Thursday, December 27, 2018

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: Now they call us ‘White Jews’: A new American antisemitism
A recent controversy about anti-Jewish views in the Women’s March has lifted the curtain on a new antisemitism that is percolating in American circles.

“Now Women’s March activists are grappling with how they treat Jews, and whether they should be counted as privileged white Americans or ‘marginalized’ minorities,” The New York Times noted in a recent piece. The labeling of Jews as “white” and debates on how to “treat Jews,” as if Jews are packages in a supermarket is a form of dehumanizing rhetoric designed to force Jewish people into a binary of “white/non-white” that is currently trendy in US discussions.


The new toxic discussion taking place primarily in the United States is designed to label Jews as “white supremacists.” For instance, Tamika Mallory, the Women’s March leader, told the Times that this issue was raised at an early meeting of the marchers.

“Since that conversation, we’ve all learned a lot about how while white Jews, as white people, uphold white supremacy, ALL Jews are targeted by it,” she said. Some groups on the far Left have even embraced this concept. Rebecca Vilkomerson tweeted about it on December 24.

“We white Jews especially need to recognize that centering out own status as victims here is a power move, as well as a way to avoid self-reflection on our relative status in a white supremacist world,” Vilkomerson tweeted.

It is particularly interesting, given the history of antisemitism, how Jews are now considered not only recipients of white privilege, due to their often passing as white, but are seen as emblematic of whiteness and a part of white supremacy. The concept of antisemitism was coined by anti-Jewish activist Wilhelm Marr, who objected to the idea that Jews would assimilate into Germany. Antisemitism became entwined with the idea that Jews were a separate “race” from white Europeans, particularly Germans and northern Europeans. Today that has come full circle and Jews are portrayed as not just passing as white, but of being an example of white supremacy.

How can this be, only 70 years after the Holocaust that the people genocided for being non-white and non-European are now called white supremacists? It is part of a carefully managed agenda in the United States to not permit Jews to be part of discussions about “people of color” or racism. The reason for this is that hatred of Jews has always been about creating an all-encompassing other that is dehumanized and then defining that as “the Jews.” Therefore in European history, Jews were hated for not being Christian, accused of blood libels and forced to live in ghettos or enter cities through the gate where the swine and sewage was. Then came the era when Jews were assimilating and becoming less religiously observant so they were labeled not as a religious problem, but an ethnic-racial problem. Oriental “wandering Jews,” who were foreigners. Today in the US where the popular view in some left-leaning circles is that being “white” is a kind of slander, Jews are “white Jews.”
Daniel Pipes: Tectonic Shifts in Attitudes toward Israel
As Arabs and Muslims warm to Israel, the Left grows colder. These shifts imply one great imperative for the Jewish state.

On the first shift: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently pointed out "a great change" in the Arab world which has a growing connection to Israeli companies because it needs Israeli "technology and innovation, ... water, electricity, medical care, and high-tech." Explaining this normalization as a result of Arab states "looking for links with the strong," Netanyahu was too tactful of American liberals to add another factor: Barack Obama's policy of appeasing Tehran jolted the Arab states to get serious about the real threats facing them.

It is striking to note that full-scale Arab state warfare versus Israel lasted a mere 25 years (1948-73) and ended 45 long years ago; and that Turkey and Iran have since picked up the anti-Zionist torch.

Nor is it just Israeli companies making inroads into Arab countries. The Israeli minister of sports broke into tears as Hatikvah, Israel's anthem, was played in Abu Dhabi upon the victory of an Israeli athlete. Rumors are swirling about a handshake to come between Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) and Israel's prime minister.

That Arab and Muslim enmity has fractured, probably never to be reconstituted, amounts to one tectonic shift in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The second, no less important, involves the global Left's growing hostility to Israel.

This pattern can be found consistently from South Korea to Thailand to South Africa to Sweden to Brazil. The Durban conference of 2001 initially brought this phenomenon to light. Among many other examples, the Black Lives Matter platform accuses Israel of "apartheid" and "genocide." A communist labor union in India representing 16 million farmers, apparently joined the boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) movement.

Attitudes toward the Jewish state follow an almost linear progression of growing negativity as one goes from right to left. A 2012 Pew Research Center survey of American adults found 75 percent of conservative Republicans sympathize more with Israel than with the Palestinians, followed by 60 percent of moderate and liberal Republicans, 47 percent of Independents, 46 percent of conservative and moderate Democrats, and 33 percent of liberal Democrats. (h/t MtTB)
Harry Potter and the Half-Wit Dunces
Measured by its impact, the BDS campaign to isolate Israel has been about as successful as the Charge of the Light Brigade, say, or the theatrical run of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, or any other cataclysmic failure that still inspires us, decades later, to ponder the bottomless depths of human ineptitude. And now, not content with their floundering boycotts, the champions of the anti-Israeli left have found a new villain: J.K. Rowling.

Why? Because Rowling is an outspoken critic of the anti-Semitic Jeremy Corbyn and his anti-Semitic Labour Party, a thought crime among those moral and intellectual degenerates who refuse to condemn hatred of Jews when it comes, as it so frequently does these days, from their side of the aisle.

Steven Salaita—the disgraced academic whose muddle-minded attempts at thinking got him jettisoned from a host of universities worldwide and who now spends his days theorizing on why Israeli hummus leads to genocide—entered the anti-Rowling fray, asking if it was possible to hide Harry Potter from his children, because, truly, there’s no better mark of an open and curious mind than attempting to censure your children’s reading list based on your political beliefs.

Not to be outdone, Rafael Shimunov, of the radical group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, accused Rowling of depicting “viciously antisemetic [sic] scenes in Harry Potter that destroyed Jewish kids who loved you and now they’re grown up and you think you can make it up by using right wing Netanyahu talking points about Corbyn. But that’s also antisemetic [sic].”

Just what sort of wicked deeds did the beloved author commit to warrant the accusation of destroying Jewish children, a charge previously limited to, say, the Einsatzgruppen? In a flurry of tweets, the studious Shimunov goes on to explain: In the Harry Potter universe, the banks are controlled by Goblins, and the chief Goblin is called Griphook. Get it? Grip, because he has a tight grip on money, and hook because he has a hooked nose! Which means he’s a Jew! Which makes J.K. Rowling some sort of slightly more feminine Goebbels!

The hatred is revealing. In their well-scrubbed moments, the boycotters insist that singling out the world’s only Jewish state for opprobrium even though—or even because—it’s a pluralistic democracy has nothing to do with Jews. You can, they insist, be an anti-Zionist and not an anti-Semite. L’affaire Rowling proves yet again that you can’t: The author had nothing to say about Israel. Her concern was the hatred of Jews in Britain, a hatred the community itself had unanimously and unequivocally characterized as a clear and present threat. And for that the BDS lowlifes pounced, arguing that anyone who bravely stands with Jews and speaks out against anti-Semitism must be some sort of bigoted emissary of the dark King Bibi himself.



 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column



Tuesday night Israel hit several locations in Syria, assumed to be weapons depots which possibly contained a shipment of Fajr-5 rockets from Iran. But it’s also being reported that “senior Hezbollah personnel” were hit, shortly after boarding a plane for Tehran, where they were planning to attend a funeral for an Iranian ayatollah. There is even a rumor – probably not true – that Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s “Quds Force,” was present and was killed in the attack. If only!

Soleimani is a legendary figure in Iran, and the Quds Force is responsible for extraterritorial activities of the IRGC, including aiding terrorist groups like Hezbollah and various Iraqi militias, as well as carrying out terrorist operations all over the world. The Quds Force has been accused of providing the explosively formed penetrators used in IEDs with deadly effectiveness against US troops in Iraq. As a strategist and commander, he is highly competent and dangerous, and should be a prime target in an Israel-Iran war.

The beginning stages of the war are already underway. The Iranian regime’s strategy seems to be to first improve its strategic position as much as possible without triggering open hostilities: it has built up Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal – and continues to try to improve it by retrofitting accurate guidance systems. It is preparing to manufacture guidance systems and/or rockets on Lebanese soil. It dug attack tunnels under the Lebanese border with Israel, which the IDF is exploding or filling with concrete as I write. It is working to improve its supply systems to Hezbollah via its newly secured land bridge through Iraq and Syria (the small American force that Trump has promised to withdraw served as a partial deterrent to the use of this route, which is one reason Israel sees the withdrawal as a problem). The regime supports Hamas and other terrorist groups in the territories. And it is continuing to prepare for the day that it can openly deploy nuclear weapons. Ultimately, its goal is to see Israel destroyed by its proxies, underneath its own nuclear umbrella.

Israel’s approach so far has been to try to interdict the shipment of advanced weapons, destroy attack tunnels, and to keep up pressure on Iranian attempts to establish herself militarily in Syria. Israel is aggressively collecting intelligence on the location of Iran’s and Hezbollah’s assets in Lebanon and Syria, so that in the event of war she could quickly destroy rocket launchers and other targets. Probably there are also targets in Iran herself, such as nuclear facilities.

I hope so. Iran would like to see the next war fought on Israel’s territory. It would like to see the casualties on its side being Lebanese, Palestinian, and Iraqi, not Iranian. It would like to see Israel wounded, but itself come out unscathed. It is up to Israel to ensure that this doesn’t happen.

Israel’s greatest weakness is her lack of strategic depth. There is nowhere to fall back to, and an invasion from Lebanon or Syria would quickly reach populated areas. Israel is no Russia, which on several occasions has been able to count her enormous size and bitter winters as her greatest allies.

This is one reason why “2-state solutions” are unacceptable, even if the Palestinian Arabs were trustworthy (which they are not). I have a relief map on my wall that I point to when anyone talks about the various 2-state ideas. It shows how the Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley (more precisely, the hills on our side of it) are natural barriers to invasion, and provide a strategic advantage to whoever controls them. It also shows the importance of the hills in Judea and Samaria, which overlook the most heavily populated parts of Israel.

The Golan Heights are particularly important. Had Israel not been in possession of them at the start of the Yom Kippur War, Syrian tanks would have rolled through Israeli cities and towns, with murderous results. More recently we would have had to deal with raids by ISIS and similar groups.

There is currently talk of a Munich-like Syrian peace deal in which part of the arrangement would include the return of the Golan to Assad’s Syria! In order to prevent this, Israel and some American politicians would like to see the US recognize Israel’s permanent ownership of the Golan. In the final analysis, only Israel’s steadfastness and willingness to fight can protect her, but it would certainly help to have the diplomatic backing of the US.

When the war finally does heat up, Israel must bring it to Iran’s homeland. But Iran is a big and populous country, and Israel does not have the ground forces to invade it. We are certainly capable of launching a full-scale nuclear assault, but this would contradict our strategic doctrine, which calls for the use of nuclear weapons only in retaliation for an attack against Israel with nuclear or other WMD, or as a last resort when the country is in danger of being overrun. There would be moral concerns about killing 28 million Iranians. One can also guess the likely response of the international community.

However there is another option, which is an attack aimed to destroy infrastructure, such as electrical grids, industrial plants, government offices, financial centers, oil fields, pipelines, refineries, transportation and communications facilities, and so on. Bombing of key targets could be combined with cyberattacks and an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. If done carefully, such a campaign would directly kill few people, but could create chaos and effectively destroy the Iranian economy to the extent that it would take decades to recover. I believe that Iraq is still suffering the effects of infrastructure bombing carried out in the first days of the US-Iraq war in 2003.

Israel is quite capable of carrying out such an attack, and this capability could serve as an effective deterrent, one which is much more likely to be employed than a massive nuclear attack. Iran directly controls Hezbollah, and the regime must be made to understand that an attack by its proxy against our homeland would result in an immediate response against its own.

In the meantime, I hope we are carefully tracking the movements of Qassem Soleimani. He has plenty of American, Israeli, and other blood on his hands. It would be a shame (for the regime) if anything happened to him.



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  • Thursday, December 27, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon
Palestinian Authority prime minister Rami Hamdallah said on Wednesday night that Arab countries promised billions of dollars in support of Jerusalem but only millions have arrived. “If the Arab summit decisions on Jerusalem were implemented, we would not be in need of anything else,” he said.

Hamdallah also said donor aid to the Palestinians for 2019 has declined by 71 percent.

Arab nations have been reneging on pledges to the Palestinians for many years now. They attend summits where they promise their full support and then usually do not follow through. Yet the conferences still happen - Hamdallah presided over one today, called the "Jerusalem Victory Conference," in Ramallah.



Absurdly, Hamdallah also claimed that there were no sanctions by the PA against Gaza. Since April 2017, the PA has limited salaries, fuel, medicines and many other items, all of which are well documented. Even Hamdallah admitted to these moves in August but he denied that they were sanctions even then, calling them "temporary measures." (Abbas gave a speech in March where he said he would increase "financial measures" against Gaza.)




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From Ian:

Photos said to show Iranian warehouse flattened by Israeli strike in Syria
Satellite images show the extent of damage from an alleged Israeli strike in Syria this week, with one photo indicating that a large storage facility was completely destroyed, an Israeli satellite imaging company said Thursday.

The photos, taken December 26 and published by ImageSat International, were of the remains of an Iranian warehouse at a base belonging to the Syrian army’s 4th division and located west of the capital Damascus, the company said. The 900-square-meter (8,000 square foot) structure appeared to have been obliterated by the attack, it said.

However, by contrast, the images showed no evidence of an attack at Damascus airport. Initial media reports of the airstrike had speculated that a 747 cargo jet, belonging to Iran’s Fars Air Qeshm, had been targeted after it landed at the airport.

The civilian company has been accused on multiple occasions of smuggling Iranian arms to Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group that fought Israel in a 2006 war, and media speculated that its cargo had been the target of the strikes.

An Israeli security official confirmed to the Associated Press on Wednesday that Israel carried out the overnight airstrike in Syria, saying a series of Iranian targets were hit.


Jerusalem official confirms Israel struck Iranian arms depot in Syria
An Israeli security official confirmed Wednesday that Israel carried out an overnight airstrike in Syria, saying a series of Iranian targets were hit.

The Israeli official said the air force had attacked several Iranian targets in three main locations late Tuesday and early Wednesday. He said the targets were primarily storage and logistics facilities used by archenemy Iran to ship weapons to Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group that fought Israel in a 2006 war.

He said Israel also destroyed a Syrian anti-aircraft battery that fired at the Israeli planes, and claimed that Iranian forces are operating less than 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the Israeli border, contrary to Russian assurances.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity under standard security protocols. The Israeli military has not commented on the incident.

Earlier Wednesday, Russia criticized the airstrikes, saying they had endangered civilian flights. The Israeli official said, however, that Israel alerted Russia about the airstrikes ahead of time and the flights were endangered by Syrian anti-aircraft fire.
IDF Hezbollah tunnel-destroying material discovered in Lebanese homes
Twenty-three days after Israel launched Operation Northern Shield and found the first tunnel dug into northern Israel from southern Lebanon by Hezbollah, the military has completed the destruction of a number of tunnels which infiltrated close to the community of Metula.

According to IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Ronen Manelis the military destroyed the tunnels by filling them with material which would prevent the Shiite terror group from every using them again.

The material he said, has come out of the tunnel in several places in the southern Lebanese village of Kafr Kila where the tunnel was dug from, including in a residential building next to the border fence which was used to make bricks.

“This fact indicates Hezbollah's use of civilian structures in the heart of an urban area in southern Lebanon, in flagrant violation of Resolution 1701 and endangering its citizens by using them as human shields,” the military said in a statement.

“It is clear that this factory belongs to Hezbollah and was used to build tunnels,” Manelis said, adding that there were other locations in Kafr Kila which were connected to tunnels and therefore the IDF saw material come out in several locations, including into residential homes.

“Whoever decides to live above a terror tunnel endangers his life, just like someone who decides to live above a weapons storehouse,” Manelis said.

The operation which began on December 4 to find and destroy the tunnels dug by the Shiite terror group has so far found five cross-border attack tunnels and last week the military began the process of destroying them.

On Wednesday, the military announced that it had destroyed a fifth cross-border attack tunnel crossing into northern Israel from the southern Lebanese village of Ayta as-Shab. It was discovered several days ago and destroyed by an explosion Wednesday night.


  • Thursday, December 27, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon
By Daled Amos

With the passing of its Nation-State Law this year, the issue of Israel as a democracy continues to be a topic of debate, and at times becomes even more pointed.

But this week we were reminded that for all the debate and the claims that Israel was revealing its fascist colors, Israeli democracy is alive and well:


The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index measures the categories of Electoral process and pluralism, Functioning of government, Political participation, Political culture and Civil liberties.  -- and taking all of that into account, Israel maintained its 2016 ranking of 30 in a field of 167 countries:

chart
Israel rated 30th as a democracy, among 167 countries - tied with Estonia

Interestingly, with the perpetual accusations each year that Israel under Netanyahu is descending into the depths of fascism, this same Democracy Index indicates the opposite. During Netanyahu's second stint as Prime Minister from 2009 to date, (his first term being from 1996-1999), Israel's democracy rating has been on an upswing -- at least until 2017:


Who knows what rating Israel will get for 2018 in light of the Nation-State Law?

Israel had a mediocre score for both Function of government (which is understandable to anyone who has watched the Knesset in action) and Political culture.

"Function of government" is determined by such things as partisanship, corruption, accountability, checks & balances, levels of political engagement and confidence in government.

"Political culture" is based on levels of popular confidence in democracy, and environment where "the losing parties and their supporters accept the judgment of the voters and allow for the peaceful transfer of power."

The biggest drag on Israel's score was in the area of civil liberties. It is the reason Haaretz's Anshel Pfeffer rails against Israel's "High-functioning Illiberal Democracy," noting that "the country’s strong showing is marred by the Chief Rabbinate’s hegemony and the way Israel treats the Palestinians and other minorities."

On the issue of religion in Israel, one can argue the point.

In their book, #IsraeliJudaism: A Portrait of a Cultural Revolution, based on extensive surveys with more than 3,000 respondents in Israel, one of findings of Shmuel Rosner and Camil Fuchs is that
you get a new picture of Israel’s Jewish society and of Israel’s Jewish culture. It is a society that moves away from religion and from religious coercion, but does not move away from Jewish traditions. It moves away from the control of rabbis and the mandatory observance of certain practices, but does not move away from voluntary, relaxed, widespread Jewish practice.
According to Rosner and Fuchs, the claim that Israel is becoming a theocracy is a myth.

For that matter, one can ask how Pfeffer derives an implied condemnation of the Chief Rabbinate from the Democracy Index to begin with.

On the more pressing issue of the rights of the Arab minority, according to a report issued this month by the Israel Democracy Institute:
More than two-thirds of the Arab respondents (67 percent) said they did not think that the Israeli government treats its Arab citizens democratically. Among Jewish respondents, however, only 23 percent thought that Arab citizens suffer from discrimination. Still, more than half the Arab respondents (51 percent) said they were proud to be Israeli (compared with 88 percent of Jewish respondents), even though this was lower than in recent years. About two-thirds of both Jewish and Arab respondents said that they believed that Arab citizens want to integrate into Israeli society.
There is potential there for improvement, but obviously with a lot of work ahead. According to that same report by the Israel Democracy Institute, respondents this year rank tensions between left and right as being a greater problem than Jewish-Arab relations, though whether that means that Jewish-Arab relations have improved slightly or left-right tensions are worse is unclear.

Writer Zev Chafets takes a different view of the Democracy Index, writing that Israel’s Version of Democracy Is in Good Health. He quotes from a 2002 decision by former Israeli chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court Aharon Barak regarding, on the one hand, the minimum definition of Israel as a Jewish state:
“At their center stands the right of every Jew to immigrate to the State of Israel, where the Jews will constitute a majority; Hebrew is the official and principal language of the State, and most of its fests and symbols reflect the national revival of the Jewish People; the heritage of the Jewish People is a central component of its religious and cultural legacy.”
and on the other hand, the minimal requirements for Israel as a democratic state, consisting of:
recognition of the sovereignty of the people manifested in free and egalitarian elections; recognition of the nucleus of human rights, among them dignity and equality, the existence of separations of powers, the rule of law, and an independent judiciary system. [emphasis is Chafets']
According to Chafets, Israel fulfills all of Barak’s requirements for a Jewish state -- and lacks one of his criteria for a democratic state: full equality for its Arab citizens. That is because while the Arabs are guaranteed the same civil rights as all other Israelis by Israel’s Basic Law, only Jews have the right to immigration and citizenship.

He explains:
This discrimination is foundational. Israel was created to be the one place where the Jewish people have self-determination, and the chance to rebuild its culture after a hiatus of two millennia. Israel is for the Jews. The great majority of Jewish Israelis, including many champions of egalitarian civil liberties, understand and accept this. Roughly 90 percent vote for political parties that regard the Law of Return as sacrosanct. [emphasis is Chafets']
We have already seen, from the reaction to Israel's Nation-State Law, that many in the West (and in Israel) see things differently.

With elections scheduled for April, we don't have long to wait before getting an idea of what Israelis really do think about Israeli democracy.




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Mondoweiss publishes Sarah Schulman, the academic fraud who popularized the term "pinkwashing," to explain to their audience how Alice Walker's blatant antisemitism is sort of okay once you contextualize it.

Like many of us, Walker has tried to understand the source of Israeli cruelty, violence, self-righteous racism, and supremacy ideology. She has risked her life for Palestinian liberation on the Flotilla, and has been in deep confrontation with the Israeli state for years. Being in that place is shocking, it reveals behaviors and beliefs of the Israeli state that are almost impossible to comprehend.
According to Schulman, Walker claiming that rabbis have taught generations of Jews to enslave "goyim" and to kill the best of them isn't antisemitic - it is a reflection of her deep pain at the plight of the Palestinians and her honest attempt to understand how Jews can be so cruel.

At no point does Schulman admit that Walker's hate for Jews is antisemitic.

Schulman admits that Walker is wrong. Not offensive, mind you - just mistaken. Not because Walker is trading in Nazi-style Jew-hatred, but because she falls for conspiracy theories and doesn't understand that Judaism isn't the issue, but religion altogether.
By looking to the Jewish religion as the source of Israeli cruelty, Walker is making two significant errors. 1. Pathologizing Judaism itself, instead of the larger problem of religions in general and how they are used to justify supremacy ideology. and 2. Ascribing religion as the central motive for apartheid when many Jews who support the Zionist state are not religious, and many Jews who stand with Palestine are religious.
Notice that purported scholar Schulman does not say that Walker's description of the Talmud and Judaism is completely wrong. No, Schulman sort of agrees that Walker is correct in saying that the Talmud teaches Jewish dominance over "goyim," but by singling out Judaism and not generalizing it to all religions, Walker fell into the trap of allowing people being able to call her antisemitic - which detracts from the wonderful work she does.
That Alice Walker has chosen conspiracy theory tools to address important questions discredits some of her thinking. But it does not discredit all of her thinking. Sometimes people who do good things also do bad things. And that can be disappointing, or devastating, but that is life and here we are. 

When a supposed scholar like Walker freely admits and even brags that her method of researching the Talmud is by watching YouTube videos made by neo-Nazis, and when she then takes that information and publishes poetry that could have been published in Der Sturmer, and when she refuses to apologize but doubles down on her hate for Jews, it doesn't discredit her at all, according to Schulman.

She's just misunderstood and human.

Really.

This is very funny coming from someone whose bogus "pinkwashing" charge is meant to tell the world that Israel does only bad things, and never does good things. When Israel treats women, minorities, LGBTQ, the disabled in ways that are more liberal than many other Western democracies, Schulman doesn't say that "sometimes people who do good things also do bad things" - she says that when Israel does good things it is by definition a bad thing.

The hypocrisy of Schulman is astounding. But not surprising.

(h/t Andrew)


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Continuing on with my 2013 lecture at YU (with some audio issues throughout - sorry!) here is how to answer the Palestinian claim that they made such a concession by giving up 78% of "historic Palestine."






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Wednesday, December 26, 2018

From Ian:

Army finds, destroys fifth attack tunnel from Lebanon
The Israeli military announced Wednesday it had discovered a new cross-border attack tunnel from Lebanon, the fifth such subterranean passage it has uncovered since launching an operation to destroy the Hezbollah-dug tunnels.

The latest tunnel was dug from Ayta ash Shab, a village across the border from the farming community of Shtula, and entered Israeli territory, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

The IDF said the tunnel was found “a number of days ago” and has now been destroyed.

“A short while ago, the tunnel was neutralized by an explosion,” it said in a statement.

Regional council heads and the United Nations’ peacekeeping force in Syria were notified ahead of the explosion, the military said.

The statement did not mention Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror group Israel has accused of digging the other tunnels.

The IDF reiterated it holds Lebanon’s government responsible for the cross-border tunnels.

“This is another blatant violation of UN Resolution 1701 and of Israeli sovereignty,” it said, referring to a UN Security Council resolution ending the 2006 Lebanon War, that requires all armed groups besides the Lebanese military to remain north of the country’s Litani River.

The military also said it would continue its efforts to locate and destroy attack tunnels from Lebanon.

The announcement by the military comes a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military was close to wrapping up the operation to find and eliminate the tunnels.

IsraellyCool: Linda Sarsour’s Monumental Christmas Screw-up
In a Merry Christmas message on Facebook to her followers, Israel-hater Linda Sarsour seems to have messed up. Big time (hat tip: Kweansmom).

You read that correctly. In that short message, Sarsour admits a whole bunch of things:

Jesus was Jewish (not a palestinian Arab as so many antisemites and Israel haters claim)
Jesus was a person of color. So much for the Jews are White. But in Sarsour’s defense, she has shown she has a hard time keeping track of her colors.
The word “Palestinian” used to apply to the Jews
There were Jews in the Holy Land at least in the time of Jesus – well before the Muslim conquest of the area.
She does realize Jesus was a “Zionist”, right? And that if he was alive today, he could be lynched if he wandered into the palestinian-controlled areas?

Thank you, Linda, for this gift. It’s like all our Christmases came at once
Ben & Jerry's political flavor doesn't suit all Israelis
Some Israelis want to boycott Ben & Jerry's for supporting left-wing US groups, while abroad BDS activists urge boycotting the ice cream because the brand operates in Israel.

In October, just before the US midterm elections, Ben & Jerry's launched a new ice cream flavor - Pecan Resist - chocolate and fudge mixed with pecans. The company said that it was part of a campaign to "lick injustice and celebrate those fighting to create a more just and equal country for all of us."

And who is creating the injustice and inequality, you might ask? Well, President Donald Trump of course. The company said, we cannot remain silent over the President's policies that are attacking and pushing back decades of progress on issues like racial and sexual equality, climate change, LGBT rights and immigrant and refugees rights - all issues that have always been at the core of our social mission for 40 years."

Pecan Resist was mainly launched to raised awareness among US voters and encourage them to vote. But the launch was also accompanies by announcement that Ben & Jerry's was donating $25,000 to each of four organizations spearheading the opposition to Trump. While many on the right in the US called for a boycott of Ben & Jerry's, Israeli ire was focused on women's rights organization Women's March, one of the four NGO's receiving Ben & Jerry's philanthropic bucks. One of the founders and co-chairs of Women's March is Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American liberal activist who has become a divisive figure in the Jewish community due to her anti-Israel activism and support of BDS.


Here’s a headline that had me scratching my head: “Three Orthodox Rabbis Ordained in Berlin after 80-Year Interruption.” I mean, I get that the last time a rabbi was ordained in Berlin had to be sometime around Hitler’s rise to power, may his name and memory be erased. And the opening lines of the article tell us that this is exactly the case:
The Nazis shut down Berlin’s Jewish seminary in 1938, and since then not a single Orthodox rabbi has been ordained in the German capital – until today, when three graduates of the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary: Alexander Kahanovsky, Shraga Yaakov Ponomarov and Shlomo Sajatz, were ordained in a historic ceremony, Deutsche Welle reported.
What I don’t understand is why there is a value to revitalizing Jewish communities in Europe, and in particular, in Germany. Germany wins the prize for worst ever host of the Jewish people, having gassed over 6 million of us. Why would we want to give them a second chance, or worse yet, a do-over?
What is the purpose of ordaining rabbis in Germany? What is the point of building synagogues or Jewish schools there? Why insist on reviving the Jewish community, or bringing Jewish culture to this place?
Why would anyone try to be a Jew in Germany after what they did to us?
I don’t get it. First of all, it seems spectacularly stupid. You didn’t get the message the first time around?
And anyway: why would you want to be in a place haunted by so many ghosts?
Why do you want to be where people hate you so much they gassed 6 million of your people? Do you think there’s some kind of courage involved in setting up (Jewish) shop there once more, so you’re just going to dig in your heels? You’re the guest no one wants. The guest who refuses to leave when the party’s OVER. (And you came back?!)
Here’s the part where you tell me: but it’s not regular Germans who are responsible for antisemitism. It’s all about the influx of Muslim immigrants. Not a terror attack happens that doesn’t begin with someone yelling “Allahu Akbar.”
But a poll published in May tells us in 2016, 40% of modern Germans (and not immigrants) hold antisemitic views, an increase of 28% from the previous poll in 2014.
Also, we need to think WHY Germany, and Europe in general, is teeming with antisemitic immigrants: the answer is they come to you precisely because they know you are birds of a feather. They hate Jews, YOU hate Jews. (“You” being Germany/Europe.) They know you gassed the Jews. This, they admire.
In spite of the pretend repentance, we know for a fact, thanks, for instance to Tuvia Tenenbom, that overwhelmingly, funding for Israel’s enemies comes from (you guessed it) Germany. Muslim antisemites fit right into your zeitgeist, your milieu. It’s a comfortable place for them. Germans share their values and their hate.
German Jew-hatred is as prevalent as it always was. It just wears it differently. Back in the 80s, Israeli psychoanalyst Zvi Rex said that, “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.” Germans tend to feel that Jews hold the past over their heads, exploiting the Holocaust to make Germans feel guilty. We Jews don’t let Germans move forward, move past the Holocaust. We don’t let them heal. This irritates Germans, giving them license to hate us (as if they needed permission), even if they use Israel’s imagined crimes as the pretext.
What about the Germans who swear they’re ashamed of their history? Let me tell you: the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Today’s German people have Nazis in their past. There’s no doubt that a vast number of contemporary Germans were raised to hate Jews. And even if you pride yourself on being open-minded, even if you feel somewhat guilty or soiled by what your grandparents or parents did, some of the antisemitic rhetoric heard at Mutter’s breast, is bound to sink in, to stick.  
How different is the Germany of today compared to the last time a rabbi was ordained in Berlin, in 1938?
The answer is that for all the lip service we pay to “Never Again,” it’s not. Not with 40% of the German population agreeing with this statement: “Based on Israel’s policies, I can understand people having something against the Jews.”
I’ll admit it: I am lucky. I did not have to go through the horrors of the Holocaust. So I don’t know what it was like for German Jews who survived. Perhaps they wanted to cling to the little bit of familiarity left to them after all they experienced. Maybe that’s why we’re seeing a resurgence of the Jewish community there.
But me? My stomach turns at the sight of a German or on hearing a German accent. It gives me cognitive dissonance for me to imagine anyone doing CPR on the dead—nay MURDERED—Jewish community of Berlin. It is a place from which Jews should distance themselves forevermore.
We Jews went to Germany only because we were expelled from our own land: Israel, and forced to wander. Forty percent of the German population has made it abundantly clear that Germany does not want us. So stop trying to be rabbis there. Stop building schools and creating organizations. Stop condemning the way they treat you there, every time they target you.
Instead, use your Yiddishe kop to get the heck out of there. Keep your goodwill and your burning Jewish spirit, yes! Ordain many, many rabbis.
But not there.
Leave Germany, leave France, where the Yellow Vests hung a banner reading, “Macron is a whore of the Jews,” and invited followers to a Chabad Chanuka celebration saying, "The Jewish people celebrate while the French have nothing to eat."
Leave also Belgium, where soccer fans sang the following lyrics in August:
“My father was part of a commando / my mother was SS / and together they burned Jews / because the Jews burn the best.”

Leave England, where the rise of Corbyn looms, and where a soccer fan only last week called for “gassing Jews” during a match.
Leave all these places before the gates close shut, as they have so many times before.
Learn from Dorothy, who famously said, “There’s no place like home.”
Come to Israel. Build your own land. Create new institutions, organizations, and schools in Israel. Contribute to its culture.
Why be the guest who refuses to leave?
Dorothy had to click her heels three times. All you have to do is hop on a plane.


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moneyDoha, Qatar, December 26 - An office staffer in the political echelon of the militant Islamist organization that governs the Gaza Strip has taken to exaggerating the attainments of his movement with the monies of the organization's chief sponsor, in keeping with the practice of not-for-profit grant reporting everywhere.

Grant writer Yusuf Mubalagha at Hamas's political headquarters in the Qatari capital has employed rhetorical and semantic sleight of hand, vague descriptors, and numerous weasel words in a report to the Qatari government on his movement's use of hundreds of millions of dollars provided by the latter, as functionaries holding analogous positions in NGOs and think tanks have done for decades.

Mr. Mubalagha has described Hamas's use of incendiary kites and balloons against Israeli communities, nature reserves, and farms, for example, as "strides forward in the campaign to liberate Al-Quds from the Zionist usurper," referring to Jerusalem by its Arabic name, when in fact the Islamist organization remains as distant as ever from achieving such a goal.

Elsewhere, the grant writer invokes the dozens of rockets fired at Israeli communities last month, which resulted in several injuries but only one death, of a Palestinian laborer in Israel, calling the two-day barrage "a mighty blow that sent the enemy cowering in his shelters and bunkers," when in fact Israel continued to function more  or less normally during that time.

"We have to justify all the funding Qatar gives us," explained Mubalagha. "That can be a challenge when you have to point to intangible achievements, or achievements that don't lend themselves easily to metrics. Lacking a body count of Jews, there's not as much to go on. So I have to get creative. I can talk up the number of projectiles fired, the number of times Israelis had to run for shelter, and that sort of thing, and make it seems more impressive than it might have been at the time. We do have the resignation of the Israeli Defense Minister to tout, but that will only take you so far. Really it's all about marketing. That's what it comes down to. Standard grant reporting methodology."

His latest report also includes a colorful chart showing the breakdown of funding uses, in which the embezzlement of large sums from Qatari aid by Hamas leaders is included in a section labeled "Infrastructure Investment," giving the impression that said funds contributed to improved quality of life for Gaza Strip residents, or at least to more tunnels in which to hide weapons, fighters, and supplies.



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From Ian:

US official says top Hezbollah brass hit in alleged Israeli strikes in Syria
An alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria Tuesday night hit several senior Hezbollah officials as they boarded a plane bound for Iran, Newsweek reported Wednesday morning, citing a Defense Department source.

The unnamed source told the magazine he had received the information from top Israeli military brass.

He said strategic Iranian munitions were also targeted, including advanced GPS components for weaponry.

Syrian state media said the strikes, beginning at about 10 p.m., were carried out from Lebanon and that a number of targets were intercepted. It said its own air defenses had opened fire on “enemy targets,” shooting them down.

Syrian TV quoted a military source saying weapons warehouses were hit, and three Syrian soldiers wounded.
A screenshot from video purporting to show a Syrian surface-to-air missile being fired near Damascus on December 25, 2018. (Screen capture: YouTube)

Syrian media said Wednesday morning that Israel hit a base used by Hezbollah in Al-Dimas, a weapons depot at a base belonging to the Syrian army’s 4th division in Sabura and the military’s 10th Division command in Qatana.

Additionally, Syrian air defenses in Attal and the 68th Brigade and 137th Battalion in Khan-al-Sheikh were also reportedly attacked, Hadashot reported.

Netanyahu vows to keep hitting Iran in Syria: ‘We stand firmly on our red lines’
Brushing aside Russian criticism of a reported Israeli airstrike in Syria overnight, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday doubled down on Israel’s policy of attacking Iranian-linked targets in Syria.

“We will not abide an Iranian entrenchment in Syria,” Netanyahu, who is also the defense minister, said at a graduation ceremony for fresh Israeli Air Force pilots at the Hatzerim air base in the south.

“We are taking action against it aggressively and powerfully, including in these very days,” he said.

US President Donald Trump’s “decision to pullout American soldiers from Syria does not change our policy,” Netanyahu said. “We stand firmly on our red lines in Syria and everywhere else.”

The Israeli air force’s capabilities are unmatched, and can reach arenas “near and far, very far,” he added.

US President Donald Trump surprised the world and many of his own officials by announcing last week that he would pull all 2,000 US soldiers in Syria out of the warn-torn country. Israel is concerned that Iran will take advantage of the military vacuum to expand its entrenchment in Syria.


Israel fires at missile from Syria; IDF jets said to pound Damascus arms depots
Israel said Tuesday night it had deployed its air defenses against a missile shot from Syria as Damascus attempted to repel an alleged Israeli airstrike against Hezbollah or Iranian targets near the capital.

The Israel Defense Forces said there was no damage or injuries from the surface-to-air missile fired from Syria at Israel.

“An IDF aerial defense system activated in response to an anti-aircraft missile launched from Syria,” the army said in a statement.

It did not say where or even if the missile was successfully intercepted.

Pictures shared on social media showed an air defense missile being fired near Hadera, a city some 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the Syrian border where residents had earlier reported hearing a loud explosion.

  • Wednesday, December 26, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon


YNet reports:
Authorities in Qatar are preparing to host thousands of Jews and Israelis during the 2022 FIFA World Cup competition. Arrangements need to be made to supply kosher food and places of prayer for soccer fans traveling to the Gulf state.

Hassan al-Thawadi, Secretary-General of the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (the organization responsible for coordinating among public and private entities to ensure that infrastructure and development projects are delivered in readiness for the 2022 FIFA World Cup), met with US Rabbi Marc Schneier, considered the unofficial Jewish chaplain of the Persian Gulf states, and asked him to serve as an adviser with regards to matters relating to hosting Jewish sports fans who will attend the matches.
 
"This is an exceptional development that attests to the sensitivity that the Qataris show toward Israelis and the Jewish world," said Rabbi Schneier. He said the Qataris sought his advice with concern for the needs of Jewish fans in everything related to kosher food. "I responded to the request with joy. The fact that our conversation took place on this subject is already amazing," Schneier said.

Whether the Qataris will set up a synagogue for Jewish fans to pray inside Schneier said: "No comment. They have left me to advise them on how to host the Jewish fans. We have begun discussing the details. Al-Thawadi told the New York Times in an interview with that Israelis will be very welcome during the Mondial games in Qatar."

Arabic site Mobtada is not happy, saying that Qatar, by welcoming Jews, "shows its ugly face."




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  • Wednesday, December 26, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon
Yesterday, I asked Ken Roth from Human Rights Watch a question, and some idiot from Gaza answered this way:


I responded:

My obviously sarcastic suggestion for this lowlife to contribute to world peace in the only possible way he physically can was flagged by Twitter as a violation of their rules.

Since strictly speaking it was a violation, I am not appealing.

So no tweets from me for the next 11 hours and change.



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  • Wednesday, December 26, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon
A few days ago, Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the largely symbolic Palestinian parliament. He pretended to do it in a "legal" way, and therein lies a tale.

The PLC is dominated by Hamas, who won more seats than Fatah in the only parliamentary election ever held in the territories. While it hasn't met since 2006, it still has one meaningful function in Palestinian law: If Abbas dies, the Palestinian Basic Law says that the speaker of the PLC becomes acting prime minister, and that is a Hamas member. So Abbas has incentive to ensure that Fatah remains in control should he expire.

In October, the Fatah Revolutionary Council called on the Palestinian Central Committee to dissolve the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) — the Palestinian parliament. The Fatah Revolutionary Council is dominated by Abbas supporters.

However, the PCC does not have the legal right to dissolve the PLC. And neither does Abbas.

In early December, Abbas vowed to dissolve the PLC "in a legal way." It is unclear if there is any legal way to do so under the Palestinian Basic Law.

But now Abbas has declared that the Palestinian Constitutional Court has indeed dissolved the PLC, just like he wanted.

The Court does not have a webpage. It has a Facebook page that doesn't mention any such decision, or indeed any of its decisions. From that page it appears that members of the court travel to other Islamic countries to conferences on constitutional law - and do little else.

But the Palestinian Constitutional Court, although mentioned in the 2003 Basic Law, was not set up until 2016. 

And guess who handpicked all members of the court? Mahmoud Abbas!


Even when that court was created in 2016, it was seen as a power play to further restrict what the PLC could do, or even as an effective replacement for the PLC.

So it is fitting that Abbas declared that his "Supreme Court" made the decision he told them to do. They could do little else.

Hamas members of the PLC vowed to meet anyway, or at least to hold a press conference in front of the shuttered building of the parliament. Abbas' security forces went there to physically stop them from doing so....claiming that they are just following the decision of the court.


It is remarkable how the Western media still reports on Abbas as if he is somehow a legitimate ruler who is accountable to his people. He is just as much a despot as Syria's Assad, and he controls every single major Palestinian legislative, executive and judicial power.




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  • Wednesday, December 26, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon


A group of Technion students won a competition for creating new, protein rich and sustainable foods by inventing falafel balls based on Spirulina seaweed.

The tahini is enriched with astaxathin.

This was part of the international competition where innovative micro-algae products were developed and business plans for their commercialization and exportation were presented.

The Technion students algae-based falafel were judged to be ready to market, now.

Congratulations....I think.



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