To my Dearest Love of the Land/An Eye That Gazed Towards Zion Readers, Subscribers and Friends,

To my Dearest Love of the Land/An Eye That Gazed Towards Zion Readers, Subscribers and Friends,

First of all, wishing one and all, a Shana Tova, an amazing year ahead, a year of health and growth, a year where more and more light shines forth in the world, where love becomes the significant driving force for our fulfilling our purpose in this world. May G-d's blessings rest upon our efforts to make this happen.

After 10 years, almost 18,000 posts and a little over 4 million reads, I am going to be putting aside my blogs, Love of the Land as well as An Eye That Gazed Towards Zion as there are now many others doing an excellent job out there, more proficient with the changes in social media and general audience. The blogs themselves will remain available to read, so much material still relevant and new to many future readers.

Thank you once again for all your encouragement over the years, and of course I will still be staying active on Facebook and Twitter both as an admin and poster.

Last but not least, in the world of who to follow, I have never ceased being amazed by Elder of Ziyon.(http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/)  Both in quality and quantity, first in my world as the #1 go to.

                                                                             All My Love   Shana Tova

                                                                                          Yosef

They see the Arab world turn against them - and don't learn a damned thing - by Elder of Ziyon

It sounds like Mr. Ramini might be close to getting it. But, no, the antisemitism that he grew up with is more powerful than actual self-assessment.

Elder of Ziyon..
11 September '20..

Countercurrents has an opinion piece by Jafar Ramini, a Palestinian who lives in London:

I believe that for us Arabs to survive and progress we must have in common more than religion, language and rhetoric. We need unity, transparency and honesty.
We Palestinians are teetering on the edge of a precipice. Until very recently, every Arab leader, politician, cleric and pundit, given half a chance, would mount the platform and raise the Palestinian flag promising to do what is necessary to liberate the land and restore what is rightfully ours. Not any more.
The language has changed totally from support of the Palestinian cause to condemnation of us Palestinians, accusing us of being ungrateful architects of our own demise. The schism between some Arab regimes, especially in the Gulf and the Palestinians has been widening ever since the two Mohammads – Bin Zayid in the UAE and Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia took control.

...This schism became even more apparent during yet another meeting, this time in Cairo two days ago. The Foreign Ministers of the Arab League opposed a proposal put forward by the Palestinian side to condemn the UAE/Israel peace treaty. So, where is the unity? Where is the transparency? Where is the honesty.?
There is none.
You might think that this recent betrayal and open rejection should serve to bring the Palestinian leaders of all persuasions to a realisation that Palestine is not the core subject of most of the Arab regimes.

It sounds like Mr. Ramini might be close to getting it. But, no, the antisemitism that he grew up with is more powerful than actual self-assessment.

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The NY Times uneasily admits that the "West Bank" is Judea - by Elder of Ziyon

No one had ever heard of the "West Bank" before the 1950s, yet that Jordanian name is now considered the most accurate for media like the New York Times while "Judea" is considered a right-wing Israeli term created to supplant it. Articles like this are awkward precisely because they highlight that the land has always been associated with Jews, not "Palestinian" Arabs.

Elder of Ziyon..

09 September '20..

The New York Times has an interesting article about Israelis managing to harvest dates from the famous Judean date palm, planted with seeds that are over 2000 years old: 

The plump, golden-brown dates hanging in a bunch just above the sandy soil were finally ready to pick. 

They had been slowly ripening in the desert heat for months. But the young tree on which they grew had a much more ancient history — sprouting from a 2,000-year-old seed retrieved from an archaeological site in the Judean wilderness. 

“They are beautiful!” exclaimed Dr. Sarah Sallon with the elation of a new mother, as each date, its skin slightly wrinkled, was plucked gently off its stem at a sunbaked kibbutz in southern Israel. 

They were tasty, too, with a fresh flavor that gave no hint of their two-millenium incubation period. The honey-blonde, semi-dry flesh had a fibrous, chewy texture and a subtle sweetness. 

These were the much-extolled but long-lost Judean dates, and the harvest this month was hailed as a modern miracle of science. 

  Where was the seed found again? 

Hannah’s seed, which came from an ancient burial cave in Wadi el-Makkukh near Jericho, now in the West Bank, was carbon dated to between the first and fourth centuries B.C.E., becoming one of the oldest known seeds to have ever been germinated. 

The phrase "now in the West Bank" is awkward - did the cave somehow move from Judea to the "West Bank"? But for the Times to more accurately say "now called the West Bank" would be problematic for a paper that chose to embrace that term only in the 1970s.

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The media fiddles while Israel burns - by Sean Durns

The press is failing to provide readers with coverage of a developing and dangerous situation in a country that is frequently the subject of disproportionate, and sometimes trivial, news coverage.

Sean Durns..
JNS.org/CAMERA..
09 September '20..

For weeks while communities in Israel burned, many major U.S. news outlets kept silent. Hamas, the U.S.-designated terror group that rules the Gaza Strip, has been intermittently launching firebombs into the south of Israel for years. Yet Hamas’s terrorism by fire was largely ignored during the summer of 2020.

By repeatedly launching incendiary devices into Israel, Hamas and other Gaza-based terror groups have violated numerous ceasefires. The damage has been extensive.

According to an Aug. 28 press release by Jewish National Fund-USA, almost “600 fires caused by incendiary and explosive-laden balloons sent by terrorists in the Gaza Strip have plagued Israel’s Gaza Envelope region over the past 19 days as thousands of acres have been destroyed.” On Aug. 23 alone, more than 28 fires were started by devices launched from Gaza. Nor is it merely balloons; as the Times of Israel reported “rockets have also been fired on multiple occasions at Israeli cities and towns, including over a dozen projectiles” on Aug. 20.

JNF-USA has helped to combat the fires by investing in firetrucks and firewagons. The threat to many communities in Israel’s south has been so pervasive that JNF-USA has helped develop “new, often fortified playgrounds, schools, parks and other amenity-enhancing projects.” Keith Isaacson, the head of security for Israel’s Eshkol region, lamented: “You can see that the forests are suffering. The wildlife is suffering. Instead of green behind our houses, we have black.”

As Ynet news previously reported, in February 2020 explosives-laden balloons landed in a preschool in the southern Israeli Kibbutz Sa’ad. More recently, others have landed near playgrounds. On several occasions, terrorists have attached the balloons with Disney characters—a tactic meant to entice unsuspecting children.

Israel, meanwhile, has responded with targeted strikes aimed at the terror network and its infrastructure.

Terrorist groups targeting children with balloon bombs and causing massive ecological damage is certainly newsworthy. Yet many major Western news outlets have completely ignored the story.

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Realizing the dream of friendly coexistence between the Jews and their Middle Eastern neighbors - by Yonatan Green

The UAE agreement constitutes the first such voluntary peace not achieved directly by military success. It marks a true and fundamental divergence from past Israeli relations with Arab-Muslims countries. And it may be said to be the first-ever such agreement that truly reflects Herzlian Political Zionism, fulfilling a dream of friendly coexistence between the Jews and their Middle Eastern neighbors. One can also be certain that the UAE did not decide to do so unilaterally; such a radical shift requires coordination with other Muslim-Arab powers and approval in advance.

Yonatan Green..
JNS.org..
08 September '20..

The recent agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, along with the Trump “Peace to Prosperity” vision that many consider to have been the catalyst for the normalization of relations between the two countries, together mark the most significant and resounding achievements of “Political Zionism” since the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan vote, and perhaps since the 1920 San Remo conference.

Since 1947, Israel has been in a continuous diplomatic limbo with regard to her borders and territory, and in her relations with her Arab-Muslim neighbors in the Middle East. Since that time, there have been no purely diplomatic breakthroughs of consequence that can be said to have altered this fundamental reality—until now. The Trump administration “Peace to Prosperity” plan marks the first serious acknowledgment of Israel’s territorial claims by a global power since 1947; while the UAE peace deal marks the first voluntary commencement of friendly relations with an Arab state, not in the immediate aftermath and shadow of defeat in armed conflict. These developments ought to be considered in the context of the different strategic attitudes that characterized Zionism from its inception as a modern national movement.

Since its very beginning, the Zionist movement diverged into multiple approaches towards achieving the common goal of establishing a homeland for the Jewish people. Perhaps the two most dominant of these were Practical Zionism and Political Zionism. While Practical Zionism focused on the physical immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel and other direct measures, Political Zionism (initially lead and inspired by Theodor Herzl) stressed the importance of obtaining international recognition and sanction of the Zionist objectives and working within a framework of international and legal cooperation. This is manifest in the Basel Program set out in the 1897 First Zionist Congress, which aimed for a “publicly and legally assured” home for the Jews, as well as the attainment of “government grants” to enable Zionist activity.

One can argue that until recently, Political Zionism can boast of (only) three major milestones.

The first is the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British government stated that they “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object ….” This was the first time a world Power publicly endorsed and supported the Zionist project, a policy coordinated with other Allied Powers and pre-approved by the international community.

The second was the post-World War I 1920 San Remo conference and the ensuing 1922 Mandate for Palestine assigned to Britain, both of which explicitly endorsed and incorporated the 1917 Balfour Declaration. If the declaration was merely a letter between the British Foreign Minister and the Jewish Lord Rothschild, the San Remo Resolution and League of Nations Mandate were the unambiguous and formal commitments of the international community to further the Zionist cause. The Mandate went a step further in the preamble by recognizing “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” and by referring to “the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

Both of the above were enormous victories for Zionism at a time when its success was far from certain. There is no doubt these diplomatic coups significantly affected the course of history for the Zionist project.

The third achievement of Political Zionism was the 1947 U.N. General Assembly vote on the partition plan. This vote by the international community constituted a clear reaffirmation of the Zionist cause of establishing a Jewish state, in the new post-World War II global order. One may rightly consider this as a lesser achievement—at that point, an independent Jewish state was an almost final and irrevocable reality that could have been challenged only by its violent annihilation (which was, of course, duly attempted). As such, the U.N. vote may be seen as a result of the success of Practical Zionism, and the acceptance of “facts on the ground,” at least as much as that of Political Zionism.

Since that time, the State of Israel and the Zionist movement have not secured significant diplomatic achievements of any magnitude approaching those listed above.

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Yonatan Green is the executive director of the Israel Law & Liberty Forum.

The continuing distortion of Western discourse on Israel - by Amb. Alan Baker

Distorting and presenting Israel’s creation as a “catastrophe” serves to falsify and overturn the historical narrative from one of inherent denial of the right of existence of a Jewish state through aggression and rejectionism, to one of victimhood and denial of rights.

Amb. Alan Baker..
JNS/JCPA..
07 September '20..

Regrettably and increasingly, Western intellectual discourse regarding anything connected to Israel has been taken hostage by pseudo-intellectual, radical leftist extremists who, using distorted information, flawed facts, “progressive” language and accepted buzzwords, seek to enhance and expand existing efforts to deny and undermine Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish and democratic nation-state.

This ideological goal of dismantling Israel is particularly evident in a curious July 9, 2020, article published in radical leftist Australian literary journal Overland, titled, “Fighting against a Racist’s Peace: What It Means to Oppose Annexation.” The author is the child of Palestinians, Tasnim Mahmoud Sammak, whose doctoral research project at Melbourne’s Monash University seeks to explore what she describes as the “emergence of radical political subjectivities and imaginaries.”

Her ultra-radical language indicates a thought process based on misconceptions and flawed assumptions. The abundant use of extreme, radical leftist buzzwords indicates an inherent lack of seriousness and intellectual honesty.

What is perhaps even worse is an apparent linkage that emerges in this article between pseudo-intellectual leftist modes of thinking and extreme, fanatical Palestinian terror and incitement to Israel’s destruction.

The following are some examples of such exaggerated, illogical and inciting terminology used in the article.

“Zionism is a settler-colonial, ethno-nationalist project”

This is an often repeated and meaningless cliché using pseudo-intellectual terminology intended to appeal to extreme ultra-liberal, leftist elements that are opposed to the very existence of Israel as a state and deny, as a matter of principle, the claims and rights of the Jewish people.

Israel has valid historical, legal and political claims to its sovereign territory and land, as well as to the land it presently administers.

In addition to the long-term historical evidence of Jewish presence, as set out in the writings of Persian, Greek, Roman and other historians who visited the area in the early centuries, and in biblical sources, extensive archeological evidence, publicly available, affirms the existence and presence of a Jewish national population in the area for over 3,000 years. The “return to Zion” has been a central theme of Jewish prayers for two millennia.

These Jewish claims have been acknowledged legally and internationally by the 1917 Balfour Declaration affirming the right of the Jews to reestablish their national homeland, the 1921 San Remo Declaration, which transposed the Balfour Declaration into an internationally recognized document and reaffirmed in the subsequent League of Nations Palestine Mandate and the United Nations Charter.

This land has never been part of any sovereign entity since the termination of the Ottoman Empire more than 100 years ago, and as such, Israel has not colonized and is not colonizing the land of any other state or entity.

For more than 120 years, the Zionist movement has been universally recognized as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and is no different from other ethno-national movements.

To single out and condemn Zionism in such a manner is tantamount to singling out the Jewish people and denying them a fundamental right that is possessed by all other national peoples.

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Why is the Media Mum on Israeli Special Needs Captives? - by Gidon Ben-Zvi

One of the media’s primary functions is to identify and report injustices being perpetrated around the world. This, in turn, keeps the pressure on serial human rights violators while ensuring that the victims are not forgotten. As such, news outlets should be shining a bright spotlight on Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed.

Gidon Ben-Zvi..
Honest Reporting..
03 September '20..

September 7, 2020 marks the sixth anniversary of when Avera Mengistu was taken captive by the Hamas terrorist group. The then-32-year-old, who had immigrated to Israel with his family from Ethiopia, developed severe schizophrenia following the death of his older brother and crossed into the Gaza Strip on his own volition.

Since then, he has not had access to treatment for his mental illness and has not been afforded the privileges guaranteed by international law. Kidnapping an innocent civilian is an egregious human rights violation; yet, even with all the recent media coverage about the weeks-long confrontation between the IDF and Hamas, there has been little, if any, attention paid to Mengistu’s plight.

Civilian Hostages: The Media’s Selective Coverage

From a media standpoint, securing the release of hostages has over the past few years been big news. According to the White House, more than 50 Americans have been released from 22 countries during President Donald Trump’s tenure. Peter Bergen, a vice-president of the Washington, D.C.-based New America think tank who has written extensively on terrorism, has described the Trump Administration’s efforts to rescue hostages as “an area of significant foreign policy success.”

Meanwhile, the US Department of State recently announced that it would intensify its campaign to bring home three citizens being held in Iran.

Much of the public has been following these stories closely, with media organizations generally providing information about any relevant developments. However, when it comes to Mengistu, these same outlets focus almost exclusively on the recurring tit-for-tat military exchanges between Israel and Hamas without raising the latter’s gross disregard for international norms.

Hisham al-Sayed: Another Mentally Ill Civilian Hostage

Hamas is also holding hostage Hisham al-Sayed, an Israeli Bedouin from the southern town of Hura who entered Gaza in 2015. He also has a history of mental illness. To date, Hamas has refused to release any information about Mengistu or al-Sayed, nor has the terrorist organization granted permission to rights groups to visit them in order to determine their respective conditions.

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