Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, February 07, 2020

02/07 Links P1: Trump's plan and the 2 Palestinian dreams; Palestinians: Arab Leaders Talking to Israel Are 'Traitors, Jews'; Gazans launch balloons carrying RPG warhead into Israel

From Ian:

Clifford D. May: Trump's plan and the 2 Palestinian dreams

Palestinian leaders were handed a great and unexpected victory in late 2016 when President Obama facilitated the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334. It asserts that there is "no legal basis" for Israeli claims to the West Bank – for centuries known as Judea and Samaria – including even the 2,000-year-old Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, and the ancient Jewish holy sites of the Temple Mount.

If that were true, on what basis would Israelis have a right to anything – even a right to exist?
And if that's the verdict not just of Israel's enemies but even of the "international community" including the US, why should Palestinian leaders compromise? Why accept less than Israel's surrender and a new Jewish exile – to be called, for public relations purposes, an "end to occupation"?

By putting forward a plan that licenses Israelis, should they face continued Palestinian rejectionism, to alter facts on the ground through annexations, President Trump has changed the dynamic – at least for now.

Perhaps the next Palestinian Authority leader will be pragmatic enough to recognize that in the contemporary Middle East, where Iran's Shia imperialists pose an existential threat to their neighbors, it's time to relinquish the dream of a Palestine that is Jew-free from the river to the sea.

That does not mean acquiescing to everything President Trump and Kushner packed into their 180-page plan. It does mean resuming negotiations with Israelis, perhaps putting a counteroffer on the table and, for the first time ever, transitioning from "resisting" the Jewish state to building a Palestinian state – a real state, with functioning institutions, not a failed state kept afloat by the "donor community."

To do that would give birth to something that for generations has existed only in our imaginations: a peace process.

Caroline B. Glick: Israeli sovereignty and the future of President Trump's peace plan

On Wednesday morning, NeverTrump propagandist Bill Kristol told his MSNBC audience that Democratic chances of victory over US President Donald Trump will rise if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is defeated in Israel's elections on March 2.

Along the same lines, if Netanyahu fails to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria before the election, not only will he almost certainly lose those elections, his defeat will bury Trump's peace plan and harm Trump's reelection chances.

To understand why this is the case it is first necessary to understand the nature of the Blue and White party and its relationship to Trump and his peace plan.

After Trump's peace plan was published, Israelis discovered significant problems with the map attached to the plan. Among other things, the map places large sections of Highway 60, which crosses Judea and Samaria from south to north outside Israeli jurisdiction. If left uncorrected, the designation will endanger the security of tens of thousands of Israelis whose communities will be rendered isolated enclaves. Since ensuring Israel's ability to defend itself and its citizens on a permanent basis is a major goal of the plan, this omission was obviously an oversight. Netanyahu announced this week that he has assembled a team to work on the map.

So long as the map is not adjusted, members of Likud and other parties in the right-religious bloc Netanyahu leads will be unable to vote in favor of the plan, despite their support for Trump and for the plan overall.

This then brings us to Benny Gantz and his party.

Just before Gantz traveled to Washington to meet with Trump at the White House last Monday, it came out that his top campaign strategists, Ronen Tzur and Joel Benenson had both separately published multiple posts on Twitter viciously attacking Trump. Both men compared him to Hitler, called him a Russian agent and a racist. In other words, both men parroted Democratic talking points against Trump. (After his posts were reported, Tzur claimed that he no longer believed the things he had written.)

Whereas Tzur – like every garden variety Israeli leftist politico – apparently follows the Democrats on everything related to American public affairs automatically, Benenson shapes Democratic positions. Benenson served as Barack Obama's senior political strategist in the 2008 and 2012 elections and as Hillary Clinton's senior political strategist in 2016.

In 2015, Wikileaks published Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta's emails. Several email chains included internal campaign discussions in which Benenson participated. In two discussions, Benenson advised Clinton not to mention Israel in public events.

Now Benenson is directing Blue and White's campaign, and there is little reason for surprise at the seamlessness of his move from Obama and Clinton to Gantz. The Israeli left has been intertwined with the Democratic Party.

Melanie Phillips: The Palestinian dissonance

Look instead at the reaction by the Palestinians. Not the reaction by the Palestinian Authority, which was merely the latest of their many rejections of a state of their own alongside Israel.

Look at the Palestinians themselves for whom that state is intended. What is their reaction to the offer of more than 80 percent of the land for such a state? They're furious.

This isn't because it's not 100 percent of the land. They're furious at the idea that they might find themselves living in such a state. So furious that they demonstrated in the thousands against the prospect.

Palestinian leaders and their Western supporters are shrieking that the plan would strip the Israeli Arabs in the Jordan Valley and the "Triangle" area of their Israeli citizenship, and transfer them into Palestine by the simply expedient of drawing its border around their villages.

This is untrue. The Trump plan states that they will be able to choose between remaining citizens of Israel and becoming citizens of Palestine. So they wouldn't be "stripped" of their citizenship at all. Changing it would be their choice.

And surely, they would all choose to become citizens of Palestine – the outcome we've been told is the absolute precondition for ending the Arab-Israel conflict?

With the unveiling of Trump's "Deal of the Century," many analyses and critiques have come out, and will continue to come out, focusing both on what Israel gets -- and on what the Palestinian Arabs do not.

In making the case for his peace plan, Trump points to 2 successful peace agreements that Israel has with its neighbors. These are supposed to be models for what is possible:

The State of Israel has made peace with two of its neighbors. It made peace with the Arab Republic of Egypt in 1979 and it made peace with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1994, two countries with which the State of Israel had fought multiple wars and numerous border skirmishes...These two peace agreements, now 40 and 25 years old, have endured and bettered the lives of citizens in Israel, Jordan and Egypt. ("Peace to Prosperity," p. 2)

Israel's peace with Egypt has long been recognized as a "cold peace," yet there have been examples of cooperation, especially in terms of security in the Sinai. There is also the gas pipeline deal, which includes the cooperation of both Egypt and Jordan -- with Israel.

Then there is Jordan.

In criticizing the Palestinian Authority, Trump's plan describes the Palestinian Authority as

"plagued by failed institutions and endemic corruption. Its laws incentivize terrorism and Palestinian Authority controlled media and schools promote a culture of incitement." (p. 4)

But this is also a pretty accurate description of Jordan as well -- especially the part about terrorism.

In 1994 Mohammad Abequa murdered his wife in New Jersey but then escaped to Jordan. President Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno and New Jersey's US representatives and senators pleaded with King Hussein for Abequa to be returned to the US for trial. Jordan refused because there was no extradition treaty between the 2 countries. Jordan did, however, agree to put Abequa on trial -- and he was found guilty of murder. He could have been sentenced to death, but instead, Abequa was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Just 5 years later, he was released, based on Abequa's claim that he killed his wife to protect his honor.

This was not a terrorist act, but the reaction of the Jordanian government to the murder of Americans by Jordanians have not always been helpful.

In 1993, a Jordanian national, Eyad Ismoil, participated in the World Trade Center bombing. Afterwards, he fled to Jordan to evade capture. In 1995, the US and Jordan signed an extradition treaty that made it possible to return Ismoil to the US.

In November 2015, a Jordanian police officer killed 5 people, including 2 Americans at an Amman training compound. The motive was unclear, and since the attacker was killed, the reason for the attack was never revealed.

Perhaps because the incident passed without wide media attention, when another Jordanian killed US soldiers the following November, there was wider coverage. On November 4, 2016, a Jordanian soldier fired on 3 US soldiers as they were entering a Jordanian military base, killing three. The shooter was wounded. The Jordanian government was desperate to avoid responsibility:

o First the Jordanian government claimed that the US soldiers had failed to stop at the gate
o When the video disproved that, the Jordanians claimed that there had been an “accidental discharge” by one of the soldiers.
o When that was disproven, the Jordanians claimed there had been a loud noise.

Eventually, a Jordanian court found the soldier guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The request by the parents of the 3 US soldiers that the killer be extradited to the US was refused.

Speaking of extradition, there is, of course, the attempt by the US to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, the self-confessed mastermind of the Sbarro Massacre, in which US citizens were killed. Jordan claims the extradition treaty, which was valid enough for Jordan to hand over Ismoil, is not valid enough to hand over Tamimi.

That is consistent with Jordan's refusal last year to honor their extradition treaty with France to hand over for trial the man suspected of being behind the 1982 attack at Chez Jo Goldenberg, a kosher restaurant in the traditionally Jewish Marais district of Paris.

But Jordan did not care about there being an extradition treaty in 1999, when the French terrorism magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguière, was able to persuade Jordan to arrest and extradite Fateh Kamel on charges of abetting terrorism on French soil -- before France even had an extradition treaty with Jordan.

Last month, I pointed out that when it signed onto the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, Jordan made it clear that Jordan is not opposed to all forms of terrorism:

The Government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan does not consider acts of national armed struggle and fighting foreign occupation in the exercise of people’s right to self-determination as terrorist acts

This is an ally against terrorism?
This is an anchor for a Mideast peace?

Jordan's approach to terrorism was apparent in 1997 in the Island of Peace massacre, when 80 7th and 8th-graders from Beit Shemesh went on a field trip to the Jordan Valley and Golan Heights. They went to an area of Israeli land between the Jordan and Yarmuk Rivers. The area was returned to Jordan as part of the Israel-Jordan peace deal in 1994, but was leased back.

A Jordanian soldier, Ahmed al-Daqamse, started shooting at the schoolgirls, killing 7, before was stopped when his rifle jammed. He was put and trial and sentenced to life in prison.

The New York Times reported at the time:

According to reports from Amman, the Jordanian capital, most Jordanians expressed dismay at the shooting. There were also reports that hundreds of soldiers lined up to give blood at the hospital where the girls were taken.

King Hussein himself a personal visit to offer his condolences to the families.

But fast-forward to 2011 and a Jordan minister called for the soldier's release.

According to the Times of Israel, the military court determined that the Jordanian soldier was mentally unstable and while life in prison in Jordan normally means 25 years, he was released in 2017, after 20 years.

When he was released, al-Daqamse got a hero's welcome, just as Ahlam Tamimi did.

At the time of his release, it was reported:

Footage shot early on Sunday, a day before the 20th anniversary of the massacre, showed Daqamseh being driven slowly through crowds chanting and clapping to show their support.

Jordan’s Roya television channel broadcast footage of him held aloft by a crowd in his home town of Irbid in northern Jordan, next to a poster describing him as a "hero".

It is not so surprising then that on October 26, 2019, the 25th anniversary of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, Times of Israel reported there was no commemoration.

In October 2018 Jordan announced it would not renew an annex of the treaty that had allowed Israelis to visit and Israeli farmers to use 2 plots of land along the border.

Bottom line:

Security and intelligence cooperation remain strong, but even bilateral trade is now declining

Hardly the model for peace that Trump claims.

According to Trump's peace plan:

It is important that governments unambiguously condemn all forms of terrorism, and that governments work together to fight against global terrorism. (p. 8)

If Trump seriously believes that Jordan is one of those governments -- good luck with that.

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Arabic cartoon for kids teaches murdering Jews

Here is a cartoon meant for kids to watch that shows a heroic Palestinian prepare for and execute a terror attack of a mass shooting of Jews at a mall.

I don't yet know the provenance of this cartoon, but it is bad enough that it exists.

(h/t Yoel and MoranT)

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UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ spoke at the opening of the 2020 session of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, and he spoke like it is still 1999:

We know that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains key to sustainable peace in the Middle East. Its persistence reverberates far beyond Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, and it continues to further radicalization across the region. That is why we have been repeatedly raising alerts about actions that would erode the possibility of a viable and contiguous Palestinian State based on the two-State solution and that are contrary to international law and United Nations resolutions. This includes expansion and acceleration of illegal settlement activities in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as well as ongoing demolitions and seizures of Palestinian-owned property and evictions.

"We know"? Syria's civil war, Yemen, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan would all be peaceful if Palestinians accepted the Clinton parameters? Iran's threats and Hezbollah wouldn't exist if there was a Palestinian state?

And of course, only Israel is guilty in the UN's eyes. Not a word about Palestinian terrorism, about Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Fatah's own Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, nothing about rockets or balloon bombs.

The Middle East is very different than it was during Oslo, and Israel has better relations with the larger Arab and Muslim world than ever before. That by itself shows Guterres' assumption to be false. There are fewer terror attacks in Israel now than there was during the heady days of the 90s. But the "experts" have learned no lessons since then.

Why do these people believe something that is so obviously false? Because Palestinians keep saying it - as a veiled threat in order to get the world to pressure Israel to make more concessions.

(h/t Irene)

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02/06 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: It's all about the narrative. Who controls it, wins; Shiite cleric seeks France asylum after death threats over Auschwitz visit; Kirk Douglas, Hollywood legend dies at 103

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: It's all about the narrative. Who controls it, wins

Moreover, anyone who points out that Islamic terrorism is part of a holy war being waged against both the west and the not-Islamic-enough Muslim world is denounced for “Islamophobia”.

This also undermines those courageous Muslims pressing for a reform of their religion, often at risk to their lives, who have the ground cut from under their feet by westerners maintaining that the problem doesn’t lie within the Islamic world but with “Islamophobes” who claim that it does.

If we really are not to “go on like this”, the first thing that needs to happen is that this dishonesty must end and the truth must publicly be told.

The government should start saying what it has flinched from saying: that the west is the target of Islamic holy war. It should say that, although many British Muslims pose no threat to anyone, too many in the community either believe the extremist precepts on which the jihad is based or passively go along with them; that too many groups and individuals revere, for example, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi who has endorsed human bomb attacks; that even among those Muslims who oppose violence, too many endorse poisonous ideas about the non-Muslim world which create the sea in which extremism and terrorism swim.

It should state bluntly that Muslims must start to take responsibility, both at home and abroad, for this war being waged in the name of their religion – and that the government will take all necessary measures to defeat it.

You see, it’s not just a matter of passing stricter laws. It’s all about the narrative. The jihadists know that whoever controls the narrative, wins. So far, the ignorant, spineless, demoralised west has let them seize control of it. That’s what now has to end.

UK: Why Are Dangerous Jihadists Being Released Early from Prison?

"We cannot have the situation...where an offender — a known risk to innocent members of the public — is released early by automatic process of law without any oversight by the Parole Board. — UK Secretary of State for Justice.

"When I was a constable, I could arrest and process a suspect in an hour, maximum. Today, it takes a day or more.... The police are mired in bureaucracy, while the judicial system has become an institutional cloud-cuckoo land." — Philip Flower, former chief superintendent with the Metropolitan Police, Daily Mail.

"Bluntly, how would you feel if you were told to keep track of known terrorists who have been released from prison to satisfy the politically correct assumptions of our justice system?" — Philip Flower, former chief superintendent with the Metropolitan Police, Daily Mail.

Ian Acheson, a veteran prison officer who in 2015 led an independent review of Islamist extremism in British prisons, told the BBC's Today program that the UK's risk-management system is fundamentally broken:

"We are going to have to accept that we have to be much more skeptical and robust about dealing with the risk of harm.
"We may need to accept that there are certain people who are so dangerous they must be kept in prison indefinitely....
"I am still unconvinced that the prison service itself has the aptitude or the attitude to assertively manage terrorist offenders."

Can Muslim Terrorists be Deradicalized? - Part I

"What we found [in prisons] was so shockingly bad that I had to agree to the language in the original report being toned down. With hindsight, I'm not sure that was the right decision." — Ian Acheson, British expert on prisons.

"There were serious deficiencies in almost every aspect of the management of terrorist offenders... Frontline prison staff were vulnerable to attack and were ill-equipped to counter hateful extremism on prison landings for fear of being accused of racism. Prison imams did not possess the tools, and sometimes the will, to combat Islamist ideology. The prison service's intelligence-gathering system was hopelessly fractured and ineffectual." — Ian Acheson, "London Bridge attack: I told ministers we were treating terrorist prisoners with jaw-dropping naivety. Did they listen?", London Times, December 1, 2019.

"Obedience is achieved by violence and intimidation carried out by members of the group known as enforcers. 'Those who had committed terrorist crimes often held more senior roles in the gang,' the study found, 'facilitated by the respect some younger prisoners gave them.' The study found that terrorist groups such as al-Qaida did not see prison as an obstacle. Quite the opposite, they viewed it as an opportunity to organize and expand." — Patrick Dunleavy, former Deputy Inspector General for New York State Department of Corrections, June 18, 2019.

I'm actually a little stunned at how little Elizabeth Warren knows about Israel and the history of the moribund peace process, as seen in this video clip:

"We need to encourage Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate with each other."

Wow! Who ever thought of that before?

Of course, the Palestinians refuse to negotiate directly with Israel. Does she have a plan B?

"Israel has the right to security, Palestinians have the right to self-determination and to be treated with respect."

Israel has offered them self-determination many times. As far as respect - that is something that is earned, not a human right. Just today Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party tweeted support for the person who rammed his car into a bunch of Israelis, mostly soldiers. Should we respect that?

Notice that Israel does not seem worthy of respect.

"The two state solution has been the policy of the United States and of Israel for nearly seventy years now."

Ummm...what? What was the second state in 1951? Is she saying Jordan is the Palestinian state? Is she referring to Zionists accepting the 1947 partition plan that was abrogated by the Arab world?

No, she's just proving that she has no idea what she is talking about.

"The embassy is what they should be negotiating."

Palestinians should be part of the decision where to put the US embassy to Israel? Do they help decide where the US embassy to Canada should be as well?

"They should be negotiating what constitutes the capital.That's really my point, is that that's what the parties should decide."

Oh, so Israel cannot choose its own capital - it needs the approval of its sworn enemy. The most basic decision of any world government cannot be made by that government. Sure.

This is kumbaya foreign policy. It is stupid, not prudent, to be "evenhanded" between a modern liberal state and a terror-supporting, misogynist, anti-gay, freedom hating entity whose entire purpose is to destroy the first state. Would she say that we should have been evenhanded between Iraq and ISIS, another wannabe state?

The times I've met with senators and members of Congress they knew their stuff. Warren's ignorance is laughable. (And she hired a large foreign policy team, as well.)

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Rachel Corrie's spirit continuing to be punished (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Rafah, February 6 - The departed spirit of an American activist who sought to shield a terrorist armaments cache with her body but ended up crushed by a bulldozer must spend the rest of eternity looking on as Israeli soldiers and machines continue to dispose of war materiel intended for use by the terrorist groups she tried to defend, sources in the transcendental realm disclosed today.

Reporters in the World of the Souls confirmed to PreOccupied Territory Thursday morning that Rachel Corrie's spirit suffers everlasting torment in the form of being forced to watch every instance of the IDF interdicting, destroying, or otherwise rendering inaccessible any weapons, explosives, ammunition, or other instruments of war in the possession of Hamas or allied Palestinian terrorist groups, or such materials on their way to said groups.

"Ms. Corrie inhabits the eternity she created for herself," a spectral representative stated. "Her choice in 2003 to enter a closed military area - effectively a war zone - to serve as cover for terrorists and to prevent soldiers from stemming the flow of arms to those terrorists, all while claiming the mantle of 'human rights' among other dubious goals, led her to stand in front of an armored bulldozer whose driver had limited visibility, and who was trying to destroy a weapons-smuggling tunnel. Her decision to side with murderous thugs who target children and other innocents as a core part of their ideology, and who would otherwise target Corrie herself for her non-Islamic allegiances and lifestyle, brought her to this place."

Corrie took part in an operation by the pro-Palestinian group the International Solidarity Movement to disrupt IDF activities in this town bordering Egypt, where an unknown number of smuggling tunnels and weapons caches ran under the frontier. Most of the passages led into homes or other civilian structures near the Philadelphi Road running parallel to the boundary, structures that also often served as cover for Palestinian snipers firing on IDF troops patrolling the area or engaged in operations to find and destroy the tunnels and weapons. Israel withdrew its soldiers and uprooted thousands of residents from the Gaza Strip in a unilateral disengagement two years later; the smuggling and armed attacks on Israelis have continued.

Corrie's ghost remained unavailable for comment; a spokespecter told journalists that until other materials come to light, her eternal consciousness will be forced to view video of the capture of a Hamas armaments-smuggling boat in an operation that took place this past November.

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02/06 Links Pt1: As String of Palestinian Attacks Leaves 16 Israelis Wounded, Netanyahu Vows ‘Terrorism Will Not Defeat Us’; Evelyn Gordon: Trump's plan takes Resolution 242 seriously

From Ian:

As String of Palestinian Attacks Leaves 16 Israelis Wounded, Netanyahu Vows ‘Terrorism Will Not Defeat Us’

A string of Palestinian terrorist attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank on Thursday left 16 Israelis wounded.

“Terrorism will not defeat us — we will win,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented on the surge of violence.

In the first incident, 14 IDF soldiers were injured — one seriously — in an early Thursday morning car-ramming assault at the old train station on David Remez Street in the Israeli capital.

The perpetrator fled the area and the vehicle used in the attack was later found south of Jerusalem, near the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

Later on Thursday, an Israeli Border Police officer was lightly wounded by a gunman in Jerusalem’s Old City, near the Temple Mount.

The assailant — an Israeli Arab from the northern city of Haifa who had recently converted to Islam from Christianity — was killed at the scene.

This was followed after a few hours by a shooting at a guard post at a junction on Route 463 in the Binyamin region of the West Bank, north of Jerusalem.

One IDF soldier was lightly hurt. The attacker escaped.

The Israeli military is sending reinforcements to the Jerusalem and West Bank sectors, in a bid to thwart further attacks.

Evelyn Gordon: Trump's plan takes Resolution 242 seriously

The plan's limited version of Palestinian sovereignty derives from the need for defensible borders as well, since as the past quarter-century has shown, Palestinian military control over territory means kissing Israeli security goodbye. The Palestinian Authority was able to wage the Second Intifada – which killed more than 1,100 Israelis, 78 percent of them civilians, including through suicide bombings in major Israeli cities – because the Oslo Accords barred the Israel Defense Forces from entering P.A. territory. Only after the IDF reasserted control over those areas did the terror wane. Similarly, the IDF's absence from Gaza is what has allowed Palestinians to fire more than 20,000 rockets at Israel from that territory, even as not one rocket has ever been launched from the West Bank.

Having learned this lesson, Trump's plan assigns security control of the West Bank solely to Israel. And again, this used to be an Israeli consensus before Oslo fever took hold; even Rabin, in his final speech, envisioned a Palestinian "entity which is less than a state."

One could obviously quibble with certain details of the plan; for instance, the idea of leaving some settlements as enclaves in Palestinian territory sounds like a security nightmare. One could even legitimately wonder, given the experience of the last 25 years, whether any kind of Palestinian state is compatible with Israel's security.

Nevertheless, Trump's plan is the first serious attempt to give Israel what Resolution 242 promised more than 50 years ago – borders that are not only recognized, but secure. As such, far from "violating UN resolutions," it's actually the first plan that doesn't violate them.

This provides Israel and its allies with a golden opportunity to remind the world that contrary to what is widely believed today, UN resolutions and "internationally agreed parameters" originally promised Israel defensible borders. Thus all the plans that broke this promise are the ones that ought to be deemed illegitimate – not the one plan that finally seeks to keep it.

The Arabs And Europeans React To Trump’s Middle East ‘Vision’

It takes time for attitudes to change, and changing attitudes in the Middle East is a tough proposition. Moving the Europeans may prove harder.

An Israeli general once told this story (I was there):

The Israeli general commanded a unit that crossed the Suez Canal in 1973 after repulsing Egypt’s surprise Yom Kippur War attack. In his headquarters, he received a message that purported to be from an Egyptian general, telling him to come — alone — in a jeep to a certain spot in the desert and “hear something.” The general told the group, “I was sure I was going to die, but I did it.” The Egyptian proved to be the chief of the Egyptian general staff and he, too, was alone.

The Egyptian said, “The war is over.”

The Israeli general said, “Yes. I know.”

The Egyptian general sighed, “Not this war. In 1948, Egypt was within 11 miles of Tel Aviv and you pushed us back. In 1956, you drove through Sinai — but it wasn’t fair because you had the French and the British. In 1967, you did it again — by yourselves. Now you have crossed the Suez Canal and are 99 kilometers from Cairo. I’m here to tell you that you won’t get any closer. The war is over.”

He got back in his jeep and left.

The Israeli returned to his headquarters and told the story to the general staff in Tel Aviv. “No one believed me,” the Israeli said.

But it was true. The Egyptian government had determined that fighting, losing, and regrouping was not a plan. In 1979, Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem, and in so doing met Israel’s primary condition for peace — recognition of Israel as a legitimate and permanent state in the region, entitled to “secure and recognized boundaries, free from threats or acts of force” (the language of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242). Today, Egypt and Israel cooperate on energy, security (including for the Gaza Strip), and trade.

In the broader Arab world, it is taking longer. Unable to countenance Jewish sovereignty in the region, the Arabs went to war in 1948 to erase it. They failed. They tried again in 1967. They failed again. After that war, an Arab League Summit convened in Sudan and issued what became known as the Khartoum Resolution: “No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.”

Mairav Zonszein, the far left writer who I have shown on numerous occasions to be intellectually dishonest, does it again - but this time for what most people consider a prestigious journal, the Columbia Journalism Review.

In short, her piece attacks The Forward for not being leftist enough. (The subtitle is "How America's Jewish newspaper lost the left.")

Now, I have attacked the Forward many times for publishing opinions and promoting articles that I think gave too much oxygen to the far-Left, providing their members a platform that is far out of proportion to their actual numbers. But the standard that one should use to criticize a media outlet, outside of insisting they report the truth, is whether it adheres to its own stated positions. The Forward's masthead says " News That Matters To American Jews," not "Bernie Sanders Fan Club" or "Zionists are Racists." (The Forward's advertising pitch does say that it is "a beacon of integrity, iconoclasm and progressive thought" but it is unclear whether it uses the word "progressive" the same way the uber-Left does. What is clear is that The Forward considers itself above all a Jewish media outlet, not a leftist one.)

Criticizing The Forward for not being leftist enough when it never claimed to be a leftist media outlet is only one piece of Zonszein's dishonesty. Zonszein misleads again and again, stating things that CFR should have fact-checked.

For example, she writes, "Compared to figures such as Omar and Ocasio-Cortez, Stephen Miller, a Trump senior adviser who is one of the most influential Jews in the White House, was given less attention, even as he advanced white-supremacist policies inspired by Mein Kampf." I count over 90 articles in The Forward about Stephen Miller, nearly all of them extremely negative. That's plenty of attention! Yes, there are about 130 articles that mention Omar, but a significant number of them support her against her critics. (Zonszein's link about Mein Kampf is also false, it does not support her assertion that Miller's positions were inspired by Hitler.)

The article goes on to berate the Forward for publishing occasional opinion pieces from the Right, such as from Mort Klein. Whether she likes him or not, he is the head of a major Zionist organization and to banning him from the Forward would be astonishing To the Left, censorship of opinions they don't agree with is a higher editorial imperative than publishing a variety of opinions that are representative of American Jews.

More outrageous is this section where Zonszein implies that The Forward is in bed with neo-Nazis: "Another contributor published 'We Need to Start Befriending Neo-Nazis.'" The article in question, by Bethany Mandel, was about the few people who try to get neo-Nazis to understand Jews and to change their minds - the exact opposite of the implication by Zonszein.

The straw that broke the camel's back, to Zonszein and her far-Left, anti-Israel friends, was that The Forward has not been shy about calling out leftist antisemitism such as that consistently pushed by Ilhan Omar.

That problem came to a head last February, when Batya Ungar-Sargon, The Forward’s opinion editor, called out Congresswoman Omar for anti-Semitism, sparking a national controversy and leading to the fundraising email that angered Jewish progressives like me. “It is frustrating and saddening to see The Forward today embracing, indeed, reveling in, its newfound role as policeman, prosecutor, judge, and jury deciding what is and isn’t anti-Semitism,” Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, says.

So the Left can tell us what antisemitism is and the Forward cannot? Because according to them, there is simply no such thing as any antisemitism that is not from the far Right, and mentioning any other type outrages them. Arab antisemitism is "protesting for Palestinian freedom" no matter how many times the word "Jew" is used. Attacks on Jews in Brooklyn are twisted to somehow be Trump's fault. And, of course, there is antisemitism on the Left itself, often camouflaged as being anti-Israel. Even UN expert on freedom of religion and belief admits that there is leftist antisemitism.

But the far Left is outraged and wants to silence any such opinion. To them, even the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance cannot express an opinion on what antisemitism is. Only they can, and all antisemitism conveniently comes from their political opponents. They are guilty of the "weaponizing" antisemitism they accuse everyone else of doing, even in this very essay.

The article doesn't even have a consistent, coherent viewpoint. Zonszein's last paragraph is a stunning example:

In many ways, what is happening with the paper reflects what has been going on in the American Jewish community writ large: the collapse of centrism, the polarization of discourse, and the imperative to take a stand. And that’s the source of my frustration with The Forward. Communicating through op-eds and imposing divides among Jews isn’t the kind of journalism required to guide us through the difficult moment we’re in.

She just wrote an entire article attacking the site for publishing opinions that are too Right and not enough from the Left, and then she complains about "the collapse of centrism"? She wants to silence Bethany Mandel, who cannot be pigeonholed as Right of Left and is as classically liberal as they come, and then complains about the "polarization of discourse"? Is the "imperative to take a stand" a bad thing? She mercilessly attacks any Jewish opinion she disagrees with and then complains about "imposing divides among Jews"? What a bizarre conclusion to Zonszein's screed.

The main thrust of the piece, besides attempting to smear The Forward, is to insist that it has no right to publish any opinions that Leftists disagree with. This fundamentally anti-liberal and anti-free speech stance is a very strange one for a watchdog like CJR to publish.

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Men killed by Israel in Jenin were both members of the PA police - and one might have also been Islamic Jihad!

From the Jerusalem Post:

Two Palestinians, including a policeman, were killed in riots which broke out in the West Bank city of Jenin after IDF troops demolished the home of a Palestinian terrorist responsible for the death of Rabbi Raziel Shevach in September 2018.

According to Palestinian news agency WAFA, 19 year-old Yazan Abu Tabikh was killed after IDF troops opened fire at rioters who had been clashing with troops. The policeman was identified as Sergeant Tarek Badwan.

The first question is - was the policeman attacking the IDF?

But there is more. Yazan Abu Tabikh was identified in Palestinian media as also a paid member of the PA's National Security Service in Jenin.

This means that two PA police were killed and they were the only ones.

This sure makes it sound like the PA is now actively attacking Israeli forces.

This gets even more interesting because Islamic Jihad issued a statement that strongly suggested that Abu Tabikh was also one of its members as well, but that is not certain.

Either way, if the PA is now encouraging its police to attack Israeli security, things could escalate quickly.

Mahmoud Abbas said last Saturday that "we still believe in peace and a culture of peace."

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Morocco's mainstream Hespress news site has an article about how Eurovision is trying to get Morocco to return to the competition.

Morocco only entered once, in 1980, with the only song ever sung in Arabic for the competition. However, it ended up in next to last place and Morocco's king vowed never to return.

Now, Morocco is using another excuse for not returning to Eurovision: the competition's decision in 2016 not to raise the flag of any country that is not a member of the UN, which applies to "Palestine" as well as Crimea and other flags.

The comments on the article are most interesting.

While some hail the ostensible solidarity with Palestinians that Morocco is pretending to have, others are slamming the idea of not joining Eurovision because of the Palestinian issue.

The Palestinian cause will not benefit from anything, but we lost and are still losing the billions that we support the Palestinians through the Al-Quds Committee and the Arab League in return, nothing.

Normalization is ongoing with the entity already. Recently, Morocco bought 3 drones [from Israel.]

How long will this folly persist, isolating Morocco internationally and selling its ideals in exchange for serving a single agenda that does not help the Moroccan people at all?. What is the relationship of the Moroccan people to lifting or not lifting a piece of cloth on an international competition? Isn't Morocco's participation and showing its capabilities internationally more worthy than the Arabs and their boycott?

A very strange logic among many Moroccans and with great regret. Why do we hate the Israelis when they are an internationally recognized country? What is even stranger is that many Moroccans hate even Jews from other countries and even Moroccan Jews. Why do you hate the Israelis? Because they kill Palestinians and because they raped Palestinian land, seems to be the answer. Turkey does not kill the Kurds and the Syrians, and Syria does not kill its people and it is from its blood and flesh? Iraq does not kill the Iraqis today? And the Saudis and the Emirates do not kill the poor Yemenis? By Allah, Israel has no weapons made in order to kill Moroccans on the contrary, it will help Morocco obtain weapons if we Algeria attacks...

This decision and this non-participation policy contradicts the provisions of the Moroccan constitution and the spirit of ancient Moroccan history, with its dimensions and its affiliation to the Mediterranean space and culture.
Who is Palestine to prohibit and separate Morocco from its Mediterranean civilizational affiliation?

The ban of non-flags of countries that are not recognized by the United Nations is natural. Otherwise, it will raise the flag of the Polisario and provide a time for them to be seen by 600 million people!
As for normalization with Israel, would you laugh at us, as Erdogan laughs at us? Turkey's trade exchange with Israel in the millions, they have embassies, offices, reception of heads of government, etc. .. Israel has been recognized by all Arabs and Muslims directly or indirectly .. So stop laughing at yourself. If Morocco does not participate, Nablus and Jericho will be liberated?
Moroccan participation is a good publicity for the country as a country of openness and peace.

Since the beginning of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, we have not gotten anything from Palestine except headaches with their empty expressions and their racism based on a vacuum that does not increase except in delaying our economic and political progress. It is time to say to the Palestinians about the wisdom of dignity - a land that you are defending as adults. Stand up, take the burden of building your future with your own hands, as we do, and let us live in peace and progress. We did not and will not forget, I, the Palestinians, many times, they provoked us with their cooperation and stood by the terrorist gang (Polisario) striking at the wall every good thing we did from them, forgetting that Moroccan souls died for them and on top of them are the two Moroccan sisters (Ghaithah and Nadia El-Bradley) who Sacrificed everything for their sake for Palestine.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Our state is tiny, in size and population. The Nations didn’t want it to exist at all, and when they couldn’t stop it they did their best to keep it small. There aren’t so many Jews in the world, anyway; millennia of oppression and murder have kept our numbers down, and today there are millions who are “Jewish by extraction” but are assimilated enough to other cultures to be lost forever to the Jewish people.

In all the world there are fewer than 15 million Jews, in Israel fewer than 7 million. But there are forces arrayed against us that are unique in their scope and viciousness. Throughout the world, even in countries where there are few Jews or none at all, people have opinions about us. According to a worldwide survey done by the ADL, some 26% of the world’s 7.5 billion people “harbor antisemitic attitudes.” That is incredible, when you think about it.

There are 35 million Kurds in the world, another people seeking (but so far not getting) self-determination. Certainly they have issues with their Turkish and other neighbors, but I venture to guess that it is highly unlikely that anywhere near as many people have even heard of the Kurds, much less “harbor anti-Kurdish attitudes.”

What’s true for Jews goes triple for their state. I won’t repeat the depressing statistics about the number of UN resolutions condemning Israel that pass every year, and the fact that it is consistently attacked there for crimes that it did not commit while countries that do engage in murder, aggression, and oppression are never mentioned. I won’t go into detail about the extreme and irrational anti-Israel expression (misoziony*) found in almost one hundred percent of the world’s academic and artistic realms.

Really, Israel and Jews are sui generis in the “objects of hatred” department (and if you think it is our fault, you are part of the problem).

This hatred is not just theoretical. From time to time, our immediate neighbors, cousins if you will, start wars whose intent is to kill or disperse the Jews who are occupying the Land of Israel. As a result, Israel has been forced to spend a large portion of her GDP on defense, which has led to her possession of very advanced military technology, which – along with her slightly better degree of organization – led to the defeat of our enemies in conventional war. That in turn led them to adopt strategies of asymmetric warfare and terrorism, which we have managed to counter, although less successfully.

These aren’t our only enemies. In the middle of the twentieth century, one of the most highly developed scientific, literary, and musical cultures in the Western world descended into genocidal madness and ignited a war which resulted in 60 million dead and much of Europe laid waste, primarily – there were other reasons, but I’ll stick with “primarily” – to annihilate us. Largish groups in almost every country of Eastern and Western Europe worked together with the Nazis to help collect, ship, and exterminate those of us who fell into their hands.

After the war there was a general revulsion in what was left of the countries that had participated in the biggest pogrom in history, as well as an understanding on the part of the Jewish remnant that our state had to be established regardless of the cost, which prevailed against the resistance – imagine, after all that! – the resistance from Britain and the Arabs.

But the antisemitism of Europe didn’t go away, although it was pushed under cover by the embarrassment of its involvement in the pogrom of pogroms. There was no embarrassment about expressing it in the form of misoziony, the wild hatred of the state that we managed to establish despite Britain’s best efforts to prevent it. And while there is still enough revulsion left to prevent them from repeating their attempt to liquidate our people, it hasn’t stopped them from paying to create the conditions for others to do it for them.

So we have European powers, particularly Germany (of all nations) and the hyper-civilized Scandinavian countries, the ones who abhor physical violence and have made the expression of racist sentiments illegal, spending millions of Euros of their citizens’ taxes on enterprises designed to weaken the Jewish state and set the stage for its destruction by Arabs or Iranians who aren’t squeamish about direct action with guns and bombs to accomplish the goal desired – but never said out loud in public – in Brussels, Berlin, and Stockholm.

European money keeps numerous international and Israeli organizations afloat, usually ostensibly in defense of human rights, but practically focusing on the rights and national aspirations of one particular group, the Palestinian Arabs. If you ask an honest Palestinian, he will tell you that he aspires, above all else, to violently kick the Jews out of all of the Land of Israel, in which he believes they have no right to live (except as a dhimmi minority), and certainly no right to have a sovereign state.

The Europeans, realizing that this aspiration smells uncomfortably like the 1940s, insist that what they want is only to divide Israel along the 1949 armistice line and set up a Palestinian Arab state in the eastern part. Then this state will live happily alongside Israel, with its 9-mile wide waist, and the “Middle Eastern Conflict” will be over. This is called the “two-state solution,” but of course won’t solve anything except the difficulties the Arabs have today in hitting Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion Airport from their territory with the cheapest and simplest of mortars.

Israelis learned by experience that Arab control of areas near Jewish populations makes them a target of terrorism and rocket attacks, and refuse to vote for the stupid or psychologically disturbed politicians who advocate this. Thus, since the Second Intifada (2000-3) and the Hamas takeover of Gaza (2007), Israeli voters have rejected the parties of the Left, whose support has fallen to the point that they flirt with the cutoff percentage in elections.

Europe wants to change that. For example – and this is just one of countless similar examples – the European Union has granted more than half a million dollars (500,000 Euros) to an Israeli NGO whose objective is to change the attitude of Russian-speaking Israelis, who have always leaned politically right – for obvious reasons – and who have opposed the creation of a Palestinian state. The EU says that the grant is intended to

…promote conditions for a negotiated settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and potential shifts in public opinion among the Russian-speaking community by building confidence and trust in the two-state solution among a population that has traditionally rejected and been omitted from the process, as well as to deconstruct a negative view of the Palestinian narrative.

It should be obvious that the political attitudes of Russian-speaking Israelis are nobody’s business but Israel’s. But this item provides a window into the overall program of the EU and individual European countries, which work on numerous levels to bring about the partition of the Land of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state.

This and other manipulative programs, including financial support for international and Israeli NGOs that propagandize, support BDS, and engage in lawfare against Israel, complement the EU’s investment in building infrastructure for Palestinians in Area C, the part of Judea and Samaria that according to the Oslo accords is under Israeli civil control. These building projects, done without permits or permission, are intended to create facts on the ground that will make it more difficult for Israel to retain control of these areas in any future deal. At the same time, international pressure on Israel to not build in the territories, even inside existing settlements that will certainly end up as part of Israel, has been effective. Despite news reports that “1000 new homes have been approved” and so forth, very few buildings have actually been constructed. And illegal Palestinian settlements have not been removed.

Make no mistake – the Palestinian leadership has no interest in a state in the territories except as a stepping stone to the replacement of Israel by an Arab state, and the death or dispersal of about half of the Jewish people. They say it themselves over and over.

Are officials in the EU and individual countries that support this project so stupid or blind and deaf as to fail to understand that? Do they not know that the funds that they provide to the Palestinian Authority are used to pay terrorists? Do they not see that UNRWA, of which they are now the prime funder, educates Palestinian children to hate?

I don’t believe it.

_______________________
* Misoziony (pronounced mis-OZ-yoni) is the extreme and irrational hatred of the Jewish state. It is antisemitism raised up one level of abstraction, although almost all misozionists are antisemites as well.

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02/05 Links Pt2: European Funding to Terror-Linked NGOs Exposed in Comprehensive Report; How the Soviets promoted openly antisemitic anti-Zionism

From Ian:

European Funding to Terror-Linked NGOs Exposed in Comprehensive Report

Eight European-funded Palestinian NGOs have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a US-designated terrorist group, according to a new report.

Palestinian NGOs Addameer, Al-Dameer, Defense for Children International–Palestine, Health Work Committees, Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), Union of Health Work Committees and Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees were all identified by Jerusalem-based research institute NGO Monitor in a report released last week as having extensive ties to the PFLP.

“Over 70 current and former staff, board members and general assembly members, as well as senior management and founders at these NGOs have direct ties to the PFLP, designated as a terror group by the US, EU, Canada, Israel and others,” said the report.

“A number of them are employed in financial positions at the European-supported NGOs, raising questions about oversight and aid diversion,” it continued.

“This is part of a wide-ranging network used by the terror group to gain legitimacy by operating under the façade of civil society,” the report added.

The report details millions of dollars in funding to these NGOs from government sponsors including the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, France, Ireland, Norway and Belgium, with additional support from the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and UNICEF.

It also identified five members of the European-funded NGOs, including an accountant at UAWC, who were indicted in December in connection with the terrorist attack in Israel in August that killed 17-year-old Rina Shnerb.

According to professor Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor’s president and founder, European support for select Palestinian and Israeli NGOs began in the mid-1990s, with several European Union and member state officials using the support to increase their influence.

After ‘Post’ report, German MP to quit BDS NGO if it does not reject BDS

Following a recent Jerusalem Post report, German politician Olaf in der Beek on Wednesday confirmed a letter in which he threatened to resign from the German-Palestinian Society, a hardcore BDS organization targeting Israel, if the group does not reject the “antisemitic” pressure campaign.

“My letter to the president of the German-Palestinian Society proves my clear stance against antisemitism and the BDS movement. If the German-Palestinian Society does not distance itself from the BDS campaign, I will leave it,” the Free Democratic Party (FDP) MP told the Post.

The Post first reported Wednesday on in der Beek’s membership in the German-Palestinian Society. Numerous Post queries sent to the president of the Society Nazih Musharbash and all members of the executive board of the organization were not returned. The Post asked Musharbash if he planned to reject BDS in to the letter.

The Post first exposed a group of German MPs who are members of the German-Palestinian Society’s advisory board. Some of the most hardcore anti-Israel MPs in the Bundestag are members of the board. Take the example of Christine Buchholz, an MP for the German Left Party, who has defended the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah in their violent terrorism war against the Jewish state.

Other members of the Society include Social Democratic MP Aydan Özogus and Green Party MP Omid Nouripour, the latter of whom co-sponsored a parliamentary initiative in 2013 to punish Jewish products from the West Bank with a labeling system. The Post has sent press queries to the Green Party and Social Democrats regarding their members’ roles in the society.

How the Soviets promoted openly antisemitic anti-Zionism

In this column in January 2017, I discussed some research done on archived KGB documents by noted Israeli investigative journalist and author Ronen Bergman. Basically, Bergman showed that during the Cold War, Soviet efforts to support the Arab war on Israel and spread extreme propaganda demonising Israel and Zionism were not simply cynical efforts to gain Arab support and damage the interests of US allies.

The documents suggest KGB leaders were sincere believers in the worst sort of antisemitic conspiracy theories, including believing in the authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, openly speaking of the “global Jewish conspiracy”, and insisting Zionists were secretly behind anything negative affecting Soviet interests, such as the increase in US-USSR tensions following the election of Ronald Reagan as US President in 1980.

As I also noted, Soviet propaganda lies behind many of the extreme claims about Israel and Zionism found on the international left today – Zionism as a uniquely evil form of imperialism and colonialism; claims that Zionists both collaborated with the Nazis and exhibit behaviour similar to Nazism; beliefs that Zionists and the “Jewish Lobby” control Washington and other capitals, the media, and international finance, etc.

Now the American blogger “Elder of Ziyon” (a tongue-in-cheek nom de guerre) has uncovered some new details about how these Soviet-promoted racist beliefs were disseminated. He notes a recent column in a Jordanian newspaper by anti-Zionist writer Marwan Soudah in which Soudah recalls the importance in Arab intellectual circles in 1970, of a “book written by the martyr of thought and the word, Yuri Ivanov, entitled ‘Beware of Zionism!’. …. I remember that these books were distributed in Amman for free and on a large scale to the pioneers of the Soviet Cultural Centre…”

The Ivanov book in question, called in English Caution: Zionism!, was one of the most seminal and widely distributed works of official Soviet anti-Israel propaganda.

And as Elder of Ziyon demonstrates through extensive quotes, it went beyond spreading the usual claims about Zionism being “a tool and agent of imperialism”; a form of colonialism and racism deploying “fascist methods” which is also able to censor the international media, and engaging in endless atrocities including “widespread” use of “paid hirelings to organise the ‘elimination’ of people refusing to serve the Zionist interests.”

Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers fights hatred and antisemitism on campus in the Bay Area, so I was surprised when I tried to share a recent piece on Facebook, Glorifying Jew Killers at Cal, and got this error message, instead:

Your message couldn't be sent because it includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive.

There was, of course, nothing abusive about this piece, except for the fact that it describes a display in the Berkeley Student Union that is intolerably abusive to Jewish students. The display consists of a series of photos and captions celebrating terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands. While the display was largely met with indifference by the student body and UC Berkeley administrators, some Jews decided to fight back, by adding context to the display, with explanatory notes.

Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers next refers us to a passionate response by student Maya Reuven in the Daily Cal student newspaper, ASUC should condemn Bears for Palestine’s display. Here, Reuven describes the actual deeds of the terrorists depicted in that display. How Rasmea Odeh bombed and killed two Jewish students shopping for groceries. The way Fatima Bernawi tried to blow up a movie theater in downtown Jerusalem. The fact that Leila Khaled was involved in more than one hijacking attempt.

The student writer asks why Bears for Palestine, in our current climate of antisemitism, in the wake of Poway, Tree of Life, and Jersey City, could not instead laud activists for coexistence and peace. People like, for instance, Bassam Eid. These are pertinent questions that are worthy of our consideration.

Questions that should not be shut down by Facebook playing Big Brother.

We know very well what happened here. Those who celebrate the Jew-killers reported Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers to the powers that be at Facebook. The report was accepted at face value, and no one bothered to look further. Or perhaps they looked further and hate Israel and the Jews, so decided to use their power at Facebook to shut down someone who fights for Israel and against hatred.

In my search for some way to work around this unjust decision, I then attempted to share the homepage of Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers: http://proisraelbaybloggers.blogspot.com/ and received this error message:

You can't share this link

proisraelbaybloggers.blogspot.com

Your post couldn't be shared, because this link goes against our Community Standards

If you think this doesn't go against our Community Standards let us know.

I duly clicked the “let us know” link and in the box provided, explained that Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers, far from being abusive, is a good website that is fighting against hatred and antisemitism. I sent off my comment and received a generic thanks:

Thanks for providing feedback about this experience.

In other words, “We’ll probably never read what you took the time to write us, but we know it makes you feel good to vent. You’re welcome.”

Not quite ready to give up on Facebook as a reasonable entity (Ha!), I decided to click on the link to “Learn more about what happens when you’re blocked or your content is removed.”

Here, I was led to an explanation of blocking, how long it lasts, and a lot of blah, blah, blah, about appropriate behavior on Facebook and how one might improve in order to be acceptable in future. Below was a series of boxes to click. I decided on “This solution doesn’t work,” and left a comment:

“Anyone who hates you personally or who disagrees with your politics can report your content as abusive, when it isn't, as a way to punish and hurt you and you have absolutely no recourse against this decision. There is no appeals system. It's actually a hateful policy that allows abuse to flourish in the Facebook community. This policy silences voices and shuts down freedom of speech.”

I clicked submit and my comment disappeared. In its stead, was a short message:

Thanks! Your feedback helps improve this answer for everyone.

I had gone as far as I could go. I could only hope that the ban on Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers lasts only 30 days, as Facebook’s explanation on blocked content suggests. But we all know that if someone wants to silence them once more, all they have to do is report the website again, and Facebook offers its users no recourse for appeal.

Several years ago, I decided to hold a one-day ban of Facebook, until they shut down a certain antisemitic page (the name of the page was something like "Kill the Jews"). I had thousands of people join the event, but when Facebook caved in and shut down the antisemitic page, I deleted the event.

Can you guess what happened next? Facebook restored the antisemitic page the very next day.

Many of us hate Facebook and use it anyway. Because the alternatives, for instance Twitter, Gab, and MeWe, just don’t give us the same satisfaction. At some point, however, the injustice of Facebook policies, and the lack of recourse to appropriate solutions may just drive us over the edge, and make us leave en masse.

Facebook is, on the other hand, such a monolith, that I wouldn’t suggest you hold your breath.

UPDATE: Btsalmo suggests that as many people as possible fill out a report at Facebook (see: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/571927962827151) stating that Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers (http://proisraelbaybloggers.blogspot.com/) and all content there, is safe and not abusive.

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