Saturday, August 31, 2019

Incentivized Emigration: An idea whose time has come? - Dr. Martin Sherman


by Dr. Martin Sherman

Of all the policy paradigms for the resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian-Arabs, incentivized Arab emigration is the most humane if it succeeds and least inhumane if it does not.


"Past attempts to encourage Palestinians to voluntary emigrate have always failed, so time and effort would be better invested in reaching an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement." - Yossi Beilin, former Israeli government minister, and a principal architect of the Oslo Accords, Al Monitor, August 26, 2019

The above quote is from an article by Beilin, still an unchastened champion of the fatally flawed process he helped initiate in the early 1990s,  in response to a spate of recent reports indicating that Israeli officialdom is considering—albeit with some hesitancy—the idea of offering the residents of Gaza material assistance to facilitate their emigration to third party countries—see for example here, here, here, and here.

Disingenuous dismissal?

Of course, Beilin’s dismissal of the notion of Israel encouraging Arab emigration is more than a little disingenuous. For if past failure is his criterion for disqualifying a policy proposal, the first to incur such rejection should surely be his own preferred Oslowian land-for-peace, two-state formula.
 

After all, from Beilin’s critique, the uninformed reader would never guess that far more “time and effort” has been invested in an almost three-decade long endeavor to "reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement” than in any attempt at inducing Arab emigration.

Indeed, no other policy prescription has been backed with such massive and sustained outlays of treasure, political and diplomatic capital and...blood, as that embraced by Beilin and his like-mined pro-Oslowian ideologues—in their foolhardy gamble of trying to reach a resolution to the conflict with their overtly Judeophobic Palestinian interlocutors, by means of political appeasement and territorial withdrawal.

But setting aside for a moment Beilin’s disingenuous invocation of the lack of success of previous efforts to induce Arab emigration, there are substantive reasons why the past may well not be a reliable indicator of the future. 

The first is that the Arab population—particularly in Gaza—has already experienced the onerous travails of life under a duly elected Palestinian-Arab government. 

Documented desire to leave

This of course is particularly true for Gaza, although there is also considerable dissatisfaction in Judea-Samaria, where after over a quarter-century of government by Fatah, all that has been achieved is a dysfunctional polity and an emaciated economy, crippled by corruption and cronyism, with a minuscule private sector and a bloated public one, patently unsustainable without the largesse of its alleged “oppressor,” Israel.

But, it is Gaza, where the misguided experiment in two-statism was first initiated back in 1994, sparking a surge of deluded optimism fanned by the likes of Beilin, that has now become its gravest indictment—for both Jew and Arab alike.

The gross misgovernment of Gaza has left the general population awash in untreated sewage flows, with well over 90% of the water supply unfit for drinking, electrical power available for only a few hours a day, and unemployment rates soaring to anything between 40-60%--depending on the source cited or the sector involved.

Unsurprisingly, this has led to a wide spread desire to leave Gaza and seek a better future elsewhere—which is reflected in both numerous media reports and in statistical polling, which regularly shows that between 40-50% of respondents are willing to openly declare their desire to leave.

Significantly, according to some sources, since May last year, between 35-40,000 have  left—despite heavy restrictions at the border, ominous disapproval of the regime and the lack of any purposeful policy of Israel to incentivize their departure. 

Enhanced scale & scope

Another reason why past failures to induce emigration may not necessarily indicate that future attempts are futile is that any envisaged future endeavor must be qualitatively different in nature, in size and in scope to those previously undertaken.

In the past, the emigration initiatives have been timid, hesitant and surreptitious, while the material inducements offered were decidedly miserly.

In prior attempts, Israeli authorities attempted to conceal the initiative to encourage emigration. Thus, one internal Foreign Ministry memo (1968) stipulated: “This must be done discreetly and ‘spontaneously’ and under no circumstances should this be declared as official policy or appear to be organized by us.”

By contrast, what is called for today is an overt, publically declared strategic initiative, including an assertive public diplomacy offensive and accompanied by a comprehensive set of highly tempting incentives to leave and commensurately daunting disincentives for continued residency in Gaza. 

The point of departure for any successful incentivized emigration policy is to identify the Palestinian-Arab collective for what it is—and for what it identifies itself to be: An implacable enemy and not a prospective peace partner—and to differentiate between the inimical collective and non-belligerent individuals, which it may include. 

Disincentives for staying; incentives for leaving
 

This brings us to the disincentives for staying.

As its implacable enemy, Israel has no moral obligation or practical interest in sustaining the economy or social order of the Palestinian-Arab collective—either in Gaza or Judea-Samaria. On the contrary, an overwhelming case can be made – on both ethical and pragmatic grounds – that it should let them collapse by refraining from providing any of the goods or services it – perversely – provides today: water, electricity, fuel, tax collection and port services to name but a few. After all, these are in large measure used to sustain the hostility against Israel and imperil the lives of its citizens and undermine the security of the state. 

Although this cessation of provision should be executed gradually over a defined period of time, it will undoubtedly precipitate a grave deterioration in the already dire situation that prevails in Gaza.

Which brings us to the incentives for leaving.

In order to allow non-belligerent Gazans to extricate themselves from the inevitable humanitarian crisis such measures will entail, non-belligerent individuals should be offered generous relocation grants to allow them—and their dependents—the opportunity to seek more prosperous and secure lives elsewhere. 

As for the incentives, these need to be of a completely different order of magnitude to those of the past and sufficient not only to cover the travel cost of the recipients to their future countries of abode, but to make them relatively affluent and welcome emigres in those countries.

Approximating the Cost

It is not an easy task to determine the optimum compensation for prospective recipients, but for the sake of argument let us assume that 100 times the current Gazan GDP per capita per family is not an unreasonable point of departure. This would amount to about $250-300,000 per family. With the estimated number of families in Gaza around 400,000, the total cost would amount to about $100 billion or about one third of Israel’s total annual GDP.
 

At first glance this might appear daunting, but if the implementation of the initiative were spread over a period of a decade and half—far less than the efforts to effect a two-state outcome have been tried—this would come to only 2-3% of GDP—something Israel could probably shoulder on its own. If other OECD countries could be harnessed to participate, it could be implemented at a fraction of a percentage of their GDPs—showing that political legitimacy rather than economic cost is the principal obstacle to be overcome.

To give a sense of proportion, the US spent several trillion dollars on its military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, which dwarfs the size of the budget required to resettle all the Gazans, together with all their kinfolk in the “West Bank”, safely and comfortably in some third party country.

Who will host them?

One of the questions inevitably raised regarding the incentivized emigration idea is that of who the host countries are likely to be—especially given the migration crisis in Europe following the chaos in the wake of the “Arab Spring” and the Syrian civil war.

Indeed, according to the previously cited reports regarding renewed Israeli interest in encouraging Gazans to emigrate, it was noted that there was some difficulty in locating countries willing to accept them.
 

Clearly, however, within the parameters of the initiative set out previously, the situation would be very different. After all, within these parameters, the Gazan emigrants will not be arriving at the gates of their prospective host countries as destitute—or at least desperate—refugees but, as mentioned above, as relatively affluent emigrants by the standards of many such potential host countries.
 

Indeed, by absorbing Gazan emigrants, the host countries will generate significant capital inflows into their economies. For example, a country that accepts 3000 Gazan families can expect a capital injection of almost a billion dollars!
 

If additional international aid can be extended to the host countries, absorbing the Gazan emigrants could be an act that is both profitable and humane. 

The moral high ground 


Israeli officials have erred badly in being reticent as to the intention of encouraging Arab emigration. Indeed, there is no reason for any sense of moral unease. To the contrary, incentivized emigration is clearly morally superior to any other policy paradigm addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—and certainly to that touted by Beilin calling for a two-state outcome. After all, any prospective Palestinian state will almost certainly be yet another homophobic, misogynistic Muslim majority tyranny—whose hallmarks would be: gender discrimination, gay persecution, religious intolerance, and political oppression of dissidents. Indeed, no two-stater, however fervent, has ever produced any persuasive argument why it would not be. 

Here of course, a trenchant question must be forced into the public discourse on the legitimacy of incentivized emigration in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general, and of Gaza in particular. This is the question of “Who has the moral high ground?”

Is it those who advocate the establishment of said homophobic, misogynistic Muslim majority tyranny which would comprise the very antithesis of liberal values usually invoked for its establishment? 

Or is it those who advocate incentivized emigration and providing non-belligerent Palestinian individuals with the opportunity of building a better life for themselves elsewhere, out of harm’s way, free from the recurring cycles of death, destruction and destitution that have been brought down on them by the cruel corrupt cliques that have led them astray for decades.

The most humane; the least inhumane

Indeed, there is another, even more pertinent question to be asked of the proponents of Palestinian statehood:

Why is it morally acceptable to offer financial inducements to Jews to evacuate their homes to facilitate the establishment of said homophobic, misogynistic tyranny, which, almost certainly, will become a bastion for Islamist terror; while it is considered morally reprehensible to offer financial inducements to Arabs to evacuate their homes to prevent the establishment of such an entity?


The proponents of incentivized emigration need not feel any sense of moral discomfort as to their policy prescription—especially when compared to that of the proponents of Palestinian statehood.

Indeed, as I have demonstrated elsewhere, the incentivized emigration paradigm is in fact the most humane of all policy proposals if its implementation is successful; and the least inhumane, if it is not.


This is the message they should be propounding vigorously, openly and unabashedly--as the harbingers of an idea, whose time has come.


Dr. Martin Sherman served for seven years in operational capacities in the Israeli Defense establishment, was ministerial adviser to Yitzhak Shamir's government and lectured for 20 years at Tel Aviv University in Political Science, International Relations and Strategic Studies. He has a B.Sc. (Physics and Geology), MBA (Finance), and PhD in political science and international relations, was the first academic director of the Herzliya Conference and is the author of two books and numerous articles and policy papers on a wide range of political, diplomatic and security issues. He is founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategicisrael.org). Born in South Africa,he has lived in Israel since 1971.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/24379

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A Teenage Girl’s Murder Shows What Loyal and Disloyal Jews Are - Daniel Greenfield


by Daniel Greenfield

Are Jewish Democrats loyal to terrorists or to terror victims?




"Is there water in the spring?"

Those were the last words that Danny heard on a hot day in June. The spring of Ein Bubin bursts forth in a valley surrounded by dusty hills, flows into a glittering pool, and waters a garden of fruit trees. But every garden has its serpent. And the serpent in this spot of paradise was named Mohammed.

Mohammed Abu Shahin stopped Danny Gonen to ask him if there was water to swim in. Danny had just finished swimming in the spring and was happy to oblige. The Israeli electrical engineering student was the oldest of five brothers and sisters. He always stepped up, whether it was supporting his family after his father died, or helping out a stranger. And on that Friday afternoon, he paid for it with his life.

Mohammed shot Danny, along with his friend Netanel. Danny’s friend survived. And Danny did not.

The Muslim terrorist was a former member of Force 17, a Palestinian Authority terror group that acted as Arafat’s Presidential Guard, and was on the Palestinian Authority payroll. He had spent two years in prison for previous terror plots before being freed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a corrupt left-wing politician, along with 249 other Fatah terrorists as part of a “peace” gesture for the Islamic Eid holiday.

Palestinian Authority boss Mahmoud Abbas rejected the peace gesture, and the freed Islamic terrorists, who had promised not to carry out attacks, shockingly enough, didn’t keep their word.

"As a gesture of goodwill towards the Palestinians, I will bring before the Israeli cabinet a proposal to free 250 Fatah prisoners who do not have blood on their hands, after they sign a commitment not to return to violence," Olmert had declared at a summit, where he was photographed hugging Abbas.

It didn’t take long for blood to end up on their hands and on the hands of the “pro-peace” politicians.

At Mohammed's trial, Danny's mother condemned the process that allowed an “animal walking on two legs, who is mistakenly called a human, to keep on living and enjoying life on our bill.” The family's lawyer asked the court to ensure that this time around the terrorist would not be freed.

When Danny’s mother appeared before the Israeli Supreme Court, Supreme Court President Miriam Naor, the best friend illegal migrants invading Israel ever had, barked at her to be quiet.

“If I survived my son's murder, then no judge will ever break me,” Danny’s mother courageously replied.

Danny was murdered in 2015. A plaque went up reminding hikers that on a Sabbath Eve, the young man had been murdered not in a place that leftists call “Palestine,” but in the “Holy Land of Israel.”

Four years later, terrorists struck at the Ein Bubin spring on yet another Friday.

Rabbi Eitan Shnerb was hiking to the spring with his son Dvir and his daughter Rina when the bomb went off. For a moment, as he described it in the hospital, everything went black. Then, badly wounded, he saw that the two teenagers were bleeding. Rabbi Shnerb was a trained paramedic. He saw that Rina, his 17-year-old daughter, had absorbed most of the blast. He kissed her on the forehead.

And then he turned his Tzizit, the biblical garment that Orthodox Jewish men wear, into a tourniquet for his 19-year-old son to stop the bleeding.

Dvir told his father that he couldn’t breathe and passed out. His daughter was already dead.
Rabbi Shnerb had stopped a terrorist attack earlier this year by two armed attackers. This time there were no attackers, just a bomb, and he had not seen the explosion coming.

Medical personnel evacuated father and son by helicopter. They continued trying to treat Rina at the scene. Hoping against hope that something could still be done.

On that same Friday, while her father and bother remained in the hospital, Rina was laid to rest. Students from her high school class turned out to say goodbye to one of their classmates. Prayers from the cemetery were relayed by phone to her father. A Rabbi recited Psalm 91 and the mourners echoed.

"I will say of the LORD, who is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust," he chanted. "Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold, and see the recompense of the wicked."

The wicked are being sought once more. Israeli soldiers are hunting for the killers and their accomplices in dirty villages and sinister towns. And they are aware that the hunt may lead to more ambushes.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh praised the killers of the teenage girl as heroes.

In his sermon in Gaza, the Islamic terrorist leader called her murder a "heroic attack" and celebrated it as “proof of the vitality and bravery of the Palestinian people." He claimed that the bombing was evidence that the terrorists are "strong people" who are "faithful and steadfast."

The Shnerb family had run a charity in Lod which handed out food and clothing to the poor.

The Palestinian Authority’s Ma’an News Agency justified Rina’s murder by falsely claiming that she was an 18-year-old soldier, when she was actually a high school student who had just turned 17.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib responded to the attack by calling for an end to the “Israeli occupation.”

Trump’s Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt urged “donor countries” to “demand the PA answer for why their donor funds continue to be used to reward attacks.” Just like Danny Ganon’s killers, Rina’s murderers will receive a lifetime salary from the Palestinian Authority funded by foreign aid.


Since Trump cut off aid to the terror group, the money is mainly coming from the European Union.

“It’s time to stop burying our people,” Danny’s mother said after the latest attack.

But the only way that will happen is if money stops flowing to the terrorists. The Democrats have made it clear that if they win the presidential election, they will restore the flow of cash to the terrorists.

Joe Biden vowed to restore “security” funding to the Palestinian Authority. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand promised to restore the aid programs that “President Trump has cut.” Andrew Yang called for restoring aid to the terrorists. Senator Bernie Sanders and Peter Buttigieg went further, threatening aid to Israel.

None of them condemned Rina’s murder.

Rina’s murder and Danny’s murder, on the same day, four years apart, were funded by foreign aid.

A few days before Rina’s murder, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas delivered a speech in which the terrorist leader vowed, “Allah willing”, to destroy Jewish houses and capture Jerusalem.

"We shall enter Jerusalem – millions of fighters!" he ranted. "We will not accept their designation of our martyrs as terrorists. Our martyrs are the martyrs of the homeland. We will not allow them to deduct a single penny from their money. All the money will go back to them, because the martyrs, the wounded, and the prisoners are the most sacred things we have."

Terrorists would continue receiving cash because terrorism was sacred to the Palestinian Authority.

Last week, Democrat politicians and liberal Jewish organizations fumed when President Trump accused them of disloyalty. The last time they were this outraged was when Israel barred Rep. Tlaib and Rep. Omar, overt opponents of Israel and supporters of terrorism against the Jewish State, from entering.

The murders at Ein Bubin are a harsh reminder that what is at stake here is not Twitter feeds. It’s lives.

The issue is not who said what about whom. It’s a bomb going off on a warm summer day. It’s a teenage girl dying in the dust. It’s the disloyalty of those American Jews who place their allegiance to abortion, to gay rights, and illegal migrants over the loyalty that teenage girl deserved from them.

Jewish Democrats who failed to stand up to their party to stop murders like these are not disloyal to a country; they are disloyal to Rina. And to Danny. And to thousands more like them.

While the Jewish Democrats attacked Israel over Rep. Omar, Rep. Tlaib and other anti-Semites, the Jews of Dolev, named after its sycamore trees, buried Rina and waited for her father to return home.

And Danny’s mother stands at the plaque marking her son’s death and wonders if there will be more.

We are all defined by our loyalties. Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib are loyal to their people. Many Jewish Democrats are loyal to the party even if it means accepting bigots like Omar and Tlaib.

That loyalty to leftist politics is disloyalty to the Jews being murdered by Omar and Tlaib’s people.

In the face of terror, there is only one loyalty that matters, either to terrorists or to terror victims.

At Ein Bubin, the water flows. And the residents of Dolev continue to hike into the hills, to swim in the spring and the pool, and to prepare for the next terrorist attack.

The spring is located in the land that once belonged to the tribe of Joseph.

“Blessed be the land of Joseph, before the Lord,” Moses preached in Deuteronomy 33:13, “with the blessing of the dew and the rain that comes down from the heaven above, with the blessings of the fountains of the deep which well up from the earth beneath.”

Faithfulness is like the springs that rise from the earth. Its loyalty breaks through all barriers.

Rina, her father, and her brother, were loyal not to a party, but to the G-d who gave them that land.

“Dvir said to me we will be strong, we will protect the people of Israel and the Torah of Israel, and together we will move forward,” Rabbi Eitan Shnerb said of his son.

That is a loyalty that the disloyal Democrats -- who cringe before Omar and Tlaib, who pander to terrorists, who believe in every leftist cause, but have no faith in a Jewish cause -- cannot imagine.

It is a true faith and allegiance that has endured for thousands of years. It is of an age with the land, with the hills and the springs beneath, with the truth of martyrdom and endurance, and the truth of G-d.

When Rabbi Shnerb spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu on the phone, he told him that his daughter was "a martyr of the people of Israel.” He asserted, “with God’s help we will grow stronger.”

That is what a loyal Jew sounds like. To hear what a disloyal one sounds like, listen to the media.


Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274744/teenage-girls-murder-shows-what-loyal-and-disloyal-daniel-greenfield

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Iranian Women Fight for Freedom - Uzay Bulut


by Uzay Bulut

Three Iranian women held in Tehran's notorious Qarchak prison were sentenced recently to what could amount to more than 10 years in prison. Their "crime"? Failing to wear headscarves

Translations of this item:


  • "The Islamic Republic authorities say 'compulsory hijab' is the law and must be obeyed. However, bad laws must be challenged and changed." — Masih Alinejad, Iranian-American journalist and award-winning activist.
  • "The basis of this tyranny is the religious law that the government has been enforcing since the 1979 revolution. Women are second-class citizens, and essentially slaves in Iran. The international community needs to have the courage to delegitimize religious law and call it out for its tyrannical nature. Just as the free world delegitimized communism during the Cold War, it should do the same to religious law." — Nasrin Mohammadi, author of Ideas and Lashes: The Prison Diary of Akbar Mohammadi, about the torture and death in prison of her late brother; to Gatestone Institute.
  • "The international community should also focus on Iran, struggle to end that regime and other similar governments across the world. With Iran, it should also point out the corruption, where religion is used as an excuse to steal money and power from the people." — Nasrin Mohammadi.
  • "But we need support of the international community to raise this issue with Iranian authorities and take action." — Masih Alinejad.

Three Iranian women held in Tehran's notorious Qarchak prison were sentenced recently to what could amount to more than 10 years in prison. Their "crime"? Failing to wear headscarves, thereby defying the country's dress code. Pictured: An Iranian policewoman (left) warns a woman about her clothing and hair during a crackdown to enforce the regime's dress code, on April 22, 2007 in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

Three Iranian women held in Tehran's notorious Qarchak prison were sentenced recently to what could amount to more than 10 years in prison. Their "crime"? Failing to wear headscarves, thereby defying the country's Islamic dress code.

The women were apprehended after a video they posted online during International Women's Day went viral. In the clip, they are seen walking bear-headed on a Tehran metro and distributing flowers to female passengers.

"The day will come when women are not forced to struggle," one of them is heard saying, while another expresses hope that one day women in hijabs will be able to walk side-by-side with women who choose not to wear them.

The battle on behalf of a woman's right not to cover her head spurred Iranian-American journalist and award-winning activist Masih Alinejad – author, most recently, of The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran -- to found a social-media movement called "My Stealthy Freedom."

The movement, as part of its efforts, created the hashtag #WhiteWednesdays, where Iranian women can share photos and videos of themselves appearing in public places without headscarves -- or pictures of themselves wearing symbolic white head coverings and other articles of clothing -- and discuss their views on women's rights.

During the five years since its establishment, My Stealthy Freedom has received thousands of photos and videos and has attracted more than a million followers.

In a recent interview with Gatestone, Alinejad, who lives in "self-exile" in New York, said:
"For 40 years, the Islamic Republic authorities have used coercion, public shaming and violence to crack down on women. What is different now is that the women are pushing back and demanding their rights. I started My Stealthy Freedom campaign against the 'compulsory hijab' in 2014, and since then, it has grown massively, with initiatives such as White Wednesdays giving the regime constant headaches, because women have become braver about challenging the authorities for their civil rights.
"The Islamic Republic authorities say 'compulsory hijab' is the law and must be obeyed. However, bad laws must be challenged and changed. Today, the women fighting against the backward compulsory hijab law are the biggest challenge to the clerical regime in Iran and, like a river that will eventually overcome any obstacle, these women cannot be stopped.
"But we need support of the international community to raise this issue with Iranian authorities and take action."
Alinejad's writings and political advocacy have come at a great cost, however. As she wrote in the New York Times in 2018, she has not been able to visit Iran since 2009 for fear of arrest. Also, her family, who "still lives in the poor village where [she] was raised in northern Iran," has been intimidated by the regime – so much so that her sister publicly disowned her on prime-time Iranian television.

Referring to the two-hour interrogation to which Alinejad's elderly mother was subjected recently, Amnesty International expressed concern "that the authorities may feature statements she gave under duress in future propaganda videos, given their long-standing record of engaging in such abusive practices."

Non-violent human rights activists are often violently targeted by the Iranian regime. Akbar Mohammadi, the brother of the US-based Iranian women's rights activist, Nasrin Mohammadi, for instance, was arrested during the student uprising in 1999. Akbar was tortured and eventually killed after seven years in prison. Nasrin published the book Ideas and Lashes: The Prison Diary of Akbar Mohammadi in 2012, about the torture of her late brother.

"Iran's violent crackdown of women is just another example of oppression that the Iranian people go through every day," Nasrin Mohammadi told Gatestone.
"The basis of this tyranny is the religious law that the government has been enforcing since the 1979 revolution. Women are second-class citizens, and essentially slaves in Iran. The international community needs to have the courage to delegitimize religious law and call it out for its tyrannical nature. Just as the free world delegitimized communism during the Cold War, it should do the same to religious law.
"The international community should also focus on Iran, struggle to end that regime and other similar governments across the world. With Iran, it should also point out the corruption, where religion is used as an excuse to steal money and power from the people."
Another U.S.-based Iranian activist Nasim Basiri -- a teacher's assistant at Oregon State University's Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies department -- told Gatestone that, in spite of the risks involved, the feminist movement is growing in Iran.

Basiri said she believes that "foreign feminists can be allies and serve as a voice for Iranian women and women's rights activists."

She continued:
"Many Iranian feminists believe that Western policies have favored the dictatorship in Iran that resulted in increased cultural and political violence against women. They do not want to experience what Afghan and Iraqi women have experienced because of wars. That does not lead to liberation and gives excuses to authoritarian regimes to silence women in the name of protecting the nation and fighting against 'imperialism.'"
Faranak Rostami, an Iranian refugee in Qatar, told Gatestone:
"Iranian women really want to exchange this regime for a liberal government. We need liberty and gender equality in all sectors. If we don't have that, we should be provided with refugee status abroad."

Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14773/iranian-women-freedom

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Mandatory Teacher Training Denigrates Christianity, Exalts Islam - Sara Dogan


by Sara Dogan

Christian scriptures described as “corrupted” while the Koran contains the “pure” word of God.




A Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan revealed deeply concerning information on a mandatory two-day teacher training session on Islam conducted for public school teachers in the state which denigrated Christianity while presenting Islam in an exclusively positive light.
“We found that the teachers were subjected to two days of Islamic propaganda, where Islam was glorified, Christianity disparaged, and America bashed—all funded by Novi taxpayers,” explained Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel at the Thomas More Law Center. He noted that the school district had not sponsored teacher trainings on Christianity, Judaism, or other religions over the past five years, but solely on Islam.

The “cultural competency” expert hired by the Novi Community Schools District in Michigan is Huda Essa of Culture Links LLC, a hijab-wearing woman of Arab descent. After examining numerous documents relating to Essa’s presentation including audio transcripts from her talk, the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) found that “information on Islam she provided to Novi teachers was riddled with falsehoods and errors of omission that were clearly meant to deceive.”

During the two-day training session, Essa “spent a great deal of time in her Novi presentation talking about Muslim women, whom she described as victims of Islamophobia on the part of bigoted Americans,” explains a press release from the TMLC. She described cases where hijab-wearing Muslim women have been attacked or killed for their religious dress but provided no details on when or where these attacks occurred. As the Thomas More Law Center pointed out in its release, “anti-Muslim attacks are relatively rare in America and actually fell by 17 percent in 2017” while “Anti-Jewish hate crimes that year out-numbered anti-Muslim offenses by nearly four to one.”

Essa also claimed that mistreatment of women in Islamic countries is due only to “cultural” differences, and not to the Islamic religion itself, which in fact dictates radically different rules for men and women.

Her presentation repeatedly portrayed Christianity in a negative light, claiming that the Christian scriptures were “corrupted” over time whereas the Koran contains the true and “pure” word of God. Claiming that Christianity and Islam are “mostly similar,” she also asserted that Islam is in fact the world’s “only purely monotheistic religion.”

Teachers attending the training session were taught to believe in a whitewashed version of Islam. Essa told those in attendance that the word “Islam” is a variation on the Arabic word “salaam” which means peace. As the TMLC points out, Islam is more accurately translated as “submission,” since Muslims must submit to Allah and Sharia law before all other authorities. She also described the phrase “Allahu Abkar” as a refrain used to convey strong emotions; she did not mention that this same phrase is used as a battle-cry by Islamic terrorists conducting attacks.

The problematic presentation on Islam was not limited to one Michigan school district. Essa’s website lists nine separate school districts in Michigan as clients and also public schools, colleges and professional organizations in numerous other states including California, Texas, Georgia, and Florida. For the two-day presentation for the Novi Community Schools District, Essa’s organization was paid $5,000. The Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the TMLC further revealed that the district did not fully vet Essa before allowing her to conduct the mandatory training, nor did they conduct a factual analysis of her claims. In spite of the school district’s limited screening process, Essa was given access to data from student and faculty surveys.

“This type of infiltration amounts to an Islamic Trojan horse within our public-school systems,” Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center said. “No other religion gets this kind of special treatment in our schools.”
 
To learn more about the Freedom Center's campaign to halt indoctrination in K-12 schools, please visit  www.stopk12indoctrination.org.  To read the K-12 Code of Ethics CLICK HERE. To order the Freedom Center’s new pamphlet, “Leftist Indoctrination in Our K-12 Public Schools,” CLICK HERE. To donate to the Stop K-12 Indoctrination campaign, CLICK HERE.


Sara Dogan

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274787/mandatory-teacher-training-denigrates-christianity-sara-dogan

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Daring to Suggest that All Cultures Aren't Equal - Jason D. Hill


by Jason D. Hill

The Acting Provost of DePaul University issues a formal censure against me.




It is a common canard among the educated cognoscenti that all cultures are equal. Indeed, a few weeks after writing an article in which I declared that not all cultures were equal, the Acting Provost of DePaul University—where I am a full tenured professor of philosophy—issued what I and many others considered to be a formal censure against me. She declared that at her university it is considered an accepted truism that all individuals are valued equally, and that she was truly disheartened that a member of the academic community would assert that “not all cultures are indeed equal.”

I had stated that some cultures are abysmally inferior and regressive based on their comprehensive philosophy and fundamental principles, or, lack thereof—that guide or fail to protect the inalienable rights of their citizens.

Therein lay the category mistake that an educated academic along with countless others commit conflating the individual with the cultural. A culture may be described as a multiplicity of complex systems that include the arts, laws, customs, practices, norms, mores, beliefs, knowledge, and human capabilities acquired by human-beings in society. Culture also includes language, ethical systems, and religious institutions. One can indeed say that all persons are endowed with equal and intrinsic moral worth as human beings which they may corrupt by committing morally egregious acts; but as human beings, they are possessed of inviolable moral worth and dignity.

It is, however, a category mistake to transfer this innate respect and reverence for the individual on to the landscape of culture which is not an indivisible whole, and which possesses none of the requisite attributes of individuals that make them deserving of such unassailable respect. Persons' identities are not reducible to the practices of their cultures. Some cultural practices are downright horrific and evil; some are better than others. Persons in their respective cultures are free to identify themselves with those cultural practices that align themselves with their moral identities, and distances themselves from those they find repulsive.

The Unites States of America is not a perfect civilization; however, as a rights bearing culture in which the inalienability of rights are observed, a country in which civil liberties such as freedom of speech ( for now) is still upheld, freedom of conscience, and freedom of religious association or lack thereof respected, it is vastly superior to barbaric and primitive cultures that have yet to discover the individual and his or her inviolate dignity. The United States is a republic devoted to the inalienability of those rights that are conducive to human survival and flourishing. The United States, through its Constitution and Bill of Rights, is the first political system to discover the direct correlation between the rational nature of man qua man, and the exact political milieu in which that nature has to properly live and function if it is to live rather than perish.

Sudan, Nigeria, Mauritania, Libya and Algeria —all countries which still practice and/or tolerate chattel slavery by Arab and black Muslims against other Muslims and Christians—are not the moral, political or cultural equals of the United States, Israel, Great Britain and, say, France. Those countries are vastly superior to Saudi Arabia or Iran, or North Korea and Gaza, which do not permit religious reciprocity. Its political leaders permit the beheading of homosexuals in the streets, legalize torture, and have some of the most egregious records of gender inequality in the world. In the cases of Iran, Qatar and Saud Arabia, we witness them as sponsors of world-wide terrorism, and of placing restrictions on civil liberties and a free press.

Cannibalistic Aztec culture could never and will never be the cultural equal of any civilized and free culture existing anywhere in the world today. Cultures that permit freedom of association, respect equality for all citizens and legal residents before the law, that uphold gender equality as an unsalable moral axiom, that allow  individuals to cultivate their unique life plans—generally speaking—cultures that have discovered the fact that that an environment in which freedom and liberty are the milieu in which the individual needs to cultivate his or her rational nature qua human being and live an optimal existence, are undoubtedly, superior cultures, morally, spiritually and politically speaking.

It is a mark of sheer cognitive malarkey to claim that all cultures are equal. Just as some cultures are technologically more advanced than others, so some are politically more distinguished in their record on individual rights and the protection of private property and personal liberties than others. Rape cultures, that is, cultures in which rape is sanctioned by law such as in several parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, are not moral equivalents of any western democratic countries in which rape, though committed by moral deviants, is illegal and punishable by objective law.

Brunei practices a Sharia penal code under Islamic law that allows death or stoning for adultery, homosexuality and even apostasy. Hamas continues to pose an existential threat to Israel by pounding the latter, (unprovoked), with a barrage of deadly rockets so often that one can barely keep track of the war attacks. Hamas routinely arrests and tortures peaceful critics of its totalitarian government with impunity. It is a blatant advocate and practitioner of Jihadism. There is no culture, so to speak, inside Gaza. It is defined, incidentally, by its absence of any significant life and culture. Nevertheless, even countries that lack a significant culture can wreak havoc on the lives of others.  A rich culture is potent because it creates life. One that is an ecological sociopolitical   ballast, or worse, evil, can destroy life. 

The question remains, too, of not only how to think about cultures that are unequal to others but: what to do about those that are evil; cultures that exist as moral rogue states that betray the civilizational maturity expected by an international order that protects the well-being of the global commons? We are talking here of morally inverted states that pose a serious threat to the international order; evil cultures that are political sinkholes that lie outside the process of history, and that are reverting to pre-modern ages. The goals of such cultures —among other things—are to eradicate the individual, and practices of freedom and liberty from the earth.

Evil cultures are drainage systems that tax the existential, spiritual and psychological resources of their citizens who must expend a disproportionate amount of energy just to stay alive—let alone flourish.

So, what is the antidote? In a forthcoming article on moral rogue states that pose existential  threats to the global commons, countries that violate the conditions of their own sovereignty which is secured by objective constraints of justice, I will outline and philosophically defend a process of what I call: global incarceration. This involves an ethical defense of placing intolerable, incorrigible and politically inverted countries into a state of political receivership by any free and civilized country willing and able to do so based on criteria of political expediency, and military and technological capability.

Until such time, let us rid ourselves of the simplistic egalitarian idea that all cultures are equal. That some are moral and political sinkholes from which millions seek to flee is obvious. That such escapees or freedom seekers aspire to self-actualize in other cultures that, in their judgments, are better suited to their aspirations, hopes and dreams constitutes enough proof that some cultures are inimical to human well-being, and others better suited for the development and practice of human agency.


Jason D. Hill is professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago, and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His areas of specialization include ethics, social and political philosophy, American foreign policy and American politics. He is the author of several books, includingWe Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People(Bombardier Books/Post Hill Press). Follow him on Twitter @JasonDhill6.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274741/daring-suggest-all-cultures-arent-equal-jason-d-hill

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IDF increases readiness in the north - Arutz Sheva Staff


by Arutz Sheva Staff


IDF cancels major exercise as forces improve preparedness for possible scenarios in northern Israel.




Over the past week, the IDF's ground forces, intelligence, Air Force, and Navy improved their preparedness for various scenarios in the Northern Command area and in the 91st Division.

In addition, in accordance with the assessment of the situation, it has been decided to postpone the IDF exercise which was planned for the second half of next week.

The exercise was designed to enhance IDF readiness and was planned as part of the 2019 training program.

Moreover, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi decided to postpone the end of IDF Spokesperson, Brigadier General Ronen Manelis' term, which was slated for this Tuesday. Manelis will remain in his position and the date of the handover to Brigadier General Hidai Zilberman will be decided upon in the future.

Reserve soldiers have received a message regarding the relevant time they need to deploy.


Arutz Sheva Staff

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/268184

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The Dangerous Stalinism of the "Woke" Hard-Left - Alan M. Dershowitz


by Alan M. Dershowitz

Feeling unsafe is the new trigger word for demanding censorship.

  • People on the "woke" hard-left seem so self-righteous about their monopoly over Truth (with a capital T) that many of them apparently see no reason to allow dissenting, politically incorrect, views to be expressed. Such incorrect views, they claim, make them feel "unsafe." They can feel safe only if views they share are allowed to be expressed. Feeling unsafe is the new trigger word for demanding censorship.
  • The other dangerous similarity between the Stalinists and the "wokers" is that both disdain due process for those they deem guilty of political incorrectness or other crimes and sins. They reject any presumption of innocence or requirement that the accuser bear the burden of proof.
  • For Stalinist and "wokers," there is no uncertainty or fallibility. If they believe someone is guilty, he must be. Why do we need a cumbersome process for determining guilt? The identities of the accuser and accused are enough. Privileged white men are guilty perpetrators. Intersectional minorities are innocent victims. Who needs to know more? Any process, regardless of its fairness, favors the privileged over the unprivileged.
  • That is why I make the controversial claim that today, the "woke" hard-left is more dangerous to civil liberties than the right. To be sure there are hard right extremists who would use — and have used — violence to silence those with whom they disagree. They are indeed dangerous. But they have far less influence on our future leaders than their counterparts on the hard-left. They are not teaching our college age children and grandchildren. They are marginalized academically, politically and in the media. The opposite is true of hard-left Stalinists. Many have no idea who Stalin even was, but they are emulating his disdain for free speech and due process in the interests of achieving the unrealizable utopia they both sought. They also have in common the attitude that noble ends justify ignoble means.
  • We must always remember that it is not only the road to hell that is paved with good intentions. It is also the road to tyranny.
Civil liberties are in greater danger today from the intolerant hard-left than from the bigoted hard-right. This may seem counterintuitive: There has been far more violence — mass shootings in malls, synagogues and other soft targets — from extremists who identify more with the hard-right than with the hard-left. But the influence of the hard-left on our future leaders is far more pervasive, insidious and dangerous than the influence of the hard-right.

People on the "woke" hard-left seem so self-righteous about their monopoly over Truth (with a capital T) that many of them see no reason to allow dissenting, politically incorrect, views to be expressed. Such incorrect views, they claim, make them feel "unsafe." They can feel safe only if views they share are allowed to be expressed. Feeling unsafe is the new trigger word for demanding censorship.


A "woke" rally in Washington. We must always remember that it is not only the road to hell that is paved with good intentions. It is also the road to tyranny. Photo: Wikipedia.

No university student has the right to be safe from uncomfortable ideas, only from physical threats, and any student who claims to be in physical fear of politically incorrect ideas does not belong at a university. The most extreme example of this distortion of the role of higher education took place at my own university when a distinguished dean of a Harvard residential college was fired from his deanship because some "woke" students claimed to feel unsafe in his presence because he was representing, as a defense lawyer, a man accused of rape.

We often forget that the concept of "political correctness" originated in the Stalinist Soviet Union, where Truth — political, artistic, religious — was determined by the central committee of the Communist Party and any deviation was regarded as unacceptable. To be sure, there is a vast difference between how Stalin treated political incorrectness and how the "woke" generation treats it. Stalin murdered those who deviated from his Truth, while "wokers" generally shun and discredit, though there has been occasional violence from elements of the hard-left toward those who deviate from their Truth. But both produce a similar result: less dissent, less reliance on the marketplace of ideas and more self-censorship.

For many "wokers," freedom of speech is nothing more than a weapon of the privileged used to subjugate the unprivileged. It a bourgeois concept that emanates from an anachronistic white, male constitution that is irrelevant to the contemporary world. Free speech for me — the underprivileged — but not for thee — the privileged. That is what the "wokers" want. Affirmative action for speech!

The other dangerous similarity between the Stalinists and the "wokers" is that both disdain due process for those they deem guilty of political incorrectness or other crimes and sins. They reject any presumption of innocence or requirement that the accuser bear the burden of proof. These bourgeois concepts are based on the recognition of human fallibility and uncertainty. For Stalinist and "wokers," there is no uncertainty or fallibility. If they believe someone is guilty, he must be. Why do we need a cumbersome process for determining guilt? The identities of the accuser and accused are enough. Privileged white men are guilty perpetrators. Intersectional minorities are innocent victims. Who needs to know more? Any process, regardless of its fairness, favors the privileged over the unprivileged.

When I was in college in the 1950s, it was the McCarthyite right that was censoring and denying due process. It was the liberal left that was defending free speech, dissent and due process. But for some on the left, this stance was self-serving, because it was people on the extreme left who were being denied these protections. Now that it is conservatives who are being censored and denied due process on campuses around the country, many on the left have remained silent. Civil liberties for me, but not for thee.

That is why I make the controversial claim that today the "woke" hard-left is more dangerous to civil liberties than the right. To be sure there are hard right extremists who would use — and have used — violence to silence those with whom they disagree. They are indeed dangerous. But they have far less influence on our future leaders than their counterparts on the hard-left. They are not teaching our college age children and grandchildren. They are marginalized academically, politically and in the media. The opposite is true of hard-left Stalinists. Many have no idea who Stalin even was, but they are emulating his disdain for free speech and due process in the interests of achieving the unrealizable utopia they both sought. They also have in common the attitude that noble ends justify ignoble means.

It is precisely because the ends sought by the "wokers" are often noble — racial and gender equality, a fairer distribution of wealth, protection of the environment, a women's right to choose, gay marriage — that liberals find it harder to condemn them for their intolerance toward civil liberties. But we must always remember that it is not only the road to hell that is paved with good intentions. It is also the road to tyranny.

Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of The Case Against the Democrats Impeaching Trump, Skyhorse Publishing, 2019. He is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14794/the-dangerous-stalinism-of-the-woke-hard-left

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To European Leaders, Jewish Flesh Is Cheap - Guy Millière


by Guy Millière

As PLO Executive Council member Zuheir Mohsen said in 1977: "The Palestinian people does not exist... Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people..."

  • The Oslo Accords were based on the illusion that the PLO could totally change and suddenly become a "partner for peace"... It soon became clear that the Palestinian Authority was still the PLO: terrorist attacks quickly multiplied. The money received by the Palestinian Authority was used to continue incitement to murder and payments to incentivize it.
  • In 1967, a change of strategy took place. No one, the PLO decided, would speak of a "war for the destruction of Israel". Instead, they would call it a "war of national liberation". From then on, the PLO was presented as a "liberation movement".
  • Arabs who had left Israel in 1948-49, many of whom remained in refugee camps, were defined as the "Palestinian people"; in this way were the Palestinian people invented. As PLO Executive Council member Zuheir Mohsen said in 1977: "The Palestinian people does not exist... Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people..."
  • The leaders of the Palestinian Authority have, in fact, never stopped resorting to "armed struggle", the name they give to terrorism and murdering Jews. To "frustrate all the schemes of Zionism", they invented the Palestinian people; their "struggle for national liberation" gave them international recognition. By renaming terrorism and murdering Jews "armed struggle", they made their use of terrorism and murder acceptable. By signing the Oslo Accords, they could appear interested in peace without having to renounce terrorism. They could even demonize Israel and give it the image of a barbaric and cruel country while continuing to murder Jews.
  • "If you look at history... what ends conflicts is one side giving up.... and then it's over.... in World War II, [the Germans] were forced to give up... and note how much they benefited by giving up." -- Daniel Pipes, historian, November 19, 2017.
  • No U.S. president had ever told Palestinian leaders that they were lying, or had required them to stop inciting murder and financing terrorism, and no U.S. president had ever decided to cut funding for the Palestinian Authority as long as it continued to incentivize terrorism. President Donald J. Trump did.
  • French President Emmanuel Macron accepted using taxpayer money to reward murdering Jews. Macron also still accepts the United Nations' (UNRWA's) unique definition of Palestinian "refugees": that they must include endless generations of descendants.

The Oslo Accords were based on the illusion that the PLO could totally change and suddenly become a "partner for peace"... It soon became clear that the Palestinian Authority was still the PLO: terrorist attacks quickly multiplied. The money received by the Palestinian Authority was used to continue incitement to murder and payments to incentivize it. Pictured: From left to right, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, U.S. President Bill Clinton, and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat at the signing of the Oslo I Accord at the White House in Washington, DC, on September 13, 1993. (Vince Musi/The White House/Wikimedia Commons)

August 7th. Israel. When Dvir Sorek, an 18-year-old student returned from Jerusalem to his school after having bought some books for his rabbis as an end-of-year gift, he was stabbed to death by two Arab terrorists.

As his funeral took place, while his father was delivering the eulogy, the inhabitants of the Arab village of Silwad, two miles North, to celebrate the murder, were setting off fireworks.

Sorek was apparently a peaceful teenager who had never hurt anyone. Among the books he brought was one by an Israeli left-wing writer, David Grossman, supporting the need to create a Palestinian state.

Sorek's "fault" was to be a Jew.

His name extends the long list of Jews killed or wounded by Arab terrorists. Some murders are even more cruel. The man who raped and murdered Ori Ansbacher in February in Jerusalem said, "I wanted to kill a Jew and be a martyr." In 2011, five members of the Fogel family, including three young children, were slaughtered. In 2014, two murderers with axes, knives and a gun entered a synagogue in Jerusalem during morning prayers and massacred five worshipers and a policeman who tried to stop the attackers. On December 13, 2018, at a bus stop near Ofra, two young Jews were shot dead by terrorists. Four days before that, another gun attack injured seven Jews. A wounded young woman survived, but despite the efforts of doctors, the baby she was carrying died. Last week, in a terrorist bombing on a hiking trail near Dolev, north of Jerusalem, a teenage Jewish girl was murdered. Her father and brother were seriously wounded.

After each murder, celebrations like those in Silwad take place. Candies and sweets are passed out in the street. If the murderers are shot by the Israeli soldiers or the police, they are proclaimed martyrs, and are celebrated. Their portraits are displayed in Palestinian towns. Whether the terrorist murders are killed or whether they are arrested, tried and imprisoned in Israel, they or their families are awarded a generous monthly stipend from the Palestinian Authority -- an amount higher than the average Palestinian wage. Sometimes, the mothers of the murderers say how proud they are of the act their sons committed.

The depravity built-in to murdering civilians, the celebrations that follow, the prestige granted to racist murderers, the alluring payments granted as a reward, and the pride of the mothers all stem from an incitement to hate Jews that is injected into the minds of the Palestinian Arabs by the people and institutions that lead them.

Textbooks used in Palestinian schools are filled with calls to murder Jews, even if the topic is math. Newspapers of the Palestinian Authority regularly publish anti-Semitic cartoons worthy of those published by Nazi Germany's Der Stürmer. The UN's Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination devoted an entire day, August 13, 2019, to studying the anti-Semitic propaganda broadcast by the Palestinian Authority's media. The data gathered was overwhelming. The legal adviser of UN Watch, Dina Rovner, showed the committee how the Palestinian Authority's media "perpetuates antisemitic stereotypes such as that Jews are greedy, that they are part of a conspiracy to control the world, that they are baby killers, and that they poison Palestinians and steal their organs".

Unfortunately, the Palestinian Authority is still fundamentally a terrorist organization dedicated to destroying Israel and Israeli Jews by all means.

Until they issued the Venice Declaration in 1980, the nine member states of the European Community saw the PLO as a terrorist group, and for good reasons: in December 1973, a Palestinian attack at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport resulted in the deaths of 34 people, and two Palestinian attacks also took place at Orly Airport in Paris, one in January 1975, another in May 1978. The US and Israel, until 1991, defined the PLO as a criminal terrorist organization, and contacts between Israelis and PLO leaders were prohibited by Israeli law.

The Oslo Accords were based on the illusion that the PLO could totally change and suddenly become a "partner for peace". The Palestinian Authority was created a few months later and became the new name of the PLO.

It soon became clear that the Palestinian Authority was still the PLO: terrorist attacks quickly multiplied. The money received by the Palestinian Authority was used to continue incitement to murder and payments to incentivize it.

The leaders of the Western world pretended that it did not matter, and looked the other way. They insisted that the Israeli leaders negotiate, as if there were no terrorism and as if incitement to murder did not exist.

So, Israeli leaders negotiated. The negotiations failed.


Since 2008, the Palestinian Authority has stopped negotiating with Israel, thereby nullifying its commitments in the Oslo Accords. Instead, the Palestinian Authority is conducting an international diplomatic offensive. According to the Palestinian Authority, the non-existent "State of Palestine" is now recognized by 139 countries, including several member states of the European Union and the Holy See. The State of Palestine was granted non-member state observer status at the United Nations in 2012 and the opportunity to join various UN agencies. In 2018, the Group of 77, the largest intergovernmental organization of developing countries in the UN, chose as its leader the "State of Palestine".

As leaders of the Palestinian Authority see that the fantasy among most of the leaders of the Western world is still strong, they no longer even hide their refusal to renounce terrorism. PA President Mahmoud Abbas, now approaching the 14th year of his four-year term, proudly announced that he will continue to reward the murderers of Jews and the murderers' families. Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, recently said:
"Palestinian society holds a completely different attitude toward those whom Israel calls 'terrorists.' These militants are, instead, regarded by us as people who sacrifice themselves for the liberation of the Palestinian people".
Palestinian leaders, without anyone ever blaming them, also deny Israel's right to exist. On August 14, Ibrahim Khraishi, the Palestinian Authority's Ambassador to the UN, said. "What we face is the Zionist movement, I would like to remind you that in 1975, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, indicating that Zionism is a form of racism". He left out that the resolution had been revoked in 1991 and that the Zionist movement reached its goal: Israel does exist. Khraishi spoke as if the state of Israel still did not. His defamation and attempted erasure of Israel were not even mentioned in the Western media.

Hamas, a more violent and radical organization than the Palestinian Authority, is often used as an example to try to float the idea that the Palestinian Authority is, by contrast, "moderate". Middle East expert Raymond Ibrahim said in 2014 that Hamas has "chosen fast jihad". However, just because the Palestinian Authority proceeds more slowly, does not make it fundamentally different.

The Muslim world in general has never accepted the existence of Israel. On the day the birth of Israel was proclaimed, May 14, 1948, the armies of five Arab countries invaded Israel to destroy the newborn State. Israel survived. Another war to destroy Israel took place in June 1967, then another in 1973. Each time, Israel won.

In 1967, a change of strategy took place. No one, the PLO decided, would speak of a "war for the destruction of Israel". Instead, they would call it a "war of national liberation". From then on, the PLO was presented as a "liberation movement". Arabs who had left Israel in 1948-49 and remained in refugee camps were defined as the "Palestinian people", and so the Palestinian people were invented. As PLO Executive Council member Zuheir Mohsen said in 1977:
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism."
A political program, adopted in Cairo, Egypt, at the Palestinian National Council on June 9, 1974, spoke of the need to create a "Palestinian national authority". The program defined this creation as a "first step", a basis for moving towards "the liberation of all Palestinian territory". Twenty years later, the Palestinian Authority was created. The goal nevertheless remains the "liberation of the entire Palestinian territory", meaning all of Israel.

The program also mentioned the need to "resort to all means necessary" and insisted on the importance of "armed struggle". It talked about a strategy of "frustration of all the schemes of Zionism". The leaders of the Palestinian Authority have, in fact, never stopped resorting to "armed struggle", the name they give to terrorism and murdering Jews. To "frustrate all the schemes of Zionism", they invented the Palestinian people; their "struggle for national liberation" gave them international recognition. By renaming terrorism and murdering Jews as "armed struggle", they made their use of terrorism and murder acceptable. By signing the Oslo Accords, they could appear interested in peace without having to renounce terrorism. They could even demonize Israel and give it the image of a barbaric and cruel country while continuing to murder Jews.

The journalist Amotz Asa-El and the historian Moshe Dann recently wrote about the multifaceted war led by the Palestinians in the context of a "war of attrition".

"Wars of attrition," Asa-El notes, "are not decided by their parties' balance of troops, arms or resources, but by their balance of spirit. The winner will not be the one left with more land, population or treasure, but the one whose spirit will last longer".

Dann writes:
"From a Palestinian perspective, their war of attrition has been successful. Despite engaging in incitement and terrorism, they are recognized and supported by the international community, including their demand for statehood... it encourages the belief that they can win if they are committed and determined."
The possibility for Israel of turning the tide and prevailing has been defined by Daniel Pipes:
"If you look at history (and I'm a historian), what ends conflicts is one side giving up. Now, think about it; if you and I are in a struggle, it's only going to end when one of us gives up, and then it's over. Until one of us gives up, the conflict can resume. The Koreas could be at war today, for all we know, because neither side has given up. World War I, the Germans lost, but didn't give up, so they gave it another try, and in World War II, they were forced to give up, and they did; and note how much they benefited by giving up." [Emphasis added.]
In other words, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will end only when Palestinians realize they cannot achieve their goal of eliminating the Jewish state of Israel.

For now, Palestinians, with the help of the Iranians and the Europeans, continue to think that they will be able to eliminate Israel.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump is the first world leader to see that Palestinians must understand that they will not win and eliminate Israel.

No U.S. president had ever told Palestinian leaders that they were lying, or had required them to stop inciting murder and financing terrorism, and no U.S. president had ever decided to cut funding for the Palestinian Authority as long as it continued to incentivize terrorism. President Trump did.

No world leader had ever before questioned the unique definition of Palestinian "refugees" given by the United Nations (UNRWA): that they must include endless generations of descendants. No world leader had dared to say that there are not five or six million refugees, but only a few tens of thousands, and that the flooding of Israel by people incited to murder Jews would not take place. No world leader had officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, or relocated an embassy in Jerusalem. President Trump did.

President Trump is also the first U.S. president since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 never to have affirmed the need for a "Palestinian state".

Alas, the attitude of other Western political leaders, particularly in Europe, is quite different.
French President Emmanuel Macron promised to give the Palestinian Authority the funding that the United States no longer granted him, and that he would not renounce rewarding Jew-killers and their families. Macron accepted using the money of French taxpayers to reward murdering Jews. Macron also still accepts UNRWA's definition -- just for Palestinians -- of being refugees in perpetuity, through the generations. He called President Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel a "serious mistake", and stressed several times the urgent "need for a Palestinian State".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel adopted the same positions. Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said in April:
"... the European Union voice, and I can probably say the European voice, has been very loud, clear and consistent all over these years on our constant work for the implementation of the Oslo agreements, and the creation of a Palestinian state... the European Union is and will remain the biggest and the most reliable donor to the Palestinians..."
She did not utter a word of condemnation regarding the Palestinian Arabs' use of terrorism or murdering Jews.

In 2016, Mahmoud Abbas delivered a speech in the European Parliament in which he falsely claimed that "Certain rabbis in Israel have said very clearly to their government that our water should be poisoned in order to have Palestinians killed." He received a standing ovation. No European leader took him to task for him for his lies.

Macron, Merkel and the European Union show Palestinian leaders that as long as the Western world is divided, they can continue to incite and murder.

In the European media, the murders of Jews, such as that of Dvir Sorek, are hardly ever mentioned. When murderers, such as those who killed Sorek, are eliminated by the Israeli army or the police, it is the Israelis who are depicted as having "killed a Palestinian" and as the real murderers.

As a character said in the movie Exodus, "Jewish flesh is cheap". Jewish flesh was already cheap in Europe 90 years ago. In the eyes of Macron, Merkel, Mogherini and many European journalists, it still is.

The European Union is considering a regulation -- it does not yet exist -- requiring labels to be placed on products made by Jews in Judea and Samaria, to caution buyers that the product was made in a "settlement colony." The shape of the labels that would be used has not yet been defined. Maybe a European will suggest a yellow star?

Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14786/europe-jewish-flesh-is-cheap

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