Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 13, 2020

01/13 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: Iran's heroic protesters expose decadence and humbug among western liberals; Fatah promises cruel terror and "war of the street", burning of Jewish towns

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Iran's heroic protesters expose decadence and humbug among western liberals

It would be despicable and unforgivable for Britain and the EU, whose support for the 2015 Obama-brokered deal hugely helped empower this unconscionable regime, now to weaken the protesters and strengthen their tyrannical rulers still further – at precisely the point at which the possibility has arisen of bringing down a regime which otherwise risks plunging the world into a terrible war.

The protesters have been ripping down mourning posters of Soleimani, chanting that both he and Khamenei were murderers. “They are lying that our enemy is America; our enemy is right here,” they have cried. At a university outside Tehran, they refused to trample upon the American and Israeli flags that had been laid out on the ground but instead stepped respectfully around them, chastising any who stepped on them. (Even though elsewhere some pro-regime thugs predictably burnt the British and Israeli flags, the former was the far more remarkable development.)

Compare all this this with the west’s received opinion about the Soleimani killing: that he was a hero, that Trump was the war criminal and monster, and that the elimination of this supposedly great general had united the Iranian people against America.

You think? According to Saeed Ghasseminejad, senior adviser and financial economist at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies: “This tweet by @realDonaldTrump with more than 100k likes is already the most liked Persian tweet in the history of Twitter. A strong show of support by Iranians for Trump’s Iran policy, something the MSM does not and will not report.”

The people of Iran know Trump is behind them and against the regime which so oppresses them and menaces the civilised world; and they also know that the west’s so-called “liberal progressives” are against them and are instead lined up behind the regime.

This is one of those moments where the division between those who seek to defend civilisation and those who wish to aid its would-be destroyers is being starkly and terrifyingly exposed.

Iran’s attacks against the US in Iraq accomplished what was intended

AS OF now, it appears that the Iranian sound and fury over the skies of Iraq on January 8 look set to signify the conclusion of the round of hostilities that began with the killing of a US contractor by the Iran-linked Ktaeb Hezbollah militia on December 27. This act provoked a US attack on Ktaeb which killed 25 of its fighters. The Iranians then launched the violent protests against the US Embassy in Baghdad. The US upped the ante at that point with the killings of Soleimani, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and the others. The latest Iranian response indicates that Iran wants an end to this round.

Of course, Iranian efforts to expel the US from Iraq will continue. The Iranian calculus at this point may well have included the assumption that the current US administration wants out of the Middle East, and therefore should not be provoked into staying.

Iranian propaganda makes much of the notion that the Iranian project is slow and systematic and at a level of sophistication that makes it invulnerable to the attacks of its enemies. That remains to be seen. But the latest round of hostilities indicates that those who helm the Iranian bid for regional hegemony are aware of their drastic limitations in the military arena, are not suicidal, and are capable of formulating and implementing policy in line with the prevailing power realities.

Iran-US: Advantage Trump

Iran has emerged completely discredited from the recent phase of conflict with the United States and US President Donald J. Trump appears, for the time being, to be the big winner.

The Iranian regime is proving to be totally incompetent: incapable of managing the funeral of the so-called "martyr" Qassem Soleimani, which resulted in the deaths of more than 50 people, but capable of shooting down "as a result of human error" a commercial flight with 82 of its own nationals on board and killing a total of 176 passengers and crew members. This is the same regime that now announces the resumption of its nuclear weapons program. The bomb could be launched "by mistake," of course, at Israel - or dropped on a neighboring country, such as Sunni states in the Gulf, or even on Iran itself.

The Iranian people know that the plane was shot down by their own government. There are anti-regime protests across Iran. There is anger over the incompetence and the lies of the last few days. The regime will come out of it weakened. After the death of Soleimani, images of mass rallies may have given the impression of a popular rally against the United States, but it has long been known that such impressions can be misleading.

Think, for example, of the images of Parisian crowds applauding Marshal Pétain in 1940, used by Vichy propaganda. In the absence of free elections and polls, it is difficult to know the real feelings of the majority of the Iranian population. As of this writing, many are protesting against "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and calling for his resignation.

The countries of the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the lead, will be convinced more than ever that their security -- in the face of an aggressive regime that does not hesitate to export its "revolution" to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen, etc. -- depends on America's protection. No longer dependent on the region for its energy supply, the United States will be able to ask those countries to pay for it, as President Trump keeps asking.

More news you haven't seen: Lebanon enforcing draconian anti-free speech laws against protesters and journalists

Lebanon is generally considered one of he most liberal Arab countries.

That's not saying much.

While Article 13 of Lebanon's constitution says:

The freedom of opinion, expression through speech and writing, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, and the freedom of association, are all guaranteed within the scope of the law.

It turns out this is not really true.

Lebanon's penal code has a bunch of penalties for defamation, slander and similar offenses.

Article 384 punishes with up to two years’ imprisonment anyone who “insults” the president, the flag or the national emblem, with up to two years' imprisonment. Articles 386 and 388 criminalize defamation of public officials and public entities. Articles 582-584 provide for up to three months imprisonment for "slander" of any public official.

Moreover, Article 157 of the Military Justice Code prohibits defamation of the army.

The truth is not a defense against these charges.

In recent months, these laws have been invoked more and more often as Lebanese have been protesting the government. One crazy example:

When banks started to issue withdrawal limits weeks before the revolution, people took videos and photos at the banks and posted them on social media.

Among them, Lebanese journalist Amer Shibani who, according to Middle-East Eye on October 15th, was threatened by a lawyer of a major bank, “You will delete your tweet or else.”

According to journalist twitter user @chehayebk, "Several were interrogated over accusations of slander and defamation," just for posting photos of the banks.

In other words, anything that someone doesn't like can become a target for a "defamation" action.

Lebanon is enforcing online "defamation" as cybercrime. The Lebanese Cybercrimes Bureau reportedly initiated 3,599 defamation investigations between January 2015 and May 2019 and the number is increasing.

This journalist deleted a tweet saying a certain bank stopped handing out dollars after he was summoned by the Cybercrimes Bureau.

In October, a group of lawyers accused the British magazine The Economist of damaging Lebanon’s reputation, economic well-being and desecrating the country's flag because it illustrated an article about Lebanon's floundering economy with this picture:

While HRW is actually on top of this story, the media has been remarkably silent - especially given that the media is the target of much of these laws.

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Oh, no! Iran declares the Pentagon to be a terrorist organization!

From Iran's PressTV:

President Hassan Rouhani has signed an amended law that expands Iran’s designation of American terrorist organizations to include the Pentagon and all its subsidiaries.

Iran’s parliament passed the initial version of the law back in April, which designated the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) a terrorist organization after the US blacklisted the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

Last week, the Iranian parliament expanded it to include the Pentagon, in response to US assassination of IRGC Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani and his companions in Baghdad.

Rouhani signed the amended version, thus making its implementation imperative upon all the country’s related bodies.

The new version blacklists all staff members of the Pentagon and subsidiary companies and institutions, in addition to those who commanded and perpetrated General Soleimani’s assassination.

All the 233 lawmakers present at an open session of the parliament on Tuesday unanimously adopted the triple-urgency motion.

It is not just urgent, and not just doubly urgent, but triply urgent!

The vote was unanimous!

Mike Pompeo must be quaking in his boots.

This will have a huge effect on the Pentagon's many bank holdings in Tehran. Not to mention that Pentagon employees won't be able to speak at prestigious Iranian security conferences.

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Auschwitz Memorial Twitter account minimizes Polish complicity for the Holocaust

For the several years, the Polish government has been trying to minimize the role of Poles in the Holocaust, as Times of Israel reported last January:

The Polish government marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday, but completely ignored the complicity of Poles who actively participated in crimes against Jews during World War II.

Rather, Warsaw seemed to stress Polish suffering and Polish efforts to rescue Jews, leading an Israeli Holocaust historian to charge that Poland is trying to make the Nazi genocide look like a “Polish rescue project.”
Historians debate how many Poles aided the Nazi death machine during World War II, with estimates ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

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But Poland has never admitted to complicity on any large scale and last year Warsaw passed a law prohibiting people from blaming the Polish nation for Holocaust atrocities.

Indeed, a new study on Holocaust remembrance in Europe argues that the Poles are among the “worst offenders” when it comes to efforts to rehabilitate Nazi collaborators and war criminals and “minimizing their own guilt in the attempted extermination of Jews.”

According to the study, conducted by researchers from Yale and Grinnell colleges and published last week, the right-wing government in Warsaw has “engaged in competitive victimization, emphasising the experience of Polish victims over that of Jewish victims.

“The government spends considerable effort on rewriting history rather than acknowledging and learning from it,” the study found.

The Auschwitz Museum Twitter account appears to be part of the Polish whitewashing of their people's complicity in the Holocaust.

The account has a lot of very good information. It humanizes many victims of the Holocaust. It has gone on a massive campaign to recruit followers, and is nearing its goal of one million.

But the Auschwitz Museum account minimizes Polish complicity in the Holocaust just as the Polish government does. This thread from Sunday illuminates this, as the Museum posted this:

Viktor Hardarson responded:

Let´s analyse your own tweet "honestly, fairly & professionally".

The beginning of the tweet sets the tone, the context and the content of the rest of the tweet.

So, the beginning is about actions of Poles during German occupation of Poland in WW2. It
mentions these actions (acts) "must be researched honestly fairly & professionally" "within the context of the German occupation...and extermination of Jews" if they were "heroic or horrible"

This is the "prelude" in your tweet.

That whether the acts of Poles relating to the Holocaust and under German occupation were heroic or horrible.

So far we´re talking about what the Poles did in relation to the extermination of Jews.
What is revealing is the phrase "heroic or horrible".
It implies direct actions with good or bad consequences
It is clear that you are talking about the acts of individuals that affected Jews in direct relations. Man to man. What one did directly to another.

And of course that should be researched. And it has been researched. For 75 years.

The 2nd part.
"However, in the case of the history of the Auschwitz camp talking about Polish complicity is false".

We´ve already established that the 1st part is about ones behaviour towards another in direct relation. It can not be about anything else based on the wording.

So the latter part has nothing to do with "planning" or "running" Auschwitz.
It´s a continuation of the 1st part so what you´re saying is: Poles had nothing to do with Auschwitz and no Jew ended up in Auschwitz as a result of Polish complicity.

This is false.
As far as I agree that research of the Holocaust should be continued there´s no need for further research on Polish complicity. We have so much knowledge about that from eyewitnesses, documentation, news, articles and so on that we know that history isn´t going to change.
Poles were complicit in the Holocaust. And Poles were often the reason Jews ended up in Auschwitz.

That is the "shit" you need to own.

In the first part of the Tweet you literally blamed Polish behaviour on the Germans. Something you have repeatedly done in our conversation.
If that was the case, that the Polish behaved the way they did because of the German occupation, then it´s equally true that those heroes that sheltered Jews also behaved in that way because of the German occupation.

There´s one thing that determines your actions. And 1 thing only.

Who you are.

How you act, or react, to circumstances is solely based on who you are.

Blaming others for your own behaviour is immature.

And it´s "whitewashing".

So let me tell you what we see in your tweet.

"If the Polish ppl did good or bad to the Jews, if it was bad it was because of the German occupation - it´s their fault, needs to be researched. But Poles had nothing to do with Auschwitz".

Does this sound like a true description of the events to anyone?

No.

This Polish historian estimates that some 200,000 Jews were killed by Poles betraying them, sometimes after extorting all their possessions.

That is part of the history that the official Auschwitz Museum account doesn't want you to know about.

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Everyday antisemitism in German public schools

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Society-wide, the numbers around anti-Semitism are stark. Six of 10 Jews in Germany have experienced anti-Semitic “hidden insinuations,” while 9 of 10 Jews in Germany feel “strongly burdened” by anti-Semitism directed at their family, according to a 2017 qualitative study out of Bielefeld University titled “Jewish Perspectives on Antisemitism in Germany.”

Schools in Berlin have seen an uptick in incidents, reporting 41 incidents in 2018, up one-third from the previous year, according to RIAS, a monitoring agency that tracks anti-Semitic incidents.

Recently, at one Berlin public school, Mr. Königsberg says, a teacher was instructing a unit on religion. One boy offered up that he was Jewish, only to hear a classmate mutter in response, “I’ve got to kill you.” The teacher heard the remark, but did nothing to intervene, says Mr. Königsberg.

Other school situations can be understated or offhand, and even perpetrated by teachers, he adds. Take the time a Berlin public school took a field trip to the city’s Holocaust memorial. A 14-year-old Jewish girl, emotional over what she was seeing, began to sob. Her German teacher told her, “Why are you crying? It was so long ago.”

A Jewish woman whose child attends an elite Berlin public school says she volunteered to run the Israel booth at the school’s international fair. She says she immediately felt uncomfortable. First, a child of about 5 years passed by and told her, “Israel is bad.” Later, as students assessed the falafel offered at the booth, several offered that the food had “nothing to do with Israel.”

Toward the end of the fair, a teenager leaned over the table to get in her face, snarling, “I wish the falafel were grenades, and that they would explode in your face.” Another parent intervened and moved the teen away from the table.

The woman visited with police over the verbal assault, but ultimately decided not to file a report. “I didn’t feel a 15-year-old should have a criminal record,” she says.

When she reported the incident to the school principal, she came away disappointed. “The issue was never raised with the community,” says the woman, who wished to remain anonymous since her child is still enrolled in the school. “Eventually the principal left. Nothing was done.”

It sounds like incidents like these are hugely unreported.

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01/12 Links: Trump Sends Message Of Support To The Iranian People Written In Persian; The perverse Western mourning for Soleimani; The new socialism, like the old, will not protect Jews

From Ian:

Trump Sends Message Of Support To The Iranian People Written In Persian

President Donald Trump sent a message written in Persian to Iranians who were openly protesting the country’s oppressive Islamic government on Saturday, which comes in response to Iran admitting this week that it shot down a passenger plane.

According to a Google translation, Trump tweeted, “To the brave and suffering Iranian people: I have stood with you since the beginning of my presidency and my government will continue to stand with you. We are following your protests closely. Your courage is inspiring.”

Trump tweeted out nearly the exact same statement in English, writing, “To the brave, long-suffering people of Iran: I’ve stood with you since the beginning of my Presidency, and my Administration will continue to stand with you. We are following your protests closely, and are inspired by your courage.”

Trump continued, “The government of Iran must allow human rights groups to monitor and report facts from the ground on the ongoing protests by the Iranian people. There can not be another massacre of peaceful protesters, nor an internet shutdown. The world is watching.”

Trump also reverberated the same message in Persian.

Trump’s comments come as Iranian protesters flooded to streets of Tehran by the thousands to demand that Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei resign after his government told the world that it did not shoot down the Ukrainian 737 last week and then reversed course on Friday, admitting that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is a designated terrorist group, shot down the plane.

“Angry crowds gathered on Saturday night in at least four locations in Tehran, chanting ‘death to liars’ and calling for the country’s supreme leader to step down over the tragic military blunder, video from the scene shows,” The Daily Mail reported. “‘Death to the Islamic Republic’ protesters chanted, as the regime’s paramilitary security force allegedly used ambulances to sneak heavily armed paramilitary police into the middle of crowds to disperse the demonstration.”

This tweet by @realDonaldTrump with more than 100k likes is already the most liked Persian tweet in the history of Twitter. A strong show of support by Iranians for Trump's Iran policy, something the MSM does not and will not report. https://t.co/4tZ0IgDZmx
— Saeed Ghasseminejad (@SGhasseminejad) January 11, 2020

The voice of the Iranian people is clear. They are fed up with the regime’s lies, corruption, ineptitude, and brutality of the IRGC under @khamenei_ir's kleptocracy. We stand with the Iranian people who deserve a better future. pic.twitter.com/tBOjv9XsIG
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) January 11, 2020

Melanie Phillips: The perverse Western mourning for Soleimani

No one, however, should be under any illusions. The regime can be expected to resume its strategy of mounting deniable attacks against soft or second-tier military targets.

Trump has now laid down his red line: If you attack America, you will be destroyed. The same cannot be said for Britain and Europe. Their aversion to fighting back has turned their populations, with countless Iranian terrorist sleeper cells in their midst, into sitting ducks.

It’s good that Trump is now increasing sanctions against Iran. And good luck to him in piling pressure on Johnson to follow America’s lead and withdraw from the lethal nuclear pact for which the United Kingdom has been such a cheerleader.

But this mercurial and contradictory president now has to follow through. He himself cannot make another deal with a regime that believes its Divine destiny is to cause an apocalypse and bring the Shia messiah to earth. He must instead force its destruction.

“President Trump could not be more clear. On our watch, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon,” said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

All decent, rational people should be cheering those words. For the first time, this evil regime has been held to account. Yet Western liberals are spitting tacks. We can see what side they’re on here, and it’s not their own.

The murderous, fanatical Iranian regime poses one of the greatest dangers to the civilized world. How shameful that Western liberals – in their terrifying moral and intellectual blindness – seem to be falling over themselves to give it victory.

The new socialism, like the old, will not protect Jews

Beyond the ugly portrayal of Jews, this argument, too, beseeches us to remember the economic context at stake in the anti-Semitic attacks targeting Jews. And those of us who see anti-Semitism as a force beyond excuse, one that manifests wherever the human heart is distorted by hate, are chided as lacking the sophistication to see the “cruelly rational” relationship between capitalism and Anti-Semitism.

That’s not analysis. It’s delusion, and its dangerous.

The simplicity of blaming everything on “material conditions,” gentrification and the existing order, is indeed tempting. The Jews become the natural victims of the system that they benefit from, and those who attack them are structurally absolved; their acts of violence get added to the bill of particulars in support of the need for revolution. Context does all the work, and what’s left over is picked up by “solidarity,” which can mean anything at all except that Jews deserve protection from those who seek to harm us.

In fact, the relationship goes the other way. As with the far right, the socialist left is relentlessly bad news for the Jews. Its most successful contemporary avatar, Jeremy Corbyn, presided over the transformation of one of the great political parties in the West into a conspiracy of befouled anti-Semites. And its most successful tribune in the United States, while himself a proud Jew, seems unable to quit those like Linda Sarsour who speak for him and see behind him a movement more amenable to their hateful commitments.
The committed antisemite will not be dissuaded by a demonstration that they are subscribing to something irrational. by the Forward
The first step to fighting anti-Semitism is recognizing how irrational it is
Deborah E. LipstadtJanuary 9, 2020

Punching down on the Jews by arguing that the stock market is the modern-day Cossack does more than just badly misread a problem. Success for the socialist dream of universality will always end up liquidating Jewish particularity.

There are simple conditions under which Jews have thrived, most of all in this country: liberty of speech and thought and religion; tolerance and diversity; equality of opportunity; the rule of law. These classic liberal values are out of favor with the revolutionaries at Jacobin and the vanguard of progressive sensibility at Jewish Currents, but they add up to our best shot to survive and thrive in the second century of the American Diaspora.

"Union Journal" site looks like a Russian fake news site

A website called "Union Journal" published a translation of an article I noted ten days ago.that said that Israel was selling the organs of Palestinians they kill.

The webpage of the "Union Journal" looks like a generic news site. Every article seems to be authored by the same "Miriam Jackson" and articles look to often be illegal copies of articles from other sites. But the articles about Israel all seems to come from anti-Israel propaganda sites.

I looked a little closer at this site. It used to be associated with a UK union site. The expired domain name was taken over by an anonymous user around 2018 were it first was a stock tipsheet. Only last September did it start to look the way it does now, as a news site.

The site claims to have millions of followers on social media. This is quite a lie. They have no presence at all on social media at this time. The links are all bad.

They hide their DNS ownership info and use Cloudflare to stop DDoS attacks.

According to Alexa, they have had a steadily increasing audience over the past three months.

The site pretends to be based out of New York City, but the people behind it link to a weather widget that uses Celsius, not Fahrenheit, so clearly this is not a US-based operation.

It looks like this is one small cog in a huge machine meant to push fake news when needed, probably ahead of US elections.

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From Felesteen:

Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem said on Saturday that the party will take revenge for the assassination of the commander of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qassem Soleimani.

"Mofazik Life" quoted Qassim as saying, "Soleimani was not only working for Iran, but for the entire Islamic world and the resistance forces against (Israel)."

"The United States will find that the calculations it made are wrong and it will have to recalculate it to change the equation," he added.

Hezbollah isn't threatening the US, but threatening to attack Israel as a means to hurt the US.

It seems unlikely that this is anything but bravado. The Lebanese people are upset enough at Hezbollah and the terror group does not want to invite another war with Israel that the people will not support. Still, threats from Hezbollah are not to be discounted completely.

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This may, or may not, be the aftermath of this huge attack, in Gaza City.

Tehran Times "reports:"

Following the Israeli operation against Syria’s T4 airbase, in which some Iranian military advisors were martyred, the forces of the axis of resistance attacked ten targets in the occupied territories in an unprecedented operation.

Israeli officials at the time stated that none of their troops were killed in the retaliatory action by the resistance movement, while detailed information reveals that about 60 Zionist regime’s forces were killed.

After the retaliatory operation by the forces of the resistance movement at 3:10 local time, CNN television channel reported that the casualties were significant. Only after ten minutes all radio and telecommunication networks and even the power of the targeted areas were cut off, then the Western media outlets insisted that there were no casualties by shifting their approach in all news fields.

To understand why such an approach was adopted the following statements should be considered.

1. The vow of retaliatory operation was fulfilled in a situation that the Zionist regime and its affiliated media outlets were trying to describe Iran’s claim about the “end of hit-and-run period” as a bluff and question the Iranian ability to take revenge.

2. This hard revenge revealed several facts for the Zionist regime, including Iran’s military capability and the will to use it against any aggression.

3. Benjamin Netanyahu, who had been in Sochi, Russia to meet Vladimir Putin at that time, sent a message by Russians declaring his lack of will to respond to the attack and calling for mediation to persuade Iran to halt its retaliatory attacks.

Reviewing the Israeli military and media reaction to the Iranian retaliatory response shows that the U.S. government has taken exactly the same approach in the early hours after a strong slap by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The Americans, on the one hand, refuse to report the casualties of their troops or facilities in Ein Al-Assad base and even suspended the Israeli journalist’s Twitter account because of an unreliable tweet about the casualties, and on the other hand, they repeatedly claim that they have suffered no damage by the IRGC’s operation.

It's a real mystery, since there have been no reports of any attacks on Saturday by Islamic Jihad or Hamas media outlets. One would think they would be covering this news fairly closely, since they are part of the "axis of resistance."

Apparently, Israel has the ability to censor everyone in the world - except the Tehran Times.

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01/11 Links: Iranians protest after IRGC admits shooting down plane; Remembering the victims of Ukraine Flight 752; Soleimani planning attacks on 4 US embassies

From Ian:

Dr. Martin Sherman: Terminating terrorists and assessing assassinations

Indeed, arguably the only case where a single targeting killing appears to have brought about the end of a terror organization is that of Zuheir Mohsen and the a-Saiqa movement which he headed. Once the second largest faction in the PLO after Fatah, since the demise of Mohsen, a-Saiqa has descended into insignificance and irrelevance.

Overall, however, it does appear that, unless targeted assassinations are part of a sustained, ongoing policy of lethal pursuit of adversaries, the effect of a “stand alone” assassination is, at best, short-lived.

The imponderable “What ifs”

Of course, one of the imponderable questions is that of what would have occurred had targeted assassinations not been undertaken.

After all, one thing is certain. If Israel’s enemies know that they are in danger of losing their lives, their modus operandi will inevitably be more constrained, cumbersome and costly than if they could operate unperturbed, secure in the knowledge that their personal safety was not at risk. With the threat of potential targeted assassination hovering over them, the resources, that need be devoted to their own security, may be considerable and hamper the freedom they might otherwise have.

There is, of course, one other consideration that militates strongly in favor of targeted assassinations. After all, whatever the operational efficacy of targeted assassinations may be—or not be—the conscience of every decent individual should rebel at the thought that arch-purveyors of terror should be permitted to pursue their deadly vocation with impunity.

Indeed, as Pulitzer Prize winner, Bret Stephens recently wrote in the New York Times:
“No U.S. president [or Israeli Prime Minister - MS]…should ever convey to an enemy the impression it can plot attacks against Americans [or Israelis - MS] with impunity. To do otherwise is to invite worse.”

Indeed it is!!

Noah Rothman: Democrats Are Out of Touch on Foreign Affairs, Too

Among general election voters, polling relating to the Soleimani strike has so far indicated that the issue does not mirror America’s partisan divides. A Huffington Post/YouGov poll conducted from January 4-5 found voters approved of the strike by 43 to 38 percent. A January 5-7 Economist/YouGov survey showed voters backed the strike by 44 to 38 percent. Reuters/Ipsos’s January 7-8 poll showed 42 percent of voters supported the strike while just 33 percent opposed it. If support for Trump’s actions in Iraq essentially mirrors his job approval rating, opposition to it most certainly does not. And while the press is more inclined to play up these polls’ findings below the topline (“Americans say Soleimani’s killing made U.S. less safe, Trump ‘reckless’ on Iran” was how USA Today characterized a poll that found only one-third of voters oppose Trump’s actions), the nuances these surveys uncovered are far more intriguing.

Another Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted from January 3-6 indicated that the deep reservoir of mistrust that has characterized Americans’ views toward Iran for the better part of a half-century persists even among Democrats. When asked if Iran represents an “imminent threat” to the U.S., a substantial plurality of all voters—41 percent—agreed. The number of Democrats who agreed with that sentiment precisely tracks with the country as a whole: 41 percent. Huffington Post/YouGov confirms that Democrats and Clinton voters are more inclined to view Iran as a “very serious” threat to the U.S. than even Trump voters and Republicans.

This isn’t necessarily the product of a news cycle dominated by Iranian aggression. A Fox News poll from July found that 57 percent of Democrats (and 60 percent of all respondents) said: “Iran poses a real national security threat to the United States.” And while 42 percent of Democrats oppose “taking military action to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons,” 38 percent support such an operation. Most polling on Iran over the course of the year presents analysts with an intuitive conclusion: Democrats are far more inclined to oppose military action against Iran than Republicans. But those surveys also suggest that the voting public, including Democrats, will support such a contingency under the right circumstances. It’s not hard to make the case that Iran’s months-long campaign of direct and undeniable attacks on Americans and their allies in the region meets those conditions.

That nuance is lost in the Democratic Party’s response to the crisis that has come to typify the opening days of 2020. Even among the party’s voices of moderation, it is fashionable to blame Trump even for reckless Iranian provocations like the downing of a commercial airliner on the night of January 7. According to Pete Buttigieg, for example, the blame for Iran’s mistaken attack on a plane full of Iranians taking off from an Iranian airport amid an entirely unreciprocated Iranian volley of rockets targeting U.S. troops 500 miles away should be laid at Trump’s feet.

Democrats are betting that their voters, much less all voters, are more or less inclined toward pacifism in the face of manifest threats to U.S. interests abroad, but the polling does not support that conclusion. Just as Democrats eventually learned that Medicare-for-all wasn’t the surefire winner its consultant class believed, they may soon discover that Americans are not as squeamish about killing terrorist commanders as they presume.

Jim Geraghty: Give Blame Where It’s Due, Please

Sure, the Iranian air-defense system would not have been on highest alert this week if the United States had not killed Soleimani outside the Baghdad International Airport January 3. But the Iranians made the choice to fire rockets into Iraq that evening, the Iranian government made the choice to permit civilian air traffic in the hours after their rocket attack, and ultimately it was the Iranian military that fired the surface-to-air missile. You really have to squint and stretch to say that this tragedy — which killed 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, eleven Ukrainians (including the crew members), ten Swedish, seven Afghans, and three Germans — is President Trump’s fault.

One question for the military-technology experts: Does this tragedy stem from poor training on the part of the Iranian military, or does Russian air-defense system equipment do a lousy job of differentiating between civilian airliners and military jets?

Whatever the answer to that question is, the fact remains that right now, the Democratic grassroots believe that Trump is the root of all evil, and all bad things that happen lead back to him in one form or another. There’s a Democratic primary and impeachment battle going on simultaneously. No one of any stature in the Democratic party can afford the political risk of publicly arguing or even acknowledging that anything isn’t Trump’s fault. The Democratic presidential candidates, in particular, have to offer the biggest, most vocal, most emphatic, “yes, you’re right, grassroots” that they possibly can.

“Innocent civilians are now dead because they were caught in the middle of an unnecessary and unwanted military tit for tat,” Pete Buttigieg declared. The most common term floating around Thursday night was “crossfire,” even though Tuesday night only one side was firing any weapons. Keep in mind, so far in this conflict, the United States military hasn’t fired anything into or in the direction of Iranian territory.

If we really want to extend blame beyond the Iranian military, there is a long list of individuals and institutions who should be standing in line ahead of President Trump. Let’s start with Iranian aviation authorities who kept their local civilian aircraft flying, and the airlines who chose to keep flights taking off shortly after Iranian military action — when no one could know for sure whether the military action had concluded.

From the Washington Examiner:

The game show Jeopardy! took flak from critics after the answer to one of its questions said Bethlehem was in Israel.

One of the contestants first picked Palestine as the answer to the question "Where's that Church?" with the clue "Built in the 300s A.D., the Church of the Nativity." The church marking the birthplace of Jesus used to be Israel, but now the Palestinian Authority controls Bethlehem under agreements from Israel. The ambiguity of the answer was enough for liberal critics to come after the game show.

"Unacceptable!!" one such critic said on Twitter. "Bethlehem is in the Palestinian territories which Israel illegally occupies (Katie Needle got the correct answer & was robbed). @Jeopardy owes an apology for endorsing Israel's universally-condemned illegal takeover of Palestinian lands."

Unacceptable!! Bethlehem is in the Palestinian territories which Israel illegally occupies (Katie Needle got the correct answer & was robbed). @Jeopardy owes an apology for endorsing Israel's universally-condemned illegal takeover of Palestinian lands.pic.twitter.com/Ym99YziM4k
— Omar Baddar (@OmarBaddar) January 11, 2020

The problem is, everyone is wrong.

"Palestine" is not a country and as such is not the correct answer.

Israel never annexed Bethlehem and as such it is not the correct answer.

The legally correct answer is probably something like "disputed regions of Judea and Samaria." (I don't know what the rules for that category were, whether a nation was the only acceptable answer or not, or whether they would have allowed "West Bank" or "Land of Israel" as answers.)

If Israel would have annexed Bethlehem, then there would be no ugly wall surrounding Rachel's Tomb. If Israel would have annexed Bethlehem, it would still be a Christian majority city and the exodus of Christians would not have occurred. If Israel would have annexed Bethlehem, things would be more peaceful today.

But as much as Zionists want to cheer Jeopardy for saying the answer is Israel, unfortunately it isn't.

Maybe one day.

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01/10 Links Pt2: The True Motives Of Palestinian Leadership, Corruption, And Ethnic Cleansing; Arab States Have Everything to Gain from Normalization with Israel; Turning BDS into 'Buy directly from Samaria'

From Ian:

The True Motives Of Palestinian Leadership, Corruption, And Ethnic Cleansing

Sadly, Israel has demonstrated more commitment to a Palestinian state than has Palestinian leadership itself. Since 2000, Israel has proposed or accepted four land-for-peace proposals that would have created an independent Palestinian state. The PA has refused all proposals, despite one being so generous as to include all of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and 97% of Judea and Samaria. Palestinian self-sabotages at achieving statehood have been so in vain that Bill Clinton once lamented, “I killed myself trying to give Palestinians a state.”

The PA’s motive, instead of statehood, is corruption — which “thrives” as conflict exists. Conflict fuels international attention and the foreign aid that the PA has exploited to line its pockets and fortify its bureaucracy. In 2015, it was reported that the PA had received $25 billion in foreign aid since 1994. Yet Palestinians “saw no improvement in their living conditions.” This sum should startle: Palestinian foreign aid, when assessed on a per capita basis, exceeds that designated for the Marshall Plan by 25 times. Unlike the Marshall Plan, which propelled Europe’s reconstruction in four years, the “Palestinian Project” has now lasted over a quarter of a century without any end in sight.

So where has the money gone? Corruption. Arafat amassed $10+ billion, “[t]he main source” of which was “the approximately $6 billion contributed … as financial aid.” Further, Arafat’s financial advisor accumulated $500+ million, having had access to “hundreds of millions of [the PA’s] dollars.” Abbas also amassed approximately $100 million, despite being a career politician, and his two sons are millionaires who operate foreign aid contracting businesses. The PA suffers from systemic venality.

Palestinian-Arab leadership has long realized that conflict must exist for it to receive aid. Thus, in 2018, it distributed $330 million worth of stipends to thousands of terrorists and their families, thereby inspiring future generations of terror. PA leadership also realizes that its power remains dependent on keeping the Palestinian people dependent on its reign. Hence, in 2016, “[m]ore than half” of the PA’s spending on Gaza was “spent on wages to PA employees.” Further, between 1999 and 2007, the PA recruited 70,000 new government officials, while spending 70% of the Paris Conference foreign aid package on government salaries in 2008, and 58% of its entire foreign aid for 2001 on PA salaries. Through inciting violence and dependency culture, the PA exploits conflict to preserve its power and wealth.

In sum, Palestinian leadership has long been disingenuous. It wants not peace, but either a “Judenrein Palestine” or a conflict that will enable its corruption, power, and raison d’etre. If the world really wants a solution, it must stop blaming Israel, which has actually tried to establish a Palestinian state, and condemn the true motives of Palestinian leadership.

‘Experts’ Perpetuate Mideast and Palestinian Myths

No matter how many times the think-tank “experts” are proven wrong in their predictions regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict, they keep promoting the same old myths.

They must think that the public has a very short memory.

The Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS) last week unveiled its recommendations for Israeli policy in 2020. The men and women who make up its roster have impressive credentials in their fields.

Yet remarkably, they keep promoting policy positions that have been discredited again and again and again.

Myth #1: Palestinian Arab terrorism is caused by poverty.

In 2020, “Palestinian disgruntlement will be mainly channeled into international diplomatic moves against Israel, not to violent unrest — unless the economic situation in the territories worsens,” according to the JISS.

Call it the “Barack Obama Theory of the Causes of Terrorism.” In an interview on CBS’s This Morning on December 4, 2015, then-President Obama explained one view of what causes terrorism: “When people are not able to make a living or take care of their families,” they become “desperate,” and “as human beings are placed under strain, then bad things happen.”

Many of the modern-day Zionist pioneers involved in rebuilding the Land of Israel in the late 1800s and early 1900s likewise believed that the Palestinian Arabs would drop their opposition to the Jews once they saw how much they would benefit from Jewish immigration.

Jobs. Running water. Electricity. Trains. They were followed by refrigerators, telephones, mail service, and automobiles. Arabs from Syria, Egypt, and across the Jordan River poured into the country and enjoyed better jobs, better homes, and better food. But it didn’t stop them from hating Jews. In 1920, 1921, 1929, and continuously from 1936 to 1939, Palestinian Arabs shot, stabbed, and bombed Jews throughout the country, even when it undermined their own economic well-being.

John Podhoretz: Tom Cotton on Anti-Semitism

On January 9, Tom Cotton of Arkansas made a speech on the floor of the United States Senate about the shocking rise of anti-Semitic crimes in and around New York City. Everyone should read it. Here it is:
This holiday season, the ancient hatred of anti-Semitism cast a shadow over New York City during Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. The New York Police Department recorded at least nine separate attacks against Jews—more than one attack for each day of Hanukkah. New attacks are reported seemingly on a daily basis.

In Crown Heights, site of the deadly anti-Semitic riots incited by Al Sharpton in 1991, a group of men beat up an Orthodox Jew and attacked another with a chair.

In Williamsburg, another group terrorized an elderly Jewish man on the street. “Jew, Hitler burned you,” one of the criminals reportedly said. “I’ll shoot you.”

And just outside the city, in Rockland County, a man with a machete stormed a Hanukkah celebration in a rabbi’s home and injured five worshippers, leaving two in critical condition. The family of one victim, Josef Neumann, says he may never wake up from his coma.

These heinous attacks are part of a growing storm of anti-Semitism that has made Jewish Americans fearful to worship and walk the streets in their own communities. They come in the wake of the deadly rampage at a kosher market in Jersey City that left four innocent people dead, including a police detective. And of course, they come in the wake of the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in our nation’s history: the massacre of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh by a white supremacist.

According to the FBI, our country suffered a 37 percent increase in anti-Semitic crimes between 2014 and 2018. According to the New York Police Department, the city suffered a 26 percent increase in anti-Semitic crimes in the past year alone. That increase is alarming enough. So is the fact that most hate crimes reported in New York are crimes against Jews. And while some of the increase is due to better reporting, much of it is not. Jewish Americans bear witness to this harsh reality.

Anti-Semitism is the ancient hatred, but today it can appear in new disguises. It festers on Internet message boards and social media. It festers in so-called Washington think tanks like the Quincy Institute, an isolationist blame-America-first money pit for so-called “scholars” who’ve written that American foreign policy could be fixed if only it were rid of the malign influence of Jewish money. It festers even on elite college campuses, which incubate the radical Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement—a movement to wage economic warfare against the Jewish state. These forms of anti-Semitism may be less bloody than street crime in New York, but they channel the same ancient hatred, the same conspiratorial and obsessive focus on the Jewish people.

Imad Mughniyeh, Qassem Suleimani and Hassan Nasrallah

Al Manar (English), Hezbollah's media outlet, says:

Representative of Hamas resistance movement in Lebanon Ahmad Abdu Hadi revealed that Hezbollah top commander Hajj Imad Mughniyeh and Commander of IRGC’s Quds Force General Qassem Suleimani had visited Gaza repeatedly and contributed to resistance actions against the Zionist entity in the coastal enclave.

“There are 360-kilometer underground tunnels in Gaza. The idea of these tunnels was introduced by two men: the first was Imad Mughniyeh, while the second was Qassem Suleimani,” Abdul Hadi said in a meeting with journalists on Wednesday.

Martyrs Suleimani and Mughniyeh went repeatedly to Gaza and contributed to the defensive plans by the resistance factions in the besieged strip, Abdul Hadi added.

“Thanks to Suelimani and Mughniyeh the resistance managed to have and produce Kornet rockets and anti-aircraft rockets as well as missiles equipped by three warheads that are capable to reach Tel Aviv.”

Yet another reason to pass out the candy.

(h/t @iTiIL972)

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01/10 Links Pt1: Glick: Donald Trump and the mythmakers; American Self-Criticism Borders on Narcissism; My despair at those who weep for Quassem Soleimani

From Ian:

Caroline B. Glick: Donald Trump and the mythmakers

If Trump's reality-based policies succeed, he will dismantle their foreign policy legacy. All their protestations of wisdom, all their fancy resumes and titles as former senior officials will lose their allure and market value.

Since Pompeo's statement regarding the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria related to an issue which, while critical, is less in the headlines today than it was under Obama, aside from a few peremptory condemnations, the foreign policy aristocrats ignored it. As they saw it, once they return to power and start working with an Israeli government led by someone other than Benjamin Netanyahu, the anti-Israel phony narrative will be restored to its rightful place as the foundation of US policy.

The Iran story is different. Days before the drone strike that killed him, Soleimani tried to re-enact the 1979 "student" takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran with "protesters" in Baghdad. But this time it didn't work. And Soleimani paid with his life for his failure. Iran's half-hearted, failed missile attack against US forces in Iraq showed that the Iranian regime is terrified of Trump and their reversal of fortune.

Trump's policies expose the mendacity and rank insanity of his predecessors’ policies towards Iran and Israel. Since Obama's policies were particularly radical, divorced from reality and devastating, Trump has reasonably singled them out for particular rebuke and condemnation. Among other things, reasonably, Trump said the missiles Iran shot at US forces in Iraq were paid for by the 150 billion dollars in sanctions relief and 1.8 billion dollars in cash that flowed to the coffers of the IRGC through the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Rather than keep quiet as their signature policy was exposed as a strategic disaster, Obama administration officials and their supporters in Congress and the media went into very public paroxysms of rage. Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser and chief propagandist, who sold the nuclear deal to a credulous and eager media, said Trump's move would lead to war. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the US strike against Soleimani was "disproportionate," hinting it was a war crime to kill the terrorist who had just ordered the seizure of a US Embassy. She scheduled a Congressional session to curb Trump's power to confront Iranian aggression and nuclear proliferation.

On cue, a group of psychiatrists wrote an open letter to Congress insisting that Trump is crazy and must be restrained. (The same group has written several nearly identical letters since Trump took office.)

To protect and preserve their 40-year old delusion-based policy, Trump's domestic opponents are effectively supporting the Iranian regime against the United States. And as they see it, they have no choice. They are in a race against time. The more successful Trump's reality-based policies towards Iran on the one hand and Israel on the other are, the harder it will be for the foreign policy establishment to restore their delusion-based policies when he leaves power. Given the stakes, we can assume that their attempts to clip Trump's wings and debase him will increase in intensity, churlishness and irrationality as time goes by and as his successes mount.

Flags L-R, via @PhillipSmyth + @abubakrbashir4:

1. Iran
2. IRGC
3. IRGC Aerospace
4. Hizbollah (Lebanon)
5. Houthis (Yemen)
6. Hashd al Sha'abi (Iraq)
7. Hamas (Gaza)
8. Fatemiyoun (Afghanistan)
9. Zainabiyoun (Pakistan) pic.twitter.com/cYm9krGciV
— Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) January 9, 2020

American Self-Criticism Borders on Narcissism

Those who said there will be war may not have realized there already was war. This doesn’t mean killing Iranian General Qassem Soleimani was good. It almost certainly wasn’t. Iran quickly retaliated by targeting two American military bases in Iraq and may find new ways to escalate, but Iran had already been escalating. The regime of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, with its Iranian patrons, led by Soleimani, has been waging a brutal assault on Syrians for more than eight years. War, in short, has been happening—costing hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians their lives—since long before Donald Trump ordered the drone strike against Soleimani.

In the aftermath of the strike, critics of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, particularly on the left, have described the move as one more rash American intervention that’s sure to further destabilize the region. Yet this formulation gives U.S. policy, for all its flaws, too much credit. Not everything is America’s fault; others are sometimes to blame; and no one, not even the weaker parties, are devoid of agency or freed of responsibility. The burden of de-escalation does not fall entirely on the United States; Iran, too, can choose to de-escalate.

There is also the problem of Trump himself. Because killing Soleimani was very much his decision—reflecting the impulsiveness and disarray a decision by him implies—it seems fair to assume that one’s view of the president will affect how one interprets the fallout from Soleimani’s killing. Correcting for subconscious bias isn’t easy, but at the very least, observers should be aware of the Trump effect.

Middle East experts, and particularly those from the region, have tended to be less alarmist than most other commentators. These experts are likely to be less fixated on Trump himself and less likely to put the United States at the center of their analysis. And they are more likely to be aware of the sheer scale of brutality, mass murder, and sectarian cleansing that Soleimani helped orchestrate. Soleimani wasn’t just another bad guy. He was one of the region’s worst. (Yet another humanitarian catastrophe has been unfolding in Syria, but it has garnered little attention. The Assad regime, with crucial military support from Iran and Russia, has been bombing Idlib province. More than 200,000 Syrians have already fled, and hundreds of thousands more could be forced from their homes.)

It is not an overstatement to say that Qassem Soleimani “haunted” the Arab world. As Kim Ghattas wrote here in The Atlantic, “Soleimani was so central to almost every regional event in the past two decades that even people who hate him can’t believe he could die.” It is a rich irony that as Democrats portrayed the strike as one of the worst foreign-policy blunders of the Trump presidency, a significant number of Syrians and Iraqis rejoiced—one of the very few times they have reacted positively to something, anything, that the United States has done. Their interests, of course, are not the same as Americans’, but there should at the very least be an effort to understand why they might have celebrated.

It would be outrageous if:

🇸🇦 Israel launched a "Mecca Force" to conquer Arabia
🇮🇹 Turkey launched a "Vatican Force" to conquer Italy
🇮🇳 France launched a "Sapta Puri Force" to conquer India

But the world's ok with:

🇮🇱 Iran trying to conquer Israel with their "Jerusalem Force"
— Israel Advocacy Movement (@israel_advocacy) January 10, 2020

My despair at those who weep for Quassem Soleimani

A few hours into the new year, pro-Assad forces targeted a school in southern Idlib with a cluster bomb. The bombing took place at 11am when it was clear the school would have been busy. Five children were killed. Two of those who died were just six years old; the oldest child victim was only thirteen. Four adults were also killed. I will forever be haunted by the faces of Yahya and Hour, the innocent six-year-olds who were amongst the child victims who attended – and died at – the school run by the organisation I work for.

This isn’t the first time one of our schools has been destroyed. In fact, six of our schools have been hit in as many months in Syria. Make no mistake: this is a clear co-ordinated bombing campaign against children.

Yet with the Syrian civil war entering its ninth year, the reaction to these dreadful, evil crimes is muted. Instead, the outrage appears to be directed elsewhere.

Two days after the New Year’s Day attack in Syria, Iran’s Quassem Soleimani was killed by a US airstrike near Baghdad airport. Many of my friends were furious. But why?

Were they concerned about the impact it would have on the region? No, they had never heard the name Soleimani until news of his death broke.

They knew little of his influence in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and further afield. Instead, quite simply, they were furious because his death resulted from a decision made by Donald Trump. Trump is bad and therefore this was bad, the logic seemed to be. Few paid heed to the crimes against humanity Soleimani is accused of. Soon, many of my Facebook friends had turned into foreign policy experts queuing up to predict that “WWIII” was inevitable. It was all Trump’s fault, they said. In the aftermath of Iran’s retaliation against US airbases, this fervour has only increased.

When Iranian proxies say "Damn the Jews," they must only mean "Zionists"

The amount of slack that the anti-Israel Left is willing to give Iran is stunning sometimes.

Reading their tweets, they (initially) said that they didn't believe that Iran had shot down the Ukraine Airlines plane because everything the US says is a lie - but not a word about Iranian claims that they killed 80 US servicemen in the missile strike, a lie so obvious that no one wants to even talk about it any more.

Iran doesn't kill any Americans out of fear of a major response, and they say Iran wisely wanted to avoid any casualties (that they claim they did.)

As I recently mentioned, official Iranian media publishes, in English, official antisemitism, even from white supremacists - and no reaction from the people who claim to care most about bigotry.

And Iran's proxies include the Houthis, whose very logo is explicitly antisemitic:

Translated:

When you define all antisemitism to be "white nationalism," then you become blind - and complicit - with all other kinds of antisemitism.

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