Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

It's not Arab fathers' Middle East any more, either (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

After writing my last post, Not your father's Middle East, I came across an article in Al-Monitor -- For Arab youth, the future is in the Gulf. It makes the same point made by Zvi in the comments to my post, namely that the Arab youth wants change, and sees the UAE as the example to follow in that direction.

Earlier this month, a Dubai public relations company acdaa-bcw, published a survey of Arab youth -- here defined as being between the ages 18 to 24, which according to the report number over 200 million people.

According to the survey, it is

the largest of its kind of the region’s largest demographic, and covers five of the Gulf Cooperation Council states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE), North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia), and the Levant (Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestinian Territories, Syria and Yemen). [p. 6]

In the survey, Afshin Molavi, a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, writes that the results of the survey remind him of the fall of the Soviet Union, after which:

the historian John Lukacs famously said, “the isms have all become wasms.” I am reminded of this line as I reflect on the 12th Annual ASDA’A BCW Arab Youth Survey, a remarkable annual barometer of youth sentiments across a vital part of the world. For many young Arabs, it seems, the idea of an ‘-ism’ - an all-encompassing ideology to solve their problems - seems almost as anachronistic as a landline telephone. Pragmatism, not ideological ‘isms’, rules the day among young Arabs, and in an era of pandemic-driven insecurity and political upheaval, this essential fact offers us hope for the region’s future. [p. 28]

Time will tell whether Molavi's comparison pans out, but the poll results do indicate a potentially dynamic shift in where the Middle East is headed.

And in the survey, the model that the Arab youth point to as the example for a better life and a better future is the United Arab Emirates -- for the 9th straight year.

Al-Monitor points to the events that would have formed the experiences of those who took the poll, and what they would have missed:

The oldest of the Arab youth cohort would have been born in 1996. This means they missed the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, the Egyptian and Jordanian peace agreements with Israel, the first Palestinian intifada, and the Lebanese and Algerian civil wars, and probably have only the vaguest memories, if any at all, of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny in Iraq and his overthrow in 2003 or the second intifada, to name just a few of the seminal events that shaped the region.

This cohort’s formative memories are instead of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, the wars in Syria, Yemen and Libya, the coronavirus pandemic, and governing elites who seem to be doing more than fine themselves and stay in power for really long periods of time, but are unable to provide jobs, pick up the trash or keep the electricity running for the citizens they supposedly serve.

That Arab Spring may have fizzled, but it did have an effect -- and young Arabs may be protesting again against the status quo:

Following the events of the Arab Spring, when young Arabs in many countries took to the streets, calling for reforms and an end to corruption, four nations witnessed a change in government – Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen. Eight years later, 2019 recorded a similar surge in youth-led protests, especially in Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon and Sudan, once again, leading to changes in leadership.

When asked specifically, to young people in these four nations, 82 per cent of young people in Lebanon, 89 per cent each in Algeria and Iraq, and 88 per cent in Sudan said they supported the anti-government protests.

Young Arabs in Iraq (82 per cent) are most optimistic that the protests will lead to real positive change. [p. 19]

The survey also covers how young Arabs feel about the Palestinian issue:

One in four (25 per cent) young Arabs said resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict must be a top consideration, while encouraging technological innovation was cited as a key driver of progress by more than one in five (22 per cent) young Arabs. [p. 25]

When asked to rank their priorities, corruption and jobs ranked as more important, while defeating terrorism was equally important.

So what about the Abraham Accords?

The survey does not cover reaction to the Abraham Accords. Al-Monitor also points out that

The survey took place before the UAE normalized ties with Israel, but the guess here is that that decision is unlikely to dent the positive perception of the Emirates among youth. The Palestinian issue still holds sway in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon as a top foreign policy priority, not so in the Gulf, where concerns about Iran dominate, according to polling by David Pollack of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy last year.

That is likely true.

In any case, events seem to be leading in a direction that will bring prosperity -- and peace -- in the Arab world.

There was a time when we thought of Arab in-fighting as a good thing, as something that kept the Arab world divided and less of a threat against Israel. But real peace in the Arab world, especially the kind that sees Israel as an ally for peace and prosperity -- and not just as a military ally against the Iranian threat -- could be even better for Israel in the long term.

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10/20 Links Pt1: The Wonder of the Abraham Accords; How Israel Helped Win the Cold War; When Biden met Golda: New details emerge of storied encounter on the eve of war

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: The Wonder of the Abraham Accords

The Abraham Accords is a moment to be remembered in Jewish history and an achievement in American diplomacy that, no matter what occurs in the election, deserves to be studied and celebrated. It ought to inspire us to ask what else “experts” might have been missing. What other aspects of the Arab–Israeli divide, once thought unbridgeable, can now be contemplated? Most interesting is a question raised by several Israeli writers: Is it now time to take a new approach to the Temple Mount? If parts of the Arab world can at least come to terms with a Jewish Jerusalem, is there a possibility that not only Muslims but also Jews can pray at Judaism’s most sacred site?

Three days after we sat on the South Lawn of the White House, I stood in the synagogue overseeing Rosh Hashanah services unlike any other. What was usually a packed sanctuary was this year marked by masked worshippers socially distanced from one another. We prayed, of course, for a return to health and normalcy, but we knew the pandemic would continue to impact our lives for months to come. In Jerusalem, a resurgence of the virus would lead to a shutdown of synagogues and a Western Wall largely devoid of worshippers. But in the midst of the depressing nature of that moment, I read from the Torah, to the congregation, of Ishmael, of God’s concern for Abraham’s eldest son.

For the first time, its text to me embodied not an abstract aspiration, but something that, in a very small way, seemed directed to us in our time. And then, as the Torah was returned, a millennia-old verse was suddenly sung, sanctified by the dreams of Jewish generations yet in the moment endowed with renewed relevance: Adonai oz le’amo yiten; Adonai yevarekh et-amo va’shalom.

It was a reminder that even amid our caustic politics and trials, we still live in an age of wonder of which our ancestors could only have dreamed, and that in such an age it was not unreasonable to have hope in the year to come—perhaps even more wondrous things than Passover programs in the United Arab Emirates will happen next year in Jerusalem.

How Israel Helped Win the Cold War

Truman’s motive in supporting the Zionists has been ascribed variously to high principle, electoral expediency, and close Jewish friends. Neither he nor the advocates for a Jewish state framed it in terms of geopolitics. But Israel turned out to be a major strategic asset.

U.S. diplomats and brass were not alone in failing to foresee this. Moscow did not anticipate it either. Hoping to drive Britain from the region, it was arguably even more helpful than Washington in facilitating Israel’s birth. This moment, however, was short-lived, ending abruptly on Rosh Hashanah of 1948.

That day, Golda Meir, Israel’s first ambassador to the USSR, attended services at Moscow’s Great Synagogue, one of the very few left open. Despite a pointed warning in Pravda that “the state of Israel has nothing to do with the Soviet Union, where there is no Jewish problem and therefore no need for Israel,” a crowd estimated at 50,000—25 times the usual attendance—was waiting to see and touch her. In her autobiography, Meir records how deeply she was affected by this display of identity with the Jewish state. But Stalin, who brooked no loyalty to anyone or anything other than himself or his regime, was affected, too, in a quite different way. Within a month, Jewish cultural institutions were closed, and soon various Yiddish actors and poets were murdered or dispatched to the Gulag. An anti-Jewish campaign in the name of anti-Zionism raged until the dictator’s death in 1953.

Israel, thus driven from its original stance of neutrality, got its first stroke of revenge in 1956 when a Pole who went by the non-Jewish name of Viktor Grayevsky managed to get his hands on a copy of the secret speech that Premier Nikita Khrushchev had delivered at the Soviet Communist Party’s 20th congress. It denounced Stalin for having created a “cult” of himself and for choosing “the path of repression and physical annihilation” against whomever raised his ire. Grayevski, quietly a Zionist, daringly brought the document to the Israeli Embassy in Warsaw where intelligence officers made a duplicate. Ben-Gurion ordered it passed to the CIA, which leaked it to the New York Times, which ran it on page 1.

The impact on the world Communist movement was shattering. The one-time Trotskyist leader Max Shachtman captured the import sardonically: “Stalin…has been officially demoted from the office of greatest, wisest and most adored leader in recorded history to the lesser office of maniacal mass-murderer.” For three decades, Communists worldwide had parroted hymns to Stalin’s glories, deriding what they saw as calumnies against him from anti-Communists of all stripes (as well as Trotskyists). Now Stalin’s successor, the new leader of world Communism, was saying plainly that the anti-Communists had been right all along and that the Communists had been dupes and fools. The American and other Communist parties never recovered from this blow.

Mordechai Kedar: No Longer United Against Israel: The New Arab World

Meanwhile, deep processes are at work. The younger generation of Arabs did not experience the “Palestinian nakba” and it is not part of their historical memory. The “Arab Spring,” which precipitated the collapse of regimes and economies and the rise of the Islamic State, threw millions of Arabs into great distress and mass emigration for a life of refugee status, poverty, and suffering far from home. The Palestinians’ belief that those Arabs should fight for the “liberation of Palestine” is not uppermost among their concerns.

As for Palestinian conduct, here is an interesting case. One of Israel’s harshest critics is Jamal Rian, the brain behind Al Jazeera and its main newscaster. He was born in Tulkarem, moved to Jordan, and became a prominent activist in the Muslim Brotherhood. It was recently revealed that Rian’s father was a land dealer who, before Israel’s establishment, sold sizable tracts of land to the Jews. What Arab wants to be a “sucker” and fight Israel to liberate for Jamal Rian the lands his father sold to Jews, a transaction that did not exactly harm his son financially?

Another factor that works against the Palestinian ethos is the huge increase in the use of social media. Today, any Arab can see the truth about Israel without needing to rely exclusively on his government’s propaganda outlets for information. Automatic translation allows him or her to “read” Hebrew websites even if he does not understand a word of Hebrew. This makes it much harder for the Palestinians to keep selling “the problem” the way it used to. Indeed, many Arabs now intentionally misspell “the problem” in a way that expresses contempt for it.

The Arab world of 2020 differs from that of 2000 in many ways. It is not the delusional “new Middle East” envisaged by Shimon Peres but its complete opposite: a region that is violent, fractured, rife with failed states, and afflicted with mass killing. But these unfortunate developments work in Israel’s favor. True, there is still hatred among Arabs for Jews and the Jewish state that must be acknowledged and contended with, and there are still hundreds of thousands of rockets surrounding and threatening Israel. Nevertheless, the trend is clear.

The peace and normalization between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain signifies the collapse of the old theories, enabling the Jewish state to be accepted as a member, not an enemy, in the “right” coalition.

PressTV "expert" is an unemployed former bartender

The Tehran Times (and other Iranian government sites) has been interviewing and publishing the work of someone named Walt Peretto, described in the latest interview as a "sociopolitical psychologist."

He says:

Donald Trump is seen by his followers as opposing this globalist and authoritarian agenda with emphasis on American autonomy and greatness. But in fact, Trump is completely controlled by these same Zionist/globalist interests and he merely plays the role of controlled opposition. In the meantime, it’s likely that the elites intend to keep giving the ‘left’ more room to commit violence in order to advance their agenda and provoke right-leaning and independent citizens into counteracting, which would increase the rate of violence and destruction. If this occurs, either the Trump or Biden administration may bring in Federal or international troops to line the streets. With omnipresent soldiers on the streets, this can open up many possibilities for the international financial elites and their pathological/technological/globalist/one-world government agenda.

Who is this guy?

He's a nobody whose only claim to fame is to write crazed conspiracy theories - and therefore is very happy that Iran is plucking him out of his well deserved obscurity.

The only job I can see that Peretto actually had was as a bartender in Florida in 2003, where he witnessed a murder. His LinkedIn says that he has been a freelance writer for ten years. (It also claims a masters degree from Rutgers that seems highly unlikely since he only has a two year associates degree at a state college in the 1980s - which he attended for 4 years, according to his Facebook.)

What, exactly, is a "sociopolitical psychologist?" You'll have to ask Peretto, since he literally made up the term:

Currently writing articles, making appearances on Press TV's website and related TV shows, giving interviews, conducting research in the field of psychology, founder of sociopolitical psychology, writing a book that will formally introduce 'sociopolitical psychology.'

Luckily, he writes a word salad description in Quora:

Sociopolitical Systems Psychology (SSP) is a nascent academic field and applied science engaged in the comprehensive psychological study of human social systems and their interactions. Using the small band hunter/gatherer/pastoralist paradigm as a starting point; it is posited that all humans alive today is descended from people who developed an innate social psyche over many millennia in this general societal paradigm; theorized to be humankind’s natural environment. Sociopolitical psychologists compare and contrast the social psychologies of these natural indigenous societies, with the social/political psychology of people within, or significantly influenced by; the city/state, nation/state, and empire, paradigm; called ‘modern political societies’ (MPS). Sociopolitical systems psychology proves that most modern political societies are significantly influenced by organized groups of pathological individuals who are psychologically void of empathy and normative human morals. These groups, operating through various methodologies, attempt to maximize power and control over as many facets of society as possible. These methodologies include; control of the issuance and regulation of moneyed currencies, political systems, intelligence apparatuses, military power and police authority, official news, information, and propaganda, education and academia, state-of-the-art technologies, occult (hidden) psychology and psychiatry, and other forms of social-engineering, chemical delivery systems, and the use of the Hegelian Dialectic. Sociopolitical systems psychology concentrates on the congenital personality disorder of clinical (primary) psychopathy, and places it into context as the core pathology that is the most influential to the human condition. When organized into positions of power and inordinate influence, the term ‘organized psychopathy’ is used to describe such pathological people collectively. The term empaths, or collectively, empathic humanity, is used to describe the vast majority of humans who are characterized by their ability to feel the emotions of empathy, guilt, and remorse; emotions considered essential for a normal/non-toxic society. Sociopolitical systems psychology studies all personality disorders and mental characteristics that can be placed in a systemic societal context. This includes pathologies and mental characteristics that result from social conditions orchestrated at least to some degree by organized psychopathy. The goals of sociopolitical systems psychology include the study of social systems from a perspective that has been traditionally neglected by the established behavioral sciences; with the hope that this new understanding can be applied to help humanity achieve more rational, and empathic-based, social systems.

In other words, the Man is responsible for Peretto's failure as a human being.

Not surprisingly, Peretto is a member of a "Sandy Hook Hoax" group and a 9/11 "truther" who blames both Israel and the US for the attacks, as his Facebook page shows.

And he once ran for US Senate as a "write in candidate:"

This is the type of nutcase Iranian media likes to use to publish antisemitic and anti-American conspiracy theories under the fiction that they are merely quoting American "experts."

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Israel-haters look upon Jews protecting Arabs at the Temple Mount as a disaster

I've reported about the strange scene of Israeli, including Jewish, police protecting delegations of Gulf Arabs from angry Palestinians at the Temple Mount - which is doubly ironic because to Jews, any Muslims who visit the area are desecrating it.

This has not gone unnoticed in Arabic media.

Arabi21 has an op-ed bemoaning this state of affairs, which was translated by Middle East Monitor:

We have lived to see Arabs enter Al-Aqsa Mosque under Israeli protection. It is shameful.

Is there any real difference between an Arab delegation visiting Al-Aqsa Mosque under Israeli protection and hordes of extremist Israeli settlers whose incursions and practice of Talmudic rituals there take place under the protection of the same security forces? The crime of these Arabs is arguably greater.

The storming by Israeli extremists under the guns of the Israeli occupation does not whitewash the image of the occupation in the eyes of the world, nor does it give it legitimate sovereignty over the Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa. The Arabs’ visit does, however, whitewash the image of the military occupation and is “evidence” that all Muslims can go to Al-Aqsa Mosque. It also shows the world the false image of Israel providing protection for religious sites and allowing religious freedom.

Left unsaid is that the Waqf has already said that they would ban Gulf Arabs from visiting Al Aqsa, which proves the exact point that it really is Israel that is safeguarding full access to the Temple Mount, blocking only those who would try to stop others from visiting.

The only reason any Arabs need Israeli protection to visit the site is to save their lives from the hateful Palestinians who would lynch them if they could.

In fact, an Emirati tweeted the video I published yesterday of Palestinians harassing Gulf visitors to the site with the caption, "Thank God that Jerusalem is in the hands of the State of Israel."

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Last summer, Israel announced a massive "Silicon Wadi" project in the Arab Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi al-Joz, converting an industrial park that is now mostly garages into a high tech area specifically meant to provide quality, high-paying jobs for the Arabs of Jerusalem. It is meant to add 250,000 square meters for tech, 50,000 for tourism and 50,000 for commercial space, intended to add 10,000 jobs.

Naturally, the Palestinian leaders complained, saying that it was an excuse extend Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. They complained about the loss of the existing garage jobs and about Jews taking all the new jobs.

Now there is an interesting possible wrinkle in the plan. According to some reports, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, deputy mayor of Jerusalem, specifically recruited UAE companies to invest in Silicon Wadi - in order to invest in the Palestinian Arabs of Jerusalem as well as a tech hub. UAE companies in the tech center would naturally recruit Arabic-speaking Jerusalemites for their ventures.

Here would be a direct way that the UAE could invest both in Israeli tech and in the future of Arabs in Jerusalem.

The question is, will the Jerusalem Arabs welcome Silicon Wadi if fellow Arabs invest in it? This would somewhat blunt their fears of Jews taking the new jobs.

This may be a way to find out if Palestinian Arabs are as opposed to Israeli peace with the Gulf as their leaders are.

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10/19 Links Pt2: Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Can Macron Stem the Tide of Islamism in France?; New York Times Op-Ed Glorifies Farrakhan March, as Bari Weiss Says Jew Hate Is Times Blind Spot

From Ian:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Can Macron Stem the Tide of Islamism in France?

The battle of ideas against Islamism will, of necessity, be a long one and if he hopes to succeed Macron must ensure that French civil society and philanthropic foundations are fully engaged in this effort. He should disband subversive Islamist organisations that lay the ideological groundwork for violence, while calling on his fellow European leaders to do the same. It’s amazing how many of them, even now, prefer to avoid the topic.

He might also strengthen immigration laws to ensure that French civic values are taken into account in admission decisions. Those admitted to the Republic from abroad should be told to embrace the French notion of social cohesion, which means they cannot embrace separatism or Islamism, or belong to organisations that do.

Existing laws should be used more too. Not so long ago, an Algerian woman who refused to shake hands with male officials at a French naturalisation ceremony was denied citizenship as a result. Islamists can, in this way, be served notice that France is not their natural home.

French law allows the government to reject naturalisation requests on grounds of ‘lack of assimilation, other than linguistic’. So in the spirit of this law, Macron should start to repatriate asylum-seekers who engage in violence or the incitement of violence — particularly against women.

In foreign policy, he could tackle the ideological extremism that is disseminated by the governments of Qatar and Turkey — among others — through their support of Islamists, Islamist foundations and communitarianism in Europe (including France). He could take a much stronger stand against the Iranian regime — bilaterally as well as at the EU level — for its hostile activities on European soil, its vicious cruelty towards its own population and its efforts to export revolutionary Islamism throughout the Middle East. This would also mean further strengthening France’s ties to Israel, the UAE and Egypt and demanding that Saudi Arabia stop funding Wahhabi extremists abroad.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Who Is Responsible for the 'Crisis' in Islam?

Other Arabs said that Muslims have only themselves to blame for the "crisis" in their religion. They are referring to the use of Islam, by many Muslims, to carry out terrorist attacks and other atrocities against Muslims and non-Muslims.

The message these Arabs and Muslims are sending is: We created the crisis in our religion by allowing terrorists and extremists to use Islam as a pretext for their crimes.

The views expressed by these Arabs and Muslims are reminiscent of those by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi. In 2014, he called for a "religious revolution" in Islam and appealed to leading Muslim groups to "confront the misleading ideologies harming Islam and Muslims worldwide."

"The fact is that the biggest conspirators against Islam are the Muslims themselves, specifically those who reproduce the discourse of closed-mindedness and hatred. In this context, there is no difference between those who create, finance or carry out terrorism and those who are silent about it or justify it." — Mohammad Maghouti, Moroccan writer, Hespress, October 13, 2020.

"[W]e have to call on France to place the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah on the list of terrorist organizations." — Nervana Mahmoud, prominent Egyptian commentator and blogger, Al Hurrah, October 11, 2020.

"The crisis that Islam is suffering from was made by Muslims with their own hands when they allowed a handful of them to adopt violence as a language for dialogue with the other. Macron was right in everything he said. His message should be considered a wake-up call. Muslims have greatly offended Islam when they showed it to be a religion that incites violence and spreads chaos in stable societies that received them as refugees and provided them with protection. Muslims made a mistake when they used their religion as a justification for attacking others. This does not give us the right to condemn others and accuse them of being hostile to Islam. Islam is in crisis because it has been distorted, mutilated, and destroyed from within. We should have said thank you to Macron rather than curse him." — Farouk Yousef, Egyptian writer, Middle East Online, October 13, 2020.

Language As an Anti-Israel Tool

This expression ”two-state solution” is so deeply entrenched in the West that it will require an enormous effort to spread doubt about it. That is not because the message isn’t simple. Why would one upgrade the criminal Palestinian entity—the leaders of which glorify genocide and reward the murder of civilians, and which is permeated with a death cult—into a state?

Israel’s battle against the UN’s abuse of the phrase ”Palestinian refugees” has been fought only in a lukewarm way. There is a general definition of “refugee”: “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”

Specifically for the Palestinians, the UN expanded this definition to include descendants of refugees. This has undermined the meaning of the word and multiplied resulting problems. Almost no Palestinian “refugees” are true refugees according to the original definition. They did not flee from Israel, though their surviving parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents may have done so and are genuine refugees. Yet not a single international journalist points this out or uses the expression “UN fake refugees” for them.

Another abuse of language is to call Israelis “colonists.” That word was exclusively used for people who went to lands usually thousands of kilometers from their homeland. The 1967 partition lines that separated Israel from the Palestinian territories were armistice lines, yet they are frequently and mistakenly called ”borders.”

There are also many examples of the abuse of language in the antisemitism discourse. The French government often used to speak about “tension between communities.” It suggested that two communities, the Muslim and the Jewish, were aggressive toward each other. The reality was one-sided aggression and hatred toward the Jewish community originating in parts of the Muslim community.

The Palestinians will probably wait to see if Biden is elected president of the US and whether he will tear up the Trump plan. Should this occur, it may well be that the Palestinians will then decide to try to arrange a peace conference to deal with concrete issues such as final borders, the status of the Temple Mount, the demilitarization of a Palestinian state, and so on. It is unlikely to address a crucial issue: how the Palestinians intend to rid themselves of the cult of genocide and death that permeates their society.

This issue should be prominently put on the international agenda by Israel. Otherwise, if a Palestinian state is established it will be the upgrading of a criminal entity into a criminal nation-state.

Adalah blaming Israel for not providing Internet in illegal Bedouin villages

The anti-Israel NGO Adalah issued a condemnation of Israel for not providing enough computers for Arab students to learn from home.

150,000 Arab students in Israel lacking computers, electricity, or internet access are unable to connect to online remote-learning solutions and cannot secure their basic right to education.
Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel has sent a series of letters to Israeli education and communications authorities demanding they provide computers and internet access so that some 150,000 Palestinian Arab schoolchildren stuck at home due to COVID-19 are able to connect to online remote learning systems together with their peers.

What is left unsaid is that haredi children have the exact same issues, so this is not an Arab problem but a problem of not enough resources.

Also left unsaid is that the Education Ministry simply doesn't have the budget to buy enough computers.

So when Adalah lists the shortfalls per community:

*Municipality name*	*Number of missing computers*	*Number of computers allocated by Israel’s Education Ministry*
Nazareth	5,000	1,868
Umm al-Fahem	4,000	1,835

Qalansawe	1,961	704

Chances are the Education Ministry is calculating the number of computers per household, not student, which is the most efficient way to spread around a limited number of devices.

The absurd part comes later in the Adalah report:

In addition, another 50,000 Bedouin schoolchildren living in unrecognized villages in the Naqab (Negev) region also lack computers as well as basic infrastructure such as electricity and internet access.

As we've seen, Bedouin have built hundreds of illegal villages, willy nilly, all over the Negev, without coordination with Israel. Israel has set up towns for them to move into with full infrastructure but most of them refuse to abandon their makeshift homes that they are using to stake a claim to state land.

Now Adalah is demanding that Israel provide electricity, plumbing and Internet to hundreds of illegal sites, some of them with only one family!

If they cared about education, they would ask that the Arabs move into the free housing Israel is offering where the kids can have the necessary infrastructure. Instead, they are using COVID-19 as an excuse to demand that Israel legalize their illegal communities.

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Palestinian Muslims are proud to share videos of them insulting their fellow Muslims at Al Aqsa when they happen to come from Gulf countries.

In this case, the Palestinian is saying, "Get out you dog, you trash, bye-bye" and other insults.

If Palestinians want to see their popularity continue to plummet among other Arabs, they are executing their plan perfectly.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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10/19 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: Israeli doctors battle to save Saeeb Erekat's life - If only hateful hypocrisy were a curable disease; Washington Should Avoid a Self-Inflicted Wound in the Sinai

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Israeli doctors battle to save Saeeb Erekat's life - If only hateful hypocrisy were a curable disease

The 65 year-old Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeeb Erekat, is deteriorating so badly from Covid-19 that he has been rushed from his home in the “West Bank” to a hospital in Israel. It is Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem.

That fact is presumably deeply unpalatable to Erekat’s comrades in the Palestine Liberation Organisation. In a statement on Sunday, the PLO said: Following his contraction of Covid-19, and due to the chronic health problems he faces in the respiratory system, Dr Erekat's condition now requires medical attention in a hospital. He is currently being transferred to a hospital in Tel Aviv.

The Times of Israel reported that the PLO couldn’t even bring itself to say he was being admitted to hospital in Israel, but said he was being transferred to a hospital in the 1948 areas.

The BBC reported for most of today that Erekat has been admitted to hospital in Tel Aviv, Israel with Covid-19.

In fact, as the Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel and jns.org correctly reported, he had been admitted to Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, Israel. The BBC finally updated its website report this evening to identify the Israeli hospital as Hadassah.

There he will receive the finest care by Israeli doctors in the attempt to save his life. Those doctors will be both Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. He will be nursed by a staff consisting of Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. He will be treated alongside patients who are both Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, and he will be dealt with, as they all are, according to the priority dictated by his clinical needs.

Washington Should Avoid a Self-Inflicted Wound in the Sinai

It does not take much imagination to envision a scenario in which a U.S. withdrawal from the MFO results in the collapse of the organization. The United States provides the largest portion of force protection capability for the MFO, and most of the other nations contribute troops to the MFO based on their relationship with Washington. If Washington were to pull the U.S. military contingent from the MFO, many other troop-contributing nations would worry for the safety of their forces. Some nations would also no longer see any serious benefit in retaining troops there in terms of their relationship with the United States.

It would hardly be surprising to see Beijing or Moscow step into the vacuum created by an American departure, seeking to work with Cairo to establish a new civil or military presence in the Sinai. Ironically, in such a scenario, an American effort to reduce a modest military commitment in the Sinai to compete more effectively with China and Russia elsewhere would give Beijing and Moscow an opportunity to establish a coveted strategic outpost vital to energy, economic, and military security at the intersection of Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Thankfully, key leaders in Congress appreciate the bigger picture. In an extraordinary bipartisan broadside, the Democrat and Republican leaders of the House and Senate Foreign Relations, Armed Services, and Appropriations Committees sent a letter to Secretary Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo regarding the MFO on May 13. The members of Congress warned that a withdrawal of the U.S. contingent from MFO would represent a “grave mistake” that could “ultimately make it more difficult to implement the NDS.”

The Pentagon is right to review U.S. military posture in every combatant command to ensure an optimal military posture that fully aligns ends and means. In the Middle East, an objective review would demonstrate that ending the modest U.S. military contribution to the MFO would endanger key NDS objectives and represent a short-sighted and self-inflicted wound to American national security interests.

FDD: Time to Act on Human Shields

Intelligence information could also help make the case that Iran fits the Shields Act’s criteria for listing as a “foreign state that … knowingly and materially supports, orders, controls, directs, or otherwise engages in” human-shields use by Hezbollah. It may well be possible to make such a case, as Iran has reportedly been sending PGM parts to Hezbollah for assembly at locations such as the Janah, Laylaki, and Chouaifet sites.69 In addition, Israel has said that Rammal was “manufacturing precision-guided missiles in cooperation with Iranian forces,” and that “as part of his role, he visited Iran a number of times.”70

Apart from the legal requirements of the Shields Act, there are strong policy reasons to hold Hezbollah accountable for human-shields use. Hezbollah’s use of human shields puts civilians in danger of explosives accidents, such as those that decimated the Port of Beirut in August71 and detonated a Hezbollah arms depot in the Lebanese village of Ain Qana a few weeks later.72

In addition, a formal U.S. government determination that Hezbollah is engaging in a war crime through the use of human shields could strengthen the argument for the European Union to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist group.73 This argument is made more compelling by recently publicized discoveries that Hezbollah has been storing large quantities of ammonium nitrate, a bomb-making ingredient, in various European countries.74

Imposing Shields Act sanctions on Hezbollah in response to its clear recent violations would also be an important first step toward countering human-shields use against the U.S. and allied militaries by groups such as the Islamic State and the Taliban. In his 2019 request to NATO member countries, General Scaparrotti, in his capacity as NATO supreme allied commander Europe, said, “[I]t is essential that further measures be taken at the national level to maximise enforcement of the international legal prohibition of the use of human shields.” Scaparrotti specifically urged “imposition of sanctions” and “spotlighting of violations.” In light of the frequency and effectiveness of human-shields use against NATO forces, Scaparrotti said that such national measures “would decidedly become a major and substantial contribution” to NATO operations.

Imposing sanctions on Hezbollah for using human shields would set a strong U.S. example for its NATO partners of taking action on these requests from the NATO supreme allied commander Europe. It would also hopefully pave the way for the U.S. government’s collection and deployment of sufficient evidence to impose Shields Act sanctions on the Islamic State and Taliban for their human-shields uses since the date of enactment (December 21, 2018).

It has been nearly two years since the Shields Act became law. Despite considerable prior evidence of human-shields use by terrorist groups, the Trump administration has yet to impose any sanctions under the law. It is time for the U.S. government to use the Shields Act to hold terrorists and their material supporters publicly accountable for the war crime of using human shields.

What do the UAE and Bahrain get out of the Abraham Accords?

Putting aside an ally against the threat of Iran there are benefits in terms of trade and commerce.

And technology.

WIRED quotes Kushal Shah, of the consulting company Roland Berger on how the UAE, already an innovation hub in the MidEast, benefits from the agreement:

“The Israel tech sector is super advanced, so obtaining some of that knowhow—the sharing of studies, research and development—will help expand and improve the UAE’s talent pool. Education for the UAE tech sector will be massive. The post-grad learning opportunities are substantial.”

But while Israel is an acknowledged leader in global technology, it's not as if Israel is late to the game.

Yehoshafat Harkabi wrote a doctoral thesis a month before the outbreak of the 1967 Six Day War. It was later published and then appeared in English as Arab Attitudes To Israel. In a chapter on Israel, he has a section on Favourable and Ambivalent References.

In the introduction to his book, Harkabi writes:

The Arab attitude to Israel is, of course, affected by the vicissitudes of time and war can certainly change public attitudes and make descriptions of previous situations out of date. It seems, however, that my description of the attitude is still valid. [p. xv; all quotes are from the English edition]

Let's see if Harkabi is right.

He writes that the many pejorative Arab statements he quotes in his book are not the whole story. Instead, there were statements made in the Arab world that praised Israel and presented it as a model to be imitated. In 1955, no less than Nasser himself recommended in a speech in Gaza:

All I ask of you is to persevere, and unite, and act, and be patient, and take an example and a lesson. [emphasis added; p. 337]

A lesson in what?

Harkabi sums it up that in the Arab praises of Israel,

major prominence is given to her efficiency and modernity, her achievements in technology and science, her thorough planning instead of improvisation. Israel stands for dynamic enterprise and achievement. [emphasis added]

Of course, these compliments are not for the sake of praising Israel, but rather to point out attributes that the Arabs should imitate -- especially the Palestinian Arabs. Harkabi refers to Arnold Hottinger's book, The Arabs: Their History, Culture and Place in the Modern World where he writes of the Palestinian Arabs that they view Israel's victory in 1948 as being because of her modernity, an ideal to be imitated.

This recognition of Israeli accomplishments in science and technology even led to arguments among the Arabs themselves.

In 1962, The Syrian prime minister, Nazim al-Qudsi spoke to students and noted the high percentage of engineers and physicians in Israel -- and emphasized the need for Syria and other Arab countries to follow suit. For that, he was severely criticized by Cairo Radio and the Egyptian press.

A Damascus Radio commentator snapped back:

Qudsi drew the attention of the Arab nation to the truth: Israel our enemy is not--as Nasserist propaganda describes her--weak and unstable in her social structure; she is a State with various possibilities and human potential. By revealing this truth, Qudsi is stimulating the Arabs to comprehensive action and progress in all fields. [p. 337]

Aref al-Aref, a journalist, historian and former mayor of East Jerusalem, wrote in his book The Disaster about how Jews study and delve into matters. Similarly, Walid Qamhawi -- who later led the Palestinian National Fund -- praises Israel numerous times in his book Disaster and Reconstruction. [p. 338]

So, no, Israel did not just suddenly appear on the world stage as a modern leader in technology.

And it's not as if the Arab world is only now recognizing that fact and wanting to emulate it -- the same attitude of admiration for Israeli technological prowess existed back then too.

So why is it only now that countries in the Arab world, including those who already have covert relations with Israel, willing to step forward to sign agreements -- and even normalize relations -- with Israel?

One reason, of course, is the threat of Iran

But another reason is how the Middle East has changed.

In the course of a wide-ranging interview he did back in August with Yishai Fleisher, Dr. Mordechai Kedar explains the Abraham Accords against the background of Middle East history over the past 30+ years.

Dr. Kedar notes how radical leaders such as Abdul Nasser of Egypt, Hafez Al-Assad of Syria, Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya once dominated the Middle East, under the aegis of the then Soviet Union and wanted to unite the Arab world.

In such a situation, more-traditional Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Oman felt under threat from these radical leaders who considered those countries as counter-revolutionaries because they stuck with the old traditions and did not actively partake in their attacks on Israel.

But now, over the past 10 years, things have changed.

The Arab countries that once were in the forefront, no longer are.

o Syria is suffering from a bloodbath
o  Iraq is dysfunctional
o  Libya is a swamp of problems
o  Egypt has its own problems with the Nile, rapid population growth and unemployment

Under such conditions, the dream of Arab nationalism has been a failure.

And Israel is not the enemy anymore.

Egypt made peace, albeit a cold one, with Israel.

Likewise, Jordan has a 'cold' peace with Israel.

Between Egypt and Jordan on the one hand, and these dysfunctional states on the other, Saudi Arabia and the other traditional countries feel free to pursue their own interests -- and those interests include living in peace, developing their countries and preparing the day when their oil runs out.

That means working with those countries that are leading the way in progress.
And that means working with Israel.

That segment begins at 22:54 below automatically.

That is quite a change.

But this is not to say that the road to real peace is certain and secure.

It is not.

Dr. Kedar points out that during the 1990's, both Qatar and Tunisia had good relations with Israel to the extent that Israel opened commercial offices in those countries flying the Israeli flag. Those were not embassies, but they were still official.

Both countries canceled their agreements with Israel following the outbreak of the second intifada.

An agreement can be breached.

It remains to be seen whether the Abraham Accords will meet expectations.

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Not one Gazan has been killed by Israeli forces since February

I saw this cartoon by the antisemitic Carlos Latuff published in August with the caption "#Israel is pounding #Gaza day after day. Are you seeing this on the mainstream media?"

Since it shows a Palestinian mother and her dead child, I wondered - when was the last Gaza fatality from Israeli action?

It was February 24th, when the IDF killed an Islamic Jihad terrorist who was setting roadside bombs outside the Gaza fence.

Not one Gazan has been killed since then by Israel. Plenty have died in "work accidents" but none from Israeli fire.

Nearly eight months without a fatality.

Now, that's something that the mainstream media is ignoring. Let alone the "pro-Palestinian" community that routinely claims that Gazans are being killed daily.

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The European Center for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies has a lengthy description of Iran's operations in German mosques and Islamic cultural centers uncovered by German intelligence.

A German intelligence report from July 10, 2020 revealed Iranian intelligence activities inside Germany, which were involved in spying against synagogues and other targets. The report referred to the Islamic Center in Hamburg which is considered “the most important center for Iran in Germany.” The center has established a national network of contacts within many mosques and Shiite societies and exercises of great influence over them. The report added that Iran "is trying to link the Shiites of different nationalities to itself, and to spread the basic social, political and religious values of the Iranian state in Europe."

The percentage of Muslims in Germany is about 4.7 million and Shiites represent about 7%, or over 300,000. An estimated thousand members of Hezbollah are in ermany.

The Islamic League (Islamische Gemeinschaft der Schiitischen Gemeinden Deutschlands, or IGS) represents the most prominent organization accused of being an expansionist arm of Iran in Germany.

The Islamic Center of Hamburg (IZH) is another prominent arm of the Iranian regime in Germany, according to a report reported by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in August 2020, which referred to IZH as a tool of the mullahs working side by side with the Tehran embassy, and its officials are known as the Supreme Leader's envoys to Berlin. The center is suspected of involvement in financing and cooperating with Hezbollah.

Other apparent fronts for Iran are the Center for Islamic Culture Frankfurt, the Counseling Association of Berlin (Markaz-Al-Qaem Al-Irshad), and the Al Hassanein Center of Berlin (Markaz Al-Hassanein Berlin), associated with Hezbollah.

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Iranian opposition group announces proof Iran secretly built nuclear facilities during JCPOA

The National Council of Resistance of Iran announced that they have proof that Iran was violating the terms of the JCPOA even before President Trump withdrew the US from that agreement.

In a press conference on Friday, the group announced that Iran's Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (Sazman-e Pazhouheshhaye Novin-e Defa’i), known by its Persian acronym SPND, started building a secret nuclear site near Tehran in 2012 and started moving personnel into it in 2017.

The new site is built in an existing area already under control of the Defense Ministry where missiles are being built.

The NCRI also announced that a second site that they had revealed in June 2019 was destroyed by the IRGC shortly thereafter, and only after a year of sanitizing the site did they allow the IAEA to inspect it this past August.

Some of the claims were corroborated by independent US experts.

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10/18 Links: Abraham returns to forge peace among his descendants; PA Irony: PA leader chooses Israeli hospital for HIS Coronavirus treatment after saying Israel intentionally spreads the virus to kill Palestinians

From Ian:

Abraham returns to forge peace among his descendants

One of the main achievements of the Abraham Accords—which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain—is their very name. After losing hope of defeating Israel on the battlefield, Israel’s enemies focused on creating an anti-Israel narrative. Their ambition was to erase all of Zionism’s intellectual foundations—distort history, negate the legitimacy of the Bible and paint Israel as an evil state, certainly not as a state seeking to promote progress and good in the region.

One of the primary avenues of this narrative-based attack is “occupation”—a buzzword that the State of Israel has been most identified with by international organizations and media outlets across the globe. This nefarious term, “Israeli occupation,” implies all that Israel’s enemies wish to convey: that Israel is a colony of the “white man” in the heart of the Middle East, a European foothold, a foreign entity seizing Arab lands and violating the human rights of the natives, the original people of the land: Palestinian Arabs.

How does one fight this? How do we express the Jewish people’s deeply-rooted connection to this land, which is the backbone of the State of Israel, and undo the image of the heartless occupier? The answer to this question lies in this new treaty, and is predicated upon a single word: “Abraham.”

US Vice President Mike Pence visited Israel in January 2018 and spoke to the Knesset. In that speech, he elucidated the importance of Abraham: “Nearly 4,000 years ago, a man left his home in Ur of the Chaldeans to travel here, to Israel. He ruled no empire, he wore no crown, he commanded no armies, he performed no miracles, delivered no prophecies, yet to him was promised ‘descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.’

“Today, Jews, Christians and Muslims—more than half the population of the Earth, and nearly all the people of the Middle East—claim Abraham as their forefather in faith,” he said.

It’s evident, then, that the phrase “Abraham Accords” denotes that the treaty was forged by the descendants of Abraham’s children—Arabs and Jews—and thus redefines Jewish presence in the region as ancient and therefore legitimate. This runs exactly counter to the “occupation” narrative. It also appears the UAE has adopted the figure of Abraham as a unifying element in the region. In Abu Dhabi, construction has already begun on a magnificent inter-faith complex named the Abrahamic Family House, which will consist of three main buildings—a mosque, church and synagogue—for the purpose of invoking peace and coexistence among the three Abrahamic faiths: Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

Mnuchin: Trump win would bring peace between more countries and Israel

More Arab and Muslim countries are likely to make peace if US President Donald Trump is reelected, Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said on a flight to Bahrain with a US-Israeli delegation on Sunday.

“We are very hopeful there will be other announcements,” he said. “Our expectation is, obviously, that President Trump wins and this continues… There is a lot more in the works.”

Asked if a Trump loss would stop the momentum of Arab states establishing ties with Israel, he said: “I surely hope not.” The Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are “the most extraordinary outcome in the last 25 years,” Mnuchin said.

“I think 10 years from now when we look back at this, this will be as significant – if not more significant than both the Egyptian treaty and the Jordanian treaty [with Israel] – in how it has changed the whole region economically in particular, but also from a security standpoint and a cultural standpoint,” he said.

The opportunities for trade between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain are enormous, Mnuchin said.

Landing in Bahrain, top Israeli official says Jerusalem seeks ‘genuine peace’

A joint US-Israeli delegation arrived in Bahrain Sunday afternoon to sign a series of bilateral agreements between Jerusalem and Manama, including a so-called Joint Communiqué that will formally establish diplomatic relations between the two countries.

El Al Flight 973 — a nod to Bahrain’s country code — landed in Manama after taking off from Ben Gurion Airport in the first-ever nonstop passenger flight from Israel to the Gulf kingdom.

Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani welcomed the joint US-Israeli delegation at the airport.

During a ceremony held on the tarmac, Israel’s National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat said in Arabic that Israel “extends its hands for genuine peace with the Bahraini people.”

“Together we will change the reality in the region for the benefit of our nations. God willing, we will host you in Israel soon,” he said.

Switching to Hebrew, Ben-Shabbat noted that the Knesset approved the Israel-UAE peace treaty three days ago. He said the current delegation, like a previous one to the United Arab Emirates, flew nonstop from Tel Aviv, and added that he hoped the route would become a regular route in the near future. He thanked Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa for making peace.

“In a certain sense, this visit today closes a circle for Bahrain’s role in bringing peace,” Ben-Shabbat said, presumably referring to last year’s Peace to Prosperity conference in Manama.

Jewish settlers again accused of chopping down olive trees - on Shabbat

Wafa and a whole bunch of other Arab sources report:

Settlers cut, today, Saturday, about 30 olive trees from Qaryut lands, south of Nablus.

The official in charge of the settlement file in the northern West Bank, Ghassan Douglas, told "Wafa" that settlers cut down about 30 olive trees in the town's lands, owned by Bilal Mahmoud Raja.

As I have shown before, Ghassan Daghlas is paid by the Palestinian Authority to make up lurid, completely fictional stories about Jewish settlers, and to tell them to the media.

This is not an exaggeration. It is his job, and he has been quoted in major media outlets who cannot believe that he is a professional liar.

In this case, as in virtually all the articles he is quoted in, there is no photographic evidence of the crime he is accusing Jews of doing.

Every article I saw about this absurd accusation, that the religious Jews of communities near Nablus would chop down trees on Shabbat, shows "archival footage" rather than any actual photos of the destroyed trees.

Even though every adult nowadays is walking around with a high resolution camera in their pocket, there are no photos.

That's truly amazing!

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