Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, August 21, 2021

08/21 Links: How the US disaster in giving Afghanistan to the Taliban happened; Hassan Nasrallah’s schadenfreude; Soldier shot, critically hurt in Gaza border clash

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: How the US disaster in giving Afghanistan to the Taliban happened

What’s worse is that the US had already pulled contractors and air support and other key factors that had helped prop up the paper-thin Afghan army. It turned out that despite the trillion dollars spent since 2001 in Afghanistan, almost no infrastructure had been built. The Afghan Air Force was a few propeller planes and helicopters, not a real air force. The US had kept the Afghan army underarmed precisely because of the sense that this way it would be dependent, and if the US left, then US fighter jets would not end up in the hands of US adversaries. Almost nothing was left to show for 20 years of the US role when it was all over.

AMERICA SENT in troops to secure part of the airport to get Americans and Westerners out. It wasn’t exactly apartheid at the airport in the final hours on August 16, but Afghans were left stranded, and mostly white Westerners got on the planes. Where once the US had helped Kosovars and helped Kurds, in 2021 the days of Americans helping were done.

While some compare the US leaving Kabul to the US leaving Saigon, in 1975 the US ambassador in Saigon, Graham Martin, went to the front to see the debacle himself and struggled to stay to the end to help get Vietnamese out.

He and his wife personally helped get Vietnamese out, and he urged the navy to help Vietnamese who were fleeing.

That was a time when American officials cared about locals. This time the US chargé d’affaires didn’t sit around to wait; he was gone when the chaos unfolded at the airport.

No one will take responsibility. Afghan leaders had all left their people behind, off to comfortable villas in Central Asia, Europe or the Gulf. US troops were left at the airport to fire gunshots in the air as the poor people begged for flights.

Unlike Vietnam, there would be no Americans offshore helping the refugees, no American Afghan version of the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act. This century would have no Americans like ambassador Graham Martin, whose steadfastness helped 140,000 Vietnamese flee.•

Biden's catastrophe

This “ending endless wars” narrative , long espoused by too many politicians of both parties, ignores the prudent admonition of former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta. We should absolutely scrutinize military interventions and how those interventions are conducted, but “we must also apply the same scrutiny to withdrawals,” Panetta wrote in December. “In doing so, Americans will find that some withdrawals can be equally deleterious to our national security, especially when the withdrawals are conducted precipitously and without clear preconditions.”

One simply needs to look to the 2011 Obama administration withdrawal from Iraq for an example. President Barack Obama, motivated in part by the sincere and misinformed advocacy of then-Vice President Joe Biden, pursued withdrawal based on a timeline and not conditions in the country — against the advice of his military commanders.

Sound familiar?

And what was the result of that 2011 withdrawal from Iraq? That decision catalyzed the rise of the Islamic State and culminated in a costly U.S. military return in 2014.

A decade after the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, Biden drew from the same playbook, and we are all witnessing the horrible results. In a bizarre twist of logic, Biden is arguing that the catastrophe his policy catalyzed in Afghanistan is evidence of the wisdom of that policy. The idea is that chaos was inevitable and that inevitability argued against keeping troops there.

This is absurd. When I taught at West Point, I might have flunked a cadet if he or she had attempted that logical maneuver in a term paper. The Afghan security forces, despite their many shortcomings, fought hard for nearly 20 years, with an estimated 66,000 paying the ultimate price to defend their country and fight our common enemy.

Some trend lines were troubling, but the rapid unraveling came after Biden’s April 14 announcement of the impending withdrawal. The psychological impact on Afghan security forces of the American abandonment (which started under Trump) and the denial of air support (by Biden) cannot be overestimated.

US general tells British special forces: Stop rescuing people in Kabul, you're making us look bad

I understand that the commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division has told the commander of the British special forces at the Kabul airport to cease operations beyond the airport perimeter.

Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue has told his British Army counterpart, a high-ranking field-grade officer of the British army's 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, that British operations were embarrassing the United States military in the absence of similar U.S. military operations, according to multiple military sources. I understand that the British officer firmly rejected the request.

Col. Joe Buccino, a spokesman for the XVIII Airborne Corps, denied that Donahue made such a request.

“The XVIII Airborne Corps denies the central thrust of this story," the spokesman said. "Specifically, Gen. Chris Donahue, whose sole focus is security at HKIA, never made such a request to any British Army officials and would have no motive for doing so.”

This show of rare tension between the U.S. and British command groups in Kabul reflects three factors.

First, it shows the obvious stress of attempting to extricate thousands of personnel under a situation of increasing terrorist threat. Elements of the Haqqani network, the Islamic State in Afghanistan, and possibly al Qaeda are now operating in proximity to Kabul airport with some degree of command separation from the Taliban.

Ricochet Podcast: Scary and Confusing

Hosted by James Lileks, Peter Robinson & Rob Long
With guests Eli Lake & Victor Davis Hanson
What can we say? Frustration has a way of concentrating the mind, and this week we’ve got one word: Afghanistan. Victor Davis Hanson joins us to talk about our absurd administration and its pathetic priorities. Then national security correspondent Eli Lake joins us to speak on the Taliban, Biden’s “return to normal” on the world stage and his moral illiteracy. The fellas also have a chance to muse on the tug-of-war of nation-building versus our security interests, along with the question of what America’s choice will be regarding its role as the leader of the free world. We’d be interested in what Ricochet members think. Let us know in the comments!

08/20 Links Pt2: The Real Truth About the Temple Mount; The US Charade of ‘Palestine’ in Jerusalem; My Friend Ruth Pearl

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: The Real Truth About the Temple Mount

Ultimately the problem with statements such as these is not their ignorance but that they give ammunition to enemies of Israel, who seek to lie about Jewish history. The hard truth is that in the past 54 years since the miraculous moment when Jews returned to ancient Jerusalem, the sacred city has itself been rebuilt—but the destruction of the remnants of the Temple has gotten worse. The waqf has destroyed much archeological evidence of the Temple that once was there, and many Palestinian leaders have denied that the Temple stood there in the first place. To say on television that the Western Wall is Judaism’s holiest site is to provide propaganda to those who seek to negate the Jewish connection to Jerusalem.

The episode is another reminder that the Jewish return to Jerusalem in 1967 marked one of the most miraculous moments in the history of the Jewish people, but it is also the anniversary of Israel’s greatest mistake. The victory in the Six-Day War could have been a moment to establish what Prime Minister Bennet rightly called “freedom of worship” on the Mount, a moment to enshrine the right for Jews to pray there as much as Muslims. But that moment was missed by Moshe Dayan, and the situation is very different today.

For those who care deeply about the Jewish connection to the Mount, and who desperately desire to pray there, it may well be that today it will be achieved first and foremost with finesse. A recent Israeli news report described how Israeli police are allowing visiting Jews on the Mount to pray—to do so quietly, unofficially, without the usual accoutrements such as prayer shawls and phylacteries, but to pray nonetheless. One of the unsung heroes of the surreptitious step forward seems to be Gilad Erdan, the outgoing Israeli ambassador to Washington, who will be staying on as Israel’s representative in the UN. Until recently the Israeli police atop the Mount would stop any Jewish act that came close to prayer, at times protesting even if a tour guide quoted the Bible. But the Jerusalem Post described how Erdan, while serving as Israel’s minister for public security, deliberately oversaw personnel changes to the police, ensuring that they “softened their attitude to Jewish visitors and did not remove those engaged in small, discreet Jewish prayer services from the site.”

Meanwhile, the government of Israel owes it to its citizens, and thousands of years of Jewish history, to state unequivocally that the Temple Mount, and not the Western Wall, is the locus of Jewish longing. It is not difficult to acknowledge, and it is important to do so for many reasons, but for one above all: It is true. And as long as lies and ignorance persist about the Jewish relationship with the Temple Mount, Jewish visits to what is undeniably Judaism’s most sacred site will become more important than ever.

The Tikvah Podcast: Allan Arkush on Ahad Ha’am and “The Jewish State and Jewish Problem”

In an 1897 essay called “The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem,” the Zionist writer A?ad Ha’am argued that “Judaism needs at present but little. It needs not an independent state, but only the creation in its native land of conditions favorable to its development: a good-sized settlement of Jews working without hindrance in every branch of culture, from agriculture and handicrafts to science and literature.” Ha’am believed that the most powerful arguments for Zionism were not economic but moral, and in his many essays he stressed the importance of forming a modern Jewish identity from authentically Jewish culture and ideas. Culture first, sovereignty later, in other words.

Ha’am was born in 1856 this week by the name Asher Ginsburg, and so we thought we’d mark the occasion by rebroadcasting a conversation about him between the Tikvah Fund’s executive director Eric Cohen and Allan Arkush, a professor of Judaic studies at Binghamton University and the senior contributing editor at the Jewish Review of Books. The two discuss Ha’am’s background, his ideas in this essay and elsewhere, and compare them to his more politically-minded Zionist rivals, namely Theodor Herzl.

Israel Was Not Created Because of Holocaust, Rather Ancient Jewish Roots & Modern Determination

Using the Holocaust to demonize Israel
The promotion of the mistaken theory that the Jewish state is but a byproduct of the WWII genocide has had a surreal boomerang effect, essentially opening the door to those with anti-Zionist agendas, as well as antisemites, to hijack Holocaust-related language and symbols in order to libel Israel by comparing its treatment of the Palestinians to that of the Jews by the Nazis.

For his part, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly likened the Jewish state’s Gaza policy to the Nazi treatment of Jews. Erdogan has said that, “we view the Holocaust in the same way we view those besieging Gaza and carrying out massacres in it.”

Perhaps most well-known was when former Iranian president and vile antisemite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2007 accused Israel of using the Holocaust as a pretext for “genocide” against Palestinians.

Then there’s ex-London mayor Ken Livingstone. In 2018, The British Labour Party extended his suspension over a 2016 assertion that Adolf Hitler had supported Zionism in the 1930s. Livingston claimed he was merely “stating a historical fact.”

Meanwhile, the ‘Never Again For Anyone’ initiative is an especially egregious example as it demonizes Israel by advocating for the ‘Never Again’ mantra – created specifically in reference to the systematic murder of 6 million Jews – to be applied to the Palestinian people.

The big problem with cum hoc ergo propter hoc
The confluence of the Jewish people’s ancient connection to the Land of Israel, the Zionist movement’s monumental efforts to re-establish a Jewish state and a complex array of geopolitical factors are responsible for Israel’s creation. And this was likely to happen had the Holocaust never been perpetrated.

By failing to explain this reality, Associated Press, whose work is republished by more than 1,300 newspapers and broadcasters across the globe, has, inadvertently or not, framed the near-miraculous actualization through perseverance and hard work of the Jewish people’s 2000-years-longing into a sort of “consolation prize”- gifted by a world that turned a blind eye to the horrors of the Holocaust.

Yisrael Medad: The US Charade of ‘Palestine’ in Jerusalem

In effect, the consulate acted as an instrument of policy that promoted the division of Jerusalem, the treating of Israelis in the area as second-class, while providing Arabs with exclusive preferential advantages and benefits, and overall keeping alive the idea of but one sole political solution—that of two states. Israel need not negotiate peace.

To be clear, the current Administration has every right to set its own foreign-affairs policy guidelines and objectives. It has the right to direct US State Department officials to act in tandem with those goals. On the other hand, I would hope that State Department career officers report back regularly to their superiors if that policy is working and succeeding (or not). That they would be informing them whether the results in the field are fair and promising. I would also hope that they would even be making suggestions as to how that current policy could be improved or even corrected.

It makes no practical sense to ignore the presence of almost 500,000 Jews living in the territory formerly illegally occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. At the very least, their input could enhance strategic thinking on behalf of those at the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in Washington.

Ignoring the Jewish residents is not only crass and inconsiderate, but it would appear to be following in step with Palestinian Authority assumptions. Those assumptions are that Jews have no legal rights in the territory international law viewed as the area of the reconstituted Jewish national home and certainly no rights of “close settlement” as guaranteed. Indeed, it would perhaps lend credence to a predetermined future of Arab apartheid practices against Jews, as well as another round of ethnic cleansing, and the re-division of Jerusalem. Foremost, based on the results of the 2005 Gaza Disengagement, Israel’s security would be negatively affected in the extreme by a territorial withdrawal.

If the State Department insists the consulate-disguised-as-a-unit is truly a necessity, as has been argued before, then why not establish it in Ramallah or Bethlehem? How many regular Arab residents of the Palestinian Authority can easily enter Jerusalem anyway? There are many more potential users of a consulate outside Jerusalem.

The United States should not be playing games in Jerusalem.

2. Palestine Airways, founded in 1934 by Zionist engineer Pinhas Rutenberg and the Jewish Agency; pic.twitter.com/nhjbzRhlEh
— Ohad ???? ????? ???? ??? (@MerlinOhad) August 20, 2021

This story came out earlier this year, but I missed it and it is too good not to share:

Less than two years ago, the official news website of the Palestinian Authority’s ruling Fatah faction (the party of President Mahmoud Abbas) contended that what’s today known as London’s Big Ben was originally a clock tower positioned at Hebron Gate (more commonly known as Jaffa Gate) in Jerusalem’s Old City.

According to the Fatah website, the Hebron Gate clock tower was completed in 1909, when Jerusalem was still under Ottoman rule. After the British took control of the city and established their mandate, they ordered the clock tower dismantled (which is true) and moved, first to another part of Jerusalem, and later to London (which is not true), where it was eventually placed at the north end of the Palace of Westminster.

Big Ben was built in 1859, fifty years before the Jaffa Gate clock tower was built.

Daniel Greenfield gave a detailed history of the Ottoman clock in Palestine which is worthwhile reading.

The claim is all over Arab media. Here. Shehab News put them side by side as if that proves something:

There is a bit of a scale problem. The entire Jaffa Gate clock tower was 42 feet high, while Big Ben is 316 feet high. Big Ben's clock face itself is 23 feet across, meaning if you placed it on the ground, it would reach more than halfway up the entire old Jaffa Gate tower!

And the Jaffa Gate tower clock mechanism was built in....Germany. It isn't "Palestinian" in any sense of the word. The idea that the British were so impressed with this small clock tower to disassemble it and ship it to England is about as delusionally egotistical as it gets.

An NGO called the "Association 302 to Defend Refugees Rights" condemned the US conditions on aid to UNRWA, including the condition that UNRWA should adhere to its own mandate of impartiality and UN principles.

The organization said that these measures will ultimately lead to restrictions on the UNRWA definition of refugee, presumably to bring it in line with the UN definition.

It said that if the US must approve UNRWA Palestinian school curricula, it is "stripping the Palestinian curricula of any contents seen as discriminatory or inciting against the Israeli occupation, such as referring to historical Palestine."

Judging from what I've seen in their curricula, that isn't the issue.

Another NGO, the Democratic Gathering of UNRWA workers, the trade union of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, terror group, condemned UNRWA supposedly punishing workers who post incitement on their social media, saying that this is a violation of freedom of speech.

It is normal for Western corporations to prohibit employees from engaging in controversial topics on social media when they can be identified as being employees of that company. It isn't stopping freedom of speech.

08/20 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Joe Biden's catastrophic judgment; Was Biden handcuffed by Trump’s Taliban deal in Doha?; Milley and Austin Should Resign

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Joe Biden's catastrophic judgment

US allies are furious and alarmed as they see the collapse of US credibility and strategic rationality.

And this brings us to Bennett's meeting with Biden next Thursday.

Biden's decision to stick to his guns on Afghanistan shows that once he has made up his mind about something, Biden is unwilling to listen to counterargument. And the only other major position that Biden has held consistently over the years is his position on Iran.

Whereas for 15 years Biden was an outspoken critic of the war in Afghanistan and demanded a swift US withdrawal, since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, Biden has been among the regime's most stalwart supporters in Washington. Biden's policy towards the ayatollahs in Tehran has been appeasement for the past 42 years, even when he stood alone on the issue.

For instance, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee in 2001, Biden responded to the Sept. 11 attacks on the US by calling for the Bush administration to give Iran $100 million in foreign aid.

This week it was reported that ahead of Bennett's visit with Biden next Thursday, government officials are hoping to convince him that given the failure of the nuclear talks in Vienna, the time has come for the US and Israel to jointly attack Iran's nuclear installations. If Biden weren't impermeable to reason, Israel's argument might have had a shot. After all, in 1983, Ronald Reagan responded to the Hezbollah bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut by invading Grenada.

But as Biden showed on Monday, and in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos Wednesday, he will not rethink his choices or positions, even after they failed. As Biden rejects all criticism of his personal failure in Afghanistan, there is effectively zero chance he will reconsider his policy of 42 years on Iran. Moreover, unlike his policy on Afghanistan, his Iran policy is now shared by the US intelligence community and military, the Washington establishment and the Democrat Party.

Whether Bennett would be better off postponing the trip until the smoke begins to settle remains to be seen. But what is clear enough is that with Iran sprinting towards the nuclear finish line, and US credibility in a state of unprecedented collapse, if Israel wants to prevent Iran from acquiring military nuclear capabilities, Biden is not man to see.

The Lesson from the U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan: Israel Must Recognize the Limits of Superpower Support

President Biden tried to justify his decision to withdraw by portraying the war in Afghanistan as a local civil war, as if the West does not have an interest in the outcome of this conflict. In fact, this is a war between two schools of thought inside Islam; the outcome may have a long-lasting impact not only on the kind of life the people of the Muslem world are going to have but on global security. Therefore, the West should have shown much more patience in assisting the moderate forces who, in some locations, cannot stay in power without close support. The lack of readiness to do so by the only Western superpower means that the extremists may feel that they have much less to lose in the future if they challenge the West since another attempt to build a functioning moderate government is not going to happen.

The essential lesson for Israel of the dramatic events in Kabul is that with all the importance of Israel’s strategic partnership with the United States – which is irreplaceable – Israel must recognize the limitations of a superpower’s backing, and therefore adhere more closely to the principle that Israel will defend itself on its own. This is a relevant lesson in the Iranian context when the Americans project hesitation in response to Tehran’s many provocations, and this is true in the Palestinian context. Once again, it becomes clear how critical Israeli responsibility is for security in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley. Disturbing is the thought that there were elements of the Israeli security establishment that in 2013 seriously considered U.S. General John Allen’s security plan – which proposed placing foreign forces in the Jordan Valley and giving Americans a key role in managing the security issue as part of the Obama administration’s proposals for a permanent settlement.

Precisely in the face of the weakness projected by the United States, Israel stands out in the regional arena as a stable pillar that moderates in the region can rely on. This is an opportunity to leverage the problematic developments in Afghanistan to strengthen and expand the Abraham Accords between Israel and moderate Arab states, which stood the test of the first year of the Accords’ signing, as well as building ties with others disillusioned with Washington’s problematic functioning. For this purpose, it is also possible to take advantage of the predicament to which Iran and its proxies throughout the Middle East are subjected at this point.‎

'It went so badly wrong due to the decision of one man' - Colonel Kemp slams President Joe Biden

Colonel Richard Kemp says 'from the moment' the President 'made that decision to withdraw without any regard for the security situation in Afghanistan... this situation was absolutely inevitable.'

Im Tirtzu: Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi, founder and CEO of Habithonistim discusses Israel's security

The Israel Guys: Can Israel Trust ANYONE Anymore?

How does the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan affect Israel? Should Israel be worried that they can’t depend on America as a strategic ally anymore? Find out on today’s news program.

Israel is preparing to quietly uproot a vineyard in Samaria that will obliterate half of a farmer’s income for the next six years. You won’t hear about this in the news, but you can head over to our social media platforms and raise an outcry. Please share the “Vineyard Segment” on our social media platforms with everyone you know. Our handle is “theisraelguys”.

Also, find out about how Israel put out the massive forest fires in Jerusalem using the coolest firefighting machine ever….a C130 Hercules.

For decades, we have seen people who use their (real or constructed) Jewish identity to attempt to discredit Zionism.

But some of them hate Israel so much, they pretend to be Zionists in order to discredit Zionism!

From Haaretz:

Is it time for liberal Zionists, in the name of Zionism, to embrace the end of a sovereign Jewish state in Israel and instead seek the establishment of a binational one? Omri Boehm, an Israeli philosopher and associate professor at the New School for Social Research, believes so – making the case in his new book “Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israel,” published this week by the prestigious New York Review Books imprint.

The book is an effort to reconcile Zionism with the diminishing prospects of a two-state solution. For decades, the Zionist left in Israel and its supporters in the Jewish Diaspora focused on the two-state solution as the only way to preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Israel’s current government, however, has no intention to advance that solution, as Foreign Minister Yair Lapid recently reminded the European Union’s foreign ministers.

Boehm argues in “Haifa Republic” that the two-state solution is now impossible to achieve, and adjures those looking to prevent an apartheid reality on the ground to think outside its confines.

The most significant conclusion he invites readers to recognize is that without a two-state solution, one must consider another option: a binational state.

Unlike most proponents of a single state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, Boehm foregrounds his binational proposal in Zionism.

We've looked at Omri Boehm before, and his positioning himself as a Zionist now doesn't exactly jive with his previous writings.

In 2016, in the New York Times, Boehm wrote that Zionism is "a political agenda rooted in the denial of liberal politics." He clearly opposed Zionism, saying that having a nation that defines itself as Jewish is a violation of a liberal standard he made up: that liberal countries must have American-style separation of church and state. Otherwise, Boehm asserts, Zionists are hypocrites.

Opposition to the Palestinians’ “right of return” is a matter of consensus among left and right Zionists because also liberal Zionists insist that Israel has the right to ensure that Jews constitute the ethnic majority in their country. But if you reject Zionism because you reject the double standard, organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or the Jewish Federations of North America would denounce you as anti-Semitic.

Boehm clearly rejects Zionism because of this false double standard - one that he that he defined. but that has no basis in reality.

Now he suddenly pretends to embrace Zionism - to make a faux-Zionist argument that a Jewish state must be replaced with a "binational" state with a Muslim majority that will limit Jewish rights!

This guy is a philosopher, but his logic consistently falls far short of the intellectual rigor of real philosophy.

Not surprisingly, Boehm is also an "as-a-Jew." He wrote another article where he cherry-picked Biblical sources out of context to assert, bizarrely, that Jews who consider Jerusalem to be a central component of Judaism are in fact akin to idol-worshippers.

He asserts this insane theory, which couldn't withstand the arguments of a fourth grade cheder student, "as a Jew."

This sham philosopher creates his Jewish persona to argue against Judaism just as he creates a Zionist persona to argue against Zionism. If his arguments had merit, he wouldn't need to resort to redefining himself as a "As-a". The argument from authority (argumentum ab auctoritate) is a basic logical fallacy - and in this case it is argument from false authority, since Boehm is clearly not an authority on either Zionism nor on Judaism but he claims such authority as implicit in his arguments.

The Guardian, August 28, 1924

In the 1920s, the notoriously antisemitic Mufti of Jerusalem - appointed by the British - built his power base by raising money in the Arab world for restoration of the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, which had fallen into disrepair under 400 years of Ottoman Muslim rule.

Part of his sales pitch was that the Jews intended to destroy the mosque to build a third Temple. He would take statements by rabbinic leaders in Palestine about the Messianic era and pretend that Jews were planning to demolish the structures on the Temple Mount.

This was a powerful message that the antisemitic Arab world eagerly accepted. It was the lie that was at the root of the deadly 1929 massacres of Jews.

The 1931 Muslim Congress in Jerusalem, led by the Mufti, neatly tied together his lie about the "Jewish designs" on Al Aqsa and his antisemitism, as he banned any Jewish reporters from covering the conference.

In 1967, the lie resumed, even though Israel could have (and should have) taken over complete control of the Temple Mount.

Arab political cartoons continue to push the lie that Israel plans to demolish Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, even though it has had the ability to do that for 54 years.

Every August 21, the lie reaches a fever pitch on the anniversary of the attack on Al Aqsa by mentally ill Australian Christian named Denis Michael Rohan.

Palestinian Arab media usually flatly lies and says that Rohan was Jewish and that this arson was part of a Zionist plot to destroy Al Aqsa.

This lie is a reliable means to inflame Arab passions, fueled by Arab antisemitism. It is especially useful when Palestinian leaders want to divert attention from their own failures and their own people's problems, by using their Jew-hatred as a political tool - just as the Mufti did a century ago.

Hamas will hold a mass rally at the Gaza fence tomorrow, using this anniversary as an excuse to fire up Gazans with hate. The Hamas Youth Department issued a statement:

The fires that have been ignited on the walls and sides of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque since 1969 have not yet been extinguished. The smell of black Zionist hatred is still wafting, and their intrigues are still waiting in Al-Aqsa Mosque to implement criminal plans against it, starting with the intention of the occupation to divide the mosque in time and space. up to the idea of demolishing it and erecting their alleged temple in its place.

The fire that was ignited was not, as the occupation claims, actually an anomaly from a crazy person. Rather, it is a systematic policy, and a firm vision adopted by the occupation since the first day that its unclean feet set foot on the pure land of our Jerusalem, so it set its sights on the project of the Judaization of Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem.

The narrative is that Palestinian "steadfastness" is what has kept the Jews from destroying the buildings so far, so the antisemitism must be stoked to "defend" Al Aqsa from an imaginary threat.

The entire history of the lie is tied to Jew-hatred.

Germany funding schools in Gaza that erase Jews

The Hashem Elementary School "A" in Gaza was built in 2017.

Here's its logo:

Obviously there is no room for Israel in this map - but that is what one would expect in Gaza. No big deal, right?

Except that its Facebook page shows this photo:

In the background the sign has the logo for KFW, which is a German state-owned investment and development bank.

I found a video from the school of an adorable girl in front of the same sign, where it says that the school was "Funded by the Federal Republic of Germany."

Germany is funding schools that erase the existence of Jews in the region.

Palestinian antisemitism is so accepted that the West doesn't even blink at things like this. But when they fund it, that is a completely different story.

Funders have influence. If Gaza schools want funding from Europe, they must agree to stop teaching hate. And if they refuse, then that means that they value teaching hate more than EU funds, which should be a valuable thing for European taxpayers to know.

08/19 Links Pt2: 30 Years Later: Remembering Crown Heights; From Anti-Semitic Agitator to Democratic Power Broker: The Preposterous Resurrection of Al Sharpton

From Ian:

30 Years Later: Remembering Crown Heights

Thirty years ago, anti-Semitic mobs plundered the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn for three days, chanting Nazi slogans, destroying Jewish homes and businesses, and lynching a young Jewish seminary student.

On the night of Aug. 19, 1991, a 22-year-old Orthodox Jewish man named Yosef Lifsh lost control of his car and skidded onto the sidewalk, killing a seven-year-old black boy named Gavin Cato and injuring his seven-year-old cousin. Rumors quickly spread that Lifsh had been intoxicated and that a private Jewish community ambulance service had treated Lifsh while refusing to treat the injured children—claims that were later determined to be false.

The neighborhood, which was majority black with a growing Orthodox Jewish minority, erupted in violence. Within hours of the boy’s death, 250 rioters descended on a Jewish religious school and set its van on fire. Mobs marched through the streets shouting "death to the Jews," smashing car windows, and beating Jewish pedestrians.

Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old Jewish seminary student from Australia, was stabbed to death by rioters who shouted, "Let’s get the Jew!"

The police struggled to deal with the riots in the face of anti-law-enforcement sentiments in then-New York City mayor David Dinkins’s office and among city leadership. Department leaders "emphasized restraint, fearing that aggressive action would exacerbate already-strong feelings and make the police the focus of the crowds’ anger," according to a 656-page report on the riots compiled by Richard H. Girgenti under then-governor Mario Cuomo’s administration.

Police weren’t given helmets or shields, with the Brooklyn South chief explaining that this was "not our style of policing in New York City. We don’t use clubs or horses," according to the Girgenti report. One officer advised Jews to leave the neighborhood, telling Rabbi Joseph Spielman that the police were not able to "hold the street and guarantee the safety of the Jews in the area."

Without a strong police response, the riots raged on for three days as city leadership downplayed the unrest. Dinkins questioned whether Rosenbaum’s stabbing had anything to do with the riots, saying, "Whether that’s related, whether that’s retaliatory, I don’t know."

Self-proclaimed civil rights leaders stepped in to fan the flames. On the afternoon of Aug. 20, Al Sharpton showed up to address a growing crowd of black protesters in Crown Heights and called for the arrest of Lifsh, the Jewish driver who hit the 7-year-old boy. "We are on the verge of an explosion," threatened Sharpton, who claimed that "apartheid ambulance services" run by the Jewish community were responsible for the child’s death.

Hundreds of rioters pelted Chabad-Lubavitch’s headquarters with rocks and bottles, chanted "heil Hitler," and burned an Israeli flag. Mobs also looted businesses and firebombed a jewelry store as police looked on, under orders from department leadership to "stand fast and not take any action."

The Crown Heights Riot, In Context, Explained

The Crown Heights riot was hardly a spontaneous act in response to the tragic death of a child. In the days and weeks leading up to the fatal crash, black activists such as Leonard Jeffries Jr., a professor of black studies at City College of New York, had been priming the community for violence with their anti-Semitic tirades.

"Everyone knows rich Jews helped finance the slave trade," Jeffries said in a lecture delivered on July 20, 1991. He accused Jews of colluding with the Mafia to "put together a financial system of destruction of black people." Activists such as Sharpton aggressively defended Jeffries against charges of anti-Semitism. At a rally in Harlem just days before the riot broke out, Sharpton threatened his Jewish critics. "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house," he ranted.

Dozens of Jews were injured in the rioting, as were more than 150 police officers, some of whom reported being under orders to refrain from taking decisive action to quell the violence. A crackdown was ultimately carried out on the third day of rioting, after New York City mayor David Dinkins (D.) was confronted by a violent mob on his way to meet with Crown Heights community leaders and eight police officers were injured by a rooftop sniper.

By the time order was restored, at least 120 people had been arrested. Stores were looted, vehicles vandalized, and millions of dollars of property damage was inflicted upon the community. The Jewish residents of Crown Heights, already traumatized by the violence and destruction, were forced to watch as Sharpton and other charlatans stoked the fires of anti-Semitic hate.

The Last Acceptable Hate Crime

In New York’s Crown Heights neighborhood and nationwide, anti-Semitic violence is still common. Why is it taken for granted?

There is little physical evidence of the bloody history at the corner of President St. and Brooklyn Ave., where in 1991 a gang of young, black men surrounded, beat, and stabbed Yankel Rosenbaum to death. Today, the corner is home to a Christian school and a defunct children’s Yeshivah. The surrounding blocks are dotted with shuls and kosher restaurants, everything you would expect in a thriving Jewish neighborhood.

But the three-decade interlude has not brought an end to anti-Semitic attacks against Crown Heights’ residents. Since 2019, there have been 20 anti-Jewish hate crimes in the surrounding 71st precinct, the fourth most for any single NYPD precinct. That includes multiple incidents of aggressive harassment, three robberies, two assaults, and one instance of "terroristic threats." As before, gangs of roving teenagers still feel comfortable beating Jewish men in broad daylight.

Rosenbaum’s death, and the ensuing riots, ought to have been a watershed for anti-Semitic violence in America. But three decades later it remains commonplace, as this past summer saw renewed aggression against Jews from Crown Heights to Los Angeles. In spite of this spike, however, the reality of anti-Semitic crime continues to receive little notice. Even as tens of thousands rally against other forms of hatred, anti-Semitism remains the blind spot.

In New York, anti-Semitic hate crimes surged this summer after a year of abeyance, with over 120 offenses reported by the end of June. A recently released repeat offender attacked an Orthodox family with a knife; a minivan driver tried to run over five Hasidic men; and four synagogues were vandalized in the Riverdale neighborhood.

The uptick has many fearing a return to the pre-COVID status quo, when a wave of hate crimes made assaults on conspicuously Jewish New Yorkers a weekly or even daily occurrence. The violence culminated in two shocking attacks in the greater New York area: a shooting at a kosher grocery in Jersey City, which left six dead, and then a mass stabbing perpetrated in the home of a Hasidic rabbi in Monsey, N.Y.

Mayor Bill de Blasio responded to that surge by deploying more NYPD patrols and expanding anti-bias education in the city’s schools. Eric Adams, the city’s likely next mayor, has promised a "zero-tolerance" policy for all hate crimes, including anti-Semitic ones.

Many times, I have seen the families of terror victims take the tragedy and turn it into something beautiful , such as charity organizations or rehabilitation centers.

Here is an example that is much less ambitious but no less beautiful.

Two years ago, 17-year old Rina Shnerb was murdered by a PFLP terrorist with a roadside bomb exploded as she was hiking with her family.

Her friends embroidered a gorgeous wedding canopy - a chupah - in her memory, to be used by anyone who wants or needs one for their own happy occasion. One couple, Naama Ben Chaim and Alon Eliyad, just used this canopy for their outdoor wedding.

Under that chupah, a letter was read from the Shnerb parents:

Dear Naama and Alon,

When a baby is born we wish his parents: 'May she be merited to grow up with the Torah, the chupah and good deeds'. Thank God, we got to see Rina grow into Torah and good deeds. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see her at her chupah.

Thanks to you, and thanks to all the couples who get married under the 'Rina Chupah', we get to see a type of 'her chupah '.

The main theme of wedding and building a home is the continuity of the people of Israel. Rina didn't get that privilege, but the people of Israel have that privilege. It is a privilege that even though our enemies seek our destruction, to despair and weaken us, not only do we not fall, but we move forward, and with strength.

Another couple getting married, another home being built, Am Yisrael Chai!

We wish you that your home will be filled with the voices of rejoicing, jubilation, pleasure and delight, love and brotherhood, peace and friendship.

Mazal Tov!

The Schnerb family

Their beauty and strength is awe-inspiring.

If any couple in Israel wants to use this chupah, here is the information.

(h/t Sivan Rahan Meir)

Virus Forgot To Check Political Affiliation Of Person It Just Infected (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

COVID Tel Aviv, August 19 - A local pathogen confessed its chagrin today upon realizing that before invading the cells of its current host and hijacking their nucleic processes to produce more viruses, it neglected to examine the views and behavior of said host to determine whether it harbors conservative views, and therefore welcomes infection, or progressive views, in which case the pathogen must not enter.

SARS-CoV-19 unit Delta-M-Z99999933.9034594710 admitted its oversight in an interview Thursday, and expressed its regret that the process it has unleashed on the host's cells, mainly in the respiratory system, cannot be reversed.

"Listen, I'm sorry, whoever you are," the virus stated. "It's totally my bad. I know that I'm supposed to be a concern only when conservatives gather, but not when progressives do, and I flubbed this one. Unfortunately it's not up to me at this point, since all the little viruses I cloned can't tell the difference from the inside, and they're just going to do their thing. We can all hope the immune system in this host is robust enough to get this person through more or less unscathed, but obviously that's a big unknown at this early stage. Again, I'm sorry."

Mainstream media narratives have long treated conservative gatherings - both indoor and out - as super-spreader events demonstrating ignorance, selfishness, malice, or some combination of the three, whereas progressive events of a parallel nature - protests, riots, rallies, marches, speeches, even birthday parties - invite no such opprobrium, and even attract praise.

Health experts noted that the current case of a virus forgetting to determine its potential host's politics constitutes a rare exception. "Just look at the media coverage and you'll understand," explained Haaretz television critic Rogel Alpher. "All those months of marches and protests against Netanyahu were fine, because the virus knows whom to infect at such events. It's in the domestic setting, where most infections take place, that the virus has trouble distinguishing between correct and incorrect politics. Perhaps future mutations will evolve the ability to detect political orientation even in non-political contexts, but we cannot plan public health policy based on such an optimistic scenario."

Observers have noted a similar dynamic across the Atlantic, where American press coverage of conservative events always highlighted lack of adherence to conventional masking and distancing wisdom, as well as the shifting importance of COVID among thousands of illegal border-crossers depending on which party sits in government when the crossings, detentions, or releases take place, indicating COVID's politically-conscious vectoring.

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.