'Muslim historians consistently confirm Jewish ties to Jerusalem' - Nadav Shragai

 

by Nadav Shragai

A new book published ahead of Jerusalem Day describes how the Muslim narrative about the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount has been distorted.

 

Dome of the Rock | File photo: Oren Ben Hakoon

The book Islam, Jews and the Temple Mount is bound to cause an uproar in the Muslim world. It presents a comprehensive list of early Islamic sources that recognize the historical Jewish claim to Jerusalem, contrary to modern Muslim religious scholars who – in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict – deny any Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and promote the argument that no Jewish Temple ever stood there. 

Fifty-four years after the unification of Jerusalem and the establishment of Israeli control over the Old City, Professor Yitzhak Reiter and co-writer Dvir Dimant hold a mirror up to this prevailing Muslim narrative. 

According to the book, Islamic leaders deny canonical Muslim historical works that date back to the 7th century CE, a few decades after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and state that the very reason Islam came to regard the Foundation Stone situated in the center of the Dome of the Rock as holy is because of the knowledge that the Jewish Temple stood there.

Professor Yitzhak Reiter

It's all in there. Muslim sources time and again describe history the same way Jewish sources do: the building of the First Temple on the Foundation Stone by King Solomon; its destruction by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar; the Babylonian exile; Persian emperor Cyrus the Great's permission for the Jews to return to Jerusalem and build the Second Temple; and its destruction by Roman emperor Titus. 

Moreover, not only do Islam's most respected historians confirm the Jewish historical timeline, but they also emphasize that the reason Jerusalem and the Temple Mount came to be considered holy in Islam is that the sites were also regarded as sacred in Judaism. This stemmed from their view of Islam as a continuation of Judaism, as well as patriarch Abraham and other figures in Scripture. 

In their book, Reiter, an expert on Islamic, Middle Eastern, and Israeli studies, and Dimant, a graduate of the Shalem Academic Center in Jerusalem and a research assistant at the Truman Institute for Peace Research, present Jewish and Islamic sources side by side and reveal an undeniable resemblance between the two. 

Islam, Jews and the Temple Mount shows that until the Balfour Declaration of 1917, not only did Muslim sources not deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, but they systematically pointed it out and confirmed it. However, in 1967, when Israel took control of the Old City during the Six-Day War, the narrative took a drastic turn, and denying any Jewish link to the Temple Mount became the prevalent argument. 

From then on, Muslims turned their backs on a vast and rich Islamic literature that confirms the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount. 

In the 10th century CE, Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, perhaps one of the most well-known and respected historians in the Muslim religious world, described how God prevented King David from building the Temple because he had blood on his hands, and therefore the task was assigned to his son, Solomon. His description is almost identical to that in the Jewish source, the Book of Chronicles. 

In the 11th century, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Wasiti, who served as the preacher of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, described how King Solomon had difficulty opening the gates of the Temple and only succeeded in doing so after mentioning in prayer the name of his father. The story appears almost word for word in the Babylonian Talmud. 

Palestinians praying in front of the Dome of the Rock (Reuters/Ammar Awad/File)

In the 14th century, Arab historian Ibn Khaldun in his cannonical work, Muqaddimah, also noted how King Solomon built the Temple in the fourth year of his reign. His description of the inauguration of the Temple is identical to that of Kings I, Chapter 6. 

In the 15th century, historian Mujir al-Din from Jerusalem also mentioned how the Temple was built by King Solomon, and so did many after him. Almost always, the description in Muslim sources was similar to that of Jewish scripture. 

The most important thing, Reiter and Dimant told Israel Hayom, "is that the Al-Aqsa Compound, or as Jews call it, the Temple Mount, be acknowledged by [modern] Islam as the site of two Jewish Temples, and most importantly, Solomon's Temple. 

"Islam has adopted the Jewish and Christian tradition in this matter, and in medieval times it did not try to deny the fact that the Dome of the Rock symbolizes the continuation of Solomon's Temple. One could go as far as to say that Islam was proud of this," they said. 

"Some scholars even noted that certain customs and ceremonies that took place outside the Dome of the Rock and even inside, during the Umayyad dynasty, were similar to those that used to take place in the Jewish Temple."

Dimant added that one of the best sources to look at when one wants to learn about the traditional Muslim narrative regarding the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount is Islam's holiest book, the Quran. 

"The sources we quote in the book have a special significance, in that they do not deal with history. It shows how deeply rooted the subject of the two Temples and the Israelites was among Quran commentators."

Reiter, who participated in dozens of diplomatic meetings between Israelis and Arabs, said he often met with Palestinians and Muslims from Jordan, Egypt and other Arab countries who were convinced that the Jews made up the story of the First and Second Temples after the establishment of the modern state, for political and national reasons. 

"Moreover, it became clear to me that senior Arab public leaders and academics are not familiar with their historical sources that have described for centuries the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and the history of Israelites in Jerusalem and the Land of Israel," he said. 

Q: How do these intellectuals react when you first share this history with them? 

"Many admit that they did not know [this], but there are also intellectuals, academics, who have these books on their bookshelves. They tell me in private conversations that what [Former Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization Yasser] Arafat said in his time, that there was never a temple in Jerusalem, is nonsense. At the same time, they explain that they cannot in the current state of conflict publicly agree with the accepted academic narrative, which is also the Jewish narrative. 'We need to keep our mouths shut,' they say," Reiter explained. 

Q: How does Islam deal with the obvious contradiction between its current argument that goes against its most respected historical sources?

"There's denial. Disregard. Embarrassment. I showed the manuscript to Arab students that I teach. What baffled me is there were no responses. Nobody spoke out in favor or against it. Nobody said it was true or false. Just complete silence. I sent a copy to a friend in the Jordanian royal family as well, who wants to stay updated on the Temple Mount conflict. He, as well, remains silent for now."

The Al-Aqsa mosque (Getty Images)

Throughout the years, when it came to negotiations over Jerusalem, the Israeli government did not use the sources Reiter and Dimant quote in their book. 

"The goal was to maintain a diplomatic and political debate, without bringing in the religious aspect," explained Reiter, who served as deputy advisor on Arab Affairs for three Israeli prime ministers - Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Shimon Peres. 

Once Begin asked me the exact verse in the Quran that says that the land of Israel was promised to Moses, Reiter recalled. "But then we found out that one of the commentators on the Quran explained that although the Jewish nation is connected to the Holy Land, they do not merit it because of the sin of the Golden Calf." 

Q: Now that you complied these sources and made the information available, do you think Israeli diplomats will use it? 

"Our goal is to make the discourse more source-based. It is very sensitive. We don't want to offend anyone. The book is explosive, and officials will not rush to use it. We don't want the book to become a source of conflict, but to transform the discourse and enrich it with an aspect that is missing from it now completely," Dimant said. 

Q: The connection between Islam and Judaism, how far does it date back to? 

"It just so happened that last week I read a biography of Muhammad that was written several decades after his death. The prophet, the book said, met with tribe leaders from the city of Medina, who studied with Jews and would often meet with Jews. He asked them about the Jews and their beliefs, and they told him, among other things, that Jews believe in one God," Reiter said. 

"The connection between Islam and Judaism existed from the very beginning of Islam. Islam has always seen itself as a continuation of Judaism. The Quran is full of stories of [Jewish] prophets. The Yusuf surah in the Quran is almost identical to the story of Joseph and his brothers in the book of Genesis. And this is just one example," he added.

Reiter and Dimant explained that modern Islam is much less proud of its Jewish origins and often goes out of its way to hide them. Also, modern Islam has prohibited archeological excavations on the Temple Mount and uses the absence of significant archeological discoveries on the mountain - the result of the prohibition to begin with - to reinforce its denial of any Jewish connection to Jerusalem or the existence of the Temple. 

Reiter and Dimant list several types of "deniers" in their book: those who claim that the Jewish Temple was not in the Land of Israel at all, but in the Arabian Peninsula; those who are convinced that Abraham, King David and King Solomon were not Jewish, but Islamic figures; and those who think that the traditional Islam is a set of biased, made-up traditions, changed by Jews who converted to Islam and influenced the religion with their own content. 

Some contemporary leaders, Reiter and Dimant explained, acknowledge that there was once a Jewish Temple on the mountain, but claim that it was a small, short-lived structure and, therefore, the Jews have no rights to the site today. According to them, the Jews of today have no connection to those Israelites. 

For many Muslims, "Judaism is the backbone of Zionism and they see the religion as a threat to Islam and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and they choose to address this threat by rewriting Muslim history on the one hand, and Jewish history on the other." 

Early Islamic sources, Reiter and Dimant concluded, "fully or almost fully accept the Jewish tradition and span over hundreds of years, almost from the early days of Islam all the way to the 20th century.

"We claim that those who deny the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount due to political purposes inadvertently undermine the Islamic legitimacy to Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, and the credibility of essential sources written in Arabic, which are the classics of Islam and its culture and identity."

 

Nadav Shragai

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/05/10/muslim-historians-consistently-confirm-jewish-ties-to-jerusalem/

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FBI names 'Darkside' as Colonial Pipeline cyberattacker - Brooke Singman

 

by Brooke Singman

A senior DOJ source tells FOX Business that the investigation into the attack is ongoing

Gas prices could 'peak' amid Colonial Pipeline shutdown: Portfolio manager

The FBI said Monday that the ransomware gang known as "Darkside" was the group responsible for the attack over the weekend that forced the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline networks responsible for carrying gasoline from Texas to the Northeast. 

"The FBI confirms that the Darkside ransomware is responsible for the compromise of the Colonial Pipeline networks," the FBI said in a statement Monday. "We continue to work with the company and our government partners on the investigation."

 

FBI Statement on Compromise of Colonial Pipeline Networks https://t.co/XxHgezpref pic.twitter.com/McrRFOil64

— FBI (@FBI) May 10, 2021

COLONIAL PIPELINE CYBERATTACKER ‘DARKSIDE’: WHAT TO KNOW

A senior Department of Justice source told FOX Business that the investigation into the attack is ongoing due to the involvement of ransomware, labeling the sophistication of the tools involved "very high." 

Darkside announced its existence in August 2020, and claims it does not attack medical, educational or government targets – only large corporations – and that it donates a portion of what it takes to charity. 

The group will harvest data from a victim’s server, then encrypt it and request a ransom. The group then will upload the data to a leak website on the dark web, which will publish should it not receive the ransom, risking sensitive data loss for any victim organization. 

Darkside has advertised stolen documents from more than 80 companies across the U.S. and Europe on its website. 

Colonial Pipeline, in a statement Monday, said they are dedicating resources to "restoring pipeline operations quickly and safely." 

"Segments of our pipeline are being brought back online in a stepwise fashion, in compliance with relevant federal regulations and in close consultation with the Department of Energy, which is leading and coordinating the Federal Government’s response," the company said. 

COLONIAL PIPELINE ATTACK: CLOCK TICKS FOR GAS SUPPLY

The company added that its operations team is "executing a plan that involves an incremental process that will facilitate a return to service in a phased approach"— a plan based on "a number of factors with safety and compliance driving our operational decisions, and the goal of substantially restoring operational service by the end of the week." 

"We continue to evaluate product inventory in storage tanks at our facilities and others along our system and are working with our shippers to move this product to terminals for local delivery," Colonial continued. "Actions taken by the Federal Government to issue a temporary hours of service exemption for motor carriers and drivers transporting refined products across Colonial’s footprint should help alleviate local supply disruptions and we thank our government partners for their assistance in resolving this matter." 

Fox News' Jake Gibson, David Spunt, Mark Meredith, Peter Aitken and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

Brooke Singman

Source: https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/fbi-darkside-colonial-pipeline-cyberattacker

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Israel's critics are right: ‘Sheikh Jarrah’ exemplifies the Arab-Israeli conflict - Micha Danzig

 

by Micha Danzig

Shimon HaTzadik is a neighborhood where Jews and Arabs could have lived side by side peacefully—had Arabs not tried to ethnically cleanse all of the Jews living there.

(JNS) Last week, anti-Israel forces went into overdrive regarding the Jerusalem District Court’s decision authorizing the eviction of certain Arab families from homes in the “Sheikh Jarrah” neighborhood of Jerusalem. These critics have aggressively railed against Israel on social media and even started a trending hashtag, “SaveSheikhJarrah,” all while claiming that what is happening in this Jerusalem neighborhood exemplifies the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.

And they are right. The dispute over “Sheikh Jarrah” does illustrate many of the principal features of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.

But first, some history about this neighborhood is needed. “Sheik Jarrah” is an Arab neighborhood that was established in 1865. And before 1949, there was a separate Jewish neighborhood within it. For about 2,000 years before that, this area was known by the name “Shimon HaTzadik” (Simon the Righteous), named after the famous rabbinical sage whose tomb is located there.

For centuries, the Jewish presence in the area revolved around the tomb of Shimon HaTzadik, who was famously one of the last members of the Great Assembly (HaKnesset HaGedolah), the governing body of the Jewish people during the Second Jewish Commonwealth (after the Babylonian Exile). Shimon HaTzadik, whose full name is Shimon ben Yohanan, was so impactful that practically every Jewish kid going back 2,000 years learned his most famous verse in Pirkei Avot (“Sayings of the Fathers”), which was incorporated millennia ago into the Jewish morning prayers: “The world stands on three things: Torah, the service of God, and deeds of kindness.”

Because of the tomb and its significance to the Jewish people, the Sephardic Community Committee and the Ashkenazi Assembly of Israel purchased the tomb and its surrounding land (about 4.5 acres) in 1875. Shortly thereafter, it, along with the neighborhood of Kfar Hashiloah in the Silwan area of Jerusalem, became home to many, mostly Yemenite, Jews who had migrated to Jerusalem (Zion) back in 1881. Notably, by 1844, Jews were the largest ethnic population in Jerusalem.

Between 1936 and 1938, and then again in 1948, the British Empire assisted Arabs, incited by raw Jew hatred, in ripping Jews from their homes in Shimon HaTzadik (and in Kfar Hashiloah). The Yemeni Jewish community was also expelled from Silwan, for “their own safety,” by the British Office of Social Welfare. Essentially, the British preferred to force Jews out of their own homes rather than expend the resources to protect Jewish families and their property rights in Jerusalem.

Then, in 1949, after TransJordan (now Jordan) invaded Israel as part of an express attempt by the entire Arab League to destroy Israel and “push the Jews into the sea,” TransJordan’s British-created and British-led Arab Legion captured Judea and Samaria, all of the Old City of Jerusalem and many of its surrounding neighborhoods, including the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood. Then the Arab Legion either killed or ethnically cleansed every last Jew. Not one was allowed to remain. Not one. Even those whose families had lived in the region for centuries before the Arab invasion in the seventh century.

After Israel gained control of all of Jerusalem from the Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel passed a law that allows Jews whose families had been forced out of their homes by the Jordanians or the British to regain control of their family homes if they could provide proof of ownership and the current residents could not provide proof of a valid purchase or transfer of title. All of the homes that are the subject of these 2021 eviction proceedings, in addition to being on land purchased in 1875 by the Jewish community, were owned by Jewish families that had purchased those homes, and had deeds registered first with the Ottoman Empire (which governed the region from 1517 to 1917) and then with the British authorities (who controlled the area from 1917 to 1948).

These four houses, subject to the pending eviction notice, have already been the subject of extensive litigation in Israel, with appeals going all the way up to Israel’s very liberal Supreme Court and with all parties receiving representation and due process. The court determined last week that these homes must be returned to their legal owners and that another four homes shall be returned to their legal owners by the end of the summer. The court further determined that the people currently living in these homes had been illegally squatting in these homes for decades without paying rent or holding proof of ownership.

This is how the current controversy and conflict surrounding the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood is emblematic of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict:

Shimon HaTzadik is an area that holds deep historical and religious significance to the Jewish people. It is a place where the Jewish people developed—as Ben-Gurion said in Israel’s Declaration of Independence—their “spiritual, religious and political identity.” It is a place where the Jewish people “first achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance.” It is land that was part of the only independent state that has ever existed west of the Jordan River over the last 2,000 years (that wasn’t part of some foreign colonizing empire). All of this, of course, also applies to every inch of the land of Israel.

Shimon HaTzadik is also where Jewish organizations purchased land and built homes during the Ottoman Empire and British Empire’s control of the region. The Yemenite Jews who moved to the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood in the 1880s came with the dream of living in Zion and re-establishing the Jewish homeland. This applies to every Jewish community established in the land of Israel between 1870 and 1947.

Shimon HaTzadik is a neighborhood where Jews and Arab could have lived side by side peacefully had Arabs—incited with antisemitic fervor by Nazi ally and collaborator Haj Amin al-Husseini and then by five of the most powerful armies of the entire Arab League—not tried to ethnically cleanse all of the Jews living there. This also applies to every Jewish community established in the land of Israel before 1947.

In Shimon HaTzadik, Jews are trying to move back into homes which were purchased peacefully and legally by their ancestors on land that is part of the Jewish people’s indigenous, historical and religious homeland. They are trying to move back into homes on land that was conquered by a foreign Arab army and renamed to erase the historic Jewish connection and character of the area. This, too, applies to every inch of the land of Israel before 1948.

Shimon HaTzadik and Sheikh Jarrah: the Arab-Israeli conflict in a nutshell.

 

Micha Danzig served in the Israeli Army and is a former police officer with the NYPD. He is currently an attorney and is very active with numerous Jewish and pro-Israel organizations, including Stand With Us, T.E.A.M. and the FIDF. This article was first published by the Jewish Journal.

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/305845

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Bay of Pigs 60th Anniversary Part III - Humiliating Che Guevara and John Kerry - Humberto Fontova

 

by Humberto Fontova

A brave Cuban freedom fighter confronts Kerry's lies.

 

''This is the history of a failure.'' -- The oddly frank opening lines of Che Guevara’s Congo Dairies.

“Those Cuban-CIA men [Bay of Pigs vets] were as tough, dedicated and impetuous a group of soldiers as I’ve ever had the honor of commanding.” -- Legendary anti-communist mercenary “Mad Mike” Hoare, commander of the “Wild Geese,” in his book Congo Mercenary.

“I stood above Che Guevara, my boots near his head, just as Che had once stood over my dear friend and fellow 2506 Brigade member, Nestor Pino. 'We're going to kill you all,' Che said to Pino. Now, the situation was reversed. Che Guevara lay at my feet. He looked like a piece of trash. I said, 'Che Guevara, I want to talk to you.'" -- Former President of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association Felix Rodriguez (pictured above), recalling Che Guevara’s capture in Bolivia, where he played a key role.

“Senator [John Kerry] your committee’s slander against me was in every g*dd*mmed newspaper after your committee’s last closed hearing! Saying I solicited drug money for the Contras. THAT, senator Kerry, is a D*MNED LIE!...and it difficult for me to answer questions from a man (you, the chairman of the committee) I do not RESPECT!” -- Felix Rodriguez testifying for Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations hearings chaired by Senator John Kerry in 1986. These evolved into the Iran-Contra hearings.

After being ransomed back by the guilt-stricken JFK after his Bay of Pigs betrayal, many of these Cuban freedom-fighters were itching to get back into the fight (but with ammo and air cover this time). The CIA obliged and sent a group of them with ex-marine Rip Robertson to the Congo in ‘64 where Castro (with tongue tucked deeply in his cheek) had sent Che Guevara to foment a “war of liberation,” training and commanding the alternately Chinese-and Soviet-backed “Simbas” of Laurent Kabila, who were murdering, raping and munching (many were cannibals) their way through the defenseless Europeans still left in the recently abandoned Belgian colony.

Together, Mad Mike, Rip and the Cubans made short work of Che and Kabila’s Simbas. Guevara himself barely escaped by hightailing it with his tail tucked firmly between his legs across Lake Tanganyika into Tanzania, with the Cuba-CIA men in hot pursuit.

Too bad Hollywood never picked up on this exploit for one of their many glorifications of Che -- worse still that Monty Python’s Flying Circus didn’t pick it up. I’ll even start the script for them: “In 1965, while planning a military campaign in the Congo against crack mercenaries commanded by a professional soldier who helped defeat Rommel in North Africa, Che confidently allied himself with 'soldiers' who used chicken feathers for helmets and stood in the open waving at attacking aircraft because a muganga (witch doctor) had assured them that the magic water he sprinkled over them would make .50 caliber bullets bounce harmlessly off their bodies. Six months later, Che fled Africa, narrowly escaping with his life and with his tail tucked tightly between his legs.”

Two years later, during his Bolivian “guerrilla” campaign, Che split his forces, whereupon they got hopelessly lost and bumbled around, half-starved, half-clothed and half-shod, without any contact with each other for six months before being wiped out. They didn’t even have World War II vintage walkie-talkies to communicate and seemed incapable of applying a compass reading to a map. They spent much of the time walking in circles and were usually within a mile of each other. During this blundering, they often engaged in ferocious firefights against each other.

“You hate to laugh at anything associated with Che, who murdered so many,” says Felix Rodriguez, the Cuban-American CIA officer who played a key role in tracking Guevara down in Bolivia. “But when it comes to Che as ‘guerrilla,’ you simply can’t help but guffaw.”

Say what you want about Senator John Kerry, nobody ever called him lazy. He landed in Congress and immediately rolled up his sleeves and spat on his hands. The Nicaraguan people must end up like the Cuban and Vietnamese! Toward this end the man was tireless.

The most vital stanza of Daniel Ortega's Sandinista anthem (Latin American leftists catch an extra breath and sing it with all the fervor we use for "ban-ner ye-et WA-A-VE!") bashes the U.S. as "El E-NE-MIGO de la HU-MA-NI -DAD! (the enemy of humanity!) The line was probably lifted from a Che Guevara speech. Naturally the authors of such an anthem stole the heart of many Democrats, including the Majority leader, future Speaker of the House, future Secretary of State and whatever high-‘falutin/cockamamie title Joe Biden recently gave John Kerry.

Even as a freshman Senator Kerry was determined. Castro and Ortega must prevail. Soon he was chairing "The Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations," quickly dubbed "The Kerry Committee" by his media cronies and soulmates. Soon it was boasting, "77 instances where the Reagan Administration misled Congress about its policies in Central America!" (I hold here in my hands...)

Lest we forget, it was here that the famous "Iran-Contra investigation" actually started. Soon the lurid accusations spawned an "Iran-Contra Committee" of its own and Kerry pressed ahead with his.

The Democratic crusade to throttle the Nicaraguan freedom fight was now under full steam. One Cuba wasn't enough for these people. They were the Best and Brightest of a new generation. They'd picked up the torch from Camelot. The honor demanded that they pledge themselves to creating another tropical gulag and slaughterhouse on our doorstep. If Latin freedom fighters battled desperately in the field against a Soviet-supplied enemy -- if these freedom fighters had their backs against the wall -- if any looked northward through sweat-stung eyes and blood-drenched bandages for an ally -- if hundreds were dying in freedom' cause with gritted teeth in a desperate and uneven struggle against a Communist common enemy -- then these freedom fighters MUST be stabbed in the back! The legacy of Camelot DEMANDED it!

Towards that noble goal John Kerry committed himself body and soul. Soon his Committee was leaking lurid details of a nefarious CIA/Contra drug smuggling plot with a Cuban-American named Felix Rodriguez as the bagman and Vice President George Bush as a silent partner. The commie-crackpot Christic Institute and Institute For Policy Studies served as the Kerry Committee's advisors. The latter had arranged his earlier Nicaragua fan trip.

The Kerry Committee finally subpoenaed future Pres. of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association Felix Rodriguez himself. Miami area lawyers, knowing Rodriguez' honorable reputation, tripped over themselves clamoring to represent him pro bono during the Kerry Committee hearings. "I don't want any lawyers!" Felix responded. "If I need a lawyer to help me explain why I've been defending this country for the past 27 years -- then I'm in the wrong country! I want my testimony in front of the American people!"

More alarmingly (to Democrats) Rodriguez refused what weasel types call "immunity."

Rodriguez didn't miss a beat -- naming dates and witnesses, citing documents -- he proceeded to demolish every accusation the Kerry Committee made against him.

"I have nothing to hide," Rodriguez said repeatedly. "I'm not ashamed of anything I've done. I've battled communism since I was 17. I help the Contras, the Salvadoran government. I do so as a volunteer, legally and openly. And if you're sincere, senator," he finished up, "you'll put out a statement to the press about what I said here today. I insist that the American people know about my testimony!"

No such statement ever issued from Kerry's Committee. So two months later Rodriguez called a press conference in Miami to tell his side.

A full year after leaking the slanders against Rodriguez and after the treacherous, lying swine who made them failed three polygraph tests, the Kerry Committee finally saw fit to allow Rodriguez' year-long request for an open hearing. They scheduled him as the fifth witness at five in the afternoon when the Senate chamber was devoid of reporters and TV cameras. In the near-empty room, Kerry finally mumbled a half-hearted apology.

 

Humberto Fontova

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/bay-pigs-60th-anniversary-part-iiihumiliating-che-humberto-fontova/

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For Some Arabs, Preventing Peace with Israel Is More Important Than Combating Coronavirus - Khaled Abu Toameh

 

by Khaled Abu Toameh

As long as such incitement against Israel in the Arab world continues, any talk about peace will be a pipe dream with hopes going up in smoke.

• The project sounds like the type of assistance that Jordanian women need, especially during this difficult period of the economic and health crises in their country.

• What particularly irritated the anti-normalization activists and groups in Jordan was that some of the Jordanian women appeared in a video praising the project and talking about how happy they were to join forces with their Israeli neighbors on the other side of the border.

• This Jordanian writer [Mohammed Sweidan] has taken it upon himself to be the spokesman for all women in his country. He claims to have some special knowledge of their actual intentions. Notably, he did not even bother to contact the Jordanian women to ask them about their attitude toward the joint project with the Israeli women.

• These [Arab] leaders and media have filled the Arab people with so much hate against Israel that participating in a positive, productive endeavor becomes a major crime.

• As long as such incitement against Israel in the Arab world continues, any talk about peace will be a pipe dream with hopes going up in smoke.

Instead of focusing their efforts on trying to find solutions to the severe medical crisis in the country, many Jordanians are busy condemning a meeting between Jordanian and Israeli women that took place in Wadi Arava, an area south of the Dead Sea Basin that forms part of the border between Israel and Jordan. Pictured: The Wadi Arava area on the Jordanian side. (Image source: Zairon/Wikimedia Commons)

Hatred for Israel (and Jews) in many Arab countries continues to take priority over economic, health and political problems. Some Arabs prefer to dedicate more time and energy to combating peace with Israel than to dealing with the deadly fallout of COVID-19 in their own backyards.

Jordan, an Arab country that signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, is no exception.

On March 31, Jordan reported 111 COVID-related deaths, the highest daily toll since the outbreak of the pandemic. The report came as some Jordanians took to the streets to protest the government's failed policies, especially in healthcare and the economy.

Instead of focusing their efforts on trying to find solutions to the severe medical crisis in the country, many Jordanians are busy condemning a meeting between Jordanian and Israeli women. These aggrieved Jordanians are dubbing the meeting an act of treason and calling for a commission of inquiry into the encounter.

The Jordanian women have been forced to go on the defensive and issue all kinds of justifications and semi-apologies for committing the "crime" of meeting with Israeli women. Worse, the charges of treason turn these Jordanian women into easy targets for violence.

Some Jordanians actually called for punishing the women who met with the "Zionist enemy." They accused the women of agreeing to serve as "tools to promote the Zionist enemy" and said that economic hardship was not an excuse for engaging in normalization activities with Israelis.

"A free woman is one who prefers to starve rather than engage in treacherous activities with the Zionist enemy," stated an anti-normalization group.

The uproar began after a video and photos of the meeting appeared on social media platforms.

The gathering was organized by a group called "Bless Your Hands," a women's entrepreneurship project to support the socio-economic and environmental well-being of Israeli and Jordanian women from both sides of the Wadi Arava, an area south of the Dead Sea Basin that forms part of the border between Israel and Jordan.

According to the group, its business model is that of a sustainable community economy, divided into Israeli and Jordanian joint mandates: product development, marketing and branding, tourism and content team. "Our goal is to provide an economic alternative for income for the Israeli and Jordanian artists, and to improve the diversity of employment available in the Wadi Arava area," the group wrote.

The project sounds like the type of assistance that Jordanian women need, especially during this difficult period of the economic and health crises in their country.

This hope for improvement in their lives is undoubtedly why some of the Jordanian women agreed to participate in the "Bless Your Hands" initiative -- particularly as its goals are apolitical and solely related to boosting the economy and creating job opportunities for many families on both sides of the border.

The Israel-haters and enemies of peace nevertheless seem to care nothing about the welfare of the women in Jordan and other Arab countries. They would rather see these women remaining unemployed and restricted to their homes, in poverty and misery, than cooperate with Israeli women to improve their living conditions.

What particularly irritated the anti-normalization activists and groups in Jordan was that some of the Jordanian women appeared in a video praising the project and talking about how happy they were to join forces with their Israeli neighbors on the other side of the border.

"Every second in the video, every hug and smile on both sides was a knife stabbing my heart," commented Jordanian activist Tayeb Awwad.

His sentiment reflected the feeling among many Jordanians upon watching the video of the Israeli and Jordanian women during the warm encounter.

"It is true that the video shows Jordanian women happy with this kind of normalization of cooperation," admitted Jordanian writer Mohammed Sweidan, an opponent of peace and normalization with Israel. Sweidan claimed, however, that Jordanian women are "totally opposed" to any form of normalization with Israelis and "hate" Israel.

This Jordanian writer has taken it upon himself to be the spokesman for all of the women in his country. He claims to have some special knowledge of their actual intentions. Notably, he did not even bother to contact the Jordanian women to ask them about their attitude toward the joint project with the Israeli women.

"The normalization project," according to a report in the Arab news website Raseef22.net, "sparked widespread anger in the popular Jordanian circles, as activists expressed their categorical rejection of any attempt to normalize relations with Israel."

Instead of thanking the Israeli women for their effort to help poverty-stricken families in Jordan, the report quotes several "activists" who accuse Israel of exploiting the difficult economic situation in Jordan to promote normalization between the two countries, even though the "Bless Your Hands" initiative is an independent project with no links to the Israeli authorities.

The aim of this project, another anti-normalization group in Jordan claimed in a statement, is "to use Jordanian women as tools to promote the Israeli narrative."

Mohammed Marwan, an Islamist member of the Committee for Resisting Normalization (with Israel), said that he was surprised that the Jordanian government had "facilitated the normalization" meeting between the Jordanian and Israeli women.

"Everyone should expose and denounce these activities rather than be dragged into participating in them," Marwan said. He pointed out that this was not the first time that Israel had tried to "penetrate this region through suspicious associations and sometimes school trips."

Another anti-Israel Jordanian activist, Hisham al-Bustani, cautioned that the encounter between Israeli and Jordanian women aimed to "send a message that normalization [with Israel] has become acceptable."

Some of the beleaguered Jordanian women, out of fear for their lives, are now trying to distance themselves from the "Bless Your Hands" plan.

Nayfa al-Nawasrah, chairwoman of a Jordanian women's circle, whose members participated in the meeting, said that her group had nothing to do with the program. She claimed that the visit of the Israeli women to Jordan took place without her knowledge. "The participation of one or two members of our group does not mean that we have anything to do with the project," Nawasrah emphasized.

The vicious attacks on the Jordanian women were predictable. They are the natural result of the decades-old campaign of anti-Israel incitement in the Jordanian and Arab media.

What else happens when the Arab media and leaders demonize Israel and Jews, day in and day out? These leaders and media have filled the Arab people with so much hate against Israel that participating in a positive, productive endeavor becomes a major crime.

As long as such incitement against Israel in the Arab world continues, any talk about peace will be a pipe dream with hopes going up in smoke.

• Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on Twitter

 

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

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17248/arabs-preventing-peace-israel

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Forcing Jewish Students to Malign and Injure Israel at Pomona College - Richard L. Cravatts

 

by Richard L. Cravatts

Yet another vile tactic in the cognitive war against Israel.

 

As more evidence that maligning and seeking to weaken and destroy Israel is still common behavior on American college campuses, the student government of Pomona College successfully pushed through a resolution that would compel student clubs to participate in a boycott of targeted companies doing business with Israel. Claremont Colleges Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Claremont Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) sponsored the odious bill and the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) passed the resolution aimed at “divesting all ASPC funds from companies complicit in the occupation of Palestine, and banning future use of funds towards such companies.”

The resolution, revealingly named “Banning the Use of ASPC Funding to Support the Occupation of Palestine,” was not unique in targeting the Jewish state for divestment and boycott; other campuses have pushed through resolutions that call on their respective university administrations to divest from holdings in companies that do business with Israel or which somehow are “complicit in the occupation of Palestine.” When those student efforts to push for divestment are passed, university administrators have regularly rejected the demands, claiming, rightly, that such boycotts and targeted divestment are inconsistent with university policies and moral behavior by focusing solely on Israel.

The Pomona divestment bill, however, took the novel and troubling step of focusing the divestment on student funds for the college’s various student organizations, thereby sidestepping the inconvenient step of convincing administrators that seeking to punish Israel, and Israel alone, is a sound or reasonable policy in the first place.

This bill put the divestment activities in the hands of the students themselves so that the ASPC “will change its internal spending habits . . . by stopping . . . spending on items that knowingly support the Israeli occupation of Palestine or contributes to any companies on the . . . United Nations list . . . [of] companies involved in the creation of illegal Israeli settlements ‘in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.’”

It is one thing for student governments to vote on and introduce resolutions that concern matters directly related to their college experience—tuition rates, grading, teacher evaluations, policies on guest speakers, confronting on-campus hate crimes and vandalism, even academic freedom and free speech. But when student leaders attempt to deal with matters extraneous to their universities, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and then force only one view of that conflict on all students, and insist that that view is absolute and inviolable, there is a danger that they not only overstep the purpose and intent of student government, but they also enforce a rigid, one-sided policy that is certain to offend and ignore the rights of certain students—in this case, Jewish and other pro-Israel students.

In a press release it issued after the resolution was passed, SJP used the typical mendacious language that animates the anti-Israel crowd, bragging that “Claremont SJP, alongside Claremont Jewish Voice for Peace, introduced this resolution to stand in material and ideological solidarity with Palestinians struggling for their freedom from Israeli apartheid, occupation, and oppression.”  The participation of the noxious group Jewish Voice for Peace helps provide cover for other anti-Israel groups like SJP by promoting its seeming Jewish identity, even though its opinions about Israel and the Arab Palestinians mirrors those of Israel’s other ideological foes, and the “peace” they purportedly seek is one in which Israel as a sovereign state ceases to exist, with Israel either dismantled or Jews living as second-class citizens in a new, bi-national state.

SJP and JVP may contend that they are standing in solidarity with the Palestinians who struggle “for their freedom from Israeli apartheid, occupation, and oppression,” but these charges against the Jewish state are habitual untruths and completely ignore the complicity the Palestinians have in creating the circumstances in which they currently live. The apartheid slander, for one, is a lie, even though, for example, it was the primary focus of the recently released and roundly-denounced Human Rights Watch report on Israel, in which this other Israel-hating organization perpetuated the apartheid myth as a way of framing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as a matter of race. 

The authors of the resolution also suggest that they seek “total divestment from the Israeli occupation of Palestine,” another contortion of fact and history. There is certainly no so-called “occupation of Palestine” currently in place, unless one assumes that the area that now comprises Israel proper is itself occupied, in which case it is clear that the enemies of Israel are not actually seeking a new Palestinian state “living side-by-side Israel in peace,” the phrase promiscuously thrown about, but a sovereign Muslim state that would extirpate Israel completely.

The SJP release also suggested that its resolution “is an important first step in reducing our complicity with a country that maintains an illegal military occupation and regularly commits crimes against humanity against the indigenous Palestinian population,” again propagating a series of untruths that form the basis of their ideology and activism. Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria, the area referred to as the West Bank, is the result of its victory in a defensive war in 1967, so legal experts have repeatedly affirmed that there is nothing illegal about a Jewish presence in territories to which the Jewish state has legal, historical, biblical, and other binding and valid claims.

And in their Manichean view that Israel is a brutal oppressor and the ever-suffering Palestinians are an innocent indigenous people, SJP conveniently ignores the reality of Arab aggression and the unrelenting attempts over decades by homicidal psychopaths to murder Jews with knives, cars, guns, rockets, and explosive suicide vests. Of course, in the BDS campaign, no mention is ever made of Arab terror and incitement against the Jewish state. No suggestions are made to the Palestinians that they recognize Israel and make efforts to build their state without further incitement and repeated rejection of peace offers. 

Resolutions like the Pomona one, more relevantly, ignore the fact that by attempting to weaken and destroy firms doing business in Judea and Samaria—either owned by Jews or selling to them—boycotts often have the perverse unintended side-effect of hurting those Palestinians who work in those companies and who often enjoy pay scales and benefits not available to them in Arab-owned businesses.

So, as has been obvious to any sentient observer, the BDS movement is not actually concerned with the well-being of the Palestinians at all. Those who promote boycotts, as was the case when the Arab League instituted a punitive boycott against the nascent Jewish state in 1948, do so with the intent, not of changing Israel’s behavior, but to cripple and weaken Israel with the ultimate goal of destroying it.

That is precisely why the Pomona resolution is so troubling, and why the notion that every student group at the college must accept and support the boycott is so unreasonable. Pomona’s SJP and JVP have no right to appoint themselves the thought police, and they do the college a great disservice by setting themselves up as the arbiters of truth and compelling other student groups to adopt their views, particularly when, in fact, they are toxic extremists with a bigoted, libelous, and often historically and factually inaccurate view of the Middle East.

On April 30th, after facing considerable push-back for the ill-advised resolution, the ASPC conducted a Zoom meeting in which members debated the intent and effect of the resolution, focusing on the final clause of the bill which exposed the malignancy of the resolution. Not content to push this toxic resolution only on its own campus, the radical sponsors stated that “ASPC calls upon the other Claremont Colleges Student Government Associations to follow suit, with the end goal of an ultimate adoption of a Consortium-wide agreement to ban clubs from using student government allocations to invest in or purchase goods or services from companies that contribute to the settlement and occupation of Palestinian occupied territories by the UN-designated companies or the Israeli state.”

And, SJP and JVP instructed, compliance with the boycott would not be optional. “Clubs that fail to divest and/or refrain from such uses of funding,” the resolution demanded, “would face the loss of all Claremont Colleges Student Government Association funds.”

So, Jewish student groups, some of which may well support Israel and would feel discomfort in participating in a boycott against companies doing business with the Jewish state or in the disputed territories, would potentially jeopardize their group’s funding if they refused to become economic enemies of Israel.

This is clearly unreasonable and unjust, just as it would be if a similar resolution were passed by activist students which made it mandatory to denounce and attack the Black Lives Matter organization because of their virulent hatred of law enforcement, their Marxist ideology, their anti-Semitic rhetoric and beliefs, and the violence and civil unrest they caused in American cities after the death of George Floyd. Would black student groups feel comfortable if their funding became contingent upon rejecting the BLM movement? Would it be just if one group of students, those holding the view that BLM was a toxic, unproductive, and dangerous group, mandated for all other students at Pomona that they must withhold support for a group which, although it has detractors, has gained wide support as a central part of the movement for racial justice?

It is obvious that the Pomona resolution is one-sided and is unfairly and inaccurately biased against Israel. And the student groups who would be targeted by the resolution, and who would suffer as a result of their likely non-compliance, are Jewish groups. That reality was made clear by Janie Marcus, a member of the Claremont Progressive Israel Alliance, a pro-Israel student group, when she correctly observed that the resolution “marginalizes Jewish students who view Israel as the Jewish homeland and directly targets these Jewish students.”

The sententious activists fueling this ideological bullying may well feel that they have access to all the truth and facts, but even if this were true—which it demonstrably and regularly is not—it certainly does not empower them with the right to have the only voice and to then force their ideology on all other students with a mandatory boycott against Israel. No one individual or group has the moral authority or intellectual might to decide what may and may not be discussed, and especially young, sanctimonious students—whose expertise and knowledge about the Middle East, as noted, is frequently characterized by distortions, lies, lack of context, corrosive bias against Israel, and errors in history and fact.

University officials regularly proclaim that they have a “commitment to the principles of freedom of inquiry, freedom of speech and freedom of association.” But that empty exhortation has shown itself, repeatedly, to be, at best, disingenuous, and, at worst, a masking of the true intention of campus radicals, such as those pushing the Pomona resolution: enabling favored victim groups to utter vitriol and libel against Israel and Jews, with the pretense that they have somehow encouraged intellectual debate and productive political discussion. This is not rigorous debate and dialogue at all; it is Jew-hatred dressed up in academic clothes.

And making Jewish students conform to this bigotry by forcing them to disavow Israel is an unreasonable and unjust tactic in the cognitive war against Israel by the Jewish state’s ideological foes.

 

Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., a Freedom Center Journalism Fellow in Academic Free Speech and President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, is the author of "Dispatches From the Campus War Against Israel and Jews".

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/forcing-jewish-students-malign-and-injure-israel-richard-l-cravatts/

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US seizes massive weapons shipment from Iran to Yemen's Houthis - Neta Bar and Reuters

 

by Neta Bar and Reuters

"The cache of weapons included dozens of advanced Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles, thousands of Chinese Type 56 assault rifles, and hundreds of machine guns, sniper rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades launchers. Other weapon components included advanced optical sights," Fifth Fleet says.

Thousands of illicit weapons are displayed onboard the USS Monterey after they were seized from a stateless dhow in international waters of the North Arabian Sea, May 9, 2021 | Photo: Reuters via the US Navy

The US Navy's Fifth Fleet said on Saturday that the guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey seized an illicit shipment of weapons from a stateless dhow in international water of the North Arabian Sea on May 6-7.

"The cache of weapons included dozens of advanced Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles, thousands of Chinese Type 56 assault rifles, and hundreds of PKM machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades launchers. Other weapon components included advanced optical sights," the Bahrain-based Fleet said in a statement.

Thousands of illicit weapons interdicted by guided-missile cruiser @USSMonterey (CG 61) from a stateless dhow in international waters of the North Arabian Sea on May 6-7.

Cache of weapons included advanced Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles & Chinese Type 56 assault rifles. pic.twitter.com/07Fv92vbrV

— U.S. 5th Fleet (@US5thFleet) May 8, 2021

It added that the material is in US custody awaiting final disposition, while the original source and intended destination of the material is under investigation.

"After all illicit cargo was removed, the dhow was assessed for seaworthiness, and after questioning, its crew was provided food and water before being released," the statement said.

 

Neta Bar and Reuters

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/05/10/us-seizes-massive-weapons-shipment-from-iran-to-yemens-houthis/

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Natan Sharansky: A Hero for All Seasons - Lawrence A. Franklin

 

by Lawrence A. Franklin

Sharansky is under no illusions about Palestinian leaders. He believes that they still are wedded to the goal of Israel's elimination.

• Sharansky reasons that until there is a fundamental internal transformation of Palestinian Arab society that embraces democracy, there can be no realistic negotiations. He roundly condemns Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a dictator and a terrorist. He views his successor Mahmoud Abbas as a pale and equally corrupt reflection of his predecessor. Sharansky is under no illusions about Palestinian leaders. He believes that they still are wedded to the goal of Israel's elimination. Sharansky underscores his point by quoting Soviet dissident and creator of the USSR's hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov: "Never trust a government more than it trusts its own people."

• Sharansky comes down hard on the Iranian regime as ideologically the most dangerous of enemies, claiming that he is in agreement with prominent Iranian analysts such as, Uri Lubrani, the last Israeli unofficial ambassador to Iran; Dr. Bernard Lewis, the most accomplished western Islamic scholar, and Ron Dermer, the long-serving Israeli ambassador to the US. Sharansky has sharp words of condemnation for Barack Obama; he accuses the former US President of having abandoned Iran's dissidents by his refusal to offer even verbal support for anti-regime demonstrators during their nationwide protests in 2009.

• Sharansky... is a fierce critic of the "new" campus-based anti-Semitism, and catalogues several programs that Israeli and some American Jews have developed to lend courage to Jewish-American youths to defend, fight back, and celebrate their Jewish identity in the face of radical Jew-haters as well as self-hating American Jews who serve as a poisonous brew that eventually destroy both the institutions of democracy and the freedoms of individual liberty.

Natan Sharansky. (Image source: Ram Mendel/Wikimedia Commons)

Natan Sharansky's recent autobiography "Never Alone" is a testament to what a solitary soul can endure and then accomplish if he maintains a life of principled consistency. The book's first section recapitulates Sharansky's "refusenik" role in the USSR in defense of the human rights of Soviet Jews. This period also covers his nearly nine-year incarceration in the KGB's infamous prisons. Sharansky credits his unwavering faith in the G-d of the Jewish Bible, his awareness of his wife Avital's relentless efforts to rally global dignitaries and world Jewry to work for his release, and his mastery of mental chess matches to sustain hope for his ultimate liberation. In retrospect, Sharansky celebrates the improbable unity of Israeli Jews and the Jews of the Diaspora as the formula that forced the totalitarian Soviet empire to disgorge him to freedom.

The second portion of Sharansky's autobiography recounts his transformation from Ukrainian Soviet dissident mathematician to an Israeli politician who employed his heroic notoriety and authority as government official to help assimilate nearly a million Soviet Jews who made "Aliyah" (rising up/emigrating) to Israel. Sharansky embraced this mission of integrating Jews from the global Diaspora, especially those from the Soviet Union, into Israeli society. He viewed his work as fulfilling the dream of Israel's founding father, Theodor Herzl: to establish a Jewish home where Jews could be safe, where Jews would be free to express their unique identity without being despised for their refusal to hide their Jewishness.

Sharansky admits to a few exasperating experiences in the topsy-turvy nature of Israeli politics, and describes his frustration as having "more authority with less freedom." Sharansky pays tribute to the several prime ministers who "built Israel" during his life as a "zek" (non-person) in a KGB cell and in his role as a public servant: Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. He makes it clear that he did not refrain from criticizing some of the policies of these leaders.

Addressing Israel's aloneness in an Arab and Islamic Middle East, Sharansky does not shy away from heaping ridicule on the failed "peace process" between the Jews and the Arabs of the region. He reasons that until there is a fundamental internal transformation of Palestinian Arab society that embraces democracy, there can be no realistic negotiations. He roundly condemns Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a dictator and a terrorist. He views his successor Mahmoud Abbas as a pale and equally corrupt reflection of his predecessor.

Sharansky is under no illusions about Palestinian leaders. He believes that they still are wedded to the goal of Israel's elimination. Sharansky underscores his point by quoting Soviet dissident and creator of the USSR's hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov: "Never trust a government more than it trusts its own people." Case in point, the Palestinian Authority, which has not held elections in more than a decade, just "postponed" the scheduled May 22 parliamentary elections in the West Bank. Abbas made this decision after realizing his slate of candidates would be soundly defeated.

Sharansky also provides insights into Vladimir Putin's cynical decision-making, acquired during the former "refusnik's" meetings with the Russian president. Sharansky recounts Putin's promise to protect Russia's remaining Jews, thereby doing the right thing even if for the wrong reason. Putin's pledge in responding to Sharansky's plea to avoid encouraging Russia's historical anti-Semitism responds:

"We fear pogroms more than you. For you, it's a few people being beaten, here and there, for us, it's a loss of control. If one group succeeds in taking the law into its own hands, do you have any idea how many other groups might follow? I will not permit any violence against Jews."

In another session with the Russian leader, Sharansky, acting as an Israeli back channel to Moscow, urges Putin to refrain from giving Iran access to Russian missile and nuclear technology. Putin offers that selling Iran technology is merely doing what several European countries are doing and "Why shouldn't we Russians profit too?" Sharansky suggests that Putin is using Iran as a foil to pressure the US and implies that the Russian President has no fondness for the Islamic Republic.

Sharansky comes down hard on the Iranian regime as ideologically the most dangerous of enemies, claiming that he is in agreement with prominent Iranian analysts such as, Uri Lubrani, the last Israeli unofficial ambassador to Iran; Dr. Bernard Lewis, the most accomplished western Islamic scholar, and Ron Dermer, the long-serving Israeli ambassador to the US. Sharansky has sharp words of condemnation for Barack Obama; he accuses the former US President of having abandoned Iran's dissidents by his refusal to offer even verbal support for anti-regime demonstrators during their nationwide protests in 2009.

In perhaps the book's most poignant pages, this hero for all seasons offers himself as a bridge between Israeli Jews and Jews of the Diaspora. He laments the lack of empathy for Israel, particularly among so many of America's Jews. He agonizes over the tendency of American Jews to try to assimilate into American societal norms, surrendering any understanding of what it means to be a Jew and the values -- advanced even now, such as: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" -- that Jews brought to the world more than three thousand years ago.

Sharansky bemoans the failure of fathers to teach their sons about the stubborn singularity of what it means to be a Jew. He is a fierce critic of the "new" campus-based anti-Semitism, and catalogues several programs that Israeli and some American Jews have developed to lend courage to Jewish-American youths to defend, fight back, and celebrate their Jewish identity in the face of radical Jew-haters as well as self-hating American Jews who serve as a poisonous brew that eventually destroy both the institutions of democracy and the freedoms of individual liberty.

Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.

 

Lawrence A. Franklin

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17345/natan-sharansky

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Is Israel losing sovereignty over Jerusalem? - Daniel Siryoti

 

by Daniel Siryoti

A report published ahead of Jerusalem Day reveals how the Islamic Movement is transporting thousands of Muslims to the Temple Mount to perpetuate conflict at the holy site.

 

Palestinians protest near the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, May 7, 2021 | Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad

The Islamic Movement is perpetuating violence in Jerusalem and is putting Israel's sovereignty over the capital into jeopardy, a report published Sunday ahead of Jerusalem Day by right-wing watchdog group Im Tirtzu warns.

According to the report, officials from the Southern Branch promote clashes in the capital and on Temple Mount by working with several "charitable" organizations, including the Al-Aqsa Foundation, to transports thousands of Muslims to the site and East Jerusalem.

The capital is one of several Israeli cities considered by the organization "front lines" for the "struggle against infidels." The rest of Israel, according to them, is "land captured by those infidels."

The report also showed that the Al-Aqsa Foundation has in recent years received substantial funding from foreign charitable organizations, like Moscow-based Solidarity Charitable Foundation, whose founder is a known Hamas sympathizer.

According to Im Tirtzu, Israel is losing its sovereignty over Jerusalem to extreme Islamists, exacerbated by the lack of response on behalf of political leaders over the latest wave of violence on the Temple Mount and East Jerusalem.

"The Israeli government must wake up, otherwise the nation will lose the place it cherishes the most," it said.

 

Daniel Siryoti

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/05/10/is-israel-losing-sovereignty-over-jerusalem/

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The True Face of Racism - Derek Hunter

 

by Derek Hunter

Welcome to the loadbearing wall of the Left's entire house of cards.

 

 

How liberals live with themselves is something I will never understand. I’m kind of happy about that, actually. While it might be helpful to comprehend your opponent’s way of thinking, the depravity necessary to get a handle on how a collectivist sociopathic psyche functions could only lead to a dark, confusing place from which reemerging would make a David Lynch movie seem coherent. But there is one thing easily discovered, by even a casual observance, about the people who strictly and gleefully adhere to left-wing dogma: racism is the loadbearing wall of their entire house of cards.

Before we even touch on the racism toward South Carolina Senator Tim Scott from the likes of Jimmy Kimmel and Joy Behar for daring to think for himself, I want to step back and highlight how big the division racket leftists have constructed and, quite frankly, need in order to win political battles.

Did you know that “news” has a race? I bet you didn’t. It didn’t always, it used to just be news – which is simply the recounting of what happened. But now it has a skin color. 

A few years ago, NBC News created “NBC Black,” which bills itself as “Elevating America's conversation about black identity, politics, & culture. Telling stories by, for, and about the black community.” They also have “NBC Latino,” which they surprisingly haven’t yet renamed LatinX (likely because they want people to know what the hell they’re talking about, since only mostly white, ultra-leftists use that made up term), which purports to exist to “Elevating the conversation around Latinos in the United States.” And, of course, there is NBC LGBTQ, “NBC Out is the LGBTQ section of @NBCNews . We write and produce content about and of interest to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community,” and NBC Asian American – “News, features, videos about #AAPI communities.”(There doesn’t appear to be an NBC Native American, which means they hate Native Americans, right?)

Other networks have gotten into the act, Fox has even gotten into the act with “Fox News Latino,” and other race-based “news” websites have come into existence in the last decade or so. Maybe it’s good business, but it’s not good for the country. And it’s what Democrats have always advocated – in 1963, Democrat George Wallace proudly proclaimed the positions of Democrats when he said “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” The only thing to change in the ensuing 58 years is their tactic to achieve that, not their goal.

The Grio, The Root, etc., are hotbeds of bigotry masquerading as news, as if the color of one’s skin dictates their world or what they care about. It’s the digital version of the liberal reaction to Senator Scott’s speech – a daily dose of “if your skin looks like this, this is how you’re allowed to think.” 

That’s how leftists reacted to a conservative black man rightly telling the country the one thing Democrats are more desperate to hide than anything else – the United States is not a racist country. They lost their minds, that’s not an approved message. 

Every stop was pulled out to protect the left’s “precious.” If people don’t see this country as horrible they will not support its destruction and replacement with the false-God Utopia the left is selling. At least not voluntarily.

The usual suspects pounced. Everyone on MSNBC attacked Scott, only stopping short of dropping N-bombs on the air, even though they clearly wanted to.

The story of Scott’s family rising from poverty to Congress isn’t supposed to happen in the America Democrats are selling. There are millions of stories like his, but they don’t get told. Barack Obama’s own story undercuts the liberal narrative, which is why he didn’t use his journey from a child of parents who wanted little (his mother) or nothing (his father) to do with him to the White House was so rarely told, and even more rarely told honestly. 

On Scott’s speech, a professor (naturally) from Fordham told an MSNBC audience, “So, that’s where the lack of respect comes from. When he talks about growing up in a one-bedroom house, ask yourself, why did you grow up in a one-bedroom house? Because your party doesn't believe in equality. Ask yourself why your grandfather didn't know how to read? It's because your party actually defunds education. Ask yourself why it is that you went to failing schools? It’s because your party doesn't value education, especially for black youths, especially for people in the south.”

What was left unsaid is after Democrats ended reconstruction after the Civil War, they had control of South Carolina for 100 years. All the issues that professor talked about were created, cultivated, and enforced by the very party she and her fellow panelists has sworn allegiance to. 

Everyone in that segment knows this, of course, they were just counting on their audience not. It was a safe bet. No one is taught accurate history anymore, and those on the left who know are as desperate as the liars to keep it hidden for their own advantage; to keep people divided and to keep dividing people further. Divide to conquer. That’s the true face of systemic racism.

The damage to lives be damned, same with the country. Individuals have always been disposable to the left, the last century proved that. Agenda über alles. People, black people in particular, have been misled and manipulated by Democrats as they switch tactics but not their objective since the Civil War. They’re more diverse now, but just as nefarious.

 

Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast, host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/true-face-racism-derek-hunter/

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