Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, October 23, 2020

10/23 Links Pt1: Israel, Sudan announce deal normalizing ties; Palestinian NGOs sue UK over 1917 Balfour Declaration; Despite VIP treatment Saeb Erakat will continue to slander Israel

From Ian:

In call with Netanyahu, Sudan leaders, Trump announces Israel-Sudan peace deal

US President Donald Trump announced Friday that Sudan will start to normalize ties with Israel, making it the third Arab state to do so as part of US-brokered deals in recent months.

During a call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sudan Sovereign Council president General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, Trump brought reporters into the Oval Office and announced: “The State of Israel and the Republic of Sudan have agreed to make peace.”

A senior Trump aide, Judd Deere, said that Sudan and Israel “have agreed to the normalization of relations.”

Trump said Sudan had demonstrated a commitment to battling terrorism. “This is one of the great days in the history of Sudan,” Trump said, adding that Israel and Sudan have been in a state of war for decades.

“It is a new world,” Netanyahu said over the phone. “We are cooperating with everyone. Building a better future for all of us.”

“We are expanding the circle of peace so rapidly with your leadership,” Netanyahu could be heard telling Trump, who responded by saying. “There are many, many more coming.”

Trump also was heard taking a dig at Joe Biden, his opponent in the November election saying: “do you think Sleepy Joe could have made this deal, Bibi?”

‘Yes, yes, yes’: Why peace with Khartoum is true paradigm shift for Israel

Yes to removal of Sudan from the US list of state sponsors of terror. Yes to a billion-dollar aid package. And yes to normalization with Israel?

The remarkable tale of Sudan turning from a symbol of the Arab world’s rejection of the Jewish state, into its latest potential peace partner, could be summed up by referring to three no’s that, in the span of 53 years, look set to become three yes’s.

Many Israelis still associate Khartoum with the “Three No’s” — “No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel” — formulated by an Arab League summit held in the Sudanese capital shortly after the end of the Six-Day War in 1967.

Now, after months of pressure from the US administration, the culmination of efforts to get the Northeast-African Arab country to normalize relations with Israel appears closer than ever, perhaps just days away.

Earlier this week, the transitional government in Khartoum agreed to pay $335 million in compensation to the victims of the 1998 bombings of two US Embassies in Africa (Sudan didn’t perpetrate the attacks, which killed more than 4,000 people, but granted asylum to the terrorists). In exchange, US President Donald Trump vowed to remove the country from its lists of state sponsors of terrorism, where it has been since 1993.

Together with a massive financial aid package for the struggling country — the US has reportedly offered $800 million in aid and investments, but Sudan demands some $3-4 billion — the removal of the terrorism designation is largely seen as a precursor to a normalization deal with Israel.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday spoke with Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, applauded his “efforts-to-date to improve Sudan’s relationship with Israel, and expressed hope that they would continue.”

Caroline Glick on Sudan normalizing relations with Israel & social media giants

Josh Hammer: Donald Trump may be the most pro-Jewish president ever

This election, there is no subgroup for whom the stakes are higher than my Jewish co-religionists.

That’s because, for starters, Donald Trump is quite possibly the most pro-Jewish president ever — or at least since George Washington famously assured the Jews of Newport, RI, that each child of the “stock of Abraham” would forever “sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree.”

Through word and deed, President Trump — a father of an observant Jew and grandfather of Jewish children — has repeatedly established himself as a true friend and guardian of the people of the covenant. And in the post-1948 era of Zionism, Trump has been by far the most loyal and transformative friend of the world’s sole Jewish state.

Trump ended decades of presidential timidity and promise-breaking by finally moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. He withdrew the United States from the harrowing capitulation to evil that was the Obama-Biden nuclear accord with Iran and has slapped crippling sanctions on the mullocracy.

He decimated the Islamic State “caliphate” and decapitated Iranian arch-terrorist Qassem Soleimani, both threats to Israel and Jews everywhere. He closed the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization’s mission in Washington and defunded the Palestinian Authority itself due to its barbaric “pay-to-slay” subsidies.

Trump also cut funding or outright withdrew from three anti-Israel UN bodies: the (grossly misnamed) UN Human Rights Council, UNWRA and UNESCO.

And we’re just getting started. Team Trump has boldly stood up for Israeli “settlements” in Judea and Samaria. The president formally recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and rolled out the most pro-Israel plan for peace with the Palestinian Arabs that a US president has ever endorsed.

Yesterday, Gaza terror groups shot two rockets towards Israeli towns.

Here is how Arabic-language media wrote their headlines:

Ma'an (Palestinian, independent): Two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip towards the settlements

Wattan.Net (Palestinian): The occupation claims that two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip towards the settlements

Shasha (Palestinian:) Israeli allegations: Two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip at the cover settlements

FatehGaza (Fatah): Sirens ring out in the settlements on the Gaza Strip, after a burst of rockets was fired

El Wehda (Pan Arab): Two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip towards the settlements

Al Masry Al Youm (Egypt): Two rockets were launched from Gaza towards Israel (headline), An Israeli army spokesman confirmed that two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip, today, Thursday, at the settlements of the Gaza envelope.

Al Ghad TV (Egypt): The Occupation Army: Two Rockets Were Fired From The Gaza Strip Towards Israeli Territory

RT Arabic (Russia): Two rockets were launched from Gaza at the settlements, with the Iron Dome blocking one of them

To much of the Arabic-speaking world, all Israeli towns are "settlements" - illegal communities that will eventually be taken over by Arabs..

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Yesterday, the controversial academic Norman Finkelstein tweeted a purposefully provocative statement:

FB & Twitter have announced that they will ban Holocaust denial from their platforms. In a forthcoming book, Cancel Culture, Academic Freedom, and Me, I argue that Holocaust denial should be taught in university and preferably by a Holocaust denier.

That chapter is online at his website.

In a nutshell, Finkelstein's argument is that, based on John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty," distasteful opinions should never be suppressed. Holocaust deniers perform a valuable service of holding Holocaust historians' feet to the fire to prove their version of events - and indeed it has happened on occasion that Holocaust scholars modified their teachings based on valid points of the deniers.

If one is committed to the purity of truth, not just in its wholeness but also in its parts, then a Holocaust denier performs the useful function of ferreting out “local” errors, precisely because he is a devil’s advocate—that is, fanatically committed to “unmasking” the “hoax of the 20th century.” He consequently invests the whole of his being in scrutinizing every piece of evidence, not taking the tiniest detail for granted, passing a fine-tooth comb through each one, and, in his monomaniacal zeal to expose an error, inevitably unearthing one.

By not allowing Holocaust denial, Finkelstein goes on, it allows false Holocaust narratives to be spread by "every Tom, Dick and Moishe pawning himself off as a 'Holocaust survivor.'"

Finally, Finkelstein says, the university is the best place for Holocaust denial to be taught, so students can see all sides of the issue and determine the truth.

Finkelstein pretends to list and counter every possible objection to this idea, which he knows quite well is incendiary. But he ignores the major objection to Holocaust denial.

The motive of Holocaust deniers isn't to uncover the truth of the Holocaust. It is to create a world where the genocide of Jews can be repeated.

There is a world of difference between legitimate researchers and bigots who hide behind hundreds of footnotes to push their hate. Finkelstein, for whatever reason, cannot distinguish between overt racist propaganda and historic research. He cannot tell the difference between an antisemitic conspiracy theory and the truth.

If someone would write that there was never slavery in America, it would be obvious what the motive was. Holocaust deniers' motives are no less obvious - and one wonders whether Finkelstein shares at least some of them.

There is a curious footnote in this essay where Finkelstein all but admits that he cannot distinguish between propaganda and scholarship.

I vividly recall my own deflated sense of intellectual self upon perusing Holocaust-denier Arthur Butz’s The Hoax of the 20th Century. He correctly observed, for example, that it was originally alleged that three million Jews were killed at Auschwitz, and six million Jews altogether were killed. The figure for the number killed at Auschwitz was subsequently scaled down to one million, yet the total figure was still put at six million. How can this be?, Butz rhetorically asked. I had no answer.

He had no answer?

Between five and six million Jews disappeared from Europe from 1939-1945. There were 9.5 million Jews in 1933 and 3.5 million in 1950, although many emigrated after the war. That's where the number six million came from - not from adding the victims from various camps. Obviously as time went on the scholarship improved, as researchers learned more about the victims of Einsatzgruppen and those killed by starvation or typhus. (Some legitimate Holocaust scholars say that the number of Jewish victims is closer to 5 million than 6.) But the total number of lost Jews wasn't calculated by adding up all the victims, it was by calculating who was left. (So far, Yad Vashem has managed to list the names of 4.7 million, with plenty of gaps that researchers are trying to fill.)

How can Finkelstein not know this? This footnote by itself proves that he is no scholar.

Not only that, as this episode proves, Holocaust scholars are quite able to modify their own understanding of the specifics over time without the "help" of Holocaust deniers that Finkelstein pretends is so critical to reach the "truth" that he pretends he cares so much about.

Finkelstein cannot distinguish between pseudo-scholarship and real scholarship. Pseudo-scholars just "raise questions" (how could burning airplane fuel bring down huge buildings?) with the intent to cast doubt on facts for the purpose of pushing conspiracy theories that are usually meant to promote hate ("The Jews did 9/11!") That doesn't mean that pseudo-scholars have an equal right to push their lies together with the real scholars' work.

As far as putting Holocaust denial in college classrooms, that is also an absurd demand. There are an infinite number of lies but only a limited number of classrooms. Why would Holocaust denial be a valid topic for discussion, but not flat-Earth theories, or David Icke's theory that world leaders are really blood-drinking, shape-shifting reptilian humanoids from Alpha Draconis, or 9/11 "trutherism," or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Finkelstein seems to choose a conspiracy theory that he feels some affinity to as being a topic for legitimate debate.

Finkelstein's assertion that Holocaust denial needs to be treated more seriously than any other crackpot theory betrays his own deep issues with Jews. It is no coincidence that his two most well-known positions are criticisms of the "Holocaust industry" and of Israel, or that he has expressed admiration for Hezbollah.

By cherry picking his arguments, Finkelstein shows he has a lot in common with the Holocaust deniers he is seeming to defend. Both of them pretend to care only about the "truth" but in fact they have another agenda.

This essay tells us a lot more about Finkelstein than about the pursuit of truth or John Stuart Mill.

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Three Palestinian groups are "suing" the British Empire in the courts of the Palestinian Authority.

The National Gathering of Independents, the International Foundation for the Follow-up of the Rights of the Palestinian People, and the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate have filed a "lawsuit" in Palestinian court against the British government "regarding its responsibilities for the suffering of the Palestinian people during the period of the mandate," specifically the "sinister Balfour Declaration."

The head of the National Assembly of Independents, Munib al-Masri, said that his group was created as a result of the "National Strategy Conference" held earlier this year to confront the Trump peace plan.

The head of the Follow-up Committee, Muhammad Barakeh, claimed that the Palestinian judiciary has the jurisdiction to legally rule on these issues.

For his part, the head of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, Nasser Abu Bakr, said, "We have friends, institutions and parties that support us in Britain," who can influence British public opinion. He announced that an international media campaign would be launched parallel to this lawsuit, stressing that "all the Syndicate's capabilities would be available for the success of this approach."

Which shows how objective Palestinian journalists are.

Lawyer Nael El-Houh claimed that experts in international law concluded that there is no objection to suing Britain for British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration, especially after Palestine obtained the status of an observer state in the United Nations.

In the event that the Palestinian judiciary decides to hold Britain responsible, every Palestinian who was affected by the British Empire can sue individually.

The lawsuit was filed n Thursday at the Nablus Court of First Instance.

The actual legal importance of this action is roughly equivalent to the results of a high school moot court competition.

One thing you have to say about Palestinian Arabs - they are really great at creating stunts.

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10/22 Links Pt2: Critical Race Theory’s Jewish Problem; David Collier: The decapitation of Europe's freedom; ‘BBC lost its moral compass’ by giving mass murderer a platform

From Ian:

Critical Race Theory’s Jewish Problem

Postcolonial Theory, Israel, and Zionism It shouldn’t be far from anyone’s mind that the Woke, as a rule, are hostile to the existence of Israel. The relevant ideology is, in fact, deeply invested in uncritical support for Palestine and is openly anti-Zionist, often to the point of openly calling for the destruction of Israel. Weiss captures the public results of this attitude well, including the confusion among Jews who still think these ideologies are liberal, writing,

The most recent major outrage in the Jewish community, now several news cycles behind us, came on the Shabbat before Yom Kippur—the holiest day in the Jewish calendar—when many American Jews seemed dumbfounded by what was to me predictable news: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, progressive superstar, had pulled out of an event honoring Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister assassinated because of his efforts to make peace with the Palestinians. Rabin was, as Bill Clinton said at his funeral, “a martyr for his nation’s peace.”

Many Jews were shocked. If Rabin, the symbol of progressive Zionism, is out of bounds, are any Israelis acceptable? What about the 95% of Jews who support the Jewish state? Why would the congresswoman from the Bronx—representing the political party to which upward of 70% of American Jews have been consistently loyal—possibly do such a thing?

The answer to whether any Israelis are acceptable under Theory is no. For those who understand that Postcolonial Theory generally believes all actions made by the West anywhere else in the world, and especially where brown or black people live, as intolerable acts of Western colonialism and imperialism, this isn’t shocking, however. It’s perfectly consistent with what its activists continually say and its Theorists continually write. Israel would be considered in Theory as the result of white, Western imperialism and colonialism—largely in cahoots with conservative Christianity—robbing poor, brown Muslim Palestinians of their land, not least so that there is the ability to assert further Western hegemony and militarism in the Middle East (for the purpose of murdering more brown Muslims). The whole point is to establish, yet again, white supremacy in the Middle East. Its terms really are that stark. In the politically polished words of Linda Sarsour, which invoke precisely the crude racial frame of Critical Race Theory to make their effect,

Ask them this, how can you be against white supremacy in America and the idea of being in a state based on race and class, but then you support a state like Israel that is based on supremacy, that is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else.

While Critical Race Theory sees Israel—no matter its racial makeup—as structural whiteness occupying the (brown) Palestinian Middle East, Postcolonial Theory regards the existence of the contemporary Israeli state in a way that is wholly critical (as Marx would be) of both it and the West that supports it. This is what Postcolonial Theory does; it claims that the West constructs the “East” (here: Palestine) in a way that is meant to make its own values look superior by virtue of being better than the “Other’s” values—a process now unfortunately called “Orientalism.” The point of Orientalism is to enable a means of domination that might then justify Western occupations of non-Western lands and people, which will then hold to its own ideologies, methods, and values. Within the Theoretical wing of the contemporary left, Israel is regarded as one such ongoing project even in a (Western) world that has rejected the idea of colonialism more or less entirely.

Again, as with the issue where Critical Race Theory collides with Jewry, this wretched analysis is exactly what we should expect from Postcolonial Theory’s collision with Israel. It simply lacks the tools for a more nuanced or reasonable analysis of the admittedly complex affair. Take the Palestinian-American Edward Said’s analysis in his landmark Orientalism, which is in some sense recognizable as the birthplace of Postcolonial Theory, wherein precisely this simplistic, cynical, zero-sum thinking can be found:

Thus if the Arab occupies space enough for attention, it is as a negative value. He is seen as the disrupter of Israel’s and the West’s existence, or in another view of the same thing, as a surmountable obstacle to Israel’s creation in 1948. Insofar as this Arab has any history, it is part of the history given him (or taken from him: the difference is slight) by the Orientalist tradition, and later, the Zionist tradition. Palestine was seen—by Lamartine and the early Zionists—as an empty desert waiting to burst into bloom; such inhabitants as it had were supposed to be inconsequential nomads possessing no real claim on the land and therefore no cultural or national reality. Thus the Arab is conceived of now as a shadow that dogs the Jew. In that shadow—because Arabs and Jews are Oriental Semites—can be placed whatever traditional, latent mistrust a Westerner feels towards the Oriental. For the Jew of pre-Nazi Europe has bifurcated: what we have now is a Jewish hero, constructed out of a reconstructed cult of the adventurer-pioneer Orientalist (Burlon, Lane, Renan), and his creeping, mysteriously fearsome shadow, the Arab Oriental. Isolated from everything except the past created for him by Orientalist polemic, the Arab is chained to a destiny that fixes him and dooms him to a series of reactions periodically chastised by what Barbara Tuchman gives the theological name “Israel’s terrible swift sword.” (p. 286)

David Collier: The decapitation of Europe's freedom

Last Friday 47-year-old schoolteacher Samuel Paty was butchered and decapitated near the school at which he worked. His ‘crime’ was to teach his students about free speech. There is a horrific difference in this terror attack that is not being fully digested. This was a community effort. Some Muslims at the school were offended and a protest was launched. A parent brought in an ‘expert’ to help fight the blasphemous teacher. A fatwa was issued and a punishment for blasphemy was handed out. Worse still – despite statements of solidarity with the victim that inevitably filled the political chambers – the message was clear – and teachers all over France received it. Blasphemy in France is a crime punishable by death.

Many writers won’t touch this subject – they are too nervous in case they make a slight mistake that will be used against them. They fear they’ll be shouted down as an ‘Islamophobe’. This in itself is indicative of the problem and shows how our rights to free speech and to defend ourselves are being removed from us. A teacher was brutally murdered for doing his job. Earlier this year a 16-year-old girl in France needed police protection for criticising Islam. We have to talk about this. The Paris attack is different

Why is this terrorist incident different? In attacks such as the Manchester bombing, 7/7, Nice or even with the murder of Lee Rigby, the specific victims were random. There was nothing random about this attack. This was the application of Islamic law on the streets of Paris. Which is where we arrive at our first hurdle- the western PC reflex to terrorist attacks by radical Islamic Muslims is to publicly state that it is nothing to do with Islam.

But what may hold some weight (I am not saying it does) when a nutcase with ISIS ideology filling his head detonates himself in a crowded venue – does not hold at all when a particular target is butchered because of blasphemy.

Simple fact : It is an argument within Islam. Those Muslims who say a blasphemer must be killed are arguing Islamic law just as much as those who say it doesn’t.

Those who say this is nothing to do with Islam should consider this – if the teacher had done this in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Somalia or Saudi Arabia the same punishment (death) may well have been handed out – in a state sanctioned killing. In places such as Jordan, Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Libya or the PA areas, he might just have spent a lengthy time in Jail. But the fact is this – one way or another all Muslim majority countries have criminalised blasphemy. All of them.

Ask yourself this question – how many devout Muslims have you spoken to who think Charlie Hebdo did nothing wrong at all?

The global proportion of Jews living in Europe is as low as it was 1,000 years ago. And the future there doesn’t look bright

Jews’ share of the population of Europe is as low now as it was 1,000 years ago and is declining even further, according to a landmark new demographic study.

The study published Wednesday by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research found 1.3 million people who describe themselves as Jewish in continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Turkey and Russia.

That figure has declined by nearly 60% since 1970, when there were 3.2 million Jews in the same area, wrote the report’s authors, Daniel Staetsky and Sergio DellaPergola.

That decline, which follows the death of about 6 million European Jews in the Holocaust, owes mostly to the emigration of more than 1.5 million people following the collapse of the Iron Curtain, their data shows.

But Western Europe, too, has lost 8.5% of its Jewish population since 1970. It is home to just over a million Jews today compared to 1,112,000 in 1970.

In particular, the Jewish community of Germany is in a “terminal” state because more than 40% of its 118,000 Jews are above the age of 65, whereas less than 10% are under 15, the study says. This reality, which exists also in Russia and Ukraine, “foreshadows high death rates and unavoidable future population decline,” according to the study.

The project is arguably the most comprehensive survey of Jewish demographics ever completed in Europe, more far-reaching than a 2018 European Union survey — although the new survey uses some information from the 2018 EU project. It is also based on official census data and figures provided by individual Jewish communities, which are often organized into organizations with official membership tallies.

From AFP:

From pickled vine leaves to coffee and cheese, Saudi supermarkets are taking Turkish products off the shelves after calls for a boycott, as rivalry between Riyadh and Ankara heats up.

This week, after an earlier call from the head of the Saudi chamber of commerce to "boycott everything Turkish", multiple supermarket chains announced they were stopping the import and sale of Turkish products.

"This decision has come in solidarity with the popular boycott campaign," one of them, Abdullah Al Othaim Markets, said on Twitter.

The two countries are at loggerheads over a range of regional issues, from Libya and Syria to Qatar, a key Turkish ally that faces a three-year Saudi-led economic blockade.

Wary of rattling foreign investors and amid suspicion that Turkey could lodge a complaint with the World Trade Organization, the Saudi government has sought to distance itself from the boycott.

Authorities have denied placing restrictions on Turkish products and maintain that citizens have led the campaign.

But a joint statement from eight leading Turkish business groups this month claimed that many Saudi companies had been "forced to sign a letter of commitment not to import goods from Turkey".

The Ankara-based Turkish Contractors Association meanwhile cited "various obstacles" at ongoing Saudi projects, such as not being invited to tenders, difficulty in obtaining visas for Turkish personnel and payment delays.

"It is estimated that the negative perception of Turkey resulted in business (losses) worth $3 billion in the Middle East for our contractors last year," the association said.

So while BDS - which counts Turkey as a major supporter - grabs the headlines, in reality Saudi Arabia is doing far more damage to the Turkish economy than BDS has done in 15 years to Israel!

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Socially-Distanced Riots Hamper Terrorists Trying To Hide Among Civilians (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

: Credit: IDF

Nebi Saleh, October 22 - Palestinian stone- and firebomb-throwers confronting Israeli troops in and near this village north of Jerusalem face a stark choice in recent months: continue to blend in among children and other non-combatants, thus risking the spread of COVID, or adhere to precautions that minimize such proximity, thus rendering themselves separate from the noncombatants and easier for IDF personnel to neutralize them without harm to the non-combatants.

Nebi Saleh has long served as a flashpoint for clashes between protesters and the IDF, but distancing guidelines issued by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in nearby Ramallah mandate at least two meters of space between members of different households. Such restrictions on conduct in the public space makes it difficult, if not impossible, for significant numbers of violent demonstrators to use women and children as human shields, several veteran demonstrators reported Thursday.

"I've been confronting the occupation soldiers for years," observed Faisal Tamimi, 22. "But it's different now. Fewer demonstrators are willing to engage in that confrontation unless closely accompanied by young children, a pregnant woman, or an old lady. The soldiers are reluctant to shoot at us like that, but we're also reluctant to hurl things at them without that protection. We haven't had anyone shot this year at all, and that's put a serious damper on our propaganda. With no wounded children to show, there's less outrage-generating material for our advocates to share around the world, and our cause attracts less and less support."

Demonstrators' concerns go beyond the simple realm of activism and publicity. "If the troops arrest someone, the government in Ramallah pays the family," explained Fares Tamimi, a cousin. "But social distancing means fewer people participating in the Molotov-cocktail-throwing, which means fewer people getting shot at, which means fewer people getting injured, and with lower participation overall, that means fewer arrests and thus less revenue. We're talking about livelihoods here. Just like almost everywhere else in the world, social distancing and lockdown policies are destroying the economy."

Even before the official restrictions went into effect, Tamimi clan members felt a difference in atmosphere. "It used to be automatic that some of us would get in the solders' faces," recalled Ahed Tamimi, whose blonde hair and blue eyes have featured in numerous Palestinian photos and clips aimed at generating sympathy from Western activists. "Can't do that now. We have to assume the occupiers are deploying coronavirus-positive soldiers to infect us. We might declare day and night that our highest goal is martyrdom for Palestine, but when we say that we're thinking of going out in a single moment, a blaze of glory. Suffering for weeks in isolation as our respiratory systems fail isn't the kind of shaheed I want to become. There's a limit to my ambitions in that respect."

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10/22 Links Pt1: Arab Leaders Want the U.S. to Support Israel; Officials: Sudan set to normalize ties with Israel; Albania Becomes Second Muslim-Majority Nation to Adopt IHRA

From Ian:

Walter Russel Mead (WSJ $): Arab Leaders Want the U.S. to Support Israel

As the U.S. has reduced its regional footprint and ambitions, the Middle East has begun to change on its own. Saudi Arabia has opened its airspace to commercial flights from Tel Aviv to Dubai, while the UAE has shifted from not recognizing the Jewish state to building a warm peace and economic partnerships with Israel.

In the new Middle East, the younger generation is turning its back on religious radicalism, and Arab public opinion is moving to accept the presence of a Jewish state. The Palestinians have lost their position at the center of Middle East politics, and it is Turkey and Iran, not Israel, that Arab rulers are most concerned to oppose.

President Trump's peace plan, which many longtime Middle East experts dismissed as a ghastly blunder that would destroy the American role in Middle East peace negotiations, has turned out to be relatively popular on the Arab street. A Zogby survey found majorities in favor of the "Deal of the Century" in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. 56% considered America "an ally" of their country, up from a low of 35% in 2018.

U.S. national security adviser Robert O'Brien told me that key Arab leaders have embraced the idea that better relations with Israel are critical to their states' security and even survival.

It is Turkey even more than Iran that keeps some Arab leaders awake at night. President Erdogan has aligned himself closely with the Muslim Brotherhood, a regional Islamist movement. Iran can only call on the minority Shiites for religious support, but Turkey can attract supporters from the Brotherhood's networks within the Sunni majority.

Ironically, the current Arab nightmare is that the next U.S. administration won't support Israel enough.

David Singer: Trump and Biden should debate foreign policy: China, Iran, et al

Trump and Biden need to debate their very different policies on China, Iran and the Middle East.

Long before the recent emergence of Hunter Biden’s alleged email files - whose authenticity still remains undisputed - Biden’s relaxed attitude to China strongly differed from Trump’s no-nonsense confrontational approach to handling China during the last four years.

On 23 October 2019 Biden – vying for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination – said:

“We talk about China as our competitor. We should be helping and benefiting ourselves by doing that. But the idea that China is going to eat our lunch — I remember the debates in the late ’90s, remember, Japan was going to own us? Give me a break.”

The CPD decision will deny intending voters their right to know Biden’s China policy stance and the implications this has for America.

Trump’s 2020 peace plan - providing for an independent Palestinian State in Gaza and up to 70% of Judea and Samaria (aka 'West Bank') to be negotiated between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation - offers a pathway to ending the 100 years unresolved conflict between Jews and Arabs.

Biden’s response: “A peace plan requires two sides to come together. This is a political stunt that could spark unilateral moves to annex territory and set back peace even more. I’ve spent a lifetime working to advance the security & survival of a Jewish and democratic Israel. This is not the way”

CPD’s political stunt ensures Biden will escape explaining how his “way” will be better than Trump’s.

America’s voters are being taken for a ride by a highly-partisan Presidential Debates Commission.

And this is without eveb mentioning Ukraine and Russia.

Dennis Ross: Saudi Prince Bandar Tells Palestinians: We Won't Cover for You Any Longer

Shortly before we presented the Clinton parameters on peace to the Israelis and Palestinians in December 2000, I briefed Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to America. Once presented, I wanted Saudi Arabia to urge then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to accept our bridging proposal to end the conflict. Bandar’s response is etched in my memory: “If Arafat rejects this, it won’t be a mistake, it will be a crime.”

Bandar said this privately to me.

After Arafat rejected the Clinton parameters, other Arab officials echoed similar, if less dramatic, views to me. But none were prepared to say anything publicly. None were prepared openly to criticize the Arafat decision or counter the Palestinian story misrepresenting what had been offered.

That was then — when the Palestinians could portray the diplomacy one way, and leading Arab figures would not challenge their story, even when they knew it was wrong.

But this is now, and the Middle Eastern landscape is changing when it comes to the Palestinian cause.

What was unthinkable before is no longer; the fear that Palestinians could arouse opposition to Arab leaders by claiming they were betraying Palestinian national aspirations is gone.

Last week Bandar bin Sultan — in a three-part interview on al Arabiya network, speaking to a Saudi and regional audience — engaged in truth-telling about the historic failures of the Palestinian leadership. From declaring that Palestinian leaders “always pick the wrong side” to bemoaning that “there were always opportunities, but they were always lost,” he debunked the Palestinian narrative. He spoke of the constant divisions among Palestinians and how the Saudi kingdom “had justified to the whole world the actions of Palestinians” even when “we knew, indeed, [they] were not justified.” But Saudi Arabia did so because, in Bandar’s words, they did not “wish to stand with anyone against them, nor did we wish to see the consequences of their actions reflected on the Palestinian peoples.” In other words, Saudi Arabia stood by Palestinian leaders even when they were wrong, producing in Bandar’s words, Palestinian “indifference” and a belief that “there is no price to pay for any mistakes they commit.”

All over Arabic media on Tuesday was the story that UAE journalist Hamas al-Mazrouei, who is close to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, had done things that would upset any Muslim.

It all started when Mazrouei tweeted this out on Monday (autotranslated):

Very quickly a ridiculous rumor started, claiming that Mazrouei was interviewed by Maariv where he said that the Saudi government should reimburse the descendants of Jews of Khaybar for Mohammed's expulsion of their ancestors from the town, and it should offer citizenship and compensation to those same Jews.

Furthermore, the reports claimed that Mazrouei said that Mohammed treated the Jews badly. For good measure, a photo claimed to be of Mazrouei sitting near a (seemingly unopened) bottle of whiskey was circulated.

Needless to say, there was no such interview in Maariv.

BBC Arabic tracked down the rumor to two news sites, one Syria and the other from Yemen. It didn't do a very good job though, since the Yemen article linked back to an article from Turkey from late September, which seems to be the original source.

I would guess that Iran sat on this story and then fed it to Iran-friendly Arabic media at a time when it would have a good chance of spreading. If foreign nations are seeding Western media with fake stories, it is a hundred times easier for them to feed fake stories to Arab media where rumors are even less likely to be fact-checked.

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Are Amnesty, HRW and Oxfam antisemitic?

From Politico:

The Trump administration is considering declaring that several prominent international NGOs — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam — are anti-Semitic and that governments should not support them, two people familiar with the issue said.

The proposed declaration could come from the State Department as soon as this week. If the declaration happens, it is likely to cause an uproar among civil society groups and might spur litigation. Critics of the possible move also worry it could lead other governments to further crack down on such groups. The groups named, meanwhile, deny any allegations that they are anti-Semitic.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is pushing for the declaration, according to a congressional aide with contacts inside the State Department.

The declaration is expected to take the form of a report from the office of Elan Carr, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. The report would mention organizations including Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. It would declare that it is U.S. policy not to support such groups, including financially, and urge other governments to cease their support.

The report would cite such groups’ alleged or perceived support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which has targeted Israel over its construction of settlements on land Palestinians claim for a future state.

It’s also expected to point to reports and press statements such groups have released about the impact of Israeli settlements, as well as their involvement or perceived support for a United Nations database of businesses that operate in disputed territories.

There is absolutely no doubt that these groups are structurally and systematically biased against Israel. They hire people to "research" Israel with a history of anti-Israel advocacy.

One example is Amnesty's Saleh Hijazi, Deputy Regional Director of the MENA Region, whose Facebook pages include support for terrorists Leila Khaled and Khader Adnan, a glaring piece of hypocrisy for a supposed human rights advocate.

Similarly, Omar Shakir had a well-documented history of supporting BDS against all of Israel (not just "settlements") and of being obsessively anti-Israel when he was hired by HRW - and that continued even as he was employed by them.

This results in these NGOs issuing anti-Israel reports that are longer, more numerous and more detailed than their reports on virtually any other nation, with only a smattering of reports about Palestinian human rights or Arab human rights abuses against Palestinians (which only exist when their anti-Israel obsessions were revealed so they wrote token reports for "balance.") In fact, in some cases these groups have supported terror-linked NGOs.

Israel is routinely accused of "apartheid" by these NGOs. There is literally no other nation in the world that they make similar accusations of.

These NGOs become obsessed about companies like TripAdvisor and AirBnB that operate in disputed territories. There is literally no other nation in the world that they make similar accusations of, let alone participate in huge funded campaigns against international companies.

Amnesty and HRW knowingly twist international law to pretend that Palestinians have a "right to return." As many as 60 million Europeans became refugees after World War II, but none of them have the same "right to return" that the 700,000 Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants are considered to have today by these NGOs. The only purpose of this demand is to destroy the Jewish state demographically.

Do these obsessions cross the line into antisemitism?

By the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, there is no doubt that these groups are antisemitic because they hold Israel to standards that they do not apply to any other country.

Even if you do not accept the IHRA definition these NGOs seems to have a problem with Jews.

For example, this report from HRW denigrating religious Jews:

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who holds the state-funded, statutory position of Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi, said in a March 12, 2016 sermon, partly in response to Eisenkot’s admonition to limit the use of lethal force, that the Bible authorizes a shoot-to-kill policy: “‘Whoever comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.’ … let them afterward take you to the High Court of Justice or bring some military chief of staff who will say something else … As soon as an attacker knows that if he comes with a knife, he won’t return alive, it will deter them. That’s why it’s a religious commandment to kill him.”
The Sephardic Chief Rabbi does not command police or soldiers, but he heads the Supreme Rabbinical Tribunal and is tasked with advising on the interpretation of religious law.
...
According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, about half of Jewish Israelis define themselves as religious or traditional, not including ultra-Orthodox Jews, who usually do not serve in the army. Conscription for non-ultra-Orthodox Jewish men is universal. Most soldiers are in their teens or early 20s, and after a few months of basic training, they can be sent to serve in the occupied West Bank.

This is an accusation that religious (and traditional) Jews are bloodthirsty fanatics who would kill Arabs at a drop of a hat - and against army regulations. That is antisemitic slander.

Or Amnesty-USA sponsoring a tour by Bassem Tamimi, who accuses Jews of stealing the organs of Palestinians.

Or this Amnesty employee that denied Egypt's expulsion of its Jews - meaning that Jews are the only group whose human rights are not to be defended.

Or these groups pushing to expel Jews - and only Jews - from their homes in disputed territories when there are also thousands of Israeli Arabs who live across the Green Line but are never called "settlers."

Or Ken Roth of HRW practically justifying European antisemitism as simply a response to Israeli actions.

Or Amnesty-UK which has hosted antisemites and BDSers at its headquarters but denied hosting Jewish Zionist groups.

Or when Amnesty's members voted against a resolution condemning antisemitism - a resolution that had nothing to do with Israel, and the only resolution that was defeated at that conference.

Or when Amnesty praised the "Youth Against Settlements" group - which is explicitly antisemitic.

Or Oxfam selling antisemitic literature on its site - copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other antisemitic books that Oxfam members owned, photographed and blurbed on their website without even considering this to be a problem.

Or Oxfam excusing and supporting Miftah when the latter published the blood libel.

There are dozens of such examples.

In total, it is obvious that these NGOs have a problem not just with Israel, but many of their members have problems with Jews.

Even so, it is unclear whether it is wise for the State Department to declare them antisemitic. Outside the Middle East, the groups seem to do some excellent work and have dedicated employees who really care about human rights. (If the NGOs really wanted to be objective, they would rotate their researchers to different areas of the world instead of allowing obsessive haters of Israel to choose to demonize Israel.)

Declaring the entire organizations themselves to be antisemitic could be counterproductive. But they do have an crazed focus on attacking the Jewish state, and that needs to be publicized.

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Last week, the UK Foreign Office issued a press release entitled "Quint statement on Israeli settlements:"

Statement from the governments of the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain:

We are deeply concerned by the decision taken by the Israeli authorities to advance more than 4,900 settlement building units in the occupied West Bank.

The expansion of settlements violates international law and further imperils the viability of a two-state solution to bring about a just and lasting peace to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is also a counterproductive move in light of the positive developments of normalisation agreements reached between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. As we have emphasised directly with the Government of Israel, this step also undermines efforts to rebuild trust between the parties with a view to resuming dialogue.

We therefore call for an immediate halt to settlement construction, as well as to evictions and to demolitions of Palestinian structures in East-Jerusalem and the West Bank.

We call for the full implementation of UN Security Council resolution 2334 with all its provisions. We emphasise that we will not recognise any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regards to Jerusalem, unless agreed to between the parties. The suspension of plans to annex parts of Occupied Palestinian Territories must become permanent. We call on both sides to refrain from any unilateral action and resume a credible dialogue, as well as direct negotiations on all final-status issues.

It turns out that the Quint is a new group.

As the Jerusalem Post notes, the group exists because the EU cannot agree on a unified Middle East policy, so the large Western European nations want to keep their pretense of influence in the region.

And this is not the first statement by the group:

Last Friday was not the first time the Quint made an appearance. That distinction apparently came last year in September, when the five European countries issued a statement expressing “deep concern” at Netanyahu's announcement just prior to that month’s elections of his intention to annex the Jordan Valley.

So the group has made two statements, both against Israel.

No stand-alone statements in favor the the Abraham Accords.

Apparently, that is the only purpose of this group.

Because the world needs another forum to condemn Jews living in their historic heartland.

Isn't that special.

(h/t Irene)

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Why is There Still a World Zionist Organization? (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

The Zionist Organization and its parliament, the Zionist Congress, were established by Theodor Herzl in 1897 (the “World” was added to their names later). Their function was to develop and implement a program of Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael. The Zionist Congress included delegates from a wide range of ideological streams; the bottom line was a Jewish home in our historic homeland (although other locations were considered in the early years), but the nature of that home – even whether it should be a sovereign state – was subject to dispute.

Today’s World Zionist Congress (WZC) appoints the heads of several organizations that control large amounts of property and funds that come from Jewish charities abroad and the Israeli taxpayer. These include the Jewish National Fund (JNF) which manages most of the land in Israel, the Jewish Agency which facilitates Jewish immigration to Israel, the United Israel Appeal which raises funds, and others.

These organizations are closely connected to the government of Israel, but they are independent bodies. This can be confusing. For example, someone applying to make aliyah to Israel must deal with both the Jewish Agency (the sochnut) and the Israeli consulate.

The most important fact about the WZC is that its sub-organizations spend about $1 billion annually. These organizations, whose utility ended on 14 May 1948, have hundreds of employees (many of whom are politically connected individuals), and hundreds of contractors and programs are supported by them. To the extent that they perform useful functions, they could and should be done by the government of Israel. The waste of funds that come from the high taxes paid by Israelis and the generous donations of diaspora Jews is colossal. Many highly-paid functionaries do essentially nothing, and are there because somebody important owed them a favor.

But in addition to being wasteful, these organizations are dangerous, because they represent an easily-opened door to infiltration by those who not only want to benefit from the fruits of the Jewish state, but to attack it in the process.

Recently many diaspora organizations, particularly in the US, which were originally established to benefit the Jewish people as a whole, the State of Israel, or individual Jews, have been pressured to include representatives of anti-Zionist groups like J Street. In 2012, “Open Hillel” was formed in order to try to change the guidelines of college Hillel houses for acceptable programs, in the words of one reporter, to “legitimize and include groups that advance anti-Israel (and sometimes anti-Semitic) agendas in mainstream Jewish campus life.”

In 2014, J Street applied to become a member of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, and was turned down after an acrimonious debate. Last week, a guy that previously worked for Bernie Sanders, and previously was the State Department’s liaison to Congress to promote Obama’s Iran deal, became Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress.

The WZC has also become a focus of conflict between right-wing and left-wing factions. Delegates from the Diaspora are chosen by elections, while Israelis are apportioned according to the parties in the Knesset. Although the Left was battering at the gates here as well, a new group of American delegates has recently been added, a slate called “Eretz Hakodesh” that appealed to non-Zionist Haredim. It’s platform did not include the words “State of Israel” or “Zionist.” A campaign in the Orthodox and Haredi communities gave the religious and right-wing bloc a slight edge over the Reform/Conservative/Left bloc among the total of 521 delegates (complete results by country are here, in Hebrew).

It’s possible to take comfort in the fact that the American Hatikvah slate, which included such “Zionists” as Peter Beinart, got only ten seats. It’s absurd that they or anti-Zionist Haredim should be represented at all.

The largest delegation from the US is the one representing the Reform movement, with 39 seats. Together with Reform delegates from other countries, they hold a total of 63 seats. Considering that “Reform Zionism” means misinformed American Jews telling Israelis how to run their country (because the US is doing such a good job at home), they too are not in the “helpful” category.

72 years after the founding of the state, Zionism as an ideology is still relevant. But the World Zionist Organization is not.

Indeed, it’s long past time to end this jobs program for shady politicians that didn’t make it into the Knesset, former mayors that were not re-elected, and so forth. The unnecessary bureaucracy only makes life harder for people who must interact with it, like prospective olim. And just like Israel’s bloated unity government with its 36 ministers – at least 18 of which are unnecessary – it is obscene to shovel cash into a black hole when Israelis and diaspora Jews are struggling in a wretched economic environment.

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10/21 Links Pt2: The Dangers of Politicized History; Jonas Salk and Antisemitism; Paris police nab seven in attempted ramming of officer near Israeli embassy

From Ian:

The Dangers of Politicized History

At the time of Sharpton’s comment the historiographical flaws of Bernal’s thesis had been meticulously laid bare a year earlier by esteemed Wellesley classicist Mary Lefkowitz in her article “Not Out of Africa,” and later in books like Black Athena Revisited (1996) and Not Out of Africa (1997). Her thorough research undercut one of the major arguments of Afrocentrism, that ancient Greek culture was a “stolen legacy” filched from African peoples, a thesis based on egregious mangling of historical facts. For example, at a 1993 lecture at Wellesley by Yosef A.A. Ben-Jochannan, author of the Afrocentric classic Africa: Mother of Western Civilization, Ben-Jochannan claimed that Aristotle had plagiarized his philosophy from the Library of Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt. During the Q&A, Lefkowitz asked Ben-Jochannan how would that have been possible, “when that Library had only been built after his death.”

The subsequent assault on Lefkowitz, documented in her 2008 book History Lessons, was an early example, of today’s “cancel culture,” and taking on the powerful black-identity politics academic lobby with such biting criticism was personally costly for Lefkowitz. Black studies professors and Afrocentric ideologues leveled against her vicious attacks, ranging from being dismissed as an “obscure drudge in the academic backwaters of a Classics department,” by the truly obscure black studies professor Wilson Jeremiah Moses; to the antisemitic smear of Lefkowitz as a “homosexual” and a “hook-nosed, lox-eating . . . so-called Jew,” by Khalid Abdul Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, whose active support of Afrocentrism was welcomed by many black studies professors.

Lefkowitz’s experience in defending history from political propaganda should have alerted both the academy and larger society to what was happening to higher education. But as we see today with the “1619 Project” and the nonsense of “white privilege,” Critical Race Theory, and “systemic racism,” politicized history has entrenched itself in the universities, and escaped from the rotting groves of academe to pollute K-12 curricula with Black Lives Matter and “1619” propaganda. Moreover, such fake history is poisoning our politics with an illiberal “cancel culture” that violates the First Amendment and the long tradition of academic freedom enshrined in the “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” promulgated by what’s now known as the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Worse yet, federally mandated policies based on ill-written civil rights laws have provided campus ideologues with powerful weapons to intimidate and silence any voice not singing in harmony with the “woke” identity-politics chorus.

What appears to be just another attempt by “woke” activists to bully an industry and indulge its anti-Semitic bigotry against an Israeli actress should not be lightly brushed off as the politically correct hysteria du jour. Nor should we forget the academic scandal from nearly thirty years ago that helped to institutionalize this particular variety of fake history and illiberal assaults on free speech. Today we all can see the consequences of such negligence, as intellectual and professional malfeasance once confined to the university classroom is now fueling violence in our streets and furthering the corruption of our K-12 and university curricula.

The Jesuits used to say, give me the child, and I’ll show you the man. The left has had several generations of our children now for over fifty years, and their men and women are rampaging through our biggest cities, controlling our corporate boards, censoring social media, polluting our culture, demagoguing in our legislatures and courts, and actively working to dismantle the Constitutional order that protects our unalienable rights and political freedom.

It’s time to start seriously reforming our schools.

Gal Gadot replaces Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra in clip

Forget the silly Twitterstorm over whether Gal Gadot is too white to play Cleopatra – Reface, the app that uses Deep Fake technology to swap faces in videos, has created a clip of the classic 1963 movie Cleopatra, replacing star Elizabeth Taylor’s face with Gadot’s.

Two things are instantly clear from this clip, which shows Gadot in many of the costumes Taylor wore in the film. The first is that Gadot has a slight resemblance to Taylor that has gone unremarked upon until now. The second is that she has a suitably regal presence to shine in the role.

The clip is scored to a rap song in Arabic, which is both a tribute to the Egyptian setting and, possibly, an ironic nod to the controversy. The sets and costumes in the film are incredibly lavish, which makes sense because this was the most expensive film ever made until then, with a budget of more than $100 million. There was also a media storm that swirled around the set, as Taylor fell in love with her married co-star, Richard Burton, who played Mark Anthony. She left her husband, singer Eddie Fisher, and Burton left his wife, and the starring couple were married and divorced twice.

Taylor reportedly was initially not allowed to enter Egypt because she was Jewish. She converted to Judaism in 1959, influenced by Fisher and her third husband, producer Mike Todd. During the hostage crisis at Entebbe, Taylor offered herself as a replacement hostage and later appeared in a small role in the movie, Victory at Entebbe.

Jonas Salk and Antisemitism

When President Dwight Eisenhower invited Jonas Salk — who discovered the polio vaccine — to the White House, the president reportedly choked back tears of gratitude. The polls indicated that “apart from the atomic bomb, America’s greatest fear was polio.”

Salk — the Jewish doctor in a lab coat — entered America’s pantheon with Mickey Mantle, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. The Jonas Salk Ward of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Hospital was named after him.

Yet Salk denied that his Jewish origins had anything to do with his achievements, and also dismissed concerns about “religious discrimination.”

Salk, in fact, was brought up in the East Bronx. His mother hailed from Minsk, his father from Lithuania. The family kept kosher but was otherwise non-observant. A hard-working boy — whose heroes were Moses and Lincoln — he yearned for academic success. He reportedly had an unassuming personality in an era when Jews were not supposed to be “pushy.” Yet Salk was accused by the scientific community of not sharing credit for the vaccine.

Whether or not he admitted it, Salk’s Jewish origins shaped his career. His mentor at NYU’s medical school, Thomas Francis, Jr., an infectious disease specialist, pulled strings to get his protégé — “a member of the Jewish race” — a fellowship at the University of Michigan. There, he won the admiration of Basil O’Connor, president of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, known as the March of Dimes. After World War II, Salk, then at the University of Pittsburgh, competed to develop a polio vaccine with Dr. Albert Sabin, another “Jewish boy” from New York. Salk’s “dead virus” vaccine was the initial winner, though later Sabin’s “live virus” vaccine eclipsed it.

Salk wanted his own research institute in California. His first preference was Palo Alto, but his friend, physicist Leo Szilard, joined Roger Revelle of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to convince him to choose San Diego’s exclusive seaside community of La Jolla.

The problem was that La Jolla contrived to maintain antisemitic restrictive covenants even after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) that such covenants could not be legally enforced.

Always a pleasure meeting up for a chat with @HenMazzig. He didn’t expect a Spanish Inquisition either! Our full discussion on disputations is available on my new #YouTube channel 📺▶️ https://t.co/LHEvY2oByC pic.twitter.com/KtjMaBd5VK
— Jonny Gould (@jonnygould) October 20, 2020

Joe Biden had his first meeting with an Israeli leader, Golda Meir, on the eve of the Yom Kippur war, right after meeting with officials in Cairo. During the then junior senator’s meeting with Meir, Biden suggested that Israel make a unilateral withdrawal from settlements for peace, criticizing the settlement policies of the Labor Party, and suggesting they represent a form of “creeping annexation.” Though Biden assured Meir that Egyptian officials were convinced of Israel’s military superiority, 40 days later, Sadat initiated a surprise attack against Israel.

This is the gist of a bombshell tweet from Israel’s Channel 13 reporter Nadav Eyal containing excerpts from a classified memo from an Israeli official who attended that fateful meeting. While it may have been the first meeting between Biden and an Israeli prime minister, it was certainly not the last. In subsequent meetings with Israeli prime ministers, Biden threatened Menachem Begin with withholding U.S. aid, and publicly upbraided Benyamin Netanyahu because it had been announced in a town council meeting that 1600 homes were to be built in future in the Jewish Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo (more about this here).

Here is the tweet:

1/Golda Meir and Joe Biden, the Israeli memo.
By far, the story Biden most frequently tells about his relationship with Israel leadership is his first meeting with Golda as a young senator. Here's Biden describing the encounter and Golda's punch linehttps://t.co/UsroQHRwog
— נדב איל Nadav Eyal (@Nadav_Eyal) October 15, 2020

Here is the content of Eyal's tweet, edited for readability:

Golda Meir and Joe Biden, the Israeli memo.

By far, the story Biden most frequently tells about his relationship with Israel leadership is his first meeting with Golda as a young senator. Here's Biden describing the encounter and Golda's punch line:

I've published this evening a classified memo documenting the meeting, made by a senior Israeli official present in the room. A fascinating meeting.

Biden comes from Egypt, some 40 days before Sadat ordered a surprise attack which will become the Yom Kippur war. He tells the Israeli PM that all the officials he met in Cairo assured him that they accept "Israel's military superiority.” Of course, they lied (not [Biden’s] fault, of course. Israel was misled by its own intelligence community).

American Politics.

Biden criticizes the Nixon administration for being "dragged by Israel" [into supporting Israeli policies]. He says, according to this government memo, that there is no debate in the Senate about the Middle East because the Senators are "afraid" to say things that Jewish voters will dislike. (He SAYS THAT TO GOLDA)

He criticizes the Israeli labor platform arguing that it’s leading to a creeping annexation of the occupied territories. Considering Israel's military dominance, Biden suggests it will initiate a first step for peace by unilateral withdrawals. This will be done from areas with no strategic importance—not the Golan.

Golda responds with a long speech about the history of the Zionist movement from its very establishment. The instability of Arab regimes, the unfairness of Supreme Court decisions.

Golda rejects Biden comments on the Labor platform, rejects his offers of unilateral withdrawal and continues to argue that Israel can make no major mistakes considering the situation of the Jewish people after the Holocaust. The official making the notes remarked that Biden was full of respect to the PM yet his "enthusiasm as he spoke" signaled his lack of experience in the diplomatic field.

REMARKS: Biden warning to the PM on the eve of the war that Israel must make some concessions is prophetic. Some historians argue that Golda's refusal to consider Egyptian diplomatic initiatives led to war. Biden's suggestion that Israel make unilateral concessions is interesting. The only time Israel opted for such a move is in 2005 when Ariel Sharon as PM initiated Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza strip. Much more to say.

Part of the original Hebrew document from the unnamed Israeli official:

It is important to note that it was the Labor Party that initiated the policy of settling all parts of Jewish indigenous territory, including Judea and Samaria. From the Jewish Virtual Library:

In the past, Labor was more hawkish on security and defense issues than it is today. During its years in office, Israel fought the 1956 Sinai War, the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War. Labor agreed to UN Resolution 242 and the notion of trading land for peace. Nevertheless, successive Labor governments established settlements in the disputed territories and refrained from dismantling illegal settlements, such as those established in 1968 at Qiryat Arba in Hebron by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, and others set up by Gush Emunim. By 1976, more than thirty settlements had been established on the West Bank; however, their population was fewer than 10,000.

Joe Biden paints that early meeting with Golda as something precious that cemented in his mind how important Israel is to the Jewish people. It is clear, however, that Joe Biden has always been against the Jewish people settling their indigenous territory. The very thought of Jews planning to build homes in Jerusalem makes him furious. Therefore, contrary to the love fest with Golda he has often described, Biden used the first chance he had to meet with an Israeli prime minister to broach the subject of unilateral concessions.

One wonders how much clout the young senator wielded at that time. Not to mention the timing of subsequent events, with the surprise attack on Israel by Egypt occurring just 40 days after Biden’s meeting with Meir. Is it possible that Golda Meir incurred wider U.S. displeasure by refusing to entertain Biden's suggestion of unilateral concessions? Was Egypt perhaps emboldened by this state of affairs to attack Israel without fear of American intervention?

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