Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 12, 2020

11/12 Links Pt1: Arabs states draw closer to Israel to counter non-Arab powers Turkey and Iran; Iran storing 12 times more enriched uranium than nuke deal allows

From Ian:

Arabs states draw closer to Israel to counter non-Arab powers Turkey and Iran

The decision by three Arab states to make peace with Israel can be credited both to efforts by the Trump administration and the recognition by these Sunni states that their security would improve against the ongoing threats they face from Turkey and Iran.

Iran and its proxies interfere with Arab states while promoting their Shi’ite revolutionary ideology; likewise, Turkey pushes its Sunni revolutionary ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the region.

Turkey and Iran look to overthrow the Sunni Arab states that do not align with them, such as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. The normalization deals between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan have greatly upset Turkey and Iran, which ideologically view Israel as the enemy.

“Iran is a tactical enemy for the Gulf states because the regime is controlled by Shi’ite fanatics who want to destroy the Sunni regimes in the Gulf,” Harold Rhode, a longtime former adviser on Islamic affairs in the U.S. Defense Department of Defense who was in Iran during the early months of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, told JNS.

Israel’s burgeoning alliance with the Gulf Arab states reverses the situation the Jewish state had found itself in during the first few decades of its existence. In its early years during the successive Arab-Israeli conflicts, it relied on an alliance of non-Arab states, such as Turkey and Iran, as its only regional allies. However, this all began to change when the pro-Western Shah of Iran was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and has increased under the Islamist anti-Israeli policies of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Rhode predicts that if the Iranian people successfully toppled the current regime, it would most likely be transformed into a country focused on rebuilding and re-establishing its connections with the world.

JCPA: Arab Normalization and Palestinian Radicalization: The Tug of War over the Middle East Peace Process

The Palestinian leadership has denounced the Abraham Accords signed by its longtime Arab allies and financial donors; they are now pivoting toward the radical, terror-sponsoring Iranian and Turkish regimes. Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem burned UAE flags and pictures of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed.

The Palestinian Authority’s Mufti of Jerusalem even issued a fatwa banning the citizens of Sudan, the UAE, Bahrain, or any Arab country that may normalize relations with Israel from praying at the Al‑Aqsa Mosque in the future.

Turkish President Erdoğan’s hosting of Fatah, Hamas, and other Palestinian factions has ratcheted up longtime tensions with Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf states. Istanbul has also served as a headquarters for Hamas leaders to mobilize West Bank terror cells and carry out cyberwarfare and counter-intelligence operations against Israel.

The Arab powers have grown tired of Palestinian intransigence, corruption, and rejectionism. Saudi Arabia has criticized the Palestinian rejection of Israeli peace offers and the Palestinian boycott of any cooperation with Israel.

The Palestinian leadership should honor the Abraham Accords’ call for unconditional mutual recognition and normalization of relations with Israel as the keys to opening a viable political and diplomatic agreement that can provide enormous benefits to the Palestinian people.

A Palestinian realignment with peaceful Arab states will enable the PA to sit at the negotiating table with its Israeli neighbor without pre-conditions, accepting the Abraham Accords’ principle of normalization, mutual acceptance, and goodwill in order to maximize the prospects for a successfully negotiated compromise.

Message to US President-elect Biden: On Israel and the region, first, do no harm

The US under Obama clashed heavily and relentlessly with Israel under Netanyahu in two central areas — the Palestinian conflict and Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.

On the Palestinians, the administration criticized any and all Israeli building over the Green Line, including in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem such as Ramat Shlomo, rather than focusing on preventing the expansion of settlements in West Bank areas Israel would ultimately need to relinquish in order to separate from the Palestinians and maintain a Jewish, democratic state.

More significantly still, Obama and his (second) secretary of state John Kerry insistently underestimated the devastating impact on Israel, physically and psychologically, of the Second Intifada — the strategic onslaught of suicide bombings that killed 1,000 Israelis and were launched from the major West Bank cities that Israel had relinquished under the Oslo process.

Everybody recalls Netanyahu going to the US Congress in 2015 to lobby against Obama’s Iran deal; most people have forgotten Obama coming to Jerusalem’s International Conference Center (Binyanei Ha’Uma) in 2013 to lobby against Netanyahu’s ultra-skeptical approach to negotiating with the Palestinians: “Peace is possible,” the US president assured a carefully chosen audience of young Israelis. “I know it doesn’t seem that way. There will always be a reason to avoid risk, and there’s a cost for failure. There will always be extremists who provide an excuse to not act. And there is something exhausting about endless talks about talks; the daily controversies, and grinding status quo.”

On Iran, meanwhile, Obama and Kerry wanted to believe that the promise of international rehabilitation, rejoining the family of nations, would help deter the Islamist regime from pursuing the bomb. They thus negotiated and approved an agreement, many of whose core provisions apply for a limited period only, that neither fully dismantled nor even completely froze the Iranian program. The ayatollahs were allowed to improve their uranium enrichment process and refine their missile delivery systems within the terms of the 2015 deal, which they were also handsomely financially rewarded for signing.

Rapacious ideologically and territorially, the Islamists in Tehran are playing the long game. They don’t want to rejoin the family of nations. They want to sit at the head of the table, set the agenda, and bend the rest of the world to their will. This harsh truth seemed lost on the Obama presidency.

The Palestinian Leadership Keeps Standing in the Way of Peace with Israel

A Washington Post front-page article on Nov. 1 noted a "promised peace" between Israelis and Palestinians "seems further away than ever." But it's not that peace is elusive.

Palestinian leaders have rejected numerous offers for Palestinian statehood in exchange for peace with the Jewish state. They refused U.S. and Israeli proposals for statehood in 2000 at Camp David, 2001 at Taba and 2008 after the Annapolis Conference.

The 2008 offer included 93.7% of the West Bank, with land swaps for the remainder, a capital in eastern Jerusalem and a state. Palestinians rejected Obama administration efforts to restart negotiations in 2014 and 2016.

Instead, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has incited anti-Jewish violence and refused to quit paying salaries to imprisoned Palestinian terrorists and their families. This is a violation of the Oslo accords that created the Palestinian Authority more than a quarter of a century ago.

Palestinian leadership could have chosen the path of peace, as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have recently done. They've chosen otherwise.

This past election, once again the perpetual question that inevitably came up was about 'the Jewish vote': which candidate won it -- and why does it even matter? The Democrats consistently brag that they own the Jewish vote, while the Republicans just keep on claiming that they are just on the verge of acquiring it.

This bipartisan fight over the Jewish vote can be traced back to Herbert Hoover.

In their 2012 book "Herbert Hoover and The Jews," Rafael Medoff and Sonja Wentling propose that the Jewish vote became a thing in the leadup to the 1944 presidential election, when Roosevelt ran for his 4th term, against Thomas Dewey.

A review of that book notes that in contrast to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it was Hoover -- 10 years after he was voted out of office -- who stood up for European Jews. Hoover publicly advocated for the US to open its doors to Jewish refugees and repeatedly spoke out for Jews during the Holocaust years.

The book also reveals that although, at the time, Rabbi Stephen Wise and the Jewish leadership were wary of Republican politicians in general and of Hoover in particular, Republicans such as

Hoover himself, Senator Robert Taft and Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce espoused strongly pro-Zionist and pro-rescue planks that were incorporated into the Republican convention’s 1944 platform. Only this threat to their monopoly of the “Jewish vote,” Medoff and Wentling argue, forced FDR and the Democrats to adopt similar planks, which have ever since remained unshakable for both parties. [emphasis added]

But why would anyone ever bother with the Jewish vote to begin with? After all, for a voting bloc, there is not a lot to recommend it:

o Jews are about 1.5% of the American population
o  That percentage is about half of what it was 50 years ago
o  And this percentage is continuing to shrink
o  As a bloc, it is not even unified -- with religious Jews tending to vote Republican and non-religious voting Democratic
o  While the vast majority of Jews support Israel, come election time Israel does not rank as a major issue

So what is the big deal?

In a 2016 video, Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis, listed some of the reasons why politicians vie over the Jewish vote, even despite its small size:

o Despite their small numbers, Jews turn out to vote in high numbers -- according to one estimate, 85% of all eligible Jews vote in presidential elections
o  Jews historically contribute large amounts of money to political parties -- both Democratic and Republican.
o  Jews happen to live in key states that presidential candidates want to carry, such as Florida
o  There are indications that the Democratic party is moving away from Israel, which may present an opportunity for Republicans to capture more of the Jewish vote

Four years earlier, in a 2012 article, Shmuel Rosner added another reason why politicians consider is important, and why the attention to the Jewish vote is out of proportion to its numbers:

One would say it's the influence that Jews have in the media and their solid presence in notable positions. Others would point to their presence in celebrity circles and the arts, while still others would look to the over-representation of Jews in American politics, as advisors, consultants, pollsters, analysts and elected officials.

But you can really just call it the bellwether factor. Jews are seen as major political players because they believe that their vote really counts, because they project self-importance. They might not tip elections, but they appear as if they can.

Going further back to 2010, Pew Research found indications that the perpetual prediction of Republican gains among the Jewish vote might actually be happening:

The religious landscape is far more favorable to Republicans than was the case as recently as 2008. Half of white non-Hispanic Catholics (50%) currently identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, up nine points since 2008. Among religiously unaffiliated voters, who have been stalwart supporters of Democrats in recent elections, 29% currently identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, up from 25% in 2008 (the proportion identifying as Democrats has fallen seven points since then). And 33% of Jewish voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, up from 20% in 2008. [emphasis added]

In a different article, Rosner finds indications that Jews are not actually trending Republican -- they are trending libertarian, meaning that losses in the Democratic share of the Jewish vote are not necessarily translating straight into Republican gains.

But either way, Democrats cannot take the Jewish vote for granted anymore -- despite what they may say publicly.

In 2006, a Washington Post featured an article Future of Orthodox Jewish Vote Has Implications for GOP, based not only on the conservative views of Orthodox Jews, but also on their higher birth rate.

To which Jill Jacobs, executive director of T'ruah, responded:

I’m not quite ready to buy this prediction. After all, who’s to say whether today’s Orthodox babies will grow up voting Republican, Democratic, Green, or Libertarian. (or whether today’s Orthodox babies will stay Orthodox, become Renewal rabbis, or even succumb the Jews for Jesus subway ads) Still, it’s an interesting assumption that Orthodox communities will always produce kids and adults who vote according to Jewish self-interest, narrowly defined.

Yeah, and who's to say whether the Democratic party will some day stand idly by as the radical left progressives of their party openly attacked not only Israel but also accuse Israel's supporters of dual loyalty?

Then there is the argument on how to even define, and measure, the Jewish vote.

Yossie Hollander, chairman of the Israeli Institute for Economic Planning, claims Contrary to popular belief, most US Jews support Trump.

His reasoning?

No one is counting the Jewish vote correctly because they are overlooking certain components of the American Jewish population:

o Israelis who emigrate to the US and are citizens with voting rights -- estimates of the size of this group range from 600,000 to one million. Pollsters do not know how to reach and measure this group and manage to measure only a very small percentage of it.

o The ultra-Orthodox -- while people talk about them as a political component of the Jewish vote, Hollander writes that because the percentage of their children is relatively higher compared to the average population, the number of eligible voters is not the same ratio as in other populations, and so they end up not being surveyed.

o Immigrants from the former Soviet Union and their children -- there are about 350,000 of them and for a variety of reasons, they are rarely surveyed.

o The "Southwest Belt" -- Over the past 30 years, there has been massive immigration in US population centers from the north to areas in Orange County California, San Diego County, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Atlanta, and Florida. Jews are part of this migration, and as a result, the Jewish communities there are growing rapidly, mostly in conservative areas. According to Hollander, most polling models still use the old population model.

That is a criticism of the methodology behind the polls.

Compare that with political consultant Jeff Ballabon, who takes a more sociological approach and compares the Jewish vote with the Irish vote.

Ever notice that no one talks about politicians going after "the Irish vote?"

To be statistically meaningful or politically relevant, a characteristic must impact voting behavior. For example, there are almost 35 million Americans of Irish descent, but it’s been decades since presidential campaigns engaged in sustained Irish voter outreach. That’s because it’s long been difficult to distinguish anything sufficiently unique – identifiably Irish - about their political behavior. Most vote precisely as their education, profession, income, and zip code alone would predict. The exceptions tend to be active, practicing Catholics who elevate concerns relevant to their faith...

The use of the term “Jewish” interchangeably to mean both ethnicity (like “Irish”) and faith (like “Catholic”) obfuscates it, but the same phenomenon is true for America’s Jews. [emphasis added]

According to Ballabon, a large segment of American Jews, like Irish Americans, are arguably not uniquely Jewish in their own political behavior:

The American Left seethes with enmity towards President Trump and is thoroughly wedded to the Democrats. The vast majority of Jews who follow suit proudly confirm that they do so as progressives with universal concerns; not parochially – not as part of a “Jewish Vote.” Even when they profess concern over antisemitism, it’s glaringly limited to those alleged by progressives to be malefactors. [emphasis added]

Whether radical groups put the word "Jewish" in their name or name their group after a popular saying in Pirkei Avot, that often appears to be the full extent of their identification with their fellow Jews.

Meanwhile, as for the latest fight for bragging rights to the Jewish vote, the results of this last presidential election seem to validate that the Jewish vote is no longer limited to being a Democratic cheerleading squad.

While Biden easily got the majority of the Jewish vote -- there are indications that Trump improved his numbers for the Jewish vote, which made it possible to win the state of Florida, where an AP exit poll indicated he received 43% of the Jewish vote compared to 56% for Biden. Nationally, exit polls indicated Trump received the highest percent of the Jewish vote for a Republican in decades (30%), while the Jewish vote for Biden was low for a Democrat (68%).

There are hints that the conservative element of the Jewish vote may finally be coming into its own -- and the same Jewish vote that helped Biden in some states was successfully siphoned off by Trump to win others.

But at what cost is the Jewish vote being split?

Jonathan Tobin writes that Jews in America are among Trump’s fiercest opponents – but also his most fervent supporters:

For Jewish liberals, Trump is an ally of antisemites and a proto-authoritarian whose character and conduct, statements mark him as a unique threat to democracy. They can’t understand why even one Jew would consider voting for him.

...It’s not for nothing that the Jewish Democratic Council has produced ads that more or less accuse Trump of being a Nazi and, despite the offensive nature of these analogies, have found them resonating with many liberal Jews.

Tobin points out that Jews, like the rest of America, are divided into 2 political cultures which feed off of different circles on social media -- circles that usually don't include the other side. The overwhelming majority of non-Orthodox Jews identify with the social justice agenda of the Democratic Party and think it forms the core of Judaism and place it higher as a priority than support for Israel. On the other hand, Orthodox Jews, and non-Orthodox Jews who identify as politically conservative, see support for Israel as a decisive issue.

At home, the Orthodox and conservative groups don't see Trump’s embrace of nationalism as a threat. Instead, they see it as the best way to defend Jews against the antisemitism of the intersectional left which is assuming a more prominent and vocal role in the Democratic Party.

Even Jews who are members of the same, educated classes who find Trump so offensive, share the distrust that the working-class has for the mainstream media that made it their mission to defeat him, working together with the liberal social media to censor conservative views and unflattering stories about Democrats.

The choice boils down to how much value you place on having a president who may be flawed, but is historically pro-Israel and supportive of a conservative political agenda, as opposed to the cherished hope of Trump opponents: that a moderate liberal like Biden can restore a sense of pre-2016 normalcy, while also keeping in check the Democrats’ radical wing.

In comparison with everything we hear about the need to address the divide between American Jews and Israelis, this developing rift within the Jewish community itself, as reflected by the split in the Jewish vote, is being overlooked.

But it is unlikely to go away.

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.

In the waning days of the Obama administration, the US pushed the UN Security Council to pass UNSC 2334, which called on all nations “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967” and which explicitly included "East Jerusalem" in the definition of occupied territories.

It was the first anti-Israel resolution not vetoed by the US in the Security Council since 2002. It essentially strips the rights of Jews to the entire Old City, including the Jewish Quarter, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

It soon became apparent that the US orchestrated this resolution and cajoled all the other Security Council members to support it, where a US abstention would allow the resolution to pass.

Clearly this was a deliberate message from the Obama administration to Netanyahu. But what role did Joe Biden have in it?

According to Vladislav Davidzon writing in Tablet magazine, Biden directly participated in pressuring Ukraine to vote for the resolution:

A wealth of evidence is now emerging that, far from simply abstaining from a UN vote, which is how the Administration and its press circle at first sought to characterize its actions, the anti-Israel resolution was actively vetted at the highest levels of the U.S. Administration, which then led a pressure campaign—both directly and through Great Britain—to convince other countries to vote in favor of it.

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.

The phone call between Poroshenko and Biden, which took place on December 19th, has been officially acknowledged by both parties. The Ukrainian presidential administration’s official statement on the particulars of the discussion contains no mention that the settlement vote was discussed. Vice President Biden’s national security advisor Colin Kahl—who, incidentally, was one of the staffers instrumental in a failed attempt to have any mention of Jerusalem removed from the 2012 Democratic Party platform—has tweeted several denials.

But a spokesman for the Ukrainian Presidential administration pointedly refused to either confirm or deny that a section of Biden’s call not covered in the read-out consisted of the US Vice President personally lobbying Ukraine to vote “Yes” on the Security Council resolution. The American pressure campaign, according to multiple sources, went beyond the single phone call between Poroshenko and Biden; according to these sources, the Ukrainians had wanted to postpone the vote by several days as a gesture to the Israelis, but the U.S. refused.

The Jerusalem Post seems to confirm the story:

Environmental Protection Minister Ze’ev Elkin claimed to The Jerusalem Post on Monday that US Vice President Joe Biden intervened ahead of Friday's vote on UN Resolution 2334 in order to persuade Ukraine to vote in favor of the resolution.
In response, the vice president's office intensely denied Elkin's comments as utterly false.
The resolution is the first in Security Council history specifically condemning Israel for its settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Elkin said openly that Biden spoke to the Ukrainians, and that they would have abstained had he not intervened. A source said Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's office confirmed that Biden called but would not confirm or deny that the conversation had to do with Israel.

Given that the US was working furiously behind the scenes to get this vote passed - and that the Obama administration denied that they were behind it - plus given the fact that Biden clearly called Poroshenko at the same time, indicates strongly that Colin Kahl's denials are untrue. (Dan Shapiro and Ben Rhodes also denied that the US had anything to do with the timing or text of the resolution.)

Interestingly, the Jewish Democratic Council of America, in an article about Biden's Israel record, chooses a different tack when discussing Biden's role in UNSC 2334. Instead of distancing him from the vote, they try to downplay the resolution altogether:

Fixating on a lone U.N. vote to call Obama’s commitment to Israel into question is absurd. By that standard, every previous administration’s commitment to Israel could be called into question, because every previous administration since at least 1967 abstained and voted against Israel more than the Obama administration.
What made Obama different from previous administrations in this respect was not that he broke with Israel on a U.N. vote, which all administrations have done, but that he only did it once, and on a vote with little if any practical effect on Israel.

They are conflating Security Council resolutions with regular General Assembly resolutions. And the denials by Obama administration officials that the US had anything to do with the resolution

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.

Continuing on on reporting by JTA that quotes Joe Biden...

November 13, 1984:

U.S. policy in the Middle East is based on myth, a leading member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee charged here yesterday.
Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the second ranking Democrat on the committee, said the “three myths” which “propel U.S. policy in the Middle East” are “the belief that Saudi Arabia can be a broker for peace, the belief that King Hussein (of Jordan) is ready to negotiate peace, and the belief that the Palestine Liberation Organization can deliver a consensus for peace.”
Biden addressed the 59th anniversary convention of the Herut Zionists of America at the Hotel Pierre. The two-day gathering closed last night. The Senator, who was re-elected to a third six-year term last week, told the convention delegates, “My first order of business in the new Senate will be to educate my colleagues on the financial sacrifices Israel has made as a result of Camp David.”

December 12, 1984:

A leading member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed Sunday night that the U.S. refinance Israel’s debt, as it has done for other countries in severe economic straits.
Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the second ranking Democrat on the Committee, said he and Sen. Daniel Inouye (D. Hawaii) would draft a refinancing plan for Israel when the new Senate goes into session next month. Biden spoke at the Annual Metropolitan Dinner of the Zionist Organization of America here.
He noted that the U.S. has been able to refinance the debt service of other economically troubled nations such as Mexico, Nigeria and Argentina. He also chided those who complain that the U.S. provides excessive economic and military aid to Israel. "The U.S. spends over $100 billion a year on NATO and worries about spending $2.7 billion on Israel," he said.
Biden, long one of Israel’s staunchest friends in Congress, observed "that the consciousness of guilt" over what America left undone to prevent the Holocaust "does not exist for most of the younger generation. America’s most articulate spokesmen for Israel are gone, replaced by men and women with no institutional memory," he said.
"The security of every Jew in the world is tied to Israel. If Israel dies, Judaism will be in jeopardy," the Senator said, adding, "but I am confident that Israel and Judaism will survive."

March 29, 1985:

When the Senators were asked about the growing influence of Arab-Americans on Capitol Hill, Biden replied they were not the main reason that supporters of Israel had lost some fights in Congress, such as the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia in 1981. He said one reason is that there are no more “giants” in the Senate like Sens. Hubert Humphrey (D. Minn.), Henry Jackson (D. Wash.), Jacob Javitz (R. NY), and Frank Church (D. Idaho) who could sway the Senate with their moral force.
Biden said the major power that helped force the AWACS sale through the Senate was the large corporations with “significant economic investments” in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. He said they brought pressure upon Senators opposed to the sale from larger corporations well as from small companies on the local and state level. He stressed that “economic muscle” still plays a major role in foreign policy.

April 22, 1985:

Sen. Joseph Biden (D. Del.), who spoke briefly from the reviewing stand [of the Salute to Israel Parade in NYC], declared that today’s Salute to Israel Parade “is the answer to Bitburg.” He was referring to the German war cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany where, to the anguish of Jews and non-Jews, President Reagan will lay a wreath next month at the graves of German soldiers who fought in World War II, including members of the notorious Waffen SS.

March 5, 1986:

Sen. Joseph Biden (D. Del.) asserted Tuesday that a bill that would have reduced Israel’s debt to the United States by $3.5 billion was postponed in the Senate last December in the wake of the arrest of Jonathan Pollard for spying for Israel.
A bill that would have passed was withdrawn within 24 hours of Pollard’s arrest because “American public opinion shifted dramatically,” Biden told the nearly 3,000 young Jewish leaders attending the closing session of the United Jewish Appeal’s Fifth National Young Leadership Conference.
...
Biden charged that for the past two Administrations there has been a lack of “a comprehensive foreign policy” for the Middle East. He said this has allowed American public opinion to move out of focus and thereby become susceptible to reducing its commitment to Israel.
In addition, Biden noted that where Israel was once considered the “David” of the Middle East, it is now viewed as the “Goliath.” Biden also claimed that while a former generation of Jews and non-Jews viewed Israel as a moral issue because of the Holocaust, younger Americans do not.
He said the U.S. must announce that Israel is an ally and treat it like one, keeping any differences in private and not making public criticism of Israel.
Biden stressed that the strategic importance of Israel, to the United States should also be pointed out. We don’t apologize for our $100 billion commitment to NATO,” he said. “Why the hell should we apologize for a $3 billion commitment to Israel.”

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.

11/11 Links Pt2: David Collier: Amnesty and the left wing media, finally spill the truth; CNN Features Anti-Semite Lawrence Wilkerson; UAE and Israel building a better future for children

From Ian:

David Collier: Amnesty and the left wing media, finally spill the truth

The removal of tents We know all of these reports are lies. Last week I reported on the deception. Since then both Honest Reporting and CAMERA have produced articles exposing the depth of media lies. Israel advocacy movement also published a video dealing with the deception and focusing on the outrageous ‘ethnic cleansing’ claims of Ilhan Omar.

We all know there was no village. Instead there was a few tents, an outpost, placed illegally inside a military firing zone. Khirbet Humsa is in an area that the Palestinians agreed would be under full Israeli control. The tents were placed their illegally There were seven of them It is a military zone The grazing outpost is new – it was only created *after* Israel had declared this area out of bounds There is no village These Beduin took their case to court and lost – they were told they had no legal right to remain They have been moved dozens of times before These people know they have no legal property rights there They also know they are lying when they say they have lived there forever Nobody gave them just ‘ten minutes’ to move – the authorities have been sending them notices for YEARS. They chose to ignore it all. This is an illegal outpost. Put up provocatively in a military area. Military land v sheep is not new or restricted to Israel. There are examples the world over. Farmer (Romania), finds good grazing land – builds without permits – has to move on. Yada yada yada. Farmers (UK) need to move off land when firing exercises take place – yada yada yada. Military orders (Sth Korea) expel an ACTUAL village (not imaginary one) – yada yada yada.

The misreporting raises another issue. This from the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
We condemn the recent demolition of 4 homes in the occupied Palestinian Territories by the Israeli authorities.

This essential infrastructure was built with Belgian funding. Our country asks Israel for compensation or restitution for the destructions.

▶️ https://t.co/QDneY6i6R1 pic.twitter.com/r5DsUfIkHA
— 🇧🇪 Belgium MFA (@BelgiumMFA) November 6, 2020

Apparently these people receive funding and supplies from the EU. How on earth are members of the EU justifying sending funding to illegal outposts in Area C – an area under full Israeli control? This is the relevant question our media will never ask. How our irresponsible media support the conflict

Here is an ABC question. If every time that a Palestinian illegally sites a tent – even in a closed military area – Israel receives negative headline press for removing it – what do you think the outcome would be?

Hence, because our own media are tripping over themselves to publish any disinformation about Israel that they can, they enable and empower those seeking to toxify the atmosphere even further. Would these families still have deliberately sought out this ongoing confrontation (which they did) if the media were not eager to print this story?

We know that there are anti-Israel provocateurs looking for trouble in areas such as the Jordan valley. Just as we are aware the livelihood of some NGOs is dependant on frequent tensions. These are all shady groups with little or no accountability.

Our media are different. As there are real consequences to the swallowing of lies and anti-Israel propaganda that openly encourages further actions of the type – we should hold them to account for the part they play. This relationship between an anti-Israel media and willing actors inside Area ‘C’ is rarely fully understood.

Medal of Honor

The greatest comic book you’ll read this year doesn’t feature a band of intergalactic avengers staving off alien invaders. It has nothing to do with raging green beasts or playboy billionaire inventors or Norse gods locked in sibling rivalry. Unlike anything by Marvel or DC, this one isn’t bloated and flashy—it’s 11 pages long, and spends more time on facial expressions than on flashy effects. Which is just as well, given that its hero is a real-life person whose story is infinitely more moving, thrilling, and inspiring than any of the masked machos its creators helped bring to life.

He is Tibor Rubin, and when we first meet him, he is dug into the dirt on a Korean mountainside. He is alone, but the Chinese army is closing in quickly. The fire emanating from Rubin’s machine gun isn’t the silly stuff of comics; it’s a hellish tongue, lapping everything in its way, a perfect visual representation of man’s inhumanity to man.

And that’s just the first panel; by the second, we meet Rubin again, this time as a child, dressed in a prisoner’s uniform and guarded by the SS. “Rubin learned early about the depth of cruelty his fellow man was capable of,” the comic book laconically informs us, and then conjures a fat-faced German who, looking bemused, tells Rubin that none of the death camp’s Jewish prisoners will survive.

Rubin, thankfully, defies the odds, and when he’s liberated by American soldiers he makes his way stateside and, though not yet a citizen, volunteers to become an American soldier himself.

From that point on, the comic book reads like one of those gritty montages that made old-fashioned war films so fun: Outnumbered by the enemy, Rubin’s outfit, the Third Battalion, decides to withdraw to the Pusan Perimeter. But Rubin decides to stay behind, eager to give the impression that the hill is still fiercely defended by scores of men; he jumps from foxhole to foxhole, seizing carbine and machine gun and grenade, unleashing that infernal fire wherever he goes. By the time the action’s over, the comic book gives us Rubin in profile, looking stoic amid the pale gray rock and the ink-blue sky. “The number of casualties he inflicted,” the text curtly informs us, “was staggering.”

All that would’ve been enough to make anyone a hero, and Rubin’s colleagues moved to file the necessary paperwork to recommend him for the Medal of Honor. They never had the chance to submit it: On Nov. 1, 1950, Rubin and his friends were awakened by the sound of bugles, and soon learned that nearly 400,000 Chinese soldiers were upon them.

A Comforter and Friend on the Front Lines

How Rabbi Harry Richmond viewed his historic role as a chaplain in the U.S. Army

In 1917, the year the U.S. entered World War I, Rabbi Harry Richmond was a newly minted graduate of Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College, the culmination of nine years of higher education, including a stint at the University of Chicago and an undergraduate degree from University of Cincinnati. Richmond was regarded for his keen intellect, earning the Reform seminary’s top prize for academic achievement.

At a symbolic vote of the student body, Richmond had been the only student at Hebrew Union College to cast his vote opposing the U.S. entering WWI.

That same year, after Congress passed a law designating military chaplains for various religious groups, the Jewish Welfare Board was established to attend to the spiritual needs of approximately 225,000 Jewish soldiers in the American armed forces. The board set about recruiting rabbis for chaplaincy service. According to Louis Barish in his 1962 article in The American Jewish Historical Quarterly called “The American Jewish Chaplaincy,” out of 400 English-speaking rabbis in the U.S., only 34 were endorsed—including Richmond, who received a JWB recommendation.

In July 1918, 28-year-old Richmond was the first rabbi to volunteer for military service in WWI, waiving his clerical exemption and enlisting as a private. It is unclear if Richmond had changed his position on the war, but his classmate and fellow chaplain, Rabbi Elkan Voorsanger, later expressed the concerns of himself and others—like Richmond—who volunteered to serve despite opposing the war; Voorsanger is quoted in Albert I. Slomowitz’s book Fighting Rabbis: Jewish Military Chaplains and American History:

“I am entering this war to register my protest against the war,” he wrote. “I can do that in no better way than to go to the front to alleviate the suffering of those who know not why they go.”

Over the next 25 years, Richmond would serve as an Army Chaplain on the battlefield in France, witness the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and serve as the only Jewish chaplain to represent the U.S. Army overseas in both WWI and WWII.

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

In the Fall of 2012, Bibi Netanyahu and then Minister of Defense Ehud Barak had a plan to destroy Iran’s capability to make nuclear weapons. The plan was not executed because of opposition from the Cabinet, the Israeli security establishment, and of course the Obama Administration, which was facing an election and secretly negotiating with Iran toward what would become the JCPOA.

The “nuclear deal” that was ultimately signed in 2015 provided Iran with cash for its Hezbollah terrorists and its expansion into Iraq and Syria, as well as fully legitimizing Iran’s nuclear project in 10-15 years. Even before then, the JCPOA lacked adequate safeguards to prevent cheating, and Iran took advantage of the loopholes to pursue development of uranium and plutonium bombs.

The Obama Administration was following a playbook developed – in part by advisor Ben Rhodes – in the 2006 Iraq Study Report, which intended to extricate the US from Iraq and bring about overall stability in the region by appeasing and empowering Iran and Syria (there was still an independent Syria then) at Israel’s expense. It seemed to me then, and still does today, that the negative consequences for Israel from the plan were not simply an unfortunate byproduct of it, but rather a desired outcome.

President Trump took the opposite tack, choosing to weaken Iran and empower America’s traditional allies in the region, Israel and the Sunni Arab states. He took the US out of the JCPOA, re-imposed sanctions on Iran, recognized Israel’s sovereignty in the Golan and Jerusalem (the 2006 plan envisioned Israel transferring the Golan to Syria), and encouraged an alliance between Israel and the Sunni Arab states.

If Trump’s policy to build up a strong countervailing power while weakening and isolating Iran would continue, then it might be possible to force Iran to give up its nuclear dreams without military action. But if, as seems likely, Joe Biden takes office as President of the US on 20 January 2021, then everything may change.

The following is sheer fantasy. I don’t know what the PM of Israel is thinking, I am not acquainted with anyone in the Trump Administration, the Biden team, or Israel’s defense establishment, and I have no insider knowledge about anything.

By Chanukah 5781 [10 December 2020], it became clear to the Prime Minister of Israel that President-elect Biden, although personally not particularly anti-Israel, was assembling a team heavy with individuals that were less than sympathetic to our point of view, like Susan Rice, Jake Sullivan, and Daniel Benaim. Biden had also made appointments that were concessions to the extreme left wing of the Democratic party that had almost defeated him in the race for the nomination. Intelligence reports showed a continuous flow of communications between Biden and the headquarters of the group led by Barack Obama, located only about 3 km. from the White House.

The PM of Israel was worried. Biden had already announced his intention to re-engage with Iran, which would probably mean a loosening of sanctions. The PM knew that the Iranians had recently made significant progress toward the development of a nuclear arsenal. He had no confidence that the Biden Administration would have the will to stop them; he could imagine a repeat of the JCPOA process, in which Iran made a fool of US negotiators.

Israel would have to stop Iran, or nobody would.

The PM knew that during the Obama Administration the Americans considered Israel a prime target for intelligence-gathering. The Americans had been operating a radar installation in Israel since 2008 that could spot air activity anywhere in the country, even small drones. Electronic communications in Israel’s defense headquarters, the Kiriya in Tel Aviv, have been tapped for some time. It would be very hard to take almost any kind of military action against Iran without the Americans finding out.

The PM decided that if Israel were to take action, it would have to be before 20 January, when Biden would be inaugurated. Indeed, considering the precedent of the incoming Obama team which aborted the ground invasion of Gaza in January 2009, it would have to be before Biden’s people got themselves organized. Otherwise, he was sure the Americans would act, diplomatically or even kinetically, to prevent Israel from striking the Iranian nuclear program.

Such an operation would not be simple or easy. The Iranian assets that would need to be destroyed are buried deeply underground and defended by surface-to-air missile batteries. The moment Israel attacked, the Iranians would unleash Hezbollah in Lebanon, which had some 130,000 short range rockets and longer range missiles, some with precision guidance. They are fitted on mobile launchers and ensconced in the homes of civilians. Hezbollah has plans to invade across the northern border, and kill Israelis and take hostages.

But the IDF has been preparing for this for some time. There is a plan called tochnit zayin [Plan Z]. The Prime Minister convened his mini-security cabinet, a subset of a subset of the cabinet, including the Minister of Defense and several others, together with the IDF Chief of Staff and a few key officers, including the Air Force and Navy commanders. The meeting took all of 15 minutes. The clock began to tick on tochnit zayin.

The IDF announced that it would carry out a defensive exercise on our northern border. It was not a massive exercise, and only a small number of reserve units were called up. Several days later an Israeli submarine moved into position in the Persian Gulf (or, if you prefer, the Arabian Gulf). At 0200 on the 4^th day of Hanukah, the submarine fired a missile almost straight up. The missile contained a small nuclear bomb designed to maximize the production of gamma rays, and it exploded high in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 100 km. A person on the ground might see a small dot of light if he knew where to look; he would not be injured or even feel anything.

Most of the gamma radiation from the explosion was absorbed by the air. The gamma rays ripped electrons from atoms in the air, and the electrons spun downward; their motion in the Earth’s magnetic field produced a powerful pulse of electromagnetic radiation, lasting only one millionth of a second but containing an enormous amount of energy. Much of Iran was blanketed by this pulse. Electrical conductors that it passed over had high voltages induced in them, and semiconductor devices, especially those connected to power lines or antennas, were reduced to inert lumps of silicon. Telephone and cellular networks, broadcasting equipment, internet routers, the power grid, and countless other things became inoperative. Even emergency generators, with their solid-state controls, didn’t start.

When Israeli aircraft arrived to bomb the nuclear sites with multiple bunker-busters, Iranian radar was dark. When eyewitnesses tried to alert their commanders, they were unable to do so. When they finally drove to Teheran to inform their leaders (most vehicles were still operative, especially older ones), their leaders could not communicate with each other, or, importantly, with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Lebanon is too close to Israel to receive the same treatment, but units of Israeli special forces penetrated its borders and destroyed communications infrastructure and cut cables at key points. A bombing campaign followed, aimed primarily at the nervous system of the country – the power grid and communications systems. In 2006, the IDF was surprised by its inability to intercept and interrupt communications over Hezbollah’s fiber optic network. Since then, it’s been documented and mapped. It was quickly destroyed. Since 2006 the IDF has collected good intelligence about Hezbollah’s installations, including the hiding places of mobile rocket launchers and weapons depots. Many of them were destroyed almost immediately.

The Hezbollah leadership was targeted; unlike in 2006, the IDF knew where they were and was able to kill them. Without a head and a nervous system, and without support from Iran, Hezbollah was demoralized, and was unable to sustain a massive rocket attack. There was some damage to Israel’s home front, but Iron Dome and Arrow antimissile systems significantly reduced it.

All this happened in a couple of days. By the time Hanukah was over, the Lebanese government – less Hezbollah – was suing for peace. In Iran, economic paralysis had begun to set in.

The US and the Russians, who had been informed only an hour before the operation, offered to help Iran and Lebanon to rebuild, as did Israel and the Gulf states – on condition that the mullahs in Iran and what was left of Hezbollah in Lebanon would have no role in the government. They accepted.

By the time Joe Biden became president, he faced a whole new Middle East.

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.

Haaretz has an article praising the late Saeb Erekat, written by a group of people who were involved in negotiations between Israel and the PLO over the decades: Martin Indyk, Daniel Kurtzer, Robert Malley, Aaron David Miller, Dennis Ross, Jonathan Schwartz, and Toni Verstandig.

In their rush to say how wonderful Erekat was, they tell us a bit more about themselves.

We had our differences because at times he could be inflexible. But then, without an independent base of his own and subject to Arafat’s whims, Saeb had little flexibility to depart from core Palestinian positions, and we often suspected, his bosses did not want him to do so.

And what are those core positions? A state on the 1949 armistice lines, all of east Jerusalem, Israel releasing all terrorists from prison, the "right to return" - all things that Israel cannot possibly accept if it is to remain a secure and Jewish state.

This is revealing. These negotiators knew that these are red lines for Israel. They would often say words to the effect that "everyone knows" that the Palestinians will in the end compromise on "return" or prisoners or "1967 lines." But in the actual negotiating room, what "everyone knows" was shown to be false - the Palestinians are incapable of compromise with Israel, of abandoning that they call their "constants."

This is hardly a secret. Palestinian leaders brag about how they have not modified their core positions since 1988. It is a source of pride - and once it crosses the line into becoming a matter of honor, then Palestinian leaders have purposefully painted themselves into a corner where they cannot compromise even if they wanted to because they would be branded traitors or worse.

So we know that these negotiators knew (or "suspected") that Arafat and Abbas simply had no desire for real peace with Israel. Their "constants" are not a recipe for a Palestinian state but as a stage for the destruction of Israel, entirely consistent with Arafat's "phased plan" of 1974.

Even though these professional diplomats knew this, most of them kept castigating Israel in public as the obstacle to peace and had nothing negative to say about the Palestinian side, no matter how many times the Palestinians simply responded "no" to every offer, idea and framework.

This article shows that they know the truth - that Palestinian leaders will never change their position without extreme pressure and that Israel is not the problem. Which makes the attacks on Israel by some of them unconscionable.

We are now on the verge of a new US administration that will be filled with people like these diplomats, who think the Oslo process is still alive, that if only Israel would compromise a little more there would be peace. It failed before Trump and it will fail after him - because the Palestinians aren't interested in peace.

And everyone knows it.

__________________________________________

Since 2015, Erekat was Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the PLO, which is a pretty high position. I don't see any moves that he made towards peace when he actually had political power of his own.

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.

11/11 Links Pt1: How can pro-Israel policies still be advanced for conservatives Jews?; How Biden Will Turn the Clock Back in the Middle East; Iranian chess team faces ban for refusal to compete against Israelis

From Ian:

Josh Hammer: How can pro-Israel policies still be advanced for conservatives Jews?

The Republican Senate, for its part, must hold the line against the worst excesses of the Biden-Harris administration. The Constitution’s framers famously wove an elaborate system of checks and balances into our legal order. Despite 100 years of accumulation of unwarranted power in the executive branch, Congress retains many tools to push back against a rogue president.

First and foremost is the power of the purse: A Republican-held Senate can, as a point of leverage, threaten to defund any number of nefarious presidential hobby horses. Chief among these for the Biden-Harris administration is a prospective return to the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal. A Republican-held Senate can also wield its investigative and oversight powers to expose any potential malfeasance of a Biden-Harris State Department — and foreign policy-national security apparatus, more generally. A Republican-held Senate can also easily forestall the administration from entering into any number of harmful formal treaties, thus ensuring that any prospective return to the Iran deal retains the comparatively weak legal status of nonbinding executive agreement. It was this weak legal basis for the JCPOA that allowed Trump to so easily withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 agreement.

It would be truly tragic if the Biden-Harris administration reneged on the stunning Middle East successes of the past four years, which emboldened Israel and our Sunni Arab allies and subdued the Iranian mullocracy and its henchmen, and instead returned to the failed decades-long consensus of browbeating Israel at every opportunity in order to force it to yield precious land for an elusive peace with an implacable foe.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed the lie at the heart of Washington’s bipartisan professional “peace process” — namely, that broader Israeli-Arab peace was impossible without a two-state solution. The Abraham Accord definitively disproved this fatal conceit, shelving aside the “Palestinian veto” that had previously hindered Arab-Israeli rapprochement. Friends of Israel — not to mention proponents of a generally more stable, secure and prosperous Middle East that aids American interests and contains hegemonic Iranian ambitions — need to relentlessly do their best to ensure the Biden-Harris administration not forsake all that genuine progress which Trump and his Middle East team made.

For pro-Israel Jewish conservatives, the next four years could prove difficult. But they can be made a lot less so if the relevant political actors and public figures urge the right people to hold the line and steer the course.

I thank our friend Donald Trump for recognizing our capital Jerusalem, moving the embassy there, recognizing our sovereignty on the Golan, his stance on Iran and at the UN, and the peace agreements. I also appreciate that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris welcomed these agreements.
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) November 10, 2020

Gil Troy: Can Jews on the Right, Left find common ground? – opinion

As Joe Biden launches his transition, and the Republicans, telling Donald Trump he lost, show off their regrown tongues, spines and souls, the Jewish community remains polarized.

As a first step to rebuilding a healthy dialogue, can we agree on certain facts? By identifying enough inconvenient truths to unnerve partisans at both extremes, perhaps we can lower the rhetorical temperature and raise awareness about some of the goals, interests and values that unite us, not just the tactical issues dividing us.

Bidenistas should acknowledge that Trump leaves at least three welcome facts on the ground in the Middle East. First, America’s embassy is now in Jerusalem – fulfilling promises Democrats and Republicans made for decades. Second, the Abraham Accords have Israelis and Arabs excitedly building business, cultural, personal and diplomatic ties. Third, Trump’s economic sanctions have sent Iranian unemployment rates and consumer prices skyrocketing – while starving Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups that target Israelis, Jews, Americans, Westerners.

And it’s not controversial to admit that Biden’s win thrilled Palestinian rejectionists, progressive anti-Zionists worldwide, and the Democratic Party’s small, loud, growing anti-Israel faction.

How Biden Will Turn the Clock Back in the Middle East

The history of the Holy Land is ignored, for the Marxist framework does not fit the historical facts. For example, when the Romans invaded ancient Israel—it was the Romans who named it "Palestine"—all of Israel, "from the river to the sea," was inhabited by Jews, and Islam, which was not invented until six centuries later, and Muslims, were unknown.

Harris also asserts that "We will also oppose annexation and settlement expansion," by which she means Israeli presence beyond the 1949 green armistice line into the heartland of ancient Israel: Judea and Samaria. She even opposes the building of new houses within communities to accommodate population increase. We can fully expect the Biden-Harris administration to demand that Israel withdraw to suicidal boundaries and that Palestine be given independent state status with an independent military.

The Biden-Harris Administration will rejoin the JCPOA, remove the sanctions from the Islamic Republic of Iran, and perhaps repeat the Obama-Biden policy of sending pallets of cash to the mullahs so that they will have more money to pass on to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian Revolutionary Guard legions in Syria. The Islamic Republic will be better able to ramp up its military, rocket, and nuclear capacity development, and to pursue its aim of destroying Israel.

How will Israel respond to this American abandonment of keeping Iran in check? Israel will return to its "blue and white" strategy of self-reliance, as it did in the past in destroying Iraqi and Syriannuclear facilities. In other words, Israel will consider striking Iranian nuclear facilities, which would probably entail pre-emptive strikes on Hamas and Hezbollah as well. In this case, Iran would not stand idle, and the result could be an all-out war in the Middle East.

Joe Biden, in collaboration with Democrat Party socialists and Islamists, will return to the post-American stance of the Obama-Biden administration, which demanded that America be transformed into a democratic socialist state and that America apologize to the world for its ill deeds, and bow to international organizations such as the United Nations, now run by a majority of third-world despots. An integral part of this plan is a return to all of the Obama failed policies in the Middle East and the conflict and loss of blood and treasure that will inevitably follow.

What Jews in America and in Israel Should Expect from the outcome of the US Elections

Speaking with Caroline Glick on what Jews in America and in Israel Should Expect from the Outcome of the US Elections.

Islamic Jihad official says "assassinations of our leaders make us stronger." Let's find out!

One year ago, Israel carried out a targeted killing of Bahaa Abu el-Atta, a senior Islamic Jihad leader who even the terror group admits was in the process of instigating an attack against Israel at the moment of his death.

On the anniversary of his death, an Islamic Jihad official in Lebanon is saying that such targeted killings only makes Islamic Jihad stronger.

Ihssan Ataya said that "the Israeli assassination policy against the resistance and its leaders will never achieve its goals and will backfire in favor of the resistance, which is getting stronger."

Ataya said: "History proves that the Islamic Jihad Movement, when leaders were assassinated, did not retreat or break down, but rather grew in strength and development, and was able to confront the occupation more than once, and made great achievements."

If that's the case, then in the interests of making Islamic Jihad even stronger, all of its leaders should take a walk towards the Gaza fence with hand grenades. They'll become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!

I wonder who these terrorists think they are fooling when they say stuff like this.

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.

Human Rights Watch just issued a 45-page report on the use of white phosphorus and how it can injure people if not used correctly. While the report claims to be about "incendiary weapons," it exclusively discusses white phosphorus.

Under international law, white phosphorus is not considered an incendiary weapon.

The Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons (Protocol III). Geneva, 10 October 1980 defines incendiary weapons:

1. "Incendiary weapon" means any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, or combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target. (a) Incendiary weapons can take the form of, for example, flame throwers, fougasses, shells, rockets, grenades, mines, bombs and other containers of incendiary substances. (b) Incendiary weapons do not include:

(i) Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems;

White phosphorus is used only for smoke and illumination, not as an incendiary weapon.

HRW acknowledges this and calls to change the definition in Protocol III, but its use of the term throughout the paper is misleading.

There is nothing wrong with HRW calling to increase restrictions on WP use, since it can be misused and cause burns and other injuries.

However, this report gives the impression that Israel still uses white phosphorus, dedicating one of its three case studies to Israel's use of WP in Gaza in 2009, liberally quoting its own 2009 report.

The other two case studies are Syria and Afghanistan. It doesn't mention that WP was also used by the US in Iraq, or by Turkey in Syria, or by both Armenia and Azerbaijan in their conflict.

It doesn't mention that Israel stopped using WP in 2013 and that it reprimanded officers for the misuse of the weapon in the 2009 war.

For a report of this size, these omissions seem to be purposeful. HRW wants to put Israel in the same human rights category as Afghanistan and Syria, and it wants its readers to think that Israel still uses WP unlawfully. Anything that would blunt inciting readers to hate Israel is omitted.

If this was the only time HRW did something like this, perhaps one could say this was an oversight. But it isn't. Even though Israel is not the target of this report, it ends up being a major villain, and it provides no context at all on Israel's former use of the still legal weapon.

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

From VPalestine:

Cancer-stricken Palestinian detainee, Kamal Abu Wa’er, 46, died today in Israeli occupation jails following a severe deterioration in his health due to medical negligence.

Abu Waer, from Jenin’s town of Qabatiya, suffered from throat cancer. He was arrested in 2003 and sentenced to multiple life sentences for resisting the occupation.

Qadri Abu Bakr, head of the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Commission in the Palestinian Authority, held the Israeli authorities fully responsible for the death of Abu Wa’er, slamming his death as a premeditated crime committed by the Israeli prison service, which was fully aware of the seriousness of his health condition and refused to release him despite many calls made for his immediate release.

I never heard of murder by throat cancer before, but those wily Israelis are capable of anything.

The PLO also blamed Israel of "medical negligence." Hanan Ashrawi said Israel was "directly responsible" for his death.

This "negligence" included multiple surgeries and months of cancer treatments.

Besides that obvious lie, the Palestinian media also lies about why he was serving six life terms.

According to the PLO and Arabic Wikipedia, he was arrested in 2003 for "resisting the occupation" and "repelling Israeli invasions." Wattan says he stabbed a soldier while defending a young girl from harassment, doubting that the soldier even died.

In reality, Abu Wa'er was a cold blooded child killer for Fatah's Force 17 involved in a number of murders, including:

The drive by shooting of Aliza Malka, 17, near Kibbutz Merav

The shooting and murder of Arnaldo Agranionic, 48, a guard from Itamar

The murder of Rabbi Binyamin Herling, 64, at Mount Ebal in 2000

The murder of Israeli Druze border policeman Madhat Yousef as he guarded Joseph's Tomb

These murders are what the PLO today extols as "resisting the occupation."

Which goes to show that when they say that they are against terrorism, they are still lying. They regard people like Abu Wa'er as a hero.

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.

11/10 Links Pt2: Arsen Ostrovsky: Fighting Anti-Semitism: Lessons From Kristallnacht; The UN’s ‘Zionism is Racism’ Resolution: From Passage to Repeal and Beyond

From Ian:

Arsen Ostrovsky: Fighting Anti-Semitism: Lessons From Kristallnacht

Eighty-two years ago yesterday, Nazis and their enablers across Germany and Austria razed over 1,400 synagogues, smashed the windows and plundered over 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, and murdered almost 100 Jews in a violent pogrom that became known as "Kristallnacht"—or the "Night of Broken Glass."

In the weeks that followed, approximately 30,000 Jews were transported to concentration camps in a jarring prelude to the further evil that would ensue.

Kristallnacht was a murderous example of the capacity of humans to escalate from indifference, demonization and singling out of a group of people—Jews, in this case—to violence. First by words and through dehumanization, and then through the Nazi infrastructure of death.

Today, this singling out of Jews again—and by extension, the Jewish state, including through nefarious attempts to boycott Israel—represents a collective form of amnesia, indifference and willful disregard of history. It indicates that for many, very little has, in fact, been learned from history.

As the great philosopher George Santayana said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

For some, the phrase "Never Again" may be no more than an empty slogan. But not for the Jewish people, the Jewish state or those with a clear moral conscience.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel implored us to "take sides," warning that "neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

This week, it is imperative we not only remember our Jewish brothers and sisters murdered in the Kristallnacht by the Nazi machinery of death, but also to recall that so many of their fellow citizens stood idly by—many outright cheering on—as accomplices in the greatest act of evil in modern history.

The UN’s ‘Zionism is Racism’ Resolution: From Passage to Repeal and Beyond

November 10, 1975: 45 years ago today. This was a very telling moment regarding the United Nations’ — and the international community’s — stance on Israel.

Twenty-five states sponsored Resolution 3379, which “determine[d] that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” Seventy-two states voted in favor, 32 abstained and 35 were against the motion. The resolution referenced the 1963 UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; the 1973 resolution condemning “the unholy alliance between South African racism and Zionism;” and the August 1975 Conference for Foreign Affairs of Non-Aligned Countries, which called Zionism “a threat to world peace and security,” and urged world capitals “to oppose this racist and imperialist ideology.”

Prior to the vote, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Chaim Herzog told the General Assembly: I can point with pride to the Arab ministers who have served in my government; to the Arab deputy speaker of my Parliament; to Arab officers and men serving of their own volition in our border and police defense forces, frequently commanding Jewish troops; to the hundreds of thousands of Arabs from all over the Middle East crowding the cities of Israel every year; to the thousands of Arabs from all over the Middle East coming for medical treatment to Israel; to the peaceful coexistence which has developed; to the fact that Arabic is an official language in Israel on a par with Hebrew; to the fact that it is as natural for an Arab to serve in public office in Israel as it is incongruous to think of a Jew serving in any public office in an Arab country, indeed being admitted to many of them. Is that racism? It is not! That … is Zionism.

Herzog then pulled out a copy of the text of the resolution, held it up, and declared: “For us, the Jewish people, this resolution based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance, is devoid of any moral or legal value. For us, the Jewish people, this is no more than a piece of paper and we shall treat it as such.”

Herzog then tore the document in half.

The United States "does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act."

~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan delivering possible the best speech ever at the United Nations, #OTD 1975, on the infamous 'Zionism is Racism' Resolution. pic.twitter.com/7mZqMNWDD5
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 10, 2020

David Collier: The cruel sewer of the far-left. Not for the faint-hearted

This piece on the cruel sewer of the far-left is not for the faint-hearted. The article contains sickening responses to the news of the passing of Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi. My research is here to provide a historical record. As such, this piece, however difficult to write or read – needed to be made public.

If you are easily offended or upset, I strongly suggest you give this one a miss. The cruel and sickening responses

It is easy to go and find some anonymous troll making an offensive or cruel comment. It is for others to engage in distortion and propaganda. What is important to note about this blog is that these are not trolls or bots. These are real people and most have held or hold key positions in anti-Israel activism or other political circles.

I start with Mick Napier the chair of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

That vile post by Napier was liked by Jacqueline Walker – ex Vice-Chair of Momentum.

At the time of writing, Napier’s post has received around 50 likes and has been shared 17 times. Walker, not content in simply liking a grotesque post about Lord Sacks, set out to post some comments on her own timeline.

More Bedouin villages that popped up out of nowhere

After I found that the village of Humsa al-B'qaia has been created only recently - deliberately inside an IDF firing zone - I looked at a couple of other areas that people have been screaming that Israel demolished in recent years.

All of them were built in Area C. All of them knew very well that Israel could not tolerate the haphazard building of illegal structures in the middle of lands that are administered by the State of Israel. Most of them are built with the funding and encouragement of the EU. And children are purposefully moved into theses areas from the secure houses they lived in before- just to make the demolitions looks more heartless.

Some are not easy to find, since even Google Maps never heard of them. But here are a couple.

Izbiq, in 2004 and 2013.

And here is a video I made of Khirbet Zanuta from 2004 to 2016.

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.