Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

01/10 Links Pt2: Pipes: How 99 percent of ‘Palestine refugees’ are fake; Vienna police charge 3 men for waving Israeli flag at rally; Are we bored of Ahed Tamimi yet?

From Ian:

Daniel Pipes: How 99 percent of ‘Palestine refugees’ are fake

And even if no one replaced U.S. donations, denying UNRWA money does not get to the heart of the problem, which lies not in its sponsored activities but in its perpetuating and expanding population of “Palestine refugees” in three unique, even bizarre ways: allowing this status to be transferred without limit from generation to generation; maintaining the status after refugees have acquired a nationality (such as the Jordanian); and assigning the status to residents of the West Bank and Gaza, who live in the putative Palestinian homeland. These tricks allowed UNRWA artificially to expand the refugee population from 600,000 in 1949 to 5.3 million now; an accurate count of real refugees now alive numbers around 20,000.

Therefore, while enthusiastically endorsing Trump’s political goals, I suggest that withholding funds is not the right tactic. Better would be to focus on the “Palestine refugee” status. Denying this to all but those who meet the U.S. government’s normal definition of a refugee (in this case, being at least 69 years old, stateless, and living outside the West Bank or Gaza), diminishes the irredentist dagger at Israel’s throat by over 99 percent. It also puts the “Palestine refugee” status into play, permits millions of Palestinians to live more healthily, addresses the dank heart of Arab anti-Zionism, and helps resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Accordingly, I propose that the president adjust U.S. policy to work with Jerusalem and continue to send aid to Palestinians while making it contingent upon the overwhelmingly majority of recipients formally acknowledging that they are not now and have never been refugees.

The Middle East Forum, which has been working this issue since 2010, has proposed legislation to make such a shift. It’s both simple and feasible, as it does nothing fancier than bring Washington’s relations with UNRWA into line with U.S. law and policy. About time.

Melanie Phillips: Our crazy world: fire, fury and UNRWA

Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the fire and fury around President Trump, America’s attempt to draw the poison of UNRWA (25:30), and the extraordinary fact that Israel helps keep the Arabs of Gaza alive in response to which the Arabs of Gaza keep trying to murder them.

UNRWA – end the UN state

As long as the “UNRWA state” exists, the Palestinian issue will never be resolved.

In the 1948 war the Arab Liberation Army suffered a crippling defeat. The Arab League refused to accept defeat and, to save its reputation, decided to demand the implementation of the principle “status quo ante bellum.” Meaning to restore the Palestinian refugees to their homes.

The United Nations embraced the League’s demand and created a special UN agency – the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The goal was not to rehabilitate the refugees, but rather to render the League refugees state services, like health, welfare and education.

Had the question of rehabilitation been on the agenda, the UN would have decided to let the International Refugee Organization (IRO – established in 1944) to take care of the Palestinian refugees.

Thus, the UN created a political unit/ entity of its own – UNRWA. A political Palestinian semi-entity, ruled by Arab states and/or organizations, depending on the location. Despite the fact that this political entity enjoys UN immunity, it is controlled by the PLO.

Every new physician, on the day of his graduation, knows that you can’t heal a wound unless you had drained the purulence first. As long as UNRWA exists, the Palestinians will never agree to reach an agreement with Israel. They believe that, through the “assistance” of the refugee-hosting Arab countries, UNRWA eventually will serve them the annihilation of Israel on a silver plate, by bring them back to Haifa, Jaffa, Beersheba and Jerusalem. They consider the refugee ID card UNRWA provides them the passport to the promised land.

Zionism and Feminism have a great deal in common

I admit that when I saw the title of this Tablet piece by Einat Wilf, Anti-Feminism and Anti-Zionism, I expected a Zionist version of the flawed leftist intersectionality arguments that try to tie disparate themes together based on very little but with a clear political purpose.

I was wrong. This is really an excellent article that shows that feminism and Zionism have a great deal in common - not that one necessarily affects the other, as intersectionality theory insists, but that they have the same underlying philosophy of equal rights for historic victims of discrimination.

Excerpts:

Feminism and Zionism are cut from the same cloth. Both movements emerged from the same intellectual and political origins, they both exhibited similar growth trajectories, becoming two of the most successful revolutions to sweep and survive through the 20th century, both continue to face ferocious backlash, and both remain vibrant and necessary in the 21st century.

Feminism and Zionism are ongoing rebellions against millennia-long power structures that assigned women and Jews a “proper place" in society....They were both forms of refusal to accept the role that others have assigned to women and Jews. They were forms of self-assertion that cried out: I refuse to be seen how you wish to see me, I refuse to be that which you want me to be, I am not your inferior, I can be so much more than I am allowed to be, and I insist on being free to explore and make the most of my humanity.

Feminism and Zionism developed as those claiming to espouse the ideals of equality and liberty and solidarity twisted themselves into ideological and religious knots to justify keeping women and Jews out of this new world. Feminism and Zionism came into their own as the logical trajectory of equality among human beings could not but be extended to those who could also lay legitimate claim to being human beings, even if somewhat different from the mold.

Alas, feminist women and Zionist Jews proved themselves ingrates. The more they attained, the more they wanted. Unable to celebrate what they were given, they exhibited an annoying tendency to not just care about being somewhat better off than before but to actually want true equality. It was a tendency that was often resisted by women and Jews themselves, who feared that the fragile achievements they already had would be endangered by movements that insisted on pressing ever forward. The “problem” with feminism and Zionism was that no matter how successful they were, what achievements they brought about for women and Jews, it never seemed to be enough....

That change was not always welcome. In fact, it was resisted at every turn, often violently, even ferociously. The more power—of various kinds—was amassed by women and Jews, the more their rise felt like an offense to the “proper order of things.” The challenge of feminism and Zionism to millennia-long power structures was never going to go over unchallenged. It is in the very nature of power that no-one, ever, gives it up willingly and easily. If women and Jews seemed unable to know “their proper place” and intent on demanding more, then they must be placed back in “their proper place,” and if needed, by force.

..[E]ntire cultures and civilizations were mobilized to drive a wedge between the “Good Woman” and the “Bad Feminist,” between the “Good Jew” and the “Bad Zionist.”
The difference between the Good and the Bad? Power. A “Good Woman” does not aspire to power; in fact, she feels uncomfortable with it and would be more than happy to forgo it. A “Good Jew” feels queasy with manifestations of Jewish power, and in the face of raw expressions of it rushes to declare his or her renunciation of Zionism. It is no accident that the forms of female and Jewish expressions that are most mocked, criticized, and denigrated are those that involve the expression of power. If the revolutions of feminism and Zionism are ever to be stalled, and even rolled back, women and Jews must come to feel uneasy with power.

This essay demolishes the pseudo-academic idea of intersectionalism and it shows that Zionism is a truly liberal idea and movement. It also neatly shows that those opposed to Zionism, for ostensibly liberal reasons, are really trying to keep Jews in their place.

And it also shows that opposition to Israeli policies is not necessarily anti-Zionism just as opposing some feminist tactics is not necessarily anti-feminist., But to oppose Zionism because of Israeli policies is just as dismissive of equal rights of Jews as opposing feminism is dismissive of equal rights for women.

This article is the best rejoinder for Linda Sarsour and her ilk who try to pretend that Zionism and feminism are incompatible.

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Meshichist Lubavitchers Aghast At People Who Insist Two-State Solution Not Dead

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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: Credit: Mordechai Baron

Crown Heights, January 10 - Adherents of the belief that the late Rebbe of the Lubavitch Hasidic movement did not, in fact, die in 1994, expressed shock today that anyone could think the Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has any life in it.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh leader of the Lubavitch dynasty, is interred at Montefiore Cemetery in the New York City Borough of Queens. A small but vocal segment of the Chabad movement, the Lubavitch organization that spreads the teachings of the dynasty's founder and his successors, insists that Rabbi Schneerson is not truly dead, and will reappear to claim his rightful status as Messiah when the time comes. To support their contentions they cite unconventional, controversial interpretations of classical Jewish teachings that run counter to authoritative teachings, and they disregard evidence to the contrary, but find the notion that the Two-State Solution remains in any way viable an absurd notion.

"Goodness gracious, it would take a credulous, willfully blind imbecile to believe that nonsense has anything to recommend it," remarked Rabbi Yechi Admor as he hoisted a "Messiah" flag out his Eastern Parkway apartment window. "People still hold by that codswallop? I'm stunned. Anyone with half a brain should be able to make an honest assessment of the situation and conclude there's no chance of 'Israel and Palestine dwelling side by side in peace and security,' as the plan's proponents never tire of declaiming."

"They must take everyone for fools," added Shaya Green, a Messianist Lubavitcher who lives in Tzfat. "Nobody in his right mind could think the Palestinians are interested in a negotiated peace, and even if they were, that the faction nominally holding the leadership has the power, resources, or will to make good on any such commitment. You have to be out of touch with reality to fall for that one," continued the father of nine. "I catch plenty of flak from my fellow Jews, even fellow Chabad people, for believing in, shall we call it, an unconventional and unlikely set of notions about the Rebbe and his position as Moshiach, but compared to the evidence for a workable Two-State Solution, the idea that the Rebbe is Moshiach is a slam dunk."

Wednesday afternoon, reports emerged that former US Secretary of State John Kerry had convened a meeting with several Messianic Chabad Rabbis to discuss potential collaboration on putting forth delusional, starry-eyed, potentially disastrous proposals for Israel.

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01/10 Links Pt1: Terror victim Raziel Shevach remembered as unique, kindhearted man; How Israel Contributes to the Security of Every NATO Country; ISIS Sets Its Sights on Gaza

From Ian:

Terror victim Raziel Shevach remembered as unique, kindhearted man

Rabbi Raziel Shevach, slain in a West Bank terror attack Tuesday night, was remembered by friends and acquaintances as a goodhearted family man who was a central figure in the local settlement community and in his home of Havat Gilad.

“He was a very special person,” said friend Yehuda Hass, who volunteered with Shevach as a medic in Magen David Adom. “Just recently he received a citation for his work in the organization. He was the unofficial rabbi of Havat Gilad.”

The 35-year-old father of six was also a rabbi in a yeshiva and a mohel.

“He was a very well known mohel here…in the area, entirely as a volunteer,” Hass told the Ynet news site. “He was a great man with a great heart.”

Shevach was shot dead Tuesday while driving down a highway near his home in the outpost outside Nablus. Israeli security forces were searching for the perpetrators.

His funeral will be held at the Havat Gilad outpost at 1 p.m. Wednesday.

Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau also released a statement in which he said he was heartbroken by Shevach’s death. He described him as a “unique, affable and rare character” who “devoted his life to saving lives, teaching Torah and safeguarding Judaism in the Land of Israel.”

The head of the local settler council, Yossi Dagan said “residents of Samaria and all of Israel grieve this terrible loss and embrace the family and the orphaned children.”

Dagan called Shevach a central figure in the region, “a man of grace, a man of Torah and a friend. All who knew him loved him, and loved him deeply.”

Frustration boils into calls for revenge at funeral of slain rabbi

Irate and mournful, hundreds of mourners attended the Wednesday funeral of a rabbi who was slain by terrorists in a drive-by shooting attack in the northern West Bank, eulogizing the father of six and calling for revenge.

A large group of mourners shouted down Education Minister Naftali Bennett as he concluded his eulogy for Raziel Shevach at the Havat Gilad outpost, where the victim lived.

As dozens of hecklers chanted “revenge,” Bennett attempted to calm the crowd by saying that “the only revenge is to keep building.”

Not appeased, the chants only grew louder, with one yelling that the minister, the head of the Jewish Home party, was “all talk.”

“Your name should be blotted out,” one mourner yelled out, using a Hebrew phrase usually reserved for especially villainous figures.

Rabbi Raziel Shevah was murdered in a drive-by shooting tonight. Per Palestinian Authority law, the PA will likely pay his killer five times the average salary for a Palestinian for the rest of his life, to reward him for making this woman a widow and these children orphans. pic.twitter.com/mLxwRBr7cP
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) January 9, 2018

Last night's victim of Palestinian terror was a 35-year-old rabbi, a first responder who no doubt treated many Palestinians over the years. He was also a father of 6 young children. Anyone who thinks this murder will advance peace or a Palestinian state understands nothing.
— Michele Chabin (@MicheleChabin1) January 10, 2018

Today's explicit Arab antisemitism that not one Arab or Muslim will condemn publicly in Arabic

Three separate articles in Arab media, all published today, show that virulent Arab Jew-hatred still flourishes and is fed to millions of people.

Kuwait's Al Anba has an article called "Characteristics of the Jews:"

The Jews are known for their profane qualities, mentioned by God in his book about them, and these qualities are inherent in all Jews until the Day of Resurrection. The Muslim should be warned about them. They have broken the covenant with the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and tried to kill him more than once....

And what happens to our brothers in Palestine is the greatest witness to their annulment of the covenants, and the Jews do not keep their covenants, conventions and agreements,...

They killed the prophets - peace be upon them -...

The Jews are keen to take the money of the people with falsehood. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning): "And you see many of them rushing in sin and transgression, To control the banks and the global economy, to control the fate of nations and peoples.

[Jews have] shame, ....So it happened, on the day of Khaybar, God humiliated and forced their enemies, as well as by the Jews of the city: the sons of Qinqaa, Bani Nadeer, Bani Qurezah, All of them are humiliated by God ». The biggest witness to this is that you see the Palestinian child with the stone facing the heavily armed Jewish soldier, fleeing from fear for his life.

They spread corruption in the land, they spread drugs and liquor, and propagate obscenities and vices among the people, they are the dealers of vice, and prostitutes, and control the media channels, which publish pornography, and also spread infidelity and atheism, and questioning the Muslims in their faith and religion, The corruption in the earth in every way they possess...

The only thing missing is drinking the blood of Muslim children.

Remarkably, an Egyptian site Fath News has an article with a nearly identical title, but written by a different person. He says that Jews rejected the prophets, that thy are responsible for all corruption on the planet, that they are the most hostile people on Earth, that they charge interest, that Freud began the sexual revolution that resulted in theater and film,and Karl Marx is thrown in there as well.

El Badil, also in Egypt, has an article that denies that Jews in Israel are Jewish, saying that anyone who says that Zionists are cousins of the Arabs is engaging in an attempt to normalize relations with Israel. One of the fun facts that author claims is that the debunked book The Thirteenth Tribe claiming that Ashkenazic Jews are European Khazars is no longer available in the United States at all, and even the copy in the Library of Congress has mysteriously disappeared.(Perhaps the Library should get it from Amazon.)

Once again, it is important to stress that individual antisemitic articles here and there do not prove that Arabs are antisemitic as a whole. What indicts the Arabs is that there is never the slightest protest or backlash against these articles when they are published. I have yet to see a single response, a single letter to the editor, a single Arab news report that denounces or condemns the explicit and raw Jew-hatred that pops up regularly in Arab and Muslim media. There is no antidote to this poison in the Arab press - there is not even dilution.

A Jewish school and an ancient synagogue were firebombed in Tunisia in the past day. Officials claim that the protests were not against Jews but of a more general nature. Of course, the only buildings that seem to have been attacked besides the government buildings are the Jewish buildings.

I am not saying that every Arab is antisemitic. But it is accurate to say that Arab society is indeed antisemitic. If you cannot find one Arab willing to fight explicit antisemitism publicly in their own nations, in Arabic, that means that Jew-hatred is normalized and accepted. The West doesn't want to admit this, but this simple fact is the single biggest reason that there can never be real peace between Israel and any Arab nation. The result is that people should not bother to work towards peace, but to work towards detente a grudging acceptance that Israel isn't going anywhere and it is less counterproductive to live with it than to try to destroy it.

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Here is how the Fatah Facebook page admiringly described the terror attack yesterday:

#Operation Nablus in numbers :-
The entire operation took 40 seconds.
The distance between the two cars was 20 meters.
Number of bullets fired: 22.
The Enforcer is skilled and trained and he withdrew quickly.
The result is a dead settler.

Rabbi Raziel Shevach was the father of five.

Under international law, he was a civilian and his murder was a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.

Yet no mainstream media outlet dares mention how Abbas' party is celebrating terrorism, explicitly.

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There are about 4000 Palestinians left in Iraq, a fraction of the number who used to live there.

From Al Monitor:

The Arabi21 news website revealed Dec. 20 that Iraqi President Fuad Masum had approved Law No. 76 of 2017, which stripped Palestinian refugees living in Iraq of their rights and classified them as foreigners. The law came into effect after being published in the Iraqi Gazette.

The new law replaced Law No. 202 of 2001, issued by former President Saddam Hussein, forcing the Iraqi state to treat Palestinians as equals to Iraqis, with all privileges and citizenship rights, such as tax exemption, opportunities to work in government departments, and access to education and health care services.

Mohammed Mshenesh, a Palestinian researcher on refugee affairs, told Al-Monitor, “The new law will deprive Palestinian engineers, doctors and teachers the ability to become members of Iraqi trade unions," thus preventing them from practicing these professions, "and whoever wants to start a commercial project will have to comply with the foreigners law, which requires the presence of an Iraqi sponsor and the approval of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and the Ministry of Interior. This will increase the Palestinians’ suffering and push the few left to leave Iraq.”

If the law were to be applied in early 2018, the number of Palestinians in Iraq would decrease even more; they would leave in search of safety, especially since they would be prevented from investing and deprived of employment in the private sector. The law would also prevent them from owning property or joining trade unions, and it would force them to pay full college tuition.

Thamer Mashineesh, the president of the Iraqi Palestinians Association, told Al-Monitor, “The Iraqi law ends the permanent residency of Palestinians in Iraq, so they are now required to renew their residency through consulting the official agencies. They could risk being expelled from Iraq if they were to commit any violation. This could threaten their rights to compulsory and university education, which evidently affects their education and gradually turns them into an ignorant community. In addition, all health care services would decline and they would be unable to pay for expensive surgeries, increasing their daily suffering.”

A law specifically targeting and discriminating against Palestinians.

In an Arab country.

Which has been mentioned in Arabic news media for nearly three weeks.

And this is the first English language article I've seen about it.

Somehow, the dozens of researchers at HRW and Amnesty, not to mention the "pro-Palestinian" NGOs who know Arabic. have not made a big deal out of this.

If they care so much about Palestinians, then why, oh why, do they ignore the news when their fellow Arabs are their oppressors?

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01/09 Links Pt2: Phillips: Time to shame those who spread prejudice; Howard Stern Bashes Lorde for Cancelling Israel Concert

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Time to shame those who spread prejudice

That would be helpful in stopping the most egregious antisemitic bigotry, which should be as unthinkable as speakers insulting or defaming black people. It is shocking that university authorities stand by while thugs disrupt pro-Israel speakers, as happened in 2016 when Hen Mazzig, a gay IDF veteran, was prevented from speaking at University College London by a violent mob.

But much obnoxious activity takes the form of falsehoods about Israel’s behaviour or Jewish history. These may be anchored in antisemitism but they are not in themselves irrational. They are simply lies and distortions. Trying to prevent them from being expressed, at all, risks crossing the line into censorship. Academic debate, after all, involves testing possible falsehoods to destruction in order to arrive at the truth.

The core problem lies not with the students putting on these vile meetings but the professors and lecturers who teach courses in which the narrative of lies about Israel is presented as academically sound — and then stand by while Jewish students are abused.

Irrational prejudice is immune to reason. False claims, though, can be disproved and those who promulgate them can be held up for public scorn. The focus, therefore, should be on universities and teachers who facilitate this. Instead of protesting from the back foot against these meetings taking place, defenders of the Jewish people need to go on to the offence.

They should be staging their own meetings setting out the facts that these universities are denying. They should be calling out specific universities and named professors and lecturers for incompetent scholarship, discriminating against students for telling the truth about the Middle East, substituting falsehoods for facts, facilitating incitement against Israel and Jews — and sometimes being funded thus to subvert academic standards by huge donations from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states.

The universities are temples of reason which, on Israel among other issues, have been hijacked in order to deny rational thought and promote instead hate-mongering lies, propaganda and prejudice. We therefore need not less but more and different speech which can turn this bigotry into a boomerang.

Paris Kosher Store Set on Fire on Anniversary of Hypercacher Massacre

A kosher grocery store in the southern Parisian suburb of Creteil was set ablaze and completely gutted early Tuesday morning, three years to the day after the 2015 attack on a Hypercacher kosher superette in the Porte de Vincennes suburb of Paris, which followed the Charlie Hebdo shooting two days earlier. The same Islamist gunmen who murdered eight Charlie Hebdo staff members, two police officers and two bystanders, then murdered four Jewish hostages in the Hypercacher, and police ended the siege by storming the store and killing one gunman.

This Tuesday, the attacked kosher store was also vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti, according to Creteil prosecutor Laure Beccuau, who told AFP “The damage is believed to be very severe.”
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The kosher grocery was completely destroyed in the fire, with the shelves blackened and charred, according to AFP.

The store, Promo & Destock, on René Arcos Street in Creteil, is owned by a Muslim. On Wednesday last week, it and another kosher store next door were vandalized with swastikas. The second kosher store caught some of the fire Tuesday morning.

Israel’s ambassador to France Aliza Bin Noun called the fire a “shameful provocation.”

An estimated 23,000 Jews live in Creteil, whose overall population is about 90,000.

A pretty accurate political cartoon about Gaza from a Hamas newspaper

Felesteen, a Hamas mouthpiece, has this cartoon showing a rifle in the shape of Gaza surrounded by barbed wire:

The cartoonist views all of Gaza as a weapon pointing at Israel.

To the West, Palestinians would show the inside of Gaza as being filled with suffering women and children imprisoned by Israel. But to their own audience, they regard Gaza is simply - a weapon aimed at killing Jews.

Why wouldn't Israel want to protect itself from something like that?

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“But why does he have to make provocations with these declarations of his?!”

I was shocked to hear this sentence come out of the mouths of my Jewish American relatives. Yes, they were referring to Trump (who they hate) and to the Jerusalem declaration.

I love my relatives but they live in a completely different universe than I do.

Slowly, carefully, I explained that a declaration does not “provoke” violence. It can be an excuse for violent people to unleash violence but a statement doesn’t actually create violence.
Would anyone accept the statement that Kristallnacht was a result of Jewish provocation? Of course not! Kristallnacht was a result of Antisemitic propaganda and the government condoned environment, sending the message that violence against Jews was perfectly acceptable, even desirable… There is no difference between that and the Arab “Days of Rage”.

To state otherwise is both Jew-hating and racist against Arabs. It excuses violence against Jews, as if it is a legitimate response, only to be expected AND it implies that Arabs are sub-human, incapable of deciding for themselves when and where to rage, as if they have none of the ability to think rationally or control their impulses that are expected of every other people on the face of the earth.

My, oh my.

“But what good does it do to state that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel? It is so why does he have to say it?”

Again, different planets. Obviously, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Jerusalem has been the heart of Zion for 3000 years, not just the last 70, since the re-establishment of the Jewish State. It is a ridiculous and (though I don’t use this word lightly) evil game played by nations that are ambivalent about the existence of the Jewish people, as if pretending our capital is not our capital might result in the Jewish people realizing that we are considered illegitimate and should therefore do the world a favor and simply disappear.

Declaring that “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and is the eternal capital of the Jewish people” is, in actuality, a statement that: “the Jewish people are here to stay. The Jews are not going away.” When the superpower of the world says this to the other nations on the planet, it matters.

For some reason my dear relatives keep telling me about the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville and how horrible it was to see people march with torches and scream “Jews will not replace us!” The fact that anyone would consider it reasonable to openly chant such slogans are indicative of the disturbing trend of open antisemitism becoming socially acceptable HOWEVER this pales in comparison to the actual attacks on the Jewish nation and the undermining of Jewish legitimacy and sovereignty in our own land, in the capital of our own country.

The votes against Israel in the UN, declarations that Jerusalem has nothing to do with Jews, that the Temple Mount and Hevron are not Jewish, matter a lot more than even a few hundred screaming tiki-torch marchers, scary as they may be.

Feeling threatened is not the same as an actual attack.

While I understand the revulsion many feel towards President Trump, he is the President of the United States, the declaration about Jerusalem actually came out of his mouth and the declaration itself is important – not only to the Jewish people but to the entire world.

A shifting is happening. My American relatives don’t seem to realize how profound the change already is.

Iranians have taken to the streets to demand that their government invest their money in them, rather than the war in Syria or in Hamas in Gaza. They want food, jobs and hope. The war on the Jews is no longer interesting in comparison.

For the first time, Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia are openly asking: “Why should we invest ourselves in the Palestinian problem? Let’s see how we can better our own lives.”

Do you really think the shift in American policy has nothing to do with this?

As an American citizen, I was raised to believe that America is a force for good in the world. As an Israeli I have felt betrayed by the land of my birth, by the policies of it’s elected politicians who have put my life and that of my friends and family in danger.

For many years America has been on the wrong side of history, not just in regard to Israel but in regard to foreign policy around the world. Here are just a few examples:

• Ousting Mubarak to support the Mursi Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt.
• Telling the people of Egypt, who did not want Islamic rule, that they have no right to demonstrate against the Mursi government.
• Telling Sisi that bombing ISIS terrorists who had slaughtered Egyptian Christians, was wrong
• Remaining silent when the people of Iran demanded freedom and were murdered in the streets by their own government. Justifying this silence with the statement: “we don’t want to meddle in the internal affairs of other countries.”
• The Iran nuclear deal. (If Saudi Arabia and Israel agree that something is bad, you know it’s bad)
• Creating a vacuum that enabled the rise of ISIS
• Destabilizing Libya. Running guns. Benghazi. Ignoring the human trafficking and slave trade.
• Abandoning the Kurds
• The war in Syria and Iraq – thousands of people in Syria and Iraq have been tortured and murdered, millions have been displaced, the genocide of the Yazidis, the sex slave trade…
• Yemen
• Nigeria
• Crimea
The list goes on and on (and that is without mentioning policies that directly effect Israel and put our lives in danger) …

My relatives are not the only Jews I have seen commenting about how horrible Trump is and pining for the dignity and eloquence of the politicians who came before him. I read a statement in a progressive Jewish group about how “we must disconnect ourselves from Trump or it will end up causing us (the Jewish community) enormous damage.”

Again, different planets.

In my world, enormous damage is the thousands who have been tortured and murdered in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The millions who have been displaced and the resulting migrant crisis.

In my world, enormous damage is the Persians who wished to be free from the ayatollahs of Iran and were gunned down in the streets because then, (unlike now thank God) America stayed silent.

In my world, enormous damage is Israel being forced into ceasefires while under attack by Hamas. The bodies of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul held hostage by Hamas just to torture their parents. Iran on our borders. Iran arming Hezbollah and Hamas in preparation to go to war against the only Jewish State…

But that’s just me.

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01/09 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: Israel thwarted 'major' terror attacks in Europe involving planes; Palestinian Authority paid terrorists nearly $350 million in 2017

From Ian:

Netanyahu: Israel thwarted 'major' terror attacks in Europe involving planes

Israeli intelligence has thwarted mass terrorist attacks in Europe that “involve civil aviation,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, in a possible reference to September 11-type attacks planned against European targets using hijacked aircraft.

Netanyahu, speaking in Jerusalem to ambassadors of NATO countries, said that the world is threatened by radical Sunni groups, initially led by al-Qaeda, but now by Islamic State, and radical Shi'ites led by Iran.

“When we talk about ISIS, it's important to understand that Israel helps Europe in two fundamental ways,” Netanyahu said.

“The first is that we have, through our intelligence services, provided information that has stopped several dozen major terrorist attacks, many of them in European countries. Some of these could have been mass attacks, of the worst kind that you have experienced on the soil of Europe and even worse, because they involve civil aviation. Israel has prevented that, and thereby helped save many European lives.”

He did not elaborate. Netanyahu has said numerous times in the past that Israeli intelligence has helped thwart numerous terrorist attacks in Europe.

JPost Editorial: Shut down UNRWA

The US under the leadership of President Donald Trump is rightly reconsidering the logic of funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine – at least as it operates presently.

Some $125 million, which makes up about a third of the United States’ annual support for the organization, has already been frozen.

Judging from a tweet by Trump that preceded the decision to freeze aid, it seems the US president wants to make funding conditional upon Palestinian cooperation in helping to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump’s concern is legitimate. UNRWA, which has been around since 1949, was supposed to be a temporary solution, until the “Palestinian refugee problem” was sorted out. But with the Palestinian Authority refusing to cooperate with the US in solving the problem, there is little reason for the US to continue footing the bill for the agency indefinitely.

We can think of a few additional reasons why UNRWA – which employs 11,500 employees in Gaza alone – should be radically revamped, if not disbanded altogether.

The first problem is that UNRWA perpetuates the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. While the original Palestinian refugees from 1948 – both those who left their homes willingly and those who were forced – might legitimately have deserved refugee status, why should their grandchildren or great-grandchildren share that status? Most other refugees are cared for by the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees, and their status is not passed on to grandchildren or great-grandchildren. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have their own agency.

This leaves millions of Palestinians in a state of limbo. Instead of getting on with their lives, the Palestinians in places like Gaza continue to grasp a false dream of one day returning to Jaffa, Haifa or Jerusalem. This also allows the kind of apartheid that takes place in Lebanon, where more than one million Palestinians live without official status. They do not have Lebanese citizenship and are confined to dismal refugee camps where terrorism and crime thrive. But because they are refugees, the Lebanese government can wash its hands of having to integrate them into society.

All this can change if UNRWA is reformed or shut down. While UNRWA is an organization that nominally is dedicated to transforming refugees into fully self-sufficient individuals, it has allowed the myth of the “right of return” to persist. Within UNRWA it is heretical to say that repatriation to Israel is unrealistic.

Palestinian Authority paid terrorists nearly $350 million in 2017

The Palestinian Authority paid terrorists and their families over $347 million last year, according to its own records, the Defense Ministry reported to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday.

The average income of a Palestinian is $580 per month, which is what the PA pays terrorists who are sentenced to three to five years in prison.

The PA pays terrorists who are sentenced to 20 years or more in prison – in other words, those who committed more severe crimes, and likely were involved in killing Israelis – five times that each month for the rest of their lives.

Terrorists who are Israeli citizens receive a $145 bonus, which, when added to the amount PA pays for the most severe crimes, comes to over $2,900, more than the average Israeli income of around $2,700 per month. There are also increases in pay for being married and for each child a terrorist has.

Palestinian terrorists' income per month. (JPOST STAFF)Palestinian terrorists' income per month. (JPOST STAFF)

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said, “The PA pays over a billion shekels a year to terrorists and their families, thus encouraging and perpetuating terror.”

“The minute the amount of the payment is decided according to the severity of the crime and the length of the sentence – in other words, whoever murders and is sentenced to life in prison gets much more – that is funding terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens. There is nothing that better illustrates the PA’s support for terror. We must stop this,” Liberman said.

Defense Ministry drafts bill to cut PA funds over terrorist stipends

The Defense Ministry on Tuesday publicized a draft bill that would deduct welfare payments paid out by the Palestinian Authority to Palestinian prisoners and their families from the tax revenues Israel transfers annually to the PA.

“The Palestinian Authority pays over a billion shekels a year to terrorists and their relatives, thereby encouraging and perpetuating terrorism,” Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said in a statement. “The moment the payments are set based on the severity of the crime and the prison sentence, namely that those who murder and are sentenced to life receive a lot more, this is [tantamount to] funding terror attacks against Israelis.”

The bill, which targets cash payments by the PA to jailed or injured terrorists and their relatives, will also apply to Palestinians who committed other crimes for which they are being compensated by the PA, the ministry said in a statement.

The Palestine Liberation Organization gives monthly payments to all Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel, no matter the reason for their incarceration, and also to families of so-called “martyrs” — a term used by the PLO to refer to anyone killed by an Israeli, whether the person was killed attacking Israelis or an innocent bystander.

The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,' except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews."
From Hamas Charter, as recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim

It is no secret that there are Palestinian Arab imams preaching hate against Israel and against Jews.

It is not even surprising that this preaching of hatred has expanded to outside the Middle East, and has found a home in Europe, where the favorite Hadith of Hamas can be heard, promising the death of Jews.

What is surprising is that last year Muslim Antisemitism, with all its vitriolic hatred, has found its way into the US. It is not as if antisemitism did not already exist. It's just that generally it has not been as out in the open nor expressed as violently as we have seen it elsewhere.

After all, year after year we read the polls in the US showing much stronger support for Israel than for the Palestinian Arabs who seek the destruction of the Jewish state. We have gotten used to the idea that life for Jews in the US is different than what it is like in Europe.

Or maybe we have just gotten complacent.

Looking back, 2017 brought with it something that we are not used to. At the same time, the media, which started off 2017 acting as if it was on the lookout for any case of antisemitism, soon proved that it was only interested in cases of antisemitism that could be traced to Trump.

By the end of the year, we didn't realize what hit us around the country.

For example, on July 21, Imam Ammar Shahin delivered a sermon at the Islamic Center of Davis, northern California -- inciting hatred against Jews:

The Prophet Muhammad said: 'Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and the trees say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah...' The Prophet Muhammad says that the time will come, the Last Hour will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews... When that war breaks out, they will run and hide behind every rock, and house, and wall, and trees. The house, the wall, and the trees will call upon the Muslims. It will say: ...Oh Muslim. Muslim. When Muslims come back... 'Come, there is someone behind me

Shahin quoted from the Hadith, leaving out that the trees will call out to the Muslims to come kill the Jew hiding behind it -- but his audience knew what he meant.

On that same day, Imam Mahmoud Harmoush was also nciting hatred - in Riverside, California:

The Jews were coming from Germany, Poland, Italy, and everywhere else, and [the Muslims] would give them rooms, shelter them, and help them out, not knowing that there was a plan. Within the thirty years between the two incidents, until 1948 and the British occupation, everything was plotted to take over that beautiful land, in the way that we all know – with killing, crime, and massacres..."One brother sent me a video, showing a naked woman walking into the holy mosque under the occupation forces, just to insult more and more the psyche, honor, and dignity of the Muslims.

On July 24, the Islamic Center of Tennessee, in Antioch, Tennessee, posted a video on their YouTube channel. It is a Friday sermon delivered by Somali-American Imam AhmedulHadi Sharif. He told his congregants that "the Zionists" are the "number one terrorists in the world," who had "kidnapped" the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Sharif went so far as to say that "if we lose Jerusalem - know that it is not going to stop there... The enemies of Allah will come and try to destroy the Kaaba."

On Friday, December 8, 2017 Imam Abdullah Khadra delivered an antisemitic sermon in a mosque in the Raleigh, NC area. Khadra recites the entire Hadith at 2:37, making clear that Muslims will kill Jews.

Here is Imam Raed Saleh Al Rousan on December 8, also quoting what apparently is an imam's favorite Hadith:

If Al Rousan makes you feel ill at ease -- don't worry. He later apologized for making you feel uncomfortable with his quoting the Hadith about how Muslims will kill the Jews:

Feel better now?

On December 8, during a sermon in Jersey City, NJ, among other things, Imam Aymen Elkasaby told his congreganats that the Al Aqsa mosque was "under the feet of the apes and the pigs, in reference to Israel.

The good news about Elkasaby is that he is going into "rehab":

Ahmed Shedeed said that Sheikh Aymen Elkasaby, imam of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, would be meeting with “interfaith scholars” who would “consult with and retrain him,” following sermons in which Elkasaby called for the murder of Jews and attacked the west for having made Muslims the “tail-end of all nations.”
“This is like sending someone to rehab,” Shedeed, the Islamic Center’s president, told The Algemeiner when asked whether Elkasaby would be dismissed from the imam’s position...“There are extremists in the Jewish, Christian and Buddhist religions and everything can be taken in the wrong way,” Shedeed said.

Even with popular backlash, these imams were able to escape serious consequences for their actions.

We can expect more of these kinds of sermons in 2018.

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Palestinian Authority cabinet rejects idea of defunding UNRWA, preferring to keep its own people in camps

In 1950, UNRWA offered to help both Jewish and Arab refugees from the war inside Israel. Here is how UNRWA reported on Israel's reaction:

REFUGEES IN ISRAEL
30. In Israel, the Agency has provided relief to two types of refugees, Jews who fled inside the borders of Israel during the fighting, and Arabs in most instances displaced from one area in Palestine to another. Jewish refugees at first numbered 17,000 but, during the current summer, all but 3,000 of these have been absorbed into the economic life of the new State. Arabs on relief were first numbered at 31,000 but many have been placed in circumstances in which they are self-supporting, so that it was possible to reduce the number to 24,000 at the end of August 1950.
31. Recent discussions with the Israel Government indicate that the idea of relief distribution is repugnant to it, and the Agency was informed that already many of the 24,000 remaining refugees were employed and that all able-bodied refugees desiring employment could be absorbed on works projects if they would register at the government registry offices for that purpose. It was stated that they all have status as citizens of Israel and are entitled to treatment as such. It was claimed that after cessation of relief, aged and infirm refugees would be cared for under the normal social welfare machinery of Israel. The Agency was requested to share financially in a programme of re-establishment of displaced Arabs now within the boundaries of Israel.

Israel, a newly sovereign nation with crippling debts, felt that the idea of having a UN agency in its borders doing the job of the state in taking care of its citizens was "repugnant." It created a plan to integrate all refugees, Jewish and Arab, into the state. It would accept monetary aid but not a parallel social infrastructure.

The contrast between 2 year old Israel and a 20-odd year old Palestinian Authority could not be more striking.

Wafa reports:

The Council of Ministers considered the decision of the United States to freeze the funding allocated to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), unacceptable blackmail and illegal action that undermines the rights of Palestinian refugees and increases the suffering and crises of refugee camps, endangering the lives of refugees who depend on the health, education and humanitarian services provided by the Agency for decades

So the United States, by deciding where to best spend its money and saying that it won't throw its money away, is engaging in "blackmail" and "illegal actions."

Any normal state would want to take care of their own people in their own borders. But the Palestinian Authority doesn't want to take care of its own people.

What kind of a state demands that their people remain in camps inside their own borders paid for by the rest of the world?

A real nation would at least demand that the cash that was going to a UN agency to do the job of the state -taking care of its people - should be redirected to its own budget so they could give equal rights to "refugees" as their other citizens.

Like Israel did.

But no one demands that the Palestinians act like a real nation when dealing with their own people. And when the expectations are so low, the results will be equally dismal.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

From Palestine News Network:

Hundreds of Palestinians unable to travel staged a protest in front of the Rafah Border Crossing calling upon the Palestinian Authority and Egypt to open the crossing, at least for students and humanitarian cases.

“We came here to send a message to the Palestinian government of national accord, as well as the Egyptian authorities, that it is necessary to open the Rafah Crossing for emergency humanitarian cases and students,” explained student Mohammed Nabil.

Protesters raised placards calling for the crossing to be opened before they take the issue into their own hands and storm through the gates.

Nabil, who is a postgraduate student, said that he is unable to attend his classes due to the Rafah closure. He pointed out that the protesters are planning to erect a tent for a permanent protest in front of the crossing gates.

According to the Palestinian Interior Ministry, there are more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza who need to travel as a matter of urgency.

On 12 October last year, Egypt brokered a Palestinian internal reconciliation deal and pledged to open the Rafah Crossing permanently, but it has not done so yet.

Egypt is just as reluctant to open the crossings for the Palestinian Authority as it was for Hamas.

Perhaps they know that Fatah and Hamas are two sides of the same coin?

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01/08 Links Pt2: A new twist for academic Holocaust distorters; West Bank: Ancient sites destroyed 'as ISIS did in Syria and Iran'; Judith Butler Plans a Stealth MLA Presidency

From Ian:

David Harris: Ten Ways That Israel Is Treated Differently

The recent focus on the Jerusalem issue is a telling reminder that Israel is treated according to a totally different standard than other countries in the international system.

Of course, Israel deserves attention and scrutiny — as does every other nation. But it also merits equal treatment — nothing more, and nothing less.

Yet here are ten ways that Israel is constantly treated differently from all other countries on earth.

First, Israel is the only state whose capital city, Jerusalem — with which the Jewish people have been umbilically linked for more than 3,000 years — is not recognized by almost all other countries.

Imagine the absurdity of this. Foreign diplomats live in Tel Aviv, while conducting virtually all of their business in Jerusalem, where the prime minister’s office, the Knesset, the Supreme Court, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are located.

In fact, look at the listings of world cities, including places of birth in passports, and you’ll see something striking — Paris, France; Tokyo, Japan; Pretoria, South Africa; Lima, Peru; and Jerusalem, sans country — orphaned, if you will.

Second, Israel is the only UN member state whose very right to exist is under constant challenge.

Notwithstanding the fact that Israel embodies an age-old connection with the Jewish people, as repeatedly cited in the most widely read book in the world, the Bible; that it was reborn based on the 1947 recommendation of the UN; and that it has been a member of the world body since 1949, there’s a relentless chorus denying Israel’s very political legitimacy.

Cary Nelson: Judith Butler Plans a Stealth MLA Presidency

Although half the hour was spent challenging and berating me, the core strategy Butler and the other senior member there, David Palumbo-Lio of Stanford, were using was nonetheless clear. After more than a decade of debating anti-Israel resolutions, MLA members had their fill. In June 2017 they voted by a 2-1 margin to bar further academic boycott resolutions. MLA’s Executive Director Rosemary Feal immediately pointed out that nothing prevented a vote on a resolution to overturn the 2017 vote, but the BDSers preferred to ignore this option, as it was clear they would lose such a contest. Unwilling to see themselves as a radical fringe group indulging in sour grapes complaints, they were left with one way to explain their loss: as they asserted repeatedly this evening, they were cheated.

“All we wanted was a level playing field,” Palumbo-Liu declared, “but we didn’t get one.” Incredibly, he revived his 2014 accusation that MLA Members for Scholar’s Rights had obtained outside Zionist funding to copy the email addresses of 20,000 MLA members. He was well aware of my public reply at the time because he responded to it: I had paid a student $650 to gather the emails. I didn’t need to contact Baron Rothschild for funds through a seance. But now he lied and complained I never answered him, even though he answered my reply, just as he lied recently in claiming he had run for the MLA Executive Council on an explicit BDS platform. In fact he had run on a stealth platform claiming he was seeking to help grad students and never mentioned Israel.

Members had only received pro-boycott materials, and we wanted them to hear our case. The MLA refused to distribute our anti-boycott dossier. We used the same emails once more in 2017. Palumbo-Liu and Butler both insisted this was unethical, despite MLA assuring members we had followed the rules. Butler incredibly added that the 2017 resolution violated the US Constitution by supposedly restricting speech. Of course speech in 800 MLA sessions was unrestricted, as was anything else anyone wanted to say from sea to shining sea. Members had democratically voted to stop squabbling about Israel and instead focus on humanities disciplines in crisis and exploited academic labor. But for a BDS disciple like Palumbo-Liu that was a cowardly distraction. Seeing it as the only hope for a newspaper headline he resigned from MLA’s Executive Council in January, absurdly protesting that his academic freedom had been violated.

What Butler and Palumbo-Liu managed to do this evening was to convince a group of young faculty and students that only a corrupt conspiracy could have defeated them in their effort to demonize the Jewish state. Their opponents were unethical and unscrupulous. At the end, Butler turned and pointed to me to conclude: “We need to overcome those who are dedicated to making the fight unfair.”

West Bank: Ancient sites destroyed 'as ISIS did in Syria and Iran'

Numerous archaeological sites throughout the West Bank are being destroyed and robbed by Palestinians and according to an Israel News Company report, this is a common phenomenon. Hebrew University archaeology doctoral student Haggai Cohen Klonymus described to the Israel News Company how tractors and bulldozers arrived at an archaeological site where the ancient city of Archelaus once stood, digging away at the ancient site.

The Palestinian assailants completely level the compound in order to locate hidden archaeological treasures to sell in the antiquities market. “It was flat and in a very short period of time, they lifted the entire area with tractors,” Bar Ilan University archaeology doctoral student Assaf Avraham told the Israel News Company. Other sites are deserted and filled with holes and trash after the wreckage.

Klonymus explained the deteriorating situation of the historical sites in the report, stating that a complaint was filed, but that there is only one inspector for all of the West Bank’s archaeological sites, who is responsible for the antiquities robbery and destruction issue. “Just as ISIS destroyed sites in Iran and Syria that were thousands of years old, the same situation is occurring here,” Klonymus said to the Israel News Company. “This is a deliberate and systematic destruction of an archaeological site without anyone responding to it. It’s just a tragedy.”

Jordan says it foiled massive terror plot

From Ammon News:

The General Intelligence Department foiled a massive terrorist scheme after it conducted an intensive and accurate follow-up operation and a preemptive effort, planned by a Daesh-backed cell during Nov. 2017.

The said cell arranged to carry out a trove of terrorist operations synchronously aimed to tamper with national security and ignite havoc and intimation among citizens.

The early intelligence follow-up endeavors led to the apprehension of 17 plotters involved in this heinous operation and seized rifles and other materials prepared to be used in the hideous plan.

No details are given, but it shows that even Jordan has bigger problems than to worry about the Palestinian issue - except to make sure that it is solved somehow for the kingdom's own stability.

But Jerusalem is a distraction, not the core issue.

Objectively speaking, a Palestinian capital in Ramallah while Jordan has a say on the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem would be King Abdullah's ideal situation.

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This piece in The Guardian by Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilos III is the is almost too absurd to believe:

Christians have lived a history in the Holy Land that spans more than two millennia. We have survived countless invasions, and have flourished under many different forms of government. We know that our survival has depended on the principle that the holy places must be shared by and be accessible to all. For it is the holy places that have given meaning to the region for both inhabitants and conquerors of all faiths. The protection and accessibility of the holy places are understood through a set of rules called the “status quo”, which has been followed by all religious and governmental authorities of the region through the ages....
Now various sides want to claim the Holy Land, including Jerusalem, as the exclusive possession of only one people. This treats with contempt the mechanism that has maintained peace and our multi-religious landscape for generations.

I've rarely seen a straw man this big. Which Jews are trying to make Jerusalem an exclusively Jewish city, with no rights for any other groups?

One of the foremost threats to Christians in the Holy Land is the unacceptable activities of radical settler groups, which are attempting to establish control over properties around the Jaffa gate. The properties in question are in the heart of Jerusalem’s Christian quarter, the seat of all the patriarchates and headquarters of the churches, and less than 500m from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The Patriarchate has lodged an appeal with the Israeli high court of justice, but if our efforts prove unsuccessful the result would be immensely damaging to the integrity of the Old City. If the settler groups were to gain control of the properties, they would be able to pursue their aggressive campaign of removing non-Jews from the City and from these strategic centres at the heart of the Christian quarter, threatening the very presence of Christians in the Holy Land.

Jews have always lived in all the quarters of the Old City. The quarters were never exclusive to one group. The idea that Jews cannot legally purchase buildings in any part of the city is, to be blunt, antisemitic. The "status quo" doesn't mean that the Old City must look exactly as it did in 1967 or 1167.

The idea that Jews purchasing buildings is a threat to all Christians in the Holy Land is an insult, plai and simple. And so is the slander that Jews are attempting to make Jerusalem exclusively Jewish.

I don't recall the Greek Orthodox Church complaining about the "status quo" when Jordan ensured that no Jews could even visit the Old City.

Of course, it is Muslims who are threatening Christians throughout the Middle East, including in Palestinian Arab areas.

Despite this high profile paean to dhimmitude, Theophilos was attacked by Palestinians yesterday exactly for his church selling the land to Jews.

Palestinian Christians on Saturday pummeled the car of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem during a visit to the occupied West Bank in protest against the church’s decision to sell land to Jewish groups.
Hundreds of Palestinians blocked Patriarch Theophilos III’s convoy as he drove to a church in Bethlehem to attend an Orthodox Christmas mass.
Protestors threw stones and water bottles and pounded his car with their fists, chanting “traitor, traitor,” before Palestinian security forces pushed them away. Three cars in the convoy, but not the Patriarch’s vehicle, had their windows smashed.

Maybe the Patriarch should choose his friends better.

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