Monday, March 07, 2022

Nadia Abu El Haj is a professor of anthropology at Columbia University's Barnard College. 

In 2002, she published "Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society." The book is meant to be a discussion of how Israel uses and misuses archaeology for its own political purposes.

But she asserts, in her own voice, something so shocking that it should disqualify her in her own field, in a section of her book that discusses Palestinian looting of Jewish artifacts at archaeological sites - something that is rampant.

Looting could well be analyzed as a form of resistance to the Israeli state and an archaeological project, understood by many Palestinians, to stand at the very heart of Zionist historical claims to the land. In James Scott's words, looting is perhaps a "weapon of the weak" [1985].
Here we have an anthropologist who is praising Palestinian looting of Jewish heritage - because it is "resistance." 

(James Scott's book, called "Weapons of the Weak," does not talk about looting of archaeological sites, and indeed does not appear to discuss the permanent destruction or loss of any major items. Abu El Haj is twisting his thesis.)

In Palestinian thought, any crime, including murder, is justifiable under the rubric of "resistance," so perhaps this shouldn't be considered too shocking. Yet this is an American-born professor of anthropology at an American university who is openly asserting that destroying Jewish culture is a good thing. (Her father is Palestinian.)

This is today's antisemitism, justified as a "principle."

(As I was researching this, I found an excellent critique of the entire book published here. )

(h/t Alex)







Read all about it here!

  • Monday, March 07, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon

Tuesday is International Women's Day. And as usual, Palestinians are using it not to look at their own issues of misogyny and abuse, but as yet another excuse to attack Israel.

Women in Gaza held a demonstration in front of the ICRC headquarters there ahead of the occasion, but their issues with spouse abuse took a significant back seat to the accusations that somehow Israel is treating Palestinian women badly.
The women raised Palestinian flags, pictures of prisoners in the occupation prisons, and placards calling for an end to the Israeli attacks on the Palestinian people.

Bisan Abu Jiyab, a feminist activist for Ma'an, said that the eighth of March comes in light of the repeated Israeli violations against female prisoners behind the occupation prisons.

Abu Jiyab called on the international world to stand in front of its stances against the occupation policies practiced against the female prisoners and the daily policy of repression, blatant violation and denial of phone calls and family visits, and in light of the deliberate medical neglect of female prisoners.
Buried later in the article is the grudging admission that, yeah, Palestinian women are beaten by their husbands, and the Palestinian leadership is not adhering to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, but that is only a side issue. Female prisoners are the overarching human rights issue.

Another article about International Women's Day in Ma'an looks at the numbers of interest to Palestinian women. It identifies exactly how many female prisoners there are in Israeli prison.

32.

It also highlights the amazing fact that roughly half of Palestinians are women.

And, by the way, it also mentions that (as of 2019, because how important are these statistics anyway?) that 13.4% of Palestinian women are married before age 18, 57.2% of women were subjected to psychological violence “at least once” in the previous year, 18.5% of women were subjected to physical violence “at least once” in the previous year, and 9.4% of women were subjected to sexual violence “at least once” in that timeframe.

This means that literally hundreds of thousands of Palestinian are being raped or beaten by their husbands - but the 32 female terrorists in Israeli prisons are what Palestinians want to talk about. Which means that this obsession with attacking Israel actually hurts Palestinian women by making issues of actual abuse secondary to their insatiable drive to make everything about Israel.

Which Western feminists are calling attention to this problem? 

The UN adds that 50% of Palestinian women and 63% of Palestinian men agree that a woman should tolerate violence to keep the family together. But that cannot be spoken about because it takes away from the discussion about how awful Israel is. 






Read all about it here!

An Israeli neuroscientist named Gerry Leisman, who teaches at Haifa University, announced on a listserv:

Hi,
I am the guest editor of a special issue of the Journal Brain Sciences and we are producing a special issue of the journal entitled, "The Brain Goes to School, details for which can be found at the following link:
We are recruiting both reviews and results of experimental studies that relate to human learning, its difficulties, remediation strategies, models, cognitive science, cognitive neuropsychology all essentially attempting to translate 150 years of cognitive neuroscience into classroom applications.......
One of the members of the listserv, Karen Froud, decided that this announcement was way too Zionist, and threatened the tiny brains of those who are offended by anything related to Israel. 


Dear colleagues -
I urge you to consider this request in light of the Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions Movement for freedom and justice in Palestine. Like many / most academic institutions in Israel, Haifa University is an apartheid institution. https://bdsmovement.net/tags/haifa-university
I recognize that many of you work within this institution and hope you are also doing your part for academic freedom.
Warm wishes for a peaceful and just world - which after all is where educational neuroscience as a field points us.
Karen Froud, Ph.D.
Program Director, Neuroscience & Education
Columbia University Teachers College

Apparently, Froud is asking her colleagues to boycott this issue of Brain Sciences because it had the audacity of asking an Israeli expert to edit it. And she claims that this is in the name of "academic freedom."

I was curious to see exactly what made Haifa University an "apartheid institution" according to the BDS movement. Here is their evidence: "Haifa University discriminates against Palestinian citizens of Israel through exclusionary practices."

Really? Because fully 41% of students at Haifa University are Arab - double the percentage of Arab citizens in Israel as a whole! Haifa University is twice as welcoming of Arab students than they are of Jewish students on a per capita basis!

Haifa University is far more liberal and far more progressive than Karen Froud Ph.D. is. 

Leisman wrote an excellent and detailed response to Froud as well, including these points:

It is quite audacious of you to claim that you support academic freedom by requesting others to shut down academic freedom. Before I begin, may I call your attention to the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1949) Article 19, which you obviously have not read, that states, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression: this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." (So much for your understanding of Human Rights and Academic Freedom).

What you want is not a boycott but rather political pressure on second parties to pressure third parties to affect policy-change by that third party (i.e. the government the State of Israel). That is not even a secondary boycott but rather just simply bullying. So much for academic discourse on your part on an issue that has nothing to do with the project in Neuroeducation. What makes your opinions valid and those of others not? Some website? Do you base your actions on an order on a website? Your actions are inconsistent with the notion of Academic Freedom, but rather with an opinionated individual ramming his/her political agenda down the throats of academics on a mailing list. 

Froud receives a lot of very bad ratings in RateMyProfessors, as she appears to pre-record her lectures and gives students the link on YouTube. She also apparently publicly humiliates students she doesn't like. 

It is not surprising that self-righteous BDS bullies are also bullies in real life.

(h/t Andrew)






Read all about it here!

Sunday, March 06, 2022

  • Sunday, March 06, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon

Under the clear waters of the Red Sea, a high-speed data cable is being laid that will connect—for the first time—Israel to Saudi Arabia. The new link, which is part of two longer submarine cables running all the way from France to India, promises not only to improve the speed and lower the cost at which information can whizz between Europe and Asia. It is also knitting together a new regional alliance between Israel and countries in the Gulf that once regarded it as an enemy.
The article is behind a paywall, but Arab media are writing about it. 

The article says that the cable "would break the Egyptian monopoly of Internet traffic in the region.”
 
The new data pipeline  is being built by Google and Telecom Italia and should be finished in 2024.

This route consists of two separate cables, one ending in the Jordanian port of Aqaba, the other starting in Eilat. 
 
One Israeli official said, “For over seven decades all the Middle East’s trade routes and communications networks bypassed Israel. For the first time since Israel’s establishment, we’re becoming part of a regional infrastructure.”
 






Read all about it here!

From Ian:

With the world in crisis, Israel steps up
What Maccabi Tel Aviv did in 1977 after defeating CSKA Moscow and leading Israel to the FIBA European Champions Cup, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett did Saturday with his dramatic meeting in the Kremlin with Russian President Vladimir Putin: put Israel on the map.

"We are on the map! And we are staying on the map – not only in sports, but in everything," Israel-American basketball star Tal Brody, in heavily accented Hebrew, said in an emotional interview after the victory over CSKA Moscow, a remark that has become iconic.

By flying to Moscow on Saturday Bennett put Israel on the map in terms of international diplomacy. That he made the trip on Shabbat, unheard of for Israeli politicians, even more so for one who is Shabbat-observant, underlined the life-and-death urgency of the trip.

Just weeks after Amnesty International called Israel an apartheid state in an effort to isolate the Jewish state and turn it into a pariah, Bennett shows up in Moscow in what on the surface seems an attempt at mediating the Russian-Ukrainian crisis.

Rather than being a pariah, Israel - it is turning out - is a necessary mediator in one of the most severe crises the world has seen in decades.

Bennett's trip was reportedly coordinated with Washington, Berlin and Paris, who all encouraged it. And it was also done with the knowledge of the Ukrainians, whose President Volodymyr Zelensky has been critical of Bennett and the Israeli government for not having taken a more forceful position against the Russians

But it seems that Jerusalem’s measured approach - balancing a real concern for Israel's interests in maintaining good relations with Russia because of Moscow’s control of Syria’s skies with humanitarian concerns for Ukrainians caught in the fighting - has paid dividends.

It is Bennett that Putin agreed to see in Moscow, not France's Emmanuel Macron, not Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, nor the prime ministers of other countries that traditionally play the role of mediator: Norway and Switzerland.

Rather Israel, little Israel.
Bennett: Israel has ‘moral duty’ to mediate between Moscow, Kyiv even if chances low
hours after returning from a surprise whirlwind trip to Moscow and Berlin, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Israel had a moral obligation to work to broker peace talks between Russia and Ukraine — even if the likelihood for progress was slim.

“I returned from Moscow and Berlin a few hours ago,” Bennett said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday. “I went there to assist the dialogue between all of the sides, of course with the blessing and encouragement of all players.”

Bennett said that he could not “go into greater detail” on the talks he held with Russian President Vladimir Putin or his phone calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Prime Minister’s Office said Sunday morning that Bennett had spoken once again with Zelensky, the third phone call between the two leaders in less than 24 hours. Neither side has released details of any of the conversations.

“We will continue to assist as needed,” Bennett said at the cabinet meeting. “Even if the chance is not great — as soon as there is even a small opening, and we have access to all sides and the capability — I see this as our moral obligation to make every effort.”

“As long as the candle is burning, we must make an effort and perhaps it will yet be possible to act,” the prime minister added.


Bennett’s Mission to Moscow Could Help Ukraine. But Can He Stop a New Iran Deal?
One of the odder sidebars to the invasion of Ukraine was a recent report that Putin was threatening to withdraw his support for the new Iran deal unless the Americans backed down on their efforts to sanction Russia as punishment for its aggression. As a member of the P5+1 group of powers that concluded the original pact, Moscow is deeply involved in the effort to revive it in Vienna.

Indeed, according to some sources, Russia played a key role in getting the Iranians — Russian allies and partners in another brutal war waged by Putin to slaughter Syrians opposed to the regime of President Bashar Assad — to go along with this fiasco that will greatly benefit it.

This means that while Biden and the West have been inveighing against Putin for his crimes in Ukraine, they are simultaneously counting on him to assist them in producing an agreement with Iran that they will falsely claim to be a diplomatic triumph. The administration has defended its willingness to continue working with the Russians in Vienna as unrelated to their efforts to isolate Moscow. But Biden’s willingness to reward Iran while punishing Russia is not so much hypocritical as it is amoral.

So while Bennett was undoubtedly sincere in offering his good offices to help arrange for peace talks to end the fighting in Ukraine, his priority ought to be somehow persuading Putin to help stop Biden’s appeasement of Iran. The same applies to his subsequent trip to Germany, which is also involved with both the sanctions on Russia and the attempt to use Putin to end the sanctions on Iran.

It’s far from clear that Bennett will be able to either assist diplomacy in Ukraine or stop the new Iran deal. But as much as the Jewish world is, like just about everyone else, completely riveted by the unfolding tragedy in Ukraine, it should not be treating Iran as a secondary issue.

That’s a difficult sell at a moment when Ukraine’s fight for independence has captured the hearts of supporters of democracy and those who sympathize with underdogs seeking to resist much stronger predators, such as Putin’s Russia. Jewish communities are mobilizing to provide aid for the refugees created by the war and calling for America and the West to do whatever they can to aid Zelensky — a new Jewish hero who has won praise for his Churchillian performance since the war began — to save Ukraine.

But to ignore, rationalize or excuse Biden’s efforts to enrich and empower Iran while granting it a clear path to a nuclear weapon with which it could potentially make good on its repeated threats to eliminate the one Jewish state on the planet just because Ukraine is the current priority is indefensible.

Bennett could win a Nobel Peace Prize for ending the war in Ukraine, while sabotaging diplomacy with Iran will only earn him opprobrium from the international press. But being as admired as Zelensky is now shouldn’t concern him. Stymying Biden’s feckless appeasement of Iran must be his sole priority.


Behind the scenes of Bennett's secret trip to Moscow
Planning of Naftali Bennett's secret trip to Russia on Saturday actually began on Wednesday, when the prime minister spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone.

Bennett advised the U.S. of his intentions and received President Joe Biden's "blessing". The prime minister also called Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky right after his meeting with Putin to brief him on the discussions. Bennett also spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Before leaving for Moscow on Saturday, Bennett called Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman, to advise them on the planned meetings.

After the three-hour meeting in the Kremlin, Bennett flew to Berlin to meet with the German chancellor. According to the Prime Minister's Office, Bennett and Olaf Scholz, spoke for 90 minutes and shared a meal. "The leaders discussed several matters including the Russian-Ukraine conflict," said the official statement following the meeting.

Ynet analyst Ron Ben Yishai said on Sunday that Zelensky's office doubted the mediation efforts would be successful. After the president spoke with Bennett, his press secretary said he would be willing to meet Putin if the Russian president was amenable.

"We cannot evaluate the outcome of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's mediation until we receive a clear indication from either Bennett or Putin that such a meeting could take place," Sergey Nikiforov said, adding that no new development was reported on Bennett's call with Zelensky.

The need for a ceasefire is said to have been the primary topic of discussion in the meeting in Moscow. Putin reiterated Russia's demand that Israel refrain from providing any weapons to Ukraine.

But Israel's concern for the safety of Ukraine's Jewish communities and of Israelis stranded in the war, was also addressed.
  • Sunday, March 06, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon
Naharnet reported on Thursday:
The lead U.S. mediator in the Lebanon-Israel sea border talks, Amos Hochstein, has sent a written proposal to President Michel Aoun, Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Najib Miqati, several Lebanese newspapers reported on Thursday.

Hochstein’s letter was delivered to Aoun, Berri and Miqati by the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Dorothy Shea, diplomatic sources told An-Nahar newspaper.
And as always, Hezbollah seems to be casting a veto that would allow cash-strapped Lebanon to access the natural-gas-rich regions of the Mediterranean:
Speaker Nabih Berri and Hizbullah have distanced themselves from a panel formed by President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Najib Miqati with the aim of studying the written proposal that has been sent to Lebanon by U.S. sea border demarcation envoy Amos Hochstein, media reports said on Saturday.

High-level sources meanwhile told al-Akhbar that Public Works Minister Ali Hamiyeh told Hizbullah that the premier wants him to be part of the committee and that the party rejected his participation.

“We will not take part in any meeting or negotiations related to the demarcation file, especially if the committee will meet with U.S. delegations,” Hizbulah told the minister according to the daily.

Does anyone on the planet think that Hezbollah cares about the welfare of Lebanon?

Meanwhile, some good news:

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has designated two “key Hizbullah financiers” operating in Guinea, a statement said.

“This action is aimed at disrupting Hizbullah’s business network in West Africa, which relies on bribery and influence to circumvent the rule of law. In addition to other sources of funding, Hizbullah generates revenue from commercial activities across the world to sponsor acts of terrorism,” the U.S. statement added.


 






Read all about it here!



As my readers know, I like to expose the stupid things published about Israel in academic papers.

One recent publication was by Saad Amira, of the University of Basel, Switzerland, whose abstract for "The slow violence of Israeli settler-colonialism and the political ecology of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank" in "Settler Colonial Studies" includes, 
Here I focus on three aspects of the slow violence of settler colonialism and its relationship to political ecology: the unleashing of wild boars into Palestinian villages and the decimation of seasonal agriculture, the dumping of sewage waste of Israeli settlements onto Palestinian villages, and the curtailment of indigenous centered modes of production and mobility. 
When he proposed this research, he also added something about "reinforcing notions of Patriarchal development" but inexplicably that line of research did not make it into his final paper, perhaps because it would have softened his anti-Israel lies.  

But the proposal included the "wild boars" theme.

Now think about this for a second. If someone proposes a doctoral thesis based on the truth of wild and false rumors about Israel, and it gets approved by their supervisor, what are the chances that this "academic researcher" will be objective when they write the paper itself? Indeed, the proposal and the abstract are very similar. The conclusions were drawn before the research.

Which is how 99% of "social science" works.

It turns out that this isn't the only academic fraud who mindlessly repeats the most insane antisemitic conspiracy theories, that religious Jewish settlers or the IDF are raising non-kosher and untamable wild boars to release them in Palestinian Arab farms.

In "No Sustainable Development in the Lack of Environmental Justice" by HE Salem in Environmental Justice (2019), we are told flatly:
Israel releases wild boars, pigs, stray dogs, and large rats in the OPT. According to reports issued by Israeli and Palestinian institutions, the Israeli authorities release wild boars, pigs, dogs, and large rats in the OPT, especially the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority’s President—Mahmoud Abbas—accused Israel of releasing wild boars to destroy agricultural fields in the West Bank to cause damage to produce and intimidate Palestinian farmers. Palestinians blame Israeli settlers for deliberately releasing boars in the occupied West Bank to deliberately attack villagers, as a way to keep them off their land."
Middle East Monitor (2012) quotes the head of the  Palestinian Centre for Environmental Development at Al-Quds Open University, Jamal Sabra, describing "the Israeli practice of releasing wild pigs in the vicinity of settlements – a practice which impacts on wild plants. "

In "Palestine and (Human) Nature" (2016) by Naomi Foyle (University of Chichester), she describes Israel as "a nationalist settler movement led by wealthy Europeans and bankrolled by America [that] has dispossessed the indigenous Arab population and laid waste to their remaining natural resources. " Naturally, she parrots the "wild boar" claim with little skepticism:

Currently, in a development even Orwell couldn’t have made up, the Zionist assault on Palestinian farming allegedly extends to pig warfare. Growing up, Murad never saw a wild boar, which formerly existed only in the north of Palestine. Now there are thousands of them, a genuine plague of huge ferocious beasts that hold night orgies in farmers’ fields and groves, devouring crops and trampling the fragile roots of the olive trees. ...Villagers report seeing IDF helicopters landing to release pairs of the animals...
In DA Jaber's "Settler colonialism and ecocide: case study of AlKhader, Palestine" - also in Settler Colonial Studies - we are told, "Qasim, an environmental activist, discussed the actions of settlers that cause the deterioration of agricultural lands. For example, the releasing of rabbits and gazelles, which are not native to the agricultural lands of Al-Khader, onto farmlands, ruining the crops, in particular grapevines and Armenian cucumber plants." The footnote says, ". For more on settlers releasing animals on Palestinian agriculture destroying crops and, at times, harming Palestinians, see Jared Eglan, Beasts of War: The Militarization of Animals (Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press, 2015), 99; Ma’an News Agency ‘10-year-old Palestinian Girl Attacked by Wild Boar Near Jenin’, May 2017."

Waziyatawin writes in "Malice Enough in their Hearts and Courage Enough in Ours: Reflections on US Indigenous and Palestinian Experiences under Occupation," Settler Colonial Studies (2012) that "people of Awarta described the theft of their sheep and goat herds, the confiscation, theft or destruction of their olive trees and the introduction of destructive wild boars" by settlers.

I only saw skepticism in a 2019 book, "Companions in Conflict: Animals in Occupied Palestine," by Penny Johnson, who realized immediately that the "settlers spread wild boar" story was insane:


If only most academics has any intellectual honesty as Johnson does. 

I wonder if any academic press would allow this research into the bias of academic research to be published. 







Read all about it here!

  • Sunday, March 06, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon
Hamada al-Farana is a columnist who is a former minister of Jordanian parliament and has been a member of the Palestinian National Council since 1984.

He wrote in Jordanian site Ad Dustour,  copied elsewhere, that a Russian victory in Ukraine will be a defeat for Israel and the United States.

We sympathize with the people of Ukraine for two reasons: first, because its president, Vladimir Zelensky, is a Jew-Zionist who has implicated his people in a battle serving the interests of the United States and against the interests of his neighbor Russia, and secondly, because the people of Ukraine will pay the price for these destructive adventures.

Russia's victory is a defeat for the colony [Israel], and Russia's defeat is a victory for the American-Israeli camp.
It is beginning to appear that the at least some Arabs wanted to wait to see who is more likely to win before openly choosing sides. 
 






Read all about it here!

Saturday, March 05, 2022

From Ian:

Jewish Ukraine Fights Nazi Russia
The Russian bombardment of the Kyiv television tower, which is located near the Babyn Yar memorial, was reported to have hit a part of the ravine inadvertently. The television tower stands right above the killing fields, overlooking the location of the memorial. There was no attack on the memorial complex itself, but the symbolism was hard to ignore. Zelensky called on world Jewry to “wake up to the threats posed by Russia’s invasion,” adding that “Nazism is always born in silence.” A translation of his speech into Hebrew was soon uploaded to the presidential Facebook page. The statement had as much to do with geopolitics as it did with his personal identity—Ukrainians have become frustrated over the past week with what they see as Israeli diplomatic equivocation, regardless of the evident needs of Israeli security, which must take into account the Russian military presence in Syria.

Zelensky had never seemed to me, including the one time that I discussed the issue with him over dinner, to be particularly comfortable with deploying or inhabiting his Jewish background in public. Despite the fact that Ukrainians enjoy pointing out his national success as an indication of a lack of antisemitism in the country—and the fact that his Jewishness was not a liability during the 2019 presidential campaign—it felt to me like his uncertainty about his identity would prove an awkward and evident tension. But now here he is, effortlessly deploying it for the greater good of the state. Zelensky is doubling down on his Jewish heritage, at the same time that he represents a sort of postmodern version of Pinocchio, stepping out of the television set and into the real world, where he has become a real boy.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Zelensky received a staggering 73% of the vote in the second round of the election in 2019. At the time, many outside analysts and observers viewed that tally as a manifestation of the capacity of television to create an illusory reality—in this case, a modern populist communicator naming an actual political party, Servant of the People, after the name of his television show. But reality has proved more personal, more contingent, than that analysis. The heroism that Zelensky has demonstrated in the past few weeks is a refraction of the resilience, cohesion in times of crisis, and other traits of the ordinary Ukrainian. Back in the comparatively peaceful days of 2019, three-quarters of the Ukrainian population took a look at Zelensky, and through some sort of heuristic that I cannot understand, let alone describe, saw a manifestation of their best qualities. And they were right. What is democracy, if not that?

Over dinner the night before his election victory, I impertinently joked to Zelensky that he would have to improve his English if he was to become a real Davos man. The joke was very much on me—and on all of us.

Glory to Ukraine! And glory to Zelensky, the bravest Jew on earth!


Bennett concludes meeting with Putin, speaks with Zelensky
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett flew to Berlin immediately after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow for three hours on Saturday, in an apparent attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.

Bennett was set to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The two leaders met in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

Earlier, Bennett and Putin discussed the war in Ukraine, including the situation of Israelis and Jewish communities as a result of the conflict, a diplomatic source said.

Bennett informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in advance of the meeting with Putin, and called him before departing Moscow.

The prime minister has twice spoken with Putin and Zelensky previously, since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Zelensky has asked Bennett to try to mediate between the sides, an offer that Putin rebuffed last year, but did not reject last week when Bennett brought it up again.

Bennett coordinated his trip to Moscow in advance with the US, France and Germany – all parties to the Iran talks. Bennett spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron and may visit Paris after Berlin, KAN reported. Turkey was also updated, as Bennett’s flight route was over its territory.

In addition, Putin and Bennett discussed the Iran talks, with the latter emphasizing that Israel opposes a return to the 2015 nuclear deal, which is the aim of the negotiations in Vienna.
David Horovitz: AnalysisWith trip to Kremlin, Bennett flies Israel into the eye of the Russia-Ukraine storm
That Bennett, Israel’s first Orthodox prime minister, flew to Moscow on the Shabbat underlined his conviction that his mission has the potential to save lives — and thus to take precedence, in accordance with Jewish religious law, over Sabbath observance. The open question is whether he can indeed somehow contribute to a restraining of Russia’s military activity, and an earlier and less bloody conclusion to the war.

If Bennett’s mission leads nowhere, and worse, if he incurs the further displeasure of the free world’s most popular head of state, the prime minister may come to conclude he should have stayed home this Shabbat. Already, his insistence on attempting the almost impossible — trying to maintain not neutral but warm relations with both sides in a war — is threatening to exasperate the US and has the potential to deeply harm Israel’s standing in the free world.

If he somehow brokers life-saving progress, by contrast, he will have performed a remarkable service.

Putin has repeatedly insisted he intends to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine, while also demanding it not join NATO. Ten days into his invasion, he has ratcheted up his rhetoric in the past few hours — warning that any countries tempted to establish a no-fly zone would be considered enemy combatants, comparing the mounting sanctions to a declaration of war, and telling Ukraine’s leaders they “risk the future of Ukrainian statehood” if they continue to resist him.

In short, Vladimir Putin is not sounding like a man with an eye on compromise. Will Israel’s prime minister — delivering messages from the West while trying to bring his own added value — be able to change that?
With the world in crisis, Israel steps up - analysis
Think about that for a minute and use it as a measuring stick to gauge how things have changed regarding Israel and the Mideast: The US turned to Israel to lobby the UAE to vote with it in the UN.

Israel now is a serious world player. With that, however, comes serious responsibility.

A mediator’s role is not always a glamorous one. Not every mediator ends up with a Nobel Peace Prize. Playing this role runs the risk of antagonizing one side of the conflict or the other -- or both -- something that could end up coming back to haunt Israel.

At the same time, however, it affords a degree of international prestige that could be leveraged for the country’s benefit down the line.

For instance, if Israel can serve a useful role here, it may be in a stronger position to make certain requests of those countries who turned to it for help in this crisis -- the US, Germany and France -- regarding the Iranian nuclear agreement that may, or may not, be concluded this week.

In the Russian-Ukrainian war, however, it seems as if more than Israel wanted this role of mediator, it was pushed into it.

It was pushed into it by the West, which because of its sanctions and its rhetoric has lost its ability to serve as an honest broker with Putin; and it was pushed into it by public opinion, both domestic and international, baffled that Israel -- with its unique history -- has not taken a more assertive role in the crisis.

Jerusalem, it seems, would have liked to sit on the fence in this crisis as many other countries in the region who share Israel's fear of Iran and dependency on Russian regional goodwill have done -- such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and others.

Circumstances, however, made that impossible. So on Saturday morning Bennett stepped into the breach and flew to Moscow at a moment that for Israel is pregnant with great risks as well as historic possibilities.
  • Saturday, March 05, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon


When Western bigots castigate Israel for its Law of Return that accepts Jews as immigrants, it is usually accompanied with  something like "but Israel bans Palestinians who lived there for hundreds of generations to return to their homes."

But in Arabic, the media that is upset at the potential of thousands of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants don't mention the Palestinian issue. They simply don't want Jews to live in the Middle East, period.

Hawra Kobeissi's essay which was published today in multiple news sites only says that Israel tries to take advantage of world crises to encourage Jews to immigrate for demographic reasons. One of her examples is the huge effort Israel expended in spiriting out only a few dozen Yemeni Jews over the past ten years, which pretty much disproves the demography theory - that is hardly a great return on investment if Israel was only interested in increasing its population.

Palestine Today has a survey of Arab analysts on the issue of Ukrainian Jewish immigration, and while most of them are very much against it, none of them say that Israel should allow Palestinians to become citizens the way the "progressive" media does. If they mention Palestinians at all, it is about the percentage of Arabs and Jews in the area of British Mandate Palestine.

Two different groups of people, supposedly on the same side, who object to Jewish immigration to Israel for completely different reasons. When you see something like that, you can be fairly certain that the real reason behind their objections have nothing to do with either of what they are saying out loud. They just don't like Jews living in Israel. 

They don't care about Palestinians - they care about hating Jews. 







Read all about it here!

Friday, March 04, 2022

From Ian:

FDD: Iran Approaches the Nuclear Threshold
The flawed premise of the JCPOA and of the Biden administration’s Iran policy is that Iran can both keep its uranium enrichment program — which the JCPOA allows to expand again starting in 2024 and to grow substantially from 2027 to 2031 — and be kept away from the nuclear weapons threshold.32 Instead of pursuing a defective and temporary accord, the United States should seek to restore the international consensus — embodied in successive UN Security Council resolutions from 2006 to 2010 — that the world cannot trust the Islamic Republic with an enrichment program.33 The regime’s relentless stonewalling of IAEA investigations demonstrates its bad faith. Furthermore, an energy-rich country like Iran has no economic need for an enrichment program. The purpose of Iran’s enrichment program has always been to build nuclear weapons.34

If and when the United States and the E3 (Britain, France, and Germany) recognize the need for a fundamental rethinking of their Iran policy, they should relaunch the kind of comprehensive economic, financial, and political pressure campaign that forced Iran back to the negotiating table during Barack Obama’s tenure. This time, however, the campaign should persist until Tehran accepts the dismantling of its enrichment program and related measures to permanently cut off all pathways to a nuclear weapon. The Iranian economy has begun a tentative recovery thanks to Biden’s relaxation of sanctions, but it remains vulnerable after a deep multi-year recession.35 The United States and the E3 should invite Russia and China to support their efforts, but only if they accept the premise of a permanent end to the Iranian nuclear threat and do not act as spoilers.

Even without Russian and Chinese support, the United States and the E3 can restore prior UN sanctions by invoking the snapback clause of UN Security Council Resolution 2231. Doing so would also restore all prior UN resolutions against Iran, which codify the principle of zero enrichment. Restoring multilateral sanctions would present Russia and China with a fait accompli regarding sanctions enforcement and provide a basis for further action by the United States and E3 to penalize non-compliance.

Congress can play an important role in encouraging the Biden administration to support a renewed pressure campaign. From 2009 through 2012, a bipartisan coalition in Congress played an indispensable role in creating the statutory framework for the pressure campaign that forced Iran back to the negotiating table. If there is renewed bipartisanship, Congress can prove similarly effective once again.

The most potent tool currently at the disposal of Congress is the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, or INARA, which gives Congress statutory review authority over any deal. Specifically, INARA requires the president to submit to Congress within five days any agreement with Iran and “all related materials and annexes.” There is then a 90-day review period during which the House and Senate hold hearings on the agreement and then debate it.36 Finally, INARA ensures a vote on whether to lift sanctions. Since the president can veto a resolution prohibiting him from lifting sanctions, a two-thirds majority in both chambers can block a deal. Thus, bipartisanship is essential. Even so, significant opposition sends a clear message to Tehran that a deal may last only as long as Biden remains in the White House.37 If the administration prefers an enduring agreement, it should stop relying on a partisan minority and submit a stronger accord to the Senate for ratification as a formal treaty. Ratification by the Senate would necessitate a bipartisan consensus on the merits of an accord and render it far less susceptible to cancellation by the next president.

Finally, the United States should continue — on its own and together with Israel — to increase the credible threat of military action should Iran move closer to the nuclear threshold or sprint to nuclear weapons. Specifically, Washington and Jerusalem should continue U.S.-Israeli military exercises practicing the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities.38 The United States and Israel should also consider actions short of military strikes, such as cyber-attacks and sabotage of nuclear or nuclear-related sites, to delay the Islamic Republic’s progress and remind the regime that its malign activity will not come without cost.

Still, it would be far better to avoid the risk war of war by discarding the JCPOA framework and implementing a comprehensive pressure campaign that confronts Tehran with the prospect of bankruptcy and isolation unless it dismantles its enrichment program. The Biden administration should take all related measures necessary to ensure that the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism can never reach the nuclear weapons threshold.
Andrew McCarthy: Biden Colludes with Russia on a New, More Disastrous Iran Deal
Others who would benefit from sanctions relief include Iranian officials complicit in Hezbollah’s 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine compound in Beirut, which killed 241 U.S. and 58 French military personnel in addition to several civilians. Also benefiting would be Iranians complicit in Hezbollah’s 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association building, which killed 85 people and wounded hundreds.

This is just breathtaking. Among the JCPOA’s many atrocious features was that, besides merely delaying rather than halting the Tehran regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, it turned a blind eye to the terrorism that Iran has for decades directed at the U.S. and our allies, especially Israel. That was unconscionable, but at least it left terrorism-related sanctions in effect. If Noronha is right, those designations and sanctions will now be lifted, even though (a) they are unrelated to Iran’s nuclear work, and (b) some of them were in response to activity in which Iran engaged after the JCPOA took effect.

In return, Iran would reap about $90 billion in immediate sanctions relief, and $50 billion to $55 billion in additional revenue from higher oil and petrochemical exports. There would be no restrictions on how Iran spends this windfall — no limits on its terror promotion, wars through jihadist proxies, ballistic-missile development, and hostage-taking. In fact, on the subject of hostage-taking, the Biden administration would reportedly cause the release of $7 billion in frozen Iranian assets held in South Korea, in exchange for the release of four Americans, and perhaps some Brits, currently imprisoned in Iran. That is, the deal would resemble the ransom Obama paid for hostages in order to get Iran’s agreement to the JCPOA; the mullahs would be reminded that hostage-taking pays.

So . . . even as Russia was encircling Ukraine with an invasion force of 150,000, even as Russia continued occupying Crimea and other territories annexed from Ukraine and Georgia, the Biden administration was eagerly confederating with Putin’s envoy in order to revive an arrangement with Russia’s client, Iran (the “Death to America” guys) — an arrangement that is a disaster for American national security. If you were wondering why Vladimir Putin, as he continues pulverizing Ukrainian civilians, does not seem too fazed about the U.S. reaction, that’s why.
Richard Goldberg: Biden’s Coming Iran Deal Will Be Even Worse than Obama’s
Moscow loves the old deal, especially the sunsets. Russia stands to make a lot of money off arms sales if Biden rescinds Trump’s executive order. That’s on top of the money Putin will already make building nuclear-power plants in Iran.

The new deal is even better for Putin — the timing of its announcement likely by his design. He will tout it as Russia’s contribution to international peace and security — a contribution requested by Washington.

Now is the time for Congress to act. The White House knows this agreement would never win ratification by the U.S. Senate if submitted as a treaty. Biden may even try to avoid submitting it for congressional review before lifting sanctions, defying a 2015 statute that requires him to do so.

Congress should defend the integrity of U.S. terrorism sanctions by mandating new sanctions on any institution in Iran — including the Central Bank of Iran — that continues to finance the activities of the Revolutionary Guard, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations. Congress should condemn as wholly illegitimate the removal of terrorism sanctions without a cessation of illicit conduct. Biden is setting a dangerous precedent for U.S. counterterrorism policy.

New legislation should set a deadline for Iran to fully account for its undeclared nuclear work or face the full reimposition of U.S. sanctions. Removing sanctions for a supposed nuclear deal that knowingly allows Iran to hide its clandestine nuclear activities defies common sense.

Steps will also be needed to deny Russia the benefits of the deal. Sanctions targeting Russian economic, nuclear, and military relations with Iran should be reinstated or strengthened. The same might be considered for China, which has announced a 25-year economic-cooperation program with Tehran.

Finally, the question of military deterrence will take center stage. The coming deal makes it more likely that the United States or Israel will soon have to choose between military action or a nuclear-armed Iran. Congress should consider what tools Israel may need to defend itself in the wake of a strike against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

Unfortunately, a chaotic and dangerous world is about to get a bit more chaotic and dangerous. At least until Congress or a new administration can change course.
  • Friday, March 04, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon
The College of Business Administration at the University of Bahrain held a "Middle East Conference" on March 2 and 3 with the participation of a number of business schools in the Gulf countries.

But they didn't say ahead of time that one of the speakers was from Tel Aviv University.

The Kuwaiti delegation found out about this terrible thing, and they withdrew from the conference - although apparently not before taking this photo that was clearly from the very end of the lecture.


I don't know whether the Israeli withheld his affiliation until the end - it seems doubtful since the PowerPoint uses a template where every page would have said that it was from Tel Aviv University.

The Kuwaitis are saying that their withdrawal causes damage to the Israelis, when in fact no one really cares what they do.

But there was one valid reason to leave this lecture.

No one should ever use the Comic Sans font for any reason whatsoever.







Read all about it here!

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: For the Jews, history repeats itself in Ukraine
Putin is seeking to reverse the identity of neo-Nazis and their victims by channelling the myth of the Soviet fight against German Nazism. But this too is built on a distortion of history.

After all, the Soviet Union was initially an ally of Nazi Germany through the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. World War Two was launched against Europe in 1939 by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany together.

Subsequently, Russia did mount a heroic defence against Germany which helped win the war. Putin is manipulating this fact to present a staggering inversion of reality to justify his unprovoked aggression and brutality.

Now where have we heard this before, where the victims of an attempt to erase them from the map are themselves accused falsely of genocide?

Well of course, this is precisely what the “Palestinians” have done to Israel. For decades, they have promoted the big lie that they are the indigenous people of the land, that the Jews were the colonisers who deprived them of their rights and that the Israelis continue to oppress and practice “genocide” against them.

Every part of that is not only untrue but it is the “Palestinians” who seek aggressive conquest and the Israelis who are victims of their terror.

This big lie about Israel was created in the 1960s when the “Palestinian” terrorist leader Yasser Arafat made common cause with the Soviet Union to rewrite history, demonise the Jewish state and subvert the west by twisting its collective mind and destroying its moral compass.

This was laid out by General Ion Pacepa, the former head of Romania’s foreign intelligence service, who played a significant role in Soviet bloc operations directed against Israel and the US and who defected to the west in 1978.

According to Pacepa, the chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, told him, “We needed to instil a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States”.

This mind-bending has resulted in Israel’s demonisation in the West. And now the same strategy is being deployed by the former KGB officer Putin towards Ukraine.

In a Hebrew-language post on his Facebook page, Zelensky urged Jewish people around the world to speak up against Russia’s attempt to “erase” Ukrainians, their country and their history.

“I am now addressing all the Jews of the world,” he wrote. “Don’t you see what is happening? That is why it is very important that millions of Jews around the world not remain silent right now.”

Zelensky cried out to the Jews to speak up because he sees history repeating itself in his country. For the Jewish people, wherever they are, history always does.


Caroline Glick: Russia, the virtue-signaling West, and Israel
Russia was willing to accept the possibility of Ukraine as a neutral state, but over the past 15 years, Putin has said repeatedly that he viewed the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO or the EU as a casus belli. The Minsk Protocol from 2014, which Ukraine accepted and the West sponsored, paved the way for Ukraine to become a neutral state. If the US and its allies were acting strategically, they would have urged Zelenskyy to implement the Minsk Protocol, which provided autonomy for the pro-Russian provinces in eastern Ukraine. Instead, as Putin deployed tens of thousands of Russian forces to the Ukrainian border, Biden reportedly gave Zelenskyy the impression that Ukrainian membership in NATO would happen at any time. And now the EU is applauding Zelenskyy's request for EU membership, thus reducing to near zero the prospect that the conflict will be peacefully resolved.

Watching the virtue signaling statements by Western leaders since Russia invaded Ukraine, the unmistakable impression is that what we are seeing is not morality-based or strategic policymaking. We are witnessing how a herd makes policy. Herd policymaking involves all parties embracing the same policy because everyone is embracing the same policy. In the current context, everyone agrees Ukraine is a paragon of liberal democracy because everyone agrees that Ukraine is a paragon of liberal democracy. Everyone agrees that Putin is evil and crazy and must be ousted from power because everyone agrees that Putin is evil, crazy and must be ousted from power.

The West's embrace of herd policymaking against Russia is a strategic menace to Israel.

To be sure, Israel is not Russia. And the Palestinians and Iran are not Ukraine. Whereas there is a strong case to be made against Russia and for Ukraine, there is no strategic rationale nor moral justification for the hostility that the EU and the progressive left in the US demonstrate towards Israel. There is no strategic rationale nor moral justification for their support for the Palestinians or for the Iranian regime, who both pledge Israel's destruction.

There is an antisemitic explanation for the West's positions. And there is a policy-by-herd explanation for their positions.

If the West's financial total war against Russia is successful, it is a foregone conclusion that it will rapidly be adopted as a standard operating procedure. There are many leaders in the Western herd who love to try it out on Israel. As a consequence, Israel must be concerned that the next time its enemies start a war against it, those voices in the herd will raise to call to turn their new weapon against the Jewish state.
The Caroline Glick Show: Ep41 - The Strategic Chessboard in Ukraine | Guests: David Wurmser and Stephen Bryen
In Episode 41 Caroline is joined by David Wurmser and Stephen Bryen. They discussed the war in Ukraine in the strategic context of Russian US-NATO rivalry; the Russian-Chinese alliance; and what it bodes for superpower relations with the nations of the Middle East. It was a fantastic, vital, and timely discussion. Don't miss it.


  • Friday, March 04, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon


Yesterday, this was widely reported:

Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown price and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman has said that the kingdom does not look at Israel as an “enemy,” as he called for “coexistence” between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

“For us, we hope that the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is solved. We don't look at Israel as an enemy, we look to them as a potential ally, with many interests that we can pursue together. But we have to solve some issues before we get to that,” Bin Salman said in an interview with U.S. magazine The Atlantic, according to an English-language transcript published by the official Saudi news agency SPA.
Perhaps the most important part of this is the fact that this was published by the Saudis themselves.

The Atlantic article did not have this quote. The transcript came from the official Saudi news agency. Which means that the Saudis weren't playing the game of "tell the Western reporters what they want" - they went out of their way to ensure that the world saw this message that Israel and Saudi Arabia are not enemies and have a lot of similar goals.

The audience for this statement is the Arab world, the Saudi people and Iran, which he also said he desires good relations with.

Four years ago, also to the Atlantic, Mohammed bin Salman surprised the world by saying that Israelis have a right to their own land (although the question was about Jews.) Now it is taken for granted. The speed of the change has been astonishing. 

Is he softening up his people for peace with Israel? Does he really think that the Palestinians will accept peace with Israel, or is he planning to give up on them? His wording leaves open the possibility of either. 







Read all about it here!

  • Friday, March 04, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon


Here is every statement by PA president Mahmoud Abbas since Russia invaded Ukraine:

Condolences to former National Assembly Speaker Salim al-Zanoun (Abu al-Adeeb) on his sister's death
Condolences to the parents of a teen killed during a violent protest
Congratulations to the Emir of Kuwait on their independence day
Condolences on the death of a "brigadier general" in Gaza
Congratulations to the Dominican Republic president on their independence day
Condolences to a "major general" on the death of his son
Congratulations to the president of Bosnia and Herzegovina on their independence day
A meeting with UNRWA representatives and affirming the importance of that organization
Congratulations to the president of Bulgaria on its independence day

Not a word of concern, let alone condemnation, of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Likewise, the Palestinian ministry of foreign affairs has been completely silent about Ukraine. 

The PA prime minister Mohamed Shtayyeh didn't completely ignore Ukraine in his statements. Last Friday evening, he called the Palestinian envoy to Ukraine to check on the safety of 2500 Palestinians there. And during his normal weekly cabinet meeting, he said that he is monitoring the developments there and that many Palestinians managed to escape.

As the entire world condemned Russia, the PA has remained silent. 

Silence is assent.

I noted on Twitter that there are a lot of similarities between how Russia has acted during this invasion and how the Palestinian leadership always acts:

* Accusing the other side of being "Nazis"
* Accusing the other side of "genocide"
* Censoring local media
* Claiming that a UN-member nation is really part of their territory
* Lying as a strategy

Of course, the Palestinian propaganda strategy was largely created by the Soviet Union and Russians are masters at propaganda.

Palestinian leaders want to be considered part of the community of nations. Yet in every single conflict since World War II, they have sided with the dictatorships, the despots and the violators of human rights. From Hitler to Saddam Hussein to Moammar Qaddafi to Iran to Venezuela, you see warm relations and support. 

Mahmoud Abbas and Vladimir Putin were employed by the KGB at the same time, and Abbas led a Palestinian-Soviet friendship foundation.

The only thing stopping Abbas from publicly supporting Putin is that he still gets significant funding from Western European nations who would be very upset at such support. But ideologically, the PLO leadership and the Russians are on the same page, and always have been. 






Read all about it here!

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