Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, March 04, 2020

03/04 Links Pt2: Anti-Israel HRW accepts Saudi funds to not criticize repression of gays; Former Prisoner Alan Gross Recalls Sanders Saying, 'I Don't Know What's So Wrong' With Cuba

From Ian:

Anti-Israel HRW accepts Saudi funds to not criticize repression of gays

The Executive Director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Ken Roth, accepted a major donation from a Saudi real estate tycoon by promising not to support advocacy of the LGBT community in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Intercept first reported Monday on the quid pro quo between Roth, who has gained a reputation for strident attacks against Israel, and Saudi billionaire Mohamed Bin Issa al-Jaber.

“Human Rights Watch [HRW] accepted a sizable donation from a Saudi billionaire shortly after its researchers documented labor abuses at one of the man’s companies, a potential violation of the rights group’s own fund-raising guidance,” wrote The Intercept’s Alex Emmons.

“In 2012, Roth signed a memorandum of understanding with al-Jaber containing language that said the gift could not be used for LGBT rights work in the region. He was later pictured next to Jaber at a 2013 ceremony to memorialize the funding,” the self-described online “adversarial journalism” site wrote.

“The controversial donation is at the center of a contentious internal debate about the judgment and leadership of Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth,” wrote The Intercept.

“The 2012 grant from al-Jaber’s UK-based charitable foundation amounted to $470,000,” the news site said.

The Jerusalem Post can report that last year Roth praised Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a tweet, after he defended his regime’s execution of gays.

2/ HRW now admits that its chief @KenRoth himself solicited the donation from Sheikh Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber. Roth himself signed the agreement with the accused Saudi human rights abuser promising that HRW would not use the funds to promote LGBT rights. https://t.co/nX6Uwso7Q9 pic.twitter.com/7WfalnPy5J
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) March 3, 2020

BBC ignores HRW’s dodgy donation

As regular readers are no doubt aware, the BBC is usually very quick off the mark when it comes to providing amplification for reports, campaigns or talking points promoted by the political NGO ‘Human Rights Watch’ (HRW).

Nevertheless, we have yet to find any BBC coverage (including on its website’s ‘human rights’ page) of a recent story concerning that organisation.

On February 27th HRW put out a “Statement on Return of Donation” which opens:

“In 2012, Human Rights Watch made a deeply regrettable decision to accept a donation that included conditions that the funds not be used to support HRW’s work on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in the Middle East and North Africa. We also regret that the grant was made by the owner of a company that Human Rights Watch had previously identified as complicit in labor rights abuse. This decision stood in stark contrast to our core values and our longstanding commitment to LGBT rights as an integral part of human rights. Accepting a grant with such a condition was anathema to HRW’s commitment to protecting the human rights of all people.”

Mondoweiss has another wonderful article about Israel, this time about how Israel is selling water technology to the UK.

While the hate site is trying hard to say this is a bad thing, it shows how advanced Israel is and how many nations are clamoring to buy technology from Israel to make their water supplies safer and more efficient.

The article tries mightily to make all Israeli companies seem somehow evil:

Mapal (‘waterfall’ in Hebrew) Green Energy started at Kibbutz Yagur, still its head office, on land once owned by the Palestinian village of Yajur....Founded in 2008, Mapal uses a ‘patented’ method of treating sewage so it can be reused called Floating Fine Bubble Aeration (FFBA). As the Jerusalem Post, for instance, states Mapal ‘developed a diffuser that stays on the surface of the water and shoots air bubbles down into the pool, which is much more effective’. When Mapal entered the UK water market in 2013 its first customer was Anglian Water, a major supplier. Since then, two other major suppliers, United Utilities and Thames Water, also installed FFBA. According to the Times of Israel “Mapal Green Energy’s Israeli-made aeration recycling system now serves some 30 million Britons.”

It should be mentioned that the author, Mark Govier, lives on usurped Aborigine lands of Australia.

Amiad (‘my nation forever’ in Hebrew) Water Systems [is] located in Kibbutz Amiad. It ‘was built after 1948 on the ruins of the Palestinian Bedouin village of Jib Yusuf’. Amiad manufactures products like hydraulic irrigation filters, and wholly owns its UK subsidiary, Amiad Water Systems (UK).

Amiad’s... big enough to justify listing on the London Stock Exchange where it states, “Amiad provides cost-effective ‘green’ solutions for the irrigation and industrial purposes … for filtration and water treatment, micro irrigation and membrane protection, wastewater and potable water treatment…” Naturally, not a word about Jib Yusuf.

Philip Weiss, co-founder of Mondoweiss, lives in Putnam County, NY, on land usurped from Lenape and Wappinger tribes. Yet his website doesn't mention that fact a single time!

Arad Metering Services “designs, develops, manufactures, sells and supports its cutting-edge water meters to residential, bulk, irrigation and water management companies around the world’. As to its history, Arad Ltd was founded in Palestine in 1941, and is based within what is now the ‘UNESCO biosphere reserve’ of Ramot Menashe. In The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Israeli historian Benny Morris explained Ramot Menashe is close to Daliyat al-Rawha’, a depopulated Palestinian village.

Whoa - it bought a company that was close to the spot of a former Palestinian village? That's got to be a war crime!

Adam Horowitz, the other co-founder of Mondoweiss, lives in Decatur, GA, on land stolen from the Muskogee tribe. Yet this fact is not mentioned on Mondoweiss at all, let alone on each of the many thousands of articles that Horowitz has written or co-written!

We should insist that every author of every Mondoweiss article mentions the name of the specific village or tribe that they live on top of, in every single article, which seems to be the standard Mondoweiss holds Israeli people and companies to.

Govier claims that the reason that the UK doesn't actively publicize these Israeli companies is because "the UK water business is eager to avoid negative publicity." Actually, there is no secret here. The reason that the companies' origins aren't trumpeted is because everyone knows that the Israel haters will harass anyone with any connection to Israel and they don't want to bother with dealing with these Israel-hating fanatics.

But, as Govier notes, these companies (and others he mentions) are prominently featured in English-language Israeli media. No one is hiding anything.

Govier and Mondoweiss are just trying to start a harassment campaign, posting the contact information of these companies. They know they have some truly unhinged readers who will start to call in death threats. How wonderfully woke they are.

And it isn't the first time- he has written previously on the connections of Australia with Israeli water companies as well, and no one cared then either.

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This article has been published in a few Iraqi news sites.

Annually, on the anniversary of the “Holocaust” imagined by the Jews of the Caspian Sea in occupied Palestine, the leaders of Israel's terrorist perpetrators stand and chant a clear message to Germany that “we will not forget and we will not forgive”, and they thus threaten Germany to continue blackmail and pressure it to pay unlimited compensation to the perpetrator of Israel, and this is another type of terrorism, organized state terrorism, through which they managed to win Germany in their favor.

These Khazars do not want to reveal the fact that Hitler, the Nazi, was one of the first Europeans to decide to get rid of Jews for their corruption, and to give them Palestine as a national homeland for them - not out of love for them, nor hatred of the Palestinians, but the European desire was urgent to get rid of them after their continuous treachery and dirty plots against he Christian West, as the reformer Martin Luther wrote.

These Khazars entered into an agreement with the Nazi Hitler to allow their youth to emigrate to Palestine to build the Zionist sustainable land there, and to give him the right to dispose of the Jewish elderly how he wanted, and the deal took place.

When the Khazars in Palestine decided to open the imagined “Holocaust” story, they issued a statement in which they said that the Nazis killed 40 million Jews, but the world knew that the number of Jews at that time was not even close to that, so they promised a review and issued a second statement, they said that there were 24 million victims. The world did not accept this claim either, so they promised a second review in which they said that after research, they found that the victims of the Nazi Jews were only six million, stressing that they would not budge from this number.

Perhaps it was absent in the minds of these greedy moneylenders that during the war Hitler did not target Jews only - and that those who targeted them as Jews were victims of Zionism first - but rather Nazi victims were from many European, German, Russian, Roma, and Arab nationalities, but no one spoke of these victims, and the theater was open to Jewish slag to reap the way it wanted.

As for us Arabs who have been plagued by the fire of Zionism and lost many, we repeat the saying “We will not forget and we will not forgive” many times in every moment, and the day will come when we take revenge for our dignity, and teach the Zionists a lesson that will not be forgotten by those who will remain alive.

The signs of this approaching day are joyful and encouraging. Here is Jordan, and after discovering the truth of the enemy brothers in the Arabian Peninsula, the leadership and people are revolting, and His Majesty King Abdullah II Bin Al-Hussein is planning a new path. We hope his next step is to cancel the gas agreement, and after that the Wadi Araba treaty [peace with Israel] canceled, then we will officially announce that the hour for the account of the Khazar Jews in the occupied Palestine is approaching.

So the Holocaust was a hoax and it is past time to kill and exile all the Jews in the Middle East.

As usual, not a word of protest or dissent when articles like this appear in Arab media.

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03/04 Links Pt1: Is Netanyahu’s Significant Victory Sufficient?; Human Rights Council Continues Gaslighting on Gaza; Iran’s Judo World Champion Mollaei to Fight For Mongolia in Tokyo

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Is Netanyahu’s Significant Victory Sufficient?

Which brings us to the importance of the election results, and the reason that Netanyahu and his supporters were celebrating on Monday night with confetti and all.

This election constituted a defeat of the “anybody but Bibi” hysteria. It represented a win for the sane center-right that believes in Netanyahu’s handling of domestic and foreign affairs, and strongly opposes the tyranny of the courts. It also illustrated that Israelis care about ideas and actions, and that they are not as swayed by empty slogans and outrageous assertions as certain politicians seem to imagine.

Take Gantz, for example, who has spent his campaign trying to out-Bibi on the one hand and accuse him — appallingly — of behaving like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the other. You know, the same Erdoğan who jails anyone who disagrees with him, including judges, lawyers, academics, and more journalists than any other autocrat or dictator in the world.

As all Israelis know, the only person in danger of getting locked up for his political views is Netanyahu himself. But never mind; the fact that he dares to criticize the police and Supreme Court is enough to stick him with the egregious label.

The good news is that Netanyahu is still Israel’s prime minister and likely to remain so in the foreseeable future. The bad news is that the makeup of the next government, if one is established without the need for a fourth election, could take weeks and be less than satisfactory to an electorate eager to move on.

Jonathan S. Tobin: Three Israeli elections reconfirm two basic facts

It took Israeli politics nearly a year to get back to square one.

That’s the basic fact to understand about the third round of general voting held within a year. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is right to claim the vote as a personal victory, it is only by comparison to his near defeat last September that it can be viewed as a great triumph. Israel’s crazy political system may have exhausted and infuriated its citizens, but the three contests held in this period changed very little about the way the country is governed.

As was the case before the first vote, Netanyahu is still the country’s most popular politician, though arguments can be made that no one under indictment should stay in power, even if the charges against him are questionable. And yet, a critical mass of Israeli voters doesn’t agree, let alone buy the claim that Netanyahu is a threat to democracy or the rule of law. Though it shouldn’t have taken three elections to clarify that point, when Netanyahu goes, it will be either of his own volition (something that he doesn’t seem to contemplate in the foreseeable future) or because the judicial system takes him down. As long as his fate is in the hands of the voters, he will remain prime minister.

The other main conclusion concerns policy, and it is one that many commentators are ignoring. Though the rest of the world, including some of those running for president of the United States, still advocates for Israel to make dangerous concessions to the Palestinians for peace, the vast majority of Israelis have more or less stopped discussing the issue. Even if many Americans refuse to accept reality, a broad consensus on the lack of a peace partner encompasses not only Netanyahu’s right-wing/religious bloc, but also the Blue and White Party, which campaigned on stands virtually identical to those of the prime minister.

These are two basic facts about the country that its foreign friends, and especially its critics, should take to heart.

With 99% of votes counted, right-wing bloc slips to 58 seats, 3 shy of majority

As votes cast in so-called double envelopes in the Knesset elections were being tallied, the Central Election Committee updated the count Wednesday morning, giving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and the centrist rival Blue and White led by Benny Gantz an extra seat apiece, leaving the premier’s bloc of right-wing supporters at 58 seats.

After 99% of the votes were tallied, Likud gained a seat for a total of 36, with the rival Blue and White party also increasing its power from 32 to 33.

The Joint List of predominantly Arab parties dropped from 16 seats to 15, while the ultra-Orthodox Shas party dropped from 10 seats to 9.

The rest of the parties’ seat totals remained the same: seven for United Torah Judaism (UTJ), seven for Yisrael Beytenu, seven for Labor-Gesher-Meretz and six for Yamina.

Based on those seat totals, Likud and its allies would have 58 seats combined. The right-wing religious bloc supporting Netanyahu — consisting of Likud, Shas, UTJ and Yamina — though, falls short of the 61 seats needed to form a government.

The counting of the “double envelope” ballots of soldiers, police staff, diplomats, handicapped citizens, hospital patients and staff, and prisoners began overnight and was expected to conclude later in the day.

A Lebanese man of Palestinian descent who lives in Montreal claims that he will manufacture an all-electric supercar using Palestinian labor, to be available in the next few years.

Jihad Mohammed started the Electra car company, it seems, around 2018. He introduced some computer simulated models of his planned car, the Quds EE.

According to the website, the Quds EE can accelerate from 0-99 kmh in 2.8 seconds and can go over 800 km between charges - significantly more than any electric vehicle on the market today.

Mohammed tells Arab media that the Quds name is an inherent part of the car, and he will refuse to honor the warranty of anyone who removes that name from the car.

The front of the car has a representation of the Dome of the Rock, which the company claims also helps charge the battery somehow - solar or wind, it wasn't clear.

Besides Jihad, the Electra company appears to have two employees - a designer, who had no previous experience designing cars, and a virtualization engineer who is creating these pictures of the car.

Mohammed himself has an "investment company" with an empty website.

Today, you can pre-order one of these entirely fictional cars. Just choose the colors of the exterior and interior, and based on the flimsy information given at the website, you can send a down payment of anywhere from $1,000 to the $70,000 estimated price of the car, to be sent via wire transfer or PayPal, and kiss your money goodbye.

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PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi, head of the Miftah NGO that even today has pro-terror and antisemitic articles like "Jews poison Palestinian wells" and "Jews steal organs of children", is calling Israelis racist.

"The results of the Israeli elections were a clear expression of the spread of a culture of hatred, racism and extremism in Israel," she was paraphrased as saying by Palestinian media.

But she's not the only hypocrite who suddenly pretends to care about racism. A leader of the Islamic Jihad terror group likewise called Israelis racist. Dr. Muhammad al-Hindi, a member of the Political Bureau of Islamic Jihad, said that "racism is rampant in the state of the Zionist entity, where everyone is racing to annex the West Bank and brag about the numbers of martyrs they kill."

Projection much?

Saeb Erekat said, "Netanyahu chose to perpetuate the pillars of the conflict and the spiral of violence, extremism, chaos and bloodshed, and thus requires that the region and its peoples live with the sword."

Again, projection much?

The PFLP said, "The election results are a clear expression of the racist Zionist society."

It is interesting how much these terrorists, Jew-haters and inciters of terror sound exactly like the "progressive" groups when talking about Israel. Their talking points are pretty much identical.

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ANOTHER Bernie Sanders staffer who wants to see the Jewish state disappear

Alison Mortell, the Deputy National Analytics Director for Bernie Sanders according to her Twitetr bio, has tweeted this joke:

Isn't the concept of a place for Jews to be safe from slaughter hilarious?

Mortell doesn't like the idea of a Jewish state.

This thread shows how utterly uninformed she is- and she even justifies Palestinian terror.

Mortell claims she is against any "ethnostate" but she only seems to care about the existence of the one that happens to be Jewish.

Can anyone find a single person working on the Sanders campaign that agrees with Sanders saying that he supports Israel's existence? Because every single person we are aware of that is working for him is against the existence of a Jewish state altogether.

And Bernie doesn't even try to tell them otherwise.

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03/03 Links Pt2: The bad faith behind ‘Free Palestine’; Imagining what a President Bernie Sanders would mean for Jews; Lionel Richie says ‘Hello’ to crowd of adoring Israeli fans

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: The bad faith behind ‘Free Palestine’

Today, enemies of the Jewish state use language to indicate Israel should cease to exist. A logical question ensues when calling to “Free Palestine” – what will be of the Jews once “Palestine” is freed? Three options emerge: 1) Israel becomes an Arab country and Jews once again take their historic place in Arab lands as dhimmis (second-class citizens), 2) all Jews will be exiled from Israel or 3) a war will be waged against Israel by her enemies with the goal to eliminate all Jews from the land.

There are real-world consequences to this type of deceptive language. A war is not fantasy. The Palestinian Authority regularly incites violence against the Jewish state. Its arch rival, the terror group Hamas, whose stated goal is the destruction of Israel, is responsible for launching thousands of rockets into Israel from Gaza. More than 1,350 innocent Israeli lives have been taken by Palestinian terrorists since 2000. Iran repeatedly calls for the destruction of Israel, and the leader of the terrorist group Hezbollah stated that it would be easier if all of the Jews moved to “occupied Palestine” in order to be chased down for the “final and decisive battle.”

For anyone truly preoccupied with human rights, all three options, with varying intensity, leave Jews in a dangerous predicament all too familiar.

As this year’s high school seniors prepare to enter college, it’s vital they learn about slogans used to vilify Israel – such as “Free Palestine” – and how to counter them. In Club Z, we expose students to the language antisemitic activists use to demonize Israel. Our teens gain the tools they need to combat antisemitic activism and stand up for the Jewish state before they arrive on college campuses. It is critical that the next generation of proud and proactive Zionist leaders are adequately prepared to fight – and ultimately defeat – the PR battle waged against the Jewish state.

Islam, Global Muslim Jew-Hatred, And Failed Jewish “Leadership”

Today, the grotesque myth of Islamic tolerance of Jews, in particular, persists, even as we are in the midst of a global pandemic of Muslim Antisemitism and Anti-Jewish violence. This violent hatred is driven by the same unreformed and unrepentant canonical Islamic themes Perlmann described in the 1940s—which date to the advent of Islam—as promulgated, now, by Islam’s most authoritative religious teaching institutions, Sunni and Shiite alike.

Analyses from the ADL published between 2014 to Nov. 21, 2019, which determined the prevalence (occurrence) of “extreme antisemitism”—i.e., agreement with at least 6/11 antisemitic stereotypes, have demonstrated:
- The 16 most Antisemitic countries in the world are all in the Muslim Middle East, where extreme Antisemitism has a 74 to 93% prevalence.
- Extreme Antisemitism is 50-55% prevalent among Western European Muslims, i.e., ~3-fold the rate of Western European Christians, or non-Muslims overall.
- Extreme Antisemitism in the U.S., a much more philosemitic country, has a 34% prevalence among Muslims, 2.4-fold the 14% rate in non-Muslims

This excess of Muslim Jew-hatred is accompanied not only by endless jihad violence against Israeli Jews (450-500 thwarted attacks per year in 2018, and 2019; additionally, thousands of rocket barrages), but 3- to 10-fold increased rates of anti-Jewish violence, or violent threats, against Western European Jews, by Muslims, relative to violence from the Left, or Right, and 23 Muslim jihadist attacks against American Jews since 9/11, 16 of which were thwarted, thankfully, but 7 that were completed, resulting in 8 deaths and 8 serious injuries—the most recent being Muslim convert Grafton Thomas’s attack on a Monsey, New York synagogue, December 28, 2019, during a Chanukah candle lighting ceremony.

Current Al-Azhar University Grand Imam, and Sunni Muslim Papal equivalent, Ahmad al-Tayeb, during an October, 2013 interview, re-affirmed, authoritatively, the canonical Islamic animus which fuels this global orgy of Muslim Jew-hatred, and violence. Riveting on Koran 5:82, al-Tayeb stated brazenly:

A verse in the Koran explains the Muslims’ relations with the Jews…See how we suffer today from global Zionism and Judaism…Since the inception of Islam 1,400 years ago, we have been suffering from Jewish and Zionist interference in Muslim affairs. The Koran (5:82) said it and history has proven it: ‘You shall find the strongest among men in enmity to the believers to be the Jews…’

Noah Rothman: Whitewashing the Reds

Perhaps the guiltiest of perpetrators, in Lowry’s estimation, is the “simple passage of time.” The Millennial and post-Millennial generations were “never exposed to the threats of the Soviet Union,” she writes. They have no first-hand knowledge of how state-run industry affects prices and quality of service. They’ve only heard about the refugee crises that punctuated the Communist epoch second-hand, if they heard about them at all. They never experienced an air-raid drill, never read dissidents or met a Refusenik, and never participated in a black economy that wasn’t built up around the trade in illicit narcotics. For these voters, the Cold War is an academic concept.

What younger voters do know more intimately, Lowry observes, are conditions like “yawning inequality, heavy debt burdens, obscene costs of living, and stagnant wages.” And as these voters have become more favorable toward redistributionist politics, they’ve gravitated toward the “worker-centered” policies of Bernie Sanders, which are tempered by his “consistent” “opposition to totalitarianism and autocracy and street violence.” After all, “the guy has always been clear that he wants the United States to become more like Denmark, not Cuba.” That’s the kind of clarity afforded only to those committed to pretending Sanders’s career in the public eye began in 2015.

It’s difficult to think of a similar example of ignorance that would be waved off with such insouciance. Would American voters with no first-hand memory of the Holocaust be forgiven for drifting into the arms of neo-Nazi movements? Are younger Americans no longer expected to maintain some understanding of America’s experience with slavery and Jim Crow laws? Should we withhold judgment on Americans who “did not live through” the Apartheid era and have never heard the name P.W. Botha? Or is it incumbent on those of us who do have a passing familiarity with these abuses and those responsible for them to educate our benighted fellow citizens? Given the level of commitment popular liberal intellectual culture dedicates to cultivating awareness around these repugnant episodes in recent human history, it is conspicuous that many can only muster a shrug when confronted with post-Soviet amnesia.

Lowry appears to see the Great Forgetting as a source of exculpation for Americans who know nothing of the suffering endured by those who lived under collectivism. In fact, what she’s written is more of an indictment—not just of those voters but the institutions and enterprises devoted to socialism’s rehabilitation. If the right is guilty of seeing a Communist conspiracy down every blind alley, center-left media rarely misses a chance to highlight the virtues of life under the red star.

Oh, by the way: Palestinians had a record olive crop in 2019

From OCHA:

Record yield reported from 2019 olive harvest

There are over 10 million olive trees in the West Bank, on which between 80,000 to 100,000 families rely for their income, including large numbers of unskilled laborers and more than 15 per cent of working women. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the olive oil yield for the 2019 harvest, which took place between September and November, is estimated to be 27,000 tons, including some 4,200 tons of oil in Gaza: this represents an over 80 per cent increase compared to 2018.

The vast majority of the report is about how Israel is supposedly making life impossible for farmers - yet somehow they reached a new record of 27,000 tons of fruit harvested.

Also, given that there are over 10 million olive trees in the area, it shows that even if you believe their figures of some 8000 trees damaged or destroyed by "settlers" this year - a highly unlikely scenario, given how difficult it is to actually destroy an olive tree - it means that "settler damage" is minuscule, less than one tenth of one percent of all trees. Given how much time the UN and Palestinian media spends on breathless reporting of every tree supposedly attacked by Jews, it shows that the UN has little interest in actual crop yields and great interest in smearing Jews.

(h/t Irene)

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From Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs "Israel Arabic" Facebook page:

Yousef Haddad, Israeli Arab:

"All my life I have lived here with Jews, Muslims, Christians and Druze. We are part of the State of Israel We are all Israeli brothers. What you hear in the media about the state of Israel is far from the truth."

A growing number of Arab citizens in Israel are following this trend.

As usual, Arab media is following this page and reporting on it.

The Israel Arabic page is one of the most successful social media initiatives ever done by Israel.

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03/03 Links Pt1: Benjamin Netanyahu defeats Gantz, but is still short a majority; Pompeo Promises to Protect U.S. Businesses in UN West Bank Data Base

From Ian:

Benjamin Netanyahu defeats Gantz, but is still short a majority

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on track to win 59 seats for his bloc of right-wing and religious parties in Monday’s election, down by one from the 60 predicted by the initial exit polls. The new prediction leaves him two short of a majority in the Knesset.

The first polls indicated that Netanyahu’s Likud won 36-37 seats. Its allies in Shas, UTJ and Yamina won 9, 7-8 and 6-7 respectively. The polls showed Blue and White with 33 seats, its ally Labor-Gesher-Meretz with 6-7, the Joint List 14-15 and Yisrael Beytenu 6-8.

When Channel 13 updated its numbers at around 1 a.m. Israel time, however, Gantz gained one seat to 34 and the blocs shifted slightly, leaving the right-wing with only 59 seats.

Channel 12 also updated its numbers, giving Likud 37 seats, Blue and White 32, Arab Joint List 15, Shas 9, Yisrael Beytenu 7, UTJ 7, Labor-Gesher-Meretz 7 and Yamina 6.

However, by 4 a.m., Kan News gave Likud 36 seats and Blue and White 33, with the right bloc also holding a total of 59.

The numbers are expected to continue to change. The votes of soldiers, who tend to lean to the right, have not yet been counted and the Joint List tends to lose a seat when the soldiers’ votes are added. But, if the Right does not obtain its 61st seat, it could end up being because the far-right Otzma Yehudit Party refused Netanyahu’s repeated requests to quit the race.

Netanyahu immediately tweeted “thank you.”

Say hello to the 23rd Knesset!

As Israel awaits the final results from the elections for the 23rd Knesset, the most recent results from the Central Elections Committee (CEC) show Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc as having 59 seats in the new Knesset, meaning it will need two more members of Knesset in order to become a majority if the seat distribution remains the same after final results are received.
Here are the new members of Knesset according to the most recent results from the CEC:

King Bibi Netanyahu, the magician – analysis

The coalition may not yet be in the bag, but after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's impressive showing in Monday's election, it can now be said with complete certainty: the man is a political magician.

After already serving as prime minister for 14 years, 11 of them consecutively; just two weeks before the start of a trial on charges of bribery, breach of trust and fraud; with a good part – but by no means all – of the media against him; with a bevy of former security chiefs and diplomats declaring his continued rule would endanger democracy -- Netanyahu again defeated the odds and pulled out what, according to the exit polls, looks like a victory.

His path to building a coalition will not be easy, but with all the parties – and the public – sick of elections, this time Netanyahu is definitely in the driver's seat and should be able to pick up the seat or two he needs to finally give Israel a government.

And the key to his political magic is the fact that Netanyahu is simply a consummate campaigner.

No one campaigns better than Netanyahu. No one. He has energy, charisma, and a once-in-a-generation ability to talk to his voters at eye level. He knows what buttons to press – Jewish and Zionist pride, fear of the Left – and he presses them better than anyone else.

Jpost Editorial: A time to heal after Israel's third elections

The president, Netanyahu and Gantz should use these elections as an opportunity to try to bridge the tribes. If Israel is to recover and rally now, after three harmful and costly elections, our leaders – especially the president – should see us as one people with one destiny.

Furthermore, the people need to know that we did not waste three elections for no benefit, and that a new government and Knesset will seek to operate on behalf of all the country’s citizens – to make Israel safe and secure, boost the economy and trade, maintain the rule of law, promote equal opportunity and recognize the legitimacy of all streams of Judaism.

There are critical budgets to be passed – from health to military. Key legislation awaits Knesset approval in a range of areas, from haredi conscription to civil marriage, and important appointments need to be made, such as a new police commissioner and state attorney. The country must come together to resolve such pressing issues as halting the ongoing terrorist attacks from Gaza, returning the two Israelis and the remains of two soldiers being held by Hamas, confronting Iran’s efforts to expand its regional tentacles and become a nuclear power, making progress on implementing the Trump peace plan, and countering the coronavirus threat.

The last thing Israel needs now is another stalemate that could force a fourth election. The country – led by the president and the politicians – must find a way to heal itself from the damage caused by the last three elections and move us all forward toward a brighter future.

Alan Dershowitz says, "Israel's Democracy is alive and well!"

Likud, chaired by Israel's caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, edged ahead of Blue and White alliance with 37-34 seats respectively, an exit poll by Channel 12 shows.

The initial results hint that the alliance led by Benny Gantz could see Likud take its status as Israel's largest party, boosting Netanyahu's position in the coalition talks that will follow. The PM was brief in his initial reaction, saying: "Thank you!"

Besides sports, Jibril Rajoub also politicizes Scouts to be anti-Israel

We have reported on how top PLO official Jibril Rajoub has been using sports to demonize Israel as head of the Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs for the Palestinian Authority as well as the president of the Palestinian Football Association and the Palestinian Olympic Committee.

It turns out he is also the head of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of Palestine.

A couple of years ago there were reports of how the Palestinian Scout Association had dedicated a training course to a terrorist, and how the World Scouts denied that the Palestinian Scouts were the official Palestinian Scouts - an absurd claim.

Now, looking at the Scouts Facebook page, one can see that they are just as political (against World Scout rules) as ever.

Here are the Scouts being indoctrinated to hate Israel at rallies last month.

Rajoub is trying to be Abbas' successor.

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Ken Roth quotes "expert" who says Israel is guilty of ethnic cleansing - and never should have been created

No matter what atrocities are happening in the world, Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch feels compelled to post at least one anti-Israel tweet a day.

Here's today's:

UN expert is "deeply troubled" by the Israeli government's latest settlement expansion plan--a "highly disturbing development." Netanyahu's plan to add 8,000 settlement housing units is “a significant breach of international law” that must be opposed. https://t.co/9gXQVQq1rx pic.twitter.com/buO16P7Hus
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) March 3, 2020

The UN "expert" is Michael Lynk, the UNHRC's "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967."

Although we've seen Lynk's bias before, I just found out that in 2009, he claimed Israel was guilty of "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians and havily implied that Israel itself is a mistake that must be erased.

In a report called "Peace, Human Rights, and the Rule of Law: Canada's Role in the Middle East" issued by the Group of 78 Annual Policy Conference, September 25-27, 2009," Lynk's presentation is paraphrased:

He used to think the critical date in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was 1967, the start of the occupation. Now he thinks the solution to the problem must go back to 1948, the date of partition and the start of ethnic cleansing. Canada’s role in partition was pivotal with Justice Ivan Rand, Lester Pearson and Elizabeth MacCallum (though she privately warned against it). What followed from this point needs review and needs to inform Canadian foreign policy going forward. Many increasingly feel that partition was a mistake.

Sure, it makes sense for the UN to hire an "expert" on Israel who thinks Israel shouldn't exist and never should have existed.

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Yes, the Palestinians ARE the pampered children of the international community. The numbers prove it. (update)

A number of columnists and tweeters are upset that Bibi Netanyahu said, via satellite at the AIPAC conference, that Palestinians are “the pampered children of the international community.”

But by any measure, that is an accurate statement.

Every few years I look at the top recipients of international aid per capita. The total amount of aid per capita from 2000-2017 looks like this:

But what about recently?

The latest numbers I have, from 2017, show that "Palestine" still gets more aid per capita than any other nation - and every other nation on the list is more deserving of aid than "Palestine:"

Things might change in 2019 after the US stopped direct aid to the PA and UNRWA, but maybe not.

However, according to all available statistics, Palestinians are indeed pampered, pretending to be more needy than nations that are far more deserving of humanitarian aid.

UPDATE: Adin found a really nice chart of the same issue:

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03/02 Links Pt2: Israelophobia and the West: The Hijacking of Civil Discourse on Israel and How to Rescue It; An Imam at a Bernie Rally Had Called for the Destruction of Israel

From Ian:

Israelophobia and the West: The Hijacking of Civil Discourse on Israel and How to Rescue It

The new Jerusalem Center publication Israelophobia and the West exposes and evaluates the parallel phenomena of unprecedented anti-Semitic assaults against Jews in the West while simultaneously demonizing the Jewish State. It further exposes the deceptive representation of anti-Semitic rhetoric as legitimate political criticism of Israel. A special dialogue: Prof. Alan Dershowitz - Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard Law School; Ben-Dror Yemini - Israeli journalist at Yediot Ahronot; Moderated by Dan Diker.

Imported Antisemitism and Those Who Support It

A 2014 survey of antisemitism by the US Anti-Defamation League (ADL) covered 100 countries. It found that all the countries in the top 10 most antisemitic locations were in the Middle East or north Africa region, with an overall figure of 73%. The West Bank and Gaza came at the top, with 93% of Palestinians expressing antisemitic views.

A smaller survey of 19 countries published by the ADL in the following year found that Muslim populations in general had the highest levels of antisemitism in Europe:
For the first time, the ADL poll measured Muslim attitudes in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the U.K. An average of 55 percent of Western European Muslims harbored anti-Semitic attitudes. Acceptance of anti-Semitic stereotypes by Muslims in these countries was substantially higher than among the national population in each country, though lower than corresponding figures of 75 percent in 2014 for Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

In the United States, a 2017 report on antisemitism in general, identified much of the hatred as coming from the Muslim community, notably on college campuses:
It is particularly disturbing that anti-Semitism appears to be relatively common in the American Muslim community, including among its leaders.

Muslim expression of anti-Semitic views has become especially common on American college campuses.

Several Muslim attacks on Jews, synagogues and more are listed in the report. Here, anti-Jewish prejudice is, as often as not, conflated with anti-zionist ideology and activism. Again, that distortion, in turn, leads many people, most often on the left, to indulge Muslim antisemitism, to join Islamic protests, and even, as Britain's Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn did for many years, to call Muslim terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah "friends".

Some anti-zionism is bolstered by the widespread rationalization that Palestinian resistance to Israel is in harmony with one's own secular political convictions. Palestinians and their supporters across the Islamic world are thought to be protesting and fighting for nationalistic, anti-colonial, and economic motives combined with an anti-apartheid pro-refugee set of priorities. Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organization's leading party, for example, is proclaimed as a "secular, nationalist" entity. The first article in the PLO's 1964 Covenant reads: "Palestine is an Arab homeland bound by strong Arab national ties to the rest of the Arab Countries and which together form the great Arab homeland."

Israel and the Great Powers: The Unsung Cold War Role

According to all elements of the U.S. intelligence apparatus, information received from the Israelis was unique in its detail and the subjects it shed light on, areas that for years were obscured from the West. Based on the intelligence provided, Washington was able to draw a detailed and fairly accurate picture of the structure and deployment of a substantial part of the Soviet Union's strategic missile divisions.[26]

How did the Israelis pull it off? Retracing the exact steps of clandestine activities is difficult, but one can reconstruct what likely transpired based on information made public after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Israeli agents who understood the Soviet bureaucracy in Eastern Europe became keenly aware of a major flaw in the system. The tendency to hoard information—itself a symptom of an obsession with secrecy—created an information glut in which untold numbers of paper-form military records were filed and stored. The more this information multiplied, the harder it became to keep track of. At the same time, Israeli spies managed to obtain the identities of several former members of the Soviet military and security establishments who had intimate knowledge of their government's missile capabilities. When these people were no longer in their positions—which undoubtedly meant the authorities paid less attention to them—it was easier for Israeli agents to convince them to share their technical knowledge. This was where Israeli intelligence reached its Cold War peak and aligned most closely with the intelligence goals of the West.
Conclusion

For many years, the Soviet ballistic missile threat was relatively low on the list of Israel's immediate security priorities. After all, Moscow's weapons were not aimed at Jerusalem or Tel Aviv but at New York and Washington. Israel had always been more interested in the MiG fighter's maneuverability and the T-class tank's endurance. So the effort to collect data on Soviet missile capabilities marked an important shift. Israeli intelligence moved from tactical concerns to a broader strategic narrative as Jerusalem understood that its long-term security interests were achieved not by narrow intelligence collection but by undermining the country that acted as the patron and arms supplier of its enemies.

And while the Cold War is over, and Israel no longer finds itself trapped between two rival superpower blocs, it continues to provide first hand and invaluable lessons on waging war and preserving national defense.

Fictional Nazi thrillers bring real-life drama to cautionary tales

Hollywood mustered its creative forces in the 1940s when Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany sought to conquer the world, with Humphrey Bogart standing up to the fascist regime in “Casablanca” and director Ernst Lubitsch mocking it and its dictator in “To Be or Not to Be.”

More than 70 years later, an increase in hate crimes, emboldened white supremacists and political upheaval have prompted TV and film makers to revisit Nazism. The works are varied and their receptions mixed, but they share a goal: to use fiction to learn from 20th-century totalitarianism and its horrors, including the Holocaust that claimed the lives of 6 million Jews.

In Amazon’s “Hunters,” an unlikely group of 1970s New Yorkers target German Nazis who have brought their genocidal quest to America. HBO’s “The Plot Against America” is based on Philip Roth’s novel that posits a repressive early 1940s US government led by Charles Lindbergh, the real-life aviation hero and anti-Semitic isolationist. The Oscar-winning “Jojo Rabbit” is in Lubitsch’s satirical mode, deepened by tragedy.

Preceding them was “The Man in the High Castle,” the 2015-19 Amazon series based on Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi novel of the same name about a fallen America ruled by WWII victors Germany and Japan.

The war has had other screen comebacks. During the political and social turmoil of the mid- to late-1960s, cynical and irreverent films including “King Rat” and “What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?” were released alongside traditional battle epics such as the star-laden “Battle of the Bulge.”

“We seem to have waves of interest in both the Holocaust and World War II, not always at the same time,” said Sharon Willis, a film scholar and professor at the University of Rochester in New York. “I feel that, collectively, we return to these terrains when we have some kind of problem to work out that we think is related to them.”