Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 09, 2023

Cartoon of the Day: Newspaper stylesheet

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Ralph Wilde, an associate professor at the Faculty of Laws, University College London, writes in OpinioJuris that Israel's presence anywhere beyond the 1949 armistice lines is illegal - not the settlements, but the "occupation" of every square centimeter.

It is a classic case where the opinion precedes the evidence, and the evidence is then shoe-horned into the argument.

There is a great deal of garbage there, but here's an argument that I had never seen before, that is profoundly stupid.

Neither United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, nor the so-called Oslo Accords, provide an alternative legal basis for the existence/continuation of the occupation. Indeed, the Oslo Accords are themselves violative of international law, because ‘consent’ to them by the PLO was coerced through the illegal use of force, and, relatedly, they conflicted with norms of international law that have a special non-derogable/jus cogens status (the prohibition on the use of force other than in self-defence, and the right of self-determination).

According to Wilde, the Oslo Accords were illegal because the PLO was coerced to sign them by Israel.

No one to my knowledge has made that claim, ever. Not during the Oslo process from 1993-2000, not during the second intifada, not afterwards.

The PLO itself certainly never made this claim; to this day, Mahmoud Abbas charges Israel with violating the Oslo Accords but he has not once said that they don't apply because the PLO was coerced

What next? Do we retroactively invalidate the Treaty of Versailles because the Germans lost World War I and therefore were subject to coercion if they didn't sign?

Wilde's illogic is remarkable. But he really tries to make it seem reasonable. In his more expansive article on the topic, he writes:

Given that much of international law operates on the basis of a fiction of sovereign equality despite de facto inequality, treaties between unequal parties are not necessarily invalid for that reason. But one red line is when the powerful party, as here, is subjugating the other party in a particular manner—through an illegal use of force—in a way that has so compromised the freedom of action of that other party when it comes to their consent to the agreement, that the agreement can be understood to have been “procured” through that particular form of subjugation. The Oslo Accords meet this test and are legally-void on this basis. Indeed, their procurement in the context of the occupation constitutes a manifest and egregious form of coercion prescribed by the equivalent rule of customary international law to the provision in the [Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties] when it comes to invalidity.

This means that every case of occupation can never be ended through negotiations because the occupied party is by definition coerced into its agreement.

Wilde's bizarre argument brings up another question. Who determines, under his fantasy version of international law, that one party is being coerced? Normal people would say that it would be the coerced parties themselves. But if the PLO doesn't claim they were coerced to sign the agreements, and indeed make constant arguments that Oslo is valid and Israel is violating it, then how can anyone else possibly make that assertion as fact?

Apparently, Wilde thinks that his own opinion on what constitutes coercion outweighs that of the party he says was coerced! This is no longer the pretense of interpreting international law - this is an attempt to create international law based on what a single uninvolved anti-Israel academic thinks.

Beyond that, we have another problem. If Oslo was signed under coercion, then why didn't the PLO sign the proposed peace agreements from Camp David and Taba, when they were being pressured not only by Israel but by the world's only superpower at the time, the United States? How did Arafat resist that pressure but succumb to the much milder coercion of 1993? What changed - under an international law framework - from his being unable to have free will in 1993 and his freedom in 2000?

It gets better. If Oslo is retroactively illegal, then the Palestinian Authority created by them must retroactively disappear, and any agreements that it signed over the past 25 years are also meaningless, since it never existed. And since the UNGA-recognized "State of Palestine" is simply a renaming of the PA, then it must also disappear - and its signature erased from all the treaties it signed.

Wilde, for all his erudition and expertise, proves himself to be a fraud in this argument. He is clearly twisting international law to fit his own pre-determined conclusion.

And that should disqualify him from teaching anyone.

(h/t Irene)

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Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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01/09 Links Pt1: Obama’s Anti-Imperialist Fantasy Bears Bitter Fruit; Israel moves ahead with transfer of PA funds to terror victims; The year Iran lost normalcy

From Ian:

Mark Dubowitz: Obama’s Anti-Imperialist Fantasy Bears Bitter Fruit

Unsurprisingly, Iran often seemed to exist for Obama not as a threat to U.S. interests but as a historical victim of Western imperialism, which supposedly overthrew a “democratically elected” Iranian prime minister and installed the shah. Iran’s repressive theocratic regime seemed less notable for its blatant offenses against its own people, or its efforts to destabilize neighboring states, than for its role as the bête noire of warmongering neoconservatives in the United States, who supported a regional structure that put America on the side of troublemakers such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. Faced with the choice between the Islamic Republic and its enemies, Obama found it surprisingly easy to take the side of the mullahs—putting himself and the United States crossways both to U.S. interests and the hopes and dreams of the Iranian people.

Obama’s big Iran play, which continues to shape U.S. regional policy to this day, was therefore neither “values-driven” nor purely pragmatic. His apparent goal was to extricate the United States from a cycle of endless conflict—one of whose primary causes, as he saw it, was Western imperialism. In doing so, Obama sought to be the first anti-imperialist American president since Dwight Eisenhower, who had backed Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser against the British, French, and Israelis in the 1956 Suez war. (Eisenhower later admitted that backing Nasser and abandoning the United States’ traditional allies had been one of the biggest mistakes of his presidency.)

Yet the Iranians were not, in fact, powerful enough to play the “balancing” role Obama envisioned for them, as their failure to stabilize Syria proved. He therefore stood aside, willingly or not, as the Russians intervened on the Iranian side to bomb the Syrian resistance. For rescuing the Islamic Republic and its allies in Syria, Putin was allowed to invade Crimea and the Donbas with minimal opposition from the Obama administration.

Anti-imperialist narratives were clearly important to Obama, and make sense as products of his unique upbringing. The fact that they utterly failed to correspond to regional realities caused multiple problems on the ground in the Middle East. Obama’s policy of trying to put the United States on the side of his own preferred client states created a slaughter in Syria that in turn led to multiple other slaughters throughout the region. The rise of ISIS was fueled partly in response to vicious Iran-backed attacks against Iraqi and Syrian Sunnis. The shocking rise of the Islamic State required Obama to send U.S. troops into Syria and back into Iraq. It also emboldened Putin, who invaded Ukraine for the third time in 2022.

Obama’s ongoing and catastrophic policy failure, which has blocked the Biden administration from developing any kind of workable strategic vision for dealing with current realities in Iran and throughout the region, demonstrates that substituting American narratives about purity and guilt for hard-power realities is a dangerous business. Ideologically driven anti-Western narratives led the United States to place dangerous and wrongheaded bets on Sunni Islamists and Shiite theocrats at the expense of our own interests and friends. Poorly executed policy led to a fatally flawed nuclear agreement that continues to bedevil the Biden administration and America’s European and Middle Eastern allies. The JCPOA was a big mistake. The longer we refuse to admit that, the higher the price we will continue to pay.

The European Union's War on Israel

A confidential leaked document, composed by the EU mission in east Jerusalem, shows that the Europeans are actively working with, and on behalf of, the Palestinian Authority to take over Area C of the West Bank -- although the area was clearly agreed on, by both Israel and the Palestinians, until further negotiations, to be under Israeli control.

"[T]he EU... insists that its positions are based on meticulous compliance with international law, EU law and charter, and also the Oslo Accord. This claim is surely defied by the leaked document in which we can see an activist EU striving to help the Palestinians take over Area C, the very area that is designated to Israel's control per the Oslo Accord which the EU claims to uphold." — Jenny Aharon, Jerusalem Post, December 28, 2022.

Aharon noted that while the EU was insisting that Israel abide by the Oslo Accords and that a Palestinian state should be established within the framework of a comprehensive peace agreement, the EU, at the same time, is trying to strip Israel of its rights according to that same agreement, which gave Israel responsibility over security, public order and all issues related to territory, including planning and zoning, in Area C.

The EU, in short, is encouraging the Palestinians not to return to the negotiating table with Israel. Instead, the EU is telling the Palestinians that the EU will help them steal land as an alternative to reaching a peaceful settlement with Israel through negotiations.

"The EU's reported clandestine activity to undermine Israeli control in Area C and to advance illegal Palestinian development in those areas constitutes a clear and present threat to the security of the State of Israel, and is an act of blatant hostility and aggression." — Letter from the Israel Defense and Security Forum, consisting of 16,000 former military, security and police officers; i24 News, December 21, 2022.

"As this document confirms, Europe's use of labels like support for 'civil society' and 'human rights' were designed to hide the millions of euros given every year to selected allied NGOs, particularly in Area C, to create facts on the ground." — Dr. Gerald Steinberg, quoted by JNS, January 5, 2023.

These revelations show that no one should be surprised when the E.U. condemns the new government for trying to save land in Yehuda and Shomron [the West Bank] — they [the EU and Palestinians] are the ones responsible for stealing it. – Dr. Eugene Kontorovich, quoted by JNS, January 5, 2023.

In 2022, illegal Palestinian construction in Area C increased by 80%. The report documents 5,535 new illegal structures built in 2022, compared to 3,076 structures in the same period in 2021. — Regavim, October 11, 2022.

Jews are the owners of the Temple Mount - opinion

The Sages said: “There are three places about which the nations of the world cannot deceive Israel and say we have stolen them out of their hands, and they are the Cave of the Patriarchs, the Temple and the Tomb of Joseph.” All three sites were purchased by our forefathers, Abraham, Jacob, and King David, at a fair price.
“There are three places about which the nations of the world cannot deceive Israel and say we have stolen them out of their hands, and they are the Cave of the Patriarchs, the Temple and the Tomb of Joseph.”
The Sages
The First Temple stood proudly on the Temple Mount, 1,500 years before the Prophet Muhammad was even born.

It goes without saying that security and diplomatic acumen are extremely important, but we cannot forget the basic facts. We Jews are not guests on the Temple Mount; we are its original owners. No other nation shares this history, no other nation has had the same capital for 3,000 years and has never had another one, and Jerusalem was never the capital of any other nation.

The criticism aimed at Israel is ludicrous and outrageous. It ignores the 3,000-year connection between the people of Israel and Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

Jordan’s audacious response of summoning the Israeli ambassador for a reprimand is particularly egregious. What is the Jordanian royal house anyway? A Saudi Arabian family that ruled the Islamic holy places in the Hejaz, Mecca and Medina, for hundreds of years. When it was defeated almost a century ago by the Al Saud family, it fled.

The British, to whom the family offered its services against the Turks in World War I, found it a new job and established the “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” in a bid to maintain an open route to the oil fields in Iraq. The royal family, which lived very well at the expense of the British taxpayer, protected British interests in the region.

The peace agreement between Israel and Jordan stipulates that Jordan has a “special role” at holy shrines in Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount.

That’s ridiculous. What is Jordan’s connection to the Temple Mount? Does the fact that Jordan conquered east Jerusalem in the War of Independence, razed the Jewish Quarter along with its synagogues, and ruled over it for 19 years give it some sort of special privileges?

Dear President Abbas: Mazal Tov, Mabrouk and Congrats on entering the ???????? ???????? of your ?? ???????? term as Palestinian President. ????

This must be what you call '??????????????????'? pic.twitter.com/DofT9jVRnR
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) January 9, 2023

The website of the Jordanian Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs includes a brief English-language history of the city originally published in 2005.

It glosses over any historic Jewish connection to the city by framing Jews as one of many invaders:

3000 B.C. :
The Arab Canaanites established the city in the third millennium B.C., as archeologists state.

1879 B.C. :
in the Egyptian Tablets, called the Texts of the Curse, the name Ur Salim (the city of peace) was mentioned as the name for the city . The name reoccurred in the year 1300 B.C. in the Tal Al- Amarnah Tablets. At that time, the city was inhabited by the Arab Yabusites.

1300 – 63 B.C. :
The city suffered invasion, occupation and destruction. It witnessed important events during this period . It was occupied by the Egyptians, the Jews, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians and the Greeks.

63 B.C – 636 A.D. :
This was the era of the Roman rule, which lasted around 700 years. The most important events during this period were :

– The appearance of Jesus Christ (the Messiah) around the first year B.C.
– 70 The city was destroyed by the Roman Emperor Titus.

The Canaanites were not Arabs.

There is no mention of Jewish kingdoms, Kings David or Solomon, the Temples, or even the Bible. Even the Quran says far more about Jews in the land than this commission does.

Well, there is an indirect mention of the Temples when it discusses the different names of the city:

Bayt Al-Maqdis (Al-Quds; The Holy) : The name given to the city by Muslim Arabs.

That name, of course, is a corruption of the Hebrew "Beit HaMikdash" - the Holy Temple.

Practically every mention of Jews in this history is a lie. A couple of examples:

1882: The start of the waves of mass Jewish immigration from Russia to Jerusalem and Palestine.

Only from Russia? Plenty of Jews came from many countries, including Arab countries like Yemen, in the 19th century.

June 1967: Confiscation of 116 dunums within the old city and the demolition of the buildings therein for the purpose of building new ones to house the Jews.

That is the restoration of the Jewish Quarter that was destroyed by these Jordanians in 1948.

21 August 1969: The Jew, Michael Denis Rohan, set fire to the blessed Aqsa Mosque.

Rohan was a Christian.

Jerusalem : The Inhabitants

– In 1918, the number of Palestinians in Old and New Jerusalem was circa (ca.) 30,000 .
– In 1918, the number of Jews in Old and New Jerusalem was ca. 10,000.

I cannot find any record of a 1918 census of Jerusalem, but this is all clearly a lie. In 1922, there were 34,000 Jews in Jerusalem, outnumbering Christians (15,000) and Muslims (13,000) combined.

This official Jordanian document also says:

– In 2000, the number of Jews in the western part of Occupied Jerusalem was ca. 275,000 colonial Jews.

Here and elsewhere, it refers to all Jews in Israel as colonialist - not just the "settlers."

Finally, it falsely claims that the number of Christians in Jerusalem has gone down from over 18,000 in 1967 to 5,000 in 1998. In reality, the number plummeted under Jordanian rule from 29,000 to 12,000 in 1967, and it has modestly increased to about 16,000 today.

This is Jordanian, state-sanctioned antisemitism.

(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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Large cache of Jewish objects hidden by Jews in Lodz in 1939 unearthed (lots of photos)

From Times of Israel:

About 400 items believed to have been hidden in the ground by their Jewish owners during World War II have been accidentally uncovered during home renovation work in a yard in Lodz in central Poland.

History experts say that the objects found in the city’s Polnocna Street include Hanukkah menorahs and items used in daily life, TVN24 reported.

Another Polish media outlet, o2.pl, said that perfume bottles and cigarette holders were also found in the trove, located some 70 centimeters underground.

The stash was found in December, and two of the menorahs were lit on December 22 during Hanukkah celebrations organized by the city’s Jewish community.

Some of the items were found wrapped in Polish, Yiddish, and German language newspapers, which were dated to around October 1939, Israel’s Ynet news site said.

Gazecie Wyborczej, an archaeologist in Lodz, said that the items appeared to have been buried in a hurry, likely when the owners were ordered to appear in the Lodz Ghetto. According to Wyborczej, the site of the building used to be a synagogue.

The items are mostly silver-plated tableware, menorahs and glass containers for cosmetics, according to the regional office for the preservation of historic objects. The office’s experts said on Facebook last week that the objects will be handed over to the city’s archaeology museum.

This is a heartbreaking story, especially when you look at the recovered objects themselves. They aren't for the most part made out of silver or gold but rather silver-plated; they were not objectively that valuable - but they were valuable to the owners. These were personal items that the Jews wanted to keep in their families.

YNet shows some of the objects:

Here are some photos from the scene as the objects were being uncovered (there's also video on the same site):

The broken, dented and tarnished objects are more affecting than the cleaned-up, polished ones.

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!

Arab people still overwhelmingly oppose recognizing Israel, but there is a silver lining

The Arab Opinion Index for 2022 has been released by the Doha Institute, and it shows that Arabs in the countries surveyed overwhelmingly oppose their countries recognizing Israel:

Moroccans were the least opposed, but that is only 20% of those surveyed.

Unfortunately, Bahrain and the UAE were not part of this survey.

One other question where Israel is a prominent component was more interesting.

When asked which world country is the biggest threat to their home countries, Israel received over 50% from only two set of nationals: Palestinians and Lebanese.

The other answers are fascinating:

In 2014, Israel's and the US' scores were much higher as to being considered a threat:

Look how Saudi Arabia's score for Israel plummeted from 40% to only 3% thinking Israel is their biggest enemy. Iraq's score also dropped a huge amount, from 42% to 7%, Libya's from 44% to 7%, Tunisia from 42% to 9%.

I would say that while the diplomatic recognition question reflects sky-high Arab antisemitism, the "threat" question is more reflective of whether the respondents believe the anti-Israel conspiracy theories claiming that Israel wants to take over the entire region, as well as a more sophisticated understanding of how Arab states relate to each other and to other nations.

At any rate, far fewer Arabs look at Israel as their main enemy than eight years ago. That is a very big deal. It means that the opportunities are opening at least for the possibility of dialogue and to discuss common interests, something impossible with a perceived enemy.

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

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Self-described Zionist rabbi refusing to say the prayer for the welfare of Israel doesn't make sense

Jodi Rudoren, editor in chief of the Forward, sent out in her weekly Friday newsletter:

When Ansche Chesed, a Conservative synagogue in the liberal bastion of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, convenes for Shabbat services tomorrow, three familiar words will not be recited from the bimah: raishit smichat gi’ulateinu.

Hebrew for “the initial sprouting of our redemption,” it’s the signature line from the Prayer for the State of Israel that Jews worldwide have been saying each week since shortly after the modern state was founded almost 75 years ago. But Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky, Ansche Chesed’s longtime leader, feels he can no longer honestly and full-throatedly pray for the success of Israel's leaders, ministers and advisers, as this liturgy calls for, since its new government includes right-wing extremists he considers akin to the Ku Klux Klan.

“I don't hope that this government succeeds; I hope that this government falls and is replaced by something better,” he explained in an interview. “I just could not imagine us saying this prayer that their efforts be successful. I think their efforts are dastardly.”

Rabbi Kalmanofsky is a staunch, lifelong Zionist — a liberal Zionist, as most American Jews would describe themselves, but also a religious Zionist, in the sense of seeing a Jewish homeland in the holy land as a fulfillment of a fundamental tenet of our faith, which makes the radicalization of Israel's Religious Zionist party feel particularly personal for him.

Rabbi Kalmanofsky did not think it was enough to join hundreds of his colleagues in signing a letter last month vowing not to let the Religious Zionist party's leaders speak at their synagogues....

These facts do not fit together: claiming to be a Zionist from a religious perspective and refusing to say the Prayer for the Welfare of the State of Israel because it is a prayer that the government succeeds. Because that is not what the prayer says.

It says,

Our father in Shamayim (Heaven),
Rock-fortress and redeemer of Yisra’el —
bless the State of Israel,
the initial sprouting of our redemption.
Shield her beneath the wings of your lovingkindness;
spread over her your Sukkah of peace;
send your light and your truth to its leaders, officers, and counselors,
and correct them with your good counsel.

That is not at all inconsistent with being against some ministers. The prayer asks God to help them make the correct decisions.

If Rabbi Kalmanofsky doesn't think that God has the power to guide Israel's ministers to do the right thing, then his theology is suspect.

The other part that makes little sense is that Kalmanofsky, while claiming to be a liberal, religious, Zionist in his letter to the congregation, also signed the letter that said that he would actively oppose not only the right-wing MKs from speaking at their own congregations, but protest them if they are speaking at any synagogue in their communities. Of course every synagogue can choose whom they allow to speak at their own temples, but even imagining that they would picket the (presumably Orthodox) shuls that might consider these MKs to be worth listening to is a huge chilul Hashem - public desecration of God's name that makes all Jews look bad. I have never seen Orthodox congregations picket outside Reform or Conservative temples for any reason, even though they invite speakers and have activities that are thoroughly offensive to many Orthodox Jews. The thought of such a protest being broadcast in the evening news is anathema to anyone who claims to care about klal Yisrael, the Jewish community.

Rabbi Kalmanofsky says the right things about his love for and support for Israel, but it simply doesn't jive with these two letters. He does not seem like an extremist or a fanatic, but his actions are as divisive and improper as those of BDSers.

I tweeted a response to him on Friday making my point about the prayer, but he did not respond.

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

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01/08 Links: Netanyahu: The Unexpected Moderate; ‘Pro-Palestinian’ Means No Such Thing; Abandoning democracy, Mahmoud Abbas enters his 19th year as Chairman of the PA

From Ian:

Netanyahu: The Unexpected Moderate

After decades, some genius pretended to have discovered the "two-state solution." That "solution", of course, had been offered by the United Nations and accepted by the Jews under the "extremist" David Ben Gurion in 1947, but rejected by neighboring Arab states. Its revival by Western powers, notably the United States, was an exercise in diplomatic wild goose chasing.

The fact is that repeated opinion polls and elections show that a majority of Israelis and Palestinians do not want the "two-state solution..."

[T]he dismantling of all settlements in Gaza never led to the peace expected.

As the theme of the settlements began to appear shopworn, a new version of the "Palestinian problem" was put into circulation: "Israeli Apartheid." But that, too, was never defined. In South Africa under Apartheid, black and colored citizens were not allowed to vote or get elected. In Israel, non-Jewish citizens can and do. Palestinians in the West Bank do not have those rights because they are not Israeli citizens.

Opinion polls in the West Bank, too, show that bread-and-butter politics and cleaning corruption are the top concerns of Palestinians.

That problem might find a solution only if both Israelis and Palestinians are convinced that solving it is in their own interest. Whichever way one looks at it, that conviction isn't there yet. And even if, one day, that conviction materializes, there is no guarantee that those who have built whole carriers and national strategies around perpetuating it will allow a solution to be agreed and applied.

‘Pro-Palestinian’ Means No Such Thing

“There are three kinds of lies,” Mark Twain said, attributing the insight to Benjamin Disraeli, “lies, damned lies and statistics.” Turns out there is a fourth: “pro-Palestinian.”

Virtually everything described as pro-Palestinian is not. That is, it does not pertain to improving Palestinian Arabs’ lives in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza Strip, let alone in United Nations-maintained Palestinian internment centers—euphemistically labeled refugee camps—in those territories and Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Ever attend a rally or lecture advocating improved standards of living or civil rights for Palestinian Arabs under jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank? On behalf of those repressed by the Hamas Islamic theocracy in Gaza? Or those subject to the authoritarian governments of neighboring Arab countries? Me neither.

Such pro-Palestinian events don’t happen. Instead, events ballyhooed as pro-Palestinian can be described accurately as anti-Israel.

Anti-Israel propaganda dressed up as pro-Palestinian has a long history. In 1958, Ralph Galloway, a former director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), discussing regimes’ treatment of Palestinian Arab refugees from Israel’s 1948-1949 War of Independence, said:

“The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. They don’t give a damn whether the refugees [numbering approximately 500,00 – 600,00] live or die.”

Hence, UNRWA established camps instead of promoting resettlement in Arab states. This was at a time, the late 1940s and 1950s, when more than 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands were being resettled. Roughly three-fourths went to Israel, the rest to Western countries.

PMW: Abandoning democracy, Mahmoud Abbas enters his 19th year as Chairman of the PA

Today, Jan. 8, 2023, Mahmoud Abbas is celebrating completing 18 years in his position as Chairman of the Palestinian Authority.

According to section 3(2) of the 2007 PA Law Pertaining the General Elections, “The presidential office term shall be four years. He/she shall not be elected for more than two terms.”

Abbas was elected in the last PA elections for the position of Chairman held on Jan. 9, 2005. In preparation for those elections, the PA Central Elections Committee reported that there were 1,760,481 registered voters. Hamas boycotted the elections, and only 802,077 actually cast their vote. Of those who voted, only 501,448 voted for Abbas. In other words, Abbas was elected by only 28% of the Palestinians eligible to vote.

Ignoring the law, and unconcerned about the fact that he was elected by a small minority vote, Abbas has remained in his position for 18 years.

While the PA constantly references its democratic values and nature, the reality is that Abbas is just another dictator who refuses to uphold the law and relinquish the power he illegitimately usurped in 2009 at the end of his 4-year term and consequent to his refusal to hold new elections.

True to the anti-democratic dictatorial values, the PA under Abbas has similarly refrained from holding general elections to the PA Parliament since 2006. In those elections, the majority of the votes cast were for Hamas, an internationally designated terror organization.

This story from September sure flew under the radar.

From Jordan News:

US Ambassador to Jordan Henry Wooster has said that the memorandum of understanding (MoU) Jordan and the US signed in Washington on September 16 is a platform that will enable the two governments to start a dialogue over common issues.

Speaking to journalists at his residence on Tuesday, Wooster said that the MoU focuses on two main issues: water and the public sector.

Under the MoU, the US government will provide a total of $10.1 billion in aid to Jordan between 2023 and 2029, at around $1.45 billion annually. It is the fourth such document signed by the two countries since 2010.

Wooster stressed that support for sectors was determined by Jordan, which sets priorities, and not by the US, and that there are no conditions attached to the MoU, which are not legally binding.

The US doesn't have any say on how the money would be spent? No conditions? No auditing?

It looks like some of the funds are very generally earmarked: out of the $1.45 billion of grants annually, $610 million is direct assistance to the Treasury; $75 million to the stimulus support fund; $350 million towards implementing priority development schemes with USAID; and $400 million in military aid to the Jordanian Army.

Beyond that, it looks like Jordan can do whatever they want with it.

And of course, there is no requirement for Jordan to extradite mass murderer Ahlam Tamimi to the US, despite her being on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

Israel is routinely accused by its detractors of having a blank check to use US funds however they want. It is a lie. There are extensive audits for US aid to Israel.

But here, the same people who claim to care so much about how US taxpayer dollars are being spent are suddenly mute in a case that really appears to be a blank check to Jordan - $610 million a year we know going straight to its treasury which can then be spent however they want - and no pushback.

How much of that money goes to fund explicitly antisemitic educational materials? Jordan funds the building of mosques - how many teach hate? Would US funded weapons be used to quash peaceful protests? There are no guardrails.

And no one even seems to suggest that Jordan should not get a penny until it sends Tamimi to the US for trial.

(h/t Arnold Roth)

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!