RUTHFULLY YOURS

Finally, the Hamas “Press Office” instructed Palestinian journalists to focus on the “humanization” of the stories of the Palestinians who are killed or injured during the mass demonstrations. Translation: If the “victim” is a Hamas terrorist, the journalists are to avoid mentioning that and instead report about his having been a beloved husband, father and community member.

Aren’t Fatah and Abbas receiving financial aid from the US and EU because of their presumed support for a peace process with Israel? Why should the Americans and Europeans be supporting a Palestinian faction whose journalists openly incite against their Israeli colleagues?

Three weeks after the beginning of the mass demonstrations along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, which are being held as part of the so-called “March of Return,” Hamas is trying to intimidate journalists into covering the events in a way that distorts the truth and reality.

Hamas, one of several Palestinian groups responsible for the anti-Israel demonstrations, does not want the world to see pictures of Palestinians throwing stones, firebombs and explosive devices at Israeli soldiers.

Hamas does not want journalists to use the words “clashes” and “confrontations” when reporting about the demonstrations.

Hamas does not want journalists to report the fact that some of the demonstrators killed during the “March of Return” were actually members of its armed group, Izaddin Al-Qassam.

In other words, Hamas wants journalists to report as if they were working for its propaganda machine. Any journalist who dares to challenge the Hamas narrative is denounced as a “traitor” and punished.

To ensure that Palestinian journalists comply with its wishes, Hamas’s “Press Office” earlier this week issued directives to reporters as to how they should cover the “March of Return.”

TEL AVIV — I am perhaps the luckiest Jew who ever lived. Or if you are Jewish, you might be.

I am the Jew who gets to see Jewish ingenuity unapologetically celebrated, Jewish material success flourish, Jewish might acknowledged and the Jewish language rejuvenated. I am the Jew who after 2,000 years gets to witness Jewish political independence. And this is true of all Jews, whether they live here in Israel or experience this success in Jewish communities elsewhere in the world.

True, there is some competition for the luckiest generation of Jews: the time of Moses, Solomon’s kingdom or the Golden Age in Spain. But I think I can make a solid case for it.

Israel, the Jewish state, turns 70 this week. Around the time my grandmother was born in Lithuania, at the end of World War I, there were, according to scholars, about 60,000 Jews living in Palestine. When my mother was born in Mandatory Palestine, shortly before Israel declared its independence, there were about 600,000. I was born in 1968, when Israel celebrated its 20th anniversary, and during my childhood the number of Jews in this country was about three million, according to Israeli government statistics. Whenever today’s population is mentioned, I have a moment of cognitive dissonance: In my still-young mind we are still three million, even as my older body lives in an Israel of six million Jews.

Still, 70 years of independence is barely a blip on the radar of Jewish history. And the Jews of Israel are highly aware of our role as a small link in a long chain of Jewish history. We are modern Israelis, of course, but our consciousness is one of ancient Jews. In survey after survey, more Israelis choose “Jewish” over “Israeli” as their main identity. And by this they do not refer to a religion (Judaism) but to a nation (the Jewish people).

Thus, when celebrating 70 years of statehood, we Jews must engage in a kind of balancing act. On one hand, we need to appreciate the great achievement of building this Jewish homeland in such a short time in such a hostile environment. On the other hand, we need to grasp the smallness of this achievement in the scheme of Jewish history.

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) – refusing to bow to pressure by President Trump to cease payments to terrorists and their families currently exceeding US$400 million annually – is looming as a potential threat to end 96 years of unbroken Hashemite rule in Jordan.

PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas – addressing the ninth annual Islamic Beit al-Maqdes International Conference in Ramallah last week – has sent a veiled message of the PLO’s intention to challenge Jordan’s ruling Hashemite family if PLO demands for a State in the West Bank with Jerusalem as its capital are not met.

Jordan comprised almost 77% of Palestine between 1920 and 1946 until granted independence by Great Britain and being renamed The Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan – subsequently being renamed Jordan in 1950 following Transjordan’s illegal annexation of Judea and Samaria in 1948 ( redesignated the West Bank).

This semantic sleight of hand could never change the historic and demographic reality that Jordan formed part of the territory comprised in the 1922 Mandate for Palestine – Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan declaring in the Foreign Affairs Review in 1982:

“the Jordanians and Palestinians are now one people, and no political loyalty, however strong, will separate them permanently.”

Abbas told the Ramallah Conference:

“In Palestine and Jordan, we are one people in two states and we will never accept an alternative homeland.”

Abbas’s statement mirrored PLO founder Yasser Arafat’s in Der Spiegel in 1986:

“Jordanians and Palestinians are indeed one people. No one can divide us. We have the same fate.”

Farouk Kadoumi – the Head of the Political Department of the PLO – told Newsweek on 14 March 1977:

“Jordanians and Palestinians are considered by the PLO as one people.”

Alleging flagrant bias towards Israel by the Trump Administration – Abbas defiantly declared:

“We are not expecting anything from them. We won’t accept anything from them.”

Abbas is being incredibly naïve if he believes he can now convince the international community into accepting that one people needs two states – and that pursuing that goal should be internationally supported at the expense of achieving an end to a conflict that originated with the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

The headlines in Norway’s national newspapers were huge: “Palestinian journalist in press vest shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza.” “Palestinian photographer killed by Israeli soldiers.” “Sharpshooter’s bullet hit his armpit. Palestinian photographer killed.”

The victim of the April 6 killing was identified as Yasser Murtaja, a “videojournalist” and “30-year-old father” who had co-founded Ain Media, a production company that works with the BBC, Al Jazeera, and other foreign media. In this instance, Murtaja was working for an NGO called Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

At the time he was shot, according to the NTB news agency report that ran in all three major Norwegian dailies, Murtaja was “over 100 meters from the Israeli border fence” and wearing a bulletproof vest “clearly marked PRESS.” The NTB story added that “according to Palestinian sources,” Murtaja “had no ties to Hamas or other militant groups.” (In the Norwegian media, “Palestinian sources” are treated as reliable in such matters.) On April 7, several hundred mourners attended Murtaja’s funeral.

Now, anyone who has seen Richard Landes’s 2005 documentary Pallywood, or who is familiar with the case of Muhammed al-Durrah, knows that any news story involving a supposed “Palestinian journalist” should be regarded with at least a soupçon of suspicion. For one thing, Palestinians who call themselves journalists have routinely faked videos of Israeli atrocities and sold them to gullible Western media. For another, Palestinian terrorists have used press badges to get close to the enemy. NGOs like the NRC are well aware of this conduct. Some overlook it. Others are in on it. (An official of another NGO, World Vision, is currently on trial for funneling millions of dollars to Hamas to fund terrorist activities.)

April 8 saw another round of splashy Norwegian newspaper stories about Murtaja. The Norwegian Union of Journalists, they reported, had condemned Murtaja’s killing and called for a UN investigation. Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, however, refused to apologize for Murtaja’s death, noting that members of Hamas routinely dress up as Red Crescent personnel or as journalists. The Norwegian media treated Lieberman’s comment dismissively. Nor, when NGO Monitor issued a press release on April 10 stating that Murtaja had “reportedly been exposed as an officer in the Hamas terrorist group,” did the Norwegian media so much as mention it.

On February 10, after midnight, an Iranian drone entered Israeli airspace. After 30 seconds it was shot down by Apache helicopters of the Israeli Air Force. Israeli planes then attacked the T-4 airbase in central Syria from which the drone had been launched.

On April 9, Israel carried out a larger airstrike on T-4 that reportedly “targeted Iran’s entire attack drone program at the base.” The attack also killed seven members of Iran’s Qods Force, including a colonel. Iran promised retaliation.

On April 13, Israel announced that the Iranian drone shot down in February was carrying explosives — enough to cause damage and “mark[ing] an unprecedented Iranian attack on Israel.”

That is, a direct Iran-on-Israel attack. Iran did not involve a proxy terror organization like Hezbollah or Hamas, and Iran apparently attacked with the aim of inflicting a blow on Israel that would undoubtedly have sparked an Israeli counterattack and — what else?

Israel has been trying to warn Western officials — who seem to turn deaf ears — that Iran’s entrenchment in Syria is getting more dangerous by the day and can lead to war. Iran’s February 10 drone attack looks like clear proof.

It was no coincidence that Friday, the day on which Israel announced that the drone had been armed with explosives, was also the day that the U.S., France, and the UK were preparing an attack on Bashar Assad’s chemical facilities that was carried out early Saturday morning.

It’s not clear if Israeli officials — who were briefed on the attack sometime on Friday — knew in advance that it would only target Syrian sites. In any case, they were reportedly unhappy with the strike’s limited scope and with the fact that it left Iran’s facilities in Syria untouched.

The Jewish Policy Center Proudly Presents
Israel – Refuge and Renaissance

Our Spring 2018 issue features:

an inFOCUS interview with Ambassador Danny Ayalon

Lela Gilbert – My Sojourn Among the Saturday People
Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni – A Prism on the Diversity of the Israel Defense Forces
Jennifer Tzivia MacLeod and Megan E. Turner – The JNF You Should Know
Colonel Uri Naaman – Israel and NATO: History and Progress
David Koren – The End of an Era for Jerusalem’s Arab Residents
Yoram Ettinger – Jewish-Arab Demography Defies Conventional Wisdom
David M. Weinberg – Israel is Worthy and Winning
Albert H. Teich – Israel and the U.S: Partners in Science
Pnina Agenyahu – Ethiopian Aliyah: An Identity-Building Journey
Eric Rozenman – Israeli College Connects Globally; Institute Trains Future Leaders
Sean Durns – The News Media and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Today

Shoshana Bryen reviews Jerusalem: The Biography

The modern State of Israel – pioneers and the Jews who never left the historic Jewish homeland – welcomed the devastated survivors of Nazi rule and then 700,000-plus impoverished brothers and sisters expelled from the Arab/Islamic world. Yemeni, Ethiopian, and Russian Jews followed. JPC Executive Director Matt Brooks explains, “Together, the people of the Jewish State are building a high-tech, secure, democratic, wealthy and socially open country.”

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For more information, please visit www.JewishPolicyCenter.org

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 elicited euphoria among world Zionists. It was to be short lived as a chain of betrayals truncated the land promised to the Jews and limited their immigration.

The 1922 White Paper (also known as the Churchill White Paper) averred that Jews were in Palestine by right, but bowing to Arab pressure, ceded 76 percent –all the land East of the Jordan River–to the Hashemite Emir Abdullah. It was renamed Transjordan, and closed to Jewish settlement. The remaining land- the West Bank of the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea was to be the Jewish state. In explanation the British stated:

“England…does not want Palestine to become ‘as Jewish as England is English’, but, rather, should become ‘a center in which Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride.’ (Ironically today Israel is poised to become more Jewish than England is English given the very real prospect that Muslims will become a majority in that nation.)

The Jews of Palestine had no choice but to accept the partition of 1922, but Arab thirst for all of Palestine resulted in murders and terrorist attacks, the Hebron massacre of 1929 and later the 1936-39 “Arab Revolt.”

The British responded with the White Paper of 1939 all but eliminating Jewish immigration to Palestine. This occurred after the infamous Evian conference of July 1938. With the exception of the Dominican Republic, all the participants refused to alter their immigration policies, thereby trapping Europe’s Jews. The Nazis were to kill one of every three Jews in the world.

In 1982, Sir Harold Wilson, who had been a member of Clement Attlee’s Cabinet when Israel became independent in 1948 and served as Prime Minister during the Six-Day War, wrote The Chariot of Israel-Britain, America and the State of Israel in which he described the British actions in 1939 as shameful and inexcusable.