Love of the Land

Monday, January 9, 2017

Why is John Kerry 'worried'? - by Dr. Reuven Berko

...Lacking a sense of history and any vision for the future, Kerry doesn't see the weakness and the need in the crumbling Arab world; doesn't recognize how marginal the Palestinian problem is and how pathetic its claims are; and doesn't understand that, in any case, if the Arabs could get rid of us, they'd have done so long ago. As it is said: May God protect me from my friends; I can defend myself against my enemies.

Dr. Reuven Berko..
Israel Hayom..
08 January '17..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=18109

When Sheikh Ekrima Sabri was still the grand mufti of Jerusalem, he declared to the media that he would prefer that the city remain occupied by Jews rather than become internationalized as part of a peace plan. Sabri said that the Muslims would eventually wrest control over the city away from the Jews, but it would be much harder to liberate it from the hands of the Christians and the Crusaders.

The return of the "Crusader occupation" via its "imperialist spearhead" -- the Jews -- is a shadowy fear that lies in the hearts of radical Islamists. They see the return of Christianity to the city, and certainly the resurrection of the Jews in their historic, promised capital with Christianity's help, as casting doubt on the relevance of the Islamist mission and the "seal of the prophets" doctrine, which, as we know, cancels out its predecessors.

Thus far, they have accepted an arrangement in which Jews are kept away from the city and worshippers at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher are subject to two Islamic families who for generations have held the keys to the church and allowed Christians -- before they fled the Middle East -- to open its doors and pray there. The reappearance of the Jewish people and the founding of their state and its capital in Jerusalem changed their world order into an insufferable situation in which the Jews were no longer a religious tribe that wandered, persecuted, throughout the world, the subject of God's eternal wrath, destined to convert to Islam.

The threat of "Jewish crusader-ism" served the fundamental hatred of Jews in Muslim countries, as well as the Arab countries and the Palestinians' political manipulations, especially when they made cynical use of Zionism as a uniting pillar of the Arab Spring. For types like Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and members of the ranks that represent his ideas -- including Sabri, radical Islamist Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, and adviser to the "rais" [president] on religion affairs, Sheikh Mahmoud Al-Habash -- locating Israel's capital in Jerusalem means nothing less than a collapse of peace and a declaration of war on Muslims.

BBC Eventually Discovers Terror Truck Had Actual Driver Behind the Wheel - by Simon Plosker

...So which is it BBC? A lorry or a terrorist? Eventually, the BBC appears to have acknowledged that there was actually a driver behind the wheel of the vehicle.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
08 January '17..

The BBC has a habit of attributing terror attacks to inanimate objects or vehicles. And so it was the case with an appalling truck ramming terror attack that took place in the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood of Jerusalem that has, so far, claimed the lives of four Israelis and injured many more.

The BBC broke the news with the following:

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The Resolution 2334 Promoters at J Street Take a Bow

J Street let their candidates know that walking out on and abandoning Israel was perfectly Okay in the pro-Israel community. It is important for everyone to realize that J Street is not simply a thankful organization that has an extremist position related to Israel, it is the organization that ACTIVELY PROMOTED the actions at the United Nations against Israel. If the US vote at the UN Security Council angered you, just don’t vent at an outgoing administration. Take it out on J Street and the candidates it supports.

FirstOneThrough..
Israel Analysis..
08 January '17..

On January 5, 2017, the left-wing organization J Street took out a full page advertisement in The New York Times to thank President Obama for letting a UN Security Council resolution pass that condemned Israelis living east of the Green Line (EGL). A casual observer would think that the left-wing group was simply being appreciative of a position that they described as “both practical and moral.” The reality is that J Street is RESPOSNSIBLE for pushing the Obama administration to take the action.

J Street has been active in “educating” Barack Obama since he became the Democratic nominee for president in 2008.

At the AIPAC conference in June 2008, Obama announced that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” I was there and applauded, as did the entire conference hall.

That enthusiasm would be short-lived.

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Concerning the Azaria Verdict: A Letter To Armchair Quarterbacks/Backseat Drivers - by Sheri Oz

Will we let the Elor Azaria verdict tear apart our social fabric? We are struggling to define ourselves as a modern nation built on the ashes of our ancient homeland and how we come out from this latest challenge will play a part in that, for better or for worse.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
08 January '17..

Dear Armchair Quarterback / Backseat Driver:

My chest aches when I see Elor Azaria and his parents, or even when I just think about them. I can imagine (or maybe I cannot imagine) the overwhelming burden of carrying an entire nation on their shoulders. That is what has become of their ordeal, an ordeal that should never, in my opinion, have reached the dimensions that it has.

Rightly or wrongly, three judges unanimously determined that Elor Azaria is guilty of manslaughter. There is now only one thing that can overturn that verdict and that is an appeal and it has nothing to do with the noise you are making in the streets or on the social media. Send in your petitions and demonstrate in the streets – I doubt this will have much, if any, effect; but if it makes you feel good, then at least be careful you do not add coal to the emotional fires of our aching nation as I promise to be careful myself.

There is nobody who is unaffected by seeing a young man handed down a harsh verdict for having killed a terrorist. I wish he had been there earlier and could have taken out his anger when the act was still in progress, something that everyone from top to bottom, right to left and front to back would have agreed was justified. I think we have mostly, if not all, reached the point where we prefer terrorists to be killed in action rather than wounded and taken in for questioning and imprisonment. But even that depends on the circumstances.

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The Seven Things NPR Wants You to Know About Settlements - by Ricki Hollander

...The NPR editors have clearly articulated their views on the subject supporting those of Palestinian leaders and they have every right to do so, but it should be done in a clearly labelled opinion piece. Using NPR as a bully pulpit to indoctrinate readers by purporting to inform them the "things to know" about any topic is a departure from journalistic norms.

Ricki Hollander..
CAMERA Media Analyses..
04 January '17..

In the wake of the recent UN Security Council resolution against Israeli settlements, passed without veto by the US, NPR International Editor Greg Myre (previously, Middle East reporter for the AP and the New York Times) and Middle East Editor Larry Kaplow (previously, reporter for Newsweek and Cox newspapers) offered the public radio station's website readers an article entitled "7 Things To Know About Israeli Settlements." The piece, however, would have been more aptly titled "The 7 Things We Want You to Know About Israeli Settlements" because it conceals relevant information, cherry-picking the facts to present a partisan, evasive and distorted view of the topic.

The tone is set by Myre and Kaplow's misleading half truths in the opening paragraphs of the article:

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Saturday, January 7, 2017

Ireland's Pseudo-Academic Anti-Israel Hate-Fest - by Denis MacEoin

...from the outset, a hate-fest of international anti-Zionist, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric and distortion.

Denis MacEoin..
Gatestone Institute..
07 January '17..

The passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 on December 23 2016 has upset more than one apple cart.[1] By declaring that Israeli settlements have no legal validity and are a "Flagrant Violation of International Law", the resolution has handed the Palestinians a weapon as powerful as any they have used against the Jewish state in their many physical attacks upon it for more than a century. Lawfare has for many years now replaced warfare (although not terror) as the Palestinian method of choice for the long-term elimination of Israel; this new resolution, even if only advisory, is a major step along the way to declare, not just the settlements but the entirety of Israel itself as illegal.

Almost all countries in the world, along with the UN, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Arab League and the Socialist "Left" now consider the Zionist project to create a living space for Jews to be a colonialist conspiracy against the "aboriginal" inhabitants of a legendary state of "Palestine". They are conveniently "forgetting" – with a significant dose of anti-Semitism – that for more than 3,000 years, the "original 'aboriginal' inhabitants" were the Jews – along with Ethiopians, Nubians, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, and eventually the Romans, Christians and eventually several Arab Muslim imperialists, culminating in the Ottoman Turks. The Jews were the people who inhabited Canaan; the Jews are why Judea is named Judea.

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Friday, January 6, 2017

Constructing a highly misleading, agenda-driven attack against Israel - by Daniel Pomerantz

...An organization like DCI-Palestine may choose to adopt an anti-Israel agenda and a newspaper may even quote them as a source, but journalistic transparency requires the media to disclose an organization’s agenda to its readers.

Daniel Pomerantz..
Honest Reporting..
05 January '17..

The Independent claims in a headline that “2016 was ‘deadliest year’ for West Bank children in a decade,” but the misleading report fails to live up to fundamental journalistic standards.

Correspondent Bethan McKernan, who is based in Beirut, uses DCI-Palestine (an anti-Israel advocacy group, more on this group below) to accuse Israel of unnecessarily killing Palestinian youths. To a lesser extent the article quotes Human Rights Watch, which has its own axe to grind with Israel.

McKernan speaks about the period of time from October 2015 to the present, with a particular focus on children.

But she fails to acknowledge that the Palestinians carried out 2,732 terror attacks against Israelis, many perpetrated by minors. This wave of terror was characterized by shootings, stabbings, car rammings, and firebombings. In other words, the spike in Palestinian deaths corresponded with a spike in Palestinian attacks.

Moreover, only 228 Palestinians died in carrying out their attacks. So even when Israelis were under direct and often deadly assault, Palestinian attackers survived over 90 percent of the time.

That indicates an impressive degree of Israeli restraint by any standards.

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To a Large Extent, the IDF’s Wound Was Self-Inflicted - by Evelyn Gordon

...But from the start, Eisenkot and Ya’alon created the appearance of injustice by routinely speaking out against Azaria when they should simply have kept silent and let the military justice system do its work. The result is that now, many Israelis still aren’t certain Azaria was convicted fairly, and that has translated into overwhelming support for an early pardon. This case has sowed devastating distrust of both the army’s leadership and its justice system among a large section of the Israeli public. Yet much of that distrust could have been avoided had Ya’alon and Eisenkot simply kept their mouths shut. That neither man proved capable of doing so is a damning indictment of them, and a tragedy for Israel.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
05 January '17..
Link: http://evelyncgordon.com/the-idfs-self-inflicted-wound/

The massive support in Israel for soldier Elor Azaria, who was convicted of manslaughter on Wednesday for killing a wounded Palestinian terrorist, has confounded some of its friends and supplied ammunition for its enemies. So it’s important to understand why that support is so widespread. Jonathan Tobin correctly explained some of the reasons yesterday, including the fact that most Israelis have limited sympathy for terrorists. But to a large extent, this is also a self-inflicted wound by the two people at the top of the military chain of command, who forgot the most basic principle of justice: Not only must it be done, but it must be seen to be done. By their own actions, they managed to create an appearance of injustice in a case where I believe none actually occurred.

The shooting occurred at about 8:30 A.M. on March 24. Five hours later, B’Tselem released videotaped footage of it. By that evening–at a time when the Military Police investigation had barely begun, and long before the video could have been examined to ensure it hadn’t been doctored–both then-Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot had already unequivocally condemned Azaria’s behavior. Ya’alon said it “completely contradicts” IDF values, while an IDF spokesman termed it a “grave breach” of IDF standards. Such condemnations continued in the coming days. On March 28, for instance, three weeks before the military prosecution decided to file charges, Ya’alon told the Knesset that Azaria was “a soldier who has transgressed, and not a hero.” In other words, both Ya’alon and the army had declared Azaria guilty even before he was charged.

In conversations with friends shortly after the incident, it was this that most infuriated them and aroused their sympathy for Azaria: They felt that the men in charge of the army, whose job was to ensure that any soldier suspected of wrongdoing receives a fair hearing, had instead rushed to judgment against him in order to appease a hostile world after B’Tselem made its video public. Moreover, they wondered whether Azaria could even receive a fair trial when the two men who must sign off on promotions for every senior military police officer, prosecutor and judge had already made it clear that they expected a conviction. Under those circumstances, would military justice officials risk their careers by exonerating Azaria if the evidence justified it?

Question. What Happens When UN Security Council Resolutions are Ignored? - by Elliott Abrams

...The point is that plenty of countries defy the UN but in very, very few cases is this even noticed, and in fewer still is anyone punished. Israel remains a special case, whose maltreatment in the UN is a disgrace—and one that, until the Obama administration decided to allow Resolution 2334 to pass, the United States fought and prevented in the Security Council.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
05 January '17..
Link: http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2017/01/05/what-happens-when-un-security-council-resolutions-are-ignored/

What happens when UN Security Council resolutions are ignored? That depends, really—on whether you are any of 192 other members of the United Nations, or are Israel.

Defenders of Israel often claim that it is treated differently by the United Nations from any other nation. That claim is accurate, and a brief look at Lebanon offers some proof. It continues to violate Security Council resolutions, year after year—but no one complains, and no one ever argues that Lebanon must be punished with boycotts or prosecutions for doing so. In fact they are often congratulated for their defiance.

The United Nations Security Council has been saying for decades that the Government of Lebanon must exercise control of its territory. Resolution 1559 of 2004 “Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias” and “Supports the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory.” By “Lebanese militias” the UN was referring to Hezbollah, but dared not speak its name. In any event, the Government of Lebanon did not comply.

Resolution 1583 was adopted unanimously in 2005 and in it the Security Council

Reiterates its strong support for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized boundaries and under the sole and exclusive authority of the Government of Lebanon;

Calls upon the Government of Lebanon to fully extend and exercise its sole and effective authority throughout the south, including through the deployment of sufficient numbers of Lebanese armed and security forces, to ensure a calm environment throughout the area, including along the Blue Line, and to exert control over the use of force on its territory and from it….

As the French ambassador said about that resolution when it was adopted, “in keeping with the present demands of the United Nations, Lebanon must extend its authority throughout the south, in particular, by expanding and deploying its forces and by disarming the militias.” But the Government of Lebanon did not comply.

Resolution 1701 of 2006, adopted to end the war between Israel and Hezbollah,

Welcomes the efforts of the Lebanese Prime Minister and the commitment of the Government of Lebanon…to extend its authority over its territory, through its own legitimate armed forces, such that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon….

Emphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory…for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon….

Calls upon the Government of Lebanon to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel….

But the Government of Lebanon paid no attention, or more accurately was unwilling to comply because it was afraid.

But Hezbollah does share Human Rights Watch's most important priority - by Elder of Ziyon

...Calling on police to kill terrorists in the seconds after they attack is a heinous crime according to HRW. But calling to annihilate hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians with an attack that Hezbollah itself likens to a nuclear explosion? Not worth mentioning by the moral arbiters at Human Rights Watch.

Elder of Ziyon..
05 January '17..

Hezbollah's Al Manar newspaper has an article on the latest anti-Israel HRW report.

Zionist soldiers and police have been incited by some of the country’s top politicians to ignore protocols when engaging with Palestinians who initiate attacks, Sari Bashi, Human Rights Watch’s ‘Israel/Palestine’ Advocacy Director, said.

In a special report of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict, HRW said that “some senior Israeli officials have been encouraging Israeli soldiers and police to kill Palestinians they suspect of attacking Israelis even when they are no longer a threat.”

Hezbollah and Human Rights Watch fit perfectly together. Not only can the Lebanese terror group pretend to care about human rights by quoting HRW, but they are secure in knowing that HRW will never hold Hezbollah to the standards that they hold Israel to - or to any standards whatsoever.

While HRW writes reports on Israeli politicians' statements meant to dissuade terror, it has not once written about direct threats to Israeli lives given, explicitly, by Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah.

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After the Blood Libel of ‘Illegal Settlements’, What Comes Next? - by Eric Rozenman

...Winston Churchill acknowledged that “the Jews are in Palestine as of a right; not on sufferance.” One year after Israel’s stunning triumph in 1967, Eric Hoffer wrote: “Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious, it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. … The Jews are alone in this world. If Israel survives it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources.” The same is true of the new blood libel. As usual, we’re on our own.

Eric Rozenman..
Algemeiner.com..
03 January '17..

Many critics of President Obama’s abstention from the recent UN Security Council vote, and Secretary of State John Kerry’s justification for this betrayal, underplayed or missed the historical and religious context.

The US’ irrational insistence that a Jewish presence in east Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank are “flagrant violations of international law” is effectively a new blood libel.

For the historically challenged, the blood libel was the allegation that Jews murder non-Jews in order to use their blood for religious rituals. It began in pre-Christian Greek culture, grew as Christianity spread in medieval Europe, was invoked in Czarist Russia and Nazi Germany, and has been exhumed by Palestinian terrorists and Islamic clerics. For more than 2,000 years, this blood libel has led to the massacres of countless Jews.

Is it hyperbole to compare a UN resolution and a harangue by a departing secretary of state to the blood libel?

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In the context of the ongoing war on the Jewish state - by Jonathan Tobin

...In a conflict in which Palestinian leaders and official media not only preach hate for Jews but honor those who act on their urgings as heroes, is it any surprise that most Israelis have little sympathy for those, like al-Sharif, whose only goal was to kill any Jew he met? Nor can we be shocked that parents of other young soldiers identify with the mental anguish of a teenager who has just seen one of his friends bleeding after a terrorist attack. Israel is a country where their enemies mark its entire people for murder. If some see the death of one of those foes—even if it was the result of a blatantly illegal act—as less grievous than the possibility that a young man who was serving his country will have his life ruined for acting impulsively, that just shows they are human and justifiably angry about the violence that is directed at their children.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
04 January '17..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/israel/not-a-simple-case-of-manslaughter-elor-azaria/

The trial and today’s conviction of Israeli soldier Elor Azaria is being celebrated by some as an example of how Israel’s justice system has vindicated the honor of the nation. That’s true. Sergeant Azaria was convicted of killing a terrorist who had already been captured and disabled. A video of the shooting appears to prove Azaria is guilty of manslaughter and the court rejected the attempts of his defenders to claim that his actions were appropriate or an effort to save his comrades from a danger that not longer existed.

And yet it must be said that, contrary to the arguments of Israel’s critics, a wave of support inside Israel for the defendant among the general public and many politicians is not an indication that 50 years of “occupation” has destroyed the country’s moral compass. If, despite the evidence that compelled the court to convict Azaria, so many Israelis on both the right and the left view this as more than a simple case of manslaughter, it is not because they are immoral or indifferent to Arab suffering. Rather, it is because the context of this controversy is a brutal war in which Israel’s youth is placed in harm’s way by their country’s foes; not an ordinary criminal case.

100 years after Balfour, 70 years after partition. Why is there no State of Palestine? - by David Collier

....There is no State of Palestine because too many Arabs (not all) simply do not accept, still will not accept, peaceful existence with Israel. There is no State of Palestine because too many people, are invested in the conflict. This is especially true of the thousands of NGO’s who in a perverse symbiosis report on a conflict that would probably not exist without them. 100 years after Balfour, the UN are still kicking Israel as if somehow the Jewish State holds the key to the end of the conflict. You will not solve this conflict until you are honest about the cause.

David Collier..
Across the Great Divide..
04 January '17..

100 years since Balfour, 70 years since partition. Why is there no State of Palestine?

There is no State of Palestine because after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, when the League of Nations used the Mandate system to facilitate the creation of Nation States, the Arabs living in the British Mandate of Palestine didn’t want one.

There is no State of Palestine because in the 1920’s and 1930’s, when the Jewish people began to prepare for their own state, the Arabs chose to violently resist Jewish immigration rather than work towards the creation of their own state. There were massacres of ancient Jewish communities.

There is no State of Palestine because in 1937, when the British proposed one be created, the Arabs rejected it. This led to more violence, including a massacre of Jews in Tiberius

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You can’t win the war you don’t fight: Skirmishes in the cognitive war - by Vic Rosenthal

...We prepare for the next rocket barrages from Hamas and Hezbollah, we procure new aircraft and submarines, we build army units to specialize in cyber-warfare, we react to diplomatic attacks by recalling ambassadors and ending aid programs, but we spend almost nothing on public diplomacy, on fighting the lies and telling our true story to the world. You can’t win a cognitive war by ignoring the most important parts of it. We need to aggressively attack the Palestinian narrative, to support our story as the legitimate owners of the land – historically, legally and morally – and we need to do all this both toward the outside world and for our own people. You can’t win the war you don’t fight.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
03 January '17..

The struggle against Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East, which has been going on for at least 100 years, has lately been characterized by alternating diplomatic/psychological assaults with violence in the form of small wars and terrorism.

The past year marked a violent phase, characterized by decentralized terrorism. We are presently engaged in a diplomatic battle, or more correctly, we are being attacked diplomatically. Security Council resolution 2334 represents a skirmish that we lost, and there are several other engagements scheduled for the near future, such as the Paris conference (that Israel will not attend) planned for January 15, and a possible follow-up Security Council resolution that will be voted on before January 20th, when a new American administration will take over.

At some point after the last “big” war in 1973, it became clear to our enemies that it would be hard or impossible to beat us militarily. But Israel’s greatest weakness, as its enemies well understand, lies in its susceptibility to cognitive warfare, a combination of small wars, terrorism, diplomatic, legal and academic warfare, and long-term psychological and propaganda operations designed to make Israel defeat herself.

By creating misperceptions of guilt, Stockholm syndrome effects, internalization of anti-Jewish memes, impossible-to-satisfy desires for approval by both “hard” enemies (e.g., Arabs) and “soft” enemies (e.g., Europeans), and by encouraging our own Jewish “useful idiots” and traitors, our enemies attempt to cause us to make deadly strategic mistakes in our responses to their pressure.

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Actually, Palestinians Hate Blue Israel Too - by Jonathan Tobin

...Whether or not they like Netanyahu, a clear majority know that Palestinians have repeatedly rejected peace and still have a conception of national identity that makes peace impossible for the present. Israeli society is split along religious, economic, security, and political fault lines. But when placed in the context of Palestinian hate, international anti-Semitism and Obama’s betrayal, the cultural divide between right and left is not quite as great as Israel’s critics would have us believe.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
03 January '17..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/israel/palestinians-hate-blue-israel-too/

For the mainstream media, explaining Israeli politics is difficult work. A country where the poor and disenfranchised immigrants from the Middle East have traditionally supported the party of the right (Likud) while the wealthy and the upper middle-class of largely European origin are the last strongholds of the political left does not translate easily into American political context. In the United States, political culture is rooted in very different concerns than those of the average Israeli, where security issues and attitudes toward the Arab world still dominate. The temptation to make flawed analogies, it seems, is still irresistible. That led to the New York Times’s attempt to ascribe reactions in Israel to Secretary of State John Kerry’s astonishing attack on the Jewish state last week to a divide between “red state” and “blue state” Israeli voters. The piece not only failed to effectively analyze the Israeli response to the Obama administration but also the reason why the Middle East conflict hasn’t been solved.

New Times Jerusalem bureau chief Peter Baker isn’t entirely wrong when he says that there is a stark divide between left and right in Israel. For some who live in secular and liberal Tel Aviv, what goes in Jerusalem and even along the border with Gaza–let alone West Bank settlements–has sometimes been of little interest. I can recall conversing with Tel Aviv residents about a visit to Sderot in the south eight years ago, which at the time was besieged by Palestinian missile fire, in which they reacted as if I was speaking of what was happening in Afghanistan. The disconnect between the minority who blame their own country for the lack of peace and the majority who correctly see the problem as the function of Palestinian intransigence is great, even if Hamas’s 2014 missile attacks on the secular metropolis erased some of the left’s complacency.

Yet the left-wing establishment that once dominated Israeli politics and society was effectively marginalized by the collapse of the peace process in the carnage of the second intifada. In the wake of the Palestinians’ refusal of an offer of statehood from the last Labor-led government in 2000, the even split between left and right that had characterized Israeli politics since the 1970s was transformed into a new reality in which power rested with a dominant right and an ever-changing roster of centrist parties. The fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now serving his third consecutive term in power and that the only viable alternative comes from Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid Party speaks volumes about how little influence leftist organs like Haaretz have, even as it continues to support attacks on the Jewish state from foreign critics like Kerry.

Hamas's Fatah and the No-State Solution - by Khaled Abu Toameh

...Abbas maintains that he is eager to work with the Trump Administration to achieve peace in the region. But will he have the courage to tell the new US administration some uncomfortable truths -- namely that he has become a political liability to the majority of his people, and that the Palestinians have never been as divided as they are at this moment? In short, will Abbas dare to share the truth of the splintered Fatah's no-state solution?

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
03 January '17..

During a celebration in Ramallah marking the 52nd anniversary of the founding of his Fatah faction, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas declared that 2017 will be the "year of international recognition of the State of Palestine." Hailing the recent anti-settlement UN Security Council resolution 2334, Abbas said he was prepared to work with the new administration of Donald Trump "to achieve peace in the region."

But while Abbas and his lieutenants were celebrating in Ramallah, at least 11 Palestinians were wounded in a scuffle that erupted between rival Fatah factions in the Gaza Strip. According to sources in the Gaza Strip, the fight broke out between Abbas loyalists and supporters of estranged Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan. The confrontation, which was the most violent between the two sides in many years, is yet another sign of increasing schism in Fatah. Moreover, it is an indication of how Abbas's control over his own faction is slipping through his hands. Hamas policemen who were at the scene did not interfere to break up the fight between the warring Fatah activists.

The melee in Gaza exposes as the lie that is Abbas's repeated claim of a unified Fatah, able to lead the Palestinians towards statehood. Incredibly, Abbas seeks global recognition of a Palestinian state at a time when the flames in his own backyard are set to engulf him and his questionable regime.

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Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.

BBC’s continuing double standards on terrorism compromise accurate reporting - by Hadar Sela

...The BBC’s politically motivated editorial policy of denial of terrorism against Israelis has prevented it from reporting this story fully, accurately and impartially to its audiences.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
02 January '17..

As regular readers well know, the BBC consistently refrains from describing politically motivated acts of violence against Israelis as terrorism and the people who execute such attacks as terrorists.

An example of the consequence of that editorial policy was seen in an article which appeared on the BBC News website’s Middle East page on January 2nd under the headline “Israel will no longer return bodies of Palestinian Hamas militants“.

BBC audiences were told that:

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John Kerry’s Attack on Israel: The Failed Attempt to Divert Attention from Obama's Disastrous Foreign Policy

...No amount of doting on the Palestinians can hide the fact that the Obama administration’s foreign policy pursuits have been a failure, and no amount of scapegoating Israel will hide the growing force of this assessment in the years to come.

Prof. Hillel Frisch..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 390..
02 January '17..
Link: http://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/390-frisch-kerrys-attack-on-israel-a-failed-attempt-to-divert-attention-from-obamas-disastrous-foreign-policy/

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Secretary of State John Kerry’s attack on Israel last week represents a vain attempt to deflect attention from the Obama administration’s failed foreign policy. Kerry’s fixation on the Palestinian issue explains why Russia, with one-tenth the GDP of the US, has emerged as the winner in Syria against both US and Israeli interests and why Iran, its ally, has come to control two more Arab capitals by proxy. Instead of promoting core US interests, Kerry has squandered efforts on promoting a two-state solution that has failed to materialize since it was first proposed by the Peel Commission eighty years ago. Hopefully, the next administration will give core US interests their due and find creative ways to deal with the fallout of a Palestinian national movement that has failed for 100 years.

In US Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent speech, in which he attempted to defend Washington’s abstention on the UNSCR resolution against Israeli settlements, he sounded more similar than ever before to the European leaders who reflexively condemn Israel. The similarity is rooted in a predicament shared by both the US under Obama and the EU – a weak and ineffectual foreign policy. Obama’s and Kerry’s “European” orientation has reduced American influence in world affairs to its lowest point since WWII and most certainly since the Vietnam War.

Just as the Europeans cover up their geostrategic weakness by ganging up on Israel, so too have Obama and Kerry zeroed in on Israel and the Palestinian issue as a means of covering up the abysmal failures of their foreign policy. Unfortunately, Israel is saddled with the costs of those foreign policy failures.

Kerry noted that the US concluded “an historic $38 billion memorandum of understanding that exceeds any military assistance package the United States has provided to any country, at any time, and that will invest in cutting-edge missile defense and sustain Israel’s qualitative military edge for years to come.” True, but he neglected to mention that most of those funds will go to meet the dangers of an aggressive Iranian policy.

Tehran has been emboldened by a $50-100 billion windfall resulting from the unfreezing of its assets in Western capitals, a bonanza orchestrated by Obama and Kerry. Israel knows full well that much of that windfall will be used to buy Russian state-of-the-art anti-air defense systems. This will make it much more difficult for Israel to attack Iran when it goes nuclear (which it inevitably will). Those systems will also be used to augment Hezbollah’s massive missile inventory in southern Lebanon, which is aimed at Israel’s major population centers.

Israel is also paying dearly for Obama’s debacle in Syria. For the first time since the 1980s, Israel is severely constrained in its mastery over the skies by a strong Russian air force presence in Syria, a state of affairs the Obama administration did nothing to prevent. Incredibly, President Vladimir Putin, the leader of a country with less than half the population of the US and one tenth its GDP, has led a winning Russian-Iranian-Syrian coalition against an ineffectual US. Tensions have only increased among Arabs, Kurds, Turkey, and the US. The Arab-Kurd standoff in Syria runs the risk of driving many Arabs into an alliance with IS.

An absolutely stunning theology of terror at the World Council of Churches - by Arnold Roth

...We're baffled by the idea that religion- and morality-minded Christians can see this and yet not scream for the WCC leadership to be kicked down the stairs of their exceedingly well-appointed Swiss headquarters, out of their pulpits and into the street.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
02 January '16..

We have devoted a dozen or more posts to things the World Council of Churches has said or done [click here] and frankly it's been hard to say anything positive about them. Here's the latest example of why.

Yesterday, the WCC secretariat, based in Geneva, issued a statement to the media in relation to the Istanbul New Year's Eve Reina nightclub massacre. Credit for those brutal and cruel killings was today claimed by an Islamist terror group.

Here's the Council's statement:

WCC condemns terrorist attack in Istanbul on innocent New Year revellers | 01 January 2017 | World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, condemns the latest terrorist attack against people in Istanbul celebrating the New Year. At least 39 people were killed and dozens more were wounded when a single gunman attacked a crowded Istanbul nightclub... "Innocent people are suffering again and again. This is an evil act. This attack is particularly shocking, in the first place because there seems to have been a clear intention deliberately to target people who were simply enjoying themselves at the New Year’ Day,” said Tveit... “In the face of this brutality, the human family, all people of faith and of good will, must stand together to recommit to respecting and caring for one another, to protecting one another, and to preventing such violence.” The WCC offers its deepest condolences to the bereaved and injured. Tveit said “God in your mercy, be with the victims and their families and those who accompany and help them.”

Most reasonable people will agree it's right for a highly influential religious group to call on the Almighty to come down on the side of the victims. It would be incomprehensible if the Reverend Mr Tveit had taken the opposing view and called for compassion for the murdering savages of ISIS.

But wait. We want to point out how differently the same Mr Tveit expressed himself in relation to a different collection of savages who. unlike the perpetrators of the Istanbul barbarism two days ago, have been caught and in most cases tried and convicted on terrorism charges.

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Almost magical. BBC diplomatic correspondent disappears Hamas and the PA - by Hadar Sela

...The Palestinian Authority governed the Gaza Strip after Israel’s disengagement in 2005 and it has been governed by the Hamas regime since its violent take-over of the territory two years later. The vast majority of Palestinians in Judea & Samaria live in Areas A and B and have been governed by the Palestinian Authority for over two decades. The number of Palestinians living in Area C (which, under the terms of the Oslo Accords is under Israeli control) and in Jerusalem does not even approach the one million mark. Paul Adams’ rhetoric obviously fails to help BBC audiences to come any closer to understanding this particular “international issue”.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
02 January '16..

One might have assumed that events in the Middle East over the past six years would have brought the BBC to the understanding that a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is not the panacea to all that region’s problems.

That, apparently, is still not the case – as a BBC news readers’ introduction to the top of the bill item on the December 28th edition of BBC Radio 4’s Six O’clock News (from 03:15 here) demonstrates.

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Massive Ethnic Cleansing of Jews and NPR - by Daniel Pomerantz

...NPR has covered up the massive scale ethnic cleansing of Jews in their own historic homeland. The result is not only offensive to the Israeli victims of these attacks and misleading to NPR readers, but also an embarrassment to the very profession of journalism.

Daniel Pomerantz..
Honest Reporting..
01 January '16..

In its article, “7 Things To Know About Israeli Settlements,” National Public Radio manages to demonstrate just how little its writers know about settlements, Israel and how to practice journalism.

Our critique of this article is not about settlements, but about basic journalistic standards.

Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank

Reporters Greg Myre and Larry Kaplow begin by claiming:

When Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War, no Israeli citizens lived in the territory.

This stunning lack of context ignores that Jews had indeed lived in Hebron, Bethlehem and many other towns in the land historically called “Judea and Samaria,” until 19 years earlier – when Jordanian forces (with the help of local Palestinians) expelled or killed all of the indigenous Jews, and then re-named the entire area “The West Bank.”

The only reason the population of the West Bank was entirely Palestinian by 1967 was because they expelled the indigenous Jews in 1948.

Doesn’t the ethnic cleansing of an entire indigenous Jewish population deserve a mention from NPR?

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Sunday, January 1, 2017

Let's talk about the 'occupation' - by Dror Eydar

...And now a point to think about: From the Palestinian perspective, an occupation is a colonialist project by a foreign political group that came from the outside with Western assistance and took over another nation by determining state laws and systems. I know of a country like that: Jordan. Jordan's King Abdullah I was born in Hejaz (today in Saudi Arabia). The sweet British gave him the eastern Transjordan as compensation for the Hashemite family's war against the Ottomans. And so they tore away four-fifths of the mandate territory designated for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
30 December '16..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=39169

1. Let's talk about the occupation. Both about the occupation of territory, and about control over another nation. As I have already expressed several times, in my view the heart of the internal Israeli conflict is not control over another nation, but specifically sovereignty over those swathes of the land -- Samaria, Judea and Jerusalem -- whose symbolic weight goes beyond their existence as geographic territory.

This is the question of all questions that has been driving us crazy since our return to history as a living nation with a political claim: Who are we? The question of our identity, which is made up of two parts that formed within us over thousands of years: nationality and religion. The widespread Israeli discourse (which impacts the global discourse) almost always favors the occupation and its consequences.

There are three types of occupation in the western side of the Jordan River. Since the Oslo Accords, we do not rule over the Palestinians as in the past. They enjoy broad autonomy: government, budgets, security forces, foreign relations, a flag and an anthem. Israel does not intervene and does not even control the constant incitement in the Palestinian education and political systems against everything Israeli and Jewish. It is true that the IDF and the Shin Bet security agency are stationed along the perimeter and control movement in the territory. The simple reason: Without a buffer of security, the Palestinian Authority would turn into a major terror zone that will, from the top of the mountain, threaten Israel's population centers and vital arteries.

The Palestinians also enjoy the buffer of security. A glance at the countries around us is enough to make one understand that a similar fate will befall the Palestinian Authority the moment Israel removes its defenses. Hamas is strong in the Palestinian street, and Islamic State, al-Qaida and all manner of evil sleeper cells are awaiting the signal to take over the territory. WikiLeaks documents published a few years ago showed that, behind the scenes, the Palestinians are demanding our protection. Senior officials told me that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would not survive for an hour without our protection. By the way, neither would King Abdullah II of Jordan.

2. When it comes to Israel, the concept of "occupation" expands a lot. It is clear to everyone that since the summer of 2005, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, the situation there is completely different from what it was before. Israel has completely withdrawn, demolished its settlements and taken its dead, just as Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish suggested in his famous poem. And still, the Left and part of the world insist: The occupation is ongoing.

Much to our grief, the warning of the Right came to fruition. The moment that Hamas took control, the Gaza Strip became enslaved (not always at the residents' will) to the near-sole motive for the existence of the political Palestinian: the destruction of Israel. There are many paths to achieving this goal: military, terrorist, diplomatic. The PLO's "Phased Plan" is no fairy tale; it is alive and kicking. Go to the Palestinian Media Watch and Middle East Media Research Institute websites and see for yourself. Do not rely on intermediaries.

As a result, Israel keeps watch over the entry of goods into the Gaza Strip, so that weapons and explosives are not brought in. Experience teaches us that the moment the checkpoints are removed, the Gaza Strip will become a ticking time bomb. The Hamas government has no greater goal than sacrificing its subjects in exchange for a fatal attack in Israel and the killing of Jews. Read the Hamas charter (available online) that serves even now as the movement's manifesto. It is a Nazi document. And so, the "occupation" continues in Gaza too.

Disputed or occupied? How location dictates BBC terminology - by Hadar Sela

...This is of course far from the first time that we have documented the differences in the language used by the BBC when reporting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the conflict in Western Sahara. Currently, however, that double standard is particularly apparent.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
01 January '16..

With BBC audiences having read and heard terminology such as “occupied Palestinian territory”, “occupied Palestinian land” and “illegal Israeli settlements” scores of times over the last week or so in BBC coverage of UNSC resolution 2334 (see related articles below), it is interesting to take a look at the language used in an article published on December 25th on the BBC News website’s ‘Africa’ page.

Although its subject matter concerns a decades-old conflict involving an invasion, disputed territory, thousands of people living in refugee camps and more than twenty years of failed negotiations, nowhere in that article – titled “Western Sahara: Kitesurfing in the Dakhla danger zone” – did the BBC tell readers in its own words that the area is “occupied” or describe the presence of Moroccan citizens as “illegal” and at no point did the BBC endorse the narrative of one side of that dispute over the claims of the other side.

In fact, readers were specifically told that the location of the story is in “disputed territory”.

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John Kerry's consistent suspension of disbelief - by Yoram Ettinger

...The U.S.'s and Israel's national security, and the pursuit of peace, require a long-term, tenacious commitment to realism, not oversimplification, short-term convenience and suspension of disbelief. The critical errors of the past have doomed a litany of well-meaning peace initiatives.

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger..
Israel Hayom..
30 December '16..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=18047

The term "suspension of disbelief" refers to the well-intentioned subordination of documented facts and common sense to zeal and wishful thinking, sacrificing long-term realism on the altar of oversimplification and short-term gratification and convenience.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's Dec. 28 speech was replete with suspension of disbelief and totally inconsistent with the reality in the Middle East. But it was consistent with his 31-year foreign policy track record.

Kerry was the top frequent-flying senator to Damascus, allowing his own idyllic vision of the globe and his hosts' duplicitous rhetoric to cloud reality. He contended that first Hafez Assad and then Bashar Assad -- two of the most ferocious, cold-blooded dictators in the world -- were constructive leaders, referring to Bashar Assad as a generous reformer and a man of his word, even while the Syrian president was terrorizing his people and facilitating the infiltration into Iraq of Islamic terrorists whose aim was to murder Americans.

In his 1997 book "The New War," Kerry demonstrated an inclination to dismiss the writing on the wall when in conflict with wishful thinking: "Terrorist organizations with specific political agendas may be encouraged and emboldened by Yasser Arafat's transformation from outlaw to statesman."

In March 2011, Kerry stated: "My judgment is that Syria will move, Syria will change as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the U.S. and the West." Indeed, Syria has changed. But, contrary to Kerry's assessment, not in a good way, with hundreds of thousands of people killed and millions displaced and made refugees.

Monday, January 9, 2017

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Saturday, January 7, 2017

Friday, January 6, 2017

Thursday, January 5, 2017

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Monday, January 2, 2017

Sunday, January 1, 2017

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