Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Joe Biden on Israel, 1984-1986

Continuing on on reporting by JTA that quotes Joe Biden...

November 13, 1984:

U.S. policy in the Middle East is based on myth, a leading member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee charged here yesterday.
Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the second ranking Democrat on the committee, said the “three myths” which “propel U.S. policy in the Middle East” are “the belief that Saudi Arabia can be a broker for peace, the belief that King Hussein (of Jordan) is ready to negotiate peace, and the belief that the Palestine Liberation Organization can deliver a consensus for peace.”
Biden addressed the 59th anniversary convention of the Herut Zionists of America at the Hotel Pierre. The two-day gathering closed last night. The Senator, who was re-elected to a third six-year term last week, told the convention delegates, “My first order of business in the new Senate will be to educate my colleagues on the financial sacrifices Israel has made as a result of Camp David.”

December 12, 1984:

A leading member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed Sunday night that the U.S. refinance Israel’s debt, as it has done for other countries in severe economic straits.
Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the second ranking Democrat on the Committee, said he and Sen. Daniel Inouye (D. Hawaii) would draft a refinancing plan for Israel when the new Senate goes into session next month. Biden spoke at the Annual Metropolitan Dinner of the Zionist Organization of America here.
He noted that the U.S. has been able to refinance the debt service of other economically troubled nations such as Mexico, Nigeria and Argentina. He also chided those who complain that the U.S. provides excessive economic and military aid to Israel. "The U.S. spends over $100 billion a year on NATO and worries about spending $2.7 billion on Israel," he said.
Biden, long one of Israel’s staunchest friends in Congress, observed "that the consciousness of guilt" over what America left undone to prevent the Holocaust "does not exist for most of the younger generation. America’s most articulate spokesmen for Israel are gone, replaced by men and women with no institutional memory," he said.
"The security of every Jew in the world is tied to Israel. If Israel dies, Judaism will be in jeopardy," the Senator said, adding, "but I am confident that Israel and Judaism will survive."

March 29, 1985:

When the Senators were asked about the growing influence of Arab-Americans on Capitol Hill, Biden replied they were not the main reason that supporters of Israel had lost some fights in Congress, such as the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia in 1981. He said one reason is that there are no more “giants” in the Senate like Sens. Hubert Humphrey (D. Minn.), Henry Jackson (D. Wash.), Jacob Javitz (R. NY), and Frank Church (D. Idaho) who could sway the Senate with their moral force.
Biden said the major power that helped force the AWACS sale through the Senate was the large corporations with “significant economic investments” in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. He said they brought pressure upon Senators opposed to the sale from larger corporations well as from small companies on the local and state level. He stressed that “economic muscle” still plays a major role in foreign policy.

April 22, 1985:

Sen. Joseph Biden (D. Del.), who spoke briefly from the reviewing stand [of the Salute to Israel Parade in NYC], declared that today’s Salute to Israel Parade “is the answer to Bitburg.” He was referring to the German war cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany where, to the anguish of Jews and non-Jews, President Reagan will lay a wreath next month at the graves of German soldiers who fought in World War II, including members of the notorious Waffen SS.

March 5, 1986:

Sen. Joseph Biden (D. Del.) asserted Tuesday that a bill that would have reduced Israel’s debt to the United States by $3.5 billion was postponed in the Senate last December in the wake of the arrest of Jonathan Pollard for spying for Israel.
A bill that would have passed was withdrawn within 24 hours of Pollard’s arrest because “American public opinion shifted dramatically,” Biden told the nearly 3,000 young Jewish leaders attending the closing session of the United Jewish Appeal’s Fifth National Young Leadership Conference.
...
Biden charged that for the past two Administrations there has been a lack of “a comprehensive foreign policy” for the Middle East. He said this has allowed American public opinion to move out of focus and thereby become susceptible to reducing its commitment to Israel.
In addition, Biden noted that where Israel was once considered the “David” of the Middle East, it is now viewed as the “Goliath.” Biden also claimed that while a former generation of Jews and non-Jews viewed Israel as a moral issue because of the Holocaust, younger Americans do not.
He said the U.S. must announce that Israel is an ally and treat it like one, keeping any differences in private and not making public criticism of Israel.
Biden stressed that the strategic importance of Israel, to the United States should also be pointed out. We don’t apologize for our $100 billion commitment to NATO,” he said. “Why the hell should we apologize for a $3 billion commitment to Israel.”

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11/11 Links Pt2: David Collier: Amnesty and the left wing media, finally spill the truth; CNN Features Anti-Semite Lawrence Wilkerson; UAE and Israel building a better future for children

From Ian:

David Collier: Amnesty and the left wing media, finally spill the truth

The removal of tents We know all of these reports are lies. Last week I reported on the deception. Since then both Honest Reporting and CAMERA have produced articles exposing the depth of media lies. Israel advocacy movement also published a video dealing with the deception and focusing on the outrageous ‘ethnic cleansing’ claims of Ilhan Omar.

We all know there was no village. Instead there was a few tents, an outpost, placed illegally inside a military firing zone. Khirbet Humsa is in an area that the Palestinians agreed would be under full Israeli control. The tents were placed their illegally There were seven of them It is a military zone The grazing outpost is new – it was only created *after* Israel had declared this area out of bounds There is no village These Beduin took their case to court and lost – they were told they had no legal right to remain They have been moved dozens of times before These people know they have no legal property rights there They also know they are lying when they say they have lived there forever Nobody gave them just ‘ten minutes’ to move – the authorities have been sending them notices for YEARS. They chose to ignore it all. This is an illegal outpost. Put up provocatively in a military area. Military land v sheep is not new or restricted to Israel. There are examples the world over. Farmer (Romania), finds good grazing land – builds without permits – has to move on. Yada yada yada. Farmers (UK) need to move off land when firing exercises take place – yada yada yada. Military orders (Sth Korea) expel an ACTUAL village (not imaginary one) – yada yada yada.

The misreporting raises another issue. This from the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
We condemn the recent demolition of 4 homes in the occupied Palestinian Territories by the Israeli authorities.

This essential infrastructure was built with Belgian funding. Our country asks Israel for compensation or restitution for the destructions.

▶️ https://t.co/QDneY6i6R1 pic.twitter.com/r5DsUfIkHA
— 🇧🇪 Belgium MFA (@BelgiumMFA) November 6, 2020

Apparently these people receive funding and supplies from the EU. How on earth are members of the EU justifying sending funding to illegal outposts in Area C – an area under full Israeli control? This is the relevant question our media will never ask. How our irresponsible media support the conflict

Here is an ABC question. If every time that a Palestinian illegally sites a tent – even in a closed military area – Israel receives negative headline press for removing it – what do you think the outcome would be?

Hence, because our own media are tripping over themselves to publish any disinformation about Israel that they can, they enable and empower those seeking to toxify the atmosphere even further. Would these families still have deliberately sought out this ongoing confrontation (which they did) if the media were not eager to print this story?

We know that there are anti-Israel provocateurs looking for trouble in areas such as the Jordan valley. Just as we are aware the livelihood of some NGOs is dependant on frequent tensions. These are all shady groups with little or no accountability.

Our media are different. As there are real consequences to the swallowing of lies and anti-Israel propaganda that openly encourages further actions of the type – we should hold them to account for the part they play. This relationship between an anti-Israel media and willing actors inside Area ‘C’ is rarely fully understood.

Medal of Honor

The greatest comic book you’ll read this year doesn’t feature a band of intergalactic avengers staving off alien invaders. It has nothing to do with raging green beasts or playboy billionaire inventors or Norse gods locked in sibling rivalry. Unlike anything by Marvel or DC, this one isn’t bloated and flashy—it’s 11 pages long, and spends more time on facial expressions than on flashy effects. Which is just as well, given that its hero is a real-life person whose story is infinitely more moving, thrilling, and inspiring than any of the masked machos its creators helped bring to life.

He is Tibor Rubin, and when we first meet him, he is dug into the dirt on a Korean mountainside. He is alone, but the Chinese army is closing in quickly. The fire emanating from Rubin’s machine gun isn’t the silly stuff of comics; it’s a hellish tongue, lapping everything in its way, a perfect visual representation of man’s inhumanity to man.

And that’s just the first panel; by the second, we meet Rubin again, this time as a child, dressed in a prisoner’s uniform and guarded by the SS. “Rubin learned early about the depth of cruelty his fellow man was capable of,” the comic book laconically informs us, and then conjures a fat-faced German who, looking bemused, tells Rubin that none of the death camp’s Jewish prisoners will survive.

Rubin, thankfully, defies the odds, and when he’s liberated by American soldiers he makes his way stateside and, though not yet a citizen, volunteers to become an American soldier himself.

From that point on, the comic book reads like one of those gritty montages that made old-fashioned war films so fun: Outnumbered by the enemy, Rubin’s outfit, the Third Battalion, decides to withdraw to the Pusan Perimeter. But Rubin decides to stay behind, eager to give the impression that the hill is still fiercely defended by scores of men; he jumps from foxhole to foxhole, seizing carbine and machine gun and grenade, unleashing that infernal fire wherever he goes. By the time the action’s over, the comic book gives us Rubin in profile, looking stoic amid the pale gray rock and the ink-blue sky. “The number of casualties he inflicted,” the text curtly informs us, “was staggering.”

All that would’ve been enough to make anyone a hero, and Rubin’s colleagues moved to file the necessary paperwork to recommend him for the Medal of Honor. They never had the chance to submit it: On Nov. 1, 1950, Rubin and his friends were awakened by the sound of bugles, and soon learned that nearly 400,000 Chinese soldiers were upon them.

A Comforter and Friend on the Front Lines

How Rabbi Harry Richmond viewed his historic role as a chaplain in the U.S. Army

In 1917, the year the U.S. entered World War I, Rabbi Harry Richmond was a newly minted graduate of Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College, the culmination of nine years of higher education, including a stint at the University of Chicago and an undergraduate degree from University of Cincinnati. Richmond was regarded for his keen intellect, earning the Reform seminary’s top prize for academic achievement.

At a symbolic vote of the student body, Richmond had been the only student at Hebrew Union College to cast his vote opposing the U.S. entering WWI.

That same year, after Congress passed a law designating military chaplains for various religious groups, the Jewish Welfare Board was established to attend to the spiritual needs of approximately 225,000 Jewish soldiers in the American armed forces. The board set about recruiting rabbis for chaplaincy service. According to Louis Barish in his 1962 article in The American Jewish Historical Quarterly called “The American Jewish Chaplaincy,” out of 400 English-speaking rabbis in the U.S., only 34 were endorsed—including Richmond, who received a JWB recommendation.

In July 1918, 28-year-old Richmond was the first rabbi to volunteer for military service in WWI, waiving his clerical exemption and enlisting as a private. It is unclear if Richmond had changed his position on the war, but his classmate and fellow chaplain, Rabbi Elkan Voorsanger, later expressed the concerns of himself and others—like Richmond—who volunteered to serve despite opposing the war; Voorsanger is quoted in Albert I. Slomowitz’s book Fighting Rabbis: Jewish Military Chaplains and American History:

“I am entering this war to register my protest against the war,” he wrote. “I can do that in no better way than to go to the front to alleviate the suffering of those who know not why they go.”

Over the next 25 years, Richmond would serve as an Army Chaplain on the battlefield in France, witness the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and serve as the only Jewish chaplain to represent the U.S. Army overseas in both WWI and WWII.

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

In the Fall of 2012, Bibi Netanyahu and then Minister of Defense Ehud Barak had a plan to destroy Iran’s capability to make nuclear weapons. The plan was not executed because of opposition from the Cabinet, the Israeli security establishment, and of course the Obama Administration, which was facing an election and secretly negotiating with Iran toward what would become the JCPOA.

The “nuclear deal” that was ultimately signed in 2015 provided Iran with cash for its Hezbollah terrorists and its expansion into Iraq and Syria, as well as fully legitimizing Iran’s nuclear project in 10-15 years. Even before then, the JCPOA lacked adequate safeguards to prevent cheating, and Iran took advantage of the loopholes to pursue development of uranium and plutonium bombs.

The Obama Administration was following a playbook developed – in part by advisor Ben Rhodes – in the 2006 Iraq Study Report, which intended to extricate the US from Iraq and bring about overall stability in the region by appeasing and empowering Iran and Syria (there was still an independent Syria then) at Israel’s expense. It seemed to me then, and still does today, that the negative consequences for Israel from the plan were not simply an unfortunate byproduct of it, but rather a desired outcome.

President Trump took the opposite tack, choosing to weaken Iran and empower America’s traditional allies in the region, Israel and the Sunni Arab states. He took the US out of the JCPOA, re-imposed sanctions on Iran, recognized Israel’s sovereignty in the Golan and Jerusalem (the 2006 plan envisioned Israel transferring the Golan to Syria), and encouraged an alliance between Israel and the Sunni Arab states.

If Trump’s policy to build up a strong countervailing power while weakening and isolating Iran would continue, then it might be possible to force Iran to give up its nuclear dreams without military action. But if, as seems likely, Joe Biden takes office as President of the US on 20 January 2021, then everything may change.

The following is sheer fantasy. I don’t know what the PM of Israel is thinking, I am not acquainted with anyone in the Trump Administration, the Biden team, or Israel’s defense establishment, and I have no insider knowledge about anything.

By Chanukah 5781 [10 December 2020], it became clear to the Prime Minister of Israel that President-elect Biden, although personally not particularly anti-Israel, was assembling a team heavy with individuals that were less than sympathetic to our point of view, like Susan Rice, Jake Sullivan, and Daniel Benaim. Biden had also made appointments that were concessions to the extreme left wing of the Democratic party that had almost defeated him in the race for the nomination. Intelligence reports showed a continuous flow of communications between Biden and the headquarters of the group led by Barack Obama, located only about 3 km. from the White House.

The PM of Israel was worried. Biden had already announced his intention to re-engage with Iran, which would probably mean a loosening of sanctions. The PM knew that the Iranians had recently made significant progress toward the development of a nuclear arsenal. He had no confidence that the Biden Administration would have the will to stop them; he could imagine a repeat of the JCPOA process, in which Iran made a fool of US negotiators.

Israel would have to stop Iran, or nobody would.

The PM knew that during the Obama Administration the Americans considered Israel a prime target for intelligence-gathering. The Americans had been operating a radar installation in Israel since 2008 that could spot air activity anywhere in the country, even small drones. Electronic communications in Israel’s defense headquarters, the Kiriya in Tel Aviv, have been tapped for some time. It would be very hard to take almost any kind of military action against Iran without the Americans finding out.

The PM decided that if Israel were to take action, it would have to be before 20 January, when Biden would be inaugurated. Indeed, considering the precedent of the incoming Obama team which aborted the ground invasion of Gaza in January 2009, it would have to be before Biden’s people got themselves organized. Otherwise, he was sure the Americans would act, diplomatically or even kinetically, to prevent Israel from striking the Iranian nuclear program.

Such an operation would not be simple or easy. The Iranian assets that would need to be destroyed are buried deeply underground and defended by surface-to-air missile batteries. The moment Israel attacked, the Iranians would unleash Hezbollah in Lebanon, which had some 130,000 short range rockets and longer range missiles, some with precision guidance. They are fitted on mobile launchers and ensconced in the homes of civilians. Hezbollah has plans to invade across the northern border, and kill Israelis and take hostages.

But the IDF has been preparing for this for some time. There is a plan called tochnit zayin [Plan Z]. The Prime Minister convened his mini-security cabinet, a subset of a subset of the cabinet, including the Minister of Defense and several others, together with the IDF Chief of Staff and a few key officers, including the Air Force and Navy commanders. The meeting took all of 15 minutes. The clock began to tick on tochnit zayin.

The IDF announced that it would carry out a defensive exercise on our northern border. It was not a massive exercise, and only a small number of reserve units were called up. Several days later an Israeli submarine moved into position in the Persian Gulf (or, if you prefer, the Arabian Gulf). At 0200 on the 4^th day of Hanukah, the submarine fired a missile almost straight up. The missile contained a small nuclear bomb designed to maximize the production of gamma rays, and it exploded high in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 100 km. A person on the ground might see a small dot of light if he knew where to look; he would not be injured or even feel anything.

Most of the gamma radiation from the explosion was absorbed by the air. The gamma rays ripped electrons from atoms in the air, and the electrons spun downward; their motion in the Earth’s magnetic field produced a powerful pulse of electromagnetic radiation, lasting only one millionth of a second but containing an enormous amount of energy. Much of Iran was blanketed by this pulse. Electrical conductors that it passed over had high voltages induced in them, and semiconductor devices, especially those connected to power lines or antennas, were reduced to inert lumps of silicon. Telephone and cellular networks, broadcasting equipment, internet routers, the power grid, and countless other things became inoperative. Even emergency generators, with their solid-state controls, didn’t start.

When Israeli aircraft arrived to bomb the nuclear sites with multiple bunker-busters, Iranian radar was dark. When eyewitnesses tried to alert their commanders, they were unable to do so. When they finally drove to Teheran to inform their leaders (most vehicles were still operative, especially older ones), their leaders could not communicate with each other, or, importantly, with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Lebanon is too close to Israel to receive the same treatment, but units of Israeli special forces penetrated its borders and destroyed communications infrastructure and cut cables at key points. A bombing campaign followed, aimed primarily at the nervous system of the country – the power grid and communications systems. In 2006, the IDF was surprised by its inability to intercept and interrupt communications over Hezbollah’s fiber optic network. Since then, it’s been documented and mapped. It was quickly destroyed. Since 2006 the IDF has collected good intelligence about Hezbollah’s installations, including the hiding places of mobile rocket launchers and weapons depots. Many of them were destroyed almost immediately.

The Hezbollah leadership was targeted; unlike in 2006, the IDF knew where they were and was able to kill them. Without a head and a nervous system, and without support from Iran, Hezbollah was demoralized, and was unable to sustain a massive rocket attack. There was some damage to Israel’s home front, but Iron Dome and Arrow antimissile systems significantly reduced it.

All this happened in a couple of days. By the time Hanukah was over, the Lebanese government – less Hezbollah – was suing for peace. In Iran, economic paralysis had begun to set in.

The US and the Russians, who had been informed only an hour before the operation, offered to help Iran and Lebanon to rebuild, as did Israel and the Gulf states – on condition that the mullahs in Iran and what was left of Hezbollah in Lebanon would have no role in the government. They accepted.

By the time Joe Biden became president, he faced a whole new Middle East.

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Haaretz has an article praising the late Saeb Erekat, written by a group of people who were involved in negotiations between Israel and the PLO over the decades: Martin Indyk, Daniel Kurtzer, Robert Malley, Aaron David Miller, Dennis Ross, Jonathan Schwartz, and Toni Verstandig.

In their rush to say how wonderful Erekat was, they tell us a bit more about themselves.

We had our differences because at times he could be inflexible. But then, without an independent base of his own and subject to Arafat’s whims, Saeb had little flexibility to depart from core Palestinian positions, and we often suspected, his bosses did not want him to do so.

And what are those core positions? A state on the 1949 armistice lines, all of east Jerusalem, Israel releasing all terrorists from prison, the "right to return" - all things that Israel cannot possibly accept if it is to remain a secure and Jewish state.

This is revealing. These negotiators knew that these are red lines for Israel. They would often say words to the effect that "everyone knows" that the Palestinians will in the end compromise on "return" or prisoners or "1967 lines." But in the actual negotiating room, what "everyone knows" was shown to be false - the Palestinians are incapable of compromise with Israel, of abandoning that they call their "constants."

This is hardly a secret. Palestinian leaders brag about how they have not modified their core positions since 1988. It is a source of pride - and once it crosses the line into becoming a matter of honor, then Palestinian leaders have purposefully painted themselves into a corner where they cannot compromise even if they wanted to because they would be branded traitors or worse.

So we know that these negotiators knew (or "suspected") that Arafat and Abbas simply had no desire for real peace with Israel. Their "constants" are not a recipe for a Palestinian state but as a stage for the destruction of Israel, entirely consistent with Arafat's "phased plan" of 1974.

Even though these professional diplomats knew this, most of them kept castigating Israel in public as the obstacle to peace and had nothing negative to say about the Palestinian side, no matter how many times the Palestinians simply responded "no" to every offer, idea and framework.

This article shows that they know the truth - that Palestinian leaders will never change their position without extreme pressure and that Israel is not the problem. Which makes the attacks on Israel by some of them unconscionable.

We are now on the verge of a new US administration that will be filled with people like these diplomats, who think the Oslo process is still alive, that if only Israel would compromise a little more there would be peace. It failed before Trump and it will fail after him - because the Palestinians aren't interested in peace.

And everyone knows it.

__________________________________________

Since 2015, Erekat was Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the PLO, which is a pretty high position. I don't see any moves that he made towards peace when he actually had political power of his own.

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11/11 Links Pt1: How can pro-Israel policies still be advanced for conservatives Jews?; How Biden Will Turn the Clock Back in the Middle East; Iranian chess team faces ban for refusal to compete against Israelis

From Ian:

Josh Hammer: How can pro-Israel policies still be advanced for conservatives Jews?

The Republican Senate, for its part, must hold the line against the worst excesses of the Biden-Harris administration. The Constitution’s framers famously wove an elaborate system of checks and balances into our legal order. Despite 100 years of accumulation of unwarranted power in the executive branch, Congress retains many tools to push back against a rogue president.

First and foremost is the power of the purse: A Republican-held Senate can, as a point of leverage, threaten to defund any number of nefarious presidential hobby horses. Chief among these for the Biden-Harris administration is a prospective return to the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal. A Republican-held Senate can also wield its investigative and oversight powers to expose any potential malfeasance of a Biden-Harris State Department — and foreign policy-national security apparatus, more generally. A Republican-held Senate can also easily forestall the administration from entering into any number of harmful formal treaties, thus ensuring that any prospective return to the Iran deal retains the comparatively weak legal status of nonbinding executive agreement. It was this weak legal basis for the JCPOA that allowed Trump to so easily withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 agreement.

It would be truly tragic if the Biden-Harris administration reneged on the stunning Middle East successes of the past four years, which emboldened Israel and our Sunni Arab allies and subdued the Iranian mullocracy and its henchmen, and instead returned to the failed decades-long consensus of browbeating Israel at every opportunity in order to force it to yield precious land for an elusive peace with an implacable foe.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed the lie at the heart of Washington’s bipartisan professional “peace process” — namely, that broader Israeli-Arab peace was impossible without a two-state solution. The Abraham Accord definitively disproved this fatal conceit, shelving aside the “Palestinian veto” that had previously hindered Arab-Israeli rapprochement. Friends of Israel — not to mention proponents of a generally more stable, secure and prosperous Middle East that aids American interests and contains hegemonic Iranian ambitions — need to relentlessly do their best to ensure the Biden-Harris administration not forsake all that genuine progress which Trump and his Middle East team made.

For pro-Israel Jewish conservatives, the next four years could prove difficult. But they can be made a lot less so if the relevant political actors and public figures urge the right people to hold the line and steer the course.

I thank our friend Donald Trump for recognizing our capital Jerusalem, moving the embassy there, recognizing our sovereignty on the Golan, his stance on Iran and at the UN, and the peace agreements. I also appreciate that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris welcomed these agreements.
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) November 10, 2020

Gil Troy: Can Jews on the Right, Left find common ground? – opinion

As Joe Biden launches his transition, and the Republicans, telling Donald Trump he lost, show off their regrown tongues, spines and souls, the Jewish community remains polarized.

As a first step to rebuilding a healthy dialogue, can we agree on certain facts? By identifying enough inconvenient truths to unnerve partisans at both extremes, perhaps we can lower the rhetorical temperature and raise awareness about some of the goals, interests and values that unite us, not just the tactical issues dividing us.

Bidenistas should acknowledge that Trump leaves at least three welcome facts on the ground in the Middle East. First, America’s embassy is now in Jerusalem – fulfilling promises Democrats and Republicans made for decades. Second, the Abraham Accords have Israelis and Arabs excitedly building business, cultural, personal and diplomatic ties. Third, Trump’s economic sanctions have sent Iranian unemployment rates and consumer prices skyrocketing – while starving Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups that target Israelis, Jews, Americans, Westerners.

And it’s not controversial to admit that Biden’s win thrilled Palestinian rejectionists, progressive anti-Zionists worldwide, and the Democratic Party’s small, loud, growing anti-Israel faction.

How Biden Will Turn the Clock Back in the Middle East

The history of the Holy Land is ignored, for the Marxist framework does not fit the historical facts. For example, when the Romans invaded ancient Israel—it was the Romans who named it "Palestine"—all of Israel, "from the river to the sea," was inhabited by Jews, and Islam, which was not invented until six centuries later, and Muslims, were unknown.

Harris also asserts that "We will also oppose annexation and settlement expansion," by which she means Israeli presence beyond the 1949 green armistice line into the heartland of ancient Israel: Judea and Samaria. She even opposes the building of new houses within communities to accommodate population increase. We can fully expect the Biden-Harris administration to demand that Israel withdraw to suicidal boundaries and that Palestine be given independent state status with an independent military.

The Biden-Harris Administration will rejoin the JCPOA, remove the sanctions from the Islamic Republic of Iran, and perhaps repeat the Obama-Biden policy of sending pallets of cash to the mullahs so that they will have more money to pass on to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian Revolutionary Guard legions in Syria. The Islamic Republic will be better able to ramp up its military, rocket, and nuclear capacity development, and to pursue its aim of destroying Israel.

How will Israel respond to this American abandonment of keeping Iran in check? Israel will return to its "blue and white" strategy of self-reliance, as it did in the past in destroying Iraqi and Syriannuclear facilities. In other words, Israel will consider striking Iranian nuclear facilities, which would probably entail pre-emptive strikes on Hamas and Hezbollah as well. In this case, Iran would not stand idle, and the result could be an all-out war in the Middle East.

Joe Biden, in collaboration with Democrat Party socialists and Islamists, will return to the post-American stance of the Obama-Biden administration, which demanded that America be transformed into a democratic socialist state and that America apologize to the world for its ill deeds, and bow to international organizations such as the United Nations, now run by a majority of third-world despots. An integral part of this plan is a return to all of the Obama failed policies in the Middle East and the conflict and loss of blood and treasure that will inevitably follow.

What Jews in America and in Israel Should Expect from the outcome of the US Elections

Speaking with Caroline Glick on what Jews in America and in Israel Should Expect from the Outcome of the US Elections.

Islamic Jihad official says "assassinations of our leaders make us stronger." Let's find out!

One year ago, Israel carried out a targeted killing of Bahaa Abu el-Atta, a senior Islamic Jihad leader who even the terror group admits was in the process of instigating an attack against Israel at the moment of his death.

On the anniversary of his death, an Islamic Jihad official in Lebanon is saying that such targeted killings only makes Islamic Jihad stronger.

Ihssan Ataya said that "the Israeli assassination policy against the resistance and its leaders will never achieve its goals and will backfire in favor of the resistance, which is getting stronger."

Ataya said: "History proves that the Islamic Jihad Movement, when leaders were assassinated, did not retreat or break down, but rather grew in strength and development, and was able to confront the occupation more than once, and made great achievements."

If that's the case, then in the interests of making Islamic Jihad even stronger, all of its leaders should take a walk towards the Gaza fence with hand grenades. They'll become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!

I wonder who these terrorists think they are fooling when they say stuff like this.

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Human Rights Watch just issued a 45-page report on the use of white phosphorus and how it can injure people if not used correctly. While the report claims to be about "incendiary weapons," it exclusively discusses white phosphorus.

Under international law, white phosphorus is not considered an incendiary weapon.

The Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons (Protocol III). Geneva, 10 October 1980 defines incendiary weapons:

1. "Incendiary weapon" means any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, or combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target. (a) Incendiary weapons can take the form of, for example, flame throwers, fougasses, shells, rockets, grenades, mines, bombs and other containers of incendiary substances. (b) Incendiary weapons do not include:

(i) Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems;

White phosphorus is used only for smoke and illumination, not as an incendiary weapon.

HRW acknowledges this and calls to change the definition in Protocol III, but its use of the term throughout the paper is misleading.

There is nothing wrong with HRW calling to increase restrictions on WP use, since it can be misused and cause burns and other injuries.

However, this report gives the impression that Israel still uses white phosphorus, dedicating one of its three case studies to Israel's use of WP in Gaza in 2009, liberally quoting its own 2009 report.

The other two case studies are Syria and Afghanistan. It doesn't mention that WP was also used by the US in Iraq, or by Turkey in Syria, or by both Armenia and Azerbaijan in their conflict.

It doesn't mention that Israel stopped using WP in 2013 and that it reprimanded officers for the misuse of the weapon in the 2009 war.

For a report of this size, these omissions seem to be purposeful. HRW wants to put Israel in the same human rights category as Afghanistan and Syria, and it wants its readers to think that Israel still uses WP unlawfully. Anything that would blunt inciting readers to hate Israel is omitted.

If this was the only time HRW did something like this, perhaps one could say this was an oversight. But it isn't. Even though Israel is not the target of this report, it ends up being a major villain, and it provides no context at all on Israel's former use of the still legal weapon.

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From VPalestine:

Cancer-stricken Palestinian detainee, Kamal Abu Wa’er, 46, died today in Israeli occupation jails following a severe deterioration in his health due to medical negligence.

Abu Waer, from Jenin’s town of Qabatiya, suffered from throat cancer. He was arrested in 2003 and sentenced to multiple life sentences for resisting the occupation.

Qadri Abu Bakr, head of the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Commission in the Palestinian Authority, held the Israeli authorities fully responsible for the death of Abu Wa’er, slamming his death as a premeditated crime committed by the Israeli prison service, which was fully aware of the seriousness of his health condition and refused to release him despite many calls made for his immediate release.

I never heard of murder by throat cancer before, but those wily Israelis are capable of anything.

The PLO also blamed Israel of "medical negligence." Hanan Ashrawi said Israel was "directly responsible" for his death.

This "negligence" included multiple surgeries and months of cancer treatments.

Besides that obvious lie, the Palestinian media also lies about why he was serving six life terms.

According to the PLO and Arabic Wikipedia, he was arrested in 2003 for "resisting the occupation" and "repelling Israeli invasions." Wattan says he stabbed a soldier while defending a young girl from harassment, doubting that the soldier even died.

In reality, Abu Wa'er was a cold blooded child killer for Fatah's Force 17 involved in a number of murders, including:

The drive by shooting of Aliza Malka, 17, near Kibbutz Merav

The shooting and murder of Arnaldo Agranionic, 48, a guard from Itamar

The murder of Rabbi Binyamin Herling, 64, at Mount Ebal in 2000

The murder of Israeli Druze border policeman Madhat Yousef as he guarded Joseph's Tomb

These murders are what the PLO today extols as "resisting the occupation."

Which goes to show that when they say that they are against terrorism, they are still lying. They regard people like Abu Wa'er as a hero.

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11/10 Links Pt2: Arsen Ostrovsky: Fighting Anti-Semitism: Lessons From Kristallnacht; The UN’s ‘Zionism is Racism’ Resolution: From Passage to Repeal and Beyond

From Ian:

Arsen Ostrovsky: Fighting Anti-Semitism: Lessons From Kristallnacht

Eighty-two years ago yesterday, Nazis and their enablers across Germany and Austria razed over 1,400 synagogues, smashed the windows and plundered over 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, and murdered almost 100 Jews in a violent pogrom that became known as "Kristallnacht"—or the "Night of Broken Glass."

In the weeks that followed, approximately 30,000 Jews were transported to concentration camps in a jarring prelude to the further evil that would ensue.

Kristallnacht was a murderous example of the capacity of humans to escalate from indifference, demonization and singling out of a group of people—Jews, in this case—to violence. First by words and through dehumanization, and then through the Nazi infrastructure of death.

Today, this singling out of Jews again—and by extension, the Jewish state, including through nefarious attempts to boycott Israel—represents a collective form of amnesia, indifference and willful disregard of history. It indicates that for many, very little has, in fact, been learned from history.

As the great philosopher George Santayana said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

For some, the phrase "Never Again" may be no more than an empty slogan. But not for the Jewish people, the Jewish state or those with a clear moral conscience.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel implored us to "take sides," warning that "neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

This week, it is imperative we not only remember our Jewish brothers and sisters murdered in the Kristallnacht by the Nazi machinery of death, but also to recall that so many of their fellow citizens stood idly by—many outright cheering on—as accomplices in the greatest act of evil in modern history.

The UN’s ‘Zionism is Racism’ Resolution: From Passage to Repeal and Beyond

November 10, 1975: 45 years ago today. This was a very telling moment regarding the United Nations’ — and the international community’s — stance on Israel.

Twenty-five states sponsored Resolution 3379, which “determine[d] that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” Seventy-two states voted in favor, 32 abstained and 35 were against the motion. The resolution referenced the 1963 UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; the 1973 resolution condemning “the unholy alliance between South African racism and Zionism;” and the August 1975 Conference for Foreign Affairs of Non-Aligned Countries, which called Zionism “a threat to world peace and security,” and urged world capitals “to oppose this racist and imperialist ideology.”

Prior to the vote, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Chaim Herzog told the General Assembly: I can point with pride to the Arab ministers who have served in my government; to the Arab deputy speaker of my Parliament; to Arab officers and men serving of their own volition in our border and police defense forces, frequently commanding Jewish troops; to the hundreds of thousands of Arabs from all over the Middle East crowding the cities of Israel every year; to the thousands of Arabs from all over the Middle East coming for medical treatment to Israel; to the peaceful coexistence which has developed; to the fact that Arabic is an official language in Israel on a par with Hebrew; to the fact that it is as natural for an Arab to serve in public office in Israel as it is incongruous to think of a Jew serving in any public office in an Arab country, indeed being admitted to many of them. Is that racism? It is not! That … is Zionism.

Herzog then pulled out a copy of the text of the resolution, held it up, and declared: “For us, the Jewish people, this resolution based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance, is devoid of any moral or legal value. For us, the Jewish people, this is no more than a piece of paper and we shall treat it as such.”

Herzog then tore the document in half.

The United States "does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act."

~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan delivering possible the best speech ever at the United Nations, #OTD 1975, on the infamous 'Zionism is Racism' Resolution. pic.twitter.com/7mZqMNWDD5
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 10, 2020

David Collier: The cruel sewer of the far-left. Not for the faint-hearted

This piece on the cruel sewer of the far-left is not for the faint-hearted. The article contains sickening responses to the news of the passing of Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi. My research is here to provide a historical record. As such, this piece, however difficult to write or read – needed to be made public.

If you are easily offended or upset, I strongly suggest you give this one a miss. The cruel and sickening responses

It is easy to go and find some anonymous troll making an offensive or cruel comment. It is for others to engage in distortion and propaganda. What is important to note about this blog is that these are not trolls or bots. These are real people and most have held or hold key positions in anti-Israel activism or other political circles.

I start with Mick Napier the chair of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

That vile post by Napier was liked by Jacqueline Walker – ex Vice-Chair of Momentum.

At the time of writing, Napier’s post has received around 50 likes and has been shared 17 times. Walker, not content in simply liking a grotesque post about Lord Sacks, set out to post some comments on her own timeline.

More Bedouin villages that popped up out of nowhere

After I found that the village of Humsa al-B'qaia has been created only recently - deliberately inside an IDF firing zone - I looked at a couple of other areas that people have been screaming that Israel demolished in recent years.

All of them were built in Area C. All of them knew very well that Israel could not tolerate the haphazard building of illegal structures in the middle of lands that are administered by the State of Israel. Most of them are built with the funding and encouragement of the EU. And children are purposefully moved into theses areas from the secure houses they lived in before- just to make the demolitions looks more heartless.

Some are not easy to find, since even Google Maps never heard of them. But here are a couple.

Izbiq, in 2004 and 2013.

And here is a video I made of Khirbet Zanuta from 2004 to 2016.

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Continuing on with how JTA reported on Joe Biden over time, this is from the early 1980s:

March 21, 1980:

Secretary of State Cyrus Vance told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today that the Carter Administration would not disavow completely the anti-Israel resolution adopted by the United Nations Security Council on March 1 and refused to say that the Administration would not support another resolution of a similar nature in September when the matter of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories comes up again.
...Sen. Joseph Biden (D.Del.) declared that Begin seriously underestimates the resentment of the American people over new settlements” and “the Begin government is dead wrong in establishing new settlements. ” But, he pointed out, “Israel is in the U.S. security interest” and Israel, “free, strong and unintimidated is a strategic asset of the U.S.” He asked Vance “What is Israel’s role in our security position regarding the Persian Gulf” oil fields?

May 29, 1980:

The United States has rejected Israel’s request to renew a five-year agreement that allows Israel to buy industrial diamonds from the American strategic stockpile at a negotiated price, Stockpile items are normally said’ by competitive bidding....
The refusal to renew the accord came despite a last-minute plea to President Carter by five members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee-Frank Church (D. Idaho), the committee chairman; Jacob Javits (R. NY), the ranking Republican; Joseph Biden Jr. (D. Del.). Paul Sarbanes (D.Mo.) and Richard Stone (D. Fla.).

August 22, 1980:

Secretary of State Edmund Muskie was advised orally and by telegram by leading Senators to veto the UN Security Council resolution on Jerusalem.
Sen. Jacob Javits (R.NY) reached Muskie at his vacationing place in Maine Tuesday night and expressed displeasure at the Carter Administration’s planned abstention vote. Muskie’s reply, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency learned, was that the Administration had given a great deal of thought to the resolution.
Yesterday morning, 13 Senators led by Frank Church (D. Idaho), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, and Javits, its ranking minority member, urged Muskie by telegram to veto the resolution since it would invoke, for the first time, punitive actions against Israel.”

Joining Church and Javits in the telegram, which was hurriedly originated yesterday morning and rushed to Muskie, were Sen. Daniel Moynihan (D.NY), Richard Stone (D.Fla.), Robert Dole (R.Kons.), John Danforth (R,Mo.), Paul Laxalt (R.Nev.), Harrison Williams (D.NJ), Joseph Biden (D Del.), Bob Packwood (R. Ore.), Alan Cranston (D.Cal.), Richard Lugar (R.Ind.) and Paul Sorbanes (D.Md.).

May 4, 1981:

Sen. Joseph Biden (D. Del.), a leading opponent of the proposed U.S. arms package deal for Saudi Arabia, strongly chastized the American Jewish community and Israel here last night for not reacting immediately in opposition to the Reagan Administration’s plan to supply offensive weapons to the Saudis.
Addressing members of the national executive committee of the Zionist Organization of America, Biden, the second ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned that the Administration will initiate tactics that will modify the American arms package.
He cautioned, however, that the dangers to U.S. and Israel security will continue. The Senator said he intended to join Sen. Alan Cranston (D. Calif.) in sponsoring a resolution of disapproval in the Senate as soon as the Administration’s proposal arrives on Capitol Hill. “If we do not make the fight now,” Biden said, the appetite of Saudi Arabia” will not be satiated.”
Ivan Novick, president of the ZOA, praised Biden for his fight against the sale.

May 2, 1983:

Sen. Joseph Biden (D. Del.), called on President Reagan today “to read the message of Congress” and ship F-16 jet fighter-bombers to Israel. He also urged the President to halt all arms sales to Arab nations in the Middle East and declared that the U.S. should begin to treat Israel “as an ally and brother and not wash dirty laundry in public.”
Biden, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke at the luncheon session of the 83rd national convention of the Zionist Organization of America here. He said American public opinion is beginning to understand what is at stake in the Middle East, “that oil is not a weapon, that the Israelis are the ones who have made concessions in Lebanon ” and that it is the Syrians, the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Lebanese government which are “intransigent."

August 18, 1983:

In the major address of the [Hadassah] banquet, Sen. Joseph Biden (D. Del.) declared that the failure of President Reagan’s peace initiative has contributed to the improvement in Israeli-U.S. relations.
“The Reagan initiative was born out of the naivete shared by the last Administration,” Biden explained. He said it was based on King Hussein of Jordan, Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat and the Saudi Arabian regime being “capable of independent action” when even if they were positive toward negotiations with Israel, “they are not capable of independent action.”
Biden said that Hussein was expected to demonstrate a “courage” that he did not have to go it alone in the Arab world, while Arafat, “even if he wanted to, and I believe he does not, is incapable of bringing along the PLO on any negotiated settlement with Israel.” The Saudis have had to make “deals” to keep their oligarchic regime in power and are not “institutionally capable” at this time of supporting peace with Israel, Biden maintained. But he noted that if either Jordan or Arafat had agreed to go along with the negotiations, Israel would have been painted as intransigent because the U.S. public would not have understood the Israeli refusal to go along based on Israel’s knowledge of the inability of the three parties to negotiate peace.
Biden, who said he supported Israel’s efforts to destroy the PLO in Lebanon, said the Lebanese action brought U.S.-Israeli relations to an all time low last year. But he said the situation has improved now for two other reasons.
One is Moshe Arens replacing Ariel Sharon as Defense Minister. The other is the Israeli-Lebanese agreement for Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon which “made it crystal clear to the United States and to the world that the party that was intransigent was not Israel but Syria and the PLO.”

September 29, 1983:

If the Israelis were to pull their troops out of Lebanon tomorrow, the Reagan Administration would “have apoplexy,” a ranking member of both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence told the United Jewish Appeal-Federation Women’s Campaign Leadership Conference.
Sen. Joseph Biden (D. Del.) warned the 200 leaders of the Women’s Campaign from New York City, Long Island and Westchester that if the Reagan Administration’s commitment of marines in Lebanon ends badly, the blame will fall on Israel. This, he said, would be unjust. The United States, he said “is in Lebanon because of United States interests, not because of Israeli interests.”
Biden emphasized that “We have an obligation as a government to educate the American people to the vital role that Israel plays in the United States security interests. Israel’s presence in Lebanon is vitally important. The Reagan Administration would have apoplexy if (Israeli Premier-designate Yitzhak) Shamir said tomorrow, ‘I’m bringing all the troops home’.”
The Senator said, “If the Administration does not put forward candidly why it has decided to be in Lebanon, the blame will eventually fall on Israel, not on this Administration’s policy.” Biden has been an outspoken critic of Secretary of State George Shultz’s statements that the Administration would not feel bound by legislation invoking the War Powers Resolution and authorizing the U.S. marines to remain in Lebanon for 18 months.

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11/10 Links Pt1: Can Biden See What’s at Stake in the Middle East?; A Biden presidency resurrects ’67 lines, Palestinian state; Saeb Erekat Dies After Contracting COVID-19

From Ian:

Can Biden See What’s at Stake in the Middle East?

The real issues in the immediate future are how the Biden Administration positions American interests vis a vis Iran and, in particular, the JCPOA. Trump’s Iran adviser, Elliott Abrams, was dispatched over the weekend to Israel to engage in a series of meetings and briefings with top Israeli officials, including, of course, Prime Minister Netanyahu. Media reports indicate that, in its final two months, the Trump Administration will issue a barrage of sanctions against Iran in coordination with Saudi Arabia and, likely, other Gulf states. The focus of such sanctions will be to impact the development of the Iranian ballistic missile system and, generally, to frustrate the incoming administration’s instinct to pander to the Iranian regime, a la Obama.

The Iranian economy is on the finest knife-edge, more imperiled than at any time during Obama’s tenure. Perhaps the hope of the Trump Administration is that sharpening the blade a touch more could be lethal and tip the balance, forcing Iranian capitulation on certain civil liberties and human rights issues, and further pressuring the increasingly besieged tyrannical regime in Tehran.

Biden and his team have been very clear regarding their intentions to “reopen” the JCPOA for renewed American leadership and participation pending Iranian compliance with its terms. The incoming administration has also telegraphed a desire to support the realization of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

Each of those sweeping positions is code for a radical re-alignment of Mideast geopolitical policy from the Trump years; basically, reverting to the so-called “Obama doctrine”, which was far from a raging success in its eight-year lifespan.

Biden enters the White House at a time when the strategic and commercial alliances in the Middle East have been utterly transformed from what they were four years ago. Among his earliest tests will be whether he understands the gravity and irreversibility of this change. Obama turned his back on traditional U.S. allies in the region, causing a deep mistrust to set in and harden. Biden cannot just walk back into the room and flick the switch. The centrality of Palestinian statehood to Middle Eastern reality was the foundation of Obama’s approach to the region. That “reality” no longer exists. The Gulf states have made clear that they recognize a permanent Israeli presence in the region and urge the Palestinians to do so, too.

Without fresh eyes and policies, Biden risks the humiliation of a very downgraded relevancy in the region. The same old same old just won’t cut it.

Mordechai Kedar: How Israel Should React to President-Elect Biden

One of the realities to which Israel will have to adjust during a Biden administration is that Barack Obama will probably play a role, officially or otherwise, as an advisor on national security or political affairs. This means Israel needs to start having conversations with members of the emerging Biden administration rather than move forward, in the waning days of Trump’s term in office, to achieve goals that the Biden administration will not accept.

It has been suggested that Israel should exploit the remaining months of the Trump presidency to extend sovereignty over parts of the West Bank. Doing so would echo the approach of Barack Obama, who, during his own transition out of the Oval Office in December 2016, supported the thoroughly anti-Israel UN Security Council Resolution 2334, spurning President-elect Trump’s request that he not do so.

Applying Israeli sovereignty to parts of the West Bank over the next two months without coordination with the incoming Biden administration might so greatly disturb a Biden administration that pressure could be brought to bear to declare all Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank illegitimate. Implementation of sovereignty could even result in the imposition of US sanctions on Israel (in relation to settlement, sovereignty, or both), a move that would be heartily endorsed by members of Congress of the likes of Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Senator Bernie Sanders.

Israel must absorb the fact that the Democratic Party of today is not the same party it was eight years ago. It has become extremist in some ways, a process that intensified sharply in response to Trump’s entry into the White House and accelerated throughout his four-year term in response to his policies, both domestic and foreign. Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel positions have multiplied and increased their grip on Democratic constituencies. Voices are already being heard suggesting the reopening of Palestine Liberation Organization offices in Washington and moving US embassy activities back to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem.

But the most complicated problem with applying sovereignty right now concerns the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan, and also (implicitly) Saudi Arabia. These countries will view an Israeli implementation of sovereignty without prior coordination with them as evidence of Israeli fraud, because the excuse to normalize relations with Jerusalem was Israel’s agreement to indefinitely postpone the application of sovereignty in the West Bank. If Israel responds to Trump’s loss by immediately withdrawing from its commitment not to enforce sovereignty, Jerusalem’s new friends will feel it has deceived them. That feeling will surely work against Israeli interests.

From PM News Nigeria:

Kannywood embattled actress, Rahama Sadau will be appearing in a sharia court in Kaduna over allegations of blasphemy levelled against her after sharing racy photos on social media.

Rahama Sadau is allegedly under police investigation after the racy photos she shared triggered blasphemous comments.

It was gathered that the investigation is linked to the blasphemous comment on the Holy Prophet Mohammed the racy photos incited.

According to a press release signed by Lawal Muhammad Gusau on behalf of the Concerned and Peace-Loving Muslim Ummah, listed some conditions that must be met before she defends herself.

It was also noted that the case against her “is a matter relating to the Hadiths of the Prophet and the Glorious Holy Qur’an and not a matter relating to the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”.

It would be bad enough if the photos themselves got Sadau to be summoned to a sharia court, but in this case she is being charged with blasphemy for the comment by someone else on her photos!

When Rahama Sadau posted the photo on November 1, Islamic conservatives in Nigeria criticized her, and others defended her. Apparently someone complained to the sharia court and the best excuse they could find to bring her before the court was to accuse her of blasphemy.

As soon as the controversy bubbled up, Sadau removed the photo and condemned any blasphemy. But that is apparently not enough - for a woman.

The man who made the blasphemous comments is not even mentioned in news articles, nor is there any indication that he is being arrested or summoned to court.

Even more outrageous, the person who brought the complaint against Sadau said that she should be arrested because her photo might cause riots - mentioning another case of a singer earlier this year whose house was burned down after he posted a video on WhatsApp that was supposedly blasphemous. The criminals aren't charged.

In 2016, Sadau was accused of indecency after a music video of her doing little more than holding hands with a man was released. She was blacklisted from the Nigerian movie industry for two years after that.

The charge of blasphemy in Nigeria is treated with kid gloves by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. If a political figure is charged with blasphemy, then they cover the story as political repression. The charge of blasphemy itself - a gross violation of the human right of free speech - is not criticized by these supposed human rights groups at all. Not a word was written by HRW or Amnesty about the singer mentioned above or a 13-year old boy sentenced to ten years in prison for blasphemy in Nigeria in October.

Here is a case of clear sexism, injustice and violation of freedom of speech that the major human rights organizations will not talk about because they do not want to be labeled "Islamophobic."

(h/t Yasmine Mohammed)

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At the official Palestinian Wafa news agency, in Arabic, Mahmoud Abbas referred to the late Saeb Erekat as a "martyr" - a shahid - implying that he was killed by Israel.

The President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, today, Tuesday, mourned, in his name and in the name of the Palestinian leadership and government, to the masses of our people and our Arab and Islamic nation, and friends in the world, the great national leader and the martyr of Palestine, the secretary of the Executive Committee of the PLO, A member of the Fatah Central Committee, and the prominent academic, Saeb Erekat, who spent his life as a fighter and a hard negotiator defending Palestine, its cause, its people, and its independent national decision.

In English, though - no shahid:

President Mahmoud Abbas today mourned Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), member of Fatah Central Committee, and a prominent academic who spent his life as a fighter and a hard negotiator defending Palestine, its cause, its people, and its independent national decision.

The rest of the article is virtually identical between English and Arabic.

I have not seen any accusations that Israel killed Erekat while he was treated for COVID-19 at Hadassah Hospital, but give it a day or two.

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The Art of the Really Bad Iran Deal

Times of Israel reports:

Amos Hochstein, a former aide to President-elect Joe Biden, tells Israeli television that rejoining the Iran nuclear deal remains “high on his agenda.”

“I believe that in the first months [of his presidency], we’ll either see him rejoin the deal fully, or what I would call ‘JCPOA-minus,’ meaning lifting sanctions in exchange for suspending some of the Iranian nuclear programs [developed] in the past three years,” he tells Channel 12.

Hochstein, who oversaw energy sanctions on Iran under former president Barack Obama’s tenure, says Biden wants “some changes” to the pact clinched in 2015 — which Trump withdrew from in 2018 — including its expiration date.

It isn't as if Biden hasn't pretty said all of this already. He wrote in an op-ed in September exactly how he plans to get "tough" on Iran.

[T]here is a smart way to be tough on Iran, and there is Trump's way....

First, I will make an unshakable commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Second, I will offer Tehran a credible path back to diplomacy. If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations. With our allies, we will work to strengthen and extend the nuclear deal's provisions, while also addressing other issues of concern. This includes working aggressively to free unjustly detained Americans and calling out the regime for its ongoing violations of human rights, including the execution of wrestler Navid Afkari this week and the wrongful detention of political prisoners, such as human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh. And we will work to help our partners reduce tensions and help end regional conflicts, including the disastrous war in Yemen.

If re-joining the JCPOA is the starting point to try to pressure Iran, what incentive does Iran have to negotiate about ballistic missiles or human rights after the US re-joins? What other carrots or sticks are there?

Biden is showing all his cards and then expecting Iran to somehow pretend it hasn't seen them.

Iran is hurting because of Trump's sanctions. But Biden is acting as if the US is dying to re-join the JCPOA and will do anything necessary to have that happen.

In other words, Biden is setting the stage to make the JCPOA even worse than it was, not better!

Iran is of course acting like a rational poker player:

Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Monday reacted coolly to suggestions that US President-elect Joe Biden would revive the 2015 nuclear deal between the Tehran regime and six world powers including America.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told a news conference in Tehran that the Islamist regime was “not aware” of comments made by an aide to Biden suggesting that a modified version of the original deal was on the table.

Khatibzadeh described the JCPOA — the technical term for the Iran deal — as the fruit of ten years of negotiation that was legally binding on all parties.

Iran is sending a message opposite to Biden's. It is saying that he US rejoining the JCPOA is not a big deal, and anyway the US is legally obligated to so don't even think of asking for more concessions.

Biden is squandering any chance the US had of negotiating a better Iran deal by telling Iran that (a) restoring the deal is one of his top priorities, (b) he will not condition any return to JCPOA on Iranian actions to make the world a safer place, and (c) after the US grovels to rejoin the JCPOA, then it will beg Iran to pretty please stop terrorism and other bad things without having anything left to negotiate with.

If you want a textbook case on how not to negotiate, this looks like it.

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