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ISRAEL

John Oliver and Israel’s ‘War Crimes’ Late-night’s useful idiot. Hugh Fitzgerald

John Oliver is the host of the late-night talk-show “Last Week Tonight.” On May 12, after two days of fighting between Hamas and Israel — the war started with a volley of 140 rockets that Hamas, in Gaza, launched against Israel — Oliver delivered his thoughts on the conflict. He came down hard on Israel. Yuval Yoaz reports on Oliver’s palpable want of sympathy for the Jewish State here: “What John Oliver doesn’t get about the war in Gaza,” Times of Israel, May 21, 2021:

“There is a lot to unpack there,” John Oliver began his opening monologue of “Last Week Tonight” last Sunday, where he sharply criticized Israel for its crushing airstrikes on Gaza strip. “From the use of the phrase ‘tit for tat’ war in a conflict in which one side has suffered over 10 times the casualties, something that speaks to the severe power imbalance that played here.” Oliver’s conclusion: this”severe power imbalance“ often “gets obscured by how we choose to talk about it.”

Oliver is, of course, free to criticize Israel, and, although he himself attests to the great difficulty in judging “the latest chapter in a long story you haven’t read” regarding the conflict in the Middle East, he is also free to draw conclusions and formulate a moral position. But Oliver should do this with the same standard he sets for others. Specifically, he’d better avoid obscuring essential facts in the way he chooses to talk about them.

The prism through which Oliver observes the latest flare-up between Israel and Hamas is that of power disparity. Israel has a strong and sophisticated army, fighter jets, and missile defense systems; Hamas does not. This much is true — there are huge, undeniable gaps in military power between Israel and Hamas.

In fact, the common notion is that these gaps are the exact reason the State of Israel exists: had it not built from the ground up a stronger army force than those of its enemies in the region, it is likely that it would have been erased from the map long ago.

Bolstered Jewish – and Inflated Palestinian – Demography Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinge

 https://bit.ly/3bRqzDu

Official Palestinian demographic numbers are highly-inflated, as documented by a study, which has been ongoing since 2004:

*500,000 overseas residents, who have been away for over a year, are included in the Palestinian census, contrary to international regulations. 325,000 were included in the 1997 census, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, and 400,000 in 2004, according to the Palestinian Election Commission. The number grows steadily due to births.

*350,000 East Jerusalem Arabs are doubly-counted – by Israel and by the Palestinian Authority. The number grows daily due to births.

*Over 100,000 Arabs, who married Israeli Arabs are similarly doubly-counted. The number expands daily due to births.   

*350,000 Arab emigrants from Judea & Samaria are excluded from the population census of the Palestinian Authority, notwithstanding the annual net-emigration since 1950.   For example, 26,357 in 2019, 7,778 in 2018, 15,173 in 2017, 15,502 in 2016, 16,393 in 2015 and 24,244 in 2014, as documented (exists and entries) in land, air and sea international passages.  

*A 32% artificial inflation of Palestinian births was documented by the World Bank (page 8, item 6) in a 2006 audit.

*The Judea & Samaria Arab fertility rate has been westernized: from 9 births per woman in the 1960s to 3.02 births in 2021, as documented by the CIA World Factbook. It reflects the sweeping urbanization, growing enrollment of women in higher education, rising marriage age and the substantial use of contraceptives.

*The number of Arab deaths in Judea & Samaria has been systematically under-reported for political and financial reasons.

Biden’s Palestinian Mission is Doomed to Fail by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17402/biden-palestinian-mission

The big problem, though, with Mr Biden’s commitment for the US to work with the Palestinian Authority in Gaza is that the ability of Mr Abbas’s organisation to exercise any influence over Gaza is virtually negligible.

While Mr Abbas continues to indulge in the fiction that he is the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, the reality so far as Gaza is concerned is that it is the Islamist leaders of Hamas who exercise total control over Gaza.

The jubilant celebrations that took place among Palestinians when the ceasefire finally took hold were not held to express their relief that the fighting was over. The celebrations took place as a demonstration of support for Hamas’s role in launching a massive attack on Israel.

The bad news for Mr Biden is that Hamas not only has zero interest in working with the US and other aid agencies on reconstruction projects in Gaza and other Palestinian territories. It has no interest in resolving tensions with Israel.

[T]he main objective of the Hamas movement, which has been designated a terrorist organisation by the US and a host of other Western governments, is the complete destruction of the state of Israel, an ambition it shares with Iran, Hamas’s close ally and benefactor.

Indeed, Israeli intelligence officials believe Iran deliberately used the recent bout of fighting to test Israel’s air defence systems with a view to improving Hamas’s capability to inflict maximum damage on the Israeli people in any future conflict.

To judge by the jubilant Palestinian celebrations that greeted the ceasefire that ended 11 days of fighting in the Gaza Strip, US President Joe Biden’s belief that the agreement presents a “genuine opportunity to make progress” on resolving tensions between Israel and the Palestinians seems naively optimistic.

Moreover, the same can be said of the president’s pledge to provide Gaza with humanitarian and reconstruction aid to help the Palestinian residents in the wake of the latest outbreak of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians.

Inside Hamas’ Hate A journey into the Heart of Darkness. Dr. Shmuel Katz

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/understanding-hostility-dr-shmuel-katz/

There is ongoing incitement by the radical Muslims and their supporters against Israel using lies and deception. These actions are preparing their supporters to use and implement the concept of Jihad, to act against the Infidel in general, and against the Jews in particular.

Recently, there has been a confluence of several factors which gave the terror-supporting Iran and their proxy Hamas the miscalculated incentive to rally their oblivious supporters, and try to liquidate the state of Israel and gain power.

The initial excuse for the Arab confrontation in Jerusalem, was associated with two big lies:

1. “The Jews decides to evict innocent Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem” – This is a lie. The fact is that this dispute is related to a long-standing refusal of four Arab squatter Families to pay rent to their Jewish landlords. This case was deliberated in the Israeli courts for many years and now it seems that the courts, that have already ruled to recognize the ownership of the Jews of these houses in the past, clarified that the Arab tenants refusal to pay rent is against the law. There is a pending Supreme Court decision which may decide that the squatters should be removed form these houses, which do not belong to them.

2. “The Israeli police decided to attack peaceful Muslim worshipers on Temple Mount” – This too is a lie. The fact is that following violence by some Radical Muslims and by few Radical Jews, Arab Palestinian agitators and Hamas supporters piled up fire bombs, firecrackers and rocks on the Temple Mount and in the Al Aqsa Mosque, and used them to attack the Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall Plaza, about 70 feet below them. The police had to go into the involved areas on Temple Mount, in order to stop these terror attacks and riots which spilled over also into other locations in Jerusalem and into other cities in Israel.

Hamas gave an ultimatum to Israel on May the 10th to leave the Temple Mount and the Sheikh Jarrah areas, and release by 6:00 pm all the Arab rioters that were caught and arrested by the Israeli police. Israel ignored this insane ultimatum, and Hamas started a massive assault on Jerusalem and other Israeli locations, launching multiple rockets from within their own civilian population, into the Israeli civilian population, in order to initiate and support a wider Jihad against Israel. They were hoping that it would involve even more of the brainwashed Israeli Arab Citizens and many of their international supporters around the world. Unfortunately, even many Media outlets fell prey for these maliciously calculated terror waves. Seeing civilian casualties is horrible, but when the casualties are caused by malicious calculation of a terror organization which planned to create this human disaster, it makes it even worse. Some of these casualties came despite the careful defensive Israeli efforts to stop the Hamas rocket launchers and the attempt to destroy the Hamas infrastructure which supported this terror effort. In addition, many Palestinian casualties were caused by the misfired rockets which were launched by Hamas, which were aimed at Israeli civilians, but hit their own population.

Diaspora Follies When the likes of Sarah Silverman smear the IDF Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/diaspora-follies-bruce-bawer/

These days the shameless perfidy of the New York Times is palpable on the front page of every new issue, but it can take a big story like armed conflict between Israel and Hamas to ratchet up the paper’s bias and duplicity to Pulitzer Prize levels. You barely need to look beyond the headlines: “Gaza War Deepens a Long-Running Humanitarian Crisis” (May 18); “After the Cease-Fire, Gaza Awakens to a Sea of Rubble” (May 21); “Life under Occupation: The Misery at the Heart of the Conflict” (May 22). Such articles being tailor-made to manipulate readers who still get their news (to use the term loosely) from the mainstream media, and whose opinions on serious issues are easily influenced by shamelessly contrived propaganda, it was no surprise to find one Marisa Kabas opening her own recent piece for Rolling Stone with a reference to a May 13 Times article, headlined “In Gaza, an Ordinary Street, and Extraordinary Horror, as Missiles Thunder In,” about Palestinians killed by IDF rockets. Kabas’s take: as the “granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor,” she had been “raised to see Palestinians as the enemy” and never to question “Israel’s existence, actions, and connection to the United States”; but after reading this Times article, she confesses, “I mourn.”

In fact, Kabas (B.A. in journalism, George Washington University, 2009) more than mourns. She has now decided – and seems to be under the impression that this is a fresh thought – that Jews’ “history of oppression should make us even more empathetic to the displacement and killing of Palestinians.” And she tells us that when she posted this insight on social media, she “was surprised and humbled by the overwhelmingly affirmative response, with fellow American Jews publicly and privately agreeing they’re no longer able to accept the party line on Israel-U.S. relations” or to “square their love for their people and history with their commitment to racial and social justice.” One of the fellow American Jews who have evolved along with her, she is glad to inform us, is a certain Jeremy Slevin (B.A. in political science, Washington University in St. Louis, 2010), who, as it happens, works as “senior communications director for Congresswoman Ilhan Omar” – a job that over time has helped him, as Kabas puts it, “to separate his Jewish American identity from Israel.” Gee, I’ll bet it has. (Slevin, according to his LinkedIn page, has previously worked for Keith Ellison, MSNBC, and John Podesta’s Center for American Progress.) Kabas concludes that “causing trauma to another group will never ease our own. Killing more than 200 Palestinians in two weeks won’t bring back our ancestors who perished in the Holocaust, and it certainly won’t bring us closer to a lasting peace. Until we recognize that no one is safe until we’re all safe, the cycle of oppression will play on.”

Rebuild What With Whom? Shoshana Bryen

https://www.newsweek.com/rebuild-what-whom-opinion-1594375?utm_term=Autofe

Video has emerged of Palestinians fighting on the grounds of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, also known as the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. The AP reported that only hours after the ceasefire with Israel took effect, thousands of Hamas supporters demonstrated against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the rule of Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, chanting, “Dogs of the Palestinian Authority, out, out. The people want the president to leave.” Violence quickly ensued.

This is a glimpse of Palestinian politics that President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken should take seriously as they discuss reconstruction in Gaza. The Hamas rocket war on Israel owed much to the Hamas-Fatah civil war that began in 2007 and has simmered since then, with Hamas in control of Gaza and Fatah in control of the West Bank. Each is a dictatorship. In the run-up to a planned 2021 Palestinian election, Abbas stoked violence against Israel, claiming that Al-Aqsa was under siege and Israel was committing “ethnic cleaning.” Abbas, apparently, feared he might lose the election to Hamas—so he canceled it and blamed Israel.

PA television was full of speeches and music videos promising glory for those who killed Jews. A music video was repeatedly broadcast in which Palestinians declared, “I fired my shots, I threw my bomb, I detonated, detonated, detonated my [explosive] belts. …My brother, throw my blood on the enemy like bullets.” Abbas’ religious affairs advisor told viewers, “Islam does not want you to be submissive to others,” and “if you die fighting, you go to paradise; if you kill the enemies, they go to hell.”

Arab states are ‘washing their hands’ of Palestinians Practical governments are seeking mutually beneficial relations with Israel. Andrew Harrod

https://www.jns.org/opinion/analysts-arab-states-are-washing-their-hands-of-palest

In what proved to be a snapshot of professional views of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the eve of war, Georgetown University adjunct professor and Middle East Institute (MEI) senior fellow Khaled Elgindy concluded that the “Arab world is sort of washing their hands” of the Palestinian cause during a May 3 MEI webinar. He agreed with his fellow panelists addressing “Arab-Israeli Normalization: A Viable Avenue Towards Peace?” that America and Arab states are prioritizing practical self-interests over an increasingly failed, violent Palestinian state project.

The panelists examined the implications of Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates establishing normal diplomatic relations with Israel during former President Donald Trump’s final months in office. These agreements initiated by Bahrain and UAE’s Abraham Accords have become only more remarkable in the days following the panel. The Iranian-supported Hamas terror group in Gaza renewed rocket attacks against Israel on May 10, firing thousands of rockets at Tel Aviv and other Israeli civilian population centers. Israel retaliated with airstrikes and artillery. UAE officials warned Hamas of sanctions if its campaign persists.

These Arab state recognitions of Israel “robbed the Palestinians of one of the very few points of leverage that they had vis-à-vis Israel,” noted Elgindy. Palestinians suffer “already pretty stark power asymmetry” with Israel. Given this “existential threat to the Palestinian national project,” he added, the “Palestinian response across the political spectrum was extremely negative.”

Richardson Center for Global Engagement vice president and executive director Mickey Bergman, Elgindy’s fellow Georgetown adjunct, argued that these Arab states had been “very opportunistic” in making deals with Israel. The panelists noted that Trump recognized Morocco’s claim to the disputed Western Sahara and delisted Sudan as a state sponsor of terror. Meanwhile, Bahrain and the UAE wanted closer ties with Israel and the United States, particularly given growing Iranian threats.

Why western mobs are now sticking it to the Jews The public has yet to grasp how “psy-ops” against Israel has messed with their minds Melanie Phillips

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/why-western-mobs-are-now-sticking?token

“Palestinianism and Black Lives Matter have not been hijacked by anti-Jewish and anti-white bigots. They are intrinsically anti-Jew and anti-white movements. Until and unless this is acknowledged, the horrendous madness through which we are now living will continue to worsen.”

Anyone who imagined that with the Gaza cease-fire the antisemitism that erupted around the west would correspondingly die down has been sorely mistaken.

It has not only continued to become ever more brazen and intimidatory but, astonishing this may seem, it has now morphed into something even more chilling. The toxic core of it, the Israel libel that fuels the onslaught, has become an axiomatic lie and a supposed marker of public conscience.

What some of us warned about the Labour party’s antisemitism under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership has now proved all too true.  This malignity was not confined to the hard-left. It reflected a terrible development that had poisoned the entire “progressive” world and was rippling out beyond even that.

What’s been happening over the past few days has been horrifying: not just the continued and ever more brazen Jew-baiting, but the relative indifference which greets it and which ensures it continues to accelerate, even though physical attackers may be arrested and prosecuted. 

In city after city, anti-Jewish onslaughts have been occurring camouflaged as pro-Palestinian demonstrations. While some useful idiots in attendance may have thought they were signalling their virtuous support for the oppressed, the language used and the targets of physical assaults committed under cover of these placards reveal the true agenda.

A look back at the first disastrous ‘two-state solution’ Victor Sharpe

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/210512

“It is not from 1947 or 1967 that the relentless aggression against Israel by the Arab and Muslim world and the so-called Palestinians began. To fully understand its origins, we must go back to the early years of the 20th century.” Rashida Tlaib, Democrat Congresswoman                                                                                                

In the 11th hour and 59th minute of his last term in the White House, Barack Hussein Obama struck his knife deep into the heart of Israel. With the appalling anti-Israel passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, engineered by President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry on December 23, 2016, the blame for the Israel-Palestinian conflict was falsely imparted upon the easy target: Israel.

In June, 1967 Six-Day War, the Jewish state survived yet another Arab war of genocide launched against it and freed the embattled nation from the existing 1947 nine – to – fifteen – mile – wide armistice lines, which Israel’s earlier minister of foreign affairs, Abba Eban, appropriately called the Auschwitz lines. Those were the lines that existed after the fledgling Israeli forces in 1948 had pushed back the invading Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Lebanese armies. Israel declared its independence in May, 1948 and immediately the Arabs launched a war of genocide.

But let us go back to 1920 when Great Britain was given the responsibility by the League of Nations to oversee the Palestine Mandate after the defeat of the 400 year old Ottoman Turkish Empire’s occupation of much of the Middle East. Britain was to uphold the League’s express intention of reconstituting within the Mandatory territory a reborn Jewish national home.

The League of Nations created a number of articles in line with the original intent of the Balfour Declaration of November 29, 1917. At the last minute, however, a new article was introduced by the British Colonial Office: Article 25.

It became apparent that its inclusion directly enabled Great Britain in 1921-22 to arbitrarily tear away all the vast Mandatory territory east of the River Jordan and give it to the Arab Hashemite tribe: The territory to become Trans-Jordan and led by the emir Abdullah.

British officials claimed that the gift of Mandatory Palestine east of the Jordan River was in gratitude to the Hashemites for their contribution in helping defeat the Turks. However, T.S. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) described in derisory terms the Hashemite role as “a side show of a side show.”

Ironically, Britain was aided far more by the Nili Jewish underground movement in defeating the Ottoman Turkish Empire, which had ruled geographical Palestine from 1517 to 1917.

What is more sad than the occupation? The need for it. By Lev Tsitrin

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/what_is_more_sad_than_the_occupation_the_need_for_it.html

Not unnaturally, the latest flare-up between Hamas and Israel, and Arab-Jewish violence inside Israel, attracted much media attention. Day after day, pages of the New York Times were filled with reports and opinions from the region — often of very questionable quality. “Guest essays” from Palestinians in Gaza painted a picture of indiscriminate, brutal Israeli attacks on the innocent civilians huddled with their wives and children in helpless dread, not knowing what next to expect from the bare-fanged Israeli monsters.

Equally gruesome was an article showing the picture of wanton Jewish cruelty, that forgot to mention that the organized Jewish self-defense arose as a response to Arab attacks on Jewish Israelis inside Israel which inadequate policing failed to prevent. A gloomy New York Times story about Israel squashing ordinary Palestinians’ simple human happiness was also devoid of background and context.

This article provides the background and context that the New York Times ignored. Let’s fill in the gap by starting with an obvious question: Why is there an “occupation” in the first place? How did it come to be? Why hasn’t it ended long ago? I would argue that, ultimately, it is rooted in willful Palestinian ignorance of Arab history.

(Note: I am speaking here about title to the land, not the right to possession. For centuries, Muslims tolerated a handful of Jews on what was once malarial, swampy land. What they cannot tolerate is Jewish ownership of the land.)

It’s inconceivable that the Palestinians do not know the story of the Arab conquest that started immediately after Mohammed’s death. Within a few centuries, Muslim Arabs spread from what is today’s western Saudi Arabia to encompass half of the then-known world, from Spain in the west to the border of India in the east. The former Roman territory of Palestine (a name the Romans bestowed on the land) came under Arab dominance in about 636 AD. The Arab’s did not begin human settlement on that strip of land, of course. It had been populated since time immemorial, including the Jews who, by 636 had already lived there for close to 2,000 years.