Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 01, 2021

Hamas arresting Fatah members, Fatah arresting Hamas members - Democracy, Palestinian-style

On Sunday, Palestinian sources said that PA security forces arrested five men in the West Bank on suspicion of being affiliated with Hamas. One of the detainees, Ameed Shehadeh, is a journalist from Nablus. The sources said he was arrested for criticizing the PA in a Facebook post.
Also in Nablus, the PA security forces arrested Qassam Sabbah, who was recently released from Israeli prison and An-Najah University student Hussam Shtayyeh.
In Hebron, the PA’s Preventive Security Service arrested Muhab al-Juneidi one week after his wedding. In the town of Salfit, Abdullah Abdel Fattah was also arrested by the PA security forces.
Last week, the PA security forces arrested Nablus lawyer Awni al-Sharif on charges of “insulting” the Palestinian leadership on social media platforms.
According to the sources, the latest arrests are in the context of the PA’s ongoing crackdown on its political rivals in the West Bank, including those suspected of being affiliated with Hamas.

Democracy!

Meanwhile, on the Gaza side:

Last week, Palestinian officials in Ramallah ... said that three senior Fatah activists – Ahmad Naji, Mustafa al-Shannat and Shukri Abu al-Hosseen – were summoned for interrogation by Hamas’ Internal Security Force.

Democracy!

And, as I reported exclusively on Saturday night, Fatah Revolutionary Council members reportedly threatened to kill anyone who runs for office outside the official Fatah slate. Human rights activists criticized the report, saying it violates Palestinian basic laws.

Democracy!

People are still talking as if the planned Palestinian parliamentary elections will occur in May and the presidential elections in July.

I'd love to see the London bookmakers odds on either of those happening. Personally, I'd say the odds are 10-1 against for the parliamentary elections and 50-1 against for the presidential elections.

Cartoon of the Day: Bigotry is the new anti-racism

Continuing my series....

01/31 Links: NY Post Editorial: A new libel against Israel from Human Rights Watch; What drove Obama into Iran's arms?; Evidence Suggests Iranian Link to Blast Near Israeli Embassy in New Delhi

From Ian:

NYPost Editorial: A new libel against Israel from Human Rights Watch

Israel has led the world in rapidly vaccinating much of its population, so naturally the global left has to find fault: hence the drive to condemn Jerusalem for not taking responsibility for vaccinations in Gaza and the West Bank.

In a series of tweets, Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth accused Israel of racism for this supposed failure; a week later, Palestinian officials decided to join the blame game, announcing that Israel is responsible for vaccinating Palestinians despite past statements to the contrary.

In reality, as UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer notes, the 1995 Oslo II Accord designates responsibility for the health care and vaccinations of its people to the Palestinian Authority.

And while the two countries are supposed to cooperate in terms of handling epidemics, Palestinian Health Ministry officials admitted back in December that they didn’t ask for help in obtaining vaccines from Israel.

Top Palestinian officials routinely go to Israel for major medical care, but PA propaganda discourages it for everyone else, with dark hints that Jewish doctors will offer Arabs only substandard care — if they’re not secretly experimenting on Palestinian patients.

What drove Obama into Iran's arms?

From Obama’s perspective, Iran was the state with which to develop a relationship. The mullahs have the will, aggression and desire to destroy Israel, which they have expressed continuously. However, Iran’s nuclear ambitions posed a PR problem. Therefore, Obama relied on the belief that Iran could not be stopped, and as a result the US and some of its European partners negotiated a deal, which on the surface could be sold to a compliant and ever helpful main stream media, which in turn would sell it to the world’s public. Iran would agree not to develop a nuclear weapon for at least ten years, after which they would be free to do so. This could follow without any international interference. Obama, by then, would have “kicked the can down the road” for a future President to deal with along with the possible fate of Israel.

Whether Iran would comply didn’t really bother anyone, and clauses contained in the agreement limited inspections to civilian sites only whilst excluding military sites -- which is, of course, exactly where nuclear weapons would be developed. This was not only an awful and extremely bad agreement, which appeared to be Obama’s intention, but it has never been ratified by the US Congress. Part of the “deal” was that Obama would transfer huge amounts of cash to the Iranians in the amount of $150 to $170 billion. It remains questionable as to how much of it would find its way into Obama’s pocket. If this was so, a Democrat aligned media would be part of the conspiracy in covering it up.

During the signing and lead up to the JCPOA, I was always struck by the arrogance and cocksureness of Mohammad Javad Zarif so much on display I suspected and speculated that he possibly had Obama and Kerry in his pocket.

This whole scheme essentially threw the USA’s Sunni Arab allies “under the bus” abandoning them with Iran simultaneously threatening them. The great unintended irony, which had not been clearly thought through or even imagined, was that this would encourage the Sunni Arabs to make peace with Israel for their mutual defence as they no longer trusted America. As a result, these states were no longer bound by a ridiculous Palestinian-imposed veto. Their interests and defence obviously took precedence and under a Biden presidency, this situation would be even more relevant, with Obama very likely in the background pulling the Biden strings.

What appealed to Obama and his useless sidekick, John Kerry, was more the potential destruction of Israel, and perhaps to a lesser extent, limiting Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The JCPOA agreement said nothing about the development of missiles, which should have been a logical inclusion. Why something so fundamental was omitted remains a mystery. What should have occurred to them during negotiations was that a nuclear bomb has to be delivered. Iran has an antiquated air force which could not manage such a task. It could of course acquire aircraft from Russia or China. However, the obvious and only alternative was via a ballistic missile. This is precisely what Iran has been developing and testing for years.

Report: Evidence Suggests Iranian Link to Blast Near Israeli Embassy in New Delhi

Indian terrorist group Jaish-ul-Hind has claimed responsibility for the blast that took place near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi on Friday, local media reported.

No one was injured in the explosion, which took place on the 29th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and Israel.

According to the India.com news site, the investigation so far has recovered social-media chatter according to which Jaish-ul-Hind operatives boast about carrying out the attack.

The Indian Express reported on a police source as saying that the bomb appeared to have been planted in a flowerpot on the road divider. According to the report, a letter found on the scene, addressed to “Israel Embassy ambassador,” said that the blast was a “trailer,” suggesting that it was a prelude to future attacks against the embassy or other Israeli targets in the country.

The note also refers to “Iranian martyrs” Qassem Soleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander killed in a US drone strike in Iran on Jan. 3, 2020, and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, head of the Iranian military nuclear program, who was assassinated near Tehran on Nov. 27 in a hit for which Iran has blamed Israel.

New Delhi Blast: 2 Suspects Seen on Security Footage

The tightropes between Qatar, Hamas, the PA, and the Gulf

Qatar has announced that it will provide $30 million a month to Gaza for all of 2021, a total of $360 million in aid.

While the aid is generally earmarked for needy families and fuel for Gaza's power plant, part of it is also for paying Gaza employee salaries - meaning that it helps prop up Hamas.

Israel has been allowing this aid for years, walking a tightrope between helping Hamas and staving off a Gaza economic collapse.

Now that the Gulf states are resuming relations with Qatar, there are more tightropes being navigated.

The Palestinian Authority has been feeling marginalized after Israel forged relations with Gulf Arab states and wants to improve its own relations with Qatar. Mahmoud Abbas visited Qatar in December in a bid for some of those millions to be directed towards the Palestinian Authority.

For its part, Qatar sees itself as a potential broker for peace between Hamas and Fatah and wants to assert its influence that way. Its cooperation with Israel on aid to Gaza also positions it in a unique way to show its importance in the region.

Israel's allowance of Qatari aid to Gaza has not been without strings attached, either. Last summer Israel blocked Qatari aid as long as Gaza groups were launching firebombs via balloons from Gaza. Note that those balloon launches seem to have halted.

There are a lot of moving parts going on, between the Abraham Accords, the thawing of relations between Qatar and its neighbors, the new Biden administration and its desire to return to the JCPOA. The Palestinian issue still grabs headlines but it is not clear at all that anyone really cares about Palestinians besides in how they can profit from anti-Israel rhetoric - which is not nearly as effective as it was a year ago.

The vast majority - over 88% - of residents in the UAE are not citizens.

The UAE is now taking small steps to change that.

Yesterday, the Emirates announced that it will grant citizenship to some foreigners, if they can contribute significantly to UAE's society.

This includes investors, doctors, specialists, inventors, scientists, intellectuals, artists and their families.

There are a number of provisions - the applicants must be prominent and active in their fields, and they can lose citizenship if they breach the conditions.

For the past seven decades, members of the Arab League have generally agreed not to give citizenship to Palestinians - enshrined into law by the 1959 Arab League Decree #1547.

The UAE did allow a number of Palestinians to become citizens by royal decree in its early years after its founding in 1971, but since then it has been nearly impossible to become a citizen of the UAE for anyone.

Will the UAE defy the Arab League and allow Palestinian doctors and scientists to become full citizens?

Time will tell, but expect some prominent Palestinians to apply for citizenship, as they have whenever a loophole opened in Arab immigration laws that allowed them to become citizens.

And expect the Palestinian leadership to oppose anything that gives citizenship rights to Palestinians anywhere.

Palestinian media is reporting that the Director General of Medical Services in the Palestinian ministry of health, Osama al-Najjar, announced Saturday that the ministry will receive mass quantities of three COVID-19 vaccines within days.

Najjar said that the ministry will distribute them in Gaza and the West Bank alike.

The three vaccines are from Pfizer, Sputnik-V and AstraZeneca.

We have already reported Thursday that Israel was providing 1000 Pfizer vaccines to Palestinian health facilities, and that was the third shipment of vaccines from Israel. Israel has cooperated fully with the Palestinian health ministry on fighting COVID-19 since the pandemic started, yet the media and NGOs started a false rumor last month that Israel was not fulfilling its obligations.

Those false accusations continue, most recently from a letter published in The Lancet.

01/30 Links: Natan Sharansky: Remember the People, Not Just the Atrocities; Caroline Glick: Democrats, American Jews and Politically Correct Bigotry

From Ian:

Natan Sharansky: Remember the People, Not Just the Atrocities

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, everyone around the world — individuals, leaders, communities — gather to reinforce their commitment to honor the memory of the victims of the darkest hour of human history.

But while the world bows its head to commemorate the Holocaust, it often remembers its victims as a unified collective. The very day we commemorate the victims, Jan. 27, marks the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the ultimate symbol of the Nazi terror. But not all Holocaust victims were sent to concentration camps. Far from it. The time has come to tell the all-encompassing story of the Holocaust.

Behind the monstrous number of “six million victims” stand six million individual life stories. To commemorate the Holocaust means remembering each and every one of those individually. We are committed to telling as many stories as possible, but unfortunately, too many of them remain unknown.

How many life stories will never be known after the massacre in Ukraine’s Babi Yar ravine? Within two days, the Nazis brutally murdered 33,771 Jewish men, women and children. By the end of the war, they murdered 100,000 people, including Ukrainians and gypsies.

The Babi Yar massacre destroyed the Jewish community in Kyiv. The Jews of Riga, Minsk and Vilnius encountered the same tragic fate — murdered in ravines. Some 1.5 million Jews lost their lives that way.

The central chapter of the Nazi’s “final solution” is still largely unknown. As I know from bitter experience, the Soviet regime after World War II did everything possible to erase Jewish identity and the memory of the Holocaust from collective memory.

The Jews who fought back during the Holocaust

Much has been written about what needs to be done during the remaining days of the year to properly commemorate and educate the world about the horrors of the Holocaust, and what “never again” really means. A recent Pew Research poll proves that Americans’ Holocaust education is sorely lacking. For example, only 45 percent of Americans interviewed even knew that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Even fewer knew that Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany by a democratic political process.

Surely, what is far less known is how many Jews fought valiantly against the Nazis. But fight they did. Jews fought back alongside resistance groups around Europe, organized uprisings in the ghettos, created partisan units and even fought back in the concentration camps, attempting to bomb a crematorium in Auschwitz. To properly commemorate the Holocaust, these stories must be told as well.

To that end, I commemorate and honor the story of the following Jews who courageously fought back during World War II and the Holocaust. Their stories represent the thousands who fought to the end.
- Mordechai Anielewitz. The leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In April 1943, he led 750 Jewish fighters armed with a handful of pistols, 17 rifles and Molotov cocktails—all smuggled into the ghetto—in a clash with more than 2,000 heavily armed and well-trained German troops. They held off the Germans for 27 days.
- Boris Lekach. This one is personal. My wife’s maternal grandfather. Lekach fought for the Russians against the Nazis. He enlisted at age 16 with doctored papers just so he could fight. He was also well-known to many in the Jewish community in Russia for helping Jews escape during and after the war.
- The Bielski Brothers. Made famous in a number of books and in the 2008 movie “Defiance,” the Bielski brothers—Tuvia, Asael and Zus—fled their city in Belarus after their parents and two other siblings were murdered. The brothers found shelter in the forest, where they created one of the largest and most effective partisan groups during the war, focusing on guerrilla attacks against the Nazis and their collaborators, as well as on preserving Jewish life even in their hideout. In a little more than two years, the Bielski group grew to about 1,200 people.
- Tosia Altman. A young woman who used fake papers to smuggle weapons and information in and out of Poland’s ghettos. She was an active member of the social Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, active in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising alongside Anielewitz and the other brave fighters.
- Eta Wrobel. A young woman in her 20s who helped form an all-Jewish partisan unit in the Polish woods. Her unit attacked German troops as they traveled through the area and is credited for saving hundreds of Jews.
- Rudolph Masaryk. On Aug. 2, 1943, at the Treblinka extermination camp, Masaryk and other Jewish prisoners stole 20 grenades, 20 rifles and a few handguns. Together, they attacked the SS guards, while another doused a large part of the camp with gasoline and lit it on fire. Approximately 300 prisoners escaped and 40 Nazi guards were killed during the Treblinka uprising.

Caroline Glick: Democrats, American Jews and Politically Correct Bigotry

In recent weeks, outspoken anti-Israel campaigners and BDS supporters like Representative Ilhan Omar, former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill and New York Times columnist Peter Beinart have been pushing for the new administration to reject the IHRA definition and legitimize BDS. They have attacked Jewish Democratic groups like the Democratic Majority for Israel, as well as the vast majority of all American Jewish groups, led by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations—all of which are urging the Biden administration to maintain the previous administration's policies.

These efforts are being driven both by overtly anti-Israel, nominally Jewish groups like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, and by ostensibly "pro-Israel" progressive Jewish groups, including Peace Now, J Street, T'ruah and the New Israel Fund. The AMCHA Initiative report found that since 2019, 44 percent of efforts to discredit the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism were carried out by these and other like-minded Jewish-run groups.

All of these groups are calling for the Biden administration to disavow the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and its examples of contemporary anti-Semitism as a legal tool for combating anti-Semitism. IfNotNow is running a social media campaign, as well, to lobby the Biden administration to appoint an official special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism who will simply ignore leftist anti-Semitism. As the group put it in a recent Twitter post, "It is important for us to demand that [President Biden] appoint someone to the special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism who'll be committed to fighting neo-Nazis and white nationalists, not Palestinians and students."

It is a peculiar thing to see ostensibly Jewish groups dedicating their efforts to removing legal protections against anti-Jewish discrimination from their fellow Jews. It is a mark of the corruption of the American Jewish far Left that this is what they wish to fight for today. But even more disconcerting is the anti-Semitic disposition of large swaths of the Democratic Party. Democratic activist circles are now dominated by anti-Semitic voices from the Left who denounce Israel and its supporters. The effort by progressive Jewish groups to deny civil rights protection to pro-Israel Jews is indicative of the prevailing winds in the Democratic Party. Progressive Jews believe that to remain relevant in their party, they must fill the role of Jewish fig leaves for their party's anti-Semitic activist base.

This then brings us to the object of their lobbying efforts—President Joe Biden. Wednesday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. To mark the occasion, Biden released a strong statement decrying anti-Semitism. Arguably more significant, however, is the fact that Trump's executive order on anti-Semitism has been scrubbed from the Biden White House's website.

Abdel Fatah Hamayel, a long time top Fatah official and former governor of Bethlehem, wrote on his Facebook page that there were death threats againt any Fatah member who dared run for office outside of Fatah's own official list.

This threat was by Fatah itself, at a meeting of the Fatah Revolutionary Council on Thursday.

Hamayel condemned the threat, saying that it is very dangerous and against the supposed democratic approach of Fatah.

Of course, Fatah was never democratic in the least. But this shows that once a terrorist organization, always a terrorist organization.

01/29 Links Pt2: Holding "Politicized, Biased" Academia Accountable; Arab Writers Slam Facebook And Twitter's Hypocrisy: They Block Trump, Yet Continue To Provide Platform For Terror Organizations

From Ian:

Winfield Myers on Holding "Politicized, Biased" Academia Accountable

Winfield Myers, director of Campus Watch at the Middle East Forum, spoke to participants in a December 18 Middle East Forum webinar (video) about Campus Watch's pivotal role in documenting the misuse of taxpayer funds and the questionable foreign funding sources of various Middle East studies centers at American universities.

A major focus of Campus Watch in 2020 was the widespread misuse of federal grants received by Middle East studies centers under Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965. The Title VI statute stipulates that these grants, usually in the neighborhood of $250,000-300,000 per year, be used for "the teaching of area studies and languages that will strengthen America's national security," said Myers. Instead, as Campus Watch research has shown, the monies are typically used to support "politicized, biased, anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Western teaching, scholarship, conferences, travel, you name it, in a variety of ways."

Campus Watch has worked in tandem with Clifford Smith of MEF's Washington Project to hold academia accountable for long-overlooked abuses. Campus Watch documents proof of the abuses, which Smith brings to the attention of policymakers, congressional leaders, and others in Washington D.C. to see "what might be done to rein them in."

Campus Watch and the Washington Project organized a congressional letter-writing campaign requesting departmental investigations into various Middle East studies centers that were abusing their grants. These letters found a "sympathetic ear" among Secretary Betsy DeVos and other political appointees in the Department of Education (DoE) during the Trump administration, who began several investigations and completed one. In prior years, the DoE had "cozy relationships" with D.C.'s higher education lobby and various directors of Middle East studies centers. The latter, whom Myers dubbed "the higher education blob," pressed "for more money and less oversight," and largely got their way.

MEMRI: Arab Writers Slam Facebook And Twitter's Hypocrisy: They Block Trump, Yet Continue To Provide Platform For Terror Organizations

Facebook's and Twitter's suspension of former U.S. President's Donald Trump's accounts following the Washington DC riots on January 6, 2021 sparked criticism from Arab writers, who accused the networks of employing a double standard. Twitter and Facebook, they said, shut down Trump's accounts on the pretext of incitement to violence, yet at the same time they continue to provide a platform for numerous terror groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, which call for murder and violence against innocent people.

January 9, 2021 Cartoon in Egyptian daily Al-Yawm Al-Sabi': Twitter and Facebook silence Trump on grounds of "public security," yet provide the "organizations of chaos and terror" with a platform on the grounds of "freedom of opinion"

The following are translated excerpts from some of the articles:
Akram Al-Qassas, acting editor of the Al-Yawm Al-Sabi' daily, which is affiliated with the Egyptian regime, wrote: "Twitter's decision to shut down the account of U.S. president Donald Trump constitutes a turning point in the practices of the social media networks [in general] and of Twitter in particular… Twitter's closing of [his] account on the pretext of incitement to violence marks a turning point, and one wonders whether Twitter will limit these rules to the U.S. alone or impose them on everyone - especially considering that Twitter is the social media network which in recent years has enabled the promotion of violence more than any other [network]. In fact, organizations like the Islamic State [ISIS] and Al-Qaeda had [Twitter] accounts on which they published statements inciting to violence, and even disseminated and marketed terror attacks. Cached Twitter accounts still include hundreds of videos in which terrorists incite terror, bombings and murder of Egyptian military personnel and police. Moreover, Twitter still provides a platform for people who call for violent demonstrations, incitement and murder, and for videos featuring religious rulings that accuse Egyptians of heresy and incite to murder them.

"[All this] may indicate that Twitter's sudden adoption of a policy opposing violence and terror applies only to the U.S., or that the [network] is employing a double standard: spreading [the messages of] terrorists and those who incite violence in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Europe, while preventing the same in the U.S. This seems to be motivated by some kind of fear by Twitter that it might be sued if it continues to allow Trump to tweet.

"Generally speaking, stopping Trump's tweets after he was accused of incitement to violence represent an important turning point, compelling all the countries in the world to apply these norms in the fight against terror and to block all accounts which call for violence and promote terror. There are hundreds of Twitter accounts… of armed organizations… which clearly incite against Egypt and other Arab countries.

"[But] it seems that the decision to suspend Trump's account is specific to him, and that Twitter will find it difficult to apply the same policy in all cases, for the network apparently profits, directly or indirectly, from fake accounts or accounts inciting violence or terror, so it will be reluctant to block them as it did with Trump."[1]

WATCH: Is the #Qatari government pushing a smear campaign against the world's most widely accepted definition of #antisemitism? pic.twitter.com/DXOyPLqnCj
— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) January 29, 2021

This is FALSE.
What Edelstein really said:
"If it is the responsibility of the Israeli Health Minister to take care of the Palestinians what exactly is the responsibility of the Palestinian Health Minister? To take care of the dolphins in the Mediterranean?" https://t.co/NTPyHAgBlK pic.twitter.com/p7cTSGROze
— Middle East Fact Check (@MEFactCheck) January 28, 2021

Cartoon of the Day: It's how you play the game

Continuing my series of recaptioning cartoons....

01/29 Links Pt1: Blast outside Israel’s New Delhi embassy - security raised worldwide; White House Punts on Condemning BDS Movement; Iran Turns Gaza Into Storehouse for Weapons

From Ian:

President Biden, please don't rock the Israel-PA boat

Please don't rock the boat. Don't stray from the path that has proven to be effective. Too many have died, too many lives ruined. Please,stay with the initiative that has ushered in one of the most peaceful times in recent history.

Why did previous administrations fail while the last administration slowed the cycle of violence and offered unprecedented hope for a true and lasting peace?

1. Examining the claims. Palestinian negotiator's claims were generally accepted outright, without much research into their validity, or consideration for the inevitable consequences of accepting such demands. This led to negotiations that started at a place much too steep for Israeli negotiators to even consider realistic talks. A basic and objective check on these claims would have quickly resulted in the nullification of many of them.

For example the demand for "the right of return". Well, why was it that so many Arabs left Israel in the first place? Were any even forced out? Why did Arab nations require the incoming refugees to remain in refugee camps, kept in squalid conditions, while other refugees have long ago been settled and rebuilt their lives?

Even the basic claim to "restore" the "Palestinian State" raises many red flags. Was there ever really a Palestinian Arab nation? Did they ever have rulership anywhere? Or perhaps it is all a pretext to simply gain valuable land? Perhaps the "poor Palestinian people" cause, is a multi billion dollar money maker where leaders like Arafat, Abbas and Hamas get filthy rich by inciting others to violence, continuously fueling the flames of hatred, while staying safely behind the scenes. Have you checked why they are sitting on billions of dollars? Why PA schools books are filled with antisemitism?

#OTD 1 year ago, US released its ‘Peace to Prosperity’ Plan, the most detailed & realistic plan for peace, taking account #Israel’s security concerns & connection to the land, with #Palestinian aspirations. I hope Biden Adm. builds on this, not reverts to failed policies of past. pic.twitter.com/qb8fAqGABq
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) January 28, 2021

Caroline Glick: Maher Bitar and Israel's ideological elections

Israel's March 23 elections are being presented as a simple referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The media and Netanyahu's opponents would have us believe that there is no ideological struggle. It's all just a question of whether you love or hate Bibi.

But this is untrue. The coming elections are primarily about ideology. To understand why this is the case, we need to look no further than President Joe Biden's appointments.

This week the White House announced that Maher Bitar has been appointed to serve as the senior director for Intelligence at the National Security Council. The position is one of the most powerful posts in the US intelligence community. The senior director is the node to which all intelligence from all agencies flows. He decides what to share with the President. And in the name of the President, he determines priorities for intelligence operations and collection.

The senior director of intelligence also determines what information the US intelligence community will share with foreign intelligence services. Likewise, he decides how to relate to information that foreign intelligence agencies share with the Americans.

As one former senior national security council member explained, "The senior director for intelligence controls the information everyone sees. And by controlling information, he controls the conversation."

Usually, the sensitive position is reserved for a CIA officer who is detailed to the National Security Council. Bitar, however, is not an intelligence professional. He is an anti-Israel political activist.

Blast outside Israel’s New Delhi embassy damages cars; security raised worldwide

A blast outside the Israeli embassy in New Delhi on Friday damaged cars but did not cause injuries, police said. Israeli authorities were treating the explosion as a suspected attack aimed at the embassy, The Times of Israel has learned, and was stepping up security precautions at missions around the world.

The district around the embassy was sealed off after the explosion and police and bomb disposal experts took over the scene.

A police statement described it as a “very low-intensity improvised device” that blew out the windows on three nearby cars and said a preliminary investigation “suggests a mischievous attempt to create a sensation.”

The New Delhi Television news channel said the explosive device had ball bearings wrapped in a plastic bag and was left on the pavement outside the embassy. There was no immediate police confirmation.

The blast in the high-security zone occurred while India’s president and prime minister were attending a ceremony marking the end of Republic Day celebrations. The venue is about 1.4 kilometers (1 mile) from the Israeli Embassy.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the blast and that no one was hurt.

“The incident is being investigated by Indian authorities who are in contact with the relevant Israeli officials,” the ministry said. “The foreign minister is being updated regularly and has ordered all necessary security steps be taken.”

Ancient cloth with "royal purple" dye mentioned in the Bible discovered

Exodus 25:2-4:

Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him.

And these are the gifts that you shall accept from them: gold, silver, and copper; blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen, goats’ hair...

This is the first time of many that Hebrew scripture mentions that specific type of purple, known as argaman, clearly an expensive dye that was used in the Mishkan (sanctuary) and the Temple, as well as worn by royalty.

Israeli archaeologists have just announced the discovery of samples of cloth dyed with that specific purple dating to the times of King David and King Solomon.

Researchers from Israel Antiquities Authority, Tel Aviv University, and Bar-Ilan University spent years studying colored woven fibers excavated at Timna in the Negev Desert, the site of King Solomon's famed copper mines. Carbon-14 dating determined that they date from 1,000 BCE, the period in which David and Solomon reigned in Jerusalem. They published their findings on Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE.

The purple color, known as "argaman" in Hebrew and extracted from a type of Mediterranean sea snail at a distance of some 300 km (186 miles) from the Timna Valley in the southern Negev Desert, is mentioned in biblical sources a number of times. However, this is the first time that a Bronze Age woven fiber dyed royal purple has been found in Israel or anywhere else in the region.

The research was carried out by Dr. Naama Sukenik from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef, from the Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at Tel Aviv University, in collaboration with Prof. Zohar Amar, Dr. David Iluz and Dr. Alexander Varvak from Bar-Ilan University and Dr. Orit Shamir from the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Sukenik, who curates organic finds at the IAA, described the discovery of the purple cloth fibers as "extremely exciting and important."

"This is the first time that woven material from the time of David and Solomon died in the precious 'argaman' has been discovered. In ancient times, purple clothing was associated with the nobility, the priestly class, and of course, kings. The beautiful color of the argaman, the fact that it does not fade, and the difficulty of producing the dye, which exists in very small quantities in the bodies of the snails, made it the most expensive dye, sometimes costing more than gold.

This discovery has other implications.

One of the researchers was able to reproduce the process needed to create the specific purple dye from three types of Mediterranean snails, each of which only produce one gram of dye. The dye was extraordinarily expensive.

And Haaretz notes that the existence of such expensive clothing in a nomadic area illuminates other Biblical issues:

The good food and elegant clothes found at Timna are all signs of cultural sophistication, that add to the massive size and standardization of the mining operation there and at other copper extraction sites, such as Feynan in nearby Jordan. All of this points to the hand of a strong, centralized kingdom, despite the fact that we don’t have major remains of permanent settlements in the Negev from this period, Ben-Yosef says.

One possible explanation is that by the 11th-10th century B.C.E. the Edomites had managed to create a sophisticated political system and a highly stratified society despite continuing their nomadic or semi-nomadic ways, Ben-Yosef suggests.

The idea that scholars too often dismiss the complexities of ancient nomadic societies because they don’t leave behind massive archaeological remains for us to find is a paradigm that Ben-Yosef has been pushing for a while, including in an article he recently published in Haaretz.

“The use of royal purple is more evidence that nomads could create a strong kingdom with an elite and vast trade ties, contrary to the traditional perception of nomadic societies as simple and isolated,” he says. “They would manifest power and wealth not by building walls and palaces but by obtaining exquisite artifacts that were mobile like they were.”

While archaeological evidence of a sedentary Edomite polity only dates back to around 8th century B.C.E., Ben-Yosef’s theory, if correct, would jive with the Bible’s assertion (Genesis 36:31) that such a kingdom existed already before the time of King David, that is, in the 11th-10th century B.C.E.

The archaeologist has suggested that this paradigm shift should apply not only to the Edomites but also to the Israelites and the longstanding debate among scholars over the historicity of the great united monarchy of Israel and Judah under David and Solomon. Most experts today argue that there is no archaeological evidence in Jerusalem or its environs pointing to the existence of a great, centralized kingdom as described in the Old Testament. Just as for the Edomites, the architectural hallmarks of political grandeur appear only in the subsequent centuries. So, this line of thought argues, David and Solomon would have been at best small local chieftains who were aggrandized by the Bible, which was put in writing centuries after these legendary rulers lived. However, Ben-Yosef counters, we should at least take into account the possibility that David’s kingdom did exist but was based on a still largely nomadic population, just like Edom apparently was, which would inevitably leave behind little tangible evidence.

At the very least, the newly discovered luxurious textiles at Timna show that the biblical descriptions of royal purple being used by the elites of the Israelites and their neighbors already in the time of King David are not an anachronism inserted by later authors projecting their own traditions back into the past, Ben-Yosef notes.

You have to admit, it is a pretty color.

Media bias illustrated: AP's "Israeli settler population surged during Trump era" (No, it didn't.)

AP published an article about Jewish population growth in Judea and Samaria that twists statistics to make a point that is not at all supported by the data.

As is often the case with the mainstream media, the facts are there - but skillfully hidden to make the reader believe something other than the truth.

Headline:

Report: Israeli settler population surged during Trump era

Usually the word "surge" would mean that the numbers increased more dramatically than previously. As we will see, this is the opposite of what happened.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s West Bank settler population has grown at a far higher rate than the country as a whole over the last four years, a pro-settler group said Wednesday, a period that coincides with the Trump administration’s unprecedented acceptance of settlement activity.

This lede is already different from the headline. It is saying that settler population is growing faster than Israel's, but not faster than its own growth before Trump.

The question is - is this unusual? Has anything changed? What does Trump have to do with it?

The report by West Bank Jewish Population Stats shows the settler population growing by around 13% since the start of 2017 to reach 475,481. During the same period, Israel’s population grew by around 8% to reach nearly 9.3 million, according to the government.

The group’s report, which is based on official government data, does not include annexed east Jerusalem, home to more than 200,000 settlers.

Note that the AP report specifically mentions 2017 as the starting point of its analysis. Yet if you download the actual report (which is woefully lacking in historical data,) it only mentions the previous 5 year period, not 4.

AP went out of its way to tie Jewish population growth to Trump when the report doesn't even mention his name.

Is this amount of growth, 13% over four years, exceptional?

Using B'Tselem's statistics and excluding Jerusalem as this report did, this is the slowest growth by far of the last five presidential terms!

Does this look like a "surge" to you?

One more thing: AP wrote essentially the same report in 2019.

This is pure bias driving the news.

Yesterday, social media (including myself) had a field day with the revelation that in 2018, Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene had come up with a theory that California wildfires might have been started by public utility PG&E, which worked with the Rothschild family, using a satellite that redirects the sun's rays to Earth, in order to clear room for a high-speed rail project that the governor wanted.

Invoking the Rothschilds is of course one of the favorite memes of antisemites, using that banking family as a proxy for supposed Jewish control of the world.

This is not the only antisemitic conspiracy theory that Taylor Greene has espoused. Also in 2018, she shared a video that claimed the "Great Replacement" theory, quoting a Holocaust denier that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation” to replace white Europeans with Muslim immigrants.

She has also claimed that no plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. While she did not blame Jews for this theory, many 9/11 conspiracy theories end up pointing back to Jews as the perpetrators. There are at least six antisemitic 9/11 conspiracy theories, from the Mossad to "Israeli art students" to "4000 Jews told to stay home on 9/11."

Conspiracy theorists and antisemitism go hand in hand. Not every conspiracy theory invokes Jews, but Jews pop up very often in these theories.

It didn't start with the grand theory of the Elders of Zion secretly pulling the strings of the world. It didn't start with the blood libel or the accusation that Jews poison the wells causing the Black Death in the 14th century.

Jews have been blamed for conspiracy theories from the very first moment of becoming a people.

After all, look at Exodus 1:8-11:

A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.”

Jews saved Egypt from famine. They were model citizens. But Pharaoh created a conspiracy theory that they were a fifth column to destroy Egypt.

This is literally the first thing that scripture says about the Jewish people.

It is not the only conspiracy theory in the Hebrew Scripture involving Jews: Esther 3:8:

Haman then said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws; and it is not in Your Majesty’s interest to tolerate them."

Sad to say, no amount of education is going to eradicate this sort of antisemitism. All we can do is expose it and expose the people who are behind it.

Like Pharaoh and Haman, the haters won't change.

Palestinians quietly request 1000 vaccines. Israel quietly delivers. World keeps screaming at Israel.

Once again, the Palestinian Authority made a formal request for a batch of 1000 COVID-19 vaccines for health care workers.

Once again, Israel is providing them.

According to Ma'an quoting Walla, the delivery of the vaccines came after Palestinian officials requested from COGAT, the IDF liaison with the territories, an urgent transfer of the vaccines.

This is at least the third such transfer of vaccines. The first was earlier this month to the PA and the second was last week to Gaza.

Israel has also been coordinating with the Palestinians on importing larger quantities of vaccine from Russia.

Literally every time Palestinians ask for medical help from Israel, including COVID-19 vaccines, Israel has responded positively.

Yet 99% of the media coverage of the topic implies, or outright claims, that Israel is refusing to cooperate with them and withholding vaccines.

Perhaps this is why there is so little trust in the media nowadays.