UN-Funded Social Studies Textbook Says ‘Zionist Occupation Started in 1856’
A 2017 United Nations-funded school textbook for Arab students offers a revisionist history of Israel as part of its goal to incite violence against Israelis.Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh leaves Germany after court rejects her deportation appeal
“Since the Zionist movement established in 1856 its first settlement, known as ‘Montefioriyyah’ [Mishkenot Sha’ananim, built by Sir Moses Montefiore before the emergence of modern Zionism], south-west of the Jerusalem city wall, the series of division [actions] in Palestine has not stopped,” according to social studies book for ninth-graders funded by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, which was established by the UN General Assembly in 1949 to assist Arabs who became refugees during Israel’s War of Independence the previous year.
“It [i.e., the Zionist movement] established settlements that included training centers and arms depots. After the ‘Catastrophe’ [Nakba in Arabic] of 1948 it ruled over more than 78 % of Palestine’s territory,” continues the text. “More than 850 thousand Palestinians were made to emigrate and they and their families lived in refugee camps in Palestine and in the Diaspora. Nothing of it [Palestine] was left, except the Gaza Strip and the West Bank that were occupied [later] in 1967.”
Palestine has never been a state.
An appeals court in Berlin has ordered the deportation of the convicted Palestinian terrorist, Rasmea Odeh. The Higher Regional Court was responding to an appeal filed by Odeh’s lawyer, challenging the earlier deportation order issued by Berlin State’s Home Affairs Department, or Innensenat, ordering her to leave the country.
That deportation was promptly carried out. Odeh is out of Germany.
Odeh, feted by anti-Israel activists across the world, is the mastermind of the 1969 Jerusalem supermarket bombing that killed two Hebrew University students, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner. She was convicted of the bombing and served a 10-year sentence, only to be released in a prisoner exchange for a captured Israeli soldier in Lebanon. She later moved to the U.S. where she applied for citizenship, concealing her terrorist past.
German authorities ordered the deportation, claiming Odeh had not disclosed her public engagements while applying for a visa at the German embassy in Jordan, where she currently resides. Odeh’s lawyers denied their client hid the real purpose of her visit. On Friday, the appeals courts accepted the version presented by the German embassy and reinstated the prior deportation order.
On Monday, the newspaper Berliner Morgenpost confirmed Odeh’s departure from Germany. “The ex-terrorist Rasmea Odeh has left Berlin. The Jordanian national voluntarily left the country, [Berlin’s] Department of Internal affairs declared,” the newspaper reported. “The police oversaw her departure from Germany.”
Odeh, member of the terror outfit Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), has a history of making false claims on visa applications. In 2017, a Michigan court stripped Odeh of her U.S. citizenship for lying on her visa and naturalization forms. She was allowed to leave the country without a prison term as part of a plea bargain.
Jim Hanson: Blood money and the corruption of American foreign policy
Foreign influence in the United States is a major problem, but it might surprise you to find out just who some of the biggest players are. You would certainly think of Russia given the massive coverage of their attempts to influence the 2016 US election. But one name you probably haven’t heard is Qatar, a small country in the Middle East which wields an outsized influence through a large and well-funded operation.
The characterization of Russia as a puppet master in US politics is, of course, utterly ludicrous to anyone familiar enough with the poorly funded, amateurish, and ham-fisted operations of Russia and her allies to influence US opinion in the 2016 cycle. This is not to say that foreign influence can’t be effective or that foreign nations and their lobbyists are not corrupting the policy-making process – they clearly are. A compelling case regarding this malicious influence is made in a new documentary called Blood Money, previewed at last month’s CPAC conference and set for release this week.
To illustrate the phenomenon of Washington, as a “playground for foreign interests,” the documentary tells the story of the Qatar lobby, and how they have effectively changed the conversation with regard to Middle East policy in establishment circles during the current administration. Under the Obama administration, the US threw its weight behind the Arab Spring movement on the theory that our support for democratization would lead to both greater stability and more pro-American outcomes. It was a bad bet. The overthrow of authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya simply empowered radical forces like the Muslim Brotherhood, at once undermining stability in the region and leading to an increase in support for terror activities worldwide.