Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, July 26, 2022

Hamas closes Gaza beach resort because a promotional video showed a family, including young girls, swimming (update)

Gazans have been furiously downloading this video of the Bianco Resort which was originally uploaded to Facebook a year ago. Apparently it was re-uploaded to Instagram about a week ago.

Gazans were scandalized by video showing a family wearing swimming suits.

Palestinian media are eagerly reporting the story about how scandalous the video is - while publishing the video itself to allow everyone to see these pre-pubescent girls splashing in the pool and hot tub. (The shirtless father is receiving some attention, too.)

The hotel issued a statement explaining that the family shown were Christians, not Muslims, and that the video was publicizing that the resort offers private chalets and pools for families to be able to swim together.

That wasn't good enough.

Today, the Gaza Ministry of Tourism closed the Bianco Resort.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in Gaza decided to close a chalet in the Bianco resort in the northern Gaza Strip until further notice; "For non-compliance with the conditions and procedures followed in implementing the events and activities, which violate the customs and traditions of our authentic conservative people."

The Bianco Resort has been in the news before.

Last summer, a man in one of the private chalets took a video of his wife who could be seen for a split second swimming nude. That man was arrested by Hamas. At that time, the resort thanked Hamas for the arrest and said it upheld the moral standards of Gaza.

Also last year, Islamists in Gaza bombed the resort because it was holding a mixed-gender concert.

The media tends to stay away from stories like these for two reasons: they don't want to publicize how extreme Hamas is in regulating how regular Gazans, including Christians, may act.

And because they don't want people to realize that Gaza has many luxury resorts and it not the bombed-out shell that the media wants the world to believe it is.

UPDATE: According to some media, this is the video that upset Hamas - a party at that same resort with young men and women together.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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The Islamic Action Front, the Jordanian political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, has warned of the "danger" of allowing hundreds of Jordanian youth to work in Eilat.

They said that this normalization somehow poses a threat to Jordanian national security.

The issued a statement that "rejects the attempts of the Zionist entity to infiltrate Jordanian society and pass the normalization approach by exploiting the youth's need for work and money."

As far as I can tell, the IAF is worried that Jordanians working in Israel will see Jews as something other than monsters. They warn about "the security risks of Jordanian youth working with the occupation and trying to influence them to serve its goals."

The poor, misguided youth of Jordan apparently can be easily influenced to become more Zionist by merely working for and getting paid by Jews under good working conditions and higher salaries than they can get in Jordan.

The statement ended affirming that "the Zionist entity will remain the nation's number one enemy."

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07/25 Links Pt2: The once mighty Amnesty International has sunk to irrelevancy; Why won’t the UK recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital?; 1,850-year-old bronze Roman coin discovered on Israeli beach

From Ian:

Barbara Kay: The once mighty Amnesty International has sunk to irrelevancy

I can’t remember the exact date, now decades ago, that I cancelled my monthly donation to AI Canada, only that it was due to AI’s rabid obsession with Israel, and its continual harping on the fallacious trope of Israel as an “apartheid” state.

AI’s “researchers” on the Israel file have a record of anti-Israel activism and make no effort to hide it. For years, the “halo” effect of its past integrity protected AI from being criticized about its extreme bias on this front, but none of the charity’s disproportionate focus on Israel went unnoticed by NGO Monitor.

In a 2015 monograph, NGO Monitor detailed Amnesty’s “financial mismanagement; repeated examples of ‘lawfare’; systematic flaws in the reporting of human rights abuses; limited understanding of armed conflict leading to erroneous claims and incorrect analysis; and violation of the universality of human rights, including a consistent institutionalized bias against Israel through double-standards.”

Suffice to say that many of Richard Gladstone’s allegations against Israel in his own infamous report on the 2014 Hamas-Israel conflict — which he later publicly repudiated — were “based upon false claims proffered by Amnesty.”

There is no law that human rights organizations must exist in perpetuity. AI has done great work, and continues to do good work, but once a charity’s reputation for consistent integrity has been deeply contaminated in one area, as AI’s has, it has lost the moral high ground it once commanded.

In any case, the world has moved on, and AI is no longer needed. Scores of NGOs now inhabit the human rights terrain that AI tilled. The internet offers more revelations on human rights abuse in a day than AI once did in a year.

Sixty years ago, AI’s literal prisoners of conscience languished in filthy prisons or suffered torture for their courage in defying tyranny. By painful contrast, in 2020, along with other equally unsound NGOs, Amnesty Ireland signed a letter urging politicians to “no longer provide legitimate representation” to women holding “critical” views on gender ideology, which the letter equates with “bigoted beliefs that are aligned with far right ideologies.”

In my youth, I was buoyed by AI’s heroic defence of the right of South African dissidents to protest their lack of political representation. In my old age, I am horrified to witness AI calling for the removal of political-representation rights from gender-ideology dissidents. AI Ireland has clearly lost the plot. But limbs take their cue from the brain. This organism is rotting from the head down.

Irish charity gets ‘reminder’ from charities regulator over its anti-Israel activity

For too long, Trócaire was allowed to act with impunity regarding its anti-Israel political advocacy. That is until someone within the organization thought it would be a good idea to post Palestinian flags to Irish households as part of its Christmas 2021 campaign. It turned out to be a step too far.

On Sunday, June 5th, the Irish edition of the Sunday Times revealed that Trócaire had finally fallen foul of the Irish charities regulator. The article stated that Trócaire had received a ‘reminder’ about its political activity. The letter from the regulator was prompted by two formal complaints about Trócaire’s recent campaigns, relating to the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza.

One of the complainants said he had received an unsolicited mailshot from Trócaire containing a Palestinian flag, along with a request to “display the flag overleaf inside your home to show solidarity with the children, women and men of Gaza and Palestine.” The complainant went on to say that “it is particularly reprehensible this is done at Christmas, the season of goodwill, when the same flag is flown over Gaza by Hamas, a violent Islamist, misogynistic, anti-Jewish cult pledged to wipe the world’s only Jewish state off the map.”

Trócaire means “compassion” in the Irish language, but as the overseas development agency of the Irish Catholic Church, its words and actions are nothing but a clanging cymbal if its compassion is not also seen to extend to the people of Israel. In a conflict as deep-seated and volatile as the Israeli-Palestinian one is, words and actions matter, and government-funded institutions like Trócaire have a responsibility not to add fuel to the fire.

In 2020, Trócaire received €21.4 million from Irish Aid, and while no one can deny that Trócaire does a lot of good across the world, it needs to decide whether it is a charity or a political lobby group with a strong anti-Israel bias. It cannot be both. The slap on the wrist from the charities regulator was long overdue.

Stephen Daisley: Why won’t the UK recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital?

The UK’s policy on Jerusalem has failed. It is not a prerequisite to peace but a hindrance, a well-intentioned bit of imperial fixing and post-imperial guilt which has calcified into catechism. The UK’s policy does not recognise Jerusalem because recognising Jerusalem is not the UK's policy. There is no rationale beyond that.

The signing of an FTA would be a prime opportunity to reset British policy on Israel. It would give the next prime minister a chance to break with the impotence and ineffectuality of the past. The lobby for the past – Foreign Office civil servants and diplomats – would be furious. No wonder: for once they would be implementing government policy on the Middle East rather than deciding it. All the same, a bit a ministerial bravery would be worth it.

If we are going to enhance our trade with Israel, we should afford it the dignity and respect of recognising its capital city. Israel does not dispute Westminster sovereignty over Scotland or Northern Ireland and Westminster should treat Israel in kind. Recognising Jerusalem would not prevent us from objecting to Israel’s rule over Judea and Samaria, over which Israel itself does not assert de jure sovereignty, or any aspects of that rule. Nor would it foreclose on territorial changes in any part of Jerusalem in future talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has demonstrated time and again its willingness to cede territory in pursuit of peace (e.g. Sinai, Hebron, Gaza). It takes a certain Whitehall arrogance to think British recognition of Jerusalem would discourage the Palestinians from their national struggle or Israel from a land-for-peace policy it has followed for four decades.

Recognition is not about pre-empting final status arrangements, imposing British preferences, or inserting ourselves in a far-off conflict. It is about recognising facts on the ground. As the United States said when it moved its embassy to Jerusalem, the decision was about ‘principled realism, which begins with an honest acknowledgment of plain facts’. Similar realism, principled or otherwise, has been shown by Taiwan, Nauru, Honduras, Guatemala, and Kosovo, as well as Russia and Australia, which have both recognised West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The UK should recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, quaint though this may sound, because it is the truth and, where possible, our policy should be based in truth, or at least not based in harmful, unproductive fictions like corpus separatum. The UK should re-designate its unaccredited Jerusalem consulate as its embassy to Israel. It should do so as a sign of good will to a friendly nation which shares intelligence that helps us break up London terror plots and whose pharmaceutical giant Teva supplies one in every six medicines prescribed in the UK. We should recognise Jerusalem because negotiating a trade deal with a country while pretending it doesn't have a capital city is as cowardly as it is absurd.

Hamas kids TV show: Criminal Jews planning to demolish Al Aqsa, defend it with your blood

From MEMRI:

In a July 15, 2022 episode of "Pioneers of Tomorrow," a children's show aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV in Gaza, a man dressed in a puppet costume spoke about Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque with children. A little girl said that the Jews must not be allowed to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque. A young boy also said that if the Muslims adhere to shari'a law, Palestine will surely be liberated. The man said that the Muslims must also wage Jihad, and the boy responded that Jihad for the sake of Allah is the "pinnacle of Islam".

In addition, the man said that the "criminal Jews" have a plot, explaining: "They are digging tunnels under the Al-Aqsa Mosque in order to... I forgot, what do they want to build?... They want to replace the Dome of the Rock with the Tem... the Tem... What is it called?" In response, the boy said that the Jews want to build the "false Solomon's Temple", but that this will never happen as long as the Palestinians defend Jerusalem. The boy then declared that the Palestinians will fight to their last drop of blood, and the man agreed and praised the martyrs, the wounded, the prisoners, and the exiles who have sacrificed for the defense of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Is it a human rights issue to teach children not only historical lies and to hate Jews, but also to sacrifice themselves for this cause?

I'm only asking because I never see any human rights group say a word about stuff like this.

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There are three crossings between Israel and Jordan.

The main one is the King Hussein Bridge (Allenby Bridge) over the Jordan, in the central part of the country. The southern one is the Wadi Araba crossing where Jordanian workers can cross to work in Eilat.

The northernmost one is the Sheikh Hussein Bridge, near Beit She'an, from (Green Line) Israel directly into Jordan.

As such, Jerusalem Arabs - who are allowed to travel throughout Israel even if they are not citizens - should be allowed to travel through Israel to enter Jordan and return through that bridge, and avoid the huge delays and expenses at the King Hussein bridge. (Expediting travel from Jordan to Israel could cost some $650 for a family of five.)

Israel has said that they can use any route to Jordan.

But Jordan is not allowing them to.

Representatives of Jerusalem Arabs wrote a formal letter to the Jordanian government asking why this is, since in the past they were able to use that crossing.

I don't know why Jordan is not allowing this. It might have something to do with an idea that it would somehow be "normalization" to allow what they consider Palestinians to pass directly through an Israeli checkpoint. Or maybe it is to keep the cash flow from the "VIP" expenses to reduce the long wait times at the main crossing.

Either way, Jordan is making life more difficult for the very same Jerusalem Arabs they claim to support.

And either way, a story about how Arabs make other Arab lives difficult - especially when Israel is happy to help - is not one that the mainstream media is interested in covering.

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07/25 Links Pt1: How the Abraham Accords are helping the Middle East come to terms with Israel’s existence; Multiple Russian-Jewish organizations sent warnings by Russian gov't

From Ian:

How the Abraham Accords are helping the Middle East come to terms with Israel’s existence

Most of the Middle East (Iran and its proxies and partners notwithstanding) now seeks some new paradigm, something pragmatic that will meet the demands of the people. Happily for Israel, its demography, geography and entrepreneurial economy are all suited to regional rapprochement.

Both Israel and its regional partners would do well to emphasize through its diverse citizenry that it’s not some colonial aberration but very much of the region — culturally, religiously and socially.

Arab leaders were willing to deal with Israel in part due to frustration with the Palestinian rejection of successive opportunities for peace deals. And while Palestinian leaders in the West Bank today call the Abraham Accords “a knife in the back,” the accords may offer job-hungry Palestinians the opportunities that their political leaders deny them.

It is Palestinian leaders, not the people, who benefit from the status quo. Arab states may play a role in this development: through direct investment, the creation of special economic zones in the West Bank or even pressure on the Palestinian Authority to revoke regulations that forbid Palestinians to work for Israeli settlers (as tens of thousands currently do).

International diplomatic pressure can be brought against countries such as Lebanon and Iraq to rescind their laws that forbid contact with Israelis. States in the region that are shifting toward openness might grant visas to adherents of Abrahamic faith communities to make pilgrimage to the holy sites of their faith. (Lebanese Christians, for example, cannot travel to Jerusalem, the most sacred site in Christianity, because of anti-Zionist laws that remain in place since modern Israel’s reconstitution.)

Finally, Western and regional governments might reduce or cut off aid to countries that refuse to rescind anti-normalization laws and teach antisemitism in schools or preach hatred through state-funded religious institutions.

Perhaps as a prelude to these steps, Western and regional partners can work behind the scenes with some governments of the region that exiled their Jewish communities after 1948 to grant special visitor visas to the descendants of those refugees, and to begin public education efforts that acknowledge the presence and cultural significance of those communities. Thousands of synagogues, cemeteries, schools and other structures attest to millennia of Jewish lives.

There are few places in the world as ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse as Israel. For all the emphasis on Israel’s Europeanness, it is today, as in many ways it always was, principally a Middle Eastern nation. Israel’s neighbors who grasp this fact will benefit immensely — first through trade, then culture and perhaps one day through civil society and governance. Israel’s diverse citizenry, Israeli Arabs and Sephardim among others, may speed the process of regional rapprochement along as much as state-level diplomacy.

Israel Has Strengthened America Many Times Over the Years

“Israel did not grow strong because it had an American alliance. It acquired an American alliance because it had grown strong,” said Professor Walter Russell Mead, a leading historian of American foreign policy. He was right.

In 1948, Israel was misconstrued by the U.S. State Department as a burden upon the U.S. It believed the newborn state would be too feeble to withstand an all-out Arab military offensive, jeopardize U.S. ties with the Arab World and potentially turn pro-Soviet.

Since 1967, however, Israel has emerged as the most effective, reliable and democratic ally of the United States, as well as a formidable force multiplier.

In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel devastated the pro-Soviet Egyptian military. Egypt was then on its way to becoming a pan-Arab leader and aimed to topple the pro-U.S. regimes of the Arab oil-producing countries, at a time when the U.S. was heavily dependent on them for its energy needs. The resounding Israeli victory spared the United States a huge economic and national security setback, and denied the USSR a geostrategic gold mine.

Twenty-five U.S. military experts went to Israel to study the lessons of the Six-Day War and examine captured Soviet military systems. Their findings upgraded the performance of the U.S. armed forces and defense industries.

After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a team of 50 American experts arrived in Israel, collecting information that benefited the U.S. military and American industry, bolstering the defense of Europe in the face of Soviet threats.

The December 1969 “Operation Rooster 53” highlighted Israel’s unique intelligence and battle tactic capabilities, which were shared with the U.S. An Israeli commando unit snatched an advanced Soviet P-12 radar system, which was stationed throughout the world, from Egypt. The Soviet radar was studied by Israel and transferred to the U.S., as were additional Soviet military systems, enhancing the capabilities of U.S. intelligence, special operations forces and defense industries.

Former IDF Military Intelligence Chief: We Don't Need a Middle East NATO

Former IDF Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Tamir Heyman, now executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies, said that Israeli officials should lower their tone about a regional air defense system.

He waved off the suggestion of posting the Israeli Iron Dome systems and lasers in the UAE or other Abraham Accords countries as wildly unrealistic or relegated to the very distant future. Rather, he said the current air defense talk is about radar and sharing data relating to detecting threats.

On a technical level, Israel "can do a [regional] defense system immediately, without it being publicized, with the U.S. and with cooperation and reciprocal respect from all of those involved. We just attach all the radar systems and benefit from having more connected sensors." But he emphasized that "it is forbidden for Israel to lead it. The U.S. needs to lead."

Asked about a Middle East NATO, he said, "We don't need an alliance. They don't want it, and we don't....In NATO, if one country is attacked, everyone must counterattack the attacker. We don't want to be in this situation" where Israel is obligated to go to war on behalf of a Sunni Arab country.

"We don't want them to intervene [militarily to help Israel] - we don't need it; we do not want to rely on them." On the other hand, "We do have common threats. There are relative benefits to cooperation, but we need to do it quietly, under the table and with modesty....Do not talk about an alliance."

Haaretz reports:

Researchers, led by Prof. David Weisburd, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem criminologist, conducted an intensive course for police officers in three cities in the United States (Houston, Tucson, and Cambridge, Massachusetts) based on a model known as “procedural justice.” Addressing the encounter between police and the citizenry, this concept focuses on making the interaction between them fair and dignified: Has the citizen been given the opportunity to voice his or her side, do the police show respect and project neutrality?...

At the conclusion of the course, the officers were assigned to high-crime areas and their work was monitored for nine months. The results exceeded all expectations.

After documenting hundreds of hours in the field, the research team concluded that the officers showed a clear tendency to listen more attentively to the people they interacted with and to treat them respectfully. Weisburd, a recipient of the Israel Prize for his research in crime and policing (in particular, he is identified with the idea of having police focus their patrolling efforts on “hot spots,” often specific streets, where crime is especially rampant), is visibly moved by the results.

“We changed the officers’ behavior,” he says. “There are hardly any studies that look at the impact of police behavior on the street. Second, it also changed their behavior in terms of law enforcement. We saw a decrease of 60 percent in arrests. It’s great!”

In addition, not only did surveys conducted in the areas where the officers were stationed find that the public harbored a more positive attitude toward the police, there was also a 14-percent decline in crime incidents in these areas. Says Weisburd: “Sometimes you can eat the cake and leave it whole, too.”

This is of course the exact opposite of what the Israel-haters have been claiming - that Israelis have been teaching US cops how to beat Black people, or whatever they are claiming lately under the "Deadly Exchange" libel.

Which means that the Israel haters who claim that they want US police to act with more empathy towards the people they serve should want all police to be trained by these Israelis.

And they never will - because, as with all confirmed Jew-haters, every other cause they claim to support is subordinate to their desire to demean and delegitimize Jews and the Jewish state.

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

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Of course the media obsession with AIPAC is antisemitic

The Israel Lobby is in the news again, as left-wing media has become obsessed with AIPAC's spending to promote pro-Israel candidates for Congress.

Rep. Andy Levin is a scion of a powerhouse Michigan political family. His father Sander was a member of Congress for 36 years and was twice the Democratic candidate for governor of Michigan. His uncle Carl Levin was a powerful senator for Michigan for 36 years as well.

He is one powerful Jew.

Yet he is portraying himself as a victim of the evil, all powerful, Israel lobby, whining on MSNBC that "AIPAC can't stand the idea that I am the strongest Jewish voice in Congress standing for... human rights for the Palestinian people." He's saying this behind a graphic warning about "DC's Dark Money."

Left unsaid, of course, is that Levin introduced a bill to consider the Jewish Quarter, the Western Wall and all the Jewish holy spots in Jerusalem as "occupied Palestinian territory." The bill has no other sponsors and has garnered zero support from his fellow members of Congress, proving that Levin's ideas are an outlier and his ideas are extreme. AIPAC isn't opposing him because he is pro-Palestinian - they are opposing him because he wants to rip Jerusalem away from the Jewish state, something no "pro-Israel" politician would ever demand.

AIPAC's new PAC is indeed spending millions - $22 million so far this election cycle, more of it to promote pro-Israel candidates than to oppose anti-Israel candidates. This is only about 4% of all outside spending for this election cycle. It is virtually the same amount spent by the Protect Our Future liberal SuperPAC.

But only AIPAC is being singled out for doing what every single other political lobby does by definition - spend money to influence the government.

If you look at the major lobbyists in Washington, AIPAC and its UDP SuperPAC are powerful but hardly unique. The media attention given to them is definitely unique. Because the meme of powerful Jews controlling who gets elected is as irresistible to modern antisemites as it is to classic antisemites.

Also interesting is what doesn't get reported.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires any country that spends money to influence Americans politically (or even to encourage tourism) to report how much it is spending.

In 2018, the State of Israel was the top spender of any government, spending $35 million directly in the US according to FARA filings with another $15 million from the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel.

That number has plummeted to practically nothing - $16 million in 2019, $2 million in 2020, $600,000 in 2021 and a mere $263,000 so far this year from the government of Israel.

The literal Israel lobby spending has gone practically to zero. But the media won't report that, because it doesn't fit the narrative of Israel controlling the US.

Now, how much do you hear about how much these countries spend to influence US policies last year?

Country	2021 Spending
China	$84,376,408
Qatar	$46,687,439
Japan	$46,426,178
Russia	$36,657,417
South Korea	$33,694,710
United Arab Emirates	$31,544,866
Marshall Islands	$30,032,779
Liberia	$29,868,477
Canada	$26,721,869
Saudi Arabia	$25,006,629

The obsession we are seeing with the Israel lobby cannot be explained by its actual influence. It can only be explained by wanting to convince people that powerful Jews are controlling American politics.

There's a name for that.

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

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Republicans and Democrats are equally likely to believe antisemitic conspiracy theories

A study was just released asking "Are Republicans and Conservatives More Likely to Believe Conspiracy Theories?"

The methodology of the study that determines that both Republicans and Democrats are roughly equally susceptible to conspiracy theories is a little suspect - a lot depends on which theories the authors decide to test. But two of the questions that they evaluated were specifically Jewish conspiracy theories, and their results show that the self-described Left and Right are equally likely to believe them.

The two questions that are explicitly Jewish conspiracy theories are:

The official account of the Nazi Holocaust is a lie and the number of Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II has been exaggerated on purpose.

A powerful family, the Rothschilds, through their wealth, controls governments, wars, and many countries' economies.

A slightly larger percentage of Republicans (it looks like 1%) believed these conspiracy theories compared to Democrats.

And, if anything, partisanship seems to make one more likely to believe antisemitic conspiracy theories. A significantly lower number of independents believed either of these theories.

The numbers themselves are alarming. These polls indicate that about 18% of Democrats and Republicans (15% total) voters believe the Holocaust is a lie and about 30% of them buy into the idea of a powerful Jewish family controlling many world governments (26% total.)

A 2020 survey showed that 23% of young Americans 18-39 think the Holocaust is a lie, but it didn't break down the percentages that believe that by politics, religion or age.

At any rate, anyone who claims that their political opponents are more likely to be antisemitic - even when discussing classical, not new, antisemitism - is being blind to the problems in their own side. And when either side uses antisemitism as a political football to attack their opponents, and ignores it on their own side, it shows that they don't really care about antisemitism to begin with.

And believe me - we Jews notice.

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

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HRW's Ken Roth wants to minimize Iran's culpability in Argentina bombings

Ronen Bergman reports in the New York Times:

Two terrorist attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires in the 1990s that killed scores of people were carried out by a secret Hezbollah unit whose operatives, contrary to widespread claims, were not abetted knowingly by Argentine citizens or aided by Iran on the ground, according to an investigation by the Mossad, Israel’s secret service.

The internal Mossad study, the written findings of which were shared with The New York Times, provide a detailed account of how the attacks were planned — including how material for the explosives was smuggled into Argentina in shampoo bottles and chocolate boxes.

While Mossad stresses that Israeli intelligence still believes that Iran, a supporter of Hezbollah, approved and funded the attacks and supplied training and equipment, the findings counter longstanding assertions by Israel, Argentina and the United States that Tehran had an operational role on the ground. They also countered suspicions in Argentina that local officials and citizens there had been complicit.

In the first attack, which killed 29 people in 1992, the Israeli Embassy was blown up. The second, in 1994, targeted the headquarters of a Jewish community center, killing 86 people, including the bomber, in one of the deadliest anti-Semitic crimes since World War II.

Now, what should a human rights leader take out of this story, if anything?

Ken Roth, outgoing head of HRW, tweeted this:

Two 1990s attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires that killed scores "were carried out by a secret Hezbollah unit whose operatives, contrary to widespread claims, were not abetted knowingly by Argentine citizens or…Iran on the ground.”

The only part of the article he wants to share with his human rights community is to minimize Iran's culpability for the attack!

Even though everyone knows that Hezbollah does Iran's bidding. Even though Iran funded the bombings and bought the equipment.

In every other context, HRW (and Amnesty) always wants to maximize culpability for any human rights crime. But when it comes to attacks on Jews, HRW consistently tries to minimize the culpability of the attackers - as Roth claims that Hamas and Hezbollah aren't guilty of using human shields. They bend over backwards to find obtuse reasons to make Israel appear guilty of violating international laws but they act just as energetically to find Israel's enemies innocent, even when they are directly attacking civilians.

This is a consistent pattern. For these NGOs, human rights are paramount - but Jews are less than human.

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!

07/24 Links: David Collier: Anne Frank wouldn’t Trust this; Are the Palestinians going to take the League of Nations or the UN to court?; Ben Shapiro visits Temple Mount with his father

From Ian:

David Collier: Anne Frank wouldn’t Trust this

The Anne Frank Trust UK’s Dejudaisation
We all know what this is about. Perhaps it is best stated in a retweet by Amjid Khazir (one of the speakers mentioned above) of hard-core hater CJ Werleman, when he wrote “Muslims are the new Jews“

This is all about theft – appropriation. The Holocaust and Anne Frank are stripped of everything particularly Jewish. On the ‘explore Anne Frank’s Diary’ page on the website of the Anne Frank Trust UK, the word ‘Jewish’ does not even appear. Yet everything that happened to her – her entire experience – happened because she was Jewish. Someone looking at the site would actually need to download the ‘learn more about this’ link – to learn that her Jewishness had anything to do with her story at all. Inexcusable. Horrific. Deliberate. The universalisation and dejudaisation of Anne Frank.

Instead of the Jews – who in this woke, racist bubble are considered white, wealthy, and privileged – the Islamists slide right in. This has to be about them. The Anne Frank Trust cannot see beyond the hijab to the problematic ideologies that may be running within.

Simple fact. There are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. They have majority rule in about 50 countries. There are dozens of nations where Islamic rule has all but suffocated out all minority groups. Without downplaying real bigotry that they certainly can face – their experience can be nothing like that of the Jews.

Had Anne Frank survived, and moved to Israel – all these people would be demonising her and her children. Had Israel been created sooner – perhaps she would not even have suffered at all. Failing to understand these issues – or build them into the Anne Frank story – signals a complete lack of understanding of Jewish history, Jewish identity, and anti-Jewish hatred. Today’s Israelis are descendants of the Anne Franks that made it out.

Let us not forget, that by the time Anne Frank’s family had moved into the ‘secret annex’ in July 1942, the ‘Palestinian’ Arab leader – Hajj Amin al-Husayni – had already met Adolf Hitler to try to gain assurances that Hitler would help to deal with the Jews in Palestine.

How can anyone have anything to do with Anne Frank and not understand the need for a Jewish homeland?

The story above is disgraceful. The Anne Frank Trust UK allows Islamists and antisemites to both work against the existance of the Jewish state and claim legitimacy as a friend of the Jews. They do this and they should not be allowed to do it in Anne Frank’s name.

Which means that the Anne Frank Trust should have made acceptance of the basic concept of a Jewish state a passcode – without which nobody is ever allowed to stand upon a platform with their name. That they have instead allowed anti-Zionists and antisemites – not just into the building – but to help them run the show – will forever be their shame.

They should do the ethical thing and change its name!

PA commits identity theft regarding South Africa and Namibia -opinion

Apartheid had begun three years after the Holocaust, promoted by the Nationalist Party and the rigid Verkrampte faction, with a background of antisemitism, expressed through their saying: “the Jew has a white face, but a black heart!” Five years later, I visited the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. Any Jewish connection had been removed. The curator was embarrassed by my questions.

In 1994, a Wiesenthal Center sting led to Bariloche, Argentina, revealing a roll of names of neo-Nazis, predominantly in South Africa. This resulted in the arrest of a group bent on bringing European assassins to murder listed members of the official Anti-Apartheid Committee.

For the first on the list, Chris Hani, it was too late. He had been shot by a Polish immigrant, Janusz Walus, close to the white supremacist Conservative Party. Second on the list was Judge Richard Goldstone.

During a visit, I and our then Latin American director, Sergio Widder, were invited by Goldstone to a “thank you” dinner in Johannesburg. We would have declined, if only we had known of his later report on Gaza, castigating Israel. Identity theft

The Palestinian leadership has constantly committed “identity theft” to validate their own historical narrative, as in the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, where over the years they claimed numerous sites, from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to the Temple Mount, renaming the Kotel “al-Buraq Plaza” and still on the wish list, even demanding property over the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The new “apartheid” campaign against Israel is based on lies and identity theft, adopted by Amnesty International, presently including South Africa and Namibia – the latter bearing a horrifying history.

Moving from Jo’burg to Windhoek, I was hosted by the late Jewish leader Harold Pupkewitz, who pointed out that the capital of Namibia still held streets with German names, such as Kaiserstrasse... a vestige of Germany’s colonial bite of Africa, from 1884 until 1919, lost in the aftermath of World War I.

PMW: Are the Palestinians going to take the League of Nations or the UN to court?

From a legal point of view, while diplomatically important, the Balfour Declaration was nothing more than a statement of British policy.

In the aftermath of World War I, the allied powers met to discuss the future of the territories that had been held by the Ottoman Empire for 400 years. As regards “Palestine”, the allies resolved:
“The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on the [2nd] November, 1917, by the British Government and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” [April 25, 1920]

The decisions made in San Remo in April 1920 by the Allied Powers then formed the basis for the preparation of a number of Mandates. Indeed, 2 years later, alongside the Mandate for Palestine, the League of Nations also adopted the Mandate for Syria and the Mandate for Lebanon. Together with the Mandate for Palestine, it was these instruments that provided the international legitimacy to create Israel (the Jewish State), Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Since it is the League of Nations, since replaced by the United Nations, that is truly responsible for creating Israel, the question that must be asked, is: Are the Palestinians going to sue the League of Nations/the UN?

Whatever the Palestinians decide to do, the truth remains that the 24th of July 1922 was probably one of the most important dates in the history of the Jewish people. On this day, the international community openly recognized the connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and decided to end 2,000 years of Jewish exile. On this day, the international community gave legitimacy to reconstitute the Jewish national homeland.

Early this morning, the IDF held an operation in Nablus reportedly to capture an Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade leader, and two terrorists were killed.

A statement were released by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades mourning the two.

The Palestinian Authority issued statements of condemnation.

But in 2008, Mahmoud Abbas claimed to have completely dismantled the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is under the umbrella of the Fatah party he leads.

No one seems to ask: why do the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades still exist 15 years later?

This isn't like the Islamic Jihad-based fighters in Jenin. These are allies of the Fatah party that dominates the Palestinian Authority. While one can argue that the Palestinian security services are not powerful enough to secure Jenin (which is a separate problem) can they not control their own allies?

Or, as seems more likely, are the Al Aqsa Brigades doing what the Palestinian Authority wants - a terror group that can be used whenever it is convenient for the PA and Fatah?

If the Palestinian Authority was doing its job - under signed agreements - the IDF wouldn't need to go into Area A to arrest terrorists.

So why isn't anyone asking why the Palestinian Authority is not doing its job? Why is no one in the West upset that the PA is supporting and mourning the terrorists rather than arresting them?

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Is USAID trying to take Area C away from Israel?

USAID is the US government's humanitarian aid arm. It has worked with Palestinians on various projects.

In 2020, Congress allocated $250 million over five years through the Nita M. Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act (MEPPA) "to advance peaceful co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians to enable a sustainable two-state solution."

Most of MEPPA funds are funneled through USAID:

The funds allocated to USAID will be guided by a fifteen-member Advisory Board with twelve members appointed by Congress in addition to a chair and two international members appointed by the USAID Administrator. The Board is tasked "to consult with, provide information to, and advise USAID and other U.S. Government agencies" on the efficacy of programming and partnership options to ensure the advancement of the goals of the Partnership for Peace Fund. Members are selected from diverse backgrounds, and their collaboration is governed by the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).

This Advisory Board held its first meeting in April, and it appears that it is interested in building institutions for Palestinians where they can supposedly work together with Israelis.

But they intend to build these institutions in Area C, which is under Israeli control, even though some 95% of Palestinians live in Areas A and B.

The transcript of their initial meeting in April included this:

Hiba Husseini: The other recommendation I would make is an Area C. Area C can be utilized both for the private sector, which I propose that we develop a logistics and distribution center, for example, in Area C. These distribution centers require large space and employ large number of people and create a lot of IT-related systems. So, I think logistics, distribution centers in Area C to serve the West Bank would be a very innovative idea and would bring the two sides -- the two businesses and create the integration that some of my colleagues have spoken about.
Another Area C project I envisage is the youth -- joint youth education in -- like IT incubation in Area C. So, take cool kids during the summer breaks and then create more advanced programs, maybe even leading to an IT university of sort or IT training center. We need the skills. And Israel has the skill, so I think jointly kids can start learning from the high school level moving forward...

George Salem (Chair):...I took pride to take careful notes of what everyone had to say. I would add, you know, the idea articulated by Ms. Husseini about expansion of programs for businesses in Area C is one I think that could be really fruitfully explored, as well as IT training, and perhaps even establishing a university there, as well as tourism.

You can be sure that when they are talking about these initiatives, the hundreds of thousands of Jews who live in Area C are meant to be excluded. Which means that this is a means to help Palestinianstake over parts of Area C - much as the EU has done over the past decades.

To pass muster with USAID, these programs are supposed to be officially joint Israeli-Palestinian initiatives, but if Palestinians are meant to reap the benefits, why not place them where the Palestinians mostly live?

MEPPA has two goals: economic development of the Palestinian private sector and "person to person" peacebuilding programs. Building a Palestinian high tech university on Israeli-controlled lands is not either of these - it is a land grab. Even if some of the instructors are Israelis.

Husseini and Salem are both Palestinian. They know exactly what they are doing.

The advisory board's recommendations are non-binding, and some members seem to be staunch Zionists including Sander Gerber of AIPAC and the Republican Jewish Coalition. Hopefully any agenda that undermines Israel, like the Area C proposals here, will be quashed before any damage can be done.

(h/t Irene)

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Last week, AIPAC-backed Glenn Ivey defeated J-Street candidate Donna Edwards for the Democratic nomination for Maryland’s 4th Congressional District.

J-Street's backing of Edwards should put to rest the lie that J-Street is in any way pro-Israel.

The Washington Examiner summed up Edwards' congressional record on Israel:

During Edwards's first year in the House, she voted "present" on a resolution "recognizing Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza." And Edwards voted present on a resolution expressing support for direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. She also voted present on 2012 legislation to enhance security cooperation between the United States and Israel. All three measures passed with overwhelming majorities, at times when Democrats and, later, Republicans were running the House.

J-Street pretends to be pro-Israel, but it supports someone who cannot even vote that Israel has the right to defend itself? Or that there should be direct Israel-Palestinian negotiations?

Clearly, Edwards is an outlier in her hate for Israel compared to most members of Congress.

J-Street cannot credibly claim to be pro-Israel in any context if this was the candidate that they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to support.

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07/23 Links: Reclaiming Jewish advocacy beyond Zionism; Sharansky urges Russian Jews to move to Israel before possible shutdown; The Top 5 Most Popular Palestinian Terrorists in the West

From Ian:

Reclaiming Jewish advocacy beyond Zionism

Data conducted by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and other leading research centers form the necessary CT scan of the Jewish American body today.

We can see the malaise, identify the various tumors: namely that a vast 73% of American Jews view their Jewish identity as an expression of religion, or that despite a plethora of Jewish teen organizations, Jews are less likely to become involved in Jewish life as adults, and more likely to intermarry (42% of all currently married Jewish respondents indicate they have a non-Jewish spouse).

And in regards to Israel, American Jewish teens struggle to support and feel affiliation in the midst of a social media propaganda campaign that paints the Jewish nation state as guilty of apartheid and Zionism as racism. We must use catheters – innovative pedagogies – to reach and confront the root of the problem: a generation that is confused about their identities, a generation that unwittingly deploys moral equivalents, a generation that is triggered by the word “truth.”

We are losing the ideological war not because we do not have better social media posts or better counter-arguments; we are losing the war because our children are marinating in a neo-Marxist framework that primes them to view power as evil, or the concept of truth an assault on narrative.

In the past four years that I have been teaching Zionism, I have noticed how rapidly things have deteriorated. If four years ago I could “sell Zionism” and inspire teens to become Zionists, today things are different. And I dare go one step further: selling Zionism has very little to do with Zionism.

Recently I had the privilege of hearing former ambassador Ron Dermer speak to a group of teens. To the question posed by one teen about how to get people to be more pro-Israel, Dermer announced: “When I gauge whether I am dealing with an ally or foe to Israel, I ask two questions and neither have anything to do with Israel or Zionism. First I ask, do you believe in a right and wrong, and second, is America a force of good for the world?”

Let us aim higher, dare to be better by reclaiming western civilization and its moral fabric by teaching that there are fixed axioms such as right and wrong, truth is objective, language shapes reality and that equality and equity comes at a cost to freedom. Dare I say, the solution is not more Zionism, but a reset button: a reclaiming of the morality narrative deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian values.

Natan Sharansky urges Russian Jews to move to Israel before possible shutdown

Russian Jews should move to Israel as soon as possible, former Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky urged on Friday, less than a day after Moscow called for the aliyah organization’s liquidation in Russia.

In a Facebook post, Sharansky, a former “refusenik” who was imprisoned by the Soviet authorities for nearly a decade during the late 1970s and early ’80s due to his human rights activism, framed the move as part of the ongoing Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine, which has seen a surge in immigration to Israel from both countries.

“Since the beginning of Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine, Israel has taken a cautious stance and offered only limited support to Ukraine,” he wrote, echoing earlier criticism of Jerusalem’s Ukraine policy, which he had previously told Haaretz stemmed from former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s fear to call out Putin.

“In the past days and weeks, Russia, isolated as it is from the free world, strengthened its military and political alliance with Iran and Syria. At the same time, it took steps to stop the operations of the Jewish Agency, the central organization connecting Israel and the Jews of the Diaspora, in its territory,” Sharansky went on to say.

He called Russia’s actions a reminder that Israelis “must protect our interests in ways that don’t rely on relinquishing our moral positions but rather on insisting on upholding them and to join the free world’s fight to stop Russia’s aggression.”

And while the Jewish Agency does important work in Russia, “it behooves us to remember that Israel knew how to fight for immigration even when the Jewish Agency and all Israeli diplomats were barred from Soviet Russia, just as it knew how to defend its security interests successfully even when all the best Soviet weapons were delivered not to us but to our enemies,” he said.

“I want to finish this post with a message to all of our Jewish brethren in Russia who are seriously considering immigrating to Israel: I urge you not postpone the implementation of your plans,” Sharansky added.

Jewish Agency in Russia is secretly planning on relocating to Israel

The Jewish Agency has secretly launched a plan to move its operations in Russia to Israel and to run the aliyah process remotely, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The decision follows the Russian Justice Ministry’s request on Thursday to shut down the agency’s activities in Russia. In the meantime, there will be a court discussion on the case this week, the Post has learned, and until then, the agency is trying to fight its case.

“The Jewish Agency employees are working on packing up, metaphorically, and re-evaluating their challenges and work,” said a source close to the agency.

The understanding is that there is no solution for the complicated legal situation in Russia, and therefore there is a need to create a system that will enable long-distance aliyah applications.

Even though the aliyah process is able to move to an online platform, it won’t be convenient for the elderly, because face-to-face connections will no longer exist.

A source in the agency explained that without the ability to promote aliyah in Russia, the immigration rates will drop dramatically in the coming years.

The agency has just a few Israeli shlichim (emissaries) in Russia and about 100 local employees. It is unclear if there will be a solution for these employees if it is forced to close its operations there.