Sunday, November 29, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
Here are a couple of cartoons and graphics I posted on Twitter last week.
Sunday, November 29, 2020
Sunday, November 29, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
cartoon of the day
- Sunday, November 29, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
The official Palestinian Wafa news agency didn't even cover the story of the assassination of Iranian defense official and nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Wafa covers every phone call that Mahmoud Abbas makes or receives, but there was no statement by him or any other Palestinian official denouncing Fakhrizadeh's death or using it as a reason to paint Israel as a lawless aggressor, the way that Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and others are.
The UN and even the EU issued a statement condemning the hit. Of course so did Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The silence of the PLO is very interesting.
The reason seems to be that the PLO and Fatah are assuming that the US supported the hit. They do not want to make any waves before Joe Biden is sworn in as President; they certainly don't want to do anything to upset Trump between now and January 20 which can affect their relations with the US.
- Sunday, November 29, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
Today, November 29, is the UN-designated International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
David Ben Gurion pledged that Arabs would be fully equal citizens in the Jewish state:
The Arab terrorists wasted no time in starting what would become the War of Independence, killing Jews in multiple attacks within hours of the declaration.
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The irony is unreal.
The day was chosen because it is the anniversary of the UN Partition resolution that called for two states in British Mandate Palestine - a Jewish state and an Arab state.
If Arabs had accepted the partition, the Arab State would be much larger than today's West Bank and Gaza.
Everything you need to know about that day, and about the last 73 years, can be seen in the Palestine Post of December 1, 1947, reporting on the day after the partition vote.
Jews celebrated:
Arab leaders declared November 29 to be a "Day of Mourning":
The Arab terrorists wasted no time in starting what would become the War of Independence, killing Jews in multiple attacks within hours of the declaration.
The actual Arabs in Palestine did not like how their supposed leaders and hotheads were inciting for war. They had no problem with the Jews.
That last day of November, 1947, is a microcosm of the entire 73 years since. The Jews remain enthusiastic that they have a state, want Arabs in Israel to be treated equally and still want to be on friendly terms with the Arab world. The people who claim to represent the Palestinian Arabs continue to make decisions that hurt the actual people they pretend to be defending. Those people remain silenced. And there is no shortage of Arabs who look for any excuse to justify attacking Jews.
Saturday, November 28, 2020
From Ian:
Melanie Phillips: The prospective return of global appeasement
John Podhoretz: Trump’s leaving Biden a Christmas gift of Middle East peace — will Joe throw it in the trash?
Melanie Phillips: The prospective return of global appeasement
Under former President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which at best would delay its ability to build nuclear weapons by only a few years, billions of dollars poured into Tehran while the regime steadily increased its power across the region and continued to ramp up its terrorist activities.
Only when Trump took America out of the deal and reimposed sanctions did the regime start to totter and hopes began to grow that it might implode without the need for war.
Under successive American presidents, whether or not they were well-disposed towards Israel, Palestinian appeasement took the form of an endless peace process.
In order to keep the Palestinians in this process, the United States, United Kingdom and European Union refused to bring up anything that would cause them to walk out.
This meant ignoring their incitement to violence, their incendiary anti-Semitism and their declared aim of using a Palestinian state as means of destroying Israel in stages. The result of this surrender to blackmail was not peace, but endless Palestinian attacks against Israel through terrorism, murder and war.
When Trump ended this lethal appeasement strategy and instead moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem as a defiant statement of the Jews’ right to the land, the foreign-policy establishment confidently asserted that this would cause the region to go up in flames.
Not only did this not happen, with no one other than the Palestinians and their acolytes turning a hair, but the Gulf states started to normalize relations with Israel. This ended the Palestinian veto on peace and advanced the prospect of an end to the Arab war against Israel more than at any time since the 1920s.
But now these gains may be put into reverse. Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State is Antony Blinken, the Jewish stepson of a U.N. lawyer and the ultimate foreign-policy establishment insider.
Blinken served as President Bill Clinton’s chief foreign-policy speechwriter, a national security adviser to Biden and deputy to Secretary of State John Kerry. He is said to be a centrist who won’t make aid to Israel conditional on its policy choices, will keep the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem and will support Israel at the United Nations.
But the label “centrist” means he is a liberal universalist, and thus committed to policies that ultimately rest upon the appeasement of evil people.
John Podhoretz: Trump’s leaving Biden a Christmas gift of Middle East peace — will Joe throw it in the trash?
First, there is a general sense among all Democrats that anything and everything Trump has touched is corrupted and diseased and must be discarded.UNSC Resolution 242 at Fifty
The Abraham Accords are in part an outgrowth of the Trump administration’s clear tilt toward Israel from the moment it took office and the move of the American embassy to Jerusalem. That may alone may render the accords suspect in Obamian eyes.
At the same time, Biden now presides over a Democratic Party whose antipathy toward Israel is growing, as represented by the left-wing activists in the House who have made their loathing of the Jewish state a key element of their Squad’s cheerleading. Ironically, the Squad is committed to a Palestinian cause that its Arab sponsors have now largely abandoned.
The Arab signatories have grown tired of, and uninterested in, the Palestinian cause, and they seem eager to move on and deal with the world as it is. As they change course, the Democratic Party writ large may be eager to take up the cudgels of Palestinian nationalism more openly than ever before.
Perhaps even more painful for the Biden team, the ultimate success of the accords would be a history-making achievement for two leaders detested by the administration in which they served — Netanyahu, the subject of some of the ugliest score-settling jabs in Obama’s new memoir, and MBS, who has more than earned the opprobrium of all civilized people due to his apparent role in the literal dismemberment of his critic Jamal Khashoggi.
A Middle East in which Israel and Arab states find they can live together, trade together and move into the 21st century in a normal way is an international blessing. The Biden team doesn’t have to do anything but reap the fruits of this new reality. It’s the easiest thing in the world. Let’s see if they screw it up.
Other factors explain the novelty of 242 as well, especially the impulse to “learn lessons” from previous rounds of postwar diplomacy and the inevitable over-learning that such an impulse generates. None of the four factors discussed above — multiple fronts, multiple players on one front, short duration, and inauspicious timing in the global order — is unique in its own right, but the combination of all four is. And the Six-Day War was not merely a unique war but a war in a unique conflict.
The wording of the resolution ignores the existence of a Palestinian national movement with real claims on the land, even while acknowledging their genuine historical grievance at the result of a previous war. And it ignores entirely that the very existence of Israel is at the center of the conflict of which the recent war was just one episode.
The standard model might work where the dispute is about land or resources or even holy sites and refugees. But when one side regards accepting the very existence of the other as an insufferable concession, any diplomatic process that makes overly ambitious demands (full peace instead of a truce) with no clear benchmarks (territorial compromises to be negotiated by all parties) among competing belligerents with vastly different interests is doomed to fail. When it leaves no room for any party or combination of parties to alter a status quo in any meaningful way by the adoption of half-measures, it has the inevitable result of cementing a reality of semi-permanent occupation.
The semi-permanent occupation has been reasonably tolerable for the Arab states that lost the war, allowing them to pursue their own means for disengaging from a conflict they had no hope of winning. But it has been a catastrophe for the Israelis and Palestinians themselves, who still find their very national existence questioned and threatened in a way nations in other conflicts, even bitter conflicts, do not.
- Saturday, November 28, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
The last three paragraphs of a Reuters article on the assassination of Iranian nuclear engineer Mohsen Fakhrizadeh:
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The NCRI said in the report that Fakhrizadeh was born in 1958 in the Shi’ite Muslim holy city of Qom, was a deputy defence minister and a Revolutionary Guards brigadier-general, held a nuclear engineering doctorate and taught at Iran’s University of Imam Hussein.A high-ranking Iranian source described Fakhrizadeh to Reuters in 2014 as “an asset and an expert” dedicated to Iran’s technological progress and enjoying the full support of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.The source added that Fakhrizadeh had three passports and travelled a lot, including in Asia, to obtain “the latest information” from abroad, but would not elaborate. Western security sources say Iran was long adept in obtaining nuclear materials and know-how from the international black market.
Even though most articles stress his nuclear scientist credentials, there is very little talk about how he was both a nuclear science expert and a key member of Iran's defense department.
This was only admitted after his assassination by Ayatollah Khamenei himself:
This is a tacit admission that Iran has - today - an active nuclear weapons program. The army wouldn't be involved in peaceful nuclear power research.
Those who are upset over this assassination are those who want to see Israel destroyed by an Iranian nuclear bomb.
(h/t Nevet)
Friday, November 27, 2020
From Ian:
Natan Sharansky and the Meaning of Freedom
Caroline Glick: Justice (and anti-Semitism) you shall pursue
Natan Sharansky and the Meaning of Freedom
Natan Sharansky has been a computer scientist, a chess player, a refusenik, a dissident, a political prisoner, a party leader, a government minister, a nonprofit executive, and a bestselling author. He never expected to be a school counselor.
But the coronavirus dashes expectations. In early March, when the virus began to appear in Jewish communities outside New York City, Sharansky found himself online, in an unaccustomed position. He began to share with students and parents whose schools were closed how he had coped during years in confinement.
"At first, it seemed absurd, even obscene," Sharansky writes in his latest book, Never Alone, coauthored with the historian Gil Troy. "How could my experience of playing chess in my head in my punishment cell compare to being cooped up in gadget-filled homes wired to the internet—with computer chess—especially because this isolation is imposed to protect people, not break them?"
What Sharansky realized is that the costs of lockdowns do not depend on the reasons behind them. The sudden and seemingly arbitrary interruption of individual plans, movements, and relationships causes psychological harm. Sharansky recorded a brief YouTube video for the Jewish Agency—you can watch it here—offering his five tips for quarantine. Recognize the importance of your choices and behavior, Sharansky advised. Understand that some things are beyond your control. Keep laughing. Enjoy your hobbies. Consider yourself part of a larger cause.
"Surprisingly," Sharansky writes, "this short clip went viral, reaching so many people all over the world within a few days that it made me wonder why even bother writing this book." His reaction was another example of his droll and often self-deprecating wit. The video, however helpful it may be, does not match the power and wisdom of Never Alone. Part autobiography, part meditation on Jewish community, the book ties together the themes of Sharansky’s earlier work, from his prison memoir, Fear No Evil (1988), to his defense of cultural particularity, Defending Identity (2008). It is a moving story of emancipation and connection, of freedom and meaning.
Sharansky was born in 1948 in the Ukrainian city of Stalino. His given name was Anatoly. His parents were educated professionals who downplayed their Jewish identity. They did not want to risk political and social reprisal. "The only real Jewish experience I had was facing anti-Semitism," he writes. The precocious youth spent his early years playing chess. He learned to navigate a Soviet system that maintained its rule through fear. He became captive to doublethink. He repeated official lies and myths not because it was the right thing to do, but because it was the safe thing to do.
This Sunday- Nov. 29th - is the anniversary of UN GA Resolution 181, unsuccessfully calling for a complex, continuous partition of Mandatory Palestine. My new @KoheletForum webminar explains what 181 achieved, and why it was seen as so important https://t.co/x9yNcL5NSQ
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) November 26, 2020
Caroline Glick: Justice (and anti-Semitism) you shall pursue
Over the past week or so we have been witnessing the emergence of a new sort of anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party. The new form of Jew-hatred is a combination of anti-Zionism and identity politics. It is convoluted and hard to follow. But contradictions and all, it has arrived. And Jewish Americans, sensing the partisan disposition, are adapting themselves accordingly.
The first place to look for the new Jew-hatred is in Joe Biden's appointments. Most of the attention this week has been focused on Biden's senior appointments. Biden appointed Tony Blinken, who is Jewish, to serve as his secretary of state. As John Kerry's deputy, Blinken played a major role in crafting the nuclear deal with Iran which, while billed as a non-proliferation agreement, gave the world's greatest state sponsor of terrorism an open path to a nuclear arsenal. Like his former boss, Blinken is faithful to the view that the Palestinians are the strategic nerve center of the Middle East. Without their agreement, it is impossible – or if possible, wrong – for Arab states to make peace with Israel.
Blinken is considered an establishment figure rather than an ideologue. But since he is a Jew, party ideologues view him as suspect. For instance, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib responded to the news of his appointment with an anti-Semitic tweet. Responding to socialist Senator Bernie Sanders' praise for Blinken's appointment, Tlaib averred, "So long as he doesn't suppress my First Amendment right to speak out against Netanyahu's racist and inhumane policies."
Two other appointments announced this week certainly were more to Tlaib's liking.
Biden appointed Reema Dodin, a Palestinian American to serve as the deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs. As the pro-Israel website Elder of Zion reported, in 2002, as a student at the University of California Berkeley, Dodin was the head of the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Muslim Students Association. In that capacity, she gave a speech at a church in Lodi, California where she justified suicide bombers. In her words at the time, "The suicide bombers were the last resort of a desperate people."
After her remarks were reported by Fox News, the Biden campaign issued a defensive response. Notably, the campaign made no effort to either deny or distance itself from Dodin's justification for the mass murder of Israelis by Palestinian terrorists. Instead, the campaign response read, "Reema is the first to tell you she has grown from her youth in her approach to pushing for change."
In other words, Dodin continues to justify the mass murder of Jews. But now that she's a grown-up, she presents it differently.
A lot of you are going to point out this analogy is disgraceful, but let's not ignore how bold it is coming from a bureau chief for the New York Times, which in 2015 published a yellow-highlighted Jew Tracker of lawmakers who opposed the Obama-Biden Iran deal. https://t.co/3hFG09Cg9J
— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) November 26, 2020
I prefer the more outright antisemitism of the Nation of Islam than I do of Women's March who masquerade as "progressives". pic.twitter.com/18cChUTWdN
— kweansmom (@kweansmom) November 26, 2020
- Friday, November 27, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
- Tomer Ilan
Business Insider wrote an article about Israel's assassination of an Al Qaeda official in Tehran. Originally it said:
EoZ contributor Tomer Ilan noticed the highlighted statement - it is incorrect.
He wrote to BI informing them that Al Qaeda did attack Israelis with a 2008 attack on the Israeli embassy in Mauritania and 2002 Mombasa attacks against Israeli targets. (Since then he also found a third attack, the 2009 murder of Yafim Weinstein.)
Commendably, Business Insider corrected the article:
From Ian:
Iran's nuclear program chief Mohsen Fakhrizadeh assassinated
Warning from the past comes back to haunt Iran’s top nuclear scientist
Iran's nuclear program chief Mohsen Fakhrizadeh assassinated
Head of Iran's nuclear program Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, 59, was assassinated in Damavand, east of Tehran, local Iranian news reported on Friday.
Iran later confirmed the reports. "The nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated today by terrorists," the Iranian Defense Ministry wrote in a statement, while not blaming any specific entity for the incident.
However, Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif later stated on Twitter that "serious indication" pointed to Israeli involvement and urged the international community to condemn the attack.
Pictures from the scene show two vehicles, one blown up and one shot at from the front. Several local reports in Iran indicated that a suicide bomber was involved in the attack, but that has not yet been confirmed.
The Prime Minister's Office and the Pentagon have yet to comment on the reports.
A military adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei accused Israel for trying to provoke "a full-blown" war by killing Fakhrizadeh.
First photo of Fakhrizadeh's car attacked by the assassins today pic.twitter.com/ciMGv6n8Sw
— Reza Khaasteh (@Reza_Khaasteh) November 27, 2020
Warning from the past comes back to haunt Iran’s top nuclear scientist
“Remember that name” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned in 2018 of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who many referred to as the “father” of Iran’s nuclear weapons project.
But over the course of two years, no one remembered that name. Save for a few, including those who assassinated him on a busy street in Damavand, east of the capital of Tehran, on Friday.
Netanyahu made the comment when he divulged that Israel had obtained 100,000 files from Iran’s secret nuclear archives. He said that Fakhrizadeh, a brigadier general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and a professor of physics at the Guard’s Imam Hussein University, played a central role in the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.
Though he had been sidelined for several years, Fakhirzadeh returned to drive Iran’s nuclear program, Project Amad, specifically to develop nuclear warheads for the multitudes of ballistic missiles the Islamic republic already possesses.
While Iran was forced to shelve Project Amad in 2003, it continued with its nuclear ambitions and Western intelligence sources even revealed that in 2013 Fakhrizadeh had attended a North Korean nuclear weapons test.
"Remember that name – Fakhrizadeh."
— Daniel Rubenstein (@paulrubens) November 27, 2020
–Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, April 30, 2018 pic.twitter.com/7NF2DkElSU
- Friday, November 27, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
- analysis, Daled Amos
By Daled Amos
Dov Lipman, who served as a member of Israel's 19th Knesset, writes about Obama’s revisionist ‘Promised Land’ -- a scathing review of the errors and outright misleading claims in Obama's new book.
Two evasions are worth noting.
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Dov Lipman, who served as a member of Israel's 19th Knesset, writes about Obama’s revisionist ‘Promised Land’ -- a scathing review of the errors and outright misleading claims in Obama's new book.
After recounting -- and debunking -- numerous falsehoods, Lipman concludes:
I have no problem with criticism of Israel. We can debate the issues in intellectually honest discussions, and in the end, we may have to agree to disagree about Israel’s policies. But no one should accept a book that is filled with historical inaccuracies that invariably lead innocent and unknowing readers to reach false conclusions. Such a devastating book has real-life ramifications and consequences.
It is terribly disappointing. I surely would have expected truth, accuracy and fairness from Barack Obama, America’s 44th president. But the falsehoods and inaccuracies in this memoir only feed the theory that Obama was, in fact, anti-Israel. Now, through A Promised Land, he seeks to convince others to join him. [emphasis added]
Rather than review the list of falsehoods and inaccuracies, I just want to
note why we should not be surprised by Obama's attack on Israel in his book.
On the one hand, we should recall Obama's attempt to recast the narrative of
Israel's history as just a response to the Holocaust.
In May 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama told The Atlantic's Jeffrey
Goldberg how
the Holocaust is the justification for the Jewish State of
Israel:
I know that that there are those who would argue that in some ways America has become a safe refuge for the Jewish people, but if you’ve gone through the Holocaust, then that does not offer the same sense of confidence and security as the idea that the Jewish people can take care of themselves no matter what happens. That makes it a fundamentally just idea.
Never mind the 3,000-year-old Jewish ties to the land.
Do you remember
Obama's speech during his trip to Cairo in June, 2009?
America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. [emphasis added]
Sure, the Holocaust cannot be denied (if only!), but the Jewish historical,
cultural and indigenous ties -- well, that is another matter.
This pales in comparison to Obama' rewriting of Israel's history in his new
book.
But I want to concentrate on something else -- on why we should have known
about Obama's disregard for Israel before he became president.
In June 2008, while at a Florida synagogue to reassure Jewish voters of his
commitment to Israel,
Obama was asked about his association with Rashid Khalidi.
Obama responded:
You mentioned Rashid Khalidi, who is a professor at Columbia. I do know him because he talked at the University of Chicago and he is Palestinian, and I do know him and I have had conversations with him.
He is not one of my advisers, he is not one of my foreign policy people, his kids went to the lab school where my kids go as well.
He is a respected scholar although he vehemently disagrees a lot of Israel policy."
|
| Obama, with his wife and Khalidi |
First of all, Obama claims he knows Khalidi from the University of Chicago and
through the school where their children go.
The truth, however, is that Obama and Khalidi were very good friends --
not casual acquaintances.
An article in The LA Times, 2 months before Obama's appearance at that
synagogue, reports about a party Obama attended in honor of Rashid Khalidi
upon his moving to New York to teach at Columbia University:
A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.Obama could have answered honestly that Khalidi was a friend with whom he had little contact after his move to New York and that Khalidi was an Arab friend just as he had Jewish friends.
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."
...And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.
Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed. [emphasis added]
Instead, Obama was dishonest and misleading.
This article by Mona Charen which appeared in The National Review in June 2008
might explain why:
For a true friend, Obama also chose peculiar associates. He was quite friendly with Rashid Khalidi, a former director of the official press agency for the Palestine Liberation Organization (and now a professor at Columbia). Khalidi, who has called Israel an "apartheid" state and who defends the right of Palestinians to use violence against Israel, founded a group called the Arab American Action Network. When Obama served as a director of the Woods Fund in 2001 and 2002, the foundation donated $75,000 to the AAAN, for projects like an "oral history" project on the "Nakbah," which translates as "catastrophe," and is the name Palestinians use for the birth of Israel. Khalidi held a fundraiser for Obama when the latter ran for Congress in 2000 [emphasis added]We should note in passing who else Obama worked with at the Woods Fund. Aaron Klein wrote in February 2008: Obama Worked With Terrorist
Obama served on the Wood's Fund board alongside William C. Ayers, a member of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow of [sic] the U.S. government and took responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1971.Speaking of associating with terrorists, note that Mona Charen refers to Khalidi as "a former director of the official press agency for the Palestine Liberation Organization."
Ayers, who still serves on the Woods Fund board, contributed $200 to Obama's senatorial campaign fund and has served on panels with Obama at numerous public speaking engagements. Ayers admitted to involvement in the bombings of U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s. He is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. [emphasis added]
Khalidi has denied this.
But Martin Kramer gives multiple proofs that
Obama's friend Khalidi did in fact work for the PLO as its official
spokesman --
“If the Israelis had any brains they could neutralize Palestinian irredentism just by giving back the West Bank,” asserted Rashid Khalidy, an American-educated Palestinian who teaches political science at the American University of Beirut and also works for the P.L.O. “It would split us.”
There is proof of Khalidi working for the PLO in The Washington Post too. Here is a letter by Thomas W. Lippman -- a former
diplomatic, national security, and Middle East correspondent for the
Washington Post
The Post's defense of Rashid Khalidi ["An 'Idiot Wind,' " editorial, Oct. 31] was generally commendable, but in fairness to Sen. John McCain, it should be noted that Mr. Khalidi was indeed "a PLO spokesman."
In the early years of the Lebanese civil war, Mr. Khalidi was the Beirut-based spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, and his office was a stop on the daily rounds of journalists covering that conflict. As we used to say in the pre-electronic newspaper business: Check the clips.
THOMAS W. LIPPMAN
The Middle East Institute
Washington
All of this was ignored back then.
The LA Times, which had video of what was actually said at that party for
Khalidi, never released the tape. They claimed it would reveal the identity of
the person who gave them the tape.
But neither would they release a transcript.
Did Khalidi really provide Obama "consistent reminders to me of my own blind
spots and my own biases," as he claimed -- or merely reinforce them?
Even in his book, Obama still glosses over Khalidi's past and his
connection with him, according to this quote from the book by Middle East Eye:
"They [Jewish supporters] attributed these whisper campaigns not to any particular position I’d taken (my backing of a two-state solution and opposition to Israeli settlements were identical to the positions of the other candidates) but rather to my expressions of concern for ordinary Palestinians; my friendships with certain critics of Israeli policy, including an activist and Middle East scholar named Rashid Khalidi; and the fact that, as Ben [Rhodes] bluntly put it, 'You’re a Black man with a Muslim name who lived in the same neighborhood as Louis Farrakhan and went to Jeremiah Wright's church.'”
With the publication of this book, we see that Obama's anti-Israel work did
not end with pushing for UN Resolution 2334.
Now, Obama will spread his hate and ignorance directly to his readers.
- Friday, November 27, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
For years, we've discussed how Mahmoud Abbas is the de facto dictator of the Palestinian areas in the West Bank. He is the head of the PLO, the president of the Palestinian Authority and the leader of Fatah (which he purged of any opposition.)
Oh, and he handpicked all members of the Palestinian Constitutional Court so he has effective control over the judiciary as well, he used them to dissolve the Palestinian Legislative Council which was the only institution he didn't control!
As long as he was making decisions that the rest of the PLO supported, no one complained about this system. But last week Abbas decided to resume security and financial ties with Israel, and the rest of the Palestinian leadership is upset. '
As The Media Line reports:
A deep schism threatens the unity of the Palestinian Authority, its ruling Fatah movement and the Palestine Liberation Organization amid turmoil among senior officials.Many of these officials were flabbergasted by Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh’s announcement last week that the PA would restore its relations with Israel, which were cut off five months ago amid Israeli talk of West Bank annexations. They say they were not consulted.A top PLO official who asked to remain anonymous says recent decision-making was unprecedentedly centralized, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and a tight circle making crucial and pressing choices without referring to official institutions.“We were not consulted and we did not participate in drafting the decision…. There is a handful of people, including the president, who make decisions, and no one is informed about them,” the official tells The Media Line.“The PA is governed by one individual. We are ruled by a dictatorial regime,” the official says, adding: “The fear now [is that] the president will continue to make important decisions without consulting the rest of the leadership.”Speaking on condition of anonymity, a member of the Fatah Central Committee says that “tempers are at the boiling point” inside the largest Palestinian faction.
This seems to have especially hurt Jibril Rajoub, who had been trying to reconcile with Hamas for the past five months. Abbas' decision torpedoed any chances of both reconciliation and of elections (which would never have happened anyway.)
- Friday, November 27, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
He praised the "wise Turkish policy towards the occupied city of Jerusalem," calling on "everyone" to follow it.
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Sabri said, "Turkey's relationship with Palestine is not new, but it is centuries old, and it has been strengthened even more through its wise policy of extending bridges of brotherhood with the Arab world," stressing that "this is a policy that we always demand."
The implication is that the centuries of Ottoman rule of Jerusalem and Palestine was not an occupation of Palestinian land, barring Palestinians from having their own independent nation. It was rather a wonderful time period when non-Arab Muslims ruled Arabs.
Only when Jews control the land is it an "occupation" and a prevention of Palestinian national aspirations.
Speaking of Jews, Sabri stressed that there is no relationship whatsoever between Judaism and the Temple Mount.
"It is our duty to clarify our strategic position, which is that Al-Aqsa is for Muslims alone, and the Jews have nothing to do with it. It is linked to a decision from God Almighty, not from a security council or a body of nations."
Remember, one of the names of Jerusalem in Arabic is Bayt al-Muqaddas, a direct Arabic translation of the Hebrew Beit HaMikdash, or Holy Temple.
The imam added that when Jews visit their holiest site, "the intruders come with an (Israeli) escort, while the foreign visitor comes without it, and this confirms that the intruder is an aggressor who wants to prove his existence."
The idea that armed guards are needed to protect Jews from the antisemitic incitement from people like Sheikh Sabri whipping up Muslims to attack them is not considered.
Thursday, November 26, 2020
- Thursday, November 26, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
- anti-Zionist not antisemitic, conspiracy theories, COVID-19, Jews control the world, PEZ, religious war, Rick Wiles, Satmar, The Protocols, TruNews
I don't even know how to wrap my head around this.
Earlier this week it was revealed that, in blatant disregard for COVID guidelines and of people's lives, a Satmar Chassidic group in Brooklyn had held a massive wedding with 7,000 maskless participants.
Mayor DeBlasio decided to give a hefty $15,000 fine to the synagogue that hosts the social hall, Yetev Lev D’Satmar.
Last year we reported about the blatantly antisemitic TruNews network, whose leader, Rick Wiles, said on his show that "Jews ...are deceivers, they plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda....People are going to be forced, possibly by this Christmas, to take a stand because of this Jew coup in the United States. ...You have been taken over by a Jewish cabal. The church of Jesus Christ, you’re next. Get it through your head! They’re coming for you. There will be a purge. That’s the next thing that happens when Jews take over a country, they kill millions of Christians."
Earlier this year, Wiles said that COVID was a punishment from God to Jews who don't accept Jesus.
That same Rick Wiles offered to pay the fine for the Satmar shul - and the Satmars are happy to accept the cash from the antisemite who wants to incite a religious war in American between Jews and Christians.
THANK YOU! Our Congregation appreciates the gracious gesture of @TruNews of donating $15k to pay the harsh fine imposed on our Congregation Yetev Lev D’Satmar by @NYCMayor @BilldeBlasio which discriminated against #ReligiousFreedom & Liberties https://t.co/qP4IoyCwpo pic.twitter.com/5Eztv1fUIr
— Satmar Headquarters (@HQSatmar) November 26, 2020
Another Satmar account claimed that HQSatmar was fake:
But HQSatmar seems legit to my untrained eye, with far more followers and a feed that seems more in sync with the Satmar community's public political positions. (UPDATE: I'm told that this account does not speak for any segment of Satmar.)עד מתי יהי' זה לנו למוקש!
— Satmar Nation (@SatmarNation) November 26, 2020
This Twitter handle @HQSatmar has ZERO right to talk in the name of Satmar in any capacity. It has as much with Satmar as Satmar has with the Neo Nazis. https://t.co/ScrO8IT2UX
Naturally, people started tweeting to TruNews about their blatant antisemitism, wondering how they can donate money to a synagogue. TruNews' response is mind-blowing:
Rick Wiles of TRUNEWS: “We love the Jews but hate Zionism.”
— TruNews™ (@TruNews) November 26, 2020
Suddenly, the Jew-haters at TruNews are claiming that they love Jews - and only hate Zionism!
The far-Right antisemites are now issuing talking points that are identical to far-Left antisemites!
And how does the far-Left respond to this?
JewishWorker, a socialist account and website, followed the TruNews/Satmar story with the proper level of astonishment. But then, in response to the far-Right using a far-Left talking point, the anti-Zionist Leftists used a Zionist talking point!
His account name is "Zionism is Goyish" - which sounds exactly like Satmar. But when TruNews befriends Satmar, suddenly the openly anti-Zionist Jewish Worker turns his back on his fellow socialist Left anti-Zionists - who indeed hate 90% of Jews - and effectively calls them antisemites.
My head is spinning.
(h/t Immort4l_legacy)
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