Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, January 02, 2018

01/02 Links Pt1: The PA’s daily battle cry for violence; An Iranian Revolution of National Dignity; Shapiro: Trump Reverses the Obama Doctrine on Iran

From Ian:

PMW: "We shall not retreat" – the PA’s daily battle cry for violence

Nearly every day since Dec. 12, excluding the days around Christmas and New Years, the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida has published a full-page of pictures of protests including rioters throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks at Israelis. The only text on the pages is a giant headline repeated each day: "We shall not retreat." The locations of each event also appears on each picture, nearly are of which are from different Palestinian cities.

One page, from Dec. 18, shows pictures of peaceful demonstrations against US Pres. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital from different countries around the world (Libya, Turkey, India, Pakistan, and Montenegro).

Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the Palestinian leadership and Fatah have been attempting to incite more violence against Israel ever since US Pres. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The following pictures are further evidence:

Caroline Glick: The Iranian explosion of truth

The $100 billion in sanctions relief Iran received in the wake of the nuclear deal enabled the regime to give hundreds of millions of additional dollars each year to its proxy militias and armies in Iraq, Yemen and Syria.

It is self-evident that if the protesters get their way and the ayatollahs are overthrown, that money would stop flowing to Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and the Shi’ite militias in Iraq. Instead, that money, and billions more, would be spent developing Iran.

There are many ways that the nations of the world can help the protesters in Iran. The US and Iran’s other targets can expose the financial corruption in the Islamic Republic, including the bank account information of everyone from Supreme Dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei down to local Basij commanders. They can broadcast anti-regime information into Iran through multiple platforms outside the regime’s control. They can bypass the regime and unblock Twitter, Facebook, Telegraph and other social media platforms.

Aside from that, the Trump administration can take immediate steps to constrain even further the regime’s access to the international monetary system and force European and US firms to cancel their multi-billion dollar deals with the regime.

There are many reasons to fear that the protests will fail to achieve their goal of overthrowing the regime. The regime is already sending its forces out to repress the protesters through killing and mass arrests.

But even if the protesters’ prospects of success are small, there is no excuse for not supporting them, as constructively, enthusiastically and unconditionally as possible. There is certainly no excuse for working to preserve Obama’s foreign policy legacy at the expense of a popular uprising that has the potential to avert a world war.

Peter Kohanloo, Sohrab Ahmari: An Iranian Revolution of National Dignity

Iran is convulsing with the largest mass uprising since the 2009 Green Movement. Demonstrations that began last week in the city of Mashhad, home to the shrine of the eighth Shiite imam, have now spread to dozens of cities. And while the slogans initially addressed inflation, joblessness, and graft, they soon morphed into outright opposition to the mullahs. As we write, the authorities have blocked access to popular social-media sites and closed off subway stations in the capital, Tehran, to prevent crowd sizes from growing. At least 12 people have been killed in clashes with security forces.

What is happening in the Islamic Republic?

After nearly four decades of plunderous and fanatical Islamist rule, Iranians are desperate to become a normal nation-state once more, and they refuse to be exploited for an ideological cause that long ago lost its luster. It is a watershed moment in Iran’s history: The illusion of reform within the current theocratic system has finally been shattered. Iranians, you might say, are determined to make Iran great again.

Their movement is attuned to the worldwide spirit of nationalist renewal. From the U.S. to India, and from South Africa to Britain, political leaders and the voters who elect them are reaffirming the enduring value of the nation-state. Iran hasn’t been immured from these developments, as the slogans of the current protests indicate. No longer using the rights-based lexicon of votes and recounts, Iranians are instead demanding national dignity from a regime that for too long has subjugated Iranian-ness to its Shiite, revolutionary mission.

It’s notable, for example, that protestors chant “We Will Die to Get Iran Back,” “Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My Life Only for Iran,” and “Let Syria Be, Do Something for Me.” Put another way: The people are tired of paying the price for the regime’s efforts to remake the region in its own image and challenge U.S. “hegemony.” Some have even taken to chanting “Reza Shah, Bless Your Soul,” expressing gratitude and nostalgia for the Pahlavi era, which saw the modern, pro-Western nation-state of Iran emerge from the shambles of the Persian Empire.

As the Iranian protests continue, one of the signs of just how serious the protesters are is what they are chanting in public about their government:

“Death to Dictator” “Death to Rouhani” "Death to Khamenei" and “Reza Shah, Bless Your Soul”.
Clearly, the extent of the anger of the protesters goes beyond removing an individual leader -- some want a complete change in government that would return Iran to the way things were before Khomeini and the Islamic revolution.

Here is another anti-government chant opposing Iranian machinations outside of the country:

#BreakingNews
Dec 30 - #Kermanshah, #Iran
People chanting "Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My life for Iran"#IranProtests #???????_?????? pic.twitter.com/UBRKWnt0Ds
— Heshmat Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi) December 30, 2017

This was tweeted by Heshmat Alavi, a political and human rights activist who has written for Forbes, The Hill, The Daily Caller and Gatestone Institute.

While "Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My life for Iran" is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Israel, it does illustrate less than enthusiastic support for the Palestinian Arabs in general, and Hamas terror attacks in particular.

But that in itself is not really anything new.

In 2009, Iranian-born conservative author Amir Taheri wrote in his book The Persian Night: Iran under the Khomeinist Revolution:

Since [the crushing of the protest in] 1999, Iran has witnessed countless student demonstrations and protests. In hundreds of resolutions passed during mass gatherings, students have challenged virtually every aspect of the Khomeinist ideology and the regime's domestic and foreign policies. One typical resolution passed repeatedly states that the people of Iran do not desire the destruction of Israel and do seek close and friendly relations with the United States. Every year in July, students mark the anniversary of the 1999 events. On October 8, 2007, students in Tehran greeted Ahmadinejad with cries of "Down with the Dictator" and "Forget about Palestine! Think about Us," forcing him to run away briefly with the help of his bodyguards. [emphasis added]

Four years earlier, in 2005, The New York Times reported that Iran's hard line on Israel was not unaminmous:

Beset by practical concerns such as double-digit inflation and unemployment, Iran's youthful population is well aware of the fact that the ideological hubris of their parents' generation - often a half-baked hodgepodge of anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism, Islamism, and Marxism - has borne the country little fruit apart from a soiled international reputation and political and economic isolation. During the 2003 summer student protests, one popular slogan, delivered in lilting Persian, was "forget about Palestine, think about us!" [emphasis added]

The article was written by Karim Sadjadpour, currently an Iranian-American policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment and Ray Takeyh, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Sadjadpour and Takeyh go on to write:

There exists no inherent reason why the Israeli-Palestinian struggle should be an overriding concern to the average Iranian. Iran has no territorial disputes with Israel, no Palestinian refugee problem, a long history of contentious relations with the Arab world, and an even longer history of tolerance vis-a?-vis the Jewish people. To this day, the Jewish community in Iran is the largest in the Middle East outside of Israel.

Ironically, in 2005 this article was claiming that based on the troubled relationship between Iran and the Arab world, it was Iran -- not the Saudis -- that should have been drawn into an alliance with Israel.
They summarized the position that Iran need not be so supportive of the Palestinian Arabs in the words of one reformist leader that:

"We shouldn't be chanting 'death to Israel'; we should be saying 'long live Palestine.' We needn't be more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves."

Clearly, things have not worked out that way so far -- this despite the fact that 2 years earlier, in 2003, an article in The New Republic and republished in The Jewish World Review was saying the same thing and was asking Is Iran rethinking its position on Israel? It suggested that

though the West still thinks of Iran as a cauldron of anti-Israel passion, a new generation of pro-democracy Iranians increasingly speaks out against the government's seeming obsession with the Palestinians.

From the way the article describes it, even "conservatives" in the Iranian government were apparently seeing the light. You would expect a very different situation from the one currently going on during the past few days.

The article examines why things were potentially so promising:

several senior conservatives have quietly joined the chorus, hinting that Iran's support for terrorist groups opposed to Israel is negotiable. According to one senior conservative official, "Iran's policy in the Middle East and the peace process is not beyond the realm of possibilities that can be discussed, given a dialogue with the United States." Translation from Islamic Republic-speak: We can talk turkey on Israel/Palestine. Sadeq Zibakalam, a Tehran University professor with close ties to conservative officials, underscored this view earlier this year, when he told the U.S.-funded Radio Farda Persian service that Iran understands Washington's concerns about Tehran's support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. President Mohammed Khatami, a reformer who has long argued that Iran should not interfere in any agreements made between Israel and the Palestinians, is unlikely to quibble with the conservatives.

So what happened?

While Mohammed Khatami, the reformer, was president in 2003, by 2005 a new president was elected: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- and the rest is history.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Credit: Farzad Khorasani Source: Wikimedia Commons

While he did not single-handedly stem the supposedly growing tide of reform, Ahmadinejad did represent the interests of the hard-liners.

For now, it is impossible to say whether the current protests will be put down and crushed as were the student protests in 1999 and the election protests in 2009. Even if successful, they are not about to change Iran overnight into a friend of Israel reminiscent of the reign of the Shah of Iran. Instead, it has been suggested that the current unrest will keep the government occupied and reduce the possibility of conflict between the two countries, especially along the Syrian border, at least for a while.

But beyond that, the idea that Iranian animosity towards Israel is not hardwired, may perhaps hold promise for some point in the forseeable future.

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Fatah: Israelis are the terrorists, our suicide bombers are the heroes

I wasn't the only one to notice how Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah was glorifying female terrorists and suicide bombers in celebration of the 53rd anniversary of their first terror attack.

Israel's PMO Arabic media spokesperson Ofir Gendelman wrote this on Facebook:

Fatah responded by claiming that Israel is the one that glorifies terror attacks like Deir Yassin, and these women are simply martyrs fighting the occupation:

Funny, I never saw any Fatah-style posters glorifying terrorists in any official Israeli site.

So now the children, old men and other civilians murdered by these heroes are "gangs of murderers" that must be "fought.".

Good to know that Fatah is so public with its moral inversion. Not that any Western media will notice, though.

Fatah also published a lengthy poem glorifying their heroes. Auto-translate does poorly on poetry but the poem does mention "apes and monkeys drinking whiskey" so it certainly has its share of Jew-hatred.

Progressive.

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The Islamic Waqf, who run the Al Aqsa Mosque and other Muslim buildings on the Temple Mount, issued a mournful press release:

The head of the Islamic Waqf and Al-Aqsa Mosque Department, Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib, said that the infiltration by the Jewish extremists of Al-Aqsa Mosque in 2017 recorded the highest number of violators. The total number of extremists who stormed the mosque is about 25,630, in a clear desecration of the sanctity of the mosque.

Sheikh al-Khatib confirmed that the numbers are increasing under the rulings issued by the Jewish rabbis who incite the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque and with Israeli government support for these intruders.

Over 25,000 - an improvement!

But just to keep things in proportion, there are more Muslims at the holy site every Friday.

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What happens to ordinary people who slap security personnel in the face (videos)

Since Ahed Tamimi is being treated as a hero for slapping an Israeli security officer in the face, here is what happens to people around the world when they do the same thing.

Last November, a University of Miami woman was being taken away from the stadium and she slapped a security guard. He knocked her out.

This Italian woman gets slapped right back - and starts to cry:

This guy slaps a cop- and regrets it pretty quickly:

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01/01 Links Pt2: Even the Beatles preceded the Palestinians; Hezbollah and Hamas top ‘Richest Terror Groups’ list; Chanting "Jews, remember Khaybar" in Italy

From Ian:

Even the Beatles preceded the Palestinians

Since then…since 1964…the “Palestinians” have been the world’s number one concern, even though they have been nothing but a headache and exist in no history books. Nothing to be found about them before June 2, 1964. That’s when the Arab League certified them as the PLO.

That’s when they became a “people” -- a people still in search of an ancestry. So far, no luck.

Abbas keeps trying. He names himself and his “people” heirs to every ancient civilization on record.

But there is not even a single page about them; not in the Hebrew Bible, or the Christian Bible. The Koran never heard of them, and neither did Josephus.

Consider the Beatles. They made their splash February 7, 1964. That’s four months BEFORE the “Palestinians” got noticed...
If the 1960s are your idea of “ancient times,” okay; consider the Beatles. They made their splash February 7, 1964.

That’s four months BEFORE the “Palestinians” got noticed and they, The Beatles, never asked for favors besides “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”

It’s the song that launched them on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” (Originally known as “Toast of the Town.”) Anybody remember Ed Sullivan? Of course not.

Yes, Millennials, we did have TV back then, though to change channels Americans had to get up off the couch. Imagine such a thing!

Since math is not my strength, I will trust you to check my figures, to which I say that the “Palestinian people” have been around for 54 years.

For that, they want their own country deep in the heart of Israel, where the Jews go back 3,800 years – and a share of Jerusalem, Israel’s capital for 3,000 years.

Hezbollah and Hamas rank at top of Forbes’ ‘Richest Terror Groups’ list

Eight of the ‘Top Ten’ terror groups in terms of income are Muslim, with Hezbollah and Hamas ranked #1 and #3 respectively.

One of the more far-reaching consequences of former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran is on display in Forbes Israel’s latest ranking of the richest terrorist groups in the world, as in 2017 Iran-backed Hezbollah leaped to the top of list with a whopping $1.1 billion in revenue.

That is not to say that all their income stems from Iran. Terrorist organizations in general also fund their purchase of arms, training and salary payments to their members from such criminal activities as drug smuggling, money laundering, kickbacks, kidnappings, ‘protection’, etc., just as organized crime does.

But the nuclear deal, it should be recalled, allowed for the release of billions of dollars into Iran’s state coffers from the lifting of internationally imposed sanctions, and the unfreezing of its assets abroad. This, in turn, allowed the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism to open the spigots to its proxies, and the results can clearly be seen by comparing this year’s “Top Ten” list with the previous one, made in 2014. Lebanese group Hezbollah, which has been fighting in Syria for years for Iranian ally Bashar al-Assad, was then ranked fourth, with $500 million – only half of what it has today.

Hamas has $700 million
The Gaza Strip’s Hamas, meanwhile, is now in third place, having actually dropped a rung from 2014. (The Taliban now occupy second place, with a revenue of $800 million). Forbes lists them as currently receiving about $700 million a year, vs. a billion dollars three years ago. They have two well-known state sponsors, Qatar and, again, Iran. But in the decade since it took over Gaza, Hamas also became expert in extracting money from its own citizens.

According to Forbes’ 2014 report, Hamas makes most of its money from a sophisticated tax system aimed at, among other things, pocketing large portions of the international aid that flows into Gaza. It also runs hundreds of businesses, controls several banks, and has levies on all consumer goods entering the Gaza Strip. All in all, the report says, about 15% of Gaza’s economy ends up in this organization’s pocket.

Riyadh chess champion criticizes Saudi visa discrimination against Israeli players

Winner of the world speed chess championship in Riyadh, grandmaster Magnus Carlsen from Norway, said in an interview with the Norwegian NRK broadcasting network that if the Saudi visa issue is not regulated until next year, Saudi Arabia should not host the next tournament. “I really hope they solve the issue of visas for all countries,” said Carlsen.

The four-day chess championship ended December 30 amid controversy surrounding Riyadh’s refusal to provide visas for Israeli players. Seven Israeli chess players reportedly requested visas for the event. Head of the English Chess Federation Dominic Lawson said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia should be stripped of the right to host chess championships. "This contract for the World Rapid Chess Championship was signed on the understanding that the Saudis would ensure that Israeli masters would be able to play,” Lawson said.

Criticism surrounding the tournament also concerned the Kingdom’s treatment of its women. This year will reportedly be the first-year female chess players were not forced to wear an Islamic abaya garment to the games; instead, they were apparently permitted to wear a long blouse. Ukrainian chess champion Anna Muzychuk told reporters she decided to turn down a chance to participate in the event due to Saudi human right violations and its treatment of women. (h/t Zvi)

Remember the ISM of Rachel Corrie fame? No one wants to give them any money anymore.

I received a fundraising email from the International Solidarity Movement, and they apparently are in pretty bad shape.

Their heyday was when they fooled Rachel Corrie into thinking that she would stop a bulldozer that couldn't see her.

Now they say that the need $29,000 to cover their budget for 2018, for office expenses and to bring some Palestinian propagandists to college campuses.. Last year in total they only raised $10,000.

An addendum to today's email, possibly not meant for the entire group, says:

The US donations have been very weak so far, although it's a bit early to count the responses by check, of which we have so far received none. Not sure about responses to the Swedish site.

The top headline on their website brags that they are "surviving."

The ISM is a bellwether for extremist anti-Israel organizations like Free Gaza and others. Chances are, they are all hurting.

They need dead activists to galvanize their base. Those evil Israelis aren't even giving that to them.

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#FreeAhedTamimi so she can become the next Leila Khaled (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

There is a refreshingly honest Twitter account devoted to promoting the otherwise appallingly deceptive campaign to #FreeAhedTamimi. Among the recently posted tweets is one declaring: “Israel is dreading that Ahed is the next Leila Khaled, they will try to break her in anyway or shape. But what they forgot is to see the fierce and fearless & determine look through her blue eyes. #FreeAhedTamimi #FreeGeorgesAbdallah.”

It isn’t all that important if this Twitter account is really an “official” account sanctioned by the Tamimi family, because the images attached to the tweet are clearly real – and truly worth a thousand words.

So let’s recall who Leila Khaled and Georges Abdallah are.

Leila Khaled, with whom Ahed posed for a photo, is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP is notorious for having “pioneered such terror tactics as airline hijackings” and perpetrated “hundreds of terrorist attacks.” As Wikipedia puts it without a trace of irony, Leila Khaled “is credited as the first woman to hijack an airplane.”

If Ahed Tamimi wants to be “the next Leila Khaled,” we can only wonder and worry what pioneering acts of terror she will once be “credited” with.

Now let’s turn to Georges Abdallah, for whom Ahed campaigned alongside her father Bassem Tamimi: Abdallah is “a Lebanese militant” who “was arrested in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for the 1982 murder of Lieutenant Colonel Charles R. Ray, who was an assistant US military attaché and murder of Israeli diplomat Yaakov Bar-Simantov outside his home in Paris on 3 April 1982, as well as involvement in the attempted assassination of former American consul in Strasbourg Robert O. Homme.”

As explained in a subsequent tweet, the photos showing Ahed and her father Bassem Tamimi campaigning alongside a terrorist for another terrorist are “from the conference on the role of women in the Palestinian popular struggle Sep 2017 and international days of resistance to Free Georges Ibrahim Abdallah Oct 2017.”

So let this sink in: just some three months before much of the mainstream media dutifully promoted fact-free propaganda about the wonderful Tamimis and their noble “non-violent” struggle, daddy Bassem and his famous daughter were all too happy to show that their idea of “non-violence” includes murder and airplane hijackings.

What’s beyond satire is that the “conference” promoting terrorism was hosted by two far-left Spanish members of the European Parliament. According to a report in the European Jewish Press, pioneering airplane hijacker Leila Khaled used the prestigious platform at the European Parliament “to praise extremist violence and demonize Jews. She glorified terrorism and trivialized the Holocaust. ‘Don’t you see a similarity between Nazi actions and Zionist actions in Gaza? … While the Nazis were tried in Nuremberg, no one has ever tried the Zionists,’ she said.”

The outcry resulting from this travesty eventually prompted the European parliament to endorse a proposal “to systematically deny access to all persons, groups, or entities involved in terrorist acts.”

Better late than never, I guess – though it remains amazing to see that terrorists like Leila Khaled and outspoken terror supporters like the Tamimis can apparently travel freely to Europe.

Now let’s look at one other gem from the #FreeAhedTamimi Twitter account: this tweet manages to summarize the Tamimis’ agenda in just one word when it describes a photo of Hebrew graffiti praising Ahed as a “hero” as having been taken in “occupied Tel Aviv.”

So next time the Tamimis tell credulous reporters that they’re fighting “the occupation,” know that they’re surely mightily amused and pleased that everyone prefers to ignore that as far as they are concerned, Tel Aviv is just one more occupied Zionist settlement.

And if everything goes well for the Tamimis, Ahed – “the next Leila Khaled” – will once be credited for her pioneering terror strategies to liberate occupied Tel Aviv.

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01/01 Links Pt1: Murderers of 179 Israelis honored by Fatah; The Regime Chants "Death to America", Iranians Chant "Death to Mullahs"

From Ian:

PMW: Murderers of 179 Israelis honored by Fatah including 4 female suicide bombers

The official Facebook page of Abbas' Fatah Movement celebrated Fatah's 53rd anniversary by glorifying eight terrorist murderers from its ranks, four of them female suicide bombers. Fatah posted photos of the killers with the same text and logo on Dec. 30, 2017:

"The Palestinian National Liberation Movement - Fatah
Mobilization and Organization Commission - Communications Office
The 53rd anniversary of the outbreak of the Palestinian revolution"

The following are the photos of the terrorist murderers posted on Fatah's official Facebook page, with PMW explanatory notes:

Khalil Al-Wazir - Abu Jihad - former head of the PLO's military wing, was responsible for the murder of at least 125 Israelis, according to the PA's news agency Wafa.
Text:
"Heroic Martyr (Shahid)
Fatah Movement Central Committee member,
Khalil Al-Wazir 'Abu Jihad'"

The number "53" represents the 53rd anniversary of the "Launch" of Fatah. In the upper right corner is the Fatah logo that includes a grenade, crossed rifles, and the PA map of "Palestine" that presents all of Israel together with the PA areas as "Palestine".

JPost Editorial: Support the Iranian people

There was a time not so long ago when Israel and Iran were allies. And if one day the Iranian political leadership will go, there is no reason why Israel and Iran cannot once again collaborate.

A free, democratic, and independent Iran would give full expression – not only to the richness of Persian culture, one of the oldest on the planet – but could also tap into the extraordinary talents and energies of this remarkable people. Imagine the synergies of combining Israeli and Iranian abilities.

The only way there is even an outside chance of this happening, however, is if the US under Trump’s leadership, along with other nations, make it clear to Iran that they will not tolerate continued repression of the Iranian people.

As part of restoring the deterrence lost during the Obama era, the US should meet every case of repression with clear consequences, whether in the form of renewed sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or the curtailing of imports, or the suspension of business ties.

You might not be able to tell by reading leading newspapers or watching the major TV news outlets, but we could be witnessing unprecedented signs of change in Iran. World leaders should, through both words and deeds, take advantage of this propitious time.

The Regime Chants "Death to America", Iranians Chant "Death to Mullahs"

Now, people are demanding not just limited reforms but regime change. After almost four decades of living under a theocracy -- with Islamist mullahs controlling them, rampant corruption, and the regime's persistent dissemination of propaganda -- the people have reached the boiling point. The government has been doing all it can to stoke the flames of hatred, but has been trying to deflect it to "Death to America" and "Death to Israel".

Protesters, risking their lives, have been chanting, "Death to Khamenei" -- a serious crime according to the clergy, and punishable, according to the Sharia law of the regime, with death.

People are also chanting, "Death to Rouhani", "Shame on you Khamenei, step down from power", "Death to the Dictator" and "Death to the Islamic Republic". Protesters are tearing down the banners of Iran's Supreme leaders, Khomeini and Khamenei.

Chants being heard all over the nation are, "Forget about Palestine, forget about Gaza, think about us", "Death to Hezbollah", "The people live like beggars / [Khamenei] lives like a God," and "Leave Syria alone, think about us instead".

The outcry leaves no question about the needs of the people, and the real voice of Iran. Demonstrators are making a clear distinction between the Iranian people's desired policies and those being carried out by the regime. All political and economic indications are that protests in Iran will continue to grow.

The Trump administration in the United States is taking the right side by supporting the Iranian people; they are the principal victims of the Iranian regime and its Islamist agenda.

From Haaretz:

Washington gave Israel a green light to assassinate Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, the overseas arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported on Monday.

Al-Jarida, considered an Israeli mouthpiece, quoted a source in Jerusalem as saying that "there is an American-Israeli agreement" that Soleimani is a "threat to the two countries' interests in the region."

The agreement between Israel and the United States, according to the report, comes three years after Washington thwarted an Israeli attempt to kill the general.

The report says Israel was "on the verge" of assassinating Soleimani three years ago, near Damascus, but the United States warned the Iranian leadership of the plan, revealing that Israel was closely tracking the Iranian general.

The incident, the report said, "sparked a sharp disagreement between the Israeli and American security and intelligence apparatuses regarding the issue."

I've looked at al-Jarida over the years, and not one of its spectacular scoops that have been picked up by mainstream media has been verified.

In 2012, a foiled assassination plot against Ehud Barak in Singapore.
In 2015, it reported that the US threatened to shoot down Israeli planes en route to bomb Iran.
It reported Gilad Shalit about to be released in 2009, two years before it happened.
It claimed Israel was about to bomb Iran in 2009.
It reported other Israeli assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas figures back in 2008.
It claimed to have had the first interview with Egyptian president Sisi- ahead of any Egyptian media! (The interview was fiction and Egypt denied any such interview.)

Who considers Al Jarida to be an Israeli mouthpiece? Why would any Israeli want to leak information to an obscure Kuwaiti paper instead of one in Tel Aviv or the US? Why are Kuwaiti reporters, of all people, supposedly so well connected?

This is lazy, unethical journalism by Haaretz (and others have done the same with Al Jarida.)

Reporting on a story by another paper with no credibility isn't reporting. It is spreading lies.

UPDATE: I forgot that this "Israeli mouthpiece" reported in 2016 that "Jews are the biggest terrorists in history."

Maybe that's why Haaretz finds them credible.

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Here's a new one.

A company of ultra-extremist settlers, on Sunday, conducted silent Talmudic rituals in the closed section of Bab al-Rahma, located between the door of the tribes and the Marwani Mosque, inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

What is the difference between silent rituals and doing nothing?

Silent rituals make headlines in the Arab media! (I saw at least 6 stories about this.)

The more interesting part is that these "rituals" supposedly happened at Bab al-Rahma, which is a building that Israel closed off this year because it was a Hamas stronghold. If Jews are really allowed to visit the building while Muslims cannot, this might be a bigger story....

I believe this building abuts one of the southern gates of the Temple Mount.

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Haaretz reports:

A fantastically preserved seal impression made by the biblical Governor of Jerusalem during the First Temple era has been found by archaeologists where it fell 2,700 years ago.

Many dozens of seal impressions and seals themselves have been found in ancient Jerusalem, including in this area by the Temple Mount. Also, several seal impressions of the Jerusalem governor ("sar ha'ir"), who was the highest-ranking officer in the city, have been making the rounds in the black market, Dr. Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah told Haaretz.

But this lump of baked clay, all of 1.3 by 1.5 centimeters in size and just over two millimeters thick, is unique in being of unquestionable provenance.

"Ours is special because this was the first time the seal of the Governor of the City of Jerusalem itself was found in the right place," Weksler-Bdolah says.

The upper part of the governor's seal impression shows two standing figures facing each other, though their potential identities are obscure, as their heads are depicted as dots, with no special features. The two are garbed in a striped, knee-length garment, say Ornan and Sass.

The lower part has bears the inscription in ancient Hebrew script "sari'r" which the archaeologists are confident is ancient Hebrew for "sar ha'ir" or "governor of the city." Typical of the time, there is no space between the words.

The Governor of Jerusalem is mentioned twice in Hebrew Scripture, once in 2 Kings 23:7.

The Palestinian Arab Ma'an News Agency, which is touted as independent and objective, reports the story this way in Arabic:

Continuing the attempts of the Israeli occupation to write an imaginary history of its control over the city of Jerusalem, it continues to talk about the artificial history of the temple and what it calls "its ancient history" in the city.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman for the Arab media, Ophir Gendelman, published photographs of relics that the Israeli Antiquities Authority allegedly found in excavations near the Al-Buraq Wall. The occupation claims that they confirm their "ancient history" in the city, and that the seals and artifacts date back to the period of the "First Temple" 2,700 years ago and to one of the "rulers of Jerusalem" mentioned in the Torah.

The article proves again that Palestinian media isn't objective. It is propaganda.

The idea that Jews controlled Jerusalem, which Muslims freely admitted until recently, is now forbidden to be said. Because politics and hate of Israel is more important than facts or history.

Whether Ma'an writes this way out of fear of repercussions if they reported the story accurately, or whether it simply regards itself as a propaganda arm for Palestinian anti-Israel narrative, is not important. What is important is that the world needs to understand that even "objective" Palestinian media is anything but, that lying comes easily to them, and that they will not report anything that violates Palestinian political correctness. History and facts be damned.

If you want to laugh, read how Ma'an describes itself:

Ma'an News Agency takes the utmost neutrality in its news editorial policy, aimed at facilitating access to information and promoting freedom of opinion and pluralism in Palestine.

UPDATE: To give an idea of how much the official rules of propaganda must be adhered to - Palestinian Christians know that Jerusalem was a Jewish city and that the Temple was there, it is in their scriptures. Yet not once have I ever seen a Palestinian Christian denounce official Palestinian Temple-denial.

Regular Palestinians know what they are allowed to say to the media and to Westerners.

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Palestine Today reports about a new poll of Palestinian Arabs where it is claimed that 81.8% of them want to cancel the Oslo Accords.

They probably aren't thinking this through.

The Palestinian Authority only exists because of Oslo. The autonomy they have in Areas A and B only exist because of Oslo.

Without Oslo, they all go back to being under Israeli control. There is no "State of Palestine."

And there are no legal claims to any territory.

Mahmoud Abbas reverts to the head of Fatah and the PLO, but no longer would have any territory, any police, any international aid for his budget.

This doesn't sound like it would be so bad.

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The differences between the "Jerusalem embassy" demonstrations and the Iranian protests

Arab anti-Trump Jerusalem protests	Iranian anti-government protests
Organized top-down by Palestinian leaders	Organized bottom up by individuals
Anti-America and Israel	Anti-Ayatollah
Predicted to set the Middle East on fire by experts. They were wrong.	Not predicted by experts at all.
Meaningless, could never accomplish anything. US and Israel wouldn't back down.	A very big deal, even if violently put down it puts the mullahs on notice
Wall to wall media coverage hoping to find some violence that would justify the predictions	Media ignoring it (or, worse, covering pro-regime puppet rallies as legit)

The sad part is that since the "experts" and media were so invested in the Iranian deal and in supporting the regime at the expense of the majority of Arabs and Israel, they cannot now support a real grass-roots uprising against tyranny.

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EoZ top ten tweets of the year

Twitter has a number of metrics to determine the popularity of tweets (retweets, likes, clicking, and more general "engagement" which adds all of the others up.)

But in figuring out my most popular tweets of the year, I'm sticking with retweets.

All I have to say is, thanks Linda for helping me out so much!

10.

The British Government has officially responded to Arab demand to apologize for the Balfour Declaration:

NO.https://t.co/4h4JgwWcdJ pic.twitter.com/It6s2XKjfW
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) April 25, 2017

A handy guide to understand how "progressives" view race. pic.twitter.com/Cufbs46Ztq
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 4, 2017

How dare you compare the two! pic.twitter.com/or6aE9jusO
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) February 5, 2017

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah literally giving illustrated lessons to children on how to attack Israelis with rocks https://t.co/Vwcz02TyJK @UNICEF and other NGOs silent. pic.twitter.com/Efzy1BCrR2
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 17, 2017

When a member of the Arab American Association told Linda Sarsour about being sexually harassed by a Muslim man, the "feminist" @lsarsour sided with the man and threatened the woman. https://t.co/R8yUV7XitV

Sarsour is a hypocrite.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 18, 2017

Too few people seem to understand this. pic.twitter.com/cPsp55wEUQ
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) August 14, 2017

Just wondering - did "feminist" @lsarsour say anything about Tariq Ramadan's sexual assaults of Muslim women? I must've missed the tweets. pic.twitter.com/cJNwP69zOf
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) November 7, 2017

The West has forgotten: Mahmoud Abbas was responsible for financing 1972 Olympics massacre https://t.co/k8xPU4Jyq5 pic.twitter.com/Bddynegxyn
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 5, 2017

Linda Sarsour does it again. "At the end of the day it's self-identification. I'm Palestinian, if I want to say 'I'm Black,' - I'm Black!" pic.twitter.com/zKrxGhIXnk
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 8, 2017

Before putting on her hijab, Linda Sarsour admits she was white. Now she claims to be a "person of color." Neat trick! @lsarsour pic.twitter.com/4km7rs0sjj
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 4, 2017

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Haaretz reports:

The Likud Central Committee voted Sunday to unanimously accept a resolution that calls on the party's leaders to move to formally annex the West Bank.
The vote by the ruling party is nonbinding and was called for in a letter signed by some 900 members of the central committee.

But that isn't what the resolution says. Haaretz even quotes it:

“On the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the regions of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], including Jerusalem our eternal capital, the Likud Central Committee calls on the Likud’s elected officials to act to allow free construction and to apply the laws of Israel and its sovereignty to all areas of the liberated Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.”

This makes it sound like the Likud is calling to annex only the settlement blocs - areas that would remain under Israeli control in any possible peace plan anyway.

Times of Israel gets it right with its headline "Likud top body votes to annex parts of the West Bank."

How will world media report this?

We will see whether Western journalists follow Haaretz' false headline or what the actual story is.

But it shows yet again how Haaretz reports what it wants, not reality.

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12/31 Links: Trump: Iranians tired of having wealth stolen, ‘squandered on terrorism’; OECD: Israel ranked 11th happiest country in the world

From Ian:

Trump says Iranians tired of having wealth stolen, ‘squandered on terrorism’

US President Donald Trump again encouraged the protesters in Iran on Sunday, saying that the Iranian people were no longer prepared to see the country’s resources “squandered on terrorism” as mass protests continued.

“The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism,” Trump tweeted, saying that it looks like the Iranians “will not take it any longer.”

“The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!” he said.

Trump’s tweets the previous day angered Iran’s government, leading the Foreign Ministry spokesman to say the “Iranian people give no credit to the deceitful and opportunist remarks of US officials or Mr. Trump.”

Trump’s remarks came with the Iranian interior minister cautioning that Israel, the US, and other regional powers do not understand the nature of the clashes and that their delight at anti-government demonstrations is misguided.

A third night of unrest in Iran overnight Saturday saw mass demonstrations across the country in which two people were killed, dozens arrested and public buildings attacked.

The entire world understands that the good people of Iran want change, and, other than the vast military power of the United States, that Iran’s people are what their leaders fear the most.... pic.twitter.com/W8rKN9B6RT
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2017

Stephen L. Miller: Iran's protests are powerful and real. Why are mainstream media outlets so hesitant to report on them?

How will the Obama Presidential Library wing look celebrating a nuclear deal with an oppressive Iranian regime that could possibly be deposed by security forces and the military joining with protesters, thirsty for democracy and a return to an Iran before the 1979 revolution?

More to the point, how will it look if the Trump administration, of all things, facilitates and encourages such change in Iran?

The prospect of this is not lost on the self-styled resistance and anti-Trump media, all too anxious to witness the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Obama Library or hand a Nobel Prize to former Secretary of State John Kerry.

Overseeing the fall of an oppressive, hardline Iranian regime that sponsors terror all around the globe – followed by the rise of a democratic Iran not interested in aggression against its neighbors – would be a foreign policy victory for President Trump, one of the biggest for a president since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

If the Iranian regime is ousted, the move would neuter Hezbollah’s primary source of funding. It would diminish Hamas at a time when the United States rightfully is moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in defiance of the United Nations.

Replacement of the Iranian government could signal that Assad’s days in Syria are finally coming to an end, without powerful bullies to back him up. A new Iranian government would also no doubt give Russia pause about meddling in Middle East affairs – a hesitancy it did not have when the Obama administration gave Russian President Vladimir Putin “flexibility.”

Combative media reluctant to give President Trump credit for any policy victories – along with reluctance by anti-Trump analysts on the right (this one included) – should not divert our attention from Iranian citizens risking their lives to take to the streets. These Iranians hope the United States and the rest of the world do not ignore them again.

Why Can’t the American Media Cover the Protests in Iran?

Selling the protesters short is a mistake. For 38 years Iranian crowds have been gathered by regime minders to chant “Death to America, Death to Israel.” When their chant spontaneously changes to “Down with Hezbollah” and “Death to the Dictator” as it has now, something big is happening. The protests are fundamentally political in nature, even when the slogans are about bread. But Erdbrink can hardly bring himself to report the regime’s history of depredations since his job is to obscure them. He may have been a journalist at one point in time, but now he manages the Times portfolio in Tehran. The Times, as Tablet colleague James Kirchik reported for Foreign Policy in 2015, runs a travel business that sends Western tourists to Iran. “Travels to Persia,” the Times calls it. If you’re cynical, you probably believe that the Times has an interest in the protests subsiding and the regime surviving—because, after all, anyone can package tours to Paris or Rome.

Networks like like CNN and MSNBC which have gambled their remaining resources and prestige on a #Resist business model are in even deeper trouble. Providing media therapy for a relatively large audience apparently keen to waste hours staring at a white truck obscuring the country club where Donald Trump is playing golf is their entire business model—a Hail Mary pass from a business that had nearly been eaten alive by Facebook and Google. First down! So it doesn’t matter how many dumb Trump-Russia stories the networks, or the Washington Post, or the New Yorker get wrong, as long as viewership and subscriptions are up—right?

The problem, of course, is that the places that have obsessively run those stories for the past year aren’t really news outfits—not anymore. They are in the aromatherapy business. And the karmic sooth-sayers and yogic flyers and mid-level political operators they employ as “experts” and “reporters” simply aren’t capable of covering actual news stories, because that is not part of their skill-set.

The current media landscape was shaped by years of an Obama administration that made the nuclear deal its second-term priority. Talking points on Iran were fed to reporters by the White House—and those who veered outside government-approved lines could expect to be cut off by the administration’s ace press handlers, like active CIA officer Ned Price. It’s totally normal for American reporters to print talking points fed to them daily by a CIA officer who works for a guy with an MA in creative writing, right? But no one ever balked. The hive-mind of today’s media is fed by minders and validated by Twitter in a process that is entirely self-enclosed and circular; a “story” means that someone gave you “sources” who “validate” the agreed upon “story-line.” Someone has to feed these guys so they can write—which is tough to do when real events are unfolding hour by hour on the ground.

"We say to him [Netanyahu], when he claims that they [Jews] have a historical right dating back to 3000 years B.C.E.—we say that the nation of Palestine upon the land of Canaan had a 7,000-year history B.C.E. This is the truth, which must be understood, and we have to note it, in order to say: 'Netanyahu, you are incidental in history. We are the people of history. We are the owners of history.'" - Mahmoud Abbas, May 14, 2011.

Dani Ishai Behan has a blog post for the Times of Israel entitled, Jesus Was Not A Palestinian, Or Even An Arab in which he argues that Jesus was not a Palestinian... or even an Arab.

He is, of course, correct and the very fact that he feels it necessary to remind us is because many Palestinian-Arabs do make ridiculous claims such as that "Jesus was the first Palestinian shaheed" and do so as part of the larger project of heritage theft against the Jewish people.

They also do so out of a not unjustified assumption concerning the idiocy and ideological blinkertude of the humanitarian racist West that enjoys blaming Jewish people for the violence against us.

This is no small matter, but it is the kind of thing that travels beneath the awareness of typical mainstream reporters.

Those who are less familiar with the Long Arab / Muslim War against the Jews of the Middle East then is Behan might wonder why he feels it necessary to acknowledge the obvious? The reason that he does so is because the war against the Jews is as much a propaganda campaign - a campaign for delegitimization - as it is a campaign of violence, terrorism, and physical intimidation for the purpose of driving Jews back into diaspora and, thus, helplessness.

The Phases of the Long Arab / Muslim War against the Jews include:

Phase 1, 1920 - 1947: Riots and Massacres

Phase 2, November 1947 - April 1948: The Civil War in Palestine

Phase 3, 1948 - 1973: Conventional Warfare

Phase 4, 1964 - Present: The Terror War

Phase 5, 1975 - Present: The Delegitimization Effort

When Palestinian-Arabs claim the Jewish historical figure of Jesus as a "Muslim martyr" they are engaged in the process of heritage theft.

The purpose of this cultural thievery is to displace the indigenous Jewish population with Arab colonists, both physically and culturally and to do so as a matter of self-righteous "social justice."

This is the insidious irony of the entire project. They are seeking to turn Palestinian-Arabs into the New Jews while transforming the Jewish people into the New Nazis. But most importantly it is to sew confusion in the minds of interested and well-meaning outsiders.

Parisian intellectuals, for example, have about as much collective knowledge of the Long Arab / Muslim War against the Jews as I have about Parisian intellectuals. That is, although such people have no idea about the conflict they are constantly encouraged to view it as one between a racist, colonialist, imperialist, apartheid, Jewish, war-machine versus a small, bunny-like, native population that wants nothing more than to be left in peace to tend their sacred olive groves.

The enemies of the Jewish people, throughout the Middle East and Europe, therefore fabricated the propagandistic illusion that the Jews are interlopers on historically Jewish land while the Arab colonists are the persecuted indigenous population.

Heritage theft is part of this process.

Although transforming the historical figure of Jesus into a Palestinian-Arab is probably the most ridiculous and audacious of such examples, it is certainly not the only one.

After all, if the Arabs can abscond with Jesus they can certainly take Anne Frank which is why we sometimes see her in a keffiyeh within circles associated with antisemitic anti-Zionism.

Another obvious example, as Behan points out, is the obscuring of Jewish history on Jewish land through the widely accepted usage of "West Bank" for Judea and Samaria. The truth is that the tiny bit of land along the eastern Mediterranean was known as Judah and Samaria for millennia.

As Behan writes:

Judaea is the Roman/Latin cognate of Judah, which is itself the Anglicized version of the Hebrew name for the land: ‘Yehudah’. We are called Jews/Yehudim because we come from Judea/Judah. The languages spoken there – Hebrew and Aramaic – formed part of the basis for diaspora tongues such as Yiddish.

Yet another example - one that I find particularly toxic and obnoxious - is the effort to equate the "Nakba" with the Holocaust.

The effort is to always balance the historical claims of the Jewish side with the ahistorical claims of their Palestinian-Arab enemies.

As Bashir Bashir, professor of Political Science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and co-editor, along with Amos Goldberg of The Holocaust and the Nakba: Memory, National Identity and Jewish-Arab Partnership tells us concerning their edited volume:

Zionism tries to treat the Holocaust as both universal and particular: it is supposed to be significance to all of humanity, but it is also the patrimony of Zionism, which has the right to decide how it is invoked and understood. Putting the Holocaust and the Nakba together in a common frame disrupts this exceptionalism and is meant to provoke new thinking that exceeds the rigid, dichotomous, and oppositional boundaries of ethno-nationalism.

To be clear, neither Bashir, nor Goldberg, seek equivalence between the slaughter of the millions of Jews in Europe and the fact that some Arabs fled Israel, and some were driven from Israel, after launching a war against the Jews in November of 1947.

But, nonetheless, they are walking an exceedingly tight rope and it is not the least bit obvious that "putting the Holocaust and the Nakba together in a common frame" does anything other than draw an ethical equivalence, despite their suggestions otherwise.

What Dani Ishai Behan very well understands, but what most observers of the conflict do not, is that there is not the slightest ethical correspondence between the Nazi slaughter of the Jews in Europe and the efforts among Jewish Holocaust survivors to save themselves and their families from the Long Arab / Muslim War that long preceded the existence of Nazis and that continues to this day.

Following the death of Muhammad in the seventh-century, the Muslims of the Arabian Peninsula conquered the Byzantine Empire and almost went forward to conquer the entirety of Europe.

I am afraid that in doing so they do not also get to conquer either Jewish or Christian history.

Jesus was a Jew and everyone knows it.

When Palestinian-Arabs claim otherwise they make themselves look like fools.

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