Palestinians: Our True Goal is to Destroy Israel - Bassam Tawil

 

by Bassam Tawil

The Palestinians do not want to see Jews visiting their holy site; they do not want to see Jews in Jerusalem, and they do not want to see any Jew at all in the land that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Translations of this item:

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• The Palestinians are upset because Jews are being permitted to tour the Temple Mount. The Palestinians do not want to see Jews visiting their holy site; they do not want to see Jews in Jerusalem, and they do not want to see any Jew at all in the land that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

• No one is disputing the Palestinians' right to protest Israeli policies. Yet when the protests turn into large pro-Hamas demonstrations, with calls for bombing Tel Aviv and killing Jews, they expose the true deadly intention of the protesters.

• When thousands of Palestinians chant "We are all Mohammed Deif" they are saying that they see themselves as terrorists ready to attack and destroy Israel. They are saying that Deif is their role model because he managed to murder many Jews and remains at large, despite Israeli attempts to apprehend or kill him.

• Hamas owes its growing popularity to the anti-Israel inflammatory campaign waged in the Palestinian media, especially social media platforms, the mosques and public rhetoric of Palestinian leaders. Hamas also owes its popularity to the ongoing corruption and incompetence of the Palestinian Authority and its autocratic president, Mahmoud Abbas.

• The demonstrations in favor of Hamas should also sound alarm bells with the Biden administration and serve as an accurate indicator as to Palestinian priorities. The Biden administration is talking about reviving the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of the "two-state solution." Hamas and the thousands of Palestinians who chanted slogans in support of Hamas and Deif, however, have a different solution in mind: the annihilation of Israel and the deaths of Jews -- the more the merrier.

Hamas and the thousands of Palestinians who chanted slogans in support of Hamas and terrorist mastermind Mohammed Deif have a solution in mind: the annihilation of Israel and the deaths of Jews -- the more the merrier. Pictured: An apartment building in Ashkelon, Israel that was damaged by rockets fired from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip during the night of May 10-11, 2021. (Photo by Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

When former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel in 1991, many Palestinians took to the streets to celebrate the attacks. Many demonstrations took place in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem even while Palestinians were being issued gas masks by the Israeli authorities to protect them against a possible chemical attack by Iraq against Israel.

The Los Angeles Times reported back then that "several Palestinians expressed joy at last week's [Iraqi] missile assault on Tel Aviv and Haifa."

When the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist group launched rocket attacks on Israel from Lebanon in 2015, Palestinians took to the streets to celebrate, holding Hezbollah flags and handing out sweets to drivers and passersby.

For the Palestinians, anyone who attacks Israel or threatens to destroy it is a real "hero."

In the past few days, the Palestinians have been cheering another "hero": Mohammed Deif, the shadowy figure who heads the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas.

Deif has been Israel's most wanted terrorist for the last 25 years because of his involvement in several terror attacks, including the killing of Israeli soldiers, suicide bombings and kidnappings. In 2015, the US State Department added Deif to its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists.

Because of his direct involvement in terrorism against Israel, Deif has always been regarded by many Palestinians as a "hero."

Now, after Deif warned Israel of retaliation if it does not change its policies in east Jerusalem, he seems to be even more popular among the Palestinians.

In a rare public statement, the arch-terrorist, who is based in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, said that Israel will pay a "heavy price" if it does not stop the eviction of Palestinian families living in Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. "This is a clear and final warning," Deif threatened, hinting that Hamas would resume its rocket attacks and other forms of terrorism against Israel.

The threat came after a Jerusalem court approved the eviction of a number of Arab families in Sheikh Jarrah from homes that had belonged to Jews before the establishment of Israel in 1948.

During mass demonstrations in Jerusalem and some parts of the West Bank over the past few days, thousands of Palestinians chanted slogans in praise of Deif and urged him to carry out his threat to fire rockets at Israel. The Palestinians also chanted slogans in support of Hamas's military wing, Izaddin al-Qassam, which is responsible for thousands of terrorist attacks against Israel during the past three decades.

"We are the men of Mohammed Deif," thousands of Palestinians chanted during a demonstration at the al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. They also called on him to "strike" Tel Aviv with rockets, thereby echoing the 1991 call to Saddam Hussein: "O' beloved Saddam, strike, strike Tel Aviv!"

The demonstrations in Jerusalem began on the first day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, when scores of youths attacked police officers and Jewish residents with rocks, firebombs and other objects. The protesters initially justified the attacks by arguing that the Israel Police had set up barricades at one of the entrances to the Old City of Jerusalem, thus preventing them from gathering at night to celebrate Ramadan.

The riots, however, continued even after the police removed the barricades. The rioters said that they were protesting the possible eviction of the families from Sheikh Jarrah and attempts by Jews to "storm" the al-Aqsa Mosque, a reference to routine visits by Jews to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.

So how does Deif, the chief Hamas terrorist, fit into the clashes between Palestinians and the Israel Police in Jerusalem?

By invoking the name of Deif and calling on him to bomb Tel Aviv, the protesters exposed the truth: that their protests were less about the al-Aqsa Mosque or the controversy surrounding the Sheikh Jarrah houses or the police barriers at the Old City than about the elimination of Israel.

It is worth noting that Israel has not taken any new measures to "alter the historical or legal status" of the al-Aqsa Mosque, as the Palestinians and other Arabs have claimed.

The Palestinians are upset because Jews are being permitted to tour the Temple Mount. The Palestinians do not want to see Jews visiting their holy site; they do not want to see Jews in Jerusalem, and they do not want to see any Jew at all in the land that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

How does the bombing of Tel Aviv help the cases of the Arab families in Sheikh Jarrah, who are challenging the eviction order in Israeli courts? How does calling on Hamas to launch terrorist attacks against Israel assist the Palestinians in their campaign to stop Jews from touring the Temple Mount?

By raising Hamas flags and chanting slogans in support of an arch-terrorist at the al-Aqsa Mosque, the demonstrators desecrated the holy site, not the Jews. Those who used the mosque compound to throw rocks and other objects at police officers are the ones who defiled the holy site. You cannot attack police officers and then complain that Israel sent police to "raid" and "desecrate" the al-Aqsa Mosque -- unless your mind has been twisted by terrorist logic.

No one is disputing the Palestinians' right to protest Israeli policies. Yet when the protests turn into large pro-Hamas demonstrations, with calls for bombing Tel Aviv and killing Jews, they expose the true deadly intention of the protesters.

When thousands of Palestinians chant "We are all Mohammed Deif," they are saying that they see themselves as terrorists ready to attack and destroy Israel. They are also saying that Deif is their role model because he managed to murder many Jews and remains at large, despite Israeli attempts to apprehend or kill him.

The violence that erupted in Jerusalem over the past few days shows that Hamas has a large following among Palestinians, including residents of east Jerusalem who hold Israeli-issued ID cards but are not Israeli citizens. After Israel annexed east Jerusalem in 1968, it gave the Palestinians living there the right to apply for Israeli citizenship. Most of them, however, chose not to ask for Israeli citizenship out of fear of being branded traitors.

As permanent residents of Israel, the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem enjoy all the rights bestowed on Israeli citizens with one exception: the right to vote for the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. At the same time, these residents are entitled to apply for Israeli citizenship any time they wish and several thousand have already done so.

Hamas's popularity is on the rise not only in east Jerusalem, but also in the West Bank, where some Palestinians also heaped praise on Deif and urged him to unleash a new wave of terror against Israel.

Hamas owes its growing popularity to the anti-Israel inflammatory campaign waged in the Palestinian media, especially social media platforms, the mosques and public rhetoric of Palestinian leaders. Hamas also owes its popularity to the ongoing corruption and incompetence of the Palestinian Authority and its autocratic president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas had good reason to delay until further notice the parliamentary and presidential elections he was planning to hold on May 22 and July 31. He knew very well that his rivals in Hamas were headed toward a victory similar to the one they scored in the last parliamentary election in 2006.

Yet Abbas did not have the courage to admit that this was the real reason why he called off the elections. Instead, he chose to blame Israel by falsely accusing it of preventing the Palestinians in Jerusalem from participating in the elections.

As he sits in his living room and watched thousands of Palestinians in Jerusalem denouncing him as a traitor and hailing Hamas and Deif, Abbas must have heaved a sigh of relief that the elections were indefinitely postponed. The pro-Hamas demonstrations in Jerusalem should worry not only Israel, but Abbas and his Palestinian Authority as well.

The demonstrations in favor of Hamas should also sound alarm bells with the Biden administration and serve as an accurate indicator as to Palestinian priorities. The Biden administration is talking about reviving the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of the "two-state solution." Hamas and the thousands of Palestinians who chanted slogans in support of Hamas and Deif, however, have a different solution in mind: the annihilation of Israel and the deaths of Jews -- the more the merrier.

 

Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17361/palestinian-goal-destroy-israel

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Not fit to print: The NYTimes on Sheikh Jarrah - Prof. Phyllis Chesler

 

by Prof. Phyllis Chesler

The courts evicted Arab squatters from the Shimon Hatzaddik homes, and they have appealed. The NYTimes, however, has made its own decision before the Supreme Court rules on the case.

 

Israeli car torched in Shimon HaTzaddik (Sheikh Jarrah) neighborhood, Jerusalem

Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90

In a nearly full page article entitled “As Court Decision Nears, Battle Over Evictions Spikes in East Jerusalem,” the New York Times manages to describe Jews as “settlers” in Jerusalem nine times; as “far right” or “right-wing” twice; as “right-wing settlers” once (in case we did not already get this point); as “provocative,” as engaged in both “ethnic cleansing,” and “racism” once each.

Thus, Jews are described negatively at least fifteen times.

Not so the Arabs, including Hamas.

As for the Arab “protestors”—we are not told whether they are “violent” or “Islamist,” “provocative,” or “armed,” nor are we told whether they (or Martians, perhaps) set fire to the burning cars, or have drawn guns. The reporter, Patrick Kingsley, and contributors, Irit Pazner Garshowitz and Iyad Abuhweila, overlook or disappear that information.

However, the article leads with the Israeli police spraying “skunk water, a noxious liquid used to deter demonstrators.” They do not describe this as the use of non-lethal force.

The words these reporters use to describe Israelis: “Jewish settlers” and the Israeli police are buzz words, guaranteed to inflame readers and to encourage them to believe that “Israeli right-wing settlers” are white racist supremacists bent on “ethnic cleansing,” and as similar to white supremacists in America.

This is an example of propaganda, not objective reportage. It is certainly not fit to print.

For the real story of what happened this past week in East Jerusalem, click here. Note that the houses are on land legally owned by Jews from before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, when the small neighborhood was known as Shimon Hatzaddik because the grave of the 3rd century sage is located there. In Arabic, the area is called Sheikh Jarrah. It was overrun by Jordanian forces during the War of Independence and Arab squatters then took over the homes. In the 1967 Six Day War the area was returned to Israel.The Arab families have already been formally evicted by a lower court. Israel’s Supreme Court is expected to rule in the coming days on whether it will allow an appeal by four of the Arab families to go forward.

 

Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D, is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at City University of New York. Dr. Chesler is a co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology (1969), The National Women's Health Network (1974), and The International Committee for the (Original) Women of the Wall (1989). She is a writing fellow at Middle East Forum and is a Fellow affiliated at both SPME and ISGAP. Dr. Chesler is the author of twenty books, including the landmark feminist classic Women and Madness, The New Anti-Semitism (2003), Woman's Inhumanity to Woman (2009), An American Bride in Kabul (2013), which won a National Jewish Book Award, A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing (2018), a Memoir: A Politically Incorrect Feminist (2018), and her forthcoming Requiem for a Female Serial Killer (2020).

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/305780

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Washington's agenda is completely wrong – and incendiary - Caroline B. Glick

 

by Caroline B. Glick

Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden's national security adviser, needs to get his facts right and his priorities straight.

Throughout the month of Ramadan, the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority and Hamas have been inciting Arab Israelis in Jerusalem and throughout the country to attack Jews. And so it happened that at the outset of the month, Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and beyond found themselves beset by gangs of Arab thugs who beat them on the streets and light-rail cars just because they were Jews.

Last week, Hamas' leaders announced their detailed plans to open a new campaign against Israel on May 9. May 9 was a conflation of three events: Jerusalem Day – Israel's national holiday celebrating the unification of Jerusalem in 1967; Muslims marked the holiest day of the month of Ramadan, and Iran marked its own Jerusalem Day, whose purpose is to call for the destruction of Israel and end Jewish rule in Jerusalem.

Hamas' leaders put everything on the table. And events progressed precisely according to the plans the terror bosses set out in their public announcements. The combination of Arab violence in Sheikh Jarrah, the Damascus Gate, and the Temple Mount, along with balloon bombs and rocket launches against Israel from Gaza, arson fires, and terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria are precisely what Hamas' leaders said would transpire. Fatah, for its part has been a full participant in the violence. Fatah's office in Nablus publicly took credit for the drive-by shooting of three Jewish students at a bus stop in Samaria last Monday. The Fatah terrorist critically wounded all three young men, one of them died of his wounds three days later. The other two are still fighting for their lives.

Despite that fact that everything was on the table, and despite the fact that only one side has been rioting, violently attacking and trying to lynch innocent civilians, Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden's national security adviser found it appropriate Sunday night to phone his Israeli counterpart Meir Ben-Shabbat and read him the riot act. In the course of their conversation, Sullivan parroted the libelous narrative being spewed by Hamas and the PA/Fatah which blames Israel and Israeli Jews for the premeditated violence that Arabs – instructed by Hamas and Fatah – are conducting against Israel and Israeli Jews.

According to the readout of the conversation that the US National Security Council spokesman posted, among other things, Sullivan, "reiterated the United States' serious concerns about the potential evictions of Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood," as if the issue didn't revolve around illegal squatters that have been working for the past 50 years to steal the buildings from their Jewish owners; as if it weren't well known that Hamas and Fatah are openly exploiting the legal battle to justify their new terror campaign against Israel.

If that weren't enough, Sullivan also, "encouraged the Israeli government to pursue appropriate measures to ensure calm during Jerusalem Day commemorations."

As Israel Hayom's Ariel Kahana reported, Ben-Shabbat didn't take Sullivan's hostile dressing down in silence. He responded appropriately, "As the sovereign, Israel is handing the events responsibly and in a measured way despite the provocations."

Ben-Shabbat added, "International intervention serves as a prize to the rioters and their dispatchers that had hoped that international pressure would be exerted against Israel."

Less than 24 hours after their phone call, Hamas proved Ben-Shabbat was right. With a tailwind from the White House, Hamas gave Israel an ultimatum: Remove your security forces from the Temple Mount and Sheikh Jarrah by 6 p.m. or you'll live to regret it. In other words: Give up your sovereignty over Jerusalem by six or else.

Lo and behold, shortly after 6 p.m., the air raid sirens sounded throughout Jerusalem and its environs as Hamas attacked the capital with rockets from Gaza. As the evening progressed Arab Israelis in Ramle and Lod and other mixed cities carried out what can only be called a pogrom against their Jewish neighbors. They burned yeshivot, schools and apartment buildings and beat and tried to lynch Jews that fell in their paths. After they were done, they went to the local hospital emergency room, threw rocks at the medical staff and patients and tried to kill the Arab Israeli doctors and nurses on the scene for "collaboration" with the Jews.

The medical staff had to evacuate with the patients to protected areas while the police dispersed the attackers with stun grenades – in the ER.

The official readout of Biden's national security adviser concluded by mentioning that Sullivan, "expressed the Administration's commitment to Israel's security."

A bit more "commitment" like this and Israel will find itself in short order fighting a regional war.

 

Caroline B. Glick

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/washingtons-agenda-is-completely-wrong-and-incendiary/

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Hamas misjudged Israel's response to rocket fire on J'lem - Daniel Siryoti

 

by Daniel Siryoti

Meanwhile, contrary to the terrorist group's successful efforts to fan the flames in east Jerusalem, it is failing miserably to rouse the Palestinian public in Judea and Samaria to clash with Israeli security forces there.

The last thing Hamas wanted was a round of fighting with Israel with the month of Ramadan winding down and the holiday of Eid al-Fitr just around the corner.

The Palestinian terrorist group, however, essentially handcuffed itself by issuing a litany of threats the moment clashes erupted in east Jerusalem, alongside the unusual declaration by Mohammed Deif, the commander of its military wing, which further incited and encouraged the Palestinian residents to confront Israeli security forces in the Old City.

Hamas, which apparently miscalculated the IDF response to the rocket barrage targeting Jerusalem, not only exploited the cancellation of the elections in the Palestinian Authority to win a few public opinion points, it also exacerbated the tensions on the ground by inserting the religious variable into the equation in claiming that Israel was trying to "Judaize" east Jerusalem by evicting Arab resident of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in favor of Jewish residents and changing the status quo on the Temple Mount. Not to mention the chilly relations between the Biden administration and Israel, the weakness and instability of the political system in Israel, and Hamas' understanding that it can dictate the pace of de-escalation in Gaza in the face of Israel's (correct) policy of containment in the southern sector.

And while on the subject of Mohammed Deif and his rare public remarks, it should be noted that the group's leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, has fallen off the radar in recent weeks. We know there are disagreements within the group's leadership between those calling for confrontation with the IDF and those – Sinwar chief among them – who want to preserve the calm and understandings with Israel via Egyptian intermediaries and monetary aid from Qatar. Sinwar, likely due to inter-organizational considerations, would rather leave the stage completely to and Political Bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh for the time being.

Also of note is that despite the IDF's attacks in Gaza and the relatively high number of casualties there, Hamas had already notched a considerable perception victory as the defender of Jerusalem amid the impotence of Mahmoud Abbas, a splintered Fatah movement and power struggles within the Palestinian Authority. This achievement notwithstanding, however, and contrary to its successful efforts to fan the flames in east Jerusalem, Hamas is failing miserably in its efforts to rouse the Palestinian public in Judea and Samaria to clash with the Israeli security forces there. While Palestinians in Judea and Samaria identify with their Palestinian brethren in east Jerusalem, they would rather leave the violent confrontations to Hamas in Gaza and the capital.

We cautiously assess that although Hamas' rocket fire at "occupied al-Quds" did garner support from Palestinians, mainly in east Jerusalem, the group likely misjudged the strength of the IDF's retaliation.

 

Daniel Siryoti

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/hamas-misjudged-idfs-response-to-jerusalem-rocket-fire/

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The US has plunged its relations with Israel into crisis - Caroline Glick

 

by Caroline Glick

The rupture in ties isn’t about how best to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It is about prejudice against Jews.

(JNS) In light of the reactions from Washington to the Hamas-and Fatah-inspired Arab violence in Jerusalem, it is hard to see how Israel will be able to maintain a constructive dialogue about its relations with the Palestinian Arabs with the Biden administration or more broadly, with the Democrat Party.

Indeed, the reactions coming out of Washington to the Arab violence in Jerusalem indicate that Israel will be hard-pressed to conduct a constructive dialogue with Washington about anything, and that this will be the case regardless of who forms the next Israeli government.

On Saturday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) published a shocking post on her Twitter account in response to the Arab riots in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, which started in earnest last Thursday. The progressive powerhouse wrote, “The forced removal of long-time Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah is abhorrent and unacceptable. The Administration should make it clear to the Israeli government that these evictions are illegal and must stop immediately.”

Warren’s statement isn’t a demand for justice for Arabs. It is a demand for injustice for Jews. Warren has become the first senior U.S. official to call for Jews to be barred from doing something specifically because they are Jewish since Ulysses Grant barred Jews from entering Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky at the height of the Civil War.

The situation in Sheikh Jarrah is cut and dried. Buildings in the neighborhood that were purchased by Jews 146 years ago were illegally seized in 1948 by Jordan as its forces illegally occupied eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem in the course of the pan-Arab invasion of the nascent Jewish state. During the course of Jordan’s illegal occupation of those areas of Jerusalem, the Jordanian Registry of Enemy Property illegally leased the Jewish-owned buildings to Arab tenants.

When Israel liberated the Jordanian-occupied areas of Jerusalem in 1967, the owners of the buildings reasserted their property rights. Their ownership over the properties in Sheikh Jarrah was duly registered in Israel’s land registry in 1973. But when the owners tried to retake possession a 48-year legal battle between the owners and the squatters began, which is scheduled to finally come to an end this week.

In countless court decisions, judges found time after time that the Jewish owners were the legitimate owners and the Arabs illegal squatters. The squatters admitted this was the case in 1982. And yet, 39 years later, the children and grandchildren of the squatters from 1982 still refuse to leave the buildings.

Following a last-ditch appeal of the Jerusalem District Court ruling that ordered their forced evacuation, the Supreme Court is scheduled to issue a final—and unappealable—ruling on the issue this week.

The current Arab violence in Sheikh Jarrah and surrounding areas of Jerusalem has been incited by Hamas. It serves a dual purpose. It invents a rationale for a new Palestinian terror onslaught against Israel. And it pressures Israeli judges, government ministers and police commanders to weigh the possibility of discriminating against the Jewish owners in the hopes of stymying Hamas’s declared plan to renew its terror offensive.

It is in this context that Warren made her demand, that the Biden administration insinuate itself into the middle of a legal dispute in a foreign country on behalf of the side that is clearly in the wrong against the side that is clearly right.

Warren has adopted this position—and is demanding that the Biden administration adopt it as well—for one reason. Warren is only demanding an action that empowers terror groups presently engaged in organized violence against Jews because the property owners are Jewish. If they were Muslims or Christians or members of any other group, she wouldn’t have cared. But since they are Jews, Warren is spreading blatant lies that effectively justify terrorism, thuggery and mob violence.

This brings us to the Biden administration and to the issue of its position on Warren’s anti-Semitic demand for Jews to be denied their legal right to property simply because they are Jewish. Unfortunately, there is very little daylight between Warren’s anti-Semitic position and the administration’s stand on the issue.

Even before Warren opened her mouth, on Friday the State Department issued a statement on the events in Sheikh Jarrah. It read: “We are … deeply concerned about the potential eviction of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrh and Silwan neighborhoods of Jerusalem, many of whom have lived in their homes for generations. As we have consistently said, it is critical to avoid steps that exacerbate tensions or take us farther away from peace. This includes evictions in East Jerusalem, settlement activity, home demolitions, and acts of terrorism.”

People can argue about what a peaceful settlement between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel should look like. There is a wide spectrum of legitimate positions in this policy dispute. But those who seek to deny individual Jews their well-established property rights simply because they are Jews are not a legitimate side in that policy debate or any other policy debate. They are antisemites.

Statements like Warren’s and the State Department’s don’t serve to calm the situation and restore peace to Jerusalem. They serve to incite still more violence by inspiring the likes of Fatah and Hamas to believe that the United States supports them as they threaten an all-out terror offensive, beat Jews, burn Jewish property and intimidate Israeli judges, government ministers and police into unlawfully discriminating against Jews.

In light of the administration’s hostile behavior, and the even more hostile positions of the dominant progressive wing of the Democrat Party, the prospects for constructive relations between the Biden administration and Israel have all but disappeared.

 

Caroline Glick is an award-winning columnist and author of “The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.”

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/305980

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The China-Led WHO Report on Coronavirus Is Deeply Suspect - Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Dany Shoham

 

by Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Dany Shoham

China appears to have essentially dictated the proceedings of the investigation, the findings of which are deeply suspect.

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,020, May 11, 2021

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The WHO’s China-led international investigation into the origins of COVID-19 did not trace either the genomic derivation or the initial contraction of the virus that generated the pandemic. This could be because it did not look for an unnatural scenario or because a natural scenario did not in fact occur. China appears to have essentially dictated the proceedings of the investigation, the findings of which are deeply suspect.

From January 14 through February 10, 2021, a joint international investigative team made up of 17 Chinese experts, 10 international experts from other countries, and other individuals and support staff conducted an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. The investigation was headed jointly by Dr. Peter Ben Embarek of WHO, a specialist in food safety and zoonotic diseases (a fitting choice in the eyes of the Chinese, who contend that the virus entered China via shipments of frozen meat), and Prof. Liang Wannian, a senior official at the National Health Commission of China, which oversaw China’s virus response (this commission is a cabinet-level executive department of China’s State Council).

A sharp conflict of interest marks another senior Chinese participant, Dr. Feng Zijian, who was identified as one of four people copied on an internal memo sent out in February 2020 by China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The memo ordered China’s scientists not to share any data, documents, or specimens related to the pandemic and to “prioritize the interests of the country.” The memo, labeled “not to be made public,” warned that anyone violating this request would be “dealt with severely in accordance with discipline, laws, and regulations.”

A salient anomaly about the makeup of the team is that China was granted veto power over all scientists selected to participate. Thus, the American selected for the team was Dr. Peter Daszak, who for many years collaborated closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in the problematic context of gain of function research and practices of coronaviruses.

The report issued by the China-led WHO team after the investigation seems at first glance to be informative and to contribute new insights. Yet it is grossly inadequate in its searching into the two core aspects of the inquiry: the genomic origin and direct source of the virus that infected Patient Zero. Patient Zero is mentioned in the report as a sporadic case appearing on December 8, 2019. This person was not, in all likelihood, Patient Zero but a much later patient.

The report did not find any non-laboratory animal infected in China with a virus that could be regarded as the direct source of the initial contagion leading to the pandemic. It nevertheless dismissed any unnatural scenario as an alternative, particularly the lab-leak scenario. With respect to the paramount distinction between natural contagion and accidental lab leakage, the report merely cites what the head of the WIV P4 facility said about the ostensible impossibility of a lab-leak scenario. (Did anyone expect that he of all people would do anything other than flatly dismiss such a scenario?)

More specifically, the report categorized several cardinal issues as “conspiracy theories,” including the following events and scenarios:

• a SARS-like illness among WIV workers in fall 2019, prior to the declared initial outbreak in Wuhan;
• consequent COVID-19 cases in the city of Wuhan before December 2019;
• the disappearance of a WIV worker claimed to be Patient Zero;
• the disappearance of vital databases from the WIV inventory of bat viruses;
• the presence in the WIV of a bat coronavirus that had been isolated in 2012 (and later altered) from diseased miners; and
• an accidental leakage of a coronavirus held in the WIV that sparked the initial COVID-19 outbreak.

Poor explanations were provided by China for these key issues, all of which remain entirely unsettled.

The investigative team was given a tour of the P4 (highest biosafety level) facility of the WIV. The P4 laboratories have 3,000 square meters of space. Strikingly, the P4 labs are located in the same building as, and are physically close to, two co-functional P3 labs as well as 20 P2 labs (in other words, labs with significantly lower biosafety levels).

It was inevitable that formal responses contradicting the WHO’s report and underlying investigation would materialize following the report’s publication. Some might claim these responses are antagonistic to China and the WHO because they contain serious accusations, either explicitly or implicitly. But the fact that they contain accusations does not mean they are unsound. On the contrary: these responses were constructed with great care and with but one purpose, to uncover the real genomic origin and direct source of the virus contracted by Patient Zero.

The following are highlights taken from several responses to the report.

Statement by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan (February 13, 2021):

We have deep concerns about the way in which the early findings of the COVID-19 investigation were communicated, and questions about the process used to reach them. It is imperative that this report (being prepared by the investigative team) be independent, with expert findings free from intervention or alteration by the Chinese government. To better understand this pandemic and prepare for the next one, China must make available its data from the earliest days of the outbreak.

Joint Statement on the WHO-Convened COVID-19 Origins Study (issued by the Governments of Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, the Republic of Korea, Slovenia, the UK, and the US, March 30, 2021):

Together, we support a transparent and independent analysis and evaluation, free from interference and undue influence, of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this regard, we join in expressing shared concerns regarding the recent WHO-convened study (the discussed investigation) in China, while at the same time reinforcing the importance of working together toward the development and use of a swift, effective, transparent, science-based, and independent process for international evaluations of such outbreaks of unknown origin in the future…

Going forward, there must now be a renewed commitment by WHO and all Member States to access, transparency, and timeliness… It is critical for independent experts to have full access to all pertinent human, animal, and environmental data, research, and personnel involved in the early stages of the outbreak relevant to determining how this pandemic emerged. With all data in hand, the international community may independently assess COVID-19 origins…

US Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce letter to the Director of the US National Institutes of Health (March 18, 2021):

Recently, the WHO attempted to investigate the origin of COVID-19. The WHO said that this investigative mission would be guided by the science, be “open-minded,” and “not exclude any hypothesis.” Unfortunately, China did not provide complete access or independence for the critical WHO mission…

The NIH, as a premier scientific institution, must lead in order to foster a transparent, independent, and science-based investigation into the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. Such an effort must meet the WHO’s stated goals of an open-minded investigation that does not exclude any plausible hypothesis. In addition, the NIH is well-positioned to gather and provide information through oversight of its grants and other federal awards. Thus, the NIH is in a unique position to investigate the possibility that the pandemic stemmed from a laboratory accident or leak, especially regarding the WIV.

Open Letter: Call for a Full and Unrestricted International Forensic Investigation into the Origins of COVID-19 (issued by 26 scientists from various countries, March 4, 2021):

Although the joint team investigation was a significant opportunity for the international community to gain some limited and highly curated information, it has unfortunately proven opaque and restrictive, greatly compromising the scientific validity of the investigation. Because we believe the joint team process and efforts to date do not constitute a thorough, credible, and transparent investigation, we call on the international community to put in place a structure and process that does.

Why China and the WHO Will Never Find a Zoonotic Origin For the COVID-19 Pandemic Virus (A scientific paper by Dr. Jonathan Latham and Dr. Allison Wilson, February 16, 2021):

…Our prediction, however, simply based on assessing the probabilities, is that no convincing natural zoonotic origin for the pandemic will ever be found by China, or the WHO, or anyone else—for the simple reason that one does not exist. There are four distinct lab origin theories and these, unsurprisingly, are getting increasing attention. Two are published in the scientific literature (Sirotkin and Sirotkin, 2020; Segreto and Deigin, 2020). A third proposes that SARS CoV-2 was [an outcome of] a failed attempt to develop a vaccine… The fourth is our own: Mojiang Miners Passage theory [passaging of a SARS-like virus that infected miners in China in 2012].

Bayesian Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Origin (a 140-page study conducted by Dr. Steven C. Quay, March 29, 2021):

This [study] uses Bayesian inference, a common statistical tool in which Bayes’ theorem, a well known statistical equation, is used to update the likelihood for a particular hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes available. It is widely used in the sciences and medicine and has begun to be used in the law.

The starting probability for [the] origin of SARS-CoV-2 was set with the zoonotic or natural hypothesis at 98.8% likelihood, with the laboratory origin hypothesis set at 1.2%. The initial state was biased as much as possible towards a zoonotic origin, with the starting point selected as the upper bounds of the 95% confidence interval for the mean and standard deviation of three independent estimates… The outcome of this [study] is the conclusion that the probability of a laboratory origin for CoV-2 is 99.8%, with a corresponding probability of a [natural] zoonotic origin of 0.2%.

It is notable that Dr. Dominic Dwyer, the Australian member of the WHO-China investigation team, said subsequent to the investigation: “It was actually very complicated and very tense. There is certainly Chinese political pressure.”

And finally, WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, after the investigation report was issued, “Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy. Let me say clearly that as far as WHO is concerned, all hypotheses remain on the table…”

It appears very clear that during the investigation, China was able to push the team to focus on the response to the crisis rather than its origins. It was also able to place excessive limits requiring international investigators to solely review the work of their Chinese counterparts and not undertake an impartial investigation. Thus, China essentially orchestrated a complete whitewash by the WHO of an investigation that looked under every rock except the most likely one.

If there was nothing to hide, why should limitations of any kind have been imposed in the approach to, during, or after the investigation? This question is especially relevant considering that critical records, data, and specimens were removed by the Chinese authorities, apparently to foil the exposure of the way the initial outbreak occurred.

On April 2, 1979, spores of anthrax were accidentally released from a Soviet military facility near the city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) in Russia. The strain of anthrax held at the military compound was the most powerful in the Soviet arsenal (Anthrax 836). The ensuing outbreak of the disease resulted in approximately 100 deaths in the area, though the exact number of victims remains unknown.

The cause of the outbreak was denied for years by the Soviet authorities, which blamed it on tainted meat. All the victims’ medical records were removed so as to hide serious violations by Russia of the Biological Weapons Convention, which had already come into effect. Later on, years after intelligence work had uncovered the truth, President Boris Yeltsin admitted that “our military development was the cause” of the anthrax outbreak. The accident is sometimes referred to as a Biological Chernobyl.

Unlike the anthrax germ, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is contagious, which is why it brought about a global pandemic. Still, the two cases share some meaningful common denominators. Although it has not yet been publicly certified that SARS-CoV-2 was present in the WIV prior to the initial coronavirus outbreak, this fact will be established sooner or later.

View PDF

 

Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Dany Shoham, a microbiologist and an expert on chemical and biological warfare in the Middle East, is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He is a former senior intelligence analyst in the IDF and the Israeli Defense Ministry.

Source: https://besacenter.org/the-china-led-who-report-on-coronavirus-is-deeply-suspect/

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Iran Building Precision-Guided Missiles for Hezbollah- Hugh Fitzgerald

 

by Hugh Fitzgerald

What “resisting” Israel really means.

 

Iran claims that its citizens are in Syria mainly to help with rebuilding the country’s infrastructure. Israel has good reason to think — and act — otherwise. Asked to comment on reports that Iran was building highly lethal weapons– precision-guided missiles — for Hezbollah, Iran feigned indignation. “Israel Intensifying Air War in Syria Against Iranian Encroachment,” Algemeiner, April 22, 2021:

Iran’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment. Iran has said it has military advisers in Syria to help Assad’s forces, and will continue a policy “resisting” US and Israeli power in the wider Middle East.

Nothing says “resisting” Israeli power like shipping 150,000 missiles to Hezbollah for future launches against Israel, even though at the time those missiles were shipped Israel had not attacked a single Iranian target, inside or outside Iran.

Over the past year, Israeli warplanes, missiles and drones have hit a far wider range of targets — from suspected Iranian guided missile research and production sites to arms storage depots — than in the previous five years, said three Israeli officials and a senior Western official based in the region.

In the latest strike on Thursday, Israel hit al Dumair on the northeastern outskirts of Damascus which it has repeatedly hit in the past and where suspected Iranian-backed militias have a strong presence.

Jane’s defense news analysts said that over a three-year span Israel had used 4,239 weapons against 955 targets with 70% of Israeli pilots involved in the campaign, with the new F-35I Adir fighter jets leading dozens of missions.

It’s a fantastic record. In the last decade of bombing sites in Syria, the Israelis have lost exactly one plane, an F-16, which crashed inside Israel, as did the pilot, who has since recovered from his wounds. In the last three years alone, Israel has hit almost a thousand targets, and many of them have been hit repeatedly, as 4,239 weapons were used. Israel keeps upping both the number of targets, and the number of hits, whether by bombs, missiles, or drones.

“It’s been…months of painful hits, not (any more) limited to the Golan Heights or southern Syria (close to Israel) or around the outskirts of Damascus, they’ve gone north to Aleppo and Hama and to Al Bukamal on the Iraqi border,” a Syrian military defector, Brigadier General Ahmad Rahal, told Reuters.

The Iranians have learned by experience that Israel was most likely to hit their bases closest to Israel, either near the Golan or elsewhere in southern Syria. So they started to put their missile factories further north, in hopes of evading detection by Israel. The Israelis, however, having not been fooled, then started to extend their targets much further north, in Aleppo and Hama, and at Al Bukamal, apparently a very important target on the border with Iraq; no place in Syria is now safe from Israel’s high-flying “lawn mowers.”

However, some underground compounds stretch as many as 6.2 miles, making them difficult to penetrate thoroughly even for Israel’s satellite-guided, 500-pound “bunker-buster” bombs, according to a senior Western intelligence source.

“There are fortifications underground that Israel cannot reach…, tunnels that maybe it knows where they begin but not where they lead to,” said a Syrian military source, who said he worked for years in one of the compounds.

“You have warehouses dug into the mountains and equipped to be resistant even to bunker busters,” he told Reuters.

Multiple Ordnance Penetrators – bunker-busters – come in all sizes. Israel has 500-pounders, but these are very small bunker busters, apparently not powerful enough to destroy the Iranian targets that have been built underground. How far underground is not said. But what Israel clearly needs, and should be at the top of the list of what the Jewish state needs to preserve its QME (Qualitative Military Edge) are much larger, more powerful MOPs. The US Air Force has the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP); it’s a precision-guided, 30,000-pound bunker buster bomb. Those are what Israel’s friends in Washington should insist be sold to the Jewish state, so that it can reach and destroy Iran’s underground facilities, both those that manufacture precision-guided missiles inside Syria, and the nuclear facilities in Iran that, even more worrisome, have been built deep inside mountains at Fordow and Natanz.

Some of the suspected Iranian military research and development (R&D) activities have been disrupted by repeated strikes, satellite images sent to Reuters indicate.

Israeli bombs obliterated underground sections of the Imam Ali military base near the Al Bukamal crossing with Iraq in January, one of several over the last year that took out tunnels used to store trucks or move advanced weapons systems, according to two Western officials familiar with the strikes….

“They are modifying and upgrading precision-guided Iranian rockets and the arsenal of Hezbollah in Syria at these sites…,” said Ismail Ayoub, a former Syrian air force lieutenant-colonel who defected to Jordan in 2012 and said he remains in contact with comrades in the air force.

Judging by the number of high-ranking Syrian officers mentioned in this report who have defected and have been providing confirmation about what the Iranians have been doing at so many different sites, at the Imam Ali airbase at Al Bukamal in southeastern Syria, near Masyaf in western Syria, near Aleppo and Hama in northern Syria, the Israelis have been kept well-informed, even beyond what their satellite imaging and other non-human means of detection provide.

In a sign of Iranian concern over Israel’s intensifying campaign, Tehran’s military chief of staff, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, visited the Safira R&D centre in Aleppo province in July soon after an Israeli air strike there, according to a Syrian army officer briefed on Bagheri’s tour.

Israel’s expanding air war has prompted Iranian-backed militia forces to redeploy from forward posts near Syria’s southwest border with Israel toward the eastern frontier, several intelligence officials and Syrian military defectors said.

That move by Iranian-backed forces away from the Syrian border with Israel hasn’t brought them any greater safety. No part of Syria is safe from Israel’s bombers, its missiles, its drones. One bit of evidence is the successful Israeli attack on the Safira R&D center near Aleppo, far from the border, an attack that apparently proved so devastating that the Iranian army’s chief of staff himself showed up to view the destruction.

Residents of Syria’s eastern Deir al-Zor region said dozens of decoy rocket launchpads and deserted farm barracks with Iranian militia flags now dot main highways in efforts to divert Israel away from genuine targets.

An imaginative deception, but how long will it take Israel to come up with a solution, by being able to “see through” with infrared devices which structures are deserted and which have weapons and/or humans inside them? Would anyone care to bet against the Israelis who are undoubtedly working on that detection problem – if they haven’t already solved it — right now? When have the Israelis ever been stymied for long?

Since January the Quds Force, the extra-territorial special forces arm of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards, has bolstered its presence around Al Bukamal, flanking a road corridor for heavy weapons convoys from Iraq, according to two Israeli intelligence sources, citing intensified drone surveillance and Syrian contacts on the ground.

Israeli and Western officials said that if Israel had not escalated its air campaign, Iran would have carved out a strategic staging ground close to Israel’s doorstep by now.

“Had (Israel) not intervened, the situation could have been 10 times worse. The Iranians are paying an ongoing price with many weapons being destroyed. Of course it has an impact on their activities but it does not solve the problem. Iran is determined to stay in Syria,” Kuperwasser said.

Is Iran more determined to stay in Syria than Israel is determined to keep “mowing the lawn”? Of course not. Iran is the one threatening to destroy Israel,, while Israel is defending its very existence. Israel has no choice but to keep going. And how many precision-guided missiles, how many military drones, how many R&D facilities in Syria does Iran possess and can afford to keep losing? What happens to Iranian facilities built deep underground in Syria if and when the Americans do the right thing— the reluctant Bidenites having been prodded by Congress — and provide Israel with 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs to do the job its current 500-pound bombs cannot?

For as long as It takes, with whatever weapons it has or can obtain, Israel will continue to engage in “mowing the lawn” in Syria.

 

Hugh Fitzgerald

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/iran-building-precision-guided-missiles-hezbollah-hugh-fitzgerald/

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Human Rights Watch Maligns Israel as an Apartheid State - Joseph Puder

 

by Joseph Puder

When pursuing "human rights" involves distortion and slander.

 

When Robert Bernstein, Aryeh Neier, and Jeri Laber founded Human Rights Watch (HRW) in 1978, they did not contemplate that the Jewish state would become its target for de-legitimization and abuse. At the time of its establishment, not long after the Helsinki Accords were signed that included the signatories from the “Iron Curtain,” the ostensible focus was to report on the abuses of human rights in Soviet bloc countries. The idealistic founders were committed to shed light on the darkest corners of humanity.

In subsequent decades, HRW grew antagonistic toward free countries, and especially Israel. On October 20, 2009, HRW founder Robert Bernstein wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times, pointing out that, “HRW has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.” As if to reinforce Bernstein’s 2009 observation about HRW’s obsession with Israel, and its efforts to portray Israel as a pariah state, the most recent HRW report issued last week (April 27, 2021) has gone even further, adding the term “apartheid” to its abuse.

HRW has campaigned vigorously as part of Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) efforts to get the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Israel on alleged human rights violations. They have provided a political narrative instead of a credible factual presentation and legal analysis. The same HRW has backed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel, as well as against companies that do business in Israel. HRW attempted and failed to get Airbnb and FIFA to withdraw or boycott Israel. Omar Shakir, the Israel-Palestine director of HRW, who has written the latest report titled, “The Threshold Crossed,” has campaigned for decades to deny Israel’s right to exist. Shakir’s personal hostility toward Israel increased further when the Israeli Supreme Court revoked his work visa because of his active involvement in the discriminatory and anti-Semitic BDS campaigns.

The HRW report states that the “government enforced generalized travel bans on Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip.” HRW should know better. Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, and left the Palestinians agricultural nurseries, which the Palestinians destroyed. In 2007, Hamas kicked Fatah/ Palestinian Authority out of Gaza, and took full control. Since then, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza have engaged in continuous terror against Israel, targeting primarily civilians. HRW’s anti-Israel bias is evident in ignoring this reality in its report. Nor has HRW addressed Hamas’ terror tunnels, incendiary balloons, and unprovoked rocket attacks against Israel. At the same time, HRW minimized Israel’s humanitarian aid to the Gaza Palestinians in the form of food, medicine, and essential necessities. Moreover, in cases of medical emergencies, Israel has allowed Gaza Palestinians to be brought to Israeli hospitals. What Israel seeks to prevent is the inflow of terrorists and materials that would be used to build terror tunnels and other lethal weapons against Israel’s civilian population. The HRW report arrogantly dismisses Israel’s security concerns.

The HRW report asserted that Israel is preventing Palestinian immigration to Israel after marriage, and thus it constitutes “apartheid.” It is apparent that Shakir’s report employs various falsehoods to smear and malign Israel, including Israel’s Law of Return. It omits the fact that the November, 1947 UN Partition Plan clearly designated Israel as a Jewish state. Naturally, following the Holocaust experience Jews underwent, with the absence of a safe haven to escape the Nazi beast, Israel’s first order of the day was to provide Jewish survivors with a sanctuary. The western allies and the British Mandatory government in Palestine “White Paper” denied Jew’s entry to Palestine while Hitler’s Nazis murdered every Jew they could find. On the issue of after marriage immigration, Shakir knows that not a single democratic state would allow a hostile population entry into their country, particularly when the so-called Palestinian “right of return” to Israel is a formula for the demographic destruction of the Jewish state. Still, Israel has permitted Israeli-Arabs to bring Palestinian spouses into Israel.

The report, using the term Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) is in itself a false, misleading, and mendacious term. There has never been a Palestinian state; Jordan occupied the West Bank from 1948 to 1967. Egypt occupied Gaza at the same time. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 used the principle of “territory for peace.” It specifically used the word ‘territory’ to imply that not ‘all’ the territories Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War would be exchanged. Resolution 242 dealt with recognized states such as Egypt and Jordan, but not the Palestinians. Today, the Palestinian Authority (PA) controls the lives of 95% of the Palestinians in the West Bank. Hamas has full control of the entire Gaza Strip.

In a New York Times opinion piece (September 19, 1983), the late Eugene Rostow, who served as Dean of Yale Law School, and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the Johnson administration, wrote: “Israel has an unassailable legal right to establish settlements in the West Bank. The West Bank is part of the British Mandate in Palestine which included Israel and Jordan as well as certain territories not yet generally belonging to either country. While Jewish settlement east of the Jordan River was suspended in 1922, such settlement remains legal in the West Bank.”

The claims by the HRW regarding the definition of apartheid under the Rome Statute are fundamentally political, and rejected by most legal experts as distortion and slander. The HRW and other anti-Israel NGOs erase the basic nature of the South African regime, which was characterized by systematic institutionalized oppression, particularly in the realm of political and civil rights. Israel, by contrast, is a recognized liberal democracy, where all its citizens, Arabs and Jews, enjoy full political rights as well as civil and human rights.

The Rome Statute grew out of the tragedies of WWII, foremost among them the Holocaust. The statute deals with, as HRW writes: “severe deprivation of fundamental rights on racial, ethnic, and other grounds…” These are precisely what the German Nazis and their allies committed principally against the Jewish people. The HRW and their NGOs allies, who seek to equate the Jewish state with such crimes, are simply despicable. Moreover, Israel’s Supreme Court has bent backwards to protect the civil and human rights of West Bank Palestinians.

In the political and soft power arenas, the smear of apartheid is particularly potent. Repeating the calumny of the 1970’s that “Zionism (the Jewish national liberation movement) is racism,” and labeling the Jewish state as racist, comparing it to South Africa’s apartheid regime is an attempt to delegitimize Jewish sovereignty. The HRW report is yet another move in the decades-long series of obsessive attacks against Israel, and its legitimacy as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Professors and international jurists Irwin Cutler and Richard Goldstone, both noted legal experts, asserted that labeling Israel as an “apartheid state” amounts to distortion and slander. Cutler, a former Canadian Attorney General, pointed out, “Let there be no mistake about it: to indict Israel as an apartheid state is a prologue and justification for the dismantling of the Jewish state, for criminalization of its supporters, and for the consequential silencing of their speech.” Richard Goldstone, South Africa’s former Justice of the Constitutional Court, in a New York Times piece wrote: “In Israel there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the Rome Statute.”

* * *

Photo credit: Louis Reynolds

 

Joseph Puder

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/human-rights-watch-maligns-israel-apartheid-state-joseph-puder/

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J Street Demands Biden Maintain Muslim Occupation of Jewish Homes - Daniel Greenfield

 

by Daniel Greenfield

The current Arab violence in Sheikh Jarrah and surrounding areas of Jerusalem serves a dual purpose.

J Street claims that it's against the occupation, but apparently it's only against occupying land when it can accuse Israel of doing so.

Here's Caroline Glick's brief summary of the current pretext for the Hamas/Fatah riots being supported by Warren, Sanders, AOC, and J Street.

The situation in Sheikh Jarrah is cut and dried. Buildings in the neighborhood that were purchased by Jews 146 years ago were illegally seized in 1948 by Jordan as its forces illegally occupied eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem in the course of the pan-Arab invasion of the nascent Jewish state. During the course of Jordan’s illegal occupation of those areas of Jerusalem, the Jordanian Registry of Enemy Property illegally leased the Jewish-owned buildings to Arab tenants.

When Israel liberated the Jordanian-occupied areas of Jerusalem in 1967, the owners of the buildings reasserted their property rights. Their ownership over the properties in Sheikh Jarrah was duly registered in Israel’s land registry in 1973. But when the owners tried to retake possession a 48-year legal battle between the owners and the squatters began, which is scheduled to finally come to an end this week.

Following a last-ditch appeal of the Jerusalem District Court ruling that ordered their forced evacuation, the Supreme Court is scheduled to issue a final—and unappealable—ruling on the issue this week. The current Arab violence in Sheikh Jarrah and surrounding areas of Jerusalem has been incited by Hamas. It serves a dual purpose. It invents a rationale for a new Palestinian terror onslaught against Israel. And it pressures Israeli judges, government ministers and police commanders to weigh the possibility of discriminating against the Jewish owners in the hopes of stymying Hamas’s declared plan to renew its terror offensive.

Here's J Street endorsing the continued Arab Muslim occupation of these homes in Jerusalem.

The violence of recent days has deep roots in the ongoing, incendiary efforts of Israeli settler groups to evict hundreds of Palestinians from the East Jerusalem homes that they have lived in for decades and more broadly to stake exclusive control over Jerusalem for Israel. Sadly, the current crisis has been inflamed by the use of aggressive, violent tactics by the Israeli police against Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. At Al-Aqsa, some Palestinians responded by throwing stones they had apparently stockpiled.

Funny how they had "stockpiled" these stones before these alleged "aggressive, violent tactics" by Israel. Soviet propaganda sounded more plausible than this.

Note also how J Street implicitly admits that the Muslim settlers are not there legitimately, describing them only as occupying "homes that they have lived in for decades".

Not homes they actually own or have legal title to.

J Street urges the Biden administration to make clear publicly that Israeli efforts to evict and displace Palestinian families in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are completely unacceptable to the United States

Maybe they can go live in Jeremy Ben Ami and George Soros' house instead.

 

Daniel Greenfield

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/05/j-street-demands-biden-maintain-muslim-occupation-daniel-greenfield/

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Martha MacCallum spars with teachers union president over critical race theory in classrooms: 'That's a dodge' - Yael Halon

 

by Yael Halon

'Do you favor teaching students that 1619 is more important than 1776?' MacCallum asked Weingarten

 Martha MacCallum presses teachers union president on critical race theory in classrooms: 'That's a dodge'

"The Story" host Martha MacCallum tangled with American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten Monday over her support of The New York Times’ controversial "1619 Project" and critical race theory being taught in classrooms across the country.

MacCallum questioned Weingarten's push to implement a curriculum based on certain parts of the 1619 Project, published in 2019 by the Times.

The project is based on the belief that the first importation of the slaves to American shores in 1619 constituted the nation’s true founding, "and that the reason for the revolution and the colonization was because people wanted to preserve slavery," MacCallum explained.

OKLAHOMA GOV. BANS CRITICAL RACE THEORY IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES

Weingarten, a self-described "history and social studies teacher" defended the controversial belief, claiming that "from everything I can see and understand from the data that I see, 1619 was the year that the first slave boat came from Africa to the United States. So that's a point in history that I think we should be teaching."

"That's a very simplistic take on it," MacCallum fired back. "The Story" host explained that the project indoctrinates children to believe that "the country was founded on the basis of wanting to preserve slavery."

"If you raise children in this country believing that it's a bad country that was founded in wanting to preserve slavery...then we've got a problem in our school system."

— Martha MacCallum, 'The Story'

"But that is not factual. That is not true," MacCallum told viewers. "In fact, scholars say there's no evidence that colonists were motivated by that in coming to the United States. So it would be wrong as a historian to want to teach them something that is not true, because that is the basis that sets up all of these other tenants that lead to teaching kids that we live in a systemically racist country."

Weingarten claimed that she had "several conversations" with 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones and that she has "not arrived at the same conclusion from her work as [MacCallum has]."

The debate took a turn when Weingarten appeared to deflect from the issue and focus instead on the network's coverage of the 2020 election.

"Oh, come on, Randi," a frustrated MacCallum interjected. "This is not the topic that we’re here to talk about. I'm not going to talk about that. We talked about that before. But that's a dodge. Okay?" she said.

"So I'm asking you -- you say you're a social studies teacher. Do you favor teaching students that 1619 is more important than 1776? Do you favor that?"

"I favor us teaching about 1776, which I have often done. I favor us teaching about 1619. I also favor us teaching about the holocaust and the genocide in terms of the holocaust," Weingarten responded.

MacCallum asked Weingarten pointedly whether she supports teaching impressionable children "that if they're White they belong to an oppressor class and if they're Black they belong to a victim class." 

"You have any problem with that?" she asked.

TEACHERS UNION BOSSES VISITED WHITE HOUSE FOR JILL BIDEN EVENT

Weingarten reiterated her commitment to elevating "all ethnicities..." and "celebrating diversity and actually looking at people's lived experience."

"But," MacCallum persisted, "if you raise children in this country believing that it's a bad country that was founded on wanting to preserve slavery, which is simply not true, then we've got a problem in our school system."

Weingarten expressed her "love" for the United States, and its ability to "actually see how to make itself better." 

"That is what we try to do in education all the time. So look, I think we should be teaching about 1776. I think we should be teaching about all of the civil rights laws. I think we should actually be doing more with civics and science in school and I do think that we should be talking about when the slave trade started in a place we now call America," she answered.

" I come from a long line of very proud teachers," MacCallum concluded, "and... I think some of them would be disturbed by what we see happening."

 

Yael Halon is a reporter for Fox News.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/media/martha-maccallum-spars-with-teachers-union-president-over-critical-race-theory-in-classrooms-thats-a-dodge

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