Surprise? Abbas Chooses Hamas Over Peace with Israel - by Khaled Abu Toameh

In their response to the "Peace to Prosperity" plan, Palestinian leaders have once again succeeded in what they do best: taking any hope for the wellbeing of their people and driving it straight into the ground.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
30 Janury '20..


US President Donald Trump's "Peace to Prosperity" plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians offers hope to the two million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, which has been ruled by Hamas for more than a decade.

Instead of welcoming the plan, designed to give the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip a prosperous future, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has rejected and denounced it as the "deal of shame" and "slap of the century."

Worse, Abbas has chosen to renew his ties with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the two Iranian-backed groups that are opposed to his policies and have regularly condemned his policies and decisions.

Abbas, in other words, is acting not only against the interests of his people in the Gaza Strip, but also against himself by engaging the same groups that have long been seeking to undermine his rule.

By rejecting Abbas Trump's plan, Abbas is denying the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip the chance of improving their living conditions.

Hamas and Iran have no plans to boost the economy in the Gaza Strip. They also have no intention of creating jobs for thousands of unemployed Palestinians. The only plan Hamas, PIJ and their patrons in Tehran have is one that will bring more suffering and bloodshed to the Palestinians. That, however, does not seem to bother Abbas, who is now seeking to appease Hamas and PIJ.

As the Peace to Prosperity plan accurately points out:

"The people of Gaza have suffered for too long under the repressive rule of Hamas. They have been exploited as hostages and human shields, and bullied into submission. Hamas has failed the people of Gaza and has diverted money belonging to the Palestinians of Gaza, including funds provided by international donors, to attack the State of Israel, instead of using these funds to improve the lives of the people of Gaza. Under the leadership of Hamas, the residents of Gaza have suffered extreme poverty and deprivation. After years of no progress, the donor community is fatigued and reluctant to make additional investments so long as the governance structure in Gaza is run by terrorists who provoke confrontations that lead to more destruction and suffering."

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Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Israel clearly stands at a historic juncture and must decide what to make of this one-time opportunity - by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen

Regardless of the ambiguities and open questions attending President Trump’s “Deal of the Century,” Israel clearly stands at a historic juncture and must decide what to make of this one-time opportunity. About such moments it is said: “There are those who gain the world in a single moment and there are those who lose the world in a single moment.”

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,431..
30 January '20
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/trump-plan-historic-opportunity/

On May 14, 1948, a few hours before the declaration of Israel’s establishment, Chaim Weizmann, soon to become the Jewish State’s first president, sent an urgent telegram from Geneva: “The decision must be made immediately. The gates of heaven have opened for a moment, and if we enter them our state will be established; if not, who knows if we will see its establishment in our day if at all.” At such moments, leaders and policymakers must make fateful decisions. Those who procrastinate and wait for detailed staff assessments risk squandering the opportunity.

From its inception, the Zionist enterprise has existed in constant tension between two contending visions regarding the overriding goal of the prospective Jewish state: redemption and reconstitution of statehood in the ancestral homeland versus an internationally recognized safe haven for persecuted Jews. And while Israel has largely succeeded at reconciling these two visions and creating a broad common denominator for a unified national endeavor, the yawning gap between the approaches reveals itself all over again at every fateful juncture.

We now see the two visions once more in confrontation: on the one hand, the desire to retain the Jordan Valley for security reasons only; on the other, the aim of applying full sovereignty to this tract of land and settling it accordingly.

The shift President Trump has brought about in the American approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict touches the very heart of the Israeli controversy and presents a unique historic opportunity.

In the decades attending the formation of the US-Israel alliance in the late 1960s, successive US administrations have expressed a commitment to Israel’s security but denied its claim to the parts of the homeland that were captured in the 1967 war.

By way of imposing a solution on the Israeli government, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry tasked Gen. John Allen with crafting a security plan that would allay Israel’s security concerns about an almost total withdrawal from the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley, and require it to “choose between peace and ideology” (as columnist Thomas Friedman put it in the New York Times). With this plan the administration sought to fulfill its commitment to Israel’s security while rejecting its demand for defensible borders that do not conform to the 1967 lines (a demand consistent with UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967).

The Deal of the Century: Cautious Pessimism, But... - by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky

What the Trump Plan has accomplished is force the Palestinians to confront their suicidal ideology and genocidal ambitions head on.

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky..
Israel National News..
29 January '20..
Link: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/25102

The most pro-Israel American president in history just released the most pro-Israel American peace plan in history, and the first that doesn’t call on Israel to make “painful sacrifices” up front or expect Israeli concessions in exchange for empty words, gestures and ceremonies. Do I think it will bring real peace? Certainly not. But it leaves me cautiously pessimistic for the future (optimism in the Middle East is misplaced until the coming of Moshiach).

The negative: recognition of a "Palestinian" state is a bone in the throat of every Torah Jew (or should be), as is the potential loss of sovereignty over parts of the heartland of the Jewish people that G-d granted us for eternity. As one rabbi once put it, no generation has the right to compromise the boundaries of the land of Israel that were given to us by the Creator and delineated in the Torah. That land is the possession of the Jewish people for all time and no single individual, group or generation has the moral, halakhic or legal right to waive that possession. This sentiment was expressed not by a Religious Zionist but in 1937, by the vociferously anti-Zionist Rav Elchanan Wasserman HY”D, in encouraging opposition to the Peel Commission’s partition plan.

The loss of Israeli territory in the Negev is especially gratuitous and irksome, especially considering the years of war and terror and hostility that the Arabs foisted on Israel. A formal place for them in Yerushalayim is similarly agonizing, even it is doesn’t change much the reality on the ground.

Secondly, the negotiations over the agreement almost presuppose a right-wing government in Israel because a left-wing government would use this basic framework – a tacit acceptance by the right-wing of a Palestinian state and the surrender of more territory – and negotiate into weakness, danger, and vulnerability. There should be no confidence that a right-wing government will rule Israel after the next election (or the one that will follow a few months later). With PM Netanyahu’s formal indictment today, just hours before the White House announcement, his prospects for heading the next government may have dimmed even more. Hence the hazards ahead, which will be entrusted to less experienced politicians and leaders.

So why then is this plan not an unmitigated disaster, as has been almost every other American or Israeli peace plan going back to the Rogers plan in 1969? It is because it must be measured not against Paradise but against the status quo. The status quo has worked well for Israel in the last decade. Terror exists but has been drastically reduced, the economy is thriving, personal security and well-being have been enhanced, and the situation in the countries surrounding Israel has superseded any internal anxiety. The “Palestinians” have been marginalized by the Arab world, much less by the West. Their bad choices have finally caught up to them. They have no base of support, no passionate advocates anymore beyond the Israeli and the American Jewish left. They are thus reduced to ranting and raving, making wild threats, burning pictures of President Trump, and chanting.

US policy and the legal status of Israel’s West Bank settlements. Why it matters - by Douglas J. Feith

For thousands of years, Jews could and did live in the West Bank, a part of the ancient Jewish homeland. From 1948 until 1967, Jordan prohibited Jews from living there. And for the last half-century, Jews have been living there again. Yet President Jimmy Carter’s administration decided that the anomaly was the norm. It asked itself whether Jews should be allowed to live in the West Bank, and it chose to find its answer not in the broad sweep of history or in a comprehensive legal analysis, but in the odd 19-year period when Jordan banned Jews from living in the territory.

Douglas J. Feith..
JNS.org..
27 January '20..

What was the context of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent declaration about the legality of Israeli West Bank settlements? And why does it matter?

Palestine is a region that Christians commonly called the Holy Land, and Jews traditionally called the Land of Israel. The West Bank is the area within Western Palestine that Jordan conquered in the 1948-49 War of Independence and then lost to Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Jews have lived in Palestine since the days of the Bible. The Romans called the land Judea and then changed its name, which was how it came to be known as Palestine.

The land was conquered many times.

For our purposes, it’s enough to note that the Turks conquered it in 1517. They owned it and the surrounding territory for 400 years. Throughout that period, Jews lived in Palestine, including in what is now called the West Bank.

Then, in World War I, the Turks joined the German side and were defeated by the Allies. In that war, Palestine was among the enemy lands that Britain conquered.

The British then ruled Palestine for three decades, until 1948. In that period, they banned Jews from settling in Eastern Palestine, but they allowed Jews to live in Western Palestine, including the area now called the West Bank.

In 1948, Britain relinquished control over Western Palestine, and Israel declared independence. Its Arab neighbors launched a war to destroy it. In that war, the Kingdom of Jordan (then known as Transjordan) conquered the West Bank and claimed to annex it. Jews were no longer allowed to live in the West Bank.

But 19 years later, in 1967, Jordan joined another Arab war against Israel. In that war, Israel conquered the West Bank. Jews then created the various towns and villages that are commonly called “settlements” and are our subject today.

So, for thousands of years, Jews could and did live in the West Bank, a part of the ancient Jewish homeland. From 1948 until 1967, Jordan prohibited Jews from living there. And for the last half-century, Jews have been living there again.

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Douglas J. Feith, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the George W. Bush Administration. This article is adapted from remarks delivered at a January 23, 2020 conference in the U.S. Capitol organized by the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET).

Can you imagine? Blatant lies in Palestinian report to UNHRC on children's rights - by Elder of Ziyon

This is child abuse - and it is encouraged by the Palestinian Authority. But the UN is not likely to look past the lies in the report.

Elder of Ziyon..
26 January '20..

The "State of Palestine" signed on to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on April 1, 2014, with very little intention of actually implementing any of its provisions. Instead, as its initial report to the UN Human Rights Council shows, the main reason for signing the Convention was to slam Israel:

The State of Palestine is under a colonialist, military occupation on the part of Israel and this report will throw some light on the colonialist policies of that occupation and the serious, systematic and widespread violations that infringe the provisions of the Convention. In fact, the Israeli occupation authorities deliberately and systematically target Palestinian children on a wide scale including through extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, displacement and forced migration with the aim of terrorizing an entire generation.

Still, acceding to the Convention involves describing what the signers are doing with their own children. The UN gave the Palestinians a long list of questions asking what they are doing to adhere to the Convention, and the Palestinians just published their responses.

Many of their responses are provable lies, and others (about teaching birth control in schools, for example) are almost certainly untrue as well.

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Really? Never Again? The moral abdication of journalists ignoring Palestinian antisemitism - by Adam Levick

As we view coverage of Holocaust commemoration events today in Jerusalem, the lofty rhetoric by world leaders, diplomats and intellectuals evoking the oft-repeated idea of ‘never again’ – the moral imperative to never again allow Jew hatred to go unchallenged, because we know now where this leads – will ring hollow if the principle of anti-antisemitism is not applied universally. Jerusalem based journalists who fail to adhere to this intuitive principle in their own reporting are guilty of a shameful moral abdication.

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
23 January '20..

We’ve often argued that the British media’s anti-Israel bias is just as evident in the stories they ignore as in the skewed nature of the stories they do cover.

As such, the nearly complete failure of journalists assigned to region to report on the endemic antisemitism within Palestinian society, and the deleterious impact such anti-Jewish racism has on efforts at peace and co-existence, represents one of the more egregious problems with their reporting.

This failure is even more problematic when you consider that instances of Israeli racism, real and, often, imagined, is frequently the focus of media reports, as is the narrative that Israeli society is getting increasingly racist.

Though we’re accustomed to this institutional media blind spot and such double standards, at times there are instances of anti-Jewish racism so extreme that we’ve held out hope that it would possibly pique the interest of Jerusalem correspondents.

A case in point is a recent op-ed published in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, a Palestinian newspaper controlled by the Palestinian Authority and whose editor was appointed by Mahmoud Abbas, literally calling for someone to shoot and kill a Jew during the Jerusalem events commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

That’s not all.

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A great, albeit fragile, triumph of Zionism - by Caroline Glick

By coming to Jerusalem the visiting dignitaries embraced the truth at the heart of Zionism: Israel was not founded because of Auschwitz. It was founded because the Jews came home to live in their homeland as a free nation, finally. Had the State of Israel existed in 1939, Auschwitz would never have been built.

Caroline Glick..
Israel Hayom..
23 January '20..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/a-great-but-fragile-triumph-of-zionism/

What the foreign leaders who came to Jerusalem this week to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day and commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz will take home from their visits is unknowable. But we do know what they brought with them. Whether they intended to or not, the leaders who came this week to Israel’s capital to bow their heads in memory of the six million sons and daughters of Israel murdered in the Holocaust brought with them a recognition of Zionism’s foundational truth: The Land of Israel is the one and only, eternal homeland of the Jewish people.

In this sense, the event marks a triumph of Zionism over anti-Zionism.

This victory was never assured and there is no guarantee that this week’s achievement will endure.

Consider the achievement.

Modern Zionism – the movement to reconstitute the Jewish homeland in the land of Israel after nearly two thousand years of exile – provoked enormous opposition from the very start. Jewish nationalism flew in the face of the prevailing zeitgeist in elite Jewish and non-Jewish circles in the mid and late nineteenth century. That zeitgeist, conceived by Enlightenment philosophers and embraced by Reform Judaism asserted that the Jews were members of the Mosaic faith, not a nation. As such, they were free to assimilate – without their particular Jewish identity – into wider society.

The force of Reform Judaism’s rejection of Zionism in favor of universalism was undiminished by the Holocaust. It was undiminished by Israel’s establishment. It was given harsh expression in 1960.

As Daniel Gordis recounts in his book We Stand Divided: The Rift between American Jews and Israel, on May 23, 1960, then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion alighted the speaker’s podium at the Knesset and announced that Israeli security forces had captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for his role in the genocide of European Jewry.

Israeli Jewry responded to the earth-shattering news with a sense that a great historical justice had been served. Eichmann’s capture was proof that the Jews were no longer homeless. By capturing Eichmann, Israel was taking responsibility for the Jewish people as a whole. They had a home. Those who harmed Jews anywhere in the world could henceforth expect to be held accountable by the Jews themselves, from their capital in Jerusalem.

The heads of the American Jewish community were not happy with this turn of events.

Joseph Proskauer, former president of the American Jewish Committee claimed Israel had no right to act in the name of the Jewish people. Rabbi Elmer Berger from the American Jewish Council said Israel’s capture of Eichmann was a "Zionist declaration of war" against the Jews in America.

Nahum Goldmann, the New York-based president of the World Zionist Organization suggested that foreign jurists should serve on the court tribunal. That is, he insinuated that Jews acting as Jews, (rather than Americans, or British), lacked the credibility to fairly judge the architect of the recent genocide of the Jewish people.

With the Six-Day War of 1967, Israeli Jews obliterated the stereotype of the Jew as a weak penitent. Israel’s triumph stirred Jewish pride and nationalism in Jewish hearts from the Soviet gulag to San Francisco. Following the war, the Reform movement formally embraced Zionism.

But the Reform Jews had been far from alone in embracing the anti-Zionist myth that rejected the fact that the Jews are a nation and that Israel is the Jewish homeland.

This position was happily embraced by Israel’s worst enemies – the Arab states, the Palestine Liberation Organization, (PLO), the Soviet Union, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian regime, and Hamas. From the Arab League to the PLO charter to the Hamas covenant, to the KGB propaganda shop, all of them insisted that Zionism was a form of European colonialism. The Jews had no roots in Jerusalem or the land of Israel. Judaism was a mere religion. Jews were not a nation. Israel itself was nothing more than a sop for European guilt. It was a European colonial project created to cleanse the conscience of Europe in the wake of the Holocaust.

A decade ago, the anti-Zionist forces scored their greatest political victory. On June 4, 2009, the new American president Barack Obama delivered his "Address to the Muslim World," at American University in Cairo. Before an audience that included a large contingent of Muslim Brotherhood members, specifically invited by the White House, Obama resonated their rejection of Jewish history and denial of the Jewish roots and rights to the Land of Israel.

Blue and White's Gantz sends a message to American liberals, but are they listening? by Jonathan S.Tobin

If they were not so blind to the reality of Palestinian intransigence, Trump’s would-be opponents might be listening to Gantz and his talk about the Jordan Valley. If they did, they’d realize that their plans to pressure Israel are based on magical thinking about peace that sensible Israelis from left to right abandoned years ago. Sensible Americans should do the same.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
22 January '20..

Heading into Israel’s third election campaign in a year, Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz seems to be in an even stronger position than in his previous two tries to topple Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The polls show him maintaining the small lead his party has over the Likud. More importantly, the bloc of left-wing and Arab parties that are likely to support Gantz’s bid to become prime minister looks to be running even with or ahead of Netanyahu’s bloc of right-wing and religious parties.

But if he has any hope of breaking the stalemate that has left Israel without a governing coalition for more than a year, Gantz is going to have to convince more centrist voters that he can be trusted with the nation’s security. That’s why he made a campaign pledge this week designed to win over voters who have supported Netanyahu, but might shock the majority of American Jews who hold negative views of the prime minister. Rather than promising to work for a two-state solution, Gantz proposed something that the Palestinians say would make such a deal impossible: annexation of the Jordan Valley.

The Jordan Valley contains a number of Jewish settlements, as well as Palestinian villages, and makes up about 20 percent of the land area of the West Bank. Gantz had issued statements prior to the September election about the need for Israel to hold on to the region, which separates portions of the West Bank that have a large Arab population from the Jordan River and the Kingdom of Jordan on its east bank. But this week, he explicitly promised annexation of the region.

It’s true that, as Netanyahu’s supporters quickly pointed out, the former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces did include a condition that renders his promise meaningless. Gantz said that annexation of the area he called “Israel’s eastern protective wall” would remain part of the Jewish in any future peace agreement, and that the promises made by the governments led by Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert—who were prepared to give it up—were mistaken. He did temper his words, saying annexation would be carried out “in coordination with the international community” after he took the reins of power following the March 2 election.

As Gantz knows, the “international community” will never accept Israeli annexation of a single meter of the West Bank or even the reunited city of Jerusalem. Other than the administration of President Donald Trump, it’s not likely that any foreign government will be willing to coordinate such an endeavor.

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Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate.

Holocaust remembrance, Palestinian irrelevance - by Ruthie Blum

Bemoaning all the apparent attention on the Jews prior to the Fifth World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem, a columnist for the official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper “Al-Hayat Al-Jadida” proposed murder as a solution to stop the proceedings.

Ruthie Blum..
JNS.org..
21 January '20..

As the nearly 50 heads of state from around the globe began preparing for their arrival in Israel this week to attend the Fifth World Holocaust Forum—on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camp from the Nazis—the powers-that-be in the Palestinian Authority have been busy trying to figure out how best to channel their anger and envy.

Unfortunately for P.A. head Mahmoud Abbas and his disgruntled Fatah henchmen, however, nobody really cares—least of all U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who will be representing the White House at the somber Jan. 23 “Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Anti-Semitism” event hosted by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem.

The significance of the major happening is magnified by the recent spike in worldwide anti-Semitism, even in America, where the rearing of its ugly head in heavily Orthodox neighborhoods has been almost as shocking as its explosion on university campuses.

To the dismay of the aging Abbas, who alternates between denying the Holocaust—as he did in his Ph.D. thesis—and accusing the Jewish state of committing Nazi-like crimes against the Palestinians, very few members of the diverse group of dignitaries gathering in the Israeli capital that he does not recognize will be taking a break in their whirlwind visit to pay their respects, or even lip service, to him.

Bemoaning the above, a regular columnist for the official P.A. daily newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, proposed murder as a solution.

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Ruthie Blum is an Israel-based journalist and author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.’ ”

A New One for the Books: The 'Crime' of Arabs Singing to Arabs in Israel - by Khaled Abu Toameh

The controversy surrounding the performance of the Jordanian singer in an Arab town in Israel showcases how bizarre anti-Israel activists around the world have become. As always, Israel's enemies are ready to hurt Arabs in order to advance their anti-Israel agenda. When an Arab visiting an Arab has become an act of "treason" that "serves the interests of the Zionist enemy," we know that we are in for a big performance.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
21 January '20..

Here is a new one for the books: An Arab singer stands up to perform in front of an Arab audience, and the anti-Israel brigade goes berserk.

What has so inflamed the Israel haters this time?

The singer is Aziz Maraka, a Jordanian composer, performer, recording artist, and producer. The audience are Arab citizens of Israel from the town of Kafr Yasif in the Northern District of Israel.

Maraka, who was invited last month to entertain Arab citizens of Israel during the annual Christmas Market festival in Kafr Yasif, has been facing widespread criticism and a shaming campaign on social media for agreeing to perform in Israel.

Never mind that Maraka, an Arab, was invited by Arabs to a Christmas event in an Arab town. Never mind that Maraka was not invited by any Israeli private or public institution. Never mind that Maraka did not perform before a Jewish audience.

None of that matters to the anti-Israel groups and individuals who are slandering the Jordanian singer and accusing him of "treason" and "promoting normalization" with Israel. The campaign of hate against Maraka shows that those who are calling for boycotting Israel care nothing about the well-being or interests of Arabs, including the two million Arab citizens of Israel.

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Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Strawberry Exports, Open-air Prisons and the Israeli Gaza Blockade? by Sheri Oz

And just in case you were wondering this too: the movement of people and goods that the world does not believe is happening — because, after all, Gaza is an open-air prison — is taking place while explosive-laden balloons are being sent across the border into Israel on the wings of off-shore winds. These balloons are the latest in the creative terrorist tools invented by the Arabs of Gaza. They are a colourful alternative to the missiles they still occasionally lob our way in spite of the supposed ceasefire.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
20 January '20..

We keep on hearing about the Gaza blockade, about how Israel has put the population of Gaza in an open-air prison and we do not let people out or products in. Well, someone in Israel apparently did not get that memo. Look what was reported in an article posted on 12 December 2019:

In the Gaza Strip, the season for growing and marketing strawberries began last month — and it is already setting new precedents. After recent weeks saw the first-ever shipment of Gazan strawberries to the Gulf countries, today (Tuesday) five tons of strawberries left the Gaza Strip for England — through Ben Gurion Airport, as arranged by the COGAT’s Gaza CLA.

COGAT is the Coordination of [Israeli] Government Activities [with the PA] in the Territories, and the CLA is Coordination and Liaison Administration for Gaza.

Next time someone says that the Israeli Gaza blockade is strangling the people there and preventing them from earning a decent living, show them this image.

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Question. What’s so funny about Saeb Erekat’s call for peace, rights and international law? by Adam Levick

For Saeb Erekat, words and lofty, progressive rhetoric don’t have objective meanings. They mean ‘just what he chooses them mean, neither more nor less’.

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
19 January '20..

In a Jan 19th op-ed at the Guardian, Saeb Erekat calls on the EU to recognise a Palestinian state. Perhaps the only elements noteworthy in Erekat’s otherwise predictable, reductive and mono-causal explanation for Palestine’s woes are his word choices: he used the word “peace” eight times, Palestinian “rights” seven times and Israel’s putative violations of “international law” five times.

So, what exactly does Erekat mean by peace, rights and international law?

Well, based on his recent comments on another matter, they don’t appear to mean much at all.

Media Line reported on Jan. 6th about new terms added by the European Union in 2019 which merely “obligate Palestinian institutions to ensure that no beneficiaries of their projects or programs are affiliated with groups listed on the European Union’s terrorist organisations list”.

However, it wasn’t merely representatives of Palestinian NGOs who rejected the requirement.

Saeb Erekat also weighed in.

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Excellent Question. Will the Iranian Regime’s Obsessive Jew-Hatred be its Undoing? by Victor Rosenthal

It would be particularly ironic if the most dangerous and destabilizing force in the world today, the primary source of the unending misery of the Middle East, were to founder, like Hitler, because of its obsessive Jew-hatred.

Victor Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
16 January '20..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2020/01/will-the-iranian-regimes-obsessive-jew-hatred-be-its-undoing/

Qassem Soleimani was a terrorist’s terrorist, a single man who was directly responsible for numerous acts of terrorism against the West and Israel, but – more importantly – who had the resources of a state at his disposal in his project to develop asymmetric warfare assets in other Middle Eastern countries. He was quite successful in building up Hezbollah in Lebanon into what is arguably the first truly existential threat to the Jewish state since 1973. He was in the process of doing the same for Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, when Trump wisely put an end to his mischief.

But he had another goal, apart from weakening Iran’s rivals Saudi Arabia and Israel, getting control of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, and forcing the US out of the region. That was to target the Jewish people worldwide. In addition to attacking Israeli diplomats in several locations, Soleimani’s terrorists murdered Jews in Argentina, Bulgaria, Panama, and Lebanon. Of course his prime Jewish target was Israel, and although his support for Hezbollah plus various Palestinian factions could be seen as part of Iran’s struggle to dominate the region, it could also be understood as part of an overall anti-Jewish project.

Israel, as the Ayatollah Khameini well understands, is the locus of Jewish power in the world. Expressing this idea in 2018 with typical antisemitic imagery, he tweeted that

Our stance against Israel is the same stance we have always taken. #Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen. …

The supposedly moderate Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, has also used this metaphor, as did his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iranian officials have likened Israel to a dog, and their expressions of hostility toward Israel are far more vicious and “personal” than those directed at their other regional adversaries. The regime regularly holds Holocaust cartoon contests despite the fact that Western countries, even those relatively hostile to Israel, find this kind of antisemitism offensive, and damage the image Iran wishes to project as a modern, progressive nation.

This is an antisemitic regime, and inviting and subsidizing visits from members of the Neturi Karta faction – representatives of which attended Soleimani’s funeral – can’t wash it away.

Lucy S. Dawidowicz wrote a book called “The War Against the Jews 1933-1945,” one of whose theses is that Hitler’s ravings against the Jews were more than, in Irving Howe’s words, “mere bait for the masses,” but rather, “the Nazis’ deepest, most ‘authentic’ persuasion.” The murder of millions of Jews was not an epiphenomenon of Hitler’s expansionist aggression, but rather one of his main war objectives.

Abbas As a Strategic Threat - by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen

The diplomatic campaign Mahmoud Abbas has been waging for a decade and a half is no less dangerous to Israel than the “armed struggle” led by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. With the growing influence of Iran and the advent of a new array of threats on Israel’s borders to the north and south, renewing negotiations with Abbas on the basis of the Barak-Olmert framework would entail an existential threat to Israel.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,409..
16 January '20..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/abbas-strategic-threat/

The recent decision by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague to investigate Israel’s responsibility for “war crimes” against the Palestinians was applauded by the Palestinian Authority, for good reason. The decision represents the culmination of the strategy PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas adopted upon taking office at the end of 2004. As he saw it, the terror war instigated by his predecessor in September 2000 (euphemistically known as the “Al-Aqsa Intifada”), despite the thousands of victims it exacted from Israel, was a total failure. It had not brought about the collapse of Israeli society or put a halt to West Bank settlement, let alone advanced the “liberation of Palestine,” and it damaged the Palestinian cause by casting them as the enemies of peace.

Abbas came up with a new approach: “Stop the militarization of the intifada. Let’s do what we are called upon to do and convince the world that we have fulfilled our obligations.” Although many took this to mean Abbas was repudiating the Arafat legacy and choosing peace, it was in fact simply a new means to the same ultimate goal of “liberating Palestine” (i.e., a Palestinian state on Israel’s ruins) to which the PLO (and the Palestinian Authority, which is under the PLO’s aegis) had steadfastly adhered. Abbas’s approach replaces the “armed struggle” with an international diplomatic campaign aimed at forcing Israel to withdraw to the “1967 borders” without a peace settlement while conceding the “right of return”—the standard Palestinian euphemism for destroying Israel by flooding it with millions of “refugees.” As such, Abbas’s approach was and continues to be in complete contravention of the PLO’s contractual obligations under the 1990s Oslo Accords.

Amazingly, despite 25 years of systematic Palestinian violations of these accords, thousands of casualties, and the turning of Gaza into a terror stronghold that persistently disrupts daily life in Israel, Israeli politicians still cling to the delusion that the PLO is a partner for peace. MK and former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan recently expressed elation over rocket fire from Gaza during a Netanyahu election rally in Ashkelon that forced the PM’s security team to rush him to safety: Netanyahu, in Golan’s view, had spent a decade squandering any possibility of a settlement in the Strip. Similarly, former PM Ehud Olmert has suggested that the upcoming election campaign focus on the resumption of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. “The absence of such negotiations,” he wrote in Maariv on December 20, “is nothing less than a strategic blow to Israel’s supreme existential interest.”

Not only were Olmert’s peace proposals at the 2007 Annapolis Conference dismissed out of hand by Abbas despite the far-reaching concessions they entailed, but those concessions diverged drastically from the conception of Israeli-Palestinian peace that had led Rabin to sign the Oslo Accords in the first place.

In his last speech to the Knesset on October 5, 1995, about a month before his assassination, Rabin set forth the basic contours of the final settlement:

Why Hamas and Islamic Jihad Love(d) Soleimani - by Khaled Abu Toameh

[Many] Arabs have claimed that they cannot understand why Hamas and Islamic Jihad are mourning an Iranian general responsible for the killing and displacement of thousands of people in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Some Arabs scoffed at the two Palestinian groups for labeling Soleimani as the "martyr of Jerusalem" at a time "when most of his rockets and bullets were being used to kill Arabs and Muslims to implement Iran's scheme of expanding its control to Arab and Islamic countries."

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
15 January '20..

Why are Iran's Palestinian proxies, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, disturbed about the death of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force, who was killed in a US airstrike on January 3, 2020?

The two Iranian-backed groups in the Gaza Strip were quick to mourn the "martyr" Soleimani and condemn his assassination as an "American-Zionist scheme." Leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad described the death of Soleimani as a "big loss for Palestine and the Palestinian resistance."

Hamas and Islamic Jihad set up a mourning tent for Soleimani in the Gaza Strip, where their representative invited Palestinians to offer condolences for the death of the Iranian military commander. The heads of the two groups, Ismail Haniyeh (Hamas) and Ziad Al-Nakhalah (Islamic Jihad) also travelled to Iran to attend the funeral of Soleimani and offer condolences to Iran's leaders over his death.

The reaction of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to the death of Soleimani is proof that the two groups have long been serving as Iran's proxies in the Gaza Strip, home to two million Palestinians. Without Iran's financial, military and political support, Hamas and Islamic Jihad would not have been able to maintain their control over the Gaza Strip.

Soleimani used his Quds Force to support Iran's proxies not only in the Gaza Strip, but also those in Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. While he used the pro-Iran militias in the Arab countries to kill many Arabs, Soleimani and his Quds Force supported Hamas and Islamic Jihad in their jihad (holy war) against Israel. Soleimani also supported Hamas and Islamic Jihad in their conflict with the Palestinian Authority (PA), and by doing so further contributed to deepening divisions among the Palestinians.

Soleimani's mission was not only to ensure that Hamas and Islamic Jihad retain their control over the Gaza Strip, but that they also have enough weapons to pursue their fight against Israel.

To justify their public mourning of Soleimani, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have, in the past few days, revealed that the slain Iranian military commander played a major role in helping them develop their military capabilities, particularly regarding tens of thousands of rockets that were fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip in the past decade.

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Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

The truth is, Jeopardy was wrong on Bethlehem. So are many of its critics. - CAMERA

...the Jeopardy host’s rejection of the first answer was correct. Bethlehem is not in “Palestine,” because there is no country called Palestine.

CAMERA..
13 January '20..

As is often the case with mundane news about Israel, pundits and journalists are buzzing with excitement after Jeopardy mishandled a question related to Holy Land geography.

The game-show exchange that led to some enraged Twitter comments and, in turn, widespread news coverage — including by CNN, NBC, the Washington Post, Guardian, Independent, Hollywood Reporter, and Al Jazeera — looked something like this:

A contestant chose the last remaining prompt on the board: “Where’s that Church,” for $200.

Jeopardy host Alex Trebek read the prompt (to which contestants must provide the question being answered): “Built in the 300s AD, the Church of the Nativity.”

A contestant buzzed in: “What is Palestine?”

“No,” replied the host.

Another contestant took a shot: “What is Israel?”

The answer was accepted. $200 for Jack.

And cue the online outrage.

American TV game show Jeopardy! sparks outrage after host rules contestant gave the wrong answer when she said Jesus's birthplace was in Palestine pic.twitter.com/sUAkQSZdxb

— TRT World Now (@TRTWorldNow) January 13, 2020

Trebek was, in fact, mistaken in the second part of the exchange. The Church of the Nativity is in Bethlehem, an ancient city that at the time of the church’s construction was ruled by Rome but that today sits in a Palestinian Authority-administered portion of the West Bank. Neither Israel nor the rest of the international community views Bethlehem as sovereign Israeli territory.

But the Jeopardy host’s rejection of the first answer was correct. Bethlehem is not in “Palestine,” because there is no country called Palestine.

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Erekat and Ashrawi tell the EU that paying terrorists is the right thing to do. EU tries to accommodate them. - by Elder of Ziyon

It is a surreal world we live in where the PLO can say "we don't want your money unless we are free to spend it on terror groups" and the EU responds with "No, let's work something out so we can both be happy."

Elder of Ziyon..
10 January '20..

In 2019, the European Union in 2019 set out rules which obligate Palestinian organizations that receive aid to ensure that no beneficiaries of their projects or programs are affiliated with groups listed on the European Union’s terrorist organizations list.

That list includes these terror groups, all of which have been proud of their terror acts:

Abu Nidal Organization (Fatah)
al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades (Fatah)
Al Qassam Brigades (Hamas)
Hamas
Palestinian Islamic Jihad
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command

It seems like a reasonable request not to allow EU finds to be redirected to EU-recognized terror groups, right?

Well, Palestinian NGOs freaked out, saying that if there are strings attached to the funding, they'd rather go without. Because to them, giving aid to these groups is righteous. The Palestinian argument is, essentially, we don't distinguish between terrorists and non-terrorists, so asking that the money not be given to terrorists is a form of discrimination.

Really, that's their argument.

And this argument is not only from Hamas and Islamic Jihad and NGOs that fund thm. No, the government of the "State of Palestine" is openly saying that terror groups should get funding like anyone else.

Saeb Erekat objected to the EU:

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An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Let’s Tell the Truth About Hamas and Gaza - by Sean Durns

Terrorists, it seems, make for poor rulers — a truth that even anti-Israel organizations and the press should be able to understand.

Sean Durns..
Algemeiner..
09 January '20..

It turns out that genocidal Islamist terrorist groups are bad at governing. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. But apparently it is to The Washington Post. The newspaper’s January 2 dispatch decried living conditions in the Gaza Strip, but failed to place blame where it belongs: with Hamas, the US-designated terror group that rules the Strip.

Citing a 2012 UN report, the Post asserted that Gaza would “become unlivable by 2020” if “prevailing economic, environmental, and political trends continued.” It is, the Post said, “a bleak reality facing Gaza’s two million Palestinian residents as they approach a new year and new decade.”

Reporters Miriam Berger and Hazem Balousha highlighted some of the issues facing Gaza: a sea filled with sewage “pumped in because there’s not enough electricity and infrastructure to run Gaza’s war-torn sewage system”; the “hospitals, schools, and homes” that are “similarly running on empty, worn down by the lack of clean water, electricity, infrastructure, and jobs or money.”

“Barely anyone,” they write “has enough clean water to drink.” The Post quotes some Palestinians. The newspaper also uncritically cites the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), as well as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN itself. Contravening standard journalistic practices, no Israeli official is quoted.

Yet, many of the Post’s sources have a documented history of bias. And important facts and context are omitted in the article.

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Sean Durns is a Senior Research Analyst for the Washington, DC office of CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.

Is the Palestinian cause really nothing more than a front for Arab imperialism? - by Dani Ishai Behan

What, then, is the Palestinian cause? It is, in essence, a reaction to Zionism and the State of Israel itself. Although it ludicrously presents itself as an indigenous rights-oriented cause, it is really nothing more than a front for Arab imperialism. It is hoped that, by repatriating the 6 million or so descendants of Arab refugees into Israel, the Jews in Israel will be demographically overwhelmed and we will be robbed of our self-determination once more, transforming our country into a de facto (and eventually de jure) Arab state.

Dani Ishai Behan..
TOI Blogs..
07 January '20..

The word “colonialism” brings to mind many things. Most notably, it is a term associated with European imperialist adventures in the “New World” and all of the attendant horrors that followed. It invokes, in specie, mental images of white-European settlers, armed with Bibles and bayonets, dominating “less advanced” (and typically non-white) indigenous populations, leading to some of the worst human rights atrocities in history – the massacre at Wounded Knee, the African slave trade, the racial segregation policies of South Africa, the reservation schools, and the extirpation of countless native cultures throughout the world.

And since nearly all of these and other more infamous examples of colonialism were specifically white-European, the concept itself has come to be seen as coterminous with white supremacism. In other words, it is perceived as an exclusively European vice, whereas the colonial histories of non-white nations are (in almost all cases) ignored or summarily dismissed. It is under this rubric, and in conjunction with the postmodern progressive fixation on racial justice (and the very recent re-formulation of Ashkenazi Jews as “white-European”), that Zionism has been cast as a “colonial” movement, while the ongoing Arab effort to reverse the gains made by the indigenous Jewish people in 1948 is championed as “anti-colonialism”. Many have even gone as far as to describe Israel as the “last remaining settler colony in existence”.

Zionism, however, is not colonialism, but the polar opposite thereof. To understand why this is so, it is important to clearly define both of these concepts.

Colonialism is, at a baseline level, the practice of expropriating foreign territory and incorporating it into a metropole, or “mother country” (e.g. the British Crown). This process typically entails occupying these new lands with settlers, suppressing local indigenous populations, and enforcing the tongue, culture, and lifestyle of the metropole on the aforementioned indigenous inhabitants. It is, to quote Wikipedia (which I am loathe to do), the relationship of domination of an indigenous population by foreign invaders, with the latter ruling in pursuit of their own interests.

It can also, in a more rudimentary sense, mean “building a town or a city”. That is how Ze’ev Jabotinsky used it in his famous Iron Wall essay, which anti-Zionists were quick to pounce upon. But for the purpose of this article, I will use it in the former sense.

Zionism is an indigenous people’s repatriation/liberation movement. It is thought to have officially emerged in exile, borne of the radical liberationist strain of Enlightenment thought from which feminism also emerged, but the underlying concept is much older. The yearning to return to our homeland has been ingrained in our culture ever since we were jettisoned from our soil by foreign occupiers, primarily into Europe, North Africa, and other parts of the Middle East.

Zionist leaders sought the support of world powers, particularly the British (who would eventually betray the Zionists) and the King of Iraq, and began to make their way home – rebuilding their people and country into the powerhouses they are today.

Zionism is, at its core, an indigenous rights project, and has been since day one. The Jews returning from exile had no mother country to “colonize” on behalf of. Israel IS the mother country. There was no New Warsaw, New Bielystok, New Vienna – only the revitalized names of ancient Jewish cities; cities that had been established by the ancestors of these supposed “European colonists”. The Zionists wanted nothing more than to rid themselves of diaspora and return home, and to compare that with colonialism is both dishonest and cruel.

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Erdoğan's 'quiet jihad' - by Nadav Shragai

Turkey's efforts to restore the "glory days" of the Ottoman Empire extend far beyond influence peddling in Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount. Turkey is spending money in Haifa, among the Bedouin, and even in mixed Jewish-Arab cities in an attempt to increase its status and bolster the Palestinian cause.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
06 January '20..

Palestinian Authority officials are calling the gift the Turkish government gave them a few years ago "the treasure." The trove contains 140,000 pages of carefully arranged microfilm that could have a dramatic effect on Israel's ability to hold onto a number of assets – land and structures – throughout Israel, in the West Bank, and east Jerusalem.

The "treasure" is actually a copy of the Ottoman Archive and includes thousands of documents of land registration under the Ottoman Empire, which ruled what is now Israel from 1517-1917. The Palestinians see these documents as a game-changer in their battle with Israel over land. They have already used the archive to challenge Israeli ownership of land and real estate in various parts of the country.

The first complete copy of the valuable archive was placed in the building of the PA consulate in Ankara for fear that the Israelis would get their hands on it. In March of last year, a formal celebration marked the transfer of part of the archive to Bethlehem. The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center documented the event, as well as the transfer of the archive in its entirety. But for some reason – even though the Palestinians now have a tool that could shake up the Israeli real estate market – the story has stayed under the radar.

To illustrate the possible ramifications of the Turkish move, we could compare it to a better-known incident in which the Greek Orthodox Church refused to extend leases on its extensive land holdings in Jerusalem. As a result, thousands of Jewish families in the capital are now living under the threat of being evicted from their homes.

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Please, Don’t Confuse Me With Facts. It’s Always About the “Occupation” by Dr. Asaf Romirowsky

The American Jewish Left has once again fallen in line with the Palestinian demand that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict always be conflated to a problem of “occupation,” regardless of facts or history. By leaping to condemn Mike Pompeo’s factual statement that Israeli West Bank “settlements” do not violate international law, American Jewish leftists joined forces with the BDS movement, which views the entirety of Israel as “occupied.”

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, photo via Religious
Action Center of Reform Judaism

Dr. Asaf Romirowsky..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,392..
05 January '20..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/occupation-jewish-left/

Like clockwork, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent observation that “the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law” was immediately denounced by the Jewish Left.

The head of the Reform movement in North America, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, said the US government’s new position on Israeli settlements will undercut the fight against BDS and the delegitimization of Israel in the US, specifically on college campuses.

It is not clear when Rabbi Jacobs was last on a campus, but the debate on North American college campuses is not about the so-called “occupation” but about whether Israel has a right to exist, period. Pro-BDS groups, including “Jewish” ones, are talking about the illegitimacy of the 1949 armistice lines, not those of 1967.

Moreover, a recent survey conducted by Ron Hassner at the University of California, Berkeley shows that most students who care strongly about the “Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories” do not have knowledge of even basic facts on the subject.

Jacobs’s lack of understanding speaks to the divergent lexicon of the conflict, and more pointedly to the growing split between American Jews and Israelis. In many “progressive” circles there is little to no understanding of what areas are even in dispute; witness the continued claims that Gaza is “occupied” by Israel. For the BDS movement, everything Israeli, including Haifa and Tel Aviv, is a “settlement” and hence “illegal.”

San Remo 1920: Why President Trump is keeping the promise - by Prof. Eugene Kontorovich

Why the conclusions of a 1978 US State Department memorandum have been repudiated.

Eugene Kontorovich..
Opinion/JPost..
02 January '20..
Link: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Why-President-Trump-is-keeping-the-promise-made-at-San-Remo-in-1920-612785

A full century after the international community met in Paris and San Remo to establish a post-imperial world order founded on independent nation states, the international community has, under the leadership of US President Donald Trump, begun to fully implement the promises and undertakings they made then.

At San Remo, the Jews were promised a “national home” in Palestine, and an explicit right to “settle” throughout the territory, which included Judea and Samaria. The international community did nothing to implement this promise, or ensure its fulfillment in the face of reluctance by the Mandatory government and growing anti-immigrant xenophobia by local Arabs. It was left entirely up to the Jews to translate the international promises into facts on the ground, and in 1948 they partially did so, though with much of the territory, including the holy sites, falling to the Jordanians.

After Israel retook these territories in 1967, much of the international community pretended its earlier guarantees did not exist. Far from allowing Jewish “settlement,” they claim that the areas Jordan ethnically cleansed of Jews in 1948 must indefinitely remain Jew-free zones, policed by Israel to prevent any Hebraic infiltration.

Yet 100 years after the Paris Conference, a leader emerged who was prepared to actualize the commitments the League of Nations had then made. President Trump’s recognition of a united Jerusalem, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s conclusion that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are not war crimes represent a proper understanding of the legal significance of the League of Nations Mandate. More importantly, they are perhaps the first leaders who refuse to subordinate Israel’s legal rights to political blackmail from Arab states.

When a ‘Global Conflicts’ Article Shows More Pictures from Israeli-Arab Conflict than Rest of World Combined - by Emanuel Miller

Even if we were to accept the bizarre premise that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict warrants more attention than the rest of the world put together, it’s telling that none of the images show the persecution of Christians within Palestinian society. One angle alone comes to the fore, and Israel alone seems to be blamed.

Emanuel Miller..
Honest Reporting..
31 December '19..

There are many ways to distort and slant news coverage against Israel.

Taking events out of context, neglecting to mention salient facts and spreading misinformation are some of the most common ways, and generally are swiftly noted by alert members of the public.

Others, such as photo bias, are trickier to discern.

Take the example of a recent International Business Times story, titled “Pope’s Christmas Message Appeals For Peace In Global Flashpoints.”

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