Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, May 05, 2023

Diversity, Palestinian-style

On Thursday, Mahmoud Abbas convened a meeting of the PLO Executive Committee.

Besides his normal anti-Israel pronouncements, he called for the widest possible participation in Nakba Day activities, stressing to his people their right to "return" to an apartheid state rather than live under his rule.

The "widest participation" line is funny, because the PLO Executive Committee is entirely made up of older light-skinned men.

The youngest member, as far as I can tell, is 55 years old. All the rest are over 60, and most are in their 70s.

So a uniformly old white and male committee is telling all Palestinians what they should do.

As usual, the Palestinian "victimhood" status serves to negate their crimes against progressivism.

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Israeli and Arab media are reporting that the Israeli government is conducting secret talks with the Palestinian Authority to extract gas from the "Gaza Marine" field off the coast of Gaza.

The report stated that the Gaza Marine field was a major topic in the Aqaba and Sharm el-Sheikh meetings, which brought together security and political officials from the Palestinian and Israeli sides, under the auspices of the United States, and with the participation of Jordan and Egypt.

Reportedly, the current talks in this regard are being led by the head of the Israeli National Security Council, Tzachi Hanegbi and the head of COGAT, Ghasan Alyan. Israel believes that this step will benefit the Palestinians economically, which may contribute to reducing security tensions in the long term.

There are concerns that Hamas might try to shoot rockets at the field, so Egypt is trying to bring them on board the initiative. Egypt would be the official sponsor of the field as the Palestinian Authority is not a state and cannot legally negotiate directly.

This is not really new. The Washington Post reported about this last November: The long dormant issue of gas off the Gaza coast was resurrected last year when Europe feared losing access to natural gas from the Russia/Ukraine war and started seeking alternative sources.

The current talks have been approved by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Galant. As far as I can tell, Israel is not claiming any revenues from the natural gas - the economic benefits would be towards the Palestinians and presumably Egypt, which has the facilities to convert the gas to liquefied natural gas which can be more easily transported to buyers.

As usual, this explodes the narrative of an Israel hell bent on destroying the Palestinian economy and self-rule. The truth is the opposite. But good luck finding the media mentioning that.

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The Jews had every reason to fear genocide in 1948

There is an interesting thread by Yair Wallach, from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, where he minimizes any threats made by Arabs towards Jews in 1948, and says that Jews exaggerate those threats in order to pursue their goal of Jewish supremacism:

So many people are attached to the "they wanted to throw us into the sea" myth based on extremely flimsy evidence - a couple of dubious quotes. If this was indeed a "genocidal war" against Jews, you'd expect such rhetoric to be easy to find. It isn't.

There is, in contrast, a considerable corpus of public discussions in Arabic on how to integrate Jews (inc. recent migrants) into the Arab Middle East. Those ideas, unsurprisingly, were unpalatable to the Zionist mainstream. But that's very different to "throwing into the sea".

But it's not enough to say: we had radically different political visions, therefore there was war. No, it has to be "they wanted to push us into the sea". Why?

Because it's a founding colonial myth. Israel is "the villa in the jungle." Arabs are genocidal and violent by nature, always a security risk. So equal rights are out of the question, and a 55 year military occupation is justified - because they want to push us into the sea.

It is true that in 1948, Zionist analysts felt that the war would go their way. It is probably true that some sober Arab leaders did not plan genocide against the Jews and "merely" wanted them to remain despised second class citizens as they had been forever under Muslim rule. But there is a huge leap in logic there to claim that there was no fear of another genocide, and an even larger leap to say that Jewish racism is keeping that myth alive in order to subjugate Palestinians.

First of all, there were threats - real threats - by Arab leaders promising a massacre of Jews that were recorded in major media, and not difficult to find at all. And they included at least one explicit call to throw Jews into the sea.

Here's one genocidal threat from November 1947:

Another one was from Abdul Azzam Pasha, secretary general of the Arab League. Right before the UN partition vote on November 29, 1947, he publicly threatened not only the Jews of Palestine but all Jews in the Middle East.

Abdul Azzam Pasha. secretary general of the Arab League, warned today that a United Nations decision to partition Palestine could mean only one thing for Arabs —"war against the Jews."

In a statement made as the UN general assembly prepared to vote on the explosive issue he declared: "Such a decision would mean the end of the first phase of the Arab struggle to have Palestine become an independent Arab state. The second phase of the struggle will now begin . . . the Arabs will have a long run of victories even it it takes us until 1950 or 1960.

"We have justice, time and numbers on our side—everything but arms— and we shall get them too."
...
The Arab spokesman said that if Haganah, army of the Jewish agency for Palestine, tries to enforce a partition decision after the British leave and Palestine Arabs seek the help of other Arab states "we shall not hesitate."

He declared: "Every Arab from Morocco to Afghanistan would rise in answer to the call of their Arab brethren."

He forecast "disturbances" and "persecution" of Jews in neighboring Arab countries "in an atmosphere of hatred and animosity which will prevail in case of trouble." The spokesman added, "Palestine Arabs will not stop to find out who is Zionist and who is not. They will be fighting one enemy--Jews."

..."If we suffer any defeats in the beginning then the Arabs will rally in huge numbers because it will be a question of racial pride."

Azzam Pasha is saying here that it is a point of pride for Arabs not to accept Jews as equals or victors. He proudly calls Arabs racists against Jews. So even if they wouldn't have literally thrown all the Jews into the sea, all the Arab proposals of what to do with the Jews ensured that Jews would be forever subjugated.

Now, let's look at what happened in the immediate aftermath of Azzam Pasha's threat. As soon as the UN partition vote ended - -within hours - Arabs in Palestine started attacking every Jew they could find.

Not Haganah members. Jews.

And for months, until the Haganah started going on the offensive, Jews were murdered every day just because they were Jewish.

In the Palestine Post of December 31, 1947, we read about:

- 39 Jews massacred at a Haifa oil refinery when 2000 Arab employees ran amok after an apparent Irgun bomb killed six Arabs.

- A funeral procession to the Mount of Olives (for Jews previously murdered by Arabs) was raked by gunfire, killing one of the mourners and a British policeman.

- Two Jews were killed in separate events near Safed.

- One Jew was killed and several injured in sniping from Jaffa to Tel Aviv.

And these are only the stories about fatal attacks. There were many others that were either repulsed or "only" resulted in injuries.

This is what the paper was like every day. Jewish doctors killed in hospitals. Jews killed trying to help Arabs in trouble. Arab neighbors who had been friends with Jews turned around and started ululating in support of Iraqi troops in their villages. It was open season on Jews.

And Jewish civilians in the Arab world were also targets at that time - in Tehran and Yemen, in Bahrain and Syria, in Morocco and Egypt.

These are not myths. Azzam Pasha's threats were coming true.

There was also at least one threat to throw Jews into the sea. In August, 1948, Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan Banna told the New York Times, "If the Jewish state be-comes a fact, and this is realized by the Arab peoples, they will drive the Jews who live in their midst into the sea." This is referring to the Jews of Arab countries, and the NYT added that "the Sheikh granted that this was a figure of speech," but later in the article he explicitly said that if it wasn't for politics, the Arab world would have "destroyed the Jews" in Palestine.

Wallach, whose Twitter feed has a number of statements disparaging those who are arguing with him because they are not real historians like he is, apparently found these explicitly genocidal statements against all Jews in the Middle East by Arab leaders too difficult to find. These are not "dubious" quotes - they are explicit calls to wipe out the Jews.

Coming only three years after the Holocaust, why wouldn't Jews take these threats seriously? More importantly, how can anyone consider these public statements from Arab leaders, backed up by Arab actions on the ground, not genocidal? The only thing protecting the Jews in Palestine was the Haganah - without them they would have been defenseless. They weren't defending themselves only from armies but from their neighbors. The Hadassah Hospital convoy massacre was not exactly an invitation by Arabs to work out their differences with the Jews.

Wallach's evidence that some Arabs discussed how to not eradicate the Jews and only subjugate them may very well be true, but there was also counter-evidence - the leader of the Arab Higher Committee being a Nazi collaborator, the organized attacks against Jews the previous decade during the Arab Revolt, the 1929 pogroms against Jews throughout the land - these were all fresh memories. Maybe Arab leaders really were against genocide, and maybe they just felt it was not a practical solution, but the Arab leaders throughout the Middle East were inciting their people to murder Jews, whether in the media or speeches to mobs.

No one says that every Arab wanted to kill every Jew. But given the events that followed the partition vote, and the recent history of Arab attacks on Jews, it would have been stupid indeed for Jews to rely on the goodwill of Arabs to keep them safe.

It is true that things aren't black and white. One can look at the relative strength of the armies and conclude that the Zionists probably wouldn't be destroyed. But at the time, as political winds swirled around - the US changed its position about partition before Truman recognized Israel, the UN meetings on Palestine brought different news every day, the British stumbled between pretending to defend Jews to abandoning them -- there was no room for the Jews to be confident. Thousands of Jews were killed during the war, and everyone knew friends and family who fell. The Jews had no less fear than the Arabs who fled - but the Jews had nowhere else to go. No matter how much Arab leaders insisted they weren't antisemitic, it isn't like the Jews of Palestine could expect safe passage or asylum in the neighboring states.

Wallach the historian also plays fast and loose in order to make his non-historic, purely political conclusion. What do these supposed "myths" of 1948 have to do with the "occupation" that began in 1967? If the "founding myths" were what animates Israel's actions today, then shouldn't they be treating Israeli Arabs the exact same as Palestinians?

He knows that Israeli Arabs having equal rights destroy his assertions, so he switches contexts to Palestinians who are not citizens, and jumps from 1948 to 1967.

Similarly, if Israel regards all Arabs as genocidal and violent, as Wallach asserts as a fundamental belief, then why did Israel make peace with Arab countries?

It is so sad when that reality gets in the way of a juicy, anti-Zionist theory.

Modern historians have the benefit of hindsight, and too often exhibit the proclivity to cherry pick the historic evidence that support their positions and ignore the inconvenient facts that say otherwise. But as we see here, being a historian does not mean being free of bias - on the contrary, it often gives the historian the hubris to discount or ignore the messy facts that don't fit their theories.

(h/t Nurit Baytch for Hassan Banna quote)

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05/04 Links Pt2: Will the Senate press the new US ambassador to Jordan about Malki’s killer?; The New Herodians; Shattering Another Excuse for FDR’s Holocaust Apathy

From Ian:

Will the Senate press the new US ambassador to Jordan about Malki’s killer?

This morning in Washington, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hear from President Biden’s nominee for Ambassador to Jordan.

Yael Lempert is a highly qualified and experienced nominee who deserves to be confirmed and given the chance to serve as the American people’s representative in Amman. However, it will be a missed opportunity if senators on the Committee fail to press her for greater clarity on the Biden Administration’s position on a key issue of concern not only to the US-Jordanian relationship but to the basic practice of American justice.

For more than a decade, one of the F.B.I.’s most-wanted and highest profile perpetrators of terrorism, Ahlam Tamimi, has been living freely in Jordan, loudly celebrating the murder and maiming of American citizens she spearheaded and encouraging others to do the same. Instead of extraditing her to the United States to face justice, as is required under the valid extradition treaty, Jordan has refused to hand her over – while eagerly siphoning billions of dollars in aid from American taxpayers.

On August 9, 2001, a human bomb exploded inside a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem. Tamimi selected the site as her target with great care as she has explained in numerous appearances in the Arabic-language media, and deposited the bomb-carrier at its entrance before fleeing to safety.

Fifteen innocents were murdered, eight of them children, with 130 injured.

Our daughter Malki, just fifteen years old, was one of two Americans among the dead. A third American, a young mother lunching with her toddler, remains in a coma still after all these years. We know Tamimi had the key role in the bombing on behalf of Hamas. We know she chose the pizzeria because of its popularity with young people. We know she sees this as the crowning achievement of her life.

We know these things because she has boasted publicly over and again and again of the unfathomable evil she unleashed that day.

The New Herodians

In its increasingly tense encounter with the American empire, the modern State of Israel finds itself confronted with an ancient choice: whether to continue as an independent state or whether to become a fractured Levantine client of a great power, governed by a Herodian faction. Rooted in the geography of the region and also in the historical experience of the Jewish people, the choice of how Israel positions itself now is likely to have extreme consequences for the future of the first Jewish state in over two millennia.

The choice of Israel’s elites, as expressed through a month of street demonstrations and an ongoing media campaign against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his proposed judicial reforms, is clear. Their strategy is to position themselves as a modern-day version of the Herodians, the famous allies of Rome whose preeminent king, Herod the Great, built the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem as well as the great fortress of Masada. Renowned during his lifetime and even 2,000 years after his death as a master builder, Herod not only ruled over the largest Jewish kingdom since the Iron Age, but managed to insinuate his relatives into the corridors of imperial power. Herod’s grandson was educated in Rome in the circles of imperial princes who befriended him, and his great-granddaughter Berenice was the lover of the future emperor of Rome—a liaison that, if consummated in marriage, might have fused Judaism and Rome at a much earlier juncture in history, and with what could have only been a very different effect, than Constantine’s conversion to Christianity.

Yet for the Jews, the reign of Herod and his family was but a way station on the path to disaster, culminating in the destruction of Herod’s Temple along with all vestiges of Jewish national independence for the next two millennia. It didn’t take long following Herod’s death for Judea to come under direct Roman rule as a province. Unrest would commence within a generation. By the time of his great-grandson, the destruction of the Jewish kingdom that Herod once ruled was so complete that the Jews became the world’s reigning metaphor for a stateless people, and the rise of Zionism, 19 centuries later, appeared to many, Jews and Christians alike, as nothing less than a modern-day miracle.

The Herodian pitch for Roman backing against their internal foes was not only not unique to their faction, but also in no way a particularly Jewish fault. The habit of local factions seeking external intervention defines the fractured societies of the Levant—Lebanon and Syria, as well as the stateless Kurds and Palestinians—who are unlikely ever to be sovereign. Such internally splintered polities have been the Levant’s structural characteristic going back for millennia, resulting from and contributing to its historical standing as “the crossroads of Empire”—i.e., a battleground for the armies of more stable and successful cultures.

Since its rebirth as a modern state, Israel has stood as an anomaly in the Levant: a cohesive and militarily powerful nation-state in a region where stability is hard to find. To ensure its independence, Israel became a nuclear power—attaining a destructive capability that only a few advanced states possess, and which would appear to serve as a potent hedge against conventional attack. According to some estimates, Israel now possesses either the fourth- or the fifth-most-powerful military in the world.

As I said, the depths the left plumbs keep getting lower.
Here are leftists protesting with flag draped coffins outside the IDF draft office at Tel Hashomer.
These women and the deep pockets that bought them their matching t-shirts, flags, coffins, strollers and megaphones aren't… https://t.co/oiJS9Nhnas
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) May 4, 2023

Alan Dershowitz: Israel Is Being Attacked by Political Short-Sellers

So this columnist plans to increase his investments in the Jewish state.

The newest weapon in the campaign against the ill-advised and overreaching judicial “reforms” being advocated by some Israeli politicians is the equally ill-advised and overreaching effort by some opponents to endanger Israel’s economy.

They claim that the judicial reform proposals, if enacted, would make Israel a less attractive venue in which to invest. There is, though, nothing in the proposals themselves that would have any direct negative impact on Israel’s economy in general or on the “startup nation” aspect of its high-tech sector.

It is the false claim itself — not the true workings of the economy — that is affecting the economic standing of the nation-state of the Jewish people. This is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which the prediction itself, even if baseless or overstated, can hurt a company or a country.

Short sellers have long been aware of this phenomenon and some have used (misused?) it to their unfair advantage. They spread false rumors in the hope and expectation that they will lower the prices of stocks they are shorting. That is analogous to what some opponents of judicial reform are trying to do in an effort to create pressure against the proposed reforms.

It may be working, at least in the short run. Some companies have threatened to pull their investments, and Israel’s credit rating has been downgraded. These actions are not a direct result of the judicial reforms themselves, which have not even been enacted. They are more a function of the alleged instability reflected in the demonstrations and counter-demonstrations.

And also in the frequency of Israeli elections and the appointment of extremists to the recently organized Netanyahu government. These alleged manifestations of “instability” are the best evidence that Israel is a thriving democracy. France too has demonstrations and extremists but they are not seen as reasons to doubt that country’s democratic character.

Jews acting like adults while Arabs act like babies - in 1948

The time between May 1 and May 15, 1948, was a strange time in British Mandate Palestine.

Many British bureaucrats had already packed up and left ahead of their official departure on May 15. But the Jewish state couldn't be declared yet.

Normal governmental functions still needed to be done. And who did them?

The Jews, of course.

Palestine Post, May 3, 1948:

May 4:

Someone has to keep the lights on, collect the garbage, deliver the mail, approve permits. It takes mature people to step in and do the work needed for the good of all.

This is leadership.

And what about in the Arab sector? They were busy doing a run on their banks (May 2):

The wealthy Arabs ran away in December, but their political leaders in Jaffa and Haifa were the first to leave, not the last, when those cities were taken over by the Haganah. (May 4)

This is the difference between leadership and the abdication of leadership.

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Arab MK Tried To Smuggle Chocolate Wafer To Hunger Striking Terrorist (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Jerusalem, May 4 - An legislator whose supporters seek the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state boasted today that before Palestinian Islamic Jihad figure Khader Adnan died this past Tuesday in an Israeli prison hospital, the lawmaker made an attempt to sneak into the detainee's possession a snack known for its status among Palestinians as not counting if eaten during a declared hunger strike.

MK Walid Taha of the Balad Party told confidants Thursday that on one of several visits, he sought to provide the hunger-striking Adnan with a supply of Tortit - a green-wrapped, chocolate-coated wafer that rise to prominence when a cell camera captured a Palestinian terrorist, Marwan Barghouti, surreptitiously devouring one during a hunger strike he had declared in 2017. Advocates rose to Barghouti's defense at the time, refusing to concede that he had violated his commitment - and thus generating precedent for other hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners to adopt similar behavior.

In the end, Taha, recalled, he decided at the last minute not to deliver the wafers because he remained unsure whether the adamant Islamist Adnan would accept Israeli products. "I know Palestinians themselves love Israeli products and buy them all the time," he acknowledged, "but a public figure like Khaled - it wouldn't do to have that awkwardness in the air. So I settled for only encouraging him verbally to continue to kill himself for Palestine."

Adnan died while awaiting trial for incitement to terrorism and membership in a terrorist group. His activities before imprisonment included calling on Palestinians to become suicide bombers against Israeli civilians, and promoting an ideology that demands submission to Islam on pain of death. Taha took advantage of his parliamentary immunity to conduct the visits.

Other Palestine advocates expressed puzzlement that Adnan did not himself resort to the Tortit gambit. "It's possible he really was prepared to die," conceded Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch. "Weird, but plausible. Also not consistent with every other aspect of Palestine activism, which has always prioritized image and rhetoric over integrity. Palestinian leaders are expected to encourage others to suffer and die while the leadership lives large and takes no personal risks. So excuse my surprise."

Taha declined to say what he did with the Tortit, since no Israelis, even the hundreds of thousands below the poverty line, will admit to eating the mediocre-at-best snack. Experts surmised that Prison Services purchases the bulk of Tortit production from its manufacturer, Elite.

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05/04 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: We made the Dee family’s killers pay; NGOs Laud Islamic Jihad's Khader Adnan, Blame Israel for Hunger Strike Death

From Ian:

Netanyahu: We made the Dee family’s killers pay

Anyone who attacks Israel should be prepared to die, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday, after the IDF killed the terrorists who murdered three members of the Dee family last month.

“This morning we made the murderers of Lucy, Maia and Rina Dee, of blessed memory, pay,” Netanyahu said. Netanyahu: Whoever hurts us, be prepared to die

Israel’s message to terrorists, the prime minister added, is that “it may take a day, a week or a month, but you can be sure that we will make you pay.

“It doesn’t matter where you hide; we will find you. Whoever hurts us, be prepared to die,” he said.

Netanyahu thanked security forces for working night and day to catch the killers.

Rabbi Leo Dee, the husband and father of the terrorists’ victims, said that he and his children “were comforted to hear that the Israeli security forces have eliminated the Iranian-funded terrorists responsible for Lucy, Maia, and Rina’s murders.

“This has been done in a way that has not endangered the lives of Israeli soldiers, nor innocent Palestinian civilians – in a way that only the Israeli army knows how to do,” he said, adding that he wants “the opportunity to speak with the terrorists’ families and ask what good they thought would come out of their actions and to hear their vision for a better world.”

Dee was later interviewed on KAN Reshet Bet, where he was asked if he felt any sense of comfort. “Nothing can really comfort our loss,” he said. “Our greatest comfort, though, was seeing the patients in Beilinson.” On Tuesday, patients at Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, who had received Lucy’s donated organs, met the family.

“We look towards the future, with what we have. Am Yisrael has a future,” he added.

Palestinian Authority condemns Israel after killing of Hamas terrorists

The Palestinian Authority on Thursday condemned Israel for launching a military operation in Nablus and killing three Hamas terrorists who were behind the Dee family murders.

The PA called on the US administration to intervene to stop the Israeli “aggression.”

The PA was responding to the Israeli security operation on Thursday morning during which the terrorists – Muath Masri, 35, Hassan Qatanani, 35, and Ibrahim Jaber, 45 – were killed.

Three Dee family members, Lucy (Leah) Dee, and her two daughters, Maia and Rina, were killed in a shooting attack carried out by the terrorists in the Jordan Valley in early April.

Hamas announced that the three slain men were members of its armed wing, Izzaddin al-Qassam. A statement issued by the group in the Gaza Strip confirmed that the terrorists, whom it described as “heroes,” were behind the attack against the two Dee sisters and their mother.

According to Hamas, the shooting attack came in response to an “assault” by Israeli police officers against Muslim worshippers who had barricaded themselves inside the al-Aqsa Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan.

The alleged “assault” took place when the officers moved to evacuate dozens of young Muslim men who reportedly brought rocks and fireworks into the mosque.

Although the terrorists killed in Thursday’s raid belonged to Hamas, many supporters of the ruling Fatah faction headed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas attended their funeral, carrying the yellow flags of their faction.

Caroline Glick: What a strategy for defeating Hamas and Hezbollah looks like

Given the Iranian regime’s vulnerability, it is apparent that Israel’s best move is to support the Iranian people in their continued efforts to overthrow the regime through direct political support for the cause of freedom in Iran and through subversion and sabotage. True, Iran’s nuclear clock is ticking, but the only long-term solution to Iran’s nuclear weapons program is to bring down the regime.

While the big bet is Iran, Israel cannot ignore its proxies. Israel has no interest in a major war with either the Palestinians or the Lebanese right now. But it also cannot stand back and let them attack it. Rather than attack tertiary sites and foot soldiers, Israel should make the most of its limited responses by directing its fire against strategic targets.

Israel should renew its targeted strikes against Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror masters in Gaza and northern Samaria. It should also take steps against their soft underbellies. Two come to mind. First, Ben-Gvir has rightly identified imprisoned terrorists in Israeli jails as one such underbelly. Terrorists in Israeli prisons receive benefits that terrorists in U.S. and other prisons could only dream about. These special privileges, such as making their own food, receiving conjugal visits and using cellphones (which also pose security threats) need to end. The swank conditions terrorists enjoy in Israeli jails are at best not a disincentive for would-be terrorists.

The second soft target is the NGO network that supports terrorists. Last month the undercover investigative group Ad Kan published an expose on Channel 14 about HaMoked, the Center for the Defense of the Individual. HaMoked members were exposed admitting that their group is a lawfare organization used to undermine Israel’s legal system in its efforts to punish terrorists. HaMoked leaders view their mission as protecting terrorists, whose actions they justify and support through their efforts. HaMoked needs to outlawed as a terror entity. Criminal probes should be opened into its activities. Other NGOs registered in Israel, the Palestinian Authority and abroad also need to be placed under a magnifying glass.

As for Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, the first step Israel should take is to stop allowing the U.S. and other global powers to get away with pretending that the Lebanese government and armed forces are independent (and pro-U.S.) entities. Today, the U.S. is largely underwriting both the Lebanese government and its armed forces, even though both are controlled by Hezbollah. The more open this situation becomes, the more difficult it will be for the Biden administration and European governments to maintain their support. The less legitimacy these entities receive, the more exposed Hezbollah and Iran become.

This won’t eliminate the threat both pose to Israel. But it will make them less interested in open aggression, for which they will no longer have plausible deniability.

A two-pronged strategy of destabilization with the goal of overthrowing the Iranian regime on the one hand, and choosing targets that strategically weaken Iran’s Palestinian and Lebanese proxies on the other, will diminish their interest in attacking Israel, advance our strategic goal of defeating them and leave our enemies teetering. It will stabilize the government and give a sense of security to Israeli citizens.

Times of Israel reports:

Two Palestinians accused of killing Lucy Dee and her daughters Maia and Rina in a shooting attack in the Jordan Valley last month were shot dead by Israeli troops Thursday morning in the West Bank city of Nablus along with a third Palestinian gunman.

In a joint statement, the Shin Bet security agency, Israel Police, and Israel Defense Forces said troops entered the Nablus Old City in order to arrest Hassan Qatnani and Moaz al-Masri, the Hamas terrorists who allegedly carried out the deadly attack on April 7.

The Palestinian prime minister responded:

Prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh condemned the Israeli aggression on the Old City of Nablus, which resulted in the death of three young men, holding the occupation government responsible for these crimes against our people.
Shtayyeh called on the international community to unify standards and hold Israel accountable for its horrific crimes and continuous violations against our people.

The spokesperson for Mahmoud Abbas, and other PA and Fatah officials also condemned the IDF operation to arrest the murderers.

But not one of them ever said anything resembling a regret, let alone a condemnation, for the murders of the Dee family itself.

They inhabit a world where everything is backwards - murderers are heroes, justice is a crime, women driving a car are aggressors and those who riddle them with bullets at point blank range are the victims.

Over the past few years, the "progressives" including "human rights experts" have eagerly adopted this perverted view of the world.

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Reuters, reporting on the suicide by starvation of Khader Adnan, writes, "Adnan was arrested and indicted in an Israeli military court on charges that included links to an outlawed group and incitement to violence."

As CAMERA notes, much of the coverage of his death imply that he was under administrative detention or that his hunger strike was about administrative detention. But in fact he was indicted and charged this time.

We don't know the specific example of incitement to violence that Adnan was charged with, but he has been captured on video explicitly calling for Palestinians to shoot and blow up Jews.

The UN has written papers on combating incitement and writes that such incitement is a violation of international law and several international conventions. It held a meeting only last year where all the participants from many countries unanimously agreed that incitement to violence is unacceptable under any circumstances.

Yet for Adnan's death, the UN supported the person who is on the record as calling for the murder of Jews.

Human Rights Watch is on the record for opposing direct incitement to violence in the DRC, in Ethiopia, in Greece and elsewhere. It says that Meta has not done nearly enough to combat incitement to violence on its Facebook and other platforms. Its official position for decades has been that HRW is against laws that prohibit indirect incitement, but it fully supports laws - supported by international law - against direct incitement to violence.

But when it comes to Palestinians directly inciting violence against Jews - not only Khader Adnan, but hundreds of examples that one can see in MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch - Human Rights Watch is silent, and has not condemned such speech. On the contrary, HRW considers Adnan to be a hero.

Omar Shakir, their Middle East researcher, tweeted, "Make no mistake: Israel killed Khader Adnan. He valiantly struggled against injustice—multiple months-long hunger strikes against administrative detention—until his last breath. He never enjoyed a minute of freedom but dies w his head raised high. His resilience wont be forgotten."

Amnesty has also spoken out about incitement to violence in Myanmar, India, Brazil and elsewhere. But it has never denounced Palestinian incitement to violence against Jews. It also tweeted in support of Khader Adnan, describing him as a "father of 9" without even mentioning his leadership role in the Islamic Jihad terror group, let alone his own direct incitement to blow up Jewish civilians.

In fact, Amnesty's reporting of Adnan's death mentions that he was charged with incitement to violence - but instead of researching what he actually said, it implies that these are trumped up charges and that he was just acting like any normal person would:

In February 2023, Khader Adnan was arrested and indicted by an Israeli military court on charges of “incitement to violence” – largely based on his visits to the families of Palestinian prisoners and to funerals of those killed by Israeli forces.

That last phrase strongly implies that Amnesty knows about the video shown above, and knows that Adnan has called for blowing up Israelis, and instead of condemning Khader Adnan's clear call to murder Jews, Amnesty says that Israel is at fault for arresting him for incitement!

This isn't human rights. This is condoning incitement to murder Jews under the pretext of human rights.

The current wave of terror attacks against Israelis have not emerged in a vacuum. The attacks, especially the apparent "lone wolf" attacks where teens and women start stabbing Israelis or ram their cars into Jews, are a direct result of this sort of incitement that permeates Palestinian media and social media. Incitement kills - and "human rights organizations" know this, because they call it out in other contexts.

But when it comes to Israel, they either don't admit there is any incitement or they frame it as just a normal part of what it means to be a Palestinian. Khader Adnan is not someone who urges Palestinians to murder Jews but a human rights hero bravely protesting his being arrested - for urging Palestinians to murder Jews.

Human rights organizations have become a parody of human rights.

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!

Wednesday was the 125th anniversary of Golda Meir's birth.

She was known for many memorable expressions, but the Arab world seems to prefer to make up their own.

Egyptian newspaper El Balad attributes to Meir a series of quotations that are completely fictional. It doesn't look like they made these up - these fake quotes have been mentioned in Arabic language articles (and even Arab English language articles) for a long time.

You can tell a lot abut the Arab psyche by their fabrications.

For example, they claim she said, "Every morning I wish to wake up and not find a single Palestinian child alive." It is an absurd libel, but it is good propaganda for Arabs who want to demonize Israelis.

The next lie is that she was asked about the worst and best days of her life, and here's the fake answer: "The worst day in my life was the day when Al-Aqsa Mosque was burned, because I was afraid of the Arab and Islamic reaction. The happiest day in my life is the next day; because I saw the Arabs and Muslims did not move a finger." This is clearly meant to insult the Arab nations for not invading Israel after that 1969 arson by a mentally ill Christian.

Another fantasy is that Meir was told that Islam predicts an upcoming war between Muslims and Jews, in which the Muslims will be victorious, and she answered "I know that, but the victorious Muslims are not the ones we see now, and this will not be achieved unless we see the worshipers in the Fajr [dawn] prayer as fervent as they are in the Friday prayer." This plays into the fantasy that smart Jews of course know that Islam is the true religion but the reason they have lost every war to Jews is because they are not strict enough with their religion.

The next fabricated quote has been used by Jews but is just as false. The story is that during a meeting between Golda Meir and a group of Israeli writers in 1970, one of them said that a Jew from Poland visited Palestine in the 1920s. On his return to Europe, he summarized his impressions by saying: "The bride is beautiful, but she has got a bridegroom already." (This quote is false as well.) Golda Meir is quoted as responding, "And I thank God every night that the bridegroom was so weak, and the bride could be taken away from him."

Another obviously fake quote is that when she first came to Eilat, which is close to Saudi Arabia, she said, ""I smell the scent of my ancestors in Khaybar."

The others mentioned in the article appear to be false as well, with one exception: Golda's 'famous quote “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children, but we cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”

Beyond the propaganda value of the fake quotes, we can see in just this one article how little regard Arab journalists have for the truth.

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!

05/03 Links Pt2: Enemies wage an ‘unconventional’ legal war against Israel; How anti-Semitic tropes crept back into the mainstream; New Ireland Boycott Bill

From Ian:

Enemies wage an ‘unconventional’ legal war against Israel

Having reluctantly realized that traditional wars—with tanks, bullets and fighter planes—have failed against Israel’s military prowess, enemies of the Jewish state have turned to unconventional tactics in an effort to defeat it. That includes “weaponizing” international law to delegitimize Israel, according to Michal Cotler-Wunsh, a former member of Knesset who is now a senior policy adviser and research fellow.

During a speaking tour from April 17-21, which took her to the campuses of the law schools at Columbia, Yale and New York universities, as well as to the City University of New York (CUNY) and Rutgers University, Cotler-Wunsh spent an hour on the phone with JNS describing the main thesis of her lectures.

An attorney by training, Cotler-Wunsh knows that legalese can confuse people and seem removed from everyday life. So she turns to an example that non-lawyers will understand demonstrates that selective application of rules and principles undermines the entire system.

“When I say to a 3-year-old that we’re going to play a game, and you’re going to play according to the rules but I’m not, that 3-year-old will turn around and say to me, ‘I don’t want to play with you. You’re cheating,’ ” Cotler-Wunsh told JNS. “The game is finished. There’s no game.”

As preschooler games go, so goes international law. “The rules-based order has to be applied equally and consistently,” she said. Instead, many seek to apply rules selectively to the detriment of the lone Jewish democracy in the world.

Attacks on Israel are often couched in what some would call “progressive” or “woke” liberal values, but Cotler-Wunsh doesn’t think they are progressive at all. “I think in many ways, they cause regress,” she said.

Polish Responsibility for the Holocaust Was Not Minor

There are two central questions of the Holocaust: why it happened and how. A recent book, Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in German-Occupied Poland, edited by the historian Jan Grabowski and by Barbara Engelking, the director of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research in Warsaw, is a significant addition to our understanding about how the Germans pursued the so-called Final Solution in Eastern Europe—namely, with the help of local non-Jewish populations.

The German effort to find and murder every Jew was a vast undertaking encompassing three continents. The Germans and their collaborators persecuted Jews from North Africa to Norway. They deported Jews to their deaths from the Channel Islands in the West and hunted Jews in the Caucasus in the East. The Germans killed Jews throughout the war, shooting Jews and their Christian companions barely 300 yards from the U.S. Army in Pisa in August 1944. Even within a global conflict that mobilized over 100 million men, the so-called Final Solution required considerable manpower and effort. Night Without End, a 546-page edited and abridged English version of a 1,700-page, two-volume Polish study, is part of a wave of recent historiography demonstrating how much of that effort came from the Jews’ neighbors.

Poland was the center of the slaughter. Of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust, some 3 million were Polish Jews. There were 108,149 Jews in the eight Polish counties under examination before the mass killings of “Aktion Reinhardt” during 1941-43. Night Without End examines the fate of the 9,543 who survived this mass slaughter. By the end of the war, only 2,387 were still alive. The Germans called this final stage of the Holocaust—the elimination of the survivors of the initial waves of mass killings—the Judenjagd (hunt for Jews). It was a shared enterprise, involving Germans, the Polish authorities, and Poles who lived near the Jews.

The eight essays in the book use a microhistory approach, patiently sifting through inconsistent and difficult sources to describe the fates of individual Jews. One microhistory technique is to note evidentiary gaps, forcing readers to confront the absence of testimony and records resulting from murder and impunity. We learn, for example, that Władysław Węgrzyn, a member of the Home Army (Poland’s main resistance), agreed to hide Sabina Blaufeder and Genia Raber, prewar acquaintances. Węgrzyn later betrayed the women. We do not know why.

The Germans organized a system of control that spread terror throughout the Polish countryside, a system based on what Engelking and Grabowski term “German law and lawlessness.” The village security apparatus also targeted escaped Soviet POWs and peasants, weaving a web of fear and death. German terror unleashed dark forces in Polish and Ukrainian societies. While the Germans destroyed the Polish nation, many Poles exploited the assault on the Jews to settle scores, enrich themselves, promote nationalist and antisemitic politics, or to survive at the expense of Jewish friends and neighbors.

Microhistory, as the name suggests, is particularly effective at reconstructing specific episodes in great detail. For instance, Grabowski details hour by hour the murder of Jews in the Węgrów ghetto on Sept. 21, 1942—Yom Kippur—the same day as the final mass deportation from the Warsaw ghetto. During the killings, the 16-year-old son of Müller, the head of the German Schutzpolizei, donned his Hitlerjugend uniform and participated.

Similarly, Tomasz Frydel analyzes the social dynamic in the Polish countryside set in motion by the German occupation. Germans brutally retaliated against some Poles who helped Jews, thereby exploiting Polish fear. The Germans and Polish police sometimes killed Poles who hid Jews, which in turn led other Poles to preemptively murder Jews they were concealing—either with their own hands or by surrendering them. Dagmara Swałtek-Niewińska provides the example of Wojciech Gicala, who asked his village leader what to do with the 18-month-old Jewish infant from the Pinkes family he was sheltering. A Polish policeman shot Gicala and the child.

The book provides a vital service by dispelling the connected Polish myths of Jews as passive victims and of Poles as rescuers. The tale that the Jews went to slaughter silently absolves Poles morally of their failure to become involved. As elsewhere in Europe, local non-Jews invented tales to remove themselves from history. Many later claimed not to know what the Germans were inflicting upon the Jews. Or they claimed that the Germans always killed those who aided Jews, thereby excusing their lack of assistance.

Jonathan Tobin: Jews don’t need a heritage month, and neither does anyone else

For some community members, it’s exactly what Jews have always wanted and needed. In 2006, following up on a resolution passed by Congress, President George W. Bush was the first to declare May to be Jewish American Heritage Month. His successors have happily done the same.

President Joe Biden’s proclamation is full of the same fulsome praise for the role that Jews have played in the history of this republic, similar to Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and, like theirs, is peppered with self-referential language seeking to position himself as a true friend of the community. As has become the custom and much like the way other declarations of other months, weeks or days dedicated to various ethnic, racial and religious groups, as well as a never-ending list of philanthropic causes and efforts to combat various diseases and maladies, the states have also chimed in with their own proclamations about the commemoration of American Jewish heritage.

The fuss made over Jewish American Heritage Month may not equal that accorded celebrations such as those for Black History (February), Hispanic Heritage (September), Women’s History (March) or LGBTQ+ Pride (June), and it does have to share May with Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage. But it is gaining a lot more attention with each passing year. And a lot of serious people, including those who are advocates in the battle against antisemitism like former U.S. State Department envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism Elan Carr, think it ought to be made an even bigger deal than it is now.

This pleases a lot of people in the Jewish community who have long thought that Jewish history deserved to be singled out in the way that all those other heritages have been. To an older generation of Jews that remember a time when Jewish participation in mainstream culture was noteworthy and a source of great pride to a community largely made up of immigrants struggling for acceptance, any amount of hoopla made over Jewish Heritage Month is especially satisfying.

But there’s more to this than a group ego trip. Many in the community believe that promoting interest in Jewish life and history among the general population can also play a role in combating antisemitism.

No Virgins for Khader Adnan Who Didn’t Eat for 86 Days (Judean Rose)

By Judean Rose

Khader Adnan didn’t eat for 86 days and died. Because that’s what happens to people who don’t eat for 86 days. They die.

Adnan was a senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad “official.” In other words, a terrorist. A high-up terrorist in a major terror outfit. Now he is a dead terrorist—likely too dead to care that there were no brown-eyed virgins awaiting his corpse.

While Khader Adnan was dying (because he, of his own volition, decided to die by not eating for 86 days), Palestinian Islamic Jihad issued a statement that Israel would “pay a heavy price” should Adnan die in custody. When Adnan’s physical condition deteriorated and his condition became critical, the “Palestinian Prisoners Club” announced that Khader Adnan could die at any minute.

Which he did. Which is generally what happens when someone doesn’t eat for 86 days. They die. Virgins or not.

Khader Adnan died not only because he was too stupid to eat, but because he wanted to die to give his fellow terrorists a pretext to shoot rockets and mortars from Gaza into civilian Israel, a favorite pastime of Arab terrorists. And now in the south, we have frightened Jewish children stuck in safe rooms as sirens go off all around them. As these children well know, rockets and mortars can and sometimes do kill their friends and relatives, and destroy their homes and cars.

More than 100 rockets and mortars have now been shot from Gaza at Southern Israelis, including my little grandchildren, since Khader Adnan killed himself on Tuesday morning by deciding not to eat until he died. Yes, dear old DEAD Khader Adnan achieved his fondest goal in life: to make life miserable for the Yahud, an ideal for which Khader Adnan was apparently willing to kill himself. By not eating for 86 days.

Last night, when “only” 32 rockets had been shot at my grandchildren and other Israelis who live in the south, I stumbled upon a friend’s post:

“So why do you think Israel let that piece of cockroach excrement die from the hunger strike.”

That was kind of cringey. Still, I took her point. Why didn’t Israel kill Adnan to begin with, instead of letting him commit slow suicide? He was a terrorist. Now he is a dead terrorist by his own hand. We could have helped him along, expedited things. Did he really deserve to live? A man whose fondest desire is to kill the Jews?

Alternatively, if we lacked the impetus to kill the terrorist Khader Adnan for political considerations, we might have force-fed him like a goose on a foie gras farm. Would world censure of Israel have been any worse than it is right now at this moment, even as my people are under rocket fire, had a feeding tube been forced down Adnan’s now-dead nose or throat?

Maybe. But I’d take that censure in exchange for keeping my grandchildren and other Southern Israelis safe. Because rockets and mortars may indeed break bones but names can never hurt me. Or any other Israelis, including my grandchildren, who will, God willing, give me great grandchildren, while Adnan’s starved and lifeless body rots in the ground, with not a virgin in sight.

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 NGO brags about the high number of April terror attacks

The Palestine Information Center "Maata" counted 987 acts of "resistance" in the territories and Jerusalem during April.

They proudly count the murder of three "settlers" as the major accomplishment for the month. Those were

Lucy Dee and her daughters Maya and Rina whom they were so proud of murdering.

They also counted:

139 shootings

5 car rammings

4 stabbings

36 IEDs

23 Molotov cocktails

They also claimed "hundreds" of stone throwing attacks.

That's at least six violent attacks every day of April, mot of which are not even reported anywhere.

Their press release also contradicts the progressive charge that Israel increases its attacks on Ramadan. They freely admit that Palestinian terror increases every Ramadan and Israel knows and prepares for it:: "The Palestinian resistance invests the blessed month of Ramadan by raising the morale of the resistance fighters and intensifying their operations. This is what the Israeli security and military services calculate when the month of Ramadan comes every year."

In addition, the specifically cheer a child terrorist, 15-year-old, Ibrahim Zamar, who carried out a shooting attack in Jerusalem injuring two.

As we've seen countless times, the messages of supporting terror and bragging about murdering Jews are explicit in Arabic, while they have many propagandists who say the opposite message in English, that Israel is the aggressor.

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!

05/03 Links Pt1: IDF struck 16 targets in Gaza overnight in response to 100 rockets; Media Give Friendly Image Overhaul to Dead Hunger Striking Terrorist

From Ian:

PMW: What is US Department of State’s Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs doing to implement the Taylor Force Act?

The 2018 bi-partisan US Taylor Force Act (TFA) conditioned much of the US aid to the Palestinian Authority on the latter abolishing its Pay-for-Slay terror reward policy. TFA was not merely a financial law. Rather, it contained substantive Congressional findings and direction, inter alia, to the US Department of State regarding the activities required of their representatives to pressure the PA to abandon its policy.

After finding that “The Palestinian Authority’s practice of paying salaries to terrorists serving in Israeli prisons, as well as to the families of deceased terrorists, is an incentive to commit acts of terror” TFA added the “Sense of Congress.” In this section of TFA, Congress called on the PA to abandon its terror reward policy and on other PA donor countries to cease aid to the PA until the PA abolished the policy.

TFA then added directions to urge “the Department of State to use its bilateral and multilateral engagements with all governments and organizations committed to the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians to highlight the issue of Palestinian Authority payments for acts of terrorism and to urge such governments and organizations to join the United States in calling on the Palestinian Authority to immediately cease such payments.”

In recent weeks, the PA approved its 2023 budget. While the PA hides its finances, the PA’s 2023 budget includes hundreds of millions of dollars that the PA will spend on its terror incentivizing and rewarding payments.

Soon after the announcement of the PA cabinet approval of the budget, Mr. Hady Amr, who according to the US Department of State website currently serves as the Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs within the Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs met with different senior PA, PLO and Fatah officials.

Funding crisis endangers Palestinian statehood, UN warns donor parley

UNSCO painted a bleak picture of the Palestinian economy, explaining that it was beset by so many forces beyond its control that even if it successfully executed all reforms possible, it could still not escape its funding crisis.

It highlights the steep drop in donor funding to the PA of over 80% from 2013 - when it stood at $1.4 billion - compared to just $350 million last year. UNSCO projected that the PA would receive only $300 million in donor funds this year as foreign financing continued to decline.

Israel’s decision to double the funds it withholds from the tax fees it collects on behalf of the PA to $30 million per month has only “exacerbated” the situation, UNSCO said. Israel does so to offset the monthly payment the PA makes to Palestinian terrorists and their family members.

“Resolving the issue could unlock an estimated 800 million USD ormolu in total withheld revenues b year-end 2023,” the UN said.

Then there is the issue of Israel's restrictions on goods that enter and exit the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing, which has over time pushed Palestinians to seek an alternative route through the Rafah crossing into Egypt.

“More than one-third of total comical traffic into the Strip” now goes through the Rafah Crossing where the PA does not generate any revenue, UNSCO explained.

Israeli elimination of restrictions on Palestinian access to farmland in Area C of the West Bank would improve PA revenues by some six to nine percent of the GDP, UNSCO said.

The World Bank issued a report which spoke of the PA’s fiscal crisis, but took a less pessimistic approach as it spoke of the PA’s recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, but still spoke of a bleak outlook, particularly in light of Israeli-Palestinian violence and the absence of peace process.

“Despite signs of recovery in 2022, growth remains sensitive to the escalation of tensions in the Palestinian territories and the ongoing restrictions on mobility, access and trade,” said Stefan Emblad, World Bank Country Director for West Bank and Gaza.

The World Bank said that the PA’s financing gap had “fared better than initial forecasts, closing the year at US $351 million, or the equivalent of 1.8% of the GDP, down from 5.7% in 2021.”