Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, April 10, 2017

Chag Sameach!

Wishing everyone a wonderful Pesach/Passover!

I will not be blogging from Monday evening through Wednesday night.

Have a great holiday!

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04/10 Links Pt2: Politico: Chabad Is Nexus Of Putin-Trump Conspiracy; JVP Haggadah: “Next Year in al-Quds!”

From Ian:

Isi Leibler: This Passover, Israelis Have Reasons to Rejoice

In the coming days, most Israelis, secular and observant, will celebrate Passover — the festival of freedom in which we recount our life of slavery and exodus from Egypt, and how we became a nation. The Haggadah that we read at the Passover Seder also carries a universal theme of human rights, but its focus is the Jewish people, stressing our shared past and our aspirations for a renewal of Jewish sovereignty during 2,000 years of harrowing exile, endless persecutions, expulsions and attempted genocide.
We read in the Haggadah that “in every generation, they rise against us to destroy us. But the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from them.” We appeal to the Almighty to “pour out Thy wrath” against the wicked and destroy them.
The Haggadah recounts the Egyptians’ pattern of Jew-hatred: They envied the prosperity of their Jewish minority, enslaved them and ultimately engaged in genocide, with Pharaoh’s decree to drown all newborn Jewish males. This pattern has recurred throughout the generations with those who’ve tried to destroy us: the pagans, the church, secular racist Jew-haters, Nazis and communists.
Today, there is a global tsunami of antisemitism, especially in Europe, where Jews are being transformed into pariahs. The current threat emanates from the bizarre combination of Islamists and radical leftists, who are renewing the vicious antisemitic propaganda of the 1930s that was a precursor to the Holocaust. In its current manifestation, this campaign is also directed against the Jewish national homeland — the only nation-state in the world whose right to exist is under threat.

Gil Troy: Cowards fear celebrating Jerusalem’s ‘Jew-bilee’

It’s reassuring to smell cowardice in opponents, but depressing to see it in friends: the quivering lips, the darting eyes, the sweaty palms. Alas, many American Jews are emitting the stink of the scaredycat these days. Too many are dodging the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the Six Day War, and especially of Jerusalem’s reunification – or burdening what should be festive celebrations with craven equivocations and politically correct genuflections about Palestinian suffering that obscure Israel’s extraordinary June 1967 triumph.
Seeking to avoid war is noble; apologizing for winning is disgraceful. I am proud that Jews sing songs of peace, crave reconciliation and regret killing. However, true peaceniks are realistic optimists, not naïve masochists.
Had Israel lost in 1967 there would be no Israel.
“Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel,” Egypt’s dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser vowed that May. Those were the stakes: Jewish women would have been raped then slaughtered; Jewish men would have been tortured then butchered. Jerusalem would sit atop one more layer of ruins – from the 19-year failed Jewish state. Tel Aviv would be a mass tombstone, reduced to rubble like the Jewish towns Palestinian radicals destroyed after the 2005 Gaza Disengagement, but this time with corpses rotting underneath.
In 1967, barely 22 years since the Nazis had finished transforming their rantings into mass murder, every reasonable person had to take the Arabs’ genocidal threats seriously. That is why Israel had young recruits digging mass graves in Tel Aviv. And that is why American Jews finally, belatedly, rallied around their homeland, under the gun, that May.

Daily Wire: Politico: Chabad Is Nexus Of Putin-Trump Conspiracy

Politico has written an indictment of an entire sect of Judaism, getting basic facts wrong and making wild implications about a Jewish conspiracy in Russia tied to the Trump family.
On Sunday, Politico published an article casting Chabad (a Jewish organization dedicated to increasing religious observance among global Jewry) as an interlocutor of political power connecting President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Against a backdrop in which 2016's presidential election is suggested to have been compromised by "interference" from the Russian government at the direction of Putin (with possible "collusion" from Trump and his political teams), Politico portrays Chabad as another brick of intrigue in its narrative wall.
“Some of the shortest routes between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin run straight through [Chabad],” alleges Politico.
As an example of the “piling up” of “links between Trump and Chabad,” Politico points to Trump’s hosting of a wedding at Mar-a-Lago between the daughter and son of two separate Chabad-connected Jewish Soviet emigres.
Politico alleges the existence of an “affinity” between “Chabad enthusiasts” and Trump, describing Chabad’s Jewish membership as “Trump’s kind of Jews.” No mention is made by Politico of long-term political support across observant Jewish denominations - and religious Jews and Christians, more broadly - for Republican and broader conservative values.
Chabad’s relationship with the Russian government is framed as a function of the organization’s political ambition, rather than a function of political necessity given the nature of Russia’s politics. No consideration is offered by Politico of political realities in Russia that would compel Chabad to develop and maintain relationships with Putin in order to best serve its mission.

Bethany Mandel: Who Needs Alt-Right Conspiracy Theories About Jews When You Have Politico?

Imagine for a moment the outrage that would (rightfully) erupt if a mainstream publication wrote an indictment of an entire sect of Islam, while getting basic facts like the name of the sect wrong, and hit publish the night before Ramadan began. Or the outrage that would (rightfully) erupt if Breitbart or an alt-right site published the same about Jews. The latter did happen over the weekend, only it wasn’t Breitbart writing a diatribe against a secret web of shadowy Jews, but instead, Politico Magazine.
This is, unfortunately, becoming a bit of a tradition at the publication. On the eve of another major Jewish holiday, Rosh Hashanah, Politico published a piece accusing politically conservative Jews of remaining silent on Donald Trump’s ascension. Because of the rules regarding work and technology on major Jewish holidays, many Jewish writers and publications were unable to respond to the smear in a timely manner, although Tablet Magazine’s Yair Rosenberg took the time to do so, pointing out for both the writer and editor of the publication just how Jew-y the anti-Trump camp of the conservative movement was and is.
Now Politico is accusing Jews of the opposite: working in a secretive, highly-funded conspiracy to put Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin in power, and keep them there. Or something. Truthfully, I didn’t really understand the crux of the piece, despite reading it several times.

Max Blumenthal-fan Reza Aslan worries about Israel (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

Some two years ago, I wrote about Reza Aslan’s gushing praise for a book by Max Blumenthal under the title “No Truth in Advertising: Max Blumenthal’s New Book on Gaza.” But now Aslan is involved in a major project that has actually been advertised quite truthfully, because the way CNN has promoted their new series “Believer” reveals right away that it is just a sensational show intended to boost ratings: “In this new spiritual adventure series, renowned author and religious scholar Reza Aslan immerses himself in the world’s most fascinating faith-based groups to experience life as a true believer.” While I’m not religious, I don’t know any sincere “true believer” who would like to see his or her deeply-held faith presented in a “spiritual adventure series” featuring a “religious scholar” who “immerses himself” for every episode in another – preferably exotic – “faith-based group.” It’s a bit like making the now fashionable donning of a “hijab for a day” into a lavishly produced series, and the message is inevitably: just dress up appropriately and participate in some rituals, and voilà – you’ll “experience life as a true believer” of whatever beliefs are deemed telegenic enough to be featured by Reza Aslan on CNN.

An excellent critique under the very appropriate title “Reza Aslan’s Cynical Careerism and CNN’s ‘Believer’”, written after Aslan’s first (truly atrocious) episode on Hinduism, notes that “creating controversy seems to be all part of the plan too; during the premiere of Believer Aslan tweeted a link to an interview on the Huffington Post entitled ‘Every Episode of Reza Aslan’s ‘Believer’ Will Piss Somebody Off (And It’s Awesome).’ It is essentially click-bait for TV.”

However, originally Aslan apparently didn’t think that “every episode” will “piss somebody off,” because when he was busy filming the episodes some two years ago (i.e. not long after he had warmly endorsed Blumenthal’s glorification of Hamas), he tweeted: “Just wrapped episode 3 in LA (which everyone will love) and off to Israel for episode 4 (which everyone will hate).”

Apparently, Aslan still feels that this episode will be particularly controversial; his pinned tweet at the time of this writing reads: “No matter what I say, no matter what I do someone is going to get pissed off in this episode;” an embedded short clip shows him in Jerusalem with the same message.

I’m writing this before the episode is airing on Sunday evening (conveniently at a time when most Jews will be very busy preparing for Passover), but the promotional material shows already that, as usual, Reza Aslan will dress up to ‘immerse himself’ in Judaism…

But I’ll also admit that I don’t need to watch the episode to be pissed off – just reading the title of Aslan’s CNN article promoting this installment is enough for me: “Reza Aslan: Why I worry about Israel’s future.” Well, when people who cheer Blumenthal and other antisemitic Israel-haters profess “worry about Israel’s future,” it usually means they’re worried that Israel has a future.

To be sure, Aslan focuses on an issue that actually also worries me and many secular Israelis: fundamentalist tendencies among ultra-orthodox Jews and their political influence. But with his trademark superficiality, Aslan dramatizes what serves his agenda and ignores whatever doesn’t fit his desired “narrative” – after all, while he likes to describe himself as a “scholar of religions,” he is “a tenured Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside.” So it is hardly surprising that Aslan claims to have spoken “to a number of secular Jews in Israel who openly worried that the ultra-Orthodox are on the verge of turning Israel into a Jewish version of Iran;” but if he really found people who worry “that the ultra-Orthodox are on the verge of turning Israel into a Jewish version of Iran,” he perhaps mingled with the same people Max Blumenthal met with when he was in Israel.

From Aslan’s Twitter timeline, one can see that he greatly appreciates Ha’aretz as a source of material for denigrating Israel, but for once, I have good tidings from Ha’aretz for Reza Aslan: he doesn’t have to lose sleep over his worries for Israel’s future – as Anshel Pfeffer concluded in a recent article under the title “In Israel the Age of the Rabbis Is Ending”: “No, Israel isn’t becoming more religious. It’s actually becoming more flexible as the lines that used to divide among the secular, traditional, religious-Zionist and ultra-Orthodox − and clearly demarcate the sects and streams − have become blurred.” Pfeffer even threw in a line criticizing the media for overlooking the trends he described: “The media as usual is finding it hard to drop its old habits.” Looking at you, Reza Aslan…

So here’s how Aslan concludes his article:

“Whether the ultra-Orthodox are in fact able to one day transform Israel into a religious state remains to be seen. But what cannot be denied is that their influence over Israeli society and the Israeli government is only growing. And as someone who lost his own country to a small but powerful group of religious zealots, I genuinely worry about the future of Israel.”

But Aslan is genuinely lying when he claims to worry about the future of Israel, because he doesn’t want Israel to have any future. As he said in a Twitter exchange with notorious Israel-haters some two years ago, he rejects a two-state solution “as a fantasy;” at the same time, he indulges the fantasy that the Arab-Muslim majority state that should replace Israel can work out swell if there’s “1to1 interaction thru art/culture.”

Yeah, maybe Reza Aslan will do his part by teaching a free workshop on creative writing?

But the truth about Aslan is that he has for years promoted antisemitic Israel-haters. Here’s a selection of his relevant tweets and statements from the past few years.

In fall 2013, Aslan promoted Max Blumenthal’s antisemitic screed “Goliath.”

Less than two years later, Aslan endorsed Blumenthal’s next book, which glorified the Islamist terror group Hamas; Aslan’s praise is downright obscene: “Max Blumenthal has spent the last decade transforming himself into one of the most vital voices in journalism today, always speaking truth to power with fearlessness and integrity. As with his previous books, The 51 Day War is sure to be talked about for years to come.”

Astonishingly, Aslan didn’t think that, given his new role as a CNN star, it might be prudent to tone down his ardent support for the Israel-hating fringe. A few weeks ago, he backed Rania Khalek, who – just like Blumenthal – had come under severe criticism from erstwhile fans for her whitewashing of the murderous Assad regime. Together with notorious anti-Israel activists like Ali Abunimah and several other contributors to the Electronic Intifada and various other anti-Israel sites, Aslan even signed a statement in support of Khalek. Among several other notorious Israel- and Jew-haters, Aslan’s co-signatories also include the cartoonist Carlos Latuff, the proud winner of a prize in the 2006 International Holocaust Cartoon Competition sponsored by the Iranian regime, who is well known for using “’Judeophobic stereotypes’ in his attacks on Israel.”

That’s the kind of company Aslan chose when he endorsed Blumenthal a few years ago, and that’s the kind of company Aslan chose now when he backed the notorious Khalek. Apparently, CNN has no problem with that, but to provide a person with this record a prominent platform to claim that he worries about Israel’s future is utterly misleading: like the Israel-haters Aslan has repeatedly endorsed, his main worry about the world’s only Jewish state is clearly that Israel has a future.

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04/10 Links Pt1: The Myth of the Palestinian Mandela; Rocket from Sinai hits greenhouse hours before Passover

From Ian:

Dexter Van Zile: The Myth of the Palestinian Mandela

I got a clear sense of just how far Palestinian elites are from following Mandela’s example during the first night of the 2014 Christ at the Checkpoint Conference in Bethlehem. More than 400 Christians from Europe and North America attended the event, which is held every two years at the Bethlehem Bible College. On the day the conference began, Amnesty International published a report saying the inhabitants of a Palestinian refugee camp in Yarmouk, Syria had “been brought to the brink of starvation, forced to forage for any food that they can find” as a result of a siege imposed by the Assad regime. Despite the differences I had with the organizers and speakers at the CATC event, I was glad that Palestinian leaders who addressed the crowd would get an opportunity to draw attention to the plight of their fellow Palestinians in Yarmouk.
But they said nothing, not one word about their compatriots starving to death less than 200 miles away. No responsible group of leaders truly interested in the welfare of the people it leads would miss an opportunity to draw attention to what was happening to Palestinians in Yarmouk, but that night they did. Organizers of the event spoke about the unfolding catastrophe the next day, after I drew attention to their failure about the issue. Mandela would have addressed the suffering in Yarmouk up front, not as an afterthought. By failing to ask for aid to their countrymen, Palestinian political and religious leaders chose to demonize Israel to the exclusion of pursuing the welfare of the people they lead.
This has been a problem for decades. Instead of following the example of Mandela, who demanded that his followers think seriously about their future and what they needed to do to prosper as a community, Palestinian elites promote a backward-looking revanchism that has condemned several generations of Palestinians to death and suffering. By making themselves opponents of Jewish efforts to flourish in their homeland, Palestinians throw away any hope of flourishing in a state of their own. That is the choice they have made.
Clearly, Mandela’s great accomplishment was to turn violence and hatred into the generous desire for peace and reconciliation. A Palestinian Mandela would have to do the same. He would have to show the willingness and the ability to get Palestinians to abandon their efforts to murder, demonize, insult, humiliate, and intimidate Israeli Jews into leaving their homeland or, barring that, submit to Arab and Islamic dominance over their lives. Thus far, the Palestinian leadership has shown an unwillingness, to say the least, to do so, and Barghouti is no exception.
It is time to stop using the image of Nelson Mandela as a club to beat Israel and start using it as a yardstick to measure Palestinian efforts for peace.

Daniel Pipes: The Israel-Palestinian Peace Process Has Been a Massive Charade

Daniel Polisar of Shalem College in Jerusalem shook the debate over Palestinian-Israeli relations in November 2015 with his essay, “What Do Palestinians Want?” In it, having studied 330 polls to “understand the perspective of everyday Palestinians” toward Israel, Israelis, Jews, and the utility of violence against them, he found that Palestinian attackers are “venerated” by their society—with all that that implies.
He’s done it again with “Do Palestinians Want a Two-State Solution?” This time, he pored over some 400 opinion polls of Palestinian views to find consistency among seemingly contradictory evidence on the topic of ways to resolve the conflict with Israel. From this confusing bulk, Polisar convincingly establishes that Palestinians collectively hold three related views of Israel: it has no historical or moral claim to exist, it is inherently rapacious and expansionist, and it is doomed to extinction. In combination, these attitudes explain and justify the widespread Palestinian demand for a state from “the river to the sea,” the grand Palestine of their maps that erases Israel.
With this analysis, Polisar has elegantly dissected the phenomenon that I call Palestinian rejectionism. That’s the policy first implemented by the monstrous mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, in 1921 and consistently followed over the next near-century. Rejectionism demands that Palestinians (and beyond them, Arabs and Muslims) repudiate every aspect of Zionism: deny Jewish ties to the land of Israel, fight Jewish ownership of that land, refuse to recognize Jewish political power, refuse to trade with Zionists, murder Zionists where possible, and ally with any foreign power, including Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, to eradicate Zionism.
The continuities are striking. All major Palestinian leaders—Amin al-Husseini, Ahmad al-Shukeiri, Yasir Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and Yahya Sinwar (the new leader of Hamas in Gaza)—have made eliminating the Zionist presence their only goal. Yes, for tactical reasons, they occasionally compromised, most notably in the Oslo Accords of 1993, but then they reversed these exceptions as soon as possible.

Would Palestine Fail?

This underlines the paradox inherent in the international community’s policy on this issue: The world calls for Israel to negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state, but according to its own data and statements, the PA lacks the foundations for viable statehood. The UN warns, “The full socio-economic development of the [occupied Palestinian territory] … will only take place when there is an end to the occupation.” But the urgent need for such development is precisely why ending the occupation would be so dangerous. Israel cannot expect a fragile Palestine to bear these risks by itself. Given its small size and proximity to Israel, any destabilizing fallout would inevitably spill over into Israel and provoke renewed conflict.
If the international community wants Palestinian statehood to be a success, it should focus on investing in the foundations for a viable state, while urging the parties not to take any steps incompatible with the two-state vision. If Israel is serious about Palestinian statehood as an ultimate goal, it needs to demonstrate how rapid development can be achieved without a military withdrawal. Israel is not a passive spectator, but a key actor in shaping what a Palestinian state would look like. And if the Palestinians face the painful conclusion that Israel cannot allow itself to withdraw in the short run, and be given meaningful guarantees that the hope of statehood is not extinguished, they can cooperate in building these foundations, instead of postponing difficult decisions like refugee resettlement to a later date.
A Palestinian state needs transparent institutions, functioning infrastructure, the rehabilitation of refugees, the disarmament of militias, a sustainable economy, and robust human rights. The assessment that a state without these fundamentals risks endangering international peace and security does not require a fortune teller—only a political scientist.

How did I miss that ISIS head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is a rabbi!

I was just reading a conspiracy column in Ammon News by Asaad Aezzona where he says that he is 100% convinced that there was no Muslim or Arab behind the church bombings in Egypt, but Jews from the Mossad.

All of that is barely worth reporting, since stupidity like that is as predictable after a terror attack as night follows day, but he also claimed that ISIS head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is really Rabbi Elliott Shimon.from Israel!

Now, this was interesting.

So a little searching found that a rumor started in 2014 from Veteran's Today "according to sources reputed to originate from Edward Snowden, an actor named Elliot Shimon, a Mossad trained operative" as Veterans Today reported. They buttressed it with a supposed article that claimed that Iranian intelligence traced al-Baghdadi to this "Elliot Shimon."

No less than National Vanguard debunked this story (I'm not linking to VY or NV but they are easy to find.)
The neo-Nazi site said that while finding Jews in power is important, unfounded rumors hurt their cause.

Aezzona seems to have added the "rabbi" part, in the time honored tradition of the Arab conspiracy theories that keep getting more and more absurd with each retelling.

Wikipedia tells that Baghdadi was born in Iraq and includes sources, plus a quote from friends who knew him growing up in Iraq.

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Found here:

10. Passover Knight--He's always different from all other knights.

9. MatzahMatzahMan--Within 18 minutes, this superhero can flatten himself and escape anything, even Pharaoh!

8. KarpasGirl-She makes any veggie taste as good as ice cream--primarily because you're so hungry.

7. Betty Catwoman--her elliptical pupils open and close so quickly, she can see the tiniest speck of hametz in the dark.

6. Man-ishtanah--His Wi-Fi enhanced brain links him invisibly to the Internet so he can "google" the answer to all FAQs.

5. Eli-yahoo--An invisibility cloak allows him to enter any home he chooses without being seen.

4. Napkin Nelly--Every cell in her brittle body absorbs stray liquid, especially wine and food stains on fancy tablecloths.

3. The Bitter Herb--This is your uncle Herb who never stops asking, "When do we eat?"

2. Wonder Woman-This is what we call your mom after doing so much work for the Seder!

1. AfikoMan-He disappears instantly, but when you find him, you've got all the power in the world!

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Yemen news says Israel benefits from Arab problems, implying Israel is behind them

Yemen-24 says that Israel is the beneficiary of all Arab problems. It doesn't make the next logical leap to say that Jews are behind all those problems, but of course its readers are familiar with the Protocols - they don't have to be told.

Here are the Arab problems that supposedly benefit Israel:

The chemical weapons massacre in Idlib: Israeli politicians protested the chemical weapon attack very publicly, therefore making Israel look moral by comparison.

Wow.

Next: Israel benefits from the split between Fatah and Hamas. Obviously.

Third: The Islamic State in the Sinai. "The existence of terrorists in the Sinai to serve Israel's interest directly, but also indirectly ..because Israel wants to wear down the Egyptian army."

Fourth: Chaos in Yemen. This "created an opportunity for Israel to exploit the situation in order to smuggle 17 Jews from Yemen to the Jewish state."

Fifth: Iraq. Israel is supposedly helping Kurds "massacre Muslims" and export oil to Israel.

Oh, here's the picture to illustrate the story, although it came from an Illuminati conspiracy theory site.

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There is no news story that Palestinians don't try to twist to be about them.

Saeb Erekat, the secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said that the bombings that targeted churches in the cities of Alexandria, Tanta were "terrible crimes."

Then he said that they were aimed at Egypt and Egypt's principles, including Egypt's support of Palestinians.

This is especially ironic since Palestinian officials, including Erekat, routinely claim that terror attacks like these wouldn't happen if it wasn't for "occupation" and other Israeli policies. In other words, usually they claim that IS terror attacks are in support of Palestinians, albeit misguided; but when it is in their interest they will claim that IS attacks are actually against Palestinians.

The ironies multiply because Erekat has also justified unprovoked attacks on civilians as "self-defense." Furthermore, he has said that the PLO will never consider Hamas, well known for its own bombing attacks against civilians, to be a terrorist organization.

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Egyptian paper claims Israelis trying to steal Nile water

Major Egyptian newspaper Youm7 has an article accusing Israel of systematically trying to steal Egypt's water from the headwaters of the Nile.

The article starts off this way:

"There is a water deficit to Israel. Because of its plans to receive more Jewish immigrants, it takes large amounts of water from the Jordan and Auja rivers, and the Lebanese Litani River. Israeli statistics show that the water deficit in Israel had reached more than 800 million cubic meters in 1978, and it was getting worse because of the continuous increase by development and natural increase of the population requirements, and plans for the displacement of Jews to Israel, including the Falasha transferred from the Ethiopian Jews "...this is an important issue raised by the book" Egypt and the problem of the Nile water: the Renaissance Dam crisis" by Dr. Zaki Behairy, issued by the Egyptian General Book Authority.

Behairy can be quickly seen to be an Israel-hater, as this 2011 interview of him shows an obsession with Mossad spies in Africa supposedly aimed at destabilizing Egypt.

Quoting a book by Egyptian scholar Dr. Zaki Behairy, the article accuses Israel of being the main driver of the Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia whose only purpose seems to be to hurt Egypt.

Just another day in Egyptian media.

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Seven new Passover music videos (update)

This Y-Studs video may be the most impressive Jewish video I've ever seen in terms of production quality:

Six13 - Seder Crew:

Maccabeats - Mah Nishtana:

Pinny Schachter - Ma Nishtanah:

Shir Soul:

Boys Town Jerusalem:

Roar Post:

UPDATE: Shtar (h/t Micro)

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04/09 Links: PA defies US, raises Martys payments; Bassem Tamimi denied Australian visa

From Ian:

PMW: PA defies US, will raise payments to Martyrs' families

In defiance of the US, which is demanding that the Palestinian Authority completely stop financial rewards to families of terrorist "Martyrs" (Shahids), the PA is now raising the payments to the "Martyrs'" families. These PA payments include lifetime monthly allowances to families of suicide bombers, and other murderers who were killed during or after committing their crimes.
Muhammad Sbeihat, the Secretary-General of the National Association of the Martyrs' Families of Palestine, which is the PLO organization dealing with the PA's payments to "Martyrs'" families, explained last week:
"In the upcoming period the allowances of the Martyrs' families will be linked to the cost of living index, which will cause an improvement in these allowances, if only slightly." [Al-Quds, April 4, 2017]
The fact that the PA is raising the amount of the allowances to Martyrs' families, even slightly, at this time is in direct defiance of the United States. Palestinian Media Watch exposed in 2011 that the Palestinian Authority pays salaries to imprisoned terrorists and allowances to families of terrorist Martyrs, and in 2016 exposed that the PA was lying when they claimed to have stopped payments to prisoners.

Visa of Palestinian activist Bassem Tamimi revoked hours before travel to Australia

The Immigration Department has refused to comment on exactly why it blocked the visa of a prominent Palestinian activist, but has argued it has a responsibility to protect the community from abuse or danger.
Bassem Tamimi, 50, had his visa cancelled hours before he was due to travel to Australia, on the grounds his opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could provoke anger in the community.
He had been given permission to travel to Australia on Tuesday, but the following day the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) revoked his visa.
The ABC asked Immigration Minister Peter Dutton about the exact nature of that new information and whether the cancellation was an example of curbing freedom of speech, and the DIBP responded on his behalf.
"The Australian Government supports freedom of speech and freedom of religious and political beliefs," a DIBP spokesman said.
"The exercise of this freedom does involve a responsibility to avoid vilification of, inciting discord in, or representing a danger to, the Australian community.
Mr Tamimi had been invited to Australia for a speaking tour by the Palestine Action Group in Sydney, the Friends of Palestine in Perth and the Socialist Alternative's Marxism Conference in Melbourne.
He has previously lobbied for an "intifada" against Israel during speaking tours in the United States.

PALM SUNDAY ATTACKS 43 dead, over 100 injured in ISIS bombings at 2 churches in Egypt

At least 43 people were killed and more than 100 injured in two separate Palm Sunday attacks at Coptic Christian churches in Egypt, each carried out by the ISIS terror group.
The first blast happened at St. George Church in the Nile Delta town of Tanta, where at least 27 people were killed and 78 others wounded, officials said.
Television footage showed the inside of the church, where a large number of people gathered around what appeared to be lifeless, bloody bodies covered with papers.
A second explosion – which Egypt’s Interior Ministry says was caused by a suicide bomber who tried to storm St. Mark's Cathedral in the coastal city of Alexandria -- left at least 16 dead, and 41 injured. The attack came just after Pope Tawadros II -- leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria -- finished services, but aides told local media that he was unharmed.
At least three police officers were killed in the St. Mark’s attack, the ministry told The Associated Press.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks via its Aamaq media agency, following the group's recent video vowing to step up attacks against Christians, who the group describes as "infidels" empowering the West against Muslims.

Israel extends condolences to Egypt, urges united front against terrorism

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office released a statement on Sunday extending Israel's condolences to Egypt and the victims of a deadly blast that occurred earlier in the day at a Coptic church in the Nile Delta town of Tanta.
"The world must unite and fight against terrorism everywhere," the statement read.
In addition, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely condemned the incident as a terrorist attack, saying it served as a reminder that Egypt is also under attack by terrorists.
Hotovely, in the first Israeli response to the Palm Sunday attack, said that terrorism does not stop at Stockholm, St. Petersburg, Berlin, London or Jerusalem.

J-Street, along with some other leftist groups, released another Haggadah that proves yet again that they are anything but "pro-Israel."

The Haggadah does not symbolize a celebration but an apology (or worse) for Israel's very existence. Excerpts:

[Israel] is mighty in arms, but iniquitous in its treatment of its neighbors, the Palestinians, and too much driven by greed rather than justice in economic and political life.

The Haggadah reminds us that the Land of Israel is not promised to us by inheritance or by right, for our forefathers were idolaters in Babylon. Canaan is not the inheritance-land of our forefathers, and we have a connection to this Land only by dint of God’s promise to Abraham who, God attests, will command his children “to do righteousness and justice”. This is indeed an eternal covenant, but it is always conditional on our moral behavior.

The next time an Israeli leader speaks of Amalek, remember the Rabbis’ hysterical fantasies.

Many of the people of the land fled before the armies of Israel and became refugees abroad. Their brethren were defeated once and again, and those who remained behind in the land became like slaves under Israel. And the heart of some of the Israelites hardened and they say: This is the will of the God of Jacob. And we, in this evening of the Festival of Freedom, say: our freedom is no freedom unless it is a freedom shared by the other people that dwells in the land of Zion. And Al-Quds became their holy one, Palestine their dominion. Let both peoples celebrate their liberty in their fatherland, and peace shall come onto the land.

The subjugators are subjugated no less than their slaves. The subjugation of another people is also self-subjugation. A long period of subjugating others is liable to lead to the most terrible of all, the striking down of the first-born, the fall of an entire generation. “In every single generation one must see oneself as though one has come out of Egypt”: We must come out of the Egypt of the subjugated and out of the Egypt of the subjugators. We must rescue our others and ourselves. We must liberate and thus be liberated. We must cry out to the pharaoh within us: LET OUR PEOPLES GO!

Oppressors are oppressed, beaters are beaten When will this madness finally end? And what’s become different for you, what has changed? I have changed, I’ve become different this year. I was once a serene lamb and a kid — Today I’m a predatory tiger and wolf. I’ve been a dove and I’ve been a gazelle — Today I don’t know what I am.

Israel isn't the only target of this Haggadah. J-Street and its cohorts claim to be more moral than God Himself.

The ten plagues have always been an embarrassment for Jewish liberals and leftists. Why does God harden Pharaoh’s heart when he could have softened it, set the Israelites on their march much sooner, and avoided the terrible suffering of the Egyptian people?
So we dip a finger and spill the wine in order to reduce our pleasure in Egyptian pain. But it would be better to focus on the pain and think about the possibility of a different deliverance. History is not determined. Imagine a God who knew the Geneva Convention and directed his plagues only against Pharaoh and his officials. Imagine a Pharaoh who fell under the influence of his adopted son Moses. Imagine a general strike of the Israelites, joined, perhaps, by other inhabitants of the “house of bondage.” There are many ways out of a bad situation, many alternatives for both the oppressed and the oppressors to think about.

But there is a fifth child:
A caring one.
What does the caring one say?
“What is God that He is moved only by the suffering of the Israelites and not by the suffering of the Egyptians?”

I think that the people who put together this sick excuse for a Haggadah fit quite well as one of the other sons listed there. After all, who is separating themselves from the nation more than the people who pretend to be more moral than everyone else?

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From Iran Front Page:

Iran’s top security official says the Tuesday chemical incident in Syria’s Idlib province was definitely caused by a third party in an effort to pave the way for the US strike on the Syrian airbase.

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani discussed the recent US military strike on Syria’s al-Shayrat airbase with his Russian counterpart Nikolai Patrushev.

The two sides conferred on the issue during a telephone conversation on Saturday, according to a Farsi report by ISNA.

During the phone call, Shamkhani underlined the need for the establishment of an independent international committee to investigate the suspicious chemical incident in Idlib.

Syria’s chemical weapons had been destroyed by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in previous years, Shamkhani noted.

Therefore, he added, the Tuesday chemical attack on Khan Shaykhun was definitely launched by a third party in an attempt to create a pretext for a military attack on Syria.

What third party could he possibly be referring to?

A real mystery.

It is interesting that Iran is pivoting from claiming that the rebels' chemical weapons were responsible to this new, time-tested formula of blaming Israel for anything evil.

Meanwhile, Islamic Jihad said "The American raid on Syria came at the instigation of Zionism in order to divide and dismantle and weaken the countries of the region in favor of Israeli hegemony."

(h/t Alexi)

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Video of moment of Coptic church bombing in Egypt

From AP:

A bomb exploded in a church north of Cairo that was packed with Palm Sunday worshippers, killing at least 21 people and wounding 38 others, officials said.

The attack in the Nile Delta town of Tanta was the latest in a series of assaults on Egypt’s Christian minority, which makes up around 10 percent of the population and has been repeatedly targeted by Islamic extremists. It comes just weeks before Pope Francis is due to visit Egypt.

CBC TV showed footage from inside the church, where a large number of people gathered around what appeared to be lifeless, bloody bodies covered with papers. Magdi Awad, the head of the provincial ambulance service, confirmed the toll.

There was live TV coverage of the Palm Sunday services at the time. The video cuts out as you hear the explosion but the screams of the worshipers can be plainly heard.

Here was the chaotic scene outside the church.

And here the bloody scene inside:

Previous bombings of Coptic churches have been claimed by Islamic State terrorists. Under the previous Muslim Brotherhood-led Egyptian government, many churches were burned and destroyed.

In contrast, the current Egyptian government tweeted this:

Terrorism hits Egypt again, this time on Palm Sunday. Another obnoxious but failed attempt against all Egyptians #united_on_PalmSunday
— Egypt MFA Spokesman (@MfaEgypt) April 9, 2017

It is no wonder Christians are fleeing the Middle East as fast as they can.

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Download the Elder of Ziyon Haggadah

In 2009 I put together a Haggadah which included commentaries on the themes of Zionism and redemption taken from various sources.

Many thousands of people have viewed it and downloaded it since then.

It includes the entire text of the Haggadah, most of it translated to English as well. It can be downloaded and printed.

One day I'll update it, but for now...here it is and it is still free.

Elder of Ziyon Haggadah 5769 on Scribd

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04/08 Links: Eli Lake: Thank Trump for Enforcing Obama's 'Red Line' in Syria; Petition to recognise Jewish history

From Ian:

Eli Lake: Thank Trump for Enforcing Obama's 'Red Line' in Syria

Samantha Power should send a thank-you note to Donald Trump. Power made her reputation as the author of "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide." It persuasively argued that the U.S. has a special responsibility to protect potential victims of genocide.
Barack Obama liked the book so much, he made Power his foreign policy tutor when he was still a senator. He brought her to his White House after he won the presidency and made her his ambassador to the United Nations in his second term.
In a cruel irony, Power's warnings were ignored by her former pupil when Syria's dictator, Bashar al-Assad, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his own citizens. She remained in her job. She gave powerful speeches. On the inside she pressed the president to do something about the mass killings. But Obama declined. He never enforced the "red line" he articulated in 2012, on chemical weapons in Syria.
But on Thursday, Trump did. He ordered 59 Tomahawk missiles to be launched at the al-Shayrat airfield in Syria, the base from where Syria launched a horrific sarin gas attack earlier this week.
The critics and proponents of intervention in Syria have already started reciting their talking points, but it's worth pausing for a moment.

Douglas Murray: Berlin, Westminster, now Stockholm. On and on it goes

So this time it is Stockholm. And I am tempted simply to write ‘copy’, ‘paste’ and ‘repeat’ with links to my recent piece on the Westminster attack. Which in turn referenced my piece on the Brussels attack. Which itself was a re-run of my piece on one of the Paris attacks. And so on and on it goes.
If there is nothing new to say it is because nobody has anything new to learn. On Wednesday of this week, two weeks to the day after Khalid Masood ploughed a car into the crowds on Westminster Bridge and stabbed PC Keith Palmer to death inside the gates of the Houses of Parliament, what was billed as a ‘Service of Hope’ took place in Westminster Abbey. One hopes that it consoled those injured and mourning. But the tone of the sermon by the Dean of Westminster suggested that the word ‘blind’ should perhaps have been put in before ‘hope’.
In the sermon at the inter-faith service the Very Reverend John Hall said that Khalid Masood’s attack had left the nation ‘bewildered’. He went on to ask:
‘What could possibly motivate a man to hire a car and take it from Birmingham to Brighton to London, and then drive it fast at people he had never met, couldn’t possibly know, against whom he had no personal grudge, no reason to hate them and then run at the gates of the Palace of Westminster to cause another death? It seems likely that we shall never know.’
Indeed. ‘Bewildered and hopeful’ is as good an epitaph as anyone has come up with for this age. A fortnight ago it was London. This week it was Stockholm. Next week it will be somewhere else. I imagine there will be a little less giggling about Donald Trump this time, but other than that there will be no change from the now traditional procedures.
And so on and on it goes, with nothing new to learn. And all the time insisting on the need to seize ‘hope’ out of every bewildered moment.

Sweden identifies truck terror attack suspect as Uzbek native, 39

The suspect in Stockholm’s deadly beer truck terror attack is a 39-year-old native of Uzbekistan who had been on authorities’ radar previously, Swedish authorities said Saturday. The prime minister urged citizens to “get through this” and strolled through the streets of the capital to chat with residents.
Swedes flew flags at half-staff Saturday to commemorate the four people killed and 15 wounded when the hijacked truck plowed into a crowd of shoppers Friday afternoon in Stockholm. Prime Minister Stefan Lofven declared Monday a national day of mourning, with a minute of silence at noon.
Sweden’s police chief said authorities were confident they had detained the man who carried out the attack.
“There is nothing that tells us that we have the wrong person,” Dan Eliason told a news conference Saturday, but added he did not know whether others were involved in the attack. “We cannot exclude this.”
Eliason also said police found something in the truck that “could be a bomb or an incendiary object, we are still investigating it.”

04/07 Links Pt2: Glick: Israel and Obama’s political war; Kemp: FO must lift their ban on Royal visits to Israel

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israel and Obama’s political war

This brings us to 2015, and the fight in Washington and throughout the US about Obama’s nuclear deal with Tehran. In the 2015 operation, the White House allegedly used intercepted communications between US citizens and Israeli diplomats and between Israeli diplomats in Washington and Jerusalem to defame opponents of the nuclear deal. Lawmakers and private citizens were repeatedly subjected to condemnations in the media where unnamed administration sources questioned their loyalty, alleged that they were serving the interests of a foreign power against the US, and that in the case of lawmakers, they were bought and paid for by rich Jewish donors.
Speaking to Smith, a pro-Israel activist who had participated in the battle against the nuclear deal explained how the White House operation worked.
“At some point, the administration weaponized the NSA’s [National Security Agency’s] legitimate monitoring of communications of foreign officials to stay one step ahead of domestic political opponents....
“We began to notice that the White House was responding immediately, sometimes within 24 hours, to specific conversations we were having. At first, we thought it was a coincidence being amplified by our paranoia. After a while, it simply became our working assumption that we were being spied on.”
Weaponizing intelligence reports was only one way that the Obama administration abused its power to weaken, silence and criminalize its domestic opponents.
Weaponizing the IRS was another way.
And just as Obama’s IRS was used to hound conservative groups that opposed Obama’s domestic agenda, so it was used to discriminate against pro-Israel groups that opposed Obama’s Middle East policies.
The most well-known case of such abuse was the IRS’s failure to approve the request for nonprofit status submitted by Z Street, a pro-Israel educational organization.

Col Kemp: Foreign Office must lift their ban on Royal visits to Israel

No fewer than 16,000 British and Commonwealth troops died during the Palestine campaign in the First World War and are buried in the land where they fell. Yet a long-standing Foreign Office ban on royal visits to Israel looks likely to deny these men the honour that has been afforded to British soldiers killed in Europe, Gallipoli and other theatres of war during the centenary years. This policy must be overturned now to ensure their sacrifice is properly recognised.
Ninety-eight years ago today, on December 9, 1917, the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem surrendered the Holy City to General Sir Edmund Allenby’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force at the end of a bloody battle against the Turks that began on November 17.
The Palestine campaign has received little attention during the First World War commemorations, but was the second largest British theatre of operations in terms of strength of forces, with troops from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and India. It achieved the first defeat of a central power in the war.
British Empire forces sustained 554,828 casualties during the campaign, including 16,000 dead. At the Jerusalem War Cemetery on Mount Scopus this year I visited the graves of two of them, Edwin Beard and Leonard Frost, both boys from my school, Colchester Royal Grammar. It saddened me to think that the British Foreign Office is ready to deny these British soldiers the honour they deserve.
There are 2,415 graves in this cemetery as well as the Jerusalem Memorial, which commemorates another 3,300 troops who have no known grave. This is the place that should be the focus of the centenary commemorations of our servicemen who died in that campaign, preferably in December 2017.

The Burden of the 1967 Victory

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Considering the ways Israel’s opponents have changed over the decades, the collective yearning among Israelis for a decisive, 1967-style victory is unrealistic. The false hope for such success impedes clarity of thinking and causes the Israeli public to lose confidence in both the military and the political leadership. The only approach that can succeed in Israel’s current conflicts is a patient, attritional, repetitive use of force. Israelis should take comfort that time is on Israel’s side.
In June 1967, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) waged war alone against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. It achieved a stunning victory in six days. The military skill demonstrated by the Israelis was remarkable – so much so that battles from the Six-Day War continue to be studied at war colleges around the world.
Israel’s military achievement had another extremely important effect. It went a long way towards convincing the Arab world that Israel cannot be easily destroyed by military force; Israel is a fact the Arabs must learn to live with. Indeed, ten years later – after Egypt had lost another war to Israel, this one in 1973 – its president, Anwar Sadat, came to Jerusalem (November 1977) to offer peace.
The swift and decisive victory of 1967 became the standard to which the IDF aspired – and the kind of victory expected by Israeli society in future engagements. This is problematic, considering the ways Israel’s opponents have changed and the means they now deploy.

Israeli Arab at Columbia says Jews should be proud of Israel

I had missed this remarkable video:

An Arab IDF veteran who participated in a pro-Israel event at Columbia University last month told The Algemeiner on Tuesday why he lashed out at a Jewish student on campus who said he was “not proud” of the Jewish state.

Mohammad Kabiya, a University of Haifa political science major and commander in the Israeli Air Force, whose sharp exchange with his peer about Israel’s moral standing has been circulating on social media, explained, “It is so wrong, and embarrassing, for a Jew to spread such lies about the one Jewish state in the world.”

“Israel is not perfect but it’s far from how these people are describing it,” Kabiya – a Bedouin Muslim — said in Hebrew, referring to the crowds participating in “Israeli Apartheid Week” (IAW) events. Criticism of the Israeli government and policies is legitimate, he added, “but it’s like when I fight with my brother; the whole world doesn’t need to know about it.”

Kabiya, who had been invited to Columbia by the school’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) as part of “Hebrew Liberation Week” – a counter-demonstration to IAW – has been serving as an informal spokesman for the Jewish state and his community’s proud role in its defense.

“Israel is my state and I need to protect it,” he said emphatically.

SSI president Rudy Rochman told The Algemeiner that Kabiya gives a voice and face to minority groups in Israel that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement neither acknowledges nor talks about.

“Many students didn’t even know there were such things as Israeli Arabs and were shocked to meet Mohammad and hear his story,” Rochman said. “They thought Israel was a country made up of only Jews. They had no idea that about 20% of the population is Arab.”

Kabiya — well-known in Israel for his efforts on behalf of public diplomacy — called the efforts of groups like SSI “holy work,” and encouraged Jewish students “to stand up for themselves.”

“You cannot fear people who just scream lies,” he said. “We have to support those who are responding to these disgusting things being said about Israel.”

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An unusual op-ed in Middle East Eye by Mat Nashed lifts the veil of Arab racism, a topic that is rarely addressed in the media. Excerpts:

Racism is a problem in the Arab world, yet too many people in the region deny it. Last week, an Ethiopian domestic worker fell from the balcony of her employer’s home in Kuwait. It was caught on camera, and though the woman survived, she later revealed that her employer was trying to kill her.

"The lady put me in the bathroom and was about to kill me in the bathroom without anybody finding out," the worker said.

"She would have thrown my body out like rubbish, so instead of staying there I went to save myself and then I fell."

This isn’t an isolated incident. Many Arab countries have maintained the kafala – or sponsorship system – which ties the legal status of low-wage migrant workers directly to their employer, giving the latter power to take away workers’ passports, withhold their salaries, and subject them to harrowing abuse.

In Arab countries where kafala isn’t applied, refugees and non-Western migrants are routinely abused by the state, their host community, and even aid organisations that were founded to help them.

In places, such as Qatar and Kuwait, more than 90 percent of the labour force is imported from South and Southeast Asia and Africa.

Recruiters do their part to lure workers by propagating false promises of a fair wage and a day off each week. It’s not until many workers arrive that they realise they’ve been trafficked into performing slave-like labour which they would have never consented to.

The International Trade Union Confederation estimates that more than 4,000 low wage workers will die while building infrastructure for Qatar’s 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Domestic migrant workers – generally women – are even more vulnerable. In Lebanon, they are excluded from basic protections under the labour law. And like elsewhere in the region, many are locked indoors and routinely subjected to starvation, rape and death.

In 2008, Human Rights Watch found that at least one domestic migrant worker in Lebanon was dying each week as a result of "unnatural causes" such as alleged suicide or after suspiciously falling from tall buildings. Activists suspect that the rate of deaths remains just as high today.

Elsewhere in the region, racism exposes itself in more subtle ways. Members of Egypt’s Nubian community, for instance, are often portrayed as servants in the media and scapegoated for street violence.

And yet, Nubian activists say that they are still treated better than sub-Saharan migrants and refugees. In Egypt, the darker you are, the harsher the discrimination.

That was obvious after a senior Egyptian official allegedly called sub-Saharan Africans "dogs and slaves" during a diplomatic visit to Kenya last year.

The Arabic word for "slave" is often colloquially used to address black Africans in the Middle East.

As with antisemitism, the West doesn't want to talk about Arab racism because the media wants to put people in one of two convenient buckets: "oppressors" and "victims." White people (which naturally include Jews in their minds) are generally always the oppressors and everyone else the oppressed.

One reason why the Western media ignores these stories is because any reporting that makes Arabs or Muslims the oppressors is perceived as oppression itself.

The secondary reason is because of the (frankly bigoted) expectation that news consumers will become racists if exposed to the full story. Sanitizing the news is meant to make the world a better, more ignorant place..

What the news editors haven'r figured out yet is that in the Internet age, stories like this are spreading faster and reaching more people. The media still plays a game of letting the New York Times or the wire services set the agenda and then slavishly following their slanted ideas.

(h/t messy57)

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04/07 Links Pt1: Netanyahu’s Told-You-So Moment; ‘Where Is the Arab Leadership? Where Are You, Traitors? Have You Forgotten Your Own People?

From Ian:

With 59 cruise missiles, US sends message to the world: We’re back

After two days of uncertainty from the US administration, following a chemical attack by the Bashar Assad regime, the Americans sent a message to the world on Thursday night in the least subtle way possible: with 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired straight at a Syrian air base.
It was a message directed toward Assad and the people of Syria, to allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, foes like Iran and North Korea, the US’s great frenemy Russia, and to the American public back at home.
Internationally, the 59 Raytheon Co. missiles fired from the USS Ross and USS Porter told American partners — and enemies — that despite the “America First” rhetoric, the US is again very much a factor on the world stage. Domestically, it was a sign that US President Donald Trump, whose administration has seen false-starts, failures and pushback, would take decisive action when he deemed it necessary.
“They are telling their allies in the Middle East: You are not alone,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser and IDF general, in a phone briefing on Friday organized by the Israel Project.
Breaking from the naval gazing so prevalent in this part of the world, the strike on Syria should also be at least briefly considered in the context of North Korea, which has been antagonizing the United States with nuclear and ballistic missile tests — vide the strike occurring during Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who holds considerable cachet over Pyongyang.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Told-You-So Moment

Benjamin Netanyahu will never be popular in America’s major newsrooms. Or among most of the think-tankers who set the tone and parameters of foreign-policy debate. His name is a curse on college campuses. So it’s worth asking whose vision of the Middle East has held up better under the press of recent events.
His or theirs?
The question comes to mind as Western governments confront this week’s chemical atrocity in Syria, and as footage of children’s bodies convulsing in agony once more unsettles the world’s conscience. Even President Trump, who generally lacks a moral language, was moved. On Friday U.S forces fired nearly 60 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base, punishing the Assad regime for its chemical crimes.
His predecessor had a rich moral vocabulary and a coterie of award-winning moralizers like Samantha Power on staff. But President Obama refused to act when Bashar Assad crossed his chemical red line. He wanted to extricate Washington from the region, and he saw a nuclear deal with Mr. Assad’s Iranian patrons as the exit ramp.
Such a deal came within grasp when Hassan Rouhani launched his presidential campaign in Iran four years ago this month. The smiling, self-proclaimed “moderate” was the Iranian interlocutor the Obamaians had been waiting for. Mr. Netanyahu posed the main obstacle.

Israeli Arab Newscaster on Syria Crisis: ‘Where Is the Arab Leadership? Where Are You, Traitors? Have You Forgotten Your Own People?’

Israeli Arab newscaster Lucy Aharish issued an impassioned rebuke on Wednesday of regional heads of state over their failure to halt the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria.
Referring to the suspected chemical weapons attack earlier this week in Syria — believed to have been carried out by President Bashar Assad’s regime — in which dozens of civilians, including children, were killed, Aharish said, in English remarks broadcast on Channel 2, “The images that once again struck us yesterday are no fake news, but rather old news.”
She continued, “There is one question that repeats itself — where is the Arab leadership? Where are you, traitors? Have you forgotten your own people?”
In December, Aharish aired an English statement in which she called the situation in Aleppo a “holocaust.”
“I am ashamed as a human being that we chose leaders who are incapable of being articulate in their condemnation and powerful in their action,” she said at the time. “I am ashamed that the Arab world is being taken hostage by terrorists and murderers and that we are not doing anything. I am ashamed that the peaceful majority of humanity is irrelevant once again.”