Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, August 19, 2021

08/19 Links Pt1: Can the West be honest about the Islamist threat?; The Worst Presidential Dereliction in Memory; The Biden Administration’s Vision of a Woke Taliban

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Can the West be honest about the Islamist threat?

That fact notwithstanding, since 2001, Americans have been preoccupied with the idea that Islamophobia is our greatest worry with respect to conflicts in the Middle East. But while any instance of prejudice against Muslims is deplorable, that has produced a mindset that has seemed to argue that anyone who speaks the truth about radical Islam and those who enable it are Islamophobes. Indeed, in one of the worst such instances, the Anti-Defamation League – the organization tasked with defending Jews against anti-Semitism – actually opposed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's nomination for the post.

They claimed that he was an Islamophobe because he called upon American Muslims to condemn acts of terror committed by Islamists. Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center also regularly smear those who are honest about the Islamist threat as bigots.

The left is preoccupied with criticisms of American conservatives with whom they have disagreements on many domestic political issues and whom they have falsely accused of waging a "war on women." And yet, liberal groups are curiously unenthusiastic about calling out those who are waging an actual war on women such as the government of Iran and other Islamists.

Just as some who deplore terrorism seem to exclude Palestinian terror against Israel from their concerns, the same people are more concerned that the Jewish state's liberal policies that ensure freedom for gays be used as a reason – what they call "pinkwashing" – to refute attacks on the legitimacy of Zionism.

The result is that discourse about the subject has become hopelessly distorted, and the misogyny, homophobia and anti-Semitism that is normative in most of the Muslim and Arab worlds is downplayed or ignored. That makes a mockery of any attempt to stir up advocacy for human rights in countries dominated by Islamists simply because to speak up exposes those who do so to false charges of prejudice.

The willingness of too many to give a pass to members of the left-wing congressional "Squad" because two of them are Muslims – Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) – for their anti-Semitism and relative silence about the fate of their co-religionists under the thumb of groups like the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah and their Iranian allies do more to undermine human-rights advocacy than anything said by their critics.

The fall of Afghanistan and the abandonment of its people to the tender mercies of Islamists are a reminder that the struggle against those who are a real threat to the rights of women and minorities must involve a frank discussion about what it is that we oppose and why. As long as we fail to note that the oppression that these illiberal groups promote is rooted in a popular version of their faith, we will fail to help those under their power and to prevent the further spread of this illiberal movement.

Durban IV: Take a Stand Against Hate

Noah Rothman: The Worst Presidential Dereliction in Memory

We have placed the fate of untold thousands of Americans and our Afghan allies in the hands of the Taliban. They dictate the terms and tempo of our operations. We depend on the Taliban to allow foreign nationals and credentialed Afghans into Hamid Karzai International Airport. According to what remains of the American diplomatic presence in Kabul, “the United States government cannot ensure safe passage” into the airport. We are dependent on the beneficence of a theocratic militia that has demonstrated no capacity for mercy. And the U.S. government has no intention of remedying this condition.

When pressed as to why America’s withdrawal strategy involved the sacrifice of the capable Bagram Airbase in favor of a much smaller commercial airport, Gen. Milley insisted that this was a better “tactical solution in accordance with the mission set that we were given and in accordance with getting the troops down to about a 600, 700 number.” In translation, either civilian or military leadership wanted the U.S. footprint in Afghanistan to be so small as to be incapable of defending an installation as large as Bagram, so it had to be abandoned. That has proven terribly insufficient to the scale of what we’re trying to pull off. So, we’re going to remedy the condition now that we have upward of 4,500 soldiers back on the ground facilitating evacuations, right? Wrong.

When pressed as to why the operation to retake Bagram and expedite the exfiltration of American personnel and allies isn’t already underway, Milley stumbled. “Good question,” he stuttered. “Great question. But I’m not going to discuss branches and sequels off of our current operation. I’ll just leave it at that.” We can assume that the mission to redeploy troops in numbers sufficient to get Americans out in a timely manner isn’t underway because Joe Biden will not authorize it.

Time is of the essence, but not because Americans in their untold thousands are trapped behind enemy lines, any one of whom could become a hostage that would tie the hands of policymakers in Washington. No, time is running out because Washington had set an artificial political timeframe for Afghan withdrawal, and they’re sticking to it. “We’re going to get everyone that we can possibly evacuate evacuated,” Austin meekly promised. “And I’ll do that as long as we possibly can until the clock runs out or we run out of capability.”

What a heart-stopping admission. Until that moment, your United States citizenship meant something. Now, however, it is something that entitles you to the protection of your government—a government that has put you in this jeopardy—only if our self-limited capabilities aren’t overextended and if it is conducive to the kind of news cycle the president wants.

Melanie Phillips: After America

Much deserved opprobrium has been heaped upon US President Joe Biden for his shameful remarks on Monday justifying his decision to cut and run from Afghanistan. He blamed everyone but himself for the Taliban’s expedited return to power, and accused the Afghan army — who have lost almost 70,000 soldiers fighting the Taliban — of having
collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight… American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves… We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.

Today, the Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat made an emotional and blistering speech in the House of Commons emergency debate. You can watch his speech here.

Tugendhat served in Afghanistan both as a soldier and as an adviser to the governor of Helmand province. He spoke about the soldiers who had died in Afghanistan, the good men he had watched going into the earth and who had taken with them “a part of all of us”. He said how proud he had been to be decorated by the American 82nd Airborne Division after the capture of Musa Qala in 2006. Making an effort to compose himself, he went on:
To see their Commander-in-Chief call into question the courage of men that I fought with, to claim that they ran; it’s shameful. Those who have never fought for the colours they fly should be careful about criticising those who have.

He went on to raise the issue that must now be preoccupying all who have depended upon the United States as the principal defender of the free world. For as I wrote here, the US has now shown itself to be a faithless ally and the weak link in that defence.

As a result, said Tugendhat, there was now a need to
reinvigorate our European NATO partners, to make sure we are not dependent on a single ally, on the decision of a single leader, but that we can work together with with Japan and Australia, France and Germany, with partners large and small and make sure that we hold the line together.

It was patience, he said, that had won the Cold War, achieved peace in Cyprus and brought prosperity to South Korea where America had stationed more than ten times the number of troops than it ever had in Afghanistan. He went on:
So let’s stop talking about “forever wars”. Let’s recognise that “forever peace” is bought not cheaply but hard, through determination and the will to endure. And the tragedy of Afghanistan is that we’re swapping that patient achievement for a second fire and a second war.

Ayyee.

He responds directly to Biden’s claim that supposedly cowardly and pathetic Afghans are to blame the Taliban takeover: “Those who have never fought for the colors they fly should be careful about criticizing those who have.”

British Parliament: "HEAR! HEAR!" https://t.co/Ai0MaDdYl7
— tsar becket adams (@BecketAdams) August 19, 2021

The Afghan gov't overthrown by Taliban never existed - ex-soldier

“They believed it because they had to; they couldn’t bring themselves to admit that this might not be real, it was just a sham,” said Graham Platner, who served in Iraq and then Afghanistan as a US soldier, and later as a security contractor. “Military officers are not trained to admit that maybe we can’t do this.”

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Platner reveals the deeply troubling levels of corruption, waste and myths that underpinned the US role in Afghanistan, and explains why the country fell to the Taliban in just a few days.

The Taliban captured their first provincial capital of Zaranj on August 7, and by August 15 they were in Kabul after President Ashraf Ghani had fled the country. US forces had left Bagram Air Base in early July, roughly a month before the Taliban offensive gained momentum and swept over the country.

Platner came to Afghanistan with high hopes in 2010. He’d been in Iraq, and would ultimately serve for eight years with the US Infantry. He came to Afghanistan with the surge of US troops that was supposed to turn around a war that had already dragged on for a decade.

“My unit was deployed in November 2010 as part of the Obama surge to move troops into the country to conduct counter-insurgency the right way,” he said. “I believed it before I left.”

Platner had seen mistakes in Iraq, and believed that Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the International Security Assistance Forces, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, his predecessor, were saying the right things about Afghanistan.

McChrystal said “that we would now drive on the road like we are part of the Afghans, and walk more and get out of our trucks,” remembers Platner. “And as an infantry sergeant who believed counter-insurgency could work, I wanted to do this, and I was excited to go and fight in an army that was going to take seriously this strategy that I had fully bought into.”

How did we spend 20 years, over 2 trillion dollars and over 2,000 American lives to wind up losing Afghanistan to the Taliban in under two weeks? Was the mission doomed from the start? A frank and wide-ranging conversation with @LTGHRMcMaster: https://t.co/VwjVEoYipZ
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) August 19, 2021

JINSA PodCast: U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Fall of Kabul

Vance Serchuk of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) joins Erielle to discuss the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, the magnitude of the consequences, and what the Biden Administration must prioritize in the coming days.

"Globalize the Intifada" is led by an NYU adjunct professor who openly advocates violence

Amin Husain is an adjunct professor at New York University where he teaches .Art and the Practice is Freedom and Art, Activism and Beyond.

He teaches "Activism and Practice of Freedom" at the Pratt Institute.

He also gives a class titled "Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the Media" at The New School.

Oh, and Amin Husain also openly promotes violence around the world.

He is a founder and lead organizer of "Decolonize This Place" which has been pushing the slogan "Globalize the Intifada."

Decolonize social media has explicit calls to violence and rioting- not only against "Zionists" but against anyone they declare the enemy, like the police or the New York subway system.

Decolonize This Place actually publishes their mindless antisemitic chants to destroy Israel and support terrorism, in case the idiots at their rallies can't repeat after the person with the bullhorn.

They try to walk the line between advocating violence and pretending to be pacifists to attract followers. So while the poster above says it is "anti-war" they also say - even in these chants - that terrorism is "justified."

Husain openly advocated violence, as well as the cynical attempt to hijack Black issues, at a 2016 Al Quds Day rally to Muslims at Times Square where he said, "One thing is certain: boycott, divestment and sanctions is changing the conversation and it's creating a new set of relationships and it connects us to the black liberation struggle in this country, and it gets around the idea of violence and non-violence which no one should judge each other on, and the days in which they call you terrorists...We're Muslims, proud Muslims, fighting for justice, and in all the ways possible, and yes jihadis, jihadis in all the ways possible..... don't let anyone tell you that you need to renounce your brother or sister because they're fighting in a way that's unacceptable."

This poster from Decolonize This Space openly advocates methods and tools of violent rioting.

Last year, Husain scrubbed his social media posts after his followers caused $100,000 of damage to NYC subways to delete direct calls for violence.

He has also publicly met with a major Islamic Jihad figure.

"Globalize the Intifada" means exactly what it sounds like: mainstream Palestinian-style terrorism worldwide, in the name of a fake "justice."

(h/t DigFind)

Iran and Hezbollah are trying to take advantage of Lebanon's economic crisis by sending an Iranian ship - supposedly with much needed fuel- to Lebanon, in violation of US sanctions.

Reuters reports:

A shipment of Iranian fuel oil for Lebanon will set sail on Thursday organised by the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah, the group said, warning its U.S. and Israeli adversaries the ship would be considered Lebanese territory as soon as it sailed.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said further ships would follow to help the people of Lebanon, who are enduring crippling fuel shortages as a result of the country's two-year-long financial meltdown.

"We don't want to get into a challenge with anyone, we don't want to get into a problem with anyone. We want to help our people," Nasrallah said. "I say to the Americans and the Israelis that the boat that will sail within hours from Iran is Lebanese territory."

Obviously, a ship doesn't become the territory of its destination. Iran and Hezbollah are trying to challenge the US and Israel to make them appear to be the aggressor for enforcing the blockade of Iranian arms and oil exports.

Nasrallah is also openly challenging the government of Lebanon.

In June, when he first announced his plan to import Iranian oil, he said, “Shipments of fuel will arrive at Beirut’s port, and let the state prevent their access to Lebanon.”

The Lebanese themselves recognize that this is a way for Hezbollah to strengthen his separate government, bypassing the Lebanese government for important decisions that affect the entire country.

“Nasrallah used a high tone when he talked about bringing fuel from Iran,” MP Bilal Abdallah told Arab News. “The Lebanese are suffering from shortages in drugs, food and fuel. Their suffering should not be used to establish stronger bridges with Iran.”

Abdallah added: “People’s suffering cannot be used for political purposes that affect Lebanon’s relations with its neighbors and the international community.”

Elias Hankhash, a politician who along with his Kataeb Party colleagues resigned from the parliament after the Beirut explosion last year in protest against government negligence, said that “Hezbollah controls all the state’s assets, including the illegal border crossings and the legal facilities and is a cover for the corrupt mafia.”

He blamed Hezbollah “for the bankruptcy, hunger and the international isolation the Lebanese are facing” and said that “buying fuel from Iran exposes Lebanon to sanctions and more isolation.”

In June 2020, Lebanon refused to allow Iranian ships to dock because of the fear that the US would extend sanctions to Lebanon if it accepted the shipments.

Israel also has interest in stopping these Iranian exports. Reports say that Israel has struck oil and arms shipments from Iran to Syria.

Nasrallah is trying to position himself and Iran as Lebanon's savior, and to get Lebanese citizens to support him. Hezbollah's popularity has plummeted in the wake of the Beirut explosion and current crisis.

During his speech, Nasrallah even said, "Iran has never interfered in Lebanon's internal affairs and we are not tools in the hands of this dear state." Instead, he accused the American embassy in Lebanon of inciting the Lebanese against each other.

"The U.S. embassy present in Awkar is not a diplomatic representation mission, it is an embassy for conspiring against Lebanon's people," he said.

This week, Israel suffered major wildfires west of Jerusalem. It asked other countries for aid in fighting the fires, but not the Palestinian Authority.

The PA volunteered to help, and Israel accepted. They sent four firetrucks and 20 firefighters to help control the blaze.

Now, Palestinians are complaining about their leaders approving doing something humanitarian for Jews.

Social media in Arabic had many posts against the Palestinians helping Israel.

Many of them pointed out that this happened on the same day that Israeli forces killed four armed terrorists in Jenin.Journalist Ibrahim Moqbel said on his Facebook page, "The occupation killed 4 and we sent them 4 fire engines. This is the national project in the religion of Abbas!"

Journalist Alaa al-Rimawi tweeted, "The Minister of Defense of the occupation, responsible for destroying Gaza a few months ago, thanks the Palestinian Authority and the President for sending the Palestinian Civil Defense to participate in putting out the fires in Jerusalem."

One other referred to the Algerian wildfires which Morocco offered to help fight and Algeria refused, saying, "A sad short story. Morocco offers to help Algeria to put out its fires, but the latter refuses, on the pretext that Morocco is allied with Israel. Massive fires erupt in the mountains of Jerusalem, and the Palestinian Authority offers assistance to Israel to put them out, and the latter agrees.” She doesn't seem to be saying that algeria was wrong or stubborn to refuse Moroccan help.

Algeria blames major wildfires on, you guessed it, Zionists

From Reuters:

Algeria on Wednesday blamed devastating wildfires this month on two groups it recently designated as terrorist organisations, adding that one of them was backed by Morocco and Israel.

The president's office said police had arrested 22 people for starting the deadly fires, but said ultimate responsibility lay with the Islamist Rashad group and MAK, an autonomy movement for the mostly Amazigh-speaking Kabylie region.

Algeria designated both groups as terrorist organisations this year. The presidency said on Wednesday that MAK "gets support and help from foreign parties, particularly Morocco and the Zionist entity", referring to Israel.

The wildfires have killed some 90 people in Algeria.

08/18 Links Pt2: New York City’s Kristallnacht; How Israelis can fight the Durban conference's Jew-hatred; B&J’s Founder Doubles Down on Anti-Israel Boycott

From Ian:

New York City’s Kristallnacht

Ed Koch called it “a pogrom.” So did Rudy Giuliani. The Reverend Al Sharpton—the chubby, agitating, last-century version—led a march along the streets as rioting young blacks rampaged through the neighborhood looking for Jews and Jewish businesses to attack. Hasidim cowered behind their mezuzah-trimmed doors while the sluggish police ducked rocks and bottles. New York’s first African-American mayor, the courtly David Dinkins, showed up, hoisted a bullhorn, and tried to pacify the mob.

“Will you listen to me for just a minute?” he pleaded.

“No!” they responded, trying to stone him.

“I care about you. I care about you desperately,” he shouted.

“Arrest the Jews!” they demanded.

That was the raw scene 30 years ago, in August 1991, when the worst race rioting in modern New York memory engulfed Crown Heights in Brooklyn. Caribbean immigrants, American blacks, and Hispanics shared the neighborhood with a heavily outnumbered community of Jews, most of them Lubavitcher Hasidim. The convulsive episode drove Dinkins’s handpicked black police commissioner back to Houston and helped doom his mayoralty, but not before that commissioner’s successor, Ray Kelly, began to reenergize the police force. This, in turn, gave momentum to Rudy Guiliani’s more muscular regime once he had defeated Dinkins in the mayoral election two years later.

Even today, many of the details about the traffic accident that touched off the riot and its deadly aftermath are in dispute, despite a 656-page investigatory report commissioned by Governor Mario Cuomo that was released two years after the event. The question for the future is whether Crown Heights was a one-time, perfect-storm explosion—or possibly an augury for Jews.

When Crown Heights erupted, I had been the editor of New York magazine for more than a decade. There had been flickerings of trouble between blacks and Jews before, but nothing on its ferocious scale. Some friction was inevitable because for decades poor blacks had done much of their food and clothing shopping at stores owned and run by Jews, lived in tenements owned or managed by Jews, and often worked as maids or janitors in Jewish homes and apartment houses. To be sure, many liberal New York Jews had been active in the civil-rights movement, contributing to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, journeying south as freedom riders, and—as in the case of Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman—dying for the cause at the hands of Dixie racists. But it was also true that some working-class Jews closer to them geographically and on the social ladder lived in fear of blacks or condescended to them.

Memorial Prayers in Brooklyn for Yankel Rosenbaum on Hebrew Anniversary of Murder in Crown Heights

Honor the sacrifice and elevate the soul of Yankel Rosenbaum HYD, murdered in Crown Heights in 1991. Thirty years ago, an angry mob shouting, “Kill the Jews!, chased Yankel through the streets of Crown Heights. Near the corner of President and Brooklyn, Yankel was surrounded and violently stabbed and beaten.

On the 30th anniversary of his murder, Wednesday evening at 6:45 pm ET, friends and family are gathering at the scene of the anti-Semitic attack to recite prayers in his memory.

Yankel’s only sibling, Norman Rosenbaum, flew to New York from Australia over 250 times in his never-ending quest for justice on behalf of his brother.

Norman never gave up and was in Crown Heights on the 25th anniversary of Yankel’s killing and held a memorial on the corner of President Street and Brooklyn. Sadly, Norman passed away in 2020.

“On Yankel’s 30th Yahrzeit (Hebrew anniversary of murder), let’s remember his story. Let’s continue Norman’s 30 year commitment to seek justice and keep Yankel’s memory alive,” said Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, leader of the Crown Heights ‘Jewish Future Alliance’ organization.

“Join the Rosenbaum family in saying Kaddish and Mishnayos in his memory. Norman’s son, Yoni Rosenbaum, will recite Kaddish and speak during the program.”

How Israelis can fight the Durban conference's Jew-hatred - opinion

From Israel it’s clear: such Jew-hatred isn’t about Palestinians or borders or Left-Right – it’s right-wrong, and it’s about survival. An increasingly vocal cadre of elite American Jews not only calls Israel “racist” and “apartheid,” but tries cleansing these terms of their Jew-baiting pedigrees or their genocidal implications – against Israel. Few Israelis fall for such nonsense.

It’s self-defeating to claim to oppose antisemitism while overlooking one of its most popular forms today – namely, anti-Zionism. Jew-hatred often mutates, attacking Judaism, Jews as a nation, and now Israel, the Jewish state. Refusing to fight Jew-hatred on all fronts is like vaccinating only strangers, not friends, against COVID-19.

An influential minority of American Jews today still view antisemitism through partisan prisms. Durban is inconvenient ideologically. It disrupts the preferred American Jewish narrative treating antisemitism as right-wing. According to the American Jewish Committee, 89% of American Jews recognize the extreme Right as antisemitic, but only 61% “say the same about the extreme Left.” Durban’s parallel NGO meeting, which became a festival of Jew-hatred, with social-justice-seeking do-gooders lustily demanding Israel’s destruction, proves that antisemitism festers on the Left, too.

The new Israeli government is putting politics aside when confronting our enemies. We need zero tolerance for Jew-haters and all bigots. We don’t accept “useful Jew-haters” – conservatives who claim to be pro-Israel yet hate Jews – or “well-meaning Jew-haters,” progressives who hide their Israel-obsession behind human rights talk. Durban showed that fighting Jew-hatred requires clear redlines, broad coalitions and a laser focus, refusing to be duped by side issues or fake friends.

Israel also has the heartbreaking honor of representing the largest concentration of victims of Jew-hatred. They include Holocaust survivors, refugees expelled from Arab and Muslim lands, Russian Jews, Ethiopian Jews, French Jews, and those killed by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, “lone wolves” and other terrorists inflamed by anti-Zionist antisemitism.

Most American Jews recognize – as President Joe Biden does – that anti-Zionism and antisemitism overlap. But many won’t connect the dots, refusing to acknowledge that Israel-bashing at the UN and elsewhere feeds Palestinian violence and rejectionism.

“Antisemitism has grown and continues to grow,” Theodor Herzl noted, “and so do I.” Fighting bigotry diminishes too many, making them pinched, angry, defensive, narrow-minded.

Israelis master Jew-jitsu, turning outsiders’ hatred into binding energy that unites us as a nation. The Jew-haters win when, by targeting us, they exacerbate divisions. The Israeli way is to see your enemy, unite our people, fight like hell, then argue about everything and anything once we’ve handled the threat.

With both Afghanistan and the Abraham Accords in the news this week, it is interesting to note that the Abraham Accords could potentially have started off with Afghanistan.

According to Radio Free Europe, in 2005 -- following Israel's disengagement from Gaza -- Afghanistan suggested establishing formal ties with Israel:

In an unprecedented interview in Kabul with a reporter from Tel Aviv daily "Yedi'ot Aharonot," Afghan President Hamid Karzai hinted at a desire to establish formal relations with Israel. While the euphoria that accompanied presumptions of imminent full diplomatic relations was quickly tempered by preconditions, the warming of ties between Afghanistan and Israel sets Kabul's policies in sharp contrast to those of neighboring Iran, where President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad has called for the destruction of the Jewish state.

According to the article, Karzai had met Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres and called him "a dear man, a real warrior for peace."

Israel's response to this news was "muted," but Ha'aretz reported that unnamed Israeli political sources believed that such a move by Afghanistan would represent "another important step on the road to recognition of Israel by the Muslim world."

That recognition of Israel never happened, in part of because of pressure from Iran, but even so -- the current debacle in that country is also likely to have an effect on relations between the Muslim world and Israel.

The website Breaking Defense looks the fall of Kabul, and the way it happened, in the context of the deteriorating situation of the Middle East in general:

In private talks with top Israeli defense and political sources alike, the view was echoed that the US drawing down in the region and the fall of Afghanistan, combined with ongoing aggression from Iran and political instability in Lebanon, all tie together into a potential regional bonfire. One senior source even raised concerns that Jordan or Iraq “be thrown away in one well planned act of the extreme jihad.”

The article also quotes retired Major General Amos Yadlin, who served as the chief of military intelligence of the IDF. Yadlin suggests that one result of the disillusionment with the US is that countries in the Middle East will look to improve their relations with Russia and China.

But Yadlin sees a second possible result:

Yadlin noted, it’s possible that the fall of Afghanistan could create space for Israel to strengthen defense ties with countries who may be looking for a more localized partner.

In other words, the tragic fall of Kabul could lead to a strengthening and even expansion of the Abraham Accords.

Elliott Abrams expands on this point, noting how Afghanistan illustrates why the Abraham Accords happened in the first place:

What is happening in Afghanistan will deepen the impression among Arab governments that they cannot rely on the United States to protect their security as they used to. So those states have increasingly drawn the conclusion that they have one neighbor who unlike Iran or Turkey poses no threat to them, and who continually displays a firm willingness to use military power against its enemies. That’s Israel. Israel in addition has a modern economy based on exceptional high-tech achievements, and maintains not only a close alliance with the United States but working relationships with Russia and China. For the Arabs, then, the Abraham Accords were at long last the victory of self-interest over ideology –and over outmoded versions of Arab nationalism and support for Palestinians. [emphasis added]

In addition to pointing to how the Accords may be strengthened by these recent events, Abrams also draws a connection between Arab nationalism and support for the Palestinian Arabs.
It's worth taking a closer look at the implications of that linkage and what it may mean.

The Palestinian Arabs reject the Abraham Accords because of the normalization of relations with Israel. More than that, despite the UAE insisting that Israel still must work towards a Palestinian state, the Palestinians still see the Accords as an abandonment of their cause.

They're right.

When Abrams refers to "outmoded versions of Arab nationalism," he is talking about Arab pan-nationalism which sees all Arabs as one nation, a supra-national community. That is what Nasser envisioned with his establishment of the United Arab Republic, which started with Egypt and Syria, but was supposed to grow into an even larger pan-Arab state.

That plan failed.

Instead -- today, Arab countries are developing their own individual, unique national identities -- tied to their own interests, including their defensive needs. Seen this way, the growing estrangement of the Arab world from the Palestinian cause is more than an issue of antagonism towards the Palestinians and their requests for money.

This growing individual, Arab nationalism, may also help explain the lack of response in the Arab world to the situation of the Uyghurs in China, with whom they may not find common cause, just as they do not find common cause with the Palestinian Arabs as they once did.

Afghanistan is now learning the same lesson that the Uyghurs -- and a growing number -- have learned. As Shoshana Bryen, senior director of the Jewish Policy Center, writes in Newsweek:

The Afghan people—like the victims of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, ISIS in the Middle East and increasingly in Africa, Iran's mullahs and their proxies, and China's genocidal policies against its Uyghur and Tibetan people—are now also victims of the "international community" and its haughty platitudes. [emphasis added]

If Israel can prove itself to be above such platitudes and be a truly reliable ally, it will go a long way towards assuring its own security, and peace in general, in the region.

The director of the mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Sheikh Hefzy Abu Sneina, now claims that his mosque is the fourth holiest mosque in Islam after the Al-Haram in Mecca, the Al-Nabawi mosque in Medina and the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. He says that it contains Islamic sanctities and the tombs of their prophets, "which proves the right of Palestinians and Muslims to it and denies any Israeli claims of their rights in it. "

Even though the prophets buried there have nothing to do with Islam, with the exception of Abraham, but everything to do with Judaism.

The Jewish ties to Hebron have given the Ibrahimi Mosque some holiness inflation, it seems.

I have not seen the Hebron mosque listed as the fourth holiest in any other source.

This article in The Guardian says that #4 is Imam Ali in Iraq, #5 is the Dome of the Rock, #6 is Great Mosque of Djenne in Mali and #7 is the Quba Mosque in Medina. Hebron isn't mentioned.

This site lists the Quba mosque as #4.

Wikipedia gives three sources saying that the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus is the fourth holiest site in Islam.

So how did the mosque in Hebron rocket to the top of the charts? (No one will argue about 1,2 or 3, although Shiite Muslims used to rate Al Aqsa as #5, behind Najaf and Karbala.)

It seems that the holier Jews consider a site, the more Muslims want to take it away from Jews. It happens in Jerusalem, in Hebron, in Bethlehem, in Shechem (Nablus.)

It is pure antisemitism, and something that no one is willing to talk about.

08/18 Links Pt1: After American withdrawal from Afghanistan, implications for Israel look grimmer; Netanyahu: In 2013, John Kerry Offered Israel to Adopt ‘Afghanistan Model’ with PA

From Ian:

After American withdrawal from Afghanistan, implications for Israel look grimmer

As Israel observes the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, it’s difficult to forget the capitulation of the Iraqi army to ISIS in 2014 or the EUBAM observers who fled as Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip in 2007, not to mention visions of the United States fleeing Saigon in the spring of 1975 as part of the collapse of the Vietnam War.

Noting the coincidental, yet equal number of years separating each of the Middle Eastern incidents in which Islamic fundamentalists defeated their adversaries, Eran Lerman, vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, half-jokingly called it the “seven-year-itch.”

“What worries me,” he says, “is a much broader symbolic message that Islamist radicalism is once again on the march, the Americans have no staying power, and the West is in decline.”

Lerman suggests that Israel learn lessons from the past, saying it should “band together with other countries to hold against the tide.”

Referring to Israel’s own concerns of Islamic fundamentalists taking over Palestinian areas besides Gaza, which Hamas already controls, Lerman says “I hope we never again hear lectures from the Americans on how you can trust Palestinian security forces to run their country and keep us safe once we leave.”

Israel has long argued that a future Palestinian state left to its own devices and without Israeli oversight would easily collapse if confronted by a terrorist organization like the Islamic State (ISIS), the Taliban or Hamas.

The fall of Afghanistan only strengthens Israel’s argument and, as Lerman argues, its leaders must learn the lessons here.

Having finally extricated itself from the mire that is Afghanistan—a goal shared by the previous two U.S. administrations, one Democrat- and one Republican-led—America has simultaneously sent a dark and ominous signal suggesting to its allies that it is no longer reliable, especially since it grossly underestimated the speed at which the Taliban took control.

Noah Rothman: The Magical, Self-Justifying Afghanistan Debacle

On Monday, President Joe Biden delivered what could only have been a hastily prepared speech on the meltdown in Afghanistan before resuming his vacation. In it, the president abandoned his rationale for total U.S. withdrawal which, in July, was predicated on the competence, training, and numerical strength of the Afghan National Forces. This week, Biden insisted, withdrawal was justified by the abject weakness and cowardice of those very same Afghan soldiers.

“American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves,” Biden insisted. “We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.” This sentiment must have appealed to Democrats like Sen. Chris Murphy, who took the opportunity of Afghanistan’s collapse to insist that the lesson here is that we should abandon the pursuit of America’s long-term interests in favor of applying Band-Aids to threats as they arise. Presumably, the rest of Joe Biden’s party will see the virtue of this sort of projection soon enough.

Leaving aside for a moment that running down an ally—even one we’ve summarily abandoned to the mercies of an Islamist militia—is an odd way to restore American credibility on the world stage, Biden’s exercise in blame-shifting has the added defect of being untrue. Tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers fought and died in defense of their country since NATO-led combat operations ended in 2014. They continued to do so well into 2020, when American “peace talks” with the Taliban began to sap those soldiers of the “will to fight” with the understanding that U.S. support was winding down. And when Biden pulled the plug on “air support, intelligence, and contractors servicing Afghanistan’s planes and helicopters,” a thorough Wall Street Journal expose revealed, “the Afghan military simply couldn’t operate anymore.” The Afghans didn’t lose the will to fight for their country; they were robbed of the means of effectively doing so by Washington.

The audience for President Biden’s self-soothing talk about the inevitability of Afghanistan’s implosion isn’t limited to stunned Democrats. A certain sort of conservative for whom retrenchment is both a means to an end and an end in itself is just as enamored of this dubious talking point.

Netanyahu: In 2013, John Kerry Offered Israel to Adopt ‘Afghanistan Model’ with PA

The former prime minister revealed Wednesday that in 2013, he was approached by then US Secretary of State John Kerry, who invited him on a secret visit to Afghanistan to see, as he explained, how the US had set up a local military force that could stand alone against terrorism.

“The message was clear – the ‘Afghanistan model’ is the model that the United States seeks to apply to the Palestinian issue as well,” he wrote.

He “politely declined” the offer and rejected the idea.

“I estimated then that as soon as the US left Afghanistan, everything would collapse. This is unfortunately what has happened these days: an extremist Islamic regime has conquered Afghanistan and will turn it into a state of terror that will endanger world peace,” he said.

“We will get the same result if we hand over swaths of land to the Palestinians. The Palestinians will not establish Singapore. They will establish a state of terror in Judea and Samaria, a short distance from Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, Kfar Saba and Netanya,” he warned.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan is now under full Taliban control after the fall of Kabul, as US forces and Western diplomats are fleeing the capital’s airport.

He further cautioned that “we saw the same wrong policy with regard to Iran. The international community has embarked on a dangerous agreement that would have given Iran an internationally condoned arsenal of nuclear bombs meant for our destruction.”

“I was then asked by our friends to keep quiet. Do not act or fight. I did not agree to that either. We have pursued an attack policy both in the operational field and in the diplomatic and explanatory field. I went out against the whole world, including many in Israel, and spoke in the US Congress against this dangerous agreement,” he recounted.

🇺🇸 Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield says U.S. expressed "in no uncertain terms" at the United Nations through "a very strongly worded press statement" from the Security Council that "we expect the Taliban to respect women's rights" and "to be respectful of humanitarian law." pic.twitter.com/32TEyRFu4O
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) August 18, 2021

That "demographic bomb" threatening Israel is now closer to a firecracker

Remember the articles from the 1990s and early 2000s that predicted a demographic bomb that would destroy Israel?

This front page article in the St. Petersburg (FL) Times from September 21, 2003 was typical:

Note the pull quote - the entire reason this woman wants lots of children is because she wants to ethnically cleanse Jews.

In that article, Israeli demographer Arnon soffer confidently predicted that by 2020, there were be 8.5 million Arabs in territories Israel controls, compared to 6.5 million Jews.

His predictions of the Arab population was only off by 1.5 million.

The Arab population growth has been steadily slowing over the years, and their birthrate has plummeted. While the Palestinian Arab and Israeli Arab birthrates per thousand used to be more than double that of Jews in Israel in 2001, they are now much closer to parity.

Also, in 2018, the fertility rate of Jewish women in Israel surpassed that of Arab Israeli women.

Not to say there isn't still an issue, but that argument that Israel must panic and give Palestinians a state because of the demographic threat has lost much of its urgency - especially since Israel washed its hands of Gaza and has no interest in controlling that sector with its 2.1 million Arabs.

Interestingly, most feminists don't seem to have a problem with the reasons for a higher Arab birthrate - a patriarchal culture, women discouraged from getting jobs, illegal abortions, and polygamy.

(h/t Noah)

In the Times of Israel, diplomatic reporter Lazer Berman offers an analysis of how the Afghanistan fiasco could affect Israel:

Though the tragedy is unfolding almost 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) from Israel, it will have important ramifications for Jerusalem and the choices its partners and enemies will make in the coming months.

For Israel, which has tied itself snuggly to Washington for decades, the downsides are clear.

“When the US is seen as weak, in the simplest terms, it’s bad for Israel,” said Micky Aharonson, a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and former foreign policy director at Israel’s National Security Council.

The idea that the most capable intelligence apparatus in the world so badly misread a country it has been intimately involved with for two decades does not inspire confidence in America’s abilities to read and shape the region — especially after a string of high-profile intelligence failures in Iraq, Iran, Libya and more.

“Whenever the world’s most powerful nation suffers a humiliating foreign policy failure, it’s going to have far-reaching international effects, including for countries, like Israel, who have based so much of their own deterrence and national security on the credibility of their strategic partnership with the United States,” said John Hannah, senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

“If I’m a Saudi, or an Emirati, or a Bahraini, or others who have been close to America, I will want to do some thinking about my relationship with the United States, and whether it might be wise of me to begin to explore whether my survival will be better assured by cutting some sort of deal with Iran rather than rely on American support,” said Cliff May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a right-leaning think tank.

These experts have good points, but there is something missing in their analyses.

To the Arab world, the US abandonment of Afghanistan is not the epochal event that changes their opinion of the reliability of the United States. The Arab world already experienced a US government that was willing to abandon its Muslim allies - during the Obama administration. Then came the whiplash of a Trump administration that looked upon all relationships as transactional and not strategic. And now, Obama's Democratic successor is appearing to be as unreliable as Obama - but even less competent.

The four year presidential cycle is what makes America an unreliable partner. Afghanistan is just a data point.

The biggest difference in the region in the past decade is that Israel is now looked upon as the most reliable pro-Western superpower. Israel's new government is not pursuing foreign policy that is fundamentally different from Netanyahu's. To the Arabs, Israel is strong and reliable - unlike the US.

In this sense, Israel is a beneficiary of the US debacle in Afghanistan.

It is true that the Arab nations have been hedging their bets by opening up channels to Iran. This wasn't in response to Afghanistan. This was because they fully expected Biden to be Obama 2.0. It doesn't indicate that they are pro-Iran, just that they want to position themselves for whatever happens. And they are strengthening relations with Israel for the exact same reason.

Beyond that, the Arab world isn't stupid. The US' poor decisions doesn't affect its strength, its technological leadership, or its intelligence gathering capabilities (although it indicates that the analysis of that intelligence is sub-par.) Israel still benefits greatly from its strong relationship with the US in terms of weapons acquisition and development and signals intelligence (and perhaps human intelligence) in the region. The raw power of the US still benefits Israel tremendously, both in real terms and in optics.

It is too early to say much more. Afghanistan will probably revert to becoming a haven for international Sunni Islamist terror groups. Their choice of targets will mean that they will be setting the agenda for the region. Uncertainty and chaos helps the terrorists.

However, as Arabs noted often during the 2000s, Al Qaeda rarely targeted Israel - because of Israel's strength and resolve. Many Arab nations will want to be under that umbrella when they are directly threatened by whatever will become the new Al Qaeda. Unlike the US, Israel is not perceived as someone who abandons her friends.

Source material proves that Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Conventions does not say Israeli settlements are illegal

The sixth paragraph of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states, "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

This has been used since 1967 to claim that Israeli settlements violate international law.

Back in 2012, I dug up all the preparatory notes - the Travaux Préparatoires - I could find for the Fourth Geneva Convention article 49 (then called Article 45) to see if the discussions of the article would shed light on the issue. My conclusion then was that the entire paragraph dealt with forcible transfers and deportations of civilians, and all the drafters were unanimous in saying that forcible transfer of people against their will was reprehensible. Given that Israelis who move to Judea and Samaria are doing that voluntarily, no one can claim that Israel is violating the Geneva Conventions.

However, the 1958 ICRC Commentary on the Conventions indicates that perhaps the sixth paragraph is anomalous inside the article and does not only refer to forced transfer:

PARAGRAPH 6. -- DEPORTATION AND TRANSFER OF PERSONS INTO
OCCUPIED TERRITORY

This clause was adopted after some hesitation, by the XVIIth International Red Cross Conference (13). It is intended to prevent a practice adopted during the Second World War by certain Powers, which transferred portions of their own population to occupied territory for political and racial reasons or in order, as they claimed, to colonize those territories. Such transfers worsened the economic situation of the native population and endangered their separate existence as a race.
The paragraph provides protected persons with a valuable safeguard. It should be noted, however, that in this paragraph the meaning of the words "transfer" and "deport" is rather different from that in which they are used in the other paragraphs of Article 49, since they do not refer to the movement of protected persons but to that of nationals of the occupying Power.
It would therefore appear to have been more logical -- and this was pointed out at the Diplomatic Conference (14) -- to have made the clause in question into a separate provision distinct from Article 49, so that the concepts of "deportations" and "transfers" in that Article could have kept throughout the meaning given them in paragraph 1, i.e. the compulsory movement of protected persons from occupied territory.

This commentary makes a large distinction between the sixth paragraph and the others. However, nowhere does it indicate that the transfer mentioned could be voluntary - it emphasizes that the important difference between the first five paragraphs and paragraph 6 is that the first five refer to forcible transfer of the occupied and the last refers to citizens, but in all cases the transfer seems to be forced.

I looked up the sources given, which are in French.

Footnote 13 is the ' XVIIth International Red Cross Conference, Legal Commission, Summary of the Debates of the Sub-Commissions, ' pp. 61-62 and 77-78. They say:

My translation:

Article 45 M. Cohn (Denmark, Gvtc) proposes to add a new paragraph as follows: "The Occupying Power may not carry out the deportation or the transfer of part of its own population from a territory other than it occupies in the territory occupied by it ", in order to protect the population of an occupied state against an invasion of persons.

Mr. Pilloud (ICRC), believes that it is more about the duties of the Occupying Power, which is not entirely the responsibility of the International Red Cross, We must seek to protect rather the nationals of the country.

Mr. Castberg (Norway, Gvt,) supported Mr. Cohn's proposal because he considered that this new paragraph would protect the nationals of an occupied country against an invasion of people coming from other territories and who would have to be fed, etc .. •

The Commission, on a proposal from MM. Holmgren (Sweden, CRO) .. and Abus (Turkey, CR) decided to postpone its decision on this article and to wait until Mr. Cohn's proposal has been distributed,

The "hesitancy" mentioned in the Commentary seems to be regarding whether this belongs in the Convention altogether because Mr. Pilloud said that transferring people from a nation to an occupied territory is a crime against the people themselves, and therefore doesn't fit in an article about the rights of the occupied. This sure makes it sound like "transfer" means against their will.

Mr. Castberg, however, says that the crime would be the occupiers taking away limited resources from the occupied, and that should be a violation. If his logic is correct, then settlements that do not affect natural resources would not be an issue. But even he could admit that the transfer being prohibited is forcible.

The second part says:

My translation:

Article 45 M. Cohn (Denmark, Gvt,) proposed the following addendum to article 45: 'The occupying Power may not deport or transfer part of its own population or of the population of another territory which it occupies within the territory occupied by it. "

After a discussion took part Mr. Clattenburg (USA, Gvt,) who considers that this paragraph has a much too broad meaning, Mr. Wershof (Canada, Gvt,) and Mr. G. Pilloud (ICRC), the deputy Commission adopted this amended paragraph as follows "The Occupying Power may not deport or transfer part of its own civilian population to the territory occupied by it". Mr Wershof (Canada, Gvt,) points out that he abstained from voting, not that he. condemns the sentiments expressed in this paragraph, but he considers that this conference is not qualified to examine questions of this kind in this paragraph and finds that the Convention is not intended to show Nations how they act in war.

Apparently, the first language was dismissed, so Mr. Cohn changed it - but this time he added specifically that the transfer could be of a nation's own citizens or people in other occupied territories.

This is pretty clearly talking only about forced transfer! People in occupied territories couldn't decide to move to another occupied territory on their own.

Footnote 14, which the ICRC says indicates that the words "deport" and "transfer" have different meanings, is for the Final Record of the Diplomatic Conference of Geneva of 1949, ' Vol. II-A, p. 664. I can only find this one section that indicates what they are saying, and it is not very clear to me:

Mr. MARESCA (Italy) said that in the last war the flower of Italian youth had been sent to Germany in cattle trucks. Such forced transfers must at all events be prohibited in the future. The term "deportation" in the last paragraph of the Article had better not be used, as "deportation" was something quite different.

But the word "deport" was kept in the final paragraph! And he didn't say anything about "transfer."

There is not the slightest indication that the word "transfer" in all these cases means anything beyond forcible transfer. After all, who could have imagined a situation where nationals want to move out? The phenomenon of Israeli settlements is not one imagined by the drafters.

Later on, the entire article is discussed without making any distinctions between paragraphs:

The CHAIRMAN, before declaring the discussion on Article 45 closed, noted that the Committee was unanimous in condemnation of the abominable practice of deportation. The sole purpose of every speaker had been to strengthen the interdictory provisions of the Article. He suggested that deportations should, in the same way as the taking of hostages, be solemnly prohibited in the Preamble.

This mirrors what I had found in my 2012 post on the topic - discussions of the article as a whole never made an exception for paragraph 6 as far as meaning forcible transfers. The only real question was whether such transfers belong in the Geneva Conventions that are meant to protect those inside the occupied territories.

Secondary sources that agree with me that paragraph 6 refers to forced transfers are summarized in a 2011 article by Alan Baker:

The international lawyer Prof. Eugene V. Rostow, a former dean of Yale Law School and Undersecretary of State, stated in 1990:

[T]he Convention prohibits many of the inhumane practices of the Nazis and the Soviet Union during and before the Second World War – the mass transfer of people into and out of occupied territories for purposes of extermination, slave labor or colonization, for example….The Jewish settlers in the West Bank are most emphatically volunteers. They have not been “deported” or “transferred” to the area by the Government of Israel, and their movement involves none of the atrocious purposes or harmful effects on the existing population it is the goal of the Geneva Convention to prevent.

Ambassador Morris Abram, a member of the U.S. staff at the Nuremburg Tribunal and later involved in the drafting of the Fourth Geneva Convention, is on record as stating that the convention:

was not designed to cover situations like Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, but rather the forcible transfer, deportation or resettlement of large numbers of people.

Similarly, international lawyer Prof. Julius Stone, in referring to the absurdity of considering Israeli settlements as a violation of Article 49(6), stated:

Irony would…be pushed to the absurdity of claiming that Article 49(6), designed to prevent repetition of Nazi-type genocidal policies of rendering Nazi metropolitan territories judenrein, has now come to mean that…the West Bank…must be made judenrein and must be so maintained, if necessary by the use of force by the government of Israel against its own inhabitants. Common sense as well as correct historical and functional context excludes so tyrannical a reading of Article 49(6.)

My reading of the source material as specifically meaning forced transfer is supported by very distinguished law experts.

It seems pretty clear that Geneva does not prohibit the settlements.

(h/t Andre)

08/17 Links Pt2: Cancel the Durban IV Review Conference; Israeli Survey of US Universities Sees Left-Leaning Groups as ‘Significant’ Source of Campus Antisemitism

From Ian:

Amb. Alan Baker: Cancel the Durban IV Review Conference

In what can only be seen as an amazing act of institutional masochism and hypocrisy by the international community, the upcoming UN General Assembly’s opening meetings in September 2021, attended by heads of state and government, will “commemorate” the 20th anniversary of the infamous 2001 Durban conference.1

The 2001 Durban World Conference, aiming to address the struggle against racism, was abused by Muslim and Arab states and anti-Israel non-governmental organizations and became a blatant antisemitic and anti-Israel hate-fest, singling out and lynching Israel in such a manner as to permanently taint the name of the Durban conference.

The damage caused by this public condemnation of Israel laid the groundwork for a concerted campaign in the international community to undermine and delegitimize the State of Israel and served as the inspiration for the launching of the infamous BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanction) campaign that continues to be waged against Israel.

The UN and its respective High Commissioners for Human Rights have attempted to re-legitimize the Durban process through Review Conferences in 2009 and 2011, which reaffirmed the Durban I conference declarations and plans of action, thereby in effect reaffirming and sanctioning the calls to delegitimize Israel.

This process will be repeated soon at the upcoming Durban IV conference at the UN in September 2021.

Durban must be expunged and forgotten. The international community must set about dealing with racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and antisemitism in a genuinely serious, a-political, and non-hypocritical manner, far from Durban.

Now that we know from Biden's speech yesterday that he takes his predecessors diplomatic commitments seriously, I expect him to shelve all discussions of opening a PA consulate in Jerusalem, and revive the Trump Framework for peace.
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) August 17, 2021

Daniel Gordis: Forego the Jewish State to save Liberal Zionism?

Two guys are sitting in a bar in Amsterdam. (They aren’t—but bear with me.) One of them was born in the United States, yet left years ago, brimming with distaste for what America had become. Now he lives in Amsterdam and teaches continental philosophy at a university there, enjoying the tulips and the beer.

The other was born in Holland. He spent a few years in the U.S. but hasn’t been back in a while, either. He didn’t like America much, either. Nasty place—anti-intellectual red states, terrible treatment of immigrants on the Texas border, the politics of masks trumping science. The list goes on. “Yup, America’s done,” they say to each other, with knowing nods, as they clink their bottles, taking another swig of the ice-cold Heineken.

They’ve met up at the bar to celebrate the new book that the one who was born in the US but now lives in Holland wrote about the US. The point of the book? Well, the US is highly imperfect, and he can’t really see any way to fix it. The only way to save the American dream is to break up the Union. Create a “more perfect union” by having no union at all.

Oh, and he wrote the book in Dutch.

So here are my questions: First, aside from perhaps getting himself a few reviews in his echo-chamber and maybe another notch on the proverbial academic bedpost, what’s the point of the book? Does he imagine that anyone in America is going to think about disbanding the union because of a guy who was born in America, left it, and bereft of solutions to complex problems, has decided to end the project? Does he really imagine he’s going to move any policy needle in America? And if he really hoped he’d engender a conversation, why did he write the book in Dutch?

I begin with that little analogy because of two very different sorts of conversations that crossed my screen this week, two pieces that I think are emblematic of the radically different conversations unfolding about Israel—one in the US and one in Israel, the latter conversation sadly almost never making it into the English press and thus remaining pretty much unknown in America. (Hence, Israel from the Inside.)

The Israel Guys: This Little Girl Was Used by the BBC As Anti-Israel Propaganda

The BBC ran an article recently with a heart-wrenching photo of a little girl sitting on a pile of rubble in Gaza. What they failed to mention however, is that the photo was staged, and the pile of rubble was home to a terrorist organization.

When will the international media be held responsible for their discrimination and lies? When will Hamas be rightfully held responsible for child abuse, instead of Israel falsely accusing Israel of the same crime?

*Correction at 1:41: should be "600 rockets were fired at the civilian population of Israel" (not Gaza)

This is an important topic. Please share this video widely.