Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, November 27, 2017

11/27 Links Pt1: Libel in official PA daily: Israel and the US behind terror attack in Egypt; PA opposes Jews' visits to Temple Mount

From Ian:

JCPA: 70 Years after UN Resolution 181: An Assessment

Seventy years ago, on November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 calling for the partition of Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The Jews accepted the plan with a mixture of joy and hesitation, while the Arabs rejected it and launched a war to forcibly prevent its implementation.

The Arabs denied the Jews any right whatsoever in their ancestral homeland, and a large majority still maintains this view to this day.

Since the Arab states rejected the resolution upon its adoption and prevented its implementation, the Palestinian leadership can neither logically nor legally claim today that Resolution 181 can serve as a basis for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Moreover, the partition plan refers to the creation of an Arab state, not a Palestinian state. Indeed, nowhere does it indicate the creation of a Palestinian state for the Palestinian people. There was never any such designation as “Palestinian” for the Arab population residing in the area.

Finally, according to the UN Charter, General Assembly resolutions are simply recommendations and are not legally binding. Only resolutions adopted by the Security Council under Chapter 7 of the Charter may be obligatory. Thus, Resolution 181 cannot in any manner be considered to be a basis for a Palestinian claim to statehood.

Israel to re-enact historic UN vote that led to its establishment

The Israeli delegation to the U.N. will mark 70 years to the historic vote on Nov. 29, 1947 that resulted in the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel with a festive re-enactment of the vote, to be attended by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and dozens of ambassadors from around the world.

The re-enactment, the initiative of Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon in collaboration with the World Jewish Congress, will kick off a series of celebrations in honor of 70 years to the Jewish state's founding. The event will be held at the original hall where the vote was held in 1947. The hall, which is now located inside the Queens Museum in New York, has been decorated to look as it did on the day of the historic vote, with wooden tables, a stage and a world map hanging on the wall. At the conclusion of the vote, dancers will break out in the hora, just as they did in the actual vote in 1947. Israeli singer Ninet Tayeb will then perform "Jerusalem of Gold."

Pence will be a guest of honor at the ceremony and will be accompanied by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who is Jewish. Dozens of diplomats and ambassadors will also attend the event, including World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder as well as representatives from the 33 countries that voted in favor of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, as well as local Jewish community leaders.

"We are proud to celebrate with our heads held high the definitive event that led to the establishment of the state and present the achievements and the vast support that Israel has around the world," Danon said. "It is a great honor for Israel to host Vice President Pence at the festivities. The president of the United States 70 years ago, Harry Truman, was the first leader to recognize the State of Israel with its founding. Ever since then, Israel has had no better friend than the United States."

On Tuesday, New York's Times Square will show clips from the historic vote alongside Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel as well as footage of modern-day Israel on its megascreens. Dancers waving Israeli flags and wearing shirts saying "I love Israel" will dance in Times Square at the event, the initiative of the World Zionist Organization and the Zionist Organization of America.

Amb. Danny Danon: We fulfilled the dream

Seventy years have passed since the moment that will forever be engraved in the history of our people, and since then, every one of us can picture themselves listening to the radio, tense with anticipation, during that historic vote on Nov. 29, 1947.

Every time we watch or listen to the long minutes of the vote, which seemed to last as long as our 2,000 years in the Diaspora, we get chills.

In 1897, Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl imagined the unimaginable when he wrote, "At Basel, I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today l would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it."

Fifty years later, the Zionist dream came true. Reality eclipsed anything we could have imagined and the U.N. recognized the establishment of the Jewish state in the land of Israel. Today, 70 years after the vote, we stand with our heads held high, proud of our extraordinary achievements, and continue to believe and dream.

Looking back from where we are today, in a strong, thriving and independent Israel, it might be hard to fathom the tense atmosphere that preceded the vote, how momentous it was or the herculean efforts on the part of the Jewish leadership, which realized that the fate of their people rested on their shoulders.

Today, we are grateful to the 33 nations that voted in favor of founding the Jewish state, thereby changing history.

Last time, I discussed how perfectly reasonable decisions by the American Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) to minimize issues that divide (notably doctrine) in favor of matters that could unite (fighting for secular political causes) had negative (and linked) unintended consequences.

Most significantly for PCUSA: these choices led to an acceleration of the membership decline the new priorities were supposed to stem. But for the Jewish community, the elevation of politics made the church vulnerable to the blandishments of BDS, a propaganda campaign ready to demand (for years and decades if necessary) that anyone claiming to fight for “social justice” must embrace their anti-Israel hysteria – or else.

Another Protestant group – the Quakers – have also embraced religiously inspired anti-Israel animus, with far more vengeance than their Presbyterian brethren. In fact, outside of Muslim organizations or fringe front groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, there are few institutions in the country more dedicated to BDS than the Quakers. But their trajectory towards this position was different than that of the Presbyterians in several subtle but significant ways.

To begin with, Quakerism already experienced membership collapse in the US centuries ago when it moved from serious Protestant contender in Colonial times (when as much as a third of Colonial Americans may have been Quaker) to the tiny sect it is today with fewer than 80,000 members in the country.

Quakerism also reinvented itself in the early 20th century, becoming the religious focal point for political Pacifism, a position that put the group at odds with the American government and public in the run up to World War I. In the face of this hostility, church organizations and members showed courage in standing up for their Pacifist beliefs, volunteering for alternatives to military service that put individual Quakers in harm’s way without requiring them to kill.

But something happened to this pacific sect as the Second World War gave way to the Cold War. For, as this piece describes, Quaker politics (always presented as religiously inspired) moved from condemning all violence from all sides anywhere and anytime, to becoming a critic of US foreign policy and champion of Left Wing causes – including causes whose members refused to give up the gun.

Given this evolution, it’s easy to see how the obsession of today’s Quakers with Israel fits the church’s postwar political framework. But the church’s direct involvement in the Middle East also lent elements of religious bigotry (in the form of Supersessionism) to the brew.

Supersessionism was originally a widespread Christian belief which held that the covenant God gave the Jews at Sinai was passed on to those who accepted Christ’s divinity. This is what allowed generations of Christians over the Millennia to treat Jews among them not as forerunners to the faith, but as has-beens whom God has rejected in favor of believers in the new creed.

Both Catholicism and Protestantism wrestled with their own church’s Supersessionist history and theology, especially given the contributions that belief system lent to historic anti-Semitism and, ultimately, the Holocaust.

Mainstream rejection of Supersessionist beliefs left this theology confined to the religious/political fringes. For the straight-on anti-Semitic Right, mouth-breathing shouts of “You will not replace us!” carry the irony of accusation against a people (You = Jew) whom Identity Christians believe they have already replaced in God’s eye.

On the other end of the political spectrum, chants of “Palestine from the River to the Sea,” spell out who is to succeed whom in the Holy Land, with all the dark consequences for the Jewish state and the Jews who make it up one does not have to imagine. Yet this is the very goal Quakers routinely defend with religious language and fervor, oblivious to the violent history of those they support and the bloodshed their vision of “justice” would unquestionably entail.

If the notion of a Pacifist religious organization enthusiastically supporting (and sometimes leading) the propaganda arm of a violent war against the Jewish state strikes you as incongruous, keep in mind that the leadership of today’s Quaker organizations have nothing to do with the courageous men and women from a century ago who struggled to balance their personal moral beliefs with their commitment to the wider society.

Rather, today’s church is led by partisan charlatans who live off moral capital produced by their forefathers, capital they have chosen to spend by handing the organization’s name and reputation over to violent bigots.

When the self-righteous sell their souls, they tend to inflate the evil of those they fight against in order to justify the corruption they have let loose within their own institutions. So it should come as no surprise that Quakers fearful of the devil they must confront in the mirror put so much effort into convincing themselves and others that the Zionist enemy they have invested so much in attacking must represent not God nor man, but Satan.

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The past 8 months prove (again) that "pro-Palestinian" really means "anti-Israel"

The Palestinian Authority knowingly put thousands of Gazans' lives at risk starting in March of this year - and the world didn't care.

Even the UN knows, and buries, the truth.

From the latest OCHA (UN) Gaza Crisis paper:

A series of measures implemented by the Palestinian Authority since March 2017, following an escalation in the internal Palestinian divide, have led to a deterioration in the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. ....These measures have exacerbated Gaza’s energy crisis, resulting in increasing outages from 12-16 to 18-20 hours a day, worsened the salary crisis in the public sector, increased the shortage of essential drugs from around 33% in March to 45% in October and delayed the referral of patients for medical treatment outside Gaza. These developments have impacted the availability of essential services and the livelihoods of Gaza’s two million residents. The following indicators were identified by the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) to monitor the evolution of the crisis, trigger humanitarian action and prevent further deterioration. Despite an agreement signed in October 2017 between Fatah and Hamas, most of the measures that triggered the recent deterioration have not been reversed.

The graphs that UN-OCHA provides show a sharp deterioration of the quality of life in Gaza starting in March when the PA started cutting off electricity and medicine:

In black and white, one can see the stark results of the PA's cutting off essential services to Gaza. And these statistics were known for 8 months.

Where were the protests in the streets of London? Where were the peace activists? Where were the "human rights" NGOs? This year, Gaza plunged from a bad place to live into an impossible place to live, and it is all because of decisions made by Gaza's own fellow Palestinian Arab leaders.

The lack of media attention to this is, frankly, criminal. The only protests about Gaza are aimed at Israel. No one blames Hamas for violently splitting with the PA; no one blames the PA for collective punishment of two million people. The things that Israel is routinely blamed for are totally ignored when Arabs do much worse.

These past eight months are all the proof you need that all those protesters, all those NGOs and all those politicians who pretend to care about Gazans are full of crap.

Just like they don't care about thousands of Palestinians killed in Syria, and hundreds of thousands who became refugees. Just like they don't care about explicit discrimination against Palestinians in Lebanon and Jordan and Egypt. Just like they don't care about legal disenfranchisement of Palestinians in every single Arab country.

If Israel isn't involved, the world's concern for Palestinians is virtually zero.

When Israel can be blamed, rightly or wrongly, the world's concern for Palestinians far outstrips its concern for every other group whose suffering is far worse.

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Earlier this month I wrote that a Haaretz article about the Palestinian rejection of John Kerry's framework for peace accepted by Netanyahu - and its ignoring a sweetened version of the plan - is the biggest story about Israel that everyone has ignored. The timeline is shown to the right.

Part of what is so maddening about the story - a story that destroys the stereotypes both of an intransigent Netanyahu and of a moderate, flexible Abbas - is that Kerry knows the truth, and even so he continues to primarily blame Israel primarily for the failure of the Obama-era peace push. The recently surfaced recording of Kerry in Dubai last year blaming Israel alone is but the most recently publicized example.

The reporter of the Haaretz story, Amir Tibon, has been reporting on the failed talks for years. He co-wrote a very comprehensive article for the New Republic on the same topic in 2014.

In that article, he described a scene where Obama presented Erekat and Abbas with the sweetened plan that would give them a capital in Jerusalem:

The next day at the White House, Obama tried his luck with the Palestinian leader. He reviewed the latest American proposals, some of which had been tilted in Abbas’s direction. (The document would now state categorically that there would be a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem.) “Don’t quibble with this detail or that detail,” Obama said. “The occupation will end. You will get a Palestinian state. You will never have an administration as committed to that as this one.” Abbas and Erekat were not impressed.

What happened next crystallizes the entire Palestinian position towards peace and having a state perfectly:

After the meeting, the Palestinian negotiator saw Susan Rice—Abbas’s favorite member of the Obama administration—in the hall. “Susan,” he said, “I see we’ve yet to succeed in making it clear to you that we Palestinians aren’t stupid.” Rice couldn’t believe it. “You Palestinians,” she told him, “can never see the fucking big picture.”

Erekat is proud of Palestinian intransigence. He says that accepting a peace plan from the most pro-Palestinian president in history is "stupid." He and Abbas want more, far more, and will always respond with a "no."

And their favorite person in the Obama administration calls them on it. Susan Rice tells them that, once again, they are the ones who have sabotaged peace.

What more proof does one need that it is Abbas and his team who are the obstacles to peace?

Yet this richly documented story, like the Haaretz story, is ignored by a world that is emotionally invested in the lazy memes of "intransigent Likud" and "moderate, peace seeking Abbas."

The truth is right here. But no one wants to open their eyes.

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Where is Benjamin's grave?

I saw an Egyptian article that says that some Egyptians claim that the gravesite of Benjamin, son of Jacob, is in the west side of Cairo.

According to the article, residents around the building (which is naturally a mosque) have egarded the site as sacred for decades. The Egyptian government has never officially recognized it, though.

The sign on the room that supposedly contains the tomb says "Here lies our master Benjamin, the brother of our master Joseph."

Interestingly, the Arabic article calls Joseph "Joseph Siddiq" which I believe is cognate with his Hebrew appellation, Yosef HaTzadik, or "Joseph the Righteous."

Pilgrims come from India and Iran and some Gulf countries besides Egypt. Residents say that some Jews come there as well.

There is no tradition in Hebrew scriptures as to where Benjamin is buried. The midrash in Sefer HaYashar says he was buried in Jerusalem.

But there is a site in Israel in Kfar Saba that is claimed to be Benjamin's gravesite:

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From Petra, the official Jordanian news agency:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, on Friday said that Jordanians and Palestinians are "one people living in two states", appreciating His Majesty King Abdullah II, who spared no occasion to defend the Palestinian cause and Jerusalem before the world.

If any Western leader would say this, there would be incredulous op-eds castigating him or her.

If Netanyahu would say this, the UN would call for a resolution condemning him.

When Abbas says something that puts into question whether there ever was a "Palestinian people" that was distinct from the rest of the Arab world - crickets.

(h/t This Ongoing War)

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11/26 Links: Dershowitz: Dems' double standard on terrorists murdering Israelis; The “Black Friday” Massacre in the Sinai Mosque

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Dems' double standard on terrorists murdering Israelis

Palestinian terrorist leaders often use teenagers to commit acts of terror because they know the Israeli legal system treats children more leniently than adults. Now 10 Democrats belonging to the Congressional Progressive Caucus are trying to give terrorist leaders yet another reason for using young people to murder even more innocent civilians.

Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., introduced legislation Nov. 14 – co-sponsored by nine other Democrats – calling on the State Department to “prevent United States tax dollars from supporting the Israeli military’s ongoing detention and mistreatment of Palestinian children.”

In a news release about the proposed legislation, McCollum said: “This legislation highlights Israel’s system of military detention of Palestinian children and ensures that no American assistance to Israel supports human rights violations …. Peace can only be achieved by respecting human rights, especially the rights of children. Congress must not turn a blind eye the unjust and ongoing mistreatment of Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation.”

It is well established that recruiting and using young Palestinians to wage terror on Israeli civilians is part of the modus operandi of Palestinian terrorist leaders. For decades, members of the radical Palestinian political and religious leadership have been stirring up young people to wage war against the Jews and the Jewish State.

This was seen in the gruesome intifada that began in 2000, in which Palestinian teenagers committed dozens of attacks against Jewish Israelis on buses, in cafes and at nightclubs.

More recently – in what has become known as the “lone-wolf” intifada – children as young as 13 have stabbed Israelis with scissors, screwdrivers and knives.

Legislation proposed by the 10 Democrats is titled the Promoting Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children Act. The bill does not explicitly define at what age a person moves from childhood to adulthood.

While noting that children between the ages of 12 and 17 are held and prosecuted by Israeli military courts, the bill fails to acknowledge that some of the most barbaric terrorist attacks against Jewish Israelis have been committed by Palestinian teens.

Richard Millett: Students at SOAS told that Zionists paraded dead and mutilated Arab bodies through Jerusalem.

There is currently a hate-filled anti-Israel exhibition in the library at SOAS. It has been up since October 25th and finishes on November 30th. During this time thousands of SOAS students will have been subjected to sick lies about Israel.

One exhibit is a cake filled with M16 bullets supposed to represent the time an Arab girl baked a cake for her sister in “Fawwar refugee camp near Hebron” in 1967.

The exhibition is called Memory Metamorphosis: An Exhibition of Palestine Remembered. The exhibits are based on interviews with Palestinians.

On Thurdsay night I went to a discussion at SOAS about this exhibition chaired by SOAS lecturer Rafeef Ziadah. On her panel were two of the artists; Jacqueline Reem Salloum and Suhel Nafar. Also on the panel was Hazem Jamjoum from New York University.

Jamjoun explained that someone they tried to interview for the exhibition had lived in Deir Yassin. Jamjoun told the audience what apparently happened there:

“There was a retributory attack on Deir Yassin. The bodies of the people who were killed and mutilated were then paraded around the Zionist neighbourhoods of western Jerusalem. It was a very intentional psychological warfare of getting stories of murder, rape and killing pregnant women to go far because it would scare and was extremely effective.”

A new book describes there being nothing of the sort having happened at Deir Yassin.

JCPA: The “Black Friday” Massacre in the Sinai Mosque

The Struggle between the Islamic State and the Sufis

Residents of the Al-Rawdah village said the terror attack on the mosque began during Friday prayers a short time before the sermon. Explosions ripped through the mosque, and hundreds of worshippers were then shot at from close range for 10 to 20 minutes. Some 25 to 30 terrorists fired with automatic weapons after arriving at the mosque in four-wheel-drive vehicles.

The residents say the mosque was attacked because it is a Sufi place of worship; Al Qaeda and the Islamic State regard Sufi Muslims as heretics. In addition, the terror organizations operating in the Sinai Peninsula view residents of the village who belong to the Al-Sawarka Bedouin tribe as collaborators with the Egyptian police and army.

Sufism is a mystical trend in Islam that deals, among other things, with the doctrine of the “hidden.” The Al-Rawdah mosque belongs to the Sufi stream, and the Islamic State had made threats to attack it. However, no special security measures were taken there.

The mosque itself was established by the Sufi Sheikh Eid Abu Jarir, founder of the Sufi community in the Sinai Peninsula. About 90 percent of those living in the Al-Rawdah village are Sufis, and they have good relations with the Egyptian security establishment.

As noted, the Islamic State sees the Sufis as heretics against Islam. In 2013 Islamic State terrorists blew up both the tomb of the Sufi Sheikh Salim Abu Jarir in the village of Mazar and the tomb of Sheikh Hamid in the Al-Mughara region, both of which are located in Sinai.

In November 2016, Islamic State terrorists murdered 90-year-old Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Haraz, the senior figure among the Sufi sheikhs in Sinai.

40th anniversary of Sadat's visit ignored by "pro-peace" groups

J-Street has a page dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, including criticism of the document by this supposedly "pro-Israel" organization.

[T]he Declaration didn’t explicitly mention the rights of the indigenous Palestinian people who had inhabited the land for centuries and, most importantly, failed to recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination in a national home alongside the Jewish state. In many ways, these omissions laid the groundwork for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Jeremy Ben Ami adds:

As we mark 100 years since the Balfour Declaration and even celebrate the first international recognition of the cause of Jewish national independence in the modern era, there seems to me to be good reason to take equal notice of the century of violence and the ongoing conflicts that trace their origins to the mistakes and gamesmanship of the Balfour era.

Really? There was no Arab violence against Jews in Palestine before 1917?

Idiot.

But what is more interesting is that this "pro-peace" group did not say a word about the most successful peace event of the past century for Israel - the 40th anniversary of Sadat's visit to Jerusalem, which happened this month.

Similarly, "Jewish Voice for Peace" tweeted over a dozen times against Balfour, but didn't mention Israeli-Egyptian peace.

The only peace group I could find that mentioned it was Peace Now, which mentioned it in a weekly interview with Yossi Alpher - and not wholly supportively.

There are at least two reasons the "peace camp" doesn't like to mention the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement.

One is that they want to paint Israel as the party that doesn't want peace, and the fact that Israel has shown that it really does want peace and is willing to make sacrifices for real peace contradicts their entire basis for existing.

Two is that not only did Israel make peace with Egypt, but it was a right-wing Likud government that made peace. That is something they cannot stomach.

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Islamic Jihad and Hamas, both offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, and ideological cousin to ISIS, is blaming Israel for the horrific terror attack against a Sufi mosque in Egypt.

Gaza clerics held a meeting to respond to the attacks, and Gaza terror groups are very sensitive to upsetting Egypt, since the Rafah border crossing is important to them for travel and Egypt has blamed Gaza terror groups for arming Sinai terror groups. It appears that Islamic Jihad and possibly Hamas was involved in putting this emergency meeting together to distance those Islamist terror groups from Sinai Islamist terror groups.

The main theme of their statements was that the purpose of these attacks was to '"establish chaos in the Egyptian Republic and turn it into separate entities to serve the enemies of the Islamic religion, especially the Israeli entity."

Sheikh Abdul Fattah Hajjaj, head of the Iqra Charity Association, said "this murder and terrorism that targeted Egypt raises questions about the objectives of those terrorist groups that serve only the Zionist enemy."

Sheikh Nimer Abu Aoun said on behalf of his fellow Islamist sheikhs that "We are absolved of the criminal act that targeted Egypt and Arabism and this terrorist act is forbidden in Islam" and called for "Love, cooperation, harmony and tolerance among the sons of the Arab and Islamic nation because the Islamic religion is one religion for all people." He said the attack was "a conspiracy run by the enemies of Islam against Egypt and its people and its army."

Sheikh Samih Hajjaj, the General Director of the Azhar Institutes in Palestine, said the attack was meant "to weaken the great army feared by Israel, and rid Egypt of any economic and social plans."

Keep in mind that the media in Gaza, including religious media, is filled with calls to violence and murder. But not usually against other Muslims.

A mark of maturity is the ability to take responsibility for things. ISIS, Al Qaeda and other terror groups didn't appear out of a vacuum - their founders were all members of the Muslim Brotherhood, as were the founders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. There is no difference in their interpretations of the Koran that I am aware of. By claiming that these ISIS and ISIS-inspired attacks are really done on behalf of Israel (or, as Iran says, the US,) the Muslim world is not doing anything to actually solve the problem. On the contrary, they are trying to distance themselves from these groups - because they know that their own support for terror is not very far from that of ISIS and al-Qaeda and they do not have an ideological leg to stand on.

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Saturday was the "International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women."

The Palestinian Authority noted the day, in its usual way: by using it as a platform to blame Israel.

While one in four married Palestinian women report physical abuse, this is not mentioned in the official PA commemorations of the day. They brush aside any hint of those problems and only admit gender discrimination as a result of Arab heritage.

Instead, they say that all of the problems of Palestinian women are a result of the "occupation." At a conference last week, PA officials and ministers talked about how Palestinian women were fighting for Jerusalem against Israeli violence, how Jews are supposedly taking off their headscarves, and it called on the international community and international NGOs "to stand up against the violations committed against women in Jerusalem in particular and in Palestine in general through implementing United Nations resolutions on ending the occupation and recognition of the Palestinian state."

The PA knowingly avoids the very real problems of domestic abuse, honor killings, women who are raped who are then accused of adultery, and the majority of Palestinian wives who report psychological abuse from their husbands. Instead , it uses the day as yet another way to blame Israel for all its problems.

Which means that it isn't the "occupation" that hurts women - it is the politicization of the topic that allows the Palestinian Authority to avoid actually dealing with its own issues and problems in its own society because of its single-minded desire to attack Israel by any and all means.

It should be noted that the only time the PA pretends to care about domestic violence against women is when outside agencies give it money earmarked specifically for that purpose. On its own, however, women are just another bullet to try to hurt Israel - and in the end the only people being hurt are the women themselves, who are doubly victimized, both as victims of abuse in their own society and then as pawns in the PA's never ending campaign to use any topic, no matter how far fetched, as a reason to bash Israel.

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11/25 Links: Palestinians vs. Trump: The Battle Begins; Balfour Centenary Lecture with Simon Schama

From Ian:

Palestinians vs. Trump: The Battle Begins

Over the past year, the Palestinians have managed to keep under wraps their true feelings about US President Donald Trump and his Middle East envoys and advisors. In all likelihood, they were hoping that the new US administration would endorse their vision for "peace" with Israel.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas ensured that his spokesmen and senior officials spoke with circumspection about Trump and his Middle East advisors and envoys. The top brass of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah felt it was worth giving Trump time to see if he was indeed gullible enough to be persuaded to throw Israel under the bus and fork over their demands.

Well, that bus has long passed.

The Palestinians are now denouncing Trump and his people for their "bias" in favor of Israel. Even more, the Palestinians are openly accusing the Trump administration of "blackmail" and of seeking to "liquidate the Palestinian cause." To top off the tone, the Palestinians are insinuating that Trump's top Jewish advisors and envoys -- Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman -- are more loyal to Israel than to the US.

The Palestinians' unprecedented rhetorical attacks on the Trump administration should be seen as a sign of how they plan to respond to the US president's plan for peace in the Middle East, which has been described as the "ultimate solution." Although the full details of the proposed plan have yet to be made public, the Palestinians have already made up their mind: Whatever comes from Trump and his Jewish team is against the interests of the Palestinians.

Michael Lumish: "Palestine" is a Wraith

"Palestine" and "Palestinian" are European settler colonial terms for the land of the Jewish people. I think we should cease to use those terms or, at least, put them in quotes.

Or perhaps go with Palestinian-Arab.

In truth, the greater Arab nation gave the world "Palestinians" - a word which used to mainly refer to Jews living under the British mandate - as a challenge to Jewish sovereignty on historically Jewish land.

The Jews are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel.

The Arabs are settlers and colonists on Jewish land.

I certainly do not mind that Arabs live there. Nor do I mind that Chinese people or Venezuelans or the Easter Islandish live there.

But none of those folk can claim sovereignty because none of them are indigenous.

Only the Jewish people have a claim to indigeneity to that land and we must insist on this basic concept.

Everything flows from that recognition.

From a purely objective historical standpoint, only the Jewish people can claim indigeneity to Israel.

The Full Balfour Centenary Lecture with Simon Schama

On 1st November, renowned historian, Simon Schama delivered a guest lecture marking the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. This historic lecture delved in to the details and background that led to the signing of the iconic Balfour Declaration- the 67 words that led to the creation of the State of Israel. This lecture is sponsored by Balfour 100, the official tribute of the British Jewish Community, marking 100 years since the Declaration.

Three insane English news articles in the past few hours saying Israel is in cahoots with ISIS (and Freemasons)

Today seems to be fertile for English-language Muslim media to act pretty insane.

Pakistan Observer:

SUICIDE bombing in mosques, shrines and slaying of innocent people in public places, targeting security and law-enforcement personnel by the so-called Islamic revolutionaries around the Islamic world; be they Al Qaeda, Boko Haram or Daesh and what have you, they are no Muslim missionaries but mercenaries hired to distort the noble concept of Jehad in Islam which is supposed to be struggle and resistance against tyranny and exploitation. This is all part of the Zionist plan drawn decades ago to dis-enfranchise, destabilize and fragment the Islamic Ummah.
...As if the Israeli transgression upon and annexation of Arab Lands was not enough to translate their hegemonic agenda, the Zionists in the early eighties schemed to fragment potentially powerful Islamic Countries; carving an Islamic State of Mecca and Medina out of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Free Kurdistan out of Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan, dividing the rest of Iraq into Sunni and Shiite States, Free Balochistan out of Iran and Pakistan, and establishing its foothold through Greater Lebanon, Jordan and Afghanistan by manipulating territories out of Syria into Lebanon, Saudi Arabia into Jordan and Pakistan’s KPK and FATA into Afghanistan.
The map was drawn up by one Col. Peter Wolf (Map source assigned to Ralph Peters) translating an Israeli diplomat Yenon’s vision and divisive plan of these countries on ethnic and sectarian lines while garnering support from ambitious India dreaming ascendency in the region, which coincided with the imperialist designs; and hence the role being assigned to it in South Asia. Although the Zionists expansionist agenda had found fruition in in severing the now Central Asian States from the then Soviet Union and partitioning of Sudan and Indonesia, it had been at work since the Israeli annexation of Arab lands in 1967 followed by the 8-year long Iran-Iraq confrontation.
But its repeat landing in Afghanistan after staging 9/11 eying the natural resources of Central Asia appears to be its culmination point.

Brighter Kashmir:

ISIS or Daesh is one such group which was created to serve the interests of those who have nothing to do with Islam. America, Israel and their Arab puppets laid the foundation of this group and provided all the required resources to them including propaganda machinery. The main motive of this group was to create sectarian violence in the Middle East to pave way for the Greater Israel and to secure the illegitimate monarchy of Arab rulers. At the time when the youth were awakened against Zionist and arrogant powers in this world and were working and praying for the liberation of Palestine, Daesh was founded to sabotage the liberation movement of Palestine and to crush the resistance movement. The creators of this terrorist group in order to hoodwink the world community staged the drama of fighting this group. There are ample reports that US and Israel were providing arms and ammunition to ISIS terrorists in Iraq and Syria and also provided treatment to those ISIS terrorists who had got injured.

MalayMail Online:

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 25 — PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang said he was not surprised with the inclusion of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) — of which he is vice-president—into a terrorist list by Saudi Arabia and its allies.
Instead, Hadi rebuked the Anti-Terror Quartet, which also included Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, as failing to act independently amid its pursuit of relations with Israel and the so-called “Mason-International Zionist” network.
“These are the same countries that are pursuing neutralisation of relations with Israel and countries within the Mason-international Zionist network. Such political association is akin to a ship sailing astray in the vast ocean.
It is unclear what he meant by the “Mason-international Zionist network” but it may refer to the conspiracy theory involving an alleged secret coalition between the Jews and the Freemasons.
In December last year, PAS’ Datuk Khairuddin Aman Razali said the party believed that Muslim terrorists are funded by foreign powers, while the conflicts in the Middle East are allegedly perpetrated for the benefits of foreign powers and the Zionist regime.
In his statement today, Hadi accused the quartet of being driven by their belief and admiration for the “Zionist Jewish powers-at-be”, more than they trust God, Islam and their fellow Muslims.

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11/24 Links Pt2: UM Students Behind Anti-Israel Resolution: ‘Jews Are Not a Nation’; Phillips: Worried about Jew-baiters? Give it straight back to them

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Worried about Jew-baiters? Give it straight back to them

In the Diaspora, people are aghast at rampant antisemitism and Israel-bashing and dismayed over the failure to halt its apparently inexorable rise.

In Britain, the parliamentary group on antisemitism heard evidence last week that anti-Jewish bigotry is now entrenched in many British universities. Student officers have used the Twitter hashtag #Jew while discussing wealth, and the swastika is now seen on campus as a “casual symbol of fun.”

In the US earlier this year, researchers from Tel Aviv University found a 45 percent increase on campus of “all forms” of antisemitism. At McGill University in Canada, three board members of the University’s Students Society were removed from their appointments over their alleged “Jewish conflict of interest” in a battle about BDS.

Much valiant effort is going into fighting this scourge.

It’s not getting anywhere, though, because the overall strategy is wrong. This is because it’s based on defending Israel against demonization and Jewish students against intimidation. It needs urgently to move from defense to attack.

Accusations of antisemitism can easily be brushed aside as hysterical shroud-waving. Evidence of Israel’s humanitarian acts towards Syrians, the moral uprightness of the IDF, Palestinian rejectionism and so on is accurate but ineffective.

This is because it’s being presented on ground defined by Israel’s enemies. To engage with their calumnies is to grant these an inescapable validity. Israel’s defenders should be reframing the whole issue. Instead of trying to rebrand Israel, they need to rebrand its enemies.

The Israel-bashers delegitimize Israel through lies and libels. Its defenders need to delegitimize them through facts and truths. Israel’s defenders should not be trying to rid it of its pariah status. They should be turning its attackers into pariahs instead.

The Expanding Umbrella of Anti-Semitism

Islam did not trick Western nations; the West brought itself to the embrace of Islam.

The center of the original Islamic message seems to have been to convert, kill or drive away Christians and Jews, rather than to meet the spiritual needs of Muslims. To this day, the central preaching of Islam still appears to be an intolerance of non-Muslims.

What made America great is being discarded together with America's imperfect past, without acknowledging that America has taken -- and is still taking -- steps to correct its injustices, as many Middle Eastern nations have not.

There is a good possibility that, with the impact of Islam -- and the replacement of the active values of personal responsibility and "pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps" by the passive values of victimhood for blackmailing, redistribution and abdication to "government" -- the West's humanistic values, which welcomed Islam in the first place, may not survive.

Martin Kramer: Sadat and Begin: The Peacemakers

It has been 38 years since the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, most famously evoked by the three-way handshake on the White House lawn that changed the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat put war behind Israel and Egypt, and in so doing, ended the Israeli-Arab conflict. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues, and so too does the Israeli-Iranian struggle.

But Israeli-Egyptian peace put an end to the destructive battlefield wars between Israel and Arab states of the kind that erupted in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973. Since the famous handshake among Begin, Sadat and Jimmy Carter, there has been no battlefield war between Israel and a conventional Arab army. And Egypt and Israel now have been at peace longer than they were at war.

It has often been said of Begin and Sadat that the two men were like oil and water. “The two men were totally incompatible,” recalled Carter, describing the Camp David negotiations that produced the treaty. “There was intense perturbation between them, shouting, banging on the tables, stalking out of the rooms. So for the next seven days, they never saw each other. And so we negotiated with them isolated from one another.”

Yet in a briefing paper prepared for the US team prior to the Camp David negotiations, these sentences appear: “Both Begin and Sadat have evidenced similar personal and national objectives throughout their familiar transformation from underground fighter to political leader. Despite their often vituperative comments, each should be able to recognize the other as a politician basically capable of change, compromise, and commitment.”

11/24 Links Pt1: 235 dead in Sinai Mosque bombing; Glick: Portents of quagmires in Syria

From Ian:

At least 235 dead in Sinai bombing, shooting terror attack

At least 235 people were killed and more than 120 wounded in a bombing and shooting attack against worshipers at a mosque in the northern Sinai after Friday prayers.

Egypt's government has declared three days of mourning in response to the attack that struck the Al-Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed west of El-Arish.

Reuters reports that witnesses saw terrorists enter the mosque to kill worshipers during Friday prayers, when mosques see the largest attendance. The attack began around noon time. They also attempted to prevent rescue services from reaching the area.

"They were shooting at people as they left the mosque," a local resident whose relatives were at the scene told Reuters. "They were shooting at the ambulances too."

No group claimed responsibility for the assault but it was the deadliest yet in the region where for three years Egyptian security forces have battled an Islamic State insurgency that has killed hundreds of police and soldiers.

Photos posted online by a Twitter account that publishes news from Sinai showed the wounded being transported in the back of pickup trucks to hospital. It said the attack also targeted a kindergarten. Photos from inside the mosque showed at least thirty bodies laying on the floor.

Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi has summoned a meeting of security officials to address the incident.

After mosque massacre, Israel says it ‘stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Egypt’

Israeli ministers on Friday expressed solidarity with Egypt following a deadly terror attack in a north Sinai mosque that claimed at least 200 lives, with one calling for “a regional front” against jihadists.

They also used the attack as a platform to attack Iran.

On Twitter, Transportation and Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) offered “condolences to the families of the dozens of people murdered in the terror attack on a mosque in Sinai” and said the Jewish state “stands shoulder to shoulder with Egypt and other countries in region and the international arena in the war against radical Islamic terror.”

In a Hebrew tweet, he also said “Radical Islam is striking indiscriminately and murdering Muslims as well. It’s time to form a regional front against Iran’s Shiite terrorism and Islamic State’s Sunni terror.”

Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) offered condolences and said: “The murderous terror attack is testimony to the fact that a new world order is being created around us, in which the distinction is between terror supporters like Iran and [IS] and supporters of humanity.

Egyptian army strikes vehicles of terrorists behind Sinai attack — report

An unconfirmed report in Sky News Arabia Friday said Egyptian military forces destroyed two vehicles carrying terrorists involved in an attack on a mosque in northern Sinai, in which at least 235 people were killed.

An unnamed army source told the TV station that unmanned drones had attacked two cars in a desert area called al-Risha, killing 15 jihadists. He added that the hunt for other perpetrators was ongoing.

There was no official word from Egypt’s military on the matter.

Armed attackers killed at least 235 worshipers in a bomb and gun assault on the packed mosque, state media reported, the country’s deadliest attack in recent memory.

A bomb explosion ripped through the Rawda mosque frequented by Sufis roughly 40 kilometers west of the North Sinai capital of el-Arish, before gunmen opened fire on those gathered for weekly Friday prayers, officials said.

Witnesses said the assailants had surrounded the mosque with all-terrain vehicles then planted a bomb outside.

The gunmen then mowed down the panicked worshippers as they attempted to flee and used the congregants’ vehicles they had set alight to block routes to the mosque.

Tel Aviv City Hall lights up in solidarity with Egypt

The facade of the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality building wore red, white, black and golden hues on Friday night as it was lit up in solidarity with Egypt, which suffered a mass casualty terror attack on Friday.

The municipality building, situated in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, donned the colors of the Egyptian flag in an official expression of Israel's support of its southern neighbor, as Egypt continues to reel from the attack that claimed the lives of at least 235 worshipers at a mosque in the northern Sinai after Friday prayers.

The mayor of Tel Aviv, Ron Huldai, expressed his condolences to Israel's southern neighbors in Egypt.

"A horrific attack in Egypt. We send our condolences to our friends across the border and light the Municipality building in their honor," wrote Huldai on Twitter.

Palestinians trying to leave Lebanon - because of Israel?

From Arutz-7:

The number of “Palestinian refugees” in Lebanon has decreased significantly over the past few years and many are leaving for other countries to try to improve their situation.

In an interview with the Hamas newspaper Palestine on Thursday, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon Ali Baraka said that some 260,000 “Palestinian refugees” had left the refugee camps in Lebanon to various countries in recent years because of the difficult security and economic conditions.

According to him, the figures he cited are based on a poll conducted by the Lebanese authorities and which indicates that there is a deliberate action to bring about the emigration of Palestinian refugees from countries bordering Israel.

"The Zionist enemy is working in this way to empty the refugee camps and to destroy the foundation for the right of return," Baraka claimed.

He further argued that this emigration should be dealt with through activities to improve the situation in the camps and through assistance from UNRWA to ensure stability in the camps prior to the return of the “refugees” to “Palestine”.

According to the data of the director of the Shahad Institution, Mahmoud Al-Hanafi, over 45 percent of the “Palestinian refugees” have emigrated from Lebanon and only 280,000 remain in Lebanon today. According to another version of the data, only 200,000 Palestinians remain in Lebanon. Hanafi noted that poverty, denial of work and security instability contribute to an increase in the phenomenon.

Remember that UNRWA claims that there are 450,000 Palestinian "refugees" in Lebanon. We have noted for years that roughly half of those have fled - but UNRWA still keeps counting them.

I couldn't find the original Felesteen article, but I found one from a few months ago quoting the same al-Hanafi about a study showing how Lebanese youth know that they have no future in Lebanon.

59% of them believe that Palestinian identity is their main obstacle to achieving their aspirations to build a family and actively contribute to the development of society.

The study said that suffering is linked to the reality of "being a Palestinian" and linked this fact to "the practice of successive Lebanese governments of the policy of deprivation and harassment of the Palestinian, so that his life has become intolerable."

70.3 percent of the 18 to 20-year Palestinians in Lebanon would migrate if given the opportunity.

The funny part is that Lebanon is controlled by Iran by proxy - but the Palestinians there who Iran pretends to love are in worse shape than they've ever been. Must be because Lebanese authorities who practice apartheid against their Palestinian "guests" are really partnering with Israel, not Iran.

(h/t Josh K)

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