Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

12/26 Links Pt1: Trump’s Embassy Move Proved Abbas Doesn’t Want Peace; NYTs Admits That Embassy Move Didn’t Lead To Mass Violence

From Ian:

The United Nations was founded on lofty principles in the wake of the atrocities of World War II. Sadly, with two votes last week – the first in the Security Council on Monday and the second in an emergency session of the General Assembly – we witnessed just how far the institution has fallen.

The U.S. is a sovereign, democratic nation that lives by the rule of law. One of those laws, the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act, was passed in 1995, by a solid, bipartisan majority of 93 to 5 in the Senate and 374 to 37 in the House. A sovereign nation has the right to choose where to place its embassies. And yet, on Dec. 6, when U.S. President Donald Trump called for the United States to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the call was met with such hysteria in this venerable institution that one might think he had called for genocide.

These two U.N. votes, condemning Trump's recognition of Jerusalem, contradict the very foundations on which the U.N. was established. Article 2 (7) of the United Nations Charter specifically states that "nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state." This, however, did not prevent the frenzy against the U.S. for supporting its one democratic ally in the Middle East.

Before Thursday's vote in the General Assembly, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley valiantly said: "The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in this assembly. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world's largest contribution to the U.N., and when other member nations ask Washington to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit."

Why a small Central American nation became a trailblazer on Jerusalem

On Sunday, Guatemala became the first country after the US to announce its intention to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a move seen as tantamount to recognizing the city as Israel’s capital, though President Jimmy Morales’s statement included no explicit recognition.

Predictably, the Central American nation’s decision was castigated by the Palestinians and other Arab states and hailed in Israel as an act of deep friendship that marked the beginning of a new trend. Neighbor Honduras is said to be next in line. Like Guatemala, it also voted last week against the United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning the US’s December 6 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move its embassy there.

Other countries — Togo, Paraguay, Romania, Slovakia — are also said to be considering following in Guatemala’s footsteps in bucking decades-old diplomatic dogma to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

But what prompted a relatively small nation far removed from the Middle East and its problems to be the first to take the plunge after the US?

There are several reasons for Guatemala’s dramatic step. The country’s well-established historic friendship with Israel and ongoing deep security and trade ties are one key part of the story. The personal character of the country’s current leader is the other.

Seventy years ago, Guatemala’s ambassador to the UN, Dr. Jorge Garcia Granados, a member of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, played a crucial role in convincing Latin American countries to vote in favor of General Assembly Resolution 181, which called for the partition of Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

“It could be that without Guatemala, the resolution on that fateful day would not have passed, and history would be very different,” Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein told Morales during his November 2016 visit to Israel.

Israel says 10 more countries in talks about moving embassies to Jerusalem

In an interview with Israel Radio, she declined to say which states Israel was speaking with, but Channel 10 reported that the next country likely to announce an embassy move was Honduras.

Israel and Honduras, which borders Guatemala, have enjoyed very close ties over the past few years, and in 2016 signed an agreement under which Israel agreed to enhance the the Central American country’s armed forces in an unprecedented way, in order to fight organized crime.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was reelected earlier this month in a hotly disputed election. He is a graduate of MASHAV, Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation, and spent time in Israel.

Along with Guatemala, Honduras was one of nine nations that voted “no” last week with the United States when the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a non-binding resolution denouncing US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Unlike Guatemala, whose embassy was in Jerusalem from the 1950s until 1980, Honduras never had its embassy in Israel’s capital.

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein announced at a Likud party event Monday that the parliamentary heads of two other countries had spoken to him about moving their embassies from Tel Aviv. The Walla news site reported that representatives from Romania and Slovakia had expressed support for such a move and were working in their respective countries to effect it.

Other countries also reportedly in talks to move their embassies are South America’s Paraguay and the west African nation of Togo.

Are the Palestinians getting it?

The sky should have fallen. The gates of hell should have been forced open The Middle East should have plunged into even more chaos. The Jews should have had to pay dearly. It's been two weeks since the American decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and yet little or nothing has happened.

The Palestinian Arabs did not go out en masse to the streets to take part in violence, more worried about what they would lose by participating in terrorism and demonstrations (entry permits, work, freedom, housing, family members) than by “the occupation". Fifteen years ago, Israeli tanks re-entered Ramallah, Qalqiliya, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem. There had been suicide bombers, snipers, rockets, thousands of dead. Today, a few kids throwing rocks, the bad mood of the tour operators in Bethlehem and a very timid reaction from the Arab countries, the minimum possible.

What does all this tell us? That Israel may have accomplished what is called the "taking off" in surfing, when the critical wave is overcome. In this case the wave is Arab-Islamic rejection. It is not that the Palestinian Arabs have become pacifists or that they now love the Jews. More terror attacks will come. Perhaps they only hate their own corrupt leaders, like Mahmoud Abbas.

But perhaps they also understand that Israel will not pack and leave, that it will remain on the map, that the Jews and not the terrorists will decide their destiny, that the IDF is invincible, that "the wall" is high and that after 70 years of terror the Israeli Jews have won.

History records that Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, came before the Sixth Zionist Congress on August 26, 1903, and presented the "Uganda Plan," suggesting that Jews accept a place other than then-Palestine as their national home. It was voted down.

Not surprisingly, there is more to the story.

Theodor Herzl; photo by Carl Pietzer. Public domain

In his book, A Peace To End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, David Fromkin writes that as an assimilated Jew, Herzl's knowledge of politics far outstripped his knowledge of Judaism. After witnessing the backlash against the Jews in France following the Dreyfuss affair, Herzl recognized the need for a Jewish state, but was not picky about the location.

At first.

Herzl created a Jewish organization through which to negotiate with various European governments. As he started plan, Herzl came into contact with the Jewish leaders and organizations that sponsored and supported Jewish settlement in Palestine. It was then that he realized the special appeal Palestine held for Jews around the world -- an appeal that would make his efforts more successful.

However, finding a government to support his plan was more difficult. After meeting with the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and finding him unresponsive to his arguments, Herzl began to look for other, more sympathetic governments.

In 1902, Herzl met in Great Britain with Joseph Chamberlain, the powerful Colonial Secretary (and father of Neville Chamberlain). Chamberlain was sympathetic not only to the idea in general, but also to its location. Herzl suggested a long-term strategy, where Jews would originally settle nearby either in Cyprus or El Arish at the edge of the Sinai until Palestine became available. While Cyprus and El Arish were considered part of the Ottoman Empire, they were both occupied by the British at the time. Chamberlain turned down the idea of Cyprus, but did offer to help Herzl get approval for El Arish. Towards that end, Herzl hired the lawyer David Lloyd George, who later went on to become the British Prime Minister, 1916 -1922.

Joseph Chamberlain. Public domain

However, by mid-1903, Herzl was informed that Al Arish was considered impractical.

It was then that Joseph Chamberlain suggested Uganda as a substitute to Herzl. Actually, Alona Ferba writes in Haaretz that the land in British East Africa offered to Herzl was 15,500 square km territory in today's Kenya. The idea was supported by the British Prime Minister at the time -- Arthur James Balfour.

Arthur James Balfour, public domain

Lloyd George drafted a Charter for the Jewish Settlement, which was submitted to the British government for approval. According to Fromkin:

In the summer of 1903 the foreign Office replied in a guarded but affirmative way that if studies and talks over the course of the next year were successful, His Majesty's Government would consider favorably proposals for the creation of a Jewish colony. It was the first official declaration by a government to the Zionist movement and the first official statement implying national status for the Jewish people. It was the first Balfour Declaration. [p. 274]

We know that is was not the last, just as we know that Uganda/Kenya was rejected by Jews as a state.

After all, Uganda could never truly become a Jewish state. It was not the national Jewish homeland. Uganda was not the indigenous home of the Jews. There were no historical, religious, and culture ties binding the Jews to any place other than the one the Western World refered to as Palestine. So even though Herzl rubbed shoulders with some of the greatest and influential British politicians of the time, in the short term - he failed.

But Herzl was successful in harnessing the pro-Jewish and pro-Zionist feeling that existed in the British government at the time. In doing so, Herzl set in motion forces that a over the following years would grow and snowball, leading to the Balfour Declaration and the eventual recreation of the Jewish State of Israel.

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French children's magazine Youpi published this in its latest edition. The translation is "We call these 197 countries states, like France, Germany or Algeria. There are a few more, but not all countries in the world agree that they are real countries (for example, the State of Israel or North Korea.)"

Youpi is meant for children ages 5-10.

The French Jewish community was not pleased, and complained to the editor.

As a result, the magazine's publisher issued an apology:

"We recognize an error, a clumsiness, we obviously did not want to challenge the existence of the State of Israel", said Pascal Ruffenach, president of the Bayard group that publlshes Youpi.

The magazine will be withdrawn from being sold today.

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Singer Lorde pretends to be brave by succumbing to BDS pressure (poster)

As has been well reported, this by HuffPost:

Grammy-award winner Lorde has canceled a planned concert in Israel following backlash over the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.

The concert was scheduled for June, but pro-Palestinian activists reached out to the 21-year-old New Zealand pop star to complain, and urged her to join a growing boycott movement against Israel.

Two activists from New Zealand, one Palestinian and one Jewish, wrote an open letter to Lorde decrying the treatment of Palestinians. They noted that it’s a particularly difficult time for Palestinians now “after the Trump administration’s decision to move” the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in an apparent bid to shut down debate about who has rights to the city.

“A performance in Israel sends the wrong message,” writer Justine Sachs and teacher Nadia Abu-Shanab wrote in the letter. “Playing in Tel Aviv will be seen as giving support to the policies of the Israeli government, even if you make no comment on the political situation.”

The pleas were effective with Lorde.

The Jewish activist, Justine Sachs, made her Twitter account private when people started looking at her extremist positions on - well, everything. I grabbed this screenshot of two of her recent tweets showing that she is against all nation-states and she would love for everyone to boycott the US as well:

I tweeted Lorde asking if she would also take Sachs' advice to boycott the US. After all, this should be part of her research, right?

Hey @lorde , the person who you thought made such great points about Israel also would love everyone to boycott the United States. Will you listen to her?

Or is your newfound morality (based on info from someone filled with hate) limited to the Jewish state? pic.twitter.com/ELy9yc7qr8
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 25, 2017

Of course, no answer on Lorde's side.

But Lorde did claim a mantle of bravery for succumbing to BDS pressure (which, as we've seen in the past, usually includes naked threats:

“Hey guys, so about this Israel show,” she said in a statement reported by The Jerusalem Post. “I’ve received an overwhelming number of messages and letters ... and I think the right decision at this time is to cancel the show. I’m not too proud to admit I didn’t make the right call on this one. I’m truly sorry to reverse my commitment to come play for you. I hope one day we can all dance.”

So Lorde says she did research before her show, and then a letter from a person who wants to see the US destroyed was considered credible enough to make her change her mind?

Here's what Lorde's calculus really is. The fear of death threats for playing Israel against no fear at all for listening to the haters. (I tweeted this earlier):

Bravery is doing the right thing, not to submit to threats (and breaking agreements) while pretending to take the moral high ground. An appeal to not hurt Palestinians' feelings, as if they really care about another concert in Israel, means more to her than hurting the feelings of her Jewish (former) fans, because the Palestinians might decide to send a few letter bombs her way and the Jews - won't.

And you can be sure that this ignorant singer who finds arguments from anarchist haters to be convincing is way too proud to admit that she did make the wrong call on this one.

(I was pleased, though, to see that one of Israel's supporters used a poster of mine on Lorde's Facebook page as people argued about this.)

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12/25 Links Pt2: The night the UNRWA stole Xmas; One Malaysian, standing with Israel

From Ian:

Christmas Eve 1944: How singing ‘Silent Night’ saved American POWs during the Battle of the Bulge

The story was told in 2011 by Keith Ginther of Montana, and was republished on his death in July 2014 by The Great Falls Tribune:
Quiet, dependable, faithful rancher Keith Ginther died Sunday in Choteau. His passing brought to mind this story, which we featured Christmas 2011. I had known him for many years in a vague sort of way. He never had much to say. And then at Christmas one year, he suddenly started talking. He seemed shocked later by all he’d reveled [sic] but proud to have told his story, too. — Kristen Inbody

Here’s an excerpt from his story (emphasis added):
In December 1944, Ginther became one of the 23,000 Americans captured or missing by the end of the Battle of the Bulge, Germany’s final and ultimately unsuccessful offensive on the Western Front.

He began a 150-mile march into Germany 67 years ago this month. He remembers feeling humbled in defeat, even more so as the POWs met German artillery pulled by horses or one truck pulling another on its way to the front….

The column of POWs passed through a countryside devastated by war and damaged by Allied bombing. At one village, the POWs had to clear rubble so German artillery could pass through. An American bomber pilot joined the prisoner ranks.

“The people seemed to be more hostile to airmen, whom they blamed for being bombed,” Ginther said.

Germans harassed the downed pilot. They’d rush the sides of the column, trying to grab him.

The villagers were starving, exhausted and angry.

When the hostility was at its worst, all the prisoners had reason to be afraid — though none so much as the captured bomber pilot.

Yet at that moment, an American in the ranks began singing “Silent Night.”

“Pretty soon the Germans were singing ‘Silent Night’ too, so it calmed things down,” Ginther said. “Halfway through the first verse, you could hear the German words, too.”

If not for the song, which for one moment brought a measure of peace to a one small corner of Germany, “I don’t really know what would have happened,” he said. “The guards would have tried, I guess, to protect him.” (h/t MtTB)

From Jerusalem on Christmas Eve, Netanyahu Offers Christians Personal Tours of Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to play tour guide to Christian pilgrims on Sunday in a Christmas Eve message relayed from Jerusalem.

In a video he posted on social media — titled “Merry Christmas from Jerusalem, the capital of Israel!” — Netanyahu described Israel as a haven for its 2-percent Christian minority.

“We protect the rights of everyone to worship in the holy sites behind me,” he said, standing in front of the Jerusalem skyline.

Netanyahu named several Christian pilgrimage sites in Israel — including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City — which would take visitors “in the footsteps of Jesus and the origin of our Judeo-Christian heritage.”

“For those of you who come to Israel, I’m going to take a guided tour. In fact, I’ll be your guide on this guided tour,” Netanyahu said. This would happen Christmas next year he said, without going into the logistics.

I'm very proud to be the Prime Minister of Israel. A country that says Merry Christmas, first to its Christian citizens, and to our Christian friends around the world! #MerryChristmas pic.twitter.com/R8DadFwoSD
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) December 24, 2017

Muhammed Yusoff Rawther: One Malaysian, standing with Israel

Arutz Sheva received the following letter several days ago:

With the recent developments in the Israeli Palestinian conflict, I have penned my thoughts on the matter from a Malaysian perspective, for your kind consideration to be published as a piece.

Thank you for your kind indulgence.
Yusoff
Penang, Malaysia

One Malaysian, standing with Israel

As the crowd of peace loving brethren from the religion of peace made their way outside the mosques in Penang and Kuala Lumpur after Friday prayers, an ugly and ironic truth dawned upon me. On the podium constructed specially for the protest, community leaders and politicians alike rose above the sea of protesters to reveal their true colours.

With chants like “death to America” and “down with Israel”, they did not for a second hesitate before the utterance of hatred, anti-Semitism, racism and sheer stupidity.

It then occurred to me, Malaysians are either too afraid, or have so become numb to such ridiculous rhetorics, that none have emerged forward to provide the counter narrative in defence of a democracy in the midst of tyrannical rule and political suppression.

Egyptian politician calls Nikki Haley a racist - while emphasizing her Sikh background

Egypt's Youm7 has an article by Salah al-Madawi, a former governor of

The Family history of the racist US delegate to the UN

When I was watching this woman’s face during the Security Council meetings I found a face loaded with strange inner ugliness and a weird determination to be more American than the Americans themselves and to be more racist than the White Americans, the descendants of the first migrants to the New World and to stand for the support of Zionism more than the Zionists themselves endeavor to.

Where did this woman whose two parents are of Indian origin gain all that hatred towards us? The woman that can sell everything sold her ethnic origin and pretended to embrace Christianity, though actually, she belongs to the Sikhs. The questions as to her religious affinity on the part of some Americans faded when she submitted her candidacy to senior positions to the state of South Carolina. When she married Michael Haley, who is a National Guard employee, the couple held two wedding ceremonies, one in accordance with Sikh rituals and later in a church in accordance with its rituals. Afterward, she [Mrs. Haley] omitted her Indian name Nimrata Nikki Randhawa and used only her middle name Nikki which means ‘the little one’ and along with it her husband’s name. Then she set into the track of political career instead of her work as an accountant.

Her best friend from amongst the Jewish Americans… of those who stood by her and supported her with money and ‘shortcuts’ till she arrived at the post of the Governor of South Carolina than with the sponsorship of AIPAC and its affiliates, she was recommended to Trump. They knew well that she acts as a mercenary and here she appears with a furious expression in the face of those who said ‘No to racism and to those who become Zionists’, so much so that there were some people who thought her to be of Jewish extract. She is not of a Jewish extract, but she is another facet of those whom the Jews of America buy and promote on Saturday in order to make use of them as their trumpets on Sunday. This woman does not have any interest in the Sikh nor with Christianity or with Islam, nor with anything else. She is a pragmatic dealer to such a degree that she adapts herself to the ideas of [Donald] Trump of assessing everything with money.

What kind of a state is that in which no one can promote himself politically without first presenting his credentials to Zionism and not the people that elect him?

Former Governor of Daqhaliyya District [in Egypt]

The antisemitism isn't too far behind, is it?

(h/t Abdallah Mashaallah)

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12/25 Links Pt1: Guatemala pledges to move embassy to Jerusalem; Phillips: The UN theatre of hatred; Bye UNESCO

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The UN theatre of hatred

Many people are understandably baffled by the recent UN vote condemning President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Since such a vote has zero practical effect, they ask, what was the point of it?

Well indeed. As the American ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said in her barnstorming response, America will still be moving its embassy to Jerusalem regardless of the UN’s opinion.

The resolution didn’t need to have any practical import. It was merely part of the UN’s theatre of hatred, the malevolent campaign it has waged for decades against Israel and Israel alone as a result of the preponderance of tyrannies, dictatorships, kleptocracies and genocidal antisemitic regimes that make up what’s called called the UN’s “non-aligned block” and which are united in their desire that Israel should be wiped off the map.

So egregious is this hypocrisy in singling out Israel, the sole democracy and upholder of human rights in the region while ignoring the brutal and murderous record of those tyrannies, dictatorships, kleptocracies and genocidal antisemitic regimes, that even a CNN correspondent has been moved to call this out. Jake Tapper tweeted: “Among the 128 countries that voted in favor of the UN resolution condemning the US decision to move the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem were “some countries with some rather questionable records of their own”.

You don’t say. The shocking thing is that so many democratic nations voted alongside these tyrannies: nations such as Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, most disappointingly India and, most sickening (to me, anyway), the UK.

Britain, the historic cradle of liberty and democracy and which once fought to defend freedom, has now made common cause with China, Iran, Libya, North Korea and Russia in their joint aim of denying the right of the Jewish people to declare, in accordance with law and history, the capital city of their own country, a right the UK and these other states would deny to no other people or state. What a disgrace.

JPost Editorial: Bye UNESCO

Israel will join the United States in removing itself and its funding from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

It’s about time.

The decision by the US was precipitated by UNESCO’s decision in 2011 to accept “Palestine” as a full-fledged member, even though there is no such thing as a Palestinian state, only a failed, quasi-political entity that is split between an Islamist enclave ruled by Hamas in Gaza and a corrupt fiefdom controlled by Fatah on the West Bank.

A 1990s-era law prohibits US funding for any UN agencies that recognize Palestine as a state. Former US president Barack Obama failed to convince Congress to change the law and restore funding. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is following through on the spirit of the law.

But the American and Israeli decisions are not just about the acceptance of “Palestine.” Like other UN institutions, UNESCO has in recent years proven to be an organization hijacked by an anti-American, antisemitic agenda that completely disregards concern for individual rights.

The US footed a large portion of UNESCO’s budget – most of which went to the payment of salaries and workers’ expenses – that did nothing to endear America to UNESCO’s functionaries.

UN Watch: The End of Human Rights at the U.N. — Panel was “Mother of All Rogues’ Galleries”

Even within the rogues’ gallery that is the U.N. human rights Council, today’s council panel attacking Western democracies for imposing sanctions on dictatorships was the mother of all rogues’ galleries.

The panelists:
1. Lead panelist was UN expert Idriss Jazairy, who described Putin’s Russia as a human rights victim. Coincidentally, as UN Watch revealed today, Jazairy received $50,000 from the Russian government. As Algerian ambassador to UN, he once said “antisemitism targets Arabs”; and, most famously, he led a major effort to muzzle UN human rights experts. And then he became a UN human rights expert himself.

2. Alena Douhan, a Belarus academic with a soft spot for Russia, whose doctorate was on the principle of “non-interference” in countries’ “internal affairs.”

3. Alfred de Zayas, the Cuban-appointed expert for a “democratic and equitable international order.” Zayas has defended Iran’s right to nuclear weapons, and writes books claiming Germany suffered a “genocide” in 1945. Zayas is a hero to Holocaust deniers.

4. Jean Ziegler, co-founder & 2002 recipient of the Qaddafi Human Rights Prize. In his presentation, Ziegler actually defended the murderous Maduro regime of Venezuela, which he said was being victimized by a U.S. “economic war.”

5. Panel Chair: the ambassador of Venezuela’s Maduro regime, Jorge Romero. He effusively thanked Ziegler for his kind words.

6. Peggy Hicks, a top official in the office of UN high commissioner Zeid, delivered the opening statement. A former Human Rights Watch official, we hoped she would provide a dissenting voice. Instead, she echoed the same line. And when Ziegler spouted pro-Maduro propaganda, Hicks was silent.

Yes, Abbas still supports terrorists. Somehow, the media keeps missing it.

Here is Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas greeting Rafat Jawabra, commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the "military wing" of Fatah movement, after he was released from prison by Israel.

The Al Aqsa Brigades were supposedly dismantled by Abbas years ago - yet they still exist. And not only in Gaza, where they recently shot rockets at Israel, but in the West Bank as well.

Here are the Brigades greeting Jawabra last week:

Those masked people with automatic weapons are on Fatah's payroll. They report to Mahmoud Abbas.

These photos are all on the official Fatah Facebook page. No one is hiding these ties. No one is hiding the fact that the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a designated terror group by the US, still operates openly under Palestinian rule.

If the hundreds of journalists drinking lattes in Tel Aviv would spend 1% of their time uncovering official Palestinian ties to terror, the world would look at the Middle East conflict in a completely different light.

Which is the exact reason why they don't.

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I am so sick of the Roger Cohens of the world

Roger Cohen, in the New York Times, writes a pretty good review of Simon Schama's The Story of the Jews: Belonging: 1492-1900. He describes how the Jewish people ping ponged from seemingly secure lives to persecution throughout the world.

But in the end, Cohen feels compelled to add two paragraphs to the time beyond 1900, and shows yet again how Israel is held to standards that are far beyond any other nation.

Not even Herzl, however, could have foreseen the industrialized mass murder of the Holocaust, the unspoken shadow that hovers over these pages. Nor could he have imagined the fulfillment in 1948, with the foundation of the modern state of Israel, of his dream. Nor how the Zionism he described in Basel as a “moral, humanitarian movement” would be prodded over time toward messianic nationalism by the violent, still unresolved confrontation with the Arabs of Palestine; nor how the Jewish exercise of power, rather than Jewish subjection to its cruel whim, would test the very ethics that bound Jews to their formless, faceless God during the millenniums of tribulation in the diaspora.

In the end the price of Jewish statehood has been heavy: the exile of another people, the Palestinians. More than a half-century of occupation of the West Bank has corroded Israeli democracy. This was not inevitable and is still not irreparable. No doubt, these themes will be prominent in Schama’s next volume. At a time of facile anti-Zionism spilling sometimes into outright anti-Semitism, Schama has made an eloquent and a far-reaching case for why Jews needed a small piece of earth they could call home.

Was there a hint of Jewish messianic nationalism when the Arabs of Palestine started attacking Jews in the 19th century and through the 1920s and 1930s? And is the current Israeli government really being influenced by messianic nationalism? Of course not - only the people who hate Israel to begin with make up that canard, and Cohen sucks it all up.

Moreover, Cohen has the astonishing ability not to recognize in today's Arab "anti-Zionism" the parallel mentality as traditional European antisemitism described by Schama. Arabs didn't care when they were under non-Arab rule of the Ottomans - but the idea of Jewish leaders is what prompted them - and still prompts them - to violence. That isn't the Jews' fault - it is simple antisemitism.

Cohen's blindness cannot be accidental. He immerses himself in the anti-Israel narrative rather than actually looking at the facts and the history.

Then comes the ethical tests of Jewish exercise of power. for some reason, only Jews have such ethical issues that test their very right to exist. Does anyone say that US control over territories where people cannot vote for president corrodes American democracy? Is anyone demanding Native Americans be given, say, South Carolina so they can exercise their rights of self determination? Is how they were treated a couple of orders of magnitude worse than how Palestinians have been treated?

And that's just the US. Every Western European country is guilty of immorality that far exceeds the worst that one can ever blame Israel for even assuming Arab lies as truth. Yet only Israel is singled out by Western, often Jewish pundits, who are so wracked with guilt over Israel's insistence on control over some historic Jewish lands whose legal status is hardly obviously "Palestinian."

Even that last sentence, where Cohen tries to show his support for Israel's existence, is ambiguous. Jews needed a small piece of earth - but don't any more?

Cohen's moralizing on behalf of the Jewish state is condescending, misdirected, biased and mostly false. Israel doesn't want "occupation" and has offered many times since 1967 to end it. Each time - each and every time - the answer was no. That simple, irrefutable fact is kryptonite to self-righteous jerks like Cohen who want to repent on behalf of Israel for not committing national suicide in the name of "peace."

Cohen will not place any blame on Palestinians (except for pro-forma denunciations of suicide bombings and the like, pretending that they are not supported by the majority.)

Only Israel is expected to live up to standards of ethics that are so high, they are unethical - because they would result in the deaths and ethnic cleansing of more people than the status quo, as long as Palestinians refuse to compromise.

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Israel Hayom reports:

The fresh violence came a day after the U.N. General Assembly resolution denouncing Trump's decision. However, the number of Palestinians who answered a call to the colors and participated in a "day of rage" over Trump's declaration was lower than expected, with a total of only about 4,000 protesters counted in the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria.
The Palestinians are reportedly disappointed at the low numbers of protesters, which is dropping weekly. One senior Palestinian Authority official told Israel Hayom that "the fact that the Palestinian public remains apathetic is worrying, and mostly infuriating. This is a failure by the Palestinian leadership."

Israel Hayom's Hebrew edition adds that Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are upset at how the Palestinian leadership has handled the Jerusalem issue. They were not enthusiastic about the Istanbul conference where Turkey and Iran dominated the discussion, and they fear that Abbas' rhetoric that the entire Arab world would ignite over the issue has been shown to be false, making him look like a fool.

Jordan in particular is upset because it feels that it has a special responsibility towards Jerusalem and Abbas' reaction, such as to try to isolate the US at the UN, could backfire for Jordan's efforts to be relevant in the holy city.

As a result, the three countries have established a commission together with the Palestinians in the Arab League on a more reasonable response to the Trump declaration, as the Palestinian strategy is imploding. Their public statements that they would not meet with Vice President Pence also hurt their cause, according to this article, as the Americans were reported to have reacted angrily.

The victories at the UN are symbolic, and the Arabs are much more concerned thatthe tepid Arab reaction to the Trump declaration might cause the issue to backfire on them, prompting other countries to move their embassies to Jerusalem as well. Guatemala already announced this and Romania is considering it.

(h/t Yoel)

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Egyptian TV host freaks out over Jewish students learning Arabic through an Arab singer

This TV clip from Egypt's Al Nahar TV shows a classroom in a Jewish school in Israel. The teacher is leading a class in Arabic language, and the students are learning a famous Arab song sung by Umm Kulthum.

The Egyptian host is livid. I don't have subtitles, but for five minutes he is raging about this, saying that the original Arab singer and composer would die if they witnessed these Jews singing their song.

The host also says that this is an attempt by Israel to normalize relations with Egypt.

At the end of the article he stresses that Israel is the worst and biggest enemy of the Arabs. Of course.

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"Maccabees are Palestinian" and other fun facts in Arab media

Dr. Jamal Salsa writes in Al Watan Voice that the Maccabees were just Jewish Palestinians fighting for their religious rights.

We learn from this Arab scholar (I looked him up, he is a dentist) that the Jews were Bedouins who moved from one place to another and lived in tents, while the Palestinian people were more civilized and lived in houses.

He then says that Abimelech, king of the Philistines, was really king of the Palestinians. "Abraham swore to Abimelech to preserve Palestine and the people of Palestine and live among them and live in the land with them in peace."

When the press reports on Neturei Karta "rabbis" waving the Palestinian flag, accoding to this nutcase, it is the embodiment of the divine covenant of Abraham, and in respect of these concepts and the law, who sought to live in peace with the "Kingdom of the Palestinians."

He ends off by saying "The bottom line is that Palestine existed before the waters of the sea knew their waves, and before the moon went into its orbit."

So, yes, he says that Palestine has existed for several billion years.

Which brings to mind this classic, originally from Latma:

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12/24 Links: Saudi Arabia bars Israelis from chess tournament; Shin Bet thwarted over 400 attacks in 2017

From Ian:

Saudi Arabia bars Israelis from chess tournament

Israeli chess players on Sunday were denied the visas necessary for them to participate in an international tournament in Saudi Arabia next week, crushing hopes that they could make history by being the first representatives of the Jewish state to take part in such an event hosted by the kingdom.

Seven Israeli players had filed requests for visas to participate in the games to be held in Riyadh on December 26-30 as part of the world rapid and blitz chess championships.

Last month, the World Chess Federation (FIDE), which runs the tournament, said that it was “making a huge effort to assure that all players get their visas.”

But on Sunday that international body announced that its efforts were for naught.

Moshe Shalev, the interim head of the Israel Chess Federation, told The Times of Israel that the players had not been granted visas and said his group was discussing taking legal action.

“We are thinking about suing the World Chess Federation,” he said.

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: Europe's betrayal

I am reliving the Evian Conference, held in 1938. No European country was willing to take the Jews.

Eighty years later, on December 21, 2017, twenty six European countries voted to condemn the United States’ decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Six abstained. No European country dared to stand with the United States, with Israel, or with reality.

Austria and Germany—Hitler’s home base—voted to condemn the United States’ decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Germany—whose shame about the Nazi genocide of six million assimilated, productive, and non-violent Jews led Merkel’s Germany tp embrace millions of non-assimilated, non-productive, and very violent Muslim refugees—and why?

Partly to redeem their own soiled reputation and, more diabolically, to continue their traditional Jew-hatred by allowing Muslim refugees to harass, beat, torture, and murder Jews—and by consistently voting for Palestinian terrorists over a peaceful and democratic Israel.

Germany—on whose soil Israeli athletes were murdered in cold blood at the Olympics and whose police could not stop the Palestinian killing spree or apprehend the perpetrators.

Austria and Germany were not the only European countries who voted to condemn the vote on moving the American Embassy to Israel’s capital city, Jerusalem.

Israeli experts weigh in on Obama-Hezbollah revelation

In fact, while much of the probe has centered on the potential illegality of Obama's intervention, investigators are scrutinizing the former chief executive’s reasons for interfering to Hezbollah’s benefit: namely, to examine the assumptions and, more generally, the worldview that shaped his policy toward the organization and, by extension, Iran.

To that end, Politico cited statements made by John Brennan, who would become Obama's top counterterrorism adviser and then CIA director. As early as 2010, just one year after Obama assumed office, Brennan confirmed that the administration was looking for ways to build up “moderate elements” within the "very interesting" Hezbollah group which was no longer considered a "purely terrorist organization."

Obama loyalists see in this interpretation a reasonable justification for the former president’s actions as a path to engaging Tehran diplomatically rather than militarily. Critics not only see no reasonable indication to have believed Hezbollah was malleable, and in fact, saw the terrorist group’s militancy as intractable. This is supported by the now infamous comments by top Obama aide Ben Rhodes who bragged in an interview of manipulating an uninformed media and populace to ratify the Iranian nuclear agreement. Indeed, it is being reported that the core of the Obama team has been activated to de-toxify the alleged Obama actions vis-à-vis Hezbollah.

Those who rejected the agreement have been strengthened during the ensuing years, as Shiite Tehran continues to foment unrest in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and beyond, arguing that by all indicators—and citing its blatant development of missile delivery systems capable of supporting nuclear weapons and flouting of United Nations Security Council resolutions—the Islamic Republic remains committed to exporting its revolutionary ideology while competing with Sunni Saudi Arabia for regional dominance.

And while proponents of the accord contend that Tehran is abiding by it, opponents continue to warn that the devil is in the existence of "sunset clauses" that will expire after 12 more years, effectively giving Iran a green-light to resume enriching uranium. At that point, the country will have pocketed all of the benefits of sanctions relief and reinforced its so-called "Shiite Crescent," a land corridor stretching through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and into the Mediterranean.

According to Efraim Kam, a Senior Research Fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, Iran's unwillingness to change course was predictable. "Obama saw the nuclear deal as a way to get Tehran to modify its strategy," he explained to The Media Line. "In the administration's view it was a jumping off point to more cooperation and dialogue.

"However," Kam highlighted, "even before the accord was concluded Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei made clear that he was not going to alter his calculus. He left no doubt that coordination would not be extended to other areas and never changed his mind for one minute."

The western-left is the most racist political movement in the West today outside of political Islam.

The categories of contemporary progressive-left racism include:

1) Anti-White Racism

2) Antisemitic Anti-Zionism

and

3) Humanitarian Racism

While left-leaning politicos in the United States are searching for Nazis and Klansmen and White Supremacists and White Nationalists and the "Alt-Right" - whatever that is, exactly - hiding beneath every bed, they remain childishly oblivious to the toxic and divisive racism that is eating its way through the core of their own political movement.

Up until about the election of Barack Obama - who I voted for in 2008 - the United States made highly significant strides in ethnic relations over many decades, which was a major factor in Obama's electoral success.

Since then, the United States is regressing on issues of race even as the inheritors of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. urinate on that legacy while calling it "social justice."

There has not been this much racial discord in the United States since 1968 and it is largely due to the fact that the progressive-left has beat it into the heads of poor "black" kids that they are oppressed and that poor "white" kids are the oppressors.

What kind of social results did they expect would emerge from incessant left-leaning racial hatred in the United States?

Anti-White Racism

Although nobody on the left ever wants to discuss it, the most prominent form of publically acceptable racism in the United States, today, is anti-white racism.

Hundreds of articles and other forms of media have been published in left-leaning venues decrying how horrible and racist and brutal - yet, somehow, fragile - "white" people are.

As an American Jew - and since the word "white" has become a racist perjorative - I am not even certain that I know what a "white" person is. I do know that I am constantly mistaken for one despite the fact that my ancestry, along with almost all non-converted Jews, goes to the Levant.

The fundamental point, of course, is that people do not get to pick-and-choose who it is acceptable to be racist towards. Either you oppose racism or you do not. If you claim that certain ethnicities, for historical and socio-economic reasons around power relations, are incapable of racism then - guess what? - you are being racist.

That is, you are holding some groups of people to different ethical standards based on their ethnic background.

Excuse me, but that is the very definition of racism.

Western-left identity politics is both racist and noxious because it indoctrinates young people into a political point of view which places individuals upon an ethnic and gendered Hierarchy of Victimhood wherein one's political significance, if not one's humanity, itself, depends upon where one falls within the hierarchy.

Contemporary left identity politics, therefore, in distinction from old-timey interest group politics, is the most prominent racist and illiberal political movement in the United States today.

It is what I call "identity politics overreach."

It is also one significant reason, among others, that Donald J. Trump happily sits in the Oval Office.

Antisemitic Anti-Zionism

This one, naturally, is my favorite.

One of the astonishing things about antisemitism is that, like an ideological virus, it has the ability to mutate according to the changing nature of its political environment. If in previous generations antisemitism was justified by notions such as the Jews killed Jesus or the Jews killed Mohammad or the Jews invented capitalism or the Jews invented socialism or the Jews represented an inferior and parasitic race, today we are to understand that the Jews are inhumane to the allegedly indigenous "Palestinian" population.

kIf you were to question your average U.S. Democrat they would likely agree that the historical persecution of the Jewish people was entirely unjustified. The western-left despises Nazism and racism and fascism, even as they unthinkingly embrace certain aspects of it. They would absolutely agree that the European persecution of the Jews was a great injustice in the past, even as they also embrace the western-left antisemitic anti-Zionism of the present.

Unfortunately, polling data also shows that a majority of self-identified "liberal Democrats" favor the Palestinians-Arabs over the Jews of Israel by a plurality of 40 percent over 33 percent.

In other words, in the imaginations of "liberal Democrats" - by which they actually mean "progressives" or, as some would say, the "regressive left" - every previous generation the Jews were innocent and did not deserve harassment or persecution... except for this one.

By some mysterious happenstance the Jewish people, today, both Israeli and diaspora, are, in fact, guilty. We were not in the past, but we are today.

Thus, who can really blame "Palestinians" if they perpetually seek to murder Jews in the very heartland of the tiny Jewish nation?

If the international community despises the Jewish State of Israel it is, therefore, because of the Jews, themselves, who generally insist upon supporting the allegedly racist, militaristic state of Israel. What this suggests, within the western-left mind, about the morality of diaspora Jewry which supports Israel is not very pretty.

Humanitarian Racism

In Manfred Gerstenfeld's introduction to Behind The Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel, and the Jews, which is a scholarly compilation of articles published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, Gerstenfeld writes:

Behind the Nordic countries’ righteous appearance and oft-proclaimed concern for human rights often lurk darker attitudes. This volume’s main purpose is to lift their humanitarian mask as far as Israel and Jews are concerned. This disguise hides many ugly characteristics, including the financing of demonizers of Israel, a false morality, invented moral superiority, and “humanitarian racism.”

The condescension and imperial superiority of contemporary leftists toward those of non-European descent, with the exception of Jews, is unfathomable. The progressive-left, as a group, treats all non-Europeans, other than Jews, like little children in need of a pat on the head and a chocolate chip cookie.

It is, at least in my estimation, the current iteration of nineteenth-century western imperial notions of "white man's burden" and it takes the form of holding non-Europeans to the ethical standards of inferiors.

In this way, European historical guilt around issues of race trump feminism, and even regular human decency, in how much of the guilt-riddent "white" middle-class judge people who in an earlier generation they would have called "our little brown brothers."

Until the western-left moves beyond anti-white racism, antisemitic anti-Zionism, and humanitarian racism, it will remain riddled with hypocrisy and acting in cross-purposes toward its own supposed values.

It is very sad that over fifty years after Martin Luther King, Jr's famous I Have A Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. that the western-left has flung King's admonitions into the gutter.

The most important thing that King stood for was this:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for anti-racism.

The contemporary left does not.

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A year ago, I critiqued a major essay in the New York Times' philosophy section by Omri Boehm, who teaches at The New School. Using arguments that wouldn't pass a first year logic course, he argued that Zionism was racism.

Now he has moved into critiquing Judaism itself.

In an article in the Los Angeles Review of Books, which was translated and published by the major German newspaper Die Zeit, Boehm argues that thousands of year of Jewish attachment to Jerusalem is really bogus, and any Jew who thinks that Jews should control Jerusalem are tantamount to idolators.

The name of the article is "Jerusalem, Our Golden Calf."

Yes, a lesson in Judaism from a person who hates Judaism.

OK, this should be fun:

[T]he heart of our heart is the Torah, and Jerusalem is not mentioned in it even once. Other municipal centers play in the book significant theological roles: Hebron is strongly associated with Abraham’s figure; Shchem, more familiar today as Nablus, functions as the Promised Land’s gate; and it is in Beit El that Jacob is renamed, very symbolically, as “Israel.” Clearly, Moses has never heard of Jerusalem, and Joseph never dreamt of it in his dreams. As the Torah’s literary theology unfolds, Jerusalem remains conspicuously absent.

Because, perhaps, Jerusalem's role is only as the capital of the Jewish nation that had yet to be born? And its prominence is obvious to anyone who glances at the Hebrew Scriptures outside the Pentateuch? (Not to mention that Jerusalem's spiritual centrality is strongly hinted in the Bible as well, as the place that God will choose to place the Temple.)

Nah, this is not important.

When the city does gain prominence, its role emerges directly from the Israelites’ demand to become “like all the other nations” — to be ruled by an earthly political authority, rather than directly by God (1 Sam. 8:5). Samuel interprets this request as an idolatrous act of betrayal, and God unequivocally shares the same judgment. Comparing it to the Israelites’ “worshiping other Gods” and “forsaking” him in the desert, God explains to Samuel that the Israelites are rebelling directly against the deity: “It is not you that they have rejected; it is Me that they have rejected as their king” (1 Sam. 8:7-8). Indeed, alongside the infamous incident with the Golden Calf, the Israelites’ request to be ruled “like the nations” has become one of the Bible’s prime examples of idolatry.

One can argue as to exactly God meant when he used those words. But Boehm, knowing his readers won't bother to look up the verses, purposefully omits what God said immediately afterwards. In the very next verse, God tells Samuel "Now therefore hearken unto their voice; howbeit thou shalt earnestly forewarn them, and shalt declare unto them the manner of the king that shall reign over them."

God and Samuel definitely have a problem with the way the people request a king, but clearly they don' t have a problem with the concept of a king. After all, the Torah mentions that Israel should have a king, explicitly, in Deuteronomy 17 - even using the words that the nation will want to be like the nations around them. Choosing a king is considered one of the commandments of the Torah.

To flatly call this request "idolatry" is absurd, because this means that, according to Boehm, God is instructing the Jews to worship idols.

What does this have to do with Jerusalem? Not much. But the "philosopher" will twist the truth to pretend it is, with more absurd interpretations that fly in the face of normative Judaism:

It is from this paradigmatic idolatrous moment that Jewish politics would be subsequently centralized in Jerusalem — a king’s earthly capital — and the city’s Temple would be built, consolidating its political-theological sway. These idolatrous origins have left on Jerusalem an enduring stain: an adequately Jewish relation to it can be at most one of ambivalent love, mixed with suspicion. Not one of enthusiastic identification.

Not surprisingly, Boehm doesn't bring any verses from any prophets that describe this supposed ambivalence or suspicion.

It is common to mention that for 2000 years, Jews have recited Psalms 137 in wedding ceremonies: “If I forget you Jerusalem, my right hand forget its skill, my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.” But this is misleading, because for 2000 years Jews have recited this while rejecting the establishment of Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem as an abomination. Indeed Jewish law strictly prohibits Jewish rule over Jerusalem before the Messiah’s arrival and the fulfillment of Isaiah’s aforementioned prophecy. In this light, not just Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — but also Ben Gurion’s declaration of Israel’s independence — stand in sharp contradiction to the Jewish religion.

There is not one source in codified Jewish law that says that Jewish rule over Jerusalem is prohibited before the Messiah's arrival. Nowhere in Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, nowhere in Shulchan Aruch, nowhere. (There have been some anti-Zionist rabbis who make such an assertion, but there is no basis in Jewish law for it.)

This entire essay is complete garbage. Boehm's entire thesis is literally made up, using cherry-picked Biblical quotes and assertions that have no basis.

And, as we have seen, even Boehm doesn't pretend to have proven that attachment to Jerusalem is akin to idolatry. He makes a false assertion that desiring a king is idolatry, he associates that with Jerusalem without any proof, and voila! An essay that gets published in prestigious journals based on nothing but hot air.

You cannot call Boehm ignorant. He knows very well he is twisting the Bible and Jewish law in ways that are utterly antithetical to what anyone with any knowledge can see what they say. He knows very well that God told Samuel to listen to the people and establish a kingdom. He didn't stop reading the verses at the point that shows him to be a liar - he just stopped quoting them, because intellectual honesty is exactly what Boehm is not about.

He is a fraud.

However, you can call the Los Angeles Review of Books and Die Zeit ignorant for publishing such blatant lies by a confirmed anti-Zionist a hater of Judaism, talking about Judaism and Jerusalem without doing the least amount of fact checking.

How does this happen? How can otherwise responsible publications allow something that is literally based on easily-refuted lies to be published? It isn't hard to open up a Bible and read the context of the verses, nor is it difficult to notice the other logical fallacies in Boehm's article.

The answer, I think, is that here is another example of things that are too good to check. Jews have been wrong about the holiness of Jerusalem for thousands of years! We have a Jewish scholar who says so! And he is a philosopher, which gives him some extra special credibility, because we really don't know much about that field but it sounds really prestigious!

So I don't blame Boehm for widely spreading his anti-Israel and now anti-Jewish hate. That's what he is about. But I do blame periodicals and newspapers to blindly believe his lies without even bothering to call up a local rabbi who might know a thing or two about the Jewish scriptures to save themselves embarrassment.

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How the PLO threatened Christmas tourists in 1967 - and today

From Time, December 29, 1967:

A warning by the Arab guerrilla organization El Fatah that Christmas tourists would not be safe in the Holy Land led the Israeli government to station 950 security police in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and to set up roadblocks in the area.

From the New York Times, December 24, 1968:

Also from the NYT on that same date:

Fatah, the dominant party in the PLO, explicitly warned and threatened Christian tourists in 1967 and 1968. And Christian leaders, under Israeli rule, were confident enough to tell the world to ignore the terrorists and come anyway, even though some were scared off. And Israel took drastic steps to reduce the chance of terror attacks by banning non-Christians from Bethlehem.

This month, virtually the same thing happened. Fatah, led by Mahmoud Abbas, and other Palestinian groups warned of "days of rage" in Israel. However, Christians under Palestinian rule - who have been fleeing their homes in droves since the Palestinian Authority was established, under Muslim threats to them - are too frightened to blame their Muslim-dominated government, so they blame Israel and Trump.

And credulous reporters believe them:

A week before Christmas, there were only a handful of tourists snapping photos of the huge decorated tree in Manger Square, with its strings of red and white lights. The large plaza in front of the Church of the Nativity was nearly empty except for a handful of visiting clergy.

Chalk the absence of visitors up to President Trump’s Jerusalem speech, which outraged Muslims, scared off tourists, and unnerved Christian clerics. It also bushwhacked Vice President Pence’s planned (now postponed) trip to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Cairo, which was meant to express solidarity with Mideast Christians. Church leaders were refusing to meet him.
...

For starters, the president’s move wrecked a pre-Christmas tourist season that is especially important to Palestinian Christians.

“Before the Trump statement, we thought this would be the best year in the past 10 years for tourism,” I was told by Maher Canawati, who, with his father, Nicola, owns the legendary Three Arches gift shops in Bethlehem, specializing in mother of pearl and carved olive wood objects. Living in Bethlehem since the early 17th century, the family has managed to navigate political challenges over time; portraits of ancestors look down on Canawati, including one of his father posing with a Bethlehem Boy Scout troop,

“The city has 50 hotels, 20 built in the last four years,” says Canawati. “Everyone thought things would be better. But now there have been many cancellations after the statement.” Bethlehem’s economy is at stake.

Trump's statement didn't scare off tourists.Palestinian threats - from the exact same Fatah that threatened tourists in the 1960s, as well as from a host of other Palestinian terror groups - is what is scaring off tourists.

Palestinian Christians, scared as hell of their tenuous position under Arab rule, have learned that breaking ranks with the Muslim majority can be deadly. So they know exactly what to say to reporters when they are on the record.

Off the record, though, Palestinian Christians admit their fears, they talk about their persecution, and they are voting with their feet by relocating anywhere they can outside the Arab world.

As I quoted an article by Standpoint in 2014:

While Bethlehem remains the most populous Christian city in the West Bank, its Christian population, as in the West Bank generally, is shrinking dramatically. Only 50 years ago, Christians constituted 70 per cent of Bethlehem's population. Today they make up just 15 per cent. Christians number approximately 38,000 people in the West Bank, representing 2 per cent of the population.
"We used to be many. Now there are so few of us left. Everyone is trying to leave," says Samir, another salesman in a neighbouring shop selling Orthodox icons. Worrying about the consequences of complaining about the situation, Samir declined to use his real name.
"My mother doesn't like to walk in the street at night because her hair is uncovered, and people come up behind her and make rude comments," he tells me. During Christmas celebrations last December, women in their twenties on a visit from London with their parents and siblings complained of being harassed by a gang of male youths as they stood watching a festive performance in Manger Square. The gang did not desist until some local women came to stand nearby and told the boys to stop.
Everyone agrees that economic hardship and the low birthrate of the Christian community are the primary causes for decline. Yet in recent years Christians in Bethlehem also complain of a growing climate of intimidation from Islamic extremists.

It was Muslims who decided to downgrade Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem and Nazareth this year. It was Muslims who decided on violent riots to protest a symbolic declaration by Trump.

And it is the exact same Fatah that threatens Christian tourists, while claiming to represent them.

UPDATE: As of December 20, Israel expected more Christian tourists this year than last. The entire premise of the article seems to be mistaken.

Journalists who don't bother fact checking. Sheesh.

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