Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, April 15, 2019

There was another fire in a sacred spot today - on the Temple Mount

Today, while the fire at Notre Dame in Paris raged, there was also a fire on the Temple Mount.

Arabic media reports of a fire in the Marwani Mosque, known as Solomon's Stables, on Monday evening.

Sputnik reports:

Part of the Haram ash-Sharif, the huge Jerusalem mosque built where a pivotal event in the prophet Muhammad's life is believed to have occurred, caught fire, damaging a part of the structure dating to Judean King Herod the Great's reign.

The fire broke out in the guard room outside the al-Marwani Prayer Room Monday evening, according to a statement by the mosque's Islamic Waqf (Endowments) Department. According to The New Arab, a guard reported a short gap in guard rotations between 7:15 and 7:30 p.m. local time.

The waqf department praised the responsiveness of staff firefighters, who quickly put out the blaze. The fire seems to have been started by children fooling around, and the waqf's statement urged worshipers "who live around the mosque and in the Old City to educate their children not to tamper with fire, especially inside al-Aqsa mosque."

Well, they play soccer every day there, why should they think it is a sacred area to begin with?

We don't know the extent of the damage. Tons of debris that contained priceless artifacts from the Second Temple period were removed when the Muslims illegally built the huge Marwani Mosque underground. This fire may have damaged even more irreplaceable relics.

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(Pinned at the top for today)

The Elder of Ziyon site continues to grow.

I've been spending more time on Twitter lately, as I've decided to go back to basics a lot more and publish posts that go to the fundamentals of the conflict, as well as to craft tweets that do the same. For example, this tweet did very well last week:

A reminder to all the people who say they they support a two state solution:

Israel offered it to Palestinians, not once but many times. It was rejected every time. Sometimes with terror.

When will you start blaming the Palestinians the way you love to blame Israeli leaders?
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) April 11, 2019

I've also been getting more aggressive against the haters, bursting their bubbles among their fans by pointing out their lies.

We visited Israel in March and there will be more videos from the visit as soon as I find the time to edit and upload them!

I've continued to bring you scoops and perspectives that you cannot read anywhere else.

As usual, my columnists have been doing an excellent job, bringing different perspectives to the site.

I spend lots of time and money keeping this going. I'm one of the very few Internet sites that pays its columnists, even if it is only a small amount,I would love to give them more. Every once in a while, I ask you to help defray the costs of the blog and keep it running. Which also helps Israel!

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Donate today, and have a wonderful Pesach!

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04/15 Links Pt2: How and Why Hamas Founded CAIR; International Union of Muslim Scholars, Which For Years Has Encouraged Jihad, Calls On The West To Prohibit The Discourse Of Hate

From Ian:

How and Why Hamas Founded CAIR

Controversy broke out last week concerning remarks Congresswoman Ilhan Omar made at a gathering of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Last week also marked the fifth anniversary since CAIR—widely regarded by American journalists and politicians as a legitimate representative of U.S. Muslims—successfully pressured Brandeis University into canceling its plans to grant an honorary degree to the apostate Muslim and women’s-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. At the time, Andrew McCarthy responded with an updated version of a chapter from his 2010 book, in which he explained how Hamas operatives created CAIR.

When 25 [Hamas] members and supporters gathered at a Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia on October 27, 1993, they were unaware that the FBI was monitoring their deliberations. The confab was a brainstorming exercise: how best to back Hamas and derail the Oslo Accords while concealing these activities from the American government? . . . In the U.S., Hamas was [by this time] perceived as the principal enemy of the popular “peace process.” . . .

That was where [a] new organization would come in. . . . The new entity’s Islamism and Hamas promotion would have to be less “conspicuous.” It would need to couch its rhetoric in sweet nothings like “social justice,” “due process,” and “resistance.” If it did those things, though, it might be more attractive . . . and effective. A Muslim organization posing as a civil-rights activist while soft-pedaling its jihadist sympathies might be able to snow the American political class, the courts, the media, and the academy. It might make real inroads with the . . . progressives who dominated the Clinton administration. . . .

Despite its Hamas roots and terror ties, the most disturbing aspect of CAIR is its accomplishment of the Muslim Brotherhood’s precise aspiration for it. Thanks to its media savvy and the credulousness of government officials and press outlets, which have treated it as the “civil-rights” group it purports to be rather than the Islamist spearhead that it is, CAIR has been a constant thorn in the side of American national defense.

Jonathan S. Tobin: The City of David and the problem with dividing Jerusalem

A few weeks ago, archaeologists announced the discovery in Jerusalem of clay seals from the 6th century BCE that appear to have belonged to one of the courtiers of King Josiah mentioned in the biblical book of Kings. The discoveries were the product of ongoing excavations of an area known as the City of David, thought to be the main part of Jerusalem in First Temple times. Persistently denying all of the facts of Jewish history in the land of Israel, pro-Palestinian activists have condemned the excavations as the work of “settlers” trying to undermine their claims to Jerusalem. Jonathan Tobin writes:

Critics of the City of David Foundation, [which oversees the excavations and the concomitant preservations efforts], are also against its activities because they believe that the area should be part of a future Palestinian state. They say that the development of the site and the digs are part of an effort to prevent a redivision of Jerusalem that would enable the Palestinian Authority to put its capital in the city. . .

[T]he effort to delegitimize the work at the City of David points to a basic problem: . . . if you’re going to deny Jewish rights to the place where King David and his descendants ruled their ancient kingdom, then you can deny them any place in the country. And that is what Palestinians have continued to do. Their effort to treat the City of David or even the Western Wall as linked to Jewish myths rather than to the beginning of Jewish civilization is inextricably linked to their refusal to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders might be drawn.

Nor can it be argued that in a two-state solution, the Palestinians could be trusted to safeguard historical sites such as these. Just this week, evidence surfaced of ancient tombs in the Jericho area—territory that is governed by the Palestinian Authority—being looted by local Arabs. This is a commonplace occurrence throughout the [Palestinian-administered] territories; the region’s ancient Jewish heritage is being systematically destroyed by those out to make a profit or whose main goal is to eradicate the abundant evidence of the ancient Jewish ties to this land.

The only way to protect the heritage of the City of David is to ensure that it and the rest of Jerusalem remain under undivided Israeli authority with the right of Jews to live in their ancient capital undiminished. Any other solution isn’t a path to peace, but something that will only further encourage the history deniers of the Palestinian Authority to keep fighting their war on Jewish history.

Eyes and ears on Poland

Poland will be very much in the news over the coming month due to ongoing celebrations of the 100th anniversary of its independence, commemorations of the 76th anniversary Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a poster exhibition at the Vitrina Gallery, Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) featuring several of Poland’s leading graphic artists. The upcoming Polish Constitution Day reception will be hosted by Polish Ambassador Marek Magierowski and his wife, Anna, who will also mark the 15th anniversary of Poland’s accession to the European Union, and, of course, the much-lauded Tulia female quartet who will represent Poland at Eurovision.

IN POLAND and in Bund circles around the world, the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is commemorated on its Gregorian calendar date, which this year coincides with both Seder night and Shabbat. Although the Bund is neither Zionist nor religiously observant, in Israel and elsewhere this year, the commemoration was nonetheless brought forward.

In Warsaw, the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra, under the baton of Gabriel Chmura, will pay tribute to the musicians of the Warsaw Ghetto in general and the Warsaw Ghetto Orchestra in particular, at a special concert to be performed at the Polin Museum of the History of the Jews of Poland on Thursday, April 18. Reports from Warsaw indicate that the concert has been sold out.

Chmura, who was born in Wroclaw, in 1946, and migrated with his parents to Israel in 1957, has returned to Poland, where he is a popular figure in musical circles.

He studied piano, composition and conducting at the Tel Aviv University Music Academy, and later in France, Austria and Italy. He won a number of international competitions and has worked with orchestras around the world. In 2001, he was appointed artistic director of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, but continued to tour abroad. Another feather in his Polish cap came in 2012, when he was appointed artistic director of the Poznan Opera. He is also the leading guest conductor of the Krakow Philharmonic and in 2013, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Wroclaw Academy of Music, and in 2017, he was conferred with Poland’s highest artistic award, the Gloria Artis Gold.

The theme of last Friday's Hamas-organized Gaza border riots was "Together to face normalization."

Other Palestinian terror groups are also deathly afraid of the idea that Israel will establish relations with Arab nations. At a rally yesterday, Islamic Jihad leader Khader Habib condemned the policy of Arab normalization with Israel, which he said was "a crime committed against the Palestinian cause and the entire Arab nation at the expense of the Palestinian cities, its villages and its permanent rights."

He said the "Israeli" entity was planted in the middle of the Arab nation as a malicious growth, and that the Palestinian people are targeted through the crime of normalization.

He warned Arab leaders that "the crime of normalization will not protect their thrones" and that "normalization will only bring them shame."

"Normalization is a betrayal of Allah and the Prophet and the nation of Islam and the Palestinian people and the prisoners of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him."

Leaders of the DFLP, PFLP, Hamas and Nasser Salah-al Din Brigades also spoke out against normalization with Israel.

The terror groups, who were considered heroes in the Arab world only a few years ago, are terrified at the idea of being further marginalized and are pulling out all the stops with what little influence they still have - appealing to religion and shame, the two most powerful arguments they can have.

(There are unfortunately no pictures of the audience, so I don't know if this rally attracted dozens or hundreds, The absence of stage indicates that this was not a very large rally and was meant not for Gazans but for the Arab world.)

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Continuing the discussion of the origins of Left-wing anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism (informed by Robert Wistrich From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews and Israel) an obvious objection to tracing the phenomenon back to Marx (and the Bolshevik revolutionaries who did so much damage in his name) is that it continues to allow current inheritors of this ideology to claim to speak for the Left as a whole.

This is actually not just a strong, but a profound argument which I plan to get to shortly. But not before covering the Betrayal portion of the story described so well in Robert Wistrich's book.

Wistrich traces the ambivalence theme in the first two sections of his book (which covers the hundred years between Marx's On the Jewish Question and the birth of the Jewish state) through a series of stories of the people who set the agenda for these ideological and political disputes.

Through brief intellectual histories of people such as Franz Mehring, Bernard Lazare, and Karl Kautsky (not to mention more well known names such as Karl Marx, Rose Luxmburg and Leon Trotsky) we can see how different individuals and groups grappled with Jews insisting on expressing their political aspirations by carving out their own portion of the labor movement (the Jewish Bund) or by developing a national consciousness (the Zionists), rather than just folding themselves into a theoretical classless society through assimilation.

Many (although by no means all) of these revolutionaries were, like Marx, estranged Jews, which might explain the extreme hostility they displayed when having to confront specific Jewish concerns. But simple politics can explain other elements of Left-wing hostility to Jewish particularism, such as Lenin's willingness to entertain the national rights of Czechs and Poles (but not Jews) since national agitation among the former could help him achieve his goal of overthrowing the Russian Czarist state, while the later were more useful providing assimilated foot soldiers for the Revolution.

The fact that almost all the Jews who threw their lot in with Communism were murdered either before, during or after the Soviet takeover of Russia (mostly by their Comrades) demonstrates just how wrong they were with regard to the fate of the Jews after the Revolution. But while Stalin relied as much on Russian nationalism (which included deep-rooted anti-Semitism) to force industrialize the USSR and get the nation through World War II, there was a brief window where state-sponsored anti-Jewish bigotry was not allowed to impact the Soviet Union's Machiavellian geopolitics.

This is why the Soviets supported creation of the State of Israel in 1948 (and allowed their emerging satellite of Czechoslovakia to provide the Jewish state with its few arms). For at the time, the Jews seem most poised to disrupt the status quo in the region, a status quo that involved an exhausted Britain trying to hold onto an Empire it no longer had the power, resources or will to continue controlling.

To a large extent, this bet paid off. For while Zionism is no longer talked about as a revolutionary movement amongst the Left, it was the example of Israel throwing off the yoke of imperial rule (while Arab opponents such as Jordan continued to ally themselves with the fading British Empire) that inspired other Third World peoples to similarly reject European rule and form their own nations.

The irony is that once those nations were formed, many threw their lot in with the new empire on the block: a Soviet Union that had mastered the ability to propagandize about creating a worker's paradise at home and liberating people abroad, while they were actually building the world's largest prison camp nternally and exporting their soldier's, propagandists and secret police forces around the globe to create a new imperial holdings.

It was during this post-war period that we get to what Wistrich refers to as "Betrayal." For once they had pocketed their gains by exploiting Israel's usefulness in cracking British rule in the region, the Soviets quickly switched their allegiance to Israel's Arab foes (as well as many other emerging states) to create the world we know today where cynical exploitation of the language of human rights and freedom is coupled with brutal repression at home and aggression abroad.

For the first two decades after 1948, the language of hostility was still driven by the fading monarchs and emerging military dictators of the Arab world who insisted their goal was to "throw the Jews into the sea." But after the 1967 Six Day War, the propaganda we see today took full flower as the real issues in the region (human rights abusing Arab tyrannies refusing to allow a Jewish presence to exist in the Middle East) was turned on its head to claim that it was the Jews who were refusing to allow an Arab (Palestinian) presence in their midst.

Given that discussion of Palestinian and general Arab responsibility for their own fate is now off limits in discussion of the Middle East within far-Left circles (a mode of discussion that has, to a certain extent, gone mainstream), we can see how successful this new propaganda message has been.

But the sheer vehemence of hostility towards the Jewish state expressed by the Soviets, their allies and (today) the post-Soviet far Left, cannot entirely be explained by opportunism or realpolitik. Annual condemnations of Israel in a Soviet (and now Arab League/OIC) dominated UN are one thing. But turning such condemnations into an hourly ritual, and coupling these with political language and imagery that would have found a home in Der Stermer represents something else entirely.

This something else might simply be the mutation of the anti-Semitic virus which once condemned Jews as a religion then as a race, now turning on them as a nation.

But as the core of the Communist belief system (the imminence of world revolution driven by the working classes) vanished as those working classes refused to budge (or – as in Germany – joined decidedly un-Marxist mass movements), something had to fill this void.

For a while, there were attempts to have the masses of the Third World take over the role that was originally to be played by the industrial proletariat (even if this meant turning that industrial proletariat from the engine of progressive revolution to part of the machinery of global repression).

But as even this hope evaporated with the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was little left for Marxist believers to actually believe in. Which may explain why a certain vanguard continues to deny so much objective reality and use the aggressive and ruthless tactics that emerged during the Age of Ideologies to propel forward the only thing left of their once eternal and global agenda: that Israel Must Go.

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04/15 Links Pt1: Has the Body of Israeli Hero Eli Cohen Been Recovered?; Trump Deal Offers No Palestinian State; PA: Zionism = Antisemitism

From Ian:

JCPA: Has the Body of Israeli Hero Eli Cohen Been Recovered?

The Syrian opposition issued reports that the remains of the Israeli spy Eli Cohen had been delivered to the Russians, and they also gave details about the remains of Israelis buried in Syria, in general.

There has been no clear Israeli denial of these reports. If Cohen’s remains have indeed been transferred, they will have to undergo Israeli identification. Meanwhile, the Syrian opposition also issued new information on how Syrian intelligence has been guarding the remains of Israelis in Syria at President Bashar Assad’s bidding.

Israeli intelligence agent Eli Cohen

The Syrian opposition reported on the remains of Israelis and how the Syrian regime has been tending to them.

The first report was issued on Twitter on April 14, 2019, by someone in the Syrian opposition, and it concerned the remains of the Israeli spy Eli Cohen.

The tweet stated:
There are unverified leaks within Damascus itself about a coffin that was transferred with the Russian delegation that left Syria. The leaks say the coffin may contain the remains of the Israeli spy Eli Cohen. We are awaiting verification.

No other source has verified this tweet, which was first publicized in Israel by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. It, too, however, has not been denied clearly by Israel.

Subsequently, the Syrian-opposition website Orient Net posted a detailed report on the remains of Israelis buried in Syria.

Rumors on Eli Cohen’s remains spread in Arab media

Rumors circulated Sunday night that a Russian team, possibly assisted by Syrian opposition groups, had extricated the remains of venerated Israeli spy Eli Cohen, taking them from Syria in a coffin and preparing to return him to Israel.

The legendary “our man in Damascus,” Cohen spied on the Syrian military establishment for four years after befriending top-level Syrian officials and celebrities under the alias Kamel Amin Thaabet. After being discovered, he was tortured by the Syrians before being executed on May 18, 1965.

In Israel, his name became synonymous with self-sacrifice and heroism, the information he provided having been fundamental to Israel’s decisive victory in the Six Day War.

Israeli officials have kept silent regarding the reports, which came in just two weeks after Sgt. 1st Class Zachary Baumel was buried on Mount Herzl, 37 years after he went missing during a battle of in Operation Peace for the Galilee.

Baumel was also exhumed by Russia and his personal effects were honored in a special ceremony in Moscow attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Since Cohen’s execution, widow Nadia Cohen has been working to bring his remains home but to no avail. In 2008, a former bureau chief of former Syrian leader Hafez Assad said no one knew where Cohen was buried, because the grave had been relocated when officials became concerned that Israel would find it.

Last year, Nadia was presented with her late husband’s wristwatch by the Mossad intelligence agency, an article which had been retrieved in a special operation.

PMW: PA: Zionism = Antisemitism

With victimhood being the most prominent component of Palestinian identity, and with the world increasingly condemning Antisemitism, the Palestinian Authority has decided to embrace Antisemitism as a new category of Palestinian victimhood. The PA Foreign Ministry has announced that since Palestinians are "Semites," any policies that harm Palestinians are expressions of Antisemitism. Since the PA sees Zionism as victimizing Palestinians - "Zionism is hostile to Palestine" - they conclude that Zionism inherently is Antisemitism. Moreover, American policy critical of the Palestinian Authority, is likewise Antisemitism.

This creative new Palestinian victimhood category announced by the PA comes in response to the American position expressed recently by Secretary of State Pompeo: "Let me go on record: Anti-Zionism IS Antisemitism."

According to the PA's new announcement, anti-Zionism cannot be Antisemitism because Zionism itself, by hurting Palestinians, is Antisemitism.

The following is an excerpt from the article in the official PA daily:
"The [PA] Ministry of Foreign Affairs... said that... American Secretary of State [Mike] Pompeo has voiced a series of false positions... Pompeo has allowed himself to remove the Palestinians and the Arabs from the Semitic race by stating that 'Anti-Zionism or objection to Israel's existence as the homeland of the Jewish people, is a type of Antisemitism that is escalating (see note below -Ed.).'

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized that hostility towards the Palestinian people is Antisemitism, and that the ugly, recurring, and deliberate Antisemitism that [US President] Trump's administration is committing against Semitic Palestine is also Antisemitism. In addition, the American administration has no right to ignore the fact that Semitism is not exclusive to the original Jews, but also includes the Arab Palestinians, and therefore any manifestation of hostility towards Palestinians is an explicit manifestation of Antisemitism. Moreover, since Zionism is hostile to Palestine, its people, and the establishment of a national homeland for the Palestinian people on the land of its homeland, this makes Zionism itself antisemitic."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 29, 2019]

Most NGOs in Gaza and the West Bank care little about actual Palestinians. As we have seen over and over again, organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, not to mention most Palestinian-based NGOs like Adalah, do nothing to help actual Palestinians and spend all of their time and money in the region on bashing Israel.

Exceptions are rare but worth highlighting.

One of the biggest challenges to the Palestinians, especially in Gaza, is jobs. There seem to be more of them employed to generate white papers about how bad things are than to actually do anything positive for their community. The fact that Hamas actions have isolated Gaza means that Palestinians that want good jobs need to look for jobs that can be done from anywhere in the world.

I am aware of only one such initiative, and that is Gaza Sky Geeks, run by MercyCorps in conjunction with many partners including Google.

The Code Academy, a joint project of Gaza Sky Geeks and Founders & Coders International, is the first full-stack coding bootcamp in Palestine. We will train 16 students per cohort in a full-time, intensive course for 8 weeks with an additional 16 weeks of project-based learning with real-world clients to jumpstart your professional portfolio. The objective is to graduate as full-stack developers who can deploy production-grade software online and secure high-quality jobs with companies or work as freelance developers.

Our immersive course is peer-led and project-based with students working in teams of 4. Students take turns delivering workshops, running code reviews, and managing projects. The course covers test-driven development, using a full JavaScript stack (JavaScript and Node.js) with relational databases. We also teach aspects of UX design and project management.

Once finished, graduates of the Code Academy will be competent full-stack developers, able to work in big teams, build complete prototypes to test their ideas, work with clients, and manage the lifecycle of a product.

Unlike other NGOs, I see no hint of a political program in this initiative. This is one of the very few programs that are truly meant to help Palestinians and not look at them as pawns to further an anti-Israel objective.

The real question is, why is Gaza Sky Geeks so anomalous?

Unfortunately, the answer seems to be that the other NGOs have learned that bashing Israel is the easiest way to raise money. The people who pretend to want to help Palestinians are usually really anti-Israel (and the only reason to be so obsessively anti-Israel is essentially always antisemitism.) It is a sick cycle of chasing limited donor funds and NGOs turning into political actors rather than organizations that care about actual people. This is why worldwide NGOs seem to do worthwhile work in other areas of the world and still treat Palestinians like nothing beyond ammunition against the Jewish state.

Gaza Sky Geeks proves that it doesn't have to be this way.

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Why, exactly, does @UNRWA exist in Jordan again? No one seems to know.

Last week, UNRWA tweeted this:

Which again brings up a fundamental question: Why does UNRWA still exist in Jordan?

There are over 2.2 million Palestinians getting services from UNRWA in Jordan, about 45% of the total number of people that get UNRWA aid. The vast majority of "refugees" in UNRWA are not refugees by any definition, but in Jordan the disconnect is worse - since nearly all of them are citizens of Jordan.

And their families have been citizens for 70 years.

What possible justification is there to maintain a parallel educational, housing and medical aid system for full Jordanian citizens, on the world's dime?

And just as importantly, why does the world accept Jordan officially treating a significant part of its population as not being quite Jordanian?

Even the most ardent fans of UNRWA have no answer to this. I once engaged in a brief Twitter discussion with a major academic supporter of UNRWA who claimed (falsely) that UNRWA's criteria for being a "refugee" is very close to that of UNHCR, but even he admitted that there is no way UNHCR would accept most Jordanians as refugees.

Yet UNRWA, with all of its financial crises, still exists in Jordan and still provides hundreds of millions of dollars of services there. While the US is thankfully no longer contributing to this organization whose only purpose is to keep Palestinian nationalism alive instead of trying to solve a refugee problem, one has to wonder when the other major donors to UNRWA will start asking the simple question: what possible justification is there for a continued presence in Jordan of an "refugee" organization that is giving services to people who are fully Jordanian citizens and haven't been refugees by any definition for decades?

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In Financial Times, former prime minister of Norway Gro Harlem Brundtland weighs in about how the two state solution is in danger, and how she is afraid that Israel might annex parts of the West Bank that would become part of Israel in any conceivable peace plan anyway.

She displays, as so many do, a peculiar amnesia about what exactly happened to end negotiations between Israel and the PLO:

For 25 years Europe’s relations with Israelis and Palestinians have been based on the assumption that the promises of a two-state solution would be realised. As the prime minister of Norway when the Oslo accords were signed in 1993, I hoped we had finally seen a breakthrough. Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization sat together, and agreed that they would gradually move towards a negotiated peace within five years.

Tragically, that approach was never seen through. Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister who had signed the accords with Yasser Arafat, was assassinated in 1995 for his brave move towards peace. After that, Israel expanded settlements, instead of transferring West Bank territory to the Palestinians. Meanwhile, Palestinian factions carried out violent attacks on Israeli civilians as well as military personnel.

There have been repeated attempts to revive negotiations, but all have petered out.

Actually, Israel did transfer more land to Palestinians after Rabin's assassination - 80% of Hebron. The prime minister who made that decision? Benjamin Netanyahu.

That cannot be mentioned because Rabin was a saint and Netanyahu is a right wing warmonger.

But even worse than that lie is the complete absence of mentioning Bill Clinton's attempts to forge an agreement in 2000 through the end of his term in 2001. Israel agreed - the Palestinians refused. And when negotiations failed, Palestinians started a war against Israeli civilians.

That is important information in understanding why Israel is not more forthcoming for peace. But even with that, Israel offered Palestinians a state in 2008 and accepted a US framework for peace in 2014, both times to be rebuffed again, without a counteroffer.

These facts are relevant to understand the failure of Oslo, but to many people, Oslo is a religion and it doesn't matter how much proof one has against it, it must be believed in.

Brundtland, together with about 25 other former European diplomats and leaders have signed onto a letter affirming the two state solution as the only solution ahead of Trump's proposed plan that is rumored not to include a full Palestinian state. That letter similarly doesn't mention any peace attempts by Israel that were quashed by Palestinian terror. Only Israel is held to be in violation of Oslo and international law, and only Israel is at fault for the failure of the two state solution, according to these former diplomats trying to be relevant. This op-ed is part of that push.

If these diplomats and former leaders cannot even admit the basic facts about why Oslo failed nearly two decades ago, why should anyone trust that they know what they are talking about now?

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Documentary on how Arabs mistreated Jews in Arab countries

I don't know what year this was made. Gal Productions is an Israeli producer of video that has been around for a while.

It shows that the claim that Jews and Arabs lived together in harmony is simply a lie.

There are way too few films on this topic.

Here are all three parts:

(h/t Rachel)

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04/14 Links: The myth of 'land for peace'; Assange’s anti-Semitism revisited; Louis Farrakhan Is Not a Fringe Lunatic; He Is Dangerous

From Ian:

The myth of 'land for peace'

Israelis, and friends of the Jewish State alike, are accustomed to the never-ending scorn the United Nations heaps on the Middle East’s only free democracy, never mind its desire for peace with all of its Arab neighbors. It may seem unfathomable then that the very same institution [UN] was ultimately responsible for the creation of Israel.

In 1917, Secretary Arthur Balfour simply expressed Great Britain’s view with favor for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

In contrast, the Mandate is the multilateral binding agreement which laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in the geographical area called Palestine, the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered in international law.

The Mandate was not a naive vision briefly embraced by the international community. The entire League of Nations – 51 countries – unanimously declared on that July 24th, 1922: “Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

The Mandate clearly differentiates between political rights referring to Jewish self-determination as an emerging polity—and civil and religious rights, referring to guarantees of equal personal freedoms to non-Jewish residents as individuals and within select communities. Not once are Arabs as a people mentioned in the Mandate for Palestine. Nowhere in the document is there any granting of political rights to Arabs.

Article 2 of the “Mandate for Palestine” document, calls to place the country “Under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.”

Article 5 of the “Mandate for Palestine” clearly states that "The Mandatory [Great Britain] shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign power." The territory of Palestine was exclusively assigned for the Jewish National Home.

Assange’s anti-Semitism revisited

Assange himself has spoken about Jews several times, with plain and heartfelt hostility. The first occasion was in 2011, when he phoned Ian Hislop, the editor of the British satirical magazine Private Eye, to complain about a piece that highlighted Assange’s friendship with a notorious character named Israel Shamir. (A Russian Jew who converted to Orthodox Christianity, Shamir has been writing unhinged missives denouncing Judaism and Zionism for the last 20 years, mostly for far-right websites.) By running the item, Assange said, Hislop had joined an international conspiracy against WikiLeaks led by journalists, all of whom, Assange emphasized, “are Jewish.” When Hislop challenged this invocation of a classic anti-Semitic trope, Assange suddenly replied, “Forget about the Jewish thing.”

But Hislop didn’t forget, and Assange promptly accused him – as is the fashion among those charged with making anti-Semitic statements – of engaging in a smear campaign. Those who gave Assange the benefit of the doubt on that occasion were, however, stumped in 2013, when WikiLeaks employee James Ball resigned from the organization precisely because of Assange’s relationship with Shamir, whom he described as “an anti-Semitic writer … and a man with ties and friends in the Russian security services.” Then, in 2016, four years into his residency at the Ecuadorian Embassy, Assange picked up on the social-media meme of placing parentheses symbolizing an echo chamber on either side of the names of Jewish writers.

“Tribalist symbol for establishment climbers? Most of our critics have 3 (((brackets around their names))) & have black-rim glasses. Bizarre,” Assange said on Twitter, in a routine example of anti-Semitic dog-whistling. Shortly afterward, and getting a taste of his own medicine, a private message sent by Assange in which he insulted the Jewish journalist Raphael Sutter was leaked online. “He’s always been a rat,” Assange said of Sutter. “But he’s Jewish and engaged with the ((()))) issue.”

It would seem, then, that what most agitates Assange about Jews is their clannishness and tribalism, their habit of sticking together politically, their notorious practice of smearing critics as “anti-Semites” and their penetration of the establishment. It’s probably not coincidental that these supposed traits are exactly what Shamir detests about Jews, too, as will be demonstrated by a quick perusal of his ravings.

The antisemitic tweets of murdered Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi

Khashoggi also showed some genuine interest in the makeup of Israel, tweeting in June 2011 about the role of Iranian Jews in the country. In a tweet that same month, he wrote about the “desperation of the Jews to deny the Protocols.” Belief in the antisemitic forgery of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion has remained common in the Middle East in both Arab nationalist and Muslim Brotherhood circles up until the present day. Former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and Hamas both pushed conspiracies regarding the text. These conspiracies were also advanced by Malaysian President Mahathir Mohammed in a 2003 speech to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. As such, Khashoggi would have been familiar with this view.

In December 2011 and July 2012, he referenced the marginalization of Jewish women by “religious Jews,” and the “superstition of the Jews” in reference to Israel and prayers at the Western Wall, calling Jews “deceivers” or “swindlers.”

In August 2012, he argued in relation to Israel: “There is no land that God has made for a people,” noting that while Jews defeated the Canaanites, the Romans defeated the Jews, and it was Muslims who made the land “for all religions.” He was also skeptical of Jewish heritage in the Land of Israel, a theme that returns several times in his tweets. In July 2014, he referred to Jews in Israel as “usurpers,” implying they had stolen or occupied the land.

In September 2012 – when a controversial anti-Islamic video in the US led to riots in Egypt and Libya, and to the murder of the US ambassador in Benghazi – Khashoggi was asked why it was permitted to have a film critiquing Islam in the US., but not questioning the Holocaust. “The reason,” he replied, “is that the Jews passed legislation that criminalized the [questioning] of the Holocaust, while even Catholics failed to criminalize the abuse of Christ.”

On September 13, 2012, he tweeted, “If this was skeptical of the Holocaust, America would not allow it to be published, because the Jews succeeded in obtaining a law that would prevent it in America and Europe.” There is no such law in the US preventing Holocaust denial, but Khashoggi used the false claim to attack Jews.

Father Manuel Musallam is a prominent Palestinian Arab priest and former head Department for the Christians of the PLO Foreign Office. He has been a Fatah activist for decades.

In a recent interview in Palestine Today, he says explicitly that the Palestinian ambition is to take over Israel.

"The great March of Return and its continuation reflects the state of the clash between the Palestinian resistance and the Israeli occupation forces, and the alarm bell in Israel continues to touch on the fact that the Palestinian did not forget and will not forget his land, country and villages. Jerusalem is the capital of Gaza, Jerusalem is Gaza, Gaza is the Palestinian right, Gaza is Haifa, Safad, Acre, Umm al-Rashrash (Eilat), Nablus, Galilee, and all of the land of Palestine."

Tellingly, he spoke at a rally in Jenin in 1993 meant to get Palestinians on board with the Oslo process that had begun only days earlier. The speaker before him at that speech, representing Fatah's youth group, "gave a short, passionate defense of the Declaration of Principles, arguing that gaining a foothold in Gaza and Jericho would be but an initial step in an eventual reclamation of all of Mandate Palestine and the return of all refugees." Musallam's speech was received even more enthusiastically and he ended it with a bastardization of Psalms: ‘If I forget thee, O Palestinian Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning.’ He now routinely refers to "occupation" as starting in 1948, not 1967.

This is five days before Arafat said the same thing on Jordanian TV:

Do not forget that our Palestine National Council accepted the decision in 1974. It called for the establishment of a national authority on any part of Palestinian land that is liberated or from which the Israelis withdrew. This is the fruit of your struggle, your sacrifices, and your jihad … This is the moment of return, the moment of gaining a foothold on the first liberated Palestinian land … Long live Palestine, liberated and Arab.

Everyone in Yasir Arafat's Fatah knew from the beginning that Oslo was a Trojan horse meant to take over all of Israel.

And yet the Western media and pundits and politicians still look at Oslo as the solution, rather than the first stage of the intended destruction of Israel.

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