Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

03/24 Links Pt1: Israeli Elections 2021: With Most Votes Counted, Arab Party Ra’am Poised to Play Key Role as Netanyahu’s Advantage Slips Away; Kontorovich: Fake International Law Is the Newest Anti-Israel Libel

From Ian:

Israeli Elections 2021: With Most Votes Counted, Arab Party Ra’am Poised to Play Key Role as Netanyahu’s Advantage Slips Away

With 87% of the vote counted in Israel’s 2021 elections, the political ground appeared to shift on Wednesday, with Naftali Bennett’s Yamina party falling from the position of kingmaker and the Arab party Ra’am emerging as a possible decisive force.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the “pro-Netanyahu” bloc of parties has fallen from 56 seats to 52, while the “anti-Netanyahu” bloc — a diverse group of parties that seek to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — dropped slightly to 56 mandates.

Netanyahu’s Likud party won 30 seats, Yair Lapid’s opposition Yesh Atid 18, and the religious parties Shas and Yehadut HaTorah 9 and 7, respectively. The results show Benny Gantz’s Blue and White with 8, Labor with 7, and Yisrael Beiteinu, the Joint List, New Hope, and Religious Zionism with 6 apiece, with Meretz winning 5.

Crucially, the Yamina party received 7 seats, while Ra’am is now slated to win 5 — despite appearing to fall below the threshold to enter the Knesset during much of Tuesday night.

Initial exit polls Tuesday showed Yamina’s Bennett set to play kingmaker, with his party’s 7 seats able to swing the balance between the pro- and anti-Netanyahu blocs. Now, however, those seats would not be enough to give Netanyahu a majority to form a government.

However, if both Ra’am and Yamina join with Netanyahu, he would have such a majority. By the same token, if either or both of them joined the anti-Netanyahu bloc, it would theoretically be able to form a government, although such a coalition forming is unlikely.

Even with most results in, they appear close enough that it remains possible the map will continue to change as the final ballots are counted.

Both blocs have to some extent declared victory, with Netanyahu pledging to form a right-wing government but leaving his options open.

Outcome still up in air, officials to start count of 450,000 absentee ballots

The Central Elections Committee was preparing on Wednesday afternoon to begin counting some 450,000 absentee ballots, and said it hoped to conclude the tally by Friday morning.

The ballots, cast in special double envelopes, account for some 10 percent of the national vote, and could yet determine whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is able to form a new government, whether his rivals do so, or whether the political gridlock continues and Israel heads for yet another election after four inconclusive rounds.

As of 5 p.m., 97 percent of regular votes had been tallied, with the Central Elections Committee expected to add the final 3% shortly.

The double-envelope system is used for anyone voting outside a regular polling station assigned to them according to their place of residence. They are all brought to the Knesset to be counted by CEC representatives. The process takes longer than the regular count as officials cross-reference the person’s details on the outer envelope to ensure they have not also voted elsewhere. After this is completed, the anonymous inner envelopes are amassed together and the ballots within can be counted like all other votes.

Absentee ballots are usually cast by members of security forces, prisoners, diplomats and persons with mobility issues who can not reach their assigned polling station.

In the previous three elections, the number of people voting by double envelope rose from 240,000 to 280,000 to 330,000, but this year jumped significantly as it now includes isolated COVID-19 patients and those in quarantine.

Eugene Kontorovich: Fake International Law Is the Newest Anti-Israel Libel

Not only are Palestinians capable of securing vaccines from abroad, they have in fact done so—though, according to media reports, they have misallocated early doses to ruling party officials and even re-exported many to Jordanian royals. The Palestinians get to choose which vaccines they want—typically not the Pfizer doses preferred by Israel—and how much they are willing to pay for them. Israel got its shots early because it paid top taxpayer dollar for quick delivery. The Palestinians are not taxed by Israel.

Again, the experts waving around Art. 56 are surely aware of the ICRC commentary that makes clear it does not mean what they say it does. But they disingenuously choose not to mention that inconvenient fact.

The official commentary also makes clear that even when an occupying power does provide public health services, it does not have to do so for free. But Israel does not control the Palestinian budget, and it is surprising that Jerusalem's critics insist that it impose its spending priorities on the Palestinian government. Part of having one's own government is the ability to set budgetary priorities. According to a State Department report, the PA spends hundreds of millions of dollars on its "pay for slay" program that incentivizes terror against Israeli Jews. The funding for that program would be more than enough to buy vaccines for its entire population. But the PA has put killing Jews ahead of protecting its own people.

The claim of Israeli responsibility for vaccinating the PA's populace was never made before Israel achieved global renown for its rapid vaccine rollout program. The accusations against Israel now are designed to besmirch and belittle this remarkable achievement. But absolutely nothing in the Geneva Convention says that an occupied territory is unable to "look after the health of its population" if it does not vaccinate them with the speed of the fastest country on earth. This idea is baseless and preposterous. In fact, the PA is receiving vaccines at roughly the same speed as are comparable governments.

And of course, none of this even touches upon the dispute as to whether Israel actually illicitly "occupies" Judea and Samaria in the first instance.

Pandemics throughout history have seen Jews blamed for the spread of disease. Today, such claims come dressed in legal robes—and get amplified by progressive U.S. legislators.

For many years, we have been reading that the Palestinians are starving.

News Line (socialist), 2006: "Israel’s brutal occupation of the Palestinian people has created refugees, death squads, and now starvation in Gaza, and hunger throughout the occupied territories."

The UN, 2007: "The forced starvation diet of Palestinians"

Richard Falk, 2007: " Israel ...has brought the people of Gaza to the brink of collective starvation and desolation."

Business Insider, 2011: "The Israeli Campaign To Starve Palestinians Into Submission Is A Crime"

WRMEA, 2019: "The Scenario of a Million Palestinians Going Hungry in Gaza"

Guardian, 2019: "One million face hunger in Gaza after US cut to Palestine aid"

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas never complained about these stories - on the contrary, they encouraged them, because they blamed Israel and the US for "starving" Palestinians and the result could be more money for them.

Something interesting happened in the past week, though.

Mohammed Dahlan, the exiled Fatah Gaza leader who is now trying to get involved in the planned Palestinian elections, said in an interview with Al Arabiya that “The Palestinian people have suffered from poverty, oppression and hunger for 15 years,” exactly what Israel's critics have claimed - but Dahlan blamed the Palestinian leadership for this, not Israel.

Pro-Abbas Palestinian media responded dismissively: "We have never heard of a single Palestinian who died of starvation."

Oh wow. It seems the Palestinians really weren't starving for 15 years as we've been told. (They were literally starving to death - in Syria - but no one talks about that.)

The article also reveals a lot about Palestinian corruption without intending to. It says that Dahlan entered Yasir Arafat’s council one day, protesting the financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority, and Arafat replied to him mockingly: “Oh Mohammad, let other people talk about corruption, not you. By the way, tell me. From where did you get the money to buy your Al Shawa villa, from your father's account? ”

If the story is true, it means that Arafat knew about the amount of corruption at every level of his Fatah cronies, and didn't do anything about it. Corruption was how he kept everyone in line.

Nothing has changed - we know that Abbas' family has become rich from their business ventures funded by the Palestinian Authority's decisions.

Many in the UK like to celebrate the Kindertransport - the initiative to save some 10,000 Jewish children from Europe after Kristallnacht.

The reality is a bit more complicated.

The UK refused to spend a penny to help the children and insisted that they all get sponsors to pay significant sums for them. Parents and adult siblings were of course not allowed to come. And the ones that were allowed to come to England were the ones who didn't look Jewish, with no health issues, and who were not religious, so they could work and assimilate.

Within hours of Germany invading Poland, the British Home Office stopped all transfers of children - even the ones already en route, as we can see from this heartbreakingly cruel letter.

The ten thousand who were saved were saved very reluctantly and most were used as child labor. Their lives were saved but it was not quite as altruistic as it sounds.

The BBC just published an extensive report on a Nazi war criminal who hid in England for decades after the war. In the middle of the article we see this detail:

As many as 50,000 Nazi collaborators infiltrated Polish forces in the later stages of World War Two, historian Martin Dean, who worked on the government inquiry and for the Metropolitan Police’s War Crimes Unit, says.

About a third of them ended up in the UK.

This means that over 15,000 Nazi sympathizers ended up sheltering - and hiding - in the UK after the war.

The British ended up sheltering far more Nazi sympathizers after the war than Jewish children before the war.

The Jewish children were vetted to make sure they were the "right" kind of Jews before being admitted. The Nazis seem to have had a far easier time to enter the UK and live out their years than the Jewish children did.

It is a small detail, but it points to the larger issue of how little the world cared about Jews.

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party has been floundering in recent weeks, with the defection of Nasser al Kidwa who wants to run as a separate candidate/party for elections and rumors about Marwan Barghouti being interested in running for president from his Israeli prison cell, while exiled strongman Mohammed Dahlan goes on Gulf TV shows every night to insult Abbas.

But according to the latest PCPSR poll, Fatah is actually doing better than it was three and six months ago. 38% of the public wants to see a Fatah led government, and only 22% was Hamas.

Mahmoud Abbas himself is not that popular, though. Only 32% are satisfied with how he does his job and 65% are not satisfied. 68% of the public want president Abbas to resign while 26% want him to remain in office.

The people seem to dislike both Hamas and Fatah. When asked what would happen if Fatah won, over 2/3 of those who responded said that corruption would increase. If Hamas wins, the people expect the economy to go downhill.

An open ended question of who people want their next president to be results in 22% preferring Marwan Barghouti, 14% Ismail Haniyyeh, and only 9% Mahmoud Abbas. Other names mentioned were 7% for Mohammed Dahlan, 3% Khalid Mishal, 2% Mohammad Shtayyeh, 2% Mustafa Barghouti, and 1% Yahya Sinwar.

03/23 Links Pt2: How The Equality Act Would Legalize Religious Bigotry; The National Council of Jewish Women's Apologists for Anti-Semites; NY Times Defends Holocaust-Inversion

From Ian:

How The Equality Act Would Legalize Religious Bigotry

The Founding Fathers recognized freedom of expression and religious liberty as core elements of diversity and tolerance. Now, nearly 250 years later, Congress is acting to stamp them out, ushering in a new era of government-sanctioned anti-religious bigotry.

While no one could argue this is motivated by anti-Jewish bias in particular, the disproportionate repression of Jewish religious practice — by a law unironically billed as an “Equality Act,” no less — is far too significant to ignore.

On Jan. 1, 2020, almost three months before COVID-19 limits on gatherings, more than 100,000 observant American Jews filled MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, and other locations across the country for a unique gala honoring religious education. Called simply “The Siyum,” meaning “the completion,” it honored the tens of thousands of religiously motivated men — and significant number of women — who completed a seven-and-a-half-year cycle studying the Oral Torah.

The Siyum celebrates not only education, but Jewish resilience in the face of persecution. The 2,711-day cycle was first set in motion in Poland in 1923, where the first Siyum ensued in 1931. In 1945, the main venues of the third Siyum were in Israel, but, incredibly, one was also held by Holocaust survivors in a displaced persons camp in Germany. Since 1990, the largest celebrations have taken place in the United States, each exponentially larger than the one before it.

But now the Land of Liberty might never allow another. With the Equality Act, Congress is waging a legislative effort to prohibit the next Siyum, scheduled to take place in June 2027, and other such “discriminatory” violations of human rights. Under the Act, observant Jews will no longer be legally permitted to gather to celebrate religious education, or any other occasion, in accordance with their beliefs.

The reason is simple: not only prayer services, but family lifecycle events of all kinds — from circumcisions to bar mitzvahs to weddings to funerals — are commonly divided by biological sex in traditional Orthodox Judaism. This is true whether or not ceremonies are held in synagogues.

Whether in restaurants, catering halls, funeral homes, or elsewhere, all of these gatherings are often observed in what the law describes as “public accommodations.” Every major Siyum event over the past century has observed this same strict separation of the sexes. The Equality Act would ban them all.

For Election Day: The famous 1961 debate over the claim that the 'Jews are a fossil race'

Recently, Melanie Phillips wrote in an article posted on Arutz 7 "...The controversy started with a tweet by the Labour Party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, congratulating the new head of the Scottish Labour Party, Anas Sarwar, on his appointment. Rayner described Sarwar, who is of Pakistani descent, as “the first-ever ethnic minority leader of a political party anywhere in the U.K.”

Sarwar is certainly the first Muslim or Asian leader of a political party. But there have been four Jewish party leaders in the United Kingdom—from Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in the 19th century to Labour Party leader Ed Miliband in the last decade.

...This erupted on the BBC’s daily show, “Politics Live,” which chose to respond to protests from British Jews over Rayner’s remark by hosting a discussion with a title card: “Should Jews count as an ethnic minority?”

To many Jews, even to ask this question was demonstrably absurd. How could they not be counted as such? And why were non-Jews suddenly presuming to tell Jews what they were or were not?

Back to the 1961 debate
The claims that Jews are not an ethnic minority are not new, I would like to describe a debate that happened in 1961 at Montreal's McGill University and became world famous - what we today would call viral - with recordings still existing. It was between the famous historian Dr. Arnold Toynbee, professor at the London School of Economics, and Israeli Ambassador to Canada Rabbi Dr. Yaakov Herzog. Herzog's brother, Chaim Herzog, would later become the sixth president of Israel. He was also the son of the second Ashkenazi chief rabbi, Yitzhak Herzog.

The debate probed among other topics whether Jews today are a vibrant continuation of a people rooted in antiquity. Rabbi Yisroel Meir Lau describes the debate in which Toynbee described the Jews as a fossil race.

"Dr. Toynbee insisted that Israel is not truly a nation, and does not deserve a state. The Jews, he claimed, are a religious sect with a mission to guide mankind in monotheism, morals and ethics in the Diaspora, but are not a nation. Permit me to use an imaginary voyage to develop a point made by Dr. Herzog."

Swastikas in Damascus

A new death notice appeared in a Lebanese village north of Beirut last September, glued to a public wall. As residents of the village went about their days, some of them probably stopped, out of habit, to read the name of the man who had recently died. It would have been a scene repeated every day in Syrian and Lebanese villages: Those who didn’t know the deceased proceeded to peruse the names of his surviving family members to find out whether condolences were in order.

There was more to this particular death notice, however, than the news of the death itself. People took pictures of it and posted it to social media, where it immediately went viral. Incredulous, people read the name of the deceased man, written in big, bold font in the center of the poster: Hitler Zakhia Bassil.

Not much was shared about Mr. Bassil himself. But the names of his sons, Adolf and Addie, hinted at something of a family tradition. I was aghast when a photo of the poster reached me via WhatsApp, from a friend looking for a laugh.

I spent my life between Aleppo, Damascus, and Beirut before moving to Paris a year ago. I’ve encountered countless such anecdotes, which seem to be the haphazard leftovers of some combination of enduring government propaganda and a lack of actual World War II and Holocaust education.

Despite the rejection of the ideology by the vast majority of the population in Syria and Lebanon, symbols associated with Nazism were there, out in the open, and having a swastika tattoo or waving a Nazi flag did not land a person in jail or lead to a financial penalty. The first time I remember seeing a swastika was at the all-boys Presbyterian school I attended for 12 years in Aleppo. Al-Saleeb al-Ma’qouf, the Hooked Cross, was one of many symbols that boys would mindlessly carve into their desks, scribble on the walls of the bathroom, or sketch in textbooks. Most of them, I would learn, didn’t even know what the symbol meant. Those who did, didn’t know much.

School management didn’t rush to remove those symbols, or try to ban them, more than they did any other symbol or writing on the wall.

State Department memo confirms Palestinians paying terrorists

From the Washington Free Beacon:

The Biden administration privately confirmed to Congress last week that the Palestinian Authority has continued to use international aid money to reward terrorists but said the finding won't impact its plans to restart funding.

In a non-public State Department report obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, the administration said the Palestinians spent at least $151 million in 2019 on its "pay-to-slay" program, in which international aid dollars are spent to support imprisoned terrorists and their families. Financial statements further indicate that at least $191 million was spent on "deceased Palestinians referred to as ‘martyrs.’" Despite this practice, which violates U.S. law and prompted the Trump administration to freeze aid to the Palestinians, the "Biden-Harris Administration has made clear its intent to restart assistance to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza," according to the report.

It remains unclear how the Biden administration will restart American aid without violating a 2018 bipartisan law known as the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits the U.S. government from resuming Palestinian aid until the payments to terrorists are stopped.

The State Department admitted it was "unable to certify" to Congress that the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization are complying with the Taylor Force Act, primarily because they have "not terminated payments for acts of terrorism to any individual, after being fairly tried, who has been imprisoned for such acts of terrorism and to any individual who died committing such acts of terrorism, including to a family member of such individuals," according to the report.

Currently, "plans for [resuming] this assistance are being developed, and the resumption of assistance to the West Bank and Gaza, including any assistance for the PA using [fiscal year] 2020 funds, will be fully consistent with applicable requirements under U.S. law," the administration claims in the report without explaining exactly how it will legally execute that plan.

Another private State Department memo outlining the Biden administration’s efforts to increase diplomacy with the Palestinian government indicates that U.S. aid dollars will start flowing again at the end of March or early April, according to a copy of that memo recently leaked in the press.

Israel haters like to imply, without evidence, that Israel is misusing US funds for demolition of Palestinian terrorist houses or other anti-terror activities in the territories. They self-righteously claim that they are only trying to protect US taxpayer dollars.

You can be sure they will not say a word against resuming funding the Palestinian Authority even with the full knowledge that the funds will go, directly or indirectly, into the pockets of terrorists and their families.

You can also be sure that the Palestinian Authority has learned that it doesn't need to change at all and Western nations will still fall over themselves to give them cash.

03/23 Links Pt1: Biden’s ‘Nine-Miles-Wide Plan’; PA Funneled Hundreds of Millions to Terrorists, State Dept Report Reveals; Ahmad Alissa Named as Suspect in Boulder Shooting

From Ian:

Josh Hammer: The Peace Process That Never Was

In a sane world, partisans of the Palestinian-Arab cause would celebrate the fact that last year, a pro-Israel U.S. president and right-wing Israeli prime minister both agreed to a framework that included the potential for an independent Palestinian state. They, of course, did not. Which brings us back to the present moment.

There is a tremendous risk that the Biden-Harris administration is set to reverse the genuine progress of the Trump era, opting instead to raise failed pieties from the dead and reassert them anew. But there is no U.S. national security interest served by a return of pressure on Israel to concede “land for peace” in the absence of any Palestinian concessions. There is no American interest in subjecting Israel to public flogging and bribery, or dangling the sword of Damocles over Israeli military aid.

America’s interest, rather, is better fortified with a strong Israel, one that knows America has its back when it acts against common enemies in Bashar Assad’s Syria, Hezbollah-run Lebanon, within Gaza, or in Judea and Samaria. In a post-JCPOA world, an unapologetically strong Israel means a strong military counterweight to the threat posed by Iran, and a mighty bulwark against Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s aspiration to neo-Ottoman hegemony. It means a greater chance of rapprochement between Israel and the Arab nations.

America has much to gain from an empowered Israel, which—paradoxical though it may seem—has quite obviously led to more peace, not less: more regional normalization agreements, better containment of Iran, more security for American interests, and more geopolitical stability. Only a stronger Israel can ever lead to a durable and lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. As America’s regional interests are supported by Israel’s military, diplomatic, and economic strength, it follows that America’s regional interests are effectively coterminous with a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. The analysis really is that simple.

To the extent that the Biden-Harris administration might change its current course and consider genuine alternatives to the failed “inside-out,” “land for peace” consensus, it has options. One intriguing idea is what Bar Ilan University Professor Morechai Kedar calls the “emirates plan,” modeled after the eponymous Gulf state. Just as the UAE is a loose confederation of disparate Arab tribes, each overseeing its own tribal land, so too could the deeply fractious Palestinians of Judea and Samaria confederate into a series of noncontiguous, Palestinian “emirates” based around the relevant tribes’ home cities. That kind of plan is “based on the sociology of the Middle East, which has the tribe as the major cornerstone of society,” as Kedar has explained. In other words, a plan based on how the Middle East is, not how blinkered Western elites want to believe it could be.

Prevailing leftist orthodoxy holds that everything the dreaded Orange Man did was bad and must therefore be toppled. But the Trump administration, unlike so many of its predecessors, understood something about how the region works, decided to accept that reality, and worked with it. As a result, the region today is more stable, more secure, and more peaceful, and the United States’ own national interest is better served. Biden’s legacy will depend, in part, on his not mucking it up.

Biden’s ‘Nine-Miles-Wide Plan’

The central theme of Biden’s Israeli-Palestinian policy in the short term, according to the Amr memo, will be a series of rewards to be given to the Palestinian Authority, even though the P.A. has done absolutely nothing to merit any of them.

Despite the P.A.’s financial support for terrorists, harboring of fugitive terrorists, constant anti-Jewish incitement and unrelenting anti-American propaganda, the Biden administration intends to “reset the U.S. relationship with the Palestinian people and leadership” by:
- Sending the P.A. at least $15 million monthly ($180 million annually) as “humanitarian assistance,” starting in “late March or early April.”
- Soon expanding that P.A. aid package to include “a full range of economic, security and humanitarian assistance,” including funds for the corrupt, pro-terrorist UNRWA agency. By “security” aid, Amr undoubtedly means the pro-terrorist, de facto army that the P.A. calls its “security services.”
- Resuming diplomatic contacts with P.A. officials by reopening the PLO embassy in Washington, D.C., and using the old (but still functioning) American consulate in Jerusalem as a de facto embassy to the Palestinians.
- Inviting the United Nations and the Quartet, both of which are militantly pro-Palestinian, to “engage” in the diplomatic process.
- Resuming “country of origin labeling,” which means declaring that goods made in much of Jerusalem, as well as Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights, will be forced to carry “Made in Palestine” labels since the Biden administration has decided that all those areas belong to the Palestinian Arabs.

In return, the Biden administration intends to make two laughably inadequate “demands” of the P.A. First, it will seek “to obtain a Palestinian commitment” to stop paying terrorists, which will probably be as genuine and durable as all the previous P.A. commitments to stop aiding terrorists.

Second, Biden will “emphasize to the P.A.” the need for “reductions of arrests of bloggers and dissidents.” What a joke! The P.A. won’t even be expected to stop arresting dissidents; it just has to arrest a few less.

What’s most important, however, is the end goal of the Biden plan. Amr’s draft says that all of the above steps are “a means to advance the prospects of a negotiated two-state solution … based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps.”

In plain English, that means a sovereign “State of Palestine” in all, or nearly all, of Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza Strip (and part of Jerusalem). The “land swaps” phrase can be disregarded. It’s nonsense; obviously, if Israel and the P.A. ever wanted to “swap land”—which they don’t—they don’t need a plan by U.S. President Joe Biden to do it.

Elliott Adrams: A New (or Old) Biden Policy on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

A “reset” of relations with the PA and PLO leadership, especially if Hamas wins a role in the legislature and is given control of some ministries, is going to be difficult and controversial. The memo says “The last Palestinian elections were held 15 years ago, and half of the young population has never had a chance to vote. But the implications of an election remain uncertain: the collapse of a power-sharing agreement after the prior elections led to the Hamas takeover of Gaza.” If I were on Secretary Blinken’s staff, I would kick this memo back downstairs to ask that it take account of all those coming problems, and how Congress will react to them.

The second issue is the memo’s assumption that U.S. policy should be built around the two-state solution, as if the Oslo Accords had been signed recently rather than a quarter-century ago. The memo says the Biden administration's goal should be “to advance freedom, security, and prosperity for both Israelis and Palestinians in the immediate term which is important in its own right, but also as means to advance the prospects of a negotiated two-state solution.” The memo is correct, in my view, to see how the Abraham Accords can be used: “In these new normalised relationships, we will look for opportunities to support Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and improve the quality of life for the Palestinian people.”

The memo argues for “rolling back certain steps by the prior administration that bring into question our commitment or pose real barriers to a two-state solution, such as country of origin labelling.” It is plain silly to think that such product labelling is actually a barrier to a two-state solution. What’s more striking is that on this subject there is no new thinking. There is simply a return to position papers from the Obama administration, and to the very old tradition of seeking smooth relations with the PA leadership no matter how bad their treatment of their own people.

But what if Hamas joins the PLO, which signed the Oslo Accords, after the Palestinian elections (likely after the scheduled PLO internal parliamentary elections, for the Palestine National Council, scheduled for August 31). In that case a terrorist group that is completely opposed to Oslo and to the two-state solution would be gaining influence and power in the PLO and the PA. Would it still be sensible to seek closer relations with the Palestinian leadership, and strengthen that “connective tissue?”

Perhaps there are other significant parts of the memo not described by The National, and in any event this is (to repeat) a memo to not from the secretary of state. Nevertheless, it is a rare early insight into administration policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From what it shows, the “new” or “reset” policy will not be very new at all: it will instead be a return to patterns of conduct that were tried and found wanting in the past.

The Three-State Solution

In many ways, to avoid becoming another Gaza, a binational state in the West Bank would need its Jewish minority. The presence of a substantial minority group makes democracy and equal rights a moral imperative; fosters openness, liberalism, and diversity; and promotes cooperation and creativity. Indeed, throughout modern history the Jews have tended to be a “creative minority,” helping the process of liberalization and modernization, with their presence often inadvertently minimizing the possibility of a “tyranny of the majority” that threatens to become oppressive or murderous.

It is true that neither the Jews nor the Palestinians in the West Bank are ready to entertain the possibility of a binational Judea-Palestine at the moment, but there are perhaps certain preliminary steps that could be taken. Israel could, for example, unilaterally freeze settlement expansion, thus reassuring the Palestinians that their majority—which is growing thinner—is preserved. An initiative could then be undertaken to bring the Palestinian Authority and the settlers’ Yesha Council together to work on infrastructure and development, thus building trust and dialogue between the two sides. The Palestinians could stop policies that incentivize violence, such as payments to imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead terrorists. And Israel could make it clear that it has no intention of annexing the West Bank itself.

This idea must seem, at the moment, to be vaguely akin to madness. But with Israel smoothly forging official ties with much of the Arab world, it is clear that, even against the most fervent convictions of experts and statesmen, the unthinkable can become inevitable very quickly. At the moment, moreover, both the Israeli and Palestinian Authority governments are mired in denial and self-deception. Contrary to what appears to be the vision of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his party, normalization with the rest of the Arab world will not make the Palestinian issue go away. The almost 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank will still be there—annexing them would still be political and national suicide, and a perpetual occupation remains immoral and unmanageable.

At the same time, however, the Palestinian dream of destroying Israel will remain impossible, the encouragement and lionization of Palestinian war crimes and terrorism will still be self-destructive and morally horrific, and the settler population will continue to grow. Both sides, in other words, must admit to reality and attempt to deal with it in a constructive way.

A three-state solution, with a binational state in the West Bank, would no doubt be difficult to establish; but it has the virtue of never having been tried before, and thus never having failed. This means, at the very least, the possibility exists that it might actually work. And for this reason alone, perhaps, it is worth trying.

Hamas "martyr" families protest in Gaza for salaries

There has been a series of protests in Gaza against the Palestinian Authority, which had discontinued paying salaries to families of "martyrs" who were killed during the 2014 Gaza war.

While paying terrorist families has been a priority for the PA, they stopped paying many Hamas families a few years ago, apparently when Fatah was trying to pressure Hamas to unify.

On Sunday, which is Palestinian Mothers Day, women and children held a protest for the PA to resume payments to their families, many of them wearing white burial shrouds.

Today, families of terrorists posed with nooses, threatening to hang themselves if they don't get paid proper salaries for being related to dead terrorists.

The timing of the protests appears to be more tied to the planned upcoming Palestinian elections than anything else.

Hamas has its own fund to pay families of "martyrs," almost certainly these families have received payments from them.

EBay won't allow Dr. Seuss - but allows terrorist Hezbollah, IRGC items and Houthi "Curse upon the Jews" logos

EBay's policy states:

Listings that promote, perpetuate or glorify hatred, violence, or discrimination, including on the grounds of race, ethnicity, color, religion, gender or sexual orientation, aren't allowed. This includes but is not limited to the following:

Items with racist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise demeaning portrayals
Listings that imply or promote support of, membership in, or funding of a terrorist organization

EBay seller "rentonstore," based in Renton, Washington, regularly violates these policies - by pretending that their terror supporting and antisemitic materials are simply Shiite Muslim religious items.

The store sells Hezbollah flags and promotional material, even though Hezbollah is a designated terror group in the United States and many other countries. This key-ring is nothing but a promotion for a terror group, and Rentonstore pretends it is a religious item, calling it "Shia Muslim S. Lebanon Military Party of God Islamic Resistance Key-Ring # 31206."

If eBay pretends that only Hezbollah's "military wing" is terrorist, then Rentonstore still has materials that violate the policy, as in this item titled "Shia Muslim S. Lebanon Party of God Islamic Resistance Military Flag #17069:"

The United States designates the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to be a terror organization as well, but Rentonstore sells IRGC memorabilia, like this "Original Shia Islam IRGC Sepah-e Pasdaran Militant Group Military Patch # 620611:"

It does not appear that these items are original - the seller seems to produce them, as there is no way that this English language "Shia Islam IRGC Sepah Pasdaran Aba Abellah Boys Counterterrorism Military Patch" has ever been used on any official Iranian uniform:

Yet the seller claims that many of the IRGC patches in the store are original - which means that a US store is importing goods from Iran and violating US sanctions policy, which is also explicitly against eBay policies.

It gets even worse, though.

Rentonstore also sells items showing the Houthi slogan, which includes "Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews:"

Importing items from Yemen is likewise a violation of US sanctions policy.

Complaints have been made to eBay about these items to no avail.

Apparently, old Dr. Seuss books are too offensive to sell, but "Curse the Jews" is perfectly OK, according to eBay.

I cannot get over this section that Peter Beinart highlighted from an essay of his on Substack:

When ordinary Americans grow paranoid, some of them lash out at the targets of their fear. As the historian Russell Jeung recently told the Washington Post, “When America China-bashes, then Chinese get bashed, and so do those who look Chinese.”

There’s nothing wrong with American politicians worrying about China’s economic and military ambitions. There’s nothing wrong with American politicians noting that China sometimes bullies its neighbors. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with American politicians speaking up for people in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and other places who are suffering terribly under Beijing’s brutal rule. But if American politicians talk only about China’s power and belligerence without also reminding Americans that Beijing’s military budget is a fraction of America’s, that China has good relations with major democracies, and that China has waged far fewer wars in recent decades than has the United States, they will be contributing to the kind of hysterical fear that over the last century has victimized vulnerable Americans again and again.

Beinart says that the constant demonizing of China inevitably results in Americans attacking Asian people. Yet Beinart's entire career is to demonize Israel, the Jewish state - and he is not at all concerned that this could result in antisemitism.

Beinart says that demonizing China should be contextualized by cherry picking specific facts about China and comparing them favorably against the US. But he never puts context around Israel's actions, except in a condescending way ("sure, there is X, BUT...").

And he always puts context around Palestinian crimes, exactly the way he does with China.

Apparently, dictatorships must be coddled while democracies must be attacked. There is no moral universe where the US is remotely comparable to China just as there is none where Israel is remotely comparable to the Palestinians' two governments. Choosing to selectively highlight and amplify problems in the US and Israel while downplaying major human rights abuses by Palestinians and Chinese is the exact same methodology used by conspiracy theorists - grabbing one fact and parlaying it into a giant universal theory that has no relationship with reality.

But, unbelievably, Beinart wasn't finished on Monday. In response to a story in the Washington Post that showed how many people in Richmond's Jewish community - individuals as well as leaders - were upset that he was going to speak at Virginia Commonwealth University, Beinart wrote that "the American Jewish establishment is an oligarchy run largely by its (often right-wing) donors."

Beinart claims to be so sensitive about critics of China inciting against Asians - and hours later, he invokes a stereotype of rich Jews trying to shut down opinions they don't like with their financial clout.

The only bigot here is Beinart himself.

03/22 Links Pt2: ‘Who Needs the Daily Stormer When You’ve Got the New York Times?’; How "tamed"Jews deny what's all around them; London police probe assault, attempted suffocation of pregnant Jewish woman

From Ian:

‘Who Needs the Daily Stormer When You’ve Got the New York Times?’: An Excellent Question

A Jewish organization worked tirelessly with non-Jewish allies to help win clemency for indigent prisoners, including many non-Jews, who had been sentenced to excessive sentences.

Rather than praising it, the New York Times targeted it on the Sunday front page with what the paper itself described as “an investigation.” The Times inaccurately smeared the work as an effort for “wealthy or well-connected people,” the product of what the Times called a “network” of “influential” “Orthodox Jewish leaders” operating “behind-the-scenes.” As if anyone could miss the point, the Times illustrated the article with a Protocols-of-Elders-of-Zion diagram in light blue and mustard yellow showing how all these rabbis have their tentacles in President Trump.

A thread of tweets by Newsweek editor Batya Ungar-Sargon did a fine job of assessing the situation, likening the Times investigation to neo-Nazi propaganda. “Who needs the Daily Stormer when you’ve got the New York Times? An Orthodox Jew helps free more than 4,000 Black men from prison. NYT: A LOOSE ALLIANCE OF ORTHODOX JEWS USED THEIR MONEY TO UNDERMINE JUSTICE AND PUPPET MASTER THE PRESIDENT. Anyone else who had done as much to mitigate mass incarceration would be lauded as a hero. But when Orthodox Jews do it, the whole enterprise is tainted by their ‘lobbying,’ their ‘lawyers,’ their ‘loose network;’ and of course, the crime of being Orthodox Jews to begin with! You can’t bring yourself to write about the First Step Act? Fine. You can’t bring yourself to admit Kushner did something good? Fine. But you don’t get to use your institutional allergy to reporting the facts to spread disgusting anti-Semitism.”

Ironically, the same Times reporter responsible for Sunday’s embarrassment — Kenneth P. Vogel — was as recently as 2018 assailing another “loose network” that criticized George Soros. “Employing barely coded anti-Semitism, they have built a warped portrayal of him as the mastermind of a ‘globalist’ movement,” Vogel wrote for the Times of efforts to smear Soros, which he said included notions of a “shadowy Jewish cabal” and a “common anti-Semitic trope.”

Vogel has gone from reporting on barely coded antisemitism and antisemitic tropes to, as Ungar-Sargon accurately described it, himself perpetuating it.

Alan Dershowitz Talks Trump Pardons

Melanie Phillips: How "tamed"Jews deny what's all around them

Tuvia Tenenbom is perhaps the most successful author to experience extreme levels of difficulty in getting his books published in English.

I Slept in Hitler’s Room and Catch the Jew, his books about antisemitism in Germany and the Middle East, were published in Germany and Israel and became bestsellers. Despite this success, his subsequent book about American Jews and antisemitism couldn’t obtain a publisher in America. He was told that it would upset American Jews.

Now he has a new book out, The Taming of the Jew, a pointed, savage and often comic travelogue about attitudes in Britain and Ireland. And guess what? He couldn’t find a British publisher. So it’s been published in English by his Israeli publisher, Gefen.

The reason for Tenenbom’s difficulty is that he frightens people. He does so by lifting a curtain to expose not only antisemitism in places where people don’t want to admit it exists, but also the often craven attitudes towards it of some diaspora Jews.

The methods he uses also provoke unease. That’s because he often pretends to be something he is not, in order to lull people into speaking in an unguarded fashion. Think Sacha Baron-Cohen with blond hair, a large belly and a passing resemblance to Falstaff.

He gets people to say things which are so outrageous that readers sometimes can’t believe they really said it. In response, he maintains that he and his wife tape-record or video every encounter.

A former playwright and theatre director, he gets people to say these things through what some might call an act, and others might call a trick.

For Tenenbom, who wrote a column for the German paper Die Zeit for many years, often introduces himself as a German or half-Jordanian reporter. When he does so, certain people assume he is an antisemite. So believing that they’re talking to a kindred spirit, they come out with ripe examples of antisemitism.

Media’s Hyper-Focus on Israel Shields World’s Worst Human Rights Abusers

Yet, for NBC and numerous other news organizations, this is a story that apparently warrants reams of breathless coverage. Why? Why is NBC (and most other Western news media) devoting far less virtual space and time reporting on the plight of the Uyghur Muslims in China? Why are they not discussing the starvation of children in Yemen? Why are they not focusing on the ongoing slave trade in Libya? Why are they spending far less time reporting on the ongoing slaughter and kidnapping of children in Nigeria by Boko Haram?

I think we all know the answer to these questions. These media organizations know they receive a lot more views promoting stories that bash the one Jewish state than those that focus on actually significant human rights stories around the world.

But while this hyper-focus on Israel certainly does do some harm to Israel, the people it harms the most are those who the media outlets largely ignore compared to how they cover Israel and the Palestinians. This media malpractice really hurts the Uyghurs, the imprisoned political dissidents in Hong Kong, those protesting another dictatorship in Myanmar, the Tigray civilians being slaughtered in Ethiopia, the gay people oppressed by Iran and the countless other actual human rights violations that barely get any attention.

In much the same way that the hyper-focus on Israel by so-called “human rights” organizations (such as the United Nations Human Rights Council) protects the world’s worst human rights abusers from answering for their crimes against humanity, the hyper-focus on Israel by the media prevents widespread coverage of the most heinous human rights abuses by the worst dictatorships and terror groups on earth.

In the first three months of 2021 alone, Boko Haram has kidnapped and murdered hundreds of people in Nigeria, many of them children. Yet a Google search for “NBC News Boko Haram” doesn’t come up with a single news story from 2020 or 2021. Not one.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Walter Lippman famously said, “There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.” Well, if the “devil” is not those kidnapping and murdering thousands in Nigeria, putting hundreds of thousands in concentration camps in China, starving tens of thousands in Yemen, etc., then the “devil” doesn’t need shaming. Only then could dozens of international news stories about kids being detained for trying to steal parrots possibly make sense.

Your anti-Israel rhetoric fuels anti-Semitic attacks.
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) March 22, 2021

In the weekly cabinet meeting, Palestinian Authority prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh said something interesting.

He said that Israel increased the amount that it reduces the PA's tax revenue payments from 41 million shekels to 52 million shekels per month.

Israeli law says that it must reduce the amount paid by the same amount that the PA pays terrorists. Up until now, Israel's deduction was based on the salaries that the PA paid to terrorists in prison; Israel has now included the stipends the PA pays families of "martyrs" and those wounded during attacks.

According to Times of Israel, the PLO recently admitted that it pays about 50 million shekels a month in terrorist salaries, so this is more in line with the true total that the Palestinian leadership pays terrorists.

Shtayyeh said that the Palestinian Authority will seek additional funds from Arab countries to make up the shortfall in its budget.

03/22 Links Pt1: Biden Torpedoes Abraham Accords Summit; Glick: Netanyahu – Israel's indispensable statesman; Biden Admin Cites Antisemitic Durban Conference as Positive Precedent

From Ian:

Lee Smith: Biden Torpedoes Abraham Accords Summit

Plainly, the Obama-Biden team doesn’t care about interfering in Israeli elections or else Barack Obama’s State Department wouldn’t have funneled money to an NGO that campaigned against Netanyahu in 2015. Nor do Arab royals sitting atop petro-kingdoms have much theoretical or practical reason to worry about appearing to back one candidate against another. Smaller powers like the UAE make alliances not with factions but with states—and all parties in Israel support the Abraham Accords. Israel’s strategic class, its political, military, and intelligence echelons, as well as Israeli voters consider relations with Gulf Cooperation Council members a strategic boon. It is difficult to imagine any circumstances short of war under which an Israeli prime minister would think it politically wise to abandon a normalization agreement with any Arab state, never mind a major oil producer.

No, “election interference” is a staple of American political discourse. More particularly it is the rhetoric through which the Democratic Party now pushes information operations, like the Russiagate conspiracy theory holding that Russia interfered with the 2016 vote to put Trump in the White House. News of the canceled visit by the Israeli prime minister was eagerly pushed in the press and on social media by Obama’s Israel point man Dan Shapiro through his proprietary Israel wing of the echo chamber.

But there’s a bigger play here than interfering in Israeli politics by denying Bibi a preelection photo op with Israel’s peace partners in the Gulf. Their larger goal is to weaken or dismantle the Abraham Accords, which by assembling a treaty structure that binds Israel together with the Gulf states structurally interferes with the administration’s stated goal of realigning the United States with Iran—and therefore against Israel and the Gulf—by reentering Obama’s nuclear deal.

But isn’t peace in the Middle East the collective dream of the Beltway policy establishment, left and right? Trump, love or hate him, got Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan as well as the UAE to normalize relations with Israel, the first peace agreements with the Jewish state since Jordan signed in 1994—and Biden said he wanted to build on the Abraham Accords. But as it turns out, “peace” has a very particular meaning for American policymakers. For the Middle East hands in the Biden administration, what matters most is completing the project many of these Obama alumni helped initiate while serving under Biden’s former boss—realignment with Iran.

Trump didn’t just withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, which undergirded Obama’s realignment strategy, he also designed a strategic architecture to counter Iranian influence—the Abraham Accords. To bind Israel and the Arab Gulf states, the Trump White House had to bracket the issue that previously kept these traditional American allies apart—the Palestinians. That alone earned Trump the wrath of Washington’s wise men.

For decades the professional peace processors warned that there could be no stability in the Middle East unless there was a comprehensive settlement to the Palestinian issue. By giving the Palestinians unbridled veto power, the Beltway establishment also ensured their job security. As long as the Palestinians said no, the peace processors were still in business. Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner wondered why the wise men held them in contempt for making peace. What they didn’t understand was that making peace meant the wise men were fired.

The alliance between Israel and the Gulf states is an impediment to the dream of a reempowered, nuclear-armed Iran backed by the United States, which was Obama’s main foreign policy aim—and an affront to peace processors convinced of their own never-ending importance. The Biden administration apparently aims to sink the accords by penalizing Israel and its peace partners for getting too close, and returning the Palestinians to center stage—in order to prepare the ground for reentering the Iran deal.

Caroline Glick: Netanyahu – Israel's indispensable statesman

According to The National's report, the new administration intends to cancel the Trump administration's policy regarding Israeli exports to the US That policy determined that exports from Area C of Judea and Samaria, which are under full Israeli control, will be marked as "Made in Israel."

The new administration intends to reinstate US financial support for UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority and will pressure Israel to permit Jerusalemites to vote in the Palestinian elections. It will undertake to reopen the US's diplomatic mission to the PA. The memo also makes clear that the Biden administration will reinstate the Obama administration's policy of pressuring Israel to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines "with mutually agreed land swaps and agreements on security and refugees."

As to the Abraham Accords, despite the memo's deliberately vague diplomatic language, it is clear that the Biden administration intends to subvert the accords in a way that will indirectly reinstate the PLO's veto over Arab-Israeli ties.

The contents of the memo, as described in The National report are not surprising to anyone who paid attention to statements made throughout the 2020 presidential campaign and since by President Joe Biden and his advisors. But the report does make clear the magnitude of the challenge Israel will face in managing and maintaining its alliance with the US in the coming years.

This challenge grew even more daunting last Wednesday and Thursday as Biden torpedoed US-Russian relations by calling Putin a "murderer" and threatening him; and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan got into an ugly public fight with their Chinese counterparts on live television.

The need to steer Israel's ship of state between a hostile ally and two rival superpowers with whom Israel enjoys relatively reasonable if limited ties may well be the most difficult challenge facing Israel's prime minister in the coming years.

On Tuesday, as Israelis go to the polls, they should pause a moment and ask themselves, "Which candidate is most capable of competently protecting Israel in the regional and international arenas in the coming years?" The answer isn't hard to ascertain.

Israeli Minister Exposes the Truth About the Palestinian People

David Singer: Netanyahu’s feats merit his being Israel’s next Prime Minister

The country’s relatively small size and electronic health records that cover more than 99% of residents were two important reasons for siting the study in Israel, Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said in an interview late Thursday with Israel’s Channel 12 news. But what tipped the scales in Israel’s favor was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s persistence, which Bourla termed an “obsession.”

“He called me 30 times,” Bourla said. “He would ask me about the variants, what data we have. And I would say, ‘Prime Minister, it’s three o’clock.’ And he said, ‘No, no, don’t worry, tell me.’ Or he would call me to ask about the children, ‘I need to vaccinate the schools.’ Or to ask about pregnant women. So he convinced me, frankly, that he would be on top of it.”

On advancing the personal safety and security of every Israeli citizen – Netanyahu has overseen:
- The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco establishing diplomatic relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords.
- Kosovo - one of the few Muslim countries in Europe - establishing an embassy in Jerusalem.
- The UAE announcing the setting up of a $10 billion fund to invest in Israel
- Israelis visiting Dubai in their tens of thousands
- Several more Arab countries reportedly being on the brink of joining the Abraham Accords -including Oman, Qatar and Mauritania.
- Normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel beginning with Saudi Arabia granting overflight rights to Israel and - most recently - allowing an Israeli racing team to participate in the Dakar Rally.
- An offer of Gaza, 70% of the West Bank and areas of Israel’s sovereign territory being made to the Palestine Liberation Organisation for the creation of a second Arab State – in addition to Jordan – in the territory formerly comprising Mandatory Palestine.

Denigrators and detractors contesting Netanyahu’s re-election face an uphill battle.