Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Saudi paper: Why so many Jewish Nobel Prize winners? It's obviously fixed!

Saudi Arabia's Al Watan looks at Nobel Prize statistics:

Over the history of the award, Jews who make up 0.2 percent of the world's population and 2 percent of the population of the United States received 179 of the Nobel Prize winners. For example, Jews accounted for 22% of the recipients of the award between 1901 and 2009, and 36% of the Americans who received the Nobel Prize in the same period in the fields of scientific research in chemistry, economics, medicine and physics...

31 Jews won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry which is 20% of the world's total. 13 Jews won the Nobel Prize for Literature, 12% of the total recipients in the world. 9 Jews won the Nobel Peace Prize. 47 Jews won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Fifty-three Jews were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, accounting for 27% of all of them.

On the other hand, the total number of Muslims in the world to about one billion people, or 20% of the world's population. Muslims and Christian Arabs received seven Nobel Prizes in literature, peace and medicine.

This is a mystery to the Saudi writer.

At first glance, it may be understandable why so many Jews win in the branches of medicine, physics, chemistry and economics. But the number does not seem logical. There is no scientific theory of their association with a particular race or religion.
In the fields of literature and peace, the exaggeration of Jewish favoritism among Israelis and non-Israeli Jews is revealed to a large extent. To name but a few, where is the peace created by Yitzhak Rabin - who wanted to break the bones of the Palestinians in the first Palestinian intifada, - and Shimon Peres, godfather of the Israeli nuclear project, and who was turning the Middle East into a new Hiroshima ?.

Arafat, of course, deserved his prize. After all he was the father of modern terrorism and a pioneer in pretending to be peaceful in some venues while planning terror attacks in others.

Every once in a while I see a story in the Arab media that notices the Nobel disparity between Arabs and Jews and it causes a little bit of self-reflection. Not this time. The Jews obviously control the Nobel Prize.

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Time for the annual olive harvest lies by the Palestinian Authority

The PA's official Wafa news agency reported on Sunday:

Palestinian locals Sunday managed to foil an Israeli settlers’ attack against olive pickers in the village of Qaruot to the south of the West Bank district of Nablus, said a local activist.

Ghassan Daghles, monitoring Israeli settlement activity in the north of the West Bank, told WAFA settlers coming from 'Eli’ and 'Shilo’; two illegal Israeli settlements located along Nablus-Ramallah highway, attacked Palestinians harvesting olives in the village of Qaruot.

Locals scuffled with settlers and managed to fend off their attack. No injuries were reported.

Yisrael Medad, who lives in Shiloh, checked out the story and it is complete fiction.

Fake news.
Never happened.
All made up.https://t.co/dNsLXNNZed @odedrevivi @epieprz
— ymedad (@ymedad) October 15, 2017

Long time readers of the blog may recognize the name of the person who made this accusation, Ghassan Daghlas.

Over the years, his accusations have been published in Arab media - almost invariably without a single photo or video to corroborate his accusations.

He is literally paid by the Palestinian Authority to make up these stories. His job is to "monitor Israeli settler activity." And he knows that no one will check his stories.

Wire services and major newspapers will quote him without the slightest reservation.

Hundreds of times.

Daghlas has been busy during this start of olive season, with daily stories in Wafa. Yesterday he claimed that Israelis stole the entire olive harvest of two villages and today that the exact same thing happened with two more villages.

Evidence? Photos? Names? No need. Daghlas knows that his stories will end up in Ma'an and Mondoweiss, and with luck Reuters and the New York Times. As long as they are quoting him, without saying that his record of truth-telling is virtually nonexistent, he has no fear about lying again and again - being paid with your tax dollars.

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10/17 Links Pt1: Netanyahu's Blistering Attack On Iran's FM; Tony Blair: It was wrong to boycott Hamas

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The opportunities and risks of Trump's Iran initiative

So long as the US continues to maintain a policy based on the false view that all that is necessary to destroy the threat of a nuclear armed Iran is a combination of the nuclear deal and economic sanctions, it will continue to ensure that Iran and its nuclear program remain a major threat. Distressingly, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, the most outspoken supporter of decertifying Iranian compliance in the Trump administration, told NBC on Sunday that the US intends to remain in the nuclear deal.

To understand what must be done we must return to Trump’s speech and its strategic significance.

By taking a holistic view of the Iranian threat – grounded in a recognition of the inherent hostility of the regime – Trump opened up the possibility that the US and its allies can develop a holistic policy for confronting and defeating Iran and its proxies. If the Iran deal and sanctions are two components to a larger strategy rather than the entire strategy, they can be helpful.

A wider strategy would target Iran’s regional aggression by weakening its proxies and clients from Hezbollah and Hamas to the regimes in Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. It would target the regime itself by empowering the ayatollahs’ domestic opponents. It would pin down Iranian forces by arming and otherwise assisting the Iraqi Kurds to defend and maintain their control over their territory along the Iranian border while strengthening the ties between Iranian Kurds and Iraqi Kurds.

Friday, Trump created the possibility for such a strategy. It is up to members of Congress, and US allies like Israel and the Sunni Arab states to help Trump conceive and implement it. If they fail, the possibility Trump created will be lost, perhaps irrevocably.

Amb. Dore Gold: There Is a Precedent for Renegotiating Flawed Agreements

Is it realistic to try to deal with the flaws in the Iran agreement and change them? In fact, there's precedent for it. In 1979, the Carter Administration negotiated the SALT-2 treaty with the Soviet Union. Whereas the Iran agreement was never a formal treaty, SALT-2 was a negotiated treaty.

But the SALT-2 treaty was flawed. It did not adequately address the arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It put a limit on the growth of the nuclear forces of the two superpowers, but it didn't reduce them.

Subsequently, however, a new administration came into power under President Ronald Reagan and he decided a different approach was necessary. It was called START - strategic arms reduction talks. Rather than limiting the growth of nuclear weapons, it reduced them, and this became the preferred approach.

During the last few weeks a number of flaws in the Iran agreement have come out, but the one that received the most focus was "Section T" of the JCPOA. What Section T tries to do is define activities in the area of weaponization that are prohibited. But, of course, Iran has not allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency or anyone to do proper verification to see that Section T in the Iran agreement has been addressed by them.

This is a huge flaw. One has to remember that in the May 2011 report of the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are frightening details about the Iranian nuclear program that include weaponization activities. It says that the Iranians were conducting design work and modeling studies involving the removal of the conventional explosive payload from the warhead of a Shahab-3 missile and replacing it with a spherical nuclear payload.

Presently, President Trump's strategy to reopen the Iran agreement to remove the flaws and produce an agreement that will safely protect the interests of the West is the only reasonable approach.

US bipartisan support for Israel -- when and how did that start?

Apparently, the birth of that bipartisan support for Israel came about during the term of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, despite FDR's antagonism towards Zionism.

FDR. Photo by Leon A. Perski, 1944.
Source: Wikipedia

And a lot of the credit seems to be due to Netanyahu.

In FDR’s Retreat on Zionism–and What it Means Today, Rafael Medoff writes about Roosevelt's attitude towards then-Palestine and Zionism.

Roosevelt opposed both, vigorously:

On January 17, 1943, on the question of restoring the pre-war equal rights of North Africa’s 330,000 Jews following the liberation of Casablanca, Roosevelt suggested that “the number of Jews engaged in the practice of the professions (law, medicine, etc) should be definitely limited to the percentage that the Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole of the North African population,” so that local Arabs would not be angered.

Roosevelt also opposed settling Jewish refugees in North Africa: “I know, in fact, that there is plenty of room for them in North Africa but I raise the question of sending large numbers of Jews there...That would be extremely unwise.”

In April 1943, Roosevelt approved of a suggested Allied ban on all public discussion of Palestine until the end of the war. He backed down after Secretary of War Stimson called such a measure "alarmist"

On March 9, 1944, Roosevelt rejected the request of Rabbis Stephen S. Wise and Abba Hillel Silver to open Palestine to Jews fleeing Hitler. He claimed that the move would enrage Arabs and responded to them, “Do you want to start a Holy Jihad?”

Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise; Library of Congress portrait.
Wikipedia

Abba Hillel Silver; excerpt from YouTube video

Also in 1944, Republican Senator Robert Taft introduced a resolution affirming US support for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. In response, Roosevelt claimed that the resolution would be “responsible for the death of a hundred thousand men.” As a result, the resolution was table for a year, and when Congress passed it – there was no Arab rioting.

Yet despite all this, the same Roosevelt who rejected a request by the Palestine (Jewish) Symphony Orchestra to name one of its theaters the “Roosevelt Amphitheatre” for fear it would link him too closely the Zionists -- did in fact turn around and support Zionism.

To a degree.

In the fall of 1943, it appeared that the Republican contender in the 1944 presidential election would go after the Jewish vote.

A major factor in adapting a strong pro-Zionist plank at the Republican National Convention was Netanyahu -- Benzion Netanyahu, the father of Israel's current prime minister.

Benzion Netanyahu in 2007. Source: Wikipedia

Medoff writes:

Benzion Netanyahu, scholar and activist (and father of the current prime minister) arrived in the United States in 1940 as an emissary of Revisionist Zionism, the militant wing of the Zionist movement, headed by Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Netanyahu organized rallies and authored full-page newspaper advertisements challenging the Roosevelt administration for abandoning European Jewry and the Zionist cause.

Netanyahu also spent part of his time on Capitol Hill. In an interview with this author, Netanyahu recalled the political landscape he encountered in the nation’s capital: “Most of the Jewish and Zionist leaders, led by Rabbi Stephen Wise, were devoted Democrats and supporters of President Roosevelt. The idea of having friendly relationships with Republicans was inconceivable to them.” In the months prior to the June 1944 Republican National Convention, Netanyahu did the inconceivable–he took his case to GOP leaders, including former president Herbert Hoover; Senator Robert Taft, who was chairing the convention’s resolutions committee; and the influential Connecticut congresswoman Clare Booth Luce, who was slated to deliver the keynote address at the convention and would also serve on the resolutions committee. Netanyahu’s goal was to have the GOP platform include a plank supporting Jewish statehood in Palestine. Neither party had ever before taken such a stand.

The efforts of Netanyahu -- and Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver -- resulted in the inclusion of the following in the Republican platform :

In order to give refuge to millions of distressed Jewish men, women and children driven from their homes by tyranny, we call for the opening of Palestine to their unrestricted immigration and land ownership, so that in accordance with the full intent and purpose of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the resolution of a Republican Congress in 1922, Palestine may be reconstituted as a free and democratic commonwealth. We condemn the failure of the President to insist that the Palestine Mandatory carry out the provisions of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate while he pretends to support them.

In response, Rabbi Wise felt forced to try to get the Democrats, with Roosevelt's approval, to include a pro-Zionist statement in its platform as well.

To a large degree he was successful. The Democratic platform supported the “unrestricted Jewish immigration and colonization” of Palestine as well as the establishment of “a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth.”

One could argue that this was the beginning of the bi-partisan support for Israel that despite its ups and downs continues to this day.

Medoff writes:

Wise summed up what was achieved: “With the plank in both platforms the thing is lifted above partisanship.” The adoption of the two party planks ensured that support for Zionism, and later Israel, would become a permanent part of American political culture. No subsequent Republican or Democratic convention could go back on it without significant electoral ramifications.

Despite the questions that are raised today about the extent and degree of Democratic support for Israel, that bi-partisan support does in fact continue.

As does the tendency of Netanyahu's not to quietly acquiesce to US policy towards Israel.

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Palestinian Arab snowflakes upset at Balfour celebration at Manchester U

From Al Jazeera:

A British university has drawn criticism for its decision to allow a Balfour Declaration "celebration" organised by a pro-Israel group.

The Manchester Balfour 100 event will be held at the University of Manchester's main campus later in October and is part of a broader series of events to mark the anniversary of the declaration made by then British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour on November 2, 1917.

The university's decision has been slammed by both academics and students.

"Having the celebration of the Balfour declaration on campus is totally disrespectful to students of Palestinian origin," said Ayham Madi, a Palestinian studying at the university, adding: "Many people lost their homes, land and their lives."

The cybersecurity student said a hundred years later, Palestinians continued to feel the impact of the declaration and that he felt "great pain" that the university has allowed the event to take place.

The National (UAE) adds:

BDS campaigner Huda Ammori, 23, told The National that the university’s decision to allow the event to take place on its premises had upset many Palestinian students.

“The Balfour Declaration is seen by many Palestinian students as the invitation of the ethnic cleansing, which took place in 1948,” she explained.

Ms Ammori, who is in the third year of an international business, finance and economics degree at Manchester, described how some of the students on campus felt when they discovered the celebration was taking place.

“It was quite an emotional step back for some of the Palestinian students because it’s a mockery, especially when they are painting it as a celebration. Not an educational talk - a celebration,” she said.

“They (the university) are making a clear statement by holding it on the campus. They are completely disregarding Palestinian students.”

The BDS campaign at the university has joined other student societies in writing a letter to president and vice chancellor, Nancy Rothwell, demanding the event be cancelled. If it is not, Ms Ammori said a protest will take place outside the venue where the celebration is held.

Poor snowflakes.

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Anti-Israel "Balfour Project" cant quite find "Palestine" stamps that don't make them look stupid

The "Balfour Project" is an attempt by a bunch of British Israel-haters to force Great Britain to apologize for the Balfour Declaration.

They illustrate their site with the first stamps used by Great Britain in Palestine after they occupied it.

So what are these stamps?

The first set of four stamps look like this:

Note that it doesn't say "Palestine" or anything close. It says "E.E.F" which stands for the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force which occupied Palestine in 1917. The E.E.F. stamps were valid in Palestine, Cilicia, Syria, Lebanon, and Transjordan.

Nothing "Palestinian" about them.

The other stamps are variants of this one, but with an overstrike that says "Palestine" in English and Arabic that Great Britain started in 1920 with the Mandate. In Hebrew it says "Palestina E.Y." where the "E.Y" stands for Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.

Palestinian Arabs didn't like the idea that the "E.Y." were on the stamps. They countered that they wanted their own national name on the stamps as well in Arabic if the Jews were allowed to place the "E.Y" after their name.

And the name they wanted to print was not "Palestine."

They wanted the stamps to say ""Suria El Jenobia" -Southern Syria!

This was all recorded in the Palestine Bulletin of October 13, 1925.

Israel-haters keep trying to make "Palestine" look like is was a real Arab country. And they always fail, spectacularly.

(h/t Irene)

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10/16 Links Pt2: UN Threatens to Blacklist Bezeq Phone Company, Bezeq CEO Calls Them Out

From Ian:

UN Threatens to Blacklist Bezeq Phone Company, Bezeq CEO Calls Them Out

The UNHRC blacklist letter to Bezeq is on display at the end of this article.

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has threatened to blacklist Bezeq, Israel’s most prominent telecommunications corporation, because the company provides services to Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.

In their letter to Bezeq, the UNHRC wrote that Bezeq could keep their response confidential, but Bezeq CEO Stella Handler chose to play no part in the UNHRC’s anti-Semitic game and publicized the UNHRC letter as well as her response on Facebook.

In her Facebook post on Monday, Handler said the company would not collaborate with what which she called “nothing more than anti-Israel propaganda.”

“Bezeq will continue to protect the rights of all our customers without discrimination. We will continue to provide service to all Israeli citizens without respect to religion, race or gender and we respect their right to choose to live in any part of this land – be it Raanana, Jerusalem, Ariel, Sakhnin or Ma’aleh Adumim.”

Handler said attempts to blacklist Israeli companies were nothing than “illegitimate pressure to ‘head-butt’ Israel.”

My message to Iran's foreign minister: Delete your account pic.twitter.com/i0Ca57uc4u
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 16, 2017

When a Jewish laborer took on 20,000 US Nazis in Madison Square Garden

A new short documentary compiles archived footage to recall an event held in New York on the eve of World War II in which tens of thousands of people gathered at New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden venue to cheer on US Nazis at what was billed as a “pro-American rally.”

Documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry’s latest work includes the moments when a Jewish man was beaten to the floor as he tried to rush past dozens of uniformed Nazis on the stage in a failed attempt to disrupt the main speaker.

The seven-minute “A Night at the Garden” is made up of various clips showing the drama on the night of February 20, 1939, when 20,000 people packed into Madison Square Garden for a rally organized by the German American Bund, a Nazi movement led by German-American Fritz Julius Kuhn.

The film was recently screened at 22 US cinemas in the Alamo theater chain.

Curry made the film for the documentary unit Field of Vision after learning about the history of the rally a year ago.

YNet reported:

A small, unlikely “dream team” delegation comprised entirely of minorities in Israel is preparing to embark on a trip to the US and Europe as part of a concerted effort to debunk the campaigns circulating on university campuses slamming Israel’s treatment of different groups in the country.

Hailing from different locations across the country, the participants are vocal in their common belief that Israel affords them equal opportunity.

Expressing their love for and faith in the state, they are determined to disseminate their message and counter the smear campaigns against Israel that have permeated college campuses, often spearheaded by the Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Dima Tiya, 25, is an Arab Muslim, originally from Qalandiya and today is a resident of Kafr Manda in the lower Galilee.

“The State of Israel is important to me on a personal level and is important for all minorities who live there,” Dima says. “I am happy to represent the state. My father is a liberal and taught me the meaning of co-existence.”

Qassem Halila, 24, an Arab Muslim originally from Iksal in northern Israel explained that he had agreed to take part in the initiative despite the resulting ostracization he has faced from family and friends.

“I pay a heavy personal price for my opinions. My cousin kicked me out of the house, another uncle stopped me from being invited to a wedding, and I was even kicked out of the family WhatsApp group,” said Qassem.

Despite his estrangement, nothing could throw the national character of the country into dispute. “Thankfully, my parents support me. At the end of every week I go to my village and believe that this is a Jewish and democratic state. I feel equal in everything and I have no feelings of discrimination,” he insisted.

Bassem A’yid, a 59-year-old Palestinian from Beit Hanina in east Jerusalem, who is also embarking on his new journey as an Israeli ambassador, emphasized the damaging impact that boycott movements are having on the Palestinians themselves.

“The BDS is endangering the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians,” A’yid complains. “I have come to defend the Palestinian economy and not to endanger my life with my opinions. I intend to say this any place I want in the US.”

Jonathan Alhori, 25, an Arab Christian from Haifa who is the son of an officer in the South Lebanon Army, stated the importance of the mission, believing it would serve as an eye-opener for many misinformed people.

Already many of these Arabs are getting death threats on social media.

But the "moderate" Fatah party is really upset. Ma'an quotes prominent Fatah leader Hatem Abdel Qader as condemning these young Arabs who ignore what Mahmoud Abbas wants them to say.

Abdel Qader described the group as stray and outcast and desperate He was especially upset at the members who say that the boycott of Israel negatively affects the economy of the Palestinian people, saying this was a false allegation and a failed attempt to mislead international public opinion.

"If Israel thinks that this empty group can cover up the nakedness of the occupation that has become exposed to the whole world, or beautify its ugly face and polish its shattered and distorted image," he said, they are mistaken.

Which makes one wonder why he feels so threatened by them if he knows that they will have no impact?

Perhaps he is much more frightened of the truth than he is of a small group of Israeli (and Palestinian) arabs.

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Guess who is to blame for ISIS terrorists in Gaza? (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

A few days ago, Ali Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada published a story about the situation in Gaza that started out with the untimely demise of Nidal al-Jaafari, a recently married 29-year-old, who “was killed on 17 August in a suicide bombing near Gaza’s boundary with Egypt.”

Since Nidal al-Jaafari was a member of the Qassam Brigades, he would have certainly been among those who would celebrate any suicide bombing targeting Israelis. But other Islamist terror groups love suicide bombings just as much as Hamas, and Jaafari was killed in a “bombing [that] was attributed to the Islamic State group.”

Unsurprisingly, Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada doesn’t mention terrorism in this story that is really about one terrorist group – namely Hamas – being forced to fight another terrorist group – ISIS – in order to appease the Egyptians.

The reader learns that already in June, “Hamas also began clearing a buffer zone along its boundary with Egypt” – and the link leads to an article in Ha’aretz that notes that this “will force a lot of families out of their homes.” Well, if even one Palestinian faced the prospect of being forced to move just a few yards because of Israel, Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada would have had plenty to say about this terrible hardship…

But now that Egypt is forcing Hamas to confront ISIS supporters in Gaza, it’s of course time to trot out the usual variations of the Nazi slogan “The Jews are our misfortune” – so here goes:

“Some also see an Israeli hand in the area.

Akram Attalla, a political analyst and columnist for al-Ayyam newspaper, speculated that Islamic State in Gaza and the Sinai is funded by Israel in order to undermine Hamas.

‘Israel is aware that the Palestinians have adapted to the division among them and the siege,’ he told The Electronic Intifada. ‘Hence, Israel is trying to create groups that can wear Hamas down.’

Omar Jaara, an Israel affairs expert and lecturer at An-Najah National University in the West Bank, echoed this theory. Islamic State, he said, is a ‘tool controlled by Israel to maintain instability’ at the boundary with Egypt. As the group’s threat to Egypt grows, he added, it becomes a ‘wild card’ that Israel can wield against Hamas.”

Well, if even an “Israel affairs expert and lecturer at An-Najah National University” thinks Israel is behind ISIS, there must be something to it, right? And indeed, I think no one can deny that this view reflects as much “expertise” as Dr. Omar Ja’ara’s amazing performance on Palestinian TV a few years ago, when he explained that “Moses the Muslim” led “the first Palestinian liberation through armed struggle to liberate Palestine from the nation of giants led by Goliath.” As he said: “This is our logic and this is our culture.”

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10/16 Links Pt1: The Growing Autocracy of the PA; Israel destroys Syrian AA after it fires at IDF jets

From Ian:

Alan M. Dershowitz: President Trump Did the Right Thing by Walking Away from UNESCO — for Now

Among the reasons are that by withdrawing from UNESCO – again – President Trump is sending a powerful message to the international community: the United States will no longer tolerate international organizations that serve as forums for Jew-bashing. This important message was encapsulated in a powerful statement made by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley: "The purpose of UNESCO is a good one. Unfortunately, its extreme politicization has become a chronic embarrassment...US taxpayers should no longer be on the hook to pay for policies that are hostile to our values and make a mockery of justice and common sense."

The political thinker Charles de Montesquieu famously said: "There is no crueller tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice." It is precisely because UNESCO purports to be a cultural and educational body that its false credibility masks its pervasive bigotry.

On Friday afternoon it was announced that former French Culture Minister Audrey Azoulay – a Jewish woman – was elected as UNESCO Chief. Azoulay said that "UNESCO is going through a profound crisis" but that she hopes to fix it from within. I hope she succeeds in this mission. I hope she can turn UNESCO from an organization that promotes bigotry in the false name of culture, into one that opposes all forms of bigotry. Given the nature of its voting membership, this will not be easy, but with pressure from the U.S., it may have a chance of succeeding. Perhaps then the U.S. will maintain its membership in and financial support for UNESCO.

CAMERA Op-Ed: The Growing Autocracy of the Palestinian Authority

On Sept. 26, 2017, the Palestinian Authority, the self-governing body that rules the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), hailed a terrorist named Ahmed Al-Jamal, for murdering three Israelis. Twenty-four hours later, the PA was welcomed into INTERPOL, which purports to work to “make the world a safer place.” Both instances are examples of the authority violating the Oslo accords which created it and from which it is still funded.

The PA was established in May 1994 as a result of the Israel-Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Declaration of Principles (DOP) during the Oslo peace process. As with the PLO, the Fatah movement has long dominated the PA. All three entities are currently led by Mahmoud Abbas, the 82-year old successor to Yasser Arafat, who is currently in year twelve of a single elected four-year term.

Abbas has been variously described as a “moderate” and a “peace partner” by press and policymakers alike. Much of his record suggests otherwise.

On several occasions, Abbas—like his predecessor—has rejected opportunities for a Palestinian state if it meant living peacefully next to the Jewish nation of Israel. For example, a 2008 offer issued by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert included 93% of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and a Palestinian state with its capital in eastern Jerusalem. Abbas himself has acknowledged that he rejected this plan “out of hand,” and failed to so much as submit a counteroffer.

Instead of accepting statehood and peace with the Jewish state, Abbas has opted for war, by promoting anti-Jewish violence and seeking to delegitimize the Jewish state.

Amb. Alan Baker: Palestinian Unification Must Honor Palestinian Commitments

The Hamas-Fatah unity agreement could, in principle, be seen to be a positive development in the general framework of the Middle East peace process.

However, such a positive development, to be meaningful and to signal genuine momentum, would have to fulfill two very basic tenets laying at the foundation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The first is that the general aim of the unification must be to enable a responsible and unified Palestinian leadership, speaking with one voice and duly empowered, to further the peace negotiation process. This aim must be publicly declared and acknowledged by all Palestinian factions.

If to the contrary, the aim of the unification is to enhance and consolidate Palestinian opposition to peaceful coexistence with Israel, through enabling Hamas to retain its armed capabilities and to continue its belligerency through terror tunnels, rockets, and acts of terror, then this unification will be flawed, false, and misleading. It will undermine international efforts at reconciliation and negotiation.

The second basic tenet of such unification must be to openly reaffirm the already existing and valid Palestinian commitments vis-a-vis Israel and the international community, signatories as witnesses to the Oslo Accords

During a period when Israel’s foes are taking advantage of increasing radicalism on college campuses and elsewhere, it is easy to panic or fall into despair as each news cycle brings more tales of terror for Israel and her supporters. But if there’s one thing that separates the effective from the ineffective warrior (political or otherwise), it’s the ability to skip over panic and get down to business.

Yes, the news is indeed frightening (especially when your news feed has been customized to only deliver tales of your political enemies behaving badly). And factors such as such as how decisions get made in Tehran or the Kremlin (or the White House for that matter) are beyond the control of any activist or group of activists, no matter how talented. But the first rule of warfare is to understand what is in your control so you can make choices based on concrete reality, vs. wishful (or fear-driven) thinking.

Working from the top, the general zeitgeist is that the election of a controversial American President has galvanized elements of the political Left to find common cause. While not a problem in and of itself (why shouldn’t political allies come together to fight a political foe?), the tendency of the ruthless (whether Leninist or anti-Zionist) to rise to power within such coalitions means such groups are likely to turn against Israel – if not immediately, then eventually.

The Right has also been doing coalition building and political agitation, of course. But since the most significant anti-Zionist agitation has been coming from SJP types and their intersectional allies, at least for now we must focus on the actual vs. potential enemy. Any good military will devote a subset of its energy to anticipating and planning for future threats. But doing so at the expense of winning the battle you’re currently fighting is folly.

With that big picture in place, we must also keep in mind Tip O’Neill’s maxim that “All politics is local.” It’s easy to lose sight of this central truth in an era when a food coop boycott in Brooklyn makes international news, or a church divestment resolution triggers tweets from Detroit to Doha. But the reason why there was a boycott or divestment motion in that particular coop or church is because local anti-Israel activists within each community organized and sustained campaigns for them.

This means that understanding the local situation takes top priority. Is there a divestment row brewing at your school? Which groups are behind it? How many members do they have? Are those numbers real, or just boasts or Facebook joins? Most importantly – who leads the opposition and are they any good?

By good, I mean, are they able to sustain coalitions or political activities for long periods of time, present a responsible face to those they are trying to convince (like unaffiliated students, administrators or reporters) and think and plan strategically? Or is there success driven primarily by aggression and charisma – both strong sources of power, but more limited ones than patience, empathy and a strategic mindset.

Oh, and if the opposition has decent leadership, are they going to be around or are they about to go on exchange program next semester (in which case the next question should be who is in charge when they leave and how effective are they?).

If you have the patience, this short book goes into more detail about analyzing battlefield forces and landscapes, and elements of effective strategic thinking. But in the particular period we’re living through when Israel’s foes are trying to use the current moment to gain control over the entire Left end of the political spectrum and turn it against us, some specific questions to ask include:

· - How much radical activity is really going on in your community? While partisans on both sides of the Right-Left divide have a stake in inflating the significance of such activity (either to condemn or celebrate it), it is your job to determine if that latest march or 20-page list of demands represents a genuine power play vs. a political stunt.

· - What is the response of the rest of the community to the radicals? Are they supportive, hostile, indifferent? Fear of being condemned as racist, sexist or something-else-ist might make it difficult for community members to honestly express what they think. But time spent really listening to people other than allies and enemies can help you better evaluate honest community attitudes.

· - Are there opportunities to cleave coalitions among our foes, or prevent them from forming? There is, after all, no requirement that every Left-leaning individual and organization must drop on their knees before the Palestine uber alles agenda. And there are various ways of making that known, from recruiting confident and vocal minorities and feminists to openly question the assumptions behind intersectional alliances, to creating your own coalitions to focus on providing genuine help (vs. just slogans) to the needy and oppressed.

Most importantly, the successful warrior is a happy warrior able to project a spirit of confidence vs. fear and despair. Our enemy thrives on other people’s weakness, following Lenin’s maxim to probe with bayonets, advancing when they encounter mush and retreating when they meet steel. This means that no matter how overwhelmed you might feel at any given time, never let your foe see anything but impenetrable metal.

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.

Don' t market to these guys! It's offensive!

From Haaretz:

Several hours after Haaretz published a story exposing a controversial Israeli government initiative to set up a database with the names of all Jewish students in the United States, the plan was put on hold.

Based upon a statement published by Hillel International, the largest Jewish student organization in the world, the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs came under pressure to withdraw it.

The project was supposed to have been run through Mosaic United, a company set up by the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs several years ago with the declared mission of strengthening the religious identity and connection to Israel of young Jews abroad.

In its statement, Hillel International said it had not been aware of the plan until it received an inquiry from Haaretz. “We immediately investigated and made clear to Mosaic United our objections to this initiative. We believe the initiative in this tender is not in the best interest of engaging American Jewish college students. Based on our objections, Mosaic United has agreed to take down the tender from its website and cancel this initiative. We appreciate Mosaic United’s swift response to our concerns.”
...
“The idea is to set up a database of all Jewish students in the United States (some 350,000 students) and to map daily all the Jewish/Israel events taking place on campuses, along with a daily structural mapping of Jewish/Israeli online content from around the web," the tender for the project stated.

"The goal is to bring a student not active today in activities connected to Judaism/Israel (roughly 85 percent) to participate in online and local campus activities numerous times and continuously."

According to the tender, the job of the company that won the contract would have been not only to create a database of names but also to divide up the Jewish students into sub-groups for micro-targeting purposes.

The company was supposed to have gathered material, both online and offline, that might be of interest or relevant to Jewish students – such as articles, photos and video clips, as well as information about Jewish or Israel-themed events taking place on their campuses. Each sub-group of students would have received a package of material, via social media and other channels, tailored to its specific needs, which would have been determined in consultation with Mosaic United.

Members of Mosaic United’s advisory board had also been kept in the dark about the initiative, which was almost certain to have drawn criticism from liberal Jews in the United States.

I cannot figure out why this is considered objectionable.

On the contrary, this is how marketing works. You can buy a mailing list of "Affluent Jewish Parents" and other companies can take an existing database of people and categorize them by ethnicity or religion. Any article about how modern elections work talk about the micromarketing done by both Democrats and Republicans to provide targeted messages to specific people based on religion, ethnicity, geography and any other factor you can imagine. Religion is one of the obvious factors that marketers use when targeting their audiences.

Why is creating a database of Jewish college students controversial?

Haaretz doesn't tell us why, just that Hillel was left in the dark about this and objected. Of course, Hillel owns the biggest database of current Jewish college students in the US, so for all we know their objection was to having competition in that area. But anyone who sees how their online ads change based on a Google search done minutes beforehand should not be shocked at modern micromarketing methods.

And who can object to marketing Jewish and Israeli events to Jews? Unless, of course, the Jews are the tiny percentage who are rabidly anti-Israel to begin with, who need a trigger warning before seeing the word "Israel" used in any sentence that does not mention "apartheid."

It must be the rights of those Israel-hating Jews that Haaretz is so concerned with.

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.