Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, March 25, 2017

03/25 Links: After London terror attack, UK blasts UNHRC anti-Israel bias; Holocaust Survivor a Bar Mitzvah at 85

From Ian:

Anne Bayefsky: Say what?! UN Human Rights Council declares Israel world's No. 1 human rights violator

According to the U.N.'s top human rights body, Israel is the worst human rights violator in the world today. That’s the result of the latest session of the UN Human Rights Council which wrapped up in Geneva on Friday by adopting five times more resolutions condemning Israel than any other country on earth.
President Trump’s administration is currently a member of this reprehensible body. To borrow Elie Wiesel’s counsel to President Reagan not to pay his respects at a German graveyard containing Nazi SS remains: “That place, Mr. President, is not your place.”
The Bush administration refused to join the Council when it was created in 2006.
On March 31, 2009, President Obama – fully aware of its entrenched anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias – made jumping on board one of his very first foreign policy moves. Moreover, in an unscrupulous attempt to control his successor, the former President obtained yet another three-year term for the United States on the Council that began on January 1, 2017.
If President Trump were to choose a swift departure from the Council as one of his very first foreign policy moves, it would demonstrate a principled reset of American values and priorities on the world stage. March 31, 2017, the anniversary of Obama’s decision, would be an auspicious date to make that point.
The reasons for leaving are many. Here are a few:

After London terror attack, UK blasts UNHRC anti-Israel bias

The United Kingdom blasted the United Nations Human Rights Council for its biased treatment of Israel and for failing to condemn Palestinian terrorism in a strongly worded speech it delivered in Geneva on Friday.
“Today we are putting the Human Rights Council on notice,” UK Ambassador Julian Braithwaite told the UNHRC as it wrapped up its 34th session. He spoke just after the 47 member UNHRC had approved four resolutions that condemned Israeli actions against the Palestinians and one that called on it to return the Golan Heights to Syria.
The UK supported two of the resolutions, abstained on another two, and voted against the one with regard to the Golan Heights. Out of a similar concern with regard to bias, the US, traditionally has been the only country to consistently vote against all UNHRC resolutions that involve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Golan Heights. In this session, the US and Togo, voted against those texts.
But Braithwaite warned that it would follow the US in rejecting all resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if the UNHRC did not treat Israel proportionally.
In this session out of the 10 condemnations issue against individual countries, five were leveled at Israel.
“If things do not change, in the future we will adopt a policy of voting against all resolutions concerning Israel’s conduct in the Occupied Syrian and Palestinian Territories,” Braithwaite said.
He spoke just two days after a terrorist attack in London claimed the lives of five people, including the assailant.

Statement from family of Edward Joffe on Rasmea Odeh plea deal

Yesterday we reported that Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh had agreed to a plea deal in her immigration fraud case, Terrorist Rasmea Odeh cops plea deal, to leave country.
Under that plea deal, Rasmea would avoid prison time, but would require her to forfeit her U.S. citizenship and be deported (likely to Jordan initially). Her plea hearing will be held on April 25, 2017 at 2:30 PM, at federal court in Detroit.
The plea on immigration fraud resulted from Rasmea’s failure to disclose on her visa papers (in 1994) and naturalization papers (2003) that she had been convicted in Israel in 1970 of the bombing of the SuperSol supermarket in Jerusalem, killing Hebrew University students Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner.
The family of Edward Joffe, two brothers and a sister, provided me with this statement on the plea deal:
“Although Odeh will not serve further prison time for the Immigration Fraud crimes of which she is guilty, we believe that after a long and difficult trial and appeal, it is time for her to be stripped of her US citizenship and deported without further delay.
While it would have been helpful to have seen some kind of repentance for her horrendous acts, her plea does show admission of guilt in our eyes. We hope that her misguided supporters will now recognize her guilty plea for what it is, and desist from pretending she is a victim.
The true victims are the two young men Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner whom she murdered.
We want to commend the US Department of Justice and especially US Attorneys Barbara McQuade and Jonathan Tukel for resolutely prosecuting this case with exceptional competence and professionalism.”

03/24 Links Pt2: JVP Defends Jew-Killing Palestinian Terrorist; Just how out of Touch is BDS?

From Ian:

Jewish Voice For Peace Defends Jew-Killing Palestinian Terrorist

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an anti-Semitic group masquerading as a pacifist organization, wrote a press statement on March 23 defending Rasmea Odeh, a convicted Palestinian-Arab terrorist who slaughtered two Jews in a Jerusalem supermarket bombing in 1969. Odeh, who lied to U.S. immigration authorities about her conviction and imprisonment in Israel for the bombing, will be deported back to Jordan instead of facing prison time for committing fraud.
In response to her imminent deportation, JVP wrote the following statement:
When a leader like Rasmea Odeh who fights for justice chooses to leave a fight, she knows the game is rigged.
Rasmea is leaving the U.S. court system, weighed down by the ever-present shadow of Israeli military regime which has already punished and tortured her.
Does Rasmea, Palestinian leader and seeker of justice, have a real chance for a fair trial in the current political climate and courts?
In the context of a Justice Department led by racist attorney general Jeff Sessions, a prosecutor with a record of demonizing Rasmea and her supporters, and a new indictment that turns her immigration trial into a repeat of the false charges of terrorism against her, Rasmea has made the difficult decision to leave the home and community she has built in the U.S. over the last 20 years.
JVP not only defends Odeh over the Justice Department rightfully pursuing the immigration fraud case against her, but it also labels her a freedom fighter and a "seeker of justice." It blames the "racist" Jeff Sessions for calling for her deportation based off "false charges of terrorism" against her. However, former Palestinian-Arab terrorist Aisha Odeh (no relation) implicated Rasmea in the same supermarket bombing that she was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for.

This Ongoing War: Our daughter's smiling killer: "Shocked" that US "decided to go after her for no obvious reason"

The following article was published by Al Jazeera in Arabic on Wednesday and in English yesterday (Thursday). It's an entirely uncritical account of a notably vicious convicted murderer's version of why she should be left alone and not have to face justice. The reporter does not challenge a single one of her claims.
Our comments are interspersed below.
Ahlam al-Tamimi: 'We only wanted freedom'
Al Jazeera speaks to freed Palestinian prisoner, wanted by the US for helping in a Jerusalem cafe bombing 16 years ago | Ali Younes | @ali_reports |
Amman, Jordan - Ahlam al-Tamimi, 37, never imagined that the quiet life she led for several years in Jordan would be turned upside down when the United States Department of Justice filed criminal charges against her demanding her extradition from Jordan and placing her on the FBI's most wanted list.
Our comment: She was freed via an extorted commutation of sentence. Israel was extorted by the Hamas terrorist regime which illegally held captive and incommunicado an Israeli combatant, Gilad Shalit, for five years, eventually trading him for 1,027 convicted Arab terrorists imprisoned by Israel. Tamimi was one of them. Not a single prisoner received a pardon. Instead, their sentences were conditionally commuted - with the conditions including an undertaking never to engage again in terrorism or incitement to terrorism.
Tamimi was serving 16 life terms after confessing to being the mastermind of the Sbarro pizzeria massacre, an especially sickening and horrific terror attack that targeted children and woman. Tamimi was the one who did the actual targeting and, as she has boasted repeatedly, picked the target with great care. She brought the bomb by bus and taxi from a PA-controlled town in the Samaria district into Jerusalem. That bomb was a young newly-religious fanatic from well-to-family: not poor, not uneducated, not living in misery and despair: a human bomb. He was equipped with an explosive-laden, purpose-built guitar case on his back. Tamimi walked him to the central Jerusalem intersection where the Sbarrro pizzeria stood and where, after giving her time to flee to safety, he exploded while standing next to our 15 year-old daughter and her closest friend, the 16 year-old daughter of our neighbours. Both girls, and 13 other innocent victims, were killed. About 130 others, many of them on the street outside the pizzeria, suffered often horrendous, life-changing injuries.

Omar Barghouti Lying With A Straight Face

A group called BDS Norway have uploaded to YouTube this interview with BDS movement founder Omar Barghouti, filmed not too long before he was arrested for being a tax cheat.
The video is an exercise in “counting-the-lies” – the fact he can say what he does with a straight face makes more understandable how he could also cheat on his taxes.
Note in particular:

His claim his “refugee background” was a reason he got involved in BDS. As a reminder, he was born in Qatar, before moving to Egypt, the US and only to Israel after marrying an Israeli-Arab woman.

His father being one of the founders of terror group PLO in 1964, 3 years before the so-called occupation

Him speaking about a “long heritage of non-violent palestinian popular resistance.”

“We never lie about our goals.” You just did.

American University of Beirut to pay $700K in terrorist case

From Reuters:

American University of Beirut, a recipient of U.S. government aid, has agreed to pay $700,000 to settle a civil lawsuit over accusations that it assisted three organizations linked to the militant group Hezbollah, federal prosecutors said.

As part of its deal with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan, a party to the lawsuit, the university also agreed to revise its policies, prosecutors said in a statement on Thursday.

The agreement resolved a case originally filed under seal by an unnamed complainant.

American University of Beirut receives funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon Kim said in the statement, "For years, the American University of Beirut accepted grant money from USAID, but failed to take reasonable steps to ensure against providing material support to entities on the Treasury Department's prohibited list."

The U.S. Attorney's Office said the university in the Lebanese capital admitted to training representatives of al Nour Radio and al Manar TV, media groups that the U.S. Treasury Department lists as branches of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

Between 2007 and 2009 the university provided the training in workshops to representatives from al Nour and al Manar, who were allowed to participate among a larger group of journalists, a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

For instance, one workshop was titled "Citizen/Online Journalism" and provided instruction on how to produce blogs, videos and podcasts, prosecutors said.

Federal prosecutors said the university used its website to connect students with Jihad al-Binaa, another organization that the U.S. Treasury Department has said is linked to Hezbollah.

American University of Beirut (AUB) said in a statement on Friday that its conduct had been neither "knowing, intentional or reckless."

The $700,000 penalty levied on the university will be paid to the U.S. government.

I'll try to find out more details, but this is good news all around.

(h/t David)

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Google pulls Hezbollah YouTube channel after media inquiries

From The Register, a snarky information technology news site:

Until just minutes before we hit publish on this story, Google was using a YouTube channel run by a fan of Hezbollah to promote potentially lethal drones.

Despite a backlash from advertisers, Amazon, Adobe and Google were among the tech titans advertising on the now-shuttered "Party of Allah"* YouTube channel – which we imagine was not the group's "official" YouTube, though there was no way to verify this.

The Trichordist blog, which has been recording the use of brands on YouTube for five years, found Google's Home (its version of Amazon Alexa) being promoted. We found ads for Adobe Cloud Services and Amazon's Alexa developer initiative. But the most intriguing was for a drone.

The palm-sized Kudrone may not pack much of a punch – but it's remarkable that Google is promoting it at all, given concerns that terror groups are increasingly taking advantage of low-cost consumer drones.

Hezbollah itself – it's both a militant group and a political party in Lebanon, where its paramilitary wing is rumoured to outsize the country's army – has been using drones since 2004. Just recently researchers warned [PDF] of the difficulty of preventing a drone being used on a civilian population. Even a "nanodrone" can still deliver a lethal payload; two years ago a drone was used to land a bottle of radioactive sand from Fukushima on the roof of the office of Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Google claims to have prevented ads being served on "over 300 million YouTube videos and removed 100,000 publishers from its AdSense program". Earlier this week Google promised to make better "tools" to advertisers allowing them to choose – but no significant shift in the content it hosts.

Google's "Community Guidelines" say it forbids "hateful" and "harmful or dangerous" content.

The terror research initiative at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands explains that Hezbollah operates an extensive criminal network in Europe, including arms and narcotics smuggling, and in 2013 the US blacklisted four fund-raisers for raising money for the Lebanese organisation.

We asked Google for details of the revenue share with the individual or organisation running the Hezbollah channel, but have yet to hear a reply. In fact, within an hour of alerting them to the ads, The Party of Allah YouTube channel had been "terminated for violating YouTube's Community Guidelines".

It sounds like the controversy over Google's serving ads to unsavory groups is making it far more interested in policing itself than ordinary complaints used to.

Amazing how much monetary incentives work.

(h/t James)

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03/24 Links Pt1: Westminster Carnage, Turkish Delight; Yes, the Jew Who Called in Bomb Threats Was Anti-Semitic

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Westminster Carnage, Turkish Delight

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn’t know he was going to get so lucky on Wednesday, when a threat he issued instantly materialized.
Indeed, the Islamist leader of the former modernizing democracy was probably happily amazed at the news of the terrorist attack in London, as it came on the heels of a speech he delivered in Ankara warning, “[i]n no part of the world, no European, no Westerner will be able to take steps on the street safely and peacefully.” This fate would befall them, he said, if they “continue to behave like this.”
Of course, Erdogan was not personally responsible for the rampage of UK-born Khalid Masood, who managed to murder three people before being killed by police. Nor had he specified what he meant by claiming that the West would not be safe.
He did, however, caution that Turkey is “not a country to push, to prod, to play with its honor, to shove its ministers out of the door, drag its citizens on the floor.” He had a point; it is only Erdogan and his goons who are at liberty to drag Turkish citizens on the floor.
This was not the point he was trying to make, however. No, Erdogan denies that he imprisons anyone he considers critical of his regime. But he has to do that when he spends so much time accusing Europe of human-rights abuses.

Douglas Murray: Pray for London, for Antwerp, for Nice: this is Europe’s new normal

The hashtag ‘PrayForLondon’ is trending on social media. But so is ‘Antwerp’. Because no sooner were we invited to pray for London than a man of ‘North African descent’ was narrowly prevented from doing something similar in the Belgian city. This is life as usual in Europe now, of course. But among the endless replays to date – and the endless replays yet to come – there are several things worth noting about Wednesday’s attack in London.
The first is that the perpetrator – now identified as one Khalid Masood – was in one sense unusual. A recent comprehensive analysis published by my colleague Hannah Stuart found that among Islamist-related offences in the UK the most common age of the offender was 22. So at 52 years old Khalid Masood was some decades older than the average attacker. Although this is wholly speculative, that is a possible reason why he avoided being regarded as an imminent threat by MI5. There has only been one other individual in the UK who has sought to participate in remotely similar acts at Masood’s age.
The second thing worth noting is that by the jihadists’ own lights Masood’s attack was an expression of failure. It demonstrated once again that people inspired by Isis in the UK aren’t able to get hold of the kind of munitions they would like. Put another way, the fact that Wednesday’s attacker used a car and a knife is not a demonstration of operational strength.
After more than a decade of bomb plots successfully thwarted by our police and security services, the mass casualty bomb attack remains out of reach for Isis supporters in Britain. Likewise, although Isis recruits have been able to attack Paris with Kalashnikov rifles, a mix of geographical good luck and hard work by the authorities has meant Isis supporters have not been able to acquire such arms in the UK. Had they been, then Westminster would have been the scene of even greater carnage on Wednesday. This is not entirely good news, of course. For as in Israel in recent years, while vehicle and knife attacks show that the terrorists can’t get hold of anything else, the downside is that anyone can get hold of such weapons and there is not very much that the authorities can do to stop them.

Melanie Phillips: In the midst of grief, still confusion

In the aftermath of yesterday’s dreadful terror attack on the Palace of Westminster, which has so far left four victims dead and around 40 people injured, many of them seriously, the Prime Minister Theresa May today addressed the House of Commons.
Among other remarks by Mrs May which struck the right tone of steely calm, there was however this exchange. A Conservative MP, Michael Tomlinson, said:
“It is reported that what happened yesterday was an act of Islamic terror. Does the Prime Minister agree that what happened was not Islamic, just as the murder of Airey Neave was not Christian, and that both were perversions of religion?”
To which the Prime Minister answered:
“I absolutely agree. It is wrong to describe what happened as Islamic terrorism; it is Islamist terrorism—a perversion of a great faith.”
To which one can only groan, head in hands: here we go again. Since 9/11 the British political establishment has refused to acknowledge that the jihadi terrorism being conducted in the name of Islam is actually inspired by… Islam. Islamic jihadi terror has instead been called “un-Islamic” or even “anti-Islamic” or “ a perversion of Islam” or “a warped ideology”. Everything but what it actually is: terrorism inspired by a fanatical but legitimate interpretation of Islam.

This Week - London Terror Attack tribute to Keith Palmer

This is too funny.

On March 3, Syrian-Jordanian cleric Sheikh Muhammad Sa'id Hawa delivered a Friday sermon in which he disputed that Palestinian children are taught hate. He instead said that Palestinian children were nurtured, along with their mother's breast milk, with the notion that Palestine as pure Muslim and Arab land, which was plundered by the Jews. "What racist hate speech are they talking about?" he asked.

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Mahmoud Abbas is on a three day trip to Germany to try to find yet another way to avoid direct talks with Israel by enlisting others to pressure Israel instead, without Palestinians having to make any compromises.

In the name of "peace."

Before his meetings with Angela Merkel, he spoke at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation NGO. According to Arab media, he said that Germany could play an important role in mediating peace.

Abbas also said "The nation of Palestine, throughout its long history, has been a beacon of radiating and generosity, and our people are an extension of the 3500 year old Canaanite civilization 3,500 years ago, with urban communities thousands of years old."

Both his assertions that Palestinians seek real peace and that they are Canaanites are equally true.

Some national leaders get pilloried for playing fast and loose with the facts. And some are honored for it.

(German speakers who want to mine his speech for other doozies can watch it here.)

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The head of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, met with United Nations Secretary General António Guterres. According to WJC's press release:

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres met with World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder this week and reiterated an earlier comment he made on Israeli radio that there is an absolute tie between the Jewish people and the land of Israel.

“It is completely clear the Temple that the Romans destroyed in Jerusalem was a Jewish temple,” Guterres said in the radio interview, referring to a recent Palestinian claim that the Jewish people have no historic ties to Jerusalem. In the radio interview, Guterres had also said there is “no doubt that Jerusalem is, today, a holy city for three religions. These are the facts that nobody can deny.”

Lauder told the secretary general that he found it “obscene” that 20 out of 26 resolutions passed by the General Assembly condemning all the countries in the world in 2016 were passed against Israel, a mere three were passed against Syria, where more than 500,000 have died, and only one each against Iran, North Korea, and Crimea.

“The UN was built on the broken bones of the Jewish people after World War II,” Lauder told Guterres. “It is an institution dedicated to making sure that what happened in the Holocaust never happens again.”

“So it is particularly outrageous that the UN has been hijacked by Israel’s enemies to delegitimize the Jewish state,” Lauder added. Guterres promised the he was “committed to act with impartiality” on all matters relating to Israel and the Middle East.

Ronald Lauder said afterwards that, “there is a breath of fresh air coming from the United Nations … a long overdue breath of fresh air.” He added that, “We are also very encouraged by the United States’ commitment to the goal of honesty and change, and support its stance that bodies such as the United Nations Human Rights Council must consistently be condemned as long as anti-Israel bias reigns free.”

For his part, Guterres said that, while he could not keep the Human Rights Council from passing its anti-Israel resolutions, he could and would curtail any biased pronouncements. Just three days earlier, Guterres demanded that a vitriolic anti-Israel report written by two former UN functionaries, Richard Falk and Rima Khalaf, be withdrawn from the UN website. In response, Khalaf submitted her resignation.

It is sad that when a UN official confirms a clear historical fact, it is news.

Meanwhile, Guterres needs to defend himself from angry Arab leaders for removing the absurd ESCWA report from being associated with the UN. He is planning to attend the Arab League summit next week in Jordan, where we will see exactly how consistent he is.

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Rasmea Odeh's co-terrorist implicated both of them in planting 1969 supermarket bomb. On video. (update)

Today, terrorist Rasmea Odeh accepted a plea bargain where she will be stripped of her US citizenship for lying about her terrorist past on her immigration application.

Many people are coming to her defense, as they have for years. They claim that she was tortured to confess to the crime, even though her confession clearly led to the Israeli police reconstructing the crime and uncovering weapons that her family had hidden.

Here are the parts of a 2005 pro-terror documentary called Women in Struggle where Rasmea Odeh's fellow terrorist Aysha Odeh details how her family were heavily involved in terrorist activity and how she helped the SuperSol bombing.

She explicitly says that Rasmea was more involved in the planning of the SuperSol bombing than she was.

Anyone who believes that Rasmea is innocent is either self deluded or an Israel hater.

UPDATE: I originally assumed, based on some articles I read, that Aysha and Rasmea are sisters. They are not.

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03/23 Links Pt2: Liberals gloss over UNRWA terror links; An economic stick against dark forces

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: An economic stick against dark forces

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA), one of the organizations operating on behalf of the UN, has commissioned another report against Israel. The ESCWA is made up exclusively of representatives of Arab states, and its most recent executive secretary was Rima Khalaf of Jordan.
Like other reports published on behalf of the ESCWA in recent years, the latest one, which was released last week, was authored by Richard Falk, an American Jew. The conclusions, which were known in advance, were that Israel is an apartheid state.
Falk represents, perhaps more than any other person, the decline and the ridiculing of the rights discourse. His series of actions gave him the third place on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Top 10 Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Slurs list in 2013. For six years, Falk served as a UN special rapporteur on "the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” He kept issuing groundless reports, much to the delight of the cheering representatives of the Islamic states. In addition to his admiration towards the dark forces, Falk repeatedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany.
In the past, Falk met with Iran’s former supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, who received his protection and admiration. After American linguist Noam Chomsky and American political scientist Norman Finkelstein expressed their support for Hezbollah, it appears that there is some fatal—perhaps abnormal—attraction between Jews of a certain species and people with a murderous and anti-Semitic agenda. How exactly do “human rights” fit in with support for these people?

Exactly 10 years ago today: U.N. banned speech heard around the world. "Human rights dream turned into a nightmare."
Prequel: APPROVED Speeches at UN Human Rights Council (creator of Goldstone report)

FOI docs reveal Liberals glossing over UN group's terror ties

For well over a year, I’ve been talking about the Trudeau government’s flirtation with funding a UN body that has had close connections with terrorist groups, that has employees that glorify terrorism, and that educates children to hate Jews and Israel.
Of course, I’m speaking of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
Canada started funding UNRWA again recently despite some grave concerns and the latest documents I’ve obtained through access to information show a government desperate to cover this up, gloss over concerns and rush the money out the door before Canadians ever knew what was happening.
An email, calls for “strict omerta”, the mafia code of silence. (page 206) While also asking if the payments could go to UNRWA on November 7th.
The announcement of the money wasn’t made until November 15th, a week later. And the plan for rolling this out, included giving a heads up to the NDP and Green leader Elizabeth May, but not to the Conservatives who opposed the move. (page 39)
Why the rush and the secrecy? Because the Liberals knew this would be controversial and they know there are problems with UNRWA.

Liberals gloss over UNRWA terror links

Father of terrorist whines about his human rights to the UNHRC

From YNet:

Mohammed Aliyan, the father of terrorist Baha Aliyan, who murdered three Israelis in the east Talpiot neighborhood in Jerusalem in 2015, took part in a UN Human Rights Council meeting on Monday as part of a Palestinian delegation of families of dead terrorists and security prisoners.

In the assembly, Aliyan spoke of the “sufferance” his family has undergone since his son's terrorist attack, due to the investigations and the sanctions imposed upon them by Israel. He also claimed Israel had executed his son.

Since his the terrorist attack, Aliyan Sr. has launched a campaign to glorify his son, and in the process he has become a symbol for Palestinians in general and in east Jerusalem in particular.

"I, the lawyer Muhammad Aliyan, am a defender of human rights, and representative of the Palestinian families who Israel is harming through collective punishment," he said at the assembly.

On October 13, 2015, Baha Aliyan and his partner, Bilal Abu Ghanem, boarded bus number 78 in the Talpiot neighborhood in Jerusalem and opened fire at the passengers, stabbing several of them along the way. Three Israelis were killed in the attack: Haviv Haim,78, Alon Govberg, 51, and Richard Lakin, 76, and seven others were injured.

Yes, a person who explicitly supports his son murdering senior citizens on a bus is claiming to be a human rights defender.

And the UNHRC, of course, welcomes him.

(h/t Josh K)

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Donald Trump likes deals. He likes the idea of brokering a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, and thinks that he can do it. He can’t, and here’s why:

The insurmountable obstacle to a deal is that the essence of the Palestinian movement is the denial of a state belonging to the Jewish people (they don’t even agree that we are a people) in any part of the land between the river and the sea. Questions of borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian unity, and settlements – no matter how difficult – are all secondary to this major problem.

This is why the Palestinian understanding of “two state solution” includes a right of return to Israel for the descendents of Arab refugees, and why it does not include recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, or a renunciation of their claim to all of the land. This is the Palestinian bottom line.

Israel is willing to make many compromises (including some that are extremely stupid and dangerous to our security) but we are not prepared to agree to disappear. This is the Israeli bottom line.

Neither side can go any lower.

Mahmoud Abbas understands this very well. This is why he correctly considers direct negotiations with Israel a waste of time. This is why he insists that PM Netanyahu does not accept the two state solution, because he understands that he and Netanyahu mean different things by that expression. This is why he favors getting the Europeans and the UN to force Israel to give him what he wants. He knows that deep down (or not so deep down) many of these elements believe there should not be a Jewish state and would be happy to see it disappear.

There is no hope of changing the bottom line of Abbas and the PLO. But couldn’t we appeal to the ordinary Palestinian, the man or (very occasional) woman on the street? Don’t they want to succeed like all of us, to raise their children in peace, to be secure economically and physically?

No. Or maybe they do want these things, but other things are more important.

Khaled Abu Toameh, an Arab citizen of Israel, often writes about the repression of Palestinian Arab journalists by the PLO and Hamas. He has written about the corruption and brutality of the Palestinian Authority and the attitudes of the Palestinian “street.” Unlike “pro-Palestinian” Jewish writers like Gideon Levy, he understands the language and culture of the Palestinian Arabs and has contacts that provide information rather than propaganda.

So when he tells us that PA Arabs favor armed struggle against Israel, despise Mahmoud Abbas as a collaborator with Israel and the US, and reject the idea of a peace agreement, we should pay attention. Last week, he reported on a demonstration against Abbas in Ramallah:

On the eve of US envoy Jason Greenblatt's visit to Ramallah last week, hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in the city, calling on Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas to resign. The protesters also condemned the ongoing security cooperation between the PA and Israel.

"Listen, listen to us, Abbas; collect your dogs and leave us alone," the Palestinian protesters chanted during what has been described as the largest anti-Abbas demonstration in Ramallah in recent years. They also called for the abrogation of the Oslo Accords with Israel, and denounced Abbas as a "coward" and an agent of the Americans. …

Yet this was far from a simple a protest against Abbas and his security forces. It was also a rallying cry for pursuing with further vigor the armed struggle against Israel.

"No to peace and no to all the nonsense, we want bullets and rockets," some of the protesters chanted. Notably, these calls in favor of an armed struggle against Israel were coming from the streets of Ramallah and not the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

The protests also reflect Palestinians' rejection of the so-called peace process with Israel. In addition to the calls on Abbas to step down, the protesters demanded as well that the PA leadership cancel all agreements with Israel, first and foremost the Oslo Accords.

In other words, Palestinians are trying extremely hard to get their message across: Israel is our enemy, not our peace partner.

This has been clear since Arafat’s intifada in the early 2000s. Polls consistently show that a majority of Palestinian Arabs believe that “an armed intifada … would help achieve national rights in ways that negotiations could not.”

It’s interesting to note that polls show that a majority of Palestinians also say they favor a “two state solution.” This is because they define it just like Abbas, with a right of return, no recognition, no end of claims. This is why they too consider negotiations fruitless. When they are asked, a majority also say that the two state condition is only a temporary step on the way to the “unification of ‘Palestine’.”

But despite the fact that both the leadership and the population do not want a deal, the Trump administration still thinks one is possible, and this week we have been hearing about it in the context of a “regional solution” involving the Arab league. The theory seems to be that the PLO will make concessions like recognizing a Jewish state or giving up their demand for a right of return if the Arab states tell them to. Abu Toameh believes that this approach is probably even less likely to succeed than direct Israel-Palestinian talks.

First of all, Palestinians don’t trust the Arab regimes, who have always preferred to talk about how badly Israel treats Palestinians to doing anything for them themselves. Lebanon, Jordan and Syria have all oppressed and even killed Palestinians. Palestinians in those places today are second-class inhabitants (in Syria, most are dead or have become refugees). They also provide little or no financial help to the PA. What the PLO wants, Abu Toameh explains, is for the Europeans and the US to force Israel to give in and meet their demands. But this is not going to happen, regardless of whether the Arab League is involved in the negotiations or not.

Secondly, most of the Arab countries don’t see anything good for them in a possible deal. Jordan is afraid that it might end up with the Hashemite regime replaced by a Palestinian one; Lebanon worries about possibly being forced to grant citizenship to the Palestinian refugees it presently treats like dirt; and Egypt fears being asked to cede part of the Sinai to Gaza Palestinians. The Syrian regime is presently in chaos, hates Palestinians and Jews almost equally, and isn’t likely to be a constructive partner.

Finally, Abu Toameh notes that,

Israel as a Jewish state is anathema to Palestinian aspirations. No Arab leader in the world can persuade the Palestinians to give up the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees or accept a solution that allows Israel to retain control over certain parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Any Arab or Palestinian leader who promotes such compromise is taking his life in his hands. And Palestinian history will record him as a "traitor" who sold out to the Jews and surrendered to American and Israeli pressure.

Abbas has been straightforward about rejecting negotiations. But Israeli leaders have acted as though they believed that something positive could come out of them. They have done this either out of naïveté or because they wanted to placate the Americans who were demanding it and threatening to withhold diplomatic or financial support. Israel paid a high price for this: murderers were released who murdered again, and Israel’s honor vis-à-vis her enemies was weakened; Israel froze construction in Judea and Samaria and weakened her claim to be a sovereign nation. But even despite this, the Palestinians didn’t change their bottom line.

Trump should know from his real estate experience that a deal is only possible when both sides think they are getting something that they want. But what the Palestinians want is something that Israel isn’t selling.

It doesn’t matter how persuasive you are. It doesn’t matter what sweeteners one side or the other can throw in. It doesn’t matter how hard you push or what you threaten. Sometimes there just isn’t a deal.

This is what Netanyahu should explain to Trump. There isn’t a deal here.

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