Tarek Khoury, a member of Jordan's parliament, tweeted a thread where he stated that peace with Israel is an illusion, and that Israel only accepts peace to swallow land that doesn't belong to it and to prime itself to steal more land. (Essentially he is accusing Israel of doing what the PLO explicitly stated it would do in 1974, to take all of Israel in phases, a position it never abandoned.)
In the middle of the thread, Khoury wrote:
"Victory is achieved only when each of us believes on this land that we have no enemy who fights us in our religion and our homeland except the Jews."
Not Zionists, not Israelis - Jews.
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This isn't just the headline, which could be written by a different editor with his or her own bias. The lede of the article says:
Israel has a right to annex at least some, but “unlikely all,” of the West Bank, the United States ambassador, David M. Friedman, said in an interview, opening the door to American acceptance of what would be an enormously provocative act.
Since the interview with Ambassador David Friedman was an exclusive to The New York Times, who is going to disagree that this is what he said?
Except that, he didn't.
His words were: "Under certain circumstances, I think that Israel has the right to retain some, but not all, of the West Bank."
Later on the article says:
He accused the Obama administration, in allowing passage of a United Nations resolution in 2016 that condemned Israeli settlements as a “flagrant violation” of international law, of giving credence to Palestinian arguments “that the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem belong to them.”
“Certainly Israel’s entitled to retain some portion of it,” he said of the West Bank.
This does not mean unilateral annexation. He didn't use the word "annex." . It means that the 1949 armistice lines are not the legal boundaries of Israel and that UN Resolution 242 entitles Israel to territory in the West Bank under any permanent agreement.
I know, because I participated – albeit in a small way – in the drafting of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 back in 1967, when Justice Arthur Goldberg was the United States Representative to the United Nations. I had been Justice Goldberg’s law clerk, and was then teaching at Harvard Law School. Justice Goldberg asked me to come to New York to advise him on some of the legal issues surrounding the West Bank.
The major controversy was whether Israel had to return "all" the territories captured in its defensive war against Jordan, or only some of the territories.
The end result was that the binding English version of the United Nations Resolution deliberately omitted the crucial word "all," and substituted the word "territories," which both Justice Goldberg and British Ambassador Lord Caradon publicly stated meant that Israel was entitled to retain some of the West Bank.
Moreover, under Resolution 242, Israel was not required to return a single inch of captured territory unless its enemies recognized its right to live within secure boundaries.
Friedman is right, therefore, in these two respects: (1) Israel has no right to retain all of the West Bank, if its enemies recognize its right to live within secure borders; (2) Israel has "the right to retain some" of these territories. The specifics – the amount and location – are left to negotiation between the parties.
When asked explicitly about annexation, Friedman did not say anything at all:
Mr. Friedman declined to say how the United States would respond if Mr. Netanyahu moved to annex West Bank land unilaterally.
“We really don’t have a view until we understand how much, on what terms, why does it make sense, why is it good for Israel, why is it good for the region, why does it not create more problems than it solves,” Mr. Friedman said. “These are all things that we’d want to understand, and I don’t want to prejudge.”
The absence of a condemnation does not equal support. Friedman did not say a single thing against US policy.
Reporters tried to play "gotcha" with the State Department spokesperson, who didn't say that Friedman said anything wrong:
State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said the administration's position on the West Bank has not changed, despite Ambassador David Friedman's comments to The New York Times that "Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank."
Speaking to reporters Monday, Ortagus said that "the administration's position on the settlements has not changed. Our policy on the West Bank has not changed."
Asked what the US position on settlement activity is, a State Department official cited President Donald Trump, saying that "as the President has said, while the existence of settlements is not in itself an impediment to peace, further unrestrained settlement activity doesn't help advance peace."
Of course, Friedman didn't say anything about whether the settlements were legal according to US policy in the interview as published.
Friedman is characterized in the media as a pro-Israel cowboy who ignores US policy in the region. He is undoubtedly pro-Israel and pro-settlement in his own opinion, but he did not say one word that contradicted US policy, nor did he say a word about supporting unilateral annexation.
This is all media bias by the New York Times and picked up by scores of reporters who do not have the ability to independently evaluate an official's statements and uncritically accept the false interpretation of the NYT.
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The announcement followed fallout from a constitutional crisis and power struggle that ended last week with a constitutional court’s suspension of the country’s elected president, Igor Dodon.
The statement tied the decision, which would make Moldova the only European country with its embassy in Jerusalem, to internal unrest and the sale of the land for the construction of a new American embassy in Chisinau, the Moldovan capital.
“We are in the situation to urgently adopt these decisions taking into account the political instability and uncertainty in the country, but also the latest political developments whereas one of the political parties that constantly blocked these two projects is attempting an illegal takeover of power,” the government under its acting prime minister, Pavel Filip, wrote in the statement.
“These are two commitments that we have previously undertaken and we want to make sure they will be respected, regardless of what happens after the snap elections.”
Following the constitutional crisis, Filip dissolved parliament and called an election for September.
“Both projects are commitments undertaken by the Government of the Republic of Moldova and the Government acted in order to avoid their long term blockage by the political crisis in the country,” he added.
The government is attempting to force this decision to stand but upcoming elections could stall or reverse the decision, it seems.
That is what happened to the Paraguayan embassy, which was closed when a new president was elected.
Other countries announced vague plans to open up embassies. Only Guatemala did so, although upcoming elections threaten that embassy as well.
The compromise that many countries, including friendly European countries, seem to be taking is to open up trade offices in Jerusalem attached to their Tel Aviv embassies. According to a recent story in Times of Israel that surveyed the situation of embassies in Jerusalem a year after the US embassy move:
Meanwhile the European Union, in an internal memo obtained by The Times of Israel, has downplayed the trend among some member states to open trade offices in Jerusalem (some of which have diplomatic status since they are seen as “extensions” of a country’s Tel Aviv embassy, but are not considered embassies themselves), insisting that it remains firmly opposed to any recognition of the city as Israel’s capital and to establishing embassies there.
Is that meaningful?
Perhaps. If nothing else, these trade missions are a recognition that something has changed and the fiction that Jerusalem would become an international city, which was the EU's official position not too long ago, seems to have disappeared.
These small and mostly symbolic moves can be seen as important in another way. These trade offices, as extensions of actual embassies, can be seen in a way as weakening UN Security Council Resolution 478 which insisted that all nations withdraw and refuse to establish any diplomatic missions to Jerusalem.
Just considering the relocation of embassies to Jerusalem, as well as opening these extensions of Tel Aviv embassies, means that many countries have decided to ignore or bypass an anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution.
This is not a small thing.
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A charity set up to help Gazans may not have conducted any charitable activity, the Charity Commission has said in a damning report.
Viva Palestina was set up in January 2009 by a group which included George Galloway, the former Labour and Respect MP, with the aim of “alleviating the suffering and to help the people of Gaza re-build their land”.
It was removed from the register of charities following an inquiry in 2013, four years after the Charity Commission, which regulates the sector in the UK, opened its first statutory investigation into it.
On Thursday, the commission published its findings from the 2013 inquiry, saying that Viva Palestina “may not have conducted any charitable activity or distributed any humanitarian aid”.
It said: "It was difficult for the inquiry to establish with any certainty whether any charitable activity had taken place, as it found little if any evidence that humanitarian aid was distributed to those in need in accordance with the charity’s objects."
It also concluded that the charity’s trustees failed to meet certain legal duties, including the maintenance of proper financial records, safeguarding the charity’s assets, providing financial records and addressing the Charity Commission’s concerns.
Some 20 scientists, including an Israeli professor, wrote an open letter to the organizers of the 2019 International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) against holding its July competition in Israel.
The letter was signed by Professor emeritus Emmanuel Dror Farjoun of the Einstein Institute of Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Though Farjoun no longer actively works at the university, his author page and contact information continue to appear on the university’s website.
“The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has lecturers from all sides of the political divide,” the university’s international media director, Tali Aronsky, told The Jerusalem Post. “We maintain a respectful, academic environment on our campuses and do not police statements made outside the classroom.
“In this particular case, Prof. Farjoun is retired,” Aronsky continued.
The open letter is being hosted on the official website of the BDS movement and was disseminated to the media. The IPhO is the premier international physics competition for high school students that includes competitors from some 80 countries.
The letter protests holding the contest in Israel due to what it describes as Israel’s denial of Palestinian human rights, including the right to education.
“We the undersigned protest against the organization of the next International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) in Tel Aviv, Israel, from the 7th to the 15th of July 2019,” the letter begins. “The organizing committee states that the aim of the International Science Olympiad is to plant ‘the seeds of cooperation and friendship among students from all over the world.’ Under the present circumstances, citizens of many countries are de facto excluded from entering Israel and attending the IPhO, not to mention Palestinian students from the West Bank and Gaza.”
Last week I told the story of Zina who made the mistake of talking to a Zionist. This is an update of what followed. It is important to stress that this blog and the video I am publishing have been produced without Zina’s co-operation in any way. She remains an anti-Zionist and an adversary. Given some of the abuse she has received, there is little doubt this blog will be taken as further sign of her being little more than a ‘Zionist infiltrator’. Nothing could be further from the truth. What she is however, is evidence of how closed minded, extreme and brutal the anti-Zionist movement is and how swiftly it rounds on anyone who thinks or acts differently.
Brief background
Zina Abdullatif is a hard-core anti-Israel activist. Zina went to the Al Quds March in London. So did Joseph Cohen from the Israel advocacy movement. After the event, circumstances brought them together and they engaged in a dialogue. Each side, the Palestinian activist and the Zionist held their political ground. The meeting was respectful and after the event, they uploaded an image of themselves standing together holding their respective flags. Whilst Joseph was praised for his actions and even Zina received warm comments on Joseph’s page, the same was not true the other way around. Zina was instantly attacked and hounded by her fellow activists. The abuse was incessant.
After the Zina blog
The situation didn’t settle down. Zina had partially caved, but despite her apologies and calls for ‘peace’ amongst her friends, Zina was continuously hounded. Eventually she turned to the police for help:
She also uploaded a video to Facebook in which she spoke of ‘unfair’ ‘horrible’ and attacks.
In their rejection of Israel, some writers and politicians, the most recent of whom is Mahmoud Abbas, resorting to denying Israel to the Jews of Israel, saying they are descendants of the Khazars (Turks) and thus have no old connection to Palestine to return to.
What is the value of these words in fact? Does it mean - and perhaps it means - that if they were descendants of Jacob (Israel) we should welcome them and accept the rape of our homeland and displacement of our people?
What is the value of this talk?
We hate all Jews equally, says Al Ghad - why distinguish between the Khazars and the non-Khazars?
(h/t/ Ibn Boutros)
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Predictably, the article accuses Israel is using vegan-friendly policies to distract from, yes, its "occupation."
The abstract:
In popular media and public discourse, Israel has been referred to as ‘the first vegan nation’ and the ‘global centre for veganism’ because of the mainstreaming of veganism in the country in the 2010s. The article examines this triumphalist rhetoric and argues that animal welfare and veganism have been enrolled as a device to narrate the Israeli nation within terms of Jewish Israeli sovereignty. The contemporary cultural politics of veganism in Israel circulate and reinforce national myths of exceptionalism tethered to a Zionist exclusionary ideology, including claims to unique victimhood, pioneering achievements and moral rectitude, which further entrench Jewish Israeli belonging and Palestinian unbelonging. Indeed, Israeli institutions have co-opted an image of ‘vegan/animal-friendliness’ as makers of the nation’s modernity and morality. Yet, drawing on fieldwork with Jewish Israeli activists, the paper argues that both the deliberate practices of veganwashing and its well-intentioned critiques overlook the nuances and ambivalences of Israeli animal politics. The paper also highlights that critiques of veganwashing do not go far enough to show how it is negotiated by Palestinian animal advocates. It suggests that focus on veganwashing as the primary debate of settler-colonial injustice and animal politics has paradoxically rendered them inaudible, and calls instead for a politics of listening.
Parts of the paper are unintentionally funny.
Activists have rightly pointed out that Israeli veganwashing generates much violence through its deflection and obscuring of settler colonial oppression.
Talking about Israeli leadership in veganism generates much violence?
The paper laments that any discussion of veganwashing has the same practical effect as veganwashing itself:
Debating veganwashing can (unwittingly) serve as a politics of deflection itself by drawing attention away from the actual settler colonial politics of the Israeli State and Palestinians’ resistance to it.
Perhaps an entirely new field can be founded, of X-washing-washing, where debate about how Israel tries to deflect from its awful crimes is actually a deflection from discussing Israel's awful crimes. Maybe even Alloun herself is a Zionist shill for increasing the debate about X-washing and deflecting from writing yet another article about how Israel is more directly evil.
The absurdities continue. The author interviewed some new Israeli Jewish vegans who stupidly compared animal cruelty to the Holocaust. Based on these anecdotes, Alloun concludes:
Mainstream Israeli culture tends to not only essentialise Jewish victimhood and innocence, crystallised through events like the Holocaust and as a core part of Israeli Jewish identity, but also to deny that other humans can be victim (Pappé 2010). This is crucial to understand the broader implications of activists folding animals into national (Jewish) victimhood and political innocence.
Using Ilan Pappe's fictional thesis that Zionist deny any other human suffering besides Jews, Alloun makes up a further theory that Jews will include animals as fellow victims, based on interviewing two idiots. Somehow, I doubt that Yad Vashem would agree.
There is a telling anecdote as Alloun talks with members of the Palestinian Animal League, the only Palestinian animal rights group in the West Bank.
Sudfeh, PAL’s vegan cafeteria (and main vegan initiative) in Abu Dhis (West Bank) which had got a lot of press and sent a clear signal that Israel did not have a monopoly over veganism, had closed because of a lack of business. Speaking to PAL volunteers and its core team at the conference, it also became apparent that veganism was neither the centrepiece nor a top priority of PAL’s animal advocacy. Conference tours of Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jalazon prompted an international attendee to remark that she had not yet seen the Palestinian vegan movement she had expected and come to the West Bank to witness (fieldnotes). There is no beating Israel at the game of the vegan nation.
The paper goes on to note that PAL is really an anti-Israel initiative where the welfare of animals is only secondary, and decries that white Westerners think of it as a normal Western-style animal rights group.
PAL rejects patronising and neocolonial interventions by well-intentioned international animal NGOs (see Safi 2017b) and proposes a unique form of animal politics with Palestinian national liberation as its guiding principle. In the context of a literal war zone, PAL’s platform envisages a decolonial and decolonised politics of animal liberation as an integral part of Palestinian self-determination. It therefore puts the Palestinian struggle for justice, and boycott of the Israeli State at the centre of its activist engagement.
In short, there is really no Palestinian animal rights group and there is not a single vegan restaurant in the territories. The one and only animal rights NGO uses animal rights as another tool to generate hatred against Israel - much like this academic paper does.
In the end, these sorts of papers which are increasingly being published without any fact checks or objective editing are part of a huge anti-Israel push in academia. Cutting out the pseudo-academic language, the "laundry" literature all has in common a thesis that Israelis do not have the right to have any pride in their people or their state. Israeli pride is simply a subterfuge for covering crimes against Palestinians, which is the only valid discourse about Israel that is allowed. Any other discussion must be silenced by accusing it of being a means to divert attention from what they believe is the real topic. It is psychological projection: it is not Israel that is so obsessed with Palestinians that they embrace liberal causes to distract the world from them, but these pseudo-academics are the ones who cannot look at Israel with anything but their occupation goggles.
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Israel’s Mossad spy agency was responsible for providing British authorities with information that helped foil Hezbollah’s efforts to stockpile explosives in London in 2015, a senior Israeli official told the Kan public broadcaster Monday.
The report said Hezbollah later attempted to move its operations to other countries, which were also notified by Mossad, and that the two organizations were for some time engaged in a game of cat and mouse, as the Iran-backed group sought to realize its plans.
According to a report Sunday by The Daily Telegraph, the Hezbollah plot was part of a wider plan to lay the groundwork for future attacks. It noted foiled Hezbollah operations in Thailand, Cyprus, and New York. All those plots were believed to have targeted Israeli interests around the world.
The report said that, acting on a tip from an unnamed foreign intelligence agency, MI5 and the Metropolitan Police raided four properties in North West London, discovering thousands of disposable ice packs containing three tons of ammonium nitrate, a common ingredient in homemade bombs.
The report said the raid came just months after the UK joined the US and other world powers in signing the Iran nuclear deal, and speculated that it was hushed up to avoid derailing the agreement with Tehran, which is the main patron of Hezbollah.
The UK’s MI5 and the Metropolitan Police uncovered the foundations of a Hezbollah plot when they raided four sites in London in September 2015, according to a shocking report in The Telegraph.
Although then prime minister David Cameron and home secretary Theresa May were briefed on the raid, it was “kept hidden from the public,” the report says.
This fits a disturbing pattern of attempts by intelligence and law enforcement agencies to track Hezbollah’s global activities, only to have them met with the cold shoulder at political levels. This may be part of a wide-ranging attempt by Western countries to curry favor with Iran’s regime and downplay the depth of Iranian penetration of foreign countries.
In 2008, the US Drug Enforcement Administration began investigating Hezbollah’s drug trade, according to an article in Politico in 2018. Thirty US and foreign security agencies were involved. They mapped a global trade from South America to Africa and the Middle East, which they linked “to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.”
But the investigators began to run into a problem from the highest levels of the Obama administration. The US was seeking to change its relations with Iran and to put forward the Iran Deal. As such, the US felt it needed to be more flexible with Iran’s allies, such as Hezbollah. The Politico report says that John Brennan, former CIA director, even said he believed that Hezbollah should receive “greater assimilation into Lebanon’s political system.”
Many of us have never needed convincing about just how dangerous Hezbollah is. That’s why – alongside Jewish communal organisations and colleagues from across the House of Commons – we campaigned to have this antisemitic terror group proscribed in its entirety.
Belatedly, and under much pressure, the government finally recognised in February that its attempt to maintain a distinction between Hezbollah’s political wing (which wasn’t banned) and its military wing (which Tony Blair’s administration proscribed) was a dangerous game of semantics.
Indeed, the UK was openly mocked by Hezbollah for maintain a distinction which it itself had explicitly and repeatedly denied the existence of.
I was nonetheless horrified this morning to read the Daily Telegraph’s expose of a plot by Hezbollah-linked operatives to store explosive materials in London, which was foiled by the security services in September 2015.
There was nothing small-scale about this endeavour.
The terrorists were allegedly stockpiling more ammonium nitrate than was used by Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in which 168 people died. And this appears to have been part of an international conspiracy stretching across several countries.
This is not so much a review of the book "The Rage Less Travelled: A Memoir of Surviving a Machete Attack," it’s more a summary of my experience reading it and why I believe this is a must read for everyone, including those not specifically interested in Israel.
Choosing to read the book
I didn’t want to read “The Rage Less Travelled.” My friend Kay Wilson is one of the best story tellers I have ever met and few stories are more dramatic than that of being brutally attacked and surviving but who wants to read about a gruesome terror attack?
And this isn’t a "horror story," something fun to scare your friends with around a campfire. This story is real and it happened to someone I care about… Just the thought of immersing myself in this deeply painful story made my stomach churn.
Strangely the feeling I had about reading the book was very different than the feeling I had hearing it directly from Kay. I felt honored when she told me about the day she and her friend Kristine Luken were brutally attacked by machete wielding terrorists, what it is like to feel your life running out of you, to know that your friend was murdered and you survived. Kay was there, in front of me - I could reach out and give her a hug. I could share a sliver of the pain and feel stronger as a result.
Life is sacred thus the moment of death or almost-death, is also a kind of holy moment. Kay made me part of that and, I think she unconsciously shielded me from some of the horror. She made sharing the story a gift, not a burden.
While she was struggling to write the book, I repeatedly told Kay that if she wrote the way she talks, the book will be incredible. I knew it would be hard for her to write but I also knew she would succeed and that the result would be very powerful.
And that is why I was afraid.
I knew the story. I watched “Black Forest,” the documentary about the attack - but compelling as it may be, a movie keeps the viewer on the outside, watching the events unfold. Well written and told in first person, a book puts the reader inside the event, granting the reader an experience not their own.
I didn’t have the guts to deliberately walk into the Black Forest. I was afraid to feel my friend's pain and not be able to reach out to her. Somehow, with Kay there, the story is one I can ingest. The tangible evidence that she is still here, that she survived, makes the evil that occurred something my heart can somehow take.
I had to read the book, for myself. For Kay. For Kristine who was murdered because the terrorists thought she was a Jew.
"We Remember" is more than a slogan to be said in reference to the Holocaust, it's a directive that teaches that every life is precious and we must understand the events that steal members of our tribe from us and, whenever possible, we must remember their lives so that at least in memory they can live on. Kristine wasn’t born into our tribe but she chose to be a friend and she suffered as a result. In my mind, that means we owe her.
Kristine
In a few succinct descriptions, Kay brings Kristine's spirit to life on the pages. This is yet another way of battling the evil of her murder. The terrorists wanted to stamp her out of existence (because they thought she was a Jew). In the physical struggle, the terrorists achieved their goal but in the spiritual realm, Kay’s words ensure their defeat.
The terrorists defined Kristine's death but they do not have the power to define what her life was or what it meant to the people who knew and loved her.
Through Kay's words, the readers are introduced to a very special woman. One who allowed herself to be enchanted by things most of us would take for granted or maybe not even notice. A woman who drank in experiences through wide eyes. A woman who marveled at the wonders of Israel and by example reminds others to see the magic of this special land.
Kristine's memory is no longer a statistic of violence or a silent photo but rather a vibrant woman, exuberant and full of faith. Who wouldn't want a friend like that?
The lies PTSD tells and the miracle that is Israel
In the USA the statistics for military veteran suicides are 22 (and possibly more) EVERY SINGLE DAY. These numbers are shocking and truly beyond comprehension but they highlight a very important path – it is necessary to learn. To understand as much as possible. Not just for survivors of terrorism and war. PTSD can occur in all types of trauma survivors – following violent crime, abuse and even car accidents.
Kay provides a glimpse into PTSD which can clarify a lot of issues, help sufferers understand that they are not alone and teach others how to address friends or family who may need help, to be more tolerant and patient with others who may be physically with us in the same room but at the same time are mentally trapped in their own black forest.
"Survivors' guilt" is a bland term that does not address the lies PTSD tells the survivor. Over and over Kay felt that "She watched Kristine die so that she could live." This not the feeling of “I’m sorry that person died” it’s a feeling of being a terrible, selfish, callous person who remained silent in the face of evil for personal gain. It is also an utter lie.
Screaming, trying to act (more than she did) would have gotten Kay killed and would not have saved Kristine. It is beyond comprehension how Kay managed to survive. By all logic she too should have died – but she did not. Would Kristine have wanted them both to die or would she have been proud of Kay for surviving?
Logical analysis of the situation provides clear answers but the problem is that PTSD is not based in logic or cognitive awareness, it is a poisonous loop that the spirit/mind gets trapped inside. Being able to recognize the lies is the first step to addressing them and release the stranglehold they have on the sufferer.
The descriptions of Kay’s thoughts and emotions and the lengths friends went to in order to support her provide insight into the miracle that is Israel. All Israelis have experienced trauma, if not first-hand than second hand. At the same time, an amazingly low proportion of Israelis actually suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It is incomprehensible how the people of Israel, instead of being angry and bitter are hopeful and willing to invest enormous energy into making the world a better place.
Kay shines light on these special qualities of Israeli society, our unique mixture of the mundane and the sublime, harshly honest and deeply caring.
Somewhere over the rainbow
Kay's book isn't about a gruesome attack. It's about hope and survival. It's about love and healing.
The evil of the attack puts the beauty of the people who took care of Kay afterwards in stark contrast. The pain of what occurred is a motivator to try to bring change and make the world a less dark place.
Kay herself is an example of what it is to be a Maccabee. Like Natan Alterman's poem The Silver Platter: "Broken, yet still standing, we are the silver platter on which the Jewish State was given to you."
Stabbed and beaten, her life running out of her body, my warrior friend Kay managed to stand and walk to her own rescue. Tortured by Arabs, she repaid evil with good by helping protect other young Arabs and set them on the path of positive personal development. Kristine’s life stolen, Kay makes sure others remember the vibrant life, not just the ugly death. She also works tirelessly to put an end to the Pay-for-Slay culture of the Palestinian Authority.
Broken, yet still standing.
Kay is like Israel. This is our beauty and our strength. Broken, yet still standing. Wounded physically and in spirit. Together we survive and we love and we infuse good into the world to counter-balance the evil.
Kay's story is an inspiration for anyone who is suffering in their own life, an example of what is possible. Kay’s story is Israel’s story.
If Kay can do what she has accomplished, who are we to say that there is something we can’t do?
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Israel's Channel 13 reports that three fires broke out in the Kissufim Forest near Gaza this morning. Investigators determined that the cause of the fire was incendiary balloons from Gaza.
Two more fires broke out in the area overnight, also assumed to have been caused by incendiary balloons fired from the Gaza Strip.
In the last 24 hours, a total of nine fires broke out in the areas around Gaza. One of them destroyed 150 dunums of wheat fields in the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council
At the same time, Hamas threatens to escalate violence in the weekly riots at the security fence.
Since the ceasefire a month ago , about 50 fires have erupted in the vicinity, but according to the ceasefire rules, Israel has not attacked balloon launching units and has not reacted forcefully.
2,000 fires have been set in southern Israel and 8,700 acres burned between May 2018 and May 2019, according to the Jerusalem Post, which notes that the Palestinian habit of setting fires has reached ISIS in Iraq.
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Turkey's Haber7 published on Sunday an article claiming that Algeria has issued a new 500 dinar coin that says "Jerusalem is Ours:"
It isn't true.
The rumor started over a year ago that Algeria would issue, for the first time, a 500 dinar coin (worth about $4.) This picture was an imagining of what one might look like by Algerian artist Abderezzak Bouhedda, who also proposed other designs as well.
When the rumor first appeared, Palestinian activists were thrilled, saying how much they appreciate Algeria. This is a story in itself, because it indicates that Palestinians - who have turned the image of the Dome of the Rock into their national symbol - are quite happy when other Arabs describe the site as theirs as well. In other words, Palestinians don't seem to care if Jerusalem is considered Palestinian or pan-Arab or pan-Muslim, as long as it isn't even slightly Jewish.
Which in fact has been the position of Muslims since shortly after Mohammed.
(h/t Yoel)
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Shavuot begins Saturday night and I will not be blogging from Friday afternoon until Tuesday morning.
Have a great yom tov!
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According to a recent report by the New York Police Department, the city has seen an 82-percent increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes—which make up more than half of all hate crimes— since last year, despite a reduction in violent crime overall. Most of the violent incidents are attacks on Orthodox Jews by African-American men. But in a press conference this week, New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio emphasized that, regarding attacks on Jews, “the violent threat, the threat that is ideological, is very much from the right.” John Podhoretz comments:
No rational person would argue that Jew-hatred has not been and does not continue to be a feature of the extreme right. It is, as the lone monsters who staged the assaults on Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue and the Chabad House in Poway, California made clear in their Internet postings. But no person other than a fool . . . would simply erase left-wing anti-Semitism and Muslim anti-Semitism and act as if they didn’t and don’t exist.
The Soviet Union was an institutionally anti-Semitic regime, as were most of its satellites and puppets before the fall of the Berlin Wall. . . . The earliest and most dedicated Palestinian nationalists, who vowed to throw the Jewish people into the sea, were not Islamists but secular radicals like Yasir Arafat and George Habash, a Marxist-Leninist whose particular specialty was hijacking planes. The 2015 anti-Semitic attacks in Paris, to which de Blasio bizarrely alluded, weren’t staged by right-wing Europeans following in the footsteps of the Nazis. They were attacks by Muslims who had aligned themselves with the Islamic State. . . .
[I]n New York City, there have been 110 anti-Semitic hate crimes this year out of 164 such crimes in total. Not a one of them, so far as I can tell, was committed by a man in a MAGA hat.
De Blasio spoke commendably at the same press conference about how the present hatred of Jews makes the existence of the Jewish state a matter of vital importance. But to speak as though the progressivism he claims to represent has nothing for which it needs to account when it comes to the rise of anti-Semitic acts is, quite simply, an act of shameful ideological whitewashing.
In it’s statement, YouTube said that it was banning Holocaust denial. Yet a simple search for ‘H-o-l-o-h-o-a-x’, the most basic way to find such material, still returns material. Here is David Irving, ‘debunking the Holocaust in 3 minutes‘. Elsewhere, you can learn about how ‘wonderful’ the treatment of the camp inmates was in this Holocaust denial video. The channel behind it has been freely peddling hate on the platform for four years.
Speeches by Jew-hating Holocaust denier Eustace Mullins are widely available, but if his American accent puts you off and you seek a more authentic Nazi accent, there is always Ernst Zundel. You can even watch him giving a ‘stark warning‘ to Jewish people. The channel that uploaded the Zundel video appears to have spreading anti-Jewish hate on YouTube for over six years.
There is little point linking to hundreds of such videos that I quickly found, and this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. Brother Nathaneal isn’t a hate-preacher? He is okay – but I am not? And Rothschild Conspiracy? The very pillars of Rothschild Conspiracy rewrite history in order to place the blame for WW1 & WW2 at the feet of the Jewish people. What is that, if not an attempt to cleanse the Nazis, turning the Germans into innocent people that the evil Jews provoked. There are 1000s if not 10000s of such videos on the platform.
I went back to my 2018 Palestine Live report, which listed dozens of hard-core videos spreading hate, to see how many have been removed. Sadly, far too many of these videos are still live, years after they were originally uploaded.
Generally speaking, those trying to avoid capture, frequently change names and locations in order to continue doing whatever they are doing for as long as they can. That does not seem neccessary on YouTube. There are channels who have been openly peddling hate for a decade. YouTube may talk about fighting Holocaust denial and Jew-hatred but it still seems as if only antisemitism campaigners and historians really have to be concerned by the new crackdown.
Even worse, however, than the Labour party’s indifference towards or connivance with the Jewish-conspiracy ravings in its ranks is the attitude of the British public. For the by-election result shows that the stench of antisemitism is failing to repel the voters. Either they don’t care or, worse, they may actually be sympathetic – perhaps because they don’t like what they perceive as people ganging up on someone. That’s a very British thing.
And heaven help us, too many do view the antisemitism furore as the Jews ganging up on Jeremy Corbyn. How can they possibly believe that, you may ask, given the unambiguous hatred, fear and loathing of the Jews that party members are either directly expressing or, in their supposed myopia or absent-mindedness, appearing to endorse?
The answer is probably that, in addition to those who actually do believe this poison, there are many who don’t notice it to be poison. And that’s because too many don’t think antisemitism is unambiguously bad.
They know nothing about the Jewish people or their history, nothing about the unique characteristics and historic reach of anti-Jewish hatred, nothing about the moral sickness of any society that fails to stamp it out. They don’t understand why the Jews always seem be going on and on about it. Doesn’t this mean, they ask themselves, that they must be doing something bad to attract so much dislike?
To them, these antisemitic remarks are just background noise, no different from all the other insults and aggression and vile outbursts that have now come to define public debate and which they mainly just tune out. Many have never even met a Jew. So why should they care about them any more than anyone else?
Before yesterday, British Jews could hardly have been in any greater dismay about the toleration of Jew-bashing on the left. The Peterborough by-election will have increased it, however, still further.
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In 2014, a cafe owner in Saint-Nicolas (near Liège), Belgium put a sign on his window that said, in French, "We allow dogs to enter, but Zionist - NO WAY!" In Turkish, the sign said, "In this business, dogs are allowed, but Jews - NO WAY! "
The signs were an obvious nod to Nazi-style edicts, like this playground sign from Germany that said, "Playground, Reserved for children, Forbidden to Jews."
Things are really bad in Europe.
(h/t Irene)
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Let us consider some of those "other priorities...." Last week, Palestinian sources revealed that the ministers of the Palestinian Authority government have given themselves a $2,000 raise in their monthly salary... at a time when the Palestinian leadership is claiming that it is suffering from a financial crisis.
Hardly a day passes without another Palestinian reported killed in Syria. The latest victim died under torture in a Syrian prison last week. The victim's family has requested that his name not be published out of concern for their lives... His death brings to 606 the number of Palestinians who died under torture in Syrian prisons in the past eight years.
When was the last time a senior Palestinian official talked about the torture and arrest of Palestinians in an Arab country? They really don't have the time: they are too busy condemning Israel and the US administration to take note of the fact that thousands of their people are being killed, displaced and tortured in Arab countries.
Palestinian ministers take yet more money for themselves from the pockets of their own people. Hamas leaders are obsessed with gagging anyone who dares to call them out for their violent and despotic behavior.... This is the Palestinian leadership in action. When, one might ask, might we see some reaction on the part of the international community and media?
These results should become more pronounced after voters evaluate the outcome of the Conference to be co-hosted by President Trump and Bahrein in Manama on 25/26 June to be attended by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar – with Egypt, Jordan and Israel (represented by Netanyahu’s caretaker Government) and other regional Arab states expected to also attend.
The US State Department has confirmed the Conference will go ahead notwithstanding Israel’s snap elections in September.
Add to this the likely possibility that before the September elections:
- Trump could recognise Israel’s political claims to sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) as he did in the Golan Heights prior to the April elections
- There could be further terror attacks against Israel from Gaza and the West Bank followed by swift Netanyahu-directed responses
Trump has already pronounced his feelings on Israel’s September elections:
- “Bibi got elected. Now, all of a sudden, they’re going to have to go through the process again until September? That’s ridiculous.”
Netanyahu – based on the April 2019 election results and Trump’s anticipated pro-Israel decisions – is odds-on favourite to be Israel’s next Prime Minister.
(Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.
As Sumption has said: “It is the proper function of the courts to stop governments exceeding or abusing their legal powers. But allowing judges to circumvent parliamentary legislation or review policy decisions for which ministers are answerable to parliament confers vast discretionary power on a body of people who are not constitutionally accountable to anyone for what they do.”
This is essentially the problem that Shaked was attempting to tackle. Ever since the 1990s when Aharon Barak headed the Supreme Court, the Israeli courts have plunged more deeply into judicial activism than even their British counterparts.
Barak wanted to turn the court into the most powerful branch of government; and because his allies controlled the committee that appointed the judges and dominated the legal establishment, he did so, greatly expanding the definition of cases that could be brought to court by granting “standing” to anyone contesting pretty well anything the government had done. The legal bar of “unreasonable” actions was lowered to include any policy of which the judges disapproved.
When the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom was passed in 1992, Barak exaggerated its constitutional significance.
Israel doesn’t have a written constitution. Its basic laws state that Knesset legislation cannot contradict them. That does not give the courts the power to strike down such legislation. Yet that’s what the Israeli Supreme Court has been doing, striking down 18 such laws since 1992.
Another development has been particularly sinister.
IN 1993, Rabin was taken to court after he ignored advice by the attorney-general to fire two government members who had been indicted. The Supreme Court ruled that Rabin had to obey the attorney-general – even if he got the law wrong – because he interpreted the law on behalf of the government.
Since then, ministers have legal advisers who are subordinate to the attorney-general to make sure ministers don’t do anything the courts don’t like. If ministers are challenged in court, they will find themselves in the Orwellian predicament that their own legal advisers – their supposed champions – will in fact speak for the case against them.
To curb all these excesses, Shaked appointed “conservative” judges – i.e., those who actually adhere to the principles of justice and democracy. This has produced some startling developments.
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Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
