Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, August 16, 2018

08/16 Links Pt1: Calm, but at what price?; PMW: PA chooses to fund terrorists over children’s education; 13 Years of Hamas in Gaza

From Ian:

And all the government says and does is some version of “quiet will be met by quiet” – nothing about how to solve this issue in the long term and bring back some normalcy to the many Israelis living under fire.

With that in mind, it’s understandable that Bayit Yehudi ministers voted against a cease-fire with Hamas at Wednesday’s cabinet meeting.

“This ‘quiet’ will give Hamas total immunity so that it can rearm itself with tens of thousands of rockets that will threaten all parts of the country and will allow it to launch a war against Israel... under convenient conditions,” Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett said this week.

Israel does not seek an escalation, but “quiet for quiet” lets Hamas set the terms, lick its wounds, and attack again when it sees fit.
It’s not that a cease-fire and opening the crossings are bad ideas. The problem is it’s not backed up by an overarching strategy to keep Israelis safe. We’ve repeated the “quiet for quiet” formula for nearly a decade, and nothing has changed.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows this; as opposition leader, ahead of the 2009 election, he said the government must “knock down Hamas.” Liberman knows this as well, having famously said that within 48 hours of becoming defense minister, Ismail Haniyeh would be dead. It’s not clear that those strategies will guarantee Israel’s safety, but at least they had ideas beyond attacking when Hamas attacks, and stopping when Hamas stops.

What we need is for the government to be more forward-looking and to take a holistic view. Residents of the South have been suffering long enough. We need more than “quiet will be met by quiet.”

Calm, but at what price?

The bottom line is that the Israeli government, which leads the strongest country in a radius of thousands of kilometers, with one of the strongest, most modern armies in the world, is heading into a deal with an organization that is nothing more than a gang, and why? Because the defense establishment couldn't handle methods of attack that were cobbled together in a backyard. When we demand answers, it explains why it wouldn't be right to go all the way and eliminate the threat that we are facing and that has been humiliating us.

This situation is unacceptable. A country that has the aforementioned strength and is surrounded by belligerent mutterings cannot allow itself to behave this way. It can't allow itself to provide such a thin, ineffectual solution for its citizens, either. They are paying a heavy price for living here. It appears that instead of deterring, we are deterred.

We should be looking at things correctly, especially now, when the question of who will serve as the next IDF chief of staff is up for discussion. Israel needs a military leader who projects confidence, who is unafraid to make hard decisions that come at a cost, who understands that sometimes you need to go all the way, and who knows that he has real influence on the political echelon and understands that it need to project confidence and capability.

We need a chief of staff who will push the defense forces to act, who won't compromise on a partial solution, who understands that wars are won on the ground and who will revolutionize Israel's ground capabilities along with creative commanders who insist on victory – commanders who excellence is measured by the security they give, and not by their brilliant explanations.

The deal with Hamas is a political decision, but it stems mainly from the military's failure to handle Hamas. Now, when the next leader of the IDF is being discussed, we should ask who will restore Israel's capacity to win and ensure deterrence.

🎥#OnThisDay in 2005, #Israel commenced its withdrawal from #Gaza. With the support of the international community, we took down all the settlements and redeployed behind the 1967 line.

13 years on, instead of peace, this is what Israeli families have to endure👇 pic.twitter.com/efoxV7hnM9
— Mark Regev (@MarkRegev) August 15, 2018

Israel-Hamas ceasefire to last a year, deal includes sea lane to Cyprus – report

A reported truce agreement aimed at calming weeks of border clashes and violent exchanges between Israel and Hamas on the border with the Gaza Strip will last for a year and see the establishment of a cargo shipping connection between Gaza and Cyprus, a Lebanese television channel reported Thursday.

Israel will have security control over the sea traffic between the Palestinian coastal enclave and Cyprus, according to a brief Thursday report from the Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen television channel, which cited sources familiar with the details.

Hamas has long made access to a sea port a key strategic goal. Under the conditions of Israel’s naval blockade, goods heading to Gaza are currently shipped to Israeli ports and then trucked into Gaza.

Israel has imposed a blockade on Gaza since Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction, seized the territory from the internationally backed Palestinian Authority in 2007. It says the blockade is in place in order to prevent weapons and other military equipment from entering the Strip.

Egypt, too, has kept its Gaza border crossing largely closed during years of sour relations with the Islamist group ruling Gaza.

Rumors on details of a Gaza-Israel truce

There are a number of rumors going around in Arabic media about the outlines of a possible truce between Hamas and Israel, which is being furiously negotiated by Egypt.

Firas Press, quoting Maariv, says that in the short term, there will be a moratorium on the launch of incendiary balloons and kites, and Israel will fully open Kerem Shalom in exchange for a ceasefire. The second stage includes a prisoner exchange deal and the encouragement of international investments in Gaza.

Palestine Today says that the deal will include Qatar's paying of electricity bills in Gaza in cooperation with Israel, Qatar's payment of salaries to Gaza employees in cooperation with Egypt, a one-year truce and a sea corridor between Gaza and Cyprus under full Israeli security control.

It would also involve opening the Rafah crossing to Egypt and talk about another sea corridor from Egypt's Port Said to Gaza (or perhaps a land corridor for that.)

I don't know if the US is involved in these negotiations in any capacity, but Mahmoud Abbas said that any talk about the US supporting humanitarian aid to Gaza is a lie.

“I swear to God, they are liars,” he said of US officials who talk about helping Gaza.

Of course, Abbas is the main person opposed to any aid to Gaza to begin with.

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Is future member of Congress Rashida Tlaib's family associated with terrorism?

Rashida Tlaib, the Democratic primary winner for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District and a shoo-in for election in November, was interviewed by In These Times where she revealed that she maintains an uncompromising stance towards destroying Israel.

And she implies that J-Street knew this about her when they supported her candidacy and gave her money:

One of the things [J Street liked] was my personal story I shared with them. I knew we weren’t going to agree on a number of stances. They didn’t ask me to waver once.

Yet she says explicitly:

What about a two-state solution vs. one-state?
One state. It has to be one state. Separate but equal does not work. I’m only 42 years old but my teachers were of that generation that marched with Martin Luther King. This whole idea of a two-state solution, it doesn’t work.

One personal anecdote of hers seems highly unlikely:

Seeing the unequal treatment in Israel, in the different colored license plates for Palestinians; and even in the ocean. When I was 19 and with my family and some of them had head scarves on, we all jumped in the water and the Israelis jumped out as if my cousins were diseased. That reminded me what I learned about the African-American struggle. That’s the lens I bring to Congress.

Arabs, including those with headscarves, routinely swim together with Israeli Jews in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. I've seen it myself. Here are some Muslim girls showering off the sand right next to Israelis in Bat Yam. Nobody batted an eye.

The story seems highly unlikely. (And it is telling that a future member of Congress doesn't know the difference between the sea and the ocean.)

And it is not apartheid for citizens of "Palestine" to have different colored license plates any more than it is for different states or countries in the EU to have different colored license plates. It is not even close to a human rights issue.

Perhaps the most troubling part of Tlaib's interview was this other personal anecdote:

I support right of return absolutely. I have family that left [Palestine] in 1967. They left, took their keys with them. They thought they could come back, and they’ve never been back. My uncle would tear up because he couldn’t believe he couldn’t go back. He had to raise his kids in Jordan.

If we take Tlaib at her word, then her uncle is very possibly a terrorist.

Most of the people who left the West Bank in 1967 simply didn't want to live under Israeli rule. They weren't expelled, they went quite voluntarily, often against the wishes of Jordan's king, throughout the summer and autumn of 1967. Even UNRWA doesn't call them refugees. Israel allowed many of them who changed their minds to return in the months that followed.

The only exceptions were the ones who had known ties to terror groups. Israel did not allow them to return to the territories.

In the 1990s, during the Oslo process, tens of thousands - perhaps more - Palestinians who lived in Jordan moved to the West Bank as well in anticipation of a possible Palestinian state that could hold more economic promise to them than Jordan did. Israel didn't prevent them from coming.

And even today, Jordanian Palestinians can visit the West Bank.Those with yellow cards in their passports came from the West Bank and can visit.

If Tlaib's uncle has not been able to even visit the West Bank, the only reasonable explanation is that Israel considers him a security threat.

Equally plausible is that Tlaib is lying, just as she appears to be lying about the "apartheid beach" where Israelis run out of the "ocean" because they see women with hijabs.

This future member of Congress either has family terror ties or she is a liar.

Or both.

(h/t JPF)

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Despite rhetoric from Abbas, Palestinian and Israeli rescuers hold joint exercise

The Palestinian Authority has threatened many times to suspend all security cooperation with Israel - but it still does it, albeit quietly.

Ma'an published photos of a joint Israeli-Palestinian civil defense exercise held near Qalqiliya.

One focus of the exercises was to work together in case of road accidents in the territories.

The most surprising image was this one, showing both teams posing together for a photo.

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08/15 Links Pt2: Amb. Baker: Is the ICC Becoming a Palestinian Propaganda Engine? Bethany Mandel: How The Angry Left Turned Me Into A Nazi

From Ian:

Amb. Alan Baker: Is the International Criminal Court Becoming a Palestinian Propaganda Engine?

In July, judges from a pre-trial chamber of the International Criminal Court ordered a campaign of outreach to Palestinian "victims residing within or outside of Palestine."

With this unprecedented move, the court is openly turning itself into a Palestinian propaganda engine, similar to the UN Human Rights Council, with a regular reporting regime on Palestine and a distinct section of its website devoted to Palestine.

This is curious in light of the fact that the court has yet to decide whether it indeed has any jurisdiction whatsoever regarding the Palestinian complaints, and whether a non-state can indeed be a party to the ICC statute.

Moreover, this measure ignores the basic question whether, pursuant to the ICC statute, a "State of Palestine" can be party when no Palestinian state exists, apart from in a non-binding General Assembly upgrade recommendation, which is far from being a legal ground for acceptance.

All this indicates that the ICC is venturing far beyond its role and is being politically manipulated - or is manipulating itself - against its own better interests.

Israel said to formally protest ICC’s unusual appeal to ‘Palestinian victims’

Israel has lodged a formal protest with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for launching a campaign last month to reach out to “victims of the situation in Palestine,” an unusual step which Jerusalem officials charge casts doubt on the court’s ability to treat the Jewish state fairly.

In a press release issued in July, three judges, who are members of the so-called pretrial chamber dealing with Palestinian complaints of alleged Israeli war crimes, ordered the court’s registry “to establish, as soon as practicable, a system of public information and outreach activities for the benefit of the victims and affected communities in the situation in Palestine.”

Furthermore, the judges required the registry — a neutral organ of the court providing administrative support — to open an “informative page on the Court’s website” geared exclusively to Palestinians, and to report on the progress of its activities every three months.

This despite the fact that ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has not yet decided whether the court has any jurisdiction over matters related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since it has no jurisdiction over Israel (which is not a member state) and because Palestine is not a state and therefore cannot exercise jurisdiction over the West Bank.
Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda at the International Criminal Court in The Hague (AP Photo/Robin van Lonkhuijsen, Pool)

Bensouda has also not ruled on whether there is a basis to investigate Palestinian claims of war crimes.

“The court’s judges are completely ignoring the fact that the court lacks jurisdiction to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the court’s prosecutor hasn’t made any decision in her preliminary examination,” a senior Israeli legal official told Hadashot TV news.

“The judges’ eagerness to initiate such an anomalous decision leaves in serious question the court’s ability to fairly deal with matters relating to Israel,” he added.

Lawfare in the service of terrorism

Chicago experienced one of the most violent weekends in the city's history two weeks ago. It is impossible to escape the context for these killings; one can only try to avoid the problem altogether. But those who are forced to admit the truth say the politically charged policies put in place by the city's progressives are keeping police from dealing with the violence in both the city's South Side and West Side neighborhoods. The spike in the number of shooting deaths in Chicago is directly related to these progressive policies.

A similar approach has been adopted toward terrorism. The aim of some left-wing organizations in Israel and around the world is to create a friendly environment for terrorism, to deter the Israel Defense Forces and provide the terrorists with as much freedom of operation as possible. This system, which has been in development for nearly 20 years, is one of legal warfare. The courts, and in particular the International Criminal Court at The Hague, are turning into political tribunals. "Values" and "rights" take the place of the law.

Instead of the rule of law helping enforce anti-terrorist operations, the rule of law has been eroded by the "human rights" warriors, who have in their sights those same people who defend peace and democracy. Take Peter Beinart, an American Jewish journalist who has become an anti-Israel political activist, and who recently completed a disinformation campaign that could serve to deter Israeli security officials from doing their job in the future.

Sarah Tuttle-Singer, new media editor at the Times of Israel, has 19,000 followers on Facebook who hang on her every word. One imagines they see her as a credible source of information. The sad truth, however, is that her posts are never truthful. She can be depended upon only to defend the Arab narrative in which Israel is always the villain. This is what she had to say, for instance, about the recent demonstration in Rabin Square against Israel’s new Nation State law.

Sarah Tuttle-Singer
August 12 at 1:52 AM ·
Two things.
First, let’s be clear: Thr demonstration organizers IMPLORED the attendees not to wave the Palestinian flag.
Some did.
WOW.
Shocker.
This is the Middle East. I pity the fool who tells anyone how to protest.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever did DAVKA the opposite of what you were told?

Hell, my kids did the opposite of what I told them five times between supper and bedtime, the little punks .
And let’s also remember this: Our government straight up told the Arab citizens of Israel that they’re less equal than Jews and they’re not really part of the Jewish state.
Raise your hand if you’d find that insulting and want to stick that ruling in their eye in a non-violent way.

You’re damn right.
Please.
We have sewn division amongst our own citizenry. What did we expect would happen?

Let’s unpack this, shall we?

First off, it’s not true that the protesters were “implored” not to wave the “Palestinian” flag. Here is a post from Balad, the party that represents Arab nationalist aspirations within the Israeli Knesset. (Can you imagine a Balad counterpart in Jordan? One that represents Jewish nationalist aspirations within Jordan? Ha!)

Balad Facebook post urging protesters to wave "Palestinian" flags.

An excerpt of the post translated into English:

The demonstration in Tel Aviv is a demonstration by Arab society in conjunction with Jews who oppose the [Nation State] law.
Israeli flags will not be waved at this demonstration and it’s not true that the [Arab] Higher Monitoring committee asked that the Palestinian flag not be waved.
Such declarations and statements do not coincide with the follow-up committee's official stance.

Sarah Tuttle-Singer’s all caps assertion that Arabs were “IMPLORED” not to wave “Palestinian” flags, is demonstrably false. Far from being implored not to wave those flags, the powers that be actually urged Arab and Jewish protesters to wave those flags. And wave them they did as they sang “With blood and spirit we shall redeem Palestine.”

In Tel Aviv now, at a protest against the Nation-State Law, demonstrators waving Palestinian flags and chanting "with blood and spirit, we will redeem Palestine."

Tell me more about how Israel isn't democratic, how there's no free speech 🙄 pic.twitter.com/6stk7yyjWT
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) August 11, 2018

The very fact that the protesters waved those flags and nothing bad happened to them proves that Israel is a democracy with freedom of expression the likes of which exists nowhere else in the Middle East. One cannot, for instance, wave an Israeli flag in Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Lebanon, and stay alive. Which is precisely why Israel needs the Nation State Law. The law prevents Israel from becoming the 23rd repressive Arab state in the Middle East.

“This is the Middle East. I pity the fool who tells anyone how to protest,” says Tuttle-Singer. But that’s exactly what Balad, the Arab party, did. It told Arabs and Jew-hating Jews how to protest. And oh boy did they ever acquiesce.

Tuttle-Singer goes on to infantilize the Arab people, comparing them to small rebellious children. She asks us to imagine how we were at that age. “Raise your hand if you’ve ever did DAVKA the opposite of what you were told? Hell, my kids did the opposite of what I told them five times between supper and bedtime, the little punks .”

If I were an Arab, I would find this wildly insulting. She’s basically saying that Arabs are unruly children. I would never label a people in this manner. It’s patronizing, rude, and racist.

Tuttle-Singer finishes up with “We have sewn division amongst our own citizenry. What did we expect would happen?”

Leaving aside an editor who cannot spell, I take great offense at her characterization of the Nation State Law. We have sown no division. We have only said that we are the Jewish State, that Hatikva is our national anthem, and that Hebrew is our national language.

As the Jewish State, we offer freedom of religion to all. Arabs and Jews mingle freely in Israel, except in Arab villages, from which Jews are banned. It is in the Arab states that freedom of religion is not practiced and in which Jews and Arabs are not free to mingle. It is in preserving the Jewish character of our state that we preserve Jewish values like freedom of religion and freedom from bigotry.

“What else do we expect?”

We expect gratitude that Israel does not permit gays to be hung or thrown off buildings. Or how about recognition of the fact that Arabs can sit, unmolested, next to Jews on Israeli buses? Perhaps some appreciation that Arabs are allowed to pray in their holy spaces anywhere in Israel?

We expect thanks for not throwing them out in 1948, for giving them autonomy in their cities and villages, and for expelling our own people from Gaza to give them Judenfrei territory. Why wouldn’t we expect something other than public cries for our blood when we have held out the hand of peace again and again? Why would they not laud us for giving aid to the people of Gaza even as they burn thousands of acres of our farmland and send our children into bomb shelters in the middle of the night? We’d expect that with all the compassion and equality we offer them that Arabs would refrain from calling for Jewish blood in our public squares.

The fact that there are Arab parties in Knesset, Arab doctors treating Jewish patients in Jewish hospitals, Arab journalists criticizing Israel in the media, and Arab judges sitting judgment in Israel’s High Court makes a mockery of Sarah Tuttle-Singer’s crocodile tears for the Arab people.

What is really absent in Tuttle-Singer’s diatribe against her own people is any sense of fellowship with them. Why does she always plead the case of those who are against the State of Israel? Why does she never defend Israel and the rights Israel offers to its Arab population? Why does she plead the case of those who call for Jewish blood and the destruction of Israel? Why does she make apologies for terrorists, but never say a word in defense of their victims?

Why doesn’t Sarah Tuttle-Singer think the Jews have a right to a state of their own, a place where Hebrew is the official language, a place where Hatikva is the national anthem? And why on earth does she think that having these things somehow discriminates against anyone at all, when the proof that Arabs are part of our society is as plain as the nose on her face?

#jerusalem

A post shared by Sarah Tuttle-Singer (@tuttlesinger) on Aug 12, 2018 at 1:14pm PDT

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Fatah seething at Israel's truce with Hamas

The official PA Wafa news agency reports that a member of the Executive Committees of Fatah and the Central Committee of Fatah, Azzam Al-Ahmad, described the truce reached between Hamas and Israel a few days ago as "betrayal of the Palestinian people and its national cause . "

I guess Fatah wants to see more Gazans killed.

Good to know how much they care about their people.

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08/15 Links Pt1: Laws of Armed Conflict in Gaza; The truth about Israeli prisons: Singing and dancing; TV and books; Does Turkey Belong in the Future of NATO?

From Ian:

Israel’s Top Military Strategist Talks War and Peace

In all likelihood the next Israeli-Iranian confrontation will be a clash with Amidror’s half-threat: the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, Iran’s most effective proxy in the Middle East and perhaps the best armed nonstate military force on earth. Amidror says another round of Israel-Hezbollah fighting is a “very-high-probability” event even if he doesn’t believe it’s inevitable. Israel’s war aims will be narrow. “We should neutralize the military capability of Hezbollah,” he said. “We should not destroy the organization as a political tool. If the Shiites want these people to represent them, it’s their problem.” He anticipates that because of Arab and Western antipathy toward Iran, Israel will have a relatively free hand to prosecute such a war and won’t become an international pariah as a result of the conflict. That’s pretty much where the good news ends.

“It will be a very nasty war,” Amidror said. “A very, very nasty war.” Hezbollah will fire “thousands and thousands” of long-range missiles of improved precision, speed, and range at Israeli population centers, a bombardment larger than Israel’s various layers of missile defense will be able to neutralize in full. “It will be very problematic for us. We don’t have tomorrow morning enough interceptors and they are enhancing their capabilities.”

This will be a blow Israel can withstand. “Israelis will be killed, no question,” Amidror said. “But it’s not going to be catastrophic.” He recalled that during the 2014 war in Gaza, the families of wounded soldiers called on the prime minister to continue the operation from beside their relatives’ hospital beds. “The cabinet didn’t know how to stop the IDF and tell them to retreat back after they destroyed the [Hamas] tunnels because the atmosphere was: Don’t stop, continue.” Amidror’s point was that the Israeli public is willing to withstand even heavy casualties during war if it’s clear the country’s battlefield aims are being achieved.

In Lebanon, the war will inflict unspeakable suffering. Because the interceptors won’t be able to stop the entirety of Hezbollah’s missile barrages, Israel will have to target rockets on the ground before they can be launched—Amidror pointed out that Israel destroyed many of Hezbollah’s Zelzal missiles during the 2006 conflict with the militant group; as a result, none of the rockets was fired at Israel during the war. “Think of about 120,000 rockets and missiles, 50 percent or 80 percent of them stored by the Iranians within populated areas in private houses. Areas will be evaporated. Think about a missile of half a ton, with all the fuel in it, and Israel hits it with only 100 grams of TNT. … Think about what will be damaged just by the stored missiles. Thousands and thousands of Lebanese will be killed and part of Lebanon will be destroyed.” That’s on top of whatever destruction Israel causes when targeting other Hezbollah bases and infrastructure.

Amidror recalled a meeting with Ban Ki-moon during one of the former U.N. secretary-general’s visits to Israel. He showed Ban photos of Hezbollah rockets stored in civilian areas. “Secretary, what should Israel do?” Amidror remembered asking. “These missiles will be launched into Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Afula, everywhere. What is your advice to Israel? And I’m telling you if we will hit these missiles, many Lebanese will be killed. Many of them even don’t know that they are neighboring a missile and are totally innocent. You are the secretary-general of the United Nations. What is your advice? He didn’t know what to say, and he said nothing.”

Laws of Armed Conflict in Gaza

Israel’s adversaries are doubling down on their success, as I saw recently when I visited the Gaza-Israel border as part of a delegation with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. The night before, Hamas fired dozens of rockets into Israeli communities, including one that landed in front of a kindergarten. I also saw the widespread devastation to Israel in the form of mile after mile of cropland scorched by incendiaries launch from Gaza.

Yet, as with reporting of clashes since March, most headlines downplayed the indiscriminate use of incendiaries and rockets against Israel, in favor of portraying Israel’s retaliation against Hamas military targets as the largest “pummeling” of Gaza since 2014. As in weeks prior, no mention was made of Israel’s graduated responses to these provocations, including its prioritization of non-lethal force whenever possible.

Unsurprisingly, an end to this conflict does not appear close at hand. Indeed, such irresponsible coverage of Israel influences the strategy of terrorist groups, who increasingly buttress their illegal tactics with sophisticated information operations to hypocritically delegitimize Israeli actions.

Israel will survive misperceptions and ill-informed reporting, though at the cost of increased and unnecessary pressure from the outside world to terminate lawful operations in self-defense. But sadly the same prospects for survival will not apply for Arab civilians unless perspectives on the radical differences in how Israel and its adversaries operate become dramatically more objective.

PMW: The truth about Israeli prisons: Singing and dancing; TV and books

Palestinian 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi, who served eight months in Israeli prison for inciting suicide bombings and for striking Israeli soldiers, was asked by Russian RT TV how she passed the time.

Her descriptions of her daily routine for herself and the entire wing include singing, dancing, reading books, watching TV, even legal studies and matriculation exams, and refute the PA's ongoing lies about the conditions in Israeli prisons.

The following is part of a longer interview on RT TV:

RT TV reporter: "Tell us in detail how you passed the time; what did you do inside the prisons?"
Ahed Tamimi: "As I told you, I did a lot of things: a legal course, we spent a lot of time on that, and matriculation exam studies; I read books; we would sing; we even had joint breakfasts of the entire wing - we would go outside, every room would bring its things, and we would eat together. We also ate lunch together most of the time. We also had parties; we would sit and sing, and dance. There were a lot of things that we did to pass the time: We watched TV, for example we jumped around in the rooms and did silly things; we did a lot of things."
[Russian channel RT TV Arabic, Aug. 1, 2018]

Already a few years ago a released terrorist prisoner described the good life in the male side of prison:

Sometimes we see photos of coins or stamps or currency of British Mandate Palestine being reproduced as "proof" that there was a Palestinian state.

If that is true, and British Mandate Palestine is proof of a Palestinian state, then its first leader was - a Jew!

Herbert Samuel was appointed to the position of High Commissioner of Palestine in 1920.

So if the money and stamps supposedly prove that Palestine existed as an independent entity, then even so the first leader of the Palestinian people after the Ottoman era was Jewish.

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I received this email from NORPAC, a pro-Israel lobby group:

President Trump signed into law [Monday] the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, the U.S. defense budget bill for the coming Fiscal Year.

Included in this bill are provisions to authorize $500 million for U.S.-Israel missile defense cooperation and up to $50 million for U.S.-Israel counter-tunnel cooperation. It authorizes funding for both R&D and procurement for the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 missile defense systems. These programs enable Israel to defend its citizens while advancing America’s own missile defense capabilities.

These funds are in addition to the $3.3 billion in security assistance as part of the U.S.-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2018 (S. 2497) which passed in the full U.S. Senate two weeks ago.

I admit to mixed feelings about much of the US security assistance to Israel, as we have seen the Obama administration use that as a set of "golden handcuffs" to stop Israel from acting in its own best interests. Israel should set a strategic goal of weaning itself off of much of that aid.

However, cooperation with the US on defense systems that can also help the US in defending itself is a very worthy cause and this story is a reason to celebrate how close the US is to Israel.

The Act itself is some 2,000 pages long but it also includes joint US-Israel projects to find ways to defend against aerial drones and to determine what weapons Israel might need in a future war with Hezbollah.

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Ma'an published an op-ed by Ali Hweidi, a writer and researcher on Palestinian affairs from Lebanon, about the threat of closing down UNRWA.

He starts off saying the truth that UNRWA's supporters in the West vehemently deny.

"The calls for the establishment of alternative institutions to UNRWA are a strategic threat that weakens the political power of the refugee issue and turns it into a humanitarian issue," Hweidi says.

That's exactly it. UNRWA was always meant to be a humanitarian agency, but the Palestinian Arab leaders at the time and the Arab world turned the refugee issue into a political issue - a means to use refugees as pawns to attack Israel and not to actually solve the problem.

The politicization of UNRWA is what makes it an anti-humanitarian agency.

Hweidi goes through the history of UNRWA, not entirely accurately, describing how different it was in the 1950s to today, and by doing so he doesn't quite realize that he is damning the agency.

In 1949, the Agency was given the task of supporting the Palestinian refugees, in addition to providing humanitarian services such as health, education and relief, coordinating with the host countries to integrate refugees into the economies of the region and working to settle those who do not wish to return and reside in host countries in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. These countries were forced to sign armistice agreements with the Israeli occupation between February and July 1949, creating a political climate suitable to begin the process of resettlement without the objection of the host countries and the exploitation of the deteriorating humanitarian situation of the refugees. The refugees themselves stopped this project and promoted awareness of what their perception was being plotted against them.

It was the Arab countries and self-appointed Palestinian "leaders" who fought against UNRWA's original aims, not the refugees themselves, who would have gladly accepted being integrated into Arab countries.

And most of them still would, today. We have documented cases where loopholes opened for Palestinians to become citizens of Egypt and Lebanon, and how tens of thousands of them jumped at the opportunity to do so.

Hweidi describes other failed attempts to integrate Palestinians into the region:

On December 12, 1950, Resolution 393 was issued, under which the United Nations General Assembly entrusted UNRWA with the task of integrating Palestinian refugees into the economies of the region, In 1959, UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld presented a paper to the United Nations General Assembly containing a proposal to expand refugee rehabilitation programs and strengthen their capacity to support themselves, dispense with UNRWA's assistance and settle them in their places of residence, while appealing to Arab countries hosting refugees to cooperate with the agency.

From the start, the Arabs have politicized the Palestinian refugee issue, and that is the entire reason UNRWA exists today - not to solve the problem but to perpetuate and maximize it for the benefit of corrupt Palestinian Arab leaders at the expense of the actual stateless Palestinians.

The more people write about UNRWA, the more it is clear that it must be dismantled, the way it was meant to be from the start, and Arabs of Palestinian descent fully integrated into the countries that they fled to 70 years ago.

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08/14 Links Pt2: Sohrab Ahmari: Never Corbyn, An appeal to sanity; Corbyn Will Lay a Wreath for PLO Munich Murderers but Not for Dead Jews at Yad Vashem; Corbyn’s Oz: A virulently anti-Israel spin doctor

From Ian:

Sohrab Ahmari: Never Corbyn An appeal to sanity.

His Labour handlers claimed Corbyn was there to commemorate some four-dozen Palestinian militants killed in an Israeli air strike against a Tunisian PLO base. But hang on: “On a visit to the cemetery this week, the Daily Mail discovered that the monument to the air strike victims is 15 yards from where Mr. Corbyn is pictured—and in a different part of the complex. Instead, he was in front of a plaque that lies beside the graves of Black September members.”

Corbyn himself has described the conference as one “searching for peace,” but the Daily Mail on Monday debunked that apologia, as well. The gabfest—titled the “International Conference on Monitoring the Palestinian Political and Legal Situation in the Light of Israeli Aggression”—featured leading members and ideologues for the Gaza-based terror outfit Hamas. One such leader, Oussama Hamdan, offered a “four-point vision to fight against Israel” and hailed Hamas’ “great success on the military and national levels.”

This comes on top of everything else we know about Corbyn’s Labour: the unreconstructed Stalinist party spokesman, the anti-Semitic outrages from local councilors and top MPs alike, the Labour leader’s stints as a broadcaster for state-run Iranian television, his invitations to Hamas and Hezbollah, which he has called “our friends.” And on and on and on. The noxious ideological fumes wafting from a once-honorable party of the center-left are suffocating.

There was a time when conservatives, including Americans like yours truly, took a certain pleasure in Labour’s Corbynite woes. Corbyn was so extreme, the thinking went, that his hostile takeover of Labour would ensure Tory ascendance for a generation. The man’s goofy manners—his tweed jackets and bad ties, his bicycling and gardening—only added to the fun. But the joke stopped being funny long ago. The Tories under Prime Minister Theresa May are in a shambolic state, Brexit has stalled, the pound sterling is in a downward spiral, and the electorate is deeply polarized. He really could pull it off.

To avert that dreadful prospect, Britons of good will should set aside quotidian policy differences and rally around the “Never Corbyn” standard. The outcome of Brexit, taxes and welfare, immigration and the National Health Service—none of these questions is more important than ensuring that the Jew-baiting, Black September-honoring, Hamas-befriending crank from the People’s Republic of Islington gets nowhere near No. 10 Downing Street.

For the love of all that is good and just.

CNN Commentator Peter Beinart Consulted Soros-Funded Anti-Israel Group Prior to Being Questioned at Tel Aviv Airport

Prior to his being questioned at Israel’s international airport on Sunday, CNN political commentator and Israel critic Peter Beinart admits to consulting a George Soros-funded radical anti-Israel organization about “what to do if I were detained” upon entering Israel.

Beinart seems to have anticipated that he may be questioned upon landing at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport, and claims that he was detained for about an hour and questioned over “my beliefs.”

Beinart wrote in a column at the liberal Forward newspaper that prior to his latest visit to Israel this week, he previously participated in a protest in the West Bank city of Hebron, and that he “become involved in the protest” through the Center for Jewish Nonviolence.

The Center seeks to “bring an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.” Israel refers to the West Bank, which houses ancient Jewish communities, as disputed and not occupied territory. Eastern Jerusalem includes the Temple Mount, Western Wall, and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City.

Flash Back 2015: Peter Beinart: Israel deserves terrorism

Liberal American-Jewish commentator Peter Beinart gave a provocative speech on Wednesday, in which he said Israel essentially deserved the wave of Arab terrorism targeting its citizens.

Beinart - who despite his regular attacks on the Jewish state insists he is "pro-Israel" - was speaking at "Beth Chayim Chadashim Progressive synagogue in Los Angeles, which was set up as a "gay-friendly" congregation.

His comments were recorded approvingly by the anti-Israel Mondoweiss website. (h/t steelraptor from Saturn)