Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

10/18 Links: The Israeli Left Crosses a Line; Majority Palestinians oppose state on 1967 borders

From Ian:

It was business as usual at the United Nations on Friday as the Security Council devoted a session to criticizing Israel. Just to make sure that the argument was skewed the event was titled “Illegal Israeli Settlements: Obstacles to Peace and the Two-State Solution.” So rather than a debate about the legality of settlements or whether they (as opposed to Palestinian intransigence) are really the main obstacle to peace, what occurred was a Star Chamber proceeding with the one Jewish state in the dock. The usual suspects decried the presence of Jews in the West Bank, lamented the lack of a Palestinian state, and counseled that unless Israel changes its ways, it will face unspecified consequences.
But there was one thing that differentiated this day from all the Israel-bashing sessions that preceded it: the presence of two left-wing Jewish organizations to add their voices to the chorus of condemnation. Representatives from Americans for Peace Now and B’Tselem, an organization that bills itself as a human-rights group while working to undermine the efforts of the Israeli Defense Forces, showed up at the UN to join the gang tackle of the Jewish state.
The testimony provided by the two groups was correctly contradicted by Israel’s UN representative, who pointed out the conflict is driven by Palestinian hate rather than Israeli home-building. But their decision to appear raises a serious question about the ethics involved in taking an active part in an effort designed to delegitimize Israel on the international stage. It’s fair to ask whether it is appropriate for any organization that identifies as either Jewish or Israeli to assist a world body that is riddled with anti-Semitism in conducting a kangaroo-court procedure in which the Jewish state is judged guilty beforehand.
The most egregious aspect of the presence of these two groups is the assertion made by Peace Now’s Lara Friedman that her participation at the meeting was due to what she said was the “harsh climate” in Israel for human-rights groups. Their work was, she said, too important to be “silenced.” But no one is silencing Peace Now or B’Tselem in Israel.

Poll: Nearly 60% of Palestinians oppose state on 1967 borders

Almost 60% of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip oppose a future Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict., a survey conducted last week by An-Najah University in Nablus found.
The survey, which questioned 1,362 people in the two areas, found that 59.4% oppose the idea as a solution to the conflict.
It also found that 61.5% of Palestinians do not believe it is possible to establish a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders because of the current situation. Some 65.4% of Palestinians in Gaza hold this view, compared with 59.3% in Judea and Samaria.
Asked if Palestinians must continue with the Oslo Accords, even though Israel had stopped supporting them (according to the survey question), 74% answered that they must stop, while 18.2% answered they must continue.
Some 48.7% oppose non-violent resistance, while 45.7% said they support such resistance. Asked about an armed intifada, 55.7% oppose this while 38% support it. Support for violent resistance is higher in Gaza than in the West Bank: 52% of Gazans support an armed intifada and 36% oppose it, while in Judea and Samaria, 29.8% support an armed intifada.
In Gaza, 17.8% oppose resistance, armed or unarmed, and say it does not help the Palestinian struggle. In the West Bank, 35.4% feel the same way.
The idea of a Jordanian federation based on two sovereign states won the support of 46.1% of respondents, while 41.3% were against it.

Chag sameach!

Another week, another holiday!

One of these sukkot seems problematic...

Wishing all my readers a Chag Kosher v'Sameach. I will not be blogging until Tuesday night or Wednesday. (And then next week we get to do it again!)

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I just read the speech by B'Tselem head Hagai El-Ad at the UN Security Council on Friday.

Some points:

"For the past 49 years – and counting – the injustice known as the occupation of Palestine, and Israeli control of Palestinian lives in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, has become part of the international order. "

In 1968, no one called it the occupation of "Palestine." When in fact did that occupation start? And indeed, on what date was the land no longer considered occupied Jordan? And why wasn't it called "occupied Palestine" when Jordan occupied it?

I've never seen a good timeline for this "occupation," perhaps because in reality it started out as a border dispute in 1949 and it remained so between two sovereign states until Jordan decided to withdraw its claim in 1988.

In a normal world, that would have given Israel full rights to the land.

Even though people hate to admit it, belligerent occupation is by definition the occupation of the land of a state, and practically no nation recognized Jordanian claims on the land and even fewer declared it "Palestinian."

El-Ad almost addresses this:
"Almost all aspects of this reality are considered legal by Israel. Israel’s control of Palestinian lives is unique in the careful attention the occupying power gives to the letter of the law, while strangling its very spirit. The occupation has so perfected the art of watering down International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law as to render them virtually meaningless. Once military lawyers, State Attorneys and Supreme Court justices are done masterfully chiseling out legal opinions, all that remains is raw injustice."

Once you remove the rhetoric, this is B'Tselem admitting that it does not have a legal leg to stand on.

The fact is that this is not about human rights of Palestinian Arabs, as B'Tselem and most of the world wants to pretend. This is about competing human rights between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. The great ignored fact is that the rights of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria, their ancestral homeland, is a human right at least as much as the rights of Palestinians.

And Israel does indeed try to walk the line between the competing sets of rights, not like B'Tselem which forced out an Arab human rights advocate, Bassem Eid, for caring about the rights of Jews.

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10/16 Links: B'Tselem's disgraceful appearance at the UN; The Soviet-Palestinian Lie

From Ian:

The success story of US state legislatures steadily hammering away at BDS

However, Clemmons recalls that a real breakthrough came “later on that trip when we had the opportunity to meet Prof. [Eugene] Kontorovich during a dinner at a winery.
“Here was one of the bright minds in the world... on addressing BDS under the US Constitution,” he explained.
By June 2015, South Carolina was leading the way with legislation targeting BDS, along with Illinois. Following South Carolina’s lead, Alabama, Arizona and other states discussed the same or similar proposals.
In total, as of now, 12 laws or executive orders (New York’s governor issued an order instead of passing a state law) have gone into effect. Though they deal with BDS along similar lines, there are some differences.
Describing the South Carolina version, Clemmons stated that “the law is broader.
It does not mention Israel. It prohibits those who engage against trade based on national origin, against our allies and against the state of South Carolina.” Those who interfere with trade in such ways are barred from getting government contracts.
Clemmons, who himself was already chairman of the South Carolina House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, returned home with 13 supportive legislators.
This was a strong group of allies, but he said that the rest of the legislature did not need to be lobbied as most of them “see Israel as South Carolina’s best friend.”

Divest This: Like Romans – BDS and War

As promised, I’ve pulled together the material written for Algemeiner over the last few months into an essay on how the language of war can help us to best understand and defeat the BDS “movement.” Consider comprehension of the chosen title (“Like Romans”) as an prize/Easter Egg for those who make it through the whole thing.
You can download a PDF version of the work here, or visit the Divest This publications page for links to all the longer works that have been published on this site. I’ve also uploaded the book to Scribd which allows you to more easily share it with your friends and allies.
I’ve also put together a Kindle version of the book that is currently going through testing. If any adventurous Kindle users want to try it on their device and give me feedback, you can request a copy via the Contact Page.
While this work is targeted towards fellow hard core activists trying to think through the best options for winning the BDS propaganda wars, I’m hoping anyone confused about or interested in contributing to the struggle will learn something from it.
Now back to the front!

The Soviet-Palestinian Lie

"The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB, which had a penchant for 'liberation' organizations." — Ion Mihai Pacepa, former chief of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Romania.
"First, the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat's birth in Cairo, and replaced them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth." — Ion Mihai Pacepa.
"[T]he Islamic world was a waiting petri dish in which we could nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought. Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep... We had only to keep repeating our themes -- that the United States and Israel were 'fascist, imperial-Zionist countries' bankrolled by rich Jews." — Yuri Andropov, former KGB chairman.
As early as 1965, the USSR had formally proposed in the UN a resolution that would condemn Zionism as colonialism and racism. Although the Soviets did not succeed in their first attempt, the UN turned out to be an overwhelmingly grateful recipient of Soviet bigotry and propaganda; in November 1975, Resolution 3379 condemning Zionism as "a form of racism and racial discrimination" was finally passed.

Morocco tipped off Israeli intelligence, ‘helped Israel win Six Day War’

Israel largely has Morocco to thank for its victory over its Arab enemies in the 1967 Six Day War, according to revelations by a former Israeli military intelligence chief.
In 1965, King Hassan ll passed recordings to Israel of a key meeting between Arab leaders held to discuss whether they were prepared for war against Israel.
That meeting not only revealed that Arab ranks were split — heated arguments broke out, for example, between Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Jordan’s king Hussein — but that the Arab nations were ill prepared for war, Maj. Gen. Shlomo Gazit told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper over the weekend.
On the basis of these recordings, as well as other intelligence information gathered in the years leading up to the war, Israel launched a preemptive strike on the morning of June 5, 1967, bombing Egyptian airfields and destroying nearly every Egyptian fighter plane.
During the war, which ended on June 10, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.

David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine has a piece entitled, San Francisco State: A Haven for Supporters of Terrorists.

Whatever anyone might say about Horowitz he definitely does not pull punches. I always think of the guy as a general marshalling his troops and setting them forth to ideological warfare. But I feel reasonably certain that he, himself, would agree with that assessment.

The editors at FrontPage tell us:

Last night, the David Horowitz Freedom Center brought its Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus poster campaign to San Francisco State University, a campus that is notorious for its glorification of anti-Israel terrorism and anti-Semitism...

The posters are part of a larger Freedom Center campaign titled Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus which seeks to confront the agents of campus anti-Semitism and expose the financial and organizational relationship between the terror group Hamas and Hamas support groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine. As part of the campaign, the Freedom Center has placed posters on several campuses including San Diego State University, the University of California-Irvine and the University of California-Los Angeles. The campaign also recently released a report on the “Top Ten Schools Supporting Terrorists” which may be found on the campaign website, www.StoptheJewHatredonCampus.org. San Francisco State University is among the campuses listed in the Top Ten report.

I do not know what effect this kind of "guerrilla politics" will have on the way people think about either the rise of Political Islam or the Arab-Israel conflict, although it may get a few people talking on that campus... either that or they will ignore the whole thing entirely.

One or the other.

My guess is that many Jewish students at SFSU will roll their eyes and turn away. Some will want to keep their head down out of fear for their social standing. Others will feel a degree of relief in recognizing that at least some people genuinely are pro-Israel and pro-Jewish, even if it does come from the much berated American right-wing. And maybe there will even be a few other Jewish students inspired to stand up and organize on behalf of their own people.

We shall see.

I feel a strong connection to this story in part because I am an alumnus. It is also because the university put up a mural of Edward Said, one of the most prominent anti-Semites working in academia in the United States during the twentieth-century.

There should be two caveats in discussing SFSU anti-Semitism, however..

The first is that Jewish parents who send their kids to that university should know that if their kids keep their heads down they'll be just fine. When I was there at the end of the 1990s, I honestly did not care that much about Israel and I had a terrific university experience at SFSU.

Of course, there was the day where I witnessed a bunch of black students holding up a poster with an American flag wherein the stars were replaced by 50 little Stars of David. That was a sort-of "wake up call" but all it elicited from me was a strongly worded letter to the editor. As I recall, the letter was not so much about condemning the poster itself, as it was about its potential for alienating Jewish students from left-leaning coalitions.

The second caveat is that this is obviously not a distinct SFSU problem. Sure, SFSU is prominent among American universities in its advancement of hatred toward the Jewish State of Israel - and thus inevitably toward Jews, in general - but it is hardly alone.

The current ongoing kerfuffle around SFSU is primarily about the rise of an anti-Israel / anti-Jewish political culture on that campus nurtured by, among others, Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, faculty advisor to the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) and Associate Professor of "Race and Resistance Studies."

The development of these interrelated stories was organic. I wrote about it. Dusty at Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers wrote about it. And, most significantly, both Cinnamon Stillwell (West Coast Representative for the Middle East Forum's Campus Watch) and Tammi Benjamin (AMCHA Initiative founder and UC Santa Cruz instructor) covered the stories, as well.

Most recently even Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Studies Forum has written about SFSU anti-Semitism, so the broader story appears to have legs.

For me it started with the guy below, Mohammad G. Hammad, former president of GUPS, holding his trusty blade back in 2013.

If you are reading this it is fairly likely that this face may look familiar. Mr. Hammad posted the photo above on his Tumblr page with this message:

I seriously can not get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier…

That was the moment that I got hooked on the story, mainly out of well-founded concern that the university - while expelling an advocate for outright murder in Mr. Hammad - nonetheless continues to support GUPS even as members of GUPS call for Intifada which is nothing less than a call for the genocide of the Jews in the Middle East.

This is what must be understood by university administrators around the country. When students cry out for Intifada they are crying out specifically for Jewish blood and university administrators from around the country (and Europe, and Australia) need to account for why they are just dandy with student calls for genocide.

Someone like Jerusalem mayor, Nir Barkat, must have an amazingly strong stomach to endure hate-filled students screaming in his face for his own murder as we saw last spring when he was invited by the local Hillel to speak on campus.

The man got ambushed.

Then, of course, we have Abdhuladi's attempt to normalize anti-Jewish hatred on university campuses though her successful efforts to partner SFSU with that "greenhouse" for Jihadis, An-Najah University in Nablus.

And finally - for the moment - there was the Edward Said mural festivities that featured GUPS members, and others, holding aloft signs calling for the murder of "colonizers." I do not know about you, but when Arab or Muslim students from organizations like GUPS - or, say, the Muslim Student Association, or, say, Students for Justice in Palestine - hold aloft signs calling for the killing of "colonizers" my guess is that they are not referring to the Polish. On the contrary, I get the sneaking feeling that they may be discussing my friends and relatives in places like Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem.

In any case, stay tuned because as long as the President of San Francisco State University can say, as President Wong did not so long ago, that "GUPS is the very purpose of this great university" then Jewish people associated with that campus, if they care about Israel and their fellow Jews, have a fight on their hands whether they like it or not.

My first recommendation is to encourage Jewish SFSU donors to divert their generous offers to AMCHA or Campus Watch, rather than to an openly anti-Semitic university.

My next recommendation is to keep a close eye on the writings and investigations of:

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin.

Cinnamon Stillwell.

Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers.

And, indeed, I will have my say, as well.

I don't think that any of us are much in the mood to allow this virulent hatred of Israel and Jews - based on lies, misinformation, and propaganda - to continue without response.

What we need, however, is for the mainstream press to pick up the larger story of the camouflaging of campus anti-Semitism under a veil of anti-Zionism and drive it home to the peoples of North America, Europe, and Australia.

That and a little Krav Maga for your kids might be good.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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PA art classes brainwashing kids to hate Israel and Jews

The Fatah Facebook page published a series of cartoons drawn by Palestinian Arab children.

Palestinian Media Watch reports that the cartoons are being labeled "innocent drawings" that "express the feelings of children of #Palestine,"

In fact, these cartoons show that the teachers have been indoctrinating the children to hate Israel.

A few years ago, there was a traveling exhibit of what was purportedly Palestinian children's art, which was a combination of art drawn by adults in a primitive style to mimic children's art and actual children's drawings that mimicked already existing cartoons and motifs that the teachers gave them. Anti-Israel groups used this fake art exhibit to great effect.

So Fatah is doing the same.

While the drawings in this exhibit do seem to be actually drawn by children for the most part, and most are even signed, the motifs and symbolism are astonishingly sophisticated for children.

Notice anything missing?

Some themes are so pervasive that it is impossible to believe that the teachers didn't encourage them:

This example shows that this "art" is meant to be eventually shown to Western audience, like the previous exhibit:

More examples of children's "art" that were clearly prompted by the antisemitic teachers and modeled after existing adult-drawn cartoons:

Similar to:

And:

A direct copy of:

This set of pictures doesn't prove that Palestinian children are innocently and spontaneously drawing anti-Israel and antisemitic cartoons. It proves that they are being brainwashed to hate.

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Does the UNESCO resolution really nullify Jewish ties to Temple Mount? Yes, it does.

Electronic Intifada and idiot blogger Richard Silverstein both claim that the UNESCO resolution passed last week actually does not deny any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.

They mention (correctly) that the resolution affrims "the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls for the three monotheistic religions," which presumably includes Judaism.

However, in regard to the Temple Mount itself, the resolution says the "Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif, as reflected in the historic status quo, [is] a Muslim holy site of worship."

Silverstein (who refers to the site as "the Haram" exclusively and falsely claims "When I was last in Israel in 1980, I visited the Haram and it was a peaceful place of worship for all who visited, including Jews)* argues that the resolution "simply doesn’t address the issue" of Jewish ties to the Temple Mount.

Ah, but it does - by omission.

Because the resolution refers to two other "Palestinian" holy sites, the Ma'arat HaMachpelah and Kever Rochel. And in both of those cases, while it mentions their Arabic titles first, it does identify them as the "Tomb of the Patriarchs" and "Rachel's Tomb." And it specifically says that both of those sites "are of religious significance for Judaism, Christianity and Islam."

Clearly, the authors of the resolution are not denying the Jewish ties to those holy sites, even if they minimize those ties.

Given that, the lack of mentioning any Jewish (or Christian) connection to the Temple Mount, and the refusal to use any other name but the Muslim names for the site, are clearly deliberate and an attempt to frame the site as exclusively Muslim and having nothing to do with Judaism.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian cartoonist correctly reacts to the UNESCO resolution as evidence that the Palestinian narrative has completely taken over UNESCO:

Hard to argue with that.

(h/t Yenta)

UPDATE: I am told that Jews actually did pray on the Temple Mount before the 1990s without anyone caring (see comments.)

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Is Obama planning anti-Israel moves before leaving office?

The Zionist Organization of America sometimes sends me op-eds for inclusion in the blog. This one from last week is worth reading:

After Elections, Will Obama Betray Israel At UN?

By Morton A. Klein

Wikileaks recently exposed an email written by former White House official Stuart Eisenstadt that discussed the Obama administration’s deteriorating relationship with Israel and warned that: “There is a distinct possibility that the Administration may seek a new UN Security Council Resolution embodying the two-state, with [pre-] 1967 lines and agreed land swaps, and some vague statements about Jerusalem.”

Is President Barack Obama intending to abandon the decades of bipartisan U.S. policy of vetoing anti-Israel U.N. Security Council resolutions? Specifically, is Obama preparing to permit the UN Security Council to pass a resolution supporting or recognizing a Palestinian Arab state, and declaring Jewish communities built within it to be illegal?

The signs that this is indeed the case are numerous. President Obama is laying the groundwork to rationalize, and make palatable and understandable that he may take unprecedented unilateral actions against Israel. Consider:

• On October 5, 2016, Obama’s State Department “strongly condemned” Israel for approving plans to build 98 apartment units within the existingJewish community of Shiloh in Samaria, for Jews who will be forcibly evicted from their homes in Amona. The existing Jewish community in Shilo which was established in 1979 and has 3,500 existing residents. The State Department falsely claimed that Israel was approving a “significant new West Bank Settlement,” and that this undermined a two-state solution, and “called into question Israel’s commitment to achieving a negotiated peace.”

• The State Department’s October 5 condemnation also stated: “with regard to the UN Security Council and any action at the UN, our position hasn’t changed. We’re always concerned, frankly, about one-sided resolutions or other actions that could be taken within the UN, and we’re always going to oppose those kinds of resolutions that we believe delegitimize … Israel and undermine its security. But we’re going to carefully consider our future engagement, if and when we reach that point, and determine how to most effectively pursue and advance the objective that we all at least claim to share, which is that of achieving a negotiated two-state solution.” [emphasis added].

Despite being prefaced with a line about the U.S. position being unchanged, the State Department’s “reconsideration” statement, on top of the unusually harsh language of condemnation for a mere announcement of program of residential construction in an existing Jewish community, is more than a hint as to the course President Obama may take.

• Shockingly, the same day, the Obama administration questioned whether Israel is a “friend.” White House spokesman Josh Ernest reiterated the State Department’s unfounded criticism of Israel, wrongly stating on October 5 that “we did receive public assurances from Israel that contradict this announcement, I guess when we’re talking about how good friends treat one another, that’s a source of serious concern as well.”

• The media promptly provided further evidence of Obama’s intentions to overturn longstanding U.S. policy. On the day of the administration’s statements (October 5, 2016), the same “echo chamber” method that Obama aide Ben Rhodes boasted of using to promote the Iran deal – namely, using the media to promote the administration’s agenda – was in full swing. A New York Times article that day quoted former Obama Administration peace negotiator, Martin Indyk, saying: “At a certain point … the Administration may well decide that there needs to be consequences for what it now sees as an effort to close off the two-state solution.”

• And on October 6, 2016, a New York Times editorial entitled “At the Boiling Point With Israel,” parroted the State Department’s false accusations against Israel, and called for Mr. Obama to “lead the Security Council to put its authority behind a resolution to support a two-state solution.”

• During his September 30, 2016 speech eulogizing Shimon Peres, Obama falsely implied that Israel is “enslaving” Palestinian Arabs. Obama quoted the leftwing Peres as saying, “The Jewish people weren’t born to rule another people” and “we are against slaves and masters.” Obama also called Israeli’s founding “flawed.”

• Later the same day, after the White House official transcript of Obama’s eulogy listed “Jerusalem, Israel” as the speech’s and burial’s location, the White House crossed out “Israel.”

• On September 9, 2016, Obama’s State Department wrongly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s valid and accurate explanation that the Palestinian Arab leadership’s repeated demand for a state with “no Jews” constituted “ethnic cleansing.”

In sum, there are good reasons to believe that the ground is being prepared for a major change of US policy, and major U.S. betrayal of Israel at the UN, perhaps after the November elections.

Obama’s refusal to veto a potential UN Resolution unilaterally establishing or laying out borders or other parameters for a Palestinian Arab State would sabotage any chance of Israel/Palestinian negotiations and peace.

As President Lyndon Johnson wisely said: “We are not the ones to say where other nations should draw lines between them that will assure each the greatest security. . . . [L]ines must be agreed to by the neighbors involved.”

The U.S. Congress can and should play a decisive role here: it can pass legislation mandating a cut-off of U.S. funding for the UN and/or the Palestinian Authority if the Obama administration permits a Palestinian state resolution to pass in the Security Council. This could stop a devastating UN resolution, which will endanger the only tiny Jewish State in the world and its eight million inhabitants.

Morton A. Klein is the President of the Zionist Organization of America.

This fits in very well with this article from October 7 by Eli Lake at Bloomberg:

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was re-elected last year, the White House threatened to reconsider long-standing U.S. policy to veto U.N. Security Council resolutions on Israel's presence in the West Bank. At issue was a last-minute interview in which Netanyahu said there would be no Palestinian state as long as he was prime minister. He took back that statement after the election. Nonetheless, the White House directed policymakers to draw up a set of options for how Obama could "preserve the two-state solution," according to one U.S. official privy to the process.

...[W]ith a little more than three months left of his presidency, Israeli officials privately say they worry Obama intends to try to level the playing field between the Palestinians and Israelis before he leaves office. The threat of a last-minute speech, executive order, or U.N. action has stirred some of Israel's friends in Washington. Last month, for example, 88 senators signed a letter to Obama urging him to restate "long-standing U.S. policy" to veto one-sided anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N.

So far, though, Obama has not sanctioned Israel for settlements, preferring instead to censure. This is where the options from 2015 could come into play. U.S. officials who have been briefed on them tell me they run from the substantive to the symbolic.

On the milder end would be a speech Obama would deliver outlining his parameters for a two-state solution. This approach is similar to a speech Bill Clinton gave at the end of his presidency that laid out such parameters. In Obama's case, the speech could disclose the concessions Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were willing to make in negotiations that fell apart in 2014.

The options also include tougher measures such as support for a new U.N. Security Council resolution that would supersede U.N. Security Council resolution 242, which was drafted in 1967. That calls on Israel to withdraw from the territory it won in the Six Day War, but calls on that territory to be returned to Israel's neighbors, not an independent Palestinian state.

Other policy options include changes to the U.S. tax code to target U.S. charities that support West Bank settlements today. Last month, J Street, the self-anointed "political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans," began a new campaign to get the Internal Revenue Service to withdraw the tax-exempt status for charities that "entrench or expand Israeli settlement activity" in the West Bank.

Another option in the 2015 policy memo would have the U.S. recognize a Palestinian state or upgrade its diplomatic presence.

And the Weekly Standard agreed, saying the building new houses at Shilo was simply a pretext for the White House to blame Israel for forcing its hand:

The latest controversy revolves around construction that the Israelis say is within the already existing Israeli neighborhood Shilo, but that the administration says constitutes a new settlement. Congressional officials who spoke to TWS said that the administration's condemnation is a pretext for eroding relations with Israel and potentially for setting up a broader diplomatic offensive.

"They're launching this weird, aggressive campaign that simply will have no positive outcome," a senior congressional source told TWS. "It's not an accident that all of this has been going on as Congress goes into recess [and] as attention is diverted by the election."

The source said that while the administration has engaged in similar behavior against Israel in the past, this case appeared "far more coordinated and aggressive."

"The president is in the market for a legacy," the source continued. "I'm very concerned that he's going to do something that he considers to be dramatic, just to get his name on the process."

Another congressional source told TWS that President Obama has been "waiting for an opening" to condemn Israel.

"200 housing units in an existing community that did not expand the boundaries at all? That's not something that should even make the news in Israel, let alone the U.S."

The source suggested that the administration had also coordinated with media outlets this past week to release material criticizing Israel.

"The fact that they seem so prepared for this, the fact that it comes at the exact same time as this crap from the New York Times and Vox," the source continued. "I [think] they were waiting for something."

A senior political official at a nonpartisan national Jewish organization told TWS that the White House seems to be setting up the Israelis to take the blame for a fabricated crisis, which could then be used to justify diplomatic action against Israel.

"It's no secret that the Obama administration is angling to do something against the Israelis after the election, when it will face no political pressure," said the source. "That's exactly why lawmakers from both parties have been penning letters and resolutions calling for the President not to throw our Israeli allies under the bus at the United Nations or target them domestically."

"The administration wants to be able to say the Israelis forced them to act, which is why they've launched these efforts to blame Tel Aviv for tensions."

Indeed, on Friday the US criticized Israel during a special UN session on "illegal settlements":

Israeli policies in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and particularly continued settlement construction were severely criticized in a special UN Security Council session on Friday.
The meeting, titled "Illegal Israeli Settlements: Obstacles to Peace and the Two-State Solution," did not involve a vote. It was held at the behest of member states Egypt, Venezuela, Malaysia, Senegal and Angola, with a push from the Palestinians. The initators made use of the Arria Formula clause, allowing them to call for debates on subjects of specific interest to them. Attendance is not mandatory.
skip - WATCH LIVE FROM UN
The U.S. representative to the session said that the U.S. is "deeply concerned and strongly opposes settlements which are corrosive to peace." He said that Israeli activities in the West Bank, primarily settlement construction, "creates a one state reality on the ground."

It seems quite possible that the groundwork is being laid for a post-election surprise.

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10/15 Links: An archaeology lesson for UNESCO; America’s Hot Proxy War with Iran

From Ian:

The Little Jewish Village That Makes Obama Boil

Halfway to the sky sits a tiny village of little white houses that has attracted the ire of the White House.
The village of Amona with its small white houses and red roofs could easily be mistaken for some lost Italian village or a dusty California town. But the White House would not have “boiled in anger”, as one anonymous official claimed, over the doings of some Italian village.
There’s only one place on earth that makes Obama’s blood boil. It isn’t Iran or North Korea. It’s Israel.
Amona’s small scattering of houses have a fraction of the square footage of the White House. The 40 families living there in defiance of Islamic terrorists and left-wing lawfarers would hardly be noticeable if they all crowded into the White House foyer. And yet they’ve been condemned by the State Department in more virulent tones than most Muslim dictators.
What is it about this handful of Jews caught between heaven and earth that outrages so many?
That may be the great question of history. It will not be solved among the sheep pens and orchards, the little white houses of Amona and their inhabitants, who despite the rage of the big White House, continue to go to work each day, to raise their children and to worship in the way of their ancestors.

Think 'Shiloh'. Think 'Settler'. Think 'Horn'.

No, that headline is not a lede about me blowing a shofar here in Shiloh, Israel.

UN Watch: Historical revisionism: UNESCO adopts PLO’s Islamist resolution denying Jewish, Christian ties to Jerusalem

UN Watch condemned UNESCO’s “historical revisionism” after the agency’s 8-member Executive Board adopted an inflammatory and one-sided Palestinian-drafted resolution, submitted by the Islamic states, which erases Jewish and Christian ties to Jerusalem and casts doubt on the connection between Judaism and the ancient city’s Temple Mount and Western Wall. The vote was 24 in favor (including Iran and Sudan), 6 against (including USA, UK, Germany, Netherlands), 26 abstaining, and 2 absent.
At the same time, UN Watch said the inflammatory text’s failure to obtain a majority was a moral victory. The amount of countries abstaining increased by seven from the 17 who supported a similar text in April, with France, India, Argentina, Spain, Sweden, Sri Lanka, Guinea and Togo shifting their votes from yes to abstain.
The resolution was drafted by the Palestinians but officially submitted by Sudan’s genocidal regime together with human rights abusers Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, and Qatar.
Notable features of the text:

The resolution “decries,” “condemns,” “deplores” and “deprecates” a long list of alleged Israeli infringements of Palestinian rights. The text calls Israel “the Occupying Power.”

The text omits any mention of the hundreds of violent Palestinian attacks against Jews in Jerusalem, organized Palestinian attempts to terrorize Jews visiting Jewish holy sites in the city, or incitement to such attacks by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas

10/14 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: America’s nightmare choice; Alleged UN-Hamas double-agent charged

From Ian:

Mark Regev: Remember Cable Street, when the labour movement and Zionists were allies

This week we commemorate 80 years since the famous battle of Cable Street, in which the labour Zionist youth movement I grew up in, Habonim, stood shoulder to shoulder with anti-fascists and leftwing demonstrators to prevent the British Union of Fascists from marching into the Jewish East End.
As the labour movement celebrates this milestone in the struggle against fascism and antisemitism, it is also faced with an inquiry into bigotry closer to home: the Chakrabarti report.
Among other findings, Chakrabarti correctly identified “Zio” as a term of racist antisemitic abuse. Yet the word that the insult is derived from – Zionism, a belief in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination – is an ideology that has enjoyed a long and proud history of support from the British labour movement.
The year before the battle of Cable Street, the future Labour prime minister Clement Attlee noted that Labour party conferences would “never falter” in their “active and sympathetic co-operation” with the Zionists. According to Attlee, Nazism and fascism demanded that this support was “all the more necessary”.
In the same year, the future president of the World Trade Union Conference, George Isaacs, called upon the Trades Union Congress to extend its blessing and help to the Jewish people in building, “a new Jerusalem in Palestine”.

Melanie Phillips: America’s nightmare choice

So let’s sum up what voters disgusted by Trump will be electing if they vote for Hillary: a corrupt, untruthful hard-leftist who disdains the US Constitution, whose record includes endangering American security and who has declared her intention to remake American society in the image of the oppressive and illiberal leftist causes she espouses.
People think that, compared to Trump, Hillary is at least a safe pair of hands. If that were so, the choice would indeed be easy. But she is not safe at all.
Let no one be under any illusions. The choice is between a candidate who is a dangerously unpredictable loose cannon and a candidate who is a predictable danger to both America and the world.
The issue in this election is not which candidate has the better claim to be an admirable human being or indeed a fine president. The issue, unfortunately, is which of the two presents the greatest danger to America and, by extension, to Israel and the rest of the free world.
Either way, America’s fate hangs in the balance. We can only look on aghast.

Honest Reporting: “This Is Palestine” – Where All Palestinians Are Innocent Victims

An article in the Irish Independent promotes a photo exhibition by Riverdance founder John McColgan, called “This is Palestine.” The photos were taken in Gaza and the West Bank, yet the article claims the photographer traveled to the region to “document the lives of Israelis and Palestinians affected by the ongoing conflict.”
In fact, judging by what the article says, the only Israelis McColgan met with were activists who campaign against the “occupation.” They are hardly going to give him a balanced view of what it’s like for Israelis living under the daily threat of Palestinian terror attacks.
In the world of the Irish Independent and McColgan’s exhibition, every Palestinian is a victim of Israeli oppression. There are no Palestinians who harm other Palestinians, and there are no Palestinians who harm Israelis. It is the usual, one-sided, simplistic narrative that the media generally favor, where Israelis = oppressors and Palestinians = victims.
These are some of the Palestinians he photographed – along with some facts that he and the Irish Independent left out that may have been inconvenient to the narrative, but would have added some much needed context:

From Middle East Monitor (MEMO), the anti-Israel propaganda "newsletter" that employs Ben White:

Israeli archaeologist denies Jewish ties to Al-Aqsa Mosque

An Israeli archaeological expert has asserted that there is no relation between the Western Wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and an ancient Jewish temple, Al Jazeera reported today.

This will likely serve to undermine Israeli excavations of the site.

Meir Ben-Dov, an Israeli archaeological expert who is author of many books about Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, further asserted that the Wailing Wall, the Jewish name for the Western Wall, has no sacred significance in the Jewish faith.

As far as I can tell, this is complete fiction.

No one claims that the Kotel is the Western Wall of the Temple; it is part of the retaining wall of the Temple Mount. (Ben Dov wrote an entire book about the Kotel.)

Here is a 1986 article about the Temple Mount and its magnificence from Ben Dov.

I did find a different relevant reference to Ben Dov:

Dr. Shmuel Berkovitz, a scholar of the holy places in the Land of Israel, found that until the eleventh century, Muslim scholars disagreed as to the location of the tethering of Muhammad’s steed and pointed to different places on Al-Haram al-Sharif.(12) Some said the place of Muhammad’s entry to Haram and the tethering of Al-Buraq was the Eastern Wall. Others said it was the Southern Wall, but no one at all looked to the Western Wall as the place where Al-Buraq was tethered. In the seventeenth century, it was common to identify a spot close to the southwestern corner of the mount as the site of the tethering. The archeologist Meir Ben-Dov believes that the Muslim traditions identifying the place as the Western Wall began at the end of the nineteenth century,(13) just when the wall was gradually becoming a symbol of the renewed Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel.(14)

If the Muslims are now asserting that Ben Dov is an authority, then the claim of the Kotel a being "Al Buraq" where Mohammed supposedly tethered his magical flying steed is completely false - according to their own expert!

This is the kind of "journalism" that Israel haters rely on for their "facts."

As far as evidence that the Temple Mount is where the Temple was, the Temple Mount Sifting Project released a great list of archaeological evidence. (h/t Yoel)

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