Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, January 19, 2023

Harvard Kennedy School refutes @KenRoth lies; its written policy prohibits donor influence over hiring. Why has no one reported this?

Former Human Rights Watch director Ken Roth was interviewed on NPR and continued his jihad of falsely accusing Harvard University of denying him a fellowship because of rich donors objecting to his "criticism of Israel."

ROTH: ...the Carr Center called me up and sheepishly had to admit that the dean had vetoed my fellowship because of my criticism of Israel....Apparently, what they objected to in my case was that I'm not partial. I'm an impartial critic of Israeli repression. And that seems to have been the stigma that the Israeli government didn't like, that its supporters didn't like. And that was why my fellowship was vetoed.

FADEL: What does this say about freedom of academic expression on campus? This is an Ivy League campus in the United States.

ROTH: This would suggest that Harvard is allowing donors to compromise intellectual independence at the university.

The original Michael Massing article in The Nation - which was itself biased and filled with baseless allegations - did not say that the Carr Center told Roth he was rejected for "criticism of Israel" but because Roth had an "'anti-Israel bias'; Roth’s tweets on Israel were of particular concern." There is a world of difference between "bias" and "criticism," bias means Roth is not impartial, as he claims he is.

But there has been not a single thread of evidence that Harvard's decision was based on donor pressure. That was completely made up in The Nation article. Roth - who clearly coordinated his anti-Harvard campaign with the writer of that article - has deliberately been pushing that narrative even though the entire theory is based on antisemitic tropes of rich Jews controlling how people could think.

At the very end of the NPR piece comes a piece of information that we had not seen before:

Kennedy School media relations director James Smith said the decision not to offer Roth a fellowship was based on an evaluation of his potential contributions to the school. Smith also said “[It is Harvard Kennedy School’s explicit and consistent policy that] we do not engage with donors or funders in our deliberations or decisions related to fellowship appointments."

(Bracketed quote fragment from this Daily Beast article.]

So Harvard's Kennedy School forcefully denies that donors are part of any decision-making. They have refuted The Nation and Roth's entire accusation - and yet this refutation is only mentioned as an afterthought, after allowing Roth to freely spread his antisemitic conspiracy theories of rich Jewish donors controlling HKS' academics.

But it turns out that even if the Kennedy School was not pro-active in getting this message out while Roth has been spouting his lies, the information about Harvard's policy has been on its website for years.

Any reporter could have looked at Harvard Kennedy School's statement on transparent engagement and funding, written in 2020. HKS explicitly says that funders do not and cannot have any influence over academic matters, including hiring:

It bears emphasis that HKS’s funders do not control the way we carry out our work. For all of our activities conducted using external funding, we protect our academic integrity and independence by maintaining full intellectual control: HKS faculty and staff make the decisions about research methodologies and policy findings, about the content of our courses, and about whom we accept into our community as students, faculty, staff, and visitors. No funder is allowed to interfere with those decisions, and all of our funders are aware of that point. We work to ensure that public communications about gifts and grants are clear that HKS is the intellectual driver of the activities.

Written policies have the force of law. The institutions that do not follow their own policies can be sued. Any major corporation or institution takes them very seriously, and Harvard clearly does based on how extensive these and other policies are.

The idea that donors pressured Harvard is complete fiction - that has been spread by media that also happens to share Roth's anti-Israel bias.

If donor pressure wasn't the reason for Harvard's decision not to hire Roth, then what was? Well, NPR quoted the reason: they did not think that he would provide a positive contribution to the school.

It is also notable that Dean Doug Elmendorf who vetoed Roth's proposed fellowship has spoken about this exact topic, about the potential downsides of inviting someone who can tarnish HKS' reputation, in a 2018 speech:

One key reason to invite visitors with a wide range of views is that a vigorous discussion of their actions and words can illuminate crucial issues in public policy and leadership, and thereby improve policy and leadership over time. Another key reason to invite visitors with a wide range of views is that the values of our community, and assessments of who is living up those values or not, are often matters of debate themselves.

At the same time, inviting visitors inevitably conveys, to at least some people, positive recognition by Harvard Kennedy School, whether we intend it or not. That positive recognition is greater for visitors who receive a particular title or honor, such as giving a named lecture or becoming a “Fellow.” We should not ignore the effects of such recognition in inviting visitors or choosing visitors to give named lectures or become Fellows. I learned this lesson the hard way. As a consequence of my learning, we are now adopting a set of standards and processes for naming Fellows, including the ideas that people proposing the appointment of a Fellow should affirm that the candidate has a professional record consistent with the values of public service to which the Kennedy School aspires, and that the dean may ask an ad hoc faculty committee to evaluate a proposed Fellow.

As part of HKS' stated policies, because of the potential of Roth to embarrass Harvard Kennedy School, Dean Elmendorf almost certainly created an ad hoc faculty committee to discuss the pros and cons of allowing Roth to become a fellow. They decided that the cons of hiring someone with a track record of lies and bias outweigh the pros.

And one does not need to prove Roth's anti-Israel bias to see that he would not have provided a positive contribution to the school. His constant lies about this Harvard episode and his baseless accusations themselves prove that Roth has no regard for the truth or fairness.

No decent school would want a vindictive liar on their staff.

Unless, of course, that person is only hired to attract rich donors to begin with.

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!

There was a brief international incident at the Temple Mount on Tuesday:

Jordan’s ambassador to Israel visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on Tuesday after earlier leaving the holy site in protest at being held up by police at the entrance, prompting a diplomatic protest from Amman.

The Jordanian foreign ministry said it summoned Israel’s envoy Eitan Surkis after Ghassan Majali was allegedly “refused entry” to the Temple Mount. A statement from the ministry said Surkis was handed a letter of condemnation.

But Israeli police — and also Jordanian reports — indicated that rather than refusing him entry, cops briefly held him up since he hadn’t coordinated the visit with them.

The Jordanian Foreign Ministry issued a statement rejecting that visits of Jordanians to the site need to be coordinated with Israel:

The political advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, Ambassador Ahmed Al-Deek, considered the statements of the Israeli spokesman a flagrant violation of the existing historical, political and legal situation in the mosque.

He noted that the attempt to justify the Jordanian Ambassador Ghassan Majali's objection to the reason for the absence of "prior coordination" is also a change in the legal status of the mosque.

Ambassador Al-Deek confirmed that the Islamic Endowments Department is exclusively responsible for organizing entry and exit to the mosque, and is also responsible for all mosque affairs and its courtyards, and that Muslims do not need any prior coordination or permission from the occupation police to enter the mosque.

So Jordan claims that Israeli demands for prior coordination is a new demand, and a violation of the status quo on the holy site.

Is that true? Of course not.

In 2012, Director of the Jordanian Public Security Lieutenant General Hussein Majali visited the site "under strict Israeli guard," Arab media reported. No one complained about that - the controversy about that visit is that one of the Israeli police was a woman whose hair was uncovered.

In 2013, Prince Hashem bin Al-Hussein, King Abdullah's brother, visited the Temple Mount, also "under the escort of Israeli security and police," entering through the Mughrabi Gate that visitors use. No one said a word about any violation of the status quo.

Because it was, and is, the status quo.

In 2021, however, Jordan started signaling they wanted to change the status quo. Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah canceled his planned visit to the Mount at the last minute because Israeli police were going to accompany him as he entered, and he felt that this was an insult.

They didn't say at the time that Israel was violating the status quo, but that the existing status quo was unacceptable to them. (You may recall that Jordan briefly blocked Bibi Netanyahu from visiting the UAE by not giving his flight permission to cross their airspace, in a diplomatic temper tantrum.)

This week's incident must be seen in that context. Jordan wants to change the status quo, and how better to do that than to insist that Israel is violating the status quo?

That's how gaslighting works, after all.

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!

01/18 Links Pt2: Moshe Dayan’s Tragic Blunder; Mahmoud Abbas’ Dissertation; Why Israel’s enemies will hate the Louvre; No room for anti-Israel bias at Kennedy School

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: Moshe Dayan’s Tragic Blunder

There is an argument to be made for permitting wider access and the right to pray for Jews at the site of the biblical Temples. In part, this argument charges that defense minister Moshe Dayan, in electing not to fully realize Israel’s sovereignty over the Mount immediately after its breathtaking capture in the 1967 war, helped facilitate the resonant Palestinian lie that the Jews have no connection to our ancient homeland—for surely, if the Temple Mount was historically ours, religiously ours, we would not have handed it back to them.

Dayan self-evidently thought otherwise. Anxious to avoid a full-on confrontation with the entire Muslim world, and utilizing the halachic argument that Jews should not set foot on the Mount for fear of defiling the sacred ground where the Temple and its Holy of Holies once stood, he allowed Jordan’s Muslim Waqf to continue to administer the compound’s holy places.

Netanyahu, Horovitz continued, had “wisely” adopted Dayan’s approach previously, but now the prime minister had “sanctioned” an act of “potential pyromania.” Horovitz’s account leaves out the fact that the decision of the ardently secular Dayan was founded on total disregard for what the Temple Mount meant to religious Jews.

After his paratroopers broke through Jordanian lines in 1967 and reached the site, Mordechai Gur exultantly exclaimed that “the Temple Mount is in our hands.” Dayan, in contrast, infamously reflected, “What do I need this Vatican for?” As the Israeli journalist Nadav Sharagai has documented, Dayan’s actions were based in the presumption that the Temple Mount is not of any religious significance to Jews at all:
Dayan thought at the time, and years later committed his thoughts to writing, that since the Mount was a “Muslim prayer mosque,” while for Jews it was no more than “a historical site of commemoration of the past…one should not hinder the Arabs behaving there as they do now and one should recognize their right as Muslims to control the site.”

But of course the Temple Mount is more, for Jews, than a commemorative locale of the past: It is the holiest site in Judaism, the one toward which Jews pray all over the world, because they believe that God dwells there in a special way. Dayan’s decision did indeed facilitate Palestinian claims, rampant today, that no Temple ever stood in Jerusalem and that the entire Jewish connection to Jerusalem is a fabrication. This is why more and more religious Jews are realizing that visiting the site is essential. It is not only far-right figures who are visiting the Mount. Entering certain sections of the Mount in a manner sanctioned by Jewish law is becoming more and more mainstream among Orthodox Jews. And that is why opposition to Jewish access to the Mount is growing more and more frantic by the day.

All this points to a profound irony. The return of Netanyahu has been met with the journalistic gnashing of teeth and the rhetorical rending of garments by writers and public figures about the danger that the (democratically elected) government of Israel poses to democracy. And yet it is these very critics who are often so dismissive of the most elemental of democratic injustices: denying Jews in Israel the right to visit, and to pray at, Judaism’s holiest place. Perhaps, when it comes to the history of the democratic liberties of mankind in the eyes of those who piously intone on the subject, it is only the rights of religious Jews that do not matter.

Mahmoud Abbas’ Dissertation

On Feb. 1, 1972, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union issued a directive “On further measures to fight anti-Soviet and anti-communist activities of international Zionism.” The social sciences section of the Soviet Academy of Sciences soon established a permanent commission for the coordination of scientific criticism of Zionism, to be housed at the academy’s prestigious Institute of Oriental Studies. Over the next 15 years, the IOS would serve as an important partner in the state’s fight against the imaginary global Zionist conspiracy that Soviet security services believed was sabotaging the USSR in the international arena and at home. In 1982, the IOS would grant the doctoral status to one Mahmoud Abbas, upon the defense of his thesis The Relationship Between Zionists and Nazis, 1933-1945.

Abbas’ dissertation has been a subject of considerable interest over the years. The thesis isn’t publicly available: By all accounts, it is kept in an IOS special storage facility requiring special authorization to access. But if one visits the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, one can easily get the Palestinian leader’s so-called avtoreferat—an extended dissertation abstract. Written to the standards of the Soviet State Commission for Academic Degrees and Titles and authored by the candidate, the 19-page document outlines the dissertation’s relevance, methodology, main arguments and unique contribution to the field. It also provides a literature review and lists the individuals and institutions that were involved in shepherding the work through to completion. It therefore offers a peek not only into Mahmoud Abbas’ academic accomplishment, but also into the system that produced it.

Using the social sciences to support political and ideological agendas set by the Communist Party was a matter of course in the USSR. Entire academic disciplines had been established to grant scholarly legitimacy to the state’s guiding ideology. “Scientific atheism,” for an example, was tasked with proving scientifically that God did not exist and that religion was the opiate of the masses. “Scientific communism” was supposed to supply scientific proof that communism was the superior stage of social and economic development and would supersede both Soviet socialism and global capitalism. When, instead, capitalism superseded Soviet socialism and the cushy budgets that sustained these disciplines vanished, they, too, quietly dissolved.

As a field, “scientific anti-Zionism” never took root in the Soviet academy as broadly as the other two subjects. Like them, it died as soon as its primary client—the Soviet state—disappeared. Soon a million Soviet Jews resettled in Israel and the newly independent former Soviet states restored diplomatic relations with the country.

I grew up in Akademgorodok—a suburb of the Siberian city of Novosibirsk that was home to the Siberian Division of the Academy of Sciences. Adults around me lived and breathed science—real science, like physics and biology. It was well-known that portions of the academy were corrupted by ideological agendas. The antisemitism in its math division and elsewhere was a fact of life. Humanities and social sciences in particular were ruled by ideological priorities. But seeing the intellectual corruption that is evident in the story of Abbas’ dissertation is disturbing nonetheless.

Why Israel’s enemies will hate the Louvre

The Palestinian Authority and its supporters have a new enemy: the Louvre.

The world’s most-visited museum, the famous French institution that holds some of the greatest works of art and antiquities, is likely to find itself on anti-Israel boycott lists around the world.

This is because among the Louvre’s storied collections is a slab of stone with an inscription that affirms the ancient connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.

The stone, known as the Mesha Stele, was first discovered in 1868 near the Dead Sea, but its inscription, written in the language of the ancient Moabites, was only partially understandable due to centuries of wear and damage. The inscription recounts a war between King Mesha of Moab and the Jews—the same conflict described in the third chapter of the Book of Kings. In addition, the words “House of David” appeared to be included in the inscription, but damage to the artifact meant this could not be proved conclusively.

Linguists and historians associated with a University of Southern California research project recently analyzed the artifact with a new technology called Reflectance Transformation Imaging that “takes digital images of an artifact from different angles and then combined to create a precise, three-dimensional digital rendering of the piece,” according to an article by two of the researchers, André Lemaire and Jean-Philippe Delorme, in the latest issue of Biblical Archeology Review.

This allowed the damaged section of the stele to be read. As was long suspected, it indeed referred to the “House of David.” So, once again, archaeological discoveries have affirmed what was already written long ago in the Hebrew Bible.

Do you know what is not mentioned in the inscription? “Palestine” or “Palestinians.”

UN resolutions that slap Israel’s hands for protecting its own citizens, are legion. The latest UN resolution censures Israel for sanctioning the PA and Hamas. The sanctions in question are a reduction in Israeli aid to the two regimes, who use that aid to reward terrorists who murder Jews by way of its pay-for-slay scheme. Israel chooses not to fund the stipends to terrorists and their families that serve to incentivize and foment terror against the Israeli people. The newly-minted Netanyahu government will instead withhold aid in an amount equal to that spent on pay-to-slay and give much of it to Israeli victims of terror and their families.

This, it appears, is something that the UN cannot countenance. The thought of Jews refusing to fund their own murders, God forbid, makes them livid. For this reason, over ninety UN member states signed a document damning Israel for supporting (Jewish) victims instead of the (Arab) terrorists who target them.

But it’s actually far worse than that. Many of the more than 90 nations that applied their John Hancocks—can we still say that?—to this antisemitic document, actually abstained or voted against the resolution. Then they turned right around and signed on to recommending punitive measures that punish Israel for supporting victims of terror instead of terror.

The duplicity astounds!

Make up your minds, oh Jew-hating nations of the UN that voted against the resolution (or abstained) only to sign on the dotted line: Do you want us to compensate our killers or not??

What is it that you really want from us, the Israeli people? Would you rather have us work hard to pay the taxes that go to buy villas for the families of Jew-killers who were once dirt poor, and now no longer are, thanks to a generous infusion of Israeli shekels? Or do you prefer our tax-shekels to assist families who have lost their main breadwinners not through suicide and murderous hate, but by dint of their having been Jewish and alive?

The malignant intentions of the two-faced signators go far beyond wanting Israel to pay for Arab terror (!). By signing on to that resolution, the more than 90 UN member states have declared that not only do they want Arab terror incentivized, and not only do they want the Jews to pay for it, but they don’t want Jewish victims to be compensated for loss and disability.

Because Joos. Or something.

“We express our deep concern regarding the Israeli government’s decision to impose punitive measures against the Palestinian people, leadership and civil society following the request by the General Assembly of an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice,” says the misleading and moreover, disingenuous statement. Israelis sanctions are not about some nasty antisemitic drama at the Hague, but about curbing terror and assisting victims. As they well know.

Israel, as the Jewish State, has always had more enemies than friends. And the enemies are not in hiding. We know how they feel about the Jews. Their signatures are right there where we can see them. “Among those that signed the text were 24 out of the 27 European Union nations. The only three EU countries that refrained from signing were Austria, Croatia and Hungary. Even countries that are enormously supportive of Israel in international forums such as the Czech Republic and Germany signed that statement,” read the Jerusalem Post report on the resolution.

Well, guess what? Israel doesn’t give a flying Ferguson what any of them think about our plan to take 139 million shekels of what would otherwise be blood money to sustain and aid Jewish victims. They are mentally ill. But Israel is not. A) We do not have Stockholm syndrome. B) We will not pay money to would-be captors who would hold us hostage to terror.

It has been said that Europe slaughtered as many of us as they could during the Holocaust. When some of us managed to survive, they went to underwrite the creation of the Jewish State. It wasn’t guilt money, according to the theory, but an attempt to concentrate the Jews, to contain them in a single space, making them a smaller target, where they could be targeted and eliminated once and for all. This is the reason they are anxious to cut a deal with Iran. Iran is their hit man, and no one can say that Europe defaults on money owed them for services rendered: in this case, Jewish genocide.

Newsflash: it ain’t gonna happen. We aren’t “Jews with trembling knees,” but the warrior Jews of latter, biblical days—strong, proud Jews who slayed giants and all those who threatened them and tried to steal their God-given land.

Europe and others who want to ethnically cleanse Israel of any Jewish presence will ultimately fail as they always have. Modern Jews who lack the stamina to make the cut—those who no longer identify primarily as Jews—will die out, but a small nucleus of the faithful will remain. Most of them will live in Israel and have amazing Jewish children, with the result that the Jewish State will be stronger than ever, and able to resist all attempts at eradicating the Jews from the land that belongs to them by right.

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!

Susana Khalil describes herself as "Politologist and Researcher; Columnist and Activist; Founder of the Canaán Association."

She wrote a column in Al Mayadeen English today that is a love letter to murdering Jews.

By renouncing the armed struggle, part of an imaginary, Il Fidaí (Freedom fighter), was lost. The raison d'être of the Palestinian Liberation Cause was disfigured. It disfigured this sacred feeling, extinguished the burning fire of resistance, spoiled the sweetness of dignity, and erased poetry and memory. We have become objective, yet objectivity does not really exist, and we have become marketing, elegant submissives. We have lost our rebelliousness. Armed struggle is no guarantee of liberation, but neither is peaceful struggle. The two must operate as a weave, one and the other is one and the same. no one has the right to impose on the native Palestinian their way of struggle.

How can Israel dare oppose the sacred feeling of Palestinians as they blow up Jewish children in pizza shops? How monstrous is Israel to try to stop the sweetness of the dignity Palestinians experience when they shoot sniper bullets at the heads of infants? How unspeakably awful is Israel for trying to erase the poetry of butchering rabbis with machetes?

I've seen the worst terrorist supporters justify murdering Jews, and even claim that it is their human right. I've seen the worst mass murderers turned into heroes by Palestinian society. But until now, I never saw even the most depraved, disgusting, perverted supporter of terror wax poetic about how wonderful it is to perform the act of spilling Jewish blood itself.

You may ask what, exactly, is the Canaan Association which she founded? We don't know, but she describes it as a "human rights association in Venezuela."

Yes, this person whose highest aspiration is to see Jews brutally murdered is a self-described human rights activist.

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!

01/18 Links Pt1: Unpacking the Freak Out over Israeli Politics; Lavrov says West seeking Hitler-style ‘final solution,’ sparking protests; UN Lebanon Envoy Thanks Hezbollah for ‘Tour’

From Ian:

The terror authority

The P.A. has long been a strategic threat to Israel’s security and continues to be one. It has been involved in terrorism since it was established, while Israel continues to view it as a force for stability. In fact, due to its unprecedented lack of popularity and legitimacy on the Palestinian “street,” the P.A. is moving towards destabilizing actions, such as suing Israel in the ICC, taking the lead on U.N. resolutions targeting Israel and asking the ICJ to investigate the situation in Judea and Samaria, a clear violation of its Oslo commitments.

Most important are the aforementioned P.A. payments to terrorists. Such payments have been official P.A. policy for decades. The P.A. offers stipends of between $400 to $3,500 monthly for every Palestinian terrorist who murders or attempts to murder innocent Israelis. Payments are promised in advance and wired to the terrorist in Israeli prison or the family of a terrorist killed in the course of his attack. These salaries are lifelong, and even terrorists released from Israeli prisons continue to receive them. The P.A. also guarantees released terrorists a safe position in the P.A. infrastructure, whether as a ghost employee or an actual one, alongside free healthcare and education.

For the average Palestinian, this is like winning the lottery. A lifetime monthly salary of $3,500 is four times the average Palestinian wage and eight times higher than the minimum wage. A convicted terrorist makes five times more than teachers and engineers, as much as a Palestinian supreme court judge. The security threat this presents is clear.

The P.A. also engages in blatant antisemitic incitement in its schools. Its textbooks encourage young Palestinians to think of Jihad as a praiseworthy way of life. It names squares and streets after terrorists and openly praises terrorist attacks on its social media pages.

Finally, the P.A. works to radicalize Israeli Arabs, encouraging them to engage in terrorism by paying them stipends as well. As we speak, Israeli Arab citizens are receiving monthly paychecks from the P.A. for murdering or attempting to murder their Jewish fellow citizens. This situation is now being scrutinized by a pending bill that would strip these persons of their Israeli citizenship.

Openly praising Israeli Arabs for committing violence is also part of the P.A.’s strategy. Senior Palestinian officials arrived in Israel just last week to participate in a “welcome-home festival” for a released Israeli Arab terrorist, Karim Yunes, who participated in the brutal murder of Israeli soldier Avraham Brumberg in 1980. In response, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant denied them further entry to Israeli territory.

The truth is, the P.A. is a terror-promoting entity that has long since proven its commitment to the final objective of Israel’s annihilation. Its daily actions and well-calculated policy, anchored in law and endorsed in outspoken fashion by its senior leaders, have destroyed its credibility as a peace partner.

It is time for the new Israeli government to reconsider Israel’s long-standing policy of containment and preservation of the status quo, and pursue new, creative methods of governing the Palestinians in case the P.A. fails to change its ways.

NGO Monitor: Tunnels Under Schools: NGO Human Rights’ Monitoring for Palestinian Children Ends When Israel is Not to Blame

On November 29, 2022, UNRWA issued a statement, according to which, it “recently identified a man-made cavity underneath the grounds of an UNRWA school in Gaza.” UNRWA strongly condemned the construction under its facility, calling it “a serious violation of the Agency’s neutrality and a breach of international law,” which “exposes children and Agency staff to significant security and safety risks” and “jeopardize[s] the ability of UNRWA to provide support and protection to the 1.4 million Palestine refugees in need in Gaza.”

Indeed, the all-too-common practice of Gaza-based terror groups building tunnels under civilian areas is a grave violation of the human rights of Palestinians in Gaza, putting them at risk of being harmed in an Israeli strike on a military target. The violation is ever graver when schools and children are being exploited.

As such, one would think that Palestinian NGOs – that are proud to claim the human rights mantle when accusing Israel of violating the rights of children – would unequivocally condemn the groups responsible for the tunnels. Unfortunately, these Palestinian NGOs are silent. An examination of Al-Haq’s, PCHR’s, DCI-P’s and Al-Mezan’s statements shows that they have failed to condemn the November incident, as well as similar ones concerning Palestinian terror groups’ misuse of UNRWA facilities in such a way that endangers both children and staff.

NGO Monitor has documented at least 7 additional incidents from the past 10 years, in which terror tunnels and weapon caches were discovered under UNRWA schools or in their close vicinity. In each, they were completely ignored by the aforementioned NGOs. The following are some examples:

Elliott Abrams: Jewish Hysterics and Israel’s New Government

To end where we began, accepting the actual, existing Israel does not mean applauding the new government or approving the Religious Zionist Party’s leaders or policies. The new government will make many mistakes, and some of them may be egregious. Officials like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich may surprise us and may learn in office about governing, or they may prove the fears about them to be accurate. But opposition to the policies of this government is not the issue. The real issue is whether American Jews care more about their own illusions or about the Jewish state that actually exists and still struggles each day against enemies who seek every day to kill Jews.

Yossi Klein Halevi’s advice to Israeli opponents of this new government should help us understand that a majority of Israelis want a state that is not simply democratic but more importantly is Jewish. That is the raison d’etre for the state. To repeat what he wrote: “An Israel stripped of its Jewishness would lose its reason for being, its internal cohesion and the vitality that has enabled it to survive against the odds.”

It is easy to be pessimistic about the relationship between the American Jewish community and Israel. More and more Jews are what the Pew survey of Jewish Americans in 2020 called “Jews of No Religion,” and increasing numbers are drifting away from the Jewish community and any sense of Jewish identity. As Israel becomes an increasingly Jewish state—which has actually been happening for decades—the distance between the two communities may grow. Some American Jews will certainly fall away, offended as is Hillel Halkin by what they see as too much Judaism.

But American Jews should reject “leaders” (including rabbis) whose facile arguments “privilege” (to use today’s locution) their own ideologies over the realities of the Jewish state, and over the desire of the majority of its people to live in an identifiably Jewish state. As Israel’s president reminded newly elected officials and all Israelis recently: “We have only one State of Israel.” To slander and disparage it, to speak wildly and carelessly when every word spoken may become a weapon in the hands of Israel’s enemies, is a sin that American Jews should avoid at all costs.

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: Unpacking the Freak Out over Israeli Politics

Editor, author, and columnist at the Jewish News Service and the Jerusalem Post, Ruthie Blum, joins the podcast today to explain why so many American Jews, in particular, are in a panic over the alleged threat to democracy in Israel posed by the country’s new government.

By calling the Temple Mount "Al Aqsa," Palestinians actually diminish its sanctity in Islam

What is the Arabic name for the Temple Mount?

The answer is political.

I was somewhat surprised to find out that calling the entire esplanade "Al Aqsa Mosque" (al-Masjid al-'Aqṣā) is not a new phenomenon. Some noted Muslim geographers and scholars used that term as early as the tenth century, as the word "masjid" is not a direct translation of "mosque."

E. H. Palmer noted this in an 1871 article for the Palestine Exploration Quarterly:

However, during the Mamluk and Ottoman periods, some people decided to elevate the sanctity of the esplanade even more.

"Haram" means "forbidden" in Arabic, meaning a place of the highest sanctity where certain activities like cutting down trees or killing animals are forbidden. Up until the Crusades the term referred exclusively to the mosques in Mecca and Medina. But after the Muslims regained Jerusalem from the Crusaders, there were some who wanted to elevate the area's sanctity even more to counter Christian claims on the site, and over time, they renamed the area the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary.

Not all Muslim scholars agreed. Yitzhak Reiter writes in Jerusalem and Its Role in Islamic Solidarity:

Although, as noted before, Ibn-Taymiyya refuted the haram status of the Jerusalem mosque, al-Aqsa's upgrading to haram status was successful and has prevailed. It became a commonly accepted idea and one referred to in international forums and documents.

It was, therefore, surprising that during the 1980s the Palestinians gradually abandoned the name that had been given to the Haram/Temple Mount compound in apparent honor of Jerusalem's status as third in sanctity - al-Haram al-Sharif - in favor of its more traditional name-al-Aqsa. An examination of relevant religious texts clarifies the situation: since the name al-Aqsa appears in the Quran, all Muslims around the world should be familiar with it; thus it is easier to market the al-Aqsa brand-name.

The increased use of the name al-Aqsa is particularly striking against the background of what is written on the Web site of the Jerusalem Waqf, under the leadership of (former) Palestinian mufti Sheikh Ikrima Sabri. There it is asserted that "al Masjid al-Aqsa was erroneously called by the name al-Haram al-Qudsi al-Sharif," and that the site's correct name is al-Aqsa. ... Sabri quotes Ibn-Taymiyya, who denied the existence of haram in Jerusalem, a claim that actually serves those seeking to undermine the city's sacred status. Sabri also states that Arab historians such as Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali, author of the famed fifteenth-century work on Jerusalem, do not make use of the term "haram" in connection with the al-Aqsa site.

Both Ibn-Taymiyya and Mujir al-Din were affiliated with the Hanbali School of law-the relatively more puritan stream in Islam that prevailed in Saudi Arabia. The Hanbalies rejected innovations, such as the idea of a third haram. One cannot exclude the possibility that the Saudis, who during the 1980s and 1990s donated significant funds to Islamic institutions in Jerusalem, exerted pressure on Palestinian-Muslim figures to abandon the term "haram" in favor of "al-Aqsa".

The entire claim that Jerusalem is the third holiest site in Islam is based on the idea that the Temple Mount is the third haram. By changing the name back to Al Aqsa, the Palestinians are diminishing its sanctity in Islam!

But they do it for marketing purposes - Al Aqsa is mentioned in the Quran (although almost certainly not referring to Jerusalem) and the Palestinian position is that the Quranic association with the name is a better means to incite Muslims against Jewish claims than the designation "haram."

It is all political.

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The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that a delegation from the EU visited the Temple Mount this morning, where they politely listened to anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda spouted by the head of the Waqf, Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib.

The delegation included 35 representatives and consuls from the European Union.

Al-Khatib "stressed the importance of their visit to Al-Aqsa Mosque as an Islamic mosque under the tutelage of King Abdullah II, the guardian of Islamic and Christian holy sites in Al-Quds Al-Sharif."

Al-Khatib accompanied the 35 representatives and consuls on a tour where he described "the occupation’s attempt to change the status quo" on the site.

He then told them that the only ones that should be changing the status quo were the Muslims, claiming that there were many Hashemite construction projects there that Israel prevents from being completed.

In a sane world, new construction projects on the Temple Mount would be considered a violation of the status quo.

Al Khatib then described his description of the status quo: he called for a "return to the historic status quo of the mosque as an Islamic mosque for Muslims alone, with its 144 dunams, with all its prayer corners, courtyards and complexes, below the ground and above it."

According to Jordan News, the delegation aimed to "confirm European support for the legal and historical status quo of the holy site and its Hashemite Custodianship."

No one seemed to disagree with the Waqf's definition of that status quo as not allowing any Jews to ascend.

The signed agreement between Jordan and Israel does not give the Hashemites custodianship over the Temple Mount. It says "Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines."

Which means that Israel makes the decisions, while respecting and giving priority to Jordanian wishes. But the language makes it clear that the ultimate decisions are up to Israel.

Notice also that the agreement says nothing about Jordanian influence on Christian sites, which al-Khatib claimed are under Waqf custodianship as well.

I doubt that anyone from this delegation has ever read the actual agreement, which is the only document that matters under international law - an agreement that explicitly gives Jews "freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance."

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Hamas media explains why they released the video of captive Avera Mengistu now

Israeli pundits are falling over each other to explain why Hamas chose to release the video showing that captive Avera Mengistu is alive, when they normally don't give proof of life without demanding something in return.

But Hamas media has its own analysis, which is probably more accurate because, well, they are controlled by Hamas.

Majid Al-Zibda writes in Hamas' Al Resalah that Hamas is trying to exploit supposed Israeli racism against its Ethiopian Jewish population at a time when Israelis are already divided.

By publishing the video message of the soldier [sic] Mengistu, the Palestinian resistance succeeded in scoring a point in its favor in the context of its ongoing psychological battle with the occupation. On the one hand, it provoked Netanyahu's extremist government, which is keen not to raise the issue of the captured soldiers in light of the exacerbating internal conflicts it faces, and at the same time this message deepens sectarian conflicts within the entity by provoking the sect of "Falasha Jews" to whom the soldier "Mengistu" belongs, and who suffer from a state of deliberate marginalization from the occupation governments.

Other reasons are given: as a response to Itamar Ben Gvir's crackdown on Palestinian prisoner perks,

as a message to the incoming IDF Chief of Staff (which is explicit in the video,) to stoke Israeli hope that Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul might still be alive as well.

But stoking racism really seems to be Hamas' main goal. This video released by Hamas' Felesteen newspaper, "Who Is Avera Mengistu," claims that Israel negotiated for the return of other soldiers but not Mengistu, because they are racist and he is black. (Mengistu was never a soldier.)

The video also says that "racist rabbis" never accepted Ethiopians as Jewish.

Hamss has tried the race card before, tweeting in 2015 that Israel doesn't care about people of color.

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01/17 Links Pt2: Even the PLO knows the Jews are indigenous to Israel; The NYTs and the PLO are made for each other; The real reasons Ken Roth was bounced by Harvard’s Kennedy School

From Ian:

A New Study Shows That the U.S. Has More Anti-Semites Than Jews

According to a recent survey conducted by the Antidefamation League (ADL), disturbingly large numbers of Americans answered “yes” when asked if they believe Jews “go out of their way to hire other Jews” or “are more loyal to Israel than to America,” and to other similar questions. Kevin Williamson reflects on these results, and what they say about the persistence of this “strange prejudice.”
About 3 percent of Americans agreed that all of the anti-Semitic tropes in the ADL survey are “mostly or somewhat true,” suggesting that there are millions more anti-Semites in the United States than there are Jews. This is not entirely surprising, given the small size of the Jewish population.

Anti-black racism has of course been the most consequential prejudice in American history, but anti-Semitism remains strangely vital. Like its cousin, anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism is more than a prejudice and more than a visceral hatred—it is, in its most extreme form, a kind of “theory of everything” in politics. Anti-black racism may exist with or without an attendant conspiracy theory, but anti-Semitism is almost without exception rooted in a conspiratorial view of the world. The fact that anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise on college campuses is entirely predictable in that campus culture is as much conspiracy-driven as talk-radio culture or Fox News culture, with different villains and a slightly more refined rhetoric: not “Jews” pulling the strings from the shadows, but “Zionists.”

Williamson also notes the confusion, and the bad faith arguments, that have emerged from the term “anti-Semitism.”
The Semitic languages famously include both Hebrew and Arabic, but also Amharic, Tigrinya, Tigre, Aramaic, and Maltese. But when T. S. Eliot wrote, “But this or such was Bleistein’s way:/ A saggy bending of the knees/ And elbows, with the palms turned out,/ Chicago Semite Viennese,” he wasn’t talking about the Catholics down in sunny Malta.

The real reasons Ken Roth was bounced by Harvard’s Kennedy School

The claim that Jewish influence and money can force non-Jews to serve the selfish interests of the Jews is, of course, a classic antisemitic trope. In the modern context, this trope usually claims that these Jewish conspirators are doing their dirty work to benefit Israel.

Roth also claimed that Elmendorf’s decision was “a shocking violation of academic freedom.” Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), agreed, saying, “If Harvard’s decision was based on HRW’s advocacy under Ken’s leadership, this is profoundly troubling from both a human rights and an academic freedom standpoint.”

It appears that Roth and Romero do not understand the nature of academic freedom. An applicant for a fellowship or faculty position does not enjoy academic freedom at the institution—in this case, Harvard—where they wish to work. They have freedom of speech to express their ideology and beliefs like all other citizens, but Roth would not have enjoyed the protection of academic freedom, which would allow him to express his views, no matter how corrosive or biased, until he became part of the Harvard community. Obviously, this never took place.

Moreover, hiring committees normally vet applicants during the application process. It appears that in the initial stages of Roth’s application, the committee inadvertently, or perhaps purposely, ignored Roth’s hostility to Israel. So, it is very likely that when the choice of Roth was made public, Harvard stakeholders had the opportunity to inform the dean about the darker aspects of Roth’s career. Dean Elmendorf then did what the hiring committee at the Carr Center should have done in the first place: Examine HRW’s and Roth’s defective scholarship and singular focus on Israel, objectively.

One particularly grotesque example of Roth’s shoddy scholarship and tendency toward outright falsehoods was a 2021 HRW report titled, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” the title of which makes its content clear.

No apartheid exists in Israel, but that did not prevent HRW from presenting the 217-page report as fact, effectively redefining apartheid to make their case. The Israel-based watchdog organization NGO Monitor, however, produced a report of its own that eviscerated HRW’s libels. NGO Monitor concluded that “the HRW publication is fundamentally flawed, using lies, distortions, omissions and blatant double standards to construct a fraudulent and libelous narrative demonizing Israel.”

“A careful examination of the text shows that HRW conducted almost no primary research,” NGO Monitor noted. “Rather, the text is bloated with cut-and-paste phrases, and quotes and conclusions taken from third-party sources—notably, other political NGOs participating in the same ‘apartheid’ campaign against Israel.”

“The omissions are even more egregious than the errors and misrepresentations, rendering HRW’s report as nothing more than propaganda,” the watchdog group asserted.

Even the PLO knows the Jews are indigenous to Israel - opinion

To deal with the inconvenient historical fact that Jews are the indigenous population of Israel, the drafters of the PLO charter created an arbitrary dividing line to determine who would be considered a Palestinian. First, the PLO charter deems any Arab who had lived in the entirety of what is now modern Israel prior to the re-establishment of the Jewish homeland to automatically be Palestinian, without regard to whether they were residents in the land. Further, the PLO charter deemed any Arab (but not Jews) born after 1947 to a Palestinian father to be a Palestinian.

Jews, on the other hand, were excised from their own national identity under the PLO charter. Only Jews who had resided in what is now modern Israel prior to “the Zionist invasion” would be considered Palestinian. And what did the PLO even mean when they called it “the Zionist invasion,” 1948 or the 1800s? The latter, of course.

Jews were forcibly removed from Israel after the destruction of the Second Temple and dispersed across the globe, making Palestine, as conceived by the PLO charter, a nearly Jew-free land before the Zionist movement was ever founded.

Imagine if, at the time of the founding of modern Israel, Jews had made a similar declaration with regard to Arabs. To wit, Israel would only recognize those “Arab Palestinians” who resided in the land and identified as “Palestinian” prior to the time of Abraham. This would obviously be an impossibility since the term “Palestinian” was created by the Romans after the Bar Kokhba revolt in around 130 C.E., while Abraham arrived in the Land of Israel approximately 2,000 years before the first use of the term Palestine.

Recently, antisemitic activists have escalated their attacks on Jews, claiming we are “settler-colonists” of a land they call Palestine. In my latest new law review article, I examine the question of colonialism and Israel. Part of my research involved tracing the history of the Jewish presence in Israel and comparing it to the waves of actual settler-colonists, ending with Palestinian Arabs, who displaced the indigenous Jewish population.

The only way that anti-Israel activists can strip Jews of our status as the indigenous people of the land and eliminate Jewish self-determination is to do as the PLO charter did: ignore history and designate a time when Jews had been ethnically cleansed from our own homeland as the point in time when Jewish history in Israel starts.

There are settler-colonists in Israel, and they are Palestinian Arabs. Nonetheless, Israel welcomes these settler-colonists and provides them with rights that no other country would provide to invaders and occupiers. It’s time for Palestinian Arab activists and their supporters to accept history and thank Israel for the gracious hospitality extended to newcomers.

Based on a true story. Israel has never occupied another people’s land in all her 4,000-Year recorded history; Israel is the world’s most accused country of illegally occupying another peoples’ land.
Ten Deceptions: https://t.co/4qiCALoxOJ #israel #palestine
— Joseph Shellim (@PhotoshopTruth) January 17, 2023

AI drawings of specific people are hit and miss (when it even allows it.)

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Jordanian dental association doing its part to uproot the Zionist entity, but Jordanian dentists don't play along

From Jordan's Ammon News:

The Council of the Jordanian Dental Association (JDA) announced that it will not participate in the AEEDC / Dubai 2023 conference, due to the confirmation of the participation of a Zionist delegation in the exhibition activities.

The JDA Tuesday called on all colleagues not to participate in this event, under penalty of union accountability.

The Council also addressed the Jordanian national companies for dental supplies, the Association of Dental Laboratory Owners, Dental Technicians, and all workers in the dental sector to adhere to boycotting the conference.

It is noteworthy that this refusal to participate in the AEEDC conference by the Jordanian Dental Association (JDA) is the third in a row for the same reason.

As far as I can tell, there are no Israelis even giving talks at the conference. The Jordanian Dental Association is boycotting the conference because two out of 570 exhibitors are from Israel!

Last year, the conference attracted 66,000 participants from 155 countries and the exhibition featured 4,800 products. The event generated some $3.9 billion of business deals.

Is the JDA hurting Israel, or itself, by not attending?

This is part of the old, outdated zero-sum mentality of the Israel haters. They are willing to definitely hurt themselves for an infinitesimal chance that they would hurt Israel. It is a hugely diluted version of the mentality that produces suicide bombers and car rammers.

The article says that the JDA boycotted the event last year as well. But guess what?

Plenty of Jordanians attended anyway!

Note also that many countries that have no relations with Israel had no problem attending.

It appears that the JDA threatened their members in 2021 not to attend as well, and also in 2022, but clearly most Jordanian dentists are not willing to hurt their careers by boycotting major events where they can learn the latest tools and methods.

It is another case of a boycott that pretends to be successful when in fact it fails miserably.

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01/17 Links Pt1: Israel blasts UN demand to lift PA sanctions, restore terror funds; Saudi Arabia's Challenge to Biden: Let's Abandon FDR's Deal With Ibn Saud

From Ian:

If the US wants a two-state solution, it must help the Palestinians help themselves

Specifically, Washington should focus energies and resources on assisting the Palestinians overcome five fundamental obstacles currently preventing peace with Israel and their own independence.

First, it must make its funding for the Palestinian Authority, currently about $235 million per year, contingent on a) the P.A. reforming its notorious educational materials to promote peace and co-existence to children, rather than terrorism and Jew hatred; and b) reforming government media so TV news broadcasts no longer deliver daily diatribes about “filthy Jews” and the Zionist enemy who “stole their land.”

Aid must also be conditioned on the Palestinian leadership ending its unconscionable “pay-for-slay” program—paying lifetime salaries to terrorists who kill innocent Jews. Currently the Palestinians spend some $300 million annually on this program. Ironically, rather than supporting peace initiatives, U.S. taxpayer dollars currently fund most of the pay-for slay program costs.

In short, the United States should reward good behavior and penalize bad behavior. It should stipulate that our financial support depends on the Palestinians ending terrorism and promoting peace. Without such incentives, there is surely no hope for the two-state solution that Biden and other Americans swear they are committed to.

Second, Washington must step up its support for the Abraham Accords, to promote Arab-Israeli cooperation and commerce. Simultaneously, it should invite the Palestinians to take part in the economic and cultural cooperation thriving around them, while making it clear that progress towards normalization and peace will continue with or without them.

Third, it must harshly condemn Hamas’s efforts in the Gaza Strip to lure Israel into wars by periodically launching unprovoked attacks against the Jewish state. Likewise, it should emphatically lend its support to the international community when Israel fights back.

Fourth, it needs to help the Palestinians develop economic self-sufficiency. Currently corruption abounds in the Palestinian economy, and about one in four Palestinians has no job. Without Western aid, the economy would collapse. No two-state solution can happen without a self-sustaining Palestinian economy.

The United States and European Union pour hundreds of millions of dollars into “support” for the Palestinians, but where does this money go? Where are the U.S.- and E.U.-sponsored training, incubator and economic development programs? The most lucrative opportunity in the self-ruled Palestinian territories should be meaningful employment, not terrorist pay-for-slay.

Fifth and finally, the United States should make a concerted effort to strengthen the P.A. and help it regain control of all autonomous Palestinian territories, including Gaza. Two states and Palestinian independence will remain a fantasy until the Palestinians achieve some level of political unity and stability—the structure and institutions of a state.

Caroline Glick: Saudi Arabia's Challenge to Biden: Let's Abandon FDR's Deal With Ibn Saud

Arabs, Ibn Saud said, "would choose to die rather than yield their land to the Jews."

Roosevelt, for his part, assured Ibn Saud "that he would do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs and would make no move hostile to the Arab people."

Generations of U.S. presidents kept Roosevelt's word. They accepted that Arab rejection of the Jews was legitimate, and that Jewish rights were, at best, contingent on Arab acceptance. The Trump administration was the first to depart from that position—and it did so only after the Arabs themselves abandoned it. Had the Emiratis not made clear they were unwilling to subordinate their national interest of peace with Israel to the Palestinians' intransigence, even President Trump likely would have continued to push Netanyahu to accept Palestinian demands.

Now, Ibn Saud's grandchildren are themselves willing to openly accept Israel, without preconditions. And the question is whether Joe Biden will act as Donald Trump did, and follow their lead.

Depressingly, it appears the Biden administration is not willing to walk away from the FDR-Ibn Saud deal, even though maintaining it alienates Ibn Saud's very heirs. Last week, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken participated in a summit of the Abraham Accords member states in Abu Dhabi. Blinken and other senior officials continued their efforts to stand the Abraham Accords on their head by peddling the outmoded "Palestinians first" paradigm, which dominated the Arab world's fraught relations with Israel until 2020. Blinken, State Department Counselor Derek Chollet, and State Department Spokesman Ned Price all made clear that the U.S. used its presence in Abu Dhabi to divert the discussions away from collective action against Iran and economic cooperation with Israel, and toward Palestinian grievances. Chollet said the U.S. is "fully supportive of the Palestinians joining" the Abraham Accords and that the summit "focused on strengthening the Palestinian economy and improving the quality of life of Palestinians."

While Israel, the Saudis, and the Arab members of the Abraham Accords are focused on blocking Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and becoming a regional hegemon, the Biden administration remains committed—despite its tepid denials—to achieving a nuclear deal, and broader rapprochement, with Iran. Such a deal will provide Iran with the financial means and international legitimacy to become a nuclear-armed regional hegemon that threatens the very existence of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Abraham Accords partners.

In other words, the Biden administration is committed to FDR's hostile posture on Israel, and opposes the Saudis' desire to abandon Ibn Saud's anti-Israel hostility.

The stakes for the U.S. couldn't be higher. If the Biden administration joins the Abraham Accords signees in their full acceptance of Israel as their brother and partner in the lands of Abraham's children, it will secure its legacy and America's posture as the lead superpower in the Middle East for years to come. If it refuses to do so, it will strike a mortal blow to America's alliance system in the Middle East, reducing U.S. power and influence in the region for years to come.

Netanyahu's strategy to strengthen Israel in its 75th year - opinion

Netanyahu has earned the stature to speak without ambiguity
LIKE HIM or not, having served Israel’s government for most of its life and his own, Netanyahu has earned the stature to speak without ambiguity. He ascended to the leadership of an Israel that was still a fledgling, quasi-socialist-agrarian nation in a hostile neighborhood, lacking the confidence to consolidate biblical lands at the core of Jewish identity, surprisingly recovered in the defensive Six Day War of 1967. Instead, he passively accepts his opponents’ descriptions of the territories as “disputed” and eventually “occupied.”

Under his leadership, Israel has been transformed into a vibrant market economy and a technological, intelligence and diplomatic powerhouse. Defying even his own expectations, Netanyahu secured peace agreements with a large portion of the Arab world; the Abraham Accords circle of peace is still expanding, and Israel is establishing diplomatic and economic relations globally at a spectacular pace.

This is Netanyahu-the-Diplomat’s moment to end the confusing dual-action tactic of sipping West Bank development while blowing two states bubbles from the same rhetorical straw.

Likud, religious Zionists, PA and Hamas are apparently unanimous on this: No one is interested in two states west of the Jordan River. Yet, 4 of their people of all cultures seem to coexist peaceably for mutual benefit without a political theater in the Old City of Jerusalem and these newer West Bank cities. More narrative clarity from Israel might help well-intentioned international allies move on, too.

A visible integration framework could include ending the occupation by suspending military law in the West Bank and applying Israeli civil law across the territories. As the functional integration described here advances, Israel could initiate a process for easing travel restrictions and work quotas for Palestinians between the territories and the rest of Israel.

Palestinian community leaders would have incentives to monitor and preempt security risks, which would be a paramount regulator of the pace and flow of integration for law-abiding Palestinians who would enjoy social mobility in Israel’s labor market. In other words, Palestinians’ individual and leaders’ choices would determine the pace of their access.

Continuing progress on these vectors of integration could deliver fair access to opportunity for all law-abiding inhabitants of the territories, consistent with Jewish religious and cultural principles. It would help to create a virtuous circle of development both within Judea and Samaria and the rest of Israel, consolidating support for the governing coalition within Israel and providing a realistic vision for diplomatic progress for all of Israel’s international allies, including supporting a core diplomatic priority of encouraging Saudi Arabia’s accession to the Abraham Accords circle of peace.

A new vision could be revealed in action, upgrading tentative words of defense. A new transparent narrative for a new process: freer movement and freer access to opportunity for all of Israel’s inhabitants. Ground-level practical integration could also involve community self-governance - always security-dependent - and in due course a constitutional path toward national participation on terms consistent with Israel’s unique status as a Jewish nation.

On the eve of Israel’s 75th anniversary, Netanyahu’s Likud and its partners have finally won the chance to reveal and deliver Israel’s destiny as the Prophet Isaiah’s light unto the nations, a beacon of spiritual and moral virtue for all humanity.

This morning, a 40 year old Palestinian terrorist was killed in a firefight with IDF troops near Hebron. The shooter, Hamdi Abu Dayyeh, used a homemade "Carlo" submachine gun.

It appears that he had also shot at an Israeli bus two days ago.

He had worked in security for the Palestinian Authority.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine says that he was one of their members.

This marks two PFLP members killed in two days, the other being the 14-year old Omar Lotfi Khumour. Both of them, as well as the 15 year PFLP "comrade" Adam Ayyad, wrote wills before being killed, indicating that in all of these cases they planned to die.

The PFLP is a secular, socialist organization. The members who write these wills are not religious Muslims. They are not aiming to reach paradise and cavort with 72 virgins.

Yet they are no less fanatic than Islamic Jihad or Hamas.

From the right or the left, Palestinianism is a death cult. It praises death, it encourages dying, and becoming a martyr is not a religious obligation - it is a political obligation.

The upsurge of attacks in recent months had been initially attributed to new groups, like the "Lion's Den". Then Islamic Jihad apparently became jealous and started ramping its own attacks up, and taking credit. Now the PFLP is joining the fray. And there have been lots of attackers who are from Fatah as well.

Ideologically, they have nothing in common.

The common denominator is a fanatical hate for Jews and the Jewish state.

As we know, antisemitism requires no consistent ideology, philosophy or creed. It stands alone as the one hatred that crosses all populations and groups. And the West Bank is now a microcosm of worldwide antisemitism.

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