Friday, December 04, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
The Trump-haters are circling Trump’s liferaft promising a comprehensive Middle East peace – but Trump can repel their determined efforts to sink it if he is not nominated as President when the Electoral College votes on 14 December.
United Nations Secretary-General Guterres is not remotely interested in pursuing Trump’s Peace to Prosperity Vision - which calls for Israeli sovereignty to be extended to about 30% of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) - with an independent demilitarized Palestinian Arab State being established in the remaining 70% and Gaza (Peace Plan).
Guterres remains committed to supporting Palestinian Arabs and Israelis resolving the conflict:
"in line with relevant UN resolutions, international law and bilateral agreements in pursuit of the vision of two states."
Guterres will be exhorting international support for UNSC Resolution 2334 – which Obama and Biden shamefully failed to veto on 23 December 2016 – abstaining instead - as they were departing the White House.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) seemingly does not have any interest in Trump’s Peace Plan - a PLO official recently declaring:
“We have received many positive messages from the Biden team in the past few days. We are looking forward to opening a new page with the Biden administration after the damage caused by the Trump administration.”
The PLO refused to negotiate with Israel on Trump’s Peace Plan even before its details were published last January.
Biden also seems certain to trash Trump’s Peace Plan if elected America’s next President.
In an interview with the New York Times Tuesday, presumptive President-elect Joe Biden reaffirmed his plan to return the US to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. The US will rescind its economic sanctions on Iran if it complies with the nuclear deal's limitations on its nuclear activities. Once this happens, Biden said he will seek to negotiate a new, longer-term nuclear deal with Iran's ayatollahs. The current deal expires in five years.Hudson Institute: A Conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Biden insisted the goal of his policy is to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. But practically speaking, Biden's policy guarantees Iran will develop a nuclear arsenal and the missiles to deliver them. This is true both because the nuclear deal will expire, and Iran will be free to build nuclear bombs as it likes in 2025, and because the 2015 nuclear deal has no effective enforcement mechanism.
The UN inspectors tasked with ensuring Iranian compliance are only permitted to enter civilian nuclear sites. Since Iran has sole authority to determine if a site is civilian or military, it can and has rendered the deal's inspection regime a pathetic joke.
It goes without saying that Israel cannot accept this state of affairs. Just as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was compelled to oppose Barack Obama's nuclear deal, so Israel has no choice but to strongly oppose Biden's plans.
Unfortunately, Israel is currently incapable of clearly opposing Biden's plan that will give the mullahs the means to carry out their plan to destroy the Jewish state. That is because currently, Israel doesn't have one government. It has two governments pretending to be a unity government. But in practice, they disagree on everything, including how to handle Biden's Iran policy and pursue contrary policies on all issues.
Netanyahu's Likud government recognizes the danger posed by Biden's Iran policy. Last week, Netanyahu loyalist Ambassador Ron Dermer said flat out that it would be "a mistake" for a Biden administration to return to the nuclear deal.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz's Blue and White government doesn't understand the danger.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat down with Hudson Senior Fellow Michael Doran to discuss the dramatic improvement in Israel’s relationship with the Arab world, the sources of Israel’s rising power, and the major factors shaping the prime minister’s strategic vision.
Friday, December 04, 2020Elder of ZiyonThe Story of HanukkahThe history behind the story of Hanukkah is painful and complex. In the days before the Maccabean Revolt, Judea was firmly under the control of the Seleucid Empire. The Jewish elite of Judea had become largely Hellenized - the dominating culture of the day. In reality, the Jewish zealots led by the Maccabees fought as fiercely against assimilated Jewish Hellenists as they did against the Selucid Empire. The ancient rabbis, writing about 300 years after the Maccabees, were all too aware that the military victory of the Macabees was short lived and they did not want to glorify it. They chose a reading in the Haftarah to go alongside the painful history - “Not by might and not by power but by My spirit, says the Lord of Hosts.” (Zechariah 4:6). They wanted to underscore the dangers of putting our ultimate faith in military power over spirit.
The choice of Haftarah for Chanukah is because it talks about rededicating the Temple as well as Zechariah's vision of a seven-branched Menorah.
While it is true that the rabbis initially didn't want to emphasize the military aspect, they certainly didn't eliminate it. As the Maharal of Prague wrote, "The main reason that the days of Chanukah were instituted was to celebrate the victory over the Greeks. However, so that it would not seem that the victory was due only to might and heroism, rather than to Divine Providence, the miracle was denoted by the lighting of the Menorah, to show that it was all by a miracle, the war as well."
This is obvious by looking at the Al HaNissim passage addition to the prayers. It emphasizes the miraculous aspect of the military victory and doesn't mention the miracle of the oil at all.
JVP then says something strange:
Another story we tell during Hanukkah is that once the Maccabees made it to their desecrated temple, they found a Menorah that ritually needed to be kept lit at all times with only enough olive oil for one day. This small amount of oil kept the lamp lit for EIGHT days - lasting the time it took for a replenishment of oil to arrive. This is a mysterious divine creation of abundance from scarcity that we lift up. And this story is made up. (Check out the Talmud - Shabbat 21b.) Our Rabbis took the opportunity to teach the stories they wanted to lead us with. They reimagined history, in order to teach us something about who we could become–– a people with faith, not in militarism, but in a different kind of future. We are following in their footsteps.
מַאי חֲנוּכָּה? דְּתָנוּ רַבָּנַן: בְּכ״ה בְּכִסְלֵיו יוֹמֵי דַחֲנוּכָּה תְּמָנְיָא אִינּוּן דְּלָא לְמִסְפַּד בְּהוֹן וּדְלָא לְהִתְעַנּוֹת בְּהוֹן. שֶׁכְּשֶׁנִּכְנְסוּ יְווֹנִים לַהֵיכָל טִמְּאוּ כׇּל הַשְּׁמָנִים שֶׁבַּהֵיכָל. וּכְשֶׁגָּבְרָה מַלְכוּת בֵּית חַשְׁמוֹנַאי וְנִצְּחוּם, בָּדְקוּ וְלֹא מָצְאוּ אֶלָּא פַּךְ אֶחָד שֶׁל שֶׁמֶן שֶׁהָיָה מוּנָּח בְּחוֹתָמוֹ שֶׁל כֹּהֵן גָּדוֹל, וְלֹא הָיָה בּוֹ אֶלָּא לְהַדְלִיק יוֹם אֶחָד. נַעֲשָׂה בּוֹ נֵס וְהִדְלִיקוּ מִמֶּנּוּ שְׁמוֹנָה יָמִים. לְשָׁנָה אַחֶרֶת קְבָעוּם וַעֲשָׂאוּם יָמִים טוֹבִים בְּהַלֵּל וְהוֹדָאָה.
The Gemara asks: What is Hanukkah, and why are lights kindled on Hanukkah? The Gemara answers: The Sages taught in Megillat Ta’anit: On the twenty-fifth of Kislev, the days of Hanukkah are eight. One may not eulogize on them and one may not fast on them. What is the reason? When the Greeks entered the Sanctuary they defiled all the oils that were in the Sanctuary by touching them. And when the Hasmonean monarchy overcame them and emerged victorious over them, they searched and found only one cruse of oil that was placed with the seal of the High Priest, undisturbed by the Greeks. And there was sufficient oil there to light the candelabrum for only one day. A miracle occurred and they lit the candelabrum from it eight days. The next year the Sages instituted those days and made them holidays with recitation of Hallel and special thanksgiving in prayer and blessings.
Friday, December 04, 2020Elder of Ziyon
Friday, December 04, 2020Elder of Ziyon
First Step to ReformForbes’ Fundraising Appeal on Behalf of UNRWA
Perhaps the most important step UNRWA can take is to adopt the same standards as the UNHCR. Specifically, UNRWA must take real measures toward the ultimate resettlement of refugees in the host states as envisaged by its original mandate, so as to transform them from passive welfare recipients into productive and enterprising citizens of their respective societies. This is not something that can occur overnight, or even in a few years, but unless a realistic 10-year resettlement plan is crafted, the ever-increasing numbers of perpetual "refugees" kept in squalid camps will never decrease.
UNRWA must take real measures toward the ultimate resettlement of refugees in host states.
While there have been numerous studies, audits, and assessments of UNRWA's operational deficiencies—from resistance to reform, to cover-up of gender issues and sexual abuse by UNRWA workers, to overall human resource and commercial transaction mismanagement—no independent, external financial audit has ever been demanded by the donor states to account for the use, or possible abuse, of their decades-long massive donations to UNRWA: How much of this money is spent on anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement through funding of PLO-dictated textbooks and teachers' guides? How much money is spent on wages for Hamas-affiliated employees who are not legally permitted to be on UNRWA's payroll, and how much on providing facilities for summer training of schoolchildren in terrorism? And above all, how much donor money is spent on perpetuating the Palestinians' "refugeedom" rather than to "start [the refugees] on the road to rehabilitation and bring an end to their enforced idleness and the demoralizing effect of a dole," to use the words of the 1949 Economic Survey Mission, whose recommendations informed UNRWA's original mandate.[29]
Donor states are not only entitled to know how their taxpayers' monies are being spent but have an obligation and responsibility to assure that they are spent on the purposes for which they were donated, and not on those that violate U.N. directives or international law. To date, this has not been done. Only an audit by the donor states will empower reform.
Conclusion The time has come for the geopolitical realities of the 2020s to be confronted head-on. The PLO, while clinging to its eternal rejectionism as evidenced among other things by its "destroy the Zionist entity" school curriculum, is nevertheless not the PLO of Yasser Arafat. Hamas, though still committed to its ultimate goal of destroying Israel, is amenable to suspension of hostilities in return for humanitarian aid, either directly (e.g., regular flow of Qatari money to Gaza) or indirectly (e.g., training Gaza medical students in Israeli hospitals, hospitalizing serious COVID-19 patients in Israeli hospitals).[30] And the Arab states seem less inclined than ever to make their national interests captive to the whims of the Palestinian leadership as evidenced by the recent normalization accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan and the strengthening relations between the Jewish state and the other Arab states.
In addition, UNRWA faces its greatest challenge in decades as Washington, its largest donor, slashed its financial support while the U.N.'s own oversight watchdogs investigated the agency's financial irregularities as it pleads impoverishment over a deficit figure variously ranging between $332 million and over $1 billion.[31] But UNRWA's plea seems to strike a weaker chord even in the European Union where the narrative of the perpetually impoverished Palestinian refugees seems to have worn thin and where the unquestioned propping up of UNRWA's failed mission is coming under growing scrutiny by those who used to be its most vocal champions.
As the Arab and Western states face their long-overdue obligations to help proactively to resolve the Palestinian "refugee problem," the agency's 70-year-long "works" must either profoundly reform or become irrelevant.
Given that well over 90 percent of the Palestinian population lives within Area A, which is fully under Palestinian civilian and security control, the assertion that every time a Palestinian steps outside s/he is “confront with occupation” is absurd. Indeed, a map published by the United Nations’ own Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs plainly shows that, checkpoints — where Israeli soldiers are found in the West Bank — are scattered, and Palestinians can travel freely within their communities and also to other locations without encountering soldiers or settlers.
Abramiam’s article was full of praise for UNRWA schools and their teachers, ignoring that the same institutions have come under heavy criticism for their indoctrination of youth with anti-Israel and antisemitic incitement. UNRWA staff have called for the murder of Jews, revered Hitler and celebrated the deaths of Israelis.
In an article about UNRWA’s funding shortfall, ForbesWomens’ Abramiam neglected to mention that Switzerland and the Netherlands suspended their donations to UNRWA for several months in 2019 due to an internal ethics report alleging mismanagement, including sexual misconduct. Deutsche Welle reported in July 2019:
The Swiss foreign ministry announced on Tuesday that it would suspend funding of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees), after the agency’s own ethics department reported allegations of sexual misconduct, nepotism and discrimination.
Such revelations, however, would belie Lewis’ parting message that “UNRWA is extraordinary–with an amazing cadre of educators and staff that need support. The potential and the possibilities have been stolen and need to be restored.”
The Guardian newspaper is on a mission. Over the last few days, it has published several ‘Jew-hostile’ news and opinion pieces. For example, two that attempted to discredit the EHRC (the statutory body that conducted the investigation into Labour’s antisemitism), and two more that set out to undermine the IHRA definition of antisemitism.Anti-Semitism and Israel's Right to Exist
The David Feldman piece The criticism of the IHRA definition of antisemitism came first in the form of a letter signed by over 100 Arab ‘intellectual’ voices. Most are names that are instantly recognisable as political anti-Israel activists. The other attack on the IHRA was an article written by David Feldman. Feldman is director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck, University of London.
David Feldman was rolled out because he is Jewish. Just as the Guardian loves to print anti-Israel letters from the Jewish modern Yevsektsiya groups. The haters learned long ago, that if you want to effectively attack Jews, make sure you pick up a Jew to do it with.
Feldman’s main positions are that the IHRA definition curtails free speech and that he believes in an ‘all lives matter’ approach to racism. As David Hirsh expertly points out, ‘the All Lives Matter‘ approach is far from helpful. Hirsh’s article is well worth a read and therefore I have no intention of covering all that ground here.
Another major problem with the ‘all racism matters’ approach is that whole strands of anti-Jewish racism today are coming from parts of the Muslim community and Black Lives matter activists. Jews are explicitly ‘othered’ by members of these groups and often cannot enter their spaces to discuss racism with them.
The right to free speech Much of the Jewish community, along with the Government have been campaigning to pressure universities to adopt the IHRA definition.
The argument over the right to free speech is an important one. Frivolous accusations of antisemitism should be shouted down loudly. Calling someone an antisemite because they do not like the Likud or Israeli building in parts of Jerusalem is not antisemitism. But then the IHRA doesn’t say that it is. People who raise these sorts of arguments are deflecting.
Jewish people need defending – especially on campus. The main thrust of the opponents of the IHRA definition is coming from antisemites who want to continue to be antisemitic. They must be pushed back.
The 122 Palestinian and Arab intellectuals (Letters, 29 November) have taken it upon themselves to define antisemitism and the struggle for Jewish rights. This is a mistaken approach which also fails to understand the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Antisemitism manifests itself, in part, by denying to Jews their collective right to self-determination under international law. That is why the view of Israel as a “racist endeavour” is an example within the IHRA definition. A Jewish majority state is no more racist than a Muslim or Christian one.
The current plight of Palestinians, far from being an intrinsic feature of Zionism, is the outcome of a tragic conflict between two peoples. In recent decades, Israel has made at least four offers to partition the land and create a Palestinian state, with every offer rebuffed, often violently. Palestinian rejectionism is thus the main cause of their statelessness.
The IHRA definition does insist that legitimate criticism of Israel, similar to that levelled against other countries, cannot be antisemitic. Denying Israel its right to exist as a sovereign state is a different matter.
Thursday, December 03, 2020Elder of Ziyon
analysis, Daled Amos
1. There is an underlying assumption that agreements must be reached with the Arabs at any price -- and the failure to reach an agreement is unacceptable.
2. Just like the man who accepts the $10,000 -- who sees the situation as a one-time game -- Israel focuses on the short, immediate term instead of seeing the immediate situation as part of the long term, and as an opportunity to establish precedents and initiatives for another, different opportunity at some point down the road. In the paradox above, instead of accepting the $10,000 -- the man could have stood his ground and refused to give in, thereby setting the groundwork for a potential opportunity that might come up later.
Lee Smith fleshes out this point in an interview with Aumann:Aumann believes that the problem isn’t that the Israelis and Arabs don’t want peace, but rather that the Israelis and their U.S. patron believe they are playing a one-time game whereas the Arabs see themselves as playing a repeated game. Jerusalem and Washington are in a hurry to conclude negotiations immediately, whereas the Arabs are willing to wait it out and keep playing the same game. The result is that Israel’s concessions, or the desire to have peace now, have brought no peace.
...“For repetition to engender co-operation, the players must not be too eager for immediate results,” Aumann said in his lecture. “The present, the now, must not be important. If you want peace now, you may well never get peace. But if you have time—if you can wait—that changes the whole picture; then you may get peace now.”3. Like the blackmailer, the Arabs have complete and total faith in their position, which empowers them to demand preconditions and even concessions up front. This confidence also convinces the other side, and the West in general, of the rightness of the Arab cause.
Meanwhile, Israel collapsed under Obama on all three points. It was compelled to publicly state its support for a two state solution which may-or-may-not be the best outcome for an enduring peace. It was repeatedly pushed for “good will gestures” that showed that Israel would take immediate action and would not walk away from the table. And far-left wing organizations such as J Street and the New Israel Fund actively undermined the faith and conviction that Jews have a basic human right to live in homes that they legally purchase. [emphasis added]
The peace process was left in shambles.
The idea isn’t convincing the other guys to like you, or to even be civil to you. The idea is to convince them that you’re prepared to walk; that you’re thinking long-term, not just Obama’s term; that you convince yourself that you’re playing for keeps, that you have the winning hand, that you’re the meanest dog in the junk yard — showing your teeth, even as you smile — and in the process you convince your opponent, too.
|
|
Source: YouTube screencap |
In principle, then, I would not rule out either Netanyahu nor Trump as theoretically possible NPP [Nobel Peace Prize] candidates. My personal opinion, however, is that their policies and personal records stand, for the most part, in stark contrast to the main trajectories in international peace politics that the NPP has followed since 1901.
The Peace Prize is for peace, not for being a nice guy. It's true that it was given to Mother Teresa and later to Obama, but neither one brought peace. Netanyahu brought peace, and is bringing more of the same.And it is interesting to imagine if Trump might have brought more of the same as well.
Thursday, December 03, 2020Elder of Ziyonhumor, Preoccupiedby House Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
Washington, December 3 - A few days ago I felt compelled to remove a message I reposted from elsewhere on Twitter, a message that contained the oft-repeated slogan of Palestinian national liberation, "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free." I decided to undo the retweet because, I belatedly understood, too many people would choose to distort the meaning of that aspiration for rendering the Jews and their welfare once again at the mercy of outside powers as an aspiration to render the Jews and their welfare once again at the mercy of outside powers.
Of course, once tweeted, even if untweeted, content on the internet can never truly be removed, all the more so when that content comes from or through a public figure; screen captures and other techniques ensured that my deletion of the post did an incomplete job of undoing it, and my political opponents proved all too ready to exploit my error for their own propaganda purposes. They now argue that a call to place Jewish survival in the hands of a culture that allied itself, under Mufti Husseini, with Hitler's genocidal regime, betrays a desire to pursue a genocidal agenda. How many attacks against Jews and Jewish interests will it take to convince the public otherwise? I shudder to consider the answer.
This hardly represents the first time the noble goals of Palestinian liberation, of freeing historic Palestine from the villainous Zionist usurper rapist descendants of apes and swine, has been miscast as driven by animus for Jews or their sovereignty. Palestinians have no objections to Jewish sovereignty; only to Jewish sovereignty that in any way attenuates the contingent, vulnerable status Jews have always held in Muslim society. Stop trying to twist that principle into something antisemitic.
My opponents will never truly be satisfied with these explanations, a fact that merely demonstrates the lack of good faith behind their position. When a pro-Palestine activist finds himself or herself restricted from intimidating Jewish students into silence over the actions of a group of Jews on a different continent, that carries disturbing implications for freedom of speech. When Islamic charities face criminal charges for raising funds for Hamas and other Palestinian liberation groups, that carries disturbing implications for freedom of religion - all because propagandists insist on misinterpreting the Palestinian call to facilitate genocide as a Palestinian call to facilitate genocide. And that must stop.
In the final days of the Obama administration, it was fashionable for the deal’s defenders to dismiss its critics by contending that Iran was in full compliance with the terms of the accords. But those critics did not disagree. Their problem was always that “full compliance” was not difficult to achieve.
Iran provided inspectors access to declared nuclear sites but not military sites where illicit activities were likeliest to occur. A subsequent agreement allowed inspectors the opportunity to access suspect sites but only with at least 24-days-notice—enough to dispose of the evidence of small-scale work on components related to a bomb. But functionally, that 24-day timeline could be reset by Iran, which could stretch the delays out for weeks—ample time to deceive inspectors.
The IAEA routinely insisted that they had ample access to sites like Natanz and Fordow, though the uranium-enriching centrifuges at those sites were only mothballed and could be quickly restored (as they were last year). But inspectors were blocked from accessing sites like the Parchin military complex, where Iran allegedly conducted nuclear explosives and hydrodynamic testing before bulldozing the area and layering it with asphalt. To satisfy observers unnerved by Iran’s intrigues, Tehran was allowed to use its own inspectors to take environmental samples from around Parchin. Shocking though it may be, neither the Iranians nor the IAEA inspectors who checked their work found anything untoward.
The IAEA also insisted that it regularly conducted snap inspections of various civilian and military sites, but Western diplomats noted that nearly all of those inspections were of places like university laboratories or manufacturing plants with little sensitive intelligence value. When pressed by the former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley in 2017 to reinspect some suspicious military sites to satisfy the Trump administration’s concerns, the IAEA declined—insisting, correctly, that the terms of the deal required a specific and credible basis to request such intrusive inspections.
The deference afforded to Iran didn’t end there. In 2018, a spectacularly successful Israeli intelligence operation recovered a cache of documents related to the Iranian weapons program that clearly illustrates the extensive work the Islamic Republic had done in pursuit of a fissionable device. Those documents were hidden away, presumably to be pulled out of storage after the deal had expired and Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon had been fully legitimized. But Iran was under no obligation to disclose those documents, even though it had repeatedly claimed (and former secretary of State John Kerry affirmed) that all of Iran’s past nuclear-weapons work was on the table.
The JCPOA was never designed to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear-nation status. It was only aimed at dragging that process out while reshuffling the region’s geopolitical deck in Iran’s favor and ultimately providing a patina of legitimacy to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Any talk about exhuming and reanimating this agreement that glosses over its weak verification regime suggests that the Biden administration, like the Obama administration, will settle for any deal—even a bad one. When Iran is on the ropes, it’s Joe Biden who is committed to negotiating from a position of weakness.
Iran's mullahs love the nuclear deal because of its fundamental flaws, especially the sunset clauses that remove restrictions on Iran's nuclear program after the deal expires soon. The nuclear deal, rather than preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, as it was falsely touted to do, in fact paves the way for Tehran to become a legitimized nuclear state.Iran’s Guardian Council Approves Law on Hardening Nuclear Stance, Halting UN Inspections
With the nuclear deal, the regime would gain global legitimacy, making it even more difficult to hold Iran's leaders accountable for any malign behavior or terror activity across the world.
Finally, Iran's ruling clerics want immediately to rejoin the nuclear deal because it would again alienate other governments in the Middle East and inevitably lead to a worsening of relations between the US and its traditional allies, especially Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.
This flawed deal, in favor of Iran, failed to recognize the rightful concerns of other countries in the region about Iran's potential nuclear capability, missile proliferation or funding of violent proxies -- both within and next door to their territories.
Iran‘s Guardian Council watchdog body approved a law on Wednesday that obliges the government to halt UN inspections of its nuclear sites and step up uranium enrichment beyond the limit set under Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal if sanctions are not eased in two months.
In retaliation for the killing last week of Iran‘s top nuclear scientist, which Tehran has blamed on Israel, Iran‘s hardline-dominated parliament on Tuesday approved the bill with a strong majority that will harden Iran‘s nuclear stance.
The Guardian Council is charged with ensuring draft laws do not contradict Shi’ite Islamic laws or Iran’s constitution. However, the stance of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on all matters of state, is not known.
“Today in a letter, the parliament speaker officially asked the president to implement the new law,” Iran‘s semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Under the new law, Tehran would give two months to the deal’s European parties to ease sanctions on Iran‘s oil and financial sectors, imposed after Washington quit the pact between Tehran and six powers in 2018.
In reaction to US President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy on Tehran, Iran has gradually reduced its compliance with the deal.
The law pushed by hardline lawmakers would make it harder for US President-elect Joe Biden, who will take office on Jan. 20, to rejoin the agreement.
This makes no sense. Once you give Iran JCPOA 1.0, you have given it everything, including a bomb. It has no incentive to agree to JCPOA 2.0. Anybody who has read the text will understand this. https://t.co/gW0Z9HDvzZ
— Mike (@Doranimated) December 2, 2020
Thursday, December 03, 2020Elder of ZiyonIt is true that Egypt and Jordan signed “peace” treaties with the Israeli Khazarian Zionist Talmudic terrorist group in 1978 and 1993. However, the agreements between the two signatories created a cold peace and remained within the formal framework, just as forced marriage is devoid of any marital practice. The Egyptian and Jordanian governments and decision-makers in Egypt and Jordan did not impose normalization on their peoples, and this shows that what they did was a coercive scheme only.As for the political teenager in the Gulf [UAE], which has not passed forty days after normalization with the Zionists at the official level, they committed a folly that followed a folly...The normalization of political adolescence in the Gulf moved very quickly, and they began to allow Jewish visitors to desecrate mosques, accompanied by figures from the authority, and broadcast pictures and comments from inside the mosques that they entered with their shoes and without purification of course, insulting the mosques...In another dehumanizing move, they began to open kosher restaurants for Jews in the Gulf, and to hold Jewish wedding parties in some capitals of the Gulf, a clear indication that Israel has achieved a decisive victory in this field. In every sense of the word, it was no longer a cultural, political or economic normalization. Rather, it shows that this is shameful.This normalization, which was exposed in pictures by the enemy's media, is part of the exchange of visits between the Zionist youth and the Gulf youth, to have sex, as young Gulf men travel to have sex in Tel Aviv, while young Zionists travel to the Gulf to have sex as well, and thus the role of the bridge will not stop and Jewish schools will be opened. In the Gulf, the practice of prostitution will flourish more in the Gulf, and we will witness an expansion in human trafficking and trade in women.Social normalization is now including Gulf families hosting Zionist families and vice versa, to mix and exchange family experiences and social values, and dear reader imagine what this program will include in terms of demolishing values and morals or what remains of them in the Gulf after the shameful normalization.
The last paragraph is talking about this photo, which has caused a great deal of anger in social media among Arab antisemites like al-Azzouni.
Thursday, December 03, 2020Elder of Ziyon
Thursday, December 03, 2020Elder of Ziyon
Qatar and Saudi Arabia are close to striking a preliminary agreement to end a dispute that has pitted the Gulf neighbours against each other for more than three years, sources told Al Jazeera.The expected deal comes after United States President Donald Trump’s adviser Jared Kushner arrived in the Gulf region as part of a last-ditch effort to resolve the Gulf crisis, before the Trump administration leaves office in January.
After Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the United States, wrote a June 2020 opinion piece warning that annexation of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank would threaten better relations between Israel and the Arab world, Kushner saw an opportunity and stepped in to facilitate talks. The talks led to the August establishment of diplomatic ties between the United Arab Emirates and Israel.The agreement normalized what had long been informal relations between the two countries.
Before interviewing him, I had read dozens and dozens of articles about the 39-year-old Harvard-graduate in the US media. There was a quite negative and cynical labels about almost everything pertains to him, be it his competence, skills or even personal traits. There is a prejudgment that evidently turned into a bias against him.My impressions of Kushner that I had met were kind, humble, soft-spoken and certainly a pragmatic. Having met several heads of state, top-level officials and many celebrities from different industries throughout my humble career, I can say his composure and emotional intelligence are distinctive. His ability to understand, give and take, turn old foes into brand-new friends, and embark on missions to resolve, what many previous American leaders and top officials could not, are evident through many outcomes, lately in his role in Israel’s peace accords with the UAE and Bahrain.It is a breath of fresh air in the Washington, Abu Dhabi, and Tel Aviv today as a chapter of the old Middle East has ended and a new one has started.
Feeling guilty about America’s past dishonors, Obama believed he could engage Iran’s mullahs honorably. And uncomfortable with the West’s disproportionate power globally, he decided that “given the asymmetry in power between Israel and the Palestinians... it was reasonable to ask” Israel, “the stronger party, to take a bigger first step in the direction of peace.”
Ideologically, in pressuring Israel while engaging Iran, Obama overcompensated for America’s previous “sins.” That’s why he sanitizes the Palestinian turn from negotiation toward terrorism in 2000 by describing a mutual “lure of violence,” while underplaying how the terrorism Palestinians initiated betrayed and traumatized Israelis. Instead, he decides ”Israeli attitudes toward peace talks had hardened, in part because peace no longer seemed so crucial to ensuring the country’s safety and prosperity.” This obsession with Israel’s economic and military power blinds him to Israelis’ feelings of vulnerability and Palestinian culpability.
Personalities played a part, too. Obama writes that Bibi Netanyahu’s “vision of himself as the chief defender of the Jewish people against calamity allowed him to justify almost anything that would keep him in power.” In our new book, Never Alone, Natan Sharansky agrees that Netanyahu “believes his staying in office keeps Israel alive, an equation that only grows more significant the longer he stays in power.” Sharansky, however, writes with admiration, tinged with occasional frustrations; Obama exudes contempt.
Obama believes his position is equitable, idealistic – and resents the criticism he received, especially from AIPAC. But his European-style obsession with power dynamics and America’s lack of exceptionalism made him too indulgent of the sins of dictators and terrorists like the Iranians and the Palestinians, and too harsh regarding the missteps of liberal democrats like the Israelis.
President-elect Joe Biden and his new team should correct Obama’s mistakes, not repeat them. Look peripherally, not just bilaterally. It’s not just about borders or nukes: Palestinian leaders must stop terrorizing Palestinians and Israelis; Iranians must stop terrorizing the world. Rather than bashing friends like Israel and coddling enemies like the Iranians and the Palestinians, restore the true moral order to the universe: Support your friends, your fellow liberal-democrats, and confront our enemies.
Israel exists. It is the largest Jewish community in the world and the center of Jewish life worldwide. @PeterBeinart and his buddy @RashidaTlaib seek its annihilation. That makes both of them anti-Jewish bigots, Beinart's Jewish heritage notwithstanding. https://t.co/EZJ8ADvDIc
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) December 2, 2020
Bit of course @ArielElyseGold is just ‘fine’ with @RashidaTlaib’s calls for genocide and destruction of #Israel. pic.twitter.com/30V7qjSGGO
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) December 2, 2020
When last summer the Trump administration brokered the Abraham Accords—a peace agreement between Israel and the two Gulf states of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates—much commentary focused on their immediate causes, particularly the signatories’ shared fear of Iran. Reports of a recent face-to-face meeting in Saudi Arabia between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will only reaffirm that explanation.
Yet the historic character of the accords lies elsewhere. The accords recognize the Jewish and Arab people’s common ancestry in the region, accepting that Jews as a people and their faith are indigenous to the Middle East and have a legitimate right to be there. This affirmation discards two central tenets of Arab nationalism: the inherent rejection of a Jewish state as an alien, colonialist presence in the region and the idea that Arab-Israeli peace must defer to Palestinian grievances. The affirmation thus marks the end of Arab nationalism. Henceforth, the Arab countries that join the accords signal that they intend to pursue their national interest and seek alliances with the Jewish state, each on their own terms and without the need of a pan-Arab strategy.
Proximate causes, to be sure, matter. After all, it was President Jimmy Carter’s misguided foreign policy in the Middle East—alongside Israeli intelligence’s tipping off of Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, of a Libyan assassination plot against him—that propitiated Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem in November 1977. His trip set off direct bilateral peace talks that would culminate in the 1978 Camp David Accords and the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty. But those events simply flicked a switch. Peace ensued not only because strategic interests suddenly aligned, but because worldviews turned upside down.
The same can be said of the Abraham Accords. Common cause against an ascendant Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and radical Islam have driven Gulf countries closer to Israel. So has the desire to leverage full peace against Israel’s avowed intention to annex portions of the West Bank earlier this year. And no doubt, the election of Joe Biden as the next U.S. president raises the possibility that the United States will rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a move both Arab countries and Israel firmly oppose. Both enthusiasts and detractors of the accords have mostly focused on these catalysts of historical change rather than recognize that a paradigm shift has emerged as a result of long-term trends.
Wednesday, December 02, 2020Elder of ZiyonOpinion, Vic Rosenthal
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
