Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, September 07, 2020

Existing Eilat-Ashkelon-Haifa oil pipeline could be used by the UAE to bypass Suez Canal, make Israel major oil hub

Around 1959, Israel and Iran built gas and oil pipelines from the Red Sea at Eilat to the Mediterranean Sea at Ashkelon, Ashdod and Haifa ports. Known at the time as the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company, it was mostly used as an alternative for shipping oil from Shah-era Iran to Europe, bypassing the Suez Canal which Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser could arbitrarily restrict.

When Iran severed ties with Israel during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, it stopped this arrangement of sending oil through Israel on to Europe.

The pipeline is still in use, fully owned by Israel and under a new company name - the Europe Asia Pipeline Co. Parts of it are bidirectional and oil from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan is being sent to tankers in Eilat for transport to China, South Korea and other Asian countries.

For Gulf countries like the UAE, peace with Israel could save them huge amounts of money now spent for shipping through the Suez Canal. Supertankers that can dock in Israeli ports have a capacity of double the size of oil tankers that can fit through the Canal, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars per shipment to Europe and North America. Right now this is very difficult because of the Arab boycott - any company that publicly used Israel for oil transport would be banned from business in the Gulf so existing users keep a very low profile and the EAPC's financial records are considered a military secret by Israel.

The current pipeline is 42 inches for crude oil, with a parallel 16 inch pipeline for gasoline or diesel.

The UAE ending its Israel boycott opens up billions of dollars of business to send oil through Israel to the Mediterranean and to make Israel a major energy transportation hub.

There is an interesting wrinkle to the story of the EAPC. At the time of the Iranian resolution, there were hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil that were already in Israel that hadn't been paid for, and Iran and Israel have been suing each other for the past 25 years in international courts for the lost business. In 2015, Iranian media reported that a Swiss court had ruled that Israel owed $1.1 billion to Iran, but Israel has shown no interest in actually paying especially in light of its countersuits. Perhaps in response to the UAE deal, Iran is again requesting payment of the alleged $1.1 billion from Israel. Iran has little recourse to force Israel to pay to its sworn enemy, however.

(h/t Yoel)

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PLO Secretary General is losing whatever tenuous grasp on reality he ever had.

His latest tweets are big on hyperbolic lies and short on any facts.

Palestine will sever its relations with any country that will move or open its embassy to Jerusalem.We urge all nation states to abide by international law ,including security council resolutions 478 and 2334 . Violating int. law is a sign of weakness not strength
— Dr. Saeb Erakat الدكتور صائب عريقات (@ErakatSaeb) September 6, 2020

Has the PLO severed all relations with the US?

Does Erakat actually think that his threat would sway anyone?

The PLO is so used to threatening other countries with terror if things don't go their way. But the Arab world no longer follows the PLO lead. These threats aren't scaring anyone, and meanwhile Israel keeps adding diplomatic victories.

International law specified occupation by force of other people’s territory is the highest form of terrorism . Enough lies and blackmail . No one can normalise Israeli settlements, annexation and occupation
— Dr. Saeb Erakat الدكتور صائب عريقات (@ErakatSaeb) September 6, 2020

Really? The "highest form of terrorism?" This coming from the people who made international terrorism what it is today?

Of course, nowhere in international law does it say that occupation is terrorism. In fact, it is not even illegal - which is why there are so many laws concerning the conduct of belligerent occupiers.

And exactly whose territory was Judea and Samaria in 1947? 1949? 1967? 1988? What was the exact date that it supposedly became Palestinian territory according to the international law that Erakat pretends to be so interested in?

My home town Jericho is 11000 years old , the mother of all cities , the oldest inhibited city on earth ,and getting younger we are still here and we will be for at least another 11000 years . This is a promise. Abandon the lies and the blackmail , try justice and fairness .
— Dr. Saeb Erakat الدكتور صائب عريقات (@ErakatSaeb) September 6, 2020

The earliest people to live in Jericho who still exist today are Jews, over a thousand years before the Arab invasion and colonization of the Holy Land and over two thousand years before Erakat's family came from Transjordan and Arabia to Palestine.

In fact, Erakat himself admitted that he was a Jordanian and Bedouin, and the only thing that makes him "Palestinian" was where he happened to be born, not where his family was from.

It's funny that any Zionist points are dismissed as "hasbara" but no one points out the obvious lies from the Secretary General of the PLO.

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Crisis Group podcast lies about Israel, settlements

This is based on a thread by Inquisitive Native:

It is sad but not surprising that @CrisisGroup chose to launch its new podcast with this unabashed BDS propaganda, falsehoods and very weak analysis by an "expert" who's main paradigm just collapsed colossally. Here are some nuggets so you don't need to listen to this stuff.

Let's start with the lies.

@NathanThrall unabashedly recycles one of the vilest and most extensively-refuted lie that Israel builds separate roads for Palestinians in the West Bank "so they're removed from the main roads for Israeli settlers" (14:30).

Dispelling the myth of ‘Jews-only roads’ in the West BankThe claim that religiously exclusive roads exist in the West Bank needs to be debunked, suggests Adam Levick.https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/yourview/arid-30856339.html

Israel indeed builds new roads in the 60% of the WB it fully controls according to Oslo (PA does it in the rest), which serve both populations. Should't Palestinians also enjoy new, safer highways? Should those be closed for Jews? There's no coherent moral stance to be found.

He later (29:10) claims that days after the UAE deal "they discussed" (who?) plans to increase settler population by 100,000s, including one to add 100,000 settlers in the Ramallah area alone. It proves the "rabid acceleration of de-facto annexation". Only none of it is true.

Where'd he get it? Maybe from a 27 Aug article on one road which mentions those numbers as either aspirations of settlers or speculations of anti-settlement activists. For him that's enough to claim they're government plans that are being discussed.

Maybe he meant the meeting on 12 Aug of the Civil Admin where 2 plans for roads were approved which, like the rest of them, will serve Jews and Arabs alike. Even if you consider Israel an "occupying power" in Area C, it has every right, and actually a duty to build roads there.

An honest analyst would tell his listeners that in fact there's been a de facto freeze in promoting housing units in settlements for over 6 months now, which is why settler leaders are angry. But that'd spoil the narrative which he lays out clearly:

Israel is "expanding eastwards and totally eliminating any possibility for a normal life for the indigenous people, restricting them into smaller and smaller enclaves" (20:55), so the only moral option is to boycott it. This was too much even for @Rob_Malley who cut him off.

If Thrall's description of current Israeli policies is true he should be able to prove that, say in the past decade:
1. land used by settlers expanded more than land used by Palestinians in Area C.
2. settler population in Area C or E. Jerusalem grew faster than Palestinian

He can't. If anything, available data points the other way. But Thrall won't let anything stop him from describing Israel as a colonial power (31:05) bent on placing Palestinian in reserves like native Americans. Yes, in those very words. Loved to see Malley's face there.

I can understand Thrall's frustration. He's been one of the main voices lobbying for massive external pressures on Israel, and must be hard to realise how wrong he was. Or as his former boss tells him fatherly, it's ok as a personal moral view but not a political strategy.

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09/06 Links: Israel-UAE normalization to be given peace treaty status; Richard Grenell: Serbia-Kosovo agreement results from Trump's different brand of diplomacy; Malawi to open embassy in Jerusalem

From Ian:

Richard Grenell: Serbia-Kosovo agreement results from Trump's different brand of diplomacy

Friday’s agreement reflects President Trump’s long-held vision for Kosovo and Serbia to focus on economic development, job creation and industrial development as prerequisites to the permanent resolution of political disputes. His belief from the start has been that trust is built first in the process of creating opportunities and futures for young people, rather than in the settlement of scores, symbolism or the righting of historical wrongs. The U.S. will spend the next year implementing these new agreements, and the people and governments of Kosovo and Serbia have the full trust of the U.S. government to carry them forward.

As a demonstration of good faith from the two parties toward the U.S., Serbia and Kosovo also committed Friday to cooperate with certain key U.S. policy priorities in the region. Both parties pledged to protect and promote freedom of religion, including renewed interfaith communication, protection of religious sites, and continued restitution of Holocaust-era heirless and unclaimed Jewish property. Both agreed to designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organization and fully implement measures to restrict Hezbollah’s operations and financial activities in their jurisdictions. Both agreed to work with the U.S. government to decriminalize homosexuality in the 69 countries where it is currently illegal. And, perhaps most importantly of all, Serbia has pledged to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, while Kosovo has agreed to mutual recognition with Israel.

Following on the heels of the Aug. 13 peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Friday’s agreement between Kosovo and Serbia to take steps toward economic normalization and an eventual peaceful coexistence demonstrates the achievements of President Trump and his administration’s sound engagement throughout the world. When the U.S. government prioritizes diplomacy over force, and understanding over threats, the world stands to benefit.

.@RichardGrenell on the historic Kosovo and Serbia agreement: “the only way that this agreement could’ve happened is from an outsider.” pic.twitter.com/HXhQuHrn9h
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) September 4, 2020

David Collier: The Jew-hating shame of Scotland and their lazy media

Lazy reporting

There is a right to protest and a high level of freedom must be granted. The people who are really letting everyone down on this issue are the media. It takes just a few hours of research into any of the demonstrating groups to realise they are extremists, racists, antisemites, Holocaust deniers and terrorist supporters. Much of this research has already been done and the information is publicly available. Yet media such as the ‘Daily Record’ report it simply as a ‘pro-Palestinian’ protest, even quoting the rancid Mick Napier and having time to introduce an Apartheid comparison.

Heather Carrick in the Glasgow Times put together a montage of pictures for the ‘pro-Palestine protest‘, mentioning criticism of Israel’s record, but failing to point out the relevance of both the Iranian and Pakistani flag captured in her photos. She did make sure however, that ‘black lives matter’ was given a prominent place.

Caitlin Hutchison of the Scottish Herald was probably the worst offender. Her report laid out the extremist case word for word, including the Apartheid smear and a full description of the content of leaflets being handed out. Hutchinson even praised the ‘social distancing’ demands of the organisers. Her readers would not have a clue that she was describing the activity of antisemites, terrorist sympathisers and rancid extremists. She is a hack.

The BBC had the protest as a backdrop to an interview, giving them plenty of unnecessary publicity. It is unlikely the BBC bothered to tell anyone this was a band of extremists.

Only the Scottish Sun, correctly identified the protest as being ‘anti-Israel’ and was responsible enough to balance out their reporting with allegations of antisemitism and criticism of the protestors.

A group of extremists and antisemites gathered outside to protest the arrival of a football team from the Jewish state. That is the news story here. If it should be shared it should be done to show people just what type of people are supporting the boycott Israel movement. That failure to report the truth – the news – is the central reason why anti-Israel hate has been spreading for decades. Instead of being researched and identified, the media is giving these racists and extremists sympathetic publicity. They are openly spreading hate.

Qanta Ahmed: As a Muslim American Trump admirer, I say to Joy Reid and Ilhan Omar: Shame on you!

Omar — like all Islamist sympathizers — seeks to silence any who dare criticize, examine or analyze Islam, Muslims, our institutions, our leaders, or any aspect of our societies.

Was Reid’s utter stupidity offensive? Perhaps. But more than offensive, Reid’s remarks were revelatory of her own rank ignorance. But were Reid’s remarks an assault on Islam? Hardly.

Stretching Reid’s remarks to anything close to anti-Muslim xenophobia (which is despicable in a liberal secular democracy where all minorities are protected and celebrated), Reid could be accused of xenophobia against Muslims, but this is not Islamophobia.

Islamists and their allies (including the left) recall that Omar met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2017 when she was a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives. Erdogan is the modern godfather of the Muslim Brotherhood — the mothership of Islamism.

Islamists and their sympathizers wield Islamophobia as a political and judicial shield against criticism and scrutiny of ideological Islamism. Omar seeks to silence not only the stupidity of Reid’s remarks, but any rights Reid might have to examine Muslims.

This does not excuse the dumb and dumber exchange we were all subjected to. But it does reveal in the left’s alliance with Islamism — whether Muslim Islamist sympathizers or a recognized far-left political commentator — how it demeans and devalues Muslims everywhere.

To Reid and Omar I say: shame on you both!

The Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday:

When he announced a potentially historic deal last month in which Persian Gulf nation United Arab Emirates said it was preparing to recognize Israel, President Trump predicted other Arab states would quickly follow suit.

But after two trips through the region by senior Trump advisors to build on what they hoped would be momentum from the Emirates deal, no other Arab nation has said it is willing to take the long-shunned leap to accept and recognize Israel as a legitimate Mideast neighbor, at least not until Israel resolves its conflict with Palestinians.

Did Trump say that other Arab countries would "quickly" follow the UAE?

Not that I can find. In the official transcript of his statements on August Trump merely says, "Now that the ice has been broken, I expect more Arab and Muslim countries will follow the United Arab Emirates’ lead. And I want to just thank them for being — it’s not surprising, knowing Mohammed so well. It’s not surprising. They are in that lead position. And normalize relations with Israel. We are already discussing this with other nations — with very powerful, very good nations and people that want to see peace in the Middle East. So you will probably see others of these, but this is the first one in more than 25 years."

Nowhere did Trump predict other Arab nations following the UAE within weeks. But the LA Times pretended he did - just so they can gleefully say that he could not follow through on a promise he never made.

It takes time for a nation to completely change its policy towards a former enemy. This should be obvious. But the LA Times is so tied to its narrative that it needs to do everything it can to downplay the historic accord.

One can only imagine how different, and celebratory, the LA TImes' coverage would have been if this was announced by Obama or Biden.

Beyond that, the LA Times article makes things up:

Kushner used his four-day trip to the Middle East to try to entice additional Arab countries to join the Emirates in moving to normalize relations with Israel. That follows a similar sojourn last month by Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, who traveled to five countries in the region. Both officials came up empty-handed.

How does the LAT know this? Normalization isn't a switch that is turned on or off - it involves lots of moving parts. It took over a decade of secret ties between Israel and the UAE before this announcement with lots of intermediate steps, like allowing Israeli athletes to compete under the Israeli flag in the UAE.

And we know that a lot has happened in the three weeks since the Israel/UAE agreement was announced.

For example, both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain announced that El Al flights would be able to fly over their territories en route to the UAE - that isn't exactly nothing. Saudi media and officials - as well as clerics - have changed the tenor of their official statements away from being anti-Israel to being more conciliatory.

Most importantly, the PLO demanded an Arab League session denouncing the UAE, and nothing happened. Gulf countries outside the UAE are no longer willing to publicly oppose peace with Israel.

This is a sea change in the attitudes between powerful Arab states and Israel - all happening since mid-August.

And this all remains unreported in the pages of the Los Angeles Times.

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Pure antisemitic cartoon from Hamas

Palestinian Media Watch recorded this Hamas TV cartoon showing Jews - religious and non-religious - "defiling" the Temple Mount. They are then literally cleansed.

The video is also inaccurate - Jews do not visit the Dome of the Rock, Jews cannot wear tefillin on the Mount, Jews cannot loiter when they do visit and they must keep moving around the periphery of the Mount, and the video implies that Israeli soldiers drink alcohol while there which is certainly absurd.

This is pure incitement to terror and it is pure antisemitism.

But don't hold your breath waiting for the left-wing self appointed arbiters of what antisemitism is to denounce or condemn this video.

(h/t Yoel)

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The New York Times usually refers to Hamas as an "Islamic militant group" that Israel "regards as a terrorist organisation."

It had rarely referred to Hamas as a terrorist organization without caveats as far as I can tell.

Suddenly, that changed on Friday.

The Justice Department on Friday charged two American citizens with ties to a far-right extremist group with trying to support the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas — a case that shows that extremists have sought to turn protests against racism into opportunities to commit violence, but that also runs counter to President Trump’s assertions that those extremists are predominantly on the far left.

Michael R. Solomon, 30, and Benjamin R. Teeter, 22, who were taken into custody on Thursday evening in Minneapolis, say they are members of a group called the Boogaloo Bois and of a subgroup called the Boojahideen. The groups are part of a loosely connected movement that seeks to bring about a second civil war to overthrow the United States government.

John C. Demers, the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said in a statement that Mr. Solomon and Mr. Teeter met with people they believed to be members of Hamas in order to “join forces and provide support, including in the form of weapons accessories,” to the terrorist organization.

When the NYT wants to associate Hamas with a right wing American group, Hamas magically transforms into a terrorist organization!

This is a remarkable example of media bias. The mainstream media goes through lots of apologetics when writing about Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Hezbollah, careful not to describe those groups as terror organizations because "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." ISIS is described as terrorist on multiple occasions in the NYT but not groups that only target Israeli civilians.

However, a tenuous connection between a fringe right-wing group and people they thought were Hamas is enough for the New York Times to change their style book from a progressive-friendly Hamas militant group that shares the same goals as BDS to a right-wing linked terror group.

The real story, ignored by the NYT, is that antisemitism is the glue that holds extremist groups together, whether Right, Left, Black, Arab or otherwise. White supremacist groups will happily quote left-wing anti-Zionists. In this case, the Boogaloo Bois were attracted to Hamas' antisemitism in wanting to partner with them.

In fact, the Boogaloo groups started off sounding as much like today's progressive extremists as they sound like white supremacists. According to the ADL, the groups associated with that name are anti-government and even anti-police. "Boogaloo" refers to a coming civil war, which is not far off what we are seeing in far-Left protests. A song lyric from the group quotes by the ADL says "Plug a pig, and then a Yid" - which makes them sound as much like Black Lives Matter as they sound like the KKK. Hate does not fit in neatly in Right/Left categories, and journalists who insist on categorizing them that way are doing a disservice to their readers.

(h/t FirstOneThrough)

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09/05 Links: Munich on my mind; The UAE-Israel accord is a win for every Muslim; Sermon suggests Saudi Arabia on its way to normalizing ties with Israel

From Ian:

CAMERA Op-Ed: Black September Remembered

It is a common, albeit false, assumption that the United States and Israel closely cooperated since the Jewish state’s recreation in 1948. Washington had supported the U.N. Partition Plan that would have created both an Arab and a Jewish state out of British-ruled Mandate Palestine, but then-President Harry Truman did so over the objections of top advisers. Indeed, the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon had argued that U.S. support for Israel would be a strategic liability.

America, in turn, often kept Israel at arm’s length, both forcing the Jewish state to give up territory won in the 1956 Suez War against Nasser and prohibiting weapon sales until 1962. While relations were cordial, and even friendly, the United States tended to view Israel less as a strategic partner and more as a burden.

With Syrian forces moving into Jordan, King Hussein asked for U.S. aerial reconnaissance. Washington turned to the Israelis.

On September 20, Kissinger told Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, the future Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, that King Hussein had asked to have Israel’s air force attack the Syrian invaders. A stunned Rabin asked, “Are you recommending that we respond to the Jordanian request?” Kissinger declined to give an answer, telling Rabin that he would get a response from Nixon within half an hour.

After speaking with Nixon, Kissinger told Israeli Premier Golda Meir, that the United States “would look favorably upon an Israeli air attack.”

Meir ordered the reconnaissance flights and Israel sent troops to its border with Syria. Israeli jets, meanwhile, flew low over Syrian tanks in Jordan—sending an unmistakable signal that Israel would intervene. “With that support,” Meir biographer Francine Klagsbrun wrote, “the king used his own air and ground forces to drive the Syrians back to their own country.” By July 1971 the PLO was crushed in Jordan, and Arafat fled to Lebanon.

Subsequently, Kissinger told Rabin that America was “fortunate in having an ally like Israel in the Middle East.”

Security cooperation would continue to improve between the two countries with Israel having demonstrated that it was more of an asset than a liability. Today, the nations enjoy unprecedented cooperation and Israel is considered a major non-NATO ally.

The event had other fateful consequences as well. The failed Syrian intervention led to the rise of Hafez al-Assad who, as defense minister, had opposed it. The PLO, meanwhile, would memorialize it as “Black September” and would go on to create another “state within a state” in Lebanon—igniting years more of warfare. Today another anti-Israel terror group, Hezbollah, has taken the PLO’s place in Lebanon. Elsewhere, Hezbollah has intervened in Syria to prop up Bashar Assad, Hafez’s genocidal son.

“History is not was,” the American novelist William Faulkner famously wrote, “it is.”

Munich on my mind

The Aftermath
Following a September 6 memorial that was criticized for sparse reference to the Israeli victims, the remaining Israeli athletes left Germany. Jewish athletes from other counties also left, or were provided extra security.

For decades, families of some victims appealed to the IOC to establish a permanent memorial. For decades, the IOC declined, worried that a memorial to the victims could “alienate other members of the Olympic community,” according to the BBC.

The IOC rejected an international campaign in support of a minute of silence at the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics in memory of the Israeli victims on the massacre’s 40th anniversary. Finally, the IOC conceded, honoring the Israeli victims before the 2016 Rio games.

Israel was well accustomed to war and terror. Its response was particularly resolute. Citing justice, and that Israelis would not be safe anywhere, Golda Meir authorized Operation Grapes of Wrath, and the Mossad began to track down and kill those responsible for the Munich massacre.

Munich Today
Years later, one of the masterminds who escaped justice, Abu Daoud, wrote that funding for the Munich attack was provided by Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority president since 2005. Had Israel known about that then, it’s possible that Abbas would also have been eliminated along with the other masterminds. Now, he’s President of an entity next to Israel that still supports terror.

The ghosts of Munich have also haunt US politics. Today, a candidate for Congress, Ammar Campa-Najjar, is the grandson of Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar, a mastermind of the Munich terrorist attack. While repudiating his grandfather’s actions, other Campa-Najjar statements have raised questions over how true that is.

Remembering the Victims

It’s inappropriate to write of the victims and not mention their names. Each led a full life, and left behind families and legacies that should not be forgotten, even five decades later: David Berger, Zeev Friedman, Yosef Gutfreund, Eliezer Halfin, Yosef Romano, Amitzur Shapira, Kehat Shorr, Mark Slavin, Andre Spitzer, Yakov Springer, and Moshe Weinberger.

In their memory, the Genesis 123 Foundation will be holding a webinar on September 9 with two current Israeli Olympians and the widow of Andre Spitzer.

#OnThisDay 1972: Mahmoud Abbas’ #Palestinian 'Black September' terrorists murdered 11 #Israeli athletes during Munich @Olympics.

May the memories of the victims be blessed & their avenging a constant reminder that 🇮🇱’s long arm of justice extends far & wide.#MunichMassacre pic.twitter.com/fam8zeLmn4
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 5, 2020

Black September - The story of the other 9/11

The date 9/11 is seared into our collective memory. That sunny Tuesday morning in 2001, Arab terrorists hijacked four airplanes and wreaked massive death and destruction on the United States.

A full 31 years before, Arab terrorists hijacked four airplanes in Europe and took hundreds of hostages. And although the incident faded in the world’s collective memory, the date 9/11 was seared into David Raab’s memory.

At 2:30 a.m. on September 11, 1970, David, his mother and four younger siblings were sleeping fitfully on a TWA plane. It was the beginning of their fifth day on board, with hijackers from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) demanding freedom for terrorists jailed in Israel and Europe.

The plane was no longer full. On September 7, non-Jewish women and children had been released and six male passengers were taken to an unknown location. About 80 passengers and 10 crew members – including the Raabs – remained trapped in the jet on Dawson’s Field, a dirt strip in Jordan.

The copilot came down the aisle and gently woke the 17-year-old rabbi’s son from Trenton, New Jersey. The hijackers, he said, wanted David at the front of the plane for questioning.

The terrorists often searched the Jewish passengers’ luggage for Israeli goods and badgered them to “admit” to Israeli citizenship or loyalty. But this summons seemed more ominous.

Tell Joe Biden – retract your promise to reinstate funding the terrorist Palestinian Regime!

Tell Joe Biden – fund JOBS not Palestinian TERRORISTS!#SayItAintSoJoe pic.twitter.com/Iu8FMMujuU
— Zionist Organization of America (@ZOA_National) September 4, 2020

09/04 Links Pt2: Netanyahu: Kosovo to be first Muslim-majority nation to open Jerusalem embassy; 100-year old hoax: Why the ‘Protocols’ is still a hit with anti-Semites

From Ian:

Netanyahu: Kosovo to be first Muslim-majority nation to open Jerusalem embassy

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that not only would Kosovo recognize Israel but it would open an embassy in Jerusalem, becoming the first Muslim-majority nation to do so.

Earlier Friday, Serbia announced that it would move its embassy to Jerusalem. The moves come as part of US-brokered discussions to normalize economic ties between Belgrade and Pristina.

After two days of meetings with Trump administration officials, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti agreed to cooperate on a range of economic fronts to attract investment and create jobs. The White House announcement provided US President Donald Trump with a diplomatic win ahead of the November presidential election and furthers his administration’s push to improve Israel’s international standing.

Netanyahu hailed the moves and said Israel would establish diplomatic relations with Kosovo.

A statement from Netanyahu’s office said that during a meeting between Trump and Hoti, the president called Netanyahu and congratulated the two leaders on the decision to establish full diplomatic relations.

According to the statement, Hoti also announced that he would open an embassy in Jerusalem.

“Kosovo will be the first Muslim-majority nation to open an embassy in Jerusalem. As I said in recent days the circle of peace is expanding and more nations are expected to join,” Netanyahu said.

Kosovo President Hashim Thaci confirmed Prisitna’s intention, saying he welcomed Netanyahu’s announcement “about the genuine intention to recognize Kosovo and establish diplomatic relations.”

” Kosovo will keep its promise to place its diplomatic mission in Jerusalem,” he tweeted.

Palestinians slam Trump for pushing Serbia, Kosovo to set up Jerusalem embassies

The Palestinian Authority on Friday slammed US President Donald Trump, accusing him of orchestrating the decision by Serbia and Kosovo to establish embassies in Jerusalem to satisfy his “electoral ambitions.”

During a summit at the White House between Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti to normalize economic ties between the Balkan nations, Trump announced that Serbia would move its embassy to Jerusalem and Muslim-majority Kosovo would recognize Israel and establish full diplomatic relations.

The White House announcement provided Trump with a diplomatic win ahead of the November presidential election and furthers his administration’s push to improve Israel’s international standing.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later revealed that Kosovo would also establish its embassy in Jerusalem, while Israel would recognize Kosovo.

Top PLO official and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat reacted angrily to the news.

“The Trump Administration once again shows their full commitment with the violation of international law, UN resolutions and denial of Palestinian rights by encouraging nations to illegally recognize annexed Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” Erakat tweeted.

“Palestine has become a victim of the electoral ambitions of President Trump, whose team would take any action, no matter how destructive for peace and a rules-based world order, to achieve his re-election,” Erakat charged.

Erakat appeared to call on the Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to sanction Kosovo and Serbia, calling for “concrete measures against those who encourage crimes and violations against the land and people of Palestine.”

This tweet received thousands retweets and "Likes."

Look at the brutality of the Israeli occupation😢#Freedom_Palestine 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/wL6C8jyv2c
— Aya Isleem 🇵🇸 #Gaza (@AyaIsleemEn) September 3, 2020

Of course, it is a lie.

I found the original photo and it is of Manar Shweiki, a 16 year old girl who hid a knife in her schoolbag to stab Israelis. She was sentenced to six years in prison under a plea agreement and was released last December.

People automatically believe captions made up by anti-Israel propagandists. Students should really be taught critical thinking starting in first grade, because very few people seem to have that skillset.

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09/04 Links Pt1: Taylor Force’s Father Urges Joe Biden Not to Resume Funding for Palestinian Terrorists; Iran breaches nuclear deal, stockpile 10 times larger than set limit

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The West's blind eye to Palestinian incitement

Why do so many well-meaning people committed to ending abuses of power ignore the evidence of who is actually committing these abuses and blame their victims instead?

An official investigation funded by Britain and the European Union into textbooks used in Palestinian schools has descended into farce.

In April 2018, finally responding to concerns about anti-Israel incitement in Palestinian-Arab schools, the United Kingdom pushed the EU to commission a report on Palestinian textbooks from the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Germany.

In April last year, the Institute published as a preliminary what it called its "Inception Report." This, it said, developed a framework for "an academically rigorous review" of "how peace, tolerance and an understanding of the other are incorporated into Palestinian textbooks."

This report, however, was itself riddled with so many mistakes that the European Union ditched it. Bafflingly, however, the EU has continued to use the Georg Eckert Institute to finish the project.

Its final report is due out next month. But it has now produced an interim report, which the EU is choosing to keep secret.

Marcus Sheff, chief executive of the Jerusalem-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, managed to obtain a presentation of this interim report. This has shown the project lurching from bad to worse.

Calling the review "a comedy of errors from start to finish," Sheff says the researchers have looked at the wrong textbooks. They have actually used as examples textbooks that are used in Israel's Arab schools in Jerusalem, praising them and presenting them falsely as part of the Palestinian Authority's curriculum.

On the basis of this egregious mistake, the researchers have claimed that the Palestinians' educational materials have been "transformed" for the better.

They make no mention of the vile language and images used in many of the Palestinian textbooks, such as describing the burning of Jewish bus passengers with Molotov cocktails as a "barbecue party," or teaching Arabic through a story promoting suicide bombings and illustrated by a Palestinian gunman shooting Israeli soldiers in a tank.

GOP Congressman Calls Biden’s Pledge to Restore US Funding to Palestinians ‘Mental Incoherence’

A Republican member of Congress has slammed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for pledging to restore US funding to the Palestinians in accordance with the Taylor Force Act, calling Biden’s pledge a display of “mental incoherence.”

“You can’t restore funding to the Palestinians and comply with the Taylor Force Act except for some very, very limited humanitarian types of funding,” Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) told JNS in a recent interview. “Basically, if you agree with the sentiment behind the Taylor Force Act, you don’t restore funding to the Palestinians.”

“I think Joe Biden is showing some mental incoherence when he says something like that,” he said.

Lamborn introduced a version of the Taylor Force Act in 2017 and a version of it passed Congress and became law in March 2018, cutting off virtually all US funding to the Palestinian Authority due to it financially rewarding terrorists and their families. It requires the secretary of state to verify that the PA has taken certain steps to stop such activity in addition to other requirements.

Lamborn warned that a Biden administration could try to certify that the PA is taking those concrete steps against rewarding terrorism, even if Ramallah isn’t actually doing so.

“There might be people out there in a Biden administration who would try to do that,” he said. “We would have to be diligent to watch over them and get oversight in trying to permit them from doing something that would be dishonest like that.”

Taylor Force’s Father Urges Joe Biden Not to Resume Funding for Palestinian Terrorists

Stuart Force, whose son Taylor was killed by Palestinian terrorists during a visit to Israel, is urging former Vice President Joe Biden not to resume assistance to the Palestinian Authority (PA) if elected in November.

In a campaign launched by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) on Monday, Force defended the Taylor Force Act, named after his son. The law, passed by Republicans in 2018, prevents the PA from receiving economic assistance from the United States until it dismantles the Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund. Known as the “Pay to Slay” policy, the fund gives monthly-payments to the family of individuals killed committing terrorist acts against Israeli or American citizens.

“Our son, Taylor, was stabbed to death, while visiting Israel by a Palestinian terrorist. The terrorist’s family became eligible immediately for a monthly payment, for life, for killing an Israeli or American,” Force says in a new ad. “U.S. taxpayers sent hundreds of millions of dollars to the PA, which they use to fund those payments.”

“There is talk that some politicians want to resume sending U.S. tax dollars to the PA, even though they have refused to end their ‘Pay to Slay’ policy,” Force says, as a photo flashes across the screen of Biden shaking hand with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.

Joe Biden says he'll reinstate funding for terrorist Palestinian Authority (PA) which pays Palestinians to murder Americans & Jews.
Sending US tax dollars to the Palestinian Authority will enable the PA to finance the murder of more innocent Jews and Americans.#SayItAintSoJoe pic.twitter.com/IRKBpqCmyg
— Zionist Organization of America (@ZOA_National) September 3, 2020

Hamas media tries to spin Israel-UAE agreement as proof of Israel's weakness

Here is a very interesting spin on the upcoming Israel/UAE accords from Hamas' English mouthpiece Quds News:

If it is such a failure, then why aren't Hamas and their pals in Iran celebrating?

The logic in the article is even funnier.

On a grassroots level, the Palestinian cause is being received and adopted by a global, diverse, and growing citizen movement, where the Occupying Power can no longer hide its true face. By resorting to autocratic states, far-right populist leaders, and desperate self-negotiated deals, and peace treaties with no enemies, Israel’s colonial project reveals how much, underneath all its military might, it is weaker than thought.

This even after admitting that the Arab world has all but abandoned the Palestinian issue:

Perhaps the only awkward fact in this story is the Arab silence, and the lack of an Arab response to the UAE’s normalization, unlike the Arab reaction to Egypt’s Camp David Accords, forty-four years ago. At that time, Egypt was expelled from the Arab League, and its headquarters were moved to Tunis. However, the Israeli-UAE agreement was met with no response on the official level by Arab states, apart from declarations by Kuwait and Tunisia that they will not follow the UAE’s steps. This Arab silence would never have been possible without the division of the Arab world and its drowning in endless destructive conflicts.

But even that must be spun, and Palestinian honor restored:

This speaks to the dystopian reality in which Israel can only achieve any normalization or acceptance of its colonial apartheid regime in the region, especially when all over the world, it is becoming increasingly discredited.

Hamas apparently chooses to believe BDS claims of victory, which may be the funniest part of all.

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Female terrorists are so progressive!

San Francisco State University will be hosting a Zoom event called “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice and Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled,” on September 23.

Leila Khaled, of course, is the PFLP terrorist who hijacked planes in 1969 and 1970. Her image with a machine gun is ubiquitous at lots of leftist rallies.

The PFLP, which she is still involved with, was behind the murder of 17-year old Rina Shnerb last year.

But no progressive groups march with photos of Rina Shnerb. They fetishize female terrorists, not female Jewish victims of terror.

Khaled is not the only heroine of the progressive crowd. They love Rasmea Odeh, responsible for the murder of two people. Also a PFLP member, Odeh has admitted that she was involved in bombing attacks against civilians. and fought to have photo-ops with her before she was deported from the US.

Odeh, a violent terrorist, was treated like a rock star by the supposedly anti-violent BDSers.

Palestinian "moderates" have been the originators of this mindset where female terrorists are role models. The Miftah NGO, which is headed by Hanan Ashrawi and is in the forefront of Palestinian feminism, has multiple articles in Arabic that praise female suicide bombers as role models - and they had English articles praising female suicide bombers as well before I exposed them.

Palestinian women have also participated in the resistance. As the conflict grew more intense and young men were recruited to carry out military operations against Israeli targets, several young women also decided to join the ranks of the resistance movement. In January 2002, 28-year-old nurse Wafa Idrees, detonated a bomb in Jerusalem’s Jaffa Street, killing one Israeli and injuring 150 others. She was also killed in the blast.

This marked the beginning of a string of Palestinian women dedicated to sacrificing their lives for the cause. Over the next two years, seven other women carried out similar operations, the most deadly of which was carried out by Hanadi Jaradat, a 29-year-old attorney from Jenin. Hanadi detonated explosives strapped to her body in a busy Haifa restaurant, killing 19 Israelis and injuring 50 others.

The "moderate" PLO has become a cult of sorts for Dalal Mughrabi, responsible for murdering 38 civilians. Numerous institutions are named after her and her likeness can be seen all over Palestinian towns.

And "moderate" Jordan has been sheltering another celebrity female terrorist, Ahlam Tamimi, who murdered 15 civilians including seven children.

It appears that the "progressive" Left in the West has embraced the idea of female terrorists as role models. It is this immoral and disgusting thinking that is behind a university effectively honoring a terrorist as if she can teach students something about life, and behind prominent American and European progressives literally embracing a murderer.

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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