Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Report: UAE sending fuel ship to Gaza shore. Wouldn't that break the blockade?

Palestine Today reports that the UAE is sending a ship filled with natural gas to help run the Gaza power plant.

According to the story, this ship will be moored off the coast of Gaza - and that Israel has no objection because it does not want a Gaza power crisis.

This effort is reportedly another attempt by Mohammed Dahlan to assert his role in Gaza, cooperating with Hamas and Egypt in bringing this about.

This sounds unlikely, because Israel's naval blockade of Gaza would be broken by such a vessel. My guess is that if the story is true the ship will go to the coast of Egypt adjacent to Gaza and the fuel will be offloaded there.

Israel's reaction as the ship approaches will be very interesting.

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07/30 Links: Secretary Tillerson should resign; Imams incite murder; American Muslim leaders silent

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Weakness and indifference over Temple Mount incitement

Join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network why the Arab violence over Temple Mount is not the result of “clashes”, as the western media claim, but the incitement of emotionally overwrought and hysterical Arabs to murder and mayhem.

David Collier: The hard-core antisemitism of the Scottish PSC (SPSC)

Significant representation & Jews providing cover
The report sought to quantify antisemitic tendency and sheds light on concentration levels of antisemitic ideology in anti-Israel activism. One of the case studies looked at the Jackie Walker event in Glasgow. Using a sample of thirty-two activists, the study found that 44% of those present had shared numerous hard core antisemitic posts. This level of Jew hate found at an event set up to deny the problem of antisemitism.
Whether deliberate or not, people like Jackie Walker are currently expending large amounts of energy providing antisemites with a defence. You cannot deny such significant representation and pretend it is only a ‘fringe’. These people are the core activists at the SPSC. But it is not just Jackie Walker giving cover to Jew hate. Here is Max Blumenthal with two of the activists picked up in the report:

In February I published a report on antisemitism in the England & Wales PSC. Following the publication I was hounded, threatened and stalked. Yet those few Jews who sit in the camp criticising Israel, did not read the report and acknowledge the hate. They attacked me instead. Jonathan Ofir wrote a piece in Mondoweiss attacking someone who had uncovered antisemitism. That article was then gleefully headlined by the Jewish led group ‘Free Speech in Israel’ (my response). There is nothing in any of these reports that has anything to do with Israel. It focuses on classic antisemitic tropes. Why on earth are Jewish people, even if they are a small minority, giving cover to people who share posts about Holocaust denial? Is the ’cause’ so infected with Jew hate, that a level of 40-50% is tolerable because as activists, there is not enough power to start the engine if they actually clean the group of racism?
The results for the second case study are even more frightening. Last August, outside a peace festival set up to celebrate Israeli diversity and culture, the SPSC gathered to protest. About one-hundred and twenty demonstrators. Over sixty activists were identified. More than 50% of them had shared numerous hard core antisemitic posts.

Statistical breakdownIn the small crowd, there were at least ten who spread material denying the Holocaust.
Findings
The findings of the report were almost self-evident.
*The inevitable conclusion is that antisemitic tendency is a primary driver of anti-Israel activism*
Following on from this:
*There is a strong probability that those who are introduced to anti-Israel material by SPSC activists on the streets are being influenced by people who adhere to an antisemitic mindset*
And also:
*Much of this activity seeks to spread antisemitic thought*

Some are fighting the anti-Israel narrative from Germany

The Jerusalem Post reported last week:

The online editor-in-chief of the mass-circulation Bild published Sunday a column filled with blistering criticism over the anti-Israel media in Germany during the Temple Mount clashes.

“No other country, which suffers under permanent terror, is reported on in Germany in the cynical, ice-cold and heartless manner like Israel is,” wrote Julian Reichelt. His commentary was at one point the second most read article on the popular website.

The title of his column reads: “Middle East coverage in the German media: Perpetrators turned into victims.”

Reichelt wrote that “Metal detectors at the entry to the Temple Mount are described as injuring religious feelings. And the German media briskly spreads this fairy tale from an Israeli attack on religious freedom.”

He lambasted the German press for “routinely interchanging perpetrator and victim.” Reichelt cited the example of the German public news show Tagesschau’s rationale for terrorism against Israeli Jews.

“The Taggeschau permitted the father of a young Palestinian, who slaughtered a Jewish family, to justify his son because the ‘honor of Muslims’ is endangered.”

His media criticism took headline writers to task. “When terrorists attack soldiers, it reads: ‘Two Palestinians killed by Israeli military action.’ That is as if one would write about the terrorist from Nice: ‘Truck driver shot by police.’”

Reichelt noted that “Israel is on the front line in the battle against a murderous ideology that envisions annihilation of us... we Germans should back the Israelis in this battle instead of expecting that they nicely allow themselves to be destroyed.”

Die Welt had another op-ed, by Richard Herzinger, that questioned the reflexive support for Palestinians in Germany:

The conflict over the Temple Mount is not about injured religious feelings of Muslims nor about mistakes of the Israeli security authorities: Jewish history is to be delegitimized.

Israel dismantles the metal detectors on the Temple Mount, which have given the Palestinian Authority (PA) the pretext to stir up rebellion against the hated "Zionist occupation". But no one should believe that this concession could end the recent, religiously charged Palestinian hate-wave against the Jewish state.

In German and international media it has often been felt that the increased security measures taken by the Netanyahu government after the shooting of two Israeli police by Palestinian terrorists are the cause of the current unrest. But this represents a breathtaking reversal of cause and effect as well as the offender-victim relationship .

In fact, the conflict over the Temple Mount is not about any injured religious feelings of Muslims nor about possible mistakes of the Israeli security authorities. The latest confrontation is the result of a strategically conceived, systematically driven campaign by the PA leadership to discredit and isolate Israel.

These are baby steps but they may be hiding a much larger sea change in European opinion that most are not yet comfortable saying out loud.

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Palestinians were chanting slogans against Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt during protests

This video was taken during the Jerusalem protests last week:

According to this tweet from Al Jazeera's Line Alsaffin, the people are chanting "Down with Al Saud"; and "Son of Hussein [King Abdullah] you coward" and [Egyptian president] Sisi son of a dog."

From Jerusalem today. Chants of "Down with Al Saud" and "Son of Hussein [King Abdullah] you coward" & "Sisi son of a dog". I love my people. https://t.co/GRibDEJC0I
— لينة (@LinahAlsaafin) July 27, 2017

Here is the full text of what they are chanting. Notice how important the honor/shame motif is ("We are the people who are the deciding factor!/Death rather than humiliation!")

Down with the Saud clan!
Down with the Saud clan!
Down with the son of Hussein!
Down with the son of Hussein!
Oh Sisi, you son of a dog!
We are the people who are the deciding factor!
Oh Sisi, you coward!
You agent of the Americans!
Oh son of Hussein, you coward!
You agent of the Americans!
From Jerusalem to Amman!
Our honor will not be trampled upon!
From Jerusalem hear oh Amman!
Our honor will not be trampled upon!
Hear oh Mahmoud Abbas!
Our Al-Aqsa is the foundation!( i.e. the most important thing for us)
Hear hear oh Abbas!
Our Al-Aqsa is the foundation!
Netanyahu you son of a dog!
We are the people who are the deciding factor!
Netanyahu you coward!
The people of Jerusalem will not be humiliated!
Raise your hands and shout loudly!
Death rather than humiliation!

The Palestinians are publicly burning their bridges with the Arab leaders who have traditionally been their staunchest supporters. They know that the moderate Arab states are getting more and more impatient with their antics and instead of looking at themselves, they are lashing out, a product of years of coddling them and enabling their childishness.

But the Palestinians aren't quite in a powerful enough position to be able to spit in the face of those who have been trying to help them grow up and accept peace with Israel.

Palestinians, like children, have a short memory. They've been treated horribly by Jordan, by Lebanon, by Kuwait - whenever they are perceived as a threat, their Arab brethren can turn on them on a dime. By inciting against the only nations that are in a position to help them, and by framing their relationship with those nations in terms of humiliation, they are cutting off their legs.

Their only friends left are Qatar and Iran. Together with regular Arab op-eds that support them, the Palestinians are turning a blind eye to what is really happening, and what has been happening for a while, as Arab leaders have been turning cooler towards them with every passing year.

This implosion of support for them from moderate Arab states is not being covered in the West, but it is a huge story that will catch everyone by surprise sooner rather than later.

In a hundred years, scholarly papers will be written about why so many invested so much time and effort to help a group of people whose only accomplishments have been to create modern terrorism and a remarkable ability to consistently back the wrong horse.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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UAE newspaper Al Khaleej has an op-ed by Hayat al Haweeq Attiya talking about the dangers of a comprehensive peace with Israel.

The author opens with a story where she and a group of students in Lebanon met with an Israeli peacenik in the 1970s. The man, supposedly a rabbi named Marr Berger, was against war. The reasons he was against war is what the author is upset about: she says he was only against war to save Jewish lives, which he claimed were priceless. So his solution was to end war and instead integrate Israel into the region economically and culturally, to benefit everyone.

This is terrible. But the reason isn't quite clear yet.

She goes on to say that Shimon Peres was just as "bad." His vision was for the Arabs and the peoples of the Middle East to act as raw materials and labor for Israeli and multinational corporations to exploit.

"This formula of bondage is much worse than the military occupation," Attiya says.

She concludes, "In the name of combating terrorism we come to a humiliating Judeo-Arabization that actually achieves the process of cultural Judaization that paves the way for the completion of economic Judaization" of the entire Arab Muslim world.

Yes, any economic agreement between Israel and the Arab world is essentially slavery, according to this Arab French intellectual.

She doesn't say it, but obviously the only acceptable Arab peace plan for the region is the elimination of Israel.

Attiya considers herself a human rights activist and an intellectual, who has appeared on TV hundreds of times (including in France) and has written thousands of articles.

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07/29 Links: Jordan’s king says he is preventing ‘judaization’ of Jerusalem; Balfour’s Shadow

From Ian:

Jordan’s king says Amman preventing ‘judaization’ of holy sites in Jerusalem

Jordan’s King Abdullah II praised on Saturday his country’s handling of the Temple Mount crisis in Jerusalem in recent weeks and said Jordan would continue to fulfill its “historic role” of protecting “Islamic and Christian holy sites” in the Israeli capital and preventing their “Judaization” while ensuring the maintenance of the status quo at the sensitive compound.
Speaking to a group of local journalists, the Jordanian monarch said Amman worked continuously to “contain the ramifications” of Israel’s imposed security measures at entrances to the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif which houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock sanctuary, and to pressure Israel to roll back the installations and “through our common stand with our Palestinian brethren.”
Israel took the rare step of briefly shutting down the Temple Mount in the wake of a July 14 terror attack in which three terrorists killed two Israeli police officers with weapons they had smuggled onto the holy site, and reopened it two days later with metal detectors and cameras in place.

Amid heavy Jordanian pressure, Israel announces probe into Amman embassy attack

The Israeli Foreign Ministry on Friday announced that a preliminary probe was launched into the attack Sunday near the Israeli Embassy in Amman where an Israeli security guard killed two Jordanian nationals, including a teen assailant who was attacking him with a screwdriver.
The announcement came after Jordan announced that Israeli embassy staff, who came back to Israel on Monday following the violent incident, would not be allowed to return to Amman until an investigation was opened. Jordan has been pressing Israel to probe the incident, which has promoted a major diplomatic dispute between the two countries, which were already navigating tense relations surrounding violence at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, administered by a Jordanian-controlled trust.
On Friday, hundreds of Jordanians held a protest near the Israeli embassy in Amman over the incident, calling on the government to shut it down and cancel the 1994 peace treaty with Israel.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday that Israel was “launching a probe process into the incident, in accordance with the appropriate legal proceedings in such matters.”

Jonathan Hoffman: Balfour’s Shadow

Remember David Cronin? He’s the campaigning Irish ‘journalist’ who tried to arrest Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in Brussels in 2011. Now he’s contributed to the growing pile of Israel-traducing books offered at markdown prices by Amazon, ahead of the Balfour Centenary in November. His book is called ‘Balfour’s Shadow’ and it focuses in particular on relations between the UK and the Israeli Arabs and Palestinians (he wrongly calls them all ’Palestinians’) between 1917 and the present day. The book is published by Pluto Press, the former publishing arm of the far-Left SWP. Cronin spoke about the book at a meeting on 27 July.
Mistake #1 comes with his timeline. In spring/summer 1948 he writes that ‘Zionist forces undertake major ethnic cleansing programme in Palestine’. Not true, see Efraim Karsh. Only a handful of Arabs were attacked by Jewish irregular forces. The vast majority left because their leaders told them to go. They were told to leave for their own safety and that they would be able to return after the fighting. The Mayor of Haifa begged the Arabs to stay.
Mistake #2: Cronin says it’s a myth that Balfour was acting benevolently in issuing the Declaration. No it’s not. Balfour’s appreciation of the history of the Jews was genuine. See for example this quote:
“Here you have a small race, originally inhabiting a small country ….., at no time in its history wielding anything that can be described as material power, crushed between great Oriental monarchies, its inhabitants deported, then scattered, then driven out of the country to every part of the world and yet maintaining continuity of religion and racial tradition of which there is no parallel elsewhere…. We cannot forget how they have been treated during long centuries. Our whole religious organization of Europe has proved itself guilty of great crimes against this race. [Speech to the Lords (1922); Quoted in Lord Turnberg’s book ‘Beyond the Balfour Declaration’]
In fact Balfour and Weizmann became good friends. So much so that in 1930 when Balfour was on his deathbed, Weizmann was the only non-family member allowed to see him.
Mistake #4: Cronin writes that at the time of the Balfour Declaration, the most prominent Jews in the UK opposed Zionism. Some did, others (Lord Rothschild, Herbert Samuel for example) didn’t. The President of the Board of Deputies opposed Zionism but for this he was voted out of office (see this book).

07/28 Links Pt2: A tale of 2 Israeli heroes; What kind of society has the PA created?

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: A tale of 2 Israeli heroes

Last Friday night, an Israeli soldier on leave for the weekend acted coolly and courageously, ‎rushing to the rescue of neighbors he heard screaming. "Sgt. O.," whose full name cannot be ‎disclosed due to the sensitive nature of the elite IDF special forces unit in which he serves, ran to ‎the home of the nearby Salomon family to investigate. When he saw through their window that ‎they were being butchered, he promptly grabbed his rifle and shot the perpetrator.‎
By the time the scene was over, Yosef Salomon, 70, his daughter Chaya Salomon, 46, and son ‎Elad Salomon, 36, were lying in pools of blood on the kitchen floor. Tova Salomon, 68, would ‎only learn of the death of her husband and two of her children upon awakening from the surgery ‎she underwent to repair the multiple injuries she sustained in the knife attack.‎
The terrorist who maimed and murdered the Salomons was evacuated to an Israeli hospital, ‎where he was treated for the bullet wound from Sgt. O.'s weapon.‎
Sgt. O. is an Israeli hero whose identity cannot be published, but whose life is intact. A ‎different Israeli hero -- one who has been a household name in the country for his decades of ‎musical prowess and gay-rights activism -- was not so fortunate last weekend.
Amir Fryszer Guttman, 41, died on Saturday of organ failure, after rescuing his 9-year-old ‎niece from drowning off the coast of Atlit. Fryszer Guttman held the flailing child, his brother's ‎daughter, above the surface of the waves, forcing himself to stay conscious while bobbing up and ‎down in the water until help arrived. It was not until he was told that the little girl was safe that ‎he passed out for good. He was rushed to the hospital in a coma, and died the following day.
Fryszer Guttman's story gripped the nation more profoundly than the international crisis ‎surrounding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The ongoing chaos, sparked by an Arab terrorist ‎attack on July 14 -- in which two Druze Israeli Border Police officers were killed outside Al-‎Aqsa mosque -- feels like yet another chapter in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. By now, the ‎matter-of-fact heroism displayed by people like Sgt. O. is something that the public has ‎come to take for granted.‎
But Fryszer Guttman's death caused everyone -- even the most secular of his peers in the ‎entertainment industry and LGBT community -- to gasp at its eerily divine significance. This is ‎because he lost his life on the very day that he and his friends and family were celebrating the ‎anniversary of the beginning of his new life.‎

David Harris: Stop Infantilizing the Palestinians

It's high time for the international community to wake up to certain Palestinian realities that many would rather avoid. I write as the representative of an organization, AJC, long committed to the search for an enduring two-state agreement, coexistence between Muslims and Jews, and friendly ties with moderate Arab countries.
An obsession with Israel and what it should (and should not) do blinds too many observers of the region to the other side of the equation - what the Palestinians should (and should not) do. Why doesn't the international community show more backbone in insisting that Palestinians take responsibility for their own behavior?
The Palestinians could have had a state on more than one occasion between 1947 and 2017, yet they rejected each opportunity. The price was recognition of Israel as a sovereign nation alongside the Palestinian state, a price they have been unwilling to pay.
While Israel has come to accept Palestinian nationalism, there has been no reciprocal movement on the Palestinian side to accept Jewish self-determination as its complement.
Moreover, the popular Palestinian belief that Jews are "outsiders," "interlopers," "colonialists," and "crusaders" must be confronted. Jews are indigenous to the region. The age-old link between the Jewish people and the land is documented and irrefutable.
Indulging the Palestinians in their fanciful history allows them to live in an alternate universe, one where Israel doesn't exist, or, if it does, is only a "temporary and illegitimate" phenomenon.
Ending the infantilization of the Palestinians - and beginning to hold them responsible for their actions - could be one promising way forward for the peacemakers.

What kind of society has the Palestinian Authority created?

On July 14th, Palestinian terrorists smuggled guns into their own holy site, then used those guns to murder two Israeli Druze police officers guarding one of the entrances to the al-Aqsa Mosque. Yet, it's the installation of metal detectors and cameras - nothing more nothing less, not the heinous use of a holy site as a launch pad for murder and terrorism that has the Palestinians enraged.
To an objective observer, the crisis that erupted in the aftermath of a bloody terror attack makes no sense. Israel’s placing security devices at the entrance to all al-Aqsa entrances was a preventive security matter plain and simple and designed to detect metal objects being carried onto the Temple Mount to prevent a recurrence of the crime and to protect worshipers coming to pray.
Sadly, mere rumors by Palestinians regarding al-Aqsa are enough to ignite a conflagration. In effect, by pretending that the al-Aqsa mosque is under Israeli attack, Palestinian political and religious leaders have deliberately drummed up senseless violence. Nor is this sham new. Palestinian leaders have been making false claims of Jewish threats to the al-Aqsa mosque since 1929.As a result, the predictable response from Palestinians was general outrage and mass riots if the security devices were not removed. So the question arises, how could the installation of metal detectors and high-tech cameras to protect a holy site be considered a cause of war or worse - a new holy war?
Even the King of Saudi Arabia said he saw no problem with the installation of electronic means of inspection, which are the same ones used at Islam's holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina. In Mecca, for example, there are 5,000 closed-circuit television cameras (overseen by a British company, G4S) and, as a security measure, an electronic bracelet is attached to each of the millions of pilgrims throughout their entire stay in the kingdom, allowing the authorities to monitor them. That hasn’t stopped the pilgrimage.

You learn interesting Jewish history from Arab websites

Here's what I learned today:

Jerusalem among the Jews is the capital of the Messiah of salvation coming from the descendants of David. In the Talmudic textbook, "The Jews will come to Jerusalem and take it, and its borders will be filled with wealth." In the interpretation of the Kabbalah, it was portrayed as a place that would flow from the sky and spread to the rest of the world.

The demolition of Al-Aqsa Mosque is an integral part of Zionist ideology. Christ will not return to battle (Armageddon) at the end of time except by the demolition of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the establishment of Solomon's Temple. And of course we know that this doctrine has loyal followers of the United States Christians, fanatical and red-headed Protestants called Jesus Freaks. Let us know from a long history of excavations and tunnels that the land under the mosque became like an ant house.

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Another Hamas "martyr" has ascended to Paradise.

Omar Abu Nimah was electrocuted while working in a terror tunnel in southern Gaza.

He was such a happy terrorist, too.

Here is the uncorrected, autotranslated eulogy from the Hamas Al Qassam website.

"We ask Allah to accept him and to make him live in peace, to make his struggle pure for his holy face, to persevere his people and his loved ones, and to improve their consolation, and the blood of our martyrs will remain a shining light in the path of liberating Palestine and burning the occupiers until they are defeated from our land." On the road of the thorn, the Mujahideen of the Qassams spend the heroes, do not know to rest or sit in a way, their silence is only a jihad and preparation for as long as the enemy and the friend saw his fruit in the battlefields of the battle, from training to industrialization to digging tunnels of pride and dignity to the positions of the homeland, some, the young believer dedicated himself to God sacrificing all dear and precious, dug in the rock despite the blockade and restrictions near and distant and give up, held out the promise of the afterlife , which is coming inevitably on getting worse Mujahdona faces of the Zionists , God willing, and expel from the land of Isra ' submissive and they are humble. " She continued:" We ask Allaah to accept Him and dwell in Him Melt downpeace, and make his struggle purely for His sake, and that patient and his family loved ones and improves find relief, and blood our martyrs will remain guiding light in way liberation Palestine and fire burn until occupiers from our land Andhroa God willing. "

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07/28 Links Pt1: The ‘Al-Aqsa libel’ lives on; The Palestinian plot to end-run Trump at the UN

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemin: The ‘Al-Aqsa libel’ lives on

As the years went by, the format of “an external enemy with self-killing” exacerbated, and not just among the Palestinians. The Muslims are regularly furious with the West. In the past few decades, the “forces of progress” have been adding fuel to the fire. Thousands of academics, journalists and human rights activists are pointing an accusing finger at the West, at the United States, as the Great Satan, and at Israel, as the Little Satan. Everything the Islamists say the ultra-enlightened people say a bit better.
But the rage against the West, which is mostly based on lies and self-deception, is entering an improved format of “an external enemy and self-killing,” because in recent decades the Muslims have mainly been massacring themselves. The massacre exists wherever there are Islamists, and they always find excuses to invigorate the “industry of death”—the title of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna’s article.
From 2002 to late 2016, 202,697 people were murdered in acts of terror. I’m not talking about the casualties of war in the Muslim world, where the death toll in that period almost reached one million. I’m talking about the victims of terror, the absolute majority of whom are Muslim, in Muslim countries or in Muslim population centers. Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria top the list. Israel is almost at the bottom. So with all due respect to the sensitivity towards the Temple Mount, which does exist, it’s the Muslim world’s last problem.
Terror doesn’t appear because it wants to improve something. It doesn’t seek peace. And in our case, it doesn’t seek two states for two people, it doesn’t want an end to the occupation. Terror appears because of incitement and hatred and blood libels. It seeks destruction and ruin, and it will find any excuse to reappear.
When the Palestinians suffer because of the occupation—they have an excellent reason, and one can be confident that the representatives of the forces of progress will turn into terrorism’s propaganda and justification arm. When things are good, despite the occupation—and in the past two years there have been signs of prosperity—it makes the jihadists’ blood boil even more and they rise up against the normalization. And, in the background, there are always the instigators and the agitators and the funders. The young man who went out to murder on Friday night believed that the Jews are desecrating one of Islam’s holiest symbols. He believed the campaign of lies, beginning with al-Jazeera and Hamas to Sheikh Raed Salah and the Palestinian media.
That doesn’t mean that our decision makers did the right thing. But before pulling out knives, and before starting an argument between the Shin Bet and the police, and before pointing an accusing finger at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, we must remember that we are talking about a much deeper problem. A problem which the Arab world must solve with itself, because the Muslims are an absolute majority of the victims of Islamic terror. The Temple Mount, with all due respect, is not a jot of this problem. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Israel must disabuse Abbas of the delusion he can bully Israel

Then Israel should stop facilitating the business interests of Abbas’s cronies, whose cartels control the Palestinian economy. The international donor community, too, might usefully rethink the huge sums of cash it pours into Abbas’s coffers every year.
Then Israel can and should revoke the VIP permits that allow Abbas and his ministers to fly in and out of Ben-Gurion Airport on their luxury private jets. Let them beg King Abdullah in Amman for travel privileges.
Simultaneously, Israel should clamp down on the activities in eastern Jerusalem of rabble- rousers like Sheikh Ekrima Sa’id Sabri, the lead agent in the city for Erdogan’s Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood; Sheikh Issam Amira, the lead agent in the city for the Islamic Liberation Party (Hizb ut-Tahrir); and Abbas’s hand-picked henchmen, the intemperate Temple Mount Mufti Muhammad Hussein and the fanatic former chief justice of the PA’s religious court, Sheikh Tayseer al-Tamimi.
Their sermons, “charitable” enterprises and educational programs glorify terrorists and explicitly call for violent resistance to Israel. Their networks (along with Fatah social media) also are the source for the libel that al-Aksa is in danger from Israel. It would also not be too hard to arrest their key street-activists, who are leading the riots in the city.
Israel should unsheathe its sovereign power and put the extremists down. This is the decisive action that one day might allow for Palestinian moderates to emerge.

Arab humiliation and the Temple Mount

With Donald Trump’s electoral victory, Palestinian hopes of luring the international community into a dictated agreement suffered an enormous setback. Meanwhile the Gulf states have come to view Israel as an ally against Iran, while Egyptian security cooperation with Israel is stronger than ever in history. The Palestinians are the odd man out. And President Trump himself went to the Western Wall of the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem, the first US president ever to do so – as a private citizen, to be sure, and without any Israeli official presence – in a powerful gesture of sympathy for Jewish national aspirations.
The last wedge that the Palestinians can drive between Washington and its Arab allies is the Temple Mount itself. This is not a matter of Muslim theology, nor a question of sentimental attachment: rather, it is the embodiment of the last hope that the hated Zionist presence will be temporary, and the prayers of a billion and a half Muslims for “success” eventually will be granted. Whether last week’s murder of Israeli policemen with guns hidden on the Temple Mount was a fortuitous pretext for the protests, or a provocation intended to produce a wave of outrage in the Arab world, is unclear.
That explains why Arab governments were “conspicuously silent” on the matter, as the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported July 24. One can only imagine the content of the telephone traffic between Washington and Arab capitals over the weekend. Israel at length removed the metal detectors to the official praise of the White House.
Washington and Jerusalem only have unpleasant choices in the short term. The so-called Arab Street has been quiet for several years. But life in the Arab world remains difficult to bear, and the danger of an eruption of popular rage is ever present. The Israelis (and above all the Israeli security services) do not want another Intifada and hope the issue will go away. Feeding the Arab’s refusal to admit defeat, though, will only encourage behavior that has come to resemble the Black Knight’s one-sided battle with King Arthur in Monty Python’s Holy Grail film. Peace isn’t made when one side is defeated, but when one side admits that it is defeated. Delaying this admission keeps the war going. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

While Mahmoud Abbas' media is praising him for his "victory" over Israel, others are claiming that they are the ones who were instrumental in Israel's decision to take down the metal detectors outside the Temple Mount.

One of them is King Salman of Saudi Arabia, who took credit for the decision in a press release:

PROTESTS and pressure from world leaders, led by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman, forced Israel to remove all security measures at Al-Aqsa Mosque. The move felicitates the return of Palestinian worshipers to the mosque, in what may be a turning point in the two-week standoff.

King Salman had a telephonic conversation with several world leaders in order to resolve the Al-Aqsa Mosque impasse after Israel’s security measures last week.

During the calls, King Salman asserted the rights of Palestinian Muslims to access Al-Aqsa Mosque. According to a Royal Court statement issued on Thursday, King Salman’s communications with world leaders succeeded in resolving the Al-Aqsa confrontations.

The Saudi government contacted the US administration and urged it to facilitate the opening of Al-Aqsa Mosque to Muslims, and for allowing them the right to worship after restrictions on access to the mosque were imposed by Israeli forces, the Royal Court statement said.

The statement added that King Salman’s efforts have been successful in a way that contributed to restoring stability and provided reassurance to the worshipers. It helped safeguard their dignity and security.

There are two messages here. One is the normal attempt by any national leader to make themselves look more important than they are by taking far more credit for world events than they deserve.

But the other is to downplay the political importance of Mahmoud Abbas.

A real ally would be sensitive to how a statement like this would play in the territories. King Salman doesn't really care.

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Amnesty International continued its anti-Israel bias, contradicting every non-Arab eyewitness account on the events on Thursday:

Israeli forces attacked peaceful crowds of Palestinians as they gathered at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem this afternoon for the first time since Israel lifted recent security measures imposed at the site, according to Amnesty International staff at the scene.
“Israeli forces started firing stun grenades, tear gas and sponge-tipped bullets into a peaceful crowd as they stood at the entrance of the al-Aqsa mosque compound and inside. It appeared to be an entirely unprovoked attack. Some Palestinians threw empty water bottles in return. Others, began to throw stones as well,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, Deputy Middle East and North Africa Director at Amnesty International.

Freelance journalist Jake Hanrahan tweeted in response:

I was there. There wasn't one single vantage point where you could tell either way who started it.
— Jake Hanrahan (@Jake_Hanrahan) July 27, 2017

Even Asaf Ronel, Haaretz' World News editor and an avowed anti-Zionist, took issue with this description:

It's a complex scene. Fact that from point of view of @amnesty staff it seemed unprovoked doesn't mean nothing happened somewhere else https://t.co/uFWbybjY1z
— Asaf Ronel (@AsafRonel) July 27, 2017

Amnesty's bias is even more egregious when you consider that for the past two weeks Israel has done everything it could to calm things down while the Palestinian leadership has done everything it could to inflame and incite.

Such background is irrelevant to Amnesty, which is wedded to its own anti-Israel narrative that trumps facts, so much so that it ignores proof that it is wrong.

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