Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, June 13, 2019

Cartoon of the Day: We love Jews, but with strings attached

This cartoon is dedicated to the DC Dyke March that planned to ban Jewish symbols before giving in.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

"Palestinian Animal League" weaponizes kindness to animals to incite hatred of Israel - and blames Israel for Palestinian homophobia!

I reported on Tuesday about an academic paper that accused Israel of "veganwashing," meaning that Israel is so obsessed with its "occupation" that it will embrace liberal causes like LGBTQ rights or veganism in order to distract people from thinking about Palestinians.

This is psychological projection. Palestinians want the world to only think about "occupation," so much so that they will hang everything they do on publicizing that.

Enter the Palestinian Animal League. Its ostensible purpose is to promote animal rights in the territories, with programs to try to stop Palestinians from abusing donkeys (which are often beaten) and helping take care of stray dogs (which they suggest could be deliberately released by Israel.)

In reality, the PAL is just another cog in the machine of anti-Israel incitement.

PAL provides English-language tours for Western animal lovers called "Vegan Tours in Palestine." Here is their entire description of the goals of these tours:

– Meet Palestinians and get the chance to learn about initiatives of resistance to the Israeli occupation and the colonization of the land;
– Learn about the solidarity movement with the Palestinian people;
– Discover the natural beauty of this land, the culture and the delicious Palestinian cuisine, which is very vegan-friendly.
– Support the local economy that suffers immensely from the occupation.
– Share what we you see and experience here with your own communities, and explain the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination where the voices of Palestinians cannot be heard.
– Get an insight on vegan-washing, i.e. the use of the animal rights movement in Israel to improve Israel’s image and to distract attention from the Israeli violations of both human rights and animal rights.

Not one goal about raising awareness on animal rights issues in the territories. The entire purpose is political, to get international vegans to hate Israel.

This goal is not only seen from the "Vegan Tours." The director of PAL, Ahlam Tarayra, spoke at the animal rights EACAS Conference 2019 which took place at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona earlier this year.

She didn't talk about the work PAL does or the challenges they have in changing Palestinian attitudes towards animals. She instead spoke about how Israel is responsible for Palestinian bigotry and intolerance!

Ahlam discussed how PAL is working to improve the physical and cultural environment for animals in Palestine. She also discussed how PAL has been observing the impact of historical British colonialism and the Israeli occupation upon animals in Palestine. PAL has been “digging back to the roots” to discover where the roots of various forms of oppression – such as speciesism, homophobia, and patriarchy – began in Palestine.

In an article she wrote for This Week in Palestine, she explains her theory:

Coming out as a homosexual is almost impossible in Palestine...it is important to underline how the Ottoman rule and the prolonged Israeli occupation have hugely contributed to remarkably emphasizing various forms of oppression that permeate a cycle of violence, which is a fundamental obstacle in Palestine’s efforts to develop into a broad-minded society that acknowledges that all oppressive institutions (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, classism, and speciesism) are interconnected and cannot be examined separately.

Palestinian intolerance for every major liberal cause is not the result of their own culture, according to this theory - but because of Israel.

Apparently, Israel controls Palestinian TV, Internet, school curricula, newspapers, magazines, conferences and topics of conversation in the street.

I suppose that the same intolerance in other Arab societies are somehow Israel's fault as well, but the intersectional theorists like Tarayra haven't yet figured out exactly how.

What is clear is that Palestinians are never responsible for their own shortcomings - it is always Israel's fault.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

This REAL Palestinian alphabet poster in Arabic includes "bomb," "bullet," "pistol," "child fighter"

In the light of the recent controversy over the "P is for Palestine" book for kids, here is a real Palestinian alphabet poster - in Arabic - designed in 1985.

Here are some of the specifics that Palestinian leaders wanted to teach their kids:

“Mim” (M) is for Musaddas = pistol

“Qaf” (Q) – is for Qunbula = bomb

“Ra” (R) is for Rassasa = bullet

“Sin” (S) is for Sayf = sword

“Shin” (Sh) is for Shibl = lion cub, but in the vernacular always means child fighter

“Fa” (f) is for fidai (pl. fedayeen) - guerrilla fighter

The designer was Mohieddin Ellabbad, an Egyptian graphic artist who was hired by Dar El Fatah El Arabi, a publishing house for children that was an arm of the PLO's cultural program Dar El Fatah. The entire point of Dar El Fatah was to ensure that Palestinian children grow up with the same revolutionary ideals of the PLO.

Ellabbad's boss was Nabil Shaath, currently the spokesperson for Mahmoud Abbas.

Violence is in Palestinian DNA.

(h/t Irene, Ibn Boutros)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

A Hamas-related “military unit” called “Sons of al-Zawari” has been responsible for launching countless incendiary and explosive kites and balloons across the border into Israel for more than a year. Recently they even threatened to fill the condoms they use for balloons (apparently they are made of strong latex, so they are less likely to break prematurely) with a payload of some kind of poisonous or carcinogenic material.

Mohammed al-Zawari, in case you are interested, was a Tunisian engineer who developed drones for Hamas; he was assassinated in 2016, probably by the Mossad.

Although it is not so newsworthy outside of Israel, Arabs from Gaza continue to start fires and try to kill people in southern Israel with these devices. Israel responds in various ways, like reducing the size of the area in the Mediterranean in which Gazans are allowed to fish (really). They have also “attacked” the groups launching the devices with drones – but news reports never say that any of their members are killed, so I presume they fire low-yield weapons near, but not directly at, the terrorists.

The “disturbances” at the border fence wax and wane, but they never stop. Every once in a while someone is shot trying to harm Israeli soldiers on the other side, or planting explosives to create a breach in the fence that would allow a large number of terrorists to cross over and attack local civilians. Israel is building a massive barrier, both above and below the ground, to protect local communities against attacks via tunnels dug under the fence, and from shooting – in a recent case, a man was killed when his car was hit by an anti-tank rocket fired from Gaza. This barrier will cost billions, but will not stop the balloons or kites, nor will it prevent rocket attacks as we experienced this May. Recently, Israeli officials said that Hamas has already replenished its stock of rockets after the recent violence.

In a sense, Hamas is already engaged in chemical and biological warfare against Israel. The border demonstrations often involve burning tires, with the smoke darkening the skies over Israeli communities, some of which are only a few hundred meters from the fence. Even more seriously, for years, raw sewage from Gaza has been dumped in the sea and into streams that flow in southern Israel. Garbage is dumped and burned near the border. The Hamas government has received much assistance from international donors to solve its pollution problems, including the World Bank financing a large treatment plant in northern Gaza, which, due to a lack of electricity and other problems, never became operational.

Of course the population of Gaza suffers far more than that of Israel from the air and water pollution. But Hamas has always allocated available resources primarily to its war effort, following the First Principle of Palestinism,™ which is that it’s always preferable to hurt Jews than to help Arabs (although, to be fair, they have built luxurious residences for their leaders).

The Israeli government has come up with various reasons (perhaps ‘excuses’ is better) for why the mighty Jewish state can’t stop the torture of the residents of the southern part of the country: Israel does not want to occupy and become responsible for Gaza; there is a more serious threat from Hezbollah and Iran in the North; among the balloon launchers and fence busters are “children;” and, an attempt to overthrow Hamas would result in numerous civilian casualties in Gaza – something that the “international community” would not permit.

The “solution” from our “hardline, right-wing” government – just ask the NY Times how “hardline” it is – is to find technological answers to all the threats: we’ll shoot down the rockets with Iron Dome or similar systems, we’ll finish the expensive over- and underground barrier, and we’ll put out the fires started by the incendiary balloons before they get too big. Then, when the Gazans understand that we won’t allow them to hurt us, someone (preferably not us) will provide the cash to solve their economic and ecological problems, and we can live peacefully side by side.

This is a recipe for failure, and it is already failing. With every Iron Dome launch costing the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars, and with Hamas and Islamic Jihad improving both the number of rockets they can fire in a short period of time and their accuracy, the task of intercepting them all becomes more challenging and more expensive. During the last exchanges of fire in May, several rockets did get through and resulted in a number of deaths. The trend is against us: it is easier and cheaper for them to improve their offensive systems than for us to strengthen our defensive ones.

Although various high-tech solutions to the low-tech balloons have been proposed, they are still setting damaging fires on a daily basis. While attempts to bribe the Hamas regime have from time to time reduced the number of balloons launched or the number of demonstrators at the fence, extortion has a way of becoming more expensive and less effective as time goes by. And we have no solution to the ecological crisis that Hamas is creating for its own population and for our common neighborhood as long as Hamas remains in power.

One goal of Hamas is to cause Israeli residents of the area to abandon it. So far, because of economic incentives to live there, the high cost of housing in other places, and apparently a strong feeling of community, this has not happened. But don’t kid yourself – if there is a successful penetration of the border in which there are significant casualties among Israelis, or if there are extended periods during which people must stay in shelters, there may be a point at which many of them ask themselves whether the disadvantages of living there don’t outweigh the advantages.

What we are doing is a combination of holding the line and kicking the can down the road, to violently mix metaphors. These are by definition temporary solutions. What is a permanent solution?

We could win a war with Gaza, and probably suffer relatively few casualties of our own, as long as we actually apply the “principle of proportionality” in the Law of War as it is intended. If the enemy is using otherwise protected targets like mosques, hospitals, schools, and civilian structures for military purposes, then we are permitted to attack as long as the collateral damage is proportional to the military advantage of doing so. In other words, if Hamas has located its main command and control center in the basement of a hospital in Gaza City, then we can bomb it, if doing so is an important enough military objective – which it certainly would be. We are permitted to fight against child soldiers, and human shields that are injured or killed are the responsibility of Hamas.

Part of winning such a war would include targeted killings of the upper echelons of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leadership. They are war criminals, responsible for the deaths of numerous Israelis, and they maintain a dictatorial and oppressive regime over their own population. They are our deadly enemies and even if their military capabilities were destroyed, would manage an insurgency against us. Killing them would send a message to their successors that they are personally responsible for events.

At this point, the hard part begins. We have eliminated the regime – who will be the new regime? Probably the civilian infrastructure will have collapsed. It is already collapsing economically and ecologically, public health is a disaster, and drug abuse is rampant. The educational system is a training camp for jihadists.

Should we dump it in the lap of the UN? If they agreed, they would be ineffective at best. At worst, they would invite operatives from hostile countries who would establish a beachhead. I am sure Erdoğan would love to help!

I think there is only one acceptable long-term solution: to depopulate Gaza. That is, to provide an exit for most of the Gazan population to emigrate to various parts of the world, including but not limited to Arab countries, Europe, Australia, and North and South America. Emigration would be financed by the UN with funds normally provided to Gaza by UNRWA. If cooperation of host nations could be arranged, this would probably cost less in the long run than continuing the international support for Gaza as at present. There would probably have to be a temporary Israeli administration set up to assure security during the process. At some point, Israel would officially annex the territory, and the remaining population – who would be vetted to ensure that they didn’t present a risk of terrorism – would be offered Israeli citizenship in a way similar to what was done in Jerusalem.

It’s doubtful that there would be many votes for this idea in the UN, if it were put to a vote. But there are probably two groups of people that would love it: Israelis, especially those that live in the southern part of the country – and Gazans.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

06/12 Links Pt2: How Hollywood idol Audrey Hepburn helped save Dutch Jews during the Holocaust; White Liberals Are Turning against the Jews and Israel

From Ian:

How Hollywood idol Audrey Hepburn helped save Dutch Jews during the Holocaust

Audrey Hepburn starred in a constellation of memorable roles, from Manhattan socialite Holly Golightly in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” to Cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady.” The 1953 classic “Roman Holiday” — in which she portrayed Princess Ann, a royal exploring the Eternal City with Gregory Peck — earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress. And Hepburn is among the select few to win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award.

Yet her most important role is perhaps her least-known. It’s the story of a Dutch aristocrat, raised by parents with controversial political allegiances, who aided her country’s resistance to the Nazis while enduring tragedy and starvation — and, despite it all, becoming a prima ballerina en route to Hollywood stardom. It’s her real-life coming-of-age story, told in a new book, “Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II,” by Robert Matzen.

“Dutch Girl” is based on Matzen’s visits to the Netherlands, where he accessed hard-to-get information in archives, and interviewed people with wartime memories of Hepburn, gaining a new understanding of the star’s own statements about her wartime past. Hepburn’s son Luca Dotti wrote the foreword, and shared previously-unseen photographs, documents and mementos.

A veteran Hollywood chronicler, Matzen learned about Hepburn’s war years while researching his previous book, a biography of Jimmy Stewart, who had been a WWII fighter pilot before becoming the all-American star of such films as “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Some of Stewart’s men had been shot down over the Netherlands, and when Matzen visited the city of Arnhem, he learned Hepburn had lived there during the war. That sparked his next project, one that would bring to light Hepburn’s war experiences, which he called in an interview with The Times of Israel, “a side of Audrey that nobody knows.”

Holocaust Museum digitizing letters from Anne Frank's father

Ryan Cooper was a 20-something Californian unsure of his place in the world when he struck up a pen pal correspondence in the 1970s with Otto Frank, the father of the young Holocaust victim Anne Frank.

Through dozens of letters and several face-to-face meetings, the two forged a friendship that lasted until Frank died in 1980 at the age of 91.

Now 73 years old, Cooper, an antiques dealer and artist in Massachusetts, has donated a trove of letters and mementos he received from Frank to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington just before the 90th anniversary Wednesday of Anne Frank’s birth on June 12, 1929.

He wants the letters to be shared so that people can have a deeper understanding of the man who introduced the world to Anne Frank, whose famous World War II diary is considered one of the most important works of the 20th century.

“He was a lot like Anne in that he was an optimist,” Cooper said of Otto Frank at his house on Cape Cod recently. “He always believed the world would be right in the end, and he based that hope on the young people.”

White Liberals Are Turning against the Jews and Israel

Over the past five to ten years, writes Zach Goldberg, a new group of liberals has emerged—mostly white, mostly born after 1980, and greatly shaped by social media and Internet reporting—that has altered attitudes on the left. Recently dubbed “the Great Awokening”—after the use of the vernacular “woke” to mean awakened to injustice—the resulting changes in liberal opinion bode ill for Jews and the Jewish state:

[These] seismic attitudinal shifts . . . have implications that go beyond race: they are also tied to a significant decrease in support for Israel and—perhaps more surprisingly—an increase in the number of white liberals who express negative attitudes about the perceived political power of American Jews. . . . Then there is the marked shift in attitudes toward Israel. Between 1978 and 2014, white liberals consistently reported sympathizing more with Israel than with the Palestinians. Since March 2016, this trend has turned on its face: significantly more white liberals now report greater sympathy for the Palestinians than for Israel.

The surveys show that among white liberals, Jews are perceived to be “privileged”—at least in comparison with other historically victimized groups. . . . Jews are no longer the downtrodden collective that white liberals can readily sympathize with. Other groups lower on the privilege hierarchy and less tainted by association with “whiteness” now have priority. So long as anti-Semitism comes from whites, there is no problem here. But if the [anti-Semite is] a member of an “oppressed” or “vulnerable” group, there may be a cognitive dissonance.

To see how this logic extends to Israel consider that the same . . . outrage over the bigoted persecution of the vulnerable by the “privileged” that informs the changing policy positions on domestic issues is applied to the international arena. [In the “woke” view of things], a “white-supremacist” America holds people of color down and keeps the door shut for others, while a “Zionist-supremacist” Israel behaves in much the same way toward its minorities of color. It’s a narrow and warped perspective but one that’s easily assimilated into a broader worldview in which human relations are defined by categories of oppressor vs. oppressed; and where these roles are assigned based on one’s placement in the privilege hierarchy. . . .

As Jews have become [symbols] of “whiteness” in the liberal political imagination—to the point that Israel is considered a white state despite having a slight nonwhite majority—they have come to be associated with an oppressor class. We shouldn’t be surprised then that white liberals are significantly more likely to feel that Jewish groups have too much influence and less likely to say the same with respect to their Muslim counterparts.

Benay Blend has written a kvetchy little piece on the antisemitic Mondoweiss about how her Arab friend Rima Najjar got banned from Quora. Blend would have us believe that Najjar’s voice is being silenced because of her “national origin.” She suggests there is a concerted effort to still voices such as Najjar’s citing a piece I wrote some years back called “Quora: The New Battlefront for Israel.”

The piece appears on the Israel Forever Foundation website, the brainchild of Dr. Elana Yael Heideman. I met Dr. Heideman at a bloggers meet-up about 5 years ago. She was getting ready to launch her website and was looking for content that showed a love of Israel. Elana didn’t care if I were right or left-wing, Haredi or Reform. All she cared about was whether I had something true and nice to say about Israel.

Elana Heideman’s belief was that Jews were too concerned with what divided us and needed to focus more on what we shared. She wanted us to get back to that basic connection that we have as a people, and she believed the key to that connection was Israel. A love for Israel was something we shared, no matter our different backgrounds.

I liked the concept and so, from time to time, I’d write something up for her website. These pieces were always written from the standpoint of unapologetic love for Israel. Because that is the entire thrust of the Israel Forever Foundation, and a writer always tailors the writing to the venue.

Blend, on the other hand, would have you believe that the Israel Forever Foundation and those of us who volunteer our time and content there, are a sort of militia, aimed at robbing others of their right to free speech. Of Najjar’s banishment from Quora, Blend writes:

She handled herself with grace and strength, always clear in her convictions, but that was not enough to counter the concerted effort of groups like the Israel Forever Foundation, which runs pieces such as Varda Epstein’s in which she describes how she “fight[s] back” against pro-Palestinian voices on social media, including Quora. Using military terms, she vows to “obliterate” any anti-Israel bias that she finds. “Because this is war, Habibi,” she declares, thereby announcing a war of words that she will win by default if there are no Palestinian voices left on Quora.

This, of course, is a distortion of the truth, or an outright lie. It is certainly lacking in context. From the perspective of the Israel Forever Foundation and from my own perspective, Najjar is free to say whatever she likes. She is even free to lie, because the Israel Forever Foundation isn’t concerned with freedom of speech issues or in silencing dissent.

I asked Elana Heideman to sum up the purpose of the Israel Forever Foundation: why she does what she does. She wrote:

Israel Forever was created to bridge the gap in knowledge, understanding, and engagement with Israel as a vital and vibrant element of Jewish life and identity. With the growing hate rhetoric, lies and demonization of Israel and Jews, our content and resources are our contribution to educators, parents, youth or community leaders, or anyone wanting to strengthen their connection or activism opportunities. Whether in social media or in person, we all must do all we can to equip and empower people to know and protect Jewish history, rights and freedom - in Israel and everywhere in the world - today, tomorrow and FOREVER.

I don’t see anything in there about silencing voices or silencing dissent. The purpose of the Israel Forever Foundation, rather, is to offer a resource to strengthen Jewish identity. It’s to encourage people to take an active stand against the lies we see from people like Blend by coming back at them with the truth.

The Israel Forever Foundation is not meant to silence or divide. It is meant to draw the Jewish people closer together. It’s certainly not about silencing “pro-Palestinian voices.”

As for me, I don’t fight against voices. I fight against lies, with words.

It would not occur to me to “obliterate” a voice, and I wouldn’t even know how.

I would, on the other hand, do everything in my power to obliterate anti-Israel bias, whenever and wherever it is encountered, such as the bias we see in Blend’s Mondoweiss piece. An example of such bias is her reference to my use of “military terms.”

Here were the “military terms” I used:

I want to answer that [anti-Israel Quora question] in such a way that my Israel-loving bias will obliterate the anti-Israel bias expressed in that question. Because this is war, Habibi.

And true love will always win out.

Najjar is getting ready to sue Quora. Her lawyer says that the ban imposed on her by Quora is “based solely on ‘her advocacy for Palestinian rights through her opposition to Zionism’ and for ‘unlawfully deny[ing] her access to a place of public accommodation on the basis of Dr. Najjar’s national origin.’”

But nowhere in Blend’s piece does she offer any proof that Najjar’s ban is based on discrimination. Instead, Blend says that being Jewish, she, Blend, would say exactly what Najjar wanted to say, but when she said it, Quora often, though not always, let it through. It was only when Najjar said the same things that the content was removed and the ban imposed.

My answers were not targeted near as often as her writing. This would seem to support the contention that her ban was a case of censorship partly due to her national origin. Her content, which countered the Zionist “narrative” so long imposed on the struggle for justice in Palestine, was a problem for those busily disseminating hasbara content. Being philosophically and politically in agreement, she and I collaborated in answering questions. More often than not, Dr. Najjar edited my writing so that the ideas stood out more clearly. And yet, I was never a target of attacks that she received.

If Blend and Najjar have spent as much time on Quora as Blend suggests, then they know that this is not how Quora works. Any user can report a response or comment, adding a detailed complaint. Eventually a Quora moderator looks at the report and decides whether or not the material should be hidden, removed, or left alone.

Some Quorans do use the report feature to target those with whom they disagree. But that targeting works both ways: many of my responses and comments have been targeted in exactly this manner. Sometimes I win on appeal. Sometimes I don’t. A lot of my content has been hidden or removed.

It’s not just one side, not just Najjar, and not just me, either. One of my sons ended up with a lifetime ban just like Najjar’s for his Israel advocacy.

Because that’s how it works: if enough of your responses and comments are troublesome—meaning if enough users complain about you—Quora will ban you for life.

This is clearly what happened with Najjar.

Now when I don’t win, I move on. I say, “Those are the breaks.” It has never occurred to me to sue Quora, though, from time to time, I have suspected an individual moderator of anti-Israel bias.

In my case, I am often certain that a Quoran with an anti-Israel bias is using the report mechanism to silence my voice. But when it happens, I don’t then get up on a soapbox and accuse people of employing “military terms” to obliterate pro-Israel voices. I just buck up and keep on keeping on.

Najjar and her Jewish spokesperson, from my perspective, seem to be drowning in litigious self-pity or perhaps just plain old sour grapes. It can be rough out there on Quora. I don’t always like the rules. For instance, I try not to use the word “Palestinian,” because I don’t believe there is a distinct people known by this term. If I instead use the word “Arab,” someone will report me. The same is true of Facebook.

This isn’t fair, of course. But it’s how Quora and Facebook want it. If you want to play, you have to obey.

Najjar, in short, was not banned because of some inherent bias against her “national origins.” She was banned because she used language that offended people and violated Quora policies. Had she not done so and not been banned for life, Najjar might have discovered, as I have, that there is always a workaround: a way to tailor language to satisfy Quora specifications.

With a bit more creativity, Najjar might yet have been free to speak her mind on Quora. But since she was not more creative, and offended people, she is not free to speak her mind on Quora. And perhaps Najjar ought to take responsibility for that, instead of hiring lawyers and having her Jewish friend complain about me and the Israel Forever Foundation—who have nothing whatsoever to do with Najjar’s apparent lack of control—on Mondoweiss.

UPDATE: Before this piece was even published, another article appeared by Blend, this time in the Palestine Chronicle, making the same accusations, and using my Israel Forever Foundation article as an example of the "concerted campaign of harassment and censorship by Zionists and Israelis” that is targeting Najjar "for her content." Here she goes into even more detail, and winds up by suggesting that this "campaign" is at the behest of the Israeli government.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

06/12 Links Pt1: Five years after kidnapping, murder of 3 Israeli teens, what's changed?; Trump Recognizes Israeli Claims in West Bank and East Jerusalem; FIFA to probe Rajoub for glorifying terror, inciting violence

From Ian:

Five years after kidnapping, murder of 3 Israeli teens, what's changed?

So what’s changed since 2014?

On the Gaza front, the IDF says it has destroyed 15 tunnels since October 2017, both crossing into Israel from inside the Strip. It has also completed some 27 of 65 km. of the underground barrier designed to block tunnels from crossing into Israeli territory from Gaza. The underground barrier, which will also stretch into the Mediterranean to stave off Hamas infiltration by sea, will be complemented by a six-meter-high smart fence.

Israel says it has removed Hamas’ strategic underground surprise.

Great. But while Hamas can no longer surprise Israel from below, terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip have increased their missile arsenal in both quality and quantity.

In the last round of violence, close to 700 rockets were fired into southern Israel, killing four civilians.

Thousands of Palestinians also demonstrate on a weekly basis along the security fence, and the first IDF soldier killed since Operation Protective Edge occurred during one such violent riot.

That’s Gaza. What about the West Bank? Well, it’s not much better.

Since October 2015, Palestinian youth have stabbed, run over and shot IDF soldiers and civilians – including some tourists – in a wave of violence in the West Bank and Israel. While the violence has since decreased since its peak in the winter of 2016, when there were attacks almost daily, 16 Israelis were killed in 2018-2019.

Those attacks are just the tip of the iceberg of stabbings, shootings and car rammings prevented by security forces.

Recently, the IDF unveiled plans to improve the level of intelligence gathering and sharing in the West Bank in an attempt to stay one step ahead of deadly terrorist attacks, like the one which claimed the lives of the three boys in 2014.

The system – an increase in surveillance cameras and other sensors in key West Bank locations – includes advanced computer analytics and visual intelligence that are all connected to an operations room.

The military hopes the system will assist in identifying imminent threats, foiling attacks in real time and carrying out manhunts for terrorists fleeing following an attack.

On this day 5 years ago, Palestinian terrorists kidnapped 3 Israeli teenagers: Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer & Eyal Yifrah.

The nation of Israel united with intense emotion during the 18-day search, until their dead bodies were found.

Naftali's mother Rachel gave this UN speech. pic.twitter.com/jOL3UMu8HJ
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 12, 2019

David Singer: Trump Recognizes Israeli Claims in West Bank and East Jerusalem

Friedman postulated:
“The absolute last thing the world needs is a failed Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan,”

He could have also added that:
- Jordan is a Palestinian Arab state that has occupied 78% of the land comprised in the Mandate for Palestine since 1922
- Redrawing the international boundary between Jordan and Israel in direct negotiations between those two states as successor States to the Mandate could see parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem incorporated within each of these two existing states thereby eliminating any danger a failed third state would pose to their security and existence.

Interestingly – Friedman indicated that Trump’s long-awaited “deal of the century” might not even be released if Trump believed it would do more harm than good.

Friedman reportedly said the United States would coordinate closely with Jordan – which could face unrest among its large Palestinian population over a plan perceived as overly favourable to Israel.

“We don’t want to make things worse. Our goal is not to show how smart we are at the expense of people’s safety.”

Trump has seemingly anointed Jordan to replace the rejectionist Palestine Liberation Organization as Israel’s negotiating partner on the future of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

It now appears that Trump’s proposals will not see the light of day unless Trump receives an unqualified assurance from Jordan that it is willing to negotiate with Israel before the plan’s details are released.

Recognising Israel has claims in the West Bank and East Jerusalem sends a clear signal to Jordan and the rest of the Arab World that time is not on their side. The opportunity to yet again miss another opportunity to make peace looms large.

Trump has targeted the West Bank and East Jerusalem – as he already has in West Jerusalem and the Golan Heights – with amazing prescience.

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.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Everyone got it wrong: David Friedman did not say Israel has the right to annex land

The headline in The New York Times shows how badly that newspaper is biased:

"U.S. Ambassador Says Israel Has Right to Annex Parts of West Bank"

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.

Alan Dershowitz notes that Friedman is correct:

Friedman is correct and his critics are wrong.

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.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

How big a deal is the Moldova opening up an embassy in Jerusalem?

From JTA:

Moldova will move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, the government of the small Eastern European country said Tuesday.

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.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

06/11 Links Pt2: Little evidence George Galloway's Gaza charity delivered any humanitarian aid; 'Pinkwashing': A failed attempt to demonize the Jewish State; Pompeo vows to protect Jews in UK against Jeremy Corbyn

From Ian:

'Little evidence' George Galloway's Gaza charity delivered any humanitarian aid, regulator finds

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.

Hebrew U. prof. emeritus calls to boycott Physics Olympiad in Israel

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.”

David Collier: Zina the hounded- the hatred that never wants to talk

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 what is apparently an editing error, a few paragraphs about Jews were tacked on to an article in Jordan's Al Ghad about the #MeToo movement in the West.

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)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Academic journal accuses Israel of 'vegan-washing"

In the latest Journal of Intercultural Studies, there is an article by Esther Alloun called "Veganwashing Israel’s Dirty Laundry? Animal Politics and Nationalism in Palestine-Israel."

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.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

06/11 Links Pt1: Mossad tipped off UK on Hezbollah bomb plot in London in 2015; U.S. Ambassador to Israel: Israel has right to annex part of West Bank

From Ian:

Mossad tipped off UK on Hezbollah bomb plot in London in 2015 – report

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.

UK’s Hezbollah revelations part of worrying trend of Iran appeasement

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.”

We should have been told about the Hezbollah bomb-making factory

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.