Most of the reports about the Arab League meeting held on Sunday in Cairo say that it accomplished two things the Palestinians demanded: $100 million a month to make up for the funds that the PA refuses to receive from Israel, and a rejection of the Trump "Deal of the Century."
The invitation for the special session said that it was meant to be an explicit rejection of the expected US peace plan. The final statement did not mention the US or the plan explicitly as Abbas demanded; it was watered down to say that the Arab league would not accept any plan or deal that does not comply with "international law, resolutions of international legitimacy and the principle of land for peace." It also mentioned the 1967 lines and Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state in line with the 2002 Arab peace plan.
Arab media understood this to be tantamount to a rejection of the Trump deal, but the statement did not go nearly as far as Abbas wanted.
Sources say that Bahrain didn't even want the word "deal" mentioned in the final statement.
Interestingly, the final statement mentioned compensation for Palestinian refugees but not return.
The final statement was also watered down by Lebanon which added demands that Israel give up the Shebaa Farms and other areas that Hezbollah demands, even though the UN certified that Israel withdrew completely from Lebanon. In addition, it demanded that Palestinian leaders to get their act together, "calling on the Palestinian factions and forces to speed up the completion of national reconciliation."
The Hamas/Fatah split is nearly 12 years old now.
As far as the monthly $100 million that the League pledged to make up the budget shortfall, it sounds like these are more empty promises, which we have seen many times in the past. Arab pledges to help Palestinians are often not backed up with actual cash. Sources say that "many countries may not be committed to these (payments) because of their financial crises or the absence of a political decision to provide support for Palestine."
In the end, the meeting was the usual platitudes of support for the PLO but in reality all Abbas got was empty words.
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Issa Kalantari, chief of the Department of Environment (DOE), told Khabaronline that rainfalls have economic benefits for the country twice as much as agriculture sector. While DOE chief regretted the casualties caused by the flooding he highlighted that the benefits of the floods are 10 times more than the losses they inflicted upon the country.
The flood waters would bring back wetlands and rivers to life and revive Zagros forests, and also recharge surface and groundwater resources, Kalantari added.
Mohammad Fazeli, an official with Energy Ministry, also said that floodwater can play a role in dissolving chemicals in farming lands.
The increase in the amount of water after floods will promote industries and tourism in flood-hit regions, he added.
Fazeli went on to explain that while floods have destructed infrastructure, and damaged houses, farming lands, crops and livestock in the short-term, its long-term benefits outweigh the losses.
Just imagine a Western leader saying this! Imagine the loved ones of the dead being told that the deaths were all worthwhile because of the groundwater levels.
What a sick society.
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Antisemitism spread through the left like a tsunami through city streets. It may have entered via radical minority groups on the fringes, but as it hit the shore, there were no defences in place. Nothing to stop anti-Jewish sentiment moving from constituency to constituency. For decades, the mainstream has flirted with anti-Zionist activism. They have justified racist boycotts and supported the demonisation of the ‘Zionist’. They stood silently, as people wearing keffiyehs, turned every meeting into one that spread lies about Israeli actions.
Even staunch opponents of antisemitism will begin each sentence with a statement suggesting they ‘don’t support the Israeli government’. Sending an unspoken message that implies those demonising Israel are right. That Israel is indeed guilty of all it stands accused of. The mainstream allowed for the image of Israel as pariah to spread – so when antisemitism hit – there was no way to stem the tide. Anybody who stood up to shout down antisemitism, was accused of defending the indefensible.
The ‘it is just to stop criticism of Israel’ excuse has been given some level of legitimacy by major political players across the spectrum. Does this sound like ‘conflation’? Of mixing up antisemitism and Israel? Yes? Good, because it was meant to. Anybody today who suggests the two issues are entirely separate understands *NOTHING* about antisemitism at all. Which is at the heart of the entire problem.
Antisemitism as anti-Zionism
Antisemitism is embedded in the roots of anti-Zionist activism. Hitler wrote that Jews promote Zionism only because they ‘want a refuge for convicted rascals and a high school for future rogues’. Early opponents of Zionist activity frequently relied on anti-Jewish hate with tragic and devastating consequences. Those seeking support to oppose Zionism, found fertile ground in the sewers of global antisemitism. And the best part about antisemites? You can say whatever you like about the Jews and it will be believed.
Anti-Israel activity is a pyramid of lies. That is not to say that the Israeli state doesn’t overstep or make mistakes. It simply means what it says – most of what Israel stands accused of – is entirely false. And this trend is not new, it has been drip-feeding for as long as Zionism has been active. Sometimes, during conflicts such as 2014, the drip turns into a flood, but even during relatively quiet moments, the tide continued to rise. Another article in the Guardian, another documentary on the BBC, a few more viral videos – or a singer attacked for performing in Israel. The daily news feed that paints Israel as some type of pariah state was spread throughout the mainstream. Like spreading kindling in the dry forest.
Did you know that that the War on Terror actually "is a war for natural resources – and that terrorism has little to do with it"?
So argues John Maszka in his book, Washington's Dark Secret: The Real Truth About Terrorism and Islamic Extremism (Potomac, 2018), as summarized in the publisher's blurb. If you were curious how this "Terrorism Scholar" (his capitals) and professor of international relations at the Higher Colleges of Technology in Abu Dhabi, would pull off so implausible a thesis, you might want to dip into the book.
A sentence, however, on p. 54, might give you pause: "Islamophobes such as Daniel Pipes insist that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim."
Okay, you might ignore the predictable "Islamophobe" silliness; but where did that statement come? Wherever did I "insist that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim"?
A search of the archive at DanielPipes.org turns up 5 article titles and 6 blog titles including the words "moderate Muslim"; also 2 and 3 titles, respectively, with the term "moderate Islam." In all, the term "moderate Muslim," turns up 619 times there and "moderate Islam" 1,270 times. That adds up to nearly 1,900 references.
You will find so many of my articles on this topic that there is even a collection of them in a "Bibliography – My Writings on Moderate Muslims." In addition, a favorite, standing slogan of mine, "Radical Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the solution," shows the centrality of moderate Islam to a strategy I have long held for defeating Islamism.
By teaching in Abu Dhabi, Maszka spreads crackpot American ideas around the world. A UAE national responded to his errors by writing me, "Unfortunately, with Islam still so largely unknown in the West, some academics manipulate facts and ideas for career purposes. Emirati institutions urgently need better quality control."
There can be no such thing as legitimate “Palestinian Territory” in a geographic region legally seized in a defensive war instigated by a foreign aggressor. The purpose of war is always to vanquish the enemy. The losers of the war cannot make demands on the victors that the victors themselves would not have been put in the position of meeting had the adversary or enemy not forced the victors into making it in the first place.
Israel was forced into a war, which it won. It was then expected to renounce and repudiate the consequences of its fairly won war by capitulating to the conditions of its vanquished enemy, which included, among other self-sacrificially undertaken goals, granting statehood, autonomy, right of return, and the ultimate elimination of Jewry from the region.
... Not all cultures are indeed equal. Some are abysmally inferior and regressive based on their comprehensive philosophy and fundamental principles—or lack thereof—that guide or fail to protect the inalienable rights of their citizens.
Given the voting patterns of Palestinians—towards Islamicism and terrorist organizations for the most part—that openly advocate and work for Israeli and Jewish destruction and annihilation, a strong argument can and ought to be made to strip Palestinians of their right to vote—period. The regional hostilities towards Israel in the Middle East are such that Israel must take those threats seriously. It must work for a coalition of forces to neutralize them.
The blowback has been vicious - and richly ironic.
A coalition of activist student groups, including the DePaul chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, United Muslims Moving Ahead, DePaul Socialists, Students Against Incarceration, College Democrats and Lambdas, banded together to call on DePaul to condemn the professor and ask for an apology.
“We, the students of DePaul University call upon the administration to censure Professor Hill for his heinous statements against marginalized communities,” the student coalition said in a statement. “His comments create unsafe and uncomfortable spaces for everyone, especially Palestinian and Muslim students […] We are not only seeking censure, but for Professor Hill to commit to racial sensitivity training and to release a public apology for his immoral conduct.
The group of students called the article “racist, anti-Palestinian, xenophobic, sexist, and Islamophobic.”
So Students for Justice in Palestine, which espouses a one state solution eliminating the Jewish state and the Jewish right to self determination, is upset over a professor arguing the exact mirror image of their beliefs against Arabs instead of Jews!
They argue that his position makes not only Muslims but "everyone" uncomfortable - the same people who shout down any speaker who supports Israel, who place fake "eviction" notices on the doors of Jewish students, and who force all students to go through mock "checkpoints."
All Professor Hill did was write an article. These people picket, protest, threaten and scream at Jewish and Zionist students (and often worse) - and they feel threatened?
Even more ironic is that Professor Hill is black. Apparently, according to the "woke" crowd, black people are not allowed to hold any position different from what the predominantly white SJP and Socialist groups want them to hold.
The people who are screaming "racism" are the racists who believe that people of color who don't agree with them must be fired or censured for their opinions.
Rest assured, these mostly lily-white "progressives" are trying to silence a person of color. By accusing him of racism, sexism and xenophobia - and the article was none of those things - their only goal is to strip Dr. Hill of his rights to free speech. Only certain types of speech are acceptable to these so-called "progressives."
Real anti-racists should welcome a person of color speaking his mind when it goes against the conventional wisdom. Racists want to shut such a person up.
Now we know that the DePaul chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, United Muslims Moving Ahead, DePaul Socialists, Students Against Incarceration, College Democrats and Lambdas are against free speech.
They support persecuting people of color who disagree with them.
By their own definitions of the terms they use so often when accusing others, these "progressives" are racists and fascists.
(h/t Andrew Pessin)
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The first reaction comes from those whose political
disposition is liberal or otherwise left-leaning who might acknowledge this
history but relegate it to the past or to a non-mainstream fringe that has
little to nothing to do with them.
For those who primarily label themselves "liberal"
or "progressive," this is a problem for "The Left." And for
Israel supporters who consider themselves "Of the Left," the history
outlined in Wistrich's book is something you might encounter on the "Far
Left," a marginal group that they claim no one listens to or cares about.
Paired with these attitude is the suspicion that attempts to
brand liberals and Leftists as anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic is really just
a tactic of the real enemy of the Left: the Right (or, more frequently, the "Far
Right") which is just interested in cherry picking facts and stories from
the darker side of the Leftist political tradition in order to smear
progressives in front of Jewish and non-Jewish Israel-supporting audiences.
This suspicion is nurtured by genuine anti-Israel Leftists
who insist that anyone who not doesn't hew to their agenda is not just a
"Progressive for Everything but Palestine" (i.e., a traitor to
Progressive values), but probably a closet
conservative/reactionary/Republican/Likudnik just posing as a liberal in order
to make "true liberals" like themselves look bad (claims which
basically accuse liberal critics of the Israel bashers as being not just
hypocrites, but liars and frauds).
But while we can dismiss the self-serving positioning of the
Israel haters, we cannot pretend that conservatives do not try to draw political
advantage by portraying anti-Israel opinion within the Left as being more
widespread than it actually is. And then
there is the phenomenon of lifelong liberals who justifiably lash out against
anti-Jewish attitudes within their own tradition who, unable to get genuine
Israel-haters to respond to their accusations, turn their wrath on more
moderate liberal voices that should be seen as friends, rather than foes.
So where to begin to untangle such a mess of accusation,
divisiveness and suspicion and is there a solution that can lead to genuine understanding
(not to mention constructive interaction leading to successful action)?
Well first off, we need to acknowledge that diminishing
suspicion between Left and Right involves coming to grips with the Left-Right
paradigm that defines (and, in my opinion) over-defines nearly every aspect of
our political discourse. I say "coming
to grips with" vs. "eliminating" since it's unrealistic to
expect a framework so widespread to be put aside after nearly two-and-a-half
centuries of use, especially since this Left-Right framework is useful,
providing as it does a meaningful way to fit positions on a range of political
subjects into a belief system imbued with important human values.
Which acknowledging that the Left-Right axis we use might be
meaningful, we need to avoid shaping every issue in a way that focuses entirely
on our most extreme differences, especially with regard to subjects containing
large areas of agreement (such as support for Israel).
Even with this even-handed backdrop, I need to point out
that those embracing a left-leaning worldview have the most heavy lifting to do
since, for better or for worse, it is their tradition that is being co-opted
and corrupted by ruthless totalitarians.
Claiming that Wistrich's history of ambivalence and
hostility towards the Jews and their state is part of the Left's DNA (and thus
unchangeable) is both inaccurate and unfair.
But denying that it has been part of the Left's tradition since the
birth of that tradition would be equally inaccurate. And denying its relevance to the current
debate (or relegating it to a marginal fringe) is not going to stop the
totalitarians from continuing to use the language of the Left to continue to
attack the Jewish state on the way to their real goal: The dictatorship of
themselves.
These would-be totalitarians have their heroes and stories
(the revolutionists of yore who used the language of progress to pave the way
for their own total rule) which propels their world view and dictates their
actions (which explains why they can ignore their own illiberal behavior and
allies, since such questioning is of no concern to a revolutionary vanguard whose
only goal is power).
But Progressive Zionists have their own heroes and stories
to turn to: including those courageous liberals who stood against Communism,
even while being accused of hypocrisy, class treason and every other imaginable
crime. And then there are the founders
of the Jewish state itself who were as much creatures of the labor movement as
they were committed Jews and Zionists, commitments that provided them the faith
and courage to overcome enemies far more ruthless than the lame, faux-liberal BDSers
we confront today.
And as the many liberal Zionists it has been my pleasure to
work with (and the many more I have never met) come to this understanding and
fight this fight, it is the obligation of those not holding a liberal world
view to distinguish friend from foe and support progressive allies (or, at
least not denigrate them), in their fight for the soul of the Left. For it is the huge overlap between Left and
Right with regard to belief in and support of the Jewish state that defines our
strength, not the shrill and self-serving arguments of those who fall outside
this consensus.
And to give us all some perspective (and perhaps an ounce of
humility); consider other traditions that have historically grappled with their
own relationship to Jews, Judaism and – most recently - Zionism. Christianity, for example, is now split
between growing Evangelical churches whose devotion to Israel is second only to
that of American Jews and dying Mainline Protestantism (Methodists,
Presbyterians, etc.) who maintain - at best - an ambivalent attitude towards
the Jewish state which frequently descends into hostility (although not yet
outright betrayal).
Or look at America's mainstream conservatives dedicated to Israel's
safety, security and success who can win at the ballot box vs. the "Blame
Israel First" Buchannanist Right that can barely manage to maintain itself
as a cult of personality.
And even within the Progressive tradition, who would you
rather associate with: the Israel-loving American industrial Labor movement
that gave us safety and fair wages for workers (not to mention the weekend) or
the self-righteous, ends-justify-the-means tradition represented today by
pro-BDS "Leftists" which has spent much of the last two centuries
delivering nothing but tyranny, death and despair?
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France should be protesting the Palestinian Authority for rewarding terrorism and not Israel for trying to curb it, MKs said Monday in response to the diplomatic row over France officially protesting the Israeli policy to freeze payments to the PA.
Likud MK Avi Dichter, who is behind the bill stopping tax and tariff transfers to the PA equaling the amount it spent on payments to terrorists and their families, asked, “How can [French] President [Emanuel] Macron not have a word to say about the Palestinian law requiring them to pay salaries to terrorists, and then come and complain about this law?”
Israel enacted the Deduction Law earlier this year, months after its approval by the Knesset with broad support. The law requires the Defense Ministry to present the security cabinet with a report on how much the PA paid terrorists in prison or the families of terrorists who were killed, and for the Finance Ministry to deduct that amount from the taxes and tariffs Israel collects for the PA. Palestinian Media Watch estimated that the PA spent at least $138 million on terrorist salaries in 2018, based on publicly available PA budget documents.
“What would the French President say if it turned out the PA was paying a NIS 12,000 monthly salary to the mass murderer Carlos the Jackal, who is sitting in a French prison after receiving a life sentence for terrorist attacks?” Dichter asked. Carlos the Jackal –whose real name is Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, a Venezuelan terrorist serving a life sentence in France for attacks killing 14 people and injuring 150 – was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Dichter added: “We will strike terrorists everywhere… In the war on terrorism, a country that doesn’t count the money will count dead bodies.”
Union of Right-Wing Parties (URP) MK Bezalel Smotrich called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “aggressively reject the French hypocrisy and send Macron to press [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] to stop paying salaries to terrorists.
Abbas is doing two things: first, he is telling Israel, and his own citizens, that he is not going to budge when it comes to the raison d’etre of his regime, which is terrorism, not the well-being of his people. This is an excellent opportunity for the world to learn the basics of what Abbas and his cohorts are all about, but Abbas knows from experience that outside of Israel, nothing he does is ever seen for what it is. Abbas knows from experience that he can do no wrong in the eyes of the international community, which continues to fund him despite his regime’s constant incitement to terror, his despotism, his blatant human rights abuses, the lack of rule of law etc. His regime is, after all, one of the most lavishly funded terrorist regimes in the world. Second, Abbas is taking this opportunity to create a humanitarian crisis that will garner support internationally – especially after he turns down Trump’s peace plan, as he is expected to do – and which he can then use to show the world how much his people is suffering. Even though the crisis is of his own making, Abbas knows that the world will buy any lie that he peddles. It always has.
What can Israel do about this cynically self-inflicted crisis, which is being created by the PA out of a desire to prioritize the murder of Jews above all — other than exposing the potential crisis for the fraud that it is?
Israel should use this situation to create, or rather widen, the existing rift between the PA regime and its citizens. Citizens in the PA do not enjoy freedom – least of all political and religious freedom – nor a high standard of living and the regime’s latest move serves as an excellent example of the blatant disregard, bordering on contempt, which the PA leadership has for its own people. Israel should communicate to the citizens of the PA that the regime that rules them — on a mandate that expired a decade ago — does not have its best interests at heart, but only peddles in death and destruction. Not only the death and destruction of Israelis but of its own citizens. It might be a welcome opportunity to point out to those citizens that choosing a different path than that of Abbas — more terrorism, more death — leads to poverty and overall decline and that it is up to them to try to forge a different path.
The results of such Israeli communications will not be impressive at first. It is almost impossible to undo decades of terrorist indoctrination. But the situation presents itself as a welcome opportunity to at least begin. It is up to Israel to make the best of that opportunity.
The Arab League has pledged $100 million per month to the Palestinian Authority to make up for funds withheld by Israel over Ramallah’s payments made to the families of Palestinian terrorists.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the Arab League in Cairo on Sunday as part of a diplomatic effort to rebuff the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan, which American officials indicate could be released this summer.
Abbas said, “The Arabs need to be engaging actively at this critical time.”
Abbas says the Palestinians reject the deal and demand Israel fully withdraw from all occupied territories.
PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ second in command, Fatah Vice Chairman Mahmoud Aloul, said on Monday that if the peace process remains on its current course the PA will cease its security cooperation with Israel and retract its recognition of the Jewish state.
“The leadership is preparing to retract its recognition of Israel and cease its security cooperation with the occupation forces,” Aloul said during an interview with the Shehab news agency on Monday, April 22.
Aloul placed the blamed for the state of the peace process squarely on the United States, saying, “The American administration has decided to escalate the situation in the region following the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, and is actively encouraging the Israeli settlement enterprise. Now Israel is preparing to annex parts of the West Bank.”
“Because of these events,” he continued, “the status quo upon which the relationship [between Israel and the PA] is based may soon disappear. The [PA] leadership is expected to announce that we will not accept the continuation of the situation, and will announce drastic measures soon.”
According to Aloul, these measures were being planned by Abbas in cooperation with other Muslim nations, among them Turkey. According to Aloul, Abbas plans to meet soon with the leaders of Muslim and African countries in order to gain support for his upcoming moves.
At the heart of the paper is an examination of five key cultural practices that are central to legitimising occupation in the Israeli consciousness. First, discursive delegitimisation of Palestinian identity by negating the existence of such identity and the denial of (historical) Palestinian presence in the land. Second, discursive deconstruction of the Palestinian right to the land by the employment of legal and religious claims to the occupied land. Third, the depiction of the Palestinians as ‘terrorists’. Fourth, the dehumanisation of Palestinians and, finally, the ‘naturalisation’ of the language and landscape of occupation. We argue that, collectively, these practices constitute acts of violence built into a long-established structure of cultural norms, narratives, normative beliefs and practices.
How did they figure out that this is what Israelis think? Did they do a survey? Did they interview random Israelis? Did they put out a call on a website for Israelis to help out their research?
No, of course not. Here is what they did:
40 in-depth semi-structured elite interviews were carried out with personnel of various non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and grassroots peace organisations in Israel and the West Bank, Israeli and Palestinian parties’ politicians, Palestinian and Israeli academics, all with direct knowledge of the Israel–Palestine conflict.
They interviewed people whose funding and jobs and careers are dependent on their demonizing Israelis. These interviews, they say, determine "empirically" that Israelis are unfeeling monsters whose accurate narrative denying a historic Palestinian people is effectively a form of violence against Palestinians.
For example they interviewed Nurit Peled-Elhanan who repeated her lies about how Israeli textbooks are biased against Palestinians.
There are lots and lots of untruths in this paper. When the methodology is flawed, the entire paper is worthless.
But it is deemed good enough to be published in Third World Quarterly.
The social sciences truly allow anyone to prove anything they want if they use the right buzzwords.
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In a cabinet session today, Palestinian Authority prime minister Mohammad Ashtiyeh spoke about a decision to stop medical transfers to Israeli hospitals and instead to send patients to Arab countries.
"Delegations were sent to Egypt and Jordan to study the start of remittances to Arab countries and to dispense with remittances to Israel," he said.
This would involve significant delays for the patients themselves. Not to mention that the hospital facilities in Arab countries are inferior to Israel's.
Which means that the main reason for this decision in not what is best for Palestinians but what is considered "honorable." Saving patients' lives is shameful, if Jews have anything to do with it.
The appeal to honor, and to avoid shame, is so important to Palestinian leaders that they have started to rename President Trump's "deal of the century" to the "deal of shame" in their media in order to stop any chance that some reasonable Palestinians might publicly support it.
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Saudi/Egyptian news site Medan El Akbar has an op-ed by Amjad Al - Masry about the burning of the Notre Dame church in Paris whose main paragraph says:
Apart from any conspiracy theory and the results of the investigations carried out by the French authorities on the incident about whether it was a deliberate sabotage or a normal accident due to negligence or similar, any good reader of history can sense the smell of Jews in the story or would orient his mind in the direction of their guilt or even accusation of this incident. From their point of view, they never forget, especially their rabbis, how the Jewish Talmud was burned in the courtyard of the Notre Dame Church in the thirteenth century AD in what was known as the history of the Disputation of Paris and of Pope Gregory I, who saw in the Talmud frank hostility against Christ and the Christian religion.
This is of course ironic because while that incident was the spark for the next 800 years of Christian antisemitism, Jews have never been known to attack and burn churches. But Muslims have attacked dozens of churches in the 21st century alone - including the horrific attacks in Sri Lanka on the very same day this op-e was published!
(An excellent article about the Disputation of Paris can be seen here.)
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We have entered a dark period in American Jewish history. In a letter to US President Donald Trump, nine mainstream Jewish organizations have urged him to embrace a “two-state solution” that almost 85% of Israelis oppose as a lethal threat to national security.
While all the signatories are clearly aligned with the Left, they are hardly fringe groups. The Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Union for Reform Judaism represent the leadership of the Reform movement. Joining them were the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism; its Rabbinical Assembly; and Mercaz, the Conservative movement’s Zionist affiliate. The Anti-Defamation League possesses what is arguably the most valuable brand in organizational Jewry. Those groups, along with Ameinu and the National Council of Jewish Women, are members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
After years of spin and lies, it’s important to understand where Israel actually stands on the issue of a Palestinian state. In the newly elected Knesset, parties that campaigned on any form of a two-state paradigm will hold only 8% (10 of 120 seats), with an equal number going to radical separatist Arab parties. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Center-Right Likud and Benny Ganz’s Center-Left Blue and White – together accounting for 70 seats – advocated variations of the status quo, in which Israel exercises security control over the West Bank while granting broad autonomy to peaceful Arab cities and villages. The remaining 30 seats will go to parties even less willing than Likud to gamble with Israeli security.
Meanwhile, President Trump ran on a GOP platform trusting Israel to know what is necessary for its own security, refusing to force Israel to risk the lives of its citizens and rejecting the widely accepted fallacy that Israel is an occupying power. And he has governed accordingly. His protection of Israel against the depredations of the plainly antisemitic United Nations and International Criminal Court has been extraordinary. His recognition of Jerusalem, the Golan and the truth about both the Palestinian Authority and the so-called “Palestinian refugees” has been long overdue. Longstanding threats of catastrophic Arab eruptions have proved baseless; instead, under Trump, Arab states have become increasingly accepting of the Jewish state.
The signatory organizations have opposed and boycotted every one of President Trump’s pro-Israel successes, defaming and vilifying him at every turn – including accusing him of antisemitism. Likewise, they’ve savaged Israel’s prime minister. Now, they attack Israel’s democracy. They have no credibility, no influence in this White House and they’re not dumb. If they truly believed that they had something useful to offer, they’d work through quiet back channels. Their very public letter cannot plausibly be taken as any kind of good-faith overture. (h/t MtTB)
President Hamilton, I suspected, would balk at now saying that SJP makes a “significant and positive contribution to the University.” I was wrong.
On Wednesday, SJP received the President’s Service Award.
That’s despite the best efforts of Judea Pearl, a major figure in the field of computer science and a winner of NYU’S Distinguished Alumna award. After his son, the journalist Daniel Pearl, was murdered by Islamic militants, Pearl and his family set up a foundation that, among other things, supports Muslim-Jewish dialogue. SJP stands against dialogue. At UCLA, where Pearl teaches, SJP has, in Pearl’s words, “resorted to intimidation tactics that have made me, my colleagues and my students unwelcome and unsafe on our own campus.” After NYU met his inquiries with “platitudes about free speech,” Pearl, according to the Algemeiner, “renounced his status as a distinguished alumnus.”
It’s worth dwelling for a moment on those platitudes about free speech. NYU spokesman John Beckman told Pearl that although “many in our university community disagree with the SJP, NYU will continue to defend the rights of our students and others to express their opposing views.” By conflating respecting free speech and rewarding discriminatory behavior, Beckman managed in one brief statement to declare NYU both morally and intellectually bankrupt.
Those looking to excuse President Hamilton and NYU can point to how the ceremony was handled. SJP complained that Hamilton didn’t show and that “they [were] also not calling out the names of the award recipients. Pathetic.”
Here, I must agree for the first time with Students for Justice in Palestine. Even if SJP is right that Hamilton and NYU were sending a message in the way they handled the ceremony, this coward’s mode of distancing is, indeed, pathetic.
Kay Wilson is the British Israeli tour guide who, in 2010, miraculously survived a brutal machete attack by two sadistic Palestinian terrorists (Aiad Fatfata and Kifah Ghanimat) while hiking in a forest near Jerusalem. The American tourist she was escorting - Kristine Luken - was murdered in the attack. The terrorists simply wanted to 'kill some Jews' (although Kristine was in fact a Christian). In this book Kay describes in detail the attack, how she survived, and her long road to recovery. The book is both harrowing and inspiring, and while it is a very personal account it also provides many insights into Israeli society. Once you start reading it you will find it difficult to put down. Yet, publishers refused to publish it because it does not fit the mainstream narrative of "Palestinians as victims".
Although it is not a point that Kay focuses on herself in the book, it is important to note that the terrorists who were convicted of the attack are held in the highest esteem in Palestinian society (receiving a monthly stipend of $3,410 as reward for being officially 'Heroes of Palestine') and also received full legal support from the Israeli state, while being housed in the relative luxury of an Israeli prison. This contrasts with the struggle Kay and her carers have to cope with the aftermath of the attack. As a further example of this contrast, the book describes how, during the trial, the Israeli court failed to provide an English translator for the Luken's victim statement, yet provided Arabic translators for the terrorists.
There are many other remarkable insights in the book, including Kay's first meeting with Kristin's parents, the fact that the terrorists did not know Kay had survived the attack until she stood up to testify at their trial (this caused them to argue between themselves); and also how Kay first heard about the arrest of the terrorists who attacked her, during a shared taxi journey in Jerusalem (when she was going to complete the forms needed to get a meagre disability allowance). The other passengers did not know it was Kay they were talking about.
In the face of all this, America’s Jewish leaders are largely and disgracefully silent. Most of them, that is, except the head of the Zionist Organisation of America, Mort Klein, who tells it as it is.
Sitting alongside Owens at the same judiciary committee hearing, Klein called for the removal of Omar and Tlaib from their committees. And he went much further.
While acknowledging the dangers of white nationalism, Klein identified the major issue threatening violence against Jews and all Americans as “Muslim antisemitism, which is strengthened by significant institutional support, and is becoming mainstream”.
He pointed to statistics showing that among American Muslims antisemitism was running at more than double the rate among than people of other faiths and none, and four times as much in parts of Europe. “It’s always about the Muslims and left attacking, verbally abusing, and threatening Jewish and pro-Israel students”, he said. And he also blamed institutional support for Jew-hatred by leading imams.
In a New York meeting a few days ago, Klein spoke further about the growing antisemitism from left-wing Muslims in Congress and how this is largely ignored not only by government officials and the media but also by the Jewish community.
In the current climate of intimidation, character assassination and cultural conformity, these are the words of an extremely brave man. He shames the craven Jewish community by speaking plain truths which others, including many diaspora Jewish leaders, seek all too successfully to suppress.
The epidemic of antisemitism and the twisting of the western mind are part of the great battle under way over the survival of western civilisation. It will require all our courage to fight for what’s right and true.
Personally, I shall be spending Passover in Israel, where the fight for freedom is in the very DNA of the people who have to defend it with their lives every day.
"...The Trump foreign policy team scored a big victory in The Hague last Friday that will protect American soldiers from illegitimate and unaccountable foreign prosecutions.
The International Criminal Court dropped a more than decade-long inquiry into alleged crimes by U.S. personnel in Afghanistan. The action came soon after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the U.S. would deny a visa to the court's prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and potentially other court officials, because of their possible prosecution of Americans. The court said in an opinion that it wouldn't proceed because of 'changes within the relevant political landscape' suggesting it would not get 'cooperation' from the U.S. In other words, the Trump Effect.
The U.S.-like most other non-European major military powers-never accepted the court's jurisdiction. According to its own statute, the ICC can only prosecute when a country is 'unwilling or unable' to prosecute its own war crimes. But the U.S. has no problem prosecuting its soldiers domestically in military courts if they violate the law.
If the ICC were to indict U.S. servicemen, no American president would turn them over, but it would have a real effect on their lives. They would face peril in traveling to countries that have joined the ICC, including all of Western Europe. They would be international fugitives...
President Trump, Mr. Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton correctly understand that their primary duty is to protect American nationals, not prop up the reputation of an already-failing treaty organization of which the U.S. is not a member. At very low cost, they have rescued American troops who served in Afghanistan from living under a Damocles sword of Hague-based prosecution..."
Dore Gold: America and the International Criminal Court
In April, the State Department revoked the U.S. visa of International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda after she declared her intention to conduct an investigation of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
The ICC had been based on the principle of complementarity - that is, it only has jurisdiction if an alleged crime occurred in a state that has no effective legal system to prosecute it, due to a lack of capacity or political will.
American critics rightfully are concerned that the ICC could be abused to drag American military personnel in front of the court, regardless of the fact that the U.S. military has its own system for investigating allegations.
Israel's concerns have been similar to those of the U.S., due to its bad experience with multilateral institutions in the past that have made baseless allegations against IDF soldiers, accusing them of war crimes.
U.S. law prohibits economic support for the Palestinian Authority if it prompts a process that places Israelis under an ICC investigation.
The debate over the creation of the ICC in 1998 illustrated that any political issue might be converted into a legal weapon. The U.S. has long been aware of this problem, which explains why, like Israel, it could not back what started as a noble cause but later became a seriously flawed idea.
Gaza Now "reports" that Israel's Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked insulted north African Muslims on Thursday night.
According to the ridiculous story, she said that Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians are ignorant, stupid and deserve to be killed. The story says that she added that they will all be terminated and not one will remain alive.
Who did she supposedly say this to? Why, AIPAC, of course.
Usually there is some grain of truth to these stories, but apparently Gaza Now decided that it is easier to make things up from scratch.
(h/t Tomer Ilan)
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Following devastating flood in #Iran, now 6 provinces across are facing a massive locus attack crisis
Khuzestan,
Bushehr,
Fars,
Hormozgan,
Kerman
Sistan & Baluchestan
Thousands of hectares of farmlands have already been destroyed. pic.twitter.com/FpSsP5O9eJ
Someone on Twitter says that there is also a plague of frogs in Djour, Egypt, but I have been unable to verify this and it appears to be not true (although the video is entertaining.)
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Wishing all of you who celebrate Pesach a chag kosher v'sameach, a wonderful and joyous holiday! (posted early for those in Israel to see it.)
I will not be posting from this afternoon EDT to at least Sunday night.
From the British Museum:
Detail of a page; Historiated initial-word panel Ha lahma aniya (The Bread of Affliction), at the beginning of the text of the Haggadah. Beneath the initial words, a miniature depicting a family by the Seder table with the master of the house placing the basket of unleavened bread on the head of one of his children.
Origin:Spain, N. E., Catalonia (Barcelona)
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I am reading an academic paper named "Making Jerusalem the centre of the Muslim World: Pan-Islam and the World Islamic congress of 1931." by N. E. Roberts.
It shows, as we have mentioned before, that Jerusalem was never an important part of Islamic thinking until the 1920s with the rise of the infamous antisemite (and later Nazi collaborator) Hajj Amin Husayni as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
Roberts notes:
Although Jerusalem was the third holiest city in Islam, it was not an important concern of Pan-Islamists in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Historically, the city had been peripheral to Islamic politics, having never been the capital of a major Islamic power, nor the site of a leading institution of Islamic learning, nor a prominent city in the Ottoman empire. So, while Muslims worried about the fate of Istanbul, Mecca, and Cairo, little sleep was lost over the status of Jerusalem, even while European interest in the Holy City increased in the late-Ottoman period.
The British were worried about the rise of pan-Islamism, and officials were divided on how to deal with it. They made a fatal mistake in thinking that they could use Islam as a means to keep the Muslims content without them engaging in political activities.
In Palestine, British officials such as Ronald Storrs (1881–1855), the governor of Jerusalem, and Herbert Samuel (1870–1963), the high commissioner, identified the Husaynis as the notable family best placed to serve as intermediaries between the government and the country’s majority Muslim population. Their decision to embrace the Husaynis occurred shortly after the occupation of Palestine, when Storrs and Samuel cultivated friendly relations with the mufti Kamil al-Husayni who they viewed as being reliably pro-British and having the requisite influence and experience to exercise leadership over the local population. The government’s support for this family helps explain why they supported Hajj Amin al-Husayni becoming the mufti of Jerusalem following his older brother’s death in March 1921, despite the young man’s lack of religious qualifications and his participation a year earlier in violent anti-Zionist demonstrations during the Muslim Nabi Musa (Prophet Moses) festival in Jerusalem. It would also lead the government to place Hajj Amin at the head of the newly invented Supreme Muslim Council (an autonomous institution that oversaw the religious affairs of the Muslim community) so that he could function as the ethnarch of the Muslim community during the mandate period.
The event that started Husayni's embrace of Jerusalem as a rallying cry for Muslims was - a British idea:
When Herbert Samuel appointed Hajj Amin as mufti and promoted him to the head of the powerful Supreme Muslim Council he did so with the expectation that he would run the religious affairs of the Muslim community and keep the peace within his constituency. However, for this quid pro quo arrangement to work smoothly, the British needed Hajj Amin and his organisation to concentrate solely on local religious matters. But barely a year into Hajj Amin’s administration, British officials gave the mufti the perfect vehicle for involving himself in Pan-Islamic politics: a mission to the Muslim World to raise funds for the renovation of the Dome of the Rock.
The idea to renovate the Dome of the Rock originally came from Herbert Samuel who, in August 1920, wrote to Lord Curzon to request that the British government provide funds to renovate the Haram al-Sharif. Noting that the site was the third most important sacred site in Islam, he explained that the ‘effect’ of this act of magnanimity ‘would be favourable and instantaneous.’ There was just one problem: if the British repaired the site, Muslims might protest that Britain was taking over an Islamic space, a particular concern of the Indian government given that the Khilafat Committee had already used Britain’s control over Muslim holy places to propagandize against empire. As a result, the high commissioner of Palestine, the secretary of state, and the viceroy of India decided that it would be better for Hajj Amin al-Husayni to lead the campaign to repair the site with Britain providing background technical and financial assistance.
As the paper details, the Mufti immediately started fundraising to repair the Dome- in order to protect it and Jerusalem from being taken over by the Jews. (The paer says "Zionists" but the Mufti was not shy about his antisemitism.)
The entire reason the Dome of the Rock is so ubiquitous in Palestinian political life today is because the British thought they would get goodwill from the Arabs of Palestine if they helped repair the long-ignored site. Instead, it was used to fuel antisemitism and create Palestinian nationalism - which were, and remain, joined at the hip.
This is an early example of something we have seen over and over: Westerners think that when they do something magnanimous for the Arabs, the Arabs would reciprocate with goodwill and cooperation - and the results are the exact opposite.
One cannot downplay how many people have been killed in the century since this decision by the Jewish Herbert Samuel and the British Empire.
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Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
