Arab media, looking for more crimes to ascribe to Qatar, has found one: the report that Qatar helped hundreds of Yemeni Jews escape their country in 2013.
The fleeing Jews allegedly went to Qatar first and from there flew to Israel according to Lebanese media at the time.
Arab newspapers have the story today, and this op-ed explains why it is a big deal: It shows that Qatar is helping Israel and hurting Palestinians by allowing Jews from Arab countries to move to Israel. The writer says that Qatar falsely claims to defend Arabism but in fact is helping Israel at the expense of Yemen and Palestinians.
And, yes, the writer says that by doing this, Qatar has sold its honor.
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Tuesday’s news contained a particularly infuriating although totally predictable report to add to my collection of “things that show why coexistence is impossible.” It seems that Israel is required by the 1994 Paris Protocol to the Oslo Accords to grant permission to ‘qualified’ Palestinian tour guides to work in Israel. Tour companies hire them because they cost about half as much as an Israeli tour guide, or in some cases if the company wants to provide a ‘balanced’ tour in which both the Israeli and Arab narratives are honored.
So what happens is that Palestinian guides take naïve foreigners to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and explain that the lessons to be learned there are that today’s Israelis treat Palestinians the way the Nazis treated them; that Israel was founded because of Western guilt over the Holocaust; and that Palestinians are victims of genocide (despite the fact that their number has tripled since 1970).
Then they go to the Old City where they tell their clients that the Jews have no history in Jerusalem, and that whether or not there was a Jewish Temple there is “controversial.” They explain that there was a Palestinian civilization in existence for hundreds or even thousands of years, until colonialist Jews came along and dispossessed, expelled and occupied them.
This is yet another small but significant way that the Palestinian Arabs chip away at historical reality and promote their narrative – an untrue story that they believe with absolute sincerity.
They believe that the Jewish state is entirely illegitimate and has no moral or legal authority to arrest or imprison Palestinian murderers, who are not terrorists or criminals but political prisoners or prisoners of war, and that it is appropriate to treat them as heroes and for the Palestinian Authority to pay pensions to their families.
And they believe that the occupation narrative justifies any form of ‘resistance’ including the murder of Jews, whom they call “settlers” (even if they live in Tel Aviv). They even believe that like James Bond, they have a license to kill, granted to them by international law!
But it isn’t merely a belief about historical facts or international law or human rights or who was here first or whether Arab refugees fled voluntarily in 1948 or were kicked out (both happened). There is an overwhelmingly powerful emotional content in the narrative. It places a massive weight of humiliation and shame on the shoulders of the Palestinian Arabs, whom the entire world knows were defeated in war, expelled and subjugated – by Jews, of all people!
Every argument is used to prove that the Jews didn’t do it themselves – that they had the Western world on their side and the money of international Jewry behind them, that the Arab nations betrayed the Palestinians, and so on. But excuses don’t cut it. The only thing that can lift the burden of the narrative from the Palestinian man is the blood of the Jews who humiliated him.
The narrative is independent of the religious imperative that drives pious Muslims to murder infidels who infest a land that was once and therefore must forever be, Muslim. It is independent of the fury born of shame felt by a Muslim who has to submit to even the slightest restraints on his right to worship (like metal detectors, or temporary closures or age restrictions at the Temple Mount) imposed by Jews. But the intense shame and rage it generates fit neatly alongside the religious humiliation felt by Muslim Palestinians.
If you sat down and tried to invent a way to prolong a conflict forever, you couldn’t do better than the Palestinian narrative. It is the narrative that justified the way the Arab nations that hosted the 1948 refugees forced them into refugee camps and refused to allow them to integrate into their societies. Even the Palestinian Authority, which they claim is actually the “State of Palestine,” refuses to end their refugee status! It is the narrative that fuels the rejection of any kind of “normalization” process that might help make it possible for Jews and Arabs to live side by side in the future. It is the narrative that insists that only the “return” of the descendents of the 1948 refugees to “their homes” – that is, the expulsion of the Jewish people from the Land of Israel – can even begin to correct what they view as the moral inversion of 1948.
Some Zionists say that there is no Palestinian people, that they are just a bunch of Arabs whose ancestors migrated into the land in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And it is correct that few of them have any long-term history here, and that they don’t have a distinct language or religion.
But I would not agree that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people. If the Jewish people are “the people of the book,” the Palestinians are the people of the narrative. The narrative, and the always simmering and sometimes boiling conflict with the Jews, made a people out of them just as the journey through the desert finished the work of creating the Jewish people.
The Palestinian identity today rests entirely on their narrative and their opposition to us, even their hatred of us. If the Jewish people disappeared tomorrow, there would be no Palestinians, just Arabs.
And this is why the conflict will not be ended by a peace agreement, a compromise of some kind, another partition or even a gradual reconciliation. An end to the conflict would mean an end to Palestinian identity, something which they will not give up voluntarily. It’s all they have.
The narrative feeds on itself and only grows stronger with conflict and time; and the stronger it is, the more conflict there is. There is only one way for it to end: one side must win and the other must lose.
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According to PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi, Israel holds the Palestinian people captive, denying its historical rights and the imperative to get real about peace. Her weekly diatribe happened to coincide with Jordanian King Abdullah’s first visit to Ramallah in five years, which demonstrated that the rest of the Arab world could not care less about history. The telegenic Ashrawi is often trotted out for a public display of the kinder, gentler Palestinian nationalist, but in fact she is a protégé of the late Columbia University scholar and anti-Zionist Edward Said. As the holder of a PhD in medieval and comparative literature from the University of Virginia, she might be expected to be a voice of cultural enlightenment, if not reasonableness.
However, in accordance with the Palestinian tradition of never failing to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, she instead pushes antisemitic tropes masked as anti-Zionism. Google lists more than a few sites of “famous Ashrawi quotes” that illustrate her consistent misrepresentation of fact in aid of the establishment of a Palestinian state. She began her deluded efforts with a breathtaking statement about the some 800,000 Jews who fled persecution from Muslim countries for refuge in the new State of Israel.
In Ashrawi’s historical analysis, these Jews were only “emigrants,” who had left their ancestral homes voluntarily. Jews lived happily among their Muslim neighbors and were brought to Israel to usurp “ancestral” Palestinian lands as part of a plot by “Zionists.”
One reason the Taylor Force Act is so vital is that it would send a message to Abbas that the United States, at least (sadly, the rest of the world has not seen the light), will no longer put up with his doublespeak. He may dress in a suit but his actions mirror his fatigue-wearing predecessor. Equally important is moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. The president must fulfill this campaign promise to send another message to the Palestinians — namely, that Jerusalem will remain the indivisible capital of Israel.
For those unaware of history and misled by claims that East Jerusalem is “Arab” and therefore should belong to the Palestinians, I would point out that before 1865 the entire population of Jerusalem lived behind the Old City walls in East Jerusalem. When the UN voted to partition Palestine, a thriving Jewish community was living the eastern part of Jerusalem, which contains many important Jewish sites, including the City of David, the Temple Mount, and of course the Western Wall. This is also the home of Hebrew University and the original Hadassah Hospital. The only time this area of Jerusalem was exclusively Arab was between 1949 and 1967, when the Jews were forcibly expelled under Jordan occupation, a time when the Western Wall was desecrated and Jews of course were barred from prayer.
I will always remain hopeful that a solution can be found that will allow Jews and Palestinians to live together peacefully. One-sided compromises, such as those made during the Oslo period, only embolden the Palestinians to believe they can “liberate” all of “Palestine,” which includes Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem – East and West.
I feel sorry for the many thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who want nothing more than to live their lives in peace, and would gladly compromise to achieve independence. Alas, unlike Israel, the PA is not a democracy and the people remain hostages of their radical leaders. It is hard to envision peace so long as Palestinians are taught to hate in their schools, encouraged to become martyrs by their preachers and media, and rewarded for murder by their leaders. Regardless of these provocations, Jews will not be driven from their capital or their homeland. Jerusalem will never again be Judenrein.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) government, headed by Rami Hamdallah, on Tuesday warned against Israel's “escalating policy” following UNESCO's recent resolutions recognizing the Muslim right to the Temple Mount and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron, while ignoring the Jewish connection to those sites. An official statement released after a meeting in Ramallah said that celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the "occupation" of Jerusalem included a light and sound show in Silwan which, the statement claimed, was based on "falsification of the historical narrative of the Holy City."
The statement further claimed that Israel is re-implementing a policy of removing Arab residents from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, including a decision to evict several families over a claim that the building in which they live belonged to a Jewish family before 1948. The PA government noted that the escalation of the Israeli government’s “settlement” activity requires the immediate intervention of the international community in order to put an end to it and requires international protection for the Palestinian people and its holy sites and serious action by the Arab and Islamic nation.
Israel closed the Temple Mount for less than 48 hours after terrorists used weapons that were hidden there to kill two Israeli soldiers. During that time the police searched the complex for more weapons, and it found knives, chains, clubs and other materials.
Today, the Waqf issued a preliminary assessment of that search - a search that originally spawned rumors that religious Jews were ransacking the area and setting it up for a third Temple.
Reluctantly, the Waqf concluded that there is no evidence that the Israeli police actually took anything. Historical records and manuscripts were left intact.
But it is outraged anyway that there was damage done in the course of the search.
For example, lockers at the mosque were opened and their locks smashed:
These actions, the Waqf says, "constitutes a flagrant violation of the sanctity of the mosque and the sanctity of its facilities."
Using the mosque as a weapons depot isn't a violation of the sanctity of the mosque. Searching for those weapons - is.
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The American Center in Jerusalem (19 Keren HaYesod St) is a section of the Office of Public Affairs of the US Embassy in Israel. It is "an information resource as well as an educational and cultural center with a range of activities aimed at the Israeli public. The Center strives to initiate and strengthen bonds between Israelis and the United States, and to promote understanding of U.S. policies, society, values, and culture."
This office is part of the US Embassy, not the Jerusalem consulate. Its webpages are in the US Embassy website. Its Facebook page says "The American Center in Jerusalem is part of the U.S. Embassy's Office of Public Affairs."
Which means that, for many years (since at least 2009, here's a 2011 event) the US Embassy in Israel has had an official presence in Jerusalem, essentially recognizing Jerusalem as part of Israel. It celebrates Jewish holidays, and Yom Haatzmaut, something you won't see at the Jerusalem consulate.
If an official office of the US Embassy has been in Jerusalem for so long without any problem, why would moving the embassy altogether be an issue? The recognition is already there, at least for the parts of Jerusalem to the west of the Green Line, which is where any embassy would be anyway.
(h/t Irene)
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Last month MEMRI published several transcripts of hate speech by Imam Ammar Shahin at the Islamic Center of Davis (ICD) in Davis, California, where he explicitly called for the genocide of all Jews. These included these words from July 14::
Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews....Oh Allah, show us the wonders of Your ability that you inflict upon them. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon them. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon those who wish ill upon [the Al-Aqsa] Mosque. Oh Allah, keep them preoccupied with one another, and make a deterrent example out of them. Oh Allah, count them one by one and destroy them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them. Oh Allah, destroy them and do not spare their young or their elderly. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon those who occupy Palestine. Oh Allah, show us the wonders of Your ability that you inflict upon them. Oh Allah, turn Jerusalem and Palestine into a graveyard for the Jews.
And on July 21:
Oh Allah, support the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the rest of the Muslim lands. Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews. Oh Allah, destroy those who closed the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon them, and the wonders of Your ability. Oh Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them.
[...]
Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Oh Allah, make this happen by our hands. Let us play a part in this. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds.
After California members of Congress issued a condemnation, the Islamic Center of Davis released a non-apology apology filled with lies that is no longer on their website. The "apology" says
The sermon was about the theological virtues of one of Islam’s holiest sites, Al-Aqsa Mosque. He also addressed the recent horrific events including the illegal closure, occupation, and attacks against Al-Aqsa Mosque, in addition to the killing and injuring of Muslim worshipers, including the wounding of the Imam of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the prevention of worship and the call to prayer at the Mosque. Specifically, the Imam was referring to individuals that are contributing to this oppression.Imam Shahin and the ICD reject any attempt to blame all Jews for Israel’s policies just like we reject the attempts to blame all Muslims for the acts of fringe groups. In reality, Jews around the world are on the front lines speaking out and protesting Israel's repressive policies against Palestinians.
MEMRI, an extremist agenda driven organization that supports Israel's occupation of Palestinian land, and other Islamophobic news organizations, accused Imam Shahin of anti-Semitism, quoting edited, mistranslated, passages of the sermon out of context.
If the sermon was misconstrued, we sincerely apologize to anyone offended. We will continue our commitment to interfaith and community harmony.
Afterwards, when the outcry remained, Shahin issued a somewhat stronger statement of apology - but he didn't repudiate his words in any way. “To the Jewish community here in Davis and beyond, I say this deeply: I am deeply sorry for the pain I have caused.”
Essentially he said: Sorry you were hurt. But I still believe every word I said.
The organized Jewish community seemed to accept his apology at face value, even though the initial outrageous fake apology proves that he was only engaging in PR and does not in any way disagree with his very explicit antisemitic words that were documented in great detail.
A grassroots group formed in Davis and held a silent vigil last night.
Here was the announcement sent via email:
As most of you know by now, Imam Ammar Shahin of the Davis Islamic Center preached a hate-filled sermon on Friday July 14 and also on July 21, in which he (quoting a Hadith) called for the annihilation of Jews. "Oh Allah, make this happen by our hands," asking for his followers to participate in the slaughter "Oh Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them.".and referred to "the filth of the Jews".
Shahin's supporters initially doubled-down and made excuses for the translated sermon, an "apology" was later issued, and some elected officials and Muslim and Jewish leaders held a closed joint press conference in which speeches were made, including an "apology" by Imam Shahin for the "pain" he caused. At no time was there any retraction or denunciation of the words quoted from the Hadith (the same words that are in the Hamas Charter which call for the murder of our Jewish friends, families and children). Neither was there any call for the Imam to be fired. Equally disturbing is the fact that no member of the DIC's board of directors, nor its congregants, have come out asking for his resignation.
No Christian, Jewish, or Muslim clergy who preaches murder of any minority group should be tolerated. Such speech leads to violence and murder. It simply has no place in a civilized society.
We need to do more to bring awareness to our community of this despicable and dangerous man. Imam Shahin has NOT said he was wrong to have made his statements (just that he was sorry for causing "pain"---as if he did not know beforehand). Nor has he said he will stop preaching such vile ideas!
THEREFORE WE ARE HAVING A PEACEFUL VIGIL WITH SIGNS. NO SPEAKERS. NO MEGAPHONES. MAKING A STRONG STATEMENT WITH OUR PRESENCE AND SIGNS.
The protesters were purposefully spread out so that drivers would see them, which unfortunately does not make for good photos of the protest, but some 60 people participated, including many Christians.
I am told that many people of Davis had not been aware of the events happening in their own town and that they were shocked when they heard the details.
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Imagine if an American priest, minister or rabbi were to call for Muslims to be annihilated. It would be a scandal and it would spark a nationwide controversy over Islamophobia, hate speech and incitement to violence. So why is that not the case when an imam calls for the annihilation of Jews?
On July 21, Ammar Shahin, the Egyptian-born imam at the Islamic Center of Davis (ICD) and an instructor at the Zidni Islamic Institute, both in California, preached from his pulpit: "The Prophet Muhammad says that the time will come, the Last Hour will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews. ... O Allah, liberate Al-Aqsa mosque from the filth of the Jews. ... O Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them. ... O Allah, make this happen by our hands. Let us play a part in this."
A video of the sermon was released by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that for almost two decades has provided access to primary source materials from the Muslim world, translating such materials from Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and other languages.
Stories soon appeared in the Israeli press and right-of-center American news outlets such as Breitbart, The Washington Times, The Washington Free Beacon, The Blaze and Fox News. Left-of-center outlets, also known as mainstream media, apparently saw nothing to report.
The ICD put out a press release calling MEMRI "an extremist agenda driven organization" and claiming that Shahin's sermon had been "mistranslated" and taken "out of context." The imam told a local television reporter that it was "very sad to hear that people are taking your words and they are twisting it around."
In response, MEMRI pointed out that it had posted the sermon uncut and unedited. There could be no question about the accuracy of the translation. The prayer had referred specifically to "the Jews" -- not Israelis or Zionists. MEMRI also translated a sermon from July 14 in which Shahin "made similar statements."
A stabbing attack was thwarted this evening (Wednesday) near the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron.
An Arab approached a Border Police checkpoint near the holy site in a suspicious manner. He stopped several feet from the police before calling out to them. The officers then noticed that he was holding a knife.
The police pointed their weapons at the man and ordered him to drop the knife and surrender. The suspect complied and the situation was resolved without violence.
The suspect a 25 year old resident of Hevron, is being interrogated by police.
Amid outrage in France over a suspected terrorist attack against police officers, the CRIF umbrella group of French Jews suggested the incident highlights indifference to anti-Semitic violence.
CRIF on Wednesday posted on Facebook a tongue-in-cheek statement, questioning whether authorities would place under psychiatric evaluation a suspect who fled after ramming six police officers with his car in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret. Two officers sustained serious injuries and the rest suffered moderate ones in the Wednesday morning attack.
“What do you think, should this insane person be put in a psych ward while we contemplate the reasons for his actions?” CRIF posted in French on Facebook about the attacker in Levallois-Perret.
It was a provocative reference to the handling by authorities and the media of the slaying of a Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, in April by a Muslim man who was sent to observation as per his insanity plea even though he has no record of mental illness. He shouted about Allah while killing Halimi, his neighbor, whose daughter he allegedly once called a “dirty Jewess.”
CRIF has campaigned vigorously for the inclusion of an aggravated element of a hate crime into the murder indictment against Halimi’s killer, Kobili Traore. The judiciary’s omission of this element is a “cover up” of the anti-Semitic character of the crime, CRIF President Francis Kalifat has said.
Through the years, I've had my ups and downs with Bibi. I did not like him at all when revelations came out about his extramarital affairs so long ago, in 1993. I thought: How can I trust him with my beloved country when he can't even be faithful to his wife?
Simplistic? Maybe. I was younger then. But from my feminist purview, it really was that simple. Fidelity is fidelity. And I wanted someone who would stand by the country, no matter what.
But I found myself wanting to like him as time went on. Wanting to, and not quite sure I did or could like him.
Sure, he's urbane and eloquent, a brilliant orator. But Bibi has done so many awful things during his career, and flip-flopped on so many important issues it's impossible to turn a blind eye to it all. I laid out many of his misdeeds in a 2013 blog called I Want to Like Bibi:
·He left the government over Disengagement, then voted for it four times
·He criticized Oslo, then gave the Bar Ilan speech
·He's the leader of the Greater Israel party, but froze building in Judea and Samaria
·He wrote a book laying out the reasons terrorists should not be used as bargaining chips, then released over one thousand terrorists with blood on their hands for one Gilad Shalit
·He commissioned the Edmond Levy Report, but didn't bring the commission's recommendations before the Knesset
·He apologized to Turkey for the Mavi Marmara incident, though Israel was the party that was wronged
·He talked the good talk about Iran, but took no real action to apprehend its nuclear ambitions (could he have?)
It's four years since I enumerated all the times Netanyahu waffled and betrayed the country, his fellow Jews. Since that time, there's a lot more. But there's also more in his favor. The way he stared down the UN, for instance.
Masterful.
The way he stayed dignified through 8 years of Obama nastiness, without once losing it. At least not in public. (I couldn't have done it.)
But then there was the time Bibi suppressed crucial military testimony in the Bank of China lawsuit. This was a lawsuit against the bank involving more than 20 families of American victims of terrorist attacks that took place in Israel from 2003-2008, including the families of those murdered in the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva massacre. Shurat HaDin, the Israel Law Center, had initiated the proceedings with the support of the Israeli government, with the knowledge the bank had handled the accounts of senior Hamas officials. Hamas had claimed responsibility for the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva massacre. My friend's son was murdered in that massacre. He was fourteen years old (HY"D).
Avraham David Moses, HY"D, with his little brothers.
It was untenable, unbearable. An agony. But most of all, heartbreaking.
And now, of course, the problem is the way Netanyahu caved on the issue of those metal detectors on the Temple Mount. Everyone knows Bibi let terror win and no one knows why. (Yes. In every case where his behavior is inscrutable, it's always possible there are things we don't and cannot know. Things that go on behind the scenes. But it just will no longer wash.)
Sure. We know about the to-do in Jordan, with the security guard who shot dead two Jordanians after he got stabbed in the back with a screwdriver by one of them. Jordan held him and the Israeli ambassador to Jordan hostage for a short period of time. It was during this time that Bibi had the newly installed metal detectors and other new security aparatus dismantled. This was followed by smiling photos of Bibi sitting with the Israelis released from Jordan. A photo opp.
We were supposed to believe the removal of the metal detectors served as ransom for the Israeli hostages.
But I don't think anyone believed it.
Look, Bibi said it straight out: He wants to keep the status quo regarding the Temple Mount. He wants to fortify the Waqf.
Why? God only knows. I sure don't. I don't understand that at all.
Once again, the Temple Mount was in our hands. Har HaBayit B'Yadeinu! The Arabs were staying away. And we once again thwarted our own ambition. Our highest ambition. (Or did we? Maybe we just didn't care enough.)
Two weeks ago Har HaBayit was empty. It was ours.
And now we have lost our holy place again. Or rather: we gave Har HaBayit to Jordan, once more.
And this time, it's not on Dayan, but on Bibi. Bibi of the "iron wall" remarks of July 23, one day before it was announced the metal detectors were going bye-bye:
"The members of the Government and I share in the terrible grief of the Solomon family. Yosef, Chaya and Elad were murdered by a beast incited by Jew-hatred. The security forces are operating on the ground as necessary, at all times. The home of the loathsome terrorist will be demolished as soon as possible. We are also taking action against those who incite toward acts of murder and those who praise them.
Since the start of the events, I have held a series of
assessments with security elements including those in the field. We are
receiving from them an up-to-date picture of the situation, as well as
recommendations for action, and we will decide accordingly. We are conducting
this calmly, determinedly and responsibly and thus we will continue to act in
order to maintain security.
Today we are marking the anniversary of the passing of Zeev
Jabotinsky, one of the fathers of Zionism. The Cabinet will make an important
decision regarding the preservation of his heritage, one of the principles of
which – as is well-known – is 'The Iron Wall.'"
It's a disaster, a real one. Not some silly drummed-up charges by those on the left to take Bibi down in court, but a serious reason for the right to boot him out on his butt.
“They are trying to get me and attempting to topple the right,” Netanyahu reportedly told senior officials in his coalition, regarding all the faux criminal investigations surrounding him and his wife. But the "right" isn't right and hasn't been for a long time. Har HaBayit is not ours. We cannot pray there. We aren't building settlements but destroying them. Judea and Samaria are still under martial law.
And there is no iron wall.
The problem is Bibi knows there is no one of his caliber to take his place. This makes him think he can act with impunity, without any accountability to his electorate. This is what we contemplated during the 2015 election. The fact that no matter whom we vote for, we get leftist policy.
We vote for the Likud, for the right, to shore up settlement activity, to be true to Jabotinsky's vision of Greater Israel, an Israel on both banks of the Jordan. We vote for the right so as to end the state of martial law in Judea and Samaria and exercise sovereignty. We vote for the right so Jews will have freedom of worship on the Temple Mount, our holiest site.
But we never get what we vote for. Ever.
And anyway, the alternative is to vote for a small party that can't possibly win enough votes to make noise or effect policy.
A prime minister to replace Bibi: who can find? Moshe Feiglin doesn't have the charisma or the presence. His milquetoast response to the business with the metal detectors was a serious turn-off
"Although I anticipated that Netanyahu would remove the metal detectors from the Temple Mount, and although I very much hoped that I would be proven wrong, things developed in such an amazing and fascinating manner that I couldn’t help but think that perhaps we were on the threshold of an historic change."
So, um. He knew Bibi would blow it, but hoped he was wrong? He was WAITING for things to go south?
Um, WHY? This was a time to scream and act. Not hold our collective breath and wait.
This is not someone who can lead my country.
Bennett? The MK who uses every opportunity and crisis to grandstand and verbally kick the PM between his legs.
Lapid? Who knows what the man believes. To the right, he is right-wing on issues. To the left, he is left-wing on issues. He's a journalist who makes stuff up.
I could happily give a run down on all the people who might take Bibi's place. But it's a waste of my time and yours.
The bottom line is it no longer matters that the person to take over from Bibi won't have perfect English, be an amazing orator, or a brilliant strategist. We've had enough capitulation on the issues that matter most to us as a people. It's time for Bibi to go.
And it almost doesn't matter who takes his place.
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Pride Rock, Serengeti Ecosystem, Tanzania, August 9 - The United Nations Education, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated this location as a site of Scar's heritage today, striking a political and diplomatic blow against Scar's nephew Simba in their struggle over rule of the pride.
The body voted 14-2 in favor of Scar's claim to Pride Rock, following appeals and machinations by Scar's allies among the member states, and against Simba, who claims title to Pride Rock by dint of his late father, Mufasa. Scar and his supporters, which include the influential Hyena Group of non-aligned states, maintain that Simba has no claim to the title, either because he is not authentically Mufasa's son; because even if he is Mufasa's son, Pride Rock is and always has been indigenously Scar; because Simba or Mufasa stole it from Scar; or because Simba has perpetrated genocide against Scar and has forfeited the privilege of sovereignty on Pride Rock.
While the move carries little practical significance, supporters of Scar trumpeted their victory. "This is yet further proof that our cause is just and the Zionist Simba is but a usurper," declared Shenzee, a Hyena representative who brought the resolution before the Council on behalf of Scar. "Let this herald momentum toward a just resolution of Scar's suffering at the hands of the imperialist Simba."
Observers of the UN lamented the blatant ahistoricity of the vote results. "No serious scholar questions Simba's connection Pride Rock," explained Rafi Ki of Baboon Watch. "The nations involved in this fiasco care more about the declarative value of the motion, though, than about its relationship to reality. This is a non-binding forum through which the various regimes can pay lip service to the Scar cause, even as they develop relationships with the up-and-coming Simba, who may yet prove more useful to them than the tired old Scar who appears more interested in holding onto power than in improving the lot of his subjects."
Recent months have seen increased tension over the historic site, with hyenas and Scar jockeying for control of the elevated area overlooking the pridelands. Simba and his supporters have accused Scar and his allies of inciting violence, while Scar continues to cultivate the image of a pursuer of peace even as his administration pays stipends to anyone who kills a member of Simba's band.
Simba was exiled from Pride Rock long ago and aims to reestablish his place in his ancestral homeland, a move Scar opposes.
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After centuries of Muslim persecution, often genocidal, or dhimmitude under sharia, Christianity in the Middle East has been stunted, if not effectively crushed. To avoid discrimination, Christians gave their children Arab names instead of Biblical ones. Their religious celebrations are kept indoors, lest Christian festivities offend Muslims. As in a Stockholm Syndrome, Middle East Christians often ended up defending and even praising Islam, even if that comes at the expense of their own religious rights.
It is stunning to see is how on the one hand, the US State Department and media play down the genocide going on today against Christians in the Middle East, but on the other hand, immediately believe Muslims when one of their leaders tells an American delegation that he does not fear Arabs but fears Jews.
With many branches of the US government apparently determined to distort reality, there seems to be a series of deliberate decisions to ignore -- and to prevent the American public from knowing -- what is really going on.
"Politically incorrect" language has been censored by the State Department, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the previous Executive branch, and, most recently, the National Security Council, which recently seems to have purged the entire department.
It is dangerous for the West to accept Arab anti-Semitic propaganda voiced by some Christian leaders in the Middle East; they are held hostage by the Muslim majority around them. Since the age of the internet, even many Arabs have stopped buying Arab propaganda.
A recent mark was retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was Secretary of State. Wilkerson recently said on MSNBC, during the recent Temple Mount crisis, that Jews pose the biggest threat to Christians in the Middle East. He learned this, he said, in 2002-2003 in Ramallah, during a business trip to meet with Yasser Arafat, from a Middle Eastern Catholic Bishop, who had told him that the biggest enemy for Christians in the region was not the Arabs but the Jews. So, Wilkerson, instead of condemning countless unprovoked terror attacks against Israelis, criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It is most unfortunate that a former high-ranking State Department official decided to blame Israel during the recent crisis, in which Jews were the obvious victims. It is more than unfortunate that Wilkerson took the Bishop's statement at face value instead of recognizing the complexities of the Middle East, where "no" and "yes" rarely mean "no" and "yes".
Half a century after the victory in the Six-Day War, 40 years after its most important political benefit in the separate peace with Egypt, half a decade after the implosion of the Arab structures around it, Israel needs a different strategy vis-à-vis the Palestinian issue. Israel should have adopted such a strategy at the latest when the “Peace Process” predictably failed in Oslo, Camp David, and Annapolis. But it’s not too late to finally abandon the fantasy of peace with the Palestinian national movement and move to an admittedly less desirable yet much more realistic proposition of unilateral disengagement from the overwhelming majority of the West Bank. Three questions beg a detailed and responsible answer: Why isn’t peace a possibility? Is there a viable alternative? How would it work?
Why no peace?
Peace, in the sense of termination of conflict and end of claims, where both sides are free to pursue their own separate nation-building projects—an Arab state of Palestine and a Jewish state of Israel—has been consistently rejected by the Palestinian national movement. Manipulative or ignorant Arabs, Westerners, and Israelis who claim that the Palestinians have all but abandoned their insistence on the “right of return”—the destruction of the Jewish state by demographic means—can no longer successfully cheat mainstream Israelis. “Let me put it simply,” said President Abbas, in January 2014: “The right of return is a personal decision. What does this mean? That neither the Palestinian Authority, nor the state, nor the PLO, nor Abu-Mazen [Abbas], nor any Palestinian or Arab leader has the right to deprive someone of his right to return. … The choice is yours. You want to return? You will return. … Even a father cannot forgo his children’s right.”
Palestinian leaders not only consistently rejected a state (notably in 1947, 2001 and 2008) but demonstrated their profound lack of interest in any constructive enterprise when the nation-builder they were lucky enough to have as prime minister—Salam Fayyad—could not muster any significant public support in the PA kleptocracy. For almost a quarter of a century of controlling most of their population—and with contributions, goodwill and assistance on a magnitude never before showered on a small people—Palestinian elites have produced little except for excuses and a discourse of perpetual victimhood. They have never taken responsibility for the consequences of their misguided decisions and have demonstrated no motivation to take charge of their future in an independent state.
Based on their national record since the emergence of a Palestinian people almost one hundred years ago, the State of Palestine, if it is born, will be a failed, violent, corrupt state, adjusted even less than other Arab entities in the region to meet the challenges of the 21st century. As long as they are under occupation the Palestinians have the supreme attention of the world, billions of dollars to live off and scheme bribes off, perfect excuses to invest nothing in their future, and armies of gullible supporters in Western democracies that help them delegitimize Israel. All this will go away if the Jews can no longer be blamed. Since the Palestinians are not willing to terminate the conflict and have no motivation to establish a state and undertake the responsibilities that statehood entails. Next to the Palestinian addiction to victimhood, the other unbridgeable obstacles for peace—including security and the barbaric Hamas regime in Gaza representing half their people—dwarf in comparison.
Hamas's summer camps in the Gaza Strip, whose motto this year was "Marching on Jerusalem,"[1] opened on July 9, 2017 and were attended by 120,000 children and teens. According to Hamas officials, their goal is to train the generation "that will lead the campaign of liberation."[2] In addition to Quran lessons, sports and technology activities, games and entertainment, the camps also offered extensive military indoctrination and training, including weapons training.[3]
Explaining the rationale behind the camps' motto, Hamas's former education minister, Osama Al-Muzaini, said: "Jerusalem is the compass of the Palestinian cause and the central issue of the conflict with the occupier... It is part of the Islamic faith, and its liberation is first a religious duty and then a national one." He added that the camps' goal is "to train the generation of victory and liberation, which will have the honor of liberating Jerusalem and uprooting the occupation."[4]
Many of the camps had names alluding to Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, such as the "We Are the Keepers of the Gates" camp, while others were named for Palestinian martyrs, such as the Muhannad Al-Halabi camp, named for a man whose stabbing of two Israelis in Jerusalem's Old City in October 2015 sparked off the Al-Quds Intifada,[5] or the "Eastern Area Martyrs" camp.[6]
Also, over the past few years, Israel has not only brought Syrians in need of medical attention into the country, Israel has also built clinics inside Syria and provided tons of food, medicine and clothes.
But what about closer to home? What kind of medical help does Israel provide to Palestinian Arabs?
The medical help that Palestinian leaders get from Israeli hospitals is an open secret, not the least because of the irony of these Arab leaders accusing the Jewish state of all manner of war crimes and apartheid -- all while availing themselves of those medical facilities.
For example, Hamas terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh has never been shy about getting Israeli medical care for his family:
o 2008: 144,838 o 2009: 180,000 (source: IDF) o 2011: 197,713 o 2012: 219,464 Palestinian patients received medical treatment in Israeli hospitals – 21,270 of them children o 2015: 221,787 (190,000 from West Bank and from 31,787 Gaza; source: Mako; Hat tip: Elder of Ziyon)
“Up until September 2000, a Ramallah resident could have taken his car and driven to Ichilov Hospital [in Israel],” began Commander of Judea and Samaria Division, Brig. Gen. Nitzan Alon [speaking in 2010]. “But from September 2000 we’ve been in a state of terror. Hundreds were killed, Jews and Palestinians alike. The battles took place in the heart of the cities, in places where enemies stood side by side with civilians, with difficult conditions and limited ability to evacuate. We could not practice medicine beyond the minimum. In those days, we were on the verge of a humanitarian crisis.”
But today, he says, the situation is different. Thanks to many efforts on both sides, stability has been restored. “The political leadership is able to make decisions not in the context of buses exploding. And now, along with direct military activity – patrolling, arrests, crossings – we are starting a new kind of routine. Medicine is an integral part of it. In today’s reality, we are obligated to do a lot more than the minimum. Our addressing of the situation should be as wide ranging as possible,” said Brig. Gen. Alon.
Sick Palestinians need to see a local doctor, who will refer them to a specialist, who then may ask to send them for treatment in Israel. From there, the Palestinian Authority Health Office will need to authorize it, get a permit from an Israeli coordination officer, find the right hospital, and send a commitment to pay the bill. This process alone can take weeks or even months.
That bill is being paid, at least in part, by the Palestinian Authority. The PA prefers that their people (though not their leaders) get their medical care in the hospitals available in the West Bank and Gaza. Besides the expense of superior care, there is the issue of the PA paying money to Israel, which they do whether the patient is from the West Bank or Gaza. For a time in 2009, the PA stopped paying the Israeli hospitals altogether.
An example given by Dr. Weintraub, of Hadassah, in 2009, for cancer care is that “it costs between $50,000 and $100,000 here. It costs four times that in the U.S.”
One source of subsidies is The Peres Center for Peace, which sponsors care for 1,000 Palestinian children each year in Israeli hospitals and provides training for 40 Palestinian doctors.
This medical aid and hospitalization is provided despite an atmosphere of mistrust from the Palestinian patients and potential mistrust from their neighbors for having availed themselves of medical assistance from 'the Zionist state'.
And this medical aid is provided while some in Gaza think that Israel owes them that medical care because of the embargo, ignoring the actions taken by the Hamas terrorists which have made that embargo necessary.
The fact remains that while Israeli medical assistance is most noticed when it is being offered in far away places in friendly countries, it is also available to those with no love for Israel, some of whom continue to wish for it's destruction.
And it is those latter cases of assistance that do not get the big headlines.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
This story is nonsensical unless you understand Arab honor/shame culture.
Many young Palestinians are upset that Israeli police have increased inspections of their bags on the way to visit Al Aqsa Mosque, in the wake of the fact that it has been used as a weapons depot for attacking Israelis.
So they came up with a bizarre plan to walk around with empty knapsacks on their backs. This causes the Israeli police to stop them, check them and check their bags.
When the bags are found to be empty, they claim, the Israeli police are "angry" and, therefore, the young Arabs are happy.
One Arab who saw this play out said, "I saw a group of police officers stop a group of young Jerusalemites in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, they searched their bags, and they were all empty, and I saw anger in the faces of police officers who were not able to do anything but inspect and return the bags to their owners."
This means that these Arab youths are deliberately trying to be stopped and searched by Israeli police, slowing down their ability to visit their supposedly holy site - all because they think that it makes the Israeli police frustrated to search a bag and not find any weapons. And if they are traveling in groups then all of them must wait for every bag to be inspected.
This makes them happy.
While normally, being stopped and searched is considered humiliation for the Arabs, but now that they consider it humiliation for the police they want to be stopped and searched.
Even more insane is that metal detectors would allow them a much faster path to praying (and playing soccer) on the Haram al-Sharif - but that is too "humiliating" so they'd rather be inspected one by one.
But that isn't shameful when they believe that they are humiliating the police instead of being humiliated, which was what they considered being frisked a week ago.
This also illustrates the zero-sum game mentality - if we aren't humiliated, then the enemy must be feeling shamed. And vice versa.
The reason that there is no peace plan that works is because Westerners try to think logically about the issue and to see what each side wants. There is no logic. Arabs generally don't work in a logical world but in an emotional one, where the exact same event can be considered either honorable or shameful based on their mindset that day.
In the end, though, any Jewish control over what they consider Arab and Muslim lands is the ultimate humiliation and that shame cannot be erased no matter how many concessions Israel gives.
The Palestinians don't need aid. They need an army of social workers and psychologists to help their self-esteem (=honor.) If they were half as confident in themselves as they pretend to be, they would be able to make concessions for real peace instead of symbolic victories like supposedly frustrating the police.
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Thursday, August 10, 2017
Elder of Ziyon
