Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 16, 2022

01/16 Links: Yes, the Colleyville synagogue attack was 'specifically' targeting Jews; ‘Calm, collected’ synagogue rabbi wowed FBI through 10-hour Texas hostage crisis

From Ian:

Yes, the Colleyville synagogue attack was 'specifically' targeting Jews

Soon after the FBI freed four hostages held by a gunman for 11 hours at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas on Saturday, Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas Field Office Matthew Desarno made a truly baffling statement.

“We do believe from our engagement with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community, but we are continuing to work to find motive,” Desarno said.

The idea that any attack on a synagogue is “not specifically related to the Jewish community” is absurd enough.

Even with the broadest definition of who is considered Jewish, Jews make up only 2.4% of all American adults, and only 0.6% of the population of Texas. It beggars belief, in most cases and in this one in particular, that someone outside the densest Jewish populations in America would have randomly stumbled upon a synagogue while looking for people to hold hostage.

Add to that the fact that the gunman entered Congregation Beth Israel on a Saturday morning, when Shabbat services are held. The timing was clearly intentional.Law enforcement vehicles are seen in the area where a man has reportedly taken people hostage at a synagogue during services that were being streamed live, in Colleyville, Texas, US, January 15, 2022.

But the specifics of this crime also show a deep current of antisemitism running through the “one issue” on which the hostage-taker was “singularly focused.”

Perhaps at first glance, that issue, the release of Aafia Siddiqui, currently serving an 86-year prison sentence for attempting to murder American troops and FBI agents, does not seem to be “specifically related to the Jewish community.” But Siddiqui was a raving antisemite, and that information is readily available.

The gunman said Siddiqui was his “sister” – though apparently in ideology and not in the literal sense – and that they would meet in “Jannah,” meaning paradise, after he dies.

‘Calm, collected’ synagogue rabbi wowed FBI through 10-hour Texas hostage crisis

Local and federal law enforcement credited Congregation Beth Israel Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker’s “calm and collected” demeanor for helping bring about a miraculous end to the ten-hour hostage crisis at his northern Texas synagogue on Saturday night.

Cytron-Walker and the three other worshipers who made it to Sabbath morning services in the quiet town of Colleyville surely felt the main risk they were taking by attending involved being present at at an indoor, mid-Omicron gathering.

But that became the least of their worries when a suspect burst into Congregation Beth Israel (CBI) and proceeded to hold the four Jewish worshipers captive, apparently at gunpoint, for the remainder of the day.

While the first three hours of the ordeal were eerily streamed on Facebook Live — as Sabbath services are every week at CBI — details of what unfolded, and why, remained somewhat limited in the first hours after the safe release of the hostages.

What was clear to law enforcement, though, was the critical role that Cytron-Walker played in the way the harrowing day played out.

Local and federal law enforcement at the scene “were really so impressed and genuinely appreciative of how calm and collected Rabbi Charlie was, keeping order and everybody’s wits about them,” Dallas police chaplain Andrew Marc Paley told The Times of Israel in an interview shortly after the hostage release.

'I am grateful to be alive,' says Colleyville rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker

On Saturday, four people were held hostage inside a Reform synagogue in Texas by a man demanding that a known terrorist be released from prison.

After 11 hours, they were freed. One of them was the rabbi of said Beth Israel synagogue, Charlie Cytron-Walker, a man known for his long history of giving and charitable work.

"I am thankful and filled with appreciation for all of the vigils and prayers and love and support, all of the law enforcement and first responders who cared for us, all of the security training that helped save us," Cytron-Walker wrote on Facebook. "I am grateful for my family. I am grateful for the CBI Community, the Jewish Community, the Human Community. I am grateful that we made it out. I am grateful to be alive."

The rabbi is a married father of two who began to work as the rabbi of the synagogue in 2006. Congregation Beth Israel was founded in 1998 as an informal community in a rapidly growing suburb of Fort Worth, located just miles from the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. Cytron-Walker was its first full-time rabbi.

Originally from Michigan, Cytron-Walker and his family belonged to Congregation Shaarey Zedek in East Lansing. He was president of both Lansing’s temple youth group and the National Federation of Temple Youth’s Michigan region while in high school Cytron-Walker graduated from the University of Michigan in 1998 where he met his wife, Adena, when they were both students. Adena is a vice president of a diversity-focused Fort Worth organization.

A beautiful statement of gratitude from Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, the heroic Rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel, following his release. #Colleyville #Texas pic.twitter.com/MM1fqD30fK
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) January 16, 2022

An FBI spokesperson said that the terrorist in Congregation Beth Israel “was singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community,”

Yes, he was focused on the release of Aafia Siddiqui, the Al Qaeda terrorist that is also a favorite cause of CAIR, Linda Sarsour and other Islamist sympathizers. But then the question is obvious: why attack a synagogue and take Jews hostage?

The answer is just as obvious if you know anything about Muslim antisemitism: Because they, like the Nazis and countless antisemites before them, believe that Jews run the world - and especially America.

Aafia Siddiqui's arrest and sentencing had nothing to do with Jews. but she was convinced that Jews and Israel were responsible for her capture and imprisonment.

Where did she get that idea? From their leaders!

Osama Bin Laden said in a well-circulated video only months before 9/11, “Jews are free in al-Quds to rape Muslim women and to imprison the young cubs who stand up to them. The blood of Muslims is the cheapest of all blood!...We speak of an American government, but it is in reality an Israeli government, because if we look at the most sensitive departments of the government, whether it is the Pentagon or the State Department or the CIA, you find that it is the Jews who have first word in the American government.”

America is a target because it is controlled by Jews. As Deborah Scroggins writes in her book about Siddiqui and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the US government are "literally talk show staples" in Pakistan.

They are staples in Arab and all other Muslim media as well.

For such a mentality, it makes perfect sense that Jews should be the target - they are responsible for the actions of the US government! If you don't hate Jews enough because of Israel, you should hate them because of what the US does.

The terrorist even demanded that the Texas rabbi call another rabbi in New York to relay his demands to release Siddiqui. After all, who can be more powerful and influential toi release a federal inmate than a New York rabbi?

Antisemitism and anti-Americanism are tightly bound. From the Right that claims to be patriotic, but that their America has been corrupted by Jews, to Arabs and Muslims who believe that America is controlled by Jews, to the far Left whose hate for Israel and for America are entwined, to Iran where America and Israel share the "satan" appellation, if someone is anti-American, chances are extraordinarily high that they have a problem with Jews (or "Zionists" who have the identical demonlike stranglehold on American policy.)

Attacks on synagogues are attacks on America, and attacks on America are often attacks on Jews. There is essentially no difference.

I don't have a solution but one must at least understand the problem.

Historian Rafael Medoff uncovers an amazing episode in American history:

Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year will be commemorated just before the 75th anniversary of a remarkable but little-known campaign by American Zionists and African-Americans that helped defeat racial segregation in Baltimore, Maryland.

This story began in the autumn of 1946, when the Zionist activists known as the Bergson Group sponsored a Broadway play called A Flag is Born, authored by the Academy Award-winning screenwriter and playwright Ben Hecht. Starring young Marlon Brando and Yiddish theater luminaries Paul Muni and Celia Adler, A Flag is Born depicted the plight of Holocaust survivors in postwar Europe and the fight for Jewish independence in British Mandatory Palestine.

After a successful 10-week run on Broadway, A Flag is Born was scheduled to be performed in various cities around the country, including the National Theater in Washington, DC. However, the National Theater barred African-Americans. Hecht and 32 other prominent playwrights had recently announced they would not permit their works to be staged in such theaters. Hence, the Washington performance was rescheduled to the Maryland Theater in Baltimore.

But the controversy was not over. It turned out that while the Maryland Theater did not bar African-Americans, it did restrict them to the balcony, which bigots nicknamed with a derogatory phrase. Alerted by local NAACP activists, the Bergson Group devised a good cop-bad cop strategy to confront the segregationists.

Just hours before the first curtain, Bergson Group representatives informed the theater management that if the seating discrimination was not rescinded, the NAACP would picket the show with signs declaring, “There is No Difference Between Jim Crow in Maryland and Persecution [of Jews] in Palestine.” The group members also threatened to personally escort several African-Americans to the show as their guests, to be seated in the white sections.

The pressure succeeded. The Maryland Theater management agreed to temporarily lease the theater to the Bergson Group. That made the theater’s ticket agents employees of the group and subject to whatever seating policy the activists chose to adopt. As a result, a dozen African-Americans attended the opening night performance on February 12, 1947, and “were seated indiscriminately, without untoward results,” the Baltimore Afro-American reported. Fittingly, February 12 is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.

Exuberant NAACP leaders hailed the tradition-shattering victory over racism that was achieved by the alliance of black and Zionist activists. The NAACP used that victory as potent ammunition in its battles to desegregate other Baltimore theaters in the years that followed.

Note the name of the Zionist group behind the play that ensured that there would be no discrimination:American League for a Free Palestine.

Black-owned newspapers covered the episode with joy.

The Baltimore Afro-American notes that before the negotiations with the theatre were completed, one of the Zionist leaders planned to bring two Black people as his guests to the theatre to force a showdown.

The Pittsburgh Courier:

The New York Age reported the incident:

(Top two photos courtesy of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.)

It's been raining heavily in the Levant, causing some localized flooding throughout the region.

And, like every year, Gaza officials are blaming their own flooding on Israel opening up non-existent dams.

The Nusseirat Municipality in the central Gaza Strip "confirmed" that the "Israeli occupation" opened the dams around of Wadi Beit Hanoun, threatening an environmental catastrophe, as the opening of dams leads to the flooding of the stream and the flooding of neighboring areas and houses.

The head of Hamas's Winter Emergency Committee, Zuhdi Al-Ghariz, also said that "the Israeli occupation opened dams in the east and north of the Gaza Strip on Sunday, which threatens to cause a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe for the people of the Strip."

Back in 2015, after AFP parroted the absurd claims to widespread derision, the French press agency belatedly went to the Negev to see if any dams existed and found that it was a Palestinian conspiracy theory with no basis in reality.

In fact, some of the responsibility for the flooding from Wadi Gaza comes from Gazans themselves.

"Wadi Gaza is liable to flood in an area which is about 70-100 metres wide but in some of these places, there has been illegal construction and cultivation, which has reduced this area to 15 or 20 metres," Munther Shoblak, a senior official in Gaza's water utility, told AFP at the time.

Notice that this year the libelers are emphasizing blaming Israel for the "environmental catastrophe" aspect. Only last week, the anti-Israel graphic designers at Visualizing Palestine (favored by Human Rights Watch) accused Israel of - get this - "climate apartheid." Because, you know, the Jews control the weather.

They also threw in "green colonialism," "greenwashing" and "environmental racism."

Throw them in a blender and pour them out and the letters all spell out "Antisemitism."

Is the US Holding Israel’s Iron Dome Hostage to an Iran Nuke Deal?

While President Biden, Senate, and Congress slow-walk and bicker over replenishing Jerusalem's dwindling defensive missile shield supplies, PM Bennett says his country won't be bound to any rickety renewed nuke deal - nor stand idly by to Iran's increasingly genocidal threats

By Dave Bender, northern Israel

Administration and Capitol political horse-traders and ideologues are holding hostage the lives of some two million Israelis -- specifically the Gaza Envelope and northern border areas. Their domestic foot-dragging endangers Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Bedouin citizens, alike.

This, while P5+1 group (US, UK, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the EU) reps wrangle with Iran in Vienna through - so far - no less than eight contentious sessions over terms of restarting the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

But Jerusalem doesn’t trust the Viennese diplomatic waltz nor Iranian double-crossing promises; they’re preoccupied with Tehran’s ruling and military leaders’ incessant, bellicose threats to “turn Tel Aviv and Haifa into dust,” “wipe Israel off the map,” and taking note of videos of simulated strikes against Israel’s cities, military targets, and reputed nuclear facilities.

“...the Zionist regime has forgotten that Iran is more than capable of hitting them from anywhere,” the Tehran Times histrionically boasted in a December 2021 front-page article, entitled, “Just One Wrong Move.” https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/tehran-times-publishes-targets-iran-will-attack-in-israel-688785

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, told the Knesset parliament’s crucial Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee that, “Israel is not a party to the agreements,” and warned that the Jewish State “is not bound to what will be written in the agreements if they are signed,” according to a JNS report. https://www.jns.org/bennett-sends-message-to-iran-vienna-talks-wont-tie-israels-hands/

And so, Israel is “investing in security rearmament,” to the tune of an immense NIS 60 billion ($19.2 billion) due to what Bennett called an “[Iranian] octopus that constantly threatens Israel.”

Military analyst Seth Frantzman at The Jerusalem Post breaks down the tentacled threat matrix:

“Both Hamas and Hezbollah maintain large stockpiles of ballistic rockets, in addition to mortars, anti-tank missiles, and other munitions. While Hamas does have Iranian-made weaponry, a significant amount of its arsenal has historically been indigenously made, as a result of the ongoing blockade against the Gaza Strip. Hamas has produced several types of rockets, notably the Qassam series. Hezbollah’s stockpile has in the past consisted of former Soviet models, including Grads and Katyushas, but, like Hamas, now has Iranian-made heavy and long-distance rockets like the Fajr series.

“Estimates of Hezbollah rocket stockpiles vary from 150,000-200,000, while Hamas’ is estimated to be around 10,000.” https://www.jpost.com/tags/rocket-attack-on-israel

Additionally, the Alma Research and Education Center, reports that Iran has deployed a wide array of “medium-range and long-range surface-to-surface missiles inside fortified shafts,” at a site near Palmyra, in eastern Syria. https://israel-alma.org/research/

“The missiles we mentioned above can threaten almost the entire territory of the State of Israel: Northern Israel (distance of about 186 miles, about 300 kilometers, from Mount Muhammad Ben Ali by air), Haifa area (distance of about 223 miles, about 360 kilometers), Tel Aviv area (distance of about 261 miles, about 420 kilometers) and even threaten the area of the city of Beer Sheva and south of it.”

But while last summer's unfulfilled promises to resupply crucial defensive measures remains a vital concern to Israelis, the regional conflagration the delay could yet ignite apparently remains - seriously and serially - misjudged and maybe even selectively ignored by the US Administration and its cohorts.

The May conflict with Gaza saw over four thousand rockets fired at metropolitan areas, and some 16 Hamas-Hezbollah rockets fired south out of southern Lebanon into civilian areas later in the year, with the Iron Dome successfully downing some 90 percent of them.

However, 12 Israeli civilians and an IDF soldier were killed, and over 300 wounded, and millions of dollars in economic damage was sustained in the 11-day operation, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Terrorism/Palestinian/Pages/Operation-Guardian-of-the-Walls-10-May-2021.aspx

In Gaza, the IDF said some 460 misfired rockets fell short within the coastal enclave, killing and maiming an unclear number of reported non-combatants. Hamas-affiliated medical officials reported some 260 deaths to the UN and Human Rights Watch, although Israeli researchers say almost 50 percent of them were affiliated with terror groups.

So without freeing up funding (which is invested in American jobs to design and construct the strictly defensive interceptors), recalcitrant US lawmakers need to plainly know: your foot-dragging is likely to get many more people killed.

We in Israel see you and we hear you, and the results, if not intent, of your deeds - and misdeeds - are clear to us:

If the State of Israel is hit in any future conflict by volleys of even more thousands of incoming rockets or payload-carrying UAVs and cannot respond sufficiently due to a lack of Tamir interceptors, the government and IDF will have no other choice but to respond with far more kinetic firepower than anything seen so far - and at targets very near and very far - in order to suppress and stop the deadly salvos aimed at heavily-populated civilian areas and strategic facilities.

And even at that, despite the “standalone measure that passed with overwhelming bipartisan support,“ but still withheld in the Senate, rebuilding the supply of interceptors takes time, due to the relatively slow manufacturing process, with cost (and likely Covid) being an inhibitor.

On the other hand, Hamas and PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] use less sophisticated - but no less deadly - rockets that are manufactured quickly, at a much lower cost.

In order to stop them before they are even launched, the sanctimonious caterwauling over previous IDF pinpoint strikes on terror targets on and cross-border will be deafened into silence by the unleashed fury out of Zion.

Speaking as a nearly-two-decade IDF artillery NCO and infantry grunt (St.Sgt.- ret.) who served in and around Gaza, and as a two-decade reporter in Israel please understand: the howling existential threats uttered by Iranian-financed, trained, and led regional proxies and their determination to eradicate us will not deter us, but the countdown to the next steel rainstorm is ticking very loudly in our ears these days.

So forgive us for being distracted by the growing chorus calling for our demise; beyond the virtuous, virtual moral Disneyland of “knowing what's best for us" hectoring, "America first!" jingoism, and unrequited "tough love" missives penned from six thousand miles away - we’ll bleed real blood and treasure due to those withheld projectiles.

And so, in order to defend our families and the sole Jewish homeland against sworn foes bent on our collective destruction - despite an unspoken defensive arms embargo - don’t be too surprised by the justified ferocity and extent of Israel’s response.

And our lack of apology for stopping our would-be killers and their murderous plans.

---

Dave Bender is a US-born, four-decade Israeli immigrant and self-described, two-decade “ever-recovering reporter,” in Israel, and was an award-winning reporter at two NPR affiliates in the States. Since then, he’s developed a photography/videography career and would, mostly, just as soon be beekeeping with his wife, and enjoying his kids and grandkids.

01/15 Links: New US envoy says ‘absolutely won’t’ visit settlements, to avoid inflaming tensions; Palestinians remove Muslim from al-Aqsa after confusing him for a Jew

From Ian:

Gunman holds hostages at synagogue in Texas

A rabbi and three others were taken hostage mid-Bar Mitzvah at the reform Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville, Texas on Saturday by a gunman who said he was the brother of Pakistani Aafia Siddiqui, who is serving an 86-year prison sentence for killing an FBI agent.

The gunman demanded to meet with his sister in negotiations with the FBI as well as have her released.

Colleyville Police first warned the public of the situation at 11:30 a.m. local time. Another tweet two hours later updated that the hostage situation was still in progress.

Apparently Aafia, a known terrorist, has friends in CAIR and Linda Sarsour who have actively campaigned for her release. #colleyville pic.twitter.com/NxoNAAW1R8
— Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר (@emilykschrader) January 15, 2022

And then there is of course #CAIR @CAIRNational, which openly incited violence against Jews and Jewish places of worship! #Colleyville https://t.co/IlsoDNr8se pic.twitter.com/VMQ5haDPIC
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) January 15, 2022

Morton Klein: The dangers of an Arab state are still true - opinion

On March 3, 1999, the great then-US senator from Florida, Connie Mack, gave an important speech on the floor of the Senate, describing the Palestinian Authority leadership’s incitement, in schools and media, of hatred, terrorism and annihilation against Jews and Israel.

It’s worthwhile revisiting senator Mack’s speech – because it spelled out the root of the problem that has grown even worse today.

Mack asked the key question: “How is it possible to engage in peace negotiations with people who maintain the right to obliterate you, who are filled with hatred toward you, and who harbor the dream of one day destroying your homeland? Peace is a matter of the heart. But what I saw, which was the outcome of the Palestinian Authority rule, convinced me that their hearts and minds are set on other goals. The Palestinian leadership does not want peace. They want to use their state to eliminate the State of Israel.”

The senator wisely concluded: “[I]f the Palestinian leadership fails to abandon incitement of hatred, persecution, and terrorism, then we are all dreaming, only dreaming [of peace], and our President’s behavior must be labeled foolish appeasement. There will not be peace until hearts and minds are changed, and we must focus our attention on these issues.”

Mack demonstrated how the PA teaches children to hate Jews. For instance, a Mickey-Mouse style program on PA-controlled television showed a young girl of six or seven years old emotionally singing “When I wander into the entrance of Jerusalem, I’ll turn into a suicide warrior in battledress, in battledress, in battledress.” Mack reminded the Senate “this is a program that was produced by the people [the Palestinian Authority] who are... supposedly negotiating peace... How would you feel if your government was teaching your children to hate? Could you conclude that they were serious about long-term peace with their neighbors?”

Mack also described PA textbooks’ incitement of hatred toward Jews. A third-grade grammar textbook teaches that the “Zionist enemy” attacks “civilians” with aircraft. A seventh-grade textbook says that Jews hate Muslims and cause division among Muslims, and asks students to give examples of the “evil attempts of the Jews” today. Note that these school textbooks specifically talk about Jews – belying the fiction that the PA “only” opposes “Israelis.”

Mack also noted that a just-published 12th-grade history book taught: “The clearest examples of racist belief and racial discrimination in the world are Nazism and Zionism.” The senator reflected: “One would expect, rather than focus on hatred, if they [the Palestinian Authority] were serious about peace, they would focus on how the two peoples are working to live side by side.”

Gantz-Abbas Meeting Strengthens PA Ahead of ‘Changing of Guard’

Palestinian sources also said that Abbas called on Gantz to reverse the decision to ban the Palestinian NGOs, reduce tensions in both eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank, and return the bodies of Palestinian terrorists killed carrying out attacks.

And indeed, the meeting saw Israeli steps taken subsequently to reduce tensions, including the decision to allow 6,000 West Bank residents and 3,500 Gazan residents into the Palestinian population census, thereby assisting people who had no defined resident status until now.

Israel also agreed to facilitate early payment of taxes it collects for the PA, to the tune of NIS 100 million, and to provide 600 entry permits to Palestinian businesspeople. Senior PA officials have been promised VIP permits granting them free travel.

The PA is also set to benefit from a new Israeli pilot program that allows shipping containers to enter from Jordan via the Allenby Crossing, and the creation of an online platform for Israeli employers to pay Palestinian employees. The online system will lead to a rise in bank transfers, and the PA is expected to make some NIS 40 million per month in taxes from this.

Palestinian opposition elements, meanwhile, fiercely criticized Abbas, since they perceived the meeting as a tool for tightening security coordination with Israel.

Hamas operatives published a cartoon that showed Abbas as a pathetic, mocked, surrendering figure, shining Gantz’s shoes. A Hamas spokesperson described the meeting as a knife in the back of the Palestinians, while a Palestinian Islamic Jihad figure said the meeting demonstrates that Abbas is a “contractor” for Israel.

In the broader historical perspective, Abbas’ meeting with Gantz is not unusual — past Israeli prime ministers such as Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Ehud Barak met with the late PLO chief leader Yasser Arafat in their own homes too. Yet unlike past meetings, the current meeting was held under conditions of Israeli government paralysis on the Palestinian issue.

From the Israeli perspective, the meeting was useful in further boosting security coordination, mutual confidence-building, and strengthening the PA’s position while weakening Hamas and its goal of increasing its influence in the West Bank, before going on to take over the entire Palestinian government system.

It is reasonable to assume that Israel will continue to pursue its interests in the Palestinian arena overtly and covertly in the post-Abbas era, and that means not allowing Hamas to take over, while working with both Abbas and whoever replaces him.

New US envoy says ‘absolutely won’t’ visit settlements, to avoid inflaming tensions

New US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides said Friday that he’d never visited an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and had no plans to do so, as part of his effort as envoy not to take steps that could inflame the situation on the ground.

When pressed, during his first interview with Israeli media since arriving in Israel, as to whether he might make such a visit, Nides told the Yedioth Ahronoth daily, “I absolutely will not.”

The interview, while conducted in English, was published in Hebrew. A spokeswoman for the US Embassy in Jerusalem confirmed that the ambassador was accurately quoted. The quotes presented in this story were translated from the Hebrew report.

Nides’ comments represented a return to the pre-Trump era status quo when US ambassadors did not make visits to the settlements. Former president Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, changed that norm, making several visits to Israeli towns across the Green Line during his tenure as envoy.

A long-time backer of the settlement enterprise, Friedman used his close ties with Trump to lobby the White House to back Israeli annexation of the West Bank, though the president ultimately did not allow the move to go through. However, the ambassador did play a role in former secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s decision to rescind a State Department legal memo deeming Israeli settlements to be illegal.

Asked to explain his decision not to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps, Nides responded, “Because just like I ask both the Palestinians and Israelis not to take steps that inflame the situation, I don’t want to do things intentionally that would create disrespect or anger among people.

Abbas calls off PLO parley to avoid ‘confrontation’ with Israel, US

A crucial meeting of the Palestinian Central Council that was supposed to take place later this week has been delayed due to ongoing tensions and differences among Palestinian officials and factions, Palestinian sources said on Saturday.

The meeting was postponed because Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas wants to maintain channels of communication with the Israeli government, especially in light of his recent “positive” meeting with Defense Minister Benny Gantz, the sources said.

In its last meeting in 2018, the PCC recommended ending the security coordination between PA security forces and the IDF and suspending the PLO’s recognition of Israel until it recognizes a Palestinian state.

“President Abbas is keen on preserving the dialogue with some members of the Israeli government,” according to the sources. “He is also opposed to calls by various Palestinian factions to terminate security coordination with Israel.”

A PLO official in Ramallah said the decision to delay the PCC meeting aims “to avoid a confrontation” with both the Israeli government and the US administration. The official said many of the Palestinian factions that were supposed to attend the meeting were planning to renew their call for cutting all ties with Israel.

In November, Zahra Billoo, executive-director of the San Francisco Bay Area branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SFBA), gave a public speech at an American Muslims for Palestine conference where she said that every Jewish organization in America that is not overtly anti-Zionist is "the enemy." This includes any Jewish organization that supports peace with Palestinians.

When CAIR had a chance to condemn this blatantly antisemitic speech and to banish Billoo as a hater, they instead chose to support her and to claim that since she mentioned that Jews who actively fight against Israel like IfNotNow are not enemies, then there was nothing antisemitic about her saying that every single synagogue in America is an enemy of Muslims.

How does one treat an enemy? By attacking it!

CAIR supports antisemitism.

Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani terrorist who shot at FBI and Army personnel with an M4 carbine, and who the man who held Jews hostage in a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas calls his "sister," is an unrepentant antisemite. She refused to be defended by Jewish lawyers.

She said the case against her was a Jewish conspiracy, and demanded that no Jews be allowed on the jury, and that all prospective jurors be DNA-tested and excluded from the jury at her trial "if they have a Zionist or Israeli background."
While at Federal Medical Center, Carswell, she wrote a letter to the warden to give to President Obama, asserting, "Study the history of the Jews. They have always back-stabbed everyone who has taken pity on them and made the 'fatal' error of giving them shelter.... and it is this cruel, ungrateful back-stabbing of the Jews that has caused them to be mercilessly expelled from wherever they gain strength. This why 'holocausts' keep happening to them repeatedly! If they would only learn to be grateful and change their behavior!! ..."

CAIR supports Aafia Siddiqui.

CAIR supports antisemitism.

Only last week, CAIR released a report on "Islamophobia" and falsely claimed that mainstream Jewish federations and Jewish-controlled foundations are "funding Islamophobia" because they give money to organizations that defend Israel or expose Muslim bigotry. Essentially they declared all Jews who support Israel's existence as "Islamophobic."

CAIR supports antisemitism.

Why has the current terrorist attacked a synagogue when Jews and Israel had nothing to do with Siddiqui's arrest?

Because of organizations like CAIR and the endemic antisemitism in the Muslim world, Jews are the enemy. It makes perfect sense that a synagogue should be a target, because Jews symbolize everything they hate.

CAIR now pretends to condemn this attack in Texas. But they time that they should have condemned antisemitism was when Zahra Billoo said that synagogues are the enemy. The time that they should have condemned antisemitism was when Aafia Siddiqui told her judge that she would not accept Jews as lawyers or jurors.

CAIR is engaging in public relations. Its own actions and choices for who it defends shows that it supports antisemitism and it supports any Muslim who attacks Jews.

CAIR is not considered fringe by the mainstream Muslim community - they are mainstream. The media is now scrambling to interview "good Muslims" who condemn this attack, but because the earlier Muslim antisemitism from AMP and CAIR does not get media coverage, they don't known enough to ask the basic question: do you consider Zionist synagogues the enemy like CAIR does?

There are others who are culpable as well. The media, by downplaying Muslim antisemitism and by parroting the far-Left lie that the far-Right is the only type of antisemitism is worth highlighting. Even today, most media isn't mentioning the obvious fact that an attack on a synagogue is antisemitic - that word is mysteriously missing from coverage. From the media, one wouldn't know that there have been many attempts by Muslims at attacking synagogues since 9/11.

Synagogues must have iron gates and armed guards because of Muslim, Black and far Right antisemitism.

According to the far Left, and CAIR, the media that follows them, antisemitism is only a far Right problem.

CAIR is part of the problem. And until the media recognizes that this group that is respected by so many is in fact a hate group and treats it as such, we will be having more Colleyvilles.

01/14 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The emergence of Arab Zionism?; Warren Mundine: Militants have hijacked Sydney Festival; Why People Love Accusing Jews of Genocide

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The emergence of Arab Zionism?

While western liberals and the UN Human Rights Council double down in their determination to demonise, delegitimise and destroy Israel, support for that beleaguered country is coming from a surprising direction.

In 2020, people were startled by the Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Hope was kindled that this unprecedented linkage might herald an end to the century-old Arab war against the Jewish state.

Now there are signs of a new and related phenomenon: the emergence of Arab Zionists.

In the Jewish Chronicle, Jonathan Sacerdoti has reported that a number of Arab influencers, with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, have emerged to promote Israel and support the Jews.

A Syrian blogger began a video begging the Israeli government to “occupy” the whole of Syria to save more lives. “The Golan Heights is the only area in Syria that hasn’t been destroyed and had its people killed,” he said.

In another video, an Arab academic was moved to tears by visiting Jerusalem’s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, promising: “Today, together, Muslims Jews and Christians, we promise you, it will never happen again.”

In Dubai, 39-year-old Loay Al-Shareef, who declares he is a Zionist, said: “It’s very righteous for the Jews to have their ancestral homeland in the land of Israel.”

Making frequent references to Jewish scripture, he added: “Jews are not colonialists or conquerors in the land of Israel because if we would believe that then we would believe that David, Solomon, Isaiah and Yirmiyahu and the prophets were actually colonisers, and that would kill the Islamic faith.”

Diaspora Jews can choose to live in Israel… or not

The Jerusalem Post op-ed I recently penned on the impact of Israel’s travel restrictions on Diaspora Jewry has caused something of a stir. Rabbi Daniel Gordis, in a recent piece published on his Substack platform page, used it as a jumping-off point to discuss the broader question of Israel-Diaspora relations. Gordis, a great and popular scholar at Jerusalem’s Shalem College, averred that ever since the founding of Israel there has been a tension between the Jewish state and Jews who live outside of it, particularly in the United States.

Israeli Zionists, populating one of world Jewry’s two poles, forever envisioned the end of the Diaspora, he wrote. American Jewish leaders, meanwhile, were staunch Zionists, who nonetheless insist their community members will remain in the US. In Gordis’s telling, this age-old conflict has acquired new salience amid the coronavirus pandemic, which made it much harder for Diaspora Jews to visit Israel over the past two years.

These restrictions were weighing on Israel-Diaspora relations, as I wrote in that last article in these very pages. American Jews, and others in the Diaspora, have family and friends in Israel; rely on the Jewish state as a cultural and educational center; they look to it as a safe haven against rising antisemitism. The sense of security and vitality that the state of Israel affords to world Jewry was strongly undermined when the Jews of the Diaspora were largely prohibited from visiting our Promised Land.

As a leader of American Jewry, I firmly believe that I have no right to tell Jews where to live. My role – and our role as officials in the Diaspora and Israel – is to enable Jews to live freely and safely wherever they like and then protect them wherever they choose. No one forced the refuseniks to go to Israel nor to the US; some came here, others went there; we fought our hardest, nonetheless, so that Soviet Jews did not have to remain in the Eastern bloc against their will. We welcomed them in the US; we welcomed them in Israel; we even welcomed them to stay in the former Soviet Union even if it would not have been our own first choice for them.

The Jewish presence in Israel and the Diaspora is fundamentally complementary. The existence of the State of Israel provides Jews around the world with a measure of reassurance and confidence – there will always be a place of refuge for us if we should ever need it. We can engage in the public life of our home countries without fear.

Caroline Glick: A Jewish majority is insufficient to protect Israel

The erosion of the moderate Left's Zionist commitment kicked into high gear during the 2019-2021 election vortex, where Israel held four inconclusive elections in rapid succession. At the outset of the process, the new center-left party Blue and White, led by three former IDF chiefs of General Staff – Benny Gantz, Gaby Ashkenazi, and Moshe Ya'alon – and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, was firmly in the Zionist camp. The four leaders all opposed forming a government that relied on the support of the virulently anti-Zionist and largely pro-terror Joint Arab List. That consensus view began to crumble after the second election. Lapid and his Yesh Atid party were the first to support forming a government with Arab lawmakers who seek Israel's dissolution as a Jewish state. After the third election, Gantz, Ya'alon and Ashkenazi agreed. But the Left alone was not large enough to form a 61-seat majority, even with the Arabs.

The prospect of a minority Arab faction gaining control over the Knesset and government became a salient possibility after the fourth election last March. It was then that the careerist, anti-Netanyahu right-wing parties – Gideon Sa'ar's New Hope and Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked's Yamina – decided that in exchange for senior positions, they would form a coalition government dependent on Ra'am, which hails from the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Islamic Movement.

Initially it wasn't clear who was swallowing whom. Ra'am chairman Mansour Abbas has become an expert making empty pronouncements (his latest involved stating the undisputed fact that "Israel is a Jewish state"), that are music to Israelis' ears while advancing his Islamist, decidedly anti-Jewish agenda. There was hope early on that Abbas's willingness to join a governing coalition stemmed from an abandonment of anti-Zionism in favor of an integrationist impulse. Perhaps that would have been the case if he had joined a Netanyahu-led all right-wing coalition. But in the event, from the early days of the current, opportunist right-wing-led, leftist-dominated government it became apparent that it was Abbas that had swallowed the leftist and opportunistic right-wing parties. They aligned toward him, not the other way around.

The government's failure to pass the amended citizenship law that blocks mass Arab immigration; its passage of the so-called "Electricity Law," which effectively legalized thousands of illegal Bedouin houses and towns built on stolen state lands in the Negev; the government's cancellation Wednesday of tree planting in the Negev in the face of Ra'am-supported Arab nationalist riots; the government's repeated rejection of bills requiring the provision of electricity to new Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria – these are just some of the governmental actions that attest to the current government has abandoned Zionism as its governing rationale and replaced it with a post-Zionist ethos and governing agenda.

The lesson from all of this is obvious. Having a Jewish majority is not a guarantee that Israel will remain a Jewish state. We must reinstate the Jewish consensus around Zionism in our schools, media, and politics. Post-Zionist politicians must be exposed. And opportunists who prioritize their ambitions over securing the Jewish state must be ousted and replaced with men and women who are dedicated to the Zionist vision of the Jewish people from time immemorial.

The Caroline Glick Show: Ep34 – The origins of the anti-Netanyahu coup | Guest: Moishik Kovarsky

In this week’s episode of the Caroline Glick Mideast News Hour, Caroline was joined by Moishik Kovarsky, a tech guru who has collated the data collected by a group of more than a hundred volunteers who have analyzed all the prosecutions’ claims against Netanyahu and discovered their overwhelming falsity. Moishik compiled a timeline of the operation to oust Netanyahu. He walked Caroline through its stages from its beginning after the Likud victory in the 2015 elections through today. This shocking information that has never been revealed to the non-Hebrew speaking public. Watch, share and subscribe!

01/14 Links Pt1: Obsessed with Israeli Settlements, Americans and Europeans Turn a Blind Eye to Palestinian Violence; Until the Palestinian Authority Stops Inciting Violence, Engagement for Peace Is Hopeless

From Ian:

Obsessed with Israeli Settlements, Americans and Europeans Turn a Blind Eye to Palestinian Violence

Dore Gold interviewed by Israel Kasnett
The U.S and some European nations continue to demonstrate an obsession with Israeli "settlements" and isolated incidents by small groups of radical Israelis, mostly wayward youths, while completely ignoring the much larger issue of Palestinian violence, incitement and terrorism. This obsession was clear during a routine meeting several weeks ago at Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs between diplomats from 16 European countries and Aliza Bin Noun, the director of the European Affairs Department.

Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, believes that "the obsession isn't with settlements; it's with Israel." Gold explained that the legal basis of European objections to settlement activity is the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from evicting the existing population or forcibly transferring its own population into the occupied territory.

"The two dimensions of the convention do not apply to Israel," Gold said, "yet the international community misinterprets international law and accuses Israel of violating the convention" while ignoring actual violations in other countries. When Turkey occupied northern Cyprus, there was a massive sale of properties there to Europeans who wanted a cheap vacation home. The UN Human Rights Council ignored it.

The one case "that really boils my blood" is what has been going on in the last decade in Syria. Pro-Iranian Shi'ite militias there have evicted thousands of Syrian Sunnis in order to change the demographic balance. Families have come from Afghanistan and Pakistan to settle in the vacated homes. In Israel's case, there has not been any forced eviction of Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. Yet the international community focuses on Israel and ignores Syria. "That is what I would call international legal hypocrisy. This is a glaring case of misapplying international law."

Gold pointed to Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin outpost situated on the main highway connecting Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley, and recognized as illegal by Israel's Supreme Court as a potential security risk. When he was director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Gold met with German officials and "made a very strong point" that if Khan al-Ahmar is allowed to remain, hundreds of Israeli families that travel on that road will be at risk. Gold told the German ministry officials that if Israeli families are killed on this road after Germany insisted that Palestinian construction in "Area C" is legal, they share responsibility in what happens.

Foreign obsession with Israel and the settlements is not going away, "but it is imperative that Israel get its truth out," said Gold. "The Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply. Israel is in the right here."

Mark Regev: Arguing with the US over house demolitions - opinion

The experience of the last few weeks demonstrates that the terrorist threat against the Israeli civilian population remains very real, and it would be folly to remove from the counterterrorism toolbox a means that, according to security professionals, saves lives. Obviously, some in the international community are uninterested in the nuts and bolts of counterterrorism, claiming instead that Israel should focus on the root causes of violence and expedite a political solution that gives Palestinians their national freedom.

However noble such an intent, it contains limited practical utility. Terrorists like Fadi Abu Shkhaydam are not interested in any solution, other than one that excludes the existence of a Jewish state. They openly proclaim that civilians are legitimate targets, that negotiations with Israel are “a waste of time, an exercise in futility” and that there is “no solution for the Palestinian problem but jihad.”

The unvarnished reality is that for as long as this sort of extremism remains an integral part of Palestinian reality, Israel will require an effective counterterrorism strategy, and without an adequate deterrence-enhancing alternative, that will also have to include the judicious use of house demolitions.

During my time at Israel’s Washington Embassy, there was a period when George W. Bush’s administration expressed its opposition to Israeli “extrajudicial killings” targeting terrorist commanders. That criticism ceased after 9/11 when the United States adopted the same strategy, utilizing it conspicuously in the attacks the eliminated Osama bin Laden and Qasem Soleimani.

I hope there will never be circumstances when the terror threat against Americans will be such that it necessitates a State Department spokesperson justifying their own country’s policy of house demolitions.

President of Jewish Federation Talks US-Israel Ties

Until the Palestinian Authority Stops Inciting Violence, Engagement for Peace Is Hopeless

A look at Palestinian media compiled by Palestinian Media Watch since November shows that the PA is far from a good-faith peace partner.

The PA, the PLO and Fatah continue to endorse terrorism, spread libels against Israel, reject Arab normalization with Israel, and question the legitimacy of Israel itself.

In a recent phone call with a newly released terrorist, PA President Mahmoud Abbas tells him, "May Allah bless you," and that what he did was a "great and important part."

On PA TV, a girl recited a poem saying, "We will trample the necks of the Zionists and make a path out of them."

A song on PA TV included the lyrics, "This is the day that Jihad is needed. Pull the trigger."

The official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida claimed that Israel "exported" Covid-19 to the PA "as a new weapon."

?? Debunking The Most Popular Lies About Israel

This is an important thread that Palestinian leaders want DELETED.

Make sure you RETWEET and tell the truth. pic.twitter.com/kWM0RMYaFr
— Nitsana Darshan-Leitner | ??"? ????? ????-?????? (@AttorneyNitsana) January 13, 2022

A Palestinian baby boom that started in 2018?

Here is the Palestinian population for every years since 1997, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. I added a column to show the increase in the population each year, and then a percentage increase.

Notice that in 2018, the increase jumped from the roughly 101,000 of the previous 10 years to over 120,000.

A steady decline in population increase suddenly spurted from 2.19% to 2.55%, and stay around there since then.

Here you can see the jump in a chart:

There was a census in 2017 which might account for this, but from this source it says that the census came out lower than PCBS estimates - which are not reflected in this table.

Something strange is going on.