Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad addressed the Oxford Union on friday, and he said his normal nonsense about why he doesn't want Israelis to enter his country.
What struck me was two of his statements that generated applause from the audience.
The first (1:12) was when he said, "Well it is not fair to call me anti-semitic. They should call other people anti-semitic. I'm not anti-semitic - the Arabs are all Semitic people."
Yes, that stupid argument actually elicited applause.
At 1:56, Mohamad justifies insulting Jews as a freedom of speech issue:
We talk about freedom of speech and yet you cannot say anything against Israel, against the Jews. Why is that? So if we....can say that we are something that will be regarded as anti-semitic by the Jews that is their right to hold such opinion of me. This my right to tell them also that they have been doing a lot of wrong things.
The liberal, enlightened students at Oxford applauded the idea of negatively stereotyping entire groups of people.
Well, not really - they only applauded the idea of negatively stereotyping Jews.
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Oh? Is there silence about Palestinians? Among the tens of thousands of articles, hundreds of hours of TV time, thousands of books and scores of UN resolutions, has the world been silenced?
[I]f we are to honor King’s message and not merely the man, we must condemn Israel’s actions: unrelenting violations of international law, continued occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, home demolitions and land confiscations. We must cry out at the treatment of Palestinians at checkpoints, the routine searches of their homes and restrictions on their movements, and the severely limited access to decent housing, schools, food, hospitals and water that many of them face.
Alexander knows nothing about Israel and next to nothing about Palestinians. I have debunked these ridiculous claims over the years.
The fact is that Palestinians could have had a state five times over - and refused. That is not Israel's fault.
The fact is that Palestinians, after promising to avoid terror in 1993, have never stopped their terror campaigns against Jews in Israel. That is not Israel's fault.
The fact is that Israel has a legal right to the territories that is at least as compelling as that of a people who literally didn't exist as a people seventy years ago.
The fact is that Arabs in the West Bank have more freedom and better living conditions, better education, better health care than most of their brethren in neighboring Egypt and Jordan.
The fact is that most of the issues with Gaza are directly because of decisions made by Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
If there is any silence around the Palestinians, it is around these facts which Michelle Alexander and The New York Times will rarely mention. That is the conspiracy of silence.
Her pretense that she is being brave by mentioning this is absurd. Bravery would be for her to say something honest about Israel that contradicts these tired lies and anti-Israel propaganda that she swallows whole.
But Ms. Alexander insists that Martin Luther King would agree with her:
Ultimately, King canceled a pilgrimage to Israel in 1967 after Israel captured the West Bank. During a phone call about the visit with his advisers, he said, “I just think that if I go, the Arab world, and of course Africa and Asia for that matter, would interpret this as endorsing everything that Israel has done, and I do have questions of doubt.”
Here is the entire quote:
I’d run into the situation where I’m damned if I say this and I’m damned if I say that no matter what I’d say, and I’ve already faced enough criticism including pro-Arab. I just think that if I go, the Arab world, and of course Africa and Asia for that matter, would interpret this as endorsing everything that Israel has done, and I do have questions of doubt... Most of it [the pilgrimage] would be Jerusalem and they [the Israelis] have annexed Jerusalem, and any way you say it they don’t plan to give it up... I frankly have to admit that my instincts - and when I follow my instincts so to speak I’m usually right - I just think that this would be a great mistake. I don’t think I could come out unscathed.
King was talking primarily about his reputation. He wanted to maintain support from the Arab and African worlds, and his main reason to cancel the visit was because of how it would hurt his standing, not any moral stance.
Yes, he had doubts about Israel capturing territory, and he did say that he felt that Israel should return territory for peace. And - it did exactly that, with Egypt. It also gave Palestinians land where they can live autonomously, and the result was not peace, but more terror.
Sorry if those actual, provable facts are too inconvenient to mention.
Alexander quotes a rabidly anti-Israel historian as "proof" that King would have been anti-Israel today. But if you look at the last words he publicly spoke on Israel, at the Rabbinical Assembly on March 25, 1968 a week before he was assassinated and nearly a year after the "occupation," this is what he said:
On the Middle East crisis, we have had various responses. The response of some of the so-called young militants again does not represent the position of the vast majority of Negroes. There are some who are color-consumed and they see a kind of mystique in being colored, and anything non-colored is condemned. We do not follow that course in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and certainly most of the organizations in the civil rights movement do not follow that course.
I think it is necessary to say that what is basic and what is needed in the Middle East is peace. Peace for Israel is one thing. Peace for the Arab side of that world is another thing. Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land almost can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.
On the other hand, we must see what peace for the Arabs means in a real sense of security on another level. Peace for the Arabs means the kind of economic security that they so desperately need. These nations, as you know, are part of that third world of hunger, of disease, of illiteracy. I think that as long as these conditions exist there will be tensions, there will be the endless quest to find scapegoats. So there is a need for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, where we lift those who are at the bottom of the economic ladder and bring them into the mainstream of economic security.
His plan for the Arabs sounds a lot like - Benjamin Netanyahu's.
But that little fact is what is being silenced, as black people today are being told that being anti-Israel is a necessary position in their own civil rights movements.
This is nonsense, and anyone reading King knows it is nonsense.
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The Palestinian uproar over the scene of a religious Jewish policeman can, in short, best be described as a display of anti-Semitism. Otherwise, how do the Palestinians explain their non-objection to a non-religious Jewish policeman patrolling the holy site? Why is it all right for a policeman without a skullcap to enter the Dome of the Rock, but not all right for one wearing a skullcap to visit the site?
The Palestinians who protested against the policeman wearing the skullcap were following the words of their president, Abbas, when he stated that the Palestinians won't allow Jews with their filthy feet to defile the Al-Aqsa Mosque." In this instance, though, the Palestinians were disturbed not by the policeman's "filthy feet", but by the fact that he was a religious Jew. Perhaps Abbas should modify his statement from 2015 so that it would include, in addition to "Jews with their filthy feet," also: "Religious Jews wearing a skullcap."
Abbas and the Palestinian leadership are clearly trying to drag Israel into a religious conflict with all Muslims, not only Palestinians. The Temple Mount has become their favorite platform for disseminating blood libels and fabrications against Israel and Jews. If anyone is defiling the sanctity of the holy site, it is Abbas and his representatives in the West Bank. Abbas's ruling Fatah faction played a major role in the protests that erupted over the latest incident at the Dome of the Rock (involving the policeman with the skullcap. The police later detained Awad Salaymeh, a senior Fatah official in east Jerusalem, for his role in the incident involving the policeman. He and other Fatah activists were at the scene as part of their leadership's ongoing effort to instigate tensions between Jews and Muslims at the Temple Mount.
Other forms of Palestinian incitement against Israel and Jews at the Temple Mount include weekly sermons delivered by leading Islamic figures. Almost every Friday, another senior Islamic cleric uses the podium to deliver inflammatory sermons against Israel and Jews. One of these clerics is Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, the former Palestinian mufti of Jerusalem, who last week told his followers that Jerusalem will never be a Jewish city. Sabri and other senior clerics have also used the podium to warn Palestinians against selling their properties to Jews.
This Palestinian incitement and cynical exploitation of a holy site to spread lies and blood libels and stereotype Jews is barely noticed by the mainstream media in the West. Were Israel to stop a Palestinian from entering a holy site because of his clothing, the foreign reporters based in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv would have rushed to the scene to interview the man and tell the world that Israel is violating freedom of worship. This is yet another example of how the media gives the Palestinians a pass and allows them to continue their vicious incitement against Israel. The next time a Palestinian grabs a knife and goes out to stab a Jew, foreign journalists might consider the last time they failed to report on the Palestinian leaders, especially their incitement.
In October 2016, UNESCO’s executive board ratified a resolution that attempted to erase 3,000 years of Jewish religious history in Jerusalem.
The resolution was drafted by Jordan and submitted by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, and Sudan — with the enthusiastic support of the Palestinian Authority, a full member of UNESCO since 2011.
The central aim of the resolution was to formalize criticism of Israel’s conduct in Jerusalem. It referred to Israel as the “occupying power” and blamed the Jewish state for the spike in violence in the region.
Condemnation of alleged Israeli aggression has long been a standard talking point in the United Nations; that alone did not set off any alarms. What disturbed Israelis about the UNESCO resolution was that it made Jerusalem’s Holy Basin an exclusively Islamic prerogative. By only referring to the Temple Mount by its Arabic name “Al-Haram al-Sharif,” the resolution’s language severed ties between Judaism and the Temple Mount. The Western Wall was reduced to Al-Buraq Plaza — the place where Muhammad tethered his horse.
In the resolution, the Arabic name was only twice followed by the Western Wall’s Hebrew name; but when that happened, it was placed in quotation marks — a grammatical detail that Israelis took as direct belittling of Judaism’s linkage to the site.
The resolution made no mention of the Jewish temples that stood at the site for a thousand years, or the next 2,000 years of continuous Jewish attachment to Jerusalem. Only once did the drafters soften their bias by making a generalized reference to the importance of the Old City and its walls to “the three monotheistic religions.”
Filmmaker Steven Spielberg told NBC News he thinks society must take the possibility of genocide more seriously now that it has in the past generation. In an interview marking the 25th anniversary of “Schindler’s List,” Spielberg referred to the massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue and warned that “hate leading to genocide is as possible today as it was during the Holocaust.”
He was behind the curve. The era of “never again” is ending in Western Europe, fading in North America and never penetrated the Middle East. Relentless demonization of the Jewish state renormalizes demonization of Jewish people.
Examples of post-Nazi genocide and attempted genocide abound, including Muslim Indonesia’s seizure of largely Christian East Timor, the auto-genocide perpetrated by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, suppression of southern Sudan’s Christian and animist Darfur region by the government of the Muslim north, the murder of much of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority by the Hutu majority and today’s oppression by Myanmar’s Buddhist majority of its Rohingya Muslim minority.
Two post-Holocaust mass murders of Jews already have been attempted.
In 1948, five invading Arab countries committed to the destruction of the fledgling Jewish state. The United States no sooner became the first nation to recognize Israel than it slapped an arms embargo on the region. Though intended to diminish general tensions, in practice the move undercut Israel, since the other side continued to receive British arms and advice.
In 1967, Israel preempted a potentially overwhelming attack by Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian forces mobilized on its border. Afterward, the philosopher Eric Hoffer noted that “had [Egyptian President Gamal Abdel] Nasser triumphed … he would have wiped Israel off the map and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.”
* Hitler was a descendant of the Rothschilds.
* He made up propaganda about murdering Jews in order to help create a Jewish state.
* His girlfriends were all Jewish.
* Rudolf Hess was Jewish.
* Hitler escaped Germany and ended up in Argentina where he died in 1971.
* "Soviet Bolshevik Zionists" were responsible for saying that he died in the bunker in Germany.
I didn't quite understand the NASA part. Apparently Jews were involved in bringing German rocket engineers to the US to help create NASA.
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On Tuesday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that freshman Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, will sit on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Some details about Omar: She supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) campaign aimed at destroying Israel. In 2012, she tweeted, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” This week, she went on CNN and defended her tweet. On Omar’s first day in office, she met with anti-Semitic Women’s March leader (and Farrakhan fan) Linda Sarsour.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee oversees House bills and investigations pertaining to U.S. foreign policy, and it has the power to cut American arms and technology shipments to allies. So, while the Democrats are distancing themselves from anti-Semitic activists who organize a march every now and then, they’re raising up anti-Semites to positions of power in the federal government.
Omar isn’t the only one. Rashida Tlaib, the freshman Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, posed for a picture with a Hezbollah supporter named Abbas Hamideh at her swearing-in ceremony in Detroit. She then dined with the man—who has railed against “criminal Zionists” and tweeted things like “Long live [Hezbollah leader] Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah!” Tlaib herself has a history of tweeting out support for anti-Israel terrorists. And recently, when a group of senators opposed a bill protecting localities that boycott Israel, Tlaib said that they “forgot what country they represent.”
There is no cosmetic fix for the anti-Semitism that’s infusing the activist left and creeping into the Democratic Party. It runs to the ideological core of intersectionality—the left’s latest religion. By the lights of intersectionality, Jews are too powerful and too white to be the targets of bigotry. So an anti-Semite is perfectly suitable as an ally against some other form of prejudice—against, say, blacks or women. And when anti-Semitism appears on the left, progressives are ready to explain it away with an assortment of convenient nuances and contextual considerations: It’s not anti-Semitism, it’s anti-Zionism; consider the good work the person has done fighting for other groups; we don’t have to embrace everything someone says to appreciate the good in them, etc.
These new congressional Democrats were celebrated far and wide when they were elected. They’re young, outspoken, and many are female. But that just makes them extraordinarily effective ambassadors for a poisonous ideology.
I have been marching for women’s rights for a long, long time — with my feet, my voice, and my pen. I am still doing so.
Currently, the most high-profile activity of the so-called “women’s movement” in the United States is one that saddens and outrages me. The Women’s March (and more specifically, the Women’s March leadership) in the US appears to have nothing to do with women or feminism. I never did care for the pussy hats, but I still supported the grassroots marchers, many of whom were serious and long-time feminists in their communities. The leadership, on the other hand, oddly seemed to have no track record in terms of fighting for women’s rights.
I am in mourning for a vibrant and radical feminist movement. This is not it. Rather, it is a shell game, a performance, a con job.
The Women’s March leadership consists of women completely new to the movement, who are branded in the same way that actresses or reality show celebrities are. They are savvy about procuring corporate funding, and even savvier about getting Hollywood stars — eager to virtue signal — involved. They stage events, not revolutions.
In recent years, progressive Jewish Zionists in the U.S. have been effectively removed - either through deliberately exclusionary language, verbal violence or physical unrest - from progressive activism. Now, the progressive camp has aimed increasingly forceful attacks against American Jews who identify as non-Zionist and even as anti-Zionist. The target now seems to be Jews as a people - with no reference to an individual's specific positions on questions of Jewish nationalism or Israel.
In particular, Ashkenazi Jewish activists have been categorized as "white Jews," attacked by Women's March co-chair Tamika Mallory for "uphold[ing] white supremacy," and accused of playing an ahistorically dominant role in the slave trade and mass incarceration in the U.S. Further, anti-Semitism is no longer allowed to remain a distinct form of discrimination, but rather a lesser branch on the tree of general bigotries.
Jews are seen as too institutionally integrated, too successful a minority (itself a favorite anti-Semitic trope), or, in other words, too white (and therefore too much the beneficiaries of "white privilege") for anti-Semitism to be taken seriously. Yet, how inclusive and welcoming coalitions are towards Jews have always been the canary in the mine of liberal democracies.
What a performance! Women's March co-leader Tamika Mallory makes an idiot of herself on Firing Line.
Transcript:
Tamika Mallory: The Palestinians are native to the land, you know, they were there for a very long time and so they are native to the land.
Margaret Hoover, PBS: Do you believe that the Jewish people are native as well?
TM: I mean, I know, I understand the history, you knowm that there are people who have their ideologies around why the Jewish people feel this should be their land. I'm not Jewish so for me to speak to that is not fair.
MH: If you are willing to say that the Palestinian are native but not the Jews are native. I mean, you are not Palestinian either.
TM: Because I'm speaking of the people who we know are being brutally oppressed in this moment. That's just the reality.
MH: Is it your view that Israel has a right to exist as a nation?
TM: I've said many times that I feel everyone has a right to exist. I just don't feel that anyone has a right to exist at the disposal of another group.
MH: In your view, does that include Israelis in Israel?
TM: I believe that all people have the right to exist. And that Palestinians are also suffering with a great crisis. And that there are other Jewish scholars who will sit here and say the same.
I’m done talking about this, you can move on.
MH: I just don't think it takes scholarly knowledge to be able to say that Israel has a right to exist.
So she's not sure if Jews have any claim to the land, but she KNOWS Palestinians are native to the land - because they are "brutally oppressed."
There's intersectional logic for you!
She contradicts herself when she says "everyone has a right to exist" (not nations, of course) but not anyone, if their existence is at the "disposal" [sic] of another group. Yet the entire Palestinian narrative is based on negation of the Jewish state! Otherwise they would have faded into the rest of the Arab world by now, and no one would be talking about a Palestinian state - or Palestinian people.
When she realizes that she is sounding like an idiot who denies Israel's right to exist and therefore she is about to even further alienate millions of Jewish women from her movement, she shuts down that line of questioning.
Because she simply cannot defend herself and still remain friends with Louis Farrakhan.
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Benny Morris is the Israeli historian whose scholarly work changed the way the Israel Palestine conflict is viewed. He coined the term ‘new historians’ which has come to include Avi Shalim, Ilan Pappe and Tom Segev. These historians challenged some myths about the creation of the state of Israel.
In more recent years Morris appears to have come to regret some of the assertions he has made, or perhaps more accurately, the way in which his research has been used.
Some extracts from his latest interview in Ha’aretz: “The first intifada was violent but not lethal. It was a popular revolt. People threw stones and a few people were killed. But all told, about 1,000 Palestinians were killed and Jews were not killed, because the Palestinians barely used firearms. They said they didn’t want to live under a military government and Israeli oppression. I refused to take part in that oppression when my battalion was posted to the casbah in Nablus. I was jailed for a few weeks. That’s a light punishment. In other armies refusing an order can land you in prison for years.”
“In the second intifada I was against refusing an order, because it wasn’t just a rebellion against the Israeli occupation but also an attempt to bring Israel to a state of collapse. Many of the terrorist attacks took place on our side of the border and included mass killings. There was terrorist warfare against Israel. To refuse to serve in that situation is not right. At the same time, I am one of those who don’t want to man checkpoints or burst into homes in the middle of the night and turn the closets inside out in a search for weapons. That is very unpleasant work and morally problematic. But the Arab desire to destroy Israel is also morally problematic.”
“The change I underwent is related to one issue: the Palestinians’ readiness to accept the two-state solution and forgo part of the Land of Israel.”
“Anyone who says that Barak and Bill Clinton made the Palestinians an offer they could not agree to is lying. Dennis Ross, the principal negotiator, has already shown in his book that that claim is bullshit. The lack of territorial continuity would only have been between Gaza and the West Bank. They were offered a contiguous territorial bloc of 95 percent of the West Bank, and they rejected it. But the story here is not one plan or another, but the fact that they want 100 percent of the territory of Mandatory Palestine. They were merely playing a game when they said they were ready for a compromise.
PA TV attacked the opening of an Israeli supermarket in Atarot in Northern Jerusalem. The supermarket chain is known as a place where Palestinians and Israelis work together. The TV story included this picture which showed skulls in a shopping cart and text stated that shopping there, which is "economic normalization," "is treason"
An important part of the people-to-people peacebuilding between Israelis and Palestinians that Israel encourages are the joint economic projects that bring financial gain to both. One Israeli prominent in advancing such peacebuilding is businessman Rami Levy who has built a number of supermarkets in which Palestinians and Israelis work side by side. The chain not only successfully employs both Palestinians and Israelis but in the aisles of the supermarkets Israelis and Palestinians are shopping together as well.
But the Palestinian Authority doesn't share Rami Levy's or Israel's interest in peacebuilding. In fact, it opposes it and works against it. When a new Rami Levy complex opened recently in the Atarot industrial area in Northern Jerusalem, official PA TV broadcast this cartoon of a woman with a shopping cart filled with various items. In the reflection in the mirror, her cart is full of skulls, the symbol of death. The text asserts that Palestinians shopping there would be committing "treason" and called for "boycotting" the supermarket:
Text upper left: "Do not be the occupation's partner in the Judaization of the city."
Text upper right: "Economic normalization is treason."
Text bottom right: "Calls from the national and Islamic forces to boycott this [Rami Levy] complex as it finances the occupation and strives to Judaize the city [Jerusalem]."
[Official PA TV, Affairs from the Capital, Jan. 13, 2019]
Two and a half weeks after a front-page Sunday investigative project in which ten New York Times journalists accused Israel of “possibly a war crime,” the Times is backing away from it by endorsing the Algemeiner’s criticism of the article.
The Times investigative project jumped to three full inside broadsheet pages of the December 30, 2018 New York Times.
One of my many criticisms of the piece for the Algemeiner was this: “The Times, for example, describes Israel as ‘the far stronger party’ relative to the Palestinians. But there are somewhere between 1.5 billion and 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, and around 14 million Jews. There are about 50 Muslim-majority countries, and one small Jewish state. The Muslims also have a lot of the oil. It may be convenient for the Times to stir sympathy for the Palestinians by depicting them as the underdogs, but it’s not as clear-cut a factual matter as the Times describes it.”
I wrote that for the Algemeiner on December 30, the same day the Times article appeared.
Now, on January 17, the Times has waddled in, belatedly, with its own story acknowledging precisely this point. Times “contributing opinion writer” Matti Friedman writes for the Times op-ed page:
Publishing one front-page news article pushing the “far stronger party” story line and then a weeks-later corrective op-ed acknowledging “that’s not the way Israelis see it” and that in fact was a “misunderstanding” and an “illusion” may be a smart short-term business strategy for the Times. It gets the Israel-haters to click on the story accusing “far stronger” Israel of “possibly a war crime,” and it gets the Israel-lovers to click on the story about how the first story was wrong.
From a longer-term perspective, though, this approach has its risks. The New York Times, after all, is a newspaper trying to brand itself as being for “Truth.” “The truth requires taking a stand. The Truth is more important now than ever,” claims a Times brand campaign ad that the newspaper is selling for $50 as an unframed poster at its own gift shop. On this one, though, the Times isn’t so much “taking a stand,” as trying to be on both sides of the issue.
"The road, which runs north-south, is actually two parallel roads separated by an 8-meter concrete wall topped with metal fencing. The western half is designed for Palestinians, though it can be used by anyone, and it bypasses Jerusalem; the eastern half is for Israelis, and anyone else with a legal permit to enter Jerusalem."
In other words, the western road can be used by anyone (Israelis and Palestinians) who doesn't want to go into Israel and the eastern road by anyone (Israelis and Palestinians) who wants to go into Israel and has a permit to do so.
That's NOT apartheid.
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Here is a summary of current resolutions in the House of Representatives that mention Jews:
January 3: H.Res.12 - Affirming the historical connection of the Jewish people to the ancient and sacred city of Jerusalem and condemning efforts at the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to deny Judaism's millennia-old historical, religious, and cultural ties to Jerusalem. (4 Republican sponsors/co-sponsors)
January 8: H.Res.27 - Expressing the sense of the House that more should be done to instill Holocaust education in school curricula around the country. (3 Democratic and 1 Republican sponsors/co-sponsors)
January 14: H.R.221 - Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Act, 58 Democratic and 30 Republican sponsors/co-sponsors. Passed 411-1, the one "nay" was Justin Amash (R), who is of Palestinian ancestry.
January 15: H.Res.41 - Rejecting White nationalism and White supremacy. 5 Democratic sponsors and co-sponsors; passed with a vote of 424-1, the 1 "nay" vote was Bobby Lee Rush (D), who is black.
January 16: H.Res.47 - Condemning all forms of anti-Semitism. (8 Republican sponsors/co-sponsors)
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Sheikh Kamal al-Khatib, deputy head of the extremist Islamic Movement in Israel, spun a conspiracy theory involving the UAE's head of intelligence attempting to purchase land for Jews in Jerusalem.
Khatib warned of what he called "the seriousness and implications of the visit by a high-level official delegation from the UAE to (Israel) in light of the continued Israeli attack on the city of Jerusalem."
He spoke of rumors that a UAE plane arriving in Tel Aviv yesterday, supposedly with UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and the Director of the UAE Intelligence Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Khatib said that there was an "attempt to buy the house adjacent to Al-Aqsa Mosque, which failed, despite the offer of $20 million to the owners of the house, by a businessman close to Mohammed Dahlan, a leader of the Fatah movement."
"The owner of the house next to the Al-Aqsa Mosque spoke to me personally three weeks ago, and he assured me that the Jerusalem businessman who offered him the sale of the pocket was Mohannad Tahnoon bin Zayed," the UAE intelligence chief.
"Tahnoon bin Zayed, who arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday, was the one who asked the Jerusalem businessman to buy this house for the maximum of $20 million," Khatib said.
Needless to say, the idea is insane.
Khatib said that "the barrier of fear and concealment (for visits by Arab delegations to Israel) has been broken, and it has become open."
That is indeed what is bothering Palestinians so much. It used to be that their threats of publicizing "normalization" and the implicit threat that the Arab street would never allow public visits between Israeli and Arab officials was enough to keep the Arab world publicly aligned with them. They comforted themselves with lots of public statements of support from Arab leaders at the UN and elsewhere.
Now, the break is so complete that they are starting to openly describe the rest of the Arab world as effectively becoming Zionist, and they are impotent to do anything about it except whine to the media.
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Israel's Kan News reports that the Palestinian Authority clandestinely released Issam Aqel, an American citizen, from prison and transferred him to the US.
Aqel had acted as a broker, buying land in Jerusalem and selling them to Ateret Kohanim, a Jewish group.
Aqel is also a resident of Beit Hanina and holds a blue Israeli identity card given to Arabs in Jerusalem.
He was held for several months in detention and prison in Ramallah, and reportedly tortured. Normally the penalty for this "crime" is life imprisonment or the death penalty.
The US pressured the PA to release the American, and Israel also put on pressure, arresting PA figures in Jerusalem after Aqel was abducted.
Hamas members bitterly condemned the decision to release Aqel to the Americans.
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This week, Tablet looks back on 40 years of the Iranian Revolution.
In an excerpt from a new history of 20th-century Iran, the neglected story of the Jewish revolutionaries who participated in—or adapted to—the sweeping changes of 1979
When the anti-Shah upheavals of 1978 erupted, Iranian Jews found themselves, naturally, on both sides of the revolutionary movement: among its supporters and its opponents.
As violence intensified, many wounded protesters calling for the establishment of an Islamic Republic found sanctuary from the clashes in a rather surprising place: the Sapir Hospital (Bimaristan-i Sapir), the Jewish hospital in Tehran.
On Sept. 8, 1978, mass demonstrations erupted in Tehran. The Shah sent the army to shoot live ammunition at the crowd of protesters. This event became known as Black Friday.
“That Friday the head nurse, Ms. Farangis Hasidim, called me and told me that they are bringing many casualties to the hospital,” recalls Dr. Jalali, one of the senior officials in Sapir Hospital at that time. “I drove to the hospital but the Zhalah [avenue] was blocked, so I went by foot and there was shooting. … Since I was friendly with the ambulance-services people, almost 90 percent of the injured people came to Sapir Hospital, where we treated all of them in our four surgery rooms.”
On Dec. 11, 1978, one of the largest demonstrations against the Shah took place in Tehran. Newspapers called it a “demonstration of millions,” and it set a milestone in the struggle against the Shah’s regime. Jewish participation set records as well; according to some sources, 5,000 Jews participated in these protests.Other estimates were much higher. Hushang, a longtime leftist activist in the Jewish community and a member of the Association of Jewish Iranian Intellectuals (AJII), a Jewish leftist activist group, helped organize the massive Jewish appearance that day: “According to press reports close to 12,000 Jews participated in these protests that day,” he says. “The Jewish religious leaders marched in the front row and the rest of the Jews followed them, showing great solidarity with our Iranian compatriots.”
The PLO’s greatest single contribution to the Iranian Revolution was the formation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but the Palestinian leader’s involvement with Iran didn’t end there
By the end of 1981, Arafat had very clearly lost favor in Tehran. To make things worse, two of his closest Iranian allies, Mohammad Montazeri and Mohammad Saleh Hosseini, would be assassinated that year—the former in an MEK bombing, the latter by Iraqi agents in Beirut. By then, the IRP had consolidated its grip on power within Iran and sidelined rival factions.
Likewise, within Lebanon, the dominant Iranian revolutionary faction—Hezbollah—had already begun cloning itself within its host country. Khomeini lieutenants like Hosseini had used connections with Fatah to recruit new cadres of Lebanese Shiite youth (among whom was a young man named Imad Mughniyeh) to their own banner. These recruits received military training in Fatah’s camps, but became part of a separate Khomeinist formation which was named after its Iranian progenitor.
In 1982, the PLO would be routed in Lebanon by the IDF, and was forced to withdraw its leadership under American protection to Tunis. By then the Iranians had already set up their own alternative structure to the PLO within Lebanon, formally known as Hezbollah.
Arafat would have one last dance with Iran before his death. After launching the Second Intifada against Israel, Arafat reached out to Iran for weapons. He purchased a freighter, the Karine A, in Lebanon, and the Iranians loaded it with 50 tons of weapons. Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh played an integral role in the operation. The IDF intercepted the ship in January 2002.
Arafat’s fantasy of pulling the strings and balancing the Iranians and the Arabs in a grand anti-Israel camp of regional states never stood much of a chance. However, his wish to see Iran back the Palestinian armed struggle is now a fact, as Tehran has effectively become the principal, if not the only, sponsor of the Palestinian military option though its direct sponsorship of Islamic Jihad and its sustaining strategic and organizational ties with Hamas.
By forging ties with the Khomeinists, Arafat unwittingly helped to achieve the very opposite of his dream. Iran has turned the Palestinian factions into its proxies, and the PLO has been relegated to the regional sidelines.
Leaving no weapon unmobilized, Corbyn and his allies have also adopted the “intersectional” left’s insistence that Jews are too privileged to be considered victims of racism and as such, by definition, cannot experience “race hatred.” In this spirit, a local Labor group recently rejected a statement expressing sympathy with the victims of the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh on the grounds that it gave too much credence to the very concept of anti-Semitism.
Finally, even as Corbyn has made the denial of anti-Semitism a core principle of the left, he has made it clear that he is more than willing to support “good” Jewish groups—that is, those who share his ideology. These include the self-described radical British groups Jewdas (sic) and Jewish Voice for Labor, both of which have refashioned Judaism into a battle cry against Israel and Western civilization.
As for the bad Jews, those who dare to affiliate in any way with the state of Israel, they are entitled to neither tolerance nor sympathy when they are the objects of violence whether physical (as at Tree of Life) or verbal—a notable case of the latter being the Labor MP Luciana Berger, who was compelled to employ a bodyguard at a Labor-party conference after being targeted with abuse labeling her a “racist Zionist,” an “apartheid apologist,” and a “warmonger.”
Jeremy Corbyn reminds us that anti-Semitism is not just an irrational hatred, harbored by madmen at the fringes of British society. He has achieved something new, not only infiltrating anti-Semitic language, tropes, and accusations into mainstream British political discourse but successfully wielding anti-Semitism as a means of dramatically increasing support for his larger program of “transforming British society.” No matter how much the British Jewish community cries “Enough is Enough,” for Corbyn it is never enough; to the contrary, to renege on his “anti-Zionism” would be to repudiate his entire worldview and renounce a core strategic key to his political success.
In sum, if Theresa May’s government falls and Jeremy Corbyn is elected prime minister of the United Kingdom, anti-Semitism, in one cheeky guise or another, will have been declared not only officially acceptable but an essential component of the governing mandate of one of the world’s greatest democracies.
Postscript: one must always hesitate to compare like with unlike, but a British observer cannot help feeling a twinge of sympathetic worry at the recent accession to the U.S. House of Representatives of several Democratic congresswomen harboring a frank and open animus toward Israel and boasting political affiliations reminiscent of Jeremy Corbyn and his milieu. One can only pray the worry is misplaced.
Terrorist leaders were prominently displayed on posters as the boys wore the official Scout logo.
Islamic Jihad officials met with the boys.
Somehow, I think that these boys were taught some things beyond the standard Scout oath.
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.
American Jews and Israel: Can this marriage be saved?
A great deal has been written lately about the problematic relationship between American Jews (the non-Orthodox majority) and Israel. Everyone wants to get into the act.
I don’t have any magic bullets. But as an American-Israeli I can’t help thinking about it.
From an Israeli perspective, American Jews don’t meet our expectations as Jews. We shouldn’t be surprised. This is because most non-Orthodox American Jews are politically either liberals, progressives, or extreme leftists. For most of them their Judaism is either a very small part of their lives, or is a version of Judaism that barely exists in Israel, Tikkun-Olam Judaism.
When American members of If Not Now or Jewish Voice for Peace seem to echo the propaganda of Israel’s deadly enemies, Israelis are shocked that Jews could speak that way about the only Jewish state. But note that while anti-Israel Jews may add “as a Jew…” to their attacks, for rhetorical purposes, either they are really speaking “as progressives,” or worse, “as Tikkun-Olam Jews,” secular humanists with some vestigial trappings of Judaism.
There are strong political pressures driving American Jews away from Israel as well. Most Jews are Democrats, and strongly supported Barack Obama. Israel began to become a partisan issue in America when the Obama Administration made it so in the fight over the Iran deal. Obama quite deliberately introduced an element of anti-Israel ideology into the conversation, and his surrogates directly accused Jewish lawmakers that opposed it of dual loyalty or warmongering.
Anti-Israel attitudes in the Democratic Party also received a strong boost in 2018 from the election of several new Muslim and far-left members of Congress who are outspokenly anti-Israel.
Republican President Donald Trump has adopted some high-profile pro-Israel policies, such as moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, cutting funding to UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority, and most importantly, taking the US out of the Iranian nuclear deal. For Democrats today, whatever Trump is for, they must oppose, and that, too, is having an effect.
Liberal American Jews are sticking with the Democratic Party, and moving leftward – and away from Israel – along with it. It’s not just politics. Assimilation and intermarriage is increasing, and Jewish identification is decreasing. There is no special reason to oppose the drift of their party. These changes make it likely that the trend pushing American Jews away from Israel will intensify.
Our expectation as Israelis is that as Jews they should feel some connection to Israel. But the reality is that they are no different in this regard from other American liberals, progressives, or extreme leftists. And why should they be?
Just as we don’t know who they are, they don’t know us. Most of their information comes through American media, much of which – for example, the NY Times and NPR, both favorites of liberal-to-leftist Jews – is biased to the point of complete disconnection from reality. They present an image of a powerful nation almost gleefully exploiting and punishing a weak, victimized minority, while ignoring the broader context of threats against Israel. They often reproduce charges made against Israel by her enemies without verification, and don’t make corrections when their stories are proven false.
American Jews are also targeted with disinformation from their own institutions: the Reform Movement in particular has pushed the Israeli Left’s position that Israel is becoming illiberal and theocratic, and has magnified and even provoked crises over issues like mixed-gender prayer at the Western Wall and non-Orthodox conversion, in order to pressure the Israeli government into fully recognizing and supporting their movement – something impossible in Israel’s political climate. Nevertheless, the campaign has damaged Israel’s image as a free and liberal society (which it mostly is).
Israel is not America. The language, the security situation, the population (containing 12% Haredim and 20% Arabs), the legal system, and the culture – as much Middle Eastern and African as European, and certainly not North American – mean that many aspects of our society will be unfamiliar to them. Americans who expect, for example, that Israel will provide the degree of freedom of expression to citizens that they have in the USA will be disappointed.
It’s very unlikely that American Jews will abandon the Democratic Party. And it’s equally unlikely that they will make the effort to get to know the state that claims to be their homeland, but that they don’t like very much.
There is one thing that could change all of this. The earthquake that could propel the American Jews into our arms would be the mushrooming of anti-Jewish attitudes in the Democratic party and the broader society. Could it happen? Something similar seems to have occurred in the UK with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. The expression of antisemitism and outright Jew-hatred promoted by Labour-linked political operatives has become worrisome enough that some British Jews have decided to leave the country. Could this happen in the US? I’ve been away too long to feel confident enough to predict that.
Short of that – and I devoutly hope it will remain short of that – we can expect the disconnect, divide, whatever you want to call it, to get worse, not better.
“Can this marriage be saved?” was a popular column in the “Ladies Home Journal” until the magazine’s demise in 2014. It was based on true stories from a family counseling practice. Both sides presented their stories, a counselor made suggestions, and there was a follow-up. My wife says that usually the marriage could be saved by improved communication, but I remember that sometimes the answer was no, it could not.
So I will play the counselor, and here’s my advice: stop criticizing each other so much. Live with your differences. And stay together for the sake of the children.
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.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly been lobbying the Trump administration on the idea of formally acknowledging Israel's 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights.
But whether Washington recognizes Israel's annexation or not, the Israelis are never withdrawing from the Golan Heights - conquered in the June 1967 war - nor should they.
Above all, the Golan does not require the control of a large hostile population, as the 27,000 Druze on the Golan Heights have accommodated themselves peacefully to Israel's rule.
The Golan Heights multiplies Israel's force in the event of a war, and is an unrivaled intelligence-gathering platform. From its posts atop the Golan Heights, the IDF can look and listen in on the valley below that leads to Damascus, only 45 miles away.
There is no question that holding onto the plateau is superior to withdrawing and the uncertainty of an agreement with the Syrian regime.
In the wake of the Syrian civil war, Iran and its expeditionary force, Hizbullah, are a threat to Israel's security. The Golan Heights is critical to keeping both from achieving their ends.
In its 2017 budget, the Palestinian Authority allocated 550 million shekels to pay salaries to terrorist prisoners and released terrorist prisoners. The salaries paid to these recipients, among them murderers, ranged from 1,400 shekels/month to 12,000 shekels/month. The beneficiaries of these payments are no more than a few tens of thousands of Palestinians.
In contrast, the PA spent only 605 million to provide financial assistance to needy Palestinian families. According to the PA budget, the 118,000 needy families received payments ranging between 750 to 1,800 shekels/quarter.
Of the 605 million shekel expenditure, 515 million shekels was funded by the international community (165 million shekels by the European Union, and 350 million shekels by the World Bank). As such, the PA contributed only 90 million shekels of the 604 million shekel expenditure.
In other words, while the PA spent 550 million shekels of its budget a year to incentivize and reward terrorists no more the a few tens of thousands of terrorists, it spends only 90 million shekels to support its needy population. In comparison, the amount it spent on the needy equals only 16% of the amount the PA prefers to spend on rewards for terror and murder!
The PA's policy and practice of paying financial rewards to terrorists prisoners, released prisoners, and the families of so-called "Martyrs" (including the families of suicide bombers) and wounded has been the subject of widespread international condemnation and was also the subject of 2018 legislation in the US, The Netherlands, and Israel.
While the US and Dutch legislation limits their countries' annual aid to the PA, the Israeli legislation requires the Minister of Defense to compile an annual report of the PA's payments in the previous year and then present the report to Israel's Security cabinet. Once the report is approved, the Israeli Government will deduct the amount the PA spent to incentivize and reward terrorists from the taxes Israel collects and transfers to the PA. The first such report should be submitted in the coming days.
Netanyahu must oust the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), thereby ending the mandate of the international observer force, Public Safety Minister Gilad Erdan said on Thursday.
He issued his call 14 days before his decision to renew the mandate of the organization that has operated in Hebron for 12 years was expected to be in, based on an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
TIPH has 13 local staff and 64 other members who come from contributing countries, such as: Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.
They are tasked with monitoring compliance with the 1997 agreement that split the city, and handed 80% of it to the Palestinian Authority and with 20% of it maintained under Israeli control. TIPH produces reports and patrols the city to give Palestinians a sense of security.
Edran has given Netanyahu a secret police report with data to back up his assertion that the organization is anti-Israel rather than a neutral force, and is harmful to both the soldiers stationed in Hebron and the small Jewish community that lives there.
The report has never been published and its contents have not been disclosed.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Sunday, January 20, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
