The West's continuing blind eye to Palestinian incitement - by Melanie Phillips

The latest incompetence, reviewing the wrong textbook used for children, seems hard to believe. Why do people find it so difficult to acknowledge Palestinian violence and bigotry against Israel and the Jews?

Melanie Phillips..
Israel Hayom..
04 September '20..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-wests-blind-eye-to-palestinian-incitement/

Why do so many well-meaning people committed to ending abuses of power ignore the evidence of who is actually committing these abuses and blame their victims instead?

An official investigation funded by Britain and the European Union into textbooks used in Palestinian schools has descended into farce.

In April 2018, finally responding to concerns about anti-Israel incitement in Palestinian-Arab schools, the United Kingdom pushed the EU to commission a report on Palestinian textbooks from the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Germany.

In April last year, the Institute published as a preliminary what it called its "Inception Report." This, it said, developed a framework for "an academically rigorous review" of "how peace, tolerance and an understanding of the other are incorporated into Palestinian textbooks."

This report, however, was itself riddled with so many mistakes that the European Union ditched it. Bafflingly, however, the EU has continued to use the Georg Eckert Institute to finish the project.

Its final report is due out next month. But it has now produced an interim report, which the EU is choosing to keep secret.

Marcus Sheff, chief executive of the Jerusalem-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, managed to obtain a presentation of this interim report. This has shown the project lurching from bad to worse.

Calling the review "a comedy of errors from start to finish," Sheff says the researchers have looked at the wrong textbooks. They have actually used as examples textbooks that are used in Israel's Arab schools in Jerusalem, praising them and presenting them falsely as part of the Palestinian Authority's curriculum.

On the basis of this egregious mistake, the researchers have claimed that the Palestinians' educational materials have been "transformed" for the better.

They make no mention of the vile language and images used in many of the Palestinian textbooks, such as describing the burning of Jewish bus passengers with Molotov cocktails as a "barbecue party," or teaching Arabic through a story promoting suicide bombings and illustrated by a Palestinian gunman shooting Israeli soldiers in a tank.

The incompetence seems hard to credit. Why do people in the West appear to find it so difficult to acknowledge Palestinian hatred and incitement against Israel and the Jews?

Clearly, they resist acknowledging anything that will undermine the narrative on which EU and UK foreign policy has been based for decades – that giving the Palestinian Arabs a state would end the "Middle East conflict."

PA World of Make-Believe: Israel supplies weapons to Palestinians to fight one another and illegal fireworks to cause injuries - by Nan Jacques Zilberdik

What does the civilian say? Journalist Omar Nazzal said that ‘the harming of the other has become a culture that is not limited just to celebrations of success at the matriculation exams, but rather prevails in all the phenomena of harassing the other on the claim that it is only [for] a day or an hour… Many who have an event, whether it is an engagement party, a release from the occupation’s prison, or success in the matriculation exams, hold these celebrations in a manner that disturbs others.’An El-Bireh Municipal Council member… said that: ‘The responsibility is on everyone. We have failed in assimilating a civil culture within us.’”

Nan Jacques Zilberdik..
Palestinian Media Watch..
18 August '20..

As the Palestinian Authority is struggling with increasing internal violence, what better way to deal with it than to blame Israel? As Palestinian Media Watch has documented this is the PA’s modus operandi whenever bad things happen.

Thus, PA Police Spokesman Col. Luay Erziqat blamed Israel for the rise in violence in Palestinian society, claiming Israel “encourage[s] violence and murder in the Palestinian society” and is “supplying” arms to Palestinian weapon dealers:

PA Police Spokesman Col. Luay Erziqat:“There are elements of the occupation (i.e., PA term for Israel) that have begun to raise their voices and have begun to spread crime and to help spread crime… We have found suspicious and funded [internet] pages, we have found ‘mouthpieces’ and elements of the occupation that encourage violence and murder in the Palestinian society. In Area C (i.e., West Bank areas under full Israeli administration according to the Oslo Accords), at the basic level, the Israeli occupation is preventing the [PA] Security Forces from acting there, and is transferring supplies to the weapon dealers. If you look for example at the southern areas like Hebron – there are weapons there, 250, 500 (rifle models –Ed.)… It is clear who is supplying these weapons, and who is transferring the supply to the dealers of these weapons.”
[Official PA TV, Directly With the Police, June 1, 2020]

In the same way, the PA blamed Israel for accidents caused when Palestinians use fireworks for celebratory occasions, for example when they receive the results of the matriculation exams. The PA’s official news agency claimed Israel deliberately supplies fireworks to Palestinians to “destroy the Palestinian society”:

“The main source of the fireworks is the settlements and the occupation, whose goal is to destroy the Palestinian society, and therefore it allows their entry into the Palestinian market, and simultaneously bans their sale in the 1948 territories (i.e., Israel) except through companies that specialize in the field of fireworks… The usage of fireworks in Palestine is one of the serious phenomena… that has contributed to turning parties and joyful occasions into sad events… and this constitutes a danger to the social well-being, and threatens the stability and the social ‘domestic peace.’”
[WAFA, official PA news agency, “Negative Social Phenomena” section, accessed July 16, 2020]

Manager of the PA’s Import Tax Administration Public Relations and Communications, Ibrahim Ayyash, supported this allegation, saying that “most of the explosives and fireworks are smuggled from the settlements… as well as fireworks that are imported from China, and the Israeli authorities turn a blind eye knowing that they are meant for Palestinian markets.” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 13, 2020]

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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.

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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. 

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The complete moral bankruptcy of a PLO state - by Rachel Avraham

The fact that the Palestinians revere terrorists as role models for young children makes the idea of promoting a PLO state morally reprehensible.

Rachel Avraham..
Israel Hayom..
19 February '20..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-moral-bankruptcy-of-a-plo-state/

Now more than ever, it is clear to everyone that former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Ebban was correct to state that "the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." Instead of embracing US President Donald Trump's "deal of the century" as a starting point to begin negotiating for independent statehood, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas instead sought the passage of a UN Security Council resolution condemning the peace plan.

Although the UN Security Council resolution set to condemn the "deal of the century" was ultimately removed from the agenda, that was due to a lack of international support, not a change of heart in the Palestinian Authority. Abbas still addressed the UN Security Council in order to condemn the "deal of the century," which he rejected before he even had the chance to see it.

In fact, the Fatah Facebook page has been even more blatant in its rejection of the 'deal of the century,' resorting to threats, ad hominem insults, and foul language: "We'll redeem Palestine with blood. Over our dead bodies, we won't let it pass and if you want to overstep my limit, Trump, we'll blind you; and if you want war, we'll declare it and only Allah will be able to extinguish it. We'll drive your Israel crazy and turn it upside-down. Trump, gather up this deal quickly, fold it and roll it up, you idiot, put it in the center and shove it up your ass."

In such an environment, how can we even begin to contemplate the creation of a pro-terrorism Palestinian state? All the facts indicate that the Palestine Liberation Organization remains in a state of war with Israel and is not interested in living in peace beside Israel.

The Center for Near East Policy Research recently reported that Dalal Mughrabi, a female Palestinian terrorist who murdered 34 Israelis and injured 71 others, is systematically presented as a role model for children in Palestinian schools: "The terrorist Dalal Al Mughrabi stars in the Palestinian curriculum as a super-heroine, equal in status to Yasser Arafat and to the Prophet of Islam's wife Aisha." The fact that Palestinian female terrorist is presented as a role model for young children makes the idea of promoting a PLO state morally bankrupt.

Anyone surprised that once again, the PA shows it doesn’t care about having a viable state - by Evelyn Gordon

Even if Palestinian statehood isn’t imminent, economic development now would increase the feasibility of any future state. So why is the Palestinian Authority refusing to go to Bahrain to discuss such development?

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

The Palestinians’ refusal to attend a U.S.-sponsored “economic workshop” in Bahrain on June 25-26 has been widely treated as a reasonable response to the unlikelihood that U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan (whose economic section will be unveiled at the workshop) will satisfy their demands. But in fact, it’s merely further proof that the Palestinian leadership doesn’t actually want a state—or at least, not a viable one. Because even if Palestinian statehood isn’t imminent, economic development now would increase the viability of any future state.

This understanding is precisely what guided Israel’s leadership in both the pre-state years and the early years of statehood. The pre-state Jewish community was bitterly at odds with the ruling British over multiple violations of the promises contained in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the 1920 San Remo Resolution and the 1922 British Mandate for Palestine. These included Britain’s serial diminishments of the territory allotted for a “Jewish national home” and its curtailment of Jewish immigration, notoriously culminating in a total denial of entry to Jews fleeing the Nazis.

Nevertheless, the pre-state leadership still welcomed and cooperated with British efforts to develop the country, knowing that this would benefit the Jewish state once it finally arose (despite Britain’s best efforts to thwart it). And four years after Israel’s establishment, in a far more controversial decision, the government even accepted Holocaust reparations from Germany to obtain money desperately needed for the new state’s development.

The Bahrain conference requires no such morally wrenching compromise from the Palestinian Authority; its declared aim is merely to drum up investment in the Palestinian economy, primarily from Arab states and the private sector. Thus if the P.A. actually wanted to lay the groundwork for a viable state, what it ought to be doing is attending the conference and discussing these proposals. To claim that this would somehow undermine its negotiating positions is fatuous since attendance wouldn’t preclude it from rejecting any proposals that had political strings attached.

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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. 

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To the Attention of MK Aida Touma-Sliman: The Palestinians incite to rape, too - by Dr. Reuven Berko

...There might be normative moral laws that mostly apply to regular citizens in functioning countries but in the incitement-ridden Palestinian territories, the victims – like Ori – are never the Arab or Muslim neighbors' daughters but rather Jews or other minorities.

Dr. Reuven Berko..
Israel Hayom..
13 February '19..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-palestinians-incite-to-rape-too/

In response to the horrifying rape and murder of Ori Ansbacher by a Palestinian terrorist, MK Aida Touma-Sliman, chairwoman of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, claimed that "the crime should be called what it is: The rape and murder of Ori Ansbacher is a gender-based crime. The criminal being Palestinian doesn't make the crime less horrifying and it cannot be part of the struggle for [Palestinian] national liberation."

The Palestinians Knesset member and Israeli citizens, like her friends in the various Palestinian terrorist organizations, were prepared for a public relations battle to characterize the rape and murder of Ori as another woman being murdered. In other words, some nameless killer with a knife just raped her for the heck of it on a chilly morning, just because she was a woman – not because she was Jewish. Why did the Palestinian criminal arm himself with a knife, cross the security barrier, rape and fatally stab Ori, rather than some random Palestinian woman?

The reason is simple: Every Palestinian who is exposed to incitement in some mosque, on social media, or in speeches by Palestinian leaders, knows that the enemy's blood can be shed. But if he rapes a Palestinian woman (a gender crime) or even secretly has his way with her in private, he'll be slaughtered and his immediate family members will follow him to hell.

After all, Muslims have honor and they are permitted to commit murder to uphold it. So whom are they allowed to rape and murder on the basis of their gender? Jews and Christians, who are defined as weak and out of bounds of the Arab code of vengeance.

Birthing a whole country of Marc Lamont Hills - by Stephen M. Flatow

Palestinian children are not born hating Jews or dreaming of destroying Israel. It takes an entire village, an entire society, an entire governing regime to make them that way.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.com..
05 December '18..

CNN has fired commentator Marc Lamont Hill for giving a speech in which he called for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea.” In other words, he means the destruction of Israel.

But let’s not forget about a much bigger problem: an entire generation of Palestinian Arabs who want to create “Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

The Palestinian Authority has posted a deeply disturbing photo on the official Facebook page of the P.A. Presidential Guard. (Thanks to Palestinian Media Watch for exposing this.) It shows an Arab boy who looks to be 5 or 6 years old, holding a Palestinian flag and flashing a V sign.

That’s not the peace sign that antiwar protesters used to make during the Vietnam war. In Palestinian culture, it’s the “V-for-victory” sign. As in, victory over Israel.

Behind the boy is a huge map, twice his size, labeled “Palestine.” Now if the Palestinian Authority was really interested only in a state along the 1967 lines—as J Street and other pro-Palestinian apologists claim—then presumably the P.A.’s map of “Palestine” would reflect that.

No such luck. The map of “Palestine” covers all of Israel. All of it.

(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. 

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Ireland, Colombia, and Israel: Clearly Not Birds of a Feather - by Stephen M. Flatow

...Robinson and Gilmore don’t understand that the Palestinian Arabs are not the same as the Irish or the Colombians. Over the past 25 years, the Palestinian Authority has raised an entire generation through schools, news media, and a popular culture that inculcate hatred of Jews, glorification of violence, and a life’s mission of bringing about the destruction of Israel. No diplomatic initiative, negotiating scheme, or peace process can change that.

Stephen M.Flatow..
Algemeiner..
16 November '18..

Two former Irish government officials who visited Israel recently declared that they know the way to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict: Both sides just need “leaders who genuinely want to resolve the issues,” they announced. Gee, why have the rest of us never thought of that before?

Sometimes, I marvel at the number of foreigners who believe that they have come up with the magical solution for peace in the Middle East. You hear such drivel from journalists like Thomas Friedman, who seems to believe that he was born with the unique wisdom to solve every international problem, and from Jewish left-wing “peace” groups that genuinely believe they are the only ones in the Jewish community who want peace. Believe me, they are not.

Most of all, you hear it from ex-diplomats. Those who have been involved in negotiating in one part of the world seem to assume that they are therefore uniquely equipped to negotiate any situation or conflict.

The worst, of course, are the former US diplomats who spent more than 20 years trying to shove a Palestinian state down Israel’s throat in the name of “peace.” These days, practically every major newspaper article about some aspect of Arab-Israeli diplomacy includes some obnoxious comment from one or more of these “experts.”

(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. 

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Show and Tell: One of the Worst Chapters in Palestinian School Books. - by Itamar Marcus

So if it weren’t scary enough for the children to be told they have to go out and kill, PA educators teach them that “heroes” are willing to fearlessly die as martyrs.

Itamar Marcus..
Opinion/JPost..
24 October '18..
Link: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/One-of-the-worst-chapters-in-Palestinian-schoolbooks-570228

If you want to know why Palestinian children believe that killing Israelis is model behavior, all you have to do is look at a chapter in one of their schoolbooks.

PA schoolbooks have been criticized ever since Palestinian Media Watch wrote the first report on them in 1998, and the newest books in some respects are the worst ever. However, one chapter stands out in its overt promotion of terrorism. This chapter, appearing in the fifth-grade Arabic Language book published in 2017, serves as a window to understanding the PA leadership’s profoundly twisted values.

The chapter starts innocently by stressing the importance of heroes to national identity and national pride: “Heroes have an important position in every nation… the people – even if they are divided over many things – they all agree regarding the pride in their heroes…”

The schoolbook continues and teaches students that feeling pride is not enough. Society takes numerous active steps to honor its heroes: “[We] sing their praise, learn the history of their lives, name our children after them, and name streets, squares, and prominent cultural sites after them…”

In short, society assures that heroes are never forgotten. They might have lived in earlier times, but by naming streets and squares after them and singing their praise, these heroes remain in Palestinian consciousness.

The next message is most important: The children are taught that these heroes are not merely memories of the past they are the role models for the future: “Every one of us wishes to be like them.”

Until now this messaging is not problematic, however, all that changes when the schoolbook presents the 10 people who PA educators promote as the role models Palestinian children should emulate. The list of Palestinian heroes includes no scientists, no doctors, no engineers, no singers, no athletes, nor any artists. There have been three Muslim Nobel Prize laureates in science and two in literature, but they are not on the list of Palestinian heroes.

Who are the Palestinian heroes then according to the PA schoolbook? They are 10 Muslim combatants from the first century of Islam through the 21st century. And possibly the worst name on this list of role models is terrorist mass-murderer Dalal Mughrabi.

The Self-Delusion of Abbas Mythology - by Mitchell Bard

...Abbas still has fans in the West, especially those who believe in the Arabist view that Israel needs to be saved from itself. One of the traits of Arabists is that their convictions cannot be shaken by evidence. Therefore, they continue to assert that Abbas is a partner for peace and that America should not only support him, but pressure Israel to capitulate to his demands.

Mitchell Bard..
Algemeiner.com..
07 March '18..

A recent article in The Atlantic about “The Tragedy of Mahmoud Abbas” noted: “In him, the world saw a reformist, a leader who could get the Palestinians to the table and possibly clear the hurdle of the two-state solution.”

This was the mythical Abbas who never really existed. But this myth allowed the Palestinian Authority president to become the world’s favorite Palestinian.

Only now, according to the same article, has the world woken up to the realization that Abbas has “morphed into a bureaucratic tyrant at home, hostile to America and downright incendiary towards Israel.”

The truth is that Abbas was never a moderate, never recognized as a leader of the Palestinians and never willing or able to reach a peace agreement with Israel.

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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. 

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Palestinians and the "Ugly Crime" of a School Curriculum - by Bassam Tawil

...The Palestinian minister of education can continue to talk about resisting the Israeli curriculum, but the good news is that the Arabs residents of Jerusalem and the Arab citizens of Israel will continue to knock on the doors of Israeli educational institutions to seek a good education.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
01 March '18..

The Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister of Education, Sabri Saidam, is worried these days. He is not worried, he says, because Palestinian schoolchildren are being taught to hate Israel. He is not worried because Palestinian schoolchildren are being goaded by their leaders to carry out terror attacks against Jews, from stone-throwing to stabbings to ramming cars.

The PA minister of Education is worried, he says, about a "crime" that is about to be committed against Arab children in Jerusalem schools. The "crime," in his view, is that the children will be taught according to an Israeli, and not a Palestinian, curriculum.

Saidam sees the decision to apply the Israeli curriculum to Arab schools in Jerusalem as an "ugly crime of counterfeit." These are the exact words he used to denounce the decision to introduce the Israeli curriculum into Arab schools.

Why are the minister and the Palestinian Authority so truculently opposed to Arab schoolchildren studying according to the Israeli curriculum? Is this curriculum really an "ugly crime of counterfeit," as the minister says?

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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. 

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Last agent of Palestinian peace? Actually, that 'agent of peace' cries for jihad. - by Dr. Reuven Berko

...The speeches delivered by Abbas and his ilk fly under our radar, but the messages they contain percolate into the heart of every terrorist with a knife, vehicle, gun and bomb. Lo and behold, Abbas of all people, the long-time "opponent of violence," boasted in his speech that more than 30 "shahids" (martyrs) have fallen on the altar of "peaceful" resistance since Trump's declaration. It is Abbas, by quoting from the Quran, who is motivating the religious war against Israel. Well, for such an endeavor, it is quite enough to have Ramallah as the capital. (or even better, without one. YH)

Dr. Reuven Berko..
Israel Hayom..
28 February '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/when-the-agent-of-peace-cries-for-jihad/

There are those who claim that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is the last agent of Palestinian peace; that he has conceded the "right of return," is opposed to terror and the religious war "toward which the leaders of Israel are moving." According to this approach, Israel has to grab him tight and not let him go before we can sign a peace agreement, lest he leaves and is replaced by far more objectionable successors.

The Americans' recognition of a united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and their intention to transfer their embassy from Tel Aviv in May 2018 – to coincide with the date of the Palestinian "nakba" (catastrophe) and the first days of fasting during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan – has wrenched Abbas from his closet of fraud and pushed him into a confrontational position, assuming of course that "the stranger doesn't understand" what he says in Arabic.

The PA president's most recent speech to the Islamic nation, from Al-Azhar University in Cairo on January 17, was for all intents and purposes a blatant call for religious war against Israel. That speech preceded Hamas' threat that relocating the American Embassy would spark the fuse that will ignite the region, and calls from groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to renew the armed struggle.

Abbas also adhered to an apocalyptic pathos, quoting from the Quran's Surah Al-Isra (The Night Journey), which contains the Prophet Muhammad's vision of the destruction of Israel and Jewish Jerusalem, Islam's impending conquest of the city, and its role as the key to peace and war: "You will work great mischief twice in the land and will become overbearingly arrogant. When the occasion of the first of the two mischiefs came, O Israelites, we raised against you such of our servants who were very mighty and formidable; so they penetrated through all parts of your country. This was a warning that was bound to be fulfilled. … Then, when the time came for the fulfillment of the second warning [to slaughter the Jews], we set other enemies [the Palestinians] on you so that they might disfigure your faces and enter into the temple [the Temple Mount] just as the former enemies had entered and destroyed whatever they could lay their hands on."

The absurdity is self-evident: On one hand, Abbas denies that we are the descendants of the Israelites and on the other, he calls for our destruction in a religious war, specifically within the framework of the Quran's prophecy about the "Israelites."

The Palestinian Authority is not a Sacred Cow - by Judith Bergman

A generation of Arabs have been raised on an unadulterated diet of hatred of Israel. It’s time Israel made it clear that this is unacceptable and not the way to make peace.

Judith Bergman..
MiDA..
22 February '18..
Link: http://en.mida.org.il/2018/02/22/pa-not-sacred-cow/

It has become a platitude repeated ad nauseam by former Israeli security officials, that the PA must not be weakened, because this might imperil Israel.

The reasoning is that even though the PA is bad, at least they cooperate — to a greater or lesser degree — with their Israeli counterparts, whereas Israel does not know what radical monster would take over after a collapsed PA.

This past Sunday, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved a bill that would deduct the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) salaries to convicted terrorists and their families from the tax revenues Israel transfers annually to the PA.

Israel transfers millions of dollars each year to the PA in customs duties levied on goods destined for Palestinian markets that transit through Israeli ports. If passed by the Knesset, the proposed legislation would enable Israel to either deduct the funds from the revenues or “freeze” the payments.

“Soon, this theater of the absurd will come to an end, and the salaries of the terrorists that we will withhold from [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas will be used to prevent terrorism and compensate victims,” said Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman about the proposed bill.

Predictably, parts of the Israeli security establishment were opposed to the proposed legislation, fearing that it could weaken the PA. Similar fears have been expressed by a group calling itself Commanders for Israel’s Security, which reportedly represents hundreds of retired Israeli military officials, regarding the US Taylor Force Act.

The Taylor Force Act, which thus far has passed the US House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, would end US funding of the PA, unless the PA stops paying its salaries to terrorists and their families.

However, Commanders for Israel’s Security have voiced concerns that the Taylor Force Act would “undermine PA stability; expand the circle of frustration and hostility; erode the security coordination” and deny the PA funding for “vital economic projects”. All this, say the retired military personnel, would “compromise Israeli security”.

Since when is stuffing your own pockets and using the rest to pay terrorists a “vital economic project”? One might argue, however, that the PA has done exactly that – created a monster that ceaselessly incites the murder of Israelis and the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.

Question. Will UK media ignore Abbas’s howler at the UN that Palestinians ‘foster a culture of peace’? - by Adam Levick

...If foreign journalists covering the region held Palestinian leaders to the same level of critical scrutiny that they consistently hold Israeli leaders to, the ten seconds of film highlighted in this post would cause a media storm – with reports and commentaries informing readers that Abbas’s UN claim, that Palestinians “are committed to fostering a culture of peace and a rejection of violence“, is simply the opposite of the truth.

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
21 February '18..

Followers of this blog are familiar with the UK media’s pattern of obfuscating, distorting or completely ignoring speeches by Mahmoud Abbas which incite violence, deny Jewish history and advance antisemitic accusations and tropes.

So, we are relatively confident that no major British media outlet will so much as take note, yet alone call out, an astonishing lie told by Abbas while addressing the UN Security Council yesterday. Though Abbas once again repeated his faux history, alleging that Palestinians are “descendants of the Canaanites that lived in the land of Palestine 5,000 years ago”, that actually isn’t, believe it or not, the most ludicrous claim in the speech.

This is:



Evidence showing Palestinian leaders, including Abbas himself, and government institutions praising, inciting and incentivizing terror, and promoting a culture which glorifies violence, is well-documented and ubiquitous.

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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. 

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Who would've thought? BBC continues its campaigning with eleventh report on Ahed Tamimi - by Hadar Sela

...This non-event of an article once again makes it blatantly obvious that the supposedly ‘impartial’ BBC has elected to lend its voice and outreach to promotion of a blatantly political campaign.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
14 February '18..

On February 13th the BBC News website published an article titled “Ahed Tamimi: Palestinian viral slap video teen goes on trial” which was presented to audiences together with two items of recycled ‘related reading’: a highly problematic filmed report by Jeremy Bowen dating from January 31st (also embedded in the report itself) and a written report by Yolande Knell from January 17th.

Readers were told that:

“A Palestinian teenage girl filmed slapping an Israeli soldier has gone on trial in an Israeli military court in a case which has split public opinion.

Ahed Tamimi, 17, is charged with 12 offences, including assaulting security forces and incitement to violence.

If convicted, she could face a lengthy jail term.”

However, as has been the case in the majority of the BBC’s copious past reporting on Ahed Tamimi’s arrest and indictment, this article too failed to provide readers with details of her call for violence on social media which is the basis of that incitement charge.

Given the article’s title and introductory paragraphs, readers of its first version may have been surprised to find that it actually told them nothing at all about the trial itself.

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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. 

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The Media's Whitewashing of Abbas’ Revisionism and Rejectionism - by Pesach Benson

...there was a bigger picture that the mainstream media snoozed through. What most journalists would consider the boring, long-winded digressions were actually part of a bigger pattern of historical revisionism and rejection of any place for the Jews in the Mideast.

Pesach Benson..
Honest Reporting..
16 January '18..

Mahmoud Abbas’ two-hour address to the central committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization was the diplomatic equivalent of giving the finger to Israel, the US and peace prospects.

The speech was expected to articulate the Palestinian leadership’s response to Trump’s Jerusalem declaration and threatened cuts of aid for refugees.

But given how long the talk was, it must have been a challenge for reporters to focus on sorting out the “news” from the “rambling.” Indeed, the PA president rejected US mediation, blamed Israel for the “death” of the Oslo accords, and dropped tidbits such as someone offering the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis to become the capital of a Palestinian state. (Abbas didn’t say who made the offer.)

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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. 

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Fact-free criticism of Israeli policy towards incitement on social media - by Elder of Ziyon

...Palestinian incitement on social media results in actual attacks in the hundreds per month. And social media is a large part of the reason for it. One cannot say the same about Israelis. But Greenwald doesn't care about actual incitement to murder Jews. He's pretty much condoned it.

Elder of Ziyon..
05 January '18..

At The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald wrote an article last week about how Facebook is supposedly doing Israel's bidding on censoring any anti-Israel posts.

As he is wont to do, Greenwald will take half-truths, eradicate context, and use these pseudo-facts to make insane generalizations that are, in the end, absolute lies.

Facebook has been on a censorship rampage against Palestinian activists who protest the decades-long, illegal Israeli occupation, all directed and determined by Israeli officials. Indeed, Israeli officials have been publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders:

Shortly after news broke earlier this month of the agreement between the Israeli government and Facebook, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Tel Aviv had submitted 158 requests to the social media giant over the previous four months asking it to remove content it deemed “incitement.” She said Facebook had granted 95 percent of the requests.

She’s right. The submission to Israeli dictates is hard to overstate: As the New York Times put it in December of last year, “Israeli security agencies monitor Facebook and send the company posts they consider incitement. Facebook has responded by removing most of them.”

What makes this censorship particularly consequential is that “96 percent of Palestinians said their primary use of Facebook was for following news.” That means that Israeli officials have virtually unfettered control over a key communications forum of Palestinians.

Greenwald is saying that what Israel says is incitement is actually any criticism of Israel.

The charge is almost too laughable to believe. Anyone can go to Arabic news pages in Facebook and use their translation service to see that not only are there thousands of anti-Israel posts every day, but there is still plenty of raw incitement to murder Jews that Facebook misses.

Greenwald's dishonesty in proving his position becomes clear in the next paragraph:

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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. 

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Peace: What do Palestinian Arab insiders mean when they see it slipping away? - by Arnold Roth

...It's a shame this Koran-thumping, rabble-rousing man of extreme violence and major influence who explicitly wants to see more and more young Palestinian Arabs die in the service of the Abbas presidency isn't better known. Perhaps he will be now.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
04 December '17..

Our partners-in-peace, the Palestinian Authority and its president-for-life Mahmoud Abbas, are taking pains once again to lay out how peace is going to come about, and how not.

As reported earlier today ["Abbas aide: Jerusalem recognition will destroy peace", Israel National News, December 3, 2017], a senior adviser to Abbas, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, evidently reacted yesterday to news reports that US President Donald Trump is likely to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as soon as Wednesday. Here are his views:

“Any American declaration of recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – if there is one – would mean total destruction of the peace process," said Al-Habbash, who was quoted in Israeli media. “The whole world will pay a price for any change or harm to the political reality of Jerusalem,” he warned. The Yediot Aharonot newspaper noted that Al-Habbash made the comments with Abbas standing at his side, meaning that Abbas fully backed the remarks. “The Arab states stand by us, especially Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and the entire Arab-Islamic nation is united in one position,” Al-Habbash further claimed.

This Al-Habbash is no stranger to our blog even if his name is not so well recognized. He's the central player in "15-Jan-14: How jihadist messages heard in the Palestinian Arab villages go unreported in the wider world", and "2-Jun-14: Palestinian government ministers and the political necessity of speaking out of both sides of the mouth depending on who's listening".

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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. 

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Surprise? Diana Buttu claims Palestinians are arrested for ‘criticising Israel’ - by Adam Levick

...Buttu’s allegations in the Guardian, characterising Israel’s crackdown on incitement to terror as an ‘assault on Palestinian dissent’, are both context-free and counter-factual – essentially everything you’d expect from a PLO propagandist with such well-documented record of lying about the Jewish state.

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
24 September '17..

Former PLO adviser Diana Buttu has a history of not telling the truth about Israel.

During interviews in the early to mid 2000s, Buttu claimed (on several media outlets) that “between the period of 1997 until the year 2000 there wasn’t a single Israeli who died of a suicide bombing inside Israel”. However, as CAMERA revealed at the time, 24 Israeli civilians were killed in six separate Palestinian suicide attacks during that period.

During the 2009-09 Israeli war with Hamas, Buttu bizarrely alleged, during interviews on CNN and Fox News, that rockets fired from Gaza “do not have explosive heads.” In fact, Palestinian rockets carried between 9-18 kilograms of explosives.

At a Harvard conference in 2012, she repeated the lie about ‘rockets without explosive heads’ and added another one, claiming that “there weren’t any grad rockets fired in 2008 and 2009.” Actually, as CAMERA revealed, dozens were fired.

More recently, CAMERA caught Buttu in another lie, complaining to journalist David Remnick (in a Sept. New Yorker article) that the Israeli hit show Fauda never mentions the word “occupation”, and that the series doesn’t show “a single checkpoint”. However, contrary to Buttu’s claim, the word “occupation” is heard in “Fauda” and checkpoints do appear.

Her latest smear against Israel was published in the Guardian.

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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. 

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Incitement and fake news, Palestinian style - by Stephen M. Flatow

...The PA tells 17-year-olds that killers of Jews will be hailed as “martyrs” and “heroes.” PA-paid Muslim preachers assure potential terrorists of heavenly rewards for stabbing and bombing. PA officials convince Palestinian teens that Israelis are vile, dangerous monsters who deserve to be killed. And then those teens pick up knives and go looking for Jews to kill. The cause-and-effect is obvious. Why can’t the world see that?

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
19 September '17..

A little-reported stabbing incident, coupled with a large dose of Palestinian Authority-generated fake news, have revealed pretty much everything you need to know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It all began Aug. 18. Qatiba Zahran, age 17, left his hometown of Alar, near the city of Tulkarm, armed with a large knife. He was looking for an Israeli Jew to stab.

He couldn’t find any Israelis in Alar, or in Tulkarm, because they have been under the control of the Palestinian Authority since 1995. That was when then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin withdrew Israel’s forces from the areas where 98 percent of the Palestinian Arabs reside.

Note that Qatiba Zaharn was born in 2000. Meaning that he has lived under the rule of Palestinian Authority his entire life. He has not lived under direct “Israeli occupation.” There are no “Israeli settlers” endangering the residents of Alar or Tulkarm.

Odd! We are always being told that Israel’s “occupation” and “settlers” are what provoke Palestinians to stab, bomb, and shoot Jews. So how can one explain what motivated young Qatiba Zahran to pick up that knife?

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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. 

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