Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, July 01, 2023

07/01 Links: French lawmaker: 'Intifada in heart of France' comes from antisemitic areas; Biden Will Fund Research in China, Not Israel

From Ian:

French lawmaker: 'Intifada in heart of France' comes from antisemitic areas

The roots of the ongoing riots in France are in areas where antisemitism, among other hatreds, are rampant, French-Israeli lawmaker Meyer Habib warned on Saturday.

“This looks like an Intifada in the heart of France,” Habib said. “France is on fire, with 249 police officers injured. Nothing, not even the dramatic death of a young man justifies this chaos.”

According to Habib, “in these lost areas of the republic, for years there has been an undisturbed growth of hatred of France, white people and Jews.”

Habib contrasted the response to the killing of a 17-year-old by a police officer, which sparked the riots, to the murder of 65-year-old Jewish woman Sarah Halimi, who was murdered in her home in 2017 by a man who shouted “Allahu Akbar” while attacking her.

“Sarah Halimi was beaten for 20 minutes in front of 20 police officers. Her murderer is practically free and no one rioted or burned anything,” said Habib, who holds a seat in parliament representing French expats living in the Eastern Mediterranean region, including Israel.

Holocaust memorial in Paris vandalized by rioters
The Holocaust memorial site in Paris, known as The Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation, was vandalized by rioters on Friday amid the large wave of anti-police protests, according to reports by The Jewish Chronicle and Algemeiner.

“The Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation in Nanterre honors the 200,000 people who were sent from Vichy France to German concentration camps during WWII,” tweeted the Combat Antisemitism Movement.

Video footage of the incident shows rioters shouting and writing anti-police slogans on the wall of the site.

World shrugs despite Mossad's impressive action on Iran

The recent thwarting of the Iranian attack in Cyprus has several takeaways, some of which should fill us with joy; others should have us very much concerned.

First, it has been proved once again that the Mossad has exceptional intelligence reach when it comes to Iran, from the operational apparatuses and characters running the show to the smuggling routes and modus operandi and the ability to conduct real-time surveillance. Such rare capabilities, which are shared by other intelligence agencies in some cases, are rare – and can have a major impact in terms of saving lives.

The second takeaway – knock on wood – is that Iran has repeatedly failed at carrying out deadly attacks against Israelis abroad since the 2012 bombing in Bulgaria. Dozens of such plots have been foiled, often in the nick of time or using hair-raising counterterrorism operations, as was demonstrated in Istanbul last summer.

The third takeaway is that the Mossad has close collaborative endeavors with other intelligence agencies around the world, especially in the region. This helped in frustrating the terrorist plots in Istanbul and Georgia earlier this year and was helpful in the Cyprus operation as well. Such cooperation is a strategic asset of paramount importance that must be nurtured; it often runs along a parallel track to official ties with Israel.

The fourth takeaway is that the Mossad has impressive capabilities on Iranian soil. This has been evident multiple times in the past with various explosions, assassinations, and other mysterious events – but the arrest and interrogation of a key would-be perpetrator almost in real-time and the extraction of an incriminating confession that includes names of collaborators are a major feat. Let's hope that this accomplishment will also lead to a significant boost in the deterrence of Iranian officials and other activists, who will hopefully scale back their operations for fear of being targeted by Israel.

The fifth takeaway is that Iran is hell-bent on killing Israelis. Last year the head of the Revolutionary Guards' intelligence apparatus lost his job after his plot to kill Israelis was thwarted in Istanbul; he was replaced by another one who now saw a similar outcome to his plot. The commanders get replaced but that Iranian motivation remains just the same, in part because Iran has not been forced to pay a price for its attempted murder of Israelis.

The final takeaway is that this intense Iranian effort has failed to cause any outrage around the world. The Mossad exposes plots, shows incriminating evidence and intelligence in practically every language, and shares it with key decision-makers and security chiefs in friendly and not-so-friendly countries, only to get a collective shrug in return. The conclusion is that Iran will continue to try to hurt Israelis and that difference between success and failure ultimately boils down to just how good the Mossad is.

Israel's Spy Agency Mossad Uncovers Pak ISI's Involvement In Killing Rich Jews

Israel's spy agency, Mossad, has announced that it has thwarted an Iranian plot to attack Israeli business people in Cyprus with a detailed probe hinting at Pakistan's involvement in the assassination bid.

In a counter-terrorist operation on Iranian soil, the Mossad apprehended the head of the cell, Yusef Shahabazi Abbasalilu, who gave his investigators a detailed confession bringing about the dismantling of the attack cell in Cyprus.

Abbasalilu received detailed instructions and weapons from senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards personnel in Iran. During questioning, parts of which were shared with the media, he admitted to his involvement in an attempted attack and described how he tried to carry it out.

In the wake of the information that he gave to the Mossad investigators, the cell was dismantled in an operation by the Cypriot security services, the announcement said.

In the video footage released by the spy agency, the Iranian also reveals Pakistani spy agency ISI's involvement in the plot to kill Jews and Israelis. Pakistani nationals have been caught recently in several other such plots targeting Israelis.

Abbasalilo names his handler as Hassan Shoushtari Zadeh, a known senior figure in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Foreign Intelligence Branch, who he said "trusted Pakistanis" who had carried out "very important activity for me".

In the video, Abbasalilo said Shoushtari Zadeh "discussed with me what he was planning to do in Cyprus. He told me you need to enter northern Cyprus, where we have certain people who can send you from there to southern Cyprus".

"He told me himself, 'I trust [The Pakistanis] and their group, they have carried out very important activity for me'", Abbasalilo says in the released video.

"I replied: 'If it is possible, I will carry out this mission immediately.' He replied: 'Wait, it is not possible yet, as there are policemen searching for you'", the English translation of his confession in Persian released says.

Biden Will Fund Research in China, Not Israel

The United States obviously isn’t obligated to conduct any kind of cooperative research with foreign countries, and yet choosing China over Israel is highly revealing of the real agenda.

The Biden administration has refused to ban funding for research in the People’s Republic of China, but has chosen to ban it, no matter how benevolent, in parts of the Jewish State. Democrat administrations are willing to fund dangerous viral research in China, but not explore ways to teach autistic children to cope with the challenges of their environment in Israel.

Gain of function research that creates deadly viruses in one of the world’s most ruthless nations was fine, but bonding hip implants to bones in one of our closest allies is beyond the pale.

Even the Department of Defense has funded research in Hong Kong which is under the control of Communist China. The CDC and NIH have funded research at Chinese universities in Beijing, Shanghai, and Najiing with no interest in the legitimacy of the Communist regime’s control over these territories or the legitimacy of the regime. But when it comes to Israel, Democrat administrations scruple over who has the right to the land that the university is on.

The Communist regime’s right to rule China is not contestable, but Israel’s right to its country is.

Unlike Communist China, Israel is run by a democratically elected government. Ariel University is located in the city of Ariel and has a student body of over 10,000. The city of Ariel, also known as the capital of Samaria, is built near the ruins of an ancient 3,000 year old Israelite city. No Arab Islamic colony had ever existed on the site. The graves of Joshua, the leader of the original Jewish return to Israel, and of Caleb, the other righteous biblical scout, lie near Ariel.

And yet the Biden administration considers the Communist Chinese regime to be more legitimate than the scientific researchers living and working in Ariel.

“The State Department is telling the entire U.S. government not to cooperate with Jews in Judea and Samaria. And of course it was sent to Congress in secret, and only revealed because reporters found out. “The Biden administration defends funding scientific research in Wuhan with the Chinese Communist Party, but they’re discriminating against and banning cooperation with Jews based on where they live,” Senator Ted Cruz said.

“The ZOA condemns the Biden administration’s reinstatement of a discriminatory, antisemitic boycott of research, development, science and technology cooperation and joint projects with Israel, in lawful Jewish areas that invading Arab nations seized from the Jewish people in 1948-1949, which Israel recaptured and liberated in the defensive 1967 war,” Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein stated.

The Biden administration has made it clear that it is more open to scientific cooperation with the ruthless regime of Communist China than the Jews of Ariel.

06/30 Links Pt2: The United States: An example of how to not combat antisemitism; Russia’s remaining Jews must leave; Ben-Gurion Airport expected to break records this summer

From Ian:

Kuntzel questions myth of ‘antisemitic backlash’ in the Arab world

It is commonly assumed – in fact it has become dogma in academic and political circles – that antisemitism in Arab countries was a backlash to the creation of Israel. Now in his new book Nazis, Islamic antisemitism and the Middle East, the German political scientist Matthias Kuntzel produces new evidence that the 1948 war against Israel was a consequence of widespread Nazi propaganda in the Arab world. For the first time, the 1937 pamphlet Islam and Judaism constructed a link between Muhammed’s confrontation with the Jews of Medina and the conflict in Palestine. This, coupled with six years of poisonous anti-Jewish Nazi radio propaganda beamed to the Arab world, and the rising influence of the Nazi-inspired Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, created a continuity between the Nazi war against the Jews and the Arab war against Israel. See his article in Fathom: Mattthias Kuntzel

Why then is the role of Nazi propaganda and Nazi policies largely ignored in debates on the roots of antisemitism in the Middle East? A plausible hypothesis is that this pattern of omission reflects a desire to protect a proposition that is accepted as dogma in many academic circles: the idea that Israel, i.e. Jews, bears sole responsibility not only for the war in 1948, but also the antisemitism in the region. Claims such as ‘The spread of antisemitism in the Arab-Islamic world is the consequence of the Palestine conflict’ are widespread.

From this paradigm, numerous Middle East experts derive mitigating circumstances for Arab antisemitism. ‘Is the fantasy-based hatred of the Jews that was and still is typical of European racists … the equivalent of the hatred felt by Arabs enraged by the occupation and/or destruction of Arab lands?’, is the rhetorical question of the British-Lebanese anti-Zionist Gilbert Achcar. ‘Arab antisemitism, in contrast to European anti-Semitism, is at least based on a real problem, namely the marginalization of the Palestinians,’ insists German Islam researcher Jochen Müller.

This paradigm, which distinguishes between a Nazi-like European antisemitism and an ‘at least’ understandable hatred of Jews in the Middle East, hides the Nazi influence on the image of Jews held by many Muslims in the Middle East. And it has political consequences: the basic assumption that antisemitism in the Arab-Islamic world is merely a response to Israel and can therefore be downplayed as a kind of local custom is one of the foundations of German and European Middle East policy and may be one of the reasons why the latter refuses to decisively combat the Jew-hatred of, for example, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime.

It is, however, necessary to understand how strongly modern Middle East history is shaped by the aftermath of National Socialism. Only then will we be able to properly understand and adequately counter the antisemitism in this region and its echo among Muslims in Europe and address the political realities of the Middle East realistically and effectively.

The United States: An example of how to not combat antisemitism - opinion

BREAKING DOWN the report points to several underlying flaws.

First, as British columnist Melanie Phillip pointed out several years ago, even when condemning antisemitism, politicians and intellectuals feel the compunction to condemn “Islamophobia” and “all forms of racism” at the same time and in the same sentence.

This politically correct refusal to acknowledge the uniqueness of antisemitism (and the overwhelming preponderance of antisemitism, above and beyond all other hatreds including anti-Muslim hatred) demonstrates precisely that Jew-hatred. “People can’t stand the uniqueness of antisemitism because they can’t stand the uniqueness of the Jewish people,” says Phillip.

Second, the issue of antisemitism manifesting as mere anti-Zionism remains a flash point. As Prof. Eugene Kontorovich pointed out in rigorously erudite testimony given last week to the subcommittee on global health, global human rights, and international organization of the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, referencing the Nexus document is an outrage. That document justifies double standards against Israel, while purveying the illusion that antisemitism is only such when it presents as pure unreasoned Jew-hatred or as stereotypes and “tropes.”

But this is demonstrably not true. Accusations leveled against Israel often resemble those made by antisemites throughout history. Kontorovich: “Instead of the Jews being accused of killing Gentile children, Israel is accused of deliberately killing Palestinian children; instead of Jews being accused of causing plague among Gentiles, Israel is accused of causing disease among Palestinians.

“And the accusation of ‘apartheid’ is a modern blood libel – an absurd ‘Big Lie,’ but inciteful in ways that cannot be rectified by mere refutation. Just as the classic blood libel resonated with the theological preoccupations of earlier ages, today’s claims resonate with the ethnic justice concerns of our times. That in our times several members of Congress can level such libels against the Jewish State without facing sanctions from their party demonstrates how dangerous ‘polite’ antisemitism is.”

The writer Peter Savodnik delves even deeper into this: “The American left has stumbled into the bottomless rage of identity politics,” he says. “They have embraced the new racial-gender taxonomy, which reimagines thousands of years of Jewish history into a wokified diorama. Today, the Arab-Israeli conflict can only be seen through this flattening prism, with Israel playing the role of the white, colonial settler and the Palestinian that of the settler’s dark-skinned, indigenous victim.”

“By squeezing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into the Procrustean Bed of left-wing identitarianism, the new progressives have alienated the Jew, who for the most part remains attached to the Jewish State, from the American body politic. By transforming the Jewish State into a force for evil, they have forced the Jew to defend that attachment. They have created a space separating the Jew from America, and, in that space, they have legitimized violence against the Jew for defending the indefensible: Israel’s supposed apartheid, colonialism, white supremacy, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.”

IN SHORT, by dancing around this core issue, namely that Israel is the focal point for much contemporary antisemitism from the Left and its intersectional allies, the Biden administration’s strategy is far less than it seems.

Third, because of the above problematics, one must wonder whether government-led programs help or hinder the fight against antisemitism. US presidential historian Tevi Troy details (in an enlightening essay in National Affairs magazine) Bush W., Trump, and Biden administration initiatives in this regard, reaching the conclusion that caution is warranted. These initiatives tend to create unwanted and unintended consequences.

“Sometimes an organization designed to address the problem ends up exacerbating it. The UN Human Rights Council, in which human rights abusers routinely condemn democratic nations, is a paradigmatic example of his phenomenon.”

The Biden administration strategy relies heavily on existing government-enabled diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives to address root causes and promote anti-hate education. This is a worrisome development given that some DEI offices are more likely to house antisemitism than to combat it. A Heritage Foundation study of the social media patterns of 800 campus DEI officers found that they tended to reflect a level of hostility toward Israel that went far beyond policy disagreement and often descended into antisemitism.

Russia’s remaining Jews must leave

Enter (of course!) the Jews. Prior to the advent of the Nazis in Germany, Russia had the entirely justified reputation as the most antisemitic country on earth, subjecting its segregated Jewish population to gruesome pogroms and vile, demonizing propaganda. The hatred ran so deep that it even impacted Imperial Russia’s relations with the United States, when, in 1911, President William H. Taft abrogated a long-standing friendship treaty after the Russians announced that American citizens belonging to the Jewish faith were banned from entering their country.

A painful collapse of Putin’s regime could yet revive and unleash these historic forces. In the last week, the two Jewish clerics carrying the title of “Chief Rabbi of Ukraine” (the fruit of an unresolved 2005 intra-communal dispute) have warned that “pogroms” and violence could yet be the lot of Russia’s remaining Jews, urging them to get out as soon as possible.

The message of both rabbis to their Russian brethren was simply this: Whichever way this situation plays out, it’s going to be very bad for you. “I didn’t have a platform for this, I just tried to tell them through social networks: get out of there, because it might be too late,” Rabbi Moshe Azman reflected on his efforts to reach the Jews of Russia in an interview with a Ukrainian outlet. Separately, Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich opined that Putin’s much-vaunted philosemitism may be a phantom. “Putin has been president or prime minister in Russia for 23 years. Over the years, he expelled 16 rabbis from Russia,” Rabbi Bleich observed in his interview. “As Putin says that he loves Jews so much, I have a question: If you love Jews, why have this attitude towards rabbis and towards the community? Why is there often such antisemitism from the Russian authorities?”

In Israel, the discussion about whether to ferry Russia’s remaining Jews to their ancient homeland has picked up steam following Prigozhin’s abortive mutiny. Last week, Israel’s Channel 13 reported on a leaked document that discussed the possibility of a “large wave of immigration from Russia,” along with the need to “prepare for it while guaranteeing the proper functioning of Jewish and Israeli institutions in Russia.”

Meanwhile, in Israel’s parliament, opposition Knesset member Oded Forer, chairman of its Absorption and Diaspora Affairs committee, called on the Jewish Agency, which is confronting a legal effort by the Russian authorities to shutter its operations in their country, “to prepare an array of dedicated airplanes” to bring Russian Jews to Israel “before it’s too late.”

The coming weeks and months will be a test of the Israeli government’s commitment in this regard. It should be mindful of Israel’s rich history of advocating for and rescuing beleaguered Jewish communities in Yemen, Ethiopia, and, of course, the Soviet Union. Because the time for the Jews to leave Russia is finally upon us.

Friday memes and cartoons

The second and third ones really, really upset the Israel haters on Twitter.

The fourth was one of the most popular memes I ever posted on Instagram.

By the way, this is Byzantine-era. Jews continued to build towns after 70 CE. There are lots of Talmudic-era synagogues discovered in the Galilee, Judea and Samaria.

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!

What do you do when your hate becomes socially unacceptable?

Find an alternative that people won't blame you for!

From TheJC:

Textbooks in German schools display a strong political bias against Israel, according to a new report.

It reveals a disturbing trend of blaming Israel for the conflict with the Palestinians.
And it says teachers in German schools tend to shy away from discussing Israel in class because of fears of sparking unmanageable debates.

The report, conducted by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation and the Mideast Freedom Forum, focused on 16 history and politics textbooks used in secondary schools in Berlin and Brandenburg.

The Amadeu Antonio Foundation described textbooks as “inadequate, often one-sided and tendentious” in their depiction of Israel.

It said there is a “different weighting of the victims on the Palestinian and Israeli sides.

“A mostly paraphrased David versus Goliath narrative is dominant. Terrorist attacks and other acts of violence are sometimes played down or ignored.

“Most of the textbooks portray Israel as a war-mongering crisis state and the sole aggressor in the conflict.

“Uprisings and violent attacks on Jewish civilians are given a kind of legitimacy because of the dominant image of Israel.

“The focus of knowledge transfer at school is on the Six Day War, which is also often presented in a distorted way.”

The report says the Second Intifada is “largely ignored in educational material” and there is an “uncritical representation of Hamas” while the failure of the peace process is often blamed on Israel.

Israeli settlement building, construction of the security wall and Israeli rejection of the Palestinian right of return are presented as obstacles to peace.

But Palestinian terror against the Israeli civilian population is not, says the report.

I'm sure it isn't only Germany.

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!

06/30 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: It’s time to dismantle the United Nations; The Potemkin Life of Persian Jewry; US Iran Envoy Malley On Leave, Facing Investigation

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: It’s time to dismantle the United Nations

In May the U.N. commemorated “Nakba Day,” the propaganda term the Palestinian Arabs have given to the date on which the State of Israel was founded. It invited the head of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas to address it.

He used that platform to repeat the P.A.’s murderous lie that Britain and the U.S. had decided “for their own colonialist purposes” to establish “another entity in our historical homeland” because they “wanted to get rid of the Jews and enjoy having them in Palestine—two birds with one stone.”

As for the WHO, Neuer observed that every year its annual assembly deviates from surveying global public health to hold a special debate singling out Israel. There is no such focus on Syria, where hospitals are repeatedly bombed by Syrian and Russian forces; nor on North Korea, which has one of the worst health systems in the world. On the contrary, the WHO recently elected North Korea to its executive board.

As ever, the deranged onslaught upon Israel stands proxy for the endangerment of the world itself.

A WHO mission to study the Covid pandemic’s origins in China announced in February that the possibility that the virus had escaped from a laboratory needed no further investigation. The mission had been put under pressure to reach that conclusion by Chinese scientists who made up half the team.

The United Nations has been impotent over China’s systemic abuses of its population and over Russia’s war against Ukraine. Who can be surprised? Both China and Russia have places on the U.N. Security Council with veto power. The United Nations places foxes in charge of its hen house.

In a similar vein, Iran, which is racing towards developing nuclear weapons to further its war on the U.S. and its intention to wipe Israel off the map, has been made vice president of the General Assembly.

Even more grotesquely, Iran has been made rapporteur of the General Assembly’s Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Committee. This is despite its persistent violations of the Security Council resolution banning its ballistic-missile program and its refusal to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The United Nations isn’t just anti-Israel. It is morally corrupt at its very core. As a result, it doesn’t just victimize Israel and empower its attackers. It doesn’t just betray its charter commitments by endangering the wider world.

By supposedly promoting global peace and justice but actually promoting those dedicated to war, terror and tyranny while demonizing their victims, the world body has also knocked the free world off its moral compass.

That world will only stand a chance of regaining its balance if it walks away from the United Nations and creates an alliance of democracies instead.

UN pares down list of firms doing business with Israeli settlements

The United Nations rights office has updated a list of companies doing business with Israeli settlements, removing 15 companies from the database that were no longer involved, a spokesperson said on Friday.

The long-awaited update was limited in scope due to budget restrictions and was only able to review the original list of 112 companies, UN human rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a press briefing.

There was no immediate comment from Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the previous version, as did Washington which has long protested the "disproportionate attention" given to Israel by the Geneva-based council.

The database was mandated by the UN Human Rights Council in 2016 but was not released until 2020. Most of the firms it named were domiciled in Israel but it also included international firms listed in the United States, Britain and France, among others.

Most of the firms named in the database when it was set up were domiciled in Israel but it also included international firms listed in the United States, Britain, and France, among others.

Packaged food maker General Mills was one of only two international firms removed from the list. Among those that remained were online travel sites Booking.com BKNG.O and Expedia EXPE.O and home-rental company Airbnb ABNB.O.

Exclusive: US Iran Envoy Malley On Leave, Facing Investigation

Iran International has learned that US special envoy for Iran Robert Malley is under investigation and his deputy has assumed his duties at the State Department.

After multiple inquiries, State Department Spokesperson Matt Miller said Thursday afternoon in a statement that "Rob Malley is on leave and Abram Paley is serving as acting Special Envoy for Iran and leading the Department’s work in this area."

Multiple sources told us that Malley is under investigation for yet unknown reasons and one source said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is also involved.

According to our sources, Malley has been absent for a considerable period prompting speculation about potential conduct-related issues, which could affect his security clearance.

Speaking to Iran International on the condition of anonymity, a source familiar with the case confirmed Mr. Malley's absence, saying, "He has completely vanished. No calls, no meetings."

Considering Mr. Malley's essential role in formulating US policy towards Iran, his abrupt and prolonged absence raised considerable questions. Iran International sought clarification earlier on Friday from the State Department regarding the nature of his leave and security clearance status.

In response, the State Department replied by email, "The Department of State, the Special Envoy for Iran, and his team remain deeply engaged on the formulation and implementation of US Iran Policy."

The Department's spokesperson reiterated the same during his daily briefing on Friday before spokesperson Miller confirmed that Malley is on leave.

The initial email did not clarify who is holding the position of ‘Special Envoy for Iran’. In further correspondence, we asked: "Can you please confirm whether Abram Paley is currently Acting Interim Special Envoy for Iran?" The state department's answer was short: "Hello, we decline to comment."

Journalist Barak Ravid tweeted after Iran International's exclusive report first appeared that Malley told him: "I have been informed that my security clearance is under review. I have not been provided any further information, but I expect the investigation to be resolved favorably and soon. In the meantime, I am on leave."

From The Cradle:

Washington is urging the Lebanese government to pressure Hezbollah into removing an outpost erected in the occupied Shebaa Farms, Israeli media reported on 29 June.

Walla news outlet cited anonymous Israeli and US officials as saying that the outpost represents a “miscalculation on Hezbollah’s part, which does not take into account the potential Israeli response. Therefore, this incident has the potential for serious escalation.”

“Our goal is for the outpost not to be there. We prefer Hezbollah evacuate its people itself over us bombing them. We have made this clear to the US, and the Americans made it clear to the Lebanese,” the report cites an Israeli official as saying.

According to Walla, Hezbollah began erecting the first tent in April. The Israeli army reportedly did not realize this until a second tent had been set up.

Israel tried to handle the situation “under the radar in quiet talks” with UNIFIL for weeks.

Other Israeli media outlets say Tel Aviv set a deadline to remove the tents, and that it would deal with the resistance group “on its own,” sparking fears of a wider confrontation.

Beirut has acknowledged that the outpost is south of the UN-recognized Blue Line, separating Lebanese and Israeli territories.

Last week I wrote, "Israeli territory is being stolen by a terrorist group. It seems unbelievable that Israel would outsource the solution to the impotent UN."

It appears that Israel is treading carefully, not wanting to start a war over this but not willing to back down.

It first gave UNIFIL a chance to get involved and do its job to ensure that all of Southern Lebanon, let alone Israeli territory, is not occupied by an Iranian militia. Israel informed UNIFIL of the tents in April, but they have proven to be worthless:

According to Kan news, which originally reported on the Iranian proxy’s armed presence inside Israel proper, the IDF approached UNIFIL regarding the matter some time ago, but the watchdog only came to the site following diplomatic pressure from Israel at UN Headquarters.
Upon inspection, UNIFIL confirmed that tents set up and manned by Hezbollah have indeed been established on the Israeli side of the internationally recognized Blue Line in the contested Mount Dov region, an area claimed by Israel, Lebanon and Syria and also known as the Shebaa Farms.
In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the UN Security Council, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan wrote that Hezbollah’s actions constitute a violation of UN Resolution 1701, enacted following the end of the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and ratified by both countries. The resolution calls for armed groups besides the official Lebanese military and UNIFIL to remain north of the country’s Litani River.
The letter also contained photographs of the Lebanese position in Israel.
Furthermore, the former public security minister noted that Hezbollah has built 27 outposts along the Blue Line over the past year, and that he expects the UN to take action on the matter, as these positions also violate Resolution 1701.

So now Israel is asking France and the US demand that the Lebanese government get involved.

Israel is trying to allow Hezbollah to "climb down the tree" quietly without being shamed, but patience is running out:

“Our goal is for the outpost not to be there,” an Israeli official was quoted as saying. “We prefer Hezbollah evacuate its people itself over us bombing them. We have made this clear to the US and the Americans made it clear to the Lebanese.”

According to the Ynet news site, Israeli officials believe UN peacekeepers will not be able to act against the post and are looking to the US and France instead. The outlet claimed Israeli officials had set a deadline for the position to be removed, after which it will get rid of the tents itself, a move that could spark a wider conflagration.

Alma Research, which watches Hezbollah closely, believes that the terror group wants a war.

In our assessment, Hezbollah intends to reach an escalation that will lead to a broad military conflict with Israel, out of an internal interest in strengthening its power in Lebanon. Hezbollah is trying to escalate with a defiant presence on the border, the Megiddo attack, firing rockets, and now the placing of tents on Israeli territory. Israel for the time being is not dragged in. Last summer, Nasrallah gave ideological and religious approval for a military conflict and as far as Hezbollah is concerned, he has carried out significant power-building in recent years and is ready for a conflict. Continued provocations or a broad conflict is a win-win for Hezbollah.

The strategy is Iranian, not Lebanese

I believe that Israel's best card to play is the Lebanese people itself. While they hate Israel, they hate Hezbollah and Iran as well, and they do not want to be dragged into a new conflict that only benefits Iran.

The Lebanese media has been muted in this issue. I believe that unless Hezbollah dismantles the tents quickly, Israel should publicly say - but with the intent that the Lebanese hear - that the situation is intolerable and that Israel will bomb the tents on Israeli territory.

Israel should make a public deadline, announce the date that the tents would be bombed, emphasize that these are on Israeli territory, and then bomb them if they are not removed.

Israel must emphasize that it has no intention of attacking Lebanon - unless attacked first. If Hezbollah responds with rockets, the gloves will come off.

The UN agrees where the Blue Line is so Hezbollah's claim that the territory is Lebanese will not impress more residents.

If the Lebanese people publicly call for Hezbollah to withdraw, it would have a hard time pretending that it is defending Lebanese interests.

The entire Shebaa Farms issue is just an excuse by Hezbollah to maintain its massive arsenal for the pretense of "defending Lebanon." Everyone knows it is a joke. But Lebanese lives are in the balance, and it must be made clear to the world that Iran and its Hezbollah proxy are trying to start a war that would only hurt the Lebanese people.

It is clear that Israel cannot allow an enemy to wantonly grab its land. No state would. Israel's patience so far has been somewhere between heroic and foolhardy.

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!

Thoughts on the burning of the Quran in Sweden

On Wednesday, an Iraqi immigrant to Sweden tore up and burned a Quran after receiving permission to do so as an act of protest, A Swedish court ruled that burning the Quran was a legal expression of free speech and the police gave a permit for the action.

In response, the Muslim world is seething. Many Muslim-majority countries lodged protests against Sweden, and there were riots in Iraq as protesters attempted to break into the Swedish embassy.

In 1976, on Yom Kippur eve, a group of Arab youths - fueled by a false rumor that Jews had torn Qurans - stormed through the synagogue at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and tore up numerous Hebrew holy books as well as several handwritten Torahs which were ripped to shreds.

The desecration of the Torah is much, much worse than tearing or ripping a printed Quran. The best analogy to a ripped Quran would be to a torn up Chumash, a mass printed version of the Torah; tearing up a Torah is more like tearing up a handwritten Quran manuscript.

And Jewish prayer books, chumashim and other holy books are desecrated by Palestinian Arabs much more often than you know.

In 2007, I visited Samuel's Tomb in Israel, unaware that Arabs had rampaged through there the previous Friday night, tearing prayer books, heavily damaging the Torah ark and stealing a Torah.

Nearly all Israeli media ignored this incident. Because Arabs desecrating Jewish holy books and sites is simply not worth mentioning.

It was hardly a unique occurrence.

Also in 2007, Arabs burned down a synagogue near Doled, destroying Torah scrolls.

In 2009, Arabs raided a yeshiva in Homesh and destroyed many volumes of Chumash and Talmud.

In 2012, Arab youths were caught trying to burn books of Psalms at the Mount of Olives.

Holy books at the Tomb of Joseph have been destroyed by Arabs more than once.

Prayer books were burned in an attack at a Gush Etzion synagogue in 2016.

In May, 2021, Arabs torched synagogues in Lod.

In 2022, Arabs burned a Jewish center in Harasha and destroyed many holy books.

When has the Muslim world condemned these incidents against holy Jewish books - equivalent or far worse than the desecration of one of hundreds of millions of printed Qurans?

They haven't, and this weakens their pretense of outrage. If you demand that people respect your holy objects, then at a minimum you should do the same.

The Muslim outrage over Sweden is not about their disgust at a holy book being desecrated. It is an expression of Islamic supremacy.

They want the entire world to adhere to Muslim laws against blasphemy and that everyone should enshrine Islamic laws against destroying the Quran. These protests are just as much political as they are expressions of popular anger: they send a message that unless the West acts as Muslims demand, they can expect violence.

Any attempts to impose Muslim mores or beliefs on the world must be opposed wholeheartedly. It is an attack on everyone's freedom.

_____________________________________

That being said, Sweden's legal ruling allowing the burning was wrong.

From the narrow perspective of freedom of expression, yes, burning a Quran - just like burning a flag - is valid and should not be illegal. But there is another, far more important issue here.

The deliberate burning of the Quran is a hate crime. It was meant not as a message of freedom but as a direct attack on the sensibilities of Muslims worldwide. It was not an expression of criticism of Islam but an expression of hate against Islam and Muslims, by an apparent ex-Muslim.

And Sweden does have hate crime laws.

The Swedish Penal Code, chapter 16, section 8, says:

A person who, in a disseminated statement or communication, threatens or expresses contempt for a national, ethnic or other such group of persons with allusion to race, colour, national or ethnic origin or religious belief shall, be sentenced for agitation against a national or ethnic group to imprisonment for at most two years or, if the crime is petty, to a fine. (Law 1988:835)

The deliberate burning of a Quran is an expression of contempt for believing Muslims. As such, it should be illegal - and so should the deliberate burning of Jewish holy books.

The protester could make the same point by burning a photo of a Quran. Destroying symbols of a religion or other protected group is criticism; destroying actual objects of importance to those groups is hate.

That is where the line should be drawn between freedom of expression and purposeful hate.

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An interesting example of Nazi propaganda in the US in 1933

In May 1933, some American newspapers published a letter, ostensibly from a patriotic German citizen upset at how the media was covering Germany's oppression of Jews:

As a resident in Germany one is at a loss to understand, how it is possible that in America and England a crop of lies about alleged Jew baiting in Germany can spring up without the slightest foundation of truth. Worse still, such atrocity tales about our pretended maltreatment of Jews, as reported in some American newspapers, actually are believed by their readers....

When a change of government in the United States takes place, we understand, many appointees of the outgoing administration have to make room for partisans of the new government. ...Among the suspected German officials of the former administration —justly suspected, as has been proved—were a number of Jews who now must -go with the other dismissals. With the tenacity of their race, however, these Jews have left no stone unturned to wreak their vengeance upon our new government. hoping. thus to regain their influence and jobs. Because Germany under its present national government sternly discourages such designs, those malcontents have instigated in the United States and in England a slanderous propaganda campaign about alleged pogroms, tortures or other pretended maltreatment of Jews in this country.

The malcontents, by instigation of a world boycott of German goods, hope to increase unemployment in our Fatherland, thereby fostering. discontent and sedition in order to pave the way for their confederates in Moscow. This Jewish press campaign is a menace, which not only concerns Germany, but.in its ulti-mate issue bears upon the destinies of every civilized nation. Should it succeed; Moscow may yet rule the world.

Not if the German government .can prevent it! Therefore Germany considers herself justified in resorting to retaliatory -measures. against certain Jews in this country, if their anti-German campaign and threatened economic boycott is not stopped. Already motor lorries and auto buses are carrying inflammatory posters proclaiming: "Judea declares war on Germany." Can you blame us for hitting back?

• HEINRICH WEITZEL, HAMBURG, GERMANY

The letter segues from "We don't mistreat Jews" to "Jews are a real menace to the world" to "Can you blame us if we attack Jews?"

A couple of newspaper editors dug a little deeper into this letter. It had been sent out by a New York advertising agency.

In other words, it was a propaganda ploy by Nazi Germany, at the same time it was denying attacking Jews in other venues - and while it was, in fact, attacking Jews. For all we know, Heinrich Weitzel never existed, although no doubt there were Nazi loyalists who would have been happy to be the face of this campaign.

The Nazis knew that there was a strong undercurrent of antisemitism in America in the 1930s, and they were not ready to confront the Western powers yet. So they used antisemitism to deny antisemitism, knowing that no matter how absurd the claims are, many people predisposed to hate Jews will happily swallow any falsehood that could justify their hate.

Which we see today with the anti-Israel crowd, all the time. Facts are optional - as long as the story fits with the hate of the target audience, it will be believed and repeated. Give bigots something to grab onto (the Khazar theory, or that Neturei Karta represents Jews) and they will adopt the lies with the passion of religious faith. That is what was happening here.

The most chilling part of this letter is part that I did not reproduce above. It said that the Nazi government, by getting rid of Jewish/Bolshevik government officials, saved Europe from a....holocaust.

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06/29 Links Pt2: Biden Admin Omits Mention of Israel in Rollout of Anti-Semitism Strategy; The Constitutionality of Anti-BDS Laws; Financial Times calls on The West to boycott settlement goods

From Ian:

Eugene Volokh: The Constitutionality of Anti-BDS Laws

Anti-BDS laws, which bar government contractors from boycotting Israel, are generally constitutional - for the same reason that anti-discrimination laws are generally constitutional. Decisions not to buy or sell goods or services are generally not protected by the First Amendment.

A store has no First Amendment right to refuse to sell to Catholics, even if it describes this as a boycott. An employer has no First Amendment right to refuse to hire Democrats, even if such discrimination is described as a boycott. A cab driver who is required to serve all passengers has no First Amendment right to refuse to take people who are visibly carrying Israeli merchandise.

All these people would have every right to speak out against Catholicism, the Democratic Party, and Israel. That would be speech, which is indeed protected by the First Amendment. However, commercial conduct is different from advocacy. For this reason, properly crafted anti-BDS statutes are constitutional.

The Country That Shall Not Be Named: Biden Admin Omits Mention of Israel in Rollout of Anti-Semitism Strategy

Biden administration officials did not mention Israel a single time in a Tuesday anti-Semitism strategy discussion at the Aspen Ideas Festival, the latest sign that the White House is attempting to downplay connections between anti-Zionism and attacks on Jews.

During the hour-long panel discussion, Vice President Kamala Harris's husband, Doug Emhoff, and White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall highlighted incidents of anti-Semitism involving neo-Nazis and far-right nationalists, but failed to mention anti-Zionist attacks against Jews, according to Jewish Insider.

A senior White House official also declined to comment during an interview on the administration's plans to deal with anti-Zionism as part of its anti-Semitism strategy, Jewish Insider reported.

The failure to mention anti-Zionism could add to concerns that the Biden administration is attempting to water down the definition of anti-Semitism to exclude anti-Israel extremism. The White House in May rolled out its long-awaited national strategy to combat anti-Semitism, a document that barely mentioned Israel. In the strategy, the White House also declined to officially endorse the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism, which includes certain extreme anti-Israel views.

The White House recently tapped CUNY professor Ramzi Kassem as an immigration adviser. Kassem has accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing" and "systematic genocide," the Washington Free Beacon reported on Tuesday.

Biden’s directive to cut support of research happening in Israel, beyond the “Green Line,” is a slap in the face and must be reversed, quickly. @arieluniversity has almost 20k students: Jews and Arabs alike.

Why reverse course?

What is driving this I’ll-conceived decision? pic.twitter.com/j671ZvURZF
— Gabriel Groisman (@GabeGroisman) June 28, 2023

A letter from Kamala supporting CAIR. Are Democrat Jews so out of touch with their party that they fail to understand the depths of support CAIR enjoys within the party? ?? pic.twitter.com/GMM6nLJc9x
— Shoshana II ????? ???? (@crayandrizzy) June 28, 2023

Only Palestinians are allowed to invoke religion for nationalistic purposes

Arab leaders and pundits habitually warn, in English, that Israel is threatening to threatening to turn the conflict into a religious war.

A recent example comes from Ramzy Baroud in Arab News, saying,

What is currently taking place in Palestine is not a religious war, but some Israeli officials and political parties are keen on turning it into one.

Though warnings against “religious wars” in Palestine — in fact, the entire region — have been mostly linked to Israel’s current “most rightwing government in history,” religious discourses have been the most dominant since the establishment of Israel’s founding ideology, Zionism, in the late-19th century.

This is absurd to the extreme.

This has been a religious war for decades, and it has been Palestinians making it one.

From their first leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem, their claims have been based primarily on religious themes and arguments. Religion suffuses everything they do - their words, their actions, their thinking - all the way back to the Mufti's claim that "Al Aqsa is in danger!" from Jews.

The Palestinian Arab armed forces in both the 1936 riots and the 1948 war were called the "Army of the Holy War."

The Palestinian constitution says, "Islam is the official religion in Palestine. ... The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be a principal source of legislation."

The Palestinian Authority has a Ministry of Religious Endowments.

Members of the PLO executive Committee marked Eid yesterday by laying a wreath on the grave of Yasir Arafat.

Mahmoud Abbas' speeches - even to the UN - all begin with "In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful."

Abbas referred to rebuilding Gaza in 2016 as a "jihad."

Every Palestinian media outlet refers to those killed by Israeli forces as "martyrs," not "victims."

The religious aspect is so ingrained that a supposedly secular UNRWA is asking for Muslims to give it "zakat" (religious charity) funds, quoting the Quran. Do any other UN agencies ever quote any other religious texts? (I found an exception that proves the rule.)

And, of course, Gaza groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad are Islamic extremist groups which use Islam to justify attacking Jews.

It isn't Israel that seeks a religious war. It is the Palestinians, and their own religious justifications are accepted without any objection by the world.

But whenever Jews assert their own religious desires in the land of the Torah, they are demeaned - not only by Palestinians - for acting in such a primitive, non-enlightened manner.

The Palestinians claim, and much of the world accepts, the idea that only Muslims have an unquestioned religious claim on the land and the holy sites that were all invariably Jewish holy sites 1500 years before Mohammed was born.

Jewish religious claims are treated with scorn while Muslim religious claims are accepted without question. And part of the reason is exactly because religion is the major component of the Palestinian nationalist philosophy.

Disparaging the Jewish religious claims to the land - especially while not questioning the Palestinian Islamic-based claims - is another manifestation of the antisemitism that is accepted as normal nowadays..

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School Raises Record Amount By Giving Parents Choice To Donate Instead Of Attending Year-End Production (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Jerusalem, June 29 - A local principal made waves in the primary education field last week by leveraging the reluctance and hassle involved in wasting an entire evening on amateurish performances and hackneyed speeches to mark the conclusion of the academic term each June: in lieu of spending time at the two- to-three-hour event on a weeknight, listening to faculty and staff drone on and on and watching the children put on skits or dances that would humiliate beached whales, the institution accepted 300-shekel contributions from each family - and brought in more money than at any other fundraiser in the school's twenty-year existence.

Devorah Friedman, headmaster of Merhavim Elementary School, responded to private feedback from numerous parents by offering the pay-instead-of-attend option for both the celebratory gathering involving grades 1-5 and the more elaborate graduation ceremony for the sixth grade. Friedman reported that near-unanimous parental choice of donating instead of attending resulted in tens of thousands of shekels flowing into the school coffers, the largest total of private donations from any of the school's many efforts to raise money.

"We've had institutional and governmental assistance in larger amounts, certainly," she acknowledged. "But none of our community-based initiatives earned nearly this much. Of the approximately eight hundred families with children at our school, seven hundred sixty decided to donate. The few exceptions were all first-time parents of first-graders. Even the parents of the sixth-graders, every last one, including the two families for whom it's their last child, opted to pay instead of attending."

"We've been able to save more money, beyond that, on the costs of the productions themselves," she elaborated. "All the extracurricular preparation time, the materials, the refreshments, the costumes, et cetera - so we ended up with more than the donation amounts as well."

Parents explained that they had had enough of the end-of-year ceremonies and accompanying plays, dances, songs, and speeches already in previous years, and did not need to blow a valuable, not to mention beautiful, June evening in Jerusalem attending yet another such performance.

"All the schools should do this," gushed Daniel Zvuloni, parent of a sixth-grader and third-grader. "I don't care that it's essentially extortion: give us hundreds of shekels or we'll force you to attend these tedious events. I gave double this year, I was so grateful for the freedom. I even asked if there's a way to prepay not to attend anything for the next three years, and I'm going to suggest the same policy to my older kids' schools."

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06/29 Links Pt1: UN Report Welcomes Input from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad; Mossad abducted terror leader inside Iran to thwart Cyprus attack

From Ian:

No sense of security: Settlers have had it with the current situation

Before addressing the key issues, this column must begin with an unequivocal and unwavering clarification: the recent scenes of Jewish protesters running amok and carrying out acts of vigilante retaliation in the Palestinian villages of Umm Safa, Turmus Ayya, and Urif, must be vigorously condemned. Both as they involved random attacks on innocent people and also due to the fact that these random acts of violence only add fuel to the fire rather than preventing it, they undermine national security rather than helping in any way. Those hooligans who entered the villages and burned down houses endanger lives and should be thrown into prison.

In addition, it is also important to state that, further to what was said by the Minister of Settlements and National Missions, Orit Struck, security forces work night and day, regularly putting their life on the line, in order to protect all citizens of the State of Israel, on both sides of the Green Line (Struck, who later apologized, had implied that they were like the Wagner Force for acting on their own). One of the leading figures in the Judea and Samaria leadership spoke to me at the beginning of the week, and the tough message he relayed is a reflection of the immense complexity characterizing the situation in Judea and Samaria in recent times.

People at the grassroots level have simply blown a fuse
"I really am at a loss as to what to say about what happened in the villages. On the one hand, if my son had been one of those to enter there I would have given him a good hard slap across the face; on the other hand, we really are 'sitting ducks'. The security forces are not doing their work and we have been left on our own. What can you say to a woman who travels, day in day out, from Ateret to Ofra or from Elon Moreh to Tapuach Junction? We have been left to fend for ourselves and nobody is prepared to do what is required to eradicate this phenomenon."

This has taken over a year, with considerable patience on the part of the settlers, who have seen their relatives and friends murdered and wounded in front of their very eyes, while actions against the Palestinians have been generally rather restrained, but the horrific terrorist attack at the gas station last week was the tiny straw that broke the camel's back. Just imagine, you are sitting down to eat at a restaurant, when all of a sudden a terrorist starts shooting wildly, butchering anybody in his path. Now, imagine that for the last year, you have been crying out that this is precisely what will happen and nobody is prepared to take the requisite steps to prevent the continued acts of terrorism, and at the end of the day, your 'prophesy' has come true. Imagine that you are taking your kids to their after-school activities and you just don't know if you will return home safely.

The IDF has failed and the settlers have been left with no option but to take action
In Judea and Samaria, people are unashamedly blaming the security forces for the ineptitude that led to the recent violence in the Binyamin region. The Head of the Binyamin Regional Council, Israel Ganz, phoned senior IDF officers on a number of occasions prior to the recent rampage, warning that after riots by the Palestinians on the Trans-Binyamin Highway, they are preparing for serious action and it was important to bring in sizable forces into the area. Even in real-time, during the rioting by the Palestinians, there was only a small military force on site, so consequently the local residents were forced to react against them, and this was later documented and published.

In other words, as the residents of Binyamin say, the IDF failed in its mission and so the settlers were forced to take action. A senior settlement figure recently told me that an extremely important official in the defense establishment expressed some form of support for Palestinians carrying arms. "There is chaos within the Palestinian Authority and they need to protect themselves," he told me. If that is what senior officials have to say, then what can you expect from the settlers?

UN Report Welcomes Input from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad

The UN Secretary-General’s new report on Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) welcomed letters and “practical measures” from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

The annual CAAC report, dated 5 June but first published on Tuesday, accuses Israel of being responsible for thousands of violations against children while only explicitly mentioning Hamas to praise its cooperation with the UN.

“I welcome the letters received from Palestinian Islamic Jihad and from Hamas, the appointment of focal points and the identification of practical measures, including those proposed by the United Nations to end and prevent grave violations against children, including those related to the killing and maiming and the recruitment and use of children,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ report said.

The report, which covers violations against children under the age of 18 through 2022, attributes the vast majority of such violations to Israel. Of the 1142 children who were killed, maimed, or required medical assistance after inhaling tear gas, the report says that 975 were caused by the Israeli security forces.

“Most children were maimed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in the context of Israeli forces’ law enforcement operations (473). The main causes of maiming by Israeli forces were live ammunition (153), rubber-coated metal bullets (136) and strikes in Gaza (44),” the report says.

Despite Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad regularly recruiting teenagers and holding training camps for even younger children, the report does not separate out children who were themselves armed members of militant groups.

Asked at a Tuesday press conference for the report’s release about whether the figures for Palestinian children who were killed, wounded or detained should distinguish teenage militants, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Virginia Gamba said that it was “regrettable” but immaterial to the report.

“A child is a child is a child, including when they are perpetrators of violence,” Gamba said. “We cannot make a distinction between children that are fighting against armed forces. We think it’s regrettable. We understand the situation. We’ve had this in many situations….A violation will be recorded, even if it’s the killing, maiming or detention of a child that is found guilty of some type of violence or perpetration of an act.”

Associated Press Ignores Barbaric Reality of Palestinian Child Terrorists

The Associated Press recently reported that the death of a 15-year-old girl in the flashpoint West Bank city of Jenin during an anti-terrorism raid by Israeli forces earlier this month had “renewed scrutiny of the [Israeli] military’s record of causing civilian casualties.”

In the article — subsequently reprinted by The Washington Post and ABC News — the AP’s Middle East correspondent Isabel DeBre uses the funeral of Sadeel Naghniyeh, who was “killed by suspected Israeli fire” while reportedly standing in the driveway of her family’s home, as a hook to supposedly highlight the “rising number of children killed in the heightened violence and the extraordinary risks they face.”

DeBre quotes several people in the first half of the piece, including Naghniyeh’s father asserting that his daughter dreamed of being a nurse, and convicted PFLP member Shawan Jabarin, director of the terror-linked NGO Al-Haq, who appears to suggest Israeli forces are indiscriminately killing Palestinian civilians.

While highlighting the gruesome reality of civilian deaths in conflict zones is important, the article glosses over or outright ignores some very relevant details.

First, the piece presents the risks posed to civilians by armed terrorist groups who hide in densely-populated urban areas as merely an allegation made by the Israeli army — as opposed to an incontrovertible fact. This is despite the use of civilians as human shields by Palestinian terrorists being a well-documented occurrence that has been acknowledged and condemned by even the staunchest critics of the Jewish state.

Second, the article totally overlooks the use of children by Palestinian terrorist groups — either as lookouts or actual combatants.

Despite revealing some telling details about Naghniyeh, including that she was sending photographs of Israeli military positions on the encrypted messaging app Telegram (used by terror networks to communicate) when she died and that her Facebook profile picture consisted of “an unidentified girl wearing an abaya and holding up a rifle,” little consideration is given to the probability that she was affiliated with a terrorist organization.

What’s appalling is that the Palestinian Authority, along with Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups, was not included in the report. The Palestinian culture of hatred and incitement, taught to young children in schools and at home, is barbaric. The terror groups use children… https://t.co/J5hBRtUxi0
— Ambassador Gilad Erdan ???? ???? (@giladerdan1) June 29, 2023

Except at the @UN, only one group of people, from the Jewish state of Israel, are repeatedly denied equal treatment before the United Nations!#StandUp4HumanRights https://t.co/WJtgDNTVdF
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) June 28, 2023

From The New York Times, September 17, 1951:

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 16— Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled Mufti of Jerusalem, and his Arab Higher Committee have started. a move to create a solid belt of Palestine Arab settlements around Israel and prevent-the moving of refugees away from Israel borders.

This change of front has come with the present evident collapse of the. former insistence by the Arab League, the Arab Higher Committee -and the Arab governments on the return of Palestine Arab refugees to their original homes under the terms of a 1948 United Nations resolution.,

The Arab Higher Committee was the last to demand that the refugees must return to the territory now under Israeli control. This demand not only has been abandoned. for practical, as opposed to political, purposes but the Arab Higher Committee and certain Arab statesmen now are opposed to. any return of Palestine Arabs to Israel territory. This change has been brought about by the fact that Israel will accept only a few Arabs into their old home, and that it is better to avoid the impression that the Palestine case has been settled. by agreement for a few to return.

...Strongly nationalist elements apparently are rallying around the Mufti and the Arab Higher Committee’s program for a belt of thickly settled Palestinians surrounding Israel.

...‘The shift in. the Mufti’s policy was apparently connected with the enthusiasm which Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria displayed for the preservation of the independent Kingdom of Jordan, and their strong opposition to its unification with Iraq. The Palestinian element is becoming increasingly predominant in Jordan in which it constitutes not only some two-thirds of the. population but is an educated and trained element that is pushing the original Jordanians, largely of Bedouin stock, into the background.

At the time, UNRWA was actually trying to solve the problem: it was pushing hard for Palestinian Arabs to be resettled in areas of Syria and Lebanon where they would be given plots of land and could become financially independent. And Israel had agreed to allow tens of thousands of Arabs to return but only in conjunction with the Arab world naturalizing the rest.

But the Mufti did not care about what was best for the Palestinian Arabs. He wanted to destroy Israel. If he couldn't flood Israel with hundreds of thousands of refugees, he intended to turn Jordan into a temporary Palestinian state whose only purpose would be to destroy Israel - and that included building settlements surrounding Israel where they could be used as a means to attack Israel from a short distance.

While his entire plan was not realized, during the 1950s and 1960s Israel suffered numerous terror attacks from Palestinian "fedayeen" who lived in nearby communities in Syria, Jordan and Gaza.

The Mufti's plan still lives, though. The PA, with the EU, are building their own settlements non-stop in Area C specifically to block Israel from controlling the land it is supposed to control in the Oslo Accords. Hundreds of illegal structures and ramshackle communities have been built, and Palestinians moved in from Areas A and B, daring Israel to tear them down in front of the cameras.

It is an updated version of the Mufti's plan for settlements being built in Judea and Samaria not to benefit Palestinian Arabs but to hurt Israel.

(h/t Charles)

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Palestinian police aren't only abdicating on doing their jobs to stop the growth of terror groups in West Bank towns.

They are also nowhere to be found when Arabs shoot at other Arabs.

The Safa news agency reports:

About a week ago, the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, witnessed an escalation of security chaos, which claimed the lives of two young men, due to a quarrel between the Khalil and Abu Ayyash families in the town.

The townspeople complain about the lack of security, the destruction of public property, and the bullets flying between houses, which have been going on for days without interruption.

Resident Rami Zaazik said in an interview with Safa agency hat he and his family avoid leaving the house for fear of flying bullets, and even inside the house, the danger remains.

He explained that the town's economy and people's livelihoods were affected by the security situation in the town and the curfew, in addition to the security and social harm.

Political activist Fayez Sweiti held the Palestinian Authority responsible for the security chaos in Beit Ummar, explaining that the authority has about 70,000 armed personnel who are unable to protect citizens and are unable to maintain civil peace.

Sweiti said, "The corrupt judiciary and weak law contributed to fueling the crisis and reaching a stage of no return."

The article blames Israel, of course, for Palestinians killing Palestinians, claiming that the IDF wants this infighting. But reading between the lines we see that this current security chaos is a direct result of the PA not taking the rise of local terror groups seriously. It notes that in the last six months of 2022, there was an increase of "resistance" in Beit Ummar, from which there were "several shooting operations targeting military points of the occupation army and the settlements surrounding the town. "

The PA turned a blind eye to the proliferation of weapons and armed groups when their targets were the IDF and Jews, and now those weapons are being used by Palestinians against each other.

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