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Thursday, January 31, 2019

01/31 Links Pt2: Ben Shapiro: Hijacking Holocaust Remembrance Day; An amnesty for Paliwood; Excavating The WaPo’s Narrative on the Israel-Islamist Conflict

From Ian:
Ben Shapiro: Hijacking Holocaust Remembrance Day
The same holds true for Linda Sarsour, co-chair of the Women’s March. Sarsour is a supporter of the anti-Semitic boycott against Israel. In 2012, she tweeted, “nothing is creepier than Zionism,” and has publicly defended radical Jew-hater Louis Farrakhan. She has stated that support of Israel cannot coincide with feminism. Yet she, too, sent out a Holocaust Remembrance missive — this one curiously missing any mention of the Jews. “May the memories of those who perished inspire us to love and protect one another. May we never forget history so that we may never repeat it,” she tweeted. “May they rest in an eternal peace knowing that we will fight for each other no matter the consequences.”

Again, a message just vague enough with which to virtue-signal — all without ever having to acknowledge the real-life anti-Semitism in which Sarsour herself has engaged.

Her tweet is a convenient way of omitting the actual message of the Holocaust: first, that Jews must never again be dehumanized and murdered for political purposes; second, that anti-Semitism is not merely a subset of bigotry, but its own poisonous brand; and third, that mass murder is possible when purportedly civilized people forget the first two lessons. And yet, thanks to a deliberate campaign to obfuscate those first two lessons, enemies of the Jewish people can hijack Holocaust Remembrance Day to use as a political club.

One time, the Lubavitcher Rebbe was asked if the Holocaust could ever happen again. “Morgen in der fruh,” he answered. “Tomorrow morning.”

In a world in which Iran routinely threatens Israel’s Jews with annihilation, in which the Palestinian Authority and Hamas unite to teach their children about the eventual hope of a Judenrein Palestine, in which Jews across Europe live under the possibility of the knife, the Holocaust must be remembered. Obscuring it with platitudinous statements uttered by anti-Semites isn’t just disgusting, it’s dangerous.
Amnesty: Israel using antisemitism to whitewash its war crimes
Israeli ministers have accused Amnesty International of antisemitism to divert public attention away from the government’s “war crimes” against Palestinians in the West Bank, the group said on Wednesday.

It hit back at the right-wing reaction to its report on Israel’s tourism industry over the pre-1967 lines called “Destination: Occupation,” which it published on Tuesday.

The report called on the four major digital booking sites – Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia and TripAdvisor – to boycott hotels, rentals and tourism sites over the pre-1967 lines. This includes Jewish sites in Jerusalem’s Old City, with its Western Wall and the Temple Mount, which are the holiest sites in Judaism.

Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan tweeted Tuesday that Amnesty has become a leader in the antisemitic #BDS campaign and that its report was an “outrageous attempt to distort facts, deny Jewish heritage & delegitimize Israel.”

Emotions are particularly on the issue among Israeli politicians in light of the anticipated publication this winter of a blacklist of companies doing business with Israel over the pre-1967 lines, which the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is expected to publish later this month.

Emotions are particularly high on the issue among Israeli politicians, in light of the anticipated publication this winter of a blacklist of companies doing business with Israel over the pre-1967 lines, which the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is expected to publish later this month.

The next day Amnesty said that ministers, such as Erdan, are trying to “silence reports of Israel’s war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

To use the charge of antisemitism in the context of the report is “blatant incitement based on lies, deceptions and distortions that are easy to refute and are intended to divert the discussion from the subject at hand, which is, war crimes and human rights violations against Palestinians in the occupied territories,” Amnesty stated.
An amnesty for Paliwood
What grounds are there to believe this is the fakest of fake news?

Although not stated explicitly by Amnesty International we are supposed to believe the boy in the photograph is bravely putting his body at risk to stop a home demolition.

Check out the bulldozer driver in the enlarged image. Does he look like an IDF driver? IDF uniform is olive-green. This driver appears to be wearing a shirt with a distinct blue stripe. If he was demolishing a building in Palestinian territory wouldn’t he for his own safety be wearing his helmet?

Check out the bulldozer. It is clearly not an IDF bulldozer. It is completely unarmoured and painted bright yellow not grey or khaki.

So maybe it is a civilian bulldozer? Is the boy in danger or not?

With photography distance relationships can be quite deceptive. Long lenses compress distance. Either way it looks as if he is nowhere near the path of the bulldozer. He has been placed there by the photographer for a good angle. Or did you think it was his idea to find a chair and a flag?



Remembering Frank Blaichman, a Jewish Partisan Hero
Born in the Polish town of Kamionka in 1922, Frank Blaichman died last month in his Manhattan home. In 1942, three years after the start of the Nazi occupation, Blaichman fled Kamionka for the forests, where he found fellow Jews eager to fight back against the Third Reich. Neil Genzlinger writes:

[Blaichman soon] organized a defense force, though at first its main weapon was illusion created with pitchforks. “We broke off all the teeth, left one tooth on, and put a strap on the shoulder,” he said in [his] oral history. “From far away it looked like a rifle.”

Illusion of a sort also helped them acquire real weapons in the winter of 1942-43. His group learned of a farmer who had a stash of guns. He and another man went to see the farmer and convinced him that they were Russian paratroopers under orders to establish a resistance unit to battle the Germans. The ruse worked. “When we headed back to the forest, we had eight weapons,” Mr. Blaichman wrote. “Finally we could defend ourselves.”

The group grew more sophisticated and better armed, and Blaichman eventually commanded more than 100 armed Jewish partisans. His group linked up with other Jewish partisans, as well as groups like the [Polish] Communist partisan force Armia Ludowa, and spent the war disrupting German supply lines and communications and ferreting out Poles who were collaborating with the Nazis.
An Australian Gold-Rush Town and Its Synagogue
In the 1850s, when prospectors were flocking to California, Australia experienced a gold rush of its own, turning Ballarat, located some 70 miles inland from Melbourne, into a boomtown. No small number of Jews were among Ballarat’s new residents, and by 1861 the city had a lavish synagogue, which still holds services today. Mark Pinsky writes:

On the whole, the Jews who streamed into Ballarat for the gold rush in the 1850s and 1860s were more likely to supply the shovels than to wield them. Yet there were some Jewish miners among the shopkeepers, tradesmen, and gold buyers. Two years after the initial find [in 1851], the first service was held in a hotel. A local newspaper observed, approvingly, that the fact that “the Children of Israel had made such an investment in Ballarat was by no means the least significant ‘sign of the times’ upon the great western goldfield.” According to [a book on the history of the synagogue], the cantor at High Holiday services on October 11, 1853, a native of Lemberg, [led services] in the traditional red shirt and high boots of a gold-mining “digger.” . . .

The synagogue, the oldest on the Australian mainland, . . . built to seat 350, is a rectangular box laid out in traditional Orthodox style, with the bimah in the center of the room, facing the ark on the front wall. There are numerous clues to the congregation’s vintage. Flanking the ark are two gold-leaf tablets honoring Queen Victoria’s 1887 jubilee, in Hebrew and in English. Other tablets memorialize members who were killed in the two world wars. A stained-glass window above the ark, said to have been taken from an Irish mansion, is thought to date from the time of Elizabeth I. . . .

When the gold played out, many Jews stayed in Ballarat and helped build the young congregation. At its peak in the 1870s and 1880s, membership included 300 men, who may have represented 1,000 family members and required expansion of the women’s gallery. . . .
Documentary on sex therapist Dr. Ruth one of snowy Sundance’s hottest films
On line for the world premiere of “Ask Dr. Ruth” at the Sundance Film Festival, I bumped into my slightly younger friend Paul from London. “I gotta admit, I’m excited for this,” I told him. And he had something to admit, too: Until reading about the film in the program, he’d never heard of sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

“She was everywhere in the 1980s and ’90s in America, especially New York,” I said. “This is going to be great.”

The documentary (a love letter, really, from director Ryan White) opens with the 90-year-old, German-born woman quizzing her newly installed Alexa about her own biography, and then races into a montage of “greatest hits” from her television appearances. When there was finally a breath, I turned to my friend. With a big grin, he whispered “I get it.”

With last year’s tremendous financial successes “RBG” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” it’s a sure bet that “Ask Dr. Ruth” will be a substantial hit. It’s a sort of blend of the two: the story of a tenacious and trailblazing Jewish woman and a nostalgic voice from a better era of television. And more so than either of those subjects, Dr. Ruth is (and always has been) a firecracker wit and master communicator.

Many people, I’m sure, don’t know her life story. She didn’t even get her doctorate from Columbia University (and become Dr. Ruth) until she was 42. At that point she was already on to her third husband after being, for a time, a single mother. Prior to New York she lived in Paris and Israel, and grew up in an orphanage in Switzerland during the war. She left Frankfurt on a Kindertransport at the age of 10.
WATCH: Ilhan Omar Suggests Israel Should Not Be Allowed To Exist As Jewish State, Suggests Not A 'Democracy'
Omar made the shocking remarks during a Tuesday interview on Yahoo News' "Through Her Eyes" with Zainab Salbi.

"I want to talk about Israel because it has been a point of contention," Salbi said. "How can America work productively towards a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians in your opinion?"

"Most of the things that have always been aggravating to me is that we have had a policy that makes one superior to the other and we mask it with a conversation that's about justice and a two-state solution when you have policies that clearly prioritize one over the other," Omar responded.

When pressed for examples, Omar responded: "Our relationship, really with the Israeli government and the Israeli state."

"And so when I see Israel institute, um, law that recognizes it as a Jewish state and does not recognize, um, the other religions that are living in it and we still uphold it as a democracy in the Middle East, I almost chuckle because I know that if, you know, we, we, we, we see that in any other society we would criticize it."

"We would call it out," Omar continued. "We do that to Iran."


WATCH: Ocasio-Cortez Caught Lying About Her Comments On Israel Occupying Palestine
Ocasio-Cortez responded by doing what she does best, playing the victim card.

"Republicans are so scared of me that they’re faking videos and presenting them as real on Facebook because they can’t deal with reality anymore," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "Here’s one bonafide truth: Election Day is November 6th."

The nine-day gap between The Daily Wire's original report on Ocasio-Cortez and Stuckey's parody video is key. The news cycle was saturated with Ocasio-Cortez's original, undoctored comments.


It's also important to note that Ocasio-Cortez never accused Firing Line of "doctoring" the original interview. She accused "Republicans" of "faking videos and presenting them as real," which also was not true, after the Stuckey parody video.

Her claim that "everyone" just saw "the doctored version instead of the actual exchange" is completely false and ignores the timeline of events and the overwhelming amount of media coverage on her remarks.
House Foreign Affairs Chair Criticizes Tlaib for Planned Trip to the West Bank
Rep. Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called out Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) for her plan to lead a congressional delegation to the West Bank.

"Instead of her talking about things, she’s new here, she ought to listen and learn and open her mind and then come to some conclusions," Engel told Al-Monitor. "If you’re going to be close-minded and have your views, no one’s going to change her views. But I would hope that once you’re elected to Congress, you would at least care to see the other side of the coin."

Tlaib intended her trip as an alternative to an AIPAC-organized trip for freshmen members of Congress to see Israel. To organize her opposition trip, Tlaib would need to get approval from the House speaker or the leader of a committee on which they sit. Engel and Tlaib do not sit on the same committees.

"I want us to see that segregation [between Israelis and Palestinians] and how that has really harmed us being able to achieve real peace in that region," Tlaib told the Intercept before she took office. "I don’t think AIPAC provides a real, fair lens into this issue."
House Democrats Defend Tlaib, Omar Amid Antisemitic Accusations
Despite antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric that includes support for the BDS movement from freshmen Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), House Democratic leadership has come to their defense.

“Clearly, I condemn antisemitism,” said House Majority leader Steny Hoyer on Tuesday. “I don’t know that I draw the conclusion, however, that those attacking those two members are correct that they are antisemitic. I don’t accept that premise.”

Unlike Hoyer, House Democratic Caucus chairman Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) sidestepped the antisemitic and anti-Israel issues revolving around the congresswomen at issue: “I’ve found those two new freshmen members to be thoughtful colleagues on a wide variety of issues.”

The Daily Caller reported on Tuesday that Tlaib belongs to a Facebook group called “Palestinian-American Congress” that consists of antisemitic videos and other posts. Maher Abdel-qader, a crucial fundraiser for Tlaib’s congressional bid, posted a video last year questioning historical facts related to the Holocaust in addition to Jewish ties to Israel. The video calls Jews “satanic.”

“Research the truth about the Holocaust, and you’ll definitely start to question what you thought you knew,” said the video’s narrator.

On her first day in office, Tlaib displayed a map with a note posted over Israel that reads “Palestine.” Four days later, she attacked Republican lawmakers and opponents of the anti-Israel BDS movement by saying “they forgot what country they represent.”
Tlaib Denies Knowing Supporter Who Called Israel ‘Terrorist Entity’
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) responded to backlash over taking a photo this month with an activist who has called Israel a “terrorist entity” and said its founding was a “crime.”

The congresswoman was photographed with Abbas Hamideh, who has repeatedly expressed support for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, at her swearing-in ceremony in Detroit on Jan. 12.

The Anti-Defamation League is among those who have called for Tlaib to “clarify this attendance and denounce his antisemitism.”

“No matter your political persuasion, all leaders—and Americans—need to unequivocally speak out against antisemitism and hate,” posted ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt in a Twitter thread. “That especially goes for members of Congress.”

“Days ago, @RashidaTlaib was photographed at an event with Abbas Hamideh, a man who has praised terrorist groups Hamas & Hezbollah and equated Zionists with Nazis,” he added. “We ask her to clarify his attendance and denounce his antisemitism.”

Tlaib told The Detroit Free Press last week, “A photo does not mean I agree with anything someone says. It is obvious this man thrives on media attention from his recent posts. It’s unfortunate that he was successful. I do not agree with the statements brought to my attention.”

But Hamideh told The Daily Caller last week that he became acquainted with Tlaib during her congressional campaign, but they don’t have a “close relationship.”
Lib Dems Accept David 'The Jews' Ward Back Into Party
David ‘The Jews’ Ward has been accepted back into the Liberal Democrats, after he was finally sacked in 2017 for his “deeply offensive and antisemitic” comments. Despite this, Ward has in recent months been campaigning for the party.

Previously the Lib Dems refused to kick him out when he said he would fire rockets at Israel, when he mocked the #JeSuisJuif hashtag at the time of the Kosher supermarket murders, ranted about “the Jews” on Holocaust Memorial Day, compared Israel-Palestine to the Holocaust, and attacked the Home Affairs inquiry on anti-Semitism.

It was only after Ward blamed the west for the murder of PC Keith Palmer, and wrote a 15,000 word thesis on “the influence of the Israeli lobby on the British political system” that he was finally booted out. Given the Lib Dem’s refusal to crack down on him for years on end, perhaps it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that they let their odious former MP back in…
Uri Geller says he will use 'telepathic powers' to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming PM
Celebrity psychic Uri Geller, famous for his spoon-bending and mind-reading antics, has said he will use his “telepathic powers” to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister.

The Israeli-born psychic, who lives in a mansion in Berkshire, was speaking on a panel with Roseanne Barr, at an event chaired by American rabbi, Shmuley Boteach.

In answer to a question about the Labour Party leader, Mr Geller told the Jerusalem audience: “I have no problem in saying he is an antisemite.

“God forbid if he takes control.”

Mr Geller was asked by Rabbi Boteach if he thought it would damage his celebrity status if he spoke out by calling Mr Corbyn an antisemite.

Mr Geller said: “I have charisma, if I said it, I would say it in the right way. I would have to say it live on TV in Britain and feel the Jewish people looking at me.”
Pushing Aside Jewish Concerns About BDS
January saw the BDS-induced antisemitism crisis within the Women’s March reach its peak and a newly elected BDS supporter appointed to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In both cases, Jewish concerns were pushed aside, fringe Jewish support was manufactured, and Israel accused of fear-mongering and conspiracies to create antisemitism. This pattern replicates that of the British Labour Party. Similar antisemitism and shallow moralizing in Ireland have pushed a BDS bill forward, at the risk of EU and US sanctions. At the same time, the significant drop in Women’s March support suggests that Americans will not embrace antisemites as readily as Britons, even in the guise of anti-Zionism and BDS.

The focus of BDS activity in January was centered on the Women’s March, its leaders, and their relationship with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. After an exposé that revealed how a small cadre of BDS supporters had taken over the march, attention quickly focused on their explicit support for the Nation of Islam. In the latter part of 2018 a public relations crisis ensued and March leaders responded by rejecting critics and accusing them, among other things, of “tearing down” black leaders.

To deflect criticism the Women’s March organizers recruited a small cadre of progressive Jews, as well as fringe rabbis, who explicitly refrained from comment regarding antisemitism. This is similar to the response of the British Labour Party, which after exposure of its antisemitism crises formed its own “Jewish” groups that then proceeded to attack Labour’s critics.

In response, one of the original organizers of the March stated, “Linda Sarsour is an antisemite and even when she is apologizing to the Jewish community on the one hand, she is condemning it on the other. She can’t help it. This is who she is and as long as the five board members are in power you will continue to see these sharp divisions they themselves foster.”

But prior to the march a number of high profile sponsors quietly withdrew support, including the Democratic Party and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Local marches also removed their affiliations from the national organization or canceled their public activities, with many specifically citing the antisemitism crisis. Turnout at the March in Washington, DC was far lower than previous years.
Exposed: Campus ‘Palestinian Youth Movement’ Promotes Terrorism, Tied to Terror Groups
The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), an activist organization which has gained prominence on US campuses in recent years, and especially on those of the University of California, has been promoting acts of terrorism against Israel and has associated itself with US-designated terror organizations, according to an extensive new report on the organization.

PYM, a political, international organization, has been exposed as an organization that justifies terror attacks and supports members of US-designated terror organizations such as Ghassan Kanafani, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Khader Adnan, a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

PYM has also used its social media accounts and conventions to endorse violence, while PYM-U.S.A. collaborates with terror-affiliated organizations in the US, such as the PFLP-affiliated Addameer and Samidoun.
Open Support of Terrorism

An extensive report by a monitoring group on PYM’s activities in the US found that in July 2018, the Critical Refugee Studies Collective, supported by the University of California, awarded a grant to PYM to help fund a three-day conference in San Francisco commemorating “70 years since the Nakba.”
State Department Failed to Mobilize Against Irish Effort to Boycott Israel
As the State Department sat on the sidelines, the Irish BDS effort has passed critical procedural hurdles.

"The State Department barely went through the motions of pressuring the Irish, even though this is a law that has enormous consequences for American citizens and American companies, and that's before you get to the consequences it has for our Israeli allies," according to one senior congressional official familiar with the situation. "Maybe they would have still lost if they actually put some effort into it but we'll never know. It's exasperating how they can't do even basic things right."

State Department officials, when pressed, would not comment on what happened behind-the-scenes, only telling the Free Beacon the administration opposes the BDS movement.

"The Trump administration's strong opposition to boycotts, divestiture and sanctions of the State of Israel is well known," State Department Spokesman Robert Palladino told the Free Beacon.

Some in the American pro-Israel community also were surprised to see that State Department stand on the sidelines, particularly in light of its efforts in 2018 to all but ensure the BDS legislation died.

"In light of their previous efforts and the administration's position on BDS, I was surprised to learn that the State Department did not engage with the Irish on this issue," said one senior official with a major pro-Israel organization who was not authorized to speak on record about the matter. "I imagine that when the secretary learns his staff dropped the ball here he'll be very displeased."
New York Times News Article Whitewashes BDS Movement
My point here is different: it relates to the “aims” of the BDS movement. Its official website lists as one of its goals the “return” of “more than 7.25 million Palestinian refugees” to “their homes” — not in the “West Bank,” but in the land of Israel that was established in 1948. This isn’t so much a “right of return” as a foreign invasion, because the vast majority of these “refugees” are children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who left during the War of Independence or at other points. Such an invasion would effectively eradicate and eliminate Israel as a Jewish state. No government elected by Israel’s current citizenry would allow it.

BDS, in other words, isn’t only about the “occupation” of the West Bank, but about the existence of Jews in Israel. Arabs have been boycotting Jews in the land of Israel since before the state even existed, and certainly since before the 1967 war in which Israel recaptured parts of Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria that had been occupied by Jordan.

The misleading description in the news article comes after a series of recent pro-BDS moves by the Times, including an official Times staff editorial critical of steps to counter the movement, a command by the Times news columns that readers “celebrate” the election of a BDS-supporting congresswoman, and op-ed columns by two regular Times columnists, Michelle Alexander and Michelle Goldberg, who are supporters of BDS.
Excavating The Washington Post’s Narrative on the Israel-Islamist Conflict
In sum: the conflict is less about “land” than it is about Palestinian denial of Jewish history and rights. And this too might explain why some anonymous Palestinian officials are objecting to a historical dig that will likely unearth more evidence of the latter.

Yet, somehow—in an article that ran more than one thousand words—The Post failed to address the obvious. Rather, the newspaper seems more comfortable embracing, if implicitly, the narrative that the conflict is merely territorial; that the lack of a Palestinian state is its casus belli.

Elsewhere in the report, The Post uncritically quotes two NGOs, Emek Shaveh and the Wadi Hilweh Information Center, both of which oppose the archaeological digs. However, Emek Shaveh “promotes distorted facts and unsubstantiated positions that promote the Palestinian narrative of victimization and sole Israeli aggression,” according to NGO Monitor, an organization that monitors non-governmental groups.

NGO Monitor also noted that Emek Shaveh is almost entirely reliant on foreign funding—much of it from governments and organizations that are hypercritical of Israel. NGO Monitor’s profile on the organization highlighted that Emek Shaveh “utilizes highly biased and politicized rhetoric” and routinely accuses Israel of seeking “to demolish Palestinian village on ‘archaeological’ grounds.” Outrageously, in a 2014 interview with +972 Magazine, Emek Shaveh officials even compared Israeli archaeological digs to the terror tunnels used by Hamas to kidnap and murder Israelis. This record of bias and politicization, however, goes unmentioned by The Post. By contrast, the newspaper sneeringly describes—without explanation—the City of David Foundation as “nationalist.”

Archaeological digs are about uncovering history and truth—not narrative. It is no wonder that those who deny the Jewish people’s connection to the land would find them objectionable and inconvenient. The Washington Post, however, should take a cue from the archaeologists and dig deeper.
BBC News Eurovision BDS report follows the usual template
Research carried out in the UK shows “a clear link between antisemitism and hostility towards Israel, finding that a majority of people in the UK who support boycotts or regard Israel as an apartheid state hold anti-Jewish views.”

The survey:
“…sought to examine the relationship between anti-Jewish sentiment and a belief that Israel should be boycotted and is an apartheid state – two of the central, interrelated claims of the country’s critics in the UK. […]

“A relationship exists between British people’s agreement with each of the two key contentions and their predisposition towards anti-Jewish sentiment – as one scale increases, so does the other,” write the authors, Dr. Jonathan Boyd, executive director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, and Dr. David Graham, its senior research fellow. […]

The correlation between anti-Jewish sentiment and support for BDS was stronger than the belief that Israel is an apartheid state and bigotry against Jews, although the latter correlation is “clearly evident”.”

Among the public purposes set out by the Royal Charter and Agreement that are the constitutional basis for the BBC are the provision of “accurate and impartial news” and “learning for people of all ages”.

As long as the BBC continues to unquestioningly amplify politically motivated delegitimisation such as the ‘apartheid’ smear and to report stories relating to the anti-Israel BDS campaign without providing audiences with the full range of information concerning the aims of that political campaign, it not only neglects those public purposes but, as the above research shows, opts out of playing a part in tackling anti-Jewish racism in the UK.
BBC News’ account of TIPH story sidesteps violent incidents
The BBC’s report did not adequately clarify to audiences the one-sided nature of the TIPH’s mandate. As Professor Eugene Kontorovich notes:

“The anti-Israel bias of TIPH is built into its mandate, which tasked organization members with the one-sided mission of “promoting by their presence a feeling of security” for Palestinians in Hebron. Protecting Jews from constant terrorist attacks is not part of their job description.”

Nowhere in the BBC’s report was there any mention of the incidents involving TIPH personnel which took place last year – the assault of an Israeli child by a Swiss member of the group and the slashing of the tyres of an Israeli owned vehicle by an Italian member. As the Jerusalem Post notes, those incidents were a factor in the call to review the renewal of the TIPH mandate.

Predictably the report erased from its section on the background of Hebron all mention of the city’s Jewish history, including the fact that Jews lived there uninterrupted for hundreds of years until the 1929 massacre. Readers did however see a dubious ‘religious importance’ rating.
Brooklyn Police Arrest Two Suspects on Hate Crimes Charges After Brutal Beating of Crown Heights Jewish Man
Police in Brooklyn have arrested two men and are searching for a third in connection with a brutal assault on an Orthodox Jewish man early on Wednesday morning.

18-year-old Navar Walters, 20-year-old Teshon Bannister and an as yet unidentified third man are accused of punching and kicking the 51-year-old victim in the Crown Heights neighborhood.

Walters and Bannister were charged later on Wednesday by police with assault as a hate crime. The victim was taken to NYU Langone Hospital, where he was treated for minor injuries.

Wednesday’s attack was the latest in a series of alarming assaults on members of the Orthodox Jewish community in Crown Heights over the last three months.

“Some 10 people were violently attacked in the last 60 days alone,” noted Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, who heads the Crown Heights-based “Jewish Future Alliance,” in a statement on Wednesday.

Behrman said his group condemned “in the strongest possible terms these type of cowardly attacks on innocent civilians, and we call on the NYPD to drastically increase police presence throughout the community.”

Behrman continued: “We ask what is going wrong in Crown Heights, when innocent Jews are being beaten in the streets in 2019? Is there an atmosphere that is encouraging violence or antisemitism? And, an equally important question, where is the public outrage? Indeed, why isn’t this front page headlines?”
MEMRI: Article On Egyptian Website: There Is No Evidence The Holocaust Happened
On the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Wasim 'Afifi, a columnist on the Egyptian news portal Elmwatin.com, published an article in which he listed "five reasons that caused the Arab world to reject the veracity of the Holocaust." He stated that the media inflated the dimensions of the Holocaust as part of a conspiracy by Russia, which wanted to blacken Germany's image, and the West, which wanted to establish a state for the Jews in Palestine. Auschwitz, he added, was not a concentration camp but rather a factory for manufacturing pesticides, and the crematoria were meant for burning the bodies of typhus victims. The world's misguided ideas about Auschwitz are a result of propaganda by Russia, which controlled the camp and manufactured fake evidence there after the war. Also according to 'Afifi, calculations prove that the Germans cannot have exterminated six million Jews, nor is it possible that their wealth was confiscated, considering that they now possess "the greatest wealth in the world." He claimed further that no official documents prove that the Nazis had a policy of exterminating the Jews. The German plan, he says, was to create a Jewish homeland in Madagascar, but "technical difficulties" and the need for working hands prompted them to use the Jews as laborers instead.

The following are excerpts from the article:
"There are five main reasons why the Arab world is waving the banner of refusal to accept the Holocaust as an historic fact. The most obvious of these is the claim that six million Jews were exterminated. This number is greatly exaggerated; according to European statistics, before World War II the total number of Jews in Europe was 6.5 million. This means that in the Holocaust, nearly all Europe's Jews were killed. This contradicts other numbers from immigration departments in Europe, according to which between 1933 and 1945, 1.5 million Jews emigrated to Britain, Sweden, Spain, Australia, China, India, Palestine, and the U.S. According to German government statistics, by 1939, 400,000 of Germany's 600,000 Jews had emigrated. Likewise, 480,000 Jews emigrated from Austria and Czechoslovakia, as part of the plan to settle Jews in Madagascar, but they ended up in other countries. Their property was not confiscated – otherwise, the Jews would not today have the greatest wealth in the world. Other numbers show that over two million Jews immigrated to the USSR.

"Historians point out that in 1938, there were 16.5 million Jews in the world, and that a decade later, that is, in 1948, there were 18.5 million Jews in the world. Assuming for the sake of argument that six million Jews were annihilated during World War II, it is inconceivable that the remaining 10 million reproduced at such a rate as to become 18 million a decade later. This is contrary to the laws of statistics, and to the human population growth [rate].
Dumbest Holocaust denial ever (NSFW)
Meet Raspect, the rapper who made his name campaigning against racism. In this video he explains to us why he "thinks" the Holocaust didn't happen. You have to see it to believe it.


ISIS supporter planned attack on Ohio synagogue
A man was indicted on a federal hate crime charge for planning a mass shooting at a synagogue in Ohio, the Associated Press reported on January 30.

Damon Joseph, 21 from a suburb of Toledo, was partly inspired by the deadly attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Joseph is additionally charged with trying to provide material support to ISIS.

Joseph did not pose an immediate threat to the public, according to the investigators. However, he spent months talking about and planning for an attack. He was under investigation for several months by the FBI, and was arrested after receiving two AR-15 rifles from an undercover agent.

Court documents revealed that Joseph tried to choose which synagogue to attack based on "which one will have the most people, what time and what day. Go big or go home."

“I admire what the guy did with the shooting,” he said of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter.

Robert Bowers was accused of storming into the Tree of Life temple in Squirrel Hill, the heart of Pittsburgh's close-knit Jewish community, yelling "all Jews must die" as he opened fire on members of three congregations holding Shabbat services there on Saturday morning.
French Jewish Students Take Fight to Antisemitic ‘Comedian’ Dieudonné With Vocal Protest Outside Paris Show
A group of French Jewish students vocally chastised fans of the antisemitic “comedian” Dieudonné M’bala M’bala as they arrived at one of his shows at a Paris theater on Wednesday night.

About thirty members of the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF) and activist group SOS Racisme distributed leaflets with images of the Nazi death camps and the faces of Holocaust victims outside the theater in Chatillon, in the southwest of the French capital. Showgoers were repeatedly asked whether they “find it funny to attend a show by a Holocaust denier” as they filed into the theater.

Despite local police preventing the Jewish activists for entering the theater, they attempted to disrupt the performance by loudly broadcasting audio of the names of Jewish children murdered by the Nazis from a PA system parked in a van across the street. Once Dieudonné began his one-man act, the activists changed the soundtrack, pounding those inside the theater with a selection of heavy metal tracks played at full volume.

UEJF chair Sacha Ghozlan told the French news agency AFP, “Dieudonné spreads racism, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.”

Ghozlan continued: “He denies the existence of the gas chambers and feeds his audience with rage and anger.”


European court backs Germany on British bishop’s Holocaust denial conviction
The European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday that Germany was within its rights to convict British bishop Richard Williamson of Holocaust denial.

Williamson, 78, sparked an outcry in 2009 by denying that the Nazis used gas chambers during the systematic murder of six million Jews during World War II.

His lawyers tried to argue he should not had been convicted because the comment was made during a television interview broadcast in Sweden, where Holocaust denial is not illegal.

But the interview was recorded in Germany, where it is a criminal offense to dispute the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis.

Williamson was convicted of incitement to hatred and ordered to pay a 12,000-euro fine, which was reduced to 1,800 euros ($2,100) in 2013 after a series of legal challenges.

The European court said it found no reason to disagree with the German ruling that Williamson’s “denial and downplaying of the genocide perpetrated against the Jews had disparaged the dignity of the Jewish victims”.

It pointed out that Williamson knew his comments were illegal in Germany, and confirmed that since the interview was recorded there it was legal to prosecute the case in the country.
Israel Aerospace Industries to Supply India With $93 Million Worth of Surface-to-Air Missiles
Israeli government-owned defense contractor Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI) has entered into $93 million in agreements to provide India with naval medium-range surface-to-air missile (MRSAM) systems, IAI announced Wednesday. The contracts were entered into with the Indian Navy and Bombay-listed government-owned company Cochin Shipyard Ltd.

In October, IAI signed a $777 million contract with Indian state-owned company Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) to supply it with long-range surface-to-air defense missiles and missile defense systems.

To date, MRSAM has produced more than $6 billion in sales, according to IAI statements.

Israel is the third largest arms supplier to India, according to a 2017 arms transfer report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Between 2013 and 2017, India made up 49 percent of Israel’s arms exports, the report showed.

Founded in 1953, IAI is Israel’s largest aerospace and defense company. The company develops, manufactures, and supplies systems including anti-missile systems, unmanned and robotic systems, and intelligence and cybersecurity systems.
Mellanox 2018 revenue tops $1 billion for first time in firm’s history
Mellanox Technologies Ltd., a maker of high-speed servers and storage switching solutions, said late Wednesday that revenues for 2018 crossed the $1 billion mark for the first time in the firm’s history, as clients demand higher speeds for their cloud platforms, AI computations and data centers.

The record results come amid reports of US giants bidding to acquire the Yokne’am, Israel-based firm. Mellanox shares surged 7.2 percent on the Nasdaq on Wednesday after reports in the Hebrew-language press said US tech giant Intel Corp., a Mellanox competitor and client, made a bid to acquire the firm for $5 billion to $6 billion, a premium to its current market price. Microsoft, a Mellanox client, and US tech firm Xilinx Inc. are also reportedly in the running to buy the firm.

On Thursday, the Calcalist financial website, which broke the news about Intel’s bid on Wednesday saying the firm had made a $6 billion cash and stock offer, reported that Intel has made it to the final stages of the bidding process. Intel and Mellanox have declined to comment on the press reports.

Mellanox shares have advanced some 35% in the past 12 months, bringing its market value to $4.7 billion, as of end of day Wednesday.
Israeli Companies Bagged a Fifth of Worldwide Venture Capital Investments in 2018
Israeli cybersecurity firms bagged a fifth of all venture capital investments in the domain in 2018, according to a new report. Only US firms topped Israeli firms in terms of overall cybersecurity investments, according to the report by Start-Up Nation Central (SNC), a Tel Aviv-based non-profit organization managing a database of Israeli tech companies. 450 cybersecurity firms currently operate in Israel, the report published Monday states.

Exports of cybersecurity technologies and products from Israel reached $5 billion, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday. Israel is set on cutting red tape to make it easier to set up new companies in the domain, he stated. 60 new cybersecurity companies were founded in the country in 2018, according to the report by SNC, a lower number than in previous years.

Netanyahu spoke at a cybersecurity conference in Tel Aviv Tuesday. Called CyberTech, the two-day event attracts private companies, nonprofit and governmental entities from around 80 countries. The event was also attended by Saulius Skvernelis, Prime Minister of the Republic of Lithuania, formerly the country’s Minister of the Interior.

Ahead of the conference, Israel and Lithuania signed a declaration of intent to increase cybersecurity cooperation on Monday, and the following day Skvernelis met with Netanyahu in Jerusalem to discuss more extensive collaboration between the two countries. Israeli Minister of Economy and Industry Eli Cohen and Lithuanian Minister of Economy and Innovation Virginijus Sinkevicius also participated in the meeting.

Other speakers at CyberTech included Yigal Unna, director general of the Israel National Cyber Directorate; Aharon Aharon, head of the Israel Innovation Authority; Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. CEO Gil Schwed, and senior executives from companies including Dell EMC, IBM, and Deloitte.

Israeli cybersecurity companies raised a record $1.19 billion in 2018, up 47 percent from 2017, according to SNC. Deal size median rose from $3.5 million to $6 million in 2018.
Rachel Riley announced as co-host of Jewish News’ Big Family Show and Expo!
Rachel Riley is the latest big name to join the line-up for Jewish News’ Big Family Show and Expo.

The countdown presenter, who has been at the forefront of fighting antisemitism online in recent months, will join Nick Ferrari to host one of the biggest communal events of the year at Allianz Park on 17 March.

A day out for the whole family, the extravaganza will feature entertainment in music, dance and magic from the main stage, while kids will be able to enjoy arts and crafts, face painting and balloon activities in a special zone. Just three days before Purim, younger visitors will be encouraged to come in fancy dress, with prizes offered for the best costumes.

More than 120 exhibitors will also be present across six zones including lifestyle, retail, and travel. Many of the community’s main organisations will have stands in the community zone, while visitors will be able to tick into shawarma, falafel, bagels and sushi in a dedicated food zone.

LBC host Nick Ferrari said: “The Jewish News’ Big Family Show & Expo is a key date in the community calendar, with an amazing entertainment, fabulous food and incredible live performance. I look forward to seeing you there!”

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Recent notable tweets

I've had a bunch of good tweets over the past day....feel free to retweet the ones you like!

First, about Amnesty:



























And other topics:








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Divorcing the Palestinians (Vic Rosenthal)


 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column


One of the favorite lines heard from Israel’s Left is that they want to “separate” from the Palestinians, or, lately, to “divorce” them. This may sound like a good idea, but it is a poor analogy. In the usual divorce, one of the former partners moves away. They don’t try to continue living in the same house.

The separation or divorce that they are talking about is the same old thing: they want Israel to withdraw from most or all of Judea and Samaria, and allow the creation of a Palestinian state. Whatever you call it, the consequences will be the same: the advancement to the next stage of Yasser Arafat’s “Phased Plan” for the destruction of Israel, and a return to what Abba Eban called “Auschwitz borders.”

The plan calls for the establishment of an “independent combatant national authority” that will control any territory “liberated” from the Zionists; then this authority will unify all the “Arab liberation movements” and ultimately coordinate attacks from a “union of confrontation countries” to complete the “liberation of all Palestinian territory.”

The phased plan, from 1974, sounds quaint today. There is no mention of Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran. Indeed, Iran – ruled by the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi – had good relations with Israel back then. It includes a gesture to Jordan, which still maintained claims on Judea and Samaria at that time. 

But the physical geography of our country and its strategic significance haven’t changed. There is still high ground overlooking our population centers from Judea and Samaria. There is still the Jordan valley, whose western slope guards our eastern border. The players have changed somewhat, and the military threats have become more sophisticated. Although the IDF has improved its capabilities, so have our enemies improved theirs. But the land is still the land. Hills are still hills; passes between them are still strategic.

The “international community,” whose will is expressed by the UN, is stuck in 1974, still wanting to reverse the outcome of the 1967 war. Maybe some of the practical reasons are different – a little less Arab oil blackmail and a little more desire to enter the Iranian market – but its hypocritical concern for the welfare of the Palestinian Arabs still hides its fundamental belief that a sovereign Jewish state should not exist.

It wasn’t always thus. Right after the First World War, the victorious Western powers for a short time were prepared to set aside a portion of the former Ottoman Empire that had already been developed by Zionist immigration, and which just happened to be the historic home of the Jewish people, for settlement by the exiled remnants of those people. This was seen as a win-win situation for everyone involved: the Zionists would get their homeland, the Europeans would (ultimately) get rid of their Jews, and the British – who would hold the Mandate for the sake of the Jews – would get a convenient place to stand to protect the flank of the Suez Canal, and maybe to build a railroad from the port of Haifa to the Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire, India.

Almost immediately, the British began reneging on their responsibilities toward the Jews, limiting Jewish immigration and encouraging local Arabs in their desire to see the whole Mandate become an Arab state. Maybe they thought an Arab state would be easier to control, or maybe they just liked the Arabs better than the Jews. Later, as the gates of Europe began closing for Jews trying to escape Hitler, their increasingly ferocious efforts to prevent Jewish immigration to Eretz Yisrael became one of the moral low points in the dark history of the period.

The 1948 War of independence and the 1967 Six Days war – a war of aggression intended to destroy the Jewish state – finally established Jewish control of the all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. The 1973 Yom Kippur war proved that even under the worst conditions, the newly expanded state was defensible.

The Arab nations were soundly defeated, but unfortunately the conflict became a proxy for the Cold War between the West and the USSR. Under the tutelage of the Soviet KGB, the Arabs developed a multi-faceted approach including terrorism, Soviet-supported diplomacy, and a sophisticated propaganda effort using revolutionary third-world rhetoric. After the Yom Kippur War, the Saudi-controlled oil weapon was deployed, and as a result the formerly apolitical (but very powerful) international corporate community quietly joined the vociferous Left in its embrace of the “Palestinian cause” (i.e., the replacement of Israel with an Arab state).

Still, after its 1982 defeat in Lebanon, Arafat’s PLO – the ideological heir of the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who collaborated with Hitler – should have faded into obscurity. But then Israel, under the guidance of the same Left that today claims to want a divorce from the Palestinians, fired a nuclear cannon into its own foot – the Oslo Accords.

Suddenly, the Phased Plan came back to life, with the creation – by Israel – of the very “Palestinian National Authority” called for in Arafat’s original plan!

Today Soviet Communism is gone, replaced by the more pragmatic and flexible (but still dangerous) Putinism, the Saudis are moderating their attacks on Israel in the hope that Israel will deal with Iran for them, and the Arab nations are in no condition to wage war. The center of anti-Zionism has moved to Tehran, from where it operates an octopus of terrorist proxies to fight the Jewish state.

But despite all the changes, what should have been settled in 1967 is still questioned today. 

The international community is still pressuring us to reverse the results of the 1967 war. And thanks to the deluded, gulled, pressured, or traitorous architects of Oslo – take your pick – we are on our way to doing that. The vicious PLO is back, ruling the Palestinian Authority. The first phase of Arafat’s plan to finally liquidate the Jewish state is complete.

There are spiritual and historical reasons that Judea and Samaria should be in Jewish hands. But whether or not they are important to you, there are also brute facts of geography: without control of the high ground of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, the state cannot be defended. We must not go back to Auschwitz borders.

I think a divorce from the Palestinians is a good idea. But I have a different property settlement in mind: we keep the house and they move out.

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01/31 Links Pt1: Palestinian Support for Two-State Solution Seen Declining; PMW: Palestinian pride – Murderers are cool!; Where Are America’s Jewish Leaders?

From Ian:
Palestinian Support for Two-State Solution Seen Declining
Among the Palestinians in recent years there has been growing interest in the idea of a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is in part linked to the growing connection between Palestinians in the West Bank and the Arab sector in Israel.

It is also related to the collective sense that the Palestinian national movement is currently at an all-time low, with growing alienation between the public and the Palestinian leaderships in the West Bank and Gaza, the lack of public belief in their ability to achieve the goal of independence, and the sidelining of the Palestinian issue from the focus of the regional and international agenda.

Consequently, there is a growing argument in the Palestinian discourse that all other strategies for realizing national objectives have been tried and failed.

Moreover, the growing support for the idea of one state is fed by internal trends. Above all, there is the collective desire to retain a relatively stable standard of living in the West Bank, together with a widespread trend toward de-ideologization and depoliticization, reflecting exhaustion after many years of violent conflict driven by revolutionary fighting slogans, which ultimately failed to achieve any Palestinian national objectives.

The lessons from the severe decline that engulfed Arab societies in the region following the Arab Spring revolutions has led to increased fear of sharing this fate.

In addition, most of the younger Palestinian generation are concerned with personal fulfillment and development, and harbor suspicion and even alienation toward the sources of authority around them, including the Palestinian leadership.

Benjamin Netanyahu and the “Strongmen”: Another Myth in the Making
In the past few months, numerous articles have appeared in the Western press about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s diplomatic outreach to “strongmen” and proponents of “illiberal nationalism.” Some have even accused him of abetting some of these leaders’ alleged anti-Semitism. Lahav Harkov explains how this narrative migrated from left-leaning Israeli publications to the diaspora press and from there to mainstream publications like the New York Times, and notes that it has been used to justify not just criticism of Netanyahu but forthright anti-Zionism. As she observes, such analyses recognize no distinctions among very different sorts of leaders, and pay little attention to diplomatic realities:

There are two elements at play in the claims of a nefarious new direction in Israel’s foreign policy: one is a pearl-clutching disgust at Netanyahu’s supposed embrace of illiberal regimes; the other concerns relations with leaders whose policies specifically impact Jews and . . . distort the memory of the Holocaust. . . . The new talk of Netanyahu and strongmen . . . conflates these two categories, [lumping] the necessary compromises of conducting international relations . . . with troubling assaults on the legacy of the Holocaust [by such figures as Hungary’s Viktor Orban].

Moreover, many analysts who lament Israel’s cozying up to strongmen ignore research showing that East European Jews feel safer from anti-Semitism than do those in the West, which may be because they perceive the greatest threat to their lives coming from Islamist violence rather than the populist right. . . . In general, it appears that East European Jews may not view their situation in the dire terms used by some of their self-appointed advocates in Israel and the West. . . .

It is, [furthermore], no defense of human-rights violators to say that Israel must sometimes hold its nose and keep up ties with [them]. As the Knesset member Avi Dichter—a Likudnik and former Shin Bet chief who could never be accused of being a bleeding heart—said before [the Philippines’ President Rodrigo] Duterte visited: “We may have to take a pill against nausea to receive him.”

But there are some too pure for such distasteful compromises. The leader of [the hard-left] Meretz party, Tamar Zandberg, wrote a letter to Netanyahu telling him not to strengthen relations with Brazil, one of the largest economies in the world, because it elected a president from the far right, months before Jair Bolsonaro even began his term. Yet Zandberg has also been photographed visiting the grave of Yasir Arafat, not a leader known for his exemplary human-rights record. And neither she, nor anyone else on the left, has called on Israel to cut ties with the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas, who wrote his dissertation denying the Holocaust, and whose regime jails people for criticizing him online or, God forbid, selling land to Jews.



Isi Leibler: Where Are America’s Jewish Leaders?
Israel is once again facing major new international military and political challenges. Yet despite our dysfunctional political system and the chaos associated with the impending elections, we have never been as militarily secure as we are today. We share a broad consensus across the nation and, allowing for minor nuances, any government elected will almost certainly maintain the broad outlines of the current security policy. These can be summed up as a desire to separate from our neighbors but an inability to do so until we have a partner for peace and can ensure our security. Alas, as of now that is not even on the horizon.

However, we need to brace ourselves because our international position is becoming increasingly fragile. The Europeans are intensifying their biased policies against us, and Britain may soon elect an outright antisemitic leader.

The continued support of the US government at this time is thus immensely important. But there are perturbing developments.

President Donald Trump has thus far been a very good friend to Israel but displays erratic tendencies and at times ignores his own advisers as exemplified recently when he announced the withdrawal of American forces from Syria. There are also unsubstantiated but disturbing hints that the American peace plan may have some unpleasant surprises that Israel may find unacceptable. At the same time, the Democratic Party’s radical and anti-Israel wing is growing, and is already threatening the favorable congressional bipartisan consensus toward Israel that has prevailed for many years.

Today, Israel’s principal supporters in the United States are the evangelical Christians, whereas the Jewish community is utterly disunited, and betraying its loyalty and obligations to the Jewish state.
Florida recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital
Florida’s state cabinet took the unusual step of recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s “eternal and undivided capital.”

It issued a proclamation to on Tuesday in a move that places it one step ahead of the Trump Administration’s stance on Israel, which recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but has not spoken of whether it supports a united or divided Jerusalem.

In explaining the move, Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis said that state governor, Republican Ron DeSantis had supported Trump’s decision to relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, when he represented Florida in Congress last year.

“We have made it clear that we stand with our closest ally in the Middle East. I too believe in standing strong with our friend and partner and ally,” said Patronis, speaking at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting in the state capital of Tallahassee.

“As a state we must continue to demonstrate our broad and deep support of our ally and economic partner by implementing pro-Israel policies,” Patornis said. “Today we declare to the world that Florida stands united with Israel.”
Arab allies gather in Jordan, potential signal to Israel and Iran
The foreign ministers of a growing alliance of Arab states gathered in Jordan on Wednesday and Thursday, with Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia participating.

The meeting sought to build consensus among Arab states on regional security issues, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on the sidelines of the meeting, according to the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad. The meeting was “positive and constructive,” according to local reports, and focused on “common Arab interests.” Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan of the UAE attended along with Sameh Shoukri of Egypt, Sabah Khaled Al-Sabah of Kuwait, Adel al-Jubeir of Saudi Arabia and Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa of Bahrain. Local reports and reports in the region, such as Kuwait’s Al-Jarida, provided scant details on what was discussed. The National in the UAE noted that there was no further information on the meeting except that it “will take place at the King Hussein Convention Centre at the Dead Sea.”

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt all cut ties with Qatar in June 2017, and relations between Qatar and these countries remain strained. Qatar has become a close ally of Turkey, and is accused by Riyadh of supporting extremism in the region. However, Kuwait and Jordan have more amicable relations with Qatar. This rift runs deep, including alleged Kuwaiti support for Qatar in a recent soccer match with the UAE that provoked anger among officials.

Al Jazeera, based in Doha, said that the meeting showed a “growing willingness to reconcile with the government of Syrian president Bashar Assad,” asserting that these countries support having Syria re-admitted to the Arab League after it was suspended in 2011. Syria’s intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk went to Egypt in December.

THE MEETING AT THE DEAD SEA comes amid other regional concerns. The US is withdrawing from Syria, but Foreign Policy has reported that it may keep troops at Al-Tanf, a desert base near the Jordanian-Iraq border. Several of the countries meeting in Jordan also fear Iran’s growing power in the region.
Seth J Frantzman: U.S. Syria policy: Get others to pick up the slack
In the last two weeks of January the US carried out 645 strikes on Islamic State. As the Department of Defense says that ISIS has lost 99.5% of its territory in Syria, Washington hopes it can get its 78 Global Coalition allies to pick up the slack as it winds up operations.

An official told The Wall Street Journal that the US hoped a “coalition of Western nations” might be able to help create a “buffer zone” between Turkey and Syrian Kurdish groups as the US withdraws.

The new reports come amid a storm that is brewing in the US. The State Department is hosting foreign ministers from the Global Coalition on February 6. The foreign ministers will meet in Washington and discuss the “important next steps in degrading ISIS’s global network.”

The US says it is determined to prevent a resurgence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, but that it is also withdrawing. The last meeting of the coalition took place in Morocco in June. Therefore this is an important meeting that comes at a crossroads in the campaign.

The Office of Director of National Intelligence released its Worldwide Threat Assessment this week as the US prepares for the next stage. The map accompanying the assessment is sobering.

It shows ISIS active across a swath of countries in the Sahara and Sahel in Africa and across the Middle East to India and East Asia. The jihadists have “expanded” their abilities to strike at US interests, the report says.
EU, Italy, Norway concerned over ouster of Hebron observers
The EU, Italy and Norway expressed their concern over Israel’s decision to oust an international observer force from Hebron.

Fearing for the safety of its observers, the World Council of Churches said it plans to also halt its mission in the West Bank city, which is one of the flash points for violence between Palestinians and Israelis.

A Palestinian girl shakes hands with a member of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) during a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision not to renew the mandate of TIPH, in Hebron January 30, 2019. Mussa Qawasma / ReutersA Palestinian girl shakes hands with a member of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) during a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision not to renew the mandate of TIPH, in Hebron January 30, 2019. Mussa Qawasma / Reuters

Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi, who is visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories this week, said he regrets Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement Sunday that Israel does not intend to renew the mandate of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH).

The mandate for the observer mission in Hebron, whichbegan in 1997, is signed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority twice a year. Its 64 observers come from five countries: Norway, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.

“We learned about this decision with regret, but we maintain our commitment,” said the minister in a press statement.

“We will discuss it also with the other states involved,” said Milanesi in a statement that was posted on the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

He met on Tuesday with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and with Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday.
Reaction to Gamliel's $250 billion compensation claim
Earlier this month, the sensationalist claim by Gila Gamliel (pictured), Israel's minister for Social Equality, that Israel will be seeking $250 billion in compensation for property and assets lost by Jews driven from eight Arab countries, caused a flurry of interest in the Israeli and western media. (Note: It is not known how Gamliel arrived at this figure, nor why she left out Lebanon and Algeria from her list of countries who owe Jews compensation). Point of No Return has been looking at international reaction to the story.

Middle East Monitor quoted Al-Wattan Voice as its source:
"The prospective American peace deal, dubbed as the “deal of the century”, is to include that $250 billion be paid by Arab states in compensation for Jewish property left behind after the creation of Israel, Al-Wattan Voice said yesterday.
Reporting Israeli media, the news site said that the occupation government had valued Jewish property in the Arab states of Libya and Tunis to be worth $50 billion, while Jewish property in the entire region to be $250 billion.
According to Al-Wattan Voice, talling the cost of losses began one and half a years ago secretly in Morocco, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, in addition to Iran."

The Russian TV channel RT balanced Jewish with Palestinian claims:
"Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority has also sought $100 billion in compensation from Israel for assets left by Arabs forced to leave the lands controlled by Israel today. Palestinians have also sought a “right of return” for the surviving refugees and their descendants — a demand that has repeatedly been dismissed by Israel. The Trump administration also seems to have taken Israel’s side on that issue, halting funding for the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) last year."

The most trenchant reaction came from Ramzy Baroud writing in Arab News. In an article titled The moral travesty of Israel seeking Arab, Iranian compensation, Baroud denied the Jewish exodus altogether:
"Contrary to what Israeli historians want us to believe, there was no mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries and Iran, but rather a massive campaign orchestrated by Zionist leaders of the time to replace the Palestine Arab population with Jewish immigrants from all over the world.
To hold Arabs and Iran responsible for this bizarre and irresponsible behavior is a transgression on the true story, in which neither Gamliel nor her ministry are interested."
Israeli orphans to face accused Brussels Jewish museum killer
Two young Israeli women will Thursday face for the first time the alleged killer of their parents when they attend his trial for the Jewish museum attack in Brussels.

The daughters of murdered Israeli couple Miriam and Emmanuel Riva will be in the Brussels courtroom with Frenchman Mehdi Nemmouche, the accused gunman in the May 24, 2014 attack.

Only 15 and 16 at the time of the shootings, the pair traveled from Tel Aviv with an aunt and uncle to testify about the couple who were married 18 years when they died.

The experience will be “extremely difficult” for Ayelet and her older sister Shira, said one of their Belgian lawyers, David Ramet.

“They will come face to face with their parents’ murderer, whom they will be able to look at, and be just meters from the weapon that killed them,” Ramet told AFP.

On display in the courtroom are the pistol used to kill the Rivas and other evidence against Nemmouche, 33, who allegedly killed two others in the anti-Semitic attack.
Israeli Stabbing Victim Confronts Palestinian Terrorist in Court: ‘You Didn’t Succeed’
An Israeli man seriously wounded in a stabbing attack in Jerusalem in December 2017 confronted the terrorist who assaulted him on Wednesday, telling him in a courtroom, “You did not succeed in doing what you wanted, because I am standing here alive and well.”

Yassin Abu al-Qara’a stabbed security guard Asher Elmalich at Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station. Police believe he committed the attack in reaction to US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Shortly before heading to the bus station, al-Qara’a composed a Facebook message reading, in part, “I sacrificed my blood for the motherland, everything for you, oh Palestine.”

Al-Qara’a concealed a kitchen knife in his coat and attempted to enter the station. Several guards, including Elmalich, became suspicious and stopped him, at which point al-Qara’a stabbed Elmalich in the chest and attempted to flee. He was subdued by the other guards and several passersby.

The Hebrew news site Walla reported that, speaking at a court hearing on al-Qara’a’s sentencing, Elmalich described the extent of his residual trauma, which he called “drastic.”

“I’m afraid to walk down the street, afraid to go to crowded places.” he said. “I look to see who’s behind me.”

Elmalich added, “I came to look Yassin in the eyes and say to him: Mr. Yassin, you didn’t succeed in doing what you wanted to do, because I am standing here alive and well.”
PreOccupiedTerritory: IDF Condemned For Shells With ‘Learn To Code’ Inside (satire)
Human rights organizations slammed Israel’s military this week upon learning that the IDF has printed on tens of thousands of small pieces of paper a phrase that Twitter has banned for its offensive capacity, and loaded the papers into bombs, artillery shells, and other projectiles for use against Hamas, Hezbollah, and other enemies.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’tselem, and several other groups leveled the criticism today, following revelations that the epithet “learn to code” now features in the weapons that the IDF will bring to bear in any conflict. spokespersons for the organizations called the move “immoral” and a “flagrant violation of norms.”

Twitter announced earlier this week it will suspend or deactivate accounts using the phrase, which rose to prominence amid news that media companies such as Buzzfeed will lay off numerous employees, a development that prompted some users to suggest the now-jobless pursue careers in computer programming, a field with greater stability and income prospects than journalism. The tech giant judged the phrase too powerful and destructive to tolerate, an assessment that the rights groups share.

“It’s pretty clear Israel has no qualms about acting inhumanely toward Palestinians and others,” stated Omar Shakir, a Human Rights Watch representative. “The only way we’ve determined that can restrain them from committing atrocities is to call public attention to their outrageous behavior. “‘Learn to code’ can only serve to destroy Palestinian self-esteem, similar to the anticipated effect it will have on ex-Buzzfeed personnel, and the world cannot stand by while Israel again inflicts such disproportionate abuse on Palestinians.”
Minister of Public Security extends ban on PA operations in east Jerusalem
Several Palestinian Authority organizations will continue to be banned from east Jerusalem.

Gilad Erdan, the Public Security and Strategic Affairs Minister, signed an extension of the order preventing the activity of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in east Jerusalem on Thursday, based on a recommendation by the Shin Bet and the Israel Police.

The order limits the activities of Orient House, a building located in east Jerusalem that served as the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1980s and 1990s. It also limits the operations of the east Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce, the Supreme Council for the Arab Tourism Industry, the Center for Palestinian Studies, the Palestinian Prisoner Club and the Ministry for Social and Statistical Studies, all of which are affiliated with the PA.

“The extension of the closure of these Palestinian institutions is a message to the Palestinian Authority and the residents of east Jerusalem that the State of Israel does not intend to relinquish in any way its sovereignty over east Jerusalem and will not allow any foothold in the capital,” Erdan said on Thursday.

He noted that the PA has recently been trying to strengthen its presence in east Jerusalem, including transferring significant amounts of funding to support activities there. Intelligence and police forces are constantly working to trace and stop these transfers.

“I will continue to strengthen Israeli sovereignty and sovereignty throughout Jerusalem, and prevent any Palestinian attempt to establish a foothold in the eastern part of the city,” Erdan said.
PMW: Palestinian pride – Murderers are cool!
Terrorist murderers are cool! That is the message from the Palestinian Authority to Palestinians. The PA continues to stress to its population that terrorists and murderers of Israelis are "heroes" by glorifying them and rewarding them with salaries.

As Palestinian Media Watch has documented, events are named in honor of the terrorist prisoners, PA and Fatah officials thank and praise them in speeches, and official PA TV broadcasts several programs about and specifically for the prisoners and visits their families.

The following two recent broadcasts on official PA TV show that the Palestinian population embraces this role modeling of murderers:
Mother to children of murderer: “Your father is a hero”
TRANSCRIPT: Terrorist prisoner Yasser Rabai'ah's wife: "I always encourage [my children] and tell them: Your father is a hero. Our homeland deserves such heroes." Terrorist prisoner Yasser Rabai'ah's daughter: " I want to say that father is one of the Palestinian heroes we are proud of." [Official PA TV, Giants of Endurance, Jan. 19, 2019] Yasser Rabai'ah – Palestinian terrorist who together with an accomplice murdered Greek Orthodox monk Tsibouktsakis Germanus in an attack on the Jerusalem-Ma'ale Adumim road on June 12, 2001.


Father of attempted suicide bomber: “All prisoners are our sons… You are a source of pride for us”
TRANSCRIPT: Father of terrorist Muhammad Sa’id Bisharat: “I want to send a message to Muhammad [Sa’id Bisharat] (i.e., terrorist, attempted suicide bombing) and to all the brothers and the loved ones, our sons, the prisoners, the sons of the Palestinian people. Not only Muhammad is my son – all the prisoners are our sons. We say to them: You are a source of pride for us. By Allah, with your endurance you have outlined the most beautiful picture in history. You are the history. You are the symbol of the Palestinian cause. You are the ones [we mean] when we say “Giants of Endurance.” [Official PA TV, Giants of Endurance, Jan. 12, 2019] Muhammad Sa'id Bisharat - Palestinian terrorist and Islamic Jihad member who attempted to carry out a suicide bombing on a bus on Aug. 2, 2001. Bisharat was prevented from boarding by the bus driver, and Israeli security forces arrested him. Bisharat is serving 18 years in prison.

IsraellyCool: Why AP’s Latest Gazan “Sob Story” Is Actually Worth Highlighting
The Associated Press has a report about a Gazan actor and playwright who can’t attend the Sundance Film Festival, where his documentary about Gaza will be showing.

It is the usual sob story, except for the fact it isn’t actually blaming lsrael!

Trapped in Gaza, star of Sundance doc misses film festival

A new documentary called “Gaza” is hitting the screens at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival this week, providing a colorful glimpse of life in the blockaded Hamas-ruled territory. But one of its main subjects, Gaza actor and playwright Ali Abu Yaseen, won’t be attending the gathering due to the very circumstances depicted in the film.

Abu Yaseen had hoped to make his first-ever trip to the U.S. to take part in the festival. But the continued closure of Gaza’s border with Egypt, and Hamas’ bureaucratic inefficiency, made it impossible for him to reach Cairo in time to receive a visa from the American Embassy needed to travel to Utah.
Why Europe Should Pull Out of the Iran Deal Now
As parties to the 2015 nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic, Germany, France, and the UK have continued to comply with its terms after the U.S. withdrawal last year. Meanwhile, Frederica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, has been an enthusiastic proponent of the deal and supporter of diplomatic and economic engagement with Tehran. Sruan Stevenson, citing Iran’s own violations of the agreement and its attempts to carry out terrorist attacks on European soil, urges European governments to follow Washington’s example:

Despite clear evidence that Iranian embassies in Europe were being used as terrorist bomb factories, EU lawmakers on July 5 of last year—less than a week after an Iranian diplomat from Vienna was arrested [for his involvement in a plot to bomb an Iranian opposition rally in France]—approved plans for the European Investment Bank to do business with the ruling theocracy in Iran, in a desperate bid to keep the 2015 nuclear deal alive. Europe’s leading appeaser, Mogherini, has been a frequent visitor to Tehran, where she pays homage to the ayatollahs, donning a headscarf to offer submission to the clerical regime’s misogyny, [and] even posing for selfies with the mullahs. Now she has decided to snub an anti-Iran conference organized by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Warsaw in mid-February.

But Mogherini’s efforts at conciliation appear to have fallen on deaf ears in Europe. It has been reported that a delegation of leading EU diplomats from France, the UK, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands had a volatile meeting earlier this month in Tehran. They told senior Iranian officials that the EU could no longer tolerate ballistic-missile tests in Iran and assassination attempts on European soil. Apparently, in an unprecedented breach of protocol, the Iranian officials stormed out of the room, slamming the door. . . .

The time is right for the EU to follow America’s example and pull the plug on the nuclear deal.
Europe set to announce plan letting Iran bypass US sanctions
Britain, France and Germany will launch a special payment mechanism Thursday that the EU hopes will help save the Iran nuclear deal by bypassing US sanctions, European sources told AFP.

The entity, to be registered in France with German governance and finance from all three countries, will allow Iran to trade with EU companies despite Washington reimposing sanctions after US President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 accord.

The three countries — the European signatories to the landmark deal that curbed Tehran’s nuclear ambitions in return for sanctions relief — are expected to issue a joint communique launching the project, which has been in preparation for months.

While the new institution, called INSTEX — short for Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges — is a project of the three governments, it will receive the formal endorsement of all 28 EU members.

The announcement may come on the sidelines of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Bucharest.
US President Donald Trump signs a Presidential Memorandum withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal from the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, on May 8, 2018. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Washington has warned the EU against trying to sidestep its sanctions on Tehran, while the Europeans — along with the deal’s other signatories Russia and China — say Iran has not broken its side of the deal and should be allowed to trade.
ODNI releases annual overview of Islamic State and al Qaeda networks
The Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released its annual “Worldwide Threat Assessment” today. The written statement accompanied oral testimony given by Director Daniel Coats to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The ODNI warns that both the Islamic State and al Qaeda maintain global networks that are far from defeated. The Islamic State still has “thousands” of fighters in Iraq and Syria alone, contradicting claims by President Trump and other administration officials that the so-called caliphate has been defeated.

The map above is the ODNI’s assessment of the areas where the Islamic State, al Qaeda and affiliated groups operate. The Islamic State and al Qaeda remain bitter rivals, often clashing in some of the areas shown. However, both have a significant global footprint.

Al Qaeda’s senior leadership and global network

Despite years of counterterrorism pressure, al Qaeda’s senior leadership remains active and in command of a widespread network.

Al Qaeda’s senior leaders (AQSL) are “strengthening the network’s global command structure and continuing to encourage attacks against the West, including the United States,” the ODNI states.

The ODNI’s map officially recognizes the presence of AQSL in Iran, as well as in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. (FDD’s Long War Journal assesses that members of AQSL have been stationed in other countries as well, including in Syria, Turkey and Yemen.)


Tehran down the sinkhole: How drought threatens Iranian stability
For the first time, Iranian officials admit that the ground around Tehran is sinking.

Slower than an earthquake, sinkholes and massive cracks can be just as destructive over long stretches of time.

A 30 year drought and excessive water pumping created a series of underground air-pockets which then implode, creating cracks or massive holes in the ground that endanger agriculture, roads and public safety, the Christian Science Monitor reported.

In the neighborhood of Yaft Abad in Tehran, residents fear poorly built buildings will collapse after water-pipes already burst and cracks appeared on several walls.

The ground is sinking under airports, oil refineries, and factories without distinction. Leading many in the Islamic Republic to support much over-due reforms in water usage and agriculture.
'Iran was at the cutting edge of technology'
When talking with Nissan Soleimani about what it was like living in Iran before the Islamic Revolution he says: "All my memories from that period are good ones."

Soleimani, 55, arrived in Israel in October 1979, several months after the overthrowing of the monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the creation of a Shiite theocracy.

The Islamic Republic of Iran was founded on in April, but Soleimani, who was a teenager at the time, still remembers his former home as a pro-Western place where one could live in freedom. "Iran was at the cutting edge of technology," he said. "Iran had ATMs and color TV in the 1970s, when those things were considered novel. I can still remember watching the 1974 World Cup in color."

"Under the Shah, a Jew would not feel different, because the education system was pluralistic and we studied with Muslims. My best friend was a Muslim called Rashidi, it was the most natural thing," he said.

Soleimani, who now lives in Rishon Lezion and is a father of three, says the decision to make Aliyah was his. "My friends began making aliyah one after another and I was practically left alone," Soleimani says. "Over the past 40 years, I have become convinced that my decision was correct, and the thank God everything turned out fine."


JCPA: Sunni and Arab Opposition Attack the Iranian Regime’s Security Forces and Critical Infrastructure
Toward the end of January 2019, two terror attacks were carried out in Iran by Sunni (the Army of Justice – Jaish ul-Adl) and Arab (the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz, or ASMLA) opposition movements. Both of these opposition movements, as well as other opposition organizations, have increased their attacks on the security forces of the Iranian regime in recent months, as well as on the regime’s energy and economic infrastructures.

On January 29, 2019, in the city of Zahedan (which is located close to the tripoint of the borders between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), capital of the province of Sistan and Baluchestan, activists from the Balochi organization, the Army of Justice, set off explosive charges at the local police station used by members of Iran’s intelligence services and Revolutionary Guard. The media in Iran reported that at least four people were injured among the police forces in the area. They were apparently wounded when they attempted to neutralize one of the explosives. According to the organization, the second explosive charge was detonated when additional forces arrived in the area following the explosion of the first bomb.1

On October 15, 2018, the Army of Justice abducted 14 members of the Iranian security forces in the province of Sistan and Baluchestan and transferred them to a secret location in Pakistan. About a month later, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard announced that five of these captives were released and handed over by the Pakistani security forces. Iran is continuing with its efforts to release the rest of the captives.


Christian Asia Bibi Free To Leave Pakistan After Spending Nearly A Decade On Death Row Under Blasphemy Charges
In October, Pakistan’s Supreme Court overturned the death sentence placed on Asia Bibi, a minority Christian woman who was convicted in 2010 of blasphemy under section 295-C of the Pakistani Penal Code.

Led in part by the extremist Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan party (TLP), thousands filled the streets in the following days, protesting Bibi’s acquittal. There were calls for Bibi’s death, as well as the deaths of the three judges who acquitted her.

In an attempt to appease the TLP and other hardliners who railed against the ruling, the prime minister’s administration reportedly agreed to look into placing Bibi on the "exit control list" while a petition against the acquittal was reviewed. This would prevent her from leaving Pakistan despite the court’s decision in her favor.

On Tuesday, however, Asia Bibi’s acquittal was upheld by the Pakistani Supreme Court, and she is now free to leave Pakistan. According to the BBC, she "is being kept by authorities at a secret location in Islamabad." This secrecy will likely continue until such a time that Bibi can leave the country.

The Associated Press writes that Bibi watched the announcement on TV, and is ready to see her daughters, who previously fled to Canada. An anonymous friend relayed the following quote from Bibi: "I am really grateful to everybody. Now after nine years it is confirmed that I am free and I will be going to hug my daughters."

The original complaint against Bibi came in June 2009. As the Christian mother of five picked berries in a field with a number of Muslim women, she became thirsty, and went to a nearby well for water. One Muslim woman allegedly accused Bibi of contaminating the water because of her Christian faith, making it unfit for the Muslim women to drink.


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