The UN Human Rights Council vs. the Palestinian People - by Dr. Edy Cohen

By targeting Israeli companies that employ mostly Palestinians, the UN Human Rights Council only helps to keep the latter in poverty—an end that serves the interests of the corrupt Palestinian Authority, which the UN automatically supports.

Dr. Edy Cohen..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,462..
28 February '20..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/united-nations-palestinian-people/..

In a blatant capitulation to the BDS movement, The UN Human Rights Council has published a list of 112 Israeli businesses linked to Jewish West Bank neighborhoods in an effort to stigmatize those businesses and encourage their boycott. This highly politicized decision will not hurt Israel, as it was intended to do, but will instead undermine the livelihood of the many Palestinians who—due to the lack of sufficient employment opportunities in Palestinian-governed areas—earn their living by working for those very Israeli businesses.

The UN has thus inflicted yet another economic blow in a series of such blows suffered by the Palestinian people. The Palestinian Authority (PA) declined an invitation to participate in the US-led economic conference in Bahrain in June 2019 and rejected the economic incentives offered in President Trump’s “Deal of a Century” without even hearing them. Trump’s proposal, dismissed by the PA out of hand, included, among many other benefits, plans to naturalize Palestinian refugees currently living in subsistence conditions in surrounding Arab states. The UN only adds to the Palestinians’ suffering by causing harm to one of their sources of income.

The PA’s wholesale violation of the Oslo Accords of the 1990s only worsened the economic position of the Palestinians living in today’s areas A and B. Many of them still reminisce about the more prosperous days when Israelis would come to their villages as well to Gaza to buy Palestinian products. All that changed with the stroke of a pen when the Accords birthed the PA and granted it authority over economic and social policy in areas A and B.

The establishment of Palestinian economic autonomy was intended to improve the prospects for prosperity and significantly improve the Palestinians’ quality of life. Despite good intentions, exactly the opposite came to pass. The PA’s incompetent and corrupt governance led to the deterioration of Palestinian quality of life and increased poverty while allowing cronies to steal public resources and exchange political favors for personal benefit. It’s no wonder that many Palestinians long for the days before Oslo.

The Israeli economy is the driving force behind Palestinian economic growth. The average salary of Palestinians working in Israel is several times the wage of Palestinians working in areas controlled by the PA, and the industrial area in the West Bank serves as a source of income for thousands of Palestinians. Palestinians work side by side with Israelis in Mishor Adumim, Shahak, Hinanit, Shaked, Ariel, Kiryat Arba, and elsewhere. Regrettably, all of this is likely to change if the UN decision has its intended impact on the Israeli companies being boycotted.

About 200,000 Palestinians earned their living last year by working in Israel and Israeli companies in the West Bank. Most are employed by the companies the UN seeks to boycott. These Palestinians look beyond ideology: they simply want to earn a decent living to support their families. Moreover, they strengthen and contribute much to Israel’s economy.

View from Temple Mount: Jerusalem's best-kept secret comes in form of silent prayer -by Nadav Shragai

Secretly, devoid of any of the traditional religious paraphernalia, a growing number of Jewish worshippers have been praying on the Temple Mount with the tacit consent of the police. This change is also at the heart of the fact that the US's peace plan seeks to ensure the status quo in the holy place permits Jewish visits, and the possibility of exercising the right of prayer in the open.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
21 February '20..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/02/21/jerusalems-best-kept-secret-comes-in-form-of-silent-prayer/

Did you know Jews pray on the Temple Mount? They do this discreetly, without provocations, and the custom is one of the best kept public secrets in Jerusalem. In some cases it is a single worshipper; rarely, 10 men enter the esplanade to pray in a minyan – the quorum required for certain religious obligations.

No external signs of Jewish prayer can be seen – no siddur, tallit, or tefillin. Nevertheless, the gathering is a prayer service in the full sense of the word. The police – and this is the true novelty – no longer drive the worshippers away, unless their intention is clearly to provoke conflict. Significantly, in hundreds of cases in recent years the police have turned a blind eye – at most they hurry the worshippers on.

Publicly, Israel has upheld the status quo that allows Jews to visit the Temple Mount but not to pray there. In practice, the prohibition on praying is no longer as strictly enforced as it once was. Although Jewish prayer on the site is very limited in scope, in recent years prayer services have been conducted – a fact of which the Muslims are also aware. The Waqf, an Islamic trust that controls and manages the current Islamic edifices on and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, regularly reports the activities on the Temple Mount to the Jordanian authorities, which often gripe to Israel on this issue.

The Jordanians cite the "Kerry understandings," reached in 2015, which put in writing, for the first time, the status quo established by Iconic Israeli statesman Moshe Dayan on the Temple Mount: Jewish visits – yes; Jewish prayers – no. Israel regularly promises to comply more strictly with the Kerry understandings. However, the de facto conditions, which have in fact changed significantly in favor of the Muslims over the years, shape a flexible status quo, on this issue among others.

This relatively new development speaks to clauses of the Trump administration's Middle East peace plan that address arrangements at the Temple Mount. The principle shaping much of the plan is the recognition of facts on the ground – whether in Judea and Samaria and the settlements, in Jerusalem, or on the Temple Mount.

Trump's team formulated two apparently contradictory clauses: On the one hand, the plan supports the status quo that allows Jews to visit the Mount but forbids them to pray there; on the other hand, it leaves open the possibility that in future, Jews will be able to exercise their right to pray in what is the holiest site in Judaism.

The clause is broad enough to allow for this future change in the status quo, yet is also clearly delineates: "People of every faith should be permitted to pray on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, in a manner that is fully respectful to their religion, taking into account the times of each religion's prayers and holidays, as well as other religious factors."

The Israeli interpretation of the new provision lays stress on peaceful worship by members of all religions. In other words, both Jews and Muslims can pray on the Temple Mount, as long as they are peaceful and refrain from provocations and riots. At the same time, the clause accounts for "other religious factors," thus setting in place an "exit strategy" for various scenarios, in the present or future, in which Jews' right to pray on the Temple Mount in accordance with the Trump plan cannot be secured.

PA appraising the damage

The sensational Temple Mount clause was preceded by various signs. Few Israelis remember that during the 2000 Camp David negotiations, former PM Ehud Barak, who was willing to divide Jerusalem and the Old City, demanded that the Palestinians allow Jews to establish their own prayer area on the Temple Mount and that they recognize the Jewish connection to it. The Palestinians rejected both demands, defining them as "non-starters."

In fact, Barak followed in the footsteps of the late Gen. Motta Gur, who led the forces that liberated Jerusalem in 1967: Some years before his death Gur traced the outline of his permanent settlement proposal in Jerusalem, including exercising of the right of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount. Barak's demand was also in line with one of the sections of the "City of Peace" program drawn up by Yaakov Hazan – one of the mythological leaders of Mapam, the United Workers Party that was one of the ancestors of modern-day Meretz.

Question. Did Zazim ask the residents of Umm el Fahm what they think? - by Sheri Oz

Regardless of the motives of the Jews in Zazim and Breaking the Silence, the big problem for Israel and for the Arabs-who-would-rather-be-Israeli-citizens is that the world beyond our region is easily hoodwinked by nefarious NGOs that advertise themselves as human rights organizations.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
25 February '20..

Jews who seem to love to hate Israel have instigated a new project. On 18 February, the leftist NGO, Zazim, made a supplication to your wallets. My translation is below the copied message, keeping the emphasis found in the original.

לא ניתן להם למחוק את הפלסטינים: בכנסת ובתקשורת מדברים בכל הזדמנות על סיפוח בקעת הירדן, אבל דווקא קולם של הפלסטינים עצמם לא נשמע, ואפילו את הפנים שלהם אף אחד לא טורח להראות. היום יש לך הזדמנות לשנות את זה.

יחד עם ארגון שוברים שתיקה, אנחנו מפיקים סרטון בו פלסטינים מהבקעה פונים אלינו הישראלים כדי להזכיר לנו, עוד לפני שנלך לקלפי – שהם אלה שישלמו את המחיר של תכנית הסיפוח. הצילום, העריכה וההפצה יעלו 29,500 אלף ש״ח. האם תוכל/י לתרום כדי שקולם של הפלסטינים ישמע?

Translation:

We will not allow them to erase the Palestinians: In the Knesset and in the media they talk at every opportunity about annexation of the Jordan Valley, but the voice of the Palestinians themselves is not heard, and nobody even bothers to show their faces. Today you have the chance to change all of that.

Together with Breaking the Silence, we are producing a film in which Palestinians from the Jordan Valley address us Israelis in order to remind us, before we go to the ballot box — that they are the ones who will pay the price of the annexation plan. The filming, editing and distribution of the film will cost 29,500 NIS. Can you contribute to this in order to allow the Palestinian voice to be heard?

I guess that Zazim and Breaking the Silence were asleep when residents of Umm el Fahm protested what they believed was Trump’s plan to move the border so that their town, among others, become part of the Palestinian state the Deal of the Century wants to establish (along with every other do-gooder wanna-be peacemaker). Many Arab citizens of Israel call themselves Palestinians but God forbid (!) you actually suggest that that be the passport they hold! They will not give up their Israeli citizenship and will fight to keep it.

(Continue to Full Post)

A bridge over a very troubled Waters - by Thane Rosenbaum

Pernicious ideas that shouldn’t even be allowed to grow on the dark side of the moon have become a sideshow for British rocker Roger Waters, who distorts facts with evil intent.

Thane Rosenbaum..
JNS.org..
24 February '20..

The British rocker Roger Waters’s insufferable crusade to con musical acts of the first order to boycott Israel and cancel their scheduled Tel Aviv tour stops has held little interest for me over the years. To my mind, the British Invasion could have left him behind. Musically, his concept albums never resonated with me. And then late in his career he espoused an odious politics even more jarring than his music.

I considered him too insignificant to attach my byline to—even if just to expose his rank anti-Semitism. I know that his now defunct band, Pink Floyd, was a chart-topping phenomenon in “Billboard,” that Waters’ own solo concerts usually played to packed houses, and that Pink Floyd was inducted into Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

All those accolades, however, can become overshadowed when artists take the risk of venturing too far into global politics, when their music takes a backseat to their causes and when they go about it dishonestly. In such times, the treble clef gets replaced by the trouble maker.

And that’s what Waters has become. His vocal range has coarsened and become more limited, and yet he won’t keep his mouth shut—not as a singer, but as a virtue signaller. His act has become an act, his concerts merely an excuse to remain relevant not for the sake of his catalogue of music, but to engage in anti-Zionist agitation.

(Continue to Full Column)

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro College, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society.

Surprise? NY Times Abandons Any Pretense of Even-handedness in Attack on Jerusalem Housing Plan - by Ira Stoll

The cherry-picked source selection isn’t the only way the Times news article is tilted. Consider the online subheadline: “The announcement by Prime Minister Netanyahu of 6,200 homes in a contested area was seen as an effort to solidify right-wing support.” To Israel’s enemies, every square inch of the country is “contested,” so the word “contested” doesn’t really add much. “Was seen” is classic Times passive voice. “Was seen” by whom? The Times headline doesn’t say, but the fact that it is the headline makes one suspect that it “was seen” that way by Times news editors, in which case, why don’t they just stop hiding behind “was seen” and just come right out and say it? I’m tempted to top this column with, “New York Times headline was seen as latest example of the newspaper’s egregious bias against Israel’s elected prime minister.”

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
23 February '20..

The New York Times has abandoned even the pretense of evenhandedness when it comes to its news coverage of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A Times news article about Netanyahu’s announcement of plans for new housing in Jerusalem includes quotes reacting to the news from three sources.

“The veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the move,” the Times reports, adding a quote from Erekat.

Then, from the Israeli side, the Times included two more reactions.

One, from “Aviv Tatarsky of Ir Amim,” which the Times describes as “a group advocating an equitable arrangement between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem,” uses the word “destructive.”

A second, from Peace Now, described the building plan as “state suicide.”

To find anyone welcoming or praising Netanyahu’s announcement, you’d have to resort to reading a different newspaper than the New York Times.

The result is to give Times readers a distorted, inaccurate, misleading view of what is happening in Israel. If you read the New York Times, you’d be shocked and surprised that Netanyahu keeps getting reelected, because the Times news articles (and opinion pages, too) are full of people criticizing Netanyahu and talking about how terrible whatever he is doing is. Yet somehow, Netanyahu and his party keep getting lots and lots of votes from people whose voices the Times doesn’t routinely deem worthy of including.

(Continue to Full Column)

Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post.

Peace and the unwillingness to grapple with the complexities of the actual state of affairs - by Douglas Altabef‏

Our eyes are open both to the lack of desire to truly engage on the part of the Palestinians, but also to the lack of seriousness, and ultimately of empathy, on the part of the so-called pursuers of peace. Ironically, no one wants real peace more than the people of Israel. At the same time, none are as aware as we are of the false siren songs of those whose eyes are closed in rapturous dreaming, instead of being open to stare at things as they truly are.

Douglas Altabef‏..
Algemeiner..
21 February '20..

“I am totally in favor of a realistic two-state solution. There is no alternative but a two-state solution.”

This conviction is often stated with the distant gaze of one uttering a transcendental truth. There is often a quasi-religious tenor to the declaration, an articulation of faith.

However, when one moves beyond the mantra, as it were, there is much murkiness, uncertainty, and downright ignorance.

What does it mean to be in favor of a realistic two-state solution? Who’s solution are we talking about? Is it mutually agreed upon or imposed? What form does it take — meaning what is envisioned for the second state, Palestine? Is it contained in the areas it currently controls? Does it include Gaza? How about parts of Israel or Jordan?

What has to happen for such a state to come into being? What pre-conditions, if any, should attend the creation of a Palestinian state? What about the right of return, for instance? Must that be discarded?

The overwhelming likelihood is that few, if any, of these questions have been thought about by those who declare their bedrock conviction that this is the only outcome that can occur between Israel and the Palestinians.

All of this leads me to posit my Iron Law of Mideast Peace Planning: The greater the distance from the region, the less the willingness to engage in the details, and the greater the intensity for an immediate solution in line with an ideological narrative.

Simply stated, the real world consequences of any peace agreement are so profound and important, that they basically force most people to retreat to an aspiration, a wish, a vision, a dream.

(Continue to Full Column)

Mr. Altabef is Chairman of the Board of Im Tirtzu and a Director of the Israel Independence Fund. He can be reached at dougaltabef@gmail.com.

The U.N.’s lofty crusade against supermarkets and gas stations - by Evelyn Gordon

...the real danger comes from the way this blacklist cheapens the very idea of human rights. According to the U.N. Human Rights Council, there is effectively no difference between mass murder and selling groceries; both raise “particular human rights concerns.” That’s a standard that no minimally moral human being could take seriously. It turns “human rights concerns” into a laughingstock, and thereby undermines respect for all human rights, even the genuine ones.

Evelyn Gordon..
JNS.org..
19 February '20..

If you want to understand just how outrageous the U.N. blacklist of businesses operating in Israeli “settlements” really is, forget for a moment about its anti-Israel bias and its warping of international law, important though these issues are. Instead, simply evaluate it on its own terms, as a compilation of companies engaged in “activities that raised particular human rights concerns.”

So what horrendous activities do these 112 companies engage in? Well, there are several supermarket chains, which sell groceries to both Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem. There are several fuel companies, which operate gas stations where both Israelis and Palestinians fill up their cars.

There are several bus and rail companies, which provide public transportation used by Israelis and Palestinians alike. There are phone companies (cell and landline) that provide general communications services. There are banks, which provide basic banking services. There’s a water company, which provides potable drinking water and sewage solutions.

There are also several food and clothing manufacturers, like General Mills, Angel Bakeries and Delta Galil, whose crime seems to consist of nothing but the fact that their cereals, bread and underwear can be found on supermarket shelves in the West Bank, Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem.

In short, almost all the companies on the blacklist simply provide the most fundamental human necessities—food, water, transportation, communication. Some of these are defined by the United Nations itself as inalienable rights: Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone” has a right to “food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services”; there’s no asterisk saying “except for settlers.” Others, like transportation and communication, aren’t considered rights, but they are considered positive goods in any other context.

In contrast, the United Nations...

(Continue to Full Column)

Evelyn Gordon is a journalist and commentator living in Israel.

When Palestinian Arabs fail to recognize that they are victims of their own doing - by Eli E. Hertz

The cost of defeat was hammered home by a stream of dire warnings from Arab capitals, with perhaps the most chilling for Israel coming from Jamal Al-Husayni as vice-chairman of the Arab Higher Committee [AHC], who publicly declared: “The Arabs have taken into their own hands, the Final Solution of the Jewish problem. The problem will be solved only in blood and fire. The Jews will be driven out.” Three years after world Jewry had lost a third of its people in the Holocaust, Israelis were not about to test whether Al-Husayni's words were merely rhetoric or a real threat, and so they prepared for the worst.

Eli E. Hertz..
MythsandFacts.org..
19 February '20..

Who Starts Wars Does Matter

As the British began to dismantle their Mandate [The British Mandate] and leave western Palestine, Israel’s War of Independence began (November 30, 1947 - May 14, 1948). During the war, Palestinian Arabs became belligerents in the conflict, and by its end, rather than accept a Jewish state after five-and-a-half months of warfare, Palestinian Arabs called upon their brethren from seven surrounding countries to invade and crush the nascent Jewish state. Six thousand Jews – 1 percent of Israel’s Jewish population – lost their lives during the War of Independence.

The Arab League's April 10, 1948 decision to invade Israel and “save Palestine,” marked a watershed event, for it changed the rules of the conflict. Accordingly, Israel bears no moral responsibility for deliberately banishing Palestinian Arabs in order to “consolidate defense arrangements” in strategic areas. With the pending invasion following Israel's declaration of independence, it is no exaggeration to say that the new Jewish state's very existence hung in the balance.

The new Jewish state found it imperative to eliminate all potential pockets of Arab resistance in key areas if it was to survive. Dislodging all Arab inhabitants from sensitive areas in proximity to Jewish communities, establishing territorial continuity between blocs under Jewish control, and ensuring control of key transportation arteries were military necessities. As May 14th approached, Israel could not afford to risk a Fifth Column at its rear to add to all other aspects of its militarily inferior situation.

The cost of defeat was hammered home by a stream of dire warnings from Arab capitals, with perhaps the most chilling for Israel coming from Jamal Al-Husayni as vice-chairman of the Arab Higher Committee [AHC], who publicly declared:

“The Arabs have taken into their own hands, the Final Solution of the Jewish problem. The problem will be solved only in blood and fire. The Jews will be driven out.”

Remembering the Failure of the Arab League Blacklist - by Mitchell Bard

Today, most people are unaware that the Arab boycott still exists, though few Arab countries enforce it and several Gulf states now have discrete economic relations with Israel. The lesson is that Israel has grown and thrived for almost 62 years despite a boycott which, at one time, was applied to thousands of companies around the world; it is not going to be destroyed by the BDS movement, even with the support of the UN and the blacklisting of a relative handful of companies.

Mitchell Bard..
Algemeiner..
19 February '20..

The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) has just published a database of companies operating in Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem. The intention is to create a blacklist of companies that can be targeted for boycotting.

The HRC’s action is outrageous and deserves condemnation, but hysteria is unwarranted. The BDS movement’s campaign to destroy Israel will fail. To understand why, let’s recall the history of the Arab League boycott.

Like the BDS movement, the Arab League boycott was fundamentally antisemitic. We know this because it was instituted in 1945 before the establishment of Israel, and because it explicitly said that “Jewish products and manufactured goods shall be considered undesirable to the Arab countries.” All Arab “institutions, organizations, merchants, commission agents, and individuals” were called upon “to refuse to deal in, distribute, or consume Zionist products or manufactured goods.” As in the case of BDS, the terms “Jewish” and “Zionist” were used synonymously.

Today, some members of Congress are resisting legislation targeting the BDS movement, but as far back as 1959, the Senate adopted an amendment opposing foreign aid to countries that discriminate against Americans on the grounds of religion. The primary motivation for this and other early legislative efforts was the Arabs’ policy of refusing visas to American Jews and, more specifically, the Saudis’ refusal to permit Jews to be stationed at the United States’ base at Dhahran.

In 1960, Congress adopted the Douglas-Keating “Freedom of the Seas” amendment, which said “the peace of the world is endangered” when nations receiving US aid “wage economic warfare against other nations assisted under the Act; including such procedures as boycotts, blockades, and the restriction of the use of international waterways.” Five years later, Congress adopted a broader regulation that held that US policy opposed “restrictive trade practices or boycotts fostered or imposed by countries against other countries friendly to the United States.”

Israel and its allies are justifiably upset that the HRC released a blacklist of 112 companies. This is trivial, however, compared to the scale of the Arab League blacklist.

(Continue to Full Column)

Mitchell Bard is Executive Director of AICE and Jewish Virtual Library.

Good Question: Is the EU done with the Palestinian scam? - by Dr. Shai Har-Zvi

It appears even the Europeans are fed up with the Palestinian method of "human rights activist by day and terrorist by night" – not to mention the demand to keep funding it.

Dr. Shai Har-Zvi..
Israel Hayom..
17 February '20..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/is-the-eu-done-with-the-palestinian-scam/

Throughout the years, the European Union has provided economic support in the tens of millions of shekels to Palestinian civilian organizations based on a standard stipulation applied to NGOs worldwide: To receive financial aid, they must have no affiliations with terrorist elements.

Lately, Palestinians have been outraged over an additional, legitimate stipulation the EU has introduced: The beneficiaries of EU grants must make sure that third-party elements (such as subcontractors, workshop participants and the like) with ties to them, who indirectly benefit from European funds, aren't on the EU sanctions list. The Palestinians are furious and have outright refused to sign on the clause. They completely reject the European decision that groups such as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are terrorist organizations because from their perspective they are legitimate political parties.

The Palestinians' feigned innocence and rejectionist stance are unsurprising. In late 2019, the Shin Bet security agency uncovered a comprehensive and organized PFLP terrorist network, which carried out the attack in which Rina Shnerb, 17, was murdered and her brother and father were wounded. The Palestinians claim the PFLP isn't a terrorist organization, and have sought to hide the fact that several members of the terrorist network discovered by the Shin Bet filled a number of key posts in the Palestinian NGO Addameer. In recent years, Addameer has received aid worth upwards of NIS 8 million from European countries and institutions. In 2018, for instance, Addameer received a NIS 500,000 grant from Switzerland. Senior officials in other Palestinian NGOs were members of declared terrorist groups for years; some of them even served jail terms in Israel.

Where We Are: Gaza Balloons - A Bursting Terror Problem - by Dov Lipman

No children should ever have to be told that they cannot touch kites, balloons, balls and other toys for fear that they may explode. Even more so, no human beings should be allowed to target innocent children in this manner. And anyone who sides with Hamas in the Gaza Strip is supporting just that.

Dov Lipman..
Honest Reporting..
10 February '20..

What kind of parent tells their child that they cannot play with balloons, kites, balls, or toy airplanes?

Either horrible, mean parents or loving, caring parents who happen to live in Israel near the Gaza Strip.

Why would caring parents instruct their children not to go near balloons, kites, and other toys? Because beginning in 2018, Palestinian terrorists began sending Gaza balloons and kites laden with explosives to harm Israelis, spark wild fires, and weaken Jewish morale.

Hamas has even established special units tasked with producing and launching them.

The Simplicity of the Gaza Balloons

Literally thousands of hectares in southern Israel have been set ablaze by improvised incendiary devices from from Gaza. Many are made up of simple, commonly available balloons — made of rubber or latex, or even condoms — which are filled with helium. Then, burning rags or an explosive device are attached. Terror kites are made by simply tying several sticks together, covering them with a plastic sheet and attaching a mesh carrying fuel.

When the wind blows into Israel from Gaza, the balloons and kites are released. While most land in the vicinity of the Israel-Gaza border, one balloon landed in Beersheva, about 40 km from the Strip.



Some Gaza balloons have been designed to spark multiple fires by repeatedly drip fireballs as they float over Israel. Bomb disposal crews are frequently called to defuse explosives found attached to balloons and kites. In one incident, a rocket-propelled grenade warhead attached to balloons was found in a kibbutz field.

Between July and September 2018, Gaza balloons and kites sparked an average of 12 fires a day. The fires they triggered have caused terrible ecological damage to Israel – destroying over 6,000 acres of forests and farmland and killing massive amounts of wildlife. Experts say that the damage to the ecosystem will take a decade to repair.

(Continue to Full Post)

The 1,000 Nos of Mahmoud Abbas’ - by David M. Weinberg

How far can Abbas go in opposing negotiation and compromise, encouraging violence, venerating terrorists, spewing hatred, and pushing the criminalization of Israel – while still being considered a paragon of peace by the Israeli Left (ref. Ehud Olmert), the American Jewish Left (ref. Jeremy Ben-Ami), and the global community?

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
14 February '20..
Link: https://www.davidmweinberg.com/2020/02/14/abbas-1000-nos/

First there was the Arab League’s Khartoum Resolution of September 1967 after the Six Day War, infamous for what became known as the “Three Nos”: No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.

Then came the Arab League summit in Cairo last week, where Palestinian Authority dictator Mahmoud Abbas “improved” on that rejectionist formulation with his declaration of “One Thousand Nos” to the new American Mideast peace plan.

The Trump plan, Abbas ranted, is based on the evil Balfour Declaration, “devised by the US and UK to liquidate the Palestinian cause.” He repeated his 2016 demand that Britain apologize to the Palestinian people for the “catastrophes, miseries and injustices” of the Balfour Declaration, threatened to retroactively sue Britain, and threatened any world leader who might favor the Trump initiative.

Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, Abbas’ handpicked Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, reinforced Abbas’ threats and curses by warning that whoever negotiates on the Trump plan is a “traitor to God and His Messenger, and to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem and Palestine. Whoever plans or supports this brute aggression, or is silent about it, deserves the curse of God, his angels and all people,” fulminated the Mufti.

Abbas also swore “never” to recognize Israel as the national state of the Jewish People (and mocked Russian and Ethiopian immigrants to Israel as non-Jews). He swore “never” to forgo the so-called right of return to Israel of Palestinian refugees, “never” to accept Israeli security control of Jordan Valley, “never” to allow Jews to live in Judea, and “never” to accept Israeli sovereignty in any part of the Old City of Jerusalem.

So the question is: How far can Abbas go in opposing negotiation and compromise, encouraging violence, venerating terrorists, spewing hatred, and pushing the criminalization of Israel – while still being considered a paragon of peace by the Israeli Left (ref. Ehud Olmert), the American Jewish Left (ref. Jeremy Ben-Ami), and the global community?

Consider: For almost two decades, Israelis have been told that Mahmoud Abbas was the most reasonable Palestinian leader they could hope for; that he was Israel’s best partner for peace; that he was the moderate with whom a grand compromise deal could be reached. Israelis wanted to believe this so much.

The time has come for a grassroots campaign for Malki Roth as well - by Karen Harradine

The redoubtable Roths should not have to fight alone for justice for their daughter. The time has come for a global and concerted grassroots campaign to pressure Jordan into extraditing Tamimi.

Karen Harradine..
Algemeiner..
13 February '20..
Link: https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/02/13/a-grassroots-campaign-for-malki-roth/

Naama Issachar’s family is undoubtedly overjoyed to have her back home. Issachar owes her release from a Russian prison to over 80 organizations and people who effectively orchestrated a campaign for her freedom.

So why hasn’t a similar campaign been undertaken to bring justice to Malki Roth’s killer? Next year is the 20th anniversary of the Sbarro terrorist attack in which 15 innocents, including Malki, were murdered by Palestinian terrorists. The mastermind of this heinous crime, Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi, lives a free life in Jordan, feted as a celebrity. The Jordanian government and their king, Abdullah II, have repeatably ignored requests by the US to extradite Tamimi to face overdue justice in an American court (Malki was an American citizen).

Malki’s parents, Arnold and Frimet Roth, have spent almost two decades living with the pain of grief, compounded by the frustration and hurt arising from a culture of silence surrounding the extradition of Tamimi.

The redoubtable Roths should not have to fight alone for justice for their daughter. The time has come for a global and concerted grassroots campaign to pressure Jordan into extraditing Tamimi. The Israeli government needs to play its part, too. Why won’t the Israeli government pressure Jordan into honoring its obligation to extradite Tamimi? What are they afraid of?

Breaking down the UNHRC anti-Israel blacklist - by Ben Cohen

Like the 1974 General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism or the 2001 Durban anti-racism conference that rounded on Israel, the publication of the blacklist by the UNHRC amounts to an attack on Israel’s legitimacy that no other member state would be expected to tolerate. Some 75 years after the creation of this world body, the contention that the legal and moral right of the Jewish people to a sovereign existence is inferior when compared to every other nationality in the world continues to haunt its deliberations.

Ben Cohen..
JNS.org..
12 February '20..

In the halls of the United Nations, they’re calling it a “database,” but it’s more commonly and accurately known as a “blacklist.” It’s a list of more than 100 companies conducting business activities with Jewish communities and Israeli enterprises in the West Bank that was published, a good four years after it was first mooted, by the U.N. Human Rights Council last Wednesday.

Given the litter of authoritarian states and theocracies that compose the UNHRC, as well as its notorious “Item 7”—an annual fixed agenda item that focuses the HRC on alleged Israeli misdeeds only—the eventual release of the blacklist has not come as a huge surprise. The justification for its existence expressed in the official report of Michele Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, is nevertheless worth a closer look.

The list comprises companies deemed by the UNHRC to be complicit in encouraging, building and maintaining “Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.” There are 10 categories that the UNHRC uses to determine exactly how this complicity functions, so if you are conducting business with these Jewish communities, and you are engaged in “listed activities” in the construction, demolition, private security, banking, natural resource or transport sectors, chances are that you will be on the blacklist.

Theoretically, the blacklist is global in its ambition, with a mandate to examine “business enterprises, whether domiciled in Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territory or abroad, carrying out listed activities in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” But when you break down the list of companies by country origin, two features stand out.

(Continue to Full Column)

Ben Cohen is a New York City-based journalist and author who writes a weekly column on Jewish and international affairs for JNS.

(Excellent) Requiem to the Israeli Left's Apartheid Argument - by Gadi Taub

The argument from the left that annexation of parts of the West Bank would make Israel an apartheid state has lost both its moral and political force, and survives mainly today as a form of virtue signaling

Gadi Taub..
Haaretz/Opinion..
10 February '20..
Link: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-requiem-to-the-apartheid-argument-1.8511117

A few months before the announcement of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mideast peace plan, I had the pleasure of lunching with an Israeli historian whose work has justly earned him worldwide acclaim. We dined at a fish restaurant in the old city of Acre, where waves lapped against the city’s outer wall across the street. Predictably, the conversation eventually arrived at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I said I no longer believed in a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. The best that can be done for the foreseeable future, I said, is autonomy. “Autonomy in whose territory, exactly?” my interlocutor asked.

The territory is, of course, Israel’s. The crucial component of any future settlement should be, in my view, Israeli control of the Jordan Valley. It’s also central to Trump’s plan, which was still unknown back then. Israel is an island of political stability in an ocean of smoldering political lava. You can’t even speak of tectonic plates. They’ve all melted away. In this neighborhood, all principles of political order – pan-Arabism, Arab socialism, political Islam and, most crucially, nationalism – have been temporary at best. As the late, great Bernard Lewis has said, there are only four nation states in the Middle East: Israel, Egypt, Iran and Turkey. The rest, he said, are tribes with flags.

A tiny state like Israel cannot risk the possibility of this violent chaos – which will in all likelihood continue to engender waves of refugees – come too close to its borders. We cannot afford to let it spill over the mountain ridge of Judea and Samaria, which overlooks the metropolitan center of the country and its single international airport. The distance between Tel Aviv’s beaches and Samaria is, one must remember, only 9 miles (about 15 kilometers) at the country’s narrow waist.

A Gaza-style or ISIS-style regime, let alone a complete collapse of order, just a stone’s throw away from Israel’s heart is not an option. This is why control of the borders on the other side of the ridge, along the Jordan River, is absolutely vital.

On the other hand, full annexation of the whole of Judea and Samaria, aka the West Bank, is also not realistic. It will require granting full citizenship to a very large and very hostile population, turning Israel from a Jewish state into a de facto binational state. Annexation without granting citizenship is no more realistic, since Israelis are not likely to give up the democratic character of their state.

So we’re stuck with autonomy as the only alternative to direct occupation. This is not a theoretical construct. It is already taking shape, since partial autonomy has been in place since the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, in the limited area where the Palestinian Authority exercises civil control. Still, whatever shape autonomy takes, it will remain inevitably within Israel’s borders.

But if it is an autonomous entity within Israel, my interlocutor said, then it’s a form of “apartheid.” I was under the impression that, for him, this is the trump card – no pun intended – that ends the debate. As if giving the plan this label has conclusively ruled it out.

There was an awkward silence. We talked about the food, which was in fact delicious.

After Inciting Violence, Abbas Comes to New York To Fight a Peace Plan - by Bassan Tawil

...Finally, a word of advice for the families of Nafleh, Abu Tabeekh and Haddad: hold Abbas, not Israel, responsible for the death of your sons. If they had not attacked soldiers with firebombs, the three young men would be alive today. The blood of these men is on the hands of Abbas and his officials, who are continuing to wage a massive campaign of incitement against the US and Israel for no reason but the publication of a plan that offers the Palestinian people hope for a better future.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
10 February '20..

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is on his way to the United Nations Security Council to speak against US President Donald Trump's plan for Middle East peace -- "Peace to Prosperity" -- after having incited his people, yet again, against Israel and the US.

Abbas's non-stop incitement has resulted so far in the deaths of three young Palestinian men in the West Bank -- Nidal Ahmed Nafleh, 19, Yazan Munther Abu Tabeekh, 19, and Mohammed Salman Haddad, 17 -- who were killed by the Israel Defense Forces while attacking soldiers with firebombs.

Why did the three men take to the streets to attack IDF soldiers? Because Abbas called on his people to step up "popular resistance activities" to protest the ostensible Trump "conspiracy."

Such incitement is seen by Palestinians in the West Bank as a green light to attack Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers with rocks, knives, car-rammings, explosive devices and firebombs.

Nafleh, Abu Tabeekh and Haddad most likely never even read the 180-page peace plan against which they were they were protesting. They undoubtedly went out to attack IDF soldiers because they were informed by their leaders, including Abbas, that Trump's plan is an "American-Zionist plot to liquidate the Palestinian cause." The plan, on the contrary, offers the Palestinians most of the land captured by Israel in 1967 that more than doubles their territory; a government with realized human rights and institutions of democracy, such as a free press, and $50 billion -- all as part of an extraordinary opportunity to build a flourishing Palestinian State.

As the journalist, Tom Gross, observed:

"Other stateless people can only dream of being offered independence and $50bn by the US president.... If only the Yazidis or Baluchis or Kurds or Rohingya Muslims were so lucky."

(Continue to Full Post)

Arabs and Europeans React to President Trump’s Middle East ‘Vision’ - by Shoshana Bryen

It has been hard for Arab states to move on from decades of adamant rejection of Israel to talk and trade, and generally accept the nation-state of the Jewish people. That is the reality, not an excuse. But for the EU and UNRWA, to encourage Palestinians in outmoded, fanatical, and dangerous thinking is inexplicable. Except it isn’t.

Shoshana Bryen..
Jewish Policy Center..
06 February '20..
Link: https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2020/02/06/arabs-and-europeans-react-to-trumps-middle-east-vision/

It takes time for attitudes to change, and changing attitudes in the Middle East is a tough proposition. Moving the Europeans may prove harder.

An Israeli general once told this story (I was there):

The Israeli general commanded a unit that crossed the Suez Canal in 1973 after repulsing Egypt’s surprise Yom Kippur War attack. In his headquarters, he received a message that purported to be from an Egyptian general, telling him to come — alone — in a jeep to a certain spot in the desert and “hear something.” The general told the group, “I was sure I was going to die, but I did it.” The Egyptian proved to be the chief of the Egyptian general staff and he, too, was alone.

The Egyptian said, “The war is over.”

The Israeli general said, “Yes. I know.”

The Egyptian general sighed, “Not this war. In 1948, Egypt was within 11 miles of Tel Aviv and you pushed us back. In 1956, you drove through Sinai — but it wasn’t fair because you had the French and the British. In 1967, you did it again — by yourselves. Now you have crossed the Suez Canal and are 99 kilometers from Cairo. I’m here to tell you that you won’t get any closer. The war is over.”

He got back in his jeep and left.

The Israeli returned to his headquarters and told the story to the general staff in Tel Aviv. “No one believed me,” the Israeli said.

But it was true. The Egyptian government had determined that fighting, losing, and regrouping was not a plan. In 1979, Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem, and in so doing met Israel’s primary condition for peace — recognition of Israel as a legitimate and permanent state in the region, entitled to “secure and recognized boundaries, free from threats or acts of force” (the language of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242). Today, Egypt and Israel cooperate on energy, security (including for the Gaza Strip), and trade.

In the broader Arab world, it is taking longer. Unable to countenance Jewish sovereignty in the region, the Arabs went to war in 1948 to erase it. They failed. They tried again in 1967. They failed again. After that war, an Arab League Summit convened in Sudan and issued what became known as the Khartoum Resolution: “No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.”

Then there were the conflicts of 1973 and 1982, intifadas, and rocket wars with Gaza.

President Trump called them on it in announcing his “Vision” for the Middle East. “It is time for the Muslim world to fix the mistake it made in 1948, when it chose to attack instead of to recognize the new state of Israel. The Palestinians are the primary pawn in this adventurism, and it is time for this sad chapter in history to end.” Three Arab ambassadors were in the room.

Our European Enemy - by Victor Rosenthal

Are officials in the EU and individual countries that support this project so stupid or blind and deaf as to fail to understand that? Do they not know that the funds that they provide to the Palestinian Authority are used to pay terrorists? Do they not see that UNRWA, of which they are now the prime funder, educates Palestinian children to hate? I don’t believe it.

Victor Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
06 February '20..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2020/02/our-european-enemy/


Our state is tiny, in size and population. The Nations didn’t want it to exist at all, and when they couldn’t stop it they did their best to keep it small. There aren’t so many Jews in the world, anyway; millennia of oppression and murder have kept our numbers down, and today there are millions who are “Jewish by extraction” but are assimilated enough to other cultures to be lost forever to the Jewish people.

In all the world there are fewer than 15 million Jews, in Israel fewer than 7 million. But there are forces arrayed against us that are unique in their scope and viciousness. Throughout the world, even in countries where there are few Jews or none at all, people have opinions about us. According to a worldwide survey done by the ADL, some 26% of the world’s 7.5 billion people “harbor antisemitic attitudes.” That is incredible, when you think about it.

There are 35 million Kurds in the world, another people seeking (but so far not getting) self-determination. Certainly they have issues with their Turkish and other neighbors, but I venture to guess that it is highly unlikely that anywhere near as many people have even heard of the Kurds, much less “harbor anti-Kurdish attitudes.”

What’s true for Jews goes triple for their state. I won’t repeat the depressing statistics about the number of UN resolutions condemning Israel that pass every year, and the fact that it is consistently attacked there for crimes that it did not commit while countries that do engage in murder, aggression, and oppression are never mentioned. I won’t go into detail about the extreme and irrational anti-Israel expression (misoziony*) found in almost one hundred percent of the world’s academic and artistic realms.

Really, Israel and Jews are sui generis in the “objects of hatred” department (and if you think it is our fault, you are part of the problem).

This hatred is not just theoretical. From time to time, our immediate neighbors, cousins if you will, start wars whose intent is to kill or disperse the Jews who are occupying the Land of Israel. As a result, Israel has been forced to spend a large portion of her GDP on defense, which has led to her possession of very advanced military technology, which – along with her slightly better degree of organization – led to the defeat of our enemies in conventional war. That in turn led them to adopt strategies of asymmetric warfare and terrorism, which we have managed to counter, although less successfully.

These aren’t our only enemies. In the middle of the twentieth century, one of the most highly developed scientific, literary, and musical cultures in the Western world descended into genocidal madness and ignited a war which resulted in 60 million dead and much of Europe laid waste, primarily – there were other reasons, but I’ll stick with “primarily” – to annihilate us. Largish groups in almost every country of Eastern and Western Europe worked together with the Nazis to help collect, ship, and exterminate those of us who fell into their hands.

After the war there was a general revulsion in what was left of the countries that had participated in the biggest pogrom in history, as well as an understanding on the part of the Jewish remnant that our state had to be established regardless of the cost, which prevailed against the resistance – imagine, after all that! – the resistance from Britain and the Arabs.

But the antisemitism of Europe didn’t go away, although it was pushed under cover by the embarrassment of its involvement in the pogrom of pogroms. There was no embarrassment about expressing it in the form of misoziony, the wild hatred of the state that we managed to establish despite Britain’s best efforts to prevent it. And while there is still enough revulsion left to prevent them from repeating their attempt to liquidate our people, it hasn’t stopped them from paying to create the conditions for others to do it for them.

Question: What do Palestinian Arabs think? - by Arnold Roth

The polling was done both in the Fatah/PLO-controlled West Bank and in the Hamas-occupied Gaza Strip in the period December 11 to 14. Total size of sample: 1,200 adults interviewed face to face in 120 randomly selected locations. Margin of error +/-3%.

Abbas in better times

Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
05 February '20..

The opinions of Palestinian Arabs are, to a great extent, a puzzle.

By that, we don't mean what their elites say they think. Or what outside reporters guess are their opinions. It's not a free or open society. It doesn't have unrestricted media - quite the opposite. And it hasn't had elections for well over a decade.

So, as we keep saying in this blog, what Palestinian Arabs tell trusted fellow Palestinian Arabs who are professional opinion pollsters about the things they actually believe is a subject always worth revisiting. (The last time we did that was here: "04-Jun-19: What do Palestinian Arabs think?")

Our previous poll-centered posts have centered on the published data of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) headed by Dr. Khalil Shikaki. Click here to go to those previous posts - we started analyzing and reporting on them in 2011.

We're doing that again now based on PSR's most recent Public Opinion Poll, number 74, which was published on December 26, 2019.

(Continue to Full Post)

Palestinian rejectionism? Who cares? - by Ken Cohen

The Palestinians have spent decades overplaying their hand, but the world seems to be catching on to their lethal game.

Ken Cohen..
FLAME/JNS.org..
04 February '20..

Last week, President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited Middle East peace plan. Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his electoral opponent Blue and White leader Benny Gantz were at the White House for the announcement. So were a bunch of international diplomats, including three from Arab nations. The Palestinians refused to attend and rejected the plan sight-unseen.

The proper question at this point about Palestinian rejectionism ought to be: “Who cares?”

Anyone surveying the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations already knows that the Palestinians’ goal is the eradication of Israel. The difference in the new U.S. plan, however, is that the initial major steps in its implementation can be taken unilaterally by Israel, even with no Palestinian participation.

Having refused four major peace initiatives in the past 25 years, the Palestinians are well schooled in rejectionism. Each of those earlier plans—starting with the Clinton initiative in 2000—would have given them a state roughly corresponding to the original 1949 armistice lines from Israel’s War of Independence.

But the Palestinians’ many “unconditional” demands—like the right of return for millions of Arab refugees and their descendants to Israel proper—created built-in excuses for walking away from the table. The new plan explicitly rules out this refugee demand.

This time, the Palestinian leadership didn’t even walk up to the table, having severed all relations with the United States in 2017 over America’s recognition of Jerusalem as the Jewish capital. Similarly, other than some security and bureaucratic coordination with Israel, they have refused all bilateral negotiations with Netanyahu and his government.

But this latest rejection could very well do them in once and for all.

(Continue to Full Column)

The Real Reason Arabs in Israel Do Not Want to Live in 'Palestine' - by Khaled Abu Toameh

Why are the 250,000 Arab Israelis living in the Triangle area strongly opposed to the idea of becoming part of a Palestinian state?

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
04 February '20..

Arab citizens of Israel, who number nearly two million, are up in arms about US President Donald Trump's plan for Middle East peace, which proposes including some of their communities in a future Palestinian state. Since the unveiling of the plan, thousands of Arabs have been demonstrating to express their rejection of the idea of placing them under the sovereignty of a Palestinian state.

Trump's "Peace to Prosperity" plan proposes land swaps that could include both populated and unpopulated areas. It suggests that the so-called Triangle area in Israel, consisting of several Arab communities "which largely self-identify as Palestinian, become part of the State of Palestine." The plan points out that the Arab communities "were originally designated to fall under Jordanian control during the negotiations of the Armistice Line of 1949, but ultimately were retained by Israel for military reasons that have since been mitigated."

Why are the 250,000 Arab Israelis living in the Triangle area strongly opposed to the idea of becoming part of a Palestinian state?

(Continue to Full Post)

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

Esther Cailingold, the Girl Who Took On the British Empire - by Rosie Whitehouse

Esther Cailingold was disillusioned with the British Empire’s treatment of Jews after the Holocaust. So she joined the Jewish resistance in Palestine.

Rosie Whitehouse..
Tablet Magazine..
27 January '20..

On May 8, 1945, when the war ended in Europe, 19-year-old Esther Cailingold and her younger brother Asher danced the night away in London’s Trafalgar Square. “We youngsters had never felt so happy,” he said. “But when we got home in the early hours our father greeted us with a doom-laden warning that dark times were ahead for the Jews. We didn’t understand what he meant, but the reality was soon to catch up with us.” Three years later, Esther lay dead in Jerusalem’s Old City, after a battle that Reuters reported was reminiscent of Stalingrad.

The Cailingold siblings grew up in a closed Orthodox society in an atmosphere that Asher, 89, said “retained the feel of Eastern Europe.” But this was still “London—the heart of the British Empire on which the sun never set,” he recalled. “When our teachers pointed to the pink shaded masses on the map of the world our little chests puffed out in pride.” But in the months following the end of hostilities, Asher watched as his sister was transformed from “a prim trainee schoolteacher into a frontline fighter who traveled alone to a strange land and changed into someone we never knew.”

Along with millions of British cinema goers, the siblings spent the summer of 1945 watching newsreel images of emaciated Holocaust survivors and skeletal corpses. It had an enormous impact on Esther. “We were both members of the religious Zionist movement, Bahad, now Bnei Akiva, and when they asked for volunteers to go to Germany to work with the survivors Esther was determined to join them, but our father refused to let her go,” Asher recalled. Then one day in August 1945, she “stomped out of the house” without telling the family where she was going.

Days later, when 300 child Holocaust survivors who had endured slave labor, concentration camps, and death marches stepped out of RAF bombers at an airport near Carlisle in the north of England, Esther Cailingold was waiting to greet them.

The children, mostly teenage boys, were brought from the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia by the Central British Fund, now World Jewish Relief. Their story is retold in a major docudrama for BBC and Germany’s ZDF, The Windermere Children, to be broadcast later this month as part of the U.K.’s 75th anniversary commemoration of the end of the Holocaust. It is being sold as a redemptive feel good story of British generosity, but it fails to tell the whole story. It is a tale that will not mention 22-year-old Esther and how meeting child Holocaust survivors in England’s Lake District turned her into a radical Zionist with a gun in her hand.

The story of the collapse of British control in Palestine is rarely discussed in the United Kingdom and does not appear in school textbooks. It is odd that such a seminal moment in history seems to have fallen through the cracks, as it links two crucial events of 20th-century history—the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel. So I recently met with Dave Rich, an expert on anti-Semitism, in a coffee shop in north London.

The fact it has been brushed under the carpet has, Rich told me, had a negative impact on Britain. Rich said it has allowed the hard left to present an incorrect “narrative which sees Jews before World War II as anti-fascists, during the war as victims of fascism, and after the war as fascist oppressors.” He said the topic is too uncomfortable even for the Jewish community to counter, with many unwilling to speak about it, almost as if it were as bad as “homegrown ISIS terrorists today. British Jews were going to Palestine to fight the British Empire.”

Rich was right; finding someone who was willing to talk about this was not an easy feat and I almost gave up. But at the 11th hour, I stumbled across an unexpected lead while at Kibbutz Lavi in northern Israel, not far from the Sea of Galilee. It was founded by Bahad in 1949 and I came to find out about its founders who cared for the child Holocaust survivors. But Lavi’s British side is fading fast. The hotel lobby was full of characters who look like they have stepped out of an episode of Netflix’s Shtisel and the buzz of conversation was Hebrew and English with an American twang. The United Kingdom seemed very far away. There wasn’t a single person from Britain in sight until I walked into the old people’s home.

(Continue to Full Story)

Rosie Whitehouse is the author of The People on the Beach: Escaping Europe After the Holocaust, which will be published by Hurst in September 2020.

The Myth Of Arab Buy-In - by Yishai Fleisher

...while many Arabs want to end hostilities, it is a mistake to pine for public Arab buy-in. Israel is anathema to both their Arab nationalism and a core tenet of Islam — and if they must swallow the existence of Israel, they prefer it play out as coercion, or at least a gradual and quiet acceptance rather than voluntary proclamations of “peace in our time.” In the end, helping the Arab world transition from war to cooperation is a delicate task and it will surely benefit Israel. But the Muslim world, which is hungry for prosperity, modernity, and reform, stands to gain even more.

Yishai Fleisher..
Daily Wire..
31 January '20..
Link: https://www.dailywire.com/news/fleisher-the-myth-of-arab-buy-in

When speaking with liberal-minded folks about solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the recently revealed “Deal of the Century,” inevitably the question of Arab buy-in arises. “Will the Palestinians accept it?” is the oft-heard refrain.

While this may seem to be a pretty reasonable question, it actually reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of the Middle East.

Here is a true story involving one of my mentors, Dr. Mordechai Kedar. It helpfully illustrates Middle East thinking.

Kedar has crafted an alternative vision to the “two-state solution” that is called the “emirates plan.” He presented it to a well-known sheikh in Judea and Samaria (i.e., the “West Bank”). The sheikh listened attentively to Kedar and in the end, announced: “I like it. It is good for us. Now you will have to force it upon me.”

Why did the sheikh, who liked the plan and thought it was good for his people, say this strange phrase, “now you will have to force it upon me?”