Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 23, 2021

Peace, Palestinian-style (Arafat 1995 edition)

MEMRI published an interview with British-Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan where he advises Jews to learn to swim because they will be pushed out into the sea very soon:

British-Palestinian Journalist Abdel Bari Atwan: What Is Happening at Kabul Airport Will Repeat Itself at Ben Gurion Airport; Israelis Should Learn to Swim; Arafat Told Me in 1995 That I Would Live to See the Israelis Fleeing Palestine Like “Rats Fleeing a Sinking Ship" pic.twitter.com/Sp41KXOshk
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) August 23, 2021

It is of course outrageous that a journalist who has such opinions (and has a history of such) is respected enough to be regularly interviewed on BBC World, Sky News, Al Jazeera English and CNN World.

However, his anecdote with Yasir Arafat is interesting.

Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, and here he is quoted in 1995 as saying that he intends to drive the Israelis into the sea.

The entire Oslo process was a sham from the beginning. This isn't the only such Arabic Arafat quote during the Oslo "peace" process indicating that he regarded it as a stage towards the destruction of Israel, in line with the 1974 Phased Plan.

Yet gullible Westerners are so enamoured at seeing a terrorist mouthing words of peace that they don't 'even consider that perhaps he might not be telling the truth.

08/23 Links Pt1: The Forever War Isn’t Over; Setting the Agenda for the Bennett-Biden Meeting; How Elevator for Disabled May Ignite Israeli-Palestinian Tensions

From Ian:

The Forever War Isn’t Over

Biden also said he's "adamant that we focus on the threats we face today in 2021—not yesterday's threats." And the "terrorist threat," he went on, "has metastasized well beyond Afghanistan." He didn't acknowledge that one of the reasons the threat spread out of Afghanistan was that for 20 years America denied it a base there. Now that the Taliban is in, and the Americans are out, the elements of al Qaeda and ISIS in Afghanistan today will be joined by more holy warriors.

Not to worry, though, said Biden. "We conduct effective counterterrorism missions against terrorist groups in multiple countries where we don't have a permanent military presence." And we can do the same thing in Afghanistan, he continued, because "we've developed counterterrorism over-the-horizon capability that will allow us to keep our eyes firmly fixed on any direct threats to the United States in the region and to act quickly and decisively if needed."

Let's hope he's right. The problem with his argument is that America does have a "military presence" in north and east Africa, Syria, and Iraq, as well as in Turkey, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, and elsewhere. And America does have a naval presence in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean. Our eyes are "firmly fixed" on bad spots in the Middle East and North Africa because we are nearby. The horizon over which our counterterrorism forces must travel is short. That won't be the case in Afghanistan.

Biden created a situation in which America has neither boots nor eyes on the ground in a landlocked, mountainous country thousands of miles from port and surrounded by unfriendly states. Unlike 20 years ago, China and Russia are strong and adversarial and looking for opportunities to embarrass the United States. Every threat or attack that emanates from Afghanistan will testify to U.S. stupidity and weakness. Furthermore, the Taliban, even as it is dogged by internal opposition, will command more territory and field stronger forces than any of the Salafist-jihadist outfits scraping by in the ungoverned and contested spaces of the Maghreb, the Sahel, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. Our intelligence capabilities will be hobbled and our response time lengthened.

This dispiriting assessment doesn't include the propaganda boon to the Salafist-jihadist cause. Kabul will be transformed from an island of modernity to the global capital of anti-Western jihad. International terrorism flourished alongside the Islamic State. It manifested in spectacular, mass-casualty attacks in Paris, Marseilles, San Bernardino, Orlando, and Manchester. "For a long time now Islamist movements have defined the creation of an ‘Islamic state' as their goal and standard for achievement," writes former State Department official Charles H. Fairbanks. "A state provides a better terrorist sanctuary, and has far more versatile capabilities, than a movement." A state gives a movement safe harbor, institutional support, and physical inspiration for "lone wolves" in the West to murder unbelievers. Such a state is what the Taliban will build in America's place.

"I made a commitment to the American people when I ran for president that I would bring America's military involvement in Afghanistan to an end," Biden said. "And while it's been hard and messy—and yes, far from perfect—I've honored that commitment." Yes, he has. The Taliban's military involvement in Afghanistan, however, continues in our absence. And so the Afghan people are left to suffer, the world watches agog, and America is vulnerable to resurgent Islamic extremism. The Forever War isn't over—it's entered a new phase. Where the enemy has the upper hand.

Where did we go so wrong in Afghanistan? - opinion

The problem was not the need to withdraw, but the manner in which it was conducted. Why on earth did he begin to pull out troops without the proper preparation to ensure that US and other foreign diplomats and civilians, along with thousands of Afghan interpreters and other support staff and their families, departed orderly and safely?

To subsequently dispatch thousands of troops to secure the airport to ensure safe passage for those fleeing was certainly necessary. But this happened only following the chaos that swept Kabul and sent shivers down the spines of tens of thousands of Afghans and foreign diplomats and civilians. As I see it, this last sorry chapter is continuing a string of mistakes committed by Biden’s predecessors Bush, Obama, and Trump. They have learned nothing about the nature of Afghan society nor anything from the Soviet Union’s experience in the 1980s, when it departed Afghanistan after ten years of fighting with its tail between its legs.

Following the defeat of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in less than a year, former President Bush rushed to invade Iraq in 2003 through the concerted effort of his then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and then-Vice President Dick Cheney. He failed to make any arrangement over the prospect of continuing Taliban resistance with the transitional government at that time led by then-president Hamid Karzai. He lost focus on the unfinished Afghanistan campaign and subjected American troops to an uncertain future, as neither he nor his military brass had any plans as to how to conclude the campaign once the main objective of removing the Taliban from power was accomplished.

IMPOSITION OF DEMOCRACY
The decision to introduce democracy and engage in nation-building was doomed from the start. Yes, progress was made, a democratically-elected government was installed, and human rights and social reforms provided the hallmark of the American enterprise. But then the US ignored the fact that the imposition of a western-style democracy on a country that lived for millennia as a tribal society would be short-lived at best.

The US should not be in the business of spreading democracy by force. We seem to have learned nothing from Vietnam, let alone the US’ long history of instigating and interfering in regime changes. Instead of providing a model of a functioning democracy and human rights through the use of soft power to influence other countries, we come in charging with massive military to change the political landscape, only to end up retreating and delivering the country straight to insurgent forces.

MILITARY MISCALCULATION
Three successive presidents before Biden made their decision on the continuing efforts in Afghanistan based on the recommendations of military leaders who insisted that the war was winnable and wanted to secure a total victory. Troop surges have continuously been sent on the promise that victory over the Taliban was in sight, which obviously was proven to be completely misguided. In addition, the military strength of the Afghan National Army was grossly overstated; thousands deserted over the years and many sold their weapons to the Taliban. Over 2,300 American soldiers were killed and more than a trillion dollars were spent with little to show for it.

In ToI interviews, Jewish veterans of Afghanistan speak of relief…and betrayal

A week after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Captain Joshua Zager, a Marine Corps fighter pilot, stood in the historic Beth Israel synagogue in Beaufort, South Carolina, praying the Rosh Hashanah liturgy.

“Who shall live, and who shall die/who will die at his predestined time and who before his time/ who by water and who by fire, who by sword,” he said, chanting the U’Netaneh Tokef prayer along with the congregation.

Zager was especially focused on his prayers that year. The next day, he was scheduled to fly his F/A-18 Hornet onto the deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which had already begun sailing for the Middle East to start striking al-Qaeda and Afghanistan.

Zager, who would fly 42 missions over Afghanistan in the ensuing months, was one of many Jewish soldiers who would fight in the distant country over the next 20 years, including at least 23 who died fighting there.

As America’s longest war comes to its inglorious end, Jewish soldiers, in interviews with The Times of Israel, reflected on their service in Afghanistan, their experiences as Jews, and their feelings on seeing the scenes of panic and flight in Kabul and beyond as the Taliban retook control of the country after twenty years of sacrifice.

I have been mentioning how Arab media and Palestinian schools still promote the idea that Israel was behind the Al Aqsa fire in 1969 set by a deranged Australian Christian. in order to replace it with a new Jewish Temple.

On the anniversary of the attack on Saturday, the Arab League itself issued a statement that cemented this antisemitic conspiracy theory as official Arab policy.

The statement from the Secretary General of the Arab League said that the arson was a "deliberate and orchestrated crime from the highest level of the Israeli Occupation authorities." It "comes In the context of a systematic and ongoing occupation policy and plans targeting the Holy Mosque and Christian and Islamic sacred places." It goes on to list various imagined Israeli crimes in Jerusalem, including "desecration of Al-Aqsa and attempts to destroy its structure" even today.

Interestingly, Arab attackers who store weapons and rocks in the Al Aqsa mosque are never said to desecrate the holy site. Furthermore, if Israel wanted to build the Third Temple, Al Aqsa wouldn't be the target - the Dome of the Rock would be.

I could not find any similar statements from the Arab League on the anniversary for the past two years. It seems likely that the Palestinian delegation drafted this absurd statement to remain relevant and top-of-mind for the Arab world when interest in the Palestinian issue is waning - and pretending Al Aqsa is in danger is the biggest stick the Palestinians have, a direct continuation of the methods of the Nazi-collaborating Mufti of Jerusalem.

It is a disappointing, however, that the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco continue to allow these lies to be spouted by the Arab League in their name.

HRW brings literally no evidence in its latest anti-Israel report

Today, Human Rights Watch issued yet another anti-Israel report that is long on accusations and very short on facts.

Between May 11 and 15, Israeli forces attacked the Hanadi, al-Jawhara, al-Shorouk, and al-Jalaa towers in the densely populated al-Rimal neighborhood. In each case, the Israeli military warned tenants of impending attacks, allowing for their evacuation. Three buildings were immediately leveled while the fourth, al-Jawhara, sustained extensive damage and is slated to be demolished. Israeli authorities contend that Palestinian armed groups were using the towers for military purposes, but have provided no evidence to support those allegations.

“The apparently unlawful Israeli strikes on four high-rise towers in Gaza City caused serious, lasting harm for countless Palestinians who lived, worked, shopped, or benefitted from businesses based there,” said Richard Weir, crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Israeli military should publicly produce the evidence that it says it relied on to carry out these attacks.”

Note the sequence in the quote: the strikes are "apparently unlawful" but they admit that they don't have any evidence for that.

There are only two alternatives: either the IDF had intelligence indicating that these buildings were valid military targets, or they just decided to go through a highly complex plan involving warning hundreds of people, ensuring not one remained in the buildings, and dropping precision bombs that would not allow the buildings to topple onto civilian buildings nearby - for no military reason.

Human Rights Watch chooses to believe scenario B, because it is in their DNA to assume Israeli Jews are monsters who destroy buildings for fun.

The entire report is a big "we dunno" shrug, followed by how awful these attacks were to the businesses and residents there. Interviewing people who are frightened to say anything against the dictatorship that can put them in prison for no reason is considered "research." The entire report is filled with irrelevant facts meant to make HRW researchers appear smart but there is nothing behind it. So we read things like

The size of the blast following the munitions impact and subsequent detonation, as captured in videos either distributed by the Israeli military or circulated online and reviewed by Human Rights Watch, appear consistent with the use of munitions with large high-explosive warheads.

Oooh, their military experts determined that the IDF used "high explosive warheads!" I had no idea!

Even with their foregone conclusions, sometimes counter-evidence creeps in - evidence that they immediately discount:

The media reported that the [Hanadi Tower] building housed offices of the political leadership of Hamas. A journalist familiar with the tower, who did not wish to be identified, said: “There are political meeting offices for Hamas parliament members and spokespersons in the tower.” While one business owner in the tower said there were Hamas offices in the tower, he was unaware of their purpose.

Hamas, the de facto authority in Gaza, is a group that includes both a political party and an armed wing. Mere membership or affiliation with Hamas is not a sufficient basis for determining someone to be a lawful military target. The laws of war allow the targeting of military commanders in the course of armed conflict, provided that such attacks otherwise comply with the laws that protect civilians. Political leaders not taking part in military operations, as well as civilians, would not be legitimate targets of attack.

HRW is nothing if not consistent: Hamas gets the benefit of the doubt that it a professional organization that cares deeply about human rights law - it strictly separates its political and terrorist wings, with a firewall separating the two so if a meeting room is used for political reasons the military cannot possibly use it.

Israel gets no such pass from HRW. The IDF is not assumed to be professional but capricious. It is assumed to not know the basic laws of war, it has no idea what it is bombing, it recklessly ignores the facts, and the incontrovertible evidence that Israel took great care to avoid a single human casualty in the bombings of four major high rises doesn't shake HRW's convictions that the attacks were random acts of vengeance.

We've recently synopsized exhaustive research in exactly how the IDF gathers intelligence, chooses its targets, double- and triple-checks their information, and goes through multiple layers of legal and military review before an airstrike. Either Human Rights Watch is ignorant about this, or it chooses to ignore it because it contradicts their basic tenet of assuming Israel is guilty before writing the report.

HRW's ignorance about Israeli methods, the laws of war and basic physics reaches absurd points. For example, HRW writes:

Personnel or equipment being used in military operations are subject to attack, but whether that justifies destroying an entire large building where they might be present depends on the attack not inflicting disproportionate harm on civilians or civilian property. The proportionality of the attack is even more questionable because Israeli forces have previously demonstrated the capacity to strike specific floors or parts of structures. However, these attacks completely flattened three of the buildings, evidently by attacking their structural integrity. Regarding al-Jalaa tower, the Israeli military said that because armed groups had occupied multiple floors, the entire tower needed to be destroyed.

Destroying a floor may be acceptable in a building that has four or five floors, but in a high rise, odds are that a major structural component would be damaged that could cause all the floors above to topple over and crash into other buildings, causing far more damage. High rises are not built out of stone.

HRW's pro-Hamas bias is almost comical:

The deployment of Palestinian armed groups in the towers, if true, would go against requirements to take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians under their control and to avoid placing military objectives in densely populated areas. Israel has repeatedly accused Palestinian armed groups of deploying among civilians and – without providing evidence, using them as “human shields” – the war crime of intentionally co-locating military forces with civilians to deter targeting those forces.

Without providing evidence?

There is massive video and forensic evidence of Hams placing rocket launchers, tunnels, weapons caches and militants among civilians - something Hamas itself has admitted! Even reporters have mentioned Hamas' military headquarters under Shifa hospital - but Human Rights Watch never has. HRW has never accused Hamas of using human shields despite clear proof. By HRW's definition of human shields used here (" the war crime of intentionally co-locating military forces with civilians to deter targeting forces") even Hamas admits that they are guilty of that crime - but Human Rights Watch never says that.

HRW has gone to such lengths to excuse Hamas' use of human shields that they have changed the definition of human shields itself, contradicting the definition used by the ICRC, to exonerate Hamas from that crime. Yet HRW's definition of the term in other conflicts is accurate.

Only with Hamas - and Hezbollah in 2006 - does this alleged human rights group bend over backwards to avoid protecting civilians from the war crimes of human shielding. That is a pretty damning

Back to the main point of the report, that Israel is somehow guilty of attacking civilian objects with no military purpose, legal expert Michael N. Schmitt wrote about these very attacks and how they were entirely legal under the laws of armed conflict:

There is some disagreement on whether a building that contains both apartments or offices used for civilian purposes and others that have been converted to military use should be considered a military objective in its entirety or as consisting of separate and distinct entities. The better view, but one that does not appear to have achieved universal consensus, is that if an attacker can surgically strike that aspect of the building used for military ends, harm to the remaining sections must be factored into the proportionality analysis.

In this case, however, there is no indication that the IDF had intelligence indicating precisely which sections of the Al Jalaa Tower its opponents were using or that the IDF fielded weaponry capable of surgically neutralizing those sections and any conflict-related material therein. Therefore, if the Israeli reports of Hamas using the building are accurate, the entire building constituted a single military objective, damage to which did not have to factor into the IDF’s proportionality calculation.

As to the requirement to take precautions in attack, since the building itself housed Hamas’ material and operations, alternative targets were not on the table. Further, there is no indication that different tactics or weapons could have avoided civilian harm. Indeed, in that the building itself qualified as a single military objective and the attack injured no civilians, collateral damage (as that concept is understood in the law of armed conflict) was minimal. Video footage of the attack, which involved dropping a multi-story building in an urban area without significant damage to other structures in the vicinity, confirms that the strike was an impressive example of careful avoidance of collateral damage by the IDF.

A real expert who is willing to put his name on the line says that the IDF did an amazing job avoiding collateral damage. HRW's anonymous "experts," , who have already shown their massive ignorance about both the laws of armed conflict and military matters, claim that Israel could have somehow avoided all collateral damage without exactly explaining how.

Who do you believe?

Even this report unwittingly shows the care Israel took in destroying these military targets. Here are photos of the Hanadi towers, before and after the airstrikes:

You can see that the Israeli strike mostly pancaked the tower, but the fallen debris leans towards the empty lot next to it - avoiding the buildings and street on the other three sides. If Israel was as callous about collateral damage as HRW claims, then why did they collapse that tower with such incredible precision?

Once you take out everything from the report that is made up, you end up with this: Israel targeted four buildings, warned their residents in multiple ways, destroyed them with the least collateral damage ever done by airstrikes on tall buildings in the history of war, and refuses to share its intelligence behind that decision with an organization that is determined to accuse it of war crimes no matter what the facts are.

As I was researching my post about how the German government paid for the Hashem Elementary School A in Gaza which that erases Israel in its very logo, I found a video of a truly adorable girl who exuded happiness for attending that school standing in front of the sign that indicated the German funding.

I see this often as I browse around Palestinian school sites. While there is Jew-hatred - highlighted numerous times by MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch - there are also smiling, laughing kids. It is hard to understand how innocent children - children who know nothing about hate - can be taught Jew-hatred in their schools, especially schools that are funded by the West, whether UNRWA or otherwise.

I tweeted a screenshot of this girl, upset that she is going to get a Hamas-approved education.

Here is an adorable girl in Gaza who is attending a school that teaches hate.

She doesn't hate Jews now. But in a few years she will be indoctrinated to want to give birth to martyrs. pic.twitter.com/ndRzhpgTR4
— Elder of Ziyon 🇮🇱 (@elderofziyon) August 20, 2021

That is the unfortunate trajectory of most kids who go to Gaza schools with the Hamas-approved curriculum.

On Saturday, the school proved me right again. It held an assembly for the anniversary of the fire at Al Aqsa in 1969, falsely claiming that the fire was the first attempt by Zionist "settlers" to destroy the mosque - the same libel that Muslims have been pushing for a century.

It is pure incitement against Jews, being taught to innocent children.

Yet my pointing this out generated hundreds of angry comments, accusing me of being the hater, of being awful by inciting Israel against the girl, of justifying her future murder by the IDF, of ignoring how much Jews hate Arabs....the stupidity went on and on for days now, with people accusing me of things that were the exact opposite of what I actually said. Not one of the supposedly liberal, peace loving respondents admitted that these kids are taught hate (except for a few that said, of course, that Israel is worse.)

This morning an Arab TV correspondent in Washington called me "creepy and weird" - yet she is so deeply antisemitic that she has gone beyond the absurd Khazar theory and claimed that not only are Ashkenazic Jews not really Jews, but even Mizrahi Jews aren't! Arab antisemitism is that endemic.

When I make a point that the haters cannot argue with, they really ramp up the attacks. When the attacks have no substance, I know I hit the bullseye.

This Ayatollah forgot to switch "Jews" to "Zionists"

From MEMRI:

[Iran Supreme Leader] Khamenei’s representative in Southern Khorasan Province Ayatollah Alireza Ebadi said that the Jews are the biggest problem for Islam and humanity. He made his remarks in a public address that was aired on Khorasan Jonoobi TV (Iran) on May 7, 2021. Ayatollah Ebadi added that the Jews control the world via cultural, psychological and military warfare, and their main goal is to pillage the world. He further said that it is not the French people who choose the French president or the American people who choose the U.S. president, but the Zionists who appoint a puppet president.

Nah, nothing antisemitic about that!

08/22 Links: The Palestinian Solidarity Statement I’d like to see; Melanie Phillips: Paranoid conspiracies v. sane and sober empiricism

From Ian:

The Palestinian Solidarity Statement I’d like to see

We understand that religious fanatics are not the only abusers of Palestinian Arab children, that the quasi-secular Palestinian Authority (PA) operates an education system designed to inculcate in them a xenophobic hatred for the Jewish “Other.”

Yasser Arafat boasted in 2002 that dead children are “the greatest message to the world,” and in 2020, Fatah party leader Jibril Rajoub declared, “We are prepared to sacrifice our children.”

We remember how the Palestinian cultural leaders used children’s entertainment to instill hatred, like the infamous Tomorrow’s Pioneers program with Farfour, the Jew-hating version of Mickey Mouse. We recoiled in horror as the curriculum of hatred became more elaborate throughout the 21st century, and we shuddered as text books, comic books, cartoons, and music videos were used to twist young minds.

We know too that this barbaric indoctrination continues today, even in the United Nations schools which Hamas uses to store weapons. Therefore, we unequivocally condemn every educator who participates in the brainwashing of Palestinian children, be they Hamas teachers, Fatah teachers, or U.N. teachers. As a song from another era put it: “Hey teachers, leave them kids alone!”

Finally, we condemn militant anti-Zionists in the West who exploit Palestinian Arab children to demonize the Jewish state. Among the worst such offenders is the New York Times which on May 26, used images of dead Palestinian children to sell papers, even though many of those kids were killed by some of the 680 errant Hamas rockets that fell into Gaza.

And so we stand in solidarity with all Palestinian children as they struggle to live normal lives guided by some of the most atrocious role models on Earth. We affirm their right to reject the fantasy forced upon them of a “Palestine from the river to the sea.”

Melanie Phillips: Paranoid conspiracies v sane and sober empiricism

However, there isn’t the kind of pushback over freedom that’s heard in Britain. Partly that’s because of the stratospheric priority Jews place on saving life. Partly it’s because Israelis have a different and more benign view of the state.

Regardless of their boundless contempt for politicians, there’s a general acceptance that the state has the interests of the citizen at heart. This is because it’s almost totally geared towards security and the saving of life against Israel’s enemies. Covid-19 is merely an internal enemy.

So to the vast majority, vaccination is a no-brainer. Now the Israelis are giving a third booster shot to the over-40s and stepping up the vaccination of young people and children over 12.

From Britain’s Covid contrarians issues the cry that the Israelis are riding roughshod over their discovery of a rare heart problem caused by the vaccine among the young. But researchers have said this problem is minor and vastly outweighed by the risks to the heart posed by the virus.

Israelis generally accept this from their experts; many in Britain would not. These Brits seem incapable of differentiating between authoritative scientists and charlatans, of whom there are many from Britain and America holding forth on social media. Maybe there aren’t so many charlatans in Israel to bamboozle people.

Maybe also in Israel there’s an overriding sense of community and commitment to the welfare of all, in contrast to the hyper-individualism of British and American society. Judaism enshrines liberty within laws and rules. Freedom is important to live a good life, not as an end in itself.

Moreover, imprinted upon Israeli DNA is the knowledge of what a real threat to life and liberty actually means. The country was reborn, after all, from the ashes of the Holocaust and faces murderous foes without remission.

So those in Britain who are screaming that the restrictions are “fascist” or “Stasi” are viewed in Israel with utter astonishment. Worse, some of these British individuals, aware of Israel’s vaccination programme for children, are now claiming Israel has “gone all Nazi”.

It really has come to something when Britain is crazier than Israel.

IDF: Remembering Victims of Terrorism Worldwide

Acts of terrorism injure, harm and kill thousands of innocent people each year. On December 19th, 2017, the United Nations General Assembly declared that the 21st of August would mark the International Day of Remembrance of and Tribute to the Victims of Terrorism. This decision was made in order to honor and support the victims and survivors of terrorist attacks and to protect their human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Every day, IDF soldiers defend Israeli civilians from terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and other Iranian-backed proxies.

We will always stand with survivors of these horrendous terrorist attacks and remember the victims all around the world. May their memories be a blessing.

You know how Israel haters pretend to care about US taxpayer dollars going to Israel?

The US gives about $3.5 billion to Israel every year, nearly all of it earmarked to be spent on US weapons anyway. The money also goes towards joint US/Israel missile defense system development and other technologies that help the US defend itself.

According to various media, the US spent over $2 trillion in Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past 20 years.

That means that it spent more every two weeks in Afghanistan than its annual aid to Israel.

Somehow, I missed all the articles from those people about how much was being spent in Afghanistan. Their concern for US taxpayers seemed to end with the aid to Israel.

Look at it this way: at the current amount of aid to Israel, it will take 571 years for the US to spend that same amount on Israel.

But even that isn't close to the reality. The US added that $2 trillion to its massive national debt to pay for Afghanistan. If it is paying only 3% interest on the $2 trillion, that is an additional $60 billion in interest payments every year. Meaning that for the foreseeable future, just the interest payments for Afghanistan will continue to cost the US far more than aid to Israel - with nothing at all gained.

Where is all the concern for US taxpayers now?

(UPDATE: I had miscalculated the interest payment as $6 billion instead of $60 billion. h/t Irene)

The Palestinian Authority continues to arrest protesters, reportedly beating them and dragging them in the streets.

Another group of 15-20 people were arrested yesterday in Ramallah for intending to protest the murder by Palestinian police of Nizar Banat in June, as well as the continued imprisonment of those who had earlier been arrested for protesting people who have remained in prison for nearly two months.

Palestinian groups have issued condemnations of the new batch of arrests.

Ironically, the reasons given for the arrests include "attacking public freedoms" along with "violating national symbols."

The Independent Commission for Human Rights says that the people arrested had requested permission to hold the protests

One of those arrested was Khader Adnan, the Islamic Jihad official who became famous a while ago for his hunger strike in protest of his administrative detention by Israel.

His wife ways that he was kidnapped by people in an unmarked car and taken away. No one knows where he, or the others arrested yesterday, are now.

I don't think a hunger strike will help him in PA prison.

The EU has spent hundreds of millions over the past 25 years to supposedly teach the Palestinian Authority how to govern and protect human rights. Somehow, I don't think the "moderate" Palestinian Authority is getting the message along with the money.

The pine tree is indigenous to Israel - it is not a Western implant - and has been there for millennia

MK Ayman Odeh repeats a popular lie when he writes in Haaretz:

The pine tree was the main symbol of the new [Jewish National Fund]; it grows quickly and doesn’t need much depth to strike roots. Like the British before it, the JNF chose the pine tree instead of expanding the natural Mediterranean woodland that grew in the Judean Hills. The pine looks nice, but it’s a foreign implant in the local environment and endangers it because it’s especially flammable in our dry, hot climate.

I debunked this claim in 2016, but here is some more proof.

The Survey of Western Palestine, Special Papers on Topography, Archaeology, Manners and Customs, Etc · Volume 4, By Palestine Exploration Fund · 1881, quotes a 7th century observer of large pine forests in the center of the land of Israel:

From Underground Jerusalem: An Account of Some of the Principal Difficulties Encountered in Its Exploration and the Results Obtained. With a Narrative of an Expedition Through the Jordan Valley and a Visit to the Samaritans, by Sir Charles Warren, 1876:

In The Trees and Plants Mentioned in the Bible by William Howse Grosser, 1895, we learn that the Aleppo (Jerusalem) pine was the most popular tree in Palestine:

The people who claim that the pine tree is a recent import also tend to think that Jews themselves were only recently introduced to the region. They are equally wrong in both assertions.

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.