Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, August 03, 2023

08/03 Links Pt1: IRGC chiefs tell UK students to join ‘apocalyptic war’ on Jews; Why Doesn't Anyone Ask Why There Is a Refugee Camp in Jenin?

From Ian:

PMW: Look what the PA is hiding from the US and Britain

The Palestinian Authority often translates Mahmoud Abbas’ important speeches into English and publishes them on the website of its official news agency WAFA. Abbas' speech this week in Cairo was also translated but one striking theme was left out: All the anti-American and anti-British hate speech.

The parts of Abbas' speech at the meeting of the secretaries-general of various Palestinian factions, that were not publicized in English, demonized the US and Britain as “colonialist” states that illegally created Israel. He condemned the Balfour Declaration, which recognized the right of the Jewish people to establish a state in their homeland, as a “conspiracy” to “promise to one [the Jews] who has no right”:
Abbas: “Western colonialism – and the US and Britian in particular – conspired to issue the ominous Balfour Promise (i.e., Declaration) in 1917, in which one who has no ownership gave a promise to one who has no right.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 31, 2023]

Abbas further criticized that “the colonialist states” - especially the US - persist in their misconduct by continuing to sponsor Israel who Abbas compared to apartheid South Africa:
“We are also especially focusing on creating changes in public opinion in the colonialist states that have sponsored Israel and are still sponsoring it to this very day, and especially in the US (in this context, we have South Africa as a model) [parentheses in source].”

Abbas’ climax on this issue is that because of all these crimes, the PA is planning legal action against the United States and Britain:
“We also will submit lawsuits against the US and Britain for their responsibility for the Balfour Promise and its implementation through the British Mandate for Palestine.”

Finally, since Palestinians - according to Abbas - have existed “on its historical homeland… on this land for thousands of years,” and Israel's history is “false Zionist and Israeli claims and narratives,” Israel is therefore an illegal occupation that is destined to “pass”:
“We will certainly triumph, we will defeat the occupation (i.e., Israel)… for every occupation passes in the end, and this will be the fate of the hated Israeli occupation of our homeland."

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 31, 2023]

Top Palestinian official slams Biden administation as ‘weak’

The Palestinian Authority’s top diplomat on Thursday slammed the Biden administration as “weak” over its failure to date to launch a negotiating process with Israel.

“I’m frustrated,” P.A. Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki told a gathering of reporters in Ramallah, adding, “It seemed that [President Joe Biden] wanted to change all policies [former President Donald] Trump had taken, but not when it comes to Palestine.”

Al-Maliki pointed to what he said was Washington’s failure to rein in Israeli construction in Judea and Samaria and curtail IDF counterterror operations there.

“We have a weak [American] administration when it comes to Palestine,” said al-Maliki. “We re-engaged with the administration hoping that they would have the strength and the courage to move forward.”

Earlier this year, P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas outlined a series of demands for Israeli concessions during a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Ramallah.

In May, Abbas likened Israel to Nazi Germany during a speech at the United Nations marking “Nakba Day,” meaning the “disaster” or “catastrophe” of the establishment of modern-day Israel on May 14, 1948.

“Zionists continue to say that Israel made the desert bloom. As if Palestine was a desert and they made the desert bloom,” said Abbas. “These are lies. They continue to lie, like Goebbels, and they continue to lie until people believe them.”

IRGC chiefs tell UK students to join ‘apocalyptic war’ on Jews

Senior commanders from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are using a London-based student organisation to pipe extremist antisemitic propaganda and calls for violence into British universities.

The speakers, some of whom who are sanctioned by Britain for human rights abuses, have played key roles in crushing of dissent in Iran.

This is the first time that IRGC commanders have been seen to play a direct role in disseminating regime propaganda in the UK.

The JC has identified eight IRGC leaders who have addressed UK student audiences since early 2020.

Recordings obtained by this newspaper reveal that one commander, Saeed Ghasemi, told British students that the Holocaust was “fake”, boasted of training al-Qaeda terrorists, and urged his audience to join “the beautiful list of soldiers” who would fight and kill Jews in a coming apocalyptic war.

Another, Hossein Yekta, claimed Jews “created homosexuality” and urged his audience to “raise the flag of the Islamic revolution, Islam and martyrdom”. Students should see themselves as “holy warriors”, he said, promising that the “era of the Jews” would soon be at an end.

The disclosures sparked renewed demands from leading MPs and security experts for the government to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist group, making organising similar talks a criminal offence. The move has been resisted by the Foreign Office.

UJS is disgusted that senior members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps have been speaking on several campuses across the UK. pic.twitter.com/GyY0xZyWWZ
— Union of Jewish Students (@UJS_UK) August 3, 2023

Yemen wins the Jew-hating sweepstakes

The most antisemitic media in the world comes from the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.

Here is an excerpt from a (now) Houthi newspaper, Al Thawra about Jewish influence in the world.

The autotranslation of the top is pretty representative.

The licentious life of the Italian clergy was prostitution, filth, and indulgence, natural or unnatural. Macchio described the monks and the Brotherhood as "servants of the devil." They indulge in debauchery, homosexuality, gluttony, selling religious functions, and deviating from religion, and they say that the men of the army are of better morals than the clerics.
As the monasteries of men and women were close enough to allow those in it to share from time to time in one bed. The monasteries' records contain twenty volumes of trials due to sexual intercourse between monks and nuns... and others.
It is clear from this section of the Christian legacy that the Jews controlled the clergy with lust and moral corruption and made them, under these scandals, their slaves.. Hence the collapse began.
They were able to control the popes, and thus society lost its confidence in them, and the process of moral and ethical collapse began.

The Jewish movement sought to create an alternative lifestyle for the wealthy in order to challenge social norms. Its main focus was the pursuit of pleasure, especially sexual pleasure. This pursuit often involved non-traditional relationships between men and women as well as same-sex relationships or same-sex relationships between women. It started with the Industrial Revolution and has grown ever since. The Decadent Movement is characterized by an emphasis on luxury and excess, with an emphasis on extravagance, decadence, and hedonism, and women were given greater rights over their own bodies.
With the emergence of this degenerate movement made by the Jews, the beginning of Western civilization (barbaric civilization) can be calculated.

This mimics Nazi antisemitic literature.

Yet there are close to no academic studies that look at Houthi antisemitism.

If Jew-hatred doesn't come from the Right, no one is interested - even when the hatred is clearly influenced by Nazi sources.

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!

Another false accusation of an Israeli law discriminating against Arabs

Jewish Voice for Peace writes in their email newsletter:

On Sunday, the Israeli Knesset passed a shockingly racist law — even by the standards of Israel’s apartheid government.

Under the new "sexual terrorism" law, Palestinian citizens of Israel convicted of rape, sexual assault, or sexual harassment can receive double the sentence of Israelis found guilty of the same crimes. The law passed in a bipartisan vote of 39-7, and received immediate condemnation from journalists, Israeli feminist groups, and Palestinian lawmakers.

This law manufactures an image of Palestinians as more violent and more dangerous than Israelis. According to the law, a crime is inherently worse simply because a Palestinian committed it. This puts a target on the back of Palestinian men and boys, intensifying the constant threat of violence that Palestinians already live under.

Really? A law that says that Israeli Arabs would get double the sentence of Israeli Jews?

Of course not. The law is described in Times of Israel:

The Knesset on Monday passed a right-wing-backed law that makes terrorist, nationalist or racist motivations an aggravating factor in crimes of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

Aggravating factors come into play during criminal sentencing and are a consideration that can push judges toward issuing a sentence closer to the legal maximum.

The law would double compensation fines for sexual harassment motivated by racism or hostility toward certain groups.

The entire intent of the law is to ensure that in cases like the rape and murder of Ori Ansbacher, where the smiling terrorist admitted that his attack was for nationalist reasons, that the sentence would be stricter.

There hasn't been a huge amount of Palestinian rape of Jewish women specifically as terrorism, but they have occured. In 2012, a Palestinian kidnapped a Jewish couple and raped the woman. The court at the time did not consider this a terror attack, but the Israeli Defense Ministry did determine it was a "nationalistic" crime because of previous terror attacks by the rapist.

An Israeli woman gang-raped by four Palestinians in 2006 was likewise determined by the Defense Ministry to have been the victim of a nationalist crime.

In these crimes, the rapist specifically seeks out a Jewish woman for attack. As heinous as any rape is, when it is done as a terror act, it is worse: the rapist does not attack Arab women but specifically Jews.

There have also been reports of Palestinian youths sexually assaulting Jewish women on buses and other public places. Again, when they single out Jewish women for assault, that is a terror attack, not an ordinary rape.

There is nothing wrong, and certainly not racist, with saying that a terror rape attack should have a stricter punishment than a similar attack that had no nationalistic motive.

The law does not say anything about Arabs. If a British-born BDS activist would rape an Israeli Jewish woman he would get the same consideration for a sentence.

As we've seen, Israeli courts have not automatically determined that every rape by a Palestinian is a terror attack, just as they do not automatically determine that every shooting by Arabs against Jews is a terror attack - some crimes have only criminal motivation.

The only bigots here are the members of JVP. Notice their wording, defining Israeli Arabs as "Palestinians" and saying that "Israelis" are all Jews. Even though very few Israeli Arabs define themselves as "Palestinian," JVP is telling them that they are not really Israeli, dismissing their own self-definition. And then JVP calls Jews racists for passing a law against terrorism and racism.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

08/02 Links Pt2: Jury votes to sentence Tree of Life synagogue killer to death; Don't let the Palestinians erase the Jewish history of Israel

From Ian:

Pittsburgh jury votes to sentence Tree of Life synagogue killer to death

A federal jury on Wednesday sentenced Robert Bowers to death for killing 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history, the New York Times reported.

In June, the jury found Bowers, 50, guilty of dozens of federal hate crimes in the trial held at the US District Court in Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania. Bowers was convicted of 63 counts, including 11 counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death.

Two weeks ago, during the first phase of the sentencing portion of the trial, the jury found Bowers to be eligible for the death penalty. Jurors then heard testimony and arguments from both prosecutors and defense attorneys as to whether he deserved to be put to death for the killings.

On June 16, the jury found him guilty on all counts, with defense lawyers offering no dispute that he planned and carried out the attack.

First-hand accounts pulled at the heartstrings of jurors
Jurors heard testimony from some of the survivors of the attack and evidence of Bowers' antisemitism, including multiple posts attacking Jews made on a far-right website in the months leading up to the attack.

In federal capital cases, a unanimous vote by jurors in a separate penalty phase of the trial is required in order to sentence a defendant to death, and the judge cannot reject the jury's vote. If jurors are unable to reach a unanimous decision, the offender is instead sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release.

In the sentencing phase, prosecutors have argued that Bowers had the necessary intent and premeditation to qualify for the death penalty. They presented witnesses and evidence to show he carefully planned the attack and deliberately targeted vulnerable elderly worshipers.

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

Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who hid in a bathroom during the attack, thanked the jury in a statement, saying "it is my hope that we can begin to heal and move forward."

US Jewish leaders applaud death sentence for Tree of Life shooter

Jewish organizations have applauded a Pittsburg jury's Wednesday decision to sentence the perpetrator of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in 2018.

Amb. Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, emphasized, "Today's decision represents a measure of justice for the slaughter of 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest act of antisemitism in US history."

Lauder continued, "The jury's decision is a stark reminder to remain vigilant against antisemitism, calling on American leaders to amplify efforts to protect Jewish communities nationwide."

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) stated, "As we process the jury's decision, let us remember the eleven lives lost to a cold-blooded hater of Jews while at prayer in the synagogue."

Yaakov Hagoel, chairman of the World Zionist Organization, praised the Pennsylvania court's decision to sentence the antisemitic killer to death, asserting, "No punishment can undo the loss of these 11 lives, but we will not forget nor forgive."

Reflection on the Jewish community of Pittsburgh
Jewish Federations of North America shared their thoughts and prayers, stating: "As our friends at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh reflect, our thoughts, sympathy, and prayers today are with the Pittsburgh community; the families of the victims; the survivors and first responders directly affected; the congregations that lost loved members; and all of the people traumatized by this crime."

They continued by remembering and honoring the eleven victims.

As they acknowledged the closing of this chapter, the organization emphasized the strength and resilience of Pittsburgh's Jewish community.

Chairman of The Jewish Agency, Doron Almog, reflected on his visit to the Pittsburgh community, stating: "A year ago I visited the Pittsburgh community that is still picking up the pieces from the unimaginable tragedy. The memory of the murdered will be encircled in our hearts, and we at the Jewish Agency send a big hug and strengthen the hands of the families and the community."

Louis Farrakhan is a notorious antisemite. He really hates Jews. Ditto Roger Waters, and so many others. Like cockroaches, the antisemites never stop coming out of the woodwork. But how should we feel about those, like RFK Jr., who spend time with them?

Robert Kennedy Jr. met with me about a vaccine that is designed to affect Black males [VIDEO] http://t.co/vIBozDkOo4 pic.twitter.com/OKoFgNg9cj
— THE HONORABLE MINISTER LOUIS FARRAKHAN (@LouisFarrakhan) June 27, 2015

Let’s say there is an intersection of interests, as in the case of Louis Farrakhan and RFK Jr. Is it right that RFK Jr. look away from the vile antisemitism of Farrakhan because they have similar views on vaccination? And if you make common cause with an antisemite, does it make you one, too? Is it right, morally, that RFK Jr., collaborate with Farrakhan on the issue of vaccination?

Some say we should give RFK Jr. a pass because there must be a viable Democratic alternative to Joe Biden in the 2024 election. But the stench of antisemitism lingers around this “viable” alternative to Joe. During the Million Man March of October 2015, Nation of Islam Western Regional Representative Tony Muhammad read a letter from Louis Farrakhan:

In the greeting words of peace, Asalam Aleikum. Brothers and sisters, I'm here to bring to you some vital information that has happened to our community and it has not been brought to the attention of black people throughout America. Four months ago, Bobby Kennedy, the son of Robert Kennedy, met with me in Los Angeles to give me some shocking and revealing and, I mean, terrible information on what is going on at the Center[sic] for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. It has been brought to our attention that the senior lead scientist for the Center[sic] for Disease Control has admitted that the MMR vaccine and many of the vaccine shots have been genetically modified to attack black and Latino boys.

I don't think you heard me. We are living in a wicked time where we are dealing with a spiritual wickedness that is in high places and the pharmaceutical industry alone with the American Medical Association have found a way like Pharaoh did when it was time for the Children of Israel for them to make an exit.

Pharaoh said, “Let us kill all boy babies two and under.”

Now they are trying to force vaccines on baby boys, at least 80 shots before they are three years old.

Was it wrong that RFK Jr. went to, of all people, Louis Farrakhan to share information on vaccines? Farrakhan is an antisemite, but both Farrakhan and RFK Jr. are against vaccination. They share a common cause. What, if any, are the moral implications of associating with known antisemites because of the intersection of special interests such as vaccination mandates?

RFK Jr. clearly saw Farrakhan as the representative of the black people on the issue of vaccination. And since RFK Jr. has an especial interest in vaccines and vaccine mandates, his interests nicely dovetail with those of Farrakhan, who has repeatedly spun antisemitic conspiracy theories about vaccination:

According to the Free Beacon, RFK Jr. and Farrakhan are “longtime allies”:

The Kennedy-Farrakhan courtship began in 2015, when Kennedy visited the Nation of Islam leader at his home in Chicago to discuss the measles vaccine administered routinely to young kids. Farrakhan said in a social media post after the meeting that the vaccine was "designed" to harm black males. "Some of us are afraid, but Mr. Kennedy found his way to our door," Farrakhan has said.

Kennedy now has vocal support from Farrakhan, who has praised Adolf Hitler, compared Jews to "termites," and maintains a massive following through the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan has credited Kennedy with introducing him to the controversial and widely disputed theory that childhood measles vaccines are linked to autism. Kennedy has cosponsored events with the Nation of Islam and its leader, whom he has praised as a "truly great partner" in the "battle" to publicize the autism theory.

Nineteen percent of Democratic voters say they support Kennedy over President Joe Biden, according to a Fox News poll. The anti-vaccine activist's popularity among Democrats could cut against the party's efforts to portray the Republican base as anti-science bigots. While Biden is still the heavy favorite, Kennedy's surprisingly strong numbers show that a sizable chunk of Democratic voters are open to supporting a candidate who has pushed anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.

As the Free Beacon suggests, some say we need RFK Jr. as a viable alternative to Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination. Is this reason enough to support someone who makes common cause with antisemites? And for those who answer in the affirmative, do you tell yourselves (and others) that there is no proof that RFK Jr. is an antisemite?

08/02 Links Pt1: The 'Two-State Solution' is the elephant in the room; In Lebanon, Israel and America Are on Opposite Sides; Iran's Illicit Oil Exports Hit Five-Year High

From Ian:

David Singer: The 'Two-State Solution' is the elephant in the room

Israeli annexation of the 'West Bank' won’t happen under the Saudi Solution – but division of sovereignty in the 'West Bank' between Israel and Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine will.

In 2002 Friedman provided an intriguing insight into the role he played in conceiving the two-state solution:

“Earlier this month, I wrote a column suggesting that the 22 members of the Arab League, at their summit in Beirut on March 27 and 28, make a simple, clear-cut proposal to Israel to break the Israeli-Palestinian impasse: In return for a total withdrawal by Israel to the June 4, 1967, lines, and the establishment of a Palestinian state, the 22 members of the Arab League would offer Israel full diplomatic relations, normalized trade and security guarantees. Full withdrawal, in accord with U.N. Resolution 242, for full peace between Israel and the entire Arab world. Why not?”

Imagine Tom’s surprise when he broached his proposal during dinner with Saudi Arabia's then Crown Prince and de facto ruler - Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud:

“After I laid out this idea, the crown prince looked at me with mock astonishment and said, ''Have you broken into my desk?''

''No,'' I said, wondering what he was talking about.

''The reason I ask is that this is exactly the idea I had in mind -- full withdrawal from all the occupied territories, in accord with U.N. resolutions, including in Jerusalem, for full normalization of relations,'' he said. ''I have drafted a speech along those lines. My thinking was to deliver it before the Arab summit and try to mobilize the entire Arab world behind it. The speech is written, and it is in my desk.”

Thus was the Friedman-Abdullah two-state solution born.

The Obama-Biden administration unsuccessfully pushed this solution between 2011 and 2016 – bequeathing its implementation to the United Nations after instructing their UN Ambassador Samantha Powell to abstain – rather than veto – Security Council Resolution 2334 on 23 December 2016 as they were packing up and vacating the White House.

That Obama-Biden ploy has failed - after seven years of intense UN pressure to broker its implementation.

Biden, Friedman and the UN have never acknowledged the existence of the Saudi solution in the thirteen months since its publication.

They need to – for the Saudi solution has now become the key to a Saudi-Israel peace.

Biden's Saudi honey trap for Israel | Our Middle East

Are the recent efforts by the Biden administration for Saudi/Israeli normalization a pathway to peace or disaster for Israel?

In this episode of Our Middle East, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Dan Diker and JCPA analyst, Arab affairs expert, and veteran journalist Yoni Ben Menahem discuss talk of an American-initiated Saudi-Israeli peace and normalization deal after U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan was dispatched to Jeddah to speak with Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

They discuss
- the likely Saudi demands for the Palestinian state, withdrawal to the 67 lines and nuclear energy.
- the danger in both Biden and Netanyahu seeking to secure their legacies
- the complete misunderstanding of the Arab street by the Americans

‘The Middle East is a Powder Keg’: Israel’s UN Ambassador Warns of Hezbollah Provocations Along Lebanon Border

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan in a letter released Tuesday warned of potentially “disastrous” consequences stemming from Hezbollah’s provocations along the Blue Line separating Israel and Lebanon.

The letter to the UN Security Council and Secretary-General, dated 27 July, cites Hezbollah’s construction of military compounds along the de-facto border, as well as Hezbollah’s repeated attempts in recent months to infiltrate or sabotage Israel’s security barriers.

“The Middle East is a powder keg on the cusp of being ignited,” the letter says. “Tensions along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon are higher than they have been in years as a result of Hezbollah’s violent escalations, blatant violations of Security Council resolutions, and dangerous military advancements. If the Security Council does not condemn Hezbollah’s destabilizing activities and demand that Lebanon takes action against the illegal military buildup within its territories– or at the very least, allow [United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)] to be able to fully implement its mandate – the situation on the ground will continue to deteriorate and the consequences will be far-reaching and disastrous.”

While UNIFIL’s 10,000 peacekeepers are in theory mandated to “restore international peace and security” in South Lebanon and are authorized by the Security Council to “take all necessary necessary action…to ensure that [their] area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind,” the area has been a Hezbollah stronghold for decades, and the terror group operates with effective impunity from UNIFIL or the Lebanese government.

For months the group has been building observation and guard posts along the border under the guise of a supposed-environmental NGO called “Green Without Borders.”

“These are military outposts for all intents and purposes, established and maintained by Hezbollah terrorists and not innocent Lebanese environmentalists,” Erdan wrote in a separate letter in January.

Tony Badran: In Lebanon, Israel and America Are on Opposite Sides

Each time Hezbollah provokes, the U.S. reliably steps in to “mediate” between the terror group and Israel, with the goal of “stabilizing Lebanon.” Needless to say, the Israeli role is strictly to make concessions in the framework of a U.S.-brokered agreement, at the risk of displeasing its American patron. Hezbollah, meanwhile, knows that the structure of this Kabuki performance prohibits Israel from retaliating, making its provocations more or less risk-free—especially given the fact that the “Lebanese state” is a fiction.

In a speech marking the 17th anniversary of the 2006 war, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, explained exactly how the terror group’s dance with Team Obama-Biden and its emissaries works. Pointedly, his elucidation began with the maritime deal. The way Lebanon got everything it demanded, Nasrallah explained, was when “the resistance” threatened the Karish offshore platform, and when the official and popular supporting cast played their part. That’s when the Americans and Hochstein came and delivered the Israelis.

Having internalized that precedent, Hezbollah then decided it was time to press its advantage on land, where again, Nasrallah’s reading of the American posture had proven correct. The day before the terror leader’s speech, Amos Hochstein, the Biden administration’s special presidential coordinator for global infrastructure and energy security, who got the lame duck government of Yair Lapid to concede to all of Hezbollah’s demands in its last days in office, arrived in Israel to discuss tensions along the land border with Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s provocations on Israel’s northern border had begun months prior to Hochstein’s arrival. On June 21, Israeli media reported that Hezbollah operatives had entered Israeli territory several weeks earlier—the exact date was later said to have been April 8—and set up an outpost in the Mount Dov area, several meters inside Israel. Needless to say, this was months before the passage of Netanyahu’s judicial reform bill.

That Hezbollah’s actions took so long to surface in the Israeli press in part likely reflects the Israeli government’s reluctance to advertise its own weakness. Instead, the government vainly hoped that this sign of its impotence might be quietly resolved through diplomatic channels and UNIFIL. Israel filed a letter of complaint with the U.N. Security Council and then threatened to remove the tents by force after an unspecified deadline—a threat which, as more time passes, appears increasingly hollow.

Israel’s weak response to Hezbollah’s symbolic invasion of sovereign Israeli territory suggests a failure to recognize that Hezbollah’s cross-border encampment is, as Nasrallah explained, part of a systematic campaign. In turn, this failure appears to be embedded in an even larger refusal to comprehend America’s new posture in Lebanon. As a result, Israel is responding piecemeal to a coherent Hezbollah strategy aimed at forcing Israel to make additional concessions, this time on land, while using the new constraints forced on Israel by the new American posture to establish new operational dynamics at the border.

The oddity of this situation, then, is that both Israel and Hezbollah appear to be acting under the assumption that they have U.S. backing. In the case of Israel, however, this assumption is in part a mistake, and in part a bit of public posturing which has failed to convince their enemies to the north, who in fact know better.

The US embassy in Lebanon under Dorothy Shea is promoting and celebrating an LAF propaganda video with anti-Israel messaging pegged to the joint Hezbollah-LAF provocation at the border. Shea spearheaded a legally dubious scheme to make cash salary payments to the LAF/ISF in USD. https://t.co/4nhbCfwCVw pic.twitter.com/oOjF6VtXbu
— Tony Badran (@AcrossTheBay) August 1, 2023

A new review of my book "PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism" in AJL News

My book, "Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism" has continued to receive great reviews from both long-form reviewers and from Amazon reviews, where every single reviewer gave it five stars.

I just stumbled upon a short review published earlier this year by Shmuel Ben Gad in the Association of Jewish Libraries newsletter.

And again, the reviewer likes my book.

Elder of Ziyon. Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism. EoZPress,2022.365 pp. $19.95(9798985708431)PBK.

This is a selection of writings from the pro-Israel website “The Elder of Ziyon.” It is vigorous and straightforward in its defense of Zionism and Israel and not without humor. For example, after providing an extensive section of a paper by an anti-Israel academic, written in opaque postmodern prose, Elder of Ziyon writes, “Did you get that? Neither did anyone else.”

He covers a wide range of subjects, including, in part, the legal status of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, the relationship of anti-Zionism to antisemitism, the intellectual shallowness and dishonesty of many academic anti-Zionists, and the hostility to Israel of certain NGOs. He does not hesitate to call hatred hatred, and thinks that the hatred of Israel, the notion that Israel is uniquely or supremely wicked country, and Jews do not deserve to be equal to other nations in having self-determination in their homeland, is irrational and causes anti-Zionists to see the world in a distorted way.

This book is about a depressing subject but its strong, energetic defense of Israel is a tonic.

Shmuel Ben-Gad, Gelman Library, George Washington University, Washington,DC

Thanks, Shmuel!

And if you haven't bought the book yet - it is a tonic!

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!

Anti-Jewish hate crimes in NYC continues to dwarf all others

Here is a chart showing the categories of hate crimes in New York City for the first half of the year.

Out of 235 incidents, 108 were anti-Jewish. This is a little less than half but still much, much more than any other kind of bias.

In 2022, 43% of all hate crimes in New York City were against Jews.

I am sure that the NYPD takes antisemitic incidents seriously, but - this is a lot. And it indicates that the usual ways of fighting hate need to be customized for anti-Jewish hate. For example, the NYPD keeps track of the race of the offenders and the districts the crimes occur in - if there is a clear pattern, that could indicate a more specific plan for combating anti-Jewish hate rather than just using the same methods as for all other hate crimes. After all, Jews are often targeted for the perception of being privileged, unlike most other bias crimes.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

08/01 Links Pt2: The colourful Twitter history of Palestine; Deir Yassin: The ‘Massacre’ That Never Was; UNESCO to rule on ancient Jericho as Palestinian World Heritage site

From Ian:

David Collier: The colourful Twitter history of Palestine

Social media sites such as Twitter portray a wonderful history of a state called Palestine – but first let us quickly remember the truth.

The historical facts:
For the Islamic world, the area of 19th century Southern Syria was a sparsely populated forgotten backwater with rival clans and nomadic tribes presenting a hazardous obstacle for every trip. The weakening of the occupying power (the Ottoman Empire) and growing global trade – resurrected European interest. It was Christian travellers recognising this area as their ‘Holy Land’ that put an anglicised version of the name given to it by occupying Roman forces – ‘Palestine’ – firmly back on the map.

European Christian and Zionist investment increased opportunity, and immigrants (mostly Muslims from the collapsing Ottoman Empire) began to flood into the forgotten backwater. This time period culminated in ‘Palestine’ being used as the name for the British Mandate, awarded to Britain by the League of Nations to resurrect the Jewish homeland.

‘Palestine’ was never anything but a name of European imperial colonial conquest (Greek, Roman, Crusader and then British). Even the root derives from the ‘Philistines’ – European Invaders from the Aegean. This is why when Arabs bringing Islam had invaded and colonised the area they didn’t adopt it, and even local usage soon fell out of favour. ‘Palestine’ was not native to the land and had no meaning at all to Muslims. It remained just Christian terminology for the Holy Land – the Jewish ‘Land of Israel’. The anti-Zionist problem

This may all sound cold and heartless on the notion of a ‘Palestinian identity’ but it remains the historical truth.

None of this helps the anti-Israel crowd that is desperate to argue that Jews came and took over a prosperous land full of indigenous Palestinian people who had lived there as a nation for millennia. As Zionism rose – Muslim interest in the area simply rose to oppose it. They had no interest until the Jews sought to reclaim the land. The Christian world divided – with supersessionists seeing the rebirth of Israel as a direct threat to their own theology – while most Christians saw natural support for Zionism in their bibles. What had been a forgotten backwater was suddenly the most important thing in everyone’s heart.

Even the precious Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa (‘Haram al-Sharif’) built on the Jewish Temple Mount had been left to waste away. Don’t take it from me. This is from the Jordanian Royal website which explains that it was the Zionist ‘threat’ that made them wake up – and led to the 1922 restoration of these holy sites that turned them from decaying relics into the iconic images we all know so well today:

But the anti-Jewish movement still needed a banner to gather around and in time, Arab – Soviet anti-Zionist mythology created the ‘Palestinian’ in order to do battle with Israel. They then set about rewriting history, both by belittling Jewish ties to the Land of Israel and embedding a narrative of the indigenous Palestinian hero/victim.

The Twitter history of the Palestinians
When your truth is rooted in historicity, the rest is easy. You have nothing to fear, and your role is to educate those around you. With the anti-Zionists- the opposite is true. Education is the enemy – and so they rely on distortions, outliers, misinformation, fake news, and ignorance to help spread their ‘word’. The result is that an army of anti-Israel activists base their ‘truth’ on a mountain of nothing but lies.

This is easily shown by turning to social media. Here are some examples of how ignorant anti-Zionist history is. As each of these examples have been used 1000s of times (with many of them receiving millions of views) I thought I would present them here – along with the truth behind the image:

Deir Yassin: The ‘Massacre’ That Never Was

The Lingering Problem
Even though Jewish soldiers encountered between 70-80 combatants in the village, questions remain as to why so many casualties were civilians.

Some have argued this was the result of the warning mechanism not working properly. On the way to the village, the loudspeaker truck got stuck in a ditch, mostly out of earshot from the village, so Arab civilians were not properly warned that a battle was about to break out.

Expecting to face only combatants in a residential area, the Jewish soldiers – lacking traditional combat experience – carried out their original battle plan, which was to throw grenades into the houses that combatants were firing from before entering and clearing the houses.

Not expecting to find civilians still sheltering in place, they did not allow for that possibility.

The fight over the Zahran household during the battle best demonstrates the consequences of these tactics. During this fight, Muhmand Zahran, two of his sons, and his grandson, defended the property. The Jewish soldiers blindly threw grenades and shot into the house, killing 24 people.

Ultimately, it was flawed tactics rather than intent to murder that were responsible for the civilian deaths.

The Real Terrorist Attack
The battle over Deir Yassin was neither a terrorist attack nor a massacre. Deir Yassin represented a legitimate military objective for the Jewish soldiers in achieving their broader military objective of securing the road to Jerusalem. While planning the attack, the Jewish soldiers planned to mitigate civilian casualties, even at the expense of their own tactical advantage.

The loss of every civilian life is a tragedy. In the case of Deir Yassin, it was an avoidable tragedy had the military operation gone to plan. But the decades-long lie that the village is the site of a planned and deliberate massacre is just that – a lie.

Sadly, it is a lie that has had deadly consequences. On April 13, 1948, Arab militants killed over 70 medical workers and civilians in a revenge attack for Deir Yassin. Their objective was to kill as many unarmed civilians as possible.

Conclusion
Deir Yassin was a failure. But most importantly, it was a military failure. The pervasive and insidious narrative that a Jewish militia targeted the village and its inhabitants with a plot to commit unspeakable savagery is simply not supported by evidence.

UNESCO to rule on ancient Jericho as Palestinian World Heritage site

UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee is expected to list the site of ancient Jericho, which is now an archaeological park located in the modern Palestinian city that still bears the biblical name, as being in the "state of Palestine."

The city is located in a section of the Jordan Valley, also known as Area A of the West Bank, which is under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority.

It is one of 53 natural and cultural sites the World Heritage Committee will be voting to include on its global list when it convenes this September in Saudi Arabia.

UNESCO has recognized Palestine as a state since 2011. It has since inscribed three other West Bank properties to it: the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2012; the ancient terraces of Battir in 2014; and Hebron’s Old Town, including the Tomb of the Patriarchs, in 2017.

The PA has filed requests for UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee to recognize 13 other sites during future meetings. They include Sebastia, the site of the former capital of ancient northern Israel; and the Qumran caves, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

The World Heritage Committee has inscribed nine sites to Israel, the last of which was Maresha Caves in Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park in 2014.

The inscription of additional Israeli sites into the World Heritage Program has been complicated by political considerations. Israel's relations with UNESCO

Israel and the United States both halted their annual dues to UNESCO in 2011 to protest the organization’s recognition of Palestine as a state. Both countries lost voting rights in the organization as a result in 2013. They withdrew at the end of 2018 to protest the organization’s anti-Israel bias, a move that went into effect in 2019.

The US rejoined UNESCO this summer, and first lady Jill Biden traveled to the organization’s headquarters in Paris in July to celebrate America’s renewed ties with the organization.

Israel has not made any public statements about its intent to rejoin UNESCO. Its absence from the organization complicates any work on the potential inscription of further World Heritage Sites.

https://t.co/3hHgwYLQKW’s a lesson from Winston Churchill. pic.twitter.com/Fyz0xT6mpH
— Mo Delawn (@MoDellawn) July 30, 2023

Academia is used to launder every possible libel against Israel into acceptable-sounding social science. "Apartheid," "racism," genocide" - no matter what lies people make up against Israel, they are all supported by academic papers.

It is easy to lie in an academic paper. Peer review is next to worthless. There are enough sources to support the most insane theories as long as the authors pick and choose them, and ignore any counter-examples. Then, once published, these papers are used as source materials in the next set of papers, and no one checks to see if these materials were any good to begin with because they rely on the peer-review process of other journals. Using these methods, it is not difficult to create an edifice of well-sourced theories based on lies.

A paper was recently published in Cogent Arts and Humanities by Hanana Bamadhaj Omar and Mohd Irwan Syazli Said that asserts that Israel is inflicting "social death" on Palestinians. Wikipedia defines "social death" as "the condition of people not accepted as fully human by wider society. It refers to when someone is treated as if they are dead or non-existent. It is used by sociologists such as Orlando Patterson and Zygmunt Bauman, and historians of slavery and the Holocaust to describe the part played by governmental and social segregation in that process."

Rather than look at whether Israel is indeed guilty of this charge, the authors seek to expand the definition of "social death" to include Israel as the social murderer. They say this explicitly:

This article draws on the elaboration of social death theory and expand it to analyse the (attempted) social death Israeli regime is inflicting on Palestinian refugees.

Omar and Said freely admit that the paper takes what is a relatively new social science concept and seek to expand it in way that are far beyond its original form - just to damn Israel.

The authors take previous studies on how there is a component of social death in genocides - where (for example) the Nazis made the conscious decision not only to murder all Jews but also to destroy their culture and their relationships. They they twist this into saying that the effects of what Israel did to survive a genocidal attempt to wipe out the Jews in the region in 1948 on its Arab population was in fact the intent.

In the Palestinian context, we are contending that Palestinians are not entirely socially dead; however, they are, to a certain degree, are exposed to social death. The dispossession of millions of Palestinians in the past 73 years is an (attempt) to socially kill them. Quoting Edward Said (1986 p. 16), “identity- who we are, where we come from, what we are—is difficult to maintain in exile.”

Said's quote is only true when the exiles do not have a strong social identity to begin with. Jews, Kurds, Armenians, and Tibetans have all managed to maintain their national identities. One can look at the same set of evidence in this paper that supposedly proves Israel is attempting "social death" on Palestinians and instead argue that Palestinian identity was never that strong to begin with.

This Said quote exemplifies how academia rewards lies.

Science - when done properly - bases new theories on things that have been proven via controlled and reproduced experiments.

Social science, on the other hand, only has pretensions to being science. But in social science, the "researchers" can pick and choose which theories and evidence they like and discard anything they don't. They then pretend that the previous studies that they like are settled facts, and they use previous half-truths to build new lies.

This paper has all of that:

2.2. Social death and genocide? Unlatching a new portal to social death
Card looks at “genocide” from a sociological viewpoint, a stance that attempts to expand the legally bounded term of genocide. Interestingly exemplifying the Holocaust, Card contended that it was not only a program of mass murder but also an assault on Jewish social vitality. This article argues that the ongoing Nakba is not only a program of violent dispossession but an assault on Palestinian social vitality. Lendman (2010), in Israel’s Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine, perhaps puts it best in illustrating this. Palestinians: dispossessed of their lands, chased out of their sanctuaries, turned into permanently temporary people. This state of being permanently temporary separates them from their families and community is a form of assault on Palestinians’ social vitality, therefore, an (attempt) to social death.

We start off with Holocaust inversion, comparing what Palestinians to Holocaust victims, which is antisemitic. They are doing this consciously with the word "interestingly" above.

Omar and Said then assert, with no citations, that the "nakba" is ongoing. This is an example of how social science rewards repeating lies that "everyone knows" without the slightest reluctance.

The authors cite Stephen Lendman, a recently deceased crazed right-wing conspiracy theorist who has no academic credentials. Lendman's blog includes "CIA Involved in Child Trafficking?", "Fake Biden Announces 2024 Re-selection Bid" and "The Scourge of US-Supported Ukrainian Nazis.

This is their source for a "slow motion genocide" of Palestinians!

The researchers are cognizant of social death being the centre of genocide (Card, 2003, 2010; Card & Marsoobian, 2007). However, she also noted that “social death is not necessarily genocide. But genocide is social death”, the same as we are conscious of the debate on using “genocide” to illustrate the violent Palestinian dispossession. Additionally, Card and Marsoobian (2007) point out that “genocidal acts are not always or necessarily homicidal” but achieve their intended effect by inflicting harm on the victim’s social vitality. Similarly, Lemkin (1944) notes genocide is not necessarily the immediate destruction of a nation. Destroying social relations on which a group’s identity and communal life are based can be genocidal (Lemkin as cited in Abed, 2007, p. 27). Culverwell (Citation2017) notes that while social death is unrecognised as an act of genocide under international law, it is essential to understand these actions’ impact on society as a whole. It is vital to note that this article will not ruminate on the genocide debate because it is not the focus of this research. There is a plethora of work on this, and among them are (Boyle, Citation2000; Doebbler, Citation2010; Lendman, Citation2010; Ophir, Citation2010; Pappé, Citation2006; Rashed et al., Citation2014) that the researchers find persuasive.

Their main source says that social death is not genocide. But the authors then twist that into saying that some people say that Israel practices genocide on Palestinians, and they agree, so social death is evidence of genocide. The entire purpose of this paragraph is to link Israel to genocide using cherry picked sources and an argument that violates basic logic.

Abed (Citation2007) responds and expands Card’s (Citation2003) social death in a manner we agree with. He introduced “territory bounded culture”, which is central to our argument where the forced removal of a population from their traditional lands eventuates social death (2007 p. 47). From our observation, Abed (Citation2007) and Patterson’s (Citation1982) work are interconnected. Patterson wrote: “slave is violently uprooted from his milieu and the process of social nullification constitutes the first external phase of enslavement” (1982 p. 38). The Palestinian case is a mixture of Patterson’s framework of social death; they are violently uprooted from their milieu by being dispossessed of their homes and lands. Many if not all cases of genocide involve forced displacement of populations, and many of these populations have cultures that are, in varying degrees, “territorially bounded” (Abed, Citation2007, p. 45). Nevertheless, Abed summarised Card’s argument perfectly.

Omar and Said are basing their entire thesis on making links that don't exist, that they feel must be right, and therefore they seek sources that seem to support them and ignore any counter-evidence.

In fact, they are quite aware of sources that disprove their own thesis - because they quote some.

[L]ooking at Palestinian identity, Siklawi (Citation2019) recognises Palestinian refugees’ identity in Lebanese camps faced a decline post-Lebanese civil war.

If their identity was strong before the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s and weakened after it, then what does Israel have to do with their "social death"?

Yet that is the entire thesis of the paper!

The rest of the paper is equally worthless. The methodology is a joke, where instead of directly asking a random sample of Palestinians some questions, the authors blame Covid-19 and instead choose a tiny number of pre-existing interviews to analyze to glean their social death status. (Ever hear of email? Telephones?)

To determine Israeli dismissive attitudes towards Palestinians, they rely exclusively on quotes from the right-wing Arutz Sheva, which represents a small percentage of Israeli Zionists and opinions.

It is obvious that the paper is not meant to research anything, but to support the authors' pre-existing biases. But it goes beyond that: the purpose of the paper is to build another component of the edifice of lies about Israel in modern academia. It is meant to be cited as a source for the next paper that will make further allegations, "extending" these concepts to further position Israel as uniquely evil and Palestinian Arabs as uniquely victimized.

The social science universe does not punish academics who subvert the field in this way. On the contrary, because the field has little rigor, it rewards 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!

08/01 Links Pt1: Six Israelis wounded in terror attack in Ma’ale Adumim; Hamas reveals new details of IDF soldier's kidnapping; Israeli Company Signs Deal with Saudi Firm on Renewable Energy

From Ian:

Ex-State Department Officials Admit They Were Wrong

On his way out the door, the retiring U.S. ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, has belatedly acknowledged that he “screwed up” in one of his last major actions.

He’s just the latest in a growing line of U.S. diplomats who have admitted—when it was too late—that they made significant errors in their treatment of Israel. So why does anybody still listen to them when they offer advice on the Arab-Israeli conflict?

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, Nides was asked about his outrageous tweet commenting on the June 20 massacre of four Israelis by Palestinian-Arab terrorists. The four victims were defenseless civilians in a restaurant; their “crime” was eating lunch while Jewish.

The tweet was outrageous on multiple levels. Nides equated the Arab slaughter of innocent civilians with Israel’s anti-terrorist operation in Jenin that week; he failed to acknowledge that the victims of the massacre were Jews or that the killers were Arabs; and he lumped Israeli victims and dead Jenin terrorists together, saying that both deserved prayers and mourning.

Nine days later, when it was too late to make a difference, Nides acknowledged to Israel Hayom: “I screwed up … it was a stupid thing to do.” Unfortunately, he then trotted out assorted excuses: “I had just returned from Los Angeles when I got word of the attack. I was shown a draft of a tweet, and I signed off on it.” Translation: “I was tired, somebody else wrote it, so it wasn’t totally my fault.” Not a very impressive apology.

Isn’t it remarkable how often this kind of thing happens to Israel?

Recall, for example, the infamous episode of Dennis Ross and the terror tunnels.

As a senior aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009, Ross pressured Israel to let Hamas bring concrete into Gaza. Here’s how Ross recalled it: “I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built. They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right.” That admission came six years too late.

The Uninvited Backbone of Israel's Anti-Reform Movement

In the war of words over Israel's judicial reform, irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the disputants, the word "democracy" appears to have suffered a bit of a roughing-up.

"... Biden was wrong to intervene in the debate over Netanyahu's proposed judicial reforms.... otherwise, Israeli officials may start commenting on Hunter Biden's plea deal." – Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, Twitter, July 31, 2023.

So, the Biden Administration delivered an "either-or" threat: stop the judicial reform or break our special relationship. The break had actually already begun with President Barack Obama, who became quixotically committed to a policy to finance and enable Israel's self-declared arch-enemy -- "Death to Israel" should probably qualify one as an arch-enemy -- unlimited nuclear weapons, billions of dollars to manufacture them; ballistic missiles to deliver them, and loose change for Iran's mullahs to continue "exporting" their Revolution into Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and Latin America.

What it all comes down to is that one party seemingly decided that Obama's promise to radically transform America was too important to trust to the electorate.

Now Blinken and Biden are supposedly qualified to give Israel's coalition government a lecture on judicial probity and democracy?

MEMRI: Saudi Journalist: Israel Is A Fact And The Arabs Must Accept It; After Seven Decades Of Conflict And Losses, The Region Crucially Needs Peace And Stability

In her March 2, 2023 column in the Emirati daily Al-Ittihad, Saudi journalist Haila Al-Mashouh, who also writes for the Saudi daily 'Okaz, stated that the conflicts and crises that have afflicted the Middle East in the last decades, chief of them the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, have brought only disaster and losses to the peoples of the region, including the Palestinians. The world, she said, is currently facing multiple security, economic, humanitarian and other crises, and therefore it is essential to attain peace and security in the Middle East and to resolve the conflicts through dialogue, rather than by force of arms. She called to persist in the efforts to achieve peace in the region even if the chances are slim. She added that the state of Israel is a fact and called to accept this while also upholding the Palestinians' right to an independent state – for this will benefit all the peoples in the region.

"…The Middle East has experienced changes and crises throughout the years, some of which led to historic and geographical transformations in some of its countries… The Palestinian issue has been one of the [sources] of the greatest and most influential crises in the Arab region. It was a historical problem that caused one crisis after another, not only in Palestine but in the neighboring Arab countries, and its effects reached even the Arabian Gulf. Later it became a political issue of the entire Muslim [nation], which sparked many wars and upheavals. Some people think that [the flames of] these wars should be fanned, although they are pointless and although it is impossible to achieve peace and security through conflict and bloodshed…

"The upheavals and conflicts that have afflicted the Middle East for decades prove beyond any doubt that… security will not be permanent, stable and genuine unless it is based on morality and justice… and on understandings, far from any armed struggle. The world is currently dealing with security, economic, humanitarian, nutrition, health, climate and environmental crises. Therefore, it is very important that the Middle East be protected from conflicts and from the fanning of disputes, and that disputes be resolved by peaceful means, through dialogue mediated by influential countries that prioritize peace over promoting [various] interests. There is [also] need to widen alliances, out of commitment to the principles of peace and in accordance with the UN treaties and the objectives of global security and stability.

"The Arab region has seen changes that have taught us difficult lessons. [These changes] include the outbreak of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; Iraq's [absence] from the regional and Arab balance of power; the threats posed by some neighboring countries in the region and their impact on the security of the Gulf and of its shipping lanes; the proxy wars against the countries of the [Saudi-led Arab] coalition [fighting] in Yemen; the terror attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia; the repercussions of the so-called Arab Spring and its horrible results, and the impact of the Covid pandemic, which is still affecting the Arab economies and the supply of food and healthcare in some Middle East countries.

"Security is not a luxury; it is required by the situation and changes in the world. Although the opportunities for peace in the region are dwindling, we must seize these opportunities in order to live in peace, stability and coexistence, while [finding] common ground as human beings, as part of the value of accepting the other and accepting reality.

"The state of Israel is a fact that must be dealt with wisely and prudently, while upholding the right of the Palestinian people [to live] in dignity, security and lasting peace in an independent state. The [Israeli-Arab] conflict, which has lasted over 70 years, has yielded nothing but destruction, considerable losses and insecurity. Peace and security are a right of the peoples of the region, and we must seek to realize and defend [this right], acting wisely rather than emotionally!"

From Sama News:

Today, Monday, President Mahmoud Abbas received a phone call from the head of the Lebanese Phalange Party, Sheikh Sami Gemayel.

The President discussed with Gemayel, during the phone call, the unfortunate events that took place in Ain El-Hilweh camp.

He stressed support for what the government and the army are doing in Lebanon in order to impose law and order.

The President stressed that the Palestinian presence in Lebanon is temporary until they return to the homes from which they were expelled according to international resolutions.

That last sentence is a coded message, saying that Abbas - as head of the PLO, and therefore ostensibly the leader of all Palestinians worldwide - would not ask Lebanon to give citizenship to Palestinians who have lived there, stateless, for 75 years.

Abbas has said this explicitly in the past, numerous times.

Which means that his official position is for Palestinians in Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and other Arab countries should not become citizens of those countries - they must remain without any national protection until Israel is destroyed or somehow forced to commit suicide via "return" to destroy it as a Jewish state.

The cynicism of this position is breathtaking. The closest thing the Palestinians have to a leader wants to use his own people as pawns, with no national rights in the countries where generations have been born, lived and died.

The cynicism does not end there, though. Because in 2005, Mahmoud Abbas had a completely different position, as reported then in AFP:

DUBAI, 12 July 2005 — Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told Arab countries hosting Palestinian refugees to give them citizenship, insisting such a move would not compromise their right of return.

“I call upon every Arab government wishing to give citizenship (to Palestinian refugees) to do so. What is wrong with that?” he said in an interview with Dubai Television late Sunday.

But the Palestinian Authority president insisted that obtaining citizenship in a host-country should not compromise the right to return to their homeland of which many Palestinian refugees dream.

“This does not mean resettlement (of refugees). A Palestinian would return to his homeland whenever he is allowed, whether he carried an Arab or non-Arab citizenship,” he said. “A fifth-generation Palestinian living in Chile also wishes to return when allowed ... It is an emotional matter, not related to citizenship,” he added.

The Palestinian leader, who visited Syria and Lebanon last week — both host to hundreds of thousands of refugees, slammed claims that the Arab League had banned naturalization of refugees as “mere excuses”. “There is no decision ... the Arab League only recommended (not to grant citizenship) but this was not a decision,” he said.

Once upon a time, Mahmoud Abbas asked Arab countries to naturalize Palestinian "guests." But only a couple of years later, he changed his position to being against them becoming citizens.

What caused the about-face?

Chances are, Lebanon and Syria and maybe also the Gulf countries that host hundreds of thousands of Palestinians told him to shut up. They don't want Palestinians to become citizens. And probably Hamas took advantage and portrayed Abbas as being weak on the mythical "right to return."

Whatever the reason, Abbas switched from acting as a real leader that tries to help his people into a corrupt leader who simply wants to abuse his people for his own political purposes.

Abbas was right in 2005. Citizenship has nothing to do with "return." Palestinian citizens of Jordan are given the clear message that they will lose citizenship if "return" would become an option. And for whatever bizarre reason, even though most of them are citizens of a state, they are still called "refugees" by the international community.

And Palestinians, when given the rare chance to become citizens of other countries, eagerly take that option. So those who say that Palestinians prefer statelessness to becoming citizens of their countries are simply liars.

Each stateless Palestinian adds an infinitesimal amount of pressure on Israel. That is the only reason for insisting that Palestinians remain stateless. Which proves that to Palestinian leaders, their own people's lives are worthless.

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!