Dr. Nasser Al-Lahham, editor of the independent Ma'an Palestinian news agency, has been very honest lately about his antisemitism,
Now he is being honest about the purpose of UNRWA "refugee" camps under Palestinian Authority rule.
There is no definition of "refugee" that says that one can be a refugee while living in their own land. But there are roughly 1.4 million people called refugees in UNRWA camps in the West Bank and Gaza. No one ever demands that these camps be dismantled and the people become normal citizens of the Palestinian Authority.
And very few people ask why that is.
Nasser al-Lahham explains it, though. In his latest editorial, he says that Palestinian UNRWA camps are "the solution, not the problem."
He writes:
In the West Bank alone, there are about one million three hundred thousand refugees [actually, less than 900,000 - EoZ.] They paid the blood tax, carried the embers, and followed the path of the revolution four generations, generation after generation, without fatigue or boredom. And without giving up the demand for the right of return, no matter how long it takes.
If you don't quite get it, he is more explicit:
The camps are not a problem for anyone. It is always the solution. They are the tanks of the revolution and the ships of return. And whoever does not like that, this is his personal problem.
UNRWA refugee camps are weapons. They always have been. Their purpose is to keep Palestinian Arabs in squalid looking living spaces so that the media can sometimes take photos of them and say "poor people, all because of Israel." There is no desire to dismantle the camps because the misery of the residents is not a problem - it is the goal.
If the camps are weapons, the residents are cannon fodder.
This is what you need to understand about the Palestinian cause. It was never a nationalist movement. A nationalist movement would want all Palestinians to become citizens. A nationalist movement would do all they can to help all Palestinians have honorable lives. A nationalist movement would not tolerate keeping its own people in camps for decades when they are living in areas controlled by their own leaders.
No, the entire point is and always has been to destroy the Jewish state.
Al-Lahham should be thanked for saying this explicitly.
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Jewish Currents, the hard-Left socialist site for which Peter Beinart is an editor, has an article by Caroline Morganti that attempts to disprove the oft-cited figure that 95% of American Jews are pro-Israel.
Its main point is that the 95% number came from a series of Gallup polls with a very small sample size of 128 Jews among a much larger survey of Americans, so it has a large margin of error.
This is true. But when you look objectively at all of the data gathered in this article, you see that it still largely holds up.
Most surveys of American Jews do not ask whether they are "pro-Israel." They ask whether they have an emotional attachment to Israel. The wording is important, so let's look at the major surveys of Jews - all of which are accurately described in this article, even as it tries to spin the results.
Pew’s 2013 survey found that 69% of American Jews were somewhat (39%) or very (30%) emotionally attached to Israel, while 31% were not very (22%) or not at all (9%) attached. Eighty-seven percent of American Jews said that caring about Israel is either essential (43%) or at least important (44%) to what being Jewish means to them.
Being emotionally attached is obviously a higher bar than just being pro-Israel, although Morganti absurdly tries to argue that many people might be emotionally connected because they hate Israel so much:
But what about respondents who are highly critical of Israel, but for whom their relationship with the country nonetheless comprises a significant part of their Jewish engagement? Could questions about “closeness” to Israel elicit confusion among respondents who might feel close on the basis of lived experiences, personal relationships, or political engagement, but simultaneously feel distant based on political alienation, or even deeply held moral objections to Israeli policy?
There is, of course, zero evidence that people would answer that way.
Far more interesting is this 2018 Mellman poll of Jewish voters:
[This] poll of 800 American Jewish voters asked respondents which of the following best described them: “Generally pro-Israel and supportive of the current Israeli government’s policies” (32%); “Generally pro-Israel but also critical of some of the current Israeli government’s policies” (35%); Generally pro-Israel but also critical of many of the current Israeli government’s policies” (24%); or “Generally not pro-Israel” (3%).
5% had no answer, but one cannot argue with the conclusion that only 3% of American Jews identify as "generally not pro-Israel." That is pretty tiny! And few of them would describe themselves as "anti-Zionist" which means that the percentage of anti-Zionist American Jews is ridiculously small.
A similar poll done by Mellman for the Ruderman Foundation among all American Jews, not just voters, gave similar results with slightly higher numbers for the "generally not pro-Israel" question:
The results showed a significant difference in the percentage of respondents who chose a pro-Israel option. In the Ruderman poll, about 80% of the general sample of American Jews chose pro-Israel options as opposed to the average of about 90% over the three JEI surveys of American Jewish voters.
The pro-Israel answers in the Ruderman poll included a relatively even split of those who were supportive (23%), critical of some (28%), and critical of many (29%) Israeli policies. Six percent were “generally not pro-Israel,” and 14% did not have a view.
It is no surprise that younger Jews are less invested in Israel. But the anti-Zionists, many of whom write for Jewish Currents, like to pretend that anti-Zionists are a significant percentage of American Jews - and that simply isn't true. Out of the 6%, chances are many or most of those would not actively identify as anti-Zionist. There is a big difference between "generally not pro-Israel" and actively being against the existence of a Jewish state.
Given this overwhelming evidence that anti-Zionism is a fringe opinion, Morganti makes up her own theory based on a question asked in 2018 in an AJC poll:
The AJC survey included a question that it had never asked before: “Can Israel be both a Jewish state and a democracy, and if not, which should it be?” Around two-thirds of respondents (68%) answered yes, Israel could and should be both Jewish and democratic. But about one-fifth (20%) of American Jews said, “No, it should be a democracy.” (A further 7% said, “No, it should be a Jewish state,” and 4% had no opinion.)
In other words, when asked directly whether Israel can reconcile its Jewishness and democracy, roughly 20% of American Jews (the margin of error was plus or minus 3.9%) said that Israel cannot be both, and that it should be a democratic state rather than a Jewish state—an answer that might be considered a non- or anti-Zionist position by contemporary standards.
That is incredible wishful thinking from Israel haters. Most of the people surveyed probably never thought much about the issue before the question came up; it is just as likely that the ones who answered "democracy" assumed it would have a Jewish majority anyway so the Jewish part of the question was not considered. Or perhaps they were thinking in terms of whether Israel should have personal issues follow Jewish law. Without followup questions, it is impossible to know what those 20% felt, but assuming that they are anti-Israel is quite a stretch.
Perhaps saying that 95% of American Jews support Israel is too high. No doubt many are becoming agnostic about Israel as they drift from identifying as Jews altogether.
But one thing are clear: Even though the question was not directly asked, the number of Jews who identify as anti-Zionist is tiny compared to the numbers who support having a Jewish state.
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French President Macron spoke to PLO head Mahmoud Abbas on the phone on Monday.
According to the official Wafa news agency, Macron emphasized his desire for a two-state solution. But then Abbas said his opinion on the cartoon controversy:
President Abbas stressed during this telephone conversation the need for everyone to respect religions and religious symbols and not allow anything offensive to Prophet Muhammad and all prophets and religions while condemning all those who do so. He stressed at the same time his rejection of extremism, violence and terrorism, wherever it came from and in whatever form.
As usual, Muslim leaders couch their demands of what dhimmis and infidels must do in terms of being tolerant to all religions. But in the end it is still a demand that non-Muslims follow Muslim law in determining what is allowed and not allowed - they want to prohibit any image of Mohammed anywhere in the world, no matter how inoffensive.
What about wanting to protect all religious symbols?
Well, the holiest place on Earth according to Judaism is the Temple Mount. There are very specific rules as to where people are allowed to visit, what they are allowed to wear and what they are allowed to do.
But Palestinians play soccer there - which is a direct insult to Judaism and a gross violation of Jewish law.
What happened to Muslim respect for other religions?
Where was the Palestinian outcry to this cartoon distributed by Palestinian NGO Badil, which used a Jewish menorah in its antisemitic theme?
I have never seen any Palestinian respect for Judaism as a religion or Jewish symbols. Gazans enthusiastically destroyed synagogues left behind after Israel withdrew, and I do not recall any objection from the Palestinians.
So when Mahmoud Abbas insists that Muslims respect all religious symbols - he's not telling the truth.
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An ongoing shooting attack was underway at several sites Monday evening in central Vienna, including in the area of a synagogue and the offices of the Jewish community, killing at least seven people, Austrian media reported, prompting a large-scale police operation.
Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said the incidents appeared to be a terror attack with multiple perpetrators.
The Kurier newspaper said at least one of the fatalities was a police officer. It added there were four people seriously injured in the series of attacks.
There were multiple gunmen, some of them still at large, according to messages sent to members of the local Jewish community.
Austrian news agency APA quoted the country’s Interior Ministry as saying that one attacker has been killed and at least one other could be on the run.
Reports said there was a hostage situation in the city’s seventh district. In addition, reports said there had been an explosion, with one of the assailants possibly blowing himself up.
Oskar Deutsch, the head of the Jewish community in Vienna, said the shooting took place in the street where the city’s main synagogue is located, in the first district, but that it wasn’t clear whether the house of worship had been targeted. He said there were no casualties among the Jewish community.
Deutsch noted that the synagogue and the community offices were closed at the time of the shooting, and asked all community members to stay away from the area.
#BREAKING: Active shooting near synagogue in Vienna, Austria. Casualties reported.
American Jews have been reminded that the world’s oldest hatred almost never totally disappears, even in places where Jews are largely assimilated and communal life feels settled. During Donald Trump’s presidency, lunatics of various ideological stripes have launched deadly assaults on synagogues, kosher grocery stores, and Hanukkah parties, while a wave of dozens of physical attacks on Jews in New York City appeared to have no overt political motive. Multiple left-wing members of Congress support the BDS movement; on the right, the president has made uneasily frequent—though not outwardly hostile—mentions of Jewish money and political power and been less outwardly condemnatory of white supremacy than the overwhelming majority of American Jews would have liked. The alleged anti-Semitism of campus Israel haters, identitarian right wingers, mentally disturbed passersby, and actual members of the federal government jostle for room within a frayed American Jewish psyche.
Last year, the American Jewish Committee commissioned a poll aimed at understanding how American Jews perceived these various threats against them. This year it repeated the exercise, while also polling the general public on its views on American anti-Semitism. The results are worth examining.
Jews overwhelmingly believe that America is becoming a more anti-Semitic and physically dangerous place for them to live, work, and study: 82% responded that anti-Semitism has increased over the past five years. Some 27% reported that Jewish institutions with which they affiliated had “been the targets of anti-Semitism” since the October 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh; 37% reported that they had “taken steps to conceal their Jewishness in public” since that attack. Meanwhile, 43% of Jews between the ages of 18 and 29 had “experienced anti-Semitism on a college campus over the past five years.”
American Jews are center-left in political orientation—the latest polling suggests that over 70% of them will vote for Joe Biden next week. Thus, the AJC’s findings about the perceived bipartisan nature of anti-Jewish hate reflects a certain fatalism, while also breaking down along lines of party affiliation: While 69% of respondents agreed that the Republican Party holds at least some anti-Semitic views, a not-insignificant 37% said the same about the Democrats.
One of the poll’s relative surprises is that BDS, which is almost exclusively a left-wing phenomenon, and which has vocal fans among growing Democratic Party constituencies, is viewed as either being anti-Semitic or having anti-Semitic supporters among a whopping 80% of Jewish respondents. While the statement “Israel has no right to exist” has adherents on both extremes of the political spectrum, it is mostly heard in left-wing quarters these days; 85% of Jewish respondents agreed it was anti-Semitic.
US Anti-Semitism Special Envoy Elan Carr Speaks to i24NEWS
Here's the link to the youtube of the panel I moderated yesterday for @HabithonistimEn in English about the future of the (irrelevant) Palestinian Authority.https://t.co/vXcfH0HjBY
A hardline settler leader and a Palestinian former terrorist have released a joint video calling on Americans to vote for Donald Trump in the US presidential elections.
The clip, posted online Sunday, features Samaria Regional Council chief Yossi Dagan alongside Mohammed Massad, who served seven years in an Israeli prison for attacks committed during the First Intifada in the late 1980s before becoming a peace activist and a fierce critic of the Palestinian Authority.
“During the Obama-Biden administration, our region was filled with chaos,” Dagan says in the video. “Two hundred and four citizens of Israel were murdered as a result of terrorist activities.”
“The administration of US President Donald Trump stopped the support for the Palestinian leadership and scaled down the severity of the hostilities,” says Massad.
“For the sake of our lives, for the sake of our future, vote for President Trump,” both men conclude.
Massad changed his views dramatically after serving a prison term for his terror activities as part of the Fatah armed wing, and wrote a book arguing that suicide attacks go against the Quran. (h/t jzaik)
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) defended the position of French President Emmanuel Macron with respect to the controversy that has arisen in recent days in the Muslim world over his stance in defence of freedom of expression with respect to the dissemination of the cartoons of Mohammed.
In an interview published on Monday by the German newspaper Die Welt, Anwar Gargash, Emirates' Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, rejected the idea that Emmanuel Macron has sent a message of exclusion to Muslims. "You have to listen to what Macron really said in his speech: he does not want ghettoisation of Muslims in the West and he is absolutely right," he said.
Muslims must be more integrated, and the French state has the right to seek the means to achieve this while combating radicalisation and communal seclusion, the head of UAE diplomacy said.
The Emirati minister added that Muslims should be better integrated and that the French state has the right to seek ways to achieve this in parallel with the fight against extremism, referring also to the law against Islamist separatism that the French government has been advocating during this time. "It does not want Muslims in the West to be isolated, and it is absolutely right. They need to be better integrated into society. The French state has the right to look for ways to achieve this: to find a place for Muslims in French civil society and means to combat isolation and militancy," Anwar Gargash said.
On the other hand, Anwar Gargash did admit to being offended as a Muslim by some of the cartoons, but made it clear that the policy is about something else. Anwar Gargash expressed his feelings as a Muslim about some of the offensive cartoons, but warned against using the issue politically in a way that harms the interests of Muslims.
Given a clear choice between the modern world and the Muslim world, the UAE is choosing the West.
Gargash is acting like an enlightened leader. He is avoiding knee-jerk reactions, he is not falling for conspiracy theories, he actually listened to what Macron said, he is understanding nuance and the bigger picture.
This never used to happen.
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That is the opinion of North Carolina's Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, who
was overheard on a hot mic as he assured Joe Biden:
“I think we’re gonna all get across the line. I think Cal’s gonna get across
the line, too. I know that’s frustrating. We’ll get him across.”
[emphasis added]
There was a time when scandals had consequences, but Cunningham is laying low
for the duration of his campaign and may just win.
Speaking of Joe Biden, there is no clear indication of what effect the
questions surrounding his son Hunter will have on the presidential election.
Like Cunningham, Joe Biden has not mounted a counter-attack against the
accusations.
Then again, why should he?
The only thing getting more attention than the apparent scandal surrounding
Biden's son, is the transparent attempt of the media -- both social and
mainstream -- to bury the issue.
In the last few weeks I’ve heard from multiple well-known journalists going
through struggles in their newsrooms, with pressure to avoid certain themes
in campaign coverage often central to their worries. There are many
reporters out there — most of them quite personally hostile to Donald Trump
— who are grating under what they perceive as relentless pressure to publish
material favorable to the Democratic Party cause.
We'll soon see how successful that pressure has been.
Putting domestic politics aside, there is an apparent effort, on an
international level, to help an old favorite finally cross the finish line.
In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor, the Permanent Observer of Palestine
to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, sounded upbeat about the interest of the
world community in participating in the suggested conference due to take place
after the inauguration of a new US president in 2021.
The Security
Council discussions revealed
near-unanimous support for the initiative presented by Abbas at the UN
General Assembly on Sept. 25. [emphasis added]
The US of course is fully in support of The Abraham Accords and has made a
point of letting Abbas know that the Palestinian Authority is no longer going
to get a free ride.
Nevertheless, according to Al-Monitor:
Comments at the Security Council session showed that France, Germany,
Belgium, China and others all spoke in support of the conference. Even the
United States and Israel, who are opposed to the idea, were
forced to engage
with the concept and take it seriously in their deliberation.
U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft was skeptical that a conference would produce
results, but said the Trump administration, Israel’s closest and most
important ally, was open to the possibility raised by Abbas.
“We
have no objection to meeting with international partners to discuss the issue.
But I have to ask, how is this different than every other meeting convened
on this issue over the past 60 years?” she asked the council.
Israel’s new U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan
opposed the Palestinian call,
accusing Abbas of refusing “every peace offer made by the state of
Israel”
and attacking Israel’s recent agreements with the United Arab Emirates,
Bahrain and Sudan instead of viewing them as “a new opportunity to kick-start
negotiations.”
The fact is that there is no indication that there is anything new being
offered here.
Is this a serious attempt to achieve a two-state solution or just an attempt
to help Abbas out of a jam, 'saving' him from having to make the kinds of
concessions required for peace, and failing to do so -- proving how irrelevant
he really is?
What makes all of this possible of course are the presidential elections this
week.
This conference is only feasible if Biden becomes president, since he would be
expected to support this old, failed approach to peace.
Joe Biden, as Obama's vice president, would never have seen the potential of
diplomacy that would focus on the benefits of normalizing relations between
Israel and Arab countries. During the Obama administration, their foreign
policy achievements were restoring diplomatic relations with Myanmar and Cuba
while strengthening Iran.
As president, Biden (and Kamala Harris) would be amenable to the insistence of
the progressive wing of the Democratic party to take up the cause of the
Palestinian Arabs -- something not at the top of the agenda of the Gulf
states.
Also, there is every reason to believe that Biden, and Harris would push for
relaxing sanctions on Iran and for the re-establishment of the Iran deal in
one form or another which would only set much of the Arab world on edge and
help to push many of those Arab countries into the arms of Israel, to begin
with.
The future of the Middle East will depend to a great extent on this week's
elections and on Europe's old habits and knee-jerk response to the region, as it
attempts to save Abbas and the Palestinian Authority from the changing Arab
world.
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Unlike Trump’s unilateralism, Biden is expected to bring back the “old” American brokership to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The 2020 Democratic Party Platform calls for the creation of a “viable” Palestinian state where Palestinians “should be free to govern themselves,” and opposes “unilateral action” from either side.
Would that reduce the number of attacks against Israeli citizens and IDF soldiers? Unlikely. But, Biden has made it clear that he will “fully support the Taylor Force Act, which withholds aid to the PA based on payments it makes to terrorists in Israeli jails.”
Biden has also said that “Palestinians need to end incitement in the West Bank and rocket attacks in Gaza” and that the leadership “must begin to level with their people about the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as a Jewish state in the historic homeland of the Jewish people.”
What about Iran?
Israel considers Iran’s nuclear program its number one concern. According to intelligence assessments, if the Islamic Republic does decide to fully renege on the agreement, it wouldn’t take long to produce enough fissure material to make a nuclear bomb.
Biden has signaled that he will try to bring Iran back into the nuclear deal and that the economic sanctions placed on the country could eventually be eased. Nevertheless, he has acknowledged that there’s no guarantee Iran would return to compliance with the agreement.
Netanyahu has been one of the loudest critics of the deal. Although IDF officers and defense experts were concerned about some elements of the JCPOA, many believed that Israel was better off when the deal was alive and Iran was adhering to it.
Should Biden win, he may only have a short time to bring Iran back to the agreement before hardliners, including members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, who oppose any engagement with the West, are expected to win Iran’s upcoming presidential elections.
And should that happen, Israel will not be any better off.
Nevertheless, no matter who wins the upcoming US elections, Trump or Biden, Israel has to remember one thing: When it comes to its security, Israel has to be able to defend itself, by itself, at any given time. At the very least, Washington will continue to reinforce that.
The sound of the ram’s horn resounded in front of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the biblical city of Hebron as settler leaders held a small rally and brief prayer service Monday for US President Donald Trump’s victory in the November 3 election.
“We are people of faith, and here – from the Tomb of the Patriarchs, we pray and express our gratitude to President Trump,” Binyamin Regional Council head Israel Ganz said.
As Ganz spoke, he stood on the stone plaza in front of the King Herod-era structure that housed the Tomb of the Biblical forefathers and foremother, including that of Abraham, whose purchase of the site is recorded in the Book of Genesis.
The settlers and their right-wing supporters, out of all the Israelis, have the most to gain from a Trump victory.
Among those who stood there were leaders like Ganz and South Hebron Hills Regional Council head Yochai Damri, who opposed Trump’s peace deal with the Palestinians, but have in the last weeks still come out in support of the US president.
Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, who held a Trump rally in his region of the West Bank last week, was absent from the event.
Both the settlers and Trump support Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank settlements, but the settlers want a more expanded annexation map and opposed the creation of a Palestinian state, even the demilitarized one that is part of the Trump plan.
Ganz said he hoped that Trump would “be granted additional years as President of the United States, and will strengthen the State of Israel, so that together, we can apply sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.”
America is at an inflection point more ominous and dangerous than the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Then, America elected a president who would fight for the good of the Union against misguided forces that broke with the Nation and sought to continue the evils of slavery.
Today, another great evil haunts the United States of America. It is an evil that has infected almost all of the Democrat party, as well as mainstream media and can be described as cultist woke-ism. Woke-ism is the accelerating set of “acceptable” ideas whose adherents dictate that if you fail to accept every single one of the cult's lunatic fringe “axioms,” you will be called a “racist,” “homophobe,” “transphobe,” Islamophobe,” be summarily "cancelled" and even lose your job.
Increasingly, the “end point” of this ghoulish intellectual infection appears to be that the only “cure” America’s “systemic racism” is to “burn it down.” Today, in the possible election of Joe Biden, we will have a president who will not fight for the forces of good, as did Lincoln, but instead, will be fighting to instill a new Fascist plan of Wokeness that enslaves Americans in a tyranny worse than the regime of hate and evil that would have ensued had the enemy defeated and occupied America in WWII. Our only salvation from this regime of Woke is for President Trump to win re-election in the coming election.
Why is a Biden victory more dangerous than America’s so far only Civil War?
The answer is first and foremost, that unlike the Lincoln victory which put the reins of power of America into the hands of the forces of Good, a Biden victory will put the awesome powers of the government into the hands of the faceless forces of political correctness, Woke-ism, and the Deep State.
Today, the media is keeping Biden’s blatant corruption off the front pages so as to elect Biden’s “name,” but then slip in Kamela Harris. If the Biden-Harris ticket wins, within three months the same media that suffocated the Biden corruption scandal, will blare it from every site and hound him from office, thereby installing the “most liberal Senator in the Senate” as President of the United States.
Biden is the Trojan Horse that hides a Harris extreme-Left Presidency. No Democrat seriously thinks Biden will last out his first year in office, most bets are on 3 months.
The level of obsession that Iran has about Israel is mind-boggling. They held an entire conference on how to politicize sports in order to delegitimize Israel.
Yet the more you read, the more you see that Iran is the one on the defensive, as more sports federations are penalizing Iran for refusing to compete against Israel and this conference was more about Irans' response to that than to the possibility of Iran influencing other countries against Israel.
The 16th pre-session on studies on the Zionist regime titled “The Use of Sports by the Zionist Regime for Normalization” was held at Tehran International Studies and Research Institute (TISRI).
The senior expert of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mojtaba Amini, noted that topics such as the Zionist regime’s racism can be highlighted by creating an anti-Zionist axis in sports and citing compelling reasons.
Head of the Athletes' Basij Organization, Dr. Mir-Jalili, also said that the Zionist regime is seeking normalization by using sports as a tool and the ways in which this could be countered included the setup of workgroups and regular meetings, using the potentials of the Olympic Charter, advertising and public opinion, using the potentials of international organizations such as UNESCO, and creating motivational topics for athletes.
He continued by saying that synergy between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Sports, and the international branch of Basij was necessary and highlighted the need to build dialogue and award the international medal of resistance to athletes who do not participate in games against the Zionist regime.
A faculty member of Allameh Tabataba’i University, Dr. Heybatollah Najandi, also had a speech and said that the abstinence of Iranian athletes from playing with the athletes of the Zionist regime was in fact a protest against the illegitimacy of this regime and the widespread violation of human rights against the oppressed people of Palestine. He said our athletes turning up for games with the Zionist regime only reduced the ugliness of the regime’s illegitimate existence.
Also at the pre-session meeting, Hojjat al-Islam Seyed Mohammad-Reza Mir-Tajedini highlighted the need for a multilateral struggle in all sectors against the Zionist regime and stressed that this must be relevant and transparent. He added that sport is not separate from the economy, it also cannot be separate from politics, and the sports sector must be freed from neutrality and move towards areas of value. He finished by emphasizing the need for increased cooperation between the diplomacy apparatus and the Ministry of Sport and considered the legal vacuum in this field a serious shortfall.
I hope that the various sports federations are taking note that Iran has no interest in sportsmanship. This conference proves it.
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PLO leader Yasir Arafat was infamous for saying peaceful messages in English and pivoting to pro-terror messages in Arabic.
Hamas has learned that lesson well.
On Hamas' Arabic webpage, there is a press release and an article about the 103rd anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
In both those cases, Hamas emphasizes that "armed resistance" (i.e., terrorism) is a valid option: "Resistance in all its forms, from popular to armed, will remain a legitimate and proven option, and it will not be withdrawn to restore the stolen right of our people and sweep the occupation."
But in its English language website, there are no articles on Balfour. The only article about "resistance" is a copy of a Mondoweiss piece about hunger striking as a form of resistance.
Even terror groups try to pretend to be peaceful when appealing to their Western fans.
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There is no doubt that there was significant Arab immigration to British Mandate Palestine in the 1920s and 30s. Yet unlike the Jewish immigrants at the time, the Arabs are never referred to as "colonialists" or "settler colonialists" as the Jews are.
In fact, in a true irony, today they are considered to be "Palestinians" - even though most of them lived in British Mandate Palestine for only 20 years or so. And they took the name of the people who were called Palestinians at the time.
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If more Arab countries normalize relations with Israel, what will the PLO leadership do?
They angrily denounced the UAE and Bahrain agreements, trying to marginalize those countries from the Arab League and failing miserably.
They seemed a little more circumspect about Sudan, but also a little more shocked.
However, in general their media is not looking at this as a wake-up call. It is still a reason for them to dig in their heels and say that they have principles that they will not give in on, even when their Arab benefactors are urging flexibility.
Part of the reason is that the PLO leadership is waiting for the US elections. They are hoping that Joe Biden rolls back Trump's pro-Israel moves and returns to a posture of pressuring Israel, coddling Palestinians and linking world peace to Palestinian acceptance of an offer.
But if they miscalculate - if either Trump wins, or if the other moderate Arab states decide to recognize Israel without US sponsorship (very possible if Biden embraces Iran and pushes Arab states towards Israel,) or if Biden recognizes that the Middle East is not the same as it was four years ago - then what?
The PLO has two options. One is to listen to its friends and accept a solution that Israel can live with. The other is to remain intransigent and seek new friends - namely, Iran.
Right now, under US sanctions, Iran is not in a position to financially aid the PLO. And unless the PLO changes its current stated policy of avoiding terror attacks, it is unlikely that Iran would fund it. But if Biden wins the presidency, and he lifts sanctions against Iran and puts Sunni Arab states in the same uncomfortable position that Obama did, it seems possible that the PLO will embrace Iran as its new benefactor.
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Here, too, Iran is the exception to the rule. Most Middle East countries want to see Trump remain in the White House; the fact that Iran fears him so much is considered a bonus. One can argue about his style, but no one can deny Trump credit for the fact that his regional policies have made friends and foes alike take notice. He has restored the United States’ standing as a major power-player in the Middle East.
There is also no doubt that his crowning achievement is making actual breakthroughs in the moribund Middle East peace process. His decision to go over the Palestinian Authority’s head was proven right, and regardless of what the future might bring, Trump will go down in history as the US president who brokered three peace agreements between Muslim nations — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan — and the Jewish state, and presided over the Israel-Lebanon maritime border talks. And more is sure to come.
Effective progress in peacemaking in the Middle East alongside the very effective deterrence gained vis-à-vis Iran has restored stability to the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring, and therefore has been welcomed by the region’s rulers. Trump has proven he has a better understanding of regional realities than his predecessor, and unlike President Barack Obama didn’t create an Islamist backlash by trying to push Western democracy or preach morals.
The results of the November 3 elections are for American voters to decide, but Trump’s legacy will be felt in the Middle East long after he leaves the White House, be it in 2020 or in 2024. His will be a legacy of power and determination, of resorting stability to the region, and of proving that the United States stands by its allies.
Support for Normalization: Sudan National Dialogue
All of this came on the backdrop of the so-called Sudan National Dialogue, a summit attended by all of the country’s political parties and factions, during which many of them expressed support for normalizing relations with Israel, especially due to the economic benefits that such a move would entail.
Under-the-radar discussions between Sudan and Israel were launched and continued into February 2020, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Uganda with Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of Khartoum’s Sovereignty Council. The two held a two-hour tete-a-tete that resulted in a loose agreement to start forging ties.
Saeb Erekat, Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization, “aggressively” condemned the move, saying that it constituted “a stab in the back of the Palestinian nation.”
Massive Country, Massive Achievement
Despite objections from Ramallah, the encounter bore immediate fruit as Israeli commercial planes were later that month given permission to use Sudanese airspace. This, in turn, decreased the flight time from Israel to South America by three hours.
The fact that Sudan, which has a population four times larger than the UAE and Bahrain combined, and whose geographical size is 22 times bigger than those two countries together, appears to be choosing a path of engagement with Israel is a remarkable twist.
A historic development of this magnitude between former enemies simply cannot be downplayed or ignored.
Regardless of the outcome of next week’s election, former Vice President Joe Biden will have the distinction of being the first American presidential candidate to draw attention to the US government’s shameful record of friendly relations with Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
During the final presidential debate on October 22, President Donald Trump claimed that he has “a good relationship” with North Korea and argued that “having a good relationship with leaders of other countries is a good thing.” Former Vice President Biden retorted that “we had a good relationship with Hitler before he in fact invaded Europe.”
Biden’s assertion must have surprised many viewers of the debate, who likely assumed that because President Franklin D. Roosevelt led America in a war against Nazi Germany, he must have always been hostile to the Hitler regime. In fact, from the time FDR first took office in 1933 until America entered World War II in December 1941, the Roosevelt administration’s policy was to pursue cordial, sometimes even friendly relations with the Nazi regime.
Many Americans boycotted products from Nazi Germany. But the Roosevelt administration helped Nazi Germany evade the boycott in the 1930s by permitting goods from Germany to bear labels that misled consumers as to their country of origin. The administration halted this disgraceful practice only when threatened with a lawsuit by boycott activists.
FDR also sent Secretary of Commerce Daniel Roper to address a pro-Nazi rally in New York City in 1933. At that rally, Nazi Germany’s ambassador to the United States was the keynote speaker and the podium and hall were decorated with swastika flags. In 1937, the administration sent one of its senior diplomats to represent the United States at the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg.
In some instances, the Roosevelt administration actually apologized for U.S. citizens’ anti-Nazi sentiment. In 1935, the administration publicly apologized to Adolf Hitler after a New York City judge released protesters who tore a swastika flag off a visiting German ship. Then, in 1937, when New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia called Hitler a “brown-shirted fanatic who is threatening the peace of the world,” Roosevelt’s secretary of state expressed the US government’s “regret” over “utterances calculated to be offensive to a foreign government.
When he hosted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House in May 2017, President Trump boasted of the ease with which he would achieve the Israeli-Palestinian peace that had eluded his predecessors in office.
“We will get it done,” Trump told reporters, saying that the task was “not as difficult as people have thought over the years.”
Three and a half years later, the promised peace seems further away than ever. Trump’s plan, crafted by son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, landed with a thud in February and all but disappeared.
Instead, Trump moved the goal posts, last week claiming to have succeeded with a deal that others “were unable to make . . . for 40 years.”
The writers, Karen DeYoung and Steve Hendrix, are skipping over some crucial parts of what happened between May 2017 and now.
Trump always said that he wasn't going to force any agreement - that Israel and the Palestinians both have to want to make an agreement, and only then is peace possible.
When Trump announced that the US recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December 2017, he specifically said that this was simply a reflection of reality, not a position of the final status of Jerusalem. It was ending the idiotic and unconscionable US position that Jerusalem might still become an international city. The option for east Jerusalem being capital of a Palestinian state was not changed at all.
But the Palestinian reaction was fierce and insulting to the US.
As a result, Trump in February 2018 said he is "taking Jerusalem off the table." But even when he said that, he criticized both the Palestinians and Israelis as not being truly interested in peace:
“Right now, I would say the Palestinians are not looking to make peace, they are not looking to make peace...And I am not necessarily sure that Israel is looking to make peace,” he said.
The PLO continued to lash out at the US. And the US, instead of coddling them as was done in the past, reacted in kind - by shutting down the PLO office in Washington in September 2018:
"We have permitted the PLO office to conduct operations that support the objective of achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between Israelis and the Palestinians," State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement Monday.
"However, the PLO has not taken steps to advance the start of direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel," she added.
The PLO reactions to both the economic peace plan presented in Bahrain in June 2019 and then the January 2020 Peace to Prosperity plan - which pushed a path to a contiguous Palestinian state that again realistically dealt with Israeli communities - were similarly and summarily rejected with insults and no counter-offers.
Whether one agrees with the US administration's positions, one cannot ignore the incitement and intransigence of the PLO which prompted the White House to move away from considering the PLO a serious peace partner. The Trump administration is transactional, and it treats other nations the way that they treat the US as opposed to the traditional way of begging for acceptance.
The PLO chose the path of making itself irrelevant, and the entire history of the Trump team's interactions with them shows that everything they did was a reaction to PLO decisions. This includes facilitating peace directly between Israel and Arab states.
It is not much different from George W. Bush's reaction to finding out that Yasir Arafat lied to his face about the Karine A weapons ship, denying anything to do with it when Israel showed Bush Arafat's signature was on the paperwork. Bush stopped talking to Arafat after that, later writing "Arafat had lied to me. I never trusted him again. In fact, I never spoke to him again. By the spring of 2002, I had concluded that peace would not be possible with Arafat in power."
So, no, Trump didn't move the goalposts. He is optimizing peace in the Middle East given a PLO that wants to be the roadblock to peace. No one could have done any better, and the WaPo criticism is based on hate of Trump rather than any objective analysis.
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I have never heard of this JaFaJ site before, but it looks like a sober intelligence site and doesn't have any crazy conspiracy theory stories that I can find.
Iraqi Officials Have Already Visited Jerusalem
JaFaJ Intelligence has confirmed that senior Iraqi officials have been engaged in peace talks with their Israeli counterparts for over a month. The talks, from the Iraqi side, involved senior official from the Prime Minister’s office, and are being facilitated under direct supervision of Jared Kushner, the President’s Middle East Advisor.
Iraqi sources have also confirmed that peace with Israel was one of the key reasons behind the Iraqi Prime Minister’s visit to Washington DC and his meeting with President Trump in August 2020.
JaFaJ Intelligence sources have also confirmed that the Iraqis have exhibited a sincere desire to reach a peace deal with Israel. The talks have been held between the parties in Jerusalem and the United States, with one Iraqi delegation visiting Israel last September under a shroud of total secrecy to meet with officials from the Israeli Prime Minister’s office.
This is important because the intelligence community knows that the Iranian government controls the jobs of most senior Iraqi government officials, and that they are members of the Shiite sect. Therefore, it is well reasoned that the Iraqi government would have never made such a move without full Iranian consent.
What is most surprising about this development is that JaFaJ Intelligence sources in Iraq have confirmed that “Iran is supportive of the negotiations”.
Facially, this statement may seem outlandish to an outsider looking in, but nonetheless, President Trump himself mentioned something about Iran when he spoke about the Sudan-Israel peace deal during a recent rally. During that speech, he implied that the deal was so good, that Iran may eventually join in.
Plagued by ruthless economic distress and unforgiving American economic sanctions that are crushing the country, Iran found itself under immense pressure from inside and outside the country, in a nation where riots have become regular happenings since 2019. Bankrupt, weakened, crushed and losing ground, the Iranian regime may not survive unless it gets a break from these sanctions.
With the elections in mind, Iran has had hopes that Trump would not win re-election and would restore the Iran Deal, giving it a break. Nonetheless, the Iranians have been forced to take this position when they received confirmation from Chinese officials that “Unfortunately, Trump is going to win, because he has the American Middle Class behind him”.
Since then, Iran has been trying to minimize its damages by helping to “broker a peace deal between Iraq and Israel”. The Iranians have gone as far as to assure the Americans (through a third party), that they could not only secure support for the peace deal from Iraqi’s Shiite religious leaders, but even have them issue Fatwas legitimizing it.
This does not seem so far fetched as I have been documenting Iraqi media showing interest in peace with Israel, and it seems unlikely that such articles would be written without an Iraqi government green light.
(h/t Yoel)
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Whatever happened to those Palestinian elections that are supposedly scheduled for February or March?
Whatever happened to unity between Hamas and Fatah that they were talking about in Istanbul in September?
Apparently, Fatah has been putting everything on hold - until the US elections. This is consensus from Palestinian media and the analysts they are interviewing.
Fatah is not interested in reconciliation with Hamas nor in elections. They don't want to risk losing the power they have; they don't want Hamas in the PLO and they are under pressure from moderate Arab states who hate the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Hamas.
Most importantly, though, is that Fatah wants to wait until after the US presidential elections. They are betting that if Biden wins, he will turn the clock back to the Obama era when the US publicly pressured Israel for concessions and left the Palestinians alone. Biden would also likely restore funding to the Palestinian Authority, which means more money for Fatah.
If Trump wins, then Fatah will feel they are backed into a corner and will have no choice but to unify with Hamas and/or hold elections to strengthen at least their on internal unity.
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Elder of Ziyon
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