Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

09/22 Links Pt2: Can Israelis See the Peace Through the Pandemic?; How Denmark, Sweden, the U.N., and the EU Got Suckered Into Funding a Terror Organization

From Ian:

Vivian Bercovici: Can Israelis See the Peace Through the Pandemic?

COVID will come and go, but the Abraham Accords have the potential to reshape the geopolitical reality of the Middle East and beyond. These accords further isolate Iran, Qatar, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Hezballah, and other extremist states and groups in the Middle East.

The UAE has embraced this new relationship with unbridled enthusiasm, engaging every sector of Israeli society. Their boldness is forging a path forward, and other nations are following.

In these Days of Awe, I hope that all Israelis take note and make or do a “cheshbon nefesh.” We must see through our collective rage at the government, which is obscuring what should be celebrated: a new, promising era of peace.

I understand the anger and share it. A second medieval lockdown is infuriating and will wreak havoc on the well-being of too many Israelis. But it will pass. Perhaps this peace is permanent.

Among the matters I will contemplate when taking my personal cheshbon nefesh will be gratitude to all who worked to bring about this peace and recognition. And I will work hard to manage my anger at the transient people and things.

Gamar Chatima Tova, we say when greeting one another in these Days of Awe. May you be inscribed in the Book of Life for the coming year.

Amen.

How Denmark, Sweden, the U.N., and the EU Got Suckered Into Funding a Terror Organization

The arrests in December 2019 of 50 suspected members of the sizable terrorist infrastructure of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Ramallah, which was responsible for the terror attack in which teenager Rina Shnerb was murdered and her father and brother were injured last summer (Aug. 23, 2019), exposed the significant magnitude of PFLP terror networks and their capacity to strike within Israel. Perhaps more ominously, it also exposed the self-deception under which many left activists operate in Europe and the United States.

PFLP funders see or pretend to see the delegitimization activity performed by PFLP-affiliated organizations as peaceful/nonviolent actions that are unrelated to the terrorist operations of the PFLP. This hypocrisy reached a new peak in a letter sent recently by the European Union’s representative to the Palestinian Authority, who guaranteed the Palestinian NGOs, many of which are affiliated with the PFLP, that the EU will keep funding them in spite of their affiliation with organizations that have been formally designated by the EU as terror organizations—a promise that came after the NGOs refused to commit to avoid such affiliations.

The PFLP is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, EU, Australia, Canada, and Japan. Back when its terror unit was still called “The Red Eagles,” PFLP won world attention because of its involvement in plane hijackings (Leila Khaled, who took part in two such attacks, is a member of the PFLP politburo and of the Palestinian National Council), and the massacre it carried out in Israel’s Lod airport in 1972.

The PFLP’s current terror arm, the “Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades,” operates from a headquarters in Damascus, where it maintains operational cooperation with Iran and Hezbollah. The PFLP has active cells in many governorates of the Palestinian Authority with dozens of active members in Judea and Samaria. Through these terror arms, the PFLP perpetrated some of the most despicable terror attacks, including the murder of Israeli minister Rehavam Ze’evi (October 2001); six suicide bombing attacks during the Second Intifada that left 13 people dead including the Nov. 1, 2004, suicide bombing attack in the crowded Carmel Market in Tel Aviv that left three dead; and the attempt to murder Israel's former Chief Rabbi Ovadya Yosef in 2005 (Salah Hamouri, who played a key role in planning the attack is a prominent activist in the PFLP-affiliated, so-called “human rights” NGO Addameer).

In November 2014, the PFLP carried out the vicious murder with axes and guns of five Jewish worshippers while they were praying at the Har-Nof synagogue in Jerusalem, as well as a policeman who tried to stop the attack. The attack was carried out by two brothers who were related to a former PFLP terrorist and the PFLP took responsibility for and praised the attack, though some sources dispute this. The PFLP performed numerous rocket attacks from Gaza during Operation Protective Edge in 2014 and participates in the operation room that led the terror attacks from Gaza in the many rounds of conflict that have taken place since.

For many left-wing organizations in the West, cooperation with the PFLP comes naturally. It is a reminder of the “glorious” era when the Soviet Union was a superpower competing for global dominance against “the corrupt capitalist West” (this vocabulary is still often used by PFLP). When the Soviet bloc collapsed, these groups had to find a new cause célèbre around which to unite. The PFLP was among the first groups to understand the potential of recruiting softer anti-Israel elements into its networks and to leverage those elements in order to gain financial support from naïve international donors.

I was on a plane hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. Why did a public university invite one of them to speak?

The most distressing and disheartening thing, 50 years after this horrible experience, is that the world has not eradicated this type of terrorism. As recently as January 2020, the PFLP (through Palestinian NGOs) receives financial support of millions of dollars from European countries, the United States, Canada, Japan, UN-OCHA and UNICEF.

In theory, San Francisco State University President Lynn Mahoney is correct in stating that a university is a place where different ideas are presented, discussed and analyzed so that individual conclusions can be drawn. But does that justify giving an unrepentant terrorist a forum to address the students?

What will she teach them? The proper way to hijack an aircraft, based on her success in 1969, and what mistakes to avoid based on her failure in 1970?

When I was a student in university, I often faced new ideas that ran contrary to my beliefs. But these perspectives were presented by knowledgeable, respectable academics. Some were Nobel Prize winners. None were terrorists.

Neither Mahoney, in her published response, nor the university indicated that anyone will be presenting an opposing view, one that is against terrorism and radicalization. I cannot imagine how Mahoney, or any decent person, can claim Khaled’s presentation will be an educational experience.

SFSU is no stranger to anti-Semitism. They have prevented the presentation of pro-Israel and Jewish ideas. In fact, SFSU had been recently sued by Jewish students who claimed that they were victims of systemic anti-Semitism. Not long ago, SFSU prevented then-Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat from speaking at a public event, and San Francisco Hillel was excluded from a fair on campus.

Inviting Leila Khaled to speak is a dishonor to all those who suffered at her and the PFLP’s hands – and glorifies terrorism, which is unacceptable. (h/t Zvi)

Gaza's Al Aqsa University: Holocaust museums are Zionist propaganda

On Instagram, Al Aqsa University of Gaza posted a video animation of a potential Palestinian museum.

The text accompanying it is more interesting than the video, though.

The Palestinian Memory Museum project designed by the students Fahmy Daher and Islam Al-Haddad in an interior design course at Al-Aqsa University. The project reviews the memory of the place in a visual narrative that employs drama to present the Palestinian narrative in an effective and convincing way to the world in confronting the Israeli narrative that our enemies succeeded in establishing through the Holocaust museums that are spreading In more than 60 countries in the world.

They actually seem jealous of the Holocaust, because they want to be the world's greatest victims. But they look at the Holocaust not as a historic genocide of millions of people but as an excuse for Jews to get a state.

(h/t Petra, Imshin)

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.

Dr. Abdul Sattar Qassem writes in Al Majd:

Is there anyone who argues that the Zionists will not establish a large, modern settlement with advanced industrial and scientific potential in the Khyber district, north of Medina? I see that the Zionists have completed plans for a modern and huge settlement city in place, and implementation is only a matter of time. Certainly, there are those who disagree with me in this regard, but time will suffice to reveal this secret if the Zionist entity remains on the political map of the world. I see the experts of the Zionists who specialize in planning cities and settlements have been busy developing their designs for years. The Zionist politicians looked ahead to where political matters are heading in the Arabian Peninsula, and that the rulers of Saudi Arabia must establish strong relations with them...

Is it reasonable for the Zionist entity to establish normalized relations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia without the agreement between the two parties stipulating Zionist privileges in the old Jewish residential areas? Scenes of the ruins of Khaybar, Bani Al-Nadir, and Banu Qurayza are still in front of us today, despite the recent developments in Khaybar, and the Zionists certainly have accurate details about what remains of the Jewish fortresses and some of the farms that they owned. If they are demanding the Noble Sanctuary on the grounds that their father Abraham, according to their religious data, has laid his foundations, then they will certainly demand historical sites before them and the whole world.

The question that should be asked is: Why have the Saudis preserved these sites as they are and did not make changes to them that take an Islamic character? There is a mosque in Khaybar and a new market with many shops, but it is empty of residents, as if it is waiting for new invaders who are not of Islam or Arabism in anything.

Khaybar was the most important site for the Jews in the Arabian Peninsula, which is about 168 km north of Medina, and many of its buildings are still standing, especially the famous Marhab Castle, which was the seat of their famous strong leader Marhab, who was destroyed by Ali bin Abi Talib, may God be pleased with him. The Khayria palm plantations still exist until now, and it is considered one of the largest oases in the Arabian Peninsula. The eyes of the Zionist Jews are on the sites of the Jews of Medina and its environs, and they will work to rebuild it, and because of the slogan that Muslims constantly chant: “Khaybar Khaybar, O Jews, Muhammad’s army will return,” which is the slogan that Muhammad’s army will liberate Palestine from its sea to its river. When Khaybar is rebuilt, the Zionists will have responded to the slogan with a new painful reality. Then the Muslims must imagine that the army of Muhammad, peace be upon him, will come from Yemen as a conqueror, given that Yemen is the only Arab country in the Arabian Peninsula qualified to fight and restore the dignity of Arabs and Muslims.

The Zionists will work to reconstruct Khaybar and the various sites in which the Jews were present, to become tourist places that attract tourists from all over the world. There will be modern thriving tourist areas that will benefit the Zionists and Saudi rule. The present and destroyed monuments will remain, and the Zionists will restore what can be restored from the homes of the Jews and their security and military institutions, and the Marhab Castle will be a vital center for the new settlement, and the farms will turn into rich gardens that tourists like to access and reside in.

No one is surprised what I say. The Zionists had planned the city of Jerusalem and designed the parks, official and unofficial institutions, museums, bus and car stations, etc. before 1948. They used to summon experts in city planning from Europe at high wages to serve the purposes of settlement in the Holy City.

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09/22 Links Pt1: Reversing a century of Pan-Islamic anti-Zionism; Trump has changed conversation on Israel at last

From Ian:

MK Orit Farkash-Hacohen: UAE-Israel partnership will advance peace in Middle East

This moment also allows us to face common threats with a united front. Not surprisingly, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and members of the anti-Israel delegitimization campaign came out against peace and normalisation.

The UAE’s decision to abolish its Boycott Law, as well as the Arab League’s decision not to condemn the peace deal, serve as strong messages: the days of boycotts are behind us; now we stand ready to join hands against terror, extremism and aggression.

History teaches us that mutual acceptance is indispensable to advancing reconciliation in our region. When recognised and given assurances for their security, Israelis feel more ready to take risks and make concessions for peace.

Those who genuinely wish to promote peace should invest in legitimisation, understanding, and dialogue. In contrast, those trying to divide us by building walls of hate, alienation and lies should be denounced for what they are: extremists or detractors of peace.

Last week’s ceremony was history in the making; now it is our shared goal to rise to the occasion. We must strive to build partnerships to advance our region, bring additional countries to join the circle of peace, including the Palestinians, and confront extremists and aggressors. Together we can do it.

MK Orit Farkash-Hacohen is Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs and a member of Israel’s National Security Cabinet

Following the #Peace signed between #Israel, #UAE and #Bahrain, had some fun with the data and created this map of Israeli diplomatic relations over the years.
Wishing more of our neighbors and friends to join next year's map. #shanatova pic.twitter.com/s0jWDV2jiG
— Nati Brooks 🇮🇱 (@NatiBrooks) September 17, 2020

Yisrael Medad: Reversing a century of Pan-Islamic anti-Zionism

There are several convincing factors as to why Israel, its supporters – both Jews and non-Jews, as well as all men and women of reason – should be satisfied with the signing of two arrangements for peaceful relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and Israeli and Bahrain.

One of them is the historical handicap the conflict between Arabs and the State of Israel and its Zionist character has been cast for a century. Indeed, the frame of reference of the "Palestine conflict" has always been one that includes the entire Muslim world. That world's identification with and sympathy for the "plight of Palestine" is now, in a sense, dissolving.

What was the historical backdrop to that phenomenon?

As Suleiman Mousa, writing in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, notes that already in July 1922, at the time of the Haj: "A Palestine delegation arrived in Mecca to explain to the king [Hussein ibn Ali] the dangers inherent in the policy of the Jewish National Home. The British government of Palestine, perturbed at the activities of the delegation, sent a letter to the Hijaz government refuting its complaints and claiming that the Arabs in Palestine were faring well and prospering. The Hijaz government refused to accept this statement and insisted that the Balfour Declaration should be canceled."

The head of that 1922 delegation was Abdelqader Al-Muzaffar, who had led previous Haj pilgrimages to Mecca. Its members sailed to Sudan and from there to Jeddah, arriving on July 11. It established pro-Arab Palestine committees at all the stops and sought meetings with leading political and religious personalities. Their theme was "Defend Al-Aqsa."

Alexander Downer: Trump has changed conversation on Israel at last

This change in the Middle East is, to say the least, dramatic. It is a geo-political realignment. The Arab states which recognise Israel and trade with Israel have the great advantage of being able to tap into the things that Israel does really well, not least innovative technology and medicine.

But there’s more to it than that. Those Arab states now working with Israel have changed the balance of power in the region away from Iran. This is a far more significant change in the architecture of the region than President Obama’s JCPOA agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. That agreement was temporary and, of course, could easily be breached by the Iranians. Whether it would be is another question. I doubt Iran would be so foolhardy under any circumstance to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

On the other hand, Israel, with a small population but a mighty defence force, will be an invaluable ally for those Arab states which fear the power of Tehran.

So where does this leave the Palestinians? This is not good news for them. It does demonstrate that for much of the Arab world there is a good deal more to worry about than the plight of the Palestinians. The Gulf States are deeply concerned about the power of Iran, they have to wrestle with COVID-19 and the global economic meltdown, and they have internal political challenges to deal with. A relationship with Israel, their ties with America and their broader links with the rest of the world are going to matter a great deal more to them than a Palestinian population not willing to engage constructively in negotiations with Israel.

So the conversation in the Middle East has changed. The Palestinian leadership would be wise to recognise that. Its strategy for the past few decades has run out of puff. Continual condemnation of Israel, resolutions through United Nations bodies, demonstrations outside Israeli embassies and so on have yielded nothing. It is time the Palestinians came up with their own peace plan, decided to engage in negotiations with the Israelis and take advantage of the new relationship between several Arab states and Israel.

Who knows whether the US administration will be able to pull that off after the elections in November? But if we’ve learnt anything over the past four years, it is a mistake to underestimate the Trump administration when it comes to creative diplomacy in the Middle East.

Sky News Arabia surveys Sudan's attitudes towards peace with Israel.

It notes that Khartoum was the warmest capital for the Jews in the Muslim world, bit that all changed in 1967 when it hosted the famous Three No's Conference. Only four years later it nationalized the properties of the Jews, forcing hundreds of them to emigrate in search of a new home, leaving behind families whose name was associated with industry, commerce and art.

In the past year there has been a heated debate about Sudan's relationship with Israel. The Sudanese were surprised when the head of the Sudanese Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, met Bibi Netanyahu last February. Since then, the debate about the interests that Khartoum could gain from peace with Israel has been a hot topic, despite Sudan's pro-Palestinian position.

Journalist Al-Nur Hamad views the issue of relations with Israel as a breaking of the psychological barrier that has been preventing Sudan from dealing in a realistic way with Israel, as it has seen in Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and Bahrain. Establishing relationships is, for Hamad, "a major starting blow in the direction of restoring the lost Sudanese identity."

Hamad admits that "Israel has its transgressions, but some other countries have their transgressions, which if Sudan took it as a reason for hostility, then we would find ourselves with a long list of enemies."

While the Palestinian issue has been the focus of Sudanese attention for decades, the vast majority of the new generation of youth seemed indifferent to having a relationship with Israel, and some of them, such as Mahmoud, who is a second-year university student, did not even know the details of the Palestinian issue.

Mahmoud says that "the most important thing for me is for his country to establish foreign relations that achieve the interests that my generation of youth expects."

One of the remaining Jews in Sudan, Abu Bakr Mustafa Israel, was born in the 1990s. He expects peace to open new hopes for his generation of Sudanese Jews, and to restore to them the golden era that his ancestors had in different Sudanese cities, before things turned upside down.

Israel recounts part of his bitterness. He tells Sky News Arabia: “Despite the unique state of tolerance that characterizes the Sudanese society, political changes cast a negative shadow over the overall lives of the remaining Jews in Sudan. My father had to change his name in order to be able to join the Military Academy, and then became a senior officer in the Sudanese army before he retired and died later.

Israel hopes that peace will create a new reality for the future of its children, so that they do not have to change their names in order to enter a job, as their grandfather did before.

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.

Aiman Dean, known as Ramzi, was a member of Al-Qaeda who turned into an agent for Britain's MI6 and later an author.

He was recently interviewed by Russia's Sputnik where he discussed, among other things, the relationship between Al Qaeda and Hamas.

Arabs always ask why Al Qaeda never attacked Israel directly. The terror group always talks about liberating Al Aqsa and Palestine from the Jews, yet it never appeared to do anything to help.

According to Dean, the reason was because there was a secret agreement between Hamas and Al Qaeda. Hamas asked Al Qaeda not to do any attacks against Israel in exchange for terror training so Hamas terrorists could do the attacks themselves.

In the late 1990s Hamas sent a small number of operatives to Afghanistan to get trained in new sophisticated bomb-making techniques. According to Dean, all the suicide bombings by Hamas from 2000 to 2003 used Al Qaeda technology, where the explosive capacity of bomb belts were doubled and the triggers were changed from electronic, which was error-prone, to a more easily created manual trigger that would explode with only a light blow on the suicide belt.

Dean - almost defensively - added that Al Qaeda was in fact busy targeting Israelis and Jews outside Israel, listing the 2002 synagogue bombing in Ghriba, the 2004 Taba bombings, an attempted anti-aircraft missile attack against an Israeli plane that took off from Kenya that would have killed 300, and the bombing of two synagogues in Istanbul that killed over twenty.

The former terrorist added that the other reason Al Qaeda was not interested in directly attacking Israel and leaving that to Hamas was because "Al-Qaeda was preoccupied with the head of the snake, which is the United States of America."

Both Hamas and Al Qaeda have roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, so none of this is too surprising - except that the only evidence of direct links has been circumstantial up until now. In 2007, Osama Bin Laden cut his ideological support for Hamas and by 2009 Hamas was fighting with Al Qaeda elements in Gaza.

In the Sputnik interview, Dean was asked about what other nations and organizations Al Qaeda cooperated with besides Hamas. "The biggest relationship that existed was with Iran and I say it frankly. Then there was Qatar, and there were also relations with Sudan, and to some extent there was cooperation with Yemeni intelligence, and there was also a relationship to some extent with the Pakistani intelligence," he answered.

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.

Jewish Voice for Peace tweeted a Twitter thread claiming that the General Mills factory in Atarot "is displacing, exploiting & stifling Palestinians."

The "evidence" given for this is laughable, but Israel-haters don't care much about facts.

What follows is a litany of half truths and selective facts that have nothing to do with the General Mills Pillsbury factory.

Pillsbury opened in Atarot in 2002, just after Israel built its apartheid wall around the whole zone. The wall & its checkpoints, visible from the 160 businesses they encircle, are a constant reminder of how Atarot helps Israel dominate Palestinian lives, livelihoods & land.

The security barrier was build to stop Palestinian suicide bombings that was killing hundreds of Israelis a year, not to show Israel domination over Palestinian lives.

The Pillsbury factory also employs Palestinians, a fact General Mills leaned on in its PR statement after the UN determined that the factory’s operations violate international law. But Palestinian settlement workers endure exceptional exploitation, precarity & restrictions. Because the Atarot Industrial Zone ravaged & suppressed pre-existing Palestinian agriculture & small businesses, local Palestinian workers—often the immediate descendants of the rightful owners of the land—have no choice but to labor in factories like Pillsbury’s.

Palestinians' jobs can be grueling & unsafe—and, under Israel’s apartheid legal system, they often have fewer labor protections, lower wages & negligible benefits compared to Israelis in the same workplace. In an occupation-strangled economy, they accept this to survive.

50% of the Pillsbury plant's employees are Palestinian Arabs. And Palestinians who work in Israeli industrial zones generally make double the salary they could make in their own communities. It isn't like they have no choice - they eagerly choose to work for Israelis.

Are their jobs without worker protections? Israeli law says that they must be afforded the same protections as anyone else. It is true that some Israeli bosses take advantage of some Palestinian workers, but there is no evidence that General Mills does - in fact, General Mills Middle East was named one of the Best Places to Work in Asia.

The chasm between Palestinian & Israeli workers in Atarot has only widened during COVID-19. Ex: due to fear of checkpoint closures—and to union bust—a manager forced Palestinians to sleep in a trash-sorting plant in squalid & infectious conditions while Israelis went home.

I don't know how true that Haaretz article is, but it has nothing to do with General Mills.

Pillsbury increases Atarot’s heavy pollution, which exceeds “permissible levels” 2/3 of the year. Many Palestinian locals have respiratory issues from flour inhalation. One said “when they pour the flour [in outdoor mixers], the flour… overflow[s] into the house.”

Atarot's pollution problems from 2016 all came from cement manufacturers, not flour. Only this year the Ministry of Environmental Protection temporarily closed two factories in Atarot for air pollution - but not General Mills.

As far as the anecdote of Pillsbury flour spilling into houses, this is absurd. There are no houses adjacent to the factories. It was a typical statement that would not be checked by anti-Israel NGOs.

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.

09/21 Links Pt2: Eugene Kontorovich: International Law for Just One Nation; Thomas Friedman’s Folly; Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Zionist

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: International Law for Just One Nation

Like a drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost, the authors invariably attach great weight to every scrap of evidence in favor of their arguments, while discounting or entirely ignoring contrary evidence. Both authors, for example, give almost conclusive weight to the International Court of Justice’s Advisory 2004 opinion in the Wall case, where the Court opined that territory can be deemed “occupied” even if it had no prior sovereign. But the ICJ opinion was, as the authors are aware, “advisory,” and thus not legally binding. As a formal matter, the ICJ’s opinion deserves no more legal weight than the quality of its legal arguments. On this point, it made none, but rather cited the numerous U.N. resolutions that had said the same thing, all solely in the context of Israel.

In any case, the ICJ opinion was only issued in 2004, further discounting its value, for both legal and sociological reasons. Under basic principles of international law, the law that would govern Israel’s presence in the West Bank is the law as it was understood in 1967, not subsequent interpretations. Moreover, by 2004, and indeed, much earlier, the question of occupation of non-sovereign territory had become entirely synonymous with the question of Israel and the territories; it could hardly be treated as an abstract legal question. On the other hand, both authors entirely ignore the Cession of Vessels and Tugs for Navigation on the Danube case, which was decided before 1967, and would thus state the law as it was when Israel took control of the territories. That case held that the territory that was not under the sovereignty of any state could not become occupied. That means that the West Bank, which was not under any sovereignty when Israel ended Jordanian control, could not be deemed occupied. Dinstein’s failure to acknowledge this precedent, which goes contrary to his conclusions, is a particularly odd lapse given that he cites Danube Tugs as authority for other propositions of occupation law.

Yet even these authors, who largely track the conventional U.N. consensus on these matters, try to take seriously the fact that they are dealing with legal texts. Many readers will be surprised that both authors agree that the broad and undifferentiated treatment of Israeli settlers as “illegal” lacks any basis. In the commonplace understanding, any Jewish presence across the Green Line is ipso facto illegal. This is the view that animates groups such as Peace Now and Btselem, who condemn every individual Jewish-inhabited housing unit. But the authors note there is simply no colorable basis in Art. 49 for such a comprehensive ban: it does not prohibit the nationals of an occupying power from moving to or living in the territory. Rather, it regulates certain actions by occupying powers to move its population there. In particular, it requires acts of “transfer” by the occupying power, a term which the authors interpret sweepingly, but still excluding clearly private actions.

Thus, both authors agree that Israelis who purchase land in private transactions, or move to land they had prior title to, cannot conceivably fall within these prohibitions. Dinstein also points out that “so called ‘outposts’”–settlements established in the face of opposition by the Israeli government–would have to be considered legal under international law, precisely because they are illegal under Israeli law.

Yet neither book takes these points to their logical conclusion. They agree that “transfer” must refer to movements of people caused by official government action, but in practice they interpret causation in a “but for” way, rather than a more direct causation of the kind typically required by criminal prohibitions. That is, to say that “transfer” occurs when Israel makes it possible for its citizens to move to the West Bank, or does not discourage residence there relative to other places, is to interpret a ban on transfer as a requirement of discouragement, which appears nowhere in the convention.

Nonetheless, it is important to note the gap between the somewhat more limited version of the rule conceded by these authors and the absolute ban assumed by the international community and pro-Palestinian NGOs. It is an odd coincidence that the legal interpretation of the obscure Art. 49(6) adopted by so many happens to be entirely congruent with Palestinian political demands and negotiating positions.

Thomas Friedman’s Folly

Friedman, like his newspaper, routinely applied a double standard to Israel (that he imaginatively recast as a “unique double dimension”). He preposterously claimed that when Israel no longer was “judged by standards applied to no other country,” it meant that “something very essential in Israel’s character and the character of the Jewish people has died.” He declined to say what double standards revealed about journalistic integrity.

Returning to the United States as a Times columnist who could lacerate Israel at will, Friedman believed that there was “no hope for peace without a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.” Yearning for a “total Israeli withdrawal” to pre-1967 lines, he warned that without a two-state solution, “Israel will be stuck with an apartheid-like, democracy-sapping, permanent occupation.” Echoing a trope favored by his colleague Anthony Lewis, he feared that “scary religious nationalist zealots” might lead Israel into the “dark corner” of a South African future of apartheid.

But Friedman’s dark fantasies about Israel unless it obeys his peace proposals reveal nothing more than his frustration that the Jewish state does not heed his advice for a return to its pre-1967 borders. That, of course, would heighten its vulnerability to new waves of Palestinian terrorism. He remains as he was as a Brandeis undergraduate: yearning for Palestinian statehood and furious at Israel for its determination to rebuild a state within its ancient Jewish homeland.

To be sure, Friedman is hardly alone at the New York Times. In an editorial (Sept. 17) celebrating the normalization of relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, the Times reiterated its hackneyed insistence that “a true Middle East peace deal” requires “an accommodation” (a two-state solution) with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. But even a cursory glance at the refusal of Palestinians under Yasser Arafat to accept a peace that would have given them the entire West Bank and Gaza for their own state would suggest otherwise. Thomas Friedman and the New York Times are a perfect match for the blame-Israel-first prize.

David Collier: Canadian research house EKOS spews a twisted anti-Israel survey

Ekos Research Associates is a social and economic research company in Canada run by Frank Graves. They have just put their name to some rather vicious anti-Israel propaganda. Lies, manipulation and EKOS

Long before anyone in the UK knew who I was, I put a comment under a Tony Greenstein blog pointing out a truly glaring factual error. Greenstein’s response was to delete my comment. This type of action speaks volumes and this event was part of my awakening into understanding the real danger these people pose. Who deliberately lies but those that set out to deceive?

Their need to spread lies is the key reason behind their refusal to engage or debate. It is why they block people like me on social media. We have nothing to fear from the truth – they most certainly do.

Which brings us to their methods. One of the more intelligent ways that they spread disinformation is through twisting surveys. They have long understood that if you ask the right question, you will get whatever answer it is you are looking for. A skill they have just put to good use in Canada. According to a recently published survey carried out by EKOS almost every Canadian thinks Israel should be investigated for war crimes:
84%? Almost nothing is ever as high as 84% and certainly not Canadian animosity towards Israel. We know this is not true – so here is how they did it. A story of how Ekos Research Associates put their name to anti-Israel propaganda. The bad, the nasty and the even worse

Ekos Research Associates were commissioned to conduct an online survey on Canadian attitudes towards Israel by three groups – Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV), and the United Network for Justice and Peace in Palestine-Israel (UNJPPI).

UJPPI have a FB page with 184 ‘followers’. Their Twitter account has 132 ‘followers’. Their posts and tweets generally remain unsupported. Of their last 15 tweets, two received a single like, the other 13 got none. Their Facebook page is equally dormant. Their blog has numerous outrageous posts, even coming out in support of Linda Sarsour.

Today's Iranian antisemitism

The Tehran Times, which is the "voice of the Islamic revolution," has an article titled “'New world order pledged to Jews' 80 years ago."

The opening paragraph:

Most Zionist diplomacy takes place in secret, through corruption and blackmail (euphemistically called “lobbying”). But sometimes it is deemed appropriate that some statement be written down by some government representative in support of Zionism. The Goyim who write these statements may think them of little consequence, but Zionists know very well how to capitalize on them.

Yes, we have an antisemitic writer here. He gives credit to someone who had written a book called "Mein Side of the Story."

In case you are interested, the main part of the story is based on a forgotten 1940 letter written by Arthur Greenwood, member without portfolio in the British War Cabinet, who wrote to the Jews of the United States that when victory was achieved an effort would be made to create a new world order based on the ideals of "justice and peace." The letter was meaningless - after all, Great Britain did all it could to block a Jewish state - but the words "new world order" make some people go crazy.

Iranian English-language media is one of the few places you can see neo-Nazi literature accepted as normal journalism - and the only reason is that the Iranians and neo-Nazis share a hate of Israel.

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Hamas and Fatah plan to meet in Turkey to discuss - yet again - a unity agreement and having elections, according to reports.

The Secretary of the Central Committee of Fatah, Jibril Rajoub, confirmed that there is a desire to hold general elections soon.

The meeting between Rajoub, representing Fatah, and leaders of Hamas, would be aimed at discussing "joint leadership."

The last major joint meeting was held on September 3 in Beirut.

Rajoub did some remarkable spinning in statements to Palestine TV. Instead of admitting that the Palestinian cause is no longer of interest to much of the Arab world and that the Palestinian leadership can no longer set the agenda for the Arab world at large, he said that for the first time in its history the decisions of the Palestinian Authority have become independent and far from any regional influence or pressure, .

Rajoub claims that legislative elections will be held first, then the presidential elections, and after that the Palestinian National Council (the parliament of the Liberation Organization) will be formed according to agreed mechanisms, without indicating specific dates.

There have been plans for "unity" and elections for over a decade now, and they never pan out.

Palestinian legislative elections were last held in 2006, while the last presidential elections were held in 2005.

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09/21 Links Pt1: The irreligious West doesn't grasp the significance of the Israel peace deal; Israel to UN: Choose between supporting Iran and terror or Israel and peace

From Ian:

Ed Husain: The irreligious West doesn't grasp the significance of the Israel peace deal

When signing the Abraham Accord, the Emirati Foreign Minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, said “with the grace of God, sir” to President Trump. Then, speaking in Arabic, he addressed the Middle East from the White House in which he proclaimed the God of Abraham for love, compassion, hope and prosperity. The prophet Mohamed, a descendant of Abraham, honoured Jews and Christians as believers in the one God of Abraham. This common heritage moves the rug from under the feet of the extremists and the Iranian government. The Jews and Christians are peoples of the Middle East for they are the inheritors of Abraham, too.

The Quran confirms the Jews’ claim to Jerusalem, recognising Joseph, son of Isaac, and the twelve tribes of Israel, while claiming Abraham’s other son, Ishmael, as the ancient father of the Arabs. This deeper history and theology will be key to making the Jewish state acceptable to the world’s 1.8 billions Muslims. And when the radical Muslim mind can accept Jews and Israel, it can stop hating the West and modernity. Israel is therefore our first line of defence. Already, the absence of riots and mass protests in Jakarta, Karachi or Cairo suggests this Abrahamic narrative cannot be easily refuted.

Rather than chase Christians away, the UAE is constructing the Abrahamic Family House, a vast compound housing a church, synagogue and mosque. A new Jewish community is thriving in Abu Dhabi and Dubai with kosher restaurants and food on planes to make Jews feel at home again in the Arabian Gulf. Jordan and Egypt, who also have peace treaties with Israel, are now considering this new model of reclaiming God and Abraham.

For too long, Palestinians and many other Muslims have been fed the falsehood that Jews are outsiders and occupiers. British diplomats and politicians are yet to understand this new zeitgeist, or encourage other Muslim nations to sign up the Abraham Accord. Will they now change course?

Khaled Abu Toameh: Arabs: "Palestinians Repeat the Same Mistakes"

At this pace, Palestinians might wake up one morning to discover that they no longer have any friends in the Arab countries at all.

"The Palestinians failed to establish their state. They failed because they did not want to establish a state. Here I mean the political leaders, some of whom still insist on repeating revolutionary phrases. The establishment of a Palestinian state will be a burden on the Palestinian leaders and will prevent them from practicing corruption.... The Palestinian Authority is no longer suitable to represent the Palestinian people." — Iraqi writer Farouk Youssef, Al-Arabiya, September 19, 2020.

"Israel did not destroy Syria; Israel did not burn Libya; Israel did not displace the people of Egypt; Israel did not destroy Libya, and Israel did not tear up Lebanon. Before you Arabs blame Israel, take a look at yourselves in the mirror. The problem is in you." — UAE Islamic cleric Wassem Yousef, Twitter, September 16, 2020.

"Palestinian leaders failed to invest in opportunities. They failed to take strategic decisions and chose [instead] to forge an alliance with Iran." — Saudi writer Yusef al-Qabalan, Al-Riyadh, September 18, 2020.

The biggest losers, of course, are again the Palestinians -- who are quickly losing the sympathy of a growing number of Arabs.

The Second Intifada: A defining event that reshaped the nation

And the main lesson for Israelis from the Second Intifada, he said, “is that if you do not control the territory, you can’t fight terrorism.” The intensity and lethal nature of the Second Intifada could only happen, he argued, “because we did not control the territory.” Another key lesson the public took away from the rampaging violence, said Amidror, today a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, is that it “is impossible to trust the Palestinians.” Amidror noted that the intifada broke out “after we had an agreement with Arafat. This wasn’t the First Intifada, where there was nothing between us and the Palestinians beforehand. We were after the Oslo Accords when we let them back into the territory. This led to a dramatic loss of confidence in them.” Amidror said that a key operational lesson learned from the violence is that force is not the only way to deal with local uprisings, and that force – the “stick” – must be combined with “carrots” in the form of economic benefits and enhanced personal security. Amidror, who stressed that he is not a psychologist, said that what remains in the minds of Israelis two decades after the eruption of the Second Intifada is “the sense that in the final analysis our security has to be in our own hands,” and that this “cannot be compromised in any way.” Asked if this was not something obvious to most Israelis even beforehand, he replied: “We had illusions. Oslo was built on the premise that we could work with the Palestinians.” Amidror argued that this premise was embraced by the politicians who negotiated the Oslo Accords, but was never accepted by the security establishment or “professional echelon,” of which he was a part at the time in his role as head of Military Intelligence’s research division. “We said this won’t work, and the reality turned out to be even more difficult than we imagined.” As to the intifada’s long-term impact on the Palestinians, Amidror said they realize now that if they initiate violence against civilians, they will “pay a much heavier price than we will.” “I think they now understand that if they use violence we will respond in a much stronger way because our capabilities are so much greater, and that if they pass a certain line we will respond with great strength, so they need to keep things below that line,” he said. Amidror said the Palestinian Authority now also understands that the only guarantor keeping Hamas from taking over all the territories is Israel.

Last week, the Palestinian Ministry of Religious Affairs sent out instructions for what mosques should preach last Friday.

It's pure antisemitism.

While there was plenty against the "Zionist entity," they also explicitly said that dealings with Jews are forbidden.

Palestinian Media Watch translates it. Excerpts:

The danger of normalization

There is nothing that harms Palestine and its holy sites more than making an alliance with the Jews, being connected to them, and relying on them.
Normalization with the Zionist entity is high treason against Palestine, Jerusalem, the blood of the Martyrs, and the suffering of the prisoners.
Normalization with the Zionist entity is one of the expressions of sanctimoniousness and hypocrisy and accepting the oppressor and his tyranny.
Obedience to the Jews and being dragged after them will lead the nation to weakness, lawlessness, humiliation, and shame.
Concentrating all the energies to reject normalization and relations with the Zionist entity.

There's nothing like a little Arab infighting to reveal the ugly antisemitism behind the facade of "anti-Zionism."

Every. Single. Time.

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Saudi-owned Arab News gives "Shana Tova" greetings on its Twitter graphic

Arab News is close to the Saudi government and there have been times when journalists were dismissed from the newspaper when they wrote things that the government was unhappy with.

So when it makes a decision, that decision is essentially green-lighted by the ruling Saudi family.

Which makes these Twitter graphics that the Arab News used for several hours very interesting:

There are very few Jews in Saudi Arabia; this message was not for them.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz has been at odds with his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, over embracing the Jewish state, with the elder king wanting a Palestinian state first and the son wanting to establish relations with Israel more quickly.

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Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades announced that Khalil Muhammad Labad, 27, from the Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip, was "martyred" Sunday, after the collapse of a "resistance tunnel."

The Brigades said in its statement: "We ask Allah Almighty to accept him and dwell with him in paradise, and to be patient and improve his family and loved ones. The blood of our martyrs will remain a beacon on the way to the liberation of Palestine and a fire that burns the occupiers until they are defeated from our land, God willing."

Pass the candy!

UPDATE: Another Hamas member, Khalil Labad, has died from his injuries in the same tunnel collapse. Allahu akbar!

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09/20 Links: Ruthie Blum: Trumping Palestinian lies and Tehran’s agenda; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, first Jewish woman on Supreme Court, dies at 87

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Trumping Palestinian lies and Tehran’s agenda

Moreover, in stark contrast to his predecessor, Barack Obama, Trump welcomed – rather than warned against – Israeli strikes on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Syria. Meanwhile, his message to the Palestinians was that they could choose to remain in the Dark Ages or opt to embrace peace and prosperity. It was up to them, and no figure in Washington was going to beg. They’d never been treated this way by a world leader.

From the get-go, then, Abbas and his henchmen rejected all US contact, other than when stomping on or burning the American flag. While the anti-Trump European Union continued to assure them that they were right to feel oppressed by “evil occupier” Israel, the Arab League grew even more disinterested in their self-imposed plight than it already was.

In fact, it could barely muster up the energy to pay lip service to their “cause” anymore. In fairness, its members had and still have their own interests to safeguard. Trump, it turns out, has been tapping into these interests skillfully.

Additional evidence of this lies in the talks that he brokered between Belgrade and Pristina earlier this month, resulting in Serbia’s announcement that it would move its embassy to Jerusalem and a recognition of Israel by Muslim-majority Kosovo.

His claim on Tuesday, thus, that “at least five or six” other countries are soon to follow the UAE’s and Bahrain’s lead is utterly plausible. The upbeat attitude of Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and the hysterical reaction on the part of the Palestinians indicates that it’s practically a done deal.

PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, for example, called the signing of the Abraham Accords a “black day in the history of the Arab nation... added to the Palestinian calendar of pain.”

He also said that such “normalization with Israel is harmful to Arab dignity.”

Neither this sentiment nor the rocket barrages that were launched into Israel during the Emirati foreign minister’s speech – in Arabic, with a token reference to the Palestinians – could camouflage the reality on the ground in a shifting Middle East: The Palestinian jig, like the lie that Trump exposed about al-Aqsa, is up.

Jon Gabriel: Trump takes a step toward peace in the Middle East, and somehow, that's horrible?

Everyone said a deal was impossible

The glum reception to Mideast peace comes from a place of shock. For decades, foreign policy panjandrums on the right and left insisted these agreements were utterly impossible. First, the U.S. needed to solve the impasse between the Israelis and Palestinians, then perhaps peace could follow.

The corrupt leaders of the Palestinian Authority rejected proposal after proposal, but the U.S. learned nothing. Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry mocked anyone who thought otherwise.

“There will be no advanced and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace,” Kerry said at the Brookings Institute’s Saban Forum in 2016. “Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality.”

Whether by wise counsel or gut instinct, Trump decided this was nonsense. He isolated Iran, strengthened ties with Saudi Arabia and the gulf states, and brought everyone to the negotiating table.

Within a few years, he proved Kerry, Rhodes and every other Foggy Bottom dilletante wrong. Somehow, Trump did the impossible

Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem was supposed to light the Middle Eastern powder keg. As was pulling U.S. troops out of Kurdish-held regions of northeast Syria. As was the assassination of Qassim Suleimani, head of Iran’s murderous Quds Force.

Again and again, Trump keeps accomplishing things that foreign policy experts promised were impossible.

At the signing ceremony, Bahrani Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani said, “Today is a truly historic occasion. A moment for hope and opportunity.”

I don’t know if Abraham would be a Donald Trump fan. But he’s definitely smiling down on his sons today.

21see Presents: Israel, UAE and Bahrain sign historic Abraham Accords

On Tuesday, we took a camera out into the streets of Tel Aviv to find out what locals think about the historic Abraham Accords signed this week between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain.

The excitement was genuine. “There’s no why for peace,” said one Tel Avivian. “Peace in itself is the answer.”

“It’s a great start,” said another.

But a peace agreement… most agree that this is normalization of relations, rather than a peace deal. As one local asks: “How can you have peace, if you haven’t had war?”

Dominic Green: The thinking behind Pompeo’s Middle East mission

The Abraham Accords, Pompeo says, are the fruit of ‘years of hard work’ by the Trump administration, the Department of Defense, the State Department and teams from the White House. President Trump, he says, made it possible by flipping the received wisdom ‘on its head’.

‘That theory was, you had to solve the Palestinian problem before nations could recognize Israel. We’ve said, “No, we have to break the mould.” We need to move forward in a different direction.’ After the Obama administration’s tilt toward Iran, the Trump administration, Pompeo said, had assured Israel and the Gulf states that they have ‘a real partner in the United States’.

Reviving the Iran Deal, Pompeo warns, would be ‘the wrong policy’ and would endanger the US-brokered Israeli-Arab breakthrough: ‘I think all of that would be at risk.’

The UAE and Bahrain, he says, ‘realise it is in their shared interest to acknowledge Israel's right to exist and to have normal relationships, commercial relationships with them, security relationships with them... If the United States’ foreign policy were to return to where it was four years ago, I think there’s a real risk that this common threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran would undermine all the good work that has been done to date, that the normalisations won't continue.’

Shana tova! שנה טובה!

May this year be a year of happiness, prosperity, health, and peace.

I will not be online until at least Sunday night or Monday morning.

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09/18 Links Pt2: Remembering a Jewish Hero and Advocate for Black Americans; How Low Can Universities Go?; One Zoom employee saved High Holidays streaming for 300 US synagogues

From Ian:

Remembering a Jewish Hero and Advocate for Black Americans

As biographer Naomi Cohen showed, Jacob H. Schiff was the prime example during the era of mass immigration of a new “Americanized” style of Jewish leadership.

Schiff was born in 1847 in Frankfurt am Main into an illustrious rabbinic family. His father was a broker for the Rothschilds. Young Schiff defied his family by immigrating to the United States after the Civil War.

He joined the investment house of Kuhn, Loeb & Company, eventually marrying Solomon Loeb’s daughter. Before 1900, he built his banking house into a power on Wall Street.

Schiff was unique for his philanthropic and political zeal, which equaled his financial drive. A Reform Jew who never became a fan of political Zionism, he nevertheless led New York’s German-Jewish elite in outreach to new Jewish immigrants. His charitable endeavors included Montefiore Hospital, the Hebrew Free Loan Society, and Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement that had offshoots in African-American neighborhoods. He funded Hebrew Union College and the creation of the Jewish Theological Seminary, drawing the line at Jewish religious assimilation. He finessed whether or not Jews were a distinctive “race.”

But after 1900, his influence widened. He helped finance Japan during its 1905 war with Russia, despite official US neutrality. He broke with President Theodore Roosevelt’s successor, William Howard Taft, over a US-Russia commercial treaty. In the 1912 presidential election, he was friendly to both Roosevelt’s breakaway reform party and winning Democrat Woodrow Wilson, whom as president he lobbied to create the Federal Reserve banking system in 1913. But again, he demonstrated independence by criticizing the Wilson administration for segregating the Federal civil service.

Schiff was at his most controversial during World War I. He patriotically supported the US when it entered the war, but only after doing everything he could to undermine the Russian czarist regime. When the czar fell in 1917, he enthusiastically embraced the Kerensky regime. Then when Lenin toppled Kerensky, Schiff only reluctantly did business with the communist regime to protect Jews. Antisemites to this day slander Schiff as “the father of Russia’s Bolshevik revolution.”

Schiff late in life supported the Technion in Haifa without formally endorsing Jewish statehood. The Jewish masses showed their love for him at his 1920 funeral.

Communists for the Jewish State: British Communists and the Daily Worker in 1948

Lessons for Today

The purpose of this brief visit to 1948 is to highlight how left-wing ideological assumptions about Israel and Zionism need to be tempered with what Edward Said called the ‘gravity of history.’[50] Anti-Zionism is not an inevitable characteristic of the left. In the circles around Jeremy Corbyn and indeed the Morning Star, Israel is constructed as a ‘colonial’ project. Zionism is seen as reactionary and racist ideology. These positions are rooted within a political outlook which divides the world into the imperialist and the anti-imperialist camps. Israel is irredeemably in the former. Such a view is often embellished with references to Marxist theory. It is instructive therefore to consider a period when the communist left looked at Israel from quite the opposite perspective.[51]

It is also a cautionary tale as it reminds us that we have to be careful of assuming the right position is always adopted by our ideological soulmates and the wrong one by our ideological foes. The complexity of politics requires us to make the intellectual and moral effort to judge issues outside of pre-determined ideological attachments. As we have seen, a repressive Stalinist regime and its supporters took the right decision to support the creation of Israel. A reformist Labour government, on the other hand, took the wrong decision to oppose its existence.

We know that communist politics dramatically changed its line on the Jewish state, and we saw the rise of a visceral antisemitic anti-Zionism after 1967.[52] This development included the ‘Zionism is racism’[53] resolution at the United Nations. This has had a malign influence on the left,[54] which in Britain led to the Labour Party’s antisemitism crisis.

In 1948 it was the Soviet Union and the communist parties that played a critical role politically, diplomatically and militarily to ensure the creation of the Jewish state. British communists played a particularly important part in this given that Britain was the mandatory power in Palestine.[55] In June 1948 the Daily Worker reported, ‘as the British-armed Arab aggressors intensified their attack on the young State of Israel’[56] Willie Gallacher MP asked Prime Minister Attlee for assurance, ‘that the government would take no action and give no support to any action that would prejudice the new Jewish State.’[57] The paper noted that ‘in face of this straightforward question Mr. Attlee maintained a silence that can only be considered as sinister.’[58] This is a reminder that it was not just the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, who played a key role in trying to prevent the creation of Israel but it was also Attlee.

Many of those in the Labour Party who opposed Jeremy Corbyn leadership lionised Attlee. Corbyn has sided with Israel’s military opponents such as Hamas and Hezbollah and oversaw Labour antisemitism that caused Jewish members of the Labour Party great discomfort and discrimination while poisoning political discourse. However, he was never in a position to prevent Holocaust survivors from reaching safety, to arm states waging war against the Jewish state, or to refuse to support Israel’s UN membership. That was the role that Clement Attlee played. The record of the left’s relationship with Israel is a tangled one and remembering that Communists once stood up for the Jewish state is instructive.

One Zoom employee saved High Holidays streaming for 300 US synagogues

When Rosh Hashanah begins on Friday night, some 300 synagogues across North America streaming their High Holidays services via Zoom will be able to set it and forget it thanks largely to one man: Mitch Tarica.

Tarica is the streaming platform’s director of North American sales. He’s also a member of Temple Ner Tamid in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, and he was critical in getting Zoom to make a small but vital tweak to its software that temporarily stopped it from automatically ending a meeting after 24 hours.

That change was crucial to enabling hundreds of synagogues to stream their services on Zoom without running afoul of Jewish laws barring the use of technology on Shabbat and Jewish holidays. For synagogues that request it, Zoom will temporarily allow meetings to run as long as 72 hours, enabling synagogues to set up their stream prior to the start of Rosh Hashanah on Friday afternoon and have it run uninterrupted through Sunday night.

“Rabbi Heller had reached out to Rabbi [Brian] Schuldenfrei, who is my rabbi, and said, ‘Hey, word on the street is someone from Zoom is part of your congregation. We need some help for the High Holidays,’” Tarica told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview conducted, naturally, via Zoom.

Office of the Press Secretary
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 18, 2020
Presidential Message on Rosh Hashanah, 2020

The First Lady and I wish our Jewish brothers and sisters Shana Tova and hope the millions observing this sacred day in America and around the world have a blessed start to the High Holy Days.

As this 10-day period of celebration, devout prayer, reflection, and repentance commences, we are reminded of how important faith, family, and fellowship are to each of us. Particularly during these challenging times, the sense of peace and reassurance that comes with these observances has never been more important in helping us seek His wisdom and understanding as we continue to grow in our faith.

This year’s High Holy Days come with a sense of optimism for the people of Israel, as my Administration continues to make great strides in securing a more stable, prosperous, and peaceful Middle East region. Last month, we secured a historic agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel—the first between Israel and a major Arab country since 1994—that normalizes relations between the two countries, including the exchange of embassies and ambassadors, as well as enhanced cooperation in a broad range of fields including education, healthcare, trade, and security. And, just days after Bahrain reached a similar deal with Israel, we were proud to host the leaders of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain at the White House earlier this week for the signing of these agreements and the Abraham Accords as a whole. As the High Holy Days begin, this momentous milestone in geopolitical relations is a reminder that we can create a coalition of nations that have shared goals of eliminating extremism and promoting security and prosperity, while also respecting religious freedom and building a more hopeful tomorrow for future generations.

Melania and I pray that He blesses all Jewish people throughout these High Holy Days. We hope that these 10 days provide those observing this special time a respite to build their faith and better experience the many blessings of the Almighty’s love and mercy.

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09/18 Links Pt1: Matthew Continetti: How Trump Changed the World; Melanie Phillips: The fundamental fracture Abraham Accords may begin to heal

From Ian:

Matthew Continetti: How Trump Changed the World

By establishing inescapable facts on the ground over the ceaseless objections of critics, President Trump overrides the often meaningless verbiage that constitutes international diplomacy and ends up changing the very terms of the foreign policy conversation. Nowhere has this dynamic been clearer than in U.S. relations with China.

Beginning with his surprise call to Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen in December 2016 and continuing through his resumption of U.S. Navy freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea the following year, his tariffs on Chinese goods in 2018, his and his administration's rhetorical barrage against China beginning in earnest in 2019, and culminating in his multiple actions against China this year, from limiting travel to canceling visas to forcing the sale of TikTok to tightening the vise on Huawei to selling an additional $7 billion in arms to Taiwan, Trump has reoriented America's approach to the People's Republic. No longer is China encouraged to be a "responsible stakeholder." It is recognized as a great-power competitor.

Resistance to this proper understanding of China's position in the international system remains strong. But it is unquestionably the case that both Republicans and Democrats are starting to see China more as a threat than a partner. And it is Donald Trump who is behind this clarification of vision. (Xi Jinping and the pandemic helped too.) Whatever a President Biden might do about China—and he seems far more interested in repairing our alliances in "Old Europe" than in tackling this paramount challenge of the 21st century—he would operate within the constraints Trump established and on the intellectual terrain Trump landscaped.

There is no greater measure of presidential significance than a chief executive's ability to transform not just his own but also the opposing party. When it comes to the Middle East and China, the Democrats are closer to Donald Trump today than they were at the outset of his term. That they find themselves in accordance with someone whom they despise is evidence of Trump's ability to realign politics at home and abroad. This is no small feat.

Some might say it's worthy of a prize.

Melanie Phillips: The fundamental fracture Abraham Accords may begin to heal

Of course, with conflict as long and intractable as the Arab war against Israel, cautious skepticism over any apparent breakthrough is only prudent. And the strategic necessity of this Arab-Israel alliance against Iran is obvious.

But it was the immensely touching visual images that told a deeper story. A photograph was posted on Twitter showing Jared Kushner, the president's senior adviser, handing a Torah scroll to King Hamad bin Isa bin Salman al-Khalifa of Bahrain to be used in a synagogue in the kingdom. Both men were looking reverentially at the scroll.

Scarcely less moving was the poignant image of the line of white-robed Emiratis all waving to the El Al jet departing with the Israeli and American delegation on the first direct return passenger flight between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi.

This is now a chance for the Arab and Muslim world to start showing the West that it can live alongside and with respect for other peoples. It's a chance for it to fundamentally recalibrate its dire association with violence and death. And it's also an opportunity for the Jewish people to reach out to the Muslim world and show that what it welcomes is a bond far greater than economic ties or strategic defense.

It's the bond of family.

Nor does the potential for good stop at Israel. Hatred of the Jews lies at the very core of the Islamist war against the West. Islamist ideologues have argued for almost a century that modernity threatens Islam and the Jews are behind modernity.

If the moderate Arab world now finally understands that Israel is not its enemy but its ally, this could begin to undermine the foundations of irrational and self-defeating hatred that has fueled the Islamist war against the West.

While intractable Islamic fanaticism will not just disappear, the Abraham Accords might give Arab and Muslim reformers wind in their sails to bring their culture into an accommodation with the rest of the world.

And Britain, Western Europe and the American left will be the last people on earth to realize this.

Biden Is No Friend of Israel; He’s an Adversary

Biden pledges to re-enter the Iran deal. Iran’s goal of annihilating the United States and Israel doesn’t seem to bother Biden.

How precious that Biden is offended about foreign election interference when it was Obama-Biden that meddled in Israel’s election, funneling U.S.-taxpayer dollars to organizations trying to defeat PM Netanyahu and then misleading Congress about it.

It was Obama-Biden that refused to oppose the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement, whose goal BDS co-founder admitted is to eliminate “any Zionist state like the one we speak about [in present-day Israel].” Even WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin (not exactly a friend of Republicans) succinctly titled her piece, “Obama Winks at BDS” and stated it well: “That the administration would in any way encourage BDS practitioners or suggest that some forms of BDS might not be so objectionable is as unprecedented as it is unsurprising. It is increasingly difficult for fair-minded people to deny the president’s [Obama] anti-Israel animus.” The same goes for Biden.

And, on its way out of the door, it was the Obama-Biden administration that betrayed Israel again in December 2016 by orchestrating the U.N. Resolution 2334 vote, falsely claiming the Old City of Jerusalem was “illegal” and “Occupied Palestinian territory.” And if that wasn’t bad enough, Obama-Biden actually instigated the humiliation of Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danon by having every other ambassador at the Security Council table stand and applaud the Resolution’s passage as Danon sat there. As Ambassador Haley said with respect to the U.N.’s bias against Israel, “what really broke my heart … was how much the Obama administration contributed to it.”

Biden’s abysmal Israel track record speaks for itself. The United States simply cannot relive this nightmare and neither can Israel.

How did "normalization" become a dirty word? (Cartoon of the Day)

It is so strange how Israel-haters create their own language where, as in this case, things that should be considered desirable turn into something awful.

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