Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, February 16, 2021

1.7 billion people have less electricity than residents of Gaza

There is a major project underway to build a natural gas line from Israel's Leviathan field directly to Gaza, which would provide much cheaper electricity for the enclave. The EU and Qatar are contributing to this initiative to help Gazans get access to more electricity, less expensively than today.

Gazans get about 14 hours a day of electricity today. This is about 203 megawatts of electricity for Gaza's two million residents, which comes out to about 99 watts available per Gazan on the average.

Given how much media attention is given to Gaza's electricity woes, one might think that Gaza is in the very bottom of any list showing how much electricity is available per person worldwide.

That is not true - at all.

Wikipedia has a list of how much power is available per capita for every country. It gets Gaza wrong, claiming .01 watts per person, which is completely false.

But assuming it is accurate for other countries, we see that there is more electricity per person in Gaza than in many other countries, including some that might surprise you like the Philippines or Morocco.

Country/Region	Average power per capita
	(watts per person)
Somalia	2
Chad	2
Guinea-Bissau	2
Burundi	3
Central African Republic	3
Haiti	4
Sierra Leone	4
South Sudan	5
Rwanda	7
Niger	8
Liberia	8
Ethiopia	9
Uganda	9
Malawi	9
Madagascar	9
Timor-Leste	9
Yemen	10
Burkina Faso	10

Tanzania	11
Benin	11
Comoros	13
Eritrea	14
Gambia	14
Nigeria	16
Solomon Islands	17
Afghanistan	18
Mali	18
Togo	18
Guinea	18
Kenya	19
Mauritania	22
Vanuatu	25
Nepal	26
Senegal	27
Kiribati	27
Cameroon	30
Ivory Coast	30
Sudan	31
Ghana	33
Angola	37
Myanmar	38
Congo, Republic of the	43
Sao Tome and Principe	43
Djibouti	45
Lesotho	48
Bangladesh	49
Papua New Guinea	49
Mozambique	50
Korea, North	56
Tonga	56
Zimbabwe	58
Cambodia	58
Pakistan	64
Nicaragua	65
Laos	65
Sri Lanka	70
Samoa	72
Guatemala	73
Honduras	78
Zambia	84
Bolivia	90
Morocco	93
Cabo Verde	94
Syria	95
Dominica	95
Philippines	99

Over 1.7 billion have less electricity than Gazans have!

I'm not saying that Gazan shouldn't have 24 hours of reliable, cheap electricity a day. Everyone should. But as usual, the media presents Gaza as being one of the worst places on Earth, and there are a lot of people who would love to live in Gaza.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

02/15 Links Pt2: Israeli Study Finds 94% Drop in Symptomatic COVID-19 Cases With Pfizer Vaccine; With Israel’s skies closed, 600 athletes arrive for judo contest

From Ian:

Israeli Study Finds 94% Drop in Symptomatic COVID-19 Cases With Pfizer Vaccine

Israel’s largest healthcare provider on Sunday reported a 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 infections among 600,000 people who received two doses of the Pfizer’s vaccine in the country’s biggest study to date.

Health maintenance organization (HMO) Clalit, which covers more than half of all Israelis, said the same group was also 92% less likely to develop severe illness from the virus.

The comparison was against a group of the same size, with matching medical histories, who had not received the vaccine.

“It shows unequivocally that Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine is extremely effective in the real world a week after the second dose, just as it was found to be in the clinical study,” said Ran Balicer, Clalit’s chief innovation officer.

He added that the data indicates the Pfizer vaccine, which was developed in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech, is even more effective two weeks or more after the second shot.

Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, who have been tabulating national data, said on Sunday that a sharp decline in hospitalization and serious illness identified earlier among the first age group to be vaccinated — aged 60 or older — was seen for the first time in those aged 55 and older.

Sheba researcher: Antiparasitic drug reduces length of COVID-19 infection

An Israeli tropical-disease expert says he has new proof that a drug used to fight parasites in third-world countries could help reduce the length of infection for people who contract coronavirus.

Prof. Eli Schwartz, founder of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Disease at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, last week completed a clinical trial of the US Food and Drug Administration-approved drug ivermectin, a broad-spectrum antiparasitic agent that has also been shown to fight viruses.

The double-blind, placebo-controlled study included 100 people with mild to moderate cases of the disease who were not hospitalized for the virus. It tested whether ivermectin could shorten the viral shedding period, allowing them to test negative for coronavirus and leave isolation in only a few days.

According to his still unpublished data, Schwartz said the drug was shown to help “cure” people of the virus within just six days. Moreover, the chances of testing negative for coronavirus were three times higher for the group who received ivermectin than the placebo, he told The Jerusalem Post.

“From a public-health point of view, the majority of patients with corona are mild cases, and 90% of these people are isolated outside of the hospital,” Schwartz said. “If you have any kind of drug that can shorten the duration of the infectiousness of these patients, that would be dramatic, as then they will not infect others.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci wins Israel’s prestigious $1m. Dan David Prize for 2021

Dr. Anthony Fauci has won the $1 million Dan David Prize for “defending science” and advocating for vaccines now being administered worldwide to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

The Israel-based Dan David Foundation on Monday named President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser as the winner of one of three prizes. It said he had earned the recognition over a lifetime of leadership on HIV research and AIDS relief, as well as his advocacy for the vaccines against COVID-19.

In its statement, the private foundation did not mention former president Donald Trump, who undermined Fauci’s follow-the-science approach to the pandemic. But it credited Fauci with “courageously defending science in the face of uninformed opposition during the challenging COVID crisis.”

Fauci, 80, has served seven presidents and has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984.

A tale of two Presidents (and Israel)

Jewish newspapers were aghast in March 1948 at the news that Harry Truman had reversed the US position on the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state.

Truman's daughter later said that he really didn't reverse his position:

Margaret Truman, in Harry S. Truman (New York, William Morrow & Company, 1973) asserts that her father never formally committed himself to the trusteeship plan (page 387). She quotes on page 388 from her father’s calendar for March 19 to the effect that the Austin statement represented the State Department pulling the rug from under him, that the State Department had reversed his Palestine policy and that with the Secretary and Under Secretary away, the third and fourth levels of the Department had succeeded in cutting his throat. Miss Truman notes on page 389 that not even in his memoirs did the President feel free to tell the whole story, although he hinted at it.

In Truman's actual press conference when he made the announcement, he said that this was meant to be a delay in partition, not a reversal:

Q. You are still, sir, in favor of partition at some future date?

THE PRESIDENT. That is what I am trying to say here as plainly as I can.

Whatever his intention, the response was immediate and angry.

A couple of weeks later a freshman congressman from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, denounced the new US policy to the local chapter of Jewish War Veterans.

Here are his notes for his speech:

One of the most discouraging aspects of recent American foreign policy is the unfortunate reversal of our ~~policy commitment~~ of our policy toward Palestine.

Since the end of first World War successive Presidents and Congress have 'reaffirmed' the solemn promise of the Balfour declaration.

The sudden reversal of our position in relation to the Partition of Palestine demands an explanation from the Administration.

There may be sufficient cause for the reversal in Palestine. If there is, we are entitled to know what it is.

Gal Berger of Israel's Kan News tweeted:

Breaking: The Palestinian Authority secretly sent vaccines to Jordan. These are 200 Sputnik vaccines that were transferred last Thursday via the Allenby Bridge to the Jordanian General Intelligence Agency. This is what Palestinian sources told Kan News.

It is unclear whether the vaccines are intended for the Jordanian defense establishment or for Palestinian officials living in Jordan.

In recent days, there has been growing criticism of the Palestinian Authority, which allegedly vaccinated senior officials, associates and official journalists, before it began vaccinating groups at risk in the general population.

To date, the authority has received enough vaccines to vaccinate only 6,000 people against the virus (12,000 vaccine doses) and as far as is known had begun vaccinating medical staff.

Why would the PA send the scarce vaccines into Jordan? The theory that it is going to Palestinian officials there makes the most sense.

Of course, the people complaining about how Israel is supposedly withholding vaccines will not say a word about how nepotism and politics, not need, seems to be driving Palestinian vaccinations.

(h/t ymedad)

02/15 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Navigating Israel's ship of state through the Biden storm; How UK gives annual nod to hate-filled Palestinian education

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Navigating Israel's ship of state through the Biden storm

In a media briefing Friday, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki refused to say whether the Biden views Israel as an ally.

Psaki's behavior was easy to understand. Although Israel is America's strongest and most reliable ally in the Middle East, Israel cannot follow where the Biden administration is now leading. President Joe Biden's policy steps and foreign policy appointments since taking office have made it abundantly clear that his first priority is to return the US to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

The so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action which was negotiated by Biden's top advisors when they served with him in the Obama administration is not a non-proliferation agreement. It is a blueprint for Iran to achieve independent military nuclear capability and regional hegemony.

Neither Israel nor the US's Arab allies in the Persian Gulf can partner with Biden and his team in advancing this policy. It puts them all in danger. This is the simple explanation for Biden's refusal to date to speak to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to other regional leaders. Quite simply, given his commitment to a policy that places their countries in jeopardy, Biden would prefer not to hear what they have to say.

Netanyahu adopted a three-pronged foreign policy when he was faced with a similar situation with Washington during the Obama presidency. After a four-year hiatus, the time has come to reinstate the policy.

The first component of that policy is a recognition that the US is irreplaceable. No other ally can provide Israel with the partnership that the US provides. That doesn't mean that Israel's government must bow and scrape before Biden and his advisors as they rush to empower Iran at Israel's expense. On the contrary. Facing a hostile administration, Israel must unapologetically stand up for itself and defend its interests and rights.

Think about this. Young US Jews are systematically harassed, attacked and ostracized on campuses by BDS goons. And @DanielBShapiro says it's RACIST for Jews to oppose Biden's placement of these BDS thugs in posts where they can turn their hatred into official US policy!
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) February 15, 2021

My Telephone’s Not Ringing

There is genuine concern in Israel about several of Biden’s top advisers, in particular U.S. envoy to Iran Rob Malley, widely seen to be soft on Iran and less than sympathetic to Israel’s security concerns. There are also, though, significant yings to Malley’s yang, key among them the widely respected Secretary Antony Blinken, and others.

Which leads us to the second tweet. Jumping into the “phone call” fray two days after Danon, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, tweeted a sensible thread stating the obvious; that Biden assumed leadership of the free world at a particularly tempestuous time and was personally taking on only the most pressing and urgent domestic and global matters, reflected in the order of his days and his calls (well, with that Canada exception, eh?)

On Saturday night, the phone call question was put to Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Gilad Erdan, on the most-watched post-Shabbat political talk show in Israel. His response, was, well, exactly what one might expect. A seasoned political operative, Erdan, with a bemused countenance, told the interviewer that the conversation is not so important.

“Until there isn’t one,” she ricocheted.

As he must do, Erdan focused on the many sidebar conversations that have taken place at the highest levels between the most senior Israeli and Biden administration officials in State, Defense, and the NSA. The well-oiled relationship between the US and Israel is humming along nicely, Erdan reassured. No need for any concern.

Biden is also sensitive to the fact that Israel is in perpetual election mode and would not want to appear to be boosting a particular candidate. But, that seems to be a chronic feature of the Israeli condition, making it almost irrelevant.

Truth is, for the last four years Israel had become accustomed to being treated as a constant priority in the Oval Office, with the formidable and combined muscle of Ambassadors Friedman and Dermer, Jared Kushner brought to bear, combined with Trump’s reported lack of discipline in his approach to, well, everything.

If there is a message in the non-phone call phone call, it is likely far less dramatic than some may be thinking, and more like: “You’re important, Israel, but perhaps not always the most important.

Let’s hope so.

JN INVESTIGATION: How UK gives annual nod to hate-filled Palestinian education

British taxpayers are continuing to pay for a Palestinian education system in which school pupils are routinely taught incitement, hatred of Israel and glorification of terrorism. Many of the textbooks are written by vetted officials, whose salaries are paid by the UK.

Despite numerous assurances from the Palestinian education minister, detailed reports from the Israel-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) show that as recently as September last year, Palestinian school students were still learning maths by adding up the number of ‘martyrs’, including those who have led suicide bombings on buses and shopping centres. The curriculum is taught in Palestinian Authority and UNRWA schools in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.

Not only does Britain continue to pay – in the past five years it has spent an estimated £105 million on Palestinian education professionals, including on the salaries of teachers who write the textbooks – but it appears to have a blind spot when it comes to challenging the Palestinians on the content of those books.

The UK and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have a Memorandum of Understanding, or MoU, which supposedly commits the Palestinians not only to “uphold the principle of non-violence”, but to take action against “incitement to violence, including addressing allegations of incitement in the educational curriculum”.

Money paid by Britain to the Palestinian partner is supposedly contingent on the PA’s performance on “curriculum reform”.

The New York Times published a feel-good story about how the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem has a program where ten year old religious Jewish kids play and learn along with ten year old Arabs who live in east Jerusalem.

As is often the case with the mainstream media, the real story is in what they choose not to report.

For the most part, Israeli Jews have always thirsted to be friends with their Arab neighbors, across the street and across the Middle East. There have been many such programs in Israel, some homegrown and some financed by the EU or the US - sports programs, support groups. scientific programs.

The Palestinians have always been dead-set against these programs. They regard them with the worst possible insult: "normalization."

Over this past weekend, there was an conference held by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean. Because Israel sent a delegation, the Algerian delegation quit the conference.

Palestinian groups praised the Algerians, saying, "Confronting normalization in all its forms is a moral, Arab and religious duty." Palestinian officials joined in.

Also this past weekend, there was a forum against normalization with Israel with participants from across the Arab world. Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the PLO Central Council who is considered a moderate, said, "Normalization constitutes a stab in the back of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people."

Palestinians are planning later this month the " the first international conference to resist normalization with the Israeli occupation."

For years, the Palestinian leadership has been against any of the peace programs exactly as described by the New York Times - because they are "normalization."

Palestinian schools - including those operated by UNRWA - refused to participate in the "Seeds of Peace" program, a program that now-President Biden has endorsed. The reason? Because any joint Israeli-Palestinian project, unless it is designed to eventually destroy Israel, is considered "normalization."

And normalization translates to humiliation and shame, in Palestinian-speak.

Hanan Ashrawi's Miftah organization is against any sort of Palestinian/Israeli peace program. Yet it is funded by the EU.

There are numerous examples of how even the thought of friendship between Palestinians and Jews is anathema to most Palestinians.

The only people who oppose programs like the Bible Lands Museum's are Palestinians and their supporters. That is the real story - and it is a story that is rarely broached by the mainstream media.

Here's another news story that would have been literally unthinkable eight months ago.

From The Daily Tribune (Bahrain):

As Jewish life continues to flourish and grow in the Gulf, a first-of-its-kind association has been formed to boost their development.

On Monday, local Jewish communities from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar announced they had come together to form the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities (AGJC).

The AGJC is a network of Jewish communities from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries who are developing Jewish life in the region. While each community is independent, they share a common goal and vision: for Jewish life in the GCC to flourish for the benefit of both residents and visitors.

The organization includes Jews in countries that have no formal relations with Israel.

The webpage of the AGJC includes things we never thought we'd see:

Even though only two of the Jewish communities listed are from countries that have formal relations with Israel, none of this would be possible without the Abraham Accords - just another indication of the huge impact made by peace between Israel and the UAE/Bahrain.

The story is being reported in Arab media without any negative or antisemitic overtones - again, something that would be virtually unthinkable not long ago.

Stop Palestinian children being recruited as soldiers

Meet Anas and Saad Al-Skafi. They were twins who fought for Islamic Jihad.

Their obituaries on the Islamic Jihad military wing website today. You can see that they were born on December 5, 1996 - and they died on July 20, 2014.

Which means they were 17 years old.

They are only two of the child soldiers that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah routinely use. As recently as last month a 17 year old was killed as he attempted to stab an IDF soldier

There are dozens of examples of children who have been recruited to attack Israelis or to fight in Gaza terror armies.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad openly brag about their summer camp paramilitary programs.

This week is the second annual Palestinian Child Soldiers week, where petitions are sent to human rights groups to raise awareness on this illegal practice. As the PCS Week literature says:

● According to the 2007 Paris Principles, any use of minors (17 years of age or younger) in any military endeavours, by state or non-state actors, is rejected by the international community and is immoral. For decades, Palestinian minors have been used in varying military capacities, by groups that includes but is not limited to the PLO, Hamas, PFLP, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The military positions that have been held include but are not limited to: combat soldiers, suicide bombers, terrorists, military tunnel diggers, mules for IEDs and munitions, human shields, frontline skirmishers in mass organized riots, couriers of messages, and spies and lookouts.
● The goal of PCS Week is to bring awareness to and end the use of Palestinian minors in militancy. For decades, the systemic issue has been ignored or brushed off as unrelated individual incidents. Without pressure or consequences for using this practice, systemic Palestinian child militancy has flourished.

● The Coalition to Save Palestinian Child Soldiers calls upon UNICEF to demand that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PLO, and PFLP to operate in accordance with the 2007 Paris Principles, and end the systemic use of Palestinian children in military efforts of any type.

You can send a letter to UNICEF at the site.

Cartoon of the Day: What would Ruffalo do?

02/14 Links: David Collier: Lies and more lies. PSC and the viral BDS fake news circus; Wanted: Christians to declare to the World Council of Churches 'not in our name'!

From Ian:

David Collier: Lies and more lies. PSC and the viral BDS fake news circus

I am just coming to the end of a project that has taken almost a year and had promised myself that I would not get distracted in the final stretch. But when this week highlighted just how badly anti-Israel activism is dependant on fake news and lies, I decided to take a slight detour to share it with you.

Divestment and the lies of BDS
The boycott movement against Israel is a complete failure. Israel’s hi-tech economy is booming (Covvid aside – tourism was booming too) and BDS has nothing to show for 16 years of effort but a few activists taking selfies next to avocados on a supermarket shelf.

Sure, in confined political student circles, 14 students can force through a pro-BDS vote whilst the 22000 non politically active students on campus are busy with their actual studies, but in the real world – all of these students use Israeli hi-tech to communicate with each other.

BDS is a noise that spreads antisemitism, demonises Zionism, and hurts Jews in the diaspora but it doesn’t actually do damage to Israel. Worse than this, where it does have some effect, it just ends up hurting Palestinians.

Because of this failure, what the BDS movement is forced to do is engage an absurd fake news strategy – any divestment of any Israeli stock or product for any reason – is promoted as a BDS victory.

For example – even when a football club changes kit supplier – something they all do every few years- if it is the brand of kit used by the Israeli team – BDS will falsely claim it is a ‘divestment’. In the end, the embarrassed club can even be forced to issue a statement rejecting the claim. This happened to Luton Town FC just last year. Think for a while how pathetic this all is.

And if the evidence is not even there, they make it all up anyway. BDS and toxic organisations such as the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign just love to spread lies. It is all they have.

The latest PSC fiction
This week provided a perfect example. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign ran with a story that the East Sussex Pension fund had divested from Elbit, a successful Israeli arms company.

The news went around. The official BDS movement bragged about it, the thugs at Palestine Action sang about it, and Middle East Monitor wrote an article in celebration.

Ben Jamal, the hapless director of the PSC followed suit. Incredibly, an industry magazine, ‘Pensions Age‘ ran with the story too, in an article written by Jack Gray, their Brighton-based ‘News Editor‘.

Except of course the story is simply not true.

Christian Post: Wanted: Christians to declare to the World Council of Churches 'not in our name'!

The World Council of Churches (WCC) has put on its theological anti-Semitic brass knuckles in its long-standing war against the Jewish State. The time has come for Christians to declare “Not in our name.” For their good, more than ours.

Rev. Frank Chikane, moderator of the WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, lost no time in a recent Zoom call to ask Christianity to revert to its worst medieval Jew-hatred. For those who will not work towards delegitimizing the entire system (aka the State of Israel) that facilitates daily “brutality” against Palestinians, he intoned a curse, “The blood of the people of Palestine will be upon them.” This was an obvious reference to Matthew’s “His blood be upon us and on our children!” These words were used for centuries to prop up the charge that it was specifically Jewish sin – not the sins of all humanity – that caused the Crucifixion. That charge of deicide was the most important source of violence against Jews, persisting till today. Rev. Chikane is not concerned that his words might inspire violence, since he regards the potential targets not as human but as “demons,” the same demons responsible for apartheid in his South Africa. And it’s worse this time, he said, because these demons have invited other demons to make the Palestinian struggle more difficult.

“Every day people get killed” – a blatant fabrication, unless he means those who are stopped in their attempt to thrust knives into Israeli civilians. He had not a single syllable of criticism for those, nor the ones who try lobbing rockets into Israeli kindergartens.

Rev. Chikane didn’t invent the WCC’s anti-Israel policy, he just upgraded and supercharged it with New Testament imagery. Just three years after Auschwitz, the WCC – which claims 500 million Christians in its affiliates – chose not support the establishment of the Jewish State in 1948, warning instead that its political complexity might invite more global anti-Semitism. In the decades since then, they have strived mightily to convert their analysis into prophecy. It’s reaction to the Jewish state’s astounding Six Day War in 1967, when it defeated surrounding armies whose announced intention was to drive the Jews into the sea, was to blame Israel for the immediate threat of annihilation by its neighbors, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Israel was faulted for allegedly inspiring the fears of its neighbors because of Israel’s “dynamism and possible expansion.” If those darn Jews hadn’t been so successful in nation-building, their neighbors wouldn’t have to murder them…

New report by human-rights group responds to anti-Israeli bias perpetuated at UNHRC

Geneva-based independent human-rights group UN Watch published a detailed report in advance of the 46th session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which is scheduled to open this month on Feb. 22 in Geneva and run until March 23. The study debunks more than 20 different major accusations leveled by numerous different countries—accusing Israel of violating Palestinians’ religious freedom, damaging their health and practicing racism.

In its first-ever report that thoroughly fact-checked and responded to the UNHRC’s anti-Israel claims, UN Watch released its 58-page “Agenda Item 7: Country Claims & UN Watch Responses” examining 23 accusations made by various countries under Agenda Item 7 against Israel in the period covering the six UNHRC sessions held in 2019 and 2020.

According to report researcher and writer Dina Rovner, legal adviser of UN Watch, the paper sets the record straight regarding distorted statements, including: “Israel hinders the Palestinian fight against COVID-19;” “Israel has occupied Palestinian territory for 70 years;” “Israel commits apartheid against the Palestinians;” “Israel damages Palestinian holy sites” and “Israel’s blockade of Gaza is illegal.”

“The truth is very different from what is being put on the record at the United Nations,” she told JNS. “When Israel is accused of hindering the Palestinian fight against COVID-19, it is actually helping and coordinating with the Palestinians. When Israel is accused of violating the rights of Syrians on the Golan, the opposite is the case—the Golan Syrians have more rights and freedoms than their counterparts in Syria, and are flourishing economically. Israel damages Palestinian holy sites? No. History shows that only under Israeli control are the holy sites of Jews, Muslims and Christians fully protected.”

According to Hillel Neuer, UN Watch executive director and editor of the report (with contributions from managing editor of UN Watch Simon Plosker), it is being sent to all U.N. ambassadors in New York and Geneva “to make clear to all delegates who tell lies that, from now on, their countries will be called out by name before the international community and refuted with the facts.”

UN Watch has also submitted several written statements that will be circulated to delegates as official U.N. documents of the session, calling out the lie that Israel’s vaccination campaign—one of the best-run in the world—is “racist”; exposing UNRWA teachers’ incitement to terrorism and anti-Semitism; and documenting the Palestinians’ illegal use of child soldiers.

.@UNRWA contradicts itself on what a "refugee" is in a single slide

UNRWA tweeted out a series of slides about what they call "Palestine refugees."

The main slide shows how UNRWA lies.

The first paragraph is the UNRWA definition of "Palestine refugees," not the actual definition of "refugees" which is defined by the Refugee Convention and is universally accepted as the only definition of refugee. But let's leave that aside for now and assume that the first paragraph is an accurate definition of what UNRWA calls "Palestine refugees."

The second paragraph goes on to say that UNRWA provides services to people who meet the definition and who register. "Palestine refugees" who moved to the Gulf or Europe might still be considered "refugees" but they are not eligible for services since they live outside areas that UNRWA operates.

It says that in order to receive UNRWA services one must fulfill three conditions: meet the definition, register with UNRWA and show need for assistance.

(This is false too - UNRWA never did a census of who was an actual refugee, and it provided services to whoever said they were refugees. Beyond that, there are hundreds of thousands of "registered Palestine refugees" in Lebanon who have moved out of Lebanon and yet UNRWA still counts them. But again, we'll leave that for now.)

Then it says that descendants are also eligible for registration.

At this point, someone reading this would think that descendants aren't considered refugees themselves - because they clearly do not meet the definition in the first paragraph - but UNRWA provides services to them as well as actual, defined refugees. The last sentence in paragraph 2 supports this interpretation.

But then the final, highlighted paragraph contradicts everything said beforehand. Suddenly, the descendants are considered "refugees" themselves - even though they do not meet any definition of refugee!

The number of refugees according to the definition can only decrease - through death, through becoming self-sufficient or seemingly from becoming citizens of other countries.

Yet UNRWA is saying that the number of "refugees" has grown by a factor of over seven - and it can only increase!

This one slide shows how UNRWA lies, with its own words, by changing the definition of "refugee" at their whim, whichever one will get them more money and sympathy.

Here we have proof positive that the agency is built on lies, and continues the lies to this very day.

Last week, there were more articles claiming that Israel is withholding vaccines from Palestinians.

None of them mentioned whether Palestinian health authorities actually requested vaccines.

Because when they do, Israel complies. As it should under the Geneva Conventions.

Walla today reports that the Palestinian Authority requested that Israel transfer tens of thousands of vaccines and it is expected to be approved:

Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi and Defense Minister Bnei Gantz are expected to approve in the coming days a request submitted by the Palestinian Authority for the transfer of tens of thousands of vaccine doses to the Gaza Strip.

According to senior IDF officers, thousands of doses have so far been transferred. Now, the request that was sent to Israel a few days ago refers to vaccines that the Palestinian Authority purchased with its own money or vaccines that it received as a donation from the World Health Organization, the European Union and Russia.

"Israel has approved and assisted in the various waves of the corona to transfer medical equipment to hospitals in the Strip," said senior officers involved in the details. They added that "corona vaccines are no different from regular drug or flu vaccines."

Last week, Israel provided vaccines for hundreds of Palestinian workers in another little-reported story.

Poor antisemitic James Zogby

James Zogby whines:

I’ve been a victim of this sick conflation of criticizing Israeli policy w/ antiSemitism. I’ve condemned antiSemitism here & at forums in the ME. Still, Foxman called me antiSemitic cuz I’m Arab American & opposed Israel’s cruel occupation. He tried to block my presidential app’t
— James J. Zogby (@jjz1600) February 12, 2021

Here is a video of Zogby speaking to Jordanian state television saying that American Jews "define themselves as more intelligent than we, more competent than we, more able to win than we [Arab Americans.] ...We have broken through that myth. we have shown that Arab Americans are every bit as intelligent as Jewish Americans, every bit as competent as Jewish Americans. every but as able to win at politics as as Jewish Americans. ...Today they have control of the Hill. But even their control of Capitol Hill is rather flimsy. hey have big money that they spend and have fear on their side. Some politicians are afraid of them, but while they have fear on their side we have friends on our side. ...We are breaking through the fear that they have used to control the Hill for too many years."

Not once did he use the word "Zionists."

This is pure antisemitism about American Jews controlling politics by instilling fear into politicians who are afraid of Jewish money being used against them.

You can see the entire interview here. Notice how Zogby nods when the interviewer rails about how Jews control American media, politics and press at the 12:00 mark.

Now, when do you think Zogby is being more honest - speaking with a fellow Arab on a program that he doesn't think any westerner would ever watch, or in front of liberal audiences?

Zogby now claims to be against antisemitism? The video shows quite the opposite - he is a leading purveyor of antisemitic slurs.

(h/t Claire, kweansmom)

A new Twitter account immediately gets followed by a who's who of Israel haters (UPDATE)

Someone who just joined Twitter has immediately been followed by a Who's Who of anti-Zionists.

The person calls him or herself "Rav Aaron Samuel Tamares" (d. 1931) named after an Orthodox rabbi who embraced pacifism after becoming disillusioned with Zionism.

The account has tweeted only three times, and the tweets may be translations from some of the real rabbi's writings which were published in English only last year.

As of this writing, the account has only 28 followers - but they are almost all very prominent in Jewish anti-Zionist circles: Mondoweiss, Peter Beinart, Eli Valley, Jewish Voice for Peace, and many more.

This is clearly something that was set up to provide a supposedly Orthodox Jewish anti-Zionist voice, to shield anti-Zionists from accusations of antisemitism.

This is a new twist on an old trick, as anti-Zionists love to quote religious anti-Zionists who lived in the early part of the twentieth century. However, after the state of Israel was born, the halachic framework on how to deal with Zionism changed - it was no longer a theoretical political movement but an actual home for a significant proportion of the Jewish people, ruled by Jewish people.

We don't know what Rabbi Tamares would have thought about Zionism after the Holocaust, or about the State of Israel after its founding. Outside of some extremist sects, most Orthodox Jewish thinkers accept and support Israel since the question of how to deal with it is much different today than the questions that Rabbi Tamares grappled with from 1900 to 1931.

For example, the pinned tweet "Political Zionism, as developed this far, clearly imperils the character of Judaism, which has survived so many centuries free from the defilements of nationalism" may have seemed true in the 1920s to some Orthodox rabbis. Yet today, Israel is the center of Jewish thought, and Orthodox Judaism is more dynamic in Israel than anywhere else. The leading halachic authorities today live in Israel and the most forward-thinking Jewish education is happening in Israel.

Tamares' prophecy was proven false.

This Twitter account is being set up to criticize a state that the real Rabbi Tamares may very well have supported.

Ironically, the entire purpose of this account and of those who support it is to politicize Tamares' words - when the rabbi himself was against the politicization of Judaism.

UPDATE: I made a major mistake - these are accounts that "Tamares" follows, not that follow him. (h/t Bob.) I regret the error.

02/13 Links: Meir Y. Soloveichik: The Jew Who Ran Away; Pfizer CEO shares his family's tragic story during the Holocaust; Don’t stop JNF from doing its job;

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: The Jew Who Ran Away

Forty years ago this month, a small movie was released in England by the name of Chariots of Fire. One year later, it won the Oscar for Best Picture, defeating the out-and-out favorite, Warren Beatty’s Reds. Both were about real people; Reds tells the story of leftist journalist John Reed while Chariots is a portrait of two British runners who competed in the 1924 Olympics. Strikingly, the Academy ultimately honored a film that celebrates Christian faith and religious liberty rather than Beatty’s multi-hour tribute to a famous American Communist.

The two runners we see in Chariots are a Jew named Harold Abrahams and a devout Christian named Eric Liddell. Abrahams is a Cambridge student angered by the subtle anti-Semitism he experiences; he determines that he will “take them on, one by one, and run them off their feet.” Liddell, in contrast, competes in adherence to the advice of his missionary father: “Run in God’s name, and let the world stand back and wonder.” The two are set against each other in the hundred-yard dash to determine who will be “the fastest man on earth,” but the qualifying heat is on a Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, and Liddell refuses to run.

I have long been obsessed with the film; I have read what I can about its historical background, corresponded with its producer, and attended a staged 2012 version in the London theater. The recent death of Ben Cross, who played Abrahams, inspired me to return to it again. And the more I watch it, the more I have come to understand the terrible Jewish irony that lies at its heart.

In the film, Abrahams’s response to anti-Semitism is not Jewish pride but assimilation. We see him ebulliently belting out lyrics from the ultimate British musical, HMS Pinafore: “In spite of all temptations / to belong to other nations / he remains an Englishman.” When he is confronted at Cambridge by anti-Semitic dons who accuse him of interest only in his own glory, Abrahams indignantly insists: “I am a Cambridge man first and last, I am an Englishman first and last; what I have achieved, and what I intend to achieve is for my family, for my university, and for my country.”

All this accords with the real life of Harold Abrahams. In an interesting doctoral dissertation on “Jews and British Sport,” David Gareth Dee notes that “Abrahams claimed the most important factor in Jewish sporting success was a willingness to ‘Anglicise’ and to move away from one’s religion.” In the 1920s, the precise moment in which the film is set, Abrahams wrote an article in an Anglo-Jewish publication encouraging English Jews to ignore Jewish Sabbath restrictions in order to compete.

Pfizer CEO shares his family's tragic story during the Holocaust

Pfizer CEO Dr. Albert Bourla joined the Sephardic Heritage International on January 28th for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, where he shared his Greek Sephardic family's story of tragedy and survival during the Holocaust.

"It’s a story that had a great impact on my life and my view of the world, and it is a story that, for the first time today, I share publicly," said Bourla during the January 28 virtual event. "Many Holocaust survivors never spoke to their children of the horrors they endured," he added.

Bourla's parents were of 2,000 survivors from a community of 50,000 nearly eradicated by the Holocaust in Thessaloniki, Greece where he was born. He began by retelling the story of his father.

"My father's family, like so many others, had been forced from their homes and taken to a crowded house within one of the Jewish ghettos," recounted Bourla. "It was a house they had to share with several other Jewish families. They could circulate in and out of the ghetto as long as they were wearing the yellow star."

"But one day in March 1943, the ghetto was surrounded by occupational forces and the exit was blocked. My father and his brother (my uncle) were outside when it happened. Their father (my grandfather) met them outside, told them what was happening and asked them to leave the ghetto and hide because he had to go back inside as his wife and two other children were home. So later that day, my grandfather, Abraham Bourla, his wife Rachel, his daughter Graziella and his youngest son David were taken to a camp outside the train station and from there, left for Auschwitz. My father and uncle never saw them again," Bourla recounted.

Coronavirus: Infection down, vaccination up - cabinet to meet Sunday

The coronavirus cabinet will meet Sunday to discuss the next phase of the country’s exit strategy, as the infection rate continues to decline, and the number of people vaccinated is on the rise.

The next phase of the exit strategy is expected to include street shops, as well as a number of other arenas that could be open only to people who have been vaccinated or recovered from coronavirus.

Those areas include shopping malls, cultural and sporting events, hotel (rooms only) and gyms.

“If all goes well, we hope we can open street shops and malls, and start carefully opening cultural shows for which entry will only be allowed for green passport holders,” Health Ministry Director-General Chezy Levy said in a weekend interview with KAN.

The Health Ministry has targeted February 23 as the start of the next phase of its plan, requiring a staged exit as was hoped for in the past, so that the impact of reliefs can be monitored. Levy said that the country will only fully understand the results of the various reliefs rolled out last week in about 10 days.

“I would recommend continuing to open carefully and thoughtfully,” he said.

This is very, very concerning:

WOW: @PressSec refuses to say that Israel is an American ally.

There is literally no excuse for this. And might explain why Biden hasn't called Netanyahu yet. pic.twitter.com/EfMJNN9Ssh
— John Cooper (@thejcoop) February 12, 2021

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki gave a vague, rambling answer Friday when asked at a briefing to reporters whether the Biden administration considers Saudi Arabia and Israel to be “important allies.”

“Can you please just give us a broad sense of what the administration is trying to achieve in the Middle East?” a reporter asked — in follow-up to an earlier question asking why President Biden has yet to call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“For example,” the reporter asked, “does the administration still consider the Saudis and the Israelis important allies?

Rather than saying simply, “Yes,” Psaki gave this answer, according to a White House transcript of the late-afternoon briefing.

“Well, you know, again, I think we — there are ongoing processes and internal interagency processes — one that we, I think, confirmed an interagency meeting just last week — to discuss a range of issues in the Middle East.

“We’re — we’ve only been here three and a half weeks, and I think I’m going to let those policy processes see themselves through before we give, kind of, a complete laydown of what our national security approaches will be to a range of issues,” she added.

On two consecutive days, Psaki said that the US has an important relationship with Israel. On Thursday:

The President looks forward to speaking with Prime Minister Netanyahu. He’s obviously somebody that he has a longstanding relationship with. And obviously there’s a important relationship that the United States has with Israel on the security front and as a key partner in the region

And on Friday:

It is not an intentional diss. Prime Minister Netanyahu is someone the President has known for some time. Obviously, we have a long and important relationship with Israel, and the President has known him and has been working on a range of issues that there’s a mutual commitment to for some time.

I don't think that it is a big deal that Biden hasn't called Netanyahu, but the inability to say that Israel is an ally is mind-boggling. Even if she didn't want to answer the same question about Saudi Arabia so she avoided answering about Israel, it is a big deal, because this points to Biden as being the third term of Obama, and the idea that the White House believes that a tilt towards Iran and away from US allies is a good idea is a very bad harbinger for the next four years.

Note also that even President Obama had no problem saying that the US was a strong ally of Israel.

I fully expect Psaki to walk this back on Monday but that will be looked upon as firefighting, not policy.

02/12 Links Pt2: Overwrought Nazi Analogies for Me, but Not for Thee?; Why George Washington Is a Hero to the Jews; Three BDS resolutions defeated at FSU

From Ian:

Josh Hammer: Overwrought Nazi Analogies for Me, but Not for Thee?

More generally, the American Left has spent large swaths of the past four years hysterically comparing then-President Donald Trump, whose daughter is an Orthodox Jew and who is likely the most aggressively pro-Jewish president in American history, to Adolf Hitler. It would be trite, not to mention impossible, to enumerate all the examples. The armchair sloganeering and rote analogizing were truly ubiquitous across CNN, MSNBC and the other myriad bastions of progressive media or cultural clout. It became old hat to compare Antifa, properly understood as a domestic terror organization, to the valiant American patriots who stormed the beach of Normandy on D-Day—thus equating the Trump administration with the Third Reich.

But even more egregious was then-President-elect Joe Biden's post-Capitol riot comparison of Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)—brilliant constitutional attorneys in their previous careers who, in challenging part of the 2020 Electoral College results, did something Democrats have done each time a Republican has won the presidency this century—to infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, a man who arguably has more Jewish blood on his hands than anyone besides Hitler and Heinrich Himmler themselves. Speaking two days after the Capitol riot, Biden expressly invoked Goebbels' name and accused Cruz and Hawley of helping to spread the "big lie." (Cruz, it should be noted, is by word and deed likely the single most philo-Semitic and pro-Israel member of either house of Congress.) The smear was quickly parroted by other national Democratic leaders.

Biden's slur was, in a nutshell, revolting. It is, or at least ought to be, far beneath the dignity of the leader of the free world to casually besmirch high-ranking political foes as active, literal Nazis. But Biden's remarkable Freudian slip did not occur in a vacuum; rather, it was the natural culmination of a years-long leftist campaign, which commenced in the pre-Trump era but rapidly accelerated during the 45th president's tumultuous tenure, to equate conservatism with Nazism. Perhaps some on the Left earnestly believe this, and some believe it to merely be tactically helpful. It is unclear.

What is clear is how deeply shameful the whole spectacle is. And not just shameful, but deeply hypocritical, to boot. Just ask Gina Carano, who was canceled for a post that was relatively subdued compared with Biden's abhorrent slander. Conservatives might be forgiven for wondering if Biden himself should be canceled next.

Seth Frantzman: Isi Leibler: Saving Soviet Jews and helping Israeli-Asian ties

There are many miracles that have helped propel the Jewish people through history. A look at the rise of Israel and the rescue of the Jewish people are current examples of miracles, says Isi Leibler, a central figure in modern Jewish history over the last six decades. “Nobody believed this could be possible,” Leibler, who was born in 1934 in Antwerp, said in a recent video interview from Jerusalem.

When he speaks about the impossible, he harkens back often to the rescue of Soviet Jews. “People said maybe we could get 10,000 out,” he recalls. “But over a million came out. It was a modern-day Exodus.”

For Leibler, who has been many things – businessman, activist, writer, personal statesman, campaigner for numerous crucial causes, intermediary – the rescue of the Jews of the Soviet Union was a key cause for decades. In 1964, he was given the opportunity to write about Soviet Jews for Arena, a left-leaning periodical, according to an account in Suzanne Rutland’s recent Lone Voice: The Wars of Isi Leibler. He was supposed to write only a few thousand words but instead wrote 30,000. Every writer knows the nightmare that comes next, having to cut down the manuscript. But Leibler plowed on and self-published the piece as Soviet Jewry and Human Rights.

The new biography of Leibler, which this interview is based on, took 20 years to complete and is the masterpiece of Rutland, a professor at the University of Sydney.

Why George Washington Is a Hero to the Jews

Even before the first president’s famous epistle to the Touro Synagogue, “to bigotry no sanction; to persecution no assistance,” the Jews of America knew that Washington was their man. He invited the rabbi of New York’s Shearith Israel Congregation to act as a formal clergyman at the first Inauguration. This marked the first time since the ancient fall of Jerusalem that a Jewish minister performed in an official capacity for a head of state.

In this vein, in August 1789, Congregation Kahal Kadosh Beth Shalome in Richmond, Virginia, opened the celebration of its new synagogue constitution with the toast: “The President of the United States, may his administration secure to the citizens of America the Liberty obtained by his valor.”

During the American Revolution, in the winter camps at Valley Forge, a Jewish immigrant from Prussia, Michael Hart, was a corporal in the Continental Army. His daughter wrote the following in her diary about her father’s wartime service: “Let it be remembered that Michael Hart was a Jew, practically, pious, a Jew reverencing and strictly observant of the Sabbath and Festivals; dietary laws were also adhered to, although he was compelled to be his own Shochet. Mark well that he, Washington … even during a short sojourn became for the hour the guest of the worthy Jew.”

So large has Washington loomed in Jewish hearts that this tale, absent details of the only kosher meal he is known to have had, morphed into folklore unlike any other. One iteration reads: “It is mid-winter at Valley Forge. Everyone is cold. Frostbite is widespread. Everyone has given up hope. George Washington is depressed. One night, looking for inspiration, George goes for a walk through the camp. He finds one Jewish member of the Continental Army lighting the haunkkiya … the soldier explains Hanukkah, Judah Maccabee, and everything to George, who re-finds his courage in the process — enough to stand up when the boat crosses the Delaware. Later, the first President sends our Jewish soldier a silver Menorah … as a gift of appreciation, along with a letter which says, ‘Judaism has a lot to offer the world. You should be proud to be a Jew.’”

The alert reader will note that the Delaware Crossing occurred a year before Valley Forge, one of many reasons to doubt the story’s veracity. But never mind that. This Monday, as we honor the man who has long been an inspiration to the Jews, let’s celebrate Washington’s life, legacy, and ideals. As Purim approaches with its account of the political fragility Jews have endured through the ages, let’s dedicate ourselves to the memory of that great statesman who reigns unparalleled in the annals of history for securing Jewish freedom, safety, prosperity, and the rights of all Americans. Happy President’s Day!

A number of newspapers had this story in the summer of 1920, which seems a lot like what happened in the UAE exactly a hundred years later.

Even more remarkably, in 1923 that same newspaper started issuing a weekly Hebrew supplement, "HsShofer." The newspaper said it "hopes thereby to create a better understanding and more friendly relations between the Jews and the Arabs."