Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, March 23, 2018

Jordanian MPs want to prevent Jewish investors from becoming citizens. Not Israelis - Jews.

A group of MPs on Wednesday called for excluding Israelis from a recent decision to grant nationality to individuals who invest in the country under certain conditions.

In a memorandum they submitted to the Lower House speaker’s office to be forwarded to the government, a total of 18 lawmakers demanded that the government reword its recent decision to grant facilities to investors, including nationality, so that Israeli businesspeople are ineligible to benefit from the incentive.

The memo did not mention whether 1948 Palestinians, who hold Israeli citizenship, should be included in the exception, but they stressed that “Jewish” investors must be banned from benefitting from the new regulations, which are aimed at luring capital into the country.

The Cabinet on Monday set several conditions for individuals seeking to obtain Jordanian citizenship, including a zero-interest, five-year $1.5 million deposit at the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ), or buying treasury bonds valued the same amount at an interest rate to be decided by CBJ and for a period of no less than 10 years.

Under the recent decision, investors can also buy securities at $1.5 million, from an active investment portfolio or invest $1 million in SMEs for five years at least to become a Jordanian national.

To obtain permanent residency, any non-Jordanian can buy a property worth no less than JD200,000, provided that the Lands and Survey Department confirms the value, for 10 years without selling the property in question or dispose it in any manner.

The Jordan Times is lying.

Every Arabic article about this memorandum doesn't say a word about Israelis - only Jews. And the memorandum itself, reproduced below, doesn't mention Israelis - only Jews.

18 members of Jordan's parliament eagerly signed a memo that is explicitly and unambiguously antisemitic. They did this without any fear of backlash from their fellow parliamentarians or Arab media.

Their own media happily whitewashed it in English.

And over a month later - not one Arabic site that I can find has even the slightest negative thing to say about a potential law to exclude Jews from a law that everyone else in the world can take advantage of.

(h/t Mike)

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03/22 Links Pt2: The Latest Israel Boycott Lie; Dershowitz on Israel at 70: ‘A Light Unto the World’; Children throughout Norway to collect millions for PA terror

From Ian:

The Latest Israel Boycott Lie

When you complain that the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement discriminates on the basis of national identity, you are nowadays met with a contemptuous sniff. Proponents of an academic boycott insist that individual Israeli academics are not targets; rather, institutional arrangements with Israeli universities—study abroad programs, for example—are. Similarly, the cultural boycott does not target individual Israeli artists, but artists and artistic groups that enjoy some sort of government sponsorship. Look, dummy, they say, our guidelines are crystal clear! This “is a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions, not Israeli individuals.”

In the case of the academic boycott, this distinction between individuals and institutions is paper-thin. Until fairly recently, the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel had this to say about its commitment to principle: “In principle, since the call is specifically for institutional, not individual boycott, [activities involving Israeli academics] do not violate the boycott. However, all academic exchanges with Israeli academics do have the effect of normalizing Israel and its politics of occupation and apartheid.” Therefore, “academics could consider whether equally valuable contributions might not be made by non-Israeli colleagues; whether an invitation to a Palestinian intellectual might be preferable; whether the exchange is intellectually or pedagogically essential.” In other words, we’re against boycotting individual Israeli academics, but please see what you can do about boycotting Israeli academics.

Comically, the guidelines explain that individual academics are being boycotted because the movement is decentralized, not because BDS advocates should try to avoid exchanges with Israeli academics despite the fact that they literally just said that was the preferred outcome. “It may also be that as a consequence of the boycott Israeli academics are now having a harder time publishing outside the country, participating in formal exchanges, sitting on boards and international committees, and the like,” the guidelines continued.

These guidelines have quietly disappeared, but their disappearance probably has more to do with their foolish revelation of BDS hypocrisy than a change of heart.

Alan Dershowitz on Israel at 70: ‘A Light Unto the World’

Ahead of Israel’s 70th birthday in May, longtime Harvard University Law professor, attorney and author Alan Dershowitz announced that he is donating an ambucycle to Israel’s volunteer medic organization — United Hatzalah — in honor of his 80th birthday.

JNS interviewed Mr. Dershowitz about this gift, to hear his thoughts on Israel at 70, and to ask what the next seven decades in Israel might look like.

Q: What prompted you and your friends to donate an ambucycle to United Hatzalah for Israel’s 70th anniversary?

A: There is a group of guys I’ve known since kindergarten. We’ve known each other for 75 years, more or less. And we try to spend several weekends a year together, and try to get together on New Year’s Eve. We all went to yeshivah in Borough Park in Brooklyn together.

We went different ways, but we are still very close. We are turning 80 this year, and we thought it would be nice commemoration of our birthdays to do something that saves lives, and I can’t imagine a charity more worthy than Hatzalah. It has led the way in quick availability on the scenes of acts of terrorism. And so we all agreed to make contributions and to dedicate this ambucycle on Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel’s Independence Day).

Q: What do you think of when you reflect on Israel at 70?

A: No country in the history of the world ever contributed more to the welfare of humankind in such a short period of time than Israel. Hatzalah is a perfect representative of that.

In Hatzalah, you have Jews and Arabs, Christians and Muslims, atheists, religious secular, etc. all working together to save lives. It represents the best of Israel. People call Israel the startup nation, and I call it the life-saving nation.

Israel has saved lives through its medical technological breakthroughs, through its agricultural breakthroughs and through its pharmaceutical breakthroughs. Israel saves lives in teaching the world how to prevent terrorism, in teaching the world how to absorb immigrants. … Israel has really been a light unto the world for 70 years, and I think it’s important to commemorate and look forward.

Gazans are planning "The Great Return March," a gimmick where thousands of Gazans will try to simply walk into Israel on Land Day, March 30, the first day of Passover.

I mentioned this last month before the date was set.

The subtext of the march is that the IDF doesn't act the way that the Arab media portrays it, because that IDF would simply shoot anyone approaching the border.

The IDF is taking this seriously. According to Arab media, it is installing another layer of barbed wire fencing at the border to dissuade anyone from coming.

Palestine Today has a photo essay of Israeli equipment leveling land and installing barbed wire on Tuesday.

Bradley Burston of Haaretz is cheering the idea of Palestinians "returning" to Israel (paywalled):

Many [IDF] soldiers, in between prayers and calls of duty, silently hoped against hope that ...one day, truly non-violent protest would take the place of interminable, immutable conflict, and drive a wedge into the mechanics of occupation.
I was one of them. And, now that it seems to be happening, this is my confession: I want this to succeed.

But the protest isn't against the "occupation." It is against the existence of the Jewish state.

Is Burston that clueless as to the meaning of "194," the UNGA resolution that Palestinians purposefully misread to give them the unlimited right to overrun Israel, or is he malicious?

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Israel and the Jewish people have no enemy more vile than the PLO and its dominant faction, Fatah.

The PLO was founded in 1964 by the Arab league as a “Palestinian” organization whose goal was the “liberation of Palestine through armed struggle.” In 1969 it was taken over by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah group, which has controlled it ever since. In 1993-4, the Oslo agreements between Israel and the PLO created the Palestinian Authority (PA), which rules the areas in which 95% or more of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria live. The PA is run by the PLO (despite the victory by Hamas in the last PA election, held in 2006) and its Chairman is Mahmoud Abbas, who is also the head of the PLO and of Fatah.

Probably more Israeli Jews have been murdered by the PLO and its factions than any other terrorist group, including Hamas and Hezbollah. The PLO has gone out of its way to kill Jewish civilians and especially children, as it did in the Moshav Avivim school bus massacre (very interesting link), the Ma’alot massacre, and the Bus of Blood incident (also called the Coastal Road massacre). Here is a list of PLO “operations” until 2004. There have been plenty more since.

In the early 1990s the PLO was isolated in its exile in Tunis and other places, with few recent terrorist atrocities to its “credit” (the ugly Achille Lauro hijacking in 1985 was an exception). But in 1993, the so-called “architects of Oslo” – Yossi Beilin, Yair Hirschfeld, Ron Pundak, Uri Savir, and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres – negotiated an agreement with the PLO which recognized it as the legitimate representative of the “Palestinian people,” and brought PLO terrorists back to Israel to form the PA. Here is how historian Efraim Karsh described the result:

For Israel, it has been the starkest strategic blunder in its history, establishing an ineradicable terror entity on its doorstep, deepening its internal cleavages, destabilizing its political system, and weakening its international standing. For the West Bank [sic] and Gaza Palestinians, it has brought subjugation to the corrupt and repressive PLO and Hamas regimes, which reversed the hesitant advent of civil society in these territories, shattered their socioeconomic wellbeing, and made the prospects of peace and reconciliation with Israel ever more remote.

In their naiveté and delusive wishful thinking, the “architects” believed Arafat’s assurances that he had renounced terrorism and would change the PLO Covenant to delete those articles calling for the violent destruction of the Jewish state. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had his doubts, but could not oppose the fait accompli from the start without being seen as “against peace,” and he soon came under massive pressure from US President Clinton to make a deal.

Arafat immediately began his double game of talking peace in English to the international community and inciting violence in Arabic to his people. Karsh notes,

The next eleven years until Arafat's death on November 11, 2004, offered a recapitulation, over and over again, of the same story. In addressing Israeli or Western audiences, the PLO chairman (and his erstwhile henchmen) would laud the "peace" signed with "my partner Yitzhak Rabin." To his Palestinian constituents, he depicted the accords as transient arrangements required by the needs of the moment. He made constant allusion to the "phased strategy" and the Treaty of Hudaibiya—signed by Muhammad with the people of Mecca in 628, only to be disavowed a couple of years later when the situation shifted in the prophet's favor—and insisted on the "right of return," the standard Palestinian/Arab euphemism for Israel's destruction through demographic subversion.

The supposedly renounced terrorism continued, with Arafat secretly providing funds to terror operatives and even cooperating with Hamas (the one thing they seem to be able to agree upon is the value of killing Jews). After the failure of the Camp David and Taba talks in 2000-1, Arafat sparked the vicious Second Intifada in which the PLO and Hamas together murdered more than 1000 Israeli Jews, mostly civilians, and in which more than 3000 Palestinian Arabs lost their lives.

Most importantly, as soon as he took power Arafat opened what I call the Death Factory, the systematic indoctrination with anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda of Palestinian Arabs in schools and mosques, and via official PA and Fatah newspapers, radio, TV, and websites. More than mere propaganda, the Death Factory teaches Arabs, especially young people, that the greatest achievement in the life of a Palestinian is to kill as many Jews as possible, even – especially – if the killer becomes a martyr in the process. The greatest Palestinian heroes are such martyrs, like Dalal Mughrabi, a young woman who took part in the Bus of Blood massacre. Countless schools, squares, sports facilities, and so on are named after Mughrabi and other exemplars of Palestinism. Hamas, following Arafat’s lead, opened its own Death Factory, featuring children’s TV programs and kindergartens where the children are taught to hate and encouraged to kill as soon as they are able.

Arafat’s successor, the Holocaust-denying, Jew-hating Mahmoud Abbas, has been careful not to be caught directly ordering terrorism. But he continued and expanded the Death Factory, and often lauds captured or martyred terrorists as heroes. In addition to Palestinian nationalism and appeals to Arab honor, traditional antisemitic themes both from the Islamic and European traditions are included. Although the PLO under both Arafat and Abbas has promised numerous times to stop such incitement, it has never done so.

Today, social media have become a force multiplier, amplifying and disseminating the message. In fact, as a result of the autonomous nature of social media, it is doubtful that the Death Factory could be shut down completely even if the PA and Hamas would stop incitement in its own media and schools.

If this were not enough, the PA scandalously pays salaries to the families of terrorists imprisoned by Israel for security offenses, or killed while attempting acts of terrorism. The monthly payments are proportional to the length of the sentence, so the family of a mass murderer who has received multiple life sentences will be paid the most. The PA also will pay to build a new house for the family of a terrorist whose home is demolished. Despite great international pressure – after all, practically all of the PA’s money comes from international donors – Abbas has said that he will never end the program, which in 2016 paid $318 million to the families of “martyrs” and prisoners.

The combination of lifetime indoctrination and incitement with financial incentives has led to a situation in which almost every Arab from the PA, and even some Arab citizens of Israel, have become potential murderers, and in which it is becoming increasingly dangerous to walk the streets or to wait at a bus stop. Arab children as young as 13 have perpetrated terror attacks. Although there has been anti-Jewish terrorism in Israel from the period before the founding of the state, the prevalence of “sudden jihad syndrome” by Arabs unaffiliated with terror groups is unprecedented.

There is no easy solution that doesn’t involve using a time machine to go back to 1993 and intercept the Oslo folly, but there are some things that should be obvious by now:

First and foremost, we must realize that the PLO is an enemy of the state of Israel and the Jewish people. Jews are being murdered regularly by Palestinian Arab terrorists because they are encouraged and paid by the PLO to do so. In effect the PLO has “taken out a contract ” on the Jewish people. Paying a hit man to kill someone is considered murder in civilized countries, and his refusal to stop doing this makes Mahmoud Abbas a murderer. He should be arrested and imprisoned.

We can’t completely shut down the Death Factory because it will continue via social media. But surely we can stop incitement on PA media. TV and radio stations that incite murder or transmit anti-Jewish material can be put off the air. Newspapers can be closed down. Websites can be blocked. We don’t need to ask permission; just do it.

Insofar as the PLO is our enemy, we are not obligated to cooperate with it in any way. In fact, we are at war with the PLO, and cooperation with the enemy in time of war is treason. We should not transfer funds to the PA – which is the PLO under another name – or grant work permits to its citizens. We should encourage our allies to stop funding the PA as well.

We have gotten used to cooperating with the PA because we believe it keeps a lid on terrorism, but what that means is that we are allowing ourselves to be extorted by blackmail and threats. And regardless of our subservience, terrorism continues and grows over time, since we never defeat our enemy.

We don’t have a time machine that would enable someone to snatch the pen out of Rabin’s hand, but recognizing the seriousness of the mistake we made is the first step to fixing it.

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03/22 Links Pt1: Palestinian claim to Dead Sea Scrolls may be next up at UNESCO; Senate Democrats Prevent Stand-Alone Vote for Taylor Force Act; Get Hamas Off Twitter

From Ian:

IDF Blog: The Intel operation behind the attack on the Syrian nuclear facility in 2007

For two years, the Military Intelligence Directorate worked with the Israeli intelligence community to collect information about the growing Syrian nuclear facility. It began with a hunch and a collection of sensitive information, continued with the recognition of suspicious buildings, and ended with the identification and destruction of the nuclear facility. Here’s the intelligence process behind the operation, step-by-step:

The beginning stages of intel-gathering

After major discoveries were made from 2005 until the beginning of 2007, it was determined that Syria was acting secretly within the nuclear field.

The Military Intelligence Directorate began to take-on the challenge: the Research Department of the Directorate established a large-scale team to analyze indications of Syrian nuclear efforts and strategies. Later on, the intelligence collection units outside of the military assisted in gathering information.

During this period of time, the Military Intelligence Directorate collected a number of key details that became the grounds for the attack:

Towards the end of 2004: Military intelligence and the Mossad collected information that foreign specialists were aiding a nuclear project in Syria.

January 2006: This was the first time it was suggested that a nuclear facility was being established in Syria. This was an important turning point in the understanding of it. Following this, the Military Intelligence Directorate collected vital information regarding the beginning process of a nuclear facility.

April 2006: A nuclear facility was identified as a result of research conducted by the Military Intelligence Directorate and intelligence community.

November 2006: Additional activity in the nuclear field was observed. With time, more aspects of Syrian nuclear efforts were revealed, specifically intensive contact with nuclear elements necessary for the operation of a nuclear facility.

Palestinian claim to Dead Sea Scrolls may be next up at UNESCO

The next “prize” the Palestinians will likely claim as their own at UNESCO will probably be the archeological site of Qumran and its Dead Sea Scrolls, Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said on Wednesday.

He spoke at a panel on the denial of Jewish history in international organizations at the Foreign Ministry-sponsored sixth Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem.

Samuels chronicled the Palestinians’ success at having attributed to themselves biblical and cultural sites, including Jewish ones, on the World Heritage List since joining the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a member state in 2011.

The World Heritage Committee ascribed to “Palestine” Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in 2012; the agricultural terraces of Battir, site of the ancient Jewish fortress at Betar, in 2014; and Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs in 2017.

The Palestinian Authority has a tentative list of 13 additional sites it seeks to register at UNESCO.

Out of that list the Palestinians are next likely to seek cultural ownership of the Qumran Caves and Dead Sea Scrolls, said Samuels, who is the director of international relations for the Wiesenthal Center.

This request may come up at the next meeting of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee this July in Bahrain, he told the conference.

Haaretz reports:

At a time when the number of students attending universities in Israel is dropping, in general (students are also flocking to private colleges instead), a report from the Palestinian Education Ministry, which Haaretz has obtained, shows that the number of Israelis at the university in Jenin has climbed from 36 to 5,294 in a decade.

An organized transportation system takes students from their homes in the Galilee and Little Triangle area of Arab cities in central Israel to the West Bank. In fact, Israeli Arabs now make up a majority of the student body at AAUJ, (Arab American University in Jenin), the first private Palestinian university. Founded in 2000, the institution is located southeast of Jenin in Area A of the West Bank – i.e., under the Palestinian Authority’s full civil and security control.

Officially, Israelis are prohibited from entering Area A, but the Israel Defense Forces does not enforce the ban when it comes to Arab citizens. The Palestinian Education Ministry report shows about 8,000 Israelis are studying in the West Bank this academic year, 66 percent of them at the university in Jenin. They constitute 55 percent of all students at AAUJ, and their presence is clearly felt in terms of what is studied at the school and in its atmosphere. During a visit there, you may feel for a moment as if you are at some Israeli institution of higher education in a city in the Galilee.

AAUJ students say relations with their Palestinian counterparts are warm and friendly, despite the expected academic competition. Many live in apartments owned by Israeli Arabs near the campus, which is surrounded by cafes and restaurants, many of which are also operated by Israelis. Over 2 percent of the full-time employees of the university have Israeli citizenship.

So there are Israelis who own apartments in Palestinian areas - and no one is calling them "settlers."

There are Israelis who own business in the West Bank - and no one is calling for those businesses to be boycotted. On the contrary, Palestinians happily buy products from these Israelis.

The only difference between these Israelis and the Israelis who the world insists are illegal and obstacles to peace is that these Israelis aren't Jewish.

What more proof do you need to know that those who scream loudest about "Israeli settlers" are just anti-semites?

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I had missed this from last month.

San Francisco State University president Leslie Wong clarified his earlier position about Zionism on campus, by issuing an apology and statement that read in part:

My comments about Zionists and whether or not they are welcomed at San Francisco State University caused a lot of anguish and deeply hurt feelings. I am responsible for those words and, after study and reflection, I have come to understand how flawed my comments were.

Thus, I want to sincerely apologize for the hurt feelings and anguish my words have caused. Let me be clear: Zionists are welcome on our campus.

I know this apology alone may not be enough. But I am committed to a new course of dialogue and actions to ensure that my own awareness and learning will move this great university forward. Admitting fault and desiring a path forward based upon mutual respect motivates me. Making peace is hard work. And hard work has long inspired me. I hope you will join me.

In response Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies/Race and Resistance Studies, wrote what would be considered an astounding statement anywhere outside of academia:

I consider the statement below from President Wong, welcoming Zionists to campus, equating Jewishness with Zionism, and giving Hillel ownership of campus Jewishness, to be a declaration of war against Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians and all those who are committed to an indivisible sense of justice on and off campus....

I am ashamed to be affiliated with SFSU administration and demand the immediate retraction of this racist, Islamophobic and colonialist statement, and the restoration of SFSU social justice mission.

At a time when we are marking 50 years since the 1968 SFSU student strike and the quest to decolonize the curriculum, it is embarrassing to have our campus leadership cater to donor pressures and the Israeli lobby.

The dear academic is saying that the statement "Zionists are welcome on our campus" to be a declaration of war, Islamophobic, racist and colonialist.

Oh, and the only reason anyone would say that a campus can welcome pro-Israel opinions is because they are getting money from the "Israeli lobby" (wink, wink.)

A fun postscript: Leslie Wong addressed Abdulhadi's group in 2015, and described her as a "first-rate scholar, the model of the kind of person that I want around young people." (16:53 of video.) Already at that time the professor had been known to meet with real, honest to goodness terrorists.

That's what universities have become.

Amcha Initiative has issued a press release about Abdulhadi's hate.

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This is good news:

On Wednesday, the State Security Court in Jordan issued harsh sentences against a number of citizens on terrorism-related charges.

The court decided to sentence a citizen to seven years of hard labor, for planning to carry out stabbing in the West Bank against Jews, after he was found guilty of a "threat of terrorist act using violence".

According to the indictment published by the Jordanian news agency Petra, the accused is Jordanian and holds Palestinian identity. For about a year, he was consumed with the desire to carry out a "terrorist" operation against the Jews by stabbing one of them. The accused left Jordanian territory for the West Bank in order to carry out stabbing operations there, but the security services managed to arrest him.

The indictment pointed out that while he was in Hebron, he tried to inquire from the citizens about a way to enter Jerusalem and implement what he was determined to do there, but he was not able to do so because of the difficulty of entering Jerusalem.

Four takeaways:

1. Jordan takes terror attacks against Jews seriously, even when the act wouldn't take place in Jordan.
2. Jordan considers such attacks to be terrorism, not "resistance," although the media is not quite sure about that by putting the word "terrorist" in quotes.
3. It is unclear if PA security forces or Israeli intelligence uncovered the plot and shipped the man back to Jordan, with full cooperation. It would be nice to know which one it was.
4. Israel's restrictions on people entering Jerusalem saves lives.

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03/21 Links Pt2: Why Postmodern Intersectionality Imperils Israel and Jews; PA: US Ambassador Friedman 'an anti-Semite'; Swedish FM seems to support PA’s payments to terrorists’ families

From Ian:

Sohrab Ahmari: Why Postmodern Intersectionality Imperils Israel and Jews

Precisely because it is a theory of generalized victimhood, intersectionality targets the Jews–the 20th century’s ultimate victims. Acknowledging the Jews’ profound claims to victimhood would force the intersectional left to admit the existential necessity of the State of Israel. But the intersectional left is not prepared to do so because, under intersectionality’s rules, all the outcomes are predetermined. Israel has been prejudged an outpost of Western colonialism. Therefore, the Jews cannot possibly be allowed to “win” the intersectional victimhood Olympics.

Intersectionality, moreover, allows its proponents to apply hideous double standards when judging between Israel and its enemies. Judged against a fair and universal standard, the Jewish state comes out looking very good indeed, especially when one takes into consideration the fact that it has been at war since its founding. But the intersectional left dreams of perfect justice without a standard of justice. It can, therefore, condemn the sole democracy in the Middle East while ignoring or whitewashing the far worse crimes of her enemies. And even the most progressive aspects of Israeli society count against it in the victimhood Olympics.

Finally, Jewish victimhood, whether at the hands of the Nazis or the Soviets, requires the intersectional left to admit that, by contrast, and for all their faults, the Western democracies (including Israel) are pretty decent, even admirable. But again, the intersectional left is committed to the opposite idea–that everywhere in the West, there are hidden “structures of oppression” that trap minorities along the lines of race, gender and sexuality. Thus, again, the Jews will lose the intersectional victimhood Olympics.

Whenever such relativism reigns–and the very possibility of objective truth is denied–Jews are imperiled. Israelis and their friends, including fair-minded liberals, would be wise to abjure intersectionality altogether, rather than try to make their case on intersectional terms.

This column was adapted from an address at the 6th Global Forum for Combatting Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem.

PA: US Ambassador Friedman 'an anti-Semite'

The Palestinian Authority has doubled down in its attacks on US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, now accusing Friedman of “anti-Semitism” against Arabs - ignoring the fact that anti-Semitism has always referred to hatred of Jews in particular, to the exclusion of others claiming to be “Semites.”

Watchdog Palestinian Media Watch cited PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, which today, Wednesday, carried an article bearing the headline, "[PA] Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates: Friedman's positions are anti-Semitic and racist and disqualify him."

The article quoted “The [PA] Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates” as saying in a statement “that US Ambassador [to Israel] David Friedman's statements, positions, and hostile behavior towards the Palestinian people and its national rights and human rights constitute a blatant deviation from diplomacy and its conventions, the ugliest kind of anti-Semitism, and a scandalous violation of international law.

The quoted statement also accused Friedman of being “an ambassador of the settlers.”

“'From day to day Friedman proves that he is an ambassador of the settlers and their gangs. He holds the ideology and positions of the extremist right-wing in Israel, which are based on perpetuating the occupation and the settlement enterprise, on enmity towards the Palestinian people, and on negating its national and human existence.'"

The verbal attacks on the ambassador come days after PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas called Friedman the “son of a dog.”

Swedish FM seems to support PA’s payments to terrorists’ families

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström appeared to display sympathy for the Palestinian Authority’s policy of paying “salaries” to the families of Palestinian terrorists.

In an interview with a local Jewish journal published this week, Wallström was asked about her opinion of the fact that Ramallah provides financial aid to the families of Palestinians who are in prison for attacking Israelis.

“I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to in this case, but we have to review how we spend our money. But are people supposed to starve to death or what? What are these families supposed to do if they don’t receive money?” she replied, according to a translation of the interview by a Swedish-born journalist.

A spokesperson for Wallström later told the local journal, Judisk Krönika, that Stockholm’s financial aid to the Palestinian Authority is not being used to pay for needy families. According to Swedish and European Union directives, no aid money is allowed to be used to fund Palestinians in Israeli prisons, the spokesperson said.

Israeli officials have long condemned what they call the PA’s “pay-to-slay” policy.

'What if I paid millions to have your father shot in the head?'

An Israeli-American man whose father was shot and stabbed to death in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem two-and-a-half years ago confronted the United Nations Human Rights Council over its failure to confront Palestinian Authority support for terrorism.

In October 2015, Arab terrorists wounded some 20 Israelis in a combination shooting and stabbing attack in Jerusalem.

The attack left 78-year-old Haim Habib and 51-year-old Alon Guvberg dead.

About two weeks later, 76-year-old American-born Richard Lakin succumbed to his wounds.

A former activist who had marched for civil rights in the US in the 1960s, Lakin’s murder inspired his son, Micah, a CEO for an Israeli financial firm, to launch an NGO aimed at combating anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement in the Palestinian Authority.

On Monday, Micah Avni Lakin addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council, criticizing the body and its envoy, Michael Lynk, for their refusal to challenge the PA’s policy of funding Arab terrorists jailed by Israel.

“My father, Richard Lakin, was brutally murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the age of 76, Lakin told the council. “Shot in the head and butchered with a knife after he fell to the ground.”

“President Abbas and the Palestinian Authority rewarded his killers and their families with $3 million.”

Does it really matter whether a person dies or is murdered? After all, when a person is murdered, he definitely dies. So isn’t it all just semantics? Why should it matter so much how we say things?

And while we’re on the subject, must we specify the nationality of the person who stabs, or that of the person who “dies?”

Aren’t people, in the end, just people? Stabber, stabbed, why should it matter? Both are people. To identify them by race, color, or creed, wouldn’t that be divisive? And anyway, if both of them die in the attempt—that is to say, both are no longer alive—don’t their deaths simply cancel each other out in a kind of ugly justice?

Their mothers, being mothers, will miss them fiercely. There will be no difference between the mourning of Fatma and the mourning of Tzipora. Just names. They could be any two mothers, mourning sons. Dead sons. Men.

All these distinctions, isn’t it exactly these which come between war and peace, good and evil? That thin line between the two—the thing that divides humans into camps: white and black, Jew and Arab.

Think about it:

Some men flew airplanes into the Twin Towers and 2,996 people died

A woman drove a man to a pizzeria and 16 people died

A man was near a playground and a baby died.

Two boys, playing hooky from school, visited a cave and died

A man came in as a woman was cooking supper and as three children watched, she died

A man came into a home during Shabbat dinner and three of the people there, died.

A father and a baby in a car, died (stupid rock)

A man walked up to a passenger window and a girl's face burned

A man walked into a café and 12 people died

A man walked into a café and 8 people died

By Orrling (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Moment Cafe

Cafe Hillel Memorial

A man walked into a library where he and 8 students, died

A man came through a girl’s bedroom window and she died

A mom and her three daughters drove past five men after a fun visit to Grandma and the youngest daughter, age two, fell into a coma. Two years later, she died

Two men walked into a home on a quiet Sabbath eve. They lived, but four people died. The men left and a baby cried. They came back and the baby died, too.

(h/t Dov Epstein for the concept)

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Jews Don't Control the Weather? What Do You Call The Ten Plagues? by Trayvon White (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Jews Don't Control the Weather? What Do You Call The Ten Plagues?

by Trayon White, Washington, DC Council member

Listen, I know it was bad form to engage in antisemitic tropes and portray the Jews as a monolithic, sinister, all-powerful group. I apologized - of course I apologized; it would be wrong not to. But between you and me, there's no shortage of evidence the Jews have been doing this sort of thing for thousands of years. just look at a bunch of the Ten Plagues.

Just look at the documented accounts, in the Jews' own works. The Nile turning to blood - well, I don't know about you, but if that's not the sort of environmental engineering consistent with weather modification, I'll eat my hat. Having the same Nile then produce frogs fits right in, as well.

You can argue about lice, wild beasts - or swarms of insects, if that's your preferred translation - and livestock pestilence, but there's no question the boils relied on wind patterns to spread the magic ash all over. Then, of course, there was hail, and it was special hail with fire inside the ice. Making it snow in DC is small potatoes compared to that.

Locusts might seem like a biological, not meteorological phenomenon, but look at the way the swarm was brought in: the east wind. The evidence accumulates. And this is the time of year the Jews are getting ready to mark these events, on Passover. You don't need a blood libel to showcase Jewish brutality here.

Darkness - well, how else are you going to blot out the sun if not with some atmospheric interference?

But it didn't end there. After the death of the Egyptian firstborns - that could also have been environmental; you never know - the Jews followed a pillar of cloud into the wilderness. Clouds are weather, as I need not remind you. Then they used the east wind again to dry up a portion of the Sea of Reeds and march through. Then when the Jews emerged on the other side, they stopped the wind blowing and the water came crashing down on the pursuing Egyptian cavalry.

The daily manna came with the morning dew, and that's how they lived for forty years. Oh, and somewhere in there the wind also brought huge flocks of quail for them to feast on when they desired meat.

And don't even get me started on Joshua making the sun and moon stand still.

But sure, make me apologize. Everyone knows I'm only doing it because I don't want the Potomac to turn to blood.

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03/21 Links Pt1: Inside Israel's Secret Raid on Syria's Nuclear Reactor; Key U.S. official: Bombing of Syria's reactor was 'A blessing for humanity'; Germany’s shameless power play against Israel

From Ian:

IDF Blog: The Secret Operation Revealed a Decade Later

During the night of September 5th and 6th, 2007, the Israeli Air Force destroyed a nuclear facility in its last stages of construction in the Deir ez-Zor region in Syria, 280 miles north-east of Damascus. Four F-16 jets eliminated a nuclear threat not only to Israel, but to the entire region.

Background and Preparations for the Operation
For two years, officials in the Military Intelligence Directorate had been monitoring the Syrian nuclear project. Their intelligence suggested that the facility would become active toward the end of 2007, which prompted the IDF to initiate an attack on the facility.

The Israeli Air Force had very little time to prepare the attack and account for possible contingencies, such as retaliation by the Syrian forces. Once the attack plan was ready, however, it was possible to execute it within 12 hours from the moment the order was to be given.

The Attack
Shortly after midnight, the Prime Minister, Defense Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chief of the General Staff, Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Head of the Military Intelligence Directorate and Head of the Operations Directorate assembled in the aerial war room.

From there, they attentively followed all aircraft’s aerial locations and the communication systems. Two fighter jets, F-16I and F-15I left the base at 10:30 pm and flew low to stay undetected. The whole operation took four hours.

Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot speaks on the Syrian nuclear facility attack

The Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot tells us his point of view of the attack on the Syrian nuclear facility in 2007, when he was the GOC of the Northern Command

Inside Israel's Secret Raid on Syria's Nuclear Reactor

Eleven years after Israeli air force jets bombed the clandestine nuclear reactor in next-door Syria being built with the help of North Korea, Israel's military censor is finally lifting the veil of secrecy on the operation. The Sept. 6, 2007, raid was conducted near the remote desert city of Deir ez-Zur. Before today, Israel has never officially acknowledged its existence.

Former Mossad director Tamir Pardo asked in an interview with us: "Where were the Americans? North Korea is a highly important target for them. And it still isn't clear whether Assad was running the nuclear project, or was it the North Koreans?" He added that he has doubts that Syria was going to keep the plutonium, or perhaps it was going to be shipped to North Korea as a supply of which the West would be unaware. Pardo's questions raise another: What else might the CIA be missing in North Korea, in Iran, or almost anywhere on Earth?

The Israeli air force attacked deep in enemy territory, enjoying protection by sophisticated electronic jamming that blinded Syria's air defenses. The Syrian facility was almost identical to the Yongbyon nuclear complex in North Korea that produced plutonium for nuclear bombs, according to Israeli intelligence officials, and it was only weeks away from beginning to produce highly radioactive materials.

Deir ez-Zur was captured in 2014 by ISIS forces and held for more than three years. Just imagine if ISIS had gotten its hands on the plutonium.

After the revelation in 2003 that Gaddafi's Libya was dangerously advanced in its nuclear work, Israel's military intelligence chiefs increased their efforts to look for a nuclear project in Syria. Mossad operatives broke into an apartment maintained in Vienna by Ibrahim Othman, director of Syria's Atomic Energy Commission, and found a digital device, which they copied. Photos were found showing Othman in the company of some North Korean scientists that were shot inside the structure in Deir ez-Zur, and which clearly revealed that it was a nuclear reactor to produce plutonium.