Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, July 10, 2023

Arab media painting "land bridge" idea between the Gulf and Haifa in antisemitic terms

Jerusalem and Washington are advancing a secret plan to establish a continuous land bridge connecting the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, leading from the Persian Gulf straight to Israel's seaports. This is intended for the export of goods from the East to Europe through Israel, and later for tourist movement as well.

The land bridge will enable trucks to transport goods while significantly reducing transportation costs and time compared to the current situation.

According to a study conducted by the Foreign Ministry and the U.S. government, the time reduction is estimated to be from two to three days to several weeks, and saving up to 20% in shipping costs.

Currently, trucks leaving the United Arab Emirates reach the port of Haifa via the Allenby Bridge but face bureaucratic procedures, including driver changes, paperwork and lengthy waiting times. Another expensive option for shipping goods is via ships through the Suez Canal and then to European ports, which is also costly.

The idea is to enable the arrival of a single truck and driver from Dubai to the port of Haifa, for example, without changing drivers and trucks at border crossings between countries. The Israeli Foreign Ministry presented the plan to the U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein.

According to senior Israeli officials, the Americans were enthusiastic about the plan and began promoting it with the involved countries: the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Sounds like a win-win-win. As long as proper security measures are in place, the idea of cutting shipping times from weeks to days between the Gulf and Europe will benefit everyone, and help solidify peace in the region.

So the usual haters are starting their campaign against it. And their major reason to oppose it is....classic antisemitism.

Rai al-Youm, a site run by known antisemite and terror supporter Abdel Bari Atwan, describes this plan as a nefarious plan for Jews to take over the economy of the Gulf. It headlines the story, "Israel's plan to control the wealth of the East."

Their illustration:

The article concludes that "It goes without saying that if the aforementioned plan succeeds, the entity will enjoy Arab money for free." The comments go on from there with various Jewish plots to take over the UAE and Bahrain.

It will be most enlightening to follow this plan. The economics and US enthusiasm may convince the Saudis to go along with it even without an official agreement between them and Israel. Assuming that they are on board, there is no reasonable objection to this plan except pure hate of Jews.

But if history is a guide, the "progressives" who are the bulk of modern antisemites in the West will work overtime to come up with reasons to oppose this plan that will sound reasonable to those who share their latent antisemitism. We will see objections based on "human rights" even though there is no human rights issue here. They will craft convoluted essays opposing it that will first be published in Al Jazeera, then sharpened and focused to be acceptable to The Nation, and then crafted further to be in the New York Times op-ed page.

But as the first knee-jerk reaction in Rai al-Youm shows, the real reason is hate of Jews, and the other excuses that follow will have only one purpose: to hide the nakedly antisemitic intent of that opposition.

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!

Comparing 1921 Zionists with 1994 Palestinians

On Sunday, I saw a tweeter quoting a 2019 Hanan Ashrawi tweet:

This is a ridiculous theory, so I responded:

Somehow, between 1921 and 1948, under full British control, Zionists managed to build a prosperous economy and effective governance.

Palestinians have had since 1994 with more autonomy than Jews had. And yet they blame Israel for their failures.

As usual when I strike a nerve, I got a lot of angry responses , nearly all of which are the usual mindless anti-Israel drivel. But a few people made one reasonable point.

So I answered that point and elaborated on my initial tweet.

The only reasonable response to this has been that the Zionists had large amounts of capital from the Jewish diaspora.

This is true - and it proves my point. Jews didn't depend on anyone else to build their nation. They funded it themselves, they drained the swamps themselves, they built their government themselves, they built cities from scratch themselves, they built an economy themselves. They had no foreign aid, no NGOs giving advice, and the British didn't allow them to do a great deal.

Now let's look at Palestinians since 1994.

They've received tens of billions of dollars - from the EU, from the Arab world, from the US. They have more NGOs advising them than anyone else on Earth does. They have an automatic UN majority for political support. They got the world to recognize their "state" before it exists.

And yet they haven't built squat. Three decades later they are dysfunctional, corrupt, divided, and immature. All those billions were wasted instead of invested. Instead of working to build, they are spending all their political capital to fight Israel in international fora.

The most honest Palestinian government comes from the Hamas terrorists. At least they don't pretend - they want Palestine to be a stage towards a pan-Islamic ummah. The PA tells the world it wants peace but it admires and financially supports terrorism.

Neither Hamas nor the PA have shown the slightest interest in building a real independent nation - only the trappings of one. Neither have shown any interest in making the lives of their people better. Their goals are the same: blame everything on Israel and work to destroy it.

Everyone knows all of this. But it is a convenient fiction for the West to pretend that the PA actually cares about its people and actually wants an independent state. The PA focus on "return" shows that its goals lie elsewhere.

So, no, Israel isn't the reason the Palestinians have a dysfunctional and corrupt statelet.

The Jews built Israel despite the difficulties, the Palestinians avoid building a state despite the financial and political support of nearly the entire world.

Adults take responsibility for their actions. Palestinians do not. Instead they blame all their problems on others.

Any objective observer can see that they are the ones who have architected their own problems by making poor decisions for decades and never abandoning Arafat's "stages" program to destroy Israel.

If the Palestinians were serious about peace and building a nation, they'd have no better partner than Israel.

But leaders that responded to a peace plan in 2001 with a terror spree that they remain proud of today are not leaders.

They are antisemites.

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!

07/10 Links Pt1: Col. Kemp on Jenin: 'Remarkable achievement unprecedented in modern warfare'; Iran's Plan To Drive Jews Out of 'Palestine'; Times' reporter tries to turn Palestinian terrorist into a civilian

From Ian:

Col. Richard Kemp on Jenin op: 'Remarkable achievement unprecedented in modern warfare'

Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of the British military forces in Afghanistan, spoke to Israel National News - Arutz Sheva on Sunday about Operation Home and Garden and the condemnation Israel has received internationally over the operation in Jenin despite the military action resulting in no civilian fatalities.

According to Col. Kemp, the complete avoidance of civilian fatalities over two days in Jenin constitutes a "remarkable achievement by the IDF," which is "probably unprecedented in modern warfare."

"To conduct an operation of such intensity in an urban area without killing any uninvolved civilians at all is a remarkable achievement by the IDF and probably unprecedented in modern warfare. Casualty ratios in most such operations have often been 3 to 5 civilians killed for every fighter, and that is by Western armies that do their best to avoid civilian casualties and adhere to the laws of war," he explained, adding: "I doubt any other army in the world would be able to achieve what the IDF did in Jenin."

Col. Kemp noted that avoiding civilian casualties in a terrorist stronghold such as Jenin "is even more remarkable given that the terrorists in Jenin hid behind the civilian population, used human shields and deliberately tried to lure the IDF into killing civilians in order to attract world condemnation."

Not everyone agrees with Col. Kemp's assessment of the IDF's performance last week. One such critic of the operation is UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who told reporters at the UN that Israel used “excessive force” in Jenin and that "the use of air strikes is inconsistent with the conduct of law enforcement operations."

To this, Col. Kemp responded: "Guterres is wrong to accuse the IDF of using disproportionate force as the facts very clearly show. Proportionality in warfare only refers to the killing and wounding of innocent civilians in relation to the military objective. No innocent civilians were killed. We don’t know how many uninvolved civilians were wounded by IDF fire, but the death rate strongly indicates that IDF action was the opposite of disproportionate."

"Guterres is also wrong to say that the use of air strikes is inconsistent with this type of operation. This was not what Guterres might see as a traditional law enforcement operation. Jenin was a war zone full of terrorists heavily equipped with arms and explosives, many supplied by Iran to kill Israelis. The IDF chose to use drone strikes because they calculated that this would be the most effective way of dealing with the threat while minimizing civilian casualties, and again, in this case, the facts proved them right and Guterres wrong," he said.

Gil Troy: The Real Story of Israel's Operation in Jenin Isn't What You've Read

Although Israel's army left Jenin on July 5 after two days spent attacking terrorist infrastructure, the cycle of nonsense attacking Israel's action began. In fact, Israel's surgical strike was totally justified, long in the making, and potentially game-changing.

In Jenin, Israel was cutting out tumors, not "mowing the lawn." The "tumors" included hundreds of weapons confiscated, multiple bomb-making factories destroyed, and two terrorist command-and-control centers eradicated.

Despite more than 1,000 soldiers entering that once impenetrable area, only 12 Palestinian militants died in combat. Hundreds fled because hunting them wasn't the main mission.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 devastated Jenin's economy, just as the Palestinian Authority started losing control. Backed by millions of Iranian dollars, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and smaller terrorist groups infiltrated Jenin. After trusting the PA's security for years, by the time the IDF realized that terrorists had reconquered Jenin, a dramatic raid was necessary.

Palestinian apologists ignore the way Palestinian militants terrorize their fellow Palestinians. Cowering behind civilians and civilized norms, Palestinian thugs recruit teenagers to keep prosecuting their uncompromising war against Israel's existence by killing civilians -with 28 Israeli victims in 2023 alone.

Bassam Tawil: Iran's Plan To Drive Jews Out of 'Palestine'

Iran's mullahs are seeking to create a situation where Jews no longer feel safe in their own country and are forced to leave Israel. To achieve this goal, the mullahs have instructed their Palestinian terror proxies, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), to step up their campaign of terrorism against Israel and Jews.

"Islamic Jihad & other Palestinian resistance movements have found the main key to fighting the Zionist regime. The continually growing authority of resistance groups in the #WestBank is the key to bringing the Zionist enemy to its knees, & this course must be continued." — Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Twitter, June 14, 2023.

The leaders of Iran, Hamas and PIJ share the same goal: eliminating Israel and killing as much Jews as possible. They do not differentiate between a Jew living in Israel and a Jew living in the West Bank. In their view, all Jews are settlers, regardless of where they live. For them, there is no difference between Tel Aviv and a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. They see Israel as one big settlement that must be removed from the face of the earth.

"The Jews in other countries live in peace and prosperity. The only place where they're being killed is in Palestine. Therefore, when we continue our fight, they will change their mind and realize that they made a historical mistake by coming to this place. They will realize that there is no chance of life for them and that they therefore should leave this country." — PIJ Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhalah, al-vefagh.net, June 8, 2023.

This statement by the PIJ leader is important because it shows that the Palestinian terror attacks against Israel are not being carried out because of checkpoints, settlements or harsh economic conditions. Instead, the purpose of these attacks is to force the Jews out of their country and replace Israel with an Islamic state controlled by Iran and its proxies, especially Hamas and PIJ.

Those who believe that the Palestinian campaign of terrorism is a legitimate resistance against the "occupation" in the West Bank are totally clueless.

Thanks to Iran, Nakhalah said, the Palestinian terror groups are now capable of manufacturing their own weapons.

When Hamas and PIJ talk about "resistance," they are referring to various forms of terrorism, including firing rockets at Israel, as well as shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks.

The Municipality of Jerusalem has policies in place for anyone who wants to open up or run a summer camp in the city.

It describes the qualifications needed for camp administrators, the permits necessary, the counselor to camper ratios, insurance requirements, first aid - the normal things you would expect from any city that licenses camps.

But in Jerusalem, they have to worry about an additional issue: the chance that a terrorist might decide to slaughter the campers.

The site says:

Security Instructions for a Summer Camp Operator
As you prepare for the opening of the summer camp, we request that you are careful to fulfil the security and safety instructions laid out in the circular by the Ministry of Education’s Director General (attached to the summer camp file).

....

In every summer camp held at one of the Authority's facilities, with one to 100 children, there is no obligation to have an armed guard. From 100 children onwards, an armed guard is required, according to the circular of the Director General of summer camps.

From 300 children up to 750, two armed security guards are required.

For 750 or more children - three armed security guards are required. (The decision will be made in accordance with the instructions of the security officer).

A camp for up to 100 children without a security guard must have a security officer and must lock the gate and the building in which the camp takes place.

You should use security companies working with the Jerusalem Municipality which employ guards trained and qualified specifically for educational institutions.

During the operation of the summer camp, representatives from the Emergency and Security Division will visit to ensure that procedures are implemented in accordance with the Director General's circular. Likewise, inspectors from the Ministry of Education and the municipal camp headquarters will visit.

For all events concerning security/safety, the regional security officer must be immediately updated, while also alerting the security and rescue forces, the Israeli Police, the Fire Department and Ambulance Service (Magen David Adom). Every summer camp director can refer to their regional security officer. The camp director must ensure that the emergency telephone numbers are displayed in an accessible place that is visible to all staff in the summer camp.

Conditions for Running a Summer Camp:

The attendance of the camp operator and the camp coordinator at the relevant security courses - compulsory. A camp coordinator who has not participated in the security briefing will not be allowed to run a summer camp.

Every summer camp activity that takes place at night requires armed security.

Each camp operator/coordinator is required to perform at least one exercise during the camp - up to one week from the camp's operation: going down to the bomb shelter/protected space, evacuation of the institution due to fire or a suspicious object.

Every trip to the pool from the camp requires the approval of the tour coordination office.

Every trip or activity outside the campus of the institution requires coordination with the regional security officer regarding security arrangements and approval from the tour coordination office, Tel: 02-6232811.
Situation Room: The request must be submitted at least two weeks in advance and approved by the police station in the vicinity of the trip the day before departure.

Activity in the Old City and the Jewish Quarter

Movement to and from the above is only on the routes defined in the Director General of the Ministry of Education's circular and/or updated instructions by the police.

Prior to each visit, you must call the "David" regional police station for instructions, Tel: 02-6226222.

Camps conducted in neighborhoods bordering East Jerusalem will receive specific instructions from the regional security officers.

Every trip to East Jerusalem requires security coordination with the tour coordination office.

In order for kids to have a normal fun camp experience, the camp operators must spend a great deal of time and effort on security.

This is, for Israel, normal. Everyone is fully aware that they are surrounded by many people who want to see them dead. And everyone does everything possible to raise kids in a normal environment despite how unnatural this is.

It is hard for those in the West to wrap their heads around this.

And all of these policies to protect kids in summer camp are done quietly, behind the scenes. Israelis aren't screaming to the world about how they are the victims, about how these policies impact their day to day lives, except with dark humor amongst themselves.

Security policies don't only impact Palestinians - they affect Israelis, day after day, as well. But saving lives is saving lives, and nothing is more important than that. And despite what "human rights" groups claim, the inconvenience on either side is not more important than the lives that are saved.

These policies show that Israel isn't just fighting for survival. It is fighting for normalcy. The policies don't say that part of Jerusalem are off-limits to campers or that overnight trips aren't allowed; they just say that if such a trip is planned that the proper authorities be informed so it can take place safely, and the kids don't have to worry about a Molotov cocktail exploding as they are walking around.

Israel cannot change the fact that it is surrounded by millions who would cheer a terror attack targeting these kids, but it can do everything necessary that the kids don't have to worry about it.

While it is profoundly sad that these policies must be created and enforced, the policies are also heroic.

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!

For the past week, Palestinian media has been filled with articles about how the Jenin Battalion defeated the IDF in Jenin. They don't quite explain how they come to the conclusion that 12 dead terrorists and much destroyed terror infrastructure is a "victory."

Today, the Islamic Jihad-linked Palestine Today published a video of their latest "proof" of this illusory victory.

The video shows an IDF armored D9 bulldozer clearing an area and being targeted with 3 IEDs.

The terror website claims that their explosives "disrupted" the bulldozer's work.

But the video shows that the bulldozer didn't even slow down while detonating these bombs.

Israel has created many different armored versions of the Caterpillar D9. According to this Wiki page, in testing the D9R version withstood IED belly charges of 500 kg - more than 5 times the mass of high explosives needed to destroy a main battle tank!

The IDF has been using D9s since the 1950s, and the armored versions have been recognized as saving many lives. D9s prompted top Palestinian terrorists in Jenin to surrender in 2003 as the machinery would slowly dismantle the buildings the terrorists were in - and they had no defense against it, forcing them to surrender before the building would collapse. (It takes about a half an hour for a D9 to destroy a building.)

The terrorists released this video to pretend that they effectively countered the D9s - but in the end, they created an advertisement that showed that these bulldozers are effectively indestructible.

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!

Member of Congress Ritchie Torres tweeted during the Jenin operation:

The Palestinian Authority has all but abandoned Jenin, leaving behind a power vacuum that has been filled by terrorists.

In the past six months, those terrorists made Jenin a launching pad for more than 50 shooting attacks against Israelis.

Israel is responding with a counterterrorism operation aimed at surgically removing these terrorists and their terror infrastructure.

There’s a word for this: self-defense, which is the right of every sovereign country, including Israel.

There is not a word in this tweet that is inaccurate. So, naturally, it upset the Palestinians.

Torres is Black and a progressive, which are two categories that Palestinians think that they have complete control over, but Torres is also an unapologetic Zionist - and this drives them crazy.

So crazy that even the most politically astute Palestinians reveal their racism and antisemitism when foaming at the mouth about him.

Commenting on Khaled Elgindy's fact-free tweet criticizing Torres, Hanan Ashrawi, the much honored grande dame of Palestinian politics, writes about Torres, "He's just mindlessly reciting what his AIPAC masters sent him as a mouthpiece of Israeli hasbara. Shameful."

In one sentence, Ashrawi evokes two bigoted tropes.

One is that Black people - even charismatic, clearly intelligent Black people like Torres - are too stupid (mindless) to come up with their own opinions on Israel and the Palestinians.

The other is that Torres - like other members of Congress - are controlled by a powerful cabal of Jews who are their puppet masters.

Racism and antisemitism in one tweet!

Ashrawi cannot claim that his skin color is irrelevant to her statement, because if that is true, then the progressives no longer can claim that every criticism of Ilhan Omar and other people of color for their opinions is racist and/or Islamophobic. If these are the rules they set for others, they must follow them as well. Additionally, while most criticisms of Omar describe exactly why her opinions are wrong, Ashrawi simply slurs Torres as being "mindless" with no supporting evidence that his tweet was at all wrong.

Similarly, one cannot say that AIPAC is not a proxy for "Jews" in her statement because the trope of powerful, presumably rich Jews controlling the government is well known; Ashrawi is clearly evoking a classic antisemitic canard.

You don't need the IHRA working definition of antisemitism to show that her statement is antisemitic; the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism that the Left loves says:

What is particular in classic antisemitism is the idea that Jews are linked to the forces of evil. This stands at the core of many anti-Jewish fantasies, such as the idea of a Jewish conspiracy in which “the Jews” possess hidden power that they use to promote their own collective agenda at the expense of other people. This linkage between Jews and evil continues in the present: in the fantasy that “the Jews” control governments with a “hidden hand” ....

Antisemitism can be direct or indirect, explicit or coded. For example, “The Rothschilds control the world” is a coded statement about the alleged power of “the Jews” over banks and international finance.

The phrase "AIPAC masters" is about as explicitly antisemitic as it gets - according to the favored anti-Zionist definition of antisemitism.

By the Left's own standards, Ashrawi fits every definition of racist and antisemite.

Yet somehow I don't see a single "progressive" calling Ashrawi to task for her outrageous and bigoted statements. Indeed, her fans doubled down on antisemitic statements in response.

People tend to reveal who they really are when they tweet without going through an editing process. Ashrawi has just informed the world who she is - a hateful, antisemitic racist and bigot.

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!

Jenin militants sprinkled explosives on their own roads. Where are the anti-landmine activists? (UPDATE)

The Times of Israel reported last week during the Jenin operation:

The Israel Defense Forces says troops located and destroyed at least 11 improvised explosive devices hidden along roads in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.

Operatives of terror groups “are planting IEDs and bombs on the roads in the refugee camp and in the city, in a civilian environment. This poses a threat to the security forces who use the roads in counterterrorism activities and to innocent people who also use them,” the IDF says in a statement.

The military says that during the last few hours, dozens of combat engineering vehicles have been combing the streets for such IEDs.

This is confirmed by the Washington Post:

One long street was plowed like a farm furrow where Israeli bulldozers had intentionally detonated explosives embedded in the pavement.

Embedded explosives in the ground are pretty much the definition of landmines. The Jenin terrorists are burying landmines in their own town, where their own people could be killed.

If the mines can be triggered by a person, they are considered illegal under the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention.

It sure looks like many of these IEDs can indeed be triggered by someone stepping on them. Here is a relatively small one being detonated by the IDF.

I have yet to see a condemnation by any NGO or state about Palestinians putting their own people at risk of being blown up by these IEDs.

Israel's clearing of the mines is considered a bigger crime than the mines themselves.

Which tells you a lot.

UPDATE: The "State of Palestine" acceded to the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, which proves yet again that the only reason they signed these conventions was to be accepted as a state, but had no intention to actually do anything to adhere to the various conventions' rules. (h/t Ian)

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!

07/09 Links: Biden: This is one of the most extreme Israeli gov'ts I've seen; Nazism and the Palestinians; Palestinian envoy to UK memorializes PFLP terrorist

From Ian:

Biden: This is one of the most extreme Israeli gov'ts I've seen

The current Israeli government is one of the most extreme US President Joe Biden has ever seen, he said in an interview with CNN on Sunday.

"This is one of the most extreme cabinets I've seen and I go back to Golda Meir," he said, referring to the fact that he has been in US politics since Meir was Israel's prime minister in the early 70s.

Biden also said that Israel and Saudi Arabia are a long way from a normalization agreement that would involve a defense treaty and a civilian nuclear program from the United States.

US officials have been negotiating in a bid to reach an elusive normalization deal between the two countries.

"We're a long way from there. We got a lot to talk about," Biden said in an interview with "Fareed Zakaria's GPS."

Israel's energy minister voiced opposition last month to the idea of Saudi Arabia developing a civilian nuclear program as part of any US-mediated forging of relations between the countries.

Biden pointed to Saudi Arabia's decision, on the eve of his visit to the kingdom last summer, to open its airspace to all air carriers, paving the way for more overflights to and from Israel.

Nazism and the Palestinians

In Jan. 1941, Husseini wrote his first letter to Hitler. Husseini claimed that British imperialism was “pitting” Arab countries “against the Jews of the entire world.” He proposed an alliance that would defeat the Zionists and end their support for Great Britain. Together, he said, the Arabs and Germans would solve “the question of Palestine.”

Later that year, Husseini travelled to Berlin and met with Hitler, seeking German help in exterminating the Jews of the Arab world. Hitler agreed and, on that basis, they formed an alliance.

Husseini then became the leading purveyor of Nazi propaganda to the Arab world. As historian Jeffrey Herf documented in his book Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, this included millions of leaflets and thousands of hours of radio broadcasts. The central theme of these efforts is captured in Husseini’s repeated exhortations to “kill the Jews wherever you find them.”

At the same time, Husseini aggressively silenced moderate Arabs, often by having them assassinated. (His successor, Yasser Arafat, would adopt the same practice.) In this way, he ensured that there could be no compromise with the Zionists.

The Nazis also financed, armed and collaborated with the violently antisemitic Muslim Brotherhood, which continued to admire the Nazis after World War II. In 1946, the Brotherhood’s founder Hassan al-Banna lauded Husseini as a “hero who challenged an empire and fought Zionism with the help of Hitler and Germany. Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin al-Husseini will continue the struggle.”

Husseini did just that, his reputation burnished by his Nazi collaboration. According to historian Bernard Lewis, pro-German sentiment was so strong in the Arab world “that even after the final defeat of the Third Reich it did not fade away and—what is perhaps more significant—it was not concealed. On the contrary, a pro-Nazi past was a source of pride, not shame.”

That pride was still alive in 2015, when the grand mufti of Jerusalem laid a wreath at Husseini’s grave. In 2019, Mahmoud al-Habbash, a former Hamas official who was appointed by Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas as an advisor on religious affairs, marked the anniversary of Husseini’s death by praising him as a “great Palestinian national leader” and a “role model.” Now, nearly half a century after his death, the P.A. preserves Husseini’s memory for the next generation at the “Amin Al-Husseini Elementary School” in El Bireh.

In their seminal book Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz noted, “While the Nazi ideology collapsed in 1945 and virtually vanished from German and European life, the radical Arab nationalist and Islamist ideologies flourished thereafter.”

This was the legacy of the Nazi-Arab alliance. Thus, wrote Rubin and Schwanitz, “the profoundly doctrinal hatred for Jews and the belief in the necessity of destroying them remained the core reason for the Arab-Israeli conflict’s enduring and irresolvable nature.”

As Rubin and Schwanitz documented, Husseini ensured that Axis-style ideology would continue within the Palestinian movement by making Yasser Arafat his successor in 1968: “The movement would be directed by these two sequential leaders and their similar philosophy and methods for an astounding 83 years, from al-Husseini’s becoming grand mufti in 1921 to Arafat’s death in 2004.”

Under Arafat, the Nazis served as an inspiration for Palestinian terrorists. As Rubin wrote in a study of the PLO, more than 25 activists “chose a nom de guerre such as Hitler or Abu Hitler.” These included Fawzi Salim Ali Mahdi, who served in Force-17, a terrorist group “under Arafat’s direct command.” Ian Michael Davison, another notable Force-17 member, was a British neo-Nazi. In 1985, he helped murder three Israelis while attacking a yacht in Cyprus. The PLO group al-Fatah trained German neo-Nazi groups in Lebanon.

Melanie Phillips: The ugly opposition to Gove's anti-boycott bill

A government bill to outlaw boycotts of Israel received its second reading this week in the Commons.

The bill prevents local councils and other publicly funded bodies from “pursuing their own foreign policy agendas” by using procurement or investment deals “to indicate disapproval of a foreign state”.

While it provides for exceptions to this ban, it states that no boycotts of Israel will be permitted.

This is because, said the Communities Secretary Michael Gove, an “existing, organised and malign campaign” is trying “to persuade public bodies to make commercial decisions solely on the basis of harming that state and its people”. This campaign, he added, also “leads directly” to antisemitic incidents and a loss of community cohesion.

The aim of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) strategy, as acknowledged by its originator Omar Barghouti, is to exterminate the State of Israel altogether.

One might therefore think that, in any decent political universe, banning Israel boycotts would be axiomatic. But of course, this isn’t a decent political universe.

Ministers have criticised two councils in particular — Leicester and Lancaster — for boycotting Israeli goods. Similar boycotts have been promoted by various academic institutions.

This is part of the obsessive animus against Israel that’s the default in “progressive” circles. As a result, the anti-boycott bill was always bound to be deeply divisive.

In the second reading vote, Labour abstained, as did more than 80 Conservatives, with two Tories voting against. Labour has said that if the bill isn’t amended according to its wishes, it will finally vote against it.

The opposition to the bill is deeply disingenuous. Critics say that it’s so wide-ranging, it will prevent boycotts of places like China or Russia. Yet exemptions would permit boycotts of those countries.

Labour’s communities spokesman, Lisa Nandy, has been careful to say the party opposes BDS. But her reasoning is weaselly. BDS, she says, “offers no meaningful route to peace for Palestinians or Israelis” and provides cover “for whipping up hostility towards the Jewish people”.

But surely the main objection to BDS is that it is unconscionable to demonise Israel through libellous falsehoods with the aim of destroying it.

Not once, though, did any of these critics acknowledge the malevolent use of such falsehoods against Israel, nor the BDS strategy of annihilation.

Arabs, including Arab Islamists, repeatedly claim that they have no problem with Jews but only Zionists.

In Arabic, things are a little different.

During a plenary session in Egypt's parliament on Sunday, Ahmed Khalil, head of the Parliamentary Committee of the Nour Party, spoke about Israel's anti-terror activities in Jenin.

Khalil said, "What happened in Jenin was genocide from the Israeli occupation."

Then, to make sure that no one would think that absurd accusations of "genocide" against Israel is anything but antisemitic, he added, "We have to confront the Jews because they are the most hostile of people."

He bases this expression on a verse in the Quran. That verse has been widely used to justify antisemitic writings in the Muslim world.

There has been no controversy in Egypt over explicit antisemitism being spouted in the Egyptian parliament. Which is the other reason you know that the Islamist protests that they oppose antisemitism are only for Western consumption.

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!

"Pro-Palestinians" justify their intransigence and hate in revealing response to my cartoon

Last week, Peter Beinart tweeted this:

People in Jenin can't become citizens of the country in which they live. Can't vote for the govt that determines if they live or die. Can't return to the lands from which their families were expelled. This underlies everything happening now. The American press rarely mentions it

Beinart complains that Palestinians do not have a state of their own where they can vote and make their own decisions, but wants to imply that this is entirely Israel's fault..

He blocks me but I tweeted a response:

Palestinian Arabs rejected plans that would have given them their own state in 1937, 1947, 2000, 2001, 2008, 2014, and 2020. They will not accept the existence of a Jewish state on ANY borders.
This underlies everything happening now, and for the past 8 decades.

And Peter Beinart never mentions it - because his agenda exactly matches theirs.

I decided to make the point in a more acerbic way, with a cartoon:

The more my memes and cartoons tell the truth, the angrier the Israel haters (masquerading as "pro-Palestinians") get. And the many angry responses to this cartoon prove my point.

Are you willing to give a bunch of squatters your land? If you say yes then you are a liar.

That's because the Zionists are dishonest and have an agenda of occupying most of the middle east by force anyway. There is no reaching an agreement with Zionists. People see you.

Revisionist history. Didn’t learn from the pain of Holocaust denial.

thats like asking are you willing to have a gang of theiving ni66ers move into your house? ckuf NO, every single time

Without proper peace deal & Jerusalem NO.

Everybody knows those are false. Zionists need war to survive. They need chaos. Only with chaos and war, they can expand - under pretext of “defending themselves”. If there was peace, Isra*l won’t be as big as it is now.

Can you agree to share your house ownership with me?

Can I come to your house and live in one of your rooms coz my parents kicked me out? I'll slowly occupy your whole house & then kick you out.

Off course “BIG NO” It’s like asking: 🤔 do you accept Zionists who are coming from Western Europe and some African countries to steal your homeland!!? Zionists are very sick

Zionists stole Palestine through terrorism and massacres. WHY would any government agree to be occupied? Especially by European Jewish terrorists?

The history of your settler colonialism proves the opposite you never wanted any coexistence.

The analogy with the house is false. There was no Palestinian state before 1948 and there isn't one now. The peace offers aren't taking away land - they are offering a nation where none existed. The ones since 1948 involve Israel willingly giving away land it controls, something that is practically unprecedented in history.

But there is a second layer to the responses. Only some say it explicitly, but the message is that there is a preference for Palestinians to remain stateless and without a nation than for them to join the community of nations.

Mahmoud Abbas himself said, in retrospect, that the Palestinians should have accepted the 1947 UN partition plan. But you cannot turn back the clock and say that you retroactively accept the peace plan of 75 years ago.

What the Palestinians and their supporters simply refuse to accept is the existence of a Jewish state on any borders. That is the only consistent position that they have had throughout history. And today, Palestinians and their "supporters" maintain that even if there is a two state solution somehow, it is only meant to be a stage on their path to destroy Israel altogether.

Chaim Weizmann famously argued when the 1937 Peel Commission recommended a tiny, indefensible Jewish state - covering only 20% of the British Mandate, divided geographically, with no Jerusalem - that “The Jews would be fools not to accept it, even if the Jewish state were the size of a tablecloth." He understood that something is better than nothing.

It is a lesson that the Palestinian side strenuously disagrees with: they would prefer nothing if the something includes the existence of a Jewish state.

It is worse even than a zero-sum mentality. They are claiming that they would prefer not being citizens of any country than to accept a Jewish state on any borders. Instead of compromising and getting something, they prefer to remain with nothing, as long as there is a Jewish state as well.

This isn't just spite - this is pure antisemitic hate. And the only people this attitude hurts are Palestinians themselves.

Israel, sometimes with reservations, accepted all these peace plans and frameworks. Palestinians rejected them all, even though they all would have given them the independence they supposedly want. What their responses to these plans, as well the responses to this cartoon, prove is that it was never about gaining an independent Palestinian state but the destruction of the Jewish state.

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!

Amnesty claims to support free speech - but it has censored Zionist voices in its own spaces

Amnesty International tweeted on Saturday:

Reminder: Everyone has the right to freedom of expression

Really?

Because on more than one occasion, Amnesty showed exactly how little it cares about freedom of expression.

Amnesty provides various spaces for rent in its London offices. There are no policies listed on its webpage saying who is allowed to rent their space. Yet in 2018, months after the Jewish Leadership Council made arrangements to rent out space for a debate on UN policy towards Israel, and only days before the planned event, Amnesty canceled the rental agreement and refused to allow the debate to take place.

Their reason? “We reserve the right to withhold permission for our building to be used by organisations whose work runs directly counter to our own. The presence of UN Watch is of significant concern and they have been active in the promotion of the event. We have partners and colleagues – both Israeli and Palestinian – working on the ground and this does put some of their working relationships at risk." They also told the JLC that they did not think it was appropriate to allow speakers who support Jews living in Judea and Samaria while Amnesty campaigns a boycott of "settlement goods."

This means that Amnesty will only rent their space to those whom they do not have any political disagreements with. Which includes antisemitism, since Amnesty-UK did rent their space to an organization that featured a speaker who justified and praised the terror attack murdering Israeli children in the Mercaz Harav yeshiva massacre.

And it is not only Amnesty-UK that only rents out its public spaces to those it agrees with. In 2014, when the Columbia University branch of Amnesty invited Alan Dershowitz to speak, Amnesty International told them to cancel the event, which they did.

Which proves that it isn't that Amnesty opposes pro-settlement speech - but any kind of Zionist speech.

Similarly, Amnesty - so opposed to Zionist speech - has never condemned explicit Arab antisemitism and incitement to terrorism against Jews. This is even though Amnesty admits that incitement and hate speech is not covered by freedom of expression.

This is about as hypocritical as it gets.

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!

07/08 Links: Israel is playing pretend as multi-front conflagration looms; Hamas lawfare campaign; Ukraine supports 90% of UN anti-Israel decisions

From Ian:

Israel is playing pretend as multi-front conflagration looms

Israel might soon face the same challenges it did in the spring, as the terror wave in Judea and Samaria continues as well as following rocket fire from Gaza and Lebanon.

The events are thought to be unrelated. Although the IDF did say ahead of its latest anti-terrorism operation in Jenin that there might be revenge attacks – such as the car ramming in Tel Aviv that injured seven – security officials struggled to link the terrorist who carried out Thursday's attack in Kedumim to the earlier events, among other things because he had no history of terror involvement.

Nevertheless, experience shows that such events are rarely unrelated. The massive scale of incitement on social media, including explicit calls to perpetrate attacks against Israelis "in revenge," significantly impacted Palestinians. Add to that the pressure exerted by various terror groups and the depletion of the Palestinian Authority's security mechanism, all of which led to a spike in the number of attempted attacks.

In an effort to subdue the terror wave, the IDF flooded the area with troops. The Kedumim terrorist encountered a soldier upon arrival and decided to shoot him. The result is tragic, of course, but perhaps preferable over civilian casualties, like in the shooting attack at the Eli gas station.

The role of the security forces is to serve as a divide between terrorists and civilians, as happened in Kedumim. The IDF must step up offensive moves as it did in Jenin to push terrorists into hiding, but if necessary, also provide a physical barrier to absorb the impact.

The terror wave is most likely to continue in the near future in Judea and Samaria and along the Green Line. What is more troubling is the fact that the northern border is becoming an issue again. The IDF could not determine who launched the projectile, Hezbollah or the Palestinians, and whether it was related to this week's events in the West Bank.

Mark Regev: Israeli-American relations over time, from President to President

Successive presidents have tried to duplicate Carter’s achievement, but only a few have come close to matching the scope of his breakthrough.

The celebration of American Independence Day this week provides an opportunity to look back at the formative events over the first three decades of US-Israel relations, when the foundation stones were laid for the strong alliance we know today.

Truman’s recognition
Moshav Kfar Truman and streets in cities across Israel are named after America’s 33rd president, and rightly so.

Harry S. Truman supported Jewish statehood in the November 1947 United Nations partition vote and followed up in May 1948 by becoming the first world leader to announce recognition (de facto) of the newborn Jewish state – a move that expeditiously followed David Ben-Gurion’s proclamation of independence.

In both cases, Truman overruled the advice of the State Department and the Pentagon, who worried about relations with the Arabs, the supply of oil, and the possibility that US troops would be called upon to protect the Jews. Seasoned professionals accused Truman of subjugating foreign policy to domestic political needs.

But if Truman was prioritizing politics – and which president running for reelection ignores political considerations? – it was not necessarily about the mythically all-powerful “Jewish vote.”

As Walter Russel Mead has pointed out in his recent book on the US-Israel relationship The Arc of a Covenant, Truman was less influenced by Jewish lobbying than by the need to ward off momentum for the left-wing presidential candidate Henry Wallace. To do this, Truman had to galvanize support for his reelection in organized labor and among liberal Democrats.

In the aftermath of the Nazi genocide, progressive America embraced Zionism, seeing the struggle of the long-persecuted Jews for a state of their own as an integral element in the liberal universalist agenda for a better world. Thus, for Truman, former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt – the period’s progressive icon and a staunch public campaigner for Jewish statehood – was far more consequential politically than the indefatigable American Zionist leader Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver.

Biden State Department Did Not Consult Anti-Semitism Office on Israel Boycott, Cruz Says

The Biden State Department did not consult with its anti-Semitism watchdog before ending taxpayer funding for Israeli research projects, a move that casts doubt on the department's insistence that the policy was noncontroversial.

The Biden administration sent shockwaves through the pro-Israel advocacy world late last month when it decided to boycott all scientific cooperation projects with Jewish Israelis living in so-called settlements throughout East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Golan Heights. But "the State Department’s own Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism was excluded from deliberations over this guidance and did not clear it," according to a draft investigatory letter authored by Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) making the rounds on Capitol Hill.

The disclosure could undermine the State Department’s claim that its ban on taxpayer funding for these Israeli groups is "simply reflective of the longstanding U.S. position" on disputed areas of the Jewish state. The department’s anti-Semitism envoy, Holocaust historian Debra Lipstadt, is a vocal opponent of Israel boycotts, and routinely calls out foreign nations for their efforts to unfairly target the Jewish state. If the State Department cut Lipstadt out of discussions around the policy, it could signal the decision was much more internally controversial than officials are willing to publicly admit.

After news about the Israel funding prohibition leaked last month, Republican leaders—including several Republican presidential candidates—quickly accused the Biden administration of advancing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Cruz’s draft letter on the matter warns the Biden administration that its endorsement of this policy risks "a full rupture" in Congress’s "ability to engage the Department of State on these issues."

"Candidly, it is untenable for State Department officials to continue testifying to Congress that they support the U.S.-Israel relationship and then—once out of view—to push policies designed to undermine that relationship," Cruz wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. "Without a reversal in these trends Congressional oversight and the expeditious vetting of nominees would become intractable."

07/07 Links Pt2: The riots in France have become antisemitic; New Hampshire 37th state to pass anti-BDS law; German analyst blasted for call to ignore Israeli suffering, back Palestinian terrorism

From Ian:

The riots in France have become antisemitic

The riots in France are currently one of the biggest international news stories. One would naturally expect their coverage by major news outlets to strive for comprehensiveness in its reporting, and accuracy in its analysis. It is therefore instructive to observe the void at the center of this coverage.

If riots involve the deliberate defacement of a Holocaust memorial, and if said defacement takes the form of threatening Jews with a new Holocaust, as has happened in the Paris suburb of Nanterre last Thursday, where the Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation was defaced with the slogan “On va faire une shoah“ (We are going to make a Shoah), it’s hard to see how one could argue that those riots – whatever the original cause of their ignition was – should not described as antisemitic.

So what happens if you search Google News for the term “antisemitic riots”, even several days after the fact? You will find several articles about the incident in Nanterre – all of which have one thing in common. From Israeli newspapers like this publication or the Times of Israel, to The Jewish Chronicle in the UK or the Algemeiner in the US, all the results are from Jewish outlets. Only on subsequent pages do results from ABC News or USA Today pop up as well – but those aren’t related to the recent events in France at all, but months-old articles about people involved in the January 6 riots in Washington DC.

Even if you let go of that particular phrase and simply search for news about the Nanterre memorial, only one non-Jewish outlet (i24News) pops up in addition.

If you rely on newspapers like the New York Times or the Guardian, or the websites of CNN or the BBC for the entirety of your information about the riots in France – even if you combine all four aforementioned sources to make sure you get a comprehensive picture – you will be completely oblivious about the incident, and anyone mentioning antisemitic riots will sound like a paranoiac to you.

‘It’s Nauseating:’ Director of Documentary on Antisemitic Murder of French Jewish Woman Sarah Halimi Assails Judicial System

The director of a documentary broadcast on French television concerning the antisemitic murder in 2017 of Sarah Halimi — a 65-year-old Jewish woman who lived on her own in a public housing project in Paris — has slammed the police and judicial investigation into the killing as “absolutely scandalous, the opposite of what I expect from French justice.”

The director, François Margolin, was speaking to the leading news outlet Le Figaro following the broadcast of his film, “Sarah Halimi: An Antisemitic Crime Unpunished,” on France’s RMC network on Sunday night. The film sought to reconstruct the crime and the consequent botched investigation that led to the accused killer, Halimi’s neighbor Kobili Traore, avoiding a trial on the grounds that his intake of cannabis on Apr. 4, 2017 — the night he broke into Halimi’s apartment and beat her savagely while shouting antisemitic epithets before ejecting her body from a third floor window — had rendered him temporarily insane.

The flawed investigation into Halimi’s death culminated in the April 2021 announcement by France’s highest court that since Traore had taken what it termed an “acute delirious puff” on a cannabis joint that eliminated his “discernement” — or self-awareness — he could not “be judged criminally even when his mental state was caused by the regular consumption of drugs.”

In response, Crif, the French-Jewish representative organization, angrily countered that “now in our country, we can torture and kill Jews with impunity.”

In both his film and his subsequent interview, Margolin focused on the role of the investigating judge in the case, Anne Ihuellou, who announced the formal end to the investigation in May 2019. Margolin said he had managed to obtain “the very rare testimony of the investigating judge, who showed a total lack of empathy for the victim and explained that she had ‘too much work to carry out a reconstitution of the crime,’ or even simply to receive the family’s lawyers. It’s nauseating.”

He charged that from “day one,” the judge had decided that “that the murderer is not responsible” and that she had “conducted the investigation only to comfort herself in this opinion. This is absolutely scandalous and, in my opinion, the opposite of what I expect from French justice.” Ihuellou’s decision was partly based on assessments carried out by two psychiatrists, one of whom told Margolin in the documentary that he had revised his view that Traore could not be considered culpable. “It’s easy to understand, listening to them, that psychiatry is not an exact science,” Margolin said.

Margolin also criticized the police, who arrived at Halimi’s apartment as Traore was beating her and yet refrained from intervening.

JPost Editorial: We should not let disagreements about judicial reform divide the country

The greatest crisis for the Jewish state is internal division
During the early years of the State of Israel, the country’s leadership recognized the necessity of caution during crises. David Ben-aGurion and Menachem Begin demonstrated that despite deep-rooted disagreements, democracy could thrive in the Middle East. Whether during the 1948 bipartisan Altalena shootout at the dawn of independence or the following reparations dispute with Germany, the potential for wider violence was always present. Responsible leadership played a crucial role in averting catastrophe and steering the country back from the edge.

Today, we are once again confronted with a significant dispute within our democratic system. Numerous responsible voices advocate for unity, reflecting the aspirations and shared struggles of the people in our country. At the same time, many individuals are deeply concerned about judicial reform and the independence of the judiciary, as well as the need for police to carry out their duties without political interference.

It is important to recognize the significance of keeping roads open for ordinary citizens who rely on them after a long day of work. At the same time, it is equally important for the public to exercise caution and respect the right to protest. Thus, we must continuously balance freedom of expression with the necessity of ensuring smooth public transit, securing the airport for travelers, and preventing the threat of fires and dangers on our highways. Police should maintain a fair and controlled environment for all involved.

As we pursue unity, it is crucial for our political leadership to showcase pragmatism and moderation during times of protest and dispute. The talks over the judicial reform at President Isaac Herzog’s residence have been on hold for too long. They should be resumed without delay and our leaders should do whatever they can to reach a negotiated agreement. In so doing, they should draw inspiration from our history and our future, charting a path that unifies Israel.

Our country faces no shortage of external threats, as evidenced by the recent operation in Jenin, and we must not allow internal divisions to harm us. With the three weeks before Tisha Be’av now upon us, there is no better time to reflect on the symbols of past divisions and learn lessons for unity today.