Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 10, 2020

02/10 Links Pt2: Tu B’Shvat: The Festival that Proves the Jewish People’s Connection to the Land of Israel; Confirmation Bias and Antisemitism; Hakarot Hatov: ‘Week of Thanksgiving’ to the Druze

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Celebrating Tu Bishvat, New Year for the trees

Tu Bishvat, the 15th of Shvat in Judaism’s lunar calendar, which we celebrate today, is also known as Rosh Hashanah Le’ilanot - “New Year for Trees.” Judaism’s arbor day celebration is a good opportunity to take stock and consider some environmental New Year resolutions.

Tu Bishvat is one of the Jewish festivals that is uniquely tied to the Land of Israel and is widely celebrated here by Jews – religious and secular – while less well known or marked in the Diaspora.

Tied so inextricably with nature, the festival has taken on a more universal environmental theme. Tu Bishvat is a reminder that environmental laws and precepts are not a modern invention. From the earliest times of the Bible, we have been commanded to respect the land, animals, plants and trees. Today, we face a peculiar situation in which both the means of destruction are more widespread and massive but also the ways of protecting the environment are much more advanced.

Tu Bishvat expresses down-to-earth Zionism, highlighting the link of the Jewish religion and people to their homeland. While environmentalism is becoming something of a new world religion, Zionism is out of fashion. Sadly, as the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continue to launch balloons and kites attached to incendiary or explosive devices, fire is being used as a form of ecoterrorism. Fortunately, environmental issues can also create common ground to bring Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians together to solve problems which do not recognize man-made borders. Israeli R&D is famous worldwide for its contribution to water management, alternative energy and agriculture, to the benefit of all.

This is the festival when the sentence in Deuteronomy (20:19) that “A person is like the tree of a field” most comes to mind. People, like trees, need the correct balance of natural elements including water, sunlight, clean air and good nourishment.

Honest Reporting: Tu B’Shvat: The Festival that Proves the Jewish People’s Connection to the Land of Israel

In contemporary Israel, tree-planting is central to the Tu B’Shvat experience. The practice can be traced back to the time when the Jewish pioneers began to settle in the Land of Israel. For them, working the land became an ideal, and they began a process of afforestation in order to overcome the desolation of the land.

The planting of trees on Tu B’Shvat gradually became customary, and in 1908, the Jewish National Fund and the educational system officially adopted the custom. Since then, Tu B’Shvat has been known in Israel as a holiday for planting trees, on which schoolchildren and their teachers plant trees all over the country. The tree-planting ceremonies symbolize the renewed connection between the nation and its land.

By 1948, approximately 2% of Israel was covered by trees. Over the space of the seventy years thereafter, the percentage had grown to roughly 8.5%, making Israel the only country in the world with a net growth in trees over the course of the twentieth century.

So strong is the connection to Israel’s identity, that on February 14, 1949, Israel’s Constituent Assembly convened for the first time in the Jewish Agency building in central Jerusalem. The Hebrew calendar date that day was Tu Bishvat. Each year, the Knesset celebrates its establishment on the New Year of the Trees, and on that day, its members participate in tree-planting ceremonies around the country.

Outside of Israel, Tu B’Shvat generally remains a minor holiday, with no special prayers recited in synagogues and no connection to any particular historical event. Nevertheless, Jews around the world view the day as an opportunity to be grateful for the planet we live on, and specifically for the Land of Israel. Even if one is unable to relocate to Israel, we are all able to partake in this day, enjoy fruits and grains grown in Israeli soil, and celebrate the millennia-old connection the Jewish people have with the region.

While Jews have lived all over the globe, Jewish tradition has always centered around the Holy Land, and these rituals and their specifics serve to highlight the centrality of the Land of Israel to the Jewish people’s identity.

Palestinians need to feel relevant - which makes them love terrorism

As I was looking at Arab stamps for my last post, I noticed this one from Kuwait:

I didn't recognize Fatima Bernawi - because she was black, and the Kuwaiti stamp designer was apparently a racist.

Bernawi was one of the earliest Palestinian female terrorists. (Palestinian propaganda refers to her as the first female political prisoner, because to them all terrorists are political prisoners.)

In October 1967 she, along with two others, left a bomb in a handbag under a seat at the Zion Cinema. An alert policeman heard the ticking and managed to take the bomb outside to an empty area where it exploded before the bomb squad could arrive.

Bernawi was sentenced to life in prison, but was released in a prisoner swap in 1977.

In a fawning article about her on Face2Face Africa, Bernawi was quoted before her death as being proud of her acts, even though they didn't kill anyone. Her reasoning is rather sick:

Before her death in Amman in 2016, Bernawi spoke of how she had dreamt about the attempted cinema bomb attack all her life.

She said that though the attack was a failure, she believed it was successful.

“It generated fear throughout the world. Every woman who carries a bag needs to be checked before she enters the supermarket, any place, cinemas and pharmacies… I don’t define that as a failure,” she said in 2015.

Palestinians have such a low self esteem that, like children having a temper tantrum, they want to make sure that they have made a difference to the world - no matter that their contribution is to force the world to spend tens of billions of dollars in extra security.

The article also notes how much of a hero Bernawi was to today's Palestinian leadership:

This was after she had received the Star of Honour, the highest military decoration awarded by the Palestinian Authority.

Bernawi, according to media reports, was honoured for her outstanding sacrifice and courage against “the enemy” and for her “pioneering role in the struggle, her sacrifice for her homeland and her people, and its revolution, and her willingness to give from the beginning until now”.

Bernawi was also honored in honor of Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, on April 17, 2015.

She was described as “one of the first Palestinian women to adopt [the means of] armed self-sacrifice operations after the start of the modern Palestinian revolution, which was launched by Fatah on January 1, 1965.”

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Oman has just issued a stamp with the slogan, "Al Quds - Capital of Palestine."

There have been dozens of similar stamps over the years issued in Arab countries, often with pictures of the Dome of the Rock.

But when did they start?

The first Arab stamps to feature Jerusalem as a motif came from Jordan and then various other Arab states in 1969 as a tax to pay for the restoration of the Al Aqsa Mosque after it was burned by a mentally ill Christian.

But before 1967, not one Arab stamp ever featured Jerusalem as its theme. (Saudi Arabia featured the Kaaba in Mecca in a 1965 stamp.)

Stamps tell you a lot about the priorities of the nations. Before 1967 there were plenty of Arab stamps that were anti-Israel. But no Arab nation felt that Jerusalem was worth commemorating - until the Jews too control of it.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

02/10 Links Pt1: PA withdraws its request for UN vote on Trump peace plan; Israeli Arabs are Israeli, not Palestinian; US envoy explains deal’s asymmetry: We trust Israel, but PA can’t keep a bargain

From Ian:

Abbas’ Palestinian Authority Hurts Everybody

By perpetuating the conflict, the Palestinian Authority also forces international donor countries to indefinitely waste their taxpayers’ money on supporting terror and incitement against Israel, financing P.A. corruption, and eternalizing the Palestinian refugee problem. Moreover, it forces the international community to adopt its false narrative, such as ignoring the historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem in U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334 and in several UNESCO resolutions, mutating basic historical facts that are central not only to Jewish history but to Western history as a whole into historically illiterate gibberish.

The United States has tried hard in recent years to put an end to this unacceptable situation. It has cut economic aid to the Palestinian Authority due to its payment of salaries to terrorists, stopped financial support to UNRWA, and closed the PLO office in Washington. The United States also defied the P.A. narrative by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and by clarifying that Israeli settlements are not illegal. It is hard to overstate the importance of these moves, all of which came in response to the P.A.’s abject failures.

The Trump administration’s new peace plan signals clearly that this Palestinian Authority has to be replaced with a P.A. that first and foremost cares about the well-being of its citizens and respects their rights, fights corruption, and has well-functioning institutions. It has to be replaced by a P.A. that disarms Hamas and thereafter is able to govern the Gaza Strip. It has to be replaced with a P.A. that has a narrative of peace and is ready to accept Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. It has to be replaced by a P.A. that fights terror, stops the “Pay-for-Slay” policy, and ends incitement and hate indoctrination at home and abroad. And ultimately, it has to be replaced by a P.A. that respects the outstanding readiness of the Arabs and the international community to support it and rises to their expectations. If this cultural change takes place, the new P.A. will turn into an independent state and will be provided with an abundance of new resources.

Unlike any previous peace plans, this new plan tells the Palestinian Authority that if it does not choose to change in the coming four years, the United States, Israel, and the pragmatic Arabs are not going to wait any longer and will not enable the P.A. to have veto power over their will to move forward for the good of Palestinians, Israelis, and the entire region. Time is ticking.

The P.A. has grown used to being spoiled by those it hurts. As Mahmoud Abbas revealed in his address to the Arab League foreign affairs ministers, previous American administrations spoiled the Palestinians so much that, in spite of the P.A.’a refusal to accept President Barack Obama’s peace plan after it was presented to Abbas in March 2014 (he replied that any Palestinian compromise is impossible), the Obama administration was still the driving force behind UNSCR 2334. This resolution defined all the territories as occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem with the Temple Mount and Wailing Wall, and declared Israeli settlements illegal. No more.

The U.S. peace plan marks a paradigm shift in the American approach to the Palestinian Authority. Will this P.A. change? Chances are slim, but only time will tell. One thing we know already—the paradigm that was adopted until now, which was largely based on willful blindness, did not yield the expected fruits. Let us hope that this new paradigm, which is based on the realities on the ground, will help heal the wounds that this P.A. has inflicted on its many victims—Palestinians, Israelis, moderate Arabs, and international donor countries whose money has been spent on murder and hate—and help us build a road to peace.

Israeli Arabs are Israeli, not Palestinian

The raising of Palestinian flags in protest against the "Deal of the Century deal" and the proposal to transfer sovereignty over the Triangle (a cluster of Arab towns and cities near the Green Line) to a future Palestinian state has caused a small yet familiar storm.

Many Jews, and indeed quite a few Arabs, have asked how it is possible to wave the flag of the Palestinian Authority while resisting falling under its sovereignty.

I am positive that there is not one Arab citizen of Israel who wants to live under the control of any Arab ruler in any Arab state, including the State of Palestine.

In Arab society, there is even a saying that "Israeli Jewish hell is better than the paradise of the Arab states."

Yes, the Arab states have civil equality among its residents, but you will not find liberty and or freedom of speech.

There is neither human dignity nor liberty nor a high court of justice.

An Israeli Arab who is used to demonstrating and yelling in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv against the policy of the government and those who lead it would not be able to do that - and survive – in Damascus or any of the Gulf states.

The reign of eternal tyrants in Arab nations is as far removed from the experiences of Israeli Arabs as we are from the Stone Age.

Raising the Palestinian flag during the protests against the Trump plan was an act of identification, not identity.

PMW: After PMW's exposure: TikTok removes video glorifying four actual terror attacks

Last Wednesday, Palestinian Media Watch exposed that a user of the social network TikTok had posted a video animation glorifying four lethal terror attacks that were committed against Israelis. PMW is pleased to report that TikTok responded immediately and removed the terror glorifying video.

The following is PMW’s original bulletin exposing the terror promotion:
Animated video of real murder of Israelis
- on social network popular among children

An animated video that encourages murdering Israelis by showing graphic recreated scenes of real terror attacks has appeared on TikTok – a social network popular among children, where users can create and share short videos.

The video shows four lethal terror attacks that were committed against Israelis – a terrorist who rammed his car into Israelis at a Jerusalem light rail station, another who shot at Israeli police, and two stabbers. An eagle – possibly symbolizing the eagle in the emblem used by the Palestinian Authority and the PLO – flies above the carnage throughout the video, at one point moving in unison with 19-year-old Palestinian terrorist Muhannad Halabi as he stabs a religious Jew in the Old City of Jerusalem. The video carries the text “Jerusalem is the dread of the Jews," followed by a red heart.

The following are screenshots from the animation paired with details of the Palestinian terrorists and the attacks they apparently portray:

Yesterday, Beatie Deutsch, a 30-year-old New Jersey native and ultra-Orthodox Jewish mother of five from Jerusalem, won the Miami half-marathon women’s division in 1:16:49 - wearing a skirt, headscarf and long sleeves.

While Deutsch was athletic as a youngster, she didn't keep it up. Four years ago, when she lost family races on a beach, she decided to get into shape. Only four months later she finished sixth in the 2016 Tel Aviv Marathon.

Deutsch has inspired other Orthodox Jews to run, and there were 600 Orthodox Jews in the Miami race, most of whom were running to raise money for charities. Deutsch herself was running to raise money for Beit Daniella, a charity for children with mental illness.

Because of the high religious Jewish participation, this is the first year the Miami Marathon offered kosher-certified meals for athletes at the finish line.

Deutsch first made headlines as a runner when she completed the 2017 Tel Aviv Marathon while seven months pregnant.

Last night she wrote on her Facebook page:

All day long I've been trying to find the time to post about my race today..

but I needed the perfect pictures and the perfect words before I could post.

Until suddenly I realized I didn't.

Because even though I'd love to share some professional quality pictures (which will come), if you've been following me long enough you know I'm not about perfection. And even if I don't have time to share a masterfully written caption, I can't go to sleep without expressing my gratitude. Hodu L'Hashem KiTov [Thanks to God for He is good] - I came in first place at the half marathon in Miami today in 1:16:49.
.
Thank you Hashem for giving me the opportunity to stand on the podium today at the @themiamimarathon and proudly represent Israel and the Jewish people.

She wanted to represent Israel at the Olympics in Tokyo and was disappointed when they scheduled the marathon for a Saturday. She's hoping they reschedule it again so she can participate.

Deutsch is truly remarkable, and her story strikes a chord - when I tweeted about her victory last night it was retweeted and liked hundreds of times by those touched by her life.

(h/t Irene)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Former Qatari Prime Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, posted a Twitter thread yesterday predicting that a non-aggression pact between Israel and many Arab states is coming.

In December, he predicted that the "Deal of the Century" would be released in January. He is offering this prediction as a follow-up.

His new prediction is for a non-aggression pact between Israel and the nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council, plus Egypt, Jordan and possibly Morocco.

The Gulf Cooperation Council members are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Why Egypt or Jordan would sign such an agreement that would be superfluous to their existing peace treaties is unclear.

Al Thani is critical of this idea, which includes his own country, as being the result of pressure from the Trump administration. He says he is not against a "just peace" but that should precede any such agreement.

"Although there are Arab countries that promised the American side that they would take a positive position on the deal, they did not, and they justified this by saying that they could not because of their media. I was almost sure that these countries wanted to make those promises to come closer to America, even though they knew that the deal would be held up by the majority in the Arab League," he wrote.

Al Thani claims that the timing of the deal was to help Netanyahu and Trump win their elections, and he complains that Israel is pursuing a long term strategy for the region while Arab nations are held hostage to short-term interests and tactics.

One person who responded to the thread pointed out laughingly that while Al Thani is claiming to be skeptical now about any peace with Israel, he told CNN that he himself wanted to see Israelis in all Arab states.

السؤال الذي يدور في ذهني هو ألا يمكن انك اهبل ولا عبيط ولا احمق ولا تستغبي ؟؟ 🤔

الاجابة صعبه شوي 🤦🏻‍♂️😂😂 pic.twitter.com/j2rya3hgZ5
— ولد عزيّز (@R_ksa2030) February 9, 2020

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

2017: The year the UN stopped rubber stamping all Palestinian demands

The PLO's Mission to the UN website has a link to a blank page with only a title:

I don't recall that the UN ever dedicated any year to be the "International Year to End the Israeli Occupation." So what's going on?

In August 2016, during the 377th meeting by the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, the PLO representative called upon all UN members to declare 2017 to be the "International Year to End the Israeli Occupation."

There was some support for the initiative by Namibia, Venezuela, Indonesia, Bangladesh and a few other states.

Mahmoud Abbas also called on the UN to make that declaration when he addressed the body in September.

But it was only three years after the 2014 "International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People." It seems likely that the UN members, already inundated with pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel initiaitves, decided that they PLO had gone too far in trying to hijack the entire UN for their own petty and narrow agenda.

Nothing ever came of this initiative at the UN.

But it seems that the Non Aligned Movement, at its 2016 summit in Venezuela, appears to have endorsed that appellation. It received no press as far as I can tell.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

No, @BernieSanders, Judaism is more than antisemitism

People say they were touched by Bernie Sanders' answer at a CNN town hall on how his Jewish heritage has impacted his politics.

"I remember as a kid looking at these big picture books of World War II and tears would roll down my cheeks," Sanders said. "How horrible people can be to other people in the name of racial superiority or etcetera has certainly been with me my entire life, and that is why I will do everything I can to end the kind of divisiveness that Trump is fomenting in the country. The pain that my family, my father's family suffered in Poland is something that has impacted my life absolutely."

The only other time Sanders addressed the issue was in an op-ed for Jewish Currents titled "How to fight anti-semitism."

I am a proud Jewish American. My father emigrated from Poland to the United States in 1921 at the age of 17 to escape the poverty and widespread antisemitism of his home country. Those in his family who remained in Poland after Hitler came to power were murdered by the Nazis. I know very well where white supremacist politics leads, and what can happen when people do not speak up against it.

Apparently, Sanders' entire view of Jewishness is in context of Jew-hatred.

To Sanders, there is no actual Judaism. No rituals, no study, no Torah, no customs. He sees not an iota of impact from thousands of years of Jewish thinkers and writers and theologians and philosophers. Jews are inert victims that must be saved by his flavor of politics but they are not actors in their own story.

His only other connection to Judaism is by going to an anti-religious kibbutz in the 1960s where the only faith was socialism. In 2016, he said, "I am not actively involved with organized religion."

Yet one does not have to be involved with Jewish institutions to want to learn about one's heritage. Sanders' doesn't have to put on a kippah and tzitzit to read about Philos or Spinoza or Judah HaLevy or Maimonides. He doesn't have to agree with any or all of them, but he should be a little conversant in some Jewish thought (beyond that of a Jew who converted and had antisemitic writings.)

Doesn't anyone find it strange that he seems so disinterested in (or perhaps hostile to) his own people's history and heritage?

Sanders' life was not impacted by Judaism. It was impacted by antisemitism. Judaism is not a response to antisemitism. One lives a Jewish life with or without persecution. Viewing Judaism only through the lens of those who hate Jews is not Judaism.

Any Jews who felt proud at Sanders' answer should look a little closer at their own relationship with their heritage. Because his answer was nothing to be proud of.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

02/09 Links: Why the Left won't tolerate liberal Zionists; Jewish Harvard Club member assaulted during pro-Palestinian lecture; Jesse Eisenberg is Marcel Marceau in trailer for World War II drama Resistance

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Why the Left won't tolerate liberal Zionists

The Columbia Journalism Review touts itself as "the voice of journalism." While the magazine, which is published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, has faced accusations of liberal bias, it still retains a reputation as a prestigious source of commentary about the news media. So when CJR commissions a hit piece on a publication, it is an event of some significance and, at least in theory, ought to alert readers to serious misconduct.

The latest CJR exposé, however, is important not because it reveals biased or misleading reporting or unprofessional behavior. According to the magazine that still claims to be the "intellectual leader" of the press, the problem with The Forward is that it has taken a stand against left-wing anti-Semitism and appears open to publishing occasional dissent against its liberal editorial stands on American and Israeli politics.

The Forward's financial troubles made news last year when it ceased publishing in print, fired its editor and laid off much of its staff. I have strong disagreements with the left-leaning editorial philosophy that the English-language successor to the historic Yiddish newspaper has adopted since it ousted Seth Lipsky, its founding editor, in 2000. But I view The Forward's struggles as indicative of problems afflicting the media and Jewish publishing that transcend politics. We need publications that can reflect the legitimate debates on important issues that are being conducted in the United States and Israel.

But CJR's decision to publish a rant against The Forward's editorial decisions in the last year by far-left anti-Zionist writer Mairav Zonszein is important. That's because what CJR has done here is essentially to smear a liberal Jewish journal because it had the temerity to call out left-wing anti-Semites like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Minn.), as well as anti-Semitic activity on campuses like Bard College. Zonszein claims that The Forward, which in recent years has disappointed many in the Jewish community by providing space to Palestinian opponents of Israel and Zionism, let the left down by calling out such hatred and claims that its occasional publishing of conservative opinion is "polarizing."

She also cheers CNN contributor/writer Peter Beinart's defection from The Forward to the smaller but openly anti-Zionist Jewish Currents, as a harbinger of a power shift on the Jewish left.

It is curious that CJR would consider Zonszein, whose work has regularly appeared in far-left anti-Israel publications like Jewish Currents, +972mag and The Nation, to be qualified to comment in their august pages on any subject, let alone a Jewish one. But as new Forward editor Jodi Rudoren pointed out, it was a gross breach of journalistic ethics on the part of CJR to commission her to write an evaluation in a forum supposedly dedicated to the study of journalism about a publication that she has bitterly criticized in rants on Twitter and elsewhere. The Forward was entirely correct to refuse to cooperate in the writing of an article that could not possibly have been fair in its treatment of its subject.

Jewish Harvard Club member assaulted during pro-Palestinian lecture, lawsuit says

A Jewish member of the Harvard Club claims she was assaulted by a professor during a pro-Palestinian lecture at the swanky venue — and then was booted by the Ivy League institution.

Vanesa Levine is suing to get reinstated to the prestigious Midtown club, whose notable present and past members include Michael Bloomberg, John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Levine, 28, a marketing manager in Brooklyn, said she was a newly minted member of the 154-year old club when she and her mom attended a February 2019 lecture called, “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine” by Rashid Khalidi, a former press officer for the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

She said she “peacefully” asked during a question-and-answer session how Mideast peace could be achieved if Palestinians are taught “to support terrorism against Jews and Israelis.”

The audience erupted in “mob-like” fury at her query, according to the lawsuit.

Harvard finance professor Faris Mousa Saah, 53, called her a whore in Arabic and grabbed her by the arm, bruising it as he tried to take the microphone, according to court papers.

“I’ve been to hell and back ever since the Harvard Club incident,” Levine told The Post.

Though she was eventually able to ask her questions, Levine and her mom, who was born and raised in Israel, were asked by security to leave — with angry audience members following them into the hall, photographing her and chanting, “We’re going to get you expelled,” she charges.

Does the EU hear the Israeli public?

Last October, the EU Delegation to Israel published an unusual tender, worth €285,000, soliciting the assistance of local public relations companies in order to “change the negative image” of Europe in Israel.

The proposal cites an EU-commissioned survey which demonstrates the extent of Israeli public mistrust of Europe. According to the survey, 55% see the EU as Israel’s “enemy,” while only 18% identify it as a “friend.” According to the Israeli news outlet ICE, the results of the survey reaffirm negative perceptions toward EU member states on a number of fronts, including their funding to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), claims that the EU supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign directly or indirectly, and even accusations that it “supports terror entities indirectly.”

These attitudes, apparently held by many Israelis, did not emerge suddenly. The EU is completely out of sync with Israelis on the issues that strike the deepest emotional chords, and is seen as tone deaf, at best, in appreciating the Israeli perspective.

Even if the public learns about the EU’s investment in cutting-edge scientific research at Israeli universities, they will not soon forget about how Europe flirts with BDS with product labeling or treating the anti-Israel movement as merely free speech.

Israelis see that the EU engages selectively with a narrow ideological group of civil society, such as B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence. They hear the repeated condemnations of Israeli policy concerning Area C of the West Bank, as if this is the major issue on the EU’s agenda.

Yes, the PFLP links to "children's NGO" DCI-P are real and relevant

From TOI last week:

Israel is angry at Belgium for what Jerusalem says is a systematic campaign to demonize the Jewish state at the United Nations, including by hosting a “radical” pro-Palestinian activist next week at the Security Council.

In February, Belgium holds the rotating presidency of the council and is using this privilege to invite speakers who, according to fuming Jerusalem officials, hold an extreme anti-Israel bias. They were especially outraged about Brussels inviting Brad Parker, a senior official for a nonprofit called Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P), to speak at the council’s session.
“Belgium has positioned itself as one of the Security Council member states most hostile toward Israel,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat told The Times of Israel on Thursday. “Inviting a one-sided radical activist such as Mr. Parker to brief the Security Council is yet another negative record.”

Israel’s Ambassador to Belgium Emmanuel Nahshon on Thursday took to Twitter to express regret at Brussels inviting “terror supporters” to the Security Council. “This is extremely disappointing and we will express our outrage in the strongest possible terms.”

Unfortunately, @BelgiumMFA @BelgiumUN has chosen to invite terror supporters to a Security Council debate . This is extremely disappointing and we will express our outrage in the strongest possible terms.
— Emmanuel Nahshon (@EmmanuelNahshon) February 6, 2020

I posted a tweet pointing to an NGO-Monitor report detailing some of the links between DCI-Palestine and the PFLP.

Here is @NGOmonitor's detailed report on ties between @DCIPalestine and the PFLP terror group.@EmmanuelNahshon is 100% correct.@PeterBeinart, @jvplive and other terror apologists like to pretend that this information isn't true.https://t.co/XGXkYL6Hii
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) February 7, 2020

A group I never heard of responded:

And here is our report on @NGOmonitor, which spreads guilt-by-association allegations to advance its partisan agenda:
SHRINKING SPACE: Defaming human rights organizations that criticize the Israeli occupationhttps://t.co/lOwbYKatr3
— Policy Working Group-Israel (@IsraelPolicy) February 9, 2020

So I looked at their report. The relevant part says:

The second tactic that NGO Monitor employs to defame Palestinian NGOs is associating them with armed groups, in particular by claiming they have alleged ties with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is listed as a terrorist organization by Israel, the US and the EU.
NGO Monitor says it has exposed ties between Palestinian NGOs and the PFLP. However, it has not presented any evidence that the accused organizations ever participated in terrorist activities or violence. It also has not explained how the organizations’ work – field research, documentation, legal work, international advocacy – is in any way related to terrorism.
The accusations are largely based on references to outdated information, on a small number of cases in the 1970s and 1980s, on selective internet inquiries and on guilt-by-association. Employees of those organizations are often accused of being “affiliated”, “linked”, or of having “alleged ties”, sometimes via family relations, with terrorist organizations or their leaders. Apart from very few exceptions, no trials or formal indictments have been initiated by Israeli authorities against employees or board members of Palestinian organizations relevant to NGO Monitor’s accusations and relating to the period of their involvement in the organization.

DCI-P lies in its reports. I've proven that many times over. Here are two of the "innocent children" they claim Israel killed for no reason:

Moreover, when it claims that 75% of children arrested by Israel are tortured, their methodology is laughable - they look for kids that will say what they want, and if they find inconsistencies in their stories, they go back and prompt the kids to change the stories.

The funny part is that this group accuses NGO-Monitor of bias, but its members seem to all be associated with the NGOs (like B'Tselem) that NGO-Monitor goes after. Moreover, this group, which seems to only have one report issued, accuses NGO-Monitor of no transparency in its sources of funding (which isn't true) - but they told me that they are all volunteers and not funded by anyone. Yet this report says it was funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, associated with Germany's democratic socialist Left party.

In other words, Leftists are defending the leftist/terrorist NGOs whose entire purpose is to bash Israel.

Reporting the ties between the PFLP and various NGOs, including DCI-P, is not meant to show a direct link between the NGOs and specific terror acts. It shows that the groups themselves have an agenda that aligns with that of the PFLP, which as a Marxist/socialist terror group is well versed in using Soviet-style propaganda against Israel - and there is no more effective propaganda nowadays then to accuse Israel of human rights abuses.

NGO-Monitor isn't the only group to show ties between the PFLP and DCI-P. Israel itself has issued a report that shows that (at least until May 2018 when there seems to have been a major re-organization) many senior DCI-P members were also PFLP members.

The anti-Israel Left is purposefully ignoring the facts that NGOs like DCI-P lie, liberally, and they try to cloud the critiques with half-baked information. I've proven the lies - go after my proof if you want to defend a terror-supporting group.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Faisal al Qassem is a popular host of an Al Jazeera TV debate show "The Opposite Direction" and is celebrated as being willing to break taboos in the Arab world. His Twitter account has over 5.5 million followers.

On Saturday, he tweeted:

Ha - The majority of Arabs, if they want to insult you, describe you as "Zionist", while knowing that the most successful project of the last century and the present is the Zionist project, while all Arab projects, especially those of the Arab nationalists, have failed. That's why, dear, before you use the word Zionist as a curse, you must first reach the shoes of Zionism and then we can talk.

He followed that up with:

When you read the Arab comments against the Zionists on Twitter and how sharp they are, the impression is that the Arab tanks are at the gates of Jerusalem, while their rulers lick the shoes of the Zionists under the table in order to keep them happy and keep themselves in their thrones, the last of which is the General of Sudan who sold the "Three no's" [of Khartoum] with a crust of bread and rushed to meet [Netanyahu] like the hired help.

People protested his comments, calling them Zionist, to which he responded:

As you can see, nearly 82% of his followers agree that Zionism has been more successful than Arab nationalism.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

This passage is from the very beginning of an article in the Fatah website denying any Jewish connection, and claiming ancient Palestinian ties, to Jerusalem:

"Hundreds of millions of Muslims across the globe have no doubt that Palestine is Arab from eternity, and that Jerusalem is its eternal capital ... and that there is no meaning to Palestine without Jerusalem, no meaning to Jerusalem without the Al-Aqsa Mosque, no meaning to the Al-Aqsa Mosque without the Al-Buraq Wall..."

The "Al Buraq Wall" is what Palestinians have called the Kotel, the Western Wall, for only the past century. Before that there was no consensus of which wall surrounding the Temple Mount was considered to be the one that Mohammed supposedly entered in his night journey, although evidence points strongly to the southern wall, with its double gate, as described by Charles D. Matthews in 1932:

The evidence of Muqaddasi (985 A. D.), a citizen of Jerusalem itself, is unquestionably for the southern location. Muqaddasi speaks of the “Two gates of the Prophet,” Babai an-Nabi, in such a way as to make the identification with the Double Gate quite positive. The descriptions of Nasir-i-Khusrau, a Persian historian who visited Jerusalem in 1047 A. D., is quite arresting. He says (as quoted by the English scholar Le Strange, in his very excellent book, “Palestine Under the Moslems,” p. 178) : “One such as these (gates) is called Bab an-Nabi (or the Gate of the Prophet)-peace and blessing upon him, which opens toward the Qiblah point-that is, toward the south (toward Mecca). . . . The Prophet. . . on the night of his ascent into heaven passed into the Noble Sanctuary through this passageway, for the gateway opens on the road from Makkah.” What could be clearer? And from the hand of a Jerusalemite and reputable historian!

Either way, no Muslim would ever say that the Buraq Wall is more sacred than the Al Aqsa Mosque. To say that the mosque has no meaning without the Kotel - the one place that Jews have venerated for centuries when banned from even visiting the Temple Mount itself - is proof positive that the entire Palestinian narrative is a series of lies.

Is there any clearer evidence that the entire Palestinian claim is not meant to assert any historic or legal rights, but to destroy Jewish rights? Literally every Jewish shrine in the Holy Land is claimed by the Palestinians to be their own, which is a hell of a coincidence. And they have been strident in saying that the Kotel was theirs as well, the Palestinian TV only recently telling viewers that Palestinians must defend their rights to the site with their lives.

The rest of the Fatah article is filled with such lies, as in this section still in the first paragraph, where it says "history proves that Palestine with its capital, Jerusalem, is Arab before the feet of the first Jew entered (Joshua bin Nun.)" The Palestinians now claim to be descended from the Jebusites, a tribe that has no evidence of existence beyond the Jewish Scriptures, who have no evidence of being Arab.

Beyond the obvious fact that Jerusalem wasn't the capital of any other nation besides Israel/Judah and there was never a "Palestine."

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

02/08 Links: The BDS Movement Is Racist and Violent; The Campaign to Sever the Democratic Alliance With AIPAC; MLB will not schedule any more promotions of Roger Waters

From Ian:

The BDS Movement Is Racist and Violent

Furthermore, the movement may present itself as peaceful, but there have been countless cases of its activists creating hostile and potentially dangerous environments for Jewish people on university campuses. BDS supporters will counter these claims by pointing to the movement’s 2018 Nobel Peace Prize nomination. Yet this nomination means very little. The BDS movement was nominated by Norwegian parliamentarian Bjørnar Moxnes — the chairman of the far-left Red Party, which holds a single seat of 169 in the Norwegian parliament. This nomination is a farce, and means nothing.

What’s more important is BDS’ constant link to known terrorist organizations. One such example of this is the global leadership of the BDS operation — the BDS National Committee’s — membership. which includes the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, which itself includes several groups designated as terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

In addition to this, tens of financial accounts linked to BDS have been shut down in the US and EU in the past few years, due to ties with terrorist groups. In an interview from late 2010, even Barghouti has spoken in support of violent attacks on “settlers” (i.e. civilians), calling them “legitimate targets.”

The BDS movement has consistently been linked with terrorist organizations, and its supporters have become aggressive and violent towards any and all who disagree with their view of Israel. The methods that the movement urges show little regard for hurting civilians, even Palestinian ones — all the while, creating a divide between Israeli people and Palestinians.

There is a good reason why so many world leaders, prominent politicians and government institutions view BDS as toxic, given the actions of its followers. BDS does not belong in any conversation about anti-racism.

The Campaign to Sever the Democratic Alliance With AIPAC

Warren's eagerness to back the AIPAC boycott movement did not come as a surprise to mainstream pro-Israel Democrats, who say they have long been battling efforts by the party's left wing to mainstream anti-Israel causes.

One Jewish Democratic operative with ties to AIPAC told the Washington Free Beacon that IfNotNow's influence on the party is becoming increasingly problematic.

"There are many reasons for [Warren] not to attend AIPAC's Policy Conference, but getting pressured by an extremist group is not one of them," said the source, who would only discuss the matter anonymously. "IfNotNow has no place in anything close to the mainstream political discourse, including within the Democratic primary."

The push to boycott AIPAC is by no means new. Liberal advocacy groups have long viewed AIPAC as overly hawkish on Israel and out of line with the Democratic Party's evolving stance on the Jewish state. Liberal mainstays like the anti-war MoveOn group have demanded Democratic leaders boycott Israel for some time. This has dovetailed with growing support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which seeks to wage economic warfare on Israel.

Support for these movements has been building in the Democratic Party for years, with one of the most notable examples playing out at the 2012 convention, when a majority of Democratic conference goers audibly booed the state of Israel.

An AIPAC spokesman would not comment on the issue when contacted by the Free Beacon.

Tonight, Elizabeth Warren nodded along and smiled as a questioner slandered AIPAC as "an unholy alliance" of "Islamophobes," "anti-semites, and white nationalists" that perpetuates "bigotry"

Without blinking, Warren then agreed to boycott next year's AIPAC conference pic.twitter.com/U2MJ6DCTdZ
— Zach Parkinson (@AZachParkinson) February 7, 2020

AIPAC apologizes for ad slamming ‘radicals in the Democratic Party’

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) issued an apology on Saturday after sponsoring a Facebook ad that slammed “radicals in the Democratic Party” and blamed them for “pushing their antisemitic policies down the throats of the American people.” It also called supporters to sign a letter to Democrats in Congress “don’t abandon Israel.”

According to the Facebook ad details, between 25,000 and 30,000 people saw it and AIPAC paid between $1,000 to $1,500 to promote in on the social media platform, primarily for people ages 55 and above. The ad is no longer active.

“We offer our unequivocal apology to the overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress who are rightfully offended by the inaccurate assertion that the poorly worded, inflammatory advertisement implied,” AIPAC said in a statement that was shared on Twitter on Saturday.

“We deeply appreciate the broad and reliable support that Democrats in Congress have consistently demonstrated for Israel. The bipartisan consensus that Democrats and Republicans have established on this issue forms the foundation of the US-Israel relationship,” the statement read.

“The ad, which is no longer running, alluded to a genuine concern of many pro-Israel Democrats about a small but growing group, in and out of Congress, that is deliberately working to erode the bipartisan consensus on this issue and undermine the US-Israel relationship,” the apology continued.

02/07 Links P2: Bethany Mandel: The Jewish Left is trying to hijack Israel; Warren agrees with supporter that AIPAC is an 'unholy alliance' of 'Islamophobes,' 'white nationalists'

From Ian:

Bethany Mandel: The Jewish Left is trying to hijack Israel

Now the American Jewish Left is using this World Zionist Congress election to try to turn the financial support of the Jewish people against Israel, and they’re not even trying to hide it.

Reporting on the election, the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz explained,

The list includes names like Peter Beinart, the liberal writer; Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal Middle East policy group J Street; and Sheila Katz, the CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women.

No, it’s not an ad for a symposium on the Upper East Side, but a slate of first-time candidates seeking seats in the 38th World Zionist Congress, the legislative authority of a 120-year-old Zionist organization that helps determine the fate of $1 billion in spending on Jewish causes.

The candidates hope to steer funding away from Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and toward causes like expanding rights for women and minorities. The second paragraph of the group’s platform notes its opposition to “the current policy of permanent occupation and annexation,” which it calls “unjust” and a threat to Israeli democracy.

Liberal Jewish groups already hold a majority of the American Jewish community’s 145 seats in the congress, but they have mainly used them to advocate for more religious pluralism in Israel. The new candidates hope to nudge those groups toward addressing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank more directly and to registering the unhappiness of the American Jewish community with the status quo there.

“My view of the American Jewish establishment and the Zionist establishment is that it is morally corrupt by defending the indefensible, for defending an occupation that holds millions of people occupied,” Beinart said in an interview.
Not content to allow politicized leftists take over the Congress and the money it could allocate, more right-leaning (religiously and politically) Jews are pushing back. In his endorsement of one of the slates, the Orthodox Israel Coalition, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro explained, “anti-Israel and anti-Jewish groups like J Street have mobilized to direct funding toward causes that run directly counter to the interests of the organization, including support of BDS.”

It remains to be seen how effective this effort will be to hijack a billion dollars in money meant to support Israel, not undermine it. This little-known election could have far-reaching and disastrous ramifications for Israeli security for years to come if liberals get their way.

Netanyahu Makes Endorsement In American World Zionist Congress Election

We’re extremely concerned about what will happen if the ZOA Coalition does not do well in this WZC election.

Our opponents used the power they obtained in previous WZC elections to stop Israel’s national institutions from purchasing lands in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and even in the Negev. This anti-Jewish discrimination could become even worse.

Shockingly, at the most recent World Zionist Congress, our opponents tried to pass a resolution smearing Israel’s tolerant, multi-faceted society as replete with “institutional racism.” We were only able to defeat this resolution — which reminded us of the notorious 1975 United Nations “Zionism is racism” resolution — by one vote.

An opposition group now openly says that it is running in the WZC election to “divert” the $1 billion per year of Israel’s national institution funding “away from the entrenchment of the occupation.”

“Occupation” is a false propaganda term used to attack Jewish persons’ rights to continue living on historic Jewish lands designated for the Jewish homeland under international law. Anti-Israel boycott groups use the term “occupation” to demonize Israel. It is frightening that groups running in the WZC election are using the same rallying cry.

The ZOA Coalition (slate #11) needs many more votes now, so that the next attempt to use the World Zionist Congress to smear Israel has no chance of passing. The full slate includes the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), Aish HaTorah, Students Supporting Israel, NORPAC, The Lawfare Project, American Friends of Likud, Dov Hikind’s Americans Against Antisemitism, One Israel Fund, Young Jewish Conservatives, Z Street, American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, American Friends of Likud, Chovevei Zion, Eretz Israel Movement, National Conference on Jewish Affairs, major Russian-Jewish and Persian-Jewish and Ukrainian-Jewish groups, Beta Israel, and more.

Warren appears to agree with supporter that AIPAC is an 'unholy alliance' of 'Islamophobes,' 'white nationalists'

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., raised eyebrows on Thursday night for appearing to agree with a town hall attendee that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is an "unholy alliance" of "Islamophobes, anti-Semites, and white nationalists."

At a New Hampshire event, a woman who describes herself as an "American Jew" expressed her disdain for the pro-Israel group and asked whether or not Warren would vow not to attend the upcoming annual conference in March.

"I'm an American Jew and I'm terrified by the unholy alliance that AIPAC is forming with Islamophobes and anti-Semites and white nationalists," the attendee began. "And no Democrat should legitimize that kind of bigotry by attending their annual policy conference."

Warren nodded along as she took a swig from her water bottle.

The attendee continued. "I'm really grateful that you skipped the AIPAC conference last year and so my question is if you'll join me in committing to skip the AIPAC conference this year."

"Yeah," Warren simply replied and waved off the attendee.

She later said about her views on U.S.-Israel relations, "For America to be a good ally of Israel and the Palestinians we need to get both parties to the table. We're not getting that if we just stand with one party."

The Warren campaign did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment.

Warren, who previously attended other AIPAC events in recent years, was one of several prominent 2020 candidates who boycotted the annual conference last year. Meanwhile, top Democratic lawmakers like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. attended the conference last year.

It keeps getting worse. As the 2020 Dems get more & more anti-Israel, will any of them stand up and condemn comments like these? Directly? Or are they too scared of the angry anti-Semitic Left? https://t.co/bUTRA4STxz
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 7, 2020

The good news (bli ayin hora)

I almost hate to mention this because the situation is always precarious, but unless I'm mistaken it has been nearly six months since any Israeli was killed in a terror attack.

The last victim was Rina Shnerb, 17, killed by an IED on August 23, 2019.

That attack was done by the PFLP - the same PFLP who is linked to anti-Israel NGO DCI-Palestine in news over the past couple of days. The PFLP is linked to a number of NGOs to use them as another avenue to attack Israel under the guise of human rights.

Needless to say, none of the PFLP-linked NGOs said a word against Rina's murder.

Still, a six month stretch without a terrorist murder in Israel is quite unusual; the last time I can see a stretch that long was seven months between October 29, 2011 (Moshe Ami, 56, rocket hitting Ashkelon) and June 1, 2012 (Staff-Sgt Netanel Moshiashvili, 21, shot on patrol near Gaza).

Let's hope the current streak continues for a long, long time.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.