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ISRAEL

Turkey and Israel: ‘On’ Again, Only to Be ‘Off’ Again by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19179/turkey-israel-erdogan

Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, appears to be on yet another hoax charm offensive: he is faking the restoration of diplomatic relations with Israel and Egypt, and even signalling peace with President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

He needs to look pretty to his Middle East nemeses to A) avoid further Western sanctions, B) wink at Washington, and C) raise some international cash flows into the badly ailing Turkish economy that threatens to end his reign after two decades of uninterrupted rule.

Erdoğan and his ministers pledged to isolate Israel internationally. Instead, it was Turkey that was isolated by the international community, including the European Union, the US, Israel, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

There will always be the risk of Turkish-Israeli friction, including the possibility of a new break up, as long as any Islamist regime in Turkey refuses fully to respect the Jewish state’s sovereignty and admit that Hamas is a terrorist entity that aims to annihilate Israel by any means necessary (see Hamas charter).

Come May 2023, with the commemoration day of the “Nakba” (“catastrophe”) — meaning the loss by five invading Arab armies of the war they had initiated to try to destroy Israel in 1948 — there is likely to be a new escalation of hostilities with a fresh wave of Hamas violence, and Israel’s response to Hamas’s violence, then Turkey’s response to Israel’s response. Erdoğan will try to exploit this in Turkey’s June presidential elections.

Once again Erdoğan plans to be shining as the anti-Zionist, Islamist neo-Ottoman sultan, the savior of oppressed Muslims!

Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, appears to be on yet another hoax charm offensive: he is faking the restoration of diplomatic relations with Israel and Egypt, and even signalling peace with President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria — in addition to his earlier reconciliation efforts with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). He needs to look pretty to his Middle East nemeses to A) avoid further Western sanctions, B) wink at Washington, and C) raise some international cash flows into the badly ailing Turkish economy that threatens to end his reign after two decades of uninterrupted rule.

Biden and Blinken Poke Israel in the Eye It’s no secret that the Biden administration is deeply disappointed in the recent Israeli elections. by Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-and-blinken-poke-israel-in-the-eye/

It’s no secret that the Biden Administration is deeply disappointed that Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, and its coalition partners, won enough seats in the Knesset to assure Netanyahu of becoming Israel’s next Prime Minister. Netanyahu is seen by the Bidenites as too unyielding, insufficiently willing to placate either the Palestinians or, for that matter, the Americans. And the Bidenites have been poking Israel in the eye ever since the election. The latest manifestation of this is Tony Blinken’s decision to give the keynote speech at the annual meeting of the leftist Jewish group, J Street, which claims to support Israel (“Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace, Pro-Democracy” is its motto), but it appears to many observers that J Street’s support depends on the Jewish state agreeing to be squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines.

Daniel Greenfield wrote about Blinken’s J Street appearance at Jihad Watch here. More on his appearance, and other Bidenite pokes in Israel’s eye, can be found here: “Welcome, Bibi: Blinken To Headline Anti-Israel J Street Conference,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, December 1, 2022:

…A State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon that Blinken’s engagement with anti-Israel groups like J Street is an “important part” of the agency’s mission.

“It is routine for the secretary of state to engage with different civil society groups representing a broad array of foreign policy interests, this is an important part of the State Department’s domestic outreach,” the spokesman said.

Lapid’s call to disobey next government puts civil society at risk, legal analysts say. David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/lapids-call-to-disobey-next-government-puts-civil-society-at-risk-legal-analysts-say/ 

Even before taking power, Benjamin Netanyahu has found himself on the defensive over his prospective coalition’s “fringe elements.” During an NBC interview on Sunday, Netanyahu felt obliged to declare, “I’m going to safeguard Israeli democracy.”

However, legal analysts told JNS the danger to democracy may come from another corner, namely the actions of outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who called on local authorities to flout the incoming government’s directives.

In a Dec. 1 open letter, Lapid urged Israeli municipalities not to cooperate with an educational department to be headed by far-right Knesset member Avi Maoz. Maoz is the sole representative in Israel’s parliament of the Noam Party, which focuses on social issues, on which it takes a traditional (its detractors would say archaic) religious stance. It’s criticized mainly for opposing LGBTQ rights.

The opposition coalition set to establish the next government has “abandoned the education of our children and handed them over to the most extreme and darkest elements in Israeli society,” Lapid wrote to the municipalities, labeling Noam “racist, homophobic and dangerous.

“I urge you not to cooperate with the unit for external programs and partnerships in the Ministry of Education as long as it is under the control of Maoz. The heavy responsibility for the educational content that our children will learn in the schools now passes to you,” he wrote.

US Funds Arabs Who Want to Destroy Israel by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19183/us-funds-destroy-israel

What is disturbing is that a large portion of this incitement is coming from Arabs whose governments signed peace treaties or other agreements with Israel: Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians.

What is even more disturbing is that the hate against Israel is coming from Arabs who continue to benefit from unconditional US financial aid.

The Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, continues to spearhead the Arab campaign of incitement and delegitimization against Israel. In addition to the incendiary rhetoric, the Palestinian Authority does not hide its vehement opposition to any kind of peace with Israel.

In its latest tirade against Israel, Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction claimed that the Israeli counter-terrorism measures, designed to save the lives of Jews and Arabs alike, are acts of “terrorism and war crimes.” According to the logic of the Palestinian Authority, a terror attack against Israel is legitimate and the perpetrator is a hero and martyr, but an Israeli action to stop terrorism is illegitimate.

This is the same Palestinian Authority that maintains good relations with the Biden administration, which recently decided to upgrade US relations with Abbas and his associates….

[T]he allegation that Israel is committing “war crimes” can be seen as a direct call to Palestinians to engage in violence against Israelis. The “war crimes” libel is also intended for Western audiences as part of the campaign to delegitimize Israel and pave the way for prosecuting its leaders before international courts.

It is worth noting that since April 2021, the US has provided more than half a billion dollars in assistance for the Palestinians.

If the US thinks that showering money and concessions on the Palestinian leaders will lessen the tension, you heard it here first: this approach definitely will not work. All that will happen is that the hostilities will increase so that the bribes will increase. Giving hard, concrete gifts in exchange for soft promises is inevitably doomed from the start.

The reason for referring Zaidan to be investigated was because had announced that he was willing to lecture at an Israeli university. He is also suspected of having expressed support for establishing relations between Egyptian and Israeli intellectuals.

Egypt has enjoyed the benefit of more than $51 billion in US taxpayer-funded military aid since the signing of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty in 1979.

Again, it is worth noting that this incitement against Israel is being spread despite the ongoing massive US financial aid to Jordan.

One way to counter this campaign of hate and to encourage peace is for the US to make its aid conditional on ending (or at least reducing) the rhetoric of hate. So far, however, it is clear that the US has no intention of demanding anything in return for its money.

For the time being, then, many Arabs will continue to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from the US while continuing actively to seek the destruction of Israel and being financially rewarded for it.

Some Israeli journalists who travelled to Qatar to report on the soccer World Cup were harassed and verbally abused by Arabs from several countries. The journalists were told that Israel has no right to exist and that most Arabs are opposed to any form of normalization with Israelis.

“A House of Lies” Israel has a ‘natural and historic’ right to exist, the UN recognized in 1947,.before it made itself world center for antisemitism.Dr. Alex Grobman

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/363862

Abba Eban, Israel’s first permanent representative to the UN, once called the UN, “the world center for anti-Semitism.” Attacks against Israel were so strident during his tenure [1949-1959], he said that “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.” [1] Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, added “Why must the UN constantly serve as a house of lies?” [2]

On November 30, 2022, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution to commemorate the Nakba (the so-called Palestinian Catastrophe), aka the establishment of the Jewish State, at “a high-level event at the General Assembly Hall” on May 15, 2023.

During the debate about the resolution, the Permanent UN Observer for the State of Palestine declared the resolution as having righted a wrong against the Arabs: “Today the Assembly will finally acknowledge the historical injustice that befell the Palestinian people, adopting a resolution that decides to commemorate in the Assembly Hall the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Nakba.” [3]

Ambassador Erdan responded that the “sole purpose” of this and other resolutions aimed at Israel “is to blame everything in the Middle East solely on Israel while absolving the Palestinian Arabs of their responsibility for their situation.

Biden adopts the Palestinian cause The president’s team is intent on undoing everything Trump did — no matter how good it was. Jed Babbin

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/dec/3/biden-adopts-palestinian-cause/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=

President Biden inherited a Middle East that posed the greatest opportunities for stability, if not peace, in almost six decades. Former President Donald Trump’s 2018 revocation of the Obama nuclear weapons deal with Iran and imposition of severe economic sanctions on it backfooted the terrorist state. The Arab nations, terrified by the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, saw Mr. Trump’s Abraham Accords as the best chance to align themselves with the U.S. and Israel, the only regional power able to face up to Iran.

As this column has pointed out before, Mr. Biden and his team are intent on undoing everything Mr. Trump did, no matter how good it was. Mr. Biden’s attempt to negotiate a new version of the 2015 Iran deal has returned the Arab states to skepticism about our reliability as an ally. Mr. Biden’s new embrace of the Palestinians is a clear message to the Arabs that he is backing away from the Abraham Accords.

In September, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was committed to “advancing and expanding” those accords. But actions and statements by himself and Mr. Biden, before and since, demonstrate commitment to the opposite policy.

It must take ingenuity to be as precisely wrong as Mr. Blinken often is. For example, he said in March that the Abraham Accords, through which four Arab states establish ties with Israel, are “not a substitute” for progress on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

No, Hady Amr is not ‘our friend’ By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/no-hady-amr-is-not-our-friend/

Mere hours after the announcement on Tuesday that the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli and Palestinian affairs had been promoted to a position that was tailor-made just for him, the American Jewish Committee jumped in to welcome the move.

“Congratulations to our friend @HadyAmr on being appointed Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs,” tweeted the self-described “staunchly non-partisan” organization. “AJC looks forward to our continued work with you to advance American engagement in the region and the cause of peace across the Middle East.”

The timing wasn’t the only thing disturbing about Amr’s “elevation” to a concocted new job—from whose title the word “Israel” is conspicuously absent—or about the AJC’s fawning response to it. But it was certainly symbolic, as it fell on Nov. 29.

On this date in 1947, the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 181, which called for the partition of British-ruled Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab one. It was the precursor to the declaration of the birth of the State of Israel less than six months later, on May 14, 1948.
Referred to in Hebrew as Kaf Tet B’November, it is celebrated annually by Israelis and—like Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day)—mourned by the Arabs who rejected the original partition plan and who continue to refuse coexistence with the “Zionist entity.” In a horrifying historical twist, the UNGA has joined the “Palestinians” who mark the nakba (catastrophe) of Israel’s birth by stressing and acting on their intention to eliminate it.

The international body even voted on Wednesday in favor of holding an official commemorative Nakba Day event to honor all those decrying the Jewish state’s upcoming 75th anniversary. The world couldn’t have found a more fitting way to champion the sharp rise in antisemitism that so many countries and NGOs claim to be attempting to combat.

Israel-critics take their cue from Lapid and Gantz  By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-723883

Leave it to two prominent American Jews to call on the White House to censure Israel. In fairness to former State Department Mideast analyst/negotiator Aaron David Miller and one-time US ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer, what they jointly penned in The Washington Post on Tuesday could easily have been crafted by any of the outgoing powers-that-be in Jerusalem.

Indeed, though Miller and Kurtzer – senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Princeton University professor of Middle East policy respectively – have never been shy about criticizing the Jewish state that both profess to love, they might not have been so openly hostile without encouragement from Israelis in high places. Take temporary interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz, for example.

Given their own horrifying statements of late, it’s hard to expect critics abroad not to jump at the chance to spew equivalent vitriol. And, boy, did Miller and Kurtzer let it rip.

“As Israel approaches its 75th birthday next year, Benjamin Netanyahu has midwifed the most extreme government in the history of the state, all in an effort to secure legislation to postpone the trial against him or cancel the indictments altogether,” they wrote. “Having brought to life the radical, racist, misogynistic and homophobic far-right parties, Netanyahu is now stuck with them.”

They went on: “He has cut a deal with convicted inciter of hatred and violence [Otzma Yehudit leader MK] Itamar Ben-Gvir and made him minister of national security, with far-reaching authority for the West Bank, Jerusalem and mixed Arab-Jewish cities in Israel proper. [Religious Zionist Party leader MK] Bezalel Smotrich, who has called for the expulsion of Arabs, is in line to run the Finance Ministry, with additional authority over the Civil Administration, which governs the West Bank. And [Noam Party leader] Avi Maoz, who proudly espouses a fierce anti-LGBTQ agenda, has been made a deputy in the prime minister’s office in charge of ‘Jewish identity.’”

Secretary of State Blinken to Address Anti-Israel Group Along With “Infected With Jew-Hatred” Activist The Biden administration really hates Israel by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/secretary-of-state-blinken-to-address-anti-israel-group-along-with-infected-with-jew-hatred-activist/

One would think this would be a problem. But it’s also routine in the Biden administration which, in recent weeks, elevated Hady Amr, a terrorism supporter, to a top-tier emissary to the PLO and sent the FBI after Israel. This is just one in a series of ugly hate messages, the latest being to dispatch Secretary of State Blinken to address an anti-Israel group set up by George Soros and some Hong Kong money laundering.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be the keynote speaker at leftwing J Street’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., the organization announced on Wednesday.

Blinken on Wednesday announced that he will serve as the headline speaker at the annual conference for J Street, which as recently as last month trashed Netanyahu, accusing the incoming prime minister of “building and bulldozing [his] way to permanent, undemocratic control of the West Bank.” The group also advocates conditioning U.S. aid to Israel, routinely attacks the Jewish state for defending itself against Palestinian terrorism…

The conference kicks off this weekend, with Blinken set to address the confab on Sunday, alongside former Bernie Sanders adviser and longtime Israel critic Matt Duss, Daily Beast writer Wajahat Ali, a cadre of pro-Palestinian activists, and several Democratic members of Congress, including Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) and senator-elect Peter Welch (D., Vt.).

The New York Times – Mouthpiece for the Palestinians How a Times correspondent parrots the Palestinian victimhood narrative. by Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-new-york-times-mouthpiece-for-the-palestinians/

Last February, the New York Times hired Palestinian terrorist apologist Raja Abdulrahim to serve as its correspondent in Jerusalem, focusing on Palestinian affairs. In that capacity, she has written a series of pro-Palestinian screeds that the New York Times has published as purported “news” articles.

On November 27th, for example, the Times published an article by Ms. Abdulrahim, which claimed that Israel’s so-called “blockade” on the entry of dual-use materials into Gaza “has devastated Gaza’s economy,” including its fishing industry. Ms. Abdulrahim lamented that the so-called “blockade,” in her words, has prevented Gazan fishermen “from buying motors, propellers, fiberglass and many other items needed to repair the boats and maintain a functioning fishing fleet.”

First of all, Ms. Abdulrahim needs to bring her “reporting” up to date. If she had checked with reliable sources on the ground in Gaza, she would have learned that Israel has already approved the entry of more dual-use materials recently, including fiberglass and other materials for Gazan fishing boats. Ms. Abdulrahim also conveniently ignored the fact that Israel has increased the number of permits allowing Palestinians from Gaza to work in Israel to their highest level since 2007, the year that the Hamas terrorists threw the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza and took control.

Secondly, Ms. Abdulrahim has failed to report how Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups themselves have brought misery upon the Gazan civilian population as a result of their relentless build-up of military capabilities to attack Israelis. For example, Palestinian terrorist groups have been caught trying to smuggle fiberglass into Gaza for the suspected purpose of building rockets, not to replace or repair damaged fiberglass in Gazan fishing boats. But Ms. Abdulrahim has neglected to provide such factual context for Israeli restrictions on the entry of dual-use materials and equipment into Gaza, which, despite continuing Palestinian terrorist attacks, Israel has actually loosened.