The 18th anniversary of a very bitter Jerusalem bombing anniversary - by Sarah N. Stern

After American largess and Israeli know-how, the Jordanians have been offering safe haven to a cold-blooded murderer of American citizens who has made a career out of her crime.

Sarah N. Stern..
EMET/JNS.org..
07 August '19..
Link: https://www.jns.org/opinion/a-very-bitter-jerusalem-bombing-anniversary/

Aug. 9 marks the 18th anniversary of a very dark day. That was the day that Ahlam Tamimi calmly picked up Izz-al-Din Shuheil al Masri from his home in al-Aqabah in Judea (the West Bank) and serenely delivered him to the Sbarro pizzeria shop in Jerusalem. That was the site Ms. Tamimi had intentionally scoped out because it was a popular eatery frequented by families, singles and Jews of all ages.

It had been a sultry day and many young students, who were off from school during the long summer recess, were looking for ways to spend their time. One of these students, Malki Roth, entered the restaurant with her best friend, Mihal Raziel. At the same time, Izz Al-Din entered the restaurant and—using a guitar case rigged with nuts, bolts and nails, together with a suicide vest rigged with 10 kilograms of explosives—detonated himself. The explosion rocked the nearby vicinity, murdering 15 people, eight of them children.

Two of the murdered were American citizens: 15-year-old Roth, and Judith Greenbaum, 31, who was five months pregnant at the time. A third American, Chana Nachenberg, lies in a permanent vegetative state.

Immediately after the bombing, Ahlam Tamimi was on a Palestinian bus back to Ramallah, and described what happened as news reached them about the mounting death toll. “As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers were applauding. They didn’t even know that I was among them … ,” she said. “On the way back [to Ramallah], we passed a Palestinian police checkpoint, and the policemen were laughing. One of them stuck his head in and said: ‘Congratulations to us all.’ Everybody was happy.”

Herein lies the heart of the matter regarding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which also pertains to our treatment of the Hashemite Kingdom.

(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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Okay, Hamas Just Violated Twitter’s Rules. Now What? - by Simon Butler

Twitter’s finding brings up some major questions: Does this mean the platform will suspend and/or deactivate the @HamasInfoEn account — and why, for that matter, is Hamas allowed to have a Twitter account in the first place?

Simon Butler..
Algemeiner..
07 August '19..

I recently received an intriguing notification from Twitter about a number of accounts that I had reported to the platform for antisemitic hate speech and other wrongdoings.

The message listed the handles that Twitter found in violation of its policies. Among them was @HamasInfoEn, which carried the name “Hamas Movement.”

That’s right. Hamas Movement — aka Hamas. The terrorist group that threatens Israel on a regular basis. The account calls itself an “official account.”

The Twitter notification sent to me points out that the group violated its “rules against hateful conduct.” Given that Hamas has directed thousands of Palestinians to riot on the Israeli border, murdered many innocent Israeli civilians, and launched innumerable rockets toward the Jewish state, “hateful conduct” may be the least of its offenses.

(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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The cheerleaders who encourage Palestinians to swim uphill - by A.J. Caschetta

So long as they are led by fools who never miss a meal, whose electricity never goes out and whose bank accounts are in the black, Palestinians will remain stateless.

A.J. Caschetta..
JNS.org..
05 August '19..

What happens when the loser of a war demands reparations and territory from the victor? If the question seems ridiculous (and it should), it nevertheless accurately describes the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. What’s most remarkable though is that Israel continues to underwrite Palestinian society with territory, money and autonomy—all of which the Palestinians freely admit they will use to fight Israel.

The latest wrinkle in this bizarre situation finds the losing party refusing $50 billion in economic aid because the cash deal does not force the winning party to give up everything it has won since 1948. That’s right, the Palestinians have refused to even negotiate the Trump administration’s so-called “deal of the century” because they know that it will not grant them a “right to return” and claim land in Israel.

The Palestinians’ bold sense of entitlement comes primarily from their leaders, both the PLO/Palestinian Authority and Hamas. But a close second place in the competition for encouraging Palestinian rejectionism goes to the academic world. Without both an elite class of Palestinian ideologues and an international coterie of academics instilling jealousy and anger in the Palestinians, there would likely be a Palestinian state today. Instead stateless Palestinians are encouraged and applauded for turning down offers that stateless Kurds and Tibetans would jump at.

Curiously, the fact that no one has seen Trump’s mysterious “deal of the century” has stopped few from expressing certainty about how bad it must be.

(Continue to Full Column)

A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is a Ginsburg-Ingerman fellow.

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! J Streeters duped on alternative tour of Israel - by Steve Frank

Hebron’s Shuhada Street was a highlight of J Street’s Israel tour, and the group fell for the myth, hook line and sinker.

That which is kept out of sight,
remains out of narrative

Steve Frank..
JNS.org..
04 August '19..

Nonprofit advocacy group J Street has recently been campaigning against Birthright Israel, an educational program that sponsors free 10-day heritage trips to Israel for young Jewish adults. Over 600,000 young adults have participated in the program since its founding in 1999.

J Street charges that Birthright trips lack Palestinians voices, fail to incorporate the Palestinian narrative and neglect to visit Palestinian sites in the West Bank. As an alternative to the traditional Birthright tour, J Street recently sponsored a trip to Israel for 28 participants who visited Palestinian sites in the West Bank and heard from spokesmen for the Palestinian cause.

According to The New York Times, “In the West Bank settlement of Har Gilo,” the J Streeters “received a harsh history lesson from a veteran opponent of the occupation. Then they toured an impoverished, water-starved Palestinian village that Israeli settlers want to demolish, and visited the city of Hebron, where repeated outbreaks of violence have turned an entire Palestinian business district into a ghost town.”

The J Street trip and the Times article about it were highly criticized in a pointed piece in Commentary magazine. The Commentary review noted that there was not a word in either the trip or the Times article “on the murderous Palestinian anti-Semitic violence that necessitates Israel’s policing of such places [as Hebron] to begin with,” “no mention of the kleptocratic Palestinian leadership that’s consigned generations of Palestinians to certain ruin” and “no mention of the fact that the Palestinians have, again and again—and again—refused to make peace with Israel when it was offered.”

However, there was one particular failing of the J Street trip that has not received the attention it deserves.

(Continue to Full Column)

Steve Frank is an attorney, retired after a 30-year career as an appellate lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. His writings on Israel, the law and architecture have appeared in publications including The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel and Moment magazine.

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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Question: Who’s responsible for denying Hadar Goldin a ‘decent burial?’ - by Jonathan S.Tobin

The family of a slain Israeli soldier is outraged that Hamas continues to hold their son’s body hostage. But whose fault is it that the terror group has gotten away with this crime?

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
02 August '19..

Five years ago, Hadar Goldin, a 23-year-old Israeli soldier, was killed during “Operation Protective Edge.” The purpose of that campaign was to silence the barrage of Hamas rockets and missiles from Gaza into Israel, as well as to prevent the terrorist group from using tunnels for kidnapping and murder raids. At the cost of more than 2,000 Palestinians killed, the vast majority of whom were terrorists, and 73 Israelis (67 Israel Defense Force soldiers and six civilians) slain, as well as many thousands of wounded on both sides and devastating damage inside the Gaza Strip, a temporary halt to Hamas’s atrocities was achieved.

But for Goldin’s family, the nightmare continues. The question is whose fault is it that their boy’s body continues to be held hostage by Hamas? The answer to that question speaks volumes about the international hypocrisy concerning Palestinian terrorism and intransigence. It also speaks to the terrible dilemma that Israel faces as it attempts to quarantine the Hamas terrorist state in Gaza without unduly harming civilians or launching another war that may not achieve more than what happened in 2014.

After U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced a ceasefire, Hamas gunmen ignored the call for a cessation of hostilities and attacked an Israeli patrol led by Lt. Hadar Goldin on Aug 1, 2014. He was killed and his body was spirited away by the terrorists.

Along with the body of Shaul Oron, another Israeli soldier killed a few days earlier, and two living Israeli citizens (one an Ethiopian immigrant and the other a Bedouin), Hamas continues to hold Goldin’s corpse hostage.

That this is a gross violation of international law, as well as of common decency, is of little concern to a group like Hamas, which uses civilians as human shields, and schools and hospitals as places to hide their fighters and munitions.

But the dilemma facing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is what can or should he do to gain their release.

(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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A global scorched wasteland: The incendiary balloon of international law - by Melanie Phillips

In the 20th century, Jewish lawyers, jurists and other activists sought to fashion international human-rights law into a defense mechanism to protect powerless minorities. The process through which it became a weapon to be used against the Jewish people is a tragic history.

Melanie Phillips..
JNS.org..
01 August '19..

For months now, Israel has been attacked by aerial incendiary weapons launched by Hamas during riots at the Gaza border fence.

These weapons—balloons or kites attached to flammable material—are driven by the winds off the sea towards southern Israel.

In just one week in June, they started nearly 100 fires in farmland and forests, in playgrounds and private yards. By last month, Hamas had burned more than 7,400 acres of Israeli land.

At the same time, Israeli communities near the border are also routinely attacked with rockets and mortars from terrorist groups stationed inside the Gaza Strip.

An American lawyer, Col. Matthew Aiesi, an associate professor at the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Va., was among a group of national security lawyers who recently witnessed these attacks for themselves.

As he has written, these are indisputably war crimes, violating numerous rules of warfare by deliberately targeting civilians and using indiscriminate weapons.

Aiesi says the United Nations or countries like Egypt working towards peace in the region should seek the surrender of those committing these war crimes to stand trial before a fair and competent jurisdiction.

Yet beyond Israel, these attacks are scarcely reported at all. And virtually no one is even stating that they are self-evidently war crimes.

The United Nations remains silent on the point. No surprise there: It has a long history of being institutionally malevolent towards Israel. Despite condemning it on countless occasions with spurious charges, the world body has never taken any action against the genocidal terrorists of Hamas.

(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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OH MY! Palestinians threaten to void agreements with Israel? No big deal - by Ken Cohen

For Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas to formally withdrawing from signed pacts would change nothing in the Middle East, except perhaps to add a note of realism.

Ken Cohen..
FLAME/JNS.org..
31 July '19..

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas threatened last week that his government would withdraw from all treaties and agreements signed with the State of Israel. This would include the 1993 Oslo Accords and all subsequent agreements regarding day-to-day security in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”). This is the emptiest of the P.A.’s numerous threats; they have never honored their pacts with Israel.

They even failed to revise their basic constitutional document, the Palestinian National Covenant. They accepted a treaty obligation years ago in Oslo to repeal sections of this viciously anti-Semitic, terror-supporting document which calls for the total destruction of Israel.

Abbas has made pact-nullification pledges many times before and always failed to keep his word, largely because the P.A. desperately depends on Israel’s support to stay in power.

Nonetheless, some in the global diplomatic community reacted with horror at this prospect. (Of course, this segment invariably blamed the “outrageous behavior” of U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the tragic turn of events.)

Another part of the diplomatic corps shrugged it off as more bluster from the P.A. leadership.

Finally, many wondered how the P.A.’s real-world actions would change in any way after its withdrawal from the agreements it has signed, whose provisions it has never honored or observed anyway.

The P.A. has seemed, since Oslo, to view all agreements with Israel as fundamentally optional, except when Israel’s obligations are in question.

(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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Amnesty's use of a deceptive press release to cover for Hamas’ human shields policy - by Emanuel Miller

...For a self-described human rights organization, it’s hard to understand how a commitment to human rights is being served when Amnesty allows itself to be used as cover for Hamas’ human shields policy, in which the terror group embeds itself in civilian infrastructure in order to conceal its presence and avert being struck, even after being discovered.

Emanuel Miller..
Honest Reporting..
30 July '19..

It’s a compelling story, one sure to be picked up by journalists, but beyond the usual anti-Israel agitprop, it’s a tale of deception and dishonesty that should leave Amnesty International shamefaced.

A show called “Obliterated,” sponsored by the prominent human rights organization, was said to have been due to be performed exactly one year after the destruction of a Gaza theater.

In fact, the play was never due to have been performed at all — the whole thing was a PR stunt.

In an email sent to people who had signed up for what was advertised as a free, one-night only performance, playwright Ahmed Masoud and actress Maxine Peake openly admitted to the devious trick: “There was never a play or a show. I didn’t write it and Maxine never rehearsed it.” This was confirmed when an Amnesty International UK press officer told HonestReporting, “they have cancelled it, and intended to cancel it.”

Despite openly admitting to registrants that the play was never written, a press release circulated by Amnesty International to announce the show was being pulled totally neglected to acknowledge that the cancellation was premeditated. The press release, seen by countless journalists, failed to mention that the play was never written, and that from the very outset, no performance was actually planned. Consequently, multiple news outlets picked up on the press release and failed to report the full story.

The episode should act as a cautionary tale to journalists not to rely on press releases for more than one reason.

The stunt was designed to draw attention to the first anniversary of the destruction of the al-Mishal Cultural Center in Gaza. In its press release, Amnesty wrote:

The scheduled performance – which is fully booked – would have marked exactly one year since the destruction by an Israeli airstrike of the Mishal Cultural Centre last year, the only working theatre in Gaza which housed numerous arts projects in the beleaguered Palestinian territory.

That’s one way to describe the theater. A more objective statement would have recognized that the theater was believed to have served as a command and control center for the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza in its ongoing hostilities against Israel.

(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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Question: Where is our apology, Barak? - by Helen Nesser Assad

...we do not need Barak's request for forgiveness, nor are we interested in one. Our friends and brothers, veterans of the IDF and defense establishment, who unlike Barak, did not abandon us, continue to accompany us in our struggles and our difficulties and have done so since that fateful day. Their friendship will not compensate for the crime, but it at least shows us that there are those in this country who are decent and moral and no less importantly, people of conscience.

Helen Nesser Assad..
Israel Hayom..
29 July '19..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/where-is-our-apology-barak/

Israel Democratic Party leader Ehud Barak apologized last week for the deaths of 13 Israeli Arabs during the riots of October 2000, which marked the outbreak of the Second Intifada. He was prime minister at the time. There are quite a few people who are willing to be moved by this, even though they understand this is nothing more than a stunt, a transparent ploy to garner votes ahead of the September election.

I am not moved by this apology; in fact I find it infuriating. I can only speak for myself, but I believe quite a few of my brothers and sisters in the South Lebanon Army community in Israel are now asking themselves: Where is our apology?

I am a bereaved daughter and sister. Quite a few Israelis, mainly IDF officers and senior defense system officials who dealt with southern Lebanon within their framework of their service, know my family as the "dynasty of death." My father, four of my brothers and two of my nephews were killed in that terrible war in South Lebanon. My brothers were wearing South Lebanon Army uniforms when they fell in battle. I was recently recognized by the Defense Ministry as a bereaved sister.

I have lived in Israel since the 1990s. I built a life in Haifa, established a family and sent my sons to serve in the military. I do not regret this. As the daughter of a South Lebanon Army family, I continue to believe in the historic alliance between the Israel Defense Forces and the South Lebanon Army. I also believe that there is more to this alliance than security interests. We are joined together by common values, a shared war ethic, and I also believe, a shared destiny. Those who have not fought shoulder to shoulder, and those who were not there and did not witness this comradeship with their own eyes cannot understand the significance of this alliance. I remember, as a girl, my parents hosting IDF soldiers, officers, and sometimes very senior IDF officers, in their home. We treated them like family, no less.

Who would have thought that the day would come when this alliance would be violated? We never guessed the day would come when the IDF would abandon southern Lebanon without preparing us in advance. There were those who somehow succeeded in gathering some of their possessions and their family and taking them across the border. The rest were abandoned to their fate, meaning to Hezbollah. It seems to me a majority of Israelis can imagine the bloodbath that ensued.

Janna Jihad 2019 U.S. Tour: Rewarding Palestinian child exploitation, Janna Jihad goes to Congress - by Petra Marquadt-Bigman

13-year-old Janna Jihad’s US tour, organized by anti-Israel extremists including American Muslims for Palestine and Code Pink, is just the latest example of Tamimi Clan children being exploited for propaganda purposes.

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
Legal Insurrection..
28 July '19..

While the 18th anniversary of the Sbarro pizzeria suicide bombing in Jerusalem on August 9 is approaching, Janna Jihad, a young relative of the terrorist Ahlam Tamimi who planned and helped perpetrate the massacre, is on a US speaking tour.

Janna Jihad is only 13, but she has already been groomed for years by the Tamimis to succeed her cousin Ahed Tamimi as the youthful, innocent face tasked with hiding the clan’s murderous hatred of Israel.

Janna Jihad 2019 U.S. Tour

Janna Jihad’s current PR tour in the US is apparently sponsored by the South African organization Shamsaan that seems devoted to promoting the Tamimi child stars (more on Shamsaan below); support for organizing and hosting events has also been provided by the far-left fringe group Code Pink and the extremist group American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) as well as other anti-Israel organizations like the misleadingly named Jewish Voice for Peace.

(Continue to Full Post)

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

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J Street, BDS and the willful blindness of the liberal peaceniks - by Ben-Dror Yemini

Some boycotts are justified, whether imposed by a state or individuals, but the drive to boycott the State of Israel is certainly nothing but an effort to deny Jews the right to self-determination, whatever so-called pro-peace organizations tell themselves

Ben-Dror Yemini..
Ynetnews/Opinion..
27 July '19..
Link: https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5556925,00.html

Ilhan Omar, a member of the US House of Representatives, is a clear supporter of the pro-Israel boycott BDS movement. Recently, she proposed a bill that supports boycotts, all boycotts, as freedom of expression, which sounds wonderful.

While most Democrats did not buy her into her sophistry, fear not, for J Street rushed in to support her.

"We do not support BDS," the organization stated, reiterating its old position in favor of two states, "but we are also in favor of freedom of expression."

How kind.

If we thought that Omar was breaking records for disingenuity, given that freedom of expression interests her as much as snow in summer and hatred of Israel is what really motivates her, J Street has actually managed to bypass her.

The Palestinian Abandonment of Oslo Agreements Window of Opportunity? - by Dr. Aaron Lerner

On the simplest level, this Palestinian move would relieve Israel from the need to continue with current policy of postponing substantive Israeli action until after President Trump's team concedes that the "Deal of the Century" is dead.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
27 August '19..
Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=73540

A committee composed of the PLO’s Executive Committee, Fatah’s Central Committee and the PA is set to meet to draw up concrete mechanisms with a specific timeline for the implementation of the Palestinian leadership’s decision to suspend ALL the agreements signed with Israel - including
security cooperation.

The official PLO news agency - WAFA - noted that in apparent reference to the security coordination, Mahmoud al-Aloul, deputy chairman of President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement told Voice of Palestine radio today that "The Palestinian leadership's decision to suspend the agreements signed with Israel includes all the agreements signed with it and does not exclude anything."

If indeed the Palestinians are serious about this, the challenge for Israeli leadership today is to exploit this unilateral Palestinian move to Israel's benefit rather than detriment.

On the simplest level, this Palestinian move would relieve Israel from the need to continue with current policy of postponing substantive Israeli action until after President Trump's team concedes that the "Deal of the Century" is dead.

Fighting the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement (Part 2) - by Victor Rosenthal

BDS is all about delegitimizing and demonizing Israel. But where is the legitimacy in the claims of the Palestinian Arabs, who are at best descendants of colonialist invaders from Arabia, and at worst the children of 19th and 20th century migrants? And we don’t need to make up stories in order to demonize the Palestinian Arabs

Victor Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
23 July '19..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2019/07/fighting-bds-part-ii/





Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it. – Jonathan Swift

Summary of Part I:

The Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement is not intended as an economic weapon against Israel, and has not succeeded as such. It does not seek to attain its stated objectives of forcing Israel to withdraw from the territories, grant rights to Arab citizens, or accept the “return” of Arab refugees. Rather, it is a cognitive weapon to facilitate the demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state, which it does by providing opportunities for the promulgation of various “big lies” about Israel and its conflicts.

Such remedies as anti-boycott laws are unnecessary (there is little danger of economic damage from BDS). Worse, they play directly into the hands of Israel’s enemies. Every controversy about BDS, every resolution that is debated on a university campus or church board, in a union hall or the US Congress, provides a platform for the same false accusations of apartheid, racism, war crimes, and even genocide, as well as a reprise of the false historical and political Palestinian narrative.

The demonization and delegitimization of Israel present a real physical danger, because they affect the target populations, both the “street” in Western countries and their decision-makers. The effect is to increase tolerance of terrorism against Israel, to reduce support (such as the supply of arms) during wartime, to justify forcing dangerous “solutions” to the conflict, to prevent Israel from obtaining decisive victory in armed conflicts, and so on.

How should Israel and her supporters respond?

A cognitive attack demands a cognitive response. As we’ve seen, legal or legislative attempts to stop boycotts actually help BDS achieve its goal by providing loci for the promulgation of anti-Israel memes. Traditionally, Israeli “hasbara” in response to BDS has taken the form of denying its accusations. We insist that we are not an apartheid state, note that Arab citizens have full civil rights, and try to disprove particular accusations of mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs and war crimes.

But by repeating the accusations in order to deny them, we give them additional currency, and make formerly unthinkable concepts at least debatable. For example, anyone who knows anything about South African apartheid or Nazi genocide knows that there is absolutely no similarity between them and Israeli treatment of Palestinian Arabs. But if the lie is constantly repeated, it becomes a question to be taken seriously, with pros and cons. This is similar to the way Holocaust deniers claim that the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz is an “open historical question.”

There is also the constant flow of what can be called “nuisance libels.” The most well-known and consequential of these is the alleged killing of the boy Mohammed al-Durah by the IDF in 2000, but it is just one of hundreds or thousands of accusations of murder, mayhem, or mistreatment that are alleged against Israel on a continual basis. It is trivially easy to make an accusation with the flimsiest of proof, but refutation requires time and effort. As Swift said, falsehood flies and truth limps. And of course the controversy itself is the objective, as former US President Lyndon Johnson well understood.

Our sporadic, reactive, and generally less-than-serious approach to the cognitive war that we are in (whether we know it or not) has so far proven ineffective. But why shouldn’t our cognitive war fighting follow the same principles that inform Israel’s doctrine of traditional, “kinetic” warfare? In other words, why shouldn’t we take the offensive and bring the war to the enemy’s own territory? Let’s see what this might mean in terms of cognitive warfare.

The new Palestinian Authority textbooks are even worse than the old ones - by Ken Cohen

Those who doubt any imminent resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict need look no further than the new Palestinian school books to become even more pessimistic.

Ken Cohen..
FLAME/JNS.org..
24 July '19..

There was great hope and anticipation several years ago when the Palestinian Authority announced that it was completely replacing its K-12 school textbooks. But new editions merely confirm obsessive Palestinian hatred of Jews and rejection of peace with Israel.

The older Palestinian textbooks were filled with ugly anti-Zionist—and anti-Semitic—propaganda. Shockingly, this pervasive spirit of distortion and hate wasn’t only employed in history textbooks, but also dominated language, math and even science lessons.

The original P.A. textbooks were in use for about 20 years, having been published following the Oslo Accords. (Prior to that, Palestinian schools had continued to use Jordanian textbooks published before the 1967 Six-Day War.)

Over the past three years the P.A. has released the full set of new textbooks—and they are even worse than the old ones in teaching Jew-hatred, fictionalized history and a profound glorification of martyrdom, terrorism and hate. Though Western liberals continue to place the onus of peace-making on Israel, these materials make clear the Palestinians’ dedication to waging war.

The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) recently published its reports on the textbooks—replete with examples—that demonstrate the horrific indoctrination being inflicted on Palestinian youth by their educators.

(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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As expected, spitting in the face of cooperation with Israel - by Ruthie Blum

Had Saud and the rest of the delegation been in the area a mere two days earlier, they would have encountered bright-red Arabic graffiti spray-painted on the Kotel HaKatan—a portion of the Western Wall on the Temple Mount—calling for the “slaughter of all Jews.” Thanks to closed-circuit TV footage, the perpetrators, young women from eastern Jerusalem, were apprehended. Sadly, however, the larger culprit—the hate-filled poison these girls imbibed with their mothers’ milk—is not only still at large; it’s purposely and perpetually fostered, as well as heavily funded.

Ruthie Blum..
JNS.org..
23 July '19..

If further proof were needed to illustrate the futility of diplomatic overtures to the Palestinian Authority, Monday’s attack on a pro-Israel Saudi in Jerusalem is a good example.

As part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s regional strategy to forge ties with formerly hostile Muslim-Arab states, the Israeli Foreign Ministry invited a delegation of six media personalities from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt to see the Jewish state for themselves. Up close and personal.

As a precautionary measure for their safe return home, their identities were not disclosed.

The only exception was Mahmoud Saud, a law student and blogger from Saudi Arabia, who regularly tweets about his unabashed support for Israel in general and the Netanyahu government in particular. This is clearly why Saud not only agreed, but was proud, to be photographed with the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman and Likud Knesset member Avi Dichter.

At a meeting with Dichter at the Knesset on Monday morning, one member of the delegation said, “This visit to Israel is like touring a dreamland. If only we would be able to bring hundreds of people from our countries, so that when they go back they can tell what they saw and felt.”

Indeed.

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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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Would This Work Better? Racist, Sexist, Homophobic, Reactionary, Totalitarian Palestine - by Divest This!

Perhaps it is our general wussiness that keeps us on the course of dialog, discussion, argument, persuasion and compromise, rather than jumping into the sewer with those who have made it their life’s work to see the world’s one Jewish state dismantled. Although given the state of Israel and the Jewish world – vulnerable though it might be – versus the hell on earth Israel’s enemies have constructed for themselves, perhaps hanging on to our humanity is a wise strategic, as well as a moral choice.

Divest This!
Elder of Ziyon..
22 July "19..

It dawned on me that all of Israel’s friends and defenders have been wasting our time over the last several decades.

Instead of writing thoughtful essays that provide facts and perspectives while making the case for the Jewish state, or organizing talks, educational programs or other campaigns that present arguments in favor of our cause or against our foes, we could all have spent that time doing something much simpler, so simple that it requires almost no thought.

So what could we have been doing, rather than bombarding the world with longwinded explanations based on facts and logic?

The answer is simplicity itself, and so easy to implement. For all it would involve would be to never use the term Palestine or Palestinian without first prefixing it with the string of pejoratives titling this piece.

We would not have to be mindless robots uttering the same phrase over and over again. Certainly whenever we find ourselves in debate, we would make sure the words “racist, sexist, homophobic, reactionary, totalitarian” precede the use of any reference to Palestine, Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas (and maybe their friends and allies throughout the Middle East). But we could get creative with the ways we slip those words into the discussion over and over and over again. For instance:

Comparative: Yes, there is a difference between the racist, sexist, homophobic, reactionary, totalitarian, corrupt Palestinian authority and the racist, sexist, homophobic, reactionary, totalitarian, religious fanatics in Hamas. But the two have important things in common: they’re both racist, sexist, homophobic, reactionary totalitarians.

Generous: You are free to support all the racist, sexist, homophobic, reactionary, totalitarian political movements you like, including the racist, sexist, homophobic, reactionary, totalitarian Palestinian movement. Just don’t also demand to be considered progressive, much less tell us you get to decide who is anti-racist and who isn’t.

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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 myth and fantasy of Hebron’s Shuhada Street - by Steve Frank

Like the rest of the Palestinian narrative, the myth of an apartheid Shuhada Street is grounded in misrepresentations, omissions and facts taken out of context.

Steve Frank..
JNS.org..
21 July '19..

Shuhada Street is a half-mile long road in the Palestinian city of Hebron in Israel’s West Bank. It was once the thriving market center of the city, frequented by Palestinians and Israelis daily. Today it is a virtual ghost town, largely shut down by the Israeli military for security reasons. It has become central to the Palestinian narrative and the symbol of an alleged Israeli apartheid that underlies the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against the State of Israel.

Why Shuhada Street was closed, how the commercial center of Hebron has moved less than a mile from the now abandoned Shuhada Street and become a thriving market district seldom if ever visited by outsiders, and a place where Jews (not just Israelis, but Jews from any country) are banned is a story seldom told in full. It represents the true story of “apartheid” in Hebron. I visited the city last week and expose the myth of Shuhada Street for the first time here.

The Jewish connection to Hebron dates back almost 4,000 years to when Abraham, the father of Judaism, came to the Land of Israel and settled in the city. Abraham purchased a plot of land, known as the Cave of the Patriarchs, as a burial plot. The site is considered to be the final resting place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah, the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Jewish religion. It is also said that King David was anointed king in Hebron and that Hebron was the first capital of Israel, until it was moved to Jerusalem.

As a result of this historic significance, Jews have prayed in Hebron since biblical times, and with a few interruptions have lived there continuously. Hebron is considered to be the second holiest city for Jews after Jerusalem.

Hebron has a long and complicated history, having been conquered by many invading peoples, including the Babylonians, Romans, Byzantines, Muslim Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, Mamelukes and the British. Following the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, Hebron was captured and occupied by the Jordanian Arab Legion. During the Jordanian occupation, which lasted for 20 years, until 1967, Jews were not permitted to live in the city, nor to visit or pray at the Jewish holy sites in the city. No one complained of “apartheid.”

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Steve Frank is an attorney, retired after a 30-year career as an appellate lawyer with the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Mr. Frank’s writings on Israel, the law and architecture have appeared in numerous publications including the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Jerusalem Post, the Times of Israel, and Moment Magazine.

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 Murder of Malki Roth, and Jordan’s Refusal to Extradite Her Smiling Killer - by Karen Harradine

With the 18th anniversary of the heinous Sbarro slaughter coming up in a few weeks, it’s time for the Trump administration to find its voice and call for justice. Tamimi must be extradited to the US to stand trial for her evil deed. Arnold and Frimet Roth should not need to wait any longer. They have suffered enough.

Karen Harradine..
Algemeiner..
19 July '19..
Link: https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/19/the-murder-of-malki-roth-and-jordans-refusal-to-extradite-her-killer/

Losing a child is devastating for any parent. But for Arnold and Frimet Roth, their loss is truly intolerable because the smiling murderer of their daughter Malki lives a life of freedom and comfort — protected by the Jordanian government.

Malki was only 15 years old when Ahlam Tamimi masterminded the terror attack that killed her at Jerusalem’s Sbarro restaurant on August 9, 2001. Fourteen other innocents, including seven children, were murdered, and 122 others wounded.

In 2011, Tamimi, a cousin of the notorious Ahed Tamimi, was freed from an Israeli prison under the terms of the controversial Gilad Shalit deal. She was whisked away to Jordan, where she has been courted ever since by Arab and Western media as some sort of heroic “resistance fighter.”

Tamimi’s life is one of luxury and privilege, thanks to the lucrative salary she receives from Hamas, which is indirectly financed by Western governments who contribute to the corrupt United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNWRA). Tamimi has never denied her role in the Sbarro terror attack, and her pride in slaughtering Jews is on display for anyone to see when she parades herself on television.

After a long campaign by the Roths to seek justice for Malki, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) officially filed charges against Tamimi in 2017, and announced that they would seek her extradition to stand trial in the US. The FBI also added her to their most wanted list of terrorists.

For those who thought that justice would finally be achieved, Jordan’s reaction was a shock. Despite having established a mutual extradition treaty with the US in 1995, the Jordanian government claimed that the treaty hadn’t been ratified in their parliament — and have thus denied the request.

Seriously, is it really the end of democracy in Israel? - by Douglas Altabef

Israel is a society that certainly has problems, pressures and tensions that cry out for leadership. Happily, the democratic health of our society is just not one of them.

Douglas Altabef..
Israelnationalnews.com..
17 July '19..
Link: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/24164

One of the recurrent drumbeats heard from certain quarters in Israel is that we are teetering on the brink of losing our democratic bearings. There are those who hear it in distant thunder claps, while others think it has already happened. To them, we are already in the morass of some kind of (pick as many as you like) theocratic, populistic, authoritarian, fascistic regression.

What are the signs of this 'capitulation'? Actually there is a common thread here. They mostly concern decisions made, or positions that the Left disagrees with.
What are the signs of this 'capitulation'? Actually there is a common thread here. They mostly concern decisions made, or positions that the Left disagrees with. One prominent example is criticizing the unfettered discretion of a Supreme Court that increasingly sees itself as a court of first instance, and one that applies its own non-definable standards for what it deems to be judiciable.

Others involve pushing back against strident criticism of our society by cultural or academic elites, who evidently believe that theirs are perspectives beyond question, let alone reproach.

There is an interesting commonality to all the doomsaying. It tends to be said in the context of outcomes, not of process.

Now, the classic way of assessing whether a society is democratic is how it conducts itself. Do people feel free to voice their opinions? Is the press unfettered in its reporting of the news (forgetting whether or not such reporting is accurate)? Are dissenting opinions tolerated? Is there an attempt to exclude other voices or perspectives from the public square?

Democratic societies are such for the ways they conduct themselves rather than for the policies they end up choosing – so long as those policies do not impinge on how a society conducts itself.

It seems to me that Israel fares quite well, both in absolute and relative terms in how we are able to conduct ourselves.

In relative terms, we look around the Western world, and see true intimidation, mostly by the Left, for those who either do not subscribe to their views, or worse, oppose them. The Progressive movement in America is increasingly taking on Jacobin proportions, where opposing views and speakers who espouse them are not to be allowed to speak or even appear. The frightening mob that constitutes Antifa – anti-fascism – is actually the very embodiment of totalitarian repression.

Intersectionality has decided which identity groups, causes and points of view are acceptable, and which need be shut out and shut down. Free speech is increasingly being perceived negatively as a way for privileged whites to maintain themselves, not as the content-free pillar of a liberal democratic society.

Does this sound like the situation here in Israel?

Please, If You Want to Help Israel, Stop Using the Word "Conflict" - by Varda Meyers Epstein

In a conflict, there's no question of guilt or blame or innocence. There are just two rivals lashing out at each other in perfect equality, both fighting for the same thing. Which is so much nicer, after all, than thinking about the men who kill Jewish babies in their strollers and cribs, solely on the basis of their religion.

Varda Meyers Epstein..
Judean Rose/Elder of Ziyon..
17 July '19..

If you really want to help Israel, please lose the word “conflict” from your vocabulary. There is no such thing as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A conflict is two sides attacking each other. This is simply not the case when it comes to Israel and the Arabs. The Arabs attack, the Israelis defend.

People like the notion of a “conflict.” It’s the American way. It’s tidy.

Americans like to think, “It takes two to tango,” which really means “It takes two parties to have a conflict and we prefer a conflict to one party attacking the other so let’s call it that."

It's not only Americans, of course. Progressives, in general, like to say things like, “There’s bloodshed on both sides,” as if the cause of blood being shed has no import, no weight. A dead murderer is equal in death to his victim, therefore the cause of death must be also be equal. One fact creates the other, in spite of the truth.

So if you have a home invasion and the cops come and shoot someone who just killed your family member, is that also "bloodshed on both sides?" https://t.co/6kdbEZxTqQ

— (((Varda Epstein))) (@epavard) July 16, 2019

Because people have this need for parity, for fairness. But this situation does not satisfy the necessary conditions that define conflict.

A conflict must have two parties at odds with each other. You don’t have that here. In the case of Israel, you have one side minding its own business and interests.


The losers, meanwhile, can’t cope with reality. They won’t make the best of a situation and you can’t make them. They prefer to maim, kill, and destroy: an adult version of the two-year-old tantrum, albeit an evil version. Because two-year-olds aren’t responsible in any moral sense for their choices. But adults, are.

In this case, the adults, who happen to be Arabs, know just how bad it is to, for instance, kill a ten-month-old infant in her stroller by sniper fire. This makes the act evil, which means that in no sense is such an attack at all like a two-year-old’s tantrum. It is, instead, a willful act of ugly violence. A deed of the Devil.

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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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Proclaiming Israel to be an apartheid state is both racist and a lie - by Karen Harradine and Paul T Horgan

...And this is all why anyone who uses the term ‘apartheid state’ in association with Israel cannot be taken at all seriously. Firstly, they are being anti-Semitic by the standards of the IHRA. Secondly, it is a provably bogus comparison. Thirdly, it tacitly supports terrorism. The term should be banished from our media as much as any other racist epithet.

Karen Harradine/Paul T Horgan..
conservativewoman.co.uk..
16 July '19..

Sharing some of my many painful memories of growing up in apartheid South Africa with Paul, my co-writer of this post, one stood out in particular. On a hot summer’s day my mother had fetched me from school, as she always did. Driving up a steep hill on our way home she suddenly stopped the car, rolled down her window and asked a man on the street if he wanted a lift.

She had noticed the elderly black man, in dusty clothes, leaning heavily on a stick as he struggled to walk up this hill. As he got into the car he started to cry and pray, thanking my mother and praising her for having the courage to help a black person. That act, of helping a black person classified as an ‘inferior race’ by apartheid laws, was an aberration in our separate and unequal society.

This ailing black man was barred from whites’ only buses and hospitals, both amenities far better than anything black South Africans were permitted to use. His fragility, caused by decades of deprivation under successive apartheid governments, encapsulates the suffering of millions under the apartheid regime. Those who accuse Israel of being an apartheid state belittle this man’s suffering.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) defines any comparison between Nazi Germany and Israel as anti-Semitism. Anti-Semites attempt to bypass that by making false comparisons between apartheid South Africa and Israel. This rhetoric is designed to smear Israel as a ‘racist’ country and is yet another attempt to delegitimise the Jewish state.

But they fail to grasp that accusing Israel of being racist is not only wrong but also a form of anti-Semitism under the IHRA definition.

This libel stems from the hate-fest that was the 2001 UN ‘anti-racism’ conference, held in Durban. This conference birthed not only the insidious Boycott Disinvest Sanctions campaign but also the unholy concept that being anti-Israel is a requisite for proclaiming anti-racist credentials.

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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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