Monday, January 03, 2022
Monday, January 03, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Abbas meets Gantz one day and bashes Israel the next
Abbas has been around quite a while and obviously knew that his meeting with Gantz would trigger furious responses on the Palestinian street. Then why make the meeting public? Why not meet in secret? A secret meeting would likely have yielded the same results, and he would probably have received the same gestures from Gantz.Gantz, ‘disappointed’ by criticism of Abbas meeting, vows to meet PA chief again
The reason is that while the Gantz meeting might not have aided Abbas’s sinking popularity among Palestinians, it helped him with the world. The US, EU, UN and various countries praised the meeting, signaling that they hoped this would build momentum for something bigger. Being seen as constructive could help Abbas build support for his never-ending effort to convene an international peace conference.
For Abbas, therefore, the Gantz meeting served a purpose in giving the world what it wanted to see. He also surely realized that while the Gantz meeting would grab headlines, a speech in which he slammed Israel a couple of days later on New Year’s Eve wouldn’t garner much international attention.
And while that assumption might be correct, Abbas again mistakenly chose to treat Israeli opinion as if it doesn’t count, that it doesn’t matter, something he has done repeatedly in the past. Abbas has never seemed to realize that any diplomatic process with Israel will need the backing of the Israeli people and that words like the ones he uttered Friday drive them away.
While Abbas has met in the past with left-wing Israeli politicians and activists as a way of outreach to Israeli society, that is not going to convince mainstream Israel that he is a man who can be trusted to make peace.
If Abbas really ever wants to reach any accommodation with Israel, he – or whoever follows him – will eventually need to win over the Israeli center. And one way not to do that is to accuse Israel of “organized terrorism” and “ethnic cleansing” just two days after meeting Gantz and walking away with a few confidence-building measures.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Monday pushed back against criticism of his recent meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, vowing to continue meeting with the PA leader.
“I heard the criticism and again say, it’s the one who sends soldiers into battle who’s responsible for doing everything to prevent it,” Gantz said during a faction meeting of his Blue and White party.
Gantz hosted Abbas at his home in Rosh Ha’ayin last week, the first time the PA leader met with a senior Israeli official inside Israel since 2010. It was also their second meeting since the new Israeli government was formed in June, with the first sit-down held in Ramallah.
The meeting was strongly criticized by right-wing opposition parties and some hawkish members of the ruling coalition, which includes factions spanning the political spectrum and has clashed over various policy matters, including those pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“I was disappointed by cabinet ministers who preferred to speak from a political position at the expense of security needs. Behind closed doors, they sound different,” Gantz said. “For me, whenever the political interest runs into the security interest, security must always prevail.”
Gantz said “the need to maintain Israel’s security” was the main focus of his meeting with Abbas, along with countering the Hamas terror group.
“And this is the reason I will continue to meet with him and other elements in the region with whom discourse helps our stability, security and interests,” he said.
PMW: Betraying the memory of Lieutenant Taylor Force
Taylor Force was a West Point graduate and veteran of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist while walking along the promenade in Tel Aviv, visiting Israel as part of a Vanderbilt University MBA study group trip examining global entrepreneurship. The terrorist was killed at the scene, before he could murder other innocent people. To this day, the Palestinian Authority pays a monthly allowance for life to the family of Taylor’s murderer, simply because the terrorist was killed during his murderous terror attack.
In order to prevent US money going to the PA as long at it pays millions of dollars every month to terrorist prisoners, released terrorists, wounded terrorists, and the families of dead terrorists - collectively known as the PA’s “Pay-for-Slay” payments - US Congress passed the Taylor Force Act (TFA) in 2018. Focusing on Economic Support Fund (ESF) aid - the largest section of US aid to the PA - TFA conditioned the ESF aid on the PA’s ending its “Pay-for-slay” payments.
Ignoring the clear call of Congress, since 2018, the PA has spent an estimated one billion dollars, paying monthly terror rewards, including over $32,434 dollars to the family of Taylor’s murderer.
While the US administration is prevented from providing direct aid to the PA, according to PA Minister of Finance Shukri Bishara’s Advisor Stephan Salameh, for 2022 the US has promised at least $225 million worth of financial aid to the Palestinians.
PA Minister of Finance Shukri Bishara’s Advisor Stephan Salameh: “The promises [from the US] are: There are promises that next year [2022] $225 million will be allocated to development projects. Also $50 million will be transferred for joint projects.”
Official PA TV host: “From institutions, not from the American administration?”
Stephan Salameh: “From the American administration, $225 million for development projects, not through the Palestinian [PA] government but rather projects by other bodies, but for developmental needs.”
TV host: “That's a good sign.”
Salameh: “Of course. $50 million for joint economic projects and support for the private sector. Also, from this $225 million there is a project to support the private sector. In addition to this, there will be between $150-200 million to support UNRWA, and additional support for other issues.”
[Official PA TV, Personal Encounter, Dec. 16, 2021]
In order to bypass the letter of US law but openly violating the spirit of the TFA, the US administration is providing the aid through its own aid organization (USAID) and is not giving the money “directly” to the PA, thereby circumventing and undermining TFA.
Monday, January 03, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh says that if Israel does not come to a prisoner accord with the terror group, it will kidnap more Israelis.“We have four prisoners, and if Israel is not convinced by that, then we will add to our stash,” Haniyeh says in comments circulated in official Hamas media.
Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a member of the political leadership of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, confirmed that his movement is determined to free the Palestinian prisoners, through the kidnappings of Israeli soldiers.
2007:
Yesterday, a Hamas official threatened to kidnap more Israeli soldiers to force the Israeli authorities to release Palestinian prisoners.
2010:
The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) threatened to kidnap more Israeli soldiers if the international community did not intervene to solve the issue of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.
Khalil al-Hayya, a member of the Hamas political bureau, threatened today, Thursday, to kidnap Israeli soldiers and settlers as long as the heroic prisoners remain in the prisons of the Israeli occupation.
The Hebrew Kan channel revealed on Wednesday evening that Hamas has threatened to resume kidnappings and capture of Israeli soldiers if a new deal fails. According to the Hebrew channel, a senior Hamas official, Khaled Meshaal, threatened to kidnap new Israelis if Israel refused to release heavy prisoners in a new dea
Monday, January 03, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Nasser al-Lahham
Israel has entered the phase of apartheid and racial discrimination: politically, parliamentary, judicial, municipal, labor market, employment and security. And even in sports, tourism, hotels, apartment rentals, road networks, trains and airports. Israel sank as a whole in the quagmire of racial discrimination and there is no hope of saving any part of it from its inevitable fate.It has turned from an island of salvation for European Jews into an epidemic area that spreads viruses of racism and hatred throughout the world.
I believe that Zionism is behind the aggravation of relations between Russia and Ukraine, leading to a war and the inevitable result of which is that Russia will occupy Ukraine in a matter of hours. The Zionist movement will accelerate the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Ukraine to Palestine. The Ukrainian Jews will be disposed of in the occupied West Bank and Syrian Golan settlements.
Monday, January 03, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Sunday, January 02, 2022
Sunday, January 02, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Sunday, January 02, 2022
Ian
Linkdump, Richard Landes
Dore Gold: The UN’s Reinvention of Jerusalem’s Past
The UN is at it again. On November 26, 2021, the General Assembly adopted a resolution referring to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where the Temple of Solomon once stood, only by its Arabic name, the Haram al-Sharif. From the standpoint of the UN, Christian and Jewish connections to the area were non-existent.
For years now, the UN’s Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has been systematically pushing false narratives about Jerusalem that deny the historic connection of the Jewish people to their holy city. In May 2016, UNESCO decided that the Western Wall Plaza should be designated with quotation marks after adopting the term Al-Buraq Plaza for the very same area with no qualification.
UNESCO reaffirmed this language in subsequent years. These distortions, which were blatant violations of its own statute, have penetrated the discourse about Jerusalem in the international media, in universities, and in world parliaments. What was axiomatic 200 years ago is now called into question.
So many people speak about Jerusalem but so few really understand it.
I’ve been a diplomat for over three decades, serving on the front lines of Israel’s struggle over the Holy City. 30 years, and I’m still surprised by the scale of disinformation and by the depth of ignorance regarding the Holy City. The ignorance in the face of overwhelming evidence of its historical past. The ignorance regarding historical facts, even recent history.
It’s been 50 years since the reunification of Jerusalem and while across the Middle East holy sites are destroyed, in Jerusalem they’re protected. And yet Israel’s legitimacy is questioned time and time again.
Col. Richard Kemp: Is Biden's Legacy Really Going to Be the Dismantling of Democracies and the Free World?
Biden inflicted untold damage on the free world by his catastrophic surrender in Afghanistan, demonstrating to America's enemies and friends alike that, under his administration, the US was no longer willing to stand by its allies nor to protect its own vital national interests.Yisrael Medad: There is Jewish and there is Arab violence
Now Biden is planning discussions in early 2022 between Russia and selected NATO members to "defuse" the situation [Russia threatening the Ukraine]. Can he really believe that any negotiations short of capitulation to Russian demands would satisfy Putin or achieve anything? So-called diplomacy down the barrel of 90,000 Russian guns looks a lot like even more appeasement.
Biden has failed to respond to Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia, Iranian aggression against Israel and even Iranian attacks on US forces in Syria and Iraq. Iran's contempt for Biden was further displayed last week in the launch of multiple ballistic missiles during manoeuvres that Iranian commanders explicitly said were intended to threaten Israel.
In the face of Iranian nuclear provocation, Biden's officials have refrained from any threat of military action — taking off the table the only truly effective deterrent against regimes that respect strength alone.
Biden's policies of appeasement towards Iran and Russia are bad enough. But the greatest threat to the free world today comes from China. Biden has a long record of appeasing Beijing.
Biden's administration has projected only confusion over China's ambitions against Taiwan. The president twice suggested the US might be willing to defend the country in the event of Chinese invasion, with his comments immediately walked back by officials... Similarly mixed messages coming from London led the Argentinian junta to believe Britain, despite its vast military superiority, would not fight to defend the Falkland Islands on the other side of the world, and actually encouraged the 1982 invasion.
"One of [Biden's] first acts on assuming the presidency was to shut down the investigations into the origins of Covid-19 — including the one I led at the State Department in 2020, which presented troubling scientific and circumstantial evidence on the secret activities of the WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] that bolster the lab-leak theory". — Dr David Asher, who spearheaded the State Department task force investigating the origins of Covid-19 and the role of the Chinese government, Hudson Institute, November 17, 2021
None of Biden's acts of appeasement are isolated to their targets alone; they are widely observed and cumulative in effect. They embolden America's enemies and unnerve its friends, potentially fracturing alliances that are vital to defending democracy. So much damage has already been done in just one year that even were Biden to change course, his legacy might well be the dismantling of democracies and the free world.
Over the past several months, the pro-Palestinian chorus has been pushing the theme of “settler violence” running rampant in the West Bank. A search using Google shows that these reports say the violence has “risen,” “increased” and “spiked” and that there has been an “upsurge” in violence by Israeli settlers.
In fact, if one reviews the various websites of such organizations and news platforms, which all feed into the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), the theme is a staple of their messaging. One can even read a statement from the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor asserting “state-sponsored violence and attacks” that were mostly “executed with full protection from the Israeli army.”
That body, however, is chaired by Richard Falk, who has been accused of manipulating anti-Semitic memes and whose reports for the United Nations as its Human Rights Council special rapporteur were condemned in years past by the United States.
Incidents do occur; no one denies that.
They are condemned by the official representative bodies that represent the Jewish residents in the West Bank. The questions, though, are how many are there, who initiates them, is the reported damage correct and what are the true overall statistics and context of violence from both sides.
As Jonathan Tobin, of JNS, recently observed, “There is something wrong if a few Jews throwing stones is considered far more important than the fact that attacks on Jews in the same areas are more or less the national sport of Palestinians.” He points to a double standard whereby proportionally fewer Jewish attacks gain greater coverage while “exponentially greater volumes of Palestinian violence is considered either unremarkable or somehow justified.”
Indeed, the data made available by the Israel Police point to something remarkable - the number of incidents of Jewish violence is decreasing. From 2019 to 2021, there has been a 61.1% drop in so-called price-tag attacks. Moreover, the number of indictments of Jewish extremists has doubled from 16 to 32 over the past year. That is not the picture the pro-Palestinian groups wish you to see.
Another factor that is underplayed is the above-mentioned volume of Arab violence in the same area. The Rescuers Without Borders paramedical organization is the first responders unit on the scene of incidents. They provide first aid and ambulance services. In the past two and a half months they reported 315 rock-throwing incidents and 50 firebombs tossed at Jewish targets in the West Bank. That is an average of eight each day. Just last night, in East Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood, dozens of firebombs were thrown at Jewish homes.
The IDF data indicates that in 2020 there were 1,500 rock-throwing incidents, 229 firebombs tossed, 31 shootings, nine stabbings, 541 guns and rifles were seized and 330 knives were recovered.
The Shin Bet security agency recorded over 100 Palestinian terror attacks in the West Bank in October 2021. In 2020, it reported almost 800 acts of Palestinian terror; an additional 424 “significant attacks” were thwarted.
Sunday, January 02, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Sunday, January 02, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Issa Nakhleh, a Palestinian Arab envoy of the Arab League who was invited to speak at the 367th meeting of the UN Special Political Committee, 12 December 1962, floated the idea that Israel illegally occupied all of Palestine:
If the situation in Palestine was the result of an armed conflict between the Jews and the Arabs, the occupation by the Jews of 80 per cent of the area was a belligerent occupation subject under international law to the law of war. It was clear from the Abandoned Areas Ordinance of June 1948 that the Jewish authorities based themselves on conquest and occupation. In that Ordinance an abandoned area was defined as any area or place which had been conquered by .Jewish armed forces, had surrendered to Jewish armed forces or had been deserted by its inhabitants. Thus the Jewish occupants would be entitled only to the rights attributable to a temporary belligerent occupation pending the settlement of the dispute by peaceful means and subject to the law of war regarding the belligerent occupation.
14. In paragraph 166 of volume II of his book International Law,.Y L. Oppenheim, the leading authority on international law, said that it had taken the whole of the nineteenth century to develop the rules regarding occupation. Those rules, which were universally recognized, were based on the principle that, although the occupant in no wise acquired sovereignty over a territory through the mere fact of having occupied it, he exercised for the time being military authority over it and he must use that authority for the ultimate benefit of the inhabitants.15. It was thus clear that Israel had no sovereignty over the area it occupied in Palestine and· that its position there was simply and purely that of a military occupant. As such it was not entitled to oppose such action as the United Nations might take to protect the properties of the refugees.16, Although some might contend that Israel at least had sovereignty within the borders allotted to it by the General Assembly under the Partition Plan that was not so under the rules of international law. Israel had acquired no sovereignty whatever over the territory it now occupied, because the legitimate owners had not ceded that territory to it and because the United Nations itself did not possess the power to cede the territory of one people to another or to transfer sovereignty over it. Now did recognition of one States by any number of Member or non-member States confer sovereignty on it under international law. Israel could acquire sovereignty only if the territory which it occupied was ceded to it by the legitimate sovereign, namely the Arabs of Palestine.
Sunday, January 02, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
The Israel Defense Forces said Saturday morning that two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip toward central Israel.Large explosions were heard in a number of central Israel cities around 7 a.m.Video circulating on social media showed an explosion in the sea off the coast of Jaffa.Other footage apparently showed the two rockets being fired from Gaza.Armed factions in Gaza said the rocket fire was “caused by weather conditions,” not the first time the excuse has been used to explain the firing of projectiles toward Israel.
Saturday, January 01, 2022
Seth Frantzman: The Middle East: A year in review
In contrast to this threat, Israel increased its joint training with the US and other partners and allies. It hosted an exercise with the British and Americans called Tri-Lightning and sent F-35s to fly in Italy. It also did a joint naval drill with US Central Command and Bahrain and the UAE in the Red Sea. It hosted US Marines at the same time for training in Israel. This was the highest tempo of joint training in Israel’s history. It came amid a joint drone training in Israel and the Blue Flag drills that saw an unprecedented number of partner countries come to Israel.Socialism’s Jewish question: Modern antisemitism explored in new book
Israel was putting itself on the map in military technology in a way it hadn’t before. This was tied to Israel’s increased work with the US defense industry and also talk of more Israeli partnerships in the Gulf and beyond. This is where Israel excels, in developing new technology such as precision weapons, artificial intelligence and air defense. Israel revealed, for instance, that it had used a drone swarm for the first time over Gaza in the May war, and it had used more artificial intelligence. The message was that Israel could confront Iranian-backed adversaries.
For Israel’s friends in the Gulf, though, the big question was whether the US would be leaving the region. After the debacle of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, it became clear that the US was not going to remain in many places. The US might reassess its role in Syria in 2022. It was taking all its combat troops out of Iraq. This was lip service to appease pro-Iran voices in Iraq. But the larger context was the Iran deal talks in Vienna and major worldwide shifts, as the US pivots to confront China. Many countries wondered if the absence of the US in the region would require them to change their policies.
Toward that end the UAE and Egypt patched things up with the Assad regime, and together with Saudi Arabia they seemed willing to patch things up with Iran as well. At the end of the day, this didn’t fit a clear narrative of who was on whose side in the region. The Assad regime, for instance, is backed by Iran, but countries in the Gulf want it to reincorporate with the Arab League.
With everyone hedging their bets at the end of the 2021, the question was also what Russia and China would do.
Russia and Turkey were playing an increasing role in Africa. China, meanwhile, appeared to have signed a 25-year deal with Iran, and China was becoming more critical of Israeli actions. The overall story was that China believed that if it was going to be confronted by the US, then it would be tougher on Western countries and regional countries that are close to the US.
This presents the US with a problem. It wants to leave the Middle East and Africa to confront China and do near-peer rivalry with Russia in Ukraine. But every time it leaves a place like Afghanistan, it is China and Russia that seek to move into the vacuum. They don’t see it as a zero-sum game; they believe they can move into areas the US is leaving, while the US believes it must leave to focus on China and Russia. This puts US allies and partners in the region in a bind.
At the end of 2021, it remains to be seen what long-term ramifications this major shift will lead to.
Book: The European Left and the Jewish Question 1848-1992 As several contributors to this book remark, socialism took on the form of a quasi-religion. Belief rather than analysis became the centerpiece of endeavor. For many, Jews simply did not count when it came to discrimination. So when the Soviet show trials took place in the 1930s, many on the Left, including critics of Stalin, preferred to look away when anti-Jewish themes pervaded the courtroom.Desmond Tutu and the Jews
Several authors highlight external factors that have influenced groups on the Left. The Spanish Left imbibed ideas at the altar of historical anti-Judaism during the Inquisition. The Christian Left promoted the vision of a Jesus who identified with the poor – and thereby with the Palestinian refugees.
In France during the 1950s, many embraced anti-colonialism and supported the National Liberation Front’s struggle for independence in Algeria – and warmed to Nasser’s backing for it. Decolonization during the 1960s allowed the New Left in Europe to identify more with the nascent Palestinian national movement than with the Israeli one – and this was before the West Bank settlement drive.
In an effort to express solidarity with discriminated Muslim minorities in Europe, some on the French Left maintain a mistaken silence about the reactionary politics of the Islamists. And anti-Zionism sometimes tips over into overt antisemitism. There were antisemitic killings in Toulouse, Montauban and Vincennes in recent times. In 2006, Ilan Halimi was killed because he was Jewish – the first antisemitic murder in France since 1945.
This volume is unusual because it goes into the origins of contemporary antisemitism and anti-Zionism within the European Left in mainly France and Italy. Pushing the slogans and clichés of campaigners against antisemitism to one side, it looks at the roots of the problem today. Its detailed explanations by scholars will certainly provide food for thought for those who wish to deepen their knowledge.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died on Sunday, was a Nobel Prize winner and a hero of the anti-apartheid movement. Yet despite all his many qualities, he had a real problem with Jews and the Jewish State. He had many Jewish friends and admirers. But his blatantly antisemitic rhetoric, on public record, consistently and simply proved that you can be a likable, even sweet hero, and still be a dangerous fool.
I have tried to understand why so many perfectly nice, good Christians seem to have such trouble with Israel. Is it just the sympathy for the underdog? Or the arrogance of many Israelis? Is it something about Jews or Judaism that offends them?
Mahatma Gandhi, one of the founders of modern India was regarded as a holy man. He, too, could not sympathize with Jewish aspirations. Gandhi’s great ideal was that of satyagraha: non-violent resistance to evil. A lovely idea in theory, and a very Christian idea of turning the other cheek observed more in the breach. Of Hitler’s evil, Gandhi said in 1938, “the calculated violence of Hitler may result in a general massacre of Jews, but if their minds could be prepared for voluntary suffering, the massacre could be turned to a day of thanksgiving and joy.”
Thank you, but no thank you. He admired the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who visited Hitler to ensure that if he invaded the Middle East, he would exterminate the Jews there too. He even suggested that “the Jews should follow the doctrine of satyagraha and offer themselves to the Arabs to be shot or thrown into the dead sea.” One wonders why he didn’t suggest satyagraha to Stalin.
There were two men I admired who were both committed Christians and devoted much of their lives to fighting against Apartheid. And yet they did not suffer from Tutu’s blind spot when it came to sympathizing with Jewish aspirations for and the right to defend a homeland. Robert Birley and Trevor Huddleston — both men I had got to know late in their lives through my involvement in the Anti-Apartheid Movement and close friends.
Saturday, January 01, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
CJ Werleman
The Zionist state has been pumping billions of dollars into US-based groups to portray Muslims as a community of terrorists.
Billions!
Recent revelations that an anti-Muslim hate group allegedly paid thousands of dollars to two employees of a Muslim advocacy organisation to undermine American Muslim activists on behalf of the Israeli government are undoubtedly shocking but represent only the tip of the iceberg in what is now a decades-long effort by the Jewish State to harass, smear and threaten pro-Palestinian activists in the United States.
The International Project of Terrorism is not an Israeli group. It is also not an anti-Muslim group, from everything I can see. It exposes antisemitism and terror ties in some Muslim groups, I have never seen it say any blanket anti-Muslim statement.
Anyway, that is "thousands" of dollars, and not from Israel. Next?
[T]he nexus between Zionism and the Islamophobia industry is documented in great detail, starting with a Zionist-funded conference in 1979. The conclave brought together US neoconservatives with Likud Party figures to tie Islam to terrorism in mainstream political discourse, with the aim of tying Palestinian aspirations for liberation to “terrorism” in the minds of American voters, as observed by Professor Deepa Kumar in Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire.
Last year, the Jewish-American magazine Forward obtained documents showing that Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs transferred $40,000 to US-based Christian Zionist organisation,Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN), which has been identified as an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a non-governmental organisation that tracks hate crimes in the United States.
Friday, December 31, 2021
18 noteworthy Jews who died in 2021
Every year brings the deaths of Jewish icons who leave behind outsized legacies, from the realms of art and culture, government, business, philanthropy and beyond.PodCast: Why the Media Keeps Getting the Jerusalem Story Wrong A fireside chat with Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem
Here are 18 whom we lost in 2021 — none from COVID — presented in alphabetical order.
Sheldon Adelson
Few people have exerted as significant an influence on American and Israeli politics as Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate who gave lavishly to Republican candidates and Israeli causes.
The founder and CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation and one of the world’s richest men, Adelson regularly set records for his donations. At $25 million, he was the largest donor to Donald Trump’s successful 2016 presidential bid and the biggest giver in the 2012 American election cycle, at nearly $93 million. He was also a leading supporter of Birthright Israel, the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Zionist Organization of America, the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Israel American Council.
He had previously been a top AIPAC supporter, but cut off support more than a decade ago in favor of more conservative pro-Israel groups. He was also a principal backer of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He died in January at 87.
Jerusalem is probably the most famous city in the world, but much of it is for the wrong reasons. This past May, when Hamas launched a terror war against Israel, Jerusalem was at centre stage, thanks to anti-Israel propaganda which was being spread around the world.The Tikvah Podcast: Our Favorite Broadcasts of 2021
But Jerusalem is more than a city under the siege of misinformation; it is also the 3,000 year old home of the Jewish People, and is undergoing a historic revitalization.
One of the people most responsible for Jerusalem’s revitalization is Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, the city’s deputy mayor, who joined The Honest Report as our guest.
In 2021, 49 different guests appeared on the podcast over the course of 44 new episodes. Our conversations touched on some of the most important and interesting subjects in Jewish life, including discussions with leaders of Israel’s Haredi community, a course developer who is deploying technology to teach people Yiddish, diplomats and strategists shaping foreign-policy debates in Israel, Europe, and America, elected officials and diplomats, historians and social scientists, theologians and rabbis, academics and authors, reporters and entrepreneurs. Each guest, in conversation with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver, trained his or her unique perspective on some timely or enduring question that stands before the Jewish people and the Jewish state.‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ bigotry at the Sydney Festival
In this episode, we present some of our favorite conversations this year. Guests featured in this year-end episode include the Israeli rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer, the foreign-policy analysts Benjamin Haddad and Michael Doran, Wall Street Journal editor Elliot Kaufman, social scientist Nicholas Eberstadt, Jewish educational leader David Rozenson, Yiddish expert Meena Viswanath, tech CEO Sean Clifford, novelist Dara Horn, and the eminent writer Cynthia Ozick.
The Sydney Festival has been subjected to intolerable pressure for accepting a $20,000 partnership with the Israeli Embassy in Canberra. The funds are to be used to stage the dance Decadence by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin at the Sydney Opera House during the 2022 Sydney Festival in January.
Despite a number of individual performers and organisations pulling out in protest over the Israeli embassy’s sponsorship, a Sydney Festival spokesperson has said they would not be terminating their agreement with the Israeli embassy.
‘The festival is unwavering in its commitment to ensuring a culturally safe space for all artists, employees and audiences,’ the statement said.
‘[The Sydney Festival] will be reviewing all funding arrangements with embassies and cultural organisations to ensure that any continuance of these partnerships is compatible with maintaining a welcoming and culturally safe environment moving forward.’
That statement on behalf of the Sydney Festival might sound fair and reasonable however, the increase in Boycott, Diversity and Sanctions (BDS) activity in Australia should be seen as foreboding for those Australians who believe in a multicultural tolerant society because BDS is the very antithesis of that.
There are a lot of offensive Israelophobic behaviours to unpack in this sorry saga with the Sydney Festival. An article in the ‘extreme left’ publication Meanjin by a clique of pro-Palestinian activists epitomises a vicious, racist attack on artistic freedom by pro-Palestinian bullies.
Let me run through the names of those who wrote a hateful article Sydney Festival: ‘Progressive Except for Palestine’ in Meanjin. Before I do that, I would like to put paid to this ruse of ‘Progressive Except for Palestine’, which Philip Mendes has explained in an article in the journal Fathom to be the new buzzword for Palestinian supporters.
In this essay, Philip Mendes argues that the new buzzword for Palestinian nationalists, ‘Progressive except for Palestine’ aimed at progressives who do not support fundamentalist calls for the abolition of the State of Israel, is ‘not a perspective which seeks to advance principled reasonable criticism of Israel’. Rather, Mendes argues the term is ‘a viewpoint based on demonising the State of Israel and all its supporters, including the many who favour a two-state solution, and limiting freedom of speech by illiberally excluding them from progressive publications and debates’. – from Fathom.
Mendes points out that a true call should be ‘Progressive except for Jews’ with the Left having been selectively ignoring manifestations of Jewish oppression throughout history. I would go further and discount the slogan ‘Progressive except for Palestine’ as a cheap trick to demean progressiveness that ignores Palestinianism – as though there is some special virtue in supporting a cause that ignores the corrupt, misogynist, kleptocratic, and intolerant nature of the Palestinian Authority or the manifest Jew-hatred from Hamas that is abundantly evident in the annals of Palestine Media Watch.
Friday, December 31, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
It happens every time.
The Ministry of Health announced this afternoon the death of the young man, Amir Atef Khader Rayan, from the town of Qarawat Bani Hassan, after the occupation soldiers shot him on charges of trying to carry out a stabbing attack west of Salfit.The martyr was shot by the occupation, leaving behind his wife, who is seven months pregnant, and his sons Muhammad, 9, Jana, 7, Atef, 4, Maryam, two, and his wife, who is pregnant with a child in her seventh month.
The Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ) mourns its martyr hero Mujahid Amir Atef Rayan from Qarawat Bani Hassan, who rose to life after carrying out a heroic stabbing operation today, Friday, with an unplanned coming.These operations are a natural response to the crimes of the enemy and its settlers.A thousand greetings to the spirit of the heroic martyr and to all the heroes of the stabbing and ramming operations and the heroes of the resistance who clash every night with the enemy and its settlers, and we call upon the masses of our people to confront the occupation army and its herds of settlers.The convoys of martyrs will remain a beacon that illuminates the path for our people towards freedom and independence, and the purification of our sanctuary, our sanctuaries, and our holy sites from the impurity of the occupation and its usurping settlers.
Mark Regev: The UN - where anti-Israel prejudice remains supreme
There are clear signs that Arab hostility towards the Jewish state is on the wane. The Abraham Accords normalized Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, an Israeli Defense Minister can make a very public visit to Morocco and even Saudi Arabia allows flights to and from Israel to cross over its territory. But there remains at least one bastion of anti-Israel enmity, the United Nations, where systematic, organizational prejudice against the Jewish state reigns supreme.Melanie Phillips: New Year’s resolution? Abolish the UN Human Rights Council
The opening act: Though not representing a member state, in 1974 Yasser Arafat was issued an extraordinary invitation to address the UN General Assembly (UNGA). His speech included a call for an end to Israel. The Jews, he said, could become citizens in the PLO’s “democratic Palestine.” Extreme content notwithstanding, and the fact that he spoke soon after his PLO massacred 25 hostages in Ma’alot, mostly high school students, Arafat received a standing ovation.
Infamously, the following year, the UNGA adopted Resolution 3379 which declared Zionism a “form of racism and racial discrimination”. Although that travesty was officially repealed in 1991, its annulment did not mark the end of the UN’s anti-Israel obsession – far from it.
Every year the UNGA routinely passes, with massive majorities, a series of blatant anti-Israel resolutions; in 2021 17 were enacted. Earlier this month, for example, the UNGA called upon Israel to withdraw from the “occupied Syrian Golan,” with delegates voting to hand over the Golan to Bashar Assad’s murderous regime.
But the story doesn’t end with these multiple resolutions, as some of them establish UN organs whose sole mission is to further propagate an anti-Israel agenda. The Special Committee to Investigate Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People is one such body. The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, which every year organizes the UN’s annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, is another.
These visionaries failed to grasp that, since the world was dominated by states and regimes that were both repressive and deeply imbued with Jew-hatred and hostility to Israel, any world body or supra-national system of law would itself become an accomplice to tyranny and antisemitism.v Caroline Glick: The escalating international war against Israel
That’s why “lawfare,” or the weaponisation of international law to wage war with better PR, has become a prime weapon against Israel, singling out the Jewish people alone for such unhinged attack.
And it’s why the UN, the world body set up to ensure that never again would crimes against humanity be repeated — a global aim which it has conspicuously failed to achieve — has itself turned into a weapon with which to commit them against the Jewish people once again.
In other words, the UNHRC has become an engine of evil.
In January, the US returns to the Council as a member. The Biden administration claims it will thus be able to stop its abuses. This is unlikely.
The UN is supposedly the world’s police force. But if a police force is in the pocket of a murderous and tyrannical cult, it turns into a protection racket where the innocent get gunned down and the guilty remain free to inflict yet more carnage.
This is not just Israel’s problem. As long as the west ignores the profound corruption of the UNHRC, it corrupts itself.
How to make the world a better place in 2022? Shut down the UNHRC.
And this brings us to the Human Rights Council's permanent inquisition whose operations a large majority of UN member nations voted to fund last week at the General Assembly. As Professor Anne Bayefsky explained in a detailed report published this week by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, the commission of inquiry's mandate is effectively limitless. The commission is empowered to rewrite the entire history of the Arab conflict with Israel and determine that Israel's birth was an original sin which must be undone. The commission is empowered to carry out an "investigation" on the basis of "testimonies" which EU-funded anti-Israel groups will supply them describing entirely fraudulent "war crimes" that will form the basis of indictments of Israeli elected leaders, IDF commanders and line soldiers, and Israeli civilians who reside in Judea, Samaria and unified Jerusalem. The UN's political "courts" in turn will agree to try them for these made-up crimes.The Caroline Glick Show: Ep31 – Lawfare – Domestic and Foreign | Guest: Prof. Avi Bell
Moreover, as Bayefsky noted, the commission is charged with making "recommendations on measures to be taken by third States to ensure respect for international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem…[to ensure] that they do not aid or assist in the Commission of internationally wrongful acts."
A similar statement is made in the resolution's preamble regarding "business enterprises."
The message in both cases is self-explanatory. The reports the inquisition will publish will serve as the basis for economic boycotts of Israel to be enacted by both government bureaucrats and businesses.
Israel has no choice but to fight this commission and any business, government or judge that uses its reality-free reports. Israel must ensure that the antisemitic propaganda the commission puts out does not turn into "law" through the actions of radical justices and government attorneys. And Israel must reconcile itself to the fact that the EU bureaucracy and much of Europe is waging a war against it, and launch a vigorous counter-assault.
In Episode 31 of the Caroline Glick Mideast News Hour, Caroline was joined by Prof. Avi Bell from Bar Ilan University and University of San Diego law schools. Caroline and Avi discussed first Israel’s legal fraternity’s transformation of Israel from a democracy to an authoritarian aristocracy of lawyers. Given Israel’s legal fraternity’s focus on seizing the power of Israel’s elected leaders, it is not surprising that if fails to understand the nature of the international lawfare being waged against Israel, first and foremost by the UN. The two discussed the nature of the UN-led political war against Israel and the central role of pseudo-legal claims play in the efforts. Caroline ended the show with a discussion of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s role in mainstreaming contemporary anti-Semitism.
Friday, December 31, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
Friday, December 31, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
The number of Israeli settlers who stormed the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque during 2021 reached more than 34,000.The Director-General of the Department of Islamic Endowments and Al-Aqsa Mosque Affairs Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib said - today, Thursday - that "the number of Jewish extremists storming the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque during the year 2021 reached 34,112 extremists."The settlers, according to a statement by the Director of Endowments, carried out their incursions "under the protection of the Israeli police and its heavily armed special forces, which turned Al-Aqsa Mosque into a military barracks."Sheikh Al-Khatib warned against the dangerous escalation of Jewish extremists' incursions into the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and desecrating its sanctity by performing Talmudic prayers and rituals inside its courtyards.
Throughout the year, incursions were carried out inside the mosque led by rabbis, soldiers, officers, intelligence agents, and former Knesset members. They deliberately organized guided tours of the “alleged temple”, delivered biblical lessons in Al-Aqsa Square, organized “rabbinic blessings” and puberty ceremonies for males and females, and announcing marriage, in addition to reading the Psalms of the Torah.A Jewish group calling itself "Return to the Temple Mount" announced last September that the shofar (one of the biblical rituals) was blown inside Al-Aqsa for the first time since the occupation of Jerusalem. Extremists brought the fruits of the "Feast of Sukkot" and palm fronds to the mosque on the first day of their feast, and they raised the Israeli flag in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque at that time.
I cannot find any news articles about blowing the shofar or bringing a lulav and etrog to the Temple Mount. These objects would be confiscated at the entrance. It may be that someone snuck in a shofar and blew it quietly, but I cannot find it reported.
Among the most serious violations that were also recorded, the extremist Rabbi Yaakov Hayman published a picture of the Dome of the Rock, and announced the need for an engineer specialized in demolishing facilities, to present a proposal for how to remove the building and establish the “Third Temple” in its place.
Indeed, Yaakov Hayman did post that on Facebook. He used to be a leader in the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation but that organization no longer exists (the domain name was lost, its Facebook page has not been updated since 2015.) He posted it as a private person, it received no coverage in Israeli media - and the Muslim world freaked out.
Facebook banned him for a day because of how offended Muslims were.
So in the end, the most serious "violations" were: 34,000 Jews visiting (which is fewer than the number of Muslims on any given Friday,) rumors about shofars, lulavs and etrogs being brought there; people giving talks about the Temples, silent prayer, someone unfurling an Israeli flag for a second before being expelled, and a Facebook post that offended them.
Friday, December 31, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
Elder of Ziyon









