In 1968, the Palestinians were not shy about their antisemitism. And it is all recorded in the archive of the United Nations itself.
From Agenda item 33, Report of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), UN General Assembly, Thursday, 5 December 1968, at 3.30 p.m:
4, The Palestine Arab delegation was grateful to the Commissioner-General for bringing to the attention of the General Assembly, in paragraph 15 of his report, the plight of the Arab refugees in the Gaza Strip. Twice in twelve years, the people of the Gaza Strip had become victims of the Jew-Khazar war crimes and persecutions. In 1956-57, during and after the war by the British, the French and the Jews against the United Arab Republic, the Jews had shot more than 3,000 young men and buried them in mass graves. In 1967, over 2,000 others had been murdered in cold blood by the Jews in the Gaza Strip and countless others had been imprisoned. As the Jews controlled the Press, radio and television in all the Western countries and suppressed any news concerning the war crimes committed against the Arabs in the occupied areas, the only hope of the Palestine Arab delegation was that the Secretary-General would focus world attention on the Jewish war crimes which were even worse than those committed by the Nazis in occupied Europe.
This was obviously before the rule that you must always say "Zionists," not "Jews."
There was six pages of this type of pure hate. One more example:
13. The world Jewish leaders had unleashed a propaganda campaign on an unprecedented scale to endeavour to justify their monstrous crimes. Having achieved their object and proclaimed a Jewish State, they were asking the world to forget the past and the fact that there was a Palestine or a people of Palestine. The Jews contended that international law, the Charter of the United Nations and the United Nations Declaration or. the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples had no application to the Palestine problem because the "chosen people" had been repatriated to the land of its forefathers as the fulfilment of Jehovah's promise. The occupation of Palestine and other parts of the Middle East by the Jews was the most dastardly colonial crime of all time.
Towards the end, the Palestinian representative discussed what he felt would be a fair solution to the issue - to expel all Jews from Israel that came after the 1880s or so and replace them with Palestinian Arabs (no one yet called them "Palestinians" in 1968.)
The Palestine Arab delegation submitted the following ten-point programme of its own for a just and peaceful settlement of the Middle East problem:
(1) The Security Council must decide that, in accordance with the Charter and the principles of international law, it could not recognize the fruits of war and conquest and, therefore, the proclamation of a "Jewish State" in Palestine was null and void ab initio.(2) The Security Council, must recommend to the General Assembly, in accordance with article 6 of the Charter, that "Israel" should be expelled from the United Nations on the grounds that its admission had been illegal, since it had never been a State in either fact or law, had never satisfied the basic requirements of United Nations membership and had persistently violated the principles of the Charter.
(3) The Security Council must take measures, under chapter VII of the Charter, to disarm the Jewish colonial illegal regime in occupied Palestine.
(4) The Security Council must declare an embargo on shipments of arms and munitions to that regime.
(5) It must call on all United Nations Member States to sever diplomatic relations with that regime,
(6) It must call on the Governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada and other Member States to prohibit the direct or indirect
transfer of funds to that regime.
(7) The General Assembly must establish a United
Nations commission to facilitate the repatriation of
Palestine Jewish immigrants to their homelands or to
any other country that would accept them.
(8) The General Assembly must establish a United
Nations commission to facilitate the return of Palestinians to their homes and to assist them in regaining
possession of their property.
(9) The General Assembly must establish a United
Nations commission to supervise the reconstruction
of Palestine either as an independent State or in
federation with Jordan, and to supervise the creation
of a democratic government elected by the indigenous
Moslem, Christian and Jewish people.
(10) The United Nations must guarantee freedom
for all religions and free access to the Holy Places
in Palestine to Christians, Moslems and Jews throughout the world.
Do you think the end goals and hatred of Jews by the Palestinian leaders has changed at all in the past 50 years? Or have they just learned to speak a bit more diplomatically?
No UN representative at that session called out the Palestinian delegation for obvious antisemitism.
By the way, there are plenty of UN sessions since 1947 where Arabs try to portray all Jews as Khazars.
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As of the latest Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics report, some 141,000 Palestinians are working for Israelis - 119,000 within Green Line Israel and 22,000 in Israeli settlements.
Sounds like they didn't hear the BDS call.
The average daily wage for Palestinians working for Israelis is NIS 261 . The average daily wage in the West Bank (as of Q1) is NIS 145.5 while in Gaza it is NIS 63.2.
About 13% of the total Palestinian workforce works for Israelis. Given that the ones working for Israelis make more than twice as much on the average as those who work for other Palestinians, that means that over 25% of the Palestinian workforce economy comes from Israel.
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Yesterday I was physically attacked at an anti-Israel protest at Kings College London. I emerged relatively unscathed, but a demonstrator clearly intended to deprive me of my camera. He rushed at me and tried to grab it and run. The force of the attack had left me with slight friction burns on my hands and a broken tripod. Just a few minutes earlier, another demonstrator had attacked pro-Israeli activist Harry Markham from behind, trying to take his Israeli flag. He was also unhurt, but his flagpole was destroyed.
The event and the protest
Inside KCL was an event being jointly held by Israeli societies on KCL & UCL. The speaker Eyal Dror oversaw the operation ‘Good Neighbour’. It helped Syrians near the border who had been caught up in the Syrian civil war. More than 7,000 Syrian’s were treated in Israeli hospitals, His team also led the evacuation of the White Helmets.
Eyal Dror is currently on tour with ‘Stand With Us‘. Tonight he is at Warwick where they are also expecting protests. The man is a hero and the episode of Israeli humanitarian activity during the Syrian civil war is a story that should be heard. Which is exactly why the anti-Israel activists are protesting him. They don’t want the world to hear the truth.
A protest was arranged online. Three years ago there was uproar over the speech of a Wanstead schoolgirl. Well she is no longer a schoolgirl nor so innocent. It seems as if she is now a major player on the anti-Israel scene. Here she is, inside the toxic antisemitic group Palestine Live, calling for people to attend the emergency protest at KCL:
I got to the campus early as I always do and watched a crowd of soon-to-be protestors gather a little way down the road. For a while I thought some were going inside and they may have been planning a co-ordinated action, but as it turned out, almost no hostile activists attended the event itself and it passed peacefully.
The protestors then made their way to the front of the building, unfurled a few banners and began to chant ‘from the river to the sea’. If anyone is not clear about what this means, at one point the ‘student’ with the megaphone said ‘we want the Israelis gone, we want our land back – from the river to the sea‘ – which is an even more explicit and undeniable call for the total destruction of Jewish life in the region.
Then came the attack on me - the Jewish journalist. My crime was reporting on the event. Someone slowly edged towards me before trying to take my camera. I wouldn't let go, but he broke the tripod. pic.twitter.com/hsTV9T9Msr
Then again, the wing of the American left that Sanders represents has absorbed that eliminationist mentality. “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea” isn’t just something Hamas fanatics scream; it was chanted at the Democratic Socialists of America’s national convention at the University of Illinois in 2017.
The river is Jordan, the sea is the Mediterranean. If Palestine were “free from the river to the sea,” then there would be no Israel.
Mainstream Democrats rolled over for the far left so quickly on Israel that it’s hard to imagine them returning to a sane place. Jews, who vote for Democrats in overwhelming numbers, need to finally wake up to the reality that their party despises the world’s sole Jewish state.
Criticizing any country or its leadership should always be fair game, to be sure, even when it’s our ally. But what is disturbing about such episodes — and the poll numbers they mirror — was summed up in a recent New York Times sub-headline: “President Trump’s hawkish support of Israel has led many Democrats to question the United States’ relationship with one of its closest allies.”
If Trump is for something, in other words, then Democrats have to be against it. That’s absurd and childish. But it’s also based on a lie.
It’s a lie to say Democrats and mainstream liberals are now turning against Israel. That turn happened under the Obama administration. Now mainstream Democrats are struggling just to beat back the tide of overt Jew-hatred in their midst.
And they’re doing a feeble job of it. Either the Democratic candidates are too afraid of the hard-leftist base to stick up for Jews and their national homeland — or they don’t want to. Either way, this isn’t leadership.
Further, by establishing a unique standard for Israel, this decision fits the internationally accepted definition of antisemitism, cited in the United Nations’ recent report on global antisemitism. So it’s rich for the European Commission to tell Fox News, “Any suggestion that indication of origin on products coming from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory or in the occupied Golan has anything to do with targeting Jews or anti-Semitism is unacceptable. The EU stands strongly and unequivocally against any form of anti-Semitism.”
Check out that loaded word choice. Then consider that such critiques are fair game. The EU does not stand unequivocally against antisemitism. There are bright spots, like Austria’s second largest city banning support for BDS. However, European Jews are acutely aware that antisemitism is widespread and dangerous.
EU officials like Michael O’Flaherty, director of the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency, know that in spite of the many reported antisemitic crimes across the EU, 80 percent remain uncounted. “As one person asked [O’Flaherty], ‘Why would I report antisemitism to an antisemite?’” Over in Britain, which has not quite left the EU, nearly half of British Jews have said they “would ‘seriously consider’ emigrating if [Labour Party leader Jeremy] Corbyn is elected prime minister [in December].”
Seventy-four years after the Holocaust’s end, the EU is no haven for Jews. Nor is it a particularly reliable friend to Israel. Calling the decision “disgraceful,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told The Federalist, “This labeling singles out Jews who live in communities where Europeans don’t think they should be allowed to live and identifies them for boycotts. It is reminiscent of the darkest moments in Europe’s history.”
Indeed, the CJEU may have forgotten, but world Jewry hasn’t. We also know that discrimination and other harms that start with Jews never end with us. So whether or not the timing was coincidental, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcing a reversal of Obama-era policy regarding Israel’s settlements certainly looks fortuitous, because this fight is far from over.
Besides the antisemitism and hate that we have documented over the years from UNRWA teachers and UNRWA curricula, one thing is certain. every single one of these 2.5 million children were taught that Israel is an illegitimate state and that those kids will one day rise up and "return" as they kick the Jews into the sea, whether literally or metaphorically.
UNRWA proudly says it teaches peace and coexistence. But it does not teach peace and coexistence with Israel.
UNRWA students never heard of the Holocaust from their schoolteachers - the few times UNRWA half-heartedly said it would be taught the uproar was immediate and UNRWA threw up its hands and said, sorry, we can't.
UNRWA schools might be somewhat better than public schools in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, but it does not prepare any of these kids for peace. On the contrary, they are taught that they must remain stateless and build up the hate for the only party UNRWA blames for their plight - Israel.
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J-Street is freaking out over Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's announcement that the US will no longer consider settlements to be illegal per se, effectively allowing Israel's excellent justice system decide which communities are legal and which aren't (typically if built on privately owned lands.)
In an email, J-Street writes:
Make no mistake: The settlements are, in fact, illegal under international law. Pompeo’s decision willfully disregards the Geneva Conventions, sets Israel on the path to West Bank annexation and shatters American credibility in the Middle East.
OK, let's revisit the Geneva Conventions.
Article 49, paragraph 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention says:
The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
We're going to set aside whether Israel is legally an occupying power. Israel has long held that the territories are disputed, not occupied, but Israel has voluntarily accepted the humanitarian parts of the Geneva Conventions on how it treats the territories. This makes sense, since the Fourth Geneva Conventions are meant for protecting civilians under occupation, and a loophole in whether these areas are not strictly considered occupied under the Hague Convention of 1907 - the only place in international law that defines occupation - should not leave civilians without humanitarian protection.
Within the text of Geneva, however, it is obvious that Jews move to these communities voluntarily. Not one would consider themselves to be deported or transferred by Israel, and both words imply that this is done against the will of the people being transferred. Indeed, the entire Article 49 deals with involuntary transfer and deportation, and there is no logical reason to think that paragraph 6 is any different.
Some people tortuously argue that by Israel providing infrastructure for these communities, it is a form of transfer, since Israel makes it easier for Israelis (not only Jews - Arabs do as well) to move into these areas. This is obviously not what was meant by the Geneva drafters, who never envisioned an occupied area that the citizens of the occupying country would want to move to on their own. Who would want to move into a war zone?
Only citizens who believe that the land was always theirs.
When the Fourth Geneva Convention was drafted, the intent of paragraph 6 was to stop mass forcible transfers of populations into newly conquered areas like the Nazis did. The 1958 commentary on the Conventions makes this clear:
It is intended to prevent a practice adopted during the Second World War by certain Powers, which transferred portions of their own population to occupied territory for political and racial reasons or in order, as they claimed, to colonize those territories.
A look at the Travaux Préparatoires for the Convention mentions nothing but forcible transfers for the entire Article 49 in all the discussions.
Here's the real proof, though. Since it was obvious to everyone that the wording in Geneva was far from explicit in making settlements illegal when there was no forcible transfer, anti-Israel nations added provisions to international law after the fact to widen the law to ensure that Israel's actions would be considered illegal!
When the laws were drafted for the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Arab delegation wanted to ensure that not only would an occupying power be guilty if it actively transferred its citizens to occupied territory, but also if it does not actively stop its citizens from going on their own! The Rome Statute says that "The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies" is against international law.
This is the most egregious hijacking of international law for political purposes in modern history.
However, if Geneva was so obviously against Israeli settlements, then why even bother to add the language of "directly or indirectly" to the Rome Statute? Geneva should have covered it.
A sui generis law was created specifically against Israel because Geneva doesn't cover the settlements in Judea and Samaria. The US and Israel never accepted the Rome Statute because of its obviously political nature to damn only a single country - something that would not have been necessary if the Geneva Conventions said that the settlements were illegal.
Ambassador Alan Baker, a noted legal expert, has dealt with this issue at length here.
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More important is the argument that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s decision transgresses settled international law. Balderdash and poppycock. Yes, it is the general understanding of the panjandra of the Smelling Salts Elite that Israel’s “settlements” stand in the way of a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—and Pompeo himself acknowledged that certain settlement activity can be understood as a means of making agreements more difficult.
But difficult does not mean illegal.
The idea that the West Bank is “occupied territory” itself is based on a problematic reading of international law. As Eugene Kontorovich has said, “the relevant international law instruments speak only of people being ‘transferred or deported’ by an occupying power.” Israel has not deported anyone from the West Bank, nor has it “transported” people there in the sense of forcing its colonization. Israelis have chosen to move to the West Bank. You can interpret that fact broadly to suggest they have “transferred” themselves, but that will result in a Talmudic argument that will never come to a resolution.
If the law were settled, the anti-Semites and Israel-haters at the United Nations would not have felt the need to seek the passage of the infamous Resolution 2334 in December 2016—which declares settlement activity a violation of international law. This is the resolution that Barack Obama allowed to pass without a veto from the United States, because he just wasn’t going to leave office without blowing a childish raspberry at Bibi Netanyahu. It was the existence of this resolution that led the Trump State Department to initiate a study of the legal basis of the Israelis’ settlements—a study whose conclusion is that while the settlements might indeed be an obstacle to peace, that does not make them, as a legal matter, illegitimate.
So don’t listen to the caterwauling and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. What Secretary Pompeo and the Trump administration have done is speak truth. Odd, isn’t it, how the simple telling of the truth is so agonizing to people who claim to be realists?
The U.S. has corrected its Middle East policy in an important way. The past legal determination that Israelis deciding to reside in the West Bank are doing so in violation of international law has always been deeply flawed.
It failed to recognize that the case of Israeli settlement construction was unique and was not what the drafters of international law had in mind when they first addressed this question. The original basis for judging the question of Israeli settlements was the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention.
Morris Abram, who was the U.S. ambassador to the UN in Geneva, had been one of the drafters of the Fourth Geneva Convention. He wrote that its authors had in mind heinous crimes committed by Nazi Germany that included forcible evictions of Jewish populations for purposes of mass extermination in death camps in places like Poland. This plainly was not the case of Israeli settlements and it is utterly vile to even suggest that Israeli settlements should be thought of in this context.
It must be recalled that the last sovereign over the territory of the West Bank was the Ottoman Empire. After the First World War, the League of Nations in 1922 explicitly supported the "close settlement" of Jews in the territory of the British Mandate. Those historical rights of the Jewish people were preserved by Article 80 of the UN Charter.
Jordan seized the West Bank in 1949, yet even the Arab states refused to recognize its sovereignty there. In other words, there was no recognized sovereign over the West Bank prior to Israel's entry into the area.
Finally, when Israel captured the West Bank in 1967, it acted in the framework of a war of self-defense.
U.S. Special Representative for Iran and Senior Adviser for Middle East Peace Brian Hook explains today’s announcement from Sec. of State Mike Pompeo’s on a change in American policy regarding Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Hook also comments on the recent demonstrations in Iran and Tehran’s violent reaction.
In [Pompeo’s] words, “calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law has not advanced the cause of peace.” Of course it hasn’t. Placing a lie in the center of the discourse on the Palestinian conflict with Israel is no way to promote understanding and coexistence.
In the interest of promoting peace, Pompeo instead told the truth. Not only are Israeli settlements not illegal. Pompeo noted that they are arguably more justified than civilian settlements built in other disputed territories.
Pompeo’s statement, and indeed the Trump administration’s decision to publish its position now, represent a complete rebuke of the European Union. The EU has made its false determination that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria are illegal as a [pretext] for its hostile, discriminatory, economic, and political policies towards Israel.
Israel’s own foreign ministry should take a lesson from the Trump administration. After a bitter, two-year bureaucratic and political fight, in 2017 Israel’s embassies worldwide published a paper that explained the legal validity of Israel’s settlements in Judea and Samaria. But unlike the Trump administration, the Israeli government has still not stated outright that international law is irrelevant to the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
On November 14, Hen Mazzig gave a speech at Vassar College.
He was interrupted by members of the local chapter of Students for Justice in
Palestine with chants of "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be
free". They were intimidating and disrespectful to the people who went to hear
him speak.
I know that Hen is open to dialogue with anyone and welcomes
all questions, no matter how hard they may be. But the group was not there to
hear him or engage with him, they were there to silence and humiliate him. They
went to deny him his inalienable right to express his views regardless of what
they may be. It also happens to be that his message was one of inclusiveness
and reconciliation, and the protesters' message was one of bigotry and
division. In following Hen for a number of years on Twitter and having seen him
speak in person, I can tell you that he advocates for the national aspirations
for the Palestinians. He has never once said that he denies them their rights.
On the other hand, the chant "from the river to the sea" is a call to
remove all the Jews from the Holy Land, dismantle the State of Israel, and
replace it with a Palestinian state that will span from the Jordan river to the
Mediterranean Sea. Make no mistake, this is a casus belli to push the
Jews into the sea. They are no advocates of peace. They aren't even advocates
of justice. And, they are certainly no advocates of a two-state solution. This
is nationalism at its most extreme.
While Hen was being interrupted, he videotaped the
disturbance and posted it on Twitter. Hen can be seen sitting silently waiting
for it to end, and Jewish students in the audience can be seen sitting
uncomfortably not knowing what to do, all the while SJP continued their
harassment and their racist chant. As you can imagine, many Jews who were
watching this unfold on Twitter were shaken and upset, myself included. Here
Jews are once again are being denied the right to speak, and this denial is
supported by many people who should know better. Where was the security? Where
was the administration? This is not a free expression of speech. This is
denying others their free expression of speech. Everyone, whether you agree
with Hen or not and whether you like Hen or not, should have supported his
right to share his story with those that had invited him to speak and who
attended the event. But that is not what happened. In fact, the opposite
happened. Having already faced abuse at the event, people chose this
opportunity to attack him even further. That is where the Tweet by Abe
Silberstein enters, which you can read below.
Mr. Silberstein does not attack Hen's arguments, but rather
he attacks Hen himself, going so far as calling him a "low quality of
speaker" and a "provocateur", all to justify SJP's harassment
and attempt to silence him. If this isn't mean spirited and bullying - name
calling and insulting to silence someone - then I don't know what is.
Mr. Silberstein is a journalist, who has written for many well-known
publications. A journalist's defense of the first amendment is like a religious
conviction. Otherwise, it is not journalism - it's propaganda. Journalists have
been killed in defense of the free speech. Justifying the silencing of a
speaker because someone perceives them as being lower quality is not only a
violation of the First Amendment, but a sure slide towards fascism. At no point
in his tweet did Silberstein refute anything that Hen talked about. He did not
mention the content of his speeches. He stated that he is of "low
quality", a "provocateur", and even asserted that Hen was
pleased with getting interrupted, that it is part of some hidden agenda. He
wrote, "Hen plays dirty". I challenge anyone to show me one thing in
his tweet that was a "thoughtful and critical assessment of Hen at
@Vassar." You can't, because this was a classic argumentum ad hominem,
an attack on the person, rather than the stance. It is mean spirited, and it is
bullying.
When I wrote my
response to Silberstein, I did the opposite of what he did. Not once did I
attack him personally, but rather his argument.
Whereas Silberstein stated Hen was of low quality, worthy of
censure and ridicule, I responded to Silberstein's comments only. His comment
was disgusting. His assessment was wrong and mean spirited. What he wrote was
bullying. I did not call him disgusting, or mean spirited. I wrote it of his
comment only. I stand by what I wrote and I challenge anyone to show me where I
am wrong.
Besides the ad hominem attack on Hen, there is another
point that is very troubling. Abe Silberstein notes in his bio that he is a
writer for the Israel Policy Forum. If you look on their website, you will find
his bio there listing him as a contributor.
The Statement of Principles of the Israel Policy Forum on their website
reads:
They present themselves as "staunch supporters of the
security and well-being of the State of Israel, the democratic nation-state of
the Jewish people", with "the goal of a two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, consistent with Israel's security needs."
How can they support a safe Israel and push a two-state solution when they have
someone writing for them who justifies chants of "from the river to the
sea" which signals the destruction of Israel, and who bullies a person
online that has consistently advocated for the two-state solution? I posted
that question to them in my reply.
After my reply to Silberstein, he blocked me and I forgot
about it, until a fellow Twitter user informed me that a director for the New
Israel Fund (NIF) was slandering me.
Harry Reis is listed as the Director for Policy and Strategy
on the NIF website. The NIF is a left wing organization, who's stated objective
is:
"We work to shape the
discourse and mobilize support among American Jewish leaders and U.S.
policymakers for the realization of a viable two-state solution. We
do this by educating political and communal leaders on pragmatic policy ideas –
developed by credible security experts. "
In his libelous
tweet, he labels me as "pro-occupation right". This is a lie. He does
not name me in the tweet but attaches an image of my tweet to Silberstein as
reference. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not on the right, nor do I
identify myself as right. I have conceptually and consistently maintained a
position not dissimilar to the Israel Policy Forum of Israelis and Palestinians
living side by side in peace as long as the security of Israel is maintained.
To label me as a "pro-occupation", is an attack on my Twitter persona
and what I try to accomplish.
He then says I "falsely + disingenuously" called
Silberstein a bully. As, I have shown above, it was neither false nor
disingenuous. He was bullying Hen, and my defense of him was genuine.
Reis then claimed that Silberstein's tweet about Hen was
"a thoughtful and critical assessment". Insulting someone as
"low quality", a "provocateur" and claiming that he secretly
craves the protest to promote himself is not exactly a thoughtful assessment. It
is garbage. Whether Silberstein is an "honest person of good
character" I do not know and I never said otherwise. Before reading that
tweet, I had never heard of him. But then Reis goes on to issue his own attack
on Hen, claiming somehow what I wrote is proof that he "plays dirty".
Great, now I’m part of a conspiracy - not only is Hen responsible for what
other people write, but probably directs them to write it, according to Reis.
Needless to say, there is nothing thoughtful or even truthful about his
accusations.
His entire tweet was an attack on my character. It was
filled with lies. It was damaging to my reputation. That he used a screenshot
of my tweet but didn't have the decency to tag me in it so that I may defend
myself speaks volumes of his character, not mine. Attached to his tweet was a
string of replies attacking me with even more lies. I was even harassed
directly because of his libelous tweet, called a "joke", a
"troll", a "coward", and "garbage".
Another user, Rabbi Andy Kahn, parroted Reis words of
"pro-occupation right", plus said I was a "shande
(sic)" and a "bad faith actor".
Last I checked,
before he blocked me, Reis' tweet has nearly 100 likes and several dozen
comments, all bad mouthing me, an individual who dedicates his time to
defending the very country Reis claims to care about. I may be anonymous right
now, but that does not mean I plan on remaining anonymous forever. I chose to
be anonymous at the moment for many reasons, including having received death
threats. I have spent five years building a following on Twitter the right way.
I do not spread hate. I do not discriminate. I spend hours doing historic
research. The information I tweet is carefully checked and my reputation is
important to me. The fact that he defamed me based on false information, and
that has now spread through Twitter, is an attack on me personally, even if I
am currently anonymous, and of my ability to one day accomplish the things I
hope to.
The New Israel Fund is a large organization with dozens if
not hundreds of employees, revenue and expenses in the millions, and very
generous funding by some powerful people. It is Goliath. It is the proverbial
1%. I am sure Reis is well paid for his work at NIF. I on the other hand have a
regular job completely unrelated to my advocacy. I defend Israel and do
research on my own time. It is a labor of love. I have never made one penny
doing it. In fact, in the times I have been published writing about Israel, I did
not accept compensation and instead directed the editor to make a charitable
contribution in my name. I am the David. I am the 99%. Here you have a powerful
organization with millions of dollars at their disposal defaming with a
libelous tweet the little guy, an individual whose Israel advocacy is balanced,
thoughtful, and charitable. This is David versus Goliath. Many of the people
that replied to Reis also blocked me, even as they continued to speak ill of
me. It is not acceptable. I ask that the New Israel Fund and Mr. Reis issue an
apology and retraction.
My tweet was in defense of Hen Mazzig. It was genuine. The tweets by Silberstein and Reis were mean spirited and filled with lies, which
attacked people and not ideas. They were meant to silence us to advance only
their point of view, one that is rejected by the vast majority of mainstream
Jews. They were meant to humiliate. They were wrong, and yes, they were
bullying.
UPDATE: Abe Silberstein sent me an apology for his tweet that he asked me to add to this article:
This past weekend, I published a tweet saying that pro-Israel groups should consider the quality of invited speakers amidst various campus controversies. I linked to a statement from Vassar College about a recent speech by Hen Mazzig that was interrupted by members of Students for Justice in Palestine with chants of "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." I also suggested Hen may have welcomed such a reaction.
I deeply regret sending this tweet, which I have since deleted. Hen was grossly mistreated at Vassar and most certainly did not take pleasure in what happened. I let my strong personal disagreements with Hen get in the way of my better judgment, and I apologize to him for that.
I am sorry that Hen endured anti-Semitism during his talk and did not mean to justify it, though I understand why some may have seen it that way. I wish him nothing but the best for the future.
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The Jerusalem Biennale international art exhibition is happening now, and one of the exhibits is causing an uproar in Morocco.
The exhibit, Ziara, for the first time shows art by Moroccan Jews and Muslims together, under the theme of (roughly translated) "journey."
Having Moroccan Muslim artists appear in Israel prompted a scathing op-ed by Mohamed Adib Al Salawi in Hespress, Morocco's leading news site.
He wrote that the participation of Moroccan artists in this show "challenged all national and cultural values, and is undoubtedly an outrageous event."
Socrates believed that art must induce virtue, that is, it must have moral value. It means that art is not the mere coloring of the paint on the cloth, but is a continuous relationship between morality and reality; between consciousness and reality, through an open mind, capable of absorbing cultural, human, moral and social values.
For the sake of its values, the Arab artist is now aware of his society and identity, which means that there is a strong cultural, religious and cultural connection between these values and the issues surrounding him and his life, the most important of which is the
Palestinian cause and the Zionist project that seeks to keep the Arab region weak, disjointed, divided and backward. How can those who belong to Arab art allow themselves to disregard all the values in order to share the murderous Zionism with its plastic connection to occupied Jerusalem, and normalize the relationship with the Israeli enemy outside all moral and religious values and endowments ...?
We do not know whether these artists know that normalization with Israel is a surrender to the Zionist entity of its right in the occupied Arab land, the right to build terrorist settlements, the right to destroy Palestinian villages and the displacement of its people, and is alsoto accept the ugliest levels of humiliation and the abdication of dignity and rights.
They have departed from the principles, objectives and ideals of the group, which requires bringing them to justice to hold them accountable for this heinous act.
Most of the responses to this op-ed are surprisingly pro-Israel!
It is very strange when you read in an article such as this article from a professional thinker who fears the Zionist project. The Arab nation itself was not torn by the Zionist enemy, but on the contrary this enemy reaches out to live in peace. Israel lives on an inch of land among millions of square kilometers (of Arab land), which has made Israel the eternal enemy for an inch of the earth. Only God knows if the Jews have the right to that inch of the earth, because the Arabs use emotions and have no historical or legal arguments when they claim that Jews are strangers in the region...
Another:
Our intellectuals are strange. Why do you link the subject of values to land has always been the subject of religious conflict? Wasn't the area owned by the Jews before it was conquered by Muslims?Wasn't the city in Saudi Arabia the property of the Jews (the sons of Al-Qenaqa, the sons of Fereida and the Jews of Khyber) before they were invaded and their property stolen and the men were killed and their women and children were exiled by Muhammad and his companions? What values are you talking about, sir?
A third:
The Palestinian cause is promoted by those who are far away from it as if it is the closest problem to them, yet the Palestinians themselves believe that the solution is to guarantee them the pride, the jobs, their future and their full rights. There is no reason to commit suicide for the sake of the Palestinians.
These sorts of comments were never published in Arabic before recently. There actually is a sea change happening slowly in the Arab world and its relationship with Jews and Israel. It is slow, and there is still more antisemitism in the Arab world than anywhere else, but these other viewpoints are really something to see, especially when published in Arabic.
(h/t Ibn Boutros)
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One of the best institutions of higher education in the Arab world is violating American law by not letting Israelis sign up for its online courses, according to a complaint filed Friday to the New York City Commission on Human Rights.
Israeli activist and attorney Yifa Segal said she was unable to sign up for a global health program with the American University of Beirut because the signup screen didn’t include Israel as a nationality option. She tried to enroll not because she is interested in global health, but because she knew she would likely be unsuccessful, and wanted to challenge the school on legal grounds.
Lebanon doesn’t recognize Israel and forbids its citizens from even speaking with Israelis, so it’s not surprising that AUB wouldn’t let Israelis take its classes. But while AUB’s campus is in Lebanon, it has an office in New York City. It is recognized by the New York state government and the regional university accreditation authority. The complaint accuses the university of violating New York City laws. Experts consulted by the Forward said the school might be violating state and federal laws as well.
“You can’t come in from China and offer a program to whites only,” said Professor Peter F. Lake, director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University.
Here is the full text of the complaint provided to me by David Abrams, one of the lawyers that filed the complaint:
1. I, Yifa Segal am an Israeli national and human rights activist. I am associated with the International Legal Forum, which is an Israeli organization dedicated to promoting peace, justice, and equality in the Middle East.
2. I regularly travel to New York and in fact I intend to visit New York in December.
3. I understand that Respondent American University of Beirut ("AUB") is a New York university with its main campus located in Beirut Lebanon. I understand that AUB regularly holds events at its "Debs Center" in New York.
4. AUB maintains a Global Health Institute ("GHI") which offers online courses and diplomas through its GHI Academy. These courses and diplomas are offered to the general public and many of them concern matters of interest to me.
5. For example, there is a course in Humanitarian Law and Human Rights; a diploma in Humanitarian Leadership; and various offerings which concern the Middle East and North Africa region, which is of course where I reside.
6. I understand that all of these courses are offered to the general public.
7. The next time I am in New York, I would like to register for and participate in such a course.
8. To be clear, I am motivated in large part by my desire to fight against boycotts of Israel and to break down barriers against Israeli participation in international trade and cultural exchange. Nevertheless, I stand ready willing and able to take one of the Defendant's online classes if I am permitted to.
9. Accordingly, I attempted to register with the GHI Academy however the online system asked my nationality but there was no choice on the menu for "Israeli." Thus, I was unable to complete the online registration form.
10. I sent e-mails to AUB requesting, among other things, that this problem be fixed and that I be permitted to register however I received no response.
11. I understand that there is a lot of anti-Israeli sentiment in Lebanon and I believe that for this reason AUB has decided to discriminate against Israeli nationals even though it is a New York university with its headquarters in New York.
12. I respectfully submit that as a provider of public accommodation in New York, it is impermissible for AUB to discriminate in this way against Israeli nationals.
13. Accordingly, I charge AUB with unlawful discrimination on the basis of citizenship and national origin.
14. I also charge AUB with taking part in a discriminatory boycott.
15. I have not commenced any other civil or criminal action, nor do I have an action pending before any administrative agency under any other law of this state based upon this same unlawful discriminatory practice.___________________________________
Yifa Segal
Interestingly, AUB claims to have a non-discrimination policy that applies to Lebanon as well as the US. I could not find where it applies to admissions, however.
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U.S. public statements on settlement activities in the West Bank have been inconsistent over decades. In 1978, the Carter administration categorically concluded that Israel’s establishment of civilian settlements was inconsistent with international law. However, in 1981, President Reagan disagreed with that conclusion and stated that he didn’t believe that the settlements were inherently illegal.
Subsequent administrations recognized that unrestrained settlement activity could be an obstacle to peace, but they wisely and prudently recognized that dwelling on legal positions didn’t advance peace. However, in December 2016, at the very end of the previous administration, Secretary Kerry changed decades of this careful, bipartisan approach by publicly reaffirming the supposed illegality of settlements.
After carefully studying all sides of the legal debate, this administration agrees with President Reagan. The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.
I want to emphasize several important considerations.
First, look, we recognize that – as Israeli courts have – the legal conclusions relating to individual settlements must depend on an assessment of specific facts and circumstances on the ground. Therefore, the United States Government is expressing no view on the legal status of any individual settlement.
The Israeli legal system affords an opportunity to challenge settlement activity and assess humanitarian considerations connected to it. Israeli courts have confirmed the legality of certain settlement activities and has concluded that others cannot be legally sustained.
Second, we are not addressing or prejudging the ultimate status of the West Bank. This is for the Israelis and the Palestinians to negotiate. International law does not compel a particular outcome, nor create any legal obstacle to a negotiated resolution.
Third, the conclusion that we will no longer recognize Israeli settlements as per se inconsistent with international law is based on the unique facts, history, and circumstances presented by the establishment of civilian settlements in the West Bank. Our decision today does not prejudice or decide legal conclusions regarding situations in any other parts of the world.
And finally – finally – calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law hasn’t worked. It hasn’t advanced the cause of peace.
The hard truth is there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace. This is a complex political problem that can only be solved by negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate peace, and I will do everything I can to help this cause. The United States encourages the Israelis and the Palestinians to resolve the status of Israeli settlements in the West Bank in any final status negotiations.
And further, we encourage both sides to find a solution that promotes, protects the security and welfare of Palestinians and Israelis alike.
And then in answering a question:
... We’ve had a long time with the policy, the legal interpretation announced today being the other way and it didn’t work. That – that’s a fact in evidence. We believe that what we’ve done today is we have recognized the reality on the ground. We’ve now declared that settlements are not per se illegal under international law, and we have provided the very space that your question suggests, the very space for Israel and the Palestinians to come together to find a political solution to this very, very vexing problem.
We think, in fact, we’ve increased the likelihood that the vision for peace that this administration has, we think we’ve created space for that to be successful. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to move forward on that before too terribly long.
Pompeo is right. The supposed "illegality" of settlements allows the Palestinians to not work towards peace, They have been sitting back for more than a decade hoping for some international body to hand them the West Bank. They've refused peace offers. This strategy is a failure.
The anti-Israel crowd is claiming that this will allow Israel to take over the West Bank with settlements. No, that won't happen. Israel doesn't want to rule Palestinian Arabs. If the legal threat is removed, it gives both parties a chance to actually negotiate and make some choices - if Palestinians really want a state.
I'm not convinced they do, but this gives them a chance to show it, instead of hiding behind the threat of going to the International Court of Justice or getting the next zillion UN resolutions in their favor.
I'm sure Europe is not on board with this, and in fact the Palestinians have been able to rely on the EU to be a more reliable ally in this issue than the Arab states themselves. But that position is eroding. Just as the Arabs have gotten fed up with the Palestinian issue, so Europe will go. It cannot happen soon enough.
Despite the self-anointed "experts" who have been acting like the Oslo process is still alive, this decision by the US can and should push Palestinian leaders to realize that time is not on their side and to act accordingly. Up until now they have been smug and acting like they have the upper hand. This strategy of waiting for others to push Israel to do what Palestinians want has sustained the Palestinian leadership.
What the Palestinians need is a realization that time is not on their side. The sooner they negotiate, the sooner they accept a Jewish state as a permanent neighbor, the sooner there could be real peace.
The peace process has been stuck in the same pattern for a long time. The idea that Israel can be pressured to do things that are against its best interests has been shown to be false.
One other positive from this decision is that it helps slow down the demonization of Jews who want to live in their ancestral lands.
I recently pointed out that the UN puts "settlers" into a different category as victims of conflict than "civilians." There is no precedent for this in international law. But it helps normalize the idea that somehow Jews who choose to live in their ancetral lands are less deserving of human rights, a little less than human themselves. This decision, by giving the "settlers" the same human rights as everyone else, helps erase what was a frankly disgusting excuse for Palestinian terror.
Now the world can start to look at Judea and Samaria as an issue of competing rights, not of Jews taking away rights from Palestinians. That narrative was never true and it just made Israel less likely to trust any international body.
When Israel is treated fairly by the world, and when Palestinians finally learn to co-exist with the Jewish state, then peace would be fairly easy. Unfortunately, neither of those are likely to happen for a very long time. Even so, this US move is a welcome step in the right direction.
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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to announce on Monday that the US is softening its position on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the latest in a series of Trump administration moves that weaken Palestinian claims to statehood.
Pompeo plans to repudiate a 1978 State Department legal opinion that held that civilian settlements in the West Bank are “inconsistent with international law.” The move will likely anger Palestinians and put the US at odds with other nations working to end the conflict.
The Trump administration views the opinion, the basis for long-standing US opposition to expanding the settlements, as a distraction and believes any legal questions about the issue should be addressed by Israeli courts, according to a draft of Pompeo’s remarks on the policy obtained by The Associated Press.
“Calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law has not advanced the cause of peace,” Pompeo says in the draft. “The hard truth is that there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and who is wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace.”
US administration moves that have weakened Palestinian efforts to achieve statehood have included US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the movement of the US embassy to that city, and the closure of the Palestinian diplomatic office in Washington.
“The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says in a departure from the U.S.' Obama-era position pic.twitter.com/3C7aRtPNSp
In the weeks leading up to the December 12 general election in the UK, more and more efforts are being made to sound the alarm and make non-Jewish voters aware of the systemic antisemitism in the Labour Party.
Last week, a group of well-known British intellectuals and artists – none of whom are Jewish, and many of whom do not plan to vote for the Conservative Party – wrote an open letter urging voters to reject Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Among the signatories were spy novelist John le Carré, historians Antony Beevor and Tom Holland, Muslims Against Antisemitism head Ghanem Nuseibeh, and writer Maajid Nawaz.
“The coming election is momentous for every voter, but for British Jews it contains a particular anguish: the prospect of a prime minister steeped in association with antisemitism,” the letter reads. “Under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Labour has come under formal investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission for institutional racism against Jews. Two Jewish MPs have been bullied out of the party. Mr. Corbyn has a long record of embracing antisemites as comrades.”
“Antisemitism is racism,” Nawaz wrote on Twitter. “Antisemitism is the *only* form of racism that unites all fascists: far-left, far-right & theocratic Islamists. This is why antisemitism is the most dangerous form of racism...There were always excuses made for Jew hate in Europe. Do not make excuses for it...Do not betray Jews.”
LBC's Maajid Nawaz has explained why he believes anti-semitism is the "most dangerous" form of racism in a heated debate.
Caller John, from Suffolk, said he was "confused" as he thought saying anti-semitism was the "most dangerous" form of racism was an "idiotic argument".
John added he thought this was because "all racism is equal" and happens all over the world.
Explaining his reasoning, Maajid said: "The far left, the far right and Islamists, all three of them, campaign, propagate and recruit on an anti-semitic basis.
"Therefore unlike other forms of racism that I may suffer, the far-left don't campaign and propagate anti-brown or black racism, they pretend to be defenders of it while propagating anti-semitic racism.
"The far right don't propagate anti-white, say, racism but they do propagate anti-semitism just like the far left.
"The Islamist theocrats aren't recruiting people based on anti-black racism, though obviously anti-black racism exists in the Arab world, but they do recruit people on the basis of anti-semitic racist tropes.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon didn’t mince words when slamming Bernie Sanders’s recent remarks about US aid to Israel on Sunday night.
Speaking at the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) gala in New York City, Danon said: “Mr. Sanders, a few months on a kibbutz in 1963 can only teach you so much." He was referring to the Vermont senator’s brief time at an Israeli kibbutz near Haifa in his youth.
Danon then attacked Sanders for comments he made during the J Street Annual conference in Washington, DC last month. There, Sanders declared that some of the $3.8 billion in aid the US allocates to Israel, should be given to the Gazan people as well.
“My solution is, to Israel, if you want military aid you’re going to have to fundamentally change your relationship to the people of Gaza,” Sanders said. “I would say that some of the $3.8 billion should go right now to humanitarian aid in Gaza.”
Finding that stance absurd, Danon said such a belief would “undermine the security of both Israel and the US”
“Perhaps Mr. Sanders didn’t hear about Israel leaving Gaza in 2005,” he said. “Maybe he hasn’t had the chance to visit the Kerem Shalom crossing, where hundreds of trucks pass daily to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza. Maybe he doesn’t know about the terror tunnels.”
“[Sanders] is suggesting to give less military assistance to the United States’ most important ally in the Middle East in order to give it to Hamas, a terrorist organization that celebrated the tragedy of 9/11,” he continued.
Danon vowed to fight against these “radical” voices threatening Israel.
One of the keys to strategic thinking is to never ignore or
pretend away things that are objectively true, even if they represent a setback
for your cause.
With that in mind, there is no way to consider last week’s
decision by the European Union to uphold labeling of products originating in
disputed territories as anything other than a setback. While it is not clear how EU member nations
will respond to this latest outrage from regulators in Brussels, or whether
such a labeling process will have any actual economic impact on the Jewish
state, the notion that EU officials would bend their own rules in order to
enact something so manifestly unfair is not a good sign regarding Israel’s
relationship with the continent (currently its largest trading partner).
In many ways, the decision is quintessentially European,
illustrating the chasm between the principles its leaders profess and the ones elites
on the continent actually live by.
If you were to ask anyone who claims faith in multi-national
governance, they would no doubt wax poetic about how the EU has replaced rule
of force by rule of law, turning a continent that was once the focal point of
global mayhem into a set of states ready to negotiate, rather than go to war
over political differences. Yet by voting to label goods from one and only one
“occupied” territory (with those same bureaucrats determining what that words
means) and never even considering using that decision to establish a general
principle (which could get them into trouble with powerful nations like China
and Turkey – a country that occupies the soil of an EU member) the EU has
effectively walked away from the rule of law that is its reason to exist.
Taking action against the truly powerful usually brings
immediate consequences, which is why the “courageous” leaders of Europe tend to
avoid ticking off those who might respond in forceful or costly ways. China, after all, has far more economic clout
than does tiny Israel (regardless of the Jewish state’s recent economic
success) and has shown willingness to come down hard on anyone who criticizes
them. And Turkey not only continues to
occupy European territory in Cyprus but has already threatened to flood the
continent with refugees if their political behavior is punished in any way.
In contrast, Israel can only lodge complaints alongside
similar ones voiced by diaspora groups pointing out the hypocrisy of Europe’s
latest foray into Middle East politics.
Even with high levels of support in the White House and, at least for
now, Congress, it is unlikely the US will prioritize creating a price tag for
Europe’s latest outrage against both Israel and the rule of law. This leaves
Israel and her supporters relying on forceful arguments and moral suasion in a
fight against bureaucrats using those words to dress up a power play.
Now there are other cards Israel and her friends can play in
such a situation. For example, the recent
labeling attack on Israel might be a way to give European leaders cover as they
continue to reevaluate decades of investment in their Palestinian “partners”
through massive infusions of cash into organizations like UNWRA. In an era when the US and several European
countries have decided that corrupt organization no longer warrants support, we
might be reaching a moment when UNWRA’s long-overdue abolishment (or folding of
the organization into the other UN refugee agency UNHCR) might actually be on
the table.
For NGOs and others pushing such an agenda, the EU’s
labeling decision could be used as leverage to push the EU into investigating UNWRA
funding by claiming such an investigation would give the Union the opportunity
to demonstrate “balance” given their seemingly one-sided take on the labeling
issue.
Another strategy would be to present the recent labeling
decision not as an attack on Israel, but as an attack on the very principles
that underlie the credibility of the EU itself.
Given the mayhem caused by one nation (Britain) deciding that it no
longer wants to have its affairs managed by Brussels, getting more European countries
to question the legitimacy of EU dictates would be a consequence even the most
anti-Israel bureaucrats would find hard to ignore.
At the end of the day, there is but one Jewish state and a
mere twelve-million Jews worldwide, most of whom are not mobilized for war
against even those who have declared war against us. This means we should not
fantasize about having options only available to the more numerous, rich,
powerful, and highly mobilized enemies.
We will not be able to get the UN to pass dozens of resolutions
condemning our foes on an annual basis, nor are we likely to get Europe to
start using our vocabulary (such as “disputed” vs. “occupied”) by leveraging
our numbers or our power, both of which are highly limited. Nor should we ever expect those institutions
to fess up to, much less act to reverse, their hypocrisy.
But we can use what influence we have strategically, just as
the Israeli military has combined its military power with creative precision to
defeat far more numerous and powerful enemies for generations. For victory goes not to those who win every
battle, but to the those who wins the most important ones (including the last
one).
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To everyone who insists that the only solution to the conflict is two states, Israel and Palestine, living together side by side, please answer this:
Outside of a very few individual and outstanding Palestinians like Bassem Eid - Palestinians who are vilified by the mainstream as being sellouts - no Palestinian leader is interested in real peace, nor has there ever been one.
The most "dovish" Palestinians do not accept Israel as a Jewish state. Polls show that most Palestinians look at the two state solution as a stage towards gaining all of Israel. The Palestinian consensus, bizarrely, is not for Palestine to be a place of refuge and citizenship for the Palestinian "diaspora" but rather that those Palestinians move to the hated enemy state of Israel. The reason is obvious and has nothing to do with human rights - they want to eliminate the Jewish state demographically.
Since Oslo, Palestinians have taught their children that Israel is a permanent part of the region, but that it is all theirs, and they will conquer it all one day. That's over 25 years of children being indoctrinated into hate and no desire to allow a Jewish state to exist.
Please find me a counterexample showing a real desire for real peace by any part of the Palestinian establishment. Ever.
You can't.
Given this, why is Israel consistently being pressured to compromise with people who truly do not accept Israel except as a temporary aberration of history that they will eventually conquer?
I want a real answer from J-Street, or Peter Beinart, or Truah Rabbis or B'Tselem or anyone. Is there anything in my analysis that is wrong? Is there some underground Palestinian majority of potential leaders who really want peace with Israel?
Now, Israel has no desire to rule over a few million non-resident Arabs. It never did. But look at what happened with Gaza - Israel washed its hands of the sector but the world still insists that Israel is responsible for it. So even those more-realistic dovish Jews who want Israel to disengage from most of the West Bank unilaterally are engaged in wishful thinking that the world would not still consider the entire area "occupied."
The only possible way a two state solution can work is if the Palestinians take responsibility for truly wanting peace, and teaching it to their people. If the only Palestinian state imaginable is one where Jews who want to visit their holy sites under Arab rule are fearful for their lives, then that is not a state that anyone should want - and it would not bring any peace. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from Joseph's Tomb in Nablus.
But if that is the only viable possibility for a two state solution, then why is nobody from the left working with Palestinians to accept the reality of a permanent Jewish state? Why doesn't Europe pressure Palestinians to teach their children peace? Why is it accepted that Palestinians can boycott any Israeli peace initiative in the name of "anti-normalization?"
If a Palestine could exist where Jews felt safe, then peace would come very quickly thereafter. "Settlements" would be no problem because Jews who wanted to stay would be allowed to become citizens without fear.
There is no path to peace by pressuring the one side that has shown a desire for peace. The only way is to change the Palestinian vision from one of conquest to one of coexistence and peace with Israel and with Jews.
If the two-staters really and truly want peace, there is only one side to pressure. That absence of pressure - in fact, the tacit or explicit support for their intransigence - is the only real obstacle to peace.
I know that most left-leaning Jews who study this topic truly want peace. Yet they all seem to be stuck in a strange mindset that "if only Israel would do X, then there will be peace." Where is the evidence? What has ever happened in the past 100 years to lend credence to those assumptions that Palestinians respond favorably to Israeli concessions with good will? There is a difference between real analysis and wishful thinking.
But please - if I'm wrong, explain it to me.
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Even among people who recognize that Israeli-Palestinian peace is currently impossible, a growing number think that Israel must nevertheless quit the West Bank. Israel has a right to defend itself, their argument goes, but not by controlling another people for decades. Instead, it should withdraw to the “internationally recognized border” and protect itself from there, as other countries do.
Forget for a moment that the “internationally recognized border” is an arrant fiction. Forget as well that Israel remains in the West Bank precisely because defending itself from the 1949 armistice lines (the abovementioned fictional border) hasn’t worked very well in either the West Bank—from which Israel partially withdrew in the 1990s before returning the following decade—or the Gaza Strip.
That still leaves another uncomfortable fact: As long as genuine peace remains impossible, Israeli control of the West Bank, despite the undeniable hardships it causes Palestinians, remains the least bad alternative for the Palestinians themselves. As evidence, just compare the Israeli-controlled West Bank to Gaza, which has been free of both settlers and soldiers since August 2005. By almost any parameter, life in the former is far better.
Take, for instance, casualties. According to B’Tselem’s statistics, Israeli security forces killed 5,706 Palestinians in Gaza from September 2005 through August 2019. That’s almost eight times the 756 killed by Israeli security personnel and settlers combined in the West Bank during this period (no Gazans were killed by settlers since there are no settlers there).
Nor is this surprising. Israel’s control of the West Bank means that suspected terrorists can often be arrested rather than killed, though shootouts (with attendant collateral damage) do occur. But in Gaza, where Israel has no troops, it can’t arrest terrorists. Thus the only way to fight terror is through military action, which naturally produces many more casualties among both combatants and civilians.
As ever, the Middle East is monumentally in flux. As usual, most developments are negative. Here’s a guide:
Water replaces petroleum as the key liquid: oil and gas still provide nearly 60% of the world’s energy, but this number is declining and even the wealthiest oil producers are feeling the pinch (“GCC states look to new taxes as oil revenues remain weak”). Contrarily, tensions over water are becoming a major source of international tensions (e.g., Turkey vs. Syria, Ethiopia vs. Egypt) and a driving force of domestic change (the Syrian revolt of 2011). It’s also a potential cause of massive migration; a former Iranian minister of agriculture predicts that water shortages will force up to 70% of the country’s population, or 57 million Iranians, to emigrate.
Anarchy replaces tyranny: of course, some tyrannies remain, notably in Turkey and Iran, but anarchy has become the region’s greater bane, including whole countries (Libya, Yemen, Syria) and parts of others (e.g., Sinai). Though generally less threatening to the outside world, anarchy is an even more miserable personal experience than tyranny, for it lacks guidelines. As a 13th century Koran scholar noted, “A year of the sultan’s tyranny does less harm than a moment of the people’s anarchy.”
The failure of Arab youths’ efforts to make improvements: around 1970, many Arabic-speaking countries began an era of corrupt strongman rule. Starting in Tunisia in December 2010, efforts to overthrow the old order have shaken governments but had few beneficial consequences. In some cases (Libya, Yemen, Syria), they led to civil war; in another (Egypt), they merely brought on a younger strongman. Recent uprisings in Algeria, Sudan, Iraq, and Lebanon have yet to conclude but odds are they, too, will end badly.
The decline of Islamism: after peaking in about 2012, the radical attempt to apply Islamic law severely and in full has lost ground in the Middle East. Several factors account for this: a fear of wild-eyed fanatics like Boko Haram, Shabaab, ISIS, and the Taliban; the dismal experience of Muslim peoples who have lived under Islamist rule (e.g., Egypt in 2012-13); and the fracturing of Islamists (e.g., in Syria) into competing and hostile factions. What might come after Islamism is unclear, but after a century of failure with it and other extremist ideologies (including fascism and communism), an era of anti-ideology might lie ahead.
Israel must deduct from transfers to PA in 2019 an additional 241 million shekels - the amount the PA paid to families of terrorist “Martyrs” in 2018
- 5 years ago today, two terrorists murdered 6 Israelis with knives and axes in a synagogue in West Jerusalem. The victims included rabbis, American citizens, and an Israeli Druze policeman. The terrorists were killed during their attack.
- Since the massacre, the PA has paid the families of these terrorist murderers no less than 204,000 shekels (almost $60,000) simply because their relatives murdered Israelis.
- Israeli law demands that Israel deduct from tax transfers to the PA in 2019 the amount that the PA paid in 2018 to terrorist prisoners and to families of dead terrorists – so-called “Martyrs.”
- Since February, the Israeli government has been deducting approximately 41 million shekels each month, 1/12 of the amount the PA paid to terrorist prisoners in 2018, which was 502 million shekels.
- In order to comply with Israeli law, the government must also deduct the full amount paid to families of dead terrorists by the end of 2019.
- This PMW special report shows that the additional amount that Israel must deduct from its tax transfers to the PA in the next two months is at least 241 million shekels – the sum the PA paid to families of dead terrorist “Martyrs” in 2018.
- PMW has calculated that there are at least 5,666 dead terrorists who were killed from September 2000 to the end of 2018 and whose families received an estimated 95 million shekels ($25.4 million) from the PA in 2018.
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Kamala Loses the Jews
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In September, the Jewish Democratic Council of America rolled out a poll
which claimed that 72% of American Jews backed Kamala, and that Jewish
voters d...
Hezbollah Leader
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[image: Dry Bones cartoon, Iran, War, Hezbollah, Nasrallah, Israel,
Lebanon,]
He's gone with the wind.
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Use Pa...
Hassan Nasrallah Nasrallahed
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[image: Hassan Nasrallah Nasrallahed]
Long-time Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other top commanders of the
terror group were killed in a massive Isr...
Weekend long read
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1) At the Misgav Institute, Arsen Ostrovsky explains ‘The Law Of Exploding
Pagers’. “Last week the world watched as the terrorist army Hezbollah was...
T...
Making a Correction
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Researching for an article on the "Saison", I checked the Hagana history
volume and a footnote directed me to the Palestine Post and a column
entitled "R...
The transparent mob attack on the Jewish Chronicle
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Make no mistake, the Jewish Chronicle made a huge error in trusting a
source they should not have done. But as embarrassing as this episode may
be – the ...
One Choice: Fight to Win
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Yesterday Israel preempted a potentially disastrous attack by Hezbollah on
the center of the country. Thirty minutes before launch time, our aircraft
destr...
Yom Hashoah 5784 – 2024
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Israel’s Yom Hashoah began at sundown this evening with the annual ceremony
at Yad Vashem with torches lit in memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of
the...
Closing Jews Down Under Website
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With a heavyish heart I am closing down the website after ten years.
It is and it isn’t an easy decision after 10 years of constant work. The
past...
‘Test & Trace’ is a mirage
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Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
about the need for a ‘working’ Test & Trace system even more loudly than
the govern...
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
