Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, June 08, 2021

06/08 Links Pt1: I Worked on the Abraham Accords. It's Time to Free the Palestinians from Hamas—and Iran; Erdan to AP CEO: Hamas worked on anti-Iron Dome tech in AP Gaza building

From Ian:

I Worked on the Abraham Accords. It's Time to Free the Palestinians from Hamas—and Iran

Still, there is reason for hope. Twenty years ago, the Palestinian cause was priority number one in the region. Now, people in the Gulf see things differently. We still care. We still support support the Palestinians. We believe in the two-state solution. But people in the Gulf no longer believe that this should come at the expense of our national interest. Many activists responded to Hamas- and Jihad- influenced media and social media posts to say, we do care about the Palestinians—but we don't care about these terrorist organizations.

What the public doesn't understand is who is behind so much of the media they read—who is funding this misguided narrative, which only serves to protect Hamas, and ultimately, Iran.

This past conflict with Gaza should be the last war. We should all learn to speak one language: the language of peace. Now is the time to not just talk the talk, but for us all to walk the walk.

Hamas and the Palestinian leadership have hijacked the minds of 2 million Palestinians to sell their political and terrorist agendas. We want the Palestinian people to enjoy what we enjoy, to have what we have and create a better future for a new generation. But we have to do this together, with all the stakeholders in the region, from NGOs to schools, religious leaders and governments. We cannot do this alone.

Dr. Ali al Nuaimi is chairman of the Defense Affairs, Interior and Foreign Relations Committee of the UAE's Federal National Council, a representative legislature whose 40 members, half elected indirectly and half appointed, serve in an advisory role to the emirates' leadership.

US working on more normalization between Israel, Arab states - Ashkenazi

The Biden administration is actively involved in encouraging more Arab states to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said Tuesday.

“They fully adopted the Abraham Accords and are eager to expand them,” he said. “There is going to be someone appointed to be responsible for doing so.”

The Biden administration is considering appointing former US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro as a Middle East envoy responsible for handling the continuation of the Abraham Accords, The Washington Post reported last week.

The Biden administration does not use the Trump-era name “Abraham Accords,” instead calling them “normalization agreements.”

In a briefing summing up his time in the Foreign Ministry, as a new government is expected to be sworn in on Sunday with Yair Lapid taking his place, Ashkenazi said he is in daily contact with Washington.

Ashkenazi would not say which countries were likely to be next to establish full relations with Israel. But before US President Joe Biden came into office, there was progress with Saudi Arabia, Oman, Mauritania and others.

Tony Blinken Declines to Confirm Israeli Sovereignty over Golan Heights

Secretary of State Tony Blinken declined Monday to confirm that the U.S. recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, when asked directly by Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) about the issue at the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Israel captured the area in the Six Day War in 1967, after the Syrian military had used it to shell Israeli civilians in the Galilee. Israel was prepared to give most of it back to Syria in peace talks in the 1990s, but was rejected by the regime.

The rise of the so-called “Islamic State,” or ISIS, a decade ago, and the subsequent intervention of Iran in the Syrian Civil War, cemented the importance of Israeli control over the Golan Heights as a strategic buffer against invasion.

President Donald Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019. In gratitude, Israel named a town in the Golan after him, “Trump Heights.” Blinken appeared to walk back that commitment, however, in February.

Zeldin asked Blinken directly about the issue, and the two had the following exchange during Monday’s testimony:
Zeldin: To clarify one other point: does the Biden administration recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights?

Blinken: With regard to that, as a practical matter, Israel has control of the Golan Heights, irrespective of its legal status, and that will have to remain unless and until things get to a point where Syria and everything operating out from Syria no longer poses a threat to Israel, and we are not anywhere near that.

Blinken’s response echoes the rhetoric of Arab states and radical Islamist movements that refuse to recognize Israel in a formal sense: they recognize that it is physically there, though they do not recognize its legitimacy and permanence. He implied that the territory could, one day, be ceded.

How many Gazans were killed by terrorist rockets? A lot more than are being reported

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported this little girl being killed on May 14:

At approximately 21:30, shrapnel of a missile fell on a house belonging to the sons of ‘Issa ‘Obaid on al-Nozhah Street in Jabalia. As a result, a girl with disability namely Buthaina Mahmoud ‘Issa ‘Obaid (6) was killed after being hit with shrapnel in the right side of her head when she was in front of her house.

PCHR doesn't mention where the actual "missile" hit, only that 'Obaid was killed by shrapnel from it. This seems to indicate that she was not killed by an Israeli airstrike but from a terrorist rocket that fell short.

It is difficult to estimate how many Palestinians were killed by terror rockets. We know that Iron Dome intercepted over 1400 rockets that were aimed at populated areas and that it had at least a 90% success rate. The IDF says that 60-70 rockets managed to get through Iron Dome to populated areas, killing 12 people.

At the same time, the IDF says that 680 rockets fell short in Gaza - ten times the number that landed in Israel's populated areas. If we assume that Gaza's population density is roughly the same as that of Israeli areas where the 60-70 rockets fell, and that the rockets that landed were equally deadly in both places, then we can guess that over 100 Gazans were killed by rockets!

However, the number is almost certainly lower than that. This map released by the IDF showed that while nearly all terror rockets were launched from populated areas, many of them landed in the farmlands that are on the borders of Gaza.

Many - but not all.

Buthania Obeid

Jabalia, where Buthaina ‘Obaid was killed - along with Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Sheikh Zayed, all in the north of Gaza - were heavily hit by rockets from terror groups. So were other towns and villages like Khuza'a in the south.

So these two strikes in Beit Lahiya on that same day that 'Obaid was killed were very possibly the result of terror rockets falling short:

According to PCHR’s investigations, Israeli warplanes targeted an agricultural land near a 3-storey house belonging to Mahmoud Hashem al-‘Attar’s sons in Beit Lahia on the Street beyween al-‘Atatrah and al-Salatin neighborhoods in Beit Lahia. As a result, Lamyaa’ Hasan al-‘Attar (27) and her 3 children namely Islam (8), Amira (7), and Mohammed “Zain al-Dein” (8 months) were killed, and their house was completely destroyed. Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes launched 2 missiles at an agricultural land in al-Amal neighborhood in Beit Lahia near a 2-storey house belonging to Ibrahim Mousa Ahmed Salama (49). As a result, his wife, Faiza Ahmed Mohammed Salama (45) was killed, and the house owner and his son were injured.

There are plenty of populated areas marked at blue on the map where deaths and injuries seem far more likely to have come from terrorist group rockets than from Israeli fire. Here's one:

At approximately 16:20 on Wednesday, 12 May 2021, the dead body of Hammad ‘Ayyad Mansour al-Debari (86), from al-Shokah in eastern Rafah, arrived at Abu Yousif al-Najjar Hospital after he sustained shrapnel wounds in the head inside his house near al-Sabereen Mosque. PCHR’s staff is still investigating the circumstances of the incident, which coincided with the Israeli Iron Dome’s interception of the Palestinian rockets fired from the Gaza Strip along with Israeli artillery shelling.

No one is investigating these strikes, of course. But 680 rockets landed somewhere, and we know they - killed people - and some of them killed many as we know from the first day. They are bigger than the rockets of the past. Israel knows its targets, and it is absurd to think that Israel is targeting random houses with children when we know that the IDF calls residents before attacking rocket launch sites or Hamas command and control centers.

It is not a stretch to believe that a high percentage of the civilians killed in Gaza were killed by those 680 rockets that rained on them.

(h/t Nevet)

When the British evacuated the Jews from Silwan (UPDATE)

Buried in a New York Times article about the claims of both Jews and Arabs to houses in Silwan we see this:

In the late 1930s, the site was abandoned. Documents show the British authorities, which then ruled Palestine, evacuated the Jewish residents, fearing they were vulnerable to an Arab insurrection. After the British left and Jordan occupied the West Bank in 1948, Palestinian families moved onto the uninhabited plot.

That is a sanitized way of saying that the Jews were constantly attacked by Arabs in Silwan.

Here is the Palestine Post article about their evacuation, from August 15, 1938:

The British authorities were supposed to protect the homes. They didn't - Arabs broke into a synagogue and defiled the Torah there several months later:

UPDATE: Here is the letter from British officials about the evacuation - and the expectation that the Jews would return shortly. (h/t Stephen)

From The New Arab:

A Jordanian national table tennis player has withdrawn from an international championship to avoid playing an Israeli player, the Jordanian Paralympic Committee said on Friday

Osama Abu Jame refused to continue participating in the Slovenia International Championship after reaching the quarter-finals where he was scheduled to go head to head with an Israeli player.

Jame is sponsored by a Jordanian software company named ProgressSoft.

It doesn't seem that the rules of the Paralympics are as stringent as those of other sports concerning athletes who refuse to compete.

Jordanians seem thrilled as this show of cowardice.

06/07 Links Pt2: The UN’s anti-racism mission excludes Jews; Ben Shapiro: The muddled thinking of 'antiracism'; Former Israel Space Agency Chief Dies of Wounds Sustained During Arab Riots

From Ian:

Anti-Zionism: the Modern Antisemitism

The Holocaust did not put an end to antisemitism, but it made all its existing forms unacceptable. Had the Nazis entered Palestine and eliminated the Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish population of the Land of Israel) anti-Zionism might have followed the fate of its predecessors, but fortunately the Nazis did not. Yet, prior to the Holocaust, Judaism played the role that Zionism plays today. Hatred of Judaism was shared by both the right and the left; though on the left, it took not a religious — as with the Church — but an ideological approach. Karl Marx in his notorious “On the Jewish Question,” written in 1843, proclaimed the antisemitic manifesto of the hundred years that followed: “In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.” Thus Judaism, as an expression of Jewish particularism, as the culture of the People of Israel in the Diaspora, was declared persona non-grata. Hitler’s ideas about the impossibility of peaceful coexistence between the Jews and the rest of the world, and his view of the inevitability of the final solution, stemmed from Marx’s maxim.

After the Holocaust, however, it seemed for a brief short moment that the Holocaust had not only failed to finish off the Jews, but had killed antisemitism for good. Not so fast. As happened many times during the twentieth century, the Soviet Union came to rescue. The 1930s saw the USSR slowly return to the antisemitic roots of the tsarist regime. The pact with Nazi Germany and the dismissal of Maxim Litvinov were the turning points, and the war that followed only injected the Soviets with the rabid antisemitic propaganda disseminated by the Nazis. After the war ended, with the dawn of the Cold War, Stalin, for many different reasons, needed a new internal enemy. With the class struggle being officially almost over, Jews proved to be a perfect candidate.

Yet Judaism proved to be irrelevant, as the Soviet Union was anti-religious, with most religious practices either banned or under strict government supervision, not to mention the association of traditional antisemitism with the Holocaust. Thus Zionism presented itself as an excellent replacement for Judaism, fitting perfectly with Marx’s ideological antisemitism. And for naive or conniving Western intellectuals, the allure of the rebranded hatred proved to be irresistible.

It is important to note that, prior to the Soviet turn to anti-Zionism, anti-Zionism itself as a defined ideology and political stance did not truly exist. There were groups of people, some large, of both Jews and non-Jews who advocated against the Zionist enterprise. However, they did so either on a purely religious basis, like some Orthodox Jews, or because they saw the enterprise as unfeasible and undesirable. Very few argued against the Jewish state as such.

And there is a reason for this: anti-Zionism, as an idea, is absurd. Imagine a political movement calling itself anti-France. It is a laughable idea that one can support only as a joke or due to a mental disorder. So why does anti-Zionism not get similar treatment? The answer is antisemitism. The defining feature of antisemitism is to treat the Jews in a way that is the opposite of one’s treatment of other people: what is allowed to everyone else is forbidden to Jews. What is tolerated in others is condemned in the Jews. And so France is fine, however questionable its long history, but Israel is not.

The general rule when observing the oldest hatred is that if one singles out Jews from among all other nations, then one is antisemitic. Anti-Zionism is no exception.

The UN’s anti-racism mission excludes Jews

António Guterres, the UN’s secretary-general, has described rising anti-Semitism as a ‘multi-headed monster’ of intolerance that’s creating a ‘tsunami of hatred’ across the world, and the UN proclaims ‘anti-racism’ as its defining ideology. But the UN is failing to confront discrimination and violence against Jews — and at times even nurturing it.

The UN special rapporteur on racism, E. Tendayi Achiume, ought to be among the leading global voices speaking out against Jew hate. Last year, she called on Bulgaria to stop hate speech and discrimination against the Roma, she urged the Human Rights Council to address abuses against people of African descent and she appealed to world leaders to confront ‘structural forms of racial and ethnic injustice’.

Yet Achiume has a blind spot about one kind of racial and ethnic injustice. When ‘anti-Zionist’ activists descend on Jewish neighborhoods with calls to ‘kill and rape’ Jewish women, and when Jews were targeted by protesters chanting ‘Zionists are terrorists’ at rallies around the world, Achiume says nothing.

She did, though, produce a report on anti-Semitism in 2019. But that only addressed the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the context of ‘neo-Nazi and related intolerance’. This exposes a fundamental flaw in the UN system, one amplified and promoted by influencers, thought leaders, academics and journalists: Jew-hatred can only be acknowledged when it carries a tiki torch. When it comes cloaked in the language of ‘racial justice’, it’s excused or ignored.

The UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, has also been silent about race-based violence against Jews. Not only that, she’s lined up with the inciters. She recently marked the 20th anniversary of 2001 World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa, by endorsing its racist final declaration. Instead of combating racism as it claimed to, the Durban conference became one of the worst international manifestations of anti-Semitism in the postwar period.

The Durban conference featured ugly displays of intolerance, anti-Semitism and baseless claims against the Jewish state. Anti-Israel activists gathered from all over the world to accuse the Jewish state of crimes against humanity. They equated Zionism with racism, threatened Jewish activists, and brandished anti-Semitic caricatures of money-clutching Jews with hooked noses and fangs dripping with blood. Two decades later, these memes recur in the anti-Jewish invective spouted by left-wing activists in the name of ‘racial justice’.

Ben Shapiro: The muddled thinking of 'antiracism'

This week, a clip of America's most prominent racial grifter, Ibram X. Kendi, began making the rounds on Twitter. Kendi, the author of How to Be an Antiracist, has undoubtedly made a fortune by indicting those who disagree with him as complicit in American racism – and by providing partial absolution to those who repeat his cultish ideas.

In one particular clip from a recent interview, however, Kendi was asked to do one very simple thing: to define racism itself. Kendi failed signally in that task. "I would define it as a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas," Kendi stated.

The audience laughed out loud.

Kendi then reiterated his definition and added: "And antiracism is pretty simple using the same terms. Antiracism is a collection of antiracist policies leading to racial ... equity that are substantiated by antiracist ideas."

This, of course, is utterly nonsensical. No term can be defined by simple reference to the term itself. If someone asked you to define an elephant and you quickly explained that an elephant is, in fact, an animal known as an elephant, you would be adding no new information. If someone asked you to describe anger and you then defined anger as the feeling of being angry, you would leave the listener in serious doubt as to your sanity.

Islamic Jihad hands out awards to journalists in Gaza

Last week I reported that Hamas had an awards gala to recognize journalists in Gaza who did everything the terror group wanted them to.

Today it was Islamic Jihad's turn.

The awards show was held at the luxury Reef Al Madina restaurant.

Islamic Jihad honored media professionals for "reporting Israeli crimes."

06/07 Links Pt1: The West’s Nauseating “Post-Truth” Over the Gaza War; PA pays $42,000 to family of terrorist who killed 2 Israelis; Hamas and Iran Turned Gaza into Cemetery for Children

From Ian:

The West’s Nauseating “Post-Truth” Over the Gaza War

In the wake of the Israel-Gaza conflict in May, an American author was suspended by Twitter for comparing a Boston Globe cartoon to Nazi propaganda. New York Times writers who, in expressing their sorrow over the fact that “most of the children who died were Arabs,” are in fact admitting that they would be happier if most of the children who died were Israeli Jews.

The NYT story did mention that “Hamas and other militant groups fired more than 4,000 rockets at Israeli towns and cities indiscriminately.” It also correctly stated that the Israeli air defense system had managed to stop about 90% of the rockets.

The article also noted that at least two of the children killed in Gaza may have been killed when Palestinian militants fired a rocket that fell short, and that one of the children killed in Israel, Nadine Awad, was Palestinian. “The low toll on the Israeli side also reflected an imbalance in defensive capabilities,” NYT concluded.

All the same, the paper’s pro-Hamas propaganda was deeply problematic in its evasive language. The authors of the op-ed, in expressing their sorrow over the fact that “most of the children who died were Arabs,” in fact covertly confessed that they would be happier if most of the children who had died were Israeli Jews.

Would the West’s underdog-nation romanticists feel better if Israel’s Iron Dome had failed, and Hamas rockets had killed 500 Israeli children instead of two? Is it really too hard to understand that 500 Israeli children were spared not because Hamas did not want to kill them, but because, as the NYT article pointed out, there is an imbalance in defensive capabilities? Is it Israel’s sin to have built the Iron Dome to minimize casualties when it is threatened by thousands of rockets flying over its skies?

If this is the precedent set by the “cradle of democracy,” the lesser democracies of the world will find it much easier to call for more Jewish blood.

Palestinian Authority pays $42,000 to family of terrorist who killed 2 Israelis

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday ordered that the family of a Palestinian terrorist who murdered two Israelis be paid more than $40,000 and be given new housing, the Kan public broadcaster reported.

Ramallah Governor Laila Ghannam, an Abbas appointee, met with the family of Muhannad Halabi and gave them some 30,000 Jordanian Dinars ($42,000), reportedly to help them cover housing costs since their home was destroyed by the IDF following the killings, Kan said.

Ghannam also told the family that Abbas had instructed his security services to help them find permanent housing. Home demolitions are a controversial policy that the IDF says helps deter future terror attacks.

The payments are the first high-profile payments to terrorist families since the Biden administration took office, despite claims that the Palestinians were willing to rethink the controversial policy as part of an effort to improve relations with Washington.

Halabi killed two Israelis, Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Banita, and injured Banita’s wife, Adele, and their 2-year-old son in a stabbing attack in the Old City of Jerusalem on October 3, 2015.

Muhannad Halabi, 19, the terrorist who killed two Israelis on October 3, 2015 in a stabbing attack in Jerusalem’s Old City. (Israel Police)

He was shot and killed by Israeli security forces.

Ahead of Biden’s inauguration, senior Palestinian officials told The Times of Israel that Ramallah was willing to alter the way it pays stipends to Palestinian security prisoners, as well as the families of terrorists and others killed by Israelis, in a bid to improve ties with Washington and Europe.

Because the PA hands out more money for longer sentences in Israeli prisons, those incarcerated for the most brutal terror attacks receive more funding from Ramallah.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Arabs: Hamas and Iran Turned Gaza into Cemetery for Children

The Arabs are aware that Hamas's only interest is to appease the mullahs in Tehran for the sake of milking them for more money and weapons. The Arabs understand that this just is another farce by Hamas and particularly Iran.

It is... refreshing to see how many Arabs are aware of the dangers of Iran's involvement with Palestinian terrorist groups that seek the elimination first of Israel, then of them.

"The Hamas militias in the Gaza Strip belong to Iran.... Iran wants to use the Palestinian issue as a winning card at the Vienna negotiations..... to force the US to lift the sanctions on Iran in return for ending the security escalation which threatens Israel.... Iran's weapons are for destruction, not construction." — Amjad Taha, prominent Arab journalist, Twitter, May 27, 2021.

"The more killing and destruction, the more Hamas's income increases while the Palestinians continue to suffer from siege and poverty." — Saeed Al-Kahel, Moroccan writer and political analyst, Assahifa, May 29, 2021.

"Iran exploited Hamas and the Islamic Jihad for its own benefit only, and if it wanted the interest of the Palestinians, it would have contributed to the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.... Tehran has not contributed or made donations for humanitarian or reconstruction projects in Gaza...." — Samir Ghattas, former Egyptian parliament member and head of the Egyptian Middle East Forum for Strategic Studies, Al-Arabiya.net, May 26, 2021.

The Egyptian expert [Muhammad Mujahid Al-Zayyat, a consultant at the Egyptian Center for Thought and Strategic Studies]... is joining other Arabs in warning the Biden administration and the Western powers against allowing Iran to be rewarded for Hamas's war of terrorism against Israel.

It now remains to be seen whether the Biden administration and the Western powers will heed this warning or continue to bury their heads in the sand, pretending that the mullahs in Iran, in exchange for massive bribes from the US, will magically change their savage stripes. They did not last time; what will happen to the region if they again do not?

Jews attacked, arrested in Arab countries in wake of Six Day War

Here are some New York Times articles about how the few remaining Jews were jailed, threatened and killed in Arab countries in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War.

Even as these abuses were happening, the Arabs were insisting that they weren't anti-Jewish, just anti-Zionist.

The years between 1964 and 1967 tell you all you need to know about Palestinian goals

On this anniversary of the Six Day War, it is worth a reminder of what the original PLO Charter said about its goals. Articles 22-24:

Article 22. The people of Palestine believe in peaceful co-existence on the basis of legal existence, for there can be no co-existence with aggression, nor can there be peace with occupation and colonialism.

Article 23. In realizing the goals and principles of this Covenant the Palestine Liberation Organization carries out its complete role to liberate Palestine in accordance with the fundamental law of this Organization.

Article 24. This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in the Gaza Strip or the Himmah area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.

Article 22 shows that the PLO considers all of Israel to be "occupied." And Article 24 shows that the PLO did not consider the West Bank or Gaza to be part of the Palestinian state that they said they wanted.

Here's a photo of a PLO meeting in Gaza before 1967, with a map of "Palestine" in the backdrop showing that they didn't consider the West Bank and Gaza to be the same as the part of Palestine they sought:

Only after the Six Day War did the PLO decide that the West Bank and Gaza were part of the Palestinian state they sought.

To summarize: The PLO only wants the parts of Palestine that are controlled by Jews.

(We've discussed many times that "historic Palestine" includes parts of Lebanon and Jordan which the PLO never claimed.)

Another interesting fact is that the Palestinian claim on Jerusalem started well after 1967!

The 1968 PLO Charter does not mention Jerusalem once.

Have you ever noticed that Palestinian officials love to put a photo of the Dome of the Rock as a backdrop in all their offices? Here's Mahmoud Abbas with Secretary of State Blinken last month.

There were no photos of the Dome of the Rock that the PLO associated with itself before 1967 - because Jordan controlled it. In fact, I cannot find any photos of PLO leaders featuring the Dome of the Rock as a background decoration until roughly 1991, when Yasir Arafat placed it in his office in Tunis.

Palestinian claims on Jerusalem seem to have been carefully coordinated with other Arabs (for example, in an Arab meeting in 1982) but it seems that only after 1988 when Jordan renounced its claim to the West Bank did the PLO make Jerusalem a key demand.

As anti-Israel activists try to bring Sheikh Jarrah back in the forefront of the world's attention, a simple question comes up.

According to Israeli legal rulings, if the residents of the homes that are in the news would just pay rent to the Jewish owners, they cannot be evicted, ever.

If people are really concerned about three families perhaps becoming homeless, then why doesn't anyone just pay the rent?

The reason: Honor. By paying rent, it would be admitting that Jews own the homes, which has been proven time and time again over four decades of legal rulings.

But the people who are making the decision not to pay the rent don't appear to be the residents. According to a Jewish Press article, the entire case has been taken over by the PLO and they are the ones who are deciding what is best for the residents - meaning, no compromise, no accepting deals, no paying rent.

To the PLO, it is more honorable for the residents to be homeless than to admit that Jews own the homes.

Of course, Palestinian leaders don't have to pay the price for making a decision like this. They are forcing the hapless residents to adhere to the Higher Principle of Palestinian Honor: Sacrifice yourself for our principles.

This is a pattern.

If you point out that Israel has offered many peace deals that were rejected by Palestinian leaders, the apologists for the Palestinians say "the offers weren't good enough." What does that mean? Does it mean that perpetual statelessness is better than a statehood that falls short of the demands?

As always, the leaders - whose lives are not affected by the lack of a state one bit - are forcing the people to adhere to their false sense of honor, to the people's detriment.

Palestinians are told not to buy from Israeli markets - because of "honor." Instead of returning stolen Israeli cars to Israel, they are crushed - because of "honor." Jews are not supposed to walk and pray on the Temple Mount - because that violates "honor." International incidents are threatened if Jews march around their capital with flags - because that is an affront to "honor."

You know what is really honorable? Peace! A peace where Palestinians can raise their families in dignity. A peace where they have autonomy. A peace where they work together with their Jewish neighbors, instead of acting as if the Jews don't belong on the land that was Jewish 1500 years before any Arabs ruled there.

The misplaced sense of honor is the single biggest obstacle to peace in the Middle East. It is obvious that this honor is misplaced because we see that the UAE and Bahrain and Morocco have not sunk into an abyss of shame after normalizing relations with Israel. On the contrary, they are expected to reap huge benefits from peace - which is the most honorable thing possible?

Palestinian leaders cannot fathom that.

As long as they cling to their fake honor, they will remain in a state of shame.

Hamas leader admits that many terror headquarters are in civilian buildings

The IDF tweeted this:

Hamas hides in civilian buildings in Gaza. Don’t believe us?

Hear it for yourself from the Head of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar: pic.twitter.com/rcFPSmEfRZ
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) June 6, 2021

Sinwar admits that Hamass has been putting its military headquarters among high rise buildings and residential buildings.

Of course, this was done deliberately, so the only reasons that Hamas might be saying it is moving them now is that it is being pressured to - either quietly from Hamas-friendly NGOs, or Arab states, or perhaps even from Gazans themselves who are homeless because Hamas chose to use them as human shields.

When Israel exposed Nasser and King Hussein as liars in 1967

On June 6, 1967, Egypt (and Jordan) accused the United States and Britain of being behind the airstrikes that destroyed the Egyptian air force.

The United States emphatically denied it.

Egypt was clearly embarrassed that the Jews could have been winning the war in such a dominating fashion, and this lie was to save face in the Arab world.

This backfired. Badly.

Two days later, Israel played a phone conversation between Egypt's President Nasser and Jordan's King Hussein where they hatched the story.

Israel played the message to the Arab world over and over aain:

Jordan, embarrassed, issued a statement admitting that it did not see any American or British planes:

This intelligence coup was also an embarrassment for the Soviet Union, which supplied the communications equipment to Egypt and Jordan that should not have been able to be intercepted. This leak seemed to also be designed to let America know that Israel is a valuable intelligence ally.

06/06 Links: UNRWA finds attack tunnel under one of its Gaza schools; Ben Shapiro: Here’s THE TRUTH About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

From Ian:

Jake Wallis Simons: The problem with the New York Times’ Gaza coverage

That’s where the New York Times comes in. It goes without saying that it’s impossible to report objectively on any story when your editorial line has been decided in advance. The latest Israeli campaign was more accurate than any recent war, with combatants accounting for the vast majority of the dead. All of this is lost when you sacrifice the facts for emotive photographs of children.

Don’t get me wrong. Emotive photographs have their place, and we must never lose touch with the tragic cost of war. But from the point of view of the victims, there is a certain indignity in the fact that they have been used to further a political agenda. And from the point of view of the Times, it is troubling that its journalists have participated in doing so.

When the front page was published, Brad Parker, a representative of the NGO, Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP), tweeted his thanks to the Times for ‘reaching out to us at @DCIPalestine to help make this front page’.

This was revealing. As was evident from his Twitter name, to which he had appended the hashtag #SaveSheikhJarrah, Mr Parker was not an entirely dispassionate observer of the conflict. And a quick look at the DCIP website shows that it is hardly objective, either. What exactly did the New York Times expect when it asked them for ‘help’?

It has long been an aphorism of journalism that if one man says it’s raining and another says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both, but to look out of the window and see for yourself.

If the Times journalists had followed the basic tenets of their profession, America’s paper of record would not have become a pawn in the chess game of Hamas. To have the Gray Lady contribute towards Hamas' war aims was a major boon for the terror group – and another dark day for journalism.

I am a Jew and I am scared. Will I be the last one in Britain?

The most worrying sign is that the Jew hate obsession has opened up a new front. Having long ago penetrated our universities and created a febrile and intimidating environment, intensely hostile to Jews and Israel, the disease is now infiltrating our schools. The Jesuit dictum was ”Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man”. Children are now being exposed to the vicious doctrine of Jew hatred. Some would call this brainwashing.

In a Leeds school the police were called to protect a head teacher, Mark Roper, after he referred to an incident where a pupil brought in and waved a Palestinian flag. He is quoted as saying during a school assembly that “some might interpret this action as a call to arms and feel threatened and unsafe”. On social media, an avalanche of cries of Islamophobia echoed and demands that heads must roll trended. Apologies were demanded and meekly given.

This represents a stunning victory for the many Jew haters. It signals that it is acceptable to migrate anti-Semitism from the mosque to the classroom. It legitimises the slanderous and libellous lies underpinning the ever-growing Jew hatred movement, no matter whether those Jews are in Leeds or Jerusalem.

Had the Israeli flag been brought in by a Jewish pupil, then that individual would almost certainly have suffered verbal abuse and also probably physical assault. Further the media would have almost certainly have chosen to question his/her patriotism, asking where their primary loyalty lay? Was it to the UK or Israel? But nobody dared question the loyalties of the pupil who provocatively waved the Palestinian flag. Conclusion? Jews have dual loyalty. Plucky pro-Palestinian Muslims are being discriminated against and insulted because they are a minority. This despite the fact that Muslims outnumber Jews in Leeds by 7 to 1. (ONS)

No matter how much of worth Jews have contributed to humanity, it counts for nothing to the Jew haters. They close their ears to any facts that detract from their unquestioning world view that Jews are evil.

Lest we forget: throughout history anti-Semitism has been the norm, with relatively short periods of calm between pogroms. What is happening today in most parts of the world is likely to be merely a reversion back to that norm. Fortunately, unlike earlier times Jews now have somewhere that will always welcome them no matter how bad things become in their country of residence. An attack on Israel is therefore an attack on all Jews everywhere.

Over recent years the number of my Jewish friends has steadily decreased. Gladly the grim reaper has not claimed them. Rather they have “made aliya”, that is moving to the “Land of Israel”. In practice this proves to be a complex and bureaucratic process for Jews, contrary to popular perception.

I wonder, how long will it be until I am the last Jew left In Britain? Will I be the one that turns the lights off?

Ben Shapiro: Here’s THE TRUTH About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (A Comprehensive History)

From biblical times to today, Ben takes us through time to explore the long history of Israel and explains the many conflicts along the way. (h/t Yerushalimey)

I guess Biden Admin is all about free speech and expression, and all that jazz ... except when it comes to Israeli Jews in our capital, #Jerusalem? https://t.co/gpwORxgesW
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) June 6, 2021