Someone should ask Bassem Tamimi and Rashid Khalidi about their illustrious family histories of helping Zionists build the land. Their reactions should be videoed.
The next paragraph provides a very nice counterbalance to this one:
A couple of months ago I wrote about the Palestinian Arab leaders' rejection of the British proposal of creating an "Arab Agency" parallel to the Jewish Agency.
The official reason that they rejected the Jewish Agency was that it was an affront to their dignity - which is the reason that this rejection is celebrated today. But Morris is correct as to the real reasons that the Arabs didn't step up to create public institutions, and "dignity" was just a fig leaf for the leaders' laziness, corruption and apathy towards the people they supposedly lead.
Just like today.
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A/HRC/41/G/17 Annex to the letter dated 12 July 2019 from the representatives of Algeria, Angola, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Comoros, the Congo, Cuba, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Uganda, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the State of Palestine to the United Nations Office at Geneva addressed to the President of the Human Rights Council
Mr. President, Madam High Commissioner,
We, the co-signatories to this letter, reiterate that the work of the United Nations Human Rights Council (IIRC) should be conducted in an objective, transparent, non-selective, constructive, non-confrontational and non-politicized manner. We express our firm opposition to relevant countries' practice of politicizing human rights issues, by naming and shaming, and publicly exerting pressures on other countries.
We commend China's remarkable achievements in the field of human rights by adhering to the people-centered development philosophy and protecting and promoting human rights through development. We also appreciate China's contributions to the international human rights cause.
We take note that terrorism, separatism and religious extremism has caused enormous damage to people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, which has seriously infringed upon human rights, including right to life, health and development. Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and deradicalization measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centers. Now safety and security has returned to Xinjiang and the fundamental human rights of people of all ethnic groups there are safeguarded. The past three consecutive years has seen not a single terrorist attack in Xinjiang and people there enjoy a stronger sense of happiness, fulfillment and security. We note with appreciation that human rights are respected and protected in China in the process of counter-terrorism and deradicalization.
We appreciate China's commitment to openness and transparency. China has invited a number of diplomats, international organizations officials and journalist to Xinjiang to witness the progress of the human rights cause and the outcomes of counter-terrorism and deradicalization there. What they saw and heard in Xinjiang completely contradicted what was reported in the media. We call on relevant countries to refrain from employing unfounded charges against China based on unconfirmed information before they visit Xinjiang. We urge the OHCHR , Treaty Bodies and relevant Special Procedures mandate holders to conduct their work in an objective and impartial manner according to their mandate and with true and genuinely credible information, and value the communication with member states.
We request that this letter be recorded as an official document of the 41st session of the Human Rights Council and that it be published on the OHCHR website.
Anyone who pretends to care about human rights in the name of Palestine and who does not have anything negative to say about this letter clearly does not really care about human rights.
(h/t UN Watch)
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A Canadian anti-Israel group, CJPME, proudly claimed that Hydro-Quebec caved to BDS demands to stop cooperating with Israel.
Another BDS Win?! 👍👍‼️@hydroquebec Quebec chooses not to renew a cyber-security contract with Israeli company IEC. @BDS_Quebec has been working for years to pressure Hydro-Quebec to sever the partnership. Congratulations! https://t.co/cIAJTpQ2eA
Hydro-Quebec responded that CJPME have no idea what they are talking about and that they have excellent relations with IEC.
Regarding the end of our cybersecurity knowledge sharing partnership with Israel Electric Corporation (IEC), we would like to state that it was not politically motivated in any way or the result of a pressure from BDS Québec. The partnership agreement of good practices between Hydro-Québec and the IEC, signed in May 2017, lasted two years. It ended, as initially planned, in May 2019. The partnership was not renewed for the simple reason that our needs and expectations regarding the sharing of information in the area of cybersecurity were fully met in the course of our 2 year collaboration. We continue to have excellent relations with the IEC and could eventually pursue our discussions should the need arise.
The BDSers will have a press conference this morning pretending to reveal important information about this - the memo of the 2017 agreement between IEC and Hydro-Quebec, being spun by an anti-Israel lawyer.
The funny thing is that the agreement ended in May, and the BDSers are only now noticing. A recent article in TVA Nouvelles talks about cyberattacks on Hydro-Quebec and how they are defending against them (autotranslated):
Hydro-Québec says it has learned a lot in Israel about how to better avoid cyber attacks.
Over the past two years, Hydro-Québec has been to the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) school, the equivalent of Hydro-Québec in Israel. The agreement ended last May.
"This agreement has allowed us to share our knowledge. Israelis are recognized as the best in the world in the field of cybersecurity, "said a spokesman for Hydro-Quebec, Louis-Olivier Batty.
The Israel Electric Corporation estimates it counteracts millions of malicious interventions annually.
The Israeli state-owned company has developed state-of-the-art expertise to counter hackers.
Many analysts believe that Israel has become a model to follow in the field of computer security.
Israel has more than 450 companies specializing in cybersecurity on its territory. In 2018 alone, 60 new companies were created in Israel in this very promising niche for the economy of the Jewish state.
The expertise of the Israel Electric Corporation is so popular that since 2013 it has offered paid training in cybersecurity.
The training program is not only intended for power grid operators, but also for IT managers in the industrial, manufacturing, insurance and financial sectors, among others.
Hydro-Québec argues that its agreement with the Israel Electric Corporation, however, did not cost anything.
"It was a knowledge sharing agreement," said his spokesperson.
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I spent some time Tuesday at a kibbutz in the “Gaza envelope,” the area close to the Strip that absorbs the brunt of the rockets that are the usual expression of Palestinian Arab rage at my existence. The kibbutz was sprinkled with little concrete shelters, because the 15 seconds or less that would elapse between the warning and the impact of a rocket doesn’t permit even a fast person to make it to the main protected areas.
There is also a serious fence around the kibbutz, and an electric gate. If one or more of the terrorists that often break through the border fence were to get in, there could be a disaster. So far, this hasn’t happened, because the IDF usually stops them, thanks to the female soldiers that “man” the observation posts up and down the border. But when we got to the gate, there was nobody to let us in. So we just waited for another car to drive out. No problem.
It was a beautiful day, not as humid as here in Rehovot even though it was closer to the coast. It was hard to believe that earlier in the day several mortar shells had been fired from Gaza at Israel, and that on Sunday night there was a rocket attack nearby. But Tuesday afternoon was quiet and peaceful.
It wasn’t peaceful in early May, when 690 rockets were launched at Israel. Some were intercepted by the Iron Dome system, but some got through, doing significant damage, killing four Israelis and wounding numerous others. Most of the rockets were aimed at the area near Gaza, but several of the deaths were in the cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod, farther north. In March, a rocket from Gaza landed in a town20 km north of Tel Aviv, destroying a house and injuring seven.
If it were not for the Iron Dome systems and the plethora of shelters in the communities near Gaza, the death toll would be much higher. A massive, all-out attack – Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad may have as many as 30,000 rockets stockpiled – would certainly overwhelm the systems, which can’t be everywhere at the same time.
There are not only the rocket and mortar attacks that kill people, but there are the arson balloons, the attempted incursions, the threat of actual invasion. And why limit the discussion to Hamas? There are also the paymasters of the “lone-wolf “ terrorists, the leaders of the Palestinian Authority – the organization that we allowed to be set up in Ramallah, led by the men of Fatah, the heirs of the Nazi al-Husseini and the ones responsible for the Second and (as yet unofficial) Third Intifadas.
These are the Palestinian Arabs, our deadly enemies.
We can’t defeat the PA and Hamas in a direct military confrontation without killing thousands. We won’t do that, even though they would do it to us in an instant. But we can’t make peace with them either. There is no common ground, no desire for anything other than total victory on their side, no possibility of trust on our side – and we are completely correct in not trusting them.
But there is a solution. And luckily, it is also a solution for some of our other problems.
The Palestinian Arabs do not have the resources to maintain their struggle by themselves. They are supported by other enemies of the Jewish state (what other country in the world has such a collection of enemies?), primarily Iran and Qatar, sometimes Saudi Arabia, and the European Union. The Palestinians are our proximate enemies, but these are our remote enemies. They are no less our enemies, and they have the same goal: they do not want there to be a Jewish state in the Middle East (or probably anywhere).
The Iranian regime fights by proxy. Its powerful Hezbollah proxy is probably the most dangerous threat facing us today. But it also supports Hamas. The remarkably hypocritical European Union also fights by proxy; it financially supports the Palestinian Authority and tries to subvert Israel’s government by supporting left-wing groups within Israel.
If we could knock out the support systems, the Palestinian war effort against us would collapse. Without financial support from Iran and Qatar, Hamas would be unable to maintain control of Gaza. The existing tribal forces in Gaza would take over. We would still have to deal with local terrorism, but the ability to mount a coordinated attack would be gone.
If Iran were neutralized, Hezbollah would wither away, along with the Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria. And that’s the solution. Rather than exhaust ourselves fighting with Iran’s local proxies, we need to confront the Iranian regime directly.
It sounds daunting – Iran is a massive country with a huge population. But it isn’t necessary or desirable to invade or occupy Iran. All we need to do is to help the opposition overthrow the regime, which is very unpopular. In this enterprise we would have the US on our side, at least under the present administration. I think it’s doable, if dangerous. Military operations would be limited to the Revolutionary Guard, which protects the regime and implements its expansionist policy.
There is also the looming nuclear threat. On this, we have no choice. The only way to deal with it is to neutralize Iran.
I think that PM Netanyahu understands this and that it is in fact his policy (that’s the only way I can understand the degree of restraint we are exercising toward Hamas).
The Palestinian Authority also must collapse. This is about to happen almost all by itself. There will soon be a struggle for power after Mahmoud Abbas dies or retires; we can support multiple tribal leaders, aiming to create a group of decentralized “emirates” in Judea and Samaria as suggested by Mordechai Kedar. But it will be important to get Iran out of the picture; otherwise the PA would simply be replaced by Iranian-funded proxies like Hamas. That implies that action against the Iranian regime must come soon.
Once the PA is gone, the EU’s influence over the Palestinian Arabs will be reduced. Our own government can and should work to strengthen regulations that will prevent the Europeans from supporting anti-state organizations here.
The solution for both Gaza and Judea/Samaria, in other words, is the same: decentralize Palestinian governance and split them from the outside forces that maintain their belligerency.
Israel is a truly beautiful place when it is at peace. We are now on the verge of a very difficult period, which will be quite the opposite. But I believe that if we have a consistent strategic plan and carry it out, we can bring about a situation in which our country will at last experience long-term peace. Timing will be everything: if we wait for the demise of Mahmoud Abbas, or if we don’t act before the administration in the US changes, it may be too late.
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Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez will travel to Israel on Friday to inaugurate a “diplomatic office” in Jerusalem, recognizing the holy city as Israel’s capital.
The diplomatic office in the city will be an extension of Honduras’s Tel Aviv-based embassy.
“For me it’s the recognition that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” Hernandez said on Tuesday.
The Honduran foreign ministry said in a statement Israel had proposed that Honduras move its embassy to Jerusalem, which is being “analyzed and evaluated in the international and national context.”
US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in late 2017 and officially moved the US embassy there last May, sparking a deterioration in relations with the Palestinians.
Honduras’ President Juan Orlando Hernandez speaks at the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington on March 24, 2019. (Screen capture/AIPAC)
Guatemala and Paraguay followed suit while Brazil said it was studying the possibility. Paraguay reversed its decision four months later, after a change in government.
Moving an embassy to Jerusalem is highly contentious. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital, while Palestinians view East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
Most diplomatic missions in Israel are situated in or near Tel Aviv as countries try to maintain a neutral stance over the status of Jerusalem.
(h/t IsaacStorm)
In an August 4, 2019 blog post on the website of the Qatari Al-Jazeera network, Palestinian blogger Ahmad Samir Qannita praised the summer camps held by Hamas's military wing, the 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades,[1] and commended Hamas for instilling the values of jihad and resistance in the Gazan youth and raising a "generation that believes in the duty of jihad." He noted that Hamas devotes all its resources, including its official institutions, media and education system, to this goal and that the summer camps for children and teens are an example of this. He noted further that the camps offer the participants – junior high and high school students from all over the Gaza Strip – a comprehensive military training program conducted by professional Al-Qassam fighters and "similar in its intensity to [the training] received by the Palestinian resistance fighters." The program includes the maintenance and use of machine guns and other weapons, live ammunition practice, urban warfare, and the crossing of enemy lines by means of attack tunnels.
The blogger also quoted lines from a militant poem by Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradawi, a major ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood who lives in Qatar and is close to the Qatari regime, which urges the Arab and Muslim nation to produce arms and fighters for the sake of Islam.[2]
The following are excerpts from Qannita's blog post:[3]
"Gaza is not like it was in previous decades, when the jihad activity there was limited to small armed groups that acted in secret, [striving] to carry out high-quality operations against the Zionist occupation forces in complicated security conditions. [Such was the situation] after, in 1996, the Oslo authorities [an epithet for the Palestinian Authority] delivered harsh blows to the armed Palestinian factions, led by Hamas, and persecuted and arrested anyone leaning towards the idea of resistance. The [Palestinian] Authority's security apparatuses even established an army of informers who were tasked with spying and collecting information on young jihad fighters, so as to arrest them and incarcerate them in dungeons, to deter them from fighting the Zionist occupation...
While the BBC shows footage of Tamimi attacking an IDF soldier, for which she spent eight months in an Israeli prison, it fails to give any real background on the Palestinian poster girl for terror. For the real tragedy is not Tamimi’s experience with the Israeli military court system (what the BBC terms a “childhood”).
Ahed Tamimi’s entire childhood has been spent in an environment permeated with Palestinian terrorism: terror in which her family has long played an active and prominent role. For example, Ahed’s aunt helped plan the horrific Sbarros Pizza restaurant bombing, and her mother posted anatomically precise tutorials on how to most effectively stab Israelis.
Ironically, this very terrorism is the reason Israel has security measures in the first place.
Related reading: Ahed Tamimi’s Global Propaganda Tour
Since childhood Ahed has learned from her family that all of Israel is occupied Palestinian land, including Tel Aviv, and that she must fight to gain all of it. Hardly a path to peace. And Ahed’s family have placed her personally in danger over and over, for the benefit of cameras.
Her appearance for the BBC is just the latest in a global propaganda tour, milking her iconic status.
This, however, is the real Ahed Tamimi that you won’t see on the BBC:
We all
know what Trump said about the Jewish people, right? About American Jews being uninformed
or disloyal? This, we were told, was the president being antisemitic! He’s
using an ancient antisemitic trope: the dual loyalties accusation.
Except he’s
not. The president is not speaking of divided loyalties to two different
countries, the United States and Israel. On the contrary, he’s saying that American
Jews are loyal to a single entity alone: the United States. He means that Jews
who vote Democrat are disloyal to the Jewish people and to Israel.
Look at the
context of what he said, when he responded to Ilhan Omar’s call to cut off U.S.
aid to Israel:
“Where has the Democratic Party gone? Where have they gone where they are defending
these two people over the State of Israel? I think any Jewish people that vote
for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great
disloyalty."
What
Trump means is that people vote their conscience. And the Democratic Party appears to have no conscience when it comes to Israel and the Jews. If you vote Democrat, you're throwing Israel and the Jews under the bus.
Democratic Party: Lost Its Moral Compass
Here is a fact: the Democratic Party has lost its moral compass when it comes to the Jews and Israel. The party is not issuing clear condemnations against BDS, cutting aid to Israel, or the trip to Israel that wasn't, which was so clearly intended to demonize and harm Israel. There has been no official censure of the junior congresswomen
for the things they have said and done against the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel. The inaction and the silence of the Democratic Party in the face of this antisemitic onslaught makes
it complicit in the attack, an actor with ill designs against the Jews.
The issues we speak of are deadly serious. BDS, for example, represents an existential threat to the State of Israel and the Jews who live there. Cutting aid to Israel, has as its goal, a Jewish people unable to defend itself against domestic Arab terror and attacks by hostile countries on several fronts at once. Maybe Israel doesn't need U.S. aid and is perfectly capable of managing without it. But the malicious intent of the effort is clear, a desire to bring down the State of Israel while placing the lives of 7 million Israeli Jews in mortal danger.
Hence, from Trump’s perspective, if
a Jew votes Democrat, the voter is basically saying he doesn’t care whether his own people--7 million of them--live or die. If the average American Jew, in his continuing support for the Democratic Party votes his conscience he is collectively saying he doesn’t care about these things--doesn't care about Israel, doesn't care when his faraway brethren are endangered.
Maybe They're Clueless
But there's a silver lining. President Trump did offer these average American Jewish Dems the benefit of his doubt: maybe they're not disloyal. Maybe they're just clueless! That could be it: they simply aren't aware of what is going on with the Democratic Party and what it has sanctioned with its
inactivity and its silence. Hence, “a total lack of knowledge.” They're not disloyal: they're uninformed. Which is what happens when you just don’t care about something. When you don't care, you don't bother to do your homework.
To be loyal to someone or something, on the other hand, is first and foremost to
care. You make sure you know what’s going on with those you love and the things you
care about. You show your loyalty and broadcast it loud and clear.
A Blood What?
So if the average American Jew is loyal to his people, he should know that Tlaib and Omar were to tour Judea and Samaria with Miftah, an organization that promoted the blood libel. He should know what a blood libel is, a primitive, evil, and unfounded rumor that Jews kill Christians to get their blood to be used in the manufacture of Passover matzah. The irony of the blood libel is that it has caused the spilling of Jewish blood alone, for centuries. The average American Jewish voter should know that the itinerary for Tlaib and Omar contained meetings with two organizations tied to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group. The PFLP has as its sole aim the murder of as many Jews as possible. Tlaib and Omar chose to give these people a hearing, and to amplify their views even now, by association. For surely if American congresswomen saw nothing wrong in meeting with these people--people tied to those whose sole goal is murdering Jews because they are Jews--it must be that goal isn't really so bad.
Now this is important: if American Jews know the Democratic congresswomen were to meet with people who thirst for Jewish blood, and these Jews continue to vote Democrat anyway, there's no getting around it. They are disloyal. To their own people and to Israel.
If, on the other hand, the average American Jew doesn't know the congresswomen were to meet with people who thirst for Jewish blood, it's because he hasn't cared enough to find out. Which is, arguably, disloyal. One might say he is "willfully uninformed."
Loyalty Is A Duty
In loyalty, you see, there's a self-imposed duty. You find out what you need to know in order to protect the people and the things you care about. And if you don't look to find out, it's because you don't care about your own people. Which means you have a loyalty problem. That's just how it is.
It's not just that the Democratic Party--the party of choice for the average American Jew--was silent in the wake of the trip to Israel that wasn't. It went beyond that, with candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for president actually condemning Israel for barring entry to the congresswomen, instead of calling them out for consorting with antisemites. The response, meanwhile, of your average American Jew? Continued support for the Democratic Party, a party that is doing nothing about the antisemitic narrative taking hold of its kishkes, its innermost workings.
Strange Loyalty
It is simple: the average American Jew is not using his vote to defend the Jewish people and the Jewish State. American
Jews are not defending their people, their brethren in Israel. They aren't defending Israel, either. What
we have is a dearth of loyalty accompanied, on the other hand, by this strange
loyalty to a Democratic Party that is more and more, allying against the Jewish people and
the country that is so central to their religion and history.
This is hard for me to understand as an Israeli American. I am certain it would be all the more difficult for a non-Jew like the president to understand. This lack of loyalty to one's own. It is a shameful thing. A moral
failing.
From
Trump’s perspective then, the Jew who votes as a Democrat is using his vote to express his conscience. When AOC trivializes the Holocaust by comparing detention camps to concentration camps, she is cementing an idea into our zeitgeist, that what happened to the Jews was nothing special, not so bad. That Auschwitz, for
instance, was no more than an immigrant holding center, a detention camp.
The Language Of Holocaust Trivialization
And when AOC is not censured by the party she represents, they are helping this narrative take hold. So when you vote Democrat, this is what you are voting for: a narrative that trivializes what happened in Auschwitz, compares the separation of parents from their children to say, an infant thrown up in the air, with a Nazi shooting bullets into it in front of its mother's eyes, to count how many shots he can get into it before it falls to the ground dead. If you care enough about your people to know these things, there is a shocking disparity between these two events, all the more so because the illegal immigrant enters America knowing what will happen if he is caught. The mother of the dead Jewish infant, on the other hand, was taken from her home, packed into a cattle car, and shipped off to an unchosen destination.
If you are a Jew who is loyal to your people, you fight against AOC and the evil she peddles, that horrendous narrative. You move your vote to the other party, because you know what is right and what is wrong.
Because as a Jewish voter you either know what AOC said and do not care or you don’t know
what she said, because you didn’t care enough to find out.
You Should Be Screaming
It is a very serious thing indeed that Jews would not be crying out against the Democratic Party, the things these women say about their people and the way they try to hurt Israel. If they were loyal to their own, they'd be shrieking their heads off about these issues. That is how things seem to
President Trump and how it looks to Israeli Jews as well.
Unless of course, the average American Jew is completely unaware of these things. And then of course, we have to ask why they don't care enough to make it their business to know.
Uninformed or disloyal? It seems there is a thin Jewish line between the two. In either direction, it's a bad choice, the wrong way to be. The good news is you can change.
What You Can Do
Tired of being disloyal, uninformed? Want to be a better
support for your people and for Israel? Here is what you can do, going forward:
oFollow alternative news sources like Elder of
Ziyon to find out what is really going on and how these things affect Israel
and your people.
oSpeak out loud and clear on social media
regarding Democratic candidates who target Israel and the Jews.
oUse whatever platforms you have to fight against
BDS, Arab terror, the blood libel, antisemitism, and Holocaust trivialization.
oVote in a way that counts for your people. Don't
vote Democrat.
If you are an average American Jew, that last bullet point is going to be a difficult one to swallow. The media has whipped you into a frenzy of hate against the alternative. Loyalty, however, demands a second look at what is really going on. If you love your people, step away from the Democratic Party.
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.
I mentioned 10th century Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi recently.
He was from Jerusalem and wrote extensively about it. Notably, he remarked upon how few Muslims lived there at the time, even though the Muslim invasion of Palestine had already been going on for centuries.
Few are the learned here, many are the Christians, and these make themselves distasteful in the public places ...The Christians and the area are predominant here and the mosque devoid of congregations and assemblies.
Referring to the Christians and Jews in Jerusalem, he referred to the city as a "golden basin full of scorpions."
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It is not likely that Netanyahu has anything to worry about where Trump is concerned, however.
In the first place, the American president said that he had no intention of lifting the sanctions. So, as was the case where his “buddy” in Pyongyang was concerned, no appeasement toward Rouhani is on the horizon.
Secondly, he was adamant that a precondition for any negotiations with Tehran would be its agreement to “no nuclear weapons and no ballistic missiles.”
Third, Rouhani replied by saying that he would not talk to Trump without a lifting of sanctions. The predictable impasse means that there will be no change in the status quo.
No, it’s not Netanyahu who needs to fear a flip-flopping Trump at this stage, but rather the Iranian people. It was they who were just sent a loud and clear message from the White House that the United States would not help them overthrow their evil regime, even indirectly.
It was “déjà vu all over again” for the population that was so brazenly abandoned by the Obama administration in favor of the world’s greatest terror-masters.
Let us hope that Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, is able to persuade his boss that Iranian weapons are only part of the battle. As he and Netanyahu are both keenly aware, without new leadership in Tehran – one not governed by a desire for global Shiite hegemony and jihadi fighters to carry it out – the West cannot rest.
Abdul Hameed Al-Ghabin – “a Saudi writer and a political and tribal figure” – has challenged Jordan to negotiate with Israel on President Trump’s “deal of the century” – or risk losing control of the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem currently vested in Jordan under the 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty and the Washington Declaration.
Al-Ghabin’s views have – significantly – been published by an Israeli newspaper. Saudi Arabia’s rulers have not condemned Al-Ghabin or disavowed his views – indicating that Al-Ghabin’s message could represent Saudi Arabia’s official position.
Al-Ghabin asserts: “There is a major issue of contention: the future of the Palestinians and their right to self-determination. It is important and logical to us that Palestinians should have a state at the end of a peace process. However, anti-peace forces litter our region. An example of such a force is, sadly, the Kingdom of Jordan”.
Al-Ghabin asks: “How can we achieve peace if the Palestinian people remain without a place to call home?”
Al-Ghabin’s answer will assuredly jolt Jordan – and the United Nations – out of their long running historical, geographical and demographical memory loss: “The answer is simple: Jordan is already 78 per cent of historical Palestine. Jordanians of Palestinian origin constitute more than 80 percent of the population according to U.S. intelligence cables leaked in 2010. Jordan is essentially already the Palestinian Arab state. The only problem is, the king of Jordan refuses to acknowledge this.
Nonetheless, the world will eventually recognize Jordan as the address for Palestinian statehood—and perhaps sooner than we think. We don’t know if the Jordanian royal family will still be in power when Jordan officially becomes Palestine, but we do know that if the royal family leaves and the Palestinian majority takes over, Jordan will officially become their homeland and we Arabs won’t feel guilty normalizing relations with Israel as another regional state.”
The sting in the tail is Al-Ghabin’s warning that Jordan’s custodianship of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem – created under article 9(2) of the Israel- Jordan Peace Treaty – could be ended if Jordan does not play ball.
Al-Ghabin is ruthless in his criticism of Jordan’s monarch – King Abdullah:
First, the security services were able to father the first leads of the details of this heinous crime and its perpetrators, and continue to pursue the investigation to uncover all its circumstances, which we will announce later.
Second, we assure our people of the stability of the security situation in the Gaza Strip, and stress that these suspicious bombings - aimed at shuffling the cards in the internal arena - are isolated incidents that will not affect that situation.
Third: The sinful hands that committed this crime will not go unpunished...
Fourth: We will not allow any party to compromise the security of the citizens of the Gaza Strip, and that all the sinful and suspicious attempts in this regard will fail, and we will strike with an iron hand anyone who tries, under any cover, or by any means.
Fifth: We pledge to our struggling people that the Ministry of Interior and National Security will remain the guardian of the security of Gaza, whatever the sacrifices, and will not rest until we take away from the masterminds of this criminal act, and those behind them.
Sixth: The Zionist occupation and its agents are constantly working to undermine the security and stability situation in Gaza, and they use various methods, and the security services have thwarted many plans, and still stands immune to all suspicious attempts that take different forms and methods.
Seventh: We call upon all sectors of our people and factions to condemn this cowardly act, and stand united in the face of this pariah group, which seeks to provoke chaos and strike the home front and cohesion.
The eighth point is most interesting:
Eighth: We call on the media and social networking activists not to rush with the transmission of news, and only report [news] from official sources. Anyone who spreads rumors and false news is a partner in trying to tamper with security.
The Interior Ministry, which controls the police, is warning bloggers and reporters not to say anything beyond official statements.
This is an explicit and official threat to press freedom by Hamas.
Not that "human rights activists" will even bother to mention it. After all, their willingness to speak "truth to power" doesn't extend to powers that are actually dangerous.
Sure enough, the "independent" Ma'an and Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today only reported on what the interior ministry demanded, and nothing else. One needs to go to western sources to find out more details on the bombings, which appear to be suicide bombings by IS.
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In a recent poll by the Palestine Center for Public Opinion in partnership with The Washington Institute of Near East Policy, a large majority of Palestinians said that the top priority for the next five years should be either "regaining all of historical Palestine for the Palestinians from the river to the sea" or "achieving a one state solution" - both of which would eliminate the Jewish state.
Moreover, when asked about ending the conflict with Israel permanently, a majority in both the West Bank (56%) and Gaza (54%) say “the conflict should not end, and resistance should continue until all of historic Palestine is liberated.”
The survey did say that most Palestinians don't expect this kind of victory, but the important part is that they have never been taught that peace with Israel is a desirable solution - but only the best they might be able to do because Israel is too strong to be dislodged.
The poll results came out nearly a month ago. One would hope that this is considered newsworthy by the mainstream media, but obviously it isn't.
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In June, Nazmi Al Jubeh, Associate Professor of History and Archaeology, Birzeit University, told a UN conference in Geneva that there was no scientific evidence linking Jews to Jerusalem.
This is the state of Palestinian academia.
But I found another article of Jubeh's apparently from 2006 where he discusses Palestinian identity, and while he insists it is a real thing, his supporting evidence says otherwise.
Excerpts:
The Palestinian people are not different from other Greater Syrian (Bilad al-Sham) peoples. They are the result of accumulated ethnic, racial, and religious groups, who once lived, conquered, occupied, and passed through this strip of land. Wars and invasions have never totally replaced the local population in any period of history; they rather added to, mixed with and reformulated the local identity. The Palestinian people are the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Jabousites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Aramaeans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Turks, the Crusaders, and the Kurds, who once settled, conquered, occupied or just passed through Palestine.
The question is whether Palestinians could reflect their identity in a different manner than they do now. I think the answer is yes. The artificial division of Greater Syria was imposed on the people. If there had been no Sykes-Picot Agreement, I am not sure that the Palestinian people would have chosen an independent state as a container of their identity. ...The idea of an independent Palestinian state was raised quite recently; as a matter of fact, the Palestinian national movement continued to market the conflict as an “Arab-Israeli” one and not as a “Palestinian-Israeli” one. The idea of the Palestinian independent state was raised in 1973 in the aftermath of the October War and specific international, regional, and national political developments; in 1974 the idea became the vehicle of the political program of the PLO. Since then and until now (I do not know for how long) Palestinian life has been completely organized according to it.
With the establishment of the PLO and the different resistance organizations, mainly in the 1960s, Palestinian identity went through an intensive politicization process. The PLO exceeded its national and regional importance, reaching wider circles all over the world. With the PLO, the Palestinian identity became “revolutionary” or at least designated as such. The Palestinian became a young man/woman wearing the kufiyya and carrying a machine gun. The PLO faced a complicated challenge, namely how to unify a nation and to develop a shared identity for people(s) living under different political regimes and living in different socio-economic contexts, Jordanian, Egyptian, Israeli, in addition to the regional and international diasporas. The PLO actually implemented different political, cultural, and social programs and worked very hard to strengthen, shape, reshape and develop a national identity, vis-à-vis an Arab identity, with the aim of creating a fighting nation seeking freedom. This, in the mid-sixties, was a dreamed approach, but it led to very tangible results. The shared political aspiration, which was not easy to maintain and to gather people around it, was efficiently used. This aspiration became the major vehicle in forming the current “Palestinian identity”. ...This hard work also led to recognition of the Palestinian people, first by the Arabs and then, slowly, by the rest of the international community.
Even though other parts of his essay claims otherwise, he's pretty much admitting that there was no Palestinian people - either self-identified of externally-recognized - until the 1970s, when the PLO effectively created them. And his description of Palestinian identity before the 1960s does not indicate anything unique or different about them compared to the larger Arab identity of the region. Bu his watered down criteria, Palestinian identity is no more specific than "Delaware identity" would be - a bunch of people who happen to live in a region but share no other unique characteristics.
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Two Palestinian policemen were killed in an explosion at a checkpoint near the Al-Dahdouh junction in Gaza City, Palestinian police spokesman Iyad Al-Bazam said.
Al-Bazam said that another explosion targeted a police checkpoint on the Al-Rasheed coastal road in Al-Sheikh Ajleen area, west of Gaza City, leaving a number of injuries.
He said that the police forces and security services are continuing to investigate the sites of the blasts.
A state of alert was declared to all security and police services.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the "martyrs" in the first explosion were Majid Nadeem, 32, and Alaa Ziad Gerabel, also 32. Two other men and a woman were injured.
Looks like Hamas has some internal enemies who are willing to kill.
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Anyone who keeps abreast of the growing academic field of Mizrahi/Sephardic studies (Mizrahi: oriental, from the Middle East; Sephardic: originating in pre-Inquisition Spain) cannot help noticing that the vast majority of papers focus on the purported “discrimination” or “racism” of the Ashkenazi establishment.
Typical is this paper by one Sarah Louden, “Israeli Nationalism: the Constructs of Zionism and its Effect on Inter-Jewish Racism, Politics, and Radical Discourse.” It has 455 views, more than any other paper in its genre. It pulls no punches in attacking the “racism” of Zionism. Its sources are almost entirely Mizrahi anti-Zionists like Ella Shohat.
Shohat, a professor at New York University, made her name by applying Edward Said’s theory of “Orientalism” to Israel, claiming that both Mizrahi Jews and the Arabs are victims of the West (Ashkenazim).
Mizrahi Jews and Arabs are assumed to have more in common with each other that Jews from the East have with Jews from the West. The former, Shohat and her ilk contend, were “torn away” from their comfortable “Arab” environment by Zionism and colonialism and turned into involuntary enemies.
These academics widely assume that Mizrahi Jews in Israel support the Likud and right-wing parties to “get their own back” against the Labour-dominated Ashkenazi establishment.
But Louden and those like her hardly ever mention the elephant in the room: The subliminal memory of Arab and Muslim persecution suffered by parents and grandparents driven from the Arab world.
Is is not plausible that Mizrahi Jews view the rocket attacks and bombings afflicting Israel as just the latest chapter in a long history of Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism? That they vote Likud because they believe that only the right can deliver the necessary tough response?
The Palestinian Authority in the past two years has lodged dozens of complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague over the Jewish state’s behavior, most recently calling the court’s attention to the approval of 650 new housing units for a village north of Jerusalem. In these instances, Israel has responded with what it terms “informal cooperation,” in which its lawyers meet with court officials to try to convince them that the charges are bogus. Avi Bell argues that this is the wrong approach, and that Jerusalem should instead imitate the U.S., which has successfully stymied equally bogus attempts to prosecute it:
The American strategy [involves] a complete refusal to cooperate with the ICC, anchored in U.S. legislation; a campaign to delegitimize the ICC . . . as an undemocratic, unaccountable, illegitimate institution that endangers the sovereignty of the United States and the constitutional rights of its citizens; and concrete threats against the ICC, beginning with diplomatic and economic sanctions . . . and ending in a threat to liberate Americans with force should they be arrested at the request of the ICC.
The ICC prosecutor, [meanwhile], who has already surrendered to Palestinian demands and opened a preliminary investigation against Israeli “criminals,” can be expected to request permission from the ICC judges to open a full investigation. . . . Israeli lawyers tasked by the government with dealing with the ICC challenge are convinced that legal responses that failed everywhere else in the world will suddenly come to their country’s aid.
Iraq has submitted a list of voluntary pledges in its bid for re-election to a seat on the UN Human Rights Council for 2020-2022. Following are five of Iraq’s most absurd claims, contrasted with the reality.
Iraq’s UN Pledge #1: “Iraq strives to ensure harmony among cultures, religions and civilizations through respect, tolerance and solidarity to eliminate hate speech and disrespect to any kind of cultural differences.”
Reality: When Miss Iraq Sarah Idan took the floor at the UN Human Rights Council to support peace with Israel, the Iraqi Parliament’s Security and Defense Committee reportedly called for her Iraqi citizenship to be revoked, labeling her advocacy a “crime.”
Iraq’s UN Pledge #2: “Iraq emphasizes the role of Civil Society Organizations and other stakeholders as main partners towards developing the work of the Human Rights Council and permit those partners to address the Council on human rights issues.”
Reality: According to a December 2018 report by Minority Rights Group International and the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights, “the outbreak of large-scale popular protests in Basra and other Iraqi cities has led to a wave of violent repression of civilian activists.”
Iraq’s UN Pledge #3: “Iraq reiterates its belief in the universality of Human Rights and the unwavering commitment to its principles, in terms of upholding the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights, in accordance with the mandate of the Human Rights Council.”
Reality: According to Freedom House‘s 2019 listing of Freedom in the World, Iraq is ranked as “Not Free”, with a score of 32/100.
A guest post by Victor Muslin. This is part 2 - EoZ
It is common wisdom that approximately 10% of students on a typical campus are committed supporters of Israel and 20% of students are committed anti-Zionists whose minds cannot be changed by facts or arguments. Therefore, pro-Israel students have been advised to concentrate on winning over the remaining 70% of the undecided. The problem with this strategy is that it assumes that the "undecided" are unbiased and would be potentially interested in joining either side if it were not for their ignorance. However, there are other, more significant reasons why these students have not taken sides. Many are apathetic and not interested in Israeli-Palestinian issues; their minds cannot be changed by any tactic that requires an investment of effort to learn the truth. The rest feel that joining the pro-Israel side would be uncool and would damage their social standing. This is where the perverse notion of intersectionality—pervasive on campus but largely ignored by liberal professional advice-givers—plays a huge role. The threat of this pernicious ideology that aligns every group against Jews cannot be overstated. To be a part of social justice circles students must demonstrate that they are anti-Israel.
Intersectionality is a key reason why pro-Israel Jews have lost ground on campus and in society at large. By using intersectionality, Islamists have hijacked the good intentions of otherwise decent people and have made antisemitism palatable. By linking together unrelated—often contradictory—grievances, Islamists have weaponized intersectionality and have infiltrated every social justice movement, assigning every possible nasty quality to Israel supporters—and Jews in general—in order to exclude them from participation in social justice causes. By positioning anti-Zionism as a purely political issue Islamists inoculated themselves against legitimate charges of antisemitism or racism.
By combining intersectionality with what they falsely claim to be a "political disagreement", Islamists defanged traditional tactics that relied on shaming and social pressure. Together with the identitarian progressives, Islamists undermined and inverted Western social norms that open liberal societies traditionally used to restrain the virus of hate. Thus, once the scarlet letter had been blotted out, it became impossible to generate bad publicity to inflict reputational damage on universities promoting or tolerating Zionophobia. As long as the universities could plausibly claim to be on the forefront of other social justice causes—such as diversity and inclusion—and as long as their faculty and students were careful to lambast "Zionists" rather than "Jews," they were insulated from ignominy and were free to spread the new antisemitism. The antisemitic absolution has been purchased with intersectional indulgence that allowed to slander, demonize, delegitimize, and apply a double standard to the only Jewish state in the world and the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. The problem with academia goes deeper than Zionophobia, but antipathy to Jews and Israel—"the Jew among nations"—is usually the first manifestation.
Despite a mountain of advice, Zionophobia on campuses has been getting worse and more virulent. One would think that this calls for some introspection and that the professional advice-givers would step back and evaluate why the trend continues in the wrong direction. Perhaps, instead of the same old "more education", "more engagement", "more listening", "more nuance", "more positivity", "more Israel-is-cool" advice, it would pay to first determine why the advice given so far has not produced the expected results? Sadly, this is either not happening or, if it is, no new strategies based on data-driven assessments and results-oriented success metrics have been implemented.
Bizarrely, some professional advice-givers disregard overwhelming evidence and believe that the situation on campus has actually improved. A year ago another member of Columbia University's chapter of Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF) and I met with the National Campus Outreach Director of a major Jewish organization to discuss potential synergies. During the unproductive and frustrating conversation, we were repeatedly advised to let the "professionals" handle the situation on our campus because, having attended numerous conferences, they were better equipped for it. We were told that the role of alumni should be limited to supporting functions, specifically, to exhibiting their materials and promoting this particular organization on Columbia's prestigious campus. After an hour of getting nowhere, we asked in exasperation whether the National Campus Outreach Director thought that the situation on campus improved over the last one, three, or five years due to the strategies she was advocating. To our amazement the Director indeed believed that the situation on campus had improved because she and her colleagues had done an effective job. At this point we politely said "thank you" and walked out. This is what is called "drinking too much of one's own Kool-Aid."
Pro-Israel students are constantly bombarded by negative messages
about Israel. Here are the posters from the Israeli Apartheid Week at Columbia
University (for more information on these items click here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).
Besides a delusional lack of self-assessment, pro-Israel advocacy on campus suffers from stale, ineffective strategies and defensive, measured tactics that make the pro-Israel advocates—both students and adults—appear tentative. These approaches are no match for the brazen commitment of the obnoxious anti-Israel brigade.
In part 3 we will give some different advice that does actually work. For more information about Zionophobia in academia and specifically at Columbia University and Barnard College, please visit https://www.cu-monitor.com/
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Elder of Ziyon
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