Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 10, 2021

Iran bans American, British COVID-19 vaccines - seemingly out of fears of GPS tech being secretly injected

DW reports:

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a live television broadcast on Friday that he has told the government to reject British and American-made vaccines.

"Imports of US and British vaccines into the country are banned. I have told this to officials and I'm saying it publicly now," Khamenei said.

Why would Iran do that?

They are working on their own vaccine, that just started Phase I clinical trials, but those would be months away from being ready.

Khamenei tweeted that the American and British vaccines are "completely untrustworthy" and French vaccines "aren't trustworthy," either. (Twitter took that tweet down.)

Khamenei's fear seems to stem from a bizarre conspiracy theory about vaccines injecting GPS chips in people's bodies.

Al Arabiya reports that Iranian hardliner Hussein Kanani said on TV, "There is a lot of information according to which some vaccines inject electronic chips and implant a Global Positioning System (GPS) in our bodies to control all our actions and movements, to the extent that we become a human machine in the hands of others."

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Book Review: Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities

Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities, by Cary Nelson, is a book-length research paper that exposes the true threats to academic freedom in Palestinian territories.

Unlike what BDS activists claim, the problem is not Israel.

For this book, Nelson has expanded one chapter of his masterful Israel Denial book into this comprehensive treatment of the subject of how Palestinian students have no academic freedom at all, at least when it comes to political speech about Israel and Palestinian leaders.

He describes how the (very) few Palestinian scholars who are moderate in wanting dialogue with Israel have been threatened and nearly killed, noting that pro-Hamas academics are also threatened in the West Bank.

Palestinians like to claim that the annual elections of student bodies at their universities are proxies for regular elections that haven’t been held for 17 years and show how important democratic processes are to them. In fact, these elections are accompanied with intimidation, threats, violence and even armed interference by the Palestinian Authority (and, by proxy, Hamas) to push their own student groups to lead the campus.

Palestinian academia is a fun-house mirror of American liberal campuses. If a professor says something that makes students uncomfortable, he or she can be threatened by students much more directly and physically than today’s cancel culture.

In Gaza, the idea of academic freedom is a sad joke. All students at Islamic University of Gaza must take one full year of Islamist indoctrination courses.

One amazing section of the book shows an IUG literature class dissecting a humorous children’s poem by British poet Roger McGough called The Cat’s Protection League about a feline protection racket. The students are prompted and encouraged to interpret the poem in the most outrageous antisemitic ways, such as assuming that the cats represent Jewish gangsters. Antisemitism pervades academia in Gaza, and no one can oppose that without facing real world consequences.

That is only the tip of the iceberg. West Bank universities compete as to which of them have had students kill the most Jews. Universities are the ideological homes of terrorism, and often the physical homes as well –weapons labs have been built in Gaza universities and one of them held kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit for a time. Many terrorists during the second intifada came from West Bank universities, including Ahlam Tamimi who helped bomb the Sbarro pizza shop.

The universities also often praise terrorism. The most infamous case was the exhibit, complete with bloody body parts, of the same Sbarro attack at An Najah University: The same university more recently displayed mock-ups of a man stabbing a religious Jew and a bloody model of a car running over Jews.

Nelson does point out times that Israel interfered with campus curricula, but that all ended at the end of the first intifada. Palestinian government control and intimidation continues on campus today, to the point that students and professors are self-censoring to stay out of trouble. (He does talk about Israel’s relatively rare raids on campus since then, which are understandable when there is an imminent terror threat but often could be more effective by detaining students at home.)

Nelson also shows how other claims by BDS, that Israel blocks students from going abroad or foreign instructors to come to teach, are exaggerated – Israel does not have any more strict restrictions on those movements than most Western democracies.

Small details in the book are illuminating. For example, Nelson points out that while Israel is roundly castigated for administrative detention, the Palestinian Authority detains hundreds of people without charge as well, although they are not as forthcoming with the statistics as Israel is. (I follow Palestinian media closely and have never seen any mention of this.)

Another section has a footnote that mentions that Norman Finkelstein actually defended Hamas’ policy of murdering “collaborators” with Israel.

This is the sort of hypocrisy exposed in Not in Kansas Anymore. The boycotters’ pretense of caring about Palestinian academic freedom is clearly just an excuse to attack Israel as they ignore the far worse crimes that Palestinian students and professors are subject to every day from their own leaders and peers.

01/09 Links: Why Biden’s Plan to Rejoin the Iran Deal Makes No Sense; Netanyahu taken to safe room during protests prior to Capitol riots; The Israeli organization saving the lives of Gaza’s children

From Ian:

Richard Goldberg and Mark Dubowitz: Why Biden’s Plan to Rejoin the Iran Deal Makes No Sense

Iran has decided to escalate tensions with the West by publicly confirming the production of enriched uranium at an underground nuclear facility and seizing a South Korean oil tanker transiting the Persian Gulf. This escalation may be designed to put additional pressure on President-elect Joe Biden to rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal—a move that would give extensive sanctions relief to a regime under enormous economic stress. But if Biden were to give in to nuclear extortion and abandon sanctions, he would surrender his most important leverage against Tehran and never achieve his stated goal of negotiating a longer-lasting, better agreement.

Five years ago, nearly every Republican in the U.S. Congress—and many leading Democrats including Senators Charles Schumer, Bob Menendez, and Joe Manchin—opposed the Iran deal for good reasons. The agreement set expiration dates on key restrictions, ruled out on-demand inspections, and let Iran maintain its nuclear enrichment capabilities. It didn’t address the regime’s accelerating missile program, gave Tehran the financial resources to sponsor regional aggression and terrorism, and ignored its egregious abuse of human rights.

Hinting at these flaws, Biden recently said he wants to build on the 2015 deal with a new agreement to “tighten and lengthen Iran’s nuclear constraints, as we address the missile program.” During the presidential campaign, he also promised to confront Iran’s human-rights record and its “destabilizing activities, which threaten our friends and partners in the region.” But the president-elect maintains that the only way to negotiate a new framework is by first returning to the old one.

There’s one big problem with that logic. Since rejoining the original nuclear deal requires Washington to lift its most punishing sanctions, the economic leverage against Tehran that Biden inherits from his predecessor will evaporate the moment sanctions are relaxed.

Congress had worked for years to enact tough sanctions to force the Iranian regime to abandon its malign activities. Indeed, former President Barack Obama credited these sanctions with bringing Iran to the negotiating table in the first place.

The obvious question, then, is this: If Obama contends U.S. sanctions pressure was necessary to produce an agreement as deeply flawed as the Iran nuclear deal, how could Biden ever negotiate far more restrictions on Iran with far less economic leverage?

Biden’s retreat from sanctions in the face of Iran’s threats to expand its enrichment-related activities, kick out international inspectors, and build additional nuclear reactors—in effect, giving in to a nuclear extortion racket—would also send a clear message to the mullahs: They can wait out a Biden administration in negotiations because he will never reimpose sanctions out of fear Iran might again expand its nuclear activities.

The end of the Gulf crisis is big news — but Middle East sands always shift

It appears that the Gulf crisis is over. The schism between U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt, on the one hand, and Qatar, on the other, is ending today in a flurry of Arab robes and face-masked embraces at a desert air strip in northwest Saudi Arabia.

This being the Middle East, the wording must be cautious and it’s wise to include a “probably” or “perhaps” somewhere. But there is no doubting the potential significance of the news. An often absurd tiff between Washington’s allies has been taken off the front burner. The significance is arguably bigger than Israel’s recent “normalization” agreements with the UAE and Bahrain. And, given the attendance in the desert today of White House adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, it’s hard not to recognize it as an achievement of outgoing President Trump.

That success must be balanced against the president’s role in starting the crisis in May 2017, when he attended the Riyadh Arab summit on his first foreign trip. Emir Tamim of Qatar was also there, but his delegation knew something was going wrong when it found itself seated near the kitchens at the banquet. Within days, the Qatar news agency had been hacked to show fake pro-Iranian messages and Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain had broken relations with Qatar. A tweet by President Trump had suggested Qatari support for terrorism. Qatar’s Arab neighbors instituted an “embargo” — in effect, a blockade, cutting the land border and banning air traffic — complaining of Doha’s support for radicals and Islamic extremists.

On a reporting trip to the Gulf a few weeks later, I searched for answers on what had happened and why. Perplexed local diplomats were doing the same. The accepted wisdom was that it was a power play by MbZ and MbS, the up-and-coming personalities of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi, the lead emirate of the UAE, and Mohammed bin Salman, who became the Saudi crown prince in June 2017 after forcing the abdication of his predecessor. Irritated by their once-irrelevant Qatari neighbor, now striding the region and even the world flush with natural gas revenues, they wanted to put it in its place.

MEMRI: A Second Chance For Sudan

With one exception, the Trump administration certainly did not distinguish itself when it comes to Africa.[1] But that exception, Sudan, is an important one. Through a bulldozer intensity focused on helping make peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors, through seemingly crude pressure and clumsy creativity, the administration came through with three great deliverables for Khartoum's transitional government: removing Sudan from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List, restoring Sudan's sovereign immunity for past complicity with terrorist acts, and providing both bilateral and IMF debt relief that will make Sudan able to more easily tap international assistance for very poor countries. Khartoum in return has to move forward with normalizing relations with Israel.[2]

I am one of those who criticized the administration for pressing too hard to get Sudan's fragile transitional government to agree on Israel – even though I support normalization – but in the end, it worked and, like the other agreements between Israel and Arab states over the past few months, this is a solid, respectable diplomatic achievement.

Sudan, after 30 years of brutal dictatorship, has been given a second chance. That chance has been principally won by the Sudanese people themselves, who in 2018 and 2019 rose up against the Omar Al-Bashir regime and, with the help of key parts of the Sudanese military establishment, brought the regime to an end. But certainly, the international community also played a helpful secondary role. And second chances in the Arab world are nothing to look down upon, as we see several countries – Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen – in deep, seemingly intractable existential crises. Sudan is also in crisis, and yet one can only compare it to the situation in Lebanon and see real hope and the possibility of progress on the banks of the Two Niles.

Sudan's most immediate problem is economic. Inflation ran at over 200% in 2020, exacerbating already widespread poverty and hunger. Supplying fuel, food, medicine, and electricity are major challenges. GDP in 2020 decreased even more than it had the past two years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Almost half of all Sudanese between the ages of 15 and 64 suffered from malnutrition as children. And with freedoms won by the Sudanese Revolution comes the right to demonstrate and complain, loudly. Expectations and frustrations are very high. Sudan's biggest challenge over the next two years is finding a way to show tangible forward motion towards a better life for its people. According to the country's Charter for the Transitional Period, democratic elections are to be held by late 2022; these would be the first fully free elections in Sudan since 1986.

The second, no less daunting, challenge that Sudan faces is that of civilian-military relations, specifically how to rein in a sprawling military establishment accustomed to both economic and political privilege. In Sudan, there are two military entities, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary forces built up by the previous regime out of the Darfur conflict and used as a type of Praetorian Guard by Bashir in his last years. Both SAF and RSF are mentioned by name in the Transitional Charter as "national military institutions that protect the unity and sovereignty of the nation." SAF's Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF Commander Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo (AKA "Hemeti") are, respectively, chairman and vice-chair of Sudan's Sovereignty Council.

It took nearly three weeks, but the Palestinian foreign ministry finally decided that the propaganda value of adopting the false anti-Israel positions of Amnesty, The Guardian and many others that Israel is somehow discriminating against Palestinians in COVID-19 vaccines outweighs the honor involved in Palestinian leaders taking responsibility for their own people.

From Ma'an:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates affirmed the duties of Israel, the occupying Power, to provide vaccines against Corona to the Palestinian people, while providing these vaccines to its citizens, ignoring its duties as an occupying power, and discriminating against the Palestinian people and denying them their right to health.

The Foreign Ministry added, in a statement issued by it, this evening, Saturday, that Israel is trying to absolve itself of its duties as an occupying power, and imposes full responsibility on the Palestinian government.

And she stressed that the State of Palestine is ready to fully assume its responsibilities and carry out its duties without compromise, which is what it was and is still doing in the face of the willful negligence and indifference of the occupying power, and the occupying power must only recognize its racial discrimination and its inability to implement its obligations and assume its responsibilities or to transfer it completely to The Palestinian government to do it, and towards Israel ending its colonial occupation of the land of the State of Palestine.

She emphasized that the Palestinian leadership’s search for providing vaccines from its various sources does not exempt Israel from its responsibilities towards the Palestinian people in providing vaccinations based on its duties based on the rules of international humanitarian law, the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Regulations of 1907, and international human rights law as an occupying power.

The Foreign Ministry praised the positions of states, institutions, members of parliament, and legal and international figures who considered the violations of health apartheid practiced by Israel against the Palestinian people.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on the international community to pressure Israel to assume its responsibilities, especially Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which affirmed that the occupying power has a duty to ensure "the adoption and implementation of preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of infectious diseases and epidemics," including these obligations to purchase and distribute vaccines to the people -the Palestinian who is under its prolonged military occupation, as well as presenting him to our brave prisoners in the occupation prison.

Notice that nowhere in this statement is the Palestinian government actually asking for Israel's help. The entire statement is meant to accuse Israel of "health apartheid" and "racial discrimination" but at no point do they say that they actually want Israel to provide vaccines, and how.

To re-emphasize:

* Under the Geneva Conventions, the PA has the primary responsibility for deciding how to fight the pandemic. Israel is obligated to cooperate with the Palestinian Authority in fighting the epidemic if they ask. They haven't asked, at least not publicly. (If the Palestinian Authority would refuse to help its own people, or if it did not have that ability, then Israel would indeed have that obligation. No one claims that their own plans for obtaining the vaccine within a few weeks is irresponsible or reckless.)

* Logistically, the Palestinian Authority cannot store the quantities of the Pfizer vaccine that Israel is using because of a lack of specialized refrigeration equipment, so this is moot.

* If Israel would unilaterally build its own clinics in Palestinian controlled territory, which is the only feasible way to do what Amnesty, the other NGOs and news media seem to be demanding, that would be decried as a "land grab" and "settlement activity." (Previous clinics that Israel has built for Palestinians in need were boycotted.)

* If somehow these obstacles could be overcome, most Palestinians would not want vaccines from Israel because of rumors that they would cause impotence or illness.

This press release is pure cynicism, a crude excuse to push an antisemitic lie of Jews discriminating against Arabs - even though more Arabs have been vaccinated in Israel than in any other country besides the UAE.

But the propaganda value of the Israel-hating NGOs relentlessly attacking Israel for weeks meant that the Palestinian government could not ignore the topic, even though it made clear multiple times that it can handle the epidemic itself and emphatically didn't want Israel's help.

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01/08 Links Pt2: Pandemic has destroyed protest tourism; Netanyahu: Everyone Over 16 Will Be Vaccinated By End of March; Scotland lists Jerusalem separately from Israel on COVID-19 travel advisory

From Ian:

Pandemic has destroyed protest tourism

In Hebron, the heart of the activism, there has been fewer clashes, curfews and stabbing attacks since the pandemic. Are people tired of fighting during a health crisis? Or are there fewer flash points between Israelis, foreign activists and Palestinians?

It’s not clear. But what is clear is that Palestinians are not left worse off when Westerners in Arab headscarves stop exploiting their struggle.

Protest tourism mostly caters to a small, privileged group of middle-class Leftists. They use it as a way to burnish their radical credentials at home, or even make a profit for whatever “non-profit” they run. For the most part, it’s about a short tour and then a plane ride home.

The pandemic has taught us that activism can best be done locally. The funds wasted on air fares and fancy hotels, like the American Colony in Jerusalem, could better be directed towards local causes, or Palestinian NGOs that actually hire Palestinians.

Lockdown has given us a good opportunity to look in the mirror and ask what all these antics were about. Was it really just a way for people to have “fun” bashing Israel? Was it a kind of virtue-signalling on steroids – titillating to the foreigners at the expense of the Palestinians?

The activists may have planted trees or escorted people through checkpoints, but most of it was a charade. Palestinian lives haven’t changed. Radical westerners have simply sponged up resources that could have actually done some good.

Spielberg Makes Movie Celebrating Jeffrey Epstein’s Anti-Israel Associate

In November 2020, filming began on Oslo: an adaptation of the revisionist history Broadway play about the fake peace process between Israel and the PLO terrorist organization.

That same month, the man at the center of both the play and the movie, Terje Rød Larsen announced that he was stepping down as president and CEO of the International Peace Institute after it was revealed that he had taken a $130,000 personal loan from Jeffrey Epstein.

The International Peace Institute is closely linked to the United Nations and its honorary chair is usually the UN Secretary General. The notorious pedophile didn’t just give Larsen money, he also pumped $650,000 into the UN-linked group through his “foundations'' and the Norwegian paper that broke the story published emails showing that Larsen’s people were trying to move money from IPI back to Jeffrey Epstein. "For forms sake we should send it to Jeff, however I am sure we will get it back many fold!" Larsen appears to have written in one email.

It was 2016. The date on the original loan was in 2013. All of this took place years after the original Epstein case and his conviction. The ex-UN diplomat knew whom he was dealing with.

But the Epstein scandal didn’t stop Oslo from being produced by Steven Spielberg anyway. Or HBO from moving forward with plans to air a story about a disgraced Jeffrey Epstein associate.

Neither HBO nor Spielberg are strangers to revisionist history or anti-Israel propaganda.

Melanie Phillips: A disaster and a tragedy for America, Jews and decent people everywhere

Tragically, though, as so often in Jewish history, there are Jews who are actively helping this onslaught against truth, justice and decency. Liberal American Jews have supported Warnock with the Jewish Democratic Council of America circulating a petition claiming that he was the victim of “baseless claims and attacks.”

Such Jews have continued to support the Democrats regardless of Obama’s hostility to Israel or his empowerment of Iran. They continue to support them regardless of their embrace of the poisonous Jew-hater, Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan, and “The Squad” of Democrat Congresswomen who are given to anti-Israel or anti-Jewish statements.

And now, with the Democrats unconstrained, we will all be forced to watch as the arguably criminal conspiracy to destroy a president is buried; as the anti-white, anti-West, anti-Jew Black Lives Matter movement is invited to set the social agenda; as the Palestinian Arabs are again empowered and incentivized to resume their campaign to exterminate Israel; and as America allows two of the most lethal threats to the free world—Iran and China—to walk all over it.

The moral case against the Democrats had been solid and overwhelming. But now, with Trump having betrayed the rule of law and constitutional order, those trying to defend these principles against the left have been grievously undermined.

What a disaster. What a tragedy—for America, for the West and for decent people everywhere.

Cartoon of the Day: Everything is a war crime

Continuing my series of re-captioned cartoons....

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01/08 Links Pt1: As Biden enters White House, did Israel's Mossad win war with Iran?; Iran leader Khamenei bans imports of US, British COVID-19 vaccines

From Ian:

As Biden enters White House, did Israel's Mossad win war with Iran?

The Post understands that a main reason that the operation to seize the nuclear archives did not take place until January 2018 was that it took Cohen and his Mossad team a full two years to plan it and carry it out.

Intelligence sources were asked about the view of some (including former Mossad chiefs Tamir Pardo and Shabtai Shavit) that the issue of how to stop Iran from going nuclear after 2025 should have been pushed off until close to 2025, without breaking up the deal in 2018.

The Post learned that the view was that any Iranian compliance with the nuclear deal in the early years would have been replaced by covertly and non-covertly chipping away at the nuclear limitations long before 2025.

Under this view, one key point was who would choose the timing of the next nuclear standoff and whether Israel and the West would have leverage or would still be trapped by fears of upsetting the Iranians.

Each move against Iran was carefully calculated to create leverage for the critical period when there would be a standoff.

Some made light of the nuclear archives because it was records of the nuclear program from the 1990s through 2003.

However, Cohen and Netanyahu believed the archives and Iran’s continued efforts to move them around to different clandestine sites helped them prove to the IAEA and others that Khamenei’s true intentions remain to achieve a nuclear weapon.

Amano may not have kept his word to Cohen, yet the intelligence obtained from the nuclear archives is exactly what empowered Grossi to insist on new inspections at Turquzabad, Mariwan (also known as Abadeh) and another site near Tehran, all of which had illicit nuclear activities.

So Cohen’s Mossad has done far more than just pressure Iran for a few years until Biden came into the picture.

Despite Iran’s recent jump to 20% enrichment, operations from his tenure will limit Iran’s ability to break out to a nuclear weapon at least in the early stages of the Biden administration. New intelligence collected may convince incoming officials to take some harder stances.

And if, at the end of the day, the Biden administration still cuts a deal with Iran that Israel does not like, something beyond even Cohen’s control, he will still have played his heart out to protect Israel, pushing the envelope to use every tool at his disposal.

The Life of Iran’s Most Celebrated Mass Killer

Late in Arash Azizi’s fluent and groundbreaking new biography of the late Qassem Soleimani, The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the U.S., and Iran’s Global Ambitions, the author tells us that the summer before Soleimani was killed, “Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert spoke of his old adversary Soleimani in a radio interview: ‘There is something that he knows, that he knows I know, that I know he knows, and both of us know what that something is.’ He paused for a moment and added: ‘What that is, that’s another story.’”

Welcome to the shadows. Azizi reads Olmert’s remarks as a threat, and perhaps they were, but amid the apocalyptic and violent threats launched from Tehran over 40 years—mostly directed at Olmert’s country—the former Israeli PM sounds positively neighborly. Soleimani’s hatred of Israel was obsessive. So many things he touched were named Quds (Jerusalem by its Arabic name)—the Quds Training Barracks, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, and a couple of operations in the Iran-Iraq War.

Soleimani endured a Dickensian rural boyhood of shame due to impoverishing family debt and menial jobs. He moved on to steady work, a love for karate, a fondness for Scarface-style men’s fashion outfits, and religious radicalization. With the coming of the revolution and Iran-Iraq War, he sought ever closer engagement at the front, as a member of the nascent IRGC, a militia “which grew to overshadow and dwarf the army … [Soleimani’s] calm and quiet demeanor did little to hide his ambition. He planned to make this war his own.” He was wounded in the grandly titled Operation Path to Jerusalem, which more modestly did liberate the town of Bostan from Iraqi control.

The recapture of Khorramshahr was followed by a string of regional events that might have ended the war: signal Iranian victories, the Palestinian attempt to murder Israeli Ambassador Shlomo Argov in London, and the resulting Israeli push into Lebanon to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization. By now “Saddam had his back against the wall” and so withdrew his forces from Iran and declared a ceasefire, a face-saving tactic accompanied by his invitation to Iran to join him in an “anti-Zionist” front against Israel along with the Palestinians, Lebanon, and Syria. An end to the war in 1982 would have allowed Iran to emerge victorious and saved many thousands of lives, especially since Iranian tactics still involved the use of suicidal waves of young men, adolescents, and children serving as human minesweepers. Yet the IRGC urgently lobbied Ruhollah Khomeini to remain at war, export the revolution, topple Saddam, and destroy Israel. Khomeini followed this catastrophic advice until 1988, when a defeated Iran accepted a ceasefire, leaving both Saddam Hussein and Israel unscathed. Humiliated, Khomeini attempted to restore his menacing reputation by ordering the massacre of thousands of political prisoners, mostly from the Mojahedin-e Khalq opposition group.

JINSA National Security Digest (Podcast): The State of Human Rights in Iran

The current state of human rights in Iran is horrendous and often fails to receive enough attention from the international community. In this episode, Erielle speaks with investigative journalist and founder of The Foreign Desk Lisa Daftari about the struggles various minority groups face in Iran, the state of the current dissident movement in Iran, and the power of social media to bring to light the regime’s abuses.

The Tikvah Podcast: Dore Gold on the Strategic Importance of the Nile River and the Politics of the Red Sea

In the water-scarce Middle East, water that can be used for drinking and agriculture is of premium importance. The entire ancient civilization of imperial Egypt grew up around the Nile River and its basin, and much of the east Africa still depends on it. Although Israel has made amazing advances in hydrotechnology, it too must treat water as a scarce resource, and that makes the politics of the Nile, along with the policing of the Red Sea, a question of real strategic significance to the Jewish state and the regional order of the Middle East.

In this week’s podcast, Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver is joined by Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, to discuss the strategic importance of the Nile River, the policing of the Red Sea, and what they mean for Israel and the regional order of the Middle East.

Israel closed the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron for ten days at the same time that it increased the lockdown in most of the country to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Even though Israel does not agree that the lands of Judea and Samaria are legally considered occupied, Israel's High Court of Justice usually applies the laws of belligerent occupation when deciding what is allowed in those areas. It is still important to understand whether Israel is adhering to international law of belligerent occupation, especially when prominent human rights organizations claim that it is violating those laws.

As we have shown, Israel is not obligated to provide Palestinians living in those areas with vaccines when their own leaders have indicated that they can handle the epidemic and the procurement of vaccines themselves. The local authorities are the ones with the primary responsibility of maintaining health. It is absurd to say that because Israel built an infrastructure to provide vaccines to its people before every other country on Earth that it must provide vaccines for Palestinians at the exact same time, especially when the Palestinian leaders do not want to get the vaccines from Israel and have been making arrangements to receive different vaccines that could be given to their people sooner than it would take to acquire the special refrigeration equipment the Pfizer vaccine needs.

The question of the Tomb of the Patriarchs is interesting because it is the flip side of the same question. In this case, the local authorities are against a health measure that Israel wants to enforce. In this case, does Israel have the right, or even obligation, to enforce health rules in opposition to the wishes of the Palestinians?

Once again, we see that Israel is following the Geneva Conventions.

The ICRC's commentary of same Article 56 that says that Israel must work with local authorities to ensure the health and safety of the population also says when Israel must override those authorities:

It will be remembered that Article 55 requires the Occupying Power to import the necessary medical supplies, such as medicaments, vaccines and sera, when the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate. It will also be able to exercise its right to requisition, and demand the co-operation not only of the national and local authorities but also of the population in the fight against epidemics.

The Palestinian Authority has the resources to acquire vaccines, but it is not cooperating with Israel in lockdowns. Israel has every right to force those lockdowns when the local authorities are unable or unwilling to.

To be sure, deciding when such a move is needed is often a judgment call. And there is one other part of Geneva that gives the Palestinians more considerations in this case:

In adopting measures of health and hygiene and in their implementation, the Occupying Power shall take into consideration the moral and ethical susceptibilities of the population of the occupied territory.

The commentary says:

The last paragraph provides protected persons with a further safeguard, in that any measure of public health and hygiene the Occupying Power feels it should take in order to comply with the above stipulations must pay due regard to the habits and customs of the population (3).
The purpose of the provision is to ensure respect for sentiments and traditions, which must not be disregarded. The occupation must not involve the sudden introduction of new methods, if they are liable to cause deep disquiet among the population. The provision should be compared with Article 27 [ Link ] , which requires the Party to the conflict to respect, in all circumstances, the religious convictions and practices of protected persons, and also their manners and customs.

In this case there is a tension between the requirements of ensuring the health and safety of the population and that of respecting religious practices. But even here the language of what Israel may do to fight an epidemic is much stronger than the language of respecting local religious customs - the former is a requirement, the latter is something that must be taken into consideration.

It is also beyond doubt that the objections of the Palestinians to the temporary shutdown is at least as much out of resentment for Israel than out of true religious sentiment. For example, the PA is claiming that Israel adhering to international law is a war crime:

Mahmoud al-Habbash, advisor to President Mahmoud Abbas on religious affairs and Islamic relations, described Israel's lockdown of the holy site as an inclusive war crime, saying that banning worshipers access to the site could fuel the sentiments of Muslims around the world.

Also instructive is the reaction of Hebron's Jewish community to the shutdown. The site is at least as holy to Jews as it is to Muslims, yet their reaction to not being able to enter the site is the opposite of the Palestinians':

COVID-19 UPDATE - Tomb of Patriarchs closed starting Friday, January 8.
Prayers outside: 4 sections, 10 worshipers each, total of 40 worshipers.
We pray for all affected by coronavirus. Together we will pull through.#Hebron #coronavirus #Lockdown3 #Quarantine pic.twitter.com/s7EMC6VUy6
— Jewish Community of Hebron - Hebron Fund (@TheHebronFund1) January 7, 2021

After all, there is no greater religious obligation than saving lives.

Once again, Israel is scrupulously adhering to international law, while it is being falsely accused of violating that law. And once again, the accusers don't care about the laws themselves, but in how to twist the laws in ways that demonize Israel.

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The EU just published an excellent guide to using the IHRA Working Definition of antisemitism. It includes detailed descriptions of when anti-Israel rhetoric is antisemitic:

In certain forms of antisemitic expression, Israel may be used as a substitute for a conceived Jewish collectivity. Rather than “criticising” Israel as one might any other state, some forms of antisemitism express direct hatred exclusively against Israel or seek to apply double standards in criticising that country.

It goes through each IHRA example and then shows specific incidents, both from the Right and the Left, that happened in Europe that were antisemitic even though they were ostensibly anti-Israel:

Antisemitic incidents:
Online (Denmark), May 2018: An individual sent an e-mail entitled “Holocaust is a giant lie!” to individual scholars and the entire Danish Parliament. The man, who had been expelled from a right-wing party due to racist statements, wrote: “Do you really believe in the grotesque history of the Holocaust?... [T]he truth is that it never happened... Israel and the Jews have completely occupied the United States and are completely draining it of money and other resources. The Jews are the eternal enemy of the white people.”

Barcelona (Spain), May 2016: Addressing the Catalonian Parliament a politician called the head of the Barcelona Jewish Community a “foreign agent” from an alleged “Zionist lobby” that defines the Parliament’s agenda.

Paris (France), February 2019: A prominent French Jewish philosopher was verbally attacked as he walked past a protest on the Montparnasse Boulevard. Protesters shouted abuses at him, among them “dirty Zionist” and “go back to Tel Aviv”. The attack was condemned by the French President, and the Paris prosecutor’s office launched an investigation into the “public insult based on origin, ethnicity, nationality, race or religion.”

Berlin (Germany), July 2020: An antisemitic caricature of a Jew in a crossed-out red circle was printed on a laminated card. Additionally, Israel was demonised and delegitimised and Judaism was equated with racism: “Stop Israhell Apartheid! Judaism is Racism!”

London (UK), 6 September 2018: Following the adoption of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism by the UK Labour Party, advertisements claiming “Israel is a racist endeavour” appeared at bus stops around London. A spokesperson for the London mayor stated: “These offensive adverts are not authorized and are acts of vandalism which Transport for London and its advertising partner take extremely seriously. They have instructed their contractors to remove any posters found on their network immediately.”

London (UK), 4 August 2014: A Member of Parliament posted a cartoon online of Israel’s outline superimposed on a map of the US under the headline “Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict – relocate Israel into United States”. To this, the MP appended the comment, “Problem solved”. She subsequently admitted her postings were antisemitic and apologised.

Benicàssim (Spain), August 2015: After pressure from activists, a Spanish Reggae festival cancelled the performance of an American Jewish singer because he declined to make a declaration condemning actions of the State of Israel. No other artist was asked to condemn a countries’ policies in order to perform. After a public outcry, the decision was reversed. However, during his performance, the artist was the subject of verbal attacks.

Media (Germany), May 2018: A German newspaper published a cartoon that uses classic antisemitic clichés, such as oversized nose, ears and lips, to depict the prime minister of Israel. The cartoon showed the prime minister in the attire of the Israeli Eurovision song contest winner 2018, while holding a rocket with the Star of David on it. Germany’s commissioner on combatting antisemitism stated that the cartoon recalled “the intolerable depictions of Nazi propaganda.” The newspaper apologised for the cartoon’s use of antisemitic clichés, fired the cartoonist and reviewed its internal editorial procedures for the publication of caricatures.

Warsaw (Poland), November 2019: Manifesting multiple forms of antisemitism, autonomous nationalists carried a banner at a large march with the words “We want our country back now! This is Poland not ‘Polin (Jewish museum in Warsaw)’ – Polish Intifada – No more apologies. No more Zionism.” They chanted, “This is Poland, not Israel!” and “White Poland!”

Berlin (Germany), May 2020: Property damage was discovered at a Holocaust memorial on the Putlitz Bridge in Moabit. The memorial, which commemorates the deportation of Berlin Jews from the Moabit train station to the extermination camps in 1942, was covered with a homemade sticker that read: “Free Gaza” and “I support a free Palestine”. This created an antisemitic connection between the Holocaust and the situation in the Middle East.

Media (Belgium), January 2020: Released to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a Dutch-language daily published an article titled “How the Zionists ‘Discovered’ the Holocaust”. This piece argued that the millions of Jews exterminated by the Nazis cannot “protest if they are used to justify another injustice: a regime [Israel] that has imposed discrimination and apartheid in law.”

Gothenburg (Sweden), December 2017: After the US government’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, individuals threw firebombs at the synagogue in Gothenburg. Three people were arrested and sentenced for hate crime violations, committing gross unlawful threats and attempting to damage property.

Graz (Austria), August 2020: The synagogue and a communal building of the Jewish community of Graz were vandalised with graffiti carrying the following slogans: “Palestinian is free” and “Our language and our country are red lines”.

The handbook emphasizes that the IHRA definition is not legally binding, but it also describes how the working definition can be used in the judiciary to help identify when a crime is antisemitic in nature:

The judiciary has a critical role in determining the antisemitic character of crimes as well as effectively trying and sanctioning them. Delivering justice is essential for the recovery of Jews, their families and the wider community from antisemitic attacks.

Forms of antisemitism related to the Holocaust are more easily recognised than some contemporary forms, such as present-day conspiracy myths or Israel-related antisemitism. A challenge might occur when the perpetrator’s antisemitic motivation is neither explicit nor apparent but is expressed through antisemitic codes or otherwise camouflaged.

Some ministries of justice have recommended that public prosecutors use the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism to help identify antisemitism, alongside other indicators such as the victim’s perception, as well as the date and location of a crime. Recognition of antisemitic motivation at any stage of a trial (e.g. within the prosecutor’s indictment or the judges’ ruling) is important for the recovery of the victim and for the preventive effect it can have in society. While it is often difficult to identify motivation, the definition allows prosecutors and/or judges to assess the antisemitic character of particular statements or acts.

This is a very important document, not least because it is created by the liberal-leaning EU. The socialist Left who camouflage their antisemitism as liberal anti-Zionism would have a hard time dismissing this handbook that directly calls them out for their hate.

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The latest date for a Palestinian election is now rumored to be in May:

A member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, Abdullah Abdullah, spoke about expectations regarding the date of President Mahmoud Abbas issuing the presidential decree to hold the Palestinian elections.

Abdullah expected, in a radio interview with Sawt al-Watan, that President Mahmoud Abbas will issue a presidential decree, before the end of this month, and thus the elections will be held in the middle of next May, that is, after the next Ramadan.

Abdullah indicated that after the presidential decree is issued for the elections, there will be a meeting of the secretaries-general again, to discuss the roadmap during the next phase.

This happened after the Hamas leader sent a letter to Abbas saying he agreed to have elections.

I am a bit skeptical.

In March 2009, the PLO announced elections by January 2010. They never happened.

In February 2011, the PLO announced elections before September of that year. They never happened.

In November 2011, elections were announced for the following May. They never happened.

In April 2014, Hamas and Fatah announced a unity government that would then arrange elections within six months. They never happened.

In November 2019, reports came out of likely Palestinian elections in February 2020. Never happened.

Last September, there were news headlines about Hamas and Fatah holding elections, scheduled for February or March 2021. That fell apart.

Just like Fatah and Hamas unity, elections are one of those things that are in the news fairly often, and so far nothing can be shown for it.

So if you bet against Palestinian elections or Fatah/Hamas unity, you will probably win.

Even this supposed May election is unclear - are they legislative? Are they for president? Are they going to be held in Gaza at the same time as the West Bank?

The track record of two warring groups, each of whom do not want to lose their hold on power, makes any new elections or unification highly unlikely.

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01/07 Links Pt2: Sometimes, the Palestinians are just an excuse; Whom the Jewish Left chooses to mourn is sadly revealing; PA Spreads Corona Libel Even as Israel Secretly Vaccinates Abbas’s Inner Circle

From Ian:

Sometimes, the Palestinians are just an excuse

Unfortunately, though, there's such a thing as the truth, and the truth is that the body responsible for public health both in routine times and in times of crisis in the Palestinian Authority is the PA itself. Throughout the coronavirus outbreak, Israel has assisted the PA, for humanitarian reasons but also our own interests, providing coronavirus tests, medical equipment, as well as training medical staff. Of course, none of this is mentioned in the article. Nor is there any mention of the fact that the PA prided itself on having ordered millions of vaccines from China and Russia. Nor is there any mention that the PA, which claims to be financially strapped, consistently pays salaries to murders, prioritizing them over the sick. This year, it went even further and paid them three months in advance. Nor is there any mention of the Israeli government's efforts to encourage vaccination among Arab Israelis. Indeed anything that might put a hole in the theory is left out. The article, by the way, is accompanied by an image of a Haredi man being inoculated in Ashdod. If you're promoting an anti-Semitic blood libel, you might as well take it all the way.

This phenomenon is nothing new. It is part of an effort to prove the moral decay of the Jewish state, and it sometimes seems that the Palestinians are just an excuse for the slander. The article in question does not provide a comparative overview or describe the levels of the outbreaks in either the PA or the Gaza Strip, both of which are from catastrophic levels. In fact, the situation in the Palestinian territories is much better than in the UK, where The Guardian is published, and even Israel, which is now experiencing the third wave of the outbreak. No, the author does not seem to care much about the Palestinians, much less the truth. There is only one objective: to vilify Israel.

The ritual goes something like this: "Human rights" organizations that are usually funded by European governments publish lies about Israel. A journalist reports these lies without challenging them at all, and the lie goes on to defame. The article in question is still on The Guardian's website and has already gained traction among those who celebrate Israel's defamation. The far-left Jewish group J Street, which claims to be pro-Israel, rushed to echo the sentiments of the piece but was later forced to take them down following criticism of the move. The Israeli public needs to be more aware of these lies, even when they are made in English, and not accept them as a mandate from heaven. This happens all the time, and it is our obligation to speak up and protest when we are trampled on.

ⓘ 𝗢𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗳𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 https://t.co/bLos3etyx8
— Rɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ Kᴇᴍᴘ ⋁ (@COLRICHARDKEMP) January 6, 2021

Stephen Pollard: How anti-Semitism is being fostered on campus Academics set the tone and agenda for much of university life

However awful 2020 was, there was at least one upside: the end of Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as Labour leader. Not that this means the party’s anti-Semitism crisis is over. If only.

The new leader does seem sincere in his desire to decontaminate the party. But however committed Keir Starmer and his allies may be to expelling members, it’s a bit like painting the Forth Bridge. Kick one out and another will emerge.

The problem runs deep. But the problem isn’t Labour per se. The party was never the origin of anti-Semitism in British politics. Members didn’t wake up one morning and decide that because Jeremy Corbyn was leader they would start to hate Jews. The anti-Semitism was latent. It was within them, inculcated and maturing over years. Mr Corbyn gave them a feeling that it was ok to say certain things publicly, but the real issue is why they harboured such anti-Semitism ideas in the first place. And the blame for that lies with academia.

Campus anti-Semitism is the hidden story of the past few years. A Community Security Trust report published last month recorded 123 university incidents in the past two years. Indeed, such is the scale of the problem that, as editor of the Jewish Chronicle, I constantly hear parents and prospective students saying that they will not consider some universities because of their reputation for anti-Semitism.

This is anti-Semitism that hides in plain sight; it is recorded and is a major topic of discussion within the Jewish community. But there has, until very recently, been little focus on it from elsewhere — as if somehow those responsible are merely overgrown kids getting a bit too overheated in debates over the Middle East.

But this is a complete misunderstanding of the real problem. Far from it being the preserve of students, campus anti-Semitism often emanates from, is propagated by and is defended by academics and the university authorities themselves. When examining problems on campus the focus should be primarily on academics, not students.

Take what happened at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). It was reported last week that the university has agreed to pay £15,000 — the cost of his tuition fees — to Noah Lewis, a former student who had to withdraw from his course because of what he called a “toxic, antisemitic environment on campus”.

SOAS’s first ‘investigation’ recommended that Mr Lewis be paid £500 to cover a few expenses. Mr Lewis appealed, and the independent panel set up to consider his appeal was withering in its judgment, arguing that the first panel had simply ignored the student’s broader complaint about the environment at SOAS.

Whom the Jewish Left chooses to mourn is sadly revealing

Whom a Jewish organization chooses to publicly mourn can be very revealing.

On December 20, Esther Horgan, mother of six, went out for a jog in the forest adjacent to her home town of Tal Menashe. Early the next morning, she was found dead. Based on the circumstances of her death, the Israeli police immediately said they suspected it was a case of Palestinian Arab terrorism.

But the police weren’t yet certain. So I didn’t expect any American Jewish organizations to start issuing statements.

On December 24, the police announced they had arrested a suspect in Esther’s murder. He is a Palestinian Arab who was previously imprisoned for terrorist activity.

I checked the web sites of the most prominent leftwing Jewish organizations in the United States—J Street, American for Peace Now, Partners for Progressive Israel, Ameinu (Labor Zionists), and the Association of Reform Zionists of America. No comment on the murder. Perhaps they thought that the police got the wrong man.

Two days later, the Israeli police announced that the suspect had confessed. And reenacted the crime. And described in great detail how he used a large rock to murder Esther. And it turns out she fought back.

Now, surely, there was no excuse for the American Jewish left to remain silent. Yet none of the above-mentioned groups took the few minutes necessary to issue a press release mourning this horrific murder. None of them.

Which is not to say that none of these groups haven’t publicly expressed their grief over any recent deaths. They have.

On November 28, for example, J Street publicly denounced the assassination of the Iranian war criminal-scientist who is in charge of developing nuclear weapons with which to annihilate Israel.

Cartoon of the Day: Benefits of NGO work

Continuing my series of recaptioning cartoons...

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IDF Critics Note That Nazis Also Used Weapons, Helmets (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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helmet Geneva, January 7 - Human rights groups and international organizations drew dark parallels today between Israel's military and Germany under Adolph Hitler, noting that the soldiers of both states carried guns, wore protective gear, operated armored vehicles, and engaged in logistics.

Six human rights organizations, among them Amnesty International, B'tselem, and Human Rights Watch, submitted a report today to the United Nations Human Rights Council, urging action against Israel, specifically the Israel Defense Force, for engaging in activities that the Nazi military also did, such as march to music and prepare field rations.

"We regret to inform the Council that once again, the Israeli military engages in constant emulation of the vilest armed force in history, known for its atrocities and perpetration of war crimes and crimes against humanity," the report read. "Among the practices that the IDF and the Wehrmacht - including the notorious Waffen SS divisions - share are drafting, training, operating an air force, maintaining naval facilities, and wearing uniforms."

"It's actually kind of frustrating to have to point these things out again and again," lamented Dean Issacharoff of Breaking the Silence. "During my own service with the IDF, I engaged in numerous behaviors that you would find just as easily among the soldiers of Nazi Germany: learning to clean a weapon; maintaining certain standards of dress and neatness; digging trenches and foxholes; handling armaments; safety procedures; salute protocols; and that's just the basics. I could spend all day detailing the eerie parallels between the Israeli military and the Wehrmacht, but seldom is there anything that anyone does about it. I hope this report to the UN shifts things in the right direction." In 2020, the Human Rights Council denounced Israel seventeen times, and other countries a total of six.

Observers questioned the rhetorical wisdom of the move. "OK, fine, the Jews are the new Nazis, I get it," shrugged pro-Palestinian activist Ali Abunimah. "We've known that since we were allying ourselves with the actual Nazis in the 1930's and 40's. Old news. But the same analogies haven't gotten us very far, so you have to wonder whether it makes sense to keep beating the same stupid drum. There has got to be a better approach to constantly reminding everyone we think of Jews as the epitome of evil who should never be allowed to live peacefully. Few of these useless reports to the UN have resulted in anything more than a mere apologia for violence against Jews, and that's a far cry from rallying the entire world to destroy them."

From TOI:

The Israeli military has deployed air defense batteries around the southern city of Eilat in recent days amid concerns of an attack from the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen.

The move came around the first anniversary of the United States killing of Qassem Soleimani, the influential head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ expeditionary Quds Force, in an airstrike in Iraq and a month and a half after Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the head of Iran’s military nuclear program, was killed, allegedly by Israel.

Iran has indicated plans to exact revenge for these two high profile killings. The Israeli military assessed that such retaliation was likely to come from an Iranian proxy, potentially from the Houthis, a Yemeni group that has conducted a number of attacks over the years against Tehran’s other rival in the region, Saudi Arabia.

Last month, IDF Spokesperson Hidai Zilberman told a Saudi news outlet that Israel had information indicating Iran was developing unmanned aerial vehicles and “smart missiles” in Iraq and Yemen, and that the weapons could have the ability to strike Israel.

In light of this threat, Iron Dome and Patriot missile defense batteries have been deployed near Israel’s southern tip of Eilat in recent days. The Iron Dome is generally used against rockets and mortar shells, but can also intercept small drones and cruise missiles. The Patriot system is used primarily to defend against ballistic missiles and larger aircraft like fighter jets and unmanned aerial vehicles.

The Patriot batteries can be seen in this video:

Israeli Patriot air defence battery deployed near Eilat, via @OrHeller pic.twitter.com/uDG8hv1xsj
— ELINT News (@ELINTNews) January 7, 2021

Israel should make clear that retaliation for any missile attack wouldn't be against Yemen but Iran. It doesn't have to be a military attack - perhaps cyber or espionage - but it should be clear that Israel holds Iran responsible.

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01/07 Links Pt1: After the Abraham Accords, the Palestinians Have Lost the Arab Street; Palestinian ideology is the biggest obstacle to peace

From Ian:

After the Abraham Accords, the Palestinians Have Lost the Arab Street

The support of the “Arab street” for the Palestinian cause was supposed (at the very least) to intimidate the leaders of the Arabic-speaking states from making peace with Israel. With regard to the two states that dared defy the purported threat of the Arab street and sign formal peace treaties with Israel, Egypt and Jordan, maintenance of popular support for the Palestinian cause was meant to prevent cold peace from growing warm.

One can hardly deny the intimidating and chilling effect Arab popular opinion, whether real or imagined, has had on Arab state leaders. Though Jordan’s King Abdullah, like his father before him, has held numerous secret and not so secret meetings with Israeli leaders, received military aid from the Jewish state, and maintained excellent security relations with Israeli security personnel in a common and successful effort to quell terrorism on both sides of the border, he has never challenged the cultural and educational boycott of Israel that prevails in Jordanian society and the anti-Jewish themes that pervade the local media.

Other Arab states, which have at times maintained consular activity, permitted Israelis with foreign passports to engage in business and commerce, and, in the case of Morocco, facilitated extensive tourism from Israel, followed the same path of cultural and educational boycott.

But three months into the Abraham Accords process, there is no doubt that Palestinian leaders on both sides of the PA-Hamas divide are deeply disappointed by, and worried about, the passivity of the Arab street.

And so they should be. If the passivity of the citizens of the very wealthy UAE and comparatively wealthy Bahrain could be explained away by the ability of its leadership to buy the support of the citizenry for unpopular policies like normalization, the argument wears thin regarding Sudan, one of the poorest Arabic-speaking countries, as well as the populous and relatively poor state of Morocco. This fear might explain why the Abraham Accords process began with the UAE as an initial test case: it was the richest of the states that were likely to normalize relations with Israel.

Contrary to the views of Israel’s many detractors — a prominent example of whom is Jamal Zahalka, former member of the Knesset, former head of the Balad party, and soon-to-be recipient of a lavish Israeli government pension — the growing indifference of the Arab street to the Palestinian issue is a long-term phenomenon. It displays occasional spikes of interest, but they are always short-lived.

A Google Trends graph of searches for the phrase “normalization with Israel” in Arabic — a phrase with a derogatory connotation in much of the Arab world — dating from 2004 shows that interest spiked more in the first decade of the new century than in the second. The graph is characterized by rigid rather than curved lines, which reflects the relatively small number of searches on the subject.

Palestinian ideology is the biggest obstacle to peace - opinion

The problem for Palestinianism is not “the occupation” in 1967, but Israel’s existence. In this view, Palestine is the exclusive Arab homeland, and Zionists are colonialists; Palestine is an integral part of the Arab world, completely under Arab sovereignty. This is axiomatic. There are no exceptions and no compromises.

Palestinianism – promoted in the media, mosques and schools to include anti-Jewish incitement, denial of the Holocaust and Jewish history, and rejection of the right of Jewish national self-determination – is the greatest obstacle to peace.

The alternative is a true Palestinianism liberation movement dedicated to meaningful human values and creativity, free of the destructive and self-destructive agenda of terrorist organizations.

A new Palestinianism can promote peace. For those who seek to express a Palestinian national identity and self-determination, they can move to Jordan and make it an economic, social and political oasis. The Hashemite rulers of Jordan claim to be descendants of Muhammad, the founder of Islam; Mecca and Medina are Muslim spiritual centers in Saudi Arabia with which Jordan shares a boundary. Jordan also shares a boundary with Iraq, ancient Mesopotamia.

This represents a potential cultural and spiritual link that can provide an ideology based on peace and reconciliation with Israel. Mount Nebo, in Jordan, the place where Moses (whom Muslims consider a prophet) died, can become a symbol for a Mosaic Accord, a bridge of understanding between countries and people.

Bank of Palestine to freeze terrorists' payments

The Bank of Palestine has recently discontinued its work with the accounts of terrorists who receive benefits from the Palestinian Authority.

According to official statements from the terrorist organizations, the bank has informed terrorists and their family members that they must withdraw all funds and close their accounts.

The decision stems from the warning the Bank of Palestine received from the Palestinian Media Watch, a non-profit Israeli institute that researches the Palestinian society.

The institute warned the bank about a year ago that according to the 2016 Counter-Terrorism Law, financial entities involved in the pay for slay system will be viewed as supporting terrorists – and will therefore be exposed to enormous legal and economic risks.

Israel's Military Advocate General had been delaying the application of the Counter-Terrorism Law in Judea and Samaria for years. Only after the murder of 17-year-old Rina Shnerb and following a demand by Palestinian Media Watch attorney Maurice Hirsch, who also represents the family, was Israel forced to clarify that the law does indeed apply to Judea and Samaria.

The Palestinian Authority prepared for the shift in advance. It paid a large part of terrorists' salaries several months in advance and is looking for new ways to continue the payments despite international pressure to stop doing so.