As Palestinian leaders continue to rob from their own people. … - by Yoni Michane

Anti-Israel activists may wish to continue to live in an alternate universe, but in doing so, they are simultaneously imposing a double-standard on the Jewish state while perpetuating Palestinian suffering.

Yoni Michane..
JNS.org..
29 April '20..

A former employee of Amnesty International, Hind Khoudary, has been denounced for getting a Gaza peace activist arrested by Hamas authorities. The reason? Journalist Rami Aman, of the Gaza Youth Committee, held a virtual meeting with his Israeli counterparts over Zoom, which has become increasingly popular around the world as a means of maintaining social ties during the coronavirus pandemic.

Organized by Israeli peace activists, the Zoom conference was titled and presented as “Meet Gazan Activists.” The event description detailed the expectations of the conference call: “Finally, an opportunity to speak with Gazans who not only do not hate us but are working tirelessly to open channel of communication between Gazans and Israelis.” Khoudary, who identified herself on social media as an international research consultant for Amnesty International, denounced Aman in a Facebook post, now removed, and tagged three Hamas officials. Aman was arrested on April 9 has not been heard from since then.

Hamas’s Interior Ministry spokesman Eyad al-Bozom explained after the arrest: “Holding any activity or any contact with the Israeli occupation under any cover is a crime punishable by law and is treason to our people and their sacrifices.” Hamas’s brutality is, at least, consistent with its 1988 Charter, which proclaims under, Article 6:

“The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinct Palestinian Movement which owes its loyalty to Allah, derives from Islam its way of life and strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.”

Anti-Israel activists may wish to continue to live in an alternate universe, where Israel’s terrestrial and naval blockades are the culprits for the lack of civil liberties that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip experience. But in doing so, they are simultaneously imposing a double-standard on the Jewish state while perpetuating Palestinian suffering in Gaza.

(Continue to Full Column)

Yoni Michanie, a former paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces, holds a master’s degree in diplomacy and international security from IDC Herzliya. He is an Israel advocate, public speaker, Middle East analyst, and a campus advisor and strategic planner at CAMERA.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

When peace activists essentially hijacked the nation’s day of mourning - by Jonathan S. Tobin

We should mourn all victims of senseless violence, be they Jews, Arabs or any other people. But we should be wary of efforts to establish a false analogy between those who died to save Jewish lives and those whose purpose was to spill Jewish blood.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
28 April '20..

Outside of Israel, it was the alternative ceremony that got the most coverage. The official commemoration of Yom Hazikaron—the country’s Memorial Day that occurs the day before celebrating the Jewish state’s Independence Day—began with a one-minute siren that sounded throughout the country and continued at the Western Wall, where President Reuven Rivlin and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi led a small ceremony that, due to the coronavirus pandemic, had no audience.

Most Israelis, all too many of whom have lost a loved one or friend who was killed during the country’s wars or as a result of terrorism, will deal with the pain of this day of remembrance each in their own way though they will not be able to go to cemeteries, which are closed this year because of the ongoing lockdown.

But outside of Israel, most of the attention was neither on official efforts to remember the fallen nor the private grief of the families. Instead, much of the press was reporting about the efforts of peace activists to essentially hijack the nation’s day of mourning and turn it into a day devoted to promoting coexistence and mutual recognition of the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians.

This “Joint Memorial Day” event, which was started in 2006 by Israeli parents of fallen soldiers, is organized by two groups with both Israeli and Palestinian members: Combatants for Peace and Parents Circle Families Forum. But this year, it received an outpouring of support from American Jewish groups, including the Reform movement’s Union of Reform Judaism, J Street, the New Israel Fund, Peace Now, as well as the openly anti-Zionist IfNotNow and Churches for Middle East Peace, an interfaith Christian group that is also deeply hostile to the Jewish state.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.   

Question. What would the world be like with no State of Israel? - by Jonathan S. Tobin

After 72 years, many take its existence for granted. But with so many still wishing it dead, it’s worth thinking about how dangerous life for Jews would be without it.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
27 April '20..

What scholars like to call counterfactual history is science fiction for those who prefer to ponder the implications of things turning out differently in the past rather than speculating on the future. Such “what if” scenarios are behind television shows like “The Man in the High Castle,” which imagined life after the Germans and Japanese won the Second World, or “The Plot Against America”—the dramatization of the Phillip Roth novel that imagined isolationists led by Charles Lindbergh keeping America out of the war and then instituting state-sponsored anti-Semitism in the United States.

But as Israel celebrates its 72nd birthday this week, it’s relevant to point out that a lot of people have spent the entire period of its history wishing that the outcome of the 1948-49 War of Independence had turned out differently. At the heart of the nakba or “disaster” narrative and core principle of Palestinian nationalism is a belief that the creation of Israel was a crime that should have been stopped and without which the world would have been much better off. The debate about the future of the West Bank often causes observers to lose sight of the fact that the basic demand of Israel-haters is not a Palestinian state alongside a smaller Israel, but no Israel at all.

What would a world without Israel look like?

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.  

Own Goal!: — Calling Hebron Occupied and then Showing the 97% that is not. - by Sheri Oz

It is amazing how many errors, um, lies, you can fit into two minutes.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
26 April '20..

News of the impending appropriation of a few meters of land, the few meters required to build an accessiblity elevator to the Cave of the Patriarchs, has resulted in the production of the amusing propaganda video in the Tweet below. Let me show you how many errors there are in this very short piece if you were unable to pick them out yourself but watch it first and see if you can find all of them:

Palestinians has warned against the Israeli efforts to impose full control over the Ibrahimi Mosque under the pretext of the #coronavirus pandemic. pic.twitter.com/quEghkU4Z2

— FilesFrom1948 (@PFiles1948) April 18, 2020

First: Of course we are exploiting the Coronavirus! We have nothing else to worry about regarding the virus than to use it as cover for harming our neighbours. (These two sentences are supposed to be read with a sarcastic tone of voice.) Regarding the closing of the mosque to visitors, all places of worship are closed in Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in order to prevent spread of the disease. And I can assure you that as soon as the danger is passed, worshipers will again be allowed in. But the producers of this film know that as well.

Second: we are taking over the entire Ibrahimi Mosque, er… the Cave of the Patriarchs? Hmm. Appropriating a few meters of land does not constitute “imposing full control” over the site. And that does not constitute turning the mosque into a synagogue.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.  

The Palestine Mandate: The San Remo Conference 100 Years On - by Prof. Efraim Karsh

It is a historical tragedy therefore that 100 years after this momentous event, the Palestinian leadership and its international champions remain entrenched in the rejection not only of the millenarian Jewish attachment to Palestine but of the very existence of a Jewish People (and by implication its right to statehood). Rather than keep trying to turn the clock backward at the certain cost of prolonging their people’s statelessness and suffering, it is time for this leadership to shed its century-long recalcitrance and opt for peace and reconciliation with their Israeli neighbors.

Prof. Efraim Karsh..
Mideast Security and Policy Studies Paper #172..
24 April '20..

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: There is probably no more understated event in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict than the San Remo Conference of April 1920. Convened for a mere week as part of the post-WWI peace conferences that created a new international order on the basis of indigenous self-rule and national self-determination, the San Remo conference appointed Britain as mandatory for Palestine with the specific task of “putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2, 1917, by the British Government [i.e., the Balfour Declaration], and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” This mandate was then ratified on July 24, 1922 by the Council of the League of Nations—the postwar world organization and the UN’s predecessor.

The importance of the Palestine mandate cannot be overstated. Though falling short of the proposed Zionist formula that “Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people,” it signified an unqualified recognition by the official representative of the will of the international community of the Jews as a national group—rather than a purely religious community—and acknowledgement of “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” as “the grounds for reconstituting their national home in the country.”

It is a historical tragedy therefore that 100 years after this momentous event, the Palestinian leadership and its international champions remain entrenched in the rejection not only of the millenarian Jewish attachment to Palestine but of the very existence of a Jewish People (and by implication its right to statehood). Rather than keep trying to turn the clock backward at the certain cost of prolonging their people’s statelessness and suffering, it is time for this leadership to shed its century-long recalcitrance and opt for peace and reconciliation with their Israeli neighbors. And what can be a more auspicious timing for this process than the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference?

(Continue to Full Article PDF)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

Question. Is it wrong to let Israel make decisions for itself? - by Jonathan S. Tobin

Peace cannot be imposed by the United States. If it does ever happen, it will only be when the Palestinians realize that Israel will not be handed over to them on a silver platter in pieces.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
23 April '20..

In principle, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s answer to a question about Israel’s new coalition government seems unexceptionable. The agreement signed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz allows for a vote in the upcoming months about extending Israeli sovereignty to parts of the West Bank, including settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley. As far as Pompeo is concerned, whether or not they do so is up to the Israelis.

According to Reuters, Pompeo said, “As for the annexation of the West Bank, the Israelis will ultimately make those decisions. That’s an Israeli decision. And we will work closely with them to share with them our views of this in [a] private setting.”

That wouldn’t have been the reaction from President Barack Obama’s State Department, nor is it fair to say from the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush or even Ronald Reagan. They would have all fervently and publicly opposed any Israeli talk of annexation, let alone plans to implement the idea.

The difference between the administration of President Donald Trump, which put forward a plan for the Middle East earlier this year that envisioned Israeli holding onto approximately 30 percent of the West Bank in the context of a scheme that would have also allowed the creation of an independent, though demilitarized Palestinian state, is not just about the contours of a solution to the conflict.

What really sets Trump and Pompeo apart from their predecessors is that the current American government doesn’t think that it is entitled to dictate policy to the Israelis. And it is this unwillingness to give orders to the Jewish state that really shocks critics of Israel and the foreign-policy establishment.

Obama wasn’t reticent about expressing his feelings about the relationship between the two countries. Though at times he paid lip service to the strong affection felt by the overwhelming majority of Americans for Israel, he never bothered to conceal his disdain for any notion that the Israelis should be treated as equals. He was explicit about believing that he had the right to “save Israel from itself” since the policies adopted by its democratically elected government were not in accord with his own unrealistic vision of how to achieve peace. He believed he had the right to override the will of the Israeli people as expressed at the ballot box, and many of his American Jewish adherents agreed with him about that.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.  

The United Nation's World Health Organization (WHO) is Not a Neutral Player - by Ricki Hollander

Were the WHO really interested in improving Palestinian healthcare, it would examine all the factors involved in regulating healthcare. But like the Hamas Health Ministry, the WHO seems more concerned with spreading anti-Israel propaganda than in seeking improvement to Palestinian healthcare.

Ricki Hollander..
CAMERA..
20 April '20..

The World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations agency responsible for international health under the helm of Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has been increasingly criticized for playing politics by allowing China to downplay and conceal information about the novel coronavirus outbreak in that country, for refusing to declare Covid-19 a global emergency from the get-go, and opposing travel bans to China.

Tedros, an Ethiopian microbiologist who was elected for a 5–year-term as director general of the UN’s health organization in 2017, met with the president of the People’s Republic of China in late January to deferentially laud “the actions China has implemented in response to the outbreak, its speed in identifying the virus and openness to sharing information with WHO and other countries.” He expressed appreciation on behalf of the WHO for China’s “seriousness” and “transparency” in its approach to the epidemic. But more and more information emerges about China’s concealment of the extent of the Covid-19 outbreak, under-reporting both the numbers of infections and deaths from the disease, and as a result worsened the impact of the pandemic in the U.S. and European countries. As skepticism and criticism of China’s actions mounted across the world, China publicly revised the number of deaths in Wuhan upward by 50%.

Yet, while the WHO was praising China’s handling of the situation, China’s Communist authorities censored information about victims of the disease and muzzled physicians who tried to sound early warnings about its outbreak. Citizen journalists who were posting videos and stories from inside Wuhan suddenly disappeared and American journalists from The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street journal were expelled from China. Even after Chinese officials recognized the gravity of a looming pandemic, health officials continued to publicly downplay the threat. Publication of academic research on the origin of the virus was subject to vetting and approval by Chinese central government officials.

The Chinese government informed the WHO about the virus outbreak at the end of December, a month after it was first detected in Wuhan, but imposed a lockdown on that city only toward the end of January, allowing people to gather in large numbers and to travel in and out of the disease’s epicenter. The WHO leadership, rather than alerting the rest of the world to the threat of the pandemic, chose to pander to the Chinese government, echoing its own public statements and praising its actions while opposing travel bans to China.

A Wall Street Journal editorial points out that the coronavirus epidemic “has exposed the [WHO’s] process for declaring emergencies as prone to politicization…” But this was not the first time that the WHO director-general has been criticized for allowing political considerations to influence him to cover up epidemics and human rights abuses. Nor is it the first time the WHO has been criticized for using its platform for partisan propaganda.

Much the same can be said of the WHO’s politicization of healthcare in the West Bank and Gaza.

While Israel is one of the WHO’s 194 member states and belongs to the European region, the West Bank and Gaza belong to the Eastern Mediterranean region, made up of largely Arab and Muslim countries. The only non-state included in the Eastern Mediterranean region is the West Bank and Gaza Strip, referred to by the WHO as “Palestine.” The Eastern Mediterranean regional office is located in Cairo, with a country/territory office for the West Bank and Gaza located in Jerusalem and two additional sub-offices in Ramallah and Gaza.

(Continue to Full Article)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.   

Typical response: Israel set to build elevator for all to access to Tomb of the Patriarchs, Palestinians claim it is only for Jews - by Elder of Ziyon

Right now people in wheelchairs need to be physically carried up some 60 stairs.

Elder of Ziyon..
21 April '20..

Palestinian site Safa reports that Israel's attorney general Avichai Mendelblit recently approved a plan use land next to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron to build an elevator and ramps to help access "for the Jewish disabled" to the holy place.

Even though they are quoting Arutz-7, the original report makes clear that the elevator is meant for all, Arabs and Jews as well as tourists.

Israel has tried for years to cooperate with the PA in helping give access to all to the site, and the PA refused to talk with Israeli authorities, as this 2019 report notes. Even the most right-wing Jews of Hebron insist that the elevator be open to Muslims, saying "The Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs belongs to the people of Israel, and the state must ensure that every person of every religion can pray there."

Even the far left Meretz agrees that there should be universal access:

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

The Actual Palestinian Virus? Abbas's Role Models - by Bassam Tawil

When Abbas describes terrorists as heroes, he is actually telling young Palestinians that those who plan and carry out terrorist attacks against Israelis should serve as role models. Abbas evidently wants all Palestinians to be like Abu Jihad and the terrorists in Israeli prisons. For Abbas and other Palestinian leaders, the glorification of terrorists seems to be more important than the fight against a deadly virus.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
20 April '20..

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has not been seen in public since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in the region last month. His absence, however, has not stopped Abbas from doing what he does best: praising and glorifying Palestinians who kill Jews.

On April 16, Palestinians marked the anniversary of the assassination of Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), a PLO leader and co-founder of the Palestinian ruling faction Fatah, which is today headed by Abbas. Before Abu Jihad was assassinated by Israeli commandos at his home in Tunis in 1988, he had planned several terror attacks inside Israel against both civilian and military targets.

Last week, Abbas, who is supposed to be busy helping his people curb the spread of the coronavirus, found the time to publish a statement describing Abu Jihad as "one of the historic leaders" of the Palestinians who "played an important role during an "historic, difficult and dangerous phase."

Abbas, in his statement, went on to praise Abu Jihad for "representing a legacy and an example of sacrifice for the sake of a free and independent Palestine." Abu Jihad, he added, was an "inspiration to all the freedom fighters who sacrificed their blood for the fulfillment of the hopes and aspirations of their people for freedom and independence."

What exactly, as Abbas argues, is Abu Jihad's "legacy" and what made him an "inspiration to all freedom fighters"?

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.  

Surprise? Financial Times more anti-Israel than Arab media - by Elder of Ziyon

When European media is more anti-Israel than Arab media, there is a big problem.

Elder of Ziyon..
19 April '20..

Here was an absurd headline from the Financial Times last week:

The article's bias is truly insane:

Arabs make up only a fifth of Israel’s population, but represent half the country’s pharmacists, a quarter of its nurses and just under a fifth of its doctors, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. Some of the nation’s largest hospitals have Arab doctors heading major departments, and the country’s leading virologist is Arab.
...
In Kafra Qara, an Arab town south of Haifa with so many medical professionals that residents call it the city of doctors, Jameel Mohsen was more critical.

“As an Arab, other jobs are closed off to us, so we became doctors,” he said, peeling off layers of protective equipment after setting up a Covid-19 ward at the Hillel Yeffe Medical Center, where he is head of infectious diseases.

If anyone can find any minority group complaining that they are over-represented in the medical professions as evidence of discrimination, I'd love to see it.

Of course, there are no professions in Israel where Arabs are not allowed.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

The efforts of Jewish anti-Zionists to free Palestinian terrorists speak volumes about their goals - Jonathan S. Tobin

Prison officials should do what they can to mitigate the effect of the virus on their charges, even if social distancing isn’t always possible there. Releases of those who don’t pose a threat to society should also be considered. However, those who advocate the release of violent thugs, including Palestinian-terrorist murderers, under the guise of coronavirus compassion should never be allowed to get away with posing as supporters of human rights.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
17 April '20..

What is our duty to those confined in places where the coronavirus crisis is a threat? Efforts to protect residents of facilities that serve the elderly have gained a great deal of attention. Yet the inhabitants of prisons may be in as much danger. Still, the question of what we should do about this problem says a great deal about the willingness of some to let their ideology overcome common sense. It also illustrates just how little some who claim the title of “human-rights activists” or advocates for “peace” value the lives of others, including their fellow Jews.

There’s little doubt that once the virus is let loose on those locked up in jails, as well as those who guard them, the results could be bad. That’s why some American states and cities where the disease has become a particularly potent threat, such as New York and New Jersey, have released large numbers of inmates in order to allow elderly prisoners who are most at risk to evade a potential deathtrap. Others, including those who were sentenced for non-violent offenses or whose sentences were nearly finished, have been freed in order to relieve overcrowding.

This has led to a spirited debate about the moral dilemma involved in maintaining penal institutions during a pandemic. The government has an obligation not to let a prison term become a death sentence. But it is equally obligated not to make decisions that endanger other citizens, who may be more likely to be victims should this policy lead to a jailbreak crime wave. The fact that New York City has released hundreds of people accused of violent crimes, in part because of the virus and also due to a recently passed dangerous “bail reform” law, has led to understandable fears about life in quarantine becoming more like a dystopian post-apocalyptic scenario than an orderly attempt to reduce deaths from a deadly disease.

At a time when the ranks of the police and first responders have been thinned by the disease, and those who are still healthy are preoccupied with dealing with the problems created by the pandemic, any mass release of prisoners has the potential to create a real crime problem. While crime rates are reportedly down, that may be more a measure of lower arrest rates than a decline in felonious behavior.

The debate in New York has exposed the fact some of those advocating such prison releases, including the American Civil Liberties Union, are motivated by a belief that the entire criminal justice system is unjust and even the most guilty prisoners can deserve a pass. But as risible as that position might be, when it is transposed to Israel, such efforts tell us something even more outrageous. Those clamoring for prison releases there are not so much driven by concern for the health of prisoners, but by a belief that captured terrorists don’t deserve punishment.

That is the position of Jewish Voice for Peace, a left-wing group whose real agenda is the eradication of the Jewish state.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

Two Irish Rebels Who Fought for Israel - by David Lawlor

As Israel’s citizens reflect on their state’s foundation 70 (now almost 72) years ago, they will look at a past of blood and sacrifice – but it’s a past made all the richer thanks to two Irish deserters from the British army . . . brave men who saw Israel’s struggle for independence and found a common cause in which they would risk all for their place in the Promised Land.

David Lawlor..
The Wild Geese..
First Posted 11 May '18..
Link: https://thewildgeese.irish/profiles/blogs/the-irish-rebels-who-fought-for-israel
H/T Tara

It was 1948, and as the military half-track drove through the Beit Netofa Valley, at the village of Madna in Galilee, shots rang out. One Israeli soldier was killed and another was hit in the head. A sniper had zeroed in on the men and was picking them off one by one.

Then, one of the half-track’s occupants, a tall, sturdy man with blue eyes and brown hair, broke cover from behind the vehicle and went to outflank the gunman. According to one witness, the soldier picked up a heavy stick and crept up behind the sniper, who was still shooting, and promptly bashed his head in.

It wasn’t the first time that Paddy Cooper saw action fighting for Israel. That same year under the hot noon-day sun in the small town of Bayt Jibrin, to the west of the Hebron Hills, a detachment of the Israeli Defence Forces were pinned down by armoured vehicles of the Jordanian Legion.

Paddy inched his way forward with a Piat anti-tank weapon (below-right) to sort out the problem. The Piat could only be fired within 50 metres, but the soldier crept even closer to make sure of his target. Alone, he cocked the weapon, fired and hit the vehicle.

On another occasion, Paddy, who was a specialist with the Vickers machine gun in World War II, took part in an attack on a police station.

A hole was blown in the wall, through which Paddy and two others entered. According to one witness, Paddy found a Vickers there, loaded it and started to fire every which way. "He was our hero that day."

Such words seem to repeat whenever people talked of the Irishman – for that’s what Paddy, whose mother was Irish, considered himself to be.

Through dogged research, his sister Veronica later managed to unearth some tales of his fascinating life fighting on the Arab front line.

‘He had no fear,’ one former comrade told her. He was "an impressive man, tall and handsome," recalled another - Yohanan Piltz, former deputy commander of the 89th battalion.

John Patrick Cooper certainly stood out from the crowd. Born to Irishwoman Agnes Collins and raised a Catholic in England, he enlisted in the British Army in 1942.

Paddy, as he was known, served in North Africa and later in Europe. Discharged from service in December 1946, he re-enlisted in October 1947, returning to the British army as a driver.

A first Passover in Israel that was one, both of disappointment, but also profound revelation - by James Sinkinson

As devastating as the coronavirus pandemic is, it may bring the benefit—as it seems to have already done in Israel—of inspiring greater appreciation of one’s home country.

James Sinkinson..
Flame/JNS.org..
14 April '20

My first Passover in Israel was one both of disappointment and profound revelation. This conflicting combination, especially in the throes of the coronavirus crisis, served to underscore the strength of the Jewish people—and that of the world’s only Jewish state.

The coronavirus dampened the traditional excitement around Passover in Israel for everyone here, because each household was for the first time forced by government order to celebrate on its own. Zero visitors—no grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins or good friends—were allowed to attend seders outside their own homes.

Think of Thanksgiving dinner with no guests. Bizarre. The sense of isolation here was palpable, for us and everyone we spoke to, as well as on local social media. Remember, too, that Israelis have for the past two weeks been restricted to within 100 meters (328 feet) from our homes, except to buy groceries or medicine, or to get medical attention, under penalty of stiff fines—which are being aggressively dispensed.

On the other hand, my moving Passover revelation was born of the opportunity to see Jewish Israelis pull together in inspiring solidarity, with our people, our story and our nation.

(Continue to Full Column)

James Sinkinson is president of Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME), which publishes educational messages to correct lies and misperceptions about Israel and its relationship to the United States.


Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

Who would've thought? A pandemic anti-Semitism ceasefire? Not a chance. by Jonathan S. Tobin

As tragic as its impact has been, the pandemic ought to help convince more people to rise above pointless hatred. But in the case of those who govern the Palestinians, the coronavirus crisis has been business as usual with anti-Semitic blood libels and repression of dissent. Those Americans who think that the situation obligates us to provide more aid for such governments to embezzle and misuse should take note.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.com..
13 April '20..

Two weeks ago, something highly unusual happened. The United Nations praised Israel. The cause for this remarkable exception to the general rule of the world body’s Israel-bashing was the cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. At the end of March, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres praised the way the two parties to the conflict had put aside their differences in their efforts to minimize the spread of the virus between Israel and the territories.

But a lot can change in two weeks. Faced with the same daunting challenges that are confounding every other governing authority in the world, the Palestinians have decided that it’s easier to blame their usual scapegoat rather than dealing honestly with the pandemic. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh claimed that “Israeli soldiers are trying to spread the virus on car handles.”

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that this was just the latest in a series of recent acts of incitement on the part of the P.A. in response to the spread of the virus. Rather than acknowledging that the pandemic is a medical problem that transcends the conflict, the P.A. is doing what it always does when faced with a problem that undermines its credibility: It changes the conversation to one about the supposed awfulness of Israel. Indeed, even the P.A. Health Ministry is now listing the cause of all confirmed coronavirus cases as “the occupation state.”

This would be pathetic under any circumstances, but it is particularly troubling while people are dying. Rather than the dealing with an intractable virus that has the ability to resist the efforts of even those governments that were quick to recognize the danger and taking strong measures to contain it—as was the case with Israel—the so-called “moderates” of Palestinian politics prefer to spread anti-Semitic blood libels.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Good Question. Why Do Liberals Dismiss President Trump's Peace Plan Out of Hand? - by Dr. Denis MacEoin

We must ask why so many secular liberals, Christians, and a minority of Jews do not grasp that negotiations based on... Islamic law can never play any role in current international law and can never bring peace to the Middle East.

Dr. Denis MacEoin..
Gatestone Institute..
12 April '20..

It was inevitable that liberal politicians, pundits and media would speedily find fault with Donald Trump and Jared Kushner's plan for peace in the Middle East, proclaimed as the "Deal of the Century". So inevitable, in fact, that the plan was condemned years before it was actually announced in 2020.

As far back as May 2017, US President Donald J. Trump had met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Washington, offered, to get a peace deal and had asked Abbas to end the "pay-for-slay" system of payments to families of terrorist prisoners in Israeli gaols. On May 26, 2017, The New York Times ran an op-ed by PLO representative Diana Buttu in which she dismissed any plan to bring peace, while blaming every problem faced by the Palestinians on Israel and its presence in the West Bank.

Even more striking was an article as late as June 25, 2019, in which The Guardian's former Middle East Editor, Ian Black (author of a 500-page tome on the Arab-Israeli conflict), stated that "The US's Middle East 'peace summit' is nonsense. Palestinians are right to boycott it".

It is easy enough to discern the motivations behind journalism of this nature, one from a Palestinian perspective, the other inspired by left-wing views about Israel and the US administration.

Needless to say, the unrolling of the plan has, almost without exception, resulted in widespread left-wing condemnation that started within minutes of the plan's having been announced. On January 28, 2019, for example, The Guardian dismissed the plan. The newspaper argued:

"The overall message... is that what the Trump administration has in mind is something far less meaningful than the two-state solution conceived by previous administrations or Oslo, with emphasis being placed on Israel's security rather than Palestinian self-determination."

The same day, The New York Times chimed in, saying:

"The plan would discard the longtime goal of granting the Palestinians a full-fledged state. President Trump called it 'a win-win' for both sides; Palestinian leaders immediately rejected it."

Of course, they did. When have any Palestinians ever said "yes" to a US or Israeli peace offer, including an offer of a Palestinian state next door to Israel? Did they ever even propose a counter-offer?

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

(Excellent) Investigation: How Anti-Israel Activists Are Hijacking The Coronavirus Crisis And Turning It Against Israel - by Samantha Mandeles

Anti-Israel activists routinely hijack causes, events, and crises unrelated to Israel, and that phenomenon is playing out again with the coronavirus pandemic, providing the ‘usual suspects’ with yet another issue to exploit.

Samantha Mandeles..
Legal Insurrection..
09 April '20..

We have written a lot about how anti-Israel activists routinely hijack causes, events, and crises unrelated to Israel, using “intersectional” theory to turn those issues against the Jewish state.

That phenomenon is playing out again with the coronavirus pandemic, providing the ‘usual suspects’ with yet another issue to exploit.

The figures and groups who have hijacked this crisis, as detailed below, include: self-identified “Jewish” anti-Israel organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and IfNotNow (INN); so-called human rights watchdog organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and B’tselem; deeply anti-Zionist blogs such as Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada; multiple chapters and student leaders from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP); domestic Islamist groups such as American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and the Al-Awda Right of Return Coalition; Islamist leaders such as Abbas Hamideh and Linda Sarsour; conspiracy-peddling ‘academics’ such as Asad Abukhalil and Steven Salaita; and gullible enablers such as “journalist” Ben Norton and CodePink co-director Ariel Gold.

(Continue to Full Report)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Israel Policy Forum: Neither defending chances for peace or a realistic plan to achieve it - by Jonathan S. Tobin

Nostalgia for the illusions of the past should never be confused with activism that actually helps Israel.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
08 April '20..

The list of signatories to a new letter organized by the Israel Policy Forum protesting the possibility of Israel passing legislation in the upcoming months to annex parts of the West Bank is full of familiar names to those who have followed American Jewish organizational life in the last few decades. Some on the list—like current Reform movement leader Rabbi Rick Jacobs—are still important players in contemporary Jewish life. But many of the big donors and veteran activists mentioned could have been recycled from a host of similar efforts by liberal groups in the distant past.

The letter is a direct response to the latest news about the terms of a still not finalized coalition agreement to form a unity government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief rival, Benny Gantz. But the tone and the language used seem straight out of the early 1990s, when some of the same people were speaking up in favor of the Oslo Accords and its promise of land for peace, or later in the decade when they were disingenuously protesting Netanyahu’s policies during his first term as prime minister for being too slow to make concessions to PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Then, too, they were admonishing Israelis not to defend their rights because doing so would alienate the tender sensibilities of Americans.

Indeed, if a Jewish Rip Van Winkle were to have dozed off during the Clinton administration and awakened in the last week, he would feel right at home with the rhetoric admonishing Israelis not to alienate Americans or to sabotage hopes of peace with the Palestinians.

The push to annex parts of the West Bank, where hundreds of thousands of Jews currently live in settlement blocs, as well as the strategic Jordan Valley divides Israelis. Yet the notion that formalizing Israel’s control over these lands is an obstacle to peace is as much a relic of the past as some of the IPF letter’s signatories.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

BDS movement co-founder Omar Barghouti: Israel should save us and then die - by Jonathan S. Tobin

The boycott movement’s coronavirus hypocrisy doesn’t obscure its anti-Semitism. Good news about Israel will never convince those who hate it to change their minds.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
07 April '20

Advocates of Israel have always liked to joke that supporters of the BDS movement shouldn’t be selective about their efforts to convince the world to boycott the Jewish state. In particular, lately they have said that they are waiting to see what those who seek to isolate and destroy Israel will do if its scientists come up with a vaccine for the coronavirus. The answer shouldn’t provide any comfort for anyone, especially those who continue to believe that the Jewish state’s scientific advances and other contributions to the world will eventually somehow convince its enemies to give up their century-long war on Zionism.

This issue arose this week because the founder of the BDS movement has actually provided a response to the quips of those who have invited foes of Israel to extend their boycotts to the fruits of the advanced medical research and innovation produced by Israel.

In a video posted on Facebook by an anti-Israel group, BDS founder Omar Barghouti said this past weekend that if Israel finds a cure for cancer or for a virus, then there is no problem to cooperate with it.”

Barghouti, who fancies himself a humanitarian, went on to say that if Israel were to perform such services for humanity, “then saving lives is more important than anything else.”

The chutzpah and the hypocrisy contained in this statement are hard to fathom. Those who seek to stigmatize all Israelis as persons that decent societies should shun and who advocate boycotts not only of all Israeli products, but of its culture and academics ought to at least be consistent. Where do those who think that the world should treat Israelis—and their technology and ideas—as beyond the pale get the gall to say that there would be “no problem” in using them to avoid a deadly disease?

What Barghouti is basically saying is that Israel should continue its incredible creativity, and go on transforming medicine and technology for the betterment of humankind, while also consenting to the elimination of the one Jewish state on the planet.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

A broken clock is right twice a day, but J Street? Virus, shmirus; let’s focus on the Palestinians! - by Stephen M. Flatow

Talk about tone-deaf! Completely oblivious to the suffering of American citizens, J Street’s top priority is to give American money to two of the most vicious America-hating regimes in the world.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
07 April '20..

The whole world is changing—but not for J Street, which, virus or no virus, is still devoting itself to persuading members of U.S. Congress to embrace the Palestinian cause.

Over the past several weeks, J Street was mobilizing its supporters around the country to urge them to “demand the administration release vital assistance to help the Palestinians combat the coronavirus pandemic.”

Think about that. In the midst of an epidemic that has left U.S. hospitals desperately short of emergency equipment and has resulted in millions of Americans losing their jobs, J Street is trying to convince the government to give millions of taxpayers’ dollars to two anti-American terrorist regimes: the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

Talk about tone-deaf! Completely oblivious to the suffering of American citizens, J Street’s top priority is to give American money to two of the most vicious America-hating regimes in the world.

It’s not just a matter of priorities. It’s not just that most Americans don’t want their money going to anti-American regimes. It’s also a matter of funding terrorists.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Ibn Saud, the Jews and FDR’s dog - by Rafael Medoff

“The choice of the desert king as expert on the Jewish question is nothing short of amazing,” Colorado Democrat Sen. Edwin Johnson declared. “I imagine that even Fala [the president’s dog] would be more of an expert.”

Rafael Medoff..
JPost/Opinion..
05 April '20..
Link: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/The-Saudis-the-Jews-and-FDRs-dog-623617

Seventy-five years after president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s controversial embrace of the king of Saudi Arabia, FDR’s grandson has become part of a Saudi-financed public relations campaign to celebrate his late grandfather’s pro-Saudi policies.

Hall Delano Roosevelt has been working with the LS2 Group, an Iowa-based public relations firm, to draw attention to the recent 75th anniversary of FDR’s meeting with King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, according to documents released by the Arab-American news site Al-Monitor. In the LST Group’s Foreign Agents Registration filings last year, it stated that it was being paid $126,500 monthly by the Saudi Embassy in Washington to provide “public relations and media management services.”

The FDR-Ibn Saud meeting took place on February 14, 1945, on the deck of the USS Quincy. The king came aboard “with his whole court, [black] slaves, taster, astrologer, & 8 live sheep,” FDR wrote to his cousin, Margaret Suckley. “Whole party was a scream!” The president does not seem to have expressed concern about the slaves.

The US ambassador to Riyadh, William Eddy, was the official note-taker. He wrote down the two leaders’ remarks in the form of a “Memorandum of Conversation,” which both the president and the king signed. One of the topics they discussed was whether or not the Arab world could accept the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Roosevelt asked Ibn Saud for his view of “the problem of Jewish refugees driven from their homes in Europe.”

Ibn Saud responded that he opposed “continued Jewish immigration and the purchase of land [in Palestine] by the Jews.” The king insisted that “the Arabs and the Jews could never cooperate, neither in Palestine, nor in any other country.”

President Roosevelt “replied that he wished to assure his majesty that he would do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs and would make no move hostile to the Arab people.”

The king asserted that the Jews should be “given living space in the Axis countries which oppressed them,” rather than Palestine.

In response, “The president remarked that Poland might be considered a case in point. The Germans appear to have killed three million Polish Jews, by which count there should be space in Poland for the resettlement of many homeless Jews.”