Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, July 01, 2019

07/01 Links Pt1: Kushner’s Peace Proposal Would End the Palestinian Refugee Problem; Abbas’ advisor repeats PA antisemitic narrative; Mossad head: Nuclear archive operation exposed 'big Iranian lie'

From Ian:

PMW: Abbas’ advisor repeats PA antisemitic narrative

According to this narrative, Jews were unwanted in Europe - an European plot created a homeland for them in Palestine.

According to the Palestinian Authority’s historical revision, Jews have no connection to the Land of Israel. The reason there are any Jews in “Palestine” is because of a European plot to get rid of the unwanted Jews. This antisemitic part of the Palestinian narrative was repeated last week by PA Chairman Abbas’ advisor on Foreign Relations, Nabil Shaath, at a symposium in Iraq:

“Shaath presented the plotting role that the US has played throughout history in order to erase the Palestinian identity and right, beginning with the Balfour [Declaration] that would not have been issued without American support, and the European plot to settle the Jews who were unwanted in Europe in order to get rid of them, so that they created a homeland for them that would absorb them in Palestine.” [Al-Ayyam, June 26, 2019]

Palestinian Media Watch has exposed the antisemitic element of the PA narrative numerous times. Another of Abbas’ advisors, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, for example, has stated that Europe supported Zionism to get rid of the Jews:

Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Abbas' Advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs: "After World War II ended, the colonialist states wanted to get rid of the presence of the Jews of Europe, who had a monopoly over the economy and capital. Therefore, they supported these claims and helped them establish their state on the land of Palestine at the expense of the Palestinian people, who are still suffering from this crime."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 24, 2018]

Jared Kushner’s Peace Proposal Would End the Palestinian Refugee Problem

The U.S. “Peace to Prosperity” plan, unveiled at the Bahrain conference last week, calls for putting $50 billion toward improving the economic situation of the Palestinians; of this, over half is to be disbursed in Gaza and the West Bank, while the remainder would be divided among Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt—to be spent on descendants of Palestinian refugees living in the first two countries, and Gazans resettled in the last. From this part of the plan, Raphael Bouchnik-Chen sees an attempt to integrate these Palestinians into the countries where they live, and end their anomalous status as permanent “refugees”:

The Trump administration is pursuing the goal of changing the Palestinian experience from that of a society of miserable “refugees” into that of a prosperous society. . . . Kushner’s concept has a historical precedent. On June 15, 1959, the UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold presented a resettlement initiative. Hammarskjold assumed there were means available for the absorption of the refugees into the economy of the Arab region, and asserted that the refugees would be beneficial to their host countries by providing the manpower necessary to those countries’ development. He proposed that the program be financed by oil revenues and international funds up to $2 billion.

In 1959, [the Arab League] claimed that acceptance of the UN secretary general’s plan, with no guarantees, would have been tantamount to giving up [Palestinians’] economic and political rights. The Arabs accused Hammarskjold of exceeding his legal limits, and faulted him for ignoring the fact that the economic issues were the result of the political conflict. Addressing the economic question also separated the refugee problem from the conflict as a whole, which, so it was argued, was one of nationhood.

Why a U.S.-Israel Alliance is a Terrible Idea

Beyond the political imperatives on both sides, the decisive question regarding a US-Israel defense treaty can be cast in terms of cost-benefit analysis. The various costs have been outlined above. As to the benefits, a formal alliance would not necessarily add to the key components vital to Israel's national security.

US military assistance, which indeed provides the IDF with key components of its build-up and maintenance, clearly constitutes an element in Israel's deterrence equation. But this rests upon the existing long-term (ten year) commitments of the Administration and upon annual congressional allocations – not upon any treaty. The weight and size of the assistance package is a function of US determination to help an ally, and not predicated upon the existence of a formal treaty document. Nor would such a document change hostile perceptions of Israel's immense base of support in the US as it is today.

A US-Israel defense treaty would also pose some diplomatic difficulties. A degree of formal distance between Jerusalem and Washington is useful in Israel's diplomatic interactions with many of the Third World countries that are suspicious of a superpower. In addition, under a defense treaty, Israel will be even less free to compete with the US military industries than it is today. As a formal ally, Jerusalem would be less likely to conduct effective diplomacy with Moscow, let alone host a tripartite US-Russia-Israel summit of national security advisors.

Thus, a defense treaty between Israel and the US would reflect noble sentiment; but beyond the statement of friendship, it is neither desirable nor practical. The treaty may be a lofty idea, but one that works well only if it remains theoretical.

The real goal of "Never Again Action" isn't to help immigrants. It is to recruit Jews to hate Israel.

In only the past few weeks, a previously unknown group called Never Again Action has come out of nowhere to gain thousands of followers as a Jewish group to oppose US immigration policies.

Michael Elgort traced the evolution of their Twitter account:

Few days ago this account was created to provide coverage for @aoc shameful words and it was created by a group of marginalized Jews from @IfNotNowOrg. Account had 30 followers day before yesterday. Today it has more than 4000 and Beinart is promoting it

Peter Beinart

✔@PeterBeinart

This perfectly captures the generational and moral divide among American Jews. Establishment Jewish leaders were offended that @AOC applied the language of Never Again to Trump's barbarism. Young Jewish activists are invoking Never Again to fight it https://twitter.com/NeverAgainActn/status/1145427476547588097 …

Never Again Action @NeverAgainActn

Replying to @NeverAgainActn

Our Jewish faith and practice is why we are here today. It’s what drives us to take action. #JewsAgainstICE #NeverAgainMeans

6,940

8:42 PM - Jun 30, 2019

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This is how it looked 3 days ago. First followers were Sophie-Ellman Golan and If Not Now. Now it suddenly came into the spotlight, gained thousands of followers and RTs from blue ticks. Of course @aoc follows it now, it fully supports her wildest claims.

Sophie started to promote account she was a first follower of.
Immediately after other blue ticks followed to promote it (including Beinart in my first tweet above) and list of followers grew to Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, @popchassid, Simone Zimmerman and @aoc of course

And now a sitting American congresswoman @aoc is promoting an unknown org created few days ago by @IfNotNowOrg - an organization that supports BDS and other antisemitic orgs. Will anyone ask her does she support BDS now? Look at the screenshots. She moneyraises for them. WTF?

I think this is more insidious than Elgort is saying.

It is bad enough that they are using the Holocaust and their supposed Jewish identities to push their agenda. This cheapens the Holocaust by comparing it to whatever is the flavor of the week. (Their video of saying Kaddish for people who died crossing the border, when they never said Kaddish for actual Holocaust victims, speaks volumes.)

This, however, is not about ICE. This is about Israel.

It was started by IfNotNow, which is an anti-Israel organization (which in turn seems to have been spun off from Jewish Voice for Peace.)

The purpose of Never Again Action is twofold, and neither have to do with ICE.

One is to hijack the Holocaust so that Israel's purpose to be a safe haven for Jews that was so obvious in the 1940s is weakened as just one more Holocaust analogy. Here is theirs:

We’ve seen this groundwork laid before. We were taught to never let anything like the Holocaust happen again.
We refuse to wait and see -- we know from our own history what happens when a government targets, dehumanizes and strips an entire group of people of all their civil and human rights. Never again is now.
Many of our ancestors narrowly escaped from conditions like what we are seeing today in concentration camps at the border and detention centers around the country. We repeated the phrase "Never Again" within our synagogues, day schools and summer camps. We learned our history so that we, as Jews, would never allow for this scale of injustice and horror to occur again.

Not to defend how the US is dealing with a very difficult problem, but it is incredibly offensive to directly compare the conditions in these detainment facilities and the Nazi concentration camps.

The other, and primary, goal of Never Again Action is to enmesh hatred of Israel in every single liberal cause.

Never Again Action is trying to mobilize young people to get angry and demonstrate against Trump and his policies - to get them to protest, write letters, get active.

Once they are active in that cause, then they are primed to be active against Israel. They will be exposed to a constant barrage of explicit and implicit anti-Israel messages (comparing US policy towards illegal immigrants to how Israel treats Palestinians.) Never Again Action is a preparatory school for IfNotNow.

Right now, IfNotNow has a lot of publicity but not a lot of members. They need to recruit more Jewish youth, but most of them don't care about Israel one way or another. These extremist anti-Israel activists are trying to get Jews involved in any liberal cause so they can then join their recruiters in their main purpose: to destroy the Jewish state by pretending to uphold Jewish values.

This is a refinement of the strategy the Palestinians have used since the UN General Assembly declared them a state. The PLO joined lots of international organizations, but all they really do is try to hijack their causes against Israel. This has not been very effective.

It has been more effective in the West, as anti-Israel activists use Black Lives Matter and the Women's March to push their messages along the others in the name of "intersectionality." But there has been pushback there as well, as the antisemitism of some leaders of both organizations have been exposed.

The main weapon the IfNotNow folks have is to claim that they represent a significant number of Jews. Surveys show that they don't, and that they make more noise than real impact. So this is the tactic they came upon: recruit Jews for a completely unrelated liberal cause, make a bogus linkage (like they try to link police brutality with Israel,) and then they have new recruits to go on anti-Israel marches.

This isn't about human rights. This is a cynical hijacking of a human rights cause with the ultimate aim of depriving Jews in Israel of their human rights.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Dictionary.com uses only hateful anti-Zionist sources for its entry on "Zionist" (UPDATE)

If you want to know what the word Zionist means, Dictionary.com will provide you with lots of examples to make you hate Zionists.

A Zionist is a follower of Zionism, a movement that created and supports Israel as the official state for Jewish people in Palestine. The term can be a neutral, positive, or offensive term for a Jewish Israeli nationalist.

Its basic definition is flawed to begin with by defining the area that Jews have wanted to live for millennia by the name it was given by the Romans to erase Jewish history there: "Palestine."

The second sentence of the definition is also simply wrong: many Zionists are not Jews.

A dictionary should note that the word is used as an epithet by some. But Dictionary.com goes way beyond that, using only negative examples of the word, and misrepresenting them as well.

Its "related words" box has absolutely nothing to do with Zionism, and except for the Ten Commandments, they are all offensive.

Things get much worse.

Every example of its use comes from rabid haters of Israel.

The first comes from some random tweeter who refers to the "zionist apartheid regime" - who on Earth would choose that as a representative example?

The second is worse, as it pretends to be quoting Jewish Telegraphic Agency but in fact it is quoting Jeremy Corbyn.

The third is a photo of a tiny Jewish anti-Zionist sect.

And it doesn't end there. The illustration of "Zionism" used in its discussion of the origin of the word is the notorious Map That Lies, credited to anti-Zionist site Mondoweiss:

WTF?? The lying map has zero to do with Zionism and everything to do with anti-Zionist and antisemitic propaganda.

And even this section is inaccurate:

Zionist activism continued into the 20th century. The word Zionist became so closely associated with Jewish politics that antisemites weaponized up the term. The 1903 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, for instance, notoriously fear-mongered a Jewish state in Palestine as just the first step toward their masterplan of world domination.

The Protocols forgery had nothing to do with Zionism. It was pure antisemitism.

It then goes on to say that many people use Zionist pejoratively, and gives even more examples!

Not once does it mention that anti-Zionism is often a cover for antisemitism, which is in fact how it is used most of the time nowadays.

There is not a single example of using the word Zionist in a positive way. Not one. The people who coined the term don't get to define it.

This is a reference site on the Internet, and Google uses it as an authoritative source. If this is how it defines Zionism, then if Dictionary.com has any integrity at all, people should be fired for politicizing a dictionary entry to incite hate.

(h/t Mitchell Bard)

UPDATE: Dictionary.com got rid of the offensive examples and changed the definition. The entry isn't perfect but it is much better.

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The top budget priority for the Palestinian Authority remains payments to terrorists and families of terrorists, above all other matters.

Palestinian Authority prime minister Mohammed Ashtayyeh announced this morning that all employees of his government will continue to receive only 60% of their salaries this month as the PA continues to refuse to accept Israel's attempts to hand over the tax revenues it is owed unless Israel pays the full amount, including the payments for terrorists and their families.

The only exception is payments to prisoners and their families, essentially all of whom have been convicted of terror related activities. Ashtayyeh emphasized that those terrorist payments will continue at 100% .

Israeli law does not allow Israel to hand over the 6% or so of tax revenue that is earmarked for payments to terrorists and their families. Ever since Israel reduced that amount of payments, the PA refused to accept any payments at all.

For people whose brothers or sons murdered a Jewish child, their salary is the highest priority and the most secure source of income possible under the Palestinian Authority.

Also, the PA continues to pay salaries of "employees" in Gaza who have not gone to work since Hamas took over the area a decade ago.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Egyptian academic writes in popular newspaper that Jews who were forced to convert in the 1400s-1700s are Trojan horses to take over the world

Youm7 (Seventh Day) is one of Egypt's most popular newspaper sites and one of the top 300 Internet sites worldwide, with roughly the same world rank as Buzzfeed.

Over the weekend it published an astonishingly antisemitic story, written by Dr. Huda Darwish, Professor of Comparative Religion, Zagazig University.

It starts out like this:

The Jews have been known to deal with usury, bribery, the creation of lies, creating division among nations, the provision of false and misleading information to the peoples, and the swaying of hearts and minds.

Our purpose in writing these lines is to reveal the root of the Jewish personality, which accepts subterfuge in all its meanings and types - whether religious, political, economic or social - by following all means of camouflage and concealment to achieve its purposes.

It gets worse. Jews who were forced to convert or die by both Christians and Muslims are characterized as having infiltrated these religions in order to destroy them from inside. For example:

In the course of the ages, Jewish sects have become assimilated to other faiths, whether forced, coercive or voluntary. These sects adopted secret methods that were vague enough as to reach the practice of worship of other religions openly, while their rituals were held secretly and hidden away from the eyes. These include New Christians who lived in Europe on the Iberian Peninsula since the 15th century, and the Dounma or Sabbatean sects of Asia who lived east in Turkey since the 17th century.

The Marranos, with their commercial investments, formed pressure groups on the peoples of those countries, where they managed to infiltrate into the ranks of the monks, adding intolerance to Christianity. The Jewish rabbis succeeded in converting to Christianity and held positions as supreme preachers in the state, such as popes, priests, baptists and members of the Inquisition, to sentence to imprisonment, murder and burn the accused Jews for the preservation of their property.

Thus, the Jewish penetration in Spain and Portugal was led by the ingenuity of the Jews in the disposition of money and speculation. They were the money changers, the financiers and the owners of the financial and commercial houses. They represented the vanguard of liberalism groups in the world in order to elevate the individual at the expense of the state.

The professor goes on to say that Sabbatean Jews also infiltrated Ottoman society and Muslim sects like Sufi and took major positions while practicing Judaism in secret.

To this day, many individuals belonging to the Marranos and Donna sects continue to live hidden among the peoples of the earth, infiltrating them with deceit and hypocrisy, as if they do not constitute a danger among them, in order to enable Zionism, to undermine Christian and Islamic sanctities, to build the Greater State of Israel and to achieve glory Of the Jewish people in the land and the west.

This is pure antisemitism, in one of the world's most popular websites.

Western media and human rights groups, as always, remain silent. Because while they all claim to be against antisemitism, when actual Arab and Muslim antisemitism shouts out to them "Look at me! I'm proud to hate Jews!" they look the other way.

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06/30 Links: With Their Repeated Rejections, Palestinians Risk Total Irrelevance; For 3 years, the PA has paid family of murderer of a 13-year-old Israeli girl

From Ian:

With Their Repeated Rejections, Palestinians Risk Total Irrelevance

Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, shocked Jewish leaders at a closed-door meeting in New York last year. "In the last several decades, the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given," said bin Salman, according to press reports. "It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining." The future king even said that the Palestinian issue was not a top priority for the Saudis, adding that Saudi Arabia "has much more urgent and important issues to deal with" in the Middle East.

Less than two years earlier, in the same city, then-President Barack Obama devoted just one sentence of his last speech before the United Nations General Assembly to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One sentence was still more than the year before, when, for the first time since becoming president, Obama did not even mention the conflict during his annual speech at the United Nations. Compare that with Obama's first three speeches before the General Assembly—in 2009, 2010, and 2011—in which he focused 10 percent, 23 percent, and 18 percent of his lengthy remarks, respectively, on the peace process. The drop-off is striking.

The cases of bin Salman and Obama represent the growing indifference of two pro-Palestinian groups—the Arab leadership and the Western, liberal elite—to the Palestinians being stateless and underdeveloped. The two cases also serve as microcosms of a larger trend: the world growing increasingly apathetic about the Palestinian plight, with traditionally sympathetic voices less interested in trying to help—save for the radicals of the Western progressive movement, who have an irrational hatred of Israel, and perhaps some Arab populations. One reason for this trend is the surge in chaos across the Middle East unrelated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A belligerent Iran on the march, the Islamic State wreaking havoc, the war in Syria showing the depths of humanity's cruelty—how much attention can political leaders give to the Palestinians with such priorities in the Middle East? But the other reason, which is hard for pro-Palestinians voices to acknowledge, is the stubbornness, the rejectionism, the Jew-hatred, and anti-Semitism of the Palestinians themselves.

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: They do not care if they go down in history as barbarians

People want to remember their ancestors as noble or as victims, never as perpetrators.

Nothing has really changed. Despite all the righteous Gentiles, Eastern Europeans would again probably incinerate the Jews. In fact, in Ukraine today, the city has sold what is a mass grave of Jews murdered in Poltava to a real estate developer. Only last year, the existing monument for the Poltava victims was defaced with “Heil Hitler” and “Death to the Kikes.”

Barbarians is a film of agonized conscience. It reminded me of the film Aftermath which fictionalizes the 1941 pogrom of Jedwabne’s Jews at the hands of their Polish neighbors. Like Odessa, and like Ostroleka, Jedwabne’s Jews were herded by their neighbors into barns and buildings and set on fire. A contemporary Christ figure who tries to do the right thing is literally crucified by the Poles who do not want to be held accountable for their evil, greedy deeds.

Pasikowski’s powerful film Aftermath caused a huge controversy in Poland—it was banned in some Polish towns—as did Jan Gross’s painstaking documentation of this same atrocity. The Polish government threatened to strip Gross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland and his impeccable research was hotly challenged. Something similar happened to Anna Bikont who also published The Crime and the Silence—another superb piece of research on this subject.

Nazi Germans industrialized ethnic cleansing. Catholic priests and nationalist leaders incited their populations to take up their proverbial pitchforks and torches and begin hacking away, burning Jews alive, possessing their tiny apartments and their pitiful crockery. Jedwabne and Ostroleka were both impoverished, agrarian communities, not large cities. The Jews did not have enviable crystal and chinaware.

See this hard-hitting film about the barbarians in our midst. It will be opening in New York City on July 19 at the IFC Center and in Los Angeles on July 26.

PMW: For 3 years, the PA has paid family of murderer of a 13-year-old Israeli girl

Three years ago today, a 17-year-old Palestinian terrorist murdered 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel while she slept in her bed. The terrorist was killed by Israeli security personnel at the scene.

Since the murder, the Palestinian Authority has paid the family over 50,000 shekels, just because their son murdered an Israeli 13-year-old girl and died a “Martyr” as they call it.

A substantial part of the PA’s "Pay for Slay" program is to pay the families of dead terrorists a monthly allowance. Since being elected as Chairman of the PA in 2005, Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly approved increasing the monthly allowances paid to the families of dead terrorists. Currently, the PA pays such families at least 1,400 shekels/month, with additions for terrorists who were married, terrorists who had children and terrorists who lived in Jerusalem or other parts of Israel.

The different institutions headed by Abbas have all referred to the murderer as a “Shahid” (Martyr) - the highest honor achievable in Islam according to the Palestinian Authority.

Reporting on the murder, both the PA’s official daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida and WAFA, the official PA news agency, referred to the murderer as a “Shahid,” as did PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi.

Also honoring the murderer, Fatah immediately posted his picture on Facebook, declaring him a “Martyr.”

The murderer’s mother expressed her pride in her son, stating that “My son is a hero. He made me proud.” She also encouraged other young Palestinians to carry out similar murders:

Mother of terrorist Muhammad Taraireh: “My son is a hero. He made me proud. My son died as a Martyr defending Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa [Mosque]. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, he [my son] has joined the Martyrs before him, and he is not better than them. Allah willing, all of them will follow this path, all the youth of Palestine. Allah be praised.”
[Hebron News YouTube channel, June 30, 2016]

More Palestinian cartoons against US, Israel and Gulf states

From Al Resalah, a Hamas-oriented news site:

"Manama auction for the selling of Palestine"

Top left: "71 years from the occupation of Palestine"

Writing on white sign: Normalization (of relations with Israel)

The two sticks holding the stick on which the Palestinian guy is roasted: on one it says "Balfour Declaration" on the other it says: "Trump Declaration"

Top: "The sun of truth cannot be covered by a sieve"

In sun: "Palestine from the River to the Sea"

In brown writing: "Deal of the Century"

Top: "Greater Israel is the result of Arab normalization (with Israel)"

On flag: "From the Nile to the Euphrates"

Arab normalization wholesale!

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Someone wishes Jews a "Shabbat Shalom" from Kaaba in Mecca, Muslims freak

The IDF Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee tweeted an image from someone at Islam's holiest site, the Kabaa in Mecca, with a handwritten message wishing Jews a peaceful Sabbath, "Shabbat Shalom."

Adraee commented, "How beautiful is coexistence and mutual respect!"

Arab media are fuming. They are assuming that someone who wishes a peaceful Sabbath for Jews must be Jewish themselves, and therefore this is proof of a Jew who infiltrated the Muslim-only city of Mecca and its holiest spot!

Because no self respecting Muslim would ever send good wishes to Jews!

This story shows not only that individual Muslims are getting more comfortable with being public about their interest in and friendship with Jews and Israel (since this was sent to the IDF's Adraee) but also it proves that the Muslim claim to only be against Israel and not Jews is so much garbage.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

From Israel HaYom:

The Palestinian Authority on Saturday night released Hebron businessman Saleh Abu Mayala after he had been detained upon his return from the US-led economic conference in Bahrain.

According to Palestinian reports, the decision to release the businessman came following a threatening letter from the US Embassy.

Mayala had attended last week's conference in Bahrain with a small group of Palestinian colleagues, led by businessman Ashraf Jabari, who is viewed with deep suspicion by fellow Palestinians and authorities for his close ties to Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

A PA security official said intelligence services detained Mayala in Hebron for interrogation, without elaborating on the reason for the arrest.

Aside from Jabari, the identities of the other Palestinian participants were not publicly announced, though a picture of some of them at the conference was widely circulated on social media.

Another participant, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said he and the other Palestinian attendees feel they are in "great danger," having been threatened by the PA and on social media.

The NYT adds:

Intelligence officers summoned another conference participant, Ashraf Ghanem, also from Hebron, by phone on Friday night, after they did not find him at home. Instead of turning himself in, Mr. Ghanem was sheltering on Saturday in Mr. Jabari’s house, according to the two men, in the Israeli-controlled section of Hebron — an area where the Palestinian Authority security forces cannot operate without prior coordination with the Israelis.

A Palestinian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on a sensitive security issue, said the Palestinian businessmen’s participation in the conference was “tantamount to betrayal,” adding that Palestinian law punishes those who betray their homeland. Once the Palestinian leadership had decided to boycott the event, he said, participation was not optional or a matter of individual freedom.

A second government official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the arrest. He said there had been public pressure on the Authority to put those who attended the conference on trial.

And, absurdly:

Reached by phone, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the Palestinian Authority’s minister of information, said he did not know anything about Mr. Abu Mayala’s arrest.

That is only the beginning of the farce.

Palestinian media did not report on the arrest until Israeli media did not allow them to ignore it. At first only an Israeli Arab news site mentioned the report. Finally, a small Palestinian news site mentioned it, but spun the story to pretend that Mayala turned himself in out of shame for the terrible thing he did:

[Abu Mayala's] family said: "From the first moment we learned that a family member was present at the conference, we denounced this news and took the appropriate measures. We asked him to leave immediately and return to Hebron and heresponded to our request and contacted the relevant authorities.

Al Jazeera reports that the businessmen are being threatened:

Earlier this week, Palestinian social media users circulated online a list of Palestinian businessmen who attended the event in Manama.

The handful of Palestinian businessmen who attended the workshop have been branded as "collaborators" by some in the Palestinian leadership.

Perhaps the most absurd part of this story is that before the conference, PLO executive director Saeb Erekat claimed that all Palestinian businessmen voluntarily boycotted the conference - an allegation that the world media believed - but he offered to "help" anyone who felt threatened to attend, asking them to reveal themselves beforehand.

No one was stupid enough to do that.

As the workshop was underway, Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Voice media listed the names of the Palestinian attendees as an implicit threat, naming Ashraf al-Jaabari, Khaldun al-Husseini, Saleh Abu Miyaleh, Marwan al-Zubaidi, Jaris al-Taweel and Mohammed Aref Masad.

UPDATE:

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06/29 Links: Cory Booker's Hypocrisy on Louis Farrakhan; PA arrests Hebron businessman who attended Bahrain conference; Iran sought in 2018 weapons proliferation technology for its nuclear program

From Ian:

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Cory Booker's Hypocrisy on Louis Farrakhan

When former vice preisident Joe Biden spoke of the civility he practiced in the Senate with segregationist Democrat senators James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia, my friend Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), among others, saw an opportunity, and jumped all over him.

He condemned Biden’s remarks and demanded he apologize.

“Vice President Biden’s relationships with proud segregationists are not the model for how we make America a safer and more inclusive place for black people and for everyone,” Cory said in a statement. He followed up with a tweet of a photo of black marchers in the Memphis sanitation workers strike of 1968 holding signs that said, “I am a man.”

Cory is right. Biden should not be praising segregationist senators. Segregation is affront to the Biblical insistence that all humans are equally God’s children and that we are all one human family. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. became the greatest American of the twentieth century by dismantling segregation, a movement for which he paid with his life.

But how does this square with Cory’s bizarre comments about being open to meeting with the foremost antisemite in America, Louis Farrakhan?

Asked whether he would meet the Nation of Islam leader at a campaign event in Nevada, Cory said, “I don’t feel the need to do that, but I’m not one of these people that says I wouldn’t sit down with anybody to hear what they have to say.” He then added that he is very acquainted with Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam from his time as mayor of Newark, N.J., stating, “I am very familiar with Minister Louis Farrakhan and his beliefs and values.”

Huh?

What Cory should, of course, have said, is this:

“I just condemned a former vice president of the United States for saying he hung out with segregationist senators. So of course I would not meet with Louis Farrakhan, who has called Jews ‘termites,’ ‘satanic,’ and referred to Hitler, who murdered six million Jews, as ‘a very great man.’ I have enjoyed wide moral and financial support from the Jewish community throughout my political career. In addition, I served as President of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s L’Chaim Society at the University of Oxford and I’ve spoken at synagogues throughout the United States who treated me with love and respect. I would never insult the my Jewish friends and supporters by meeting with a man who demonizes Jews and incites violence against them, especially a time of rising global antisemitism.”

But Cory did not say any of that. Instead, he left the door open to meeting a man who employs Nazi terminology about Jews. (Everyone knows the one thing you do with termites is exterminate them.)

Putin’s War

In late 2013, hundreds of thousands of angry Ukrainians took to the streets to demand the resignation of Viktor Yanukovych, their country’s corrupt, pro-Russian president. Following months of violent clashes in which dozens of people were killed, Yanukovych fled to Moscow and by March 2014, Russian forces had occupied the Crimean Peninsula and began fomenting separatist uprisings in the Ukrainian east.

During the revolution, the Jewish community of Kiev had been subjected to a series of anti-Semitic attacks and in the aftermath of the revolution, many worried that their situation would deteriorate further. However, despite a Russian propaganda campaign warning about the rise of Ukrainian fascism, the real threat to the country’s Jews came not from domestic ultranationalists or anti-Semites but rather from Russia itself. In April 2014, Russian-backed separatist fighters declared a People’s Republic in the city of Donetsk near the Russian border, setting off a war that still rages to this day.

Over the course of the conflict, more than a million and a half people were displaced, including many Jews living under separatist occupation. Among those who fled the war zone were the overwhelming majority of Donetsk’s estimated prewar population of 11,000.

One of them was Pinchas Vishedski, a diminutive Israeli Chabad Hasid who had arrived in Donetsk soon after the fall of the Soviet Union and had worked for decades to rebuild Jewish life in the city.

Two days after reinstatement, Labour MP again suspended amid anti-Semitism row

The UK Labour Party on Friday reportedly reimposed the suspension of an MP two days after it was lifted, amid an ongoing furore over the party’s handling of complaints of anti-Semitism.

Chris Williamson, a Corbyn ally, was filmed in February telling a meeting that the party was “too apologetic” and had “given too much ground” in its response to anti-Semitism allegations.

He was reinstated Wednesday after being suspended pending an ethics review.

However a member of the panel which allowed Williamson’s return to the party, Keith Vaz MP, said he felt the decision should be reconsidered.

Following Vaz’s comments, the Labour general secretary, Jennie Formby, told the party’s national executive that Williamson’s case would be on the agenda for the next meeting of its disputes committee, the Guardian reported.

“Subsequently, the whip is not restored as the decision is still pending,” a source told the BBC.

Williamson, an MP from Derby North, tweeted on Friday that he is “naturally concerned by the lack of due process and consistency in how my case is being handled.”