Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, January 12, 2023

The UN's Humanitarian Affairs office doesn't care about dead Jews

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for the Palestinian territories wrote a report called "The humanitarian impact of 20 years of the Barrier."

It lists many reasons why Israel's separation barrier makes the lives of some Palestinians more difficult, highlighting farmers who need permits to work their land on the other side.

It is true - for a relatively small number of Palestinian farmers, the fence is a major inconvenience. There is nothing wrong with the UN highlighting their plight.

But there seems to be something missing from the analysis of a humanitarian affairs office.

The document begins with, "In 2002, the Israeli authorities started to build a Barrier with the stated aim of preventing violent attacks by Palestinians inside Israel."

By those criteria, was it successful?

Here are the number of Israelis killed in terror attacks, by year, from when construction began on the barrier:

The number of Israelis killed went down precipitously as the major parts of the barrier were completed.

It is hard to know exactly how much of the reduction was directly the result of the fence, of course; there were probably other factors. But according to one expert in the field, the barrier made all the difference:

Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shalah publicly admitted that Israel’s security fence is a significant obstacle to the Palestinian terrorist organizations. “If it weren’t there," he told Al-Manar Television, "the situation would be entirely different.”

On November 11, 2006, Shalah granted a long interview to Al-Manar TV, Hizbullah’s television channel. He asserted that suicide bombing attacks are the Palestinian people’s “strategic choice” and the terrorist organizations have every intention of continuing suicide bombing attacks, but that their timing and the possibility of perpetrating them from the West Bank depends on other factors.

“For example,” he said, “there is the separation fence, which is an obstacle to the resistance, and if it were not there the situation would be entirely different.”

According to the now dead Islamic Jihad leader, terror groups kept trying to blow up Jews and fully intended to continue, but the ugly wall stopped them.

Which means that the barrier has saved hundreds of Israeli lives - maybe thousands.

Now, why would the UN issue a report that only discusses how the fence is a detriment to Palestinian farmers' work, and not mention that it has largely fulfilled its purpose of saving many lives?

Unfortunately, the reason is because the UN doesn't consider saving Israeli lives to be a positive 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!

Sunjeev Bery is the Executive Director at an NGO called Freedom Forward. He was advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) at Amnesty International USA from 2011-2017. he's been interviewed on TV as some sort of expert.

For the past few days, Bery has been tirelessly tweeting his support for Ken Roth in the Kennedy School story - and going after Roth's critics.

Including me.

Which makes for some very entertaining reading.

Roth tweeted, "Harvard's Kennedy School says it 'welcomes new ideas—even unpopular and controversial ones." Its curriculum "encourages students and faculty to talk openly and effectively about difficult and highly charged issues.' Except for Israel, Dean Elmendorf?"

I responded to Roth, "Perhaps @Harvard @Kennedy_School has a policy against hiring obsessive liars? In 2014 I compiled a list of Ken Roth's Twitter lies over just a few months, and documented why they were wrong. He of course never corrected [any of] them. See for yourself," linking to a list of dozens of lies and distortions that Roth tweeted during and after the 2014 Gaza war.

Sunjeev Bery was very upset, apparently, at the tone of my list. "I started reading your "document" @elderofziyon, and it became clear within 10 seconds that it's a flimsy prop that enables you to just claim that people are liars. You are selling something that is far less than it actually is and using it for propaganda purposes."

Not knowing (or caring) who he was, I answered, "You are invited to tell me where I am wrong."

Instead of doing that, Bery wrote, "Many of the statements you make in your documents are simply claims and represent your beliefs. You seem to be adopting the posture that your claims are The Truth, and that those you disagree with are The Liars. Your intent is propagandistic."

Ah, so it isn't my facts - but my intent - that offends him. Good to know that human rights professionals are as little interested in the truth on Twitter as they are when they write their reports.

Then he hit me with what he considered his real zinger - which he used on other critics of Roth on the thread. "But here's the real question that tests your intentions: What are YOUR human rights criticisms of israel?"

It was already clear now that he was playing a game and had no interest in any semblance of truth, so I said I was done with the conversation: "So you cannot find a single example where Roth was correct and I was wrong. Out of several dozen. And then you want to accuse me of being disingenuous? Bye."

But this human rights professional brought out his inner teenage troll and kept trying to goad me. "Nice try buddy. Again @elderofziyon, what are YOUR criticisms of Israel?." I ignored him.

Another tweeter answered him, "He asked you a question in direct response to your criticism and you still didn’t answer. You should answer his question before you move on."

Bery answered him or her, "Wrong, buddy. If he can't say anything critical of Israel then he is ultimately a propagandist and a pro-government partisan arguing in bad faith."

I gave in and finally responded:

I'm not here for your amusement. I don't pretend to be anything but a pro-Israel site; I provide a tiny bit of counterweight to the tsunami of anti-Israel information out there. I am not a newspaper that pretends to be balanced. That being said, I strive to be 100% truthful.

To me, "bad faith" is accusing me of something and not being able to back it up, and instead changing the subject. THAT is a propaganda technique that the anti-Israel crowd does all the time; reframing the conversation instead of admitting mistakes.
I don't play those games.

After repeating himself for some reason, he gave me his one example of where my criticism of Roth was off-base to him with this screenshot:

By your own admission, you say that Ken Roth uses "the best available data" but because he doesn't include the caveats, you claim he is lying.

This is a totally bad faith argument on your part, and it is one of many many such examples in the document.

And so your overall document @elderofziyon lacks the substantive content necessary to justify your overall claim.

My reaction to the content of your document is that it serves the purpose of creating a propagandistic and misleading headline.

That is why I ask if you have any criticisms of Israel's policies that you are willing to state here publicly?
This is the test for differentiating an honest critic from a propagandist. A propagandist promotes a government and avoids mentioning any criticism whatsoever.

OK, at least he said something specific, even if it made no sense. I responded:

My 2014 article says "dozens of them were flat-out false, and others were knowingly deceptive." Your example is one of the deceptive ones - Roth stated the statistics AS FACT without saying "reportedly" or any other word newspapers would use.

Of course, he never corrected.

To defend that, and to cherry pick that out of all my examples that show how Roth DID lie multiple times, shows that YOU are the one who is being a propagandist. Is this the standard you accept for a human rights leader you have defended so energetically? That's pretty sad.

Bery:

No, I pointed out one example of many lies within your document in response to your request. There are many more examples of similar exaggerations.

But once again, you have failed to answer my question:

What are YOUR criticisms of Israeli policies?

The answer seems to be none.

Obviously he did not point out a single mistake or lie of mine. But I decided to answer his main question:

I defend my family publicly. I criticize them privately.

Everyone has biases. Every media outlet does, too. I admit mine -and the goal of my writings - upfront. Call it propaganda if you want, but I insist on honesty and transparency - which is much more than most media.

To Bery, this was the smoking gun! After a rehash of earlier arguments, he wrote, "Here's the reality, @elderofziyon. You are self-admittedly engaging in pro-Israel propaganda. You clearly state that you avoid making any public criticism of Israel, and that your only public comments on Israel are to defend its policies. "

Uh, yeah.

Yes. It is no secret. Wikipedia calls me a pro-Israel blogger. Not sure why that bothers you.

Ken Roth is also a propagandist, as I proved. But he insists there is no bias, which I have comprehensively shown he has.

And you are cool with that.

Bery's response to this graphic is priceless:

I bet many of Ken Roth's tweets regarding Israel are because he feels pressure to respond to propaganda accounts like yours constantly flooding Twitter with false claims.

So the only reason Roth treats Israel like the worst violator of war crimes is because people like me bother him!

Only then did I look Sunjeev up - and propaganda is his middle name.

Pot, meet kettle.

Sunjeev worked at Amnesty USA during the 2014 Gaza war. AI-USA said that Amnesty would correct any errors in their "Gaza Platform." I pointed out SCORES of them, calling terrorists "civilian." They ignored it.

Who is a propagandist?

His hilarious response was to paste my tweet where I admitted that I am a pro-Israel blogger. So damning!

Then I noticed that this "human rights professional" "Liked" a tweet that was pretty much at his maturity level:

So....it is propaganda when I defend one side, but it is perfectly OK to pretend to be an objective head of an NGO while "Like"ing tweets that say "Zionists love smelling their own farts"?

Bery then fell apart - yet defended it!

1. Zionists and Jews are not the same thing. It is anti-Semitic to conflate the two.

2. There are Christian and Hindu zionists. There are Jewish anti-zionists.

3. You are part of an organized troll strategy of amplifying your propaganda tweets, which I do liken to flatulence.

The guy who was trolling me for hours says I'm the troll!

I responded with my own numbered list:

1. Your Like proves that you are not the least bit objective. Just like your hero Roth.
2. If you don't know what objectivity means, then your defending Roth as objective is far funnier than a fart joke.
3. I wrote a book describing how today's anti-Zionism is a modern form of antisemitism.

4. This thread has proven to any observer that you have zero intellectual honesty.

He then said that I didn't answer him, presumably his non-sequitur that Zionists and Jews aren't the same: "Once again, you didn't respond to anything that I said. But that's cool. Keep up the propaganda! 👍 Your audiences are getting smaller and smaller 😊"

So I finished him and the thread off:

I never once claimed that Jews and Zionists are the same. Your reading comprehension is about the same level as your objectivity.
This thread will make a great post, though. Making a fool of a supposed human rights expert to the entire world is always fun!

His final response after bring proven a hypocrite with not the slightest interest in truth?

The troll couldn't handle being made a fool of.

But the most bizarre part is that while it is obvious that he said nothing at all to contradict a single one of my facts, ... he thinks he won!

Bery's entire argument is that to have any credibility, every Zionist must criticize Israel publicly and constantly. Obviously, he has no similar criteria insisting on "balance" for the anti-Israel zealots he admires and quotes.

I'm actually complimented that he keeps calling my writings "propaganda." Here is his response to the 2009 NYT op-ed by Robert Bernstein decrying how the organization he founded, Human Rights Watch, had gone off the rails by going after democracies like Israel that have checks and balances and downplaying the evil of the real human rights violators of the world:

I'll gladly share the insult with a true human rights giant.

The NGO Bery currently heads, "Freedom Forward," says it "seeks a world in which all people have the benefit of living in societies that are anchored in democracy and respect for human rights." It doesn't appear to actually do anything besides create "campaigns" against Israel and US Arab allies.

I wonder who funds it. The site is not very transparent about that.

Bery himself seems to have a soft spot for that bastion of democracy and human rights, Turkey.

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!

01/11 Links Pt2: Col Kemp: Jew-Hate at American Universities; Caroline Glick: The ‘woke’ West is assaulting Jews for embracing their heritage with Richard Landes

From Ian:

Col Kemp: Jew-Hate at American Universities

[The Amcha] report paints a stark picture of an increasing, intensifying and carefully coordinated campaign of attacks on Jewish identity at over 60% of the colleges and universities that are popular with Jews, including 2,000 incidents intended to harm Jewish students since 2015.

[T]hese activists demand an end to Zionism, which... means just one thing: an end to the democratic State of Israel. This itself is antisemitism in any book and is spelt out as such in the US State Department definition of antisemitism.

Despite expending so much energy against their fellow students, German Gentiles had plenty left for their Jewish professors. Unsatisfied with Nazi race regulations restricting Jewish faculty, students boycotted the classes of those who were exempt under the race laws and pressured university authorities to dismiss them. The result was that every Jewish professor who was still legally allowed to teach had resigned by 1935.

The Amcha report characterises the situation on US campuses today as a crisis for American Jews. It is much more than that. It is a crisis for us all that one section of our student body is bullied, abused, intimidated and cast down by their fellow students and often abandoned by their professors and faculty authorities.

It is high time for the federal government, under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to withdraw its funding from all universities that participate in bigotry such as that.

Jonathan Tobin: Ilhan Omar is the Democrats’ problem, not Kevin McCarthy’s

By standing with Omar, Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have effectively normalized antisemitism. And McCarthy’s effort to punish her will again test whether they mean what they say when they speak of their opposition to hate.

As was the case with Greene and Gosar last year, it will take a vote by the majority of the House to remove Omar from her perch on the Foreign Relations Committee. Given the GOP’s narrow majority, the fate of Schiff (who repeatedly lied about the hoax he helped promote that former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election) and Swalwell (who had an intimate relationship with a Chinese spy) will also be part of the same debate.

Democrats will also answer the list of Omar’s antisemitic statements and actions with their own brand of “whataboutism,” which will involve McCarthy’s recent embrace of Greene, who was an ally during his fight for the speaker’s chair. They’ll bring up other Republicans for censure, as well. One is Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who lied about just about everything during his campaign for election, including whether he was Jewish.

If every member of Congress or the executive branch had to be censured for lying, however, Washington would soon be emptied of politicians, including Biden, who takes second place to no one when it comes to being a serial fabulist. Moreover, there is an argument to be made that neither party should be engaging in this kind of tit-for-tat punishment.

If the voters think they deserve nothing better than to be represented by such scoundrels, perhaps it’s best if we leave it to them to decide at the ballot box who should sit in Congress or on committees. As the great cynic, journalist H.L. Mencken wrote, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Nevertheless, if the Democrats are going to play this game, then McCarthy can hardly be blamed for answering in kind. And if House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) isn’t prepared to agree to remove Omar, then the speaker is justified in seeking to oust her.

At stake here is not the broader question of how much extremism or bad behavior Congress should be willing to tolerate in its members. Rather, it is specifically one that will force Democrats to decide what is more important to them.

Is it the fight against antisemitism at a time when Jew-hatred is on the rise throughout the globe? Or is their true allegiance to identity politics and the toxic intersectional myths that allow Omar to paint herself as an oppressed victim, rather than a hatemonger, simply because of the color of her skin?

Caroline Glick: The ‘woke’ West is assaulting Jews for embracing their heritage

As Israel is being pilloried at the U.N. Security Council by friend and foe alike for daring to allow Jews to visit the Temple Mount, professor Richard Landes joins Caroline Glick on this week’s episode of the “Caroline Glick Show” to discuss the contemporary roots of the demonization of Jews and the Jewish state.

Landes recently published “Can the Whole World Be Wrong: Lethal Journalism, Anti-Semitism and the Global Jihad,” the product of 22 years of work.

He began his study of the subject in the aftermath of the first modern blood libel, the alleged killing of Muhammed al-Dura, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, by IDF forces in Gaza on Sept. 30, 2000.

The false allegation that the boy was killed by IDF forces that day, and that they murdered him deliberately, formed the basis of a massive propaganda effort. Its product has been the legitimization of the mass murder of Jews in Israel and worldwide by Palestinians and other jihadists.

Landes argues that the West’s embrace of the al-Dura blood libel was the foundation not only of the antisemitism assaulting the Jewish people worldwide today, but also of the West’s inability to acknowledge, let alone defeat, the forces of global jihad, whether in the United States or Europe or in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and beyond.

Glick and Landes examine the current pathologies of the “woke” West—including the assault on Jews for embracing their heritage, by among other things, visiting the Temple Mount—through the prism of the al-Dura incident. Their conversation traverses space and time and ends with vital insights into what needs to happen for the West to survive the ravages of the Red-Green alliance which was born with the al-Dura blood libel.

“As weak as Netanyahu is, he must, at least this time, stand up and tell [MK Itamar Ben Gvir], ‘You are not going to the Temple Mount.’ People will die,” said Lapid, and when he said it, I cringed.

There are some things you just don’t say.

Of course, Ben Gvir did go to the Temple Mount and no one died. But that doesn’t make it any less a godawful disgusting thing to say out loud. Most people know better than to say such things. But for a Jew in particular to say such things is beyond the pale—especially for a Jew with power and a podium.

Which may be the point. Lapid should never have been in power and now he isn’t. All of Israel knows how the outgoing government got into bed with the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Raam Party in order to unseat Bibi. The outgoing government didn’t care that their path to power was contrary to the will of the people, because the outgoing government didn’t, and doesn’t care about the Israeli people—it also doesn’t understand them.

In some circles, Israelis won’t even whisper the word “cancer.” Instead they refer to it as “hamachala” or “the disease.” Saying it out loud is dangerous, like tempting Satan. So you go vague, nonspecific. A mother won’t say, “Don’t run out into the street—you could get hurt,” but “someone could get hurt,” and even that is followed by imprecations that no such thing will occur: “Heaven forbid” (chas v’shalom) they will say, and “not on us” (lo aleinu), to ward off the evil eye.

Lapid’s latest proclamation: “People will die,” runs contrary to an important principle adhered to by large swaths of Israelis, both religious and non-religious: never forecast doom. To say “people will die” is to curse them, Heaven forfend, with death. He literally could not have said anything more offensive. For your average Israeli, “Your mother is a whore” is a better thing to say than “People will die.”

Okay, well maybe that last is a bit of an exaggeration. The point is, you never say that people are going to die, especially in the Middle East where that does tend to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. But as Elder of Ziyon wrote in his own account of the Ben Gvir tempest in a teapot, “Everyone has a script in this play, and everyone plays their own role that matches their agendas.”

Lapid wasn’t forecasting doom, he was trying to make it happen. “People will die” was a dog whistle. It was a signal to the PA and to Hamas in Gaza, to respond with force should Ben Gvir go ahead with his visit. Then, when God forbid, what Lapid wished for, happened, Bibi’s coalition would be ousted and Yair and company would return to power.

Well, the joke’s on Yair. Even the PA and Hamas find him irrelevant. Ben Gvir went up to the Temple Mount, which excited a lot of talking heads, but ultimately no one cared enough to stop him and no one died.

Whether Ben Gvir should have visited the Temple Mount is a different story. Not only are such visits deemed a provocation to the Arab population, but as Elder also pointed out, they’re seen as a grave sin by many rabbis for fear that visitors will blunder into the Holy of Holies, where the tabernacle stood. One of those rabbis is MK Moshe Gafni, who said that Ben Gvir’s actions “only cause damage and have no benefit.”

This is debatable. For one thing, we don't know where the Holy of Holies is, but we know where it isn't. Ben Gvir, like all religious Jews, walked along the margins of the Temple Mount compound during his visit and in that way avoided going where he shouldn't. The only damage caused were the nasty editorials and scathing remarks by people like Lapid.

The benefits, on the other hand, are enormous. Ben Gvir’s visit is a signal that the Jews are not going to kowtow to terrorists and antisemites. He WILL pray on the Temple Mount and if you don’t like it, you can blow it out your ear. The Ben Gvir visit is a return to the Begin days, when Biden, then a senator on the Foreign Relations Committee, threatened to cut off aid to Israel if Begin didn’t jump when he said “Jump.”

Begin wasn’t having any of it then, just as Ben Gvir isn’t having any of it now. “Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history,” said Begin to Biden.

This is the attitude that Israelis want to see in those who govern the Jewish State. We want to see a government that won’t back down—won’t cater to the whims of a world that says a Jew has no right to pray in his holy spot in Jerusalem. That’s the only government that can deter terror, because when Jews assert their rights, the Arabs don’t dare attack them, because they know the Jews will respond with due force.

And that is the only language terrorists understand. We voted for this government because we’re tired of terror. We’re tired of being robbed of our religious rights in our own land. We’re tired of being bullied by this foreign Arab terrorist implant and we’re tired of being bullied by Biden and his minions.

But we’re most of all tired of dying. Which means that Lapid isn’t going to get his wish. Ben Gvir went to the Temple Mount and nothing happened. The Arabs are afraid of him, and that’s how it should be. That’s how we make Israel safe. It’s how you make sure that people won’t die, chas v’shalom and lo aleinu, but live to be a light unto the nations, Am Yisrael Chai.

The people of Israel live.

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!

From the official Palestinian Wafa news agency:

A Palestinian who was earlier shot and injured by Israeli soldiers in the south of the West Bank has died of his wounds, according to the Ministry of Health.

It said the Civil Affairs Authority had informed it that Sanad Mohammad Samasra, 19, from the Hebron district town of Dahriyeh, who was critically injured when he was shot near the illegal settlement of Havat Yahuda, south of the city of Hebron, has died.

Another senseless murder by the evil occupation.

Hamas tells the story a little differently:

A young man was killed, this evening, Wednesday, after carrying out a heroic stabbing attack that injured a settler near the town of Samou, south of Hebron.

The Ministry of Health announced the martyrdom of the young man, Sanad Muhammad Othman Samamreh, from Al-Dhahiriya, after he was shot by the Israeli occupation after carrying out a stabbing operation near the "Havat Yehuda" settlement, south of Hebron.

Martyr Samamreh carried out a stabbing operation in the "Havat Yehuda" settlement, and inflicted several stab wounds on the head and neck of the settler, injuring him with moderate and serious injuries. The occupation soldiers shot Samamreh, who was critically wounded, and later announced his death.

This is the usual pattern - the PA positions Palestinians as victims and don't mention why they may have been killed, while the terror groups boast about their attacks.

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!

01/11 Links Pt1: The Real Reasons for Europe's Demonization of Netanyahu; Saudi leaders tell Jewish group they’re ready to normalize with Israel, but first need to normalize with US

From Ian:

Too Far Right—and Too Jewish : The Real Reasons for Europe's Demonization of Netanyahu

In the liberal media and among the intelligentsia and the European political class there reigns an untroubled unanimity on the subject of Israel: it is no longer a democracy because its new government is of the Right. Too far to the right. I have no particular sympathy for Benjamin Netanyahu, but I must observe that the manner of his election was perfectly legitimate. Nor have I any sympathy—far from it—for the extremist Jewish parties that have entered into the government coalition, but they, too, were elected. Thus, I cannot see on what grounds the objecting Europeans allow themselves to denounce Israeli democracy. I am reminded of a famous proposal by Bertolt Brecht: “Since the people vote against the government, the people must be dissolved.” As it happens, a majority of Israelis consider themselves represented in Netanyahu’s new government, and the minority will take back power in a few more years. Such are the mechanics of universal suffrage.

Therefore, before diabolizing Netanyahu, Europe’s finest should ask themselves about his repeated electoral successes and record for longevity, both of which bring to mind Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, and José María Aznar. The voters know what they’re doing: under Netanyahu, Israelis have experienced their greatest security, and never has their economy been more prosperous. It was thus not by chance that Netanyahu was reelected, but as a reward for his success and his good fortune (in politics, luck and success are indissociable). Has he threatened democracy in the past, and will he distort it this time in order to please his integralist allies? This may be doubted, since the person who could make the Israelis shut up would not be of this world. The Hebrews quarreled with God; the Jews argue ceaselessly among themselves, and that includes the Israelis. The media are free and will remain so, as are the parties and the judges. The Israeli army does not accept orders from without. As for the rabbis, there are as many points of view among them as there are synagogues.

What, then, is the source of this Western condemnation of the new Israeli government and these dark prophecies concerning democracy? First, there is ignorance. What European scribbler inquires into the problems Netanyahu faces? We prefer to condemn him from afar, for fear of being contradicted by reality. But let’s state the essential: the despair displayed by the European Left comes from the fact that its adherents judge Israel from the standpoint of the Palestinians. It’s true that Netanyahu and his allies don’t believe in the viability of a Palestinian state; the Israeli government is not the Palestinian government, and it defends the interests of Israelis before those of the Palestinians. We may bemoan the fate of the Palestinians, but whose responsibility is that, really? In 1947, the United Nations divided Palestine into two territories, one Jewish and the other Arab. Who is it that refused this division into two states, as demanded today by the Arabs, the Palestinians, and the “international community”? From the moment of the UN’s announcement of the partition, the Arab armies of Jordan, Syria, and Egypt attacked the Israeli colonies. The Israelis of that day, against all expectations, much like today’s Ukrainians, resisted and conquered a territory larger than what the UN had assigned. Since then, the Arabs have never ceased attacking Israel, including launching wars in 1967 and in 1973. They have lost every time.

Gil Troy: Israel's democracy is fine - beware Left, Right doom-and-gloomers

Just as bullies overstep when unrestrained in schoolyards, political thugs overstep, too. Israel is neither “Haredi-stan” nor “Putin-grad.” Imposing a narrow vision of Judaism and Israeli security on a majority with different views risks triggering a backlash. Likud voters won’t stand in traffic on Sunday so haredim can boast about ending railroad repairs on Saturday. Israeli taxpayers won’t bankrupt themselves to subsidize freeloaders. And most Israelis – including the prime minister – prefer building ties to the United Arab Emirates to humiliating Palestinians unnecessarily. Ultimately, arrogant excesses could end the ultra-right and ultra-religious dominance in politics rather than cementing it.

The Left won’t benefit from the backlash if liberals treat every coalition proposal as a contract kill targeting Israel’s soul. Liberals fear an aggressive majority imposing a vision of Israel on all Israelis. That nightmare reflects deep insecurity, ignoring the many social, cultural and political revolutions that have modernized, diversified and democratized Israel, even without judicial intervention. The totalitarian, socialist Johnny-one-note Israel of the Left-dominated 1950s no longer exists. Israelis have different lifestyles, tribal affiliations and ideologies while remaining far more intertwined and united than most Westerners.

Just as democratic Israel wasn’t built overnight, it can’t be dismantled so easily. From the sacred right to denounce the government, to ever-expanding minority civil liberties and growing public profiles, Israel’s democracy is far more resilient today than ever. That was the message Benjamin Netanyahu broadcast and most foreign reporters overlooked when he allowed Amir Ohana’s LGBTQ+ family to upstage his return to power.

Ultimately, Israel’s on-the-ground realities should calm the panic-mongers on the Left and the Right. Listen to the song of the Israeli street and see how Israelis live day-to-day. Taste the freedoms we take for granted but won’t relinquish easily and feel our eternal, transcendent sense of community uniting us in so many ways, despite our passing political divides.

We cannot be complacent. The powerful, sometimes countervailing forces that keep Israel alive and thriving as a Jewish-democratic state require constant maintenance and updating. But we secure our future by trying to understand our fellow citizens’ fears, compromising when possible and accepting losses along with victories as necessary while trusting the historical processes and enduring Jewish-democratic values that sustain us.

Ruthie Blum: An Israel Prize laureate’s anti-government stance reveals a sinister view of the Jewish state

Gently reminded that the public opted for this government and the policies it promised to implement, he stated, “I say to the public, ‘Pardon me, you determine who your representatives in the parliament are; you don’t determine what democracy is [just as] you don’t determine what constitutes proper medicine or successful science. … Your role in a democracy is to elect your representatives in the parliament, which elects the government. You don’t have a mandate to tell us what democracy is.”

Even the liberal interviewer sounded uncomfortable with that bit. Her ill ease didn’t put a dent in his train of thought, however. Instead, it guided the conversation to a disparagement of the Israeli populace as a whole—excepting the elitist minority that deems itself better equipped intellectually to rule the roost from on high.

“If we were actually to ask the people, in a ballot, what they think about freedom of speech for Arabs, freedom of movement for LGBTQs and especially freedom for women to live as they please, we’d get a terrible picture,” he argued. “[This is why] we don’t ask the people what civil rights are. We ask them only to select the representatives who have to reach collective decisions for them.”

Never mind that the public actually did cast its ballot, a mere two and a half months ago, in a—yes, truly democratic—election. In his eyes, the rest of the bloc to which he belongs must “take to the streets” to counteract the undesirable result.

“I’m not saying that they should break the law while doing that; I’m telling them to abide by the law in the meantime. … [T]hink of Russia, Poland and Hungary, during their communist regimes. Does a citizen have to obey a totalitarian law?”

Kasher’s epithets and accusations—among them “mutations of the Jewish people,” “dictatorial nationalism,” “haredi parasitism” and “moral collapse”—would make a BDS activist salivate. They also meet the criteria of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “working definition” of antisemitism, adopted by dozens of countries, including Israel.

The IHRA specifies that one manifestation of what the late historian Robert Wistrich called the “longest hatred” is the “applying [of] double standards” to the Jewish state “by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

Kasher won’t be called out as an antisemite. Discrediting his attitude will have to suffice. And at least it’s on display for illustrative purposes.

Anti-Zionism is antisemitism: Israel haters upset UAE schools will teach about the Holocaust

i24News reports:

The United Arab Emirates Embassy in the United States has announced that the Holocaust will be taught in school curricula.

According to the embassy, the content of the studies on Nazi Germany's genocidal murder of six million Jews during World War II will be developed in collaboration with Israel's official Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and will be included in the curriculum of primary and secondary school students.

This news is upsetting Arab haters of Israel.

The UK-based Al Quds site didn't directly criticize it - but it framed it this way:

Coinciding with the occupation’s violation of the sanctity of the Holy Mosque, and the escalation of attacks and threats against the Palestinian people, the UAE announced the inclusion of Holocaust studies in the educational curricula within its schools...

Hamas strongly condemned the announcement.

Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary-General in Lebanon, Sheikh Naim Qassem, tweeted his disapproval, implying that the Holocaust was not nearly as bad as what Israel does, and warning the UAE that "You will not benefit from appeasing the Israeli entity to obtain protection, they are moving towards annihilation."

The subtext is that teaching the Holocaust could make Arabs sympathetic to Jews, and this is unacceptable.

I expected more criticism, to be honest. But the Arabic op-ed cycle often takes a couple of days to get geared up.

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The classic definition of chutzpah is someone murdering his parents and then throwing himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.

The EU has just hit that high standard:

The European Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarcic, said this weekend that Israel must pay reparations for structures it demolishes in the West Bank that were built with EU funding.

Lenarcic's remarks were in response to 24 European Parliament members who contacted the commission following Israel's intention to demolish dozens of houses in the West Bank villages of the Masafer Yatta area that were built with financial aid from the European Union or its member states.

"The European Union has repeatedly requested that Israel compensate for the loss of European taxpayers' money," members of parliament wrote to Lenarcic, adding that the commission itself confessed that its diplomatic requests to Israel were ineffective.

Lenarcic responded that "in a number of incidents, Israel has been asked to return or compensate for assets financed by the Union that that were destroyed, dismantled, or confiscated," and that the European Union is continuing to work in this regard through a range of diplomatic and political channels.

This is like demanding compensation from the police for confiscating the car you stole.

The EU-funded buildings are built illegally. Not only under Israeli law - but under international law!

Even if you call Area C "occupied," the occupier is mandated by the Geneva Conventions to maintain a system of laws in the territory. These buildings are built in violation of planning and zoning laws, haphazardly, almost always on public/state lands, with no roads and often stealing water. It is like deciding to build a house in the middle of Yellowstone National Park.

I've seen these structures first-hand, proudly displaying the EU flag.

The EU deliberately builds them in Area C, in areas that no Arabs or Bedoun have ever lived, in order to steal land from use by Israel. They move Arabs from Areas A and B, and bus students from those areas to schools they build in Area C. It is land theft.

And these illegal buildings are popping all over.

I once made an animation showing one brand new village in the Judean desert, funded by the EU and NGOs, and how it has been growing based on satellite images.

There is no infrastructure. With full EU support, the Arabs grab land, build shacks, and then claim that these are their ancient homesteads.

As The Daily Mail reported in 2015:

Alan Baker, an international lawyer who took part in drafting the Oslo Accords in the Nineties, said that the EU’s actions were illegal.

‘The EU is a signatory to the Oslo Accords, so they cannot pick and choose when they recognise it,’ he said.

‘According to international law, all building in Area C must have permission from Israel, whether it is temporary or permanent.

‘The same principle applies anywhere in the world. If you want to build, you need planning permission.

‘The EU is ignoring international law and taking concrete steps to influence the facts on the ground.’

If there is any problem here, it is that Israel has not been pro-active enough in destroying the illegal buildings, empowering the Palestinians and the EU to keep building against international law.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The third Negev Forum met this week in Abu Dhabi.

The forum has participants from the United States, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco as well as Egypt.

The goal of the forum is to advance multilateral projects in the fields of health, regional security, education, water and food security, tourism and energy. It is not a peace summit - it is very focused on specific mutual interests to countries in the Middle East, to benefit all.

The US tried to get Palestinians to join the meeting. They refused. And Jordan said that they won't attend unless the Palestinians do.

Now, why won't the Palestinians attend? Certainly they could benefit from talks about health, water and energy. According to Arab News, the reason they refuse is "Palestinians view the forum as an attempt to sideline its key demands of independence and an end to the Israeli occupation."

But that is not what the forum is about.

The only way the Palestinian refusal makes sense is if you understand the Palestinian mindset.

They have joined lots of international forums - but, invariably, they use those platforms to attack Israel. Whether it is about the world's oceans, or climate, or women, or the disabled, the Palestinians enthusiastically join - and then the entire session grinds to a halt as a Palestinian representative uses his allotted time to bash Israel.

To them, these conferences not a means to join the world community as an equal member. They aren't for information exchange. They aren't to work together to solve problems. To Palestinians, international foraare arenas of war, nothing more.

But the Negev Forum accepts Israel as a permanent part of the Middle East. It isn't marginalized - it is a key player. And the Palestinians cannot stomach the idea that Israel itself is considered legitimate.

Palestinians cannot hijack this conference. So boycotting, and shaming Jordan to do the same, it meant to somehow injure the conference altogether.

This has nothing to do with settlements, or human rights, or international law. The Palestinians refuse to attend a regional forum where they would benefit because it accepts Israel's existence - and Palestinian leaders still hope Israel will disappear.

Their childish behavior here is further proof that they have no interest in peace or becoming a responsible state. The entire purpose of the Palestinian national movement has always been the destruction of Israel. And they think that boycotting this event helps that goal in a tiny, tiny way.

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

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Read all about it here!

01/10 Links Pt2: Israel at 75: The ancient love story between the Jewish people and their homeland; Media Breathe New Life Into Ken Roth’s Twisted Anti-Israel Conspiracies

From Ian:

Gil Troy: Israel at 75: The ancient love story between the Jewish people and their homeland

Seven Arab armies attacked. Starting with only a population of 600,000, Israel would lose 6,000 people. By the 1949 truce, Israel had secured more defensible borders, while 700,000 Arabs fled their homes — some voluntarily, awaiting victory; others in fear.

Israel’s War of Independence established this old-new state. Despite the war’s distractions, Ben-Gurion made another fateful decision: overruling his economic advisers, again, he welcomed every Jew who wished to immigrate.

Arab hostility throughout the Muslim lands and North Africa soon triggered an exodus of 850,000 Jews from Arab countries. These Jewish refugees became Israeli citizens on arrival — stabilizing the state the Arabs had tried to destroy.

Seventy-five years after these epoch-making events, it’s important to remember that life in Israel has often been stressful. Since 1948, Israel has had to overcome numerous challenges.

While full peace remains elusive, since Israel won the Yom Kippur War in 1973, no Arab army has attacked Israel. The once-monolithic Israeli-Arab conflict is now a series of conflicts, largely due to peace treaties signed with Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco.

Along the way, Israel solved its water shortage, developed from a poor, primitive economy into a high-tech behemoth and ended its often vulgar and macho clubby culture. Although bigotry never fully disappears, the initial hostility against the Jews from Arab lands, the “Mizrachim,” has abated, and Arab-Israelis, who were under military rule until 1966, have now built a thriving middle class with full legal rights.

Ultimately, the instability that had Israelis before the 1967 war joking that, the last person fleeing the country should “turn off the lights” at the airport, is no more.

Zionism can also toast seven miraculous Israeli achievements. First, after millennia of homelessness, the Jews re-established sovereignty over their homeland. Second, Israel has integrated three-million immigrants since 1948, mostly refugees fleeing from persecution in post-Nazi Europe, the Arab lands, Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union.

Third, the Jews returned to history, as full participants, sometimes facing complex dilemmas, but no longer victims. Fourth, Israel’s western-style capitalist democracy maintains a strong Jewish flavour, expressed in the holidays, the traditions and the Jewish national culture, while guaranteeing all citizens equal rights.

Fifth, Herzl’s vision of “Altneuland,” old-new land, balances traditional values with trend-setting culture. Sixth, the once-dormant Hebrew language has become alive again. And finally, for all its challenges, Israel revolutionized the Jews’ image — and self-image — worldwide.

Israel remains a project-in-formation. Like Canada, Israel is one of the world’s few democracies, guaranteeing regular votes and permanent rights to every citizen. And for most Jews, especially Canadian Jews, Israel remains a favourite destination, a point of pride and their greatest collective endeavour in the world today.

‘A New Narrative’: Group Aims to Give Voice to Resilient Mizrahi Jewish Refugees

“When people learn that I am from Syria and I’m a Jew they look at me like I have 18 heads,” Abraham Hamra, a 35-year-old lawyer who fled with his family to America when he was a child, told The Algemeiner recently.

For generations, being Jewish in the United States has widely meant to be Ashkenazi. That’s an assumption Uprooted, an organization co-founded by Hamra earlier this year, is challenging. At a time of increasing antisemitism and anti-Zionism, Uprooted’s founders say raising representation for Jewish refugees from Arab countries and awareness of their harrowing personal stories can redefine the political discourse around Jews and Israel in the United States.

“We need to break that classification of Jew as this white man because that’s not a true classification,” Hamra, the president of Uprooted, said. “That’s one of the main goals; to really fight back and counter that ideology. Instead of just targeting every specific incident of antisemitism, we’re more focused on the root causes of antisemitism, which comes from a specific ideology. We see that it stems from this totally misconceived idea that that Jews are just white supremacist colonizers with no roots in the Middle East.”

Jewish presence in the Middle East and North Africa date back to more than 2,500 years ago but from what was once an estimated 1 million Jews living in North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf region, today less than 4,500 Jews remain in Arab countries, figures show. Between 1948 — when the state of Israel was founded — and the early 1970s, an estimated 850,000 to 1,000,000 Jews from Arab countries were forced to flee after waves of pogroms and relentless government repression against Jews. It is this tragic history which the group says it wants to share with the world.

“I wanted a group that is made up of Jews that are themselves from Arab countries and were themselves refugees, and of children of Jewish refugees from Arab countries,”said Rabbi Elie Abadie, a Lebanese Jew who is Uprooted’s spiritual leader and also serves as the chief rabbi of the United Arab Emirates. “Uprooted will be a personal and family story of people that themselves experienced the exile and the persecution from Arab countries.”

Jewish Soldiers Helped Liberate Palestine From the Ottoman Empire

The saga begins in 1915 when the Zion Mule Corps was created to deliver desperately needed supplies to the troops trying to dislodge the Turks at Gallipoli. The Corps was made up of 737 volunteers, largely Russian-Jewish refugees in Egypt, who were expelled from Palestine by the Turks. The first independent Jewish fighting force in well over a millennium, it was commanded by Lt Col John Henry Patterson, an Irish Protestant who sympathized with the Zionist cause. His second in command was Josef Trumpeldor, a Russian Jew of who served with distinction (and lost an arm) in the Russo-Japanese War. (In 1920 Trumpeldor was killed defending Tel Hai in northern Galilee.) The Corps was evacuated from Gallipoli with other Allied forces. By then, fourteen men were killed and 60 were injured, including Trumpeldor.

The second part of the story took place in 1917 and 1918 when Jewish soldiers, again commanded by Patterson, participated in Allenby’s assault on Palestine. The Jewish Legion was the unofficial name given to five battalions of Jewish volunteers; battalions 38 to 42 of the Royal Fusiliers, a line infantry regiment of the British Army. Initially it included former members of the Zion Mule Corps a well as British and Russian Jews. Later, they were joined by a battalion made up largely of volunteers from the US and Canada. This battalion, which trained in Canada (at Fort Edwards, Nova Scotia), included David Ben-Gurion, the future Prime Minister of Israel.

The five battalions, amounted to a significant force of 5000, about the size of a brigade. They participated in battles north of Jerusalem, at Megiddo, as well as on the east bank of the Jordan River. Close to 100 men were killed or died from malaria. With the end of the war, the force was reduced to one battalion, titled First Judeans, and then disbanded. Some members stayed and founded, a moshav, Avihayil, in central Israel.

Colonel Patterson continued to support the Zionist cause and the Jewish people for the rest of his life. Before he died (in Los Angeles in 1947) he asked that his remains be transferred to Israel to be close to the men of the Legion, and in 2014 his remains were reinterred in the cemetery at Avihayal.

In The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926), Lawrence himself noted that to Allenby the Arab Revolt was merely a sideshow. The Arab fighters never saw action in Palestine itself and the Revolt may have involved only a few hundred Bedouin.

It was the British Army, including a significant contingent of well-trained Jewish soldiers, that liberated Palestine from the Turks.

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

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Someone complained about one of my @KenRoth tweets to Twitter in Germany (update)

Ken Roth, formerly of Human Rights Watch, has been having a meltdown lately.

Over the summer, Harvard's Kennedy School did not offer him a fellowship, reportedly because rich Zionists who fund the school didn't like his record of crazed anti-Israel tweets and reports.

We have no information about whether this is really the reason. But Roth is pushing that narrative as mentioned in the original Nation article about this non-story.

As a propagandist, Roth waited until he could get media coverage for the insult to his vaunted expertise and now he is tweeting about the supposed loss of "academic freedom" that this represents - now that he has found another fellowship at another Ivy League school.

He's been tweeting constantly about this.

Anyway, I responded to one of his tweets where he demeaned anyone who called out his anti-Israel obsession as a form of antisemitism:

So Roth, or one of his German fans, tried to show how much they care about freedom of speech by reporting me to Twitter!

I received an email:

Hello,

Twitter is required by German law to provide notice to users who are reported by people from Germany via the Network Enforcement Act reporting flow.

We have received a complaint regarding your account, elderofziyon, for the following content:

Reported Tweet

@KenRoth We're not idiots, Ken. We know what human rights advocacy looks like. We know what "criticism of Israel" looks like. And we know what antisemitism looks like.

Your obsessive hate for Israel (and even now, blaming rich Jews for not getting the Harvard gig) is antisemitism.

We have investigated the reported content and have found that it is not subject to removal under the Twitter Rules (https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311) or German law.

Sincerely,
Twitter ------------------------------------------------------

Roth would post every single time someone complained to Twitter about one of his tweets, pretending he is a champion of free speech and evil Zionists were trying to silence him. (Even though Human Rights Watch under him banned me from their Twitter feed!)

So....who is trying to silence me, and does Roth support them?

UPDATE: They complained about a second tweet of mine!

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!

01/10 Links Pt1: The perpetual dictator and the missing peace: The story of Mahmoud Abbas; Ambassador Nides’ delusions about Palestinian terrorism

From Ian:

Bassem Eid: The perpetual dictator and the missing peace: The story of Mahmoud Abbas

During these long 18-plus years, peace has eluded the region primarily through Abbas’s personal obstinance. In 2008, Abbas walked away from a third Israeli peace offer that would have relinquished Israeli control over the Old City, location of the holiest site in the Jewish faith, the Temple Mount. Under his rule, Palestinian public education and news media fully normalized and are even saturated in antisemitism, often featuring explicit calls for violence against Jews. Abbas’s public statements and speeches place all of the onus for peace on Israel, as the Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblatt succinctly wrote: “The Abbas approach should be rejected by the international community, not merely because of its bias against Israel, but also because it recycled the same-old ideas that have pushed Palestinians down the pointless loop of delegitimizing Israel rather than the hard climb of reaching compromise.”

Over 2 million Palestinians live under the tyrannical power of Abbas’s PA in the West Bank, including me and many of the people I care most about. Abbas is the real occupier of our cities and our homeland, not our future partner Israel, which has consistently had a majority in favor of peace and not Benjamin Netanyahu, a leader who has explicitly supported the idea of a Palestinian state so long as Israel maintains the necessary security controls.

Abbas has offered us neither democracy nor independence, but we remain a free people. It is time for the Palestinian nation to reach a new agreement with Israel and the international community, abolishing the dictatorial rule of Abbas and the PLO and instead granting our people what we truly deserve: peace with dignity alongside our neighbor, the Jewish State of Israel.

Netanyahu government breaks sharply with predecessor in dealings with PA

On Jan. 5, Israel’s Security Cabinet approved a series of retaliatory measures against the Palestinian Authority. These included sanctions against senior Palestinian officials, the withholding of Palestinian funds collected by Israel and a halt to illegal Palestinian construction in Area C of Judea and Samaria.

The measures were swiftly implemented: Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki, on returning from a trip to Europe, found himself waiting in line at the Allenby Bridge crossing after Israel stripped him of his VIP pass. On Sunday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced the transfer of $40 million in confiscated Palestinian funds to Israeli victims of terrorism, money that would have gone to support terrorists had it reached P.A. hands.

“The difference that we’re seeing, the actions of the government on all fronts, is really quite substantial,” IDF Lt. Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, director of legal strategies for Palestinian Media Watch, told JNS.

The measures, coming less than two weeks into the tenure of the country’s new government, are partly a response to the P.A.’s orchestration of a vote at the United Nations on Dec. 30 calling on the International Court of Justice to render an opinion on the legal status of Judea and Samaria. (Al-Maliki’s VIP pass was reportedly confiscated because of a meeting he had at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.)

“What the government did is focus on punishing the P.A. leadership. The government is saying that there’s a cost and a consequence for these actions,” said Hirsch. “P.A. subversion at the United Nations is a complete and utter breach of the Oslo Accords. The VIP permits are a function of the Accords. There’s no reason why we should have to continue as if nothing happened. They have to pay the price,” he added.

Israel’s move to freeze taxes and tariffs it collects on behalf of the P.A.—and which the P.A. uses to award terrorists and their families as part of its “pay-for-slay” program—is also a welcome decision, according to Hirsch. An Israeli law to withhold the funds has been on the books since 2017, but only half-heartedly enforced, he noted. “This will be particularly effective and forceful with the P.A.,” he said, as it will cost them 100 million shekels ($28 million) a month.

US: Israel’s Withholding of Funds over Palestinian Terrorism ‘Exacerbates Tensions’

US State Department spokesman Ned Price on Monday described a series of Israeli measures meant to curb and punish Palestinian terrorism as a “unilateral move” that “exacerbates tensions.”

Israel’s Security Cabinet last week approved the measures in response to what it described as the Palestinian Authority’s ongoing “political and legal war” against the Jewish state. The previous week, the U.N. General Assembly, at the urging of the P.A., passed a resolution calling on the International Court of Justice to “render urgently an advisory opinion” on Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory.”

“We have continued to make the point that unilateral actions that threaten the viability of a two-state solution, unilateral actions that only exacerbate tensions—those are not in the interests of a negotiated two-state solution,” said Price.

He added that Washington has “been consistent in our own strong opposition to the request for an ICJ advisory opinion concerning Israel…. We believe this action was counterproductive.”

As part of the measures, Israel on Sunday transferred $39.5 million of taxes and tariffs collected for the P.A. to the victims of terrorism and their families.

At a press conference, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “We promised to fix this, and today we are correcting an injustice. This is an important day for morality, for justice and for the fight against terrorism. There is no greater justice than offsetting the funds of the Authority, which acts to support terrorism, and transferring them to the families of the victims of terrorism.”

Palestinian Prime Minister calls new Israeli sanctions 'final nail in the coffin'

.@USAmbIsrael Tom Nides gets it exactly wrong

In a recent interview in Hamodia, US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides said, when asked about a recent poll that showed 72% of Palestinians support terror groups like Lion's Den, "I firmly believe, and you might disagree with me, but the vast, vast majority among the average Palestinians doesn’t wake up in the morning wanting to kill someone who happens to be Jewish. They want to live just like you and I do."

Stephen Flatow responded quite nicely in JNS to this.

I would like to add my own observations.

Nides was careful in his words. He didn't say that the vast majority of Palestinians don't support terror, only that most of them don't want to personally kill Jews.

I've been closely following Palestinian polls for over 15 years. I suspect Nides knows that polls show consistently over the years that a majority of Palestinians support terror attacks as part of a strategy to gain independence. Those questions are asked in the abstract.

But when Palestinians are asked about specific terror attacks, support goes way up.

In 2008, a terrorist entered the Mercaz Harav yeshiva and started mowing down students. 8 were killed, including 4 children. When Palestinians were asked if they supported that attack, an astonishing 84% said they did.

You can see how Palestinians consistently support specific terror attacks that murder Jews more than general attacks in the abstract from that March 2008 poll.

This is more than simply supporting terror for political gain. This is bloodlust against Jews.

Nothing has changed since then. In 2014, after a string of stabbing attacks including the massacre of four rabbis in Har Nof, not only were celebrations shown on Palestinian TV. A survey shortly after the event asked, "Recently there has been an increase in Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank in attempts to stab or run over Israelis. Do you support or oppose these attempts?" Four out of five Palestinians supported murdering Jews, and one in three emphasized that they strongly support such attacks.

Although the media and government officials try hard to wave this away, the truth is in these surveys.

It goes beyond that. You will never find a Palestinian official on Arabic TV condemning these attacks - besides when Mahmoud Abbas is pressured to do so by the US. On the contrary, the murderers are "martyrs" and "heroes," virtually every time.

Do well-meaning lies and obfuscations from people like Nides, and New York Times reporters, and Europeans, help the cause of peace? No, they don't. When the West gives Palestinians who support terror the benefit of the doubt, they learn an important lesson: that the West is on their side. By downplaying explicit and overwhelming Palestinian support for terror, they leaves the door open for "human rights" groups and Western parliaments to demonize Israel as the obstacle to peace, and the Palestinians as hapless, defenseless victims.

This emboldens the terrorists and results in more dead people on both sides.

It is important to note that Gulf countries, in Arabic, have been criticizing Palestinians for nearly a decade now, even as their own support for suicide terror has plummeted in other surveys. The Abraham Accords is in no small part a result of a refreshing honesty in parts of the Arab world about the real situation.

The West needs to stop its default stance of "don't upset the Palestinians." It hasn't worked and it has empowered them to be more intransigent, thinking that the West is doing their bidding.

Palestinians live in an honor/shame society. Therefore, upsetting them is exactly what needs to be done. Palestinians must be shamed into stopping support for terror in their schools and media.

If Tom Nides really wants peace, that is the most effective tool he has.

Coddling and covering up Palestinian support for terror does the exact opposite - and we see how well that has worked.

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!