Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Newest "Apartheid?" Poster

02/23 Links Pt1: Joe Biden’s Emerging Folly in the Middle East; Netanyahu: Iran Will Fail like Haman Did 2,500 Years Ago; Vaccination nation

From Ian:

Noah Rothman: Joe Biden’s Emerging Folly in the Middle East

APolitico report published Monday revealed that Joe Biden’s administration wants to rid itself of the troublesome Middle East. In terms of global priorities, one Biden adviser confessed that the region “is not in the top three.” The new administration would prefer to focus on instability in the Western Hemisphere, containing threats and pursuing diplomatic initiatives in Europe, and, of course, finally pivoting to Asia. “They are just being extremely purposeful to not get dragged into the Middle East,” another adviser said. But the Middle East has a habit of dragging the United States back in, and a heedless effort to withdraw from the region is one of the easiest ways to stumble back into open-ended commitments.

The Biden administration encountered one of the first tests of its resolve to disengage from Middle Eastern affairs earlier this month following a deadly rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in which one civilian contractor was killed and nine others were wounded, including a U.S. service member. The Shia militia Saraya Awliya al-Dam, which maintains close links with Tehran, claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Biden administration responded in a “measured” way, according to the New York Times. It does not want to see a nascent attempt to restart negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program derailed by this Iran-linked provocation. But that indefatigable commitment to the pursuit of “rapprochement” with Iran and its proxies has only invited more rocket attacks.

On Monday, locals observed as rockets were fired at the U.S. diplomatic presence in Baghdad within the so-called “Green Zone.” It’s the third attack on Western diplomatic stations in Iraq in a week. Iraq has responded by requesting a larger NATO military presence in the country, and NATO will oblige. In the coming weeks, the Atlantic Alliance will increase its deployments in Iraq from 500 to approximately 4,000, and the Pentagon is not ruling out additional deployments to supplement the Western presence there.

Iranian strategy may seem counterintuitive on its face; why would a rogue state desperate for the rewards associated with the resumption of diplomatic talks risk it all by testing the new administration so brazenly? But Iranians can read American news media, too. If Tehran believes that the Biden administration wants out of the region so badly that it will not absorb the costs associated with sticking around, why not test that proposition? Iran’s long-term objective isn’t just relief from economic sanctions, after all—its regional dominance, with the U.S. all but out of the picture.

Biden squanders leverage Trump stockpiled on Iran in pursuit of a defective nuclear deal

Unfortunately, we’ve seen this movie before. As the Obama administration courted Tehran for nuclear talks from 2012 to 2015, it restricted its counterterrorism and counternarcotics policies toward the regime’s proxies like Hezbollah. As Politico exposed in 2017, U.S. efforts against Hezbollah lessened as the importance of getting a nuclear deal with Iran grew.

The desire to achieve and maintain the Iran nuclear deal also had other negative regional effects. Some of those in the Obama administration arguing for a more robust Syria policy in support of protestors and against the atrocities of President Bashar al-Assad — Tehran’s man in Damascus — were overridden since targeting his regime would have necessarily aggravated the Islamic Republic.

Absent any reciprocity, the Biden administration reversed the Trump administration’s restoration of U.N. penalties on Iran’s military-related procurement and proliferation.

The Biden administration’s eagerness for diplomacy will likely be read by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as a vulnerability to exploit. And in response, Tehran will do what it has done for decades: intensify its aggression and only back down if presented with no other alternative.

Iran is watching Washington begin to dismantle maximum pressure in favor of “maximum diplomacy.” Absent a willingness to add to or even maintain existing sanctions, as well lacking broader efforts to tackle the clerical regime’s regional threat network, such an approach is indeed possible to prejudge: It will end in failure.

Joe Biden Must Respond to Attacks By Iran’s Iraqi Proxies

In addition to holding the Iranian regime to account for last week’s attack—something which Secretary Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab both promised to do to the perpetrators—a renewed effort to bring Iranian compliance for nuclear non-proliferation should undoubtedly include robust measures put in place to curb Iran’s ballistic missile development.

While the break-out time for developing a nuclear weapon once Iran reaches 20 percent uranium enrichment (which they have assured under the guise of national sovereign law to implement from February 23 unless U.S. sanctions be lifted) is only a mere three and a half months, Iran will still require the delivery capability which will truly enable the regime to be a nuclear military power.

Only three weeks ago Iran tested a new rocket with improved technology which could be used in its missile program. The new Zuljanah rocket, developed to send satellites 310 miles into orbit, is easily transferable to Iran’s military missile program run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Any renegotiation of the JCPOA by the United States must factor in the requirement to limit Iran’s ballistic missile program, and Britain will be instrumental in helping shape this policy with fellow JCPOA signatories. Curbing Iranian uranium enrichment is only one side of the nuclear coin; the other lies in restricting the ballistic missile program needed to operationalize a nuclear warhead.

Due to the consistent pressure which Iran is applying on the new administration, time is running out for President Biden to show a stronger hand needed to deal with this repeated Iranian aggression. This includes publically acknowledging the role in which Tehran has over sponsoring and controlling the Shia Iraqi militias which continually cause the biggest source of U.S. and British casualties in Iraq. With the recently announced significant uplift of NATO troops to Iraq, this is not the time for appeasing an aggressive Iranian regime.

Netanyahu: Iran Will Fail like Haman Did 2,500 Years Ago

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the story of Purim and the downfall of Haman the wicked who sought the Jewish nation’s destruction to warn Iran against threatening Israel with nuclear weapons.

Speaking on Tuesday at the state memorial ceremony for Yosef Trumpeldor and his comrades who fell in defense of Tel Hai in the north, Netanyahu declared that “on the eve of Purim, I say to those who seek of our souls, Iran and its proxies in the Middle East: 2,500 years ago another Persian tyrant tried to destroy the Jewish people and just as he failed then – you will fail today.”

Purim, celebrated this year on Thursday through Sunday, marks the saving of the Jewish people from Haman, an Achaemenid Persian Empire official who plan to annihilate all the Jews and failed, as recounted in the Book of Esther.

“We will not allow your extremist and aggressive regime to acquire nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told Iran. “We did not make the journey of generations through thousands of years back to the Land of Israel, to allow the hallucinatory regime of the ayatollahs to end the story of the resurrection of the Jewish people.”

Rejecting a renewed agreement with Iran, Netanyahu underscored that Israel “does not rely on any agreement with an extremist regime like yours. We have already seen the nature of agreements with extremist regimes like yours, in the past century and also in this century, with the North Korean government. With an agreement and without an agreement – we will do everything so that you do not arm yourself with nuclear weapons.”

Netanyahu’s cautionary remarks came just hours after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran will continue its 20% enrichment of uranium, and will increase enrichment up to 60% “based on the country’s needs.”

Oman Daily has a quite unhinged article by Zahir bin Harith Al Mahrouqi against normalization with Israel by Gulf states.

It starts off by alternatively being happy at how (he says) most Gulf Arabs are still anti-Israel and upset that many Arab youth don't know how truly awful Israel is. But then he really goes off the deep end:

The conclusion is that popular normalization with the Zionist entity in the Gulf and in the Arab countries is unacceptable, and Israel cannot succeed in reaching the Arab peoples, except through twisted methods that it has mastered, such as disguising themselves with Arab names and calling Mordechai "Muhammad," for example, and selling its products to people by changing the name of the country of origin.

May God have mercy on the researcher, Abdel-Wahab Al-Messiri, who predicted how things will turn out, and said: “From now on, we will find Jews in Muslim clothes. The Career Jew. A Muslim who prays with us in the mosque, but he plays the same role as the Jewish general. Accordingly, this phenomenon must be analyzed so that many of us do not convert to Judaism without realizing it. ”

There you have it. The danger of normalization is that soon Muslims will unwittingly become Jews. Perhaps they are afraid that there is a secret phrase that, when uttered, converts people into Jews like the Shahada makes people Muslim.

Iran's International Quran News Agency liked this article so much, they reprinted it.

From the Washington Post, an article written by anti-Israel academics Marc Lynch and Shibley Telhami:

The Middle East never lacks for commentary and opinions. Several high-quality surveys regularly ask political scientists and foreign policy experts their views on U.S. policy in the region. But what do scholarly experts on the Middle East think?

Last week, we fielded a unique survey of scholars with expertise in the Middle East, the first of our new Middle East Scholar Barometer. Drawing on the membership of the Middle East Studies Association, the American Political Science Association’s MENA Politics Section and the Project on Middle East Political Science at George Washington University, we identified 1,293 such scholars. The vast majority speak regional languages, have spent significant time in the Middle East, and have dedicated their professional lives to the rigorous study of the region and its politics. Within three days, 521 scholars had consented and responded (a 40 percent response rate), divided almost equally between political scientists and nonpolitical scientists.

Perhaps the starkest finding of the survey is the collective assessment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A strong majority, 59 percent, describes the current reality for Israel and the Palestinians as “a one-state reality akin to apartheid.” An additional 7 percent view it as a “one-state reality with inequality, but not akin to apartheid.”

How scientific was the survey? Not at all. It was a self-selecting online survey, meaning that people with strong opinions were more likely to answer. The survey makes itself sound scientific by saying that it uses the "University of Maryland's Qualtrics platform" when Qualtrics is simply an online survey company that anyone can sign up for in five minutes, send a "poll" to their mailing list, and post the results as if they are meaningful.

Qualtrics is as scientific and rigorous as a Twitter poll.

Legitimate surveys are constructed to reduce bias. This poll is constructed to encourage bias. Unlike legitimate surveys, this online poll ensures that people with strong opinions are more likely to respond. And who are more fanatic than Israel haters and BDS supporters?

Which brings us to the second fatal issue with the poll. The vast majority of the respondents are members of the Middle East Studies Association, which pretends to be apolitical but is anything but. While it has not voted on BDS, it has defended it vigorously. And it defends those who want to boycott Israeli universities in the name of academic freedom, which is as Orwellian as it gets.

Before the "call for BDS" in 2005, MESA issued a 2002 statement that would be a condemnation of BDS:

We believe that critical analysis and argument should infuse university life. We believe that individuals should be accorded equal access to that arena for debate without regard to their personal status, country of origin, religious persuasion or policy preference.

Yet BDS advocates boycotting Israeli academics - and MESA defends them, seemingly silently eliminating the "country of origin" clause in their 2002 statement.

A self-selecting, unscientific, online poll of "scholars" who defend boycotting Israeli universities, and only Israeli universities, is being pushed as if it is meaningful. It doesn't reflect reality - it reflects the biases of the people who came up with the idea of the poll and their friends.

This isn't a one-off. This was the first poll of the "Middle East Scholar Barometer" - a way to push political agendas by creating polls whose results are cooked to begin with, while giving credulous news media the pretense that these are objective and accurate surveys.

(h/t Lenny)

On Sunday, I quoted Times of Israel:

The Palestinian Authority has reportedly sent a letter to Washington stating that all Palestinian factions — including Hamas — have committed to a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem, and to peaceful popular resistance against Israel.

Thge "all Palestinian factions" part upset the Islamic Jihad terror group.

They issued a statement on Sunday night saying that it has no connection with what was stated in the letter, stressing that it did not authorize anyone to relinquish any grain of sand of the soil of the land of historical Palestine.

At the same time, the terror group released a video where their leader says that as long as one Palestinian is alive, they will keep fighting.

02/22 Links Pt2: David Collier: David Miller’s antisemitism – Bristol University shares the blame; SNL’s Anti-Israel Covid Blood Libel; Why Poland Is Trying to Control Holocaust Memory

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: 'We need to BDS them': Mark Levin says of media hostility towards Israel, US

Mark Levin, the conservative Jewish American radio broadcaster with more than 14 million daily listeners, has a gloomy forecast for the future of American media coverage of the US, of Israel and of ties between the two countries.

Ahead of the launch of the Hebrew-language edition of his bestselling book Unfreedom of the Press, Levin told Israel Hayom that to understand the nature and depth of the danger that the US media poses to democracy in America, you have to understand the way that the US media treats Israel.

"I think the American people – forget about the elites – I think the American people and the Israeli people have such a connection, and such a love for each other," he explained.

"We get in this country from our media … that Israel is an apartheid society, it's a racist society. It's the same things they say about our country, they say about Israel. So it's kind of hard to write a book – what I called Unfreedom of the Press – and ignore what's going on in Israel.

"It's also hard to ignore it as a Jew," he adds.

"I see the overlays. I see the animus towards Israel, the animus towards the United States."

For decades Israelis and Israel's supporters in America complained about the anti-Israel bias of the US media. But in Unfreedom of the Press, Levin explains that the problem is far worse than mere bias.

David Collier: David Miller’s antisemitism – Bristol University shares the blame

I have long said Corbyn was a symptom of a far greater problem and only now is that beginning to be more widely understood. The rewriting of history took place in academic halls long before it began to spread on social media. We witnessed the growth of anti-Israel movements only after academic activists had provided them with faux legitimacy. The NGOs fighting against Israel are full of graduates who were taught their twisted hatred, whilst studying at government-funded educational institutions. A whole generation of academics has arisen, who view the world through an antisemitic lens. They protect each other, stand together to silence dissent and spread their false tales to all the new students that appear. It is a factory that creates clones.

If they leave academia to branch out into law, politics or non-profit work, they spread their toxic beliefs wherever they land. It was only a matter of time before a mainstream political party became a target.

In comparison to the battle against Corbynism’s invasion of the Labour party, we are faced with a much more difficult fight. Academia will be protected by academics. The wider uninformed public will not tolerate interference with something that all the little graduate soldiers in media and in NGOs will come out to defend. David Miller’s case highlights this perfectly. The Bristol faculty, certainly the parts surrounding David Miller, are probably very hospitable to his views. When Bristol University considers its response to the outrage facing David Miller, make no mistake – the reaction of their own faculty if they respond harshly is a larger worry to them than having to deal with a few unhappy Jewish students.

But ask yourself this. If Bristol University which adopted the IHRA, still cannot deal with a case as blatant as David Miller then what value does the IHRA have? At the very least, the IHRA demands that a name be given to such breaches – and that name is antisemitism. The Miller case proves that those attacking the IHRA have little to worry about. The responsibility of the University of Bristol

But the bottom line is that this story is all down to the University of Bristol. They chose to give him a senior role even though he had been targeting the Jewish community for a decade. If you employ a racist and he racially abuses your students – you bear responsibility. This is no different.

Bristol is failing in providing a basic duty of care for Jewish students. It is a waste of time turning to an academic who is lost down an anti-Zionist black hole and expecting some type of understanding, sympathy or apology. Miller sees our community as a fifth column with a power base that he would happily dismantle. All this is down to the university. They chose to employ him. They would not have done this to any other minority group. It is time they afforded their Jewish students the basic protections that they are legally obliged to provide.

It is time they start doing their job.

Morton A. Klein: It wasn't funny, Michael Che

The ZOA demands that NBC’s Saturday Night Live (“SNL”) producer Lorne Michaels apologize for and terminate the writer of a “joke” which was not funny and in reality was a dangerous Jew-hating, Israel-bashing blood libel. In addition, this blood libel should be removed from NBC’s website and other fora where it may appear.

On SNL last night, SNL actor Michael Che stated, in a failed attempt at humor that: “Israel is reporting that they’ve vaccinated half of their population. I’m going to guess it was the Jewish half.”

In fact, in Israel, all citizens – Jewish, Muslim, Arab and Christian, are equally eligible and have the equal opportunity to receive the anti-Covid vaccine.

Antisemitic libels are not funny. In fact, in Israel, all citizens – Jewish, Muslim, Arab and Christian, are equally eligible and have the equal opportunity to receive the anti-Covid vaccine. The priorities are health care workers of all backgrounds (including Israel’s many Arab physicians and health care workers) and the elderly of all backgrounds. Approximately 70% of Israeli Arabs over 60 have already received the vaccine.

Israel also offered the vaccine to the autonomous Palestinian Authority (“PA”) and PA President/PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, even though Israel has no obligation to do so. The Oslo accords make clear that the PA is responsible for all issues affecting the health of the PA’s citizens. The PA and Abbas adamantly rejected Israel’s extraordinary, generous humanitarian offer.

The "Franklin Prophecy," a 1930s era forgery of a statement purportedly made by Benjamin Franklin at the 1787 Congressional Congress, is still being circulated in the Arab world as fact - along with the claim that Franklin was a US president.

Jordanian news site Rum Online writes:

In a bold and clear speech more than 200 years ago, US President Benjamin Franklin presented to the American Constituent Assembly in 1799 his historic will alerting to the dangers facing America’s future as a result of the increasing Jewish threat in the country. Do not think that America escaped from the dangers once it gained independence, for it is still threatened by a grave danger that is no less than the danger of colonialism, which is the devastating danger as a result of the multiplication of Jews in our country, where the evils and troubles that befell European countries will befall us, and it is the one that tolerated the Jews and provided them with livelihoods and left them settling Its lands, when the Jews were quick to eradicate the traditions and beliefs of its people and killed the morale of its youth with the toxins of pornography and immorality.

This is a bit of a difference from what the actual forgery stated. The original statement itself is straight antisemitism, first published by a fascist organization in the US and then immediately republished in various Nazi organs. It says:

There is a great danger for the United State of America. This great danger is the Jew. Gentlemen, in every land the Jews have settled, they have depressed the moral level and lowered the degree of commercial honesty. They have remained apart and unassimilated; oppressed, they attempt to strangle the nation financially, as in the case of Portugal and Spain.

For more than seventeen hundred years they have lamented their sorrowful fate — namely, that they have been driven out of their mother land; but, gentlemen, if the civilized world today should give them back Palestine and their property, they would immediately find pressing reason for not returning there. Why? Because they are vampires and vampires cannot live on other vampires --they cannot live among themselves. They must live among Christians and others who do not belong to their race.

If they are not expelled from the United States by the Constitution within less than one hundred years, they will stream into this country in such numbers that they will rule and destroy us and change our form of Government for which we Americans shed our blood and sacrificed our life, property and personal freedom. If the Jews are not excluded within two hundred years, our children will be working in the field to feed Jews while they remain in the counting houses, gleefully rubbing their hands.

I warn you, gentlemen, if you do not exclude the Jews forever, your children and your children’s children will curse you in their graves. Their ideas are not those of Americans, even when they lived among us for ten generations. The leopard cannot change his spots. The Jews are a danger to this land, and if they are allowed to enter, they will imperil our institutions. They should be excluded by the Constitution.

It was determine to be a forgery fairly quickly. The language is not how people spoke in the 18th century and its reference to Palestine shows that it was written partially as a response to Zionism. This New York Times article from March 10, 1937 describes how it was exposed:

Arab antisemitism has often used Nazi sources, and that hasn't changed.

02/22 Links Pt1: Biden’s Policy of Weakness Toward Iran; Why are Israelis held in Gaza ignored amid Syria prisoner exchange?; IAEA strikes deal with Iran to cushion coming blow of slashed access

From Ian:

National Review: Biden’s Policy of Weakness Toward Iran

Instead of signaling to the Iranians, as President Trump did, that the U.S. will hold them directly accountable for the actions of the militias under their control, the new team appears to have let it slide without a direct warning to Iran.

And as Yemen’s Houthi rebels continued their assault on civilian areas, Biden lifted the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation of the Iran-backed group.

Worst of all, though, the Biden administration has extended this olive branch to Tehran following a report this month revealing that the International Atomic Energy Agency found new Iranian uranium-metal production in excess of JCPOA limits. Meanwhile, Iran is threatening to curtail IAEA inspections following a February 23 deadline set by parliament if the U.S. doesn’t cave.

Contrary to what some Iran appeasers argue, this bad behavior is not the result of the Trump-era maximum-pressure campaign. Tehran is escalating now because it sees an opportunity to strong-arm Biden into lifting sanctions first.

Since Thursday, the calls for talks by Jake Sullivan, Blinken, and the president himself have been taken less as a sign of magnanimity than of weakness. Already, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif has reiterated his demands for sanctions relief as a prerequisite for any talks about U.S. reentry into the JCPOA.

At least the administration hasn’t budged on sanctions — yet. But unless Biden is forceful in pushing back on Iran’s tests of his resolve, yet more will come and perhaps force the kind of crisis that the president wants to avert.

PMW: How much did PA spend on terror salaries in 2020?

Since the beginning of 2020, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been trying to hide the financial record of its payments to the Palestinian terrorist prisoners and released terrorists (together hereinafter “the terrorist prisoners”). In 2018 and 2019, the PA monthly budget performance reports clearly listed the transfer expenditures of the “Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs,” which was primarily the payments to terrorist prisoners, as 502 and 517 million shekels respectively. In 2020, the budget category of the “Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs” (later by the PA called the Commission for Detainees’ Affairs) was removed altogether. However, throughout 2020, numerous statements by PA and PLO officials confirmed that the PA continued to pay hundreds of millions of shekels a year in terror rewards. Consequently, it was clear that the PA had decided to pay terrorists in a roundabout way so that there would be no reference to the salaries at all in their budget.

Palestinian Media Watch has examined the PA’s financial reports throughout 2020 and can now report both where the payments are being hidden, and that the amount the PA spent on terrorists salaries in 2020 was no less than 512 million shekels.

The salaries the PA paid to terrorists in 2019 via the Ministry/Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, were paid in 2020 through the PLO. Under the budget listing of PLO “transfer expenditures” the PA’s payments through the PLO rose more than 300% in 2020, from 161 million shekels to 673 million shekels. The additional expenditure - 512 million shekels - is the minimum amount the PA paid to the terrorist prisoners and released terrorists in 2020.

Why did the PA make this accounting change in 2020?
As a recipient of international funding, the PA must show full transparency and publicly list all its expenses, whereas the PLO is not accountable to anyone for how it spends its money. The PA wants to prevent the international community from seeing listings like the one below in its “budget performance report” of 2019, which shows 517 million shekels for salaries to terrorist prisoners listed under the “Commission of Detainees’ Affairs”. (Note: the 517 million shekels in the right column are the salaries to terrorists, while the 619 million shekels in the left column is the full budget of the Commission in 2019.)

The answer is that if the price of each vaccine was $33, the PA could have bought 4,727,272 vaccines.https://t.co/HwDcG1mdl1
— Maurice Hirsch, Adv. 🇮🇱 עו''ד מוריס הירש (@MauriceHirsch4) February 22, 2021

Palestinian COVID vaccine plan faces large funding gap, World Bank says

The Palestinians' COVID-19 vaccination plan faces a $30 million funding shortfall, even after factoring in support from a global vaccine scheme for poorer economies, the World Bank said in a report on Monday.

Israel, a world leader in terms of vaccination speed, could perhaps consider donating surplus doses to the Palestinians to help accelerate a vaccine roll-out in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, the bank said.

"In order to ensure there is an effective vaccination campaign, Palestinian and Israeli authorities should coordinate in the financing, purchase and distribution of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines," it said.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) plans to cover 20% of Palestinians through the COVAX vaccine-sharing programme. PA officials hope to procure additional vaccines to achieve 60% coverage.

Cost estimates suggest that "a total of about $55 million would be needed to cover 60 percent of the population, of which there is an existing gap of $30 million," the World Bank said, calling for additional donor help.

The Palestinians began vaccinations this month and have received small donations from Israel, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

Palestinian Media Watch reports that during 2020, the Palestinian Authority continued to pay salaries to terrorist prisoners, hiding the salaries under the budget line of “PLO institutions.” The total payments in 2020 to terrorist prisoners and released prisoners were at least 512 million shekels, which is over $156 million.

There are about 4.5 million people under Palestinian rule, of which about 2.5 million are over 20 years old.

For $156 million, the PA could have purchased two doses of the Moderna vaccine at an expensive $30 a dose for every adult Palestinian. For the Russian Sputnik-V vaccines, they could have purchased enough for every single citizen of any age at $10 a dose and still had $66 million left over for other critical expenses.

Instead, they pay terrorist salaries, on a sliding scale, where the more Jews they attacked roughly means more money from their government.

One of the arguments that anti-Israel activists use to justify their demand that Israel provide free vaccines for Palestinians is that the Palestinians cannot afford to buy their own without wrecking their economy. These people seem to agree that it is more important for Palestinians to pay terrorists than to pay for vaccines.

Today, finally, Hamas started the process of inoculating Gazans with the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine.

Besides the 2000 doses sent through Kerem Shalom last week, another 20,000 doses were donated by the UAE and were shipped in through Egypt yesterday.

That is interesting in itself. The UAE, still upset at the Palestinian Authority for rejecting its own COVID-19 aid last summer, apparently decided to bypass the PA altogether and send vaccines straight to Gaza.

And they worked with Mahmoud Abbas' political rival from Fatah, Mohammad Dahlan, who is angling to be a player in the upcoming planned election.

Politicizing vaccines would be considered reprehensible if done by anyone but Palestinians. (Yet another example of the "Palestine exception.")

The other interesting fact about the vaccines in Gaza is that even though the Hamas health ministry opened up an online registration drive, only 7,000 out of 2 million Gazans actually signed up for vaccines so far.

After all of the publicity of the delay of bringing vaccines in to Gaza, it seems that most Gazans aren't too interested in getting the vaccine anyway, at least up until now.

The first people to receive the shot, in front of reporters, were former Gaza health ministers.

CNN uncritically reports US-Palestinian who was stuck in Gaza, when his story doesn't add up

CNN has the story of Hani Almadhoun and his family, who were stranded in Gaza when they went to visit Almadhoun's dying grandfather. They went to Gaza via Egypt on in early November and then they couldn't leave as Egypt blocked the Rafah crossing due to COVID.

Parts of his story doesn't quite add up, but CNN reports his experiences as accurate.

About a week after Almadhoun's grandfather died on November 19, the crossing was closed due to Covid-19 restrictions.

..."We realized we were stuck around December 25 ... that's when we started worrying," Almadhoun said.

After his grandfather's death, apparently the family decided to hang around in Gaza for several more weeks. During a pandemic.

The State Department makes it crystal clear that it strongly discourages travel to Gaza at any time, let alone during a pandemic:

Gaza:  The U.S. government is unable to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens in Gaza as U.S. government employees are prohibited from traveling there and are restricted from traveling close to the Gaza demarcation line.  Hamas, a U.S. government-designated foreign terrorist organization, controls the security infrastructure in Gaza. The security environment within Gaza and on its borders is dangerous and volatile. Sporadic mortar or rocket fire and corresponding Israeli military responses may occur at any time. During periods of unrest or armed conflict, the crossings between Gaza with Israel and Egypt may be closed.

So why on Earth did these US citizens choose to stay in Gaza when they could have and should have left?

But instead of asking that question, CNN reports on their plight - and their complaints about the US State Department for not helping them escape

Given his past experiences traveling to Gaza as a US citizen, and the Covid-19 pandemic, Almadhoun expected the US Embassy would help.
"It's not like we went to Gaza to smoke hookah. We went to see our dying grandfather," he said. "It was a human thing to do. We didn't expect not to get any help, or even just kind words, from the American embassy. All their replies were robotic and scripted."
Almadhoun believes that if his family was not Palestinian, the US Embassy in Jerusalem would have treated them differently.
"I never received help from them in the past, but I hoped with the pandemic they were feeling more human," he said. "It's like, you're an American citizen yet when they see you're Palestinian, that's all you are, and that's how you're treated. If they ask if you have a Palestinian ID card and you do, they stop listening."

So did the US Embassy help him in the past or didn't they? The contradiction isn't cleared up. But the State Department makes it clear there is only so much they can do.

In the end, the family appealed to a senator to contact Egypt and allow them to leave a few days after the Rafah crossing opened.

There were some other parts of Almadhoun's story that were strange as well:

On many nights, while spending time with his family or working remotely, Almadhoun said he could hear the sounds of drones flying overhead and what sounded like missiles striking targets not far from their home in Gaza City.
"Being in Gaza is hard. At times it was hell. You get maybe six or eight hours of electricity a day, and some days there is not even water," Almadhoun said.

I looked up how many times there were Israeli airstrikes in Gaza during the 100 or so days the family was there. It happened on only four nights, according to the UN: 11/15, 11/21, 12/26 and 1/18. Each of them were in response to Hamas rocket attacks to Israel. There were also some "work accidents" during that time period, but Almadhoun reports every explosion he heard as an Israeli airstrike - and CNN didnt fact-check him/

Also, OCHA-OPT says that Gaza averages 14 hours of electricity a day during the time the family was there. It is possible that he only got 6-8 hours of electricity where he was, but again, CNN took his statement as being truthful for all of Gaza.

But why shouldn't CNN believe him? Why shouldn't CNN give him the benefit of the doubt?

Because Almadhoun works for UNRWA-USA, which depends on demonizing Israel for its funding. Members of UNRWA-USA have a history of anti-Israel slanders.

An Arab family decided to essentially vacation in Gaza, and they then blame Israel and the US for making their trip less than enjoyable. And CNN happily reports their story without any skepticism.

(h/t Mathew)