Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 08, 2023

When do charges of "cultural appropriation" cross the line into antisemitism?

Palestinian Arabs falsely complaining that Israeli Jews are "culturally appropriating" their cuisine have become so common that they are almost a cliche.

But at least some of these accusations cross the line from absurd into antisemitism.

Here's an article this past weekend from L'Orient Today by Emmanuel Haddad:

After hummus, falafel and so many other flagship dishes of Palestinian and Levantine cuisine, knefeh nabulsi is the latest victim of appropriation by Israel.

This delicious dessert, which originated in Nablus and is named after the main ingredient — nabulsi cheese — has been incorporated into a more-than-dubious recipe developed by Pizza Hut Israel.

For Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan, the affront is threefold: "First against the knefeh, then against pizza... And then, against the taste!"

The flavor is as off-putting as it is bitter for Salma Serry, historian of Near Eastern cuisine. The Israeli pizza-knefeh fits perfectly into the definition of appropriation she offers on Sufra Kitchen, the online platform she created to decolonize regional cuisines:

"Appropriation [is the] inappropriate adoption of a group's food without giving it credit, especially for commercial gain. Example: Israeli restaurants profiting from falafel, knefeh or hummus without mentioning their original culture."

The word "inappropriate" in that definition does some heavy lifting here. The USA has lots of restaurants that serve pizza or tacos; is it cultural appropriation to mention them without the prefixes "Italian" or "Mexican?" Apparently, only in Israel, and only for Jews, is cooking food from surrounding countries considered a crime without mentioning their origin - and in the case of foods from Arab countries, the origin in often murky and hardly ever "Palestinian. "

The Israeli Pizza Hut chain never once claimed that "knafeh pizza" is an Israeli food. On the contrary, when they introduced the dish last month, their press release said, “Pizza Hut recognized the unrealized potential of this irresistible Middle Eastern food, and decided to make its own version.”

And Pizza Hut is not calling it "knafeh" but "knafeh pizza." It is a (perhaps bizarre) combination of the two, but no one claims it is authentic knafeh - or authentic pizza, for that matter.

The article goes on:

Salma Serry says she often hears denials of this culinary appropriation, defended as the natural spread of cuisine among different communities.

"Of course, food is meant to be shared. But when there is active violence that takes away a group's cultural identity and denies its heritage, its land and the food it produces while manipulating its history, then it becomes problematic,” she said. “In the specific case of Palestine, it's not about sharing; it's about taking and not giving back."

This is simply not true. Israeli chefs and cookbook writers happily describe where Israeli cuisine comes from. No one is "stealing" anything. Read Janna Gur's "A Short Introduction to Israeli Food" preface to her cookbook Shuk where she concisely describes the Israeli food scene's influences, from dozens of ethnic cultures in the Israeli melting pot but also from the neighboring Palestinians. Yes, sometimes non-experts will lazily say that some Arab dishes are Israeli, but they mean that they are popular in Israel: no one says that they originate there, unless they really do, as in the case of falafel in pita. Similarly, there was much angst when Haaretz once said that shawarma is "Israeli street food" - yet it is, just as much ss pizza is American street food.

Here's a 1949 advertisement for a Tel Aviv restaurant selling "oriental food."

No Israeli ever claimed hummus was natively Israeli.

The real irony is that Palestinians are the ones who have culturally appropriated Middle East foods. They really have claimed to have invented most popular Levantine foods like hummus and falafel, and here they claim to have created knafeh. They may have invented knafeh nabulsi, which uses cheese made in Nablus, but knafeh itself has much murkier origins.

Why does no one accuse Palestinians of cultural appropriation for claiming foods that were invented elsewhere?

Because they are not Jews.

There are two reasons that articles like this descend from simple lies into antisemitism.

One is that they are saying that while every nation's cuisine is an amalgam from many places, only Israeli Jews are accused of "theft" - even though Israeli foodies freely admit and eagerly explain where all their dishes originate.

The other is that these articles deny the or even existence of Mizrahi Jews on the Israeli food scene, even though they are the primary source.

The L'Orient article includes this falsehood:

For chef Kattan, the case of hummus is emblematic of the broader problem:

"It was the very first dish appropriated by the Israelis as early as 1948. Originally, the Zionist project was marked by European-style colonialism that denied the Arabness of Palestine and its land. But when they went to eat at the homes of Palestinians who survived the Nakba — during which 580 Palestinian villages were razed to the ground — they said to themselves, ‘This chickpea puree is not bad!’”

Jews in the Middle East have been eating hummus for centuries. This is a Palestinian chef erasing hundreds of years of Jewish history, and claiming that Jews have no right to be in the region.

Here is a Palestine Post article about the popularity of falafel among Palestinian Jews in 1940 - and it interestingly describes the uniquely Israeli version of falafel in pita even then. The writer interviews a Jew who was born in Yemen, went to Egypt and brought his falafel skills to Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street.

These articles invariably downplay the role of Mizrahi Jews in bringing with them the bulk of what is now called Israeli cuisine.

Yes, that is antisemitism.

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!

On Thursday I wrote about The Nation article claiming that Ken Roth, formerly head of Human Rights Watch, was unfairly passed over for a position at Harvard Kennedy School because of powerful Jews who didn't like his being a critic of Israel.

The argument, as I showed then, was absurd. Even according to the article, "Roth’s tweets on Israel were of particular concern."

Since then, the "progressive" crowd has been amplifying The Nation story - and its subtle antisemitic trope of rich Jews who try to control free speech - with no skepticism. Roth has also been tweeting the story.

So while I had looked previously at Roth's anti-Israel tweets many times and identified lots of bias and lies, I decided to do a survey of his tweets in 2021, the year before his Harvard rejection, to objectively prove that he has an anti-Israel obsession.

I looked at every tweet of Roth's that used the phrase "war crime" or "war crimes" during the year and counted which countries he was referring to. Some tweets referred to more than one country or entity - for example, Syria and Russia both bombing civilians in Syria - and I would count tweets like that for both countries.

The results are stunning.

In 2021, Roth associated Israel of war crimes 65 times, more than triple any other country or organization.

The only reason Hamas and the PA are in second place is because of his Israel obsession as well - he usually mentioned "war crimes by both sides" when talking about Hamas rockets during the May Gaza war, but most of his tweets about Israel mentioned only Israel.

Is Israel 10 times worse than Russia? Six times worse than Syria? And infinitely worse than North Korea, who didn't get accused of war crimes once?

This is not "criticism of Israel." This is obsessive, psychotic hate, which is part of a consistent pattern we've seen over years of his tweets. And his 2021 tweets were even more obsessive over Israel than his 2020 tweets were.

In that year, 2021, Roth tweeted real antisemitism as well, by blaming British antisemitism on Jews rather than on the attackers. And shortly afterwards implied that American Jews who were upset about Ben and Jerry's anti-Israel moves were acting on behalf of the Israeli government - the age-old dual loyalty trope that is a sure sign of antisemitism.

But the sheer number of anti-Israel tweets, and scores of flatly false accusations of war crimes (neither settlements nor Israeli actions in Gaza are illegal, let alone war crimes), prove without a doubt that Roth has no credibility.

I have plenty of other evidence that Human Rights Watch under Roth was also obsessed with Israel - but the tweets are his own words, from his own keyboard, and these statistics cannot be denied. Roth has a crazed obsession with demonizing Israel. The numbers don't lie, and anyone can reproduce my research.

Harvard did the right thing.

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!

01/07 Links: Blood libel: Kremlin claims organs harvested by Ukraine end up in Israel; Israel to halt PA construction, withhold funds in response to UNGA vote

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: How can Israel win the Palestinian conflict? Historian explains

Do the Abraham Accords and the focus on Ukraine and China change things? Not really. The Abraham Accords are great, both in of themselves and because they got Netanyahu in 2020 to abandon his plan to annex parts of the West Bank. Ukraine and China reduce the spotlight on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, always a good thing. But Israel’s thriving relations with the UAE and other states barely diminishes the Palestinian campaign of delegitimization. And whenever the Palestinian Authority or Hamas wishes the spotlight to return, it will do so, instantly.

How should Israel handle the international spotlight?
By recognizing it as a fact of life and finding ways to deal with it. When Hamas decides to launch missiles into Israel, it knows it will get clobbered militarily but will gain international political support. Likewise, Israel knows it will get clobbered internationally, so it should take advantage of the crisis to send a very strong message to the Gazan population that it has lost the war. Ultimately, media coverage matters less than winning on the ground.

Practically speaking, how does Israel win?
I prefer to posit Israel victory as a policy goal, without going into detailed strategy and tactics. First, it’s premature to get into specifics. Second, delving into these topics distracts from establishing the policy goal.

That said, Israel has an extraordinary range of levers due to its vastly greater power than the Palestinians – and not just military and economic.

One creative example: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would probably love to add al-Aqsa to his collection of Islamic sanctities, especially at a time when Tehran challenges Saudi control of Mecca and Medina. How about Israel opening negotiations on this topic with Riyadh, offering the jewel in the Palestinian Authority’s crown in return for full diplomatic relations and a change in the status quo on the Temple Mount?

Can Israel defeat Hamas without reoccupying Gaza?
Again, I prefer not to discuss strategy and tactics. But, as you ask, here is one tactic: Israel announces that a single missile attack from Gaza means a one-day border closure: no water, food, medicine, or fuel crosses from it to Gaza. Two missiles means two days, and so forth. I guarantee this would rapidly improve Hamas’s behavior.

But isn’t the delegitimization issue a struggle against those in the West, too? Don’t they have to be defeated? Horrors, no. Plus, that would be impossible. But it is also not necessary, for they are mere followers. Imagine the Palestinians acknowledge their defeat and truly accept the Jewish state; this would pull the rug out from leftist anti-Zionism. Sustaining a more-Catholic-than-the-pope stance is tough to keep up. Israel is lucky that its principal enemy is so small and weak.

Over time, do Palestinians increasingly accept Israel?
Former minister Yuval Steinitz just told me that 75% of Palestinians have come to terms with the State of Israel and live normal lives, but I wonder. A recent Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll found that “72% of the public (84% in the Gaza Strip and 65% in the West Bank) say they are in favor of forming armed groups such as the Lions’ Den, which do not take orders from the PA and are not part of the PA security services; 22% are against that.”

Yes, there’s a general calm. In the hotel where we are meeting, the Dan Jerusalem on Mount Scopus, the Palestinian staff goes quietly about its work and is not stabbing anyone. But at a time of crisis, say a Hamas rocket attack, I would avoid this or most other Jerusalem hotels.

Israel’s previous leadership seems to accept Micah Goodman’s idea of “shrinking the conflict.” Do you?
No, I see it as just another in a long line of attempts to finesse the difficult work of attaining victory. Prior ideas included expelling the Palestinians either by force or voluntarily, the Jordan-is-Palestine scheme, erecting more fences, finding a new Palestinian leadership, demanding good governance, implementing the Road Map, funding a Marshall Plan, imposing a trusteeship, establishing joint security forces, splitting the Temple Mount, leasing the land, withdrawing unilaterally, and so on. None worked; none will work. Defeat and victory remain imperative.

What about Iran? The Palestinian terrorist groups, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, get support from Iran. If Iran’s regime falls, will that matter?
Regime change in Iran has vast implications for the Middle East but not so much for the Palestinian war on Israel. The mullahs’ political collapse will not close down the Palestinians’ conviction that rejectionism works, that “revolution until victory” will prevail, that they can eliminate the Jewish state. Israel cannot outsource victory.

Blood libel: Kremlin claims organs harvested by Ukraine end up in Israel

A Russian former senior official argued the war in Ukraine became a very profitable battlefield for "black-market transplantologists," in a report picked up by several Russian media outlets.

In an interview with Russian outlet Moskovskij Komsomolets, retired Major General of Police, and ex-head of the Russian Central Bureau of Interpol Vladimir Ovchinsky claimed the Armed Forces of Ukraine are delivered human organs harvested from the dead and wounded in the war, people who are still alive, such as Russian prisoners of war, and even Ukrainian civilians who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

When asked where the organs are transported to, Ovchinsky said: "The most effective and successful 'workshops' are located in four countries - Turkey, India, Israel and South Korea."

"Israel is also a leader in the field of innovative medical techniques, which are used throughout the world. The clinics of this country successfully perform organ transplant operations."

The former advisor to the interior minister of Russia also added that large amounts of medical equipment, including containers for transporting human organs, were sent to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia's invasion.

When asked what they do with the bodies, he replied: "They burn them like in Auschwitz or Dachau, they are after all heirs of Hitler. There is also information about mobile crematoria to burn the remains of people whose organs were removed."

Taxpayer Dollars Could Reach Terrorists Under Biden Admin Aid Changes, McCaul Says

Biden Treasury Department authorizations, announced late last year, rolled back safeguards on U.S. humanitarian aid, a move that is likely to pave the way for millions in taxpayer dollars to reach "designated terrorists, human rights abusers, and violent authoritarian regimes," according to a congressional foreign policy leader.

The authorizations, which will make it easier for aid dollars to be allocated in conflict zones and areas where terrorist activity is taking place are generating concerns in Congress. Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), the incoming chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that in its rush to push aid dollars out the door, the Biden administration is relaxing longstanding safeguards meant to stop taxpayer aid from enriching malign regimes and terrorism supporters.

"By relaxing longstanding basic restrictions on the provision of aid to countries subject to U.S. sanctions, [the] action by the Biden administration increases the likelihood some of our assistance funding will go to designated terrorists, human rights abusers, and violent authoritarian regimes," McCaul said in a statement. "I urge the administration to reverse this decision."

As part of this recalibration, the Treasury Department issued authorizations that will inject U.S. taxpayer dollars into areas that have historically been subject to strict sanctions, including in China, Cuba, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Iran, and other conflict areas, according to congressional officials who reviewed the new initiative.

The Treasury Department changes, these sources said, remove longstanding restrictions that prevent U.S. aid from being injected into sanctioned areas. To skirt these restrictions, the United States will funnel taxpayer dollars to United Nations organizations working in these conflict zones.

The aid policy also protects U.N. organizations from repercussions should U.S. aid dollars end up in the hands of terrorists or other sanctioned entities, like the Taliban or Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria, according to one congressional official tracking the matter.

Samantha Power, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) administrator, acknowledged in a statement issued late last year that the new aid practices will grant blanket immunity to organizations operating in conflict areas.

01/06 Links Pt2: The Israeli canary in the west's cultural mine; I’m tired of memorials for dead Jews’; Where are the pro-Israel Jewish academics?; Antisemitism and the New York Times

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The Israeli canary in the west's cultural mine

This perverse behaviour by western liberals, aided by Israeli leftists who fan the flames by even more hysterically promoting these lies and appeasement, hugely incentivises further Palestinian rejectionism and violence. It also actively emboldens Israel’s existential foes among the world’s tyrannies and kleptocracies who use United Nations resolutions and “lawfare” to try to bring Israel down.

Just imagine if America said that these Palestinian lies and incitement have to stop, that Israel has law and history on its side, and that the only aggressors in this war are the Palestinian Arabs who want to destroy the Jews’ right to their country and historic identity.

The Palestinians’ strategy of extermination would collapse overnight — because the main reason this war never ends is the west’s support for their cause.

The result is the unique and insane situation in which Israel is forced to fund people who continue to build an infrastructure of genocidal warfare that they periodically unleash against Israeli civilians; in which so-called allies prevent Israel from taking measures essential to defend its people against mass murder; and in which the same so-called allies now have the gall to tell Israel that the composition of its government doesn’t meet with their approval.

Israel, however, is not the only example of a looking-glass world in which aggressor and victim, right and wrong, truth and lies have been turned on their heads.

Many are observing similar denials of reality and character assassination in the west’s culture wars, and are concluding that the world has simply gone mad.

Israel’s new Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may turn out to behave badly or unwisely. Ben-Gvir and the other two “extremists” in Israel’s government may promote the fanaticism or recklessness with which they are associated. If they do so, they will deserve to be criticised.

But just as happened with former US President Donald Trump, such a rational, evidence-led approach is vanishingly unlikely. To liberals, there are simply no facts or evidence that can reframe the way they view the Netanyahu government — that it has crossed over to the dark side from which there can be no return.

Antisemitism repudiates reason. Anti-Israelism repudiates reason. It’s well known that the Jews are always the canary in the cultural coal mine.

Today, anti-Jewish bigotry is both symptomatic of and fuelled by a far broader and deeper phenomenon. We can see this in the madness of identity politics. The west, having produced the age of reason, is now intent on destroying it.

Jonathan Tobin: I’m tired of memorials for dead Jews’

Will the discontent with Israel’s new government lead to a sea change in the relationship between the Jewish state and American Jews?

JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin believes that while there are endemic problems that are undermining support for Israel in the United States, especially among younger Jews, worries that Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s right-wing/religious party coalition will create a permanent breach with either the U.S. government or American Jewry are overblown.

However, Tobin believes that the efforts of the left-wing anti-Bibi resistance in both Israel and the United States has the capacity to do real damage to the alliance.

There are three reasons why the predictions of doom and gloom will be proven wrong, he says:
1. So long as Netanyahu is in charge, he will ensure that nothing happens that will cause lasting harm.

2. The government’s legislative agenda of judicial reform is neither extreme nor unreasonable, and the same is true of its plans to address the upsurge in terrorism and to defend Jewish rights in Jerusalem and the territories.

3. Far from being a threat to democracy, fair-minded Americans will understand that Netanyahu’s government is acting to implement the will of the voters, who gave them a clear majority in the last election.

Tobin is joined by Malcolm Hoenlein, the vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who agrees that the predictions of doom and gloom should be discounted.

Speaking from his decades of experience in working to bring Israeli and American Jews together, Hoenlein thinks many observers underestimate the strength of the ties between the two countries, as well as between the two Jewish communities. He criticized the practice on the part of some in the United States of trying to air differences with Israel in hostile venues like The New York Times rather than quietly in person-to-person and government-to-government exchanges.

Discussing the surge in antisemitic discourse and attacks, Hoenlein said, “I’m tired of memorials to dead Jews. I’m tired of how good the world is at expressing regret. I want it to stand up for living Jews and [the] Jewish state. I want that to be the measure by which our elected officials and judicial officials and people in authority of every stand are taken to account. I don’t want to be the canary in the mine anymore. We’ve done that for too long.”

Al Ahed News (Lebanon) reports that Shiite Sheikh Muhammad Sanqour, the Friday preacher at the Imam al-Sadiq Mosque in Diraz, Bahrain, today called on the government to ban all sales of real estate to Jews.

He claimed that "usurping Jews" are making handsome financial offers for Bahraini real estate, and called on the government of Bahrain "to reassure people by issuing a law that categorically prohibits owners from selling any of their property and assets to Jews, individuals or entities, directly or through an intermediary."

Sanquor added, "Selling something of real estate, even if it is easy for the likes of these usurpers, is tantamount to selling the homeland."

He continued, "These people do not coexist with anyone. The first of their victims is the one who did them a favor.”

And then: “We call for the state to have the right to annul any contract that was concluded or is to be concluded if one of its parties was Jewish."

Sounds like Jew-hatred to me.

In September, another Shiite cleric in Bahrain, Ayatollah Qassem, made a similar demand:

Dear people of Bahrain,
Do not hand over to the Jews even a small piece of land or a small house; By this, you are selling to them your religion, your history, your homeland, your present and your future. Be aware that you are committing suicide – materially and morally.

Today, Bahrain is an Islamic country
Tomorrow, according to the plan of Judaisation, it will become a country of Jews and Muslims. The day after tomorrow, it will become a country of Jews and Muslim residents – at the disposal. After that, the Muslims will be expelled. The beginning [O dear people of Bahrain] is the purchase of your land and the land of your Muslim brother.

Whoever sells land or a house to the Jews is not selling soil and stone, but rather a homeland, people, nation, history and dear sanctities. He is selling Islam as if it is not worth anything.

The government of Bahrain has not had a great relationship with Sanquor. It closed down his mosque briefly in 2016 and detained him.

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!

01/06 Links Pt1: What killed the two-state solution? Cheers and cash for terrorists; Middle East Quartet no longer relevant to Israel-Palestinian conflict

From Ian:

Debunking the Arab Narrative

The facts are otherwise. Jews have lived in the land continuously for at least 3000 years. The San Remo Resolution in 1920, gave the Jewish people legal title to the land and the Palestine Mandate of 1922 gave them the right to settle the land.

After the ’67 War, the United Nations Security Council passed Res 242. It made no mention of the "Palestinian people", because there was no such people.

“1. Affirms that the fulfilment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:

“i) "Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;

“(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;”

Thus the Security Council; gave Israel the right to stay in possession of “territories occupied in the recent conflict” until she had a peace agreement with all states in the area which provided for “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force”. It did not require Israel to withdraw from “all territories” and allowed Israel to keep some of the land which it required for security. So far, no such agreement has been attained but Israel has already withdrawn from 91% of the territories.

Israel considers the Jordan River to be its secure boundary and will not withdraw from it.

Yet, since 1999, the UN, EU and the PA refer to the remaining land as “occupied Palestinian territory”. This was due to the fact that the Oslo Accords gave the Palestinian Arabs autonomy over Area A, partial autonomy over Area B and no autonomy over Area C as delineated by the Accords. But even they recognize that these lands are not sovereign Palestinian Arab territory.

The preamble to the Accords provides;
“Recognizing that the aim of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations [..], leading to a permanent settlement based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338;

Reaffirming [..] that the negotiations on the permanent status, [..] will lead to the implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338,[,,]”

This is the bottom line. Res 242 rules, and the Oslo Accords is nothing more than a path to it.

And as I pointed out in “Israel should terminate the Oslo Accords”, such autonomy can be cancelled by Israel at any time.

In conclusion, these lands are not Palestinian Arab lands and they are not illegally occupied by Israel.

Jonathan Tobin: What killed the two-state solution? Cheers and cash for terrorists

This is hardly an isolated case, as a shockingly biased article published last week in The New York Times showed, Palestinian society is obsessed with honoring “martyrs” who died trying to kill and injure Israelis and Jews. The conceit of the piece centered on the assertions that the Israel Defense Forces have been killing growing numbers of civilians, and that 2022 had been the “deadliest year” since 2005 for Palestinians. But efforts to smear the IDF are being undermined by the fact that most of the Palestinian casualties from such encounters are claimed as operatives by Hamas, Islamic Jihad or terror groups, like the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, associated with the Fatah Party that runs the P.A.

As Honest Reporting pointed out, 90% of those killed by the IDF were involved in violent incidents, with 60% taking part in armed attacks on Israeli civilians and security forces, and the rest being participants in riots. The claim of IDF targeted killings of innocent Palestinian civilians is worse than bad reporting on the part of a journalist biased against Israel, as CAMERA noted in an article on Times correspondent Raja Abdulrahim; it’s a blood libel.

Lies about Israeli actions aside, a crucial fact repeatedly omitted from most coverage of the conflict is that the factions competing for popularity among Palestinians understand that the way to gain political influence is by playing a role in terrorism and shedding Jewish blood. The problem is not just that the P.A. engages in a pay-for-slay scheme that rewards Younis and his ilk with salaries and pensions. It’s that such an incentive is so popular that neither P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas nor any of his potential successors would dare end it.

The valorization of terror is an integral element of Palestinians’ culture. It’s part and parcel of the way their national identity is inextricably tied to the century-old war on Zionism.

Indeed, Palestinian protests are not motivated by grievances about Israeli policies or aspirations for statehood. Rather, they are about rejecting the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its boundaries might be drawn. That’s why Abbas and his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, refused numerous compromises and peace offers, dating back to the Bill Clinton administration, which would have resulted in the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

This leaves Israel with an anomalous situation in which it must not relinquish security control over Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), even as the Palestinian population is governed in most of the area by Fatah and by Hamas in Gaza, which has functioned as an independent Palestinian state in all but name since the 2007 coup that ushered in the rule of the radical-Islamist group.

All of the above explains why Israeli voters turned their back on parties that support a two-state solution and brought to power a coalition that has stated its determination not to tolerate more Palestinian terrorism.

Unless and until Americans acknowledge the reality of the conflict and the nature of Palestinian politics, the disconnect between the two countries about two states will continue. What both the administration and liberal Jews need to finally understand is that if their coveted solution is dead, it wasn’t slain by so-called Israeli hard-liners. It was murdered by Palestinian cheer and cash for terrorists.

David Singer: Are there under the radar negotiations on Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine?

Israel and Saudi Arabia have reportedly begun US-brokered peace negotiations that will be conducted far away from the media and public gaze.

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu made that perfectly clear in his 50 minute interview on Saudi Government-controlled Al Arabiya TV on 15 December:
“You know, I’m sort of a champion of a slight twist in what Woodrow Wilson said in the Versailles Peace Conference. He said he believed in open covenants, openly arrived at. I believe in open covenants, secretly arrived at or discreetly arrived at. There we will have to have discussions about all the questions that you asked today and see how we can advance this. If you try to sort it out in advance you get stuck. That’s what happens.

"In Israel, we say 'climb the tree.' Everybody climbs on their own tree and says, 'I’m here, and I’m not climbing down and no matter how many ladders you give me.' I’m stuck in my tree, the other guy is stuck in his tree, and we just shout at each other across tree trunks and we never get to a meeting of the minds or an actual meeting on the ground. I think we have to take a different position. All these things need to be discussed discreetly, responsibly and, within the confines of closed meetings, openly. And once we get an agreement, then we can come out.

"I don’t need the public fanfare, I don’t need it. You know, if you come to an agreement, it will be publicized. If you don’t come to an agreement, nothing happens. I think we can come to amazing agreements.”

One topic for discussion will assuredly involve the implementation of the Saudi-based Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution published in Al Arabiya News on 8 June 2022. Its author – Ali Shihabi – is a confidant of Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister – Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) and also a member of MBS’s advisory board on Neom – a US$500 billion megacity being built in north-western Saudi Arabia covering an area equal to the size of Israel.

Shihabi’s plan calls for the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into one territorial entity to be called “The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine”

Haaretz agrees: Zionism is integral to Judaism, anti-Zionism is antisemitism

Haaretz headlines over the past month keep trying to top themselves in derangement. Here's one from today:

Yes, Netanyahu is an anti-Zionist!

But wait: in 2018, Haaretz had other op-eds on Netanyahu:

These articles comes right up to the line of accusing Bibi of antisemitism because he criticizes George Soros.

So this is great news:

Even Haaretz admits that anti-Zionists are antisemites!

But there's more, from today's Haaretz. If you want to be anti-Israel, you should abandon Judaism!

Judaism is Zionism and anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Haaretz said so, and no religious Zionist could have said it better.

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!

At least we now know what "status quo" means to the Biden administration

Earlier this week, after Itamar Ben Gvir visited the Temple Mount without incident, there was a very telling exchange at the daily State Department briefings:

QUESTION: Just to cut to the chase on this, you talk about how you’re opposed to any unilateral actions and that you support – or oppose any effort to change the status quo. So do you believe that this visit alters the status quo in any way?

MR PRICE: Look, Matt —

QUESTION: And do you not support it? Do you think that it was a bad idea? Would you prefer that it had not happened?

MR PRICE: This visit has the potential to exacerbate tensions and to provoke violence. As we’ve said, we’re deeply concerned by any unilateral actions that have the potential to do that. So yes, we’re deeply concerned by this visit. Now, when it comes to the historic status quo, it’s not for me to define from here what the historic status quo is; it’s not for the United States to prescribe what the historic status quo is. That’s a question of history. It’s a question for —

QUESTION: Certainly you know what the historic status quo is?

MR PRICE: It’s a question for the parties themselves, including the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, whose role as the custodian of Jerusalem’s holy sites, again, we deeply appreciate.

The United States position is that the status quo must not be violated, but it doesn't know what the status quo is.

Yesterday's address by the US Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood at the UN Security Council sheds some more light on the US position:

Secretary Blinken has said very clearly that it’s absolutely critical for all sides to exercise restraint, refrain from provocative actions and rhetoric, at the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount and other holy sites in Jerusalem, both in word and in practice. In this spirit, we oppose any and all unilateral actions that depart from the historic status quo, which are unacceptable.

While he didn't directly say that Ben Gvir violated the status quo, in the context of an emergency Security Council session to condemn Israel for allowing the visit, and with not a single word to tamp down the anti-Israel rhetoric there, it seems pretty clear that the US position is that any "provocative actions" are violations of the status quo.

But only "provocative actions" on the Israeli side.

When Palestinians stockpiled stones, fireworks and Molotov cocktails inside the actual Al Aqsa Mosque multiple times over the past decade and then used them, I could find no mention by the State Department that these actions were "provocative." At the time, they said "we welcome the steps the Israeli Government has taken in recent days aimed at avoiding provocations" but I do not see any indication that turning the mosque into a weapons cache has ever been considered provocative.

In fact, I cannot recall a single time that any country besides Israel has accused Palestinians of violating the status quo, even when they excavated hundreds of tons of rubble that contained countless priceless Jewish antiquities to build a brand new, 7000 seat mosque underneath the Temple Mount in the 1990s. It is hard to imagine a bigger violation of the status quo than that, but there were no UN sessions about it.

Putting it all together, we see that according to the US, anything that upsets Palestinians is a violation of the status quo. Because by definition, anything that upsets Palestinians is "provocative" - it provokes them, no matter how trivial it is in practice. And the US makes no distinction between "provocation" and "violating the status quo."

Looking back on the January 3 State Department statement, this becomes clear. If the status quo is defined by "the parties themselves" and Israel's opinion is ignored on the issue, as it has been this week, that means that the only people who define the status quo are the Palestinians and Jordanians - and they can define it however they want, even to change it daily, based on what "provokes" them.

A few months ago, they were "provoked" by a Spanish Christian tourist (that they called a "Zionist settler") showing her legs on the Temple Mount. They were "provoked" by other Christian tourists who carried some Jewish-looking souvenirs they had just bought in the souk on their tour. They are provoked every day that Jews visit the Temple Mount, with headlines in the newspapers about Jews "desecrating" the holy site with their very presence.

According to Israel's best friend, any "provocation" by non-Muslims that causes an uproar is a violation of the status quo and deserves condemnation. And that should concern anyone who cares about Jewish rights.

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15 year old PFLP "martyr" intended to die - and wrote a farewell note.

Yesterday I noted that Defence for Children International - Palestine falsely claimed that Israel had killed 3 children so far this year - one of them was 25, and the other two were active militants at the time of their deaths.

One of them, 15 year old Adam Ayyad, was killed throwing Molotov cocktails.

It might be thought that he was just like a stone thrower, play-acting at being a hero, and Israel shot him for no legitimate reason. But Arab media sites have been showing that not only was Ayyad an active fighter - but he planned to die that day.

He had a note in his pocket, written in his handwriting, with a message he intended to be seen after his death.

“I am very happy that our Lord fulfilled one of my dreams, martyrdom..and I tell you that martyrdom is not just a martyrdom death, but pride in yourself and pride in the whole world.”

He continued: “Martyrdom is a real victory. Your life is over, but it's over and you're happy."

He ended the note with, “Do not forget me, I do not want to say goodbye to you, we have a meeting in paradise.”

This was "suicide by Zionist."

Ayyad had been brainwashed to want to die a martyr's death. This is the child abuse that every single Palestinian child is exposed to - they are taught this in schools, indoctrinated with music videos, inundated with martyr posters glorifying death.

Where is the world outrage over a generation of Palestinian kids who are told by adults that they should want to die?

Perhaps there is none left over after it was expended over a man taking a walk on a hilltop.

In fact, these kids are dying because the world doesn't want to criticize this cult of death. Whether it is because of baseless fears of being accused of Islamophobia, or because they want to shore up the false narrative of Israel as evil and Palestinians as oppressed victims, the world's refusal to get involved is what allows Palestinian leaders to think it is OK to raise children this way.

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01/05 Links Pt2: Biden Admin Delays Civil Rights Protections Against Antisemitism to December; Palestinian Group Lauds Move; Jihadi Who Attacked NY Cops on NYE Cites US Support of Israel As Motive

From Ian:

Biden Administration Delays Civil Rights Protections Against Antisemitism to December; Palestinian Group Lauds Move

The Biden administration has again delayed issuing new federal regulations — first proposed by President Trump — that would apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism to civil rights investigations, which lawmakers and advocates have long said would help protect Jewish students from anti-Zionist discrimination and harassment.

The proposed guidelines, based on a directive given in Dec. 2019 by former President Donald Trump in response to rising anti-Zionist discrimination on college campuses, will not be instituted until at least December 2023, according to a copy of the proposed rule on the website of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

The IHRA definition of antisemitism includes examples of anti-Israel bias, including “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” “denying the Jewish people their right to self determination,” and “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

The Department of Education had initially pledged to issue new regulations in September 2020. After President Joe Biden was sworn in on January 20, the administration indicated that it had embraced the IHRA working definition but delayed codifying civil rights protections based on it until January 2021.

In February, thirty-nine members of the US Congress released a letter urging the Department of Education to speed the process up.

On Wednesday, however, OCR Assistant Secretary Catherine Lhamon issued a statement affirming that the Biden administration’s “commitment to applying Executive Order 13899 on Combating Antisemitism” while noting that OCR opened in 2022 several investigations based on complaints of anti-Zionist discrimination and harassment.

Palestine Legal, a nonprofit legal and advocacy organization, lauded the move.

“We are reassured to see @EDcivilrights do the right thing: #RejectIHRA, and focus on rising threats of bigotry & racist attacks by white supremacists,” the group said in a Tweet.

Bedein vs. Palestinian Authority: 'First entity in the world to endorse murder of Jews'

David Bedein of the Israel Resource news agency urges new gov to crack down on incitement in PA textbooks and go after 'pay for slay.'

David Bedein, Director of the Israel Resource news agency at the Nahum Bedein Center for Near East Policy Research, has a strong message for the new right wing Israeli government to be very careful regarding the Palestinian Authority.

“We’re taking about the first entity in the world to endorse the murder of Jews. We didn’t even have that with Nazi Germany. It was there but always kept quiet,” he says.

Bedein points out that the PA endorses the murder of Jews in its legal code.

A new law that the PA enacted, which the Nahum Bedein Center was able to get a copy of through a Palestinian Arab journalist who works with them, states that “if you murder a Jew, you get a salary for life,” he explains.

“The government of Israel has never asked that that law be cancelled and repealed,” he says. “Until anyone involved with ‘pay for slay’ is arrested, is stopped – in any normal country in the world if someone sends a bank transfer to you because you just killed someone, you get arrested. Where’s the government of Israel in this?”

“Same thing with the school books,” he adds, noting that every year the PA textbook come out they go through them.

“It’s now come to more than a thousand school books. And these school books are an instrument of teaching not hatred but how to kill Jews,” he says. “Every aspect of the school system is how to kill Jews, whether it’s in their prose, in their songs, in their art, and in their school books.”

These textbooks are also used in UNRWA schools in Judea and Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem, he adds.

“There are certain things that we as a Jewish country and as a normal country [cannot allow],” he says. “When we showed this to the UN Secretary-General and his staff, they were shocked.”

According to Bedein, since Oslo the original PLO Palestinian Covenant from 1964 has remained the main document taught in PA schools.

“Children are taught to continue the war,” he says.

Knife-Wielding Jihadi Who Attacked New York Cops on New Year’s Eve Cites US Support of Israel As Motive

The 19-year-old man who attacked three police officers with a knife in New York on New Year’s Eve told authorities he had come to the city “in order to kill people and carry out jihad,” prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Maine resident Trevor Bickford also allegedly said that all government officials were legitimate targets in his view, including Muslims since “they cannot be proper Muslims because the United States government supports Israel.”

Bickford was charged Wednesday by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office with attempted murder in the first degree and attempted assault. The attack occurred shortly after 10 p.m. on Saturday just north of Times Square.

Bickford, who is understood to have converted to Islam within the past year and a half, uttered the words “Allahu akbar” before hitting one officer over the head with a long knife known as a kukri, according to court documents. He then charged another officer, dropping the knife in the process, and made an unsuccessful grab at the officer’s gun before another officer used his service weapon to wound him in the shoulder.

Nothing to see here just a member of US congress spreading disinformation on social media about a U.S. ally.

FYI, 70-90% of casualties have been confirmed to be Palestinian terrorists killed in the act of committing a terror attack. But don’t let facts get in the way… https://t.co/DT4kyQ3AQB
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? ????? ????? (@emilykschrader) January 5, 2023

Ken Roth rejected from Harvard Kennedy Center fellowship. The Nation explains: Rich Jews control the school, that's why it hates human rights. (update)

The Nation has a 5,000 word article blaming Jews for Ken Roth being rejected from a fellowship position at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

After describing how the Carr Center wooed Roth, it says the crushing news about the victim who made a $600K+ salary:

Elmendorf informed the Carr Center that Roth’s fellowship would not be approved.

The center was stunned. “We thought he would be a terrific fellow,” says Kathryn Sikkink, the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School.

Sikkink was even more surprised by the dean’s explanation: Israel. Human Rights Watch, she was told, has an “anti-Israel bias”; Roth’s tweets on Israel were of particular concern. Sikkink was taken aback. In her own research, she had used HRW’s reports “all the time,” and while the organization had indeed been critical of Israel, it had also been critical of China, Saudi Arabia—even the United States.

It is curious that a human rights academic cannot fit into her brain that both "HRW criticized other counties" and "HRW, and particularly Roth, exhibited a severe anti-Israel bias" could both be true.

I've documented that bias exhaustively. So have many others. But The Nation discounts that, saying that NGO Monitor is an unreliable, biased source for information, without mentioning a single incorrect thing it ever said. It quotes Roth's bizarre thesis as to why NGO Monitor's Gerald Steinberg might find him biased:

Roth rejects such claims. Most people knowledgeable about Israel, he says, understand that NGO Monitor “is a profoundly biased source” that “has never found a criticism of Israel’s human rights record to be valid.” Roth thinks that Steinberg was “particularly incensed that I dared to criticize Israel even though I am Jewish and was drawn to the human rights cause by my father’s experience living in Nazi Germany.” His father escaped to New York in 1938 when he was 12, and Roth grew up hearing many “Hitler stories.”

This is a completely baseless claim, but The Nation finds it compelling.

Then the article starts to veer into antisemitic territory.

According to people knowledgeable about the school’s programs, its administration is terrified of touching anything related to Palestine, and Palestinian voices have largely been silenced. That’s due not to any particular administrator, they say, but to “the ethos of the place” and the people who fund the Belfer Center.

Prominent among those people is Robert Belfer, who has donated more than $20 million to the Kennedy School since the 1980s—money that has come from his family’s fortune.

In addition to the Kennedy School, he and his wife, Renée, have given to an array of cultural institutions, medical research centers, private schools, universities, and Jewish and Israeli institutions. In a 2006 interview with the US Holocaust Museum, Belfer observed that most of his extended family (including his paternal grandparents) perished in World War II—a loss that gave him “a sense of identity” of “being Jewish, of being very supportive of Israel.”

According to the 990 forms of his family foundation, between 2011 and 2015 Belfer gave more than $300,000 to the American Jewish Committee, on whose board of governors he sits. In 2018, he joined with the Anti-Defamation League to endow a new fellowship at the Belfer Center to study disinformation, hate speech, and toxic content online. Every year, the school hosts three ADL Belfer Fellows. In short, the primary funder of the Belfer Center has been a significant backer of two of the groups—the AJC and the ADL—that Peter Beinart cited as assailing human rights organizations because of their criticism of Israel.

So because Peter Beinart, who accuses Israel of Jewish supremacy and want to see the destruction of the Jewish state, says that the AJC and the ADL are anti-human rights - an absurd claim - that proves that one of their funders hates human rights as well.

And it must be emphasized that while the article repeats that criticism of HRW and Amnesty is because of their criticism of Israel, it isn't. It is because of their obsessive lies about Israel. Provable, easily researchable lies.

Now the article goes into Mapping Project territory, finding links between the Kennedy Center and Jews to discredit it:

[Belfer and his son] sit on the Dean’s Executive Board...The board’s chair, David Rubenstein, is the cofounder and former CEO of the Carlyle Group, the private equity giant.... The 16 members of the Dean’s Executive Board also include Idan Ofer and his wife, Batia. Idan is the son of Sammy Ofer, an Israeli shipping magnate who until his death in 2011 was one of Israel’s richest men. Worth about $10 billion, Idan has come under fire in Israel for moving to London to reduce his tax bill and for a lavish lifestyle highlighted by the €5 million party that he threw on the island of Mykonos for his 10th wedding anniversary.

The Kennedy School dean cannot afford to lose the confidence of this board.

The article doesn't say a word about any ties between Ofer or Rubinstein to any Israeli or Jewish causes. It doesn't have to. Their names tell you all you need to know.

Also on the board are people with Muslim names like Hazem Ben-Gacem (apparently Tunisian) and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani (Iranian.) No reason to mention them, though.

And in case you think I'm being paranoid about the antisemitism underlying this article, it says this:

In 2018, the Kennedy School opened a renovated campus, made possible by a capital campaign that raised more than $700 million. Anchoring it were three buildings bearing the names Ofer, Rubenstein, and Wexner. “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us,” Dean Elmendorf said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Oh my God - so many Jewish names - who shape Harvard's Kennedy School!

Rich Jews control Harvard's Kennedy School, and that's why the school opposes human rights.

What other evidence do you need?

(h/t Andrew P)

UPDATE: Stephen Walt, co-author of the widely criticized "The Israel Lobby", is still today the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at the Kennedy School at Harvard University. If Belfer was the nutty Zionist censor The Nation makes him out to be, and if the Kennedy School is so terrified of allowing critics of Israel to be there, why do they allow Belfer's name to be associated with someone whose anti-Israel positions are so well known? (h/t Ian)

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Persian Gulf Countries Attempt To Fuse Oil-Based, Slave-Based Economies (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Kuwait Ferrari Doha, January 5 - The recent World Cup contests and festivities in Qatar highlighted a salient long-term issue for the dictatorships and monarchies in the region, observers note, where the tension between old and new features at the fore of social, financial, political, and other issues, with specific prominence for the often-competing but sometimes-complementary models of generating revenue from fossil fuels using the most modern technology and the exploitation of tens of thousands of migrant "workers" to perform menial, hazardous tasks.

Investors, government officials, businessmen, and tourists highlight the burgeoning economies of Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and other Arab states, pointing to the advanced high-rise construction; their citizens' high per-capita income; the availability of luxury goods of every kind; and high return on equity in local petroleum-based enterprises. At the same time, the government and diplomatic corps of those nations wield rose-colored propaganda to induce and entice myriad foreigners, mostly from underdeveloped countries, to earn a living in the region, and when those foreigners arrive, local "entrepreneurs" confiscate their passports, enslave them, mistreat them, and force them to engage in dangerous jobs in the construction and infrastructure industries.

The tension between ancient and modern exists throughout the developing world, where archaeology and venerable sites or cultural phenomena vie for resources and priority with the existential need to generate revenue and develop the economy. The exigencies of rule of law and property rights often conflict with nomadic lifestyles of certain tribes with little notion of private real estate, from Israel to Dakota to Australia to Chad. Few countries have managed to synthesize the old and the new in a way that satisfies advocates for either set of resources. The Persian Gulf countries, however, continue to attempt the feat, and government figures from throughout the region noted some of the successes in that regard.

"The modern Arabic world for 'Black man' - an African - is some variation of 'abed, meaning 'slave' - so that should give you an idea of which traditions get preserved and maintained, and which ones are candidates for modernization," explained Qatar Minister for Economic Affairs Prince Abdel Rahman.

"The synthesis of ancient and modern is an ongoing negotiation, a process," remarked Saudi commentator Quntaq Inte. "Some countries do it better than others. Iran and Saudi Arabia, for example, are involved in helping Yemen come down firmly on the side of prioritizing the old - not by preserving it, as one might think, but, counterintuitively, by destroying everything else."

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01/05 Links Pt1: Why Palestinians Want to Slaughter Jewish Worshippers; Iran reveals death of Qasem Soleimani was major blow to anti-Israel forces

From Ian:

Why Palestinians Want to Slaughter Jewish Worshippers

The Palestinian Authority, which is in charge of security in Nablus, has -- despite official agreements in the Oslo Accords -- nevertheless refused to fulfill its commitment to protect and ensure free access to Joseph's Tomb.

So far, no one has called out the Palestinian Authority for its grave violations of the international commitments signed with Israel ensuring free access to, and the protection of, all holy sites.

Encouraged by the silence of the international community, the Palestinian Authority has been trying to prevent Jews from visiting another holy site, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem... which is abutted by the Western Wall.... This wall happens to be the holiest site in Judaism where Jews are permitted to pray.

Instead of denouncing Abbas for his incitement and the Palestinians for their denial of Jewish links to the holy site, the United Nations General Assembly in 2021 approved a resolution that disavowed Jewish ties to the Temple Mount.

Without the presence of the Israeli security forces in Jerusalem, Jews would have been attacked and slaughtered every day on their way to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

If the city or these sites were ever to be handed over to the Palestinian Authority, Jewish worshippers would have to visit their holy sites in bullet-proof vehicles accompanied by platoons of soldiers and police officers, as is necessary these days at Joseph's Tomb in Nablus.

The Biden administration and the rest of the international community would do well to wake up to the fact that the Palestinian state they are clamoring for means the continued slaughter of Jews and the denial of their safe access to Jewish holy sites.

Tolerance and freedom of worship are not terms that can be found in the Palestinian lexicon. The Palestinians will be satisfied only when they replace Israel with an Iranian-backed terror state and erase all traces of Jewish history and faith.

Fight over Jerusalem's Temple Mount holy site: Why is it so important to Jews, Muslims and Christians?

Jordan blasted "in the severest terms the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the violation of its sanctity." The Jordanian Foreign Ministry in Amman summoned the Israeli ambassador Eitan Sorkis, who got a dressing down from the Hashemite Kingdom.

It is unclear what Jordan meant by the "storming" of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Ben-Gvir did not enter the mosque and his presence on the compound went without friction.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told Fox News Digital that Jordan is, "The last country on earth to lecture Israel. Jordan destroyed Jewish life in the Old City in 1948."

Jordan controlled the Old City in Jerusalem from 1948 until 1967. Cooper noted that Jordan "barred Jews for 19 years from praying at the Western Wall" and "it is the height of hypocrisy," for Jordan to lash out at Israel.

The Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, which was designated a foreign terrorist entity by the U.S. and European Union and rules the Gaza Strip, warned the "continuation of this behavior will bring all parties closer to a big clash." Hamas threatened a "religious war" against Israel in September 2022, after Jewish activists visited the Temple Mount.

Rabbi Yishai Fleisher, an advisor to Ben-Gvir, told Fox News Digital, "Freedom to pray at one's holy sites is a basic human right - and that is why Minister Ben-Gvir visited the Temple Mount today. The fact that Jews are barred from praying or condemned for ascending is racist and discriminatory. This government has shown today that it will not be held hostage to terrorist threats - and will promote the values of religious freedom and freedom of expression for all."

The Israeli organization Beyadenu documented the number of visits in 2022 as 51,483 Jews to the site. Beyadenu said in 2021 that 34,651 Jews visited the Temple Mount.

"There should be no discrimination against Jews visiting the Temple Mount. At the end of the day, visits are not mass prayers anyway, so it cannot be argued that they harm the status quo," Matan Peleg, the CEO of Im Tirtzu, told Fox News Digital.

Peleg said that "After 150 years of conflict, it is time for the Arabs to show some maturity and responsibility and stop their racist incitement, which historically has only hurt them."

Morton Klein: The Biden administration sides with discrimination on the Temple Mount

It is a fundamental American principle that religious and racial discrimination is impermissible, unacceptable and unjust. We Americans do not let threats of violence stop us from changing a discriminatory “status quo.”

Thus, threats from the Ku Klux Klan and other bigots did not stop the U.S. government from ending the longstanding “status quo” of segregated schools, “whites only” drinking fountains and practices that prevented Jews and blacks from living in many neighborhoods.

Instead, we stood up to the racist black-hating terrorists. For example, when nine black children were prevented from entering Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, then-President Dwight Eisenhower sent 1,000 U.S. Army paratroopers to ensure that the students could attend school.

But today, the Biden administration is arrogantly demanding that Israel maintain an antisemitic, racist, discriminatory and unjust “Muslims only” status quo on the Jewish people’s holiest site—the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Mount is the site of the First and Second Jewish Temples, which stood for approximately 1,000 years, long before Islam was invented and long before Muslims built mosques on the site.

King Solomon built the First Temple as a place where all people were welcome to pray. Israel’s 1967 Protection of Holy Places Law followed in his footsteps, ensuring free access to all holy sites. But now, Jews and other non-Muslims are denied the right to openly pray on the Temple Mount or even bring prayer books with them. Visiting hours for non-Muslims are severely restricted. Non-Muslims can only enter the site through one of 12 gates, while Muslims can use all the gates. Jews are not permitted to drink from the water fountain on the Mount because some Jew-hating Muslims consider Jews “unclean.” Sound familiar? Jews are not even permitted to silently mouth a prayer.

Meanwhile, Muslims have shown their “respect” for the site and the “status quo” by playing soccer games on the Mount; storing rocks, firebombs and weapons in the Al-Aqsa mosque; destroying literally tons of priceless Jewish antiquities and archeological materials from the Mount; harassing and attacking Jews who visit the site; converting a Second Temple-period structure into a new mosque; hurling rocks at Jews praying at the Western Wall below; and inciting anti-Jewish violence by broadcasting blood libels that Jews are “storming” and “destroying the sanctity” of the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Instead of opposing this unacceptable antisemitic discrimination, the Biden administration is wrongly condemning Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir for briefly touring the periphery of the Jewish people’s holiest site.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides arrogantly stated, “To be very clear—we want to preserve the status quo and actions that prevent that are unacceptable. We have been very clear in our conversations with the Israeli government on this issue.” Nides said this even though Ben-Gvir’s visit did nothing to change the Mount’s so-called “status quo.”

Similarly, during the U.S. State Department’s Jan. 3 briefing, State Department Spokesman Ned Price said, “We oppose any unilateral actions that undercut the historic status quo. They are unacceptable. …. This visit has the potential to exacerbate tensions and to provoke violence.” This assertion that a mere visit by a Jew to the Jewish people’s holiest site can “provoke violence” is akin to accusing Rosa Parks of “provoking violence” by not sitting in the back of a bus.