Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Cartoon of the Day: The Palestinian NGO job interview

10/27 Links Pt1: Ruthie Blum: The bigger picture behind the narrow Gantz-NGO controversy; Col. Kemp: Jerusalem Consulate: A Nail in the Coffin of Peace

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: The bigger picture behind the narrow Gantz-NGO controversy

It's hard to believe that Israel's defense minister would lie about such an event, the veracity of which would be easy to check. Nor would it make sense for him to have targeted specific groups without evidence. Moreover, the watchdog group NGO Monitor said that Gantz's announcement confirms what its research has shown for years.

Whether the defense minister is right or wrong about the NGOs he singled out, however, the brouhaha brings to light two larger points that the Israeli government keeps trying to deny or sweep under the carpet. One is that false assertion that the "diversity" of political parties that make up the coalition is an advantage, not a hindrance.

The second is the ridiculous claim that the government – now led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett but squeezed hard by parties to his left – has the Biden administration in the bag. Oh, and that this "change government" will "bridge" the partisan Democrat-Republican divide on Israel that former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supposedly created and cultivated.

Well, the PFLP-NGO scandal is only the latest among many internecine spats that have been rocking the shaky coalition. This doesn't mean that it's going to fall, mind you, as every one of its members still has more to lose than gain by quitting and toppling it.

But the explosion illustrates, yet again, that the only way for it to function is through the capitulation – not "compromise," as its champions like to euphemize – of one side to the other. And the right hasn't been winning the tug of war.

The genie that Gantz let out of the bottle belies the similar pipe dream of improved relations with the Democrats across the ocean. As anyone paying attention is aware, the battle in the United States, like that in Israel, is ideological.

Ironically, the left knows this full well. It's about time for Bennett and his buddies to acknowledge that the split within both countries and between the two cannot be mended with masking tape.

Gantz, who's being pummeled by the Palestinians and their apologists at home and around the world, is being forced to learn that lesson. As someone who himself campaigned on a ticket of "restoring" relations with the Democrats, he ought to be eating his hat – and a hunk of humble pie – while sticking to his guns against those groups whose work and cashflow should be stopped.

Richard Kemp: Jerusalem Consulate: A Nail in the Coffin of Peace

This may seem like just another diplomatic facility to issue visas, promote trade and take care of US citizens, with no greater consequence than the US consulate in Edinburgh, UK. But it is far more than a mere office for paper-shuffling diplomats. It amounts to a de facto US embassy to the Palestinians on Israeli territory. Its true purpose is to undermine Israeli sovereignty in its own capital city and will jeopardise future prospects for peace between Israel and Palestinian Arabs.

As well as betraying Israel, Biden's irresponsible diplomatic signalling — which also appeases his hard-left supporters — is a betrayal of the Palestinian people. They have suffered too long and too hard under the hostility of their leadership, which has consistently refused to entertain all proposals for peace with Israel that could lead to the establishment of their own state.

Successive Palestinian leaders have been encouraged in their intransigence by the US and Europe who have for decades extracted concession after concession from Israel while Palestinians make none.

The intended consulate in Israel's capital will... encourage greater support for Hamas, the terrorist group that rules Gaza....

That this is not mere bureaucratic reshuffling can also be understood from the Biden administration's determination to do it in the face of Israeli government opposition and despite it potentially breaching Israel's Basic Law, US law and the 1963 Vienna Convention, which does not allow a consulate to be opened without host nation consent.

In addition, opening a consulate in the same city as an existing embassy — an unprecedented move — reinforces its immense political significance. Especially as there is no practical purpose for the new facility, with the embassy already incorporating a department devoted exclusively to Palestinian affairs.

Following his validation in Afghanistan of this damning indictment, Biden now has a chance at last to get something right by abandoning his plan to undermine a close ally, reduce the prospects of peace and sentence the Palestinian people to more decades of suffering.

i24NEWS:'This is the beginning of undoing the recognition of Jerusalem' says Prof. Kontorovich

Interview with Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, Director of the International Law Department, Kohelet Policy program.

Kontorovich analyzes the latest on Israel-US relations

Amb. Alan Baker: Are the Palestinians Changing their Legal Tactics in the International Courts?

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ desire to petition the International Court of Justice on the “issue of the legality of the occupation of the land of the Palestinian state and the relevant obligations for the United Nations and States around the world in this regard” opens a “Pandora’s box” of questions.

A legal situation of “occupation” is, in and of itself, not inherently illegal. On the contrary, it is a legally acknowledged situation in international law and practice.

To raise the question before the international court as to whether there exists a “Palestinian state” would appear to be presumptuous and even pre-empt and prejudge the outcome of the negotiation process. There exists no internationally accepted and binding document attesting to the existence of any Palestinian state.

It is unclear if those advising the Palestinian leadership fully understand the distinction between the status and functions of the two different international judicial bodies, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.

The Palestinian leadership alleging before the UN and ICJ that Israel is violating the Oslo Accords would be ironic, in light of the long list of fundamental breaches of those accords by the Palestinians.

It remains improbable that the Palestinian leadership could establish any viable cause of action in the ICJ against Israel, based on the Oslo Accords.

As the COVID-19 crisis started, the Palestinian Authority started the Waqfet Ezz fund to help out people who lost their jobs or otherwise couldn't afford to pay their bills.

They raised money from the private sector - mostly businesses. Citizens were urged to donate as well, and the current mufti of Jerusalem announced that funds given would be considered zaqat (Islamic charity.)

The board of directors of the Waqfet Ezz fund were rich businessmen who were expected to donate huge amounts.

Already last year, criticisms of the fund started. Citizens felt that the government was responsible for helping the people and shouldn't push the issue of funding to the private sector. Only $13 million was raised in the first month. 10 of the 29 board members didn't give a dime. People felt that the board should include citizens from Gaza, from academia and from NGOs, instead of only rich businessmen who raised their own prices for goods to take advantage of the coronavirus.

Now, an audit shows that the Waqfet Ezz fund misused its limited funds, and gave aid to many people who didn't deserve it. Some people who made handsome salaries still snagged benefits, and some families had as many as seven members each apply for and receive benefits when it was meant on a per-family basis.

Where there is money, there is Palestinian corruption.

Palestinian Authority stops fuel stations from selling gasoline in containers for Molotov cocktails

Palestinian terrorists are upset at a governmental decision to ban fuel stations from filling containers with gasoline.

The Palestinian Authority issued the instruction recently, saying it is prohibited to sell gasoline in plastic or glass containers to citizens, making it more difficult to get the crucial ingredient for Molotov cocktails.

"Resistance activists" said that this was meant to "protect the occupation." There are daily attacks against Israeli motorists and police using the crude firebombs. However, there have been many protests against the Palestinian Authority recently as well, and this decision might have been aimed at those.

Political activist Fakhri Jaradat told Felesteen that the PA aims to control the security situation in the West Bank and bury all kinds of resistance.

According to the Shin Bet, there were 187 Molotov cocktail attacks against Israel in September, more than double the incidents in August.

After the Abraham Accords, the Palestinian Authority announced it would boycott the Dubai Expo. They didn't.

In August 2020, in protest of the UAE normalizing relations with Israel, the Palestinian government announced quite publicly that it will boycott the Dubai Expo this year.

They can't even keep the promises they make to their own people, let alone to Israel.

There is a Palestine pavilion at the Dubai Expo. It must have taken months to build - after this announcement.

This week, the head of the Palestinian intelligence service, Majed Faraj, made an official visit to the expo.

He was accompanied by the ruler of Dubai, Mohammed bin Rashid.

The Emirates News Agency described Faraj as "the special envoy of President Mahmoud Abbas."

That's as official as it gets.

Palestinian media that is not part of the PA is noting the hypocrisy.

There is nothing wrong with changing one's position. Sometimes one has to bend to realpolitik,. But there is a mature way to do it, and a puerile way to do it.

The Palestinian Authority is now nearly thirty years old, yet it continues to act like a spoiled toddler, who hopes that no one will notice when they do something they weren't supposed to.

This drives another important point. The announcement about the boycott came from the Palestinian cabinet, led by the prime minister. But in the end, the cabinet is a joke - they don't make any decisions. Every week they make announcements but those are more declarations than governance.

The "State of Palestine" is a dictatorship, and what Abbas says, goes, with no regard to any other institutions or processes.

This is reason #10,432 why peace is impossible: the Palestinians cannot act like adults. They cannot admit their mistakes. They scream, threaten, bully, and mope but they never, ever take responsibility. They spent decades building the trappings of institutions to attract Arab and European money but those institutions are fig leaves on top of a core that is irredeemably corrupt and where the most moderate leader in their history is still a ruthless tyrant.

In 2010, a Quran was published that showed a six pointed star on the cover. When a private retailer imported the book to Algeria, the country went crazy. The government declared that the symbol on the cover "is not in keeping with the general ethics of the state". The importer was accused of "disrupting public order." Algeria's parliament blamed the religious affairs minister for the debacle.

Eleven years later, Algeria does not seem to have gotten over its hexaktinoasteriphobia (fear of six pointed stars, a word I just coined.)

Last summer, some Algerians were up in arms about perceiving a Star of David on the dome of the new Grand Mosque of Algeria, with conspiracy theories galore on social media.

Now, they are mobilizing to fight their latest enemy - imported pencils.

Algeria's Eshorouk Online reports, "The phenomenon of dumping the Algerian market with products bearing Jewish and Talmudic symbols continues to spread from time to time in our country by some importers who neglect the control of the quality of what they import."

An importer brought in a shipment of colored pencils that had a decoration of a six pointed star.

Some bookstores and school supplies stores in one of the western states [sold] boxes of colored pencils with the Star of David symbol.

The Directorate of Education urged students not to acquire these pencils and called for not using them in order to sensitize and raise awareness of the conflict of this type of supplies with the Algerians' faith and religion.

In turn, the Directorate of Education of the Wilayat of Al-Tariq carried out the same procedure and wrote to the directors of educational institutions across the state through a dispatch sent by the Education Department under No. 26/M/T/2021.

The letter stated, “It was recorded that there are colored pencils in school supplies stores with a symbol of the Star of David. This product is Chinese-made and imported by the “M.S.L. and LLC of Al-Baraka and Al-Ghazal, located in the Wilayat of Oran.”

The Directorate of Education asked the principals to take appropriate measures by sensitizing students to the meaning and danger of the symbol, and to withdraw these boxes, if any.

The funniest part is that Muslims have used six pointed stars as decorative motifs for centuries. Which makes it even more clear than before that the fear that Algerians have towards the symbol is pure Jew-hatred.

(I had no luck finding a picture of the actual pencils. I'll update if I find them. H/t Yosef for the "H.")

10/26 Links Pt2: Lipstadt: Sunrise DC move to boycott Jewish groups an ‘overtly antisemitic act’; David Collier: Academics against Jews – another shameful story

From Ian:

Lipstadt: Sunrise DC move to boycott Jewish groups an ‘overtly antisemitic act’

Deborah Lipstadt, the Biden administration’s nominee to be the State Department special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, discussed her nomination, the recent antisemitism controversy involving the Sunrise Movement’s D.C. chapter and her approach to and concerns about modern antisemitism at an event on Monday night.

The historian and Emory University professor addressed a virtual audience from the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston. Her participation in that event was a somewhat unusual move for a nominee awaiting Senate confirmation, but offered clues as to how she might tackle the position if confirmed.

Lipstadt addressed a recent statement from the D.C. chapter of the climate activist organization Sunrise Movement, in which the group announced it would not collaborate on voting rights issues with several pro-Israel Jewish groups.

“It was an overtly antisemitic act,” Lipstadt said. “If you support the existence of the state of Israel according to this, then you are a racist… What it is saying is that, ‘You Jews, as a people, you do not have a right to a national identity.’”

She noted that the group did not have the same objections to non-Jewish groups that also support Israel, like the American Federation of Teachers.

Lipstadt also drew a distinction between the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement at large and individual supporters of BDS, particularly students on college campuses who she said may have “backed into antisemitism.”

“Young people on campuses who support BDS because they see it as a way of changing Israel’s policies, I don’t label them as antisemitic. I think they’re wrong. I think it’s a mistake,” she said. “But if you look at the founding documents of the BDS movement, you see an effort to destroy the state of Israel. There’s no question about it. That I find antisemitic.”

Soros Bankrolls Far-Left Group at Heart of Anti-Semitism Scandal

Left-wing billionaire George Soros is bankrolling the political arm of the Sunrise Movement, a far-left group engulfed in an anti-Semitism controversy after its Washington, D.C., chapter said it will no longer hold rallies with Jewish organizations.

As part of his eight-figure cash infusion during the 2020 election cycle Soros’s Democracy PAC gave $250,000 to Sunrise Movement’s political action committee, according to Federal Election Commission filings reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. Sunrise PAC also received $500,000 from the far-left dark money group the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which received $9.6 million from the Soros-run Open Society Policy Center in 2019. Those two donations constituted nearly a third of the $2.35 million Sunrise PAC raised from Jan. 1, 2019, to Dec. 31, 2020.

Sunrise DC was widely condemned last week after it released a statement on "future coalition spaces with Zionist organizations." The group said it will not appear at a rally for Washington, D.C., statehood because other left-wing groups in attendance, such as the National Council of Jewish Women and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, support Israel’s existence as a nation. The group said the fight for D.C. statehood was "incompatible" with Zionism.

Soros did not respond to a request for comment on his future funding of the organization.

Soros and his allies have raised the alarm about anti-Semitic attacks against the billionaire, but his decision to bankroll a group purveying an anti-Semitic trope—and his silence in the face of it—raises questions about his sincerity.

"Zionism is not a theoretical concept: it is the ideology that has led to Palestinians being violently pushed out of their homes since 1948."

For some reason Sunrise is still talking, and it's going extremely well why do you ask https://t.co/8UXMuRxj7m
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) October 25, 2021

?Why would a climate change initiative - @sunrisemvmt - be so obsessed with the world's only Jewish state?

?? It was co-founded by Sara Blazevic, a "strategist" for the radical fringe group that says Kaddish (mourner's prayer) for Hamas terrorists - IfNotNow pic.twitter.com/w5mkVp3kNu
— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) October 26, 2021

CAMERA Prompts Religion News Service Correction on U.S. Congressional Criticism of Sunrise DC

After contact from CAMERA, Religion News Service changed an Oct. 21 , 2021 article which inaccurately claimed that Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) are Jewish.

The dispatch asserted: “Several members of the U.S. Congress tweeted their opposition to Sunrise’s DC chapter, including New York Democratic Jewish representatives Grace Meng, Jerry Nadler and Ritchie Torres.“

Following contact from CAMERA, RNS changed the wording to read “Several members of the U.S. Congress tweeted their opposition to Sunrise’s DC chapter, including New York Democratic representatives Grace Meng, Jerry Nadler and Ritchie Torres.“

CAMERA commends RNS for its prompt correction and has reached out to the Washington Post, which carried the RNS article, for a correction, as well.

I happened to catch this person's picture on the website of Islamic Jihad's Saraya site as a "martyr."

He looked pretty young.

He was.

According to his obituary, Omar Salman Abu Mustafa was killed two months short of his 18th birthday, on October 24, 2004.

Mustafa had joined Islamic Jihad in 2002, when he was 15, and he joined their Saraya al-Quds unit in 2003 when he was 16.

He was killed along with his 30 year old brother in Gaza.

Mustafa was hardly unique.

Islamic Jihad is also celebrating the anniversary of the "martyrdom" of Saeed Muhammad Al-Najjar, killed on October 25 2004, the day after his 17th birthday. He joined Islamic Jihad at 13 and the Saraya brigades at 16.

Defense for Children-Palestine seems silent about this.

10/26 Links Pt1: The 'human rights' scam at the heart of the NGO controversy; GOP bill seeks to stop Jerusalem consulate for Palestinians

From Ian:

UN Watch: Ahead of Donor Conference, UNRWA Should Identify Teachers Suspended for Antisemitism

Ahead of a major international UNRWA donors conference in November that will seek $800 million from mostly Western states, a watchdog group is calling on the UN agency that runs schools for Palestinians to identify which teachers and other employees were recently suspended during internal investigations into allegations of widespread incitement to antisemitism and terrorism by more than 100 UNRWA staffers.

UNRWA has reportedly suspended at least six of its employees after a report by United Nations Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental organization, exposed over 100 UNRWA educators and other employees who have publicly propagated violence and antisemitism on social media, in breach of the agency’s proclaimed policy of “zero tolerance” for incitement.

The suspension of UNRWA employees only came to light after the outraged reaction of Palestinians in Gaza was reported in Arabic-language media, including Al Jazeera and The New Arab, as a former UNRWA staffer—who was fired for his own ties to the Hamas terrorist organization—accused the agency of caving into “Zionist pressure” for taking measures against the employees.

Ahead of the November conference, and in the absence of any official statement from UNRWA, UN Watch has today sent a letter (full text below) to UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini asking him to reveal which of the 113 named employees were reportedly suspended.

The letter also expressed concerns over a series of recent controversial statements by Lazzarini that characterized legitimate oversight and accountability of his agency as “politically-driven attacks.”

Jonathan S. Tobin: The 'human rights' scam at the heart of the NGO controversy

The problem doesn't stop with these NGOs that help promote the work of Palestinian groups. The heart of the international human-rights scam that is now just a thinly disguised cover for Jew-hatred is the United Nations and its Human Rights Council, which lends a facade of legitimacy to these efforts to libel the Jewish state.

Sadly, the Biden administration reversed the decision of its predecessor and rejoined the Human Rights Council this year. While it says it will fight to reform it, such an attempt to do so was proved to be a fool's errand a long time ago. Instead, it just shows how the foreign-policy establishment, which is back in charge in Washington, is hopelessly compromised by its faith in diplomacy and multilateral engagement as an end in itself. In doing so, it also helps promote the credibility of a world body that became a safe place for antisemitism decades ago and shows no signs of changing.

Part of this is also linked to the growing popularity among liberal American elites of Intersectionality and critical race theory. Those toxic ideas falsely label Israel to be a function of "white privilege" and colonialism rather than an expression of the self-determination of the Jewish people, and they lie at the heart of the campaign against Israel that has been gaining traction in the international community since the 2001 Durban "anti-racism" conference that turned into a hate fest of antisemitism.

The UNHRC is at the heart of a web of groups acting in concert to attack Israel in this fashion of which HRW and Amnesty are major players. The six PFLP-associated Palestinian NGOs are essential for providing fodder for their smears.

It's long past time for those who care about human rights to reject the scam being perpetrated on a gullible world by those who parade under that banner. It can start with putting Palestinian terror NGOs out of business. But it will also require all decent people to treat HRW and Amnesty as the frauds that they truly are as opposed to giving lip service to the notion that they are human-rights groups. It will also require the United States and the rest of the West to thoroughly reject the organization at the top of this fraudulent scheme: the United Nations. Until that happens, Jewish groups, Israel and the United States will be acquiescing to the most overt expression of antisemitism on the globe rather than opposing it.

Israeli Foreign Ministry Argues Banned Palestinian Groups Are ‘Main Source’ of PFLP Funds

Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Monday provided further details on why it labelled six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist groups and charged them with having links to one of the most extreme and violent factions of the PLO.

The move comes after Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Friday signed an executive order to take action against six Palestinian advocacy organizations — Addameer, Al Haq, Bisan Center, Defense of Children International-Palestine, Samidoun and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) — who are alleged to have connections to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

“The PFLP, designated as a terrorist group by the US and the EU, operates an organizational and military apparatus, including a network of civilian institutions whose goal is to absorb donations from abroad and fund the group’s critical needs on the ground,“ Israel’s Foreign Ministry stated. “PFLP institutions operate under the guise of humanitarian aid, receiving funding primarily from Europe. These institutions serve as the main source of funds for the financing of the PFLP’s activities at all levels.“

The terror designation of the NGOs has sparked some international backlash against Israel, as well as domestic criticism from within the governing coalition, while the US said Friday it had been taken by surprise by the decision. In response, Israel plans to send envoys from the Shin Bet security agency and a Foreign Ministry representative to Washington in coming days, to present further intelligence and evidence linking the Palestinian human rights groups to the PFLP.

The PFLP says it is a "human right" for Palestinians to kill Jews

As we've been reporting, the international community is in an uproar over Israel's designation of six Palestinian NGOs as being part of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group, and that these groups redirect international funds for terror.

International human rights NGOs, the UNHRC and others are claiming that Israel is trying to silence criticism and is acting like an authoritarian regime by shutting down human rights groups.

Essentially none of the critics admit that there are links between the groups and the PFLP. Yet the groups were either founded by the PFLP directly or they are run by PFLP members.

In my previous post, I looked at the 2000 political vision of the PFLP - a 225-page manifesto that made no distinction between terrorism and political activity.

That document didn't say that the PFLP planned to use human rights groups as a political tool against Israel. At the time it was written, though, it had already founded some of the groups that are now being celebrated as human rights organizations. This characterization is uncritically swallowed by Western NGOs.

You can see that even these organizations consider themselves to be part of the resistance against Israel. For example, the Union of Palestinian Women's Committees, founded by the PFLP, describes itself both as a "progressive feminist organization" and "an integral part of the Palestinian national movement that struggles to get rid of the Israeli occupation." Their summer camp for girls glorified the second intifada where the PFLP used suicide bombs to murder Israelis as the "uprising that our people fought" and a source of pride.

As we've seen, the PFLP makes no distinction between its political and social movements and its support for murdering Jews. These "human rights" groups don't consider Jews to be human. And they are being defended by the international human rights community.

The PFLP itself has its own unusual definition of human rights.

A PFLP representative gave a speech in Cuba to mark the group's 45th anniversary in 2012. Here is what he said about human rights:

On this anniversary, we reaffirm our commitment to our goals, principles and inalienable Palestinian national rights. Some of these have been recognized and approved by the norms, principles, conventions, international resolutions, international law and human rights. The first of these rights is the right of the Palestinian people to resist the occupation by all means and methods.

"All means and methods" is the Palestinian way of saying "terror attacks."

PFLP training camp for kids, this year

This is the lens through which any honest person must look at these organizations that claim to uphold a progressive, human rights agenda. To them, human rights includes murdering Jews for their cause.

I cannot find a counterexample where these purported human rights groups admit that Israel Jews are human or that they condemn terror attacks against Jews in Israel. (I even posted a bet in Twitter that no such statement exists.)

When Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, B'Tselem and the UN all defend the PFLP's social organizations, they are defending a philosophy where murdering Jews is celebrated.

Palestinian prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh is visiting Europe in a bid to resume the faltering funding that used to be a blank check from the EU.

International funding to the Palestinian Authority has declined this year, for the first time in decades. While the EU says that it hasn't sent its usual $150 million to the PA this year for "technical reasons." it appears that European taxpayers do not want to continue paying for the PA's corruption.

Earlier this month Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde warned, "If we are to fully support economic development, then we can not have corruption at such a level as exists in Palestine."

A recent audit of the Palestinian Authority for the year 2020 revealed many examples of corruption and embezzlement of funds. These included misuse of funding for the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, the “National Committee as a Permanent Capital for Arab culture,” abuses by the Palestinian Ministry of Finance, Al-Aqsa University and many other institutions. If lots of money is sent to the Palestinian government, you can assume that much of it is going into the pockets of their leaders.

The total aid expected by the Palestinian government this year is only 10% of the total pledges of donor countries to the PA. One official said that the funds expected to come later this month from France and the EU were earmarked in 2020, and the 2021 money has not yet come.

The rampant corruption of the Palestinian Authority is still barely reported in the media, even though it is well known to the international community and to Palestinians themselves. It contradicts the narrative that Palestinian suffering is all because of Israel, and therefore the media believes that reporting this will just confuse people - and cause them to lose interest in a conflict that is a cash cow for the news business.

Human Rights Watch issued a report in 2002 detailing the terror attacks during the start of the second intifada. The report described the various terror groups that had been targeting and killing Israelis.

Here's what it said about the PFLP:

The PFLP has not claimed any separation between its military wing and its political leaders. As with the other armed Palestinian groups that have intentionally and repeatedly organized suicide attacks against civilians, persons carrying out attacks on civilians claimed by the PFLP are individually criminally liable for their actions. PFLP leaders are also liable both directly and under the doctrine of command responsibility.

HRW accurately said that the PFLP political and terror components are one and the same.

But over the years, as Human Rights Watch lurched leftward become the leading anti-Israel organization, its descriptions of the socialist PFLP has become less critical and more admiring.

In 2007, it called the PFLP "a secular leftist party that also conducts armed attacks against Israel."

In 2012, HRW said that PFLP - which it had previously documented in 2002 of being guilty of crimes against humanity - was merely a group "which Israel considers a terrorist organization."

In 2013, it became "a left-wing political party."

In 2018, it was merely a "leftist party."

By 2021, HRW writes:

For most of the last six years, Israeli authorities have detained Khalida [Jarrar], a 58-year-old elected member of the Palestine Legislative Council, over her political activism with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). One of the more than 400 organizations that Israeli authorities have outlawed, the PFLP includes both a political party and an armed wing. The armed wing has attacked Israeli soldiers and civilians. Israeli authorities have never charged Khalida with involvement in armed activities.

The implication is that Israel has no business outlawing the PFLP altogether, because its armed and political sides have nothing to do with each other - the exact opposite of its position in 2002.

Even though the PFLP was involved in a murderous attack in 2019 - where the ringleader worked for one of those "human rights organizations" that HRW is defending now.

In 2002, HRW would have said that Khalida Jarrar was responsible for the death of Rina Shnerb, under the doctrine of command responsibility. 2021 HRW creates a virtual wall between the two sides of the PFLP - a wall that the PFLP itself brags doesn't exist.

What does the PFLP itself say?

Their most recent political platform was published in 2000:

It it is a natural right, and duty that the Palestinian people should defend itself, resist the occupation through various means of struggle, including armed struggle. ..[T]he form of armed struggle should be dealt with at each stage as a means to serve the inclusive political vision which is responsible for determining the function to be done at each stage of the struggle...

The political platform explicitly supports the "armed struggle" and regards it as integral to the PFLP. There are no "wings." The PFLP's "human rights organizations" are part of its social, political program. To the PFLP, "human rights" are just as much weapons as the IED that murdered Rina Shnerb, which the PFLP admits.

The only thing that changed is that Human Rights Watch, which had a shred of morality 20 years ago, is now an open ally with Palestinian terror groups.

10/25 Links Pt2: For the Anti-Israel Left, the Jewish State Is but a Screen onto Which It Projects Its Fantasies; Im Tirtzu: 'New Israel Fund collaborating with pro-BDS groups'

From Ian:

For the Anti-Israel Left, the Jewish State Is but a Screen onto Which It Projects Its Fantasies

There is another problem with intersectionality, at least in the way it is now being used. It, too, is a kind of conceit—an updated version of “We Are the World.” As the political theorist Michael Walzer told me, “Intersectionality is a genuinely useful idea. But there is no intersection between American Blacks and Palestinians. The moral significance of solidarity is that it extends solidarity to people with whom you have no intersection. Intersectionality is an entirely different idea from internationalism.” The Israeli journalist Etan Nechin observed to me that the American left’s discourse on Israel is “an offshoot of identity politics, with emphasis on ‘me.’ But internationalism was never about that.” To support other peoples or movements because they are somehow “like” you—or because they “look like you”—betrays the traditional ethos of internationalism.

And in the Manichean imagination—and this, I think, is its greatest sin, if I can use that word—the democratic forces within Israel, both Jewish and Arab, are rendered literally invisible, as if by a perverse magic trick. In Haaretz, Nechin recently charged that those on the American left—and particularly the Jewish American left—“dismiss realities on the ground in Israel and Palestine entirely, and instead offer high-minded ideological critiques.” As for ending the occupation, American leftists “expect … if that day comes, [that] it won’t be because of the work of decades by the Israeli left, but because Americans boycotted SodaStream.” Gone missing are “the hundreds of thousands of union workers, writers, doctors, teachers, activists, and everyday people within the Green Line who protested the Jewish Nation State Bill, or go out on a Friday afternoon to stand in solidarity next to their Palestinian neighbors.”

Today’s left, and today’s liberals, are in a bit of a pickle—or at least in a state of moral and theoretical disarray. I don’t exempt myself from that. It is extremely hard to figure out how to extend solidarity—in real, not rhetorically grandiose terms—to Syrians and Afghans; to democracy activists in China, Nicaragua, and Hong Kong; to horrifically endangered peoples such as the Uyghurs and Yazidis and Rohingya. Ending the occupation, and strengthening endangered democratic institutions in Israel, are goals that rank high on the list of political urgencies for some of us.

In the current, often bewildering international context, the venomous attacks on Israel qua Israel offer a seductively easy, morally antiseptic—and, I would add, appallingly self-absorbed—way to intervene in foreign affairs. The hysterical hyperbole, the self-referential projections, the lazy conflations, the warped histories that abound today: All substitute for solidarity. What is needed, I believe, is an entry into the world of political thought, whose foundation is the ability to make distinctions within the context of history rather than to crush them.

So no, Palestine isn’t Ferguson, Israel isn’t South Africa, and Zionism isn’t white supremacy. As Arendt wrote, the activity of thinking—the very basis of politics—begins with the knowledge that “A and B are not the same.”

Im Tirtzu: 'New Israel Fund collaborating with pro-BDS groups'

The New Israel Fund has increased its funding of a series of left-wing organizations and Palestinian aid groups, at least one of which has ties to an organization that supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. This is according to a new report by right-wing watchdog group Im Tirtzu.

The report's findings are in contrast to the New Israel Fund's claims to donors "it will not support organizations that call for and support a comprehensive boycott of the State of Israel."

According to Im Tirtzu's Research and Policy division, in 2020 the New Israel Fund gave $125,000 to Baladna – the Association for Arab Youth. According to its Facebook page, Baladna recently collaborated with Qatari-based BDS organization QAYON. According to QAYON's official website, the organization opposes any form of normalization with the "Zionist entity" and runs BDS campaigns. Baladna recently worked with QAYON to organize an event benefitting Palestinians detained during the Israel Defense Forces' Operation Guardian of the Walls. In addition, Baladna is known for its opposition to minorities enlisting in the IDF or national service.

The report further found that the New Israel Fund continues to donate tens of thousands of dollars a year to Combatants for Peace, a self-described anti-occupation" Israeli-Palestinian non-governmental organization. The New Israel Fund increased its funding to Combatants for Peace in 2020, according to the report.

Alon Schwartzer, who heads Im Tirtzu's research and policy division, said: "This is not the New Israel Fund, but the Israel Erasure Fund. The findings of the New Israel Fund's financial reports prove the fund is continuing its support for organizations that act toward the defamation of IDF soldiers, the tying of their hands, and their prosecution at the International Criminal Court at The Hague."

Prof. Phyllis Chesler answers Giulio Meotti''s tough questions

On their own initiative, two internationally well-known authors and publicists, veteran op-ed writers for Arutz Sheva, decided to get to know one another's thoughts on crucial current issues from across the ocean. Here is the result.

Meotti: Question 2) In the UK, a Tory MP was just murdered. A year ago, a French teacher…and the llist goes on. Will the West pay dearly for its appeasement?

Chesler Response: Absolutely. The West has a choice. Build walls up to the very skies and guard them well —or monitor and root out radical Islamic terrorists from afar. Both propositions are hugely expensive. Europe genocidally exterminated their peaceful “Semites,” the Jews, and has reaped a terrible karmic destiny.

They subsequently welcomed millions of non-peaceful other “Semites,” the Muslims, within their borders, without demanding proof that they will become Europeans, without subjecting them to a rigorous Western education and linking all benefits to that program, and without deporting them when they fail to Westernize.

Meotti: Question 3) Joe Biden, Kamala and the others don’t seem much impressed by the news coming from Afghanistan. Is their woke gender women's agenda just a dog whistle?

Chesler Response: President Biden seems to be half-comatose or at least cognitively impaired. The Anyone But Trump crowd found the least qualified candidate, one who could be controlled by the increasingly “left” Democratic Party. Biden and Harris are not paying attention to the consequences of America’s shameful retreat from Afghanistan.

Or to the immigrants entering the United States through our southern border. No one is checking to see if they have COVID or any other communicable disease. No one is checking to see whether they are Jihadists or criminal cartel members.

God help us all.

No wonder BDS doesn't try to boycott companies that open offices in Israel

One difference between the Arab boycott of Israel from the 1940s (still officially in effect) and BDS is that the Arab boycott would restrict business from any companies that had business in Israel.

This is why Israelis couldn't buy Pepsi Cola, Toshiba computers, Toyota or Nissan cars until 1992, because those companies adhered to the boycott out of fear for losing the more lucrative Arab market.

But BDS couldn't make such a boycott work, without the support of the Arab world.

And for one other reason: BDSers themselves couldn't live for five minutes without using products from companies that have branches in Israel.

This morning I saw that AT&T opened up it second R&D center in Israel; the first was opened in 2007. It employs 600 people.

For high tech companies in Israel, that is practically nothing.

Wikipedia's page of companies with R&D facilities in Israel is a who's who of the top companies in high tech, not to mention many other industries.

Imagine BDS trying to boycott Apple, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft.

That's why they nibble around the edges, going after HP and AirBnB. Because they know that they cannot possibly adhere to a real boycott themselves, let alone demanding that others do.

This is why Israel's best defense is strength. Economic strength ensures that boycotts can't hurt it; military strength ensures that enemy states cannot hurt it, and when they realize that they can gain much more by cooperating with Israel than fighting a losing battle, that's how peace can happen.

Peace is the last thing that the BDSers want - including the ones with "peace" in their names.

This poster barely scratches the surface - 380 multinational companies have R&D facilities in Israel, and many more have subsidiaries, investments and partnerships.