Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, September 04, 2022

Jordan considering resuming ties with Hamas

Last week, a small symposium was held at the Center for Middle East Studies in Amman titled "The Relationship Between Jordan and Hamas, Foundations, Transformations and Future Directions."

The speakers said that Jordan must reconsider its policy of shunning Hamas that has been official since the late 1990s, when the kingdom expelled Hamas leaders.

The speakers said that a relationship with Hamas serves Jordan's strategic interests because Hamas is a major and "mature" Palestinian political force, and it is in Jordan's interests to have strong relations with all Palestinian factions.

Professor of International Relations at the University of Jordan, Dr. Hassan al-Momani, said that Hamas' "pragmatism" at not getting involved in the August flare-up between Israel and Islamic Jihad shows political maturity that should be rewarded.

Others claimed that Hamas positions on Zionism, and on issues like the Ramon airport plan, are more aligned with Jordan's own positions than those of the PLO.

The symposium came only days after a visit to Amman by Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.

While there appear to have been only a handful of attendees, the coverage of the meeting in Jordanian and Arab media indicates that the Jordanian government is looking to normalize the idea of a warming relationship with Hamas - and by extension, the Muslim Brotherhood.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Times of Israel reports:

The Hamas terror group announced on Sunday that it had executed five Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including two for “collaboration” with Israel.

“On Sunday morning, the death sentence was carried out against two condemned over collaboration with the occupation (Israel), and three others in criminal cases,” Hamas, which rules Gaza said in a statement.

It added that the defendants had previously been given “their full rights to defend themselves.”

Hamas media is reporting that "experts" and "activists" are supporting the executions. Many use a hashtag, #القصاص_حياة, "Retribution is Life," from a Quran quote.

I can find no "progressive" anti-Israel activist who is condemning Hamas' death penalty for either the Gazans convicted of murder or of "collaboration."

Moreover, the "human rights" groups that Israel has outlawed are not saying a word either. Al Haq, "Protecting and Promoting Human Rights & the Rule of Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory," is silent.

Also silent, as of this writing, are the social media of Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, who regularly condemn the death penalty in the US.

PCHR, a Palestinian human rights group not considered illegal by Israel, to its credit, does consistently condemn the death penalty. But B'Tselem hasn't said anything about this.

So-called human rights groups pretend that they are even handed and condemn Hamas when appropriate. But except for rocket fire, they tacitly support everything Hamas does with their silence, while they spend thousands of hours looking for new things to accuse Israel of.

The "collaboration" crimes occurred in 1991 and 2001.

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Isa Qassim, a leading Shiite cleric who lost his Bahraini citizenship in 2016, has issued a religious ruling that Bahraini citizens may not sell their land to Jews.

Al Ahed News reports:

The great Bahraini religious authority, Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim, sent a message to the people of Bahrain, warning them against selling any of their property to the Jews. [He said that such a sale would] "hand over to them your religion, your history, your homeland, your present and your future."

Sheikh Qassim added that "Bahrain today is an Islamic country, tomorrow, according to the Judaization plan, a country of Jews and Muslims, and the day after tomorrow a country of Jews with Muslim residents at their disposal. After that, the Muslims will be expelled, and the beginning is when they buy your land and the land of your brother from the Muslims."

He concluded the letter by saying: "Whoever sells land or a house to the Jews is not selling soil and stone, but rather a homeland, people, nation, history and dear sanctities. He is selling Islam, which is not equal to anything. May God's peace, mercy and blessings be upon you."

This harangue seems to be related to a statement the same cleric made last week, when he condemned a rumor of a Jewish Quarter in Bahrain.

The Jewish Quarter to be established by the Government of Bahrain on the land of Manama will be a replacement for the Islamic and Arab national identity, a distortion of the nation's history, the erasure of evidence of the authenticity of the original citizens, and the opening of the door to the Israeli occupation with the complicity of local politics.

I am not sure, but I think that saying that prohibiting selling land to Jews is antisemitic. So is spreading conspiracy theories that Jews are planning to take over Bahrain and to expel all Muslims.

But if this was really antisemitism from a prominent cleric, surely it would be all over the media, wouldn't it?

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

09/03 Links: The perpetual Palestinian paradox; Is Jordan planning to restore ties with Hamas?; Seven Myths about the Iran Nuclear Deal; Moroccan, Israeli Universities Launch Student Exchange Program

From Ian:

The perpetual Palestinian paradox

Even if the Palestinians were to have their own state, they will remain refugees “because it is an essential part of our identity,” Mansour declared. Palestinian former legislator and activist Hanan Ashrawi, with whom I got into an unpleasant heckling match, concurred.

This strange double-think was evident elsewhere. The Jerusalem Post Magazine’s Voices from the Arab Press round-up (compiled by The Media Line) last week contained an item with the headline “Lessons for Palestinian Leadership,” by Majid Kayali, writing in Lebanon’s An-Nahar on August 20. It was a diatribe against Israeli security actions and in particular the raids and closures of NGOs affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), recognized as a terrorist organization.

“Israel’s actions are also meant to send a clear message to the Palestinian Authority, according to which the Palestinians – despite having a president, a government, a flag, an anthem, embassies and even a security force – are ultimately nothing more than pawns in Israel’s chess game,” Kayali wrote, accusing Israel of seeking “to expose the fragility of the Palestinian Authority and undermine its role in front of its people.”

It’s not the PA fragility that I seek to expose, but the hypocrisy. As Kayali notes, the Palestinians already have the symbols of statehood – in fact, the State of Palestine is recognized by more than 135 UN member states – yet they see themselves as refugees, deserving unique support. This culture of entitlement gives the PA no motivation to return to the negotiating table in good faith to solve the issues that could let both Israel and the Palestinians thrive, side-by-side. On the contrary.

And it’s not only Israel that’s paying attention. Particularly following the 2020 Abraham Accords, an increasing number of Arab and Muslim countries have shown interest in growing stronger economically and technologically together with Israel – and to combat the Iranian threat and dangers of Sunni jihadi extremists. While the Palestinians are obsessively anti-normalization, Arab states are realizing that peace and stability are more beneficial for all. The Palestinians might be brothers, but they’re a heavy load for the Arab world to continue to carry. And they have been betrayed by their leadership, particularly Abbas, now in the 17th year of his four-year term of office.

It is also now obvious to all that Israel is here to stay, with the emphasis on here – in its ancient homeland. Having turned down multiple rounds of negotiations and peace processes – which usually ended with waves of terrorism – the Palestinian resolve to unilaterally declare statehood will compound the problems rather than solve them. Keep in mind that maps of “Palestine” include all Israel, “from the river to the sea.”

At the same time, the Palestinians’ long-term plan is to remain dependent on the UN and external funding and to maintain and their refugee status. Not so much a paradox as a parody, it’s classic chutzpah.

The real history of the U.S.-Israel relationship

More than half a century ago, the great American Jewish historian Jacob Rader Marcus warned: “A people that is not conscious of its past has no assurance of a future.” His words would make an apt epigraph to Walter Russell Mead’s magisterial new book, “The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People.”

Mead, a professor of foreign relations and humanities at Bard College, notes that the ancestral homeland of the Jews may be just a speck on the world map, but “it occupies a continent in the American mind.” That space, he found, is filled with misinformation, subject to prejudice and swamped by emotion. “To get the story straight I was going to have to take on both pro-Zionist and anti-Zionist legends that have obscured the historical record,” he writes. He set himself the task of helping Americans understand the “real history of their relationship with the Jewish state,” the importance of Zionism and Israel’s place in American world strategy.

He has achieved that goal. Any careful reader will come away from this book armed with facts, history and context, and with a clarity absent from most discussions of the subject. At a time when “replacement theory” has become acceptable political rhetoric on the right, and with antisemitic incidents at an all-time high, this volume is more than timely — it is necessary.

Mead tackles head-on the narrative that a secret Jewish cabal controls American foreign policy on Israel. Election by election, he cites the facts: George W. Bush, whose Iraq War was “allegedly taken in Israel’s interest,” saw Jews voting heavily against him in 2000 and 2004. Donald Trump, who moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and delighted Benjamin Netanyahu by terminating the nuclear agreement with Iran, lost the Jewish vote by a wide margin. Mead writes, “To blame the Jewish community for policies it dislikes made by presidents it rejects seems, if not virulently antisemitic, at least uninformed.”

Why, then, is recent American foreign policy relentlessly pro-Israel? Because “it emerges from the same kind of political process and struggle that produces the rest of our policies.” A global strategy, grounded in domestic politics — which he spells out, decade by decade — underlies the U.S. stance, Mead writes.

PBS series asks hard questions about how Americans treated Jews in WWII

To depict the history, the filmmakers relied heavily on their advisory board (they have one for every project they take on) to determine how much time to devote to various historical events, whether to show certain images or merely describe them and how to describe them. “We don’t go anywhere without our board of advisors,” Botstein said.

For “The US and the Holocaust,” the advisors included Holocaust historians such as Debórah Dwork, Peter Hayes and Richard Breitman, as well as scholars of race history such as Nell Irvin Painter, Mae M. Ngai and Howard Bryant.

Often the advisors disagreed on how to depict moments in history, and this disagreement is sometimes reflected in the film itself. A debate over whether the United States should have bombed Auschwitz, or even the trains leading into the death camp, echoed in the advisors’ room just as much as it did in the highest levels of government in the war’s waning months. The film reproduces those debates, quoting from historians who argue both points.

The film’s treatment of Franklin D. Roosevelt is also notable given Burns’ demonstrated interest in the US president. Many historians today fault Roosevelt for failing to take more decisive action to prevent further bloodshed at key moments in the war. The director noted that the new series is more critical of FDR’s actions during the Holocaust than his earlier series “The Roosevelts” was, but Burns still believes the president was mostly acting within his means as a politician. “He could not wave a magic wand,” he said. “He was not the emperor or a king.”

All Burns films are released with teaching guides and are intended for use in the classroom, but getting “The US and the Holocaust” into schools was of particular importance to the filmmakers because they saw an opportunity to fit it into the dozens of statewide Holocaust education mandates that have been passed.

And also, Novick said, because the filmmakers have noticed the rise of various far-right, white supremacist ideologies, including many figures who espouse Holocaust denial. “It’s a never-ending battle that has to be fought,” she said. The film itself doesn’t engage with such denialists.

In their publicity for the film, Burns and company are partnering with several organizations to try to bring the Holocaust’s lessons into the modern day, including the International Rescue Committee, a refugee aid agency, and the US government-funded think tank Freedom House.

The producers asked JTA not to give away the details of the film’s ending — an unusual request for a Holocaust documentary. But the reason is that Burns and his team don’t end with the camps’ liberation in 1945. Instead, they come up to the present, in unexpected ways.

“Most of our films come up to the present,” Burns said. “And we would be remiss if we did not take on this most gargantuan of topics, and not say that this is rhyming so much with the present.”

When asked why the film makes some of the connections it makes, Burns quoted a line Lipstadt delivers in the film: “If ‘the time to stop a Holocaust is before it happens,’ then it means you have to lay on the table the ingredients that go into it. Maybe these ingredients don’t add up to it… But if you’re seeing people assembling, in the kitchen, the same ingredients, you’ve got to say, you cannot wait until the meal is prepared.”

09/02 Links Pt2: Jewish anti-Zionists are trying to legitimize anti-Semitism; The BBC's perfectly sealed thought system; Anne Frank’s Memory Is Under Assault

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Jewish anti-Zionists are trying to legitimize anti-Semitism

Using the bully pulpit granted him by the Times, Beinart was able to use one of the most read publications in the world to argue that anyone who defends Israel against the apartheid lie or points out the way those who wish to eliminate it (as opposed to merely criticizing some of its government’s policies) are engaging in discrimination against Jews are the real problem. According to Beinart, the mere existence of one Jewish state is a form of racism and “Jewish supremacy” that should be opposed. In his eyes, the century-long Palestinian war on Zionism and opposition to a Jewish state, no matter where its borders are drawn, is a righteous cause. More than that, he argues that the willingness of Jews to defend their state, even while often criticizing it, as the ADL and Lipstadt do, discredits efforts to oppose anti-Semitism.

Like his Palestinian terrorist allies, Beinart is especially angry at those Arab and Muslim states that have made peace with Israel—either overtly via the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords or quietly, as is the case with Saudi Arabia—and thinks links to these admittedly authoritarian governments also discredits Jews. That his cause is discredited by the fact that those who agree with him among Palestinian groups or their Iranian allies have consistently rejected compromise and peace—and seek Jewish genocide—is a minor detail that he ignores.

Beinart’s own embarrassing history of wanderings from a neo-liberal supporter of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq to a virulent opponent of both it and U.S. foreign policy during his time as editor of The New Republic, then as a liberal Zionist supporter of Israel and advocate of a two-state solution to his current position in which he supports Israel’s dismantlement, makes it hard to take him seriously. He has always been an intellectually shallow writer whose willingness to spout his opinions is only matched by his often-breathtaking ignorance of many of the subjects he discusses, of which Israel is the most conspicuous example.

Yet Beinart, who was once included by Foreign Policy magazine on its list of 100 top global thinkers, is not only someone that is regularly given access to one of the largest publishing platforms in the world for his hateful views. He’s also a reliable weathervane that can usually tell us which way the wind is blowing among the left-wing elites who have such a stranglehold on control of the major institutions of journalism, academia and popular culture.

So it is significant that Beinart is not only venting his resentment at the way the overwhelming majority of Israelis, as well as most American Jews, haven’t taken his advice about surrendering to those who would endanger their existence. He is now embracing the intersectional narrative in which the effort to destroy Israel is identified as a cause that lovers of freedom should support.

The not-so-subtle warning implicit in his article is that the overwhelming majority of Jews who are Zionists—even liberals like the ADL and Lipstadt—are discrediting the Jewish people and leaving themselves open to what are, in his opinion, justified attacks from the left.

Melanie Phillips: The BBC's perfectly sealed thought system

After Sir Salman Rushdie was attacked in New York last month by a Muslim intent upon fulfilling the murderous 1989 Iranian fatwa against him, the BBC’s Dateline London programme ran an interview with the Palestinian commentator Abdel Bari Atwan.

Atwan said on the show that The Satanic Verses, Rushdie’s satirical novel for which he attracted the fatwa, was “blasphemy” and “offensive”.

Rushdie, said Atwan, was “very, very cruel when he talked about the Prophet Mohammed and his wives” which was also “very, very dangerous”. He added: “About 90 per cent of the people of the Muslim world believe that freedom of expression [is] practised only to insult Muslims”.

The Jewish Chronicle reports that this prompted Baroness Deech, a former BBC governor, to write in protest to the BBC Director-General, Tim Davie.

Deech, a former Oxford university law lecturer, wrote that “it is absolutely unacceptable to respond to comments with murder or violence,” and that Atwan’s comments “could amount to glorifying terrorism,” a crime under English law.

The BBC dismissed her complaint, insisting that inviting Atwan to comment was “editorially justified” and that “if extreme views are expressed on the BBC we would always seek to challenge them”.

Here, though, lies the rub. For the BBC’s definition of extremism is subjective, ideological and deeply flawed.

In giving a platform to Atwan and standing by his comments, the BBC adopted the attitude common in the west ever since that Rushdie fatwa — genuflection to the claims made by Islamists about their religion which they enforce with murderous violence.

Their charge against Rushdie’s novel was that it was offensive towards Islam’s founder, Mohammed, and therefore blasphemous. The same charge was levelled against satirical cartoons of Mohammed whose publication led to dozens of killings around the world. It also led to censorship by most of the western media of anything that Muslims held to be offensive.

Along with the rest of the secular west, whose disdain for religious belief is exceeded only by its readiness to capitulate to Muslim demands, the BBC internalised the claim that being offensive about Islam was a religious prohibition that should be respected.

So the BBC probably assumed that Atwan’s comments represented a legitimate point of view. The fact that such an interpretation inspires terrorist violence is a link that, wearing such cultural blinders, it would be unable to make.

Moreover, it has been giving a platform to Atwan for years as an impartial commentator, despite his virulent libels against Israel and support for terrorism.

He has praised Palestinian terrorists as “martyrs”. On YouTube, he called April’s shooting of three Israelis in Tel Aviv a “miracle”.

Last month, he claimed that the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes was not committed by Black September terrorists, with Mahmoud Abbas among the planners, but by “Israeli Mossad operatives and German police”; and that the hands of acting Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid were “soaked in the blood of Palestinian children”.

Yet the BBC repeatedly uses Atwan as a respectable commentator. But then, when it comes to Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, the BBC almost always suspends any critical judgment that it applies to other parts of the world.

In full: Baroness Deech's letter to the BBC

Dear Tim

I am prompted to write to you by viewing the BBC’s featuring of Abdel Bari Atwan on Dateline London on 19 August 2022.

In this appearance, approximately 22 minutes in, Mr Atwan spoke at length about the stabbing of Sir Salman Rushdie in New York, describing his book, The Satanic Verses, as “blasphemy completely and it is offensive”.

He described Rushdie as “very, very cruel when he talked about the Prophet Muhammad and his wives, and actually, to talk about the wives of the Prophet is really very, very dangerous”. He added: “About 90 per cent of the people of the Muslim world believe that freedom of expression [is] practised only to insult Muslims.”

It was wrong for the BBC to have given him this airtime. His comments about Rushdie could amount to “glorifying terrorism” under the Terrorism Act 2006. It is absolutely unacceptable to respond to Sir Salman’s writing or comments, no matter how offensive they might seem to some, with murder or violence, and any attempt to explain or justify violence committed against him should be challenged vigorously, not least by the presenter. No direct challenge was made on the programme when Mr Atwan spoke about this topic.

A quick search of Mr Atwan’s website would reveal inter alia, this post It recounts his condemnation of Chancellor Scholz for disagreeing with Mahmoud Abbas about “50 Palestinian holocausts” and his perversion of history in accusing Israel itself of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

These statements fall within the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism and, as racist and hate speech (criminalised by statute), fall outside the limits of free speech.

The BBC must have been aware that Mr Atwan was likely to offend against the BBC’s own commitment to truth and legal speech. In preparing this programme they should have considered balance and readied themselves by adding another panellist prepared to condemn the terrible attack on Rushdie and stand up for the BBC’s own principles.

JTA reports, "The student magazine at the University of Adelaide in the state of South Australia called for 'death to Israel' in an article."

I wondered at how often we hear "Death to Israel" compared to "Death to Palestine."

Google search for "Death to Israel" estimates about 700,000 hits. "Death to Palestine" has about 117,000 hits.

But that doesn't tell the whole story.

An examination of the "Death to Israel" entries finds hundreds if not thousands of unique cases where Israel haters screamed or published that term. But the "Death to Palestine" search results find only a relative handful of cases.

One is from Iran, when protestors in 2018 chanted that slogan during protests about the economy. Another was in May 2021, when someone spray painted that phrase on a Brooklyn mosque.

Those two seem to be the majority of cases listed!

It seems pretty clear which side is suffused with hate.

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!

09/02 Links Pt1: ‘The games must go on’: Athlete recounts Munich massacre and problematic aftermath; Thirsty for war and fame: Gen-Z Palestinian terror influencers

From Ian:

Thirsty for war and fame: Gen-Z Palestinian terror influencers

According to the latest statistics, more than 60 shooting incidents occurred in the West Bank in the first part of August, and 60 shooting attacks were carried out against Israeli security forces during arrest raids in the area in recent months. These numbers are higher than in all of 2021 combined.

In addition, another 220 shooting incidents were thwarted by the IDF and Shin Bet. These numbers are relatively high to the numbers we got used seeing to in the past decade.

The Palestinian terrorists with whom the IDF is dealing are also different from those it faced in recent years. To a large extent, it can be said that they are merciless, strive to engage in combat, refuse to surrender easily, and equally important - thirsty for publicity and versed in social media. The most well-known among the latest "famous" Gen-Z terrorists was Ibrahim al-Nablusi, who was killed by Israeli security forces three weeks ago while evading arrest.

Al-Nablusi became a Palestinian social media terror "influencer," having recorded himself at funerals and during shooting attacks, which he later published to online platforms.

Earlier this week, a friend of a wanted Palestinian "succeeded" to film him shooting at IDF forces as they closed in to arrest him (and he later turned himself in). Each video of this kind glorifies the militant in question, who then immediately becomes a local hero and in some cases, a national one, like al-Nablusi.

These new-age terrorists also don't have any distinct organizational affiliation. They see their local Palestinian identity as more important than being affiliated with a particular terror group.

The growing involvement of Islamic Jihad members in the shooting attacks, as well as Fatah operatives who are now collaborating with them, raises suspicions that we are witnessing a development that is beyond spontaneous. Hamas certainly won't object to this move. It contributes greatly to incessant attempts of persuading Palestinians in the West Bank to carry out attacks against Israel.

In the early years of the Second Intifada, Hezbollah invested quite a lot of funds in an attempt to incite the West Bank by supporting Fatah and Tanzim operatives in the Nablus area. Such a scenario is also possible now.

Above all, the current escalation in the West Bank makes it clear for the umpteenth time that despite the Israeli attempt to lavish the Palestinians in the West Bank with economic benefits and bury its head in the sand in the process. Since 2009, the Palestinians continue to oppose Israel's wild dream of truce through "deluxe occupation."

‘The games must go on’: Athlete recounts Munich massacre and problematic aftermath

With the Games suspended for the first time in Olympic history, the team prepared for a complete cancellation.

However, they were halted for only 34 hours, with then-IOC president Avery Brundage declaring “the Games must go on.”

Langhoff said it was “doubly difficult” for his side to focus on their sporting objectives after the attacks.

The team lost against the Soviet Union and ultimately finished fourth.

Despite the harrowing experience, the team found little understanding from the East German public upon returning home.

“Only medals counted,” he recalled. “For us in the GDR [East Germany], finishing fourth was a shock to the system. I mean, there wasn’t a prison camp, but only places one to three were financially rewarded.”

The East German government, allied with the PLO and hostile to Israel, officially called the hostage-taking a “tragedy,” while there was hardly any mention of the atrocity in the media.

The Communist authorities “completely ignored this attack and didn’t include us in any evaluations or anything else… [they] were only concerned with being successful in the competition,” Langhoff said.

Germany agrees to $28m. in compensation for families of Munich Olympics victims

Germany and the families of Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics have agreed on a compensation offer totaling 28 million euros ($28 million), said an interior ministry spokesperson on Friday.

Last month, the families had said they were unhappy with the latest German compensation offers and that they planned to boycott a ceremony on Monday in Munich marking the 50th anniversary of the attack in protest. How will the reparation be paid to victims' families from the 1972 Munich Massacre?

The federal government will contribute 22.5 million euro, while 5 million euros will come from the state of Bavaria and 500,000 euros will come from Munich, said the spokesperson.

On Sept. 5, 1972, members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage at the poorly secured athletes' village by Palestinian gunmen from the radical Black September group.

Within 24 hours, 11 Israelis, five Palestinians and a German policeman were dead after a standoff and subsequent rescue effort erupted into gunfire.

Throwing rocks at Jews is all the rage lately.

Right after two Lebanese ministers proudly videoed themselves hurling rocks towards the border with Israel, Palestinian Media Watch found this news story about the Palestinian Museum in Ramallah, where there is a new interactive "intifada" exhibit.

Director of The Palestinian Museum’s Information and Communication Technology Unit Nasri Shtayyeh: “The user can choose one of these interactive stories. The first story is the intifada, and they have a kind of emotion, because the moment [the museum visitor] enters the story he needs to respond, since he is entering an environment of intifada that could contain throwing rocks, it could have road closures, it could have vehicles entering.”
…

Official PA TV host: “Let’s try it.”

Nasri Shtayyeh: “It’s really nice, and it’s interactive.”

[Official PA TV, At the Museum, Aug. 24, 2022]

We always wondered what a Palestinian museum would include. Now we know - it glorifies terror, the major Palestinian accomplishment.

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!

Activist who says Google demanded her relocation as retaliation for anti-Israel activities is lying

From The New York Times:

A Google employee who became the most visible opponent of a company contract with the Israeli military said on Tuesday that she would resign after claiming Google had tried to retaliate against her for her activism.

The employee, Ariel Koren, a marketing manager for Google’s educational products arm who has worked for the company for seven years, wrote a memo to colleagues announcing her plan to leave Google at the end of the week.

She spent more than a year organizing against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion agreement for Google and Amazon to supply Israel and its military with artificial intelligence tools and other computing services. Ms. Koren, 28, helped circulate petitions and lobby executives, and she talked to news organizations, all in an effort to get Google to reconsider the deal.

Then, in November, she said, came a surprising ultimatum from Google: Agree to move to São Paulo, Brazil, within 17 business days or lose your job.

Ms. Koren marketed educational products to Latin America and was based in Mexico City before moving to San Francisco during the pandemic. But, she said, there was not a clear business justification for the mandated move or its urgency, and a supervisor in Brazil told her that employees in São Paulo were working from home because of the pandemic.

But then we see this lone sentence:

Google and the National Labor Relations Board investigated her complaint and found no wrongdoing.

The NLRB dismissal letter shows that Koren's entire complaint is baseless - because Google's decision to move her role to Brazil came before she started her complaints about Israel and Project Nimbus: (I inserted her name in the redacted area.)

(I was skeptical at first, but this is definitely the correct dismissal letter, since that case number was linked in an article about Koren's complaint in March.)

The New York Times not mentioning this important fact is journalistic malpractice. It upends the entire point of the article.

Koren and the BDSers have been masterful at gaining outsized publicity since the Project Nimbus protests started.

The number of Google employees who protested the project is minuscule, but they still got their open letter published in The Guardian.

Then the BDSers pretended that there was a "shareholder revolt" which was similarly grossly exaggerated - but it generated a headline at The Intercept.

After that fizzled, the BDSers asked US students to sign a "pledge" that they will not accept internships at Google and Amazon, and again very few signed - but it was enough for them to trumpet it as a victory.

Koren's false claim that Google is retaliating against her was chapter four in this monomaniacal attempt to demonize Israel and pressure Google. Since there have been a number of similar retaliation complaints against Google in recent years, this one has received more publicity than the others did. Check out this March Los Angeles Times headline:

Koren's quitting Google is chapter five. After all, if her work environment was so toxic, she would have left Google long ago. But she wanted to squeeze out one more wave of anti-Israel articles - and the New York Times is happy to do its part.

I'll bet that Koren has been job searching for months and has another position lined up - but is framing her changing jobs, among Silicon Valley's constant employee turnover, as a principled decision to resign from Google.

(h/t Michael Starr/Jerusalem Post, David Bernstein, David Litman)

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!

UN Security Council condemns Hezbollah - but refuses to mention Hezbollah

From UNIFIL:

(Resolution 2650 of) the Security Council requests the LAF and the UN Secretary General set out precise benchmarks and timelines for the effective and durable deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces in southern Lebanon and in the country’s territorial waters. ...

The Council reiterates that UNIFIL does not require prior authorization or permission from anyone to undertake its mandated tasks, and that it is allowed to conduct its operations independently. It calls on the parties to guarantee UNIFIL’s freedom of movement, including by allowing announced and unannounced patrols. The Council condemns the harassment and intimidation of UNIFIL personnel, as well as the use of disinformation campaigns against peacekeepers. It further requests the mission to take measures to monitor and counter disinformation.

The Council also expresses concern in the resolution about some developments along the Blue Line. It notes the recent installation of containers that restrict peacekeepers’ access to, or ability to see, parts of the line. It also condemns the presence of unauthorized weapons controlled by armed groups in UNIFIL’s area of operations.

That last sentence is a condemnation of Hezbollah by the UN Security Council. But it refuses to name Hezbollah!

That is cowardly. While it is obvious that this resolution is meant to condemn Hezbollah, by not saying their name, they are letting them off the hook.

The resolution actually condemns two unnamed groups - both of which are Hezbollah.

The "containers" it mentions are from an NGO called "Green Without Borders" that is a Hezbollah front. Its leader is aligned with Hezbollah, outposts they build are used by Hezbollah, and these "containers" just happen to be right on the Blue Line, which seems awfully coincidental and political for an environmental group.

Palestinians use "human rights" NGOs to hide terror activity. Hezbollah uses "environmental" NGOs to do the same.

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!

09/01 Links Pt2: Amnesty International - Hypocrisy and Double Standards; Closet Zionist? Linda Sarsour’s On the Down Low Visit to Israel

From Ian:

Amb. Alan Baker: Amnesty International - Hypocrisy and Double Standards

In the context of the ongoing armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Amnesty International (AI) recently issued a report, dated August 4, 2022, entitled “Ukrainian Fighting Tactics Endanger Civilians.”1 This report names Ukraine responsible for the deaths of Ukrainian citizens caused by Russian bombardments. The report accuses Ukraine of violating international humanitarian law and endangering its own civilians “by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, including in schools and hospitals…” and thereby turning civilian objects into military targets, generating Russian strikes in populated areas thereby causing civilian fatalities and destruction of civilian infrastructure.”

There can be no doubt as to the centrality and essential nature of those humanitarian requirements set out in the internationally accepted and recognized instruments of international humanitarian law, requiring the protection of civilians and avoidance of military attacks against civilian concentrations and objects. Such instruments include the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949,3 and the Protocol Additional relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977.

To maintain credibility and dignity as a bona fide human rights watchdog, Amnesty International must carry out its duty impartially and without the slightest indication of political partisanship.

The choice of Amnesty International to direct the bulk of its criticism against Ukraine and to hold Ukraine partly responsible for the deaths of Ukrainians attacked by the Russian military has become the subject of considerable international criticism.5 This is especially true since the report implies that Ukraine may be committing war crimes and that its soldiers’ actions might be interpreted as using civilians as human shields.

Much of the criticism revolves around serious flaws and clumsy and negligent methodology used by Amnesty International researchers and the fact that the organization chose to publish its findings despite a lack of solid facts and without taking into due consideration pertinent constraints generated by the context of the Russian offensive.6

Nevertheless, one cannot avoid drawing a comparison between Amnesty International’s demonstrated and justified concern for the protection of civilians and civilian centers in Ukraine and its demonstrated and unjustified lack of concern about the actions of Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip.

While Amnesty calls out Ukraine for allegedly “establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, including in schools and hospitals, thereby turning civilian objects into military targets,” it curiously refrains from addressing precisely the same phenomenon employed by the Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Such an apparent double standard is incompatible with Amnesty International’s core principles and stated mission.

Amnesty appears to ignore or minimize blatant violations of international humanitarian law committed by these Palestinian terror groups in using the local Palestinian public in the Gaza Strip as human shields and in flagrantly directing thousands of rockets against Israeli civilian targets, including towns, villages, agricultural centers, schools, and hospitals.

Jonathan Tobin: Celebrate Gorbachev’s failure to save the Soviet Union, not his heroism

Gorbachev hadn’t come into office as an advocate for human rights, economic liberalism or freedom for the captive nations that languished under Soviet control. Nor was he known for his love of the Jewish people. Had he been any of those things, he never would have been elevated to the head of the Communist state. But his ability to see the weakness of the Soviet state and, unlike his predecessors, his lack of any real prejudice against Jews led him to a series of decisions that would lead to the end of the regime and the opening of the gates to a million Jews who chose to leave for Israel and the United States.

Still, none of that would have happened had the West continued to be led by weak leaders like President Jimmy Carter, or realists like President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who were so overawed by the facade of Soviet strength that they chose a policy of détente that essentially accepted it rather than seeking to resist it. Though hailed in the 1970s as astute foreign policy, détente helped prop up and preserve the Soviet Union. Reagan and Thatcher chose a different path, which eventually created the circumstances that led Gorbachev to concede that the Soviets couldn’t beat the West.

Equally important was the resistance to Soviet tyranny on the part of dissidents like nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov and refuseniks like Sharansky, who inspired not just the movement to free Soviet Jewry but a spirit of revulsion against the Soviets in Western opinion that buttressed Reagan’s stand.

Sadly, Gorbachev’s failure to preserve the Soviet Union set an example that other tyrants aren’t likely to forget. In 1989, most people were sure that the Chinese Communist state would suffer the same fate as the empire of Lenin and Stalin. But the Chinese Communist Party had no intention of being merely shoved aside as their Soviet counterparts had been. It liberalized its economy, allowed massive investment from the West, and made it richer and stronger. Still, its leaders never loosened up their authoritarian instincts, repressing freedom of speech and all dissent even as they legalized free enterprise, albeit with the state always having the option to step in and take what it wants.

The Iranian regime understands that same fact and unleashes its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to massacre dissidents in the streets whenever protests arise.

History Repeating Itself as Bethlehem’s Christians Face Extinction

The demise of Christianity in Palestinian-controlled areas is part of a more general pattern of Christians disappearing in the Middle East and North Africa.

In 2019, a UK-commissioned report laid bare the scale of the problem, describing their dwindling numbers as “coming close to genocide.”

“Forms of persecution ranging from routine discrimination in education, employment and social life up to genocidal attacks against Christian communities have led to a significant exodus of Christian believers from this region since the turn of the century,” the report said.

“In countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia the situation of Christians and other minorities has reached an alarming stage. In Saudi Arabia there are strict limitations on all forms of expression of Christianity including public acts of worship. There have been regular crackdowns on private Christian services,” the report concluded.

The crisis currently facing Christians is not unique to the region — it is part of a grim pattern that started with the mass expulsion of Jews over 70 years ago.

As HonestReporting has detailed, approximately one million Jewish residents of Arab countries were forced to flee their homes following the rejection by Palestinian and Arab leaders of the 1947 UN Partition Plan.

Although Jews had lived in North Africa and the Middle East continuously for thousands of years — long before the advent of the Islamic faith — their presence has, except for in Israel, effectively been eliminated.

Christians living under Palestinian rule and in the region as a whole now face the same future. This, while church leaders fail to denounce the root cause.

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All Culture To Be Transformed Into Amorphous Blobs To Avoid Offending, Triggering (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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blob New York, September 1 - Museums, schools, libraries, and other repositories of the collective wisdom and artistic-intellectual output of the preceding generations have embarked on a program to render all such materials into indistinct, vague masses lest anyone experience negative emotional responses to an encounter with anything resembling an assertion.

Leading cultural institutions resolved this week to protect the fragile psyches of humans by turning all textual, visual, tactile, and acoustic media into blobs of undiscernible nothingness, in keeping with the burgeoning trend of avoiding offense wherever and however possible. Representatives of the institutions announced the initiative following an incident last week in which a visitor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art called all attempts to examine, study, learn from, analyze, or explain anything that came from another culture "exploitation" and "appropriation." The complaint prompted museum officials and colleagues throughout the cultural and academic world to "do better" by removing all content that could insult, or be interpreted to insult, marginalized communities.

"Our entire collection or objets d'art excludes the visually-impaired," observed Neffer Gudenov, a curator at the Met. "So we're going to get rid of it all. I understand that the New York Philharmonic will now only perform or commission works that contain no audible notes, so as not to violate the sensibilities and sensitivities of the hearing-impaired. This is a welcome change in the cultural world, a long time in coming."

The New York Times will eliminate its print and online presence, except the braille edition, an editorial announced Thursday. "We will begin to phase out our visual media - articles, photos, caricature, illustrations, advertisements, anything visual," the editorial stated. "For too long, the literate and seeing demographics have, ironically, not seen those among us who cannot see or read. Even the braille edition will come to an end by mid-2023, since the use of braille requires literacy, and that discriminate against the literacy-impaired."

The Museum of Modern Art considers itself ahead of the curve on this cultural matter. "Art went conceptual ages ago," explained Putin Yuan, a docent at MOMA. "Even some of our visual exhibits only exist temporarily, by design. We're uniquely placed to lead this evolution of empathy."

Activists hope the phenomenon expands beyond cultural output. "We can eliminate uniqueness of shape, style, color, comfort, or any indications of difference from, from example, cars," suggested one activist. "It's hurtful to the have-nots when someone else can afford more than they can, and seeing such a car, or hearing an ad for it, or somebody mentioning it, causes trauma. I don't even need to mention the exclusion of color-blind folx. If things go according to plan, we can live in a society of total equality where no one lives in an easier-to-find or easier-to-reach place than anyone else, and no one has any reason to live more than anyone else."

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09/01 Links Pt1: Col. Kemp: A Deal Based on Lies: The Iran Nuclear Agreement Will Make War More Likely; Iran deal bashed in letter to Biden from 5,000 Israeli security experts

From Ian:

Col. Richard Kemp: A Deal Based on Lies: The Iran Nuclear Agreement Will Make War More Likely

Iran has been waging war non-stop on the West and its allies in the Middle East since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Appeasing Tehran by endorsing its nuclear program and handing it billions of dollars from sanctions relief will empower and encourage the ayatollahs to even greater aggression.

The mantra of the apologists for President Biden's attempt to revive President Obama's failed agreement from 2015 that paved the way to an Iranian nuclear bomb is "a bad deal is better than no deal." Well, no, it is not. The argument is that it buys time for the West, with optimism that "something will turn up." But optimism is not a strategy and certainly not for dealing with a violent revolutionary regime dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, which it sees as the proxy of its ultimate enemy, America.

The "buying time" argument only works if you do not understand Iran and are naive enough to believe the regime will honor what it agrees to. The reality is that the regime in Tehran will ignore constraints imposed by the deal that it does not like. That is what it did with the original JCPOA and its other international undertakings including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that it has frequently breached.

Tehran will continue to develop its nuclear capability - deal or no deal - at the speed it wants until it is physically stopped from doing so. The $100 billion a year it will receive as a result of lifted sanctions will enable Iran to speed up its nuclear program, including development of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to Europe and the U.S. Iran's regional aggression will shift into overdrive with the massive cash injection.

What kind of Temple Mount access do Israelis want?

The issue of the Temple Mount becoming a geopolitical flashpoint between Israel and its neighbors has robbed us of the opportunity of speaking about it religiously and historically. The increasing numbers of Israelis supporting a Jewish presence on Temple Mount, and the growing number of Jews ascending to Temple Mount – most famously the recent visit by conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro – demand that we ask ourselves: where is this all heading, and what would we like to see happen on the Temple Mount?

If the White House, Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, Jordan’s Abdullah, China’s Xi Jinping, and the Secretary General of the UN all called and told the Israeli government that they would be delighted to see Israel take full control of Temple Mount, what would we do next? Differing Jewish views on the matter

To answer this, we must note the different positions among the Jewish people on this matter. The overwhelming number of Orthodox rabbis and the Chief Rabbinate would ask that the area be fenced in and that no one be allowed at the site known as Har Habayit until the messiah miraculously arrives.

On the other side of the spectrum, there is a fringe group of religious Jews who have been anticipating such a moment and would like to engage in a complete reconstruction of the Temple, build the Third Temple, and bring daily sacrifices and offerings so that “the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem shall be pleasing to God as in the days of yore and in the years of old” (Malachi 3).

In fact, in 1962, five years before the Six Day War, the IDF’s chief rabbi, Shlomo Goren, published an article saying that if Israel were to take over Jerusalem, we would be obliged to rebuild the Beit Hamikdash.

These two sides of the spectrum are irreconcilable. Those who believe in fencing the area off until the messiah arrives are not neutral on the matter – it is their belief, and they are the majority. To them, building the Temple and offering sacrifices – or even going up there today – is a far worse problem than the current status quo.

Unpacked: The Secret Agreement That Shaped the Middle East | History of Israel Explained

It was 1916 and World War I was raging. Countries were fighting for resources, land and power and the Ottoman Empire was on its deathbed.

With all eyes on the Empire’s territories, the secretive Sykes-Picot agreement was created to decide who would get control over what would become Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, and Iraq, as well as parts of future Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

However, in 1920, representatives at the San Remo Conference tossed these secret plans out in favor of “mandates'' AKA territory temporarily governed by an Allied power. This led to the British Mandate over Palestine, and the eventual establishment of Israel as a legal national home for the Jewish people.

CNN Arabic quotes an episode in Jared Kushner's book Breaking History that I couldn't find in any English-language articles. The quotes are obviously translated from English to Arabic and back, so they will not be exact quotes from the book.

The President was scheduled to meet with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank. Abbas came to the White House in May, told the president he was ready to negotiate, and expressed confidence in Trump as an arbiter of a peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israel. We were impressed, but we were still waiting to hear more. Just before we left, Ambassador Friedman showed Trump a video of Abbas making serious threats towards the Israeli people.

Friedman's message was clear: Be careful with Abbas - he tells you he's for peace in English, but look carefully at what he says in Arabic. Tillerson saw what was happening in the video and got angry, claiming he was dishonest. Friedman replied: ' Are you saying he didn't say these things?' Tillerson had to admit that they were Abbas's words, but he was angry that he was losing control. It was important for the president to see all sides of the issue, especially since he was hearing from so many respectable businessmen that Abbas was a serious man who genuinely wanted to make peace.

During the bilateral meeting in Ramallah, Abbas recited the same talking points he had used during his last visit to the White House. It was as if the first meeting never happened. He failed to show any progress on the issues he and Trump had previously discussed. Trump was disappointed. He was furious and did not mince his words: 'You pay those who kill Israelis. This is official government policy. You have to stop this. We can make a deal in two seconds. I have the best players on it. But I want to see some action. I want to I see it quickly, I don't think you want to make a deal.'

Abbas became defensive and complained about Israeli security. Trump replied: 'Wait: Israel is good at security, and you say you're not going to take security from them? Are you crazy? Without Israel, ISIS can take over your territory in about twenty minutes. We're spending so much on the military. Everyone in this region spends a fortune on security. If I can get high-quality security for free to America and save the cost, I'll take it in a second'.... After witnessing Abbas' stubbornness, I understand better why 12 former presidents tried and failed in reaching a peace agreement.

This sounds like Trump - and Tillerman, and Friedman, and Abbas himself. It is consistent with what Friedman wrote in his memoir about the meeting with Trump. The Jerusalem Post said that the businessman who had tried to convince Trump that Abbas was peaceful was Ronald Lauer, which is sort of amazing - he used to be a Netanyahu supporter but had a falling out, but to hate Netanyahu so much as to tell Trump that he should accept Abbas as a peaceful statesman is almost beyond belief.

CNN Arabic contacted the Palestinian foreign ministry to comment with no response.

It is interesting that this was not reported in English-language CNN. Apparently, criticizing Abbas in English does not fit the narrative.

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