Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, September 22, 2019

How even a Rosh Hashana greeting from the PLO's @ErakatSaeb is antisemitic

At first glance, this greeting for the Jewish New Year by PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat seems to be a nice gesture:

On the Eve of the Jewish New Year Nemah and I would like to extend our best wishes for a happy , peaceful and good year for all those who follow the Jewish faith , and a happy and good year for all .
— Dr. Saeb Erakat الدكتور صائب عريقات (@ErakatSaeb) September 20, 2019

But notice is wording. He is not wishing a happy New Year to Jews or the Jewish people, but to "all those who follow the Jewish faith."

Because the official position of the PLO is that there is no such thing as a Jewish people. In the PLO's own words:

Recognizing the Jewish state implies recognition of a Jewish people and recognition of its right to self-determination. Those who assert this right also assert that the territory historically associated with this right of self-determination (i.e., the self-determination unit) is all of Historic Palestine. Therefore, recognition of the Jewish people and their right of self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people’s claim to all of Historic Palestine.

According to the PLO, Judaism is merely a religion, because to admit the truth that Jews are a people implies that Jews have a right to a land like all other peoples - and the Jewish claim to their land predates the Arab claim, making it stronger than the flimsy Palestinian claim as a recently created "people."

Denying that the Jews are a people is antisemitic.

So even something meant to be as innocent as a greeting to Jews is a subtle attempt to deny Jews their historic connection to the land, a connection that is mentioned countless times in the high holiday prayers.

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09/21 Links: Melanie Phillips: In a deadlocked election, the real winners are Israeli Arabs; Palestinians in bid to secure renewal of UNRWA mandate; The Kremlin's persecution of Jews

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: In a deadlocked election, the real winners are Israeli Arabs

Israeli Arabs are poorly served by their elected members of Knesset. According to a recent survey by researchers at Tel Aviv University, crime, unemployment, welfare, and the community’s dire housing crisis top Israeli Arabs’ concerns.

Their Knesset members, however, are interested only in political posturing that bashes Israel, behaving as a kind of disloyal fifth column inside the Knesset intent upon harming the state to whose legislature they have been elected.

MK Ahmad Tibi, for example, does not support Israel as a Jewish state, opposes the Law of Return and has challenged the Jewish religious symbols on the national flag.

Former MK Hanin Zoabi has walked out of Knesset during the singing of “Hatikvah,” claims that the Israel Defense Forces are a greater danger than the possibility of Iranian nuclear weapons, and has said that Palestinians who kidnap Israeli civilians are not terrorists because such actions are their only alternative to suffering under occupation.

Before April’s election, some Israeli Arabs were quoted bitterly criticizing the Arab List MKs.

“It didn’t represent us, and it did great damage to the [average] Arab citizen who wants to integrate,” said one resident of Abu Ghosh, an Arab village near Jerusalem. “The infrastructure in the Arab communities needs to be taken care of, and they [the Arab lawmakers] aren’t dealing with it.

“We recognize the existence of the only democratic country in the Middle East and want to be a part of the country. And we’re proud of it. We, Israeli Arabs, exist with our Jewish brothers. Not coexist, exist.”

Those living in east Jerusalem, where civic status falls into an unhappy legal limbo under uneasy Israeli sovereignty over that part of the city, are by default Israeli residents but not citizens.

Officially, they are citizens of Jordan. Most choose not to exercise the right to which their residency entitles them to vote in Jerusalem’s municipal elections.

But Jerusalem’s city hall is currently swamped by applications from Israeli Arabs in east Jerusalem who are keen to activate the right they enjoy under Israeli law to convert their residency into Israeli citizenship.

They want to be Israelis. They don’t want to be citizens of a future Palestinian state.

Kevin D. Williamson: The Iran Dilemma, the Saudi Dilemma, and the Iran–Saudi Dilemma

The United States has enough firepower at its command that it can afford to wear its idealism on its sleeve.

Is the United States going to go to war against Iran on behalf of Saudi Arabia? Probably not.

Should it?

Probably not.

The Saudi regime is, to be plain about it, detestable. It is wildly corrupt and horrifyingly repressive, it tangles together sundry absolutisms and fanaticisms (religious, nationalist, monarchist) into a mess of diplomatic and military trouble, it is duplicitous, and — perhaps most dangerous of all — in spite of its aspirational absolutism, it cannot even control its own contradictory internal constituencies, which is why the Saudi elite cultivates Islamic terrorism with one hand while fighting it with the other. Americans invested a lot of hope and diplomatic currency in the belief that crown prince Mohammed bin Salman was going to turn out to be the great reformer that the West keeps hoping will emerge in the Islamic world, and he’s shaping up to be just another Arab caudillo, if a slicker and more intelligent specimen than the general run of them. There is not much there to hang American hopes on.

But the Iranians are worse. At least, that is the conventional point of view in Washington. The question of what is worth fighting for sometimes is distinct from the question of what is worth fighting against.

And that, fundamentally, has been the argument underpinning continued U.S. support for Saudi Arabia, which is put forward as the great counterweight to the forces of jihad and chaos in Tehran. It is classical great-gaming, the enemy-of-my-enemy thinking that — while not always wrong and occasionally even necessary — has led the United States into so much trouble in the Muslim world, with so many unintended consequences. The legend that the United States “created al-Qaeda” is not exactly true, in the way it usually is put forward, but it is not entirely an invention, either.

The rat bastards in Riyadh, we keep telling ourselves, are our rat bastards — mostly, and most of the time, when they are not murdering columnists for American newspapers or torturing human-rights advocates as a prelude to raping and murdering them or launching ill-advised wars on their neighbors. This so-called foreign-policy realism (which can be very unrealistic) is what is used to paper over both the domestic abuses of the Saudi state and, more important, its habit of acting in a way that is inconsistent with long-term American interests in the region. Of course the Saudi leaders are vicious, depraved, and fundamentally anti-American, the story goes, but they are not quite as vicious, depraved, or anti-American as their Iranian counterparts.

Book review: 'After ISIS'

As Frantzman leads us through the sequence of events that slowly but surely squeezed ISIS out of the vast areas of Iraq and Syria that it had originally conquered, he provides an informed commentary on their impact. He embraces issues ranging from the effect on Europe of the influx of refugees from the Middle East, to the success of the Kurds’ peshmerga fighters against ISIS, the subsequent boost to their independence aspirations, followed by the efforts by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to remove what he saw as a Kurdish threat to his regime.

Frantzman brings to light the temporary battlefield alliances that were formed and disintegrated as the US-led coalition slowly crushed ISIS, and also with more profound changes in political thinking in the region, for example how Iran’s growing influence encouraged Saudi Arabia and the UAE to look increasingly toward Israel as an ally, and how it changed the strategic thinking of Jordan and Egypt.

In considering whether the post-ISIS era would simply replicate the worst days of al-Qaida terrorism under Osama bin Laden, he is not wholly pessimistic. He sees hope in the rise of a younger generation of Middle East leaders that came of age in the 1980s or 1990s, in an era of US hegemony, taking over from leaders who had run the region since the colonial era. “With the Saddam Husseins, Mubaraks, Gaddafis, and Salehs out of the way,” he writes, “there may be a new way forward.”

The basis for Frantzman’s qualified optimism lies in his belief that the whole ISIS episode was a unique phenomenon – a one-off. In his words: “It appears that the power of ISIS was sui generis. A group like this will not appear again. This was the apogee of Islamist extremism and jihadist groups.”

“After ISIS” is a comprehensive, insightful, thought-provoking account of how an exceptionally ruthless and brutal organization succeeded in capturing the imagination of scores of thousands of Muslims the world over, how it rose to control large parts of Syria and Iraq and rule over millions, and how finally it was defeated. For anyone wishing to understand how this all came about and what might follow, “After ISIS” is essential reading.

09/20 Links Pt2: Why Are the Left’s Favorite Muslims Anti-Semites?; BDS founder Omar Barghouti, due to speak at Labour conference fringe, fails to secure UK entry visa;Their Boys, Not Ours

From Ian:

The New Anti-Semitism is the Old Anti-Semitism

And when the Nazi Holocaust confronted the world with the ghastly handiwork of unbridled evil, the world embraced the Jewish people as the poster children for the overarching moral standards that govern civilized society. The innate empathy of mankind began to emerge. Anti-Semitism became as indefensible as infanticide.

Tragically, the pendulum has swung back again.

In part, memory fades. More significantly, politics has come to replace religion as the guiding doctrine of mankind. The principles introduced to the world by the Jews have been hijacked and conscripted to defend an ideology of utopianism. Judge every person favorably has mutated into non-judgmentalism. Charity has morphed into entitlement. Liberty has devolved into libertinism. Civility has been weaponized into political correctness.

Most perversely, Israel has been compared to Nazi Germany.

As moral autonomy supplants moral duty, the traditional values of Judaism become worse than irrelevant; they become a threat. The mere suggestion of higher moral authority annuls the right of the individual to define his own moral code. Traditional values become a form of heresy, and all heretics must die.

Ideologies become entrenched. Truth becomes subjective. Civil discourse disintegrates. Rhetoric becomes weaponry. Society descends into empathy deficit disorder.

Inevitably, violence follows as bullying becomes the new normal.

The resurgence of Jew-hatred, therefore, is a symptom of the moral decline of man, not into immorality but amorality, the rejection of moral absolutes and embrace of relativistic moral autonomy.

Ironically, anti-Semitism, has much more to do with non-Jewish society than it does with either the Jew or his Judaism. It is the bully’s reflexive response in the face of moral maturity on the playground of human society.

Is there a solution? Of course.

How Pro-Israel Students On Campus Can Fight Back Against Jew-Hatred

Do my fellow proud Zionists see the problem here? The Palestinian-Arab side of the argument may be genocidal and jihad-loving, but at least they present a morally framed narrative (no matter how grossly immoral that narrative actually is). The pro-Jewish/pro-Israel side, by contrast, tends toward an AIPAC-inspired, overly defensive posture that relies on a non-substantive, purely procedural narrative.

Interestingly, then, the fight against Israel-inspired Jew-hatred on the university campus can actually learn much from the ongoing conservative dialogue between the New York Post’s Sohrab Ahmari and National Review’s David French. Procedure-based arguments, especially when confronted with a substance-based argumentative opposition, are unlikely to be sufficient; the only way to truly make a dialectic dent is to argue on the substantive merits of an issue and argue in overtly moral terms. I wrote as much in June: "Advocates for Israel on the American university campus must transition away from pleas for 'peace' and 'tolerance' and toward arguments grounded in the inherent, biblically derived morality of a Jewish state existing between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea."

This simply must be the path forward for Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus who are invested in helping to turn back the tide of rising on-campus anti-Semitism. Jewish and Zionist students must make the moral, historically informed case that Zionism — which is simply the Jewish right to self-determination in the Jews' biblical, ancestral homeland — is an inherently beautiful phenomenon. These courageous students must argue that the culmination of Herzl's Zionist vision, the establishment in 1948 of a sovereign Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael for the very first time in millennia, represents one of the most profoundly beautiful developments in human civilization over the course of the last century. These students must advance direct, overt, morally based arguments that defend the beauty of that Zionism. These students must also advance historically and legally informed arguments that rebut the utter mendacity that is "Nakba" and other purported Palestinian-Arab "national" humiliations.

Appeasement and unilateral disarmament — here, in terms of the use of overt moral terminology — never work. The students who take the lead on this initiative will necessarily be bold. They will be valiant. And they will face mighty resistance from the leftist/Islamist alliance all across the nation. But these students will have the benefit of standing for truth, morality, and, fundamentally, justice. It's time to get the ball rolling and begin to defeat on-campus Jew-hatred in America.

BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti, due to speak at Labour conference fringe, fails to secure UK entry visa

The co-founder of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, who was due to speak at a number of fringe events at the Labour party conference, has been denied an entry visa to the UK.

Omar Barghouti had been due to speak at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign event in Brighton on Sunday, alongside prominent Labour party politicians including Diane Abbott, the Shadow Home Secretary and Lisa Nandy, chair of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East.

Len McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite union, and Josie Bird, president of the Unison union, were also due to speak alongside him.

However, on Friday, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) announced that Mr Barghouti had been unable to travel to the UK “because his visa was abnormally delayed by the British government without explanation.”

The PSC blamed his lack of a visa on “growing efforts by Israel and its allies to suppress Palestinian voices and the movements for Palestinan rights.” The organisation added that Mr Barghouti would speak via a video link-up instead.

A Jordanian poet named Rania Dogan, who has published a number of books, writes a poem in As Sawsana that covers a number of current events.

Google translates poetry very poorly, but even with the unreadable parts one gets a pretty good idea of where Dogan, and probably many other Jordanians, are coming from.

The smell of Netanyahu is everywhere and Ivanka perfumes and skirts

Short Mossad walks in our phones ..... and our cars follow

Cooks in Alwats August ..and Alnmimh ... and sometimes myopia

The media is controlled by the Jews

Our radio ..... penetrates our homes .. And our cars know about us more than we know

About ourselves

Our fate is all dependent on the Israeli elections

Century deal and included the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea

Have mercy and have mercy

A crisis between teachers and the government in Jordan is worsening ... stalled

Life in Jordan and education .. That home did not have only

Education ... and salt ... millions of students and teachers .... stopped them

Wheel of life ... The teacher stood on the corner of the dream to fight .. And congestion

My people because of the difficulty of life .... and circumstances .. And life that

It became impossible .. and became impossible

In Egypt, it was a million to overthrow the police rule of the military Bastar… They killed Morsi and his legitimacy. They served his son's heart to go to him.

Bashar al-Assad wanders stranded in Syria after all his crimes in Syria

It's boredom again

Saudi Arabia is now sinking oil wells in it .... and lose half of its production and it is difficult for them now to collect their papers

The UAE stood half way ... looking at the veins of her hands smelling the martyrs of Yemen

Trump with a square face .... the world moves right north waving the stick to Iran .. and war on it ... and sanctions to leave Saudi Arabia in a dilemma ..... after being implicated

In the war in Yemen ... and sold it arms ... and looted its goods

Erdogan from far away wants to help. Qatar, Kuwait and Muscat are trying to save China ... China started to take an economic role ... and Putin is reading a wall of

The Quran

Israel .... Israel right-wing Jews .... and left-wing Jews

Beware ... Injustice Beware that Trump is an ally because he may fall in the first election ... Don't make al-Sisi ally ... Because his fall is close ... Don't reach out

Bashar on anything we reward

Beware .. and beware ........ deal of the century

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Jews and Arabs donate kidneys to each other when original recipients were not suitable

From YNet (Hebrew):

Twenty-four hours before the dramatic moment the polls opened, two Jewish men and two Arab women faced their own dramatic moment: a chain of operations that saved the lives of two of them. Ido from the religious community of Hoshaya intended to donate a kidney altruistically to Israel, which he did not know before, but unfortunately he was found unsuitable for matching. So did Aida Mashfaram, who intended to donate a kidney to her sister-in-law Hanan, but the results of the tests showed that this would not be possible. At Rambam Hospital, the four proposed a "chain of transplants", which led to Aida donating her kidney to Israel, while Ido donated a kidney to Hanan.

Israel Belban (35), a resident of Kiryat Bialik, needed a kidney transplant due to hereditary disease. He says that four years ago he began receiving dialysis, and since then his life has changed: "I stopped working and almost every day came to Rambam Hospital for four hours. At one point I was hospitalized for six months, I was a transplant candidate and was waiting for a donation.The Matnat Chayim organization called me one day,"he recalls the day he was informed that a kidney had finally been found for him, just before he was disappointed: " They said there was a potential donor, but unfortunately in the tests we conducted he wasnot fit to donate to me, "he said.

At the same time, and without knowing each other, Hanan, a Muslim from Shfaram, lay in the hospital waiting for a donation from Aida Husari, her 52-year-old sister-in-law. "I got a genetic test which told me that the kidney was not right for her," Aida said.

The transplant operation performed by surgeon Dr. Ahmed Asalia and vascular surgeon Dr. Tony Karam took twelve hours. The crossover was indeed successful, and this week the donors and recipients met. "I met Aida in the hospital, thanked her and bought her a gift and chocolates," Israel said excitedly. Aida added: "I am very happy to have saved the lives of two people. The racism of the politicians is killing us - we have learned to live together, Arabs and Jews."

Rabbi Yeshayahu Haber, chairman of the Matnat Haim Association, which has been responsible for hundreds of transplants in recent years, welcomed the special transplant: "This transplant is a wonderful union between the different parts of the nation has been exciting and uplifting: Jews and Muslims, religious and secular, women and men. That is the beauty of a gift of life, and I hope we will continue to connect and unite the people through an altruistic life-saving. "

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09/20 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: The strategic cost of Israel’s political instability; Armenia to open embassy in Israel by 2020; Hezbollah member arrested for scouting possible terror sites in New York, Boston

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The strategic cost of Israel’s political instability

When Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman abruptly resigned his position as defense minister last November and started the countdown to the Knesset elections in April, he plunged Israel into a state of political instability. Following the April elections, by refusing to serve in a government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and so forcing Israel into a second election, Lieberman prolonged the instability he instigated.

Tuesday’s elections ended in deadlock. Neither major party can form a governing majority. And so, there is no end in sight for the instability Lieberman provoked and prolonged.

Israel’s prolonged political volatility and uncertainty have had a disastrous impact on Israel’s strategic flexibility. Indeed, it has induced strategic paralysis. Israel cannot respond in a meaningful way to threats or take advantage of strategic opportunities that present themselves.

The implications of this dire state of affairs were brought to bear twice in one day during the campaign. In a press conference last Tuesday, Netanyahu announced his intention to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley after the elections. Netanyahu’s announcement included the revelation that US President Donald Trump supports the move. American officials backed his claim after the fact.

This was a stunning development. No US administration has ever supported Israel’s right to assert its sovereign rights in Judea and Samaria without Palestinian permission until now.

But the media and Netanyahu’s political opponents on the left and right ignored this basic fact and instead derided his statement as nothing more than a cheap election stunt to rally his base.

In a way, they were right. After all, all Netanyahu did was make a promise. But it was due to Israel’s strategic paralysis that he had no other option.

Where did Bibi go wrong? - analysis

‘Six things does the Lord hate,” observed King Solomon, and “seven are an abomination unto him” (Proverbs 6:17-19). Three of those – “a proud look, a lying tongue,” and “him that sows discord among brethren” – add up to Bibi Netanyahu’s moral meltdown and political demise.

Pride made Israel’s longest-serving prime minister misjudge the mainstream electorate’s size, priorities and feelings, which under his sleepy radar traveled steadily from respect through doubt to wrath.

The social discord he sowed as a matter of ploy and habit needs no elaboration, nor does the “lying tongue” he deployed while libeling almost everyone, from judges and cops to the entire press.

At this writing it is too early to say that Netanyahu’s 37-year public career is over. It is not too early to say that a critical mass of the electorate this week announced the beginning of its end.

Having entered this election with 41 lawmakers (Likud’s 35, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon’s four, and Moshe Feiglin’s equivalent of two) Netanyahu lost a fifth of this original electorate. Yes, in terms of parliamentary blocs we face a cloud that will take time to scatter, but on the personal level this poll produced a resounding vote of no confidence in a leader who lost touch with his nation and task.

NETANYAHU MISJUDGED the voters on three planes: the social, the institutional and the ideological.

Socially, he assumed that average Israeli Jews see Israeli Arabs as fair game. In his superficial reading of Israeli society – a binary us-and-them dichotomy between “the Left” and “the Right” – the former are ready to give “the Arabs” everything and for no price, while the latter trust not one Arab, will cheer any anti-Arab broadside, and will prize whoever delivers it.

Appeasement vs. incitement: two takeaways from the Israeli election

We don’t yet have a prime minister candidate, nor a clear path to a government. Both will take some time. But there are already valuable and useful lessons that have emerged from this week’s election.

The first relates to Israel’s Arab population. For years, the Arab Knesset members focused on nationalistic issues in the parliament, serving as the mouthpiece of the Palestinian Authority in decrying “the occupation,” criticizing the Israel Defense Force, and not indicating any desire to be partners in the leadership of Israel.

Arab MK’s would not even recommend anyone to be prime minister lest they be accused of having any association with Jewish candidates from Zionist parties. The recognition that their representatives would not be working for their interests and needs, and would not even consider joining a government which is where real societal reforms can be made, played a significant role in the low Arab voter turnout in past elections.

But in this election, MK Ayman Odeh, chairman of the Joint Arab List, changed course. He gave an interview in Yediot Aharonot just a few weeks ago in which he said, “I want to lead Arab politics from a politics of protest to a politics of influence. We are 20% of Israel’s population, and we are needed to bring equality, democracy and social justice to Israel.”

While Odeh ruled out the possibility of joining a Netanyahu-led government, he presented four conditions for entering a Gantz-led government:

“The first is the construction of a new Arab city and redoing the rules to allow for more Arab construction and stopping demolitions in Arab areas. Second is a government focus on fighting crime in Arab areas, including an operation to gather all the weapons that people own in the Arab population. Third is in the welfare realm including building a public hospital in an Arab city, and raising stipends for the elderly. Finally, there must be direct negotiations with the Palestinian leaders to bring an end to the occupation and to establish a Palestinian state, alongside canceling the Nation-State Law.”

The first three conditions focus on needs also relevant to the Israeli community and could be easily accepted by Benny Gantz. While the last condition is more complicated, the very fact that their leader is placing real day-to-day issues on the table as a possible entry into a government energized much of the Arab population, making them feel that it was worthwhile to vote to try to place their representatives in positions of influence. And that led to a larger Arab turnout than usual, which enabled them to stay in double-digit mandates despite the high turnout throughout the country.

Who are Israel's official enemies? This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer

David Halbfinger in the New York Times writes:

For three years now, Asmaa Azaizeh has run a popular Arabic-language book festival in Haifa, a mixed city that has become a vibrant culinary and cultural capital for Palestinian citizens of Israel.

But as this year’s festival opens on Friday, it is being held without hundreds of titles Ms. Azaizeh wanted to showcase. Israeli border officials barred them from being imported from Jordan, under an 80-year-old law that predates the existence of the state of Israel.

Arabic translations of George Orwell, James Joyce and William Faulkner; of Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag and Nelson Mandela; of Shakespeare, D.H. Lawrence, Orhan Pamuk, and Agatha Christie were all rejected and sent back to a Jordanian distributor.

The reason? The books were printed in Beirut.

An Israeli law that dates back to World War II-era British Mandatory Palestine forbids trading with the enemy, and Israel applies that policy to Lebanese, Syrian and Iraqi publishers, among others.

The books’ content is not the issue, Ms. Azaizeh said. Only the location of the publisher — despite the fact that she was purchasing the books from a company in Jordan, with which Israel does have a peace treaty and trade relations.

The law in question is the British 1939 Trading with the Enemy Act, which defines an enemy as "any State, or Sovereign of a State, at war with His Majesty," among others.

Israel maintained the law upon independence in 1948.

But who is an enemy now? This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.

Israel's laws don't formally provide a list of enemies. The closest they have come from two laws.

The 1954 Law against Infiltration lists Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen as countries that could be the source of infiltrators. (Jordan and Egypt were on the list in 1954 but removed after the peace treaties.) This seems to be the source of not allowing books from Lebanon.

The other law is the Citizenship Law, which states that “the Administrative Court may, at the request of the minister of interior, cancel the Israeli citizenship of a person who… perpetrated an act which involves breach of faith to the State of Israel.” It also forbids “obtaining citizenship or the right to settle permanently in" various countries. One of the footnotes updated in 2008 list includes the names of Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and the area of the Gaza Strip.

This is not a formalized list of enemies, but it is a reasonable working list. From a legal perspective, it is unclear if it is official, though.

Notice that even in 2008 it didn't include Gulf states, Morocco, or Algeria.

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If these photos enrage you, you just may be an antisemite

Ma'an, the independent Palestinian news agency, published an article saying that "448 settlers stormed the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Mosque" in the past week.

In English, this means that 448 Jews visited the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. This week there were more Jewish visitors than usual because election day is a holiday in Israel.

Ma'an goes on: "Hundreds of settlers, accompanied by Jewish rabbis, stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa and performed Talmudic rituals, with security protection from the occupation forces."

In case that doesn't anger the Arab audience of the article enough, they published a photo of these storming settlers.

Palestine Today added more of what they consider incendiary images of Jews taking photos in front of the Dome of the Rock, the site where the Jewish Temples were built and destroyed:

Yes, there are more photos of smiling Jews on the Temple Mount on Arab websites than in Jewish news media.

Now keep in mind that photos like this are taken all the time by Christian visitors:

And Muslims take tons of photos - and their selfies can even be taken at night when non-Muslims are banned from the site:

Yet the photos of Christians and Muslims happily posing in front of the iconic dome are not front page news, anywhere.

Only Jews taking the same types of photos, in the same spot, with the same smiles, causes Arabs, Muslims and their fellow travelers to become enraged.

The Arab articles about "storming settlers" invariably mention that they are protected by a group of armed Israeli police.

Now, why is that?

Because religious Jews visiting the site without that protection would be lynched by crowds of Muslims who are incited to murder by daily exposure to articles like this! Arabs are fed a steady diet of incitement, demonizing any Jew who dares to visit the site that was the site of Solomon's Temple 1600 years before Islam existed.

If this isn't antisemitism, what is?

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How English Wikipedia Parrots the Arab Narrative of 1948 (Tomer Ilan)

Guest post by Tomer Ilan:

Wikipedia is an extremely powerful tool that has a huge influence on billions of people.

It is the 4^th most popular website (excluding China) with 18 billion page views per month. For many, it is the only encyclopedia they ever use and the main or sole source of information.

Although Wikipedia operates in 285 different languages, English Wikipedia is the most influential, by far. On top of the huge number of native English speakers, many international users turn to English Wikipedia to search for information about subjects related to Israel which are not available in their own language's version.

With regards to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Wikipedia has very different information in the English, Hebrew and Arabic versions of the same article. In most cases the English version fully adopts the Arab narrative.

This bias is apparent, for instance, with regards to articles on Arab villages abandoned in the 1948 war.

As an example, here's a table comparing the Hebrew, English and Arabic versions of the events of 1947-1948 in the village of Al-'Abbasiyya:

Hebrew	English	Arabic
On November 30, 1947, villagers from Al-Abbasiyya attacked a bus, killing 7 Jews.	No mention	No mention
On December 13, 1947, the Irgun attacked the village killing 2 Arabs.	On December 13, 1947 the Irgun attacked the village killing 7 Arabs, mostly women and children.	On December 13, 1947 the Irgun attacked the village killing 7 Arabs, mostly women and children.
In April 1948, Hasan Salama, commander of the “Palestinian Holy War Army” gangs moved his HQ to the village and all civilians left.	No mention	No mention
Irgun captures the village from Arab gangs on May 4, 1948.	No mention	No mention
Jordanian Arab Legion captures the village from Irgun on June 11, 1948.	No mention	No mention
IDF captures the village from the Arab Legion on July 10, 1948.	No mention	No mention
On September 13, 1948, most of the village houses were demolished.	On September 13, 1948, David Ben-Gurion requested the destruction of Al-'Abbasiyya among other Palestinian villages whose inhabitants fled or were expelled.	On September 13, 1948, David Ben-Gurion requested the destruction of Al-'Abbasiyya other Palestinian villages whose inhabitants were expelled.

As this table shows, the English version is almost identical to the Arabic version and both distort the narrative by omitting many critical pieces of information only mentioned in the Hebrew version.

No mention of terrorist attack from Al-Abbasiyya and Jewish fatalities before Irgun retaliated.
Arab fatalities in Irgun attack are 350% higher in the English and Arabic versions.
No mention of “Palestinian Holy War Army” and Arab legion making the village a military base starting from April 1948 in the English and Arabic versions.
No mention of the civilian Arab population fleeing in April 1948 in the English and Arabic versions.
No mention of several battles between Jewish and Arab forces in the village between April and July 1948 in the English and Arabic versions.

Reading the English article, you get the impression that Irgun attacked the village unprovoked, then Israel arbitrarily destroyed it and expelled the inhabitants. It’s like a microcosm of the entire false “Nakba” narrative of so-called “Ethnic Cleansing”.

The terrorist attacks emanating from the village, the fact that civilians left and it became a military base, the illegal invasion and occupation by the Jordanian Legion – are all missing from the English version. As far as the vast majority of people who get their information solely from English Wikipedia – those events never happened.

A quick look at other articles on Arab villages abandoned in 1948 reveals the same phenomenon.

How does that happen? Why is Wikipedia so biased?

There’s a wide belief that in Wikipedia “anyone can edit and improve articles immediately” making Wikipedia accurate using the Wisdom of Crowds. While this may be generally true, it is not the case with regards to articles on the Israeli/Arab conflict on English WIkipedia. Those articles are subject to the “30/500 editing restriction”, also known as Extended Confirmed Protection, which prevents users without 30 days tenure and 500 edits on the English Wikipedia.

Apparently, those senior editors who are authorized to edit English Wikipedia articles on the Conflict are a smaller group, in which anti-Israel users are over-represented, who use Wikipedia rules to block the Wisdom of Crowds and dictate an anti-Israel narrative.

New information which contradicts the Arab narrative is blocked from Wikipedia. For instance, David Collier’s research which unearthed British Mandatory documents debunking the myth of Balad al-Shaykh Massacre were removed from Wikipedia just hours after they were added to the article.

By controlling English Wikipedia, the anti-Israel activists control the narrative and are able to rewrite history.

Supporters of Israel should get involved, achieve the 30/500 status that allows them to edit articles about the Conflict and make English Wikipedia much more accurate and balanced.

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.

09/19 Links Pt2: David Collier: The Guardian – anti-Israel bias, more obsessive and vindictive than you think; Head of European Jewish Association: We're not wanted here

From Ian:

Is Israel Abandoning the Liberal Order? Robert Kagan Says Yes. He's Wrong about Israel, and Wrong about the Liberal Order

Considering Israel’s relationship to what he calls the liberal world order and the new anti-liberal world order peopled by nationalist and authoritarian leaders, Kagan poses the question, “Which side does Israel want to be on?” And he answers: “in recent years Israeli foreign policy has been trending in a decidedly anti-liberal direction,” thus showing that the country actively desires to join the anti-liberal camp.

In justification of this charge, Kagan notes that Israel has pursued and maintained relations with the new leaders around the world whose authoritarian power and politics are replacing, to his dismay, the old liberal international order created by the United States after World War II and again at the end of the cold war. Kagan cites many such leaders: Putin of Russia, Xi of China, Modi of India, Orban of Hungary, and others, including the authoritarian leaders of Middle Eastern countries.

Setting aside the question of whether there are any Middle Eastern leaders besides Netanyahu who are not and have not long been authoritarian, the burden of this account would seem to be completely vitiated by two elements that Kagan himself mentions: first, that the new anti-liberal order is a fact of life, however unfortunate; and second, that Israel, despite its present success, is a tiny country endangered in a truly existential way by truly mortal enemies from its founding 71 years ago down to the present day, most recently in the form of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Indeed, in the course of his essay Kagan goes out of his way to insist on how ultimately small, weak, and thus inconsequential Israel is. He describes it as essentially a burden to the U.S. ever since its founding. Even at present, on his reckoning, were it not for America’s concern for the Jewish state, neither Iran nor Israel’s efforts to defend itself and even others in the region from Iran’s predations would matter to the U.S. Iran itself, he reassures us, is “not yet” a threat to America.

If so, what’s the big deal? The obvious conclusion to be drawn from these facts is that Israel, in order to continue to survive, is adapting to a new order created by forces much greater than its own and very much beyond its control. In so doing, it is behaving the same way other small states must behave, now and always—as a historian like Kagan well knows. From time to time in his essay, he even seems to draw the same conclusion. How, then, does the behavior of this small and ultimately inconsequential state matter as anything more than another sign of our lamentable times? Why Kagan’s preoccupation with Israel, of all the small states faced with the same circumstances?

The Tikvah Podcast: Micah Goodman on Shrinking the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

If you follow Israeli politics, then you know that within the past year, the Jewish state has experienced two deadlocked elections. What explains this political stalemate?

According to Micah Goodman, one of Israel’s leading public intellectuals, Israeli politics is trapped in a Catch-67. Most Israelis have been persuaded by the Right that peace with the Palestinians isn’t feasible and that withdrawal from Judea and Samaria would be a security nightmare. But they are also persuaded by the Left’s argument that Israel’s control over the West Bank poses a demographic time-bomb that threatens the nation’s character as a Jewish and democratic state. They think that establishing a Palestinian state right now would be a disaster and that remaining in the territories would be a disaster.

How can Israel get out of this impossible situation? By abandoning comprehensive peace plans and messianic solutions, argues Goodman. Rather than solving the conflict or ignoring it, Israel ought to focus on shrinking the conflict by improving the day-to-day lives of Palestinians while maintaining an unwavering commitment to national security. In his Altantic essay, “Eight Steps to Shrink the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Goodman describes how Israel can do just that. And in this week’s podcast, he joins Tikvah to explore his vital book and thought-provoking essay.

Better Relations with Israel Are in Pakistan’s Interests

In 2003, Pakistan’s then-dictator Pervez Musharraf floated the idea of establishing diplomatic ties with the Jewish state, a position he has also repeated even after stepping down—although little came of the suggestion. A few weeks ago, the country’s current government told reporters that it is considering an overture to Jerusalem. Ephraim Inbar explains what Islamabad would gain from doing so, and that Israel’s ever-closer friendship with India—Pakistan’s chief rival—is an inducement, not a hindrance, to a thaw between the two countries:

Pakistani national interests dictate better relations with Jerusalem. Israel’s new relationship with India was gradually transformed into what Prime Minister Narendra Modi termed “a strategic partnership.” Israeli technology and arms served the Indian military effort well in the 1999 Kargil war against Pakistan. Moreover, closer Indian-Israeli cooperation after the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks enhanced Delhi’s capacity to deal with Pakistan-sponsored terror. It can be argued that better relations with Israel might balance the intensified Indian-Israeli military ties. . . .

Iran is also a point of convergence. Pakistan fears Iran, its neighbor to the west, less than Israel does. Yet it’s hard to imagine that Islamabad is indifferent to the possibility of having another nuclear-armed neighbor on its western border. In addition, both countries play games with the Baluchi minorities beyond their borders and compete over influence in Afghanistan. Therefore, the Israeli campaign against Iran, which weakens an adversary, is not [inimical] to Pakistani interests. . . .

Israel, a state in quest of international legitimacy for many years, has always welcomed Pakistani overtures. Pakistan is a large Muslim state, and better relations with Islamabad could be useful in further diluting the religious dimension of Israel’s regional conflict. Israel desires a normalization in relations with all capitals of the world. Furthermore, the Pakistani-Saudi special relations could be leveraged to let both states overcome their inhibitions on relations with the Jewish state.

From Naharnet:

Lebanon's Central Bank announced Thursday it had agreed to the self-liquidation request it received from a bank hit by US sanctions last month over ties with Hizbullah.

"Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh announced today he approved the request made by Jammal Trust Bank SAL," the Lebanese state-run National News Agency reported.

On August 29, Washington slapped heavy financial sanctions on JTB, which was accused of acting as a key financial institution for Hizbullah.

The US Treasury said the bank was used for enabling several of the Shiite militant group's financial activities, "including sending payments to families of suicide bombers."

Iran-backed Hizbullah has been a US-designated terrorist group since 1997 and fights alongside the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the neighbouring country's civil war.

One of a handful of Shiite-owned Lebanese banks, JTB had specialised in micro-credit in remote areas of the country's Shiite-majority south, which is also Hizbullah's heartland.

In only a few weeks, the US has managed to definitely hurt Hezbollah's ability to do terror. This is the way things should be done with terror groups.

Looking forward to the next bank in Lebanon to be similarly sanctioned. You can be sure that those banks are now looking very carefully at whether they want to keep all of their customers.

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Racketeer In Hell Despite Shas Promise Of Heaven To Its Voters (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column (delayed) from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Gehinnom, September 19 - A criminal who died this morning after casting his ballot on Tuesday for a party representing Jews of Mizrahi heritage found himself among the damned, even though the party leadership assured the public that supporting them in the election would guarantee a place in the Garden of Eden.

Shimon Levy, 54, perished Thursday in a car accident, just two days after voting for Shas in Israel's parliamentary elections. Shas leaders had repeated a campaign tactic from previous contests, telling their voters that voting for Shas guarantees the voter will enter the Coming World.

Nevertheless, Mr. Levy, who had served six years and paid numerous fines for various corruption and racketeering offenses, ended up in Hell.

"I don't understand," gasped the small-time organized crime associate as his flesh was raked from his body, only to regenerate so it could be raked off once again, over and over. "They said if I voted for Shas I'd go to Gan Eden! I did exactly what the Rabbi said! This isn't fair!"

Shas campaign tactics featured posters and images of the late Rabbi Ovadya Yosef, the party's leader and inspiration until his passing at age 93 in 2013. The campaign invoked the Rabbi's words and messages again and again, including statements that anyone who votes for Shas cements a place in paradise - though such statements run afoul of laws that bar inducements on the part of candidates to get voters to cast ballots in their favor. The party aims to appeal to ethnic solidarity on the part of Mizrahim who feel both proud of their heritage and marginalized by the dominant Ashkenazi cultural elite. That strategy results in the use of tropes that often fuse culture and religion, in a manner that stirs loyalty even from many Mizrahim whose lifestyle departs from religious strictures in significant ways.

Representatives of Shas declined to comment on the discrepancy between the campaign promise and Mr. Levy's posthumous fate, as well as on such promises violating electoral laws. Experts point to various Talmudic passages as possible sources of resolution, noting in particular a section toward the end of Tractate Yoma discussing the circumstances and combinations of repentance, Yom Kippur, and various forms of suffering that can atone for different types of sins.

"All the sources seem to agree that interpersonal sins require that the victim consent to forgive," observed Rabbi Mendel Luphol. "That may be what made the difference in this case, considering all those directly and indirectly affected by Mr. Levy's crimes over the years. I have to wonder, then, about the afterlife prospects of someone who promises people Heaven without disclosing the fine print governing the terms and conditions."

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09/19 Links Pt1: No Principles, No Dignity, No Power, No Deterrence; Updated tally shows Blue and White increase lead over Likud 33-31; Iran’s judo federation calls ban over Israel boycott policy ‘unfair’

From Ian:

MEMRI: No Principles, No Dignity, No Power, No Deterrence

The 9/14 attacks, correctly referred to by Secretary of State Michael Pompeo as "an act of war", is a harsh humiliating blow dealt to the U.S., signaling an American multilevel failure:

First, there was a failure of deterrence. The Iranians took a calculated risk and were proven correct. They view themselves the military regional equals of the US and via their proxies even beyond the region.

American military officials openly betray their fear of Iranian power and retaliatory capability on CENTCOM targets and they thus make Trump's boast that the US is the world's strongest military power, empty posturing In fact it is Iran that is actually deterring the U.S. from any retaliation. Iran relies on its proven ability to act in the local theater while its results have a global ripple effect.

Secondly, it was a failure of U.S. intelligence (military, NSA, CIA and others). Apparently, there was no early warning about an operation that must have had dozens of parties engaged in the decision process, the secret planning and the preparations. Since May 2019, MEMRI has issued several strategic warnings about the Iranian threats to carry out such attacks, based on open Iranian sources.

Thirdly, the successful Iranian attack represented an American technological failure, as not a single cruise missile or drone was intercepted. Iranian Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif ridiculed the U.S., tweeting "Perhaps [the US is] embarrassed that $100s of blns of its arms didn't intercept Yemeni fire".

Fourthly, and most disturbingly, it is a case of political failure - no one in the U.S. administration expected such a bold direct Iranian attack. True, Iran has resorted to proxies to afford it deniability, but now the Iranian leadership has realistically gauged American hesitancy and conflict aversion and believed that Iran could risk making a direct attack, discounting the possibility of strong American retaliation. Considering the global effect of this bold attack, so far, the calculated risk has proven to be a sound bet.

Noah Rothman: No, We Shouldn’t Let Saudi Arabia ‘Fight Its Own Wars’

The principle of reciprocity would logically limit Saudi strikes to the targets responsible for the attack on the Aramco plant in Abqaiq. A tailored response that would be seen as proportionate and, therefore, not worth risking a broader conflict over would be limited to the bases and infrastructure north of the Arabian Peninsula from which the cruise missiles and drones that struck the Saudi refinery over the weekend originated. But Riyadh’s options are not—and, perhaps, should not—be so limited.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and Quds Force soldiers and brass are spread out across the Middle East, and their locations are reportedly known to American officials. Regular Iranian military outposts are in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria, too. Hitting these locations outside Iranian borders would rob Tehran of the claim that its territorial sovereignty was violated, but such an operation would also validate the claim that the Saudis are executing a region-wide strike on the sources of Shiite political authority. That claim could fast become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

These pitfalls are not unknown to American military planners, and the risk these scenarios present arguably outweigh the rewards. In the end, a mission designed to reestablish deterrence and restore balance to the relationship between the Middle East’s two competing regional hegemons could have the precise opposite effect. If such an option is being seriously considered by the president, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that there will be no U.S.-led military response, much less a U.S.-supported military response from one or more of its allies. And that could be disastrous.

Iran’s aggressive behavior follows a clear pattern of escalation. It has executed sophisticated covert operations targeting the global oil supply by disabling and hijacking ships in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz. It has destroyed a $120 million American aerial surveillance drone operating above international waters. And now, it has executed an elaborate assault on a Saudi refinery. Iran is behaving rationally by testing the limits of provocation as a tool of statecraft. Its strategic objective is to stoke anxieties among America’s Middle Eastern and European allies and, ultimately, erode global will to maintain the present suffocating sanctions regime. Eventually, Iran is likely to miscalculate, executing a bloody attack that demands a disproportionate response from the United States. This is an outcome that American policymakers are right to avoid, but not at any cost.

It would be a shame to see Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran derailed by a limited retaliatory strike on Iranian targets, but the alternatives are intolerable. Unfortunately, the Trump administration doesn’t seem to see it that way.

A U.S.-Israeli Defense Pact: How to Ensure That Its Advantages Outweigh Its Disadvantages

The idea of a defense pact between Israel and the U.S. has already been considered several times and rejected. Both sides are cautious about making commitments that would limit their freedom of action and require them to act militarily in contexts that are not viewed as vital by their respective populations.

Israel has reserved the right of nonintervention in conflicts that do not directly affect Israel, preserving its independent decision-making when it comes to using its power, and, above all, upholding the principle that Israel should be able to defend itself by itself.

To date, Israel's expectations of the U.S. in the security domain have gone unfulfilled in a number of cases. According to unwritten understandings, Israel is to deal with threats within its own immediate environment while relying on U.S. assistance in intelligence, equipment, and resources, and the U.S. is supposed to prevent, with Israeli help, the emergence of strategic threats to Israel and to the U.S. from the second and the third tier.

At several critical junctures the U.S. has decided to prefer other interests over Israel's security needs, allowed the threats to its security to intensify, and forced it to stretch its capabilities to the limit, with Israel devoting huge budgets to its defense.

Nevertheless, a U.S.-Israeli defense pact could help promote the common goal of deterring Iran and curbing its activity by making it clear that aggression against Israel is tantamount to aggression against the U.S. and would prompt harsh American countermeasures.

Such a pact must preserve both sides' independence of decision-making in case of disagreement about a joint action; reinforce the principle that Israel must continue to be capable of defending itself by itself, to the extent possible; and it must not put new limits on Israel's ability to develop ties with other important states such as China and Russia.