Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 07, 2019

02/07 Links Pt2: Glick: AI Uses Airbnb to Push Wider Boycott of Israel; UK anti-Semitism breaks record high for 3rd year in a row; Why Won't the British Left Pick on Someone Else?

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Amnesty International Uses Airbnb to Push Wider Boycott of Israel

To advance their goal of criminalizing the act of being Jewish while present in Judea, Samaria or Jerusalem, Amnesty refers to Israel as an “apartheid regime.”

In so doing, like its fellow antisemitic political groups that pose as human rights organizations, Amnesty distorts the language of human rights and international law to libel Israel. In the real world, Israel is the only human rights respecting democracy in the Middle East.

Apartheid was the South African regime for forced legal separation between whites and blacks and other racial groups, and the subjugation of the latter to lower legal status. Apartheid South Africa forbade blacks from living in white areas unless in domestic servitude. Blacks were forbidden to use white bathrooms, white parks, white movie theaters and white beaches. And, of course, blacks were denied the right to vote. The laws were inherently discriminatory.

Israel’s legal code in contrast rejects any form of discrimination. Minorities in Israel have the same legal rights as Israel’s Jewish majority. And yet, here is Amnesty finding “inherent discrimination” in Israel’s legal code, which allows persons of all ethnicities – including Jews — to open up their homes to tourists.

By asserting a separate legal system for criminalizing Israeli Jews, by applying legal norms against Israeli Jews that are applied to no other group, Amnesty and its fellow antisemitic activist groups that are seeking to institute a quasi-apartheid regime – against Israel.

This is not simply a gross abuse of the very concepts of law and human rights. It is the negation of the concepts of law and human rights. Those who ascribe to Amnesty’s thinking view the law not as an instrument to serve justice blindly but instead is a means to discriminate against hated groups.

It is appalling that Amnesty has stooped this low. And of course, the pit of antisemitism is bottomless, so there is no reason to believe that it won’t go even lower in a month or two.

But the worst part about Amnesty’s galling report is that it shows that the powers-that-be in fake human rights group, with annual budgets in excess of $300 million, think that it is acceptable to wear their Jew-hatred on their sleeve.

Amnesty International has lost its moral way with regard to Israel

In 2002, following an Israeli military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin in response to the Passover massacre in Netanya, in which a Palestinian suicide bomber murdered 30 civilians during a celebratory feast, Amnesty accused Israel of carrying out war crimes and massacres of Palestinian civilians. The allegations, promptly reported by the BBC and other news outlets, placed the Palestinian civilian death toll at more than 500. But 52 Palestinians died, the majority of them combatants, along with 23 Israeli soldiers, in fierce urban combat.

False allegations of a massacre made by Amnesty lubricated the machinery of the political campaign against Israel, leading to street protests, campus hearings, reams of condemnations and anti-Israel resolutions across civil society and government.

In 2015, Amnesty was forced into a humiliating admission that it had lobbied the Australian government to accept murderous Lindt Cafe terrorist Man Haron Monis as a genuine refugee.

Last April, Amnesty’s secretary-general called Israel’s democratically elected government “rogue”. In 2010, the head of its Finnish branch called Israel a “scum state”. Its British campaign manager has likened Israel to Islamic State and been condemned for his attacks on Jewish parliamentarians.

Perhaps as revealing as Amnesty’s fixation on Jews living on the “wrong” side of a long-defunct armistice line has been its relative silence on the disturbing trend of rising anti-Semitism. In April 2015, Amnesty UK rejected an initiative to “campaign against anti-semitism in the UK”, as well as “lobby the UK government to tackle the rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Britain” and “monitor anti-Semitism closely”. It was the only proposed resolution at the annual general meeting that was not adopted.

The skewed morality revealed by Amnesty’s obsession with Israel reflects a broader decline in the non-governmental sector. Whereas groups such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch once led the struggle against Soviet tyranny and actively defended the rights of political prisoners, today they serve an increasingly narrow political agenda, one aligned with anti-Western, anti-capitalist forces. Amnesty’s apparent contempt for Israel, its ho-hum attitude to anti-Semitism, and its inordinate condemnations of democracies all stem from this malaise.

Of course, the settlements are a point of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Indeed, the parties identified settlements as a final status issue in the historic Oslo Accords signed between the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Israel in 1993. It was agreed that the questions of which settlements will be annexed to Israel and which will be dismantled or transferred to Palestinian sovereignty are to be resolved in direct negotiations in the context of a final peace agreement. But the pursuit of peace is not aided by Amnesty’s political manoeuvres and attempts to isolate Israel, which perpetuate conflict by other means.

Why Won't the British Left Pick on Someone Else?

Why are Labour members not speaking out loud about the need to boycott or overthrow such a regime as Iran, but instead focus all their venom on Israel, a country they demonize on wholly false grounds, especially considering the full IHRA definition of anti-Semitism which Labour has technically adopted -- while reserving the right, however, to criticize Israel as an apartheid or Nazi state?

Whatever its faults, Israel is a utopia for human rights that many self-congratulatory moralists identify as their personal preserve. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country to uphold all the rights the Labour Party claims to hold precious. Yet, Israel is the only country in the world that the Labour party reserves for its censure, while other countries are ignored, mildly rebuked or even cosied up to.

In reality, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have largely governed their own people since 1994, following the signing of the Oslo Accords. The Palestinians, however, continue to go through inconceivable suffering due to the atrocious governance by their own often corrupt and manipulative leaders. They continue to blame Israel and the Jews -- preferable, apparently, to blaming themselves.

"Victimization is the pain-orientated version of privilege. If it suffices to call oneself oppressed in order to be in the right, everyone will fight to occupy that slot." — Pascal Bruckner, An Imaginary Racism: Islamophobia and Guilt.

I recently attended a very pretty funeral and was surprised to discover that it felt wrong to me. Living in Israel has changed my perspective on so many things, it turns out that I have developed a new way of seeing funerals too.

A mother of a neighbor died. She had a long good life although her youth was marred by the horrors of the Holocaust that never really left her. Her son arranged her burial in the cemetery where his father had chosen to be buried, a private cemetery where he could have a non-religious funeral.

The Holocaust caused his father to develop a problem with religion.

The funeral was in a private cemetery in a kibbutz near Haifa. The location is beautiful. The graves are spaced out, each with its own unique style.

Unlike the municipal cemeteries run by the Hevra Kadishah who also conduct the funeral ceremony according to Jewish tradition, in the private cemetary you can have any kind of ceremony you want. Some of the people who choose this route are not Jews. Some are Jews who for whatever reason developed a distaste for the religious. Others simply like the freedom of choice and the prettier location.

In general Israelis are horrible at ceremonies. Pageantry takes timing, care of details and “prettifying” reality – Israelis don’t do that.

The first Israeli funeral I went to shocked me to the core. I was in 10th grade and the brother of a girl in my class died in a training accident in the army. The first thing that struck me was the ambulance waiting outside the cemetery in case, in their anguish, any of the relatives collapsed and needed medical care. Then came the gut-wrenching howls from some of the women of the family. Then the father saying Kaddish for his son, crying and asking God why the natural order of the world had been flipped on its head, why he had to say Kaddish for his boy when it was the boy who eventually should have said kaddish for him.

Raw, gut-wrenching pain I will never forget.

I have been to many different funerals since. Too many. The way the families react is different. When and how much they choose to speak is different. The funeral ceremony itself is very spartan. The area where family and friends gather before the funeral is usually an empty, unadorned space, designed to fit large crowds. The body is brought out, wrapped in a shroud. There is no coffin (unless it’s a military funeral).

The body wrapped for burial usually looks much smaller than the person seemed in life.
It is considered a mitzvah to escort the dead to their final resting place. It’s considered a mitzvah to take part in the actual activity of burying the dead. While most of the ceremony consists of prayers for the deceased, at the end of the ceremony a direct request is made from the soul of deceased, asking for forgiveness if any offense was caused, with an explanation that if something was done that disturbed the body, it was done out of respect and in accordance with the traditional methods of preparing the deceased for their final journey. Before leaving attendees place a stone on the grave, symbolizing the permanence of memory.

It’s a utilitarian ceremony with no real thought given to beauty or comfort.

Municipal cemeteries tend to be overcrowded and unattractive, even when they are in beautiful locations (as is Haifa’s cemetery). There is none of the charm of an old cemetery you might find in the USA or Europe. This private cemetery was different. It was tranquil and pleasant.

And it felt wrong.

The place created for families to speak before the ceremony was lovely. It had a podium and pews to sit in. The deceased was brought out in a coffin, covered in a cloth that made it look more like a table than a body prepared for burial.

(The family did choose to have a Rabbi conduct the service so that part was like in standard funerals.)

My internal conflict surprised me. On one hand my natural desire for beauty and peacefulness was answered. The environment provided everything I had previously felt lacking in other funerals I attended. On the other hand, it felt wrong to me.

Israeli funerals aren’t prettified because death isn’t pretty. Other people might have customs designed to make it easier for the bereaved, to distance the living from death - such as not having anything to do with the physical act of burying the deceased or even leaving before the coffin is placed in the ground. Our funerals aren’t designed to disguise the ugliness of grief. The bereaved often have intense emotions clawing at their guts and the funeral is the place to let it out – and however it comes out, it’s ok.

It surprised me how much the coffin disturbed me. It seemed fake, artificial, an unnecessary, unwanted barrier between the deceased and the land that is a living player in the eternal love story of the Nation of Israel. Does that seem strange? It must…

Living in this land has changed me. I will always love the beautiful but I have learned to understand the beauty of truth and truth is often unpleasant, messy and even harsh.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Israel has dived head on into pre-election madness, with commercials on social media (TV and radio commercials are not allowed until 26 March, thank goodness), text messages, wild and not-so-wild accusations and allegations, and – until the deadline for presenting party lists in two weeks – rumors of shifting alliances between parties and factions. It is hard to believe that on 9 April this will be over.

The actual contest is between the blocs of parties representing the Left and the Right. The Left continues to chant its mantra of democracy in danger, while the Right warns of a left-wing government that will repeat the errors of Oslo and the withdrawal from Gaza. While the poll numbers of the individual parties go up and down, the totals for the competing blocs change very little.

The fact is, there is a right-wing majority in Israel, for the very good reason that the twin traumas of Oslo and Gaza taught most of us a serious lesson. The Left pretends that its ideas today are more sophisticated than they were in 1993, but nobody is fooled. Even if the Left should propose to take the Arabs into the coalition – something that has never occurred before – barring the very unexpected, we will have another right-wing coalition.

Incidentally, the indictment of PM Binyamin Netanyahu for alleged corruption is not “unexpected.” It will happen, because the legal establishment, which leans leftward, wants it, and the similarly-biased media have been clamoring for it. Netanyahu and the Right have tried to weaken the power of the unelected establishment in media and the legal system, and the elites are fighting back with everything they have. But most voters who prefer Bibi believe that the things he is accused of are either small enough to be ignored, or constitute politics as usual. The probable indictment is already “priced into” the polls.

The major threat to the Right is the new Hosen l’Yisrael party (Resilience for Israel) party led by former Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, and including Moshe Ya’alon, a former Defense Minister and COS himself, probably along with yet another former COS, Gabi Ashkenazi. One would think that all this brass in one place would produce a right-wing party, but in Israel, ex-generals are often lefties (this is for historical reasons, and probably won’t be true in the future as more religious and Mizrachi officers are promoted). Gantz seems like a pleasant, honest, and dignified person, and some claim that he has the charisma that previous opposition figures lacked.

The party defines itself as “centrist” – Gantz claimed to be “neither Left nor Right,” but even in his initial speech, which was heavy on platitudes and vague promises, there were hints of a willingness to surrender parts of Judea and Samaria to the Arabs. He referred to the Jordan Valley as the “security border” of the state, something which leaves the door open to arrangements in which it would not be under full Israeli sovereignty. Apparently lacking political sense, he even praised the “disengagement” from Gaza in an interview published Wednesday. His party did well in initial polls after its launch, and may gain strength if Ashkenazi joins; it may even absorb Yair Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party. But I don’t think it will ultimately take any right-of-center votes. The blocs are solid.

The Left argues somewhat shrilly that Netanyahu is destroying Israeli democracy and introducing fascism, citing his attacks on the media, and the legal establishment; his support for the Nation-State Law, and what they consider his populist style. None of this really hits the mark, except with those who are already opposed to him. The media and the legal establishment are biased against him, and shouldn’t be surprised when he hits back.

The accusations that Netanyahu is destroying democracy are not convincing, either. Polls consistently show that Netanyahu is the person that more people consider suitable to be Prime Minister than anyone else, which is prima facie evidence that democracy is functional. What his opponents mean, of course, is that Bibi opposes the unelected “gatekeepers” of liberalism in the form of the media and the legal and academic-cultural elites, who wish to turn the clock back to before 1977, when they controlled the political system. The public intuitively understands this, and likes the clock where it is today, thank you.

The Right has its problems, too. It has been unable to form a coalition without the Haredi parties, a real irritant for Israel’s secular majority, particularly the nearly 1 million from the former USSR, many of whom can’t satisfy the Haredi Chief Rabbinate that they are Jewish enough to get married in Israel. They would prefer to let localities make up their own minds about whether or not to allow stores and public transportation to operate on Shabbat.

Both sides promise to reduce the cost of living and especially the cost of housing, which has skyrocketed in recent years. I am not sure of the explanation, but here in Rehovot, there are new buildings under construction everywhere, and they are filling up. Enough people seem to be able to afford the expensive new apartments to keep the developers busy. Food and clothing are also expensive. The health-care system is stretched very thin: emergency rooms in some parts of the country are overflowing, there is a shortage of doctors and nurses, there are long waits for some procedures, and other problems. It’s not clear that anyone has a serious program to improve these things.

But nothing is more important than security. Israel will not forget Oslo and the consequences of it. The country was dragged by the delusional Left, into a situation in which we introduced our deadliest enemies into our midst, provided them with weapons and money, and watched them kill us. More than a thousand of our relatives, neighbors and friends, were murdered while riding buses, eating pizza, or attending Passover seders, as a direct result of the Oslo accords; and today, sixteen years after, we are still paying a price in terrorism. Instead of being honored, Shimon Peres and the others who let this happen – who made this happen – should have been prosecuted, or at least permanently banished from public life.

There is a good reason that the majority of Jewish Israelis simply don’t trust anyone to the left of the Likud, and this is it. Many Israelis would sooner have a picnic on the grass inside the lion exhibit at the Ramat Gan Safari park than put their lives in the hands of the ideological heirs of these criminally incompetent egotists.

I don’t think there is a harder job in the world than being Prime Minister of Israel. There’s no room for mistakes, and the consequences of making one follow quickly. If he screws up, he – and the nation – pay the price right away. At the same time, the constraints placed on the PM by the exigencies of the coalition system, the too-powerful Supreme Court and Attorney General, and the intrusive and hostile media, limit what he can do. He bears all the responsibility, but has insufficient authority to do his job.

Although military experience is a necessity for a Prime Minister or a Defense Minister, in order to understand the soldiers, and to be able to respond in their language. I think, though, that a professional soldier with no civilian political experience is rarely a good candidate for PM. Military politics are not the same as civilian politics, and international politics are another world entirely. Armies have interests, and they are not always identical to the nation’s interests. This is why civilian control of the military is necessary, and why someone who has recently stepped down from the role of Chief of Staff may not have the broad perspective necessary for a Prime Minister. The three former chiefs who became PMs (Rabin, Barak, and Sharon) were, in my estimation, poor Prime Ministers.

As I write, there are 63 days remaining until I exercise my right and responsibility again, to place a small piece of paper in a box to help choose the next Knesset and Prime Minister.

I can hardly wait!

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02/07 Links Pt1: The State of the Union is Pro-Jewish; BDS Is Linked to Terrorists, Just as You Suspected; Glick: The Limits of Arab-Israeli Cooperation

From Ian:

Abe Greenwald: The State of the Union is Pro-Jewish

At Tuesday night’s address to the American people, writes Abe Greenwald, the president made multiple pronouncements of particular relevance to the Jewish people—all of them for the good:

President Trump used his State of the Union address in part to celebrate the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, call out Iran on its genocidal hatred of Jews, confront anti-Semitism generally, and tie his conception of American greatness to the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. . . .

For Trump, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was, as he put it, a matter of “principled realism.” Based on that realism, his administration “proudly opened the American embassy in Jerusalem.” Nothing here about both sides having to bend or about Israel now having to “do its part for peace.” The president of the United States simply noted that he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital because it is. And that’s the most powerful thing he could have said on the matter.

The president [also] called Iran “the world’s leading state sponsor of terror” and emphasized that “it is a radical regime.” He went on: “We will not avert our eyes from a regime that chants ‘death to America’ and threatens genocide against the Jewish people.” No garbage about make-believe moderate mullahs, no specious conflation of the Iranian people and the regime, no wishful fantasies about Iran’s tyrannical theocracy showing heartening signs, and, finally, no equivocating about the nature of its obsessive anti-Semitism. In all, a welcome return to moral sanity.

Trump talked about a great many other things [as well], but it’s remarkable the extent to which his speech acknowledged, celebrated, and urged on America’s doing right by the Jews. It would be welcome enough if he emphasized such things in an address to an exclusively Jewish audience, but this was a State of the Union speech, and so his words were meant to shape our very understanding of America.

Jewish takeaways from Donald Trump’s State of the Union address

President Donald Trump linked his actions on Iran to the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, pivoting during his State of the Union address from his decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal to a declaration that anti-Semitism must be confronted “anywhere and everywhere it occurs.”

Trump also bookended his speech with references to D-Day, including salutes to troops, among them Jewish-American veterans, who helped liberate Europe, and Holocaust survivors who were liberated thanks to the American-led action. The salutes earned standing ovations.

Containing Iran is fighting antisemitism

“My administration has acted decisively to confront the world’s leading state sponsor of terror: the radical regime in Iran,” Trump said Tuesday evening, delivering his address in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“They do bad, bad things. To ensure this corrupt dictatorship never acquires nuclear weapons, I withdrew the United States from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal,” he said, referring to the 2015 sanctions-relief-for-nuclear-rollback agreement negotiated under President Barack Obama. “And last fall, we put in place the toughest sanctions ever imposed by us on a country.

“We will not avert our eyes from a regime that chants death to America and threatens genocide against the Jewish people,” he continued, to applause, mostly from the Republican side. “We must never ignore the vile poison of antisemitism, or those who spread its venomous creed. With one voice, we must confront this hatred anywhere and everywhere it occurs. Just months ago, 11 Jewish Americans were viciously murdered in an anti-Semitic attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.”

The October 2018 shooting, in which 11 people died, was the worst attack on Jews in American history. It was carried out by a man shouting anti-Semitic epithets, and appears to have been principally motivated by hatred of pro-immigration policies favored by HIAS, a Jewish immigration advocacy group. The alleged attacker bought into the notion that migrants from Mexico pose a national security threat, a theme also favored by Trump, who devoted much of his speech Tuesday night to securing the border. There’s no evidence that the attack was related in any way to the Middle East.

Jewish Model Harassed After Coming Out As Trump Supporter

Jewish model Elizabeth Pipko kept her work for President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign a secret, fearing she would be ostracized by the liberal fashion world. Last month she came out as pro-Trump, and she's already being called a Nazi.

The 23 year old started off as a volunteer for the campaign, but was eventually hired full-time. Late last year she got married to a man she met on the campaign, and who is already working on Trump's reelection campaign.

The wedding was at Trump's Mar-a-Lago. She said the president didn't make it because he was dealing with negotiations over the government shutdown, but she wore a Make America Great Again hat on the dance floor anyway.

She came forward with her story to the New York Post in January, telling the paper she is "hoping to take part in the reelection in some capacity" and has no plans to hide her support for Trump this time around.

"Now that it’s been two years since the election, I don’t want to keep silent any longer," she said. "Even if that means saying goodbye to modeling forever."

Was a mound of ash from Temple sacrifices visible as late as 1900?

Lenny Ben-David, who often posts historic photos of Israel, tweeted this photo yesterday:

It comes from the Library of Congress Madson Collection of photos. It was taken in 1898 and the caption is "Ash heaps from the Temple sacrifices."

Lenny adds, "It was real! Outside of Damascus Gate. Discussed in Talmud Yuma 68a as 'Beit HaDeshen.' The site was cleared in early 1900s for housing."

The idea that actual ashes from Temple sacrifices were easily seen only 120 years ago is intriguing. I looked a little further into this and found two fascinating letters about this in the 1855 "Journal of Sacred Literature."

Discovery of Altar Ashes at Jerusalem.—Mr. James Finn, Her Majesty's Consul at Jerusalem, to whose intelligent care of literary and antiquarian interests in the Holy Land our readers are indebted for much agreeable information.

Jerusalem, April 2. Outside of this city, towards the north-west, and not far from the Nablus Road and the Tombs of the Kings (so called), are some considerable heaps of blue grey ashes, on which no grass or weeds ever grow. One of them may be 40 ft. in height. They are remarkable objects in themselves, especially as contrasted in colour with the dark olive groves around them. These are commonly believed by the people of the city to be heaps of refuse from the soapboilers' works of former times. Some of our English residents here, having conceived a different idea of their origin, namely, that it was not impossible they should be ashes from the ancient sacrifices, begged of Dr. Roth, of Munich, when here in 1853, to carry away samples for analysis in Germany, which he did; and Dr. Sandreczki has now laid before the literary Society of Jerusalem an account, in English, of a letter received from Dr. Roth on the subject. After some remarks on the beetles and mollusca which he collected in Palestine, and tendering generous offers of assistance, he proceeds thus: "Hitherto it has been questionable whether the two ash-hills without the Damascus Gate have been heaped up from the ashes of the burnt sacrifices, or from the residuum of the produce of potash in the soap manufactories here. Dr. Roth, who had taken with him two samples, states that their analysis in our famous Liebig's laboratory bears evidence to the supposition that those ashes are the remnant of the burnt sacrifices, because they are chiefly of animal, and not of vegetable origin; and even contain small fragments of bones and teeth burnt to coal; and yet it would be impossible to ascertain the species of the animals to which they belonged.' The analysis exhibits a small percentage of silicic acid, which is never found in the ashes of flesh or bones. Dr. Roth is of opinion that we may account for this circumstance by supposing that the ashes of the meat-offerings in which silicium may be found, were likewise carried off to the hills in question. The samples were taken both from the top and the basis of the larger hill,—not just from the surface, nor from a considerable depth either. Dr. Roth, intends to send the whole account of that analysis, together with a new analysis of the mineral waters near Tiberias.

This almost unexpected result is one that leads to important antiquarian consequences,—not only exciting wonder at the confirmation of Holy Writ, and bringing our feelings back to immediate contact with those of the Aaronic priesthood, but as helping among other facts to determine the course of the ancient walls, since these ashes must have been thrown beyond the wall.— Yours, &c.

"James Finn."

The second letter is even more astounding:

The insertion of the above letter in the Athenaeum called forth the following— The Valley of the Ashes.—

Referring to the letter from Mr. Finn, Her Majesty's Consul at Jerusalem, whose courtesy and hospitable kindness it has been my privilege to share, 1 beg to make one or two remarks.

I visited Palestine in 1852, it having beforehand been mutually arranged with Dr. Robinson that I should meet him there, and accompany him on his journey. Finding, when I reached the country, that our plans and objects did not coincide, I gave up the arrangement; and thereafter visited almost every place of interest, "from Dan to Beersheba," accompanied only by my Arab attendants.

While at Jerusalem, some remarks of my friend Mr. Caiman, of the London Jews' Society's Hospital there, in reference to the mounds to the west of the Damascus Gate, suggested the probability of the view referred to in Mr. Finn's letter. I proceeded, in company with Mr. Caiman, carefully to examine the mounds; believing that if I were correct in supposing that they were the ashes of the ancient temple sacrifices, proof to that effect might probably be found.

Digging, both at the top and near the base of the largest heap, I was struck with the fact that the whole seemed homogeneous, there being no earth, stones, pottery, or rubbish of other kind apparently mixed with the grey-blue mould. This seemed unfavourable to the popular idea of their being formed from soapboilers' ashes. Continuing to dig, I was greatly interested soon to find among the ashes, (which appeared to me to be animal, though I never have had them analyzed) small portions of bone, still strengthening my belief that I was surrounded by the remains of the burnt-offerings of Israel during a thousand years. But the proof appeared to amount to demonstration when I discovered, a foot or more from the surface, fragments of bone sufficiently large to leave no doubt as to the kind of animal to which they belonged. I have in my possession a number of specimens, among which is one, three inches long, evidently the leg-bone of a sheep or lamb; another, a fragment of the skull or nose-bone; and two others, fragments of ribs, which it seems impossible to mistake for any other but the same animal. The first mentioned of those specimens has marks, in some parts, of having been charred or blackened by the action of the fire.

Since I returned from the East, I have frequently, both privately and in public, mentioned the above circumstances, and my intention to have the ashes analyzed, that it might be ascertained whether they consisted chiefly of animal matter. Further inquiry on this point is rendered unnecessary by the analysis of Dr. Roth, as stated in the letter of Mr. Finn.

While upon the spot, I was also struck with the light which the position of those mounds seemed to throw upon the vexed question of the ancient course of the city wall. It seemed to confirm the theory of Dr. Robinson, that instead of running considerably within the present city boundary, as is contended for by those who maintain the authenticity of the so called Holy Places,—the ancient wall must have run considerably to the westward of the present Damascus Gate, it being most probable that the ashes would be deposited immediately outside the wall, and not carried so far from it as the heaps are now found.

If these ideas be correct, do they not seem to throw light also upon an expression,—to which I am not aware any definite meaning, as to the locality, has ever been attached,—in the boundaries of the city referred to in Jeremiah xxxi. 40 ?—" the valley of the dead bodies, and of the ashes." If by "the valley of the dead bodies" is meant the Valley of Hinnom, it seems likely, from the connexion of the passage, that by "the valley of the ashes," is meant the locality where the ashes are now found. It is not improbable that anciently, when the wall ran close by, there was a descent outside to the westward, accounting for the expression valley, the hollow now being filled up or levelled by the accumulated rubbish of the city's "long desolations."

While I am glad that the attention of others has been directed to this interesting matter, I trust that it may not seem uncalled for thus to advert to it, that I may not seem to be entering into other men's labours, should I ever be able to publish notes of my journey.

I am, &c., William Dickson.

20, George Square, Edinburgh, April 24.

Dickson claims to have seen animal bones that were charred in the mound.

A skeptical note can be found in Dr. William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (1877), where he writes that similar mounds were found in Shechem, Lydda, and Gaza, where no sacrifices were made, so he believes the theory that these were refuse from soap manufacturing, without explaining why animal bones would be there nor verifying that the other mounds really were made out of the same material.

Charles Wilson's maps of Jerusalem from 1865 identifies two ash heaps:

An article in Hebrew about this identifies the locations in relation to the discovery of the buried ancient wall of Jerusalem, discovered afterwards but adjacent to it. The ashes would have been dumped outside the city walls.

Here's a map of where this is today:

This is what the area looks like now (as close as I could get with Google Street View):

From the other direction:

The building is the Legacy Hotel, formerly a YMCA.

A formerly 40 foot high mound of ashes outside Jerusalem seems worth exploring. (By 1898, it was already much lower.)

With Wilson's maps, perhaps it is worth the Israel Antiquities Authority exploring to see if there are any residual animal ashes in that area, perhaps in the parking lot.

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I received an email from the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, about Angela Davis receiving a human rights award. In the email it says, "Palestine is a racial justice issue, and Dr. Davis’ insistence that the Palestinian people be included in that vision of justice qualifies her for the award all the more."

There is nothing remotely racial about the conflict between Israel and the Arab world, including Palestinians. After all, half of Israelis have some heritage from northern African and Middle Eastern communities and are indistinguishable from Arabs. (European Jews are genetically closer to Middle Eastern Jews than to other Europeans, as well.)

If skin pigmentation is your criterion, there are roughly 100,000 Israelis from Ethiopia who are darker than virtually any Palestinian Arab. Yet they are considered "white" by the bizarre logic of those who want to paint this as a racial justice issue.

Of course there is discrimination in Israel, just as there is in every other country on Earth. But the Palestinian Arabs aren't discriminated against based on race. It is a political, religious and cultural conflict but there is no racial component - half of Israelis are the same "color."

The people who want to call this a racial conflict are the racists. Against all visual and genetic evidence, they want the world to view Israelis as the evil "white" oppressors and the Palestinian Arabs as the victimized people of color. If racism is the idea that some people are better than others based on skin color, the anti-Israel racists are demanding that the world hate Israelis based on skin color that most don't even have!

It is the anti-Israel crowd that is obsessed with race, assigning racial definitions to people purely to incite others to hate them. If that isn't racism, what is?

I saw a different, more sophisticated and even more deceptive argument about why the Israeli-Arab conflict should be considered a racial justice issue. At the United Methodist Church website, a 2014 article entitled "Why Justice in Palestine Is a Racial Justice Imperative" says:

[Phyllis] Bennis pointed out that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, as a case for racial discrimination, can be made based on the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The convention defines racial discrimination in terms of exclusion and restrictions based not only on “race,” but also on color, descent, or national or ethnic origin. Under this definition, Bennis said the case for racial discrimination could be made for Palestinians...

That seems like a very good point. Article 1, Paragraph 1 of The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination indeed says that racial discrimination does not only apply to race but also to those other criteria.

However, Paragraph 2 of the Convention rips the argument that this applies to Palestinian Arabs to shreds:

2. This Convention shall not apply to distinctions, exclusions, restrictions or preferences made by a State Party to this Convention between citizens and non-citizens.

Palestinian Arabs are not citizens of Israel, and as such Israel is not required to treat them the same as citizens - just like no nation on the planet gives the same rights to citizens and non-citizens.

It is easy to prove this, since Israeli Arabs have the same legal rights as Israeli Jews, and more rights in Israel than Palestinian Arabs, as they should. They are racially and ethnically identical to Palestinian Arabs so any difference in how they are treated is purely because the Palestinians are not citizens, not because of color or ethnicity or national origin.

The people who are calling "Palestine" a racial justice issue are not only liars - they are the only racists in this discussion.

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The Palestine Chronicle has an article by former Al Quds professor Rima Najjar, who now lives in the US, where she admits that Zionism is indeed part of Judaism:

Those who smear anti-Zionists by falsely accusing them of antisemitism understand very well that anti-Zionism means anti-Jewish-nationalism as expressed in the territory of historic Palestine, now subdivided into Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but effectively controlled by the Jewish State.

Zionism is a product of Jewish philosophy and is based on Jewish culture and thought, which has its roots in Judaism. The core purpose of Israel’s settler-colonial Zionist regime is to maintain itself as a Jewish State. Exaggerated or false claims of antisemitism aim to create a climate of fear in which Palestinian legitimate human rights campaigns are stifled.

If Zionism is rooted in mainstream Judaism, as Najjar admits, then being against Zionism means one is against Judaism, which she denies.

She tries to explain away this obvious contradiction, and fails miserably. Her point is pretty much that she should be free to attack Jews in the name of being pro-Palestinian:

Today all around the world, synagogues and rabbis are the ones indoctrinating their communities into worshiping Israel and a tribal, some would say Medieval, identity.

And, in defending Alice Walker's antisemitism:

... Is it anti-Judaism (I won’t say antisemitic because I am not sure I understand what that means anymore) to look into what in the Talmud might be inspiring Chief Rabbis of Israel in his racism and cruelty, in condoning ethnic cleansing and genocide?

She sums it up this way:

Jewish nationalism manifests itself as settler-colonialism. One concept does not exclude the other operative concept in Palestine, namely that Jewish Zionism = Jewish nationalism = Jewish supremacy = Apartheid.

Of course, by her logic every nationalism is apartheid. Including Arab nationalism and Palestinian nationalism. But in her zeal to attack only Jewish nationalism and equating it with racism and evil, she wants her readers to ignore her inconsistencies.

And only focus on the Jews.

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02/06 Links Pt2: European Anti-Semitism Goes Well Beyond “Criticism of Israel”; Dershowitz: Double Standard for Historical Revisionism; BDS for thee, but not for me

From Ian:

European Anti-Semitism Goes Well Beyond “Criticism of Israel”

While there is little doubt that hatred of Israel has become the dominant form of anti-Semitism in Europe, its more naked forms persist as well. Manfred Gerstenfeld writes:

Polls by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) show that the evil myth that Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus is alive and well in Europe. It was found that 46 percent of Poles, 38 percent of Hungarians, 21 percent of Danes and Spaniards, and 19 percent of Norwegians and Belgians believe this. So do 18 percent of Austrians and British, 16 percent of the Dutch, 15 percent of Italians, and 14 percent of Germans. Once a belief is so deeply ingrained in a culture, it takes a very long time to flush it out. Rather than disappear, it will change its shape. . . .

From [another] study, it emerged that at least 150 million adult EU citizens agreed with the statement that Israel is conducting “a war of extermination against the Palestinians.” . . . In another new mutation of anti-Semitism, European Jews are now accused of being responsible for Israel’s actions. . . .

The way that ingrained anti-Semitism manifests itself varies not only from subculture to subculture but also from country to country. In January 2014, a mass rally in Paris took place. This “Day of Anger” was not related to any specific Jewish topic, and part of the protest was against French president François Hollande’s economic plans. However, various groups of participants started to shout anti-Semitic slogans. These included, “Jews, France doesn’t belong to you” and [the Holocaust denier] “Faurisson is right,” as well as “the Holocaust was a hoax.”

The same has happened recently in the “Yellow Vest” demonstrations. These are ostensibly a protest against the French president Emmanuel Macron’s decision to raise fuel prices—again, a topic that has nothing to do with Jews. Yet during some of the demonstrations, there have been signs describing Macron as a “whore of the Jews” and as their “puppet.”

Alan Dershowitz: Double Standard for Historical Revisionism

Ford's book, The International Jew, became a bestseller in many parts of the world and was cited at the Nuremberg trials as a work that turned many Germans and Austrians into anti-Semitic Nazi leaders and followers. Ford was the single most influential anti-Semite in the first quarter of the 20th century and beyond.

Yet, according to the New York Times, Ford's "name or likeness graces everything from the performing arts center to the manhole covers." Bill McGraw, a historian of Dearborn, has written that "Ford's attacks on Jews were distributed around the world before and after World War II and, alarmingly, they influence budding neo-Nazis today."

The New York Times continues: "But Mr. McGraw also included in his report an article on how Mr. Ford's descendants have consistently supported Jewish charities and cultural organizations..." These descendants should be praised for those contributions and not condemned for the sins of their ancestor. But the truth about Henry Ford must be told -- to the residents of Dearborn and to the world.

Many buildings are named after Henry Ford, who remains Dearborn's favorite son. It's difficult to go anywhere in Dearborn without encountering the Ford name. Even buildings carrying the generic name Ford are based on his deeply flawed legacy. There is too much honoring of Henry Ford and too little educating about the horrible influence he had on promoting anti-Semitism and Nazism.

I'm not one for destroying or removing statues or other historical works of art, but I strongly believe that these images must be accompanied by contemporary descriptions of the evil deeds committed by those portrayed in the art. Removing the Ford name from Dearborn's Ford Community & Performing Arts Center raises more difficult issues. There is no art, just honoring, in the selection of a name for a center. Henry Ford does not deserve to be honored. The question the good people of Dearborn should ask themselves is: What would you do if the center were named after Jefferson Davis? If the answer is that you would remove Davis's name, then you should remove Ford's. There cannot be differences between how anti-Black, anti-gay, anti-women and anti-Jewish practitioners of bigotry are treated. There must be a single standard for historical revisionism.

Melanie Phillips: Ireland bigotry, EU bares teeth on Brexit

Please join me in the video below for my latest chat about our crazy world with Avi Abelow of Israel Unwired. We discuss the bill which is currently going through the Irish parliament to boycott Israeli goods or services produced in the disputed territories or eastern Jerusalem. You can read what I wrote about this piece of poisonous bigotry here.

We also discuss the latest in the Brexit crisis, in which the EU negotiators have decided to double down on their intransigence by refusing to re-open negotiations with the UK in the hope that the supposed chaos caused by leaving the EU with no deal will cause the British to come crawling back on their knees to accept the terms they have so far rejected. What this tells us is that the Eurocrats not only have the mindset of the mafia but really don’t understand democracy, political liberty or the British national character at all.

Go figure... dozens of conflict zones around the world and @PSCupdates and Corbyn only want a musical boycott of the Jewish state.

See their PSC campaign page: https://t.co/5OFdcFi3GQ #Antisemitism #News @COLRICHARDKEMP @CUFI_UK @mishtal @lucianaberger @margarethodge pic.twitter.com/pETVcF97yq
— Jewish Human Rights Watch (@jhrwatch) February 5, 2019

A balloon landed in Moshav Bitkha, near Ofakim, on Sunday night. This time, the colorful rubber orb carried no incendiary device—only a message in Arabic, which read:

"We, the people of Gaza, need medical treatment. Remove the blockade."

Well, “we, the people of Israel” would like to suggest that the blockade has nothing to do with your ability to obtain medical treatment for your people. Take all the European aid you receive and build hospitals. If you want to be a state, don't depend on your neighbors to provide you with basic necessities like medical care.

And don’t go crying to us about your poverty. You’ve launched thousands of rockets, mortars, and missiles into Israel. That costs money. Lots of money.

Take mortars, for instance. They cost $24,717, each. But when Israel hits back, there goes the mortar (and $24,717).

Mortar rounds can get expensive, too. They cost anywhere from $5.52-$438, depending on type.

How about a Grad missile? They cost $1,000 a pop, if you’ll excuse the expression. (As an aside, the cost to intercept them with Iron Dome, is $100,000.)

And then, of course, there’s the Qassam rocket. The raw materials for one of these babies cost $800.

But it’s all actually much more expensive than it appears to wage a war of terror, according to this 2012 Jerusalem Post article by Akiva Hamilton:

And the losses continue once the Grad gets to Gaza, with the IDF regularly destroying rocket caches. Thus, 1,000 Grads, which cost Iran $1 million to purchase, may end up as 300 Grads which cost a further $2 million in “delivery charges.” This turns a $1,000 Grad rocket in Iran into a $10,000 Grad rocket in Gaza.

. . . The strategic implications are that the current rocket-based terror strategy of Hamas and Hezbollah has been rendered both ineffective and economically unsustainable. I estimate it is currently costing Hamas (and thus its patron Iran) around $5m. (500 rockets at $10,000 each) to murder a single Israeli. When Iron Dome reaches 95% interception rate these figures will double and at 97.5% they will double again.

In 2012, the interception rate for Iron Dome was over 90%. It may be higher now, but Israel may not be so eager to share the current interception rate, which may well be regarded as a military secret.

We haven’t even gotten to the cost of constructing all those terror tunnels. The IDF estimates that Hamas spent $30 to $90 million, pouring 600,000 tons of concrete, to build three dozen tunnels from Gaza into Israel. Some of those tunnels cost as much as $3 million to build.

But let’s move away from the costs of terror to talk about all that beautiful aid money. It’s starting to shrink, for sure, as the world wakes up to the corruption of UNRWA, and what it means to fund the Pay for Slay program, but the “West Bank” and Gaza received over $27b in international aid between 1993 and 2013. By now, well. Pshaw. We’re way past that.

And then there’s this UNRWA funding chart from 2016:

That’s an awful lot of money going down the toilet. The people are still poor. And they still need Israel’s hospitals instead of building their own.

By the way, wondering what it costs to build a really nice hospital? The University of Texas Southwestern Hospital, at over 1.3 million square feet and 532 beds, cost $800 million to build. Parkland Memorial, Dallas County's public hospital, at around 2 million square feet with 862 beds, cost $1.3 billion to build. That was in 2017.

University of Texas Southwestern Hospital

Yes. We are all well aware that Hamas keeps this money from the people. We are aware that Hamas offers you incentives to make war on civilian Israel, while starving your families and keeping them in subhuman conditions. But you voted for Hamas in democratic elections. And you are sleeping in the bed you made.

That’s not on us.

We gave you land. We gave you autonomy. We gave you money. We gave you greenhouses.

These are the high-tech greenhouses Israeli settlers built in Gaza, that provided employment for thousands of Palestinians and produced an array of fruits and vegetables in the midst of a barren desert. Rich westerners (including Bill Gates) bought and gave them to the Palestinian Authority when Israel withdrew from Gaza. (photo and caption credit: Tom Gross)

These are how the greenhouses looked a few weeks later, after Palestinians looted and burned them. (photo and caption credit: Tom Gross)

In October 2006, Israeli troops temporarily went back into Gaza in an attempt to stop continuing Palestinian rocket fire on Israeli towns and villages. The Israeli army found that the greenhouses were now being used to build arms-smuggling tunnels. (photo and caption credit: Tom Gross)

But instead of making something of yourselves: making good, and caring for your own, your hate drives you only toward your own self-destruction.

The money will continue to dry up, and as it does, you might take a minute to rethink this whole thing. Build a hospital or two, try to stand on your own two feet.

But we know you won’t. Because you really don’t care if your people live or die.

As long as you can continue to make war against the Jews.

(Thanks to Dov Epstein for assisting in the research for this piece.)

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IDF Causing Palestinian Heart Attacks As Pretext To Give Care, Boost Image (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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: Credit: Medical Corps

Gush Etzion Crossing, February 6 - Israeli soldiers instigate cardiac arrest in vulnerable Palestinians for purposes of treating them and looking good as a result, human rights groups allege in a new report.

Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontièrs, Human Rights Watch, Btselem, and several smaller organizations charge that the IDF not only sees the emergency medical treatment it provides to Palestinians as a public relations opportunity; they allege that it actively foments medical events with the aim of creating publicity for the treatment. The means by which the IDF remotely generates heart attacks, seizures, and other emergencies were not mentioned in the report.

A spokesman for Amnesty told reporters that activists from numerous human rights organizations had monitored interactions between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians, and discovered that in nearly all cases in which a Palestinian required medical attention that did not result from a violent encounter, IDF medics hurried to provide that care. "Obviously that could not be an altruistic act, since this is Israel we're talking about," explained Raul Panim. "But it occurs far too often to be coincidental, and we came to the conclusion that Israel must be engineering these events somehow to help counter the prevailing image of them as sadistic, inhuman, uniquely evil occupiers, an image we are proud to note we payed a large role in creating."

"Of course Amnesty couldn't have done this alone," he continued. "Not just because there are numerous locations where the interactions take place, but also because we've been allocating our limited manpower of late to getting TripAdvisor not to carry Jewish homes in the ancestral Jewish homeland. Because of human rights. Anyway, because we've been devoting most of our recent attention to other aspects of this uniquely evil occupation, Amnesty hasn't had the time to take on this monitoring project itself, and we're happy to collaborate with our partners on it."

The groups plan a follow-up research project to determine the means by which Israel causes the heart attacks and other medical events. "Figuring out that aspect of this conspiracy is beyond our capabilities," conceded Médecins Sans Frontièrs activist Faith Heeler. "Very few of us are involved in actual medical research. So we're going to have to partner with other organizations who are willing to manage that side of things. Fortunately, we've already lined up some enthusiastic partners such as Dr. David Duke, Dr. David Irving, and Dr. Josef Göbbels."

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02/06 Links Pt1: Senate Passes Anti-BDS Measure by 77-23; Marco Rubio: The Truth About B.D.S. and the Lies About My Bill; WH Official: No Need for Equivalency between Israelis and Palestinians

From Ian:

Marco Rubio (NYTs): The Truth About B.D.S. and the Lies About My Bill

A bipartisan supermajority in the Senate passed the Combating BDS Act on Tuesday. Yet a few of my colleagues recently echoed false claims made by anti-Israel activists and others that the bill violates Americans' First Amendment rights.

That line of argument is not only wrong but also provides cover for supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, who embrace an international campaign of discriminatory economic warfare against Israel, a fellow democracy and America's strongest ally in the Middle East.

In a high-profile case in 2014, the BDS movement drove the Israeli company SodaStream from the West Bank. Five hundred Palestinian employees were left jobless by the move.

The Combating BDS Act does not prohibit Americans' right to engage in boycotts. It focuses on business entities - not individuals - and, consistent with the Supreme Court, it focuses on conduct, not speech. It does not restrict citizens or associations of citizens from engaging in political speech, including against Israel.

Rather, the bill merely clarifies that entities - such as corporations or companies - have no fundamental right to government contracts and government investment.

"Anti-discrimination restrictions on government contractors are commonplace and a normal requirement for government funding," Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at George Mason University, notes.

Senate Passes Anti-BDS Measure by 77-23

The U.S. Senate approved in a 77-23 vote a bill that codifies $38 billion in defense assistance to Israel and which provides legal cover to states that target the boycott Israel movement.

The bill, sponsored by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., had stirred controversy because a number of Democratic senators said that while they oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, they were also concerned that state laws aimed at BDS impinged on speech freedoms.

Among the Democratic dissenters were declared presidential candidates like Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California. Non-declared but likely presidential contenders who voted included Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sherrod Brown of Ohio who voted against; and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota who voted for. The sole Republican voting against was Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Rubio, writing Wednesday in The New York Times, defended the bill against charges that it would violate free speech. Democrats supporting the anti-BDS component included Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

The bill now goes to the U.S. House of Representatives where the Democratic majority will break it up into its components, and its leadership is likely to bury the anti-BDS section while advancing the other components.

In addition to the money for Israel and the proposed anti-BDS laws, the bill intensifies sanctions on Syria’s Assad government and reinforces ties with Jordan.

David Singer: Hamas and PFLP Embroil USA and EU in Plans to Destroy Israel

A look at just one organisation – Al-Haq – headquartered in Ramallah and operating in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), the Netherlands, France, and Northern Europe – indicates the modus operandi that similarly exist in the others.

Al-Haq (established in 1979):

Has Governmental Sponsors: European Union, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Ireland

Received Grants from Governmental Sources, 2014-2018: Over $3 million

Published with a group of French NGOs a report in March 2017 entitled “The Dangerous Liaisons of French Banks with the Israeli Colonization”.

Leads the legal effort to delegitimize Israel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague

Shawan Jabarin, General Director of Al-Haq since 2006, served as a senior PFLP official in the past and at least until recently maintained close ties with PFLP operatives in Judea and Samaria. Jabarin was tried and convicted for his military activity in the PFLP and has served multiple prison sentences.
Jabarin was described in a 2007 Israeli Supreme Court case by the presiding judge as:
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Some of his time is spent in conducting a human rights organization, and some as an operative in an organization which has no qualms regarding murder and attempted murder, which have no relation whatsoever to rights. Quite the opposite, they reject the most basic right of all, without which there are no other rights, that is, the right to life.”

Three other PFLP members arrested by Israel are also identified as working or having worked for Al-Haq: Ziyad Hmeidan, Zahi Jaradat and Majed Abbadi.

European and American funding of these organisations should be banned, their offices in the USA and EU closed – and those identified as Hamas and PFLP members deported.

Terrorists in suits denigrating and delegitimising Israel in slick racist and ongoing deceptive public relations campaigns of lies and half-truths – can be just as dangerous as terrorists armed to the teeth.

The EU and America must stop being played for suckers by these Jew-hating organisations.

Back in 2013, the Israel Foreign Ministry launched a Twitter account, @IsraelintheGCC, to speak directly with the Arabs of states in the Gulf Cooperation Council, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain.

It fizzled out in 2014 with very few posts, all of which were in English.

Now it has been relaunched, in Arabic. Ofir Gendelman, the spokesperson to Arab media for Israel, announced on his Twitter "To our dear Gulf followers, follow this account, which is intended for you to broaden the dialogue between us and you."

One of the first posts shows a video of Israeli innovations narrated by an Arabic speaker.

إبتكارات إسرائيلية تجعل حياتنا أفضل

هل تعلم أن إسرائيليين اخترعوا جهازًا يحول الهواء إلى ماء وتكنولوجيا تمكن السيارات من القيادة بشكل ذاتي؟ فيما يلي معلومات عن ابتكارات إسرائيلية قد تجعل حياتنا أفضل. pic.twitter.com/gsLdCw2Ezu
— إسرائيل في الخليج (@IsraelintheGCC) February 5, 2019

Most of the responses are typical of the Arab responses to any Israeli initiative in Arabic - cursing Israel. But as you scroll down there are a significant number of Arabs who are fans of Israel, who support peace and who see positive possibilities in normalizing relations with Israel.

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