Breaking Israel News reports on a post at the StandwithUs Facebook page (I couldn't find the original.)
Yosef Rabin writes, “An Israeli Flag has not flown on the Temple Mount since the 1967 War. Today Chinese tourists brought an Israeli Flag up to the Temple Mount. I am not sure how they got the flag past security and how the Waqf [Jordanian Islamic security that controls the Temple Mount] or police did not notice, but this sets a massive precedent – I hope.
This is truly remarkable, since the Waqf has stopped people from wearing Israeli flag buttons.
In 2013, a small group of Jews unfurled an Israeli flag and were immediately escorted off the site by Muslim and Israeli police.
In 2016, an Israeli who photoshopped himself waving a flag on the Temple Mount was briefly arrested by Israeli police who thought he really did it.
So this photo is quite surprising.
Arab media, of course, are claiming that this group of Chinese tourists are Jewish "settlers."
(h/t Steven)
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As the Palestinians continue to insist on no compromise in their demand for a state, let's look at what progress has been seen in the world since 2000, when they rejected the chance for statehood at Camp David.
Palestinians reject statehood offer at Camp David (2000)
Playstation 2 (2000)
USB Flash Drive (2000)
Palestinians reject statehood offer at Taba (2001)
iPod (2001)
Wikipedia (2001)
Skype (2003)
YouTube (2005)
Facebook (open to the public in 2006)
Twitter (2006)
iPhone (2007)
Palestinians reject peace offer and statehood offer from Olmert (2008)
Google Chrome (2008)
Palestinians reject statehood offer from
WhatsApp (2009)
Instagram (2010)
Kickstarter (2010)
Snapchat (2012)
Palestinians reject Obama framework for peace (2014)
Xbox One (2014)
Playstation 4 (2014)
Windows 10 (2015)
Oculus Rift (2016)
iPhone X (2017)
Tesla Model 3 (2017)
The world moves on. But Palestinians stay exactly the same - adding demands, rejecting peace, rejecting a state.
In 2050, this list will be longer, and Palestinian Arabs will be exactly where they were in 2000. Despite billions of dollars invested in them from governments and NGOs, they haven't progressed.
Because they don't want to create a state. If they did, they would have done it, and had years to build it.
They only want to destroy one.
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Compare that to this speech by Hawaii senator Brian Schatz, where the applause for pro-Israel positions like supporting Israel's right to exist and maintaining Israel's military edge were muted or nonexistent, but supporting the Iran deal and demanding that the US take in Syrian refugees were greeted rapturously.
Altogether, the representative of a terror organization received far more adulation than a Jewish senator who supports Israel's right to exist.
(You might argue that Schatz didn't pause enough after saying his pro-Israel positions so the audience couldn't applaud as much. Perhaps, but I would argue that he knew his audience - he is a professional politician and knows how to elicit applause with a pause, and he didn't want to risk an awkward silence.)
Schatz also made a pro-J-Street argument, claiming falsely that the Zionist crowd is unwilling to engage in debate and that this is undemocratic. No, we are happy to engage in debate - of all J-Street was doing was asking for debate there would be no shortage of people willing to argue for Israel against it. But J-Street is actively trying to undermine Israel's democracy while pro-Israel organizations support it. That's the issue.
Which he knows is true, because AIPAC always supported the Israeli government, left or right. It is J-Street that is manifestly undemocratic.
J-Street isn't a pro-Israel organization. It is simply a leftist group that is trying to split the American Jewish community to oppose Israeli policies.
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Yom HaZikaron is the day of national remembrance in Israel to commemorate all the soldiers and people who lost their lives during the struggle to defend the State of Israel. On this day we mourn and remember our fallen soldiers and all lives lost by terror. Yom HaZikaron, which goes by the Jewish calendar, begins with a siren at 8:00 in the evening. As soon as the siren is heard, Israeli citizens stop whatever they’re doing, wherever they are, and stand firm to honor those they’ve lost. People driving on highways stop their cars in the middle of the road to get out and stand in remembrance. A whole office will stop working and a family having dinner will stop eating in order to spend a minute in respectful silence.
After the first siren, the State Memorial Ceremony begins at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. The Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense, the Chief of the General Staff of the IDF, and the President take part in this ceremony. The next day, there’s another two-minute siren at 11:00 in the morning. This siren marks the beginning of private memorial ceremonies that take place in cemeteries or schools.
At night, the final ceremony is held at Mount Herzl National Cemetery. This ceremony ends Yom HaZikaron and marks the beginning of Israel's Independence Day.
Generally, in other countries, the Remembrance Day (Yom HaZikaron) of fallen soldiers and the Independence Day occur in two separate days of the year. In Israel, it was decided in accordance with the law that the Independence Day needs to begin the moment that Remembrance Day ends. This is because the State of Israel wouldn’t be able to celebrate its existence if it weren’t for those who gave their lives for it. We wouldn’t be able to have one of those days without the other one. We honor their memory and everything they fought for, so that today, we can celebrate our independence.
Israelis will bow their heads at 8 p.m. Tuesday for a minute of silence as sirens sound in remembrance the country’s fallen soldiers and terror victims.
In all, 71 new names were added over the past year to the roster of 23,646 who died defending the country. Thirty of those were disabled veterans who passed away due to complications from injuries sustained during their service.
Twelve names were also added to the list of terror victims who perished in attacks, bringing the total to 3,134.
The nationwide ceremonies for Israel’s Memorial Day, which begins at sundown, started in the afternoon with a commemoration event at the Yad Lebanim memorial for fallen soldiers in Jerusalem.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein took part in the ceremony, as well as top army brass and families of fallen soldiers.
“We bow our heads in memory of our loved ones whose blood has been spilled in our homeland,” Netanyahu, who lost his brother Yoni during the 1976 Entebbe Operation, said at the ceremony. “There is never a true remedy to that — to every family its own grief and its own courage.”
The prime minister mentioned the two Israeli soldiers who were declared dead after the 2014 Gaza war and whose bodies are held by the Hamas terror group, as well as an Israeli civilian who went missing after entering the Strip of his own accord.
“We don’t forget our missing [soldiers], Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, even for a single moment, and are committed to returning the boys home as well as Avera Mengistu.
“We don’t forget our wounded even for a moment and lovingly send them wishes for recovery,” he added. “The message left by the fallen is sharp and clear: Our lives may be too short, but we have guaranteed the life of the nation forever,” Netanyahu said. “And they have indeed given us the ability to live. It is thanks to them and their successors that we are here.”
From its unimposing exterior, one might be surprised to learn that what lies underground at the site of the new Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen is an architectural masterpiece. The emotionally impactful memorial, set atop the historic Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, was designed and constructed by Kimmel Eshkolot Architects to commemorate members of Israel’s security services killed in the line of duty.
The hall, commissioned by Israel’s Department of Families, Commemoration and Heritage, was inaugurated in late 2017 upon completion but it wasn’t open to the public until recently. Now, visitors can experience the memorial with public tours and follow along with a video app that takes them through the stories of the fallen and the uniquely designed site.
At the center of the memorial, intended to be both a collective and personal experience, is a 250-meter “Wall of Names” composed of 23,000 commemorative bricks, each individually engraved with the name of a fallen soldier and date of death.
A computerized system, custom built for the memorial in collaboration with ETH’s ROB Technologies, illuminates each engraved brick on the anniversary of the person’s death.
The continuous, spiraling wall wraps around a central commemoration hall, where an undulating funnel-shaped formation of bricks opens to the sky.
“The special shape of the funnel is like a vortex – a natural phenomenon – playing with the daylight falling into the hall, making the daylight a ‘building material,’” Etan Kimmel, cofounder of Kimmel Eshkolot Architects, told Dezeen.
The article is helpfully illustrated with a picture of a Jewish family on an outing in a park.
I'm not quite sure what goals the "Jews" have, but I think it has to do with world domination.
The question is answered:
.... Over the years, the Jews became increasingly deceptive and despotic, in addition to their tyranny and domination over the Palestinian state.
But despite the passage of all those years we did not think .. What is the secret of the superiority of the Jews?
Is it because of Western support for them? , Or perhaps their minds are full of deception? Or that there are other reasons and elements that are the reason for their superiority and strength?
The answer to this question may not be easy, but we have seen over the years that allows us to understand what the secret of their strength and they own [the unity] that is missing some Arab countries, for example, "Zionist lobby" knows its goal and did not differ whatever their motives and personal conflicts, Their main goal is to establish a Jewish state and the goal after its establishment is to preserve and expand it, and this is why they are currently seeking to control Palestinian Jerusalem.
...It is also known that Jews follow all dirty means to reach their goals.
Also it is known that the Jews resort to political and physical liquidation if they do not find what they are looking for according to their interests .. Just as they did with Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him and tried to assassinate him, and try to kill Jesus peace be upon him...they are working to bring down any politician or employee in an intelligence service who is not a supporter of the Jewish state, as they did with Jewish nuclear expert Vanunu who was kidnapped, tried and imprisoned for leaking the secrets of the Jewish nuclear program with a British newspaper.
Thus, the Jews use all illegitimate methods or twisted dirty tricks to reach their goals and rely on lies and deception in their dealings. ,This is not like the Arabs, but will we remain steadfast in front of their tricks.
Nah, nothing antisemitic about this. Move on.
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I did not watch “Seven Days in Entebbe” and I don’t intend to.
When the trailer came out my first reaction was excitement. This story is one of the best, breathtaking, exciting, moving, against-all-odds, adventure stories I have ever heard and, best of all – it’s real. And it’s OURS.
My second reaction to the trailer was concern. Would the producers tell the story correctly or would it be distorted into something else? Would they tell of the heroism of the Israelis who flew to the edge of the world to rescue their own, knowing that the lives of Jews can never be left to the mercy of others? Or would this extraordinary story be twisted into something different, some morally-relative political distortion of reality that could even turn into some type of anti-Israel propaganda?
And then the movie came out and I began to hear the reviews.
To my revulsion, I heard that my concerns had become reality. The producers, in their desire to “tell all sides of the story as realistically as possible” had, in essence, made the terrorist hijackers, the heroes and reduced Yoni Netanyahu to a shadow of who he was. I heard survivors of the hijacking express their dismay at how their story was perverted.
What really caught my attention was an interview with one of the Israeli actors featured in the movie. Lior Ashkenazi, plays Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin in the movie. Like most of Israel’s actors, Ashkenazi is known to belong to the political left. In the past he has played leading roles in controversial movies that depicted Israel and particularly the IDF in a negative light. While Ashkenazi adamantly defended his role in the movie “Foxtrot,” declaring that the depiction of the IDF was intended as an allegory and not truly negative, his response to “Seven Days in Entebbe” was hair-raising. When asked to respond to the accusations that the movie turned the terrorists into heroes and diminished the legacy of Yoni Netanyahu, Asheknazi’s response was: “You know, when you are an actor and get sent an international screenplay, what you do is flip through it and see how many lines your character has… You know, there’s the story in the script, the story in the filming and the story in the editing...”
I watched the television interview in amazement. I fully expected the actor to adamantly defend the film but instead this normally eloquent man was squirming, stuttering and stumbling over his words. The best he could do was explain was that the movie was created by people with a different perspective that is not an Israeli perspective.
Various Israeli reporters (who all tend to be left-leaning) have discussed the movie and everyone I heard described feelings ranging between discomfort and anger at what they saw.
The more I thought about it, the more upset I became. The stories of Israel are powerful. From the beginning of our Nation, our stories have affected, influenced and changed the world for the better. Now our stories are being appropriated, turned inside out and upside-down, creating a completely different and terribly distorted reality.
It is becoming common to see miraculous Israel presented as a mistake or even an evil. Heroic survivors are being turned into the new-Nazis and one of the most daring rescue operations in history is now being presented as the result of an understandable hijacking by “freedom fighters” - like the rape victim who “had it coming” because she wore a short skirt in a dark alley.
My history, the history of my people, is being rewritten in order to steal our future.
Dehumanize, delegitimize, destroy.
This is dangerous and very wrong. But what could I do? Seven Days in Entebbe was produced and released. A generation of movie-goers will believe that what they see is “the truth” about the Rescue at Entebbe.
My rebellion was to delve into history and watch Operation Thunderbolt, the original, Israeli film made about the rescue at Entebbe in 1977.
Old, obviously produced with a low budget and including some funny casting choices, this film has no Hollywood sleekness and ALL of the Israeli spirit. This is what Israel is like. These are what Israel’s elite soldiers are like – not muscular Rambos, they often don’t look like anything special. The best of them are notoriously rumpled looking and casual - they are too good to have to adhere to rules and regulations of how soldiers are supposed to present themselves. Most of all, they have a bond of friendship that stretches beyond comradery into the realm of brotherly love.
I don’t think people who live elsewhere understand the Israeli ideal that comes from Psalms 66:12 of following a leader through fire and water. This is the ideal for IDF Officers, to be the type of leader soldiers will follow, through fire and water, not because they were commanded to do so but because their love of that leader and trust in him compelled them to do so.
Note that this means that the leader goes first. “Achari! After me!” is what the IDF Officer calls out to his soldiers. This is the ideal of Israeli leadership.
Like Yoni Netanyahu.
When Yoni Netanyahu told his soldiers, they were flying in the middle of the night, to Africa, on a secret and extremely dangerous mission to rescue Israeli hostages and that they would succeed – they believed him.
The movie “Operation Thunderbolt” makes it very clear why they were going – to save Jews, because they are Jews. Because if they don’t, no one else will save them.
That is what NEVER AGAIN means. Jews, some of them with the memories of concentration camps still very vivid in their memory and tattooed on their arms were hijacked by German terrorists collaborating with the Arab enemy. This time, unlike the last time, the sons of Israel would swoop in and rescue them.
The raid at Entebbe, first named “Operation Thunderbolt” was later renamed “Operation Yonatan” because Yoni Netanyahu was killed during the mission.
It is not his death that made him a hero, it was the way he lived his life, the countless known and unknown missions that he completed for the country, to protect his people. It was his leadership and vision that made the rescue at Entebbe possible. It was his spirit that gave the other soldiers the strength and courage to do their part to make the rescue a success. A combination of skill, courage, teamwork and a series of miracles made it possible for them to pull off one of the most daring rescues in history.
Yoni’s death knocked the wind out of his soldiers.
On the way back to Israel, the soldiers were exultant in their success. They knew that Yoni had been hurt but not that he had died:
“On the plane there had been endless chatter,” recalls Shlomo, everyone telling what happened to him. It seemed that everything was going great, that we’d succeeded. And then someone came in and said that Yoni had died, and all at once, it seemed as if someone had turned off the entire plane. Everybody was silent… We were hit heard, and each of us withdrew into himself.”
Matan Vilnai, the head of the paratrooper contingent in the raid went over to the hostages’ plane. “I saw Yoni’s body lying in the plane, wrapped in one of those awful aluminum blankets the doctors use,” says Matan. “I saw the hostages completely stunned, shadows of men. They were very depressed. And what hit me then was a kind of feeling that was, for an army man like myself, totally illogical: that if Yoni was dead, then the whole thing wasn’t worth it.”
~excerpts from “Self portrait of a hero” from the letters of Jonathan Netanyahu, notes and afterword by his brothers Iddo and Benjamin Netanyahu
Many Israelis who knew and loved Yoni named their children after him. As did others who had never met Yoni. It was his death that set his brother, Benjamin Netanyahu on the path of politics and ultimately becoming Israel’s Prime Minister.
After I watched Operation Thunderbolt I watched the actual footage of the planes landing with the rescued hostages. I watched the hostages come off the plane. I saw Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin let out an enormous sigh as he waited for them to bring Yoni’s body out. I listened as he and then Defense Minister Shimon Peres talked to Captain Michel Bacos, the French pilot who bravely insisted that he and his crew were staying with the Israeli hostages after they were separated from the other passengers.
When asked if he was surprised to see the IDF rescue team arrive in Entebbe his answer was a calm: “No sir.”
To me, that says it all.
At that time the difference between right and wrong was very obvious. Rescuers were heroes, hijackers were terrorists and NEVER AGAIN meant something.
It is this legacy of heroism, leadership and love that is being turned upside-down. It is the concept of NEVER AGAIN that is being diminished and destroyed.
There is one thing we can do to make sure truth does not die with us. Watch the movie, the ISRAELI movie. Read the book of Yoni’s letters. Learn about the kind of person he was from his words, not those of other people. Teach your children.
It is up to us protect our past, to insure our future.
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Throughout all the military confrontations Hamas initiated against Israel in 2008-09, 2012, and 2014, as well as in the recent "March of Return," it has systematically disseminated outright fabrications and distortions and manipulated Western and social media. Hamas presented the march as a peaceful demonstration initiated by suffering citizens to protest their awful economic and social conditions. Hamas also accused Israel of committing war crimes by intentionally shooting and killing demonstrators. The truth is exactly the opposite.
The march was initiated and organized by Hamas, not by oppressed citizens. Hamas invested millions of dollars in building an infrastructure for the demonstrators, and called for breaking the border fence and infiltration into Israeli territory. If Hamas had been permitted to accomplish this goal, the life and property of Israeli citizens living a few meters from the fence would have been in danger. These were not peaceful demonstrations.
Hamas deployed operatives among the demonstrators and ordered them to throw firebombs, shoot at Israeli soldiers, put explosives on the fence, cross into Israel's territory, and, if possible, kill or kidnap soldiers and citizens. They also wanted as many Palestinians as possible to be killed, including women and children, in order to obtain favorable media coverage.
Hamas is lying and cheating about the reasons for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It annually spends hundreds of millions of dollars on operatives, rockets, attack tunnels, and violence. If Hamas had spent that money on economic and social development, Gazans would now live in a better economic environment. The recent deterioration in the Gazan economy resulted from a bitter feud between Hamas and the PA, not from any Israeli action.
The media in the U.S. and Europe, including the elite press of the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, CNN, and BBC, largely accepted the manipulations, lies, and fabrications of Hamas without much questioning or reservation. They conveniently removed any reference to Hamas' motivation, aggression, war crimes, and manipulations.
Tehran's steadfast support for Syria's Assad is not driven by the geopolitical or financial interests of the Iranian nation, nor the religious convictions of the Islamic Republic, but by a visceral and seemingly inextinguishable hatred for the State of Israel. As senior Iranian officials like Ali Akbar Velayati, a close adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have said, "The chain of Resistance against Israel by Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, the new Iraqi government and Hamas passes through the Syrian highway."
Though Israel has virtually no direct impact on the daily lives of Iranians, opposition to the Jewish state has been the most enduring pillar of Iranian revolutionary ideology. Whether Khamenei is giving a speech about agriculture or education, he invariably returns to the evils of Zionism.
The number of Syrian deaths since 2011 is many times greater than the number of Palestinians killed in the last 70 years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while many more Syrians than Palestinians have been displaced. Indeed, since 2011 far more Palestinians have been killed by Assad (nearly 3,700) than by Israel.
"Syria is occupied by the Iranian regime," said former Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab. "The person who runs the country is not Bashar al-Assad but [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander] Qassem Suleimani."
Pragmatic: relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters : practical as opposed to idealistic. Merriam-Webster
To be a pragmatist is to be a realist, someone who understands that there are times that one's idealism or ideology has to give way to different means, even if contrary to that ideology, if one is going to achieve a successful end.
And that is what the new philosophy of Hamas is all about - at least that is what The New York Times believes.
This week, David Halbfinger - who took over last year as the new Jerusalem Bureau Chief for The New York Times - reported that Hamas Sees Gaza Protests as Peaceful — and as a ‘Deadly Weapon’. Halbfinger went on to write approvingly of the Gazan riots controlled by the Hamas terrorists:
Its experiment with popular resistance may or may not be wholehearted, but it is indisputably pragmatic. [emphasis added]
Pragmatic?
Hamas logo
Now keep in mind that when Halbfinger started his new position, Times International Editor Michael Slackman and Deputy International Editor Greg Winter wrote of him in their announcement of Halbfinger’s appointment that
He has written hard-hitting investigations of corrupt public officials and businessmen, murderous prison guards, law-breaking Hollywood moguls...
No one would claim Halbfinger's writing of Hamas to be hard-hitting or as particularly 'investigative' for that matter.
In his article about the riots last week, Halbfinger described the "protest" as "generally nonviolent." He also summed up that a riot replete with throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, tire burning, explosives and attempts to infiltrate the fence separating the rioters from nearby Israeli communities was "for Gazans, even a tentative experiment with nonviolent protest is a significant step" -- even while granting that Hamas "seeks Israel’s destruction, has always advocated armed struggle."
Getting back to Halbfinger's description of Hamas as "pragmatic," a search of the New York Times website for articles containing both the words "Hamas" and "pragmatic" turned up 247 hits - not exactly scientific, but here are some of the articles that came up:
For 2017 three articles come up on the first page or two of results:
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that has governed the Gaza Strip for a decade, is drafting a new platform to present a more pragmatic and cooperative face to the world, Hamas officials confirmed on Thursday. [emphasis added]
Actually, the Hamas charter did not change, Hamas still vows to destroy Israel and continues to encourage terrorist attacks against civilians. Yet the word "pragmatic" is not used sarcastically.
Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said the group had to move beyond its original charter to achieve its goals. “The document gives us a chance to connect with the outside world,” he said. “To the world, our message is: Hamas is not radical. We are a pragmatic and civilized movement. We do not hate the Jews. We only fight who occupies our lands and kills our people.” [emphasis added]
Again, the article does present both sides on the Hamas claim of pragmatism, but the idea is not directly challenged.
Mr. Abbas’s quick and positive reply on Monday — he spoke by telephone with Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political director, and promised to follow up after returning from the United Nations gathering in New York — prompted some to ask whether renewed Egyptian diplomatic assertiveness and pragmatic new Hamas leadership had managed to turn a page on the long-running rivalry.
Here, Halbfinger goes so far as to present Hamas pragmatism as fact, for which there is precedent 11 years earlier:
Hamas plans to nominate Ismail Haniya, viewed as one of its less radical leaders, for prime minister, The Associated Press reported, citing a Hamas official in Damascus.
Does anyone today consider Haniya "pragmatic" or a "moderate"?
Ismail Haniya. Source: Haniya
Maybe claims of Hamas pragmatism are the stubborn insistence that the predicted moderation of Hamas upon assuming power is finally beginning to materialize. But if so, it will take more than praising Hamas terrorists as pragmatists.
Mark Twain once described pragmatism like this:
The man who sets out to grab a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful.
Mark Twain. Photographer: A.F. Bradley. Public domain
Hamas has had several useful lessons after having been repulsed by Israel on multiple occasions and to a degree neutralized, being pressured by Egypt and after having failed to get the international support and recognition that its fellow terrorist group, Hezbollah, has achieved.
No doubt Hamas has learned a lesson, but what The New York Times and Mr. Halbfinger have failed to do when referring to Hamas as pragmatic is to make clear whether Hamas is in fact being pragmatic in its ends - moderating its declared goal of the destruction of Israel - or whether it is merely being pragmatic in the means to achieve that goal.
Over and over, what self-confident journalists call pragmatism in Hamas is what with hindsight is just deception.
But what about The New York Times description of Israel?
When referring to Israel as pragmatic, The New York Times has - on occasion - used the term sarcastically, critical of whether there is a sincere change of heart.
That is especially true when describing Netanyahu:
What Does Netanyahu Really Want?
Gal Beckerman, December 8, 2016 - Review of "The Resistible Rise of Benjamin Netanyahu" by Neill Lochery
Pragmatism doesn’t tell us much. Every successful politician is pragmatic, if this simply means reading and responding to your public. What Lochery fails to explore are the consequences of Bibi’s “pragmatism” in a place like Israel. Because, in practice, pragmatism for Netanyahu means twisting every which way to avoid confronting the problems of the occupation. [emphasis added]
Benjamin Netanyahu. Credit: State Department photo/ Public Domain
For all of Mr. Lieberman’s bluster, many Israeli analysts predict that he will become more pragmatic once he takes office. [emphasis added]
Hamas disproved those who predicted political responsibility would soften their ideology and rhetoric, but that did not stop the pundits who predicted that Lieberman would soften his views.
When Netanyahu won in 2009, there were those who insisted that if pragmatism was not inherent in the newly elected leadership, perhaps it could be chemically induced, especially if Western values could somehow rub off on the Palestinian Arabs:
A broad government joined by the center and left would likely promote a more pragmatic agenda and avoid friction with Israel’s most important ally, the United States...
Ms. Livni has staked her political career on promoting negotiations with the more pragmatic, Western-backed Palestinian leadership for a two-state solution.
To many here, it is increasingly likely that Mr. Netanyahu’s government will consist exclusively of parties from the right, which oppose a Palestinian state and favor expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, making it much harder for him to exercise his pragmatic penchant.
Whatever Bronner's feelings about Netanyahu's "pragmatism," the editor who wrote the headline would have nothing of it.
The Israeli Parliament approved the American-brokered peace plan today by a significant majority, reflecting the widespread, pragmatic acceptance here of partitioning the Land of Israel. [emphasis added]
At the airport in Tel Aviv, despite the chilly reception from the settlers, Mr. Netanyahu received not only a formal brass-band welcome but also a genuinely enthusiastic one from Cabinet ministers and from the rank and file of his Likud Party. This suggested that he has successfully moved his political camp onto new ideological terrain where territorial compromise with the Palestinians, long anathema, has been accepted as a pragmatic reality. [emphasis added]
Yet there may have always been a wariness of Netanyahu's polemical prowess:
No modern politician here has logged more time on American television than Mr. Netanyahu, explaining in idiomatic English Israel's positions on international terrorism and the Persian Gulf war. And no Israeli politician has adopted a more American campaign style, from his crafted sound bites to his cross-country barnstorming by bus.
So successful is he at reducing his pragmatically hawkish opinions to manageable television proportions that some in Likud -- allies as well as foes -- worry that he is prey to accusations that he is not a deep thinker. One task before him now, these Israelis say, is to prove that he is more than glib.
Similarly, Rabin's electoral victory, ending 15 years of Likud governing was a victory for...pragmatism:
Forget for a moment about which parties landed on top and which on the bottom in Israel's national election last week. The real winner was pragmatism and the big loser uncompromising ideology. [emphasis added]
Haberman went so far as to see
...the complex combination of events behind the upheaval that ended 15 years of Likud governance, threatening that party's stability and dashing the conventional wisdom that Israel's political drift is inexorably rightward.
Yitzhak Rabin, Source: Israel Defense Forces. Public domain
So much for that idea.
One can appreciate the frustration of The New York Times.
(Maybe they are the ones who need to be more...pragmatic.)
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"As Europeans and Arabs we share in particular an interest in preserving the unique status of our common Holy City, Jerusalem."
Those were the words of EU High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini during the opening session of 29th Summit of the League of Arab States on Sunday.
Not only is the Jewish claim to Jerusalem is not only non-existent, but any claim the Jews have to their capital is less important than that of Europe.
(You know - the continent the Crusaders came from, killing hundreds of thousands of Jews and Muslims. )
Mogherini's outrageous statements to the Arab league didn't end there.
And you know, you can always count on us Europeans to reiterate our belief that the only viable solution is the two-state solution, with East Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine.
Meaning that the EU will solidly and always be against the idea of Israeli and Jewish rights to Jerusalem. That the EU places a higher priority on Palestinian rights in Jerusalem than to Jewish rights in any part of the city.
The Arab League has a unique role to play here. The Arab Peace Initiative is still, in our eyes, the essential building block towards peace. The King of Jordan is the custodian of the Holy Sites in Jerusalem.
Oslo isn't the essential building block to peace - after all, Palestinians responded with a terror war. So the Arab plans are the only ones to consider, not the actual signed agreements that Israel made with the Palestinians, that they violently rejected in the end.
And, as we have noted before, the signed agreements between Israel and Jordan give the King no custodianship role over holy sites in Jerusalem. On the contrary - Israel is given the main role on controlling them and Israel is merely requested to "respect" the "present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan" for the Muslim (not Christian) holy sites.
Israel doesn't even bother to protest these outrageous and false statements. It should be as energetic and angry at them as Arabs are at any public acknowledgement of Jewish ties to Jerusalem. The EU representative in Israel should be called into the Prime Minister's office to explain these statements every single time they are made.
(h/t Irene)
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When Husam Zomlot gave his speech at J-Street, he described every single thing that Palestinians will never accept.
Most of these were things that any Israeli government, from right to left, would insist on in any peace deal.
No to anything less than a full state - with an army, with control over its borders, which would threaten Israel's nine-mile pre-1967 width. Bill Clinton was OK with this, Barack Obama was OK with this - but not J-Street.
No interim peace plans. Give Palestinians everything they demand unconditionally, and trust them, even though they have given Israel no reason to trust them and celebrate terror, today.
No state without East Jerusalem - a huge amount of applause from the supposedly pro-Israel Jewish crowd, willing to give up their very souls. Yitzchak Rabin would never have dreamed of doing this.
No state without "resolving" refugees - meaning flooding Israel with people whose ancestors were in British Mandate Palestine in 1947. Why a Palestinian leader wants his own people to move to the Jewish state and not "Palestine" is obvious to anyone with a brain - but J-Street audience members support it.
No state with"one Israeli soldier on its soil" - meaning, Israel must outsource its very security to people who celebrate terrorists as heroes and martyrs.
None of these would be accepted by any reasonable Israeli leader without severe restrictions at the very least. But J-Street doesn't represent the needs and wants of Israel.
As the audience proves here, J-Street is pro-Palestinian - and nothing else.
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The audience was also remarkably willing to believe the most absurd lies. "We vow that once peace prevails, once the State of Palestine is created, with East Jerusalem as its capital, we will not only recognize the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, we will celebrate it."
Recognizing the Jewish connection to Jerusalem shouldn't be dependent on a peace deal - it is a fact. A promise to recognize a fact doesn't show flexibility - it proves that the negotiator is a liar from the start.
The idea that J-Street actually believes these obvious lies is, by itself, enough to discredit it as any sort of serious group of people.
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We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
In January 2017, the Ipsos Mori research company published a shocking poll headlined “Six in ten around the world think their society is ‘broken.’ ” Out of 23 countries surveyed—13 Western democracies and 10 non-Western democracies, most with relatively strong economies—only in six did a majority of respondents disagree with that statement.
Moreover, almost four in 10 respondents agreed another troubling claim: “These days I feel like a stranger in my own country.” Though the proportion topped 50 percent in only two countries, it exceeded a third in all but three.
Pollsters then asked several questions designed to elaborate on those general sentiments—some exploring trust in national institutions and others exploring attitudes toward immigration. Their theory was that low trust in institutions would correlate to high levels of belief that society was broken, while negative attitudes toward immigrants would correlate to high levels of feeling like a stranger in one’s own country. And there was, in fact, some correlation, albeit not perfect. Notably, countries with both high trust in institutions and low concern about immigration had among the fewest respondents saying either that society was broken or that they felt like strangers in their own land.
And then there was the one glaring exception: Israel.
A majority of Israeli respondents voiced little or no confidence in all seven categories of institutions—international institutions, banks, the justice system, big companies, the media, the government and political parties. In five of the seven categories, more than 70 percent did so. Israel was among the top 10 most distrustful countries in all but one category; in most, it was in the top six.
The saying goes “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In Europe, even before the last survivors have passed, history is already repeating itself. In Paris recently a Holocaust survivor was murdered in her own home, the victim of an anti-Semitic attack. Not only was the 84-year-old woman stabbed eleven times, but she was then burned beyond recognition. The Times of Israel reported on the crime, comparing it to another similar attack on a Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, in her home last year.
France has been Ground Zero for anti-Semitic attacks in a continent not exactly unfamiliar with the phenomenon. Twelve years ago a young Jewish man, Ilan Halimi was kidnapped, tortured and killed in Paris. In 2012, seven were killed, including children at a school in Toulouse, France. The Times of Israel called those attacks the beginning of a wave of terror in the country; though one could argue it began with Halimi’s murder in Paris, a brazen attack which French authorities initially refused to attribute to anti-Semitism.
In her story on the disappearing knowledge of the Shoah among Americans, especially Millenials, Maggie Astor spoke with a number of historians and curators of Holocaust Museums and memorials, who suggested more personalized experiences; hearing directly from survivors whenever possible.
To be sure, ignorance of the slaughter of millions of Jews stems from ignorance of all history, not just that of that era. Americans know less and care less about history; it’s no coincidence the History Channel has somehow morphed into the alien chasing channel.
The sad truth about the study isn’t just that Americans don’t know about how anti-Semitism led to the mass death of Jews, but also that they don’t care. How many know of the continued attacks on Jews in the present day in Europe; at schools, grocery stores, restaurants, synagogues, and even their own homes? The news isn’t even met with a shrug here, so why should historical accounts of the murder of Jews elicit anything more?
As Haaretz is fond of reminding its readers and its critics alike, the Israeli broadsheet is the voice of the nation’s embattled intelligentsia, an unabashedly progressive publication that spends much ink criticizing Israel’s faults, small or large, real or imagined. It’s why the paper’s long-time marketing slogan was “a newspaper for people who think”—the same distinction, presumably, did not apply to those who started their mornings with, say, Yediot Aharonot—and why it opted to celebrate Israel’s 70th Independence Day by asking its reporters to choose which classic Israeli song, the national anthem included, they despised the most. You could write all of that off as the same sort of hilariously unaware and irritating condescension you get every day in The New York Times or any other bastion of self-appointed elites anywhere; but this weekend, the paper’s publisher, Amos Schocken, crossed a line.
An active Twitter user, Schocken, the son of the newspaper’s original publisher, Gershom, got into an argument on the social media platform on Saturday after several readers tweeted at him that commemorating Israel’s Independence Day by mocking the anthem was, at best, in poor taste. Schocken held nothing back, and several of the exchanges grew heated. At some point, one woman, Ravit Dahan, tweeted at Schocken that it was security-minded people like her who kept Israel safe and allowed Schocken “to continue and live here like a king and publish your surreal newspaper without interruption.” At that, the publisher lost his cool.
“You insolent woman!” he tweeted back. “My family led the Zionist movement when you were still swinging from trees.”
It didn’t take long for people to note that a privileged, wealthy, Ashkenazi man accusing a Mizrahi woman of apishness was, to put it mildly, wildly racist. Schocken must’ve realized it, too, as he deleted his tweet and issued an apology, claiming that he didn’t think accusing someone of swinging from trees had any racial connotations.
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