Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 13, 2017

Fisking the lies behind the Paris "Peace" Conference

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault writes in Haaretz his justifications for why a peace conference must be held now.

The Middle East peace process cannot wait, for two main reasons.

First and foremost, the situation is urgent. Many crises throughout the region, from Syria to Libya, from Yemen to Iraq, have generated new threats to its stability. Some say that because of these crises, priorities need to be established, and in the name of these supposed priorities, resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be put off until later.

This is not what I believe: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be considered separately from its regional environment. Thinking that the Middle East could restore its stability without settling its oldest conflict is unrealistic. This conflict, if not dealt with, will continue to fuel frustration and will ultimately only worsen the vicious cycle of radicalization and violence. It will continue to give budding terrorists excuses for enlisting. The heinous attack in Jerusalem last Sunday is an additional warning sign.

Ayrault engages in sleight-of-hand here. No one is saying that one can ignore the Israel-Arab conflict forever, only that its solution would have little real impact on regional stability. What he is really saying is "we are impotent but we can always pressure Israel to feel like we are doing something, and we can justify it with straw man arguments."

The proof that this is not Israel's fault is clear. The Palestinians rejected the only realistic peace process in the region, the Oslo process, and actively chose war instead in 2000. Yet the world community did nothing to pressure the PLO for that decision.

I have a very strong conviction, and it is one I share with most of our partners and with most Israelis and Palestinians. This conviction is that only a two-state solution will, in time, bring stability to the region and enable Israel to live in security.

Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Sinai have absolutely nothing to do with Israel, and Ayrault knows this. There will never be stability in the Middle East as long as supremacist versions of Islam and dictators who care little about their people exist. To lay the blame at Israel (which is what Ayrault is doing despite claiming to be evenhanded) is the political equivalent to the Chelm story of the man looking for his lost keys in the well-lit town square instead of the muddy forest where he lost them.

This does not mean imposing peace. France has never claimed to outline a solution for anyone. We are extremely aware that the conflict will not be settled until parties have decided to set out down the courageous and demanding path of reconciliation.

Haaretz proved this to be a lie with the publication of the draft resolution to be published at the end of the conference, a document that explicitly says that Israel has no rights over any territory beyond the 1949 armistice line.

Palestinians are seeing their future state shrinking, as settlement expansion continues at an unprecedented speed.

I've shown how this is false before from the perspective of actual area taken up by Jewish communities. Anti-Israel activists keep putting out maps that falsely give the impression of huge growth by either making the actual communities look much larger than they really are (by using large dots) or by sizing the dots by population size to make it look like the Jewish communities' size, still around 2% of the West Bank, takes up so much more. See, for example, this Peace Now map:

But let's talk about population growth, since everyone uses those numbers for their evidence of "unprecedented" growth.

Here's Peace Now's chart of population growth of the Jewish communities:

Any demographer would tell you that populations grow exponentially. A 4% growth rate for 100,000 people would be 4000 people, for 300,000 it would be 12,000, so the chart would show a curve, not a line, if the growth rate was steady. This chart is a straight line growth, meaning that roughly the same increase in real numbers year over year - which means that the rate of growth is actually going down. This chart shows an average increase of about 10,000 people a year both when there were 100,000 people and when there were 300,000 people.

Moreover, Haaretz showed last year that practically all the real growth was in Haredi communities right on the Green Line that would be part of Israel in any peace plan, and that is the case with most of the growth.

Anti-Israel activists play with the numbers to give a sense of urgency to politicians like Ayrault who are more than happy to use this false data to spout lies.

Note that while Haaretz published this apologia for pressuring Israel, all the proofs that I use to show that the assumptions are false come from Haaretz as well. The Left knows the truth but chooses to hide it when it is convenient for them, and pressuring Israel to make concessions that would jeopardize its security is very convenient for many people who feel that something must be done, and Arabs cannot be expected to fold under pressure the way Jews can.

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01/12 Links Pt2: Chloé Valdary: Where Israel Advocacy Fails, and How It Can Succeed

From Ian:

Chloé Valdary: Where Israel Advocacy Fails, and How It Can Succeed

This past November, the student newspaper at McGill University in Montreal responded to accusations that it had been providing a platform for anti-Semitism. While denying the specific charge, the editors emphatically reasserted their core position—namely, that the student paper “maintains an editorial line of not publishing pieces which promote a Zionist worldview, or any other ideology which we consider oppressive.”
This blunt statement is a reminder that hatred of the Jewish state is rapidly becoming the default position on many college campuses. Meanwhile, Israel’s friends, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, are left to ask what, if anything, can be done to stem the rising tide of anti-Israel venom.
In more than five years of involvement in advocacy for Israel, both as a college student and in a professional capacity, I’ve spoken at hundreds of events, worked with dozens of organizations, designed campus programs and social-media campaigns, and advised members of Congress, donors, and even Israeli government officials on how best to advance the cause of the Jewish state. As a member of the “millennial” generation, I have also been privy to the frustrations and complaints of my activist, pro-Israel peers whose own enchantment with the Jewish state is a driving force in their lives and who believe that too much institutional support is going to forms of advocacy that have outlived their usefulness.
Partially in response to these frustrations, I conducted a year-long study of how pro-Israel groups engage millennials. What works? What doesn’t? How to improve? In addressing those questions, I compared the available survey data about the attitudes of young Americans toward the Jewish state with what pro-Israel groups are currently doing to reach them, and conducted hundreds of interviews with students, professors, essayists, and professional activists.
The conclusion I eventually arrived at, presented below in severely boiled-down form, is that some kinds of Israel advocacy are at best of limited effectiveness and at worst can do more harm than good. Yet I also found some approaches that promise significantly greater success.

Trump’s Pentagon chief: The capital of Israel is Tel Aviv

Diverging from the signals the president-elect has been sending out, James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis opts to ‘stick with US policy’
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Pentagon said Thursday that the United States should continue treating Tel Aviv as Israel’s capitol, breaking with Republican members of Congress and indications the incoming president could fulfill his campaign pledge to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.
Asked during his confirmation hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee if he supported the embassy’s relocation, retired Marine Corps general James “Mad Dog” Mattis said, “Right now I stick with the current US policy.”
Facing an hours-long session of questions from senators, he emphasized that “the capital of Israel is Tel Aviv” because, he said, “that’s where all the government people are.”
The last three successive presidents have maintained that the future status of Jerusalem should be settled in final negotiations between the parties, as both Israelis and Palestinians claim the city as their rightful capital.
But Trump has indicated since his surprising victory in November he will no longer honor that tradition. In December, he nominated his longtime friend and attorney David Friedman, a vocal supporter and donor to West Bank settlements, to be the next US ambassador to Israel
In a statement announcing the selection, Friedman said he expected to carry out his duties in “Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

David Collier: Corked. Ben Dor’s anti-Israel ‘circus of hate’ comes to UCC in Ireland

Corked is a word that defines something special turning rotten. A wine that is flawed due to a damaged or broken cork. In this case, it is perhaps fitting that Oren Ben Dor chose UCC, or University College Cork, as the new site for the failed academic hate-fest from two years ago. The hate fest, the venom, the anti-Israel activism posing as academic thought, the deception, the rush to be top of the ‘Israel hating’ pile. This is what happens when academia is not preserved properly. When unwanted and unsavoury elements are allowed to infest and spoil the natural academic process. The proposed conference is effectively ‘corked’.
What do you do when on the one hand you want to adhere to the strongest principles of free speech, but on the other believe that academia is being used for something illegitimate.
For two years, the organisers of the disgraceful Southampton conference have had the ability to rent the local hall, pull these activists together, and conduct this vile call for the destruction of Israel in private. This is not good enough for them.
Almost all the academics involved are activists. People who are apparently on a mission to bring about the end of the democratic state of Israel. These people, in the vast majority, see Israel as an Apartheid, Nazi-like state. The conference is seen by these people, as part of their activism.
Therefore, it is not the ‘in gathering’ of like-minded people that is important. It is not about the discussion, but rather how the output can best be utilised to further delegitimise Israel and strengthen their personal cause. They need this to be in a university because they must have the academic stamp of approval.

The man behind the scam: dubious tactics of Al-Jazeera’s undercover reporter

This is the man who spent six months undercover for a sting that aimed to expose “attempts by the Israeli government to influence British democracy” – but his true identity remains hidden four days after the story broke.
The reporter, posing as a pro-Israel Labour activist by the adopted name Robin Harrow, first made contact with Shai Masot, then assistant to deputy ambassador Eitan Na’eh, last summer.
He subsequently spent considerable amount of time with him, even accompanying him to a Jewish Labour Movement meeting between Ambassador Mark Regev and a group of young Israeli Labor leaders, and social gatherings such as the one where he made his much-reported remarks about ‘taking down’ Alan Duncan.
To create his persona, ‘Harrow’ set up a fake Twitter account promoting pro-Israel messages and also a blog on the Times of Israel, with a bio describing himself as German-born and having taken part in Israel exchange programmes in school. He also professed his fascination with the strength of Israeli society “to live under such circumstances and continue to grant civil rights to all citizens”.
In one in which he lauds the treatment of LGBT people compared to other parts of the Middle East, he wrote that those calling themselves anti-Zionist are “effectively saying that Israel should not exist”. He added: “If the Labour Party loses its path, leaves the progressive camp and sanctions terrorist groups like Hamas, we lose more than legitimacy and electability in the minds of the electorate. The Labour Party will lose its soul and open the door to a new wave of anti-Semitism.”

UNHRC accidentally strengthens Israel's legal claim to the territories

The UN Human Rights Council issued a report in 2013, the "Report of the independent international factfinding mission to investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem."

It includes an annex that purports to provide a history of the "settlements" - a history that begins in 1948.

Its very first entry says:

1948: • The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel‖ is issued. It equates Eretz-Israel (in Hebrew the Land of Israel) to the territory of British Mandate Palestine, in contrast to the provisions of 1947 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 on the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into two Independent Arab and Jewish States with a special international regime for the City of Jerusalem.

I don't read Israel's declaration of independence that way (it actually obliquely refers to UNGA 181 as proof that the UN accepts a Jewish state but it never accepts the partition plan borders), but if the UN does interpret the Declaration as saying that Israel claims the entire area, that actually strengthens Israel's legal position.

The UN calls the territories "occupied." Israel characterizes them as "disputed." If Israel's official claim to the entire British Mandate areas dates from 1948, and not 1967, that means that the territories were by the definition disputed even before the Six Day War, and Israel's claims to Judea and Samaria pre-dates any Arab nation's claims. It means that Israel staked a claim to the areas before the Green Line existed. Jordan only claimed them in 1949.

Unfortunately, the UN timeline is nonsense, but it proves that they will make up whatever they want as long as it fits their narrative of a expansionist Jewish state that salivated after Arab lands from the start.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

To whom does the land belong?

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. – Charter of the United Nations, chap. 1, art. 2, p. 4

In May 1948, with the end of the British Mandate, various Arab nations invaded Palestine with the encouragement of their patron, Britain, with the intention of seizing the territory for themselves. In particular, Jordan (then called Transjordan) occupied Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, killing or driving out the Jewish population of these areas.

The Mandate, which was established for the benefit of the Jewish people and which called for settlement of Jews in what was then called Palestine, echoed the language of the Balfour declaration, which referred to a “national home” for the Jewish people. The Zionist leadership of the yishuv (the pre-state entity in the land of Israel) quite reasonably interpreted this as a sovereign state. But the British preferred to see it become part of its Arab client states or at least ruled by Arabs. They had gotten used to “Palestine” as part of their empire, and didn’t trust the Zionists. They also feared Soviet influence over a Jewish state, since the leadership of the yishuv represented the left wing of Zionism. And of course the usual anti-Jewish attitudes played a role.

So Britain subverted the Mandate by being partial to the Arabs throughout its existence, encouraged Arabs from the region to immigrate to Palestine, fought against Jewish immigration – even for Jews fleeing the Holocaust – tried to prevent the declaration of the Jewish state in 1948, and supported the Arab invaders with arms and even British officers.

In 1949, the new state of Israel and Jordan signed a ceasefire agreement which delineated the boundary between the Israeli- and Jordanian-controlled areas. Moshe Dayan drew a line on a map with a green pencil, and this boundary henceforth was called the Green Line. The cease-fire agreement very clearly stated that the Green Line was not a border; it had no political significance and only marked the locations of the opposing forces at the time of their disengagement. The Jordanians were adamant about this, because they viewed the situation as unsatisfactory and temporary: they did not accept the existence of any Jewish state in “Palestine” and intended to eliminate it in the future. In 1950, Jordan violated the UN Charter and annexed the territory it had acquired by aggression, calling it the “West Bank.” Only Britain and its client Pakistan recognized the annexation.

In 1967, Jordan again attacked Israel, and as a result Israel conquered the area that Jordan had been illegally occupying.

To whom does this land belong?

Israel, the state of the Jewish people who were the intended beneficiary of the Mandate, would seem to have the strongest claim. But at this point another claimant arose, the PLO. The PLO, with Soviet help, jumped on the bandwagon of decolonization and fraudulently claimed to represent an indigenous “Palestinian people” that had been dispossessed by Jewish colonists. It received great support at the UN and throughout the “international community” as a result of the influence of Arab oil-producers, by terrorist blackmail of European nations, and again because of anti-Jewish attitudes. Its narrative fit in quite well with fashionable “third-worldism” and anti-racism (despite the fact that its own ideology was itself highly racist).

During the period of 1967-1988, Jordan maintained significant influence in the territories, paying salaries and pensions to civil servants and providing other benefits to inhabitants. Israel did not object to this and allowed the continuation of Jordanian law for such things as land transfers. Israel acted as a military occupier even though the land she was “occupying” did not belong to any other state. But she hoped that at some point there would be a peace agreement in which part of the territory would be given to Jordan and the rest annexed to Israel.

In hindsight this was a bad idea, since it weakened Israel’s claim to having liberated land that originally belonged to her. It made room for the unsound Geneva Convention arguments for the illegality of Jewish settlements.

In 1988, Jordan renounced all claims to Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem in favor of the PLO. It should be obvious that King Hussein did not have the right to give away what he did not own – not the parcels of land that he had used to bribe local sheikhs prior to 1967 and which so bedevil Israel's settlement enterprise today, and not the totality of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem to the PLO.

In 1993, Israel made a further mistake, this one disastrous for the prospect of peace and Israel's security, when she signed Oslo I and recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the “Palestinian people.” This validated the fraud which elevated the descendants of recent Arab migrants to a “people” with an equal or greater claim on the land than the Jews, and which gave new life to the moribund PLO – which was and still is a corrupt band of gangsters and terrorists who extort and exploit the Arabs under its control, while it indoctrinates them to extreme hatred and incites murder.

But after all this, the question remains: to whom does the land belong?

The American position on this has evolved over the years, in my opinion in the wrong direction. UNSC resolution 242 was passed after the 1967 war, and it was interpreted by the West (but not by the Soviets or Arabs) to mean that Israel would return some of the territory it had conquered to Jordan, Egypt and Syria in return for agreements to end the conflict. How much and which land would be returned would depend on what was needed for “secure and recognized boundaries.” There was no suggestion that Israel had to compensate anyone if she did not return 100% of the territory. There was no implication that the land across the Green Line was prima facie the property of the Arabs.

In discussions between Israel and the PLO during the 1990s, the idea of land swaps was raised. After all, Israel had given Egypt 100% of the Sinai in return for peace; weren’t the Palestinians also entitled to 100%? And if Israel kept settlement blocs, then shouldn’t she give the Palestinians an equal amount of land from somewhere else so they wouldn’t be “cheated?” Land swaps were discussed in President Clinton’s negotiations in 2000-1, and also proposed by Ehud Olmert in 2008, but in both cases no agreement was reached. The swap idea was just a proposal to make the deal more attractive.

President Obama, however, introduced the idea of “1967 lines with mutually-agreed swaps” as a firm basis for negotiation in 2011. This represents a significant shift away from UNSC 242, by requiring compensation for land across the Green Line that becomes part of Israel. It implies that the PLO has title to this land now, and must be paid for whatever Israel takes. But this is sheer nonsense: Jordan could not bequeath to the PLO what it didn’t possess, either de facto or de jure.

Obama, unfortunately, is not a student of history but an ideologue; and the ideology that appeals to him is that of the “plight of the Palestinian people,” about which he has been talking since his Cairo speech in 2009. And he has chosen to take action in the last days of his administration to make the diplomatic landscape fit that ideology.

The position that all land across the Green Line is “Palestinian land” has now been formalized in UNSC resolution 2334, passed in December when the US did not veto it, and which the Israeli government believes was actually “created” by the Obama Administration. Note that while the resolution affirms UNSC 242, it goes on to contradict the long-held Western interpretation of it.

Much of the erosion of Israel’s position can be laid at her own feet. She should have been more aggressive about claiming her rights early on. But I think that today – before the second shoe of the pair that includes UNSC 2334 drops – Israel should make a clear statement of her rights to the land, something like this:

Israel believes that her claim to Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, based on the Mandate for Palestine and her historical claim of aboriginal rights [explicated here by Allen Hertz] to the Land of Israel, is stronger than that of any other claimant. Israel would be within her rights to annex these areas today.

Israel categorically rejects UNSC 2334 and the idea that she does not hold title to all of the land in question.

Nevertheless, Israel has on several occasions been willing to cede some of the land in return for a real peace agreement that ends the conflict and cancels all Arab claims (including right of return) against Israel.

However, any such agreement must, in the words of UNSC 242, provide for “secure and recognized boundaries,” which include continued Israeli possession of certain strategic areas like the Jordan Valley and the hill country adjacent to Israel’s population centers.

Israel’s security is also not consistent with a fully sovereign Palestinian entity. Such an entity must be demilitarized and Israel must retain control of airspace and other strategic features of the territory.

The PLO would never agree, since this directly contradicts its narrative. But it’s the truth.

Go for it, Bibi.

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01/12 Links Pt1: Col Kemp: Call off the Paris conference; The UN Is Beyond Reform

From Ian:

Col Kemp: Call off the Paris conference

The planned Paris conference was born out of good will, but it comes at a very bad ‎moment. On the one hand, Resolution 2334, recently adopted by the U.N. ‎Security Council, has endorsed the Palestinian narrative that the core of the ‎problem comes down to a geographical issue: the settlements in the West Bank ‎and the 1967 borders. Yet this interpretation does not hold water. Every time Israel ‎has swapped land for peace, it has only earned more terrorism. The most striking ‎and visible case is the Gaza Strip: Since Israel carried out its unilateral ‎withdrawal in 2005, Hamas has ruled in that territory with total impunity and the ‎attacks on Israel have only continued. Thousands of rockets and missiles have ‎been launched from Gaza against civilian populations in Israel.‎
It is easy to believe that the conflict can be reduced to an issue of territories. But that's ‎false. The reality is different.
The real problem is that the Palestinians don't want ‎to give an inch of what the Israelis want, namely, that they recognize Israel as ‎the state of the Jewish people. It is as basic as that; nothing more, nothing less. ‎To demand that Israel renounce any claim to the Western Wall and other places ‎at the heart of Judaism is not just historical nonsense, it is the wrong move. The ‎Palestinians demand east Jerusalem today; tomorrow they will want the entire ‎city, and later, the entire country. In fact, that's what their propaganda teaches. ‎Their school textbooks, all paid for with EU taxpayers' money, are full of hatred, ‎incitement to violence, and clear denial of Israel and the Jewish people.‎
Peace cannot come out of incitement to hatred and violence. It would be good if ‎the participants in Paris would demand that Palestinian leaders end their ‎campaigns and indoctrination against Israel and assume once and for all that ‎Israel was created as the homeland of the Jewish people and that it will ‎continue to be so. The sooner they accept that, the better, so they can reach an ‎agreement with Jerusalem on the drawing of borders.‎
In the same spirit, this international conference would do well to demand that ‎the Palestinian state have transparent institutions, free from corruption, and ‎defend tolerance and peaceful coexistence with neighboring Israel. No ‎liberal democracy should be satisfied if what it establishes and recognizes is a ‎nest of corruption, nepotism, discrimination, and violence.‎

French Ambassadors Declare War on Israel

For our ambassadors, terrorism does not exist in "Palestine". They just whisper Quixotically about "the need for security" for Israel.
The obvious conclusion is that they are just trying to hide their own detestation of Israel behind the Arab one.
The problem is not Jewish "settlers" in "Palestine". Before 1967, there were no settlements, then what was the Palestine Liberation Organization "liberating" when it was created in Cairo in 1964? The answer, as the PLO was the first to admit, was "Palestine" -- meaning the entire state of Israel, regarded by many Arabs as just one big settlement. Just look any Palestinian map.
The problem is that these ambassadors are not as dangerous to Israel as they are to Europe and the free world, as they keep on succumbing to the demands of Islam.

Melanie Phillips: Perfidious Boris?

First of all, the Israeli settlements are not illegal. They are lawful several times over under international law which the UK Foreign Office persistently and wilfully misrepresents. Second, this profession of the government’s “strong support for a Jewish homeland in Israel” is simply nauseating in view of the fact that resolution 2334 falsely declares that Judaism’s holiest places in Jerusalem, to which the Jews alone have the overwhelming legal, historical and moral claim as the only people for whom Jerusalem was ever their national capital, belong to the Palestinians.
The UN resolution of which Boris Johnson is so proud says in effect that it is illegal for Jews to pray at the Western Wall. It is therefore not just a strike against Israel but a strike against Judaism itself.
Not satisfied with this hypocrisy, Boris Johnson added for good measure that Britain had supported UN resolution 2334 “only because it contained new language pointing out the infamy of terrorism that Israel suffers every day, not least on Sunday, when there was an attack in Jerusalem.”
But resolution 2334, of which Boris Johnson boasts, contributed to the atmosphere of incitement in which last Sunday’s murderous truck-ramming attack, which claimed the lives of four young Israelis and wounded many more, took place. The Palestinians – who thanked Britain and the other supporters of 2334 in a cartoon which threatened more violence against Israel – have ramped up their incitement to murder as a direct consequence of the UN having now endorsed in 2334 their exterminatory lies. Israeli officials have also observed that there has been a sharp rise in the number of violent attacks in the disputed territories, primarily rock-throwing incidents, since 2334 was passed.
No more funny guy, Boris. Perfidious Albion redux, indeed.

19 years of ethnic cleansing, 50 years ago (Zvi)

A guest post from Zvi:

In 1948, the Arab Legion ethnically cleansed - illegally - the millennia-old Jewish Quarter
of eastern Jerusalem, as well as other parts of the "old city." The Jordanians, occupying the area, expelled every last Jew, destroyed 58 synagogues and tens of thousands of Jewish graves, and forbade Israelis to pray at their holiest places. Arab Muslim settlers - including some from Hebron, which had violently murdered most of its own Jews only a few decades before, in 1929 - were later transferred in to replace the Jews who had been violently expelled from their homes in eastern Jerusalem. The area became a slum.

Only 19 years later, In 1967, Israel took Jewish eastern Jerusalem and REVERSED that ethnic cleansing, allowing Jews to return. It did so without ethnically cleansing Arabs, or even expelling the Arab settlers. Today Jerusalem is a busy city in which people from all sects and cultures rub shoulders, nearly all peaceably.

Today, the Palestinian Authority - with the Obama Administration and the United Nations cheering it on - claim that it was illegal for Israel to reverse that 19-year act of ethnic cleansing and demand that the Jews be forced out once again. They insist that Jews have no ties to the ancient Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem; to our holiest place on earth, the Temple Mount, and to the Second Temple's Western Wall; to the cemeteries where our people were buried for centuries; and to the houses from which all Jews were violently expelled only 19 years before 1967.

It has been 50 years since that brief 19 year period of Arab ethnic cleansing in eastern Jerusalem. Anyone who truly stands for peace and justice must support the most open and free government that Jerusalem has had in millennia, stand against the denial of millennia of Jewish history in the city and stand for Israel's right to its capital, the united city of Jerusalem.

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Knesset member calls on Israeli Arabs to prioritize Palestinian cause over Israel

What other democracy would tolerate a traitor in its own government?

From MEMRI:

On November 20, 2016, Ayman 'Odeh, chair of the Joint List, an alliance of Arab-dominated parties in the Israeli Knesset, participated in a conference held by the Palestinian Masarat Center for Research and Public Policies. The conference, held simultaneously in Al-Bireh and Gaza under the heading "Reality and Horizons in the Struggle of the 1948 Palestinians [i.e., Israeli Arabs]," was attended by dozens of politicians, academics and social activists. 'Odeh, who attended the conference in Al-Bireh, addressed the political path of the Israeli Arabs and said that, when a conflict arises between their Palestinian and Arab identity and Israeli citizenship, their Palestinian and Arab identity takes precedence, and that is why they avoid taking jobs at various government ministries.

He added that Israeli Arabs have a duty to support the Palestinian struggle and have a national interest in seeing an end to the occupation, the establishment of a Palestinian state and the return of the refugees.

'Odeh called "to form a joint cultural framework [for Israeli and non-Israeli Palestinians] to strengthen national identity, with the PLO's consent." Noting that the PLO cannot represent the Palestinians inside Israel, and that the latter cannot be members of the PLO or its National Council, he added that "there is need for functional separation that will take into consideration the unique [position] of the Palestinians inside [Israel]," and that "the implementation of this idea requires discussion and study."

'Odeh made similar remarks at the opening ceremony of Fatah's Seventh General Conference on November 30, 2016 in Ramallah. He addressed Fatah as "Fatah of the great sacrifices" and "Fatah of the martyrs and prisoners," and, speaking on behalf of his party, called on the Palestinian factions to put aside their differences in order to concentrate on the main struggle, against the occupation. He explained that the Israeli Arabs have a role in helping the occupied Palestinians and in swaying public opinion in Israel, and ended his speech with a quote from Arafat and with a call for the next Fatah conference to be held in Jerusalem: "As the great [Arafat] said, 'people think that [the Palestinian state] is far, but we see that it is near.' Fatah's next conference will be held in East Jerusalem, capital of the Palestinian state, and we shall be there with you." 'Odeh's speech was received with applause and cries of the slogan, coined by Arafat, "thousands of martyrs are marching on Jerusalem."

(h/t Josh K)

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In 2007, Mahmoud Abbas officially announced that all armed groups outside official PA security forces were illegal and that the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were dismantled.

It's been nearly ten years, and nothing has changed.

This month the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades openly participated in the 52nd anniversary of Fatah's first terror attack. Their masked terrorists paraded in public, through city streets, with their weapons including what appeared to be rockets. (These videos were made in Gaza.)

When Israel makes a stink about Abbas violating agreements or doing things that are against peace, sometimes the media starts asking questions and you will see a vague announcement or denial from some Palestinian official. But the open acceptance of a separate armed terror group under the Fatah umbrella is completely unreported. And it brags about attacks it makes against Israel in the West Bank.

It doesn't fit the narrative of a "peaceful" Mahmoud Abbas and therefore the story must be blackholed.

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Yemen site: "Protocols" are a myth but Iranians are taking a page from them

This is progress, of sorts.

Yemeni news site Tehama Press has an interesting op-ed:

Experience has proven that the Iranian regime does not seek to make peace with its Arab neighbors, but its main concern is the restoration of the glories of a defunct empire, where they converted Arab Shiite youth to firewood and cannon fodder for their sectarian treacherous, war. This danger of this system to usurp all political, religious and military areas exceeds the Israeli danger itself, and we have to be ready for military confrontation with them to end their ambitions, and reduce the risk of [Iran's] sectarian project which is growing by supporting terrorist organizations and militias in the region.

...Although modern analysts say that that these Protocols [of the Elders of Zion] are incorrect and fraudulent despite their spread on a large scale between 1902 and 1920, but it can not be denied that what Iran seeks to reach today is much more dangerous than The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols only wanted to dominate and exterminate the Christians, while the protocols of Iran seek the malicious destruction of Arab societies and the demonization of Muslims, and the elimination of the ties that bind members of the Arab communities, Sunni and Shi'a Muslims and Christians.

If you read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , you will find myriad parallels between them and the velayat - e faqih projects and actions and interventions of Iran in the Arab region and the world .

I do not recall this much hate for Iran and Shiites back when Iran started to flex its muscles to become a world power. Right now Israel, as despised as it remains in the Arab world, is not nearly as loathed as Iran is among Sunni Arabs.

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01/11 Links Pt2: Al-Jazeera Over-Eggs Israeli Conspiracy Sting

From Ian:

Guido Fawkes: Al-Jazeera Over-Eggs Israeli Conspiracy Sting

Guido thought the Al-Jazeera sting exposing Israeli ‘diplomat’ Shai Masot and Rob Halfon aide Maria Strizzolo discussing their dislike of Alan Duncan was a fun tale. Was it a “plot” to “take down” a Tory minister? No. Maria Strizzolo was a very junior aide. The truth is MPs and journalists have far tastier conversations with friends at London embassies all the time…
Part two of the sting caught Masot telling Labour Friends of Israel chair Joan Ryan that he could fund trips for MPs to Israel. If you believe Al-Jazeera this is proof of a million pound Israeli conspiracy to buy off British MPs. Again they’ve over-egged it. Pretty much every MP has taken a freebie trip to another country at some point.
Today brings part three: the Israeli embassy helped Jewish students campaign against Malia Bouattia’s election as NUS president. Seriously? Bouattia had been embroiled in some pretty nasty anti-Semitism allegations, is it a surprise or even a bad thing that the Israelis aren’t her biggest fan? Noteworthy that the Qatari-funded Al-Jazeera is siding with an alleged anti-Semite while peddling a bunch of far-fetched anti-Israel conspiracies in a series titled “The Lobby” (that old trope). Guido looks forward to Al-Jazeera’s exposé of Qatari money funding much more sinister activities in the UK…

Jewish Group Screens ‘Jerusalem Eternal Capital of Israel’ on UNESCO’s Paris Headquarters

The French branch of the organization Israel Is Forever on Tuesday announced it had decided to take strong action “on behalf of many French Jews and Israeli Francophones,” to show their dissatisfaction with the upcoming international conference on the Middle East to be held in Paris January 15, whose only goal is to harm Israel.
According to IIF France, its members proposed on Tuesday evening to project the image of the Western Wall with the text “Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the State of Israel” on many facades of the UNESCO building in Paris, as well as on the building fronts of the “disinformation” news agency AFP, and on the Arc de Triomphe.
IIF France argued that France’s voted at Unesco and the UN, along with its initiative for an international conference Sunday, January 15, can only promote terrorism against Israel. They suggested that last Sunday’s terrorist truck ramming attack in Jerusalem was further proof for the notion that the more the PA Arabs sense that the international community is anti-Israel, the more inclined they are to resort to terrorism.
They also issued “An open letter to the President of the French Republic,” which “draws attention to France’s harmful role vis-à-vis the island of stability and democracy in the Middle East.” The letter condemned a policy that undermines prospects for peace and expresses its solidarity with the State and people of Israel.

FBI looking for source of 'robocall' bomb threats to Jewish centers

A wave of telephone bomb threats to 16 Jewish community centers in nine US states may have originated from the same number and been placed by at least one individual and an automated calling system, security officials said on Tuesday.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the calls, which led to evacuations at some of the community centers on Monday, but resulted in no attacks or injuries. Police who searched the centers found no bombs.
The FBI has not named any suspects or described a likely motive for the bomb threats, and it was not clear why the centers in the US Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and South regions were targeted.
Some of the phone calls were made using an automated "robocall" system, while others were placed live by at least one individual, said Paul Goldenberg, national director of the Secure Community Network, a nonprofit group that advises Jewish groups on security.

How's this for a stunner? According to the latest Peace Index,* a poll of Israeli attitudes put out by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) and Tel Aviv University (TAU), the majority of Israelis (57%) think Barack Obama has had an unfriendly attitude toward Israel during his tenure. Of course, the IDI and TAU are both bastions of liberal thought, so you can probably assume the actual number of Israelis who think Barry hates us is closer to, oh, a gazillion percent.

It's no surprise that we think Barry O. hates us here in Israel. It is kind of surprising, however, when you look at what Israelis think about the by now, infamous abstention on UNSC Resolution 2334. One might have thought that the IDI and TAU, being slanted so far left they're in danger of falling over, would find a way to skew their poll so that it attributes the motivating force behind the resolution to settlement construction.

But no.

The majority of Israelis polled, (52.9%), as it turns out, are certain the resolution was all about hostility toward Israel, rather than any principled stand on settlement construction. And since that is the case, some 62% (!!!) of Israelis polled feel that in light of the Security Council resolution, we should "continue" building homes in "the territories." Which is a funny thing to say, considering there hasn't been any settlement construction to speak of under PM Netanyahu, except for some (inadequate) natural growth expansion. Obama has made sure of that.

Still, it's nigh impossible to get 62% of Israelis to agree on anything at all, so let's look a bit closer at the number of Israelis who think we should Build Baby, Build.

89% of those on the right say Israel should keep building

83% of moderate right Israelis say Israel should keep building

45% of the center says Israel should keep building

21% of moderate left Israelis say Israel should keep building

15% of the left says Israel should keep building

That final figure (15%!!) kind of jumps out and makes one wonder what prompts that many leftist, anti-settlement, pro-two-state-solution, land-for-peacenik Israelis to favor building in the territories. Could it be that Security Council Resolution 2334, or perhaps the U.S. abstention of same, finally brought home (if you'll excuse the expression) to them that when the UN and Barack Obama speak of "territories," they don't just mean Judea and Samaria, but Jerusalem, and probably Haifa, Tel Aviv, Beersheba, and all parts in between?

It would be nice to think so. Because fixing problems always begins with a frank assessment of the problem. Part of that problem is the blame game.

The Israeli left traditionally blames settlers for the lack of peace in the region. This belief was the driving force behind Disengagement. The left needed a scapegoat. They needed to punish someone. The settlers were "It." All 11,000 of them. That is the number of Jews expelled from Gaza and Northern Samaria in order to make Disengagement possible.

Expelling those settlers made the left very happy. It made them cheer. But the thing is, all of us can see the results of Disengagement. All of us can see what happens when you boot out the settlers and give the land they made bloom to the Arabs. You get Hamastan on your border. You get tens of thousands of rockets shot from the land you gave them into the part you still have. You get terror tunnels invading your kibbutzim.

The left is beginning to see these simple truths. That the only answer to a world that doesn't want Jews to build homes in Israel—the land promised to the Jews—is for Jews to build homes in Israel.

Building homes won't stop the terror. Not altogether. But it will make a dent in that terror. Because it's giving an inch that makes them attack you until you give them a mile. The more you give, the more they will demand, the harder and more cruelly they will attack you. That's just the way it is.

It has always been thus.

Building, on the other hand, says, "No. We're not going away. We're digging in our heels."

Now most Israelis (71%) believe that under the Trump administration, Israel will have a free hand in this renewed desire to build the land of Israel. Or at least, we won't have anyone tying our hands to keep us from doing so. Even the Arabs believe this (81%). They know that when Obama goes, there goes the constraints, the blackmail, the nasty lashing out at Israel. They know that no one in the White House is going to get in the way of Jewish building now that Barry's going away for good.

It's all so close and yet so far away. The dream of a racist Judenrein Arab state on Jewish soil may yet be declared in Paris before Obama's timeline runs out. But it will matter little to how we run our affairs in Israel. We know it and the Arabs know it, too. Jews are gonna build homes in their homeland, because they can and they will.

We'll keep on building because there is nothing wrong with Jews building homes and everything right. Unless you're Obama and the UN Security Council. And there is this sense that these two entities have had their day in the sun and that this particular sun is waning. They will hurt us all they can and then they will render themselves completely irrelevant as the world begins to understand that their hate is just hate. Even if it's Jew-hate.

It's going to happen. People will see that homes are just buildings and that it is terror, not buildings, that prevents peace. All over the world, they will awaken and see it.

There may be some blips along the way. But we can smell truth dawning, getting ready to sit pretty in the sunshine and put some color in its cheeks.

And it's only a week and counting until it happens.

*From the IDI press release: The Peace Index is a project of the Evens Program for Mediation and Conflict Resolution at Tel Aviv University and the Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research of the Israel Democracy Institute. This month's survey was conducted by telephone on January 2 and 3, 2017, by the Midgam Research Institute. The survey included 600 respondents (500 Jews, 100 Arabs), who constitute a representative national sample of the adult population aged 18 and over. The maximum measurement error for the entire sample is ±4.1% at a confidence level of 95%.

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Roger Waters Announces Concerts In Tel Aviv, Jerusalem (Satire from PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Roger Waters Announces Concerts In Tel Aviv, Jerusalem

: Credit: Alterna2 via Wikimedia Commons

New York, January 11 - Former Pink Floyd frontman and boycott-Israel advocate Roger Waters announced today that he will perform a series of concerts in Israel this summer, in both the cultural capital of Tel Aviv and the political and spiritual capital, Jerusalem.

A spokesman for the singer-songwriter told reporters that the announcement by no means indicates that Waters has departed from his pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel political stance. "Every single BDS activist uses Israeli technology constantly," explained Preet Ender. "I can't think of a single one who would specifically instruct the medical facilities treating them not to use inexpensive generic pharmaceuticals, most of which are made by the Israeli manufacturer Teva. And I don't see them lining up to ban the sale of cherry tomatoes, which are an Israeli invention. And I won't even mention instant-message technology, Intel computer chips, and the fact that our BDS ally Omar Barghouti got his PhD at Tel Aviv University."

Ender added that no plans have been made for protests or internet campaigns urging Waters not to perform in Israel. "It would normally be Roger's approach to hound artists who have announced performances in Israel, but the effect of calling on himself not to play Tel Aviv and Jerusalem would be incoherent," he noted. "Not that it won't happen, because incoherence is a thing with BDS in the first place, what with the declared-undeclared opposition to Israel's existence, as opposed to its policies." He did not rule out the possibility that Waters would delegate the harassment to other washed-up celebrities in the BDS movement, such as Elvis Costello.

Music industry insiders note that political ideology and commercial interests seldom mesh. "Waters himself has certainly not renounced profits from sales of Pink Floyd materials in Israel," remarked Arthur Facepalm, a talent agent. "Besides, if Arab countries that once boycotted Israel, not to mention the Palestinian Authority's own economic leadership, are investing in better commercial relationships with the Jewish State, it makes little sense for him to adhere to some ideologically pure policy when the people on behalf of whom he claims to be campaigning have themselves rejected that stance."

To assuage fellow BDS advocates who might feel betrayed or slighted by the concerts, Waters also announced that he would hold several benefit performances at American college campuses in the fall, to which only declared anti-Semites will be admitted. Proceeds from the US concerts, said Ender, will go toward a fund for grassroots BDS groups to build and run their own websites using the Israeli web-design utility Wix.

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