Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 05, 2019

Jordan's antisemitism (and insecurity in its own history) on full display

As I reported Thursday, Jordan has closed the Shrine of Aaron the Prophet because a group of Jews prayed there.

Jordanian media is filled with paranoia about the incident, and the rumors and lies are off the charts. Moreover, Jordan has strengthened its antisemitic policies of not allowing Jews to enter the Kingdom with any religious objects - including kippot and tzitzit:

In an interview with Ynet, tour guide Roni Ayalon, who was with the group of tourists, described being subjected to humiliating treatment by Jordanian authorities.

“They just stripped down all of us,” he said. “They took off the women’s head scarves. All the boys’ yarmulkes were taken off. They took off everyone’s shirts to see if they had tzitzit (religious fringes) under their clothes and took [the tzitzit] off them. They confiscated any religious symbols they found on us.”

“If there was this kind of humiliation of an Arab on our side who wanted to enter Jerusalem and they would dare to tell him to take off his shirt or confiscate his Koran, there would be a world war,” Ayalon said. “All the Arabs would jump up. But they can do whatever they want to us.”

Jordanian media is flooded with photos of Jews at the site with wearing the tallit and tefillin and with a Torah - something that is literally impossible nowadays. The photos were taken in 2013 before the antisemitic rules went into effect when a group of Jews made a bar mitzvah celebration at the site.

There has been a perfect storm of events to highlight how the old fashioned Jordanian patriarchy, antisemitism and inferiority complex have been feeling under attack - and all centered in the archaeological site of Petra.

It started with a Netflix series, Jinn, about rich Amman high-schoolers who investigate the supernatural death of a classmate in Petra. That series was attacked for its depiction of teens kissing, as well as talking about sex and smoking pot. Jordanian ministers complained about the film and there were calls to censorship that failed. Jordanians said that the series was an attack on their "honor."

Then came the trumped-up accusations against another Netflix movie that was being produced in Jordan, named Jaber, which highlights what even the Quran admits - that Jews came from Egypt through today's Jordan before crossing the Jordan river. Pressure forced the director to abandon filming.

Part of the reason is that Jordan is convinced that Israel wants to take over their country. Old and absurd accusations of Jews going to Petra to plant old fake Jewish artifacts are being reported as fact again in Jordanian media. JBC News writes, "Jews believe that this place belongs to them, as they claimed to be the builders of the pyramids, after they failed to find any historical trace of the presence of their forefathers in Palestine, which led them to fabricate certain places."

There are now debates in Jordan's parliament about allowing the "normalization" of Jews visiting the kingdom.

Former tourism minister Maha Khatib is going on TV about how she found Jews trying to bury objects in order to claim Petra as a Jewish site, and how she heroically stopped them. It is taken as a given that Jews are attempting to take over Jordan.

Interestingly, Petra is in a southern area of Jordan that no one has ever thought of as being part of historic Eretz Yisrael - it was part of Edom. Much of the northern part was part of the Land of Israel in Biblical times, but for some reason I have not seen Jordanians worried about Israel claiming those lands. Their fears are always around Petra, because of the Biblical significance of it being a potential burial place of Aaron.

If Jordanians were secure in its own borders and history, they would laugh at any supposed Jewish attempts to take over. But they are so insecure that they see conspiracies at every turn of Jews taking over their land. It shows how little they believe their own narratives of an Arab people that pre-date the Jews in the region.

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There is a telling detail in Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades website where it brags about the 2014 Gaza war.

The Brigades of the Martyr Izz el-Deen al-Qassam, the military wing of the Hamas movement, , is celebrating the victory against the Zionist enemy during the [2014 Gaza war], and the enemy soldiers are still talking about the courage of fighters in the fierce battles on the threshold of Gaza, and of the fear chasing usurpers because of the rockets.

I doubt that any Israeli soldiers are talking about what fantastic fighters Hamas had.

But Hamas needs to believe that this is true.

When you live in an honor/shame society, the worst thing that can happen is to be publicly shamed. But the second-worst thing is to be irrelevant.

Hamas wants to be respected by Israel. It loves its rockets because Israel cannot ignore them. It causes Israelis to run to shelters, and Gaza terror groups love publishing pictures of Israelis running to shelter.

It makes them feel less irrelevant. Important, even. They have managed to make an impact in Israelis' lives!

Hamas' videos make their soldiers look as menacing as possible, because they want to be feared. The IDF doesn't fear them, and this drives them crazy. They threaten "new weapons" in order to get any sort of reaction from Israel. Every few weeks they'll issue a new threat to see if Israeli newspapers report on them.

In so many ways, Hamas acts like a spoiled kid who will do anything to get attention.

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Which Jewish voices are being silenced on Israel?

The reprehensible cartoonist Eli Valley, who loves to draw grotesque Zionists to look uglier than Nazis, was miffed at a recent Forward piece that he believed "tokenized" his tiny cohort of very vocal haters of Israel and Zionism:

Gut Shabbos to all my fellow "tokens," fuck you to the vile creeps dedicated to erasing Jewish voices. pic.twitter.com/X2nU7vNUvd
— Eli Valley (@elivalley) August 2, 2019

I'm always amused when people who manage to get an outsized amount of media coverage compared to their numbers complain that they are somehow being silenced or tokenized.

They dominate the Forward's entire site; they dominate the NYT's editorial and news sections, JTA gives them plenty of coverage.

But pointing out that they are only a tiny minority among Jews makes them very, very upset.

As I was thinking about this, I calculated that nearly 4% of all Jews alive today are "settlers." Not supporters of Israeli settlers, but actual people who chose to risk their lives in order to live in their ancestral homelands, knowing that the entire world is against them and regard them as illegal squatters and thieves.

This means that there are probably roughly as many Jewish "settlers" as Jewish anti-Zionists.

Now, how many headlines in the Forward or NYT treat them as normal human beings, as people whose opinion on Israel matters? The Times will have a token op-ed every once in a while by a "settler," mostly to make them look extreme and absurd. But in reality, do NYT or AP or Reuters reports ever treat them as regular people whose opinions matter?

Almost never. They are treated as outliers, as not representative of anyone - even though if you add their numbers to their supporters, there are far more people supporting Jews living in Judea and Samaria than Jews who oppose Zionism altogether.

Who gets more press, and who gets silenced?

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08/04 Links: Secret documents may help prove that the UK is paying terrorists with taxpayer cash; Propaganda for Gaza in The Sunday Times; Michael Lumish: Jews are from Judea

From Ian:

Secret documents may help prove that the UK is paying terrorists with taxpayer cash as government loses legal battle to keep files under wraps

The Government has lost a legal battle to keep back secret documents which may support claims that terrorists have been paid using British taxpayers’ cash.

UK foreign aid money is said to have funded ‘salaries’ to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails for terrorist acts.

The payments of between £400 and £2,000 a month came from the Palestinian Authority (PA), which controls the West Bank and has received hundreds of millions in British foreign aid.

Recipients reportedly include master bombmaker Abdullah Barghouti, who was jailed after attacks that left 67 dead. It is claimed that he has been given more than £100,000 by PA.

Campaigners including UK Lawyers For Israel (UKLFI) have long accused the Government of failing to come clean over the alleged misuse of cash, claiming that Ministers have potentially misled Parliament by saying that salaries for terrorists were simply welfare payments.

For the past year, campaigners going through the Information Commissioner’s Office have demanded that the Department For International Development release an audit of where UK aid given to the PA has gone. DFID told the ICO that releasing the audit would harm relations between the UK and PA.

But now the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham has ruled that there is a ‘significant public interest’ in the disclosure of the information. Between 2008 and 2015, Britain paid the Palestinian Authority £430.5 million. More than eight per cent of money from the PA Central Treasury was used to pay terrorists’ salaries, according to documents obtained in 2012 by Israeli NGO Palestinian Media Watch.

'Our children are buried while the terrorists celebrate'

Bereaved families are protesting this morning, Sunday, in front of Ofer Prison, regarding the conditions of terrorists' incarceration.

The families of the “Bochrim Bachayim” (“Choosing Life”) forum of the Im Tirtzu organization are protesting against the benefits and gratuities received by terrorist murderers from the prison service, at the expense of Israeli citizens.

Recently, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) revealed that there are fitness facilities in all the prisons for the welfare of the terrorists, and that every security prisoner is entitled to a daily newspaper subscription and one magazine subscription.

Meirav and Herzl Hajaj, whose daughter Shir was murdered in a ramming attack in the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood of Jerusalem, said: "We have come here to shout against the exaggerated living conditions those who murdered our precious children get. It is time for Minister Erdan to act immediately to approve the conclusions of the committee that he led and put an end to the festivities happening in prisons.”

''We came to hand out gifts and sweets to terrorists to show the absurd reality that the terrorists receive. We cry and they laugh. We are bereaved families of a different type, we will not be silent and will not rest until the prison parties stop," the parents promised.

Honest Reporting: Propaganda for Gaza in The Sunday Times

Advocacy journalist Sarah Helm has a history of lies and distortions when it comes to reporting on Israel. In recent years we’ve called her out for using a quote falsely attributed to David Ben Gurion and lying about Israel’s Gaza border fence in The Independent. We’ve also taken Helm to task for an opinion piece in The Guardian that was littered with bias and blatant falsehoods. Other examples of Helm’s bias have been cataloged at UK Media Watch.

So it’s hardly surprising that Helm has appeared in The Independent and The Guardian that regularly display overt hostility towards Israel. Unfortunately The Sunday Times, a more balanced media outlet, has now given Helm a platform to disseminate her anti-Israel bias. While this latest article is behind a paywall, thus limiting its reach, it is nonetheless worthy of a response.

Helm tells the story of Bilal Masoud, “shot in his legs and right arm by Israeli soldiers at the border fence separating Gaza from Israel. Now he was unable to do anything for himself or feed his birds.”

Even the way that Masoud and other Palestinians in the story are referred to by their first names is a deliberate attempt to elicit sympathy for their plight. Indeed, that Masoud eventually commits suicide is undoubtedly disturbing. It is also legitimate to feel some level of sympathy for Palestinians whose lives have been ruined as a result of reckless or violent behavior, incited by Hamas terrorists to riot at the Gaza border fence.

But Helm doesn’t bother examining what’s really motivating Palestinians like Bilal to risk their lives or even actively seek to end them.

Bilal rushed to the fence, knowing that Israeli troops would open fire if he got too close. He was badly maimed by the shots; his injuries so unbearable that ultimately he chose another way to end his life.

Bilal is one of thousands shot by Israeli soldiers since the Great March of Return protests began near the fence in March last year.
…
The Great March of the Return protests marked Palestinians’ desire to go back to their families’ former homes in what is now Israel.
So Israel is simply shooting thousands of Palestinians who merely “desire to go back to their families’ former homes.” This is a narrative that ignores the very violent intentions of many of those driving the weekly demonstrations at the border fence, least of all Hamas, which barely warrants a mention.

Last week I reported about a Jordanian film that was embroiled in controversy when one of its actors withdrew from the film, claiming that the script was "Zionist" and implied that Jews were the rightful owners of Petra.

In the film's plot, a Bedouin child finds a stone with Hebrew letters in Petra and it is seen as proof that it was the real site of the biblical Mount Sinai.

Since then, the director Mohyee-Deen Qandour strongly denied the actor's words, saying that he withdrew because he wanted a bigger role.

Beyond that, the Qandour said that even according to the Quran, Moses and the Jews were in Jordan before coming to the Land of Israel; it is not controversial to say that they were there. It doesn't imply any sort of ownership.

This defense of the film was all for naught. After a week of bizarre accusations, Qandour canceled all filming.

The "Jaber" film team decided to cancel the shooting following the wide controversy that its script raised on social media platforms.

The team decided to cancel the shooting after a state of controversy was raised upon the film, in order to prevent anything that would harm national unity or raise issues that may affect national security, Director of the film Mohy Al Din Quandour said in a statement on Saturday, August 3, 2019.

I'm sure that the Jews who were filmed praying in the area of Aaron's tomb this week helped fuel the conspiracy theories that killed this film.

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J. Lo vs. J-Street

Last week Jennifer Lopez and her fiancee Alex Rodriguez visited Israel last week and seemed to have a fantastic time.

Although she only tweeted about her visit a couple of times and he added a few more, it occurred to me that they had far more pro-Israel tweets in one week than the purportedly "pro-Israel" J-Street has had in eleven years on Twitter.

Amazing energy in Tel Aviv last night!! Over 50,000 strong!!! I love you so much 🌟🌟🌟🌟💕💕💕💕 The party continues... #ItsMyPartyTour pic.twitter.com/oRe21nHHI9
— Jennifer Lopez (@JLo) August 2, 2019

Mediterranean 🌊 pic.twitter.com/HbTHV9Bh1B
— Jennifer Lopez (@JLo) August 3, 2019

So excited to be in Israel for the first time for @JLo’s show!

How many of you living here are big baseball fans? What would you like to see @mlb do more of? Let me know!!
— Alex Rodriguez (@AROD) July 31, 2019

What an amazing time we are having on my first trip to Tel Aviv! The people have been wonderful and have such energy. I will definitely be back and recommend visiting this incredible country! ❤️

How many of you have been here and how was your experience? pic.twitter.com/tlKeB4In9X
— Alex Rodriguez (@AROD) July 31, 2019

This beats NYC traffic any day. #israel #scooter #mynewride pic.twitter.com/038hMzIiOv
— Alex Rodriguez (@AROD) August 1, 2019

Jerusalem, you are unforgettable. What a perfect finale to our first trip to this beautiful land. pic.twitter.com/XSqbdv2JIE
— Alex Rodriguez (@AROD) August 2, 2019

In contrast, I just searched through all of J-Street's tweets that mention "love" or "beautiful." Not one is aimed at Israel without qualification (there are many that claim that people who love Israel criticize it, not one that just says how much they love Israel itself or that Israel is beautiful.)

So J. Lo and AROD have shut-out J-Street and Jeremy Ben Ami in terms of who really loves Israel.

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IfNotNow lies (video)

It takes nearly 5 minutes to properly fisk 30 seconds of an absurd IfNotNow video. But someone's got to do it.

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08/03 Links: Swastika raised with Palestine flag during weekly Gaza riots; White House demands info on any misuse of American funds by UNRWA; Time to Stop Feeding the ‘Crocodiles’

From Ian:

Swastika raised with Palestine flag during weekly Gaza riots

Approximately 6,000 Palestinians gathered on the Gaza border fence on Friday, holding the weekly March of Return demonstrations, while a swastika was raised along with a Palestine flag on the fence.

In a tweet posted by the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, the swastika could be seen underneath the Palestine flag. The IDF tweeted a response – in poetry form – that: "In the face of this hatred stand IDF soldiers, alert and determined; ready to defend lsrael, today and every single day."

During the demonstrations, the rioters threw explosive devices at the border fence and at IDF forces, as well as hurdled stones.

According to reports, 51 Palestinians were injured, 24 of them by IDF live fire.

White House demands info on any misuse of American funds by UNRWA

The White House is demanding information on whether the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees misused American funds, as part of an investigation into its conduct.

In a letter to the UN on Thursday, US Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt said reports of misconduct at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were “deeply concerning” and called for the UN probe to be as transparent as possible.

Noting that Washington was previously the largest donor to UNRWA, providing billions of dollars to the agency, including nearly $3 billion over the past decade, Greenblatt wrote that the administration was “strongly committed to ensuring fiscal transparency and accountability to the United States taxpayer.”

“If the investigation should yield any findings of impropriety — including…any related to potential misuse of US funds — we request immediate notification and access [to the findings],” he wrote.

In 2018, the United States suspended and later cut all funding for UNRWA, causing a financial crisis that threatened to see its schools and hospitals closed.

Greenblatt said that the US move was “in part due to UNRWA’s unsustainable business model and fiscal practices.”

Trump’s former UN envoy, Nikki Haley, took to Twitter earlier this week to say, “this is exactly why we stopped their funding.”

Human Rights Watch's EU Director Lotte Leicht lobbied incessantly to fund UNRWA. (See: https://t.co/1nlq62kHIe)

Now that we learn corruption & bullying were rampant—and that UNRWA chief @PKraehenbuehl pressured his employee to become his mistress—why is she silent?#MeToo https://t.co/LoX2YPidhU
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) August 3, 2019

What attacks on Israel’s embassies really mean

THE ISRAELI government would do well to remind the 180 states that are party to this treaty of their responsibilities, starting with Finland. If states hosting Israeli missions do not abide by the articles of this treaty, Israel should invoke the relevant mechanisms under international law to ensure they do.

Likewise, we must also understand the effect that attacks on Israeli missions have on local Jewish communities. Obviously, many Jews worldwide identify closely with Israel and Zionism, seeing it as a physical manifestation of their Jewish identity. It must be terrifying for these communities to witness attacks on their religious and national identities. These perils could potentially lead to internal fractures within those communities.

The international community must recognize that these attacks are not merely vile and cowardly attacks on innocent Israelis, but on the Jewish people as well. And make no mistake, these attacks are not anti-Israel (if such a concept even exists), they are full-blown antisemitic. Sketches of swastikas, antisemitic slurs and Hitler are not critiques of Israeli policy, they are expressions of Jew-hatred.

Being separated by state borders does not sever the universal bond that Jews everywhere share with one another. An attack on one is an attack on all. We in Israel must ensure that Jews in the Diaspora feel their voices of concern are being heard, even in the smallest and most remote communities. More importantly, we cannot allow for an environment in which Jews in the Diaspora are afraid to express their Zionist ideals.

Helsinki is home to roughly 1,800 Jews. The community dates back to the early 19th century and has long been a steadfast ally of Israel. Finnish volunteers in the Israeli War of Independence represented the highest per-capita participation of any Diaspora Jewish community. We cannot afford to lose this community to the fear and hate of our enemies. The Israeli government ought to use the full force of its influence to elicit a more effective, proactive response to these antisemitic attacks from Helsinki’s law enforcement, and we in Israel should make sure that the Jews of Helsinki know they have not been forgotten.

08/02 Links Pt2: Lyn Julius: No place for blind spots on Muslim anti-Semitism; Richard Landes: How radical Islam taught the progressive left to blame the Jews; 120 years after trial, Alfred Dreyfus may be promoted to general

From Ian:

Lyn Julius: No place for blind spots on Muslim anti-Semitism

The failure to acknowledge Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism is a peculiarly leftist blind spot. Twentieth-century Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism resulted in the ethnic cleansing of almost a million Jews in a single generation, but its roots lie in an ancient system of exploitation of the wealth and talents of Jews and Christians known as dhimmitude, where other religious minorities have second-class status. This system, punctuated by the odd pogrom or forced conversion, cemented a concept of Muslim supremacy over non-Muslim peoples reminiscent of colonialism.

Underlying the Labour campaign against anti-Semitism is the assumption that Israel is to blame for ruining the pre-existing state of harmony and peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews. This, of course, is a myth. Jews in the Muslim world were always viewed as inferior and had few rights, their fate utterly dependent on the munificence of the ruler of the day to whom they had outsourced their right to self-defense.

This truth is a vindication of Zionism. Even if oriental Jews were not prominent in the modern Zionist movement, they remain eternally grateful that Israel—where they comprise half the population—has ended their historically weak, inferior and defenseless status. Israel is the envy of other indigenous non-Arab and non-Muslim groups, like the Kurds or the Assyrians, who would dearly love to throw off the yoke of Arab supremacy to achieve self-determination in a sovereign state of their own.
This is the contradiction at the heart of Corbyn’s Labour. It sees itself as the party of the downtrodden and the abused, when in truth, it champions the abusers.
It denies that non-Arabs and non-Muslims in the Middle East were ever victims of oppression. In its (at best) ambivalence to Zionism and (at worst) hostility towards Israel, it is effectively supporting the re-imposition of Arab and Muslim domination over a dhimmi people.

Spectator PodCast: How radical Islam taught the progressive left to blame the Jews

It's less than four years since Jeremy Corbyn's hard-left sect seized control of the Labour Party, and yet already its anti-Semitic views – so alien to Labour tradition – seem too deeply rooted to eradicate.

Today's 'Holy Smoke' podcast puts this sinister development in the broader context of the 'Red-Green' alliance – the love affair between the progressive Left and the Jew-haters of jihadist Islam.

On the face of it, this is an unlikely, even surreal, relationship. But as Damian's guest, the historian Richard Landes, argues, the two have something in common: millennialism, the belief that some sort of Heaven on Earth, is not only imminent but historically inevitable.

In theory, progressives believe that this transition to a new era will be peaceful; Jihadists, by definition, don't. But, as Landes explains, it's not as simple as that...

JCPA: American Liberal Jews: Strong Concern about Anti-Semitism, Strong Support of Israel but Less for under 60s – Part 1

For Americans and for American Jews in particular, the Israel-America relationship is thought of as something special. But that special relationship has come with periods of perceived stress and strain and tension, and that is something we see reflected in the media, often with some bold headlines and in some polls which show some softening of support among more liberal Americans, such as what we find among Democrats.

The conventional wisdom out there is that Democrats, as a mostly liberal group, have a political or ideological orientation that creates at least some of the tension with what is considered currently a right wing government in Israel. And since Jews are mostly democrats, that tension would extend to them as well.

Are these perceptions accurate? Are American liberal Jews becoming alienated or disconnected with Israel? Is it accurate to say, as some polls have suggested, that concerns about Israel are a very low priority for American liberal Jews?

So, we looked for evidence by both examining data already collected in previous studies and by collecting some data of our own.

Palestinian gays protest against anti-gay violence. In Israel. (update)

This was tweeted this morning by Harry Reis, Director, Policy and Strategy at the leftist New Israel Fund:

Wow (via friend who took part): Yesterday Palestinians staged first queer protest, demanding acknowledgement of pioneering role in reshaping/leading Pal society, offering a vision of a unified progressive, inclusive Palestinian society that is strong because of its diversity.
— harry reis (@harryreis) August 2, 2019

No, that is not what happened.

There was no protest in the Palestinian controlled territories. There was a protest by Arab Israelis, who call themselves Palestinians, in Haifa.

Israel.

The protest was against a 16 year old gay Arab from Tel Aviv being stabbed recently - by his brothers. (UPDATE: The Arab was transgender and was from the Israeli Arab town of Tamra.)

Even so, the Arab gays in Israel are using this as an example of how Israel does not protect gay Arabs despite hasbara about how gay Palestinians often flee to Israel to save their lives.

But how can Israel defend a gay 16 year old from his brothers, if he didn't seek protection from the police?

The linked article accuses Israel of "pinkwashing." Moreover, the article claims that Israel only provides a curriculum of tolerance for sexual orientation for Jewish schools, not Arabic-speaking schools in Israel, and therefore it is responsible for Arab violence towards gays. I find this hard to believe - more likely the Arab schools refuse to teach tolerance.

The original tweet was knowingly deceptive as to where and for what purpose this protest was. He was trying to make Palestinian society look tolerant and progressive for suggesting that a pro-gay protest was allowed in the territories. Rather than showing Arab support of gays, as it pretends to, it highlights the intolerance of Arabs towards gays. In fact, this story proves that the only safe place for Arab gays to protest is in Israel.

Moreover, the only safe place for such a protest is in a Jewish-majority town in Israel - they didn't protest in an Arab community.

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.

08/02 Links Pt1: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: When Concessions Are Impossible; Phillips: The incendiary balloon of international law; Holland and Belgium Freeze Funding to UNRWA

From Ian:

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: When Concessions Are Impossible

One of the issues of consistent consensus in Israel is that the government should not concede on issues of its citizens' security. Therefore, it was no surprise that Israel acted to demolish structures illegally built in proximity to the security barrier, which has saved hundreds of lives since its construction, to prevent terrorist groups from compromising its efficacy.
Although the Palestinian Authority maintains a somewhat hostile position toward Israel, it is able to cooperate more closely on issues of security with the "Zionist regime" than with its Palestinian brethren in Hamas. A decision by PA President Mahmoud Abbas to end security cooperation with Israel would reduce his own capability to deal with threats from his Hamas rivals at a time when his administration is wildly unpopular.

As for the prospects for the U.S. peace deal, the long-term factors impeding an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians include the political, geographical, and ideological divide among Palestinians, and the inability of the Arab Quartet (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt) to "deliver" the Palestinians.

As long as the West Bank and Gaza remain separate political entities under different leadership, any peace agreement would necessitate a prior Hamas-PA reconciliation agreement. There have been countless failed efforts over the last 12 years to broker such a deal.

While Israelis should root for the U.S.-led peace effort to succeed, a backup plan should include the following components: maintain security by rejecting any compromise of Israel's operational freedom to counter terrorism in the West Bank; promote capacity-building and economic development for Palestinians; and seek to revive bilateral negotiations with a credible Palestinian counterpart.

Ben-Dror Yemini: There might be something to 'deal of the century' after all

There is no Palestinian statehood in the "deal of the century," only autonomy, as U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, a silent member of the administration's Mideast peace team, has revealed.

Friedman warned the Palestinians that the Clinton, Olmert, Kerry and Obama proposals are no longer on the table.

This is a blow to Saeb Erakat's vision of Israeli-Palestinian peace as told to the Jordanian Ad-Dustour daily newspaper in 2009: "At Camp David (in 2000) we were offered 90% (of the West Bank) and Olmert offered 100% (in 2008)."

Now the architects of the peace plan are making clear that all those proposals are a thing of the past and there is no better deal on its way.

When Arab countries are disintegrating because of jihad on one hand and Iran on the other, no stable Arab government would see the formation of a new Arab state as a dream come true. A bold new peace plan should propose taking a completely different direction.

Given all of the above, there may be some logic to holding a summit at Camp David as a continuation of the Bahrain conference. And maybe, just maybe, some Arab states would be supportive of that.

Jordan will continue to release statements in support of a Palestinian state, but it is actually the last thing Abdullah's kingdom needs. Such an entity would be prone to expansion to its east as well as its west and could threaten Jordan.

Additionally, Hamas would try and most likely succeed in seizing control of such a state.

Netanyahu's plan to build 700 housing units for Palestinians in Area C can be seen as a gesture of good will, if a proposal of autonomy is considered.

Regardless of whatever left-wing or right-wing political views its population may hold, a proposed peace settlement that would ensure Israel's continued existence as a Jewish and democratic state - and prevent a bi-national state down the road - is the best option.

Melanie Phillips: The incendiary balloon of international law

For months now, Israel has been attacked by aerial incendiary weapons launched by Hamas during riots at the Gaza border fence.

These weapons – balloons or kites attached to flammable material – are driven by the winds off the sea towards southern Israel.

In just one week in June, they started nearly 100 fires in farmland and forests, in playgrounds and private yards. By last month, Hamas had burned more than 7,400 acres of Israeli land.

At the same time, Israeli communities near the border are also routinely attacked with rockets and mortars from terrorist groups stationed inside the Gaza Strip.

An American lawyer, Col. Matthew Aiesi, an associate professor at the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Va., was among a group of national security lawyers who recently witnessed these attacks for themselves.

As he has written, these are indisputably war crimes, violating numerous rules of warfare by deliberately targeting civilians and using indiscriminate weapons.

Aiesi says the United Nations or countries like Egypt working towards peace in the region should seek the surrender of those committing these war crimes to stand trial before a fair and competent jurisdiction.

Yet beyond Israel, these attacks are scarcely reported at all. And virtually no one is even stating that they are self-evidently war crimes.

This week there was a conference in Jordan sponsored by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) on the topic of “Green Technology Transfer, Adaptation and Investment Required for Implementing SDG 12: Sustainable Consumption and Production.”

ESCWA is perhaps the most antisemitic commission of the UN. All of its members are Arab states, despite its name. It specifically excludes Israel from its Arab-only "Western Asia" agenda - while it includes African Arab states.

It has written insanely anti-Israel reports, and routinely refers to Israel as an "apartheid state" using criteria that would mean that nearly every member of ESCWA is also an apartheid state.

In 2014, ESCWA posted 181 "facts" on Twitter and Facebook for the International Year of the Palestinian People, many of which were simply untrue. (They have since taken them down.)

ESCWA's hate for Israel is not a question.

Just imagine, though, that the UN wasn't so insanely hateful. Imagine is ESCWA actually wanted to work for peace instead of war with Israel. Imagine if ESCWA adhered to the actual principles of the UN.

Specifically, imagine if ESCWA had invited Israel to this conference on green technology in the Middle East, a topic that no one is more familiar with than Israel.

Would the Arab members have walked out? Probably Syria, maybe Libya and Lebanon. But if ESCWA had any actual interest in peace, it would be censuring the members that can't abide Israel's existence rather than allowing them to set the anti-Israel agenda for the entire Commission.

The entire purpose of the UN is to help keep world peace. ESCWA could do that by inviting Israel to relevant meetings.

But of course Middle East peace is not a priority of UN ESCWA. Quite the opposite.

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.

Agricultural exports from Gaza going up, not that you would know that from the news

The UN's Food and Agricultural Organization puts out statistics each week on Gaza's exports of fruit, vegetables and fish to the rest of the world.

Here's where the exports this year have gone so far:

Jordan's imports of Gaza goods have gone down sharply, but Israel's and especially the GCC's imports have risen a great deal.

It appears that Israel and the Gulf are putting their money where their mouth is as far as helping the Gaza economy, although these are token amounts. The vast majority of Gaza exports go to the West Bank.

To the best of my knowledge, unless something has changed since I last spoke to Israeli officials about this, there are no restrictions on Gaza exports outside the number of willing buyers.

In the past, and perhaps now as well, the IDF's COGAT unit would provide seeds and expertise to Gaza and West Bank farmers to grow new crops and improve their quality.

Another new thing is that Gaza now exports fish. From reading the news one gets the impression that Gaza fishermen can't even provide enough fish for local consumption, but in fact they are sending hundreds of metric tons of fish to the West Bank.

Something else that the news media won't bother to report.

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Every day there are stories in Arabic media about Jews "storming" the "Al Aqsa Mosque," meaning Jews visiting the perimeter of the Temple Mount. So, naturally, the writers need to find some new angle to make the stories appear more interesting.

They are mostly press releases from the antisemitic Muslim authorities on the Temple Mount, the Waqf.

Today's variant, as headlined in Arab48 news, was that Jewish children visited the Mount.

According to the story, an organization called Women for the Temple has now organized tours of the most sacred place in Judaism specifically for children, where they are taught about the history of the site. (Or as the hateful Arab media puts it, "they carried out provocative tours of the Haram al Sharif and received explanations about the alleged 'Temple.'")

This is perhaps more frightening to Muslims than the daily screaming headlines of Jews "breaking in" to the site. Children, after all, are the next generation, and if they consider visiting the Temple Mount to be normal, then it will be that much harder to stop them from visiting when they are adults and want to bring their own kids.

Meanwhile, the Jordanian Waqf issued a statement that "stressed that the sanctity of all parts of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, equivalent to the sanctity of the Sacred House in Mecca, and that any infringement on part of it is an attack on every Muslim on earth."

Just some more every day incitement against Jews.

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Jordan closes Aaron's burial place because Jews performed "rituals" there (UPDATE)

Tonight is the traditional anniversary of the death of the Biblical Aaron.

Jordanian media is filled with stories of a group of Jews who visited the "shrine of the Prophet Aaron," as the Muslims characterize it. There they performed "religious services."

The video showing the supposed services is only 8 seconds long, and it looks like they are singing but not praying, from what I can tell.

Jews have gone there before, as in this video from last year shows:

As a result of Jews actually treating a holy place as a holy place, the Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs in Jordan, Dr. Nasser Abu Al-Basal, decided to close the building and not to allow any visitor to enter the shrine without obtaining the ministry's approval.

The ministry also said that it will open an investigation into how Jews managed to enter and chant without knowledge of the locals.

As far as I can tell, there is no mosque on the site (yet.) So Jordan's objections to Jews praying there isn't because it is desecrating a mosque, but because they simply don't want to extend any basic rights to Jews.

UPDATE: The Jewish Press has more, and more video. (h/t Irene)

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