This short video from Jewish Insider shows three truths about Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
First it shows how, at what was billed as a press conference, Abbas refused to take a single question. Ignoring the press at a press conference shows complete disdain for the idea of freedom of expression
Second, notice how Abbas is protected by his handlers. He looks like a tottering old man who has no idea what he is doing, not at all like a national leader.
Third, Jeremy Ben Ami of J-Street - who is obviously not a reporter - was given a seat of honor for the meeting, and Saeb Erekat led Abbas to Ben-Ami so they could kiss. It is telling that to Abbas, the media is the enemy - and J-Street is his friend.
And why not? There is no daylight between the positions of J-Street and Abbas, and Ben Ami has visited Abbas in Ramallah several times a year. Chances are that he is considered a strategist for Abbas.
You can be sure that J-Street won't be saying anything critical about Mahmoud Abbas' autocracy and the lack of freedoms under his rule. Because they aren't liberal - they support the worst dictators if those dictators share their hate for the democratically elected government of the Jewish state.
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There is something practical that can be done to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that is to grant limited autonomy to a limited Palestinian entity in Judea and Samaria.
It is not a “solution” in the sense that it guarantees a complete end to terrorism. It does not produce the warm feeling that would come from the knowledge that the entire Land of Israel, from the river to the sea, was in Jewish hands. Nor does it satisfy “Palestinian aspirations.” But it’s something we can do today, or at least in a few months. And although I can’t say for certain how much better it will make things for Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, I am relatively sure it will not make them worse. And it does not preclude additional positive developments in the future.
I said “something like” the Trump plan. Trump’s map needs adjustments, and the “secure route” between the Palestinian entity in the east and Gaza is a non-starter. Indeed, Gaza requires an entirely different approach. But in outline, it is a plan that will improve Israel’s security and can provide a better life for the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria, if they can repress their desire to kill us long enough to take advantage of what they will be given. And we don’t need their agreement to begin.
The status quo is unacceptable. It is expensive, it prevents the development of Judea and Samaria – despite what the Left says, there is almost no actual Jewish construction across the Green Line – and it leaves us vulnerable to terrorism. And no other proposed “solution” is practical.
I have favored incentivized emigration as proposed by Martin Sherman, and I still think that in the case of Gaza, it must be at least part of the solution – along with regime change there. But is hard to imagine that we can afford to pay all the Arab residents of the land to leave, that there are enough countries that would both be attractive to them and would want to take them, and that the reaction from the rest of the world would be positive.
The Obama-style sovereign “Palestine” in almost all of Judea and Samaria is also unacceptable. I don’t have to discuss the reasons in detail; most of my readers are aware of them. Promises of demilitarization are ludicrous; we would have mortar fire on Ben-Gurion airport, short-range rockets striking Tel Aviv, and Iranian-controlled militias in the Jordan Valley. International security guarantees are worth as much as the UNEF that fled from the Sinai in 1967, or the UNIFIL that was charged with preventing Hezbollah from rearming in 2006. Only Israeli security control of the entire area – as proposed in the Trump plan – can guarantee our security.
On the other hand, wholesale annexation of Judea and Samaria and absorption of the entire Arab population into Israel would be dangerous in another way. Although we would still have a Jewish majority (barely), and even supposing we could find a way to keep from granting citizenship to all of those Arabs who wanted it, we would most likely be facing a continuing insurgency. Either we would move in the direction of a binational state – and such a state would make Lebanon look relatively stable and peaceful – or we would have to take draconian measures to suppress the Arab population, which would be in a permanent state of unrest and conflict.
Various Jordan-is-Palestine plans have been suggested. But surely Palestinians would not accept the Hashemite dynasty, and a change in regime would be massively destabilizing for the entire region. Israel’s security would not permit contiguity between a “West Bank” and the rest of Jordan. A movement of a large part of the Arab population of Judea and Samaria to Jordan is also impractical and unlikely. Perhaps this could have been accomplished in 1967, perhaps not. But not today.
The Trump plan has been rejected by the Palestinian leadership, both the PLO and Hamas. And that is not surprising, since it fails to accommodate their true aspiration, which is to replace the Jewish state with an Arab one. It acknowledges that the only way to ensure that the Jewish state will continue to exist is for it to have security control of all of the land from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. It takes into account that the state that (at least the PLO) say they want, when they speak in English, is not what they really want. It recognizes that they have rejected all previous offers, including offers of sovereignty over almost all the territories, because they thought that holding out long enough would ultimately get them a package that included the tools for the destruction of Israel.
If the Trump plan is implemented, probably the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas will both have to disappear. The PA was established by the Oslo Accords as a temporary government for the Palestinian Arabs. It is essentially identical with the PLO, with whom Oslo was negotiated. The PLO was admittedly a terrorist organization until the Oslo Accords, in which they pledged to abandon terrorism. They didn’t, but most of the world – including the government of Israel – pretends that they did. The PLO is an umbrella organization, made up of various factions of the Palestinian movement. The largest, which dominates the PLO, is Fatah, the movement formerly led by Yasser Arafat and now by Mahmoud Abbas. Fatah is and has always been committed to the violent destruction of Israel. It has vehemently rejected the Trump plan.
I suspect that nobody would be happier to see the PA/PLO and Hamas ride into the sunset than every Palestinian not on their payroll. Both regimes are corrupt, stealing huge amounts of aid and tax money from their citizens; both are oppressive, violently crushing dissidents and not allowing a free press; both engage in torture of their citizens. As long as they are in power, it’s doubtful that the promise of the Trump plan to provide a better life for Arab residents of the territories can be fulfilled. However, it will still be possible for Israel to obtain the security benefits from the plan. At the end of the day, it will be up to the Arabs take advantage of the financial and other incentives provided by the plan.
The European Union and apparently most of the Democratic candidates for the US presidency oppose the plan. The objections from the candidates seem to boil down to “the Palestinians don’t agree” and “anything Trump does is bad.” I suppose the second objection was unavoidable, but in regard to the first, we should note that so far the Palestinians have never agreed to anything. This implies that the candidates think that more concessions from Israel are necessary to get them to agree; but even previous plans (e.g., Clinton, Olmert, Obama/Kerry) would have presented unacceptable security concerns had they been implemented. So now they want to go even farther? Either they are ignorant of the true objectives of the PLO/Hamas, or they don’t care about Israel’s security, or they just wanted talking points.
The European Union is, I think, another kettle of fish. In a recent document describing the EU’s positions and activities in the territories, it was made clear that the EU position is that any Israeli presence in the areas controlled by Egypt and Jordan from 1949-1967 is illegal under international law, and all Israeli communities there should be dismantled and their residents expelled. The entire 133-page document makes only two references to terrorism, one in connection with Israel’s cutting off revenue transfer in response to the PA’s “pay for slay” system, and another saying “The EU firmly condemns the terror attacks and violence from all sides and in any circumstances, including the death of children.” I should hope so.
It’s clear that if the EU’s recommendations were carried out, the Jewish state would cease to exist. I am convinced that this is the desired outcome for policymakers in the EU and several European countries, and that they would prefer that the Jewish state had never been created. But there is no reason that the Jewish people – which learned about the imperative of self-defense from its history in Europe during the last century – should respect, or indeed pay any attention at all, to the views of these successors to the Nazis.
The Trumpprogram represents a break with the conventional wisdom of the last decades which held that a reversal of the results of the 1967 war would bring peace. It should be clear that what has prevented peace has been the struggle by the losers of that war (as well as the war of 1948) to try to ignore its clear outcome. UNSC resolution 242 correctly asserted that secure borders for Israel were required for peace. For the first time since then, a serious proposal that recognizes this has been put on the table, backed by the greatest world power.
Everyone should put aside their issues, whether they come from simple partisanship or more complicated psychological problems, and grasp this historical moment to work to implement Trump’s plan – before it’s too late.
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The Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Reverend Dr. J. Herbert Nelson II, issued a statement against the Trump plan that goes way beyond valid criticism into antisemitism territory.
We must speak out on behalf of the Palestinian community, residents of this land for generations. Their land has been stolen. Their holy sites have been denigrated. Their homes and businesses have been destroyed and they all live under the iron fist of Israel’s continuing military occupation. This would not change under this “deal” proposed. As Christians, concerned for our own roots in this “Holy Land,” we cry out in anguish and anger as a kind of social and religious “ethnic cleansing” is occurring under these efforts of current Israeli leadership and of our own president.
What Muslim or Christian religious rights have been curtailed by Israel? On the contrary, if the Muslims controlled the land the way that PCUSA insists, the Jewish rights to worship would be the ones that are denigrated. There is more freedom of religion in the Land of Israel now under Jewish rule than there has been for 1900 years under Christian and Muslim rule. That isn't even in question.
But the statement gets even worse;
One of the deep ironies of the impact of the ongoing illegal taking of Palestinian land and the draconian control on the Palestinian community by Israel and its military is the potential for feeding the growing antisemitism in Europe and the U.S. that we so abhor. More violence is the inevitable fruit of a “deal” such as the one proposed.
This bigoted cleric is saying that Arabs are driven to violence against Jews worldwide and simply cannot stop themselves - meaning they are an inherently violent people. So, just as a pit bull owner is responsible for anyone injured by his pet, Israeli Jews are responsible for any Arabs or Muslims who attack Jews in Europe or America - these subhuman Arabs have no free will and cannot help themselves.
Saying that the Jews defending their people are responsible for haters attacking Jews is supremely antisemitic.
Once Nelson proves his bigotry against Arabs, he must extend it to Jews:
And the Israeli Jewish community should understand, better than anyone, the tragedies of sustained oppression.
This is a thinly veiled accusation that Israeli Jews are acting like Nazis.
I call on all Presbyterians who yearn for peace in The Holy Land to demand of our president a better “deal.” We must make clear to our political leaders that the “land of Israel” will never be at peace until justice is done for all her people, not just members of the Jewish community.
"Justice" is a codeword for allowing Palestinians to reject any and every peace plan they don't like, because they cannot accept anything that doesn't fit with "justice" - and they are the only ones who can define what justice entails. PCUSA is saying that the Palestinians have veto power over any peace plan that allows Israel to exist as a Jewish state, which they do not consider "just."
This statement is not a reasoned criticism of the Peace to Prosperity plan. It is an antisemitic and bigoted screed that uses the plan as an excuse to bash Jews and to say that Jew-hatred is justified.
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According to the PLO's 1988 Declaration of Independence, the legal justification for a Palestinian Arab state comes from the UN General Assembly resolution 181, the 1947 partition resolution that the Arab world rejected. At the time, the Palestinian Arabs were so incensed at the resolution that they started a war only hours after the resolution passed.
Despite the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to self-determination, following upon U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, yet it is this Resolution that still provides those conditions of international legitimacy that ensure the right of the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty.
But there is a problem with that. If the PLO claims that the legal basis for the existence of an Arab state in Palestine is UNGA 181, then that means that they also accept Israel as the Jewish state, as the resolution stated - no less that thirty times! Moreover, the Declaration of Independence itself even explicitly says "two states, one Arab, one Jewish."
If they say that their legal legitimacy comes from the UNGA 181, then the PLO also accepted Israel's legitimacy as the Jewish state back in 1988!
In 1988, the "Jewish State" issue was nonexistent. It was first brought up as an issue that Israel requires for security in 2001, the early days of the second intifada, as Israeli leftists tried to build a path to peace with Palestinian intellectuals - who rejected the idea of Israel being considered a Jewish state. Ariel Sharon emphasized the issue's importance to Israel when he led the country. Accepting Israel as the Jewish state later became a demand by Tzipi Livni in negotiations in 2007 as well.
When Israelis brought up the issue in the 2000s, the Palestinians insisted that they could never accept that formulation. Saeb Erekat said in 2014 that such recognition is a problem of principle. “It’s my narrative, it’s my history, it’s my story,” he said. “I’ve never heard in the history of mankind that others must participate in defining the nature of others. It’s really ridiculous.”
But the PLO knows that the 1988 Declaration is problematic for them today.
The Negotiations Affairs Department of the PLO now claims that the organization (implicitly) recognized Israel in 1988. This 2012 PLO NAD document (no longer on their site) confirms that "Palestine"'s legal foundation is UNGC 181 but it excludes the "Jewish State" language from its description by replacing it with an ellipsis:
2. What is the Declaration’s significance for the two-state solution?The Declaration contains an overt acceptance that “the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, of 1947, which partitioned Palestine into two states […]provides the legal basis for the right of the Palestinian Arab people to national sovereignty and independence.” The PLO's recognition of Resolution 181, along with their acknowledgment (in the same session of the PNC) of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis for negotiating a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, signaled the Palestinians’ formal acceptance of a two-state solution.
They deleted the part about the Jewish state! The 2012 PLO realized that their legal argument for "Palestine" is also a legal argument for Israel as the Jewish State, so they tried to paper it over by erasing the phrase in their own Declaration of Independence. Clearly they knew then that the language in their declaration undercut all their arguments against recognizing Israel as the Jewish state today.
Keep in mind that the legal argument is bogus. UN General Assembly Resolutions are not international law. But by making the claim that 181 is their legal basis for legitimacy, the PLO must also accept a Jewish state - the same document that they say is the legal basis for an Arab state must be accepted in toto, meaning that they have accepted a Jewish state since 1988.
It is a little difficult for them to deny the language and legal reasoning in their own Declaration of Independence.
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TikTok is a social network app popular with teenagers and children on which users create and share videos up to 60 seconds long.
Palestinian Media Watch has discovered a song whose Arabic lyrics celebrate that Palestinians/Muslims/Arabs are “dread for the Jews,” and proclaim their “slaughter.” The song has been uploaded 11,200 times by different users, making their own videos (according to the app’s records.)
PMW has made a short video compilation from parts of 14 of these TikTok videos.
Lyrics: “Advance, for you are the symbol of resolve,
For your being in the world is dread for the Jews,
With blows and slaughter on land and sea,
The era of weakness will not return,
Say this in my land
and in the land of the ancestors, [which has] the history of glory
Until eternity”
The message of the Arabic song is that Arabs, Muslims, or Palestinians constitute dread for Jews and will slaughter them.
Last week, PMW exposed an animated video on TikTok that showed reenactments of four real terror attacks against Israelis. Following PMW’s exposure, TikTok promptly removed the video and suspended the account on which it had been uploaded.
PMW calls on TikTok to once again do the right thing and remove the 11,200 songs proclaiming the slaughter of Jews.
Anti-Semitism takes varied forms. One of the under-reported forms of Jew hatred is that perpetrated by Replacement Theologians.
Jews have been persecuted down the ages by Christians who express the view that God has replaced the Jews as His Chosen People for not adopting Christ as our savior.
To this end, Jews have been tortured, banishe and, burnt at the stake by Christians who have used religion as an expression of their Jew hatred.
This continues to this day.
One example is Rick Wiles, who has wrongly been described as a Far-Right anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theorist. He is not. He is a Replacement Theologian.
- Wiles ridiculously accused Jews of being behind the vote-counting disaster at the Democratic caucus in Iowa.
- He accused Israel as being "the people who crucified Christ."
- He accused Israel of funding the first openly homosexual presidential candidate, despite this candidate having a jaundiced view about Israel. In his rantings,
- Wiles accused Israel as being a "foreign power that is anti-Christ," and, to rub in his anti-Semitism, he accused Israel of operating "a Jewish coup" in America.
These are the ravings of a replacement theologian. We have seen this played out in Bethlehem where replacement theologians cohort with the very people who have driven out Christians from a once-Christian town, by foolishly labeling Jesus as "a Palestinian messenger," in a place where Palestinian Arab hoodlums and terrorists have persecuted once prosperous Bethlehem Christians.
Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes, one of the media’s favorite Donald Trump antagonists, took to Twitter this weekend to pen a transcendently nonsensical thread comparing the firing of a handful of bureaucrats to the rounding up of political undesirables in the lead-up to the Holocaust.
It’s wouldn’t be a huge deal, except that this kind of hysterical reaction has now been normalized in American discourse, illustrating that once-rational people have either lost all sense of history or are willing to belittle the past for short-term political gain. My bet is on the latter.
Here’s how Wittes begins his updated version of Martin Niemöller’s famous poem:
First he came for @comey, and I said nothing because I was mad at @comey because of the Clinton email investigation and I blamed him for Trump’s election.
When fellow Hungarians came for my grandfather — he was one of the first to be deported from the country — they sent him to sweep mines on the Eastern Front before handing him over to the Germans at Mauthausen and then Gunskirchen.
At some point he perished, no doubt, in a vile and undignified manner, perhaps succumbing to starvation or typhoid or dysentery, or maybe he was shot in the head and left in a shallow unmarked grave. We don’t know. His wife and son, the latter of whom he would never meet, would never find out how he died, despite decades of trying. His loss, like the deaths of millions of other powerless and now anonymous victims of that age, would have repercussions that reverberate today.
When “they” came for James Comey, on the other hand, he landed a massive book deal, made millions on the speaking circuit, wagged his finger at his former boss through social media to his million followers, and spent some quality time with family. He never once had to worry about state-sanctioned violence. Comey, a man powerful enough to oversee a cooked-up investigation into a presidential candidate, merely lost a job.
Like Comey, all the alleged victims on Wittes’s ludicrous list served at the pleasure of the president and could be fired by Donald Trump for almost any reason he desired, just as they could have been fired by Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter or FDR. Many of the people on the list, in fact, have been investigated by the inspector general, who found that they acted either incompetently or potentially illegally.
Government bureaucrats aren’t endowed with a God-given right to work in the executive branch of the United States government. Most of these “victims” will find lucrative work elsewhere. None, I confidently say, are going to be thrown into camps. If you don’t like who Trump fires, or how he fires them, you can always vote for another candidate. (h/t FAILexa for FAILosi)
Poet Naftali Herz Imber's handwritten text of Hatikvah
Sovereignty in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley is a key issue for the Israeli right, and exercising that right may just swing the vote for Netanyahu in the upcoming March 2 election, the third this year after two other elections failed to yield a clear majority. President Trump, meantime, is staying Bibi’s hand, telling him he can’t do this sovereignty thing quite yet. “We are going to do this with the agreement of the Americans, because this can’t be a one-sided act. We want US consent and we have it,” said Netanyahu.
But we don’t. If we did, the deed would have already been done. And Bibi would not now be walking back the promise he made that he would declare sovereignty before the March 2 election.
To me, this is not a complicated situation. Netanyahu, to his credit, is not using the “A” word, “annexation.” He speaks of exercising sovereignty as a right. It is Israel’s right as a sovereign nation, to declare sovereignty over the indigenous territories that we recaptured during defensive wars, such as in 1967. It is the media that uses the “A” word (annexation), even suggesting they are quoting from Netanyahu, as in this Jerusalem Post article from February 10: Netanyahu: We want to annex settlements with US support, not without.
What is absolutely uncomplicated is that Netanyahu believes these are Israel’s sovereign territories, as does a large sector of the Israeli people. If Israel is a sovereign country, we do not need Trump to give us permission to do what is necessary to implement our territorial rights, to protect what is ours. It is disturbing to me that we would once again wait for permission from America, to do what we need to do. Which is not about taking something from someone else, but exercising our right to what we already have—what we already earned and inherited.
Doing the American president’s bidding is something Israel is always being forced to do, like not responding during the Gulf War, because America asked us not to do so. That move turned us into sitting ducks (and disrespected victims). It was NOT a good move for Israel and Israelis, but rather a move that Israel made for the sake of its relationship with the U.S. The move hurt, rather than help Israel. It affected our standing, the way people see us. It turned us into a nation lamed, or on a leash.
This is far beneath the basic goal of Zionism, which is for the Jewish people to be sovereign in Jewish indigenous territory.
What will waiting on Trump’s pleasure achieve? The Arabs will not be happier if Israel waits a few months to make this important and necessary move. They will respect Israel far more if Israel grows a pair, and goes ahead and does what should have been done long ago.
There will of course be diplomatic fallout when Israel declares itself sovereign over all its territory. There always is. Because everyone loves to hate Israel, and bully it and shove it into a corner so the Arabs won’t miss when they target us. Or for whatever reason is expedient to those nations that tell us what to do.
But isn’t real Zionism about Israel asserting itself and doing what is best for Israel?
And about this deal of the century: Isn’t it time we stopped agreeing to give away bits and pieces of our land and our sovereignty, betting on the fact that the Arabs will once again say no? What happens when the Arabs finally wise up and say yes? Would we really gamble away any part of we’ve fought so hard for on the basis of hope and conjecture and probability: that the Arabs will probably say no once more?
Is that the meaning of these lyrics from Israel’s national anthem, Hatikvah, the hope?
Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope that is two-thousand years old,
To be a free nation in our land,
The Land of Zion, Jerusalem.
Is the hope that we have “not yet lost,” the hope that the Arabs will keep on saying no? Or is the real hope, the one that allows us to be a free nation in our land—the real Hatikvah—the hope that all other entities—including the president of the United States—will finally recede into the background as Israel at last determines its own fate and future?
I vote for the latter. Though neither Israeli prime ministerial candidate even comes close to offering us the hope that this will ever happen.
At least not in March, or in the otherwise foreseeable future.
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The UN Human Rights Council published a blacklist of 112 companies it says are conducting business in West Bank settlements, and it said the companies’ activities “raised particular human rights concerns.”
Needless to say, there is no international law prohibiting companies from doing business in disputed or even "occupied" territories. They do it all the time, all over the world.
The countries that supported the resolution to create this list includes such shining rights of human rights as Sudan, Kuwait, Venezuela, Algeria, Bahrain, Bolivia, Chad, Cuba, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, and Libya.
One of these evil Jewish human rights violators on the blacklist is Mayer Davidov Garage, which repairs cars and trucks.
One of its garages is in Atarot, and another in Mishor Adumim, which the UN considers "illegally occupied territory."
In 2017, and perhaps still today, the garage hosted a backgammon tournament for Arabs and Jews to help the two communities get to know each other better. Here's a photo of the event.
Mayer Davidov did infinitely more for peace between Arabs and Jews by hosting just one backgammon event in their garage than the UN Human Rights Council has done in its entire history.
(Correction: I originally wrote that their Talpiot location was the one the UN considered to be in a settlement. h/t YK)
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Since 1948, the Palestinian leadership has adhered to an obstructionist orthodoxy, espousing an uncompromising rejection of the state of Israel. They have poured their resources and energy into hatred. UNRWA — which is supposed to be a politically neutral humanitarian organization — receives foreign funding, which is allocated to operate health clinics, schools and other laudable initiatives. Except, the money is handed over holus-bolus to local Palestinian authorities, unhindered by any meaningful oversight or accountability. School curricula is rife with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hatred, ensuring that the conflict persists. This is well-documented and known.
Nation building is hard work. Those that have succeeded in this uphill challenge have demonstrated cohesion and developed institutions to serve the people and improve their lives. Palestinian leaders, however, have become expert in perpetuating misery and pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars, tucked away safely in foreign bank accounts. All of them, including Arafat.
Until now, the default Palestinian reaction to any peace initiative has been immediate and total rejection. This time was no exception. Hamas launched rockets and airborne balloons with incendiary devices attached and intended to attract children and blow them to bits. The PA huffed and puffed and warned of violence and mayhem, which they delivered with customary reliability.
The PA is incensed by what it sees as the betrayal of its Arab brothers and sisters, abandoning their cause. Even the E.U. — not known for adopting positions sympathetic to Israel — is urging the Palestinians to chuck the brittle “all or nothing” approach, roll up their sleeves and get to the table. Neither time nor history are on their side, nor is precedent. Their demands are just not going to be met. Pragmatism and reality have finally influenced the Saudis, Emiratis, Egyptians and others to abandon the rhetoric of the past and adopt a more realistic, prudent approach to the present and future.
Palestinian leaders are the authors and perpetuators of the continuing statelessness, oppression and misery of their people. And everyone seems to see that but the Palestinians themselves.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met with former premier Ehud Olmert Tuesday and committed to restarting peace talks where they left off with the former Israeli leader over a decade ago, while rejecting a current US-backed peace effort.
The New York meeting and press conference by the two drew vociferous condemnation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accused them of trying to undermine the US peace plan.
Rejecting the Trump plan in a joint press conference held on the sidelines of a UN Security Council meeting, Abbas called for a resumption of the talks he had held with Olmert when the latter was Israel’s prime minister 12 years earlier.
The two had “made real progress,” Abbas insisted, saying he was “fully ready to resume negotiations where we left it with you, Mr. Olmert, under the umbrella of the international Quartet, and not on the basis of the plan of annexation and legalizing settlements and destroying the two-state solution.”
Abbas “is a man of peace. He is opposed to terror. And therefore he is the only partner that we can deal with,” Olmert, who was seated beside the Palestinian leader, told reporters.
“I think that there is a partner,” Olmert reiterated, calling Abbas “the only partner in the Palestinian community that represents the Palestinian people, and that has manifested that he is prepared to negotiate.
Absolutely disgusting that @jstreetdotorg's @JeremyBenAmi would embrace Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas funds terrorists to kill American and Israeli Jews. He is a virulent anti-Semite. Ben Ami isn't a head of state, he doesn't have to pretend Abbas is legitimate. https://t.co/1puFtsZGl8
Of all days, when Israel and the United States notched a victory at the United Nations Security Council and forced Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to deliver a relatively "weak" speech, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert chose to stand by the embattled Palestinian leader and declare him to be "a partner" for peace.
Abbas "is a man of peace. He is opposed to terror. And therefore he is the only partner that we can deal with," Olmert said.
"I want to make it clear that I didn't come to the US to criticize the US president [Donald Trump] or his political plan. It's not appropriate, there's no reason for me to do it in America… and I also didn't come to criticize Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu – I use every opportunity to do so in Israel, but I won't do it here in the United States."
But he insisted that ultimately, peace could only come from direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Trump's plan "is aimed at eventually making peace between Israel and the Palestinians. So we have to negotiate with the Palestinians. Who will we negotiate with?" Olmert asked.
"Who will be the partner on the Israeli side, we will know later this year," he said, alluding to the March 2 elections scheduled in Israel, though two elections last year failed to produce a government.
For too long we have been witnessing a conflict that has caused endless suffering for generations of Israelis and Palestinians alike. The increasingly dire situation on the ground – including violence, terrorism, incitement, settlement expansion, illegal by the way, and the consequences of the ongoing occupation – has destroyed hope on both sides and reduced the viability of a two-state solution.
At an international level, for a number of years, there has been little or no substantive engagement in efforts to resolve the conflict. Indeed, as one observer pointed out to me recently, there is neither peace nor a process.
In recent years, we on the European Union side, are perhaps the only actor to have stayed the course.
We have been vocal in our support for a negotiated two-state solution, based on the internationally agreed parameters and in accordance with international law. This means a two-state solution based on the parameters set in the Council Conclusions of July 2014 that meets Israeli and Palestinian security needs and Palestinian aspirations for statehood and sovereignty, ends the occupation that began in 1967, and resolves all permanent status issues in order to end the conflict.
Our European vision is a principled one and a pragmatic one. It reflects our broader attachment, as Europeans, to the rules-based international order.
In short, the EU is committed to a solution based on the Oslo process - a peace process decisively rejected by the PLO with a years-long terror spree.
The EU doesn't mention that.
Even worse, Borrell thinks that unconditional support of the EU to Palestinian rejectionism is the best solution to the conflict, when it is the major factor that prolongs it:
We are also active on the ground. No other international actor has been as engaged as we have been in practical efforts to build a future Palestinian state. In 2019 alone, the European Union and its Member States had an open portfolio of some €600 million in assistance to the Palestinians. I have said it during my hearing, €600 million is almost €1.5 Million a day.
And what has that €1.5 Million a day done for peace? Or even for governance, for that matter?Not only has it turned the PA into one of the most corrupt governments in the world, but it has also allowed Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies to point to EU support as evidence that their intransigence is the correct response to any peace plan. The EU is saying every day that the fictional "1967 borders" are the only "legal" solution and compromise on that point is a reward to Israel for breaking international law, so Mahmoud Abbas has no incentive to bargain with something that the EU (falsely) says is legally his.
Throwing money and unconditional support to the PA has been shown not only to be ineffective but supremely counterproductive. The PLO has become more intransigent and less interested in negotiations than ever before - and EU diplomatic and monetary support are the major reason for that. Now that even Arab countries have realized that the PA is a bad investment, the EU remains the only supporter of the failed wannabe state.
The proof is in the polls. The Palestinian people are less oriented towards peace with Israel than they have been in years. Apparently, none of that €600 million spent annually by Europe with no strings attached on a corrupt, anti-peace Palestinian Authority has not moderated them one bit.
Imagine that.
(h/t Irene)
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We proposed to the public 10 possible responses to the American plan and asked it about its support and opposition to each response... Public support is highest (90%) to the response of ending the split and reunifying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, followed by waging a diplomatic warfare against Israel in international organizations (85%); withdrawing Palestinian recognition of Israel (84%); waging non-violent popular demonstrations (78%); ending security coordination (77%); ending the implementation of the Oslo Agreement (69%); waging an armed struggle or return to an armed intifada (64%).
Notice that people could choose more than one answer, so at first glance it appears that more people support non-violent "resistance" than terror. But that isn't true. When asked to choose only the preferred response to the status quo, terrorism beats out negotiations 2-1 and it beats "non-violent resistance" 3-1:
The most preferred way out of the current status quo is “reaching a peace agreement with Israel” according to 22% of the public while 45% prefer waging “an armed struggle against the Israeli occupation.” Only 15% prefer “waging a non-violent resistance” and 14% prefer to keep the status quo.
And when the question is reframed, terror beats out any other alternative by a huge amount:
When asked about the most effective means of ending the Israeli occupation, half of the public (50%) chose armed struggle, 21% negotiations, and 23% popular resistance. Two months ago, 47% chose armed struggle and 26% chose negotiations.
Some 25 years after Oslo, Palestinians still are overwhelmingly supportive of terror.
Which is the main reason why peace is not possible.
It is too bad the world ignores that quite basic fact.
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Palestinian Authority dictator, Fatah leader and PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas showed the UN a map created for the occasion by the Negotiations Affairs Department of the PLO.
It is a new version of The Map That Lies, but it adds some additional lies and false implications, starting with the header - that these are maps of Palestinians' "historic compromise."
The first frame says "1917 - Historic Palestine."
That's a lie. Historic Palestine was on both sides of the Jordan and parts of Lebanon and didn't generally include most of the Negev.
In fact, the map shown here as a 1917 map is actually the British Mandate map of 1923; before that it included all of today's Jordan.
The second frame shows the proposed partition of Palestine by the Peel Commission. It was rejected by the Arabs, so it was never a "compromise" by the then-fictional "Palestinians."
The third frame is the UN partition plan, again completely rejected by the Arabs and therefore irrelevant. If they would have accepted it they could be celebrating the 72nd anniversary of Arab Palestine this year.
The fourth frame says "1967 Border Lines Endorsed By the PLO in 1988 as a Historic Compromise for Peace." They were never "1967 border lines" or any borders; they are the 1949 Armistice cease fire lines. They were never meant to be considered a border. And before 1967 Palestinians didn't even claim them as their own land.
In 1988, the PLO issued a declaration of independence that said nothing about borders or Israel. It can only be implied to accept, at best, an Israel on the UN's recommended 1947 partition lines that the Arabs roundly rejected. A separate memorandum called for an international peace conference based on UN Resolutions 242 and 337, but it never said that it accepted those resolutions that would recognize Israel on the 1949 armistice lines. Now they tell the West that they made a historic compromise, but the language is slippery and far from clear.
As far as the fifth frame is concerned, notice that the PLO dropped the fourth frame from the old Map That Lies which shows the current areas controlled by the PA. There's a good reason for it - because the Trump Plan gives them more than double the amount of area they control now, and the fifth frame would look like a great deal if they compared it with the actual areas controlled by Palestinians now, as I pointed out when Abbas brandished the old Map The Lies at the Arab League earlier this month:
Put all of this together, and you can see how much the PLO tries to fool the world by picking and choosing facts and half truths. Practically no reporters are competent and knowledgeable enough to confront the PLO with their slippery language that can be interpreted to make them sound flexible to Western ears but allows them to continue their policy of rejectionism and their aim of destroying Israel without lying in their official documents.
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Indoctrination in violence frequently begins in the Palestinian-Arab education system. Countless reports of inflammatory material propagated on official Palestinian Authority- or Hamas-run media have been published, yet have received little condemnation internationally. It took until August 2019 for the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to issue its first ever condemnation of incitement and anti-Semitism found in Palestinian Authority textbooks. The textbooks included glorification of terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi, who viciously slaughtered 38 civilians, including 13 children, during the 1978 “Coastal Road massacre.” Even kindergarteners are not off limits from Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another Gaza-based terror group, even runs terrorist summer boot camps for about 10,000 children.
The tragedy of Palestinian child soldiers — or any child soldier, for that matter — does not end once the child takes off the uniform. Those who survive their ordeal often exhibit severe psychological trauma that hinders their ability to adjust to civilian life. The evil people who turn children into tools of war for their own political gain do not merely rob children of their childhoods; they rob them of the joy of living normal lives.
On February 12, 2020, the word commemorates the annual “Red Hand Day,” which is meant to draw attention to child soldiers. There is no better time to shine a light on the plight of Palestinian-Arab children suffering at the hands of their oppressive, corrupt leaders.
Indeed, some have already to take matters into their own hands. A multi-NGO campaign is underway on social media and college campuses to raise awareness about the nightmare that so many Palestinian-Arab children are forced to endure. This campaign encourages citizens to send open letters to their governments and public leaders. Yet this is merely the first step.
We all have a duty to raise awareness and pressure Palestinian-Arab leaders to cease these exploitative practices. Palestinian-Arabs must know that they can have more to life than death and murder — and are worth more than ammunition. Even if no one else will tell them this, we must.
The British Government has said “changes will be made” to Palestinian textbooks from September, following a recent meeting in London.
News came from Middle East Minister Dr Andrew Murrison in response to a question on Palestinian education in the House of Commons late week.
Describing “the active role that we have taken to ensure that no inappropriate material is used,” he said: “I spoke recently to the Palestinian education minister. I know that this issue is at the top of his agenda, and in advance of the academic year in September, changes will be made.”
It follows a meeting at the Department for International Development (DFID) on 22 January between Murrison and Palestinian Education Minister Marwan Awartani, who was in the British capital for the Education World Forum.
After a UK call for action, the European Union agreed to lead an independent review of the content in Palestinian textbooks. This is currently ongoing, as is British government funding for Palestinian education.
“In the last year, UK aid has supported 26,000 children to go to school in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and is also helping to educate 500,000 Palestinian refugees across the Middle East,” a DFID spokesperson said.
“UK aid does not pay for textbooks in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We are working with the Palestinian Authorities on a thorough review of its textbooks to make sure they do not incite violence.”
In the last year, the UK gave £20 million to fund Palestinian teachers’ salaries and £65.5 million to the UN Relief and Works Agency, which supports the education of 500,000 Palestinian refugees across the Middle East.
Barghouti also makes crank comparisons of Israeli behaviour to the Nazis: “Many of the methods of collective and individual “punishment” [in] the occupied Palestinian territories are reminiscent of common Nazi practices against the Jews.”
His stances are a disgrace. They cause huge offence to Jews here in the UK, let alone in Israel, by denying their peoplehood and right to self-determination, and comparing the actions of a country they feel an affinity with to those of the Nazis who attempted to exterminate the Jewish people.
So why did the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) invite someone who repeatedly makes prima facie antisemitic statements to be the keynote speaker at their AGM on Saturday 25 January and greet him with a standing ovation?
Why did Brian Eno host a gathering for him the next day with musicians and singers?
Why did the PSC and KCL Action Palestine society bring him onto the King’s campus to speak, surreally, as part of a panel on “Forming an anti-racism front”?
Why is a person with these repugnant views being lauded by the PSC and artists like Eno? Why can’t all UK advocates for the Palestinians promote peace instead of hatred and antisemitism? Many do manage to make the Palestinian case without antisemitic tropes or hatred for Israel, its time the PSC learned how to this, and took a lot more care about which voices it promotes.
Completely normal for leading Democrat party candidate (Bernie Sanders) campaign surrogate, Linda Sarsour to attack Muslims, accusing them of trying to “humanize” Israeli Jews https://t.co/gTLlgBTHZY
Hatikvah is a slate for "progressive Jews" who want to weaken Israel and strengthen Israel's enemies. Here are the "progressive" organizations that support it and want to grab part of the billions of dollars at stake to spend on hurting the Jewish state.
If you have not yet voted, look at the slates and make a decision. It doesn't cost much but it is very important to have a say.
You only have until March 11 to vote. Don't delay it any more.
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A journalist asked me what questions I would ask Mahmoud Abbas if I could.
I doubt that any of these will actually be asked to him today, because for some reason journalists are more polite to someone who pays terrorist salaries than to politicians of the party that they dislike, but here's my list:
Most Palestinians can trace their family trees a few centuries back, often to prominent families in Arabia. Is your family descended from the Banu Abbas family from the dawn of Islam?
Do you regard Jews who quietly walk on the Temple Mount to be desecrating the area? You referred to them as having "filthy feet," do you still think so? Do other non-Muslims who visit the site also desecrate it, or just Jews?
Do you believe that there is a Jewish people, or that it is merely a religion?
At the UN today, you showed a map that implied that Palestinians accepted compromise on the land in 1937 (Peel) and 1947 (UN.) Of course, Arabs rejected those plans. Why are you showing the world maps of "Palestinian compromise" that are clearly historically false? pic.twitter.com/cd5LquMXzI
Chaim Weizmann once said that he would accept a state the "size of a tablecloth." The Palestinian attitude seems exactly the opposite - you will NOT accept a state unless your laundry list of demands (Jerusalem, "Return," prisoners, borders) are exactly what you demand and nothing less. How much do you really want a state when you claim on the one hand that your people are suffering terribly but on the other hand you have demands that Israel can never accept?
Why should Israel trust that you are interested in peace when you and your government routinely praises terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi?
Given a choice of a true peace with Israel and unification with Hamas and Islamic Jihad while they remain armed and sworn to destroy Israel, which would you choose?
It's been over 25 years since Oslo. In all that time, you could have prepared a generation of children to live in peace with Israel. Instead, you teach them in schools and on TV that all of British Mandate Palestine is theirs, that they have a "right to return" to a state you consider your enemy, that martyrdom is their sincerest wish. If you want peace as you keep saying to diplomats and the Western media, why has nothing been done to actually teach peace with Israel to children?
And a few years ago I made a poster of lots of other questions for Abbas.
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In this day and age, with progressives tending to bestow automatic moral rightness on the weak and to assign automatic moral blame to the strong, the left is inclined to be furious at the very suggestion that the occupied are to blame for the continued occupation. Part of this fury is based on denying Palestinian recalcitrance and rejectionism.
But the other part is actually more poignant: Some on the left believe we must end the occupation regardless of the price we’ll have to pay, since it is an evil one cannot acquiesce to. From this perspective, the infringement on Palestinian human rights is so grave that it undermines Israel’s moral foundation – to the point of voiding its very right to exist. If Zionism rests on the universal right to self-determination, the argument goes, it cannot exist at the expense of another people’s ability to exercise that same right.
I don’t know if the historian with whom I dined subscribes to this extreme view, but I think this is what many who see the “apartheid” argument as closing the case believe.
Still, one is obliged to ask if what we are talking about here is an offense so abhorrent, so inhumanly odious, that one must die rather than commit it. Should we really end the occupation even if it means collective suicide for Zionism and probable death to most of its sons and daughters (or at least to those who cannot afford to emigrate)?
Undeniably, there are crimes one should die before committing. Genocide would probably be the obvious example. But it is hard to stretch this argument to include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It would seem there is not much moral weight to the idea that we should choose our own death only to save the Palestinians from the consequences of their rejectionism and their turn to murderous terrorism. There is also little point in committing suicide only to replace Israel’s military rule with a more brutal regime that will deprive the Palestinians of human rights to an even greater extent, as Hamas has done in Gaza.
The truth is that, short of attempting to justify collective suicide, the moral argument from “apartheid” has no use. As long as we refuse to die, it will not save us from having to limp along with no full solution in sight to the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire.
We will have to brace ourselves for a long stretch of political awkwardness and moral ambiguity. Which is still far better than jumping together, with our hands at each other’s throats, into the lava around us. The incantation “apartheid” will not make any of those harsh circumstances disappear.
Amid the all-important International Criminal Court debate about whether Israeli settlements are a war crime, almost completely ignored has been the question of Turkey’s occupation of Northern Cyprus.
The Palestinians officially asked for ICC intervention in January 2015, and ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda essentially declared Israeli settlements war crimes on December 20.
In contrast, the first complaint by a Cypriot official, represented by Shurat Hadin, against Turkey’s settlements in Northern Cyprus was filed in July 2014 – half a year earlier than the claims against Israel.
Seven weeks after Bensouda decided against Israel, all that has been said about the Turkish occupation of Cyprus is that a decision is anticipated at some undefined point later in 2020.
How did the Turkish case fall to the back burner as compared to the case against Israel?
Does this unequal situation prove anti-Israel bias by the ICC, as some claim?
The Israel Bar Association will try to represent Israel in the International Criminal Court at The Hague to push against the charges laid by the Palestinians, Israel Hayom has exclusively learned.
The IBA's move is designed to give Israel a voice in the court without having the country officially join.
Israel has refused to sign the Rome Statute and is hence not part of the ICC. The Jewish state also says the court has no jurisdiction on matters pertaining to Israeli territory because Israel is not a party to the convention, but the court has nevertheless begun proceedings that could culminate with a full-fledged investigation against Israel over its actions in the Gaza Strip and in various Palestinian cities.
Israeli leaders have slammed the court for taking that position.
The IBA's governing body approved Monday a motion that could pave the way for the organization to represent Israel in cases concerning the state. "In order to avoid having the Palestinian Authority's position go unchallenged, we have discussed the possibility of becoming an amicus curiae in the court and we have assembled a task force to facilitate that," the motion reads.
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Elder of Ziyon
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