Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is assumed to spend nearly all of his time during the past 15 years in an underground bunker out of fear of being targeted by an Israeli airstrike.
But he often hosts guests, usually Iranian dignitaries and fellow terrorists.
Their meetings almost invariably take place in front of....curtains.
This week he hosted Iran's foreign minister:
With Hamas leader Haniyeh:
With Iran's foreign minister Zarif:
And other meetings with Hamas, Lebanese and Iranian officials:
These curtains do not cover windows. There is not a hint of light coming from behind them, which one would see if the meeting is during the day even with blackout curtains.
The only exception I could find was this photo from 2006, before Nasrallah's panicked descent into the bunker beneath Beirut, where you can see the flash of the camera reflect off the window behind a thin curtain:
His hideout is clearly very large, with multiple rooms.
When you live your life like a rat underground, any bit of self-deception helps.
Associates for Biblical Research (ABR) announce the discovery of a formulaic curse inscription recovered on a small, folded lead tablet.
The defixio came to light in December 2019 when Scott Stripling, ABR’s Director of Excavations and the Director of the Archaeological Studies Institute at The Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas, led an ABR team to wet sift the discarded material from Adam Zertal’s excavations (1982–1989) on Mt. Ebal.
A press conference was held on Thursday, March 24th at the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas to announce the extraordinary discovery.
The ancient Hebrew inscription consists of 40 letters and is centuries older than any known Hebrew inscription from ancient Israel. The scientists employed advanced tomographic scans to recover the hidden text [and]...deciphered the proto-alphabetic inscription, which reads as follows:
Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by the God YHW.
You will die cursed.
Cursed you will surely die.
Cursed by YHW – cursed, cursed, cursed.
According to Stripling, “These types of amulets are well known in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, but Zertal’s excavated pottery dated to the Iron Age I and Late Bronze Age, so logically the tablet derived from one of these earlier periods. Even so, our discovery of a Late Bronze Age inscription stunned me.”
Almost immediately Galil recognized the formulaic literary structure of the inscription: “From the symmetry, I could tell that it was written as a chiastic parallelism.”
According to Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8, Mt. Ebal was the mountain of the curse. Joshua 8:30 indicates that Joshua built an altar on Mt. Ebal. The defixio derived from previously excavated and discarded material from a structure Zertal believed was Joshua’s altar.
It may be a coincidence that a curse be found on a mountain most famous for its curse, but the dating of the tablet to the Late Bronze Age - the 14th to 13th century BCE - is about the accepted time of the Exodus.
As far as I can tell, this is the earliest mention of the Hebrew God using the tetragrammaton by centuries - the previously earliest find was the Mesha Stele from 840 BCE.
The chiastic structure of the curse (ABCCBA) is clear, and the Hebrew Bible is filled with similar chiastic structures throughout, such as Genesis 9:6: שֹׁפֵךְ֙ דַּ֣ם הָֽאָדָ֔ם בָּֽאָדָ֖ם דָּמ֣וֹ יִשָּׁפֵ֑ךְ, "the spiller of blood of a human, by a human would his blood be spilled." Some chiasms span chapters or entire books.
The researchers are holding back on some of the findings, such as the text on the outside of the tablet that they found.
The Palestinian legislature is planning to pass a law based on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW.)
The PA has been a signatory of that convention since 2014, but it hasn't actually put it into law. When pressed, it does what it always does - it blamed the "occupation."
When no Westerners are listening, Palestinians freely admit that the only reason they joined the Convention and other international conventions (without reservations, showing that they barely read them to begin with) was to make it easier to join the International Criminal Court and therefore attack Israel via lawfare.
Palestinians never had any intention to enforce the convention that they signed.
Apparently, the international community has noticed this and it can turn into a source of embarrassment. The Palestinian dictatorship decided to have its cabinet pass a law that is congruent to CEDAW and to do it in a quiet way so that the right wing, Islamist opponents don't stop it.
Now, 41 Palestinian legislators have signed a crazy letter opposing CEDAW, complaining how the legislation was being sneaked by them.
Their letter says the purpose of CEDAW is "to spread abnormal practices in our reality, and turn them into familiar natural phenomena and practices, such as sexual relations outside marriage, absolute freedoms, moral chaos, and homosexuality of all kinds. destroying the foundations on which the family is built."
They also expressed their “astonishment and disapproval” that such an important law was drafted “in secret, discussing and circulating it in closed rooms with a limited group that does not represent society, and avoiding consulting specialists from Sharia scholars, clerics, judges, jurists and opinion-holders." The noted that under Palestinian law, the Legislative Council is the only body authorized to pass laws and legislation.
It seems that the cabinet doesn't even have the power to enact laws like this, and this is just a sham to push off the international community for another couple of years until they notice that the laws are not being enforced.
This sort of stuff happens all the time in the PA. They pretend to be a functioning, responsible government but the PA side is thoroughly corrupt and Abbas does whatever he wants, while the Hamas side is thoroughly Islamist. The entire CEDAW episode has been playing out for years and anyone can see that there was never any desire to actually fight for women's rights.
This 2018 report details the huge gaps between Palestinian laws and equality for women, showing how few women are employed or in important political positions, and how many are beaten every year.
Last year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised a new nuclear deal with Iran that would be "longer and stronger," hinting that it would seek to extend some of the JCPOA's sunset provisions that were set to expire in the next decade, as well as place limits on Iran's testing of ballistic missiles. It isn't clear the new deal will meet either goal.
Reaching a kick-the-can-down-the-road agreement may seem like a diplomatic victory to the State Department. But it's a strategic defeat when it does little more than delay a crisis for the future in exchange for strengthening our adversaries in the present. Tehran attacked Iraq with ballistic missiles earlier this month and (through its Houthi proxies) launched missile and drone strikes on Abu Dhabi in January. What can Iran's neighbors expect from it when its coffers are refreshed with tens of billions in oil revenues, free from sanctions?
The principal geopolitical challenge the U.S. faces today is the perception, shared by friends and foes alike, that we are weak, distracted and divided. The Biden administration urgently needs to telegraph strength. An Iran deal that leaves us even weaker and meeker than the previous deal accomplishes the opposite.
(2) Iran's new fiscal year just started. In the regime's new budget, there's a 386% budget increase for the Shahid Ebrahimi Program, an initiative for the IRGC to "strengthen the security infrastructure of the country.
Translation: funding to take hostages and kill dissidents.
(9) But historically, we know the regime spent: ??$700M annually on Hezbollah ??$100M annually on Hamas ??More than $16 billion in funding for terror proxies since 2012.
And we know they always prioritize funding terror over the Iranian people. I don't expect that to change. END
Most of America's Middle Eastern allies - Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, Jordan, Turkey and Egypt - also are expanding ties to Russia and China. America's Middle Eastern partners have rationally concluded that they need to diversify their foreign-policy options, given Washington's reluctance to uphold its defense commitments.
Dramatic scenes of the disorderly U.S. exit from Afghanistan confirmed that America is in retreat. For Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in particular, the lack of a meaningful American response to Iran-sponsored drone attacks on airports and oil facilities in 2019 and 2022 was the straw that broke the camel's back.
The U.S. can't engage effectively in a great-power competition while relinquishing its dominant position in the Middle East. When the void left by the U.S. is being filled by Russian military encroachment, and as China has displaced the U.S. as the lead trading partner for most of the Middle East, allies and partners will need to adjust accordingly.
Moreover, while the U.S. assumes that achieving detente with Iran, beginning with a nuclear deal, would make the region more stable, once most Western sanctions are lifted and American deterrence across the region wanes, Iran's appetite for expansionism will likely increase.
The writer is an adjunct professor at George Washington University's Elliott School for International Affairs and a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
It’s reasonable to assume that, when the Revolutionary Guards “put the fear of God into her,” they told her what she could and could not say when she returned to Britain.
They would have wanted her to shift the focus away from the way they had ill-treated her as their hostage — her solitary confinement, her torture, the mental cruelty of releasing her only to re-incarcerate her and charge her with new crimes after the sentence had been completed. They would have wanted her to present her experience instead as something that could have been solved years ago if only Britain had paid the £400 million debt that it owed for an unfulfilled weapons deal in the 1970s (and which has now apparently been paid).
Now look at what Nazanin actually said and didn’t say at that press conference.
Discussion of the debt, she said, had come up early in her detention. “So I didn’t know the details at the time,” she said. “But I think it was the week two or week three that I was arrested, like six years ago, that they told me, ‘We want something off the Brits. We will not let you go until such time that we get it.’ And they did keep their promise.”
She declined to speak about the months she had spent in solitary confinement or about the psychological and physical torture to which she had been subjected. “Over the past six years, it has been cruel, what happened to me,” she said. “It’s always going to haunt me. There is no other way round it. It will always be with me.”
That was it. Not a word of condemnation of the Iranians.
In other words, she framed her story as a cruel and dreadful experience to which she had been subjected for six years because Britain hadn’t paid the debt it owed Iran.
We don’t know the full story behind the non-payment of that debt. But the actual reason that she and the other dual nationals were incarcerated for so long (and one of them, Morad Tahbaz, an Iranian, US and British citizen who was briefly let out of prison when Nazanin was freed but was then cruelly re-imprisoned) was because the Iranian regime intended to use them in the lethal game of three-dimensional chess it has been playing for decades in its war against the west.
The people responsible for her ordeal were those running the revolutionary Islamic regime in Tehran. Their absence from the story she has chosen to tell strongly suggests that while Nazanin is at last free, her parents are now Iran’s hostages — and so in a sense she still is, too.
Turkey has agreed to return to Israel an ancient inscription from Jerusalem, currently housed in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, an Israeli official told Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site. It is considered one of the most important ancient Hebrew inscriptions in existence.
The gesture comes amid warming ties between Israel and Turkey and was discussed during the landmark visit of President Isaac Herzog to Ankara earlier this week, said a senior official in the Israeli entourage.
Israel has long sought the return of the so-called Siloam Inscription, a 2,700-year-old ancient Hebrew text that provides concrete historical support for the biblical account of the construction of a tunnel which brought water from the Pool of Siloam to the City of David, below the southern edge of the Temple Mount, during the reign of King Hezekiah.
This was widely shared, and it would be a big deal.
Turkish officials denied reports on an Israeli website that the country would return an ancient inscription brought to Turkey from eastern Jerusalem during Ottoman rule.
The artifact, currently in Istanbul Archaeological Museum, is viewed as one of the oldest and most important Hebrew inscriptions in existence.
Turkish diplomatic sources speaking to local media outlets said the claim was “false.”
Diplomatic sources told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Sunday that east Jerusalem, where the inscription was found in 1880, was part of Ottoman territories back then and it is currently a part of Palestinian territories; thus, it was out of the question to return it to Israel, a third country in Turkey's view.
The Palestinians like to claim that there is no archaeological evidence that Jews lived in the region. The Siloam Inscription refutes that. As Wikipedia says,
It is the only known ancient inscription from ancient Israel and Judah which commemorates a public construction work. It is among the oldest extant records of its kind written in Hebrew using the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet,[
New York, March 24 - An activist campaigning for economic, cultural, diplomatic, and other measures against a Levantine country for its structurally-discriminatory policies against a significant minority within its borders, a minority that has suffered displacement for decades, on top of which the country's government lies under effective control of a violent ideological group at the root of so much regional unrest and suffering, had an epiphany today during which he understood he must target Beirut and those who underwrite its dysfunction if he wishes to address the primary injustice he sees in the world.
Chico Howell, 25, of Midwood, Brooklyn, shared his realization Thursday with fellow activists, to some confusion and much anger. "They don't want to hear it," he discovered. "Like, our function as social justice advocates is to fight for the oppressed, and Palestinians in Lebanon face far more oppression from Hezbollah-run Lebanon than even their fellow 'refugees' under Israeli control - of which there are none under direct Israeli control, would you believe? I mean, I know lots of my colleagues like to define 'occupation' and 'control' flexibly, so that Zionists can be blamed whichever way you slice it, but have you seen the restrictions on employment and education that Lebanon places on Palestinian refugees, and has the temerity to call them 'guests' in the country?"
"Don't get me wrong, I'm as anti-Zionist as the next random Black guy from Brooklyn," he insisted. "I'm of two minds about harassing Jews here over what goes on over there. I get it, not the same people, but really, everyone knows they're the same. Whatever. Violence isn't my thing, at least not directly. But if I want to support my fellow People of Color, my Palestinian brothers and sisters, and fight for their right to live free lives, I can't only fight for the ones in Israeli-controlled territory. I also just discovered that the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza even have their own elected government! Nobody tells us that! Now, I know they haven't actually held any elections in more than fifteen years, and I'm ok blaming Israel for that, I really am - but since when is a group with their own elected government under 'occupation'? Now get this - the 'refugee' camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the folks who live there, are not allowed to become Palestinian citizens under Palestinian law that the Palestinian government issued, because otherwise they might decide to just live wherever instead of specifically 'returning' to their ancestors' long-gone homes in Israel itself - the same as when Palestinian President Abbas refused to allow Palestinian refugees in Syria to escape the civil war there by letting them into his territory, lest he lose valuable anti-Israel leverage by reducing Palestinian suffering even a little."
"Now take that and apply it to Lebanon, where they don't even have representation in the government," he continued. "I think we have to rethink our approach, because if we're really about helping Palestinians, we have to- hey, where is everybody going? What is WRONG with you people?"
In Israel, one of the most-shared videos in recent weeks shows a Ukrainian soldier named Alex revealing the contents of his military backpack. After waving his night-vision goggles at the camera, he pulls out a Ukrainian-language translation of Golda, a 2009 biography of Kyiv-born former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
Alex, who is not Jewish, explains that he intends to take the book with him into battle. He says his nickname is Zion, “because I am a Zionist”.
Golda Meir is very popular in Ukraine these days, with a version of her saying about Israel and Arabs still circulating on social media: “If Russia lays down its weapons, there is no war. If Ukraine lays down its weapons, there is no Ukraine.” Yet in his speech to the Knesset on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy quoted a different Meir remark: “We intend to remain alive. Our neighbours want to see us dead. This is not a question that leaves much room for compromise.”
Had Zelenskyy continued in this vein, his speech may have had a warmer reception. Israelis, even those who weren’t yet born in 1973, have a sense of what it’s like to be attacked by larger armies who think their country should not exist. The Israeli army’s ethos is largely about being a smaller, scrappier and smarter force that can successfully take on those who seek to annihilate us. So when Ukrainians quote Golda Meir’s pithy remarks, it resonates in Israel, because we understand — first-hand or through our close family members — what Ukraine is experiencing.
Israelis also see parallels between Ukraine and its current situation because, as politicians in Jerusalem often say, Israel must be able to “defend itself, by itself”. While grateful for military aid from the US, Israel never expected other countries’ soldiers to take part in its wars. Many of its politicians and pundits — myself included — watched the world do next to nothing when Russia amassed its tanks on the border, concluding it was yet further proof that Israel can and must rely on itself. Plus, as Zelenskyy could have pointed out, Russia is an ally of Iran, which is bent on Israel’s destruction.
But rather than highlight this, Zelenskyy chose to focus much of his speech on the Holocaust, a rare misstep in his video tour of parliaments. Israelis, of course, know all about the horrors of the Holocaust. They know, for instance, that it was not a war between the armies of two nations. Rather, it was Nazi Germany’s attempt to erase all Jews from the earth. It was industrial-scale genocide, with gas chambers, death marches and — as at Babyn Yar in Kyiv, which Zelenskyy mentioned — the mass execution of thousands of people lined up in front of ditches.
Remember, both sides get to apply history. The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is a master of the art, carefully tailoring his speeches to each national parliament he addresses, effectively telling one country after another: “Our history is your history. We are you.” He gave the Brits Churchill, the Germans the Berlin Wall, the Yanks Martin Luther King Jr., and the Israelis the Holocaust.
Putin applies history in a diametrically opposite way. “The president has completely lost interest in the present,” the Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar argued in a recent New York Times piece. “The economy, social issues, the coronavirus pandemic, these all annoy him. Instead, he and [his adviser Yuri] Kovalchuk obsess over the past.”
I can see that. Putin’s recent pseudo-scholarly writing — on the origins of World War II and “On the Historical Unity of the Russians and Ukrainians” — confirm the historical turn in his thought.
I disagree with the former Russian foreign minister, Andrey Kozyrev, who told the Financial Times that, for Putin and his cronies, “the cold war never stopped.” That is not the history that interests Putin. As the Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev told Der Spiegel, Putin “expressed outrage that the annexation of the Crimea had been compared with Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938. Putin lives in historic analogies and metaphors. Those who are enemies of eternal Russia must be Nazis.” Moreover:
The hypocrisy of the West has become an obsession of his, and it is reflected in everything the Russian government does. Did you know that in parts of his declaration on the annexation of Crimea, he took passages almost verbatim from the Kosovo declaration of independence, which was supported by the West? Or that the attack on Kyiv began with the destruction of the television tower just as NATO attacked the television tower in Belgrade in 1999?
Yet such recent history is less significant to Putin than the much older history of Russia’s imperial past. I have made this argument here before. Fresh evidence that Putin’s project is not the resurrection of the Soviet Union, but looks back to tsarist imperialism and Orthodoxy, was provided by his speech at the fascistic rally held on Friday at Moscow’s main football stadium. Its concluding allusion to the tsarist admiral Fyodor Ushakov, who made his reputation by winning victories in the Black Sea, struck me as ominous for Odesa.
The Chinese also know how to apply history to contemporary problems, but they do it in a different way again. While Putin wants to transport post-Soviet Russia back into a mythologized tsarist past, Xi remains the heir to Mao Zedong, and one who aspires to a place alongside him in the Chinese Communist Party’s pantheon.
With the Western world transfixed by the horrors in Ukraine, Israel finds itself singled out for criticism and misunderstanding in equal measure. Israel depends on Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, turning a blind eye to the frequent Israeli sorties into Syria to destroy Iranian weaponry being transported there to attack Israel from just across the border.
Despite this, the Biden administration has made a point of pressuring Israel to adopt Western sanctions against Russia. While Israel hasn't officially joined the sanctions campaign, it is ensuring that its financial institutions won't provide a sanctions bypass. Israeli banks have severed relations with sanctioned Russian banks.
But America is being staggeringly two-faced. While pressuring Israel to impose sanctions, it is using Russia to broker the nuclear deal with Tehran (which refuses to negotiate directly with the U.S.). Under the reported terms of this deal, the Biden administration will make Putin the effective gatekeeper for Iran's nuclear program. Worse still, the U.S. proposes to enable Russia to set up a sanctions evasion hub in Iran, where Russia's state-controlled energy company, Rosatom, is set to cash in on its $10 billion contract to expand Tehran's Bushehr nuclear plant.
Ukraine's fate demonstrates that, when a despotic power has nuclear weapons, the world's ability to stop its atrocities is all but paralyzed. Despite this, the Biden administration is set upon a course that will enable terrorist Iran to become a nuclear power.
Last year, the US State Department reinstated funding to UNRWA that wass cut during the Trump administration. But it added conditions to the funding, which included that UNRWA would uphold UN standards on neutrality in their school materials.
UNRWA commits to take all possible measures to ensure funding provided by the United States to UNRWA does not provide assistance to, or otherwise support, terrorists or terrorist organizations. Further, the United States and UNRWA condemn without reserve all manifestations of religious or racial intolerance, incitement to violence, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief, including anti-Semitism, Islamophohia, anti-Catholicism, anti-Arabism, or other forms of discrimination or racism against Palestinians, Israelis or other individuals or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief.
Priority activities for 2021-2022 to facilitate conformance with conditions on U.S. contributions to UNRWA are expected to include, but are not to be limited to:
■ Strengthening Agency oversight of its consistency with UN principles, which includes committing the resources necessary to maintain the neutrality of UNRWA facilities and staff and to monitor the protection of beneficiaries. This includes dedicated U.S. funding to rebuild UNRWA's capacity to conduct four neutrality inspections per facility each year and support staff compliance.
■ Improving the Agency's capacity to review local textbooks and quality assure education materials it uses to identify and take measures to address any content contrary to UN principles in educational materials.
The EU then signed off on a similar plan.
This has caused great anger among Palestinians.
Last year, students in an UNRWA school in Lebanon were surprised and shocked to see that a map published in a geography exam printed the verboten word "Israel."
This month, the Palestinian Land Society started a campaign against the agreement claiming that the US is saying to Palestinians, "Deny you are a Palestinian or perish."
Palestinian historian Salman Abu Sitta wrote a letter to UNRWA demanding that Palestinians revert to creating their own curricula, claiming that this agreement that requires UNRWA to adhere to its own published standards is a violation of numerous international laws. He threatened to escalate the issue to the UN Human Rights Council. He includes over-the-top language like saying that the agreement is a threat that really says "Deny you are Palestinian or else you will starve or your children will roam the streets without education."
Clearly, teaching children facts without bias is a major threat to Palestinian society, whose very existence is built on lies.
The Hura local council quickly condemned the attack and dissociated itself from it, calling upon residents to help stem attempts at escalation. “This act represents only its perpetrator. Under our responsibility as elected officials, we condemn any violence, especially the murder of souls,“ said Habis al-Atauna, the mayor. “In the morning we sat, we talked, and we’re in continual meetings with security officials and municipal leaders to bring calm.”
The family of the terrorist also condemned the attack: “We call upon the Israeli intelligence forces to closely monitor the content running wild online. There’s content here entering our homes like drugs, and we have no control over it. We as Arabs in the Negev, if we have some criticism against the government or its policy, we act only in lawful ways. Any act of violence whatsoever is abhorrent.”
Hura mayor Habis Atawnah told The Times of Israel that schools and nurseries in the small town would devote hours of discussions to the violent attack by one of their residents.
“We will tell them that this is not our way. We want to educate our children and young people to the values of mutual respect and the sanctity of life,” Atawnah said in a phone call.
While part of these responses come from fear that they will be lumped in with the murderer, these and other quotes indicate that they are not pro forma declarations of opposition to terrorism but honest shock and outrage from the Israeli Arabs of the area at the attack.
The contrast with how Palestinian Arabs respond to terror attacks could not be starker.
Terror groups were quick to praise this attack, and the Palestinian Authority referred to al-Kiyan as a "martyr" in its Facebook page before taking it down after Israeli outrage. People handed out sweets in Gaza.
The official PA and Fatah media have been mostly silent about the attack, concerned that the US will again stop funding them. But when there is a murderous attack by Palestinian Arabs against Jews, the Palestinian response is almost invariably celebration. Even horrific attacks on infants are usually praised on Palestinian TV.
We never see Palestinians horrified by these murders. We never see introspection, wondering how the murderers have become so radicalized. We never see Palestinian op-eds wholeheartedly condemning these attacks without blaming them on Israel.
The reactions out of Hura are welcome - but more importantly, they show a level of morality that simply doesn't exist in Palestinian society, media, and schools. There has never been a comparable reaction in any Palestinian media or from any Palestinian official to the murder of Jews. On the contrary - Palestinian media has daily incitement encouraging Arabs to perform attacks exactly like this one.
The residents of Hura prove the depravity of Palestinian society.
The "military wing" of Fatah, the political group led by "mmoderate" PA president Mahmoud Abbas, has praised the Beersheva terror attack Tuesday that killed four Jews - including two women and a rabbi.
A military statement issued by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - Palestine
About the heroic Beersheba operation, which led to the killing of 4 settlers
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades congratulate the heroic stabbing and ramming operation carried out by one of the liberated Palestinian prisoners in the occupied city of Beersheba, which led to the killing of four settlers and the injury of others.
The battalions consider that this heroic operation comes in the context of the natural response to the escalation of terrorism of the Zionist enemy and its continuous settlers in all Palestinian cities and villages, and as the best response to the incursions of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the continuous aggression against our people in all its places of residence.
This operation came to confirm our people's rejection of the policies of the criminal enemy in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, and to reaffirm our people's support for the option of armed struggle, and to also confirm that our people, who defeat their enemy with the simplest tools, will not accept oppression or surrender.
We also call on the masses of our struggling Palestinian people in the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza and the occupied interior to start a comprehensive revolution in the face of the plans of the criminal Zionist enemy, to wrest victory, and for the blessed month of Ramadan to be a fuse for volcanoes of anger that erupts in the face of the usurpers of our land and our sanctities.
The "moderate" Fatah political party's armed wing supports murdering Jews.
It regards all Jews in Israel - and only Jews - as "settlers."
It says that Jews peacefully visiting the Temple Mount is justification for murder.
It calls for more murders of Jews during the "holy month" of Ramadan.
Sometimes, the media reluctantly acknowledges that Hamas praises terror attacks. But it almost never notes that Hamas rival Fatah, framed as the moderate solution to Hamas, is exactly the same.
United Nations Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk accused Israel of apartheid in a report submitted Tuesday to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
“With the eyes of the international community wide open, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world,” wrote Lynk, whose full title is “Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.”
Lynk is slated to formally release his report on Thursday ahead of a debate on Agenda Item 7, the permanent HRC item reserved for Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians and other Arabs.
This is Lynk’s final report in his six-year term.
“The political system of entrenched rule in the occupied Palestinian territory which endows one racial-national-ethnic group with substantial rights, benefits and privileges while intentionally subjecting another group to live behind walls, checkpoints and under a permanent military rule… satisfies the prevailing evidentiary standard for the existence of apartheid,” wrote Lynk.
The Canadian academic argued Israel is pursuing a strategy of “strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian territory into separate areas of population control, with Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem physically divided from one another.”
Israel uses Gaza, Lynk claimed, for the “indefinite warehousing of an unwanted population of two million Palestinians.”
The issuing of thousands of work permits for Palestinian laborers in the West Bank and Gaza to work in Israel amounts to the “exploitation of labor of a racial group,” according to the report.
Lynk also posited that “torture continues to be used in practice by Israel against Palestinians in detention.”
The report, the main body of which does not mention terrorist groups Hamas or Islamic Jihad, says Israel “must cooperate in good faith with the Palestinian leadership to completely end the occupation and realize a genuine two-state solution.”
Israel and Jewish organizations blasted Lynk as hostile to Israel and the report as baseless.
Invented legal standards
Lynk continues to promote invented international law standards regarding the law of occupation. He states:
“By their very nature, occupations are required to be built with wood, not concrete. Accordingly, Israel’s occupation must be temporary, it must be short-term, it is prohibited from annexing even a millimeter of occupied territory, any changes to the occupied territory must be as minimal as possible, it must comply fully with international law and United Nations resolutions, and it must cooperate in good faith with the Palestinian leadership to completely end the occupation and realize a genuine two state solution.”
Contrary to Lynk’s claims, occupation is not illegal, nor is its duration proscribed under international humanitarian law (IHL). Article 6(3) of Geneva IV, however, limits the applicability of certain provisions of the Convention in occupied territory to one year after the ‘close of military operations’:
In the case of occupied territory, the application of the present Convention shall cease one year after the general close of military operations; however, the Occupying Power shall be bound, for the duration of the occupation, to the extent that such Power exercises the functions of government in such territory, by the provisions of the following Articles of the present Convention: 1 to 12, 27, 29 to 34, 47, 49, 51, 52, 53, 59, 61 to 77, 143.
In the absence of an IHL rule prohibiting prolonged occupation, Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs, as well as UN rapporteurs, have sought to redefine the legal status of the West Bank from “occupation” to a situation of apartheid. Merging a discourse of “prolonged occupation” with allegations of apartheid began in the 1980s, coalescing further during preparations for the discredited UN Durban conference in 2001 and, following sustained advocacy by John Dugard and Richard Falk, Lynk has now taken up this narrative in his report.
Regarding the apartheid slander, Lynk relies on the invented definition proffered by Amnesty in its February 2022 report. See NGO Monitor’s Analyzing Amnesty’s Antisemitic Apartheid Attack, False Knowledge as Power: Deconstructing Definitions of Apartheid that Delegitimize the Jewish State, and Neo-Orientalism: Deconstructing claims of apartheid in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for more information on how Amnesty and other NGOs manipulate the definition of apartheid to target Israel.
.@MichaelLynk5 pretends he made a new finding. In fact, Lynk played a leadership role in several Arab lobby groups in Canada, including CEPAL which promoted “Israeli Apartheid Week” events. Lynk joined anti-Israel petitions and “One State” conferences seeking to eliminate Israel. pic.twitter.com/dx2qHFpLjn
A new report by NGO Monitor debunks the accusation of apartheid against Israel and assesses whether apartheid, as previously defined, is applicable to Israel and territories under its military administration.
This new report, titled “Neo-Orientalism: Deconstructing Claims of Apartheid in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict” and written by legal expert Joshua Kern, and legal adviser and U.N. representative for NGO Monitor Anne Herzberg, expands on a previous report published in December that sought to rectify the lack of a coherent and legally substantiated definition of the crime of apartheid.
According to NGO Monitor, “accusations of this crime against humanity have been historically leveled at the State of Israel and its officials by powerful NGOs such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), B’Tselem and, most recently, Amnesty International. The lack of an accepted definition of the crime of apartheid has been harnessed by central actors in the campaign to delegitimize Israel, who apply the term to characterize the political and legal nature of Israel’s government, and in many cases to delegitimize the notion of Israel’s identity as a Jewish state.”
“Our report is for legal professionals, academics, practitioners and government officials,” Herzberg told JNS, “but it is also for those who are looking for answers to the false and often malicious charges by NGO and U.N. Rapporteurs who grossly misrepresent the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the legal basis for Israel as a Jewish state, and the nature of Israel’s democracy and legal system.”
In “A Threshold Crossed,” published in April 2021, HRW accused Israel of “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
Not to be outdone, Amnesty International took this accusation further on Feb. 1, when it released its own report, “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity.”
According to NGO Monitor, “Amnesty’s 280-page report largely echoes those of the HSRC [Human Sciences Research Council] and HRW. It does, however, express (while HRW and HSRC only did so implicitly) a thesis that the establishment and maintenance of Israel as a Jewish state institutionalized apartheid.”
Zelenskyy has left us Israelis with a bad taste in our
mouths. He’s a hero the world over, and we want to like him, too. But it’s
difficult for Israelis to like him after the things he said in his address to
the Israeli Knesset on Sunday. President Zelenskyy hit all the wrong notes,
pointing an accusatory finger at Israel with one criticism after another.
Zelenskyy criticized Israel for not doing enough to help
Ukraine, for not supplying the right kind of aid, for not applying pressure to Russian
businesses. The Ukrainian president asserted that Ukrainians saved Jews during
the Holocaust, while Jews have turned their backs on the Ukrainian people.
One can keep asking why we can't get weapons from you. Or
why Israel has not imposed strong sanctions against Russia. Why it doesn’t put
pressure on Russian business. But it is up to you, dear brothers and sisters,
to choose the answer. And you will have to live with this answer, people of
Israel.
Ukrainians have made their choice. Eighty years ago. They
rescued Jews. That is why the Righteous Among the Nations are among us. People
of Israel, now you have such a choice.
Ukrainians greeting arriving Germans in Western Ukraine in the summer of 1941
President Zelenskyy accused Israel of indifference, of refusing
to choose sides, and of immorality, too, questioning whether Israel’s imagined
inaction was premeditated,
for which, he suggested, we’d one day be held to account in the final battle
between good and evil.
Can you explain why we still turn to the whole world, to
many countries for help? We ask you for your help? What is it?
Indifference? Premeditation? Or mediation without choosing a party? I will
leave you a choice of answer to this question. And I will note only one thing —
indifference kills. Premeditation is often erroneous. Mediation between states
is possible, but not between good and evil.
The worst part of Zelenskyy’s antagonistic speech, however,
was when he called the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, a repeat of the Final
Solution.
When the Nazi party raided Europe and wanted to destroy
everything. Destroy everyone and leave nothing from us, nothing from you. They
called it ‘the final solution to the Jewish issue.'
You remember that. And I’m sure you will never forget!
Listen to what is sounding now in Moscow. Hear how these words are said again:
‘Final solution.’ But already in relation, so to speak, to us, to the
‘Ukrainian issue.'
This is a distortion of the truth. The Final Solution was an
attempt to eradicate a people. Putin is not looking for that. It’s not his
goal. What he wants is to capture territory. Putin doesn’t care how many
Ukrainians he has to murder in order to recapture Ukraine. But his actions are only
about recapturing Ukraine. The
killing is indiscriminate.
The goal of Hitler, on the other hand, was to kill all Jews
dead. Hitler had his men hunt the Jews down, one by one. His soldiers kept
count of every murdered Jew, recording the names and dates of each Jew they
killed. Hitler transported Jews to death camps in windowless cattle cars so
packed, the occupants could not sit down. Once at the camps, Jews deemed
incapable of work were gassed and burned straight from the cars. The remainder
were worked almost to death before being gassed and burned like the other Jews before them.
Now that was
systematic genocide, with the Final Solution a means to an end: ridding the world
of that eternal problem, the Jew. And far from making the right “choice,” the Ukrainians
pitched right in. Ukraine did not save its Jews. It helped to murder them.
There were an estimated 40 million Ukrainians when Nazi
Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Between 1.2 and 1.6 million Jews were
murdered over the next few years, with the enthusiastic collaboration of the
vast, vast majority of Ukrainian civilians. Ukraine as a whole was delighted to
see the extermination of its Jews. And here is the number of Ukrainian
righteous among the nations who saved Jews, according to Yad Vashem: 2,619.
As shocking as these numbers are, scratch the surface, and
you’ll find more Ukrainian antisemitism. Let us go back, for example to 1648
and the Chmielnicki
Uprising (emphasis added).
Bogdan Chmielnicki, leader of the Cossack and peasant
uprising against Polish rule in the Ukraine in 1648 which resulted in the
destruction of hundreds of Jewish communities . . .
In the course of their campaigns Chmielnicki's followers
acted with savage and unremitting cruelty against the Jews. . .
In the annals of the Jewish people, Chmielnicki is branded
as "Chmiel the Wicked," one of the most sinister oppressors of the
Jews of all generations, the initiator of the terrible 1648–49 massacres
(gezerot ta ve-tat). The Jewish population of Ukraine had been an active factor
in colonizing the steppes before the massacres. Many Jews settled in the
villages, and were occupied as lessees (see *arenda ) or administrators of the
estates of the nobles; they also played a role in developing the towns and in
their armed defense at times of danger. However, as agents of the Polish nobles
and Polish rule, they incurred the hatred of the Ukrainian serfs. Both Polish and Ukrainian modern
antisemitic historiography has attempted to attribute the overwhelming
responsibility for the terrible bloodshed during the rebellion on the Jewish
lessee and agent, thus justifying the singular cruelty directed against the
Jews. But the reports of Jewish
persecution of the peasants, or offenses against their religious feelings
caused by the lease of churches to the Jews, find no confirmation whatsoever in
the sources. . . .
It was during the months of May to November 1648 that most
of the massacres took place. At the beginning of the uprising, the communities
east of the Dnieper were immediately destroyed. Those Jews who did not manage
to escape or join the Polish army of Wisniowiecki on its retreat westward met
violent deaths; some converted to Christianity to save their lives; many were
seized by the Tatars and sold into slavery. During the summer, the persecutions
spread to the western bank of the Dnieper and by the middle of June there were
no more Jews in the villages and the open cities.
The first large-scale massacre took place in Nemirov, into
which the Cossacks penetrated in the disguise of Polish soldiers. Jews died en
masse as martyrs when faced with the demand that they convert to Christianity:
"They arrived … as if they had come with the Poles … in order that he open
the gates of the fortress … and they succeeded … and they massacred about 6,000
souls in the town … and they drowned several hundreds in the water and by all
kinds of cruel torments. In the synagogue, before the Holy Ark, they
slaughtered with butchers' knives … after which they destroyed the synagogue
and took out all the Torah books … they tore them up … and they laid them out …
for men and animals to trample on … they also made sandals of them … and
several other garments" ( *Shabbetai b. Meir ha-Kohen , Megillah Afah). .
.
It is impossible to
determine accurately the number of victims who perished, but it undoubtedly
amounted to tens of thousands; the Jewish chronicles mention 100,000 killed and
300 communities destroyed.
This is the Ukraine we know. The Ukraine we know did not save the Jews during the Holocaust,
but were eager, active participants in the shedding of Jewish blood. The
Ukraine we know, still lauds Bogdan Chmielnicki, sees him as a Ukrainian hero,
and named a Ukrainian military honor after him, the Order of Bogdan
Chmielnicki. Two weeks ago, in fact, Zelenskyy
awarded the mayors of embattled Ukrainian cities with just this military honor.
Today I decided to award orders to the heads of regional
administrations and mayors who have excelled in the defence of their
communities.
The Order of Bogdan Chmielnicki of the Third
Degree is awarded to:
Head of Kharkiv Regional State Administration Oleh
Vasyliovych Syniehubov.
Head of Mykolaiv Regional State Administration Vitalii Oleksandrovych
Kim.
Head of Donetsk Regional State Administration Pavlo
Oleksandrovych Kyrylenko.
Head of Luhansk Regional State Administration Serhiy
Volodymyrovych Haidai.
Head of Chernihiv Regional State Administration Vyacheslav
Anatoliyovych Chaus.
Head of Sumy Regional State Administration Dmytro
Oleksiyovych Zhyvytskyi.
I asked Katarina Matlin, my expatriate Ukrainian friend, to
verify the above translation and she did so, commenting that Chmielnicki is a
revered figure in Ukraine.
“The Chmielnicki award is the Ukrainian military award for
bravery. To Ukrainians, it’s no different than Americans giving an award in the
name of George Washington. Chmielnicki is celebrated as a war hero. There are
statues of him all over Ukraine, streets named after him, his birthday is
celebrated as a national holiday. We used to read poetry about him in Ukrainian
class.
“The president, irrespective of ethnicity, wouldn’t pick that as a hill to die on.”
Kyiv monument memorializing Bogdan Chmielnicki
And still, we have to wonder at the inaction of a Jew in
power who does nothing to alter the fact that a Ukrainian military award is
named after Chmielnicki, a man whose name is synonymous with Jewish bloodshed.
But Zelenskyy’s Judaism is selective. When he wants a favor, he’s Jewish. The
rest of the time, he’s like every other (antisemitic) Ukrainian.
Portrait of Bogdan Chmielnicki
Katarina reminded me that Western Ukrainians formed fighting
units and fought alongside the Nazis. “Their biggest achievement was murdering
the vast majority of Ukrainian Jews, including my family. Most guards in the
concentration camps were Ukrainians.”
John Demjanjuk in the photo for his Trawniki card.
Many Jews are willing to let history slide, to let bygones
be bygones, to empathize with the Ukrainian people under siege. These empathetic
Jews say that was then, this is now.
Katarina, however, says otherwise:
“Their antisemitism today is as rampant as ever. They’re
already blaming Jews for this war, just like they’ve blamed us for everything
else over the millennia. Cossacks are celebrated as a part of Ukrainian
heritage just like American cowboys are celebrated in the US. I had Cossack
action figures growing up. It’s no different than American kids playing with GI
Joe. Anti-Semitism is so ‘normal’ in Ukrainian history that it doesn’t even get
a side note.”
None of this should surprise any Jewish person anywhere. And
this is precisely why Zelenskyy’s address to Israel was so bad. His words only
added fuel to the Ukrainian antisemitism that is already on fire, and spreading
fast to the rest of the world. Even those who traditionally support Israel, are
now reprimanding her, and trying to force her into acting against her own best
interests. This sort of criticism may not be antisemitism, but it certainly
fans the flames of hate.
Israel’s reaction to #Ukraine will have bearing on future aid from the US to #Israel. Pay it forward
Zelenskyy’s own criticisms of Israel began way before his
most recent address. Zelenskyy earlier accused Prime Minister Bennett of
disloyalty, asserting that Bennett had not “wrapped himself in the Ukrainian
flag.” At every possible turn it seems, Zelenskyy has examined Israel and found her
wanting.
It is now an unavoidable conclusion that criticism of Israel
from Ukrainian officials over the past several weeks has come from the top
down. From the Ukrainian ambassador to Israel finding fault with Israeli aid
and Israel’s handling of Ukrainian refugees, to Ukraine’s Foreign Minister
Dmytro Kuleba accusing El Al of evading sanctions by accepting payments “soaked
in Ukrainian blood,” it’s all a part of the antisemitic party line. The
Ukrainian fish, like every other fish, rots from the head down.
Israel might have hoped that President Zelenskyy, being a
Jew himself, might refrain from fomenting another Chmielnicki-style Uprising.
Instead, the hate begins with Zelenskyy, trickling down to the others to a man.
Zelenskyy may not be motivated by antisemitism, but unfortunately, he inspires
it in others.
Zelenskyy has put Israel between a rock and a hard place. Do
we choose the Ukrainians, or protect ourselves from Hezbollah and Iran? Do we
jump to follow the commands of a Jew who marries out, baptizes his kids, and
then pulls the Jew card in an effort to get the Jews to cough up whatever he
demands, regardless of the precarious situation it would put us in, were we to fulfill
them?
For most Israelis, there’s no contest. We choose to protect
our own people from terror and worse over the things Zelenskyy wants us to do
for a people with a long and well known history of antisemitic cruelty.
We realize that the Ukrainian president may not even be
conscious of the fact that he is exciting Jew-hatred in his countrymen and the
world. For him, it is not intentional. It’s just a way of life. From Zelenskyy’s
perspective, Judaism is a cudgel he can wield against Israel’s tender brow to
get what he wants and needs for his people. He may not know he is feeding the
hate. But he also may not care. Much as Putin will, without a care, kill as many Ukrainians as necessary to capture Ukraine.
To the entire world, Zelenskyy is a hero. But to Israel, Zelenskyy
is a threat, illustrating an unfortunate truth: one can be Jewish and still be
a casual antisemite.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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