Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

The Problem with Creating Palestine on Jewish Land (Judean Rose)

Trump’s peace plan for Israel has a major flaw: it assumes the Arabs can govern themselves, when they have proven just the opposite, and it rewards them for their failures in statecraft, with a state on Jewish land. The Arabs, meantime, are not only an abject failure at self-government, their economy is a failure, too. They exist by the grace of UNRWA/EU life support. Despite these facts, Trump's deal of the century calls on Israel to write off territory in order to create the State of Palestine on Jewish land, along Israel's border.

It is true that this state would exist on land already Judenrein, a place where no Jews live, land that is under PA autonomy. It must be stated that, nonetheless, this is Jewish land.

Trump’s deal is not new. It is a reprise of the land for peace formula. In this tired paradigm, Israel offers Jewish land to the Arabs in exchange for peace. But the peace somehow never arrives.

The narrative which accompanies the land for peace formula on the face of it looks as though both sides give something up. The Arabs, their arms, the Jews their land. Giving away precious land stands as a statement that Israel cares more about peace than land--a statement forced on Israel by outside parties. But what land for peace really represents, is Jews ceding Jewish land to the PA, a foreign, latter-day terrorist entity.

In land for peace the Jews are told to take a leap of faith and hope for the best. The outcome has, historically, never been favorable to the Jews.

Some would say that Israel has already ceded the territory in question, when it gave the Arabs autonomy. Self-rule and a territory free of Jews! Is this not, already, a de facto state?

But no, a state it was never meant to be. What Begin offered with autonomy, was something less than a state: the right to self-determination, but never a state:

We do not even dream of the possibility---if we are given the chalice to withdraw our military forces from Judea, Samaria and Gaza--of abandoning those areas to the control of the murderous organization that is called the PLO. . . . This is history's meanest murder organization, except for the armed Nazi organizations.

And of course, in the light of day, autonomy is a failure. The PA government is corrupt, the people poor, their economy dependent on outside support. From Wikipedia (emphasis added):

In 2013, $1.1 billion was contributed to UNRWA, of which $294 million was contributed by the United States, $216.4 million from the EU, $151.6 million from Saudi Arabia, $93.7 million from Sweden, $54.4 million from Germany, $53 million from Norway, $34.6 million from Japan, $28.8 million from Switzerland, $23.3 million from Australia, $22.4 million from the Netherlands, $20 million from Denmark, $18.6 million from Kuwait, $17 million from France, $12.3 million from Italy, $10.7 million from Belgium as well as $10.3 million from all other countries.
In 2016, the United States contributed $368 million to the agency, and $350 million in 2017, but has cut around one third of its contributions for 2018. In January 2018, the United States withheld $65 million, roughly half the amount due in the month, again creating a financial crisis for UNRWA. Belgium and Netherlands plan to increase their contributions to UNRWA.
In August 2018, the United States cut its annual contribution of $360m to UNWRA. In mid-2019, Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland temporarily suspended funding to UNRWA. In December 2019, Netherlands restored funding to UNWRA, increasing its donation by €6 million for 2019, to €19 million.

If the Arabs have been unable from the 1977 Autonomy Plan until now, to either effectively rule themselves or build an independent economy, even with a never-ending pipeline of foreign money, how will Trump’s money make any difference at all? The peace has never arrived because the Arabs do not want lots of money and some Jewish land for their state. They want all the land, and they want the Jews gone. Ignoring these realities, Trump asks Israel to pretend that this time, with his plan, things will be different: the Arabs will build Canada on Israel's border, bearing nothing but maple syrup and goat's milk fudge. At least that is the message conveyed to the people of Israel by President Trump by way of Ambassador Friedman:

“I understand them, but [we are saying] you don’t have to live with that Palestinian state, you have to live with the Palestinian state when the Palestinians become Canadians. And when the Palestinians become Canadians all your issues should go away.”

Alas and alack, the Palestinian Authority will never be other than what it is, the "meanest murder organization" save the Nazis: a terrorist regime. In spite of this, Trump asks Israel to look the other way, to give the PA a state on Jewish land, a state that will sit on Israel’s border, run by the democratically-elected leader of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, the man behind the Munich Massacre who succeeded Arafat, a president in the 15th year of a four-year term.

Abbas is Abbas. The same Abbas who uses his platform to incite the masses against the Jews.

Abbas has not changed and will not change.

Now we do not say that the PA, under Abbas, has no achievements. But unfortunately, the greatest achievement of the PA under Mahmoud Abbas has been ensuring the continuation of the pay-to-slay salaries to terrorists in Israeli prisons, in contravention of the Taylor Force Act. In its insistence on giving financial incentives to terror, the PA thumbs its nose at Taylor Force, Donald Trump, and America, and should this peace deal go forward, Trump will effectively be looking the other way.

This is quite bad enough. But Trump also asks Israel to reward the PA, to give them yet more Jewish land. Abbas and his PA, however, have never acted in good faith. They are bad actors and should not be rewarded, let alone with de jure recognition as a genuine state, even if they lie some more and say they'll behave. There is no doubt that hiding behind any such lies, the true intention of any such state is to continue as a belligerent welfare project perched along Israel’s border, poised to strike at the Jews.

Trump’s plan of partial Israeli sovereignty and a new Arab state, like all the plans before it, is not really new. It’s just more of the same salami tactics, no different really from the creation of Transjordan as the national homeland for the Arabs on 78% of the land that the British had already promised the Jews.

As the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. From the time of the Brits, and way before, the world has pressured Israel to cut up its body like an ever-shrinking salami, to feed bits and pieces to the wolves outside the door, as it waits for a peace that never quite arrives.

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The 1931 British Census of Palestine includes an interesting observation:

In addition, however, to the development of this complex of religious communities, a political development has taken place, and the Jewish Community existing as legal entity, and created historically under a principle of religious freedom, has now a specifically political character. The following quotation descriptive of the community is extracted from Command Paper No. 1 700 of the 1st of July, 1922 :-

. . . The Jewish community in Palestine has its own political organs : an elected assembly for the direction of its domestic concerns elected councils in the towns : and an organization for the control of its schools. It has its elected Chief Rabbinate and Rabbinical Council for the direction of its religious affairs. The business is conducted in Hebrew as a vernacular language, and a Hebrew Press serves its " needs . It has its distinctive intellectual life and displays consider " able economic activity. This community, then, with its town and " country population, its political, religious and social organizations, " its own language, its own customs, its own life, has, in fact,' national ' " characteristics."

In fact, the Jewish Community is a " nationality ". The consciousness of the existence of this "nationality " has led the non-Jewish religious communities to a vague conception of an Arab "nationality ". This Arab " nationality " has no legal existence since there is no Arab community in any formal sense. Its basis is perhaps best described as an awareness, on the part of members of some of the non-Jewish religious communities, of the possibility of common factors in the aims of the several communities. This awareness found its expression in a request during the preparations for the census from the Arab Census Committee that persons enumerated at the census should be given the opportunity of declaring an Arab " nationality ".

While this is speaking about “nationality” from a legal perspective, realizing that the Jews of Palestine had even in 1922 already become a cohesive community that acts and self-governs like a nation, it is striking that it notes that there is no similar Arab consciousness of nationality.

Of course, the word “Palestinian” is not mentioned. They were taking about a general Arab nationality, not specifically Palestinian Arab national feelings, which of course virtually did not exist at the time.

05/13 Links Pt1: The long arm of the 1975 UN declaration "Zionism equals Racism"; International Kangaroo Court to Investigate Israel for War Crimes

From Ian:

The long arm of the 1975 UN declaration "Zionism equals Racism"

On the 37th anniversary of the Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass), the UN General Assembly declared that Zionism is racism and a form of racial discrimination (Z=R) when it adopted Resolution 3379. The resolution, which passed on November 10, 1975, was part of an organized global campaign by the Soviets and the Arab states to delegitimize the State of Israel, after an abortive attempt to expel her from the UN.

On the same day, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3376, creating an Assembly Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. Sixteen of the original 20 members on the Assembly committee did not have diplomatic relations with Israel, and some had never acknowledged Israel’s right to exist. [1]

The Z=R resolution attracted worldwide attention to Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination.” guaranteeing Israel would be viewed as a racist state the international community would have to confront. Although the resolution was abrogated in 1991, depriving it of legal status, the hostility it generated toward Israel in most UN member nations, and in the UN’s own institutions continues unabated. [2].

No Longer Just a Common Reprobate
Israel was “no longer among the ordinary evil-doers of this world, all of whom at one time or another attack and harm civilian populations, oppress minorities, and institute exclusive immigration laws and monopolistic religious laws.” wrote Ehud Sprinzak, a Hebrew University political science professor. Israel’s crimes were committed “as part of an entire ideological system” and therefore every Israeli government action was racist and “antihumanistic.”

Israel had gone from being a legitimate national liberation movement to one that opposed the rightful aspirations of other nations and peoples. The UN General Assembly provided the stage and a guilt free path, assuming one was needed, for antisemites and antisemitism at the UN [3]

Even more insidious, the resolution went to the heart of Israel’s right to exist, opined Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine. Israel was denounced not only “as an illegitimate entity,” but, “the very idea of a sovereign Jewish state in the Middle East (Zionism), let alone the actuality of one, no matter what its boundaries might be, was by definition declared criminal (racist)…. Israel could only cease to be criminal if it ceased to be both Jewish and sovereign—if, in other words, it ceased to exist. Returning to the boundaries of 1967 or even the boundaries of 1948 would make not the slightest difference. For the resolution did not concern boundaries or occupied territories; it concerned the right of a sovereign Jewish state of any size or shape to exist in the Middle East.” [4]

International Kangaroo Court to Investigate Israel for War Crimes

According to the ICC's charter, the Court cannot investigate the conduct of non-signatory states of the 1998 Rome Statute that established the Court. Israel, like the U.S., is not a signatory of the statute.

Bensouda, by accepting the Palestinian Authority (PA) as plaintiff, further violates the Rome Statute: the ICC is only permitted to investigate allegations brought by a sovereign state. There is no State of Palestine. There are no established boundaries of any possible future Palestinian state. There is no population of a sovereign state to act as a plaintiff....

Bensouda's decision appears to undercut the ICC's already damaged reputation that it is neither independent nor impartial. The ICC's budget is limited and increasingly hostage to the UNGA. The UN also appoints the ICC's panel of judges, an intrinsically political process, subject to bloc voting in the UNGA.

The spokesman for the 45-member PA Executive Committee that briefed the ICC is Dr. Ghazi Hamad, deputy foreign minister of the terrorist group Hamas, which is unquestionably dedicated to destroying Israel. The committee also includes representatives of two other terrorist organizations besides Hamas, namely, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF).

A recent Jordanian newspaper article reinforces the claim that Bensouda secretly colluded with the PA to target Israel. This collusion between Bensouda and the PA may explain the optimism of longtime Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat that the ICC's investigation will ultimately be successful.

Bensouda has already proved her bias by her conduct in a previous investigation of baseless charges of systemic human rights abuses by British military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq.

New report traces how European money makes its way to terrorists

Money donated by European governments and private individuals is making its way into the coffers of terrorist organizations, a new report from the Strategic Affairs Ministry warns.

The ministry issued the report after the European Union announced it would be funding Palestinian "civil society organizations," even if they include members who support terrorism.

According to the report's findings, Palestinian activists have established a way of securing European monetary donations that allow them to carry out terrorist activity in addition to civil society work.

"The links to civil society entities in the west allows them a way of securing financial assistance that they could not receive any other way," the report states.

In the past two years, the Shin Bet security agency has exposed a number of incidents in which Hamas took control of money belonging to aid organizations that are active in the Gaza Strip, and in some cases used them for military purposes against Israel.

One notable example was a case of European donations that went to fund terrorists involved in the murder of Rina Schnerb in the summer of 2019. Samar Arbid, head of the cell that killed Schnerb, 17, and wounded her brother in an attack at the Danny Spring in Samaria, played a key role in an organization named Addameer, which is defined as "active in human rights."

Other member of the same cells earned a living from European government donations to "civil society groups."

Last Thursday, Israel reprimanded Emmanuel Joffre, head of an EU delegation to Israel, for the announcement that the funding would continue.

The Jerash UNRWA camp in Jordan is a terrible place. We’ve reported about it for years.

The far-Left Israeli site +972 has finally noticed it as well. Here’s what it tweeted:

Jerash refugee camp is home to an estimated 30,000 Palestinians whose elders fled or were expelled from Gaza in 1967, after Israel occupied the territory.https://t.co/mVLb0oe8sI
— +972 Magazine (@972mag) May 12, 2020

No one was expelled from Gaza in 1967. Some 12,000 Gazans went quite voluntarily to Jordan to avoid living under Jewish rule (which is funny, since they also claim they want to “return” to Israel) and thousands more went to the West Bank, with Israel’s cooperation.

The article itself doesn’t use the word “expelled.” And it is pretty accurate in mentioning how bad things are in Jerash.

Based on a 2013 report by the Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies — the latest UNRWA study released on the socio-economic conditions of Palestinian refugees in Jordan — refugees who were displaced (either for the first or second time in 1967) from Gaza and their descendants are more than three times as likely to be among the most impoverished, living on less than $1.25 a day. Over half of the camp’s refugees have an income below the national poverty line of JD 814 ($1,148). Unemployment rates in the camp are close to 40 percent compared to 14 percent for Palestinian refugees in Jordan, according to a 2018 study by the Palestinian Return Centre.

The camp’s residents were also already facing a myriad of public health issues prior to the pandemic. More than 65 percent of the buildings contain asbestos and corrugated zinc, and have not been overhauled since their construction. There is limited access to clean water and a “reeking sewage system,” states the Palestinian Return Centre report. Garbage is strewn in the streets, as UNRWA had to reduce its trash collection after the United States slashed its funding to the relief agency in 2018.

The article even mentions that Jordan refuses to give the Gazans citizenship as it has done to the vast majority of Palestinians in Jordan.

But in the end, it doesn’t call on Jordan to give citizenship to Jerash residents. it doesn’t call on Jordan to at least extend basic medical services to them, or to fix the laws that don’t allow residents to build or to address any of the other myriad issues that non-citizen Palestinians have in Jordan. It doesn’t ask anything from Jordan at all.

The article concludes this way:

The COVID-19 crisis is highlighting the need for long-term, structural solutions when it comes to the rights and needs of Palestinian refugees — ones that not only respond to their humanitarian and economic difficulties, but that also address the root of their problems: their initial displacement.

There you go. It is Israel’s fault that Arabs in the south fled in 1948 to Gaza and that some of them then decided to move to Jordan in 1967. Egypt mistreated Gazans for 19 years and Jordan for the next 53 years, but that is all irrelevant, because Israel is obligated to commit national suicide by welcoming millions of Arabs who never saw Palestine to move into houses that mostly don’t exist. Only Israel has responsibility to fix the issue of Arabs mistreating other Arabs.

To the Left, Arabs simply have no responsibility.

Which is racist.

One would think that if any Palestinian government agency is trustworthy, it would be the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. After all, they should be dealing with hard numbers and facts.

That is naive.

Every year, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics issues a population report on the anniversary of Israel's founding - what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe.

In 2006, it wrote. "The estimated number of Palestinians who were expelled as a result of the Nakba is about 750,000 persons in addition to approximately 350,000 persons in 1967. "

There are at least four lies in this sentence alone.

* Most of the Arabs who left in 1948 fled, they were not expelled.

* There were not 750,000 refugees in 1948 from areas won by Israel. Some 200,000 "refugees" were locals who took advantage of the free food offered by UNRWA and its precursor.

* None of the Arabs who left in 1967 were expelled; they fled to Jordan and Egypt because they didn't want to live under Jewish rule, although thousands of wanted terrorists fled to avoid prison in Israel. Israel did destroy three villages on the Latrun corridor because of their strategic position but it offered compensation to the residents; it did not force any to move to Jordan. Israel gave the people who fled a number of months to voluntarily return, as well.

* There were not close to 350,000 who fled in 1967; the UN estimated 200,000.

If you look at this year's Nakba report, you see something else that is interesting:

Nakba in Palestine describes a process of ethnic cleansing in which an unarmed nation was destroyed and its population displaced systematically by gangs and individuals from all over the world. The Nakba resulted in the displacement of 800 thousand Palestinians out of the 1.4 million Palestinians who lived in historical Palestine in 1948 in 1,300 villages and towns.

Once you get beyond the "ethnic cleansing by [Jewish] gangs" lie, you see that the 750,000 number has magically become 800,000.

Perhaps, you can say, they are including thousands of Arabs who were displaced from their homes in 1948 but remained inside the 1949 armistice lines. But a look at their 2016 report shows that this is not the case:

In 1948, 1.4 million Palestinians lived in 1,300 Palestinian towns and villages all over historical Palestine. More than 800,000 of the population were driven out of their homeland to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, neighboring Arab countries, and other countries of the world.

Thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their homes but stayed within the Israeli-controlled 1948 territory.

So besides the not insignificant fact that the PCBS blatantly lies about statistics, it inflates its own numbers as time goes by!

What kind of a statistics agency would publish numbers that contradict its own previous data? A Palestinian one, where propaganda and politics is always more important than telling the truth.

If you trust their current statistics, here's an interesting finding:

Even as they scream "genocide" and "holocaust" and "ethnic cleansing," the number of Palestinians worldwide has increased by a factor of nine since 1948. But in Israel, it has increased even faster, from 140,000 to 1.6 million - or about 11.5 times! Somehow, those racist Jews are allowing Israeli Arabs to thrive even more than the Palestinian Authority does.

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This was a fun conversation.

Apologies, for some reason the sound did not work for the YouTube clip at the end where Pessin is the "Genius" on David Letterman. You can see the entire clip here:

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05/12 Links Pt2: Does media bias against Israel still matter?; Protecting Itself from Covid-19, Israel Shows Cohesion; GWU International Affairs School Names BDS Supporter as Interim Dean

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Does media bias against Israel still matter?

If media bias like this doesn't impact American public opinion about Israel, should anyone bother protesting it?

In the first place, it is vital that a newspaper like the Times, which calls itself the nation's "paper of record" and which does devote more resources to reporting foreign news than any other outlet, not get away with biased coverage.

Straight news reporting without a heaping serving of bias is a thing of the past at the Times. Their animus against the Trump administration has, whether or not you agree with them about the president, led the paper and other mainstream outlets to discard even the pretense of objective reporting with editorializing in headlines and in the text of articles becoming so routine as to be hardly worth protesting anymore.

Still, that doesn't absolve those of us who still care about ethics in journalism from the duty to point out such egregious practices.

It's true that most Americans couldn't care less what the Times, CNN or other legacy media outfits say about any topic. But when it comes to one particular group, what the media, and in particular, The New York Times, says about Israel, matters a great deal.

While support for Israel among Americans, in general, has risen in the past decades, it has declined among Jews with a growing split between their views and those of Israelis. There are a number of reasons for this, including assimilation and the resultant shifting demography. Some of it also has to do with politics, as many in a group that overwhelmingly votes Democratic has followed the rest of their party on this issue.

But there's more at play here than just that.

We know that praise for Israel's underdog victories in its struggles for survival and positive events like the 1976 Entebbe rescue made Jews everywhere feel better about themselves and more connected to Israel.

The opposite is also true.

While some Jews are outraged by biased coverage that unfairly depicts Israel as a villain, others internalize the calumnies and distance themselves from the Jewish state. An average consumer of news may not be influenced by the Times. But a not-insignificant portion of American Jewry still regards the newspaper with the sort of veneration that observant Jews have for religious texts. The Times has been assaulting the Jewish community with the prejudices of its publishers, editors and reporters since the days when, as Dermer rightly notes, it "buried" the story of the Holocaust.

Media bias may not have turned Americans against Israel, but it has been doing a bang-up job of turning Jews against each other for decades.

David Collier: How the Jewish Diaspora let down its own children

Where do we sit now? What happened?

The current coalition is a national unity coalition. It comprises the Likud and the centrist Blue and White Party, sitting with a couple of allies from the Labour Party. It has an impressive majority. Such as union should find widespread support in the UK Jewish establishment. The only semi-significant Jewish voice on the left not in the coalition is Yair Lapid. Outside of Meretz none of the parties support dividing Jerusalem, none support giving up the Jordan Valley and whilst some give lip service to theoretical negotiations, none are emphatically behind the Oslo vision anymore. Not one.

As Meretz no longer calls itself a Zionist party. There is absolutely NO Zionist support in Israel for the 2SS of the Oslo Process. So just which Israel are these signatures asking the Board of Deputies to speak against? All of it? Every single Zionist party?

Israelis know the truth. They were there when Barak was rejected in 2000, they remember the failure of Olmert’s deal. They understand that the factional infighting in the Palestinian street leaves them without a partner. Why didn’t we follow them through these experiences?

When Muslim representative bodies enter Parliament, most don’t mince words. There is support for BDS, the Right of Return, Jerusalem to be taken away from Israel and so on. They are not shy. Our MPs on the one hand are hearing a persistent demonisation of Israel from constituents that dwarf the number of Jews in the UK. On the other, our representatives keep mumbling about a ‘viable negotiated settlement’ that isn’t realistic and few in Israel believe in.

The PSC, PRC, Amnesty – all of these groups are also inside Parliament. What is the best the Jewish organisations can do to counter the smear of ‘Apartheid, racist, colonial, genocidal, ethnic cleansing’? Is it really to offer support for a ‘two state negotiated settlement’ with a people that want to see you destroyed?

No wonder our youth live in Narnia. We let the Israelis walk on alone and we don’t even make sense to ourselves. Which organisational body is out there telling the truth – that the negotiated 2SS is currently dead – and Israel is looking for a way forward? Because this is what we should have been screaming for a decade. Like a drumbeat. Our children would have picked up the message.

Instead – they mumble about negotiated settlements. If this is what we have spent the last decade teaching our youth, this letter should come as no surprise to anyone.

These kids are a product of our schools, our synagogues and our youth groups. Rather than look to them for an explanation, we really need to turn our attention to the organisational bodies that are meant to teach them. For this letter is a catastrophic indictment of all of them.

Protecting Itself from Covid-19, Israel Shows Cohesion

Israel's battle against the Covid-19 pandemic has not been perfect, but its overall strategy and leadership has been strikingly effective - as is borne out by the current death toll which compares extraordinarily well to much of the rest of the world. Israeli society is supposed to be perpetually tense and permanently riven - a country hopelessly divided between left and right, Jewish and Arab, religious and secular. You name it, we fight about it. Except, facing down Covid-19, we don't.

Several Israeli Arab communities, realizing they had high infection rates, closed off their own entries and exits to thwart a further spread. IDF Homefront Command officers have described the high degree of cooperation and appreciation they've encountered when helping Bedouin communities in the south deal with their Covid-19 cases.

It's only when you talk to relatives and friends abroad, and realize how unnerved some of them are by the way their leaders, authorities and citizenries have been dealing, or failing to deal with Covid-19, that you realize the relative common sense demonstrated here is not necessarily the norm elsewhere.

Lebanon is suffering from an economic meltdown, that has become a looming catastrophe because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The New York Times covers it...with a curious omission.

Lebanon’s economic problems have been building for years. A nation of 5.4 million on the Mediterranean with a variety of religious sects and large groups of Syrian and Palestinian refugees, Lebanon has long suffered from internal conflict and spillover from the wars afflicting its neighbors. Its historically weak government has relied on increasing amounts of debt to pay its bills, while failing to carry out reforms that could have bolstered its economy or unlocked international aid. That has made it the third most indebted state in the world, and rampant corruption has further siphoned funds from state coffers.

Not once in the article does it mention Hezbollah's strangehold on the country and its fealty not to Lebanon but to Iran.

Lebanese media covers this angle:

The government led by Hassan Diab will not succeed in rescuing the Lebanese economy as long as its touted reforms are tailored to suit the needs of Hezbollah and its regional allies – and as long as the Prime Minister’s No 1 priority is to remain in power at any cost. This government is essentially a fig leaf for a coalition of political parties led by Hezbollah, an entity that is loyal to the Iranian regime in Tehran.

With Hezbollah being an important weapon in its arsenal, Tehran has two objectives that it is determined to achieve in Lebanon. First, it intends to help consolidate Hezbollah’s dominance over the country by overturning its banking system, market economy, political system and the constitution. Second, it hopes to eliminate all possibilities of a popular uprising demanding reform and accountability, as this could not only topple the corrupt ruling class in Beirut but also expose Hezbollah’s power structure to major risks – a red line for Tehran.

It is clear to all sides that there is no way to rescue Lebanon from collapse except through serious negotiations with the IMF, which would unlock external funds conditioned on serious reforms.

Hezbollah has rejected Beirut’s co-operation with the organisation except on its own terms, endorsed by President Aoun and Mr Bassil; the latter is known to hold the keys to Lebanon’s energy sector. In other words, this axis is bent on cherry-picking only that part of the IMF’s advice which suits it, while preventing any scrutiny of the government’s books, especially in the energy sector that has bankrupted the state.

The key to foreign aid is clear: serious negotiations must be held with the IMF with a proven commitment to comprehensive reforms – not selective adjustments that overlook certain sectors for political reasons.

Arab editorial cartoonists are also clued in to what the New York Times ignores. The caption here says "Hezbollah's weapons drag Lebanon's economy into the abyss."

Iran is holding Lebanon hostage, and that includes the economy. It is astonishing, although not surprising, that the New York Times does not want to even give Hezbollah's role in Lebanon's problems a passing reference.

(h/t EBoZ)

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College threatens professor over "Islamist terror" question, backs off when faced with legal challenge

This story has a happier ending but it should never have happened to begin with.

Nicholas Damask, chair of the political science department at Arizona’s Maricopa County Community College, has a world politics class that includes a module called “Islamic Terrorism.” In that module students were asked whom terrorists “strive to emulate,” which Islamic verses encourage terrorism, and when terrorism is justified in Islam.

One student (whom I bet is not a Muslim) complained that this was disrespectful to Islam. Unbelievably, the college agreed, and wrote one of the most craven apologies I've ever seen:

Earlier this week, a student at Scottsdale Community College took a quiz as part of the class coursework. The student expressed concern over the wording of three questions related to Islam on the quiz.
SCC senior leadership has reviewed the quiz questions and agrees with the student that the content was inaccurate, inappropriate, and not reflective of the inclusive nature of our college. SCC deeply apologizes to the student and to anyone in the broader community who was offended by the material.
SCC Administration has addressed with the instructor the offensive nature of the quiz questions and their contradiction to the college’s values. The instructor will be apologizing to the student shortly, and the student will receive credit for the three questions. The questions will be permanently removed from any future tests.
We applaud the student for bringing this to our attention – and encourage any student or employee to speak out.
SCC does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability or age in our programs or activities. We value inclusiveness because we all benefit by embracing a diversity of voices, viewpoints, and experiences. SCC cultivates success when individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds are respected and empowered to contribute.
Chris Haines
Interim President
Scottsdale Community College

Professor Damask felt that he was being targeted and that his own job was in jeopardy for teaching the course his way - and there was nothing inaccurate about his course from what I can see.

As The College Fix reports, "The college committed the trifecta of censorship with this course of action, violating not only the First Amendment and core tenets of academic freedom but also state law protecting faculty against compelled expression of 'a particular view.'"

Only after the threat of legal action did the college apologize.

...I am troubled by what appears to be a rush to judgement in how the college responded to the controversy and the apparent failure to follow policy and procedure in addressing both the student’s concerns and the faculty member’s rights. I apologize, personally, and on behalf of the Maricopa Community Colleges, for the uneven manner in which this was handled and for our lack of full consideration for our professor’s right of academic freedom.

To avoid rushing to judgment a second time, I am announcing the immediate independent investigation of the facts related to this situation. I expect this to be completed with all deliberate speed. Upon conclusion of the investigation, I will ensure appropriate accountability wherever any failures occur. Also, to clear up misinformation, the MCCCD Governing Board is not currently involved in an investigation of the professor, nor does it plan to initiate one. Furthermore, it is important to note that the faculty member involved is not in jeopardy of losing his position.

Today, I am announcing the formation of the Committee on Academic Freedom, to be led by Provost Karla Fisher with members identified by the end of the week, to champion academic freedom education and training and to resolve academic freedom disputes in the hope of ensuring this fundamental academic value is better understood and realized alongside our longstanding commitment to the value of inclusion.

It should never have come to that. The reflexive idea that the questions were anti-Muslim without discussing this with the professor, and the pressure for him to apologize, is outrageous. To think that only the threat of a lawsuit made the college do the right thing does not say much about the value of the apology.

(h/t Andrew Pessin)

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05/12 Links Pt1: David Collier: Palestinian refugees and UNRWA – it is time to tell the truth; Lag B’Omer Amid COVID-19; Israeli Soldier Killed by Rock Thrown During West Bank Arrest Op

From Ian:

David Collier: Palestinian refugees and UNRWA – it is time to tell the truth

UNRWA has to go

UNRWA, and much of the apparatus of the UN these days exist inside a paradigm of apology. The end goal is a setting back of the clocks to before the 1947 partition plan. It is no coincidence that the annual UN ‘day of solidarity’ with the Palestinian people is on the 29th November, the day of the vote on partition. Why on that day, because they the UN are sorry it happened. Despite western pressure everything the UN does still treats ‘Zionism as racism’. This message is carried throughout the Palestinian movements and NGOs. The right of return is part of the way the ‘clocks’ get reset, the Jewish state is undone and Palestine – from the river to the sea – becomes ‘free’.

UNRWA, rather than working to help or assist in refugee resettlement, became a pillar in the Palestinian resistance – schools funded by the west, teaching children why they should join the armed struggle against the Jews. UNRWA must be dismantled as part of a comprehensive reworking of the possible ending of this conflict.

The Palestinians themselves are caught in an eternal prison predicated on a non-existent right that must be unravelled. A force created solely for the purpose of destroying Israel against a state of Israel that will not be destroyed. Perpetual statelessness forced on people who should have been given a new home 70 years ago. An identity that is today more virtual than real holding back Palestinians in Ramallah and Jericho from having the freedom of being able to make peace with their neighbours.
The farce of the UNRWA refugee

Look at Jordan. Over one third of Palestinian ‘refugees’ live in Jordan. They have lived there all their lives. They have Jordanian citizenship, they vote in elections and travel freely. The vast majority do not live in camps, with many joining the professional ranks of Jordan’s middle class. These are refugees? It is an insult to the millions of real refugees, survivors from war-torn regions, that exist in the world today. Worse still, it is THESE Palestinian refugees, that receive more aid and recognition than any of the others in the world. Ending this farce is a humanitarian objective that everyone on the left should support. Why should those Jordanians, with their Jordanian passports hold back the Palestinians in Bethlehem?

The Palestinian refugee in 2020 simply should not exist. To highlight the absurdity we can use another example:
1. A person who normally resided for just two years in the mandate of Palestine was given the status of Palestinian. As a Palestinian refugee, they are even given special status that makes it hereditary
2. A person who has resided in Lebanon for 70 years, is not given the status of Lebanese. Nor are their children and grandchildren who have lived in Lebanon all their lives. Instead they remain abused and denied their rights by the Lebanese.

UNRWA perpetuates this abuse. UNRWA has to go.

Removing the refugees and UNRWA from the equation
Incredibly, so fully has the ‘peace process’ become embedded into the western mindset this underlying truth – the calling out of the Palestinian refugee as a perpetuated myth forged as a weapon – receives pushback even amongst some Zionists. Yet there will be no solving this conflict until this farce is removed from the Middle East.

The evidence is everywhere. It is why they are not building homes in Gaza or Ramallah. Why those living in PA areas are also called refugees. It is all nonsensical UNLESS you see this for what it is. The Palestinian refugee was born into a paradigm of no to normalisation – and they cannot exist outside of it. If we are to move forward and find any accommodation between the Jews of Jerusalem and the Arabs of Ramallah, we have to end these lies.

Lag B’Omer Amid COVID-19: An Invitation to Civility

Some 2,000 years ago, according to the Talmud, “Rabbi Akiva had twelve thousand pairs of students in an area of land that stretched from Gevat to Antipatris in Judea. It is taught that all of them died from diphtheria in the period from Passover until Shavuot.”

Lacking understanding of the natural causes of epidemics, a moral explanation about human behavior could serve to help to prevent another plague.

The Talmud says that 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva died “because they did not treat each other with respect.” Intriguingly it adds: “And the world was desolate.”

It is most certainly a coincidence that the current terrible pandemic affecting the world happened at the same time of the year. And the correlation between Rabbi Akiva’s students’ behavior toward each other may have nothing to do with the plague’s cause. Yet the images (and the tweets) that will be studied by our descendants hundreds of years down the road will have them ask if our present catastrophe was not largely because we “did not treat each other with respect.”

What the Talmud is unequivocally saying is that lack of mutual respect brings desolation to the world.

COVID-19 may not have much to do with the US cultural and political wars; and certainly with Assad’s crimes in Syria; or violence in Hong Kong, Venezuela, and Chile; or the hundreds of tragic situations around the world where the true root cause of the problem is lack of respect for others.

Scholars have ventured that the Talmudic reference to the plague was not the result of naïveté as a euphemism for the violence committed by human beings. Probably, with that in mind, Jewish tradition eventually instituted a holiday to reflect on what can cause epidemics and bring desolation to the world.

They named the holiday Lag B’Omer. It is, in fact, an invitation to civility that is mostly lost in barbecues, bonfires, bows and arrows, and haircuts. Prevented as we are this year from just burning energy in large outdoor gatherings, we should explore what can change when we treat with respect those with whom we disagree.

Air pollution reduced by 90% after Lag Ba'omer bonfire ban - report

Due to the ban on bonfires during the holiday of Lag Ba'omer, air pollution was reduced by up to 90% across the country, compared to the same date in 2019, the Environmental Protection Ministry reported on Tuesday.

One exception was the Ketura air quality monitor, which registered a 149% increase in air pollution since the same date in 2019, but it seems to be a local event. Tel Aviv registered around an 80% decrease in three monitoring stations, Jerusalem a 69% decrease, and a 70% decrease in Beersheba.

The ban was set to prevent mass gatherings in order to curb the spread of COVID-19.

The ministry informed the public it may download Air in the Environment (Avir Baseviva) and be updated on air quality as monitored across the country.

The problem with the ADL's antisemitism analyses (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

No one says that the ADL has not done good work. Just last month, the ADL pursued the removal of The Sbarro Bomber on Social Media

A notorious terrorist who is on the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists was kicked off of several social media platforms this week after ADL sounded the alarm about her gratuitous, hateful and terrorizing social media presence. ADL provided to Twitter and Instagram information about the social media activities of Ahlam al-Tamimi, an international fugitive wanted for her key role organizing and carrying out Hamas’s 2001 suicide bombing at a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem.

And last week, the ADL joined in criticism of The New York Times for demonizing Israel in what should have been a positive story :

But according to the ADL, the most concerning culprit in the rise of antisemitism is the right-wing, and the individual they blame for that is Donald Trump. In a 2017 Press Release, the ADL reported a 86% spike in antisemitic incidents, during the first 3 months of 2017 alone:

Anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. surged more than one-third in 2016 and have jumped 86 percent in the first quarter of 2017, according to new data from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In its annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents, ADL reports that there has been a massive increase in the amount of harassment of American Jews, particularly since November, and a doubling in the amount of anti-Semitic bullying and vandalism at non-denominational K-12 grade schools.

The press release goes on to make clear that they connect this spike to Trump:

The 2016 presidential election and the heightened political atmosphere played a role in the increase [of antisemitic incidents]. There were 34 incidents linked to the election. For example, in Denver, graffiti posted in May 2016 said “Kill the Jews, Vote Trump.” In November, a St. Petersburg, Fla., man was accosted by someone who told him “Trump is going to finish what Hitler started.”

ADL head Greenblatt had already made abundantly clear what he thought of Trump. In a March 2016 article, he seemed to struggle to support his argument that No, Donald Trump is Not Adolf Hitler:

But while Trump’s stereotyping and bullying are truly troubling, he is not Hitler. He lacks an all-encompassing ideology like Hitler; he commands no paramilitary force like Hitler. He has no organizing principle like Hitler’s anti-Semitism. He has no genocidal ambitions.

Apparently, Greenblatt could not bring himself to just say that Trump was not a racist nor an antisemite.

Antisemitism By The Numbers?

In March 2017, Seth Frantzman -- oped Editor and Middle East affairs analyst at The Jerusalem Post -- took a look at that 86% jump in antisemitic incidents that the ADL reported. Frantzman looked at the data of an ADL Audit: US Anti-Semitic Incidents Surged in 2016-17...

...and makes the following chart of total antisemitic incidents during the Obama presidency, leaving out 2016, since results during that year could be made out to be tainted by the increase in antisemitism during the leadup to the election:

The total number of antisemitic incidents during that 7 year period is 7,034 and Frantzman draws some different conclusions:

o First, where was the outcry, by either the ADL or the media over those over 7,000 cases of antisemitism?

o Over those 84 months of Obama's presidency, that comes out to 84 (83.7) incidents per month during those 7 years -- again, why no outcry?

o Frantzman teases out the number of actual antisemitic assaults during those 7 years, noting the increase in attacks during Obama's last years. The number nearly doubled between 2009 and 2015, while rising from 17 in 2012 to 56 in 2015 (more than tripling) -- yet again, why no outcry?

How Much Antisemitism Can One Person Be Responsible For?

Getting back to that 86% spike the ADL audit found over the first 3 months of 2017, Frantzman critiques it from a different angle in another article: 86% Rise in Antisemitism in America? Half of It Caused by One Jewish Israeli. According to that ADL Audit:

In the first quarter of 2017, preliminary reports of the 541 anti-Semitic incidents included: • 380 harassment incidents, including 161 bomb threats, an increase of 127 percent over the same quarter in 2016;

Frantzman claims that the claimed increase of 86% is overstating the case because one person was responsible for them -- a Jewish Israeli. The 86% is based on the increase in incidents from the first quarter of 2016 (291 cases) to 2017 (541cases) But if you remove those 161 bomb threats, the increase from 2016 (291) to 2017 (380 cases) is 31%.

A 30% increase is still very high, but it is not as staggering as 86%. The ADL report bases its claim of a surge on the increase from 2015 to 2016 of 942 to 1,266 -- an increase of 34%. Frantzman compares the 1,266 in 2016 with the similar 1,239 incidents during the Obama administration and makes the case that there is no surge:

When something is the same as six years ago, it is not a “surge.” It is “historical levels.” When half of the surge in “antisemitism” is caused by a Jewish teen, the data shouldn’t be used for the purposes of discussion. We don’t track racism against black people in America by keeping data on every time a black rapper uses the n-word, do we? We track racism based on actual racist attacks. But when it comes to antisemitism we throw out the rules, and try to record as much as possible, even recording more than 100 incidents of “antisemitism” allegedly caused by a Jewish teen. That data should be thrown out.

Antisemitism As Perception

Lawyer David Bernstein also addresses Correcting the ADL’s False Anti-Semitism Statistic, pointing to the methodology the ADL itself says it uses:

Incidents are defined as vandalism of homes/businesses/public areas, or harassment or assault on individuals or groups, where either 1) circumstances indicate anti-Jewish animus on the part of the perpetrator or 2) the incidents result in Jews perceiving themselves as being victimized due to their Jewish identity. Any vandalism against Jewish religious institutions or cemeteries is also included. [emphasis added]

Bernstein writes that as a result of the increase in "perceived threats" in the Jewish community in 2017, between Trump's election victory and the bomb threats, it is likely that "ambiguous" incidents were reported to the ADL. As examples, Bernstein cites a case of cemetery vandalism that turned out to be a case of old stones falling over and the case of a "drunk and mad" individual with no antisemitic intent, according to the police. The ADL removed the first case from its list, but not the second. In another point, Bernstein notes that when the ADL compares incidents of antisemitism on college campuses, it reports an increase from 108 incidents in 2016 to 204 incidents in 2017, but does not delineate between those by alt-right nationalists who supposedly inspired by Trump and leftist anti-Israel activists, who are not -- allowing Trump to be blamed for all of them.

Lastly, since Bernstein is writing in 2018, he can pick up on a point that is raised by Frantzman and carry it one step further.

While Frantzman in 2017 pointed to the increase in antisemitic assaults during the final years of the Obama administration, Bernstein notes that

despite showing a 57 percent increase in incidents overall, from 1,267 [in 2016] to 1,986 [in 2017], the ADL study shows a 47 percent decrease in physical assaults, from 37 to 19. This is obviously inconsistent with the meme that 2017 saw a surge in violent anti-Semitism. Physical assaults are also the most objective sort of incident to document, which adds to concerns about the robustness of the rest of the data. [emphasis added]

He concludes that he is neither a supporter of Trump nor an apologist for him. Rather, his point is that "the Jewish community’s assessment of the dangers of anti-Semitism should be based on documented facts, not ideology, emotion, partisanship, or panic."

Can Hate Crimes Be On The Rise If Assaults Are Going Down?

Also in 2018 is an article by Robby Soave, a senior editor at Reason, who writes The Media Keeps Saying Anti-Semitism Spiked 57% Under Trump, but That Statistic Is Really Misleading.

He points to an article in The Washington Post that repeats the common accusation that not only is there a major increase in antisemitism, but Trump is to blame:

According to the Anti-Defamation League, the incidence of anti-Semitic hate crimes jumped nearly 60 percent in 2017, the biggest increase since it started keeping track in 1979. What made 2017 so different? It was Trump's first year in office. [emphasis added]

At issue is what the ADL is actually measuring.

The ADL statistic captures anti-Semitic "incidents," which is a much broader category of behavior than "hate crimes" or "attacks." Incidents include things like bullying in schools—which is bad, but usually not indicative of criminal conduct.

There are 2 issues at work here. First of all, do all of the incidents being reported actually qualify as actual "hate crimes" -- or do we now suffer from the domestic equivalent of overusing the accusation of "war crimes"? Secondly, if the results of ADL reports are going to be used to associate these antisemitic attacks on Trump, then a distinction should be made by the ADL to distinguish between right-wing and left-wing antisemitism -- based on the unlikelihood that the left-wing antisemites are taking their cue from Trump.

What Qualifies As Right-Wing Violence, Anyway?

This year, in April, another came out questioning the ADL's methodology. It addresses the issue of perception, but not of the victim of the incident but of the person behind it. In Business Insider, Anthony L. Fisher, their politics columnist, makes a distinction in extremist incidents between "violent incidents committed by people with ties to extremist groups or ideas" vs. "incidents motivated by extremist views where violence actually occurs, is attempted, or is substantially plotted -- but are not actually targeting minorities." Fisher is not arguing with the ADL claim that ultrarightist groups account for a disproportionate number of hate crimes and acts of terror. What he is arguing is that the number is still being inflated. Fisher and his colleagues examined over 500 cases, defining extremist violence as "incidents where police reports, court documents, or news articles presented evidence that the incidents were motivated by extremist viewpoints." They came to the conclusion:

Many of the ADL's 'extremist incidents' are not motivated by bigotry or politics. They're often extremists killing other extremists.

He gives some examples

o A member of a racist extremist group who is a methamphetamine dealer and kills a rival dealer, o A white supremacists who kills either rival white supremacists, or even allies they suspect of being police informants o A former neo-Nazi who killed his roommates when they made fun of his converting to Islam

These may still be classified by the ADL as "extremist killing." --

But by painting its findings with such a broad stroke, the ADL data might lead some to conclude that there are significantly more hate crimes and terrorism in the US than actually transpire. Based on the incidents cited by the ADL, in most years, extremists are just as likely to kill each other, their criminal associates, or their family members as they are to kill people in protected identity groups.

Armed with this distinction, Fisher and his colleagues went through incidents reported over a 10-year time period from 2009 to 2018 and found:

The ADL identified 414 extremist incidents during that 10-year period. Of those, I found just 240 met the criteria that it constituted actually attempted violence and involved a perpetrator with verifiable or self-identified extremist beliefs against a member of a marginalized or targeted group or their property. That's 58% of the ADL's count. [emphasis added]

Fisher, like the other critics, does not see his critique as a way of supporting or advocating for Trump. He sees a need for greater accuracy in the labeling of right-wing extremist violence. Violent extremists generally inspire each other, and the publicity they get in the media is exploited as a recruiting tool. Seen this way, inflated statistics have the potential to embolden and encourage other extremists whose goal is to terrorize the public with the apparent extent of their violence --

It's not dissimilar to ultranationalists cherry-picking statistics regarding violence perpetrated by undocumented immigrants. The bigger the number, the more likely the public is to be cowed by a sense of dread.

Fisher, in particular, makes a point of saying upfront that he is not accusing the ADL of deliberately trying to create a particular impression with their data. Not all of the critics of the ADL's methodology are quite that generous. But the fact remains that similar to human rights groups that maintain a certain "halo effect" giving added validity to their accusations, the ADL, too, gets a certain amount of respect, which attaches itself to the numbers in its reports -- easily turning its data into a political weapon. For example, the radical left-wing group Bend The Arc has decided to helpfully point out "far-right extremists and politicians" and reveal "who's inciting antisemitism."

As an example of their 'work' in ferreting out antisemites, here is an example where Bend The Arc uncovered over 30 antisemites -- at a conservative conference.

We don't need this kind of weaponization of antisemitism by such fringes groups for political purposes, tearing the Jewish community apart. All the more reason for the ADL to be more cautious and take more care in what it counts as antisemitism and how it documents it. As Bernstein pointed out:

the Jewish community’s assessment of the dangers of anti-Semitism should be based on documented facts, not ideology, emotion, partisanship, or panic.

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Of course the new @HRW report is filled with anti-Israel bias, as always

Human Rights Watch issued a new report, Israel: Discriminatory Land Policies Hem in Palestinians: Palestinian Towns Squeezed While Jewish Towns Grow.

As usual with HRW, it plays fast and loose with the facts to make Israel appear to be monstrous.

It starts off with

The Israeli government’s policy of boxing in Palestinian communities extends beyond the West Bank and Gaza to Palestinian towns and villages inside Israel, Human Rights Watch said today. The policy discriminates against Palestinian citizens of Israel and in favor of Jewish citizens, sharply restricting Palestinians’ access to land for housing to accommodate natural population growth.

Decades of land confiscations and discriminatory planning policies have confined many Palestinian citizens to densely populated towns and villages that have little room to expand.

Notice that HRW refers to Israeli Arabs as "Palestinians." As Daled Amos recently showed, the majority of Israeli Arabs do not identify as Palestinian. If anything, HRW is trying to place an artificial distinction between two sets of Israeli citizens more than they accuse Israel of doing!

While the issue of land use in Israel is very complex, and there has been validity to the charge of Israel showing a preference for growth in Jewish communities over the decades, Israel has recently been addressing the issue and putting enormous amounts of time and effort into solving the problem. HRW glosses over, minimizes and ignores these efforts. By saying at the outset, as a fact, that Israel is "boxing in" its Arab communities, HRW is lying, as we will see below.

Another indication of bias comes from this paragraph:

Palestinian citizens of Israel constitute 21 percent of the country’s population, but Israeli and Palestinian rights groups estimated in 2017 that less than 3 percent of all land in Israel falls under the jurisdiction of Palestinian municipalities.

The implication is that Arabs are allocated only one seventh of the land they should have by their population.

However, one cannot compare the land of Arab municipalities with the total land of Israel - because most of the land in Israel is not part of any municipality, Jewish or Arab. Only about 6400 of Israel's 22,000 square kilometers is urban. Which means that the actual percentage of municipal land dedicated to Arab-only towns is over 10%. Furthermore, many Arabs live in "mixed" towns like Lod or Jerusalem or Acre or Haifa making this statistic an even less accurate metric of reality since they aren't "hemmed in" at all and can build and buy real estate exactly like their Jewish neighbors. Additionally, tens of thousands of Bedouin in the Negev do not live in any municipality at all.

By using the 3% figure, HRW is distorting the truth by an order of magnitude.

The bias continues:

Jisr al-Zarqa, between Netanya and Haifa in northwest Israel, is the only Palestinian town in Israel on the Mediterranean coast. Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics lists its population as 14,700. Jisr al-Zarqa, a local council in the Haifa District with a size of about 1,600 dunams, is one of Israel’s poorest towns, with about 80 percent of residents living below the poverty line.

Policies of Israeli governments and institutions under the British mandate dating back almost a century have effectively boxed in its residents. In the early 1920s, the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, drained the swamps, from which local residents derived their livelihood herding buffalos and weaving reed mats, to make room for new Jewish settlements. Residents say they ended with roughly their current plot of land, far less than they had historically lived on.

Again, one can make an argument that Israel hasn't treated the Arabs fairly - but to say that ridding the country of malaria is a bad thing is a fairly ridiculous argument. And it isn't like the Zionists controlled the land in the 1920s; the British were who moved the residents so the swamps could be drained, which is the sort of thing governments do all the time when people are living in a dangerous area. It was the British who decided how much land the residents would have, not the Jews. HRW says none of this.

HRW included an appendix with a letter from the Israel Planning Administration which listed in great detail what Israel was doing in recent years to help Arab residents achieve equality with Jews in regard to land use. Specifically for Jisr al Zarqa, it says:

The plan allocates new development areas, some west of the built-up areas within the municipal boundaries and some east of Road No. 2 and outside the municipal jurisdiction, on land that belongs to the Beit Hanania moshav community. In answer to your question, the added development areas in the west necessitated the advancement of planning measures for zoning changes of “green” areas (a national park, a landscape conservation area, and agricultural land), which are approved as part of national masterplans, to allow residential use on state land for the purpose of developing new residential neighborhoods. The zoning changes were approved by the National Planning and Building Council Subcommittee.

This undermines the entire thrust of HRW's report - the Israel government is not only allocating state land to this community, it is taking land away from a Jewish moshav to give to the Arabs of Jisr al Zarqa.

So when HRW says Israel is "boxing in" Arab communities, it is flatly lying.

The IPA lists everything it has been doing over the past few years:

Of the 132 Arab communities, 119 have current master plans that have been approved, are in the approval process, or are in preparation. These plans cover some 96% of the total population of these communities. The plans form a planning framework that encompasses the entire area of the community and determines zoning distribution for the coming decades as well as future development trajectories (residential, employment, tourism, public buildings, open public spaces and more), and they are made in a process that includes public involvement and participation.

These plans are complex and intricate, given the unique features of Arab communities, which are related to the structure of land ownership: Most of the land in these communities is privately owned, with few landowners in possession of a great deal of land (Some 20% in possession of some 80% of the land).

As a result of this, there are many unutilized agricultural enclaves. In addition, there is a short supply of land for public use, partly due to the inability of local authorities to utilize land for public purposes and authorize infrastructure on privately owned land. Most existing construction is in the ineffective form of diffused single-family dwellings. This precludes large-scale solutions for young couples and features multi-generational construction implemented over the years while forcing the authorities to deliver infrastructure over an expansive area, which constitutes both a financial and operational burden. All of this takes place in tandem with large-scale unregulated construction and challenging topographic conditions, particularly in communities in the Galilee.

The comprehensive plans promoted by the Planning Administration, as detailed above, address these issues on several planes: First, the plans recognize thousands of existing housing units, including ones located at a significant distance from the area approved for development. Second, the planning process includes great efforts to locate state-owned land that would allow both large-scale construction of housing units in order to provide solutions for individuals in need of housing, as well as the allocation of core public spaces needed for these additional housing units and as compensation for shortages in the older core. State-owned land is sometimes located at some distance from the existing community, with agricultural enclaves in between. These lands are included in the new development zones in order to produce a compact urban structure that is not detached from the urban tissue. The result of these measures is masterplans that include new areas for development on an extremely extensive scale, and are suited to contain a number of housing units far exceeding the programmatic and demographic needs of the community, as required by projected natural growth and internal migration over the coming decades. Some of the plans include vast development areas reaching beyond the jurisdiction of these communities. These plans bridge the gaps of the past and provide infrastructure for growth over the extended long term, while taking into consideration construction practices characteristic of privately owned land. All of this is in contrast to the compact high-density planning that is characteristic of planning in the Jewish sector.

HRW breezily dismisses this entire letter by saying,

in 2019, the Israeli group “Bimkom: Planners for Planning Rights” noted an increase in planning activity in Palestinian towns, including steps to allow for more housing construction, but observed that the housing shortage in Palestinian municipalities would continue without the state allocating them more state land.

This is a far cry from "boxing in." This is saying that Israel is trying to accommodate all its citizens and some interest groups are complaining that it is not enough.

HRW knows that no reporter is going to go past the first paragraphs of the report that accuses Israel of wholesale crimes against its Arab citizens and read the details and appendix that show that the situation is far more complex and that Israel is investing enormous resources into fixing the issue. Because HRW isn't interested in telling the truth, but in pushing an anti-Israel agenda.

As always.

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Monday was World Keffiyeh Day, which was made up by a student group in Canada ironically named Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights.

The reason it is ironic is that while in English the pro-Palestinian crowd says it is a symbol of "unity and struggle," in Arabic it is all about "resistance" - which means terror.

It originally was used during the 1936 Arab riots to hide from the British, and then became popular again when Yassir Arafat wore it everywhere. But Arabs understand it as a symbol of terrorism.

This poem, illustrated with the face of a girl wearing the keffiyeh, ends off with "The way to Palestine is through the barrel of a gun."

Anyone who tells you that the keffiyeh is a peaceful symbol of unity is lying, and probably knowingly so.

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