Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 07, 2020

EoZTV: Eugene Kontorovich speaks about international law on Judea and Samaria

My live interview with international law scholar Eugene Kontorovich was plagued by connectivity issues last Sunday, but I've edited the parts I could together to get 12 precious minutes from him.

As always, Eugene has a unique but compelling perspective on Israel in international law.

I didn't get to the questions I had about the ICC and and the BDS laws in the US, but maybe next time!

Enjoy!

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Jews and Evangelicals: it’s Complicated (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

I have lived a large part of my life outside the Jewish bubble. I have known many Evangelical Christians, and some of them have been good friends. So I wasn’t surprised to hear about “God TV” and its attempt – which apparently did not succeed, although it came very close – to initiate a Hebrew language TV channel on HOT, Israel’s largest cable provider, that is an unabashed attempt to “broadcast the gospel of Jesus Christ – Yeshua the Messiah – in Israel on cable TV in the Hebrew language” (video here). The channel is called “Shelanu” [ours] to remind us that Jesus was one of us, a Jew – as if this is an argument for Jews to adopt Christianity!

Many Israelis and Jews are outraged by missionary activity aimed at us. From our point of view it is deeply insulting. How dare they try to subvert Judaism, especially considering the history of Christian (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) Jew hatred? Arguably, the very wellspring of all antisemitism is the response of non-Jews – leaders of the early Church, Mohammed, Martin Luther, the Inquisition, et al – to the stubborn refusal of Jews to replace their traditional beliefs and rituals with the “better” ones proposed by the various religious innovators. So naturally we vehemently reject modern-day attempts to convert us.

Jews are generally not judgmental toward those who practice other faiths (they specialize in criticizing other Jews). We do not go around telling Christians that they are practicing idolatry, nor do we attack Hindus for their polytheism. In modern times, most strains of Judaism do not engage in proselytizing. And so we have little patience when it is directed at us.

The legal discussion concerning whether the channel should be permitted will be interesting. Israel has freedom of religion, as indicated in the Declaration of Independence. The courts have upheld the right of free expression of religious beliefs, on the basis of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. There are, however, laws forbidding anyone from providing material benefit to someone for changing their religion, and forbidding attempts to persuade a person under 18 to change religion. Tourists can be prevented from entering the country or even deported for missionary activity.

Religious programming on TV is permitted. Even, theoretically, proselytizing programming. But if it is determined that it may influence young people, then it may not be allowed.

In order to understand why Evangelical Christians – who are otherwise supportive of Israel and may be quite friendly with Jews as a people and as individuals – would do something that is guaranteed to anger Jews and damage their relationship with them we need to look at some of their beliefs.

There of course is no one “Evangelical Christianity.” But Evangelicals generally believe that salvation requires an act of “conversion” or acceptance of Jesus as one’s savior and a renunciation of sin. The sometimes sudden life-changing experience is what some call being “born again.” Unlike Judaism, which requires above all observance of mitzvot [commandments], Evangelicals emphasize a radically powerful belief, which completely changes a person’s relationship to this world as well as his future in the world to come.

Along with the personal aspect of belief is the universal aspect, by which Evangelicals believe that one of their most important personal tasks, indeed one of the morally best things that they can do, is to bring others to the realization of the “good news.” If someone is resistant to the message, it can only be that they simply don’t understand what the stakes are; they don’t know what they are missing in this life, nor what will happen to them when they die, if they don’t accept Jesus while they still can.

Evangelicals believe that the Bible, including the Jewish Tanach, is the Word of God, either literally or by divine inspiration; and they study it carefully for guidance in all matters. Many Evangelicals are much more familiar with the Tanach than Jews, even Jews that have had Jewish educations. This naturally leads them to believe in the spiritual importance of the Jewish people. Often they quote biblical passages as the justification for their support and even love of Israel and the Jewish people. And how better to show your love for someone than to try to give them a better life, and save them from a horrible, eternally painful, doom?

It’s often said that Evangelical support for Israel, as well as their desire to convert Jews, is based on a belief in certain prophecies about the “End Times,” and they are acting in ways that will bring it closer. Some may believe this, but most of those who do accept such prophecies believe that the great upheavals and mass conversions that will mark the End Times are predestined, and not affected by human actions.

I think it should be clear that trying to explain to Evangelicals that it is inappropriate to proselytize among Jews will not be successful. Sharing and spreading their faith is a fundamental part of that faith itself; we can no more get them to renounce it then a Christian could get us to accept the Trinitarian nature of God.

At the same time, Jews have a right not to be bombarded with attempts to persuade them to abandon their own faith (I know Christian missionaries say they are just adding something to it, but that is disingenuous). The people behind the Shelanu TV channel are guilty of what popular psychology calls “bad boundaries.” One of the reasons for the existence of a Jewish state is to provide a place in which we can fully realize the Jewish dimension of our personal identity, something that is difficult or impossible in the diaspora. Part of the problem is the continuous pressure, even coercion, by the majority population, to give up our spiritual uniqueness. Missionary activity reintroduces that pressure. And the fact that it happens here in our own country diminishes our sovereignty.

Although it is important to protect the rights to freedom of expression and religion, no rights can be absolute, because of conflicts among them. Here in the Jewish state, unlike in the diaspora, there are special rights, or privileges, or benefits, for Jews and Judaism. We’ve tried to express some of this “specialness” in the controversial Basic Law: Israel – the Nation-State of the Jewish People.

So I think that if it becomes necessary to limit some of the rights exercised by those who love us so much that they find it acceptable to trespass on our boundaries, we might look to this law as a justification for that limitation.

That’s a job for the lawyers and judges. Meanwhile – and I really mean this – with the utmost respect for my Evangelical friends and strong supporters of Israel, I would like to see “God TV” out of the Jewish state.

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.

05/06 Links Pt2: Col. Kemp: Palestinians, Israel and the Coronavirus; Israel reports no new deaths since Tuesday from COVID-19

From Ian:

Col. Richard Kemp: Palestinians, Israel and the Coronavirus

Israeli and PA health departments meet regularly to coordinate action and share vital information. Troops from the IDF's Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) are organising joint training for medical teams. Israel provides test kits, laboratory supplies, medicines and personal protective equipment for Palestinian health workers.

Some Palestinian Arab leaders today seem to prefer that their own people succumb to disease rather than cooperate with Israel. While Palestinians and Israelis on the ground pull together against Coronavirus.... articles in official Palestinian Authority publications assert that Israel is deliberately spreading the infection and trying to contaminate Palestinian prisoners, using Coronavirus as a biological weapon. Of course, Israel-haters in both mainstream and social media are only too eager to amplify such defamatory and divisive outbursts.

A recent Coronavirus op-ed in the Washington Post demanded that Israel "lift the siege on Gaza". Predictably, the author ignores the fact that Israel's lawful blockade of the Gaza Strip -- also imposed by Egypt -- is in place for one reason only: the regime there remains intent on using Gaza as a base for terrorist attacks against both Israel and Egypt. But even in Gaza, a form of cooperation has been achieved.

Israel-haters don't want to know this, but what the author calls for is of course exactly what has been happening since the Coronavirus outbreak.

🚨STARTING NOW ⁦@COLRICHARDKEMP⁩ @ThePodcastRadio⁩. “KEEP ATTACKING”. Britain’s former commander of forces in Afghanistan discusses where today’s threats come from and what he campaigns for today.
📻LISTEN LIVE https://t.co/bmht956Cv6
🎧EPISODE https://t.co/W6Bl0hWXsR pic.twitter.com/Yt6h2Obhgl
— Jonny Gould’s Jewish State 🎧 podcast (@jonnygouldpod) May 6, 2020

Israel reports no new deaths since Tuesday from COVID-19

There have been no new deaths reported since Tuesday from COVID-19 for the first time since early March.

As of Wednesday morning, there are 16,314 confirmed coronavirus cases in Israel, while 238 patients have succumbed to the virus.

The Health Ministry said there are 5,549 people currently infected with the pathogen, while 10,5 have recovered from the disease.
Out of those currently infected with the virus, 90 are in serious condition, with 70 requiring respiratory assistance.

Another 55 people are in moderate condition and the rest have mild symptoms.

At least 247 people are hospitalized with the virus.

According to the ministry, 7,741 coronavirus tests were reported Tuesday.

The southern Bedouin city of Hura, which the government has put back on lockdown Tuesday, still leads the country in infection rate at 19.2%, with 20 new confirmed cases in the past three days.

How did Israel keep its death toll so low and does it now risk a new spike?

Prof. Yehuda Carmeli, head of the Department of Epidemiology at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center and one of the medical professionals leading the Israeli Health Ministry's response to the coronavirus pandemic, was asked how Israel kept its death toll so relatively low.

After more than a month in lockdown, the government has begun dramatically easing coronavirus restrictions, buoyed by a stream of encouraging statistics. Daily new cases were in the low dozens. And there were almost 240 fatalities, figures much less severe than countries of comparable size, including countries that imposed stay-at-home orders relatively early in their outbreaks.

"This virus will probably stay with us for a very long time. Even if we are able to control it fantastically within Israel, at some point we will once again have more ties to the rest of the world. We will have to adapt to a different way of life," Carmeli said.

"The reason for the low mortality rate is that although there was a lot of criticism about how many tests were done, Israel is among the leading countries in the world in testing people. We do a lot of tests so we detect a lot. Also, it's because most of our affected population are young people, and they have a very low mortality rate. If you look at the distribution of sick people in Israel, fewer than 5% are over the age of 80. That's the age where you start to see very high mortality rates. And in Israel, the population over 70 and 80 was quite well protected."

GOD TV, an evangelical broadcasting company with programming in 200 countries worldwide, launched Shelanu (Hebrew for “Ours”) TV on April 27, having snagged a seven-year contract with HOT cable television network through chicanery and misdirection. In the run-up to the launch, GOD TV CEO Ward Simpson boasted about this “triumph” on the GOD TV website, and in a video uploaded to the GOD TV YouTube channel. Simpson was positively jubilant as he described how the evangelical community had at long last, found a way to convert the “lost” Jews of Israel, bringing the message of Jesus Christ as messiah straight into Israeli living rooms, in Hebrew. It was a miracle, he said. But then the evil motives of these evangelicals and the nefarious means they used against Jewish Israelis were exposed, laid open to the Israeli public in a media blitz and BAM.

Down came the webpage. Down came the video. Poof. Like they had never been there before.

All those media pieces you saw on the subject citing the video and launch page, were now giving you errors. There was no longer any proof that Simpson had said those things: had bragged about converting the “lost” Jews of Israel and bringing them to Jesus.

Except that some people, in particular, my friend Shannon Nuszen, was already wise to these tricks of the trade, having once been an evangelical missionary herself. Today an Orthodox Jew living in Israel, Shannon works for Jewish Israel, and a key facet of her work is to preserve such materials, thus exposing the evangelicals, their unsavory methods, and their lies. The minute Shannon became aware of the launch page and video, she made copies, thus preserving them for posterity.

“Jewish Israel is, in fact, a database of exactly this sort of thing—we copy their blatant materials proving their agenda, and then report on it. Because as soon as a report like this hits the media, the site goes down, and all of a sudden a newly carefully worded site goes up looking KOSHER,” said Shannon. “Of course they deny everything in our original report, except that we always follow up with screen shots and pdfs of their previous site. It’s always the same MO, with all of them.”

Facebook post created with materials copied from GOD TV:

“I downloaded the video because I fully expected the original video, posted by God TV, to be taken down as soon as trouble started. I knew to expect this because I was once a missionary myself. I am a ger, a convert, and have been living as an Orthodox Jew for the past 15 years.

“Much of the media coverage on the issue links to the original 15-minute video by God TV that is now no longer available, leaving these stories with a dead video link,” said Nuszen.

Why put up the video in the first place? As Shannon put it, “The video was removed because it was never meant to be seen by Jewish people.”

Short version of the video that was taken down:

Commenting on the above (copied and documented) GOD TV video, Gavriel Sanders, a former evangelical missionary minister said he finds it particularly unsavory that Simpson speaks of “lost Jews” that need Jesus to save them. “That's not Christian education—that's proselytizing,” says Sanders.

Shannon was flabbergasted when she discovered that these missionaries had wangled a seven-year contract to preach the gospel on TV to Israeli Jews. "How this received government approval is beyond me, and hopefully this is a mistake that will be rectified immediately. This is an assault on every Jew. An attack on Judaism itself."

Exactly what kind of people engage in this sort of sneaky business, anyway? Rabbi Tovia Singer, of Outreach Judaism explains that the people who make it their business to evangelize the Jewish population of Israel are fundamentalist evangelical Christians. “They secured the Shelanu TV station on HOT TV, and the way they operate—their MO—is to blur the distinctions between Judaism and Christianity, in order to lure Jews who would otherwise resist a straightforward message. The plan, in their own words, is to evangelize 9 million Israelis, using the HOT TV channel and of course, GOD TV.

“When they say “9 million Israelis,” that means everyone. That’s as many people who are here. As it turns out, however, that’s not legal in Israel. You’re not allowed to evangelize minors in this country.

“But to speak to the way they speak—it’s a double speak,” says Singer. “To one audience, they’re very clear. To the non-Jewish evangelical Christian audience, who they want to raise money for this massive project, they put up that video, which in very plain words, expresses their intent on converting the Jews, young men and women, the elderly, to Christianity. That wasn’t meant for Jewish consumption. That was meant for their own supporters, primarily in the United States, who want to see the Jews here in the Holy Land, convert to Christianity.”

Full video here:

“It’s striking, and not surprising, that the moment they got wind of the fact that the video they had put up—which was completely unambiguous, it’s transparent in what their intent is, to convert the Jews—the moment they got wind of the fact that the Israelis are onto what they do—that the Jewish community recognizes what they are doing, they took down the video,” says Singer. “Why would they take it down? That’s their whole MO.”

Singer shared with this writer a communications card that is used by missionaries to train evangelicals on how to “witness” the Jews. It’s included in their training manual materials. The communications card tells missionaries to say “Yeshua the Messiah” rather than “Jesus Christ.” When speaking to Jewish people, the card tells them, “Don’t say, ‘Come to church,’ but rather ‘Come to a Messianic congregation.’ Don’t say ‘Christian,’ say ‘Believer in the messiah’ or ‘Messianic Jew.’”

Messianic "soul winners" card: Missionary communications card trains evangelicals how to speak to a Jew: "Do say," "Don't say"

“That’s what they’re planning to do with GOD TV and Shelanu TV in particular,” explains Singer. “They’re notorious for using Jewish symbols, icons, and liturgy. It’s a war on the weakest of all people. In fact, they say it straight out: we want to bring this to the young, we want to bring this to the elderly. And they want to do it in the native Hebrew language, which they clearly state, has never been done before.”

Shannon Nuszen has seen it all before. She grew up on this stuff. “It is not uncommon to hear Christian supporters of Israel profess their love for the Jewish people, and deny that they have any intention to proselytize while in the Jewish State. Yet, if you were to see these same Christians speaking in churches around America you'd hear something completely different. Among themselves, they are free to take their masks off.”

Rabbi Singer calls Shelanu TV, “A very aggressive project. To seize and use HOT cable—which is in the homes of some 700,000 Israelis—to witness to the Jewish people. Their view on their part in this is if the Jews en masse in the Holy Land are converted to Christianity, this would enable Jesus to make a second coming. So their press now, more than ever, is to bring back the second coming of Jesus,” says Singer who explains that this belief is based on a passage in Matthew 23:39 which evangelists interpret to mean that Jesus cannot make a second coming unless the Jews convert to Christianity en masse.

“Hot, of course, should completely nullify this agreement because this particular station was supposed to be educational. The license was not given to them for the purpose of converting people to Christianity.”

The good news is that Likud MK David (Dudi) Amsalem, who heads Israel’s Ministry of Communications is working to drive Shelanu TV out of business, fast. Here’s a rough translation of his Hebrew statement:

“We will not allow any missionary channel to operate in the State of Israel, under any circumstances.

“It is important to note that the Cable and Satellite Council is an independent and sovereign body which makes its own decisions, but as soon as I learned of this case, I immediately contacted the chairman of the Cable and Satellite Council to launch a thorough and comprehensive investigation into the matter, ensuring that no channel violates the terms of its license, and that the channel in question will be removed immediately.

“On the face of it, this is a failure, and as the representative of the State of Israel's media, I will not allow the unfair impact of religious broadcasts on viewers in the State of Israel.”

Shannon Nuszen, in her capacity as a board member of Jewish Israel, on the other hand, was never fooled. She has spent years monitoring missionary activity in Israel, and has helped the organization amass an extensive database of websites, screen shots, and videos of the internal communications of missionaries. These are always taken down after they are found by Jewish organizations that expose their agenda. That’s why she began a concentrated effort to copy the GOD TV materials as soon as she uncovered them. And she knew, right away, that something underhanded was afoot. And it was. “If God TV had applied for a license using the description for its programming in the same way they did in that fundraising video, I do not believe they would have been granted the right to broadcast on HOT TV.”

Hence the deception.

The moral of the story? Let the cable TV buyer and just regular Jewish Joes on the (Israeli) street beware. Because you’re not just paranoid. These (sneaky, underhanded) evangelists really are out to get you.

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.

Israel sentences Palestinian student to prison. Usual suspects defend her. But is she innocent?

There are petitions with 15,000 signatures to free Mays Abu Ghosh from prison:

She was sentenced to 16 months in prison this week.

What were the charges against her? Haaretz' Gideon Levy co-wrote (with Alex Levac) a sarcastic article making fun of the idea that she is anything but an innocent lamb, so let's see if we can translate his spin into truth:

Mohammed Abu Ghosh says that his daughter’s arrest has been even more difficult for him than his son’s death. He casts a wistful glance at a huge photo of Mays’ pretty face and falls silent. A pendant in the shape of Palestine is hanging around her neck. Mays, his eldest, has been in Israeli custody for five months.

Mohammed has known his share of suffering: His son Hussein was killed at the age of 17 after perpetrating a stabbing attack in the settlement of Beit Horon in which Shlomit Krigman was killed in 2016. Mohammed’s nephew, also named Hussein, was killed at the age of 19 on the first anniversary of his son’s death, in a car-ramming attack in the settlement of Ma’aleh Mikhmash. And Mohammed’s son Suleiman, now 17, was twice arrested last year and held in administrative detention – incarceration without trial – for four months each time.

Translation: Mays comes from a family of terrorists.

Now Mays is in prison and, according to her lawyers and other sources, she has been tortured during her interrogations. The five counts of the indictment against her sound serious and terrifying, but are for the most part revealed as ridiculous when the details are known.

The “unlawful association” that Mays, a fourth-year student in the media department at Bir Zeit University, is accused of belonging to is the left-wing students’ organization, Qutub. Israeli authorities claim that Qutub is affiliated with the outlawed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, but the student group denies any such connection.

Apparently Levy was convinced by that denial without doing any checking. Because the Facebook page of Qutub says that it is indeed associated with the PFLP as well as the DFLP.

And its activities are featured on the PFLP website.

And the Facebook page of Qutub also explicitly supports violence.

"The only road to Palestine" (is through violence.)

So, yeah, Mays is associated with a terror group.

“Bearing, possessing and manufacturing weapons” boils down to filling two bottles with sand at a gas station and inserting pieces of cloth into them, which to her interrogators indicated that she might have been making a Molotov cocktail.

Hold on. She inserted sand and some cloth into a glass bottle outside a gas station.

The only ingredients in a Molotov cocktail are a bottle, gasoline and a cloth as a wick. But guess what? Sand is also used in Molotov cocktails to give it some weight and it helps the glass break easier.

Of course she was putting together a Molotov cocktail. What else could she have been doing - an art project outside a gas station? Perhaps someone should ask Gideon Levy.

So, yeah, Mays was caught manufacturing a firebomb.

“Contact with an enemy” apparently involved participating in a conference about the Palestinian return in Lebanon, speaking on a radio program about her dead brother and intending to prepare a report on Hadeel al-Hashlamoun.

About that conference in Lebanon: Mays met with Hezbollah while there. In fact, she was offered a job as a reporter for Al-Nour TV while there, which is a Hezbollah station.

So, yeah, Mays was in contact with Hezbollah.

Paragraph 2.4 of Mays’ charge sheet is particularly serious: “In August 2019, or a proximate date, the accused spoke with Kutzi Masalmeh, Lian Elkaid and Samah Gradath about holding a summer camp for the organization [Qutub], and wondered how to go about it in the light of the detention of a number of people.”

Fortunately for Israel, the malicious and perilous plan to organize a summer camp was thwarted in time, thanks to the Shin Bet security service.

What do you think would be taught at a summer camp run by a group linked to terror? It isn't a summer camp, it is an indoctrination center for children to join the PFLP.

Just based on a biased Haaretz report and some basic searches, we can see that Mays Abu Ghosh grew up with terrorists, joined a student group linked to terrorists and that glorifies terrorists, met with terrorists herself, and was caught making two firebombs.

And these are just the charges and details we know about.

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.

05/06 Links Pt1: Palestinian terrorists can legally take part in EU-funded activities; The Unsinkable Benjamin Netanyahu

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: EU Diplomats Capitulate to Palestinian Pressure on Terror Regulations

On March 30, 2020, the EU Representative Office to the West Bank and Gaza sent a “clarification letter regarding the EU-funded contracts” to Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) – an umbrella organization of 135 Palestinian NGOs. In it, the EU diplomats appear to give in to Palestinian pressure and effectively annul EU regulations that prohibit the transfer of EU funds to terror groups or individuals connected to these groups (what Palestinian NGOs label “political parties” and “resistance factions”).

At least five members of PNGO have reported ties to EU-designated terror organizations, including through employees and/or board members who are directly involved in the activities and programs – on top of the various Palestinian NGOs and humanitarian groups that are affiliated with the PFLP. In addition to ongoing funding, on April 9 the EU announced a massive assistance package to the PA of “around €71 million in response to the coronavirus pandemic,” including “€6.9 million in humanitarian aid” to unnamed “non-governmental organisations and UN agencies already present on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

In practice, this means that even if a Palestinian NGO applying for EU grants is an affiliate of terrorist groups or employs individuals from these groups, the EU will still provide them with taxpayer funding – whether designated for emergency responses to COVID-19 or for regular programs.

Background
In 2019, the EU introduced a clause in its contracts with NGOs, under “General conditions applicable to European Union-financed grant contracts for external actions” (Annex G.2, Annex II, Article 1.5 bis). It stipulates that “Grant beneficiaries and contractors must ensure that there is no detection of subcontractors, natural persons, including participants to workshops and/or trainings and recipients of financial support to third parties, in the lists of EU restrictive measures.” In the Palestinian context, these lists EU-designated terrorist organizations(e.g. Hamas, Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine).

According to media reports, during a December 20, 2019 meeting with EU officials, representatives from PNGO “refused to sign an EU grant request which stipulates among its criteria that beneficiaries must refuse to transfer any EU aid given to terrorist groups or entities….The organizations in question steadfastly decline to do so, claiming Palestinian terrorist groups are merely ‘political parties.’”

On December 30, 2019, multiple Palestinian NGOs, including PNGO members, launched a “Palestinian National Campaign to Reject Conditional Funding.” The campaign, which rejects the EC’s “conditioned funding” and “so-called anti-terrorism clauses and policies…on preventing terrorism that affect the history and struggle of our people” (emphasis added), justifies the use of violence and claims that the “Palestinian resistance factions are not terrorist organizations,”
Click Here to Read NGO Monitor’s Letter to the President of the European Commission Regarding the Anti-Terror Clause

Palestinian terrorists can legally take part in EU-funded activities

Palestinians affiliated with terrorist groups may participate in EU activities, EU Representative to West Bank and Gaza Sven Kuhn von Burgsdorff wrote in an official letter obtained by The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

The letter, dated March 30, to the Palestinian NGO Network clarified that all EU-funded projects, including by Palestinian organizations, must follow EU law, such as a ban on funding terrorist groups. However, the letter points out that there are no Palestinian individuals on the EU's "restrictive measures list" barring funds to terrorists, such that the NGOs would not be penalized if members of terrorist groups benefit from EU funding.

"While the entities and groups included in the EU restrictive lists cannot benefit from EU-funded activities, it is understood that a natural person affiliated to, sympathizing with or supporting any of the groups or entities mentioned in the EU restrictive lists is not excluded from benefiting from EU-funded activities, unless his/her exact name and surname...corresponds to any of the natural persons on the EU restrictive list," the letter reads.

The letter also states that "the EU does not ask any civil society organization to change its political position towards any Palestinian faction or to discriminate against any natural person based on his/her political affiliation."

Von Burgsdorff’s message came after months of protests by Palestinian NGOs demanding that the EU erase a stipulation that aid only be sent to organizations with no ties to EU-designated terrorist groups.

PA hiding terrorist salaries from donor countries in financial reports

Monthly budget documents prepared by the Palestinian Authorities for 2020 show that the administration is attempting to hide the salaries it pays terrorists from international donors, making a sham of its commitment to financial transparency.

The PA receives hundreds of millions of dollars annually from donor countries around the world and is therefore obliged to produce fully transparent financial records with all expenses listed for the benefit of its donors. However, its 'pay to slay' scheme, which pays terrorists a monthly stipend, likely falls foul of international law, leaving the PA unable to openly declare the payments within its budget.

Consequently, the NGO Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has found that the PA is diverting the payments through the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a trick it has used in the past.

“Ever since PMW notified the donor countries that the PA’s is paying salaries to terrorist prisoners with their money, the PA has been doing everything it can to confuse the donors," Itamar Marcus, director of PMW said.

"In 2014, the PA closed the PA Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs, and in 2015 it created the PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs. In 2018, it reopened the PA Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs and in 2019 it changed its name to the Commission for Detainees’ Affairs. Now in 2020, it is trying to hide its payments by moving them once again from the PA to the PLO.”

Detailed analysis of the PA's Budget Performance Reports show that in 2018, the PA spent 736 million shekels financing the Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs. The following year the Authority spent a further 619 million shekels financing the Commission for Detainees' Affairs, of which 517 million was spent on terrorists salaries. In the 2020 reports, however, neither organization is listed, but the monies paid to the PLO has increased significantly, from just over 400 million shekels to in excess of 700 million shekels.

If you can make heads or tails out of this abstract, my hat's off to you:

Palestine and the Will to Theorise Decolonial QueeringWalaa Alqaisiya

AbstractThis article posits a theorisation of decolonisation in relation to queer as it emerges from the settler-colonial context of Palestine, what I call decolonial queering. The first part provides a new reading of Zionist settler-colonialism, which I define as hetero-conquest. Its novelty lies in refocusing the question of colonialism in native grounded knowledge of queering, while showing the limitations of those existing studies whose frames emanate mainly from American and/or global north contexts of racism and homo-nationalism. By tracing the contemporary continuity of hetero-conquest in Palestine, the second part unpacks the need for a radical theory of liberation that weaves decolonization into queer. Bringing Sara Ahmed and Frantz Fanon into dialogue, such a theory emanates from the amalgam of histories, geographies and bodies, whose restoration beyond the strictures of hetero-conquest opens the way for a radical multi-scalar politics of liberation.

The paper itself isn't much more understandable, but one part that was almost in English was interesting.

In May 2016, Israel held its first ever beauty pageant for transgender people and the winner was Talleen Abu Hanna, an ‘Arab citizen of Israel,’ who became Israel’s transgender beauty queen. Abu Hanna’s victory marked a significant historic moment, signalling the undeniable progressiveness of Israel as an LGBT haven. The circulating facts about Israel as a beacon of LGBT emancipation, however, are part of a very carefully engineered array of narratives that aim to frame and sponsor the country as a liberal democracy via its record on gender and sexuality rights. In so doing, those narratives also are engrained into a chrono-geographical scheme that is reminiscent of what has been presented so far. Israel’s record of LGBT tolerance, in fact, is measured in relation to its Arab neighbours, who happen to lack such values....

The success story of Israel’s Arab transgender queen is not simply a historic moment showcasing Israel’s progress on transgender rights, but it sits within the discursive economies of Zionist rightful [settler-colonial] presence over Palestine by virtue of emancipating the ‘oriental’ ‘woman-land.’ Being a woman and Arab, in fact, are constituting elements in this victory, as they permit readers to zoom on the necessity of her ‘triumph’ over her Arab closed-minded background, which rejected her and did not accept her transitioning....

Abu Hannah’s case and the narratives mobilised around her allows us to map the historical continuity of Zionist hetero-conquest. Similar to the oriental woman-land, whose emancipation awaited halutz desiring project -fusing Zionist spatio-temporal constitutive (modern ploughing techniques birthing a Zionist geography)- Abu Hanna’s ability to transition successfully as a woman owes to Israel’s presence as a place of modern sexual values. Read within the sphere of Halutz desiring logic, Abu Hanna is the perfect embodiment of a sexed and gendered other, whose racialised [oriental] essence makes it possible to demarcate the necessity of Zionist conquest, with its moral modern and civilizational attributes. Through Abu Hanna, Israel’s unprecedented celebration of transgender rights can be fathomed only in relation to its antithesis: a Palestine to which Abu Hanna is grateful not to belong to. The latter lacks in cultural and moral values that Israel has – [Palestine] would have killed Abu Hanna- while Israel is the one that nurtures and permits the unfolding of her True sexed/gendered self. With this triumph, Abu Hanna is not only said to reveal and fulfil her true gendered self, but is also caught within the discursive promotion of Israel: As a place of peace and a culture of sexual tolerance as opposed to Palestine and rest of the Arab region. The birthing of an Arab transgender queen of Israel, therefore, corresponds to a Zionist settler colonial teleology, generating - once again - the legitimizing grounds for de-legitimising Arabness/Palestine.

Alqaisiya cannot deny that Israel is a liberal state. She cannot deny that transgender rights exist in Israel and are non-existent in the Palestinian areas. She cannot deny that Talleen Abu Hanna is a proud Israeli who would be killed if she lived under Palestinian rule.

But pointing out those facts is immoral, because it helps legitimate Israel and it delegitimizes Palestine.

In other words, pointing out that Israel is a more moral and a more liberal society than any in the Arab world is worse than the gay-bashing, misogynist Arab culture itself. There is no greater crime than legitimizing Israel, and its liberalism and morality do exactly that, so they must not be discussed. And when Israel shows pride in its own accomplishments and its humanity, that is all a means to legitimize itself, and therefore immoral.

The next paragraph of gibberish mostly confirms what I wrote, but it ends with an astonishing statement for a supposed liberal to make:

Conceptual frames approaching queerness as a liberal critique would interpret the case of Israel’s first Arab beauty queen as the emergence of (queer) homo-normative/ nationalist subjectivity, thus serving a liberal/nationalist status quo that is nevertheless racist. Drawing on decolonial queering, however, I capture the historical continuity of hetero-conquest and the embedded violence on a native self from without and from within. This lens invites the reader to reflect on the case of Abu Hannah - and the narratives around her – as part and parcel of the history of Zionist conquest, whose constitutive gendering and racializing elements cohere with a structural settler-colonial politics of Time, Space and Desire. More importantly, decolonial queering situates queerness in relation to hetero-conquest generated from within Arab-native self-struggle and adopted taxonomies for emancipation. In other words, the story of the first Arab transgender queen in Israel is not simply a moment of queer liberal time, where the racialized Arab emerges as ‘the most salient and dangerous other at the moment the homosexual, once the nation’s sexual other, gains increasing acceptability.’ This would be a reductive analysis that divorces the event from a wider historical continuity of settler-colonial conquest and its generative production of the conquerable other. This triumph explains how those same dynamics of hetero-conquest – mapped above – perpetuate, whereby the colonising saviour self-legitimises its presence over the woman/land by virtue of extending those progressive values and tools the native is presumed to lack. What is important in Abu Hannah’s case is that she as an Arab who is said to reify this narrative of Israel’s legitimate presence by virtue of promoting herself as Israeli and mobilising international support for Israel. She, therefore, confirms the Zionist colonial fantasy of having to endow conquest, as Neumann would perceive it in its moral liberating terms vis-a-vis the woman-native who is yearning for her conqueror.

The Arab winner of a beauty contest is a person to be loathed because she said nice things about Israel. According to Alqaisiya, this cannot possibly be because she actually likes her country. No, she is "yearning for her conqueror" and is therefore worthy of contempt.

The only possible way that a leftist can insult a trans woman without the risk of being labeled "transphobic," is if that trans woman praises Israel, the ultimate evil.

This is academia in the social sciences today - pseudo-academic texts with multi-syllabic (and invented) words all meant to justify the basest of hatreds.

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Climate, women's rights, gay rights, animal rights: Israel is held guilty of violating every social justice crime

Since Israel haters in the West are overwhelmingly part of the socialist Left, they attempt to buttress their anti-Israel argument by hitching a ride onto whatever the current trendy social justice issue is.

The irony is that every single accusation they make against Israel applies not to Israel - but to the Palestinians.

Every single one.

I started a thread on Twitter yesterday about this with a number of examples. For example, this classic where somehow "Palestine is a climate justice issue":

- Even though the Palestinians in the West Bank waste tons of water, and the ones in Gaza burn rubber tires and set Israeli fields on fire

And of course "Palestine is a feminist issue":

- Even though women under Palestinian control suffer from a large set of laws that are explicitly anti-woman:

A queer struggle?

Many have spoken about the insanity that attracts some gays to be pro-Palestinian when gays are honor-killed and beaten in Palestinian areas, and as far as I can tell there is not one gay person who is out in Palestinian controlled areas because of fear for his or her life.

Here's a novel one:

I admit I have no clue how Israel supposedly interferes with Palestinian reproductive rights. But I'm sure there is something. Maybe watching "Fauda" is depressing Palestinian birthrates.

Of course the social justice warriors will connect "walls" - because whatever Trump supports, they must oppose and link to Israel.

Yet Palestinians set up checkpoints and limits on who can enter their territories during the pandemic, as did everyone else - but no one talks about those "walls." Everyone has a right to defend themselves except Jews.

While the social justice crowd claims to be for free speech, they do everything they can to shout down any pro-Israel voices on campus while claiming that pointing out their own biases is "quashing" their own free speech.

Even last month, Palestinian officials have suspended two journalists from their jobs at the Palestinian press agency Wafa because they didn't like their social media posts. The PA also routinely arrests people for posting insults of Mahmoud Abbas on social media.

Somehow, even disability rights is framed to be an anti-Israel issue (this is a variant of the charge that Israel seeks to maim Palestinians.)

We cannot forget animal rights:

- Even though Palestinians treat animals horribly. Israeli police do more to help Palestinian-owned animals than Palestinian police do!

Speaking of police, we cannot forget that Israel haters claim that Israel is somehow responsible for police brutality in the US.

-Even though Palestinian police are much more brutal.

It's all intersectional!

Israel is even accused of somehow being linked to prisoner abuse worldwide - because Israel uses G4S as a security contractor sometimes, as so do other countries! (G4S is British.) Yes, there is no logic there, but that doesn't stop Linda Sarsour from making the claim that they are connected.

I found one case where people even tried to link gentrification of US neighborhoods to Israel!

That attempt failed miserably.

The SJWs say explicitly that somehow the Palestinian issue is the defining global justice issue of our time.

To these people, Israel is the unique evil that is behind all the other evils in the world.

Which is exactly what people have said about Jews over the past 2000 years.

It's truly an amazing coincidence.

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An easy test to see if one is pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel

The UN's OCHA-OPT weekly COVID-19 report says:

Following agreement between the Palestinian and Israeli authorities, over ten thousand Palestinian labourers crossed into Israel from the West Bank on 3 May. They are part of an estimated 40,000 labourers who have been granted permits to stay in Israel until the end of Ramadan. As part of the agreement, Israeli employers will be responsible for the accommodation of their workers, while the Israeli authorities will provide workers with health insurance, as well as protective masks and gloves.

Yes, Israel is providing health insurance for Palestinian workers.

If there is any non-Israel issue that the anti-Israel Left agrees on, it is universal health care. If they really care about Palestinians they should be very happy about this news that provides a safety net for those who need work and must go to Israel.

Haaretz reported last week that the Israeli Health Ministry issued a a directive already on March 24 requiring the Israeli employers to arrange for health care coverage for those Palestinians who decided to stay in Israel to continue to work. Soon they all went home anyway because the PA demanded it.

It looks like the employers are not all following the directive, so - based on this UN report - it looks like the Israeli government itself is ensuring that Palestinian workers have health insurance.

Even so, the ministry issued the order based on its own judgment of what is the right thing to do - not because of pressure from critics of Israel.

This is how a moral society works.

And this is why you will not hear a word about this from the people who claim to be pro-Palestinian. Because they want to find things to blame on Israel. They want to see Israel treating Palestinians poorly.

Palestinians, as always, are pawns to those who pretend to support them. And the proof is the lack of coverage of the remarkable fact that Israel is providing the most socialist of benefits to people who declare themselves to be Israel's enemy.

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My latest EoZTV interview is with Asaf Romirowsky where we discuss 70 years of UNRWA failure and what the future might bring.

Unfortunately you cannot hear his audio for the first 3 minutes, so listen to my initial question and skip to the 3:00 mark.

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05/05 Links Pt2: Failed by Israel, Malki Roth’s parents hope US can extradite her gloating killer; Kiss frontman Gene Simmons learns about Holocaust survivor mother’s ordeal

From Ian:

Failed by Israel, Malki Roth’s parents hope US can extradite her gloating killer

There might be all manner of “creative ways” to help the Jordanians mitigate any damage and the US should certainly give them “time and space to advise us on how they intend to do it,” said Shapiro. “But that’s quite different from the seeming lack of conversation for a long time, where they simply refuse to discuss it and we conduct business as usual.”

Hoenlein and Conference of Presidents CEO William Daroff told The Times of Israel in Jerusalem in February it was outrageous that Tamimi was walking around freely in Jordan.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations executive vice president Malcolm Hoenlein (R) and CEO William Daroff at The Times of Israel offices in Jerusalem, February 6, 2020. (Times of Israel)

“I speak to [Malki’s] parents and we are getting more involved in it,” said Hoenlein. “They are right: it is an outrage. Because of the sensitive position the king is in, everybody tiptoes. Rightfully, we have good relations with him, and when he comes to America, he meets with us always and we want to see him strengthened. We don’t want to jeopardize the stability of Jordan, which would have grave implications for Israel, for everyone in the region. But this is really an unacceptable situation.”

Along with the simple principle of justice, Congressman Perry, the legislator whose bid to condition US aid on Jordan honoring its treaty led to that extraordinary new “extradition” clause in this year’s Appropriations Bill, raised another central point when considering the balance between pushing Jordan hard for Tamimi’s extradition and preserving Jordan’s internal stability: the imperative that neither Jordan, nor any other country for that matter, be permitted to turn itself into a safe haven for terrorists.

“Delivering justice to the loved ones of the three Americans killed in the August 2001 senseless bombing is a top priority. Under United States law, we have the legal authority to try individuals whose attacks against US Nationals outside the US result in death; as such, we’re seeking the rightful extradition of Al-Tamimi from Jordan,” Perry said in an emailed statement. “Jordan’s unwillingness to cooperate with our extradition request is unacceptable, and I fear its resistance will turn them into a safe harbor for international terrorists and thugs.

“If Jordan is unwilling to allow Al-Tamimi to stand trial in the United States for the actions about which she publicly boasts and brags,” he added, “this is a very dangerous message to other bad actors that consider attacking innocent civilians.”

Congress Members Push for Extradition of Wanted Terrorist Ahlam Tamimi From Jordan

A group of Republican members of Congress have called on the Jordanian ambassador to the United States for the Hashemite Kingdom to extradite wanted Palestinian-Jordanian Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi to the United States.

Tamimi has been accused of being the mastermind behind the Sbarro Pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem on Aug. 9, 2001, that killed 15 people, including eight children, and wounded 121 others. Among those killed were two American citizens, 15-year-old Malki Roth and 31-year-old Judith Greenbaum, who was pregnant at the time. A third American, Chana Nachenberg, has remained in a permanent vegetative state ever since.

“Today, appallingly, Tamimi is a media celebrity, the subject of wide popular admiration. She has appeared publicly side-by-side with prominent political figures and received extraordinary recognition in Jordan’s mainstream press and television media as a respected commentator and as an object of Jordanian national pride,” wrote the group of Republican congressmen to Jordanian Ambassador to the United States Dina Kawar.

The signees were Reps. Greg Steube (R-Fla.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), Brian Mast (R-Fla.), Scott Perry (R-Penn.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).

“She has been showered with acclaim by the students of the Arab world’s most important graduate school of journalism, the Amman-based Jordan Media Institute, who declared her to be their “success model,’ ” they wrote. “For five years, she traveled widely and often to deliver public speeches throughout Jordan and in numerous Arab countries beyond Jordan’s borders. Her theme has always centered on promoting terror and terrorists.”

Tamimi, who planned the attack, has shown no remorse, saying she has “no regrets.”

UK Supreme Court BDS Ruling Will Not Prevent Israel Divestment Ban

The Supreme Court’s "narrow" technical ruling against the government over local authority divestments will not prevent forthcoming legislation to ban public bodies from imposing boycotts, the Conservative Friends of Israel group has said.

In a joint response to last week’s ruling that former Communities Secretary Said Javid had gone too far in telling local councils that they could not choose to shun certain countries when investing pension funds, CFI’s chair Stephen Crabb MP, Lord Pickles and Honorary President Lord Polak said the judge’s decision "serves to reinforce the importance of the government’s forthcoming legislation."

The trio added: "We reiterate our strong support for the Conservative government’s manifesto commitment to ban public bodies from imposing their own boycotts, divestments, and sanctions, which have all too often sown discord within local communities”.

Meanwhile a government spokesperson underlined the continued support for legislation – a commitment that was confirmed by Boris Johnson in the Queen’s Speech debate following the December general election. “We are committed to ensuring public bodies take a consistent approach to investments and to stop local boycotts," a spokesperson said this week. "We will therefore bring back new legislation that addresses the technical points raised by the Supreme Court."

A legal expert told the JC that last week’s ruling was "a narrow one" which applies in relation to a specific law, rather than making any general points about the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

They added that nothing in the judgement prevents parliament from passing new legislation.

Guardian promoted BDS letter by '130 parliamentarians' is not what it seems

A May 1st Guardian article by Patrick Wintour (“MPs press for sanctions against Israel over West Bank annexations“) promotes a letter organised by the Council for Arab British Understanding (Caabu), a UK lobby group which promotes BDS and other forms of deligitimisation against Israel.

It begins thusly:
Nearly 130 parliamentarians, including former Conservative cabinet ministers, have written to Boris Johnson urging him to impose economic sanctions against Israel if Benjamin Netanyahu’s new coalition government goes ahead with its threat to annex parts of the West Bank.

However, we examined the 130+ parliamentarians who signed the pro-BDS letter, and it turns out to be far less impressive than the Guardian’s framing.

First, here’s our breakdown of the party affiliation of those who signed.
42 Labour MPs
12 Labour Peers
31 SNP MPs
7 Lib Dem MPs
17 Lib Dem Peers
9 Conservative MPs
3 Former Conservative MPs
5 Conservative Peers
1 Green MP
1 Plaid Cymru MP
1 Northern Ireland Alliance MP
8 Crossbench Peers
1 Green Peer

Some observations:
In total, only 92 signatories are current MPs. (The rest are either peers or retired MPs)

The number of current Labour MPs who signed the letter (42) is actually small when you consider that 91 Labour MPs are members of Labour Friends of Palestine, and that there are 202 Labour MPs overall. Further, signatures from high profile Labour MPs – including Jeremy Corbyn – were noticeably absent, and, in fact, not one member of Keir Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet signed.

JTA reports:

The Western Wall Plaza reopened to worshippers on Tuesday morning.

The reopening comes after the Israeli government relaxed some of its coronavirus restrictions, including canceling the restriction on joining outdoor prayer services only within 500 meters from a person’s home.

The plaza in front of the Western Wall will be divided into as many prayer areas as possible in accordance with government social distancing regulations, The Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which operates the holy site, said in a statement.

For the next few days, up to 300 worshippers will be allowed to be in the Western Wall plaza at one time, contingent on them wearing masks.

Here's how Hamas mouthpiece Felesteen reported the news:

The resumption of the Jewish incursions into Islamic Al-Buraq Square in Jerusalem

The committee that supervises the Jewish settlers' incursions into the Islamic Al-Buraq Square, west of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, announced today, Tuesday, the resumption of these incursions in the place starting today.

This is just a reminder that for all the assertions that Muslims are tolerant towards Jews, there is a significant percentage that wouldn't even allow Jews to worship at the Western Wall if they were in charge. In fact, there is not a single Jewish holy place that Muslims do not also claim as their own, so they would - if they were in a position of power - ban all Jews from all holy places.

The people who say they want peace don't like to admit that fact, or they pretend that a Muslim state would act differently today.

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