Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, February 08, 2022

Three terrorists killed; Palestinian media calls them "civilians" - from Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades

Who is a civilian?

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, members of armed terror groups fit that definition.

Palestinian media reported that the terrorists killed were civilians while also reporting that they were members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades:

Three Palestinian youths were killed on Tuesday evening by the Israeli occupation forces' bullets in the Makhfeya area in the center of Nablus city.

In turn, the Palestinian Health announced the death of 3 civilians, who were shot by the occupation in Nablus.

For its part, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of Fatah movement, mourned on Tuesday its three martyrs after their assassination by the occupation forces in Nablus.

In its statement, Al-Aqsa Martyrs said: "We mourn our heroic martyrs Ibrahim Al-Nabulsi, Adham Mabrouk and Muhammad Al-Dakhil, after a cowardly assassination carried out by a Zionist special force in the city of Nablus, Jabal Al-Nar."

The battalions affirm that the blood of their martyrs will not be in vain, and that the response will come and blood will be met with blood."

Israeli media reports that the group had been responsible for multiple recent shooting attacks, and were planning more.

Keep in mind that these terrorists were not Hamas or Islamic Jihad. They were from Fatah, the organization headed by Palestinian president Abbas, who claimed fourteen years ago that the "military wing" had been dismantled.

He might not have been telling the truth.

And make no mistake: if the Al Aqsa Brigades were not doing what Abas wanted, they really would have been dismantled. Yet they openly parade in the West Bank, showing their weapons, with no hint that they are not doing exactly what Abbas wants.

And that includes attacking Jews.

A random example of the Amnesty report's dishonesty

I decided to choose a random page of the Amnesty International's "Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians" report, just to see if I can find dishonesty on every page.

Pretty much.

On page 73, Amnesty says:

Palestinians on the other hand are treated by the Israeli state differently based on its consideration of them as having a racialized non-Jewish, Arab status and, beyond that, as being part of a group with particular attributes that are different from other non-Jewish groups. With respect to Palestinian citizens of Israel, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs officially classifies them as being “Arab citizens of Israel”, an inclusive term that describes a number of different and primarily Arabic-speaking groups, including Muslim Arabs (this classification includes Bedouins), Christian Arabs, Druze and Circassians. However, in public discourse, Israeli authorities and media generally refer only to Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs – those who generally self-identify as Palestinians – as Israeli Arabs and associate them with Palestinians living in the OPT and beyond, using the specific terms Druze and Circassians for those other non-Jewish groups. The authorities also clearly consider Palestinian citizens of Israel as a single group different from Druze and Circassians since they exempt this group alone from military service in “consideration for their family, religious, and cultural affiliations with the Arab world (which has subjected Israel to frequent attacks), as well as concern over possible dual loyalties.”[206]

First of all, most Israeli Arabs do not call themselves Palestinian. A 2020 JPPI survey showed that 51% of Israeli Arabs identify as "Arab-Israeli" and another 23% simply call themselves "Israeli." Only 7% call themselves Palestinians.

In this world of wokeness where people are supposed to respect how others refer to themselves, Amnesty is decidedly barbaric.

Footnote 206 is from the Israel's Foreign Ministry. Amnesty is implying that Israel purposefully keeps a separate policy for Israeli Arabs and the Druze/Circassian communities because of fears of dual loyalty, and that this distinction proves Israel is discriminating against Israeli Arabs because they are "Palestinians."

Here is the bolded quote in context:

Since Israel's establishment (1948), Arab citizens have been exempted from compulsory service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) out of consideration for their family, religious, and cultural affiliations with the Arab world (which has subjected Israel to frequent attacks), as well as concern over possible dual loyalties. At the same time, volunteer military service is encouraged, with some choosing this option every year. Since 1957, at the request of their community leaders, IDF service has been mandatory for Druze and Circassian men, while the number of Bedouin joining the career army voluntarily increases steadily.

Amnesty is trying to paint this as proof of official Israeli discrimination. The actual quote shows that Israel's treatment of different groups aligns with how they want to be treated. And Arabs who want to take advantage of the social benefits of army service are perfectly free to do so.

The truth is the exact opposite of how Amnesty is trying to paint it.

The MFA article is worth reading. It is far more accurate than Amnesty's description of Israel. It honestly notes the problems that Arabs have in a majority Jewish society, and it emphasizes how Israel is trying to improve things - details that Amnesty doesn't want its readers to know.

Here is the truth, and Israel doesn't lie about the real issues about full equality:

Arab citizens, who constitute more than one-sixth of Israel's population, exist on the margins of the conflicting worlds of Jews and Palestinians. However, while remaining a segment of the Arab people in culture and identity and disputing Israel's identification as a Jewish state, they see their future tied to Israel. In the process, they have adopted Hebrew as a second language and Israeli culture as an extra layer in their lives. At the same time, they strive to attain a higher degree of participation in national life, greater integration into the economy and more benefits for their own towns and villages.

Development of inter-group relations between Israel's Arabs and Jews has been hindered by deeply-rooted differences in religion, values, and political beliefs. However, though coexisting as two self-segregated communities, over the years they have come to accept each other, acknowledging the uniqueness and aspirations of each community.

Pluralism and Segregation:

As a multi-ethnic, multicultural, multi-religious, and multi-lingual society, Israel has a high level of informal segregation patterns. While groups are not separated by official policy, a number of different sectors within the society are somewhat segregated and maintain their strong cultural, religious, ideological, and/or ethnic identity.

However, despite a fairly high degree of social cleavage, some economic disparities and an often overheated political life, the society is relatively balanced and stable. The low level of social conflict between the different groups, notwithstanding an inherent potential for social unrest, can be attributed to the country's judicial and political systems, which represent strict legal and civic equality.

Thus, Israel is not a melting-pot society, but rather more of a mosaic made up of different population groups coexisting in the framework of a democratic state.

Amnesty justifies their disrespect for Arab Israelis with their hate for Jewish Israelis.

Israel's strength is in respecting each ethnic and religious group and treating them as they themselves want to be treated, with an underlying framework of legal equality to protect them from the very thing that Amnesty is claiming Israel is guilty of.

Israel's "mosaic" is more respectful of human rights than most Western societies are, who insist on homogenization. Obviously being a citizen brings with it responsibilities, but as I've noted, Israel's tolerance for Muslims far exceeds that of most Western European countries.

This one page, when read honestly, proves not only Israel's liberalism, but also Amnesty's illiberalism.

Funny how the most "progressive" people are also the most intolerant.

02/07 Links Pt2: The Palestinian myth explained and analyzed; Israeli Scientists Engineer 3D Human Spinal Cord Implants to Help Paralyzed Patients Walk; USA Today explores best things to do in Tel Aviv

From Ian:

The Palestinian myth explained and analyzed

Even more imbecilic, why call themselves a name they cannot pronounce in their mother tongue? An English word derived from Hebrew, describing Greeks, then translated into Latin without any Arabic derivation and with such offensive definitions to their, albeit false history and culture.

No, no, shout the offended Palestinians, we are called Filastinians, that is the Arabic word for us. Oh really, this disciplined researcher retorts in astonishment. But ‘Filastine’ is simply the Arab pronunciation of Philistine and therefore apart from one letter to conform with Arabic vocalization the Filastinians are still naming themselves after extinct Greek sailors or uncouth, uncultured heathens – and in Queen’s English. You really couldn’t make it up, it’s Monty Pythonesque – that was a British comedy mocking absurd situations which were themselves exaggerated.

Further investigation is surely necessary as it is patently imbecilic that supposedly, indigenous peoples should be satisfied with such negative and offensive definitions debunking all claims of indigenous ethnicity. So we research into the Filastinian historical archives in the expectation of discovering a people or persons who identified as indigenous Filastinian leaders or a war, battle or conflict fought by indigenous Filastinians against any domestic or foreign invaders throughput the centuries of warfare in their apparent homeland in an attempt to recapture their cherished Jerusalem.

Maybe we will find archaeological evidence of a Filastinian currency, town or city; maybe an historical construct originated and built by indigenous Filastinians and the name of the Filastinian architect. If the Filastinians are indigenous then history and evidence must surely reveal the name of any one, just one historical Filastinian King, Queen, Prince, Princess, President, Imam, Leader, Warrior, Apothecary, Writer, Poet, Scribe, Soldier, Sailor, Tinker, Tailor, Butcher, Baker or Candlestick maker.

Alas, there is no such evidence to be found of any race, culture, or people. Other noted travelers to the area , listed here such as Edward Webbe, 1553 – 1590 , Adrian Reland 1676 – 1718 , Count Constantine Francois Volney 1757 – 1820 , William Thackeray, 1811 – 1863 , Gustav Flaubert , 1821 – 1880 , James Finn 1806 – 1872 , Mark Twain , 1835 – 1910 , and B.W. Johnson, 1833 – 1894 , never recorded , discovered nor wrote of the indigenous Palestinians or Filastinians. These itinerant scribes did not write about them nor the villages they supposedly inhabited because they never existed.

And there is a reason for their nonexistence and it is simply because they are a recent construct invented by those political organizations and Arab countries who sought to eliminate the Jewish State of Israel and deconstruct the geographical area after 1948. And what is equally astounding is that the fiction has morphed into fact. The anthropological miracle we know today as Palestinians have revised history so that a non-existent people have existed apparently since time immemorial.

My silent departure from Algeria

This year is the 60th anniversary of the mass exodus of some 130,000 Jews from Algeria. Morial, the Association of Algerian Jews in France, is collecting testimonies from those who left. Here is an extract of an account by Jacqueline Kadji, nee Chichportich, who was nine years old when she left (with thanks: Leon):

The town of Bou Saada was known as the city of happiness. Life moved to the rhythm of the Jewish festivals – until September 1956, when my uncle was murdered on the eve of Rosh Hashana. He was shot at point blank range in his shop selling bolts of fabric. The whole community was in shock. Two months earlier, one M. Touboul had been murdered in a settling of scores. My father also received death threats. That’s when he resolved to leave for Paris where his two sisters and family were living. That meant dropping everything and leaving my mother in charge of us. There were more and more murders and ambushes in the area. Fear gripped us. Families got ready to leave.

My mother planned our departure. She closed the shop and took all the stock into our house. It was a fun time, I played shops at home – a child’s dream. The days went by as we worried about our future. My mother had decided to put us three older children on a coach to Algiers – my older sister, 29, my brother, 16, and me, nine.

On the day we left my mother told us something chilling: we had to go our separate ways as there was an ambush en route, ‘so we don’t all die at once’ . Those words carved themselves into my young memory. Was I every going to see my mother again? A tsunami of emotions engulfed me. I was cut adrift, separated for the first time. No tears, no expressions of fear – I did not want to upset my mum. without being capable of further explanations, I was already catapulted into the adult world, aged nine.

In wake of Whoopi Goldberg’s race comments, US Jewry reflects on identity in America

Schneider and others expressed hope that the episode reminds people that Jews have historically experienced extensive discrimination in America, such as being barred from purchasing homes in certain areas, excluded from country clubs and denied admission to some universities.

In the past, there even were travel guides for Jews with tips on how to avoid discrimination on the road, guidebooks that preceded the 1936 debut of “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” which provided similar advice for African Americans.

Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, recalled growing up in Plano, Texas, where the handful of Jewish families, including his own, sometimes experienced antisemitism.

“We never saw ourselves in the same category as any of the white Anglo Southern Baptists,” he said. “Although we had white skin, we didn’t consider ourselves part of the white culture.”

The racial equation has only grown more complex as Jews of color — including African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans — account for a growing percentage of the overall Jewish population.

“Jews are multiethnic, multiracial,” Farkas said. “We don’t consider ourselves just a community of faith.”

Farkas said systemic discrimination against Jews in the US has largely faded over the decades, but antisemitism persists and antisemitic violence over the past five years has been at its highest level in decades.

The deadliest incident was the mass shooting in 2018 at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, where 11 worshippers from three different congregations were killed by a gunman who railed against Jews and immigrants they helped, according to prosecutors in his pending hate-crimes trial.

Critics of Whoopi Goldberg suspension for Holocaust remarks see missed chance by ABC

Goldberg explained to talk show host Stephen Colbert in an episode that aired Monday night that her perception of race is based on skin color but that she was wrong.

She apologized again Tuesday morning on “The View” and invited Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, on to that day’s episode to talk about the Holocaust. He said in a tweet he deeply appreciated her invitation and that “her apology is very much welcome.”

But ABC News President Kim Godwin announced her suspension later on Tuesday. On Wednesday, former GOP communications director Tara Setmayer sat in as guest co-host and nobody said anything about Jews or the Holocaust.

In announcing the suspension, ABC said it was asking Goldberg “to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments.” The network did not respond to requests for comment Friday about the public reaction to the suspension.

What people seem to be forgetting is that Goldberg made her remarks during a segment about a Tennessee school board’s banning of “Maus,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Nazi death camps during World War II, said author Frederick Joseph.

Conservative officials across the country are trying to ban access to books such as “Maus” and the “The 1619 Project,” which puts Black slavery and Black Americans at the center of US history. His own book, “The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person,” is being protested by some parents, he said, because they say it’s indoctrination.

Joseph said Goldberg was seeing the issue of race through the lens of a Black woman in America and the lens lacked historical knowledge of what the Holocaust was actually about.

The Nazi precedent for Arab bans of Israeli films

From a tweet I made yesterday:

02/07 Links Pt1: ‘Apartheid’ accusation against Israel puts NGOs on road to irrelevance; Amnesty's map that lies; Israeli-Palestinian confederation plan to be presented to UN, US by Beilin

From Ian:

Amnesty International's Moral Turpitude

Six years before British-Indian author Salman Rushdie had a $6,000,000 bounty on his head as a result of a fatwa (Islamic decree) for his “blasphemous” 1988 book, The Satanic Verses, he stated in 2010 that the NGO Amnesty International was in a state of “moral bankruptcy.”

He was referring to the organization’s blatant surrender to the regimes and gangs practicing violent Islamism, as well as to its anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Israel sentiment. He could say the same today, in light of the report that it released on Tuesday.

The 211-page report, issued by Amnesty’s U.K. branch, is an indictment of the Jewish state. It’s a document that deems Israel’s existence, not merely its policies, as an illegitimate, colonialist and racist entity.

Indeed, for Amnesty, the Jewish state wasn’t based on the self-determination of a population returning to its ancestral homeland—necessary for the Jewish people’s very survival—nor even for defending itself, tooth and nail, against a bloody stream of terror perpetrated by armed movements seeking its destruction.

Indeed, the document is a disgrace to an organization with a record of battling on behalf of communist dissidents or apartheid—the real one, in South Africa. Along with its systematic failure to denounce human-rights abuses in Syria, Iran and Turkey, and repeated calls to take action against the United States and Europe, the report demonstrates that the NGO has been overtaken by politics.

It exposes Amnesty’s ideological approach that confuses the attacked with the aggressor; justifies Hamas terrorism; criminalizes countries concerned with an influx of potentially dangerous immigrants; and extols a sea of hatred against the Jewish state.

Amnesty’s delegitimization efforts have and will continue to backfire - opinion

If prominent international organizations like Amnesty International and others engage in such demonization, convincing other Israelis that their goal is merely to end the conflict with the Palestinians becomes a great deal harder.

Indeed, polling data from the beginning of this century demonstrates that Israeli popular support for a two-state solution was much higher before the international campaign waged by Amnesty and others got underway.

If Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and the myriad other groups and agencies which have taken part in this campaign over the last two decades truly wish to have a positive impact on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, they must abandon this pernicious strategy of demonization and delegitimization.

Trying to convince Israelis of the importance of separating from the Palestinians is ill-served by falsely accusing them of being racist white supremacists.

Advocating for the destruction of Israel’s Jewish character and national identity will not persuade Israelis that the true goal of these organizations is the fulfillment of the two-state vision.

As a member of the Labor party and a long-time advocate for such a resolution, I will continue to work toward the goal of two states living alongside each other in peace.

What I ask from Amnesty and others is not to harm this objective with their extremist, manipulative and hateful propaganda.

‘Apartheid’ accusation against Israel puts NGOs on road to irrelevance

The apartheid smear against Israel is absurd, but before explaining why, it’s important to recognise how beating the apartheid drum cynically serves the political ends of the NGOs and the boycotters, like two sides of the same coin.

To a great extent, core supporters for both groups share the same ahistorical worldview: Namely that Jews are not native to Israel, but Palestinians are, making Israel in their minds a settler-colonial project and every Palestinian allegation and grievance gospel that should never be questioned.

Further, these beliefs are today strongly linked to the fashionable idea of intersectionality and the far-fetched attempt by some to apply critical race theory to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This has seen groups like Black Lives Matter join in the apartheid canard despite the fact that over half the Jews in Israel are people of colour and the story of European Jewry is one of relentless exclusion and persecution.

The fact is, we have seen extreme criticism of Israel become the primary litmus test for acceptance into progressive circles and the non-government organisations they support.

While this has been true to some extent for decades, the cost of admission has risen like inflation.

Once, it was enough to criticise Israel for the sins of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967 and settlements. Never mind that the capture of the territories was the outcome of a defensive war, and that Israel immediately offered to return land for peace and was rejected.

Never mind that under the 1993 Oslo Accords, well over 90% of Palestinians live in self-rule areas governed by the Palestinian Authority (today in Gaza, by the terror group Hamas).

Never mind that Israel offered the Palestinians statehood opportunities on the equivalent of virtually 100% of the territory after land swaps, plus the removal of isolated settlements, on at least three occasions since 2000 and has been knocked back each time by Palestinian leaders without so much as a counter-offer.

But mere criticism of Israel is passé. Today, that same “woke” groupthink demands Israel is branded with the crime of apartheid. Not just apartheid, but like an arrow with a bullseye painted around it after it lands, a unique apartheid definition has been invented by NGOs like Amnesty to conform with their distorted perception of Israeli transgressions.

If Amnesty cares so much about occupation, why is it silent on Northern Cyprus?

One can read the interview of Amnesty's Philip Luther at Times of Israel over and over and keep seeing new levels of hypocrisy from the organization.

TOI: I still can’t understand why Israel gets the apartheid investigation, and you haven’t found any other country besides Myanmar within four years that deserves it. It seems not to bother you – maybe it does bother you – that the UN, which is not your organization, that every year there are permanent and recurring condemnations automatically, and not [against] other countries in the same way, not even close. That would seem to me to be…

Luther: How many other countries have a fifty-year occupation?

TOI: Is that the only human rights violation?

Luther: No, I’m saying that it’s a metric. You’re saying, is there not something very specific about the Israeli and Palestinian situation? If people ask about the singularity of the situation, that is singular.

This year will mark 48 years of Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus. True, it is not quite fifty, but if occupation is a metric that merits Israel being singled out for opprobrium, certainly we should be seeing Amnesty take at least a passing interest in Turkey's occupation of Northern Cyprus?

All the horrible things that Amnesty and other "human rights" groups are warning will happen with Israel's "occupation" of the West Bank - that hasn't happened over 54 years - already happened under Turkish occupation in Cyprus.

Here's a summary from Cyprus' Foreign Ministry:

On July 20, 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus, violating all rules of international law, including the Charter of the United Nations. Turkey ... illegally occupies over 36% of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus ever since.

As a result of the Turkish military invasion and occupation, 162,000 Greek-Cypriots fled their homes becoming refugees in their own country. To this day the occupying forces impede the return of refugees to their homes and property. By the end of 1975, the vast majority of Turkish-Cypriots living in areas controlled by the legitimate government were forced to leave their homes and move, owing to Turkey's coercive policy, to the Turkish-occupied territory of the Republic of Cyprus.

20,000 Greek-Cypriots and Maronites chose not to leave their homes despite the Turkish occupation. Most of those who remained, mainly on the Karpasia Peninsula, were gradually forced to abandon the area. The number of Greek-Cypriots and Maronites currently living in the area has plummeted to 300 persons. This dramatic decrease in the number of enclaved people is striking considering that based on the agreement reached in Vienna on 2 August 1975, the Turkish side would have to provide the enclaved population with "every help to lead a normal life, including facilities for education and the practice of their religion, as well as medical care by their doctors of preference and freedom of movement in the North". In breach of this agreement, on a practical level, the Turkish side subjected the enclaved to constant harassment, restrictions on movement, denial of access to adequate medical care, denial of adequate facilities for education, especially beyond elementary education, restrictions on the right to use their property and the free exercise of their religious rights. It was, thus, a deliberate policy of national cleansing, forcing the enclaved to flee their homes.

At the same time, Turkey has implemented a systematic policy of settlement of the occupied part of Cyprus since 1974 with the mass transfer of more than 160,000 Turks from Turkey in order to change the demographic profile and alter the population balance on the island. This policy, together with driving the Greek -Cypriot inhabitants out of the region, the destruction of the cultural heritage, and the illegal change of geographical place names in the occupied part of Cyprus, aims at the elimination of every single, centuries-old Greek and Christian element, and eventually the "turkification" of the region. It also aims to change the balance of power and the social fabric in the occupied part of Cyprus, to ensure that the Turkish-Cypriot leadership conforms to the policies of the Turkish government. With the mass migration of Turkish-Cypriots from the occupied territories, the total number of Turkish soldiers and settlers is now greater than the remaining Turkish-Cypriots.

What does Amnesty have to say about this?

Essentially, nothing.

Amnesty's annual report on Turkey does not mention Cyprus or Northern Cyprus once! The term "Northern Cyprus" is barely mentioned in the entire Amnesty site. No calls to allow hundreds of thousands of refugees to return to their homes. Not a word about ethnic cleansing. Nothing about Turkey's current destruction of Christian and Greek cultural heritage in the area.

In 2020 and 2021, Turkey essentially stole the resort town of Varosha, while not allowing its actual residents to return to live there. There is not one word about Varosha on the Amnesty and HRW sites.

Everything Israel is accused of doing in the West Bank and Gaza actually happened in Northern Cyprus.

In two years, when the Turkish occupation reaches the five decade mark, Philip Luther will undoubtedly say that Israel is singular, because, "How many other countries have a fifty-five year occupation?"

The Encyclopedia of Human Rights says that settlers have human rights. But it isn't talking about Jewish settlers, whom everyone agrees would have to be forcibly removed from their homes. It is talking about the Turkish settlers in Northern Cyprus.

The singling out of Israel has nothing to do with Israel's policies. It has everything to do with Israel being a Jewish state. All the other excuses (billions in US aid! Israel's claims to be a democracy!) are nothing but smokescreens for the truth: it is all about the desire by modern antisemites to say that Jews are the worst human rights violators on the planet.

Yes, Israel is singular - in the double standards applied to it.

From Iran's ABNA news agency:

The head of Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement’s Executive Council ruled out any possibility for Lebanon to normalize ties with the Zionist regime of Israel.

Referring to some media speculations about the issue as fake and misleading, Syed Hashim Safi Al Dinsaid (Safieddine) said. “We will never accept Lebanon’s move on that path,” Al-Ahed News reported.

He said those talking about normalization seek to stop the activities of the resistance in the name of saving the country.

That's a hell of a statement. He's saying that the survival of an extra-governmental terrorist army is more important than the very survival of Lebanon!

He also claimed that "orders came from the kings and princes that everyone must follow the path of normalization" but the proud Lebanese people would never do it: "How could they want the resistance front’s fighters, families of martyrs and Lebanon’s noble people to join those who shamefully normalized relations with the Israeli regime?"

Then comes the real punchline:

Safieddine also said that those who try to portray the resistance as the one responsible for Lebanon’s woes are ill-wishers and serve the enemies.

Lebanon ought to rely on itself and its strong army and its economy should be independent, he went on to say.

The movement that does everything it can to make Lebanon an Iranian satellite claims it wants Lebanon to be independent!

Another Hezbollah leader spoke yesterday:

Hizbullah central council member Sheikh Nabil Qaouq on Sunday lashed out at what he called “the Arabism that is allied with the Israeli enemy.”

“The Arabism that is allied with the Israeli enemy is an American Arabism that doesn’t belong to us and we don’t belong to,” Qaouq said during a memorial service in the southern town of Kfar Tebnit.

The cynical commenters on Naharnet were quick to respond: "and who the .... are you to define and classify Arabism?! An Iranian terrorist!"

Two rival clans, the Al-Owaiwi and Al-Jabari families, have been openly fighting in Hebron and the police are nowhere to be found.

Videos show automatic machine gun fire aimed at the opposing family's shops, and one scene appears to be inside a mall.

Three civilians were injured by gunfire on Sunday, including an 11 year old boy shot in the chest.

The feud between the clans was re-ignited last year when one member of the Al-Owaiwi family killed a member of Al-Jaabari family in a revenge act for the murder of a relative more than 15 years ago.

A mass rally in Hebron called for a solution to the security chaos as well as an end to high prices.

The PA's hold on things is fraying badly. And when Abbas dies, things are going to get very ugly.

A boy dies in a well in Morocco. Palestinians want the story to be about them!

Palestinians really hate when there are any news stories that don't put them at the center.

For the past five days, the Arab world and then the world at large held its breath, hoping that a five year old boy named Rayan would be rescued from the well that he had fallen down last Tuesday.

Unfortunately, today we found out that he did not survive.

The official Palestinian newspaper Al Hayat published an op-ed by Dr. Jamal Abdel Nasser Mohammed Abdullah Abu Nahl, President of the National Center for Palestinian Scholars, on the story.

After perfunctorily saying that Rayan's death was a tragedy and he's really sorry, he said that famous "but..." that Palestinians and their supporters love to add. Rayan suffered...but what about Palestinians?

Palestinians have people in Israeli prisons - and they did nothing wrong, only killing Jews for defending their dignity! Rayan's mother may be mourning, but what about Palestinian mothers of martyrs?

Thousands like Rayan were martyred, he says, and their pure blood remains a living witness to the crimes, fascism, Nazism, barbarism, racism and sadism of the usurping occupation gang of Palestine; the usurping Jews who do not want peace or harmony! And even as Jews are killing thousands of Rayans, Arab nations like Morocco are normalizing relations with the hated Zionist entity!

It is because of articles like this that the Arab world recognizes that Palestinians have no empathy, no concern for the rest of the Arab world. They demand the Arab and Muslim worlds keep their issue at the top of every agenda, and even a child who is tragically lost is simply another story to twist into ensuring that no suffering is considered as bad as Palestinian suffering.

This is while Palestinians have a standard of living and health that is on par with most Arab nations and better than many.

Palestinians are the most self-absorbed people on Earth. And Arabs are getting mighty disgusted with it.

02/06 Links: Amnesty International Tries to Put Israel on Trial; After Israel, Ben & Jerry's attacks US Ukraine policy; Kuwait bans ‘Death on the Nile’ film over Israeli actress Gal Gadot

From Ian:

Elliot Kaufman (WSJ$): Amnesty International Tries to Put Israel on Trial

Boycott, marginalization and even violent resistance follow from the apartheid label. In 1975, a year after South Africa’s diplomatic credentials were rejected, the Organization of the Islamic Conference sought to expel Israel from the U.N. as well. This failed, but as a consolation prize, the U.N. passed the “Zionism Is Racism” resolution. This diplomatic offensive was the new stage in the Arab war against the Jews, after military force had failed for the last time in 1973. In 1982 the General Assembly recommended “all Member States to cease forthwith . . . all dealings with Israel in order to totally isolate it in all fields.” In Resolution 37/43, also passed in 1982, the General Assembly grouped Israel with South Africa and affirmed “the legitimacy of the struggle . . . by all available means, including armed struggle.”

Who today would deny that the African National Congress had a right to fight Pretoria? The same was meant to apply to Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorism against Jerusalem. The U.N. reaffirmed this right to armed struggle many times, thwarting general treaties against terrorism. The OIC insisted that “anti-Israel militants be exempted,” reported the Washington Post in November 2001.

Whereas the sponsors of Resolution 37/43 had their eyes open, Amnesty International’s leaders doubtless have their eyes shut. But by invoking apartheid to single out Israel as an enemy of mankind, Amnesty implicitly rejects Israel’s right to exist and authorizes violent resistance to destroy it.

With an idea of the stakes, supporters of Israel rush to defend it from the apartheid charge. But in this strange game, the only winning move is not to play. Forget “WarGames” (1983); this is the lesson of Kafka’s “The Trial” (1925). Josef K., standing in for the Jews, is told that he is on trial, though for what, he can’t comprehend. His mistake is to mount a defense. An accusation that isn’t the product of disinterested reason won’t be refuted by recourse to it, and to defend oneself is to acknowledge the legitimacy of the court. The beauty of Zionism is that Jews can finally have their own court and no longer be made to stand before the biased judges of centuries past, protesting their innocence of imagined crimes when all parties know a guilty verdict is assured in advance.

Amnesty International and a dozen U.N. bodies would love nothing more than to preside as arbiters in this latest trial of the Jews. We are lucky that they have no power to compel Israel’s participation. But if the apartheid charge were to stick, rallying an international boycott and authorizing renewed armed resistance, who’s to say the Jews couldn’t be paraded into court one more time?

NGO Monitor: Amnesty’s “Apartheid” Report: Recycled Tropes in the Guise of Research

On February 1, Amnesty International posted a 200+ page publication singling-out out and targeting Israel as an “apartheid” state, in the NGO-led campaign to delegitimize and isolate Israel, based on the action plan of the 2001 Durban NGO Forum. Although Amnesty officials repeatedly referred to the document as “original research” extending over 4 years (or 3 in other cases), an examination of the contents reveals this to be a collection and repetition of the verbal contortions and discredited claims largely copied from other NGOs with the same agenda.

In particular, the Amnesty text (Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System Of Domination And Crime Against Humanity) recycles the accusations, distortions, tropes and specific language from the Human Rights Watch version, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution published in April 2021, and analyzed by NGO Monitor. The overwhelming similarity between the two documents highlights the symbiotic and self-affirming relationship between the members of the anti-Israel NGO network, and their methodology of recycling discredited tropes and misinformation.

Both publications consist primarily of the following themes:
- Antisemitic tropes such as Jewish “supremacy” or “domination”
- An artificially constructed and incoherent definition of the term “apartheid”
- Exploiting the apartheid framework while falsely claiming not to be comparing Israel to the South African system
- Singling-out Israel uniquely and without comparison to other countries (an example of antisemitism according to the consensus IHRA working definition)
- Deleting the history and the context of the conflict, including Palestinian terror and war crimes
- Recommendations of sanctions and other punitive measures to isolate and delegitimize Israel, in accordance with the 2001 Durban NGO plan of action
- Rejection of Israel’s identity as a Jewish state and the denial of the Jewish people of the right to sovereign equality and self-determination (an example of antisemitism according to the consensus IHRA working definition)

Friendly reminder for everyone, including Amnesty. pic.twitter.com/E8N2uTYCei
— Ruslan Smith Pomorov (@RuslanSmith1) February 6, 2022

Qaryout

Arab and Iranian media are claiming that Jews poisoned a spring in Qaryut, near Shiloh.

Israeli settlers on Friday intentionally polluted the water of a spring in the West Bank village of Qaryout, north of Nablus, Anadolu Agency reported.

“The settlers raided the area, broke the lock of the water spring, damaged the fence around it and poured unknown material with a dirty smell in the water,” activist Bashar Al-Qaryouti confirmed.

He added: “They did so to turn the water unsafe for drinking or farming.”

I couldn't find the Anadolu Agency article.

And there is no original reporting of this in Palestinian media. They are all quoting Turkish media about something that supposedly happened in their backyard.

No photos of the damaged fence or broken lock. No interviews of any witnesses. No mention in Haaretz. Just quotes of an anti-Israel activist talking, for some reason, to a Turkish news agency instead of the local media.

They say there are only seven basic plots of stories and everything is a variation. I have a feeling that there are only seven basic antisemitic libels as well (Jews spreading disease, Jews secretly controlling institutions, Jews faking history, Jews being guilty of the worst possible crime in any age...), but the world is as insatiable in wanting to hear the variants of the Jew-hate story as they are for all other fiction.

The exact same playbook @Amnesty and @HRW took on "apartheid" can be used to accuse Israel of "genocide"

The path that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch took to declare Israel guilty of "apartheid" can be used to claim that Israel is guilty of the crime of "genocide" against Palestinians.

Sounds absurd? It isn't.

The "apartheid" charge began in earnest at the NGO Forum of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held at Durban in September 2001. Amnesty and Human RIghts Watch were there among the 3000 delegates and did nothing to stop the final declaration, which repeatedly accused Israel of apartheid, racism, and genocide.

In the preamble:

Recognizing further that a basic “root cause” of Israel’s on going and systematic human rights violations, including its grave breaches of the fourth Geneva convention 1949 (i.e. war crimes), acts of genocide and practices of ethnic cleansing is a racist system, which is Israel’s brand of apartheid.

In the main body:

We declare and call for an immediate end to the Israeli systematic perpetration of racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing (as defined in the Statute of the International Criminal Court), ... and state terrorism against the Palestinian people, recognizing that all of these methods are designed to ensure the continuation of an exclusively Jewish state with a Jewish majority and the expansion of its borders to gain more land, driving out the indigenous Palestinian population.

We declare Israel as a racist, apartheid state in which Israels [sic] brand of apartheid as a crime against humanity has been characterized by separation and segregation, dispossession, restricted land access, denationalization, ¨bantustanization¨ and inhumane acts.

And in the recommendations, which sound a great deal like the recommendations at the end of the Amnesty and HRW reports:

Call for the establishment of a war crimes tribunal to investigate and bring to justice those who may be guilty of war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing and the crime of Apartheid which amount to crimes against humanity that have been or continue to be perpetrated in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Condemnation of those states who are supporting, aiding and abetting the Israeli Apartheid state and its perpetration of racist crimes against humanity including ethnic cleansing, acts of genocide.

At Durban, the absurd accusations against Israel of apartheid was accompanied by the equally absurd accusations of racism, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

And just as with apartheid, the NGOs at Durban twisted international law to justify their accusations of genocide.

Note that they mentioned the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Antisemites can read that as if Israel is guilty of genocide just as the antisemites of HRW and Amnesty read the various legal definitions of "apartheid" to damn Israel alone.

Article 6
Genocide
For the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Amnesty and HRW already laid the groundwork to prove that Israel does all of those things! Their tendentious reports try to prove a Jewish attempt at supremacy or domination, to prove Jewish racism, and especially to prove Jewish intent to destroy "in whole or in part" Palestinians.

The accusation of "intent" was the major part of the discredited Goldstone Report and they are key parts of the newer NGO "apartheid" reports.

Amnesty and HRW regularly pretend to know Israel's intent in all their anti-Israel reports - Israel intended to attack civilians, the IDF intended to cause disproportionate damage to Gaza, and now Israeli Jews intend to dominate the non-Jewish minority in Israel as well as the Palestinians in territories.

Intent is the entire underlying structure of their reports. The very first sentence in Amnesty's report is a quote from Benjamin Netanyahu saying that Israel was the nation/state of the Jewish people alone, while they didn't quote his next sentence that Arabs have the same rights as all. It doesn't fit their "intent" narrative so therefore it must be ignored.

In real life, proving intent is difficult, because no one can read minds. The bar to prove intent in international law is very high for that reason - one must have a preponderance of evidence of statements and actions that indicate that the criminal had intent to persecute people because they were of a different race or ethnic group.

That is what HRW and Amnesty have been pretending to do in their 200+ page reports.

That's the pattern in all these reports: only quoting bits and pieces of Israeli officials' statements to prove Israeli Jewish racism and ignoring all statements and actions that prove Israeli liberalism and intent to ensure equal rights for all.

The half-truths meant to prove Israeli racism are a direct result of antisemitism. The NGOs only look for evidence that proves their pre-judged verdict of Jewish racism and anything that disproves it is considered hasbara, or purposeful misdirection by the evil Jews to throw the righteous NGOs off the trail. Amnesty's Philip Luther pretty much said that in his dumpster fire of an interview at Times of Israel:

It’s because the Israeli state has made it so difficult to penetrate. They have tried to create a smokescreen around, and of course there is a democratic system, and there are judicial institutions that of course then call the state to account, or at least challenge their decisions. But that’s what makes it so challenging in some ways then to disentangle them when you put it all together.
So I would put it back on the Israeli state. In some ways, it ends up being a driver of complexity and a driver of resources unnecessarily spent on investigations by anybody, because it’s made so damn complicated.

Amnesty's job to accuse Israel of racism and apartheid is made difficult by the "smokescreen" of a fair legal system, freedom, democracy, laws, practices and facts that prove the exact opposite.

In a nutshell, that is the proof of Amnesty's antisemitism - they must work really hard to ignore any evidence that Israel is not as evil as they always intended to prove it is. They know the Jews are up to no good, and it is their job to uncover it.

So what's the difference between accusing Israel of apartheid and accusing it of genocide? Nothing. Luther alluded to years of modern antisemites accusing Israel of apartheid - i.e., "Israel apartheid weeks" on campus - to say that this was the opening to Amnesty writing this paper now:

...Part of the reason for that on Israel/Palestine is because there is a growing debate on the subject. We thought it was absolutely right and proper that we brought up….When you’re looking at the question of whether you’re going to be looking at any particular place, well, is there a debate on it? There are external factors, that’s part of the strategic landscape. Do we have something to say on it, is it something that we might have a contribution.
... To my knowledge, the Chinese activists are not currently using the [apartheid] term.

Here, Amnesty is admitting that it bases its research on what "activists" accuse a country of doing, and not any objective factors. Since no one is accusing Lebanon of apartheid with their anti-Palestinian laws, there is no reason for Amnesty to do so . Objective truth is not the goal: Amnesty is choosing what it will call apartheid "strategically," by following the lead of the antisemites and allowing them to define the "debate."

In Durban, Amnesty official Claudio Cordone slightly distanced the group from the genocide charge: "We are not ready to make the assertion that Israel is engaged in genocide," he said. He didn't say it wasn't true, just that Amnesty wasn't yet "ready" to pursue that avenue of attack.

It is twenty years later. Amnesty has already shown what it needs to be "ready" to accuse Israel of genocide - a "debate" created by Jew-haters.

If today's antisemites change their annual "apartheid weeks" to "genocide weeks," that it what would create the "debate" that would give Amnesty and HRW the opening to write their next generation of reports accusing Israel of the worst crimes against humanity possible.

The apartheid charge is just as absurd and antisemitic as the genocide charge. Anyone who has visited a mall in Jerusalem see there is no apartheid. Anyone who sees that the current Israeli government has an Arab coalition partner knows that the charge is a blatant lie. But both the apartheid and genocide/ethnic cleansing charges were given legitimacy in Durban where major NGOs signed on to the final statement, both of those accusations are regularly hurled at Israel by "activists" and Palestinians, both of them have legal definitions that can be twisted by the lawyers at the NGOs against Israel. All that is missing is the "debate," and today's antisemites could create that "debate" over the next few years.

HRW and Amnesty already have the "genocide" reports half-written.

For many years, Iranian media has used a stable of antisemitic American commentators to spread hate but pretend that they are just quoting an "American analyst."

Mark Glenn has been a rabid antisemite for a long time now, and he is a frequent columnist and "interviewee" on Iranian media which gobbles up his Jew-hating conspiracy theories.

Here's 'the latest from Iran's AhlulBayt News Agency:

In order to best understand the role that the 1979 Revolution played in the changing of ‘regional equations’ in the Middle East, it is first important to understand what was and is the ultimate goal that Zionism, organized Jewish interests and the West intended to see take place as a result of creating this monster simply known as ‘The Jewish State’.

This ultimate goal, this ‘New World Order’ as it is called can be summed up and understood very simply by examining critically and rationally the ‘blueprint’ for this ‘Great Reset’ which Zionism Judaism seeks to create, just a few details of which are quoted below.

'On that day the LORD made a covenant, saying 'To your descendants, I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates'…--Genesis, 15:18

'Every place whereon the sole of your foot shall tread shall be yours, from the wilderness, and Lebanon, from the river Euphrates, even unto the hinder sea shall be your border…' Deuteronomy 11:24

'The Gentiles and their kings shall minister to you, as your gates remain open, day and night, so that the wealth of the foreigners may be placed at your feet while their kings are led in humble procession before you, for the nation which will not bow down and serve you shall perish, it shall be utterly destroyed… –Book of Isaiah

These represent just a few of the many, many ‘prophecies’ which those following the diabolical, anti-God and anti-human Zionism Judaism have in mind–creating a totalitarian empire stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates and headquartered in Jerusalem from where all decisions that affect all nations will be decided and made by those claiming membership in the tribe of Judah. Those nations that refuse to bow down before these precepts will be utterly destroyed, just as the world witnessed with the nation of Palestine, Iraq, Libya, and which the diabolically-demented and deranged followers of the Zionism Judaism cult are planning to inflict upon the great nation of Iran, for indeed, had Iran not succeeded in its1979 Revolution, the diabolical plans which these elements have been striving to achieve now for thousands of years would be immeasurably closer than they already are.

Apparently, "Zionism Judaism" has been plotting for thousands of years to take over the world.

02/05 Links: Amnesty, the Media, and Waving Narratives in the Air; US waives sanctions on Iran’s civil atomic program in bid to advance nuke talks

From Ian:

The apartheid libel is a nuclear weapon

The Amnesty International report released this week seeks to harness the diplomatic equivalent of a nuclear weapon against the State of Israel: the apartheid libel.

The accusation is a lie, without any foundation in truth. It is a desecration of the memory of the victims of the real apartheid, and it is a cynical abuse of the term in the cause of another form of bigotry – antisemitism. But its immorality and falsehood make it no less dangerous.

The intent of those who apply the apartheid label to Israel is the same as the Iranian regime: to destroy the Jewish state. They are merely using another weapon – equally lethal.

I say this having grown up in South Africa through the 1980s, experiencing the effects of global sanctions against the apartheid government. It was a noble campaign to bring the evil National Party regime to its knees and cause the demise of the injustice of a real apartheid system. And it was devastatingly successful.

It made being a South African citizen shameful. It completely broke the will of white South Africans to continue the apartheid policies. The economic sanctions hurt the pockets of the people, while the symbolically powerful sporting and cultural boycotts made white South Africans feel like pariahs. International travel with a South African passport was like walking around with a badge of shame.

The intention behind this Amnesty International report, like all those who falsely accuse Israel of apartheid, is to destroy the Jewish state by breaking the resolve of its brave citizens by making them ashamed of their country, reluctant to serve in its army or pay its taxes; instead looking to emigrate to avoid the disgrace and pain of sanctions and international ostracism.

Amnesty, the Media, and Waving Narratives in the Air

Anyone who actually managed to read through Amnesty’s 280-page report accusing Israel of the crime of apartheid will tell you that it is not particularly well-written or convincing. It’s a confusing, disorganized mess that would make any self-respecting lawyer want to abandon the practice of law, lest they be a part of a professional industry that has been so degraded by such amateurish rubbish.

But Amnesty knows almost no one will actually read the report.

As law professor Avi Bell explained regarding Human Rights Watch’s report in 2021 (but which equally applies to Amnesty’s report this week), “the length of the report is an important part of HRW’s strategy of marketing its propaganda as ‘research.’”

Amnesty is counting on lazy journalists and politicians to pick up the report and wave it around, picking out a random quote a staffer found that suggests Israel is a racist endeavor. They also know too few journalists these days are willing and able to perform serious journalism and ask the tough questions (with very notable exceptions such as Lazar Berman’s outstanding interview of two top Amnesty officials).

As a consequence of Amnesty’s deliberate exploitation of media bias and unprofessionalism, too many are hearing the false, slanderous narratives of “Israeli apartheid” instead of the actual reality on the ground, in which the Arabs of Jerusalem prefer Israeli rule to Palestinian rule.

Those who would support the truth, and those who recognize the creeping danger of the mainstreaming of antisemitism being fueled by this dynamic, must be prepared to push back. There have already been many outstanding responses to Amnesty’s libels, such as those of my colleagues at CAMERA as well as many other lawyers and researchers. There is also good journalism out there, such as The Algemeiner’s coverage of the poll of Arab Jerusalemites. It’s time to start picking up these articles and responses and start waving them back.