RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/13/moral-clarity-versus-moral-depravity-in-israel-and-gaza/

Nationally syndicated radio host Dennis Prager has often observed that if the Israelis were to lay down their guns, Israel would be destroyed tomorrow, but if the Palestinians were to lay down their guns, there would be peace tomorrow. It has always been thus.

The latest flare-up of violence between Israelis and Palestinians is no different. The proximate causes are a thorny combination of an abstruse housing dispute in northeastern Jerusalem, deceitful Palestinian slander about an ostensible threat to Al-Aqsa Mosque, the destabilizing nature of Israel’s current domestic political morass, and the contemporaneous American appeasement in Vienna of the Palestinians’ preeminent jihad bankroller, the Islamic Republic of Iran. But the immediate aggressors, as per usual, are clear: Hamas, the internationally recognized Gaza-based terrorist outfit whose founding charter calls for the murder of every Jew worldwide, and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, ruled in profoundly corrupt fashion by serial jihad-inciter Mahmoud Abbas, a Holocaust denialist now in the 16th year of his four-year term.

The result has been the worst bout of bloodshed since the last full-scale Israel-Hamas war in 2014. Hamas has fired thousands of rockets into the Jewish state, seeking—and, tragically, occasionally succeeding—to inflict maximal harm upon Israel’s civilian population. Hamas’ rockets do not discriminate on the basis of age, race, or religion: Victims include an Israel Defense Forces soldier, a 6-year-old boy in the oft-targeted Gaza border town of Sderot, and a 32-year-old Indian national in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. One would be waiting in vain for Black Lives Matter, or other leading institutional wokesters and intersectional shakedown artists, to reconcile such calamities with their professed principles.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/the-truth-about-the-sheikh-jarrah-eviction/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

It’s worth rebutting the deceptions about the incident at the supposed center of a resurgence in violence between Arabs and Israelis.

The east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah has become the latest flashpoint in the Arab–Israeli conflict, sparking the very tension that Hamas seeks to exploit for its own political advantage.

Several Palestinian-Arab families living in Sheikh Jarrah face eviction from homes following a ruling from Jerusalem’s District Court. In anticipation of a Supreme Court hearing of an appeal of the ruling, Palestinian Arabs have rioted nightly in Sheikh Jarrah, joining violent Palestinian-Arab attacks related to the Ramadan holy month, and culminating in violent eruptions across the city, including at some of Jerusalem’s holiest sites.

Meanwhile, Hamas has capitalized on the unrest by launching some 1,000 rockets toward Israel, with at least seven targeting the capital city, in the hopes of killing Jews and inciting further violence.

Since Sheikh Jarrah is emerging as the battle cry of the Palestinian-Arab violence, it is worth discussing why the supposed “scandal” isn’t really a scandal at all.

For starters, the title to the land never belonged to the Palestinian Arabs currently residing on the property. There is nothing pernicious happening beyond a standard landlord eviction of non-paying tenants. But you wouldn’t know that based on the current media coverage and outcry on the progressive left.

For instance, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) penned a tweet labeling the evictions “inhumane” and stating she stood in “solidarity” with the Palestinian families being evicted from “their homes.” Senator Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.) demanded that the evictions be halted, while Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) labeled the evictions “abhorrent and unacceptable,” asserting, “The Administration should make clear to the Israeli government that these evictions are illegal and must stop immediately.” Some progressives are even arguing to condition aid to Israel over the Sheikh Jarrah issue, suggesting that U.S. aid to Israel is being used to oppress Palestinian Arabs. In turn, the Biden administration has also expressed concerns over the evictions, albeit far less forcefully.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post just published an op-ed titled “Sheikh Jarrah highlights the brazenness of Israel’s colonialist project.” Or, not to be outdone, Reuters published a piece yesterday strangely lacking an opinion label, but nonetheless featuring the title, “East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah becomes emblem of Palestinian struggle.”

There is intellectual laziness, and then there is shameless misinformation. All of the above falls into the latter category.

https://bit.ly/3uKTBfp

According to the annual February 2021 Gallup’s country favorability rating, Israel is the 7th most favorable country among Americans, enjoying a 75% very/mostly favorability rating.

Israel’s favorability of 75% – compared to 66% in 2013, 69% in 2019 and 74% in 2020 – is above its 65% average since 2001, and just shy of its exceptional 79% favorability recorded during the 1991 Gulf War, when the US public was exposed to Iraqi missiles hitting Israel. 

According to Gallup, “In the latest poll, 85% of Republicans view it favorably, compared with 77% of independents and 64% of Democrats.”

Iran (13%) and the Palestinian Authority (30%) trail Cuba (45%), and are among the least favorable countries, along with North Korea (11%), China (20%), Iraq (21%), Afghanistan (21%) and Russia (22%).

Israel trails Canada (92% favorability), Great Britain (91%), France (87%), Japan (84%), Germany (84%) and India (77%).

However, unlike these countries, Israel’s 75% favorability is in defiance of systematic criticism (of Israel) by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other key members of the US media establishment, as well as by State Department spokespersons and the United Nations.

Israel’s high favorability rating occurs despite the spike in anti-Israel activities on US campuses, as well as the recent erosion of Israel’s stature on Capitol Hill (especially on the House side), which has been Israel’s consistent ally since 1948.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/is-israel-on-the-verge-of-a-hamas-abetted-civil-war-opinion-668148

Amid the barrages of Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets – and as young Arab citizens of Israel engaged in riots across the country – Muslim and Jewish medical personnel at the Rambam Health Care Center in Haifa issued a message of unity.

In an uplifting multi-lingual tweet on Wednesday evening, the doctors and nurses of the hospital posted a photo collage in which they are seen standing side-by-side, holding up pieces of paper spelling out the Hebrew sentences: “We overcame the coronavirus. We will all come together again now.” Some members of the team, in scrubs and surgical masks, with stethoscopes around their necks, are bearing signs with drawings of hearts accompanied by the word “peace” in Arabic.
The uplifting social-media post was both welcome and jarring. On the one hand, it served as a reminder of the dedication of Israel’s doctors and nurses of all ethnic and religious backgrounds to saving lives for months on end during the pandemic.

On the other, it constituted a stark contrast to the scenes of anti-Jewish rampages taking place in Jerusalem, Lod, Acre, Jaffa and Haifa, and retaliation by vigilantes out for vengeance against Arabs in Bat Yam, Tiberias and elsewhere.

The brewing of what is coming to resemble an actual civil war, as with the missiles from Gaza, can be attributed to Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip, and to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

https://www.opinione.it/editoriali/2021/04/29/renato-cristin_ostilit%C3%A0-israele-antisemitismo-funzionale-human-rights-watch-onu/

On one thing, the recent report by Human Rights Watch dedicated to Israel is right: “a threshold has been crossed”. Yes, one limit has been crossed, or rather two, but it is Human Rights Watch itself that has exceeded them: on the one hand, its report goes beyond the limits of the caricature and the grotesque (which is inadmissible for an organization accredited to the UN), presenting a political and social reality through the distorting lens of pro-Palestinian, pro-Islamic and anti-Zionist ideology; on the other hand, the border that divides criticism of the work of the State of Israel from antisemitism as the result of an action, an analysis or an opinion has been crossed. Yes, this relationship has introduced a new level: it cleared that form of anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish hatred that I call functional antisemitism.

We know that these organizations, protected by the UN, have no problem attacking any government not aligned with the Palace, tarnishing it with hallucinating and often spurious accusations. But towards Israel there has always been, in that Palace and in its ideologies, a special aversion, which can be explained above all by the resistance that Israel opposes to the tendency to annihilate the nations that the UN has always supported and with the refusal Israel to accept the warnings (or rather: the diktats) to behave according to criteria that the UN considers politically correct.

Today, with an apparently isolated but in reality concerted action at the highest level, because it is connected with the orientation of the UN and, as we will see, with the action of the International Criminal Court, this questionable NGO puts Israel in the dock for racism and crimes against humanity (but with what credibility, then?, with what historical heritage, with what spiritual mission, with what political authority, with what popular mandate, with what ideological neutrality?), as if it were Amin Dada’s Uganda or the Central African Republic of Bokassa. Absurd, as in a piece by Beckett or Ionesco.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/holy-war-a-perspective-of-the-arab-israeli-conflict-opinion-668131

Superficially, the conflict is about who has sovereignty in Israel: “the occupation,” “colonialism,” etc. On a deeper level, however, it is about jihad, a religious obligation in Islam that many interpret as a demand to destroy Israel. That is the core and heart of Palestinianism.

From this perspective, the Arab-Israeli conflict is not only national, the desire for a state; it is fundamentally a religious conflict. Islamists consider “Palestine” to be part of the house of Islam and Jews as “dhimmis,” a subject religious community, not a nation.

Violence waged by Islamists against Israel, therefore, is not only over enclaves, neighborhoods or territory; it is also a struggle over ideology – Zionism (Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people) and Palestinianism, which advocates Israel’s destruction. As long as Israel denies Palestinianism, there will be violence, promoted by the PLO, Hamas and most Islamist groups as “resistance” or “intifada.” The struggle, therefore, is not only about who has sovereignty, or even about Palestinian statehood; it is about Israel’s existence.

The resurgence of Palestinian violence is inevitable because Islamists have a long-term strategic goal to eliminate Israel. Every move by Israel to assert its authority and sovereignty is a threat to Palestinianism. This is based on the PLO Covenant and Hamas Charter, both of which define the problem as Israel’s existence.

Any recognition of Israel’s right to exist and its sovereignty is seen as a defeat of the fundamental Palestinian narrative, the Nakba (“catastrophe”) – Israel’s creation in 1948, the failure of Arab armies to destroy it, and the flight of Arabs who became refugees. It is also interpreted as a violation of Islamic law. This explains why efforts to resolve the conflict always fail.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/rashida-tlaib-falsely-charges-settlers-setting-hugh-fitzgerald/

Rashida Tlaib (D-West Bank) has gone on a rampage again. She’s accused Israel of “apartheid” and “stealing Palestinian homes” – so far so predictable, but now she’s added a new charge – that Israel has deliberately been setting fires to Palestinian land. A report on her latest outburst is here: “Top US Jewish Group Calls for Rashida Tlaib to Remove ‘Falsehood’ About Israelis Setting Fire to Palestinian Fields,” Algemeiner, May 6, 2021

A leading US Jewish group called on Congressman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) to remove a tweet that accused Israel of “apartheid” and “stealing Palestinian homes and burning their lands” as she shared an account of Israelis setting fires to Palestinian fields that was retracted by the Israeli NGO that originated it.

“.@RashidaTlaib, you shared a falsehood about Israeli Jews setting fire to Palestinian fields. This ugly claim has been retracted. You’re a member of Congress. Take down your tweet. Or is it okay to perpetuate untruths when they fit your policy agenda?” the American Jewish Committee (AJC) tweeted Thursday.

On Wednesday, Tlaib retweeted an article about fires near the Palestinian village of Burin, drawing from a Palestinian media sources and a May 4 tweet by the left-wing NGO B’Tselem, which shared a photo of the flames and blamed Israeli “settlers.”

“Stealing Palestinian homes and burning their lands. The actions of an apartheid state. We cannot stand by and watch this happen,” Tlaib wrote, tagging the account of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “Billions of US taxpayers dollars support Netanyahu’s government and this racist violence. We must condemn this swiftly.”