On Monday night, IDF troops shot and killed a 19 year old who hurled an explosive device at them from a motorcycle.
Last week, a teenaged girl tried to stab soldiers and was shot and killed.
Both of these teens are being hailed as heroes by the party led by the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who tells people he is against violence.
Here's a Fatah poster for the 19 year old:
Although Fatah's Facebook page doesn't mention his attack, the poster calls him "the heroic martyr Abdallah Abu Taleb" - and they don't use the word "hero" for people killed unless they were attackers.
Here's a cartoon about the girl on Fatah's Facebook page:
Perhaps she is going to Paradise to have sex with the male terrorists, who Palestinian children are taught are rewarded with 72 virgins.
Anyone who claims that Abbas doesn't encourage violence never spends time reading the material put out daily by his own people.
(h/t Ibn Boutros)
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Ever since Amnesty International released its truly antisemitic report last week on how TripAdvisor dares to list Jewish-owned properties in Judea and Samaria, it is been pushing this report incessantly on Twitter.
19 out of 30 tweets since then, spread over nearly a week, have been about that topic, and all the other human rights topics of the world have been put on the back burner.
Here is a chart showing the topic of Amnesty's tweets since January 30:
What do you call it when someone is obsessed with the idea that Jews, and only Jews, living in their historic homeland, do not have the same rights as every other human being on the planet?
It sure isn't "human rights."
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Two of the most influential people in the country when it comes to American policies toward Israel are a Mormon state representative in South Carolina who used to be an Eagle Scout and a Jewish law professor in Virginia who used to study pirates. You likely haven’t heard of Alan Clemmons or Eugene Kontorovich, but around three-quarters of Americans live in states with laws written or inspired by them — laws that aim to protect Israel from the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.
Versions of their bill, which bans state entities from investing or contracting in companies that participate in BDS, have been passed by 25 other states since Clemmons shepherded it into law in his state in 2015.
Pro-Israel groups – most notably the Israel Allies Foundation, which brought Kontorovich and Clemmons together - have spread them nationwide, ensuring their passage with strong bipartisan majorities despite the complaints of civil liberties advocates and pro-Palestinian groups. Advocates have tried to keep the laws consistent across states, but have managed to adapt when necessary. Now they’re using the same viral techniques to create statewide legislation to officially define anti-Semitism in a way that includes anti-Zionism.
The anti-BDS bills have spread so far and so fast that the sponsor of the one in Missouri – who said he knows Clemmons well – told the Forward he had no idea that the South Carolinian sponsored the original law.
“The way I see it, BDS efforts are an attempt to harm America’s staunchest ally, and at worst, attempt to destroy the state of Israel,” said Bob Onder, the Republican state senator in Missouri who sponsored the bill.
Clemmons and the IAF did not respond to requests for comment. Kontorovich said he did not have time to respond before the Forward’s deadline.
It’s not just about statehouses anymore. The U.S. Senate has involved itself in protecting these bills. Senators voted this week to advance a bill that would give legal cover to states that pass the anti-BDS laws.
The law’s origin story, as The Jerusalem Post explored, goes something like this: While on a junket to Israel in 2014, Clemmons met with a factory owner who exports automotive filters to South Carolina but said the BDS movement was already hindering sales in Europe. On that same trip, Clemmons met Kontorovich, who had previously focused on international law, and shared his concerns.
The pair worked together with the IAF, a small not-for-profit whose primary mission used to be arranging meetings between Christian legislators and parliamentarians in the U.S. and Europe with their Israeli counterparts. Kontorovich crafted the law’s structure, Clemmons introduced it as a bill, and the Israel Allies Foundation secured the support of other Jewish and pro-Israel organizations to further lobby and advise its nationwide network of legislators about how to best pursue a version of their own.
And to think Syd Barrett is considered the most insane member of Pink Floyd. https://t.co/HFpcMwRPk9
The evolution for Broder from young left-wing radical to his current position entertaining neo-Nazis in the Bundestag has been a strange one. In a 2013 profile in Tablet, David Mikics called him “Germany’s Most Annoying Jew,” and compared Broder to the deceased gadfly Christopher Hitchens—another writer with a penchant for provocation and whiplash-inducing swerves in his public positions. In 1986, Broder published a book, The Eternal Anti-Semite, that took aim at all kind of anti-Semites, from conventional right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis to the far left in all its esoteric varieties. At the heart of the book, there is an argument, as Mikics wrote, that “there’s a link between the obsessive thinking about the Holocaust in Germany and what he sees as an increasing German tendency to condemn Israel.”
Yet the members of the AfD for whom Broder offered his recent friendly address exhibit a different disturbing tendency regarding the Holocaust. Rather than obsessing over it as a vehicle for condemning Israel they suggest that it wasn’t really so bad and thus not worth the fuss, let alone an historical obsession. Notoriously, AfD chapter leader Björn Höcke has called the German Holocaust Memorial a “memorial of shame.”
The younger Broder could be bold and insightful. He was correct in 1976 when he condemned the anti-Semites of the German left for joining forces with Palestinian anti-Semites in Entebbe. He was also correct in documenting the spread of anti-Americanism and pro-Islamism across vast parts of the German mainstream immediately after 9/11.
Indeed, there was a time when Broder demonstrated a degree of intellectual consistency in his condemnations of anti-Semitism; attacks on targets of both the left and the right. In 2007, he mocked Jewish journalist Michel Friedman, former deputy president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, for the foolhardy idea of interviewing Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi Horst Mahler. The incident prompted Broder to write in the leading weekly political magazine Der Spiegel, that some Jews have “no dignity” at all in their willingness to speak to Jew haters. He argued, as well, against the pro-Iranian ultra-Orthodox Vienna “Chief Rabbi” Moshe Arye Friedman who went to Tehran’s infamous Holocaust denial conference.
But a staunch opposition to Islamism and the “Red-Green Axis” of the left and political Islam, along with his fervent support for Israel made him hostile toward the values of political correctness and German immigration policies and increasingly sympathetic to the far right.
After a long drift into far-right circles, Broder’s final break with reality seems to have occurred in 2014, a few years earlier than the rise of Trumpism in the U.S., with the right-wing nationalist Pegida movement, “Patriots against the Islamization of the Occident.”
“Moon of Israel” is an epic 1924 film from the golden era of silent movies, and helped launch the directing career of Michael Curtiz, of “Casablanca” fame. Sequels seldom live up to the original.
But if Israel’s plans to put a robotic lander on the moon in February 2019 can be considered a sequel, this new “Moon of Israel” mission, led by the nonprofit company SpaceIL, will be a blockbuster in its own right.
Lunar landings date back to the 1960s. The United States landed 12 people on six separate occasions as part of the Apollo program, along with robotic spacecraft such as Surveyor, which served as a precursor to human missions. The Soviet Union preformed robotic Luna missions and landed Lunokhod automated rovers in the 1970s. Most recently China landed the Chang’e 4 robotic probe on the back side of the moon.
These missions are all amazing technical accomplishments, and marvels of human know-how, sponsored and built by large government space agencies.
The moon’s next visitor is different. SpaceIL’s Beresheet – Hebrew for “In the Beginning” — will become the first privately funded mission to launch from Earth and land on the moon, and the first spacecraft to propel itself over the lunar surface after landing by “hopping” on its rocket engine to a second landing spot. The mission marks yet another milestone, not only in the history and technical arc of space exploration, but also in how humankind goes about space exploration.
A Muslim student at Punjab University has written an article spinning a bizarre conspiracy theory where Jews were instrumental in Pakistan losing Kashmir.
The essay includes these gems:
The murder of Gandhi right after five months of India’s independence was not merely an accident it could have been a carefully planned operation by the Zionists who used Nathuram Godse (an RSS member) to kill Gandhi and to pave the way for their friend Jawaharlal Nehru to rule India. ...Nehru was a dedicated member of the Zionist Movement in India. Everyone knows that he was the father of Indira Gandhi and but very few know that he was the son of a Zionist Motilal Nehru who according to official Masonic website of India was initiated into Freemasonry at Lodge Harmony in Kanpur in 1884.
These secret relationships are still maintained today in between the ruling families in India and Israel, and are based on their mutually shared common ideology of “The End of History”. The Hindu-Judaic conception of “The End of History” is remarkably similar to each other; both the Brahman Hindu and Jew consider themselves as the elite of human civilization and consider all other non-Brahman and non-Jew to have been created with an inferior status. This laid the foundation for secret brotherhood in between the Brahman Hindus who rule India and the Zionists who rule Israel today.
This is one secret of all secrets which are only known among the elite Jewish-Kabbalistic circles and the elite Brahmans of India.
My favorite part was where he calls the Balfour Declaration an "open secret:"
It is an open secret today how British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour under Lloyd George’s administration wrote a letter to Lord Rothschild to ensure a Jewish national home in Palestine.
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A dustup within the organized Jewish community here in Boston helps clarifywho genuinely represents “The Big Tent” when it comes to coalition politics.
In many major US cities, Jewish Community Relations Councils (or JCRCs) bring together Jewish communal organizations (some religious, some cultural or political) in coalition. Boston’s JCRC has historically been one of the largest and best-organized institution of this type in the country which means their decisions (which can take a long time to make, given the opinionsthat need to be balanced) tends to establish precedent followed by other communities.
The Boston JCRC’s “Big Tent” policy has caused controversy in the past, notably when J Street was given membership without formal organization-wide approval after they had “acquired” an existing member organization called Brit TzedekV’Shalom.
During debates over that earlier controversy, J Street and its allies made the case that – regardless of what you thought of their politics – the organization has positioned itself as an opponent of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) targeting Israel. In a coalition with remarkably few red lines, support for BDS was and still is one of the few things that can get you left outside the “Big Tent.”
Although some organizations have danced close to that red line, none had ever crossed it. At the same time, organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace, which exists primarily to support BDS, understand their positions place them outside looking in.
The wisdom of such exclusion was made clear when JVP finally said out loud what anyone paying attention to the group has known for years: that they are an anti-Zionist organization dedicated not to improving the Jewish state or finding peaceful compromises between Israel and her enemies, but to denying to the Jews a right to their own nation.
As JVP’s mission expanded to include the spreading of anti-Semitic canards channeling the nation’s racial tensions towards hostility towards Israel, the wisdom of keeping distance between them and an organization (JCRC) that represents the vast majority of Jewish opinion on the Middle East seems wise indeed. But one group, the Workman’s Circle (a founding JCRC members) decided to take a step over the red line right when JVP’s anti-Zionism and anti-Jewish animus hit high gear by officially signing onto a petition, created by JVP, that condemned the equation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
I’ll leave it to readers to decide if denying Jews rights given without question to hundreds of other peoples, or telling African Americans that the Jewish state is responsible for cops killing their children constitutes “legitimate criticism of Israel.” But JCRC, in a vote of 62-13, decided that the support lent to an anti-Zionist, BDS-supporting organization like JVP was enough to get Workman’s Circle removed from the Council.
In typical Jewish-organization fashion, a vote was only taken after endless discussion and deliberation, including months of direct talks with Workman’s Circle members. But, in the end, the rest of JCRC decided overwhelmingly that anti-Zionism and BDS were positions that others were free to take – but not in the name of the rest of the community.
It is worth comparing the extended discussions, debates, editorials, offers of compromise and, ultimately, democratic voting that led to the anguished choice to ask a member to leave with the behavior of those who criticize JCRC’s decision as an attack on inclusivity.
As I’ve noted before, Jewish Voice for Peace has been very careful to insist that anyone joining its ranks, and certainly anyone who speaks in their name, tow the organization’s political line, especially with regard to support for BDS.
Pulling the lens wider, political coalitions that have formed in the last few years under the banner of “intersectionality” (based on the premise that all oppressed groups have an affinity to one another and should thus work together as a united front) have rapidly developed their own sharp red lines separating oppressed from oppressors, as well as rigid internal hierarchies to determine whose oppression counts most.
Progressive Jews find themselves in a double-bind within such intersectional boundaries and hierarchies, excluded if they show any type of support for Israel (whose role as an oppressor must remain unquestioned), and stuck on the bottom of the oppression hierarchy (as “white Jews”) even if they abandon enough Jewish identity to satisfy intersectional gate keepers.
Do choices of who is in and who is out of an intersectionality club, and who is up and down within them, bear any resemblance to the extended deliberation, search for understanding and compromise, and democratic decision-making you just read about in the story of Boston JCRC’s decision to say goodbye to a member that made the conscious decision to embrace positions rejected by the rest of the community?
Hardly. For these intersec-coalitions are driven by ruthlessness, not be conversation or democratic values. Hostility to the Jewish state has become the hallmark, if not the defining element of “the movement” not because people have agreed to it, but because those who have clawed their way to the top are ready to see the organizations they lead destroyed, rather than allow any opinion that contradicts their world view to be heard, much less gain purchase. The recent implosion of the Woman’s March is just the latest example of this toxic dynamic in action.
So, in one of the many great ironies punctuating history (especially Jewish history), it is the parochial organization trying to carefully and thoughtfully police its boundaries that represents genuine universal values, such as the virtues of negotiation, compromise and democracy, while those who insist they (and they alone) represent progress that behave the most narrowly and tyrannically.
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The Iron Dome’s-based greatest test came when IDF troops attacked Hamas positions in the Gaza strip in July 2014. Gaza militants launched around 4,600 rockets and mortar shells in response, around one-quarter of which landed near areas populated by Israeli civilians. The six Iron Dome batteries then active were hastily reinforced with three more. Together, they shot-down 735 rockets and mortar shells and failed to intercept around seventy, consistent with an 85 percent to 90 percent success rate claimed by the IDF.
In total, Palestinian rockets and mortars killed five Israeli and one Thai civilian and injured eighty in 2014. Additionally, nearly three hundred short-firing militant rockets landed in Gaza, killing thirteen Palestinian civilians, most of them children.
Despite the system’s popularity in Israel, critics have questioned whether officially successful Iron Dome intercepts are actually effective at neutralizing incoming projectiles, though some of the more sweeping critiques themselves appear flawed when given scrutiny . A more measured 2018 assessment by Michael Armstrong argues the system’s success rate against projectiles landing in populated areas may lie between 59 percent to 75 percent.
Cost-efficiency is another concern. Though some sources list the Tamir missiles as costing as little as $35,000 each, the new Pentagon’s funding request lists a price of $150,000 per missile. Even this higher figures is peanuts compared to multimillion-dollar Patriot air-defense missiles. But even going by the lower figure, each Tamir is many times more expensive than the projectiles it is destroying.
This has led some Israelis to advocate for a directed-energy weapon component to more cost-efficiently handle mass attacks. The Israeli firm Rafael has developed a laser called the Iron Beam with this capability in mind, though atmospheric diffusion limits its engagement range to a seven-mile radius.
A week after raising doubts on President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a leading Mideast policy expert reversed course and affirmed Trump as “the most pro-Israel president ever.”
Daniel Pipes, founder and president of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum think tank, had written in a January 23 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that although the specific details of Trump’s peace plan have not been publicly revealed, recent hints indicate that the proposal “doesn’t sound good.”
But on January 30, in the aftermath of his discussion on the Wall Street Journal column with U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Pipes wrote on Twitter that that Trump is “the most pro-Israel president ever.”
“In particular, the president bucked conventional thinking and made overdue changes by: Withdrawing from the disastrous Iran deal; moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, carrying out a law on the books since 1996; obstructing efforts at the United Nations to delegitimize Israel; accepting Israeli acts of legitimate self-defense; encouraging Arab countries to cooperate with Israel; cutting funds for the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA, including active support for the Taylor Force Act,” Pipes tweeted. “I hope for a continuation of this positive record despite my known concerns.”
Others have shared Pipes assessment of President Trump’s record on Israel.
I just found this video put out by the "Government of Palestine" for World Children's Day 2017 in English. Only a a couple dozen people watched it, but it shows how easily they lie.
A central point was this one:
Really?
At this moment, according to B'Tselem, there are 203 minors in Israeli prisons. 80% are over 16, none are under 14. Some more might be in IDF detention, but certainly less than 250 total.
The chances that a Palestinian minor from the West Bank is in Israeli custody right now is about 1 in 10,000.
The chances that an American minor is in detention (prison or juvenile detention) is about 1 in 1500. The chances that an American minor is in adult prison is 1 in 7500.
Canadian rates are comparable.
A Palestinian minor has a much lower chance of being in Israeli custody than an American or Canadian minor being in custody in those countries.
The Palestinian video went on to accuse Israel of torturing the children, an equally false accusation.
The obvious audience for this failed video is the English speaking world - NGOs, the UN and other Westerners, most of whom would not believe that a government that they want so desperately to succeed would lie so blatantly.
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Arabs are celebrating Ezzeddine Faraj, a Lebanese teenager who was to compete in a regional taekwindo competition in Cyprus.
When he found out that he was going to compete against a "Zionist" on February 1, he withdrew from the competition.
From what I can tell, the World Taekwondo Federation has no rules about a situation like this, although the Israeli team can file a complaint.
Most of the competitors in the tournament are from the Mediterranean region like Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Lebanon and Italy, with a few Swedes scattered in.
Faraj is being hailed as a hero. The concept of hero in the Arab world seems to have changed from someone who wins a victory into someone who runs away from the fight - what others would call a coward.
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In reality, the words mean "Here they incite to kill Jews."
That is quite different.
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Walid M. Sadi, writing in Jordan Times, writes that Jordanians are still not used to the idea of having peace with Israel 25 years after the peace treaty.
His Majesty the late King Hussein made a strategic decision when he decided to sign the Wadi Araba Peace Treaty due to far-reaching strategic considerations and out of consciousness of the country's long-term national interests, despite all the pitfalls and dangers associated with it. King Hussein must have felt that on balance, entering into a peace treaty with Israel would serve Jordan's national interests more than maintaining the status quo. Yet, some quarter of a century later, many Jordanians have yet to get used to the implications of that peace treaty, and cling to the notion that anti-normalisation with the Zionist state serves Jordan's interests more.
He feels that a line needs to be drawn between what Jordan must do to legally uphold the peace treaty and what it must do to avoid any warming of relations between the two countries:
The anti-normalists are failing to distinguish between normalisation of relations with Israel, which is basic, legally necessary and binding under the peace treaty on one hand, and elevating bilateral relations with Israel to warmer levels on the other, which is not legally binding.
Jordanians at large do not differ on the need to cool off relations with Israel for as long as it continues its current path of defiance of everything sensible to the Palestinian's overtures for peace. But when it comes to “normalisation” per se, it would be difficult to reconcile such a stance with the letter and spirit of the peace treaty. This growing stance is clouding the national thinking and judgments on many regional projects.
The government is called upon to speak out more coherently on this dividing subject, with a view to providing guidance to the public on what is right and what is wrong when it comes to the bilateral relations between Jordan and Israel.
I wonder what Palestinian "overtures for peace" he is referring to.
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As of January 31st, the US administration ceased all its aid to the Palestinian Authority. In response, Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian Chief Negotiator, said: “Hundreds of Palestinians will be losing their jobs as a result of the U.S. decision to terminate all USAID projects in Palestine. An additional step in a series of punitive and unethical measures, carried out by the Trump Administration, against the people of Palestine to pressure its leadership to compromise on our inalienable right to self-determination.”
[Website of the State of Palestine PLO Negotiations Affairs Department, Feb. 2, 2019]
Upon closer examination, it becomes clear that Erekat, on behalf of the PA, is once again distorting a very simple fact.
In reality, it is not the US that has made any such decision. Rather, it is the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, which has positively decided to reject all of the considerable US aid to the Palestinians. It has done so by actively choosing to continue its ”Pay for Slay“ policy, whereby the PA squanders hundreds of millions of dollars annually to incentivize and reward terrorism and terrorists including convicted murderers and the families of dead terrorists (so-called “Martyrs.”)
American veteran Taylor Force was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist while touring Israel. When the US understood that the PA pays the family of the murderer of Taylor a monthly allowance, it passed the Taylor Force Act (TFA, passed March 2018). According to the provisions of TFA, most of the US aid to the PA became contingent on the PA abolishing its ”Pay for Slay” policy.
Instead of heeding the call of the US administration, the PA made a positive decision to waive the US aid and continue its ”Pay for Slay“ policy, with Abbas declaring that the PA prioritizes rewarding terrorist prisoners rather than taking care of the rest of the Palestinian population:
There are more than 100 links between the internationally-designated terrorist organizations Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) with NGOs promoting the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, some of which receive funding from European states and philanthropic funds, a new report by the Strategic Affairs Ministry has found.
More than 30 members of Hamas and PFLP hold senior positions in BDS-promoting NGOs, the vast majority of whom have been in prison for terrorism-related crimes, including murder, and maintain active ties with the terrorist groups.
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said the research “reveals the true nature and goals of the BDS movement and its connection to terrorism and antisemitism.”
“When people talk about the goals of the BDS movement, they don’t bother to read official statements from its leaders,” Erdan lamented. “If you do, it becomes clear that the goals of its leaders are the same as those of the leaders of Palestinian terror organizations. BDS rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state within any borders. They want to see Israel wiped off the map.”
“Promoting boycotts is [just] a different means to achieve this goal,” he added.
One such example is Laila Khaled, a PFLP member infamous for hijacking two civilian planes in 1969 and 1973, who was found to have planned terrorist attacks in Jerusalem as recently as 2011, and called for “armed struggle” against Israel last year. She continues to actively fundraise for BDS organizations in Europe and South Africa.
Another example is Rani Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and also a PFLP operative. His organization releases weekly reports calling to boycott Israel and received $1.5 million of European funding in 2014-2017. Sourani and Iyad al-Alamo, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights’ legal department, provided legal aid and advice to Hamas as recently as 2017. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
Al Jazeera and SputnikNews note that when Qatar won the Asia Cup tournament last week with a victory over Japan, the news media in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain did everything they could to avoid or minimize the name of the victor.
The tournament was played in the UAE.
Al Bayan in the UAE headlined the story as "Japan loses" instead of "Qatar wins," only mentioning the Qatari team as an aside in the second paragraph.
Most of this UAE article referred to Qatar as merely "the opponent."
Gulf nations cut off relations with Qatar over its policy of remaining friendly with Iran.
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A Detroit-area historical group is protesting a mayor’s decision to stop it from sending out the latest issue of its publication, which delves into Ford Motor Co. founder Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism.
Officials with the Dearborn Historical Commission say the latest edition of The Dearborn Historian, a city-financed quarterly journal, should be sent to its roughly 200 subscribers and that Mayor Jack O’Reilly should reverse his decision to cut ties with longtime Detroit journalist Bill McGraw, who wrote the Ford piece.
The story, which can be read online, highlights Ford’s writings and views on Jews and explores how they still influence modern neo-Nazi groups. The cover of the halted edition noted that Ford bought a publication called the Dearborn Independent 100 years ago and “used it to attack Jews.” It added, “the hate he unleashed flourishes in the Internet age.”
The mayor is censoring a history journal???
O’Reilly said in a statement that he thought the publication and dredging up “hateful messages” from a century ago “could become a distraction from our continuing messages of inclusion and respect.”
No, that's not the reason the mayor of Dearborn quashed the article.
This is:
Dearborn now has one of largest communities of Arabs outside of the Middle East.
He is catering to his Arab voter, who (he believes) would be upset at an article about antisemitism.
The article is online and is quite good. The article notes that the topic of Ford's antisemitism has been "off-limits" in Dearborn. Excerpts:
Under Ford, the Independent became notorious for its unprecedented attacks on Jews. But Ford’s anti-Semitism traveled far beyond the Dearborn borders. Showing the marketing expertise that had catapulted Ford Motor into one of the world’s most famous brands, Henry Ford’s lieutenants vastly widened the reach of his attacks by packaging the paper’s anti-Semitic content into four books. Experts say “The International Jew,” distributed across Europe and North America during the rise of fascism in the 1920s and ‘30s, influenced some of the future rulers of Nazi Germany.
In 1931, two years before he became the German chancellor, Adolf Hitler gave an interview to a Detroit News reporter in his Munich office, which featured a large portrait of Ford over the desk of the future führer. The reporter asked about the photo.
“I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration,” Hitler told the News.
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Open Doors, an organization for protecting Christians from persecution, issues a ranking of the 50 worst countries and territories for Christians.
Palestinian Territories makes the list at #49. While not as bad as many other Muslim majority countries, it still is not a great place for Christians. Specific issues are:
• During the WWL 2019 reporting period, at least one female convert has been confined to the family home for some time. Several forced marriages of female converts to Muslim men were reported and a number of converts had to relocate within the country, due to pressure from family and society.
Generally speaking, Christians are affected by Islamic oppression throughout the Palestinian
Territories, although there is noticeably more pressure in Gaza than in the West Bank, because of the
presence of active radical Islamic movements. Islamic militants more radical than Hamas have been
active in Gaza, and are also present in the West Bank. These include Islamic State group (IS) cells -
either active or "sleeping". Despite the fact that these groups do not have any major power yet, their
influence cannot be dismissed.
In addition, there is a continuing influence and enforcement of age-old norms and values.
In the
Palestinian Territories it is very much mixed with Islam and especially affects converts from Islam. As
in the rest of the Middle East, religion is connected to family identity. Therefore, leaving Islam is
interpreted as betraying one’s family. In general, families put strong social pressure on converts to
make them return to Islam, leave the region or to be silent about their new faith. In many cases,
converts are alienated from their families as a result of their faith.
Dictatorial Paranoia is connected to plain greed and the safeguarding of the interests of a small group.
Nepotism is widespread within the clan-based society and people with connections to those in power
are most of the time well-off. Christians have traditionally been involved with Fatah and the nationalist
movement. Most Christians support the factions in their struggle against the Israeli authorities and
face no difficulties. Nevertheless, without elections for many years, the democratic legitimacy of the
government is low. Both parties within the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and Hamas, try to maintain
power with all means necessary. Freedom of expression and therefore the freedom of religion is
limited; if church leaders criticize the Palestinian Authorities or their Islamic rule, it can have negative consequences, especially in Gaza. Christians also face the pressure of Israeli government control; for
example, church leaders in Jerusalem have to operate carefully in order not to lose privileges such
as easy access to obtaining visas and permits.
(h/t Irene)
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And don’t forget the little matter of such falsehoods blatantly violating the Oslo Accords. Those accords obligate the PA to refrain from “hostile propaganda” against Israel. Accusing Israel of murdering the PA most beloved leader surely qualifies as “hostile.” So why does the PA keep violating the accords? What happened to all those promises that it can be trusted to honor the agreements that it signs?
Also in the past few days, a rally was held in Tulkarm — under Abbas’s official auspices — to honor convicted Palestinian murderer Maher Younes, while the Bethlehem branch of Fatah (the ruling party, chaired by Abbas) posted photos on its Facebook page glorifying teenage terrorist Ahmed Sanagrah.
Wait, that doesn’t make any sense, either. The proponents of creating a Palestinian state keep telling us that it’s safe to create such a state because the PA is against terrorism. They say Hamas is the bad one, while the PA is moderate. So if the PA is against terrorism, why do its leader and ruling party keep glorifying, sheltering, and paying terrorists?
By the way, when Abbas spoke at the United Nations earlier this month, he proclaimed the PA’s “commitment to international law and legitimacy and to a peaceful solution.”
And that makes perfect sense. Abbas is truly bilingual. When he speaks to Western audiences, he uses all the right words that they want to hear. He sounds peaceful, reasonable, and moderate. But when he speaks to his own people, he literally speaks another language: the language of hatred and violence. It’s the kind of language that gets innocent people killed.
There was a time, not so long ago, when it was almost impossible to find out what was being said by Palestinian Arab leaders in their own media. Every once in a while, something would leak out. But by and large, the world news media did an effective job of keeping Americans in the dark about what Arafat, Abbas, and the others were saying.
That’s all changed thanks to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), which exposed the above-cited outrages and so many others. By exposing the PA leaders’ true words, PMW has affected US and European policy towards the PA and in some cases has led directly to reductions of Western aid to the PA. Palestinian Media Watch is a uniquely worthwhile organization, and it deserves to receive a level of support from Jewish federations comparable to what is given to various other Israel-based agencies that do good work. Now that would make a lot of sense.
LIKEWISE, THE Alawites were promised a fair amount of autonomy in their own area around Latakia, between Lebanon and Turkey. A nominally Shi’ite sect that most Muslims, including regular Shi’ites, regarded as heretical, the Alawites were eager to associate with the new non-Muslim rulers. They provided the French with excellent and disciplined native levies, which later turned into elite forces.
The Druze issue was more awkward. Another offshoot of Shi’ite Islam that had developed into a fully separate religion, the Druze community was a major power both in the mountainous areas south of Damascus – the Jabal Druze – and in several parts of Lebanon. While the French provided the Jabal Druze with a state of its own, they subordinated the Lebanese Druze to the Christians. That major departure from their global scheme and major mistake was soon met by a bitter all-Druze insurgency and more unrest in other parts of the country. It took two years, and a very discerning general, Edouard Andrea, to quell it in 1927. Finally, de Caix’s map was cosmetically redrawn. The states of Damascus, Aleppo and Jabal Druze were merged into a single Syrian Federal State. However, Lebanon and the Alawite State were maintained as separate entities.
Wrested from Vichy France by the British and the Free French in 1941, Syria was granted independence as a single state in 1945, with the exception of Lebanon, which was confirmed as a separate independent state. It did not mean, however, that the ethnic, religious and geographic tensions or rivalries that appalled de Caix vanished instantly. On the contrary, they were exacerbated by an enormous demographic growth – from five million in the 1950s to about 10 million in the 1970s to about 20 million today. Democracy quickly gave way to military regimes, a succession of coups and even a brief incorporation into Gamal Nasser’s United Arab Republic. Finally, the Alawites took over.
Ironically, the pro-French Latakia sectarians had converted to militant nationalism and then Ba’athism in the 1940s, and their military power had allowed them to assert an ever-increasing role in the country’s politics in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1970, Hafez Assad, an air force general and a leader of the Ba’athist Syrian branch, emerged as the sole ruler. The Assad regime, under Hafez Assad from 1970 to 2000, and then under his son Bashar, was outwardly pan-Arabist, but relied in fact on carefully calculated sectarian alliances.
In a nutshell, the Alawites coopted all non-Sunni or non-Arab minorities in order to check the Sunnis. The system was cemented by socialism – in effect, family and sectarian patronage – and a close alliance with the USSR. Once the Soviet Empire fell that started to unravel. The civil war that started in 2011 brought back to the surface a geopolitical Atlantis: de Caix’s map, with only one major difference, the assertiveness of Trans-Euphrates Syria.
The post-Soviet Russians have been back in Syria since 2015. While they see the preservation of their Alawite ally as a priority, they are realistic enough to commend federalization as a long-term solution. This is all the more so since they know they are bound to compete with their Iranian allies and their Turkish allies-in-the-making. The Americans and the Europeans should not, at that point, leave it to the Russians alone. Nor should the Israelis. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
Britain’s far right has never been so politically weak, fractured or disorganized. The British National Party – whose leader, Nick Griffin, once warned against the “unholy alliance of leftists, capitalists and Zionist supremacists” which had conspired “with the deliberate aim of breeding us out of existence in our own homelands” – is now a spent force.
A decade after winning nearly a million votes and seats in the European Parliament and London Assembly, the far right is now “almost extinct,” in the words of the anti-extremist organization Hope Not Hate.
“Organizationally,” Hope Not Hate suggested in its annual report last year, “the movement is weaker than it has been for 25 years. Membership of far-right groups is down to an estimated 600-700 people.”
But counting votes or membership rolls, its opponents fear, fails to capture the nature of the threat it poses.
That threat has seen growing warnings by the police of the danger of far-right terrorism. Last year, Mark Rowley, then the UK’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, warned that the “right-wing terrorist threat is more significant and more challenging than perhaps public debate gives it credit for.”
Over the previous two years, he suggested, far-right activity had evolved from unpleasant protests and hate crimes committed by isolated individuals. “Right-wing terrorism wasn’t previously organized here,” he claimed.
Thus while much media and political discussion on anti-Semitism over the past three years has focused on the opposition Labour party and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, that attention has somewhat disguised the danger posed by the far right — a danger which the country’s current political instability and divisive debate over its planned departure from the European Union appears to be fueling.
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Elder of Ziyon
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