Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

12/28 Links Pt2: PM, ministers lay into Kerry’s ‘obsessive, skewed’ speech on conflict; UN to fund blacklist of companies in 'settlements'

From Ian:

Kerry: Two-state solution ‘only path to peace,’ but we won’t impose deal

US secretary of state John Kerry on Wednesday laid out his “comprehensive vision” for the future of Middle East peacemaking, saying that a two-state solution was the “only way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state,” but promising that the US would not seek further UN action on the conflict, days after President Barack Obama infuriated Israel’s for the decision not to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlement activity.
In a speech that lasted well over an hour, Kerry described settlements as an important obstacle to achieving an agreement between the sides and that Israeli actions in the West Bank were putting the two-state solution, which he said was the sole path to peace, “in serious jeopardy.”
Kerry argued that settlement construction in the West Bank was being “strategically placed in locations that make two states impossible” and said the “the status quo is leading toward one state, or perpetual occupation.”
With less than a month as secretary of state, Kerry sought to champion the two-state outcome he worked to achieve throughout the last four years, saying it was the only path forward. Yet his address comes in the backdrop of incoming president Donald Trump signaling he may not be committed to the two-state framework.
“The two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” Kerry said. “It is the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state living in peace and security with its neighbors.”
“It is the only way to ensure a future of freedom and dignity for the Palestinian people and it is an important way of advancing United States interests in the region,” he added of the two-solution, which he said was “now in serious jeopardy.”

PM, ministers lay into Kerry’s ‘obsessive, skewed’ speech on conflict

Israel’s leadership was quick to deride US Secretary of State John Kerry’s vision for a solution to the Middle East conflict Wednesday, shortly after the American diplomat once again championed the two-state solution and staunchly defended the Obama administration’s decision to allow the UN Security Council to declare Israeli settlements illegal.
Responding to the speech, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement to the media that, “Like the Security Council resolution that Secretary Kerry advanced at the UN, his speech tonight was skewed against Israel.
“For over an hour, Kerry obsessively dealt with settlements and barely touched upon the root of the conflict — Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries.”
Education Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home party, said he had no intention of allowing Palestinians to set up a “terror state” alongside Israel.
“Kerry quoted me three times anonymously [in his speech] to show that we are opposed to a Palestinian state,” Bennett wrote in Hebrew on Twitter. “It’s true. If it’s up to me, we will not establish another terror state in the heart of the land [of Israel].”

PMW: Support PMW: Look what we accomplished this year!

"Palestinian Media Watch showed how the PA sought to deceive international donors..."
[MP Joan Ryan, Labour Party in UK Parliament, June 13, 2016]
"Anyone in this parliament who has been to the many sessions of Palestinian Media Watch that have taken place here over the last 15 years has seen some of the appalling material..."
[MP Michael Danby, Labour in Australian Parliament, Nov. 22, 2016]
"Antisemitic statements and incitement to violence by Palestinian leaders are documented by Palestinian Media Watch... Aid to Palestine should therefore be conditioned."
[MP Mikael Oscarsson, in Swedish Parliament, Jan. 19, 2016]
"The Norwegian Foreign Ministry confirms Palestinian Media Watch's claim." [TV news report, NRK TV (Norway), April 24, 2016]
"Itamar Marcus [PMW director]... has documented the flow of money to the [terrorist] prisoners... " German MP Volker Beck: "Supporting people who have committed terrorist acts against Israel or Israeli citizens cannot be funded under any circumstances by the PA, when Germany supports them financially." [TV news report, Channel 1 (Germany), Aug. 25, 2016]
"The donor community is helping the PA basically pay people to slay other people and then a stipend is given..."
[Congressman Ed Royce referring to PMW report
in House Foreign Affairs Committee, April 13, 2016]

1) He did it on Shabbos. Many people will read this and say, "What do you mean Shabbos? He did it before Chanuka!"

They're not wrong. Obama pushed the resolution to a vote before a Jewish holiday as if to twist the knife in that much deeper. Roseanne Barr has pointed out the similarity here to how the Nazis operated during the Holocaust.

nazis enacted anti jewish laws on the eve of jewish holidays-exactly as @POTUS has done on eve of Hanukkah. Don't light candles 2night, BHO!
— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) December 24, 2016

Barr's point is valid. The Nazis purposely scheduled the deportation of Jews from the Zychlin Ghetto to the Chelmno camp to take place on Purim, March 3, 1942. Half a year later, Amon Goeth and his SS-men took 50 Jews from their barracks at Auschwitz and shot them dead. Because it was Yom Kippur.

But there is another point to make and that is that the Jewish Sabbath takes precedence over most holidays and certainly over Chanuka. It's the holiest day of the week. And it's the day that observant Jews take a break from all media.

By pushing the vote through on the Sabbath, Obama effectively rendered mute the people most affected by this resolution: the ones who see yishuv haaretz (settling the land) as fulfilling God's will; the ones who set Jerusalem above their chiefest joy (Psalms 137:5-6). He, Obama, made it illegal for Jews to live in Jerusalem or pray at the wall. And he did that on the holy Sabbath day, while they were out of contact with the wider world. It is sneaky, evil, and underhanded.

2) The Security Council applauded the results. The always eloquent Nachman Kahana writes:

"The vote is not the real story here. The more damning action of the Security Council occurred after the voting, when all the members stood and clapped at the results."

Rabbi Kahana draws a comparison between the behavior of the Philistines before Samson's final heroic act (Judges, chapter 16) and the behavior of the Security Council to the State of Israel. The Philistines ridicule Samson and are said to be in "high spirits." By the same token, says Rabbi Kahana, "The clapping at the end of the vote at the Security Council disparaged, denigrated, belittled, trivialized, ridiculed and discredited the Jew and the Jewish State. . .

"As a consequence of the Philistines’ ridicule and clapping, the Temple to Dagon was destroyed. The Security Council’s ridicule and clapping will bring about the obliteration of the institution that has lost its ability to discern between right and wrong."

Amen. Can't be soon enough for this gal.

3) The smiling Obama Christmas photo POTUS tweet. Nothing like tweeting a photo of the Obama family wearing self-satisfied smiles, because hey! O just screwed the Jews! (And any day that happens is a holiday in the Obama White House)

May your home be filled with peace and joy. Merry Christmas! pic.twitter.com/ZfJKus2SsV
— The First Lady (@FLOTUS) December 25, 2016

4) Alan Dershowitz telling us that Obama is the worst president ever. Dershowitz has been everywhere since the lead up to the resolution, playing up to the cameras, writing articles, giving interviews. And we should listen to him because? He voted for the man?? Stumped for him TWICE?

“He called me into the Oval Office before the election and said to me, ‘Alan, I want your support. And I have to tell you, I will always have Israel’s back.’ I didn’t realize that what he meant was that he’d…stab them in the back.”

Funny. Because a lot of us who didn't go to Harvard did know he'd do exactly that. We tried to tell you, Alan. Do we now have to listen to you tell us just how bad he/this is?

5) Obama ran roughshod over American tradition by doing something lame ducks just don't do. Seth Frantzman wrote a comprehensive list of abstentions by the U.S. on anti-Israel resolutions. This writer checked each abstention. Not one abstention occurred during a president's final month in office. To break with longstanding U.S. policy during the lame duck period is just not done. Basically this is Obama thumbing his nose at America and its longstanding presidential tradition.

6) No one called the Arabs out for their ongoing terror during the Security Council meeting.

7) No one called the Arabs out for refusing to negotiate during the Security Council meeting.

8) The media paints Israel the violent party. Writing about the reaction of the Israeli government to the U.S. abstention, Washington Post writer Ruth Eglash characterizes MK Naftali Bennett as a "more-militant" voice (which by default must make Netanyahu at least "somewhat militant"):

"Netanyahu’s anger was matched by more-militant voices in his right-wing coalition.
"Education Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the ultranationalist Jewish Home party, held a news conference at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, one of Judaism’s holiest sites, saying the city has been the capital of Jews for 3,000 years."

What is it that makes either of these government figures "militant?" Is holding a news conference at the Western Wall "militant?" Are Netanyahu and Bennett militant because they think Jews should be able to live in Jerusalem? Pray in Jerusalem?

The answer, of course, is that neither one of them is militant. The tag reflects only the Washington Post's bias, or at least that of Ruth Eglash.

9) The pretense that Jews building homes is something illegal, evil, and nasty. There is nothing wrong with people building homes. Therefore there is nothing wrong with Jews building homes. There is certainly nothing wrong and everything right with Jews building homes in their indigenous territory. The thing that's really nasty, evil, and wrong is that anyone at all would demand that even one square inch of the Holy Land be Judenrein. Absolutely. Evil.

10) Obama's brazen effrontery to God. God gave Israel to the Jews. Forever (See: Genesis 13:14-17). Who is Obama to say it is illegal for Jews to live in the land God gave them?? (The nerve.)

But hey, it's Chanuka. And Chanuka is when we Jews remember stuff. We remember our victory over the Greeks. We remember getting our Temple back. We remember regaining our religious freedoms and ridding Jerusalem of Hellenist culture.

Chanuka is a time to ponder all God's miracles for us. Oil, for instance, that lasted way longer than it possibly could. Not to mention, the disappearance of a powerful culture.

Yes! We outlived the Greeks.

And we'll outlive Obama, too.

Meantime, I rather enjoy imagining him being struck by lightning. Repeatedly. (A girl can dream.)

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12/28 Links Pt1: Trump slams Obama for his 'disdain' and 'disrespect' toward Israel; How Pro-Israel Dems Lost the Party

From Ian:

Transcript claims to show US worked with Palestinians on UN resolution

An Egyptian paper published what it claims are the transcripts of meetings between top US and Palestinian officials that, if true, would corroborate Israeli accusations that the Obama administration was behind last week’s UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements.
At the same time, a report in an Israeli daily Tuesday night pointed to Britain helping draft the resolution and high drama in the hours leading up to the vote, as Jerusalem tried to convince New Zealand to bury the Security Council measure.
In a meeting in early December with top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, US Secretary of State John Kerry told the Palestinians that the US was prepared to cooperate with the Palestinians at the Security council, Israel’s Channel 1 TV said, quoting the Egyptian Al-Youm Al-Sabea newspaper.
Also present at the meeting according to the report were US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and Majed Faraj, director of the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence Service.

White House: No coordination with Erekat, leaked transcript ‘total fabrication’

The White House on Wednesday denied any coordination with the Palestinians over the formulation of Friday’s United Nations Security Council Resolution condemning Israeli settlements, and called recently leaked transcripts of conversations between top US and Palestinian officials, published by an Egyptian newspaper, a “total fabrication.”
According to the report in Al-Youm Al-Sabea, a meeting took place earlier this month between Secretary of State John Kerry, national security adviser Susan Rice and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, during which the three strategized on how to push forward a resolution that would be acceptable to the US.
While Erekat did lead a Palestinian delegation to Washington this month, no such meeting between all three individuals took place, according to National Security Council spokesman Ned Price.
A State Department statement released at the time confirmed that Erekat met separately with Kerry and Rice, but no tripartite meeting between all of them occurred, said Price.
“This alleged meeting… never happened,” Price told The Times of Israel on Wednesday morning. “The ‘transcript’ is a total fabrication.”

Phone Call From Biden Said to Precipitate Ukraine’s UN ‘Yes’ Vote

The repercussions of Friday’s United Nations Security Council vote in favor of a resolution urging Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory” continue to reverberate. The resolution, which declared Jewish settlement anywhere in the West Bank including the Old City of Jerusalem to be in violation of international law, passed by 14-0, with the United States abstaining—a game-changing action that broke with decades of diplomatic guarantees to Israel and which enraged American Jewish political leaders in both parties.
A wealth of evidence is now emerging that, far from simply abstaining from a UN vote, which is how the Administration and its press circle at first sought to characterize its actions, the anti-Israel resolution was actively vetted at the highest levels of the U.S. Administration, which then led a pressure campaign—both directly and through Great Britain—to convince other countries to vote in favor of it.
Tablet has confirmed that one tangible consequence of the high-level U.S. campaign was a phone call from Vice President Joseph Biden to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which succeeded in changing Ukraine’s vote from an expected abstention to a “yes.” According to one U.S. national security source, the Obama Administration needed a 14-0 vote to justify what the source called “the optics” of its own abstention.
“Did Biden put pressure on the Ukrainians? Categorically yes,” said a highly-placed figure within the Israeli government with strong connections to Ukrainian government sources, who confirmed to Tablet that the Americans had put direct pressure on both the Ukrainian delegation—and on Poroshenko personally in Kiev. “That Biden told them to do it is 1000% true,” the source affirmed.

Trump slams Obama for his 'disdain' and 'disrespect' toward Israel

US President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday took to social media to rail against the Obama administration's treatment of Israel, criticizing the White House's foreign policy decisions and its most recent move at the United Nations.
"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect," Trump wrote on Twitter hours before US Secretary of State John Kerry was scheduled to give a speech on Middle East peace.
He continued by stating: "[Israel] used to have a great friend in the U.S., but... not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)!"
"Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!," the president-elect added.
Shortly after Trump issued his remarks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the incoming American commander-in-chief for backing Israel.
"President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel!" Netanyahu wrote on Twitter.

Al Jazeera looks at modern antisemitism. What does it leave out?

From Al Jazeera:

It's been called the world's oldest hatred. In back-to-back debates in this UpFront special, we discuss anti-Semitism.

In the first debate, a panel explores the rise - or return - of anti-Semitism among the far right, and discusses if Donald Trump's election has emboldened those attitudes.

And in the second debate, we discuss anti-Semitism among the left, and the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

Part 1: Anti-Semitism on the political right

Since Donald Trump's election victory in November, anti-Semitic attacks have been on the rise in the US, with swastikas and other Nazi imagery increasingly popping up.

Has far-right anti-Semitism been energised by Trump's election win?

"It's not so much that this anti-Semitism didn't exist before; it probably did exist but it was under the radar," says Haaretz senior columnist Chemi Shalev. "The candidacy of Donald Trump brought forth or emboldened all sorts of anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish groups who nobody paid attention to any more."

Hadas Gold, a media reporter for Politico magazine, says: "Some of my colleagues got actual letters to their personal addresses at home - it was rather frightening. I mean, it's never pleasant to see your face with a bullet hole through it. These direct threats were something new, and they were almost always directly connected to Donald Trump."

In the first part of this UpFront special, Chemi Shalev and Hadas Gold discuss the troubling resurgence of anti-Semitism among the hard right.

Part 2: Anti-Semitism on the political left

With anti-Semitism on the rise across parts of Europe, is it something the left and supporters of the Palestinians need to tackle urgently, or is anti-Semitism being used and abused by supporters of Israel?

"Just because sometimes not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish, doesn't mean that it never is," says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, who also writes for The Jewish Chronicle. "Sometimes it is, the way it's expressed. If it borrows from or draws on the language or imagery of old style anti-Jewish prejudice, then it is."

Israeli-Canadian Lisa Goldman, cofounder of the left-wing Israeli journal 972, says: "I do see it on the rise in Europe on the left, but the crude anti-Semitism I'm seeing comes from the radical right."

Palestinian-American human rights lawyer Noura Erakat, who is also an author and academic, says: "I think that obviously there is a misunderstanding that's constructed. But at the end of the day, those who are part of a movement against Zionism are part of a liberatory movement not only for Palestinians, but it has an emancipator potential for Jewish people as well."

In the second part of this UpFront special, Jonathan Freedland, Lisa Goldman and Noura Erakat debate anti-Semitism among the political left.

So five leftists discuss modern antisemitism. Not surprisingly, they are enthusiastic to discuss rightist antisemitism and link it to Trump - and to discount leftist antisemitism as really justified anti-Zionism. There is a little disagreement about whether the Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel can be conflated with Zionism, but all agree that Jews can hate Israel's government.

What they don't discuss at all is whether the obsession over Israel by the Left is a form of modern antisemitism. They create a straw man that criticizing Israel isn't antiemitism, when no one says it is. It is the obsessive, deranged hate of Israel and only Israel that is antisemitic, and that is exclusive to the Left. It is the demand that Israel, and only Israel cease to exist that is antisemitic. It is the crazed equation of Israel to the Nazis that is antisemitic, something that they simply do not want to address here.

No wonder they didn't want to discuss it.

This is Al Jazeera's idea of "balance."

What about Arab antisemitism?

It is dismissed with a sentence. The moderator asks Noura Erakat about the undeniable antisemitism in the Middle East, and she responds that she doesn't deny it but the Palestinian movement is completely against it.

The host, of course, is happy to leave it at that and not to mention the constant stream of antisemitic rhetoric on Palestinian TV, other media and schools, and the far worse antisemitism in Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere.

Erakat also makes up a novel idea. She claims that there are only two areas under League of Nations mandates that did not achieve self-determination when the League was dissolved (she calls it the "League of Mandates") were Namibia and Palestine, and "Palestine" remains the only such area that is still under colonial rule.

Of course, Israel was the fulfillment of the League of Nations mandate for a Jewish homeland when it became independent. Legally, all Palestine institutions became Israeli institutions except for the areas illegally annexed by Jordan or administered by Egypt. Noura's ancestors did not complain when they became Jordanian citizens. Erakat is pretending that Israel's control of Judea and Samaria is a continuation of British colonialism - as she asserts that people need to "understand history."

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You can' t make this up.

Someone forwarded me the latest (and last) newsletter from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, ICAHD. The organization says that it is closing its Israel operations:

For various reasons – refusing to NGO-ify ICAHD and turn it into a domesticated organization doing the donors’ bidding; losing young Israeli activists who prefer limited and reactive actions on the ground to strategic and systematic (but, granted, less adrenaline-generating) work within an organization; and, perhaps primarily, the inability of our critical Palestinian and Israeli partners to formulate our version of a just solution and develop the mechanisms for effectively advocating for it – we closed our office in Jerusalem and shifted our advocacy efforts to our chapters abroad: the UK, Germany, Finland, the US and Australia.

But before they disappear from the Israeli scene, they proved that they are hypocrites in the purest sense of the word.

Commenting on the UNSC Resolution 2334, they write:

The vote has no immediate repercussions. It doesn't contain sanctions on Israel for ignoring and violating it -- which the Israeli government has already says [sic] it will. The only genuinely effective way to end settlement construction and all other Israeli attempts to make the Occupation permanent is to enforce the the Geneva Convention, which would dismantle Israeli settlements.

The Geneva Conventions do not in any way, shape or form demand the demolition of Israeli settlements! This is pure fiction from the mind of ICAHD founder Jeff Halper.

But it shows that the high and mighty moralists from ICAHD don't care about demolishing houses - if Jews own the houses being demolished. They don't care about homeless people - if the homeless people are Jews.

ICAHD doesn't want to see Jews and Arabs living together in an Arab state of Palestine. The very same people who demand that Israel's (quite legal and quite limited) house demolitions of illegally built homes and homes of terrorists be considered a war crime explicitly advocate the demolition of the homes of Jews in Judea and Samaria.

Can there be a purer demonstration of hypocrisy, and of how little these anti-Israel activists truly care about human rights?

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Analogies are never perfect, but they can still be illuminating.

Let's talk about Guam.

Spain originally colonized the island in the 16th century. The US captured the island in 1898 during the Spanish American War. (There was no battle, the island's residents had no idea they were at war with the US and surrendered.)

Since then, the US has controlled the island. it remains today an unincorporated territory of the United States, where the residents do not enjoy constitutional protection.

The United Nations includes Guam in its list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, and it has expended efforts to decolonize Guam along with the other remaining colonized lands worldwide.

Among the annual UN demands of the US concerning Guam is:

Called once again upon the administering Power to take into consideration the expressed will of the Chamorro people as supported by Guam voters in the referendum of 1987 and as subsequently provided for in Guam law regarding Chamorro self-determination efforts, encouraged the administering Power and the territorial Government to enter into negotiations on the matter, and stressed the need for continued close monitoring of the overall situation in the Territory;

Here is how the US responds to the UN demands for self-determination in Guam:

In a letter dated 2 November 2006 addressed to the delegate of American Samoa to the United States House of Representatives, the Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs elaborated on the position of the Government of the United States. He indicated that the status of the insular areas regarding their political relations with the federal Government was an internal United States issue, and not one that came within the purview of the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. He also noted that the Special Committee had no authority to alter in any way the relationship between the United States and those territories and had no mandate to engage the United States in negotiations on their status.

In other words, when the UN wants to help the residents of Guam to achieve self-determination, the US tells the UN to go to hell.

No protests, no BDS.. The US can act with impunity towards the residents of Guam and keep the island as a colony despite UN attempts to work towards more independence.

It is instructive to see that even democratic nations tell the UN to drop dead when it is in their interests to do so.

(h/t Irene)

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How you may be able to donate to EoZ and receive a tax deduction

EoZ is not a non-profit so donations are not tax-deductible.

But if you have a business, you can place an ad in the EoZ site before the end of the year and deduct that as a business expense for advertising.

If interested, email me at elder -at - elderofziyon.com.

And, as always, thanks!

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Chanukah Night 4: Incandescence (Ariella Zeitlin)

This is an instrumental, with a really nice Chanukah-themed video.

(h/t Josh K)

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12/27 Links Pt2: UN vote tops Wiesenthal list of top 10 antisemitic, anti-Israel cases in 2016

From Ian:

UN vote tops Wiesenthal list of top 10 antisemitic, anti-Israel cases in 2016

The US abstention from a recent vote against Israeli settlements at the UN Security Council topped the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s annual list released Tuesday of the 10 worst outbreaks of Jew-hatred and anti-Israel incidents.
The Jewish human rights organization ranked the Obama administration’s move as the top case, charging that it erased Jewish history.
“The most stunning 2016 UN attack on Israel was facilitated by President [Barack] Obama when the US abstained on a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for settlement construction. It reversed decades-long US policy of vetoing such diplomatic moves against the Jewish State,” wrote the center.
The organization added: “It also urges UN members ‘to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967,’ effectively endorsing BDS.”
UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn along with former British politician Baroness Jenny Tonge ranked second.
According to the ranking, “antisemitism in the [Labour] party has greatly escalated. Corbyn, who previously called Hamas and Hezbollah his ‘friends,’ also promoted his strategy adviser Seumas Milne, a Hamas proponent.”

Special Report Fox News Trump Dec 26 - 'This Was a US Operation All the Way' - Krauthammer on UN Israel Resolution

The United Nations Gets KRAUTHAMMERED: Trump Should ‘Turn It Into Condos

Michael Lumish: Question of the Whenever # 5: Why Support the Regressive-Left?

By what argument can regressives claim to stand for universal human rights when they honestly do not care that women are treated like chattel throughout the Islamic world and forced to hide themselves in black potato sacks?
By what argument can regressives claim to stand for universal human rights when they think that the Christian genocide under Arab-Muslim imperial rule is just dandy?
If the regressive-left does not stand for universal human rights than it stands for nothing and is, therefore, undeserving of support.
And, needless to say, no Jew with even the slightest whit of self-respect would support a political movement that is more than happy to undermine the well-being of Jews everywhere, through its willingness - if not eagerness - to throw Israel to the wolves, as we just saw with the recent UNSC resolution.
The so-called "progressive-left" has thrown its alleged values into the garbage entirely and, thereby, transmogrified itself into the regressive-left.

Throughout our history there have been times when it’s been illegal to be Jewish, when our land has been occupied by foreign powers who tried to force us to bow to their gods and make us forget about ours.
We’ve been scattered, enslaved, accused of every evil in the world, tortured and slaughtered.

There have been times when it’s been illegal for Jews to work in the field of their choice. When Jews were not allowed to create anything. When Jews could not own land (were they afraid of the power in the connection between Jews and their land?).

Jews had to be marked as Jews when they were in public –
the Nazi yellow star wasn’t the first time that happened, it was the most recent.

Outcast, downtrodden, almost exterminated.

Every nation that has risen up against the Jewish people has ultimately failed.
The greatest empires the world has ever seen have dwindled and fallen.

But the Jewish people have remained.

Faithful the land that is our birthright,
And to the ideas that have made us strong.

Hanukah is a reminder:

Of the victory of the few against the many
Of the defiance of those who would not submit, who refused to forget
And of miracles for the people who did not break their covenant with God.

Hanukah is the festival of lights,
reminding us that a single candle can light the darkness.

We are that candle, kindled again and again throughout the centuries.
We cannot be extinguished.

Changing the name of our land will not change our history.
Calling our towns and our holy places illegal will not break our connection to those places.
We will always belong to this land

And we will always shine our light to the world.

What has happened before is happening again.

The nations of the world have, yet again, a choice.
This time, what will you do?

Your ancestors sat silently by… will you do the same? Do you want to be part of the darkness tries desperately to smother the light? Or would you rather add your own light to ours?

All it takes is one candle to chase away the darkness.

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12/27 Links Pt1: Col Kemp: Obama and the UN's Outrageous Assault on Israel's Legitimacy; Why This Resolution Was Different

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Obama's war against America

In 1989, following her tenure as President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick described how the Palestinians have used the UN to destroy Israel.
Following outgoing US President Barack Obama’s assault on Israel at the UN Security Council last Friday, longtime UN observer Claudia Rossett wrote an important article at PJMedia where she recalled Kirkpatrick’s words.
In “How the PLO was legitimized,” published in Commentary, Kirkpatrick said that Yasser Arafat and the PLO worked “to come to power through international diplomacy – reinforced by murder.”
Kirkpatrick explained, “The long march through the UN has produced many benefits for the PLO. It has created a people where there was none; a claim where there was none. Now the PLO is seeking to create a state where there already is one. That will take more than resolutions and more than an ‘international peace conference.’ But having succeeded so well over the years in its campaign to delegitimize Israel, the PLO might yet also succeed in bringing the campaign to a triumphant conclusion, with consequences for the Jewish state that would be nothing short of catastrophic.”
As Rossett noted, in falsely arguing that Obama’s support for Friday’s UN Security Council Resolution 2334 is in line with Reagan’s policies, Obama’s UN Ambassador Samantha Power deliberately distorted the historical record of US policy toward Israel and the PLO-led UN onslaught against the Jewish state.
As Rosett noted, in stark contrast to Power’s self-serving lie, neither Reagan nor George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush would have ever countenanced a resolution like 2334.

Omri Ceren Breaks Down the Diplomatic Fallout of UNSC’s Condemnation of Israel

Omri Ceren (@CerenOmri) is the Managing Director for Press and Strategy at The Israel Project (TIP) and he had this to say on Twitter about how unprecedented UNSCR 2334 is, what a major break it represents from long-term American policy, and how it treats “international law.” (Scare quotes because it’s a made-up term that now means what ever we can use to bash Jews and protect real human rights abusers.)
Can’t believe this has to be done, but here’s why anyone who compares Obama knifing Israel to previous US diplomacy is a hack or an idiot 1/
UNSCR 2334 existential not political. Past UN res’s about Israel doing X. 2334 ex post facto rewrites intl law about what Jewish state is 2/
First let’s do intl: 2334 flips intl precedents. So (a) it’s diplo assault on Israel (b) shows in principle goalposts can always shift 3/
(a): 2334 flips West Bank legal status: Jewish state had great claim (mandate, San Remo, Sevres) vs weak Arab claim (bc 1948 rejection) 4/
(b): 2334 shows hostile anti-Israel diplomats cant move goalposts any time. If 1948 lines can be imposed, why not 1947 lines? Or earlier? 5/
Now let’s do domestic: 2334 flips US policy, which has never said settlements “illegal.” ALL past resolutions were in line with US policy 6/
2334 also nukes 25 years of US diplo assurances to Israel, bought with Israeli concessions, that US would prevent EXACTLY ALL THIS 7/
Specifically it nukes core Oslo assurance that West Bank status would be decided bilat – so dissolves peace process. Which ALSO means… 8/
… that it sets 25 years of US Middle East diplomacy to 0. Now this part gets very specific: For US diplomats Mideast WAS LITERALLY Oslo 9/
Dissolving Olso, which 2334 did, is (sorry) ontological issue for US 10/
Other procedural diffs inside UNSC room, but details. NEVER EVER did US approve UN res reversing US policy and intl law. Obama just did 11/
If you read someone saying or tweeting that any Pres ever did anything comparable to what Obama just did, that person is hack or idiot 12/12

Amb. Alan Baker: The Dangers of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016)

Analysis

While the resolution does not replace Security Council Resolution 242, which is the accepted and agreed basis for the Israel-Arab peace process, it nevertheless contains elements that attempt to modify Resolution 242 and to sway the negotiating process in a particular direction.

The resolution cannot, in and of itself, serve as grounds for legal proceedings in the International Criminal Court (ICC) or other international tribunals. But clearly, it will be used by the Palestinian leadership as a political tool to buttress existing complaints.

The United States, through its decision not to veto the resolution, enabled acceptance of a Security Council resolution referring to “occupied Palestinian territory including East Jerusalem.” This indicates U.S. acceptance of the fact that the territories and east Jerusalem belong to the Palestinians.

This represents a serious, and even irresponsible departure from U.S. policy which has consistently advocated negotiated settlement of the issues of permanent status, Jerusalem, and borders.

This position taken by the United States (as well as the other members of the Security Council) also undermines the basic obligation of the Oslo Accords, signed by the PLO and witnessed by the United States (as well as the EU, Russia, Egypt and others), that the permanent status of the territories, the issues of Jerusalem, and borders are to be negotiated.

While the United States and Israel have entertained basic disagreements on settlement policy, the United States has consistently rejected, as a matter of basic policy, any attempt by the international community to prejudge this or the other permanent status negotiating issues.

The outrage voiced by Israel with both the resolution itself and the Obama administration’s enabling it to pass stems from five basic components:

The text of the resolution, which is unprecedented in the extent of the condemnatory language used.

Israel’s frustration at the irresponsible behavior by the Obama administration.

The evident irreversibility of the resolution and the potential for future damage.

The imbalance between accusations of Israeli violations of the Oslo Accords and the Palestinians’ blatant violations of international law in their incitement and payment to terrorists.

The issue of settlements is not the core of the conflict. It remains the Palestinians’ refusal to recognize the Jewish State and its right to any part of the land west of the Jordan River.

ElderToons: "Help! I'm being oppressed!"

I started writing my earlier article on international law as a short piece to accompany this cartoon, and the article just grew into a much longer, more serious piece.

Then the cartoon didn't seem quite as appropriate there.

My point was that the humanitarian provisions of Geneva wouldn't include things that don't affect the lives of the people at all. You can argue "occupation" affects them, but the Jewish communities don't.

By the way, I took that picture.

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Video: UN Security Council cheers screwing Israel

I am curious if other Security Council resolutions elicit this kind of enthusiasm.

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The world claims that Israel violates the Geneva Conventions, Article 49, Paragraph 6:

The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

The original intention of this paragraph was described by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1958 this way:

This clause was adopted after some hesitation, by the XVIIth International Red Cross Conference (13). It is intended to prevent a practice adopted during the Second World War by certain Powers, which transferred portions of their own population to occupied territory for political and racial reasons or in order, as they claimed, to colonize those territories. Such transfers worsened the economic situation of the native population and endangered their separate existence as a race.

They are referring in part to the German Generalplan Ost, a far reaching plan to colonize most of Europe and to expel (or murder) anyone who the Germans felt were inferior - and replace them, forcibly if necessary, with Aryans.

Only after 1967 did anyone think that this minor paragraph in a major article about forcible transfers of populations could apply to people who wanted to - voluntarily - return to the land of their ancestors in territory that was never under the legal sovereignty of a state.

For fifty years, the anti-Israel community of nations have been steadily nudging international law to be interpreted in a way that Israel's actions of allowing Jews to voluntarily move to ancestral lands has gone from admirable to a war crime.

The first thing they needed to do was to define Judea and Samaria as "occupied territory," since Geneva only refers to occupied territory. They do this using a neat trick: since no one doubts that the provisions of Geneva are humanitarian and meant to protect the existing population, they ignore the official definition of "occupied" as defined in the Hague Conventions where the occupied territory must belong to a "state."

They say that the laws of occupation must apply anyway, because the people in the territory must be protected whether they are residing in a state (a "high contracting party") or not.

Israel always accepted that it would uphold the humanitarian provisions of Geneva for any non-citizen Arabs who live under its rule, but building houses and communities - nearly always away from Arab population centers - do not violate any humanitarian rules of Geneva.

Israel's enemies claim that Geneva applies to the territories in total, meaning that they have won the argument that the territories are occupied, and therefore they try to apply the paragraph about "transfer" to Jews who move voluntarily. The international community has acquiesced to this false interpretation of Geneva because nothing is more important than humanitarian considerations, so they say that Geneva must apply and ignore the fact that, strictly speaking, it doesn't.

But that is still problematic to Israels enemies because it is obvious that this was not the intent of Geneva's framers and paragraph 6 was a bit vague.

So the Additional Protocols for the Geneva Conventions were drafted in 1977 and they elevated this violation of international law into a "grave breach:"

4. In addition to the grave breaches defined in the preceding paragraphs and in the Conventions, the following shall be regarded as grave breaches of this Protocol, when committed wilfully and in violation of the Conventions or the Protocol:
(a) the transfer by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory, in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Convention;

Note how Israel's enemies now placed a nation's transfer of its own population before the much worse issue of forcible deportation. This is language that was directed at Israel and only Israel.

But there is still the problem of defining "transfer." In Geneva Article 49, the term is used seemingly only in reference to involuntary transfer, as every other use of that term in that article is clearly referring to deportations or forcible transfer.

When the International Criminal Court was being created, the Arab nations seized the opportunity to upgrade Israel's "crime" once again. The Rome Statute lists as war crimes things like murder, torture, kidnapping, intentionally attacking civilians - and it added one more that had never been considered a war crime in history:

The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

Arab states insisted on adding the "directly or indirectly" terminology and the drafting committee caved to pressure. The only target of this was, again, Israel, which would now be considered criminal for not stopping Jews from moving to their historic lands.

This is only one of many examples of how haters of Israel have managed to move the goalposts of international law, specifically against Israel and only Israel.

The sober jurists and arbiters of international law have allowed themselves to be manipulated, between decades of propaganda and laziness at deciding to "compromise" with those who want to destroy Israel, into believing that allowing Jews to houses are war crimes on par with directly and purposefully attacking civilians.

The biggest irony of all is that Geneva IV Article 49 is concerned with the huge human rights violations of forcible mass transfer of populations against their will - and yet the world is steadily moving towards using that very same human rights law to forcibly transfer hundreds of thousands of Jews out of their homes, many of whom have lived there all of their lives. It is not just a misinterpretation of Geneva - it is a perversion of Geneva. And it is only being directed at Jews. (Thousands of Israeli Arabs have moved over the Green Line without any peep of protest by the international community.)

Perhaps the biggest perversion of all is that these legal instruments, in a sense, equate Israel with Nazi Germany. Many of the Geneva Conventions were specifically written to counter the worst kinds of human rights violations done by Nazi Germany in order to ensure that they never happen again. Now the same instruments of international law are singling out the Jewish State as a paradigm of what is considered evil - laws are being passed and approved by the entire international community specifically to target the primary victims of the Nazis whose actions led to Geneva to begin with.

In this case, they aren't trying to ensure that these supposed war crimes never happen again. After all, there are settlers being implanted in Crimea, Western Sahara. Northern Cyprus and elsewhere, all without a peep from these supposed humanitarians who created these laws. The purpose of these laws have been and remains to delegitimize Israel and only Israel.

The new UN resolution 2334, although not international law, is simply another in a series of never-ending actions that are all intended to do one thing: to twist, manipulate and create an international legal framework against Israel and only Israel.

Between their own latent antisemitism, their fear of Arab terror, and their lack of moral principles, the international community allows and even encourages these perversions.

After all, they can comfort themselves by saying that this entire fifty year legal war against Israeli Jews is all "legal."

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Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah celebrates Hamas, Islamic Jihad terrorists

The 52nd anniversary of the first Fatah terror attack (January 1, 1965, against Israel's water carrier) is coming up, and the official Fatah Facebook page is churning out posters to commemorate the event.

But Fatah, led my Mahmoud Abbas, isn't only celebrating Fatah's "martyrs". It is also celebrating any terrorist leader who was responsible for murdering Jews.

So we have the sight of Fatah giving homage to Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin:

And Islamic Jihad founder Fathi Shaqaqi:

And more, even some who aren't dead:

When Fatah and the other terror groups talk about unity, the only common ground they ever find it - terrorism.

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Chanukah Night 3: Another Hamilton Chanukah, this time by Six13

I guess that's the theme this year among Jewish acapella groups....

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12/26 Links Pt2: The 2016 Dishonest Reporter of the Year; Bernard-Henri Lévy: The Shame of Aleppo

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: Tears of hypocrisy

Op-ed: We can’t prevent what is happening in Syria or in Somalia, but we can prevent a similar future in Israel. This bloodbath is the outcome of placing hostile populations within ‘one state.’ If it won’t work between Muslims and Muslims, why does anyone think it can work between Jews and Arabs?
The world is hurting over the situation in Aleppo. Emotional articles and posts are being published here and there. Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah are extremely moved. They know that no one will lift a finger to help. Interior Minister Aryeh Deri has asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to turn to the United Nations. Oh, come on.
US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power delivered a firm and moving speech in a recent Security Council briefing. "Are you truly incapable of shame?” she asked. “Is there no execution of a child that gets under your skin?" She knows how to speak. There were even tears. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei were unmoved.
The massacre won’t stop without action. And those who are getting all emotional, might I remind you, usually lead the camp that is against action. They lauded and praised US President Barack Obama for not intervening, even when it may have been possible to stop the bloodbath.
These emotions are the result of exposure to information. Because there are much greater tragedies occurring in other places as we speak. On the border between Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon, there are 1.4 million children who have become refugees, and 75,000 of them are on the verge of starvation. In Somalia, 200,000 have already died because the local jihad organization, al-Shabaab, has halted food deliveries, and 38,000 children under the age of five are in danger of starving. The Nigerians and Somalis’ situation is much worse than the Syrians’ situation. But they don’t have any Internet access, and no one there has heard about social media. So no one is moved.

HonestReporting: The 2016 Dishonest Reporter of the Year: Why Headline Writers Won

The Dishonest Reporting Award typically goes to a clear-cut winner. Last year, the BBC won for a steady output of problematic coverage throughout the year. In 2014, the award went to Gaza war correspondents for their problematic handling of Operation Protective Edge. But 2016 didn’t have any comparable singular outrages like, say, journalist Donald Bostrom’s Swedish blood libel of 2009.
Since a wave of Palestinian stabbing, car-ramming and shooting attacks began in 2015, 36 Israelis, two Americans and an Eritrean national have been killed. According to AFP‘s count in mid-December, 238 Palestinians, a Jordanian and a Sudanese migrant were also killed — mostly while carrying out the attacks, in clashes with the IDF in the West Bank or along the Gaza border, or in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. HonestReporting readers objected to the slow and steady drip of headlines which, at times, mangled facts, lacked context, used loaded language or — in some cases — were poorly revised after being published.
Headlines don’t just skew our sense of the world as we scroll through our social media feeds. They also impact the way we read and remember content. We elaborate on this issue, in Why Headlines Matter.
We took some of the worst headlines of 2016 and broke them down to four categories. The first three are associated with The Eight Categories of Media Bias. The fourth reflects that sometimes, a revised headline can actually be worse.
1. Distorting the truth
2. Lack of context
3. Loaded language
4. Regressive revisions
Here’s what we found from a range of papers in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, and international wire services.

News Literacy: Why Headlines Matter

Headlines certainly deserve scrutiny. It’s well-known that we don’t read most of the articles in our daily papers; we skim the headlines before being drawn to whatever draws our attention. The same habits apply on social media, where we scroll through our Facebook or Twitter feeds and click on whatever catches our fancy.
An April, 2016 academic study of bit.ly links shared on Twitter to BBC, CNN, Fox News, New York Times and Huffington Post articles found that 59 percent of the links were never clicked. And another study of push-through news alerts to mobile phones found that “People click on the alert about half the time.”
So for many casual readers who don’t follow closely follow the Israeli-Arab conflict, all they know about the latest in the Mideast is from the headlines and alerts of articles they don’t read.
This Columbia Journalism Review observation about the mobile alerts would also apply to headlines:
But push notifications are not news stories. They are snippets often written on deadline, akin to headlines that deliver the jist [sic] of a complicated event but little more. Yet there’s growing anecdotal evidence to suggest that readers may view news alerts as standalone stories, taking them at face value without clicking through to read more.

Meet BDS fan Haj Amin al-Husseini – the ‘Hitler of the Holy Land’ (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

‘It is untrue that the world is siding with the Jews’: meet BDS fan Haj Amin al-Husseini – the ‘Hitler of the Holy Land’

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

In early December, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) and the Harvard Law School Alliance for Israel held a conference entitled “War By Other Means – BDS, Israel and the Campus.” One of the speakers was Cornell Professor William Jacobson, whose presentation was on the history of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The presentation is now available at Legal Insurrection, and it is a must-read (or must-watch) because Jacobson shows that “BDS is a direct and provable continuation of the Arab anti-Jewish boycotts in the 1920s and 1930s and [the] subsequent Arab League Boycott, restructured through non-governmental entities to evade U.S. anti-boycott legislation and repackaged in the language of ‘social justice’ to appeal to Western liberals.”

When I read through Professor Jacobson’s presentation, I remembered that some time ago, I had come across an archived JTA article from September 24, 1929 that provides a perfect illustration of the conference theme that boycott campaigns should be understood as “war by other means.”

Published a month after the notorious Hebron massacre and the subsequent Arab violence, which left 133 Jews dead, the article is entitled “‘My Hands Are Clean,’ Grand Mufti Asserts in Interview;” and as the title suggests, it describes an interview with Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had incited the violence with the pernicious (and still popular) libel that “the Zionists” were plotting to damage or destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque in order to rebuild the Jewish Temple.

Shortly after the bloodbath he had incited, the man who would eventually become known as “Hitler’s Mufti” felt rather confident that the Jews would soon be forced to leave British Mandate Palestine. He asserted (rightly) that “it is untrue that the world is siding with the Jews” and then proceeded to explain:

“We are … assured of the solidarity of the entire Moslem world and have actually offers of armies to help us if necessary. Help is unnecessary. We will win through an economic boycott. The boycott in Moslem countries against Jewish industries is tight and daily growing tighter, until the industries will be broken and English friends, moved by pity, will remove the last remaining Jews [from British Mandate Palestine] on their battleships. Today there’s not a Jewish factory working in Palestine … (which happened to be entirely untrue) [and] as Jewish industry depends on the good will of the surrounding Moslem countries, the factories may as well remain closed. The Moslems will not buy.”

While the mufti’s hopes of driving out the Jews with a successful economic boycott didn’t work out in his lifetime, he would surely be pleased to know that there are still people who haven’t given up on his lofty goal; and he would surely be no less pleased to see that it remains indeed “untrue that the world is siding with the Jews.” (Congratulations to the UN Security Council for proving the mufti right once again!)

The mufti also said some other things that you can read any day at Ali Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada and similar sites: he complained about “the aid of rich American Jews for the Palestine upbuilding” and claimed that this aid “made the Palestine Jews so arrogant, they thought they could start expelling is [us].” And just like Palestinian leaders nowadays, al-Husseini denied having incited the murderous violence.

Another remarkable parallel to today’s news is that al-Husseini was rumored to have become quite rich by misappropriating funds he had collected for repairs of the Dome of the Rock. The article’s description of him is intriguing:

“The Mufti spoke in French and granted the interview in the presence of Jamal Effendi Husseini in the palatial office buildings located in the galleries of the Mosque of Omar. The 31 year old Amin El Husseini, with blond beard, sparkling blue eyes, ingratiating smile and pleasant mundane manners, sat in silken robes on a luxurious divan and smoked cigarettes taken from a gold beaten box, holding a morning levee like a mediaeval Turkish Pasha. The hall and corridors were filled with servants, ushers and courtiers. When politely told that world opinion is holding him personally responsible and partially guilty for the savagery and unspeakable assaults, the Mufti smiled and with a sweeping gesture, showing delicate manicured hands, he declared: ‘My hands are clean, I declare before God.’”

As it happens, when I researched this post, I came across another fascinating article about al-Husseini from June 1948. At first, I was not sure if the site that featured it, i.e. Old Magazine Articles, could be trusted. The article is entitled “Hitler of the Holy Land” and the sub header describes the mufti as “a master of terrorism.” But I found out that a ’48 Magazine indeed existed – in fact, it was apparently a relatively expensive highbrow magazine – and the author of the article, David W.Nussbaum, wrote at least two (but likely four) other articles on the mufti elsewhere in the immediate postwar years. According to the information given about Nussbaum, he was a “former Washington correspondent of Life, magazine writer and Navy air veteran” who in early 1948 had “just returned from an extended survey of conditions in the Middle East.” His article on the “Hitler of the Holy Land” is absolutely fascinating (it can also be downloaded as a pdf if you click the blue button “Read article for free” just above the space for comments).

In the almost two decades that had passed since the 1929 interview, the mufti had apparently lost his “pleasant mundane manners;” Nussbaum described him as “a man who has spent a lifetime fleeing justice” and who, “in his struggle for power, counts no man as a friend.” In Nussbaum’s view, the mufti was a crucial and cunning leader who ensured that the Arab conflict with the Jews would not be settled peaceably. Reportedly, al-Husseini told him: “What you see unsheathed in Palestine is the sword of Islam. Whenever they are beset, the Arabs will inevitably unsheathe it.” Asked if the Arabs had enough arms and men to win a war, the mufti responded: “Consequences do not disturb the Arab as they do the Westerner. The Jews do not reckon with this factor. If he is attacked, the Arab fights back regardless of the consequences. The fighting in Palestine has been inevitable since the first Jew set foot there.”

But Nussbaum believed that it was the mufti who worked hard to make war “inevitable”:

“War in Palestine is the goal that the Mufti set himself in the summer of 1946 [when he fled France], and it is the goal that is now being achieved. […] While he tightened his grip on Palestine, the Mufti waged a shrewd campaign within the Arab states. In Egypt, he made effective use of the extremist right-wing Moslem Brotherhood, which, supported by students, staged well-timed demonstrations in Cairo, shouting for revenge against the Jews. Fire-breathing statements began filling the Lebanon papers. In the lobbies of the Arab League conferences, the Mufti hammered away at the idea of jihad – the holy war.”

So it seems Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas knew what he was doing when he repeatedly paid homage to al-Husseini, praising him for having “sponsored the struggle from the beginning.”

But importantly, the “struggle” al-Husseini “sponsored … from the beginning” was not really about Palestine, but rather about Arab-Muslim rule. When Nussbaum asked him if he was looking forward to “an early return to his homeland,” al-Husseini “ruminated for a few moments and then said, ‘Palestine is not my home; it is only one of them. Cairo is home and so is Syria. Whenever I am among my own people, I am home.’”

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12/26 Links Pt1: Obama’s UN Legacy: Whitewashing Iran’s Nuclear Cheating; Outlawing Jewish History

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Obama’s parting shot

What’s more, Resolution 2334 is absurd in that it makes no differentiation between places such as the Old City and the Kotel or consensus Jerusalem neighborhoods like Ramat Eshkol, and isolated settlements with a handful of residents in Judea and Samaria.
More pernicious, however, will be the ramifications of Resolution 2334. It will give new life to boycott, divestment and sanctions efforts, particularly article 5 of the resolution which calls upon the nations of the world “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territories of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.” The distance is short from delegitimization of Jewish settlements, neighborhoods, towns, cities and institutions located beyond the 1967 armistice line to delegitimization of everything Israeli.
Even terrorist attacks directed against residents of the “territories” will be in some sense understandable, according to UN morality and legal principles, since every Jew living in these areas is considered, according to the Security Council, not only a criminal but an obstacle to peace.
We can only lament Obama's decision, made in the twilight of his term. It hurts chances for direct negotiations, strengthen BDS and sullies Israel’s name. For all the strengthening of Israel’s defense deterrence and unprecedented financial aid that his administration heaped on Israel, this is Obama’s legacy; this is his parting shot.

Rejecting the false notion that Israel is occupier

The UN Security Council’s passage of Resolution 2334, an outrageous act of hostility personally engineered by President Obama against the State of Israel, has rightly evoked great anger across all parts of the American political spectrum.
This past summer, the Republican Party’s platform section expressing our unequivocal support for Israel, included a key statement made in anticipation of President Obama’s betrayal of our great ally: “We reject the false notion that Israel is an occupier…” Given the anticipated effects of Resolution 2334, this policy statement is critical, as it represents the central tenet of what will now unquestionably be the policy of the Trump Administration and the pro-Israel community.
“Occupier” is nothing more than a polite way of calling Israel a thief, suggesting that Jewish invaders colonized territory belonging to the Arabs, and which therefore must be restored to its rightful, victimized owners. The term is intentionally misused against Israel in order to shape negative misperceptions of her history and legitimacy, while perpetuating a sense of Palestinian-Arab victimhood. To suggest that the Jews are occupiers in a region that has been known as Judea for over 3000-plus years is no less ridiculous than to suggest that Arabs are occupiers in Arabia.
“Occupier” is a legal term whose definition does not apply to Israel under the law. Israel’s legal title and rights to all of its present territory stem directly from an act of international law made in the post-WWI San Remo Agreement, which was then further recognized and incorporated in subsequent binding acts, from the Covenant of the League of Nations all the way through Article 80 of the United Nations’ charter. None of the national and political rights thereby recognized as inherit in the Jewish People have ever been revoked, nullified or superseded by a subsequent act of international law.

Amb. Alan Baker: A Scandalous UN Resolution

"The U.S. abstention on this recent resolution in the Security Council is irresponsible to the point of being scandalous, because this resolution reaffirms the fact that the territories occupied by Israel and east Jerusalem are Palestinian. Now this runs directly against American policy and against the obligations according to the Oslo Accords, that issues of Jerusalem, issues of borders, and issues of the final status of the territories are to be negotiated."
"The resolution repeats a lot of previous resolutions, a lot of previous determinations regarding the validity of settlements, regarding the status of the territories. But there are one or two paragraphs in here that seem to be direct quotes from [Vice President] Joe Biden, from [Secretary of State] John Kerry, from [President] Barack Obama, whether it refers to the 1967 lines or refers to the one-state solution or refers to the non-sustainability of the present situation - these are direct quotes from these people. So it shows that they have had direct involvement in actually drafting this resolution."
"Why would the Palestinians want to negotiate with Israel on these things if they've got a Security Council resolution that basically determines that east Jerusalem and all the territories belong to them? Why should they go and negotiate - and compromise, because negotiating includes compromising? Why should they do this when they know that they can run to the international community and get whatever they want?"

As if you had any doubt: Yes, Hamas is antisemitic

The fallout from the videos of Bahraini nationals dancing with Jews continues.

Hamas was upset with this video of Jews at a Chanukah candle lighting ceremony:

The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas denounced the hosting a group of dignitaries and traders in the State of Bahrain. Dancing with the Israeli delegation of Jewish extremist racists is a humiliating and disgraceful appearance.

The movement in a press statement on Monday warned that this will hurt the reputation of the State of Bahrain at a time when there is growing international sympathy with the Palestinian cause and support the right of the Palestinian people, and the growing international boycott of the Zionist entity movements in all forms.

Hamas has demanded the State of Bahrain, Arab and Islamic countries all work to stop all forms of normalization and ending with the Israeli enemy in all fields.

Of course, this wasn't an Israeli delegation at all, but American businessmen, a European rabbinical leader and reportedly some Chabad emissaries.

Hamas is disgusted to see Jews being treated like normal people by Arabs. And judging from social media, they aren't alone.

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