Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, August 09, 2023

The real elephants in the room (2023 edition)

Recently, a group of hundreds of North American academics issued a statement linking the Israeli governments support for judicial reform with the "occupation" and saying Israel is guilty of apartheid and Jewish supremacism.

They called the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria "the elephant in the room."

This prompts me to bring up the real elephants in the room - the elephants that these human rights pretenders always ignore and want everyone else to ignore as well

I have been calling out these elephants since 2005, updating the list every few years. These are the facts that everyone knows - and that are actively suppressed by the media, politicians, academia and "experts."

Here is the latest iteration of the inconvenient facts that no one wants to discuss:

Elephant 1: Terror groups control Gaza - and that will not change

Every peace plan and proposal includes Gaza in a Palestinian Arab state, and none of them has any provision on how to handle the fact that Gaza is a terrorist haven, in much worse shape since Israel uprooted the settlements there, controlled by Iranian-funded terrorist groups that are consistently and wholeheartedly against Israel's existence. Peace is impossible with this elephant, so it is easier to pretend it isn't there - or, for some, to position the genocidal, antisemitic desires of Hamas and Islamic Jihad as somehow a brave fight for freedom.

Elephant 2: Palestinian Arabs consistently support terrorism

In the only fair, democratic elections in the territories, the Hamas terrorists were chosen by the people. Poll after poll shows that Palestinian Arabs support terror in Israel itself. (52% still support a violent intifada in 2019.) The elections and surveys proved that the conventional wisdom was wrong - and the conventional wisdom ignores and downplays this proof that peace is impossible, and it isn't Israel's fault.

Elephant 3: The current PA government was not elected

This corollary to Elephant 2 means that the people representing "Palestine" on TV and at the UN do not represent the people. Even if they sound moderate or compromising, they have no mandate. The current PA president is well past his term of office, and none of his prime ministers were ever elected Negotiating with the PA is, literally, meaningless.

Similarly, the unelected PLO is the real power behind the PA. The PA officially reports to the PLO, and all negotiations are done by the autocratic, Fatah-dominated PLO, not the PA.

Elephant 4: The current PA government has almost no power - and no respect

Outside of Ramallah, the Abbas government has little popular support and little power. Terror groups are a very real threat to the PA in the West Bank and have been building their bases, which has now become obvious in recent years. The PA has lost large swaths of the West Bank. The PA canceled the last elections because they would have lost to Hamas.

Elephant 5: The PA is being kept alive by artificial methods

The PA budget is bloated from "payroll" of non-working workers, including terrorists who receive a salary for not working. The PA may also still be paying Gaza workers who were kicked out of their government jobs in 2006 by Hamas. The very basis of the organized Palestinian Arab workforce is a fiction being kept barely alive by external infusions of cash with no real plan to fix the problem.

Elephant 6: Fatah remains a terrorist group paid by the PA

Despite the claims that the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades has dismantled, it is a joke meant to appease the wishful-thinkers. The PA might arrest Hamas members in the West Bank, but there still remains - today - terrorist groups that report to Fatah. Here's the webpage of one of them. There has been no serious move by the PA to dismantle their own terror groups, and there are lots of PA security employees who join with terror groups like Lion's Den at night.

Elephant 7: The PA's goal remains the destruction of Israel

Whether it is by "right of return" or not changing the Fatah charter or by printing map after map showing no Israel, even the most moderate Palestinian leader clings to the idea of destroying Israel, and looks upon a Palestinian Arab state as only one stage in the process. One only needs to look at the maps of "Palestine" in official PA documents and schoolbooks.

A 2011 poll that remains criminally under-reported proves that when Palestinian Arabs say they want a two-state solution, it is only a stage towards their real goal of destroying Israel.

And polls in 2019 confirm it.

Elephant 8: Jerusalem

Most Israelis want a unified Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty. Most Palestinian Arabs refuse to accept anything less than all of ("east") Jerusalem as the capital of a Muslim state. The positions are not compatible and a compromise will not reduce the chances for violence - it will increase it.

Jerusalem, under Jewish rule, has more religious freedom than at any time in its history. That would disappear in any "peace plan." But "human rights activists" are remarkably uninterested in the rights of Jews.

Elephant 9: Israeli concessions have encouraged more terror

The conventional wisdom is that if only Israel give Palestinians more of what they demand, it will help bring peace. But history shows the opposite.

Israel's far-reaching offers for peace in 2000 and 2001 had a very loud response: the second Intifada and thousands killed. Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon to UN-drawn lines resulted in Hezbollah becoming more powerful, with hundreds of thousands of rockets pointed at Israel and new provocations at the border, with one major war in 2006 and another threatened. Israel's withdrawal from Gaza did not result in peace but in the takeover of Gaza by terror groups.

Israeli concessions are regarded not as goodwill gestures that should be reciprocated but as weakness that must be taken advantage of.

And that is exactly what would happen if Israel withdraws from areas in Judea and Samaria.

Elephant 10: Palestinian Arab "unity"

No peace plan can work unless Hamas and the PA/Fatah, along with other terror groups, reach some sort of unification agreement. This is not possible in the foreseeable future. Moreover, Hamas is powerful enough that any such agreement must include a hardening of PLO positions that would be completely incompatible with the basic minimum standards for peace - renunciation of terror, recognition of Israel and acceptance of previous agreements.

Elephant 11: "Refugee camps"

The only reason there are still "refugee camps" in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are to keep Palestinians in misery - to make them pawns in photo-ops and to create new generations of terrorists. Real fighters for human rights would insist that "refugees" become full citizens of the countries they have lived in for generations - but they argue the opposite. Real human rights advocates would insist that the camps in PA and Hamas controlled territory be dismantled and normal housing built - but they don't. People who hate Israel are eager to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians because they want to destroy Israel with the fictional "right of return." Israel will never agree so these people are left in misery, forever.

See also Elephant 16.

Elephant 12: Economics

Some 30 years after Oslo, the economy in the territories is still close to non-existent and wholly dependent on foreign aid. Not only is there no free market, there is no incentive to build one as the very mentality of Palestinian Arabs and their leaders is one of welfare rather than responsibility. All the plans to create a Palestinian Arab state do not consider Day 2 and how such a state would be able to sustain itself. The expected influx of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Lebanon and Syria would make it even worse. It would take at least a generation to turn the poisonous attitude of entitlement around.

Elephant 13: Gaza demographics

Gazans have no room to expand as their numbers continue to grow at among the fastest rates in the world. Theoretically they could move to the West Bank but only a small percentage would. This is another Day 2 powder keg that is being ignored in the interests of a "solution" of a "Palestinian state."

Elephant 14: Palestinian Arab leaders never showed interest in independence

The West assumes that the goal is an independent Palestinian Arab state where Arabs no longer have to live under "occupation." But the actions and words of Palestinian Arab leaders have never borne that goal out; they have not worked towards building the institutions and infrastructure that would be necessary in an independent state. Their insistence on "right of return" and "Jerusalem" as issues that must be resolved before independence betray their thought processes - inconsistent with independence (neither of which require those two issues to be resolved) and consistent with a desire to destroy Israel in stages.

Elephant 15: A unilateral Palestinian Arab state would be militarized

There is no way that a new Palestinian Arab state would remain demilitarized for any length of time. The Palestinian government could invite a friendly Muslim nation to position anti-aircraft weapons within its territory; to shoot missiles at El Al planes landing a few miles from the Green Line, or to get a few thousand tanks poised to cut Israel in half.

Iran already effectively controls Lebanon, Syria and to a large extent Gaza They would use the nascent state of Palestine to position themselves on the West Bank as well. Just like the PA ran away from Gaza at the first sign of trouble, so would they lose their state to Iranian proxies and Islamic terrorists.

The PLO's will to defend themselves is not nearly as strong as their will to destroy Israel, a desire that has been inculcated in them for generations. Palestinian Arab nationalism is a fundamentally weak and externally-imposed construct. Iran is poised and anxious to take advantage of the chaos that would follow a unilaterally declared state, even if at the moment they are distracted.

But the West is ready to risk Israel for that elephant as well.

Elephant 16: The so-called "right to return"

The PA is showing no interest in integrating the Palestinian Arabs outside of the territories into their state. On the contrary; the "refugee camps" in PA controlled territory continue to grow, rather than shrink. Clearly, the PA expects the bulk of the "diaspora" to go to Israel, not a Palestinian Arab state, and decades of incitement both within and without the territories have brainwashed generations of Arabs to not accept anything less than a "return" to a land that most of them have never stepped foot in. (UNRWA has been a major promulgator of this lie.)

Elephant 17: Corruption and human rights abuses are still endemic in the PA

Despite the publicized successes, the PA remains mired in corruption, hardly a model for an independent state. The 2008 Global Integrity Report rated the West Bank as close to the bottom in its corruption ratings and more Palestinians have rated local corruption among the worst in the Arab world. It hasn't improved.

The PA is a dictatorship. Mahmoud Abbas controls the PLO that the PA reports to, the judiciary, the legislative branch and the executive branch. There is no independence or checks and balances.

Women are discriminated against by law. Press freedom remains low; the justice system is opaque, and whistle-blowers are forced to go to the Israeli press to expose corruption. Prisoners are tortured. And except for rare occasions, these abuses are ignored.

Elephant 18: Palestine would be Judenrein

Statements by PA leaders make it clear that their state of Palestine would not have any Jewish citizens allowed within. Jews whose ancestors have lived in Judea and Samaria, whether for decades or for millennia, will be legally barred from living in Palestine - an extraordinary display of state antisemitism that is completely at odds with the Western standards that the nascent state of "Palestine" is pretending to live up to.

Elephant 19: The Muslim world's antipathy towards Israel

Although this is weakening, most of the Arab world and the Muslim world remains overwhelmingly against the idea of a Jewish state in the midst of supposedly Muslim lands. Iran remains in de facto control of southern Lebanon and Gaza; ordinary Jordanians and Egyptians remain among the worst antisemites in the Arab world. The Abraham Accords have been a tremendous counterweight to this, and things are better than they have been in the past, but the Arab people themselves are still overwhelmingly antisemitic and anti-Israel. The threat from radical Islam remains potent in Arab and Muslim states. No concessions would change that.

Elephant 20: Mahmoud Abbas will die and there is no plan for the day after

Mahmoud Abbas has no successor. Polls show that if elections were held today, the new president of the PA would be a convicted terrorist now in Israeli prison. Iranian-funded error groups are poised to take over. Even if Abbas would sign a real peace agreement today, that paper would be next to worthless after he is gone.

Israel has to navigate these challenges every day. Rarely does the media mention them, instead insisting on a simplistic narrative where only Israel is responsible for peace. This pretense that Palestinians have no responsibility of their own - a fiction that Palestinian leaders go to great lengths to promulgate - is ultimately racist against Palestinians.

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!

The official Palestinian Authority Wafa news agency reports:

Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh today received in his Ramallah office the new head of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Kerstin Gerling, in the presence of its former head, Alexander Tieman, and IMF Resident Representative Thomas Laursen, during which they discussed the impact of the Israeli occupation on the Palestinian economy.

"The Israeli occupation is the main obstacle to the development process in Palestine. Israel has employed many tools to control us, whether through direct military occupation of our lands, and control of the borders, crossings, the labor market, and infrastructure," said the Prime Minister.

Let's look at the list of how Shtayyeh claims Israel is controlling the Palestinian economy and development - and compare it to how Jews existed in British Mandate Palestine:

The British military occupied the entire land.

The British controlled the borders.

The British controlled the crossings.

The British controlled the labor market.

The British controlled the infrastructure.

Yet , somehow, the Zionist Jews managed to build an economy, develop industry, create an entire export industry, innovate in farming techniques, drain the swamps to rid the country of malaria, and at the same time build universities, newspapers, cultural institutions, sports teams and everything else to be ready for independence.

And the Jews did it all in 26 years, from 1922 to 1948.

The Palestinians have essentially complete control of all of Area A and administrative control of Area B for 28 years now, since Oslo II in 1995. They have control over their own labor market. They have control over their own infrastructure. By nearly every metric, they have more autonomy than Jews did under British rule.

But what do they have to show for it? Whining about how the Jews are stopping them from building an economy!

Unlike Jews in the 1920s, Palestinians can build an economy providing services worldwide via networking. Residents can program, translate, do legal service work, artwork - anything that can be done remotely. Unlike the Jews in the British Mandate, the Palestinians are surrounded by fellow Arabs who would happily buy goods from them if they were competitive on price and quality.

Where are the initiatives to build such an economy?

As far as I can tell, every major plan to improve the Palestinian economy comes from non-Palestinians - from the UN, or the Quartet. The Palestinians outsource their own future to others - and then blame Israel when they don't accomplish anything.

The Jews in the mandate period didn't have international organizations falling over themselves to build a Jewish state - but almost every nation in the world claims to support building an independent Palestinian state.

Even with the billions of aid, the automatic majority in the UN, countless NGOs willing to fully support the Palestinian cause, and a history of hundreds of millions of petrodollars invested in Palestinian governance, the Palestinians still have next to nothing to show for it.

But they do have someone to blame - Israel.

And the world believes the obvious lie.

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!

08/08 Links Pt2: Israel's leadership never cared about the Sbarro bombing victims; ADL Report Shows Antisemitism Widespread on European Left

From Ian:

Frimet Roth: Israel's leadership never cared about the Sbarro bombing victims

The Sbarro bombing of 2001 accompanies, or more precisely haunts me always, even after 22 years. But that Hamas terror attack, which robbed me and my family of our precious Malki, ought to be remembered by the Israeli public as well, even those for whom the 16 murders had no direct impact.

It teaches us a lot about our leaders, their thought processes, priorities and concern, or rather lack of it, for us – their constituents.

The lessons to be learned began some time before the attack.

The Sbarro bombing could have been prevented
In the early afternoon of August 9, 2001, Ahlam Tamimi was leading her accomplice to Sbarro. My husband refers to Izz ad-Din Shuhayl Ahmad al-Masri as her human bomb. Days before, by Tamimi’s own account, she had scouted the city center for a site that would provide the largest number of religious Jewish women and children as targets. She had chosen well.

In a guitar case casually slung over his shoulder, Al-Masri carried 10 kilograms of explosives. Both terrorists wore touristy attire, and Tamimi was careful to speak in English to further dispel suspicion. Al-Masri, who did not know English, remained silent.

Days later, then-justice minister Meir Sheetrit disclosed on a TV news program, with no apparent shame or regret, that he and other government officials had been notified that Palestinian terrorists were circulating in the center of Jerusalem on August 9.

I recall hearing that officials had warned local hospitals of a possible imminent flood of victims. He said that police had been sent to scour the streets.

Sheetrit added that the government pleaded with then-Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat for assistance in thwarting the attack. I leave it to you to guess his response.

Presumably, they did not permit their own loved ones to meander through the city that day. But at no time were we – the residents of the city – alerted to the impending danger.

And so, when my precious 15-year-old child called me that day at 1 p.m. to tell me she was leaving her friend’s house in Ramot and heading by bus for a camp leaders’ meeting in Jerusalem, I thought nothing of it.

We concluded our chat, as was our custom, with “I love you.” For the last time.

New ADL Report Shows Antisemitism Widespread on European Left

Brazen expressions of anti-Zionism and hostility towards the State of Israel that spill over into antisemitism continue to be visible among socialist and far left political parties in Europe, according to a new assessment published on Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

The report, titled “Antisemitism and Radical Anti-Israel Bias on the Political Left in Europe,” draws on contributions from four Jewish or pro-Israel institutions in France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. It examines how “anti-Israel actions and calls for the application of BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) against Israel are increasingly common in leftist political circles in Europe.” The report further notes that their “rhetoric influences, and draws inspiration from, some left-leaning activist movements in the US.”

The report identifies “common antisemitic themes that emerge from each of the four countries, including claims that Jewish cabals control politics and media; Holocaust trivialization; equating Israel with the Nazi regime; and the false charge that accusations of antisemitism are used to silence criticism of Israel,” the ADL observed.

“While left-wing antisemitism has existed in France for many years, its mainstreaming is a source of deep concern in the French Jewish community,” stated the contribution from France, supplied by the editors of the Jewish magazine K. “Since the mid-20th century, the French left had been influenced by the Soviet Communist Party with its anti-Zionism that challenged the legitimacy of Israel’s existence, propagated conspiracy theories, and portrayed Israel as a destabilizing factor both regionally and internationally.”

Among several examples in France is the profusion of “images of Jews controlling the government…found on social media accounts of left-wing activists, including some prominent personalities. In 2017, Gérard Filoche, a member of the Socialist Party executive committee, tweeted an image of newly elected President Emmanuel Macron with three prominent French Jews in the shadows behind him.”

Similarly, in Germany “Israel-centered antisemitism is a major contributor to the normalization of antisemitism, making it difficult to combat the phenomenon in general,” stated the contribution from the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, a prominent anti-racist organization. It cited the May Day demonstrations in Berlin in 2022, where “antisemitic slogans could be heard from the outset: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ ‘Apartheid Israel’ and one that explicitly trivializes terror: ‘Stop the war, Intifada until we prevail.’ The crowd chanted the motto ‘Yallah class war,’ while posters showed Leila Khaled, member of the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is responsible for numerous attacks against Israeli civilians.”

French Interior Minister Orders Dissolution Of Catholic Association Over ‘Antisemitic’ Speech

France’s Interior Minister on Monday announced the dissolution of a traditionalist Catholic association after one of its leaders called for Jews to be stripped of their political and civil rights.

“Antisemitism has no place in our country,” French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted. “I strongly condemn these ignominious remarks and direct them the Public Prosecutor.”

Darmanin added that he had issued instructions for “the dissolution of Civitas,” the name of the association.

Darmanin was responding to a speech delivered to a Civitas meeting in the town of Pontmain on July 30 by Pierre Hillard, an essayist. Hillard argued that the situation of Jews in France prior to the French revolution of 1789 — when they had no legal rights — should be restored.

“The naturalization of the Jews in September 1791 opens the door to immigration,” Hillard stated. “If we restore the laws of Catholicity and [make] traditional Catholicism a state religion, perhaps we should return to the situation before 1789.”

Old antisemitic lies don't die. They live forever, no matter how many times they are debunked.

Jordan's Al Ghad has an op-ed by Youssef Abdullah Mahmoud that quotes a variant of a Nazi-era libel claiming that "president" Benjamin Franklin gave a speech to the American people warning them about the dangers of Jews.

There is a great danger for the United States of America. This great danger is the Jew. Gentlemen, in every land the Jews have settled, they have depressed the moral level and lowered the degree of commercial honesty. They have remained apart and unassimilated; oppressed, they attempt to strangle the nation financially, as in the case of Portugal and Spain.

If they are not expelled from the United States by the Constitution, they will stream into this country in such numbers that they will rule and destroy us and change our form of Government for which we Americans shed our blood and sacrificed our life, property and personal freedom. If the Jews are not excluded within two hundred years, our children will be working in the field to feed Jews while they remain in the counting houses, gleefully rubbing their hands.

I warn you, gentlemen, if you do not exclude the Jews forever, your children and your children’s children will curse you in their graves. Their ideas are not those of Americans, even when they lived among us for ten generations. The leopard cannot change his spots. The Jews are a danger to this land, and if they are allowed to enter, they will imperil our institutions. They should be excluded by the Constitution.

This lie was first published in 1934 by an American fascist publication and quickly reproduced in Nazi Germany. Here's a Nazi poster with the lie, complete with a picture of someone who is definitely not Franklin.

The supposed speech was debunked fairly quickly - there is no record of any such speech, it uses language that was not used in the 18th century, and Franklin was a philosemite.

But that hasn't stopped this supposed "Franklin prophecy" from being resurrected every couple of years in Arab media. Usually, the articles claim Franklin was the President.

Mahmoud expands on the forgery, claiming that "Zionists" stopped early Americans from implementing Franklin's plan of ethnic cleansing Jews from the United States.

Why recycle old, provable lies? Because most people don't know they are lies, and it is easier to re-use old ones than to make up new ones.

Interestingly, as I was writing this, I found articles that give a strong indication that a 19th century Mussar work, Sefer Cheshbon ha-Nefesh based its self-improvement program on Benjamin Franklin's own program described in his autobiography. The author, Menachem Mendel Lefin, didn't credit Franklin but he didn't claim to have created the method either, and other writings of his show he was familiar with Franklin's writings. So in a way, Benjamin Franklin has influenced modern Jewish thought.

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!

This morning, the IDF demolished the home of the Hamas terrorist who killed brothers Hallel Yaniv, 21, and Yagel Yaniv, 19, as they drove through Huwara in February.

I always wondered whether this policy actually deterred some terror attacks. Reading between the lines of the angry reactions from major terror groups, it appears that they may indeed act as a deterrent for at least some attacks.

Islamic Jihad issued a statement saying "the demolition of the house of the martyr Abd al-Fattah Kharousha in Nablus will not weaken the resolve of the resistance fighters, but rather they will increase their determination and adherence to resistance and jihad....the crime of demolishing houses will not achieve the deterrence goals that the enemy army is looking for."

That is a lot of words to protest a policy that they claim is ineffective.

Similarly, the PFLP said, "The policy of demolishing the homes of the martyrs will only increase our people's determination to continue the path of freedom and dignity that was paved with the blood of our martyrs, the sacrifices of our families, and the struggles of our people with all its components."

Hamas said, "Our people and their factions will remain a support for our steadfast people who are targeted by the enemy by demolishing their homes and property. This struggling people will continue to unite with the heart of one man in the face of the occupier, until our rights are fully recovered, no matter how long it takes and no matter how much they sacrifice." It also said that this was "a Zionist policy of impotence, which proved its failure to quell the resistance and affect the morale of the fighters."

If the home demolition policy only encourages more terror, and these groups want to recruit more members, then why are they so insistent on how the policy is ineffective? These statements appear to be more a message to Israel to stop the demolitions and to their own people not to be deterred from attacking Jews because of the knowledge that their families will lose their homes.

Israeli authorities know far more. They interview the actual terrorists and know whether some of them say that the demolition policy affects their fellow terror group members. Almost certainly these interviews are what prompts Israel's High Court to continue to allow that policy, as the objective of discouraging terror attacks is a higher priority than the issue of collective punishment that is the usual argument by NGOs against the policy.

This is indirect proof, of course, but the strident reactions to the destruction of Abd al-Fattah Kharousha's home in Nablus seem to indicate that the policy does indeed cause some militants to think twice before attacking, and the leaders of the terror groups are trying to quash that reluctance.

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!

08/08 Links Pt1: Australia to resume use of term ’occupied Palestinian territories’; Gallant warns Hezbollah against escalation: ‘We’ll return Lebanon to the Stone Age’

From Ian:

Australia to resume use of term ’occupied Palestinian territories’

Australia’s Labor government will resume the use of the term “occupied Palestinian territories” in reference to eastern Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, reversing an unofficial policy stance that had been in place for almost 10 years.

“In adopting the term, we are clarifying that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Gaza [sic], were occupied by Israel following the 1967 war and that the occupation continues,” Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong told lawmakers on Tuesday, The Guardian reported.

“[The move] reaffirms our commitment to negotiate a two-state solution in which Israel and a future Palestinian state coexist,” said Wong, adding that Canberra had engaged with the Israeli ambassador on the issue as Australia remains “a committed friend of Israel.”

Australia’s top diplomat furthermore said the government would strengthen its opposition to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, calling them “illegal under international law and a significant obstacle to peace.”

Sources cited by the Guardian said ministers had broadly refrained from using the term “occupied” or “occupation” since 2014, beginning under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Abbott (2013-15), once named a top Christian ally of the Jewish state.

“The description of East[ern] Jerusalem as ‘occupied’ East Jerusalem is a term freighted with pejorative implications, which is neither appropriate nor useful,” then-Attorney General George Brandis said at the time.

The Palestinian Authority welcomed Tuesday’s policy shift, calling it a “significant and important development in the Australian position,” but said Canberra should go even further and “recognize the state of Palestine swiftly, in accordance with international law and international legitimacy.”

The Zionist Federation of Australia and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry in a joint statement slammed the move as “inaccurate, ahistorical and counterproductive.”

Canberra’s decision “effectively denies any Jewish claim to the West Bank [known by its biblical names Judea and Samaria] and Jerusalem. The most important Jewish holy sites of the Temple Mount and the Western Wall are in [eastern] Jerusalem, and there has been an unbroken Jewish presence in the West Bank for thousands of years,” the two organizations said.

“The foreign minister has previously stated that Australia should not preempt the outcome of final-status issues. It is regrettable that the government has now done that,” added the statement.

@ECAJewry and the @ZionistFedAus deeply concerned by the Government’s statement and change in language about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The change in language is inaccurate, ahistorical and counterproductive.”

Full statement available on
https://t.co/puJFCPOqFO pic.twitter.com/45uODIODZY
— ECAJ (@ECAJewry) August 8, 2023

Sky News Australia: ‘Pathway to stability’: Labor MP maintains ‘respectful debate’ will be held over Israel

Labor MP Graham Perrett says the Labor caucus has a range of people with a number of views on many topics and maintains a “respectful debate” will be held in a national Labor Party caucus conference over their stance on Israel.

ILF statement expressing extreme disappointment in the #Australian government’s highly flawed & one-sided change in policy, to label the entirety of Judea & Samaria (‘West Bank), east Jerusalem and Gaza, as ‘occupied Palestinian territories’ and deem all settlements ‘illegal’. pic.twitter.com/vVld7G4JJQ
— The International Legal Forum - ILF (@The_ILF) August 8, 2023

For the record, Canberra was only made the capital of #Australia in 1913, when it literally had to be built from scratch. Whereas #Jerusalem has been capital of the Jewish people for 3,000+ years, since days of King David. It was, is & shall remain #Israel’s indivisible capital.
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) August 8, 2023

Actually, @abcnews Australia, the statement referred to 5,700 settlement units.

There's a significant difference between 5,700 new houses and 5,700 new communities.

Please correct the error.https://t.co/HcX6JdzMcb pic.twitter.com/QmlIUUzdZY
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 8, 2023

Once again, Save the Children lies about Palestinian kids supposedly tortured by Israel

Last month, Save the Children issued a press release:

Palestinian children in the Israel military detention system face physical and emotional abuse, with four out of five (86%) of them being beaten, and 69% strip-searched, according to new research by Save the Children. Nearly half (42%) are injured at the point of arrest, including gunshot wounds and broken bones. Some report violence of a sexual nature and some are transferred to court or between detention centres in small cages, the child rights organisation said.

Save the Children’s new consultation showed that:

During arrest, 42% of children were injured, including gunshot wounds and broken bones, and 65% of children were arrested during the night, mostly between midnight and dawn. Half of all arrests took place in the children’s home.
The majority of children experienced appalling levels of physical and emotional abuse, including being beaten (86%), being threatened with harm (70%), and hit with sticks or guns (60%).
Some children reported violence and abuse of a sexual nature, including being hit or touched on the genitals and 69% reported being strip searched.
60% of children experienced solitary confinement with the length of time varying from one 1 day to as long as 48 days.
Children were denied access to basic services, 70% said they suffered from hunger and 68% said they didn’t receive any healthcare.
58% of children were denied visits or communication with their family while detained.

Wow! The vast majority of Palestinian kids arrested are beaten, nearly half are physically injured, and more than half are placed in solitary confinement!

Then, Save the Children describes its methodology.

In total, 228 former child detainees participated in this study by Save the Children and YMCA. This includes 177 children who responded to surveys and 51 who took part in focus group discussions. A further two focus group discussions were held with parents whose children had been detained. ...
A combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches, including surveys and focus groups, was applied, to ensure that the perspectives and experiences of Palestinian children who experienced arrest and detention were at the core of the study.

This is an embarrassing methodology that would shame any credible researcher.

The surveys have, by their very nature, self-selection bias. Only children and parents with a desire to tell their stories will choose to answer the questions, anyone who had an uneventful arrest won't bother answering a survey that is meant to prove Israel tortures kids.

Save the Children does not publish the methodology of how they determined who to send the surveys to, or the survey questions, which were probably leading questions based on what we know from previous Save the Children reports.

The focus groups are even worse. The biases seen in focus groups are well known. The moderator can ask leading questions. Those who spin lurid stories of torture would tend to monopolize the discussion, influencing the other kids in the group to want to embellish their own stories.

Save the Children says nothing about any professional training or expertise their moderators and facilitators have to minimize bias in their responses.

And when they say they use "qualitative approaches" you know that means that they will weight whatever the kids say towards the worst possible interpretation for Israel.

The names of the researchers are not mentioned, nor is the author of the press release. It is completely opaque - and this is not an accident.

The full report shows how absurd the interviews are. B'Tselem statistics show that the number of children under 14 held in prison is almost always zero, and it is difficult to find one or more children at that age in prison for two consecutive months. But somehow Save the Children finds several 13-year olds who claim they were in horrible conditions in prison:

“Sometimes they broke into our prison cells and made us stand in the cold air outside. They didn’t allow us to sleep. One night, they broke the roof and we had to spend the night with the rain pouring into our room....They hit me with their hands and rifles, everywhere, especially on my private parts.”” Yousef*, detained when he was 13

“For me, the transfer bus was the worst. There is a tiny box inside that barely fits one person; what they would do is put two of us together in that box handcuffed to each other and driven around all day. They would drive us for hours, from early in the morning to late at night, just locked in that box....I used to have nightmares about my time in prison all the time, especially about the officer who interrogated me. He told me, ‘I promise you that you will dream about me’. And he was right.” Khalil*, detained when he was 13

None of this rings true. But Save the Children wants to issue a report that will make a splash, so they are not interested in the truth.

In fact, it quotes even less reliable reports as fact - such as the PLO's Commission for Prisoners and Freed Prisoners which claimed minors "became victims of the sexual lust of their jailers from the Nahshon forces without consideration for their age."

Perhaps this is why this survey did not get any publicity outside of outlets like Al Jazeera and Palestine Chronicle. It is obvious even to anti-Israel media that the results of the "survey" are so out of whack with reality that their publicizing it would hurt their own credibility.

Save the Children deliberately does everything possible to get the most lurid results for publication - and then quote these "statistics" as if they are scientifically valid.

After all, if there is no torture, they can't raise funds.

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Palestinian journalists are being attacked daily - by Palestinians. World media and NGOs actively SUPPRESS this information.

Here is a list of attacks on journalists by Hamas, the PA and Palestinian protesters in just the past two weeks by the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA).

August 1:

The Palestinian General Intelligence Service had kidnapped the freelance journalist SAMI SAEED ALSAAI (43 years old) at around 12:00PM yesterday, Monday, in Nablus, and took him to an unknown place. According to the journalist’s wife, four masked men dressed in black came to the journalist’s workplace in two cars, one of which had yellow license plates, and kidnapped him at gunpoint.

MADA also strongly condemns the attack by members of the internal security of Hamas government in Gaza Strip against journalists in Gaza Strip while covering the peaceful demonstrations that took place therein, calling for an improvement in the living conditions of citizens. Individuals in civilian clothes - identifying themselves as members of the Internal Security Service - assaulted Palestine TV and Abu Dhabi TV reporter, journalist WALID ABDEL RAHMAN, while covering the peaceful event in Jabalia Camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, last Sunday. They insulted him and forced him to stop the coverage.

In the same context, the freelance journalist EHAB AL-FASFOUS was threatened by the investigation and internal security members while covering the same event in Khan Younes, southern Gaza Strip.

August 6:

The security services of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and the Internal Security Forces in Gaza Strip, have increased their aggression against journalists in a violent manner that threatens the professional work of journalists, which is a bad indicator of the reality of media freedoms that is witnessing bloody violations. For instance, the reporter, ALI AL-SAMOUDI, was injured by shrapnel in the head as a result of the shooting in Jenin camp yard, while the citizens were celebrating the shooting attack that took place in "Tel Aviv" yesterday, Saturday. The security personnel also targeted the reporter of "Quds News Network" MOHAMMED ABED with a gas bomb directly at the event.

This was preceded by a group of Al-Shabibah members assaulting a group of journalists at Hebron University a few days ago, during which journalist NIDAL AL-NATSHEH was flagrantly assaulted.

The situation in Gaza Strip is not any better than this, as the attacks of the Internal Security Service affected many journalists yesterday, Saturday, as the security services of Hamas Authority arrested a number of journalists, namely, MOHAMMED AL-BABA, the cameraman of the French Agency, and the journalist, BASHAR TALIB, for about 45 minutes inside Jabalia police station, north of Gaza City, before they were released after their cameras and mobile phones were searched.

The security members also arrested journalist MOHAMMED FAYEZ ABU AOUN, journalist YAHYA HASSOUNA, journalist MOHAMMED AL-HADDAD, and journalist IHAB AL-FASFOUS, who was attacked, and his phone was confiscated before it was returned to him. As for the journalist, MOHAMMED ISMAIL AL-HADDAD, he was threatened by a person in civilian clothes who identified himself as a member of the Investigation Department, as soon as he was filming, and informed him that "there is a decision to ban filming and asked him to stay away from the place”.

Meanwhile, journalist FOUAD JARADA and his colleague MUAMMAR ABU TABIKH were threatened via phone of a special number “not to engage in any journalistic work on the "We Want to Live" movement in Gaza”.

At least two of these journalists have received major media coverage when they were injured by Israeli forces.

Ali al-Samoudi was injured last year in the incident that killed Shireen Abu Akleh, and he was interviewed extensively at the time. This time, Palestinian and world media have not written a word about his being injured in the head by a bullet.

AFP cameraman Mohammed al-Baba was injured at a Gaza rally in 2018 by a gunshot blamed on Israel and that story was covered by wire services. But when Hamas arrests the same AFP journalist and confiscates his equipment, even AFP doesn't report it.

Perhaps even more shocking is that even though all these attacks and far more are documented by MADA, including in their monthly reports, the Committee to Protect Journalists has not said a word about Palestinian repression of press freedoms since February 2022. In that same time period they have issued dozens of alerts against Israel.

CPJ routinely reports on journalists injured and arrested worldwide - but ignores when it is done by Palestinian authorities. This means that even the major international NGO whose mission is to protect press freedoms is actively suppressing news of Palestinian violations of those freedoms.

(h/t GnasherJew)

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The Washington Post humanizes terrorists - and doesn't do basic fact checks

Washington Post reporters are very proud of themselves for scoring an interview with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades:

Zoufi is the commander of the camp’s branch of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is listed as a terrorist group by Israel and the United States. He founded the armed militant cell just over a year ago as Israeli military raids spiked across the West Bank.

The Washington Post spent time with him and some of his 15 fighters, as well as with militants in two other Palestinian refugee camps — Jenin and Askar — over three days in July. The visits, agreed to on the condition that full names and specific locations be withheld, afforded a rare window into the lives and actions of fighters on one side of the worst violence to grip the West Bank in decades.

...Making contact with Zoufi and his fighters meant navigating a clandestine network of intermediaries inside the camps. After being handed off by a string of trusted escorts — walking along narrow lanes laced with sagging electric cables and papered with posters of slain fighters — the Post reporters were led to a room deep inside Balata Camp.
Several men there were eating mana’eesh, a flatbread with za’atar. Weapons rested in their laps or against the walls.
“Welcome. Yalla, join us,” said one man, known in the camp as Goblin.

It is exactly what we have seen countless times before - humanizing terrorists and trusting what they say implicitly while including the bare minimum of Israeli "claims."

I found this paragraph interesting:

The fighters, who inspire both fear and fealty, enjoy cultlike status in the camp. There are no sports teams here. Male unemployment is nearing 90 percent. With few role models of any kind, boys collect stickers, posters and necklaces bearing images of slain militants.

The male unemployment rate in the West Bank altogether is 12.4% (2021). UNRWA says that for all camps, it is 17%. This site says the Balata camp's unemployment rate is 25%. I cannot find any source that says it has an unemployment rate anywhere close to 90%.

The Washington Post does not provide a link to this statistic. It appears that someone they interviewed made it up and they parroted it.

And what, exactly, stops Balata's residents from finding jobs? It isn't Israel. Residents can move out of the camp and go wherever they want in the West Bank. They can get jobs in Israel the way tens of thousands of other Palestinians do.

The only difference is that they have free housing, courtesy of the world paying UNRWA.

Moreover, why is the camp still only a single square kilometer? Why doesn't the Palestinian Authority expand the boundaries so the people aren't so crowded? It isn't Lebanon, and there are open spaces outside the camp.

It is true that there are no sports teams in the overcrowded camp itself. But Balata, the town, does have a sports club - the Ahly Balata club - which includes an entire sports and youth program that also teaches job skills to teens.

According to Google Maps, it is easy walking distance from the camp.

The "90% unemployment" and the "no sports teams for kids" were factoids that were too good to check for the WaPo's reporting team. And for their editors.

How many other things were they told that are simply terrorist propaganda? And why are they so willing to swallow it?

I asked that question in the comments on the article. We'll see if anything changes.

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08/07 Links Pt2: Phyllis Chesler: Our eternal battle for Zion; ‘The Jews Are Guilty’: Reflections on Antisemitism Old and New; Glaring, blatant anti-Israel hate speech at EU

From Ian:

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: Our eternal battle for Zion

Like so many, I had assumed that hatred and persecution of Jews had been defeated, that the genocide of Jews would never repeat itself. I was wrong.

I first encountered antisemitism among American leftists, including feminists, in the early 1970s and it sent me straight to Israel for a long overdue visit. Yet it took me more than three decades to publicly break with leftists and feminists over their antisemitism/anti-Zionism.

During that time, the scope of my activism in fighting Jew-hatred and standing with Israel—both independently and in collaboration with other Jews and organizations—has been intensive and vast. The strategies included authoring books and thousands of articles; delivering speeches; soliciting signatures against anti-Israel resolutions; holding press conferences; being interviewed in films, the media, and on television; bringing journalists and iconic feminists to Israel; collaborating with Israeli feminists; organizing conferences; and battling for Israel at international conferences, including the UN Conference on Women held in Copenhagen, which was a pre-cursor to Durban.

In the early 1980s, while traveling on a European feminist lecture tour, I stood outside the great synagogues—the Rue Copernic Synagogue in Paris, the Stadttempel Synagogue in Vienna, and the Great Synagogue of Rome. Palestinian Arab terrorists had bombed them all and the synagogues subsequently needed permanent police guards outside.

In 1991, I stood on a corner in Crown Heights in Brooklyn and watched a Black pogrom against Orthodox Jews. It raged on. The mayor and the police did not stop it for days. I will never forget it. I knew then that the bloody beast was back.

However, on October 12, 2000, when Palestinian Arab barbarians in Ramallah lynched Vadim Norzhich and Yosef Avrahami, two Israeli Defense Forces reservists (may they rest in peace), the airwave’s many Talking Heads did not flinch as they played and replayed this ghoulish event.

Just thirteen days prior, on September 29th, Arafat unleashed his well-planned Second Intifada, which lasted until February 8, 2005. Over 1,000 Israelis were killed, and thousands were severely injured in these attacks. And so, it was on September 29, 2000, after thirty-two years of researching, speaking, marching, and publishing pioneering feminist works, I found myself drafted into a new kind of army. Suddenly, I was a full-time civilian fighting in the Cognitive War against the Jews.

And, when the planes of 9/11 crashed through history and into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I understood: “Now we are all Israelis.” Airports everywhere would have to develop the kind of security procedures that only Israeli Embassies, consulates, airports, synagogues, and Jewish centers had tragically been forced to pioneer.

Meanwhile, over the last 40+ years, the Western academy, media, international organizations, and governments, which included liberal and leftist feminists—all became increasingly Stalinized and Palestinianized. Leftist feminists became more obsessed with the alleged “occupation” of a country that had never existed—Palestine—than they were with the real occupation of women’s bodies globally. They dared not focus on the occupation of women’s bodies in Muslim countries lest they be shunned as racists and Islamophobes. I learned that so-called “progressives” could also be racists.

Those in the West who benefited from free speech, women’s rights, human rights, gay rights, and religious freedom, refused to criticize the utter absence of such rights in the Muslim world—and in totalitarian countries such as China, Russia, and North Korea. Instead, the intelligentsia had decided that Israel was the worst possible nation on earth and that if Israel were boycotted, or abolished, that justice would prevail everywhere, and the world would be at peace.

‘The Jews Are Guilty’: Reflections on Antisemitism Old and New

By several metrics, hostility toward Jews appears to be on the rise, both in the U.S. and in the world at large. Alvin Rosenfeld considers the origins and nature of anti-Semitism with an eye toward better confronting its present manifestations:
There are two important sources of anti-Semitism. One, popularized in modern times by the malicious 1903 Russian hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is the figure of the conspiratorial Jew. The other is his figurative brother, the diabolical Jew. Bring the two together, and you have the delusional but abiding portrait of Jews as a community inherently hostile to non-Jews, intent on bringing endless suffering to mankind—a community that must be dealt with decisively before it is too late.

Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, . . . wrote. “All Jews by virtue of their birth and their race are part of an international conspiracy against National Socialist Germany. They want its defeat and annihilation and do all in their power to bring it about.” But if all Jews are guilty simply because they are Jewish, it does not take much analysis to see that the Jews are guilty not because they have done something wrong, but that they have done something wrong because they are guilty.

That key sources of anti-Semitism have remained constant over the centuries is not to downplay the seriousness of the situation today.

Rosenfeld makes several suggestions about how American Jews can confront the threats against them, the last of which applies to the “particularly virulent strain of anti-Semitism [that] holds not just the Jews but the Jewish state guilty.”
American Jews must recognize that the wellbeing of the state of Israel is fundamental to their own thriving. Many Jews now appear to feel embarrassed by Israel, particularly as the country seems to be going through a populist moment similar to those we have seen all across the world’s advanced economies. . . . We would do well to invest considerable resources in making an unapologetic case in our own communities and in non-Jewish communities for the proposition that Israel, for all its faults and all the difficulties in reaching a modus vivendi with the Palestinians, has fulfilled the long-held Jewish dream of national self-determination. No apology is needed for this extraordinary accomplishment. It’s one to be proud of.

David Harris [WaPo]: Israel's Larger Purpose

In his Aug. 1 column, Max Boot said his larger outlook toward Israel has been changed by the policies of Israel's current government. Yet Israel's larger purpose remains to allow Jews to live as a majority population in one country on Earth, continue the millennia-long connection between the ancient land and the Jewish people, and control their own destiny, including immigration.

Families like Mr. Boot's were able to leave the Soviet Union in the 1970s because they declared their intention to live in Israel. Without that declaration, their exit might well have been blocked. The same Israel that helped them leave, even though Mr. Boot's family ended up heading for the U.S. after arrival in the West, is the same Israel that today is providing a sanctuary to Jews fleeing tyranny in the Russian Federation, war against Ukraine, and rising antisemitism in Europe and elsewhere - while continuing to be the most progressive nation in the Middle East and a staunch U.S. ally.

The rebirth of a Jewish state in 1948, after 1,878 years of forced exile, was an extraordinary event in world history. 75 years later, it remains extraordinary.

From the official Palestinian Wafa news agency:

Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh Monday met with a delegation of members of the US Congress, which included 22 members of the Democratic Party, headed by Senator Hakeem Jeffries, leader of the Democratic Caucus in the House of Representatives, in his office in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

Ramallah isn't occupied. There is not one Israeli soldier there. It has its own governance structure that has nothing to do with Israel. There is no sane definition of "occupation" that makes Ramallah occupied.

The meeting discussed ways to revive the political process and the role of the US Congress in protecting the two-state solution, as the Prime Minister called on Congress to vote in favor of recognizing the State of Palestine.

Shtayyeh has no problem representing all of Israel as part of Palestine, showing how important the "two state solution" is to him.

The Prime Minister affirmed that Israel violates international law on a daily basis through killing, storming and building settlement, stressing that this causes the systematic destruction of the two-state solution.

"Storming"? According to Shtayyeh, Jews visiting their holiest spot are somehow violating international law. Which shows that his interest in real international law is also nil.

Shtayyeh called on Congress to pressure Israel to allow holding of Palestinian elections, including Jerusalem, in accordance with the signed agreements, considering that Israel's failure to allow this is an attempt to fight Palestinian democracy.

Israel isn't what is stopping elections. Mahmoud Abbas is. Jerusalem Arabs can vote in any Palestinian elections as they have in the past.

Did any members of Congress have the backbone to contradict Shtayyeh's lies? I tend to doubt it.

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

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A cringy woke apology for complaining about Hezbollah T-shirt at a gay pride event

Two weeks ago, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that anyone who engaged in a homosexual act should be killed.

A week later, at the Berlin Whole LGBTQ festival, a person was seen wearing a Hezbollah T-shirt on the stage, which upset a Lebanese citizen at the event, who complained about seeing someone wear a symbol of oppression to gays.

He then apologized for complaining!

This apology is truly remarkable.

The hezbollah t-shirt on beach stage

@Chris on #general -

@Chris on July 31, 2023:

To the person who was wearing a Hezbollah t shirt on the beach stage, I'm sorry if my complaint caused you upset. I unfortunately felt triggered by the t-shirt because the party leader recently encouraged the killing of queer people. I understand that wearing the t-shirt was used as a trendy fuck you to the hypocrisy of what is called terrorist vs what is not, and I understand being told that it's not ok to wear it by a white man can be triggering - however, given that whole is about celebrating queerness, I feel that perhaps there are other symbols to wear that are less complicated politically and more inclusive to the different experiences of people. I'm sorry again that it happened this way, I hope you are ok now. To the security people who listened to me and talked to the person, thank you. I wish you let me speak to him directly, it would have been validating and perhaps he would have understood the nuances of my views given that I'm Lebanese myself, but I also understand you wanted to make sure we are both heard.

Needless to say, we don't have any similar apology from the Hezbollah T-shirt person.

A week earlier, at a different Berlin gay festival, someone was seen wearing a gay version of a Lion's Den terrorist group T-shirt, with pink submachine guns.