08/29 Links: Caroline B. Glick: The Israel-Sunni Arab bloc – the new sheriff; UAE formally abolishes Israel boycott law ahead of delegation’s arrival

From Ian:

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Caroline B. Glick: The Israel-Sunni Arab bloc – the new sheriff

In Pompeo's shuttle diplomacy we see the enormity of the administration's achievement.

After the Cold War, Israeli leftists and anti-Israel foreign policy analysts in America claimed that with the superpower contest settled, Israel was no longer a strategic asset to America. The Israeli Left argued that to retain its relevance to America, Israel had to sue for peace with Yasser Arafat on his terms.

Arguably the saddest man in Jerusalem this week was British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab. Blind to the seismic shifts that have occurred, Raab arrived uninvited in Israel's capital, (which Britain still refuses to recognize) to mediate peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

After Britain exited the European Union following the Brexit vote, the Trump administration expected Britain would renew its special alliance with the US and ditch Brussels' anti-American and anti-Israel unified foreign policy. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson didn't get the memo.

Much to Washington's disappointment, the Johnson government has continued to act as a loyal member (or vassal) of the EU. The Johnson government opposes the administration's maximum pressure strategy for dealing with Iran, and even abstained from supporting the US at the Security Council last week.

The British Foreign Office, like the EU and the UN, reacted coldly to the news that Israel and the UAE are normalizing their relations, insisting that the Palestinians must not be ignored, the chimerical "two-state solution" must be upheld at all costs.

Raab met with Pompeo in Jerusalem. While the details of their meeting were not reported, Netanyahu made clear Israel's displeasure at Britain's pro-Iran policies and expressed no interest in Britain's offer to pressure Israel to make unreciprocated concessions to the Palestinians.

The Israeli-Sunni Arab bloc is a stabilizing force in the region because it is an organic alliance. It was not the product of superpower rivalry. It was borne out of common interests that are likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future. The existence of this bloc has enabled Washington rebuild its credibility as a superpower and an ally in the Middle East and advance its Iran policies with or without UN Security Council support.

If Trump is re-elected in November, this stabilizing bloc whose members stand against both Sunni and Shiite jihadists will expand and the circle of formal ties between Israel and the Gulf States will grow. If Trump loses, just as the bloc protected its members against the hostile Obama administration, so it is likely to survive and shield its members from the vagaries of a Biden administration.

UAE formally abolishes Israel boycott law ahead of delegation’s arrival

The president of the United Arab Emirates on Saturday issued a decree abolishing a law boycotting Israel and allowing trade and financial agreements between the two nations, two days before a delegation from Jerusalem was due to arrive in Abu Dhabi in the wake of August 13’s normalization agreement.

The state-run WAM news agency said the move formally ending the boycott came on the orders of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi and the Emirates’ leader.

WAM said the new decree allows Israelis and Israeli firms to do business in the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula. It also allows for the purchase and trade of Israeli goods.

“The decree of the new law comes within the UAE’s efforts to expand diplomatic and commercial cooperation with Israel,” WAM said. It lays out “a roadmap toward launching joint cooperation, leading to bilateral relations by stimulating economic growth and promoting technological innovation.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the move as “an important step in promoting prosperity and peace in the region.”

Already, some Israeli firms had signed deals with Emirati counterparts. But the repeal of the law widens the likelihood of other joint ventures, such as in aviation, banking, and finance.

The decree formally eliminates a 1972 law on the UAE’s books since just after the country’s formation. That law mirrored the widely held stance by Arab nations at that time that recognition of Israel would only come after the Palestinians had an independent state of their own.

Prime Minister Netanyahu:
"I welcome the decision of United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed to cancel the law on boycotting products from Israel and economic contacts with Israelis. This is an important step in promoting prosperity and peace in the region."

— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) August 29, 2020

Israel to declare UAE a 'green state' - report

Israel is expected to declare the Untied Arab Emirates a "green state," meaning that Israelis who return from the country will not need to enter home isolation, according to Walla! News.

On Monday, an Israeli delegation led by Meir Ben Shabbat, Head of the National Security Council, will leave for the UAE.

El Al said to ask permission for Israel-UAE flight to cross Saudi airspace

El Al has reportedly asked Saudi Arabia to use its airspace when one of its planes on Monday makes the first-ever commercial passenger flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates, following the countries’ US-brokered agreement to normalize ties.

According to the Israeli news site Ynet on Saturday, the request was relayed on El Al’s behalf by way of the National Security Council and other unspecified mediators. The Saudis have yet to respond.

Earlier this week, The Times of Israel reported that the Foreign Ministry was conducting talks with Saudi Arabia about the flight potentially passing over Saudi airspace, but the matter wasn’t final, according to a source with knowledge of the talks.

On Friday, Israel listed the El Al flight taking off on Monday for Abu Dhabi on the Israel Airports Authority website.

It said the flight would be numbered LY971, a nod to the UAE’s international calling code number. A return flight to Ben Gurion International Airport on Tuesday will be numbered LY972, Israel’s international calling code.

Among those set to be on the flight are White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and several other senior Trump administration officials, who are scheduled to arrive in Israel over the weekend.

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08/28 Links Pt2: The Plot for America: Remembering Civil Rights Leader Joachim Prinz; The Pope, the Jews, and the Secrets in the Archives

From Ian:

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The Plot for America: Remembering Civil Rights Leader Joachim Prinz

The influential Newark rabbi was a confidante of Martin Luther King, but he’s been all but ignored by history

On the evening of June 26, 1937, thousands of Berlin Jews packed the city’s grand Brüdervereinshaus to bid farewell to Rabbi Joachim Prinz, who had been ordered by the Gestapo to leave Germany immediately or face an almost certain death sentence for political subversion. Prinz had been the most popular, outspoken, and inspirational champion of Jewish national rights and Zionism in the dark years since the Nazis’ rise to power, preaching to overflow crowds at Berlin’s most important temples about the need to leave Germany and immigrate to Palestine. By the summer of 1937 he had already been arrested a half-dozen times by the Gestapo, but he always managed to elude deportation. This time, however, he was warned by his “friend” and informant, Gestapo Obersturmbanführer Kuchman, that his days were numbered, and he reluctantly decided to emigrate to the United States, sponsored by his friend and patron Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. Among the uninvited guests at Prinz’s farewell was a Nazi functionary, Adolf Eichmann.

Eichmann’s presence was to have important legal ramifications more than two decades later. In the initial discovery proceedings to establish Eichmann’s identity before his 1961 trial in Jerusalem, Benno Cohen, the foremost Zionist leader in pre-war Berlin, positively identified the defendant, testifying as follows:

We held a valedictory meeting to take leave of Rabbi Dr. Joachim Prinz who was leaving the country. He was one of the finest speakers, the best Zionist propagandist in those years. The large hall was packed full. The public thronged to this meeting. Suddenly, as chairman of the event, I was called to the door and my office clerk told me, “Mr Eichmann is here.” I saw this same man, for the first time in civilian clothing, and he shouted at me, “Who is responsible for order here? This is disorder of the first degree.” … I watched him the entire time from my place in the chair.

As a young rabbi in his late twenties, Prinz was already addressing congregations of thousands in Berlin’s largest temple, the magnificent Neue Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse, whose stunning façade has recently been restored. And less than two years after arriving in the United States after his expulsion from Germany by Eichmann’s goons, he was appointed rabbi of New Jersey’s largest Jewish house of worship, the magnificent Greek Revival Temple B’nai Abraham, which towered over Newark’s then-fashionable and heavily Jewish Clinton Hill section, where hundreds of young people swarmed to hear his Friday-night orations.

As Prinz so evidently delights in repeatedly recalling in his posthumously published memoir, Rebellious Rabbi, the Jews of both Berlin and Newark—especially “the younger generation” to whom he mainly dedicated his ministries—did not so much “go to shul” for an encounter with the divine as they “went to Prinz” for an encounter with the rabbi. The combination of Prinz’s charismatic personality and his distinctly un-theological and nationalistic understanding of the essence of Judaism proved as attractive to the nervously Americanizing Jews of mid-20th-century New Jersey as it had been to the deeply assimilated and newly imperiled Jews of early Nazi Germany. Prinz’s nationalist theology was first expressed in his classic work of Jewish defiance, Wir Juden, which was published in Berlin in 1934 and quickly became a best-seller among Germany’s deeply demoralized Jews. He used his experiences leading the Jews of Nazi Berlin to develop an almost metaphysical notion of Jewish national identity, which he referred to as the “doctrine of Jewish inescapability.”

Prinz’s initial, exploratory visit to the United States, in March 1937, just a half year before his final emigration from Germany, was marked by all manner of disappointments with the “Golden Land.” Prinz complained bitterly about America’s complacence in the face of the threat posed by Nazi Germany. In his first recorded impressions of the country, he found almost nothing that compared favorably with his native Germany. America’s cities are depicted as ugly and rundown, racism against blacks disturbingly pervasive, its political culture naïve and intellectual life second-rate, and its people primitive and poorly dressed.

The Pope, the Jews, and the Secrets in the Archives

In early 1953, the photograph of a prominent nun being arrested was splashed across the front pages of French newspapers. Over the next several weeks, other French clergy—monks and nuns—would also be arrested. The charge: kidnapping two young Jewish boys, Robert and Gérald Finaly, whose parents had perished in a Nazi death camp. The case sparked intense public controversy. Le Monde, typical of much of the French media, devoted 178 articles in the first half of the year to the story of the brothers—secretly baptized at the direction of the Catholic woman who had cared for them—and the desperate attempts by surviving relatives to get them back. It was a struggle that pitted France’s Jewish community, so recently devastated by the Holocaust, against the country’s Roman Catholic hierarchy, which insisted that the boys were now Catholic and must not be raised by Jews.

What was not known at the time—and what, in fact, could not be known until the opening, earlier this year, of the Vatican archives covering the papacy of Pius XII—is the central role that the Vatican and the pope himself played in the kidnapping drama. The Vatican helped direct efforts by local Church authorities to resist French court rulings and to keep the boys hidden, while at the same time carefully concealing the role that Rome was playing behind the scenes.

There is more. At the center of this drama was an official of the Vatican curia who, as we now know from other newly revealed documents, helped persuade Pope Pius XII not to speak out in protest after the Germans rounded up and deported Rome’s Jews in 1943—“the pope’s Jews,” as Jews in Rome had often been referred to. The silence of Pius XII during the Holocaust has long engendered bitter debates about the Roman Catholic Church and Jews. The memoranda, steeped in anti-Semitic language, involve discussions at the highest level about whether the pope should lodge a formal protest against the actions of Nazi authorities in Rome. Meanwhile, conservatives in the Church continue to push for the canonization of Pius XII as a saint.

The newly available Vatican documents, reported here for the first time, offer fresh insights into larger questions of how the Vatican thought about and reacted to the mass murder of Europe’s Jews, and into the Vatican’s mindset immediately after the war about the Holocaust, the Jewish people, and the Roman Catholic Church’s role and prerogatives as an institution.

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Jordanian cartoonist arrested for anti-UAE cartoon

From the International Federation of Journalists:

Cartoonist Emad Hajjaj was arrested on Wednesday August 26 for "disturbing relations with a sister country” in a cartoon. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemns this arrest and recent attacks on media freedom in Jordan and demands Emad Hajjaj’s immediate release.

Published in Al Araby Al Jadeed, the cartoon mocked the recent deal the United Arab Emirates struck with Israel. Hajjaj was referred to the State Security Court yesterday, his trial will be held under the antiterrorism law.

Here is the cartoon, captioned “Israel asks US not to sell UAE F-35s.”

 

Today, his detention was extended 14 days. According to the newspaper Al Araby al Jadeed that he works for, the UAE complained about the cartoon which resulted in the arrest.

In an earlier cartoon this month, Hajjaj evoked Jesus’ drown of thorns in another cartoon against the agreement.

 

This fairly blatant antisemitic imagery didn’t cause any furor.

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08/28 Links Pt1: Arab countries aren't waiting for the Palestinians; Beat Nasrallah at his own game; Netanyahu’s grand strategy on peace, security vindicated with UAE deal

From Ian:

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Arab countries aren't waiting for the Palestinians

A few days ago, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, the mufti of the Palestinian Authority and Jerusalem, published a fatwa (religious ruling) stating that Muslims in the United Arab Emirates were forbidden to visit Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Who has ever heard of a fatwa like that? Who will enforce it? Whom is it supposed to deter? Will Arab states seeking to follow in the Emirates' footsteps be put off from normalizing relations with Israel out of fear that Mohammed Hussein will issue a similar fatwa for their own citizens?

The Palestinians' relations with Arab countries aren't an ongoing love story. The Palestinians weren't prepared to accept any solution that allowed Jews in western Israel any sovereign territory whatsoever and dragged the Arab countries into joining their opposition to the UN Partition Plan in November 1947.

During the War of Independence, Arab countries sent forces which, other than the Jordanians (whose real goal was to capture the territory earmarked for a Palestinian state for Jordan), comprised only a sliver of those countries' military power.

The Arab countries themselves did take in Arab refugees from Palestine, some of who we ran off and some of whom we expelled, but only Jordan granted them citizenship. All the others kept them as second-class citizens. In 1948, Egypt, under the auspices of the Arab league, set up in the Gaza Strip the ridiculous "All-Palestine Government," whereas Arab state exploited the Palestinian problem for their domestic and international needs.

The Palestinian expectation that the Arab countries would fight us and clear the way for the 1948 refugees to return was pathetic, and the Palestinian leadership's destructive transition to the use of terrorism in the late 1960s stemmed from a no less pathetic desire to take the fate of the Palestinians into their own hands and bring about the solution they desired, by themselves.

The expectation that Arab states would, at least, provide continual diplomatic backing for the Palestinians took a blow in the Camp David Accords, and when Anwar Sadat rose to power in Egypt. The country's need for peace with Israel (to get the Sinai Peninsula back, and because it wanted security and economic ties with the US), prompted Sadat to avoid the standard precondition that there would be no peace unless a Palestinian state was established. The Palestinians managed to initiate an Arab boycott of Egypt, and have the country expelled from the Arab League, but neither lasted for long.

Beat Nasrallah at his own game

One must ask: Where do the UN, EU, and ICC stand on what was surely a catastrophe foretold in Beirut?

Hezbollah has been consistently involved in attempts to obtain and store ammonium nitrate for the purpose of carrying out terrorist attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets. From the 1994 terrorist attack on the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, to ammonium nitrate repositories discovered in London and Cyprus, to the Mossad intelligence agency's warnings to the German government about three tons of ammonium nitrate hidden in a warehouse in Berlin, – information that led Germany to outlaw Hezbollah.

If anything, the UN-backed tribunal's decision on convict only one Hezbollah operatives in the 2005 assassination of beloved Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has enhanced the Lebanese people's understanding that this is a brutal terrorist group that, despite professing to be "the defender of Lebanon," is actually hurting it.

The verdict infuriated many in Lebanon, who know that Hezbollah planned and executed Hariri's murder on the behest of Iran and Syria. The tribunal, served with thousands of documents and pieces of evidence, was wary of setting that fact in stone.

Israel must use the simmering unrest in Lebanon to deal Hezbollah a crippling blow in terms of psychological warfare. Not one bullet needs to be fired. This is also our moral duty vis-à-vis civilians being used as human shields by living in very close proximity to chemical warehouses and missile depots.

Militarily speaking, the value of the intelligence Israel holds is lower than the impact it could have on Lebanese public opinion, especially when the voices asserting that Hezbollah is dooming the Lebanese people to death and destruction are growing louder.

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It’s much more complicated than that (ElderToon)

I played with one of those “make your own comic” sites for the artwork…

 

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The shtetl mentality is alive and well with liberal American Jews

 

JTA reports:

[O]n Wednesday night, the 93-year-old synagogue’s driveway was graffitied with the words “Free Palestine.”

Critics of the Black Lives Matter movement have cited similar vandalism as evidence that protests have devolved into rioting. But has the graffiti changed the synagogue’s support for the racial justice movement?

“Absolutely not,” said Rabbi Dena Feingold, who has led the Reform congregation for 35 years. “That’s a trivial matter. What’s happened these last few days is not about us and what’s happened to us. It’s about the issues of systemic racism that plague our society. About police policy, about implicit bias, white privilege and those bigger issues is what this is about. It doesn’t change anything at all.”

European Jews were conditioned over generations to not make waves because of fears of deadly antisemitic responses to the slightest perceived provocations. This is the shtetl mentality, and it is one that Zionism worked hard to eradicate in Israel.

In America, though, it has been a major part of the Jewish experience.

The irony is that this mentality is worst among the most liberal Jews – Jews who fight hard for the rights of every minority but their own.

What kind of a rabbi would trivialize an antisemitic attack against her own synagogue? Any person with self-respect would send out a clear message of outrage over an incident like this one, but in the progressive circles that Dana Feingold inhabits, a Jew cannot be proud or make a scene. So she says, hey, no biggie – graffiti us all you want, and maybe we’ll take down that Israeli flag we are waving if it upset the community so much.

I had a similar story yesterday that mentioned the liberal Jews who were concerned with American synagogues flying the Zionist and then the Israeli flags, pre-emptively worried about whether it would stoke accusations of dual loyalty before any antisemite even made that accusation. To the liberal Jews of America, the overwhelming mentality is one of not rocking the boat – to act as if American Jews are not full Americans with the same rights as everyone else.

To act as if antisemitism is the Jews’ fault.

The irony is that the shtetl mentality was inherited by the liberal American Jews who are against what they look at as the separatist Orthodox Jews living in tight-knit communities that resemble Europe’s shtetls. They style themselves as being fully integrated into American society and they look at the religious as being backward and regressive. Yet it isn’t the Orthodox who are fearful of American non-Jews – it is the supposedly assimilated liberal American Jews.

The flag story, where the Orthodox fought for Jews to be proudly Zionist in the face of some Reform Jews who were frightened by that idea,  was a small example. Another one comes from the early part of the 20th century.

It is the story of the Jewish Sabbath Alliance, a group of Orthodox Jews who lobbied strenuously to allow Jews to be protected if they refuse to work on Saturday and to allow Sabbath observers to open up shops on Sundays, when this was illegal in much of America. While Reform Jewish leaders at the time paid lip service to the Orthodox position, they didn’t actually join the lobbying efforts, because they felt that Jews in America must act like “Americans,” meaning Christians. (Indeed, the Reform movement supported changing the Sabbath to Sundays starting in 1885, and only abandoned that idea in the 1920s.)

It was the Orthodox who vigorously defended the rights of Jews while the liberal Jews were too frightened to step up and fight for their own people – specifically because to them, assimilation and not standing out were higher imperatives than being proud Jews. This excerpt from an article in The Reform Advocate, June 25, 1904, describes the shtetl mindset while decrying practicing and identifiable Jews as being “fanatics.”

 

This is cowardice dressed up as being practical. Don’t make waves. Fight for other minorities and oppressed groups – but don’t fight for your fellow Jews. Don’t stand out. Make up a Judaism where no one need know you are Jewish.

Rabbi Feingold is following in a long tradition of liberal Jews trying not to make waves. Just like her forbearers in America, just like the shtetl Jews of Europe.

She has not yet learned the fundamental lesson that in order to gain respect from others, you have to respect yourself first. If liberal Jews were taught to be honestly proud of their Judaism and their membership in the Jewish people – proud enough to loudly fight for it when it is under assault – they would get the respect from the gentiles that they have been craving for the past 150 years.

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The Orthodox Jewish Sabbath Alliance eventually hit upon a solution that the Reform Jews could wholeheartedly support. Instead of framing this as a religious freedom and human rights issue, which the liberal Jews had no sympathy for, it was positioned as a social justice and workers’ rights issue which they loved. The religious Jews partnered with (liberal Jewish dominated) unions in  advocating a five day work week for all, where everyone would be off work on Saturdays and Sundays.

It took until the 1960s but eventually that discrimination against Sabbath observing Jews was largely abolished. (There are still some remnants of “Blue Laws” but as far as I can tell nothing that hurts Sabbath observing Jews.)

I am surprised that I cannot find a single book written about the Jewish Sabbath Alliance and the century-long fight for Sabbath observance in America. I could only find one academic article from 1979 on the topic. This is a book that needs to be written, about Jewish heroes who stood up for their rights in an American society that had plenty of antisemitism.

This is the message that liberal Jews  should internalize, that fighting for your rights is the American way, not assimilating into irrelevance.

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Harvard names serial liar and failed diplomat Saeb Erekat as a Fellow to teach diplomacy!

Remember when Harvard University actually meant something?

The Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has named four senior leaders in diplomacy to be Fisher Family Fellows for the 2020-21 academic year: Julie Bishop, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Australia and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party; Saeb Erakat, the Chief Palestinian Negotiator and Head of the Negotiations Affairs Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); Federica Mogherini, former High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission; and Peter Wittig, former Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United States.

“We are proud to welcome these four respected global leaders to the Harvard Kennedy School for this academic year. They will strengthen our capacity to learn the lessons of effective diplomacy and statecraft,” said Faculty Chair Nicholas Burns.

The Fellows will speak in virtual seminars in the autumn, hold office hours with students to help foster their professional development and networks, and participate in research initiatives. Public health conditions permitting, the Fellows will visit campus in spring 2021 to lead study groups for Harvard students on topics of their expertise, including on transatlantic relations; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and emerging foreign policy and security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region…..

Saeb Erakat has been extensively involved in all negotiations with Israel, including those conducted at Camp David (2000) and in Taba (2001). In 1991, he was the Vice-Chair of the Madrid Peace Delegation and was later the Vice-Chair at the Washington negotiations of 1992. Previously, he served as the Minister of Local Government for the Palestinian National Authority and is also Head of the Palestinian Side of the Steering and Monitoring Committee. He is the author of fourteen books on foreign policy, oil, conflict resolution, and negotiations.

What diplomatic victory has Erakat ever achieved? He has been instrumental in painting the Palestinians into a corner, stopping dealing with Israel even after “annexation” is off the table, which only hurts his own people.

His brilliant diplomacy skills have succeeded  in turning much of the Arab world from being pro-Palestinian to lukewarm or hostile.

He has a long history of the most egregious lies, denying Jewish history, and justifying terror attacks.  He’s even lied about his own life and his family’s history.

And that is only scratching the surface.

Erakat is not at all a “respected global leader.” He is a failure at everything he has ever done.

Why would Harvard hire a proven, serial liar, a failed negotiator and politician who has never helped his own people in the slightest way, and who is not really even popular among Palestinians, to teach its students?

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Suha Arafat threatens “war” against Palestinian leadership, says she has dirt on them

 

Over the weekend, Yasir Arafat’s widow Suha apologized to the UAE for how Palestinians were insulting the Emirates:

Suha Arafat said she wanted to apologise in the name of the Palestinian people in a post on Instagram.

“I want to apologise in the name of the honourable people of Palestine to the Emirati people and their leadership for the desecration and burning of the UAE flag in Jerusalem and Palestine and for insulting the symbols of the beloved UAE country,” she wrote. “The difference in opinion does not spoil the friendliness of the cause.”

“I tell our generations to read history well to know how the UAE, past and present, supported the Palestinian people and the cause,” she said. “I apologise to the people and leadership of the Emirates for any harm done by any Palestinian to these generous and kind people who have always welcomed us. I apologise to the mother of the Emirates, Her Highness Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, for this irresponsible behaviour.”

The reaction from Palestinian leaders and pundits was bitter – accusing Suha of working together with Abbas rival Mohammed Dahlan on the plan, and otherwise insulting her on social media.

Today, Suha struck back, with a threat to blow the whistle on top PLO officials with tidbits from Yasir Arafat’s unpublished diary.

Suha Arafat, the widow of the martyr Yasser Arafat, said in an interview with the Israeli television network Kan that she was receiving threats from officials in the Palestinian Authority following a post that she published on her page on the social networking site Instagram in which she apologized on behalf of the Palestinian people to the UAE United Arab Emirates after the announcement of normalization between the Emirates and Israel.

According to Suha Arafat, the Palestinian Authority has already started harassing her family members, and her brother - the Palestinian ambassador to Cyprus - has been summoned for interrogation in Ramallah after he refused to organize anti-UAE activities in the embassy compound.“Do they want to destroy Yasser Arafat’s family ... We are stronger than them! "

Arafat 's widow warned  that if the senior officials in the Palestinian Authority continued their  campaign against her , she will announce what she knows about them from the diary of Arafat. She said, "I will open the gates of hell. It is enough to publish a little of what I know, and I will burn them in front of the Palestinians."

Suha Arafat said that the defamation campaign against her is being lead by the  private secretary of president Mahmoud Abbas, Intisar Abu Amara, and she was the one who gave instructions to present Suha to people as a traitor.

I would love to see Arafat’s diary published!

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08/27 Links Pt2: Kontorovich: “Palestinian Position Is One Of Apartheid”; Europe is clinging to the Palestinians; 'Britain wants Israeli hi-tech,' no longer fears Arab reaction;

From Ian:

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U.S. Law Professor Says: “Palestinian Position Is One Of Apartheid”

Though talk of Israel’s annexation of parts of the West Bank (also known as Judea and Samaria) has subsided, it is widely believed that the move has been postponed, rather than abandoned.

When the plan re-opens, it will be important for pro-Israel voices to be armed with the knowledge of precisely why these lands legally belong to the Jewish people. Whether it’s to combat ignorance on university campuses, challenge social media untruths, or act as watchdogs of the media – facts remain an important tool in the court of public opinion, in addition to educating our youth.

Professor Eugene Kontorovich is a noted speaker on this topic, and many others regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict.

He is a professor at George Mason University’s Scalia Law School, in Virginia. Previously, he was at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, where he was a Professor of Law from 2011-2018 and an Associate Professor from 2007-2011.

His expertise is often quoted by major news organizations, such as NPR, the New Yorker, and Fox News. His popular writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Haaretz, and other leading publications.

In the lead-in to the new school year, TheJ.Ca caught up with the professor to ask him how to fight with facts.

Cold hard facts and figures are one thing, but in the days of buzzwords, soundbites, Tweets, memes, and banner slogans, how do we square the intellectual debate when the “discussion” is dumbed down to “End the Occupation of Palestinian Land!” and social media screeds?

One problem with pro-Israel activists is they believe that nuance in arguments will help swap people. But those without fixed opinions are unlikely to delve into the level of nuance. If one side is saying it is apartheid, and the other is saying “yes, Israel is not perfect but…” the average listener will split the difference and conclude it is half apartheid.

Europe is clinging to the Palestinians

The Arab world is tired of the Palestinians, but the EU has no other trump card when it comes to policy in the Middle East, other than its blind support for the Palestinians. Indeed, the only positive the EU has found in the Israel-UAE deal is the postponement of Israel's plans to apply sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria.

Remember, there were EU foreign ministers who toyed with the idea of applying sanctions to Israel if it proceeded with "annexation." And now, the US and the Emiratis have managed to come up with a completely different and much more effective idea that will promote true peace and delay the "sentence."

The Europeans can only hope that the "annexation plan" will be cancelled entirely, knowing that will only happen if there is a different US president in the White House, and if they embrace those in the Israeli government who want to prevent any declaration of sovereignty. Three years ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needed the support of Israel's friends in the EU to receive an invitation to a meeting of European foreign ministers that was organized behind the back of then-EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini. Now Ashkenazi is receiving a warm welcome from the current president of the EU, Germany.

There have been EU member nations, including Germany, that promoted the idea of gradual normalization between Israel and the Gulf States. However, it's doubtful they ever thought of a peace agreement between an economic powerhouse like the UAE and a technological powerhouse like Israel. Cooperation between the two countries could break down borders, in every sense of the word.

This presents the Europeans with another problem: Not everyone in the EU is happy to see Israel join the competition for the Emirati market, not to mention that the aforementioned cooperation could reduce the efficacy of the economic pressure the EU was hoping to use to influence Israel. More importantly, the Israel-UAE deal strengthens the front against Iran and the 2015 nuclear deal, to which the Europeans are also clinging desperately.

If only the European Union would drop its anti-Israel obsession, it would realize the great benefits that could grow out of the deal between the Israelis and the Emiratis, especially when it comes to the Turkish threat, which is growing daily. Maybe Israel's true friends in Athens, Vienna, Prague, and Budapest will finally manage to free Europe from its frozen thinking.

New Lincoln Project Ad Accuses Jared Kushner of Being Evil

A new ad by the Lincoln Project, a political action committee made up of Republican critics of President Donald Trump, calls White House adviser Jared Kushner evil.

Kushner, who also is Trump’s Jewish son-in-law, “prioritized the President’s reelection above public health, ignoring testing from states with Democratic leadership, resulting in the loss of nearly 200,000 lives and counting,” the Lincoln Project’s website says in introducing the ad, referring to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Evil is real,” begins the ad, which dropped on Monday to coincide with the start of the Republican National Convention, while showing images of Kushner walking in the White House, shaking hands with world leaders and with his wife, Ivanka Trump.

“We ignore it when it seems educated, polite, superficially charming, even sophisticated,” the ad says. “We trivialize it, ignore it, and when we do, it grows.”

The ad, with sinister music playing in the background, asserts that the national plan to fight the coronavirus designed in part by Kushner was dropped after the states most affected by it seemed to be Democratic governors.

“It was deliberate, cold, political, premeditated,” the ad says. “Some people say Trump and Kushner were incompetent when it came to COVID. But let’s call it what it is: evil.”

The Lincoln Project also posted on Monday and then deleted a tweet saying “Jared Kushner owns 666 5th Avenue. #JaredIsEvil” Kushner’s family does own the property; however, “666” is also associated with the Christian devil.

Lincoln Project actually went w/the Satanist-Jewish-landlord portrayal of Jared Kushner and drove it home with a "Jared is evil" video meant to show him secretly controlling everything to destroy the country from within. A shot of digging mass graves to Jared's smiling & lurking. pic.twitter.com/0MYxI5FmFz

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) August 26, 2020

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Hipster Terrorist Insists Was Just Stabbing Jews Ironically (PreOccupied Territory)

 

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

 

Petach Tikva, August 26 - The Palestinian killer of a 46-year-old Israeli father of four claimed today that he performed his act of murder yesterday in this suburb of Tel Aviv not as a sincere expression of his desire to murder people he sees as ideological enemies, but as detached, ironic mimicry of the mainstream acceptance of such behavior in his society, which of course he finds laughable.

Khalil Abd al-Khaliq Dweikat, 21, was apprehended Wednesday afternoon after an incident in which police allege he injured a Jewish man and an Israeli Arab in a stabbing attack; the Jew later died of his injuries. After an initial period of isolation and interrogation, the alleged perpetrator requested that his attorney assure the public he perpetrated the killing ironically, and demanded that they not make the mistake of thinking him a bourgeois mainstream drone who just does what society expects; in fact he imitates that behavior in an effort to mock it.

"I would like to stress that my client does not admit to the charges against him, at least not in the conventional sense," pronounced Nabil Aswani. "Most of you probably never heard of it, but Mr. Dweikat was engaged in what can best be described as a type of sardonic performance art, in which he takes conventional behaviors that mainstream sensibilities accept without question, and subjects them to the critical lens of doing the same thing, but with a beard, thus undermining their axiomatic status in society. I think that's what my client told me, anyway. I brought him the wrong kind of soy latte when I went to see him this morning, and he may have been less than cooperative in the communication department."

Jailers reported as well that Dweikat has made repeated requests to hear music by artists no one has heard of, only to be informed that playing music in the detention facility violates Prison Services policy. Guards recalled that the prisoner's response involved a rolling of the eyes and sarcastic inquiries whether the policy could be read from actual paper, or was that too archaic for their mainstream sensibilities.

Police and prosecution officials expect the case to go to trial, at which they will seek an ironic sentence of life imprisonment for the defendant, or at least an ironic plea bargain under which the defendant will receive an ironically reduced prison sentence in exchange for information about other terrorists' activities.

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Biden/Harris And The Low Bar For Being Pro-Israel (Daled Amos) (fixed)

By Daled Amos

In a 2004 article he wrote for the Jewish Press, Rick Richman describes an experiment to evaluate John Kerry's support for Israel, in response to a reader who commented that he was going to vote for Kerry because his record on Israel was "second to none."

Intrigued by the idea of how to quantify "second to none" support of Israel, Richman got a list of Kerry's Israel voting record on 60 bills and resolutions -- and applied the following methodology:

I disregarded the 17 measures that passed with 90 or more votes (out of a possible 100), on grounds that these were not exactly profile-in-courage moments.
...Then I discounted the 18 measures that garnered between 82 and 89 votes. You don`t get a "second to none" rating by simply hanging around with the 80-plus percent crowd.
I decided the best indicator of the depth of Kerry`s support would be the instances where the pro-Israel position got 60 votes or less -- by definition the most controversial situations, the ones where Kerry's vote mattered most.

That left 10 bills, of which Kerry voted pro-Israel in six instances.

The measures Kerry did not support were:

o  the pro-Israel position in the FY 2000 Foreign Aid Conference Report
o  a bill calling on the president not to recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state
o  the pro-Israel "Peace Through Negotiations Act,"
o  a letter to the State Department, demanding they include Hamas in its annual report on terrorism.

That gave Kerry a 60% rating -- more 'nuanced' than Kerry's own boast that

I have a 100 percent record -- not a 99, a 100 percent record -- of sustaining the special relationship, the friendship that we have with Israel.

I was reminded of Richman's experiment while writing the first draft of this post, examining the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris record on Israel. I had written something like that on Biden last year, and thought I would update it and add details about Harris as well.

But the issue is larger than political statements of support for Israel.

These days, others have co-opted Jewish issues and grant themselves the authority to define Jewish identity (White supremacy), what qualifies as antisemitism (very little, unless the right-wing does it) and what Zionism is (evil).

And now, with the 2020 presidential election just a few months off, who is the better supporter of Israel -- Biden or Trump?

The answer is probably only academic anyway. Jews vote for Democrats. Period. Besides, while polls indicate that the vast majority of Jews claim to support Israel, Israel is not one of the top issues Jews consider when voting.

One of Biden's major selling points as a 'friend of Israel' is that his long term as senator has given him the opportunity to know various Israeli leaders and lots of stories. Those may be entertaining, but are not much of an indicator, especially when Israel is such a lightning rod for controversy and outright smears.

On the other hand, when discussing Biden it is easy to point to his gaffes and misstatements of fact -- just as easily as one can point to Trump's over-the-top statements and tweets.

There is plenty in the general behavior of both candidates to question and criticize -- their character flaws are not unknown. Having established that both Biden and Trump are human, what each of them says is not as important as what each has done -- not on the campaign trail, but while in office.

As vice president, Biden supported Obama's policies, not all of which were beneficial to Israel.

The Iran deal comes to mind. Biden not only went along with it and supported it, but has also expressed his willingness to resurrect the deal as president. Last year Biden said:

If Iran moves back into compliance with its nuclear obligations, I would re-enter the JCPOA as a starting point to work alongside our allies in Europe and other world powers to extend the deal’s nuclear constraints.

That raises a second issue -- Biden's role in the UN vote on Resolution 2334 at the end of Obama's term, declaring all Jewish settlements in the West Bank -- including the Old City of Jerusalem -- to be in violation of international law. The resolution passed by 14-0, with the US deliberately abstaining.

An article in Tablet Magazine indicates that as part of the Obama administration plan against Israel, Biden called the Ukrainian president in order to ensure that their UN representative voted for the resolution and did not merely abstain:

Tablet has confirmed that one tangible consequence of the high-level U.S. campaign was a phone call from Vice President Joseph Biden to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which succeeded in changing Ukraine’s vote from an expected abstention to a “yes.” According to one U.S. national security source, the Obama Administration needed a 14-0 vote to justify what the source called “the optics” of its own abstention.

“Did Biden put pressure on the Ukrainians? Categorically yes,” said a highly-placed figure within the Israeli government with strong connections to Ukrainian government sources, who confirmed to Tablet that the Americans had put direct pressure on both the Ukrainian delegation—and on Poroshenko personally in Kiev. “That Biden told them to do it is 1000% true,” the source affirmed.

Even if one could claim Biden was merely "following orders," and would not consider opposing Israel so aggressively as president, it is not hard to imagine Biden being guided into doing something similar by his advisors.

Another concern is the decidedly radical change in the Democratic Party against Israel.

Last week, during the Democratic National Convention’s virtual caucus meeting for the Muslim Delegates and Allies Assembly, Linda Sarsour spoke -- confirming that the Democratic Party was their party.

When complaints were made about Sarsour, a Biden spokesman made a statement:

“Joe Biden has been a strong supporter of Israel and a vehement opponent of anti-Semitism his entire life, and he obviously condemns her views and opposes BDS, as does the Democratic platform … She has no role in the Biden campaign whatsoever.”

That was what was said publicly, but apparently, the Biden campaign apologized to Sarsour privately for that statement, as reported by Middle East Eye this past Sunday.

But that was not the end of the matter either:

On Monday, the Biden campaign disputed that the call was an apology for its reaction to Sarsour.

“We met to affirm [former] Vice President Biden’s unshakeable commitment to working with Arab, Palestinian and Muslim Americans, and to standing up against anti-Muslim prejudice, and to make clear that we regretted any hurt that was caused to these communities,” Biden campaign senior adviser Symone Sanders told JNS. “We continue to reject the views that Linda Sarsour has expressed.”

At this point, who even knows anymore where Biden stands on the issue.

But if he is going to condemn antisemites and reject their views, Biden may as well go all the way...

Biden and Sharpton. Screengrab from Facebook

And that is where Kamala Harris comes in.

Last year, Harris defended Ilhan Omar against criticism of her attack on AIPAC and accusations of Jewish dual loyalty

Harris came to Omar's defense:

We all have a responsibility to speak out against anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and all forms of hatred and bigotry.

But like some of my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, I am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk. [emphasis added]

Harris also joined Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in defending Omar, saying

“I also believe there is a difference between criticism of policy or political leaders, and anti-Semitism,

Daniel Greenfield questions how it is that Harris did not see Omar's comments as a threat to Jews, but saw the protests against those statements to be a threat against Omar.

For that matter, how is accusing people of dual loyalty to Israel a criticism of policy?

Greenfield points out that Harris's choice of chief of staff is also problematic:

Karine Jean-Pierre, was the national spokeswoman and senior adviser for MoveOn. The radical group has a long history of trafficking in anti-Semitism and attacking the Jewish state. It even opposed New York Sen. Chuck Schumer because, in its own words, “our country doesn’t need another Joe Lieberman.”

So it is not surprising that Jean-Pierre claimed:

under [Netanyahu's] leadership of Israel, according to the United Nations, Israel may have committed war crimes in its attacks on Gazan protesters.

This in addition to bashing AIPAC.
And this is Harris's chief of staff.

Putting aside that Harris's step-children call her "momalah" or that as a kid she used to collect money to plant trees in Israel, Harris appears to be part of the radicalizing trend in the Democratic party against Israel. Keep in mind that Kamala Harris has not boycotted AIPAC, has not supported BDS and co-sponsored legislation opposing UN Resolution 2334.

So why does she have a chief of staff who says Israel is guilty of war crimes?

How long can she straddle the widening chasm in the Democratic Party between those who support Israel and those who want to weaken it?

And what would 4 years of Biden, with the pressure to resurrect negotiations for a 2 state solution, mean for Israel against the backdrop of an increasingly 'progressive' Democratic Party?

As for Trump, last year, in a letter to Nancy Pelosi before the impeachment hearings, Trump listed what he considered his pro-Israel accomplishments:

o  The US recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,
o  The American Embassy was opened in Jerusalem,
o  The US recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
o  Secretary of State Pompeo announced the new US position that "the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law."
o  Pompeo also gave Israel clear support for its operations against Iran’s presence in Syria and elsewhere

We can throw into the mix that this year Trump came out with his new peace plan, which broke away from the 2 state solution model -- and he played a key role in the new peace agreement between Israel and the UAE.

And of course, Trump pulled the US out of Obama's (and Biden's) Iran nuclear deal.

Accomplishment, no matter how many, are not in and of themselves proof that they are successful and beneficial -- and Jews are still not running from the Democratic camp to vote for Trump.

But compared with where Obama -- and Biden -- left Israel at the end of 2016, Israel is in a better position, and not because aid is being thrown at it to buy US arms to protect itself from enemies like Iran that the previous administration strengthened.

Some, like The Wall Street Journal, think that Trump has made a positive difference in the Middle East in general and for Israel in particular.

The Wall Street Journal's Editor-At-Large, Gerry Baker, writes

For those of you with deficient memories, let’s review this strategic record of the two decades before President Trump took office: the ascent of al Qaeda and 9/11; the catastrophe of Iraq and the messy, bloody stalemate of Afghanistan; the collapse of U.S. authority in the Middle East in the face of civil war in Syria and Libya; the rise of Islamic State; a resurgent Russia gorging itself on Eastern Europe; and the inexorable, unchallenged rise to superpower status of China.

Part of the problem the foreign policy establishment has with Mr. Trump is that it’s hard to stomach that a dilettante has been so effective. Whatever you think of the president, his inconsistencies, his curious taste for the world’s autocrats and his bombast, his efforts have proved more consequential than those of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment that came before him. On the three biggest strategic challenges the U.S. confronts—the Middle East, China and the Western alliance—the president has radically reoriented U.S. policy.

...The Trump administration dispensed with it all: no enforced rapprochement for Israel with recalcitrant Palestinians, no American blood shed to build neoconservative sandcastles of democracy, no illusory engagement with the mullahs.

But Baker is not saying that Trump's policies are an unmitigated success -- or necessarily a success at all, (yet):

It’s too soon to assert with confidence that this Trumpian tripod of strategic innovation has irrevocably advanced America’s objectives. But at the very least it represents a sharp break from years of bipartisan failure.

It would be interesting to see what another 4 years of Trump could bring.

Who knows, maybe Trump might even avoid getting impeached a second time.
 

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08/27 Links Pt1: Pence: Trump's Jerusalem recognition changed region; Khartoum Emerges As Place To Watch After Pompeo Visit; Hezbollah carried out border shooting under peacekeepers’ noses

From Ian:

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Isaac Herzog and Michael Herzog: Israel's Right to Self-Determination Does Not Depend on the Palestinians

The historic breakthrough towards normalizing Israeli-Emirati relations demonstrates a sea change in the Arab world’s outlook on Israel. In a region plagued by failed or failing states, wars and radicalism, Israel is increasingly perceived as a beacon of stability.

It also demonstrates that offering the Middle East a brighter future can no longer wait for the truly noble goal of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israel-UAE deal is a welcome outcome for a region destabilized by Iranian ambitions, Islamist extremism and internal strife. And a comprehensive framework for normalized Israeli-Arab relations that goes far beyond a “cold peace” not only deals a blow to the enemies of peace, but also creates an essential space for keeping the two-state solution alive.

Amazingly, there are those who continue to view the region through the sole prism of the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the point of suggesting the dystopian paradigm of dismantling the Jewish state into one state for Israelis and Palestinians.

The stories of the childhood of our father, Israel’s sixth president Chaim Herzog, in civil war-torn Belfast have shaped our perspective on the need for separate political entities for Israelis and Palestinians. Our father’s earliest memory was witnessing a gunfight resulting in murder. Today, some pundits cite Ireland as a hopeful example of resolving a centuries-old conflict between rival groups within one state. Yet this paradigm does not translate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which involves two competing national movements with bitter history and sharply different cultural and religious characteristics, espousing conflicting narratives and aspirations over the same piece of land.

Forcing Israelis and Palestinians together into one state is highly unlikely to produce a melting pot of coexistence and equality. Rather, it would trigger an endless struggle over dominance and only inflame and perpetuate the conflict, to the detriment of both peoples.

The debate over one state or two states is particularly significant in the aftermath of last month’s 20th anniversary of the Camp David Summit. One of us was there, as well as in most peace negotiations with the Palestinians since 1993. Fresh in our memory is Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat denying that there was ever a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Nor can we forget his nod to a terror campaign that took the lives of over 1,000 Israelis in the wake of Camp David.

In the decades since Camp David, the Palestinians have persistently rejected or ignored far-reaching Israeli and American peace proposals. Is Israel seriously expected to make a choice between fully accepting Palestinian demands or else dismantling itself?

Pence: Trump's Jerusalem recognition changed region

US Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday cast the re-election of President Donald Trump as critical to preserving America's safety and economic viability while claiming the administration's pro-Israel decisions helped bring it closer to the Arab world.

Amid widening protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Wisconsin, Pence and other Republicans at their national convention described the Nov. 3 contest between Trump and Biden as a choice between "law and order" and lawlessness.

"The hard truth is you won't be safe in Joe Biden's America," Pence told the crowd seated on a lawn at historic Fort McHenry in Baltimore.

Pence added that a vote for President Trump is also a vote for law and order worldwide. Stating that this administration has "Stood up to our enemies and we've stood with our allies. Like when President Trump kept his word and moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, the capital of the state of Israel, setting the stage for the first Arab country to recognize Israel in 26 years."

JPost Editorial: Pompeo is a great friend to the State of Israel

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s four-minute video clip addressed to the Republican National Convention from Jerusalem on Tuesday has triggered an avalanche of criticism.

Some have criticized him for literally using Jerusalem as a prop in US President Donald Trump’s campaign; others, for politicizing his office and being the first secretary of state in memory to address a national political convention.

Both criticisms ring somewhat disingenuous.

It is quite understandable that the Trump campaign wants to highlight its move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It views this as one of the president’s crowning achievements, and something of great importance to millions of Evangelicals who form a core component of Trump’s constituency. What better way to highlight that than for Pompeo to mention the embassy move to the convention with the domes and steeples of Jerusalem’s Old City glittering in the background?

And regarding politicizing the secretary of state’s office, c’mon! The secretary of state is a political appointment. Did anyone really fall of their chair watching that clip and discovering that Pompeo supports Trump’s foreign policies?

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When did synagogues start placing the Israeli and American flags in front?

On Twitter, Ben Kurt asked me, “Why do American synagogues often have the Israeli flag next to the ark or on a pole? I've never seen it one single time in a European synagogue.”

It appears that the custom of (usually non-Orthodox) synagogues, as well as churches, to display any flag at the front of the sanctuary happened during World War I as they displayed American flags as a show of patriotism for the US war effort. Some synagogues decided to also add the Zionist flag on the other side of the ark, perhaps out of a sense of aesthetics as much as a declaration of support for Zionism.

On May 9, 1931, a writer at the Reform Advocate expressed unease at the idea of  either flag in synagogue, especially the Zionist flag, worried that it would make it appear that Jews had dual loyalties – even before Israel was reborn!

 

Despite these misgivings by some Reform Jews, the Zionist flag became more and more popular in American synagogues (along with the American flag.) Flags would be presented to synagogues as gifts (this example from 1935):

 

The practice of American and Israeli flags in synagogue only accelerated during World War II.

However, after Israel was reborn some liberal congregations felt a little uncomfortable with the Israeli flag, for the same reason they were in the 1930s: they didn’t want to appear to have dual loyalties.

In 1950, Reform Rabbi Aryeh Lev suggested that instead of the Israeli flag, American congregations should adapt the flag used by Jewish chaplains during World War II as an American Jewish symbol.

 

 

Clearly the liberal congregations of every type did not show interest in Aryeh Lev’s proposal, and the Israeli flag remains at the front of many American synagogues today.

An article in JTA from a few months later describes a strong reaction against this idea by the Orthodox Union:

The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, representing all Orthodox synagogues in the United States and Canada, today announced its opposition to the adoption of a separate religious flag for American Jewry as proposed recently by Rabbi Aryeh Lev, director of the Division of Beligious Activities of the National Jewish Welfare Board.

Pointing out that traditional Judaism does not recognize the existence of an American Judaism separate from the “World Community of Israel,” the statement expressed opposition to the adoption of “concepts and symbols which will divide American Jewry from Klal Yisrael, whether they hide behind the Ten Commandments or any other emblem.”

Released by Rabbi Irwin Gordon, national director of community activities of the Union, the statement reviewed Jewry’s history of rarely displaying flags in synagogues. It related the change of this custom by Jewish religious groups which broke away from the Orthodox movement and by the display of the Zionist blue-and-white-flag and the American flag in synagogues during the war.

“With the establishment of the state of Israel and the adoption of the blue-and-white flag as its national ensign, some question has been raised concerning the propriety of further display of the Zionist flag in synagogues and centers,” the statement said. “Using the fear of ‘double loyalty’ as a jumping-off point, certain sectarian groups have asked for the adoption of a new religious flag for American Jewry.

“The spectre of “dual loyalty,” we are convinced, exists primarily in the minds of those who are not loyal to their own Jewish heritage,” it continued. “As observant Jews, we have never found and do not today find any contradiction between our loyalty to our faith, our devotion to our heritage and people and our political loyalty to the land of our birth.

“Traditional Judaism, unlike the sectarian movements, which have broken from it, does not recognize the existence of a separate and distinet ‘American’ Judaism. Surely, none of this is sufficient reason for the adoption of new-symbols which will separate American Jewry from Klal Yisrael, the world community of Israel, united by its common allegiance to its Torah,” the statement insisted.

It is interesting that the Orthodox Union, most of whom’s members would not have displayed any flag in their synagogues, felt they had to weigh in on this topic because of the perceived threat to the unity of the worldwide Jewish community which, then as now, overwhelmingly sees the flag of Israel as representing their own sense of pride of being Jewish.

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Palestinian Authority arrested a famous film director/actor for "defaming" the government, media silent

Abdulrahman Thaher is a Palestinian actor and film director. 

On August 14, he posted on Facebook a very mild and indirect criticism of the Palestinian Authority, saying that he didn't want to comment on the Israel/UAE agreement but that the PA had no right to criticize it since they have maintained recognition of Israel for decades.

He was then promptly arrested on charges of "defaming the Authority." 

Last Wednesday his detention was extended and on Sunday the Palestinian court rejected an argument that what he did was not illegal under Palestinian law.

Thaher's wife said he looked "sick and confused" during his court date and added that he was hospitalized, but she wasn't allowed to visit him. 

At the same time, another Palestinian critic of corruption in the Palestinian Authority, Nizar Banat, was also arrested for the same "crime "of "defaming the Authority." 

Western media and human rights groups have not said a word about these two cases, days after the Palestinian Independent Commission on Human Rights criticized the arrests.

Many Palestinian media outlets steer clear of reporting such cases, but Hamas and some independent media have been reporting it, and there is lots of interest on social media. The arrests are no secret. Reuters even reported about it in its Arabic newsfeed. 

The only reason the Western media is reluctant to report on such stories is because they want to maintain their anti-Israel bias. If the Palestinian Authority is revealed to be the corrupt dictatorship it is, then public opinion would swing more towards Israel which is far better in every single metric of adherence to the law and of morality. It would upset the false "narrative" of oppressive Israel and its Palestinian victims. 

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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.

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Did you hear about Palestinian Authority torturing a minor? Neither did anyone else.

 

PCHR, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights,  reports an incident of the Palestinian Authority torturing a 17-year old:

A Palestinian force of the Preventive Security Service (PSS) arrested a 17-year-old boy, from Ethna village in Hebron, without showing a warrant from the Public Prosecution, assaulted him physically, and shackled him subjecting him to degrading treatment. According to his statement:

“An officer grabbed me from my shirt and took me into the head office and ordered me to carry a heavy metal chair on my head while lifting one of my legs off the ground. When I refused to do so, the officer slapped me in the face and kicked me with his leg. I did what the officer ordered me for 5 minutes. After that, an officer grabbed me from my shirt again and hit me on my head repeatedly until we reached the investigation room. Officers ordered me to strip naked and face the wall and lift one hand and one foot up. I was kicked every time I tried to put my leg down. An inspector drew a fan on the wall and ordered me to turn it on while another inspector drew a ladder and ordered me to climb it. After that, another offer came and ordered me to crawl on the ground naked and officers proceeded to step on my body and head with their shoes on. I learnt later that I was arrested to pressure my father to turn himself in, as I was released after he was arrested.”

PCHR is not always the most reliable reporter of human rights abuses. One thing is clear, though: accusations of torture by Israel receive screaming world headlines, while accusations of torture by the Palestinian Authority or Hamas get muted.

This story is from Monday yet it has been completely ignored in English.

It was published in two obscure Palestinian news sites in Arabic but no site that has an actual audience.

Of course,  neither Human Rights Watch nor Amnesty tweeted about this.

Arabs abusing other Arabs, including children, are simply accepted and condoned by the “progressive” crowd, because admitting that Arabs act worse than Israel does muddies their antisemitic message of “Jews bad, Arabs good.”

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Israel’s PM and Government Should Resign Today (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

I’m not looking forward to writing this, or to reading the responses that I will surely get from various quarters. But here it is.

The Breslov Hasidim venerate Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810), a kabbalist, scholar, and founder of a movement that stresses joy and the personal closeness of a Jew to Hashem. Israelis are familiar with the Breslov trucks that drive around playing loud, rousing music, sometimes stopping for the passengers to get out and dance in the street with passers-by. Some see their approach as a welcome infusion of life and spirituality into what can be a dry and forbidding faith; others see their attitude toward Rabbi Nachman as avoda zara (worship of something or someone other than Hashem).

The Breslov Hasidim have developed a tradition in recent decades of visiting Uman (in Ukraine) where he died and where his grave is located, on Rosh Hashana. This pilgrimage has included tens of thousands of Israelis and others over the years. While for most of the pilgrims the goal of the trip is increased spirituality, there is also an element that treats it like the American college students’ Spring break, lubricated by alcohol and spiced up by prostitution.

The advent of the Coronavirus pandemic has (maybe) put a damper on the phenomenon. Israel’s numbers of serious cases and daily deaths from Corona are about as high as they have ever been, and its total number of cases per million population is 19^th in the world (out of 213). Ukraine is also suffering an increasing number of new cases, although it ranks only 87^th in cases per million. Last month, Ukraine decided to bar Israelis from the pilgrimage after the EU placed Israel on its “red list” of countries unsafe to visit.

Since then, pressure has been applied to authorities in Israel and Ukraine, both for and against the event. As one can imagine, tens of thousands of visitors mean a huge amount of income for the relatively small town of Uman. On the other hand, the danger of spreading Covid-19 at this kind of happening, where there will be large crowds and little social distancing, is very great. As Prof. Roni Gamzu, the Corona coordinator of Israel’s Health Ministry, recently pointed out, travelers to Uman will have to be placed in quarantine when they return home. A few thousand could be placed in hotels, but there is no way to quarantine and keep track of tens of thousands. Gamzu wants the government to forbid Israelis from flying to Uman. He also communicated his feelings to Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

In response, former Health Minister and present Housing and Construction Minister Ya’akov Litzman, himself a member of a (different) Hasidic sect, was infuriated and called for Gamzu’s resignation. The most recent development has the Ukranian President announcing that the pilgrimage would be “significantly restrict[ed]” although no precise details were given. Zelensky said that he was responding to a request made by PM Binyamin Netanyahu, but the PM’s office denied that he had made such a request, and said only that travelers should follow health instructions (proving yet again that at least in the case of Bibi, physical courage in youth doesn’t necessarily translate into moral courage in maturity).

I don’t know what will come out of this for Gamzu, who recently implied that he would resign if “not given the tools to bring down morbidity.” Gamzu, who has been properly trying to balance the medical demands of the epidemic with the need to protect the economy, has been stymied at almost every turn by politicians.

Why is an advanced, small country like Israel doing so poorly in managing the epidemic? There are several reasons. One is the fact that government decisions are being made on the basis of political interests, and not from medical or economic considerations. The pilgrimage to Uman is only one example. Another is that the Haredi and Arab sectors, where the virus has spread the most, institutionally resist authority, and ignore the rules. And finally, last but definitely not least, is the lack of leadership from the one person that should pull everything together, the Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu is more concerned with keeping the support of Litzman’s Haredi faction to keep him in power and out of jail, than with the threat of a major outbreak of the virus and concomitant economic disaster. Netanyahu has systematically kept his rival Naftali Bennett on the political margins. Bennett is one of the few politicians who has demonstrated real creativity in dealing with the present crisis, but he was forced out of the Likud by Bibi, reportedly because Mrs. Netanyahu dislikes him.

Recently the government managed to avoid falling and precipitating yet another election when it negotiated an internal compromise to delay voting on a budget. This is the best thing this pitiful government is capable of accomplishing: saving itself by not doing something essential.
Thanks to the irresponsibility of our politicians, people are dying of the virus. And the ones who don’t die are out of work.

After three elections in one year, Israelis have no appetite (or half a billion shekels) for another one. But the people have had it. We are sick of the endless crises of their own making, while the country misses opportunities like the application of sovereignty to the Jordan Valley, while the southern part of the country absorbs blow after blow from Hamas (yesterday their incendiary balloons started 30 fires), and while the number of seriously ill increase daily as the politicians dither.

Recently the entire government of Lebanon resigned, after an ongoing economic meltdown was followed by a massive explosion that destroyed large chunk of their capital. I don’t envy the Lebanese their economy or their explosion, but our government should follow their example.

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08/26 Links Pt2: Whither the BDS Movement?; Only 4% of American Jews consider Israel most important voting issue; Tel Aviv synagogues get go-ahead to hold High Holiday services in public spaces

From Ian:

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Only 4% of American Jews consider Israel most important voting issue

Ahead of the US 2020 presidential election, most American Jews remain pro-Israel but do not define Israel as their most important voting issue, according to a new study by the Ruderman Foundation.

Only 4% of Jewish voters identify Israel as their first or second-most important election issue. Some 43% prioritize health care, 28% prioritize gun violence and 21% prioritize Social Security and Medicare.

The paper, entitled “The Jewish Vote 2020: More Empowered than Powerful,” states that analysis of Jewish American voting patterns “tells us more about why they vote than about what their vote achieves,” and examines voting patterns to draw conclusions on shifts in American Jewish identity and values.

The failure to vote primarily on the topic of Israel is not due to a shift away from pro-Israel sentiments but rather a reflection of Jewish liberal identities, according to the study.

One of the finding in the paper is that “in the voting booth, most American Jews are actually more pro-choice and anti-Trump than pro-Israel.”

The three part position paper examines defining issues of what it calls a “watershed seemingly dividing pro-Trump Israeli Jews from anti-Trump American Jews,” and was co-authored by the Ruderman Family Foundation and Prof. Gil Troy.

Should Jews be angry about Pompeo’s speech from Jerusalem?

Republicans did their best last week to highlight the presence of a pair of anti-Israel figures at the Democratic National Convention. But in a stroke of irony, this week the Democrats are, among other things, complaining about the way the Republicans are trying to highlight their pro-Israel credentials.

There’s no real symmetry between the dustups over the Democrats’ flip-flops over their relations with radical BDS activist and prominent anti-Semite Linda Sarsour, and the GOP’s decision to have U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speak to his party’s convention in an address taped in Jerusalem. Nor should either be compared with the fact that, to their credit, the Republicans bounced a scheduled speaker from their program who had been found to have tweeted out anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The contrast between these kerfuffles is interesting because it raises the question of whether and how concerns about Israel and anti-Semitism should impact the decisions of voters.

Sarsour’s presence, as well as that of an Islamist imam, at a DNC daytime forum was outrageous. The real problem, however, was that Joe Biden’s campaign tried to have it both ways—first condemning and disassociating the candidate from her and then apologizing to her supporters for being “insensitive” to their feelings.

Nevertheless, Pompeo’s speech raises legitimate questions about a sitting cabinet member engaging in political activity and doing so while using an allied country as a backdrop.

The Hatch Act broadly prohibits government employees from playing politics while on duty. That law has often been observed in the breach by previous administrations with, for example, members of President Barack Obama’s cabinet appearing at the 2012 Democratic Convention.

The New York Times claimed that it had been at least 75 years since a secretary of state spoke at a national party convention, but since I haven’t found any record of Cordell Hull—President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of state appearing at either the 1940 or 1944 Democratic conventions—Pompeo’s speech might be a first.

Democrats are arguing that posts like secretary of state ought to be above politics, and to some extent, that’s true. It’s equally true that these posts are usually filled by politicians who often use their exalted platform for purposes that advance their political interests, such as the way Hillary Clinton helped the Clinton Family Foundation, a billion-dollar slush fund masquerading as a charity that existed mainly to promote her interests and future presidential candidacy while doing little in the way of philanthropy.

Too many American Jews are turning a blind eye to Antisemitism

Chutzpah layered on top of chutzpah. Morton Klein the President of the National ZOA had the audacity to answer those very questions, pointing out in tweets what should have been obvious to all: “BlackLivesMatter is an anti-Semitic, Israel hating, Soros funded, racist, Israelophobic hate group.” He followed up with: “I urge the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) to immediately put BlackLivesMatter on their list of hate groups. BLM is a Jew hating, White hating, Israel hating, conservative Black hating, violence promoting, dangerous Soros funded extremist group of haters.”

For expressing what only the willfully blind could deny, Klein was subjected to his sworn enemies giving voice to an anguished outcry of hate Vociferously, he was denounced as a “racist,” “bigot,” and xenophobe.

If you think the recriminations were coming from BLM, you’re sadly mistaken. Sixteen of the fifty one member organizations of the Conference of Presidents issued a separate letter on June 12th condemning Klein’s comments, and called for the removal of the ZOA from the Council of Presidents.

Unsurprisingly, not one word about the antisemitic riots just days earlier was mentioned by any of Klein’s sixteen disparaging groups. It’s not surprising because with the exception of the ZOA no other Jewish organization in the United States has the intestinal fortitude to publicly confront and maintain pressure on egregious acts of antisemitism.

This past December, a black man named Grafton Thomas crashed a Hannukah party at the house of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg in Monsey, New York. Brandishing a butcher knife, he immediately began stabbing five people, one of whom, Rabbi Josef Newmann, succumbed to his injuries. Investigators found handwritten journals expressing antisemitic views, including material about Adolf Hitler, "Nazi culture", and drawings of a Star of David and of a swastika among Thomas's possessions.

With so much evidence of it being a hate crime and over a hundred guests at the party recognizing him as the assailant, you would think it was a slam dunk case. Guess again. This past April 20th, a federal judge ruled Grafton was incompetent to stand trial and ordered him to be hospitalized in a mental facility. He certainly was competent enough to research Nazi culture, cross state lines, seek out the Rabbi’s address, and commit murder, but not enough to stand trial. This dastardly event came on the heels of a 30 year old Hassidic kollel student was stabbed multiple times on his way to Synagogue in Ramapo, New York, two months earlier.

There isn’t a person on the planet that hasn’t heard of George Floyd, so why aren’t the names of Rabbi Newmann and that kollel student equally familiar? I think all unbiased, serious minded people know the answer to this question.

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