Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, September 19, 2022

A Palestinian's home will be demolished - but no human rights groups will care this time

Tamer Abu Bakra received a demolition notice for half of his already tiny 60-square-meter home.

But you won't hear a word about this from B'Tselem or ICAHD or HRW or Amnesty, who love to publicize when Palestinian homes are to be demolished.

Because this demolition notice came from Hamas.

Bakra put out an appeal on social media, saying the Khan Younis house "has been lived in by my father and my family since the Nakba, and it has been inherited from them to this day."

It had been burned down in 2020 and he has been rebuilding it himself.

Bakra said it is already too small to be called a "home."

Too bad he had the misfortune of building his house where no one would care if his home gets taken down.

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Egypt and Hamas' open air prison

Israel haters love to claim that Gaza is an Israeli open-air prison.

Gazans know better.

Sama News writes:

The crisis of stranded travelers in the Gaza Strip continues, with thousands of people wishing to leave the Strip still waiting.

Informed sources told Al-Ayyam newspaper that the crisis that started since last May is still continuing, especially in the departure route, as thousands are waiting for their turn to travel from the Gaza Strip.

The crisis continues despite the departure of more than 3,200 passengers per week, and the stranded people have appealed to the Egyptian authorities to speed up their exit from the Strip, by increasing the number of departures, and opening the crossing for an additional day per week, so that work will become six days instead of five.

Those stuck in the Gaza Strip are forced to purchase the express travel service through a specialized company, in order to expedite their departure from the Strip, despite its high financial cost....

With regard to the arrival route, the source confirmed that returning to the Strip is easier, but there is suffering in the journey to come, due to the turbulent conditions in the Sinai Peninsula and the long hours of travelers staying at the Egyptian army checkpoints, in order to allow them to reach the crossing.

The Rafah crossing operates five days a week from Sunday to Thursday.

Hamas publishes the list of people allowed to leave every day. They are the ones who decide who can stay and who can go.

Egypt sometimes blocks specific people from coming for presumed security reasons, last week they blocked 86 out of 3200 people.

Israel has nothing to do with this.

But it gets blamed.

(h/t Imshin)

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09/19 Links Pt1: The contrasting tale of two monarchs; US MUST put Fatah on its Terror Groups List; Israelis and Jews at Risk of Attack by Iran and ISIS Overseas

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The defender of faith

The King has shown much friendship and warmth towards British Jews. In 2013, at the inauguration of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, he became the first royal to attend such a ceremony — sporting a personalised kippah embroidered with the crest of the Prince of Wales. In a speech that year, he expressed concern at the rise of antisemitism in Britain.

In 2019, at a Chanukah party at Buckingham Palace, he said that as he grew up he had been deeply touched that British Jews remembered his family in their weekly prayers. “And as you remember my family”, he said, “so we too remember and celebrate you”.

Five years ago, however, Jews were alarmed to read a letter he wrote in 1986 to his mentor, Laurens van der Post. He referred in this to Israel having been created by an influx of European Jews. He also lamented the influence of the “Jewish lobby” in America.

At the time, Clarence House disavowed these remarks. It said the letter “clearly stated” these weren’t his own views but represented the opinions of some of those he had met during his recent visit to the Gulf “which he was keen to interrogate”.

Whether or not he ever held such views, however, is all but irrelevant.

Now that he is the King, he has lost the freedom to express his opinions. In his private weekly audiences with the prime minister, he is most likely to follow the constitutional convention upheld by his mother.

This is to proffer wise advice to the prime minister, issue warnings and above all provide support — but never to seek to influence government policy.

In any event, his own deep belief in promoting harmony reinforces the fundamental duty of the British monarchy — to unify the nation.

In that duty, the British crown has patterned itself since antiquity on the monarchy of King David, who forged a united kingdom out of disparate tribes and whose own power was limited through alternative power bases of priests, prophets and judges.

Charles III is the latest British monarch in that Davidic tradition. God save the King. And God save British Jews.

Liz Truss’s world view and its implications for UK-Israel relations

While the world’s attention has been focused on Britain’s new king, the country also got a new prime minister just two days before the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Toby Greene investigates Liz Truss’s approach to both domestic politics and diplomacy—which he argues are not unlike those of Margaret Thatcher—and how these will shape policies toward the Jewish state:

In Truss’s mental map of the world, in which decent, honest, sovereign, free-trading nations are pitted against aggressive authoritarians, Israel sits firmly in the former category. Israel’s inclusion in Truss’s list of “friends and allies” in her October 2021 conference speech was not an isolated example, with Israel referred to repeatedly as an example of a (non-EU) democratic partner that excels in innovation.

Truss’s attitude towards Israel cannot be separated from that of her party, in which a view of Israel as a democratic, economically successful, and strategically significant partner has become increasingly dominant.

Whilst Israel is a pariah for significant chunks of the [British] left—and bursts negatively into the public eye during periodic rounds of violence [in the Middle East]—for the right this is more grist for the mill in the culture wars. Conservative pro-Zionism helps expose Labor’s internal rifts over the legacy of [its former leader Jeremy] Corbyn, who got the party bogged down in his anti-Semitic anti-Zionism.

Like much of Truss’s politics, her philo-Semitism carries echoes of Thatcher, whose cabinet famously included more “old Estonians than Old Etonians.” . . . . But that does not guarantee plain sailing for UK-Israel relations under a Truss premiership. First there is the issue of Iran. While Truss talks tough on Iran, like many Western leaders, she is unlikely to stand in the way of the Biden administration’s determination to return to the [2015 nuclear deal], which Israeli leaders and U.S. Republicans will complain is disastrous.

The contrasting tale of two monarchs

The one was to live a tranquil 96 years – a full life. The other was to be cut down aged 23 in a bloody revolution. Faisal, his family, the prime minister Nuri al-Said and his ministers were brutally shot by military officers who seized power in 1958. Iraq became a republic. In a show of exceptional barbarism, the corpses of King Faisal II, his uncle Abdelilah, and Prime Minister Nuri al-Said were dragged, naked, through the streets of Baghdad.

Iraqi Jews who were still living in the country – 98 percent had already left by 1951 – remember that ghoulish episode. For some it was the final signal to leave forever. They could not stomach the brutality with which Iraq treated its royal family.

Conditions had already deteriorated quite badly for the Jewish community by the time King Faisal II took the throne in 1953. When the photo was taken, only 6,000 Jews out of 150,000 still lived in Iraq, a fractious country.

The Queen was a comforting symbol of unity and stability to whom British and Commonwealth Jews have always pledged loyalty. Faisal I, Iraq’s first king, Faisal II’s grandfather, from the Hashemite dynasty, also commanded the respect of the Jewish community in Iraq. Still today he is thought of as a wise and tolerant king.

Iraq was a post-WW1 concoction of three Ottoman provinces under British mandate. The Jews experienced their golden age under Faisal I in the 1920s. He pledged to treat the Jews, Christians and Muslims in his kingdom equally.

The Hashemites were brought in from the Arabian peninsula by the British as a reward for fighting alongside them against the Ottoman Turks. The Allies had promised Faisal I the throne of Syria. But he was double-crossed by the British and the French and offered the throne of Iraq instead. Faisal never appeared to forgive the British and arrived in Baghdad with a coterie of disgruntled ex-Ottoman and Syrian nationalists. During his reign Iraq became a hub of Arab nationalism.

Check out the new Hebrew Jewish prayer for King Charles III - Read here

Since the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the traditional prayer that UK Jews have been reciting for hundreds of years has changed to include the name of King Charles III, as well as Prince and Princess of Wales William and Kate.

In addition, in the coming months, the United Synagogue will print a new version of its siddur (prayer book), with the updated version of the prayer for the royal family.

Jewish communities around the world have been accustomed to reciting a special prayer for the survival and peace of the heads of state in the countries they live in. In the UK, the prayer blessed Queen Elizabeth, and in the United States, it is a blessing to the president.

A source in the United Synagogue, the largest umbrella organization of synagogues in the UK, which is considered central to Modern Orthodoxy, has said they were planning on printing a new version of the siddur anyway – but now that the queen has died and there is a new king, they have decided to quickly edit the existing text to say: “He who gives salvation to kings and dominion to princes, Whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom – may He bless Our Sovereign lord, King Charles, our gracious Queen Consort Camilla, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and all the Royal Family.”

“Chief Rabbi … you have to get home for the Sabbath…”

Beautiful anecdote by @chiefrabbi Mirvis, about the lengths HM #KingCharles went to, in order to ensure the Chief Rabbi could attend the faith leaders reception & return home in time for Sabbath.pic.twitter.com/3ZTmoAAdDE
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 18, 2022

Tom Gross: UK royal record on Israel & Holocaust not as good as some claim & questions over bin Laden donations

False claims of Nazi spies masquerading as Jews provided excuse to limit Jewish immigration to America during the Holocaust

The Ken Burns documentary that started being broadcast last night, The US and the Holocaust, has prompted me to dig up little known stories about how the US severely limited Jewish immigration.

One reason that the US gave for limiting immigration was the fear that some of the immigrants were in fact Nazi spies.

The New York Daily News reported on November 26, 1940 - a year before the US entered the war - about a secret Gestapo school in Prague to train spies to act as Jews for espionage purposes.

The article makes it clear that this fear would end up dooming thousands of Jews.

I cannot find any independent report during or after the Holocaust about this supposed "Jewish institute."

There are cases of Nazis who masqueraded as Jewish refugees in Europe. One such ring was reported in Holland and the Dutch authorities easily discovered them, as JTA reported:

The disclosure that Nazi agents masquerading as refugees had helped the Nazi parachutists landing in the Netherlands recalled today that the Dutch authorities had several months ago discovered a group of such agents through the medium of botched circumcisions.

Last February the Paris newspaper L’Ouevre reported that 16 Nazi spies who entered the Netherlands in the guise of Jewish refugees — even taking the precaution of being circumcised — were unmasked when it was determined through a rabbi that they were not circumcised according to the Jewish ritual.

According to the report, the Gestapo had selected 16 men who looked as Jewish as possible, had them attend synagogue services for several weeks to acquaint ports stamped with “J” (Jew) and sent them into Holland.

The Netherlands anti-espionage service, suspecting that they were spies, arrested the men. After examining them, the authorities called a rabbi and, without informing him about the details of the case, asked him to ascertain whether they had been circumcised in the Jewish manner. He reported that they were not.

But (so far) I cannot find any such case in the US. The closest was the case of Herbert Karl Friedrich Bahr, a German-born American citizen who arrived in the US on the Swedish-American liner SS Drottningholm in 1942. The media originally said that he pretended to be a Jewish refugee but that wasn't true, as JTA reported at the time:

The Nazi spy, Herbert Karl Friedrich Bahr, who was arrested aboard the diplomatic exchange ship Drottningholm, will face a speedy trial, it was announced today. Full information of the arrest released here indicated that the 29-year-old spy was posing as a “friend of Jews in Germany,” and not as a Jewish refugee as was generally reported yesterday when the news of his arrest was made public by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Inquiry at the FBI office here elicited the information that Bahr was provided by the Nazi military espionage office with full information concerning a Jewish family in Germany in order to be able to explain to U.S. authorities how he happened to be in possession of $7,000 in American currency. He was instructed by the Nazi espionage headquarters to say that a Jewish friend of his in Germany, a member of the old Social-Democratic party, had been beheaded by the Nazis, that the man’s wife had sold a valuable stamp collection for $7,000 and given him the proceeds to take out of the country for her.

In 2015, the Smithsonian Magazine wrote an investigative report on Bahr and noted that in fact the rumors of Nazis posing as Jews to spy on the US were essentially baseless:

Government officials from the State Department to the FBI to President Franklin Roosevelt himself argued that refugees posed a serious threat to national security. Yet today, historians believe that Bahr's case was practically unique—and the concern about refugee spies was blown far out of proportion.

In the court of public opinion, the story of a spy disguised as a refugee was too scandalous to resist.

Immigration restrictions actually tightened as the refugee crisis worsened. Wartime measures demanded special scrutiny of anyone with relatives in Nazi territories—even relatives in concentration camps. At a press conference, President Roosevelt repeated the unproven claims from his advisers that some Jewish refugees had been coerced to spy for the Nazis. “Not all of them are voluntary spies,” Roosevelt said. “It is rather a horrible story, but in some of the other countries that refugees out of Germany have gone to, especially Jewish refugees, they found a number of definitely proven spies.”

Here and there, skeptics objected. As the historian Deborah Lipstadt points out in her book Beyond Belief, The New Republic portrayed the government’s attitude as “persecuting the refugee.” The Nation didn’t believe that the State Department could “cite a single instance of forced espionage.” But these voices were drowned out in the name of national security.

Government agencies like the State Department used spy trials as fuel for the argument against accepting refugees. But late in the war, government whistleblowers began to question this approach. In 1944, the Treasury Department released a damning report initialed by lawyer Randolph Paul. It read:

“I am convinced on the basis of the information which is available to me that certain officials in our State Department, which is charged with carrying out this policy, have been guilty not only of gross procrastination and wilful failure to act, but even of wilful attempts to prevent action from being taken to rescue Jews from Hitler.”

The FBI, State Department and media couldn't resist pushing the narrative of Jewish spies, the result being that tens of thousands of Jews who could have been saved in the US were murdered instead.

One other point: It would have been easy for the FBI to hire religious Jews to vet the immigrants to ensure that at least the religious ones were who they said they were. But it seems that the antisemitism of the day precluded considering American religious Jews as truly American and trustworthy for such a task.

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Examples of materials in Israeli Arab textbooks that Palestinians consider offensive

Today, Arab schools in Jerusalem are on strike because Israel has been trying to encourage them to use the Israeli Arab curriculum instead of the antisemitic Palestinian curriculum. Israel provides additional funding for the schools that adopt the Israeli curriculum, but it is not mandatory; many schools have adopted it.

Arab media is falsely claiming that the Israeli curriculum is being "imposed" on Arab Jerusalem schools.

The preacher of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, told thousands of worshipers on Friday that “it is not permissible by Sharia to teach the Israeli curricula, and whoever teaches them is sinful, and so is whoever supports teaching them, and whoever sends his son or daughter to the school that teaches these curricula."

Shehab News among others shows examples of the highly offensive materials in Israeli Arab textbooks.

Prepare to be shocked!

"The countries surrounding the homeland"

"There are different religions in Israel but all worship one God"

"Sabbath is a holy day for the Jews, and the Wailing Wall is one of the holy spots for Jews"

"Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, where the Knesset, ministries, Supreme Court and other government institutions are"

The Palestinians are upset at materials that encourage tolerance. And no wonder. Compare these to materials issued by the Palestinian Authority that teach:

"Jihad for the sake of Allah for the liberation of Palestine is a private obligation for every Muslim."

"The obligations towards Al Aqsa Mosque: Protecting and defending it, chasing away the Occupation, committing jihad, and dying as a martyr for the sake of liberating it."

"It is the right of any people captive under foreign occupation to use armed force for their freedom, independence, and right to self-determination."

"It is my duty to defend my motherland and not to neglect it; to redeem it with blood, possessions, and with the most precious things we have."

“The Jews are foreigners in this land, and Palestine is for its Arab Muslim population.”

There is no room for Jews in the Palestine that the children are taught to spill their blood for.

There is direct line from these materials to terrorism. And that is really what they are fighting for.

(h/t Abu Ali Express)

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Palestinian and other Arab media have been whipped into a frenzy over the idea that more Jews will be visiting the Temple Mount during the upcoming holidays, with daily stories about how the Jews want to blow the shofar and bring the "arba minim" during Sukkot.

The Waqf wants Muslims to respond with large turnout of their own during the Jewish holidays.

The Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs has warned of the danger of reviving “Jewish holidays” inside Al-Aqsa Mosque, and desecrating its sanctity and profaning it through the implementation of provocative rallies, calling for a public mobilization to travel to Al-Aqsa and to confront the settlers’ incursions into it on the eve of the alleged holidays.

She stressed that "Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa are a red line, and it is a sacred right that belongs to Muslims and the Jews have no connection with it..."

The Awqaf called on the Palestinian people in Jerusalem and all those who can reach Al-Aqsa to intensify their presence in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Rabat there during the festive period to limit the implementation of these incursions and marches.

This will make the Temple Mount look more like it did...in the times of the actual Temple!

During the Second Temple period, according to Josephus, there was an outer court of the Temple where gentiles could gather and buy animals to be sacrificed by the Jewish priests. It is mentioned in Christian scriptures as well. I don't believe that this courtyard is mentioned by name in the Talmud but Menachot 73b does say that many Gentiles did come to the Temple (or send offerings to the Temple from remote regions) to relay various kinds of sacrifices of their own.

The site of Al Aqsa Mosque, which is built on one of the Herodian extensions of the Temple Mount and therefore of lesser sanctity, is very possibly part of this so-called "Court of the Gentiles." (Various Christian maps of the Temple place this court in different locations, but most of them seem to say that the southern part where Al Aqsa Mosque is was at least part of it.)

Effectively, the Waqf is asking that Muslims make a pilgrimage to the site of the Temple on the Jewish holidays, including Sukkot, the same occasions that one may presume that gentiles traveled to the Temple Mount two thousand years ago to be part of the Jewish pilgrimage holidays.

So in a small and indirect way, the Waqf is asking Muslims to mimic what non-Jews did at the Temple so long ago. They are coming to the Temple at the times the Jews flock there to show their respect for what everyone knows has always been the most sacred Jewish spot.

Hajj Sameach!

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"Yonkle, the Cowboy Jew" - 1907 novelty song is all kinds of wrong

In 1907, a novelty song was released called "Yonkle, the Cow-Boy Jew."

It is antisemitic and anti-Indian, and simply wrong in all sorts of ways. I do not know if the lyricist, Will J. Harris, was Jewish. (Someone with that name had some hits in the 1920s but that one was born in 1900.)

The sheet music is out there, but here are the lyrics, which are incredibly offensive.

A Jew named Yonkle Finklestein
Went out west one day;
Just to shoot wild Indians,
That's what the neighbors say.
Didn't care a snap for home,
Left his wife and little child;
Met a pretty cowboy girl
Then his Yiddish brain went wild
To his friends he sent a note,
And this is what he wrote.

Chorus
Western life is fine and dandy
I have got no kick;
When I think of the pawnshop bus'ness
Oi, it makes me sick.
Ev'ry time I see some Indians
I just kill a few,
So I've changed my name from Finklestein

To Yonkle, the Cowboy Jew.

Now Yonkle made love to the girl
That he met out west;
But she told her beau on him,
And he then did the rest.
With a shooter in his hand
Cowboy made poor Yonkle dance;
Then he yelled, "You Tenderfoot,
Run while you have got the chance,"
Yonkle then commenced to pray
And swore he'd never say:

Even worse is the photo series someone created to publicize the song, showing "Yonkle" with his foot on a dead or captured American Indian. (This is from the Library of Congress site.)

Oi, indeed.

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09/18 Links: Amnesty Int’l’s distortion of humanitarian laws has become an art form; The Islamic Republic’s ‘morality’ murder and US appeasement

From Ian:

Amnesty Int’l’s distortion of humanitarian laws has become an art form - opinion

AMNESTY’S PRONOUNCEMENTS are routinely transcribed directly into media headlines, then cited verbatim in academic publications – without due care for the integrity of the claims they make, never mind the accuracy of their findings. There is something to be said about leading the blind, or blinding to lead.

The issue here is the organization’s propensity to exploit its status in the media and academia to influence not only minds but policies. Rather than hold true to its self-proclaimed impartiality, Amnesty International has systematically taken very political positions, weaponizing human rights law, international humanitarian law, and the laws of armed conflicts to advance a private agenda, untrammeled by oversight.

The problem with the attack on Ukraine’s right to self-defense, protecting the very idea of the state’s sovereignty and independent identity, is the same as with the oversight of Amnesty’s use of imagery on their campaigns. It is set up to rebuke any rebuttal through the apparent, morally elevated self-portrayal of the organization, and our acceptance of their proclamation of infallibility.

Reports are built on anonymous tips and witness reports. None of the “facts” can be independently verified, yet we are called upon to accept them as truths. Truths withstand scrutiny… if indeed they are that!

It is pandering to the abominable to validate Putin’s criminal war narrative against Ukraine, his torment of Russians in the opposition, terror aggressions toward Israel– not to mention crimes committed against Palestinians, whether through indoctrination or physical violence, or the propagation of martyrdom by misguided ideologues the world over.

It is left to us now to admit, once and for all, that the rights organization has stretched the definition of “charity” to be, instead, a party to bloodshed and political radicalism.

Munich Massacre and DW’s Farah Maraqa A German Litmus Test on Safeguarding Israeli Civilians

Are German authorities speaking from both sides of their mouths about their obligations towards protecting the lives of Jewish Israeli civilians?

With this month’s 50th anniversary of the Munich Olympics massacre, widespread publicity focused on belated German acknowledgement of the government’s failure to safeguard the lives of Israeli civilians competing on its soil. Simultaneously, far under the media radar, a German court decision emerged which, it seems, reprehensibly rejected the lives of Israeli civilians as worth protecting.

In the official commemoration of the Sept. 5, 1972 Palestinian Black September terror attack, in which 11 Israeli athletes and a police officer were killed, German President Walter Steinmeier addressed the victims’ families, seeking forgiveness for the “inadequate protection afforded to the Israeli athletes.” He also lamented the German authorities’ decades-long “obstruction, ignorance and injustice.” Notably, a compensation settlement between the bereaved family members and the German government was finally reached the previous week.

Meanwhile, Berlin-based pundit Farah Maraqa deemed Monday as “a day for celebrations” following a local labor court reportedly ruling that the termination of her employment as a journalist at German public media outlet Deutsche Welle was “legally unjustified.”

DW fired Jordanian-Palestinian Maraqa and six other Arab employees earlier this year at the conclusion of a two-month internal antisemitism probe. Last week, she and her lawyers claimed that the Berlin court ordered Germany’s public broadcaster to reinstate her and pay all legal expenses. (The court have not confirmed the information; Deutsche Welle, which only four days before had introduced a new Code of Conduct where it states its support of “the right of Israel to exist,” said it has “taken due notice of the ruling.”)

David Singer: Biden and Blinken silent on Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine

The Saudi plan’s author – Ali Shihabi - is a confidante of Saudi Arabia’s next King – Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman. Shihabi’s Plan was published in Al Arabiya News – owned 60% by the Saudi Government.

This latest Saudi plan supersedes the 1981 and 2002 Saudi Peace Plans.

The rationale for creating the Saudi-proposed merged state as against the Biden-proposed brand new state was recently explained by Shihabi:

“We have seen from recent experience that state building is a virtually impossible task, particularly in a polarized environment so creating a “Palestinian State” from scratch is a fool’s errand. At the same time Jordan is a decently run country by regional standards and hence its government infrastructure can be used to incorporate 'Palestine' which will instantly have a globally recognized and respected government with all the basics like security, government bureaucracy etc.”

Shihabi’s two-state solution – if implemented – would consign Biden’s two-state solution – “a fool’s errand” says Shihabi - to the diplomatic graveyard.

Significantly - Palestinian Authority President Abbas, Jordan’s King Abdullah and Hamas leaders have not voiced any objection to the Saudi proposal since its June publication. Rejection by any of them would have stopped the Saudi plan in its tracks.

I sought State Department clarification on 6 September:
“I refer to the Peace Plan emanating from Saudi Arabia published in the Al Arabiya Times on 8 June 2022 proposing the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of the West Bank into one territorial entity to be called the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine (Saudi Plan):

Could you please advise in relation to Secretary of State Blinken:
1. When he first became aware of the Saudi plan?
2. Has he commented on the Saudi plan since its release on 8 June 2022?
3. If so – when and where were such comments published?
4. If he has made no comment – would he like to make any comment on the Saudi plan that I can publish verbatim and attribute to him in an article I am writing on the Saudi Plan?

I would appreciate a reply within the next 72 hours.”

The State Department has yet to reply.

Biden and Blinken’s silence is baffling.

From i24News:

German police knew that one of the Palestinians who took Israeli athletes hostage during the 1972 Munich Olympics lived in Berlin for several years following the attack, the Suddeutsche Zeitung daily reported on Saturday.

The three suviving hostage-takers were captured, but released weeks later in an exchange when gunmen hijacked a Lufthansa plane on October 29, 1972, and demanded their release.

On Saturday the German daily said that one of the three Palestinians who was released then lived for years in Berlin, citing a report in Munich police archives.

According to the report, the Munich police - in charge of investigating the attack - was told by the BKA federal police that the Palestinian in question was living in West Berlin and that he went to East Berlin almost daily, to work at the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Following the release of the three hostage-takers, a theory made the rounds that then West Germany had facilitated the release in order to avoid any more operations by Palestinian militants on its territory.

"We can pose the question if the police really wanted to act or if they wanted to give up arresting someone to avoid a new attack by Palestinian militants" in West Germany, German historian Dominik Aufleger, who had access to the same documents as the paper for his research on the attack, told the daily.

It would be unbelievable if we didn't already know that the German government was involved in planning that hijacking to release the terrorists.

I guess here's something to add to my list of Munich massacre facts that most people don't know.

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Adin Haykin published a huge thread on Twitter detailing every Palestinian killed (or purportedly killed) by the IDF so far in 2022 in the West Bank.

He finds that the huge majority of the 83 killed were either members of terror groups or were killed while performing terror acts like stabbing or throwing Molotov cocktails.

By my count, 34 of them were members of Islamic Jihad, 18 from Fatah, five Hamas, and one each from the DFLP and PFLP.

Of the others, most of them were involved in stabbing, violent riots and throwing Molotov cocktails. One tried to use a hammer on a policeman. Two were killed trying to infiltrate into Jewish communities.

Four women were killed while trying to attack soldiers.

Three were killed accidentally during fighting, including Shireen Abu Akleh.

One died of a heart attack and Israel is being blamed.

Of those killed, at least 17 were children - and they were all involved in violence.

Read the thread and compare that information, accompanied with photos of their "martyr posters" and weapons, with how the UN and others describe them all as "victims."

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International Association of Judges meeting in Tel Aviv today

The International Association of Judges is holding its 64th annual meeting starting today in Tel Aviv.

Besides the lectures, there will be excursions to Jerusalem, Masada and the Dead Sea.

As the welcome video says, they ask the jurists that are visiting to "judge with your own eyes."

One country that won't be there is Algeria. Their National Union of Judges announced that they will boycott the meeting:

The National Union of Judges announced the boycott of an annual meeting of the International Association of Judges due to its being held in the occupied Palestinian territories. After receiving an invitation from the International Association of Judges to participate in the annual meeting to be organized in Tel Aviv in the occupied territories, the Algerian organization formally informed the President of the Federation and the African Group of Judges Unions of its boycott of this event, explaining in its statement that the boycott decision came out of its belief in the principles of justice and human rights, and in line with Algeria's official and popular position on the Palestinian cause and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Yes, the Algerian judges are judging themselves morally superior and more concerned with human rights to the 94 countries that are attending.

The World Justice Project ranks Algeria in the bottom half of all countries in the rule of law, 82nd among 139 countries ranked.

I don't think their presence will be missed.

Outside Morocco, Algeria, Iraq and Tunisia. most Middle East Arab countries are not even members of the IAJ.

Notice that Algeria considers Tel Aviv to be in "occupied territories."

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09/17 Links: America’s Holocaust failure through the lens of 21st-century politics; Hamas Comes to Harvard; Facebook bans, reverses decision on Holocaust movie ads that ‘violated’ race policy

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: America’s Holocaust failure through the lens of 21st-century politics

The film asks whether Americans will respond to future catastrophes with more concern. But while such pious sentiments seem appropriate, they are also entirely beside the point. We already know how Americans act when confronted with other genocides. In the case of Rwanda, they did nothing. The same is true with respect to the horrors being visited on the Uyghur people in Western China by the Chinese Communist Party regime in Beijing right now.

Genocide is, of course, globally very different. Those being perpetrated outside of the context of a world war in which the murderers are also bent on conquest are bound to be treated less seriously, and that is why no one in the West lifts a finger when mass murders happen in places like Africa or central Asia, where no strategic interests are in play and few journalists are present.

As historian Deborah Lipstadt, the current State Department Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, correctly notes in the film, Nazi Germany largely achieved many of its goals with respect to the Jews. As the late historian Lucy Dawidowicz wrote in her classic work, The War Against the Jews, the German war waged on the Jews was entirely separate from the one they were fighting against the Allies. They won the former while losing the latter. The Allies never really cared about the war on the Jews—or at least not enough to do anything about it before their victory ended the slaughter.

Moreover, the attempt to frame the Holocaust as a function of general intolerance is always a mistake. Anti-Semitism isn’t merely hateful sentiments; it’s a political organizing principle that has attached itself to a number of different ideologies. Then it was Nazism, today it is the Islamism embraced by an Iran that seeks a nuclear weapon with which another Holocaust can be perpetrated. The answer to such threats isn’t open borders for America, amnesty for illegal immigrants or even more people reading The Diary of Anne Frank. The only way to deter a future genocide of the Jews is Jewish empowerment and their ability to defend themselves, something they would only gain after the war with the creation of the state of Israel.

Like all of Burns’ films, “The U.S. and the Holocaust” makes for riveting television and provides plenty of fodder for serious thought. For those who know little about the history of American anti-Semitism and the basics of the Holocaust, it provides an introduction to these subjects.

Yet contrary to the film’s conclusion, the Holocaust tells us nothing about what to do about America’s contemporary immigration debates. The fact that a CNN interview with Burns led to a discussion in which efforts by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to ship illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, whose liberal residents advocate for open borders, were compared to the actions of the Nazis shows just how misleading the filmmaker’s efforts to frame the issue along these lines are. Nor should it help fuel efforts to falsely label those political opponents whom the liberal establishment is trying to smear as fascists and Nazis threatening democracy.

The Holocaust was a chapter of history marked by American failure. But as much as the documentary is told through the prism of what it meant to America, the responsibility for the murder of 6 million Jews belongs to the Nazis and their collaborators. It was a crime that the United States may not have had the power to deter, but it could have done more to stop once it began had its political leadership been willing to do so. That is bad enough. But those who want to apply that lesson to complicated 21st-century political debates while ignoring actual genocides going on in real-time now or seeking to render Israel defenseless in the face of those who are actively plotting another Holocaust, shouldn’t pretend they’ve learned anything from the past.

US congressman calls on FBI to probe handling of antisemitic crimes in New York

US House Representative Ritchie Torres on Thursday called on the FBI and US attorney general to investigate New York’s response to surging antisemitism.

Torres, from New York, called for the federal investigation in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, US Attorney General Merrick Garland and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke.

“I am respectfully asking the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to consider investigating New York’s systematic failure to police and prosecute hate crimes and to issue recommendations to reform,” Torres said, after expressing his concerns about antisemitic violence.

“The federal government can no longer stand by passively as antisemitic violence goes unchecked and unpunished in America’s largest city,” said the letter, which was provided to The Times of Israel.

Democrat Torres represents New York’s 15th Congressional district in the Bronx and is a firm supporter of Jewish communities and Israel.

In the letter, he highlighted statistics from the Anti-Defamation League showing record numbers of antisemitic attacks in recent years, and an article from Tablet on the low number of serious punishments for anti-Jewish hate crimes.

Hamas Comes to Harvard

After the fighting between Israel and Hamas in 2012, Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki announced that he wanted to visit Gaza.

“I congratulate Ismail Haniyeh (the Hamas prime minister) on the victory in Gaza,” he said.

Marzouki had previously met with delegations from Hamas and Islamic Jihad. His support for the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group was so blatant that even the PLO had warned him not to come to Gaza. After leaving office, Marzouki boarded the Hamas flotilla invading Israel. When the flotilla was intercepted, Israel deported him. These days, Tunisia doesn’t want him either.

But Massachusetts does.

More recently an arrest warrant was issued for the arrest of Marzouki by his own country. He was sentenced to four years in prison for national security violations last year.

Marzouki, then in Paris, was quoted as warning that, “I’ll soon return home to Tunisia and overthrow the incumbent regime” and “I’m waiting for a signal from the militants in Tunisia to decide on the date of my return to Tunis”.

Instead, he’s going to Harvard where there are even more militants than in Tunis.

The Ash Center for Democratic Governance at Harvard’s Kennedy School announced that it’s appointing the international fugitive and longtime Islamist ally as a senior fellow. The Harvard announcement makes no mention of either Marzouki’s support for Islamic terrorism against Jews or the fact that he is a wanted criminal. But they do hail him as a hero of the Arab Spring.

Last year, after a barrage of Hamas rockets and terrorist attacks, Marzouki had phoned Hamas boss Ismail Haniyeh to congratulate him for the “victory for the Arab and Muslim Ummah.”

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Marzouki told the Qatari Islamist media operation, “I have always supported Hamas because it is a national resistance movement. When I was president of Tunisia, I received Khaled Meshaal and Ismail Haniyeh, totally ignoring the US ambassador’s indignation at the meeting.”

Harvard has no objection to this. And instead describes Marzouki as a “freedom fighter.”

09/16 Links Pt2: Abraham Accords stronger than ever, two years later; The NYT's botched attack on Jewish schools; The Jews of the Jews; How American Anti-Semitism Helped the Nazis

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Abraham Accords stronger than ever, two years later

This week marked the second anniversary of the Abraham Accords, under which Israel signed normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which were later extended to Morocco.

Skeptics at the time noted that Israel had not been at war with these Arab Muslim states and downplayed the idea that the accords – reached under the Trump administration and Netanyahu government – could be called “peace treaties.”

But their importance should not be underestimated. The Abraham Accords marked a strategic diplomatic shift for Israel and the region and the relationships with the countries has flourished beyond even optimistic expectations.

As the UAE minister of state for foreign trade Thani Al Zeyoudi wrote in an opinion piece in yesterday’s Jerusalem Post, “It was a moment that changed the course of history. On the bright, sunlit morning of September 15, 2020, when Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, foreign minister of the UAE; Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani, foreign minister of Bahrain, held aloft signed copies of the Abraham Accords in front of the White House, it signaled not simply the end of 48 years of hostility and distrust but the beginning of a new political and economic era for our region.

“In establishing full diplomatic relations, the UAE, Bahrain and Israel had chosen prosperity over politics, cooperation over isolation, opportunity over suspicion. Everyone present on the South Lawn understood the magnitude of the occasion – and its potential to elevate the lives of people across the Middle East in the decades to come.”

What about today?
Today, it seems natural that a minister from a Gulf state would write in The Jerusalem Post praising the relations between the countries, but we need to remind ourselves that it was not always obvious. Similarly, to mark the anniversary, Prime Minister Yair Lapid yesterday hosted the UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. It is important to note that although the administration and government in the US and Israel changed in the meantime, the accords hold firm, as seen, for example, in the so-called Negev Summit earlier this year. This is the mark of true treaties between countries rather than agreements between leaders.

What has the game-changing Abraham Accords accomplished after two years?

Israel has spent much energy touting the success of the Abraham Accords and encouraging other countries to join. In July, U.S. President Joe Biden visited Israel and Saudi Arabia, where there was speculation over warming ties between Jerusalem and Riyadh.

While Jordan and Egypt remain aloof from the developments, in part due to the Palestinian issue as well as widespread anti-Israel public sentiment in the two countries, the Abraham Accords, and Israel’s subsequent close ties with the UAE and Bahrain in particular, have led to agreements on everything from tourism to defense. Trade between the countries has reached approximately $2 billion annually and is expected to pass $10 billion within the next five years; Israeli officials point to this as a sure sign of success, with more to come.

But a poll in July by the Washington Institute reports that the proportion of those who view the Abraham Accords favorably in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE “has dropped over the past year to a minority view,” David Pollock and Dylan Kassin said in an analysis.

According to them, “current attitudes contrast with the relative optimism exhibited by a significant percentage of Emiratis, Bahrainis, Saudis and even some Egyptians in the months after the announcement of the Abraham Accords.”

The authors also noted, however, that the data “indicates a countercurrent of openness to allowing business and social ties with Israelis in some parts of the Gulf, especially in comparison to their peers in Egypt, Kuwait and the Levant.” Opposition to allowing business or sports ties with Israel “remains at 85% in Egypt and 87% in Jordan despite long-standing official relations,” they wrote.

It is unclear whether there is a difference in these countries between the older generation, which has spent decades considering Israel as an enemy, and the younger generation, which is connected on social media and may have differing opinions on the subject.

Critics note that the Abraham Accords have failed in a number of ways. First, they have not led to new agreements with other Gulf Cooperation Council countries such as Oman, Qatar or Saudi Arabia, and they do not appear to have led to an improved view of Israel on the street. The agreements have also not led to any tangible improvement on the Palestinian front.

The March 2022 “Negev Summit,” a gathering of foreign ministers from Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Morocco and the UAE, and facilitated by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, went off course when Blinken used it to talk about the Palestinian issue instead of focusing on Iran, which was the original purpose of the gathering.

However, according to Gerald Feierstein and Yoel Guzansky of the Middle East Institute, “normalization has opened new opportunities for defense and security cooperation, especially among Israel, Bahrain and the UAE, which share a common perspective on the security threat posed by Iran.”

They said the Negev Forum that grew out of the Negev Summit and which folded Egypt into the Abraham Accords coalition “offered additional possibilities for cooperation on shared interests, including energy, food and water security, health and other issues.”

Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS that “normalization is a process, not an event. There is no timeline or handbook for establishing warm ties after decades of enmity.”

Still, he remains optimistic about Israel’s ties with the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco. He is also confident that other Arab countries “will prioritize their national interests over the Palestinian issue.

“Much of the region is undeniably ready to steer their countries toward stability and prosperity,” Schanzer said.

Others are optimistic as well.

Abraham Accords: A promising start with challenges ahead

Despite this somewhat optimistic view, it is essential that we invest serious effort to bolster the framework of the Abraham Accords and expand it, while doing our utmost to prevent Iran from wielding its negative influence to halt the trend of progress.

In addition to the security-related activity, and the economic, commercial progress being made, the policymakers in Israel would do well to consider adopting the following steps:

Firstly, strengthening the circle of peace-supporting countries and expanding it. It is important to invite Sudan and Chad (which was unjustly left out of the states party to the accords) to participate in all forums and working groups. It is important for them too to enjoy the fruits of peace and benefit from their decision to engage in normalization with Israel. As, if this is not the case, it might well result in negative momentum, possibly even leading to withdrawal – either publicly declared or discreetly – from the agreement. This will serve to encourage additional countries to join too.

Secondly, recognition of Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara. Although Israel provided no outright commitment to this, there is clear expectation of this in Rabat, especially after Washington and others have declared their recognition.

Thirdly, the opening of an overland trade route via Israel (or from it) to the Gulf States. Such a route would be considerably more efficient and less expensive than those currently in use, it would provide significant economic profits to the regional states and to the EU states too, which would be able to benefit from it for both the import and export of vehicles. This would be a tremendous boost to trade among the member countries of the Abraham Accords, while also contributing to the global economy.

Fourthly, expediting joint ventures for marketing solutions to globally urgent problems in the fields of energy, food and water, while exploiting the relative advantages of Israel and the Gulf States.

Fifthly, expanding educational and cultural initiatives to reinforce deeply-entrenched attitudes in favor of peace and so weaken separatist approaches and radical Islamic ideas.

This is a critical component for establishing peace at the popular level, between citizens and peoples, rather than just between states and governments.

Another idiotic antisemitic argument

Today I tweeted this meme:

Some Jew-hating idiot responded that today's Jews have nothing to do with the Jews of Jesus' time, and gave as proof "'EDOM IS IN MODERN JEWRY.' The Jewish Ency. 1925 Ed., Vol. 5, Pg. 41."

This was new to me, so, for fun, I looked this up. And this quote is all over antisemitic websites, I even saw a video about it on "GoyimTV."

They are claiming that the Jewish Encyclopedia says that Jews are really descendants of Edom (Esau.)

So I looked up page 41 of volume 5 of the 1925 Jewish Encyclopedia. It really is the entry on Edom, although it doesn't say at all what they claim it says.

What it does say is that during the Hashmonean era, some of the Edomites (Idumeans) were forcibly converted to Judaism by John Hycranus I (which is the only case of forced conversion to Judaism in recorded history.)

The Idumeans did become enthusiastic members of the religion - King Herod was Idumean. They were obviously still a minority among Jews. (There is an interesting halachic issue mentioned in the article about whether Edomites were allowed to join the Jewish people, but that is a separate matter.)

Even so - they were considered Jews living in what would later be called "Palestine" in Jesus' time. They are clearly of MIddle East origin, native to the region. Even if some of them survived to remain Jews today, how, exactly, does this hurt the Jewish claim to Israel? The Idumeans lived as Jews in Judea seven centuries before Islam!

All this proves is that antisemites, like anti-Zionists, will seize a tiny piece of real information and build an entire fictional universe around it to fit their 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!

This week was the wedding of the Chabad rabbi of the UAE Levi Duchman to Leah Hadad. Khaleej Times reports:

It was pure joy and excitement in the UAE capital as guests from all around the world attended the first ever wedding of a rabbi in the country.

The rabbi to the UAE, Rabbi Levi Duchman, married Lea Hadad of Brussels, Belgium on Wednesday, September 14, at a magnificent ceremony held at the Hilton Yas Hotel.

1,500 guests from around the world attended the wedding – the largest Jewish event in the Arabian Gulf in recent history – including prominent rabbis and dignitaries. More than 20 ambassadors, including those from Japan, South Korea and Finland, were also in attendance.

Yemen news site 26 September was not happy:

It is a dance of shame about normalization at a huge wedding ceremony for the chief rabbinic in Abu Dhabi, in a new dedication to the shame of publicizing normalization between the Emirates and the Zionist entity

...Leaked wedding videos showed very intimate relations between the Jewish attendees and Emirati officials.
The event, which coincides with the second anniversary of the Abraham Accords, highlighted the growing openness of Jewish life in the Emirates.

Until 2020, the country's Jewish community preserved the privacy of its traditions and services. But recently, the UAE government has welcomed more public festivities and celebrations.

That's the shame that the wedding viscerally brings up to Yemen. Not the normalization, but Jews publicly celebrating in an Arab country with Muslims.

The caption on this video is "Normalization Dance."

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!