Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, October 14, 2022

Mahmoud Abbas supports Russia's invasion of Ukraine: "Russia adheres to justice and international law"

Ever since the free world has been condemning Russia for invading Ukraine, modern Jew-haters have been trying to paint Israel as being like Russia.

They tried to compare Ukraine to Gaza. They tried to compare Russia's occupation to Israel in the West Bank.

Facts, of course, are not part of the conversation. Modern antisemites rely on emotion and analogy, as well as the ignorance of their audience.

But you don't hear much from them lately about this analogy. Because the Ukrainians and the Palestinians aren't following the script.

Ukrainians have compared themselves multiple times with Israel standing up against a hostile Arab world, not with Palestinians.

And now Mahmoud Abbas, who has pretended to not take sides, has dropped the pretense that he doesn't support Russia.

A month after Hamas leaders met with senior Russian officials (without any negative reaction from Palestinians,) Abbas followed suit and met with Vladimir Putin and other officials.

"Russia adheres to justice and international law, and that is enough for us," Abbas said.

With this, Abbas has placed a "halal" sticker on Russia's invasion of Ukraine as being legitimate, legal and just.

Palestinian activists for years have been repeating the mantras of supporting "justice" and "international law." Now we see that both major Palestinian parties support Russia's interpretation of those two concepts.

And now the same Palestinian activists who have tried so hard to associate Palestinians with Ukrainians look like idiots because Palestinian leaders themselves fully support Russia's invasion - and occupation - of Ukraine.

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!

The Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan issued a survey of Jordanians this month, and the results are not good for the government.

Only 33% trust the current government and think that it can assume its responsibilities. Only 29% are optimistic about the government, with 71% disagreeing. Only 17% have confidence in Parliament and 12% in political parties.

80% of Jordanians say the country is moving in a negative direction in general, and 85% say the economy is moving in a negative direction. And perhaps most astonishingly, the vast majority of Jordanians - 69% - believe that the majority of people in Jordan cannot be trusted. 79% say that Jordan is not a happy society.

But guess who Jordanians regard as their biggest external threat? Israel, of course! 61% of Jordanians believe that Israel is a threat to Jordanian national security. 54% believe that Iran is a threat.

What can one make of these results?

The fear and hate of Israel comes directly from the daily incitement and antisemitism in Jordanian media. And Jordan's media is not exactly independent, meaning that the government is trying to ensure that the people direct their anger at the Jews rather than the government.

It is a time honored Arab tradition.

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!

10/13 Links Pt2: How Ken Burns Misuses the Holocaust; How Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Berkeley and Wellesley mainstream anti-Semitism; The Wedding Canopy in Abu Dhabi

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: How Ken Burns Misuses the Holocaust

Yet contrary to the film’s conclusion, the Holocaust tells us little or nothing about what to do about America’s contemporary immigration debates or the current American problem with Jew-hatred. Any attempt to frame the Holocaust as a representative moment in the history of human intolerance is a moral calamity. Burns demonstrated this in a CNN interview to promote the film. He spoke of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s decision to ship illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard—whose affluent liberal residents advocate open borders but prefer to have border communities deal with the humanitarian crisis this has engendered—as if it deserved to be mentioned in the same conversation as the subject of his documentary.

That Burns, a longtime supporter of the Democrats and liberal causes, would be guilty of playing along with such an inappropriate Holocaust analogy demonstrates that the filmmaker’s efforts to frame the question of American guilt in this context should be viewed with suspicion. The same is true of his attempt to claim that current political opponents of open borders—such as Trump, DeSantis, and their supporters—are figures who conjure up the threats that America and the Jews faced in the past.

Anti-Semitism isn’t merely a collection of hateful sentiments; it’s a political organizing principle that has attached itself to a variety of different ideologies, from Nazism to Communism to Islamism. The answer to such threats isn’t open borders for America, amnesty for illegal immigrants, or even ensuring that more people read The Diary of Anne Frank. The only way to deter another genocide of the Jews is Jewish empowerment and our ability to defend ourselves, something we would gain only after the war with the creation of the State of Israel.

Some who attempt to use the Holocaust as an exhibit in contemporary immigration-law debates are actually indifferent to the security of Israel and, indeed, support appeasement of an Iran that seeks nuclear weapons to possibly perpetrate another Holocaust. This makes it hard to take them seriously when they lecture Americans about the murder of 6 million Jews in the past century.

The Holocaust was a chapter of history marked by American failure. But whatever one may think about Franklin Roosevelt and his indifference to Hitler’s victims, the responsibility for the murder of 6 million Jews still belongs to the Nazis and their collaborators. It was a crime the United States may not have had the power to deter, but one this nation could have done more to stop had its political leadership been willing to do so. This is a disturbing fact for many who lionize Roosevelt. But Burns and others who clearly wish to apply the lessons from this failure to complicated 21st-century political debates, while ignoring real-time genocides or potent threats to the security of millions of living Jews, shouldn’t pretend they have learned anything from the past or have anything to teach us about it.

Jonathan Tobin: How Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Berkeley and Wellesley mainstream anti-Semitism

At what point does a rise in anti-Semitism stop being viewed merely as a series of isolated, troubling occurrences and start being treated like an emergency? When mass- media programs mainstream hatemongers who target and seek to delegitimize Jews? When elite academic institutions behave as though it’s acceptable conduct? When Jews are attacked in the streets?

The ongoing epidemic of violence against Jews in New York City is mostly ignored, both by the media and much of the organized Jewish world. This is not only because the victims are Orthodox Jews who are easy to pick out. They’re also not the sort of people with whom opinion leaders, and even most American Jews, identify or associate.

But the mainstreaming of anti-Semitic attitudes on major campuses around the United States is harder to dismiss. Even more difficult to ignore are the widely disseminated programs that embrace open anti-Semites as legitimate voices worth considering.

Indeed, what is unfolding, inch by inch, is the normalization of anti-Semitism in the U.S. in a manner unprecedented in the post-Holocaust era. Nor is it confined to a specific segment of society or particular end of the political spectrum.

Indeed, as the events of the past week illustrate, Jew-hatred is thriving on both the left and the right. Individually, each of these instances—the legitimization of the BDS movement and targeting of Jewish institutions at Boston’s Wellesley College; the establishment of a Jew-free zone by student organizations at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law; the appearance of BDS advocate Roger Waters on the Joe Rogan podcast; and the featuring of the rapper formerly known as Kanye West on the Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight”—can be unpacked, denounced or rationalized and then forgotten, before the public’s attention is diverted to new controversies.

Taken together, they represent a trend that ought to set off alarms about the way insidious ideas that normalize hatred for Jews and Israel are gaining a foothold in mainstream forums. More than that, the growing tolerance for them and lack of consequences for those responsible bode ill not just for Jews, but for the future of civil society.

Roger Waters: Israeli policy is the mass murder of Palestinians

Roger Waters, British rock musician and founding member of band Pink Floyd has expressed his strong opinions about the relationship between Israel and Hamas in a recent appearance on commentator Joe Rogan's popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.

"The Israelis seem now to have a policy of ... murdering so many of them that they are absolutely trying to create another intifada. So they can make it an armed conflict...so they can just kill them all," he said, adding that Israel is provoking the Palestinians into an armed conflict in order to manufacture an excuse to destroy them.

Waters started out his statements by reminding Rogan that Hamas is actually "the democratically elected government of Gaza." He quickly added that "there is an armed wing and whatever..." and then began speaking about occupation and the Geneva convention.

Rogan pressed him, asking whether or not the elections in Gaza were corrupt. Waters responded saying, "I have no idea, I wasn't there...Has there been an election since then? I don't know. ...I can't really answer that question because I'm not there and I don't know."

Touching on the subject of rockets fired into Israel, Waters asserted that rockets fired from Gaza "almost never do any damage because they're very ineffectual."

A huge percentage of anti-Israel actions on campus, whether it is BDS votes in student unions or anti-Israel protests, are scheduled for when Jews are likely to be unavailable.

But don't call them antisemitic!

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

In an effort to demonize Jews, anti-Zionist groups are throwing around the word "pogrom" for some hotheaded Jewish settlers who entered Huwara today.

I am not going to defend the Jewish youth who appear to only want to cause trouble. But the descriptions of the scenes there by people and groups like "Independent Jewish Voices" as a "pogrom."

Israeli settlers carrying out a pogrom in the middle of a Palestinian town near Nablus today. This kind of fascist behaviour is a natural outcome of Israeli apartheid and colonialism.

The haters also claim that the Jews are being given carte blanche to destroy property and that the IDF is protecting their rampage.

The most complete video of the events shows not a pogrom, but clashes. Palestinians are wielding sticks and throwing rocks at the Jews. And the IDF is separating the two sides, not protecting one side.

If I wanted to, I could edit the video and add deceptive captions to make it look like Palestinians are attacking Jews without any provocation. Which is exactly what the haters are doing on their side.

Using the word "pogrom" is as offensive and as antisemitic as using the word "Holocaust" to describe Jewish actions. It is meant to accuse Jews of doing exactly what those who murdered them throughout the ages have been doing. The term is meant to hurt Jews and only Jews.

And, again not to defend the Jewish youth, but they are there because Palestinians have been attacking Jews non-stop in recent days. The haters aren't talking about that.

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!

10/13 Links Pt1: How to Lose Friends and Influence Over People; Lebanon's Bait-and-Switch Treaty; Israel Passing Intelligence to Ukraine on Iranian-Made Suicide Drones

From Ian:

Yeah, Buoy!!!

The government’s new pitch was that this would be the real benefit of the deal: preserving and enhancing Israel’s security interests through the now-famous buoy line. Barak Ravid, the local Israeli journalistic mouthpiece of the Obama-Biden policy team from the Iran deal days, relayed that government officials who briefed reporters on the deal said that anchoring the “line of buoys” was “very important” because “in the last 20 years the Israeli military operated along this line unilaterally and the Lebanese side had international legitimacy to challenge it.” The deal, however, “will allow Israel to treat it as its northern territorial border.”

In other words, in the two decades up to this moment, Israel has had total freedom to operate in the area to ensure its security against Hezbollah. However, without the deal, the terror pseudo-state to its north would suddenly have enjoyed “international legitimacy” to challenge Israel. That sounds very serious—and certainly warrants ceding territory with potential energy resources under threat of force to a terrorist group that is stockpiling and pointing tens of thousands of rockets at you.

Needless to say, the Lebanese side disagrees with the Israeli reading. Instead, it claims another point on land farther south at Naqoura. Squaring this circle, probably with some creative language, is what the U.S. mediator likely has been busy figuring out.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz was spit-balling another set of talkers: “This is an agreement whose essence is economic,” Gantz said last week. “And if it is signed, we, as well as Lebanon and its citizens, who are suffering from a severe crisis, will enjoy it for years to come.” The logic here was that if Lebanon gets its rig in its Block 9 opposite Israel’s rig at Karish, then Hezbollah will have a stake in maintaining calm and smooth operation of both rigs. So, in the future, if Hezbollah attacks Israeli energy infrastructure, Israel can target a gas rig owned and operated by France’s Total—putting France on Hezbollah’s side.

This pretense of hard security and pseudo-deterrence posture rang even more hollow as it clashed with another key government talker: that Israel had to conclude this awful deal ASAP if it wanted to avoid a new war with Hezbollah. An IDF official sent out to make this pitch put it this way: “There is an urgency and a necessity to reach an agreement in the near future and without delay, in order to prevent an escalation of security [dangers], which is [otherwise] highly likely, and to utilize the unique window of opportunity to reach an agreement.”

The logic here was itself unique in the annals of deterrence: If your psychopathic neighbor keeps slashing the tires on your shiny Mercedes, the solution is to buy him a spanking brand-new Mercedes of his own that you can then pretend to hold hostage.

The source of this weird pitch was again the Biden administration. As a senior U.S. administration official relayed through Ravid, the reason Biden wanted Lapid to wrap up the deal within weeks was “because the issue has become urgent and the lack of an agreement could lead to dangerous consequences for the region.”

Yet when U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted that he was troubled by how the Biden administration “pressured our Israeli allies” into a comically terrible deal, the Washington arm of the Obama-Biden messaging machine sprang into action. The progressive lobbying group J Street put out a brief that “fact checked” Sen. Cruz’s ignorant partisanship. Daniel Shapiro, Obama’s former ambassador to Israel who is intimately familiar with the communications environment in Israel, weighed in, regurgitating the same exact talkers and asserting that it was “definitely NOT” American pressure that pushed Israel into this deal.

Yet the reason the Biden administration announced that a gas deal was a key priority was precisely because it’s a deal with Hezbollah. Stabilizing and investing in Iranian regional “equities” is at the core of the Obama-Biden doctrine of realignment with Iran. It’s how you achieve “regional integration”—by publicly showcasing your ability to pressure your allies to prop up Iranian assets, even as the Iranian people are being mowed down in the streets.

How to Lose Friends and Influence Over People

Americans have a reputation, with others and in their own national literature, for being careless and breaking things. Often this is because they are so admirably creative, dynamic, and unattached to the past. But for the last two decades, the epicenter of American carelessness has been the Middle East, an area of the world that seems to encourage fantasies among all Westerners, yet where real-world margins for error are small. The result has been a series of disasters for the peoples of the region and for American prestige. This week brought what looks like another unforced error in policymaking, fed by hubris, fantasy, airy talk, and a refusal to acknowledge reality.

On Tuesday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby announced that President Joe Biden will be reevaluating America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia after OPEC+ announced the previous week that it would cut oil production. Kirby’s announcement followed a statement by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., claiming that Saudi Arabia is helping to “underwrite Putin’s war” through OPEC+. “As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” Menendez said, “I will not green-light any cooperation with Riyadh until the Kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine.”

As a Saudi who loves the United States, and believes deeply that our two countries need each other, the only word that comes to mind regarding the contemporary “reevaluation” of our relations is: obscene.

It was the Obama administration that decided to give Vladimir Putin a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean, which it sold to the American people as a way to “deescalate” the civil war in Syria. As the United States romanced Putin, offering him Crimea and warm water ports in Syria in exchange for pulling Iran’s irons out of the fire over the past decade, U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Israel have had no choice but to cope. Last month, while Russian-operated Iranian drones and missiles were pounding Kyiv, Riyadh used its diplomatic leverage to obtain the release of American and British POWs from Putin.

America saddled us with the reality of a neighboring country controlled by Iranian troops and the Russian air force. Worse, as part of its Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Obama administration sent tens of billions of dollars flowing into Iranian coffers—money that was used to demolish Iraq, crush Syria, create chaos in Lebanon, and threaten Saudi territory from Yemen. Iranian rocket and drone strikes on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia are now routine. In response to the barrage of missiles on Saudi infrastructure last year, the Biden administration withdrew U.S. missile defense batteries from Saudi territory.

Having watched Russian forces support or directly commit atrocities against innocent civilians and facilitate the use of chemical weapons for seven years in Syria, the Saudi government was quick to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Unlike many in the West, who expected a short, parade-ground war, the Saudis understood full well what Putin was capable of. So did the Israelis.

Why Jerusalem Is the Right Location for the UK's Embassy

Up until 1948, the world generally referred to "Palestinians" as the Jews who lived in what was to become modern Israel. The "Palestinian" flag until 1948 contained a Magen David, the Palestine Post was the region's Jewish newspaper and Palestinian football teams comprised Jews.

Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Old City and eastern Jerusalem by the invading Jordanian and Arab armies in 1948. Jews were the majority of the population of the Old City. Synagogues were desecrated and destroyed and the vibrant Jewish community erased. The Jewish neighborhood of Simon HaTsadik (Simon the Just) became the Muslim area of Sheikh Jarrah.

The default position for the location of an embassy is a country's capital city, and it is for the country itself to decide its location. Israel has declared that Jerusalem is its capital city and this must be respected. The UK already has a consulate in eastern Jerusalem to serve the local Arab communities. Why, therefore, should there not be an embassy in Jerusalem to serve Israeli citizens?

The Abraham Accords and the immense benefits for the region flowing from them has shown that the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem has had no adverse effect. Neither would the relocation of the British embassy.

This video was featured on the Fatah Facebook page. It says,

It shows a car being stoned by youths. The driver attempts to flee to save his life, and he ends up crashing the car and it falls into a ditch.

The video is captioned, "A settler entered Husan village in Bethlehem by mistake.✌️🇵🇸"

This isn't the Facebook page of some Palestinian teenager celebrating throwing rocks at cars. It is the official social media of the ruling political party of the Palestinians.

There is real glee here from Mahmoud Abbas' party at kids terrorizing a presumed Jew because he or she is a Jew.

Anyone who thinks that Fatah can run a country has 25 years of counter-evidence - but all you really need to see is in how it promotes this video.

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!

The "If-Then" fallacy comes back in full force for Lebanon

Amir Tibon writes in Haaretz that the maritime border agreement between Israel and Lebanon are as important as the Abraham Accords:

The Abraham Accords, for all the optimism and economic benefits they created, did not save the life of one Israeli soldier. After all, Israel had never gone to war with Bahrain, the UAE or Morocco. The Lebanon deal mediated by Biden’s point man, Amos Hochstein, on the other hand, has the potential to avert a disastrous confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah.

Such a war would play out very differently than Israel’s periodic clashes with Hamas in Gaza: Conservative estimates include tens of thousands of rockets falling on Israeli cities, hundreds of casualties, and widespread destruction. If the agreement holds, this nightmare scenario will be prevented. It doesn’t mean peace will blossom between Israel and Lebanon, but securing quiet on Israel’s northern border is more important at the moment.

The assumption that the agreement will prevent war is part of an old tradition held by "experts" that I have called the "if-then" fallacy: If Israel does X, then others will do Y.

An early example was Michael Kramer in Time magazine who said, in 1988, that if Israel would give a serious peace offer to Palestinians and the Palestinians reject it, then the world wouldn't blame Israel for there not being peace.

Since then, Israel indeed did offer many serious peace offers, Palestinians rejected them all, and the world keeps blaming Israel.

Another example is ironically listed in Tibon's peace. In 2003, the conventional wisdom was that if Israel would just withdraw from Gaza, then Gaza would no longer be a problem for Israel, because there would be no incentive for Gaza groups to start wars.

Israel withdrew from Gaza - and Gaza groups continue to start wars every year or two.

What about Hezbollah, though? Aren't they a more rational actor than Hamas and Islamic Jihad? Couldn't they be trusted to react logically when Israel does what they want?

Well, in 2000, Israel withdrew from Lebanon - the entire raison d'etre of Hezbollah, it seemed. The UN certified Israel's full withdrawal. Certainly, the experts said, if Israel made a full withdrawal from southern Lebanon, then Hezbollah would have no claim on Israel and there would be peace. Yet Hezbollah continues to claim lands south of the UN-demarcated line, and it violate the Blue Line when kidnapping Israeli soldiers that sparked the 2006 Lebanon war.

Now, we are told that if Israel concedes the entire disputed area with Lebanon at sea, then Hezbollah will not do anything to jeopardize Lebanese sovereignty and will respect the border. Yet Lebanon and Hezbollah created a new "border" during the negotiations. What is stopping Hezbollah from claiming, whether this year or in five years, that Israel is extracting gas in Lebanese territorial waters and that it must "defend" the area?

Indeed, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is taking partial credit for the agreement, saying that Israel knuckled under to his threats to attack the Karish gas platform. This was parroted by Hezbollah's deputy, saying it was Hezbollah strength that forced Israel to humiliate itself. They regard the agreement as a capitulation by Israel to Hezbollah threats.

This is not exactly the same "if-then" formula that the optimists are claiming.

The Shebaa Farms dispute, over a tiny amount of land, has been enough of an excuse for Hezbollah to continue claiming Israel is the aggressor and that it is protecting Lebanon with an army and arsenal that rivals those of many nations. Why would it act any differently over a maritime border?

Moreover, Hezbollah is not an independent player. It follows what Iran's supreme leader wants. If Iran tells Hezbollah to shoot a thousand rockets into Israel , Hezbollah will not listen to the "experts" about how pragmatic it is. It would do what terror groups always do: create a pretext that will mollify Leftist antisemitic allies ("we are protecting Jerusalem from Judaization!") and shoot the rockets.

There is no doubt that in the short term, this maritime agreement will cool tensions on the Lebanese border. But the hundreds of square kilometers Israel gave up are not only for the short term, but forever. Giving up something so valuable in exchange for an assumption of how a terror group will act far into the future, without a single Hezbollah pledge or signature, is taking the if-then fallacy to new lengths.

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!

Field teams of the Yemen Ministry of Industry and Trade in Sanaa closed a shop selling children's pajamas with the Star of David on them on Wednesday.

The Minister of Industry and Trade, Muhammad Sharaf al-Mutahhar, stressed his ministry will not be lenient towards those involved in importing and trading Israeli goods or those bearing symbols of the Israeli enemy.

Al-Mutahar expressed his thanks for citizens who reported this horrendous crime.

Samples of the offensive pajamas were taken and through intensive investigation, the importer was identified.

The Deputy Director of the Industry Office in the Secretariat, Muhammad Sudan, said that the field teams closed the shop of the merchant who imported the awful clothing, stressing that the necessary legal procedures are being completed to refer him to the competent authorities.

The streets of Yemen are safe again.

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!

10/12 Links Pt2: Alan Johnson: On Amnesty’s Antisemitic ‘Apartheid’ Report; Kontorovich: Israel should not sign a cultural agreement with Europe

From Ian:

Alan Johnson: On Amnesty’s Antisemitic ‘Apartheid’ Report

This new introduction to the updated 2022 edition of The Apartheid Smear (forthcoming), originally published by BICOM in 2013, critiques a recent Amnesty International report, one of a crop of very similar ‘reports’ published by NGOs and UN bodies in 2021 and 2022 that smear Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state [6]. The introduction is organised in three parts, critically examining in turn the analysis, politics, and methods of Amnesty’s report.

Why is it so important for opinion formers and policy makers who seek peace via the two-state solution to reject the Amnesty Apartheid Report?

Because it has long been understood by democrats on all sides that a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is impossible without the hard work of mutual recognition and peacebuilding, negotiations and compromises, and, eventually, a lasting settlement based on a division of the land and an institutionalisation of the democratic right to national self determination of both peoples.

Some way-stations on the journey to peace have been Madrid, Oslo, Camp David, Taba, Annapolis, and the Kerry-Obama talks. Yes, the last inch of the journey, as the saying goes, is a mile deep, but there is no real-world alternative to trying again to traverse it. Today, that effort will proceed in the more hopeful context of the Abraham Accords, a historic series of agreements between Israel and several surrounding Arab states. For an extensive collection of some of the most creative and expert thinking from Israelis, Palestinians and others about how to recommence that journey to peace see Rescuing Israeli-Palestinian Peace: The Fathom Essays 2016-2020.

However, while a negotiated two-state solution remains the only viable way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by recognising the right of both peoples to national self determination, right now the gaps between the sides remain significant, and there is insufficient trust, or political will, to build the kind of relationships between the leaderships that might allow those gaps to be bridged.

In the real world, which is found at some distance from NGO-UN Reportland, the task of Britain, along with other European states, the US and Arab leaders, is not to make Israel an international pariah as the Amnesty report would have us do, but to prevent further deterioration on the ground, lower tensions, and find ways to improve the situation. This approach may not be well suited to winning applause from a campus audience, but it is well suited to encouraging a recommencement of the peace process down the line. The analysis, politics and methods of the Amnesty report would take us in the opposite direction, and should be rejected as a political dead-end by opinion-formers, policy makers and, not least, Palestinians.

Mainstream Jewish Organizations Don’t Have Leftwing Antisemitism “Under Control”

While the Jewish community is playing the short game, doing what it’s always done to win the moment, radical social justice warriors are playing the long game—what activists call “the long march through institutions”—in inculcating a stark ideological worldview that portrays anyone with power or success (success is a function of power, in this worldview)—America, Israel, Jews, Asians, men, etc.—as oppressors. Schools are teaching students to see people’s identities as markers of privilege and power and to “recognize and resist systems of oppression.” The problem is that the ideologues who are driving the agenda define the oppressor as anyone perceived to be powerful and successful, and the oppressed as anyone they deem powerless and, hence, unsuccessful. It’s a highly simplistic, binary worldview.

With this ideological software running through our kids’ brains, the school system does not have to even utter the word “Jew” or “Israel” for Jews and Israel to be ultimately implicated in oppression. Indeed, this is already happening. Survey data shows a strong correlation between progressive political attitudes on oppression and antisemitism on the left. The Jewish Institute for Liberal Values commissioned a poll of 1,600 likely voters. Survey respondents were split roughly between Democratic and Republican voters. Respondents were asked: “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? America is a structurally racist country in which white Americans, and white-adjacent groups who emulate white culture (like Asian Americans and Jewish Americans), have unfair advantages over minorities which must be addressed to achieve equity?” The poll revealed that those on the far left were much more likely to agree with the statement, an indication that progressive ideological attitudes about structural racism are fueling antisemitic and anti-Asian sentiment (viewing Jews and Asians as privileged).

The ideologues are rewiring the way young people think so that they’ll adopt their worldview, including the view that Israel is a “settler-colonialist” state. They are, in effect, laying the groundwork for the Berkeley Law Schools of the future, when there will be more true believers on their side, at which time the future Dean of the Law School will face more pressure from radical activists and less pushback from us.

For Jewish organizations to effectively counter the long-term threat, they must come to terms with the underlying ideology that powers progressive antisemitism. They cannot, on the one hand, pretend to support this oppressor/oppressed binary, as many did in the California Ethnic Studies controversy, and, on the other, hope and pray that such a stance doesn’t ultimately manifest in the portrayal of Jews and Israel as oppressors. As long as radical social justice ideologues are experiencing success pushing a program that simplistically divides the world into oppressed and oppressors and condemns anyone who doesn’t agree with them, we are going to have major antisemitism problems, in ever greater frequency and intensity.

The sooner the Jewish community comes to terms with this reality and stops playing footsie with radical forces, the sooner we can develop strategies and tactics aimed at winning the long game.

Martin Kramer "Semites, Anti-Semites, and Bernard Lewis: The Life and Afterlife of a Seminal Book"

Martin Kramer is a historian of the Middle East and Israel at Tel Aviv University and the Walter P. Stern Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was the founding president of Shalem College, a liberal arts school in Jerusalem, and a visiting professor or fellow at Brandeis, Chicago, Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the Wilson Center. He earned his degrees from Princeton, under the supervision of Bernard Lewis. Among his many publications on Islam, Israel, and the Middle East, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (2001) has been widely discussed and influential.

Imagine a Jew waking up each morning in his plush, temporary Jerusalem digs, drinking his chai latte, and saying to himself, “What immediate steps can I take today to make Judea Judenrein? Is there something I can do right now to block Israel’s use of the mountain aquifer that supplies half of Israel’s water? Who can I meet with during my 8-hour workday to ensure that Jerusalem is surrounded by hostile Arab terrorists sworn to annihilate the Jewish people—little girls like Hallel Yaffa Ariel; high school boys like Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah; and babies still housed in their mother’s wombs like Amiad Yisrael Ish-Ran?”

“Most of all, how can I get Jews to stop building homes so they can’t take shelter or raise families in their indigenous territory?”

If you’ve imagined all that, congratulations. You’ve just imagined U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides, who, in an October 7 interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), said “We do not support settlement growth. Period. I work every day behind the scenes, with the Israelis, to try and eliminate, slow down or avoid that.”

In other words, Tom Nides daily threatens Israel out of the public eye in his quest to eliminate all traces of a Jewish presence in the place where G-d made an everlasting covenant with Abraham and his descendants. God and only God promised the Jews that they would forever inherit this land, which is why it’s called “the Promised Land.” Tom Nides, however, is apparently so powerful that he can render God’s promise to the Jews null and void.

God told Abraham that He would make his descendants “as numerous as the stars in the sky.” But Tom Nides, a Jew, would like to “slow down or avoid that,” at least in the land where Jacob wrestled with the angel and was renamed “Israel” (Yisrael), “for you have contended (‘sarisa’) with the divine and with man and you have prevailed” (Gen. 32:29).

Ambassador Tom Nides has forgotten these words. He does not tremble, thinking of the consequences of turning Jewish land Muslim. For Nides, the nonsensical makes sense in that he thinks he can announce his intentions, publicly, via a supposedly Jewish news service, and God will not know what he, Tom Nides, plans to do. As if he could hide anything from God, though perhaps even Nides read these words in synagogue not three weeks ago, and would have been wise to consider them well:

You remember the dealings of [men in] today’s world, and You [also] consider the behavior of all those who lived in earlier times. In Your Presence are revealed all hidden things and the multitude of secrets from the beginning of creation; for there is no forgetfulness before the throne of Your Glory, and there is nothing hidden from Your eyes. You remember all that has been done, and even all that which is formed is not concealed from You. All is revealed and known before You Adonoy, our God Who observes and looks until the end of all generations.
For You set an appointed time of remembrance, to consider every soul and being; to cause numerous deeds to be remembered and the multitude of creatures without end. From the beginning of creation, You have made this known, and from before time You have revealed it. This day [Rosh Hashana] is the beginning of Your work a memorial of the first day. For it is a statute for Yisrael a [day of] judgment of the God of Yaakov. And over countries [judgment] is pronounced, which of them is destined for the sword [war] and which for peace, which for famine and which for abundance. And on it, creatures are brought to mind, to be remembered for life or for death.
Who is not considered on this day? For the remembrance of all that is formed comes before You: the dealings of man, and the decree of his fate, and the misdeeds of man’s actions, the thoughts of man and his schemes, and the motives for the deeds of man. Fortunate is the man who does not forget You, the son of man who gains strength in You. For those who seek You will never stumble, and never will they be disgraced— all who trust in You. For the remembrance of all their deeds come before You, and You examine the deeds of all of them.

And No’ach too, You remembered with love, and [therefore] decreed for him a promise of deliverance and compassion, when You brought the flood-waters to destroy all flesh because of the wickedness of their deeds. Therefore, his remembrance came before You, Adonoy, our God, to multiply his seed like the dust of the earth, and his descendants as the sand of the sea; as it is written in Your Torah; “And God remembered No’ach and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the Ark, and God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters were calmed.” And it is said: “And God heard their groaning cry, and God remembered His covenant with Avraham, with Yitzchak, and with Yaakov.” And it is said: “I will remember My covenant with Yaakov, and also My covenant with Yitzchak, and also My covenant with Avraham, will I remember; and the land [of Yisrael] I will remember.”

God remembers Israel and always will, but apparently Nides forgot. Or couldn't care less. At any rate, Nides believes he can go over God’s head by making threats against Israel behind the scenes. As Nides told the JTA: “This is a sovereign country. We can’t dictate to them what they can or can’t do, but I can put as much pressure as I can to make sure they understand our position.”

Tom Nides, it is true, has ways to really hurt the Jewish people, irrespective of what God might want. We know this because we have learned to read between the lines. “Pressure,” in the lexicon of America’s dealings with Israel, is the equivalent of the Arab terrorist’s “legitimate resistance.” Just as “legitimate resistance” gives moral permission to Arab terrorists to murder, decapitate, ram, kidnap, rape, bomb, stab, and burn Jews—even civilians, children, babies, rabbis, and grandmas—“pressure” means, for example, no more American aid, Iron Dome, or F-35s.

“Pressure” might also, for example, mean many more pallets of cash for Iran, so eager to spend that money toward the obliteration of the Jews.

Why would he, Tom Nides, do these things to Israel? Because he, Tom Nides, can rally the combined hate of the world against the Jews, to finally prove to the world, that he, Tom Nides, is not one of THOSE Jews—the ones whom everyone hates.

It’s a funny thing: God can see everything about Tom Nides, but Nides can’t see God. Is it possible that Nides has dyslexia, or that he has never read the bible? Does Nides not know that God commanded the Jews to settle the Promised Land?:

“And you shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have assigned the land to you to possess” (Numbers 33:53).

Settlement in Judea and Samaria is a mitzvah, a religious imperative. But Tom Nides, in his JTA interview, suggests he doesn’t care about any of that, demonstrating that God’s words mean nothing to him. Nides thinks he can turn his back on his tradition, his people, and his God. Perhaps he thinks it is the only way he can declare his allegiance to the non-Jewish world, as if to say, “Here I am, Hineni. I am not one of them, the accursed Jews.”

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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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!

10/12 Links Pt1: Israel’s far-left is no better than the anti-Zionist Arab parties; Israeli Security Cabinet OKs Lebanon maritime accord; The real threat to U.S.-Israel relations comes from anti-Semitic Democrats

From Ian:

Left-wing lawmaker causes uproar after saying IDF 'executes' Palestinian children

An Israeli lawmaker caused a firestorm Wednesday after footage emerged in which he accused Israeli troops of carrying out deliberate killings of Palestinian minors. MK Ofer Cassif, who represents that Arab-Jewish party Hadash in the Knesset, said in a speech on Tuesday that the recent deaths in Judea and Samaria have only one side to blame – Israel.

In the footage obtained by Israel Hayom on Wednesday, a day after it was filmed, the lawmaker can be seen saying that the recent spate of terrorist attacks on Israelis, including deadly shooting incidents in Jerusalem and Samaria in successive days, could be explained by Israel's overall actions throughout the years and that the real victims were the casualties on the Palestinian side who died during Israeli counterterrorism raids.

"The root cause is the occupation, it is an injustice in and of itself; 12 Palestinians were murdered in the occupied territories, including minors, children who were executed. This bloodshed is terrible, the occupation is a form of injustice," he said, ignoring the fact that Israeli troops targeted armed Palestinians during the raids.

During the event, which was attended by other lawmakers from Arab parties, the participants were asked whether they would agree that terrorist attacks on IDF soldiers should stop. Joint Arab List leader Ayman Odeh tried to evade the question, saying that "everyone is a victim of this wicked occupation... Arabs and Jews are dear to everyone and we do not want even one person to die. We have to end the occupation."

In the wake of Cassif's comments, Defense Minister Benny Gantz issued a harsh rebuke. "Cassif has once again crossed a red line with lies and incitement precisely when the IDF soldiers are protecting all Israelis – Arabs and Jews alike – from murderous terrorism. They have been doing this with professionalism, determination, and in accordance with IDF values and purity of the arms, and we should all praise them for this." Gantz vowed to provide "full backing" for the soldiers and added that "precisely because of statements like that no government will have the Joint Arab List in it," referring to the Nov. 1 election, from which he hopes to emerge Israel's prime minister.

In response to Gantz's comments, Cassif said, "If a war criminal like him attacks me, then I am in a good place."

Ruthie Blum: Israel’s far-left is no better than the anti-Zionist Arab parties

One campaign mantra of the camp of Israeli opposition and Likud leader Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu ahead of the Nov. 1 Knesset election is that interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid will not be able to form a coalition without the Arab parties.

Barring a miracle—or an egregious manipulation of the system similar to that which Lapid and Naftali Bennett pulled last year—this numerical given is a truism that the “anybody but Bibi” politicians have been trying to obfuscate.

Though having no choice but to lean on the support of Hadash-Ta’al and Balad in order to keep Netanyahu from returning to the helm, they are aware that the public is none too fond of MKs who openly side with Israel’s sworn enemies. As a result, they prefer to point to the one Arab parliamentarian, Mansour Abbas, who distanced himself from his more treasonous colleagues.

The United Arab List (Ra’am) chairman made a historic move by being the first of his ilk to join an Israeli coalition. In fairness to the head of the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, he did acknowledge that Israel is both a Jewish state and here to stay.

Still, Netanyahu has been highlighting Ra’am’s dubious record to admonish voters not to be lulled into considering it kosher. But there’s another party that warrants at least as much, if not more, negative attention: Meretz—without which Lapid also has no chance of coming even close to a 61-mandate majority.

Like Ra’am, Meretz is polling at four-to-five seats. In other words, each is straddling the electoral threshold.

Meretz, too, moderated its rhetoric when it became part of the now-defunct coalition. This is probably why its members penalized the faction’s top honchos in the Aug. 23 primary, and elected Zehava Gal-On to replace Nitzan Horowitz as party leader.

It was an ironic turnaround.

Horowitz brought the party out of backbench exile and into the glory of government, serving for the past year and a half as health minister. Gal-On, on the other hand, resigned five years ago from her post as chair of the far-left party, reappearing on the scene to resume her coveted spot.

In an interview on Oct. 8 with the Mako Weekend magazine, Gal-On let her radicalism rip. This wasn’t novel. She’s never been one to hide her aversion to Jewkhaish settlement and sympathy for the “plight” of Palestinian terrorists “under Israeli occupation.”

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians' New Enemy: British Prime Minister Liz Truss

The defamation campaign against the British prime minister is yet another sign of the ongoing radicalization of Palestinians not only against Israel, but anyone who dares to say a good word about Israel. This radicalization is the result of the massive campaign by Palestinian officials and media outlets to delegitimize Israel and demonize Jews.

The campaign coincides with the Palestinian leaders' continued talk about their commitment to the so-called two-state solution.

If the Palestinian leaders are so committed to the "two-state solution," they should cease and desist from their lethal incitement against Israel.

It is this campaign of hate that is the real obstacle for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. For many years, the Western countries that fund the Palestinians have utterly ignored Palestinian incitement against Israel.

Now, as is evident from the attacks on the British prime minister, Western leaders are themselves becoming victims of the Palestinians' smear campaigns. This is what happens when Western governments lavish untold millions of dollars on the Palestinians without requiring accountability and without demanding an end to the venomous Palestinian rhetoric against Israel and Jews.

To the @NYTimes, green tech is wonderful in Dubai but problematic in Israel

Last October, the New York Times described how forward=thinking the UAE is in diversifying its energy needs towards more green tech:

The Emirates plans to spend 600 billion dirhams, or $163 billion, over the next three decades to reduce the emissions from power plants that now burn enormous volumes of natural gas in part to cool buildings in the fierce Gulf heat. A lot of the money will go into solar farms, which can be set up across the sands of the Emirates. Another source of clean power will be a group of four nuclear reactors recently built by South Korean contractors in Abu Dhabi that are gradually coming online.

Analysts say that spending so much money is bound to have a major impact in a small country of 9.9 million people that is already well ahead of neighboring petroleum exporters like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in diversifying their economies away from oil. The Emirates, for instance, is a regional hub for finance, logistics and tourism.

And more funding is likely to be forthcoming to support the green agenda, like retrofitting buildings so that they don’t suck up so much power for air conditioning, or converting transportation to electric power or hydrogen. The Emirates is one of those places with the riches and the will to implement “loss-leading projects that are about being at the cutting edge,” said Raad Alkadiri, managing director for energy and climate at the Eurasia Group, a political risk firm.

But when the NYT writes about Israel and green tech, things suddenly get more problematic.

This is the great solar tower of Ashalim, one of the tallest structures in Israel and, until recently, the tallest solar power plant in the world.

“It’s like a sun,” said Eli Baliti, a shopkeeper in the nearest village. “A second sun.”

To backers, the tower is an impressive feat of engineering, testament to Israeli solar innovation. To critics, it is an expensive folly, dependent on technology that had become outmoded by the time it was operational.

Sometimes it feels like a dystopian skyscraper, looming ominously over the cows and roosters of a dairy farm across the road. The tower’s height prompts comparisons with the Tower of Babel, its blinding light with the burning bush. Its base looks like the hangar of a spaceship, its turret the pinnacle of a fantasy fortress.

Using energy from the sun, the tower generates enough electricity to power tens of thousands of homes. Completed in 2019, the plant showcases both the promise and the missteps of the Israeli solar industry, and it is a case study in the unpredictable challenges that await any country seeking to pivot from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

For many villagers, who moved to Ashalim for a flawless desert view, it was a considerable blot on the landscape.

“I’m pro clean energy,” noted Mr. Malka, who runs the pool. “But they chose to do it on the road by the village.”

In the UAE, solar power is wonderful. In Israel, it is problematic.

Anyone wonder why?

(h/t Joshua F)

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From all appearances, the new Lebanese-Israeli maritime border agreement seems to indicate that Israel has given up significant positions for very little return.

David Schenker summarizes in the Wall Street Journal:

During negotiations, mediated by the Biden administration, Israel conceded the entirety of its claims to the 330-square-mile zone to Lebanon in return for a 3-mile internationally recognized buffer zone adjacent to the shoreline. The remainder of the zone goes to Lebanon, which will also have the right to exploit a natural gas field known as Qana, which extends south of the frontier, and an obligation to remunerate Israel for the extracted gas there.

The contours of the proposed deal are stunning. ...As per the new agreement, Lebanon will attain virtually 100% of its initial negotiating position.

It’s a remarkable turn of events, especially given Beirut’s profound lack of leverage.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist organization, also played an important if indirect role in the talks. The organization has threatened to attack the Energean floating production system rig in Israel’s Karish field, south of the 23 line, if the ship started to extract gas prior to reaching an agreement on the maritime border. Before Hezbollah’s warning, Israel announced that pumping would start in September. In the absence of a deal, extraction didn’t commence.

Israel's logic seems to be that if Lebanon becomes a partner in selling natural gas, Hezbollah is far less likely to start another war. But Israel is permanently giving up hundreds of square miles of maritime rights for an assumption of logic on the part of a group that slavishly does whatever Iran tells it to do. And Hezbollah has a history of not giving a damn about Lebanon when it makes its own decisions.

It turns out that there was practically a mirror image of these negotiations happening on Israel's other maritime border, with Egypt. Al Monitor reports that Israel appears to have given up on its maritime rights in the sea off the Gaza coast as well:

Egypt succeeded in persuading Israel to start extracting natural gas off the coast of the Gaza Strip, after several months of secret bilateral talks, according to information provided to Al-Monitor by an official in the Egyptian intelligence service and a member of the PLO Executive Committee.
It comes after years of Israeli objections to extract natural gas off the coast of Gaza on security grounds...
The member of the PLO Executive Committee told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that Egypt informed the PA of Israel's approval to start extracting Palestinian gas off the coast of Gaza. He pointed out that this came after political pressure exerted by European countries on Israel to meet their needs for gas alternatives to Russian gas.
The PLO official said that under the agreement, Egypt and Israel would supervise the extraction process, and that part of the gas will be exported to Egypt, and the bulk of it will be exported by Israel to Europe through Greece and Cyprus. The financial revenues from the process of exporting Palestinian gas will return to the treasury of the PA, with part of these revenues allocated to support Gaza’s economy.

The details are fuzzy, but it is apparent that there are commonalities between the Lebanese and the Egyptian/PA agreements: Israel agreed to both under pressure from world powers, Israel abandoned its long standing positions protecting its own rights, and Israel hopes that these agreements will reduce the chances of war without her enemies Hezbollah and Hamas making or even hinting at a single promise.

Avoiding war is of course important, but assuming that making agreements with parties who are adjacent to irrational enemies will avoid war with those enemies is a hell of a stretch, especially one to give up permanent rights for.

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!