Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, February 18, 2023

02/18 Links: Blinken speaks with Abbas as US works to block UN resolution on Israeli settlements; Israel Denounces ‘Severe’ Incident of Diplomat’s Expulsion from African Union Summit

From Ian:

Draft UN resolution demands end to Israeli settlements

A draft U.N. resolution that the Associated Press obtained demands an immediate halt to all Israeli settlement activities, condemning Israeli attempts to annex settlements and outposts and calling for their reversal. The Palestinian-backed resolution could be put to a vote as early as next week.

The new resolution comes as Israel’s government reaffirmed its commitment to legalize nine communities in Judea and Samaria in the wake of last week’s deadly terrorist attack in Jerusalem. The victims were identified as Yaakov Israel Paley, 6; his brother Asher Menachem, 8; and Alter Shlomo Lederman, 20.

At the same time, Israel’s government has announced plans to advance nearly 10,000 housing units in Judea and Samaria following a string of terrorist attacks, which claimed 10 Israeli lives in the past several weeks.

“The introduction of this resolution is unhelpful in supporting the conditions necessary to advance negotiations for a two-state solution,” Vedant Patel, deputy U.S. State Department spokesman, told reporters in Washington on Thursday. Patel added that Israel’s decision to expand settlements and legalize those communities was also “unhelpful.”

Supporters of the resolution want a vote on Monday ahead of the year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Starting on Wednesday, this period will be marked by several days of high-level activities.

The resolution was introduced and supported by the United Arab Emirates, which normalized relations with Israel more than two years ago and has taken a tepid stance on opposing Russia’s war with Ukraine.

The United States will look to the United Arab Emirates and other council members to vote in favor of a U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning Russia for invading Ukraine and calling for an immediate withdrawal of all Russian forces.

Blinken speaks with Abbas as US works to block UN resolution on Israeli settlements

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken phoned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday, as Washington seeks to thwart a Ramallah-backed UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate halt to Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank.

The Security Council resolution has placed the US in an uncomfortable position, as it too has spoken out aggressively against last Sunday’s decision by Israel to legalize nine outposts in the West Bank and advance plans for some 10,000 new settlement homes, the largest-ever package to be green-lit in one sitting.

Additionally, the Biden administration has maintained that vetoes at the UN Security Council should be used sparingly and has been critical of Russia’s efforts to block consensus-backed initiatives over the past year. Vetoing this measure, which includes a condemnation of steps toward annexation by Israel — such as outpost legalizations, would put them at odds with countries it has asked to back UN resolutions against Russia for annexing Ukrainian lands.

However, the US has also said the UN is not the correct forum for adjudicating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has been critical of member states’ disproportionate and sometimes biased approach on the issue.

The Palestinian readout of the Saturday phone call said Abbas briefed Blinken on his office’s involvement in the Security Council initiative, which was drafted by the United Arab Emirates, the Arab League’s representative on the top UN panel.

Abbas said the UN effort was “a result of Israel’s insistence on violating signed agreements” and “underscored the need for Israel to stop all unilateral measures, including settlement construction, home demolitions, raids on cities and villages and the extrajudicial killings of Palestinians,” according to the PA readout.

The PA president urged the US to “immediately and effectively intervene to press Israel to stop all these dangerous measures” to ensure the continued prospect of a two-state solution, his office said. It added that Blinken assured Abbas that he would reach out to the Israeli government “in an effort to stop the unilateral Israeli actions on the ground.”

The State Department later released a readout saying Blinken stressed “the US commitment to a negotiated two-state solution and opposition to policies that endanger its viability.”

Seth Frantzman: Is rising terror in Israel a sign of a new Palestinian intifada?

The most violent year in the West Bank since 2005
The last year has been described as the most violent in the West Bank since the UN began recording data on Israel-Palestinian clashes in 2005. It’s important to note here that this data point is well crafted to provide a headline because actually, the conflict is not more violent today than in conflicts such as the 2009 war in Gaza.

However, by looking solely at the West Bank, it is indeed violent. This has come about primarily due to the rise of Islamic Jihad in Jenin, gangs and militias in Nablus, as well as armed groups in Jericho. These seem to be men who are well armed thanks to arms trafficking in the West Bank.

The men all have M-16s, and while some may be relatives of members of Fatah or may have allegiance to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the overall trend is that armed gangs and militias, mafias and militants are taking over one Palestinian city after another.

THE ARMS flow in the West Bank has gone on for decades, but recent years have apparently seen a surge in the flow of M-16s, the same type of rifle used by Israel and the US. Where do the weapons all come from? It’s not entirely clear, but the fact is that almost every Palestinian gunman killed in recent clashes with Israeli forces has been pictured with an M-16, usually in “martyr” photos published posthumously by supporters.

Attacks continue even with efforts to take the wind out of their sails
The M-16 generation of terrorist militias/gangs/mafias rising in the West Bank is a generation that was born after the Second Intifada began. That means they have no real memory of the brutal fighting that marked that era. They don’t remember the siege of the Muqata of the church in Bethlehem, the shooting from Beit Jala or the battle of Jenin.

They have only stories, and unlike the previous generations, they grew up entirely sealed off from Israel. This is because the security barrier was built when they were very young. Unlike their parents, they never met Israelis in a normal setting and didn’t likely work in Israel. They are the fruits of Oslo and the bizarre “peace” of the 1990s.

The fighters Israel is confronting and those involved in attacks today are also children of another phenomenon. They are not well trained because Israel dismantled the terror infrastructure of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

02/17 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Can the whole world be wrong?; BDS shares concentration camp photo, claims it's a massacre of Palestinians; Abu Dhabi’s new ‘Abrahamic Family House’

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Can the whole world be wrong?

One of the mysteries of the war against Israel is the extent to which a monstrously twisted narrative about Israel and the Palestinian Arabs — casting the former as evil and the latter as sanctified victims — has been absorbed by so many people.

Still stranger, this narrative seems to be the driver of progressive politics. It’s not just that “intersectionality” demonises the Jews, but that it is driven by an obsession with Palestinianism.

As Corinne Blacker wrote in Tablet: “In queer and women’s studies programs, the topic of Palestine is regularly inserted into the most unlikely contexts, to the extent that one student in a class about queer history told me that they discussed nothing but Palestine.”

The astonishing story of Mohammed al-Durah illustrates just how perverse this is. On Sept. 30, 2000, the French TV station France 2 broadcast footage from Gaza that apparently showed the 12-year-old al-Durah being shot dead by Israeli fire as he clung to his father during a demonstration.

This iconic picture detonated the second intifada, the Palestinian terrorist war waged against Israeli civilians that murdered more than 1,130 of them and wounded more than 8,000 between 2000 and 2005. The footage incited hysteria across the Arab and Muslim world.

Eleven days later, when two Israeli reservists strayed into Ramallah, a mob beat them to death. They threw one body out of a window, mutilating it and parading it through the streets. A gloating Palestinian Arab was pictured waving his hands in the air covered in the Israelis’ blood while the mob screamed “revenge for the blood of Muhammad al-Durah!”

One year later, at the UN’s sickening anti-Jewish hate-fest in Durban, South Africa, Mohammad al-Durah’s body was paraded in effigy among thousands of demonstrators screaming hatred of Israel. Then Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was beheaded by al-Qaeda explicitly for the killing of the child.

The whole al-Durah killing, however, was a set-up and a grotesque lie. As I saw in a Paris courtroom in 2007, previously unseen French TV footage showed that the scenes of battle had been staged with cameras, producers and even make-up technicians visible in a carnival atmosphere.

Palestinian “demonstrators” were laid out on stretchers and carted off to ambulances. But there was no blood or evidence of injuries whatsoever, not even on Mohammad al-Durah, with the boy peeping through his fingers moments after a reporter announced he had been killed.

U.S.-Based NGO Claims Slain Palestinian Terrorists as ‘Theirs’

A U.S.-based nonprofit is holding rallies in major American cities to protest a recent Israeli Defense Forces counterterror operation, labeling it a “massacre.” The NGO, Al Awda has a long and troubling history of vocally supporting terrorist groups committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.

On Jan. 26, 2023, the IDF carried out an operation in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) town of Jenin. The raid, an IDF statement said, was to foil an imminent attack being planned by a cell of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

According to the Times of Israel, a local wing of PIJ claimed that its operatives shot IDF forces and used explosives. Nine Palestinians were killed, seven of whom were linked to terrorist groups, including al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. The other two were civilians, including a sixty-one-year-old woman named Magda Obaid. The shootout reportedly lasted three hours and left several IDF jeeps so damaged from explosives that tow trucks were required to remove them.

Within hours, the New York branch of Al Awda condemned the “massacre committed in the Jenin refugee camp.” The NGO’s Jan. 27, statement mourned “the nine martyrs” who were killed in the “Zionist massacre.” It was, Al Awda claimed, the latest “intensification of violence by the new, ultra-fascist Zionist regime.”

Al Awda omitted that the IDF was carrying out a counterterrorist operation to thwart an impending attack. Instead, the U.S.-based nonprofit proclaimed that it “honors the resistance fighters in Jenin.” Al Awda hailed what it referred to as “our fighters” and “our resistance people” who “used explosive devices, guided bombs and bullets leading to certain injuries among the occupation forces.”

“We, Al Awda NY, will not forget the role of President Biden, the U.S. Congress and all those who facilitate the endless flow of arms and financial support to the Zionist murder machine,” the group warned.

BDS shares concentration camp photo, claims it's a massacre of Palestinians

In a tweet shared on Twitter, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) claimed that they are displaying a photo where the so-called "Tantura Massacre" took place in 1948, but a Holocaust expert proved it was actually a Nazi concentration camp in Germany. The photo showed tens or possibly hundreds of corpses in a black and white photo, before being buried in a mass grave.

PACBI, a BDS-affiliated organization, tweeted that "the Palestinian Academy for Science & Technology calls on EMBO to relocate workshops from apartheid Israel, including the one at the site of the Tantura massacre." In the shared photo, it is claimed that a mass grave is underneath the parking lot next to the beach.

EMBO is an organization of more than 1,900 researchers "that promotes excellence in the life sciences in Europe and beyond," according to the organization's website.

"EMBO has a moral obligation to end its complicity in whitewashing Israel’s crimes," the PACBI tweet said.

Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli responded on Twitter to the matter "the racist BDS movement breaks a Guinness record, uses a picture from the German concentration camp of Nordhausen to lie about a fictional massacre during Israel's War of Independence. Holocaust distortion, appropriation and denial, further victimizing Jewish people. Pure evil."

A few Eldertoons for the weekend

All of the artwork by Stable Diffusion.

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02/17 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: How Biden subverts Israeli democracy; Col. Richard Kemp: Israel - Don’t give your enemies more ammo!; When Netanyahu Spoke to Congress

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: How Biden subverts Israeli democracy

The Movement for Quality Government (MQG) in Israel is the far-left organization at the epicenter of the Israeli left’s war against the Netanyahu government. MQG began its current campaign of delegitimization, subversion and demonization immediately after the Netanyahu government was sworn into office on Dec. 29. The next day, MQG petitioned the Supreme Court to prevent Shas leader Aryeh Deri from serving as a minister in the government.

There was no legal basis for the petition. But that didn’t bother the lawyers at MQG.

In its petition, MQG claimed that the terms of a plea deal Deri reached with the State Prosecution last year on tax reporting errors barred him from serving as a minister. Never mind that nothing in the plea deal stipulated anything of the sort or that 400,000 Israeli voters cast their ballots for Shas with the full expectation that Deri would serve as a senior minister.

Like MQG, the Supreme Court justices didn’t bother giving a legal basis for their decision to act on MQG’s petition and bar Deri from serving as a cabinet minister. The justices said Deri’s appointment was “unreasonable,” and with a stroke of a pen, the court retroactively disenfranchised Shas voters.

Building on its success, late last month MQG submitted a new petition asking the justices to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As in the case of Deri, MQG’s petition is based on a political rather than a legal argument. MQG argues that as a criminal defendant, Netanyahu is unfit to serve. The premier, MQG insists, is acting with a conflict of interest by overseeing judicial reforms while on trial. And as a result, the justices should declare him unfit and remove him from office.

Never mind that the justices have a conflict of interest since it is their powers the government’s proposed reforms would check. Never mind that in a bid to prevent politicized judges and prosecutors from overturning the will of the voters, the law explicitly permits prime ministers to serve not only while standing trial, but even if convicted. And never mind that the charges against Netanyahu have fallen apart in Jerusalem District Court.

Col. Richard Kemp: Israel - Don’t give your enemies more ammo!

After a recent visit to Israel both of us, we're deeply concerned by the unprecedented degree of tension and sheer animosity permeating the political arena.

As friends of Israel rather than Israeli citizens, we do not seek to intervene on any partisan basis, but to sound the alarm about the very real potential for Israel’s enemies to exploit the current rhetoric and do harm to the country as a whole.

Political polarization and confrontation are nothing new to us since they are trends now rooted in our own countries and across the Western world, from the U.S. to Italy. But our experience fighting successive attempts to delegitimize the State of Israel shows us that this country simply cannot afford the level of domestic political tensions that other democracies can go through. Israel has proven itself time and again to be the most resilient country in the world when it comes to physical warfare. But it is also subject to the most insidious political warfare — continuously under attack by international institutions such as the UN, EU and International Criminal Court (ICC) as well as a range of foreign governments, human rights bodies, academia and much of the world’s media.

It is in this realm that the current discourse and strife will be most damaging. For Israel to be strong, to prosper, to be a force for good in the region and the world, and to fend off incessant political warfare campaigns, it needs to be united in the basic questions, despite all the disagreements that may reasonably emerge around specific proposals and policies. That national unity is being eroded by the tone and conduct of the debate on reforms to the judiciary presented by the coalition government.

We have heard Israeli voices telling us that what is at stake is the survival of democracy in the country, if not dead already. We have been told that it is better not to make even a single concession than to try to reach an agreement. Such extremist attitudes are far from producing a better reform and come dangerously close to emboldening and even inciting Israel’s many international enemies.

Declaring democracy dead has consequences that go well beyond domestic politics. Over the years, both of us have been fighting all attempts made by Palestinian groups to indict Israeli soldiers and political leaders at the ICC, every effort made by the institutionally anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council to condemn Israel’s sovereign right to self-defense, and successive campaigns by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement as well as international bodies to wreck Israel’s economy.

Ruthie Blum: Israel’s vilified majority isn’t swayed by the protests

What do all the protesters have in common? They all dream of an Israel without Netanyahu
WHICH BRINGS us to what the protesters “of all stripes” really have in common, and it has nothing to do with the redistribution of power between the judicial and legislative branches of government. No, the shared vision of an otherwise disparate bunch of politicians, academics, artists, hi-tech entrepreneurs and physicians is an Israel without Netanyahu.

Some of the above groups and individuals are totally secular; others observant. Some consider themselves Zionists; others wouldn’t deign to hang an Israeli flag on Independence Day, but agree to carry one during demonstrations for show. Some identify as liberal; others as conservative. Some are city-dwellers; others live on kibbutzim or suburbs. Some are straight; others gay. Some are married; others single. Some are army officers; others view the IDF as a symbol of Israel’s “evil occupation.”

The diversity is genuine. The depiction of the disgruntled hordes as “Israelis from all walks of life,” thus, is accurate.

The disingenuousness lies in the contention that the hysteria exhibited by those citizens reflects a seismic shift in Election Day sentiment. The truth is that few, if any, of those taking to the streets and pounding the pavement outside the Knesset voted for Netanyahu’s Likud or its coalition partners.

In contrast, many among the angry throngs have been longtime “anybody but Bibi” activists horrified that their hopes to be rid of Netanyahu, specifically, and the religious Right, in general, were dashed. They’d been under the impression that the fifth round of elections was going to mimic the previous four.

And though they didn’t wish for another impasse, they thought it might force Netanyahu to vacate his seat, or that his party would push him aside. They certainly didn’t anticipate that their worst nightmare was about to materialize.

STILL, IT wasn’t judicial reform that they harped on; it was Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. Laser-beam focus on the two religious right-wingers was so constant that they became household names around the globe. Warnings poured in from world capitals that there would be no contact whatsoever with the dangerous duo.

The “homophobe” Avi Maoz then became a cause for frenzy. His highlighted infamy placed the imagined trampling of LGBTQ rights front and center. Again, judicial reform was barely mentioned.

Once those specks of dust had settled, the defeated camp turned its attention to Levin. Doing so infused energy, as well as cash, into the protest movement. It also riled up the international and American-Jewish communities, much to the delight of Israel’s enemies.

Unfortunately for Lapid, it hasn’t had the same effect on the fractured back benches of parliament. No wonder he’s so often AWOL from the plenum.

Meanwhile, the Right is busy working for the vilified “majority” that handed it the reins. No surveys about societal strife can obfuscate that fact.

Palestinian public school teachers in the West Bank have been on strike for eight days. There is no indication that the issue will be resolved any time soon.

The teachers have not received their full salaries for over a year because of the Palestinian Authority financial crisis, which comes from a combination of the reduction of aid from Arab countries and Israel's reducing the tax revenue paid to the PA equivalent to the amount they pay terrorists and their families.

Which proves that paying salaries to terrorists and their families is a higher priority than paying the full salaries of 38,000 teachers.

According to the Israel Defense And Security Forum, a convicted terrorist's salary is quadruple that of a typical teacher. A Palestinian terrorist who serves a life sentence in prison receives a salary that is four times higher than the average Palestinian income.

Terror is more important than educating kids.

But we already knew that. Mahmoud Abbas has said that if there was only one penny in his budget, it would go to pay terrorists and their families.

Keep in mind it is not only the government. As far as I can tell, Palestinians wholly support "pay for slay" and consider it to be a necessary social program.

Supporting terror is baked into Palestinian society.

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Earlier this week I discussed the death of Mahmoud al-Aidi, a 17-year old Palestinian who was killed by the IDF during clashes in the Al-Faraa camp.

The IDF said at the time that Aidi approached them with an explosive device as they were carrying out an arrest operation.

Palestinians have now created a memorial video, using security camera footage, showing Al-Aidi carrying that improvised explosive device - built out of what appears to be a propane tank - as he gets shot.

As usual, the IDF report was accurate.

And we have yet more evidence of Palestinian terror groups cynically recruiting and encouraging children to fight and be "martyred" for PR purposes - as "human rights groups" continue their silence.

(h/t GnasherJew and Joe Truzman)

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Arabic media are claiming that Israel purchased an island from Bahrain. Middle East Monitor has all the details:

Israel has reportedly "bought an island" from Bahrain, prompting criticism from activists opposed to the on-going normalisation between the two countries.

News of the purchase was initially announced by TV7 Israel News, before being removed after it was broadcasted, according to Al-Mayadeen. However, several social media users managed to screenshot the report before it was erased.

According to the report, Israeli firm Himnota, which is owned by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a "charitable" organisation that has long been used by the apartheid state for expropriating Palestinian lands and obfuscating Israel's war crimes, acquired the private island for $21.5 million in an auction.

The island, which measures 9,554 square metres, will be used for investment projects and could be used to evacuate Israelis in case of the outbreak of war. Avery Schneier, who is on the board of directors of the company, said talks will be held with the "friendly" Bahraini government to transfer sovereignty over the island to Israel.

It is strange to have a story with such details made up from scratch. One grain of truth in the story is that Bahrain indeed intends to sell an island and other properties at auction - but the auction hasn't happened yet. It is scheduled for February 28.

I also couldn't find the screenshots of the Israeli TV Channel 7 website that supposedly were captured on social media before it was taken down. The earliest I can find the story reported is from a Syrian "researcher" who did not link to anything, just the claim that it was from Israeli TV but he didn't say he watched it himself.

The story seems highly unlikely, to put it mildly.

UPDATE: Now Bahraini media is combining this rumor with a conspiracy theory that one of Bahrain's artificial islands is shaped like a Chanukah menorah and therefore has been designated from the start to be a Jewish/Zionist area.

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02/16 Links Pt2: Top Left-Wing Network Blocked From Credit Card Processor Over Ties to Palestinian Terror Group; Arkansas Legislature Passes IHRA Definition; Israel exports crude oil for first time

From Ian:

Top Left-Wing Network Blocked From Credit Card Processor Over Ties to Palestinian Terror Group

One of the nation’s most prominent left-wing dark money groups announced Tuesday that it was unable to process credit card payments, following reports of its ties to a Palestinian terrorist group.

The Alliance for Global Justice said in a statement that Salsa Labs, which handles its credit card contributions, locked the "anti-capitalist" group and its network of 140 left-wing initiatives out of its online fundraising platform. The Alliance claims the freeze-out is the result of a January Washington Examiner report that the group was illegally fundraising for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terror organization.

The move could prove financially calamitous for the Arizona-based group, which in 2021 helped raise over $56 million for the initiatives it sponsors. Discover Card blocked the Alliance from accessing its network in September 2021 over its financial ties to the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, an Israel-designated terror group that works to free Palestinians from the Israeli prison system.

Few fundraising tools remain on the table for Alliance as of Tuesday. The group asked supporters to "donate via paper checks" to buoy the group "as the enemies of the people gloat about our trouble."

The Zachor Legal Institute, a pro-Israel think tank that filed an IRS complaint in January against the Alliance for its alleged ties to the Popular Front, praised Salsa Labs for cutting ties with the group.

"We are happy to see that the platform provider for Alliance for Global Justice’s terror funding efforts has finally complied with its legal obligations to terminate unlawful uses of its platform," Zachor Legal Institute founder Marc Greendorfer told the Examiner. "We hope that there will also soon be federal action to put an end to the unlawful terror financing being enabled by Alliance for Global Justice."

UK Organizations Fundraise for Gazan Hamas Charity Run by Killers

A Hamas-run organization in the Gaza Strip managed by two terrorists personally responsible for the stabbing and bombing of Israeli civilians is organizing public events in the United Kingdom and receiving support from multiple British charities, an investigation by FWI has found.

The revelation comes just a week after the publication of the British government-commissioned Prevent review, which concluded that "those who fundraise for Hamas or break the law in support of the group's activities must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law," in the same manner as "those who support Islamic State, National Action, or other proscribed organisations."

FWI has identified five British groups funding or in partnership with the Qawafil Al-Khair Association, which two Hamas terrorists, Mansour Rayan and Ali Al-Mughrabi, established in 2015.

Rayan and Al-Mughrabi were released from Israeli jails in 2011 as part of the "Wafaa al-Ahrar" deal, Hamas's agreement with Israel for the return of imprisoned terrorists in exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli solider kidnapped by the terrorist organization.

Both Rayan and Al-Mughrabi have blood on their hands. In 1994, Rayan broke into the home of Israeli civilian Yoram Sakuri in the West Bank Israeli community of Kiryat Netafim, stabbing him to death, and wounding his wife.

As for Al-Mughrabi, he was part of a terrorist cell that organized multiple attacks in Israel, including the suicide bombing of the Moment café in Jerusalem in 2002, in which 11 were killed, and 54 injured. According to Haaretz, Al-Mughrabi served as a "right hand man" for his elder brother, the cell's leader. Al-Mughrabi "transferred funds, stole cars for [the] attacks and photographed the suicide bombers," for which he received two life sentences.

Israel exports crude oil for first time, with shipment heading for Europe

Israel has exported crude oil material for the first time, with a shipment headed to Europe from the country’s offshore Karish gas field, according to an announcement Tuesday by Greek gas company Energean. The London- and Tel Aviv-listed firm is in charge of production at the Karish and Tanin natural gas fields in Israel’s economic waters in the Mediterranean.

In a statement Tuesday, Energean said “the first ever lifting of an Israeli crude oil cargo has taken place at the company’s Karish field,” and a cargo ship of hydrocarbon gas liquids (HGLs) extracted from natural gas (and then used in a mixture to make crude oil) was exported to global markets “for the first time in the history of Israeli oil and gas production.”

“This creates a significant differentiated income stream, fundamentally separate to gas-derived revenues,” Energean said, welcoming Israel into the “club of international oil exporters.” The cargo was “sold as part of a multi-cargo marketing agreement with Vitol; the first of a new source of East Med energy to reach Europe,” it added.

Energean got the green light last October to begin production at Karish, a day before Israel and Lebanon signed a long-awaited, US-brokered maritime border deal that ended a dispute over the gas field.

The Karish and Tanin fields contain a total of around 75 billion cubic meters of natural gas. About 12 billion cubic meters are consumed annually in Israel.

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Cat Can't Believe It Wasted Sixth Life On Trying To Cross Betzalel St. (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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cat Jerusalem, February 16 - A local feline met its grisly demise today on a stretch of wet roadway where drivers often fail to spot the traffic signal in either direction, witnesses reported, causing the animal to regret at once the profligate use of one of its previous remaining incarnations in a fatal effort to reach a part of the neighborhood with more or less the same trash in and around the dumpsters as anywhere else in the country.

The intersection of Bezalel and Nissim Bachar Streets saw ramming death of a feral cat late Thursday morning when the driver of a car barreling westward down Betzalel disregarded or failed to discern a red light and did not spot the animal on its way across the busy road; its mangled carcass adorned the side of the rainy road for some hours afterwards, pending action by the municipality's sanitation department. While awaiting its third-to-last embodiment in a new corporeal entity of fur, claws, and at least one soon-to-be-missing eye, the creature's lifeforce acknowledged the stupidity of trying to cross the Nachlaot neighborhood's hazardous major central artery at its most hazardous transition spot, all for the dubious purpose of finding better scavenging in the trash piles of the north side than of the south.

"OK, that was dumb," the anima admitted. "Really, really dumb."

The cat-soul found the incident its most embarrassing demise yet in the series of six, and eventually nine, lives. The grisly Thursday occurrence topped in its retrospective cringe even the animal's first death, dying at the ignominious hand of an infectious pathogen following an ill-advised confrontation with another feline whose numerous bald spots, scraggly fur, and numerous secretions from various orifices should have served as ample warning against approaching the diseased rival, despite the tantalizing morsel of day-old Moroccan tilapia it was protecting. "In my defense, I was hungry at the time," the now-veteran dead cat remarked. "Not this time. No excuse. Just stupid."

In terms of cringe, the incident even edged out the feline's previous death: being eaten by its mother within a day or two of birth. "Yeah, I'd rather forget that one, too," it conceded. "But at least in that case it wasn't my fault I was too scrawny to appear worth the expenditure of resources."

The intersection in question has proved dangerous to humans as well as cats: its unusual configuration causes eastbound drivers not to notice the stop line before the crosswalk, such that even when the red light is visible - during one stretch of winter it sits squarely in the sun's glare at 7 AM - drivers continue through the crosswalk before deciding to stop at some random point thirty feet on. Westbound, the downward slope of the artery has contributed to many drivers failing to notice the light in that direction, as well.

Municipal workers dismissed concerns over the intersection, noting that both pedestrians and cats need to be culled.

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02/16 Links Pt1: Why keep pretending that Jews building homes prevents peace?; When Is Terror Not Terror? When the Victims Are Jews; Pompeo calls Abbas a ‘known terrorist’

From Ian:

The “Two-State Solution” and the Arab Palestinians: Partition or Politicide?

“Justice for Palestine” and the Strategy of Phases
At present, the main advocates of the idea of “territorial compromise” are Israel’s enemies, along with well-meaning outsiders and “progressive” Israelis. For the Arab Palestinians, the basic objective is to achieve “justice” by means of “armed struggle.” One need only consult Article 21 of the Palestinian Covenant:
The Arab Palestinian people, expressing themselves by the armed Palestinian revolution, reject all solutions which are substituting for the total liberation of Palestine and reject all proposals aiming at the liquidation of the Palestinian problem, or its internationalization.4

Further, one cannot overlook the PLO’s “authentic genocide message.” For example, Daniel Pipes published a reader’s comment in the Middle East Forum stating that the PLO’s first chairman, Ahmad al-Shukeiri (Shuqayrī) (1908–80), coined the phrase “Driving the Jews into the sea,”/“Throwing the Jews into the sea.” The contributor [who most likely was Prof. Barry Rubin of the IDC, Herzliya] observed: “After the Six-Day War, realizing the great damage it has done to Arabs, Arab propagandists, including Shukairy himself, tried somehow to ‘transform’ his statement from the meaning of annihilation to the meaning of ‘transfer’ of Jews (or ‘ethnic cleansing’), but it was too late, the clarity of his authentic genocide message was already publicized.”5

Indeed, in a 1972 interview with Oriana Fallaci, and, later, in 1980, Yassir Arafat stated the Palestinian position succinctly: “Peace for us means the destruction of Israel and nothing else.”6 During a visit to Venezuela in February 1980, he elaborated on this theme:
Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war that will last for generations …. We shall not rest until the day when we return to our home, and until we destroy Israel …. The destruction of Israel is the goal of our struggle, and the guidelines of that struggle have remained firm since the establishment of Fatah in 1965.7

Over time, intransigent pronouncements and terrorist attacks, such as Black September (1970) and the Munich Massacre at the Olympics (1972) harmed the Arab Palestinian cause. Consequently, the PLO needed to repair its image in order to achieve its political goals. On the prompting of the Soviet Union, the Politbureau of North Vietnam coached a PLO delegation.

As early as February 1970, Salah Khalaf, a.k.a. Abu Iyad, led a PLO delegation to Hanoi where they met the legendary General Vo Nguyen Giap. Their political experts advised them how to manipulate the Western media and transform their public image from terrorists to “moderates.” Abu Iyad described this important encounter in his book, My Home, My Land, a series of interviews with Eric Rouleau published in 1978.

Jonathan Tobin: Why keep pretending that Jews building homes prevents peace?

Biden and even his European allies know that the places where new homes will be built in Judea and Samaria will never become part of even a theoretical Palestinian state. Already, more than 500,000 Jews live in the parts of Judea and Samaria that were labeled as “Area C” in the Oslo Accords, plus another 250,000 who live in Jerusalem but who are also considered to be “settlers” by the world, if not by most Israelis.

None of them are going to be chucked out of their homes to create a Palestinian state that would also include “Area C.” Still, the more the world continues to act as if that were a possibility, the less likely it is that the next Palestinian leadership, which will eventually succeed 87-year-old P.A. head Mahmoud Abbas (currently serving the 19th year of the four-year term he was elected to back in 2005), understands that if they want sovereignty over any part of the country, they’ll have to concede the areas where Jewish communities exist.

It’s not just the fact that no one complains about Palestinian construction in this area, which is just as much an effort to create facts on the ground as Israel’s housing starts. It’s that the branding of “settlements” as illegal and subject to eviction is a standing incitement to more terrorism, as well as intransigence.

The existence of these communities hasn’t prevented a two-state solution, and they won’t stop one in the future if the Palestinians want it since they can have their own state without also taking the places where Jews currently reside.

If foreign governments and so-called human-rights groups really wanted to end the cycle of violence, then they would ditch the cycle of diplomatic condemnations of Israel that help reinforce the Palestinian mindset that Israel is an illegitimate nation that can eventually be destroyed. It may be too much to hope that the foreign-policy establishment ever acquires the wisdom to understand just how mistaken it is about the conflict. But if they did, they’d know that their supposedly well-intentioned advocacy for two states is a far greater obstacle to peace than any housing plan.

When Is Terror Not Terror? When the Victims Are Jews

In the aftermath of the shooting of seven people near a synagogue in Jerusalem, one of the deadliest mass shootings in over a decade, many media outlets including the New York Times carefully avoided the word "terror." In 2022, the Times mentioned Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hizbullah in its headlines only eight times throughout the entire year. Only one mention of Hamas and Hizbullah was negative. Islamic Jihad was mentioned negatively twice. By comparison, 192 headlines mentioned Israel in a negative or critical tone.

In total, 53% of New York Times' news coverage of Israel was negative in tone, compared with 11% that was positive. Between January and October 2022, before the new government was elected, 60% of op-eds were negative towards Israel. After the election, the negative tone became more extreme.

According to the Israel Security Agency (ISA), there were 2,618 terror events in 2022, 204 of them significant (shootings, bombings, stabbings, or intentional car ramming). Another 472 significant attacks were thwarted. The Times has stressed that most of the Palestinians killed were not terrorists, whereas IDF data shows the exact opposite.

The Times is obsessed with Israel but offers the world a monochromatic picture of the situation. Its journalistic failing contributes to the growing hatred of the world's only Jewish state, and the global rise in antisemitism that comes with it.

Lately, Palestinian social media has been including the hashtag "Cubs of Revenge" (#أشبال_الثأر) on social media. (Palestinians refer to child militants as lion "cubs.")

They are celebrating and encouraging children to attack Israelis.

The poster above is not a memorial to children tragically killed - it is a tribute to how wonderful these children are, both dead and alive, for attacking Israelis.

Al Resalah gushes, "In the squares of Al-Aqsa and Damascus Gate, and in every neighborhood and alley of the towns and camps of Jerusalem, a new generation is growing that sees in Israel nothing but an enemy that will only be defeated through resistance and jihad."

Other articles in Palestinian media are also praising the child terrorists.

And, still, silence from "human rights" NGOs, including those that are specifically meant to protect children.

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!

Palestinian PM claims Israeli law to strip citizenship from terrorists is illegal under international law. Of course he is lying - and a hypocrite.

From Times of Israel:

The Knesset approved a law on Wednesday to strip convicted terrorists with Israeli nationality of their citizenship — provided they receive funding from the Palestinian Authority or an associated organization.

The law, an amendment to Israel’s 1952 Citizenship Law, applies to both Israeli citizens and permanent residents incarcerated following a conviction for terror, aiding terror, harming Israeli sovereignty, inciting war, or aiding an enemy during wartime, and enables the interior minister to revoke their status after a hearing.

The law enables citizenship to be revoked even if the person lacks a second citizenship, provided they have a permanent residence status outside of Israel. Once citizenship is revoked, the person would be denied entry back into Israel.

The Palestinian prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh reacted angrily, claiming the law is "racist" and illegal:

Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh said in a statement that this decision is a racist practice and a flagrant violation of international law and international humanitarian law. calling on the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union to denounce the resolution, and to put pressure on Israel to force it to cancel it .

Is it illegal to revoke citizenship of terrorists? Of course not. Western nations do it all the time. The US Department of Justice has an entire section for pursuing denaturalization for terrorists and other criminals. The UK, France and Britain have laws to strip citizenship away from terrorists, and the European Court of Human Rights has upheld their decisions.

There are two potential arguments against stripping citizenship.

One is that this law is discriminatory, since it only applies to Palestinians and not Jewish terrorists. But that is only because the only recipients of Palestinian Authority payments are Arabs - if Jews would be convicted of terrorism for the Palestinian cause, and if the PA would pay them, the law would apply to them as well. Similarly, any Israeli Arab in prison can refuse to accept payments from the Palestinian Authority and therefore be immune from being denaturalized. The fact that they accept money from those who want to see Israel destroyed is a pretty good argument that they are not good citizens.

The second argument is that stripping nationality, leaving someone stateless, is illegal altogether. There is a UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness written in 1961 that never received a majority of UN votes - but even many of its signatories included reservations that made it clear that they maintain the right to revoke citizenship for specific acts by citizens. For example, Austria said, "Austria declares to retain the right to deprive a person of his nationality, if such person enters, on his own free will, the military service of a foreign State."

Shtayyeh's calling denaturalization "illegal" and "racist" is especially hypocritical. Only a day beforehand, he called on Western nations to revoke the citizenship of Jews (and only Jews!) who live across the Green Line. Arabs who moved across the Green Line are, of course, not "settlers."

There would be a further irony if critics refer to the UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness to claim that this is illegal. Because nearly all Arab states refuse to sign that convention - if they did, they would be required to provide citizenship to children born to Palestinians there, and the Arab League says that Palestinians should remain stateless!

Once again, we see that "critics of Israel" aren't basing their critiques on international law, or morality, or really any framework that doesn't prove that they are hypocrites. The only consistency they show is antisemitism.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Palmach soldiers

The Palestine Post, February 13, 1948, describes a despicable war crime in Jerusalem that has been all but forgotten.

A group of four Haganah members in Jerusalem were arrested by a British Army patrol that was manned by Arabs.

Hours later, their bodies were found, riddled with bullets.

Their names were Eliyahu Kessler, Shimon Nissani, Naftali Schul and Shalom Leon.

This is really a double war crime. One is that the Arabs effectively used their British army uniforms to perform an illegal attack, and the other one was to slaughter prisoners in custody.

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!

02/15 Links Pt2: The Truth Behind the Palestinian ‘Catastrophe’; Irwin Cotler: To combat antisemitism, we must first agree how to define it; Moral idiocy: Academics fuel Palestinian terror against Israel

From Ian:

The Truth Behind the Palestinian ‘Catastrophe’

ON AUGUST 5, 1948, not quite three months after the new state of Israel was invaded by five Arab armies, a short volume titled Maana al-Nakba (later translated as The Meaning of the Disaster) appeared in Beirut to popular acclaim. The author was Constantine K. Zurayk, a distinguished professor of Oriental history and vice president of the American University of Beirut.

Zurayk was the wunderkind of the Arab academic world. Born in Damascus in 1909 to a prosperous Greek Orthodox family, he was sent off at 20 to complete his graduate studies in the United States. Within a year he had obtained a master’s from the University of Chicago. One year later, he added a Ph.D. in Oriental languages from Princeton. He then returned to Beirut and the American University.

Zurayk soon became one of the leading advocates of the liberal, secularist variant of Arab nationalism. After Syria won its independence in 1945, he was chosen to serve in the new nation’s first diplomatic mission in Washington, D.C., and also served with the Syrian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly.

Zurayk’s book reflected the sense of outrage among the Arab educated classes over the 1947 UN partition resolution and the creation of the Jewish state. Zurayk’s anger was even more personal, since he had participated in the UN deliberations on the Palestine question. His 70-page book then became a reference point for future pro-Palestinian historians and writers. Yoav Gelber, a prominent Israeli historian of the 1948 war, cited Zurayk’s work when he told me he didn’t think there was much new in Arafat’s 1998 Nakba Day declaration. “The Nakba was at the basis of the Palestinian narrative from the beginning,” Gelber said. “Constantine Zurayk coined the phrase in 1948.”

In previous writings about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, I wasn’t able to comment on Zurayk’s book. A limited-edition English translation of Maana al-Nakba appeared in Beirut in 1956, but it was never published in the United States. It was only recently that I found a rare copy in a university library and finally read the real thing.

It was not what I expected. The Meaning of the Disaster actually isn’t about the tragedy of the Palestinian people. According to Zurayk, the crime of the Nakba was committed against the entire Arab nation—a romantic conception of a political entity that he and his fellow Arab nationalists fervently believed in. And, it turns out, Zurayk was no champion of an independent Palestinian state.

In an introductory paragraph, Zurayk writes about “the defeat of the Arabs in Palestine,” which he then calls “one of the harshest of the trials and tribulations with which the Arabs have been afflicted throughout their long history.” Zurayk’s only comment about Palestinian refugees is that, during the fighting, “four hundred thousand or more Arabs [were] forced to flee pell mell from their homes.” (All italics added.)

Zurayk predicted that all Arabs would continue to be threatened by international Zionism: “The Arab nation throughout its long history has never been faced with a more serious danger than that to which it has today been exposed. The forces which the Zionists control in all parts of the world can, if they are permitted to take root in Palestine, threaten the independence of all the Arab lands and form a continuing and frightening danger to their life.”

Irwin Cotler: To combat antisemitism, we must first agree how to define it

The IHRA definition provides examples of both forms of antisemitism. The examples addressing older forms include stereotypes of Jews as controlling the media, world governments and the economy. Examples of newer forms include denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel.

These latter examples have provoked some opposition, with opponents alleging that the IHRA definition will stifle criticism of the actions of the Israeli government, as well as advocacy for Palestinian human rights. This claim is as misleading as it is unfounded.

In fact, distinguishing between what is and what is not antisemitic enhances and promotes free expression and peaceful dialogue. In particular, the IHRA definition explicitly states that “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”

Accordingly, the definition serves to protect speech that is critical of Israeli policy — which I have myself engaged in — so long as it does not cross the delineated boundaries into antisemitism. Conversely, using this definition, genuine antisemitism, such as those examples listed above, can be defined and recognized.

The IHRA definition therefore sets the parameters for a healthy, democratic, tolerant debate and dialogue. It fosters non-hateful communication, and prevents both actual instances of antisemitism as well as unjust labelling of antisemitism. In doing so, it aligns with Canadian values of equality, diversity and human rights.

My hope for 2023 is that the Canadian jurisdictions that have not yet adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism will do so, and that the ones that have adopted it begin to implement and use it. The IHRA definition is an indispensable resource in helping to identify, recognize and define antisemitism, and adopting it is the critical first step towards Canada’s collective effort to combat the rising tide of antisemitism.

Gil Troy: Moral idiocy: Academics fuel Palestinian terror against Israel - opinion

Imagine the hate required to overrun fellow humans at a bus stop. Imagine the super-sized evil required to keep accelerating when you notice six- and eight-year-old brothers standing there, innocently chatting with their dad. And imagine the perversity involved in celebrating such murders. Friday proved – again – how deep anti-Jewish demonization has been drilled into too many Palestinian hearts, deforming their souls.

Until the world acknowledges this wickedness – which on Friday ended three lives – more such murderers will be mass-produced – with Western dollars, progressive encouragement, and, in modern Jewry’s sickest trend, some Jews’ validation too.

Too many Blame-Israel-Firsters discount this cultivated ugliness which mocks their delusions that peace will descend once Israel retreats, creating a Palestinian dictatorship – er, state – next door. These pie-in-the-skiers keep deciding that Palestinian abominations confirm Israeli iniquity. They theorize that only desperate individuals driven by evil “occupiers” would act so viciously.

Jews have often been blamed for their enemies’ enmity. This Palestinian addiction to violence, however, reveals more about the killers than those killed.

This, the real cycle of violence, with Palestinian rejectionism and antisemitism fueling terrorism, poses the biggest obstacle to peace. The terrorist rot infects Palestinian identity. Contrast Israel’s army, which will abort legitimate missions to minimize civilian casualties, with Palestinians’ death cult, which targets kids and often blackmails the most vulnerable Palestinians into terror.

The Terrorist-Intellectual Complex
An academic recently challenged some other centrists and me for attacking the Netanyahu-Deri corruption yet ignoring the “occupation’s corruption.” Actually, I’m struck by many critics’ corruption, judging us long-distance through ivy-clouded lenses.

Their “Terrorist-Intellectual Complex” perpetuates violence. Palestinians keep deluding themselves that terrorism works, emboldened by ever-accumulating stacks of UN resolutions, academic treatises, “human rights” proclamations, and student petitions – amplified by retweets and likes.

Many have long noted that only intellectuals could figure out how to call themselves “progressive” while supporting sexist, homophobic, Jew-hating, murderers. Today, “woke” parents training their kids in self-abasement and cravenness to dodge confrontations, even in self-defense, nevertheless cheer Palestinians’ killing cult. And self-proclaimed “Social Justice Warriors” justify this most unjust movement, forgiving the Palestinian Authority and Hamas autocracies.