Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 21, 2022

01/21 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: A lethal state of denial; Jew-hatred and Islamism at the Heart of Texas Terror; Poll: US Jews worried about antisemitism, ignorant about Israel

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: A lethal state of denial

The Islamophobia canard has been eagerly endorsed by those in the wider community for whom the very concept of Jewish victimisation is a problem.

That pathology is on regular display at the BBC, which has been doubling down on its apparently baseless report last month that orthodox Jewish teenagers set upon by Muslim men in an antisemitic attack in the centre of London themselves voiced an anti-Muslim slur.

The deep reluctance by the wider community to acknowledge Muslim antisemitism has been further facilitated by the silence of British Jews on this issue. For the community’s leaders never mention it. Instead, they lash out at any Jew who dares call it out.

At the Board of Deputies, 46 left-wing members are demanding that the Jewish National Fund UK charity gets rid of its chairman, Samuel Hayek, over his “Islamophobic” suggestion that Jews might soon be forced out of the United Kingdom because of the rising number of Muslims who hate or want to harm Jewish people.

This misplaced attack by Jewish liberals is idiotic and disgraceful. For antisemitism is not only rampant in the Muslim world but is absolutely central to Islamic extremism.

Numerous Islamist terrorists have made it clear that, in attacking the west, their most fundamental target is the Jews. At war against modernity, they believe that behind modernity stand the Jews — who they think are behind everything in the world that the Islamists have decided is bad.

This doesn’t mean every Muslim antisemite will turn into a terrorist. But it does mean that every Muslim terrorist is an antisemite.

Antisemitism doesn’t just endanger the Jews. It is the marker for Islamic extremism. Until this is realised, the west will continually fail to understand the threat it faces.

Caroline Glick: Colleyville and the 'professional' civil servants

We also don't know who was responsible for permitting Akram, a British national with a criminal record, a history of public support for terrorism and a mental illness, to enter the United States. But then again, it's fairly clear that De Sarno and the FBI Dallas Field Office he leads played no role in that failure.

At any rate, given the outcome at the scene, from a professional statecraft perspective, De Sarno and his team played things by the book. De Sarno's denial of the terrorist's antisemitic motivation had nothing to do with professionalism. It was a political/ideological pronouncement. It wasn't made in a vacuum. And it should be deeply disconcerting to all Americans because it is a testament to a growing pathology within the FBI.

Over the past 15 years, much of the federal government, including the FBI and the US Department of Justice, have been politicized and radicalized. The first major demonstration of the politicization came in 2013 with the IRS's discriminatory use of its regulatory authorities against organizations and individuals aligned with the conservative and Republican side of the ideological/political spectrum.

In 2016, US intelligence agencies unlawfully targeted Donald Trump's presidential campaign. To promote a clear political agenda, the heads of the FBI and the Department of Justice wrongfully used their authority as intelligence and law enforcement "professionals" to conduct politically motivated, evidence-free criminal probes, first of candidate and later of President Donald Trump and his advisors. These investigations, which cost US taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, hamstrung Trump and his administration for two and a half years. They subverted Trump's domestic and foreign policies and contributed to unprecedented discord and division in American society.

And this brings us to De Sarno's absurd denial of the antisemitic nature of Akram's actions at Beth Israel. As FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland have proclaimed in Congressional testimony over the past year, as far as the FBI and the Justice Department are concerned, the gravest terror threat facing the United States emanates from "domestic terrorists" (aka, Trump supporters). Islamic terrorists and violent far-left groups like ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter who looted and burned America's cities, killing dozens and causing billions of dollars in damages throughout much of 2020, lag well behind the MAGA crowd in terms of the danger they pose to America and its citizens.

Given the gravity of the perceived threat, naturally, US counter-terror and law enforcement agencies have invested their time, manpower and resources in investigating American citizens who participated in or supported the violent demonstration at Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021.

Akram was not a Trump supporter. He was not a white supremacist. He was an Islamic antisemite and terrorist. And so he was an inconvenient distraction from the real threat the FBI is concerned with.

De Sarno's false construal of Akram's motives flows naturally from the political/ideological closed circle of today's FBI.

The Caroline Glick Show: Ep35 – Can you rebuild a democracy after a deep state coup? | Guest: Lee Smith

Against the backdrop of plea bargain negotiations between Benjamin Netanyahu and state prosecutors that may well banish Netanyahu from politics for good, in this week’s episode of the Caroline Glick Mideast News Hour, Caroline and co-host Gadi Taub spoke with Lee Smith, the author of The Permanent Coup and The Plot Against the President. The three discussed the influence the respective deep state coups in the U.S. and Israel that have unseated elected leaders have had on the two societies and what they portend for the future. They then shifted to the FBI’s denial of the anti-Semitic motive of the Islamic terrorist who took four Jews hostage at Beth Israel synagogue in Texas over the weekend and what it means for the future of Jews and anti-Semitism in the United States.

01/21 Links Pt1: Remember Deir Yassin!; Debunking Another False Narrative about Sheikh Jarrah in Israel; Biden saves Iran from itself; BDS cost Unilever $26 billion

From Ian:

Gil Troy: Remember Deir Yassin!

Deir Yassin. For decades it was the main count in the Palestinian indictment against Zionism and Israel. In the 1970s, when Palestinian terrorists butchered schoolkids and Olympic athletes, they and their supporters cried “remember Deir Yassin!” In the 2000s, when Palestinian leaders blew up the Oslo Peace Process by dispatching suicide bombers to Israeli buses and cafes, they and their supporters cried “remember Deir Yassin!” Even today, the massacre of 254 Arabs, including 25 pregnant women, 50 breastfeeding mothers, and 60 other women—followed by mass rapes and other atrocities in this pastoral village just outside Jerusalem—remains one of the prime movers of anti-Zionism, an often-invoked justification for the rejectionism and crimes of Palestinian extremists. In their still-defining book on 1948, O Jerusalem, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre describe Jews cutting open a pregnant woman’s stomach “with a butcher’s knife,” and slashing at least two people “from head to toe,” as they “killed” and “looted,” then, “finally they raped.”

But what if, as professor Eliezer Tauber argues in his new book, Deir Yassin is The Massacre That Never Was?

Tauber’s book, subtitled The Myth of Deir Yassin and the Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, may have been 2021’s most snubbed yet significant scholarly work. Originally published in Hebrew in 2017 as Deir Yassin: Sof Hamitos (Deir Yassin: The End of the Myth), it was ignored then, as it is being ignored now.

Tauber, who founded Bar-Ilan University’s Department of Middle Eastern Studies, is a tenacious researcher, offering nearly 100 pages of Arab, Israeli, and British sourcing to back 208 pages of text. He painstakingly recreates the battle of Deir Yassin, noting who fought where, who had how many guns, and who died. Sixty of the Arabs who died were men, and 41 were women—some dressed as men and armed to fight. Tauber concludes that 61 of the 84 Arabs whose circumstances of death were ascertained “were killed under battle conditions.”

The battle began early on Friday, April 9, 1948, five weeks before David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. Since the United Nations had voted a Jewish state into existence on Nov. 29, 1947, Arab extremists in Palestine had launched a guerilla war against their Jewish neighbors. The British, who controlled Palestine under the 1920 Mandate, were counting down to their U.N.-mandated departure on May 14. Jews and Arabs were scrambling for strategic advantage—and starting to clash over land. Arab irregulars were besieging Jerusalem, and three different fighting forces were defending the Jews while competing aggressively with one another, too.

Erielle Davidson: Debunking Another False Narrative about Sheikh Jarrah in Israel

Those groups lambasting the evictions, such as the Israeli group Peace Now, insist that the plans to build a yeshiva down the road (also on public lands) should be scrapped in order to place the school there. However, the yeshiva site is farther from the residential areas of the Arab neighborhood, and, furthermore, not one argument has been made as to why the yeshiva project is unworthy of completion. In short, Peace Now wants to hold the education of Palestinian special-needs children hostage in hopes of possibly derailing a Jewish seminary at a different location.

Peace Now also argues that demolishing the home of the Mahmoud Salihye family is not necessary to build the school. However, one glance at the proposed building plan reveals how fatuous this argument is. The compound touches the anticipated school building. There is no physical space for a squatter (or any individual, for that matter) to essentially reside on the property of a school. Schools have various forms of infrastructure — playgrounds, fencing, and gates — designed to keep children safely on the property and to provide them with recreational space. It would also stand to reason that a school of this nature may require even more recreational space.

The manufactured outrage at the eviction, when considered in conjunction with the yeshiva, shows that progressives embrace the goal of a Jew-free eastern Jerusalem to such a degree that they would be willing to block a special-needs school for Palestinians in the hopes that it would keep Jews from studying Torah there. It is worth noting that none of these groups claim that the evicted tenants have any legal claim to the land — only that Jewish property rights should be ignored, that the needs of Jerusalem’s most vulnerable population be ignored, and that the areas purged of Jews by Jordan in 1948 remain essentially Jew-free forever.

A war crime, indeed.

Just a reminder that Russian imperialism is in full swing but instead of protesting outside the Russian Embassy today, an organisation called “Stop The War” is going to picket the Israeli Embassy instead. pic.twitter.com/BoRgYeoFOQ
— Ben Stanley (@BDStanley) January 21, 2022

Richard Goldberg: Biden saves Iran from itself

Iran’s response was predictable. The regime cut back U.N. access to its declared nuclear sites, produced uranium metal, a key component of nuclear weapons, and increased its enrichment purity level to 60% — dangerously close to weapons-grade. Considering Tehran’s failure to cooperate with the IAEA’s investigation, the obvious course of action presented itself: Refer the matter to the Security Council and restore U.N. sanctions on Iran. But in June, September, and November, Biden opted against any action that could provoke Iran at the IAEA’s quarterly board meetings.

Biden made other poor choices as well. He chose not to respond militarily to the March death of a U.S. contractor in Iraq. He chose not to respond militarily for months thereafter despite continuous drone and rocket attacks targeting U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. And the two times he authorized a U.S. military response, he directed fire at non-Iranian personnel or installations rather than targeting the Revolutionary Guard commanders orchestrating the attacks.

Biden also gave a green light to Iranian adventurism in the region, a large source of chaos, instability, and deadly violence. In Yemen, Biden ended U.S. military support for a Saudi-led campaign against the Iran-backed Houthis and rescinded the group’s designation as a foreign terrorist organization. On Tehran’s orders, the Houthis responded by increasing missile and drone attacks against Saudi and Emirati citizens. In other words, Iran responded to Biden’s concession with more violence against U.S. allies. How did Biden respond to this pattern? By rewarding it. The administration removed American missile defense from the Saudi kingdom, which invited more Houthi attacks. In mid-January, a combined drone, ballistic missile, and cruise missile attack on Abu Dhabi left at least three people dead.

If the supreme leader had any doubt left about whether he could establish Iran as a nuclear weapons threshold state without fearing a U.S. military response, Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, looking the other way as the Taliban marched on Kabul, sealed his calculus.

All the while, Biden let Iran’s economy stabilize. He suspended sanctions, which gave the regime access to billions of dollars more in frozen funds. And he refused to crack down as China increased its imports of Iranian oil. As Tehran’s regional violence increased and its nuclear transgressions continued unabated, Washington essentially helped the mullahs avoid a financial crisis.

Never has a U.S. president given up so much leverage so quickly for absolutely zero gain. To borrow a football analogy, Biden started his presidency with Iran backed up against its own goal line, and he deliberately allowed the regime to march all the way to America’s red zone, the threshold of nuclear weapons.

The president made a bet one year ago that abandoning maximum pressure in favor of maximum deference would somehow induce the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism that pledges “Death to America” to make concessions. He lost that bet. And every time he doubles down on that bet instead of admitting his mistake, he loses again.

Biden came into office and implemented a new Iran policy. He owns its failure.

As we've seen many times, there are daily headlines in Arab media from Algeria to Iraq of "fanatic Jewish settlers storming Al Aqsa mosque" when Jews quietly roam and tour the Temple Mount.

But that evergreen headline changes on Fridays.

On Fridays, Jews aren't permitted to ascend, and tens of thousands of Muslims go for Friday prayers.

The Arab media theme every Friday looks like this:

Tens of thousands performed Friday prayers in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, despite the strict military measures imposed by the Israeli occupation authorities at the gates and entrances to the Old City of occupied Jerusalem.

The Department of Islamic Endowments in Jerusalem estimated that about 50,000 worshipers performed Friday prayers in Al-Aqsa compound. The occupation police prevented the worshipers from entering the mosque, who flocked since the morning hours, through careful inspections of their belongings, and checking their personal identities.

The occupation forces deployed in the streets of the city and the vicinity of Al-Aqsa, stationed at its gates, stopped the worshipers, checked their ID cards, and prevented the entry of thousands of citizens from the governorates of the West Bank.

The worshipers heroically evade evil Israeli police, and 50,000 of them managed to slip through the Israeli cordon.

What is really happening is that Israel doesn't allow Palestinians from the West Bank to come into Jerusalem without a permit every day. Residents of Jerusalem and the rest of Israel are free to go worship. 50,000 is pretty typical, when the weather is bad it is usually 40,000 or so.

There is nothing newsworthy happening, but the Arabs know that unless they keep emphasizing the importance of Al Aqsa, the people will lose interest, as they did for centuries between the Crusades and the twentieth century.

Over the years, this site and others have lampooned BDSers who use Israeli products (or go to Israeli universities) while telling everyone else to boycott Israel.\

It looks like this kind of boycott hypocrisy has been around for a while.

I found this article about how Arabs who pretended to be following the anti-Jewish boycott, and even boycott leaders, would use Jewish products when it made their lives easier.

Just like today.

From the Chicago Tribune, October 15, 1946.

ARABS CONNIVE WITH JEWS AND EVADE BOYCOTT
Zionist Products Given Moslem Labels

BY CLAY GOWRAN [Chicago Tribune Press Service]

JERUSALEM. Palestine, Oct. 14— Since last December, top ranking leaders of the Arab world have been attempting to enforce a rigid boycott of Palestinian Jewish products in the Moslem states as a protest against Zionism. Amusing details of how the boycott works, or rather fails to work, were revealed today in the Holy City.

As conceived by the Arab League, the boycott was designed to close the entire middle east Arab world to Jewish goods. All Arab nations passed stringent measures forbidding the importation of Jewish products. then sat back to wait for the Jewish economy in Palestine to topple.

However, due to the zeal of Arab merchants to carry on business, plus a similar frame of mind among Palestinian Jewish businessmen, it did not work out that way.

New sport: Beat Boycott
Boycott evasions became a high priority sport throughout the middle east. Take chocolate, for instance.

Three large, Jewish owned factories in and near Tel Aviv probably produce more of this delicacy than any other concerns in this part of the world. One of the chocolate firms' best customers is an Arab owned candy company in Palestine. which buys huge quantities of the sweet, re-wraps the bars in folders bearing Arabic labels, then sells it either to Palestinian Arab shops or exports it to Arab countries as a Moslem product.

Trade in aluminum kitchen utensils operates the same way. Products of Palestinian Jewish factories, the utensils are purchased wholesale by Arab dealers, fitted with labels stating they were made either in Arab factories or in England, then sold here or exported to Arab league nations.

Jews Even Make Labels
The zany point is that even the phony labels with which the chocolate and utensils are tagged are products of Jewish owned print shops, according to experts here.

In recent weeks, the whole world heard much about the Nejada, so-called militant Arab Boy Scout movement of Palestine, which in reality is the closest facsimile of an army which the Palestinian Arabs possess. However, the world to date has not heard this about the Nejada—that the copper badges sported by its members. which bear the slogan. "Arab lands for Arabs," are products of a Jewish factory in Jerusalem.

Blowing Hot and Cold
One of the best boycott anecdotes, printed in local Jewish papers, occurred three weeks ago in Haifa. An Arab bought a bugle in a Jewish owned music store. The next day when the owner of the shop was sitting in front of his store, an Arab parade passed by. The purpose of the parade was to advertise the Moslem boycott. Playing a bugle in the front row of the band was his customer of the day before.

Arab owned weekly papers of Jerusalem and other Palestinian cities print lurid cartoons urging Moslems to stand by the boycott and picturing grim dangers if they fail to do so. Because there is no Arab plant in the Holy Land equipped to prepare such line drawn cartoons for newspaper reproduction plates, they are let out under contract to a Jewish owned engraving concerns

Iran was the only country to object to the UN's resolution against Holocaust denial

Yesterday, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution that "rejects and condemns without any reservation any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part."

Nearly all envoys who spoke at the session strongly supported the resolution.

But not Iran.

The UN's press release about the session highlighted Iran's statement along with that of Israel and Germany, and even implied with its wording that it has validity:

Iran’s representative disassociated his country from the resolution although it did not block the passage of the text. Strongly rejecting the attempt to misuse the concept of the Second World War to provide cover for the continuing practices of racism and expansionism, he said: “The Israeli regime has applied both in its policies and practices over seven decades.” Its brutal crimes against Palestine, which include ethnic cleansing, an inhumane blockage and forced evictions, have continued, he said.

The way this is written, the bold section sounds like the opinion of the UN writer, not only Iran.

Iran's statement was expanded later in the press release when the entire discussion was summarized:

The representative of Iran, speaking in explanation of position ahead of the vote, strongly rejected the attempt to misuse the concept of the Second World War to provide cover for the continuing practices of racism and expansionism, adding: “The Israeli regime has applied both in its policies and practices over seven decades.” Its brutal crimes against Palestine, which include ethnic cleansing, an inhumane blockage and forced evictions, have continued, he said. Iran condemns genocide as a crime against humanity. Therefore, Iran disassociates itself from the text in its entirety.

The representative from Ukraine was the only one who showed disgust at Iran's statement. “It is morally egregious to poison this moment and use it to attack and single out countries,” he said.

The Arab bloc, represented by Egypt, also tried to use the resolution against Israel, although only implicitly:

The representative of Egypt, speaking on behalf of the Arab Group, echoed consensus on the resolution, stating that memory of such a black hole in history must be kept alive in the global consciousness so that it is never repeated. However, this can only be ensured if the international community makes a sincere effort to strive for peace, and recognize the rights of others, including the right to self-determination and mutual coexistence.

In 2007 a similar resolution passed at the UN, and Iran opposed it then as well,

Iranian representative Hossein Gharibi, while reiterating his country’s “unambiguous” condemnation of genocide against any race, dismissed the resolution as a manipulation to deflect attention from Israel’s “atrocious” crimes and said it should have included other cases of genocide such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the US dropped atomic bombs, Palestine, Rwanda and the Balkans.
“In view of the above we truly disassociate ourselves from this entire hypocritical political exercise,” he declared.

Israel's ambassador responded:

Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman said the lessons of the Holocaust are universal, compelling all nations to recommit to preventing the horrors of genocide. “While the nations of the world gather here to affirm the historicity of the Holocaust with the intent of never again allowing genocide, a Member of this Assembly is acquiring the capabilities to carry out its own,” he added.
“The President of Iran is in fact saying: ‘There really was no Holocaust, but just in case, we shall finish the job.’”

Iran has a history of Holocaust denial by its leaders, officials and state media. The US Holocaust Museum published a summary in 2016.

(h/t Irene)

01/20 Links Pt2: A Stronger and Wider Peace: A U.S. Strategy for Advancing the Abraham Accords; UN adopts Israeli resolution aimed at combating Holocaust denial; Don’t Bury Alberto Nisman Again

From Ian:

A Stronger and Wider Peace: A U.S. Strategy for Advancing the Abraham Accords

The normalization agreements that the United States brokered between Israel and four Arab states – the United Arab Emirates (the UAE), Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan – represent a major inflection point in the history of the modern Middle East. Struck in rapid succession over the final months of 2020, the Abraham Accords have the potential to shift the region’s strategic trajectory in ways overwhelmingly favorable to U.S. national security. These agreements hold out the prospect of ending the persistent conflict between Israel and a group of pragmatic Arab states, which since the early days of the Cold War has regularly frustrated Washington’s ability to establish an effective multinational framework for safeguarding vital U.S. interests in the Middle East.

Realizing their full potential will entail continued and concerted American leadership, both to help deepen ties among the members of the Accords, especially in the defense sphere, and to expand the agreements to include other pivotal regional actors – in particular Saudi Arabia. The Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) convened the Abraham Accords Policy Project and this task force – comprised of leading retired senior American military officers and national security officials with deep Middle East experience – to understand and articulate how U.S. policies can capitalize on these historic developments to encourage further progress that will strengthen regional stability, boost America’s waning global influence, and ultimately leave it better positioned to compete against the growing strategic challenges posed by China, Russia, and Iran. As part of their research and deliberations, members of the task force conducted an extensive, high-level fact-finding mission to Bahrain, Israel, and the UAE in the fall of 2021, with a special focus on examining new possibilities created by the Accords for building defense cooperation and military-to-military ties.

This comprehensive report is intended to provide in-depth analysis and recommendations to help inform the work of American decision makers, both in the Biden administration and Congress, as well as the broader policymaking community and public. Its first section identifies the factors, both long-term and proximate, that made the Accords possible, and details some of the remarkable and unprecedented cooperation they have already spurred in the realms of diplomacy, trade, culture, and even defense. The second section contains the group’s key findings, anchored around the vital importance of sustained U.S. leadership and support for consolidating and widening the Accords, including taking full advantage of the multinational framework provided by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and Israel’s recent integration into its area of operations. In laying out a menu of policy prescriptions that range from less controversial low-hanging fruit to more ambitious, complex, and even transformative initiatives, the third and final section of the report emphasizes how the Executive Branch and Congress should maintain attitudes of flexibility and opportunism to seize upon the many strategic breakthroughs made possible by these landmark agreements.

The Arab influencer pushing the Abraham Accords from Abu Dhabi

At the age of 28, when Loay Alshareef, then a French language student from Saudi Arabia, stumbled into his homestay in Paris to discover he was surrounded by Stars of David — his instinct was to turn on his heels and find another family to stay with. “I didn’t feel comfortable at the beginning,” he told The Circuit.

Putting it mildly, Alshareef said he “didn’t have positive views about Israel or about the Jewish people,” at that time, in 2010.

“I called the school and they said ‘take your time’” — and with the gentle guidance of his “wise” host mother, he did.

That accidental and intimate almost year-long encounter with a Jewish family proved to be a turning point for Alshareef, an observant Muslim, whose father is originally from Egypt and who also has family from Bahrain, which he described as “a very nice mix.” Alshareef grew up in a middle-class household in Jeddah with his brother and sister.

Today, he is a prominent face among movers and shakers in the region who have embraced the Abraham Accords, normalization deals signed in September 2020 between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and are working to strengthen people-to-people ties between those countries and beyond. He’s caught the attention of Israeli, U.S. and Gulf leaders, and frequently meets with prominent figures visiting the UAE, where he has lived since 2020.

Alshareef owns a PR company in Abu Dhabi and works with both governmental and non-governmental entities, and also teaches English and Arabic. He has also learned Hebrew, largely from watching TV and listening to songs and podcasts, which he readily explained to The Circuit in the language. Prior to moving to the UAE, Alshareef lived in Bahrain, and spent a couple of years in the U.S., where he earned a master’s degree in software engineering from Pennsylvania State University.

He hasn’t yet visited Israel, but hopes to do so when the COVID-19 situation isn’t so rife — he’s waiting to visit his mother back in Jeddah for the same reason. Ultimately, he strives to get an academic degree in Israel and study the history of the Dead Sea Scrolls, further embracing his love of Biblical Hebrew which he describes as “very authentic and very deep.”

He said that while he appreciates the focus on Israel as a startup nation, “the history of Israel itself is also a beacon in our world and deserves to have more attention to it.”

KT Exclusive: One-on-One with Israeli Ambassador to UAE Amir Hayek (@HayekAmir).

Three months in, Israeli Ambassador says UAE feels like home. Watch the full interview here: https://t.co/CA86HYZ6la @IsraelDubai @israelintheUAE @michaldivon pic.twitter.com/dr0NoLXHnD
— Khaleej Times (@khaleejtimes) January 20, 2022

There's a new fad: “indigenous land acknowledgment”, of declaring acknowledgement that an institution sits on the un-ceded land.

Why cannot Arabs of the former Palestine Mandate admit they are on the land of Judea, the historic homeland of the Jews?
— Yisrael Medad (@ymedad) January 20, 2022

I Forgot You Were Jewish When I Said I Support Your Self-Determination (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

I Forgot You Were Jewish When I Said I Support Your Self-Determination

by Entirée Szyst, progressive activist

man with shades London, January 20 - Oh, goodness, I'm so sorry. Your ancestry and heritage had totally slipped my mind a few minutes ago, and had I remembered, I'd not have mindlessly agreed that you and your people deserve to govern yourselves in your own land and not remain at the mercy of host cultures. I hope you didn't misunderstand.

As a progressive, I live by a certain set of principles, high among them that every identity group deserves respect and may define itself and its needs without seeking approval from others or the dominant group. My political path, decisions, and rhetoric all draw heavy influence from that principle, and if I neglect to take it into account in my choices and my speech, I risk compromising the very values I claim to hold dear. But I also forgot for a moment that your specific identity group is Jewish. My colleagues and I in the progressive movement carve out an exception to that principle when it involves Jews. I'm sorry I gave the wrong impression earlier when I expressed support for your people's self-determination, let alone in their ancestral homeland. The opposite, I assure you!

In fact I oppose the very notion of Jewish peoplehood, simply because the implications of that phenomenon undermine so many of the causes I espouse.

Jewish faith, or membership in a Jewish faith community, poses no problem. As long as you restrict your Jewishness to matters of ritual, doctrine, or even morality, I'm with you! Just don't claim that Jews are a distinct people, because if I acknowledge Jewish peoplehood, I must perforce concede that Jews have a collective right to manifest that peoplehood in political terms, and that the most appropriate - indeed, the only historically viable - venue for such an endeavor is the very place where Jewish peoplehood came to be. That conflicts with the Palestinian cause, the crown jewel of all progressive causes. I apologize for, however briefly, implying that the two are not mutually exclusive, or worse, that even for an instant I might neglect the primacy of Palestinian claims and narrative.

Now you must apologize to me for causing me to violate one of the cardinal values of progressivism. That is correct: progressives, as ontologically your moral superiors, cannot fail; we can only be failed. Therefore, culpability for my erstwhile neglect of Palestinian supremacy lies with you, my Jewish-and-possibly-Zionist interlocutor, and not with me. Axioms, dear fellow; axioms.

01/20 Links Pt1: Anne Bayefsky: UN ditches its rules for an anti-Israel ‘Inquiry’; Texas synagogue terrorist ranted about “f***ing Jews” in last call to family made during siege

From Ian:

Anne Bayefsky: UN ditches its rules for an anti-Israel ‘Inquiry’

The United Nations has created a Star Chamber targeting the State of Israel. The inquisition was devised by the U.N. Human Rights Council last May and funded by the U.N. General Assembly at the end of December. The three members appointed to the new “Commission of Inquiry” make a mockery of the most elementary preconditions of fairness and legitimacy.

The identities of the inquisitors are Navi Pillay of South Africa, Miloon Kothari of India and Chris Sidoti of Australia. Pillay was named chair, hence the fitting epithet of the U.N. offensive: “Pillay’s Pogrom.” The three were appointed in July by then-council president Nazhat Shameem, a Muslim lawyer from Fiji. With funding now assured, the “Inquiry” is underway.

The “Inquiry’s” founding resolution was crafted at the behest of Islamic states and what the United Nations calls the “State of Palestine.” It spells out a number of fantastically broad tasks connected by one overarching goal: to turn the Jewish state into a global pariah.

Internationally recognized credentials for any such inquiry demand “independence,” “impartiality” and “objectivity.” Even the United Nations calls these prerequisites “of paramount importance.” Hence, a close look at the records of the “Inquiry” members, as compared to the “Inquiry’s” assigned tasks, is compulsory.

The first task assigned was to investigate “all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity.”

Pillay, who was U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014, has an answer to task No. 1—already. The flagship enterprise of Pillay’s tenure was resurrecting the U.N.’s anti-Semitic hate-fest held in Durban in 2001 and reaffirming the slander of the racist Jewish state. Since then, she’s been preaching, “help end decades of Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people … recognized as apartheid.”

As for the task of identifying root causes, Pillay’s got that covered. In her own words: “The occupation continued to be the main cause of widespread violations of Palestinians’ civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.” “At the heart of so many of the problems plaguing the Israel-Palestine situation,” she once contrived, was “that the Israeli Government treats international law with perpetual disdain”—not the perpetual disdain of law and life by Palestinian rejectionists, racists, terrorists and enablers.

In her application to be U.N. Special Rapporteur on Palestine—to be decided by the Human Rights Council in March—Francesca Albanese denied holding "any opinions that could prejudice the manner in which the candidate discharges the mandate." https://t.co/ZtYhbu1pvT

She lied. pic.twitter.com/q12jj9JhPf
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) January 19, 2022

Under Council rules, as defined in resolutions 5/1 and 16/21, the criteria of “impartiality” and “objectivity” are to be of “paramount importance” when selecting and appointing mandate-holders.

Sadly, each of the candidates is more biased than the next:https://t.co/Vd6gAcbwhm pic.twitter.com/nq2J69QCb4
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) January 19, 2022

StandWithUs: Stop The UN’s Newest Effort To Harm Israel And The Jewish People

The UN has launched a "Commission of Inquiry" that disproportionately targets Israel and is led by officials who have historically ignored, minimized, and excused violence and terrorism targeted at Israelis. Will the UN ignore Israeli terror victims in its new effort to harm Israel and the Jewish people? UN: Your bias is showing. This is #UNjust and UNacceptable.

Sweden released its 2020 hate crimes report.

There were 627 anti-religios hate crime reports. Of those, 27% were against Jews, and 51% against Muslims.

Muslims make up about 8% of Sweden's population while Jews are only about 0.15%.

This means that the average Jew is 28 times as likely to be a victim of an anti-religious hate crime than the average Muslim., and over a thousand times as likely to be victimized for religion as a Christian in Sweden.

Interestingly, Sweden has a relatively low number of antisemites, according to the ADL - only 4% by their criteria, or about 300,000 people. But there are about 800,000 Muslims in Sweden, and usually more than half of Muslim population in any country is antisemitic. I'm wondering if the ADL poll included a relative sample of Muslims; they only reported on Christian and atheist responses.The police report didn't mention who the perpetrators of the crimes were, but the Jewish community has pointed to attacks by Muslims over the past decade.

Felesteen reports that a partially decomposed body was found washed ashore in the northern Gaza Strip this morning. Sources say that it was the body of a girl who was not from Gaza.

If that is true, then almost certainly the body came from Israel. And that would be a nightmare.

I found two reports of missing girls over the past couple of months, a 12 year old from Zichron Yaakov, and a 14-year old from Ashkelon who has been missing since early December. I haven't seen any reports of them being found, but it might not have been in the newspapers.

It is conceivable that a body could float from Ashkelon to Gaza.

Arab media are publishing photos of the body.

I really hope that the Hamas authorities are mistaken or are covering up for some Gaza crime. If this is the body of an Israeli girl, the sick leaders of Hamas would hold her body hostage to release terrorists.

I cannot imagine a more terrifying scenario for parents.

I hope that Israel has a plan for such a nightmare.

UPDATE: Both of these girls have been found. (h/t David)

"They are Judaizing the neighborhood!" says an Israeli Jewish woman who lived in Sheikh Jarrah since 1998

There is a lot of hypocrisy around Sheikh Jarrah, and here is only one small example.

The New York Times reports:

Israeli police evicted two Palestinian families from their homes on Wednesday to make way for a new school in Sheikh Jarrah...

Israeli officials said the expropriation and evictions were necessary to make way for building a school for Jewish and Arab students with learning difficulties.

But the Salhiye family and rights campaigners said the eviction was part of a more general attempt to force Palestinians from East Jerusalem, and questioned why the school could not have been built on nearby land designated for a Jewish seminary.

“They are definitely trying to Judaize the neighborhood,” said Lital Salhiye, 43, an Israeli who married into the Salhiye family in 1998.

Yes, Lital is Jewish, born in Rishon LeTzion. She must have married Mahmoud when she was around 19.

So hasn't Lital been "Judaizing" Sheikh Jarrah for 24 years? She's a Jewish settler!

I cannot see any article saying she converted to Islam. Yet she covers her hair with what looks like a ski cap while obviously not being a religious Jew. Which means that she is the perfect dhimmi, submitting to the demands of her Muslim community who would be offended by the sight of her hair even though Jewish women have no obligation under Muslim law to cover their own hair.

Which means that Lital isn't "Judaizing" Sheikh Jarrah because she adds nothing Jewish to the neighborhood.

Only Jews who act as proud Jews are guilty of the terrible crime of Judaizing.

And Lital hates that!

Lital's home being demolished also disproves that Israel is only going after Arabs and Muslims. Is she being ethnically cleansed if she is ethnically Jewish?

Keeping the Land of Israel (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal

News Item:

The European Union has spent half-a-billion dollars over the last seven years to support a Palestinian Authority plan to control Area C of the West Bank, an Intelligence Ministry report publicly released Tuesday.

“Foreign assistance as a significant accelerator in the takeover processes,” stated the report by the ministry’s research division, which was authored in June and published this week for Tuesday’s debate in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the matter.

“The rough estimate is that from the period of 2014-2021, at least half-a-billion dollars were transferred to the Palestinians through various channels and it’s possible that the sum was larger,” the report stated.

An annual sum of some €20 million is earmarked for Palestinian legal battles against settlements and the security barrier, the report stated.

All the territories except Gaza were divided into Areas A, B, and C in 1995 by the Oslo II Agreement. Area A includes major Arab population centers, and is under complete PA security and civil control. That means that PA provides all needed services to the population, including counter-terrorism and law enforcement. The IDF only enters Area A when it is absolutely necessary, and coordinates with the PA to locate and apprehend terrorists (needless to say, this procedure can break down when a wanted terrorist is associated with the PA’s ruling Fatah faction). Area B is under Israeli security control and PA civil control. It is made up of areas with Arab populations that, because of their strategic location or nature, must be under IDF control. About 90% of the Arab population of the territories lives in areas A and B.

Area C, which is about 60% of the land area in question, is under complete Israeli control. It comprises all Jewish communities and military installations in the territories, and contains their entire Jewish population. It also includes strategic areas. Some 450,000 Jews and 180,000 Palestinians live in Area C. Some right-wing parties have advocated annexing or extending Israeli law to Area C, and even most “2-state” proponents agree that for security reasons, and to avoid expelling hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes, at least parts of Area C must become part of Israel.

In 2009, former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister and Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, in cooperation with the Obama Administration and the EU, came up with a plan to unilaterally establish a Palestinian state, regardless of Israeli wishes. Fayyad envisioned establishing all the pieces of a government and an economy before declaring the state, much like the Zionists did in the pre-state Yishuv. Detailed plans were written, with a high degree of detail and attention to concepts like justice, democracy, and even environmentalism, that would appeal to the Western technocrats who were to pay for the project. The contrast with the actual behavior of the PA, toward its citizens, the environment, and Israel, is striking.

The stated goal is to create a “sovereign and independent state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, and reach a just and agreed solution for Palestinian refugees in accordance with relevant international resolutions, and UN General Assembly Resolution 194 in particular.” If you think the plan might not be problematic for Israel, let me remind you that the PLO has always interpreted 194 to mean that all the descendants of Arab refugees of 1948 can choose to return “home” to Israel, or be compensated for the loss of their “property.”

The plan requires maximum land area under Palestinian control and maximum contiguity thereof, so control of Area C and the expulsion of as many Jews as possible is critical to it. Although Fayyad was pushed out in 2013 by a jealous Mahmoud Abbas (he went to work at various prestigious educational institutions and think tanks), the implementation of the plan continued under his successors.

American funding for the project began with the Obama Administration, stopped under Trump, and is being restarted by Biden. But the lion’s share has come from European sources. Regavim, an Israeli organization dedicated to protecting Israeli lands (both within and outside of the pre-1967 lines), explains some of the methods used by the Palestinians and their European partners to take de facto control of land in the most strategic parts of Area C, such as “E1,” located between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim:

The method is simple: E.U. vehicles station water cisterns and solar panels in strategic spots in Area C. Bedouin clans then create encampments around these critical resources, and the rest is history: The Jahalin clan and the residents of Khan al Akhmar are two well-known examples of the results.

Another ploy is to build an illegal structure at a strategic location, and to post signs designating it a “school” or a “hospital.” If Israel attempts to remove it – remember, the area is supposedly under full Israeli control, which includes zoning and issuing building permits – then she is alleged to be guilty of an inhumane act, or even a war crime. It’s ironic that at the same time, Palestinians and their supporters claim that Israel is “gobbling Palestinian land” by “settlement construction,” when in fact there is almost no construction of new communities and minimal construction inside old ones going on.

The Israeli government does sometimes take action, often when prodded by Regavim, but equally often the thefts of land are simply ignored. I think this is because many Israeli officials, even ones that are supposedly “right-wing,” have internalized the idea that a Palestinian state of some kind is both benign and inevitable. It had better not be inevitable, because nothing about it is benign. The Fayyad plan is essentially a detailed blueprint for the implementation of Arafat’s “Phased Plan” for the replacement of Israel by an Arab state (Fayyad was Arafat’s Finance Minister in the PA’s 2002 government).

It is difficult to think that the European – and American – officials believe that they are doing anything less than working to subvert the Jewish state. It is difficult to think that they are so credulous as to actually believe that the Palestinian State that they are creating on top of us will be democratic, peaceful, and neighborly. Finally, it is impossible to accept that they don’t have the imagination to picture what is likely to happen here if the PLO succeeds in implementing its plan.

What they are doing is an act of war. I would say it is flying under the radar of the citizens of their countries who are paying for it, but the truth is that most of those citizens couldn’t care less about what happens in this tiny spot in the Mideast.

But we, who live here, care, and it’s up to us to make our government carry out its responsibility to defend its citizens, which in this case also means to protect our lands from being nibbled away.

01/19 Links Pt2: Following the law is not a disadvantage; Pfizer CEO awarded Genesis Prize for efforts to combat COVID-19; UN set to pass historic resolution against Holocaust denial Thursday

From Ian:

Following the law is not a disadvantage

Upholding the laws of war in each and every case is a humane action that needs to be carried out anew each time, depending on the context. If there is any suspicion that the law was intentionally ignored, the instance must be investigated honestly. However, during war there can be mistakes and errors, some of which might cause unintentional harm to civilians on the other side. Sometimes mistakes are the result of combat requirements being underestimated and too much caution. For example, in the incident in which Border Police Staff Sgt. Barel Hadaria Shmueli was killed, it's possible that the orders did not correctly assess the demands of the situation.

In any case, there is nothing new in applying the laws of war to the war on terrorist organizations. Legal advisors have been taking part in Israel's war on terrorism for decades, and even if the nature of their involvement changes over time, ultimately they were and still should be part of the process, and advise. That is accepted practice in all western armies, and it should be. The final decision lies with the commanders, and it should take into account the legal counsel they receive.

Too easy
In this context, in recent years we have faced two massive challenges. One is the enemy's increasingly sophisticated methods. Among other things, this includes activating groups that portray themselves as human rights organizations, but actually are branches of terrorist organizations (for example, some of the groups Israel recently declared to be terrorist entities with links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). Others operate with blatantly anti-Israel motives.

The second goal is the ease with which the enemy is able to enlist new media and some of the media establishment to promote its goals – primarily, slandering Israel and chipping away at its legitimacy. For years, radical left-wing entities throughout the world have been investing considerable means in slandering Israel, able to do so in part by taking advantage of the new reality in which areas of conflict are replete with tools of documentation that can be used to manipulate.

The international system, motivated by political considerations, mostly accepts the double standard of morality that this asymmetry expresses. While Israel is required to meet stringent standards and the former chief prosecutor of the ICC decided to open an investigation against it, no one truly expects the Palestinians to follow their laws of war, even though the ICC investigation is supposedly looking to Hamas' war crimes, as well. Moreover, according to the Palestinian narrative, the battle against Zionism justifies any form of war, including terrorism. And although the Palestinian Authority pays fat salaries to terrorists, it is seen as a legitimate partner in negotiations.

The IDF should continue to operate according to the law, but Israel must also recognize how vital it is for its to improve its abilities in the fights for western public opinion through an emphasis on our morality and our strong commitment to the law. The goal should be to increase the IDF's freedom of operation and restrict our enemies' freedom to operate.

Israel’s new man in NY: Bring on the broad — but legitimate — criticism of Israel

Israel’s new consul general in New York touched down in the US three months ago with his work cut out for him.

“I told my predecessors that I received a New York that is much more difficult than what they experienced,” said Asaf Zamir in an interview last month.

“During their tenures, Israel was only a positive buzzword,” he said, positing that the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and the Gaza War the following year intensified the intersectionality framework’s prominence among progressives who now tie the Palestinian struggle “to all other issues.”

While Zamir clarified that the support for Israel he has encountered in recent months both within and beyond the local Jewish community has been “overwhelming,” the new era in the US now features “politicians of all wakes who allow themselves to comment in such extremes on [the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] — some of it legitimate criticism, and some of it crossing [the line] into antisemitism in my eyes.”

In this newly challenging environment, Zamir fears that young Jews arriving on college campuses are particularly vulnerable.

In a wide-ranging discussion on the sidelines of the Israeli American Council’s annual conference in Florida, Zamir revealed that one of his main goals in his job as consul general is to provide these students with the tools to be able to defend their Zionist identities on what has become at-times hostile turf.

The outreach efforts of previous governments may have been similarly motivated, but the new diplomat indicated that the message so far failed to resonate. With the most politically diverse coalition in Israel’s history sworn in last June, though, Zamir argued that Jerusalem was uniquely suited to make inroads with the next generation of Americans.

He admitted that the new government’s policies still won’t satisfy many of the skeptics he’ll be serving in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Delaware.

“Because life is complex, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex,” he said.

US envoy to Israel ‘absolutely will not’ visit West Bank settlements

'I don’t want to do things intentionally that would create disrespect or anger among people'

The United States envoy to Israel said Friday that he never visited an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and had no plans to do so, in an effort to avoid inflaming tensions.

When asked whether he would make such a visit in an interview with Ynetnews, Ambassador Thomas Nides said “I absolutely will not.”

“Just like I ask both the Palestinians and Israelis not to take steps that inflame the situation, I don’t want to do things intentionally that would create disrespect or anger among people,” he continued.

“I’ll make mistakes. I’ll say things that will aggravate people… But I don’t want to intentionally anger people.”

Nides arrived to Israel in November following a lengthy confirmation process due to the refusal of Senate Republicans.

In explaining his approach to the position, he said that he has no ideology “when it comes to Israel.”

“All I care about is that Israel will remain a strong, democratic, and Jewish state,” he told Ynetnews.