Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Kuwaiti singer says she converted to Judaism, with predictable antisemitic responses

Ibtisam Al-Hamid a singer who uses the stage name Basma Al-Kuwaiti, has stunned the Arab world by declaring that she has left Islam and converted to Judaism.

She says, “I am Ibtisam Hamid, who is called the Kuwaiti singer Basma....I proudly announce my conversion to Judaism.”

Hamid is also quoted as saying that Islam does not give women their full rights. Reports say she added, "I also declare my opposition and my non-affiliation with the Al-Sabah [Kuwaiti ruling] family, which rejects normalization, freedom of religion and freedom of opinion."

Newspapers are reporting that she was never a Kuwaiti citizen, even though her mother is Kuwaiti and she was born in Kuwait. She is said to have sought Kuwaiti citizenship and was rejected. Reports also say she no longer lives in Kuwait.

A few years ago Hamid announced that she won a Quran memorization competition in high school.

Conversion to Judaism is far more involved and time consuming than conversion to Islam, and it is unclear where and when she converted, and which rabbi supervised the conversion.

The reactions have been furious, with people accusing her of wanting to exhibit her nude body or of never being a proper Muslim to begin with. Some say that this is an attempt to make more money, because, Jews. They are especially stunned because a popular Kuwaiti broadcaster announced his conversion to Christianity last month. He looked notably worse not long afterwards, apparently not prepared for the vicious reactions he received.

Across the Arab world there have been other reactions. Dr. Amna Naseer, a professor of faith and philosophy at Al-Azhar University in Egypt, said that deviating from Islam is a “psychological disease: and blamed Islamic extremism for misrepresenting Islam. (She has previously blamed Islamic extremism on...Jews.)

Another artist, Ahmed Fluks, after saying that she knows nothing about Islam, added, “The religion of Judaism is that they are scattered on the ground and they are lost in the earth. The Jews are the ones that crucified Jesus and tortured him. The Jews are the ones who kill in the babies of Palestine - and you claim that Islam is terrorist?"

Every year since 2015, the House appropriations bill has included this language that bars the US from sending economic support to the Palestinian Authority.

A)(i) None of the funds appropriated under the heading ‘‘Economic Support Fund’’ in this Act may be made available for assistance for the Palestinian Authority, if after the date of enactment of this Act—

(I) the Palestinians obtain the same standing as member states or full membership as a state in the United Nations or any specialized agency thereof outside an agreement negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians; or
(II) the Palestinians initiate an International Criminal Court (ICC) judicially authorized investigation, or actively support such an investigation, that subjects Israeli nationals to an investigation for alleged crimes against Palestinians.

Did the ICC ruling this week trigger this law?

The ruling made it possible for the ICC to investigate Israel, but that investigation hasn't happened yet. The chief prosecutor must decide whether to start an investigation or let her successor decide - she is due to step down in June.

If the prosecutor decides to open an investigation, are the Biden administration's hands tied concerning their promise to resume maid to the Palestinian Authority?

There is an "out" for subparagraph I where the secretary of state can overrule the law, but there is no such override for subparagraph II.

I cannot find much wiggle room to avoid the law withholding funding. In 2015, when the PLO joined the ICC, one could argue that the Palestinians did not actively request an investigation of Israel, but the current ruling says that they did do so. It says: "On 22 May 2018, Palestine referred the Situation in the State of Palestine to the Prosecutor pursuant to articles 13(a) and 14 of the Statute."

Article 14 means that the Palestinians formally requested an investigation of Israel. I don't see how that can be interpreted in any way other than that they are "actively supporting" an investigation.

So unless the Biden administration blatantly ignores the law, if the ICC goes ahead with the investigation the US must ensure that no funds go towards the Palestinian Authority.

(h/t Mitchell)

02/09 Links Pt2: Israeli inventor of promising COVID drug hopes it can help vaccineless countries; Outrage as Oxford college holds event with controversial filmmaker Ken Loach; ‘Palestinians deserve better’

From Ian:

Israeli inventor of promising COVID drug hopes it can help vaccineless countries

The inventor of a new Israeli coronavirus medicine has secured the prime minister’s help to advance testing — and says the drug could provide hope to poor countries that don’t yet have access to vaccines.

Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center claimed a “huge breakthrough” on Friday, saying that Prof. Nadir Arber’s EXO-CD24 inhaled medicine had been administered to 30 patients whose conditions were moderate or worse, and all 30 recovered — 29 of them within three to five days.

On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invited Arber to his office and asked him about the “miracle drug.” During the briefing, Netanyahu said: “If this succeeds, it will be huge, simply huge. This is of global significance. This is amazing.

“I wish you success. If you need anything, say it and we will help you. This little thing could change the fate of humanity. This is amazing. Good luck.”

Arber told The Times of Israel on Tuesday that, with the Phase 1 trial just completed, he has applied to the Health Ministry to start a Phase 2 trial. This will give a more reliable picture of efficacy, as Phase 1 is small, largely concerned with checking safety, and lacking a placebo group.

Netanyahu has already helped to pave the way to a multi-country trial. After meeting with Arber, he hosted Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who offered to have a leading Greek hospital take part in testing in the framework of bilateral cooperation.

“I asked Professor Arber to come to my office today. He did. Two hours later my friend Prime Minister Mitsotakis comes to my office and more or less the first question he asked me was, ‘Can you tell me about this miracle drug?'” said Netanyahu.

“We called Professor Arber and Prime Minister Mitsotakis volunteered that Greece, their leading hospital, would partake in the clinical trials and I hope that we can approve this because I think this is an example of our cooperation in forging ahead to new areas.”

Israeli COVID cure? Researchers hope peptide treatment could slow disease

A group of Israeli researchers have launched a Phase II study of a drug that they believe could keep patients off mechanical ventilation and speed their recovery.

The trial, which is being collectively run by Ziv and Rambam medical centers with researchers from Bar-Ilan University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, is examining the use of a drug based on a naturally occurring peptide called angiotensin 1-7 to help counter the impact of COVID-19 on the lungs.

A peptide is a set of amino acids.

Coronavirus enters a person’s cells through angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors. These same receptors produce angiotensin 1-7, explained Dr. Karl Skorecki, dean of the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine of Bar-Ilan University in the Galilee. Angiotensin 1-7 is a protein that is naturally produced in the body and is responsible for preventing cell proliferation and inflammation.

“When the enzyme is busy acting as a receptor, it can no longer do what it is supposed to do, which is make angiotensin 1-7,” Skorecki said. “The hope is that by replenishing this peptide, their lungs will get back what the virus nefariously took away from them.”

Around 3% of all people who contract coronavirus in Israel are hospitalized, and many do not respond to what have become traditional steroid or antiviral drug treatments.

‘Palestinians deserve better’

Sir, – The Palestinian people deserve better (Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid, “Israel’s obligations as an occupying power under the Geneva Convention still stand”, Opinion & Analysis, February 4th).

They deserve leaders who truly care about their people, and not those who consider Palestinian people as pawns to be used in endless political posturing. Under the Oslo Accords, which are the existing applicable legal framework between Israel and the Palestinians, all civic powers and responsibilities – including in the sphere of health – in the West Bank and Gaza are under the mandate of the Palestinians. This includes responsibility for the administration of vaccinations to the Palestinian population.

In the past year, governments around the world have taken decisive measures to protect their populations from the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic. These measures have had tremendous societal and economic impacts but were taken with the understanding that there was simply no other choice. In Israel, like other places around the world, the welfare and health of citizens is the first priority. Israel devoted huge efforts and resources into finding ways to fight the pandemic. Israeli scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs pioneered innovative ways to deal with various aspects of Covid-19, including the development of an Israeli vaccine (now in trial phases), development of a cure for the disease (also in trials), and more. Securing early vaccination of the entire population became the top priority of the Israeli government, who managed to secure that by swift negotiation of agreements with major suppliers, in particular Pfizer. Israel became a world leader in vaccinating its population while providing real-time data about the effectiveness of the vaccines to the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, in a politically motivated galaxy far far away, Palestinian leaders, and some of their supporters, have been engaged in weaponising the pandemic against Israel and hijacking the Covid agenda for their narrow political goal. OPHIR KARIV, Ambassador of Israel to Ireland

Cartoon of the Day: "Legitimate Criticism" looks a little different for Israel

This one is more original, although still using other clipart.

Youm7 (The Seventh Day) is a popular Egyptian newspaper and news site.

Yesterday, it dedicated an article to describing about five Islamic hadiths that claims that Jews tried to poison Mohammed.

Most versions of the story go like this:

Narrated Ibn Shihab:
Jabir ibn Abdullah used to say that a woman from the inhabitants of Khaybar poisoned a roasted sheep and presented it to the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) who took its foreleg and ate from it. A group of his companions also ate with him. The Messenger of Allah then said: Take your hands away (from the food). The Messenger of Allah then sent someone to the woman and he called her. He said to her: Have you poisoned this sheep? The woman replied: Who has informed you? He said: This I foreleg which I have in my hand has informed me. She said: Yes. He said: What did you intend by it? She said: I thought if you were a prophet, it would not harm you; if you were not a prophet, we should rid ourselves of him (i.e. the Prophet). The Messenger of Allah then forgave her, and did not punish her. But some of his companions who ate it, died. The Messenger of Allah had himself cupped on his shoulder on account of that which he had eaten from the sheep. It has been a Jewish knowledge that there will be a prophet at the end. He will not be killed and will die natural death. Banu Nadhir's Jews made many attempts to kill Prophet Muhammad to prove that he is not a true prophet but failed. This attempt was perhaps last one. Abu Hind cupped him with the horn and knife. He was a client of Banu Bayadah from the Ansar.
Sunan Abu Dawud 39:4495

As with any legend, there are variants in the stories. The Youm7 article emphasizes that this was an initiative of the "Jews" and not of one woman - in fact, it doesn't even mention her name, Zaynab bint Al-Harith.

The story was picked up by other Arabic media.

02/09 Links Pt1: Anti-Zionist Left Rallies to Defense of Controversial Biden State Dept Pick; UAE halts funding to UN Palestinian agency in 'reset' of aid programme

From Ian:

Christine Rosen: ‘Neo-Racism’ in the Justice Department

Clarke clearly had no problem with Martin’s trafficking of Nation of Islam-fomented conspiracy theories, even though his “scholarship” was so egregiously anti-Semitic that it prompted the American Historical Association to issue a policy resolution in 1995 about Jews and the slave trade. “The Association therefore condemns as false any statement alleging that Jews played a disproportionate role in the exploitation of slave labor or in the Atlantic slave trade,” that rebuke read.

And Clarke hasn’t distanced herself from those views, either. In 2019, she signed a letter supporting Women’s March co-founder Tamika Mallory after Mallory told white Jewish women to check their privilege and, according to an exhaustive investigation by Tablet, “asserted that Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people—and even, according to a close secondhand source, claimed that Jews were proven to have been leaders of the American slave trade.” Like Clarke, Mallory seems both familiar and comfortable with some of the most egregious anti-Semitic conspiracy theories promoted by the Nation of Islam and “scholars” like Tony Martin.

When asked recently about her support for such views, Clarke told The Forward that it had been a “mistake” to invite Martin to campus, but also claimed her words had been “twisted.” She added, “I unequivocally denounce anti-Semitism.”

But this is disingenuous—as Clarke herself perhaps inadvertently revealed when she refused to extend her condemnation of anti-Semitism to the anti-Semitic statements of Tamika Mallory. As Clarke sees it, there is a clear hierarchy of victimization, and she and Mallory rest atop it: “The marginalization of women of color is a threat to disrupt democracy, and what led me to join that letter was a grave concern about seeing another woman of color marginalized and silenced,” she said. “Let me be clear, I denounce anti-Semitism wherever and whenever it shows up.”

But one can’t defend Mallory while denouncing anti-Semitism, given that Mallory is an unapologetic anti-Semite (she once referred to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as “the greatest of all time”). After all, Mallory is only promoting the same vile conspiracy theories that Clarke’s favorite Afrocentric scholar, Tony Martin, legitimized when Clarke gave him a platform to do so.

This does not inspire confidence in Clarke’s ability to deal with serious issues of civil rights and justice. The group most often targeted and victimized by hate crimes in the U.S. are Jews. If Clarke is happy to overlook the hateful views of someone like Tamika Mallory merely because Mallory is black, then what will she do when tasked with enforcing civil rights law under the aegis of the Justice Department?

Anti-Zionist Left Rallies to Defense of Controversial Biden State Dept Pick

Some of the country’s most prominent, self-described "anti-Zionists" are rushing to defend the Biden administration’s possible selection of a top Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) aide to serve at the State Department.

Following a Washington Free Beacon report last week on Matt Duss’s anti-Israel history, anti-Zionists including Peter Beinart, the Jewish writer beloved by anti-Israel activists, are coming to his defense. Beinart wrote in a self-published piece on Monday that Duss is being unfairly maligned by the pro-Israel community and Republican leaders because he is a Christian who cares "about the powerless and the abused, whatever their race, religion, or nationality."

Beinart, the former editor of the New Republic and an Iraq war supporter, called for an end to the Jewish state of Israel, and American support for it, in an essay last year.

The possible selection of Duss, like Beinart a defender of the anti-Semitic Israel boycott movement, has become a flashpoint between pro- and anti-Israel activists. Both groups see Duss's potential elevation as a signal about what direction the Biden administration's foreign policy will take. The prospect of Duss appointment is being cheered by the Democratic Party’s far-left flank, which is pressuring the Biden administration to hire nearly 100 people, including Duss, who are hostile to the U.S.-Israel alliance and want to see an end to the close cooperation between the two. Critics, including the former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and freshman Rep. Ronny Jackson (R., Texas), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, say Duss’s "disdain for the Jewish people and the American-Israel alliance would be a cancer on the U.S. State Department."

It is unclear what position Duss is under consideration for, but he would join a growing roster of Biden administration hires who have displayed animus toward Israel, promoted boycotts of the Jewish state, and advocated for a Palestinian "right of return" that would destroy the country's Jewish composition. This includes Robert Malley, the administration's new Iran envoy who once held unauthorized talks with Hamas, and Maher Bitar, a White House National Security Council member who spent his youth organizing in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

Beinart's praise for the Sanders aide was well-received by Trita Parsi, vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an isolationist think tank bankrolled by billionaires George Soros and Charles Koch. Parsi, who has faced accusations of acting as an unregistered lobbyist for the Iranian regime, said Duss’s critics are being led by war "hawks trying to prevent the best in Washington from getting into the Biden administration." Parsi also was included on the far-left's list of 100 foreign policy hands they hope to see hired by the Biden administration.

UAE halts funding to UN Palestinian agency in 'reset' of aid programme

The United Arab Emirates does not plan to resume funding to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, which was halted last year, until steps are taken to manage funds more efficiently, a UAE government official said.

The Gulf state, current chair of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) advisory committee, provided the agency with $50 million in 2019 and $20 million in 2018, but made no contributions last year, although the official said UAE charitable groups donated $1 million.

“We are in dialogue with UNRWA’s leadership on how to enhance effectiveness of aid,” Minister of State for International Cooperation Reem al-Hashimy told Reuters this week.

She said the decision to halt funding was taken when the oil producing country revised its aid programme at the end of 2019 and was not related to the UAE establishing ties with Israel under a U.S.-brokered deal in September.

“COVID was a revealing time and led us to push the reset button. We believe that we have a moral responsibility but not under the same mechanism,” she said. “We want to see how international organisations are revising their approach - we are looking for more efficacy, and a wiser way of utilizing funds.”

HonestReporting: Webinar, Deconstructed: 'Palestinians Exposed: Hate in the Classroom'

In case you missed it, HonestReporting recently hosted an eye-opening webinar – Palestinians Exposed: Hate in the Classroom – that answered a fundamental question: How is it that Palestinian children born generations after Israel’s establishment are still being educated to envision themselves as residents of cities stolen by Jews, and as refugees temporarily living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip?

The webinar featured Itamar Marcus, Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, who analyzed the disturbing world of the Palestinian child – spanning sports, culture, music and education. As a result of their exposure to blatantly antisemitic and anti-Israel tropes, Palestinian youth grow up believing that in the future they will “liberate” modern-day Israel, effectively ending Jewish self-determination.

Peter Beinart writes in his Substack blog:

Christian hostility to Jews draws more attention than Jewish hostility to Christians. And for good reason. Christian hostility has produced millennia of persecution. Jewish hostility, for the most part, hasn’t produced much more than the occasional nasty line in a prayerbook (sometimes accompanied by spitting).

Still, Jewish misgivings about Christians go way back. When Christianity was still in its infancy, the rabbis of the Talmud taught that if Jews saw Christian religious texts burning on Shabbat, they should let them burn (Shabbat 116a). And as Christian anti-Semitism grew, Jewish animosity intensified. To grasp the intense anger toward Christianity carried by even highly enlightened Eastern European Jews, listen to this curious vignette by Professor Moshe Halbertal about the great Israeli intellectual and social critic Yeshayahu Leibowitz (It starts around minute nine and ends around minute twelve). Growing up, I encountered the residue of this hostility myself. I remember being reprimanded for calling Mary a pretty name and for proposing Christmas colors for a school costume. (Call me self-hating: I still like red and green).

This is only a preface to his main point, which we will get to. But what exactly is the purpose of Beinart bringing examples of supposed Jewish hate for Christians?

The "nasty line in the prayerbook" is in the original Aleinu prayer, composed according to most scholars by Rav in 3rd century CE Babylonia. It had some early Christians but it seems unlikely that he was referring to them when he composed " For they worship vanity and emptiness, and pray to a god who cannot save."

Similarly, when the Talmud says which texts should not be saved on the Sabbath, it is indeed referring to early Christians, but they are not the same as today's Christians. The word that the Talmud uses is "heretics" and it is their heresy that is offensive, not their Christian beliefs. They pretended that they were still Jews and tried to convert real Jews. This is referring to scrolls with the sacred name of God in Hebrew which can normally never be allowed to be erased (or burned) but the consensus is that it must be burned when written by a heretic.

It has nothing to do with modern Christianity.

Of course there is some antipathy towards Christianity among Jews -nearly 2000 years of persecution in the name of Jesus leaves a mark. But Beinart is going out of his way to cherry pick instances, real or imagined, of what he characterizes as irrational Jewish hate for Christians.

Why does he want to do this? To lead up to this crazy theory:

I mention all this because my friend Matt Duss, who currently serves as Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy advisor, is reportedly being considered for a job in Joe Biden’s State Department. As in the case of Rob Malley, hawks are calling Matt anti-Israel. As in the case of Rob Malley, they’re attacking Matt’s father. But Matt has a vulnerability that Rob didn’t: He’s a Christian, and his faith is central to his views on foreign policy, including Israel-Palestine. That’s a good thing—because Matt is a Christian in the tradition of Reverend William Sloane Coffin and Reverend William Barber. His Christianity makes him care about the powerless and the abused, whatever their race, religion or nationality. And yet, in Washington today, it’s more perilous for Matt to talk about how his Christian faith compels him to care about human rights in Israel-Palestine than it is for Mike Pompeo to talk about how his Christian faith compels him not to. The ancient Jewish anxiety about Christians has become morally warped. In the hands of the Israeli government and its American Jewish allies, it has become an anxiety directed solely toward those Christians who care about justice.

Who knew that Matt Duss was Christian? He barely mentions it on his Twitter feed. Not once have I seen criticism of Duss - and there is plenty of it, quite deserved - mention his religion.

Beinart creates an entire prologue of Jewish hate for Christians to lead up to a theory that Zionist Jews don't have any serious issues with Duss' opinions, and anything they say about him comes from irrational anti-Christian bigotry!

How can you read this as anything but incitement to get Christians to hate Jews?

Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a wide ranging interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN yesterday. Blitzer touched on every issue that is important to Israel, and Blinken's answers were mostly encouraging - within the framework of the conventional wisdom of the Democratic party.

The problem is the framework itself.

QUESTION: A State Department spokesperson has given the Trump administration credit for what’s called the Abraham Accords, the normalization deals that Israel worked on thanks to the Trump administration, with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, but at the same time you’re saying it can’t be a substitute for Israeli-Palestinian peace. So how exactly are you going to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process?

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, first, Wolf, yes, we applauded the Abraham Accords. This is an important step forward. Whenever we see Israel and its neighbors normalizing relations, improving relations, that’s good for Israel, it’s good for the other countries in question, it’s good for overall peace and security, and I think it offers new prospects to people throughout the region through travel, through trade, through other work that they can do together to actually materially improve their lives. So that’s a good thing. But as you said rightly, that doesn’t mean that the challenges of the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians go away. They don’t. They’re still there. They’re not going to miraculously disappear. And so we need to engage on that. But in the first instance, the parties in question need to engage on that.

Look, the hard truth is we are a long way I think from seeing peace break out and seeing a final resolution of the problems between Israel and the Palestinians and the creation of a Palestinian state. In the first instance now, it’s do no harm. We’re looking to make sure that neither side takes unilateral actions that make the prospects for moving toward peace and a resolution even more challenging than they already are. And then hopefully we’ll see both sides take steps that create a better environment in which actual negotiations can take place.

The State Department is leaning back towards the failed idea that Israel/Palestinian peace is the most important concept. The Abraham Accords destroyed that paradigm - the old thinking said that peace with the Arab world was linked to peace with Palestinians, the "linkage" myth, and the Accords shows that this isn't true. By definition, peace between Israel and Palestinians has been shown to be less important.

Blinken now sees no relationship between Israeli-Arab peace and Israeli-Palestinian peace. But that's not true either. Palestinian intransigence is fueled by their conviction that world pressure will bring Israel to its knees, and now that Trump is gone they are waiting for the Biden administration to pressure Israel like Obama did, and for it to partner with Western European states to push the Palestinian demands - 1967 "borders" being only the first demand.

When Blinken says that neither side should take unilateral actions against peace, he is almost certainly not talking about Palestinian land grabs that happen every day - only Israel asserting its rights in Judea and Samaria. It is a troubling reversion to old thinking.

QUESTION: I know that you, the Biden administration still supports what’s called a two-state solution —

SECRETARY BLINKEN: That’s right.

QUESTION: — Israel, a new state of Palestine. But I understand that President Biden still hasn’t even spoken with Prime Minister Netanyahu; is that right?

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, they spoke actually during the transition. I think one of the first calls that the President had was with the prime minister. I’ve talked to my Israeli counterparts on multiple occasions already. And you’re exactly right about the two-state solution: The President strongly supports it. It is the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state, and the only way to give the Palestinians a state to which they’re entitled.

QUESTION: But is there a reason as President he still hasn’t spoken with Netanyahu? He’s spoken with so many other world leaders.

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Oh, I’m sure that they’ll have occasion to speak in the near future.

Some think that the symbolism of Biden not calling Netanyahu is important. I don't. Unless he calls Abbas first, this is not something to waste time on.

QUESTION: Anxious to get your yes or no on some specifics, very sensitive issues. You’ve said the United States will keep the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. It used to be in Tel Aviv. Do you regard Jerusalem as Israel’s capital?

SECRETARY BLINKEN: I do, yes. And more importantly, we do.

QUESTION: As part of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, would you support a Palestine having its capital in East Jerusalem?

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Look, the – what we have to see happen is for the parties to get together directly and negotiate these so-called final status issues. That’s the objective. And as I said, we’re unfortunately a ways away from that at this point in time.

This is the correct answer. The Europeans also say they don't want unilateral moves - and then they unilaterally say what the final agreement should look like. Trump destroyed the lie that Israel's capital is not Jerusalem and Biden is not going to go back to the fiction that every previous administration had that Jerusalem would become an international city.

QUESTION: The Trump administration, as you know, also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria back in 1967. Will your administration, the Biden administration, continue to see the Golan Heights as part of Israel?

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Look, leaving aside the legalities of that question, as a practical matter, the Golan is very important to Israel’s security. As long as Assad is in power in Syria, as long as Iran is present in Syria, militia groups backed by Iran, the Assad regime itself – all of these pose a significant security threat to Israel, and as a practical matter, the control of the Golan in that situation I think remains of real importance to Israel’s security. Legal questions are something else. And over time, if the situation were to change in Syria, that’s something we’d look at. But we are nowhere near as that.

Here's another example of using the wrong framework. The Biden administration is not going to recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan, but they will not prioritize Israel giving the strategic area back to Syria. But this is problematic.

Blinken claims that human rights is now a centerpiece of foreign policy. This statement undermines the human rights of the Arabs who live in the Golan. As long as they are concerned that they could revert to living under Syrian rule, they are not free. They are worried about being executed as traitors or spies under Syrian rule. They will remain in this limbo until the world recognizes that Israel's control of the Golan is not only legal but just.

Of course, all of this is trivial next to the question of Iran.

QUESTION: You’re facing a stalemate apparently when it comes to Iran, the Iran nuclear deal. Iran’s ayatollah says the U.S. needs to lift sanctions before it returns to the deal. President Biden says he won’t lift sanctions first. So what happens now?

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, look, the President’s been very clear about this. If Iran returns to compliance with its obligations under the nuclear agreement, we would do the same thing, and then we would work with our allies and partners to try to build a longer and stronger agreement, and also bring in some of these other issues, like Iran’s missile program, like its destabilizing actions in the region that need to be addressed as well.

The problem we face now, Wolf, is that in recent months Iran has lifted one restraint after another that was – they were being held in check by the agreement. We got out of the agreement, Iran started to lift the various restraints in the agreement, and the result is they are closer than they’ve been to having the capacity on short order to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon. The agreement had pushed that past a year. According to public reports now, it’s down to three or four months and heading in the wrong direction.

So the first thing that’s so critical is for Iran to come back into compliance with its obligations. They’re a ways from that. But if they do that, the path of diplomacy is there, and we’re willing to walk it.

QUESTION: So they’ve got to take the first step, and then the U.S. will respond. Is that right?

SECRETARY BLINKEN: That’s – the President’s been clear about that. They need to come back to compliance, and if they do, we will look to do the same thing.

This is much, much better than Biden's campaign promises to return to the JCPOA. But it is not nearly enough.

The Biden administration needs to enroll the European signatories to the JCPOA to do their job. They haven't left the agreement that Iran is proudly violating. They have not invoked the sanctions that were supposed to be automatic with Iranian violations. Their cringing acceptance of Iranian violations is the reason Iran feels that it has the upper hand.

The West needs to renegotiate the Iran agreement from a position of strength. That means getting the western Europeans on board and having a united front on sanctioning Iran for its violations.

The US is now saying the right things but it sure looks like one day soon Iran and the US will announce the simultaneous removal of sanctions and the US returning to negotiate what would be an identical agreement with Iran that Obama did - and then gaslighting Americans into believing that it is an ironclad agreement that stops Iranian nuclear weapons development.

Also, while it is hard to prove 100%, Iran's cash crunch has hurt Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terror groups. Lifting sanctions without addressing those issues, and others like Iranian development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, is the opposite of promoting peace.

The old frameworks about Iran and the Middle East kept peace further away. The return to the failed frameworks is the real danger, and saying the right things in the wrong framework is putting lipstick on a pig.

A Muslim woman who doesn't hate Israel enrages Marc Lamont Hill, Linda Sarsour

On Sunday, Marc Lamont Hill did his usual apologetics for BDS and pretending that BDS is against all forms of oppression and racism. But a committed American Muslim woman who is heavily involved in the Democratic Party called him out.

Hill absurdly responded that Palestinians support boycotting working for Israelis - by quoting their trade unions, who of course are threatened by the existence of any jobs they cannot control!

Anila then challenged Hill to a debate, which he of course declined, because he wants the entire world to be focused on hating Israel and nothing else that affects Muslims.

Even funnier was Linda Sarsour's response to Hill.

Sarsour is telling Hill that Ali cannot possibly speak for Palestinians.

This is the person who pretends to know what Jews think about antisemitism.

This is the person who thinks that a Black professor from Philadelphia can speak for Palestinians because he has visited there, but a Muslim woman from Pakistan who has also visited there must be silenced.

This is the person whose entire life revolves around building platforms to promote her own political career.

We see how much Sarsour and Hill cherish the opinion of others. How much they care about what Muslim women think.

They want to silence any other opinions, to portray Muslims as being monolithic and having only one point of view. Their power comes from that myth - "this is what the Muslims demand." The lack of media attention for alternative viewpoints like those of Anila Ali helps promote this myth.

Unlike Sarsour and Hill, Anila Ali actually cares about oppressed Muslims everywhere. While I am sure I disagree with her on many, many topics, she is worthy of respect because she actually cares about people - not supporting those who want to use Palestinians as props for their own book sales.

As far as whether Palestinians are against working for Israelis: Palestinians are falling over themselves to work for Israelis, both inside the Green Line and in settlements. Over 13% have jobs for Israelis. A significant part of the Palestinian GDP comes from those workers. Their salaries are more than double those who work domestically. While some do get taken advantage of, they have the same rights as any Israeli worker.

Back in 2010, the PA tried to pass a law to ban Palestinians from working in communities in Judea and Samaria. The PA backed down, because so many were getting paid so well and there was no comparable work for them in Palestinian controlled areas.

When Hill and Palestinian political figures say what Palestinians want - they are lying. The Palestinians' own actions prove it, every single day.

(h/t kweansmom)

02/08 Links Pt2: Will the Boycott-Israel Clique Co-opt the Scientific Community?; Vaccinated people less likely to transmit coronavirus, Israeli study suggests

From Ian:

Will the Boycott-Israel Clique Co-opt the Scientific Community?

Higgs is among the most important figures in the world of physics, but he eluded the media and popular culture. Doing the opposite arguably made Stephen Hawking the world’s most famous physicist, perhaps even its most famous scientist. In May 2013, when he pulled out of a conference in Jerusalem, the New York Times headline blared, “Stephen Hawking Joins the Boycott Against Israel.” He was reportedly persuaded to do so by MIT linguist and anti-Israel activist Noam Chomsky and members of the British Committee for Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), which effectively functions as the U.K.’s arm of the BDS movement.

BRICUP founding members Hilary (a sociologist) and Steven (a neuroscientist) Rose wrote in The Guardian that Hawking’s decision “threatens to open a floodgate with more and more scientists coming to regard Israel as a pariah state.” While not quite a floodgate, certainly a door was opened by Hawking’s example, and gradually a number of physicists, chemists, and biologists began to distort history, repeat the rhetoric of Palestinian terrorist groups, and call for a boycott of Israel. In 2015 a group of physicists founded Scientists for Palestine “to raise awareness among scientists . . . about the challenges of science under military occupation.”

Malcolm Levitt, a British professor of chemistry, made headlines in 2017 by urging his colleagues to boycott the Federation of European Biochemical Societies’ annual convention being held in Jerusalem. In 2019, George P. Smith, a Nobel Prize–winning professor of biological sciences at the University of Missouri, endorsed a boycott of Israel while receiving an award at Westminster College. Both Levitt and Smith played a role in the initial Molecules decision to oust Levine as guest editor.

By 2018, the Electronic Intifada, sensing a trend, published an article titled “Why Scientists Should Boycott Israel.” It predicted a propaganda victory when more scientists join the BDS movement by disrupting Israel’s “projection of itself as a modern, hi-tech, Western-style liberal democracy.”

In the history of physicists and chemists boycotting Israel, there is both irony and hypocrisy. Some have detected irony in Hawking’s boycott of the country that produced the technology that extended his life, and a whiff of hypocrisy in his collaboration with Israeli physicist Jacob Bekenstein (as in the theory of Bekenstein-Hawking entropy). After the then-theoretical Higgs boson was confirmed in 2012, David Shamah wrote that while Higgs was the father of the so-called God particle, “researchers at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Hebrew University, and the Technion” played such a crucial role that “Israeli scientists were uncles.” In the last decade four Nobel Prizes in chemistry have gone to Israelis, so future boycotters of Israel harm themselves by precluding collaboration with Israeli scientists.

The BDS movement is at a crossroads, sinking in the wake of Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords but likely to be buoyed by the Biden-Harris administration, which has already named BDS activist Maher Bitar as senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council. The big question is: If the Electronic Intifada gets its wish and scientists become as common as Middle East studies professors in the BDS movement, will it matter? Do people, unwittingly or otherwise, privilege science and therefore the opinions of scientists, or do most people see scientists (physicists especially) as savants, brilliant in their fields but only humored, certainly not emulated, outside of them? In short, are people more likely to trust and believe the opinions of scientists than those of other academics?

The evidence is mixed. Pew Research and other polls indicate that “public confidence in the scientific community has remained stable for decades” and that scientists are far more trusted than journalists, educators, and politicians. This suggests that a major influx of scientists could strengthen the BDS movement.

Others believe that public faith in scientists amounts to only “soft support,” and that the more people know about science, the more likely they are to be “concerned about biases that may cloud scientists’ thinking.” If so, then scientists are no more likely than anthropologists, historians, or English professors to salvage the dying cause.

Vaccinated people less likely to transmit coronavirus, Israeli study suggests

Israel’s largest COVID-19 testing lab says it has found evidence indicating that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine significantly reduces the transmissibility of the coronavirus, offering a tentative answer to one of the world’s most burning questions.

A paper published online Monday claims that positive test results of patients age 60 and over had up to 60 percent smaller viral loads on the test swab than the 40-59 age group, starting in mid-January, when most of Israel’s population age 60-plus had already been vaccinated with at least one dose.

The results were published by the MyHeritage lab, which handles more than 10,000 tests a day, in a study co-authored by several prominent scholars, including leading COVID-19 statistician Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

The results are only based on partial data, because MyHeritage did not know if individual samples came from patients who had been vaccinated or not. But overall, the results appear to show that once someone is vaccinated, even if they have the virus in their system, they are less likely to pass it on because they have fewer infectious SARS-CoV-2 droplets hanging around their noses and throats.

“Our result reflects great data, because it gives exactly what we want from a vaccine, namely that it reduces transmission,” Prof. Yaniv Erlich, head of the MyHeritage lab, told The Times of Israel on Monday. “It shows, to some extent, that this reduces viral load in the nose and throat, which is the main channel for transmission of the virus.”

While the lab found a 60% reduction in viral load for those 60 and over, Ehrlich postulated that it could drop further once more people in the cohort are vaccinated. He emphasized that his research is at an early stage, and the topic needs more investigation.

The family we didn't know we had

Israeli travel to the UAE picked up at lightning speed with the country listed 'green' up until recently, allowing Israelis to travel back home without the need to quarantine. During the month of December alone, over 65,000 Israelis visited the UAE according to Ben Gurion airport spokesman. Among them were Israeli delegations participating in GITEX, Israeli singer/songwriter Idan Raichel's who performed at Dubai Opera, a delegation of Israeli Mayors, Peres Center for Peace officials, Israel's ice hockey team who arrived for a friendly match against Dubai, and many tourists driven by intense curiosity to see and experience the intriguing destination.

Thousands of Israelis and diaspora Jews who arrived to the UAE to celebrate Hanukkah described the occasion as historic. For the small Jewish community living in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the festival of lights marked the first time in which a Jewish holiday was publicly celebrated and recognised. Hotel lobbies displayed signs wishing visitors a Happy Hanukkah as the sound of Hebrew filled large parts of the city. Emirati guests who joined the candle lighting ceremony were also amazed to see the giant menorah at the base of Burj Khalifa - a site that neither side imagined possible before the signing of the Abraham Accords.

Ever since UAE tourism opened up for Israelis, several new Kosher restaurants and services have been added to the city landscape, and the site of kippa-wearing-visitors in Dubai easily outnumber Tel Aviv during high holidays.

The effects of the Abraham Accords don't stop with Israel-Jewish communities around the world are expressing great interest in visiting and learning about the UAE. Observant Jews who already visited the Emirates say they feel safer walking around with their prayer shawls here, than they do in Europe and even New York.

While Covid-19 has slowed down travel between the two destinations, excitement levels remain high. Israeli tourists are eager to get back in the air and look forward to introducing Emiratis to Israeli culture, cuisine, history, and the family they never knew they had.

Moroccan TV programme celebrates Jewish culture

On 3 February 2021 the Moroccan TV channel MED1tv broadcast a 'culturathon' - a two-hour long programme vaunting Moroccan-Jewish culture. The programme featured performers, a Judaica collector, a film-maker and academics, all speaking of their memories, nostalgia and affection for Morocco. It ended with the Moroccan national anthem being played in Israel.

The programme was clearly aimed at an external audience. It began with the glamorous French-speaking presenter quoting from the 2011 Constitution, which recognised Jews and Berbers as integral components of Moroccan 'pluralism'. Kamal Hachkar, a French-Moroccan with Berber roots, took part. He had made a documentary about Israeli Jews homesick for their mutual home town of Tinghir in the Berber Atlas, and a sequel following an Israeli singer, Neta Elkayam, who has returned to live in Morocco.

Interspersed with blessings for the welfare of King Mohamed VI, the programme bore the unmistakable stamp of royal adviser Andre Azoulay, who for years has been pushing Jewish heritage into the Moroccan mainstream. A 19th century synagogue in Essaouira has been converted into Beit Dakira, a House of Memory, opened by the King in 2020 to great fanfare.

Now that Azoulay has fulfilled his foreign policy objective of US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara as part of the Abraham Accords (one interviewee called it the US-Morocco accords') what is he trying to achieve next? The programme ended with a call to the young generation of Jews, now mostly settled in Israel, to return to Morocco.

Egyptian site El Nabaa has a bizarre conspiracy theory that they somehow think shows that Israel has every intention to steal water from the Nile River.

I cannot say I understand it, but they seem to be saying that Binyamin Netanyahu is using Judaism as an excuse to steal water, and that somehow the Ethiopian Jews who immigrated to Israel is part of the plot for Israel to grab or redirect the water from Ethiopia.

Here is some of the craziness in the article:

Israel's dream to grab the Nile water is not spur of the moment, as Dr. Zubaida Muhammad Atta, Dean of the Faculty of Arts of Heloun and a professor of history and expert on the Jewish issue, says. Her study "Israel in the Nile" provides documents and conclusive evidence of Tel Aviv Satanic scenarios to block Egypt water inside the Nile Basin countries, pointing out that the basin countries are not witnessing a breakthrough as much as they are witnessing an organized Israeli invasion.

Zubaida indicated that the Egyptian people have the right to know the fate of its eternal river and the evil Zionist conspiracy being hatched for it, explaining that Israeli engineers flocked to Addis Ababa to study the implementation of dams there for more than 30 years, and that President Sadat announced at the time that he would fight a fierce war against Israel and Ethiopia for the waters of the Nile.

Zubaida indicated that Israel's ambitions in the waters of the Nile date back to 1903, that is, before the Balfour Declaration and the establishment of the State of Israel itself, and that the waters that it stole from Sinai, Palestine and Jordan after the 1967 setback did not stop them, stressing that Israel dreams of delivering the Nile water to Israel through water channels in Egypt, and that the "New Middle East" project is the one that world Zionism has been seeking since the days of Herzl.

Of course, part of the theory comes from the Biblical description of Israel as stretching "from the Nile to the Euphrates."

The article also highlights that the former assistant to David Friedman, Aryeh Lightstone, is a rabbi. There is no small amount of antisemitism in this article.

The funniest part is that, because of extensive desalination, Israel has had a water surplus for several years now. It would cost more to transport fresh water from Africa than to create it from the Mediterranean.

02/08 Links Pt1: Only an Israel victory over Palestinian Lawfare will stop the ICC process; US rejoins UN Human Rights Council, reversing Trump's withdrawal

From Ian:

Only an Israel victory over Palestinian Lawfare will stop the ICC process

Israel should see this as just another front in the over-100-year war against Jewish sovereignty in its ancestral and indigenous homeland, and respond accordingly.

It should use all of its tools available to defeat the Palestinian Arabs on this and every front.

The Palestinians have taken off their gloves, if they ever even had them on. Israel should do likewise.

Bringing Israel or Israelis into the international dock is more than a declaration of war, it is an aim to defeat Israel by other means. It is an attack on those who protect us. Its chilling aim is to weaken our defenses and make every Israeli more vulnerable.

We can not sit idly by, merely condemning and talking about hypocrisy.

We must act, and act now.

We must break the Palestinian Authority leaders’ will to continue this process. They can stop it at any time, and they should be pressured intensely and ruthlessly to do so.

Only overwhelming strength will win the day on this battlefield that the Palestinians have chosen for us and achieve an Israel victory.

The ball is now in the court of Israel’s decision-makers. Harshly worded press releases and empty threats will not protect our soldiers.

Only an Israel victory will.

Eugene Kontorovich: The ICC's unique approach to Israel

US rejoins UN Human Rights Council, reversing Trump's withdrawal

The Biden administration has reestablished ties with the United Nations Human Rights Council three years after former United States president Donald Trump exited the contentious body over its anti-Israel bias.

“The United States will engage with the Council as an observer,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement he issued Monday. When the Trump administration left the UNHRC, it had been one of 47-member states with that held three years terms on the council, which gave it voting power.

It not only gave up its seat, but severed all ties and refused to publicly engage in meetings.

Blinken clarified that the US is now reestablishing those ties, but in an observer capacity, and not as a member state, a move that can happen only when annual elections are held by the UN General Assembly.

The US “will have the opportunity to speak in the Council, participate in negotiations, and partner with others to introduce resolutions,” Blinken said.

“It is our view that the best way to improve the Council is to engage with it and its members in a principled fashion,” he added.

“We strongly believe that when the US engages constructively with the Council, in concert with our allies and friends positive change is within reach,” Blinken said.

“We recognize that the Human Rights Council is a flawed body, in need of reform to its agenda, membership, and focus, including its disproportionate focus on Israel,” Blinken said.

“However, our withdrawal in June 2018 did nothing to encourage meaningful change, but instead created a vacuum of US leadership, which countries with authoritarian agendas have used to their advantage,” he added.

US pendulum swings back into the UN Human Rights Council - analysis

Ever since the United Nations Human Rights Council was established 15 years ago, the American position on it has swung back and forth like a pendulum, staying out, joining, leaving, and now rejoining.

The problems at the UNHRC run deep. UN Watch, an NGO promoting UN reforms and transparency, has a database that shows just how badly the UNHRC has failed to do its stated job.

The UNHRC’s Executive Board is currently made up mostly of non-democratic countries, including notorious human rights violators like Venezuela and Pakistan, among others. At the UNHRC dictatorships are allowed to take leading positions.

Israel remains the only country about which the UNHRC has a permanent agenda item. Since the council was established, it condemned Israel 90 times, Syria 35 times, North Korea 13 times, Iran 10 times and Venezuela twice. Among the countries that have never been condemned by the UNHRC are China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Zimbabwe.

The UNHRC has held eight special sessions on Israel, as opposed to one on Libya, two on Myanmar and five on Syria, and has had eight commissions of inquiry on Israel, as opposed to one on North Korea and two each on Libya, Myanmar and Syria.

And the number of inquiries and special sessions is not the only issue; it’s their content. The UN’s expert on “Palestine” is only supposed to investigate Israel’s supposed violations, and not the Palestinian Authority and Hamas abuses of Palestinians and Israelis.

Every US administration since the UNHRC’s establishment in 2006 has admitted that it is a deeply problematic institution. The question is, in what way should the US use its considerable influence and budget in relation to the Council.

The UN Human Rights Council doesn’t improve human rights. It covers for dictators & human rights abusers like Russia, China, & Venezuela. Sad to see the Biden admin legitimize an org that has become a farce to human rights advocates around the world. https://t.co/1tsJTG0oix
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 8, 2021

UNRWA spokesman Sami Masha’a announced that the UAE has slashed its annual payments to UNRWA from $51.8 million in 2019 to only $1 million in 2020, a reduction of over 98%.

Palestinian media is claiming that this came as a result of pressure from the Trump administration. Perhaps, but the Abraham Accords were announced in August and the UAE didn't pay anything beyond the token amount all year.

It isn't only the UAE, though. The entire Arab world pledges very little to UNRWA - and pays even less. According to an expert in UNRWA, Essam Adwan, the Arab world pledges to pay only 7.8% of UNRWA's budget yet pays less than 5%.

Notably, "experts" keep insisting that the Arab world wholeheartedly supports Palestinians yet they always seem to overlook how little they actually do.

It is widely expected that the Biden administration will restore much or all of the $360 million that was cut from annual US payments to UNRWA but the bulk of aid now comes from European states.

Two weeks ago, Palestinian and anti-Israel media were filled with reports like this one:

A Palestinian worker died Sunday after suffocating from tear gas when the Israeli army attacked workers near the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem.

50-year-old Fouad Joudeh from the city of Nabulus along with other workers were trying to pass through a separation fence in the village of Faroun to reach their jobs in Jaffa.

Fouad attempted to reach his workplace after more than 20 days of unemployment since Israel imposed a new lockdown as a protective measure to control the spread of COVID-19.

Doctors at Rafidia Hospital in Nablus said the autopsy confirmed that Fouad died as a result of inhaling large amounts of toxic tear gas and heart failure.

The story is strange. Unless someone has a previous medical condition, it is extraordinarily rare for people to die from tear gas inhalation - and next to impossible for this to happen outdoors.

Apparently, Joudeh did not die from anything that Israel did, despite what the Rafidia Hospital says.

The death is not mentioned by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which counts every Palestinian death that can be blamed on Israel.

It is not mentioned by the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights.

It is not mentioned by the UN's OCHA-OPT unit, which likewise keeps a running count of all Palestinian casualties by Israel, both deaths and injuries.

B'Tselem likewise does not have this case in their own database of all Palestinian casualties.

If none of these groups who have every incentive to count all Palestinians killed by Israel list Joudeh, you can be certain that Joudeh was not killed by Israel. He probably had a heart attack and his relatives are making up a story about tear gas killing him, perhaps to get benefits due to the family of "martyrs."

Note that the Rafidia hospital the was reported to say he was killed by tear gas is a Palestinian government hospital. Assuming the report is correct, it means one cannot trust Palestinians to report accurate death information when they can make Israel look bad.

Just another Palestinian lie.

But this is important for another reason. The four NGOs listed must have researched the circumstances of the death of Fouad Joudeh before determining that he was not killed by Israel. This means that they are aware of the lie. How many other times has the media blindly reported lies falsely blaming Israel for killing Palestinians? They know the answer - but they will never publish it, because they have a vested interest in keeping the world ignorant to the extent of the mendacity of the Palestinian authorities and official media.

We know about some of these cases, but only the NGOs attacking Israel know the true extent of the deceit of the Palestinians. Only they know how little one can trust official Palestinian news and government statements. But these organizations, which are supposedly founded on moral principles and fact checking, won't ever report on these lies - because they support the goals of those lies.