As anyone who followed the case of Naam Issachar knows, she was caught with 9.5 grams of marijuana in her suitcase during a stopover in Russia coming from India to Israel. She had no access to her luggage in Russia, she couldn't have sold her small amount of pot if she wanted to.
Issachar is not a politician. She is just a naive, perhaps stupid, girl for taking the marihuana on the plane. But Ashrawi, by smearing her as a "drug smuggler," shows that she does not want to merely insult a girl - but an Israeli and a Jew. She wants to tell the world that Issachar is guilty because she is Jewish - there is no other evidence of her being a smuggler.
Ashrawi, whose Miftah has pushed the blood libel and supported terrorists who kill Jews, has proven her hate for Jews yet again.
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Setting policies toward territories involved in protracted conflicts poses an ongoing challenge for governments, companies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Since there are multiple zones of disputed territories and occupation around the globe, setting policy toward one conflict raises the question of whether similar policies will be enacted toward others. Where different policies are implemented, the question arises: On what principle or toward what goal are the differences based?
Recently, for example, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) decided goods entering the European Union that are produced in Jewish settlements in the West Bank must be clearly designated as such.1 At the same time, however, neither the ECJ nor the European Union have enacted similar policies on goods from other zones of occupation, such as Nagorno-Karabakh or Abkhazia. The U.S. administration swiftly criticized the ECJ decision as discriminatory since it only applies to Israel.2 Yet, at the same time, U.S. customs policy on goods imports from other territories is also inconsistent: U.S. Customs and Border Protection has explicit guidelines that goods imported from the West Bank must be labelled as such, while goods that enter the United States from other occupied zones, such as Nagorno-Karabakh, encounter no customs interference.
Territorial conflicts have existed throughout history. But the establishment of the United Nations, whose core principles include the inviolability of borders and the inadmissibility of the use of force to change them, led to the proliferation of protracted conflicts. Previously, sustained control over territory led to eventual acceptance of the prevailing power’s claims to sovereignty. Today, the United Nations prevents recognition of such claims but remains largely incapable of influencing the status quo, leaving territories in an enduring twilight zone. Such territories include, but are not limited to: Crimea, Donbas, Northern Cyprus, the West Bank, Kashmir, The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, and Western Sahara.3
The problem is not simply that the United Nations, United States, European Union, private corporations, and NGOs act in a highly inconsistent manner. It is that their policies are selective and often reveal biases that underscore deeper problems in the international system. For example, Russia occupies territories the United States and European Union recognize as parts of Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, yet Crimea is the only Russian-occupied territory subject to Western sanctions. By contrast, products from Russian-controlled Transnistria enter the United States as products of Moldova, and the European Union allows Transnistria to enjoy the benefits of a trade agreement with Moldova. The United States and European Union demand specific labeling of goods produced in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and prohibit them from being labeled Israeli products. Yet products from Nagorno-Karabakh – which the United States and European Union recognize as part of Azerbaijan – freely enter Western markets labeled as products of Armenia.
Today, several occupying powers try to mask their control by setting up proxy regimes, such as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) or similar entities in Transnistria and Nagorno-Karabakh. While these proxies do not secure international recognition, the fiction of their autonomy benefits the occupier. By contrast, countries that acknowledge their direct role in a territorial dispute tend to face greater external pressure than those that exercise control by proxy.
On Wednesday, over on the heavily-trafficked Fox News website , there's an informative long-form piece that in large measure deals with our efforts to see Ahlam Tamimi, the Jordanian Islamist who masterminded the massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria in 2001, finally brought before US justice.
Written by Hollie McKay, the article is entitled "Most wanted female terrorist lives in freedom in Jordan despite extradition request for bombing that killed Americans".
Tamimi faces serious Federal charges in the United States for the central role she had in the mass-casualty attack. The FBI and the US Department of Justice have made serious efforts to take her into custody and reached what we think is the limit of their capabilities, absent the involvement of the political echelon of both the United States (by far the more important side) and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The mainstream media pay almost no attention to Tamimi, to Jordan's egregious (and frankly disgraceful) refusal to comply with its own 1995 treaty with the US, to our efforts, to the effect the Jordan/Tamimi scandal is having on the unchecked spread of Islamist and extremist pro-Palestinian Arab violence, and to how US politicians (with some important exceptions) treat the affair as untouchable and us as lepers.
Our thanks to Fox News and to Hollie McKay, whom we've never met, for focusing on what we are sure is an important story that exemplifies how justice in the plainest sense can be denied for shabby and unspoken political motives.
The January 23, 2020 visit to the Nazi Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp in Oświęcim, Poland by a delegation from the Mecca-based Muslim World League (MWL), comprising 25 senior Muslim clerics and headed by its secretary-general, Mohammad Al-'Issa, was unprecedented. Taking place in advance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, it was the first visit by a senior Muslim delegation to the camp, and was in conjunction with delegations and representatives from the American Jewish Committee (AJC). The visit, along with Al-'Issa's statements condemning the Holocaust during the visit, prompted a range of reactions in the Arab and Islamic world.
Saudi intellectuals and media figures expressed support for the visit on social media, emphasizing that the Holocaust was a mark of shame for humanity as well as history's most loathsome crime, that it should be acknowledged and condemned as such, and that it should be taught in schools. They added that the visit itself was an expression of tolerance and a positive move that would advance peace in the region. The Saudi press also published articles in support of the visit and of Al-'Issa, clarifying that it expressed condemnation of the crime against the Jews but was not an expression of support for Israel since Jews and Zionists are not the same.
Aside from the delegation's Auschwitz visit, this year International Holocaust Remembrance Day received special mention in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. The Bahraini and UAE foreign ministers expressed solidarity with Holocaust victims and condemned racism on Twitter, with the Bahraini minister tweeting: "Together, we will remember those who were annihilated, [to ensure] that these crimes against humanity will not recur."[1]This was retweeted and expanded by his Emirati counterpart. Likewise, Saudi media published articles on International Holocaust Remembrance Day recognizing its importance.[2]
On the other hand, pro-Qatar elements leveraged the visit to protest against the MWL and its home base, Saudi Arabia. Condemnation of the visit appeared in the Qatari media, and the Qatar-backed International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) also condemned it, calling it an expression of unacceptable normalization with Israel. The position taken by the IUMS was in line with the antisemitic statements made over the years by its senior officials. IUMS founder Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradawi has for years promoted an extremist antisemitic and anti-Christian discourse, even saying in a sermon that Hitler was Allah's punishment for the Jews and calling for another Holocaust but this time at the hands of the Muslims.[3] This year, the organization's current leader, Dr. Ahmad Al-Raissouni wrote that it is a right and an obligation to question the Holocaust, and that details about it could not be confirmed because the narrative consists of claims that are "politically biased and questionable."[4]
A tweet I saw was funny but ultimately horrifying:
Since it’s Year of the Rat, I just wanted to pay my respects to rat girl, the girl who every Muslim kid growing up was told had turned into a rat because she threw out the Quran. My scripture teacher told us about it and literally no adult questioned this. Thanks rat girl pic.twitter.com/BmEnPbkVi2
The thread showed that this was, and maybe still is, a widespread assertion used by Muslim teachers and parents:
This story is actually all over the place, and treated seriously in many Muslim websites. The main variant:
A girl was listening to music loudly, her mother happened to be reading the Quran, she asked her to turn the music down so she can carry on reading the Quran. The girl got pisst off and went to kick the Quran, her mother threw herself between her foot and the Quran, she ended up kicking her mother. She then stormed up to her room, where she put her music on and locked the door.
Later that day her mother realised that she had been up there for quite along a time, and the music was still blasting, she decided to call her down to eat. So, the mother went up to call her daughter but there was no answer. The mother got worried, she got her husband to break open the door, and they found the daughter in a state where she could be described as half monkey, half snake, lizard and very ugly like a ghost. She appeared to b a mixture of monkey, lizard and human, she couldn’t speak either.
It is sort of horrifying that this story is told as truth (with mosques even handing out flyers with the grotesque picture, as one tweeter noted.) Kids were truly traumatized.
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Perhaps the Trump plan's most important achievement is to put on record the truth about the Jews' unique rights to the land of Israel. As it states, the areas that Israel is being asked to yield to the Palestinians nevertheless constitute "territory to which Israel has asserted valid legal and historical claims, and which are part of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people."
As for the loud protests that Israel is being allowed to "annex the West Bank," professor of international law Eugene Kontorovich has tweeted that the United States is not proposing to recognize Israeli annexation of the territory: "It is recognizing that Israel has always had a legitimate claim on this land." In other words, the application of Israeli sovereignty is to be based on its pre-existing rights to the land.
The most intractable element of these pre-existing Jewish rights is Jerusalem, which Israel will never allow to be divided again but to which the Palestinians lay claim as their state's intended capital. The plan audaciously resolves this apparently insoluble conundrum by stating that the Palestine capital should be located "in all areas east and north of the existing security barrier," including Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis, and which could be named Al Quds.
In other words, the Trump team has simply redefined Jerusalem to exclude those Arab areas of the city beyond the security barrier. This would enable the Palestinians to tell themselves their capital is Jerusalem, while Israel will have ceased to regard that area as Jerusalem at all.
Of course, the Palestinians would never agree to this. "Al Quds" to them centers on their illegitimate appropriation of Temple Mount – the most sacred site in Judaism.
But the plan states the all-important historical truth denied by the Palestinians because it vitiates their entire claim to the land – that Jerusalem was the political center of the Jewish people under King David, and has remained their spiritual center and the focus of their religious beliefs for nearly 3,000 years.
The Trump plan won't bring peace; however, it restores the truth and justice that are essential prerequisites of peace. Crushing the lethal and poisonous fantasies about Israel and the Jewish people, as well as taking a hard-headed approach to Palestinian intentions, it replaces illusions by reality.
That's no small achievement. Now it's up to the rest of the world.
When Israel embarked on the Oslo peace process it accepted Oslo's foundational assumption that Israel is to blame for the Palestinian war against it. From the first Oslo agreement, signed on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, through all its derivative deals, Israel was required to carry out "confidence-building measures," to prove its good faith and peaceful intentions to Arafat and his deputies.
Time after time, Israel was required to release terrorists from prison as a precondition for negotiations with the PLO. The goal of those negotiations in turn was to force Israel to release more terrorists from prison, and give more land, more money, more international legitimacy and still more terrorists to the PLO.
On Tuesday, this state of affairs ended.
On Sunday morning, just before he flew to Washington, US Ambassador David Friedman briefed me on the details of President Donald Trump's peace plan at his home in Herzliya.
Friedman told me that Trump was going to announce that the United States will support an Israeli decision to apply its laws to the Jordan Valley and the Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria.
I asked what the boundaries of the settlements would be.
He said that they have a map, it isn't precise, so it can be flexibly interpreted but it was developed in consultation with Israeli government experts.
To those that oppose it – and are living in comfort in the west – they really need to decide what it is they are opposing – they are not the people who suffer from the perpetual conflict.
The problem for the Palestinians is that non-engagement doesn’t work. And I am speaking as someone with historical knowledge who wants genuine peace – and can visualise a time when the walls between Palestinians and Israelis fall down organically.
The only question we face today is how to build a platform upon which a real future partnership can be built. You don’t start as a doctor – you start in pre-school. If you refuse to enter education until you receive your medical licence – you will remain uneducated- even though education still remains a fundamental human right. On statehood – the Palestinians will never be able to start at the end.
Friends of Palestinians should be screaming this loudly. That historically when the Arabs did not co-operate – they lost. They lost when they didn’t co-operate during the early days of the Mandate. They lost when they refused to engage the UN as it formulated the partition plan. The world is moving on – and Israel has continued to grow and prosper. Talking doesn’t hurt. What ruined Oslo wasn’t the talks – it was the bus bombs.
The ‘vision’ does *EXACTLY* what it says on the tin. It is a clear project to improve the lives the Palestinians (and Israelis). It may not be perfect, but it is certainly something that everyone interested in ending the conflict should take seriously and want the Palestinians to discuss.
The vision looks at Palestinian suffering and finds a way to break through the impasse. But there is the catch. It deals with the Palestinians as people – not as a cause. It deals with their human rights, not their anti-Israel desires. And for that it will be instantly rejected by every Palestinian flag waver in the west. Which given the world will carry on moving with or without them – would be a tragedy for the Palestinians more than anyone else.
The Moroccan army has received 3 Israeli-made reconnaissance planes, according to French intelligence website Intelligence Online as quoted by Ma'an.
The news, which was also reported by Moroccan media, confirms that the size of the deal amounted to $48 million.
The drones are the Israeli Heron.
In 2014, there were reports of another 3 Herons that ended up in Morocco via France.
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One of the biggest complaints by the anti-Israel crowd against the Trump plan is the supposed "bantustans" of Palestinian territory only connected by roads, bridges or tunnels. This is said to be intolerable for a sovereign nation
Yet if you look at Wikipedia, you can see that there are literally hundreds of examples where the territory or territories of one state is fully or functionally within the territory of another, known as enclaves, exclaves, or variants of those. The largest example in the world (which is really a semi-enclave) is Alaska, only accessible to the rest of the US via land through Canada.
We mentioned one example in passing, that of the border between the Netherlands and Belgium at Baarle-Hertog:
This is the possibly the most complicated one but there are a huge number of others. Up until 2015, the border between India and Bangladesh had not only over a hundred enclaves but enclaves within enclaves (and one parcel of land that was a piece of India within Bangladesh, within India, within Bangladesh.)
There are even some small Canadian land parcels that are only accessible through the United States.
If there are hundreds of examples of such arrangements working perfectly well, then why is there such an uproar over a pathway to peace that would do the same for Palestine?
The answer is in the question. The Israel-haters have no desire for peace.
It is no coincidence that the Trump plan is named "peace to prosperity." Unlike every single previous plan, this is the first one that is focused on peace, not land.
If there is real peace, then no one would care about the enclaves of Palestinian lands in Israel and Israeli lands within Palestine (i.e., "settlements.")
The ideal, which the plan envisions, is that Israel and Palestine would be like Belgium and the Netherlands - two partners in peace. Any Arab can visit the Temple Mount, any Jew can visit the synagogues in Jericho and Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, without the need of heavily armed security protecting the visitors.
When there is real peace, the borders are not important.
This is the fundamental reason why Israel supports the plan and the Palestinians are so dead-set against it. Only Israel has ever desired real peace, just as Israel has thirsted for real peace with Jordan and Egypt and the rest of the Arab world.
The "pro-Palestinian" activists, although many belong to groups with "peace" in their names, do not want peace with Israel. They want Israel to be destroyed one way or another, and they - as well as Palestinian leaders - look at an independent Palestine as a weapon to end Israel, not as a goal in itself.
If Palestinians wanted a state, they would have had one in 2000, 2001 and 2008. If they wanted peace, they could have a state tomorrow.
It has been 26 years since Oslo, but in all that time no Palestinian school - not one - has taught students that they should thirst for peace with Israel. On the contrary, Israel is always the enemy and it must one day be reclaimed as "Palestine."
For some reason, the world thinks that the existence of two states would automatically bring peace. Everyone has it backwards. It is peace that would bring two states, because Israel would happily give the responsibility of governance to a Palestinian state that was friendly, where the borders are as open as those between EU states.
The Trump plan is a true peace plan - a vision of how peace and prosperity can bring about a political solution. The reason it is unrealistic is because Palestinians are taught hate from birth.
And that is the real obstacle to peace.
The world seems to have forgotten that peace is the goal.
(h/t Ian)
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A tweet from Alice Rothchild, a long time anti-Israel activist, author, filmmaker, physician and member of Jewish Voice for Peace who says she has written for the Seattle Times and Boston Globe.
An Israeli army statement said the three teenagers had crossed some 400 metres into Israel and were hiding in a thicket when a military jeep approached them. The army said that the young men threw two objects believed to be explosives at the jeep, prompting soldiers to open fire, killing them all. But Mohammed’s father refused to believe the army’s version of events. “The closest he ever got to resisting [against Israel] was by attending the Great March of Return protests a few times,” Hani said of his son. “He never held a gun, he didn’t participate in any military groups and I’m sure he didn’t know how to make a grenade. “If the boys crossed the border, I bet they did it for entertainment only and were unaware of what the consequences could be. The Israelis are lying.”
According to a friend of the slain teenagers, who asked not to be named, Mohammed, Salem and Mahmoud gathered in the square of the village of al-Zawayda on Tuesday afternoon after a long day at school. “It was about an hour before sunset, and they decided to go to some farmland owned by Salem’s family,” the friend told MEE. “They just wanted a break from hard studying.” The Naami family’s land is located some 200 metres from the fence that separates Gaza from Israel east of the Maghazi refugee camp. While the area is often monitored by Israeli forces – which enforce a ‘buffer zone’ hundreds of metres into the Palestinian territory – the teenagers regularly came to the area to relax around a bonfire, the friend said.
It is fairly obvious the boys crossed the fence - meaning they cut the fence. The IDF watched them as they went the 400 meters into Israel. Their bodies were recovered in Israel. They carried a knife and screwdriver. This happened at 8:30 PM. There is infrared video of them:
Mondoweiss, of course, didn't mention those facts.
Some Gazans made up a different story, based on this video: that the things we see thrown are the boys' clothing, and the IDF humiliated them by forcing them to strip before executing them with machine guns.
That's also obviously a lie. Heat is shown as black in the video, so they threw hot things that exploded into smaller components. Clothes would not show up as black.
This is just as much a blood libel as the accusation last week that Israeli Jews kidnapped a boy from Jerusalem and drowned him, the lie that was tweeted by Hanan Ashrawi and retweeted by Rashida Tlaib. Their falsity is obvious to anyone who is not an anti-Israel fanatic.
Which is why her tweet was retweeted and "liked" by various JVP branches and Mondoweiss itself.
Jews who push blood libels are just as antisemitic as non-Jews who push the same libels.
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Tunisian President Qais Saeed called for an investigation into the participation of a tennis player with Israeli citizenship in an international tournament in Tunisia.
A presidential statement said today that President Saeed asked the Minister of Youth and Sports Sunni Sheikh "to open an investigation in the purpose to determine responsibilities", pointing to Tunisia's principled position rejecting the establishment of relations with Israel in any way.
Aaron Cohen, holder of French and Israeli citizenship, participated in an international tennis tournament that started in Tunisia on January 26.
Cohen played his first match against Tunisian Karim El-Shazly last Sunday, winning two sets for nothing, and he also won his second match against Italian Simone Cavalieri before losing the third match against Portuguese Miguel Gomez and leaving Tunisia on Tuesday.
The Tunisian presidency confirmed that the player "entered Tunisia with a French passport, but he participated in the tournament as an Israeli."
President Qais Saeed - who is against normalization with Israel - pledged in his election campaign not to allow the entry of Israeli passport holders to Tunisia.
The president of Tunisia is seething over an Israeli teen playing tennis in his country. Hate is a fascinating thing.
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As US President Trump demanded “halting the financial compensation to terrorists” PA documents just publicized show the PA admits to paying 517.4 million shekels in salaries to terrorists in 2019, a rise of 15 million shekels compared to 2018.
Israeli government stipulated that the PA spent 150 million shekels on the payments to wounded terrorists and the families of dead terrorist “Martyrs” in 2018
PMW has calculated that this figure has grown by at least 1.6 million shekels, in 2019
Accordingly, in 2020, the Israeli Government must deduct no less than 669 million shekels from the taxes Israel collects and transfer to the PA
According to recently published Palestinian Authority financial reports, Palestinian Media Watch can expose that the PA has admitted to spending no less than 517.4 million shekels ($149.7 million/€136 million) paying salaries to terrorist prisoners and released prisoners in 2019.
The PA expenditure on allowances to wounded terrorists and the families of dead terrorists was at least 151.6 million shekels in 2019. Accordingly, the total minimum PA expenditure in 2019 on its payments to terrorists and families of dead terrorists - its Pay-for-Slay policy- was 669 million shekels ($193.6 million/€175.8 million).
In accordance with the Israeli law, Defense Minister Naftali Bennet should present the National Security Cabinet with a report showing that the PA expenditure on its Pay-for-Slay policy was no less than 669 million shekels.
Israeli law demands that this figure be deducted from the monthly tax transfers Israel makes to the PA.
Uganda is reportedly planning to announce that it is moving its embassy to Jerusalem next week, sources close to the Ugandan president and the Ugandan Christian community told The Jerusalem Post.
A spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry could not confirm the report.
The Hebrew website Ynet reported on Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to travel to Uganda on Monday, but did not cite a reason for the visit.
Sources close to the community told the Post that the move has been in the works for three years.
Pastor Drake Kanaabo, who ministers at the Redeemed of the Lord Evangelistic Church Makerere in Kampala, Uganda, told the Post that he had been hearing rumors about the move.
"I got a note from sources that Uganda is moving the embassy," he said, though he noted that he was unable to confirm the rumors with senior leaders by press time.
He said it is important that Uganda move the embassy to the holy city "because of our past good relationship with the State of Israel.
"On a spiritual level, Uganda regards Israel as the mother of Christianity," he told the Post. "Ugandan Christians are no longer standing on one leg for Israel, but two - in prayer and action. Israel is the only first-world country that is near to Uganda and Africa."
Peter Beinart has recently joined Jewish Currents as a columnist and "editor at large," leaving The Forward. Jewish Currents was a Communist publication from decades ago that has been reborn recently as an equally leftist publication. (Apparently, the Forward was too right-leaning for Beinart.)
His tweets have been becoming more and more unhinged. It feels like he is following the Max Blumenthal model of going from somewhat respected to off-the-wall crazy. (We'll see how long he lasts at the Atlantic.)
His latest piece for Jewish Currents, where he gives his take on the Trump plan, is a conspiracy theory: the plan, according to Beinart, is nothing more than a way for Trump to attract the evangelical vote that he already has. (If anything, evangelicals would prefer Israel annex the entire Judea and Samaria.)
But Beinart really went off the rails when Jared Kushner said on TV that Palestinians had screwed up every opportunity they have had to gain a state.
Kushner's opinion is hard to dispute. The last offer by Olmert to Abbas not only met all his demands but exceeded them - and Abbas still rejected it. Don't ask me; ask Saeb Erakat:
How can anyone justify rejecting everything you say you want? How can that not be considered a screw-up?
But to Beinart, this is not only a racist opinion - it is one that Kushner clearly learned from the racist Orthodox rabbis and other teachers, and camp counselors. Yes, Orthodox Jewry is inherently racist, according to Beinart.
This opinion would fit in very well in any neo-Nazi publication.
Beinart is so upset at Kushner's using the word "screwed up" that he used today's Daf Yomi Talmud study as a means to give him "mussar" (ethical direction):
Beinart's self-righteousness not to humiliate anyone clearly doesn't extend to his own tweets and retweets. After all, according to Beinart, Kushner is guilty of "humiliating" Palestinians by using the word "screwed up" but Beinart is allowed to call Kushner patronizing, ignorant and racist.
I have a feeling that Forward editor in chief Jodi Rudoren is relieved not to have to worry about Beinart embarrassing her publication any more.
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Jerusalem, January 30 - Israel's embattled prime minister promised his citizens today that he will not allow the historic moment facing the country to disrupt his administration's horse-trading, bickering, and cynical manipulation of the public and its institutions.
Binyamin Netanyahu returned from a dramatic overseas trip to the US and Russia with a triumph in hand: de facto official American endorsement of Israeli sovereignty over much of the territory the country took in the 1967 Six-Day War, with an ultimatum to the Palestinian leadership that further intransigence and avoidance of negotiations will result in loss of potential statehood. The premier stood at President Donald Trump's side as the latter made his historic announcement and urged the international community to back the plan which, he and his staff contended, dispenses with the failed formulae of the past and focuses on what works, effectively siding with Israel and Netanyahu on every major issue. Several Persian Gulf Arab states sent representatives, as well, indicating the historic shifts taking place. The prime minister assured his constituents Sunday that this once-in-two-millenniums opportunity, as important as it may seem, will not impede his ongoing effort to make everything about petty politics.
"I stand before you with the most important proposal Israel has accepted in two generations," he declared at a rare press conference upon disembarking. "The State of Israel faces an opportunity of epic, perhaps even Messianic, proportions: US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and other strategic locales in our heartland, the cradle of our culture and history. Already I have instructed my cabinet to prepare for such a move, but in the meantime, I say to you, my fellow citizens, that I will continue to work as hard as I can to make sure this episode causes no interruption in my use of power for personal gain; my machinations to assert and retain control of my Likud political apparatus; and my famed refusal to do anything remotely right-wing of lasting significance despite my campaign promises, lest the unelected officials of the Attorney General and the High Court veto them."
"It's nice to always have them to blame for my lack of political will, so you can rest assured I will not lift a finger to reform anything," he added.
In addition to the question of annexing disputed territory, Netanyahu has been indicted for bribery, and must conduct yet another election campaign for a contest scheduled at the beginning of March, which experts believe will help, rather than hinder, his efforts to make every move with maximum cynicism.
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In the immediate and intermediate future, the detailed plan and map put forward by President Trump will be rejected out of hand by the Palestinian leadership. For them it is indeed "dead on arrival." Both Fatah and Hamas joined the choir of condemnation. Some violence may ensue, although Mahmud 'Abbas speaks of "popular" rather than terrorist pressure. And yet the plan is of great importance, for the future of the Palestinians as well as for Israel: it is an experiment in breaking the bonds of past perceptions and offering both sides from the opportunity to shake off the effects of their illusions.
Israelis who thought that there was a "free trump lunch" are being disabused of the expectation that he will herald a messianic era, in which all will be given to us and none to the Palestinians. There is nothing to validate the claim, made by some, that a firm Israeli stand would have secured American consent for a total annexation. Trump sees himself as a deal maker – not as an Israeli enforcer.
On the Palestinian side, the problem runs deeper. For years, specifically since the Annapolis process and even more so since the days of the Obama Administration, they have built up expectations based on what may be called the "EKP" – "Everybody Knows" Paradigm. The latter is focused mainly on the territorial dimension: A full return to the 1967 Armistice lines with minor swaps and a partition of Jerusalem, alongside some (symbolic?) concessions on the Right of Return, etc.
"Everybody" – except the broad range of Israelis who find the EKP objectionable and impractical. Well beyond the settler communities and the vocal minority who reject any concessions to the Palestinians, many Israelis find fault with the ideas enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 2334 for several good reasons:
1. To begin with, the great majority of Israelis feel strongly that Jerusalem must remain Israel's undivided capital – give or take some of the outlying neighborhoods beyond the security barrier.
2. Moreover, the idea of another round of violent displacement of tens of thousands of Jews, from their homes in their homeland, raises traumatic memories of the sad summer of 2005 and the disengagement from Gaza.
3. The notion that Israel will be safe, even without a permanent military presence on the Jordan river and firm control of our eastern approaches, became less and less persuasive as chaotic events engulfed the entire region and the danger of destabilization became more acute.
4. Moreover, the experience in Lebanon since 2006 provided proof positive that it would be a deadly mistake to rely on some UN-mandated foreign military forces in the Jordan Valley (or elsewhere): UNIFIL's record in apprehending Hizbullah weapons or curbing Hizbullah's huge arsenal is outright dismal.
Thus, those in Europe, in American progressive circles, and among the Israeli Left who still advocate acceptance of the EKP (rather than the Trump baseline) are actually doing the Palestinians no favor. They help lock the leadership in Ramallah, and the Palestinian political class, into a set of specific expectations that cannot be delivered upon: and thus perpetuate a deadlock they may be of use to 'Abbas or to Hamas but does little to ameliorate the conditions of people in the West Bank or in Gaza.
The Ben Shapiro Show: The First Real Peace Plan (3:30 to 36min)
This plan isn’t just about Israeli-Palestine. It’s central to the administration’s Middle East strategy. For decades, the international consensus has been that peace cannot blossom in the region unless the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is addressed first. But as the conflict becomes more marginal to the interests of key actors, and the U.S. has generally become less interested, that’s no longer true. Arab-Israeli normalization is only a matter of time, and the Palestinians are at risk of missing that train.
This peace plan is directly connected to the current political situation in both Israel and the U.S. Although U.S. officials insist they’re not taking sides in the Israeli elections slated for March 2, the timing of the plan’s release is useful for Netanyahu, who was indicted today on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of public trust. Given Netanyahu’s troubles (and the likely prospect that he’s not Prime Minister for much longer), the administration was committed to bringing Gantz on board with the plan as well. Kushner told me: “It’s good to see how two competitors in the Israel elections can put aside their differences to promote the interests of their country ahead of their political interests.” That wasn’t the Gantz’s initial position—he first publicly objected to the release of the plan before the election; after weeks of diplomacy he reversed his position and expressed support. Meanwhile, while Netanyahu will receive receive a temporary boost, he will have trouble guarding his right flank. The far-right parties on which he relies for political survival will decry his endorsement of a Palestinian state, whatever else the plan says.
Meanwhile, from the US side, the Middle East peace plan will further energize Trump’s base. Already this year, Trump has secured a “Phase One” trade deal with China, killed a prominent Iranian general, and proposed a fix to one of the most intractable political problems in history with the full support of Israeli leaders. Tomorrow, he will sign a trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. This is significant counter-programming to the Democratic Party’s Iowa Caucus and the impeachment hearings in the Senate.
We should consider the release of this plan the end of the beginning of the Trump peace plan. The administration told me they consider it an opening bid. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger told me that he thought the plan was “a responsible first stage and broader approach to the world’s most intractable geopolitical issue.” Whether this bid draws a constructive counter-offer and longer bargaining process plan will depends on a new set of factors in the region, ultimately determining whether (and which) Palestinians will engage. The ball’s heading to their court, whether they want it or not.
Nobody will benefit less from a curt dismissal of the U.S. peace plan than the Palestinians themselves, whose leaders are again letting history pass them by. Nearly every time the Arab side said "no," it wound up with less. That was true after it rejected the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which would have created a Palestinian state on a much larger footprint. It was true in 1967, after Jordan refused Israel's entreaties not to attack, which resulted in the end of Jordanian rule in the West Bank.
It was true in 2000, when Syria rejected an Israeli offer to return the Golan Heights, which ultimately led to U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty of that territory. It was true later the same year, after Yasir Arafat refused Israel's offer of a Palestinian state with a capital in east Jerusalem.
The U.S. plan offers Palestinians a sovereign state, mostly contiguous territory, and $50 billion in economic assistance. What it demands is an end to anti-Jewish bigotry in school curriculums, the restoration of legitimate political authority in Gaza, and the dismantling of terrorist militias.
The Jewish state has thrived in part because it has always been prepared to make do with less. The Palestinian tragedy has been the direct result of taking the opposite approach: of insisting on the maximum rather than working toward the plausible.
Author of Arabic translation of the "Protocols," left, with a smiling customer
The annual Cairo International Book Fair is in full swing, and as we've reported in previous years, it is featuring antisemitic books.
The Dar Al Kitab Al Arabi Publishing Company again has an exhibit there where you can see their antisemitic book collection. Here are the covers of:
Arabic "Protocols of the Elders of Zion: The Masonic Plots to Dominate the World - 10th Edition" by Mansour Abdelhakeem;
"Pawns in the Game..The Practical Implementation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion," by William Guy Carr (translated by Magdy Kamel); and Mein Kampf, trasnslated by Farid al-Falluji
You can see these books in these screenshots from video from the Fair.
The US Embassy in Cairo has its own booth at the fair, and as in previous years, the presence of antisemitic books doesn't cause any concern.
(h/t WC)
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A tweet from Carl Bildt, Co-Chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations:
He's referring to the peace plan's tripling the size of Gaza to add agricultural and industrial areas as well as more residential areas:
Of course, there are Israeli communities dotting the Negev, including near the Egyptian border. A quick look at Google Maps identifies Naveh, Bnei Netzarim, Be'er Milka, Kadesh Barnea, Nitzana, Ezuz, Yevul, Avshalom, Dekel, Yated, Sdei Avraham, among others.
Note the sarcasm of "generous" when referring to tripling the area that Gazans can live and work.
Obviously, Israel isn't going to agree to uproot citizens if it doesn't have to, so the offer is going to be for areas of the Negev that have not yet been cultivated. But Israel has proven that wonderful and beautiful communities and businesses can thrive in the desert.
Bildt knows this, because when he used Google Earth he had to manipulate the screenshot to avoid the Israeli communities and farms to the north and south:
This hardly shows the size of the communities. Here I zoom in on the Shefa Vines Essential Oils farm immediately to the south of his desert shot, where residents offer an Airbnb for anyone who wants to visit their farm and vineyard.
Bildt is knowingly lying.
He wants to characterize the desert as an impossible place to live and thrive. Not only has Israel proven that wrong, but Israeli expertise would be available to help any Palestinians who would want to build successful communities there in the context of peace.
Something Bildt apparently opposes.
His tweet is even worse than that. He refers to the Israeli communities within the Green Line as "settlements," meaning that he seemingly feels that Jews have no right to live in any part of Israel (besides his implication that any land given to Palestinians must already have Jews to deport.)
Bildt is not only a liar but a hypocrite. As Tundra Tabloids has documented, at the same time that Bildt says that a non-contiguous Palestinian state is unacceptable and horrible, he actually celebrates bizarre and non-contiguous borders between different European states with citizens who live in areas dominated by another state:
Belgians and Dutch citizens can live in disconnected enclaves in the others' areas and Bildt celebrates it as a creative solution. But Jews living among Arabs is unacceptable under any circumstances.
The hypocrisy is stunning, but par for the course.
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When Palestinians say that they cannot possibly have a state without their preconditions, which include:
* "Right of return" (to Israel, not to their own state!)
* Jerusalem as their capital
* Israels' release of terrorist prisoners
* 1967 lines
They are lying. None of those are prerequisites for a state. They are completely separate demands.
When Palestinians insist that they will not agree to any peace plan without those demands, they are saying that statehood is really not that important to them. Neither is peace.
A little thought reveals that each of these demands does not even strengthen an independent Palestinian state nor do they help peace. However, every single one of those demands weakens Israel:
* "Right of return" to destroy the Jewish state demographically
* Jerusalem, specifically the Old City, to sever Jewish emotional and religious ties to the holy city
* Israels' release of terrorist prisoners to allow them to attack again (as has happened numerous times with previous prisoner releases)
* 1967 lines to ensure that Israel is only nine miles wide and vulnerable to ground attack
These demands are not only not peaceful - they are the antithesis of peace. They have nothing to do with an independent state. They are only designed to hurt Israel.
Yet Palestinian leaders, and anti-Israel activists, act as if these demands are preconditions for peace and not addressing them dooms any chance for peace. This is the opposite of the truth.
There is another argument to support Palestinian intransigence. It was described in an Atlantic article by Shadi Hamid last year:
I recently took part in a study tour on religion and nationalism in Israel and the West Bank organized by the Philos Project. One Palestinian official whom we met told us, “I’m not going to compromise my dignity.”
Our Palestinian interlocutor’s refusal to cede his dignity wasn’t a performance; it was despair. It felt to me like an epitaph. There have been conflicts in which leaders have made compromises that may have seemed like betrayals, only for history to view them as both bold and necessary. But those conflicts are not this conflict.
Palestinian activists tend to speak in terms of justice. An injustice was done, so it must be undone. Christopher Hitchens, in his valediction for the Palestinian American author Edward Said, wrote that his friend’s “feeling for the injustice done to Palestine was, in the best sense of this overused term, a visceral one. He simply could not reconcile himself to the dispossession of a people or to the lies and evasions that were used to cover up this offense.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters often chant the mantra of “no justice, no peace.” One former Israeli official we spoke with in Jerusalem had a different view. He said, “If we make this about justice, there will not be peace.” Too many Palestinians celebrate victimhood—fueled by a profound sense of injustice—rather than overcome it, he suggested.
But then we return to the question of dignity. No one should be asked to overcome their victimhood by giving up their dignity, the one thing even an occupier shouldn’t be able to take away. That might sound naive and impractical, especially for those who would rather Palestinians just get on with it, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Hamid suggests that the conflict is not about land or statehood - from the Palestinian perspective, it is about "justice" and "dignity."
Yet these supposedly "dignified" people happily take charity from UNRWA and the EU. (In fact, when they don't get the free aid they are used to, they riot for their handouts.)
These "dignified" people keep their fellow Palestinians in "refugee camps" even if they live in the areas of British Mandate Palestine or if they are full Jordanian citizens. They choose to use their own people as pawns by pretending to be refugees. What is dignified about that?
And the "justice" argument is similar to the "dignity" argument. When people say that they will not accept any compromise that violates their own sense of dignity or justice, that means that they are the judge and jury as to what kind of peace plan is acceptable. It gives them veto power over any possible plan, no matter how generous, because they are the only people who can say that their dignity is restored or justice is served.
As long as Israel exists, they will not feel like they have any dignity nor justice. Because they consider the entire land theirs. Their maps show the entire British Mandate territory. They are taught that Jaffa and Nazareth are Palestinian cities. Anyone can see that people who believe that will never say that any peace plan will be good enough to make them feel dignified and that justice was served.
Nobody says that Israelis must have "justice" and "dignity" in any peace plan. The reason is obvious: because when that is demanded from both sides, peace is impossible. Yet no one sees any problem with using these terms that are anti-peace as demands for the Palestinian side.
Like it or not, any two state solution will involve compromise on both sides. The concepts of "dignity" and "justice" is incompatible with compromise - which makes them anti-peace.
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Saturday, February 01, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
As anyone who followed the case of Naam Issachar knows, she was caught with 9.5 grams of marijuana in her suitcase during a stopover in Russia coming from India to Israel. She had no access to her luggage in Russia, she couldn't have sold her small amount of pot if she wanted to.
