Thursday, May 19, 2022

Rep. Greg Steube Wants Congress to Push Back at Jordan on Thwarted Extradition (Judean Rose)

                                                       Interview with Arnold Roth



President Joe Biden met with King Abdullah of Jordan last week. We know what they talked about and what they didn’t talk about because the White House issued a statement outlining the points of discussion. Omitted from that statement is any mention of the failure of Jordan to honor its extradition treaty with the United States. Also missing from the White House statement is any mention of Ahlam al Tamimi, a terrorist, or of the American citizens in whose murder she played an instrumental role. Tamimi chose the venue for the massacre, a central Jerusalem pizzeria; the time the massacre would take place, lunch hour, when the restaurant was sure to be at peak capacity; and she drove the bomber to the location she had chosen, ensuring that all would go as planned.

Among the 15 civilians murdered that day in 2001 were Shoshana Greenbaum, a pregnant woman, and Malki Roth, a 15-year-old girl. Joe Biden would have been careful to refrain from mentioning their names to Abdullah, because the subject of extraditing Tamimi is a touchy one. Tamimi is popular in Jordan, famous for murdering Jewish children.

Tamimi enjoys celebrity status in Jordan. Here she brags on Jordanian television about the Sbarro terror attack in which she played an instrumental role

Tamimi was nonetheless the mastermind of a massacre of United States citizens, and it is clear that this should be the sitting US president’s first, and ultimate concern. That it is not Joe Biden’s first or ultimate concern, is a grave thing to contemplate. It is wrong. But not the only wrong.

Far worse, perhaps, is the fact that Tamimi is only living free in Jordan as a celebrity, because a prime minister of Israel arranged for her release to that country, directly from an Israeli prison. That prime minister was Benjamin Netanyahu.

In his 1995 book, “Fighting Terrorism,” Netanyahu wrote that prisoner exchanges were "a mistake that Israel made over and over again." and that refusing to release jailed terrorists was "among the most important policies that must be adopted in the face of terrorism."

The release of convicted terrorists before they have served their full sentences seems like an easy and tempting way of defusing blackmailed situations in which innocent people may lose their lives, but its utility is momentary at best," said Netanyahu. "Prisoner releases only embolden terrorists by giving them the feeling that even if they are caught, their punishment will be brief. Worse, by leading terrorists to think such demands are likely to be met, they encourage precisely the terrorist blackmail they are supposed to defuse.

Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL 17th District)

The former Israeli prime minister broke with his own philosophy to release 1,027 Arab terrorists for a
single Israeli captive, Gilad Shalit, in 2011. Ahlam Tamimi was one of the terrorists released on that black, black day, 11 years ago. Until now, the parents of Malki Roth, Arnold and Frimet Roth, have fought to get American officials and the mainstream media to take note of this travesty, and to act. Someone finally did, Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL 17th District), who has introduced a bill to limit US assistance to Jordan until the validity of 1995 extradition treaty between the two countries, is recognized.

Arnold Roth took the time to update us on efforts to extradite Tamimi from Jordan, and the much-appreciated active role Congressman Steube has taken in seeking #justiceforMalki:

Varda Epstein: Netanyahu broke with his own philosophy as outlined in his 1995 book, “Fighting Terrorism,” to release 1,027 Arab terrorists for a single Israeli captive in 2011. What do you know about what went into that decision? Is it possible that pressure was brought to bear on Netanyahu by the Obama Administration?

Arnold Roth: Netanyahu happens to have been in Melbourne, where both Malki and I were born, on that awful August day in 2001 when the Sbarro massacre happened and we lost a child. Friends who saw this happen say he was asked by Australian journalists to comment on a terror outrage since one of the victims, according to the reports just then coming in, was a Melbourne girl, a lovely, smiley teenager of 15 – my daughter.

I was told that when he responded, the former prime minister of Israel (who became prime minister once again eight years later) used the expression “my heart goes out to them”. He followed that with some reference to visiting us when he was back in Jerusalem. He of course didn’t visit us but the expression “my heart goes out to them” is etched into my memory because it happens to be one of the things he said when he addressed the nation in October 2011. The occasion was his announcing that he had a done a deal with Hamas to free an Israeli soldier held hostage by them for five years, Gilad Shalit.

It's worth dwelling for a moment on the key paragraph of a best-selling book from the 1990s entitled “Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorists”. In the edition I am looking at as I answer you, Varda, the one published by Farrar Straus Giroux* in 1995 at page 144, the acclaimed author writes:

“A government that seeks the defeat of the terrorists must refuse to release convicted terrorists from prisons… Releasing imprisoned terrorists emboldens them and their colleagues… By nurturing the belief that their demands are likely to be met in the future, you encourage terrorist blackmail of the very kind that you want to stop. Only the most unrelenting refusal to ever give in to such blackmail can prevent this.”

The words of that last sentence ring powerfully for me. But actually the whole quote makes solid sense. The person who wrote them is of course the Israeli leader did the deal with Hamas that served as my daughter’s murderer’s incomprehensible ticket to freedom.

“I keep wondering if he ever read it"

His name is Benjamin Netanyahu and I keep wondering if he ever read it. It’s disappeared of course, from bookstores everywhere now, and for good reason.

I don’t know what motivated him to transact a massive swap of 1,027 terrorists for a captive Israeli soldier, and to market it so heavily to the Israeli public that freeing Shalit at any price (“any price” is the term I remember being used freely when this was happening) had enormous support for a while.

It was of course, like so many things in political life, bogus, a lie wrapped around a tiny grain of truth. There are many, many things Israel would never have done to free Shalit. This one just seemed affordable to the shameless insiders who cooked it up.

Terrible acts of terror against Israelis were executed in the years after the deal was done, executed by people who were in prison right up until the day Shalit walked free, with many of them sentenced to stay there for the rest of their lives, like Ahlam Tamimi.

“His wife pressed him to do it”

But they were freed by Israel and have gone on to lead high-profile lives as terrorists. Yahya Sinwar, for instance, who took over the leadership of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2017 and has much blood on his hands.

Netanyahu once said publicly that he did the Shalit deal because his wife pressed him to do it. For some people, let’s say politicians for example, that’s as good a reason as any. I would feel a little less hostile to the man if he had ever taken the trouble to speak with us in the years he was prime minister, a job he lost in 2021. But he never did. And in fact his office remained locked and impervious for years to our efforts to appeal for Israeli help in the Tamimi extradition. Or more accurately, to stop interfering with it. [Emphasis added, V.E.]

Netanyahu won’t get invited to any of my family’s future celebrations. My heart doesn’t go out to him.

The Roth family at Malki's Bat Mitzvah

Varda Epstein: Considering the lack of any meaningful effort by successive US administrations to extradite Ahlam Tamimi from Jordan for the murder of two US citizens, is it possible that the US is bowing to pressure from Israel? What rationale would there be for Israel to quash these efforts?

Arnold Roth: I assume there are multiple factors at work but, yes, I have heard from sources in Washington that there is a view among government insiders that Israel is fine with Tamimi being left alone in Jordan. Whether or not it’s true, the consecutive US administrations of Obama, Trump and Biden have all praised good king Abdullah in ways that are hard for ordinary people to understand. There are compelling reasons why the US ought to be very wary of giving him the moral and political and – which may surprise some people – financial backing that he gets.

Abdullah wields significant power as the owner and operator of the family business – the Hashemite Kingdom. In the past two decades, this has been a profitable undertaking for its shareholders, not so much for its subjects. Jordan may be a basket-case economically, hugely dependent on handouts and with a population suffering from a badly-run economy. But this hasn’t prevented its free-cash flow from serving as the way its king has quietly (until this was exposed in a series of major global news investigations) and surreptitiously become a real estate tycoon in the United States.

“I know there are analysts and think-tank mavens far better informed than me who say it’s best not to endanger his or Jordan’s stability. But those are sentiments of the kind that make sense when they come with no price.”

He owns a much real estate and multiple private aircraft. A well-trained, lavishly equipped military force serves his needs. And since his country is now officially designated (in Freedom House’s most recent global survey) as unfree, it’s obvious he has little fear of his country’s media, parliament or mobs. The evidence is he has excellent connections in the US with powerful friends in Washington and a major US military presence based inside his kingdom’s borders. Less well known is that he spends a fortune on US lawyers and lobbyists.

I know there are analysts and think-tank mavens far better informed than me who say it’s best not to endanger his or Jordan’s stability. But those are sentiments of the kind that make sense when they come with no price.

But the reality is that the hypocrisy and double-talk comes at a high price. Jordan flagrantly breaches its most important treaty with the US and communicates to its people that it stands firmly with the fugitive bomber. It has never paid a price for its embrace of terror. That’s no way for foreign relations to be conducted. It gets noticed by others and in the end, especially in bad neighborhoods like the one where Jordan operates, it comes back to bite you. The way we think about Jordan is long overdue for a reality check.

Varda Epstein: How did Congressman Greg Steube become aware of your situation and the refusal of the US government to get tough with Jordan regarding the existing extradition treaty? Can you outline for us the steps Rep. Steube has taken to bring some justice to this situation? Why now?

Arnold Roth: To his credit, Congressman Steube, a Republican from Florida, has stepped up to the plate several times to press Jordan on this important matter of justice.

Two years ago, the excellent people of EMET Endowment for Middle East Truth led by Sarah Stern suggested that he be the key signatory on a letter from Congress about Tamimi directed at Jordan’s then and current ambassador to Washington. You might be interested to know the ambassador never bothered to respond.

Then in March 2022, Rep. Steube led ten Congressional colleagues in another letter, this one addressing Secretary of State Blinken That too has so far gone unanswered.

As to why now, that would be a good question to ask Steube’s staff. I could imagine him watching with rising fury as Jordan shows ever greater signs of developing into a totalitarian society, having an unfree media culture, providing a safe environment for hateful ideologies, educating its children to think antisemitically and all the while pocketing more foreign aid from US taxpayers than almost any other country – while trampling a strategic treaty with its largest and most important ally.

When you view it that way, the real question might be this: where does the over-the-top warm reception extended last week to King Abdullah by Congressional lawmakers and the President of the United States come from?

Varda Epstein: There has to be a sense of betrayal that Israel released your daughter’s murderer from prison, especially since you threw in your lot with the Jewish State by making Aliyah. Your wife is American. Does she feel a sense of betrayal as an American citizen at the lack of will to push for extradition? How does it feel to be doubly betrayed, so to speak?

Arnold Roth: That’s a hard question to answer. Not because I don’t feel those things but because complaining of being betrayed doesn’t go down well or get you far in the court of public opinion. People have a hard enough time with their own problems.

So first about Israel. Yes, we have certainly been betrayed. That’s the right word: we had rights and they were and are being cruelly trampled and with no regard to what this does to our values as a society. Or to people like us.

“Watching as the convicts walked triumphantly free”

In this, we are not alone. The same thing can be said by all the other families who experienced the murder or maiming of loved ones by terrorists who were sentenced to long prison terms by judges applying very respectable judicial criteria and then watching as the convicts walked triumphantly free.

That should never have happened. Those who argue differently need to review what they think they know about justice and Jewish values.

But it’s clear to us that Israel as a nation didn’t betray us. It was politicians. There’s much more I would want to say about that aspect but not now. We remain as Zionist as the day we arrived in Israel, passionate and proud to be raising our children and grandchildren in the Jewish homeland.

“Did the US betray us? No, and this is a good moment to say that we get gratifying support from wide parts of American society.”

I’m not an American. But Malki was and so are my wife and children.

Did the US betray us? No, and this is a good moment to say that we get gratifying support from wide parts of American society. But as with Israel, the politicians – except for those who have shown a distinct sense of morality and honor – do what politicians do and hurt us in heartless ways. 

From conversations with US government officials, we have the sense – never said to us in this way – that there’s more interest in seeing Ahlam Tamimi slip away and somehow disappear into the desert than in having her stand trial in Washington.

This is not a partisan political thing; we are almost, though not quite, as infuriated by how the GOP has pushed past the Jordan/Tamimi issue as we are by the Democrats. Again, this isn’t about which side of the US divide you stand on.

Much of America’s Jewish community leadership has been unhelpful and cold. Having said that, it’s an exceptionally painful subject that I don’t want to address here. At some point we will because there’s much we have learned on this that we would have preferred never to know. And people ought to know.

Here’s what I want to say about the US government. Other than at the political leadership level, the Justice Department and the FBI have always given us the sense of being with us and wanting the same result we want – Tamimi in a federal court on trial for her terrorism and the deaths she caused. We sincerely appreciate the hard work that has kept the pursuit of the Sbarro bomber going all these years.

“He/she skipped the briefing.”

This is relevant to something that happened some weeks ago when Frimet and I met with a significant US government figure (hereafter SUSGF). And here’s the only part of it worth raising in today’s interview. We were told ahead of time by our own sources that SUSGF was going to receive a briefing before our sit-down from well-connected officials in Washington. But in speaking with us for an hour or so, SUSGF volunteered half-way through that he/she skipped the briefing. Hence our mild hope of getting some insight into why we have been treated as pariahs for so long by the government of which our murdered child was a national was misplaced. We learned nothing. The experience was a waste of everyone’s time.

There’s no point in sharing my feelings about the governments of the past. But here’s a thought about the current administration.

Speaking in July 2021 during the first of the three official visits to the US made by King Abdullah in the past ten months, President Biden called Jordan “loyal and decent friend… We’ve been hanging out together for a long time. It’s good to have him back in the White House.”

“What’s decent about an ally shirking a treaty to appease popular bigotry?”

The same day those comments were reported in the New York Times, Frimet and I wrote an open letter to President Biden. It was published prominently in the Wall Street Journal:

The president, a grieving parent himself, pledged during his inauguration speech to write “an American story of decency and dignity.” Is anything more dignified than doing justice? What’s decent about an ally shirking a treaty to appease popular bigotry?

That question is still on my mind. And again, no response has ever come from the White House.

We also wrote a private letter to Secretary of State Blinken six weeks earlier, in July 2021. He has never answered.

Varda Epstein: On March 20, 2017, the Jordanian Court of Cassation ruled the extradition treaty invalid. Yet we know the US has requested extradition and received fugitive terrorists from Jordan on multiple occasions. Why does Jordan not honor the treaty in practice, if not by law, in the case of Tamimi?

Arnold Roth: Though Abdullah has given various explanations for why Jordan cannot extradite Tamimi, these have all been behind closed doors. He has never publicly addressed the issue. But we do know that Tamimi is a popular Jordanian folk hero.


Varda Epstein: Why do you think that your family was not forewarned before Tamimi was released in the Shalit Deal? Was it an oversight?

Arnold Roth: Not an oversight in any sense. In the eyes of the Israeli government, the need was urgent and the relevant officials had no intention of letting messy citizen actions get in the way. I also think some of them, at least, were aware of how morally and strategically wrong the Shalit Deal was in every respect. So why take chances? Rush it through and let history work out who was right and who wrong.

Murdered Israelis did not get to vote.

Varda Epstein: We know that President Biden met with King Abdullah on Friday. Have you had any information regarding the contents of their conversation? Do you know if the subject of Tamimi’s extradition was raised?

Arnold Roth: America gives tremendous influence to its appointed spokespersons. We have fought to see US justice done since 2012 – a decade. We have come up against spokespersons in the White House and the State Department several times and been deeply embittered by how that process works. With a handful of notable exceptions, there’s no one in the ranks of the media who attend those briefings who has the interest or skill to go head-to-head with them.

So the last time, a year ago, that King Abdullah paid official calls in Washington, the spokespersons in both the White House and the State Department were asked by, as it happens, Associated Press journalists in each place whether the Tamimi issue had come up. The answers they got are a disgrace to the White House and the State Department. They were evasive, unclear and essentially meaningless. There is a serious game being played by these US government employees and it doesn’t get exposed often enough.

An official readout was issued by the White House after President Biden’s tête-à-tête with Abdullah this past Friday. Here’s what it says about Tamimi:

[The two heads of state] reaffirmed the close and enduring nature of the friendship between the United States and Jordan.  Jordan is a critical ally and force for stability in the Middle East, and the President confirmed unwavering U.S. support for Jordan and His Majesty’s leadership.  The leaders consulted on recent events in the region and discussed urgent mechanisms to stem violence, calm rhetoric and reduce tensions in Israel and the West Bank. The President affirmed his strong support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and cited the need to preserve the historic status quo at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. The President also recognized the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s crucial role as the custodian of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. The leaders discussed the political and economic benefits of further regional integration in infrastructure, energy, water, and climate projects, with Jordan a critical hub for such cooperation and investment.  They agreed to remain in regular touch and further enhance the historic ties between our countries.

In other words, zero. [Emphasis added. V.E.]

Jordan’s trampling of the 1995 treaty continues and America’s chief executive is fine with it. That’s a showstopper in my opinion. And completely at odds with what he declared in his inauguration speech.

Varda Epstein: Presumably Malki was also an Australian citizen? Australia appears to have signed an extradition treaty with Jordan in 2017, but it is not yet enforced. Can you tell us a bit about this? Why has the proposed extradition treaty not yet been enforced? Are you in touch with authorities on this score? What efforts are you making on the Australian front?

Arnold Roth: Not so. Yes, Malki was born in Australia. Australia spent years negotiating an extradition treaty with Jordan but it pulled out of the negotiations a year or two ago. Australia, for good historical reasons, has warm relations with the Hashemite kingdom.

That's what brought me to write an op-ed in The Australian, five years ago this week in fact. In it I called on then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull to in effect have a quiet word with his mate King Abdullah. Turnbull's answer was a welcome one, but the follow up by others in his government was not. The initiative ended up falling by the wayside.

For the past two years I made similar efforts with the current Australian leadership via the prime minister's team and his foreign ministry - with frustratingly disappointing outcomes. At this point, Frimet and I have stopped knocking on their doors.

“Justice, Tamimi, Jordan cannot possibly be partisan issues. But there you are. It’s galling.”

Varda Epstein: Is there any US official other than Rep. Steube who has taken an interest in your plight? Is there something American citizens can do to get their own representatives to act? What makes this a propitious time to press for extradition?

Arnold Roth: There is a small handful of lawmakers who have consistently given us their support. But rather than dwell on their identities, the larger point is that we get far less support – almost none -- from the Democrat side. Justice, Tamimi, Jordan cannot possibly be partisan issues. But there you are. It’s galling.

Varda Epstein: Has what happened affected you at the polls, and if so, how? Would you, could you ever support the man who released Tamimi from an Israeli prison?

Arnold Roth: Well phrased. The Shalit Deal cured me of any lingering confusion about politicians capable of doing what Netanyahu and the many who followed him into the catastrophe did. I’m no zealot and am perfectly aware that Bibi has a large following. I don’t preach against him but I have no hesitation in sharing my views of the man and what in my opinion he represents.

Varda Epstein: Let’s say your efforts are rewarded, that Tamimi is extradited to the US and tried in an American court of law. Let’s imagine that she is found guilty and punished. What would that mean for the world, for Jordan, and for your family?

Arnold Roth: It will be an essential affirmation that terrorism is outside the boundaries of what society can tolerate. The failure to adhere to this principle is a catastrophe wherever it happens. And leaders who bring catastrophes on their people ought to suffer rejection and marginalization.

Until that happens, it’s clear to us that in fighting for the principle, we are the ones rejected and marginalized.

*Slightly different than the passage cited in my introduction to this interview, from Background: In book, PM warned not to release terrorists. I chose to include both excerpts for greater clarity of intent. 

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  • Thursday, May 19, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon

"The pre-1967 internationally recognized borders"

You know how the UN, EU and many nations like to claim that the 1949 armistice lines (the "Green Line") are the internationally recognized borders of Israel?

I just found the 1960 annual report of UNRWA which shows maps of its fields of operations. 

Look at Israel.



13 years after it was rejected by the Arabs, UNRWA was still drawing the 1947 partition lines on top of the "present demarcation line." The only reason that the partition lines could be relevant is if UNRWA felt that they were the "real" borders of Israel.

So the Green Line was never the "internationally recognized border" of Israel. The 1949-drawn line only became sacred after 1967.

It is one of those magical things that happen in the Middle East, like how "occupied Jordanian lands" turned into "occupied Palestinian lands."


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Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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05/19 Links Pt1: What’s to become of the Palestinians? We need to talk about Khaybar; The Nakba myth hijacks Congress; Why are some Jews defending the IRGC?

From Ian:

What’s to become of the Palestinians? We need to talk about Khaybar.
What about the Palestinians’ friends in the west and elsewhere, who amplify all those same slurs? They do matter, but not because they can deliver Israel bound & gagged. They can’t. They matter because they bear a good share of responsibility for leading the Palestinians into the quicksand and keeping them there, prolonging everyone’s misery. By encouraging them to keep fighting a war they’ve long since lost and by adopting every malformed phantasm of Palestinian resentment, they’ve walked with them hand in hand. The difference of course, is that it’s the Palestinians that are paying the price. Israelis are often lectured that it’s the duty of a friend to put them straight when they are going wrong. Where was the tough love for the Palestinians?

When the army of the Prophet swept through the Khaybar oasis, hate put the spur to his horses and sharpened the edge on his swords, and set the relationship between Muslims and Jews for the next millennium and a half, but impotent hate only clarifies its target’s vision and hardens his resolve. The Palestinians can see that what power they have is trickling away, it’s obvious in their panicky response to the Abraham Accords and any other sign of Arab “betrayal”, and even their fury at the suggestion that UNRWA might outsource some of its activities to other agencies. Hate on top of powerlessness weakens their position, but in defeat they can’t give it up.

So what is the future for the Palestinians? Where does all this leave the two-state solution, first of all? It leaves it dead. Israel has been told endlessly that it mustn’t do certain things because they will destroy the prospects for two-states, but nobody thought to tell the Palestinians that they mustn’t hate for the same reason. People who want to will put the blame on Israel, but the end result will be the same: Nations don’t choose suicide willingly and while would-be murderers of Israel may be plenty their means are insufficient. Beyond that, predicting the future is for fools but there’s little sign that Palestinian dreams will come true. Israel has been getting stronger, not weaker. More and more Arab countries, quietly or in public, are deciding that they can’t subordinate their own interests to Palestinian ones forever. Even Arab-Israelis are gradually starting to integrate more, joining the economy and the army and embracing politics that aren’t zero-sum dead ends. If Israel responds thoughtfully those numbers will only grow. If the Arab world moves on without the Palestinians there’s little reason for Europe and America not to follow suit. Do the Palestinians understand their bind? I doubt it, but they can’t leave their cage by either possible exit and I can’t see how anyone else can get them out. I truly wish they could; I don’t enjoy their suffering and a perpetually bitter and hopeless Palestinian enclave is going to continue lashing out at Israel forever. But not all stories have happy endings.

In medicine there exists something known as a sequestrum. A piece of tissue dies and, instead of the usual process of breakdown and resorption, it mummifies in place. It has no future role in the surrounding body except as a source of inflammation and pain. Is that what the Palestinian people have to look forward to, to be a permanent, irreducible focus of inflammation and hurt in the Middle East? How do we spare them and the Israelis that?

POSTSCRIPT
This piece was written before the death of the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin, but if I’d started writing it today it would have come out exactly the same. From the shrieks of Murder! by everyone from Mahmoud Abbas to Rashida Tlaib to the right-on Susan Sarandon; from the forthright libels of Al Jazeera, the “news” source to which Abu Akleh lent her services for 25 years, to the more veiled insinuations of once-reputable outlets like the BBC and Associated Press, it’s the proof you didn’t need. The Palestinians demonstrate their enduring ability to bruise and blacken Israel, and they get … nowhere. It couldn’t be clearer that the PA, never mind Hamas, is not thinking about coexistence. For all their talk of fairness, justice and rights, the West’s thought leaders’ stampede toward verdict before trial shows again how flexible their principles are in service of their politics. In the process, they make any thinking Jew wonder what future there is for the diaspora. And so we go on, hate and pointless violence that serves only to take the Palestinians further from a future worth having. The pain they inflict and suffer has become their substitute.
JPost Editorial: Israel cannot abandon the two state solution
Due to the loss of hope that there is a viable solution, some people on both the Israeli and the Palestinian sides are starting to believe that their side should be in control, while the other should be deported or eliminated.

It is true that it is not possible to make peace with the aging and intransigent Mahmoud Abbas, who barely controls the West Bank, and without Israel’s help would be toppled by Hamas that wishes to wipe out the State of Israel.

But one day, Abbas will depart from this world, and what then?

Does Israel want to maintain a situation in which millions of people live under the control of its military while being refused citizenship? Or does it want to make those people citizens and lose the Jewish majority?

For over a decade, Israel made great efforts to weaken the Palestinian Authority and to strengthen Hamas. At the same time, it allowed Hamas to develop military capabilities that could terrorize the country.

It is time for Israel to strengthen its ties with moderate Palestinians and keep cooperating with pragmatic Israeli-Arabs.

Having Ra’am in the coalition is a huge and historic step in that direction.

Its leader, Mansour Abbas, has said multiple times that he recognizes Israel as a Jewish State, and that “it will stay like this.”

It is time to start talking again about solutions to the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. Ignoring it does not serve Israel’s interests of remaining a Jewish and democratic state.

Despite what you may be reading, of course Israel is still investigating Shireen Abu Akleh's death (update)

Haaretz has what can only be described as an intentionally misleading story:


The Israeli army's Military Police Criminal Investigation Division does not plan to investigate the fatal shooting of Shireen Abu Akleh. The Palestinian-American journalist for Al Jazeera was killed during clashes between Israel Defense Forces soldiers and Palestinian gunmen in Jenin on May 11. 
At the end of the second intifada, then-Military Advocate General, Maj. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, instituted a protocol whereby in most cases in which Palestinian civilians were killed in the West Bank and there was a suspicion that it was caused by Israeli gunfire, a probe by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division – better known by its Hebrew acronym, Metzah – was opened.

The nonprofit organization Yesh Din said the decision not to authorize the military police to investigate the incident showed that “the army law enforcement mechanisms no longer even bother to give the appearance of investigating. Eighty percent of the complaints that are submitted are dismissed without a criminal investigation. It appears that politics and image count for more than truth and justice. An army that investigates itself in such a serious case as this again proves that it is incapable or unwilling to undertake a fair and effective probe.”
At first glance, it sure sounds like Israel is trying to do a coverup.

Until you start to focus on the word "criminal" in "criminal investigation." At this point in time, without the forensics data from the bullet and based on the testimony of the soldiers who were there - verified from open sources - they were only shooting at nearby terrorists.

That is not a crime unless there is gross negligence, which there is no evidence of.

Buried in the article is this paragraph:

The Israel Defense Forces spokesman said in response: “During arrests undertaken on the Jenin refugee camp, heavy and uncontrolled fire was directed at IDF forces, as were more accurate shooting and the detonation of explosives that damaged army vehicles and occurred close to troops. The circumstances in which the incident occurred will be studied in an operational investigation being conducted by the head of the commando unit."
There is an ongoing investigation in the circumstances. If that investigation uncovers evidence of a crime, then a criminal investigation will follow. 

And this is implied in the IDF statement to the Jerusalem Post:
In view of the nature of the operational activity, which included intense fighting and extensive exchanges of fire, it was decided that there was no need to open a Military Police investigation at this stage. The decision was made in accordance with the Judea and Samaria investigative policy, as approved by the Supreme Court, according to which it does [not] require the opening of a criminal investigation into the death of a Palestinian during operational activity with real combat, unless there is real suspicion of a criminal offence.
If the investigation points to criminal conduct, then a criminal investigation will be opened. Which is pretty much how every criminal investigation worldwide is done.

This misleading headline is already prompting Israel haters to scream that the IDF is covering up for its "murder" of Shireen Abu Akleh. Israel-haters in the media and anti-Israel activists are going crazy. 


This is deliberate deception on the part of Haaretz.

UPDATE: And, proof that the investigation is going on:
The Israeli military has identified a soldier’s rifle that may have killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, but says it cannot be certain unless the Palestinians turn over the bullet for analysis, a military official says today. 

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  • Thursday, May 19, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon

Israel demolishes or confiscates hundreds of Jewish-owned homes in the territories every year. Not that you will read this anywhere.

Home demolished in Ofra in 2017


Haaretz writes:
Israel carried out eight times as many demolition orders in the West Bank against new structures built by Palestinians compared to settlers between May 2019 and the end of 2021.

During that period, the Civil Administration – Israel's governing body in the West Bank – issued removal orders against 285 new Palestinian structures and razed 200. For settlers, by contrast, these figures were 84 and 25, respectively.

The demolition orders were issued in accordance with the Removal of New Structures Order, which took effect in 2019 and was upheld by the High Court of Justice. It requires residents to present a building permit within 96 hours, after which Civil Administration inspectors are permitted to demolish the structure without holding a hearing.

The order has attracted harsh criticism from both Palestinians and Jews, because unlike ordinary demolition orders, it provides a brief time frame until the demolition is carried out, and eliminates the hearing and appeal process entirely.

The Civil Administration also gave Lasky data on the number of movable structures that Israel confiscated in Areas C, including mobile homes and other structures whose transportation within the West Bank requires a permit.

Between 2017-2021, four times as many movable structures were confiscated from Palestinians (3,201) than from settlers (736).
Haaretz and the Meretz lawmaker who is publicizing this emphasize that far more Arab-owned homes are demolished and more Arab-owned caravans are confiscated than those owned by Jews.

The numbers themselves do not prove discrimination on their own, despite how they are presented. There could be many reasons that illegal Arab structures are more often demolished and confiscated, and bias is only one possible explanation. For example, if Arabs illegally build far more homes than Jews, that would explain it as well. We don't know how many illegal structures are not demolished on either side.  Based on these numbers in the article alone, we do not have enough information to determine whether there are any double standards. 

What we can definitely see from this story, however, is that Jews are subject to the same building laws as Arabs in Area C.

How many articles have you ever read about Israel demolishing or confiscating Jewish owned homes in the territories? Outside of highly publicized demolition of illegal outposts, the impression one gets from the media is that Jews can build with impunity wherever they want, and the state will look the other way in nearly all cases. 

Haaretz, without intending to, is showing that Jews are subject to the same laws as Arabs when it comes to constructing or transporting structures. Even if the law is enforced unevenly, as Haaretz asserts, there is no "apartheid" in the laws themselves.  Jews have to be just as concerned about having their illegally-erected homes taken away as Arabs do.

Every single demolition of an Arab home is written about and protested in the media and on anti-Israel websites and social media. Yet the hundreds of identical actions against Jewish-owned homes are not, as far as I know, reported at all. This gives the world the impression that laws against illegal structures are only for Palestinians, not Jews.

The media is hiding the truth, and you have to dig to find it.

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!
 

 

What do the Nazi-collaborating Grand Mufti and terrorist Ahlam Tamimi have in common?

Malki Roth, z"l
Later today, there will be an extensive interview with Arnold Roth on this site by columnist Varda Epstein. Roth is the father of Malki Roth, a 15 year old girl with American citizenship who was one of 15 civilians killed, including six other children and a pregnant American woman, at the Sbarro Restaurant massacre of August 9, 2001.

One of the terrorists who engineered the attack is Ahlam Tamimi, who was released from Israeli prison in 2011 in a prisoner swap and now lives as a celebrity in Jordan.

Even though Jordan has an extradition treaty with the United States it has refused to honor that treaty to have Tamimi tried in the US and brought to justice. 

Arnold Roth, along with his wife Frimet, have been very frustrated these last few days. Last week, Jordan's King abdullah visited the US for the third time since Joe Biden became president. Yet not only was the topic of Ahlam Tamimi not brought up by any US government official, but not one mainstream media outlet even mentioned this ongoing travesty - no questions in any White House or State Department briefings about what the US is doing.

I was reminded of this seeming conspiracy of silence as I read this book review of  Jeffrey Herf's  Israel’s Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949 by Sol Stern in Quilette.

Herf notes that the notorious Nazi collaborator and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, was under house arrest in Paris after World War II. Yugoslavia requested extradition of the Mufti to try him for war crimes he committed in the Balkans for the Nazis. 

 French Foreign Ministry documents unearthed by Herf explain why this was never going to happen. A diplomatic memo put the matter quite directly: If the French government complied with the extradition request from Yugoslavia, or indeed from any other allied government, “we would unleash a new wave of hostility against us in all the Arab countries, and would also deprive ourselves of the interesting and fruitful contacts that the Mufti maintains with important figures from the Arab world.”

In June 1946, French security forces guarding the house where Husseini was detained conveniently left the door open and he “escaped” to Egypt. The Mufti was granted asylum by King Farouk and received a rapturous reception upon his return. In Cairo, he was greeted as a conquering hero by the founder of the islamofascist Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna. The Mufti, al-Banna declared, was a great leader who “challenged an empire and fought Zionism with the help of Hitler and Germany. Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin al-Husseini will continue the struggle.”
Doing the right thing takes a back seat to pretending that monsters can be useful, directly or indirectly.

Like the Mufti, Ahlam Tamimi is popular in the Arab world. The US wants to maintain friendly relations with Jordan. Instead of acting like a superpower, giving a message to the world that the US will pursue justice, the Biden administration is continuing the policy of sending hundreds of millions of dollars annually to Jordan to prop up its "moderate" king. 

Like post WWII France, the US has decided that a murderous war criminal is an ally in achieving its foreign policy aims.

There is one significant difference between the Mufti and Ahlam Tamimi, though.
American progressives and leftists who later pushed for Israel’s independence first came together to launch a public campaign to bring the Mufti to justice for his collaboration with the Nazis and for possible war crimes. But Husseini was shielded from prosecution by high-level government officials in the US and France who were determined to protect Western influence in the Arab world. In Washington, the sudden concern for the Mufti’s safety came from the same anti-Zionist faction within the Truman administration that later tried to block the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
The people fighting for justice in the 1940s were progressives and liberals. The people who are fighting against justice today are progressives and liberals. 

The media in 1946 were aghast at how the allies allowed the Mufti to escape to freedom.


But the media today has erected a wall of silence to protect the murderer of Jews and Americans. 

Even though the Roths and others have tirelessly contacted media outlets and fought for coverage of the Tamimi case, the people who pretend to care so much about "justice" in other contexts have decided to bury this story.

And the people who are shielding the criminals then and now happen to also be the people who are the most critical of Israel in the name of the same "justice" they trample.




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!
 

 

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

05/18 Links Pt2: Denying Jewish Identity Is the Epitome of Anti-Semitism; How the Guardian's anti-Israel bias colours everything; Sacha Baron Cohen to Narrate Classic Jewish Folktales of ‘Chelm’

From Ian:

Denying Jewish Identity Is the Epitome of Anti-Semitism
The far-right nationalist tells me I’m not white. The progressive liberal tells me I am. The former explicitly wants me dead; the latter wants me to strip away any allegiance to myself as a Jew in favor of claiming a privilege that goes only so far.

So which is more sinister? In People Love Dead Jews, Dara Horn makes a distinction between two kinds of anti-Semitism, represented by two major Jewish holidays: Purim and Hanukkah. With Purim anti-Semitism, Horn explains, “the goal is openly stated and unambiguous: Kill all the Jews.” This is the anti-Semitism you can see clearly. It’s the anti-Semitism of Haman and is similar in content to what the Nazis advanced: “We want to kill you because you are Jewish.” That kind of anti-Semitism is indeed terrifying, and it has led to millennia-long trauma, including the Holocaust and numerous pogroms. More recently, we see it among the white nationalists and in the sharp rise in anti-Semitic violence, including the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

But the other type of Jew-hatred—“Hanukkah anti-Semitism”—is less overt and harder to parse. “The goal is still to eliminate Jewish civilization,” Horn writes. But it may be achieved “while leaving the warm, de-Jewed bodies of its former practitioners intact.” Today, Hanukkah anti-Semitism is couched in nominally noble pursuits such as social justice, civil rights, freedom of the oppressed, and the intersectional movement. This kind of anti-Semitism, promoted by the Hanukkah villain Antiochus, doesn’t outwardly encourage Jew-killing. Instead, it tells Jews to hide or erase their Jewishness by disavowing their practices, history, unique identity—and, especially in recent years, Israel—in favor of assimilating into a larger culture. It’s the anti-Semitism that says, “Go ahead and be Jewish, but don’t make a fuss about it.” As Hellenistic Jews tried to integrate elements of Greek culture into their lives, traditional Jews pushed back, leading to the eventual Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire, from 167 to 160 B.C.E.

But the desire to blend into the surrounding population can be seen at various points in Jewish history. There is perhaps no example more illustrative of this than the practice of foreskin restoration—or epispasm. In ancient Greco-Roman culture, intact genitals were seen as beautiful, masculine, and ideal. In the first century C.E., under Roman rule, Jewish men in the gymnasia—where exercise was done in the nude—felt an enormous pressure to reverse their ritual circumcisions to avoid stigma in a society that viewed an exposed glans as vulgar and indecent. Roughly 2,000 years later, some European Jews sought foreskin restoration to avoid Nazi persecution. And in Russia during the Soviet Union, the practice of circumcision was forbidden—as were most religious practices—leading most Russian Jews at the time to forgo the tradition to avoid discrimination, or to risk the procedure by way of clandestine underground networks of mohels.

Hanukkah anti-Semitism continues to be problematic for today’s Jews, especially those living in the United States. While most American Jews espouse liberal values, their access to those circles where such values are championed has come at a cost. No longer do we feel pressured to reverse circumcisions, but we are more insistently being told to whitewash ourselves or be whitewashed by society without our consent. With progressives increasingly conflating the Jewish people with whiteness in their postmodern power rubric, American Jews find themselves stuck with nowhere to turn when faced with white supremacists who want them dead.
Double Standard Against Jews
A controversy erupted in the White House earlier this year when it was reported that Vice President Kamala Harris’ newly-hired communications director, Jamal Simmons, had posted statements on social media several years earlier that were offensive to undocumented immigrants. After criticism from progressive and Latino activists about his decade-old tweets, Simmons offered a tepid apology and met with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to explain his thinking on immigration-related policy. The tempest blew over quickly because Simmons made it clear that he was a strong supporter of immigration reform and that his online comments did not reflect his true beliefs.

Contrast Simmons’ situation with that of Karine Jean-Pierre, the new White House press secretary, who authored an article for Newsweek magazine a few years back in which she attacked the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for what she calls “severely racist, Islamophobic rhetoric.” In the article, she accused Israel of potentially committing war crimes in its attacks on Gaza, and charged AIPAC with “trafficking in anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric while lifting up Islamophobic voices and attitudes.”

When Jean-Pierre assumed her new role as chief presidential spokesperson this week, there was no similar outcry such as that which Simmons had faced. Nor has she explained or apologized for her condemnations of both Israel and its primary advocacy group. Joe Biden is not an anti-Zionist or an antisemite, not in the least, any more than Kamala Harris is anti-immigrant. But the very different responses to their advisors’ transgressions is yet another reminder that denigration of the Jewish state and its people is more commonly accepted than equally bigoted attacks on other marginalized targets.

In the days after last weekend’s racist massacre in Buffalo, New York, we don’t need a reminder that anti-Jewish hatred thrives on both extreme ends of the political spectrum. The deranged gunman who cited abhorrent “replacement theory” as his motivation for killing ten people is a direct ideological descendant of the ultra-conservatives who caused such mayhem in Poway, Pittsburgh and Charlottesville. Nor is this column an attempt to equate Jean-Pierre’s noxious statements with much uglier acts of violence, bloodshed and murder.

But just as the new White House spokesperson accuses AIPAC of fomenting violence with language that she finds objectionable, her brand of anti-Zionist bias provides false comfort to those who engage in violence against Israel and Jews. Issue-based differences are an entirely legitimate and necessary part of political debate. But the vilification of an entire people has no place in the public square, and those who engage in such behavior should not be speaking on behalf of the leader of the free world. (Jean-Pierre’s defenders can argue that her disparagement of Israel is based on legitimate policy difference, but the fact that Simmons’ postings represented an opposing belief on U.S. immigration policy did not protect him from either criticism or from the need to apologize.)
Calling Obama administration ‘cowardly,’ Danny Danon releases book on UN tenure
In December 2016, less than a month before US president Barack Obama left the White House, the UN passed Security Council Resolution 2334. The resolution blasted Israel for building West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements, which, according to the resolution, have “no legal validity” and are “a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.”

Washington stunned Israel by abstaining on the resolution, amid a nadir in ties between the countries under Obama and then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, allowing it to pass and drawing the ire of Israeli officials.

Danny Danon was Israel’s ambassador at the UN when the vote was passed, a job he calls “the most intense and demanding position in the Israeli diplomatic world” in his new book, “In the Lion’s Den: Israel and the World,” released on Tuesday.

Danon tells the story of the infamous resolution from his perch at the UN, lambasting Obama and then-US secretary of state John Kerry for “working diligently behind the scenes to make the resolution and its passage a reality before they left office.

“I had hoped [Obama’s] thinking would be stronger than his emotions, but it was not the case,” Danon writes. “He wanted to conclude his term with a UN resolution that would define the legacy of his Middle East policy.”

Danon also reveals the roles Ukraine and Russia, who are now fighting a bitter war in Europe, played in the lead-up to the vote. Kyiv wanted to abstain, according to Danon, and was under pressure from Israel and the incoming Donald Trump administration to do so.

“At the end, they decided to support the resolution,” writes Danon, “because they were afraid that President Obama would take measures, even at the eleventh hour of his administration, to hurt them.”

Abu Aqleh as the New al Durah: The Blood Libel and the Media Megaphone (Judean Rose)

                                                          Interview with Richard Landes

Shireen Abu Aqleh died in the performance of her job as a journalist. That is an undeniable fact. Just about everything else you’ve heard from the mainstream media, however, is a lie.

The party responsible for Abu Aqleh’s death could not be identified by the official PA coroner, yet the media (and Susan Sarandon) have unequivocally pointed a finger at Israel.


None of this outrage and blame is about determining whether it was an Israeli or an Arab bullet that killed Abu Aqleh in a crossfire. The allegations are far worse: Israel is charged with the deliberate execution of Abu Aqleh, though there is no evidence to back this claim and no reason to believe it is true.

All of which makes this a blood libel.

What is a blood libel, really? It is a false allegation, a cynical use of dead people to smear and foment violence against the Jews. And the media would not serve it up to you on a plate unless the public were hungry for it—unless they themselves hated the Jews as a concept and a people.

In that sense, the Abu Aqleh story is not a fresh news cycle, but an old story. The comparison to the Mohammed al Durah story, in which the shooting death of young boy was falsely pinned on Israel, is obvious. And there is no one better to weigh in on how these two news stories have been handled than Professor Richard Landes.

Prof. Landes documented the blood libel that was the al Durah story. It was Landes who coined the term “Pallywood” to describe the theater put on for the media by so-called “Palestinian” Arabs in their cognitive war against the Jews. The media lapped up the al Durah fakery and more than that, helped to create it.

Pallywood I - According to Palestinian Sources from Israel on Vimeo.

Here, Richard Landes offers his insight on this newest example of Pallywood in regard to the death of Shireen Abu Aqleh, and how the media is helping to amplify this latest blood libel against the Jews.

Varda Epstein: It seems obvious to draw comparisons to the shooting death of Abu Aqleh and that of al Durah. The accusations that Al Durah’s death was at the hands of the IDF turned out not to be true. There was a longstanding attempt to cover up the truth not only by an Arab populace hostile to Israel, but by the media, and in fact, this was a collaborative effort between the two. 

Some recent footage has been aired showing gunmen gleefully stating that an IDF soldier had been shot, after which they began to drag the victim out, presumably to confirm or ensure “his” death, only to discover that the body was that of Abu Aqleh. If this short footage is as it seems, what do the accusations against the IDF signify, and how is this similar to what happened with al Durah? Is there a pattern here?

Richard Landes: The pattern is, above all, the successful accusation of deliberate murder of an innocent civilian carried forward as completely plausible, if not news, by Western news media. We heard immediately about a sniper, and claims by the eyewitnesses of deliberate, cold-blooded murder. There is no way they can know this; and now that we know the caliber of the bullet, sniper fire is out. But the media relayed the accusation (who else would kill her?).

In the case of al Durah, the details are very different. It was staged; and the body that was buried was not the boy who was allegedly shot. But the key accusation, what fuels the blood libel that the IDF deliberately targeted the boy, was not only made by the cameraman (Talal abu Rahmah) in a signed affidavit – which he later withdrew in a private fax – but more significantly by Charles Enderlin in his voiceover: “la cible de tirs venus de la position israélienne” [the target of fire coming from the Israeli position]. He thus became the first self-identified Jew (an Israeli who served as IDF spokesperson!) to spread a blood libel against his people.

Asked later by an Israeli journalist why he spoke of the IDF targeting them when he had no evidence, he replied, “If I hadn’t… they’d say in Gaza ‘How come Enderlin does not say it’s the IDF?’”

The response was so damning (not clear that Enderlin even realized that) that HaAretz removed it from their English version of the article. What on earth is an Israeli (or any) journalist doing taking orders from Gaza in a matter of assessing Israel’s “murderous intentions”?

Richard Landes holding his film, "Pallywood"

Varda Epstein: Did the al Durah episode set certain precedents in the “cogwar,” the term you have coined for cognitive warfare? Can you elaborate on that for us?

Richard Landes: Above all, it confirmed what the Palestinians had long claimed, but Western media was reluctant to believe (given the IDF’s code and behavior), namely that Israel deliberately kills kids and other civilians. From this point on, any claims Palestinians made of Israelis killing kids got ready credulity from the press. More important even than that, it meant that every time the Palestinians attacked Israel and Israel responded, the press led with the Israeli response. So, for example, Jacques Chirac told Ehud Barak on October 4, 2000, in what may be one of the stupider comments of the day: “You will never convince anyone that the Palestinians are the aggressors.”

He thus made it impossible for the West to see the first round of a global jihad which would soon target them as well, not just Israel.

As a result, Palestinian terror became a measure of Israeli guilt – they have “no choice” but to fight back. By 2003, at the height of the suicide terror war against Israel, Ian Buruma commented (as a self-evident aside) that being pro-Palestinian was a “litmus test of liberal credentials.” The very meme now so powerfully embedded in current “progressive” discourse – IDF are child-killers – starts with al Durah.

Varda Epstein: What lessons have the enemy learned from what happened with al Durah? How are these lessons applied today?

Richard Landes: They’ve learned that they can count on the media to promote their war propaganda as news (lethal war journalism), even when it’s against their own interest (promoting the enemy’s war propaganda as news = own-goal war journalism). I put together the eight basic principles of the Palestinian Media Protocols for Western journalists:

Palestinian Media Protocols

1. The Palestinians are the noble resistors - David. 2. The Israelis are the cruel oppressors - Goliath.
3. Thou shalt always portray Palestinians as victims, never as Aggressors. 4. Thou shalt never portray the Israelis  as victims, always as Aggressors.
5. Thou shalt not portray Palestinians unsympathetically. 6. Thou shalt not portray Israel sympathetically.
7. Thou shalt not challenge or undermine Palestinian claims.       8. Thou shalt challenge and undermine Israeli claims.

The compliance score of Western media is so high that even when Palestinians kill their own people they can count on the media to blame Israel. As a result, Hamas has developed a cannibalistic strategy where it promotes casualties among its own people (no bomb shelters, firing from civilian areas, random shelling that often kills its own), and counts on the media to create a massive PR disaster for the Israelis. Some of the compliance comes from ideological/emotional sympathy with those who hate Israel; some (I think most) comes from a fear of retaliation/intimidation.

Varda Epstein: Has Israel absorbed the full significance of the al Durah episode, and developed any significant, responsive strategies going forward?

Richard Landes: Not really. First of all it took over a decade for them to even challenge al Durah (as in not supporting Karsenty in his court cases), until the Kuperwasser commission tackled it, but even that was not promoted as it should have been. There was a brief moment when some took the cogwar seriously, but rather than learn from the people who had been fighting the cogwar for over a decade, they charged ahead without really understanding the dynamics. More broadly – and this may be a hard-wired problem for Israelis – they don’t understand the antisemitism underlining the appeal. They think – as I did initially – that it’s about information. But that’s just the most superficial level, and appeals to the empirical are limited. The Palestinian appeal to the West (alas Western progressives), is the latter’s apparently insatiable appetite for news of Jews behaving badly. Hard to fight that.

Thus, to take the most important issue in Abu Aqleh’s death, the immediate accusations of a sniper deliberately killing her, of the IDF opening fire on the journalists, wasn’t addressed. Instead, they tried to suggest that the Palestinians shot her – very possible – but didn’t immediately counter the “murder” charges (i.e. they focused on the empirical, not the question of intention). And that’s what the media ran with. So, when the Palestinians announced the caliber of the bullet, what should have been a major victory for Israel – it was not a sniper, the “eyewitness” testimony was not honest – became a fight over a joint forensic investigation. Huge opportunity lost.

Varda Epstein: How is world response to Abu Aqleh’s death similar to that of al Durah’s?

Richard Landes: The immediate acceptance of the accusation of deliberate murder, the ferocious attention to the event (as opposed to the 487 other journalists killed in war zones in the last two decades, none of whom have received this kind of attention). And, of course, many on the Palestinian side try to make the comparison. Certainly, in terms of how angered the Arab world is at this news, it’s comparable. Vic Rosenthal, one of the most astute bloggers on these issues put it this way:

If the production called “the death of Muhammad al-Dura” is the Gone With the Wind of Pallywood,* then the recent extravaganza starring Shireen abu Akleh is on its way to becoming its Star Wars.

Varda Epstein: Israel has stepped up with an offer to work together on the investigation of Abu Aqleh’s death, and the PA has refused to cooperate, yet world leaders are condemning Israel. Why? Why is the Biden Administration taking sides, and pretending that both sides are refusing to cooperate in an investigation, when only one side is doing so, the PA?

Richard Landes: The Biden administration is in the hands of people who have bought the Palestinian line. They don’t even have to be in the radical pro-Palestinian camp (like Tlaib and Omar); they just don’t understand the stakes and the rules of the game. So while supporting the Palestinian “narrative” of suffering at the hands of Israel has them thinking they’re siding with the underdog freedom fighters against the colonial oppressors, they’re actually siding with the global imperialists trying to wipe out Israel and subject the rest of the world to the Caliphate. The height of the folly came two years later when Europeans, responding to their news media’s lethal journalism about a “massacre” in Jenin, cheered on suicide terrorists who would soon target them.

Varda Epstein: What do you think of the police response to protesters trying to abscond with Abu Aqleh’s casket, against the wishes of her family? Was the response appropriate? Does it matter what the world thinks of what happened, or how they rush to judgment based on the footage aired by those aiming to demonize Israel?

Richard Landes: Classic and typical. Assume that the Palestinians are a single unit and the Israelis are yahoos. The thought that the (Christian) family might object to jihadis hijacking their funeral doesn’t even enter their minds. The Israeli police was caught in an impossible catch 22 situation; whatever they did, they lost. This cartoon from the Arab side illustrates nicely how they won this round.


Varda Epstein: Why is the Biden Administration seemingly so ready to weigh in on the Abu Aqleh shooting while it refrains from pressuring King Abdullah to extradite Ahlam al Tamimi? Abu Aqleh was an American citizen, but so were Malki Roth and Shoshana Greenbaum. Shouldn’t Biden act on these much older murders of American citizens before pointing a finger at Israel, America’s supposedly greatest ally, for this new incident, especially since the investigation of Abu Aqleh’s death is incomplete?

Richard Landes: The basic rules of the game have to do with whom you want (or don’t want) to cross. No one in the West wants to cross Arab Muslims. Say no to Israelis and at most they whine; say no to Arabs and there’s no end to the problems that can ensue. Same thing with antisemitic cartoons like the one Dave Brown did of Sharon as Chronos devouring Palestinian babies which got an award from the British Political Cartoon Society because it outraged the Israelis and got so many hits. When Martin Himmel asked why not a cartoon of Arafat eating Palestinian babies? the head of the BPCS said:

Maybe [because] Jews don’t issue fatwas . . . if you offend a Muslim or Islamic group, as you know, fatwas can be issued by ayatollahs and such like, and maybe it’s at the back of each cartoonist’s mind that they could be in trouble if they do so . . . if they depict an Arab leader in the same manner . . . they could suffer death, couldn’t they? Which is rather different. [smiles disconcertingly].

With the Roths’ case, I think it’s not so much that the US fears the king’s retaliation, but that the king will be fatally compromised by their forcing him to side with Western infidels against a fellow Muslim considered a “heroine” by so many. It says a lot about Jordanian society, not surprising, but rarely stated: the “alliance” we have with our allies in this part of the authoritarian world is not very deep (in contrast to Israel). If Westerners had understood this better, rather than pretending all cultures are equal and the same and the Arabs (according to the post-Orientalists) are on the verge of democracy, we would not have named the events of 2010-11 the “Arab Spring.”


Varda Epstein: How legitimate is it for the Arabs to claim Shireen Abu Aqleh as a martyr when she was not even a Muslim?

Richard Landes: Not at all. But that’s only in a world where real definitions and identities matter. Palestinians will say anything that works. If calling her a martyr galvanizes their world, what’s the problem with that?

They can easily make three radically different assertions serially: 1) the holocaust never happened, 2) the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews, 3) we want to finish Hitler’s job. In the Arab Muslim world, each of these appeal for a different reason, and they all have a great deal of power. The pathetic part of the story is that Westerners don’t see through it, and so deplore them for saying 1), accept their claim of 2), and ignore 3).

Same with their claims about the media. On the one hand they can relish political cartoons like the one above, while on the other, claim that Israel controls the media. If it feels good – builds “us” up, tears “them” down – go for it.

Varda Epstein: Many have said Israel should not be mourning the death of Abu Aqleh considering she worked for Al Jazeera, and independent of working for an antisemitic, anti-Israel outlet, had views in line with those sentiments. Is this a relevant consideration, in your opinion?

Richard Landes: I don’t know her work, but clearly the Palestinians thought she was on their side (hardly surprising for someone who has worked for a propaganda outlet). I certainly understand Israelis who do not mourn the death of someone who regularly engaged in Palestinian lethal journalism. The irony of course, is that the Palestinians insist that the Israelis shot her because of her journalism, which is a perfect projection of what they’d do to any journalist who had the nerve not to comply with their protocols.

Varda Epstein: How hard do the Palestinians have to fake it until they make it? Does the media question the Pally side of things? Does the public? Is the death of Abu Aqleh convenient as an opportunity for the media, kind of like a supply and demand situation for material that demonizes Israel in the public eye? If so, why does the public so desire this type of “news?”

Richard Landes: They don’t have to try too hard. The original title of the book I’m publishing in October was They’re so Smart cause we’re so Stupid. Partly it was inspired by how cheap the al Durah fake was, and how eagerly the media and “progressive” public snatched it up. In the case of Pallywood, for example, the Western news editors take obviously faked footage and turn it into believable sight-bytes.

My friend David Deutsch has a theory about a kind of social constant (he calls it “The Pattern”) – the need to legitimate hurting Jews. This kind of lethal journalism that feeds Palestinian propaganda into the Western (dis)information stream serves that need.

Put in psychological terms, I think there’s a moral rivalry here between the “progressive global left” (in USA, “woke”), who feel they’re at the cutting edge of global morality, and their only serious competitors are the first and oldest claimant to that moral title, namely the Jews. As a result they’re involved (largely, I think unconsciously) in a kind of supersessionism – we replace the Jews as moral leaders – and therefore, like the Christian and Muslim supersessionists before them, they revel in news that makes the Israelis look bad. As a result, the most progressive nation – by far, by light years – in the Middle East appears on the progressive screens as the worst violator of human rights, fascism and racism, while the most right-wing, imperialist, misogynist, genocidal movement on the planet appears on their screens as part of a global left anti-imperialist alliance.

They then open the door to an even more insidious form of replacement theory, the projection onto the Jews of a notion of chosenness which is a) not Jewish, and b) often gentile supersessionist, namely that being chosen gives the chosen the right to treat the non-chosen as subhuman (hence the appeal of the blood libel). That of course, thrives on descriptions of Israelis massacring Gazans and is impervious to any evidence that Hamas is killing Gazans.

Varda Epstein: Did Israel take the right steps, following the death of Shireen Abu Aqleh? What more could Israel have done to respond to this event?

Richard Landes: As I said, the focus should have been immediately to counter – nay ridicule – the accusations of deliberate murder. Even if we did shoot her, we didn’t do it on purpose. By focusing on this issue, the validity of Palestinian claims could have been undermined early on.

                                                          ***
Richard Landes is a retired medieval history professor, living in Jerusalem. His next book, entitled: Can “The Whole World” be Wrong? A Medievalist’s Guide to the Troubled 21st Century, is due to be published in October by Academic Studies Press.

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