Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, September 04, 2020

Even in the middle of the Lebanese crisis, Hezbollah remains fixated on "Zionists"

The Hezbollah mouthpiece Al Manar writes about a meeting of the terror group's political bloc in Lebanon:

The “Loyalty to the Resistance” parliamentary bloc held its periodic meeting Thursday in its Haret Hreik-based office, under the chairmanship of MP Mohammad Raad. stressing that it deals positively with the initiatives aimed at helping Lebanon carry out the needed reforms.

In a statement issued after the meeting, the bloc said that it was keenly following up on all efforts aimed at assisting the Lebanese authorities , on top of which the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron.

“In light of our commitment to and keenness on national sovereignty, we are dealing positively with the initiatives of brothers and friends, with the purpose of helping Lebanon make reforms and achieve developmental projects, in a way that preserves our independence and protects our people’s dignity,” the statement read.
...

Hezbollah bloc also blasted the UAE-Israel agreement aimed at normalizing their mutual ties and sponsored by the US, denouncing the Zionist settler policy in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Talk about being tone-deaf! The Lebanese people want leaders who will ensure that the country is run responsibly, and Hezbollah can't help but to condemn Israel on topics that have zero relevance to the Lebanese.

It is too early to say that Hezbollah's position in Lebanon has been permanently weakened, but since the Beirut blast the group has been attacked in rallies and on social media. Any claims Hezbollah ever had to be working for the Lebanese nation and people are regarded as lies.

Condemning Israel and the UAE in a press statement is not a very savvy move, but it is who they are.

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09/03 Links Pt2: Wake Up America, and Smell the Anti-Semitism; Brooke Goldstein: The Time Is Now for a Jewish Civil Rights Movement; The Dangers to Israel of a Biden Administration

From Ian:

Wake Up America, and Smell the Anti-Semitism

What do all these incidents have in common? Not that they are the unique province of “the right” or “the left”—but that they are happening in America on a daily basis and both the mainstream press and the organized Jewish community seem determined to ignore them. Last summer, Armin Rosen documented the “routine” attacks upon the city’s visible Jews. “The increase in the number of physical assaults against Orthodox Jews in New York City is a matter of empirical fact,” he stated, while detailing the steep rise in numbers from the NYPD hate crime unit. The question Rosen raised then was why the country’s biggest wave of hate crimes was apparently not worthy of notice by any of the city’s major newspapers, the mayor’s office, the Justice Department, or civil rights groups; six months after his article was published, it was still the only long piece on the subject.

What became clear to me from the I-405 incident is that America’s Jews don’t see anti-Semitism, even when it’s dangling over a freeway in one of its most liberal cities in broad daylight. But perhaps it isn’t odd that mainstream media haven’t reported on it when American Jews won’t admit that anti-Semitism is a real problem in this country, and when so few of our high-profile Jews speak out against such attacks. Why would the media consider it of public interest if the Jews don’t?

It seems that American Jews don’t see anti-Semitism in America because they don’t want to, not because it isn’t real. They choose not to see it because it makes them uncomfortable. Or they only see it when it comes from the other “side.”

Yet for an outsider, the normalizing of open anti-Semitism in this country on all “sides” is shocking. This past week, in addition to the Delaware Chabad, Nazi symbols were painted on a bus stop in Colorado Springs and Philadelphia’s NAACP President Rodney Muhammad was removed after posting an anti-Semitic meme to Facebook. In the past three months we’ve seen the California Board of Education go ahead with an ethnic studies curriculum that is openly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel as part of its efforts to promote diversity and understanding among cultures. Synagogues have been defaced in Pennsylvania, Boston, Florida, and Cleveland, among other places. And that’s a good week, because nobody was put in a hospital or killed.

While “anti-Zionism” provides a fig leaf for anti-Semitic bullying campaigns, especially on college campuses, the idea that there is some clear line between the new and the old types of blood libel is increasingly hard to credit in an age of hypersensitivity to every other kind of real or imagined slight. At USC, Jewish student Rose Ritch resigned from her position as vice president of the student government after being bullied for her “Zionism”—meaning her refusal to stridently condemn and disavow Israel, a subject that has zero to do with student government at the college.

At least a half dozen synagogues have been vandalized during BLM protests, including one in LA (“Fuck Israel” was sprayed on the side of the building). A BLM protest in Washington, D.C., featured the chant: “Israel, we know you, you murder children too.” There’s been a resurgence of the ugly rhetoric of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam via figures such as DeSean Jackson, P Diddy, and Jay Electronica, along with articles explaining why Louis Farrakhan is in fact a very important figure in the African American community whose minions provide young minority men with positive role models. Yikes.

Zooming with Terror

Leila Khaled owes her international fame to two things: she used to hijack planes, and female hijackers remain an object of fascination. You can find her face on T-shirts, in part because some advocates of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel love her.

As I’ve written before, that’s strange because, as Khaled has indicated any number of times, she is in favor of violence against Israel, whereas BDS sells itself as a nonviolent movement. It’s almost as if BDS isn’t dedicated to nonviolence, except as an adjunct to violence.

Khaled remains in the leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and other nations, and still very much in the terror business. A PFLP cell is suspected in a bombing that killed seventeen-year-old Israeli, Rina Shnerb, as recently as last year.

Nowadays, Khaled tours the world (when she is not denied entry) and dispenses the occasional anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

In 2020, thanks to the magic of Zoom, San Francisco State University, whose track record on these matters is not great, can hear from Khaled without worrying about her getting stopped at the border. The event at which she will be virtually appearing is being promoted by an academic program, the cumbersomely-named Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies, which sits in SFSU’s College of Ethnic Studies. Rabab Abdulhadi, from that program, and Tomomi Kinukawa, from Women’s Studies, are co-moderators.

This event, I think, is protected by academic freedom and, at a public university like SFSU, the First Amendment. But it seems safe to assume that the co-moderators, who examined in April the “direct connections between Israeli Zionism and [a] Japanese far-right government that denies its own history of colonial violence and war-time crimes,” are not there to ask Khaled tough questions. Ethnic studies is a self-consciously politicized field that has no qualms about using the academy to promote radical politics. That’s one reason the adoption of a new ethnic studies requirement at state universities in California should be bigger news than it is.

The real story here is less the event itself—Abdulhadi and Kinukawa’s April event doesn’t seem to have generated much interest, even at San Francisco State—than the mainstreaming of this kind of thing in the academy. Abdulhadi just this year received an award from the American Association of University Professors, even though her career has been dedicated to undermining the distinction between teaching and propagandizing on which the AAUP’s defense of academic freedom relies.

The Pinnacle of Looting Apologia

I am also from recent-immigrant stock. Osterweil euphemizes looting as “proletarian shopping,” and no one from a place that has recently experienced this phenomenon can take seriously her assurance that it can happen justly and bloodlessly. When I think of riots and smashed storefronts, I think of Kristallnacht. I think of American businesses built by penniless immigrants who preferred to forfeit their vacations and weekends for 30 years rather than see their children suffer as they did; I think of these businesses ransacked in 30 minutes and left in ruins. Osterweil at least has the psychology right when she says that looting can be “joyous and liberatory.” I have never seen a sullen looter, but I have seen plenty of shop owners crying next to the smoking remains of their children’s future.

Absent from this book is even fleeting recognition that anyone (or nearly everyone) might prefer the current nonrevolutionary arrangement. Osterweil does not say what property-less system of government or anti-government she prefers, but I suspect it is not democracy, a term she uses only sneeringly. Nor is it clear how she intends to move from the past disgraces and present unrest to her goal, whatever it is, other than by rioting and stealing things until morale improves. What do you do when the free stuff runs out, the businesses and ordinary people who invested in your city decide not to make that mistake again, and—oops!—a few shopkeepers get beaten to death? This messy process is the “new world opening up, however briefly, in all its chaotic frenzy,” she writes. To me it sounds like a prequel to The Road.

Osterweil is unable or unwilling to relate to anyone at all with anything resembling a sense of humanity. Comrades and enemies alike are described without compassion, emotional detail, or distinction as people endowed with feelings or moral complexity. Once cast as a villain, a villain one remains, with no intricacies of the human condition explored under any circumstances. In the NPR interview, Osterweil describes the Los Angeles convenience store where Latasha Harlins was shot to death in 1991 as the location of “white-supremacist violence.” That shooting, which came two weeks after the beating of Rodney King and contributed to riots that killed 63 people, was perpetrated by the store owner, a female Korean immigrant—an irony that surely deserves probing. But Osterweil’s great class war has only two sides, so a working-class Korean woman is effortlessly enlisted on the side of the white-supremacist cisheteropatriarchs. Osterweil quotes a communist magazine: “Just as Jews were in 1965, Koreans in 1992 were ‘on the front-line of the confrontation between capital and the residents of central LA—they are the face of capital for these communities.’” As explanations of communal violence go, this is contemptibly inane.

Here's from the actual book "In Defense of Looting": The destruction and looting of Jewish and Korean immigrant-owned stores is justified by the author because Jews and Koreans are "the face of capital." pic.twitter.com/qPhpXQQI10
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) September 2, 2020

At Rai al-Youm, Ibrahim Abdullah Sarsour - former head of the Islamic movement in Israel - whines about how awful it is that the UAE and probably Bahrain will accept Israel.

The beginning of his harangue includes an interesting list of the changing Arab attitudes over the years, from hate to acceptance. It is worthwhile to see how the Palestinians are viewing their brethren who have given them billions over the years.

“The complete liberation of Palestine and the occupied Arab land” and

“What was taken by force can only be recovered by force.”

"Eliminating the effects of aggression"

"Save what can be saved"

"Land for Peace"

“Take, then negotiate.”

“Negotiations are the strategic choice.”

“Peace for peace”

“We are tired of the Palestinian cause”

“The Jews have all the right to Palestine, and the Palestinians have no right to it”

"The Palestinians should accept any Israeli offer before there is nothing left.”

“Israel is a natural part in the region”

“We urgently need Israel to develop our Arab countries, as it is superior to the Arabs in all fields”

“Israel is our only entrance to the heart of the inhabitant of the White House, and his satisfaction is important.”

This is written with great bitterness and things aren't nearly as good as described here - but it might actually happen.

(I do not know how closely related the author is with Linda Sarsour.)

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Report: Every Good Thing Bad If Other Political Side Does It (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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double standards Jerusalem, September 3 - Scientific research has confirmed a long-held assumption prevalent among the civically engaged, a new study claims, to the effect that constructive, beneficial acts, policies, or decisions that a government adopts become wrong when that government is run by your ideological opponents.

An article in next week's issue of the journal Hypocrisy Today lays out the details of the research, which examined numerous instances of the wrong people supporting the right things, thereby making the right things the wrong things even though they would remain the right things were the right people to do those things. The study arrived at what the authors call a workable model to explain the phenomenon, which observers are calling an important milestone in the age-old endeavor to comprehend what makes people such schmucks.

"Many of us had sensed the truth of this hypothesis intuitively," explained lead author Dr. Sel Fintrizt of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "We knew it was unremarkable when the Obama administration kept illegal immigrant children in cages, but when the Trump administration revived the policy, it became evil. In a similar vein, Obama administration attempts to influence elections in Israel through a series of NGOs caused little stir in Washington, but the charge of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 elections in the US sent the Democratic Party and mainstream media into a frenzy. We discovered it's less about the what and almost all about the who."

The phenomenon occurred with the greatest frequency, the article notes, in international treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Arrangements from the 1990s that granted Palestinians limited self-rule in certain disputed areas also barred either side from a number of unilateral actions that might prejudice the outcome of a still-elusive final status agreement; nevertheless, European and other foreign governments either turn a blind eye to, or directly fund, Palestinian efforts to establish such facts on the ground even as those governments and NGOs rail against Israel for pursuing the same type of behavior.

Similarly, making the desert bloom generally registers as a positive among humans, but for opponents of Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland, when Jews do it there it becomes rape of the landscape and the upsetting of important ecological balance.

Scientists agree the mechanism of the phenomenon remains in large part a mystery, but some tantalizing hints have emerged, revealed Dr. Fintrizt. "We know as soon as Jews appear in the picture somewhere, the probability of this phenomenon occurring quadruples," he noted. "That's likely a huge clue, one we do not yet understand. But it's probably the Jews' fault."

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09/03 Links Pt1: UAE's crown prince wants visit to Jerusalem after historic deal; Col. Kemp: A Great Step Forward for World Peace - and Who Seems Determined to Ignore It

From Ian:

BESA: The Israel-UAE Agreement’s Greatest Achievement: Little Arab Protest

To the surprise of Iranian and Palestinian leaders, the Arab public did not protest the Israel-UAE peace agreement—but they continue to protest Iranian meddling in Iraqi and Lebanese affairs. The lack of protest against the Israel-UAE breakthrough is a sign of political maturity as Arab and Muslim populations clamor for reform at home rather than destructive ideological visions.

Lively analysis has taken place over the possible ramifications of the Israel-UAE peace agreement. Some have rightly noted that while this is the third peace treaty Israel has signed with an Arab state, it is the first to contain the promise of a warm peace. This is in sharp contrast to Israel’s relations with prior accord partners Egypt and Jordan, which are limited to very narrow personal, diplomatic, and security relations. With Egypt, the peace treaty has rarely reached even that threshold.

Hosni Mubarak, throughout his 30 years of ruling Egypt, never made an official visit to Israel, which is less than an hour’s flight away. Nor has King Abdullah of Jordan. In over a decade of rule, Abdullah has abstained from visiting Israel despite meeting several times with PA head Mahmoud Abbas in nearby Ramallah.

Israel has been at peace with Egypt for nearly a half a century, but not one Egyptian soccer team has ever played against an Israeli team either in Israel or anywhere else. Not one delegation from an Egyptian university has ever visited an Israeli counterpart, let alone engaged in a joint program. Not one Egyptian cultural ensemble or group has ever visited Israel. On the rare occasions when individual Egyptian artists have come to Israel, they did so primarily to appear before Israel’s Arab citizens. For that gesture they were met with opprobrium and threats. Such was the power of the Arab world’s boycott against “normalization.”

Dore Gold interviewed by Jenni Frazer: Israeli and Arab Interests "Have Begun to Coalesce"

In 2015, Dr. Dore Gold, a former director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, opened a small Israeli economic office in the UAE and is better placed than most to judge the pace of Israel's outreach to the Arab world. He told the Jewish Chronicle this week that other Arab countries are quietly falling into line behind the UAE, driven not only by fear of Iran, but also by concern at the machinations of Turkey, where President Erdogan is trying to revive the status of the Ottoman Empire.

As far back as 1996, when he first came into government as foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu, "I visited a number of countries, including Qatar and Oman," Gold said. He also went to Paris that year for a meeting with a senior Saudi diplomat.

When he served as Israel's ambassador to the UN between 1997 and 1999, "there was an African country with a Muslim majority, whose ambassador was head of the committee for the inalienable rights of the Palestinians." After a fire-and-brimstone speech to the General Assembly, "he came up to me and asked, 'Dore, maybe you could take me for lunch at one of your kosher restaurants?'" Today, Israel and the country have full diplomatic relations.

"The point here is that countries are driven by a keen understanding of their interests. If their interests lead them to closer ties with Israel, they will pursue them. First perhaps in a hidden way, but later in an overt way....Our vital interests and those of the Arab world have begun to really coalesce. And that makes great opportunity for dramatic breakthroughs. I am optimistic with respect to what can be done."

Col. Richard Kemp: A Great Step Forward for World Peace - and Who Seems Determined to Ignore It

Some months ago, in talks with leaders in Saudi Arabia as part of a delegation from former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Friends of Israel Initiative, together with their Executive Director and former Spanish National Security Adviser Rafael Bardaji, I heard first-hand how open the Saudis were to the prospect of embracing Israel in the future.

Of far greater significance, however, is the looming threat to the region from Iran and, to a lesser extent, Turkey. Most Arab countries see common interests with Israel in the face of the mullahs in Tehran with their imperial aggression in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and beyond, coupled with insatiable nuclear ambition.

Notwithstanding the economic, technological and security imperatives that lie behind the evolving Middle East relationships, great credit must go to the men behind the Abraham Accord.... Mohammed bin Zayed... [and] Benjamin Netanyahu... know only too well that such actions carry with them serious risks to themselves personally and to their nations.

Palestinian Media Watch translated an interview with Saeb Erakat where the accomplished liar tries mightily to come up with reasons why Arab nations shouldn't make peace with Israel - something that he and Hanan Ashrawi have been trying to do without much success.

They try different tacks to see if anything will resonate with the Arab world, but they aren't doing too well.

Erakat said:

There are [Arab] groups that say: ‘Palestine is not my cause.’ Groups say that ‘the Palestinians are ungrateful and we are employing them [the refugees]. We’ve helped them, but Israel is a beautiful, successful state.’ [Some] speak in Hebrew at universities to speak with Israel… This is a public birth for the Arab Zionists. There is no Arab Zionism, there are Arab Zionists… I have contacted Bahrain and sent official letters. I sent official letters and asked for two things: Not to follow the UAE [but] stick to the Arab Peace Initiative. And to convince the UAE to recant [the agreement with Israel]… I did the same with all the Arab states… It is not insignificant when an Arab photographs his son who puts the Israeli flag on his chest… This is Zionist thinking. Forbidden. This is forbidden.“

What exactly is his argument? He really doesn't have one. In the end, the best Erakat can do is to use the word "Zionist" as a general expletive and insult and say how unacceptable it is for an Arab to engage in "Zionist thinking."

What is Zionist thinking? That to build a nation you have to do the hard work yourself and not rely on outsiders to do all the work for you?

No wonder the Palestinians are allergic to it.

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Al-Omah, an Egypt-based pan-Muslim news site, has a most revealing op-ed about the Israel/UAE accord that shows how systemic Arab antisemitism is.

The article, by Dr. Abdul Latif, is so dripping with anger at the UAE for partnering with Jews that it doesn't even mention the UAE by name.

It is entitled, "Loyalty to the Jews is the epitome of hypocrisy." In this case, the word "hypocrisy" is not a mere value judgment but a specific Quranic term describing someone who appears on the outside to be a Muslim but who is actively working to destroy the Muslim world from the inside.

Latif employs two well-known Quranic verses:

Quran 5:51:

O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you - then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people.

Quran 4:145:

Indeed, the hypocrites will be in the lowest depths of the Fire - and never will you find for them a helper.

Dr. Latif is saying that UAE leaders who cooperate with Jews will go to the worst depths of Hell, beyond the spaces reserved for mere unbelievers.

Remarkably, Latif doesn't even pretend to care about Palestinians in his criticism of the Emiratis, which is the usual fig-leaf used by Arab critics of the deal. His enmity is based purely on old fashioned Muslim Jew-hatred. Cooperating with Jews on any level is a major sin and those who do it are condemned to hellfire.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Daoud al-Khatib, 45, an Islamic Jihad terrorist who was sentenced to 18 years of prison in 2003, died of a heart attack with six months left in his sentence.

As always happens when prisoners die, the Palestinians across the board are accusing Israel of "medical negligence."

The Samidoun Prisoners Network says so. The Palestinian Prisoners Club says so. Islamic Jihad says so. The PLO says so.

The Human Rights and Civil Society Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization called on the international community and its bodies to break their silence about the occupation crimes against Palestinian and Arab prisoners and put an end to the violations committed against them, foremost of which is the policy of medical negligence, which has become a tool in the hands of the occupation authorities to practice a policy of slow killing for them.

Based on the articles on al-Khatib's death, he suffered a stroke several years ago, and he was treated for that at the time. Afterwards he underwent open heart surgery - paid for by the Israeli taxpayer. After his latest heart attack the Israeli prison authorities attempted to revive him with defibrillation.

In other words, the "negligent" Israelis did everything they could to keep this terrorist alive.

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09/02 Links Pt2: The dumb Jewish supporters of BLM; Senior BBC journalist used pseudonym account to back attacks on Emma Barnett after Shoah speech

From Ian:

The dumb Jewish supporters of BLM

Jonathan S. Tobin of JNS wrote a reasoned article panning the recent ad in the NYTimes supporting Black Lives Matter and signed by 600 Jewish groups. There were no Orthodox umbrella groups, haredi or centrist, such as OU, Igud Harabanim or the RCA among the signers.

I, in contrast, will be less polite.

What is the Jewish street terminology for those who egregiously give support and comfort to their enemies? One word.....well, Arutz Sheva won't print it (those with a penchant for rhymes can figure it out at the end of this article.)

And so, trusting to your imagination, I'll apply this adjective to the 600 Jewish groups that signed on to a full-page ad in this past week's New York Times supporting and gushing over the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) and its leaders.

We'd expect such radical self hating Jewish groups such as T'ruah, Jewish Voice for Peace, J Street and Bend the Arc to stand strong with any Jew/Israel hating bunch of common street thugs. But to have the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the national umbrella group and spokesperson for such normally credible organizations as Hadassah, Jewish War Veterans, ORT, B'nai B'rith, and our Jewish Federations, join in the parade to glorify the horrific platform of the BLM, blows one's mind.

To begin with, recall please, the demonstrations down the streets of NYC, led by thousands of BLM supporters chanting, "Kill the cops!" along with shouts of "What do we want? Dead pigs in blankets!" and "Fry 'em in bacon!"

Those signed Jewish groups support such outrageous, dangerous, calls-for-murder-of-cops statements? And what of the 2016 BLM platform accusing Israel of being an "apartheid" state committing "genocide" against Palestinian Arabs and claiming that Jewish supporters pushed the U.S. into wars in the Middle East?

The BLM platform also officially joined forces with the BDS campaign to "free Palestine from the River to the sea" and to "dismantle (destroy) the State of Israel." They said it, they mean it and they will stick to it.

David Collier: Toxic. BBC journalists as antisemitic trolls and the battle for academia

The sickness of the PSC

This week exposed the weakness and failure of the anti-Israel movements more than most. The deal between the UAE and Israel is a historic one. Whilst the lies of the PSC may persuade a foolish pensioner in Newcastle to stop buying Israeli avocados, the Arab boycott itself is crumbling. So it was no surprise that the latest online event put on by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was a depressing affair.

The online ‘demonstration’ was hosted by Director Ben Jamal and lasted 90 minutes. Yes, of course Jeremy Corbyn was a keynote speaker. Two other MPs made an appearance, along with a couple of trade unionists. As PSC events go, it was relatively tame. They had a few political propagandists speak from Gaza and coincidentally, there was no problem with Gaza’s electricity supply when they did so. There were the usual smears but nothing too outlandish. The only surprising thing was that the ageing crowd did not fall asleep.

One of the hardest parts of my research is putting names to faces, so for me an online Zoom event like this which does the work for me, is like receiving an early Chanukah present:

They claimed over 1000 people watching, which is a bit silly when these online apps give an accurate headcount. There were roughly 430 on Zoom and 50 on Facebook. What made it even sadder is that every Zionist activist I know was in the crowd too. What was also clear was the demographic of the online viewers. One of the cases that I have been making for years is that ‘PSC’ people are mainly older, majority female and very white. For most of these sad individuals ‘Palestine’ is the cause they picked up as they would a bridge or chess club. Something that gets them out of the house to meet people at a local coffee evening.

Their online weakness was also exposed. During the event they ran two ‘online’ campaigns using #hashtags. #endthesiege and #stoparmingisrael. They both only received a few dozen tweets and almost all of these were a direct copy and paste comment from empty trolls. The same type of thing we see coming from online Gazan troll factories. This exact comment, word for word, made up over 90% of the tweets made:

There was almost no original input whatsoever.

It is time to undress the toxic BBC
Far more worrying is what is taking place elsewhere. Yesterday the news broke that a senior BBC journalist had been running an antisemitic sock account. Nimesh Thaker used the Twitter account ‘Not That Bothered‘ to belittle antisemitism and promote posts by people such as Jackie Walker and Kerry-Anne Mendoza. The account was also used to ‘support attacks on the organisation’s Jewish presenter Emma Barnett after she spoke out about the personal impact of antisemitism on her life’. By the time I went looking, the journalist appeared to have completely disabled all his social media accounts.

The horror of this should not be understated. This news brutally exposes the mindset we know exists at the BBC – childish, supremacist and Jew-baiting. For years we have complained about the bias and clearly distorted reporting taking place. We don’t need to wonder anymore about why the fringe group JVL were so often given BBC airtime. People like Thaker write the news that millions of people read each day. They’ve been doing so for decades. Nothing in the UK bears more responsibility for the spread of the false anti-Israel narrative than the BBC.

I have never been of the ‘defundthebbc’ bloc, but I am finding it harder and harder to justify that stance. I used to argue it needed reform rather than a complete rebuild, but I no longer oppose those that think the entire structure should be taken down. Pay the license fee – why on earth should I pay for this. BBC journalists have become antisemitic trolls. How do you repair that?

Senior BBC journalist used pseudonym account to back attacks on Emma Barnett after Shoah speech

A senior BBC World News journalist used an anonymous social media account to support attacks on the organisation’s Jewish presenter Emma Barnett after she spoke out about the personal impact of antisemitism on her life.

Nimesh Thaker also used the Twitter account set up under the pseudonym Not That Bothered to support posts written by Kerry-Anne Mendoza and Jackie Walker, both of whom have been at the centre of antisemitism allegations themselves.

In posts from the account, the BBC reporter also suggested Israel was a “racist” and “white supremacist state”. He also branded the BBC Director General a “white male Tory”.

The JC has been given evidence showing that Mr Thaker had used the Not That Bothered account to attempt to make contact with individuals for reports he was making for the BBC – exposing the fact that he was behind the account.

New BBC Director General Tim Davie is expected to outline his disapproval of partisan journalists as he sets out his plans for the Corporation later this week.

Mr Thaker – who has reported for BBC World News for over ten years - was openly critical of BBC 5 Live presenter Ms Barnett after she delivered a widely praised speech about the impact of the Holocaust on her family on the day that Twitter was being boycotted over its failure to act against rapper Wiley’s antisemitic outbursts.

The JC has been sent screenshots showing that the Not That Bothered account retweeted a post sent to Ms Barnett which accused her of using “the same old ‘antisemitism’ excuse whenever people criticise Israel”.

Normalization Could Create a Real “New Middle East” (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

The main thing you need to know about the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is that Iran, Turkey, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, IfNotNow, Jewish Voice for Peace, and other enemies of the Jewish state oppose it.

Opponents of the deal like to call it a “betrayal of the Palestinians.” It isn’t: rather, it’s a betrayal of the PLO and Hamas, organizations which are the worst thing to happen to Palestinian Arabs since the Nazi Mufti Amin al-Husseini.

Countries don’t have feelings and don’t form friendships. They have interests and form alliances in support of them. The PLO was created in 1964 by Nasser’s regime in order to promote Egyptian objectives, which were to conquer and annex as much as possible of the new state of Israel; later it came under the influence of the KGB, which employed it on behalf of Soviet interests in the region.

Neither Egypt, which forced Palestinian refugees into camps in 1948 (and to this day does not grant full Egyptian citizenship to Palestinians living in Egypt), nor the other Arab states and the Soviet Union, viewed Palestinian Arabs as anything other than a weapon to use against Israel, and the PLO, their creature, reflected this.

In 1982, the PLO was defeated by Israel and Maronite Christian forces in the First Lebanon War. But instead of being treated like the war criminals they were, the leadership of the PLO was allowed to flee under UN auspices to Tunisia. One would have thought that the PLO, removed from close contact with Palestinian Arabs, would lose influence and die out. But in 1987 there was a popular Palestinian uprising in the territories, the First Intifada, and PLO-connected groups managed to coopt and control it, brutally suppressing anti-PLO Palestinians as “collaborators.” The PLO made itself the de facto representative of the Palestinians in the territories.

And now Israel made one of her greatest mistakes since 1948, the Oslo Accords. Oslo created a “temporary” Palestinian Authority (PA) to govern the territories until a final status agreement could be made, which of course never happened. But the PA, in essence the PLO, still controls the parts of Judea and Samaria where most Palestinians live. In Gaza, the PLO was overthrown by a violent coup by Hamas in 2005.

Both the PA and Hamas function as dictatorships (the PA is supposed to be democratic, but hasn’t held an election since 2005). Both are supported by large amounts of foreign money via UNRWA and other sources. They are both massively corrupt; “connected” Palestinians live like kings, while most of the population lacks basic needs. Both maintain their maximalist demands against Israel, which have kept the conflict simmering with intermittent boiling over into large-scale violence – the Second Intifada and multiple Gaza conflicts. And both have created educational and media systems that teach their youth to hate Jews and Israelis enough that even children have become capable of murdering Jews at random in the streets.

The PLO and Hamas depend on the conflict as an excuse for their dictatorial control, and for much of their foreign money. It’s their reason for being. So there can be no “normalization” of relations between Palestinian Arabs and Jews on their watch. The conflict must go on. And this has been bolstered by almost universal Arab and Muslim solidarity – until today.

The peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan called for some degree of normalization, but these aspects have not been realized. The peace has been “cold” from the beginning. This isn’t an accident. Indeed the growth of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel expression in Egypt and Jordan – which sometimes bursts out in murderous incidents – ensures that there will not be normalization in the near future. Like the PLO, the leadership of these countries has been prepared to compromise to some extent to achieve the practical benefits of non-belligerence; but they have not rejected the destruction of Jewish sovereignty as an ultimate objective.

The negotiations with the UAE, on the other hand, at least at this point, seem to express a wholly different spirit, one in which actual normalization and not just non-belligerence seems to be the goal. Nothing could infuriate the Palestinian leadership more, since their unhappy subjects will see, for the first time, that the option of unending hostility is not the only choice. If other Arab nations join in as expected, it will be even more persuasive.

Naturally, the Iranian and Turkish regimes (correctly) see these developments as the creation of an economic and military alliance that opposes their geopolitical ambitions. But what about Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and similar Western leftist groups? How can we understand their opposition to what is, after all, a movement in the direction of reducing conflict, perhaps a movement that will ultimately lead to the long-desired end of the Israeli-Arab conflict?

It’s simple. They say they are concerned for the welfare of the Palestinian people, but that is not true, and never has been true. The welfare of the Palestinians would best be served by the replacement of the PLO and Hamas by less corrupt leaders that would favor normalization and closer cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis. There is no doubt that if instead of paying terrorists to murder Jews, Palestinian leaders worked together with Israelis to develop economic alternatives to the international dole, the lives of ordinary Palestinians would be greatly improved. I am sure that many Palestinians already think so, but are afraid to publicly say it in the face of PLO and Hamas repression.

IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace – and countless other such organizations – have as their objective the elimination of the Jewish state, not the welfare of Palestinians. For that reason, they support BDS, the PLO and Hamas. They are supported financially by anti-Israel sources (see here and here) like the massive Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Their opposition to normalization exposes them for what they are.

One doesn’t want to be too optimistic at this early stage. It can be noted that there will probably be a backlash from religiously conservative elements against Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the region. It can be argued that the apparent rapprochement between Israel and some Sunni Arab states is nothing more than a temporary alliance against Iran. But I don’t think so. I think there is beginning to be an understanding, at least on the part of some Arabs, that the continued demonization of Israel does not serve their long-term interests. And the possibilities for the future are breathtaking.

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Israel haters often say that Zionism is racism, saying that the entire idea of Zionism is anti-Arab.

This week we saw an outpouring of love from Israeli Jews to the Arabs of the United Arab Emirates. Israelis are excited to start new business initiatives, to visit the UAE with their families. Zionists worldwide are enthusiastic over the possibilities. Israelis and Emiratis are exchanging admiring posts on social media.

Aren't the citizens of the United Arab Emirates - Arabs?

If Zionists are racist and Zionism is racism, how can these racist Jews so fully embrace peace with not just an Arab country but with so many Arab people?

With Jordan and Egypt as well, it was the Zionist Jews who wanted true normalized relations on every level. It was the Arabs who resisted doing this.

There are some racist attitudes in the Middle East, but both Israel and the UAE are far more tolerant than most other nations in the region.

(h/t Yisrael Medad)

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09/02 Links Pt1: A tectonic shift in the relations between Israel and Arab world; Soldier, cop lightly injured in suspected car-ramming and attempted stabbing

From Ian:

A tectonic shift in the relations between Israel and Arab world

Over the past decade or so I have reported from around 100 countries. I have been in the White House during the good moments (with US President Donald Trump) and during the bad moments (with then-President Barack Obama).

I have witnessed the return of the remains of an Israeli MIA through Moscow, and traveled with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Uganda, Brazil Ethiopia and Beijing for his diplomatic visits. But the flight from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi was something completely different.

It underscores the major breakthrough between the UAE and Israel. The fact that El Al's Star of David flew over Saudi Arabia symbolizes the tectonic shift underway in relations between Israel and the Arab world. Israel made a giant leap forward on Monday in its effort to integrate in the region and be like any other normal country. The hostility and the boycotts are now a thing of the past, a new era of cooperation and friendship has begun.

The enormity of these developments was palpable among all those who were on board, not just the Israeli and US officials but also the flight crew and reporters. Everyone talked about how it was such a great privilege to be taking part in this historic event. Special face masks decorated with the flags of the US, the UAE and Israel were handed out; the boarding passes also had a special design.

It's also worth noting that throughout the three-hour flight, Israeli and US officials sat next to each other as if they were family or citizens of the same nation. Such closeness among the senior members of both governments is unprecedented. This intimacy in and of itself is an accomplishment that stands out.

JPost Editorial: The UAE-Israel deal could mark a new dawn for relations in the Middle East

The new dawn that is the UAE-Israel relationship is not just built on practical issues such as economics and security. It is already being built on human relationships. Whether it is stories about kosher deli service for the Expo in the Emirates, or the small but thriving Jewish community, we can see that there is a very real human warmth that is emerging in Abu Dhabi and Dubai towards Israel.

This warmth goes both ways. Israelis have lit up their buildings with the UAE flag, and opened their hearts to the possibilities of peace. This is welcome news during the COVID-19 crisis and the way that the world’s nations and citizens have become isolated and cut off from one another.

The symbolic visit to the Western Wall by Kushner prior to the historic flight and the morning prayers in the UAE bookend this phenomenal trip.
However, we must not glory only in success and fanfare. Too often our presumptions, and sometimes arrogance, have clouded reality. There is a long road ahead in the UAE, just as there have been hurdles in the Jordanian and Egyptian peace agreements.

There are questions about US F-35 sales to the Emirates. Israel is divided on whether the sales would erode its qualitative military advantage. It will take years for F-35 sales to materialize, even if approved in the US. By that time, Israel will have several squadrons of the advanced aircraft.

There may be other hurdles as well, such as the UAE wanting to see some progress on issues in the West Bank, or Iran and Turkey seeking to throw a spanner into the process. Israel and the UAE have dangerous enemies, from Tehran to the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a part. Navigating the US election and Washington’s increasingly partisan foreign policy will be difficult.

We can face the future together with the UAE. This week began what should be a beautiful friendship.

David Singer: Saudi Arabia is impeding Trump's effort to end the conflict

Israel’s then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced Israel’s readiness to resume negotiations with the Palestinian Authority “based on previous agreements between us, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map and the April 14, 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

No mention was made of the API forming part of those renewed negotiations – nor could it be - since its total territorial withdrawal demands had been undercut by the Bush Congress-endorsed letter.

Those Arab nations and entities – indeed all parties present at the Conference - failed to object or demur to the new territorial reality of partial Israeli withdrawal which the Bush letter had engendered.

Saudi Arabia’s insistence on Israel’s total territorial withdrawal stipulated by the API as the price to be paid for Saudi Arabia signing a peace treaty with Israel has been seemingly backed by Sudan,Bahrain and Oman to prolong the 100 years-old Arab-Jewish conflict.

The Trump vision for peace is a plan that can end that conflict. It needs to be embraced by all who attended the Annapolis Conference – especially by Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Bahrain and Oman now joining the UAE as real trailblazers for peace.

Trump did not present his meticulously detailed deal of the century to see it rejected before its implementation was even attempted.

Pressure by top Trump aides in the region this week to get Saudi Arabia to endorse Trump’s plan is certain.

Failure to do so could see Trump administering his proven shockwave therapy to jolt Sudan,Bahrain and Oman from backing Saudi Arabia’s continuing rejection of Trump’s plan.

Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor makes some excellent points about the irrelevance of Europe to the Israel/Arab conflict and how their outdated views of the region are actually anti-peace.

The EU was notably absent on the El Al plane from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi. There were no EU officials and no EU flags, either on the plane or on the face masks of the Arabs who greeted the Israelis. Why not?

As Steinberg writes,

Almost all EU diplomats, foreign policy officials and 'experts', operate through simplistic misguided prisms based on post-1945 images of normative (soft) power, rules-based international order, and other thinking that is .totally inapplicable to the Middle East. As a result, Europe has little credibility.

The Israel-UAE agreement is based on realpolitik and national interests -- security (the Iran threat), economic, cyber threats and others. European diplomacy in 21st century has no capacity for contributing in these dimensions.

Europe's foreign policy on Israel offers nothing positive and tangible. Their main tools are threats of sanctions (aimed at Israel only), ritual anti-Israel UN votes, and massive funding to fringe anti-Israel NGOs under the facade of aid and human rights. This is in total contrast to the US.

For Palestinians, Europe is a very reliable cash cow and amplifier of slogans, including their supposed powerlessness and victimhood. No matter what Palestinians do - terror, incitement, ICC lawfare - European money keeps flowing. But for substance, Palestinian leaders have (until very recently - EoZ) turned to the US.

Europe is narrowly focused on the Palestinian issue (and stuck in the 1970s); they treat Israel condescendingly, and their "peace proposals" and frequent declarations consist entirely of empty slogans. Systematically stuck in the 1970s (or 1950s), Europe is blind to Israel's role as a major regional actor, interacting with other countries on the basis of significant capabilities and shared interests.

Opposition to the Iranian strategic threat is a major catalyst for Israel-Gulf cooperation. In contrast, Europe's policy on Iran is based on slogans and reviving the ill-conceived JCPOA, allowing the regime to acquire nuclear weapons. These policies are non-starters.

To play any useful role in the region, Europe needs an entirely new approach to Israel, Iran, the UAE and other Gulf states. The people and myths that have dominated Europe's approach for decades need to retired and replaced by diplomats and experts with both feet on the ground.

Steinberg is correct. It is no coincidence that each one of Israel's peace agreements with Arab countries have been facilitated by the US with no European involvement. The Europeans treat the Palestinians as spoiled children with no responsibility for their actions, and one cannot make peace with irresponsible toddlers.

Gulf countries have, in recent years, given the Palestinians the message that they are not the center of the universe and they can no longer assume reflexive support and unlimited cash from their fellow Arabs. They live better lives under "occupation" than most Arabs do in independent countries. Their fate is in their hands but they have rejected every peace plan that doesn't leave open the possibility of Israel's destruction.

Instead of growing up, the puerile Palestinians have come to rely on the Western Left to provide them with unlimited moral and financial support. Europe, pretending to be relevant, is happy to fund organizations that actually hurt any chances for peace. This massive funding has perverted the Palestinian economy itself - the best paying jobs outside Israel come from these anti-Israel NGOs, which contribute nothing towards actual productivity and make it unappealing for Palestinians to become productive and independent citizens, creating and exporting useful goods and services.

The UAE deal reveals the European approach to the Middle East to be corrupt and counterproductive.

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Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO to meet with heads of other terror groups Thursday

From the official Palestinian Wafa news agency:

Preparations are underway to hold a meeting headed by President Mahmoud Abbas and with the participation of the heads of all the Palestinian political factions at home and abroad, today said Ahmad Majdalani, Secretary-General of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front and Minister of Social Affairs in the Palestinian Authority.

He told the official Voice of Palestine radio that the meeting, which will be held between Ramallah, for the home-based leaders, and at the Palestine Embassy in Beirut, for the leaders in exile, seeks to reach a consensus on a national program to confront the US so-called deal of the century, Israel’s annexation plans and the normalization of Arab relations with Israel.

He stressed that this meeting is expected to strengthen the home front and pave the way for ending the inter-Palestinian division.

The meeting is scheduled to be held on Thursday.

This means that Mahmoud Abbas' PLO is meeting with internationally recognized terror organizations to come up with a response to Israeli peace with the UAE and potential peace with other Arab countries.

In fact, the head of Hamas' "political wing," Ismail Haniyeh, arrived in Lebanon on Monday to attend the Beirut meetings with the PLO and other factions. He already met with Hezbollah terrorists.

The group eschewed wearing masks as they stood shoulder to shoulder for this photo op, so perhaps some good will come from that meeting.

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From AFP:

French President Emmanuel Macron said Lebanon's embattled leaders had pledged Tuesday to form a crisis cabinet within two weeks to push forward with key reforms, as he visited the disaster-hit country.

Macron was in Beirut for a second time since an August 4 explosion there which killed more than 180 people, laid waste to entire city districts and fueled popular rage against the country's political elite.

Speaking at a press conference following talks with the heads of Lebanon's parliamentary blocs, Macron said Hizbullah "is probably in parliament because of intimidation but also because other forces have failed to run the country well."

"But it has a popular base and that is the reality," he added.

Nonetheless, "with Hizbullah there is a discussion that needs to be initiated," with regards to disarmament, Macron added.

"This is exactly the discussion we had an hour ago (and) it should not be a taboo," he said.

It won't happen, but even discussing the issue out loud is something that was not done before the explosion. The Lebanese people are becoming more public in their criticism of Hezbollah, and Nasrallah's speeches cannot make a dent in that.

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