From photos of the event in Ma'an, it is obvious that sports is the last thing on the minds of the organizers as well as the participants.
The route is specifically chosen to maximize the participants' view of the separation barrier.
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.The Jordan Times is lying.
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.
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.
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.
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.But the protest isn't against the "occupation." It is against the existence of the Jewish state.
I was one of them. And, now that it seems to be happening, this is my confession: I want this to succeed.
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.
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.
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:Palestinian claim to Dead Sea Scrolls may be next up at UNESCO
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.
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.
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.So there are Israelis who own apartments in Palestinian areas - and no one is calling them "settlers."
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.
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.
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....The dear academic is saying that the statement "Zionists are welcome on our campus" to be a declaration of war, Islamophobic, racist and colonialist.
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.
On Wednesday, the State Security Court in Jordan issued harsh sentences against a number of citizens on terrorism-related charges.Four takeaways:
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.
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.PA: US Ambassador Friedman 'an anti-Semite'
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.
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.”Swedish FM seems to support PA’s payments to terrorists’ families
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 Foreign Minister Margot Wallström appeared to display sympathy for the Palestinian Authority’s policy of paying “salaries” to the families of Palestinian terrorists.'What if I paid millions to have your father shot in the head?'
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.
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.”
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The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
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