Saturday, December 23, 2017

12/23 Links: Another "Reconciliation" Bites the Dust; Israel to formally announce withdrawal from UNESCO; Pierre Rehov’s new film “Unveiling Jerusalem”

From Ian:
After investigation, Denmark to cut funding from some Palestinian NGOs
Denmark is to revoke funding from several Palestinian non-governmental organizations and tighten aid criteria for others after they were tied to anti-Israel activities.

Israel hailed the move as a victory and urged other European governments to follow suit.

The Danish Foreign Ministry made the announcement Friday, saying it would implement a more stringent vetting process for the transfer of funds to Palestinian NGOs.

“It is important that there is confidence that Danish assistance is going for the right purposes,” said Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen.

Samuelsen said that, following an investigation, most of the earmarked funds will be returned to Danish government coffers. He added that many organizations currently receiving Danish support would no longer do so.

“This is a welcome, moral, and crucially-important decision. Palestinian NGOs that have ties to internationally-designated terrorist organizations and that promote boycotts against Israel should not receive European governmental funding,” said Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan.

“I call on all other European governments to exercise the same moral responsibility and take similar steps,” he said.
(h/t Elder of Lobby)
Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Another "Reconciliation" Bites the Dust
The idea that Hamas would disarm and stop digging tunnels and hand the Gaza Strip on a silver platter to Abbas and Fatah is pure fantasy.

From the outset, it was clear that Hamas had no intention of relinquishing its security control over the Gaza Strip and that it plans to continue holding hostage the two million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. How do we know that? The answer is simple: That is what Hamas leaders themselves have been stating in public almost every day for the past few weeks since the "reconciliation" agreement was announced in Cairo.

The Hamas-Fatah "reconciliation" accord failed because Hamas will continue to prepare itself to pursue the fight against Israel. It wants to continue digging tunnels along the border with Israel so that it can use them one day to kill or kidnap Israelis. Hamas wants to continue building tunnels along the border with Egypt so that it can use them to smuggle weapons and terrorists into and out of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas wants to hold on to the thousands of militiamen it employs and continues to recruit in the Gaza Strip because it will never allow anyone else to rule the Gaza Strip. Hamas denies that it had agreed to disarm or dismantle its security forces when it reached its agreement with Fatah.

The "reconciliation" deal, however, not only failed because of the controversy over the security control of the Gaza Strip.

The other reason the deal never materialized is because Hamas simply cannot accept a situation in which it is being asked to accept the so-called two-state solution. Hamas is worried that its partnership with Abbas and Fatah might be interpreted as a sign that Hamas recognizes the Oslo Accords and has abandoned its genocidal ideology, which calls for the destruction of Israel. As made clear by the Hamas leaders, their goal remains to seek the "liberation of all of Palestine, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river." This is Hamas's mantra.

The United Nations Long Ago Lost Its Moral Authority To Tut-Tut At Trump Over Jerusalem
On December 21, the 193-member UN General Assembly held an emergency special session at the request of Arab and Muslim states. The session was aimed at rebuking President Trump’s recent announcement to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Not surprisingly, the special session passed a non-binding resolution approved by 128 states, declaring Trump’s announcement is “null and void and must be rescinded.” But this resolution only serves as the latest example that the UN lacks moral authority to resolve the thorniest world affairs.

The UN’s Anti-Isrel Bias Is Appalling
While the UN charter claims it is an “organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members, “ Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is often subjected to the UN’s anti-Israel bias. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon justified Palestinian terror against Israeli civilians by saying, “it is human nature to react to occupation.”

The UN’s Human Rights Council, packed with human rights abusers such as Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Venezuela, permanently singles out Israel under a special agenda item and condemns Israel at every one of its meetings. The UN Commission on the Status of Women condemned Israel as the only country in the world violating Palestinian women’s rights, while ignoring the violations committed by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, and many abuses women suffer in countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.

The UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) singled out Israel as the only violator of “mental, physical and environmental health,” while ignoring the atrocities taking place at the time in Syria and Yemen. Interestingly, the same WHO appointed Zimbabwe’s 93-year-old authoritarian leader, Robert Mugabe, one of the worst human rights abusers in the world, as WHO’s goodwill ambassador in 2017. It had to recant its offer after worldwide outrage.

The UN has done little in the last six decades to come up with any reasonable solution to the Israel- Palestine conflict. By singling out Israel constantly and repeatedly as the target for its condemnation, the UN has already lost moral authority to be the right venue to solve this conflict.
Elliott Abrams: Honor and Dishonor at the United Nations
But then we get to the meat, where the General Assembly resolution continues:

“Expressing in this regard its deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem,

“Affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered, the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded….”

Israel made no “recent decision;” only the United States did. And now we are told it “must be rescinded,” to which one can only reply with the famous words Daniel Patrick Moynihan spoke in 1975 after the “Zionism is Racism” resolution passed: the United States “does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.”

Some will argue that it is unfair to compare these two resolutions. I think not. Both continue the General Assembly’s record of infamous maltreatment of Israel. No other country has ever been singled out for abuse in such a manner, and now the United States is abused for the crime of acknowledging the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. Only one nation on earth is not permitted to choose its capital, and the refusal to allow Israel that right is part and parcel of the delegitimization campaign against Israel of which this resolution is itself a part.

Now what? The United States has said there will be a price to pay for insulting us in this way. Withholding aid is unlikely to be the way forward. There are too many cases where humanitarian aid is needed and there is no reason to punish desperately poor people because of a vote their rulers made. In other cases American security interests are too important. But there are ways to make our displeasure known, such as canceling or delaying the visit of a top-level American official, or the visit to the United States by a foreign official. Downgrading ties quite informally is also possible: some foreign minister comes, and finds that unaccountably the President, National Security Advisor, and Secretary of State are unavailable, and that the mid-level officials who are available have just a few minutes rather than the time requested. Requests that are too important to deny can be slowed down. A creative diplomat will find plenty of ways to show that we remember and resent this gratuitous insult to our country.

Malaysian rally proves that "pro-Palestinian" and antisemitism are two sides of the same coin



From The New York Times:

A protest in Malaysia against President Trump’s decision to designate Jerusalem the capital of Israel brought together political foes on Friday, illustrating how solidarity with Palestinians has united disparate forces in the Muslim world.

Prime Minister Najib Razak headlined a rally of more than 1,000 people in the Putra Mosque compound in Putrajaya, the country’s administrative capital.

Also in attendance were former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the 92-year-old opposition leader, who has led a campaign to oust the scandal-plagued Mr. Najib, his former protégé, and Khalil Abdul Hadi, the head of the youth wing of the country’s main Islamic party. Mr. Mahathir joined a prayer service at the Putra Mosque, along with other politicians.

“Today, regardless of our political beliefs, we gather to show that as Muslims in Malaysia we are united in opposing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” Mr. Najib said Friday.

"There are 1.6 billion Muslims,” Mr. Najib said at the Malaysian rally, to vigorous applause. “There are only 13 million Jews. It does not make sense if 1.6 billion lose to the Jews. If we don’t unite, we will be looked down upon.”
That is honor./shame in a perfect little nutshell. It shows that the issue isn't Israel or Jerusalem or Palestinians - it is Muslims losing to the Jews.

And the prime minister's political opponents are even more antisemitic:

Lawyer-cum-activist Azhar Harun has suggested that Prime Minister Najib Razak is wrong in the way he is looking at the issue of Palestine and Jerusalem, following comments made at the “rally for Jerusalem” in Putrajaya yesterday.Firstly, the 1.6 billion has never lost to the 13 million. The 1.6 billion have lost to themselves. They are busy trying to kill each other, whether figuratively or even literally.
“Secondly, and more importantly, many among the 1.6 billion are absolute hypocrites. They lack the absolute and sincere willingness to free Palestine and the Palestinians from the clutch of the 13 million,” Azhar said.
He added that there has been no proper plan, if any, from Muslim leaders and nations other than making fiery speeches.
Azhar then asked Najib to accept the fact that social media tools, such as Twitter and Facebook, through which he has “voiced his disdain against the 13 million”, is owned by the 13 million.
He also made the distinction of how the Jews now hold economic power and indirectly, political power, including among Muslim leaders.
“They, themselves, rely on the Jews and the friends of the Jews, to make money and to pursue their selfish agenda. They lack altruism,” he said.
Azhar explained how the Jews had plotted their way back from the “pogrom and holocaust” to persevere and eventually gain “world dominance”.
“They did that, first by gaining control of the economy through the financial system, international trade, properties and the world’s essential productions.
“Then, with the wealth that they created, and the essential services that they excel in and even monopolise, they made themselves indespensable to everything that moves in this world, including politicians who were too eager to pursue their own agenda, even at the expense of the Palestinian cause.
“With that, they become an absolute necessity. With that they control the politicians and the politics,” he said
Azhad added that there were no fiery speeches or “sad poems” involved in the Jews’ efforts.
“They had a plan. They worked to execute that plan quietly. And that is why, the 1.6 billion ‘lost’ the plot. And they ‘lost’ to the 13 million.”
The further Muslims are from Israel (and therefore the Western media limelight), the more free they are to be public about their antisemitism. But make no mistake - deep down, the self-loathing and shame that came from weak, lowly Jews defeating the Muslims to gain Israel is the driving force behind all the political moves of the Muslim world towards Israel, and Palestinians are merely pawns.

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Friday, December 22, 2017

12/22 Links Pt2: Phillips: The true presidential collusion scandal; Top 12 BDS Fails of 2017; That mental illness problem again.....

From Ian:
Melanie Phillips: Straws in the wind or a dangerous delusion?
In Jerusalem this week, a touching film was screened about the Jews of Iraq. In Remember Baghdad, sensitively directed by British filmmaker Fiona Murphy, five Iraqi Jewish families look back at a scarcely imaginable time when Jews lived and prospered in Baghdad before persecution and massacres drove them out of the country.

One of these exiles, London resident Edwin Shuker, has recently made the deeply quixotic gesture of buying a house in Erbil, the embattled Kurdish city. As he emotionally explains, he feels a duty to reestablish a connection, however small, with ancient Babylon, which 2,500 years ago was home to one of the most ancient Jewish communities in the world.

No less striking is the reaction to this film from Iraqis themselves.

Earlier this month, it was screened at the British Academy in London to a mainly Iraqi Muslim audience, including a senior delegation from the Iraqi Embassy.

According to David Dangoor, a prominent Iraqi Jewish exile who also lives in London, the Iraqi ambassador’s political adviser said at the screening that, with the defeat of ISIS and extremism, the country is intent on pushing tolerance and diversity. Other members of the audience, said Dangoor, made very positive comments about Iraqi Jews.

There are other straws in the wind.

Last December, the Iraq Society of London’s Imperial College held an Iraq Day sponsored by the Iraqi Embassy at which the ambassador insisted that Iraqi Jews should have a stand. Although this sported many books about their lost community and related subjects all saying “printed in Israel,” Dangoor says it was the most popular of all the displays and its books all sold out.

Some Iraqi exiles scoff at the suggestion that Iraqi Muslims are now warming toward the Jews and Israel. Nevertheless, the Arab Muslim world is changing in startling ways.
Sohrab Ahmari: Swedish Secularism Targets Jewish Homeschoolers
The firebombing of a synagogue in Gothenburg thrust Sweden’s anti-Semitism crisis into global headlines. For years, Swedish Jews have lived in fear of such violence, which is almost always perpetrated by the country’s large and ill-assimilated Muslim minority. According to a 2013 European Union study, four out of five Jews decline to publicly identify themselves as Jewish in Sweden–a damning indictment of a country that likes to portray itself as one of the Continent’s most tolerant.

Street-level thuggery isn’t the only source of the crisis. As if Molotov cocktails and mobs chanting “we will shoot the Jews” weren’t enough, Swedish Jews also find themselves pressed by the reigning securalism. The Swedish state is full of solicitude for Jewish citizens in the wake of anti-Semitic attacks. But it also seeks to limit their freedom to practice their faith.

Consider Rabbi Alexander Namdar and his six-year battle to homeschool the four youngest of his 11 children in Sweden. The rabbi and his wife, Leah, arrived in the country in 1991 as emissaries of the Chabad movement, and they founded its first outpost in Scandinavia. Their center now serves some 4,000 Jews in Gothenburg, offering religious education, holding prayer and holy-day activities, and promoting Jewish life and culture in the city.

When it came to educating their own children, the public system was out of the question. The public schools were religiously inadequate and, more important, physically unsafe for Jews. Private schools were no better. All schools, including “private” and religious schools, are government-funded in Sweden, and therefore required to accept all-comers. For the Namdars, then, homeschooling was the only way to ensure their school-age children’s security and the Jewish character of their education.
Caroline Glick: Israel’s learning disabled Right
It is an iron rule of Israeli politics regularly disregarded by the political Right that left-wing parties govern from the Left, not the Right; center-left parties govern from the Left, not from the Center.

Despite the axiomatic nature of this rule, time after time, politicians and public figures on the Right have ignored it. Periodically, they make light of the distinction between governments run by their political camp and governments run by their leftist opponents.

To their credit, the converse is never true. Leftist politicians and activists never delude themselves that they are better off in the opposition. They always prefer governments led by their own camp to governments led by the Right.

For several years, this pathology unique to the political Right laid dormant – never entirely gone, but out of sight. Today, the Right’s pathological refusal to recognize that it is better off in charge than in the opposition is making a political comeback.

For the past month, a rapidly growing chorus of columnists and politicians – all of whom dwell on either the right-wing or left-wing margins of the nationalist camp – have decided to join the Left in its assault against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and call either directly or indirectly from his ouster from office.

The Left – like its rightist followers – characterizes its anti-Netanyahu campaign as an anti-corruption campaign.

  • Friday, December 22, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

EoZ top tweets of the week

Here are my top tweets of the week, sorted by number of impressions.

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12/22 Links Pt1: There Is No ‘United Nations.’ So Let’s Stop Paying For It.; Daniel P. Moynihan (Feb. 1, 1981): “Joining the Jackals”

From Ian:
Michael J. Knowles: There Is No ‘United Nations.’ So Let’s Stop Paying For It.
In 1975, the U.N. adopted the resolution, “Zionism is racism.” In 2011, the U.N. General Assembly held a moment of silence to honor North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il. In 2017, it condemned the United States for establishing an embassy in a member nation’s capital city. It wasn't always like this. During its founding period, the United Nations possessed greater moral clarity because it limited membership to countries that had declared war against the Axis powers in the Second World War. The modern U.N. bears no resemblance to that body.

More than 20 years ago, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton explained the relation between the United States and the United Nations with characteristic bluntness. “The League of Nations was a failure because the United States did not participate. The United Nations would be a failure if the United States did not participate,” he observed. “There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that’s the United States, when it suits our interest.”

The image of a United Nations that does not rely for its very survival on the goodwill of the United States is a dangerous fiction that empowers the worst actors on earth and conflates their vicious self-interest with American moral clarity. It’s time to defund the fantasy. When next the ingrate children leading U.N. member states desire our blood and treasure, as they constantly do, they can come to us and beg.
Daniel P. Moynihan (Feb. 1, 1981): “Joining the Jackals”
The chain of resolutions passed in condemnation of Israel by the Security Council in 1979-80 forms a complex story. Yet to follow it only a single point needs to be understood. It is that, as a direct result of American policy, the Security Council was allowed to degenerate to the condition of the General Assembly.

Under the UN Charter the General Assembly reaches decisions by majority vote, but its decisions are purely recommendatory (Article 10). By contrast, the Security Council has power. In situations where it determines that there is a “threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression,” the Council “shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken. . . .” These include “such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary. . . .” The Security Council, in a word, may make war. And for that reason the Security Council does not operate by majority vote. Any permanent member may veto any action, simply by voting No. However, in the face of the increasingly vicious Soviet-Arab assaults that followed Camp David, the United States began to abstain. I have represented the United States on the Security Council; I have served as President of the Security Council. I state as a matter of plain and universally understood fact that for the United States to abstain on a Security Council resolution concerning Israel is the equivalent of acquiescing.

The first abstention in the sequence we are now tracing occurred on March 22, 1979 when the Council, in a resolution directed against Israel, established a three-member commission “to examine the situation relating to establishments in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.” The phrasing here was ominous: “Arab territories . . . including Jerusalem.” Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. How could its capital be in the territory of others?

Equally ominous, although at this point restrained, was the reaffirmation of earlier Council statements that the Fourth Geneva Convention “is applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem” and the strict injunction upon Israel “as the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention.” Now, the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War is one of a series of treaties designed to codify the behavior of Nazi Germany and make such behavior criminal under international law. This particular convention applied to the Nazi practice of deporting or murdering vast numbers of persons in Western Poland—as at Auschwitz—and plans for settling the territory with Germans. The assertion that the Geneva Convention also applied to the West Bank played, of course, perfectly into the Soviet propaganda position that “Zionism is present-day fascism.”
Ben Shapiro: BREAKING: U.N. Votes 128-9 To Declare Trump's Jerusalem Embassy 'Null And Void'; ALSO BREAKING: Who Gives A S***
On Thursday, the United Nations General Assembly voted 128-9 to condemn the United States for President Trump’s decision to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They labeled the policy “null and void.” There were also 35 absentions. The nine countries voting no were the United States, Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Togo, Micronesia, Palau, Nauru, and the Marshall Islands. The 35 abstentions were mainly centered in Eastern Europe. 21 countries didn’t bother voting.

The vote was hailed by the Left as evidence of . . . something. It’s really just the latest indicator that the United Nations is the Star Wars cantina of international politics — it would be difficult to find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Here’s the breakdown on U.N. resolutions over the past few years, thanks to UN Watch:


The United Nations was always a garbage idea — the very notion of countries where citizens have been reduced to eating dogs (Venezeula) or thrown in jail for dissent (Turkey) declaring American sovereign policy “null and void” with regard to reinforcing a historical and verifiable truth is insulting. The foreign community has zero control over our foreign policy, and particularly over our placement of our embassy.

Fortunately, we now have a list of countries to which President Trump can minimize funding — and we can reconsider giving money to the U.N. in the first place. U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has officially been appointed Daily Wire spirit animal, said as much:
CNN’s Tapper: Many Countries Voting against U.S. on Jerusalem Have “Questionable Records”
A number of countries supporting Thursday’s United Nations General Assembly vote against President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital have “questionable records of their own,” Jake Tapper said in a commentary during his show The Lead on CNN.

Tapper singled out critics such as Venezuela, Syria, Yemen and North Korea, all of whose citizens suffer from tyranny and war.

“The U.S. imperils global peace says the representative of Venezuela, a country in a humanitarian disaster,” Tapper observed. After noting that Venezuelans are suffering from widespread hunger, Tapper asked, “On what moral platform does the government of Venezuela stand today?”

Tapper also rejected criticism of the U.S. position on Jerusalem from Syria noting, “We’re in the seventh year of the brutal Syrian civil war that’s killed half a million people and displaced millions. Syrian President Bashar al Assad has used chemical weapons against his own citizens including children.”

Yemen, which along with Turkey drafted the resolution criticizing the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem, is “seemingly more focused at least during the speech on where the U.S. puts it’s embassy on Israel than on the 7 million Yemenis on the brink of starvation in that country’s civil war,” Tapper said.
Critics with questionable records condemn US


  • Friday, December 22, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

Arab antisemites upset at Turkish embassy in Israel giving Chanukah greetings



Last week, the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv tweeted Chanukah greetings:


Nothing about Israel, just greetings for Chanukah.

The responses that came in Arabic are nearly all insulting, because acknowledging a Jewish holiday means, to many Arabs, being pro-Israel.

So responses ranged from standard insults to things like this:


Arab media is covering this without any hint of their usual meme that Jews are good, Israelis are bad.

Clearly, these Arabs haven't received the memo that they supposedly love Jews and hate Zionists.





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  • Friday, December 22, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

UNRWA claims (and takes funds) for 450,000 "refugees" in Lebanon. There are only 174,000 left.

From AP:
The first official census of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon has revealed that there are 174,422 Palestinians now living in Lebanon, a figure almost two thirds less than previously estimated.

The Palestinians — both original refugees and their descendants — were believed to number about 450,000 but tens of thousands emigrated from Lebanon in over the past decades, seeking better opportunities.

The census released Thursday was conducted by the Lebanese Central Administration of Statistics and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
Even though UNRWA knows how many Palestinians are in Lebanon and how many left, it claims that there are 450,000 "registered Palestine refugees" in the country - because it wants to screw the world out of more money.

I looked at this in 2012, when it was thought that there were still 260,000 Palestinians actually in Lebanon in a study that UNRWA itself funded - and buried.

Lebanon is where the world's hypocrisy about Palestinians is in full view. A country whose very laws are discriminatory against Palestinians, where Palestinians are barred from getting many jobs or to own land, where they are pushed into overcrowded camps where they are not allowed to build and that are not allowed to expand.

And in one case, the camp is literally surrounded by a brand new wall, complete with watchtowers, making it a literal prison. Now we know that the 100,000 Palestinians in this prison are more than half the total Palestinian population in Lebanon!

The plight of Palestinians in Lebanon is worse than in Gaza. No wonder two thirds of them have fled to wherever they could go.

Yet popular artists still perform in Lebanon without anyone complaining about "apartheid." There are few articles and no conferences and no UN resolutions to help these Palestinians.

Anyone who says they care about Palestinian suffering and who never mentions their oppression in Lebanon (and Syria and Jordan and Egypt) doesn't really care about Palestinians.



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Palestinians destroying ancient Herodian and Hashmonean antiquities - literally bulldozing Jewish history

We've discussed the The Temple Mount Sifting Project before:
The Temple Mount Sifting Project (formerly known as the Temple Mount Salvage Operation) is an Israeli archaeological project begun in 2005 dedicated to recovering archaeological artifacts from 400 truckloads of topsoil removed from the Temple Mount by the Waqf during the construction of the underground el-Marwani Mosque from 1996 to 1999.[1] The project is under the academic auspices of Bar Ilan University and until 2017 was funded by the Ir David Foundation and Israel Exploration Society.
The destruction of so many tons of property from the Temple Mount was the biggest archaeological crime in history.

The project webpage is now warning of other large-scale destruction of Jewish history by Palestinians, ISIS-style.




In full view of people passing on the highway 90, Palestinians are using bulldozers and other heavy equipment to destroy Second Temple-era Jewish settlements in order to build a new village.

This is all happening in Area B, under Palestinian administrative control.

Moreover, it looks like Palestinian antiquities thieves are working in the area at night to steal whatever ancient artifacts they can find to sell on the market.

The article notes that similar destruction has recently begun  in the area of ​​the Hasmonean palaces in Jericho.

These areas are under Israeli military control, but complaints have gone unheeded. At a time that Jerusalem's Jewish history is in the news, the Israeli government is allowing Jewish history in Judea and Samaria to be wantonly destroyed.

In Israel, any construction project must be checked out - and stopped or modified, if necessary - by archaeologists to see if anything of historic value would be destroyed. Muslim artifacts are protected as well as Jewish ones.

The Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, wants to destroy any vestiges of Jewish history from areas under its control.

This is another crime being done in broad daylight.

(h/t Yoel)
 

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Thursday, December 21, 2017

  • Thursday, December 21, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

Donate to EoZ!

(Post pinned to the top of the blog, scroll down for newer articles.)


It is the end of the year, and this site continues to be an integral part of the pro-Zionist online discourse.

1.7 million direct page views this year. Over 25,000 Twitter followers. My research quoted in newspapers. And even a symposium in Jerusalem this year.

EoZ takes a great deal of time and money. Also, unlike practically every other website, I try to pay at least a token amount to my columnists who do such a good job.

Please help support EoZ and ensure that we can continue to grow and educate the world on the truth about Israel and the Arab world.

And thanks again for all your support!





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Have a great holiday season and thanks again!



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12/21 Links Pt2: The 10 most insane UN anti-Israel actions of 2017; Is The Liberal Media Giving Linda Sarsour A Pass On A Sexual Assault Cover-Up?

From Ian:
UN defies Trump, rejects US recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli capital by 128-9
Non-binding General Assembly motion brands US president's decision on holy city 'null and void'; US envoy Haley notes '65 countries refused to condemn the United States'
The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday defied warnings from the United States and overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and calling on countries not to move their diplomatic missions to the city.

A total of 128 countries voted in favor of the text, defying the threats — that were forcefully reiterated in an address before the vote by US envoy Nikki Haley — to cut aid to countries that opposed the motion.

Nine countries — the US, Israel, Togo, Micronesia, Guatemala, Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands and Honduras — voted against the resolution.

There were 35 abstentions, including a number of countries that had been widely expected to support the move, such as Colombia, Mexico, Malawi and Rwanda. A further 21 countries did not vote at all.

By abstaining, Hungary, Croatia, Latvia, Romania and the Czech Republic broke European Union consensus on the vote. The EU had previously vehemently rejected any attempt to change Jerusalem’s status in the absence of a final peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians.

Haley tweeted after the vote that “65 countries refused to condemn the United States” — totaling the no votes, the abstentions and the no-shows.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, in a video, that “Israel completely rejects this preposterous resolution. Jerusalem is our capital — always was, always will be.” However, he added, “I do appreciate the fact that a growing number of countries refuse to participate in this theater of the absurd.” He thanked US President Donald Trump and Haley for their “stalwart defense” of Israel and the truth.

Full text of Nikki Haley’s speech to UN General Assembly on Jerusalem




Hillel Neuer: The 10 most insane UN anti-Israel actions of 2017
5. Dubravka Simonovic, the U.N. expert on violence against women, visited Israel and the territories and concluded: When Palestinian men beat their wives, it’s Israel’s fault.

UN Watch’s executive director took the floor to challenge the U.N. investigator’s report: “Why did you fail to mention that official Palestinian TV regularly broadcasts Islamic preachers who tell the people how to beat their wives?”

In reaction, the Egyptian chair of the meeting broke with parliamentary protocol: “I would like to say thank you, but I can’t,” said Ambassador Amr Ramadan. “Because I think that you need to respect this council more.”

4. In its ritual annual scapegoating of the Jewish state, the UN General Assembly adopted 20 one-sided resolutions against Israel—and only 6 resolutions on the rest of the world combined. Tomorrow, at an emergency meeting called by the Arab and Islamic states to condemn the United States over its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a 21st resolution will be adopted criticizing the Jewish state.

3. UNESCO negated its mandate to protect world heritage by adopting a resolution recognizing Hebron—second holiest city in Judaism because of the Tomb of the Patriarchs—as a Palestinian world heritage site.

UN Watch revealed that UNESCO had rejected its own experts’ advice, who opposed the Palestinian nomination on account of failing to properly recognize Hebron’s Jewish and Christian heritage.

2. UNRWA launched a global campaign showing the picture of an 11-year-old girl, “Aya from Gaza,” in a bombed-out building—portraying Israel as a cruel oppressor of Palestinian children—but UN Watch exposed it as a fraud: the photo was actually from Syria. The story went viral online. UNRWA suffered massive embarrassment, and was forced to remove the photo worldwide.

1. The office of U.N. human rights commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein spent the past year preparing to inflame the anti-Israel boycott campaign by drawing up a blacklist of companies that do business in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and other Jewish communities over the 1949 armistice line. The report is due to be submitted this month, and presented before the council in March. UN Watch will take the lead in countering the blacklist, what Nikki Haley this week called the “ugly creation” of the UNHRC.

  • Thursday, December 21, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

Palestinian writer describes his people as "12 million intercontinental missiles"

Adnan al Sabah, who lives in Jenin, writes an article for the Arab Media Internet Network  about what has worked for Palestinians and what hasn't, to figure out why they still haven't managed to make any progress.

He starts off his essay as if he might actually be saying something daring:

Why do we fight the largest military arsenal in the Middle East with worn or hand-made guns? In a century, we continue to offer victims after victims, and we are happy to present ourselves as champions and lovers of death. We speak with pride about victories here and there despite the enormity of the catastrophe and without shame either for ourselves or for the world around us.
So Sabah decides to look at the history of Palestinian "resistance" and see what lessons can be learned.

He starts with their first murderous rampage in 1920 and goes on from there, looking at the impotence of the murder sprees and terror attacks in 1921, 1929, 1936 and the more recent intifadas. Yet he despairs - why haven't these moves worked? And now, horror of horrors, Arab states no longer want to fight wars with Israel.

What to do?

Sabah says that all 12 million Palestinians must get off their seats and walk, "barechested," and overrrun Israel. After all, Israel cannot possibly kill 12 million people, right?

As he writes it, "How many people can [an Israeli soldier] kill before he is trampled by the masses of men, women, children and the elderly, sick, disabled, and old?"

Tellingly, he refers to all 12 million alleged Palestinians as "12 million intercontinental missiles." This is exactly how the Arab leaders have traditionally looked at Palestinians - not as people but as cannon fodder, as pawns who can be used for propaganda purposes against Israel. Certainly not as human beings with human rights, at least not under Arab rule.

Of course, the idea that Palestinians must compromise and make peace with Israel so these millions would not have to be human weapons never occurs to Sabah - nor does it occur, as far as I can tell from over a decade of reading Arabic media, does it ever occur to a single Palestinian Arab published writer in Arabic.



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The Obama-Hezbollah-Iran crime family (Vic Rosenthal)


A stunning investigative report by Josh Meyer in Politico has revealed that the Obama Administration interfered with and then shut down a campaign by the Drug Enforcement Agency and other law enforcement agencies against a billion-dollar drug and weapons trafficking empire run by Hezbollah, in order to keep from damaging relations with Iran.
The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

Sounds like precisely the sort of operation that the civilized world should be carrying out against those who want to destroy it. The administration apparently didn’t see it that way:
But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.

The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.

 “This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” said David Asher, who helped establish and oversee Project Cassandra as a Defense Department illicit finance analyst. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”

The conjecture is that this was done in order to protect the developing nuclear deal with Iran:
Asher, for one, said Obama administration officials expressed concerns to him about alienating Tehran before, during and after the Iran nuclear deal negotiations. This was, he said, part of an effort to “defang, defund and undermine the investigations that were involving Iran and Hezbollah,” he said.

“The closer we got to the [Iran deal], the more these activities went away,” Asher said. “So much of the capability, whether it was special operations, whether it was law enforcement, whether it was [Treasury] designations — even the capacity, the personnel assigned to this mission — it was assiduously drained, almost to the last drop, by the end of the Obama administration.”

There is much more. The report is well-sourced and clearly documents a consistent policy to ignore criminal and terrorist activity by Iran’s Hezbollah proxy, doubtless in response to signals from Iran.

This policy will doubtless be justified by those responsible on the grounds that the Iranian nuclear deal was of such major importance to the US that nothing could be allowed to interfere with it – assuming that they are ever called on it, whichthe mainstream media doesn’t seem to be interested in doing (in the US, only Fox News and conservative media have covered it, at least so far).

The nuclear deal itself was the culmination of a process that started in 2006, when James Baker and Lee Hamilton, along with a young assistant named Ben Rhodes, who would later attain great influence as a foreign policy adviser and speechwriter for Barack Obama, produced the Iraq Study Commission report. The report advised persuading Israel to give the Golan heights to Syria and Judea and Samaria to the PLO, in return for which Iran and Syria would stop helping Iraqi insurgents kill Americans.

Although further developments showed the plan to be unworkable, Obama never gave up on the idea of “engagement” (that is, siding with) Iran in the maelstrom of Mideast conflicts. In the process, he prevented Israel from destroying Iran’s nuclear program and allowed Bashar al-Assad’s survival as Syrian ruler, as well as the entry of Russia as a major player in the Syrian conflict. The nuclear deal, rather than preventing Iran from developing deliverable nuclear weapons, actually facilitated its progress and protected it from interference by Israel or anyone else. As a side benefit, it freed up billions of dollars of Iranian money that had been embargoed after the 1979 revolution, and even paid additional hundreds of millions of dollars in cash as ransom for Americans being held in Iran.

Naturally, Iran immediately used its windfall to build up its armed proxies, Hezbollah and the Iraqi Shiite militias that have done much of the fighting in Syria on behalf of Assad. It strengthened its terrorist cells in South and Central America, and almost certainly in the heart of the US.

The imprimatur placed on the deal by the UN Security Council weakened the limitation on ballistic missile development formerly in place, and Iran is spending some of its gains on missiles that can reach most of Europe, and at some point, the USA. Iranians haven’t stopped chanting “death to America,” although now the “devil” they hate is Trump.

Obama’s was the most consistently anti-Israel administration since the founding of the state of Israel, considering the deliberate insults and provocations directed at Israel’s PM, its pressure to make dangerous concessions to the Palestinians  with no reciprocity, its lack of support and even sabotage of Israel in her periodic conflicts with Hamas, its nuclear deal, and its lame-duck abstention on an anti-Israel Security Council resolution. But the administration’s spin machine argues that its policy is, in the final analysis, favorable to American interests.

It’s hard to see how. As time has passed and the weaknesses of the deal became more and more evident, as Iran has become more powerful and US influence in the region has waned, as direct threats to the US (both from Iran and from its ally North Korea) become more apparent, it is harder and harder to maintain this fiction. The revelations contained in the Politico report make it even more difficult than before. Hezbollah’s narco-terrorism has a dual purpose. It not only pays for its weapons and murderous activities, the drugs it sells rip at the fabric of our society.

I have an acquaintance, a sweet Jewish grandmother, who liked to post pictures of the Obamas on Facebook with comments about how much “class” they had. Once she even commented “I love my President!” and she would not listen to anything negative about him. She managed to “love” him while his policies were assisting  terrorists who were killing Americans in Iraq and Jews in Israel. But those things were far away.

It would be interesting to ask how she feels about him having helped to bring drugs to her grandchildren’s schools.

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12/21 Links Pt1: Shapiro: Jerusalem Move Blows Up Mideast Myths; Lake: Nikki Haley Confronts the U.N.'s 'Jackals'; Bibi: UN is a 'House of Lies'

From Ian:
Ben Shapiro: Jerusalem Move Blows Up Mideast Myths
Recognizing this truth means setting a serious groundwork for peace. No divorce can be negotiated without a common frame of negotiable items. Jerusalem is not negotiable. End of story. Trump recognized that, and in doing so, he undermined the chief rationale driving Palestinian terrorism: the delusional hope that spilling enough blood would cause the West to push Israel into surrendering its spiritual and physical capital.

Trump’s move also fostered peace by formally recognizing that Israel’s new alliances with Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia against Iran are more important than any religious dispute over Jerusalem. There have been no serious protests from any of those governments — each of which attacked Israel in 1948, 1967 and 1973. Those governments now recognize that Israel is an important strategic ally in the region.

The lack of blowback from Trump’s decision has left only two groups angry: Democrats and the media. Democrats are angry because they have been publicly humiliated: The Senate voted 90-0 to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital not six months ago, and yet Democrats were now forced to denounce Trump for taking their words seriously. The media are angry because they have spent years building the myth that conflict in the Middle East centers on Israeli intransigence. Now it’s clear that it was Muslim intransigence all along that caused conflict, and that Muslim willingness to side with Israel against Iran supersedes religious conflict.

So, well done, President Trump. And thank you for speaking plain truth and acting bravely when most were willing to offer empty only verbiage backed by inaction and fear.
Eli Lake: Nikki Haley Confronts the U.N.'s 'Jackals'
When U.N. member states vote Thursday on a resolution condemning America's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Ambassador Nikki Haley will be watching. As she tweeted Tuesday, "The U.S. will be taking names."

President Donald Trump endorsed the threat Wednesday at the opening of a cabinet meeting, suggesting that countries that vote against the U.S. in the U.N. General Assembly will potentially lose foreign assistance.

It's easy to shrug off this bravado. The U.N. provides members with an accounting of all votes in the General Assembly, so there's no need to "take names." What's more, it's only a symbolic resolution. Haley vetoed a potentially substantive one on Monday at the U.N. Security Council.

But dismissing Haley's threat misses the significance of Trump's course correction at the United Nations. Trump's predecessor used the U.N. to validate American foreign policy. Barack Obama sought a Security Council resolution to intervene in Libya -- without bothering to get Congress to authorize that military action. And while he didn't end up going to the U.N. when a rampage of the Islamic State in 2014 led him to re-intervene in Iraq and Syria, Obama generally placed great weight on the U.N.'s approval of U.S. foreign policy. He loathed using America's veto to protect Israel from the inevitable one-sided pro-Palestinian resolutions that burble out of Turtle Bay.

When Obama's envoys did exercise that veto, the administration made sure to signal that it agreed with the principal of condemning Israeli settlements, but opposed the venue. Haley's predecessor, Samantha Power, finally did abstain from a resolution that declared East Jerusalem occupied territory a year ago. She did so -- to a standing ovation at the U.N. Security Council -- when Obama had less than a month left in office.
Trump Tells Countries Favoring U.N. Resolution Against His Jerusalem Decision: I’ll Cut Off Your Financial Aid
On Wednesday, President Trump, who absolutely refuses to be bullied by countries around the world that are vilifying him for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, struck back.

The U.N. General Assembly is holding an emergency session on Thursday that was requested by Arab and Muslim countries to vote on a draft resolution calling for Trump to rescind his decision.

Trump let them have it with both barrels, asserting, "They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we're watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care.”

On Monday, the 15-member U.N. Security Council voted on an Egyptian-drafted resolution that expressed "deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem." Only the U.S. voted against the resolution.

The five permanent members of the Security Council are the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, China, and the Russian Federation. The current non-permanent members are Bolivia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Senegal, Sweden, Ukraine, and Uruguay.

Israel has never sat on the Security Council since it was established in 1946, while Iran, Cuba, Syria, Iraq and Pakistan have all had at least one turn.

On Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley issued a letter to dozens of U.N. states bluntly stating that Trump had asked her to "report back on those countries who voted against us."

Haley followed with a terse Twitter message: "The U.S. will be taking names."


Palestinian minister slams US ‘threats’ ahead of UN Jerusalem vote
Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki on Wednesday accused Washington of “threatening” member countries of the UN General Assembly ahead of a vote on rejecting the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Malki said American officials were “committing another mistake when they have distributed this famous letter trying to threaten countries, (and) threaten their sovereign decision to choose how to vote.”

He spoke at a press conference with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in Istanbul, shortly before both men left for New York.

On Tuesday, Nikki Haley, Washington’s UN envoy, warned countries that she would report back to US President Donald Trump with the names of those who supported a draft resolution rejecting the US recognition.

The UN General Assembly will hold an emergency session on Thursday to vote on the proposed measure, after the US vetoed a similar resolution for the Security Council.

“This is really a new definition of world order in politics and it seems that the American administration… are putting their stamp on a new political reality that many countries will reject,” Malki said.

Turkey and Yemen requested the urgent meeting on behalf of the Arab group of countries and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The two countries circulated a draft resolution on Tuesday that mirrors the vetoed measure, reaffirming that any decision on the status of Jerusalem has no legal effect and must be rescinded.

Malki said the UN session would show “how many countries will opt to vote with their conscience.”

“They will vote for justice and they will vote in favor of that resolution that was presented by both Yemen and Turkey on behalf of the Arab group and OIC,” he said.

My diaspora Hanukah vs my Israeli Hanukah (Forest Rain)



My American Hanukah’s were tainted by Christmas. Without even realizing it, the way my family celebrated Hanukah was a reflection, not of our Jewish holiday or it’s true meaning but rather of the holiday that our Christian friends and neighbors were celebrating.

The homes of our Christian friends were covered in Christmas decorations. Our home was covered in Hanukah decorations. They had snowflakes pasted on the windows and so did we. They had banners that said: “Merry Christmas”. We had banners that said “Happy Hanukah”. My Christian friends had presents under the Christmas tree. I had eight nights of presents (on the table). Their holiday was fun and so was mine.

And while I grew up understanding the concept of Christmas I don’t think I fully understood the concept of Hanukah. There is an almost unfathomable chasm between celebrating a great miracle that happened THERE and a great miracle that happened HERE.

My diaspora Hanukah vs my Israeli Hanukah illustrate how much influence Israel has on my Jewish identity.
While it is difficult to imagine living in the time of the Maccabees and being forced to bow down to Greek idols it is easy for me to identify with Jewish warriors who refuse to bend before the enemy. I don’t have to imagine them. I live with them.

In Israel my Hanukah celebrations are nothing like the celebrations of my American childhood.
While I still have the box of Hanukah decorations from the USA, I have not opened it in years. I once showed the kids the bizarre foreign dreidels that have the wrong letters on them – instead of saying what they had always seen, the letters that stand for “A great miracle happened HERE,” my American dreidels say “A great miracle happened THERE.”

In Israel kids have vacation from school during Hanukah but parents go to work. The holiday is celebrated in the evening, lighting candles together, eating traditional food. It is a time of joy, fun and games. At the same time, it is not the complete break from normal routine that other holidays are.

Hanukah is a holiday, a celebration of life, of faith, of tenacity and most of all – sovereignty. This is a holiday of the Nation of Israel, a celebration of a small indigenous people who managed to retake our land from a foreign occupying power much stronger than ourselves. This is a celebration in gratitude for the God of Israel who fought wars for our ancestors and created miracles for them.

In Israel this concept is not theoretical or something of a mythological past. It’s the reality we live every day, something that is very difficult to understand without actually experiencing.

I live in a neighborhood that is full of secular Jews (like myself). Every family celebrates the holiday in their own way but the celebrations are insular. Our neighborhood has much the same atmosphere as it always does.

In search for stronger experience of the Jewish side of Hanukah I took a walk through the Orthodox neighborhood of Haifa. There, the atmosphere was completely different.

As I walked down the street my nose was filled with the smell of cooking oil and potatoes. Latkes. In home after home mothers were cooking.

The sun had gone down but it was not yet completely dark. Window after window opened and fathers, surrounded by their children lit their Hanukiah. The quiet neighborhood was filled with the sound of small voices singing.

Maoz Tzur, is a song everyone sings after they light their Hanukiah. Very often secular families sing only the first verse. As I walked, I heard verses I had never heard sung before – they spoke of being saved from the soldiers of Pharaoh, being returned to Israel from exile in Babylon, of Haman who, instead of succeeding in his plot to have all the Jews in ancient Persia slaughtered was himself killed, of the oppression of the Greeks in the days of the Maccabees and of the miracle of Hanukah.

Not one miracle but countless miracles. Salvation from genocide not once but many, many times over. Coming back to our land not once, but again and again.

I walked past windows glowing with the lights of Hanukah. The lights remind us of the miracle of survival, of the light that should have gone out but didn’t. Jews around the world celebrate this miracle with the same ritual lights but there is something about celebrating in Israel that is different.

My Israel Hanukah has nothing to do with the holiday of my Christian friends and neighbors. It has everything to do with the land I am walking on.


Being alive, Jewish and free in our own land, the land of our ancestors, is nothing short of miraculous. 

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  • Thursday, December 21, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

Waqf reportedly stopped a Jew in Muslim disguise from entering Temple Mount

Arabic media are publishing this photo:



According to their reports, this is a "militant" Jew who tried to sneak onto the Temple Mount by walking in through the Cotton Merchants Gate. He dressed up as a Muslim.

The Waqf asked Israeli police to arrest the man. It is unclear if that happened.

The Islamic extremists who control the holiest site in Judaism are very concerned any time any Jew wants to peacefully visit. They congratulate themselves on stopping this person who apparently just wanted to visit without waiting in the long lines that are at the only gate where non-Muslims are allowed to enter at limited times.

The Waqf keeps statistics on Jewish "intrusions" on the Temple Mount, and according to them the number of Jewish visitors this year is 300%  more than in 2015.

Yesterday, the Waqf counted 83 "settlers" who ascended to Judaism's holiest spot.




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  • Thursday, December 21, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

Foreign minister of Bahrain says Jerusalem is a "side issue"

Khalid bin Ahmed is the foreign minister of Bahrain.

Yesterday he tweeted, "It's not helpful to pick a fight with the USA over side issues while we together fight the clear and present danger of The Theo-Fascist Islamic republic."

This public breaking of the message of unity on Jerusalem that the Palestinian leaders have been carefully cultivating has caused great anger and much coverage in the Arabic media.

Ma'an's headline was probably accurate when it slightly changed his words to say that he meant that not only Jerusalem but "Palestine is a side issue" in the Arab world.

It is true. At the same time that Arab leaders will mouth their support for Palestinians in forums like the UN, when the West isn't the audience they have been signaling their impatience and apathy towards the issue for years.

We noticed this as far back as 2008, as the Arab world already then was reluctant to pay their pledges to the Palestinian Authority (holding back some $700 million!) because the Hamas/Fatah split proved that the Palestinians don't have their own act together.

When asked to protest against Israel, sure, the Palestinian factions can speak with a unified voice, but they have no unity outside of hate for Israel. They can't agree on anything - not even when to hold elections.

The Arab world, faced with threats like ISIS and Iran and Syria as well as internal threats, has no patience for Palestinians or their whining. The Gulf countries have been making their positions clear in their actions for quite a long time, and now they are starting to say the same things in English.

The Palestinians, drunk with how successful their UN initiatives are, are willfully blind towards this long term trend. And one day in the not too distant future, they will wonder whatever happened to their political power in the Arab world.


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Wednesday, December 20, 2017

  • Wednesday, December 20, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

Did Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh want to die so his family would get "martyr" money? (UPDATE)



In my previous post on the double-amputee Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh who was killed in Gaza last week, I quoted RT which interviewed the family:

The Palestinian’s brother told Ruptly that Thurayeh knew he would not be coming back from the protest alive. “Yesterday my brother said to me while he was eating dinner us: ‘Brother, forgive me. This is the last night you will see me. And you, my mother, forgive me, and you my sisters, you all forgive me...’
“He kissed the hand and the leg of my father and said to him: Father, forgive me. This is the last night you will see me, as I intend to be a martyr. I am bored of this life, I have no legs and I have nothing. I want to die and rest from life.”
His mother told Ruptly that her son wanted to “sacrifice himself for the homeland,” adding that “he has become a martyr.” His father said that his son died for Jerusalem.
So did he plan his own death - perhaps even at the hands of Hamas?

 A couple of other pieces of information might indicate that martyrdom wasn't his main goal - providing for his family was.

Abu Thurayeh was profiled in a couple of Arabic media outlets two years ago.
Ibrahim is now washing cars, from his wheelchair, taking an hour to wash each car.

"I had to work to face the deteriorating reality of my family, despite the looks I get from neighbors and pedestrians," said Ibrahim, 27, to Watan. "I start my day from 9 am, go back late at night, and contribute to paying my university fees for my sister, in addition to the expenses of the house."

The Ibrahim family consists of a father with a disability, a mother who is sick with high blood pressure and diabetes, and two brothers and six sisters, one of whom is studying at the university, hoping to improve the family's living conditions after graduation.

Ibrahim hopes to find a girl who accepts marriage despite his health and life, and to become a family.

He also lives in a modest house in the Shati refugee camp (west of Gaza City). "I get paid 1,000 shekels a month, 700 of them for rent, and the rest will be paid for previous debts."
 He felt he had to take care of his family, and he wasn't making nearly enough money washing cars.

Families of "martyrs" get about $1000 a month, or 3500 shekels. By getting killed, Abu Thurayeh is going to provide his family with 3.5 times the salary he made before his death.

That is a pretty powerful incentive, especially for someone who was depressed at not finding a wife and having no legs.

UPDATE: More evidence that Abu Thurayeh planned his death, from Mondoweiss:

The older bereaved brother, who took part in Ibrahim’s funeral, recalled for Mondoweiss their last conversation during breakfast last Wednesday. Ibrahim saw that the demonstrations were becoming deadly. “Mom, bro… please forgive me for any mistake I have ever did, I have lost my legs for my country and I think that is not enough, I must sacrifice my whole body for the sacrifice of the homeland,” Ibrahim said.
(h/t Adam L)

Also, keep in mind that according to his family, Abu Thurayeh went either every week or even every day to protest at the Gaza border. He obviously wasn't concerned that he was going to be shot and killed every other time. Only the day before he was actually killed did he express that desire.

So when his brother (in other interviews) points out that this is proof that Israel shoots disabled people...quite the contrary.

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Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



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