Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

05/17 Links Pt2: At 75, Israel Has Plenty to Celebrate; 38% of European Jews consider leaving due to antisemitisim; Tel Aviv ANU–Museum buys Codex Sassoon for $33.5 million

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: At 75, Israel Has Plenty to Celebrate

It helps to remember the circumstances in which the country was born. Israel is a post-colonial state. It started its national life dirt-poor. Its peer group of countries includes Syria, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and North and South Korea. These states came into being with many of the same core problems: hostile neighbors, unsettled borders, deep poverty, restive ethnic and religious minorities and other unresolved dilemmas from their independence struggles.

As with Israel, many of those problems still dog most of those states. The Koreas don’t have a settled border. India and Pakistan have painful memories of forced population transfers. Those who think the Palestinian issue is unique should consider the situation of Kashmiris in India, Tamils in Sri Lanka, or Kurds in Syria.

But if Israelis haven’t settled the conflict with the Palestinians and other neighbors, neither have they allowed themselves to be consumed by it. Israel is not a country that defines itself in terms of what it’s against, what it’s not, or who has done what to it. There is also an affirmative vision of Israeli identity, centered on the ideal of a renovated and renewed Jewish civilization within which its citizens can find prosperity, a sense of purpose and relative security.

It’s easy to take for granted how fully that vision has been realized. “We will know we have become a normal country when Jewish thieves and Jewish prostitutes conduct their business in Hebrew,” was how David Ben-Gurion famously defined normality. Israel got there long ago. On a visit to Israel last week, I casually checked an iPhone app to see where the rockets were falling — not too worried, since the Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile systems provide effective defense.

If the success of a society can be measured by the speed at which the miraculous becomes the mundane, Israel is doing fine.

Meir Y. Soloveichik: Why Jews Speak of Memory, Not History

On a recent visit to Israel, I toured the Museum of the Underground Prisoners, in Acre. It is housed in the Ottoman fortress that the British utilized as their most important prison during their colonial administration of Palestine between 1920 and 1948. It was the most emotional museum visit I have ever experienced. It was at this site that the pioneering revisionist Zionist leader and thinker Vladimir Jabotinsky had been held in 1920 by the British for the “crime” of organizing a Jewish defensive response to Arab riots in Jerusalem. And it was there that Menachem Begin’s Irgun staged the prisoner breakout later immortalized in Leon Uris’s novel Exodus and Otto Preminger’s eponymous 1960 film. But we had not come to Acre to remember Jabotinsky, or Begin, but a young soldier who had been imprisoned there, a young soldier who had died there, a young soldier by the name of Dov Gruner.

Gruner was a Jew who fled Hungary ahead of the Holocaust, illegally made his way to the Holy Land, and served with distinction in the British Army. He had grown convinced that the government that had betrayed the promise of the Balfour Declaration by closing the gates of Palestine to the Jews of Europe and thereby condemning them to death had lost the right to rule. Upon his discharge, he joined the Irgun, the militia that grew out of Jabotinsky’s visionary belief in Jewish self-determination and self-defense, to fight under and alongside Menachem Begin.

Captured during an Irgun raid on a Ramat Gan police station, Gruner was sentenced to death. Given his wartime service, an international campaign sought the commutation of Gruner’s sentence. But the British, in an act that horrified even Menachem Begin’s opponents in the Zionist movement, hanged Dov Gruner in the middle of the night in the Acre prison, denying him the right to see a rabbi before his execution. His sister, who had come from America to see him before she lost him forever, learned about her brother’s death from the radio.

Prior to his hanging, Dov Gruner wrote a letter to Begin, which was somehow smuggled out of prison on several scraps of paper. He thanked his commander “from the bottom of my heart for the great encouragement you have given me in these fateful days.” He added:
Of course I want to live. Who does not? But if I am sorry that I am about to “finish,” it is mainly because I did not manage to do enough. I too could have “let the future fend for itself,” taken the job I was promised, or left the country altogether and lived securely in America. But that would not have given me satisfaction as a Jew and certainly not as a Zionist.

Gazan rocket attacks may not seem to kill many Jews, with notable, tragic exceptions such as 4-year-old Daniel Tragerman, 16-year-old Daniel Viflic, and most recently, 80-year-old Inga Avramyan. But Gazan terror rockets may be killing Jews in other, more insidious ways. Since 2012, for example, researchers have known that rocket attacks are a significant risk factor for preterm delivery (PTD), the leading cause of infant mortality among Jewish Israelis. In effect, one might say that rockets are killing Israeli Jews even before they are born.

Tamar Wainstock, PhD, School of Public Health; Faculty of Health Sciences Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, has done groundbreaking work on the effect of rocket attacks on pregnancy outcomes for women in Southern Israel. I reached out to Wainstock who sent me the 2012 study, Was the military operation “cast lead” a risk factor for preterm deliveries?, along with three related studies that she, personally led.

Pregnancy and Delivery Outcomes: Operation Cast Lead

In the 2012 study, pregnancy and delivery outcomes of women who gave birth during Operation Cast Lead are compared to those of women who gave birth during the same time period of 1 and 2 years before and after the war. Women exposed to the stress of the military campaign were found to have significantly more preterm deliveries at gestational age 32-34 weeks (1.6% vs. 0.8%).

The researchers introduce the subject of the study as follows (emphasis added):

Gestational age is one of the most important predictors of an infant’s subsequent health and survival. Preterm infants are at an increased risk of death or short-term and long-term disability than those born at term. Preterm delivery (PTD) refers to birth that begins after 20 weeks gestation and before 37 completed weeks of gestation.

The 2012 study authors explain that stress is recognized as a risk factor for PTD, offering examples of other stress-producing attacks and conflicts in various parts of the world that have affected pregnancy outcomes. At that time (2012), the data was sparse, as the researchers note:

Studies on the influence of war related acute stress on fertility and pregnancy outcomes are limited and very controversial. The Persian Gulf War at 1990–1991 which presented Israel with a threat of chemical attacks on civilian localities have been studied and examined for the effect of environmental stress on health. After the Gulf War a significant rise of spontaneous abortions has been observed – starting from 1992, reaching a peak in 1994, which then began to decline in 1996.
The NATO aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 included widespread bombing [affecting] civilians for a period of four month. Krstić et al. examined the influence of stress on duration of pregnancy and prenatal outcomes during the NATO operation. They found a significant shortening of the last trimester under the influence of stress but no significant difference in the incidence of PTD. Spandorfer et al. examined women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles over 13 weeks that included September 11th, the terrorist attack on New York. Although conception rates were similar before and after the terrorist attacks, patients who became pregnant in the weeks after September 11th had a pregnancy loss rate of 47.9% compared with 28.6% among women pregnant in the weeks before this period.
[Aside from these] few studies, there is not enough evidence of the impact of war and terrorism on gestational duration.

The researchers write of the need for national resilience in times of emergency:

Emergency national resilience is the physical and mental ability of the country’s civilian economy and government authorities to ensure the continued functioning of routine life, in light of the ongoing emergency. This strength is measured by the ability to effectively manage the event, and to return to a functional community thereafter. Treatment of populations with special needs at the time of emergency reflects the society’s resilience. Preliminary mapping of special populations by the local and national authorities has a great influence on the ability to handle effectively these populations during an emergency. Historically special attention was given to special populations at times of war.
During World War II in the “London Blitz” the government decided on preventive evacuation beginning with children and elders from the city centers. They also [devised] a special maternity care plan for pregnant women and sent them to maternity homes established far from [cities under attack]. At Israel’s independence war (1948) an organized evacuation of children was carried out. The “Second Lebanon War” between the terrorist organization Hezbollah and Israel (2006) [lacked any] organized national evacuation program.

In their conclusion, the Operation Cast Lead-related study researchers find that the period of the military operation “was adversely associated with an increase in the rate of early PTD (<34 weeks gestation). From a public health perspective, pregnant women should be considered a special population and should be taken into account in a preparedness program for an emergency crisis and must be an important part of the public agenda and the state’s infrastructure.”

Preemies are rushed to shelters at Barzilai Hospital

Rockets, Preterm Delivery, and Low Birth Weight

Wainstock’s 2014 study, Exposure to life-threatening stressful situations and the risk of preterm birth and low birth weight, evaluated the association between exposure to life-threatening rocket attacks and the risks of preterm birth (PTB) and low birth weight (LBW). The rates of PTB and LBW were found to be higher among the exposed women as compared to those in other parts of the country (PTB: 9.1% versus 6.8%, P=0.004; LBW: 7.6% versus 5.8%, P=0.02). The paper offers the following context for this research:

The unfortunate situation in southern Israel presents an opportunity to study this association. The southern Israeli town of Sderot (population of approximately 20 000) has been a constant target of rocket-firing from the Gaza Strip (4 km away) since 2001. These rocket attacks are preceded by a warning alarm, informing residents to seek shelter. The alarms are loud, sudden, and stress-inducing because they are sounded only a few seconds before rockets hit the town. Between April 2001 and December 2008, over 1000 alarms were sounded around the town. Numerous rockets fell and exploded, causing damage to property and human lives.

Stress and Fetal Sex

Wainstock led a further study on maternal stress and pregnancy outcomes that same year, Fetal sex modifies effects of prenatal stress exposure and adverse birth outcomes, with the aim of discovering whether the sex of the fetus makes a difference in “the association between continuous exposure to life-threatening rocket attack alarms and adverse pregnancy outcomes.” Wainstock and her team found that male fetuses may handle stress better than their female counterparts. “Regarding all adverse outcomes, the male-to-female ratio was higher in the exposed group than in the unexposed group. The findings support the hypothesis that male and female fetuses respond differentially to chronic maternal stress.”

The introduction explains:

Male-to-female ratio at birth, defined as secondary sex ratio (SSR), is usually greater than 1.0, and has been shown to vary with exposure to stressful conditions experienced by pregnant women either pre-conception or during pregnancy. Under circumstances including terror attacks, earthquakes, periods of economic insecurity and unemployment, a decreased SSR has been observed (Catalano et al., 2005, 2006; Hansen et al., 1999; Navara, 2010; Obel et al., 2007).

It is suggested that female fetuses adapt to poor intrauterine environment by decreasing growth rate, while fetal male response may be less adaptive, and may be expressed as IUGR stillbirth or early pregnancy loss, often referred to as the ‘‘male culling effect’’ (Clifton, 2010; Torche & Kleinhaus, 2012).

Here the focus is on stress produced in relation to the sirens that warn of impending rocket-fire:

Since 2001, the Israeli southern city of Sderot (population 20,000) has been constantly exposed to rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip (distance 4 km), creating extremely stressful conditions. These rocket attacks are preceded by warning alarms, informing residents to seek shelter. The alarms are loud, sudden and stress-inducing, as they are sounded only a few seconds before the rocket hit the town and residents have 15 [seconds] to run for cover.

This study looked at the data on deliveries from years 2002 to 2008. While we are now somewhat better prepared, for example with Iron Dome, things have not much changed since that time. The pregnant women of Sderot are still hearing alarms, and running for cover. Quite possibly to the detriment of the female population.

Premature babies being moved to safety at Barzilai Hospital

Objective and Perceived Stress

The final study shared with me by Dr. Wainstock, The association between prenatal maternal objective stress, perceived stress, preterm birth and low birthweight, involved a smaller sample and self-reporting, but was, in some way, even more striking: “Women exposed to rocket attacks during the second trimester of pregnancy were more likely to deliver LBW infants than were unexposed women (14.9% versus 3.3%, p = 0.03).”

Note that according to the World Health Organization (emphasis added), “Low birth weight infants are about 20 times more likely to die than heavier infants."

Two groups of women were studied this time around:

[The] women residing in Sderot were considered the Exposed Group. Women residing in Kiryat Gat, located 20 km from Gaza strip, which at the time was not a target for rocket attacks, were considered as the ‘‘unexposed group’’. Kiryat Gat was chosen for comparison since it has the same socioeconomic ranking as does Sderot and is located at the same distance from Barzilai Medical Center.

The study population composed of 267 women who resided in Sderot at the time of delivery and 403 women who resided in Kiryat Gat, all of whom delivered singletons at Barzilai Medical Center during 2008. During that year the rate of rocket-attacks and alarms intensified, with 500 alarms sounded in and around Sderot (versus 239 during 2007 and 125 during 2006).

The paper concludes:

Although sample size was limited, the present findings suggest that the use of objective measure of stress might adequately identify women at risk for adverse birth outcomes, whether or not the extent of the stress is perceived.

Most of us realize that stress and trauma lead to anxiety, depression, and PTSD. All of these ill effects have been found to be more extensive in residents of the Gaza envelope who suffer from hundreds of rocket attacks each year. But how many of us realize the impact of rocket attacks on infant mortality and consequently on the overall population of Israel?

Media consumers look for a body count. When they don’t see reports of large numbers of Jewish dead, they tell us that it’s the people of Gaza who are suffering—that for Jews, the rockets have only nuisance value. What they don’t see (and aren’t looking for) is the number of babies who just don’t make it due to maternal stress—the kind of stress that is due to alarms, rocket-fire, and living under constant threat of death.

That’s a body count that has yet to be tallied and you’ll likely never see it in the news.

A special thank you to Dr. Tamar Wainstock, who gave so generously of her time to share the research cited here. Any and all errors here are my sole responsibility.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

From The Guardian:

New York’s state assembly is to consider legislation to stop registered charities from sending tens of millions of dollars a year to fund illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

State assembly member, Zohran Mamdani, has introduced the “Not on our dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence” act to prohibit tax-deductible donations from being used to expel Palestinians from their land and other activities widely regarded as war crimes under the Geneva conventions.

The United Nations security council has called Israeli settlement construction “a flagrant violation under international law”.

“This legislation makes it clear that New York will no longer effectively subsidise war crimes and the flouting of international law,” Mamdani told the Guardian.

“What we have is a number of New York state-registered charities that are sending at least $60m a year to Israeli settlement organisations which then use that funding to continue the history of expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians in the occupied territories that has been going on for decades.”

The Guardian, naturally, does not research the history of anti-Israel rhetoric and slanders that Zohran Mamdani has been responsible for. See CAMERA-UK for details.

The bill says it is trying to revoke the non-profit status of any organization that supports:

* Unlawful transfer of Israeli civilians into occupied territory

* Acts of violence committed by Israeli citizens against protected persons living in occupied territory

* Forced transfer or eviction of protected persons within occupied territory, or eviction from occupied territory

* Appropriation, expropriation, seizure, destruction, demolition, dismantlement, or confiscation, in whole or in part, of private Palestinian land or residential, business, social, or public structures or infrastructure, inhabited or uninhabited

The first bullet point is nonsensical. The Geneva Conventions do not prohibit people from voluntarily moving where they want, and organizations that help them are not breaking any laws.

The rest of the bullet points are almost completely irrelevant - there are no non-profits that fund violence. None of them fund expelling Arab residents. None of them support destroying Arab homes.

The only word that is not a complete lie is "appropriation." Some of these non-profits raise money to legally purchase properties from Arabs. This is not illegal. It is not immoral. On the contrary, it is immoral and antisemitic to claim that Jews do not have the right to buy property in Judea and Samaria

And yes, this bill is only against Jews. Israeli Arabs can and have bought properties all over the West Bank with no one calling them "illegal settlers." So saying that only Jews cannot purchase property is the definition of antisemitism. Which makes this bill antisemitic.

Like the proposed bills in US Congress to prohibit the US funding Israel, this bill is not meant to reflect reality - it is anti-Israel propaganda disguised as a piece of legislation. It is meant to put on the record the accusation that charities in the territories are illegally displacing or attacking Arabs, an absurd and slanderous accusation.

After all, have you ever seen a state government bill that has its own logo? It is propaganda, not a serious piece of legislation.

This graphic supporting the bill shows the lies, as it falsely claims that these organizations violently attack and displace Arabs.

It gets worse, though. Because the secondary goal of this bill is to label all Israeli Jewish charities that work in Judea and Samaria as illegal. This includes those that fund schools, security, ambulance services, social programs, rehabilitation and many other worthy causes. All of them can and have been interpreted as "unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity" that the bill refers to.

If you say that saving the lives of people depends on whether they are Jewish or not, and what specific geographic area they are in, then you are saying that you consider some Jews to be less than human - and that some Jews do not have normal 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!

05/17 Links Pt1: A Holiday of Hate Celebrated by the UN; Gaza and the Red-Green Alliance Against Israel; Guardian op-ed laments the 'catastrophe' of Israel's existence

From Ian:

Arsen Ostrovsky: A Holiday of Hate Celebrated by the UN

Today, the only "catastrophe" is that 75 years later, whereas Israel has made peace with most of her immediate Arab neighbors—and those beyond with the Abraham Accords—the Palestinian leadership is still seeking the Jewish state's annihilation. And it's all under the cover of the United Nations.

Instead of celebrating 75 years of Israel's independence and rebirth, in which the UN played such an instrumental role, it abominably chose to hold an event calling the creation of its sole Jewish member state "a catastrophe," doing so merely days after Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group rained down almost 1,500 rockets on Israel.

This is, of course, not the first time that the United Nations has welcomed a Holocaust denier, having done so previously with former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and more recently, with the current Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

Although many nations showed principled leadership and refused to dignify this Nakba Day hate-fest with their attendance, the room at the UN was still full, and included participation from some European nations, such as France, Spain, and Luxembourg, as well as senior UN officials, including UN Under-Secretary Rosemary DiCarlo and UNRWA Commissioner-General Phillipe Lazzarini.

Most sickeningly, Abbas' Holocaust distorting speech, rooted in historical revisionism and dripping with Jew hatred, was greeted with applause and cheers of "free, free Palestine" and "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free." These are common slogans used by pro-Palestinian groups and terrorist organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as rallying cries calling for Israel's destruction.

Speaking in January this year, on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that we must "stand against those who deny, distort, relativize, revise" the Holocaust. Except perhaps at the UN, where you get rewarded with a podium and a standing ovation.

PA President Abbas’s equating Israel with the lies of top Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels is an affront to Holocaust victims and survivors. Especially during a time of rising antisemitic violence throughout the world, such rhetoric about the world’s only Jewish state is…
— Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt (@StateSEAS) May 17, 2023

To Fight Jew-Hatred, the Time Has Come for the UN to Promote the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres -- a dedicated champion for human rights and a stalwart ally of the Jewish people -- recited the text of the definition and commended “the efforts of countries that have agreed on the common definition of antisemitism.”

The European Union, the Organization of American States, and numerous UN member states on the national level have used the definition as a cornerstone of strategies to combat antisemitism.

Next month, in Cordoba, Spain, a summit organized by High-Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, Miguel Moratinos, will be held to discuss a UN action and response plan for antisemitism.

This initiative offers a can’t-miss opportunity for the UN to stand up and show its solidarity with the global Jewish community by recommending that all its member states and affiliated agencies adopt the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.

There would be no better way for the UN to prove its commitment to fighting antisemitism and securing and nurturing Jewish life around the world than by taking this vital step.

That’s not what @AmichaiChikli said and is certainly not what @TheIHRA working definition says. But some extreme Israel haters will look for any excuse and invent things, to find backdoor way for their Jew hatred. https://t.co/wvchhT9kVC
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) May 16, 2023

The Caroline Glick Show: Gaza and the Red-Green Alliance Against Israel

Islamic Jihad’s assault on Israel did not happen in a vacuum. It happened in the context of the Red-Green alliance.

The Red-Green alliance is the partnership of the international left and Islamists – led today by the Islamic regime in Iran. In her update for this week’s Caroline Glick Show, Caroline explained how the alliance works to tie Israel’s arms on the battlefield by diplomatically criminalizing the Jewish state. Caroline points out the weak points in both sides of the alliance and the way they need to be leveraged to defeat the forces arrayed against Israel and the free world as a whole.

This column by Ahmed Al-Sarraf was published in Kuwait's liberal Al Qabas newspaper, and it was republished in Al Arabiya:

I remembered the Kuwaiti proverb, “We satiated them with insults... They satiated us with jokes”! It means that we cursed our enemies, but they beat us up! I remembered it while reading passages from one of the textbooks, which are taught in our schools, and which clearly show that whoever sets educational curricula is either completely detached from reality, or that he lives in a fantasy world steeped in aspirations that are difficult to achieve.

From reading three or four pages of a textbook, we find that the greatest concern of the nation, which the educators, who wrote the books, would like to focus on is the enmity of the Jews and their elimination, and this is indeed confusing, as the number of Arabs is 400 million, and above them is a billion Muslims, and it is inconceivable that it is Are all of these with this “mental” humility and desire to eliminate a country of 6 or 7 million?

There is no doubt that there is a defect in the matter, and if the Ministry of Education allowed school students to be taught the subject of critical thinking, then the students themselves would have shown the absurdity of the equation and the absurdity of the text. The issue is not a sword and horses and a hand in which camels run and horses spear, but rather knowledge, understanding and achievement. Not all of our nation can eliminate Israel with our current reality that is weak, disjointed, and backward in health, socially, morally, industrially, and financially. They continue to defeat us in every military or moral battle!

Our children are taught, based on school texts, how to confront the conspiracies of the Jews, and we forget that we conspire against each other more than they conspire against us, because our involvement in our differences represents the greatest support for them and their continued survival, especially since the curricula are completely devoid of materials related to how to eliminate our differences, and accept each other, stop our dispersion and fragmentation, and reject the distinction between free and slave, indigenous and faction from faction, Muslim and Christian, Shiite and Sunni, Druze and Alawite, Coptic and Amazigh, Kurdish and Ibadhi, without liberalism and freedoms we will not exist!

The curricula also focus on the fact that the enmity of the Jews towards Islam and Muslims is deep-rooted and ancient! Of course, this is not true, and if it is true, I do not think for a moment that they are as preoccupied as we are with this enmity, thinking about it and teaching it in their curricula.

Our curricula also focus on the story that the Jews are covenant-breakers, and this automatically means that we are among those who keep them. It is another lie that is difficult to deceive the least bright of male and female students.

Conclusion: We are the enemies of ourselves more than others are our enemy.

Notice he doesn't say that Jews are good, just that they aren't as bad as Arabs are to each other.

Articles like this are few and far between, but they do get published occasionally.

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!

Putin greets Jews on Day of Salvation and Liberation, tells them that Ukrainians are Nazis

Today is the 26th of Iyar on the Jewish calendar, which is the Hebrew anniversary of Nazi Germany's surrender in World War II.

Several years ago, this day was established as a new holiday, the Day of Salvation and Liberation. There have been various events in Europe and Israel to mark the day in recent years.

Russian President Vladimir Putin added a political message in his press release congratulating Jews for this year's event.

Today, in Russia and other countries, the 26th of Iyar, the Day of Salvation and Liberation, is solemnly celebrated.

This date occupies a special place in the Jewish religious calendar, serving to preserve the memory of the unprecedented feat of the soldiers of the Red Army and the armies of the allied countries in the anti-Hitler coalition, who crushed Nazism and saved the Jewish and other peoples from the threat of total annihilation.

Both we and future generations must sacredly keep the historical truth about the Second World War, understand what destructive consequences any connivance with nationalism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia leads to. It is with the direct followers of Nazism that our fighters and commanders are fighting today in the course of a special military operation.

His message last year did not refer to the war in Ukraine, although he said that the day helps combat all forms of antisemitism.

This is ironic because in recent years Russian antisemitism, as well as persecution of other religious minorities like Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Protestant Christians, has been steadily increasing.

According to Pinchas Goldschmidt, the exiled chief rabbi of Moscow, some 80,000 Jews have fled Russia since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, most to Israel. “This new situation for Jews in Russia is becoming more and more dangerous,” he said in March. “We are worried about the state of the Jewish community there. Not everyone can leave. We can definitely call the Jewish community of Russia today a community in distress.”

Last year, assistant secretary of the Russian Security Council Aleksey Pavlov wrote an article in a state journal that attacked Chabad-Lubavitch with a classic antisemitic trope, saying, “The main principle of the Lubavitch Hasidim is the superiority of the supporters of the sect over all nations and peoples.”

Also in 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that Adolf Hitler had “Jewish blood.”

In 2018, Putin himself suggested that Jews might have been involved in manipulating the US elections.

As is usually the case, those who claim to be against antisemitism are merely using Jews as political footballs, and don't really give a damn about antisemitism from their own side.

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!

Insane antisemitism in Jordanian news site

From Jordan's Ad Dustour:

Zionist Jews are the most impure deformed people on this earth. They are the sons of apes, pigs, tyrant worshipers, and cow worshipers. They are the kings of sorcerers, immoral people, and warlocks. In order to expand your knowledge of the Jews, I invite you to refer to the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet, as they surround you with abundant, more accurate and detailed information about the Jews.

The Zionist Jews killed children, women, the elderly and youth by slaughtering, burning and dragging, and displacing millions of people.

These impure Zionists consider the whole world and people, whether Americans, Europeans, Chinese, or Japanese people, and all non-Muslim nations must live at their service and under the power of these impure and deformed people. Until someone finds a magic solution to get rid of them forever and ever without return..

Is it reasonable for eight million Zionists to control the world, which has a population of eight billion people, with the exception of the resistant and free Palestinian...?

Since the occupation of our land, the Zionist entity has been using biblical names. Because it realizes that the war with the Palestinians is religious and the conflict is religious and ideological.

No matter how much the Zionists use various biblical religious names, like Iron Dome, David's Sling, Moses' Magic Wand, Yellow Cow, Star of David, or other Biblical names, they will not succeed in defeating the Palestinian resistance and continuing their violation of Aqsa; Rather, the resistance will crush them through its hell, and will terrify them in their lives from morning until evening and the minutes of life and daily living..

The author, Dr. Ghassan Mustafa al-Shami, is not considered crazy. He also writes for respected Palestinian and Arab publications like Al Jazeera, Ma'an News, Arab48 (Israeli-Arab), Al-Watan and a half dozen Palestinian sites.

This hate will not cancel him - it will make him more popular.

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!

05/16 Links Pt2: A new low in Israel-bashing; The inconvenient Palestinians; NGO Ties of PFLP Bus Bombers; I am still shocked by the New York Times

From Ian:

A new low in Israel-bashing

Targeting terrorist leaders and their bombmakers is legal according to international law.

The only way to avoid civilian casualties when fighting terrorists embedded in civilian neighborhoods is never to attack the terrorists. That would reward the terrorists by granting them immunity as they plot and execute attacks and hide rockets in civilian homes.

Perhaps the French and the U.N. missed the story that PIJ leader Abu al-Ata was hiding inside a Gazan hospital to make himself immune to attack. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies said using “civilians to shield its weapons or fighters from lawful attack, the terror group committed a war crime in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

I have seen firsthand how Israel tries to avoid civilians in responding to missiles launched from civilian areas in Gaza. Israel often releases videos of aborted drone and missile strikes because civilians were in the line of fire. One example was on May 11, when an IDF pilot said, “There is a child here outside. Forty meters. Two. Hold fire. Hold fire.”

Yet when a missile aimed at Israeli civilians misfired in Gaza and killed four Palestinian civilians, including a 10-year-old child, the French made their best impression of famed mime Marcel Marceau, remaining mute.

The Obama administration defended targeting terrorists during our wars with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Jeh Johnson, Obama’s general counsel at the Department of Defense, said, “Under well-settled legal principles, lethal force against a valid military objective in an armed conflict is consistent with the law of war.”

Harold Koh, Obama’s State Department legal advisor, said, “A state engaged in an armed conflict or legitimate self-defense is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force. … The principles of distinction and proportionality … are implemented rigorously … in accordance with all applicable laws.”

In war, bad things happen to innocent people. Conflating civilian deaths associated with the legitimate targeting of terrorists with the accusation that Israel specifically targets civilians is a new low in Israel-bashing. Knowing that hostilities with asymmetric actors will plague the West for decades, it would behoove our government to articulate the rules of engagement with an enemy that places civilians in harm’s way for military and political gain.

Paris, let’s end the hypocrisy of pretending you don’t know that the IDF is unsurpassed in avoiding civilian casualties, while Iran’s proxy Palestinian terrorist organizations have deliberately aimed for civilian casualties for decades, targeting Israelis and drawing fire on their own involuntarily martyred “human shields.”

Stephen Daisley: The inconvenient Palestinians

His name was Abdullah Abu Jaba and I want you to remember it because it’s the last time you’ll hear it. He was a Palestinian from Gaza, reportedly a father of six, and was killed in the latest clashes between Israel and Palestine Islamic Jihad. You haven’t heard of Abu Jaba because he was an inconvenient Palestinian, one who cannot be held up as the latest victim of Zionist aggression. Pictures of his weeping widow and confused children will not fill your social media timeline. Major media outlets will not compete to tell human interest stories about how he played with his children or how his family will cope without him. No US congressmen or British MPs will demand justice for him.

Because Abu Jaba was not killed by Israel, but by Palestine Islamic Jihad. He was a labourer and working on an agricultural building site near Shokeda, a tiny Israeli village near the boundary with Gaza, when a PIJ rocket strike hit on Saturday. He was not protected by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system which only targets rockets heading for populated areas. Abu Jaba and a number of other men were working in a remote field despite an evacuation order issued by the Israeli army. A father will take whatever risks are necessary to put food on the table. Abu Jaba was 34, his eldest child is said to be 11.

He was one of the 18,000 Palestinians from Gaza who go to work in Israel every day. His brother, Hamad, is another. Hamad was seriously injured in the same attack. Israel’s defence ministry has recognised Abu Jaba as a terror victim, meaning his widow and children will receive the same compensation payments that go to Israeli families bereaved by terrorism. Palestinian guest workers in Israel can encounter suspicion, hostility and racism. It’s a relief, albeit a small one, that the Jerusalem bureaucracy will do right by Abu Jaba’s loved ones.

Abu Jaba is not the only inconvenient Palestinian. Among the civilian casualties recorded in the past week were Palestinians Ahmed Muhammad a-Shabaki (51), Rami Shadi Hamdan (16), Yazan Jawdat Fathi Elayyan (16), and Layan Bilal Mohammad Abdullah Mdoukh (10). Each is believed to have perished after Palestine Islamic Jihad rockets fell short and dropped inside Gaza instead of Israel. They join other inconvenient Palestinians, such as the 14 Gazans — half of them children — killed by misfired Palestinian rockets last August, and Mahmoud Abu Asabeh. Abu Asabeh, a Palestinian working in Ashdod, was killed in 2018 when a rocket from Gaza hit his apartment building. He was 48 and had five children.

NGO Monitor: NGO Ties of PFLP Bus Bombers

On May 8, 2023, Israel announced that it had arrested a six-member cell from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) responsible for manufacturing and planting a bomb on a bus in the town of Beitar Illit, on March 9, 2023. Authorities named the six suspects: Mohammad Al-Barq, Wisam Owainah, Ahmed Abu Naima, Mazen Abdallah, Rami Al-Ahmar, and Nour Mahmoud – all members of the PFLP’s student organization.

Based on open-source information, NGO Monitor has determined that at least two members of the cell have ties to European-funded NGOs. Mohammad Al-Barq volunteered at the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS), and Wisam Owainah participated in a project organized by ActionAid. Notably, both previously expressed public support for PFLP terrorists and terrorism, an obvious indication to both the NGOs and their donors that these are terror-supporting individuals.

These links add to the approximately 50 PFLP-linked NGO board members, officials, and employees named in NGO Monitor’s February 2023 report, “Clear and Convincing: The Links between the PFLP and the European Government-funded NGO Network.”

Mohammad Al-Barq
According to the open source information, as of April 2023, Mohammad Al-Barq had been an active member at PMRS since at least December 2017. As documented by NGO Monitor, PMRS officials have participated in PFLP events, among other links.

On April 3, 2023, PMRS President Mustafa Barghouti wrote that “the prisoner volunteer Mohammad Al-Barq’s family” was honored and invited to the PMRS’ celebratory Iftar dinner, which Baraghouti himself also attended.

The Palestinian PM once insulted all Jews on his Facebook page

The Palestinian prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, put this graphic on his Facebook page on New Year's 2018 Eve:

Yes, he wrote "Next Year in Jerusalem."

I think that is a far more offensive cultural appropriation than falafel could ever be. It is clearly meant to denigrate the Jewish claim to Jerusalem.

This is the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority insulting all Jews worldwide.

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From Islamic Jihad:

You are invited to the great national festival:

Revenge of the Free .

This will be on Friday, May 19, 2023, immediately after the Asr prayer,

on the battalion land in Gaza City.

Your participation is a message of strength and support for the resisters and loyalty to the martyrs

The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, and its military arm, the Al-Quds Brigades

Yes, they lost their leaders, but they managed to murder an 80-year old Jewish woman, so it is time to party!

What exactly is the definition of victory, you may ask?

Based on the ecstatic news articles during the fighting, anytime an Israeli is affected by anything the terrorists do, it is a victory.

Walking to a bomb shelter, mostly. But any damages from rockets are huge victories as well. Causing Israelis to cancel school is a big one.

Their bar for "victory" is very low.

It is as if mosquitoes avidly follow when they make humans wave them away in irritation, and publish huge headlines when a person scratches their bites. Once in a great while a mosquito with a virus manages to kill a person, which is the best news they can receive. Even if lots of mosquitoes get killed by sprays and swats, they proudly announce that there are plenty more mosquitoes coming. And then they throw a party to celebrate all the bites they managed to land.

(And, no, I'm not comparing Palestinians to mosquitoes. I am comparing terrorists to mosquitoes.)

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05/16 Links Pt1: The tragedy of the Palestinians; Who are the Palestinian Arabs?; Rashida Tlaib Asks Supporters To 'Chip In' So She Can Host More Anti-Semitic Events

From Ian:

The tragedy of the Palestinians

More recently, Iran has come to play more of a role in the Palestinian tragedy. Its aim is to bolster its regional presence at the expense of Israel. So it has provided substantial backing to the heavily armed Hezbollah militia of Shiite Muslims in Lebanon as a way of threatening Israel. It has also supported Islamist terrorist groups among the Palestinians, such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

These Palestinian Islamist groups, as I have previously argued, do not support Palestinian self-determination. On the contrary, they share the Islamist goal of creating a transnational Islamic order. They are hostile to national self-determination. The Palestinians are being used to lead a fight for an Islamist order that transcends national borders.

Finally, there is the UN itself. It has a special organisation, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), formed in 1949, charged with dealing with the large number of Palestinians still deemed as refugees in the West Bank, Gaza and the surrounding countries. This is separate from the UNHCR, which deals with refugees around the world.

The problem with the UNRWA is that it helps perpetuate the refugee status of many Palestinians. There are now not only first-generation refugees, but also those deemed second- and third-generation and beyond. Rather than encourage the Palestinians to integrate with the local populations, the UNRWA works to keep them separate. In Lebanon, many Palestinians are forced to live in UNRWA-run refugee camps, attend UNRWA-run schools and rely on meagre handouts from the agency.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has proven to be extremely intractable. But a precondition for its resolution is for numerous outside forces to stop interfering. Presenting Israel as a universal oppressor inevitably promotes a crass narrative, with Israel cast as a fount of evil. Pushing the Palestinians into the role of universal victim is arguably even worse. It has proved to be another catastrophe for the Palestinian people.

Jordanian Journalist Voices Unusual Position: West Bank Is Part Of Jordan; Palestinian Authority Is Artificial Entity That Must Cease To Exist; We Should Seriously Discuss Reuniting The Two Banks Of The Jordan River

In a recent article in the daily Al-Ghad, Jordanian media figure Malik Al-'Athanmeh voices an unusual opinion, calling to seriously consider the option of reuniting Jordan and the West Bank. He criticizes the Arab states for refusing to recognize Jordan's annexation of the West Bank in 1950 and for recognizing the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.[1] Al-'Athamneh, a Jordanian who resides in Belgium and writes a regular column in Jordan's Al-Ghad, notes that the West Bank was part of the kingdom of Jordan from 1950 until1967, and that the Arab League initially opposed Jordan's annexation of this territory. However, it ultimately accepted this fact, and the UN later recognized it as well. He laments the fact that the "obsessive pan-Arabism" and "false delusions of heroism" of Gamal 'Abd Al-Nasser, president of Egypt at the time, swept Jordan and Syria into the 1967 war, in which all three countries lost territory to Israel and Jordan lost the West Bank.

According to Al-'Athamneh, the Arab League's recognition of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, which was affirmed at the 1974 Arab League summit in Rabat, was a significant and "despicable" act that undermined the historical and geographical reality, namely that the West Bank is part of Jordan. Calling the PA an "artificial" entity that should cease to exist, he contends that the Jordanians should start talks with a "real and active" Palestinian partner about the option of reuniting the two banks of the Jordan river, which would benefit both sides.

It should be mentioned that Al-'Athanmeh disregards the decision taken by the Jordan's King Hussein on July 31, 1988, in which he severed the connection between Jordan and the West Bank, i.e., renounced any claim to Jordanian sovereignty over this territory and severed all legal and administrative ties with it, except for Jordan's custodianship over the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. With this move King Hussein relinquished his dream of forming a federation between Jordan and the West Bank, and affirmed Jordan's support for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

"In practice, the West Bank of the Jordan river used to constitute one half of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and all the debates about how to describe what happened at the Jericho Congress,[3] whether it was 'annexation' or 'unification,' will not change the geographical and historical [facts that prevailed] after April 24, 1950 [Jordan's official annexation of the West Bank]. On that [day], two years after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the West Bank and its inhabitants became part of Jordan. In December 1949 the inhabitants of the West Bank had already been granted the right to apply for Jordanian citizenship.

"The Arab League opposed the unification of the two banks, and some Arab countries even demanded to expel Jordan from the [league for this]. In 1955, after Jordan joined the UN, the latter recognized the unification of the two banks, or the annexation of the West Bank. But the Arab League had already announced, on June 12, 1950, that the annexation was [merely] a practical and temporary measure and that Jordan would hold [the territory] in trust until [some other] arrangement could be made regarding it – a naïve statement that sought to rescue the self-respect of those who had opposed the reality [of Jordan's annexation of the West Bank].

From the British Arsenal football club:

Celebrating our Jewish Gooners

Ahead of Sunday's match against Brighton & Hove Albion, we celebrated the official launch of Jewish Gooners with a special party at Emirates Stadium.

The Jewish Gooners supporter banner was also revealed inside the stadium for the very first time at the match, marking the arrival of our newest official supporters' club.

The group has been set up by Jewish Arsenal supporters wanting to express and celebrate their identity as a community.

Around 70 supporters attended the launch event, including club legend Perry Groves and Lord John Mann, the UK Government’s independent advisor on antisemitism.

Speaking at the launch, Lord Mann, said: “It’s fantastic to see Arsenal and their community of Jewish supporters working together in this special way. Football has a unique power to unite communities and Arsenal and Jewish Gooners are setting the example for others to follow. I’m looking forward to seeing what they can achieve together, and I’m delighted to support them on their journey.”

The Algerian Echorouk Online site is very angry at this. How dare a British football club honor its Jewish supporters ....on Nakba Day! Honoring Jews provokes the feelings of Arabs and Muslims!

The newspaper sarcastically added:

The Arsenal club management, which knows the British colonial past in the Arab world well, has chosen history carefully to honor its Jewish fans. It is synonymous with the 15th of May, which coincides with the Arabs and Muslims“Nakba Day.” The fateful date on which Britain expelled the people of Palestine (May 15, 1948) and planted the Zionist entity in the heart of the Arab land.

The match where it was introduced was on Sunday, not Monday.

And Arsenal officials do not care about their team losing by3-0 to the visiting Brighton Club, and abandoning the dream of winning the Premier League title.... As far as the old mother (Britain) is concerned, the spoiled girl (Israel). is taken care of .

Arsenal and the Jewish fans didn't mention Israel once.

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Now that the Gaza micro-war is behind us, it is time for Palestinians to create the next crisis: this Thursday, Jews will march in their capital city with Israeli flags.

Obviously, this is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad event. Because Jews being proud of the reunification of their historic capital city is regarded as an insult to those who prefer those Jews to be dead and unable to march.

Palestinian feelings are more important than Jewish pride. That's an axiom - after all, some murder people when their feelings are hurt, so it is clearly important. In fact, Jewish pride itself insults Palestinian feelings. Jews with flags are an insult, Jews walking around their holiest spot is an insult, Jews praying at the Kotel is an insult, Jews living in Hebron is an insult, Jews breathing as free citizens is an insult. And insults are Very Bad, worse than death. Jews marching with flags is effectively genocide.

So, we have a completely artificial crisis brewing based on Palestinians not being able to tolerate Jews acting like normal people.

The question is, what will happen this Thursday?

In 2021, Hamas shot rockets towards the "third holiest city in Islam" at precisely the moment that the march was set to begin. This is considered a major victory for Gaza terrorists, who say that they linked the events in Gaza with Jerusalem. They call this the "unity of the squares," a warning that whatever Israel does in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem will cause a reaction from Gaza.

It seems unlikely that there will be a repeat of that scenario this time, not so soon after a ceasefire.

Islamic Jihad media predicts there will be a major terror attack in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv ahead of the march.

Hamas media is trying to reproduce the hysteria that accompanied the rumors that Jews would sacrifice a lamb on the Temple Mount for Passover, saying that Temple groups requested to allow the march to enter the Temple Mount. This of course will not be allowed.

They also say that the Flag March will be confronted by Arabs with Palestinian flags at Damascus Gate trying to physically block them. In addition, Jerusalem Arabs plan their own version of the flag march on the Temple Mount, planning to stay overnight or to arrive very early as they did during Ramadan so they can block any Jews from touring on Thursday.

A Palestinian youth movement plans is announcing their own Palestinian flag day, for both Thursday and Friday, in an attempt to marginalize the flag march.

It appear that the strategy is to do everything possible to create points of friction in Jerusalem. They are hoping that the media will take video of Israeli security forces pushing Arabs with flags back, and/or video of clashes on the Temple Mount to allow Jews to visit like they do every weekday. As usual, those videos will be used to charge that Israel is violently suppressing Palestinians who are just trying to peacefully protest, with the hope that this will inspire other acts of violence.

Ultimately, as is often the case, the modern antisemites want to make it more expensive for Israel to protect its citizens' rights than to give in to Palestinian threats of violence. And any specific incident has the potential to spiral out of control - something that the Palestinians are hoping for.

And all of this is artificial. There is nothing wrong with Jews marching with flags. Yet there is an entire industry dedicated to demonizing people exercising their right to peaceful assembly. The media, sadly, buys into the narrative that Palestinian Arabs are right for wanting to quash Jewish freedoms.

In 2021, Netanyahu agreed to re-route the march around the Muslim quarter of the Old City to avoid unnecessary conflict. As usual, this was interpreted by Palestinians as weakness, not conciliatory, and Hamas attacked anyway.

Netanyahu is not making that mistake this year. The threat of violence has nothing to do with the march itself - the march is an excuse for violence, not a cause.

Normal adults do not respond to perceived insults with threats of violence. The media, and the world at large, needs to stop allowing Palestinians to act like spoiled children.

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Mahmoud Abbas' speech at the UN for "Nakba Day" included many parts that weren't reported in the official version, meaning that he ad-libbed.

And when Abbas ad-libs, he proves that he is an antisemite, a consummate liar and a conspiracy theorist.

From JPost:

There is no proof of Jewish ties to the area of Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Monday at the United Nations. He mentioned Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount and its adjacent Western Wall.

“They [Israel] dug under al-Aqsa… they dug everywhere, and they could not find anything,” Abbas said.
...

There is rich archaeological evidence for the Temples that have been found in the Temple Mount Sifting Project and in the City of David, where thousands of clearly Judean artifacts and others have been found.

But that sidesteps the real issue: the entire Temple Mount was built by Jews, in sections, from the time of the Biblical kings to the Hasmonean extensions to the Herodian extensions. These extensions can be seen from the Eastern Wall of the Mount.

The entire Temple Mount is proof of the Temples!

Denying the Temples - which have been accepted as legitimate by Muslim scholars without question before Palestinians sprouted up in the mid-1950s - is denying Jewish history, and is pure antisemitism.

But that was just the beginning of Abbas' delusions mentioned in his speech.

During his speech, Abbas said the US and the UK were responsible for the permanent displacement of what he said was close to a million Palestinians during the 1948 war.

“These countries wanted to get rid of the Jews and benefit from their presence in Palestine,” Abbas said.

He compared Israel’s rendition of its historical narrative to the kind of misinformation disseminated by Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels during World War II.

“The Israelis and Zionists continue their false claims that Israel made the desert bloom,” he said. “Palestine was a desert, and they made it blossom, a paradise. They can’t but lie. But what can we do? They lie and lie just like Goebbels. They lie, lie and lie until people believe.”

The early Zionists “falsely” claimed that “Palestine was a land without people,” but this was never true, Abbas said, adding that the Palestinians were descendants of the biblical Canaanites. This was proven “in religious scriptures, including the Torah,” he said.

Saying that the US and Great Britain supported Zionism to get rid of their Jews is a crazed conspiracy theory.

Comparing Jews telling the truth to Nazi Goebbels is antisemitism.

Saying that the Torah says that Palestinians descend from Canaanites is delusional. (Palestinians used to claim they were Philistines, but the Torah doesn't say Philistines were Canaanites either.)

The New York Times didn't mention a single one of these lies or delusions in its report on his speech. Neither did AP nor AFP , Haaretz and The National (UAE) and Axios.

And the world just shrugs at Mahmoud Abbas' lies. Because everyone understands that this is what Palestinians do.

There is one delusion that Abbas said that the mainstream media did note - but did not check. From AP:

He held up a letter from Israel’s foreign minister, Moshe Sharett, after resolutions were adopted in 1947 and 1948 promising to implement them and said: “Either they do respect these obligations, or they stop becoming a member.”

I cannot find any record of a letter from Israel promising to adhere to resolutions 181 and 194. Certainly Israel never agreed to go back to the borders suggested by resolution 181 or the internationalization of Jerusalem. There is lots of literature about Israel's negotiations over the refugees and its offers to help solve the problem, notably an offer to allow 100,000 refugees to return. I find it difficult to believe that Sharett wrote what Abbas claims he did. His position can be seen here.

Members of the Knesset are fully aware of the basic attitude of the Government on this problem, that in the main a solution must be sought, not through the return of the refugees to Israel, but through their resettlement in other states. There has been no change in this basic attitude. At the same time, the Government has repeatedly stated that, within the framework of an overall and all inclusive peace settlement, it is ready to contribute to the resettlement of the refugees by allowing the return to Israel of a limited number. This was stated by Israel’s permanent representative at the United Nations at the session of the Ad Hoc Committee on May 5th, 1949. It was repeated by the Head of the Israeli Delegation at Lausanne to the Conciliation Commission during May and June. I myself made a similar statement before the Knesset in my address during the foreign affairs debate on June 15th. Hitherto, there has been no change in policy.

... If peace is not achieved, if the Arab States refuse responsibility for the absorption of the great majority of the refugees, if an overall solution to the problem is not found, then the present fixing of Israel’s contribution shall not be binding. This contribution is presented as a link in a chain. It does not exist on its own, but only as part of a whole. This is the attitude of Israel’s Delegation at Lausanne, which now awaits the word of the Arab States.

So Abbas waved a document that almost certainly did not say what he claims. And the media didn't bother to check.

As usual.

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