Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, July 03, 2019

07/03 Links Pt1: The Palestinian Authority Failed to Block the Bahrain Conference; PA salaries to terrorists rise by 11.8% in 2019 - amidst self-inflicted financial crisis

From Ian:

JCPA: The Palestinian Authority Failed to Block the Bahrain Conference

The PA was unable to pressure Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan to stay away from the Manama workshop and failed to organize an effective Arab-Islamic rejectionist camp against it.

Moreover, while the delegation of Palestinian businessmen headed by Sheik Ashraf Jabari of Hebron went to the Bahrain conference despite the rage of the Palestinian Authority, only one of them was briefly arrested and interrogated. Even though most of them live in the PA territory, the PA only made threats against them while taking no practical measure to prevent them from going – even though the PA said that doing so was “national treason.”

Senior Fatah officials claim that the PA chairman feared to clash with Arab states that sent representatives to Bahrain. The PA’s difficult financial crisis, precipitated by the cutoff of American aid and PA’s refusal to accept tax revenues from Israel, is having its effect. Abbas is pinning his hopes on the Arab League’s fulfilling its promise to provide him with an economic safety net for a few months that will enable him to recover and prevent the PA’s collapse.

The officials say Abbas is trying to stall for time to concentrate on a political effort against the Deal of the Century in November, after the Israeli elections and close to the date when the political part of the American peace plan will be published.

Until then, Abbas will mount a diplomatic campaign to organize an international conference that will include representatives of Russia, China, and the European Union, which oppose the Deal of the Century.

David Friedman: Lessons from the Golan

In the aftermath of President Trump’s momentous proclamation of March 21, 2019, many rose to applaud while words of criticism emanated from the usual corners. But as the noise dissipated and the sun rose the next day, two new realities were beyond dispute: America’s stature in the world had risen and the security of its ally Israel had been enhanced.

Now, I look back at some of the lessons learned:

1. Foreign policy must evolve with changed circumstances. Many who criticized the president’s decision noted that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, of blessed memory, negotiated with Syrian President Hafez Assad in 1994 to return portions of the Golan in exchange for peace and they urged that this failed process remain open.

But almost nothing about the circumstances that existed then are relevant today. In particular, the Syrian civil war, in which the Assad regime has murdered or displaced more than one million of its own people and became a client state of Iran, is a seminal event that cannot be ignored. By affirming Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, President Trump has sent a clear and moral message to the world that Syria has forfeited any legitimate claim to the Golan Heights.

2. Brains without courage make for a weak foreign policy. All presidents are smart. If they weren’t, they never would have attained their lofty positions. Past presidents all grasped the need for Israel to retain sovereignty over the Golan. But only President Trump had the courage to give practical effect to this undeniable truth. Courage matters.

3. Right makes might. Some have criticized the president’s decision as one of “might makes right” — a euphemism for the erroneous proposition that a nation as strong as the United States can pursue a policy devoid of any moral foundation. Here, exactly the opposite is true: The United States is stronger because it has acted justly.

The United States has sided with Israel, a nation that at great risk opened its border every night to provide emergency health care to Syria’s sick and wounded, and against the Syrian regime which has inflicted unspeakable trauma upon its own people.

PMW: PA salaries to terrorists rise by 11.8% in 2019 - amidst self-inflicted financial crisis

The Palestinian Authority has finally publicized its monthly financial expenditures for the first 5 months of 2019. They show that the PA has paid no less than 234,172,000 shekels (over $65 million), or, on average, 46,834,400 shekels/month in salaries to terrorist prisoners (including released prisoners) in spite of its self-imposed financial crisis.

Based on this monthly average, the PA expenditure on the “Pay-for-Slay” salaries to terrorist prisoners in 2019 should reach 562 million shekels, as compared to 502 million shekels in 2018. This amounts to 60 million shekels or a 11.8% rise in PA salaries to terrorist prisoners in 2019.

Since 2014, the PA Ministry of Finance had been publishing an annual anticipated budget in the first part of the year as well as monthly reports of actual expenditures in each budget category. Based on the monthly budgetary updates, Palestinian Media Watch exposed that the PA expenditure in 2018 on salaries to terrorist prisoners and released terrorist prisoners was no less than 502 million shekels.

Immediately after the Israeli cabinet implemented Israel’s Anti “Pay for Slay” Law and started deducting from the 2019 tax income the amount PMW had shown that the PA spent in 2018 on salaries to the terrorist prisoners, the PA decided to disregard its donor countries’ demand of full financial transparency and hid all its budgetary data. In place of the monthly budget expenditure updates, the website of the PA Ministry of Finance carried a notice saying "Due to the contingency law and legal dependencies with the Israeli side, the financial reports were temporarily suspended." This note appeared for almost three months.

I am actually stunned at this "video op-ed" from the New York Times attacking the idea that America is great.

The myth of America as the greatest nation on earth is at best outdated and at worst, wildly inaccurate. If you look at data, the U.S. is really just O.K. pic.twitter.com/pFrWBH0Zfl
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) July 2, 2019

The title indicates that the authors are practically in pain when confronted with people who believe America is great. "Please stop telling me America is great. It hurts my delicate sensitivities!"

The blurb for the video:

America is the greatest country on earth. It’s a phrase, a slogan, a dogma for patriots. And as we stare down the barrel of an upcoming election, we’re prepared to hear this refrain echo.

In the video Op-Ed above, we argue that the myth of America as the greatest nation on earth is at best outdated and at worst, wildly inaccurate. Comparing the United States of America on global indicators reveals we have fallen well behind Europe — and share more in common with “developing countries” than we’d like to admit.

There are two major problems with this video.

One is its tone. It does not look like a "video op-ed" from the New York Times; it looks like a Saturday Night Live skit. Its use of old movies and videos shows not a sober argument about America's real problems, but rather it is making fun of anyone who actually thinks that the USA is great. The objective of the video, including the narrator's voice, is to make anyone who disagrees with its premise into a buffoon. While the authors might believe that it violates their safe space when people call America great, they have no problem directly mocking those people.

This is not an op-ed at all: it is propaganda.

Perhaps this is to be expected from a newspaper that had an editorial yesterday that tried to spin the longest economic growth period in America's history as a bad thing.

However, the video is not primarily an analysis, despite its cherry picking of statistics. It is just snark. It is trolling anyone who loves this country.

The second problem with the video is that it tries to rank the USA's "greatness" according to specific metrics where the US doesn't lead, or is woefully behind.

No one is arguing that America is perfect or that it doesn't have problems. No one is arguing that the US doesn't lead the world in many key indicators. But saying that this is what "great" means is sophistry.

When one asks potential migrants from around the world what country they most want to move to, the US is by far the top choice.

Either they are all idiots for preferring the US to Sweden, as this video would have you believe they should because of literacy rates, or there is more to America than its problems.

This is the point. America represents something that most other nations do not: it is the Land of Opportunity. France isn't.

In America, despite its problems, people of any origin and any race and any socio-economic class can dream to reach the greatest heights. There will be obstacles, but in America those obstacles can be conquered - and there is a track record where those obstacles have been conquered by others.

The mindset from our Founding Fathers that anyone can do anything remains a part of the fabric of the nation. This is what makes America great. And this is exactly what the New York Times is actively trying to destroy.

Cynicism is the enemy of idealism. America is built on ideals; the people behind this video - and those who funded them, and who promote them, including the New York Times - are motivated to ridicule, demean and destroy those ideals.

This video is not meant to inspire Americans to do better, which we most certainly need to. It is meant to satirize those who believe in the American dream. It is meant to insult America itself.

Ironically, the US is the only country in the world that can create a New York Times that can make such an attack. And you are not seeing any significant numbers of Americans rushing to move to Europe where things are supposedly so much better.

There are reasons for this, and this video is meant to obscure those reasons.

I know that this is not my usual topic. However, the methodology used here (and elsewhere) to attack America follows the same playbook as those attacking Israel: Compare your target against a mythical perfection and then hammer at not reaching that goal, cherry pick statistics that suport your thesis and ignore any counterexamples, demean the good and highlight the bad as if that is representative - or, in Israel's case, fabricate the bad.

Both the US and Israel are built on the idea that ordinary people can do extraordinary things against the odds. This is what makes both countries great and it is the reason that there is such an affinity between the two nations. Weakening either weakens both and ultimately makes the world a much more dangerous place.

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From Times of Israel:

A senior Palestinian official Monday condemned the participation of US envoys in the unveiling of an archaeological site in East Jerusalem and scoffed at the “fake” account of Jewish history attributed to the subterranean road.

Saeb Erekat said he believed the tunnel was a project being used by Israeli right-wingers to further Israel’s claim on East Jerusalem and advance settlement growth there.

“It has nothing to do with religion, it is fake,” he told journalists at his office in Ramallah in the West Bank.

He cited reports by two Israeli NGOs questioning the archaeological methods used.

One of the organizations, Peace Now, also says cracks emerged in multiple houses in Silwan after the digging began.

Erekat said: “It’s a settlement project. It’s based on a lie that has nothing to do with history."

This is a person regarded as a "moderate." This is a person that was a lead negotiator for, ahem, "peace."

And this is a person who is actually more reasonable than most other Palestinian leaders!

"Questioning archaeological methods" does not mean that the road discovered that leads up to the Temple Mount is not real. It was clearly used by hundreds of thousands of Jewish pilgrims to visit the Second Temple. No archaeologist in the world denies this.

But Saeb Erekat does.

Which means that (yet again) Erekat is proven to be a liar. You literally cannot believe a word he says.

The Western media, unfortunately, doesn't hold him to the same standards that any Western politician would be held to when they are shown to be knowingly lying. On the contrary, they are eager to interview him. The Forward published an op-ed from this liar just this week (claiming that the US supports "Greater Israel" based on the Bahrain workshop that didn't talk about politics or borders at all.)

A number of years ago, Erekat issued a quote referring to Israel's prime minister, with a saying I never heard and couldn't find anywhere else. Perhaps it is an Arabic saying, but it is clearly Saeb Erakat's personal motto:

“There’s a saying that if you don’t stop a man who is lying after 24 hours, the lies turn into facts."

Who can stop Erekat's lies? Only the media and politicians, but they refuse to. He has been proven a liar too many times to count - claiming a "massacre" in Jenin*, claiming that Israel killed nearly 12,000 civilians in Gaza in 2014, claiming his family was in "Palestine" for 9000 years, on and on.

That's how his lies become facts.

______________
*Electronic Intifada published a letter in the Economist in 2002 claiming that Erekat never used the word "massacre" in describing Jenin. Yet the Irish Times quoted him directly:

"How many civilians must be killed to speak of a massacre?" asked Mr Erakat. "The Israeli massacre in Jenin's refugee camp clearly happened and this is a war crime and crimes against humanity also took place".
Mr Erakat had accused Israel during the battle of killing up to 500 people in Jenin, a figure the UN report dismissed, saying 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers died in the fighting.
"The UN should have used the word "massacre" or "war crime", especially because the Jenin's camp is managed by the UN," Erakat said.

He also used that word on CNN.

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Ethiopian Jews refer to themselves as "Beta Israel" and consider the term "Falasha" to be derogatory.

"Falasha" means stranger, exile, wanderer or landless person. Wikipedia notes: "The derogatory term Falasha, meaning 'landless, wanderers', was given to the community by the Emperor Yeshaq I in the 15th century, and is to be avoided as extremely offensive. "

It was already known to be offensive in 1988 as mentioned in this Washington Post article. The BBC noted its offensiveness twenty years ago.

Yet Encyclopedia Britannica still has an entry for "Falasha." It doesn't even note that this is an offensive term. Its online entry was edited earlier this year, so they don't have the excuse of, say, the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906.

Perhaps worse, the Britannica students site also has an entry for "Falasha," teaching children that this is an acceptable term.

This is racism enshrined in the most prestigious encyclopedia in the world.

(Palestinian Arab websites routinely use the word "Falasha" transliterated to Arabic, and the current violent demonstrations in Israel by the Beta Israel are being followed closely as the Arab media. The Palestinians are anxious to call Israeli society racist, without noticing that their very terminology is racist. But no one expects Arabs to hold by Western standards of not referring to people by names they find offensive. The question as to why Arabs are held to lower standards than Westerners, and why people would be more upset at Britannica than Palestinian Arab media for using the offensive term, is a topic for another day.)

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07/02 Links Pt2: Dublin's Anti-Israel Boycott Bill; The Roots of the Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace Lobby; UK-based 'Muslim Scholars' Demand 'Fascist' Israel Returned to Arabs

From Ian:

Dublin's Anti-Israel Boycott Bill: Bad for Ireland, Worse for the Palestinians, Terrible for Everyone

The chief government figure opposing the bill is Foreign Minister Simon Coveney. Coveney argues that Ireland risks its standing in the European Union because the bill is legally unsound. He is correct. A Brussels-based EU trade official warned the Irish government that "the bill would be in contravention of EU competence on trade matters," as the EU Commercial Treaty demands uniformity in member-state trade policies.

Irish politicians who passed it would likely be regarded as racist, particularly in view of the German Parliament's recent resolution to designate BDS (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel) as anti-Semitic.
In addition, there could be "potentially huge losses of US tax benefits for US companies with subsidiaries in Ireland, if the Bill is passed into law. This could potentially lead to major US companies pulling out of Ireland, and for other companies who were considering relocating, to not do so."

The bill may also may well hurt Ireland's effort to secure a position on the UN Security Council (UNSC) in the 2020-2021 vote by regional member-states in the General Assembly. Canada and Norway are competing with Ireland for the two seats allotted to the UNSC's West Europe/North America region.

[The] legislation... will harm the interests of Palestinians -- an estimated 30,000 of whom are employed by Israeli businesses in the West Bank... The Ireland Israel Alliance also accuses the bill's supporters of hypocrisy, and cites their failure to condemn analogous situations in which Irish firms invest in international companies that do business in other occupied territories around the world.

Germany: Some Hate Speech 'More Equal than Others'

Although the "military arm" of Hezbollah is prohibited in the EU, the "political arm" is not, which means that in Germany, Hezbollah is free to engage in "non-military" activities -- such as fundraising.

On the one hand, the federal police conduct countrywide raids on middle-aged Germans who post their thoughts on Facebook, while on the other, members of openly lethal terrorist organizations who espouse nothing but hatred towards a specific ethnic group, the Jews, are not only allowed to march in the heart of the German capital... but are free to organize and fundraise for their purpose.

That participants in the anti-Semitic Al Quds march have been allowed to flaunt their hatred for nearly four decades now, while middle-aged Germans are having their apartments searched for anti-Semitic and racist messages on Facebook, exposes a disturbing double standard in the application of the law.

At the very least, it shows that German authorities appear to harbor extremely selective views of what constitutes hate speech, based, it seems, on nothing more than the identity of the group that voices it.

BDS Spreads Through Community Organizations and K-12

In all these cases — as with the ongoing crackdown by YouTube and Facebook on “extremism” — institutions are shaping the information environment in pervasive and tendentious ways. In the process, Jewish history is redefined as an infinitely elastic metaphor while inevitable protests and corrections are regarded as parochial Jewish efforts to “claim” history. Conversely, any critical treatment of Middle Eastern history or Islam is “Islamophobic.” The specific effect is to cast Israel as the universal villain and Palestinians as the universal victim.

The extent to which BDS has helped normalize antisemitism was demonstrated at Cambridge University, where statements by former Indonesian Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir, including about Jews’ resentment over being accused of having “hook shaped” noses, and “Can you imagine the Israelis taking over Cambridge and calling it Israel? How would you like that?” were met with polite laughter. Similarly, at an Intelligence Squared debate in London, the resolution that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism passed by a substantial margin, much to the satisfaction of an Islamist who participated.

Ironically, progressive vilification of Israel and its supporters, especially Jews, is expanding at the same time that neo-Nazis in the US and Europe are explicitly expressing support for BDS. A recent study showed that neo-Nazis in the US are increasing active in online forums dedicated to BDS and regularly share all manner of antisemitic materials without reproach.

Similarly, neo-Nazis in Germany have begun using the phrase “Israel is our misfortune,” a sentiment that converges with the German Green Party’s explicit support for BDS. The crossover between the two streams was seen recently when a founder of the Green Party spoke at a neo-Nazi event. This comes as the German Parliament voted to condemn the BDS movement as antisemitic. To date, however, progressives have not rejected or repudiated neo-Nazi support for BDS.

Underlying this convergence are longstanding if understated alliances between extremist figures such as David Duke and Louis Farrakhan. While logically consistent (at least partially) from the neo-Nazi perspective, progressive tolerance for the convergence is more difficult to explain. One historical parallel from the 1960s, when elements of the German far-left converged with neo-Nazis over shared antipathy toward Israel and Jews, hints that a similar process may be underway today globally. Whether this will be self-marginalizing remains unknown but the corrosive impact on mainstream political discourse and social attitudes is already apparent.

Farah News Online, an Australian Arab news site, published an absurdly antisemitic article by .Mouaffaq Alsibai. It is hard for Google to translate well, but here are some highlights:

The Children of Israel seek to corrupt the world, by spreading oppression and evil and all categories of vice, with the intention of destroying the human race.

They want to destroy religious and moral values, and break up social and family ties, and destroy relations between people, using food, drink and sex.

They encourage new trends, and pressure people to buy new products like phones and cars which distract them.

Thus, the children of Israel - the demons of humanity - control humanity .. Utilizing the weaknesses created in our bodies .. And mentioned by Allah.

The author seems to be Syrian and he has a blog that is filled with hatred for Jews. A number of Arab media sites besides this one consider his opinions to be worth spreading.

(h/t WC)

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Who wants to erase history? 1960 Jordanian tourist map of Jerusalem erases all Jewish sites

In late 2017, Jordan's King Abdullah said, "Attempts to Judaize Jerusalem and to change its identity will bring additional violence and extremism."

Jordanians and Palestinian leaders regularly accuse Israel of attempting to erase Christian and Muslim history in Jerusalem, saying they will "defend" the holy sites of both religions from Israeli attempts to, presumably, destroy or erase them.

As is so often the case with Arab accusations against Israel, this is projection of what they have done and would do, not what Israel does.

Here is a Jordanian tourist map from 1960 of the Old City of Jerusalem.

The Kotel (Western Wall) - erased.
The Temple Mount is replaced with "Haram Esh Sharif" even though Christian tourists would be interested in the Mount.
The Jewish Quarter - erased. Along with its street names.

We have a track record of how Arabs act when they control Jerusalem and other ancient Jewish towns. And they are guilty of everything they falsely accuse Israel of doing.

Every single time.

(h/t Irene)

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07/02 Links Pt1: PA leaders implicitly threaten more terror against Israel; Caroline Glick: The Palestinian Authority Hated the Bahrain Conference Because It Was About Helping Palestinians

From Ian:

PMW: “There are thousands” of willing murderers - PA leaders implicitly threaten more terror against Israel

During the recent US-led Bahrain Conference, which the Palestinian Authority decided to boycott despite its stated purpose to discuss means of bringing financial prosperity to the PA, many PA and Fatah leaders spoke out against it.

Speaking at a rally protesting the workshop, PA Chairman Abbas’ deputy in Fatah, Mahmoud Al-Aloul, implicitly threatened Israel and the US that there might be more terror attacks and willing murderers on the way. Referring to a terrorist who murdered 2 Israelis just a few months ago - Omar Abu Laila - Al-Aloul addressed the US and Israel, stating that “your tyranny won’t pass” and that “there are thousands of Omar Abu Lailas who don’t agree to the tyranny”:

Fatah Deputy Chairman Mahmoud Al-Aloul: "We can’t in any way allow the implementation of your plans to eliminate the Palestinian cause. Never! Not your Deal of the Century and not the workshop in Manama [Bahrain]... This is Palestine - it is not for sale and not for purchase. The person has not been created who will relinquish Jerusalem...
Our message today to the US and this Israeli occupation: Your tyranny won’t pass like this. Don’t you understand? Have you not learned what the motives of Omar Abu Laila were? And there are thousands of Omar Abu Lailas who don’t agree to the tyranny and don't agree to the disrespect."
[Official Fatah Facebook page, June 26, 2019]

Fatah official threatens more terror against Israel

Abbas' deputy threatens: "There are thousands" of willing murderers, responding to US-led workshop

The EU Bias That Feeds the PA’s ‘Pay for Slay’ Policy

The EU again in June donated 15 million euros to the Palestinian Authority (PA). As Palestinian Media Watch has exposed, this is the second such donation.

The announcement of the donation exposes both the EU’s open bias against Israel, and its immoral support of the PA’s “Pay for Slay” policy.

Referring to the donation, Deputy EU Representative Tomas Niklasson explained, “We understand the financial crisis that the Palestinians are experiencing. … The EU has been in contact with both sides and … expressed our clear expectations that the governmental economic and financial agreements between the Israeli and Palestinian sides must continue to be fully implemented, including the Israeli obligations according to the Paris Protocol.”

When Niklasson says that the EU understands “the financial crisis that the Palestinians are experiencing,” he, in the name of the EU, is ignoring the fact that the PA “financial crisis” is actually self-imposed, because the PA is refusing to accept nearly 165 million euros a month that Israel has been transferring to the PA. This refusal is a direct result of the PA decision to prioritize paying salaries to terrorists at the expense of its law-abiding employees and the health of the Palestinians, including a seven-year-old undergoing cancer treatment in Israel.

Furthermore, it is shameful that Niklasson focuses solely on the implementation of the “Israeli obligations,” but ignores the fact that the PA is breaching its express commitments in the agreements that form the basis for the economic agreements.

Caroline Glick: The Palestinian Authority Hated the Bahrain Conference Because It Was About Helping Palestinians

PLO chief and PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas made it clear that this is his position when he deliberately forced the U.S. to defund the Palestinian Authority budget. Abbas forced the U.S.’s hand last year when he refused to end the PA’s allocation of 7 percent of its budget to convicted terrorists imprisoned in Israeli jails and to the families of dead terrorists. All Abbas needed to do to prevent defunding of the PA budget was end his regime’s subsidization of terrorism. And he refused.

So too, when Israel passed a law similar to America’s Taylor Force Act, which bars the U.S. from funding the PA so long as it pays salaries to incarcerated terrorists and to the families of dead terrorists, Abbas decided to refuse Israeli financial transfers to the PA. To deal with the funding gap, Abbas cut salaries of regular PA employees by 50 percent and raised the payments to terrorists.

In other words, Abbas chose to immiserate his own people to ensure the continued incentivization of terrorism against Israel.

For its part, Hamas, which destroyed Gaza’s economy, offers the residents of its terror state in Gaza no option other than to serve Hamas’s terror war machine against Israel. Like Hamas, by rejecting U.S. and Israeli funding in order to keep up his payments to terrorists and their families, Abbas denied the Palestinian residents of his West Bank fiefdom an alternative to supporting Israel’s annihilation through terrorism.

Another purpose that perpetuating Palestinian economic suffering serves is securing political support for the Palestinian campaign against Israel. Palestinian economic privation induces the United Nations, the European Union, and the international Left to maintain and expand their hostility to Israel, which is blamed for their plight.

UN and EU anti-Israel resolutions, BDS campaigns, and UN and European financial transfers to Abbas’s coffers will continue to flow only so long as the Palestinians living under the PA’s jackboot continue to suffer and Israel continues to be blamed.

If the Trump plan is implemented, and Palestinian suffering ends, the A-listers in the media, on college campuses, and on the diplomatic circuit also stand to lose.

In short, the Palestinian leadership doesn’t hate Trump and his team because they are trying to hurt the Palestinians. The Palestinian leadership hate Trump and his team because they are trying to help the Palestinians.

The annual State Department report on international religious freedom was released last month. It has a large section on Israel that concentrates on the Orthodox/non-Orthodox split in Israeli society and on Jews against proselytizing by Christians. It also highlighted reports by NGOs accusing Israel of selectively only excavating Jewish archaeological sites, but noted Israel's denial of that.

Here is what is had to say about Palestinian antisemitism, in an appendix on the report on Israel:

On April 30, [Mahmoud] Abbas spoke at a meeting of the Palestinian National Council, stating the massacres of Jews, including during the Holocaust, were related to their “social behavior, [charging] interest, and financial matters,” and not their religion. He issued a statement on May 4 apologizing to those offended by his remarks...

Religiously intolerant and anti-Semitic material continued to appear in official PA media. On October 5, the official Palestinian TV aired a speech by PA Islamic Law Judge Muhannad Abu Roomi describing Jews as “fabricators of history” who “dance and live on the body parts and blood of others.” In another instance, a guest on a Palestinian TV program on April 10 stated that the Holocaust was a lie, and that many Jews “colluded with Hitler to create a gateway to bring settlers to Palestine.” On December 14, Osama al-Tibi delivered a Friday sermon at the Taqwa mosque in al-Tira, near Ramallah, broadcast on Palestine TV. In his sermon, al-Tibi said he was not able to mention all of the Jews’ despicable traits, and that “Allah … turned them into apes and pigs.”

There continued to be anti-Semitic and militaristic and adversarial content directed against Israel in Palestinian textbooks as well as the absence of references to Judaism alongside Christianity and Islam when discussing religion, according to Palestinian Media Watch and the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education. The two NGOs also reported that PA schoolbooks for the 2017-2018 school year contained material glorifying terror and promoting violence. In September media reported a European Parliament committee voted to freeze more than $17 million in aid to the PA over incitement against Israel in its textbooks.

...Palestinians at times violently protested when Jewish groups visited holy sites in the West Bank, particularly Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus. Palestinians threw stones and Molotov cocktails and clashed with IDF escorts during visits of Jewish groups to Joseph’s Tomb (located in Area A) on several days during the year. The IDF used tear gas, rubber bullets, and live fire to disperse Palestinian protesters, secure the site, and/or evacuate Jewish worshippers.

...In an article published by the independent Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, former Hamas official Mustafa al-Lidawi invoked the blood libel to describe how Jews prepared pastries for the Purim holiday.

This is only a small section of the entire report.

(h/t Irene)

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Jews silently praying on Temple Mount is "desecration," playing soccer isn't

Palestine Live tweeted a brief video of Jews praying on the Temple Mount:

A group of Israeli Jewish settlers desecrated today the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied #Jerusalem to perform Talmudic rituals inside its courtyards pic.twitter.com/nQCIxxnCYG
— Palestine Live (@pallive_en) July 1, 2019

I responded:

If Jews quietly praying on their holiest site is a desecration of the site's sanctity, but Arabs playing football or parkour isn't, then perhaps you have a warped idea of what the word "sanctity" means, @pallive_en. https://t.co/UwCbgRUci9
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) July 1, 2019

I also tweeted some pictures of Muslim respect for their holy spot:

I turned the parkour photos into a snarky animated GIF as well:

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From NPR:

Lebanon hosts more than 1 million Syrian refugees and only allows them to build shelters made of canvas and wood. But the laws have not been clearly stated. The government doesn't permit the establishment of formal refugee camps. So instead, many refugees live in informal settlements, in makeshift homes, some of which have grown over time into more durable homes with breeze-block walls.

A military decree issued in April now requires the refugees to demolish any concrete walls over 1 meter — about 3 feet — high. The military has given the refugees until July 1 to comply, or else authorities will come in and knock down the structures themselves.

But the fear among refugees is that if they leave it to the military to enforce the demolitions, the entire camp, along with their belongings, will be razed. And so they're going about the grim task of destroying the homes they have built.

"Why would I keep my belongings and my children in the house and let the house be knocked down on top of my kids and things?" Jumaa says.

Most of the Syrians have no alternative place for shelter, and it's unclear where thousands of them will go after their homes are destroyed.

The sudden ruling has left aid agencies scrambling to procure tents for those who will be left without homes. According to Save the Children, this military decree has affected more than 5,000 Syrian families, and as many as 15,000 Syrian children now face homelessness.

HRW notes that many Lebanese municipalities have been evicting Syrian refugees from their homes as well in an effort to pressure them to return to Syria, where they may face death.

Surely you have seen the screaming headlines about Syrian refugee homes in danger of demolition, right? CodePink and IfNotNow have been making public protests, right? The media has been all over this story, no?

(h/t JWD)

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07/01 Links Pt2: BDS ‘Anti-Normalization’ Is a Mockery of Progressive Values; ‘Nobel Prize in stupidity’: Holocaust survivor wants AOC out of Congress

From Ian:

BDS ‘Anti-Normalization’ Is a Mockery of Progressive Values

Anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) promoters have long tried to stake out the moral high ground — depicting themselves as the champions of the oppressed, and positioning their movement as being on the right side of history.

But the reality is that BDS rarely acknowledges, or works to prevent, harm to Palestinians that is meted out by their own governments and societal extremists.

What’s even worse is that BDS leaders often egg on and incite these depredations with an anti-normalization campaign characterized by coercion and strong-arm tactics against peace activists and co-existence groups — along with just about any Palestinian who dares to cross the BDS picket line to cooperate with or even just talk to Israelis.

This strategy of anti-normalization, long a mainstay of the BDS movement, originated at the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa — an antisemitic hate fest where Jew-hatred became so ugly that the US delegation walked out. Ever since, BDS has opposed any contact between Palestinians and Israelis that fosters dialogue, so as not to “normalize” Israel’s existence.

Basically, BDS calls for the boycott of all Israeli-Palestinian projects and programs that don’t sufficiently emphasize Israel’s alleged brutality and wrongdoings. In fact, the only people-to-people engagements that PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) condones are those that support “resistance.” All others are rejected as undermining Palestinian rights and the national struggle.

Investigation: Anti-Israel groups plan disruption of Christians United for Israel Annual Summit

On July 7-9, 2019, the largest pro-Israel organization in the United States, Christians United For Israel (CUFI), will hold its annual Summit in Washington, D.C. Thousands of CUFI attendees will gather inside the Walter E. Washington Convention Center to hear from speakers such as Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

In this post we will describe the preparations by leading anti-Israel groups to protest outside the venue, and cause a disruption inside the venue, as laid out at a planning meeting recently held in Maryland.

Table of Contents
1. Why Target CUFI?
2. Disturbance Inside The Venue Planned
3. Sunday, July 7 – Training and Panel, featuring Linda Sarsour
4. Monday, July 8 – Training and Protest
5. Groups Behind the Anti-CUFI Protest
A. Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA)
B. Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)
C. American Muslims for Palestine (AMP)
D. U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR)
6. Conclusion – A Who’s Who of Israel Haters Desperate for Attention

1. Why Target CUFI?
CUFI, which now counts over 5 million members, has been a major force driving American Christian grassroots activism and support for Israel for more than 10 years

For anti-Israel groups, CUFI has become a white whale of sorts; with its ever-burgeoning membership and its popularity among America’s sizable Evangelical community, CUFI is a problem for those who seek to turn American Christians away from Israel.

This explains why a handful of the most aggressive anti-Israel groups, including (the inappropriately named) Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), have been planning a joint protest of CUFI’s upcoming convention. [See discussion of each group later in this post.] They’re calling it, “Rise Against Racism: Counter CUFI!”

It this were just a protest outside the venue, it would not be unusual. Almost every major pro-Israel conference attracts fringe Israeli-haters like Code Pink and various Hezbollah supporters. (h/t MtTB)

Progressive Jewish group IfNotNow expands forces for 2020

Other activists have already had success influencing the 2020 news cycle by confronting candidates on the campaign trail and asking them candid questions: Former Vice President Joe Biden was caught on camera telling an ACLU volunteer he supported repealing the Hyde Amendment. His campaign later said he actually backed the ban on using federal dollars for abortion services, only to reverse his position again after being rebuked by abortion rights groups.

“The Democratic base is quite far politically in their views on the issue from where the Democratic establishment is,” said Mayer, who named Biden and Sen. Cory Booker as presidential candidates who are particularly out of sync with liberal voters.

IfNotNow believes that the time is ripe to put Israel at the center of the primary debate: Only 26 percent of Democrats view the government of Israel favorably, according to a 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center.

Until now, IfNotNow has focused on trying to change the way Jewish people and institutions, such as Jewish summer camps, discuss the issue of Israel. The group’s move into electoral politics has earned them praise from the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress.

“It is about time we realize the status quo is not working to bring peace to the region,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). “IfNotNow is one of the organizations that gives me hope that we are making progress towards a just and lasting peace.”

IfNotNow trying to make the occupation a major Democratic issue

On Saturday, IfNotNow members posed for a photo with candidate Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire, holding a “Jews Against the Occupation” sign.

IfNotNow said in its announcement of the new endeavor that it founded the new arm in order to “expose the occupation as a moral crisis within the American Jewish community, end the weaponization of anti-Semitism in the political debate over Israel, and create political space for leaders who will stand up for the freedom and dignity for all Israelis and Palestinians.”

The group has raised its profile over the last year by protesting Birthright in a variety of ways, including walking off of its free 10-day trips to Israel.

*Photoshoped

Sheikh Khalid al-Jundi, a member of the Egyptian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, said on TV last night that the Muslim Brotherhood exploited religion as a means of controlling the government, the minds of the Egyptians and even the lungs and breath of the Egyptians.

You can see where this is going. After all, who has such powers?

"The Brotherhood is a Zionist industry," al-Jundi proclaimed. "[The year that they ruled] was a year of sadness, and we were thinking of emigrating whether we are Muslims or Christians."

I guess the Jews all left Egypt because they perfected remotely controlling the Muslim Brotherhood.

(h/t WC)

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While I have occasionally critiqued specific people and policies connected to a political party or wing of the political spectrum, I’ve made it a point to try to illuminate what’s behind the Left-Right divide on Israel, rather than contribute to it.

With that as backdrop, the following critique of someone running for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States should not be seen as an endorsement of anyone else in that race, nor support (or condemnation) of those who don’t have a (D) after their name.

But the rise and (likely) fall of US Senator Cory Booker should be a cautionary tale for those who think they can betray their principles, then “pivot” back to integrity after the damage has been done.

Booker has been on my radar ever since I attended my first AIPAC event where the young and rising political star gave what was possibly the most powerful and inspiring speech on Israel I ever heard. His talk drew from his experience interacting with the Chabad community while he was a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford, notably how his relationship with their Rabbi Shmuley Boteach helped him appreciate both Judaism and the centrality of Israeli to Jewish life.

Since then I’ve kept track of Booker’s rise of the cursus honorum, hoping for the opportunity to vote for the man I saw all those years ago for President. Unfortunately, now that the chance to do so has arrived, the person I was so impressed with is no longer there.

I suspect that the turning point for Booker came when he had the opportunity to vote against President Obama’s Iran deal, a vote that might have eventually earned him a Profiles in Courage award, but which would have cost him support of a popular president and the enmity of the most powerful people in his party at a time when a presidential run was clearly in his future. Sadly, Booker took the expedient route and voted for something he probably knew was not right. Even more sadly, in justifying that vote, had had to justify moving away from all he said – and I suspect believed – as a younger, wiser man.

Given the dynamics of the current presidential race, where dozens of candidates have to go to extreme measures to stand out from the crowd, Booker seems to be playing the game of saying the right things to the Jewish community, while acting against Israel’s interests (by, among other things, voting against federal anti-BDS legislation) and justifying those choices with stale talking points I can’t believe he really buys.

Booker’s path has cost him the support (although not the friendship) of his old friend Boteach, and his current two-step regarding whether or not he will meet with Louis Farrakhan simply illustrates more of the same triangulation calculated to signal to Left wing primary votes that he is one of them, while trying not to alienate the Jewish community so much that he loses their long-term support.

Unfortunately for him, all of this calculated pandering does not seem to have budged him in the polls. Part of this is the sheer difficulty breaking through all of the noise, especially with the most aggressive members of the Democratic pack out-Lefting him at every turn. But I also suspect that primary voters with little involvement or even interest in Jewish or Middle East issues recognize inauthenticity when they see it.

The sad thing is that even Booker’s switch to a “balanced” position between Israel and her would-be destroyers has not earned him substantial or lasting support from Israel haters who are only too ready to not just abandon but punish anyone who deviates even an angstrom degree from their ever-changing list of demands.

Demands for fealty by the BDS crowd stands in sharp contrast to large swaths of the Jewish community not ready to abandon Booker even when he acts against their interests. Perhaps this longing for friendship (especially by a rising African American political star) represents weakness on our part, although it could also represent hope that the man who spoke so eloquently at AIPAC way back then is the real Cory Booker, who is just playing the cards he’s been dealt in a strange political era.

Maybe they are right and in five years we’ll be watching Cory Booker accept the nomination of his party for a second term in office. But I suspect that what we are really watching is a man sacrificing both his soul and his dreams by walking away from what he believes in order to achieve what he wants.

If Cory ends up an also-ran, with nothing to show for all he’s sacrificed, that should serve as a lesson not for just him, but all of us. In ways large and small, we are asked to (and often make) compromises to get through life, but our integrity – that which makes us truly us – is something that must never be put up for auction. Living an inauthentic life has a high cost, which Booker is currently paying. But his sacrifice might have value if it teaches the rest of us not to make the same mistake.

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07/01 Links Pt1: Kushner’s Peace Proposal Would End the Palestinian Refugee Problem; Abbas’ advisor repeats PA antisemitic narrative; Mossad head: Nuclear archive operation exposed 'big Iranian lie'

From Ian:

PMW: Abbas’ advisor repeats PA antisemitic narrative

According to this narrative, Jews were unwanted in Europe - an European plot created a homeland for them in Palestine.

According to the Palestinian Authority’s historical revision, Jews have no connection to the Land of Israel. The reason there are any Jews in “Palestine” is because of a European plot to get rid of the unwanted Jews. This antisemitic part of the Palestinian narrative was repeated last week by PA Chairman Abbas’ advisor on Foreign Relations, Nabil Shaath, at a symposium in Iraq:

“Shaath presented the plotting role that the US has played throughout history in order to erase the Palestinian identity and right, beginning with the Balfour [Declaration] that would not have been issued without American support, and the European plot to settle the Jews who were unwanted in Europe in order to get rid of them, so that they created a homeland for them that would absorb them in Palestine.” [Al-Ayyam, June 26, 2019]

Palestinian Media Watch has exposed the antisemitic element of the PA narrative numerous times. Another of Abbas’ advisors, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, for example, has stated that Europe supported Zionism to get rid of the Jews:

Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Abbas' Advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs: "After World War II ended, the colonialist states wanted to get rid of the presence of the Jews of Europe, who had a monopoly over the economy and capital. Therefore, they supported these claims and helped them establish their state on the land of Palestine at the expense of the Palestinian people, who are still suffering from this crime."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 24, 2018]

Jared Kushner’s Peace Proposal Would End the Palestinian Refugee Problem

The U.S. “Peace to Prosperity” plan, unveiled at the Bahrain conference last week, calls for putting $50 billion toward improving the economic situation of the Palestinians; of this, over half is to be disbursed in Gaza and the West Bank, while the remainder would be divided among Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt—to be spent on descendants of Palestinian refugees living in the first two countries, and Gazans resettled in the last. From this part of the plan, Raphael Bouchnik-Chen sees an attempt to integrate these Palestinians into the countries where they live, and end their anomalous status as permanent “refugees”:

The Trump administration is pursuing the goal of changing the Palestinian experience from that of a society of miserable “refugees” into that of a prosperous society. . . . Kushner’s concept has a historical precedent. On June 15, 1959, the UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold presented a resettlement initiative. Hammarskjold assumed there were means available for the absorption of the refugees into the economy of the Arab region, and asserted that the refugees would be beneficial to their host countries by providing the manpower necessary to those countries’ development. He proposed that the program be financed by oil revenues and international funds up to $2 billion.

In 1959, [the Arab League] claimed that acceptance of the UN secretary general’s plan, with no guarantees, would have been tantamount to giving up [Palestinians’] economic and political rights. The Arabs accused Hammarskjold of exceeding his legal limits, and faulted him for ignoring the fact that the economic issues were the result of the political conflict. Addressing the economic question also separated the refugee problem from the conflict as a whole, which, so it was argued, was one of nationhood.

Why a U.S.-Israel Alliance is a Terrible Idea

Beyond the political imperatives on both sides, the decisive question regarding a US-Israel defense treaty can be cast in terms of cost-benefit analysis. The various costs have been outlined above. As to the benefits, a formal alliance would not necessarily add to the key components vital to Israel's national security.

US military assistance, which indeed provides the IDF with key components of its build-up and maintenance, clearly constitutes an element in Israel's deterrence equation. But this rests upon the existing long-term (ten year) commitments of the Administration and upon annual congressional allocations – not upon any treaty. The weight and size of the assistance package is a function of US determination to help an ally, and not predicated upon the existence of a formal treaty document. Nor would such a document change hostile perceptions of Israel's immense base of support in the US as it is today.

A US-Israel defense treaty would also pose some diplomatic difficulties. A degree of formal distance between Jerusalem and Washington is useful in Israel's diplomatic interactions with many of the Third World countries that are suspicious of a superpower. In addition, under a defense treaty, Israel will be even less free to compete with the US military industries than it is today. As a formal ally, Jerusalem would be less likely to conduct effective diplomacy with Moscow, let alone host a tripartite US-Russia-Israel summit of national security advisors.

Thus, a defense treaty between Israel and the US would reflect noble sentiment; but beyond the statement of friendship, it is neither desirable nor practical. The treaty may be a lofty idea, but one that works well only if it remains theoretical.