Wednesday, September 26, 2018

  • Wednesday, September 26, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon
Arab media is upset over some Jews singing the Israeli national anthem while visiting the Temple Mount:



The articles say they were singing it "loudly" but it is apparent that the main singer has his mouth very close to the microphone, and is not singing loudly at all. Certainly the guards do not seem fazed.





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From Ian:

The Palestinians' Three No's: What They Mean
When Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad talk about "paying a political price," they are referring to demands that the Palestinian terrorist groups lay down their weapons, halt terrorist attacks on Israel, and abandon their dream of eliminating Israel. These are terms, of course, to which no Palestinian terrorist group could ever afford to agree.

Accepting such conditions would make them look bad in the eyes of their supporters, who would then accuse them of betraying the Arabs and Muslims by failing to fulfill their promise of destroying Israel. As far as these groups are concerned, keeping their weapons is tremendously more important than improving the living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

To be clear: when the Palestinian terrorist groups talk about "resistance," they are referring to terror attacks on Israel. These include suicide bombings, launching rockets towards Israel, and hurling explosive devices and firebombs at Israeli soldiers and civilians. These groups do not believe in any form of peaceful and non-violent protests. For them, there is only one realistic option to achieve their goal of destroying Israel: the armed struggle.

Why are the Palestinian terrorist groups conducting indirect talks with Israel to reach a new truce agreement in the Gaza Strip under the auspices of Egypt and the UN? The answer is simple. They want a truce, or period of calm, so that they can continue preparing for the next war against Israel without having to worry about Israeli military operations.



PMW: Fatah TV host anticipates taking Israelis hostage to "release our captives"
Commemorating the anniversary of the capture of 8 Israeli soldiers and holding them hostage in Lebanon in 1982, until Israel released 5,900 Palestinian and Arab terrorists from Israeli prisons, a Fatah TV host expressed his wish for a similar "operation" to "release our captives" - i.e., terrorists and murderers sitting in Israeli prisons.

Interviewing Fatah Deputy Chairman Mahmoud Al-Aloul about the taking of Israelis as hostages in the 1980s, Muwaffaq Matar, host at the Fatah-run Awdah TV, described the 8 Israeli captives as "the hens that would lay golden eggs," because they were exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.

Fatah Deputy Chairman Mahmoud Al-Aloul: "They [Fatah fighters] shouted at them [Israeli soldiers] to lay down their weapons... There were six of them. The guys arranged them in one row, took their weapons from them, and ordered them to raise their hands... The two [additional Israeli] soldiers who were behind the hill advanced... laid their weapons on the ground, and raised their hands..."
Fatah-run Awdah TV host Muwaffaq Matar: "We had... 'the hens that would lay golden eggs'... the captives through whom, or through the exchange of whom, about 5,000 Palestinian prisoners were released... We think that this Palestinian wisdom... the Palestinian fighter will undoubtedly bring a new victory and a new quality operation one day. The conditions might have changed, and the means might change, but this hope and this promise will release our prisoners."
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Sept. 4, 2018]
Israel’s Nationality Law, UN Resolution 181, and the Arab List
Ever since 1988, when after 40 years of rejection, the PLO feigned acceptance of UN General Assembly Resolution 181 on the partition of mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, the resolution has been the document used most frequently by Palestinians to underscore two of their major claims — the right to statehood within borders that were larger by far than those envisaged by the Oslo “peace” process, and the supposed Palestinian “right of return.”

For these reasons, Resolution 181 holds center stage in one of the PLO’s most famous documents — the Palestinian declaration of independence, which was approved by the Palestine National Council (PNC), the PLO’s legislative body, in Algiers in 1988.

It can be self-defeating to cite documents without having read them. And the Palestinians learned this in their attempts to mobilize Resolution 181 behind the Palestinian cause.

One major contradiction concerns Jerusalem. According to the partition resolution, Jerusalem was to be governed by an international regime that was separate from both the Jewish and Arab states. This, of course, directly contradicts the vision of Jerusalem as the Palestinian state’s future capital. (For this and other reasons, the document is never quoted by Israeli officials either.)

Even more blatant is this contradiction: the traditional PLO stance is to reject the existence of Israel as a Jewish state (or the state of the Jewish People), but the partition of Mandatory Palestine was to have been between a Jewish state and an Arab one. It was unproblematic at the time to define the future state with a Jewish majority as the “Jewish state.” The drafters of the document took it for granted that the Jewish state was to be the state of the Jewish people, which may be one of the reasons why the Arab states uniformly rejected the document and its contents.




Continuing from last time, a BDS debate involving South Africa usually follows certain predictable patterns.  BDS advocates claim that those involved in the struggle to topple Apartheid in SA see the Arab-Israeli conflict in the same terms with Israelis serving as stand-ins for the Boers.  Various names are dropped, but since most Americans are unfamiliar with the cast of characters (and because most students at schools targeted for BDS campaigns weren’t even born when Apartheid existed or ended), the only two names with any resonance are Desmond Tutu and, of course, Nelson Mandela.

Because Reverend Tutu is a four-square champion for BDS, his support for a boycott or divestment program can only be trumped by invoking the name of Mandela whose relationship with Jews and Israel is more ambiguous.  One of the reasons an attempt a few years ago to break ties between the University of Johannesburg and Ben-Gurion University in Israel failed was because of Mandela’s involvement in the relationship between the two centers of learning.  This is why the endorsement of Mandela is so sought after that BDS advocates are not beyond using fraud to pretend to obtain it. 

Like most things, the actual relationship between Israel and South Africa (like the relationship between South Africa and every other country in the world – including Israel’s loudest critics) was a complicated affair.  As is usually the case when $$$s mix with global politics, few hands are clean when it comes to international affairs vis-à-vis pre-Mandela SA.  And South Africa’s relationship with Israel since Apartheid fell is as multi-faceted as one would expect between two such intense and vibrant societies.

But when BDSers lay down their Tutu card (as they do in nearly every BDS battle) or supporters and opponents of boycotts try to read the Mandela tea leaves, they are taking for granted the assumption that the South African experience gives those that fought against Apartheid unique moral weight in discussion on other topics (notably the Middle East).  But, without diminishing the courage and patience of all those involved with the successful overthrow of Apartheid, is this a reasonable assumption?

After all, if suffering and courage lent all who practiced it unquestioned moral authority, why are Jews (who suffered one of history’s greatest mass murders only to revive and build a thriving nation and Diaspora) treated by BDSers as uniquely damaged by these experiences?  Apparently, if the South African experience created saints who cannot be criticized in any way (lest critics be banished from decent society), the Holocaust turned Jews into proto-Nazis who learned nothing from the experience other than how to behave like their former tormentors.

This knot can be untangled if you look at the world not through the lens of ideological need, but of actual human experience.  As has been pointed out before, the BDS “movement” is part of an “Apartheid Strategy” designed to brand Israel as the inheritor of the mantle of the late 20th century’s most reviled nation and political system.  But on its own, the “Apartheid Strategy” is simply an accusation, one that can be counter by facts and blunted by counter-accusation of the Apartheid-like nature of Israel’s most vocal critics.

Which is why the endorsement of those involved with the original fight against the original Apartheid becomes so critical.  And just as importantly, we are asked to take it on faith that any South African endorsing the Israel=Apartheid analogy must be doing so based on nothing more than an unvarnished quest for justice. 

But South Africa is a real place containing real people involved with real political (now geopolitical) decision-making.  Yes, they won a marvelous victory against a vile and bigoted political system, and projects like Truth and Reconciliation commissions showed the world that there were options other than vengeance when old orders make way for new.  But why were the Arabs states who supplied Apartheid with the oil it needed to run its machinery of repression given a unique pass from this Truth and Reconciliation process?  Why do South Africa’s leaders, considered saints when they hurl their barbs at the Jewish state, behave with the same mix of vision, patriotism, virtue, venality, greed and hypocrisy seen in every other political leader in human history?

The voice of South Africans with regard to the Middle East (as with any other issue) are many and varied and the motivation behind some South Africans (including Tutu) endorsing BDS projects can and should be subjected to the same scrutiny as any political statement made by any other political leader.  No supporter of Israel I have ever met has demanded that all political discussion stop because a Jew (even a Holocaust survivor) has spoken (quite the opposite, in fact).  And without in any way diminishing the valor of those who helped bring down the Apartheid system, it is well past time that the same approach be taken with regard to South Africans.






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  • Wednesday, September 26, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon
Journalist Joe Truzmah tweets this video:


He also tweeted this photo of a child setting fire to a tire wedged at the fence, meant to weaken it:


Hamas operatives stay hundreds of yards behind the fence and send kids (and other civilians) with the wirecutters and tires to go to the fence - and hopefully be shot by the IDF so they can claim Israel kills innocent kids.

It is a cynical game, and one that journalists fall for every time.





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  • Wednesday, September 26, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon


Lebanon's acting Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil  reveals some hypocrisy that the world happily accepts.

In Al Monitor (quoted in The Daily Star):
Caretaker Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said that the U.S.’s decision to cut UNRWA funding will be discussed during meetings at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, and that he didn’t oppose conditioned peace with Israel.

In an interview published Monday with the United States-based Al-Monitor news website, Bassil said that the cuts were one of the ways of preventing the Palestinians in Lebanon from returning to their homeland and staying there.

The cuts “have a very heavy political weight on the idea of keeping the Palestinians in Lebanon because, you know, this is a step forward to, one, deprive them from the right to return and, two, to somehow take the title of refugee and turn them into integrated people in our country,” Bassil said.
But Bassil also has some interesting things to say about Syrian refugees:

 As Lebanon's foreign minister, Gebran Bassil has in recent months taken steps to quicken the return of Syrian civilians who in the past seven years crossed the border to flee civil war.

Speaking to The National, Mr Bassil hesitates to call such Syrians refugees, instead describing them as "migrants" and "displaced".

"Lebanon does not accept Syrians to be refugees, not one of them," he said on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

His argument is that Lebanon is not a signatory to the Convention Relating To The Status Of Refugees, a UN multilateral treaty agreed in 1951, and thus is not required to grant refugee status.

He is also sensitive to the need and some public desire for repatriation of the more than one million Syrians in Lebanon because of the war.

"It's stipulated in our constitution, it’s related to the existence of the country that’s based on a certain equilibrium and balance, you cannot all of a sudden introduce 50 per cent of its population to the country."
Lebanon doesn't legally consider Palestinians to be refugees - but it happily calls them refugees when it is convenient.

Isn't it funny that no one is calling Lebanon racist for deciding on its ethnic character in its constitution?

It gets even worse:

On 21 March - Mother’s Day in Lebanon and a little more than a month before the country’s first parliamentary election in nine years - Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil announced he would submit an amendment to the country’s nationality law that would give Lebanese women married to foreign men the right to transfer their nationality to their children.

The initiative “applies the principle of equality between all Lebanese women and men”, Bassil said.

But there is one significant exception in the minister’s proposal: the right would not extend to Lebanese women married to citizens of “neighbouring countries”, meaning Syrians or Palestinians. Bassil said he would also seek to remove the right of Lebanese men to confer citizenship to their Syrian or Palestinian wives and the children of those marriages.
This wonderful paradigm of a liberal foreign minister spoke at Princeton University this week, where he blames ISIS and Israel for forcing Lebanon to have discriminatory citizenship and refugee laws.

Yet rock stars and other artists happily play in Lebanon. There is no BDS movement against Lebanon. Racist laws and accepted as part of the reality and the world shrugs.




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Tuesday, September 25, 2018

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Mahmoud Abbas Should Be Barred from Entering the U.S.
The U.S. government should bar Palestinian Authority Chairman and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Mahmoud Abbas from entering the United States on Wednesday for the opening of the United Nations.

In the days that have passed since Queens, New York, native and dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Ari Fuld was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist, we have learned several things about how his murder came about.

Together, they make a compelling case to take action against Abbas when he arrives at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. (Abbas is scheduled to arrive in New York to address the UN General Assembly meeting on Thursday.)

Ari Fuld, a 45-year-old father of four, was stabbed in the back by Palestinian terrorist Khalil Jabarin last Sunday morning outside a shopping center at Gush Etzion Junction in Judea, south of Jerusalem.

On Tuesday, Palestinian journalist Bassem Tawil provided significant evidence that recent statements by Abbas may have encouraged 16-year-old Jabarin to murder Fuld – or any other Jewish person. Jabarin is from Dura, a village about a half hour south of the shopping center – a convenient site for his attack.

Tawil reported that Saturday, the day before the murder, Abbas gave a speech to the PLO’s Executive Committee in Ramallah. In his address, Abbas reportedly “repeated the old libel that Israel was planning to establish special Jewish prayer zones inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” which is on the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism, the site of the Second Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
Report: PA leader aims to undercut US peace plan at UN
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is ‎planning to host a conference of world leaders and ‎high-ranking diplomats on the sidelines of the ‎United Nations General Assembly this week with the ‎expressed intention of undermining U.S. President ‎Donald Trump's regional peace plan, Channel 10 ‎News reported Monday.‎

Relations between Washington and Ramallah have been ‎‎‎particularly strained since U.S. President Donald ‎‎Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's ‎capital last December and subsequently moved the ‎U.S. ‎Embassy there in May. The move outraged ‎Palestinians, who envision east Jerusalem as the ‎capital of a future Palestinian state. ‎

Abbas has ‎since refused ‎to engage with any of ‎Trump's Middle ‎East envoys, saying that the U.S. ‎bias in favor of Israel ‎proves ‎it cannot act as an ‎impartial mediator in ‎‎regional peace talks.‎

The Trump administration has taken ‎several other steps ‎against the Palestinian ‎Authority, including ‎suspending the large U.S. ‎contribution to the U.N. aid ‎agency assisting ‎Palestinian refugees and shuttering ‎the Palestine ‎Liberation Organization's mission in ‎Washington. ‎‎

The United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and ‎‎Germany, as well as diplomats from 40 nations and ‎international organizations, have been invited to the conference ‎scheduled for Wednesday, the ‎report said. ‎

Titled "Salvaging the Two-State ‎Solution, ‎Defending the ‎International Rules-Based ‎System,"‎ the conference is set to take place at the Grand Hyatt ‎hotel in New York.‎
Former envoy: Israel-Russia crisis artificial, driven by anti-Semitism
The crisis between Israel and Russia resulting from a Russian military aircraft being shot down over Syria last week is "calculated and artificial, unrelated to reality or the facts, because the Russians want payment," former Israeli Ambassador to Russia Zvi Magen told Israel Hayom in an interview.

Now a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, Magen underscored that "it doesn't matter what Israel does. From the moment the other side wants a crisis, there's no way of preventing one.

"The media blamed Israel on the day of crisis in a well-timed orchestrated manner, filled with anti-Semitic elements. This wasn't random."

According to Magen's analysis, the Russian defense establishment never changed its stance, even after Israeli Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin visited Moscow to present Israel's findings on the incident.
Anti-Semitism rears its head
A Russian Defense Ministry statement repeating gross accusations about Israel being responsible for shooting down a Russian military plane over Syria last week is a signal that, at least outwardly, Russia is unwilling to turn over a new page and move on from the past.

The inaccurate, unfounded, and even false claims in the ministry's findings should not come as a surprise to anyone. After announcing that Israel was at fault, the Russians have not been able to back down, not even after an Israeli Air Force delegation showed them clear proof that Israel had operated within both nations' coordination guidelines. It goes against the Russian culture of power to publicly admit to a mistake. The Russian government will never let facts confuse its citizens' belief that Russia is always right.

The false accusation against Israel has awakened the ghosts of anti-Semitism that always existed in Russian society and which the ruling powers have made an effort to hide these past few decades. Russian television stations permit themselves to make harsh statements about Israel and a number of speakers, including senior delegates in the Russian parliament, have demanded that military air bases in the Jewish state be bombed in retribution. Until last week's incident, such remarks were effectively prohibited in public in Russia, because officials were certain that the person at the top – President Vladimir Putin – objected to them.

But the new situation in which a major government entity in the form of the Russian Defense Ministry talks about Israel in language reminiscent of the Cold War has unleashed anti-Semitic language in Russia in general.

Sunday, September 23, 2018

  • Sunday, September 23, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon

I will not be posting anything until Tuesday night at least because of the Sukkot holiday.

Have a great chag!

  • Sunday, September 23, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon
Since the US stopped funding UNRWA, there have been articles about how this is bd for Jordan.

The Christian Science Monitor, WSJ and others are emphasizing how any loss of UNRWA services may destabilize Jordan.

Let's think about this.

If there is a legitimate fear of Jordan being destabilized from UNRWA cuts, that means that Palestinians in Jordan would revolt over the loss of their free benefits and being forced to be treated like all other citizens of the kingdom. They would have to pay for their own houses, and compete with other Jordanians for spots in classrooms.

The fear is that Palestinians, who according to many make up a majority of Jordanian citizens, would topple the regime and take over.

Which would make Jordan into a Palestinian state.

So in short, the fear is that the majority citizenship of Jordan would take over Jordan and make it Palestinian. Which would be disastrous, because Jordan is a reliable ally and a Palestinian Jordan would not be.

The supporters of UNRWA in Jordan - a place that they should not have been since the early 1950s when Jordan offered them citizenship - are tacitly admitting both that Palestinians have a claim on controlling Jordan and that a Palestinian state that replaces it would be a terrible, terrible idea.

Now, I  am very skeptical that US cuts to UNRWA will close the agency in Jordan and if it did, that the kingdom would fall. But the people that are making that argument are saying that without the artificial UN agency's presence in Jordan, it would become a Palestinian state - and one that would likely be a state that could fall to terrorist supporters like Hamas.

Doesn't this tell you something about what these supporters of UNRWA think an independent Palestinian state would be like?






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From Ian:

IDF rejects Moscow claim of ‘criminal negligence,’ vows to keep targeting Iran
The Israeli military on Sunday rejected the Russian defense ministry’s claim that it was entirely to blame for the downing of a Russian spy plane by Syrian air defenses during an Israeli strike last week, reiterating that Syria was at fault.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces maintained its version of events — that the Russian reconnaissance plane was shot down as a result of indiscriminate Syrian anti-aircraft fire — and said it would continue to act to prevent terrorist groups from obtaining advanced weapons.

“The full, accurate and factual details are known to the Russian military professionals involved in the matter, and from them it is clear that the deconfliction mechanism worked and did so in a timely manner (as it has for the past two and a half years),” the IDF said Sunday evening, referring to a hotline between the two militaries meant to avoid such inadvertent clashes and casualties.

Israeli fighter jets conducted the airstrike last Monday night on a weapons facility in the coastal city of Latakia that the IDF said was going to provide weapons to the Hezbollah terror group and other Iranian proxies. During a Syrian air defenses counterattack, the Russian spy plane was shot down by a S-200 anti-aircraft missile, and its 15 crew members were killed.

Earlier on Sunday, the Russian defense ministry released the findings of its investigation into the downing of the plane and the deaths of the crew. Moscow said Israel alone was responsible for the incident, accusing the IDF of failing to give notice of its attack in a timely and accurate manner, and claiming the Israeli pilots used the Russian surveillance aircraft as cover during their strike.

The IDF rejected all the Russian findings.

“The Israeli Air Force does not hide behind any plane, and the Israeli jets were in Israel’s airspace when the Syrians struck the Russian plane,” the military said.

“The downing of the plane by the Syrians was tragic and difficult, and we take part in the sorrow of the families and the Russian people,” the IDF added.

MEMRI: Russia's Reactions To The Russian Plane Crash In The Mediterranean
What Happened

On September 17, a Russian Ilyushin-20 was shot down with 15 servicemen aboard over the Mediterranean. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, radio contact was lost with the Ilyushin-20 plane, 35 kilometers away from Syria’s shore, as the plane was returning to the Khmeimim air base.[1]

The Russian Defense Ministry's View Of What Happened: It Was An Intentional Provocation
The Russian Defense Ministry later said that the Ilyushin-20 (IL-20) was shot down by the Syrian air defense. The Russian Defense Ministry originally charged that Israeli F-16s, which were bombing targets in Latakia, had used the Ilyushin-20 as a cover, thus making it vulnerable to the Syrian S-200 air defense system.

Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov stated: "By using the Russian plane as cover the Israeli air pilots made it vulnerable to Syrian air defense fire. As a result, the Ilyushin-20, its reflective surface being far greater than that of the F-16, was downed by a missile launched with the S-200 system."

Konashenkov added that four Israeli Air Force's F-16s carried out a strike with guided air missiles against Syrian facilities in Latakia at about 22:00 on September 17. He stated that the Israeli pilots approached the target from the Mediterranean at a low altitude and intentionally created a threatening situation for ships and aircraft in the area.

Konashenkov added: "The bombing raid was near the French frigate Auvergne and in close proximity to the Ilyushin-20 plane from Russia’s aerospace force that was about to land… [The Israeli pilots] could not but see the Russian plane, which was approaching the runway from an altitude of five kilometers. Nevertheless they deliberately staged this provocation."

Konashenkov also stated: "A hotline warning was received less than one minute before the strike, which left no chance for getting the Russian plane to safety."[2] After the attack, the Syrian air defense troops responded and as a consequence the Ilyushin-20 was shot down.

Konashenkov also threatened that Russia reserve "the right to take adequate tit-for-tat steps."[3]
Don't be fooled, Moscow and Jerusalem still need each other in Syria
In an interview just two months ago following a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, US President Donald Trump said Putin has a soft spot in his heart for Israel.

Putin, Trump said, is “a believer in Israel; he is a fan of Bibi and really helping him a lot – and will help a lot, which is good for all of us.”

That was just two months ago.

Following the Russian Defense Ministry's announcement Sunday angrily pinning the blame on Israel for Syria's downing last week of a Russian spy plane, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now has to be hoping that Trump was accurate in his read of the Russian president.

Netanyahu, and Israel, will need all the good will he has built up over the past nine years with the Russian president to ensure that the current crisis does not seriously harm Israel's ties with Moscow, something that would impair Israel's ability to deal with what it views as an enormous strategic threat: an entrenched Iranian military presence in Syria, and the unhindered transfer of precision-guided missiles from Iran through Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In a turn of events that could only happen in the Middle East, the Syrian army shoots down a Russian spy plane following an Israeli attack on an Iranian facility meant to manufacture precision arms for Hezbollah in Lebanon – and Israel gets blamed.

That chain of events brings to mind Menachem Begin's famous line after the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982: “Non-jews kill non-Jews, and they immediately come to hang the Jews.”

  • Sunday, September 23, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon
Avi Abelow Picks up the Torch

Michael Lumish

Abelow on left, Fuld on right
with two other gentlemen
I think that it may be fair to say that few were wounded more by the murder of Ari Fuld -- outside of his family -- than was Israeli-American social media personality, Avi Abelow.

I like Avi because he has both strength and joy.

He analyzes the worst of the conflict while also spreading gladness in his participation in Israeli and Jewish life.

What can I say? I am an American. Any American Jew, like Avi, who makes aliyah and is an old friend of Ari Fuld and promotes baseball in Israel is a good guy in my book.

He even coaches Ari Fuld's kid as anyone with access to Facebook can see on Ari Fuld's Israel Defense Page.

Abelow, like many of us, was wounded by the murder of Fuld, but Abelow knew him personally for many years. And so when I say that he is a social media figure that is willing to face the very worst side of the conflict, this is probably the very hardest example of it for him personally. He did not need to make aliyah and stand up for the Jewish people and, therefore, face the murder of friends... but he did so.

He could easily have stayed in the United States.

I honestly do not know that it is appropriate for me to promote a media person upon the death of his friend, but I am doing so, anyway. Abelow has been around for awhile and I know him best for his live discussions with journalists and scholars like Caroline Glick and Melanie Phillips.

He is also the founder of 12Tribe Films which he describes as:
dedicated to promoting creative projects about the Jewish people and the land of Israel that connect, entertain, and inspire. As the name of the organization suggests, our creative projects address Jewish issues, with a greater focus on the Jewish values that connect us as a whole. While the projects of 12Tribe Films address religious, political, sociological, and current events effecting Israel and the Jewish people, our goal is to be an informative and educational resource that focuses on the underlying Jewish values and human experiences beneath the issues.
But, again, what I most appreciate about this guy is his willingness to stare the devil in the face while also expressing the beauty and significance of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. That is quite a tight-rope. That is not an easy thing to do, especially when the world begins to expect you to get up every morning and do it again and again and again. Half the time he is calling out antisemitic anti-Zionism and the other half he is either showing us the grace of Jerusalem or tossing around a ball with the kids in the park.

There are media people, such as Gideon Levy or Amira Hass of Ha'aretz, who make their bread from spreading hatred toward their brothers and sisters in the land of the Jewish people.

What we need now -- more than at any time in recent memory -- are people like Avi Abelow who are willing to stand up for the memory and strength of Ari Fuld.



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  • Sunday, September 23, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon
The headline seems strangely familiar:

Russia: Israel 'entirely to blame' for loss of military plane near Syria


Somehow, Syria shots down a Russian plane and Israel is the only party to blame?

This fits a pattern.

Sabra and Shatila. Blaming Israel for Palestinians abusing their wives. Blaming Israel for US police brutality. 

Somehow, it is always the Jews' fault.






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  • Sunday, September 23, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon


From "Country cooperation strategy for WHO and the Occupied Palestinian Territory 2017–2020":

Palestinian public finances have depended on foreign aid to a significant extent over the past decade, albeit marked by large fluctuations and unpredictability. Despite increasing needs, aid for Palestine has declined, dropping 30% in 2015 from the previous year, resulting in a US$ 650 million budget gap reported in early 2016.17 Factors contributing to this gap include the global economic recession, an increase in humanitarian needs in other countries and regions, and donor “fatigue” or “occupation fatigue”, due in part to the lack of any progress towards any political resolution of the conflict. 
For some reason, even though the entire world has been cutting aid to Palestinians for years, only when Donald Trump does it are there dire headlines about how awful it is.

Usually any news story about the dire needs of Palestinians is simply window dressing for an anti-Israel story. The proof of this is the dearth of stories about Palestinians who are in much worse shape in Lebanon or Syria.

But now the media is just as interested in the anti-Trump narrative as in the anti-Israel narrative, so suddenly Trump's moves are denounced when identical moves by other countries, notably Arab Gulf countries, are roundly ignored by the world.

(h/t Irene)





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Saturday, September 22, 2018

From Ian:

Soviet-style antisemitism funded by UK taxpayers
It took 16 years to get the UN to expunge the infamous 1975 ‘Zionism Equals Racism” Resolution. IHRA states that it’s antisemitic to claim ‘that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor’. Mr Alsaraf and Ms Murphy did nothing to try to stop the meeting – not at the start and not later on, when antisemitism was voiced. Does Camden not provide training in antisemitism for its Prevent officers?

Campaign4Truth was at the meeting, you can see their videos here. The meeting began with a statement from the meeting Chair ‘Sam’ regarding the representations made to KCBNA to cancel the booking. He said that Philip Rosenberg, the Director of Public Affairs of the Board of Deputies, ‘attempted to use his position of influence to ban this public meeting’. Rosenberg, he said, ‘claimed with no evidence that the meeting would be antisemitic. This is a reactionary attack on those who support Palestinian self-determination….. To suggest that the RCG is antisemitic is an outrageous slur’.

I shouted to ‘Sam’ that the cloth behind him was antisemitic. He threatened to throw me out (of course – for Communists, ‘free speech’ only goes one way).

‘Sam’ thanked the organisations and people who had emailed KCBNA to support the holding of the meeting. You can guess who they were. Here are some he mentioned: Camden Abu Dis Friendship Society; Free Speech on Israel; Socialist Resistance; Geoffrey Bindman; Steve Hedley from the RMT trade union.

Additionally RCG had contacted the following for support: PSC; Labour Against the Witchhunt; International Jewish Antizionist Network; London Palestine Action; InMinds; Friends of Al Aqsa; Counterfire; Jewdas; SWP; Socialist Party.

‘Sam’ was not happy about the presence of the two Prevent Officers: ‘We are outraged that a Labour Council sees fit to send these officers to an antiracist pro-Palestinian meeting and we see this as a step towards political censorship….. We advise attendees … to treat these officers as if they are Police.’

The first speaker was ‘Witan’ (that’s how I heard the name, no family names were announced, neither were they included in the meeting announcement). (Addendum: He has been identified as probably Wesam Pinko). As might be expected from the RCG, he gave a history of Zionism which was thoroughly distorted through a Marxist prism. He said that Zionism is a racist ideology; that it was a middle-class movement; that the JNF leased land only to Jews; that the JNF head in the 1930s wanted to ‘transfer’ Arabs; that Israel has forcibly sterilised Ethiopian women; that the UN gave Israel 55% of the land when the Jewish population was only 30%; that Israel had expelled 800,000 ‘Palestinians’ in 1947-8; that the Nation State bill proved that Israel is an ‘Apartheid’ State. All liberally laced with the usual ‘settler-colonialism’ and ‘imperialist’ references.

Five of these lies are antisemitic. I corrected some of the lies in my intervention in the Q+A, see below. The ones I omitted were about the JNF (the policy of leasing land only to Jews ended long ago); sterilisation (simply a lie); the 55% reference (much of the land allocated to the Jews was desert); the Nation State accusation (a lie).

The second speaker was ‘Nicki’. I understand her name is Nicki Jameson. She spoke about the IHRA definition and the tortured process by which Labour adopted it.

Here were her lies: The IHRA ‘has clauses which restrict or forbid criticism of Israel’; that there is a ‘Zionist propaganda machine’ which in 2008/9 complained to the BBC that its coverage was anti-Israel when 7 Israelis had died versus 2000 Palestinians; that Jeremy Corbyn did not lay wreaths for terrorists associated with the 1972 Munich massacre; that Rabbi Lord Sacks is ‘right wing’. I countered two of these lies in my intervention in the Q+A, see below.
One Palestinian killed, one IDF soldier lightly wounded during Gaza riots
One Palestinian was killed and hundreds more injured during the weekly Great March of Return protests along the Gaza border fence on Friday, which also saw one IDF soldier lightly wounded from shrapnel.

The fatality was identified by the Palestinian Health Ministry as Karim Mohammad Kullab, 25. The ministry said that of the 312 wounded, 54 were injured by live bullets, including four rioters who were said to be in critical condition.

According to the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, more than 10,000 protesters took part in violent demonstrations along the border fence, throwing explosive devices, grenades and stones at IDF troops, and burning tires. A number of attempts to cross the border fence also occurred throughout the riots.

One IDF soldier was lightly wounded from shrapnel, and was evacuated to the hospital to receive medical attention.

The IDF responded to the violence and attempted sabotage of the fence with crowd dispersal techniques in accordance with open-fire regulations. IAF jet fighters also struck several targets in the northern Strip.

Following several improvised devices planted along the fence in recent weeks, the military has warned of an increased use in such devices as well as the use of grenades and possibly live fire against troops.

On Friday the IDF’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Kamil Abu Rukun, urged the residents of the Hamas-run enclave to stop cooperating with Hamas, threatening to reduce the fishing zone from nine miles back to three if the “daily terror attacks continue.”

Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for international negotiations, also took to Twitter Friday writing “Sadly Hamas continues to choose violence over building a better future for Palestinians.”


Egypt officials arrive in Gaza to salvage Hamas truce with Israel, Fatah
Two senior Egyptian officials arrived unexpectedly in the Gaza Strip on Saturday for talks with Hamas leaders aimed at achieving a truce with Israel and ending the ongoing rift between Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction.

The two Egyptian emissaries, Ahmed Abdel Khaleq – who is in charge of the “Palestinian Portfolio” in Egypt’s Mukhabarat (General Intelligence Service), and Mustafa Shehata – a top Egyptian diplomat, entered the Gaza Strip through the Erez border crossing with Israel, and immediately held talks with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and other top officials of the movement.

The visit comes amid mounting tensions between Hamas and Fatah, and continued violence along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

On Friday, one Palestinian was killed and scores injured during Hamas-sponsored Great March of Return protests near the border with Israel. The Palestinian killed in the clashes with IDF soldiers was identified as 25-year-old Karim Kallab.

Sources in the Gaza Strip said that Egypt is trying to avoid a further deterioration in relations between Hamas and Fatah, and convince the two rival parties to implement previous “reconciliation” agreements they had signed in the past few years.

Last week, a senior Fatah delegation headed by Azzam al-Ahmed held talks in Cairo with Egyptian intelligence officials on ways of ending the crisis with Hamas.

The Fatah officials are reported to have told the Egyptians that the only way to achieve a breakthrough was for Hamas to unconditionally hand control over the Gaza Strip to the Ramallah-based government. They also rejected Hamas’s demand that the PA government incorporate thousands of Hamas employees and disarm as part of any “reconciliation” agreement.

The sources said the Egyptians are particularly worried that Abbas would impose more sanctions on the Gaza Strip if Hamas does not comply with these demands. Abbas is said to have informed the Egyptians that he will halt all PA funding to the Gaza Strip if Cairo’s efforts to end the Hamas-Fatah power struggle fail.

Friday, September 21, 2018

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The blood of slain Israelis stains many hands
It’s often claimed by Western enemies of Israel that the military actions of the Israel Defense Forces against Hamas in Gaza are disproportionate because such actions kill Arabs while Hamas attacks don’t kill Israelis.

That’s apparently why the Western media ignore the thousands of rockets and aerial firebombs launched from Gaza to kill the residents of southern Israel, reporting instead IDF military action to stop such attacks as the wanton killing of civilians.

When an Israeli actually is murdered by an Arab in cold blood, however, this isn’t reported as wanton killing of the innocent, if he happens to be the wrong sort of Israeli. Then it’s suggested his murder is his own fault.

The killing of American-born Israeli Ari Fuld on Sept. 16 has caused an outpouring of grief in Israel. The impassioned eulogies to him poured out not just because his wife, four children, parents and the rest of his family have been so cruelly bereaved.

It’s because he was a brave and outstanding fighter for Israel and the Jewish people, and admired even by his political opponents on account of his warm nature. He devoted his existence to fighting a great evil to which he has now lost his own life.

The Western media, however, don’t count Ari Fuld as a victim at all because, as a resident of the Judean town of Efrat, he was a “settler.”
Caroline Glick: How Israel defeated the PLO
The so-called “Oslo process,” is really two processes. The first was the Oslo peace process. It began with secret negotiations between Israeli leftists with ties to then-foreign minister Shimon Peres in Oslo, Norway, in 1993. It led to Israel’s recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the establishment of the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority to run the Palestinian autonomy in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. It also led to a seven-year attempt by Israel to make peace with the PLO.

The peace process, was the brainchild of the Israeli Left. It was predicated on the notion that without the PLO there can be no peace. And without peace, based on territorial concessions, Israel has no hope of surviving, let alone prospering.
The Oslo peace process failed in July 2000 when the PLO rejected peace and statehood.

The failure of the Oslo peace process was followed quickly with the initiation of the Oslo terror war by the PLO-PA and its partners in Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Its goal was to demoralize Israeli society and foment a collapse of Israel’s national will to reject the PLO’s maximalist demands, which in turn would lead to the eventual destruction of Israel.

To a large degree, the Oslo war ended in 2004 when Israel secured its control over the Palestinian population centers in Judea and Samaria and killed Hamas’s senior leadership in Gaza.

The Israeli Left never accepted the failure of the Oslo peace process. And the PLO-PA never abandoned its efforts to destroy Israel – in the name of peace and justice.

The refusal of both the Israeli Left and the PLO-PA to own up to the failure of both Oslo processes, has engendered a strange symbiotic relationship between the two sides. No, of course the Left hasn’t joined or supported the PLO-PA’s terror war. To the contrary. There is little if any distinction in the positions of the Israeli Left and Right on the need to defeat Palestinian terrorism.
Mordechai Kedar: The American government confronts the PA house of cards
In essence, with the moves he has taken against the PLO and PA, Trump is intimating that he has done his part, and now wants to know what Israel is going to do to put the PLO and PA where they deserve to be. Is Israel going to continue giving artificial respiration to these dead bodies? Is Israel going to continue keeping the hallucinatory agreements with terrorists signed by people like Peres and Beilin? Or is it going to join Trump and begin thinking rationally?

The Palestinian issue has direct bearing on the Iranian problem, because Trump is surely asking himself: If Israel, justifiably, is constantly warning about the danger facing it from Iran, how does it allow a terrorist organization to control the mountains overlooking Israel from Dimona and Beer Sheva in the south all the way up the coastal plain to Afula and Beit Shean in the north? Every schoolchild knows that the Palestinian Arabs will launch rockets against Israeli communities as soon as they are able to. Isn't there a contradiction between Israel's vehemence against Iran and its attitude towards the Palestinians? And if Israel creates dangerous situations for itself, why should America act against Iran and the agreements signed with that country?

It seems that the proverbial penny has dropped in Washington and the US government has begun behaving rationally with regard to the delusionary Palestinian State, putting it out to dry economically and ending decades of keeping it alive by artificial means. The Palestinian State can now find its rightful place in the history books as another march of folly.

The only problem is that all this is reversible and a different US government can easily turn back the clock and begin pressuring Israel to leave Judea and Samaria in favor of a judenrein Palestinian Arab state. Israel, therefore, must take advantage of the Trump era by creating a new reality, one that is almost impossible to change or dismiss: Israel must cancel the Oslo Agreements and all the others that followed those Accords, knock down the Palestinian house of cards, send the criminals it brought from Tunisia back to where they came from, starting with Mahmoud Abbas and his sons – and create independent emirates in every Arab city in Judea and Samaria run by local clans and their natural, local leaders.

Israel must remain in the village areas forever and offer Israeli citizenship to those living in those areas who make up about 10% of the Arabs in Judea and Samaria.

This is the only solution based on local sociological reality. Only this solution can bring stability, growth and peace to the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria, security to Israel. This is the solution to which Trump's steps can lead.



Peter Beinart shows off his 1990s-era thinking in the Forward, which is eager to publish him. Essentially every paragraph betrays his bias, his inability to grasp reality, and his wishful thinking:

Since the 1970s, and certainly since Bill Clinton got Yitzhak Rabin and Yaser Arafat to shake hands on the White House lawn at the beginning of the Oslo Peace Process in 1993, every American president has practiced “dealism.” Every one has dreamed primarily of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and being remembered as one of history’s great peacemakers.

None has dreamed primarily of being remembered as one of history’s great liberators.

None has described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict primarily as a struggle for rights.

This stands in contrast to the way in which Americans, at least in retrospect, view other conflicts that pitted a population lacking basic freedoms against the state that denied them. Americans don’t generally tell the story of Mahatma Ghandi and Kwame Nkrumah’s struggles against British colonialism, or Martin Luther King’s struggle against white supremacy, or Nelson Mandela’s struggle against apartheid, or the American colonists struggle against “taxation without representation,” as a tale of how the two sides “got to yes.”

The Palestinians aren't the Founding Father or Ghandi or Martin Luther King. They have a autonomous state which is recognized by most countries in the world, a state that has failed - not because of Israel but because their leaders are not interested in building a state, or in securing rights, or in freedom. If they had wanted those things - things that Beinart believes axiomatically they want - they would have a state now. They would have accepted one of the many peace plans that Israel agreed to. They would have actually rescinded support for terror, which Arafat promised to do back in 1993. Beinart still believes Arafat's lies and he still pretends that the Intifada never happened.

Why?

Why does Beinart not ever want to discuss their failures and pretend that only Israel is to blame?

This isn't analysis - it is pathology.

Palestinian Arabs do have rights. So do Israelis - the right not to be stabbed, blown up, run over and to live in peace in the Jewish state. That is a right that Peter Beinart doesn't talk about.

Lacking even the minimal moral scaffolding of previous administrations, Trump and Kushner have taken what seems like the shortest path to a deal: They have demanded that the weaker party cave on virtually everything.

Although the details remain hazy, reporting suggests that the Trump peace plan will not create a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, will not link Gaza and the West Bank, will not require Israeli troops to leave the Jordan Valley (which comprises roughly 25% of the West Bank), will not require Israel to evacuate settlements and will not allow a single Palestinian refugee to return home.

Any how, exactly, is the "right of return" a prerequisite to Palestinian rights to live in a state of their own? How exactly are the 1967 lines a prerequisite to peace? How is their capital being in Jerusalem a prerequisite to peace and their acquisition of actual human rights - the types of human rights that are actually codified somewhere, not what they claim they are?

The Trump administration is cutting out the bull that Palestinians have been claiming for years, lies that Beinart swallows whole. If they want a state they can have one. But their desire for Jerusalem or "return" or the 1967 lines has nothing to do with freedom and rights - every one of those are designed to ensure that their state is not an endgame but a waystation on the way to the ultimate destruction of Israel, as every poll and every map and every honest interview with Palestinians shows.

But the idiot Beinarts and Kerrys and Obamas of the world refuse to believe it. (I think Clinton gets it, because he saw the rejectionism firsthand.)

In late August, the White House announced it was cutting $200 million in aid to the Palestinians. Then it ended funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). UNRWA mostly provides health and education for Palestinian refugees, some of the poorest and most desperate people on earth. It serves half the people of Gaza, who already live in a territory the UN says may be uninhabitable by 2020.

As a result of Trump’s budget cuts, UNRWA warns that it may soon close more than 700 schools.

Do I have to point out to Beinart that if UNRWA would cut out all Jordanian citizens from its welfare, its budget would be reduced by 40% and there would be no crisis? And that the evil Trump and Kushner want to give Jordan the money directly to educate and provide healthcare to their own citizens, as they should? Or does he pretend that 2 million Jordanian citizens deserve special attention and for the world to fund them, forever - or until Israel is destroyed by "return" which is the very basis of UNRWA's reason for existence and what it teaches in its schools?

Beinart isn't stupid. He knows everything I am writing is true. The question is why he prefers to write these lies that his liberal friends love to pretend are the truth, rather than to actually have the guts and admit that his thinking will not result in peace but in perpetual war. Why does he pretend that Israel is to blame for the failure of Oslo? Why does he not mention terrorism or rockets or Hamas or "pay to slay" or Abbas' rejection of peace plans and frameworks and even direct talks?






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