Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, June 02, 2020

European-funded Ma’an News says it wants Israel destroyed: “We are coming, Tel Aviv!”

The Ma’an News Network has been the recipient of millions of dollars of grants from European sources over the years, including a donation of hundreds of thousands of euros from the EU earmarked for 2016-2019 for “Leveraging Media Initiatives to Promote Participatory Engagement in the Peace Process.”

I don’t know about funding for 2020, because Ma’an is not transparent about its funding sources, but Ma’an certainly does not even pretend to support peace with Israel today.

An editorial last week said:

Whatever Netanyahu does… and whatever he says

However he begs… and however he threatens

We will not relinquish the idea of one-state

Farewell to the past

Farewell to area A

Farewell to half-solutions

We are coming, oh Tel-Aviv

That sounds pretty explicitly against peace – and against the agenda of the EU.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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From The Media Line:

Under slogan ‘It’s Me or the Coordinator,’ activists seek to pressure people to stop following COGAT’s Arabic-language Facebook page

Palestinian activists and public figures have launched a campaign against “Al-Munasek,” the Arabic-language Facebook page of COGAT, Israel’s liaison body for coordinating activities in the Palestinian territories.

Under the slogan “It’s Me or the Coordinator,” the idea is to convince Palestinians to unfollow and even boycott the page, which features news and announcements about Israeli activities in the West Bank. Information includes the operating hours of checkpoints and border-crossing stations, and, more recently, ads for entry permits for purposes of work and medical treatment.

The activists call the COGAT page an effort to “whitewash” the Israeli occupation.

The COGAT Arabic page has some 570,000 followers. It provides critical information for people who need to cooperate with Israeli authorities, such as workers and traders who need to travel to Israel.

Last week it posted one of the videos that drive haters crazy. Israel opened up the crossings for all workers with permits to enter Israel, and it showed a 15 minute clip of Palestinian workers entering the Qalandia checkpoint – live and unedited. The workers averaged about 4 seconds at each face-recognition turnstile, and the only slowdown was when they forget to remove their mask to be recognized.

The Arabic comments on the video were overwhelmingly positive and polite. A few commenters went so far as to say “All respect to the Coordinator (COGAT)” but those elicited derisive responses upset that anyone can say anything nice about the IDF, and counter-responses that there is nothing wrong with showing appreciation to Israel’s efforts to streamline the checkpoints and save them hours that they used to waste.

The page also dispels rumors (today many Arabs heard that COGAT was giving out permits to traders without checking them, and they gently explained that the procedures have not changed) and other important information (workers whose permits expired during the coronavirus shutdown were given an automatic 30 day extension.)

Telling people, especially workers, to boycott the page shows that those activists don’t care about their own people. Frankly, the idea that boycotting the page hurts Israel and not Palestinians is bizarre.

(h/t YMedad)

Jordanian news site Sawaleif has an op-ed by Dr. Bassem Rubeen where he brings a novel theory that Israelis have to fabricate their enemies in order to gain sympathy from the West.

Yes, he has written an anti-Israel, antisemitic article claiming that Jews don’t have anyone who hates them.

He quotes a study by a Major General Falah al-Ma’aitah saying that “the Jews have a firm conviction that ensuring the permanence of the State of Israel and the continued sympathy of the West and their support for it is only possible if an enemy threatens their being, even if that enemy was fabricated.”

Finding enemies for the Jews provides them with great logistics, so we see them since the era of the great Messenger, peace be upon him, have broken their covenants, and here they deny the agreements of Wadi Araba and Oslo, and all the United Nations resolutions related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, but they always create the conditions for the escalation of the situation, as a guarantee of the continued flow of aid.

They attract diaspora Jews from different races, and that is another reason for them to manufacture enemies, they are confident that the enemy industry will push the internal and diaspora Jews to stand together and stand up to any enemy…

Therefore, the Arabs, after having tried all the methods that were imposed on them, and made all the concessions, must be convinced that the Zionist ideological strategy does not want peace even if the Arabs agreed to all their requirements and the Palestinian negotiator has achieved this. This is entrenched by their lack of commitment to any peace agreements concluded with the Arabs, because achieving peace, as we mentioned, will cause them internal unrest due to the many races, spectrums, colors and beliefs within the Jewish community.

Yup. It is Israel that has refused to make peace. The writer even says that Israel hasn’t kept its agreements with Jordan. And this is a longstanding Jewish trait.

Pure antisemitism, published openly in Jordan – Israel’s “peace partner.” Today.

06/01 Links Pt2: HonestReporting Takes Legal Action Against Twitter and Ayatollah Khamenei; Bending the Jews; The Times retracts claim Palestinians fled in '48 due to Israeli 'rape and torture'

From Ian:

Michel Foucault and Iran’s Ayatollahs

The Islamic Revolution in Iran, which brought Islamists to power for the first time in modern history, pitted the global left—perhaps best personified by Michel Foucault—against the global right. To this day, the global left’s advocacy for Islamism continues to guide the West’s general approach toward the Middle East.

The Islamist regime in Iran has now been firmly in power for over 40 years. The leaders of the regime and those they favor continue to benefit from their decades-long rule, but the people of Iran—as well as the countries in its neighborhood—suffer from the tyranny and terror unleashed on them by the regime and its ruthless Revolutionary Guards.

Analysts of different stripes usually tend to interpret the so-called “Islamic Revolution” of 1979 as the manifestation of the yearning of the Iranian people to free themselves from the tyranny of monarchy and Western interference. They tend not to mention that the revolution had a broad ideological scope that pitted the global left against the global right on the Iranian battleground.

Some of the most influential Western leftist intellectuals had a great personal stake in the Iranian revolution. They played a significant role in pushing Iran into the arms of Islamism in order to fulfil their ideological dream of “defeating capitalism” around the world.

The foremost of those intellectuals was French philosopher and journalist Michel Foucault.

Foucault’s interest in Islamism started in 1978, when the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera called on him to write a series of articles about Iran. To fulfill that assignment, Foucault spent time among members of the left-leaning Confederation of Iranian Students and other opponents of the Pahlavi regime in Europe. He then went to Tehran and met with many prominent revolutionaries. When he returned to France, he visited Ayatollah Khomeini in the village of Neauphle-le-Château near Paris where he was exiled at the time.

HonestReporting Takes Legal Action Against Twitter and Ayatollah Khamenei

Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader of Iran, is spreading hate and calls for violence against Israel and Jews. That’s nothing new. Except now the Iranian dictator is becoming increasingly active on Twitter. These days “media” is not just print and television, but social media too; and that’s where HonestReporting comes in.

Khamenei is abusing his Twitter account to broadly distribute antisemitic conspiracy theories, threats of violence and incitement for others to commit violence, including a link to his web site which contains calls for a Final Solution: a thinly veiled reference to Hitler’s notorious plan to murder all Jewish people in the world, which formed the centerpiece of the Holocaust.

Other specific examples include: calling the Jewish state a “cancerous tumor,” and calling for Palestinians to defeat the “Zionist enemy” through greater “access to weapons.” Like many modern antisemites, Khamenei declares he is not actually a Jew-hater, before going on to portray himself as a mere anti-Zionist whose aim is to “eliminate” the worlds only Jewish state, and the country with the world’s biggest concentration of Jews.

Incitement to violence is not only not free speech, it’s also illegal under U.S. law. So is aiding and abetting incitement to violence, which is exactly what Twitter is doing in this case.

Incitement to violence violates Twitter’s terms and conditions, terms which the company often enforces aggressively even against only marginal violations. So why does one of the world’s most brutal dictators receive different treatment?

Israel Advocacy Movement: Twitter enables antisemitism

If Twitter can censor Donald Trump, why don't they censor genocidal antisemites?

Bending the Jews

Deep-pocketed funders—including the Rockefellers and the Buffetts—are creating a constellation of activist groups like Stosh Cotler’s Bend the Arc that aim to rewire American Jewish life

From her 19th floor corner office in the Bend the Arc headquarters, Stosh Cotler took in the panoramic view of downtown Manhattan. It was a warm weekday last summer, and far below her the pedestrian foot traffic inched along like dollhouse miniatures on the sidewalks of Seventh Avenue. To the west under detailing light, white yachts traced long lines away from the piers of the Hudson River.

By that point, Cotler had been CEO of Bend the Arc for more than five years, but her role had changed since the 2016 election. She was in near-constant triage mode, she said, on guard to respond to whatever inflammatory statement or action was coming out of the White House. On television, radio, and in major print publications Cotler had assumed a regular profile, her strong, forceful presence fast becoming a recognizable voice speaking out on behalf of Jews in America. The day prior, President Donald Trump said, “If you vote for a Democrat, you’re being disloyal to Jewish people,” a reference to the ongoing support for the BDS movement by Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.

Cotler’s assistant popped her head in to tell her she had an interview request with The Washington Post. No problem, she said.

Slim and athletic, Cotler’s motorized scooter and neon-green helmet leaned beside her tidy stand-up desk in the corner. At 50, Cotler wears her curly hair high, large earrings, and thick bracelets on her wrist. Though calm and on occasion friendly in conversation, a notable intensity emanates from her dark brown eyes, particularly when Cotler speaks on the burden on American Jewish organizations to chart the proper path forward for a country she sees veering into dangerous waters.

“At this point in time we’re really seeking to become the institution that redefines the center of gravity in the American Jewish community,” Cotler told me. “We have a vision and we have an agenda that we believe to now be the communal agenda of the Jewish community.”

Last summer, when I first encountered Bend the Arc in the news, I did not know what the group was or what they did. Then I saw them nearly everywhere—or at least they appeared to maintain a constant presence in the media on the issue of the southern American border and immigration detention facilities. Wearing organization T-shirts and carrying banners with the Bend the Arc logo, their protesters appeared in dozens of demonstrations and marches for immigration policy reforms covered by the mainstream press. At protests in the halls of Congress, their staffers were being arrested. On cable news and the radio, their leaders were brought on to condemn the policies of the Trump administration. In my social media feeds, I started to see photos and videos of smaller events in between those covered by major news outlets.

Though tracing its lineage back to predecessor organizations that were founded as far back as 1983, the Jewish social action organization is essentially a recent construction that has taken on a new and diffuse slate of political issues at both the state and national level—immigrant documentation, tax laws, voter rights, among other causes that may have little to do with what are generally defined as the specific needs of any particular Jewish community but are often championed by progressive Democratic politicians.

The PLO salutes health care workers. They don’t mention that many Palestinian terror leaders were doctors!

From the PLO propaganda Twitter account:

The killing of Al-Najjar was a tragic accident from a bullet that ricocheted off the ground over 30 meters away from her.

But for the Palestinians to say that they support health workers is a bit disingenuous.

After all, Hamas uses ambulances to hide terrorists.

And some terrorist leaders were doctors themselves.

George Habash and Wadie Haddad, founders of the PFLP, were medical doctors.

Fathi Shaqaqi, co-founder of Islamic Jihad, was a pediatrician.

Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, co-founder of Hamas, was a physician.

So, yes, I fully believe that Palestinian leaders salute health workers. Just not for the reasons they claim.

EoZTV: Interview with David Collier

David Collier is the amazing researcher who has written book-length exposes of antisemitism in the British Labour party as well as at Amnesty International.

I spoke to him on Sunday about his work and his opinions. We discussed the current unrest in the US, the white supremacy and racism in the Left, and how his opponents try to pain him as a racist.

It was a good interview. Check it out!

06/01 Links Pt1: Sovereignty over the Jordan Valley Is Key to Israel's Security; Iran Attempted to Raise Chlorine in Israel’s Water Supply to Dangerous Levels

From Ian:

Sovereignty over the Jordan Valley Is Key to Israel's Security

In order to thrive, and not just survive, Israel must have a minimally defensible eastern border, located in the Jordan Valley, and it must retain control of the eastern mountain ridge.

Yitzhak Rabin, architect of the Oslo Accords, included full Israeli security control over Jewish cities in Judea and Samaria/the West Bank, and full freedom of maneuver for Israelis along the main roads of the area, within those parameters.

The Trump peace plan, with its endorsement of Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, accurately reflects the Rabin parameters. It also calls for a two-state solution and a demilitarized Palestinian state, with Israeli security control over the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The U.S. peace plan was coordinated with Sunni states and Israel. That coordination is the result of the Sunni view that an alliance with Israel is an existential imperative in their fight against Iran - something that is of far greater significance to them than the Palestinian-Arab cause.

Jordan, despite its rhetoric, is unlikely to cancel its peace treaty with Israel. It is Israel and the U.S. that stabilize Jordan, not the other way around. There is no Jordanian interest in having a Palestinian military presence on their western border.

The Palestinian public in Judea and Samaria, for its part, has demonstrated that it is primarily interested in its economic wellbeing. The Palestinian-Arab street has shown little appetite to return to the days of the Second Intifada.

David Singer: Trump Needs to Revise his Vision for Judea and Samaria

President Trump’s deal of the century envisioning the creation of a second Arab state in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan – is in tatters following its absolute rejection by the PLO – requiring its urgent revision by the president.

Trump has vainly struggled to keep the statehood possibility alive despite PLO President Mahmoud Abbas having consigned it to the dustbin of history on the day of its publication – 28 January 2020 -but the PLO has refused to play ball.

Being a beggar does not fit Trump’s persona. He is allowing Israel to apply sovereignty in 30% of Judea and Samaria in July – with allocation of the remaining 70% requiring another Arab interlocutor to negotiate with Israel.Trump’s vision was always a mirage – offering the PLO less than 100% of Judea and Samaria it had been demanding since 1967– supported by the international community since the 1980 Venice Declaration.

Trump had predicated his vision without even defining who comprised the “Palestinians”. In addition his plan had incorrectly asserted:
1. “Palestinians have aspirations that have not been realized, including self-determination”.

All West Bank Arabs became Jordanian nationals in 1954 until their nationality was revoked by Jordan in 1988.

2. “The State of Israel has also exchanged sizeable territories for the sake of peace, as it did when it withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace with the Arab Republic of Egypt.”

Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 didn’t rate a mention.

3.“One reason for the intractability of this problem is the conflation of two separate conflicts: a territorial, security and refugee dispute between Israel and the Palestinians and a religious dispute between Israel and the Muslim world regarding control over places of religious significance. ”

There is only one conflict – between Jews and Arabs - fuelled by the Arab League’s refusal to recognise the State of Israel since its establishment in 1948.

The religious dispute was resolved under the 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty granting Jordan control over places of Islamic religious significance in Jerusalem.

Jonathan Tobin: Whatever happened to the Emergency Committee for Israel?

Ten years ago, it came in with a bang, but this spring, it disbanded without even a whimper.

The Emergency Committee for Israel came into existence in 2010 in response to President Barack Obama's increasingly aggressive criticism of Israel and his attempt to pressure it to make concessions to the Palestinians. In the following years, as Obama's push for appeasement of Iran culminated in a disastrously weak nuclear deal, the ECI depicted the administration's policies as not just wrongheaded or counterproductive, but an "emergency" that decent Americans should mobilize to oppose.

Democrats blasted the group for what they claimed was an attempt to turn Israel into a partisan wedge issue. Yet by helping to frame the debate about Obama's push for more "daylight" between the United States and Israel, and a rapprochement with Iran, the ECI played a not insignificant role in generating dissent about such dangerous folly and electing members of the House and Senate who disagreed with the administration.

Once Obama got his way on the Iran nuclear deal, the ECI went silent. Earlier this spring, it formally disbanded. But it's prime mover, former Weekly Standard publisher William Kristol has moved on to a different cause, albeit one that puzzles many of those who agreed with him about Obama's attitude towards Israel.

After leading the effort to brand Obama a threat to Israel's existence, Kristol has, along with some other celebrity pundits like The Atlantic's David Frum and The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin, who were cheerleaders for the ECI, become the voice of the #NeverTrump movement. He leads a new organization whose purpose is to convince Republicans to support presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. But unlike the ECI, which was often torched by the mainstream media, his new effort is gaining the same kind of sympathetic coverage in The New York Times that the left-wing lobby J Street – ECI's principal antagonist during its most active period – usually receives.

She’s wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh. She’s holding a Molotov cocktail. And she’s ready to firebomb – a NYPD police car.

From the New York Daily News:

One of the two Brooklyn lawyers accused trying to torch an NYPD cruiser in Brooklyn used a Bud Light bottle stuffed with a rag as a Molotov cocktail, according to a photo obtained Sunday by the Daily News.

Urooj Rahman, 31, was snapped in a picture holding a black and white striped scarf close to her face with one hand and the potentially fiery bottle with another as she prepared to toss it out of the passenger-side window of a van.

Rahman and Colinford Mattis, 32, a corporate lawyer and member of Community Board 5 in East New York, were charged with the attempted attack Saturday night on an empty police cruiser parked outside the 88th Precinct station house in Fort Greene.

Rahman hurled the bottle, which was filled with gasoline, into the cruiser. But the Bud Light Molotov cocktail failed to ignite, law enforcement sources said.

Cops gave chase and stopped Mattis’ van nearby on Willoughby St. They found the makings of another Molotov cocktail in the back seat along with a gasoline container, authorities say.

But Urooj Rahman is not just a lawyer. She’s a human rights lawyer.

And she’s not just wearing a keffiyeh for fashion. She’s an anti-Israel activist. She spent a summer interning for an anti-Israel NGO and she wrote an article for Fordham’s human rights newsletter accusing Israel of “apartheid.”

As we have seen countless times, anti-Israel activism and support for terror is often hidden under a veneer of “human rights.” And here we see not only support for terror, but domestic terror itself by a “human rights lawyer.”

This “human rights lawyer” likes to wear a ski cap with a skull and crossbones.

In a final twist of irony, Rahman’s last name means “compassionate” in Arabic.

Will any real human rights groups condemn Rahman? More to the point – are there any real human rights groups in existence?

Is there the slightest hint of embarrassment from the far Left about a person squarely in their camp who was building firebombs to hurl in New York City?

(h/t kweansmom)

Social media is filled with images and videos of violence during the riots in response to George Floyds murder by Minneapolis cops – violence by the rioters and violence by the police. One egregious example of the latter is this video of New York City police cars purposefully ramming protesters who were throwing objects at them.

Wtf!!! #BlacklivesMaters #brooklynprotest pic.twitter.com/S1oet8JC0x
— Pierre G. (@pgarapon) May 31, 2020

When the murder of Floyd occurred, many anti-Israel activists and organizations were quick to tie his death to Israel, either by explicitly saying that US cops were trained in Israel to kill protesters or by claiming that they were somehow influenced by Israeli techniques of violence against Palestinians.

The claims are of course absurd. While many police departments do send representatives to Israel to learn anti-riot techniques, they are the ones responsible for their police officer training and rules of engagement, and the cops themselves are responsible for their actions. Blaming Jews for the brutality of some US cops is simply a modern form of antisemitism.

However, there is an irony there. If the US police departments had actually gone through an extensive and formal training of riot control techniques as their Israeli counterparts have, there would be far fewer injuries of protesters today than we have been seeing.

Back in 2013, B’Tselem issued a report trying to damn the IDF’s riot control techniques. The report itself highlighted how much the IDF tries to minimize civilian injuries and death.

There are two main categories of controls that the IDF uses to minimize civilian injuries during violent riots.

The first one is to try to use weapons that cannot or are unlikely to injure or kill protesters – tear gas, foul smelling “skunk water,” stun grenades, foam bullets.

Far more important, however, are the instructions and training that go along with these weapons. IDF soldiers are given very specific rules as to when each kind of riot countermeasure can be used. Practically the entire B’Tselem report is accusing the IDF of not following its own rules – many of which the NGO only guess at based on secondary sources.

For example, here is part of the section in the report on stun grenades:

Stun grenades are a diversionary device whose explosion emits a bright light and a thunderous noise. The grenades are designed to cause fear and panic, distracting individuals and allowing security forces to gain control of crowds. According to Israel Police procedure, “This device should be used for handling disturbances of the peace which endanger the police force and/or public safety and which do not enable direct contact with the demonstrators without injury to police officers. This device is designed to achieve the dispersal of demonstrators and gaining control of them.” …When used according to the regulations, stun grenades should not cause bodily harm, nor do they have any side effects. However, under certain circumstances, the noise resulting from the explosion may damage the eardrum; therefore, users are instructed to wear hearing protective equipment. In addition, the grenades’ explosion mechanism generates an extremely hot flash of fire, and the very impact of a heavy metal object hurled at a person can result in bodily injury. Therefore, police safety instructions stipulate that the grenade must be aimed at a safe distance of 30 meters from the person throwing and 5 meters from the target, and in any case, the grenade must not be thrown into a crowd. Moreover, over the years, Israeli soldiers who have taken part in dispersing demonstrations have informed B’Tselem that they were instructed to roll stun grenades on the ground, not throw them at people.

The detailed, six page IDF response emphasizes the importance it places on proper training and documentation of when and where to use its non-lethal crowd control and dispersal tools, and only mentions the actual methods peripherally:

The rules and procedures for when to engage with live fire are clearly worded and also encompass the wide array of possible security situations IDF soldiers may find themselves in. These rules clearly establish for soldiers how to respond to life threatening situations as well as riots and other disruptions of public order. Additionally, the instructions regarding proper usage of crowd dispersal equipment are also clearly worded, organized and detailed. As updated instructions are passed from the headquarter-level to the field, they are adapted for the soldiers in the field, and "responses to specific situations" are included so as to ensure that the soldiers understand what is permitted with regards to the use of force and the use of the riot control measures.

It is important to note that the emphasis that the IDF places on the proper procedure for live-fire and proper usage of crowd dispersal equipment significantly reduces the potential for casualties. The IDF emphatically denies the claim that IDF soldiers racially discriminate when engaging in crowd dispersion in Judea and Samaria or in any other location. The decision regarding which specific crowd dispersal equipment to use is based purely on security and operational considerations, not on economic or any other type of consideration.

In order to deal with violent and illegal riots or other disruptions of public order, the IDF utilizes a selection of different equipment to disperse crowds as well as prevent causalities of any kind. The IDF invests a great deal in order to acquire as well as develop effective crowd dispersal equipment that will not harm the rioters; a good example being "Ha'Boesh" or the "skunk" canister. These measures are taken in order to avoid having to employ alternative measures.

Police and soldiers are human and sometimes, in the heat of being attacked, make mistakes. The way to minimize these mistakes is to engage in training and to have specific written rules and drills on how to deal with every situation. What we are seeing in the examples of police overreaction being shown in social media is that some cops simply are not adequately trained, and (certainly in the case of the police ramming mentioned earlier) they don’t even seem to be properly equipped with proper crowd control tools and methods to begin with.

If US police were trained by the IDF the way IDF soldiers are, there would be far fewer such incidents. The “Deadly Exchange” libel is the exact opposite of the truth – if the anti-Israel Left actually cared about protecting protesters, they would want US police to act the way their Israeli counterparts do and to increase training with the IDF, which unfortunately has a great deal of experience with violent riots.

Furthermore, as Haviv Rettig Gur notes, the training programs that do exist today emphasize how to avoid situations that can bring riots in the first place: “sharing best practices in community engagement, nonviolent policing, intelligence.” It is the polar opposite of what is being described by the Israel-haters.

Of course, the socialist Left agenda has nothing to do with avoiding riots or injuries and everything to do with vilifying the police and romanticizing the violent rioters – just as they demonize the IDF and defend terrorism against Jews in Israel.

Jordan still worried about being forced to become Palestine

A cartoon in Jordan’s Al Ghad shows that even today, Jordan is worried that it will be forced to become the Palestinian state, as some right-wing Israelis have suggested over the decades.

The caption says “Annexation of the West Bank” and the Jewish crocodile is thinking that Jordan is the “alternative homeland” for Palestinians.

Of course, Palestinians are widely regarded to be the majority in Jordan and if anyone who pretends to be pro-democracy would insist that the model be applied to Jordan, then Jordan would indeed become the Palestinian state. Jordanians are understandably dead-set against the idea because they remember the last time Palestinians tried to take over the Kingdom in 1970 and the Palestinian who assassinated King Abdullah I in 1953.

Notice that the artist has the Jewish crocodile eating all of Israel, implying that none of it belongs to Israel even today.

Despite the outreach to Israel, Saudis are still antisemitic

Even though the news has been full of stories about how the Gulf countries have been putting out signals of friendliness towards Israel and Jews, antisemitism is still quite a part of life.

The official Saudi news agency Okaz has an article attacking Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The two main charges against him are that he is friendly to Israel – and he is supposedly Jewish:

• Who is Recep Tayyip Erdogan?
• According to the book “Sons of Moses” by Turkish writer Ergün Poyraz, Erdogan is of Jewish origin. This author Y. Küçük confirmed in a television interview with “Oda TV,” that Erdogan's lineage comes from the Jews, and that 3 of the most important pillars of his government are Khazars.

Erdogan’s enemies have been claiming this for years – see one example below - but if someone calls you “Jewish” to insult you, you can be sure that they are antisemitic.

05/31 Links: Who owns the Land of Israel?; Melanie Phillips: EU second thoughts over hostility to Israel?; Between Minneapolis and Jerusalem;

From Ian:

Pastor John Hagee: Who owns the Land of Israel?

I am inspired to send this message to the 8.2 million-plus members of Christians United for Israel by the fact that months ago president trump met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington to present the administration's peace proposal. I was there!

It was a masterful proposal that gave the Palestinians the opportunity of a better life through a 50 billion dollar investment package. It was an effort that required years of work by the brilliant and talented inner circle of the president.

It was made clear at the Washington meeting that this historic peace plan could go into effect within days. If the Palestinians immediately reject the plan, the US Will be prepared to accept the enactment of Israel's sovereignty over parts of the West Bank within 48 hours.

It was made clear that this historic plan could go into effect within days. However, days have become weeks, weeks have become months.

To be clear, the Palestinians have never owned Judea or Samaria. That Israel will meet with a Palestinian leadership that still supports terrorists and incites violence against the Jewish people is a commentary on Israel's willingness to make every effort to advance peace with their neighbors, not a commentary on the Palestinians being deserving of yet another chance at the negotiating table.

Our role is to heed the commandment that we "pray for the peace of Jerusalem!" And that time is now!

Melanie Phillips: EU second thoughts over hostility to Israel?

Has the European Union reached a tipping point over Israel? Or to be more precise, is the Europeans’ bluff finally to be called over Israel’s proposal to extend its sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria?

The E.U. has been mulling over punitive measures against Israel if it goes ahead with what its western critics call “annexation of the occupied territories of the West Bank.”

A number of member states, headed by France along with Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Belgium and Luxembourg are calling for a hard line.

Measures being considered include supporting any U.N. moves against “annexation”; public support of proceedings against Israel currently underway in the International Criminal Court at The Hague; and increasing the boycott of settlements in various ways, along with increased financial support for the Palestinians.

The E.U. and Britain maintain that Israel is illegally occupying the disputed territories, and that its settlements there amount to a transfer of population into those lands in contravention of the Geneva Convention.

This is a serious misreading of international law. Israel is not “occupying” these territories. In law, occupation can only occur if the land belongs to a sovereign power, which was never the case here; and a state can also hold onto land which continues to be used for belligerent purposes against it.

It is also a gross misreading of the Geneva Convention, as the Israelis living in these territories were not transferred but moved there entirely of their own volition.

Between Minneapolis and Jerusalem

The killing of Eyad al-Hallaq in Jerusalem was unsettling, as was the horrific images of George Floyd in Minneapolis gasping for air.

Both of them civilians, both killed by police. Their tragic and outrageous deaths are part of a long history of violence.

But the similarities end there, and after observing the path social media took this weekend, maybe it needs to be said clearly: The attempt to draw parallels between Jerusalem and Minneapolis are manipulative, and in many ways irresponsible.

Joint Arab List MK Aida Touma-Sliman implored "whoever is shocked by the murder in the US, to look closely – a whole nation is choking under occupation without being able to breathe."

Leading pundits worked hard to frame the shooting of al-Hallaq as an example of systemic racism in Israel, and many even blamed the public security minister by proxy.

Others expertly determined that it was "murder", and a few self-branding mavens were quick to use the hashtag #ArabLivesMatter, the local version of #BlackLivesMatter.

That's not only self-righteous populism but a manipulative way to use conscience. The shooting in Jerusalem, as horrible as it was, did not take place on racial background, but in the context of a nationalist conflict, which unfortunately creates terror. Just this week there were those who told us an intifada was the natural and desired result of all the talk about extending sovereignty. That is the reason for police presence in Jerusalem, and that is the background for the tension.

A Sudanese writer is claiming that a Saudi development initiative is actually an excuse for Israeli expansionism in the Persian Gulf.

The Saudi initiative is called “NEOM:”

NEOM is a bold and audacious dream. It is a vision of what a New Future might look like (in fact, NEOM means, “new future”). It’s an attempt to do something that’s never been done before and it comes at a time when the world needs fresh thinking and new solutions. NEOM is being built on the Red Sea in northwest Saudi Arabia as a living laboratory – a place where entrepreneurship and innovation will chart the course for this New Future. NEOM will be a destination, a home for people who dream big and want to be part of building a new model for sustainable living, working and prospering.

NEOM will include towns and cities, ports and enterprise zones, research centers, sports and entertainment venues, and tourist destinations. It will be the home and workplace for more than a million citizens from around the world.

The future has a new home

NEOM is the vision of His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and is a centerpiece of Saudi Arabia’s 2030 Vision plan to grow and diversify the Saudi economy and position the country to play a leading role in global development. While NEOM is being driven and initially funded by Saudi Arabia, it is an international project that will be led, populated and funded by people from all over the world.

In Gulf365, however, writer Shihab Muhammad knows better:

This article aims to explain two facts: they revealed that the Saudi NEOM project announced by Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is not a tourism or development investment project, but rather a revival of the biblical Kingdom of Noam, and to be the capital of the Kingdom of Israel. This is expected after rebuilding the alleged temple on the ruins of Al-Aqsa, with the approval and support of the Al Saud, in implementation of the Zionist Masonic plan…

The city of Neom is mentioned in the context of the deal of the century, which is being established in the region located on the border between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Palestine and Jordan, this name “Neom” does not mean as they say future and development, but it is a biblical word, and this name was mentioned in the Torah and means “Noam”, which is the name of a Jewish kingdom “ממלכת נוים”, which will be revived in that area of northern Saudi Arabia and Egypt, southern Palestine and Jordan.

…The NEOM project, which will be built on 26 thousand square kilometers, will be responsible for serving the Peres project, and will be based on energy, water and modern technologies, and the Israeli flag will be raised over the two islands of Tiran and Sanafir, Saudi Arabia, for their presence within the project, the government of the temple guards, meaning that the Zionist-Masonic project…

Another issue being covered up is that Egypt has leased 400 km to Saudi Arabia, regions that are filled with ancient monuments and will be handled by Jewish archaeologists, and they declare falsely that they have found Jewish antiquities, perhaps to make up for their failure to find even a shard of pottery indicating their ancient presence in Jerusalem in particular, and we have seen how Moshe Dayan, who occupied the West Bank, Sinai and the Golan in 1967, was burying some pottery and metal pieces, to say later that they found Jewish relics indicating them, and they did so in Lebanon in 1982.

Needless to say, there has never been a Biblical Kingdom of Noam, which the article helpfully transliterates into Hebrew as “Noim” to make it look legitimate.

This is definitely one of the more entertaining conspiracy theories I’ve come across.

A 21 year old girl was beaten to death by her father in what was probably another “honor killing.”

“M.G.” of Al Azawaida in central Gaza arrived at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah on Thursday evening in very serious condition, beaten and bruised. She succumbed after midnight.

According to the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, the cause of death is a result of severe beatings in the head and parts of the body. PCHR says that there were also signs of strangulation around her neck.

PCHR notes that “Palestine” has signed international agreements to protect women legally but has not implemented them, as we have noted previously. In fact, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have a laundry list of laws that explicitly discriminate against women, and Hamas never repealed laws that mitigate penalties against “honor crimes.”

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From Xinhua:

Palestine on Saturday said it supports China's right to impose the full sovereignty over all its territories including Hong Kong, and maintain its territorial integrity.

"We reiterate our support to the friendly People's Republic of China's right to maintain its sovereignty, against any foreign intervention into its internal affairs and the attempts to destabilize it," the Palestinian presidency said in a statement published by the official Palestinian News and Info Agency.

Palestine values China's efforts in fighting COVID-19, said the statement, highlighting China's aid to other countries including Palestine in combating the pandemic and building a global health community for all.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also appreciated the unwavering Chinese support to the people of Palestine to achieve independence and freedom, and said Palestine is keen on enhancing its relations with China to the benefit of the two peoples.

There is not a dictatorship or autocratic state that the Palestinian leadership does not support.

And of course, the leftists who pretend that they support the people against their oppressive governments will be silent on this.