Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 09, 2021

Journalists Didn't See The Abraham Accords Coming -- Or Didn't Want To (Daled Amos)

Last week, the Combat Anti-Semitism movement (CAM) awarded former US Secretary of State Pompeo with its inaugural Global Leadership Award. In his acceptance speech, Pompeo shed light on the events leading up to the Abraham Accords:

When did the breakthrough that paved the way to the accords take place? According to Pompeo, it was at a summit in Warsaw, Poland, in 2019 at which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat down with foreign ministers of the Gulf states, which he called a "historic moment."

The announced goal of the 2019 Warsaw Conference was to build a coalition against Iran. However, because of the pushback from other countries, the US was forced to backtrack and seek more modest goals, along the lines of brainstorming ideas for the Middle East.

In that sense, the conference was a failure for the US -- and that is what many journalists focused on.

But not all.

Writing for the Times of Israel, Raphael Ahren described how In Warsaw, Pence hails sight of Netanyahu ‘breaking bread’ with Arab leaders:

US Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday hailed the symbolic importance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “breaking bread” with Arab leaders at a Mideast conference in Warsaw, saying he hoped it heralded further cooperation to come.

Ahren reports up front that the original focus of the 2-day conference was supposed to be on Iran and that its goal was watered down to a discussion of regional stability in the Middle East. But that did not stop Pompeo from making a statement that in retrospect seems almost prescient, and backs up his claim that the conference was intended for more than just standing up to Iran:

Tonight I believe we are beginning a new era, with Prime Minister Netanyahu from the State of Israel, with leaders from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, all breaking bread together, and later in this conference sharing honest perspectives on the challenges facing the area.

Here were leaders from both Israel and the Arab world together at the same conference -- something that last happened at the Madrid peace conference in 1991, which in that case culminated in the Oslo Accords.

Netanyahu was dropping hints as well. At the conference, he connected again with Omani Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, with whom Netanyahu met 4 months earlier during a visit to Oman in November:

Netanyahu said many Arab countries were following Oman’s lead in moving toward more open interaction with Israel, “including at this conference.”

Israel Hayom also emphasized the conference's potential for Arab-Israeli peace and reported on a leaked video of one of the meetings:

The Prime Minister's Office released a 25-minute video of the closed meeting, in which senior Gulf Arab officials played down the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, defended Israel's right to defend itself, and described Iran as the greatest threat to regional peace.

The video, bearing the insignia of the Prime Minister's Office, was recorded on a mobile device and it was not clear who took it. Netanyahu's office briefly made the YouTube video available to a small group of journalists traveling with him before quickly removing it.

And it wasn't just the Israeli media that noticed what was happening at the conference.

The Washington Examiner noted how Netanyahu joked that the statements by Arab attendees at the meeting 'dethroned' him as the chief Iran hawk

That joke — an endorsement of the alarm sounded by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain — all but vindicated the Warsaw conference on Middle East peace in the minds of U.S. organizers...Netanyahu’s remarks — and the nearly unprecedented public meetings he's held in Warsaw with Arab leaders — offset the frigidity of diplomats from major European powers, who declined to applaud the Arab triumvirate’s broadside against Iran.

Now contrast those accounts of the conference with the Washington Post, which confidently featured the headline, Pompeo won’t find a future for Middle East peace in Warsaw and mentioned Netanyahu only once in passing that

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, announced a meeting with Arab leaders in Warsaw that would seek to “advance the common interest of combating Iran.”

Because of the focus on the Iran angle, arguably to discredit Trump, the newspaper missed the other story.

Ironically, the Washington Post chose this article to feature an ad bragging about their journalistic expertise:

Politico similarly referred to the conference as "the Middle East peace gathering with utterly no chance of forging peace in the Middle East."

As for the New York Times, while the Times of Israel had an article focused on "Netanyahu ‘breaking bread’ with Arab leaders" and how Pompeo singled out Netanyahu's speaking with representatives of Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain -- the New York Times reported:

Still, togetherness had its limits. The Arab leaders who attended were hesitant to appear on the stage at the same time as Mr. Netanyahu; they kept their distance, lest images from the conference, which was closed, circulated back in Arab capitals.

...Officials from Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates sat at a table on one side of the room, while officials including Mr. Kushner, Mr. Pompeo, Mr. Netanyahu and Abdul Malik al-Mekhlafi, the Yemeni foreign minister, sat on the other. [emphasis added]

Comparing the coverage by The Times of Israel and The New York Times, you would never know that they were covering the same conference.

Considering what we have seen in the past of journalist descriptions of stabbings as if the knives were attacking on their own and Israeli reprisals being reported without mentioning the terrorist attacks that preceded them -- it is not surprising that The New York Times and Washington Post would emphasize the aspects of the Warsaw conference that fell short and ignore the successes.

The Abraham Accords don't fit the accepted agenda for Middle East peace, and being news is apparently just not enough.

03/09 Links Pt1: Trump Administration's West Bank and Gaza Labeling Helped Affirm Reality; Dershowitz: ICC's Israel decision is self-inflicted lethal wound on court; Squelching the PLO incentive to murder

From Ian:

David Milstein: Trump Administration's West Bank and Gaza Labeling Helped Affirm Reality

Two weeks ago, six far-left groups sent an inaccurate and deceitful letter to the Biden administration that urged the reversal of the Trump administration's labeling requirements for goods exported from Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza Strip into the United States. Their effort is not surprising, given their long record of vilifying and delegitimizing Israel and their support for the discriminatory Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. But there is absolutely no legitimate basis to reverse the Trump administration's decision, which is consistent with long-standing U.S. policy and practice, as well as prior agreements and the reality on the ground.

The Trump administration's Notice issued on December 23, 2020 requires goods produced where Israel continues to exercise relevant authorities and administrative control under the Oslo Accords and Hebron Protocol in Area C and H2 of the West Bank be labeled as "Product of Israel" or similar markings. Goods produced where the Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to have civilian oversight in Areas A and B, along with H1 of the West Bank, must be labeled as "West Bank" or similar markings. Goods from the Gaza Strip have to be marked as "Gaza Strip" or similar markings. It is no longer permitted for goods from any of these geographic areas to be labeled as "West Bank and Gaza" or similar markings.

The central argument in the groups' letter is that the Trump administration's decision "marks a significant change from longstanding U.S. Customs guidance maintained under both Democratic and Republican administrations, which prohibits products from anywhere in the West Bank—whether from settlements or Palestinian areas—from being labeled as made in Israel." Their letter further states that "[t]he pre-Trump guidance was first promulgated in 1995 following the Oslo Accords." Both these claims are untrue. Indeed, these groups conveniently excluded from their letter the 1995 Notice text described prior to the Oslo Accords: "Customs required that the word 'Israel' must appear in the marking designation" for all goods exported from the West Bank or Gaza Strip.

The 1995 Notice changed the labeling requirements only after the Oslo Accords. Goods from the West Bank or Gaza Strip had to be marked as "West Bank," "Gaza" or "Gaza Strip," and could no longer use the word "Israel" or similar markings. The 1997 Notice then stated that the West Bank and Gaza should be considered one territory, thus permitting the label "West Bank and Gaza" or similar markings. Both the 1995 and 1997 Notices were reaffirmed by the Obama administration in 2016.

But there were three main problems with the 1995 and 1997 Notices.

CAMERA Op-Ed In POLITICO, Peace Processors Offer Bad Advice

Writing in POLITICO Magazine, Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky proclaim that “elections have consequences” and herald that new U.S. President Joe Biden “will end the Trump sugar high for Israel and Saudi Arabia.”

Both Miller and Sokolsky have decades of public service to their credit, serving in Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Their years of service should be commended. But both, regrettably, have failed to learn either from their experience or from recent events.

First, Miller and Sokolsky assert that Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have the “two biggest egos” in the Middle East. While certainly subjective—and prime ministers and princes are not usually known for their humility—this claim omits the dictatorship in Tehran, where both the power and likeness of Iran’s self-styled “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are omnipresent.

It is unsurprising that the two analysts omitted Khamenei. The rest of their op-ed reveals an inability to recognize the strategic challenges that confront the United States in the Middle East.

Iran is the main threat plaguing the U.S. in the region. Long listed as a chief state sponsor of terrorism, the Islamic Republic has, in recent years alone, plotted to blow up a restaurant in Washington D.C., murdered U.S. servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan, planned attacks at major U.S. airports and power grids, and sheltered and supplied both Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the progenitor of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Tehran has also acted as arguably the greatest imperialist power in the world, with its proxies seizing power in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and, to a different extent, Syria.

Jonathan Tobin: Will Biden’s moves bring the Saudis closer to Israel?

What can the Saudis and other Arab states do to protect their interests in the face of America abandoning them?

As some sources told JNS, the breach with the Americans could draw the Saudis and other Arab states closer to Israel. Indeed, a desire to make things right with the Americans might impel Riyadh to break down and recognize Israel itself, rather than persist with the current status in which the two countries are actively allied but do so without formal recognition.

It’s far from clear that’s the most likely outcome.

As much as MBS and the Saudis value their relationship with Israel and regard it now as essential to their security, there is a big difference between them and the other Arab countries. The Saudi royal family sees its legitimacy as rooted in its status as the guardian of Islamic holy places in Mecca and Medina. Recognizing the Jewish state makes sense from a realpolitik perspective, but not from a religious one since such a move would render the Saudis even more vulnerable to attacks from Islamist critics.

There’s also the possibility that Washington won’t merely punish the Saudis but actively pressure them and the other Gulf states to make their peace with Iran. Indeed, muscling them into bowing to American demands may be a much higher priority for the administration than strong-arming Israel into making concessions to a Palestinian Authority that even Washington’s most ardent two-state solution advocates know won’t make peace.

While it’s hard to imagine such a turn of events right now, stranger things have happened in the history of the Middle East.

Downgrading relations with the Saudis might bring them even closer to Israel and further solidify an Israel-Arab alliance against Iran that could be powerful enough to deter Iranian aggression and transcend Washington’s feckless efforts to appease Tehran.

But if the Biden administration, despite its claims of support for the Abraham Accords, decides that it wants to actively trash them so as to assist its agenda of making nice with Iran or try to bring the dead-in-the-water peace process with the Palestinians back to life, it’s not inconceivable that they could wind up sabotaging the greatest advance towards Middle East peace in decades.

Seen from that perspective, Biden’s swipe at the Saudis isn’t so much a blow struck for human rights as possibly a devastating defeat for the cause of genuine peace between Jews and Arabs.

Saudi Shocker Temple Mount is Jewish, Muslims Should Pray Toward Mecca

Saudi Twitter users have recently been pushing a new line of thought that plays up the importance of Muslims praying towards the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, while downplaying the importance of the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Israel National News(INN) reported Sunday.

The controversial campaign appears to be designed to push the message emphasizing the importance of the Saudi cities of Mecca and Medina as the holy places of Islam, and to eliminate the importance of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount for Muslims, thereby decreasing any Islamic authority the Palestinians have over the site.

One of the messages reportedly comes from well-known Saudi cartoonist Fahd al-Jabiri, who tweeted that “the direction of the prayers of the Jews is not important to us, what is important to us is only our homeland.”

Another English-language tweet is by a Moroccan user named Ibtissam Zegiga whose profile says he studies Hebrew and wants peace, and calls on “dear brothers and sisters” to join in the movement.

“This recent Saudi twitter movement believes that there is no importance of the temple mount to Muslims, and the waiting for the [Jewish] third temple. A new era, one of peace.”

According to the report, the Saudi campaign is in response to the Palestinian insults online and chants against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia heard at at demonstrations at the Temple Mount after prayers on Fridays. The Saudis have quietly supported the recent Abraham Accords the established peace between four Arab countries and Israel, and that has infuriated the Palestinians.

The reaction of the Saudis is to emphasize that the Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem is simply a mosque like all mosques, but the direction of prayer for all Muslims no matter where they are on the planet is only towards to the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

One tweet from the account Saudi Arabia In Numbers said Muslims were not religiously obligated to help the Palestinians by fighting for Jerusalem, where the Palestinians constantly emphasize that the Al Aqsa mosque is the “third holiest site in Islam.”

Raed Salah is the head of the outlawed northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel. For many years he has spewed hate and incitement, trying to rile up Muslims to violence against Jews.

He often claims that Israel is planning to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque. In 2007 he gave a sermon that invoked the blood libel of Jews drinking children's blood. He has said that 4000 Jews were warned ahead of time not to go to the World Trade Center on 9/11. He claimed that Israeli police are drinking and having sex at Al Aqsa. He has said that Monica Lewinsky is part of a global Jewish conspiracy to take down Bill Clinton. He predicted in 2011 that Israel would no longer exist by 2020.

He is currently in prison in Israel for incitement to terrorism.

On Saturday a three day conference began online with the aim of declaring the hateful antisemite a "global humanitarian symbol."

An international conference was launched, Saturday, in solidarity with the Palestinian leader, Raed Salah, who is detained in Israeli prisons, with the aim of coming up with a document declaring him a "global humanitarian symbol."

The Forum for Thought and Strategic Studies (a non-governmental organization based in Istanbul) and the Global Coalition for Support of Jerusalem and Palestine sponsor the "International Conference of Solidarity with Raed Salah", in sessions that started Saturday on Zoom and will continue for 3 days.

Among the most prominent participants in the international conference, whose proceedings are translated into 5 languages, are the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Muhammad, the advisor to the President of the Turkish Justice and Development Party Yassin Aktay, the former Bahraini parliamentarian, Nasser Al-Fadhala, and the preacher of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Ikrimah Sabri.

During the opening session, President of the Forum, Bassam Dwaihi, said: "Today, an elite group of opinion, intellectual and diplomatic leaders are meeting to address a global figure, including the character of Salah with great qualities abounding in the struggle against the occupation."

He pointed out that "the conference includes many sessions to confirm Salah's achievements at all levels, the most important of which are humanitarian, civil and social work, and defending the rights of Palestinians and Islamic and Christian sanctities, and come up with a document aimed at adopting him as a global symbol."

Jew-hatred, humanitarianism - what's the difference?

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights wrote about the status of Palestinian women for International Women's Day.

After the obligatory claims that Israel is the real problem for Palestinian women - highlighting the 39 Palestinian women in Israeli prisons, which is a really minuscule number - PCHR then turned to give some horrific statistics of what Palestinian women have been living through under COVID-19.

Domestic violence soared during the lockdown period. Official statistics conducted by the Ministry of Women Affairs indicate that domestic violence significantly increased during the lockdown imposed by the Palestinian government. However, mental violence was the most documented, which reached 55% of the total number of reported cases of violence against women. In addition to economic violence (53%), social violence (27%), verbal violence (24%), and physical violence, that increased during Covid-19 pandemic.

Surveys have indicated that 88% of women with disabilities were subjected to various kinds of gender-based violence, such as economic, social, physical, mental, and verbal violence. 47% of women sought protection during the pandemic. [This may be a typo or mistranslation, it seems inconceivable that nearly half of all women sought protection! -EoZ]

During 2020, PCHR documented the killing of five women in the oPt on grounds of gender-based violence; 3 in the West Bank and 2 in the Gaza Strip.

88% of women with disabilities were subject to mistreatment?? The women who need to be treated best are treated the worst??

That's some statistic.

This report doesn't say it, but the usual excuse in NGO reports on Palestinian men beating their wives is that they are driven to do it by the "occupation." Which just shows how little NGOs care about actually helping these women.

Toujan al-Faisal was the first woman elected to Jordan's parliament. Her criticisms of Islamic fundamentalists have gotten her into trouble, and later her criticisms of the Jordanian government landed her in jail.

Faisal just wrote an article against the Biden administration accepting the "Zionist" IHRA definition of antisemitism, in which she denies that there was ever any Arab antisemitism, claims that Palestinians are more victims of antisemitism than Jews, and says that the Jewish claim to Israel is practically nonexistent.

First she does what lots of antisemites do - pretend that the definition of antisemitism is being against Semites. "Neither Israel nor world Zionism represent Semitism as a race. The Arabs are more Semitic than they are."

She then goes into alternate history fantasy:

There is no ongoing persecution of the Jews anywhere in the world now. In fact, there was no Arab hostility to Judaism when ships loaded with Jewish refugees were unloaded on the shores of Palestine during World War II, but rather sympathy and hospitality from Palestinians and Arabs, until the purpose of bringing them became clear. Until then, there is no Palestinian or Arab discrimination mentioned against Jews or Judaism.

With a stroke of a pen, al-Faisal has erased hundreds of years of Arab and Muslim persecution of Jews that has been widely documented. The 1921, 1929 and 1936 riots aimed at Jews in Palestine have disappeared. The Arab demands for the British to end all Jewish immigration ahead of and during the Holocaust - never happened.

There are no longer any demands that have political support for the deportation of these people from all of Palestine.

Who made those demands, again? And while those demands aren't popular any more, it is because Israel has gained strength and it is not realistic anymore, not because Arabs suddenly lost the desire to expel all Jews from the land.

She goes on to say that Jews in Israel are engaging in racial discrimination against Arabs, a complete slander.

Faisal then says that if America doesn't oppose this fictional dissemination, then America will become irrelevant in the Middle East. OK.

Of course she doesn't acknowledge that Arab nations are accepting Israel.

She then goes on to say that there is more "anti-Palestinianism" in the world than antisemitism:

All the descriptions of the old and new ethnic and historical rights and grievances in describing the Jews presented through IHRA apply more precisely to the Palestinians as a people that has been displaced from their historical land and even exterminated, which is still continuing.

As usual, the heroes of the "human rights" community don't think Jews have any human rights.

03/08 Links Pt2: BDS groups from US and Europe team up with Iran and Hamas against Israel; B'Tselem fuels Jew-hatred with lies - and these are the donors who fuel B'Tselem

From Ian:

Together, we are changing history: Bahrain's Ambassador Houda Nonoo

Neither our gender, nor the religion we practice, has ever restricted the opportunity of any Bahraini to succeed

In honour of International Women’s Day being observed on Monday (March 8), Khaleej Times sat down with Bahrain’s Ambassador, Her Excellency Houda Nonoo, the first Jewish ambassador to be appointed from an Arab country and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member country's first female ambassador to the United States (US). Ambassador Nonoo had served as Bahrain’s Ambassador to the US from 2008 to 2013 and continues to serve in the country's Foreign Ministry as an envoy.

Excerpts from an exclusive interview:
I’m sure that Jews from around the world have reached out following the signing of Abraham Accords. Have they started to come visit?
It has been six months since the historic announcement from Bahrain and Israel and not a day goes by without Jews from around the world reaching out about upcoming trips or letting us know that they have arrived. Over Hanukkah, we participated in many online menorah lightings with communities in the US and Europe. We have spoken with a plethora of Jewish tour operators who are planning to bring tourists groups in the coming months. There is a euphoria that has spread following these announcements and we are looking forward to welcoming all of the Jewish tourists to Bahrain.

How will Bahrain and the wider region transform following the signing of the Abraham Accords? How does the future look?
While 2020 was historic for Bahrain and Israel, 2021 will be even better as we feel its influence in the business, healthcare, education, travel and tourism sectors. Recently, Israel’s two largest banks, Bank Hapoalim and Bank Leumi, signed several memoranda of understandings (MoUs) with the National Bank of Bahrain. These new partnerships will make banking transactions possible for customers in both countries as new economic opportunities arise.

However, the Abraham Accords were not just signed for economic reasons but also because our leaders – His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – had the bold vision to advance the horizons of stability and prosperity in the Middle East, one built upon warm peace and creating opportunities for the next generation. Together, we are changing history. We are doing this for our children, because by inculcating the lessons of peace and tolerance within them now, they will grow up to be the future political and business leaders of the next generation – and they will not know of the chasm that previous generations faced. As our Bahraini children start to learn about Judaism and Israeli culture in their schools and Israeli children learn more about Islam and Gulf culture in theirs, they will carry these lessons with them as they grow to lead this powerful region. The Abraham Accords are the beginning of a new era for our region, and we are all excited about it.

BDS groups from US and Europe team up with Iran and Hamas against Israel

BDS groups in Europe and North America took part in an event with the Iranian regime, leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups earlier this year.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh praised the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions organizations in his address at the Tehran event, saying: “We see good results to the work of our diaspora in raising awareness, cutting relations with the occupation and delegitimizing it.”

Two related events were broadcast simultaneously from Gaza and Tehran, on January 18, with the Gaza event called “Year to Confront Normalization” and the Iranian event called “Together Against Normalization.” Both Gazans and Iranians reiterated their opposition to the four Arab states,– the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, – which normalized relations with Israel last year.

One of the organizers of the Gaza event, Sheikh Yusuf Abbas, declared that their campaign “mainly aims to make everyone understand that normalization is treason.”

More than 60 organizations took part in the Gaza event, organized by The Global Campaign to Return to Palestine, a broad network including many BDS groups. Among the participants were Western groups, such as the US Palestinian Community Network, Malcolm X Grassroots effort in the US, Collectif Palestine Vaincra, in France, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Sardegna Palestina in Italy, Palestinian Community in Belgium and Luxembourg, and International League of Peoples’ Struggles, based in Australia.

Haniyeh and Ziyad Nakhala, the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, addressed the Tehran event, as did Speaker of the Iranian Islamic Consultive Assembly Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, speakers of the parliaments of Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and the deputy speaker of Yemen’s legislature.

The Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity organization, which is active in Europe and the US, also took part. Israel designated Samidoun a terrorist group this year, as it is a branch of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terrorist group in the US, Canada, the EU and Australia.

One speaker at the Gaza event was Mahathir Mohamad, the former prime minister of Malaysia, who is noted for his antisemitic remarks, such as Jews are “hook-nosed” and “control the world by proxy.” Other participants included Aleida Guevara March, Che Guevara’s daughter, Tuhsar Arun Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s great grandson, and Zwelivelile Mandla Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s grandson.

David Singer: B'Tselem fuels Jew-hatred with lies - and these are the donors who fuel B'Tselem

Israeli-based Arab human rights organisation – B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories - is becoming more and more politically involved in the unresolved 100-years conflict between Jews and Arabs over sovereignty in the territory formerly called Palestine.

The beneficiary of substantial international financial largesse – B’Tselem has a belligerent political anti-Jewish stance.

In a recent Position Paper headlined: “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid” – B’Tselem claims:

"More than 14 million people, roughly half of them Jews and the other half Palestinians, live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under a single rule … the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is organized under a single principle: advancing and cementing the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians… There is one regime governing the entire area and the people living in it, based on a single organizing principle."

But there is no single rule – no Jewish supremacy - no apartheid.

B’Tselem’s claim is patently false - as the Oslo Accords clearly attest: Area A of the 'West Bank' is totally ruled by the Palestine Liberation Organisation – which also exercises full administrative and shared security control over Area B of the 'West Bank' – these areas totalling 40% of the 'West Bank' and housing 95% of the West Bank' Palestinian Arab population.

Gaza is totally ruled by Hamas.

In February, UNRWA announced a "unified food basket program" where it would give all families the same food benefits and take away free food for families with a steady income.

For several years UNRWA classified some families as "abject poor" and gave them more food.

This angered Palestinians, as they get upset any time UNRWA announces any changes in its benefits.

So they did the normal thing they always do: they shut down UNRWA centers, ensuring that no one gets any food at all!

Camp popular committees are being joined with terror groups like the DFLP to protest and shut down UNRWA centers, and the actions are expected to escalate in coming days and weeks.

So everyone can suffer equally!

UNRWA, for its part, says that it simply cannot afford to keep things as they are. It is suffering a $200 million deficit in 2021.

03/08 Links Pt1: India blames Iran’s Quds Force for blast outside Israeli embassy; Attack on Israeli Vessel Was Iranian Retaliation for Secret Operation

From Ian:

India blames Iran’s Quds Force for blast outside Israeli embassy

India has concluded that Iran was behind a blast outside the Israeli embassy in New Delhi in January, with the device planted by a local Shiite cell, an Indian news organization reported Monday.

The Hindustan Times said investigators concluded the attack was carried out by the Quds Force branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tasked with carrying out overseas operations, and that the device was detonated by remote control.

According to the report, there was an attempt to mislead investigators into blaming the Islamic State terror organization for the bomb, but counter-terrorism agencies were clear that it was an Iranian attack.

“That the bomb was not of high intensity, with no human targets in mind was perhaps because the Iranians did not want to run afoul of a friendly nation like India. But the message was clear and the threat is real,” an unnamed expert told the outlet.

A letter found close to the scene of the blast was a death threat to the ambassador that warned he was being constantly being watched and vowed to avenge the deaths of “martyrs” Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander who was killed in a January 2020 United States drone strike; Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a top Iraqi militia commander who was killed along with Soleimani; and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the architect of Iran’s nuclear program, killed in a November 2020 attack Tehran has blamed on Israel.

The handwritten note, in English, but riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, was addressed to Israel’s ambassador, Ron Malka, and referred to him as a “terrorist of the terrorist nation.”

Attack on Israeli Vessel Was Iranian Retaliation for Secret Operation, Says Official

The attack on an Israeli-owned vessel in the Gulf of Oman on Feb. 25 was an Iranian retaliation for a secret Israeli operation, a senior security source told the Hebrew-language news site Walla.

The anonymous official denied previous claims that the attack was a response to the assassinations of Iran’s top terrorist commander Qassem Soleimani and its leading nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Soleimani was assassinated in a US drone strike in January 2020, and Fakhrizadeh was killed near Tehran in November 2020 in what has been widely viewed as a likely Mossad operation.

The source said that while Iran has been attempting to attack Israeli interests over the past year, they have largely been frustrated by Israel.

He did not give any details on what the secret Israeli operation may have been, but Israel is believed to be working constantly at frustrating the Iranian nuclear program by covert means.

In a Jewish Chronicle article published last month detailing the operation that killed Fakhrizadeh, one intelligence source said, “We will kill the bomb.”

Israel, Cyprus and Greece agree to link power grids via subsea cable

Cyprus, Greece and Israel on Monday signed an initial agreement to build the world's longest and deepest underwater power cable that will traverse the Mediterranean seabed at a cost of about $900 million and link their electricity grids.

The project, called the Euro-Asia interconnector, will provide a back-up power source in times of emergency, said Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, who was in Nicosia to sign a memorandum of understanding with his counterparts.

Cypriot Energy Minister Natasa Pilides said it marked "a decisive step towards ending the island's energy isolation, and consequently, our dependence on heavy fuels."

The cable will have a capacity of 1,000-2,000 megawatts (MW) and is expected to be completed by 2024, according to Israel's energy ministry. With a length of about 1,500 km and a maximum depth of 2,700 metres, it will be the longest and deepest subsea electricity cable to have ever been constructed, it said.

Steinitz said the cable "will allow us to receive electricity backing from the power grids of the European continent in times of emergency and more importantly will also support our ability to significantly increase reliance on solar power generation." The Israeli ministry said that the European Union has recognised the cable as a "Project of Common Interest" and was willing to partly fund it.

From the Jewish Journal:

The UCLA student government passed a resolution on March 3 alleging that the Israeli government is committing “ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinians.

The resolution called for the University of California system to divest from “the war industry” and for “the university to sever itself from companies that engage or aid in the oppression of any people.”

But what Jewish groups and students have taken issue with is that the resolution states that divestment is a legitimate tool to fight against injustice, citing “South African apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing in Palestine by the Israeli government.” The resolution also promotes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolution passed by the UCLA student government in 2014.

“We had no idea this resolution was coming up, and were not alerted by anyone ahead of time,” Aaron Ahdoot, president of Bruins for Israel Public Affairs Committee at UCLA, told the Journal. “The language of the resolution was not released ahead of the council meeting, making it impossible for any of the students to speak out on it.”

Rabbi Aaron Lerner, Executive Director of Hillel at UCLA, wrote in an email to community members that the resolution “follows the familiar pattern of seeking to delegitimize Israel within broader language. The resolution was deliberately hidden from Jewish students, preventing them from engaging in the debate.”

Indeed, while the resolution was sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine and a host of other groups, as far as I can tell they didn't mention the upcoming resolution in social media beforehand - and celebrated it afterwards.

It was deliberately hidden to stop any pro-Israel students from having the opportunity to object, which shows how little the BDS groups actually think of their resolutions' actual merits.

The "apartheid" language is hidden in the preamble:

WHEREAS, the strategy and tool of divestment has been used on numerous occasions to fight for justice, including such examples as the Darfur genocide in Sudan, South African apartheid, the private prison industry, fossil fuels, the Thirty-Meter Telescope, and against ethnic cleansing in Palestine by the Israeli government;

And the preamble also pushes BDS:

WHEREAS, in 2014, the Undergraduate Student Association Council passed A Resolution to Divest from Companies that Violate Palestinian Human Rights proposed by UCLA Students for Justice in Palestine;

There is an irony in that the actual resolution would, if applied fairly, mean that the UCLA Student Government itself should boycott BDS:

LET IT FINALLY BE RESOLVED, that the Undergraduate Student Association Council, representing the interests of students, calls upon the university to sever itself from companies that engage or aid in the oppression of any people based on religion, nationality, gender, race or orientation, or violence against them, by divesting from companies that participate and profit from human rights violations.

BDS calls for Israeli speakers on campus to be boycotted and for Israeli universities to be shunned, which means that BDS itself discriminates against nationality. If discrimination on that basis is unacceptable, then the UCLA Student Government should ban any group that pushes BDS on campus.

The good news is that after Jewish groups pointed out the underhandedness of sneaking Israel-hating language into an anti-war resolution, the student government apologized:

On March 5, the UCLA student government sent an apology to Hillel at UCLA over the resolution being “inadvertently hidden from the Jewish community and the public at large” and that the student government will make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“Going forward we hope to work with student leaders in Hillel and in all spaces on campus to ensure that USAC [UCLA Students Association Council] is a safe space for debate and dialogue on important issues on our agendas,” they wrote.

But that is fairly meaningless since the resolution has already passed.

On #InternationalwomensDay, hypocritical "pro-Palestinian" groups don't give a damn about Palestinian women's rights

Today is International Women's Day. As usual, "pro-Palestinian" groups are using it as a means for anti-Israel propaganda.

Yet not one is calling for more women's rights under Palestinian rule.

As we've mentioned before, the Palestinian Authority cynically uses women's rights as a weapon against Israel but really doesn't care about rights for its own women.

It joined the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) along with over a dozen other international agreements in 2014 without reservation. Yet it never actually put any of CEDAW's provisions into law.

Not only that, the PA itself has rejected the convention as violating Islamic law.

Not one "liberal" anti-Israel group said a word.

The editor of a major Palestinian newspaper admitted that there was no intent for the Palestinian government to actually take these international agreements seriously. The only reason that it joined these conventions was to pretend to be a "state" so the International Criminal Court can bring a case against Israel: "The government cannot implement CEDAW in its entirety in light of the existence of a societal system, and that the signing of the agreement is political and was not intended to undermine the Sharia, and had it not been for the signing of CEDAW and many other agreements, the International Criminal Court would not have accepted us."

The actual laws under the Palestinian Authority and under the Gaza government undermine women's rights. Here are only some examples from a 2018 UN report that, as far as I can tell, was completely ignored by these hypocritical "pro-Palestinian" groups who pretend to care about Palestinian rights.

It gets even worse.

A 2018 survey showed that:

35% of Palestinian men say that men who kill their female relatives for "honor" reasons should not go to jail.

47% of Palestinian men say that female relatives who "act or dress" in ways that they disapprove deserve to be punished.

17% of Palestinian men admitted to have engaged in physical violence against their female partners, 21% of women say they have been hit by their husbands.

80% of Palestinian men say "A man should have the final word about decisions in the home."

34% of them say "There are times when a woman deserves to be beaten."

63% of men say "A woman should tolerate violence to keep the family together."

Again, these "pro-Palestinian" NGOs and media outlets who happily use women's rights as a club to beat Israel don't have a word to say about Palestinian misogyny that affect Palestinian women every day.

When these groups claim that Israel is the main oppressor of Palestinian women, they are actively hurting Palestinian women by not allowing a real conversation about their rights to even take place.

Jordanian member of parliament Saleh al-Armouti is upset that a book by Albert Einstein is freely available in Jordan - because it is Zionist.

He composed a parliamentary question to the Minister of Culture asking why it promotes a book that promotes and supports Zionist ideology, settlement activity and the "occupation of Palestine."

The book he is referring to is "The World As I see It," a pamphlet by famed scientist Albert Einstein, written in 1934.

Al Armouti was concerned that the book includes sections exhorting the Jews of Germany to support building up Palesine. He is also upset at these phrases in the wook:

"Palestine is not primarily a place of refuge for the Jews of Eastern Europe, but the embodiment of the re-awakening corporate spirit of the whole Jewish nation."

"The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice, and the desire for personal independence--these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it."

"Palestine will be a centre of culture for all Jews, a refuge for the most grievously oppressed, a field of action for the best among us, a unifying ideal, and a means of attaining inward health for the Jews of the whole world.."

The book was apparently distributed by the Ministry of Culture as part of its annual Family Library Project which publishes a variety of texts.

Al Armouti asked the Ministry why it is marketing a Zionist book, who was responsible for this decision, who paid for the publishing costs. He also says that the contents of the book would provide toxicity for generations of Jordanians.

He further claimed that Einstein's words are "a violation of the Jordanian position and the Jordanian principles, of international law and international legitimacy, and breaches global peace and security according to the United Nations Charter."

Einstein in the book wants to see peace between Jews and Arabs:

It is for us to solve the problem of living side by side with our brother the Arab in an open, generous, and worthy manner

We need to pay great attention to our relations with the Arabs. By cultivating these carefully we shall be able in future to prevent things from becoming so dangerously strained that people can take advantage of them to provoke acts of hostility. This goal is perfectly within our reach, because our work of construction has been, and must continue to be, carried out in such a manner as to serve the real interests of the Arab population also.

I have a feeling that MP Armouti does not share those sentiments.

Cartoon of the Day: The benefits of tenure

03/07 Links: David Collier: BDS network exposed as front for Islamic terror groups; PA: ‘If ICC Indicts Israel, We Can Take US Firms to Court’; Three Gazan fishermen killed in suspected Hamas rocket misfire

From Ian:

David Collier: Exclusive – BDS network exposed as front for Islamic terror groups

BDS is an arm of the terror groups
Given all the evidence, it is clear that the terrorists and their supporters that dominate the GCRP and its events are not hangers-on but rather the driving ideology behind the entire project and its goals.

Take a look at this image:

It is the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (a supporter of the terrorist network) sharing an article from Samidoun (another supporter of the terrorist network) reporting an event in which Ahed Tamimi (a supporter of the terrorist network) was given the floor. The tragedy is that this event took place in the European Parliament in Brussels. It is Iranian Islamist influence spreading anti-Jewish hate throughout Europe and centres of influence in the west.

The GCRP now spew out an endless stream of propaganda via their outlets and their material is shared relentlessly in online anti-Israel groups:
And on campus:

The openly stated goal of this terrorist support network is to use participants in its events as tools to spread the word across the globe. The images above shows both how it works – and more scarily, how well it all succeeds. This is from the closing statement at the launch event:

The evidence is all here. Using solidarity movements as proxies and hiding behind human rights keywords, radical Islamic ideology spreads into our high streets and onto our university campuses. They turn up with catchy slogans such as ‘Apartheid week’ or ‘BDS’ – but the driving force behind all this is a radical Islamic genocidal force that seeks to destroy the Jewish presence in the region – simply because it is Jewish. This has nothing to do with human rights. It is a key element in a radical Islamic holy war.

Khaled Abu Toameh: PLO slams US for ignoring Palestinian misery and pro-Israel, anti-ICC bias

Palestinians have accused the Biden Administration of ignoring their suffering for its bias in opposing the International Criminal Court's war crimes probe into Israeli action in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza.

The US “totally ignored the legitimate rights of the Palestinians to have a viable state, while the Israeli occupation state continues to annex vast areas of the Palestinian territory in an attempt to undermine the so-called two-state solution," said Tayseer Khaled, member of the PLO Executive Committee on Saturday.

Khaled referred specifically to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s speech on foreign policy last week, in which he said Palestinian suffering has been completely ignored.

“Blinken did not even mention a word with regard to the suffering the Palestinian people face under occupation, nor anything about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and its impact on security and stability in the region,” he said.

“This confirms that the new US administration pays no attention to reviewing the destructive policy of the Trump administration," Khaled said. Blinken did not mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his major policy speech last week. Similarly, the Biden administration's Interim National Security Strategic Guidance published last week laid out a Middle East strategy that spoke of Israel, but not of the Palestinians. A senior Palestinian official in Ramallah also expressed disappointment with the Biden administration for opposing last week's decision by ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to open a war crimes investigation into the actions of Israelis and Palestinians.

Palestinian Authority: ‘If ICC Indicts Israel, We Can Take US Firms to Court’

In an interview that aired on Palestine T.V. on March 1, Shtayyeh said, “Before we turned to the ICC, there had been tremendous and unparalleled pressure.”

“I was in New York when a delegation from the State Department came. They left Washington, D.C., at six o’clock in the morning so that they could meet [Palestinian Authority] President [Mahmoud] Abbas in New York. The reason was that our membership in the ICC is not only against Israel,” he said.

“If Israel is indicted, all the parties involved in the Israeli actions against the Palestinians will also be indicted. This means that we can also take the American companies and organizations that support Israel to court. Hence, the deputy secretary of state said to President Abu Mazen [Abbas]: ‘If you become members in the ICC, it will be like obtaining nuclear weapons.”

Neither Israel nor the United States is a signatory to the Rome Statute from which the ICC derives its authority.

The Palestinian premier also said that the P.A.’s appeal to the ICC had “shattered” Israel’s claimed “monopoly on pain.”

“Israel was basically purporting that the Jews in the world were the only ones who were tormented by the Nazis and so on,” he said.

“Our appeal to the ICC demonstrates and proves that the Palestinian people suffer, their prisoners have been tortured and killed, Palestinians have been martyred and displaced … So we shattered the monopoly on pain that Israel purported to have,” he added.

Palestinian PM Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh: As ICC Members, We Can Take American Companies and Organizations to Court #ICC #Palestinians #Israel pic.twitter.com/d1UkccgG8q
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) March 7, 2021

Magen David Adom vaccinating Palestinians at Tulkarm Thursday

The Palestinian Ministry of Health has admitted that it has no idea when it will be getting COVID-19 vaccines that they say have been promised from the major drug manufacturers.

At the end of January, the ministry claimed that it would begin receiving mass quantities of the Pfizer, Sputnik-V and AstraZeneca vaccines "within days." It never happened.

In early February, the health ministry said that 2 million doses of the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine would arrive starting February 14. It never happened.

The minister of health said in late February that two million doses from AstraZeneca would be arriving starting at the end of February and the beginning of March.

None of that happened.

Now, a ministry of health spokesperson has admitted that they don't know when any vaccines will arrive. He said that the shipments from the COVAX mechanism are due to begin arriving after March 20th, but no date is given for the arrival of the vaccines supposedly procured from Pfizer, Moderna and Russia. Interestingly, he didn't mention the AstraZeneca vaccines that were said to have been purchased as well.

Nowhere in this interview did the spokesperson say a word about Israel. He didn't claim that the PA ever asked for vaccines from Israel, nor did he say that Israel was stopping any vaccines from coming. The times that the Palestinians have asked Israel for help with vaccines, Israel complied (although sometimes delayed.)

The lack of asking Israel for help is despite the fact that new, faster spreading mutations of COVID-19 have been devastating Palestinian hospitals which are at capacity.

That fact the Palestinians have avoided asking Israel for help has simply not been mentioned in the hundreds of media reports criticizing Israel for not providing vaccines to Palestinians. Israel cannot provide vaccines without cooperation of the Palestinian health authorities. They aren't going to leave boxes of vaccines at checkpoints.

Israel's ability to help is much more limited than is being reported, though. Today, Israel does not have enough vaccines to inoculate all Palestinians. It has some 300,000 Moderna vaccines today with 700,000 more supposed to come in April.

Israel was supposed to start a program to vaccinate over 120,000 Palestinian workers today but that has been delayed for administrative reasons after a pilot program that gave some 700 doses last Thursday. Two doses for each worker would deplete the majority of Israel's existing Moderna supply, and it is still waiting for much more from Moderna as well as AstraZeneca.