Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 03, 2022

05/03 Links Pt1: Revealing the truth behind al-Aqsa and 100 years of lies; How Arab Rulers Undermined a Palestinian State; Biden Won’t Block $10 Bil for Russian Nuclear Work in Iran,

From Ian:

Emily Schrader: Revealing the truth behind al-Aqsa and 100 years of lies

THIS YEAR, Palestinian leaders and terrorist organization Hamas are once again using Ramadan to spread rumors that Israelis are “desecrating” al-Aqsa, which has led to massive riots and violence at al-Aqsa Compound throughout the month. They claim Jews are “storming” the Temple Mount, yet video footage shared by Palestinians showed Palestinians using the mosque to prepare for violent confrontation before any non-Muslims entered the premises. During Passover, Israel explicitly banned any Jews from visiting the holy site, so as to avoid an increase in tensions. Despite that, the campaign of incitement surrounding al-Aqsa being “in danger” continued.

Camping out in the mosque with their shoes on for days, Palestinian rioters used the holy site to throw rocks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at Israeli police and non-Muslims, even damaging the mosque itself. This occurred even when police were outside the compound entirely.

The rioters prevented the vast majority of peaceful Muslim worshippers from being able to pray during Ramadan. Yet how was this reported on social media and in the international press? That the Israeli police were preventing Muslims from worshipping at al-Aqsa Mosque. This is the definition of disinformation, fake news, or just plain old lies – not to mention outrageously lazy and irresponsible journalism on the part of the press. Last Friday, a quarter of a million Muslims prayed at al-Aqsa Mosque; this did not make the headlines. Yet again, the status quo has not changed at the al-Aqsa Compound.

It should go without saying that no one has a right to violently assault someone visiting a holy site. Muslims do not have a religious monopoly on al-Aqsa, nor should they. This is a site that is holy to more than one faith, and freedom of religion should be respected. Ironically, it is extremist Muslims attacking others for visiting, then claiming those visitors are threatening the sanctity of the mosque itself, which these extremists are desecrating by wearing shoes and engaging in violence on-site.

The hypocrisy is blatant and shameful, and prevents Muslims and non-Muslims alike from practicing their religion.

The media need to step up and do their job. The truth must be told; otherwise, the violence will continue. Palestinian extremists must not be allowed to dictate the narrative at al-Aqsa as they have for nearly 100 years. Enough.

If Israel does not assert sovereignty, it will lose it

While Israel has never been militarily, technologically or economically stronger, it is suffering from a crisis of conviction.

Our ancestors were Jews in the Diaspora who excelled and achieved great things in their host countries, yet they sought in vain the approval of their non-benign gentile neighbors. Just like them, Israel’s current leaders are chasing the not-to-be-had support and affinity of leading Western countries.

In the name of that unrequited love search, they have been willing to send highly dangerous signals to our Palestinian enemies that Israel is willing to relent, to look the other way and to accommodate Palestinian aspirations and inclinations. Our leaders will cloak all of this in the guise of a quest for accommodation and reasonableness. The goal is to show the Palestinians that Israel is prepared to respect Palestinian sensibilities by neither provoking nor providing the grounds for insult and resentment.

All of this sounds appropriate and wise, except that it is all completely misplaced and dangerously counterproductive.

In one of the great historical misreads of the goals and intentions of the opposing side, Israel’s leaders have made the great mistake of Western geopolitics, which is to assume that the other guys basically want the same thing as they themselves do. We all want peace, prosperity, good relations with neighbors, and ideally economic cross-pollination among us. Right?

How Arab Rulers Undermined a Palestinian State

Conclusion The 1967 Six-Day War placed the "Palestine question" at the forefront of international attention with the PLO gaining worldwide prominence as "the sole representative of the Palestinian people" while maintaining its terrorist ways. But, the Arab states have shown no real interest in Palestinian statehood beyond the customary lip service.

Despite Jordan's 1988 renunciation of claims to the West Bank, the Hashemite monarchy has neither shown any desire for the establishment of a Palestinian state, which it fears might subvert its rule, nor shied away from making peace and closely collaborating with Israel with the kingdom's possible return to the West Bank occasionally mooted by both sides. Similarly, while Anwar Sadat went to great lengths to attach the Palestinian issue to the Egyptian-Israeli peace negotiations, the agreed formulation spoke about a transient autonomy without specifying statehood as the end result, let alone insisting on its attainment. Nor was Sadat deterred from opting for a separate Egyptian-Israeli peace once Arafat rejected his overture. Add to this the Assad regime's adamant subscription to its perception of Palestine as Syria's southern province and its outright rejection of "peace" that did not entail Israel's destruction.

This half-hearted approach toward Palestinian nationalism notwithstanding, decades of staunch anti-Zionist propaganda have entrenched the "Palestine question" in the collective regional psyche to the extent of making it exceedingly difficult for the Arab states to conclude functional peace treaties with Israel without a pro forma Palestinian-Israeli agreement. Yet while this state of affairs gives the Palestinians some veto power over inter-Arab politics, it is unlikely to derail the intensifying, multifaceted, and increasingly overt Arab-Israeli collaboration even in the event of severe deterioration in Israeli-Palestinian relations, as the 2020 normalization agreements between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco show.

Jordan is Palestine. Jordanians are Palestinian

The San Remo Resolution is the subject of research of international law scholar and lawyer, Jacques Gauthier, Ph.D. The Toronto-based Gauthier, who is Christian, spent a quarter-century researching and writing a 1,300-page thesis to investigate legal ownership rights of the ancient-modern capital city.

Through San Remo, a legal document, “The Jewish people have been given the right to establish a home, based on the recognition of their historical connection and the grounds for reconstituting this national home,” Gauthier explained..

The Palestine Mandate included both sides of the Jordan River and was passed in 1922 by the League of Nations. It should be noted that the Mandate as passed violated the rights given to the Jews at San Remo in that it restricted their homeland to the lands west off the river. But all of the land was managed under the same Mandate, It was intended in 1922 that Jordan would be the Arab state and Israel would be the Jewish state

The Mandate included this recital. “Whereas recognition has thereby [i.e. by the Treaty of Sèvres] been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country”

Jordan declared independence in 1946 and Israel did in 1948.

Thus the Jewish state includes all of the lands west of the Jordan River.

And thus Jordan is Palestine. And most people living in Jordan are Palestinians.

In order to make this a reality the King Abdullah II must abdicate and the Palestinians must take control of their country..

By Daled Amos

Antisemitism is on the rise.
We see it not only getting worse on college campuses, but also in the cities.

The reactions by university officials seem tepid at best.
Local government officials are not doing any better.

And on the international stage, calls for the genocide of Jews are ignored --

Last week, Palestinian Media Watch reported an Imam calling for the extermination of Jews -- not the defeat of Israelis, but rather the murder of Jews:

...a Palestinian imam led a prayer in a mosque that was broadcast on PA TV, calling for the extermination of Jews:

“Allah delight us with the extermination of the evil Jews”
In addition, he called for extermination of those he called “their hypocritical supporters who have evil and their hearts.”

Significantly, this imam presented the extermination of Jews in his Ramadan prayer in the Al-Ain Mosque in El-Bireh, near Ramallah, as something that will bring pleasure and “delight” to Palestinians.

This public call for genocide was brought to you by Abbas's Palestinian Authority, the good people who are consistently referred to as Israel's peace partners.

Meanwhile, that same week, Hamas joined in the hatefest, proudly proclaiming that they do in fact target women and children

There is a big show by self-described human rights groups, cobbling together arguments that Israel is guilty of apartheid, but calls for the genocide of Jews don't seem to interest them.

An automatic reaction we often have to these kinds of displays of Jew-hatred is to point out that if any other group was singled out for violence in this way, there would be a public reaction, a pushback.

Today...not so much.

But while today the West will not come out in force to repudiate these threats against Jews, this was not always the case.

Remember when Iranian president Ahmadinejad called for wiping Israel off the face of the earth?

Back in 2005, when Ahmadinejad talked about erasing Israel, both Europe and Russia condemned the statement:

Governments around the world expressed shock and scorn Thursday at the Iranian president's call for Israel to be "wiped off the map," and several summoned Tehran's envoys in their capitals for a reprimand.

...Israel's deputy ambassador to Britain, Zvi Rav-Ner, said it was unheard of for a U.N. member state to call "for genocide and wiping off of another member state of the U.N."

..."I have never come across a situation of the president of a country saying they want to ... wipe out another country," Blair said.

"Their attitude towards Israel, their attitude towards terrorism, their attitude on the nuclear weapons issue, it isn't acceptable....Can you imagine a state like that with an attitude like that having a nuclear weapon?" he said.
"Calls for violence, and for the destruction of any state, are manifestly inconsistent with any claim to be a mature and responsible member of the international community," the EU leaders said in a statement.

...France, Russia, Spain and The Netherlands summoned the Iranian ambassadors in their capitals to explain the remarks.

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said the ambassador "was reminded that the right of Israel to exist cannot be contested."

...Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, on a visit to Israel, criticized the Iranian leader. "I don't agree that anyone should challenge the right of any U.N. member to exist, this is indeed inadmissible," Lavrov said.

The condemnations against Iran were public, unequivocal and widespread.

Today, almost 2 decades later, we live in different times:

o Abbas pushes ahead with the pay for slay program, incentivizing terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians -- but today, no one suggests that the observer status at the UN should be made conditional on his eliminating that program.

o Hamas has pushed the concept 'human shields' to the point that the the terrorist group can hide behind the entire population of Gaza, putting other countries in the situation of offering to rebuild Gaza after each war it instigates, while the Hamas terrorists avoid respnsibility -- and who knows how much of the offered aid ends up in their pockets?

o  Contrary to what Blair said at the time, today, it is not hard at all to "imagine a state like that with an attitude like that having a nuclear weapon"

o  Calls for violence against and the destruction of Israel don't seem to bother the EU all that much anymore. Instead, there are condemnations for "the cycle of violence" and Israel is called upon to exercise restraint.

o  And when is the last time we heard about Russia criticizing Iran?

Are things different now because the West sees that words of condemnation are not enough, and they just do not have the stomach to do anything more? Do terrorist states like Iran know this and so not only do not fear the West, but do not hesitate to kidnap citizens of other countries for exorbitant ransoms?

And does the West really believe that the threat is limited to Israel's backyard?

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Hamas' claim of responsibility for Ariel attack appears political, not factual

Yesterday, Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades took responsibility for the terrorist murder of security officer Vyacheslav Golev, in Ariel.

They claimed that the two men captured for the murder were Hamas mujahadeen.

This is the first time Hamas has claimed responsibility for a terror attack in quite a while.

The claim is dubious. If it was true, they would have claimed responsibility immediately, not waiting a few days.

During those two days, Hamas essentially took over the Eid al Fitr celebrations on the Temple Mount, turning them into pro-terror rallies and unfurling a huge Hamas banner showing a militant with a surface-to-air missile.

Meanwhile, Hamas leader Yahya al-Sinwar made a speech where he said threatened a war against Israel and Jews worldwide if Israel does pretty much anything he doesn't like.

Like the other terror groups, Hamas has praised the recent terror attacks that killed several Israelis. What appears to be happening now is that Hamas wants to take advantage of those attacks = which the Palestinian Arabs overwhelmingly support - by appearing to be the driving force behind them.

Hamas is painting Mahmoud Abbas as weak and out of touch. The groups has been pointing out that he was nowhere to be seen during Eid al Fitr celebrations, and didn't even appear at the ceremony to lay a wreath on the grave of Yasir Arafat in Ramallah.

When the first intifada broke out, it was not driven by the PLO but by individual Palestinians. The PLO, then in Tunisia, managed to wrest control back and sideline the ringleaders. The current terror wave is similarly decentralized, driven by a steady diet of incitement and direct calls to violence in Palestinian media, as well as frustration with Israeli political gains in the Arab world that have been sidelining the Palestinian cause.

Hamas senses an opportunity to take charge. They want to say that their leadership is what is behind the terrorism, that the Palestinian Authority has failed to bring any tangible results to Palestinians, and that only murdering Jews will gain Palestinians the honor they crave.

By taking responsibility for the Ariel attack, Hamas is positioning itself to be seen as the real leader of all Palestinians. It also hopes to attract recruits in the West Bank where it has not been too successful up until now, to make this claim of responsibility into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Palestinian Authority has no tools to combat this battle for the hearts and minds of Palestinians. There is no "peace camp" that advocates compromise with Israel and the benefits it would bring. There are only two war camps - the Fatah one that advocates political warfare while praising (and paying for) past terror attacks, and the Hamas one that openly praises and advocates terrorism. Palestinian media is filled with incitement and has absolutely no content that calls for real peace or even against terrorism.

In such an environment, Hamas and Islamic Jihad control the message and look like strong leaders.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

On April 6, Jewish Voice for Peace sent out a letter asking students to "boycott" Google and Amazon for working on a cloud project for the Israeli government.

But asking students to actually boycott Google and Amazon is crazy talk, so instead, they asked students to refuse to take internships or jobs with those companies "until they drop Project Nimbus."

You already see the issue. Google and Amazon are giant, but they have far more applicants than they have jobs. College students pledging to not apply for jobs would literally not be noticed by these tech giants. And no student is going to apply to a job or internship only to refuse it afterwards.

It is a totally meaningless gesture. But it is a gesture that JVP assumed would attract thousands of students, especially non-tech students, because they figured they would want to virtue signal not to accept jobs that they wouldn't be qualified for and would never apply to anyway.

Sure enough, a few days after this email, the articles started coming about how "hundreds" of students - 550, to be exact - had signed this meaningless pledge. And it was painted as a great victory.

On Monday, a month later, JVP sent out an identical letter. And according to the website that they send people to, the number of signers has reached only 730 (as of this writing.)

Over four weeks, they barely added anyone to the signatories.

Now let's look at the numbers. There are 20 million undergraduate college students in the US. You could get far more than 700 to sign a petition to draft Scooby-Doo to be President than to commit to not work for Google and Amazon. 700 students represent 0.004% of the students in the country. There are 1000 times more people of college age who believe that the Earth is flat than who say they want to boycott jobs from Google and Amazon.

When Project Nimbus was first in the news, the BDSers made a huge deal that 1000 employees of Amazon and Google wrote a letter opposing it. That was equally unimpressive - one tenth of one percent of all 1.2 million employees, which tech people would call "line noise." Yet the BDSers took those thousand and parlayed it into op-eds in major media.

We see this all the time. Anti-Israel demonstrations that attract tiny crowds are trumpeted as major accomplishments.

The Israel haters are very good at trying to turn their worst failures into victories. Unfortunately, the media is often too willing to do their bidding.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

05/02 Links Pt2: An Open Letter to Anti-Zionists from a Veteran of the Left; Harvard Crimson is drinking the BDS Kool-Aid; Diary of a journey: An Arab-Israeli delegation to Auschwitz

From Ian:

An Open Letter to Anti-Zionists from a Veteran of the Left

Over one year on, the leading lights of the British far left are men and women who have been repeatedly accused and often disciplined for antisemitism. On social media and in activist groups, they rail against the ‘witch hunt’ they darkly suggest is being orchestrated by the Israeli government. Flinging the ubiquitous hashtag #ItWasAScam, Corbyn’s defenders dismiss in toto the mountains of evidence of Labour Party antisemitism. Meanwhile, in Facebook groups such as the plaintively named ‘Jeremy Corbyn should have been Prime Minister,’ commenters vie for the most vitriolic denunciations of Israel and fervid adoration of Corbyn. I am disgusted by their antisemitism, stubborn disregard of facts and messianic fervour, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand it.

Here’s a story. When I was in that Trotskyist group, I was for a time on its newspaper’s editorial board. An opponent organisation that we hated, with zeal rivaling that towards ‘the Zionistsss,’ accused our Great Leader of having made a blatantly racist remark years earlier, and he was furious at us for failing to sufficiently defend him against this slander. Yet even as I joined the other malefactors in sincerely groveling for forgiveness, in a repudiated pocket of my brain I knew, and I knew my fellow accused also knew: the Great Leader did make that racist remark. The evidence existed in black and white, in a readily available public transcript. Yet even though I ‘knew’, I can honestly say I didn’t allow myself to know until well after I’d quit.

It’s incredibly difficult to see facts that jeopardise your very sense of belonging. We all need this sense, a warm refuge of comradeship and meaning; above all, a loved and respected leader who gives us a sense of security. Challenging the core beliefs of your anti-Zionist community will be hard and painful. It may throw into question seemingly everything you believe and your place in the world. Do it anyway. Antisemitism is vile and it is increasing everywhere, including on the left. As a socialist—and I do still consider myself some kind of socialist—I call on you to reflect.

Antisemitism does not only come from antisemites. The world is not so easily divided into antisemites and non-antisemites, black and white. Particularly when it comes from the left, antisemitism exists in shades of grey: nebulous feelings and beliefs that morph according to circumstances. Sometimes antisemitism pits people against their own Jewish identities. It echoes ancient lies about Jews and makes some otherwise well-meaning people believe them at some level—no matter how sincerely they proclaim that they don’t. And it frightens and angers me that there is so little willingness on the left to reflect on this, or on history. The Holocaust was possible not simply because the Nazis decided to exterminate the Jews, but because enough of German society shared enough of the Nazis’ beliefs about Jews to find their ‘solution’ acceptable. As for the rest, enough people just didn’t care what happened to Jews. It took long-standing murky, distorted perceptions about Jews for the Holocaust to be not only conceived but horrifically realised. It took myriad shades of grey.

I don’t know where today’s antisemitism is headed, but it strikes a terrible fear in my heart. So I beseech you, anti-Zionists: Think it possible that you may be mistaken.

WaPo Opinion Piece Decries ‘Anti-Palestinian’ Media, but Gets Every Single Fact Wrong

Ironically, this quote appeared in a slanted Washington Post opinion piece containing numerous falsehoods. Written by two American-Palestinian activists, “How Media Coverage Whitewashes Israeli State Violence Against Palestinians” argues that, by “neglecting to contextualize Israeli state violence, the media has given the Israeli government a free pass, enabling it to continue ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people with impunity.”

In their April 28 article, Laura Albast and Cat Knarr furthermore assert that “headlines in outlets such as the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, NBC News and others use language that fails to recognize the power imbalance between the Israeli military apparatus and the native Palestinian people.”

As HonestReporting has repeatedly detailed (see, for instance, here, here, here and here), the opposite is true. In actuality, news organizations all too often dismiss the reality of Palestinian terrorism.

Case in point: on April 30, the Reuters wire service headlined an article “Israeli and Palestinian killed in West Bank violence,” lumping Israeli terror victim Vyacheslav Golev together with a former Palestinian security prisoner who was shot during violent clashes and was hailed a “martyr” by multiple US-designated terror groups (see here, here, here and here). Yihya Adwan reportedly served as a commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Nonetheless, Albast, a senior editor at the Institute for Palestine Studies-USA, and Knarr, who serves as the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights’ communications director, accuse journalists of “conveying incomplete narratives that give reign to Israeli aggression.” In an attempt to substantiate this claim, the authors charge Israeli police with “attack[ing] Palestinian worshipers at the holy site of Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem” on April 15, in what they describe as “carefully calculated… state violence.”

Authors of opinion pieces and editorials are entitled to express their personal opinions and beliefs. However, in the words of the famous Senator, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

Yoseph Haddad: Diary of a journey: An Arab-Israeli delegation to Auschwitz

Last week, I had the privilege of leading a delegation to Poland composed of Israeli Arabs – Muslims, Christians and Druze. The delegation, organized by the Together Vouch for Each Other NGO, went there to learn about the Holocaust up close, to see the horrors, and to make the issue of Holocaust remembrance accessible to Arab society in Israel and the Arab world.

This was especially important to us because in Arab society, we do not learn enough about the Holocaust, certainly not compared to what Jews learn. There are no visits to Yad Vashem, no lesson plans on the subject and no memorial ceremonies on Holocaust Remembrance Day. The vast majority of us have never met a Holocaust survivor and certainly haven’t been on a trip to Poland.

The day after we arrived in Kraków, we visited the factory of Oskar Schindler, the greatest of the Righteous Among the Nations.

It was a powerful and special visit for us. A delegation of non-Jews, we came to honor a non-Jewish man who saved the lives of Jews by losing his fortune and risking his life. We were all moved by the gravity of the occasion. We began to grasp the significance of our journey.

We arrived at Auschwitz on the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. For all of us, it was our first visit there.

We made history by being the first group to hold the ceremony there in Arabic. It is difficult to describe how moved we all were, to hear eulogies in Arabic among the barbed wire and the pavilions, to light candles in memory of the victims and to hear the personal testimony of our American Jewish friend Eric Rubin, who joined the delegation and told the story of his family who perished there. As I translated from English to Arabic, I broke down along with him. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day itself, we returned to Auschwitz and participated in the March of the Living. Our group received a lot of love and support from other participants who were excited to hear Arabic there and even more excited to learn that we were a delegation of Arab citizens of Israel.

Eighty years ago, Jews marched hopeless to their deaths; we marched together, Jews and Arabs, all of us full of hope and singing “Hevenu Shalom Aleichem” (“We come to greet you in peace”).

I need to do a deeper dive into the psychological benefits of antisemitism. People hate Jews because they get something out of it, and in the case of the radical Left, a lot of that is indicated by this cartoon - it enhances their sense of self-righteousness that is behind many of their other activities.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

BDS: "We call to boycott all Israeli companies. OK, not really - only the small number we think we can bully."

In the wake of the Harvard Crimson's editorial page saying that they support the BDS movement, it is worthwhile to review exactly what BDS calls to boycott.

The answer is - it is arbitrary.

In their "know what to boycott" page, they say, "The BDS movement calls for a boycott of all the products of all Israeli -- and international -- companies that are involved in Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights. Virtually all Israeli companies are complicit to some degree in Israel’s system of occupation and apartheid."

Except that they also say, on the same page, "We focus our boycotts on a small number of companies and products for maximum impact. "

OK, so that means that they call for everyone to boycott all products, but they only publicize a small percentage of them.

But do they actually call to boycott them, as they claim?

They might call for it, but they sure don't do it themselves!

Here's a partial list of companies that have R&D or other ties to Israel, from Deloitte and Touche:

Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft,Visa, PayPal, Snapchat, eBay, Samsung, Lenovo, GE - you know that not one of the BDSers telling you to boycott all these companies are doing it themselves! None of them choose their airlines, their cellphones, their social media, their email service or their credit cards based on whether those companies do business in Israel.

The BDS "Call" is not to boycott companies doing business in Israel, but to boycott companies that they determine that they can successfully bully!

That doesn't sound like such a principled position anymore, does it?

So, is The Crimson calling to boycott all Israeli companies or only the ones that some self-proclaimed leaders of BDS they think they can threaten? Because either they support targeted intimidation and threats - or they are hypocrites.

Pick one, oh moral giants of Harvard!

(h/t Irene)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

05/02 Links Pt1: How Muslims Changed the Status Quo on the Temple Mount; Netherlands rejects Amnesty report accusing Israel of apartheid; Russian FM: So what if Zelensky’s Jewish, so was Hitler

From Ian:

JCPA: How Muslims Changed the Status Quo on the Temple Mount

The status quo on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, as formulated by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan in 1967, no longer exists. In the 55 years since the Six-Day War, changes in the status quo have greatly improved the Muslims' hold on the Temple Mount.

Muslims have inaugurated four new mosques on the Temple Mount since 1967: the Dome of the Rock, which originally was not built as a mosque; the El-Marwani Mosque, located underground in Solomon's Stables; the "Ancient Al-Aqsa" Mosque, established in 1998 under the existing upper mosque; and the Gate of Mercy prayer area, set up and turned into a mosque in 2019.

The establishment of additional mosques on the mount stemmed from a new definition of the Temple Mount compound by the Muslims, who began to refer to all of the area as "Al-Aqsa" and to regard the entire mount as one great mosque. Until the Six-Day War, the compound as a whole was called "Al-Haram al-Sharif" (the Holy and Noble Place), and was defined differently from the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

In the first decade after the Six-Day War, Jews were allowed to enter the mount through the Chain Gate and the Cotton Merchants' Gate, but today can only enter through the Mughrabi Gate. For two decades, Jews were allowed to visit for more hours of the day and at all parts of the mount, even the interior of the mosques. Today, Jews' visits to the mount are much more limited in time and in the areas permitted.

While displaying flags is prohibited on the Temple Mount, in practice, the only flag not displayed there is Israel's. Palestinian Authority, PLO, Hamas, and Hizb al-Tahrir flags can often be seen, while a small Israeli flag on the desk of an officer at the Temple Mount police station had to be removed following Muslim protest.

After a succession of changes to the status quo by the Muslim side, a change was also made on the Jewish side. For several years, on the eastern flank of the Temple Mount, with the permission and surveillance of the police, Jews have been praying in a "nondemonstrative" manner, without prayer shawls or prayer books.

MEMRI: Jordanian Senator And Former Media Affairs Minister: Extremists Promote Violence In Al-Aqsa Mosque And Temple Mount To Push For Military Confrontation And Score Political Points; For All Its Shortcomings, Peace With Israel Is 100 Times Better Than War

In reaction to the recent tension in Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Jordanian government leveled baseless allegations against Israel's "continuous steps to change the historical and legal status quo in Al-Aqsa Mosque" despite Israel's repeated reiterations of its commitment to protecting the freedom of worship for Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

On April 17, 2022, the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issues a statement[1] saying that Israel's attempts to "impose the temporal and spatial division of Al-Aqsa Mosque" represent "a dangerous escalation and a condemned breach of the international law." The statement also noted that Israel bears "full responsibility for the dangerous repercussions of this escalation that undermines all efforts to maintain the comprehensive ceasefire and avoid more violence that threatens peace and security" and stressed that "Al Aqsa Mosque is a place of worship for Muslims alone and that the Jordan-run Jerusalem Awqaf and Aqsa Affairs Department has the exclusive authority to supervise the holy site's affairs and manage entries."

The statement by Jordan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs came a day after 76 members of the Jordanian parliament signed a petition[2] urging their government to cut diplomatic ties with Israel, shut down the Israeli Embassy, expel the Israeli ambassador, and suspend bilateral agreements with Israel. According to Ammonnews.net, the petition stressed that "Resorting to condemnation and disapproval of what is taking place in Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque is an option that no longer matches the interest of Jordan or the aspirations and sentiments of the people of Jordan and most certainly does not match the sacrifices of those stationed at the front lines of Al-Quds [Jerusalem] and Al-Aqsa Mosque." The petition then saluted the people of Al-Quds "who have remained steadfast against the terrorist forces of the occupation and its actions..." the petition also urged the government to intervene at "a highest level to ensure the release of the imprisoned and kidnapped young men of Al-Quds [Jerusalem] who are taking part in Ribat [guard duty] and who are defending the dignity of the ummah [members of which were arrested] in Al-Aqsa Mosque."

Meanwhile, in an unusual article, Jordanian Senator Muhammad Hussein Al-Momani who is also former Jordanian minister of media affairs and former government spokesman, condemned[3] "the extremists" for promoting violence to score political points and push for military confrontation with Israel. In the article, which was titled "Temple Mount During Every Ramadan" and was published in the Jordanian daily Alghad, the writer condemned those who criticize Jordan's official position on the recent tension saying it is an "advanced position, highly truthful, strong and nationalist" and described those criticizing it as "unfair and ungrateful."

The following are translated excerpts from the article.
"The pre-Ramadan efforts to ensure calm are relatively in place despite recent events, but no one can guarantee that the situation will remain calm because Ramadan and its last ten days are yet to come and the Jewish holidays are still ongoing."

Prosecutors to Charge Jerusalem Muslim Cleric for Incitement to Terrorism

The Israel Police announced on Sunday that it has completed the investigation of a Jerusalem Muslim cleric who was arrested on April 22 on suspicion of incitement to terrorism.

The cleric is due to be charged by state prosecutors on Tuesday, police said.

The 56-year-old cleric from Beit Hanina in eastern Jerusalem delivered a speech on the Temple Mount in which he stated that “the liberation of the Al Aqsa Mosque will only happen through weapons and force,” according to police.

Following his arrest, the suspect was questioned by Jerusalem Police District’s Central Unit and a court extended his custody on multiple occasions.

Meanwhile, police said, the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court agreed on Sunday to a police request to extend by three days the custody of a Muslim cleric from Lod, who was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of incitement to violence in a speech that was recorded and distributed on social media networks.

“The Israel Police will continue to work with the other law enforcement agencies to investigation and deal, in an uncompromising manner, with anyone who exploits their public and religious position to incite to terrorism, violence and disturbances against public order illegally,” said police.

There has been lots of justified criticism of the Anti-Defamation League under Jonathan Greenblatt, and how it has apparently embraced the woke ideology and de-emphasized leftist antisemitism. (One of the most pointed and trenchant critiques came from Seth Mandel in this Commentary piece last month - it is worth reading.)

Perhaps in response, Greenblatt gave a speech at the ADL Virtual National Leadership Summit yesterday. (Video here.) While it only partially addresses the critics, he was emphatic that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, and his arguments are as good as one can find. He did not pull any punches.

To those who still cling to the idea that antizionism is not antisemitism – let me clarify this for you as clearly as I can – antizionism is antisemitism.

I will repeat: antizionism is antisemitism.

Antizionism as an ideology is rooted in rage. It is predicated on one concept: the negation of another people, a concept as alien to the modern discourse as white supremacy. It requires a willful denial of even a superficial history of Judaism and the vast history of the Jewish people. And, when an idea is born out of such shocking intolerance, it leads to, well, shocking acts.

I’m sorry, but why would this surprise anyone?

Let me give you a recent example.

All of us held our breath in recent weeks as yet another wave of terror attacks rolled over Israel. Murderous terrorists in cities across the country targeted anyone within arm’s reach – police officers, children, teachers, etc.

And how did organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine (also known as SJP) or the Jewish Voice for Peace – this name is not intended be ironic – respond? With increasingly dangerous language.

Just this month, Georgetown SJP invited Mohammed El-Kurd to its campus, a man who alleged that Jewish Israelis and Zionists eat the organs of Palestinians and claimed that Zionism is inherently linked to “blood thirsty[sic] and violent” actions.

And in the face of recent violence against Israeli civilians, an SJP spinout, Within Our Lifetime, marched through Manhattan a few weeks ago. They carried signs and chanted slogans.

And what did they say?

Did they call to “stop the violence?”

No.

Did they call to “give peace a chance?”

No.

They called to “globalize the intifada.”

Let me say that one more time – their response to a surge in homicidal violence against civilians was literally a call for more homicidal violence against civilians. And this isn’t the first time SJP and students have called for this.

And this isn’t just SJP. Recently, JVP in NY promoted another rally using the hashtag #globalizetheintifada.

Now you might hear from some voices on the fringe that the word “intifada” is not about a call to violence, that it is about liberation.

That is a complete fiction. It is an utter lie.

An even cursory examination of history reveals that the Intifada was far from a Ghandian campaign of civil disobedience. It was an armed conflict that ranged from rocks being thrown at soldiers to suicide bombers detonating themselves inside crowded restaurants full of women and children in Jerusalem.

And when activists insist that they don’t hate Jews, just “Zionists” and “Zionism,” here’s a quick history lesson—the sleight of hand, replacing the word “Jews” with “Zionists” to claim some type of perceived moral high ground, wasn’t invented in Berkeley or Brooklyn but rather in Moscow. It was a rhetorical technique pioneered in the 1950s by Soviet disinformation specialists. You see, Stalinists wanted to claim that their Communism inoculated them from antisemitism, that their seething hatred of the Jewish people and the systemic antisemitism so rampant in the Soviet Union was about opposition to imagined Western Imperialism, that it was rooted in politics not prejudice.

It wasn’t. It was propaganda and prejudice then, it is propaganda and prejudice now, even if the lies today are repeated by DSA boosters rather than 1950s Kremlin supporters.

Why do I feel the need to call out these words?

Because words have power.

Words have meaning.

And, as ADL fought back when candidate Trump leveled slanders against Mexicans and Muslims in 2015… or when President Trump made the preposterous claim that the 2020 election was rigged and that his supporters should “fight like hell…,” or when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene makes horrendous comparisons between COVID-19 mitigation efforts and the Holocaust, as well as embracing antisemitic conspiracy theories like QAnon, we fought back against these statements because, well, it starts with words.

And so, when activists knowingly call for violence against another people – that is not normal discourse, that is not reasonable rhetoric – that is extremism.

When campus organizations like SJP interrupt speeches, disrupt events and call for an end to any action that normalizes any relationships, or programs associated, with Israel or Israelis – including participating with the local J Street chapter as happened at Tufts University, my own alma mater, last month, that is extremism.

When groups like Jewish Voice for Peace tweet out “Jews, hands off Al Aqsa,” when they absolutely know that such language is inflammatory, that the community literally is nowhere near the Al Aqsa Mosque, let alone even permitted to pray there, that is extremism.

When SJP in Chicago urges students not to take, and I am sorry for the language, “shitty Zionist classes” because it is taught by two Jewish people or when a law school student affiliated with SJP demands that Zionist professors not be welcomed on campus and further demand that Zionist students not be in spaces with Palestinian students because Zionism is a threat, that is extremism.

When the head of the San Francisco branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, astonishingly claims that ADL, Jewish Federations, and Hillel chapters are the “enemies” of her community and when she concocts a wild conspiracy of interconnected Jewish organizations that supposedly are planning and plotting to harm Muslims, including the groundless accusation that the Israeli military secretly trains U.S. police to harm people of color, I’m sorry but that is extremism.

And when CAIR itself takes no action itself to correct the conspiracism, to acknowledge the hurt of such slander, and instead opts to blame the victim and defend the bigot, that is extremism.

So SJP, JVP and CAIR – these groups epitomize the Radical Left, the photo inverse of the Extreme Right that ADL long has tracked.

Unlike their right-wing analogs, these organizations might not have armed themselves or engaged in an insurrection designed to topple our government, but these radical actors indisputably and unapologetically regularly denigrate and dehumanize Jews. Again, I am not diminishing the singular threat of white nationalists; however, as we saw last May, vicious rhetoric is not just an abstract issue. No, it is dangerous and destabilizing because it can manifest in the real world and impel individuals to act violently.

You see, if you demonize another group enough, there are more than a few people out there who will act…who will think it’s OK to slur a classmate during a pick-up basketball game, or spray paint a synagogue, or jump the Haredi man walking down the street in Brooklyn, or – God forbid – do even worse.

That is why we are seeing this jump in antisemitic incidents – because groups from all sides of the ideological spectrum are using their words to make it OK to hate Jews.

As an organization dedicated to stopping the defamation of the Jewish people, it means we must act against the antizionist extremists just as we have against other extremists from the white supremacists and alt-right ilk who murder Jews in the places where we pray and continue to pose the greatest threat to the homeland in terms of violent domestic extremism, to religious zealots and Islamist fanatics who spread hate through their own channels and commit acts of violence, let alone inspire others like a deranged man from the U.K. who held four people hostage in a synagogue in Texas earlier this year. We will continue to combat these threats even as we apply more concentrated energy toward the threat of radical antizionism.

How?

We will use our analytic capabilities to expose their ideas and ideology.

We will use our litigation skills to hold them accountable for their harm.

We will use our advocacy muscles to push policymakers to take action.

And we will use our communications know-how to share these stories with the world.

Now I can anticipate the reaction by these groups to these remarks.

Some will try to delegitimize ADL right out of the box – they will point to the slanderous campaign, Drop the ADL, that uses innuendo and untruths to libel our organization and assert that we somehow are not a civil rights organization. An obvious falsehood, one disproved by more than a century of activism.

Some will try to tell us – Jews – what is antisemitism and what isn’t antisemitism – and that we should not feel threatened. This is classic victim-blaming. It is not tolerated when it is done to African Americans, Latinos, or LGBTQ Americans – and it should not be tolerated when it is done to Jews either.

Some will claim that putting these groups in the same category as right-wing extremists somehow makes ADL anti-Muslim or anti-Palestinian. This is also a lie, one as toxic and false as the claims by alt-right bigots that calling out their extremism makes ADL anti-Christian or anti-white.

Some —such as JVP – will attempt to use their Judaism as a shield. And undoubtedly there are many among their ranks who genuinely do not intend to be antisemitic, who think their activism is rooted in their Jewish values. But neither their identity nor their intent relieves them of responsibility for their actions.

Whatever excuse they give or label they use, we at ADL simply will judge them by their record and their actions. And if they spout extremism, we will expose that hate without hesitation.

This doesn't make up for all the many missteps that the ADL has made under Greenblatt, and it should have happened years ago, but this is a welcome public stance that puts forth the argument well.

It is especially notable that no one can accuse Greenblatt of being a right-wing ideologue.

Credit where credit is due, and Greenblatt deserves credit here.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

EXCLUSIVE: Photo of the secret Israeli tool of torture and oppression for Palestinians over Ramadan

The official Palestinian Wafa news agency writes about today's holiday of Eid al-FItr in Jerusalem:

Eid in Jerusalem.. Insistence on making joy despite suffering

Jerusalemite activist Osama Barham told Wafa: "The occupation restrictions, the closure of streets and checkpoints, and the deprivation of our people from outside Jerusalem to come, added an aura of sadness, but the Jerusalemites insisted on creating joy and happiness.

It is noteworthy that more than 200,000 worshipers performed the Eid al-Fitr prayer, in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, where the takbeers were raised in its premises, amid large crowds of worshipers who exchanged congratulations, and others distributed sweets at its doors .

The agency bravely decided to show only a photo of the joy and not the suffering.

And here was the scene this morning when 200,000 Muslims somehow managed to evade oppressive Israeli restrictions and pray on Judaism's holiest site despite obvious Zionist/Jewish Islamophobia:

But, as every article emphasizes, this happiness is tempered by the extreme Israeli restrictions on who can enter the sacred site there isn't a square centimeter to spare.

What is the tool of oppression that the "Israeli Occupation Forces" use to restrict unlimited Muslim access to a limited space?

After much research, I found a photo of this torture tool:

Here's an exclusive photo of it being prepared to torture Muslims:

This vile instrument has been responsible for most of the complaints by Palestinian Arabs against Israel during Holy Saturday, Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr.

Sure, it looks just like similar barricades used in every event involving crowds worldwide. But when it is used by Zionists, it is inherently evil and destructive, not to mention a human rights violation and possibly a war crime.

And if Israeli police didn't use them and the people are crushed to death in a stampede - as used to be typical in the annual Saudi hajj at the Kaaba in Mecca - that would be Israel's fault, too.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Al-Makassed has been Jerusalem's largest Arab hospital for many years. And in recent years, it has been under severe financial strain. Doctors went on strike last year after not being paid for months.

Now they are ready to do it again, and the hospital might not survive.

Most of its patients - about 70% - come from referrals by the Palestinian Authority, who are supposed to pay their medical expenses. But it hasn't been doing that. Doctors have not been paid at all during Ramadan.

Jerusalem Arabs can go to Israeli hospitals and generally prefer the Jewish-run hospitals, so the funding al-Makassed gets from Israeli HMOs is limited.

The hospital is described as in danger of collapse.

As of last year, the hospital had about $49 million in debts.

Now compare that to the "pay for slay" program of Palestinian Authority paying terrorists salaried and their families a stipend. That expense is well above $300 million a year.

If the PA would stop its immoral policy of paying murderers and their families. it could easily afford to pay its debts to al-Makassed.

But paying "martyrs" and their families is entrenched in a society that praises terrorists every day.

Actual hospitals might fail because the Palestinian Authority prioritizes the welfare of murderers and terrorists.

Think about that.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

NPR gushes over fan of terrorist Rasmea Odeh

NPR's All Things Considered has a worshipful interview with Reem Assil about her new cookbook, "Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora."

During the interview, Assil laughingly says that Israel stole Palestinian culture and cuisine and land:

Well, you know, hummus existed long before the state of Israel was created in 1948, and so there is an intentional omission of Palestinian (laughter). And that invisibilizes me - you know? - the fact not just that Israeli hummus is the Trader Joe's hummus, the, you know, the Americanized versions of hummus...
And it feels - yeah. That sort of, you know, whether intentional or not intentional, devoiding food from its - cutting it off from its lineage and negating a whole people that enjoyed and subsisted off of that food for generations is really dangerous. You know, for Palestinians, we don't have much left. You know, we - you know, a lot of our lands have been taken from us. Our - you know, we've been cut off from our foodways. So our food is like the last frontier of, you know, marking our identity. And so it's really important for me as a chef here in this country to be able to talk about that food and have people question where the food comes from.... It's inherently political.

And that is the entire reason NPR devotes a segment to a first time cookbook author. Not because her food is so unique or noteworthy, but because it is ammunition against Israel.

And who is Reem?

We've discussed her before. Here is what her restaurant looks like:

Yes, that's a huge mural of terrorist Rasmea Odeh, murderer of two Jews.

NPR is praising a person whose hero is a terrorist.

Reem adds this ironic note:

When I created my restaurants, you know, seven years ago, I wanted anybody to walk into Reem's and feel at home, whether they knew anything about Arab food or not.

Except for Jews.

(h/t Irene)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

05/01 Links: Ruthie Blum: Ramadan goes out with a bang; Can the United Nations Survive the War in Ukraine?; TIME Magazine comes out batting for Assad and Hezbolllah

From Ian:

Can the United Nations Survive the War in Ukraine?

As well as empathizing with the Ukrainians’ plight, Guterres also spoke plainly when in Moscow. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a violation of its territorial integrity and against the Charter of the United Nations,” he said, a rare example of a UN statement with no ambiguities at all. Standing alongside a frowning Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, Guterres offered another pithily worded summary of the problem: “We have not Ukrainian troops in the territory of the Russian Federation, but we have Russian troops in the territory of [Ukraine].”

As Guterres acknowledged in an interview with CNN, the United Nations is not in a position to bring peace to Ukraine; only Russia can do that, by withdrawing its troops. Encouragingly, neither did Guterres advocate endless rounds of meetings as hostilities become more entrenched on the ground, suggesting that the United Nations would only be able to play a peace-building role after the war had definitively ended. He said he had told Putin “the same things I say in New York … which means that the Russian invasion is against the charter of the United Nations, is a violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine and that this war must end as quickly as possible.”

Yet it is hard to see where Guterres’s honest appraisal of Russia’s invasion and its impact on Ukraine and the world more broadly will lead. Russia isn’t any old aggressor, but a member of the UN Security Council armed with nuclear weapons that its leaders have invoked on more than one occasion in the last two months. The split within the world body between those states with liberal democratic orders (Israel being one of them) and states for whom the value of sovereignty lies in the principle of non-interference (thus enabling them to persecute their own populations without sanction) is the organization’s most enduring. If the response of democratic nations to the Russian invasion is to promote a rules-based world order — the success of which requires all governments to treat both their subject populations and their external borders with solemn respect — then it begs the question of how useful the United Nations can be as long as Moscow exercises a power of veto.

The United Nations won’t follow the example of the League of Nations by expelling Russia. But democratic member states can — and should — take all necessary measures to isolate Russia within its ranks and to expose it as the pariah state it is. Beyond that, the debate about how to establish a rules-based world order that actually works — a debate that also took place in 1919, 1945 and 1989 — is still hanging.

Kremlin-linked group: Israelis helping Ukraine evacuees are mercenaries

A Kremlin-linked Telegram channel claimed that 10 Israeli officials who worked on the Ukraine-Poland border are mercenaries, publishing their names and passport details.

The list, published on a channel called “River” on the encrypted messaging app, “can help Israel’s enemies, such as Iran intel,” journalist Yossi Melman, who first reported the story, tweeted.

The Israelis on the list included diplomats, consular employees and embassy security guards, among others who helped receive Israelis who fled Ukraine over its border with Poland after Russia invaded.

The Kremlin-linked group claimed they found the names on the computer of Vitaliy Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv Oblast in southern Ukraine, whose office was bombed by Russia in late March.

The Foreign Ministry declined to confirm or comment on the matter.

The only person on the list to comment publicly on the matter was Rishon Lezion Deputy Mayor Maksim Babitzky.

“It is not clear what happened, but it is clear that it is not worth going to Russia,” Babitzky told the Israeli Russian-language website Mig News.

Ruthie Blum: Ramadan goes out with a bang

This wasn't the kind of heroism that Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar had in mind when he hailed the attack, however. In a speech on Saturday morning to members of the Izzadin Kassam Brigades, he hailed Golev's killers for their deed, as well as those who committed similar deadly assaults throughout the month.

He then proceeded to call on all of Israel's Arab citizens to follow suit, telling them to get hold of weapons of any kind. "Those who don't have a rifle should get an ax or a knife," he urged.

He summed up his fiery oration by reassuring his audience that "to protect Al-Aqsa, we've already lined up 1,100 rockets" to fire on Israel, eliciting cheers of "Allahu akbar" ("God is great").

Lebanon-based Hezbollah, too, praised the bloodshed in Ariel, which came mere hours after Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah gave a televised address in which he incited Palestinians to step up their "lone-wolf" attacks that Israel is hard-pressed to thwart.

The beauty of such acts, he said, is that they don't involve a lot of planning or infrastructure. "All they require is an individual with a pistol or machine gun – or a knife from his kitchen."

What a lovely holiday message for Muslims about to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, with lots of food, festivities and gift-giving. Palestinians in Ramallah and Gaza are already gearing up for the occasion by baking sweets to distribute when the next Jews are gunned down or stabbed to death.

The Arab citizens of Israel who identify with them have been busy, as well, removing Israeli flags from poles along highways in the Galilee and replacing them with Palestinian ones. Like their counterparts in Iran, Gaza, Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East, they are preparing for Israel's seventy-fourth birthday this week by plotting its demise.

On Saturday, Ali Velshi of MSNBC narrated a segment about the evils of annexation. He started off by describing Russia's annexation of Crimea, and then went on to the US annexation of Hawaii, Saddam Hussein's attempted annexation of Kuwait and Morocco's annexation of Western Sahara.

But according to Velshi, the worst case of occupation and annexation in the world is clearly Israel.

In a screed that shows how superficial the "experts" on MSNBC are, Velshi selectively recounts history, and when necessary, he makes it up.

Which brings us, arguably, to the leading occupying force in the world. Israel. The map of the Palestinian Authority, sometimes described as Swiss cheese, has been carved up by Israel over the past century.

Israel is the "leading occupying force in the world?" Turkey's occupation of northern Syria is much larger than the West Bank, and it also occupied Northern Cyprus. Crimea is much larger. Nagorno-Karabakh, Sofulu, Barxudarlı, Yukhari Askipara, and Karki, and Artsvashen are all occupied by Armenia none of which Velshihas probably ever heard of.

Then he says Israel has been carving up Palestinian Authority land for a century? Given that the PA was created in the 1990s, that's a neat trick.

What Velshi is really saying is that the Jewish claim on the land is completely illegitimate and it is all Arab land. His interest in international law that he claims later in the segment dissipates when it comes to the San Remo Conference, the UN recognizing Israel or even the UN recommending partition.

So objective!

The State of Israel has forced the annexation of several Arab territories. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the Six Day War in 1967. It remains occupied by Israel to this day. Occupation is just a step towards annexation.

And how exactly did Jordan acquire this territory?

Velshi makes it sound like Israel illegally stole land from Jordan, when the world never recognized Jordan's truly illegal annexation of the West Bank in 1949. Instead of this textbook case of annexation, he extends his definition of "annexation" to include "occupation," and he doesn't even undertand that:

Israel actually did annex two thirds of the Golan from Syria during the Six Day War., passing a law extending Israeli law, jurisdiction, and administration to the area.

Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, not 1967. And Velshi implies that Israel's capture of the Golan was from an aggressive war on Israel's part, not Syrian aggression in 1967 and 1973. He fails to mention that capturing land in a defensive war was never considered illegal before Israel did it. He also doesn't mention that Syria liked to shoot at Israeli civilians from the high ground and this is unacceptable.

None of that is relevant in his zeal to paint Israel as a unique thief of land.

Not to mention that Velshi is strikingly supportive of a regime that kills its own people. How do you think Assad would treat the "traitors" and "spies" that live in the Golan now if Israel would give it up as he demands? Suddenly, human rights are not nearly as important as misapplying international law against the Jewish state.

...Since 1967, Israel and the Palestinians both assert rights in the West Bank. Leaving its status unresolved. Israel claims historical and religious rights to the West Bank, as the ancestral land of the Jewish people. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers now live on illegally occupied palestinian land in the West Bank.

See the sleight of hand here? At first (above), Israel occupied the land from Jordan. Then, both Israel and Palestinians claim rights to the land. Finally, Velshi declares it unambiguously Palestinian land - and also claims that the "occupation" is illegal, when occupation is emphatically not illegal under international law.

Palestinian families are constantly kicked out of their homes to make room for more Israeli settlements, often, under false pretenses and legal justifications.

This is a complete falsehood. No Israeli settlements are built on land where Palestinians have been "kicked out." (The only possible exception is Hebron, on properties that had been stolen from Jews in the 1920s and 1930s.) The Palestinians whose homes are demolished either built them illegally or they are families of terrorists. Say what you want about the circumstances, but Israel's Supreme Court rules on each and every one of these cases, and it has never been credibly accused of operating under false pretenses or accepting invalid legal justifications.

This is not only a smear job. It is riddled with basic errors and inaccuracies - all in one direction.

Which is par for the course for MSNBC.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!