Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, June 09, 2022

US State Department Religious Freedom Report seems to OPPOSE religious freedom for Jews on the Temple Mount

The US State Department's 2021 Report on International Religious Freedom was recently released. It has quite a large section on Israel, much of it about religious coercion by Orthodox in Israel towards other denominations.

But one theme on that and the West Bank/Gaza page was seemingly against religious freedom.

When it discusses Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, the tone of the report is decidedly negative, which is quite strange for a report that is supposed to support freedom and rights for religion:

According to local media, some Jewish groups performed religious acts such as prayers and prostration on the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount despite the ban on non-Islamic prayer. The Israeli government reiterated that overt non-Islamic prayer was not allowed on the grounds of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. NGOs, media, and Jewish Temple Mount advocacy groups continued to report that in practice, police generally allowed discreet non-Muslim prayer on the site. The news website Al-Monitor reported in October that although the country’s two chief rabbis repeatedly said Jews were not to set foot in the Temple Mount out of concern they could inadvertently step into an area which, in Jewish law, it was forbidden to enter unless one was ritually pure. In recent years, some Jews had entered the mosque and tried to offer prayers.

No Jews entered the mosque. The State Department is adopting the absurd recent Palestinian claim that the entire Temple Mount is a mosque. (If it was, then no Muslim would be allowed to wear shoes on the entire complex!)

In August, the New York Times reported that Rabbi Yehuda Glick, whom the newspaper described as a “right-wing former lawmaker,” led “efforts to change the status quo for years” and said that Glick livestreamed his prayers from the site. The report said that although the government officially allowed non-Muslims to visit the site each morning on the condition that they did not pray there, “In reality, dozens of Jews now openly pray every day [at the site]… and their Israeli police escorts no longer attempt stop them.” The New York Times reported that Glick and activists ultimately sought to build a third Jewish Temple on the site of the Dome of the Rock, an idea that Azzam Khatib, the deputy chairman of the Waqf council, said “will lead to a civil war.”

The same article said that Glick only wanted to build the Third Temple in dialogue with Muslims, not above their objections, and it would be open to all religions. Both of those facts should be relevant but the report seems to want to paint the Jews as extremists who want to forcibly take over the Mount.

According to the Religion News Service, one group known as the Temple Institute hoped to build a third temple where one of the al-Aqsa complex’s three mosques now stands and to reinstate ritual animal sacrifices. The group’s website reported that it was working with an architect on a design. In September, al-Monitor reported, “In the past, doing so [praying out loud or making movements of genuflection], could lead to the person being detained and ejected from the site, as Jews are not allowed to pray there. But more recently, a warning is reportedly more common. Last July Israel’s Channel 12 filmed Jews praying silently at the site while police officers watched.” Police continued to screen non-Muslims for religious articles. Police allowed Jewish male visitors who were visibly wearing a kippah and tzitzit (fringes), and those who wished to enter the site barefoot (in accordance with interpretations of halacha, Jewish religious law) to enter with a police escort.

On October 5, the Jerusalem Magistrate Court ruled that “silent Jewish prayer” on the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount did not violate existing police rules on the site. The ruling was in response to a case involving a 15-day administrative restraining order against a man whom police had removed from the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount on September 29 on grounds that he disturbed public order by engaging in Jewish prayer. The judge ruled that silent prayer “does not in itself violate police instructions” that prohibit “external and overt” non-Muslim prayer on the site. Al-Monitor said the Magistrate’s Court’s ruling was “unprecedented” and “seem[ed] to question the status quo that has prevailed over the site.” The Jerusalem District Court overturned the lower court’s ruling on October 8, ruling that the INP had acted “within reason,” and “the fact that there was someone who observed [him] pray is evidence that his prayer was overt.” Minister of Public Security Bar-Lev supported the appeal, saying “a change in the status quo will endanger public security and could cause a flare-up.” The Waqf said the lower court’s ruling was “a flagrant violation” of the complex’s sanctity and a “clear provocation” for Muslims.

This report is framing the Jews who want true religious freedom as fanatics who are somehow limiting Muslim religious freedom. The supposed "status quo," which was by definition antisemitic in that it forbade Jews from prayer, is held up as an ideal.

(h/t Irene)

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06/08 Links Pt2: In-depth Audit Says World Vision Totally Incompetent, Funded Hamas; Hostile environments toward Jewish students; Middle East Professors Boycott Israel — Where’s the Moral Outrage?

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: In-depth Audit Says World Vision Totally Incompetent, Funded Hamas

On November 3, 2021, the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits petitioned the Jerusalem District Court to dissolve an Israeli non-profit organization belonging to the international aid agency, World Vision (וורלד ויזון in Hebrew). As justification for the request and following a multi-year investigation, the Registrar alleges that the local non-profit did not implement humanitarian projects as it claimed to and conducted financial transactions for purposes other than its stated goals – including providing funds to Hamas. Moreover, the Registrar charges that the non-profit’s executive and oversight frameworks were non-functional and ineffective.

These evidence-based findings are particularly significant in light of the ongoing trial against Mohammad El-Halabi, manager of World Vision’s Gaza operations, over his alleged diversion of $50 million in aid materials to Hamas. Responding to his arrest and trial, World Vision officials in Australia, who funded this operation, have repeatedly insisted that local finances were managed competently, and that the allegations could not possibly be true. Although they claimed that a full audit was conducted after Halabi’s arrest, in fact, no report has been made public.

In contrast, the Registrar’s conclusions, based on an independent audit conducted by the Schmidt, Ben-Tsvi, and Perlstein accounting firm, [on file with NGO Monitor] confirm concerns revealed by previous NGO Monitor analyses of World Vision financial reports. (For more on the financial inconsistencies and irregularities discovered by NGO Monitor, see “World Vision’s Operations in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza” and “World Vision Finances in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza”.)

The following primer summarizes the Registrar’s assertions – as well as World Vision’s responses – on a series of issues
- Terror funding
- Financial and organizational mismanagement
- Funds not utilized to achieve the non-profits goal
- Unclear financial transactions
- Salary payments
- Cash withdrawals
- Multiplicity of bank accounts

Jonathan Tobin: What does the BDS movement really stand for?

As a Pew Research Institute study recently revealed, the overwhelming majority of Americans have little or no idea what the debate about the BDS movement is about. With 84% of those polled confessing ignorance about the topic, that left only 11% to express an opinion about it one way or the other. Those who understand the anti-Semitic nature of BDS activism may take some cold comfort from the fact that its supporters haven't made all that much headway in the public square. But the fact that only 6% opposed it, while a mere 5% backed it, is a frightening result when one considers the consequences of the way many on the left-wing of the Democratic Party are buying into exactly the sort of intersectional ideology that is the foundation of BDS lies about Israel.

That's the context for the news that a Boston BDS group is promoting a "Mapping Project" that is supposed to illustrate "how local support for the colonization of Palestine is structurally tied to policing, evictions and privatization locally, and to US imperialist projects worldwide."

It's not clear whether such extremism has much support even in the most woke sectors of one of the country's most liberal communities. But what makes it truly sinister is the way that it creates maps of synagogues and other Jewish institutions, including schools in the state of Massachusetts, and attempts to hold them out as bastions of "harms" such as "racism," "policing, "US imperialism" and "ethnic cleansing."

It should be understood clearly what Boston BDS and its leftist allies are doing here. They are placing a target on American Jews – declaring that anything and everything associated with Jewish life in this country is fair game for false accusations of crimes against minorities, delegitimization, and, at the very least, hounding out of the public square and, perhaps, ultimately violence. This is tangible evidence of the way elements of the ideological left have crossed over to the kind of open anti-Semitism that many Jews are only prepared to acknowledge when it comes from the far-right.

Some on the Jewish left have urged Americans to understand BDS as a cry of protest against what they mischaracterize as oppressive Israeli policies and a way to pressure Israel to withdraw from the West Bank. They say that progressives who either support BDS – like the members of the left-wing congressional "Squad" – should not be treated as anti-Semites or beyond the pale of normal politics. But it should be noted that the kind of rhetoric from the BDS movement – in which talk of "colonization of Palestine" refers to Tel Aviv, not remote settlements in the territories – actually reflects exactly the sort of toxic stuff that is routinely spouted by both the Hamas terrorists who rule the Gaza Strip and their supposedly moderate rivals of the Palestinian Authority that autonomously governs the Arab population of the West Bank in their official media.

Ruthie Blum: Shavuot, the Six-Day War and the Sorry ‘Status Quo’ on the Temple Mount

Israeli and Diaspora Jews visiting the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on Sunday to celebrate Shavuot—the holiday marking the revelation of the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai—were greeted by angry Palestinians. The latter, mostly young men, have taken to rioting regularly on the compound where the Al-Aqsa mosque is located.

It would be easy to attribute the behavior of the Muslim troublemakers to the occasion when Jews make a festive pilgrimage to the site of the two temples. It would be equally simple to attach significance to the Gregorian date, which coincided with the 55th anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War.

Though the two are indelibly linked, the tendency of mostly young male Palestinians to use any excuse to desecrate the site—the holiest in Judaism and third in Islam after Mecca and Medina—has become commonplace. And it’s no wonder.

Incited by the Palestinian Authority, with a little help from the king of Jordan, these guys get to cloak their violent energy in a veil of religious and political purity. The neat trick on the part of the leaders in Ramallah, Gaza and Amman to encourage terrorist activity is to perpetuate the bald-faced lie that Israel plans to storm the compound and destroy the mosque.

The mendacity doesn’t end there. The PA leadership also pretends that the presence of Jews in the ancient land of Israel is a myth, and that the story of the First and Second Temples is a fabrication.

That the Bible and archaeology say otherwise is of no consequence to PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, who determines what is published in the press that his people read and the curriculum in their schools. A central theme in the material that he disseminates is that the State of Israel is an illegitimate entity whose destiny is elimination.

While his rivals in the terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad openly aim for this goal, Abbas puts on a charade for international consumption. The act involves talking peace while fomenting hostility against his alleged partner on the road to a “two-state solution.”

Here’s the rub. He insists that the stumbling block to this dream of Palestinian independence is Israel’s grip on the territories that it occupied in 1967. The fact that anyone in Israel or abroad still buys this hackneyed baloney is mysterious, to say the least.

The Biden Administration is leaking like a sieve. And what it is leaking is Israeli intelligence that harms the welfare of Israel and the people who live there, for example, this writer. This time, the leak concerns highly classified information regarding the alleged role of Israeli intelligence in the assassination of Col. Sayad Khodayee, a senior commander in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In other words, a top-ranking Iranian terrorist was taken out, and the Biden Administration made the deliberate decision to leak details that implicate Israel as the responsible party.

Khodayee was gunned down as he sat in his car outside his home, by two men on a motorcycle, on May 22. No one should shed a tear for him. The IRGC Quds force officer was the deputy head of Unit 840, tasked with attacking foreign targets such as Israel. Khodayee is said by Western intelligence sources to have direct responsibility for terror attacks against civilians not only in Israel, but in Europe and America, along with government officials from countries such as the UAE, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Colombia.

The fact that Khodayee was a terrorist responsible for murdering innocent civilians, among them Americans, did not deter the Biden Administration from rushing to Iran with helpful intelligence regarding the assassination—intelligence that implicates a supposed US ally, Israel. Biden wants to help Iran, and is willing to look the other way to do so, even where American blood has been spilled. If Biden is willing to ignore spilled American blood in its sycophantic quest to please Iran, all the more so is he willing to toss Israel to Iran, like throwing meat to a hungry lion.

Israel, of course, never confirms nor denies involvement in its overseas operations. But it really doesn’t matter. The information gifted to Iran by Biden would have been detailed and specific to the point that denial would have no import. America, Israel’s supposed bestie in the Middle East, gave away the store.

So egregious was the leak, that the Israeli defense establishment had no compunction about making a public statement to the effect that, in fact, there was a leak. Ram Ben Barak, for example, an Israeli MK and former deputy head of the Mossad as much as said so, calling the leak a “violation”:
"We have very many close relationships and a lot of cooperation between us, which all depend on trust, and when it is violated in some way then it damages future cooperation."

In a recent podcast with Michael Makovsky of JINSA, Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer remarked on the fact that this latest leak is far from the first by US officials regarding classified Israeli operations:

If you remember, about 15 years ago, I think US intelligence officials had leaked to the NY Times, if memory serves, the bombing of the Syrian reactor in 2007, and then you had various leaks, I remember during the Obama years with all sorts of allegations that Israel was planning this or that operation to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities and that would come out from time to time [Azerbaijan and others]. There were leaks that raised a few eyebrows back in Jerusalem and in other parts of Israel where our security services work.

Dermer goes on to explore the reasoning behind the leaks in great detail, and demonstrating the will to boost Iran and “handcuff Israel”:

But I think the relevant question is, if this is true, I mean if it’s an American intelligence leak, and by all accounts it is, I don’t know, but if that is true, the question becomes, why? Why are they actually leaking this, and so I think two things are likely, if it’s an American leak.

The first is they’re trying to distance themselves from Israel. Meaning to try to push away, put the blame on Israel, and keep the United States out of it. And I think that’s very disturbing because that would only encourage attacks against Israelis because of the fear of potential American action against Iran or other actors that actually deters aggression. You saw that in the case of Soleimani, in the wake of the Soleimani [assassination].

In taking out Soleimani in early January 2020, there was a very weak response from the Iranians because they were really concerned about a potential counter response from the Americans and in that case, America said that they were responsible for [Soleimani’s assassination], they took responsibility for it, and even when that happened, Iran was very deterred in taking mass actions against the Americans because they don’t want to be in a clash with them. So for the United States to think they’re going to stabilize the situation by distancing themselves from Israel, not only endangers Israeli citizens and officials, but it also actually makes the chance of an attack, much higher.

The second thing, which would concern me if this is an American leak, is that what I see it as a message to Israel that the US disagrees with the action that was taken, and essentially what that means is they are trying to curtail Israel’s freedom of operation. . . and this one of the concerns that I’ve had for a long time, that should a nuclear deal be signed, that the United States would immediately try to restrict Israel’s freedom of operation, because if they did a deal with Iran, let’s say, and everybody starts applauding and saying this brings peace and stability to the Middle East, then Israel will find itself as a sort of skunk at the post-Iran Deal garden party. Right?

And we’re going to do these operations which we have to do against, let’s say Iran and Syria, which Israel has admitted has done, we’ve launched hundreds of attacks against Iran establishing beachheads against Israel in Syria, and there are other places where we would engage in this activity, and my concern for a long time was that the US would try to handcuff Israel, either through leaks like this, or in other ways to try to prevent us from acting, and the reason why I’m concerned is because I saw that happen in the past.

Dermer did in fact see it happen during his diplomatic years in Washington, during Obama’s time in office:

After the deal was signed in 2015, the United States, rather than stand with Israel and fight Iran in different areas around the region, as was promised at the time—remember they said, “Hey this is a nuclear deal and then we’re going to make our, we’re going to stand with Israel and our Arab partners in the region and push back against Iranian aggression in the region.”

But that didn’t happen. In the latter half of 2015, and in 2016, it didn’t happen. There was almost no pushback.

You remember the humiliation of taking sailors of the United States during that period and everything was done to avoid confrontation because to have a confrontation with Iran in any theater, would suggest that the Iran policy was a failure . . . that Iran wasn’t a good actor, that Iran wasn’t joining the community of nations but was actually, as the Prime Minister said in his speech to Congress, “Gobbling up the nations.”

So they wanted to avoid, the Obama Administration, any tension with Iran, and when they saw Israel going and operating against Iran in the region, they didn’t like that, and my concern from the beginning, was the second that any nuclear deal with Iran is signed, there is going to be an attempt to handcuff Israel.

Dermer sees the current American leak of Israeli intelligence as a foreshadowing of how things will go, should Biden succeed in his quest for a “deal” with Iran:

Now, I see this as a sneak preview of what Israel can expect if there is a deal. Now maybe they’re doing it now to fire a shot across the bow or maybe they think they could still get a deal, even though the prospects, at least publicly, look less likely than they did a few weeks ago. But I think it’s very disturbing on both counts.

One, it I think it encourages potential action by the Iranians against Israel, it will fuel that aggression, and I think it also tells Israelis that the United States won’t have their back in doing certain operations in the region, and the person you quoted, Ben Barak, I mean he’s a former, I think number two at the Mossad. That’s a very, very senior official who’s saying that and he’s not somebody who’s eager to have any kind of clash or confrontation with the United States. So he was very upset about it and senior leadership of Israel were obviously very upset about, for good reason.

The latest leak confirms that Biden will do anything to please Iran. It’s the Obama playbook all over again. Elevate Iran and take Israel down a notch, to alter the balance of power in the Middle East. That is the purpose of the Iran Deal, which of course, is not a deal at all. The Iran Deal is a capitulation, an appeasement policy designed to placate Iran and alienate Israel. More than that, the Iran Deal releases money to the Iranian nuclear power program, enabling it to reach its goal of obliterating Israel (and for that matter, America, too—but in the Obama now Biden playbook, the crocodile eats them last).

As a result of current American policy which involves the outright betrayal of a staunch American ally, Israel, things may go very wrong—not only for Israel but for the world at large. Behind these concerns, however, is something that is in some ways even more disturbing: the betrayal of Israeli Jews by American Jewry, the majority of whom voted for Biden and for Obama before him, despite Israeli pleas to their American brethren. Back in February 2021, I wrote an angry piece on the subject of the Jewish vote, American Jews Voted for This. An excerpt:

While the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the Houthis, the Biden administration has already moved to suspend some of these sanctions. That’s because Iran is sending lots of sophisticated weaponry to this Yemen-based militia group and training Houthi militants in their use. And Biden, you see, is loath to upset Iran.

The Trump administration designated the Houthis a terrorist organization. Biden, on the other hand, is reviewing this designation. Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state, said he has “deep concern about the designation” of the Houthis as a terrorist organization. The Biden administration's “review” is part and parcel of a return to the bad old days of the Obama administration and the JCPOA appeasement policy in which America pretends it can mollify the mullahs by funding their nuclear ambitions. American Jews voted for this and it literally makes no sense. It’s suicide.

The Biden administration is, in fact, an extension of the Obama administration’s “abnormal Middle East strategy,” in which enemies are strengthened, and friends are punished. In voting for Biden, American Jews voted for strengthening Iran and punishing Israel. Because that is how much they hate Donald Trump. For hatred of this one man, they threw the Jews of Israel under the bus. They empowered an Iran that promises to wipe out both Israel and America.

It is obvious that the Biden Administration, more than one year later, has not deviated in its path of appeasement. The Obama policy of leaking of Israeli intelligence continues, in hopes that Iran will at last be persuaded to take a bribe. Iran’s empowerment gains momentum even as Biden’s faculties diminish, leaving the President unable at times even to remember where he is.

Biden wonders off as Jill speaks at a DC school to push vaccinations... pic.twitter.com/VxQ5onImO6
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 10, 2021

Joe Biden got lost.

The President of the United States accidentally wandered into an ordinary cafe at the G7 summit.

Jill helped him to get out under the general laughter. pic.twitter.com/297KraNB7K
— The W&J Show w/ Kenny Webster (@WaltonNJohnson) June 14, 2021

Easter bunny appears to direct Biden away from Afghanistan question pic.twitter.com/2nujATYQ40
— The Independent (@Independent) April 19, 2022

Biden has told us on more than one occasion, that “they”tell him what to say—that he is going to get into trouble with “them” for saying things he should not. We may not be able to prove with any certainty the identity of the Biden puppet master. But we do know that strings are being pulled, moving the world in the wrong direction, and taking us to a place where the bad guys win and the good guys lose.

Even as the Biden Administration leaks Israeli intelligence, Iran continues to build its nuclear arsenal and make clear its ambitions. The mullahs' war? It only begins with Israel. But instead of banding together with Israel against the threat, Biden makes a sacrificial offer of the Jewish State.

Much of the world is not cognizant of this fact, having drunk the Koolaid proffered by the media and progressive wokeism. There is no kicking and screaming even as their elected government drags America into a quagmire of death and destruction. “LGBTQ!” they shout, “Abortions!” they shout, though none of it will matter if they all go up in a mushroom cloud.

This is the future they chose: to help Iran in its quest for the bomb; to finance the deaths of Israelis and Arabs, and to finance their own deaths, too. It’s what they voted for. And it is anyone’s guess if they will awaken in time to stop the madness.

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!

By Daled Amos

China-Israel relations took decades to warm up, but when they did -- they really took off.

At least until last month.

On May 30, The Jerusalem Post featured an interview critical of China: Taiwan FM to ‘Post’: China preps to invade us, Israel can't trust Beijing:

Voicing concern about a possible Chinese invasion of his country, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu warned Israel – in an exclusive interview on Monday – from relying too heavily on China.

“China is an authoritarian country and they do business in a very different philosophy,” Wu told The Jerusalem Post in a video interview from his office in Taipei. “Sometimes they use trade as a weapon, and we have seen them practicing their weaponized trade relations with many other countries.

“They did it to Lithuania, they did it to the Czech Republic and they also did it to Australia. Sometimes they try to do that to Taiwan as well. So, when we do business with an authoritarian country, we need to be very careful. We shouldn’t allow these kinds of business relations to jeopardize our national security. And I understand pretty well that Israel also places national security very high on the government agenda,” he continued. [emphasis added]

Business between Israel and China is a delicate issue.

According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, Israel was one of the first non-communist bloc countries to recognize China as the People's Republic of China in 1950. As a result, Israel severed ties with Taiwan (the Republic of China). At the time, Israeli efforts to build on ties with China fell apart. The problem was not because of any desire by China to develop ties with the Arab world. At the time, those were mainly monarchies and had an attachment to the West. Instead, the problem was the US -- China was involved in the Korean War and the US frowned on countries having any relations with Peking. [Encyclopedia Judaica, 5:472]

Which means that current US efforts to curtail Israel's dealings with China is not something new.

Relations between Israel and China finally took off in 1992. Today, China is Israel’s 3rd largest trading partner, and in 2021 China eclipsed the US to become Israel’s largest source of imports at $10.7 billion.

So what was China's reaction to Mr. Wu's interview in the Jerusalem Post?

This: an email to Yaakov Katz, the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post --

So China's relations with Taiwan "is purely China's internal affair that allows no external interference" and "a basic norm?" The attempt to create "two Chinas" will never succeed?

While it may claim common business interests with Israel, especially in the areas of technology and infrastructure, China lacks an appreciation -- or simply does not care -- that Israel has a historical and cultural bond with Jerusalem that far exceeds that of the Chinese for Taiwan.

One might have thought that the Chinese attachment to Taiwan would allow them to appreciate the special Jewish attachment to Jerusalem.

Apparently not.

Instead, in keeping with their ties with the Arab world and with Iran, China supports the division of Jerusalem, and the designation of "eastern" Jerusalem as a capital for Palestinian Arabs.

I came across a post of a blogger writing about his experiences while living in China in the 1990s. He writes that he once brought up the topic of Taiwan with a Chinese official, and the response of the official was: SILENCE -- complete, total and absolute silence that would not even allow for pushing the discussion onto another topic.

He writes, "I might as well have insulted this gentleman's ancestors." And then he continues:

While a student at Beijing University, I onced asked my professor why it was that everyone from the taxi driver on the streets of Changsha to the highest government official in Zhongnanhai was uniform in their determination on the Taiwan question, it was simply put to me: "Taiwan is our Jerusalem." China, my professor explained, is simply not complete without the re-unification of Taiwan with the Mainland. He went to say that if Taiwan was to ever to formally declare its political independence Beijing would have no choice but to claim the island by force for the Chinese leadership very legitimacy would be at stake. No Chinese leader, he concluded, could stay in power overseeing the formal end to the dream of a unified country. It just won't happen he demured. [emphasis added]

But China's interests in Israel are purely a matter of business, part of its "zero enemies" policy that allows it to do business with Israel, while also doing business with Iran, supporting Palestinian Arabs and condemning Israeli actions in the UN.

According to a Pew survey, the majority of Israelis have a positive view of China. But it is not because China is cultivating any common bond with Israelis. The positive view is the result of the media campaign that China is running in Israel. It is a media campaign that China originally started running using the Jerusalem Post.

It is why China threatened that it would cut off ties with the Jerusalem Post:

But China better be careful.

The US has been very wary of Israel's deals with China, warning that some of those deals -- such as the joint venture to build the Haifa port -- might give China opportunities to spy on US naval movements.

But the US may well have a new, unexpected weapon to deal a major blow to China's business ventures in Israel: the Abraham Accords.

An article in The Diplomat explains How the Abraham Accords Disrupted China-Israel Relations:

Washington had to realize that it cannot block its Middle Eastern partner from attracting foreign capital, thereby damaging its own interests in the Jewish state. Paradoxically, the Israeli domestic political crisis of 2019-2021 and the COVID-19 pandemic provided time for Washington to develop an alternative strategy to harsh pressure, while Israel was internally focused. The United States had to offer other possibilities, a strategy it is also employing in the Indo-Pacific region to sway away countries from China’s orbit.

The key to solving this conundrum came with Trump administration’s initiative in 2019-2020, the long-promised “Deal of the Century” entitled “Peace to Prosperity.” Under this framework, the Trump administration oversaw the normalization and peace agreements that came to be known as the Abraham Accords. A significant solution to the Middle Eastern economic problems would be the linking of Gulf capital, Israeli technology, global markets, and Arab labor. The first three aspects were largely achieved by the Accords, while the fourth pillar remains unsolved, as economic means cannot circumvent political solutions to the Palestinians’ plight.

Among the countries that signed the treaty, the United Arab Emirates is in the best position to provide the amount of capital needed in Israel, as long as Saudi Arabia remains only a clandestine partner of the Jewish state.

After the ceremonies ended in September 2020, economic deals between the Israelis and the Emiratis started to flow with great pace, the first “warm peace” between Israel and an Arab country. Economic cooperation was extended to all areas that were previously attracting Chinese capital, including high-tech companies, joint ventures, and critical infrastructure.

It remains to be seen if in fact the Abraham Accords really will have a dampening effect on the Israel-China business deals. The article came out a year ago.

At the very least, considering that the Biden administration shares the concern of previous administrations that China will exploit its Israeli ventures to spy on US interests, one might expect Biden to finally make an effort to persuade other Arab countries to join the Abraham Accords.

Meanwhile, there is a real bond developing between Israel and the Arab members of the Abraham Accords, the kind of bond you don't hear about developing between Israelis and the Chinese.

And on the business end of things, the Abraham Accords is working out pretty well:

Maybe China needs Israel more than Israel needs the Chinese?

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!

06/08 Links Pt1: Prof. Anne Bayefsky: The UN Commission of Inquiry: An Exercise in Historical Revisionism; Col Kemp: UN Will Justify a Mirror Image of Putin's War

From Ian:

Prof. Anne Bayefsky: The UN Commission of Inquiry: An Exercise in Historical Revisionism

The Commission of Inquiry created in 2021 by the UN Human Rights Council issued its first report on Tuesday. The three commissioners appointed to conduct the inquiry were on record accusing Israel of apartheid, and urging boycotts and criminal prosecution – in advance of investigating anything. At least two reports annually may be expected to pound a steady drumbeat of modern anti-Semitism, namely, delegitimizing Israel.

The UN handed the Commission a search warrant unrestricted to any period of time, to seek “all underlying root causes” of the conflict and hunt for “systematic discrimination and repression.” So we submitted the names of 600,000 Jewish refugees and victims of Arab persecution in Middle East and North African nations in the past 75 years.

We submitted the names of 4,220 civilians – Israelis and foreign visitors – killed by unremitting Arab violence from the beginning of modern Zionism until today. We submitted the names of 24,092 Israeli military and security forces who have fallen in defense of their country against the Arab goal to eradicate the modern Jewish state.

We gave the Commission documentation that the Palestinian Authority pays bounties for killing Jews – an amount that increases the more deadly the attack. We presented irrefutable evidence that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza maintain a system of racist indoctrination demonizing Jews and inciting violence against Jews – in schools, official television programming, summer camps, public displays and public honors.

Our submissions contained evidence of the ceaseless, unrelenting, violent attacks on Jews prior to Israel’s independence and until today. War after war, terror attack after terror attack, suicide bombing, kidnapping, torture, arson; with rockets, mortars, grenades, pipe bombs, drones, firebombs, stones, bullets, vehicles, and knives, decade after decade; with one goal: the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – the ultimate violation of human rights. Yet the report finds no Palestinian terrorism.

This UN exercise in historical revisionism seeks to invent a narrative of powerless Arab victims and criminal Jewish perpetrators, invert who violated the rights of whom, and challenge the moral imperative of the modern Jewish state. It is far more than an outrage. Unless stopped, it has and will continue to breathe oxygen into a highly flammable cauldron of modern anti-Semitism.

Col Kemp: UN Will Justify a Mirror Image of Putin's War

Putin went to war to turn into reality his much repeated insistence that Ukraine is an illegitimate state that has no right to exist and is inseparable from the rest of Russia. Similarly, the UN mandate allows it to question the very existence of the State of Israel. Unlike all other UN inquiries, this one has no historic time limit and enables the commission to range right back to the foundation of the state. The commissioners won't be bold enough to explicitly declare that Israel has no right to exist, but you can be certain that will be the subtext running throughout its report.

[E]ven before the notorious 2009 Goldstone Report, the UNHRC justified and encouraged Hamas violence, and that has played a crucial role in efforts to vilify and isolate Israel as well as incite greater bloodshed in the Middle East and attacks against Jews around the world.

[L]ike Putin in Ukraine, Hamas's war against Israel aims to conquer the territory of a sovereign democratic state that it believes should not exist.

Both Hamas and Putin's Russia, like most dictatorships, habitually plead self-defence as their justification for aggression. Putin pretends that NATO is a threat to Russia, yet he understands it is a defensive alliance that has no hostile intent; Hamas claims Israeli aggression while knowing that Israel would not and has never used force except in defence of its sovereign land and people.

Hamas and Russia share totalitarian values; both are kleptocracies, both ruthlessly repress internal opposition and both readily resort to violence — be it political assassination, terrorism or all-out war.

The chair of the UN commission, Navi Pillay, has indirectly played into the Israel-Nazi theme, supporting and justifying the viciously anti-Israel UN Durban Conference at which fliers were handed out with a picture of Hitler captioned with an assertion that if he had won there would be no Israel. Durban is just one of Pillay's numerous credentials against Israel, set out in detail by the NGO UN Watch in a submission to the UN. Her indisputable anti-Israel bias is shared by her two fellow commissioners, Miloon Kothari and Chris Sidoti, as outlined in an article by David Litman earlier this month in JNS.

UN Watch: U.N.’s Pillay Report Pillories Israel, Ignores Iran

Today’s one-sided report on Israel by the UN inquiry led by Navi Pillay marks another propaganda win for Iran and its terrorist proxies, said the independent non-governmental organization UN Watch today.

The Pillay Report, to be presented on Monday before the 47-nation Human Rights Council, offers a blueprint of what is to come from the Pillay Commission, which was granted a perpetual mandate to report on alleged war crimes and discrimination in wake of last year’s Hamas-Israel war.

“The report turns a blind eye to Palestinian terrorism and embraces the Hamas narrative that Israel is the root cause of all conflict. This is exactly what we expected from Navi Pillay, who actively lobbies governments to ‘sanction apartheid Israel‘ and to condemn Israel for the very conflict that she is meant to investigate,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer.

The Pillay Commission concedes their report is “overwhelmingly directed towards Israel.” (par. 28)

“Cynically, the Pillay Commission claims to have ‘ensured the inclusion of a diverse range of perspectives’ by meeting with Palestinian organizations dedicated to condemning Israel, as well as Israeli organizations dedicated to condemning Israel,” said Neuer.

“This cynicism was taken to new heights by the Pillay Report concluding that Israel’s ‘perpetual occupation’ is the ‘underlying root cause’ of the conflict on the basis of their consultations with both ‘Palestinian and Israeli stakeholders.'”

“Claiming that Israel alone is to blame for the conflict, while saying nothing about Palestinian terrorism and their stated goal of destroying Israel, is bad enough; suggesting that this is a representative view of ‘Israeli stakeholders’ is another thing altogether,” said Neuer.

My letter of complaint to IMPRESS regarding Bellingcat's flawed investigation of Shireen Abu Akleh's death

I sent this letter to IMPRESS and Bellingcat today. IMPRESS is an independent British organization that maintains a standards code for accuracy in reporting, and Bellingcat subscribes to their regulations.

______________________________

Good day.

I would like to submit an IMPRESS complaint about the May 14, 2021 Bellingcat article, "Unravelling the Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh," under the grounds of being inaccurate.

The main problem with the article isn't what it says, although it does have major errors of fact. Its main shortcomings is in what it omits. By leaving out relevant facts, it violates the guidelines of IMPRESS that " a significant inaccuracy may be judged by considering whether the story, taken as a whole, was likely to create a false impression."

The Bellingcat article summary leaves little doubt as to its conclusion that the only reasonable explanation for Abu Akleh's death is the IDF shooting her, seemingly deliberately:

As the open source video evidence shows, when IDF soldiers and an armed group were engaged in fighting on the street where Abu Akleh eventually fell, the IDF position had a clear trajectory and was closer to the spot where she was shot. This is in contrast to the more obstructed and more distant positions of the armed groups. The leading vehicle in the IDF armoured vehicle convoy seen in the bodycam footage was located approximately 190 metres from the spot where Abu Akleh was shot. In contrast, the armed group seen firing down the street in Video Three was located some 300 metres away.

Preliminary forensic audio analysis of a video captured in the aftermath of Abu Akleh’s killing also appears to suggest the gunfire originated roughly 177 to 184 metres away, assuming that the weapon and round used are consistent with those seen being used by the IDF and armed Palestinian groups in the area. This estimate more closely aligns with the approximate distance between the IDF position and the site of the journalist’s killing than between the latter and the location of the armed groups.

There are some errors of fact here.

First of all, according to the position of the IDF in Bellingcat's own map, the IDF is about 197 meters away from Abu Akleh, not 190. More importantly, the article uses the audio forensics to determine that the shooter was between 177 and 184 meters away from Abu Akleh. The difference of 6 meters is understood to be within a range of error. However, the measurement from the audio analysis must be made from the location of the microphone on the camera, not Abu Akleh's position. The camera was roughly a further 14 meters away. So now the IDF is about 30 meters outside the possible zone of a gunshot from an M16 or M4, which is no longer a discrepancy that can be overlooked of 3%, but a major discrepancy of 13% of the distance.

An audio forensics error cannot account for such a discrepancy, meaning that the IDF's probability of shooting Abu Akleh with the information we have has gone from "the best guess we have" to "nearly impossible."

That is a significant inaccuracy.

The errors of omission are arguably more important. The article does not allow for the possibility of any Palestinian militants who can be between 177-184 meters away from Abu Akleh (really the microphone). They float the idea that a gunman in the building next to the IDF would have had line of sight but say they have no evidence of any such gunman.

This diagram, excerpted from Bellingcat, gives the impression that there were no other known gunmen besides the two groups shown:

Yet the authors overlooked plenty of open source evidence that there were not only gunmen in the "Goldilocks zone" but that there were many Palestinian snipers in positions all over Jenin.

The evidence of militants who were southeast of Abu Akleh comes from a video and a photo. You can see the video in this tweet, with a followup tweet showing their location:

https://twitter.com/tomasyo99/status/1524343547478036481

Additionally, there is a still photo of some 15 gun toting militants on that same street, from the same morning:

There is a problem of line of sight, but Bellingcat did not even mention these people to see if there was a possibility that there was a line of sight from them to Abu Akleh to begin with. I believe that there might have been a line of sight from further south on that street, where there is a hill, but that is further than the 184 meters. Nevertheless, the cemetery has sections that have a lower wall, and across the street from Abu Akleh was mostly a tarp; as far as I can tell no one looked for bullet holes in the tarp.

Still, not even mentioning this group, even to dismiss it, gives the impression that no one but the IDF is even potentially guilty of killing Abu Akleh. This is a major inaccuracy.

Furthermore, video evidence of witnesses show that there were many who saw snipers in buildings. I show one video here - the extended video in which one can hear the bullets than killed Abu Akleh: https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2022/05/more-information-on-abu-akleh-reporters.html The reporters, or perhaps residents, point out multiple sniper hideouts in buildings, pointing southeast. Snipers in buildings would have line of sight - and by definition they did because the witnesses could see them above the hedges to the north of the cemetery.

Moreover, the two witnesses closest to Abu Akleh themselves said that they saw snipers in buildings across from them. Shatha Hanaysha said that "we were standing across from a building with snipers." and "we were between the wall and the snipers." This indicates that the snipers were towards the east, not due south where the IDF was, parallel to the wall.

Similarly, reporter Ali Samoudi said he heard "the sound of bullets raining down on us from the side of the occupation soldiers who were on the roofs of the buildings opposite us."

Again, there were no IDF snipers during this operation, and IDF snipers do not use the 5.56mm bullets that killed Abu Akleh. These journalists mistook Palestinian snipers for IDF soldiers. (At least one building southeast of Abu Akleh is both the exact distance for the audio forensics and an ideal sniper position with a clear shot down a street between the sniper and where the IDF could be expected to travel.)

There is more evidence of Palestinian snipers all over Jenin, such as this video taken from the northwest of Abu Akleh's location where gunshots can clearly be heard even though the IDF is over 270 meters away from the rooftop.

Together, the evidence is overwhelming that trigger happy Jenin youths, amateurs with M16s from 180-190 meters away, are far more likely to have killed Abu Akleh - perhaps mistaking her helmet poking over the brush as belonging to an IDF soldier - than a professional army that has huge disincentive to kill reporters.

Why was none of this evidence even mentioned? The reader is being misled, perhaps deliberately, to believe that there are no Palestinian militants in the area besides the two groups identified to the south of the IDF convoy.

That error of omission is the basis of Bellingcat's thesis that the IDF is the most likely culprit in Abu Akleh's death, when there are many other militants in the area at the time, many of them closer to Abu Akleh than the IDF was.

These facts have been tweeted to Bellingcat, under the assumption that they would be at least addressed and the article updated, but that has not happened. Therefore I am submitting this formal complaint in the hopes that this additional evidence can be evaluated in an objective manner and the article updated with all the relevant information, not only the information that leads one to a specific conclusion.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Thank you,

Elder of Ziyon

__________________________________

I will keep everyone posted as to what I hear back. Bellingcat says "We will acknowledge your complaint by e-mail or in writing within 7 calendar days and will normally respond to your complaint with a final decision letter within 21 calendar days. If we uphold your complaint, we will tell you the remedial actions we have taken."

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!

Iran's Supreme Leader tweets classic "Elders of Zion" style antisemitism

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, left no doubt as to his Jew-hatred in a tweet this morning.

"Today, #Zionism is an obvious plague for the world of #Islam. The Zionists have always been a plague, even before establishing the fraudulent Zionist regime. Even then, Zionist capitalists were a plague for the whole world. Now they’re a plague especially for the world of Islam," he tweeted in a thread about his message to Iranians going on the Hajj trip to Mecca.

When Khamenei talks about "Zionist capitalists" who were a "plague for the whole world" before Israel was established, it is quite obvious he's referring to the classic conspiracy theory about Jews, not "Zionists." In fact, he is using the exact same timeline as the forgers of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

He goes on to attempt to use his Jew-hatred as a means to disrupt the Abraham Accords as he continues to use the term "Zionist" as an obvious euphemism for "Jew:" "The plague of Zionism should be exposed, in any way you can. These Arab and non-Arab states that shook hands, kissed & held meetings with the Zionists won’t benefit from what they did at all, not at all. This will only be to their loss. "

In another allusion to the Protocols, Khamenei concludes by saying that the "Zionists" are secretly exploiting the Arabs much like the Jews are said to be secretly manipulating gentiles: "Muslim nations oppose the normalization of relations with the Zionists, clench their fists & shout slogans against states seeking normalization. The Zionist regime exploits these states. They don’t realize it, but we hope they realize it before it’s too late."

The Jew-hatred is as blatant as it can be. But Iran's Supreme Leader avoids using the word "Jew" so apologists for modern antisemitism can continue to pretend that Iran isn't systemically antisemitic.

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!

Israel's ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan was elected on Tuesday as a Vice-President of the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

There are 21 vice presidents. It is not a big deal. And his predecessor, Danny Danon, also held the role one year.

But watching the terror groups and their fans freak out is a wonderful thing to behold.

Hamas issued a statement saying the appointment is an affront to the feelings of our people and to those who love peace and justice in the world. It also considered the appointment an affront to the international system

Walid Al-Awad, a member of the Political Bureau of the Palestinian People's Party, said Erdan's appointment "contradicts the moral and political values stipulated in the Charter of the United Nations."

Best of all was the PFLP terror group, which "considered that the appointment of the criminal representative of the Zionist entity to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, as Vice-President of the United Nations General Assembly, represented a black day in the history of the United Nations, and constituted a blow to the values on which its charter was founded. "

It added that "this is clear evidence of the influence of the Zionist lobby on centers of power and influence in this world. "

According to the PFLP, antisemitism is one of the UN's core values. Which isn't really that far from the truth!

I just find it hilarious that anyone can claim that Jews have taken over the UN!

Keep in mind that this same antisemitic PFLP is linked to numerous Palestinian "human rights" groups. And no human rights professional ever finds anything negative to say about the terrorist, antisemitic PFLP.

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!

06/07 Links Pt2: High and Low Israel Criticism; BDS map ties police, media to Boston Jewish, 'Zionist' institutions; Oldest Concentration Camp Survivor Dies at Age 108

From Ian:

High and Low Israel Criticism

When it comes to Israel, it’s always the best of times and the worst of times. For the Jewish state, the sky’s the limit—or else it’s falling. According to its critics, Israel is on the verge of moral immolation, an apartheid regime living on borrowed time. Its boosters counter that Israel has never been stronger: The more the haters hate, the more peace agreements it signs with its Arab neighbors, and the more sophisticated the technology it develops and exports. It’s as if the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea can only be viewed through a fun-house mirror.

This schizophrenia finds expression in two recent books that read like they were written on different planets. Omri Boehm’s Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israel approaches Israel as a failed state and Jewish sovereignty as a moral obscenity. As Boehm, an Israeli associate professor of philosophy at The New School in New York, puts it, “True Israeli patriots must now challenge Zionist taboos as we have come to know them, must dare to imagine the country’s transformation, from a Jewish state into a federal, binational republic.” If Thomas Jefferson believed that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” then Boehm believes that sometimes you need to cut the tree down altogether.

Yossi Shain’s The Israeli Century: How the Zionist Revolution Changed History and Reinvented Judaism argues that Israel’s success is so total that it has remade the Jewish people, reversed the misfortunes of their past, and secured their future. For Boehm, Israel is so compromised as to be ripe for demolition; for Shain, a Knesset member for Yisrael Beiteinu and professor of political science at Tel Aviv University, it is one of the greatest miracles in human history and the lodestar of the Jewish present. “Israel has consolidated its hold as the most dominant entity in the Jewish experience,” he writes. “The Jewish center of gravity—cultural, religious, political, demographic, and even economic—has decamped from New York, and is now to be found in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for the foreseeable future.” In the Israeli century, “the majority of Jews will come to live in the historic Land of Israel and enjoy the protection of the State of Israel.” Zion is where it will be at.

Like his one-state fellow traveler Peter Beinart, Boehm knows his audience: He couches his advocacy for the dissolution of the Jewish state in language intended to convince Jewish readers and non-Jewish critics of Israel that it is perfectly acceptable and desirable to overturn the country’s national identity. Even as he seeks to detonate the Israeli national project, he insists that he is more Zionist than the Zionists, selectively citing clippings by Menachem Begin, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and David Ben-Gurion to argue that sovereignty as such was never really necessary. A Jewish state—as opposed to a binational state with a Jewish minority—was a mistake, a wrong turn that has led to a dead end.

According to Boehm, Israelis have become more hardline and closed-minded than their founding fathers, who were open to a broader range of political possibilities. The book’s title refers to Boehm’s personal promised land: not contested Jerusalem or vibrant Tel Aviv, but Haifa, a city unshackled from Jewish history or yearning that in Boehm’s telling can be the model for the successor state to the Zionist entity.

Yisrael Medad: When Siegfried Sassoon was in Palestine at the Same Time as Jabotinsky

Siegfried Sassoon (1886 – 1967) was a scion to the wealthy India Jewish merchant family on his father's side with his mother being Anglican, of the Thornycroft farmers whose progeny had turned to becoming sculptors, painters and engineers. He grew up in rural Kent yet his father abandoned the family before Siegfried was five. His education was at Cambridge although he did not formally finish. He played sports, wrote poetry and developed into a homosexual.

He enthusiastically enlisted in the army when war was delcared but his war peorty became predominately critical with biting satire. While convalescing from a wound received at the Arras batle, he came in close contact with a pacifist circle and a protest of his was read out in Parliament in late July 1917 and published in The Times the following day.

And then, he returned to service and
In November 1917, Sassoon was passed fit for service. He was sent to Ireland where he served until February 1918 and was then transferred to Palestine as part of General Allenby’s army. He hated it there and described Jerusalem as ‘not a very holy-looking place’ and referred to the natives as ‘Hebrews’. His vague Jewish connections through his father meant nothing to him. After three months in Palestine, Sassoon returned to the Western Front.

Sassoon arrived in Palestine on 12 March 1918, some 3 months after Jerusalem had surrendered to Allenby. Sassoon’s unit, the 25th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, was stationed north of Ramalleh, near the Jerusalem–Nablus road; by the time Sassoon reached Palestine the unit was engaged in holding the recently-secured line.

Palestine Jews were encouraged to visit Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan and Egypt in the 1920s-40s

The blog at Israel's National Library put out an interesting post:

Just as Jewish merchants moved between Jerusalem, Damascus, Halab, and Beirut during the days of the Ottoman Empire, citizens of Mandatory Palestine – both Jews and Arabs – continued to visit their northern neighbors while living under British rule. The local tourist industry in particular, flourished during this period. Lebanon was considered a fascinating and attractive destination: its southern shores, the vibrant metropolis of Beirut and the beautiful snow-capped mountains – a rare sight in the Middle East. The Hebrew press and bulletin boards were filled with advertisements appealing to the Jewish readers to come and relax in Lebanon.

They show advertisements to visit Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan: