Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, August 26, 2021

Sorry, @RashidaTlaib, but you cannot visit your grandmother - because the PA won't allow it

In 2019, after Israel originally denied permission for Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to visit the West Bank because of their support for BDS, Tlaib appealed to Interior Minister Aryeh Deri asking to visit her elderly grandmother ("sity") on humanitarian grounds, saying that she will not use the occasion to promote boycotting Israel.

Israel granted permission for her visit.

After a backlash from her fans, Tlaib did an about-face and angrily said that she would never submit to such humiliating restrictions - that she had explicitly accepted only one day beforehand. Her sity was just not that important.

This week, Tlaib criticized the Palestinian Authority for their arrests of protesters, telling Mahmoud Abbas "Shame on you!"

According to Khaled Abu Toameh, as a result of her tweet, Tlaib "is persona non grata in Palestine, according to a senior Palestinian official in Ramallah."

So even if Tlaib would want to visit her grandmother now - whether through Israel or through Jordan -it looks like the Palestinian Authority would ban her.

Will there be any headlines about this?

Media doesn't mention the Gazan who died at Saturday riot was a Hamas terrorist (UPDATE: He was holding a grenade)

Al Jazeera and AFP: "A Palestinian man has died of injuries sustained during weekend confrontations with Israeli forces..."

TRT World: "A Palestinian man died on Wednesday from a bullet wound that he sustained over the weekend when Israeli forces opened indiscriminate fire on protestors along Gaza's border fence, Palestinian health officials said. "

Al-Monitor: "A Gaza man injured in violent clashes with Israeli troops over the weekend was pronounced dead Wednesday, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said.

Middle East Monitor: "A Palestinian young man was pronounced dead this morning after he succumbed to a bullet wound he sustained while taking part in a protest rally."

Middle East Eye: "A Palestinian man who was shot by Israeli forces during weekend protests in Gaza succumbed to his wounds and died on Wednesday..."

Here is a case where Hamas is more honest than the English-language media.

Hamas Al Qassam Brigades:

The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, announces that one of its heroic mujahideen from the northern Gaza Strip ascended to Al-Ula, rising from wounds sustained in the occupation's aggression against the popular marches on the anniversary of the burning of Al-Aqsa.
In its military statement, Al-Qassam Brigades mourned the Mujahid / Osama Khaled Muhammad Duaij (32), from the Al-Amin Muhammad mosque in Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip, who rose to death today, Wednesday, Muharram 17, 1443 AH,...
And the brigades said in their statement: "Let him go to his Lord after a blessed life full of giving, jihad, sacrifice and bonding in the cause of God."
And they continued: "We ask God Almighty to accept him and dwell in his vast gardens, and to make his jihad pure for his honorable face, and to be patient with his family and loved ones and improve their solace, and the blood of our martyrs will remain a beacon on the path to liberating Palestine and a fire that burns the occupiers until they are defeated from our land, God willing."

What an amazing coincidence that the only casualty from the riots happened to be a Hamas terrorist! Especially since he almost certainly was not in uniform - Hamas organizes these riots to make them appear to be spontaneous, popular protests but Hamas officials direct the youth when to go to the fence, cut the wire, set off IEDs and shoot live bullets.

Duaij was not an innocent protester. The media that parrots the (Hamas-run) Gaza Health Ministry language simply doesn't want to go to the next step and find out if they are being misled.

In Arabic, terrorist media is proud of this "martyr." In English, they are sorrowful over an "innocent life" lost.

One other interesting detail: Osama got married only three weeks ago, because he was pressured to do so he was already very old for a groom. He didn't want to get married. Perhaps he was gay. He may have wanted to die a martyr and hero rather than be stuck with someone he doesn't like - and who would stop him from meeting his very good "friends."

(h/t Tomer)

UPDATE: Joe Truzman found footage of Duaij, in civilian clothing, holding a hand grenade.

08/25 Links Pt2: Nevergreen: A Victim of Cancel Culture Strikes Back With a Devastating Campus Satire; Eichmann Was Turned in By Anti-Nazi Geologist, German Paper Reveals

From Ian:

Nevergreen: A Victim of Cancel Culture Strikes Back With a Devastating Campus Satire

7 years ago, Professor Andrew Pessin, a respected teacher of religion and philosophy at Connecticut College, criticized Hamas. Back then, cancel culture wasn’t the familiar buzzword that it is now, but when the local Students for Justice in Palestine affiliate and the college paper came after him, the college leadership sided with the mob and against their own professor.

Front Page Magazine took on the story back then, exposing the radical hate of the mob’s leaders. In the years that have passed, Pessin’s experiences have been replicated on campuses across the country. Social media mobs have spread beyond the campus, coming for ordinary people with the misfortune to appear on some social justice Twitter influencer’s radar.

And college campuses have only gotten crazier and more dangerous in the last 7 years.

Now, Andrew Pessin is back with Nevergreen. Though none of the events of the novel reproduce his own encounter with campus cancel culture (that would be life, not art), and there is no Nevergreen College (although there is an Evergreen College which was the epicenter of one of the worst radical campus meltdowns), Pessin’s novel distills the madness that has taken over campuses across the country in a still of literary satire that is all the more devastating because it’s so disarming.

There are the "atheists in the 'Be Grateful God is Dead Club'" and a character is described as wearing "the official t-shirt of the campus tea shop, Chai Guevara, featuring the iconic image of the revolutionary leader sipping a mug of chai itself emblazoned with the Chai Guevara logo".

A professor named “Peace” teaches conflict studies while making threats, and the students campaign for a wheelchair ramp for the high diving board.

“‘It’s for the principle, the principle of inclusion,” the earnest young woman explained when J. asked whether any wheelchair-bound person were likely to actually use the diving board.”

At Nevergreen College, 1984’s Two-Minutes-Hate is countered with an “official Two Minutes of Hate-Hate later this afternoon”. And Nevergreen’s protagonist J becomes its target.

Eichmann Was Turned in By Anti-Nazi Geologist, German Paper Reveals

Sixty years after infamous Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was captured by Mossad agents and brought to Israel for trial, a German media outlet has revealed, for the first time, the identity of the person believed to have turned Eichmann in.

The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung ran a feature article this week describing the role German geologist Gerhard Klammer, who opposed the Nazi regime and worked with Eichmann in Argentina, played in revealing Eichmann’s true identity to the Mossad.

According to the report, Klammer worked for the Capri building firm in the Argentinian city of Tucuman, where he met Eichmann, who was employed at the same company under the fictitious name “Ricardo Klement.” Eichmann reportedly revealed his true identity to Klammer in the 1950s, and Klammer made multiple anonymous attempts to alert authorities in both Germany and Argentina, hoping they would take action against Eichmann for his war crimes.

Associates of Klammer said that Eichmann’s true identity had been an “open secret” in the German community in Argentina and that supporters of the Nazis worked to protect him. But Klammer had opposed the Nazi regime, and therefore sought to have Eichmann face trial.

In the 1960s, the building company encountered financial difficulties and Eichmann left Tucuman to try and find work in Buenos Aires. At that time, Klammer returned to Germany, where he told a close friend—a priest who had served in the German army—where Eichmann was and the cover story he had adopted.

The two delivered the details of Eichmann’s false identity, as well as a picture of him, to Fritz Bauer, the prosecutor responsible for the Eichmann case. Bauer had already heard about Eichmann’s whereabouts from a German Jew whose daughter dated Eichmannn’s son briefly. The son told the man’s daughter about his father’s new secret identity, but many details were missing. Klammer’s evidence gave Bauer proof that Eichmann was alive and in Argentina, and the prosecutor reached out to the Mossad, whose agents began searching for him, eventually locating him in a small town near the Argentine capital.

Poland’s Troubling Legislation, and the United States’ Unwavering Commitment to Holocaust Era Justice

Immediately after the “yes” vote, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his deep concern, urging President Duda not to sign the bill into law. After the bill was signed by President Duda, Secretary Blinken reiterated his stance by emphasizing: “We deeply regret the adoption of these amendments [severely restricting restitution and compensation for property wrongfully confiscated during Poland’s communist era]. Further, we urge the Polish government to consult with representatives of affected parties and to develop a clear, efficient, and effective legal procedure to resolve confiscated property claims and provide some measure of justice for victims. In the absence of such a procedure, this legislation will harm all Polish citizens whose property was unjustly taken, including that of Polish Jews who were victims of the Holocaust.”

In July, when the proposed bill was sent to the Polish Senate, it also came under scrutiny when 12 prominent US Senators, led by Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) sent a letter to President Duda urging him to “press for the withdrawal of the bill from the Polish Senate, but if the bill is passed, veto it.”

International leaders at the highest levels also expressed their condemnation of the bill.

We do not suggest in any way that Poland is responsible for the crimes of Nazi Germany. This is about Poland addressing the wrongs committed by its own post-World War II Communist government. The house or shop or factory in a town in Poland affected by this legislation was taken by Poland after the war, remains today in Poland, and has benefited Poland for more than 76 years.

For many Holocaust survivors and their families, a home is the last remaining physical connection to the lives they once led, to the countries where they were born, and to the towns where they grew up, before their lives were shattered.

We also must not forget that there are many other countries in Europe that have yet to fulfill their commitments on Holocaust era property restitution, as the JUST Act Report articulates.

As a matter of urgency, we call upon Congress to convene a hearing on the JUST Act Report, and hold accountable all countries that endorsed the 2009 Terezin Declaration, including Poland.

Progress on Holocaust justice depends upon continued and heightened United States leadership. We must help survivors secure what is rightfully theirs. For Holocaust survivors, restitution or compensation for property is about justice and fairness. It is an acknowledgment of the destruction of their families and an opportunity to restore and reconnect with at least a small part of a life and culture that was so wrongfully taken from them.

Tragically we are losing survivors every day. Time is of the essence. We must address this dark chapter in human history by facilitating the restitution of or compensation for wrongfully confiscated property. This issue will not go away until justice is achieved.

Bennett Should Have Stayed Home (Vic Rosenthal)

Judean Rose is taking off for several weeks.

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal

Israel’s PM, Naftali Bennett, is already in the US and will be meeting with US President Biden on Thursday.

There are some who think that Bennett should have stayed home. While it is unlikely that the administration can be convinced to turn aside from its path of appeasement toward Iran, it is expected to pressure Bennett on several other issues, like construction in Judea/Samaria, the re-opening of the American consulate in eastern Jerusalem, and who knows what else.
The issue of the consulate is particularly painful. Before Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, it served as the de facto US Embassy to the “State of Palestine.” A country locates its embassy in the capital of the state that it serves, and the significance of an embassy to Palestine located in Jerusalem, is that Jerusalem is the Palestinian capital. Trump – or his Ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman – realized this and closed the consulate, transferring its functions to the new US Embassy to Israel in Jerusalem. Reopening the consulate and resuming its function as a mission to the Palestinians, in effect walks back Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and at the very least supports the division of Jerusalem into Israeli and Palestinian sovereignties.

The Biden Administration also considers any Israeli construction east of the Green Line as undesirable, because it prejudices the possibility of obtaining a “two-state solution,” that is, an Israeli withdrawal from territories it gained control of in 1967. Somehow there is less excitement when Arabs illegally build in Area C, where Israel has full civil control, according to the Oslo Accords, which still have the force of international law. Biden has already restarted aid to the Palestinians that Trump cut off due to policies such as anti-Jewish indoctrination in Gazan and Palestinian Authority schools, and payments to convicted terrorists or the families of “martyrs.”

After the realism of the Trump Administration, it feels like swimming underwater to hear the familiar platitudes about “two-states, living side by side in peace” coming from Biden’s officials. Today there are only two kinds of people who support an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria: those who are entirely disconnected from reality, as it has unfolded in the past century (and particularly in the past three decades), and those who want Israel to be replaced by an Arab state, and see the reversal of 1967 as a step on the way. Biden himself, to the extent that he thinks about anything at all, is in the former category; but many administration officials fall into the latter one.

Biden and the Democrats are in big trouble now, because the debacle in Afghanistan has made it impossible to maintain the fiction of a competent government and chief executive. Even some of the formerly sycophantic media are beginning to sound discordant notes. The fact that the mighty US was (and apparently still is) unable to even rescue its citizens – not to mention the thousands of Afghans who had worked for it and whom are already being targeted by the Taliban – sends a signal of weakness and even cowardice, which Biden only made worse by unconvincingly blaming Trump and the Afghan army.

China has already made propaganda hay out of the situation, warning Taiwanese that American support can’t be depended upon. And Islamic terrorists of all stripes have been cheering loudly.
Biden’s people will be looking for a foreign-policy achievement to help make Americans and others forget the humiliation, especially one that will send a message of strength and control. How better to get one than to bully Israel, which – unlike the Taliban – is unlikely to shoot back?
In an interview this week with the NY Times, PM Bennett made it clear that his top priority is to get the US to work together with Israel and its Sunni allies to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. He also insisted that he would defend construction policies in Judea/Samaria (although he has already preemptively cut building plans to avoid irritating Biden) and that he is not interested in any new Palestinian peace initiatives.

Perhaps Bennett thinks that if he throws Biden a news-cycle lifeline, Biden will be grateful enough to give him something in return. Bennett is very unpopular these days in Israel – the Right thinks he has sold out to the Left, and the Left dislikes him for his right-wing ideology. Some crumbs from Biden’s table might be politically useful to him.

So I’m sure Bennett will return brimming with accomplishment over some encouraging words about Iran that he will have received; but the possibility that there will be any substantive change in US policy is negligible, given the cast of characters in the American administration. If, as I suspect, the administration is strongly influenced by the circle around former president Obama, that is even more reason to think that Israeli concerns will not affect American Iran policy.

The phrase for “negotiations” in Hebrew is literally translatable as “give and take.” But when one side holds all the cards, there is mostly give and very little take. Anything that Bennett does get from the meeting, even if it is only insubstantial promises, he will pay for, probably in concessions regarding the Palestinians.

There are plenty of crises in Israel right now – for example, hospitals are claiming to be out of money and refusing to take more Corona patients – that could serve as legitimate reasons to stay home. Bennett should have picked one of them and not gone to America.

UNRWA's webpage on Lebanon says:

More than 479,000 refugees are registered with UNRWA in Lebanon. About 45 percent of them live in the country’s 12 refugee camps.

The implication is that 55% of them live among the Lebanese, outside of the camps.

But Lebanon doesn't allow any Palestinians to live outside the camps! 100% of the Palestinians in Lebanon live in camps. Where are the other 55%?

UNRWA doesn't want you to know that they have left Lebanon altogether. Because UNRWA wants to tell the world that it should be funded for 479,000 "refugees," not less than half that amount.

UNRWA does this consciously. In a recent article on Lebanon's woes, UNRWA writes, "UNRWA remains the main provider of basic services, such as health, education and camp improvement to over 210,000 Palestine refugees present in Lebanon. These include about 28,000 Palestine refugees from Syria."

In fact, when you subtract the Syrian refugees, actual UNRWA recipients are less than 40% of the "refugees" registered in Lebanon.

If anyone of Palestinian descent needs aid, the ones remaining in Lebanon do. Lebanon has literal apartheid laws aimed at keeping them landless, stateless, jobless and incarcerated in camps they can't easily leave.

But UNRWA has the obligation to be honest about the number of people it serves. It shouldn't play fast and loose with those numbers to scam more money from the international community.

08/25 Links Pt1: Two-states is so dead, it isn't on the Bennett-Biden agenda; The Afghanistan Catastrophe Is an American Humiliation; Into the Heart of a Hezbollah Terror Tunnel

From Ian:

Two-states is so dead, it isn't on the Bennett-Biden agenda

The Biden administration also seemed to downgrade expectations on that score. On Monday, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said of the coming parley that “we seek to see to it that Israelis and Palestinians alike can enjoy equal measures of what is important to both people: prosperity, freedom, and importantly, dignity.”

It was almost as if, even before the meeting took place, the Biden administration had written out acceptable talking points Bennett could get behind that did not address Palestinian statehood or self-determination.

Former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren told The Jerusalem Post that Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken were as committed as their predecessors Barack Obama and John Kerry, to a two-state resolution to the conflict. But they are not going to “go down that road” now because they fear it would bring down Bennett’s government.

Instead, Oren speculated, the conversation would focus on small steps, in which the US would ask Bennett to make gestures to the Palestinians. If two-states is mentioned, it will be the US that speaks of it, he said.

The stumbling block here, however, is not just the policy difference between Bennett who opposes Palestinian statehood and Biden who believes in two states at the pre-1967 lines.

At issue is the acute financial and leadership crisis within the Palestinian Authority itself, that would make it impossible to move forward on statehood.

The question, these days, is less about how to make peace than how to prevent violence.

The conversation will likely focus on economic gestures Israel can take to help the Palestinians or steps in can refrain from taking in the West Bank's Area C.

Bennett’s public silence on the Palestinians is less about the topic’s unimportance than about the absence of any possible horizon. The harsh reality is that ‘two states’, once a standard bearer of the US-Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, has been buried so deep that the best one could hope for is a series of gestures to prevent violent explosions.

Hamas' latest antics in Gaza are aimed at Washington

Hamas has in the past few days organized several particularly violent riots ahead of the meeting between Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and U.S. President Joe Biden, set to take place on Thursday in Washington.

The leaders of the terror group that rules Gaza hope that this will push the issue of the enclave's rehabilitation following the 11-day May war to the top of the meeting's agenda.

Hamas expects the United States to both pressure Israel to advance the issue and be an active partner in the reconstruction of the Strip. This means that any attempts on Israel’s part to reconcile with Hamas by easing restrictions on the Strip are doomed to failure.

Israel’s conduct in Gaza over the past week - mainly its failure to retaliate for the rocket fire and lax response to violent riots on the perimeter fence - could only be described as a military blunder. It was only meant to contain the riots and avoid casualties on the Palestinian side in order to not exacerbate the situation.

Mainly, it was a strategic failure on the part of Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Both of them utterly failed to properly read the diplomatic map.

Israel thought it would be able to buy some peace of mind with money, while failing to understand that Hamas sees violent border riots as an opportunity to achieve much more than a few economic perks. For instance, it seeks to force the Americans to pressure Israel into reaching a long-term agreement with Hamas that would include the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Hamas will never voluntarily agree to peace with Israel.

David Singer: The ghost of Trump's Peace Plan hovers over the White House

Biden’s seven months tenure as President has already seen unprecedented chaos and confusion in America’s internal and external relations following Biden’s unilateral dumping of three major Trump policies without consulting individuals, state or foreign Governments affected by such changes:
Ceasing construction of Trump’s security fence on America’s southern border - facilitating increased unauthorised and illegal entry of aliens into the US.

CNN reported on this continuing crisis on 13 August:
“The Biden administration is facing a "serious challenge" at the US southern border, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday, saying the US has encountered an "unprecedented" number of migrants illegally crossing the border.

During a news conference in Brownsville, Texas, Mayorkas stressed the sharp increase of migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border, many of whom are fleeing deteriorating conditions in their home countries.”

- Blocking completion of the Keystone XL pipeline (costing 11000 jobs) and reviewing oil-exploration leases granted by Trump in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - reversing hallmark policies of Trump’s administration championing the oil industry by promoting oil-exploration projects in the interests of securing US energy independence.

- Ditching Trump’s plans for a conditions-based orderly American withdrawal from Afghanistan and replacing it with an unconditional withdrawal - leaving behind billions of dollars of American sophisticated and highly-secret military equipment, up to 15000 American civilians, and thousands of Afghani civilians who helped the US military – and their families - at the mercy of the anti-US Taliban terrorist militants taking over Afghanistan.

Biden cannot – after these disastrous unilateral policy decisions – dump Trump’s Plan without Bennett’s approval.

Trump’s Plan is the most comprehensive and detailed plan ever prepared by an American President for dividing sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza between Arabs and Jews.

Trump’s Plan – and his vision for peace - will surely be hovering over Biden and Bennett when they face-off in their White House meeting this week.

It's always Israel's fault.

For the third straight day, Egypt has closed the Rafah crossing, stranding thousands of people on both sides who want to cross the border. Egypt also closed the Salah a-Din Gate from where some truckloads of goods are sent.

Egypt's sudden closure is largely assumed to be an expression of anger over Hamas organizing violent protests at a time when Egypt has been putting its own reputation on the line to bring down tensions between Israel and Gaza.

Gisha, the Israeli NGO that monitors movement from and to Gaza, is upset over this - but they don't blame Egypt.

On the first day of the closure, they wrote, "The closure of Rafah compounds severe movement restrictions imposed by Israel, leaving Gaza residents with even fewer options to travel for medical, professional, educational, or personal needs."

And in its conclusion, they don't call on Egypt to lift the restrictions - but Israel: "Given its ongoing effective control over Gaza, which amounts to occupation, Israel is obligated to protect human rights and facilitate normal life in the Strip to the greatest extent possible. This includes facilitating access abroad, particularly given Egypt’s closing of Rafah Crossing."

This NGO doesn't even call for Egypt to lift the restrictions. Even though Israel cannot do anything to help people who want to go to or return from Egypt, Gisha is programmed to make everything Israel's fault and Israel's responsibility.

Moreover, Gisha doesn't even ask Hamas to stop its activities that are prompting Egypt to make this decision.

Arabs hurt Arabs and Israel gets blamed.

Gisha's obsession with castigating Israel is part of its DNA. For example, on August 17, it wrote that Israel was not allowing communications equipment into Gaza. However, since then Israel has lifted that restriction. You wouldn't know about it from Gisha, though - the article about the restriction is still on their front page, and there has been no update.

Israel has recently allowed over a thousand traders and businesspeople from Gaza to resume entering Israel to facilitate trade - but Gisha was silent. Israel recently resumes allowing construction material into Gaza for international organizations - but Gisha ws silent.

In fact, one can see more accurate information about imports and exports from Gaza from Islamic Jihad media than from an Israeli NGO. If you want reliable information on people and goods going in and out of Gaza, this Western-funded NGO is the worst place to look.

Gisha has 25 employees, a budget of $1.6 million and is funded from a variety of sources:

Action Against Hunger

Broederlijk Delen

Danish Representative Office

DROSOS FOUNDATION

Foundation for Middle East Peace

Irish Aid

Leonard Hill Charitable Trust

New Israel Fund

NGO Development Center

Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Oxfam SDC-Danida

Oxfam Novib

Rockefeller Brothers Fund

Salesforce.com Foundation (in kind donation)

Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

The Embassy of Finland in Tel Aviv

United Nations Development Programme

All of them are complicit in demonizing Israel, even for things not under Israel's control.

The Foreign Press Association issued a press release yesterday:

On Saturday, August 21st, Palestinian security forces in the West Bank harassed, abused and threatened a pair of Washington Post journalists, Salwan Georges and Sufian Taha, covering a protest in Ramallah’s Manara Square.

The demonstrators had gathered to protest the Palestinian Authority’s handling of the death of Nizar Banat, a government critic who died in the custody of Palestinian police on June 24.

As police broke up the gathering, a Palestinian policeman grabbed the Washington Post photographer as he was taking pictures of the arrests. The officer seized the camera, held the photographer’s neck and tore his press badge.

Georges explained that he was with the international media and tried to hold onto his camera. But additional security men surrounded him, taking away the camera and telling him: “Here it’s different. We don’t care.”

The police held on to the camera for over an hour, deleting seven photos and preventing him from doing his job. When the camera was returned, both journalists were ordered to leave and told there would be a “big problem” if photos of one of the officers were published.

The Foreign Press Association condemns this egregious behavior in the strongest terms. We call on the Palestinian Authority to sanction the officers who were involved in this incident and to stand behind its past promises to respect the freedom of the press.

A government attacking media is pretty big news, right?

But this story - which happened on Saturday, and this press release issued Tuesday morning - has not gotten any coverage in the media that I could find.

Not even from the Washington Post!

The Washington Post made a conscious decision not to cover an attack on its own journalists. It chose to publish AP's story on the protest in Ramallah, and not the account of its own people on the scene.

The venerable news organization chose to adhere to the wishes of the Palestinian Authority that they censor their own story about Palestinian police violence.

Compare the lack of response here to the huge headlines when Israel attacked an office tower that housed AP along with Hamas offices and intelligence equipment in May. Article after article hinted that Israel deliberately attacked the media, a most ridiculous accusation. But when Palestinians target media explicitly - silence.

That cowardice is the real story here, not the attack itself. A news organization that makes a decision to censor itself in the face of threats from Palestinian bullies cannot be trusted to objectively report any news from the region - Palestinian threats clearly work.

And they aren't only effective against Washington Post reporters. There must be a tacit agreement among mainstream media to keep this story quiet, because 24 hours after the FPA issued their press release, there are still no articles on this (that I could find in Google News.)

This is just a small example of how media bias works - at all psychological levels. The media does not fear retribution from Israel so it can be as critical and unfair as it wants. It fears a great deal what the PA and Hamas can do so it censors itself. That self-censorship results in more anti-Israel stories to justify their cowardice and make reporters act like they are fearless in the face of a regional superpower.

The deliberate choice by the entire international media to ignore a story of attacks on journalists betrays a deep rot in today's journalism.

Too bad that story won't be covered by journalists.

UPDATE: David Gerstman reminds me that a few years ago, Israeli police accidentally detained a Washington Post reporter for a brief time and it made a headline in the New York Times.

UPDATE 2: Sufian Taha was arrested with Booth in 2016 - the very same person, two arrests, only one newsworthy!

From Reuters:

A U.S. donation of 500,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses arrived in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza on Tuesday, as Palestinian officials work to boost uptake and counter a surge in new cases by requiring some workers to get the jab.

The Palestinians began administering vaccines in February, but despite having purchased or received what officials have called “an abundance of doses”, uptake has stalled at just 35% of age-eligible Palestinians in the West Bank, and around 11% in Gaza.

With the U.S. donation of 500,000 Moderna doses, facilitated through the global COVAX vaccine-sharing programme, the Palestinians say they have now received 2.5 million doses. The West Bank will take 300,000 of the donation and Gaza 200,000.

"Stalled" is right. Few seem to want the vaccine in the Palestinian areas. A mere 4200 doses a day were administered over the past week. At that rate, they wouldn't run out of the vaccines they already have for seven months - enough time for the US donation to expire! (Assuming about 2.3 million Palestinian adults and 1 million doses already given.)

For months, we were told that Palestinians were being deprived of much needed vaccines. But none of those reporters bothers to take a survey of what Palestinians themselves want.

Hamas is offering cash rewards for people to take vaccines. and both Hamas and the PA are forcing their employees to get vaccinated or else lose their paychecks. The Palestinians are expecting a shipment of a million more vaccines in September, which will again expire before they are used unless there is a significant wave of new people taking the vaccine.

The only survey I found, from June, found that 35% of Palestinians refuse to take the vaccine. But that number seems to be low, since the vaccines have been widely available for months and most people are not bothering to get them.

Meaning that these 500,000 US vaccines should have gone to somewhere people need and want them.

08/24 Links Pt2: Emily Schrader: 'Woke' activists outraged by Israel stay silent on Taliban; Edward Said projected his self-hatred onto the whole of the west and its history.

From Ian:

Emily Schrader: 'Woke' activists outraged by Israel stay silent on Taliban - opinion

There’s no shortage of hypocrisy when it comes to anti-Israel activists and the selective outrage over Israel’s actions. For as long as there’s been an Israel, there has been an obsessive focus on critiquing the state’s every move while more recently, turning a blind eye to human rights atrocities around the world, including human rights violations of Palestinians by Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

With the tragedy in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of US troops, so-called “woke” activists who previously were concerned with “joint struggles for liberation” now seem to be largely silent on the issue. These activists and groups are ignoring the crisis in Afghanistan at the hands of Taliban and instead are choosing to demonize Israel to further their own political agendas, throwing their allegiance to “intersectionality” out the window.

As the Taliban has swiftly taken control of Afghanistan, the world watches in horror as we can only forecast what the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” will mean for women, minorities, the LGBT community, and more, who are already being stripped of whatever rights they had obtained in the past 20 years. Does a shared intersectional struggle only matter when it comes to Palestinians? Do Afghani lives not matter to these activists and groups?

There are numerous anti-Israel organizations who pride themselves on intersectionality and have championed the term in their advocacy: for example, the BDS-supporting Jewish Voice for Peace which claims to be an ally of the black community against police brutality, as well as other minority groups. JVP hasn’t even tweeted once from its own account about what’s happening in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, every day they have put out anti-Israel content.

Another organization, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), has also included intersectionality in its advocacy. AMP actively takes part in Black-Palestinian solidarity initiatives – yet like JVP, AMP has been silent about the Taliban takeover.

Have the Courage to Name the Real Threat to Afghan Women: Islamist Rule

The tragedy of Afghanistan today is not America's fault.

It's true that America has made many mistakes in Afghanistan. As far back as the Reagan era, we can clearly see heinous errors made by administration after administration. And it is certainly true that this latest crisis sits squarely on President Biden's shoulders. He failed to plan to get troops and allies out safely.

But the great tragedy of Afghanistan today—what the Taliban are doing to women—has nothing to do with America.

Americans did not train the Taliban to force women into blue body bags and to kill them if they disobey. America did not insist that they force women out of their jobs, that they force women out of school, that they force women to be housebound and to only leave if accompanied by a man. Americans did not instruct the Taliban to burn down amusement parks because they have statues in them. They did not insist that the Taliban hang gay people in the streets or throw them off of roofs before stoning them.

None of that training came from the American military.

The reason why families are handing their infants over to troops, why women are screaming at the airport, reaching their outstretched arms to American troops as if they are actively drowning and hoping someone, anyone, will extend a hand and save them, is not for a reason that is unique to Afghanistan. It is mirrored in across the world—in many other countries where women are enduring similar atrocities.

Where are the Feminists?

No, feminists in America will not be criticizing the Taliban, just as neither they nor gays in America have dared criticize the brutal treatment of women and gays under the governance of Hamas in Gaza. Feminists in this country are too consumed with another task: the destruction of the American male, who is seen as the producer of imperialism, “racist capitalism,” and systemic racial and gender oppression. This is their obsession. The destruction of the American male supersedes moral concern for the wanton annihilation of human lives in other countries. They will not speak out against the Taliban because they hate America and American men more than they care about the rights of any individual singled out as a target for discrimination based on membership in a demonized group.

As we hurtle towards a possible post-American future, this new breed of feminists, a phalanx of zealots, has forged fourth-wave feminism, and it’s far more rabidly anti-male than previous iterations of the ideological movement. You’d think because of its petty maliciousness and deranged radicalism, its appeal would be narrowly limited to the faculty lounges of liberal arts colleges. Yet since the inception of the #MeToo movement, the crazed foot soldiers of fourth-wave feminism managed not only to take their worldview mainstream, but also to put a headlock on the commanding heights of American culture. This is as impressive as it is terrifying.

These new man-haters are seething with toxic feminism, and the further spread of their noxious sentiment could likely spell the death of our country as we know it. Increasingly prevalent is their practice of exploiting female agency and identity to make blanket attacks on men, to neuter manliness, and to advocate for the end of masculinity. These goals are being achieved while simultaneously promulgating the dual concepts that men are by nature nefarious and that female advancement can only come through the wholesale annihilation of heteronormative constructs of maleness. The destructive consequences for relationships at every level of society—from the simple couple to the community to the nation—will be vast and irreparable.

The New Misandry, as I call it, arose out of the more extreme versions of second-wave feminism. Proponents of this form of feminism, such as Gloria Steinem and Kate Millett, Valerie Solanas (author of SCUM—Society for Cutting up Men) and Carol Hanisch, began the process of speaking to the irrelevance of men to women’s life and society in general. Steinem’s famous dictum, “a woman needs a man the way a fish needs a bicycle,” spoke to the changing cultural attitudes towards men that regarded them as disposable, annoying, and of having nuisance value only. Third-wave feminism, beginning in the early 1990s, saw a rise in affluent middle-class women influenced by Anita Hill who wielded their agency in strategic ways to exact a revenge against all men in the ways in which they imagined a malevolent, collectivist male psyche had inflicted irreparable damage on all women. Fourth-wave feminism, which arose in the 2010s, gained traction with the creation of the #MeToo Movement. This form of feminism is the most toxic brand we find in the history of feminism. With full malice aforethought, its adherents depict masculinity as inherently toxic, and claim that only the abolition of maleness will result in the creation of an egalitarian world for women.

I created a quick ebook with 50 (okay, 51) of my popular pro-Israel text memes that I have posted on Twitter.

Enjoy!

50 memes from EoZ

Al Masry al-Youm reports that Dr. Ahmed Karima, Professor of Comparative Jurisprudence at Al-Azhar University, has allowed husbands to take second wives on a “part-time” basis, under specific conditions.

The main issue is that the existing wife must agree to having her husband sleep with someone else for a few hours, and a nuptial agreement that the second "wife" has no claims to be provided with a place to live and does not stay overnight, that the marriage is witnessed by two men and that the man pays his "wife" a dowry.

Yes, it sounds like legalized prostitution.

Karima does not agree with the longer "temporary" marriages where men who travel pick up another "wife" for a fre months and discard them when they leave.

His opinion has caused an uproar in Egypt. Egypt's Dar al Ifta, which is an official Egyptian authority on Islamic law, tweeted a statement on the controversy that, even when translated into English, seems impenetrable:

We should not be drawn behind the calls for modern terminology in marriage which has increased in recent times wherein lies a love of showing off and fame and destabilization of values, which creates confusion in society and negatively affects the meaning of stability and cohesion of the family that our religion seeks and the state has nurtured through laws.

It sounds like they are expressing disapproval but tacitly admitting that there is nothing technically wrong.with this practice.

08/24 Links Pt1: Biden Brings Extremism, Terrorism Back to Life; The Largest Hostage Crisis in American History; It’s Italy’s turn to shun the Durban conference

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Arabs: Biden Brings Extremism, Terrorism Back to Life

For the first time in several years, the jihadis sense US weakness, confusion and lack of vision under the Biden administration.

"The United States withdrew from [Afghanistan] to open the door for its enemies and opponents to fill the vacuum.... If we assess the situation, we will find that the forces that will replace the US there are: Russia, China, Pakistan, and of course Iran. Russia and China are driven by the desire to exploit the vast mineral wealth of Afghanistan." — Jameel Al-Theyabi, Saudi journalist and political analyst, Okaz, August 15, 2021.

"The escalating threat of terrorism from Afghanistan appears to be taking place with the support and patronage of major countries... by turning a blind eye to the activities of violent and terrorist organizations, which require Arab and international solidarity to confront the threat of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda together." — Monir Adib, Egyptian expert on global terrorism, Al-Ain, August 16, 2021.

"The Americans must admit their failure to build a state, or an army, in Afghanistan, or even a movement to confront terrorism and extremism, and now it is withdrawing all its agents, leaving Afghanistan hostage in the hands of extremists." — Osama Saraya, former editor of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram; Al-Ahram, August 16, 2021.

Thanks to the Biden administration, say the Arabs and Muslims, terrorist groups that want to wage jihad (holy war) against the US and Israel and threaten the security and stability of many Arab countries have firmly increased their foothold in the Middle East.

Noah Rothman: The Largest Hostage Crisis in American History

“Given the number of Americans who still need to be evacuated, the number of SIVs, the number of others who are members of the Afghan press, civil society leaders, women leaders—it’s hard for me to imagine all of that can be accomplished between now and the end of the month,” said U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff on Monday. A number of prominent federal legislators are demanding that the administration commit to a longer operation, and they are joined by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He will use the occasion of an emergency G7 summit on Tuesday to pressure Biden to “ensure safe evacuations, prevent a humanitarian crisis and support the Afghan people to secure the gains of the last 20 years.”

Joe Biden finds himself in a trap of his own making. U.S. forces operate out of Kabul’s airport at the pleasure of the Taliban. At any point, what Biden called a “ragtag” group can disable the airport and reengage in combat with the American forces they’ve so far allowed a narrow berth. Biden is determined to avoid that outcome. The only alternative to such a disaster would be to bribe the Taliban into submission. It’s an option the president has already foreshadowed. “The Taliban has to make a fundamental decision,” Biden said on Sunday. To be successful, they are “going to need everything from additional help in terms of economic assistance, trade, and a whole range of things.” The Taliban, Biden said, is “seeking legitimacy to determine whether or not they will be recognized by other countries.” No doubt, all these carrots are being dangled before our captors by CIA Director William Burns, who was this week dispatched to Kabul likely to negotiate an extension of our mission there.

The message from the Taliban couldn’t be clearer: Your money or your lives. And there are thousands of Americans in Afghanistan from which the Taliban might choose to make a few examples. As the heartrending audio received by Rep. Carol Miller’s office attests, the Americans trapped behind enemy lines believe they are abandoned by their government to the mercies of a vengeful Islamist militia. As one staffer at the abandoned American embassy admitted, “it would be better to die under the Taliban’s bullet” than to face the brutality of a likely unsuccessful effort to reach American service personnel on their own. Our citizens and friends are resigning themselves to a terrible fate.

America’s humiliation in Afghanistan did not end with the fall of Kabul. It is only just beginning.

Commentary Magazine Podcast: Hostages Abroad and Hostage at Home

Author and editor emeritus of The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, joins the podcast today to talk about the ongoing nightmare in Afghanistan, which is evolving from a debacle into a hostage crisis. But Americans get no respite at home as COVID has evolved from a pandemic into a lifestyle brand.

Ben Shapiro: President Biden has chosen decline

In November 2009, the late Charles Krauthammer gave a seminal speech, titled "Decline Is a Choice." In it, Krauthammer stated, "The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. There is no yes or no ... Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice."

Last week, President Joe Biden chose decline.

That choice was not inevitable. It was foolhardy in the extreme, a symptom of Biden's commitment to his own idiotic ideology – an ideology that crashed headlong into the steel wall of reality in Afghanistan. Former Presidents Obama and Trump both wanted to remove the United States from Afghanistan, but both recognized the reality on the ground: that removing all American support from the Afghan military would result in the Taliban – the terrorist regime responsible for providing aid and support to Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaida in the run-up to and aftermath of 9/11 – taking over the country.

Biden knew this. He just didn't care. As he reportedly expressed in 2010, while speaking with Richard Holbrooke about American responsibility in Afghanistan, "F*** that, we don't have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it."

And so, Biden destroyed the stalemate in Afghanistan that had allowed America's counterterror mission in-country to continue successfully. The Afghan military was built to work with U.S. close air support; Biden withdrew that support. In fact, he went so far as to bar American contractors from entering the country to help the Afghan air force maintain its equipment. He cut the Afghan military off at the knees, then blamed them when they left the battlefield.

And Biden lied. He lied that Afghanistan represented an "endless war" carrying the possibility of "endless rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery"; in reality, the United States ended its combat operations in Afghanistan in 2014, had just 2,500 troops on the ground before Biden's unplanned pullout, and has not suffered a combat casualty since February 2020.

As we mentioned last week, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been trying to act as a hero to save Lebanon by organizing an Iranian oil tanker to deliver much needed fuel - and daring Israel and the US to stop it.

He doubled down, literally, on Sunday:

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday announced that a second ship carrying fuel will sail to Lebanon “within days.”

“Our first ship has become at sea, our second ship will sail within days and more ships will follow,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech commemorating Abbas al-Yatama, a Hizbullah military commander who died a week ago.

“We are seeking to alleviate the suffering and what we will bring will be for all Lebanese and all those living on Lebanese soil. It will not be for one Lebanese region without the other,” Nasrallah noted.

“We are not an alternative to the state in this matter or in any other matter. We cannot be so and we are not an alternative to the companies that import oil,” Hizbullah’s leader pointed out.

That bolded sentence shows how sensitive Nasrallah is to the criticisms of his first announcement.

He added for good measure, “If the (foreign) companies fear Israel and the sanctions, we are willing to bring an Iranian drilling company to extract offshore oil and gas, and let Israel bomb it,”

The Lebanese are not impressed.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Monday ridiculed Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s declared plans for bringing fuel ships from Iran.

“As for Sayyed Hassan’s promised ship, it is nothing but a silly little joke amid the tragedy that we are living,” Geagea said in a statement.

“Why hasn’t the Iranian oil solved Assad’s problem? It is noteworthy in this regard to mention that Syria’s fuel crisis is what amplified Lebanon’s fuel crisis due to the ongoing systematic smuggling,” the LF leader noted.

“My suggestion to Sayyed Hassan is for Iran to solve Syria’s fuel problem, which would instantly resolve half of Lebanon’s problem,” Geagea went on to say.

Hezbollah has been accused of smuggling fuel to Syria, so the Lebanese are cynical about their sudden interest in importing fuel.

The New York Times writes about Jews praying on the Temple Mount and how supposedly dangerous this is:

Since Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967, it has maintained a fragile religious balance at the Temple Mount, the most divisive site in Jerusalem: Only Muslims can worship there, while Jews can pray at the Western Wall below.

But recently the government has quietly allowed increasing numbers of Jews to pray there, a shift that could aggravate the instability in East Jerusalem and potentially lead to religious conflict.

“It’s a sensitive place,” said Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli prime minister. “And sensitive places such as this, which have an enormous potential for explosion, need to be treated with care.”

[D]ozens of Jews now openly pray every day in a secluded part of the eastern flank of the site, and their Israeli police escorts no longer attempt to stop them.

To many Palestinians, the shift is provocative and unfair. They feel that Muslims have already made a big concession at the Western Wall, which is now used mostly by Jewish worshipers despite its also being important to Muslims.

Sheikh Omar al-Kiswani, the director of the mosque, said that the Aqsa compound should be reserved for Muslim prayer, in recognition of its importance to Muslims.

“It has been named Al Aqsa since the Prophet Muhammad rose to heaven there,” Sheikh Omar said.

The de facto change in policy is just part of a larger pattern of slights against Palestinian dignity across the occupied territories, he said.

“This is the prevalent reality, not only at the Aqsa Mosque, but also at checkpoints and other places in Palestine,” he said. “We face constant racist discrimination and infringement on our human rights.”

The tenor of the article is that the Israeli government has recently changed the status quo and there is a danger of this exploding into a religious war.

But buried in the middle of the article is this:

The policy began to change during the tenure of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, who led coalitions of right-wing and religious parties. Rabbi Glick said that the police began to allow him and his allies to pray on the mount more openly five years ago.

And as this Los Angeles Times article from 2012 shows, Jews were more or less openly praying longer ago than that.

A simple, ancient ritual is threatening the delicate security balance atop Jerusalem's most sacred plaza: Jews are praying.

On most days, dozens — sometimes hundreds — of Jewish worshipers ascend to the disputed 36-acre platform that Muslims venerate as Al Aqsa mosque and Jews revere as the Temple Mount with an Israeli police escort to protect them and a Muslim security guard to monitor their movements.

Then, they recite a quick prayer, sometimes quietly to themselves, other times out loud.

Jews praying on the Temple Mount is not a secret. We've been doing it for years. Arab media obsessively covers it with angry headlines about "settlers performing Talmudic rituals." Videos of worshipers are easily available. I myself prayed with a minyan (quorum) two years ago. No one asked me not to take pictures or not to write about it.

The prayers occur at the perimeter on the east side of the Mount, a spot Muslims typically don't visit.

And despite the articles warning of imminent violence erupting, nothing has happened - even though this has been going on for years. There are no clashes, no shouts, no "Allah Akhbar" chants. It is a daily event, observed by the Islamic Waqf.

In other words, organized Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount has become the status quo.

The only thing that can cause violence is articles like this one that interview Muslim leaders and put them in a position where they have to escalate tensions to keep their "honor." In that sense, warning of potential violence has the potential of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. In fact, this is the second NYT article on prayer on the Temple Mount this summer - the first one also gave dire warnings:

Bassam Abu Labda, a veteran Waqf official in Jerusalem, described the situation as “very dangerous,” adding, “The government is giving cover to the extremists.”

“Every day we have people making movements, performing prayers, lying on the ground and dancing,” Mr. Abu Labda said.

Daniel Seidemann, a longtime advocate for a shared Jerusalem, said there has been “a de facto erosion of the status quo going on for years,” with Temple Mount activists testing the boundaries, first by moving their lips in silent prayer, then whispering and swaying and now gathering in groups.

Look at that awful progression!

The fact is, Jews praying has become normal, and the sky didn't fall. The New York Times, embarrassed to have not picked up on this story years ago, is now pretending that something new and dangerous is happening which will make angry Muslims rise up and attack Jews - and they almost seem to want to provoke exactly that.