Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, January 03, 2017

01/03 Links Pt1: Hamas's Fatah and the No-State Solution; The PLO’s zero-sum game

From Ian:

This is important for Israel to understand because the clock is ticking. Obama’s onslaught has made clear that the Democratic Party no longer supports Israel. Like the PLO, Obama and his advisers view the PLO’s conflict with Israel as a zero-sum game and they have cast their lots with the terrorists against the Jewish state.
It is to be expected that under the leadership of former president Obama and Ellison the Democrats will expand the openness of their hostility to Israel.
Under these circumstance, Israel has but two years – until the mid-term congressional elections when the Democrats may be empowered in Congress – to decide what it wants to do with Judea and Samaria.
Last week the government signaled that its first step will be to apply Israeli law to Ma’ale Adumim. A bill to this effect is expected to be brought before the government shortly after Obama leaves office.
While a good first move, our leaders must recognize that it needs to be quickly followed up by additional administrative changes. The goal of those additional steps is to dismantle the military government which administers Area C – 60% of Judea and Samaria – by 2019 and transfer full administrative responsibility for the area, which includes Israel’s border with Jordan and all the Israeli communities of Judea and Samaria, to the government.
The time has come for the government to move ahead boldly. In their post-Obama, post-2334 state, the Israeli Left and its American Jewish supporters are in no position to stop the government from doing what needs to be done. But, if the government fails to act now, when the Democrats return in two or four years, the opportunity now upon us may be lost forever as the PLO comes back to win its zerosum game against Israel.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas's Fatah and the No-State Solution

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared that 2017 will be the "year of international recognition of the State of Palestine."
The melee in Gaza exposes as the lie that it is Abbas's repeated claim of a unified Fatah able to lead the Palestinians towards statehood. Incredibly, Abbas seeks global recognition of a Palestinian state at a time when the flames in his own backyard are set to engulf him and his questionable regime.
More bad news from the poll: if presidential elections were to be held today, Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the terrorist group Hamas, would beat Abbas by 49% to 45%.
Palestinians are now openly talking about two different Fatah factions. After Abbas's decision to strip the legislators of their parliamentary immunity, six Fatah PLC members participated in a Hamas-sponsored meeting of the PLC in the Gaza Strip. This was the first time since 2007 that such a move had been made.
Fatah leaders in the Gaza Strip, unlike their colleagues in the West Bank, are de facto recognizing the Hamas rule over the Gaza Strip. This is wonderful news for Hamas, whose leader, Ismail Haniyeh is likely to defeat Abbas in a presidential election.
The Fatah gunmen who marched in the Gaza Strip courtesy of Hamas are not supporters of Abbas. Instead, they represent the "other face" of Fatah -- the one that does not believe in any peace process with Israel and shares Hamas's ambition of destroying Israel.

JCPA: What does the December 23, 2016 UN Security Council Resolution contribute to the peace process?

The UN Security Council resolution tries to establish whether the settlements are legal or not. Its major reference point is the 1949 4th Geneva Convention, adopted in the aftermath of the Second World War when the Axis powers, particularly the German army, were seizing territories, throwing out the populations that lived there, and bringing in German citizens to live in those areas. But is Israel forcibly throwing the Arab population out of the West Bank? No.
Where the principles of the 4th Geneva Convention are very much relevant and where are they not being applied is in Syria where the army of President Assad and its Iranian and Russian allies are engaged in mass expulsions of the Sunni Arab population. They are also bringing in Shiite population to settle in Syria from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, altering the demographic balance inside Syria. So the UN is ignoring the real violators of the 4th Geneva Convention who are changing the demographic makeup of the Syrian state to serve the interests of expansionist Iran.

Al Madayeen, a pan-Arab satellite channel based out of Lebanon, will broadcast a three-part documentary about the "hero" Samir Kuntar starting January 8.

Here is the trailer, with dramatic music, for the film, "Thus lived Kuntar....who never died."

Here's the summary of the monster who is such a hero to the Arab world:

In the cover of darkness on April 22, 1979, Kuntar, then 16, led a Palestinian Liberation Front attack that brutally murdered a family in the northern town of Nahariya and an Israeli police officer. From southern Lebanon, Kuntar and his accomplices snuck into Israel via the sea, and then broke into a family's apartment. There, they kidnapped a young father, Danny Haran, and his 4-year-old daughter Einat.

Kuntar took the father and his young daughter to the nearby beach. There, he shot the father, and had the daughter, Einat, watch as he drowned her father underwater to ensure he was completely dead. Then, he smashed the young girl's head against a nearby rock with the butt of his gun.

As Kuntar was kidnapping the father and daughter, the mother, Smadar, grabbed their 2-year old baby, Yael, and hid from the men who breached her home. As Samadar tried to keep her baby quiet to keep them from being found, her daughter suffocated in her arms.

The documentary's first part concentrates on Kuntar's "famous operation in Nahariya." The second concentrates on his years in Israeli prison, and the final part is about his activities for Hezbollah between his release and his way overdue assassination.

As usual, the outrage isn't merely that Arabs are lionizing the most disgusting and depraved people are heroes. The outrage is that there is no pushback, no complaints, no disgust in Arab media that they consider such a person a hero to begin with.

When you cannot find a single person among 350 million citizens of Arab countries to publicly object to such pro-terror propaganda, you have a much bigger problem than just a documentary making a monster into a hero.

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Human Rights Watch released another anti-Israel report, saying that Israeli officials who call to "shoot to kill" attackers are "proliferating" and implying that they are influencing police and soldiers to break their own rules of engagement.

Even the examples they give are misleading. Here's one:

In October 2015, a radio interviewer asked Israeli Police Minister Gilad Erdan if he agreed with a statement by a lawmaker from an opposition party that “if a terrorist has a knife or screwdriver in his hand, you should shoot to kill him without thinking twice.”

Erdan said yes: “Definitely. The question of course depends on the circumstances. There are clear instructions to the Israeli police. As soon as a police officer feels danger to himself or any other citizen, he needs to shoot according to the regulations. It’s clear. We don’t want to endanger any citizen or police officer. And also, every attacker who sets out to inflict harm should know that he will likely not survive the attack.”

Erdan is not saying to shoot to kill automatically. He's saying to go according to regulations, but the terrorist should be forewarned that he will very possibly be killed. His words were meant to dissuade terrorist, not to give instructions to violate rules of engagement.

Similarly, some Israeli officials will talk tough for the media when innocent people are being attacked, but there is no indication that the rules of engagement have changed at all since the wave of knife attacks last year.

HRW is making up an issue where there is none.

The latter part of the HRW report gets into much more sinister territory:

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who holds the state-funded, statutory position of Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi, said in a March 12, 2016 sermon, partly in response to Eisenkot’s admonition to limit the use of lethal force, that the Bible authorizes a shoot-to-kill policy: “‘Whoever comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.’ … let them afterward take you to the High Court of Justice or bring some military chief of staff who will say something else … As soon as an attacker knows that if he comes with a knife, he won’t return alive, it will deter them. That’s why it’s a religious commandment to kill him.”

The Sephardic Chief Rabbi does not command police or soldiers, but he heads the Supreme Rabbinical Tribunal and is tasked with advising on the interpretation of religious law. He is chosen by a committee composed of public officials and more junior state-appointed rabbis and is the state-appointed authority on religious law for the roughly half of Jewish Israelis of Arab or Eastern descent. Netanyahu did not publicly repudiate Yosef’s statement.

In July, [army Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Gadi] Eisenkot reaffirmed his support for the incoming Chief Military Rabbi, Eyal Karim, after records came to light showing that, in 2003, Karim told religious followers that “suicide attackers who have been injured, should be killed.” Eisenkot distanced himself from that statement and others considered contrary to the military’s policy but confirmed that he would still give Karim the army’s top religious post. In August, female lawmakers from the left-wing Meretz party petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to block the appointment, citing Karim’s statements against integrating women in the army and negative comments he made about the LGBT community and non-Jewish soldiers. The petition was withdrawn after Karim articulated more moderate positions consistent with IDF policy on the above-mentioned issues. He did not address or repudiate his statements about killing “attackers who have been injured”. On December 2, 2016, he was sworn in as the Chief Military Rabbi.

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, about half of Jewish Israelis define themselves as religious or traditional, not including ultra-Orthodox Jews, who usually do not serve in the army. Conscription for non-ultra-Orthodox Jewish men is universal. Most soldiers are in their teens or early 20s, and after a few months of basic training, they can be sent to serve in the occupied West Bank.

That last paragraph implies that half of Israelis would listen to rabbis and violate official orders on how to deal with terrorists.

HRW is trying to paint Israelis as bloodthirsty religious fanatics who would disregard the law - and risk court martial - because of a statement a rabbi made.

This is pretty close to full-blown antisemitism. And it is a lie - far less than half of IDF soldiers and police are religious Jews and the vast majority of those religious Jews them would follow orders. And nearly every rabbi in Israel would instruct them to do exactly that.

HRW is falsely slandering Judaism and religious Jews by making its readers believe that Jewish soldiers will violate orders to kill Arabs for little reason. The organization doesn't bother to research the topic; it takes some Haaretz quotes as all the proof it needs to create a fantasy that fits in with antisemitic conspiracy theories, and not at all with reality.

Since the very beginning of the mini-intifada in October 2015, after the murder of the Henkins, HRW has not once condemned the wave of knife and car ramming attacks against Israelis by Palestinians. It has not once said a word against the incitement to stab Jews on Palestinian media. It has not once said anything about the Palestinian Authority's and Fatah's openly treating the worst terrorist murderers as heroes. HRW never said a word against the explicit and open incitement to kill Jews coming in weekly sermons.

If you get your human rights news from HRW, you simply wouldn't know these facts. All you would think is that Israelis are trigger happy religious fanatics who would murder Palestinians for sport and are in no real danger from attack. HRW believes that Israeli leaders are inciting to murder Palestinian Arabs, and it doesn't deign to mention that they are whitewashing the real incitement - incitement that directly leads to murder.

As the expression goes, if HRW didn't have double standards, it would have no standards at all.

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"Progressives" romanticizing Hamas terror rockets at film festivals

Filmmaker Martin Ginestié made a film in 2015 called "In Defense of the Rocket." And that is literally what it is - a film that defends and romanticizes Palestinian terror rocket fire towards Israeli civilians.

It was just released to the world on Vimeo:

In Defense of the Rocket - dir. Martin Ginestié (2015) from Martin Ginestie on Vimeo.

The film is offensive on two levels.

One is that it pretends that Israel bombs Gaza for no reason, and that rockets are a natural reaction to the failure of the peace process that Israel's random attacks have killed. It doesn't show any rockets themselves until after it shows bombed-out Gaza buildings. The viewer would have no idea that Hamas rockets are aimed towards civilians and that thousands of them, shot after Israel withdrew from Gaza, preceded any military action.

The second reason it is offensive is that it is simply a poor film. It literally looks like it was made in Microsoft Movie and Martin Ginestié couldn't even sync up the photos with the music in several instances.

The poorly made piece of pro-Palestinian terror propaganda "In Defense of the Rocket" was shown at these film festivals:

- International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) - Netherlands - 2015
- 9180 Shortfest - India - 2015
- True / False - USA - 2016
- Internationale Kurzfilmwoche Regensburg - Germany - 2016
- Athens International Film + Video Festival - USA - 2016
- cellu l'art - Germany - 2016
- Leiden International Short Film Experience - Netherlands - 2016
- Hot Docs - Canada - 2016
- Festival Internacional De Cine De Huesca - Spain - 2016
- Sarajevo Film Festival - Bosnia Herzegovina - 2016
- off-courts Trouville - France - 2016
- Fantoche International Animation Film Festival Baden - Switzerland - 2016
- Milan Film Festival - Italy - 2016
- Camden International Film Festival - USA - 2016
- Riga International Film Festival 2ANNAS - Latvia 2016
- The Living Art - Italy - 2016
- Sapporo International Short Film Festival - Japan - 2016
- DEPO2015 - Czech Republic - 2016
- DocsDF - Mexico - 2016
- Croydon IFF - UK - 2016
- Jogja-NETPAC - Indonesia - 2016
- Istanbul International Short Film Festival - Turkey - 2106 [sic]

It is proudly promoted by the British Film Council.

Ginestié spoke to Electronic Intifada (which naturally supports the terrorism romanticized in the film) :

“At festivals, I’ve definitely got people being offended by the title,” Ginestie said. “But that was the purpose.”

“The moment of inspiration for the film was the bombing of Gaza in 2014, because I was just trying to find something positive from that event,” Ginestie added. “It was very hard to find anything positive.”

“The ambition of the film was to provoke Western liberals – at the time there was a lot of sympathy for Palestinians but very little sympathy for armed resistance,” Ginestie added. “That was kind of a red line. I wanted to provoke people, not to support armed resistance – it’s not for us to decide how Palestinians resist colonization – but to get people to reframe the Western debate about the use of violence.”

“I wanted to make a film that retraced the past 20 years of Palestinian politics and give some kind of historical logic for what the Palestinian resistance was doing,” Ginestie said.

Anyone who frames Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, Israeli citizens being bombarded by rockets and Israel finally fighting back after years of inaction as "colonization" is an imbecile.

And anyone who says that Palestinians have the right to murder Jews in the name of "resisting colonization" if they choose but Israelis don't have the right to defend themselves is a hypocrite.

Yet a score of film festivals think that a poorly made piece of pro-terror propaganda is worth showing - because supporting terror against Jews is now considered "provocative" "art."

The final frame of the film, showing an animation of a wonderful "resistance rocket" soaring in the sky above what the viewer would believe was a devastated Gaza, is actually taken from a photo of a Jordanian refugee camp in 1949 near the Dead Sea.

Today that camp is still there, under Palestinian Authority rule. No documentary filmmakers are asking why Palestinians keep their own people in "refugee camps" in territory that has been under their control for over two decades.

There is no market for such films.

(h/t SpotlightingSA)

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01/02 Links Pt2: Assad's Palestinian mercenaries; European diplomats meet with Hamas, express 'positive position'

From Ian:

Black Lives Matter offshoot embraces anti-Semitism, engages with terrorists

Over the Christmas weekend, Chicago surpassed the 750-murder mark for 2016. But as blacks lay dying on the streets of Chicago’s South and West Sides, a Black Lives Matter offshoot is more interested in traveling overseas to learn “resistance” from terrorists.
The Dream Defenders bills itself as “an uprising of communities in struggle, shifting culture through transformational organizing.” But an investigation conducted by the Haym Salomon Center reveals the group’s embrace of anti-Semitism and collaboration with a State Department-designated terror group.
In August, Black Lives Matter singled out Israel for condemnation, declaring it an “apartheid” state engaged in “genocide.” These accusations angered Jewish leaders, many of whom had steadfastly supported the BLM cause. Nonetheless, despite what can only be described as a total lack of relevance to its own agenda, BLM did not back down.
Just like BLM, Dream Defenders proclaims solidarity with Palestinians. DD claims that the black community in America, together with Palestinians in the “occupied” territories of Israel, are all victims of state-sanctioned violence. As such, the two causes are related and should learn “resistance” from each other. After leaders from BLM and DD made their first trip to Palestinian territories in January 2015, BLM’s anti-Israel advocacy remained steady, mostly lashing out at the Jewish state at rallies and protests. DD stepped up their disdain for Israel, engaging in what the U.S. government defines as anti-Semitism.
Dream Defenders’ website dedicates an entire page to Palestinian solidarity. While accusing Israel of existing on “stolen land,” there is no mention of Palestinian terrorism, including the targeting of civilians. (h/t Jewess)

Assad's Palestinian mercenaries

Over the past century, various Palestinian leaders have fostered alliances that were either unsuccessful or not particularly useful to them.
Take the alliance formed by the grand mufti of Jerusalem during the British mandate period, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who during World War II supported Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Al-Husseini hoped the Germans would win the war and Hitler would become fuhrer of the Middle East. After the Nazis lost the war, however, the West did not forgive al-Husseini, which severely damaged the Palestinian cause for over two decades.
Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat erred in 1990 when he supported Iraq in its invasion of Kuwait. Palestinian public support for the invasion led to a great deal of suffering for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians then living in Kuwait and the Persian Gulf, who paid the price for Arafat's support of the tyrannical Saddam Hussein.
Today, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is maintaining ambiguity regarding the Syrian war, taking pains to avoid denouncing or supporting the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. It appears Abbas has learned from history. However, tens of thousands of Palestinians are apparently fighting on behalf of the Syrian dictator, even sacrificing their lives for him. These Palestinians, who went to live in Syria in recent decades, are helping slaughter the Syrian people fighting for their freedom. The guest has turned murderer.
Among the Palestinians, the most fervent Assad supporters belong to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine's General Command, led by Ahmed Jibril. The organization is headquartered in Damascus and consists of thousands of fighters; Jibril's loyalty to the Assad regime has never wavered. His fighters are taking part in the war effort, even against their own people, their own flesh and blood. In one example, when Assad's army laid siege to the Yarmouk refugee camp, it was Jibril's fighters who provided the regime with intelligence information and ground support. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

The wisdom of the Kiwi foreign minister

New Zealand was one of the four countries which sponsored the biased and unhelpful Resolution 2334 at the UN Security Council last week. The main proponent of the Kiwi initiative was Murray McCully, the Foreign Minister.
Thanks to the excellent online publication Shalom.Kiwi we can be privy to Mr McCully’s insights into the geopolitics of the Middle East, offered at a meeting on 18 May 2016 in an address to the Auckland Jewish Community.
When asked about the role of Palestinian terror in the current stalemate, McCully declined to distinguish between Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians and the Israeli response to such attacks. When pushed, he refused to call the current wave of stabbings, shootings, car-rammings and suicide bombings “terrorism”, snapping: “You can call it what you like ….. you choose your words, I’ll choose mine.”
In relation to the terrorist group Hamas, McCully conceded that it had “stopped short of formally accepting the Quartet Principles” – an observation that ‘provoked astonished laughter from a shocked audience’.
‘The Quartet Principles include recognising Israel, abiding by diplomatic agreements and renouncing violence. As one audience member responded, this was rather a generous comment to make about an organisation whose statements, charter and purposes are the annihilation of Israel, not in order to make a Palestinian state, but because of a religious objection to Jewish sovereignty in any part of that land’.

Over the summer Mrs. Elder and I had the opportunity to meet and interview Manfred Gerstenfeld, perhaps the leading expert on antisemitism today.

His book The War of A Million Cuts is an incredible and frightening read. Of course I read articles all day about antisemitism but to see everything described thematically and in context is an almost overwhelming experience.

Gerstenfeld first shows how antisemitism and anti-Israelism is intertwined. He categorizes different types of antisemitism and gives copious examples of each. Finally, Gerstenfeld puts together a plan to combat the "world's oldest hatred."

The book is now available for download for free from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. i

Get it. It is very worth your time.

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Who wants to be a Palestinian? (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

When the Israeli journalist Noga Tarnopolsky posted a tweet announcing the heartbreaking news that a young Israeli woman was among the victims of the New Year’s eve terror attack in Istanbul, Haaretz World News Editor Asaf Ronel insisted that the victim should be described as “Palestinian.”

Tarnopolsky responded by pointing out that not all of Israel’s Arab citizens identify as Palestinians; indeed, a relevant recent poll she posted showed that only 12% chose “Palestinian” as their preferred identity, while 24% chose Arab, 25% Israeli, and 29% preferred to be identified by religion, i.e. Muslim, Christian or Druze. Tarnopolsky also noted correctly that irrespective of the victim’s preferred identity, Israeli authorities would provide the family with the same assistance that every Israeli family receives in these terrible circumstances.

However, in the course of the exchange it quickly turned out that Ronel couldn’t care less about how Israel’s Arab citizens prefer to be identified. He insisted that designating the victim as Palestinian was “more accurate since it’s factual.” Preposterously, he even insisted that if the victim’s family preferred to identify as Israeli Arabs, “they are Palestinians w Israeli citizenship that define themselves as Israeli-Arabs.”

So we know now that it’s progressive and politically correct to ignore the wishes of Israeli Arabs who don’t want to be described as Palestinian.

I’m not sure if this should perhaps have implications for Article 1 of the Palestinian Constitution, which declares: “Palestine is part of the large Arab World, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab Nation.” After all, this clearly implies that being Palestinian is a subcategory of being Arab, similar to being Bavarian is a subcategory of being German. Does Ronel approve of this or would he prefer the Palestinians to forget about feeling “part of the large Arab World” and “part of the Arab Nation”? And what about the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, that proclaims: “The State of Palestine shall be an Arab State and shall be an integral part of the Arab nation”?

In this context it’s interesting to consider the poll posted by Tarnopolsky in some more detail. It is taken from the 2016 Israeli Democracy Index, published two weeks ago by the highly respected Israel Democracy Institute (IDI). The relevant poll is on page 78 of the report, and IDI notes [emphasis added]:

“Arab respondents were given the following options to choose from as their primary identity: Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, and religious (Muslim/Christian/Druze). As the figure below indicates, the strongest identity among Arab respondents is religious, followed by Israeli and Arab. Palestinian identity was selected as primary by the smallest share of respondents, bolstering the argument that the Arab population is undergoing a process of Israelization and, at least seemingly, countering the widespread claim that a major process of Palestinization has taken place, or is taking place, in Arab Israeli society.”

IDI explains further:

“A breakdown of the Arab sample by religion yielded interesting results. The responses of Muslim interviewees when asked about their primary identity can be summarized as follows: religious identity, as chosen by the largest share, followed by Arab and Israeli identity, with Palestinian identity trailing far behind. […] We learned further that among Christian Arabs, Arab identity takes precedence, followed after a sizeable gap by Israeli and religious identities. Here too, Palestinian identity is at the bottom of the list. Among the Druze, religious identity is dominant, followed by Israeli identity, while Arab identity is weak and Palestinian identity is negligible.”

But it’s perhaps only fitting that the Haaretz World News Editor would insist that imposing the preference of a tiny minority on everyone is somehow “more accurate since it’s factual.”

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01/02 Links Pt1: Kerry on Israel: An Alternate Universe; Friedman’s Unhinged Attack on Netanyahu

From Ian:

Omri Ceren: Kerry on Israel: An Alternate Universe

For months one of the worst-kept secrets in foreign-policy circles was that Secretary of State John Kerry would give a speech about his vision for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, just as soon as the 2016 elections were safely over. Gossip revolved around which staffers were getting pulled in to write, which wonks were being brought in to vet, how far it would go, and so on. A few weeks ago, Kerry even nudge-winked about just how much of an open secret his plans had become, telling an audience in London that he’d be moved to speak on the issue some time “in the next weeks, months, or over the year.”
What few people expected is how totally irrelevant Kerry’s performance would end up. The secretary’s remarks, which extended for over an hour, have already generated the expected heap of praise and criticism. But the praise feels like writers rationalizing how they wasted a day on what will ultimately become a footnote in American diplomatic history, and some of the criticism is crankiness over the same thing.
Kerry’s speech was already going to be drowned out by the global din around United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which passed in recent days after the U.S. abstained, and which among other things lumped Judaism’s holiest sites in East Jerusalem together with the West Bank and declared all of them occupied Palestinian territory. It has been criticized first as a diplomatic gambit that detonated the peace process and, second, as an abandonment of Israel contrary to decades of U.S. diplomacy aimed at blocking international assaults on the Jewish state.
The resolution presented another rhetorical problem for Kerry: To even get to the parameters, he was going to have to get past those two criticisms. He needed to paint a world in which the UNSCR built on the peace process rather than detonated it, and boosted Israel rather than abandoning it.

Algemeiner Editor-in-Chief: ‘Obama Has Given Incredible Boost to March of Antisemitism’ by Abstaining From Vote on Anti-Israel UN Resolution

US President Barack Obama “has given an incredible boost to the march of antisemitism,” the editor-in-chief of The Algemeiner said in an interview on Friday.
Discussing the latest moves by the lame-duck administration in Washington to put pressure on Jerusalem — abstaining in the UN Security Council vote on anti-settlements Resolution 2334, and Secretary of State John Kerry’s subsequent harsh address, warning that Israel cannot remain both a democracy and a Jewish state — Dovid Efune told Rush Limbaugh Show guest host Buck Sexton that such behavior encourages and invigorates the deligitimization and demonization of Israel, both defined as antisemitic by the US State Department.
It is for this reason, said Efune, that Kerry caused such a stir.
“His speech was essentially a glorified attempt to justify the vote at the UN last Friday, which the US — in an unprecedented move — abstained from, angering the Israelis, betraying the Israelis. And I can tell you from where I stand: The mainstream Jewish community in this country is seething, outraged, furious across the board with this stab in the back and, as some have even defined it, a stab in the front,” Efune said.
Listen to the full interview below (Efune’s remarks begin at 37:30):

How UN Security Council Resolution 2334 Relates to Palestinian Terrorism

On December 23, 2016, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2334, with 14 countries voting in favor. The United States abstained allowing the resolution to pass. Resolution 2334 deals mostly with the Israeli settlements in Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem, over which there is broad international consensus. The issue of terrorism is included in the resolution but its weight is slight (as opposed to extensive dealing with the settlements, which are represented as the main obstacle to peace). Moreover, for the most part the terminology used in dealing with terrorism is general and vague. The resolution does not explicitly refer to Palestinian terrorism, the Palestinian terrorist organizations (especially Hamas) and popular terrorism and violence(the so-called "popular resistance").
1. By not explicitly mentioning Palestinian terrorism and the Palestinian terrorist organizations,the resolution can be expected to lead the Palestinians to interpret the operative paragraphs dealing with terrorism and violence as relating to Israel and not Palestinian terrorism(Paragraphs 6 and 7; see Appendix A). That was manifested at the recent 7th Fatah Movement conference when Mahmoud Abbas rejected terrorism "regardless of motive and source," including the terrorism of a country [i.e., Israel] and the settlers. He claimed that "we [Palestinians] adhere to culture and tolerance."

The fallout from the videos of Jews dancing in Bahrain continues.

The Bahrain Women's Union, also known as the Bahrain Society Renaissance Girls, issued a statement against "normalization with the Zionist entity" that was prompted by the videos.

The group "considers this reception and hosting [of Jews] is an integral part of the deception and deceit and conspiracy process exercised by racist enemy Zionist usurper in order to impose the recognition of their settlements and the gradual normalization.

"This reception and celebration of the Zionist delegation was a serious episode of penetration and normalization with the Zionist entity, and it also represents a provocation against the national feelings of the Bahraini people who refuse to compromise on the fundamentals of the Arab nation. It also represents a flagrant threat to the Palestinian presence.

"We express our condemnation of this visit."

The statement also condemned "provocative dancing and performing Zionist songs and anthems of to build a Jewish temple on the ruins of the mosque Al-Aqsa," adding that the Jews were also somehow threatening a public square in Manama.

But they have nothing against Jews. Only "Zionists."

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Fatah honors terrorist Dalal Mughrabi at "52nd anniversary" celebrations

On January 1, Fatah celebrated 52 years since its first terror attack in 1965. (It never marks the anniversary of its actual beginnings in the 1950s.)

According to the leaked minutes of meetings between John Kerry and Susan Rice and Palestinian leaders, the Americans "praised 'Abbas's courage, positions, leadership, and adherence to the culture of peace and to peace as a strategic option."

These photos show what kind of a "culture of peace" Mahmoud Abbas has built in the territories he controls.

The celebrations included boys in military uniforms:

Lots of masked Fatah members, imitating if not being actual terrorists:

Armed terrorists as well:

And large posters of Fatahs' heroes: Arafat, Abbas, and terrorist Dalal Mughrabi:

Mughrabi's poster was clearly meant to boost Abbas' popularity as a man who supports terror while he tells gullible Westerners the opposite:

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Hamas put out its annual statistics of its "martyrs."

It shows Hamas was far more efficient at killing its own people than Israel was last year.

According to the Al Qassam website and Hamas newspaper Felesteen, 29 Hamas members were "martyred" in 2016. This included 21 people killed in tunnel collapses, 2 in training accidents, 2 killed in work accidents, one killed while trying to dismantle a bomb, one died of previous wounds, one killed by Israel in Hebron after he murdered Rabbi Miki Mark, and one who was presumably assassinated by the Mossad in Tunisia.

Islamic Jihad also released a list of its nine "martyrs" for the year. None were killed by Israel in 2016, although one died from wounds from an Israeli attack in 2006. The rest were killed in work accidents, tunnel accidents, or even heart attacks.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Record breaking "desecrations of Al Aqsa" in 2016

According to Arab media, this year some 17,602 Jews visited the Temple Mount in 2016, the highest number since 1967.

This means that more Jews visited their holiest spot in 2016 than since the destruction of the second Temple.

Somehow, the Muslim observers at Judaism's holiest spot know that the visitors who "desecrated the Al Aqsa Mosque" included 14,103 "settlers," 2,259 Jewish students, 815 police and 425 plain-clothed police. I don't know how they determine which people are "settlers" and which ones are Jews who live within the Green Line.

Oh, that's right. All Israelis are settlers.

th Muslim officials say that October was the busiest month with 3,020 Jews because of the Jewish holidays.

For context, far more than 17,000 Muslims visit the Temple Mount every Friday.

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There is no shortage of NGOs and media articles that claim, falsely, that Israel limits medicine and critical medical equipment to Gaza.

But there are very few reports of the corruption that actually occurs within Gaza for patients.

According to a new investigative article, there are two ways to get a routine operation at a government hospital in Gaza: either you must be politically or socially connected, or you must pay a bribe to the doctor. Otherwise you may wait a year or more for basic surgery.

The bribes are euphemistically called "gratuities."

Doctors are prioritizing procedures for their friends and relatives over others, and patients are even witnessing their own scheduled operations being bumped by well-connected patients.

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01/01 Links: A Palestinian Defeat Is Good for All; Israel is Jewish

From Ian:

Daniel Pipes: A Palestinian Defeat Is Good for All

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was photographed on December 21, carrying a copy of Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History, by John David Lewis. In that book, Lewis looks at six case studies and argues that in them all, “The tide of war turned when one side tasted defeat and its will to continue, rather than stiffening, collapsed.”
That Netanyahu should in any way be thinking along these lines is particularly encouraging at this moment of flux — when Sunni Arab states focus as never before on a non-Israeli threat (namely the Iranian one), Obama leaves Israel in the lurch at the United Nations Security Council and insurgent politics disrupt across the West. In other words, the timing’s exactly right to apply Lewis’ argument to the Palestinians. Actually, Israel successfully pursued a strategy of forcing the taste of defeat on its enemies through its first 45 years, so this would be a return to old ways.
That strategy starts by recognizing that, since the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Palestinians and Israelis have pursued static and opposite goals. The Palestinians adopted a policy of rejectionism with the intent to eliminate every vestige of Jewish presence in what is now the territory of Israel. Differences among Palestinians tend to be tactical: Talk to the Israelis to win concessions or stick to total rejectionism? The Palestinian Authority represents the first approach and Hamas the second.
On the Israeli side, nearly everyone agrees on the need to win acceptance by Palestinians (and other Arabs and Muslims); differences are again tactical. Show Palestinians what they can gain from Zionism or break the Palestinians’ will? The Labor and Likud parties argue this out.
These two pursuits — rejectionism and acceptance — have remained basically unchanged for a century. Varying ideologies, objectives, tactics, strategies and actors mean that details have varied, even as the fundamentals remained remarkably in place.

Report: East Jerusalem Christmas Tree Decorated With Photos of Palestinian ‘Martyrs’ Killed While Attempting to Murder Jews Attracts Enthusiastic Visitors, Including Greek Orthodox Archbishop

A Christmas tree in east Jerusalem decorated with photos of Arab “martyrs” killed while committing terrorist attacks against Jews has been attracting prominent Arab Muslims and Christians, Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Sunday.
According to the report, one such member of the Christian community was Theodosios, the Archbishop of Sebastia from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, who told passersby about the importance of the Palestinian people’s struggle for their land and holy sites.
The tree, declared Theodosios – known more commonly in the West as Atallah Hanna — constitutes a “Christmas message” from “the heart of Palestine” — that “we are one nation defending one issue…standing firm and remaining in the holy land.”
Other people who stopped by to gaze at the tree — which resembles a similar evergreen erected last year on the campus of nearby Al-Quds University – were even more outspoken in their praise for terrorists, according to Channel 2. Some went as far as to laud those who died during the “Al-Quds Intifada,” a reference to the surge in Palestinian terrorism, which began in September 2015 and has been characterized by stabbings, car-rammings and other acts of violence against Israelis.
In a video obtained by Channel 2, Israeli Border Police are seen arriving at the tree late at night and removing pictures of the “martyrs” hanging from its branches.

Israel Is Not the Occupier

This past summer, the section of the Republican Party’s platform on Israel included a key statement made in anticipation of President Obama’s betrayal of our great ally: “We reject the false notion that Israel is an occupier.”
The United Nations Security Council’s passage of Resolution 2334, an outrageous act of hostility personally engineered by President Barack Obama against the state of Israel, has rightly evoked great anger across all parts of the American political spectrum.
Given the anticipated effects of Resolution 2334, this policy statement is critical as it represents the central tenet of what will now unquestionably be the policy of the Trump administration and the pro-Israel community.
“Occupier” is nothing more than a polite way of calling Israel a thief, suggesting that Jewish invaders colonized territory belonging to the Arabs — territory that therefore must be restored to its rightful, victimized owners. The term is intentionally misused against Israel in order to shape negative misperceptions of its history and legitimacy, while perpetuating a sense of Palestinian-Arab victimhood. To suggest that the Jews are occupiers in a region that has been known as Judea for over 3,000-plus years is no less ridiculous than to suggest that Arabs are occupiers in Arabia.
“Occupier” is a legal term whose definition does not apply to Israel under the law. Israel’s legal title and rights to all of its present territory stem directly from an act of international law made in the post-World War I San Remo Agreement, which was then further recognized and incorporated in subsequent binding acts — from the Covenant of the League of Nations all the way through Article 80 of the United Nations’ charter. None of the national and political rights recognized as inherit to the Jewish people have ever been revoked, nullified or superseded by a subsequent act of international law.

Fifty years from now Barack Obama will be known to most Americans as, quite simply, the first African-American president of the United States. Aside from this he will have precious little to distinguish himself other than in the notable electoral deterioration of the Democratic Party under his tenure.

While future historians may join Alan Dershowitz in considering him among the worst foreign policy presidents in U.S. history, he will probably hold a very special place in the hearts of Jewish people throughout the world. This is true because he will likely be known as the American president who, whatever his honest intentions, did more than any to divide the Jewish people from one another and from the Jewish state.

The genius in this bit of Jewish slicing-and-dicing is in its multifaceted aspect.

Obama did not merely rub poison into the cleavage between progressive-left Jews and the rest of us. Nor did he merely drive a wedge between American Jews and Israeli Jews. He even managed, much to my astonishment, to divide pro-Democratic Party Jews among themselves and between themselves and, increasingly, the party as a whole.

Now that is quite an accomplishment.

Let's briefly go through it.

Dividing American Jews from One Another

Barack Obama can hardly be blamed for creating Jewish divisions over Israel, as Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor would readily agree. Nonetheless, it must be understood that while Obama may appreciate certain Jews as individuals he has never been friendly or sympathetic to the Jewish people as a whole... or so we can reasonably deduce from his posture toward the Jewish state.

On the contrary, along with figures like Mahmoud Abbas, Louis Farrakhan, George Galloway, Rashid Khalidi, Jeremy Corbyn, and Keith Ellison, Obama regards Israel as a rogue state imposing itself upon the "indigenous" Palestinian-Arab population. The Jewish people who live there are considered by their very presence, an impediment to peace.

Among the various ways that Obama's influence, therefore, served to crack Jewish solidarity, the first was in hammering the wedge between progressive-left Jewish Democrats, who generally show greater sympathy toward his views on Israel, and the rest of us who do not.

By insisting that Jews in Israel should be allowed to live in some places, like Tel Aviv, but not in others, like Hebron, the Obama administration animated a confrontation within American Jewry. Those loyal to the Democratic Party, like Peter Beinart and Alan Dershowitz, agreed that the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, in and of itself, represented an obstacle toward resolving the conflict. Beinart and Dershowitz may not agree on much, but they definitely agree on that. Others, like Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), believe (along with me) that Jewish people have every right to build housing on the lands of our ancestry. Furthermore, in a recent piece for the Jerusalem Post Isi Liebler acknowledged Klein as the ONLY American Jewish leader of national consequence to be consistently critical of Obama's transparent flaws and who, he says, "has been more than vindicated" in his views.

I couldn't agree more.

Given the existential nature of the long Arab aggression against the Jews in the Middle East, Obama's hostility toward Jews who live in the wrong place set Jew upon Jew in a manner that grew increasingly acrimonious throughout the period of his tenure. By supporting J-Street while devaluing AIPAC, Obama agitated this split. He also put his sincerest American-Jewish friends on the defensive before those of us who believe in Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria. Obama thereby forced his Jewish devotees into the position of justifying an unjustly racist stance toward the Jews of Israel.

Dividing American Jews from Israeli Jews

If Obama encouraged political divisions within the American Jewish community he also encouraged political divisions between American Jews and Israeli Jews. Because Israeli Jews understood how Obama's policies encouraged Palestinian-Arab violence and intransigence on the so-called "peace process," the vast majority of Israeli Jews quickly learned to distrust the man. Jewish Democrats who wished to maintain their progressive bona fides were thereby leaned into ideological tensions with friends and relatives in Israel.

In order to maintain good-standing with their fellow Democrats, Jews who care about Israel were put into an exceedingly uncomfortable position. They could support Obama or they could support Jewish rights to property on ancestral Jewish land, but they could not do both. And, again, Obama did not create this dilemma, he simply forced the issue. Obama used the two-state solution as a reason for opposing Jews like our friends Joseph and Melody Hartuv who live in Hebron and thereby allegedly stand as an obstacle to peace. He was not even the first president of the United States to do so, but he was certainly the most insistent.

Hebron, of course, is the site of the Cave of the Patriarchs. This is a place that, with a little encouragement from Obama, the United Nations decided belongs to Arabs. Through the unjust, if not racist, insistence that the "settlers" represent an obstacle to peace by their mere presence, Obama encouraged his American Jewish supporters to join him in condemning their fellow Jews. He managed this while still maintaining a pro-Israel face to his Jewish followers. Furthermore, by playing along with the erasure of Jewish history on the ancestral lands of the Jewish people, Obama also encouraged the dilution of American-Jewish support for that country and those people.

Dividing American Jews within the Democratic Party

I have considerable sympathy for Jewish Democrats.

Many in their own party hold them in contempt for defending Israel, while much of the rest of the American Jewish population casts a gimlet eye upon their never-ending pro-Obama apologetics and sycophancy. These are Jews who, from political and ideological standpoints, are getting smacked around by all sides and finding it increasingly difficult to walk the "progressive Zionist" tightrope. Divisions thereby emerged between the true Obama devotees and those going wobbly watching Obama's year-in-and-year-out hostility toward Israel.

In this way, within the Democratic Party, there are good Jews and bad Jews.

Good Jewish Democrats support Barack Obama while bad Jewish Democrats question the wisdom of breathing life into the corpse of Oslo. Good Jewish Democrats believe that if only Netanyahu had pushed Yosef and Melody out of their home in Hebron then peace could be achieved through the offices of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Bad Jewish Democrats tend to doubt this. They understand that Palestinian-Arabs have no desire to create a state for themselves in peace with Israel. Indeed, why should Palestinian-Arabs hope for a conclusion of hostilities via a negotiated two-state settlement when Obama and the UN want to give them a state on Jewish land in a manner that maintains those hostilities?

Whatever happens going forward, however, the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel are, and will continue to be, one.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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Chanukah Extra: Israel Philharmonic, Maoz Tzur

As we say goodbye to Chanukah, here is the Israel Philharmonic (with Yedidya Wexler singing) playing the grandest version of Maoz Tzur you are likely to hear.

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Humanist Israeli leftists refer to Israelis they don't like as "vermin"

Dror Etkes loves all humans. His Twitter account includes this anti-racist cartoon:

But his love for all humans doesn't extend to Jews who want to live in Judea and Samaria.

Haaretz quotes him as saying "Israel’s racist education minister is busy trying to find ways to make vermin like the Amona outpost kosher."

So while he loves all humans, he draws the line at vermin.

This is not the only ironic use of the term by a left-winger who pretends to be against racism. Before the 2013 elections, Yehonatan Geffen wrote (also in Haaretz), without the slightest sense of shame:

Watching the televised campaign ads physically turns your stomach: The religious parties are busy sowing hatred while the right-wing parties, as usual, are focused on fear-mongering.

I am not particularly interested in disclosing who's got my vote, but I can tell you that it rhymes with sheretz [also the Hebrew word for vermin].

Yet the real vermin is the country's stable coalition,

Literally two sentence after pretending to be outraged at people who are "sowing hatred" he refers to his political opponents as "vermin." And Meretz is a party that explicitly puts human rights in its platform.

It's bad when anyone dehumanizes people, but it is the height of hypocrisy to pretend to be an advocate of human rights and anti-hate while at the very same moment being in the forefront of pushing hate yourself.

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