Wednesday, May 03, 2023

By Daled Amos

It was recently reported that a Jordanian member of Parliament was arrested by Israel on suspicion of smuggling weapons and gold while going through the Allenby Crossing.


The Jordanian response was predictable:

Why predictable?

On March 13, 1997, a Jordanian soldier opened fire on a large group of schoolgirls from Israel while on a school trip on the Island of Peace in Naharayim, killing seven of them. Jordan's King Hussein's reaction was extraordinary: he personally paid condolence calls to the families who lost their daughters:

Two fathers, an Arab king and an Israeli factory worker met yesterday in a house of grief to mourn the death of a 13-year-old daughter.

King Hussein of Jordan knelt at the feet of Yisrael Fatihi, who sat on floor cushions in the custom of Jewish mourning, and told him, "Your loss is my loss, my personal loss."

But not all Jordanians shared the king's sympathy.

Although the soldier, Ahmed Daqamseh, was sentenced to 20 years, on February 14, 2011, Jordan's justice minister Hussein Mjalli joined dozens of protesters in demanding the murderer be released early.

Daqamseh was not released early, but when he was released in 2017, members of the Jordanian Parliament made no secret about how they felt:

"On the occasion of Daqamseh's release, let me place his picture over my head, because this hero has returned to his home safe and sound.

"This is a Jordanian day of celebration. We are very happy at (Daqamseh's) release, which is overdue.

o  "We congratulate the country upon the return of the hero Ahmad Daqamseh. We never wanted him to remain in prison for such a long time, away from his country.

Based on this, the Jordanian support for Ahlam Tamimi -- the self-confessed mastermind behind the Sbarro Massacre -- is not surprising, nor is the refusal of Jordan to abide by its extradition treaty with the US.

And Jordanians have attacked -- and killed -- Americans as well as Israelis.

In 2015, a Jordanian policeman opened fire on Americans:

A policeman has opened fire at a police training centre in Jordan, killing two Americans, a South African and two Jordanians, officials say.

The Jordanian embassy in Washington said the Jordanian assailant also wounded two Americans and two Jordanians, before being shot dead.

There were no statements of solidarity this time by the Jordanian parliament and the assumption was that the killings were in solidarity with terrorist groups in the Middle East, especially since the attack fell on the 10th anniversary of bombing attacks by al-Qaeda on three hotels in Amman which killed more than 50 people.

But just one year later, on November 4, 2016, a Jordanian soldier, M'aarek Abu Tayeh, attacked and killed 3 American soldiers, Staff Sgt. Matthew Lewellen, Staff Sgt. Kevin McEnroe and Staff Sgt. James Moriarty as they were entering a Jordanian military base. Jordanians did not celebrate the killing, but they did do everything to cover up what actually happened.

There was an ongoing investigation. It raised the possibility that more than one Jordanian was involved. Other Jordanian soldiers in the area did nothing to aid the Americans. More than that, they fired warning shots at a US truck that was behind the vehicles carrying the Green Berets, preventing it from assisting the Green Berets.

On March 6, Jordanian ambassador Dina Kawar sent a letter to Representative Ted Poe of Texas, claiming that a joint US-Jordanian investigation concluded that there was an "absence of premeditated intentions by M'aarek Abu Tayeh." Instead, the Jordanians accused the American soldiers both of failing to stop at the gate but also of negligently discharging their weapons, which caused the security guard to panic and open fire.

One of the parents, Mr. McEnroe responded to Jordan's attempt to sweep the tragedy under the carpet:
Over four months have passed since our boys were murdered. None of our families has heard any apology, condolences or explanation from the Jordanians other than these false narratives. In my mind, Jordan is at the very least guilty of complicity in the murder of three American brave servicemen.
 
We are told that Jordan is an important ally in the war on terror -- a war which I support -- but I encourage our president and our administration to take a hard look at our relationship with an ally who would so callously disrespect the sacrifice made by our boys. [emphasis added]
The Jordanian offered one lie after another to avoid responsibility:
o First the Jordanian government claimed that the US soldiers had failed to stop at the gate
o When a video disproved that, the Jordanians claimed that there had been an “accidental discharge” by one of the soldiers.
o When that was disproven, the Jordanians claimed there had been a loud noise caused the Jordanian to react

It was not until June 1, 2017, that the Jordanians officially charged Abu Tayeh with murder. He was sentenced to life for murder but will qualify for parole in 20 years -- which would match the sentence Ahmed Daqamseh served for killing the Israeli schoolchildren, before being released to a hero's welcome.

Meanwhile, Israel has extended the detention of the Jordanian minister who was caught smuggling weapons. This incident on its own has troubling implications. Joe Truzman at FDD noted:

The Jordanian parliament has long been a stage for the worst kind of anti-Israel vitriol. Now, it appears, one of its members has shifted from speech to action. This would constitute a major breach of both the word and the spirit of the almost three-decade-old peace treaty between Jordan and Israel. Amman should make amends, and publicly, fast.
And recently, there was more troubling news, that Jordan and Iran are planning to meet in order to improve relations between the 2 countries. This latest diplomatic offensive follows the improving relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

On the one hand, this would seem to be a blow to US influence in the Middle East. On the other hand, one of Obama's goals was to bolster Iran's role as a policeman in the region.

The growing rapport between Tehran and various Arab countries marks a departure from the trend of increasing Arab-Israeli normalization fostered by the 2020 Abraham Accords. Despite being one of the first Arab countries to establish relations with Israel nearly 30 years ago, Jordan has recently displayed a more hostile face. Its official rhetoric about Israel has grown increasingly negative, if not vitriolic, in both public forums and Jordan’s government-sponsored media.
So on the one hand, Jordan -- which is touted as a major ally of the US in the war against terrorism -- is edging closer to Iran. On the other hand, one may wonder how concerned the Biden administration really is at the prospect of furthering Obama's goal in readjusting the political landscape of the Middle East. 




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Palestinian prisoner rights NGOs are using today's World Press Freedom Day to call for Israel to release 16 "journalists' who are in prison. They claim that these journalists were arrested to curtail freedom of speech:  "The occupation authorities are pursuing a number of policies to restrict freedom of opinion and expression and impose more censorship and control on the Palestinians, as part of the tools of the apartheid regime, most notably the policy of arrest, threats, house arrest, and repeated assaults in the field of work; This is in a continuous attempt to undermine their societal, cultural, and political role, and to prevent them from exposing the ongoing crimes against the Palestinians."

They pointedly don't mention that these "journalists" were arrested because they engaged in terror. And many were never journalists to begin with.

People like Ahmed Adeeb Ahmed Al-Saifi, a member of Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades sentenced to 17 years in 2011 for his involvement in a shooting attack. He became a "journalist" during his time in prison.

Or Bassem Khandakji, a PFLP member who drove a 16 year old to blow himself up at the Carmel Market in 2004, killing 3 civilians. He also started writing after he was in prison.

Or Mahmoud Musa Issa (right), a Hamas Al Qassam member who kidnapped and killed an Israeli soldier in 1992. H is another "journalist" who started writing while in prison. 

Or Islamic Jihad's Haitham Jamal Ali Jaber, sentenced to 28 years in 2002 for terror attacks, who completed his degrees while in prison and also only became a writer afterwards. 

Of course, people who do have press credentials and use them to help terrorism are even more reprehensible and should not be held up as 

One photojournalist, Yazan Abu Salah, is a PFLP member who was sentenced to four years for his involvement in setting up terror cells an Iranian-funded plot to kidnap soldiers.

This is just more cynicism from Palestinian NGOs who know that most people will not bother to check their claims. Their track record of telling the truth is exceedingly poor, but they keep getting funded and respected. They know that years of lying propaganda pay off over time.




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At first it looks like an article about the fighting in Sudan, but writer Muhammad Kamel Al-Ayadi quickly gets to the root of the matter: Jews!

The media is one of the most important priorities of the Jews to control the world, as expressed by this Jewish Rabbi “Rashoron” in the year 1869 AD, when he said: "If gold is the first power, then the press must be our second power."

In the year 1897 AD, the Jews said in a conference held for him In the “Swiss Basel” the plan for the establishment of the state of “Israel” cannot be achieved without complete control of the media, especially the press, so that we have the ability to stir up people’s minds when we want and calm down whenever we want, just as our enemies should not have media through which they express their opinions. Rather, the press must be ridden and reined in.

And the Jews have a lot of dirty methods, which they are good at using, as a means of money, sex, and intellect, and to question political and religious symbols, and to work to end the role models, and spread  competition between brothers, with the abhorrent partisanship, which is fueled by the global Zionist gangs, in order to serve their interests and aspirations to rule and control the Arab world, the genie that, if recovered, will devour all civilizations, not with injustice, but with the justice of its message, so they hatched conspiracies, spread strife, and ignited sectarian and tribal wars, to reach the ultimate goal, which is world rule, under the rule of one government, because they are the most deserving and deserving of its rule.

The Zionist conspiracies do not end, and the world saw what happened after the World Trade Tower was struck. Iraq was struck, and successive strife was stirred up in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and now Sudan, knowing that Sudan has a large percentage of the Jews of the Israeli community, who lived in it. As part of the social structure, they succeeded in establishing political, economic, and social relations, to collect money to achieve their aspirations, and to implement the “Bernard Lewis” plan in dividing Sudan into four states...

Since the fifties, the Jews have been working in order to reach and seize Khartoum, so they set up separatist movements in the south...

Wake up. And unite before our hands are shackled, and we cannot defend our lands, and we become between the walls of the occupation, we have no power or strength, may God protect Egypt, and the entire Arab world.
Of course, there are many Egyptians who wrote angry comments about how offensive this antisemitism is. Just kidding!



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Tuesday, May 02, 2023

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The Guardian has called everything from gardening to the countryside racist – but the real problem is themselves
Then we come to this past weekend, and the cartoon published in a paper which calls itself “the world’s leading liberal voice”.

The cartoon depicted the resignation of BBC chairman Richard Sharp.

Sharp is Jewish, though that is no reason why he — nor anyone else in public life — should be immune from criticism.

Personally, I hate almost all attempts to censor or limit what a free Press should print, draw or say.

Yet The Guardian’s cartoon on the Sharp resignation was not just criticism or lampooning. It was outright anti-Semitism.

Martin Rowson, the cartoonist in question, depicted Sharp in the most ugly, stereotypically “Jewish” way imaginable.

Dr Goebbels would have loved the work.

Sharp is shown as dusky, with great, ugly, protruding facial features.

He is seen carrying his box of possessions away from the office.

You’d have thought that the box, if it said anything, would say “BBC”.

But no, strangely, the box said “Goldman Sachs”, the Jewish-founded bank that is such an obsession of modern-day anti-Semites.

Sharp used to work there, but that is irrelevant to his current predicament.

Bizarrely, the box has a squid in it, another anti-Jewish trope where Jews are meant to have their “tentacles” around everything.

There is also a head of Rishi Sunak in the box, implying that Sharp also somehow “controls” the Prime Minister.

To his side is a slaughtered pig, surrounded by blood.

The Guardian has since withdrawn the cartoon and the cartoonist apologised.

Elsewhere there has been silence from the paper’s contributors.

All these pious men and women who always berate the rest of us, preaching from such a very high pulpit, have been silent.

I have not seen a single Guardian journalist distance themselves from what their paper published.

So what are we to make of this? As I say — The Guardian is what it accuses everyone else of being.
Scourge or Success Story: How Israel’s 75th Birthday Was Commemorated By Media and the World
Unlike the global media’s generally despondent outlook on Israel’s future, the congratulatory messages from some of Israel’s closest allies were much more joyous and uplifting.

The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Australia and the European Union’s messages all celebrated the decades-long relationships they share with the Jewish state, with the US noting that it was the first country to recognize Israel, and Australia taking pride in the fact that it was one of the first to vote for the UN partition plan.

Along with their strong friendships, the US, UK, EU and Canada’s messages also celebrated Israel’s advances in technology, science, innovation, culture and the arts.

While these messages were, of course, much more diplomatic than the media’s coverage of Israel’s birthday, the US, Canada and the UK did make subtle references to the current political climate, with the US and Canada referencing Israel’s democratic tradition and the UK reiterating its commitment to the two-state solution.

The Nakba, Ethnic Cleansing & Racism: Anti-Zionist Twitter Responds to Israeli Independence

In her special message congratulating Israel on its 75th birthday, Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, stated that Israel has “literally made the desert bloom.” This led to a severe backlash on Twitter, with a number of anti-Israel personalities calling her out for what they perceived to be a “racist” statement.

Known anti-Israel persona Muhammad Shehada tweeted that von der Leyen had resorted to a “racist and colonialist trope,” while Electronic Intifada lamented the fact that her special Israeli independence message had made no mention of the Palestinians and trotted out “one foundational myth after another.”

The reaction to Ursula von der Leyen’s message was but the latest vitriolic response by popular anti-Israel social media users to Israel’s 75th birthday.

In commemoration of the anniversary of Israeli independence, Jewish Voice for Peace claimed that Israelis were celebrating “75 years of ongoing dispossession, oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” while also falsely asserting that Israel was manipulating the Jewish calendar in order to entrench the idea that the Jewish people are perpetual victims and that Israeli military might is needed in order to save them.

Not one to be outdone in publicly flailing the Jewish state, Ali Abunimah (the founder of Electronic Intifada) tweeted “Imagine how much of a sociopath you must be to see and know the horrors ‘Israel’ has been perpetrating against the Palestinian people continuously for 75 years (actually much longer) and considering that a cause for celebration.” He claimed in another tweet that Israel is a racist endeavor “perpetrated on the land of people subjected to barbaric European colonization and genocide.”

As we approach May 15, when Palestinian nationalists commemorate the founding of Israel as the Nakba (“catastrophe”), the vehement anti-Israel sentiment on social media is due to grow. Already, the Palestinian Youth Movement has advertised on Instagram that it is hosting a public gallery in Dallas entitled “75 years of resistance. 75 years of glory,” in which they will pay “homage to our martyrs and political prisoners.” The United Nations has announced that it will host a Nakba event for the first time in the General Assembly.

While world leaders celebrate 75 years of Jewish sovereignty, anti-Israel advocates vilify it online and the international press call into question Israel’s durability, the Jewish state continues to serve as an exemplar of innovation, endurance and adaptability as it looks toward its 100th birthday.


Israel made the desert bloom – this is fact, not racism
In a famous passage in 1867, Twain clearly illustrates what the region looked like before Jewish immigration. He described it as “a desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds – a silent mournful expanse... A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action... We never saw a human being on the whole route... There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”

Despite coming home to a barren land filled with swamps and malaria, Jewish immigrants were determined to rebuild their homeland and began to cultivate the land. They used modern agricultural techniques, such as terracing, crop rotation, and irrigation, to develop the land and increase productivity. Jewish immigrants expanded trade and tourism, making the Holy Land popular and contributing to the growth of coastal cities like Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Acre.

They also transformed the countryside toward the end of the Ottoman period with communities of Jewish farmers settling in the Galilee and the Jezreel Valley. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the impact made by these Jewish farmers is well documented in travelers’ accounts, official documents, and reports of explorers.

It can also be seen in pictures taken by photographers who recorded the country while providing souvenirs for the growing tourist market. Under the British Mandate, the Jewish population continued to develop the land, building roads, schools, and hospitals and establishing a thriving economy.

Fast forward to 2023, Israel is a global leader in AgriTech, even sharing its knowledge with developing countries. Since establishing ourselves as a state, we have built desalination plants and wastewater treatment facilities to conserve water sources. As a country, Israel invested in research and development of advanced technologies, including drip irrigation, hydroponics, and genetically modified crops, which have greatly improved agricultural productivity.

One of our most notable achievements was transforming the Negev desert (which covers half our territory) through innovative irrigation systems, including drip irrigation and underground pipelines, to deliver water to the crops more efficiently. Today, Israel is a leading exporter of agricultural products and technology, demonstrating the remarkable success of Jewish efforts in making the desert bloom.

Contrary to what anti-Israel figures try to say, the Jewish people transformed this region in the Middle East into a prosperous country. Saying so is a fact, not a “racist remark” against Palestinians. Our success in making the desert bloom is a testament to the Jewish people’s determination, hard work, and innovative spirit.
Sometimes I can get the message across in a cartoon or meme far better than I can in an article. 
















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Israel haters have been trying to say that Israel is guilty of every social justice crime there is. +972 describes the logic behind this, without any sense of irony:

Across the world, climate movements are firmly rooted on the political, social, and economic left. Their campaigning and advocacy make connections with struggles for democracy, social justice, and human rights, and speak out against racism, discrimination, nationalism, and neoliberalism. Not merely content with demanding a change in environmental policies, the global climate justice movement seeks to change economic power structures and liberate all living beings from all forms of oppression, violence, and dispossession.  
In other words, the environment is not really as important as they say, and it is an excuse to attack The Wrong Side no matter how far afield from the environment the charges are. 

A webinar last November was even more absurd:

For Palestinians, climate change is not just a natural phenomenon, but a political one.
Israel‘s regime of occupation and apartheid, which denies Palestinians the right to manage their land and resources, greatly heightens the impact of the climate crisis for Palestinians, making them more vulnerable to all climate-related conditions

Today, after a century of unbridled colonialism, the historically green and fertile land of Palestine has lost much of what it once offered the world, and environmental conditions continue to deteriorate rapidly.
Really?  Palestine was a green land a hundred years ago and is now an ecological disaster? Somehow the many pilgrims that visited missed this.

But the biggest hypocrisy is that these people make no demands on Palestinians themselves to be environmentalists - no initiatives I've seen to teach them to not waste water or not burn tires in protests.


Or not shoot incendiary devices towards fields.

A fire is spreading near the southern Israeli town of Ibim, apparently as a result of rockets launched from the Gaza Strip earlier.
This is the sort of thing faux environmentalists would be in the forefront of blaming Israel for if Israel had started the fires, even inadvertently. 

If you don't care about the environment when it is being ruined by "Palestinian resistance," you don't care about the environment. 



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From Ian:

Military Aid to Israel Offers Valuable Returns
As we commemorate Israel's 75th birthday and the longstanding friendship between the United States and the Jewish State, we must reassert our bond—and spurn efforts to diminish it, as cooperation between both nations safeguards Israel from the destruction of war, maintains regional stability, protects vital American strategic interests, and ultimately saves countless lives. This partnership is now being threatened by a few fringe members of Congress calling on President Biden to restrict military aid to Israel.

The benefits of U.S. military aid to Israel are well known and well documented. Since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, the U.S. has allocated over $150 billion in military and economic aid to Israel. American support helped Israel develop a strong military that can repel a variety of attacks from terrorism, ballistic missiles, and the many other dangers menacing Israel's borders. U.S. assistance also enables Israel to maintain its qualitative military edge over adversaries such as Iran, ensuring that it can defend itself effectively against any global threat.

U.S. military aid to Israel is not simply about Israel's defense—it also serves critical and undeniable American national security interests. Israel is a key ally in an important region. Our military partnership enables the U.S. to maintain an active presence without having to deploy U.S. troops and potentially put Americans in harm's way. Israel's thriving defense industry produces cutting-edge military technologies, such as the Iron Dome missile defense system, which has saved thousands of lives. Military aid to Israel also contributes to new scientific innovations that benefit the entire world, including the development of breakthrough medical devices and water-conservation technologies.

Additionally, more than 75 percent of security assistance provided to Israel is spent in the United States. This spending boosts the U.S. economy and helps support thousands of high-quality American jobs across the country.

Efforts to cut or condition military aid to Israel would have lasting and disastrous implications for Israel's ability to defend civilians from existential threats. Moreover, such proposals are far too often fodder for those who viscerally oppose the very existence of Israel, the world's only Jewish State, as well as those who hide their antisemitism behind the fig-leaf of anti-Zionism. Cutting military aid not only lessens Israel's ability and readiness to defend itself, but also, intentionally, or otherwise, incentivizes those who seek to do harm to the prospects of a lasting peace in the region.
EU promises funding won’t go to PA textbooks inciting against Israel
The European Union will make sure it is not funding Palestinian textbooks that incite against Israel, European Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Olivér Várhelyi told Foreign Minister Eli Cohen in Brussels on Tuesday.

“Israel does not oppose aid to the Palestinian Authority, but we will not allow a situation in which those funds indirectly fund terrorism or incitement against Israel,” Cohen said.

Várhelyi also promised the EU will fund additional research on incitement and antisemitism in Palestinian Authority textbooks, following a previous paper on the topic from 2019, Cohen’s office said.

In addition, the senior EU official and foreign minister agreed to work together to strengthen and expand the Abraham Accords, forged between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco in 2020.

Israel and the EU also plan to work together on sweeping mines in Ukraine.

Cohen also met with European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, who backed a resolution passed in January calling on the European Council and member states to add the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the EU terrorist list, banning financial activity related to the IRGC and its affiliates. Cohen and Metsola discussed ways to turn the resolution into action.

“The Iranian regime threatens the Middle East and the Western world,” Cohen said. “European states understand the Iranian threat today more than ever and see eye-to-eye with Israel on the need to fight the terrorism that the Iranian regime leads and funds.”
Al Sharpton said to be appalled by Palestinian pay-for-slay policy
It was an unlikely image, to say the least. Rev. Al Sharpton tweeted a photo of himself last week with Mort Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America.

Much of the Jewish community has long considered Sharpton antisemitic for his incendiary rhetoric, accusing him of inciting violence against Jews back in 1991 in Brooklyn, N.Y., as part of the Crown Heights riots. He has expressed regrets about such actions in recent years, which some take as genuine remorse, though others think that he is more focused on rehabilitating his reputation.

Sharpton expressed support of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in 2019, calling it “inexcusable” that Israel banned the congresswoman, who has a history of antisemitic statements, from entry the country that summer. And as recently as 2020, Klein said that the Anti-Defamation League head should not go on Sharpton’s MSNBC program, “PoliticsNation.”

Klein told JNS that he received a call from Sharpton’s National Action Network offices, looking to set up a get-together.

“A couple of his board members told Sharpton, ‘You should meet with a guy who fights for his people just as strong as you fight for the blacks,’ ” said Klein. “I figured if I can have a relationship with him that will help our Jewish people and Israel, I’ll do it.”

There was no preset agenda for the initial 90-minute meeting, according to Klein. Sharpton has tweeted that the meeting included Howard Teich and Michael Hardy, board member and general counsel, respectively, of National Action Network.

Klein told JNS that he sought to make common cause with civil-rights activist Sharpton, discussing his upbringing in a majority-black West Philadelphia neighborhood, as well as a friendship with Ice Cube after the rapper’s own spewing of anti-Jewish sentiment. Sharpton tried to explain his past actions that have been seen as antisemitic and said some were misrepresented in the media, according to Klein.
The American Jewish Yearbook for 1916 described several events about the Kotel that year, all of which were ascribed to Djemal Pasha, the military governor of Syria (which included Palestine) at that time.

JUNE 11 1915. Djemal Pasha examines reports of various Zionist congresses and other Zionist literature, and warns Jewish colonists that despite their success in the past the Government would in future make establishment of colonies more difficult.

JUNE 18 - Djemal Pasha prohibits Jews to pray at the Wailing Wall, because their prayers include plea for the re-establishment of Jewish State.

AUGUST 13. Djemal Pasha announces that the Government has become convinced of the necessity of destroying the entire Jewish colonization work in order that the colonies should not become a danger to the integrity of Turkey.

NOVEMBER 2. Jaffa Hebrew weekly, Hapoel Hazair, reports that Djemal Pasha, commander of Turkish Army, orders barricade to be placed across approach to Wailing Wall, thus preventing Jews from visiting it. Order said to be based on sanitary grounds.

MARCH 3 (1916) . Djemal Pasha offers to give Jews free access to Wailing Wall for from eighty thousand to one hundred thousand francs.
Pasha was a monster, killing Arab leaders right and left, and possibly involved in the Armenian genocide. But I hadn't heard abut restrictions at the Kotel in the 1910s, and notice that he gave different reasons to bar Jews - both because they always pray for Jerusalem to be rebuilt and then the bogus "sanitary reasons," before deciding to shake down the Jews to pay for the privilege of praying there.

I confirmed a couple of these incidents:

This December 1915 article adds that Pasha considered all Jews in Palestine to be spies, and his Turkish authorities stole charity funds intended for impoverished Jews:


Also December 1915:


March 1916 news articles in Jewish newspapers confirmed the desire to charge an exorbitant fee to visit the Kotel in Jerusalem:


100,000 French francs in 1916 was worth about $17,000 US dollars at the time - which is equivalent today to $470,000, a truly exorbitant amount. 

I don't see any indication that this was paid. I see photos of Jews at the Kotel in 1917 before the British took over. Either that particular story was a rumor,  Djemal Pasha didn't enforce it or somehow an amount was paid quietly.








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Amnesty just released its latest anti-Israel report, "Automated Apartheid: How facial recognition fragments, segregates and controls Palestinians in the OPT."

The 82 page report was conceived from the start to be biased against Israel. This can be seen from just the introduction.

By Checkpoint 56 in H2, a towering barrier features two turnstiles, and at least 24 cameras on the outside. Palestinians rely on passage through the checkpoint to access most, if not all, of goods and services, work, education, family life, and healthcare. It is here where witnesses described coming face to face with a new facial recognition system, Red Wolf, in 2022. 

Palestinians are the only racial group of residents in H2 required to use these checkpoints, and the system relies on databases consisting exclusively of Palestinian individuals’ data.
Palestinians are not a racial group. Here Amnesty is apparently again using a definition of "racial discrimination" based on the ICERD definition which explicitly says that its definition does not apply to treating citizens and non-citizens differently. Amnesty's use of the word "racial" here has only one purpose: to assume that Israel's racism as a basis for the report itself.

Similarly:
In Hebron City and East Jerusalem the rights of Palestinians are violated through a range of legal and military measures that help maintain Israel’s system of apartheid over Palestinians.
Amnesty lied about "apartheid" in its earlier reports, and those definitions have been thoroughly debunked. But since Amnesty is more interested in propaganda than accuracy, it now uses the term as if it was a fact and this report is meant to build on that assumption. As a result, any alternative explanations for its findings are discounted or ignored - everything must support the lie that Israel engages in "apartheid" against non-citizens, which is nonsensical, since by that definition every country in the world practices apartheid.

The constant surveillance Palestinians face means they not only live in a state of insecurity, but they are also at risk of arbitrary arrest, interrogation, and detention. 
If Palestinians are being arrested or detained based on being identified by surveillance, then by definition the arrests are not arbitrary. Israel is only arresting those people it is looking for; the vast majority of Palestinians pass through the checkpoints with no problem. This is the opposite of arbitrary. 

But "arbitrary arrest" sounds so much worse, so Amnesty lies.

Neda, a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, spoke of the impact this oppressive technology has on her daily life: “I’m being watched the whole time…[it] gives me a really bad feeling everywhere in the street. Every time I see a camera, I feel anxious. Like you are always being treated as if you are a target.” 
For better or worse, residents of every urban area on Earth have cameras pointing at them all the time. Police can request the video footage from private security cameras, too. There is no fundamental difference between what Neda is describing and what everyone in every city experiences.

This report establishes that facial recognition technologies are providing the Israeli authorities with powerful new tools for curbing freedom of movement – a pre-requisite for the realization of basic rights – adding further layers of technological sophistication to the system of apartheid that Israel is imposing on Palestinians in the OPT. This is achieved via: 

• The establishment of compounding technological infrastructure to expand the reach of Israeli authorities’ control. As checkpoints govern the ability of Palestinians in H2––the area of Hebron under military rule by the Israeli Civil Administration––to travel outside their homes,  Israel is able to contain Palestinians geographically, using domination by way of military force and surveillance tools such as Red Wolf and Blue Wolf to deter resistance.   
Even if you call Israel's presence "occupation," the Geneva Conventions allows great latitude in allowing the occupier to maintain security of both civilians and soldiers. Checkpoints are not illegal. As we will see, the only people that the new technology stops are those who are already wanted.

Palestinians define attacking Jews as "resistance." Deterring resistance is not only legal but an obligation, to normal moral people.

• Surveillance as part of a coercive environment aimed at forcing Palestinians to leave areas of strategic interest to Israeli authorities, by making their ordinary lives unbearable.
Really? Cameras make their lives unbearable? Has a single Palestinian ever moved his family to avoid cameras? This is just another example of how Amnesty makes things up and knows that no one will look too closely at how their supposedly factual assertions are simple lies.

This report is based on field visits to Hebron and East Jerusalem, involving observations, interviews, and the collection of visual evidence, as well as on open-source intelligence and previous reporting. Between May and June 2022, Amnesty International met with Palestinian families, activists, students and experts from across Hebron and East Jerusalem, who were routinely exposed to daily surveillance. In doing so, Amnesty International researchers gathered testimonies and experiences related to the human rights harms associated with the deployment of invasive and wide-reaching remote biometric surveillance technologies, in particular facial recognition. 

Given the sensitive nature of the research, risk of leaks, and risks posed to Amnesty researchers, a decision was made from the beginning of the research not to engage directly with Israeli officials. 
Meaning, all of Amnesty's "research" involved looking at only one side of the issue.  And this was a deliberate decision, not only not to include Israeli officials but not to include any Israelis who might contradict the premise of the report that Israeli is racist.

How can Amnesty claim to be objective when its decides, at the outset, to only look at sources biased in one direction?

 Amnesty International issued a right of response letter to the state of Israel on 19 April 2023 but had not received a response at the date of publication.
Amnesty has been working on this report since 2021 - but gives Israel less than two weeks to respond to an 82 page report. One of those weeks includes Remembrance Day and Yom Haatzmaut. Yeah, that's real objective.

Amnesty International has found that facial recognition technology is used extensively by the Israeli authorities to support their continued domination and oppression of Palestinians in the OPT. With a record of discriminatory and inhuman acts that maintain a system of apartheid, the Israeli authorities are able to use facial recognition software – in particular at checkpoints – to consolidate existing practices of discriminatory policing and segregation, violating Palestinians’ basic rights. 

Amnesty International is not convinced that the security justifications which Israel cites as the basis for its treatment of Palestinians – including restricting their freedom of movement – justify the severe restrictions that the Israeli authorities have imposed. While some of Israel’s policies may have been designed to promote legitimate security objectives, they have been implemented in a grossly disproportionate and discriminatory way which fails to comply with international law. Other policies have absolutely no reasonable basis in security and are clearly shaped by the intent to oppress and dominate. This includes differential treatment in the occupied territories, supporting the settlement of Jewish Israelis in the OPT, the designation of closed military zones, and the imposition of certain restrictions on movement such as travel bans. Examined in the context of systematic discrimination and oppression, and in the light of the mass human rights violations these policies have entailed, it becomes clear that genuine security considerations, including in the context of the deployment of facial recognition, are not the driving force behind these measures. 

There is no way for Amnesty to know any of this without mind-reading capabilities. These aren't conclusions - they are assumptions. Given that the number of terror attacks against Jews has increased dramatically during the time period that Amnesty researched and wrote this report, plus the rise of new terror infrastructure like Lion's Den, these two paragraphs are Amnesty's way of saying Jewish lives don't matter. 

Amnesty's position is that any technology to save the lives of Jews and soldiers is disproportionate. 

Their "Methodology" section shows more intentional bias by Amnesty:
To design the research project, Amnesty International established an advisory committee in early 2022 consisting of half a dozen researchers at the forefront of research on surveillance in the context of the OPT, with proven track records of scholarship and human rights advocacy in relation to the topic. They included academics, lawyers, campaigners and activists. The advisory committee was crucial in informing the research project, including but not limited to formulating the research questions, identifying potential witnesses and research partners, and addressing ethical and security-related concerns associated with the project. 
So the advisory committee included only people who hate Israel. And no distinction was made between the supposed experts and "campaigners and activists." There is not even the pretense of objectivity.

Here is one perfect example of Amnesty's bias. The report relies heavily on testimony from Breaking the Silence, but ignores when their testimony proves that the facial recognition actually makes the lives of Palestinians at checkpoints easier. One BtS report quoted four times says:

You have this system called Red Wolf.

Okay, give more details.
A person arrives and goes through a security check. He gives me his ID. I put it into [the system]. If it goes green on the computer, he goes through a security check and moves on. If it goes yellow, I have to call... Yellow is unidentified, unknown, something like that. There’s this number you call, the division, the DCL (District Coordination and Liaison office, a regional unit of the Civil Administration), and they tell you what to do. And if it’s red, there’s the protocol. You lock down the whole turnstile [at the checkpoint], call to have him picked up because he’s wanted for arrest.

And they come to get him?
Yes.

Would that happen a lot?
No. It never happened. They (the Palestinians) are not idiots. In the end, there are openings that aren’t this checkpoint.

And usually, when there’s a yellow, what would actually happen?
It’s a computer bug. I never really had a yellow. For the most part, they’re all green, or they have no ID, and then you turn them around.

Can this system identify them even without putting in the ID [number]?
Yes. There’s something like ten cameras. Once they arrive and pass through inside, it essentially takes photos, identifies them, to help you as the soldier standing there. It catches the face before [they enter], and it displays the face for you on the computer. If it’s someone who’s been coming through there a lot, the computer already knows them. It takes photos of everyone who passes there essentially. And you, as a soldier, a commander, standing there, can match the face to the IDs until the system learns [to recognize] the face. It recognizes him, and then he comes, and he’s already lit green for me even before he showed me an ID, and so it makes the process shorter for him, in theory.

And then, after you see green?
He can go through the turnstile with no problem.   
So the system allows Palestinians who live in Hebron to zip through checkpoints without having to show their ID each time. 

Amnesty doesn't even consider that the systems could be used to ease Palestinians' lives, nor does it allow that the security gains and lives saved by these systems have any value at all. 

Amnesty's scope for this report deliberately omits the high tech checkpoint at Qalandiya that speeds Palestinian workers through and saves them the hours that they used to spend there. It also uses facial recognition to help make things go much faster. There is no way that someone with any intellectual honesty can look at Qalandiya and conclude that the facial recognition is hurting them in any way. 

But Amnesty chose not to include that in this report, because it would contradict the anti-Israel message that Amnesty intended this report to be all along. If report readers knew about Qalandiya, they might think that checkpoints in Hebron that use facial recognition also are better then the old system of checking IDs.

Similarly, Amnesty quotes an IDF report about the surveillance system in Hebron, but doesn't quote the part that explains why it is necessary: "The main challenge in Hebron is the friction between the Jewish residents and the Palestinians, who live right next to each other - so when a security incident breaks out, the force has to react within seconds. The new cameras which give us a clearer picture of what is happening in the field, and thus solve the timing problem." 

Amnesty doesn't mention, or airily dismisses, the actual security reasons for surveillance. Which is the entire problem. There are alternative explanations for this technology that make far more sense than Amnesty's assertion that these systems are "clearly shaped by the intent to oppress and dominate." How exactly that oppression and domination would help Israel in any way is not defined. In fact, such a deliberate mistreatment as Amnesty describes would make life worse for Israelis as well. But according to Amnesty, Jewish supremacists just love to harass Palestinians  for no reason, and even spend millions of dollars to create high tech methods to make their lives miserable. 

Those are Amnesty's "facts" before they wrote one word of this report.

The report was conceived, researched, scoped and written with assumptions of unmitigated Israeli evil If you never encountered Amnesty's bias beforehand, this report alone is enough to show that the entire organization is a joke. 

Yet the New York Times wrote essentially a press release for this anti-Israel report, without reporting any bias at all.

Because people who share a bias cannot notice it in others.

UPDATE: NGO Monitor adds lots more.



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!

 

 

According to Palestine Chronicle, Palestinians now celebrate "Nakba Day" as a happy holiday.

For Palestinians, the catastrophic destruction of the Palestinian homeland, known as the Nakba, is not simply about mourning what has been lost, and the tragedy that has befallen the Palestinian people ever since. 

It is also a celebration of life, of culture, of the past and the present, and a strong message of a rooted nation with a strong sense of peoplehood to a young generation that has grown up stateless or in exile. 

This Palestinian community in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis has done just that. The elders of the community led an event that exhibited the young talents of the area, their artwork, poetry and embroidery. 

Can you imagine morphing Yom Hashoah (or Tisha B'av before the Messiah comes)  into a day of happiness?

"Nakba Day" is not really about memorializing and mourning a "catastrophe." The first one was celebrated only 25 years ago, after all - for the 50th anniversary of Israel's founding.

Nakba Day isn't a day of sadness, and it never was. It began and remains primarily a day of protest against Israel's existence. It is meant to recast the rebirth of the Jewish state into something terrible. It is meant to blunt Yom HaAtzmaut by choosing the anniversary of Israel's independence - not the anniversary of Palestinians leaving Haifa or Jaffa, or Deir Yassin, or Lydda. 

As with everything else  about Palestinian nationalism, it is about getting the world to hate Israel.

There isn't a separate "Palestinian celebration day." As far as I can tell, Palestinians don't have parades in Ramallah on their "independence day" in November.  

Nakba Day is a day to get the world to pay attention to Palestinian temper tantrums about Israel.

As such, Nakba Day has become the most important day on the Palestinian calendar. Demanding Israel's destruction to the world is the Palestinian national holiday. And since there is no other day on the calendar to celebrate Palestinian culture, the residents of Khan Younis chose the only real national holiday they have.

And since food plays an essential role in sustaining Palestinian culture and making it accessible to everyone, freshly made Palestinian bread, known as shrak, was shared among the community, along with freshly brewed coffee, done according to Palestinian Bedouin traditions. 



Shrak is not "Palestinian bread." Most sites say it is Jordanian, Bedouin or simply Levantine, but no one says it is "Palestinian."

It always amazes me how Palestinian Arabs who are so quick to claim that their cuisine is being "stolen" eagerly claim others' cuisines  as their own. Whomever came up with the idea of psychological projection would have a field day with Palestinians.





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

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Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, May 01, 2023

From Ian:

Israel at 75 Is a Modern Wonder
The other day I had my first journey on the sleek new Tel Aviv-Jerusalem railway, which shuttled me from Ben-Gurion airport to the Holy City in about the time it took to skip the ads on a podcast. It embodies the best of modern Israel: fast, efficient, impressive.

Israel turned 75 on Wednesday. It is one of the most astonishing achievements of the modern age. Every time I visit Tel Aviv, I still feel a shudder of awe over the sheer improbability of its existence, a thrilling modern metropolis built on little more than ancestral longing and borrowed guns.

Israel at 75 has a GDP per capita notably higher than Britain's. It is 11 times richer than its neighbor Egypt. It has won more Nobel prizes per person than America or France. This country is a towering monument to the power of ideas. It is literally a dream come true.

Who to blame for the predicament of the Palestinians? The Palestinians were let down repeatedly over the years by their Arab allies in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, who generally treated them as political pawns, not a sovereign people. They have been let down by their own leaders, who "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." Their propensity for violent terrorism has also done them no favors, all but destroying the peace movement in Israel. Most Israelis see peace as a fantasy.
Youssef Elazhari used to rely on Al Jazeera; now, he gets facts from Israel
Growing up in Marrakesh in the Kingdom of Morocco, Youssef Elazhari had positive views of Jews but not of Israel.

There hadn’t been many Jews around in Morocco since the community immigrated after 1948 with the establishment of modern-day Israel. Today, some 1 million Jews of Moroccan descent live in Israel—one of the largest single immigrant populations—while Morocco’s Jewish population hovers at about 2,000.

Elazhari’s parents, who belong to an indigenous people of Morocco that arrived prior to Muslims and Jews called Berber, had memories of their Jewish friends. His father is a retired university law professor, and his mother is a schoolteacher. His maternal grandfather, who worked in the interior ministry, was a pasha, which meant he kept the peace for all Muslims and hosted Jews regularly in his home.

“Growing up, my mother would tell me stories about how she and my father lived with the Jews in harmony until they made aliyah,” Elazhari told JNS.

In the 1950s, Jews were very active in Morocco’s cotton and silk industries, an industry in which Elazhari’s paternal grandmother also worked. She shared fond memories of her Jewish best friend and co-worker, Tamou.

Moroccan philosemitism notwithstanding, Israel is often viewed negatively in Morocco, according to Elazhari, which he blames on misconceptions spread by Arabic media.

“I will admit like many Moroccan teenagers, I was a victim of Al Jazeera propaganda,” he told JNS.

How Elazhari’s views on Israel evolved is one of the stories he told speaking on April 30 at the Wayfarer Theaters in Highland Park, Ill.
Polish government denounced over ‘dangerous' attack on Holocaust scholar
The Polish government has been furiously denounced over an “extremely dangerous” attempt to silence a leading Holocaust scholar.

More than 300 academics and institutions around the world - including Yad Vashem - issued a statement condemning the Polish government-led attacks against Polish historian Barbara Engelking, director of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, for publicly stating that Poles “failed” during the Holocaust and Jews were “unbelievably disappointed with Poles during the war".

"We regard such censorious tendencies and the notion that the continued financing of academic institutions should be conditional upon whether the research produced within them meets the expectations of politicians as extremely dangerous and unacceptable,” the letter says.

"Such actions are aimed at discouraging other scholars from undertaking research that might be met with a similar hate campaign."

One letter in support of Engelking released Thursday and signed by 11 Israeli organisations, such as Yad Vashem, the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum and Massuah Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, decried her critics’ attack on “academic freedom and historical facts".

The dispute reflects the governing Law and Justice party’s ongoing push for a patriotic narrative of the past that scholars such as Engelking say erases Polish crimes against Jews during the war.

The party’s campaign on this front led to a years-long series of diplomatic spats with Israel.

The latest fracas began on April 19, the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when Engelking made an appearance on the country’s largest private television station, TVN.

“Poles had the potential to become allies of the Jews and one would hope that they would behave differently, that they would be neutral, kind, that they would not take advantage of the situation to such an extent and that there would not be widespread blackmailing,” she said, adding that Poles today exaggerate how much they helped Jews during the war.
On January 16, 1920, prominent leaders of Nablus - both Muslim and Christian - met in a conference where they pledged, under oath::

(1) To boycott the Jews completely as n counter-measure against their covetous spirit toward this country. 

(2) To refuse them dwelling space in our district, and to binder their admittance thereto in every way. 

(3) To persevere In this boycott and opposition until there remains no trace of the Zionist Idea, or until we perish to the last man. 

(4) To submit this decision to His Excellency the Chief Administrator of the Occupied Territory, and, through the medium of the Allied representatives In Jerusalem, to the delegates of their respective governments at the Peace Conference; and to publish the same in the newspapers for the information of the civilized world, so that It may be understood why the inhabitants of this country are forced to sacrifice their lives for its freedom.

(Seat of the Islamo-Christian Conference at Nablus.] (Signed) Youssuf. 

It was essentially a declaration of unending war against the Jews of Palestine until they returned to being the second class citizens they should be.

This wasn't the only boycott that Palestinian Arabs declared against Jews. 

The fifth "Palestine Arab Congress" in 1922 pledged a boycott of Jewish products and services including the nascent electricity lines being set up by Pinchas Rutenberg, and this was reiterated in at least one successive Congress.

There is not exactly room for compromise here. The Arab leaders said, either Jews remain subjugated under our control, or we keep fighting them forever.

Terrorism and Arab Jew-hatred is not a reaction to Jewish "occupation" or supposed crimes. It pre-dates all of that. And whether it is official or not, the pledge to keep opposing Jewish rights in the Holy Land has never been rescinded.




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!

 

 

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