Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 05, 2021

"The Arab countries for the Arabs"

During World War II, a tiny organization called the “League of American-Arab Committees for Democracy” started a letter writing campaign to members of Congress to demand that they don't back a Jewish state.

The letter deplored the persecution of Jews in Europe, bu the idea of them moving to safety in the Land of Israel was apparently worse to their moral sensitivities. “[We] can never countenance such a miscarriage of justice as the rape of Palestine by a group of people claiming that their ancestors once occupied the country some thousands of years ago,” it said.

The letter added, "It is decidedly contrary to the best interest of the United States to deliberately antagonize some sixty million Arabs and two hundred and fifty million Moslems by permitting political Zionism to consummate its audacious ambition in Palestine.”

In a bizarre revision of history, the letter concluded by saying the Palestinian Arabs have “contributed far more than their share towards the rehabilitation of Jewish refugees from Europe, since they have already accepted more than half a million of them in a country about the size of Vermont.”

No, they opposed every single Jew fleeing persecution and pressured England to sentence millions to death.

The League had a motto: “The Arab countries for the Arabs.” I wonder if their political descendants would have a problem with "The Jewish State for the Jews."

05/05 Links Pt1: Biden to UAE crown prince: Israel normalization of ‘strategic importance’; PMW caused the closure of 35,000 bank accounts of terrorists; The Lebanese Jew Working for Israeli Intelligence

From Ian:

Biden to UAE crown prince: Israel normalization of ‘strategic importance’

US President Joe Biden spoke by phone with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed al Nahyan on Tuesday, in his first call with the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates since entering the White House in January.

During the call, Biden hailed the Trump-era normalization of ties between Israel and the United Aarab Emirates, according to a White House statement.

“They discussed regional and global challenges, including Afghanistan, the nuclear and regional dimensions of the threat posed by Iran, as well as the common quest for de-escalation and peace in the Middle Peace,” the statement said.

“In that regard, the president underlined the strategic importance of the normalization of relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel. He expressed his full support for strengthening and expanding these arrangements,” the White House said.

The Biden administration has told Congress it will move ahead with a massive arms deal to the UAE, including advanced F-35 aircraft, that was signed in the wake of Israel’s normalization deal with the Gulf nation, congressional aides told Reuters last month.

In January, the new administration put a temporary hold on several major foreign arms sales initiated by former US president Donald Trump, including the deal to provide 50 F-35 advanced fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates, which was fast-tracked by Washington after Abu Dhabi agreed to normalize relations with Israel.

A State Department spokesperson told Reuters that estimated delivery dates to the UAE were for after 2025.

In addition to the massive $23 billion transfer of stealth F-35 fighters to the United Arab Emirates, another deal being paused is a planned major sale of munitions to Saudi Arabia. Both sales were harshly criticized by Democrats in Congress.

Jared Kushner launches peace institute to advance Abraham Accords

Jared Kushner has launched an institute to promote his major accomplishment when he advised his father-in-law, former US President Donald Trump: the normalization agreements between Israel and a number of Sunni Arab countries.

Kushner founded the Abraham Accords Institute for Peace with Avi Berkowitz, a friend who Kushner brought in to be the chief Middle East peace negotiator in the latter part of his father-in-law’s single presidential term, Axios reported on Wednesday.

Berkowitz helped broker the accords last year that brought normalization agreements between Israel and Sudan, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

The institute will promote trade, tourism and people-to-people exchanges between Israel and the Arab countries.

The other founders include Haim Saban, an Israeli American entertainment mogul who also is a major donor to the Democratic Party. Axios said that Kushner wants to bring more Democrats on board. The Abraham Accords is one of the few diplomatic initiatives launched by Trump that President Joe Biden has fully embraced.

Kushner has laid low since his father-in-law left office and has not pronounced on the false claims Trump peddles that Joe Biden’s election was fraudulent. Kushner, who led Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, is reportedly no longer among his father-in-law’s political advisers.

US pulls out of Durban anti-racism meet up, is Australia next?

As countries prepare to officially mark the 20th anniversary of a 2001 United Nations conference notorious for its extreme antisemitism, the United States has made the principled decision not to participate.

It is anticipated that other countries, Australia included, may consider following suit.

Held in the South African coastal city of Durban, the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance produced a conference declaration that singled out Israel alone for criticism, out of all the world’s nations. It was preceded by an NGO sideshow event where virulent antisemitic behaviour was widespread, facilitated by the organisers. The situation became so dire that Jewish participants had to be accompanied by additional security to ensure their personal safety at the conference.

The overall event, which became colloquially known as Durban I, was a watershed in the long and dishonourable history of the UN being manipulated to discredit Israel, the world’s sole Jewish state.

According to a report in the Jerusalem Post, the United States has decided it will not participate in the 20th anniversary event planned for September 22, 2021. A spokesperson told the Israeli publication: “the United States stands with Israel and has always shared its concerns over the Durban process’s anti-Israel sentiment, use as a forum for antisemitism and freedom of expression issues.”

Since 2001, there have been two follow up conferences, in 2009 and 2011. In both instances, there were few attempts to right the wrongs of Durban I. In both instances, the United States, Australia, and a small group of similarly minded truly anti-racist countries, boycotted.

At the conclusion of Durban I, Australia’s then-foreign minister Alexander Downer noted there was language in the conference declaration “with which we could not be associated”.

Australia did not send a delegation in 2009, when then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a welcomed speaker, despite having called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and denying the Holocaust.

In 2011, the Australian Government participated in early discussions, but soon withdrew. Then-prime minister Julia Gillard noted she had “not been convinced that the high-level meeting will avoid unbalanced criticism of Israel and the airing of anti-Semitic views.”

The Australian Government under Prime Minister Scott Morrison has already flagged its concern with the 20th anniversary event.

Jewish Leaders Commend US Refusal to Participate in Durban IV pic.twitter.com/eftfGUrr7F
— Conf Of Presidents (@Conf_of_Pres) May 5, 2021

At first, this story in NG Misr looked like it was a rare Arabic language story that is sympathetic about the Holocaust, describing the amazing Irena Sendler, the Polish woman who saved many Jewish children during the Holocaust (and who is supposed to be the subject of a movie starring Gal Gadot.)

However, the author, Moawia Elzahaby, finishes the article with Holocaust denial.

In the story he wrote sentences like, “She was able to save the lives of thousands of Jews from Hitler’s alleged Holocaust.” and "According to what the Jews and those who sympathize with them propagate, Irena put children in suitcases and took them out of the besieged Jewish quarters/neighborhoods.”

His true colors really come out at the end, though:

At the end of the war and the fall of Nazism, the Jews began to search for proof and evidence that the Nazi Holocaust happened to them. The story of the Polish nurse was one of those stories that they began to propagate and revere. Today Hollywood produces a huge film that tells a story the events of which are closer to fiction than to reality. The film does not need many artistic touches. The question surrounding these type of stories - and whether the Holocaust itself actually took place – remains open. The Jews claim that millions of them were killed, while voices – that are accused of antisemitism – say that the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis is nothing but an exaggeration, and the number of their dead is not more than a few thousand.

Nothing to see here, just another Egyptian who considers Jews liars and the Holocaust a myth.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Iranian media shows its Jew-hatred ahead of Quds Day

This year, Iran's annual hatefest called Quds Day this Friday is only online because of the pandemic.

Ahead of that holiday, which was created as a response to Jerusalem Day, Iranian media - which is all government approved - is proving quite definitively that its problem isn't with Zionism, but with Jews.

The headline of this Al Alam TV article says that the Arabs in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem are threatened by "the fangs of jungle monsters" - their woke term for Jews.

A lengthy article at PressTV (English) goes over a twisted history of Israel and features an interview with Lebanese academic Denijal Jegic, a frequent contributor to Al Jazeera. This expert confidently tells us that Jewish history is a lie:

This whole Zionist narrative is really just based on myths and ways to construct the history and the connection to the land that was not there before the settler colonial movement...I'm not surprised to hear that the Zionist regime is having their own [Jerusalem] day because it's also a way for them to inscribe themselves into Palestine and to construct the connection to the land that wasn't there before.

Jegic once wrote a chapter to a book whose abstract reads, "This chapter explores the inclusion of Palestine within Transnational American Studies and discusses how intersectional and transnational understandings of the Palestinian intifada can be applied for the analysis of subaltern forms of expression. While the impossibility to effectively differentiate between US and Israeli hegemony has transformed Palestinians into a contemporarily transnationally colonized people, discussions on settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing, while formerly absent from American Studies, were articulated by Black activists and artists, who voiced a transnationalization of the Palestinian intifada as a revolutionary intervention into hegemonic concepts. In order grasp the potential of artist-activist work, and in order to expand the decolonial discourse, Transnational American Studies needs to combine the analysis of political, economic, and military components of transnational hegemony with the highlighting of counter-hegemonic articulations of resistance."

Good to know his antisemitism is well-grounded in the latest intersectional motifs and transnationalist narratives.

Meanwhile, Iranian figurehead president Hasan Rouhani said Zionists are the worst people on Earth:

Rouhnai [sic] termed the Zionists as the enemies of the region and its security, the enemies of the Palestinian nation, the murders [sic] who displaced millions of civilians.

He went on to say that during the past decades, nobody has been such criminal [sic] as the Zionists are.

Millions of civilians displaced!

More civilians were killed by Iran in the Iran-Iraq war than were killed in the past hundred years of conflict in Israel.

Arabs set fire to Jewish fields. They claim Jews set fire to Arab fields. B'Tselem, Peace Now believe the Arabs.

B'Tselem tweeted that Jews had set Arab fields on fire last night.

The tweet received thousands of "Likes" with respondents calling the arsonists terrorists.

Which they are.

Except they are Arab, setting fields from the neighboring Jewish community of Givat Ronen on fire.

Residents spent hours fighting the blazes.

An IDF spokesperson confirmed that security cameras detected three separate fires were set by Arabs at Givat Ronen.

Arabs setting fires to Jewish fields is hardly unusual - it happens every year, and it has happened since before the State of Israel was established.

But B'Tselem, Peace Now and others immediately believed the lies that these fires were set by "settlers" and spread the slander to thousands of people already primed to believe any lies about Jews.

To be sure, there has been arson done by Jewish settlers, and it should be condemned. But it is the responsibility of NGOs to check stories before spreading them, and the track record of Arab media that they mindlessly parrot is not very good in cases like these.

Similarly, no one seems to report things like Arabs shooting fireworks directly at Jewish-owned houses in Jerusalem, while the converse would have been front page news. (This happened last month.)

05/04 Links Pt2: Matti Friedman: Eight Tips for Reading About Israel; Jews are increasingly welcome in the Islamic world; A Review 'Jews Don't Count' by David Baddiel

From Ian:

Matti Friedman: Eight Tips for Reading About Israel

From my position as a journalist in Israel, perched on the fault line between Western preoccupations and the country where I live, I’m confronted with a growing perception gap. The gap becomes apparent in conversations with visitors flying in for a brief visit (at least when “flying in” was something that happened) or with those who take an interest in this place from far away. These observers have formed a picture of Israel based on stories — stories that might come from home, from college friends or professors, from a Jewish summer camp or day school, or from journalism.

Some of these stories are positive and others negative, but what they generally share is being only tenuously linked to reality. Observers thus find themselves struggling to reconcile the State of Israel as it really is to the narratives in their head — an effort that often ends with either retreat into the imaginary landscape they had in the first place, or frustration with reality’s failure to cooperate. It’s possible that visitors to any country have a similar problem, but I suspect that Westerners landing in, say, Burundi (to name a country whose population is about the same size as Israel’s) arrive with less preexisting information and emotion, making the perception gap less of a challenge.

People who live in the liberal worlds of Western Europe and North America more often seem to approach Israel with a shared narrative about the place and shared sources of information, chiefly the international press. That’s an industry I know well, having spent formative years of my journalism career as a correspondent and editor for the Associated Press, one of the world’s biggest news organizations, in the Jerusalem bureau.

2 | why are you telling me this?
Is your source of information an observer whose job is to explain things, or an activist with a political plan? Being an activist is fine, but it’s important to understand who’s who. An activist doesn’t need to tell you everything, just the things that will draw you to his point of view. To take examples from the Israeli context, groups such as Breaking the Silence or B’Tselem are activist groups, and so, on the other side of the spectrum, are groups like StandWithUs. Their material isn’t meant primarily to explain what’s going on, but to induce you to support a particular position. Contradictory information won’t be included. Their role is like that of an attorney at a divorce trial: If you’re representing the wife, your job isn’t to offer a fair assessment of the husband. Your job is to savage his character in your client’s interest and to get the judge on your side.

What makes sorting journalists from activists more and more difficult is that many journalists have become activists — that is, they see their job not as helping you understand events, but as pushing you toward their conclusions. They engineer their reporting to that end. Many Western reporters here in Israel, supported by the world of activist NGOs and international organizations (which is the same social and professional world inhabited by reporters, with much movement between them), believe that Israel is the problem. It follows, if you’re an activist, that what’s needed is not an understanding of Israel’s concerns, but a character assassination that will stoke anger and punish the guilty party. The goal is less to inform than to enrage. That’s why bloodshed during a Hamas attempt to penetrate the Gaza border (to cite one example from 2018) isn’t described as the result of actions, however imperfectly pursued, by Israeli soldiers to protect their citizens. Such a description would be true, but as activism it’s ineffective. Instead, the event must be presented as a kind of murder, even a massacre.

As soon as the press becomes activist, it becomes impossible to understand what’s going on. Anyone hoping to understand should be looking for knowledgeable observers capable of understanding different points of view.

Justice, justice shall you pursue: The crisis for American and French justice

France, as I have previously written, is in a state of cultural decline and loss of confidence by its intellectuals. What we see plainly in the Halimi case is an example of when righteousness is absent and the “robot” judges, only can see the surface of the law and cannot interpret the law to reflect righteousness.

“Justice, Justice shall thou pursue", then we are told to do more than mindlessly applying precedent, but to interpret the law where possible from a position of righteousness.

The failure to understand the ideological antisemitism and state of denial in France was made even clearer a year after the Halimi murder: Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old French Jewish woman and Holocaust survivor was murdered in her Paris apartment on 23 March 2018.

The two suspects, one of whom had known her since he was a child, entered the apartment and reportedly stabbed Knoll eleven times before setting her on fire. The older suspect told investigators that the younger suspect asserted “She’s a Jew. She must have money.” The two suspects have accused each other of the stabbing, one of them claiming that the other shouted Allahu Akbar as he stabbed her.

In this case, finally, the murder has been officially described by French authorities as antisemitic hate crime. Those who understand the need for judges and legislators all to be righteous, understand what must be done in both France and America.

And what we Jews learn is that no ideology should ever be used to thwart or overturn justice. Our Torah by repeating the word “Tsedek” makes it clear that righteousness not ideology is the foundation of justice.

Jews are increasingly welcome in the Islamic world

One message is coming through loud and clear in all this activity: Islamic countries want to nurture and grow their Jewish communities. But equally heartening is how Jewish communities in these countries are reaching out in friendship to their Muslim fellow citizens. Rabbis and Jewish community leaders are breaking bread at Ramadan iftars around the Islamic world and distributing food packages filled with Ramadan staples like dates, tea, lentils, chickpeas and other essentials to their Muslim neighbours, including many people in need.

These improvements in Muslim-Jewish interaction have occurred at a time when the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan have established new relations with Israel. But the religious rapprochement runs deeper than politics, as signified by the communities that have moved closer to one another elsewhere. In the end, what we are seeing on a personal level is the result much more of Muslim-Jewish entente than Arab-Israeli diplomacy.

In this new reality, Muslims and Jews are becoming trusted partners and friends, relegating the longstanding hostility between Israel and the Islamic and Arab worlds to an anachronism. This transformation should offer hope for reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians.

There is more work to do. The Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, created only a few years ago, now boasts rabbinic members serving Jewish communities and residing in Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Nigeria, Turkey, Tunisia, Uganda and Uzbekistan. Not all these places are as embracing of Jews yet as the UAE has been.

But never have I been more optimistic that a true and universal Muslim-Jewish partnership may be achievable. The efficacy and durability of such a relationship is being demonstrated every day by the Muslims and Jews who live together in mutual affection and peace, and the Jews in Muslim lands who are not merely tolerated but very much integral to the countries they call home.

In the Middle East and elsewhere, Muslim-Jewish friendship and solidarity unlocks the combined ability of our faith communities to defeat Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry.

Together, we can collaborate on medical, scientific and development breakthroughs that benefit each of us, and all of humankind. And certainly, while numbers may still be modest, the emergence of vibrant and sustainable Jewish communities in Muslim lands should be seen as an indisputable advance in building a more tolerant and co-operative world.

From StrategyPage:

The Israeli Army has ordered a new guided 120mm mortar shell, Iron Sting, that can use GPS or laser guidance to hit targets with greater precision than any existing guided shell. Iron Sting is also equipped to work with a new digital fire control system that is also entering wide use in the Israeli military. That means 120mm mortars, which are vehicle mounted, can receive target location data from any Israeli ground, air or naval source and quickly program and fire Iron Sting shell at anything within twelve kilometers. While GPS guidance is reliable enough to put the shell within a few meters (ten feet) of the target, laser guidance can reliably hit individual vehicles, bunkers or snipers in buildings. The laser guidance requires someone within a few thousand meters of the target to aim the laser at the target and keep it there for the laser guided shell to hit the reflected laser light. Another advantage of laser guidance is that is harder to jam than GPS. Some GPS jammers can disrupt GPS guidance within several thousand meters. Laser signal disrupters are more expensive and only provide protection for individual vehicles and similar size targets. Israel has been using GPS guided 120mm shells since 2015 and they cost about $33,000 each. Iron Sting is more expensive but considered more effective due to the laser guidance and integration with the new fire control system.
...

Unguided mortar shells cannot put the first round very close to the target, which means firing several rounds to adjust aim before one gets one on target. A guided mortar round is very useful in urban warfare, where a miss will often kill civilians. The 120mm mortar round has about 8 kg (17 pounds) of explosives, compared to 10 kg (22) pounds in a 155mm shell. The smaller explosive charges reduce collateral damage to civilians. Normally, an unguided 120mm shell will land anywhere within a 136-meter circle (on the first shot). All GPS guided rounds land within a ten-meter circle and laser guided shells land within a one-meter circle.

I'm not sure as to the price of each shell, but if they are more than $33,000 this seems a reasonable guess is $50,000.

That is how much Israel spends per shell to avoid civilian casualities.

Hamas's mortars, which are meant to kill civilians, are about $100 each.

Israel haters love to say that Israel fires indiscriminately at civilians and shows no interest in reducing casualties. There are thousands of counter-proofs, and this is just one of them.

But they will keep lying.

(h/t MtTB)

05/04 Links Pt1: Mt. Meron and Israel's paradoxical nature; Are We “Judaizing” Jerusalem?; After Meron, violence, Israel needs a government now

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Mt. Meron and Israel's paradoxical nature

On Saturday night, as Tel Aviv's City Hall lit up with the image of the Israeli flag to commemorate the dozens killed and 150 injured in the crowd-crush two nights earlier on Mount Meron, Israelis of all backgrounds came together to light yahrzeit (memorial) candles.

Some of the people present at Rabin Square that evening, like others around the country, configurated tea lights in the shape of the numeral 45 – the number of people trampled to death during the Lag B'Omer celebrations.

The outpouring of nationwide grief over the victims and empathy with their families was not unusual in a state sadly accustomed to burying citizens who are, by all measures, too young to die. Nor was it novel for Israel's Kan Radio to play sad music, out of respect for the gravity of the hour.

The same can be said of the public's lining up in droves, and for hours on end in sweltering heat, to donate blood for the treatment of those still in the hospital. Though less frequent an occurrence, the offer by Israel's national carrier, El Al, of free passage for anyone from abroad needing to pay their last respects or provide bedside comfort to loved ones was also not surprising.

Even the fact that Arab villagers from the Meron area in the north rallied to help their Jewish brethren in distress – distributing free food and drink to survivors – wasn't totally out of the ordinary.

But all of the above has been noteworthy nevertheless, due to the identity of the casualties. All were ultra-Orthodox Jews who had made a pilgrimage to the gravesite of second-century sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai to dance around the holiday's traditional bonfire – hosted, as it happened, by the Jerusalem-based, anti-Zionist sect, Toldot Aharon.

Throughout the past year, since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, already strained relations between the Haredim and secular Israeli society have been particularly fraught. Indeed, COVID-19 is one force majeure that hasn't been a unifying factor in the way that other shared traumatic experiences have been, due in large part to its dragged-out duration.

Jpost Editorial: After Meron, violence, Israel needs a government now - editorial

If anyone still harbors any lingering doubts about why Israel must not go to a fifth election, but rather form a stable, workable government as soon as possible, the events of the last two weeks should put those doubts to rest.

What happened two weeks ago? Clashes began in Jerusalem between Arabs and Jews, exacerbated by a protest by a group of racist Jews, that then led to terrorists from Gaza firing rockets into Israel.

That was followed by Thursday night’s horror in Meron, and no less than three terror attacks on Sunday, including a shooting attack at the Tapuah Junction that left one yeshiva student in life-threatening condition, another in serious condition, and a third with light injuries.

Why should any of that convince people of the need for a strong government and not spin the wheel on a fifth election? Because these incidents show that while Israeli politicians are fiddling around, things out there in the real world are happening.

The world continues to spin. But while it spins, Israel is unable to prepare or respond as it should because its leaders are otherwise engaged. The recent uptick in violence and Palestinian terror came as no great surprise. First, the Muslim month of Ramadan has for years been a period of increased violence in Israel.

From Israel: Are We “Judaizing” Jerusalem??

The amusement is fleeting, however, for there is nothing funny about the Arabs’ motivation in making this charge: They are seeking to delegitimize the Jewish claim to Jerusalem, and, more extensively, to Israel.

When I wrote my last posting, I said I would return to consider other reasons why Israel needs a strong right-wing government without delay. And this, my friends, is one significant reason. We need leaders who are clear on our rights and ready to stand on them. For, just as anti-Semitism is increasing world-wide, so is anti-Zionism, the flip side of the same ugly coin.

The Palestinian Arabs and their supporters may be virulently hostile, but they are not stupid. They know that Jerusalem and Har Habayit (the Temple Mount) are an essential element of our claim to the Land.

Our claim is based on international law.
We have just celebrated the 101st anniversary of the San Remo Conference: At the end of WWI, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan – with the United States as a neutral observer, came together for the Conference in San Remo, Italy, under the auspices of the League of Nations. They met to determine the allocation of Middle Eastern lands that had been part of the defeated Ottoman Empire. Borders were drawn that defined Mandate territories. These were to be governed temporarily by either Great Britain or France, and would receive independence within a relatively short period of time.

The Mandate for Palestine was given to Great Britain, which was charged with establishing it as a Jewish homeland.

The decision made at San Remo was then officially confirmed in a unanimous vote of the League of Nations (51 nations) on June 24, 1922. Thus was the Jewish right to the land established in international law; that law still stands. Jerusalem, it should be noted, was within the area defined by the Mandate as a Jewish homeland.

Our claim is also based on heritage and history.
Incorporated into the San Remo Resolution regarding the Mandate for Palestine was the Balfour Declaration – a 1917 letter from the British Foreign Secretary declaring the government’s sympathy with Zionist aspirations and endorsing establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

The text of the Mandate for Palestine as passed by the League of Nations additionally said this:
“…recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

This is huge. The fifty-one nations of the world belonging to the League of Nations all signed on to a document recognizing the Jewish historical connection to Palestine. (See the full list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_League_of_Nations)

The US was not a member of the League of Nations, but the Lodge-Fish Resolution, passed by both houses of Congress on June 22, 1922 (before the League of Nations voted), endorsed the Mandate for Palestine; it was then signed by President Warren Harding.

Al Monitor reports that Palestinians are upset that Jews are visiting - and praying in - an ancient synagogue.

Israeli settlers have been increasing their visits to the ruins of the ancient Naaran and Shahwan synagogues in the Jericho area in the West Bank and also performing rituals in them, sparking Palestinian fears about Israeli intentions for the region.

Iyad Hamdan, the director of the Department of Tourism and Archaeology in the city of Jericho, told Al-Monitor, “The Shahwan and Al-Dyouk [Naaran] synagogues are two archaeological sites located within the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities’ sites in the Jericho area and the Jordan Valley."

He added, “The archaeological sites are not a place for worship, but the settlers treat them as such and insist on performing Talmudic rituals in the synagogues. More than 50 settlers visit the two synagogues on a weekly basis.”

Mohammad Jaradat, the director of tourism and antiquities for Jericho governorate, said that although the Shahwan synagogue in the city of Jericho is in Area A of the West Bank, which is under the control of the Palestinian Authority, the visits from Israeli settlers and tourists "stem from the terms of the Oslo Accords, which allowed in its additional annexes the Jews to visit the synagogue which is known [to them] as Shalom Al Yisrael Synagogue." Shalom Al Yisrael means “Peace Unto Israel.”

He told Al-Monitor, “Israeli army forces accompany the settlers when visiting many archaeological sites in Jericho governorate to protect them. These include the archaeological Tal al-Sultan site.”

He said the "settlers’ visits are intended to entrench settlement, as they consider the site part of the Jewish religious heritage.” He added, “The visits to the archaeological and historical sites are a Zionist attempt to Judaize the Jericho area and the Jordan Valley to implement part of the Zionist annexation plan."

He added, “The two synagogues are part of Palestinian history that dates back to thousands of years."

As usual, the Palestinian officials are not telling the truth.

1. It isn't only "settlers" visiting the Shalom Al Yisrael synagogue - Jews worldwide visit it.

2. The 1995 Oslo Accords Interim Agreement doesn't call it an archaeological site - it calls it a Jewish holy site. It "ensure[s] free, unimpeded and secure access to the relevant Jewish holy site," refers to its "Jewish religious nature" and says "existing religious practices shall be preserved."

3. There is nothing new with Jews visiting the site to pray. Jews resumed praying with a quorum after the second intifada regularly since 2007, and every Friday several years afterwards.

4. Note that Jaradat admits that the IDF needs to accompany the Jews visiting the site to protect them. It is obvious that their lives are in danger otherwise and that Palestinian police cannot be trusted to protect Jews wanting to pray in their own holy site. This article itself is proof of that - it is a new initiative to give the impression that Jews have no religious rights in Jericho.

5. Part of Palestinian history that dates back thousands of years? Please.

Incidentally, the mosaic floor there includes many depictions of heart shapes.

While the Jewish Jericho site claims that these hearts - half green and half red - symbolize the emotional and logical parts of the heart, that shape was not associated with the human heart (as far as I can tell) until the Middle Ages. In Greece, the decorative shape was more often associated with leaves.

If anyone has any idea of what heart shapes would have meant to 3rd century CE Jews , I'd love to know! This book thinks they are some sort of directional arrows.

Israel haters lie. They KNOW they are lying. We can prove it. Exhibit A: @LaraFriedmanDC. Exhibit A: @EuroMedoPt

Lara Friedman, the president of the anti-Israel Foundation for Middle East Peace, tweeted:

Israel built 5000 housing units in Jerusalem in four months?

Anyone who follows the issue of settlements would know instantly that this is a ridiculous lie. The total number of housing units that began being built in all of 2020, in all the territories, was less than half that. If 5,000 units would be built in Jerusalem it would be making world headlines. And to build and complete them in four months would be really remarkable!

The very first sentence of the EMHRM article explains the story a little better: "Israel has demolished 31 homes and 27 Palestinian facilities after plans to construct 4,982 new settlement units were approved, since the beginning of this year, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in statement. "

So no houses were built - plans were "approved." Most of the planned housing units never get built, as any knowledgeable person on the topic would know. And there are many stages of approval, which means that each housing unit can be "approved" up to eight separate times before actual building!

Lara Friedman knows all of this. She knows the headline is false and keeps the tweet up anyway.

One way we know she knows is because the error was pointed out to her almost immediately after she tweeted, and then many times again - and she didn't respond or remove the tweet, even as she continued to tweet on other topics during the day. (After I pointed it out, she tweeted the first sentence of the EMHRM article without explaining that her first tweet was wrong, giving the impression that Israel built 5000 units and approved 5000 more.)

But the other way we know that Friedman is purposely pushing lies is because of her previous job - at Americans for Peace Now:

Lara Friedman is Director of Policy and Government Relations for Americans for Peace Now. As a leading authority on US foreign policy in the Middle East, Israeli settlements policy, and Jerusalem.

Friedman is an expert on settlements! She knows that Israel doesn't build anything close to 5000 settlements a year, let alone in Jerusalem over for months. Peace Now knows the entire building process intimately - they wrote a detailed article and slide deck while she was at APN that describes the process in detail.

Friedman's knowledge is clear from her attempts to twist the facts without technically lying in this Haaretz article I picked apart when she worked at Peace Now.

Most reporters don't understand the intricate details behind the stages of building housing in Judea and Samaria - but Lara Friedman knows it well.

Friedman lied - and deliberately maintains the lie. Because she wants to demonize Israel.

Now, how about the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor? Could this have just been a headline mistake, and the article is accurate?

Nope! Here are the first two paragraphs of the article:

Israel has demolished 31 homes and 27 Palestinian facilities after plans to construct 4,982 new settlement units were approved, since the beginning of this year, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in statement.
During the past four months, Israel has escalated its policy of demolishing Palestinian homes and facilities and removing Palestinians from their neighborhoods, while building thousands of settlement units in East Jerusalem. Such a conduct aims to perpetuate racial discrimination and eliminate the Palestinian Arab presence in the city.

Right after admitting that only plans were approved, the EMHRM says again that was building thousands of units in Jerusalem!

Lara Friedman lies - and knows it. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor lies - and it knows it.

For normal people or organizations, being proven a liar over and over again tends to damage credibility. But for people who are anti-Israel, it burnishes their credibility among their audience who is eager to believe the lies - the bigger the lie, the better.

Lahav Harkov of the Jerusalem Post asked the State Department whether the US will attend the Durban IV conference in September, which seemed a distinct possibility after the Biden administration mentioned the upcoming 20th anniversary of the antisemitic "UN World Conference Against Racism" in a joint statement led by the US at the UN Human Rights Council.

The US will keep up its policy of not participating in events commemorating the 2001 Durban Declaration, which singled out Israel as racist, a State Department spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

“The United States will not attend or participate in any events commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action or the World Conference on Racism, which preceded it,” the spokesperson stated.

The State Department spokesperson said that the US “remains deeply committed to combating antisemitism at home and abroad. Furthermore, the United States stands with Israel and has always shared its concerns over the Durban process’s anti-Israel sentiment, use as a forum for antisemitism and freedom of expression issues.”

The spokesperson responded to a query from the Post about the March 2021 UN Human Rights Council Joint Statement on Countering Racism and Racial Discrimination, initiated by the US.

The State Department spokesperson said that the joint statement “includes a brief reference to the fact that the Durban conference happened 20 years ago and in no way reflects a change in our position regarding the problematic portions of the document or the process that led to its creation.”

Harkov contacted the State Department after reading my article about the UNHRC joint statement. She also quoted it in the piece.

The joint statement remains problematic, because it definitely gives Durban I legitimacy, and mentioning it was not necessary for the letter. Moreover, mentioning Durban ensured that Israel could not join the 156 signatories to the letter, which meant that the US did something to isolate Israel on the world stage. So there are still some unanswered questions.

It would also have been much better for the State Department to have issued the statement distancing itself from Durban IV publicly, rather than from an anonymous spokesperson.

Nevertheless, it is good to see this statement, and that the Biden Administration won't do what many feared, in the name of "anti-racism." Which was what the original Durban conference was supposed to be about, anyway.

I wasn't the first person to notice the US joint letter mentioning Durban. That was Anne Bayefsky, of Human Rights Voices.

05/03 Links Pt2: US will not take part in Durban IV conference; Editorial: How we must investigate Meron; Ayaan Hirsi Ali vs. the Mob; BBC quiz show describes Ashkelon as “a Palestinian port”

From Ian:

State Dept: US will not take part in Durban IV conference

The US will keep up its policy of not participating in events commemorating the 2001 Durban Declaration, which singled out Israel as racist, a State Department spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

“The United States will not attend or participate in any events commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action or the World Conference on Racism, which preceded it,” the spokesperson stated.

The UN plans to hold events marking the 20th anniversary of the World Conference on Racism, called Durban IV, on September 22, coinciding with Sukkot.

The State Department spokesperson said that the US “remains deeply committed to combating antisemitism at home and abroad. Furthermore, the United States stands with Israel and has always shared its concerns over the Durban process’s anti-Israel sentiment, use as a forum for antisemitism and freedom of expression issues.”

The spokesperson responded to a query from the Post about the March 2021 UN Human Rights Council Joint Statement on Countering Racism and Racial Discrimination, initiated by the US.

The statement mentions the Durban Declaration in a positive light: “Recalling the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action, we are committed to working within our nations and with the international community to address and combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, while upholding freedom of expression.”

The State Department spokesperson said that the joint statement “includes a brief reference to the fact that the Durban conference happened 20 years ago and in no way reflects a change in our position regarding the problematic portions of the document or the process that led to its creation.”

JPost Editorial: How we must investigate Meron - editorial

A state commission of inquiry – or a parliamentary committee of inquiry – is needed not to find who is to blame for the disaster but to establish exactly what happened, why and how, in order to prevent the recurrence of a similar catastrophe. The findings, incidentally, can be applied also to save lives at other mass events including sporting events and festivals.

Sadly, as has happened before with events like the Arad Music Festival tragedy where three teens were crushed to death in 1995, there is no investigation until there has been a loss of life.

As the Jerusalem Post’s Herb Keinon noted yesterday: “‘Don’t worry,’ goes the oft-repeated refrain if there are safety hazards in the street, or at construction sites, or at various nature reserves, ‘everything will be okay.’ One can imagine that this was the refrain heard in Meron, both by organizers before the tragedy and by celebrants at the site: ‘Sure, it seems dangerous, but everything will be okay, as it always has been in the past.’

“But, heartbreakingly, everything wasn’t all right. And now a war needs to be waged against this ‘Take my word for it, everything will be fine’ mentality.”

A state commission of inquiry has a broad mandate to investigate on a systemic level what happened to allow the Mount Meron tragedy to occur. Learning from the disaster is essential. Nothing can bring back those who died but the state does have to do everything to make sure – as much as is possible – that these senseless tragedies don’t happen again. That is why appointing a state commission of inquiry chaired by a Supreme Court justice is the only correct decision.

State comptroller announces investigation into ‘preventable’ Meron disaster

The state comptroller announced Monday that he would be opening a special investigation into the disaster at the Mount Meron compound where 45 people were crushed to death last week, saying that the tragedy was “preventable.”

“I intend to launch a special investigation into the circumstances that led to this disaster, the preparation of the various bodies, both this year and during the years that have elapsed since the State Comptroller’s report from 2011,” said Matanyahu Englman at a Jerusalem press conference.

“This is an event that was preventable, and now it is up to us to examine and investigate how and what should have been done to prevent it,” Englman said.

The state comptroller said that the investigation would focus on three main aspects: the conduct of all parties involved, starting with the decision-makers and including law enforcement system, prior to and during the event; the administration of the Rashbi [Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai] compound in Meron over the years; and steps that can be taken to prevent the recurrence of such a disaster in the future.

Englman said that if there was a suspicion of criminal conduct, the information would be passed to the attorney general for consideration. Additionally, Englman said he would examine any work done by a potential state commission of inquiry into the tragedy.

This comic was inspired by a Jewish Voice for Peace membership drive email I just saw. It said:

As we reclaim Judaism from Zionism, our opponents try to use false claims of antisemitism against us.

As we gain traction in Congress, our opponents lobby even harder to fund the Israeli military—meaning U.S.tax dollars still pay for the imprisonment of Palestinian children and the theft of Palestinian land.

As the vaccine becomes widely available, the state of Israel continues its regime of medical apartheid, withholding vaccines from the millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza—and accelerating the illegal demolition of Palestinian homes at a time when, for many of us, home is the safest place to be.

Since Zionism is an inherent part of Judaism, what sort of "Judaism" are they referring to?

One where one is obligated to lie about what US aid to Israel is used for?

One where one is obligated to lie about Israel "withholding vaccines" from Palestinians who never asked for them?

And then they complain that they aren't invited to join Jewish organizational umbrella groups!

Anti-Zionist Jews are the real clowns.

Hate crimes went down significantly in COVID NYC - but anti-Jewish hate still leads

In 2020, New York City's hate crime complaints went down significantly from 2019 - from 420 to 265.

But as in every other year, complaints about hate crimes against Jews led all others by a wide margin:

So far in 2021, however, it appears that anti-Asian hate crime complaints have overcome the anti-Jewish ones, at least based on their word chart for the first quarter: