Many crises that took place recently led Palestinians to question why Hamas has stayed in power but is unable to lift the siege and provide a decent life for the nearly 2 million residents of the tiny costal enclave.
Those who want to work in the governmental sector in Gaza must be a Hamas loyalist or at least supporter. This also applies to international aid assistance from countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Turkey and NGOs.
The priority to receive food aid depends on how well a person is connected to the Islamic movement. Housing projects for those whose homes were destroyed in wars with Israel are also prioritised by level of loyalty to Hamas.
If a person has no connection to Hamas, they must be very patient and fight for rights.
No accountability is carried out. Many young people committed suicide because of poverty and debts. The number of beggars — mainly children — in the streets has reportedly tripled.
Mass migration is taking place from Gaza to settle in Europe, especially among unemployed youth and graduates. Even some of those who are rich and who have a stable life have left looking for a better future and to enjoy their basic rights.
Activists and journalists have left because they were unable to express themselves or report without intimidation.
Leaving Gaza is not easy. The Egypt-controlled Rafah crossing is the main gateway for the Gazans to the outside world. They must exert effort to make sure their name is on the departures list. Connections and sometimes bribes are a must to make it out of the “big prison.”
Coordination must go through both Egyptian authorities and Hamas. Reaching Cairo safely from Rafah via the Sinai Peninsula is another story. The suffering has become part of Gazans’ daily life and Hamas is often accused of contributing to the misery by refusing to concede power, allow elections and reconcile with Fatah. The gap between the two parties is big.
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From a political perspective, the implications of Drori’s judgment are harder to predict.
Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner heads the Shurat HaDin organization, which is dedicated to seeking legal redress for victims of Palestinian terrorism. She filed several of the lawsuits on behalf of terror victims that led to Drori’s ruling.
Darshan-Leitner was firm regarding the implications of the ruling. In a statement to the Post, she said that the Palestinian terror war was an attempt to achieve political ends that the PLO was unable to extract at the negotiating table with Israel. Specifically, she explained, “The Palestinian cause was genocide against Jews in Israel.”
She added that the court’s ruling proved that the Palestinian terror war “was not a popular uprising, but a planned and deliberate war against the civilian population of Israel.”
It should be noted that little has changed since 2002. The Palestinian Authority continues to incite and indeed solicit terrorism against Israel.
The PA’s “pay to slay” policy remains in force today. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas prefers to forego both U.S. financial aid and Israeli financial transfers, which last year were conditioned on the PA ending the payments to terrorists.
Abbas insisted that the payments to terrorists must continue because “we actually sent them, so we are committed to them. We have to pay them.”
If the United States and Israel accept the evidence that led to Drori’s decision, the policy implications are clear. The PLO and the PA are terrorist organizations, not political actors. And they should be so designated and treated accordingly.
Hatred of Trump seems to have caused a number of Jews to lose their reason altogether. In The Los Angeles Times this week, Michael Hiltzik wrote: “What’s most striking about current administration practice is how it resembles the pre-Final Solution treatment of Jews in Germany and Nazi-controlled portions of Europe.”
This obscenely false analogy unforgivably trivializes the genocide of the Jews of Europe. Yet one after the other, liberal Jews are abusing the memory of the Holocaust and its victims by claiming that Trump is paving the way for Nazism.
Heaven only knows, Trump has his faults – many of them unattractive, egregious or alarming. But those who so hysterically anathematize him and have falsely made him into a figure of mythic malice, while themselves nodding along to bigotry, violence and seditiousness on their own side, are saying much more about themselves. And none of it is good.
It is the Democrats who are embracing anti-Americanism, anti-white racism, Jew-baiting, witch-hunting, and contempt for the rule of law. It is Trump who is standing up for the defense of America and its values, for legality and due process and for the Jewish people.
By displaying Democratic and liberal partisanship that is shallow to such a horrifying degree, American Jews are disgracing their cultural heritage and destroying their own moral standing.
The First Amendment’s promise of freedom of religion is an empty one if all Americans, including American Jews, don’t feel safe in their houses of worship or welcome in their communities. With FBI data showing that 58 percent of religiously-motivated hate crimes targeted American Jews in 2017, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been making an increased effort to support and engage with the Jewish community, including by convening a summit on domestic anti-Semitism this week.
The day-long event included speakers from the Departments of Justice, State, Treasury, and Education, including the secretaries of Treasury and Education. Panels addressed how to combat anti-Semitism while respecting the First Amendment, anti-Semitism on college campuses, the prosecution of hate crimes, and federal efforts to combat anti-Semitism.
In his introductory remarks, Attorney General William Barr compared various forms of anti-Semitism to different forms of cancer, observing that the body politic needs a strong immune system that rejects both anti-Semitism and racial hatred. Speakers throughout the day acknowledged the patient is sick. However, Barr told American Jews that he sees rising anti-Semitism, not only in the widely discussed attacks in Pittsburgh and Poway, but also on the streets of Crown Heights, in desecrated cemeteries, and in zoning decisions intended to exclude growing Jewish communities.
Barr told the audience, those experiences “form the daily background of concerns about safety and security that many Jews feel. I want to assure you that the Department of Justice and [the] whole federal government stands with you and will not tolerate these attacks.”
The son of a distinguished historian, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows that history is a leader's northern star. The leadership test is the impression that is passed on for generations. Today, as Netanyahu becomes the longest-serving prime minister in Israel's history, this fact is certainly of historical significance.
In the 70 years to the state's founding, three prime ministers will be remembered for building a real and meaningful layer in its history: David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, and Netanyahu.
Ben-Gurion will be remembered as someone who, at a unique point in Jewish and world history, bravely declared the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel and led it at it the beginning of its path.
Began will be remembered for generations as the Jew who hitched the "Second Israel" that had been left abandoned by the side of the road to the carriage of redemption, and who signed the peace agreement with Egypt.
Netanyahu will forever be remembered as someone who, within the span of 10 years, succeeded in turning a small country on the sidelines of the Middle East into a recognized and esteemed global power in the fields of diplomacy, economy, science, technology and the military. Many great nations across the world are amazed by Israel's achievements and make significant efforts in order to figure out its secret to success.
Never before in the country's history has there been a prime minister that developed such close ties with important leaders from countries like Russia, the United States, China, and India, but also smaller countries in Africa and Asia. These ties make Arab countries realize bolstering their ties with Israel could be of significant help to them. Netanyahu's ability to stand face-to-face with former US President Barack Obama for eight straight years, and not bend over or fold, is a reflection of his proven courage and leadership.
Imagine Donald Trump serving as president of the United States for 45½ years.
If Trump, or any US president, had ever served for that long, it would mean one man at the country’s helm for nearly 19% of America’s 243-year-old history.
That’s a huge percentage of time, a massive piece of any country’s history.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will overtake founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having held that role for 13 years and 127 days, or 4,873 of Israel’s 25,981 days of existence.
That represents nearly 19% of Israel’s entire history. And that, too, is a huge chunk of time.
Put the lengths of Ben-Gurion’s and Netanyahu’s tenures side by side, and this country has been guided by two leaders for more than a third of its history (37.5%).
And just as Ben-Gurion – his personality, ideology and leadership style – placed an unmistakable stamp on the country’s first two decades, Netanyahu has left his indelible imprint on the last two.
As Israel of the 1950s and 1960s reflected its leader – tough, pragmatic, socialist, content with a frugal lifestyle – so, too, Israel of the last two decades has reflected Netanyahu: tough, pragmatic, fiercely capitalistic, and someone who very much enjoys the good life.
Ben-Gurion retired to a sparse, book-lined hut in Sde Boker. Netanyahu, when/if he retires, will retreat to a luxurious, book-lined home in Caesarea. That says much about the difference between the two men, and also about the different ideals of the country at the time.
The media chose to make it all about race. Yet this tweet is not about race. If anything, because Trump has never attacked the Americanness of politicians who believe in the American way of life, regardless of their skin color – and regardless of their antagonism towards this administration. That is the reason the President considers the Canadian-born Hispanic senator Ted Cruz completely American, despite their bitter political feud.
This is not the first time liberals agree with white nationalists. Both camps are obsessed with race. Liberals just disagree with white nationalists on whether whites are the bane or the blessing of America. This agreement is sorely evident in academia and the media, where sociologists and journalists outdo each other to convince us that the problems faced by minorities all derive from racism. Likewise, the White House‘s proposals for immigration reform are scrutinized for their racial impact by both white nationalists and liberal pundits.
Liberals will be aghast at being compared to white nationalists. They will argue that centering every discussion in America on how policies affect racial minorities is the most anti-racist attitude possible. These liberals should remember that racism does not emerge in a vacuum. It emerges in an atmosphere where every problem is viewed through the prism of race. That is the reason the obsession with ethnicity and race in American universities today is eerily reminiscent of academia in Nazi Germany. Both fuel an intellectual climate that poisons race relations.
The media's reaction to the President‘s tweet is another wasted opportunity to discuss what really matters: How to strengthen the American way of life and how to attract immigrants devoted to the American way of life. All else is cheap politics – and racism.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards seized two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, officials in London said, in a move that appeared to infuriate American and British leaders.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said it had seized British oil tanker Stena Impero, claiming it “was confiscated by the Revolutionary Guards at the request of Hormozgan Ports and Maritime Organization when passing through the Strait of Hormuz, for failing to respect international maritime rules.”
US officials told CNN there were indications that Iran had seized a second vessel, the Liberian tanker MV Mesdar. Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that Masdar had been detained by Iranian forces but was released and left Iranian waters.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt confirmed that two ships had been seized, condemning the incidents as “unacceptable” and saying he was “extremely concerned” by the incidents.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt leaves 10 Downing Street in London on June 11, 2019. (Isabel Infantes/AFP)
“I’m extremely concerned by the seizure of two naval vessels by Iranian authorities in the Strait of Hormuz,” he said in a statement. “These seizures are unacceptable.”
The Soviet Union may have killed millions, may have imprisoned hundreds of thousands of political prisoners, it may have been institutionally antisemitic - but boy, was it progressive!@nytimes is a self-parody. https://t.co/gyJfJ4O87l
Here's where @marclamonthill accuses Israel of poisoning Palestinian water, echoing the lies that brought pogroms that killed thousands of Jews in the Middle Ages.
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Alas here again we must be disappointed. For in his book Johnson apparently argued that the Islamic religion caused the Muslim world to be ‘literally centuries behind’ the West. He furthermore said,
‘There must be something about Islam that indeed helps to explain why there was no rise of the bourgeoisie, no liberal capitalism and therefore no spread of democracy in the Muslim world.
‘It is extraordinary to think that under the Roman/Byzantine empire, the city of Constantinople kept the candle of learning alight for a thousand years, and that under Ottoman rule, the first printing press was not seen in Istanbul until the middle of the nineteenth century. Something caused them to be literally centuries behind.’
The Guardian, and Perraudin, along with the MCB and Tell Mama and various other professional offence-takers think it not just outrageous but seriously provocative for someone to point this out.
So rather than counter anger with anger, I would like to respond in a spirit of charity and generosity. Thus do I hereby offer a box of Roses chocolates to any Muslim or non-Muslim organisation or spokesperson who can prove that Johnson was wholly wrong in the above statements, and that rather than being a plausible and legitimate interpretation of the historical record, the statements in fact constitute a set of wholly made-up hate-claims. I have purchased the box of chocolates. They are sitting beside me, temptingly, indeed coquettishly, as I write. Yet I will not touch them. All that Tell Mama, the MCB or anyone else needs to do to get them, is to prove that wherever and whenever the religion of Islam arrives in a society, that society sees a burgeoning of capitalism, democracy and the free exchange of ideas. It can’t be that difficult, can it? I await the deluge of applications.
The European Parliament (EP) has a Palestinian terrorist problem.
The EP hosted an event last week featuring Khaled Barakat, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), according to the terrorist group’s website. He is also the president of the Palestinian NGO Samidoun.
The European Union designated the PFLP as a terrorist group in 2002 — and the designation is well deserved. The PFLP gained notoriety in the 1960s and 1970s for high-profile hijackings and attacks against Israelis. One of the hijackers was Leila Khaled, who speaks regularly at Samidoun events. In October 2001, the PFLP assassinated an Israeli minister. And in 2014, the PFLP claimed responsibility for a grisly attack on a Jerusalem synagogue that left six dead, including three Americans.
Manu Pineda Marin, a Spanish member of the European Parliament, hosted Barakat, along with Charlotte Kates, Barakat’s wife and Samidoun’s international coordinator, for a panel discussion in Brussels. The panelists also included Samidoun’s European coordinator and PFLP member Mohammad Khatib.
The fact that the event took place is curious. Weeks prior, Germany, an EU member state, prohibited Barakat from engaging in political activities due to his affiliation with the PFLP and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. This came just weeks after Germany’s parliament passed a resolution declaring that BDS is antsemitic.
Three years ago this month, thousands of Israelis attended the funeral of Rabbi Michael “Miki” Mark, director-general of the Otniel Yeshiva, who was killed in a drive-by Palestinian terrorist attack.
The father of 10 children was shot while driving with his wife and two of his kids on Route 60 in the South Hebron Hills. He was struck by a barrage of bullets and lost control of the car, causing it to overturn.
As Mark, 48, bled to death in front of his injured 14-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son – whose mother, Hava, was rendered unconscious in critical condition – a Palestinian Authority civil servant who happened by the scene of what he thought was a car accident rushed to assist the family.
For his swift and humane action, the young man from Hebron was thanked profusely by the Mark family. He and a Palestinian doctor who arrived a few minutes later to help were also granted an award for “outstanding citizenship and courage” by the Shurat Hadin-Israel Law Center during a conference at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem
In an interview at the time with Israel’s defunct Channel 2, “A” – whose name has been withheld since then – recounted seeing the Marks’ overturned vehicle and stopping on the side of the road.
“I tried to open the door, but the car was completely locked,” he said. “I saw two children inside screaming and asking me to help them. I put out my hand and for two minutes, I tried to open the door to get to the children who were suffocating in the car. I think that if they stayed there a little while longer, those children would have suffocated in the car. Out of the shock she felt, the young daughter spontaneously grabbed me and jumped onto me. I immediately put my hand on her head and spoke to her in Hebrew, of course. I told her, ‘Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, I will help you. Don’t worry.’ I did what I did out of humanity. These are children. There were children inside. There were people inside. I didn’t hesitate at all.”
In spite of Israeli efforts to assist, “A” remains anonymous for his own protection. The powers that be in Ramallah knew exactly who he was, and promptly penalized him for rescuing wounded Jews. As Israelis lauded him – not only for being a Good Samaritan, but for rekindling a ray of hope in peace – the PA promptly dismissed him from his job.
Continuing my series of re-captioning single panel cartoons...
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This article doesn't say anything new but it touches on all the standard Arab antisemitic thinking:
President Donald Trump considered Jerusalem as the capital of Israel based on a lie that Jerusalem was the capital of the Jewish people. We know that Judaism is only a religion, but the Jewish religion is not national, which makes us deny the existence of a Jewish people. ... Is there any connection between the Jews of Israel and the Jews of the people of Moses peace be upon him? The Jews that are Khazars have nothing to do with the Jews of the time of Moses, peace be upon him, neither in form, in language. As well as the Jews of Yemen .. Falasha Jews .. They are residents of Abyssinia and did not know Palestine and did not visit them and have no relationship with the Jews in terms of form, race or language. There were also Jews in the Arabian Peninsula, the Jews of Khyber, Bani al-Nathir and Bani Qinqaa. They are Arabs who have nothing to do with Israel.
For Jews, there is no religion except Judaism. The Islamic and Christian holy sites do not matter to Israel, nor do they consider them to have any sanctity, in addition to their being unwelcome.
The Jews are known for lying and charging interest and fornication since ancient times. They are a people of terrorists, as described by the Torah, the Bible among the Jews, who robbed the Egyptians of gold and fled under the cover of darkness when they came out of Egypt with deceit. They invented an imaginary pretext and fled from Egypt under the cover of darkness. In the Sinai instead of the worship of God one of them crafted a calf of gold to him until the Jews worshiped it as stated in the Torah...
The Jews are a false and fraudulent people. We are puzzled by this crooked people. Their prophet orders them to steal and their Lord helps them. Their holy book tells us that theft and fraud are among the great ideals and values that they boast to the peoples of the world.
As a result of these qualities in the Jews, they were expelled from the European countries several times...
If the Jews read Jewish and Islamic history they'd see how the Arabs embraced them and treated them excellently, but they are like a snake after you take care of it, the fangs are planted with the deadly poison to those who hugged and warmed them.
The existence of such hate in a mainstream Arab publication is disgusting, but that isn't the worst part. The worst part is that there is absolutely zero criticism from any of the hundreds of millions of Arabs who are exposed to this type of article, even though they all swear they are not antisemitic at all.
In other words, this bile is not treated in the Arab world as opinion, but as fact.
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(d)A visa or residence permit of any kind will not be given to a non-Israeli citizen or a person who has an Israeli permanent residence permit if s/he, or his/her organization; or the body in which s/he works for has knowingly published a public call to boycott the State of Israel as defined in the Law for Prevention of Damage to the State of Israel through Boycott – 2011 (5771), or if this person has committed to participate in such a boycott. (e) Despite what was mentioned in sub-section (d), the Minister of the Interior is entitled to grant the visa or residence permit mentioned in the aforementioned sub-section for special reasons which must be specified.
Haaretz reports that even though the law says that the Minister of the Interior can allow such an exception, given the sensitivity of the issue in this case the decision will be made by Benjamin Netanyahu himself.
Last year Israel tried to deny student Lara Alqasem entry to the country based on this law, and Israel's Supreme Court ruled that she should be allowed to enter.
When Israel tried to deport Human Rights Watch's Omar Shakir for his anti-Israel activities, the Supreme Court again ruled that he can stay while fighting the order. He's still in Israel and it is not clear when the ruling will come.
As Professor Eugene Kontorovich notes, “It’s very hard for the Israeli government to actually apply the law because, basically in practice, everybody who they try to bar immediately turns to the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court has barred the effective implementation of the law, and unfortunately, that results in a situation where Israel gets all of the criticism for applying it without the actual benefits of being able to exclude people. Omar is an American congressperson. That is a very strong reason for admitting her. But at the same time, I would expect Israel would seek the opinion of the United States government as to whether to admit her.”
Moreover, Israeli law allowed the country to deny entry to people who are a danger to the State before this law.Anti-Israel activist Norman Finkelstein was deported and given a 10-year ban in 2008 and Noam Chomsky was denied entry in 2010, before Amendment No. 28.
It is the right of any country to bar anyone from entering, and the US and UK do it all the time, for example. The current law is not effective in the least, it allows the haters of Israel to engage in drawn out legal proceedings which grab headlines for weeks, it was not necessary to begin with and it has been an unmitigated public relations disaster for Israel.
Refusing entry to Tlaib and Omar would be exactly what they want. It will paint Israel in the media as cruel (for not allowing Tlaib to bring her kids to see her grandmother) and petty (for looking so insecure that it cannot handle the inevitable criticism that both members of Congress will bring up, no matter what they see in Israel.)
This is a PR war. Tlaib and Omar are very good at PR. Israel needs to be better, and barring their entry is the exact wrong decision.
Instead, Israel should make a very public show of welcoming them. It should recommend - and provide logistics - for them to visit the real Israel.
Not Yad Vashem. Not the Kotel. Not the usual destinations that Israel brings politicians.
Instead, Israel should invite them to see the Israel Museum, which carefully shows Jewish, Christian and Muslim history in the Land in equal measure.
They should be invited to see the Museum of Islamic Art, in Jerusalem.
They should be invited to the Mamilla Mall, or really any Jerusalem mall, where Arabs and Jews freely shop together without a second thought.
They should be invited to the Peres Center for Peace to see soccer games between Jewish and Arab youth.
They should be invited to see the high tech laboratories in Tel Aviv - and Nazareth.
They should be encouraged to speak to Arab workers at Rami Levy supermarkets (even in the "settlements") or at Sodastream.
The invitations should come not only from Likud officials but from the other parties as well.
All of these invitations should be very public and emphasize how Muslims and Arabs are truly treated in Israel, not how the media portrays it.
The Israel haters carefully choose where to bring their tourists to maximize hate for Israel - but they are the ones who are not allowing the tourists to talk to ordinary people.
To undermine their lies, Israel merely needs to show the reality. Even if that includes the Ethiopian Jewish protests.
They won't become Zionists. That isn't the point. This is a public relations war, a war that Israel still needs to do a better job at. Banning them, or even talking about banning them, makes Israel look like it is afraid of the truth. Making Tlaib and Omar refuse invitations by high level officials will reveal which side is secure and which is afraid of the truth.
And if they accept the invitations, then dozens of reporters will write a little more about what Israel is really like.
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President Donald Trump’s tweets on Sunday drew predictable condemnation. But aside from the partisan debate about whether they were racist, they contained an important truth: hatred of Jews and hatred of America are linked.
Trump told the so-called “squad” of radical Democrats — Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — they could leave the country if they hate it so much. He drew criticism because he said that they came from foreign countries; in fact, only Omar did.
But Trump also highlighted a basic fact about the nature of leftist ideology. Just as the Iranian regime views the United States and Israel as two sides of the same coin, with the ayatollahs dubbing the U.S. “the Great Satan” and Israel, “the Little Satan,” so the radical left views the U.S. and Israel – the most powerful democracy in the world and the only democracy in the Middle East – as states with no moral foundation for existing.
Although other presidents have spoken out against hatred of Jews and Israel on the one hand and hatred of America on the other, it is hard to think of another example of a U.S. leader making the case that the two hatreds are linked as Trump did this week.
This is important, because they are linked. The haters see both America and the Jews as all-powerful forces who use their power to bend the world to their nefarious, avaricious, greedy aims. They stereotype both Americans and pro-Israel and traditional Jews as vulgar and fascist.
The undermining of Zionism in America by Arabs and Muslims is not new.
As researched here, by Daniel Rickenbachert, there were early attempts and one of them was in January of 1930, when the Mufti-led Supreme Muslim Council (SMC) and the Arab Executive, sent two delegations to the US and to Britain to promote the Arab cause, this just after the murderous 1929 Riots.
As appears there, the delegation to the US consisted of the Syrian pan-Islamic activist Shakib Arslan, his brother Adel Arslan, Issa Bandak and three other members. In the US, the delegation met with the State Department, arguing that only the abolition of the Balfour Declaration could lead to a reconciliation between Jews and Arabs. The delegation also appealed to the Arab-Americans to “emulate the American Jews” by giving donations to the SMC. However, the undertaking was reportedly a financial disaster. This may explain why there were no further Arab delegations from Palestine during the next seven years.
But the first one to speak out against Zionism was an American-Lebanese, Amin Rihani who arrived in the US in 1898. That was in September 1917, two months before the Balfour Declaration, when he published an anti-Zionism piece. In his article,
ABC (Australia) in ‘absolute denial’ over Hamas ‘wanting blood’
Sky News host Andrew Bolt says there are people in Australia, helped by the ABC, in ‘absolute denial’ about Hamas wanting 'blood', and not wanting peace.
The Latin title of this 1659 map by Dutch cartographer Nicolaus Visscher translates to "The Holy Land or Promised Land (Formerly Palestine), Recently Depicted and Published."
It features a picture of the Jewish Holy Temple, surrounded by its various holy objects and utensils.
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Kibbutz Keturah, July 18 - The sacred Islamic land of Palestine has made clear its existential revulsion for Jews exercising sovereignty there over the last seven decades, demonstrating its disgust with the phenomenon via such unequivocal acts as producing agricultural and horticultural bounty unprecedented in such an arid climate and lending its previously infertile areas to successful, productive cultivation, but only while Jews govern it.
The land, which supported perhaps tens of thousands of people at a time during the centuries leading up to the Zionist usurpation of its precious soil, now only houses ten million, an unmistakable sign that Palestine cannot abide Jewish control of its natural resources. Another sure indication of its displeasure features in the country attaining the unique status of the only one in the world to achieve a net increase in the number of trees over the last century.
Experts call the land's expressions of distaste for Jewish control unmistakable. "It takes extreme situations for the soil of Palestine to react in such an extreme fashion," explained Yessir Amafart, a Palestine Liberation Organization official. "It didn't react this way for the Romans, Parthians, Byzantines, Rashidun Caliphs, Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatmids, Seljuks, Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mameluks, Ottomans, or British. The land is telling us something clear, and we must act accordingly."
Arab residents of the land and neighboring areas have taken upon themselves to remedy the situation: from Gaza, daily volleys of bombs and incendiary devices travel via helium, wind, or drones travel over the border fence to set alight as much farmland and nature as possible. Arab vandals strike Jewish farms almost nightly, stealing livestock, damaging equipment, attempting to prevent the land from continuing its tantrum. In some locations, local Arabs cut down their own olive orchards and blame it on Jewish settlers, in an effort to both remedy the sacred land's corrupted output and put pressure on the instigators of that output to leave. And throughout the country and region, numerous activists fight to reduce the number of Jews provoking the land's abnormal activity, albeit with limited success.
In the one area Jews did leave, the Gaza Strip, activists have long worked to reverse the dangerous growth of Jewish-cultivated plants and produce. "When the Jews left in 2005 we destroyed the greenhouses they left behind," recalled local resident Qutnoz Sbaytfeis. "Some American do-gooder philanthropist thought we might want to continue working there and making a living, but we can't risk the land being fruitful for us after the Jews were here. It would be sacrilege."
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US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, US Envoy Jason Greenblatt, and US Senator Lindsey Graham took part in the inauguration ceremony last month of the Pilgrimage Road subterranean archaeological site, located south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The excavated road was used by Jewish pilgrims visiting the Second Temple around the first century CE, and the Arab neighborhood of Silwan has since been built above it.
The PA called the opening of the ancient road an act of "Judaization," and PA Chairman Abbas repeated the PA libel that Israel works to "change Jerusalem's Arab characteristics": "[PA] President Abbas explained to his Russian colleague [President Vladimir Putin] about the crisis in the relations with Israel, and also about the daily violations, the latest of which was the excavation of a tunnel in order to change Jerusalem's Arab characteristics" [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 13, 2019]
Senior PA officials used the opportunity to criticize and condemn the American officials present at the opening. Abbas' advisor on religious affairs and Islamic relations, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, accused Friedman and the other US officials of "piracy" and repeated the PA's denial of any Jewish historical presence ever in Jerusalem, claiming that it is "an Arab, Palestinian, and Islamic city": "He [Al-Habbash] emphasized that [Friedman's] actions constitute piracy and a blatant attack against international law, which considers Jerusalem an occupied city and a purely Islamic heritage [site]... Al-Habbash said that the colonialist acts of Trump's administration and its representatives - led by settler Friedman - in Jerusalem... will not change the historical and religious truth regarding the city, as it is an Arab, Palestinian, and Islamic city - it was and will remain such until Allah inherits the earth and its inhabitants. He noted that the plots of the occupation state, and behind it the colonialist administration that controls the White House, will not succeed in Judaizing the city or changing its Islamic and Palestinian character." [WAFA, official PA news agency, June 30 2019]
Al-Habbash added that Friedman is like an extremist and racist settler: "Friedman's activities are as far as possible from diplomacy, as he is behaving like an extremist settler who is controlled by racist ideas against all people, and not only against the Palestinian people."
Is it time for some tough-love for the Palestinian refugees? What role has the international community played in keeping the Palestinians as perpetual victims? If hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab lands can be resettled, why can't the Palestinians?
From the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs: Examining the international community's long-standing double standard on refugees, written by Natalie Hilderan, editor-at-large for the J'accuse Coalition for Justice.
The following steps, in particular, are necessary to make progress toward improving the status of Palestinian refugees:
1. ...UNRWA ought to be replaced by a program that promotes self-governance for Palestinians currently in the Palestinian Authority, and citizenship for Palestinians living in other Arab countries, rather than simply welfare for an ever-ballooning refugee population....
2. ...Arab governments hosting Palestinian refugees must embrace the benefits of integration, beginning with full citizenship....
3. ...In addition to pursuing economic prosperity for Palestinians, Arab governments must abandon culturally and/or religiously motivated retribution against Israel because such an attitude allows Palestinians to prioritize resistance ahead of reconciliation....
Read it all here
I have blogged several times that, historically, a specific Palestinianism, that is, an Arab nationalism based on a country called Palestine and one distinct from other forms of Arab nationalisms, was quite late in developing.
Palestine was a region of Syria. It never was an independent country or state and its borders altered over centuries as did its internal administrative boundaries.
The idea to rejoin Palestine to Syria was a staple of their propaganda.
Into the mid-1920s, the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission was receiving such requests. This line continued years later.
Here are some abstracts from a PhD dissertation relating to the subject: ...In December 1918, Hitti and George Khairalla established the New Syria National League. The group lobbied for the establishment of a Greater Syria under American protection, reaching from the Sinai to the Euphrates.229 These groups intensified their activities in light of the upcoming peace conference in Paris. Shatara and Hitti reached out to John Huston Finley, the chief of the Red Cross Commission in Palestine, asking Finley not to detach Palestine from Greater Syria.230 During the conference, Hitti’s New Syria National League also sent a telegram to Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau advocating an American protectorate over Syria. 231 Abraham Mitrie Ribhany, the
author of ‘America save the Near East’ (cited above) and a member of both the Palestine Antizionism Society and the New Syria National League, attended the Paris conference. His presence allowed for direct lobbying with the American representatives in Paris and the members of the King-Crane commission. On March 15, he sent a petition on behalf of the New Syria National League to the Americans, which was also read by commission chief Henry C. King. The petition made the case for an American mandate over a Greater Syria.
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Sunday, July 21, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
