Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, November 14, 2022

The UN Fourth Committee - completely hijacked by Israel haters

One of the UN General Assembly's committees is the Fourth Committee, which is the "Special Political and Decolonization Committee of the General Assembly."

It has a wide ranging and eclectic official agenda: it "considers a broad range of issues covering a cluster of five decolonization-related agenda items, the effects of atomic radiation, questions relating to information, a comprehensive review of the question of peacekeeping operations as well as a review of special political missions, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Israeli Practices and settlement activities affecting the rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the occupied territories, and International cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space."

Needless to say, it now ignores every single topic that isn't anti-Israel.

This month, it approved six draft resolutions. None of them were about outer space, or atomic radiation. All of them were about Israel.

“Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” (document A/C.4/77/L.12/Rev.1)
“Assistance to Palestine refugees” (document A/C.4/77/L.10)
“Operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East” (A/C.4/77/L.9)
“Palestine refugees’ properties and their revenues” (document A/C.4/77/L.11)
“The occupied Syrian Golan” (document A/C.4/77/L.13)
“Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan” (document A/C.4/77/L.14)

The more you learn about the UN, the more it is proven to be a joke.

(h/t Irene)

UPDATE: They do approve some other resolutions (here are last year's), but far more about Israel than any other topic. (h/t Irene)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Oklahoma - when Republicans start going too far

Oklahoma is starting to raise alarm bells for Jews.

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, who was re-elected last week, recently dedicated "every square inch" of the state to Jesus: "[With] the authority that I have as governor, and the spiritual authority and the physical authority that you give me, I claim Oklahoma for you."

Stitt's new secretary of education, Ryan Walters, also wants to orient the school curriculum towards Jesus.

Parts of what he says are good....

“Our kids need to know about the founding. They need to know this country was founded on Judeo-Christian values.”

“What we have to have is true history taught in schools. Our kids need to know about the founding. They need to know this country was founded on Judeo-Christian values. They need to know about the Constitution. They need to be inspired by heroes like George Washington,” Walters said.

At an Oct. 25 debate, Walters said: “We have to continue to stay vigilant as the far left has decided that they’re going to launch a war for our kids’ minds and convince our young people that they are racist. They’re going to inject this division into the classroom. They’re going to inject this hatred of the Constitution and the values this country was founded on.”

...But not everything.

The Norman Transcript reported that Walters wants to install a “God-based history curriculum” in the state’s schools, one that will highlight the role God played in the founding of America.

There is no problem noting that the Founding Fathers believed in God and that their theology inspired their politics. But to say that God founded America is going a bit too far for a history curriculum.

And too often, the "Judeo-Christian" values that evangelicals claim to adhere to are really just Christian values.

If the new government, and particularly school, makes people of other religions uncomfortable and unwilling to publicly espouse their own beliefs that might contradict those of the political leaders, then they are not much better than the woke that they are fighting against.

The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby, in his email newsletter today, discusses Thomas Jefferson's attitudes towards religion in public life in America. "The surest way to prevent a society from igniting in religious strife, Jefferson argued, is not through the establishment of an official religion, but through a steadfast refusal to give any religious creed the endorsement of the state, let alone to dictate how Americans should worship or what faith they should confess."

That is the concern with Oklahoma in a nutshell. There is no reason to exclude God from American history, but there is very good reason not to dedicate a state to Jesus.

It is entirely possible that the reporting on this issue is exaggerated and statements are taken out of context. I hope so. But if we don't want to let states like Oklahoma go down the slippery slope towards an explicitly and exclusively Christian viewpoint, now is the time to call it out.

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!

11/14 Links Pt1: Gleefully abandoning Israel; Why the Palestinians Snubbed the Israeli Left; Zelensky aide; Ukraine’s vote against Israel at UN ‘a grave mistake’

From Ian:

Gleefully abandoning Israel

Kasher's post was so incendiary that Facebook removed it for violating rules of decent conduct. But Kasher didn't let up. He continued to expectorate that "a Jewish people with this face is not my Jewish people, and not the Jewish people among which I wish to be counted as a son." As a result, he announced that he now prefers not to be called a Jew but rather only "a person of Jewish origin."

He then went on to reject "invalid" calls for unity with the two camps he views as mutations. "The differences between me and the people of the mutations are not marginal and should not be ignored for the sake of a higher goal," he wrote. "There is no true unity and there never will be."

What makes Asa Kasher's diatribe so disturbing is its source. Until now, Kasher had been considered one of this country's respected and reasonable thinkers, someone who authored the IDF's code of ethics in warfare and who defended its targeted assassination policies in academic and legal forums worldwide. He is an Israel Prize laureate. Now it seems that Kasher has lost his bearings in a haze of hatred and self-hatred.

Religious Zionist Party Chairman Bezalel Smotrich responded to Kasher's remarks, saying they saddened him. "People like Asa Kasher, whose wisdom, integrity, and morality I wanted to appreciate, are now unmasked as lacking national responsibility, personal integrity, and minimal morality."

Addressing his "brothers on the Left," Smotrich said his camp was "given a mandate to promote what we believe is right and good for the State of Israel. We are positively going to fulfill this mandate. But you should know that your attempts at intimidation are baseless and unnecessary. No one is going to destroy democracy, turn Israel into Iran, harm someone's individual rights, or force Israelis to change their personal lifestyle."

My conclusion is that "Ben-Gvir-Phobia" (as opposed to reasonable concern about his rise) is a purposefully blown-out-of-proportion fear of the Right that serves as cover for people who apparently weren't comfortable with staunch Zionist and real Jewish identity to begin with. It leads to off-the-rocker reactions like those of Friedman and Kasher, who seem only-too-happy to jettison their associations with Israel and Judaism.

We shouldn't go there. Israel's democratic and Jewish discourse is sound even as it tends towards the conservative side of the map, and Israel's religious, defense, and diplomatic policies will not easily be hijacked by Ben-Gvir-ism. The radicals that truly worry me are those that seek to crash Israel's diplomatic relations and Israel-Diaspora relations with false, apocalyptic prognostications of Israel's descent into barbarism.

Perhaps the best advice is to ignore angry self-declared prophets like Friedman and Kasher. Perhaps I shouldn't have written about them at all. I am certain that they do not represent mainstream opinion in either the American-Jewish or Israeli communities. The Israel they fabricate and scorn ain't the real, responsible and realistic Israel I know.

Ruthie Blum: Let’s replace the term ‘national unity’ with ‘majority rule’

It’s no wonder, then, that the “anybody but Bibi” bloc disintegrated as soon as the latest election campaign kicked off. Grasping that the best he could hope for—even with the virulent anti-Zionist parties’ support—would be to prevent Netanyahu from being able to form a coalition, Lapid’s goal was to remain interim prime minister for as long as possible until a sixth round of elections.

He thus discouraged voters from opting for smaller left-wing parties. The upshot was that Meretz didn’t pass the threshold and Labor garnered only four mandates. He also colluded with the far-left Jewish-Arab Hadash-Ta’al Party not to join forces with its radical Islamist counterpart, Balad, which then didn’t make it into the Knesset.

Then there was Gantz, who ran against, rather than with, him. To do this, he established a party whose name in English, hilariously, is “National Unity.” Neither this nor his enlisting of former Israel Defense Forces Chief-of-Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot as a draw helped him come close to surpassing Lapid, let alone Netanyahu.

The icing on the “unity” cake was on display during the coalition consultations with Herzog. The only parties to recommend Lapid were his own, Yesh Atid, and Labor, headed by Merav Michaeli, who publicly blamed Lapid for the electoral defeat.

Angry at her for having dared to cross him in this manner, he stormed out of the Knesset last Sunday when she took to the podium to deliver a speech at the ceremony marking the 27th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The “unity” was heartwarming.

To be fair to Lapid, who is about to assume the role of opposition leader, “unity” is a meaningless concept in general, unless applied to a specific tenet or circumstance at a given time. The same goes for Netanyahu’s newfound coalition, which undoubtedly is and will continue to be fraught with frequent squabbles.

Still, the contrast in this respect between the outgoing and incoming governments is stark. Whereas the sole glue for Lapid’s coalition was anti-Bibi animosity, Netanyahu’s espouses a set of values and objectives shared by a higher percentage of the population.

Whether this constitutes “unity” is questionable. But it’s what democracies call “majority rule.”

PreOccupiedTerritory: People Who Think Actual Terrorist Arafat Changed Ways Refuse To Accept Former Kahanist Has Moderated (satire)

The evolution of a far-right figure who, among other beyond-the-pale rhetoric, once expressed admiration for a man who massacred dozens of Palestinians at prayer, into an influential kingmaker who professes a shift to more tolerant views, has prompted skepticism among his political opponents, many of whom had little problem believing that the mass-murderer Yasser Arafat sincerely disavowed violence, despite the latter’s flagrant use of such means to achieve his political ends after signing peace agreements.

Numerous commentators, politicians, and other public figures in Israel have spent months, some even years, denouncing Itamar Ben-Gvir as a fascist Islamophobe who must be kept as far from governmental power as possible – warnings that have taken on greater urgency since the alliance of his Otzma Yehudit Party and the Religious Zionism Party garnered fourteen seats in elections two weeks ago, putting Ben-Gvir in position to extract policy and personnel concessions from Binyamin Netanyahu, the prospective prime minister of an emerging right-wing coalition. Ben-Gvir has in recent years renounced some of the extreme positions that characterized his activism in prior decades, such as calling Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a traitor and threatening harm to him; Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by another extremist with views that overlapped Ben-Gvir’s. That political evolution, however, has failed to sway Ben-Gvir’s critics, who find unconvincing his protestations of moderation, even as many of them make excuses for the arch-terrorist who ran the Palestine Liberation Organization and commitment to pursue his political aims through negotiation rather than terrorism, but disregarded that commitment repeatedly.

“A leopard can’t change his spots,” insisted Zehava Gal-On, whose far-left Meretz Party failed to meet the electoral threshold of 3.25% of the vote, and will be absent from the Knesset for the first time in more than thirty years, but for some reason journalists keep seeking out her opinion despite its questionable relevance. “Arafat was totally different. He renounced violence and I believed him. Anything that happened afterwards was just technicalities, necessary sacrifices for peace. Doesn’t count.”

David Miller, the crazed Jew-hater academic whose antisemitism got him fired from Bristol University, and whose slavish support for his Iranian paymasters and against freedom for women in Iran has turned off even his most ardent Leftist fans, has written an article about the dangers of "hasbara."

His venue is the Hezbollah newspaper Al Mayadeen.

As with everything else Jewish, Miller sees nothing but conspiracies - dark, sinister conspiracies by the evil Hasbarists, controlled by Israel, working in concert for nefarious aims.

The Zionist entity has a myriad of ways to target audiences outside occupied Palestine. One time-honored approach is to send settler colonists from Palestine to spread the word as “Schlichim” or “emissaries” in what is referred to incorrectly as the “diaspora”, a term which implies, falsely, that all Jews have some connection to Palestine.

Yeah, why should daily prayers yearning to return to Zion indicate that Jews have a connection to Israel?

Miller gives lots of bogus examples of this Israeli-controlled Hasbara Central, including Digitell, conferences in Israel for pro-Israel activists that I attended. No, I never followed any instructions from Digitell; we shared ideas and data. How awful!

If you read his screed closely, you can see how most Israeli hasbara initiatives fell apart after a short time. If they were so all powerful, why don't most of them exist anymore?

In reality, every pro-Israel activist does their own thing. We are not instructed by anyone what to write about. There is no Hasbara Central.

When analysis turns into conspiracy theory, you know that the accusation is simple Jew hatred.

But Miller's final paragraph is most amusing:

There is no point in engaging with Zionist trolls. They are not interested in rational or good-faith debates.

Translated, this means, "You cannot win arguments with Zionists. They have proven that I am an antisemite many times and I cannot defend myself. So I want to make sure that the modern antisemites like me don't try to engage in public debate, because invariably it makes us look like idiots."

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!

Yisrael Medad writes an important piece in the Jerusalem Post:

Said Arikat is the Washington Bureau Chief of the Al Quds daily newspaper and ...is a long-time Washington-based journalist.

True to his newspaper’s self-assumed role as trumpeting an ideological presentation of pro-Palestinianism, Arikat has, to his credit, maneuvered himself into an ideal position through his presence at US State Department press briefings.

There, he never fails to present the various spokespersons at the podium with carefully worded questions that usually trumpet a propaganda angle, inserting doubtful “facts.” He always leads those spokespersons to utter conclusions that would both aid the cause of Palestine while deviously demonizing Israel.

If anything, Medad understates the issue. Every day, it seems, the State Department spokesperson calls on this relatively obscure reporter, and every day Said Arikat uses that opportunity to put rabid anti-Israel lies - and sometimes, antisemitic lies - on the official public record, pretending that he is simply asking questions.

I've noted before how Arikat once implied that Israel controls members of Congress and has them do their bidding. I've also written about how he (and others) have tried to leverage US support for Ukraine's self-defense as being the same thing as Palestinian terror attacks, using the word "resistance" for both of them.

But Arikat's propaganda is inserted into most briefings.

When the US says it is against collective punishment, Arikat asks whether Israel closing its borders on election day is "collective punishment."

He framed a question about Israel killing six known terrorists in Nablus as "Ned, the past few days have witnessed an increased assault by the Israeli occupational army into towns and villages, killing a number of people, killing six people last night alone in a home."

Or, this cunning question, knowing that the US considers the West Bank to be occupied, Arikat tries to extend that: "Do you dispute that the Palestinians are militarily occupied, that Israel has annexed Palestinian land? Do you dispute that? Do you dispute that they have forcibly removed populations? "

These examples are only from the past month.

The State Department spokesperson usually ignores or correctly responds to these, but the fact remains that not only are these questions on the record, but the other reporters in the room and those watching the live webcasts hear one-sided anti-Israel propaganda, brought to them by the US State Department.

Arikat has every right to be there and to ask questions, even to spout lies. But, as Medad points out:

What is lacking at these press briefings, these challenges of American foreign policy and the prejudicial framing of the stories, is the voice of Israeli journalists and American Jewish media representatives. No one is there to politely, but authoritatively, ask questions predicated on the true circumstances.

They could request information on acts – or lack thereof – on the part of Mahmoud Abbas’s regime. They could ask why the Taylor Force Act is basically a dead letter. Or why President Biden, on his recent trip to Jerusalem’s Augusta Victoria Hospital, refused an Israeli escort, or whether the hundreds of millions of dollars his administration has pledged actually accomplish anything positive.

There are major Jewish media outlets, such as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and the Jewish News Syndicate, as well as national and Washington local Jewish weeklies like the Algemeiner, The Jewish Press and The Jewish Week.

There are Israeli newspapers, and radio and television correspondents based there. Can’t they regularly send a reporter, or pool a reporter, to cover the State Department beat? Even a college intern?

That is the question. The State Department should be asked about what they are doing to bring Ahlam Tamimi to justice and why they fund Jordan despite their obligations to extradite her. They should be pressed on responding to Mahmoud Abbas' praise of the most obscene terrorists. They should be asked to comment on daily incitement in official Palestinian media, including antisemitism.

I'm sure that a Jewish philanthropist could fund the salary of a reporter to attend State Department briefings and ask tough questions from the other side. It is an easy and obvious thing to do. So why isn't it happening?

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!

100 years ago or today? "Wave of prejudice against Jews and Negroes sweeping US"

From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 13, 1922:

Then, as now, Jews and Blacks are the top targets of hate crimes.

Then, as now, the hate is spread by propaganda - instead of traditional wartime propaganda, it is social media Right vs. Left propaganda.

Then, as now, Jews are discriminated against in college admissions - then because they weren't white enough, now because they are too white.

Then, as now, some Christian groups like Presbyterians lead the charge against Jews, pretending that their hate is based on a twisted sense of morality and ethics.

It's been a hundred years since this was written. What has really changed?

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Anti-Israel activists hush up Palestinian sexual harassment and rape of their women

In the TV documentary series Shtula, at one point members of the ISM tell the woman posing as an anti-Israel activist that, by the way, she can expect to be sexually harassed by Palestinian men.

It's just part of the job.

This is well known in the anti-Israel activist community.

In 2010, a Palestinian convinced a group of female Western activists to let him stay in their guest house in an Arab village because, he claimed, the IDF was trying to arrest him. He then attempted to rape one of the American women - who was the only Muslim. The Palestinian Authority then convinced her not to press charges, because it would be too damaging to the anti-Israel cause.

This was not an isolated incident.

An Israeli peace activist was "severely sexually assaulted" at Sheikh Jarrah. The victim tried to complain, but "after heavy and unfair pressure from the [Western] organizers of the Sheikh Jarrah protest, she withdrew her complaint." And then these "progressives" warned all Western women to cover their hair and bodies in Sheikh Jarrah.

And other incidents slowly leaked out. One activist admitted to an Israeli reporter, “I know of such rape cases from women who are not Jewish: a female European leftist activist, a female Red Cross volunteer and a young Arab woman from Yafo. I met the three of them during reserve service. I met with each of them afterwards… they told me what happens there, in the Palestinian villages, far from any observing eye.” That activist claimed that some of the female activists became unwilling wives and virtual slaves in Palestinian villages.

Haaretz published a similar article about sexual harassment of leftist activist women in 2012.

Apparently nothing has changed.

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

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11/13 Links: Palestinian Resolution at UN Is a Desperate Step; Major Terror Attack in Turkey, 6 Dead, 53 Wounded"; Chappelle: 'Not a crazy thing to think' that Jews run Hollywood

From Ian:

Palestinian Resolution at UN Is a Desperate Step

The worst-case scenario – a future declaration by the ICJ stating that Judea and Samaria are being annexed – will not be a blow to Israel, but a headache at most. The countries that are already hostile to the Jewish state do not need a court to justify their approach. Similarly, the states that understand the situation or support Israel will not change their policies because of a political opinion disguised as international law. There have been plenty of these over the years and we are still standing.

Saturday's vote at the UN makes it clear who is on our side and who is against us. Sixty-nine countries opposed the measure, which is not a few. These include the United States, Germany, Canada, and Australia, where left-wing governments have been in power in recent years. Italy stood by us for the first time as well, as did others.

Most other Western countries abstained. Those who supported the Palestinians were mostly Arab, Muslim, or African countries, with one notable exception: Ukraine, which continues to put sticks in our wheels at the UN while asking Israel for favors in reality. Strange.

And speaking of reality, it is not yet certain whether the ICJ will even publish the opinion that the UN is requesting. The whole world knows that the conflict is political, not legal. With this very rationale, many countries have turned to the ICC requesting not to advance Palestinian claims against Israel. By the looks of things, those requests were convincing. The process is stuck there, which is a good thing.

In any case, even if such an opinion is published, it will take years before it is written. So early in the game, no one knows what it will say, much less what its effect will be on the world. But it doesn't mean we can bury our heads in the sand.

The Palestinian appeal to the ICJ is a desperate step taken by Mahmoud Abbas and his people in order to internationalize the conflict. This process started more than a decade ago, which is when-then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not counteract.

Abbas learned that he is not held responsible for the diplomatic battles he starts with Israel, which is why he has since escalated by appealing to a long list of international institutions.

It was a dire mistake. Israel has and has had a lot of leverage against Abbas and the senior PA officials. There is no reason, for example, for him to fly to meet with leaders around the globe as long as he seeks to undermine Israel's status. The same goes for other senior PA members as well.

These are the first tools in the toolbox and they are now at the disposal of the new government. They will have to use them until the final vote in the General Assembly in a month. In addition, the new foreign and defense ministers – when appointed – will have to make it clear to the US that it must put limits on the Palestinian Authority. The administration is very afraid of its disintegration. It must therefore contribute to returning the demon attempting to internationalize the conflict straight back into the bottle.

Lapid calls to exact price from Palestinians for UN ‘occupation’ vote

Israel is preparing a security and diplomatic response to the Palestinians for their UN resolution calling on the International Court of Justice to consider the illegality of Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank, Prime Minister Yair Lapid said on Sunday.

Lapid instructed the government to prepare a “security and diplomatic toolbox” to respond.

“The way to resolve the conflict does not pass through the halls of the UN or other international bodies, and the Palestinians’ move at the UN will have consequences,” the prime minister warned.

The UN General Assembly Fourth Committee voted 98-17 on Friday to ask the ICJ to consider whether the IDF’s ongoing presence in Judea and Samaria, east Jerusalem and the Golan can be considered de-facto annexation after 56 years. The resolution, officially proposed by Nicaragua because “Palestine” is a UN observer, questions the status of Jerusalem, ignoring Jewish ties to its holiest site, the Temple Mount, and referring to it as al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary). The resolution must be approved in another, full UN General Assembly vote before it goes to The Hague.

Israel slams UN panel decision on West Bank probe

Israeli leaders are decrying a UN decision to seek a legal opinion from the International Court of Justice on Israel's activity in the West Bank.

Former ambassador Daniel Shek joins us to discuss how Israel will approach the resolution, and the countries that voted in favor, including Ukraine.

Israel-haters lying with statistics, part 3: Israeli Arab health stats

AlQuds (UK - Arabic) has an article on the gap between Jews and Arabs in health statistics in Israel. It starts off saying:

A new study based on official medical data revealed that the rate of common diseases among Palestinians of the interior is many times greater than that of Jews, as a result of several factors, including external factors related to poverty and racial discrimination between Arabs and Jews...

For death from heart diseases, the percentage of Arabs is one and a half times higher than among Jews, and in death as a result of diabetes, the percentage of Arabs increases by two and a third of times compared to Jews. Vascular and kidney diseases cause two and three-quarters of deaths in Arabs more than Jews, and the rate of death rises to twice as high as a result of respiratory diseases.

One has to read much further to find out that the main reasons for the gaps aren't because of poverty or discrimination - but lifestyle:

16.5% of Jews are obese, compared to 23.5% among Arabs. The percentage of older Jewish women (ages 55-74) who are obese is 41%, compared to 70% among their Arab counterparts.

The percentage of smokers is 22.9% for Jewish men and 35.5% for Arab men. In the category in which the individual smokes more than 20 cigarettes a day among Arab men and women, there are twice as many Arabs as the Jews.

Wouldn't that explain the differences in diabetes and heart related diseases far more than any difference in poverty?

Also, if poverty causes illness and shorter life expectancy, then one would expect that the Haredi (ultra-religious Jewish) community in Israel would have shorter life expectancies as well. The truth is the opposite - they generally have better health than their non-religious counterparts. One reason offered is that they have much higher "social capital" than others, and less feelings of loneliness. But it is also significant that haredi men (unlike their stereotype) are much less likely to smoke than most Israeli men - i 2010, only 13.4% smoked, compared to 23.9% of all Jewish men at that time. (However, haredi Jews are seven times as likely to be obese than all Israelis. )

Again, we see how statistics can be easily manipulated for anti-Israel propaganda purposes, and most people don't know enough to recognize how they are being brainwashed.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Israel-haters lying with statistics, part 2: Christians in Jerusalem

Daniel Seidemann tweeted, "In Jerusalem, 1948, the Christian community of Jerusalem was almost 20% of the city's population. Today that number is approximately 1.5%. The interests of the vulnerable Christian community in the Holy Land are not served by hollow hasbarah. "

So what is he saying? That the Christians left because of Israeli policies?

The actual number of Christians increased, albeit slowly, since 1967. The only time the Christian population went down was under Jordanian rule, from 29,400 in 1944 to 12,400 in 1967.

The Christians didn't leave under Israeli rule, but they flocked away under Muslim rule.

Which is consistent with the Christian population in the entire Middle East - save for Israel.

In fact, the raw numbers of Christians has slowly increased under Jewish rule, it has gone down under Palestinian rule.

This Christian site, citing survey research, describes why:

The main factor driving Christian emigration is persecution. In the survey conducted by the Philos Project and the PCPSR, over 40% of Palestinian Christians surveyed indicated that they feel that Muslims do not wish to see them in Palestine. Additionally, 44% feel that there is discrimination against Christians when seeking employment, and 50% describe their economic situation as “bad or very bad.” Nearly 30% have been called a “non-believer” or “crusader” by Muslims.

Palestinian Christians are no strangers to violence. Father Justinus, a monk at Jacob’s Well Monastery on the outskirts of Nablus, a Palestinian city in the West Bank, was beaten in January 2022. The elderly monk has survived 32 life-threatening attacks throughout his time at the monastery.

Seidemann uses percentages, not raw numbers, because the actual number of Christians in Jerusalem has not gone down at all. But the reason that the percentage of Christians has gone down is because the number of Jews in Jerusalem has skyrocketed - and the number of Muslims has gone up far faster than the Jews, from 55,000 to 320,000 since 19671

If Seidemann is suggesting that Christians are leaving because of persecution by Jews - and that is exactly what he wants people to think - then by that logic, Israel has made Jerusalem into a paradise for Palestinian Muslims!

This is another instance where anti-Israel activists rely on their readers being innumerate - subject to propaganda using misleading statistics.

And it happens all the time.

(h/t YMedad)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Someone named Laith Hanbali, of Al-Shabaka -The Palestinian Policy Network, tweeted "Israel arrested 690 Palestinians in October. That's about 1 Palestinian arrested every hour for a whole month!"

Sounds awful, doesn't it? Over a 1300 people thought so.

This is where it is important to discuss innumeracy - mathematical illiteracy. Seemingly, most people cannot look at this statistic critically to realize how deceptive it is.

Let's start with another Palestinian source, Muetta, a Palestinian think tank that issues monthly statistics on "acts of resistance." They count 1,999 such acts in October. Some of them are vague like "resisting settler attacks" which could mean anything, but nearly a thousand of the events listed are potentially deadly - shootings, firebombs, stabbings, car rammings, stone throwing.

By their own count, Israel didn't arrest close to the number of Palestinians who were engaged in violent acts. And that number has increased a great deal this year.

Are 690 arrests a huge number compared to the number of attacks? Clearly not. If anything, this proves that Israeli arrests aren't arbitrary, and if anything they are not aggressive enough given the number of violent acts aimed towards the IDF and ordinary Israelis.

Given the number of Palestinians, is 690 arrests excessive? On the contrary. The number looks positively puny compared to the number of arrests in large American cities with comparable populations.

There are about 4.7 million Palestinians in the territories, about 2.7 million in the West Bank. This is more than in the city limits of Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia. But in October, in Philadelphia (1.6 million people), police arrested 1858 people, a rate roughly 5 times the arrest rate of Palestinians in the West Bank per million.

Sounds bad? Just wait.

Chicago arrested over 13,000 people - over 18 every hour - during October.

That's nothing compared to Houston, with over 40,000 arrests in September(the most recent month with statistics.) That's 56 people every hour!

Is 690 arrests in a month really that bad? That is about the number of October arrests in Chattanooga, TN (pop. 182,000.)

What about cities outside the United States? Maybe it is the US that is the anomaly?

Nope. In October, the London police arrested 11,263 people. In fact, they arrested 988 minors!

Just imagine the outcry if Israel arrested 1000 Palestinian minors every month!

(London has nearly 9 million people, but even if you cut that number by 75% to match only the West Bank, it still dwarfs the number of arrests done by Israel.)

Without context, statistics are meaningless. Which is why anti-Israel activists never, ever compare Israel to anyone else.

Because it would make them look like idiots.

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!

11/12 Links: Lapid slams UN after pro-PLO measure advances, calls move 'prize for terrorist organizations'; To anti-Zionists, Ben Gvir is not a problem, he is an opportunity

From Ian:

Lapid slams UN, calls pro-Palestinian vote 'prize for terrorist organizations'

Israel lambasted the United Nations on Saturday after a key committee approved a draft resolution Friday calling on the International Court of Justice to urgently issue its opinion on the legal consequences of supposedly denying the Palestinian people the right to self-determination as a result of Israel's actions since the 1967 Six-Day War.

The measure was vehemently opposed by Israel, which argued it would destroy any chance of reconciliation with the Palestinians.

"This step will not change the reality on the ground, nor will it help the Palestinian people in any way; it may even result in an escalation. Supporting this move is a prize for terrorist organizations and the campaign against Israel," Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement, adding that "the Palestinians want to replace negotiations with unilateral steps. They are again using the United Nations to attack Israel."

The vote in the General Assembly's Special Political and Decolonization Committee was 98-17, with 52 abstentions. The resolution will now go to the 193-member assembly for a final vote before the end of the year, when it is virtually certain of approval.

The draft cites Israel's supposed violation of Palestinian rights to self-determination "from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the holy city of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures."

It would ask the court for an opinion on how these Israeli policies and practices "affect the legal status of the occupation, and what are the legal consequences that arise for all states and the United Nations from this status."

The International Court of Justice, also known as the world court, is one of the UN's main organs and is charged with settling disputes between countries. Its opinions are not binding.

"Israel strongly rejects the Palestinian resolution at the United Nations. This is another unilateral Palestinian move which undermines the basic principles for resolving the conflict and may harm any possibility for a future process," Lapid tweeted and thanked that handful of countries that voted against the resolution with Israel. "We call upon on all the countries that supported yesterday's proposal to reconsider their position and oppose it when it's voted upon in the General Assembly. The way to resolve the conflict does not pass through the corridors of the UN or other international bodies," he continued.

Jonathan Tobin: Don’t apologize for Ben-Gvir or anything else about Israel

When Netanyahu became prime minister again in 2009 and in the 12 years that followed, when there was no thought of Ben-Gvir being a minister, the same arguments about Israeli policies being oppressive and alienating American Jews were heard over and over again.

During this time, as the anti-Semitic BDS movement gain footholds on American college campuses and on the left-wing of the Democratic Party, there was no talk about Ben-Gvir or the evils of Israel being governed by right-wing and religious parties.

To the contrary, the so-called centrists of Israeli politics—Lapid and Gantz—were just as reviled by those who spread the “apartheid state” smear as Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are today. The same claims about a mythical old “good” Israel being destroyed were made by those who opposed Netanyahu.

Those who think one Jewish state on the planet is one too many didn’t need Religious Zionists in Israel’s cabinet to be convinced that Israel shouldn’t exist. American Jews who are embarrassed by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich were already embarrassed by Netanyahu and even some of his left-leaning opponents in the Knesset. Their failure to magically make the conflict with the Palestinians disappear has been cited by those who note a decline in support for Israel in the years since the collapse of the Oslo peace process, and even before that while the delusion that it might succeed was still alive.

This goes beyond the fact that the claims that Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are fascists is without real substance. As I’ve noted previously, the talk about the winners of last week’s election being enemies of democracy is just an echo of the Democratic Party talking points about Republicans in the U.S. and just as specious. Whatever one may think of either man, their party doesn’t oppose democracy.

None of that matters because this discussion isn’t rooted in the facts about Israel or those who will make up its next government. Rather, it is an expression of unease with the reality of a Jewish state that must deal with a messy and insoluble conflict with the Palestinians as well as one where the majority of its Jews don’t think or look like your typical liberal Jewish Democrat.

Israel-haters will work for its destruction no matter who is its prime minister or the composition of the government. As has always been the case, the anti-Semites don’t need any new excuses for their efforts to besmirch and delegitimize the Jewish state.

One needn’t support Netanyahu or his partners to understand any of this.

Rather than apologizing for Ben-Gvir or the other aspects of Israeli reality that make readers of The New York Times cringe, those who care about the Jewish state and its people need to stop longing for an Israel which looks like them and embrace the one that actually exists. By buying into the disingenuous claims that this government will be less worthy of their support than its predecessors, they are merely falling into a trap set for them by anti-Semites.

Those who support the right of a Jewish state to exist should stop apologizing for it not conforming to some idealized liberal vision of Zionism, and understand that the people who voted for Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir are just as deserving of respect and representation as they are.

Fred Maroun: To anti-Zionists, Ben Gvir is not a problem, he is an opportunity

While Ben Gvir calls for Palestinian terrorists to be expelled from Israel, we know that Arab entities (including the Jordan-occupied West Bank and the Egypt-occupied Gaza) indiscriminately expelled all Jewish residents decades ago. We also know that Israel’s enemies are “bent on wiping the Jewish state and its inhabitants off the map” (as Canadian National Post columnist John Robson put it). As racist and as anti-democratic as Israel’s far right is, it is nothing compared to Israel’s enemies. That is of course cold comfort to those who are genuinely concerned about Ben Gvir and his ilk, but it points to a double standard.

Criticizing Ben Gvir and the Israeli extreme right while giving a pass to far worse Palestinian groups is a double standard. It sets high expectations of Jews while setting much lower expectations of others. It is obviously a form of antisemitism.

Using Ben Gvir to demonize Israel is not a new concept. Before Ben Gvir and the Israeli extreme right became popular, it was Netanyahu and his Likud party who were the favorite target of anti-Zionists. Anti-Zionism was not born with Ben Gvir’s entry into Israeli politics, nor was it born with Netanyahu’s entry into Israeli politics. It has existed ever since Israel exists. Anti-Zionism was just as strong, and perhaps even stronger, when Israel was governed by socialists like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir.

In essence, there are two types of criticisms of Ben Gvir. There is the criticism that aims to make Israel better (or at least not worse). This criticism comes from Zionists in Israel and abroad. And there is the criticism that uses Ben Gvir as a new and more convenient way to demonize Israel. This criticism comes from anyone who hates Israel and does not give a fig about Israeli Arabs but looks on with glee as Ben Gvir weakens the fabric of Israeli society.

To Zionists, Ben Gvir is dangerous for several reasons. He is likely to weaken Western support for Israel, he is likely to weaken Israeli democracy, and he is likely to increase Israel’s investment in West Bank settlements which make a one-state bi-national solution increasingly likely. To Zionists, Ben Gvir is a problem. But to anti-Zionists, these are all reasons to celebrate. To them, Ben Gvir isn’t a problem, he’s an opportunity.

11/11 Links Pt2: NYTs fraught history covering Jews, Israel draws fresh backlash amid report on Hasidic schools; Germany must not engage In Holocaust minimization

From Ian:

New York Times' fraught history covering Jews, Israel draws fresh backlash amid report on Hasidic schools

The New York Times said last month that a string of investigations – some which were accused of being "politicized hit piece[s]" against Jews – is a part of its "financial success" strategy, adding to a long list of controversy of what some critics have alleged is an "anti-Jewish animus" at one of the nation's leading papers.

Former New York Times executive editor, Dean Baquet, announced an investigative journalism fellowship he would oversee that was inspired by the apparent "financial success" of investigations on Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, among others. Dean Baquet, former executive editor at The New York Times, announced an investigative journalism fellowship inspired by controversial stories published about Jews.

The announcement referred to a front-page spotlight article the Times published in September which claimed Jewish private schools were "flush" with government cash and failing their children.

"What's clear is that the NYT is not interested in positive value for our schools, just spreading lies for clicks," Simcha Eichenstein, a NYS Assembly member, who represents a Brooklyn Hasidic Jewish community, said.

Activists – including international human rights attorney Brooke Goldstein – derided the "politicized hit piece" for singularly "targeting" the Jewish community as violent anti-Semitic attacks continue to rise in New York City. It was also a bizarre choice for a front page article on Sept. 11 for the New York-based paper, she said.

"What the hit piece did at The New York Times… [is] accuse [Jews]… of abusing their children. I couldn't think of anything more vicious than that," Goldstein, who runs the Lawfare Project, told Fox News Digital.

She added that "Targeting Jewish Hasidic schools, or any Jewish organization, to leverage for financial success is beyond shameful."

The New York Times has a "longstanding Jewish problem" when it comes to various types of coverage spanning from the Holocaust era to the present, according to its critics.

Josh Hammer, the opinion editor at Newsweek, told Fox News Digital, "The New York Times never ceases to amaze me when it comes to Jewish-related issues."

"This is the same newspaper that consistently buried coverage of the Holocaust far from the front page. Some things never change. The true shame is that far too many liberal Americans still accord the Times far more credibility than it deserves."

This sentiment has also been touched on by current and former Times staff. The paper did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Mark Regev: Moshe Sneh: The communist who defended Israel

The blatant antisemitism that plagued the Soviet bloc in the final months of Stalin’s rule severely shook Mapam’s faith in the Kremlin, and the party incrementally moved toward an independent socialist position. This change was opposed by the staunchly pro-Soviet Sneh, who bolted Mapam in 1953 to establish the Left Faction, which merged into the communist Maki in 1954.

Over the next two decades, Sneh was the foremost leader of Israeli communism, repeatedly representing Maki in the Knesset while editing the party newspaper Kol Ha’am (Voice of the People).

In 1970, Sneh authored an essay titled “Arafat the adored and Lenin the ignored,” where he applied Vladimir Lenin’s communist principles to denounce the global left’s infatuation with Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization.

While embracing Palestinian self-determination, Sneh condemned the PLO’s call for Israel’s destruction. He quoted Lenin’s distinction between progressive nationalism, which seeks national freedom, and bourgeois nationalism, which denies national freedom to others; Lenin’s writings endorsed the former while condemning the latter. According to Sneh, Leninist logic would clearly place the PLO’s negation of the Jews’ right to a state of their own in the second, reactionary category.

Moreover, Sneh elaborated upon Lenin’s critique of terrorism, contrasting it with the PLO’s sanctification of the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians. He also refuted the depiction of Israel as a colonial entity, pointing out that the Jewish state has no imperial mother country.

Sneh reminded his readers of the events surrounding Israel’s creation: the Jewish armed struggle against British imperialism; the communist bloc’s support for the November 1947 UN vote calling for the establishment of a Jewish state; and the masses of survivors of fascist persecution and genocide who found refuge in Israel.

Perhaps today’s radicals, from Brazil’s Lula da Silva to France’s Jean-Luc Melenchon to Ireland’s Mary Lou McDonald, who like Sneh’s 1970 leftist audience uncritically champion Palestinian nationalism, might benefit from familiarizing themselves with the political writings of Israel’s former communist leader.

Postscript: Moshe Sneh’s son, Ephraim, a member of the communist youth movement in his earlier years, nonetheless went on to become an IDF brigadier general and a Labor Party MK. He served as health minister in the governments of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, deputy defense minister to Ehud Barak, and even transportation minister under the Likud’s Ariel Sharon. What would his communist father have said?

A Lost Novel Describes Arriving at the “Palestinian Ellis Island” in Pre-State Israel

Before setting off from New York City to the Land of Israel in 1926, the Yiddish novelist and essayist Miriam Karpilove dashed off a letter to the secretary of the I.L. Peretz Writers’ Union. Therein, she complained of the many things she had to do in preparation for leaving golus [diasporic exile], adding “I am my own [lady messiah] and, as you know, I have no white horse and, as you also know, the subway is on strike to boot.” Her visit to Mandate Palestine would last for two years, and form the basis of an unfinished novel, parts of which will soon be published. Jessica Kirzane excerpts her translation of the opening chapter, which depicts the characters’ arrival at the “Palestinian Ellis Island.”

We had to show a group of British government officers all of our documents so they could see that our coming here to Eretz Yisrael was kosher and we’d followed all the legal requirements they set out for us. These government officials sat at a long table in the middle of a large room. We had to stand. Stand and wait in line until someone looked over our papers and gave them to another official, who gave them to a third official, and so forth.

More than anything, they noticed the stamp on our papers with the word “settler.” They were surprised that American citizens with money had come to settle in Palestine: is it so bad in America, or so good in Eretz Yisrael, that the Jews would want to settle here? Especially during the present crisis? One of the officials asked my brother why he wanted to settle in Palestine, isn’t it good to be an American citizen?

“Oh, very good!” Jacob said. “But I think Palestine has more for us.”

“Remarkable, . . . ” he shrugged his shoulders and asked me what compelled me to settle in Palestine. I looked him straight in his squinty eyes and replied, “historical connections, you know . . .”.

Two interfaith events between Muslims and Jews, on opposite sides of the Middle East

The JC reports:

In the shadow of the UAE’s elaborate Grand Mosque and its white marble spires, interfaith representatives from across the world are gathered to listen to, of all people, a rabbi.

It is a scene that would have seemed unlikely a few years ago, and at times impossible. In the ballroom of Abu Dhabi’s Ritz Carlton, among the chandeliers, dates and gold, Chief Rabbi Mirvis made an unprecedented address to the audience of hundreds of Islamic scholars and leaders.

The first UK chief rabbi to ever visit the Emirates, Rabbi Mirvis was welcomed to the Abu Dhabi Peace Forum by its president, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah, a revered Islamic scholar.

Addressing the crowd in a mixture of Biblical Hebrew, Arabic and English, Rabbi Mirvis called on leaders of all faiths to “achieve the unachievable” and build on the historic peace brought about by the Abraham Accords two years ago.

Over 7000 km away, another kind of interfaith gathering happened recently - in Morocco:

After a forced two-year hiatus linked to the pandemic, the emblematic Atlantic Andalusian Festival returned this year for its 18th edition.

President and Founder of the Essaouira Mogador association, André Azoulay, adviser to King Mohammed VI. speaks of it with passion and fervor: “It is an indescribable festival, which never ceases to amaze and which, in the eyes of some, brings together all the paradoxes: a festival which has not always been understood. We were often seen as somewhat naïve dreamers, expressing a reality that many had turned their backs on.”

Azoulay repeats it frequently: this meeting is the only one in the world to bring together thousands of Muslims and Jews, who have chosen to meet in Essaouira for the simple “happiness of being together."

This is more than a slogan for the followers of this committed festival: against the current of a culture of indifference and denial. And this year, more than 10,000 came to listen to the songs and music of the malhun or the Judeo-Arab matrouz.

“We blew the numbers. Never - I who dream a lot for my country, my city and my Andalusia - had I dared to imagine that they would be there by the thousands from Israel, France, Canada, the United States, Latin America, from Africa and the Arab world… Shoulder to shoulder to sing and dance together.

On social networks, explains Azoulay, the videos of the concerts and the forums of the festival amount year after year in millions of views.

And of course soon thousands of Israelis will descend to Qatar for the World Cup.

We live in amazing times. No wonder the Israel haters are perpetually angry.

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!

11/11 Links Pt1: How to defeat the PLO and UNRWA; Pro-Israel watchdog alleges ‘sham hearings’ by controversial UN commission; Iranians protest nationwide, mark "Bloody Friday"

From Ian:

How to defeat the PLO and UNRWA

Below is a list of doable steps that will make all the difference:
1. Recognize the new paradigm: Fatah can no longer be defined as a "partner for peace."
2. Neutralize COGAT (Israel's Civil Administration), and its blind protection of the PA and UNRWA.
3. Present PA and UNRWA Indoctrination as a primary factor in the war on Israel.
4. Since the PBC (Palestine Broadcasting Corporation) continues to incite, close all Israeli government frequencies used by the PBC.
5. Define PA and UNRWA schools as warlike entities that deserve no support.
6. Reinstate? oversight of all texts and teachers? in PA/UNRWA education.
7. Advocate the repeal of "Pay for Slay" legislation as a condition for aid
8. Disarm all Palestinian Arab entities, including the PSF, trained by US and Israel.
9 Arrest anyone who pays killers who have ?carried out acts of murder.
10. Encourage confiscation of all funds set aside by the PA to pay salaries for life to anyone who kills a Jew.
11. Organize conference of the descendants of the Dalal Mugrabi 1978 terror attack, where 35 Jews were murdered. Dalal is lionized by the PA and in UNRWA education.
12. Advocate harsh conditions in jails for terrorists, because current terror cells have turned into summer camps and universities.
13 Commission new films of UNRWA and PA SCHOOLS. Seeing is believing.
14. Oversee all funding to PA and UNRWA: Demand accountability for cash allocations ?to PA and UNRWA. Hold all PA funders criminally responsible for PA transgressions (NGOs have no diplomatic immunity).
15. Create a new think-tank to monitor and fight Arab terror.
16 Hire a community organization social worker to create a new Arab health and social welfare system, one that is independent of ?the corrupt PA and UNRWA. 17. Transform "victims of terror" into an effective organization to present the human face of those who have suffered the consequences of Arab violence. 18. Launch inquiry into private investments in the PA. 19. Foster an effort for UNRWA policy change - Counter "Right of Return by Force of Arms". Instead, advance the resettlement of Arab refugees from 1948 and their descendants.

That's all it takes, folks.

Israel's democracy is its strength over Gaza -opinion

A good friend drew my attention to the article by the Palestinian publicist Dr. Ibrahim Abrash. A resident of the al-Breij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, formerly the Minister of Culture in the Palestinian government.

Abrash has an education in law and lectures on law and political science. He is a veteran Fatah member, who lives and operates in the ruling districts of Hamas, and despite this, he is known for his independent views and his critical writing.

On Sunday, he published on one of the Palestinian news sites his take on the election results for the 25th Knesset. "You can talk at length about Israel as an imperialist, racist and terrorist entity. You can also talk about the right-wing tendency of Israeli society, and say that the election contest is mainly conducted within the extreme right. Benjamin Netanyahu's return to the prime ministership, in a coalition with extremists like him, portends difficult times."

"But we must recognize that in everything related to the organization of internal politics and the management of the affairs of the regime and the government, a positive thing happened that must be credited to them: the insistence on returning to the public five times over the course of four years to decide who will rule the country, and this without Netanyahu or another political leader, not even the army, contemplating a coup or casting doubt on the election results," Dr. Abrash continued.

In the opinion of the Gazan writer, democracy is one of the reasons for Israel's strength and advantage over others in the region. "This is a card they use to promote themselves in the world," Dr. Abrash explained.

JPost Editorial: Israel's defense diplomacy is just what the Jewish state needs

Reports emerged Wednesday afternoon that the United States has given Israel its approval in principle to export the advanced Arrow-3 ballistic missile defense system to Germany. America has asked – as it has for years – that some battery production be in the US.

These talks came just one week after Defense Minister Benny Gantz held discussions with his American counterpart, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, to discuss the deal.

The Arrow 3, developed by Israel Aerospace Industries as a joint Israeli-US program, is one of Israel’s most advanced air-defense systems. It is capable of intercepting ballistic missiles at altitudes of over 100 kilometers, with a reported range of up to 2,400 kilometers.

This deal – and the hype surrounding it internationally – represents something far greater than any previous defense deal for Israel.

Something far greater than any previous defense deal for Israel
Germany began to eye Arrow-3 earlier this year in March, just as the Russian invasion of Ukraine was in full swing and it therefore increased its budget for defense spending. The concern in Berlin, and in much of Europe, is that the missiles landing on Ukraine could one day land in Germany.

In September, just a few months later, Prime Minister Yair Lapid met in Berlin with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and said that “the future possible deal [on the Arrow 3] has to do with our total commitment to the safety of Germany.”

Although no deal has been signed yet, Germany has requested that the first Arrow system be operational in the country by 2025.

The deal is supposedly still on the table and being negotiated, as both Israel and the US have to approve it in order to move forward.

Nevertheless, the fact that this has reached an advanced stage shows, above all else, that Israel has made itself a leader of the pack in terms of the development of defense systems.