Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, July 16, 2023

07/16 Links: Settlers are not an obstacle to peace; Hamas is the Palestinian Wagner Group; Fatah tried to help terrorists escape after today’s terror attack

From Ian:

Herzog to fly to Washington for White House visit, Congress speech

In the speech, the president plans to emphasize the importance of “expanding the circle of regional peace” between Israel and Arab states, and “the essential need to fight against the hatred and terrorism that Iran is spreading while it pursues nuclear weapons.”

Herzog also said that, in all of his meetings, he will talk about the “internal challenges and opportunities facing Israeli society.”

The president will travel from Washington to New York City to meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and New York Mayor Eric Adams.

The local Jewish Federation will host an event at which Herzog will meet young leaders, which he said reflects his “actions to build bridges between Israel and Diaspora Jewry.”

Herzog invited Leah Goldin to accompany him on the trip. Goldin is the mother of Lt. Hadar Goldin, who was killed in battle with Hamas during Operation Protective Edge. The terrorist group has held her son’s body captive since 2014.

Ahead of the trip, Netanyahu told Herzog last Thursday that Israel has two redlines.

“Israel will not agree to an American return to the dangerous nuclear deal with Iran and will act with every means it has to stop Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon,” a source close to Netanyahu said.

In addition, “Israel will not agree to a ‘no surprises’ policy when it comes to Iran.”

Settlers are not an obstacle to peace - opinion

An honest look at what is holding up peace between the Palestinians and Israelis is clear. Palestinian refusal to negotiate sincerely and their support of terrorism, are holding up peace. If Palestinians would cease all terror attacks and enter earnest negotiations with Israel, a peace deal could be reached. It is Palestinian intransigence that has been the obstacle to peace.

I find the notion that I can’t live in Judea and Samaria, the historic heartland of the Jewish people, simply because I am a Jew, abhorrent. Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was interviewed by Sky News who pushed him on my community and those like it being an obstacle to peace.

He responded, “What you’re saying is that if a Jew buys property on private land and wants to live in areas next to Palestinians that is a criminal action and we must sanitize the area [of Jews], we have to make it ethnically cleansed.

“If I said to you Jews cannot buy land anywhere in the world, in London, or Paris, you would be outraged. But if a Jew buys private land in a disputed territory whose political future has not been determined yet, Jews should not live there because it obstructs the peace?

“Why do a million Arabs sit in Israel as citizens of Israel, live in Israel, and we don’t say that’s not possible, but the idea that Jews should live next to Palestinians, that obviates the peace? That conception is the danger to peace. The idea that the presence of Jews on their ancestral homeland, which has been their homeland for 3,000 years, that Jews should not live there, that it should be Judenrein?”

I AM proud of where I live. I have followed my ancestors back to the land that was promised to the Jewish people and where they lived for thousands of years. I am inspired by the Zionist pioneers that came before me and I follow their example. I dedicate hours of every single day to developing my town and my nation and there isn’t a foreign notion or nation that will impede our growth.

I also pray for peace three times every single day and I look forward to the day when I can live peacefully with my Palestinian neighbors. I am ready for peace, but it will only happen when the Palestinians sincerely want to end the conflict with Israel.

If Palestinians want to continue using my home and town as a pretext to justify their intransigence and support of terror, that is their mistake, and they will suffer the consequences. My neighbors and I will keep building and developing our towns – and we will create new ones. Time is on our side; the longer Palestinians delay making peace with Israel the more they will lose.

My vision of a peaceful Israel, with Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, living side by side, is too strong to be ruined by cynical or shortsighted people. I will keep praying and dreaming of peace, and I am confident that I will live to see the day peace is reached in our land.

Lex Fridman Podcast: Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

TRANSCRIPT: https://lexfridman.com/benjamin-netanyahu-transcript/

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
2:35 - Hate
8:15 - Judicial reform and protests
16:51 - AI
26:53 - Competition
33:34 - Power and corruption
40:45 - Peace
55:18 - War in Ukraine
59:15 - Abraham Accords
1:03:15 - History
1:08:02 - Survival

UNRWA media advisor Adnan Abu Hasna warned of the possibility of UNRWA being forced to stop services in September with its budget projected to run out by that time. It wouldn't be able to pay salaries or other expenses.

UNRWA has a financial deficit this year of about $200 million.

Abu Hasna noted that the support provided to UNRWA by Arab nations was $200 million in 2018, but it has evaporated to only $20 million dollars last year, a 90 percent reduction.

I counted about $50 million in pledges from Arab countries last year, so I'm not sure if they simply didn't pay their pledges or these are pledges for 2023 payments.

Either way, the amount of aid to UNRWA from the Arab states is ridiculously low compared to the amount that the West provides - Canada itself gives $20 million a year, and individual EU states gives tens of millions on top of the $100 million from the EU itself.

Apparently, appealing to Arab pride to increase their donations is not effective.

Why, exactly, does the West provide so much more for Palestinian "refugees" than the Arab world. especially the wealthy Gulf countries? And why don't the Palestinians themselves make a bigger deal over being shortchanged by their supposed "brethren?"

If the Arab world itself doesn't care about their own, why should the West?

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!

Haaretz reports that Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, condemned Israel as a "racist state" on Saturday.

During the Netroots Nation conference, at one point Rep. Jan Schakowsky was introduced. She is one of the highest ranking Jewish members of Congress and a strident critic of Israel.

She was roundly booed and protesters started chanting anti-Israel slogans as soon as she was mentioned.

Schakowsky tried to tell the protesters that she is on their side, but they drowned her out, and she briefly considered walking off the stage. But then Jayapal stood up and silenced the protesters by saying, "As somebody who’s been in the streets and participated in a lot of demonstrations, I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state." She added that there were nefarious forces trying to silence them, and Schakowsky is not one of them.

Meaning, she is one of the good Jews.

The incident starts around 1:06:00 in this video.

Schakowsky, who almost certainly disagrees that Israel is a racist state, remained silent so as not to anger the mob even more.

The mob sets the agenda for the "progressives."

The wording is telling. Jayapal isn't arguing that Israel is a "racist state." She didn't bring a single fact to support the statement. She is telling the crowd that the progressive Democrat goal is to spread the word that Israel is a racist state, and that she agrees with the protesters - protesters who waited until a Jewish member of Congress was going to speak before interrupting, an hour into the conference.

Facts don't matter - propaganda is the goal. If the Israel haters can find some context-less facts that seem to support that narrative, great, and any counter-evidence is summarily dismissed and ignored. That is the entire content of the Amnesty and HRW "apartheid" reports. The accusation is the important thing, not the facts. And the accusation is seen as an important part of the progressive story.

The accusation itself is absurd. Unlike apartheid-era South Africa, and despite the lies of some NGOs, there are no Israeli laws that discriminate against Arabs or Muslims. On the contrary, equal rights are explciit in many Israeli laws. If equal rights for all is enshrined in the law in hundreds of ways, then clearly Israel is not a racist state. (I gave an example last week of Israel's law against desecrating religious objects, which does not single out Jewish religious objects but applies equally to attacks on all religions.)

Israel does discriminate against non-citizens. So does every other nation on the planet. But only Israel is accused of "racism" or "apartheid" for prioritizing its own citizens over non-citizens, especially non-citizens who are attempting to destroy the State.

The only bigot in this conversation is Pramila Jayapal, who is singling out the world's only Jewish state as being intolerant when it its laws are more tolerant of its Muslim minority than much of Western Europe's are. Not to mention the constitutions of nearly every Arab nation being explicitly discriminatory against non-Muslims and non-Arabs.

There was another accusation of racism against Israel this weekend, and unlike Jayapal, this one pretends to have facts on its side.

The official Palestinian Wafa news agency reports in its English-language site:

The Israeli national water company Mekorot has reduced the daily amount of water supply to the provinces of Hebron and Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank by about 6,000 cups per day, today said the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA), which described the move as ‘racist’.

PWA said the move deprives the people of their right to obtain sufficient amounts of water, especially in light of the sharp rise in temperatures.

“There are no technical reasons behind this reduction,” PWA said, adding that “no faults were detected in the supplying source, but rather it [the move] comes as a discriminatory measure that adds to the racist policies practiced by the occupation authorities.”

I could find no news stories about this in Hebrew media, so I have no idea if it is true. But let's pretend that it is, and Israel reduced the amount of water to the governorates of Hebron and Bethlehem by 6,000 cups every day. (The word "cups" is consistent in English and Arabic; in fact the word is "kub" in Arabic.)

Given that there are about 900,000 people in those two governorates, that comes out to about one third of a teaspoon of water per person per day. If the "6,000 cups" story is even remotely true, no one would notice. Which is why the accusation is almost certainly false - why would Israel reduce the amount of water by such a minuscule amount?

As with Jayapal, the accusation of "racism" is what drives the story, not any facts. Facts are the enemy of these modern antisemites, which is why they try so hard to drown out the facts with a false, slanderous narrative.

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!

Study: Antisemitism is associated with conspiracy thinking, authoritarianism and desire to overturn the social order

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.., made headlines this weekend when he seemed to claim that COVID-19 could have been genetically engineered to target certain populations, and then mentioned there have been studies that suggested that Chinese people and Ashkenazic Jews are less susceptible to the virus.

"COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese," the Democratic presidential candidate said in a video that the New York Post published.

There is indeed such a study, from 2020, which he gets slightly wrong. The two groups that the study claimed were less likely to be susceptible to COVID-19, based on an analysis of two specific genes, were Ashkenazic Jews and the Amish. Latino, South and East Asian, and Finnish people were less susceptible than other groups as well.

Kennedy later clarified, saying he “never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews. I do not believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered.”

Obviously, a large number (and percentage) of Ashkenazic Jews died of COVID-19, so the study did not predict anything accurately.

But the cat is out of the bag, and conspiracy theorists now have more ammunition to attack Jews.

And they are the most likely people to be antisemitic to begin with.

A new study published in Nature shows that antisemitism is not so much associated with the political Right or Left as it is with extremist thinking and conspiracy theories.

The researchers checked the association between antisemitic attitudes and likelihood to believe in other theories. For example, they found a high correlation between antisemites that those who believed in totalitarianism:

•To bring about great changes for the benefit of mankind often requires cruelty and even ruthlessness.
•Soft and idealistic people can never be the doers of great events.
•Almost any unfairness or brutality may have to be justified when some great purpose is being carried out.
•The unhappiness of a few people simply doesn’t matter when it is a question of a step forward for the majority of the people.
•Sometimes when a new society is in its early stages, the masses have to be ruled with an iron hand for their own good

Similarly, antisemitic attitudes were correlated with belief in conspiracy theories, such as:

•The government permits or perpetrates acts of terrorism on its own soil, disguising its involvement.
•The power held by heads of state is second to that of small unknown groups who really control world politics
.•A small secret group of people is responsible for making all major world decisions such as going to war.
•Secret organizations communicate with extraterrestrials, but keep this fact from the public
•The spread of certain viruses and/or diseases is the result of the deliberate, concealed efforts of some organisations.
•Technology with mind-control capacities is used on people without their knowledge.

And they are also associated with support for authoritarianism, both associated with the Right:

•What our country needs most is discipline, with everyone following our leaders in unity.

•An ideal society requires some groups to be on top and others to be on the bottom.
•Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups

And the Left::

•Rich people should be forced to give up virtually all of their wealth.
•Most investment bankers need to be thrown in prison.
•Political violence can be constructive when it serves the cause of social justice.

•Books that contain racism or racial language should be censored.
•I should have the right not to be exposed to views I find offensive.

While both the Right and the Left attack each other as antisemites, they usually remain blind to the antisemitism that is on their own side. And too many on their own sides want to see an authoritarian government that supports their viewpoints - and violently represses others.

Which indicates that antisemites are often some of the worst people on Earth. And those who find antisemites on their own political side should be in the forefront of denouncing them, not accommodating them.

Incidentally, the introduction to the study cited quite a few studies that showed a strong correlation between Judeoiphobic antisemitism and anti-Zionist antisemitism. And the people who would self-describe as anti-Zionists were just as likely to believe in the other noxious theories listed here as those who espouse the "old" antisemitism.

(h/t Irene)

our country needs most is discipline, with everyone following our leaders in unity.

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!

07/15 Links: Netanyahu admitted to hospital for dehydration; RFK Jr. says COVID may have been ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews; Activist backs off Sweden Torah burning

From Ian:

Hospitalized for Apparent Dehydration, Netanyahu Says He ‘Feels Very Good’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday he felt “very well” after being hospitalized for dizziness, with his office saying the 73-year-old leader had likely been dehydrated. The Israeli leader will, however, stay in hospital overnight for continued medical supervision.

Netanyahu was rushed to Sheba medical center in the afternoon, his office said, noting he was in “good condition and undergoing medical evaluations.”

Later his office said Netanyahu had on Friday spent time in the scorching heat of the Sea of Galilee, in Israel’s north.

“Today, he felt slightly dizzy, and at the advice of his personal physician, Dr Zvi Berkowitz, was taken to Sheba’s emergency department,” another statement said.

“The initial examinations showed normal findings,” it added. “The initial evaluation is dehydration.”

In a video recording released several hours later, Netanyahu said he spent time on the lake with his wife “in the sun, without a hat, without water.”

“Not a good idea,” Netanyahu said, noting however that he was now feeling better.

“I feel very well,” he said, imploring Israelis to “spend less time in the sun” and “drink more water” in the wake of the heatwave scorching the country.

Netanyahu was hospitalized over Shabbat, apparently for dehydration. He says here that he was at the Sea of Galilee without a hat or water, "not a good idea." He says he feels well and appreciates the concern. pic.twitter.com/vQuJHyojo3
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) July 15, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu admitted to hospital

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has check himself into a hospital after reportedly losing consciousness at his home

JPost Editorial: Burning sacred books is unacceptable, whether it be the Torah, Bible, or Quran -

Sweden, that Nordic bastion of liberal democracy, appears to be in the throes of a spate of sacred book burnings.

Two weeks ago, during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, two men stood outside a Stockholm mosque, tore pages out of a Quran, and set them on fire – after receiving a permit from local police to do so.

The desecration of the Muslim holy book triggered furious protests across the Muslim world: a mob stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad, several Muslim countries summoned their resident Swedish ambassadors, and various Muslim leaders issued statements slamming Sweden for permitting the incident.

Leaders of other faith groups, including the Swedish Jewish community, also issued condemnations of the Quran burning, and Israel’s President Isaac Herzog decried the act.

“I was horrified when I heard the recent news from Sweden, about the desecration of a Quran, holy to the believers of Islam,” Herzog said last Sunday. “One cannot and one should not remain silent in the face of this… These acts are diametrically opposed to all the values of partnership between faiths for which we as a people and a country yearn, and we must all stand against this wherever it should arise.”

The Quran burning set off a series of requests for permits to publicly burn other sacred books. Then, this past week, Swedish authorities approved a request to burn a Torah and a Christian Bible outside the Israeli embassy on Shabbat.

Activist backs off Sweden Torah burning: Trying to draw attention to Quran desecration

A Muslim activist who had received permission to burn a Torah and a Bible outside the Israeli embassy in Sweden on Saturday said he was backing off from the move, adding that he only wanted to draw attention to the recent burning of the Quran in the country.

The man, identified as Ahmad Alush, 32, had received permission from Swedish authorities to perform the act, drawing widespread condemnation and protest from Israel and Jewish groups, among others.

But Alush arrived outside the Israeli diplomatic mission on Saturday clutching only a copy of the Quran and said it was never his intention to burn Jewish or Christian holy books, only to protest the recent burning of the Quran.

“It is against the Quran to burn and I will not burn. No one should do that,” Alush, who is of Syrian origin, told reporters gathered at the scene.

“This is a response to the people who burn the Quran. I want to show that freedom of expression has limits that must be taken into account,” he added.

“I want to show that we have to respect each other, we live in the same society. If I burn the Torah, another the Bible, another the Quran, there will be war here. What I wanted to show is that it’s not right to do it.”

Swedish public broadcaster SVT said Alush threw a lighter in his hand to the ground and said he didn’t need it.

Local police on Friday said they had approved an application from an individual in his 30s to hold a rally outside Israel’s embassy in Stockholm on Saturday, where a Jewish Torah and Christian Bible would be burned.

Relieved that the burning of a Torah book did not take place today. I thank everyone in Sweden, Israel and around the world, including Muslim and Christian leaders for their messages of support and solidarity.
The danger of desecrating holy books has not yet passed. A way must be… pic.twitter.com/2JrIBNVCIN
— Ziv Nevo Kulman ???? (@zivnk) July 15, 2023

07/14 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The real crisis in the west; BDS proponents suffer third consecutive loss in court; Friedman Finally Stumbles onto a Not-Totally-Bad Idea

From Ian:

Interview With Alex Ryvchin, Author of “The Seven Deadly Myths”

Over the years, many books have been written about antisemitism from different perspectives. How is your book different?

Many books have addressed the ‘why’ of antisemitism. Why are the Jews so hated? Why have such things been inflicted on them? Why do they continue to be targeted? This book will go some way to explaining the ‘why’ but my central interest is the ‘how’? How does antisemitism function in practice? How is it transmitted around the world and from generation to generation?

This question of ‘how’ led me to the seven deadly myths. It is through this complex and well-honed mythology that antisemitism thrives. As Isaac Herzog said in reference to my book: By shifting emphasis from the ‘why’ of this puzzling and dangerous phenomenon to the ‘how’ of the mechanics of its transmission, Ryvchin points to the possibility of actually confronting and diffusing it.

You mention in your book that it could be used in the classroom. There is discussion about Holocaust education — and how it has failed, both in making people knowledgeable and in changing attitudes. What do you think are some of the causes for this and how would your book and a curriculum based on it overcome these problems?

Holocaust education is vital and I support it entirely. Within the study of the Holocaust we learn not only about the process by which the European Jews were destroyed, we observe everything of which man is capable of – sadism, cruelty, heroism, strength, apathy and cowardice. But in terms of understanding the hatred of the Jews, the Holocaust answers few questions. In fact, it raises these questions to fever pitch and leaves them unresolved. This is why despite so many admirable endeavors in Holocaust commemoration and education, antisemitism has continued to rise.

Trying to understand antisemitism through the Holocaust is also highly problematic as it positions antisemitism as a historical event and not something in the here and now. It would be like trying to teach anti-Black racism and ending the story with the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. It also falsely positions it as solely a product of race science, fascism and totalitarianism which completely ignores its political and religious sources and manifestations.

This has all contributed to the extremely limited and poor understanding of antisemitism in society, despite it being the most lethal and persistent hatred. This is why it is essential to teach antisemitism itself, what it looks like, how it is expressed, what it continues to do to our communities and wider society.

Why do you think antisemitism persists even after the Holocaust — why wasn’t the world “scared straight” by the murder of 6 million Jews?

Because antisemitism was too ingrained. Antisemitism was soaked into the world’s consciousness through centuries of lies, mythology and propaganda. It emanated from religious sources, nationalist heroes and popular culture. Even the horror of the Holocaust and the most devastating war in history could not dislodge it.

As is often forgotten, Jews continued to be massacred in Europe even after liberation from Nazi occupation. To give one example, the Polish Peasants Party passed a resolution in 1946 thanking Hitler for destroying the Jews and calling for the expulsion of any survivors. Forty-two Jewish survivors were clubbed to death in Kielce, Poland. One of the heroes of the Sobibor Camp Uprising was murdered by nationalists after escaping a camp which had virtually no survivors. So of course, today, when the Holocaust is considered ancient history to many, the same myths and conspiracy theories that made it possible, are resurgent.

Mark Regev: Israel's first ally: The forgotten Paris-Jerusalem alliance

IF THE UK, US, and USSR had no desire to become Israel’s military ally, it was not too long before Paris filled the vacuum. And while France was not one of World War II’s “Big Three” allied victors, for Israel it was the next best thing.

The French were defeated in May-June 1940 and Paris remained occupied by the Nazis until August 1944. Nonetheless, France emerged from the war with an enhanced international status that included an occupation zone in Germany and a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

Like all good international partnerships, the Franco-Israel alliance of the 1950s was founded on common interests and shared values.

The period’s French leadership espoused the ethos of the wartime Résistance and embraced the Jews as Nazism’s ultimate victims.

This affinity was further strengthened by the series of left-of-center governments during France’s Fourth Republic (1946-58), which shared a socialist fellowship with Israel’s like-minded ruling Mapai (Labor) party.

In parallel, Paris was a magnet for Israeli writers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, who gravitated toward the French capital for inspiration.

Augmenting the cultural and ideological affinity was solid realpolitik. From November 1954, France was conducting an increasingly bloody counterinsurgency against nationalist rebels in Algeria.

Inspired by the Viet Minh’s May 1954 victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, the pro-independence Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) launched an armed revolt against French rule.

But unlike Vietnam, Paris saw Algeria not as a foreign colony, but as an integral part of France, a claim buttressed by the presence of some one million European settlers – the pieds-noirs.

The Algerian revolution received vigorous ideological, diplomatic, and military backing from Cairo, with Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser championing the expulsion of all European colonialists from the greater Arab homeland.

Israel, the enemy of France’s enemy, thus became Paris’s best friend.

Melanie Phillips: The real crisis in the west

Over the past six months, the mass protests in Israel over judicial reform have elicited loud cries in the West that Israel is "in crisis." In its eagerness to identify such crises, however, the West looks everywhere but in the right direction.

Three years ago, French President Emmanuel Macron said, "Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today."

In a video interview conducted in 2022, which has now gone viral following the latest riots in France, Mohammad Tawhidi, an Australian Shiite cleric and Islamic reformist, pointed out that, in general, the Muslim world is doing rather well. The crisis is in the West.

While the extremists of the Muslim Brotherhood cannot operate in Muslim countries like Bahrain and Oman, said Tawhidi, they are operating in Britain, France, Canada, and Washington, DC.

The West imported the "garbage" promoted by jihadis whom Muslim countries were attempting to neutralize, he said. By allowing in this "filth" and even amplifying or glorifying it, the West had made its bed and must now lie in it.

This grim assessment was amply borne out by the riots in France. The violence broke out after a 17-year-old Muslim boy with a criminal background who was wanted by police was shot dead by a police officer during a traffic stop.

This triggered rioting on an unprecedented scale. For five days, Muslim youths torched large numbers of buildings and vehicles. Jewish businesses and institutions were targeted, including kosher restaurants and food shops. Terrified Jews barricaded themselves into their homes as rioters screamed: "Death to the police," "Death to France" and "Death to the Jews!"

Order was restored only when the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic drug barons called the youths off the streets.

People can see that the French president is no longer in control of his own country and that the scale of Muslim population increase means that France is losing the battle to remain recognizably France. Similar demographic trends are changing the face of other European countries such as Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Italy, Spain and the U.K.

With indigenous Europeans failing to have enough children to reach replacement rate, there are fears that within a few decades, European civilization will be lost.

Islamist extremists are banned from operating in Saudi Arabia and the UAE but they are legally registered and have bank accounts in Europe and the USA. pic.twitter.com/dSAJsX2K29
— Imam of Peace (@Imamofpeace) September 10, 2022

UN-OCHA moving the goalposts to make Israel look bad

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the Palestinian territories comes out with a report every month about imports, exports, entrances and exits from Gaza.

In its report on June, it says:

In June, the Israeli authorities allowed 42,220 exits of people from Gaza (in most cases, travelers exited multiple times). This is 13 per cent higher than the exits in May, and 19 per cent higher than the monthly average in 2022. However, it is 92 per cent lower than the monthly average in 2000, before the imposition of category-based restrictions by the Israeli authorities.

They are comparing the number of exits with 2000 - when thousands of Israelis still lived in Gaza and traveled freely in and out every day? Before the second intifada when checkpoints needed to be enforced? Of course the number of exits will never be nearly as high as in 2000; the borders were porous then.

If they were to compare with any previous year, they should - and normally do - compare it to the time between Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and when Israel started restrictions on Gaza after Hamas violently took over the territory in 2007. Otherwise it is comparing apples to oranges.

So let's look at previous UN charts.

Here's a UN chart from 2016 that was already deceptive: starting in 2004 when Israelis left Gaza so part of the year there were many, many more exits; and showing that in March 2006 Israel started its restrictions on Gaza workers. So if there is any year that the UN should compare against, it is 2005.

In 2005, the monthly average of exits was 31,424. Today, it is significantly higher - as mentioned, over 42,000 last month, and in fact earlier this year it surpassed 50,000 some months.

The headline should be that Israel now allows more freedom of movement for Gazans than at any time since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. But the UN cannot have a headline that makes Israel look good, can it? So instead of comparing to 2004 or 2005, as it always did before now, it makes up a new benchmark: 2000, a completely artificial and irrelevant date.

Here is UN-OCHA's new chart where they, for the first time, added the year 2000 with its "0.5 million" figure - just to minimize how much Israel is doing to make Gazan's lives easier.

This is lying with statistics.

(correction on years h/t Irene)

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!

Arutz-7 published a d'var Torah this week by prominent Religious Zionist Rabbi Melamed, where he encourages Israeli Jews to have more children and for diaspora Jews to move to Israel, because he says the more Jews in the land, the more peace there will be.

In one part of the essay that mentions this week's Torah portion he says,

Why were the borders of the land reduced in Parashat Masei?

The borders of the Land of Israel are from the [Nile] River to the Euphrates River. However, in practice, in Parashat Masei, when God commanded Israel to occupy the land and settle it, he commanded to conquer only the western side of the Jordan. Because the mitzvot of settling the land must be fulfilled according to the ability of the people of Israel. And since the number of Israel was not sufficient to settle the whole Land of Israel, the mitzvah was to first conquer the more sacred part, to the west of thee Jordan. And only after they multiply, they would be able to gradually expand towards the eastern Jordan and all the territories of the Promised Land of Israel (Ramban Bamidbar 21:21; Malbim ibid.).

Therefore, from the beginning, Israel did not intend to conquer the land of Sihon and Og, and only after they did not accept the peace offer and went to war against Israel, the people of Israel conquered their land. And there was still no intention to settle there, so when the sons of Reuven and Gad asked to cross the Jordan, Moses was very careful about them, but in retrospect he granted their request after they promised to be pioneers in conquering most of the land. In practice, there were not enough Jews to enter the Western Jordan, and it remained sovereign enclaves of Gentiles there, who caused great trouble to Israel for about four hundred years, as recounted in the Book of Judges.

Rabbi Melamed is saying that God Himself commanded the Israelites to only conquer the land to the west of the Jordan, and not the entire expansive borders, because there simply weren't enough of them to effectively rule a larger area - and even the parts of Transjordan that they settled was a cause of problems since they didn't have enough people. Certainly it is not desirable today to conquer much of the Arab world.

Arab media is looking at this article and saying,

Rabbi to the Jews: They multiplied so that we fight Egypt and Iraq and control the Nile and the Euphrates

The extremist Jewish rabbi , Eliezer Melamed, claimed that the borders of the Israeli occupation should extend from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq, to repeat the occupation narratives that prove Tel Aviv's desire to dominate the Arab region .

Which he is hardly saying - he is complaining that we do not have enough Jews to even control the entire area west of the Jordan properly! Nowhere does he call for a war with Egypt and Iraq!

Now, other Arab sites are chiming in about the "racist" rabbi who merely quoted the Torah about the ideal borders of Israel that no one is calling for today.

Usually, when these kinds of things happen -and they happen pretty often - it is a secular Israeli newspaper that misinterprets the words of some rabbi to make him sound racist. Here, apparently the Arab media themselves decided to interpret the d'var Torah in an entirely wrong way - because they know no one will fact check them.

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!

07/14 Links Pt1: WSJ: Biden Treats Israel Worse than He Does Iran; Just say no to ‘Palestine’; Israel protests as Sweden allows Torah burning outside embassy on Saturday

From Ian:

WSJ: Biden Treats Israel Worse than He Does Iran

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board on Thursday night published a scathing attack on President Biden’s Israel police, especially the way he’s been mistreating PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

To remind you, last Tuesday, NY Times pundit Tom Friedman wrote (White House Urging Israelis to Play Nice, Tom Friedman Says US to Reassess Relationship with Israel): “US diplomats … find it hard to believe that Bibi would allow himself to be led around by the nose by people like Ben-Gvir, would be ready to risk Israel’s relations with America and with global investors, and WOULD BE READY TO RISK A CIVIL WAR IN ISRAEL (sic.) just to stay in power with a group of ciphers and ultranationalists.”

In its response to that and similar brazen attacks fueled by the administration, the WSJ editorial board (What Does Biden Have Against Israel? – The President treats the governing coalition in Jerusalem worse than he does Iran) asked: “Why does President Biden go out of his way to snub, criticize and give marching orders to the government of Israel? At least rhetorically, the President and his Administration treat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his governing coalition worse than they do the ruling mullahs in Iran.”

The WSJ is critical of Biden’s repeated declaration that he will not invite the Israeli PM to the White House, while US Ambassador to Jerusalem Tom Nides has been warning that Israel is “going off the rails,” and both men know that their statements provide shameless support to Netanyahu’s enemies.

“When Mr. Netanyahu was most vulnerable, in late March, Mr. Biden needlessly decreed that Israel ‘cannot continue down this road’ on judicial reform,” the WSJ editorial continued, noting that “the Prime Minister had already changed course and agreed to moderate the reforms—a domestic Israeli affair in which the US President has no business. Mr. Nides publicly instructed Mr. Netanyahu, as if with his chauffeur, to ‘pump the brakes.’”

“This is no way to treat a democratic ally,” argues the editorial, and suggested “the President’s Israel policy has been counterproductive. US aid to anti-Israel international bodies has resumed, and all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is treated as ‘occupied territory.’ This is now a liberal article of faith, but how does it advance peace to indulge Palestinians in the belief that Jews are interlopers in Judea and at the Western Wall?”

The WSJ says Biden is undermining Israel’s democratically elected government while “Hamas and other Iranian proxies are gaining power in the West Bank, activating another front against Israel.”

The paper warns: “The new wave of terrorism against Jewish civilians will set back the Palestinian cause but advance Iran’s.”

The editorial also lists Biden’s other failures in the Middle East, including abandoning the Abraham Accords, one of his predecessor’s most brilliant achievements. Biden also failed to keep Saudi Arabia in the Western camp, driving it instead to deepen its relations with China. And the administration’s promises about a better nuclear deal with Iran are all gone.

US, EU, UN pan Israeli eviction of Palestinian family from Jerusalem’s Old City

The United States, the United Nations and the European Union condemned the Tuesday eviction of a Palestinian family from their home in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City where they had been living since the 1950s.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Sub Laban family’s eviction earlier this year, citing a law that allows Jews to reclaim properties in East Jerusalem that were owned by Jews before the formation of the state in 1948. At the same time, Israeli law bars Palestinians from reclaiming property in west Jerusalem from which they were removed as a result of that same war.

Asked to comment on the eviction, a US State Department spokesperson said Wednesday, “We have been clear that it is critical for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution.”

“This certainly includes evictions of families from homes in East Jerusalem in which they have lived for generations,” the spokesperson added.

The EU’s Delegation to the Palestinians tweeted that it “regrets the decision by the Israeli authorities, noting that hundreds of other Palestinian families face similar evictions in East Jerusalem. “We urge the Israeli government to respect international law and let these families live where they have been living for decades.”

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement citing UN experts who argued that the eviction “is representative of a widespread and systematic practice by Israel to forcibly evict and displace Palestinians from east Jerusalem and ‘de-palestinize’ the city.”

During British rule over Mandatory Palestine, before the War of Independence over Israel’s creation in 1948, the Sub Laban’s apartment was owned by a trust for Kollel Galicia, a group that collected funds in Eastern Europe for Jewish families in Jerusalem.

The Palestinian family says it moved into the property in the early 1950s and rented it from a “General Custodian” for abandoned properties, first under Jordanian authorities and then under Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967. The case dragged on for decades, as the Israeli custodian and then the Kollel Galicia trust contested the family’s “protected” status.

Just say no to ‘Palestine’

Amid the domestic strife over the government’s proposed judicial reform, Israelis received a stark reminder this week of the danger that a Palestinian state would pose to Israel’s existence.

In a frightening development, Palestinian terrorists near Jenin in northern Samaria fired two rockets at the nearby Jewish community of Shaked. Fortunately, no one was injured, but that in no way diminishes the importance and severity of the incident, which demands an immediate Israeli military response.

Simply put, the Jewish state must take action to prevent Palestinians in Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank) from developing an effective capability to fire rockets, which would further amplify the threat to Israeli cities throughout the center and north of the country.

Consider the following: The distance from Jenin to Haifa is just 49 kilometers; to Tiberias it is 43 km.; and to Afula, it is less than 17 km. If the Palestinians in Samaria succeed in replicating the technologies developed by their terrorist comrades in Gaza, they could easily turn Israel’s North into a shooting gallery.

And that, it would appear, is precisely what they have in mind.

Indeed, the attack earlier this week was reportedly just the latest in a series of recent attempts by a Hamas-linked group called the Al-Ayyash Battalion. While thus far their efforts have been crowned with failure, there is no reason to assume that will continue.

But Hamas is not the only band of thugs working on perfecting rockets.

On May 17, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs published a paper by Yoni Ben-Menachem titled “Islamic Jihad Is Trying To Establish a Rocket Force in Judea and Samaria.” It noted that the Palestinian terror group is aiming to create the necessary infrastructure in Judea and Samaria in order to manufacture and fire rockets. The report came just days after Shin Bet director Ronen Bar said at a press conference, “In the last few weeks, we thwarted a squad in the Jenin refugee camp area, which had already started producing rockets and a launcher to fire rockets from Samaria towards Israel.”

Clearly, a concerted effort is underway by various Palestinian factions in Judea and Samaria, one that must be stopped at all costs.

Over the past two decades, we have all seen the havoc, fear, and trauma periodically caused by Palestinian terrorists based in Gaza, whose rockets have reached Tel Aviv. Israel cannot and must not allow Judea and Samaria to turn into another Gaza, which would mean possibly contending with rocket attacks simultaneously from both areas in any future conflict.

It is therefore essential for Israel to nip this threat in the bud.

Left to their own devices, it is only a matter of time before the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria either develop or acquire the technology needed to bombard the Jewish state.

On Wednesday, PA president Mahmoud Abbas visited Jenin for the first time in over a decade.

The visit was widely viewed as a belated attempt to assert that the PA is in control of the area, which no one really believes.

Hamas media says:

During his visit to Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, the President of the Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, showed disregard for meeting popular figures and representatives of the factions, as his visit was limited to the outer edges of the camp. This sparked anger and resentment among the people.

The official PA news agency Wafa paints an entirely different picture of the visit:

An atmosphere of relief prevailed, after President Mahmoud Abbas' tour in the city of Jenin and its camp today, Wednesday .

His Eminence began his tour in the Jenin camp, by laying a wreath of flowers on the tombs of the martyrs in the new martyrs' cemetery in Jenin camp. His Eminence also inspected the effects of the destruction left by the recent Israeli aggression, and was briefed on the progress of work in its reconstruction .

His Excellency stressed, during a speech, in the camp square in the midst of a mass audience, that the heroic Jenin camp is an icon of struggle, steadfastness and challenge, which withstood the aggression and made sacrifices, martyrs, prisoners and wounded for the sake of the homeland .

He said, "We came today to continue rebuilding the camp and the city, so that they are as they were and better, and we have not and will not forget the camps of Nablus, Jabal al-Nar, and all the camps of the homeland, and we will not forget Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the State of Palestine. "

The President's speech was widely welcomed by the people of Jenin and its camp, who affirmed their support for the President's position and his emphasis on the importance of strengthening the steadfastness of citizens .

Same visit, opposite conclusions.

The Hamas site adds some interesting context. It notes that Abbas rarely leaves Ramallah to visit other Palestinian towns altogether, except to visit Bethlehem for Christmas. It also reminds the readers that three major Fatah figures were expelled from a funeral of the camps' "martyrs" due to anger at the PA, which was (as far as I can tell) not reported in official PA media.

In this case, Hamas media is probably closer to the truth.

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!

From Times of Israel:

Outrage mounted in Israel on Friday after Swedish police accepted a request to allow the burning of a Bible outside of the Israeli embassy in Stockholm on Saturday, just weeks after Quran burnings took place in the city.

Local police confirmed two weeks ago to Sweden’s national public broadcaster that it had received an application from an individual in his 30s to burn a Jewish and a Christian Bible outside Israel’s Embassy in Stockholm on July 15 as “a symbolic gathering for the sake of freedom of speech.”

It was not immediately clear if the person planned to burn a copy of the Bible or a Torah scroll.

The person planning to do the burning appears to be the same Egyptian who threatened to burn a Torah and a Christian Bible in January. He ended up postponing the action but said he planned to do it in the future.

The Quran burning earlier this month was done outside a mosque. But this one is being done outside the Israeli embassy.

In January, the man told Swedish media, "Burning holy books is somewhat disgusting, but I am angry and will do it to have a discussion." He also said that the Islamic Association in Stockholm's mosque urged him not to do it, saying it is against Islam.

Israel has laws that explicitly criminalize burning any holy book, including the Quran, and forbids the insulting of any religion. In its penal code, it says:

170. If a person destroys, damages or desecrates a place of worship or any object which is held sacred by a group of persons, with the intention of to reviling their religion, or in the knowledge that they are liable to deem that act an insult to their religion, then he is liable to three years imprisonment.

173. If a person does any of the following, then he is liable to one year imprisonment: (1) he publishes a publication that is liable crudely to offend the religious faith or sentiment of others; (2) he voices in a public place and in the hearing of another person any word or sound that is liable crudely to offend the religious faith or sentiment of others.

So why would someone who ostensibly wants to protest freedom of expression to insult religious groups choose to protest outside the embassy of a country that protects the rights of religious groups from such insults?

Because this has nothing to do with freedom of expression. As I've mentioned before, if he wants to do something symbolic, he could burn a symbolic Torah or Bible. These aren't acts to protect freedom of expression but to express hate.

In this case, "freedom of expression" is an excuse to perform an antisemitic act - and to the person who plans to burn the Scriptures, he does not distinguish between hating Jews and hating Israel.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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If this is what victory looks like....

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, an analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tweeted a criticism of Arabs who keep declaring "victory" over Israel:

The Arabs have a chronic and permanent feeling that they are on the verge of victory over Israel, and that the passage of time is in their interest. This is how Nasrallah appeared yesterday saying that Israel does not dare to remove his border tent because Israel's deterrence capacity has diminished, and because Israel is no longer as strong as in the past, and Lebanon is also not weak as in the past.

This feeling that Nasrallah transmits regarding the Arab struggle against Israel is improving in favor of the Arabs, is not born yesterday. "Israel is weaker than a spider’s web.”

Like Nasrallah, Arab Americans feel that anti-Israelism in America and the world is expanding, and that times are changing in favor of the Arabs. Of course, these feelings are not based on facts. Rather, they are from the core of the Arab heritage that replaces truth with poetry, empty pride, and bragging about imaginary heroism and victories.

This Arab non-reality is passed down through the generations. For example, in the closing statement of the Arab League summit held in Tunis in 1979, when Nasrallah was still a teenager, it was stated that the conferees expressed their relief that the world had begun to turn against Israel: Noting with satisfaction the increasing isolation of Israel in the world arena, the shrinking of its international relations, and the growing awareness of the justness of the Palestinian cause and all occupied Arab lands among the world public opinion, it warns against all attempts aimed at restoring the relations of some countries with the Zionist enemy or recognizing Jerusalem as its capital, and declares that the Arab countries will take the necessary measures to protect Arab rights.

Decades, even centuries, of Arab statements made of pure excrement. Statements aimed at masking the complete Arab collapse (with a few exceptions in the Gulf), often by attempting to divert Arab attention by blaming Israel. Arabs who live in illusions and feelings, there is no measurement of the truth, no appreciation of reality, no comparison between what was in the past and what is today (performance indicators), nor how the future can be, nor how can we deflect its path to our advantage. Only drums and honking, and woe to whoever comes out with a different point of view because he departs from the consensus, and that is treason.

Unlike Hussain, Saudi analyst Abdullah bin Bakhit hates Israel. But he also criticizes the Palestinians for declaring victory, specifically in Jenin, from a completely different angle (which includes a dose of classic antisemitism):

Well-known Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan wrote the following text on Twitter: "The resistance battalions did not leave Jenin until after the enemy withdrew in defeat. The battalions are entrenched, preparing for the next round, and celebrating the great victory politically and militarily despite their limited capabilities and the failure of the authority and Arab governments to them.. The march of honor, redemption, and resistance continues."

However, all that we saw, heard, and expected was that the Israelis destroyed, killed, displaced, arrested, and accomplished everything they came for, and that day will not be late when they will return to do it again. When Israel uses the most powerful warplanes to bomb Gaza and destroy the already worn-out infrastructure, we hear Palestinian officials and journalists celebrate the great victory achieved by the resistance.

In fact, this is free propaganda for the Israelis, as all their crimes are blotted out by this false victory in front of the world. Thanks to these celebrations, the Palestinian situation worsens, the Palestinian cause recedes from the forefront, and Israel moves closer to the Arab street.

The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is a struggle between absolute power and absolute weakness. The defenseless Palestinian is fighting against all the forces available in the twenty-first century, tanks, planes, intelligence and unlimited global media support. The Palestinian celebration of the delusional victory misleads not only the Palestinians, but also misleads everyone who wants to extend a helping hand to them.

...
The calamity of the Palestinians began when Yasser Arafat stood at the United Nations platform in the 1970s. Instead of explaining to the world the catastrophe of his people and their pain, he began threatening the world, saying, "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." The world thought that the man was hiding a mighty force waiting for a signal from him. .

Arafat's speech at the United Nations was the prevailing discourse in the Arab world at the time, and this discourse continued in the conscience of the Palestinian man, who did not want to abandon him. At a time when the Jews continued to weep to this day over the tragedy of their people, and they are the victorious occupiers who own everything in the world of the West. You will hear the representative of Israel at any conference in which he participates, asking those present, with tears welling in his eyes, to pause for the souls of the Jews.

It is clear that the Palestinian mind is still imprisoned in the revolutionary discourse of the sixties, when the process of liberating Palestine was at the door, and it only needed the Nasserite, Baathist and nationalist drums that would accompany the fighters upon entering Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem.

While Hussain's criticisms are reality based, Abdullah bin Bakhit still wants to propagate lies, but his preferred lie is the opposite one. Knowing that the West favors the underdog, he wants to paint the Palestinians as the ultimate losers - who need billions of dollars and political aid.

To my mind, the Palestinian desire to always declare victory - whether in Gaza or Jenin - is mostly a result of honor/shame culture. Losing is ignominious. The only losses that the Arab world admits are those that are too obvious to lie about: 1948 and 1967. Otherwise, everything is a victory - and Israel is always on its last legs.

This denial of reality serves another purpose: it helps Palestinians avoid the compromises necessary for any kind of peace. If they only need to wait until Israel implodes in the next few years to get everything they always wanted, the thinking goes, then they won't have to make any hard choices now. This denial of reality helps fuel intransigence and terror.

Yet no Western leader (with the possible exception of Donald Trump) has been willing to say, publicly, that the Palestinians are wrong and have always been wrong, and their decisions and self-deception ultimately hurt their own people more than they hurt Israel. Instead, they play into the lie, which leads directly to more terror attacks and more Palestinian enthusiasm that they are winning - which recruits far more into the terrorist camp than losing does.

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!

07/13 Links Pt2: The Biden Administration Redefines Antisemitism; Nazis and Palestinians are thick as thieves; Jury Finds Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooter Eligible for Death Penalty

From Ian:

Jury Finds Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooter Eligible for Death Penalty

A federal jury on Thursday decided that Robert Bowers was eligible for the death penalty for killing 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history, local media reported.

Last month, the jury found Bowers, 50, guilty of dozens of federal hate crimes in the trial at the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania. Federal prosecutors had charged Bowers with 63 counts, including 11 counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death.

In the first phase of the sentencing portion of the trial, the jury briefly deliberated on Wednesday afternoon and then again for about two hours on Thursday morning before reaching their decision that Bowers was eligible for the death penalty, KDKA TV, a local CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh, reported.

In the final phase of the sentencing portion of the trial, both prosecutors and defense attorneys will have the chance to make arguments on whether Bowers deserves the death penalty. Victims and families of those killed in the shooting will also have the opportunity to speak to the court. The jury will then deliberate Bowers' fate.

In federal capital cases, a unanimous vote by jurors is required in order to sentence a defendant to death, and the judge is obligated to abide by the jury's decision. If jurors are unable to reach a unanimous decision, the offender is instead sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release.

On June 16, the jury found him guilty on all counts, after defense lawyers accepted that he planned and carried out the attack. Jurors heard testimony from some of the survivors of the attack and evidence of Bowers's anti-Semitism, including multiple posts attacking Jews made on a far-right website in the months leading up to the attack.

Defense lawyers argued that Bowers suffers from major mental illness, including schizophrenia, and so lacked the necessary level of intent.

In their arguments in support of making Bowers eligible for the death penalty, prosecutors said that he had the necessary intent and premeditation to qualify for the sentence. They presented witnesses and evidence to show he carefully planned the attack and deliberately targeted vulnerable elderly worshipers.

JPost Editorial: Britain's current transparency approach is morally wrong

The attempt to hide the audit may be because the British government wants to avoid a confrontation with British Jewry, supporters of Israel, and other decent Britons who would be appalled to learn that funds to the Palestinians are not being carefully monitored to prevent their use in this way.

London might hide this information from the public due to concerns that it could harm its relationship with the PA. They know that if they raise the issue with the Palestinians, the PA will surely object and will not actually alter its policies.

Ultimately, London’s concealment may stem from the shame and embarrassment of the knowledge that British funds may be used for such reprehensible purposes. The Foreign Office knows the pay-to-slay policy is evil, and perhaps it is simply ashamed of any collusion with it and thus wants to keep it hidden.

The British should – and must – confront the PA on this anyway, because these payments are indeed heinous, and if there is anything over which it is worth confronting the PA, it is precisely this. And it should be transparent with the British people about the steps it is taking to ensure that their tax money isn’t going to fund murder.

The current approach is morally wrong. The PA’s payment of stipends to those who kill Jews is repugnant. The enlightened world, including Israel, must not only express its condemnation verbally but also show its repulsion through policy.

The US did so in 2018 by passing the Taylor Force Act, which stopped certain US aid to the PA until it ceased these stipends.

Britain and other European states should follow suit.

At a time when there is much talk, including in Israel, about the need to strengthen the PA, it is critical that this is done in such a way that ensures money allocated to prop up the PA is properly accounted for, preventing it from being diverted to odious purposes.

There are ways to audit these things. The British government knows how to do it. The British public has a right to see if it is being done.

Nazis and Palestinians are thick as thieves

Under Arafat, the Nazis served as an inspiration for Palestinian terrorists. As Rubin wrote in a study of the PLO, more than 25 activists “chose a nom de guerre such as Hitler or Abu Hitler.” These included Fawzi Salim Ali Mahdi, who served in Force-17, a terrorist group “under Arafat’s direct command.” Ian Michael Davison, another notable Force-17 member, was a British neo-Nazi. In 1985, he helped murder three Israelis while attacking a yacht in Cyprus. The PLO group al-Fatah trained German neo-Nazi groups in Lebanon.

Having moved to Palestine after the Oslo Accords, Arafat took control of the content of Friday sermons at the al-Aqsa mosque, making them a tool of incitement. As Efraim Karsh wrote, the sermons became particularly extreme after the beginning of the second intifada in 2000. For example, in one such sermon the preacher instructed his listeners, “Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them.” The echoes of Husseini’s wartime exhortations were unmistakable.

Rubin and Schwanitz stated, “Organizational links to the Axis-era past continue to the present day. The West Bank is ruled by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, created by Arafat, al-Husseini’s heir and a former Muslim Brotherhood activist.”

Gaza is ruled by Hamas, an uncompromising and deeply antisemitic branch of the Muslim Brotherhood “whose worldview is indistinguishable from that of al-Husseini and the Brotherhood in the 1930s and 1940s.” Thus, the radical forces encouraged and funded by the Nazis continue to dominate Palestinian politics.

Even Abbas, a supposed non-violent moderate, has adopted Nazi-inspired propaganda. For example, in his doctoral dissertation, he repeated the Nazi claim that a Jewish “declaration of war” on Germany caused the Holocaust. In a 1983 book based on his dissertation, Abbas claimed that Zionists colluded with the Nazis to promote immigration to Palestine. In 2018, Abbas suggested that Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves with their “social function,” including “usury and banking and such.” Last year in Berlin, he accused Israel of inflicting “50 Holocausts” on the Palestinians. Thus, much to the embarrassment of his host, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Abbas engaged in the kind of Holocaust inversion popular on the German far-right.

It wasn’t always this way. As Lewis wrote, “European antisemitism, in both its theological and racist versions, was essentially alien to Islamic traditions, culture and modes of thought. But to an astonishing degree the ideas, the literature, even the crudest inventions of the Nazis and their predecessors have, so to speak, been internalized and Islamized.”

The legacy of this Nazi-style ideology is what Jeffrey Herf called a “tradition of absolute and uncompromising rejection of Zionism and, later, the State of Israel.” Therefore, Herf wrote, “One precondition for a peaceful end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies in an Arab and Palestinian rejection of the reactionary Islamist political theology that Husseini did so much to create. A frank and well-grounded coming to terms with the history of his collaboration with Nazi Germany should be part of that reckoning.”

Whoever replaces Mahmoud Abbas might want to think about that.

Those who scream the most about religious hatred are the most guilty of religious hatred

From the Jerusalem Post/Reuters:

Muslim states including Iran and Pakistan on Tuesday said desecration of the Koran amounted to inciting religious hatred and called for accountability, as the UN rights body debated a contentious motion in the wake of a Koran burning in Sweden.

The motion, brought by Pakistan in response to last month's incident, seeks a report from the UN rights chief on the topic and calls on states to review their laws and plug gaps that may "impede the prevention and prosecution of acts and advocacy of religious hatred."

The debate highlighted rifts in the UN Human Rights Council between the OIC, a Muslim grouping, and Western members concerned about the motion's implications for free speech and challenges posed to long-held practices in rights protection.

Yes, Iran and Pakistan - two of the most antisemitic countries out there - are claiming to care so much about "religious hatred."

The country that sponsors the Holocaust Cartoon Contest is telling others that they shouldn't hurt Muslim feelings.

The country whose foreign minister went on CNN in 2021 and said in the context of Israel, "they are very influential people. I mean, they control media" is railing against anyone disrespecting Islam.

And here's a twofer: The Tehran Times, which is either officially or effectively state media, published earlier this year a Holocaust denial article written by a Pakistani political scientist and "pro-Palestine activist" Dr. Sabir Abu Maryam:

The Holocaust refers to those people belonging to the Jewish religion, about whom the Zionists have propagated to the world on the basis of lies and deception that they were brutally murdered by the German Nazis between the years 1933 and 1945.

Zionists called the Nazi killing of Jews a systematic state-sponsored massacre, and hence it is now referred to as the "Holocaust."

The Zionists, who were responsible for starting the First World War in the world, have always made efforts to destabilize governments through riots in different countries around the world. The fall of the Ottoman Caliphate was also an example of the Zionist rebellion.

After the First World War, there was a number of Jews in Germany. In the First World War, Germany had to suffer a lot, which was actually the Zionist movement under the guise of which the First World War was started. In fact, the Zionists wanted to burn the world in the fire of war and implement the plan of occupying Palestine only so that their influence in the future region would be established.

It is said that the German Nazis hated all these Jews and Zionists and this hatred may have been the reason why they asked the Jews to leave Germany.

These people are not in a position to tell anyone else about inciting religious hatred.

I myself do consider the deliberate burning of the Quran specifically to hurt Muslim feelings to be a hate crime. But everything depends on context, and the Muslim desire to make the entire world prohibit such acts is not out of concern for religious hatred but a means to exert control.

Especially when Palestinian Muslims already have a rich history of desecrating Jewish holy books, including handwritten Torahs - and the Muslim world remained silent.

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!