Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

The latest "Al Aqsa is in danger!" meme: "Israeli five point plan for weakening the walls of Al Aqsa"

Antisemitic Arabs have been claiming that the Jews are planning to destroy Al Aqsa since the Mufti of Jerusalem made up that lie a century ago.

The latest version of the libel comes from a "secret five point plan" from Israel that Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today has allegedly uncovered.

The five points are:

- Weakening the walls of Al-Aqsa, in preparation for their downfall or demolition, by emptying the land areas from below.

- Continuation of the excavations under the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which weakens the walls of the mosque.

- Impeding any attempt to restore the walls.

- Causing stones to fall from Al-Aqsa Mosque and its walls.

- The great danger that threatens Al-Aqsa and its walls at the present time, which threatens collapse all the time.

All five points sound similar to me, but when it is presented as a five point plan, it sounds much more legitimate, like they found a document or something. Of course, the exact same charges that Israeli excavations are meant to weaken and destroy Al Aqsa have been claimed for decades as well.

So, why haven't the Jews destroyed Al Aqsa yet?

Must be because the brave Muslims have been "defending" it!

That is the narrative for over a hundred years - and I have yet to see any Palestinian say, if they wanted to destroy it, they would have done it by now.

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Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is really, really trying hard to spin Operation Breaking Dawn as a victory.

The latest delusional logic comes from a Palestine Today interview of PIJ political bureau member Dr. Walid al-Qatati.

“The loss of the martyrs, especially the great leaders, saddens and pains us and leaves a great void for their families and their movement, but this does not affect the course of jihad, but rather increases it strength and vitality. vitality on the march of jihad and resistance until victory," al-Qatati stated.

If killing PIJ leaders strengthens the movement, then by all means, let's continue!

Al Qatati says that Israel tried to drive a wedge between Islamic Jihad, Hamas and ordinary Gazans, but it failed to do so. He doesn't really explain why Hamas didn't join the battle, though, or why even Islamic Jihad never claimed to be acting on behalf of Gazans.

He also claims that Israel is hiding the extent of damage and injuries from Islamic Jihad rockets, because - apparently - Israel controls its media so well.

And what about the accomplishments that Islamic Jihad claimed when the fighting stopped, that Israel agreed to release two prisoners who have not been released? He brushes that aside, saying that Israel is procrastinating, but the battle has achieved the most important goals of hurting Israeli security, the continuation of the flame of jihad and resistance, and the affirmation of the unity of all the battlefields of national struggle in Palestine.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Islamic Jihad officials privately admit that the deaths of their leaders was a major blow to them.

One senior Islamic Jihad leader told AFP that the commanders killed were replaced “within minutes,” but Ahmed al-Mudallal, from the group’s political bureau, acknowledged the impact.

“This round was difficult,” he told AFP. “We lost many major military leaders that were important to us.”

Mudallal’s son Ziad — an Islamic Jihad officer — was killed alongside senior commander Khaled Mansour in a strike in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah.

That AFP article also notes that, unlike the wars waged by Hamas, Gazans gained nothing from this mini-war - no concessions from Israel on loosening the closure, for example. Islamic Jihad's reputation in Gaza is in tatters between the selfish goals of the war to get Israel to release one of their leaders, to the rockets that PIJ shot into Gaza killing many civilians, to not extracting any concessions from Israel to stop the fighting.

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08/15 Links Pt2: It's time for Amnesty International's candle to be extinguished; David Collier: An open letter to Edinburgh Council – are you in bed with terrorists?

From Ian:

It's time for Amnesty International's candle to be extinguished - opinion

The resignation of Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnès Callamard is no longer enough to serve justice. It is time for Amnesty International to complete its 60-year mission and go down in history, before all memories of the heroic days of the struggle for human rights have faded. The scandal with the Ukrainian report is a moment that Amnesty should seize and close its doors forever. It is the only remaining honorable exit, worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Unfortunately, Amnesty International did not understand this and thus it condemned itself to a shameful and painful end. And not only itself, but also all its predecessors who fought against torture in the past six decades, including the founding father of Amnesty, Peter Benenson.

“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,” wrote this British lawyer back in 1961 in a famous article for The Observer, in which he demanded the release of two Portuguese students, victims of Salazar’s dictatorship and thus laid the foundation of one of the largest global organizations for the protection of human rights. Looking at his successors today, Benenson would probably say – “It is better to extinguish the candle than to celebrate the darkness.”

With the report on Ukraine, Amnesty International celebrated the darkness and helped to make it even thicker. Accusing Ukraine of knowingly sacrificing civilians by deploying its military forces in residential areas is an unforgivable support for the worst human rights violation the world has seen since World War II.

With this report, Amnesty has done the greatest service to Russian aggression since it began almost six months ago. Incomparably greater than all its propagandists have achieved together since February 24. This is a service for which the Kremlin would gladly give billions, because that’s what it will really be worth, if Amnesty International survives and continues to work as it has been working until now.

Gerald M. Steinberg: False Accusations and Ideological Bias

In his critique of Amnesty’s report, Tom Mutch describes an encounter with Rovera during her “investigations”:
In May this year, I was sat around a table with Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis researcher predicting their upcoming report would land like a lead balloon. We were in the kitchen of our hotel in Kramatorsk, the administrative capital of Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk and we could hear the boom of artillery outside our windows every hour.

Rather than expressing shock at the relentless Russian bombardment, the Amnesty staff seemed much more concerned with the fact that a Ukrainian army unit had taken refuge in the basement of a college building.

We’d all been to the building: an abandoned language school in the frontline town of Bakhmut which had been turned into a temporary barracks for a Ukrainian unit. This is not a war crime. A military is perfectly entitled to set up in an evacuated educational institution, although of course that building can no longer claim civilian protection and there was a mainly abandoned civilian apartment block over the road, which had not been fully evacuated.

But Rovera was insistent that this military presence in a populated area was a “violation of international humanitarian law”’. When I pressed her on how the Ukrainian Army was supposed to defend a populated area, she said that it was irrelevant.

In many respects, this exchange summarizes the absence of credibility—both factual and legal—in these NGO attempts to investigate and report on conflict, and to assign blame. The same fundamental flaws in Amnesty’s report on the Ukraine, and the allegations of “putting civilians in harm’s way” have been documented in numerous other reports, particularly in the attempts to delegitimize Israeli responses to war and mass terror. Amnesty’s researchers, like those of HRW or the UN Human Rights Council, are not experts and do not even attempt to provide credible and verifiable sources to support what are often their pre-determined conclusions. Their judgments on international humanitarian law and the laws of armed conflict are no more than opinions, exploiting the ambiguity and largely theoretical nature of this discourse.

The sooner journalists, academics, diplomats, UN officials, and others acknowledge this reality, and the hollow state of the NGO campaigns based on these illusions, the better. More than enough damage, much of it irreversible, has already been caused by “reports” based on false accusations and ideological bias.

Sbarro and Malki Roth remembered via JM in the AM

Coinciding with the twenty-first anniversary of the Hamas bombing attack on a Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria, Nachum Segal hosted Arnold Roth, father of Malki Roth who was one of the fifteen innocents murdered in the atrocity. Arnold took part by phone from Jerusalem.

They discussed Keren Malki (the Malki Foundation) and the ongoing efforts to get terrorist Ahlam Tamimi extradited from Jordan to the US to face federal charges and more.

Nachum Segal, as recounted in Wikipedia, is an American radio disc jockey. He has hosted the program Jewish Moments in the Morning (commonly abbreviated as JM in the AM) since September 1983.

Every morning from 6 to 9, Segal runs his show incorporating music, interviews, news reports and much more. The Nachum Segal Network has a number of different programs during the non-morning hours (schedule here).

According to Wikipedia, Segal's advocacy for social causes and his longevity has propelled JM in the AM to be regarded as the radio program of record in the Jewish world. He is known for analyzing and probing issues from the perspective of the Jewish world. Influential members of the political world – from ambassadors to senators to Members of Kness
et – have sought time on the air and joined Segal in the studio. JM in the AM has been called the "Voice of Klal Yisrael (The Whole of Israel)".

Click the button above to hear an audio record of the program.

A member of the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars and an advisor at the Saudi Royal Court, Sheikh Dr. Saad bin Nasser Al-Shathri, called on the Saudis to be kind to Jews who visit the Kingdom.

During a fatwa program on "Alif Alif" radio, a listener asked how a Muslim should treat a Jew who visits the kingdom.

Al-Shathri responded that “not every Jew is an Israeli, and a Muslim must approach God by kindness in dealing with all people,” warning against “being deceived by malicious propaganda and rumours.”

The cleric pointed out that Mohammed had good relations with some Jews.

“A person must draw closer to Allah by showing kindness to all people, of whatever religion they are,” he added.

"People must abide by these instructions and these etiquettes that were brought by Islamic Sharia, with regard to good logic and beautiful speech.. A kind word is charity, as the Holy Prophet said.”

He added the need to "provide assistance to others, whatever their religion, so that the Muslim can be a good model, and provide correct propaganda to introduce Islam."

Although it appears that some Jews have managed to visit Saudi Arabia for business over the years, they have kept a low profile. Lately that has been changing, as Israelis have been allowed into the Kingdom as well under special circumstances.

Even though the answer seems to say at the end that it is allowed to treat Jews well in order to ultimately attract them to Islam, the answer itself is pretty good.

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Palestinian media, whether Hamas or not, consistently refers to the victims of the terror attack in Jerusalem this past weekend as "settlers."

The rest of the Arab world, however, has been referring to them as Jews or Israelis.

This may seem like a minor matter, but up until recently the nomenclature would be consistent - the Arab world would follow how Palestinians spun stories.

Palestinian media calling the victims "settlers" makes it appear as if they deserved to be attacked. Calling them "Jews" or "Israelis" makes the attacker the guilty party, except for inveterate antisemites reading the article.

Baby steps....

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08/15 Links Pt1: Trump letter authorized Israeli sovereignty in West Bank; The West cannot do business with Iran; Islamic Jihad Rocket Killed Hamas Policeman and His Three Children

From Ian:

Trump letter authorized Israeli sovereignty in West Bank - exclusive

Former U.S. president Donald Trump authorized then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex parts of the West Bank, in a letter obtained by the Jerusalem Post on Sunday. In a three-page letter dated January 26, 2020, two days before Trump presented his Vision for Peace at the White House, the president said that Israel would be able to extend sovereignty to parts of the West Bank, as delineated in the map included in the plan, if Netanyahu agreed to a Palestinian state in the remaining territory on that map.

Trump asked Netanyahu to adopt "the policies outlined in...the Vision regarding those territories of the West Bank identified as becoming part of a future Palestinian state. In exchange for Israel implementing these policies and formally adopting detailed territorial plans not inconsistent with the Conceptual Map attached to my Vision - the United States will recognize Israeli sovereignty in those areas of the West Bank that my vision contemplates as being part of Israel."

A Trump administration source closely involved with the president's letter said that "it was a key part of Israel's acceptance of the Vision for Peace as the framework for negotiations for America to accept sovereignty up front, as per the mapping process and the plan, and for all the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley to be included." At the White House on January 28, 2020, Trump said: "The United States will recognize Israeli sovereignty over the territory that my vision provides to be part of the State of Israel. Very important."

Palestinian Authority condemns Trump’s ‘annexation’ letter to Netanyahu

A statement issued by the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned what was revealed in the letter, saying it was “official piracy and extension of the ominous Deal of the Century,” a reference to Trump’s Vision for Peace for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The letter is “an integral part of the previous US administration’s endorsement of, and absolute support for, the occupation and its racist expansionist colonial projects,” the statement said.

The letter and Trump’s “anti-peace plan have no legal validity, will not give any legitimacy to the massive annexation of the occupied West Bank, and is considered a blatant aggression against international law, international legitimacy resolutions and signed agreements,” it said.

“The content of this colonial letter collapsed with the downfall of the Deal of the Century, which was thwarted by the steadfastness of our people and our leadership,” the PA said.

David Singer: Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine: Vote winner for Lapid, Gantz, or Bibi

With Israeli elections due in October – the major players vying to become Israel’s next Prime Minister – current caretaker PM -Yair Lapid, current Minister of Defence - Benny Gantz and current Opposition Leader - Bibi Netanyahu have yet to issue any statement on the Saudi plan released on 8 June to merge Jordan, Gaza and part of the 'West Bank' into a single territorial entity to be called 'The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine'.

The Plan’s author - Ali Shihabi – is a confidant of Saudi Arabia’s next King – Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and a member of the Advisory Council appointed by Bin Salman advising him on his personally-driven initiative - a $500 billion development called NEOM - a megacity of the future like none other on this planet – to be built in Northern Saudi Arabia on an expanse of land equal to the size of Israel.

The Saudi Solution offers a lot to excite Lapid, Gantz, Netanyahu and their respective political parties with these game-changing features:
The plan reverses two previous Saudi peace proposals in 1981 and 2002 calling for Israel to withdraw completely from the 'West Bank'.
The two-state solution –the creation of a separate Palestinian Arab State between Jordan and Israel – pushed unsuccessfully by the United Nations for the last 29 years and by the European Union since 1980 - is consigned to the diplomatic graveyard
Jerusalem will not be claimed as the capital of 'The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine' – whose capital would be Amman.
The right of return to Israel is abandoned
Citizenship would be offered in the 'Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine' to Palestinian Arab refugees living outside the boundaries of the new entity.

Promising voters to negotiate with Jordan on implementing this Saudi Plan is an assured vote winner.

The most contentious issues in such Israel-Jordan negotiations would be:
Israel’s security concerns in relation to the territory of the new entity West of the Jordan River - where demilitarization and responsibility for maintaining security control would be issues on the negotiating table
The carve up of the 'West Bank' and Gaza - where Israel and Jordan would have a good map to focus on for starters – President Trump’s 2020 Conceptual Maps “Vision for Peace”

Some claim that the Palestinian people have existed for centuries. Here is an account of what Southern Syria (what Arabs called Palestine) was really like in the 19th century, from an 1883 article in the Fortnightly Review by Captain C. R. Conder, about how absurd the idea of a unified Palestinian Arab population was:

Why do not these oppressed subjects of a foreign power [Turkey] help themselves to liberty? There are, it is true, perhaps only a dozen real Turks in the country, for the Pashas even are Kurds, Armenians, or Europeans. Yet to expect a national rebellion is to argue a great want of acquaintance with Oriental character. The power of combination for a common object is unknown in Eastern communities. Arabi's army might — so some of his officers said — have deserted en masse if any one of them had been able to trust another with his real wishes. To the peasant, the village faction appears more important than any national league, and the Turk knows well how to rule by dividing. Southern Palestine, within the memory of living men, was divided into two fierce factions — the Keis, who seem to have been mainly the original peasantry on the west, and the Yemini, allied with the Eastern Arabs, who were pushing northwards from Yemen. The battles fought between these factions are yet related by the village elders, and much courage and daring was then exhibited by the peasantry.

In Jerusalem itself, three of these factions still divide the Moslem population. The Hoseini, in the middle of the town, are the most powerful ; the Khaldi occupy the east quarter ; the despised Jauni abide among the Jews on the south. A Hoseini mother would rather see her daughter die unwedded than suffer her to take a Jauni husband. The same survival of faction I have traced in many other towns of Palestine, and the division of these Moslem parties, even in the petty villages, is almost as great as that which separates the Moslem from the Arab Christian, Latin, Greek, or Maronite. It is by fostering such ancient enmities, and by playing the Druze against the Maronite, the Arab against his elder brother, the Greek against the Latin, that the Turk retains his power over the numerous sects which are found in Syria. It was the same spirit of disunion which in older days gave birth to fifty Gnostic sects in the Holy Land, and which created the twelve Christian creeds which are now to be found side by side in Jerusalem.

The same spirit of disunion exists also among the Bedawin, and, indeed, manifested itself among the early conquerors of Islam as soon as their prophet was dead. Recent events in Egypt and Sinai have not shown us the "noble Arab," in whom we have been told we are to place our trust, in a very favourable light ; and the student of history, whether in Omar's time or in the days of Napoleon, will find that the Bedawin have never fulfilled the expectations of their admirers, and have rarely evinced any great nobility of character. As allies no nation could be more unsatisfactory. They skulked over the Kassassin battle-field to rob and mutilate the dead ; they took money to murder Englishmen who trusted to their reputation for good faith ; and they stole a few cows from the British camp. They never took a side heartily for or against Arabi, and they deserted him at his need. Truly, the noble Arab is not found either in Moab, in Sinai, or in Egypt; and we may well question if he exists in Arabia, for those who know the Syrian Arabs well say that the Nejed and Yemen tribes differ only in being fiercer and more warlike ; while as regards the Sakhur and the Anezeh and other large clans who are more remote from European influence than the Belka Bedawin, it has been my experience that they only differ in being greater savages, more ignorant, crafty, and unreliable than those who know better the power of the West. Truly, one is tempted to regard the noble Arab as " an extinct race which never existed."

This is the history that has been excised from not only Arab but Western textbooks as well.

(I had excerpted much more from this article in 2008.)

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The Gaza fauxtography continues

During Operation Breaking Dawn, the amount of damage Israel inflicted on Gaza was very limited. As far as I can tell, in only two cases did we see an entire building leveled in an urban area as the IDF successfully targeted top Islamic Jihad figures.

But Gaza photographers need to make the most of these incidents. They must find ways to frame their photos to make the damage look far more devastating than it is.

Here you can see the area of the airstrike. Although there was some damage in the buildings surrounding the strike, for the most part this is the entire area with large amounts of rubble.

The Rafah airstrike that killed Khaled Mansour has become the favored area for Gaza news photographers to stage scenes that they hope to sell to Western agencies.

And nothing sells like sad looking children.

The photographer, Omar Ashtawy, hedged his bets - in case no one wanted to buy photos of sad children, he also wanted to stage photos of the same children "playing" in the rubble, showing how resilient they are.

Hey, if one meme doesn't work, maybe another one will.

The same photographer has some shots of the cemetery where four kids were killed by an Islamic Jihad rocket - but his caption says it was an Israeli airstrike. He gain staged it with a child. Yet his photo shows the damage that Gaza rockets, deliberately filled with nails and sharp shrapnel are designed to inflict as they pockmarked cement gravestones.

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In recent days, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas:

- Offered condolences to Egyptian leaders on the tragic church fire

- Offered condolences on the assassination of a Fatah military leader in Lebanon by unknown people

- Called three terrorist prisoners who were recently released by Israel

- Congratulated Chad's leader for its independence day, as well as those of Ecuador and Singapore

- Offered condolences to the families of three terrorists killed in Nablus by the IDF

- Condemned Israel for its "continued aggression against our people"

With this busy schedule of statements and phone calls, his choice not to condemn a terror attack in Jerusalem that targeted religious Jews is not an oversight. It is a deliberate decision.

Because Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority support, tacitly or explicitly, every terror attack.

The only time they condemn terror attacks is when they are pressured to do so by the United States. Otherwise, while they don't issue congratulations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, they definitely don't issue condemnations.

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Book review: The Arc of a Covenant by Walter Russell Mead

The Arc of a Covenant is a well-researched book about the history of the US-Israel relationship. And it destroys many myths in the process.

Most books about the US and Israel are written by one of two kinds of people: Zionists and anti-Zionists. Both of those suffer from a skewed vision where the American Zionists and Israeli politicians are considered critical players in the drama.

Walter Russell Mead calls the anti-Zionists who believe in a nefarious and outsized role of Jews in steering the US towards a disaster in foreign policy "Vulcanists." In the late 1800s, astronomers noticed irregularities in the orbit of the planet Mercury, and postulated that there was a hidden planet they called Vulcan that could explain them. Some claimed to have observed the planet. In the end, the irregularities were found to be because of the sun's gravity bending the fabric of space under Einstein's theories, but they didn't have a clue - they convinced themselves that there was a fictional planet. They couldn't even imagine that there was an alternate theory that could explain things better.

The field of research into the US-Israel relationship is likewise skewed, according to Mead, by writers who are convinced that Jews have been at the center of the decision-making. The entire book zooms out from this tunnel vision and looks more fully at history and sees that US (and other countries) made their decisions about Palestine and Israel based on their specific political circumstances at the time, and the Jews (or Zionist lobby, or Christian Zionists) were only a small component of what went into national decisions.

The centerpiece is an analysis of Harry Truman and what went into his policies towards Palestine. Mead notes that Truman was very unpopular in his own party after FDR's death - he was reluctantly chosen as a vice presidential candidate to help Roosevelt get elected in 1944 - and that Truman had a great deal on his plate: political pressure from the Left, including from the very popular former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a State Department that disagreed with Truman's ideas, a war-depleted Great Britain that wanted to hold onto some Middle East oil fields to help regain money and power, a devastated Europe that needed to be helped without the danger of a new menace arising, and a Soviet Union that had been an ally and looked to be becoming an enemy again, but which many American Leftists preferred to Britain. Truman needed to balance these with many domestic concerns and his own weakness as President.

The Jewish lobby, and keeping Jews happy, was very far down on his priority list.

Mead busts myths right and left - for example, he notes that the State Department's opposition to a Jewish state was more out of concern that the Jews would certainly lose any war and there would be a new Jewish humanitarian and refugee crisis than any pro-Arab tilt. And he also destroys the myth the Harry Truman's meeting with Chaim Weizmann arranged by his old business partner, Eddie Jacobson, was critical in changing Truman's mind about the Jewish state - it notes that the US announced it opposition to the partition plan a day after that meeting in March 1948. Mead notes that Weizmann may have convinced Truman that the Jewish forces were better armed and prepared than the State Department thought, so the meeting may have had an effect, but this was not the Queen Esther moment that Zionist sources like to portray it as.

The entire book is this way - looking at all the factors that went into decisions, some of which were far afield from the Middle East itself.

Mead is scrupulously unbiased and hardly a right wing Zionist (he supports a two state solution and is very sympathetic to Palestinian Arabs). The overriding theme of the book is that Jews have not been as critical in important decisions as the many books written by Zionists and Vulcanists have implied. Sometimes the context that Mead adds to an episode goes on for tens of pages; in this sense this is almost a general history of American foreign relations and the different streams of thought behind it.

Even though the role of Jews in this history is far more limited than had been previously assumed, to me the story is no less remarkable. On the contrary.

Four years ago, I gave a lecture at a Queens synagogue for Yom Haatzmaut. Given the venue, instead of concentrating on the facts as I do in this site, I spoke about the miracles behind Israel's rebirth - the improbable coincidences that set the stage for the English speaking Christian world to be interested in Jewish return to Israel, the improbable set of circumstances that led to the Balfour Declaration, and the almost unexplainable turn of the Soviet Union toward Zionism in exactly the time period of 1947 and 1948 when it mattered most (a topic Mead goes into here.) To me, seeing the intricate sets of circumstances that all happened to converge to US and Soviet support of Israel when it was most needed is more incredible than any story about Jewish genius that could have helped bring it about.

The book is long, and the necessary context is at times lengthy. I was surprised that the biggest crisis in US-Israel relations, the 1956 Sinai war, is barely described. But Arc of a Covenant is an essential and important book that explains the history of the US-Israel relationship - through Donald Trump - much better than any other I've seen.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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08/14 Links: Who speaks for the Arab world about Israel? Biden under pressure to suspend Iran talks after Rushdie attack, weak condemnation

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Who speaks for the Arab world about Israel?

Israeli diplomats at the United Nations often speak of how their Arab colleagues talk one way about the conflict in public and very differently in private. The United Nations can be dismissed as a mere talking shop with no power. But that ignores the genuine damage that U.N. agencies can do to Israel and to aid those boycotting and trying to destroy it.

Even if Arab statements at the world body were merely a cynical show, the fact that they feel it is necessary to behave this way is not insignificant.

Public opinion in Egypt and Jordan is still heavily anti-Semitic and lags far behind their country’s leaders when it comes to the acceptance of Israel. Popular culture in the Arab world is also still hostile to Israel and Jews. There is no sign of a popular groundswell backing an alliance or closer ties. On the contrary, even governments that have made peace are wary of going too far when it comes to abandoning the Palestinian desire for Israel’s destruction. Authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Jordan and in the Gulf don’t depend on popular approval. But they are acutely conscious that by getting too close to Israel, they are giving ammunition to radicals backed by Iran who seek their overthrow.

Saudi Arabia’s modernizing ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmon, has embraced closer under-the-table ties with Israel though that has stopped short of normalization. But even the Saudis fear the possibility of a restive Arab street. That is accentuated by justified worries that a new and even weaker nuclear deal between the West and Iran, which may be concluded soon, will reinforce the impression that the theocrats in Tehran—and not the moderates in Riyadh or Cairo—are the “strong horse” of the region. A new pact will strengthen Iran’s economy and military, and could also help Iran sway opinion in those states that have relations with Israel.

Recognizing the persistence of Arab and Muslim hostility to Israel doesn’t negate the historic importance of the Abraham Accords. Indeed, as Jason Greenblatt, the Trump administration’s Middle East peace envoy, told me in an interview, the question to ask about the Saudis is not what they haven’t done but the distance they have traveled from their former stance of unremitting hostility.

Still, the optimistic notion that all the barriers between Israel and the Arab and Muslim worlds are coming down is, at best, premature. Jew-hatred is still far more popular than acceptance of Israel. As long as that is true—and the governments that made peace are dictatorial and don’t reflect the popular will of their peoples—the progress that has already been made towards true peace cannot be considered irreversible. That is a sobering thought that should inform Israeli strategy as well as those elsewhere who are under the misapprehension that the conflict over its right to exist is over.

Why Was Ilhan Omar’s Antisemitism Erased by the New York Times and Washington Post?

Connection between media coverage and rising antisemitism?
With antisemitism on the rise, the way the media report on it has become crucial in order to prevent more incidents by prominent public figures falling through the cracks.

The media has reported relatively accurately on Marjorie Greene’s hate-filled ramblings in part because her brand of Judeophobia is more traditional, and hence easier to spot. Meanwhile, Ilhan Omar expresses her anti-Jewish animus in a newer, more subtle way – by delegitimizing the world’s only Jewish state.

As a result, media coverage of her controversial remarks has been spotty at best.

Guided by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, journalists would make better-informed decisions in choosing which stories to cover and how to cover them. This is all the more important given that antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories are being spread by individuals across the political spectrum.

These leaders must be held to account for their words and actions.

Biden under pressure to suspend Iran talks after Rushdie attack, weak condemnation

The attack comes more than 30 years after Iran's late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for his death in response to Rushdie's book, "causing Rushdie to require round-the-clock security at various points in his life.

According to Fox News, Rubio was joined by several other lawmakers and prominent figures on the Right who pressed President Joe Biden to end his effort to restore the 2015 nuclear deal, pointing a finger at Iran for the attempted murder.

"Iran's leaders have been calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie for decades," Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted. "We know they're trying to assassinate American officials today. Biden needs to immediately end negotiations with this terrorist regime."

"This White House statement on Salman Rushdie is appalling," author Gary Weiss described the White House's reaction to the attack. "No mention is made of Iran putting a price on his head. Or that the fatwa was reaffirmed by the ayatollah in 2005 and in 2019. Is Joe Biden is THAT anxious to move ahead with the lousy JCPOA?"

In his statement condemning the attack, Biden said "Salman Rushdie – with his insight into humanity, with his unmatched sense for story, with his refusal to be intimidated or silenced – stands for essential, universal ideals," but did not mention Iran or the fatwa against him.

"The silence of @POTUS in response to the attempted murder of Salman Rushdie looks increasingly the result of one thing: A desperation to return to the Iran deal," Foundation for Defense of Democracies CEO Mark Dubowitz tweeted. "American desperation increases regime aggression. It always has."

Fox News said that "a White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital that President Biden has been clear he will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon and that the best way to ensure that happens is through diplomacy." Although Iran's current Supreme Leader Ali Khameneihas ostensibly tried to play down the decree from the 1980s, the state-controlled media had jubilant reporting in the wake of the attack, including on the paper that is considered a mouthpiece of the chief ayatollah, calling him an "apostate" over his "blasphemous" writings.

Today, I am a man (under international law.) It's EoZ's 18th birthday!

This blog began on August 14, 2004.

At the beginning, it was mostly links to articles that looked interesting to me, with brief comments. But soon it became more like it is today, a place to find news and analysis about the Middle East and antisemitism that you cannot find anywhere else.

Here's what the blog header looked like in January, 2006: (I don't have any earlier snapshots)

And in 2008:

EoZ has grown a lot since then, and I'd like to thank my loyal readers and fans, as well as columnists, for making it a success.

Thanks!

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Amira Hass in Haaretz published a detailed account of the Gazans who died in Operation Breaking Dawn and the circumstances of each death. I disagree with several of her conclusions, and she doesn't identify all of their affiliations with terror groups, but on the whole it is a reasonably fair article that squarely blames Islamic Jihad for the deaths of 19 civilians including 12 children, far more than were killed in Israeli attacks that were targeting terrorists and military targets.

Despite Palestinian media attributing all deaths to Israeli attacks, Gazans know well that a very high number of victims stemmed from failed rocket launches by Islamic Jihad.

The high number of fatalities from so-called internal fire has embittered Palestinians, some Gazans told Haaretz.

Amira Hass is a reliably anti-Israel reporter for Haaretz, often quoted by anti-Zionist activists and faux "human rights" professionals.

Which is why this article is being nearly universally ignored by the anti-Israel crowd who have insisted that every dead child was "murdered" by Israel - and fundraised based on that lie.

The only exception I could find was James Zogby, prominent Arab American and pollster, who took advantage of the fact that the Haaretz article is only visible to subscribers - so he misrepresented the article as saying that all the civilians were "murdered " by Israel.

Mainstream media journalists, who follow Haaretz religiously, have also ignored this story that damns Islamic Jihad for its responsibility for the bulk of the civilians killed. At best they have maintained a "he said, she said" narrative where Israel tells the truth and the Palestinians deny it.

It is essentially a conspiracy of silence to make sure that the world doesn't learn the truth, outside of the one failed rocket attack Israel documented in Jabalia.

But Arabic-language media has no such qualms.

Arabic sites, including the influential UK-based Al Quds, have translated and published the Haaretz article. It was also translated in the popular NABD news aggregator. The article is even in one Palestinian media outlet that regularly translates Hebrew articles into Arabic, as well as in "Palestine Forum."

The Arab world, including Palestinians, is being more honest about Islamic Jihad's culpability in the deaths of children than the Western mainstream media has been.

The worst of all in attempting to hide these deaths are the very "human rights groups" whose job is to protect these civilians. They know the truth very well but have done everything they can to hide it.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The anti-Israel Left makes up new laws, and ignores international law, when it comes to Israel

+972 Magazine has an article about how awful and immoral the IDF is.

The Israeli news site Ynet quoted army officials boasting that the ratio between “non-combatants” and combatants killed was “the best of all the operations.” And yet, Israel admits that it killed at least 11 people who had nothing to do with militant activities, including a five-year-old girl.

Yes, a five year old girl who was near a top Islamic Jihad target was killed. She was not the target. If there was a way to attack the target without killing the girl, the IDF would have. (Indeed, during Breaking Dawn, Israel did abort attacks on legitimate targets when civilians were around - as long as they could wait and attack the same target later without the civilians.) Since it couldn't attack the legitimate target without killing the girl, she was unfortunately killed as well.

These are the laws of armed conflict. The presence of civilians do not make a military target immune from attack. The fact that there was a five year old girl near the Islamic Jihad commander does not, under any interpretation of international law, mean that Israel must not attack the commander.

The laws of armed conflict are designed to protect civilians without impeding military efficiency in any way. Those words come from the International Committee of the Red Cross, no tme.

And it has to be that way, because otherwise terrorist groups can just ensure that they are well embedded with civilians and can then act with impunity.

That appears to be what +972 wants:

Dana — who asked to use a pseudonym, like all the former soldiers interviewed for this article — is a kindergarten teacher who lives in a wood-furnished apartment full of philosophy books in central Tel Aviv. During her military service, she took part in an assassination operation in which a five-year-old boy was killed in Gaza.

“When I served in the Gaza Division, we were following someone from Hamas, because [the army] knew he was hiding rockets,” she said. “They made a decision to eliminate him.”

Dana served as a signal traffic analysis officer in the operations room, where her job was to confirm that the missile had hit the right person. “We sent out a UAV to follow the man to kill him,” she said, “but we saw that he was with his son. A boy who was five or six years old, I think.

“....They killed the Hamas military operative, and the little boy who was next to him.”

Unless they had a way that they could kill the Hamas operative without killing the boy, this is not only a legal but also a moral decision, albeit tragic. It is a decision any army would make.

But to some, Israel must be held to much higher standards that every other nation. A single civilian killed among a hundred terrorists makes the entire operation immoral, according to them.

And endangering Israeli civilians as a result because of the resultant attacks that would or could happen by not attacking the terrorists? That is not part of the anti-Israel crowd's moral calculus.

That's not the only way this article demands Israel go beyond international law:

The army also admitted that it shoots unarmed people, according to a female officer who gave an interview to Ynet after the latest onslaught. “The [PIJ] operative came down from the position as he was unarmed, and I opened fire,” she said. “When he fell, I fired more.”

Legal combatants are any member of the armed forces (outside medical and religious personnel.) These include those who aid the fighting, not only those with literal weapons. A lookout, a messenger between combat forces, a radio operator helping aim mortars - all are considered combatants under international law, even when unarmed.

It is easy for Israel-hating propagandists to take an incident of collateral damage and frame it as a war crime. It doesn't make it true. From all indications, this operation was as moral as possible in warfare.

That is not good enough for inveterate inciters against Israel.

(The article mentions some other issues that are morally problematic if true. But they aren't publishing them to force the IDF to improve its policies - they are publishing them to incite more hatred against Israel.)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

08/13 Links: Salman Rushdie on a ventilator, likely to lose an eye after on-stage attack; Senior UN official loses her post after tweet condemning PIJ rocket fire at Israel

From Ian:

Salman Rushdie on a ventilator, likely to lose an eye after on-stage attack

Author Salman Rushdie is likely to lose one of his eyes and is currently on a ventilator after he was attacked on stage at a literary event in upstate New York on Friday, a report said.

“The news is not good,” the 75-year-old writer’s agent, Andrew Wylie, told The New York Times.

“Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged,” said Wylie.

Rushdie, who is still unable to speak, was attacked by a lone man while speaking at an event at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, NY, about 55 miles south of Buffalo.

He was scheduled to speak about the United States as a place for exiled authors “as a home for freedom of expression,” according to the institute. After the stabbing, he was transported by helicopter to a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he underwent surgery.

A witness who was in the audience told The Post that Rushdie tried to run off the stage, and the two men scuffled before audience members rushed onstage to subdue the attacker.

Approximately 2,500 people were in the audience at the time.

Rushdie’s alleged attacker, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, of Fairview, New Jersey, was arrested at the scene by a state trooper who was assigned to the lecture.

Douglas Murray: The best response to Salman Rushdie’s stabbing

It must be said that Rushdie has dealt with all this and more heroically. He does not complain about his lot. He does not make himself into a victim. Instead he has displayed the simple qualities of a hero. In a recent series of Curb Your Enthusiasm he even joked about it. Most impressive, perhaps, was that his well of creativity has never been dimmed. From Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) right up to his forthcoming Victory City the assaults of the illiterate on him and his work never managed to stop that work.

The attack onstage in New York today is still a subject of confusion. Initial reports said the author had walked off stage with assistance. Now it appears that his assailant stabbed him in the neck. Rushdie has been helicoptered to hospital and is currently be fighting for his life.

In his 2012 memoir – Joseph Anton – Rushdie wrote about the fatwa years. The book is a detailed chronicle of all the people who let him down: the MPs who promised support and then whipped up mobs; the political figures of left and right who said that while the Ayatollah may have caused an offence so had the novelist; the authorities who allowed Muslims in Bradford and others on television to call for a British subject´s murder with impunity.

But it is also a chronicle of the people who supported him, the friends who stood by him and the public figures who stood up for him. One of them was the American writer Susan Sontag, who helped organise a public reading of Rushdie´s work in New York. As Sontag said, the moment called for some basic 'civic courage'. It is striking how much of that civic courage has evaporated in recent years. Today no one would be able to write – much less get published – a novel like The Satanic Verses. Perhaps nobody has tried. From novels to cartoons a de facto Islamic blasphemy law settled across the West in the wake of the Rushdie affair. The attack today will doubtless exacerbate that.

So apart from willing, wishing or praying for Rushdie´s recovery, the only other thing that can be done now is to display that civic courage that Sontag called for three decades ago. The Satanic Verses is a complex but brilliant novel. It includes an hilarious and devastating reimagining of the origins of the Quran. I hope that people will read it, and read from it, more than ever. Because what happened in New York today cannot be allowed to win. The illiterate cannot be allowed to dictate the rules of literature. The enemies of free expression cannot be allowed to quash it. The attacker should get exactly the opposite of the response he will have hoped for. Not just hopefully a failure to silence Rushdie, but a failure to limit what the rest of us are allowed to think, read, hear and say.

JPost Editorial: Iran needs to be shown that it cannot win through aggression

On Friday, Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born novelist who spent years in hiding after Iran urged Muslims to kill him because of his writing, was stabbed in the neck and torso at a lecture in New York State. He was airlifted to a hospital, was placed on a ventilator and was said to be in serious condition.

Stunned attendees helped wrest the man from Rushdie, who had fallen to the floor. A New York State Police trooper providing security at the event arrested the attacker. Police identified the suspect as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from Fairview, New Jersey, who bought a pass to the event.

Matar reportedly was caught carrying a fake driver’s license with the name Hassan Mughniyah. The first name is the same as Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and the last name is the same as Imad Mughniyah, the Hezbollah military commander killed in a CIA-Mossad operation in 2008.

The attempt on Rushdie’s life was made just days after the United States Justice Department announced that it was indicting a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps for attempting to hire hit men to murder former national security advisor John Bolton in an apparent retaliation attempt for the January 2020 assassination of IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.

Shahram Poursafi, aka Mehdi Rezayi, a resident of Tehran, attempted to pay individuals in the US $300,000 to murder Bolton in Washington or Maryland on behalf of the Quds Force, according to court documents.

“The Justice Department has the solemn duty to defend our citizens from hostile governments who seek to hurt or kill them,” said Assistant Attorney-General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “This is not the first time we have uncovered Iranian plots to exact revenge against individuals on US soil – and we will work tirelessly to expose and disrupt every one of these efforts.”

“Iran has a history of plotting to assassinate individuals in the US it deems a threat, but the US government has a longer history of holding accountable those who threaten the safety of our citizens,” said Executive Assistant Director Larissa L. Knapp of the FBI’s National Security Branch.

Israel says Rushdie stabbing ‘an attack on our values,’ evidence of Iran’s brutality

Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Saturday night condemned the attempted murder of British-Indian author Salman Rushdie the previous day in the United States as an attack on freedom and the consequence of years of incitement by the Iranian regime.

“The attack on Salman Rushdie is an attack on our freedoms and values. It is the result of decades of incitement led by the extremist regime in Tehran,” Lapid tweeted Saturday night.

“On behalf of the people of Israel, we wish him a full and speedy recovery.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Idan Roll also denounced the Iranian regime following the attack on Rushdie during a speaking event in the town of Chautauqua in New York state.

“Yesterday’s shocking attack on Salman Rushdie is further evidence of the brutality & extremism of the Iranian regime, which has gone after and persecuted freethinkers everywhere for decades,” said Roll.

“Iran is a threat to the free world,” he continued.