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ISRAEL

Gaza Strip: Breeding Ground for Radical Terror Groups by Bassam Tawil

Hamas is doing its utmost to conceal the truth about ISIS in the Gaza Strip, while the Palestinian Authority (PA) is continuing to pretend as if Hamas is headed toward moderation as a result of the “reconciliation” accord.

Hamas presents itself as the sole and legitimate ruler of the Gaza Strip and as if it is in full control of the Gaza Strip.

If the “reconciliation” agreement is implemented, Majed Faraj, commander of the PA General Intelligence, and considered a strong candidate to succeed Abbas in the West Bank, will soon find himself working with his Gaza Strip counterpart — a convicted terrorist who serves as a “general,” named Tawfik Abu Na’im.

Hamas claims that Israel was behind the attempt on the life of Tawfik Abu Na’im, a top Hamas security official in the Gaza Strip. There is good reason to believe, however, that ISIS was behind the assassination attempt, which took place in the Gaza Strip on October 27.

Abu Na’im, commander of Hamas’s security apparatus, was lightly injured when an explosive device hidden beneath his car exploded after Friday prayers in a local mosque. Even before Abu Na’im was rushed to hospital, several Hamas officials and spokesmen publicly held Israel responsible. This claim, of course, came without any evidence to support their charge.

Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas political bureau, visits top Hamas security official Tawfik Abu Na’im at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on October 27, 2017. (Image source: Mohammad Austaz, Hamas Media Office)

Abu Na’im, who was released from an Israeli prison in 2011 after 23 years behind bars for terror-related offenses, is one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, Ezaddin Al-Qassam.

Since his release and return to the Gaza Strip, Abu Na’im, who holds the rank of “general,” has been dubbed the “man of difficult missions.”

Only a handful of Hamas officials know the nature of the “difficult missions” Abu Na’im is said to have carried out on behalf of the terrorist movement. What is certain, is that these missions were anything but humanitarian in nature.

Those who are familiar with Hamas’s “missions” cannot but conclude that the “general” was involved in terrorist activities such as the digging of tunnels and the smuggling of weapons. It is also likely that he was involved in planning terror attacks and preparing Hamas for another war against Israel.

Hamas is now claiming that Abu Na’im was targeted by Israel precisely because of his involvement with Hamas’s terrorist activities. Hamas is also claiming that by targeting its “general,” Israel is seeking to sabotage the recent “reconciliation” agreement between Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (PA).

Ma’mun Abu Amer, a Palestinian expert on Israeli affairs, argues that Israel is the only beneficiary of the assassination of a senior Hamas official. “Israel is trying to sabotage the reconciliation and create chaos in the Gaza Strip,” he alleged. He even went as far as claiming that Israel is behind a number of ISIS-inspired terror groups in the Gaza Strip.

Tensions High As Israel Destroys Palestinian Terror Tunnel IDF deploys the Iron Dome and places troops on alert. Ari Lieberman

At least seven Palestinian terrorists were killed and 12 injured hours ago after the Israeli Army discovered a terror tunnel that extended from Gaza into Israeli territory. According to Israel’s Channel 2, eleven terrorists were killed. Most of the terrorists belonged to the Islamic Jihad group but some were affiliated with Hamas.

According to Palestinian sources, the tunnel was destroyed with an airstrike. Israeli sources, which are generally more reliable, claim that it was destroyed with a controlled explosion. Israel’s combat engineering units train incessantly for such scenarios and have played a key role in detecting and destroying terror tunnels. In the past two years, several Palestinian-constructed tunnels have mysteriously and inexplicably collapsed, killing dozens of terror operatives trapped inside. Palestinians have accused Israel of deploying a new weapon and the Israelis have not denied the existence of such a top-secret device.

Israel believes that the tunnel was constructed after Operation Protective Edge, which took place in 2014. Palestinians have attempted to employ tunnels as an offensive strategic weapon for the purpose of infiltrating Israeli territory and perpetrating mass killings and kidnappings. However, at least three dozen of these tunnels were destroyed during Operation Protective Edge, thwarting Hamas’s ghoulish designs. Hamas terrorists have invested substantial sums in creating a network of tunnels that crisscross the Gaza Strip. They have also diverted cement and steel, designated for civilian use, to construct tunnels.

According to Israeli officials, the tunnel ran from the Gazan city of Khan Younis, crossed under the border for several dozen feet, and approached the Israeli Kibbutz of Kissufim. An Israeli military spokesperson noted that none of the Kibbutz residents were in danger as the tunnel was destroyed approximately 1 and ¼ miles from the kibbutz. Officials added that construction of the tunnel was being monitored for a period of time prior to its destruction.

According to Palestinian sources, at least five of the dead were identified as Islamic Jihad members while two were affiliated with Hamas. The discovery of the tunnel, its destruction and the deaths of so many terrorists has significantly raised tensions near the Gaza periphery.

The Israel Defense Forces declared the area near the Gaza Strip a closed military zone. In addition, Israel readied its Iron Dome batteries in anticipation of retaliatory rocket fire. Iron Dome proved its mettle during Operation Pillar of Defense, which occurred in 2012 and then again during Operation Protective Edge. In 2012, the system scored an 85% success rate and in 2014, Iron Dome boasted an even greater success rate, shooting down more than 700 Hamas rockets. Iron Dome calculates the rocket’s trajectory and is only fired if it is determined that the rocket will land in populated areas.

Predictably, Islamic Jihad called for retaliation. An Islamic Jihad spokesman posted the following combative comment on twitter: “The Zionist terror government must realize that we will not hesitate to protect our people and our land.” Hamas issued similar militant comments.

The question that everyone is asking now is whether this incident will spiral into a full-scale conflagration. In 2014, a Hamas kidnapping of three hitchhiking Israeli youths provoked a series of escalations that resulted in full-scale war.

Israel Destroys a Gaza Tunnel, Killing Militants At least seven dead, more than a dozen wounded By Rory Jones in Tel Aviv and Abu Bakr Bashir in Jerusalem see note please

ANOTHER DUPLICITOUS HEADLINE…WHAT ARE “MILITANTS” DOING IN A TUNNEL AND SINCE WHEN ARE ISLAMIC JIHAD AND HAMAS A “POLITICAL GROUP” AND TO COMPOUND THE BIAS, THE PICTURE ABOVE THE STORY SHOWS AND ELDERLY WOMAN WEEPING…..RSK

Israel blew up an underground tunnel on Monday that had reached Israeli territory from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, killing at least seven Gazan militants and wounding more than a dozen, the Israeli army and Palestinian health authorities said.

The tunnel was “detonated” in a controlled explosion, the army said, without providing further details. It was the third such passageway into Israel discovered by the Israeli army since 2014, when it fought an air and ground war with Hamas, in part to destroy the militants’ network of tunnels.

Officials from both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant and political group based in the West Bank and Gaza, said that they had lost operatives in the explosion. Islamic Jihad also vowed to retaliate against Israel, saying the tunnels existed to defend the Palestinian people.

The incident is likely to increase tensions in Gaza, as the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority moves forward with a long-awaited reconciliation process that would see it take back control of the enclave from Hamas, a move opposed by some extremist fighters in the strip.

The Israeli army since 2014 has developed and begun constructing an underground barrier around Gaza to detect and destroy cross-border tunnels. The army said it used the new technology to find the tunnel destroyed on Monday.

Hamas in 2014 mounted assaults on Israeli forces through a labyrinth of tunnels. The subsequent Israeli offensive in Gaza led to the deaths of 2,205 Palestinians and 71 Israelis and the destruction of 18,000 Palestinian homes, according to the United Nations.

The Palestinian Authority in the coming days is expected to take control of border crossings into Gaza and return its security forces to the strip, before organizing presidential and parliamentary elections with Hamas.

Hamas and the dominant Fatah party of authority President Mahmoud Abbas have for weeks been negotiating a rapprochement after a 10-year rift sparked by a short but bloody conflict in 2007.

A key obstacle to the talks remains whether Hamas wiill give up its arsenal of weapons and dismantle its militant arm, known as the Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades. CONTINUE AT SITE

Normalizing Anti-Semitism in Student Governments Purging Jewish students from the Israeli/Palestinian debate. Richard L. Cravatts

In the campus war against Israel, the all too familiar refrain from student anti-Israel activists, many of whom form the loose coalition of groups and individuals spearheading the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, is that their quarrel is only with Israel and its government’s policies, not with Jews themselves. But that specious defense continues to fall away, revealing some caustic and base anti-Semitism, representing a seismic shift in the way that Jews are now being indicted not just for supporting Israel, but merely for being Jewish.

At McGill University this week, as the latest example, three board members of the University’s Students’ Society were removed from their appointments after a vote at the Fall General Assembly due to what was reported to be their perceived “Jewish conflict of interest.” The ouster was led by a pro-BDS student group, Democratize McGill, which was campaigning against pro-Israel students in the wake of a September ruling by the Judicial Board that, once and for all, rejected the BDS movement on the McGill campus, stating that it was violative of the SSMU’s constitution because it “violate[d] the rights of [Israeli] students to represent themselves” and discriminated on the basis of national origin.

In retaliation, and to eliminate pro-Israel views on the board, Democratize McGill launched an effort to clear the board of BDS opponents, based on the cynical notion that these members harbored clear conflict of interests which arose from their purported biases, those conflicts of interests and biases stemming from the poisonous notion that because the students were Jewish or pro-Israel, or both, they could, therefore, never make informed or fair decisions as student leaders.

Ignoring their own obvious biases and the lack of any balance in their own views on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the pro-BDS members nonetheless felt comfortable with suppressing pro-Israel voices and Jewish students on the board, asserting that they sought to remove these students because they “are all either fellows at the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee (CJPAC), an organization whose explicit mandate is to promote pro-Israel discourse in Canadian politics, or primary organizers for the anti-BDS initiative at McGill.” In other words, they were being disqualified for having views that differed from those student leaders seeking to purge them from SSMU. The Jewish board member and two other non-Jewish, pro-Israel board members were subsequently voted off the board.

McGill has a previous history of seeking to suppress pro-Israel thinking by Jewish students, not in the student government but in its press. An example of that was the 2016 controversy involving The McGill Daily and its astonishing editorial admission that it was the paper’s policy to not publish “pieces which promote a Zionist worldview, or any other ideology which we consider oppressive.”

“While we recognize that, for some, Zionism represents an important freedom project,” the editors wrote in a defense of their odious policy, “we also recognize that it functions as a settler-colonial ideology that perpetuates the displacement and the oppression of the Palestinian people.”

Leading up to this revealing editorial, a McGill student, Molly Harris, had filed a complaint with the Students’ Society of McGill University’s (SSMU) equity committee. In that complaint, Harris contended that, based on the paper’s obvious anti-Israel bias, and “a set of virulently anti-Semitic tweets from a McGill Daily writer,” a “culture of anti-Semitism” defined the Daily—a belief seemingly confirmed by the fact that several of the paper’s editors themselves are BDS supporters and none of the staffers were Jewish.

An attempted purging of a pro-Israel student from student government, very similar to the inquisition that just occurred at McGill, took place in February of 2015 at UCLA, when several councilmembers on the USAC Judicial Board, UCLA student government’s highest judicial body, grilled Rachel Beyda, then a second-year economics student, when she sought a seat on the board.

How the Balfour Declaration Has Emerged at the Crux Of the War Against Israel By Rick Richman

One hundred years ago — on November 2, 1917 — the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, issued a letter to the British Jewish leader, Lord Walter Rothschild, pledging British support for “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration was a milestone in the Zionist effort to re-create the Jewish home in the land where, nearly two millennia earlier, it had existed for centuries.
Click Image to Enlarge
EPIC EPISTLE: The centenary of Lord Balfour’s letter to Lord Rothschild in respect of the Jewish homeland in Israel will be celebrated next month, even as the Palestinian Arabs hew to their rejectionist course. Image is of the news as published in the London Times.

By 1922, the Balfour Declaration had become an established part of international law: endorsed after World War I by the Allies at their San Remo Conference; included in the 1920 peace treaty signed by Turkey’s Sultan Mehmet VI; and incorporated in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922, which expressly recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” and their basis “for reconstituting their national home.”

After receiving the League of Nations Mandate, Britain split off the eastern portion of Palestine — known as “Transjordan” — and recognized the Arab emir, Abdullah, as its ruler. Strife between the Arab and Jewish communities in western Palestine led Britain in 1937 to propose a two-state solution: most of western Palestine would also become an Arab state, with a minuscule Jewish state in the remainder.

The Arabs rejected the 1937 partition proposal and also the 1947 United Nations two-state resolution, in favor of a war against the Jews. After Israel won, the Arabs rejected three additional two-state proposals: the 2000 Israeli offer at Camp David, the Clinton Parameters of 2000-2001, and the 2008 offer at the end of the Bush administration’s “Annapolis Process.” It seems safe to say that no people in history have been offered a state — and rejected it — more times than the Palestinian Arabs.

In 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu became the fourth Israeli prime minister to endorse the two-state solution (after Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert), as long as the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Yet the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, soon to start the 14th year of his four-year term, has repeatedly said he will “never” recognize a Jewish state in any part of Palestine and repeatedly demands that Britain “apologize” for the Balfour Declaration, which he asserts is the original cause of the conflict.

Therein lies the crux of the continuing Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Peace processors used to believe that Israeli-Palestinian peace was a 1967 issue, negotiating suitable borders; or perhaps a 1948 issue, dealing with the refugees from the Arab war against Israel. It is now clear that it is a 1917 issue – the rejection by the Palestinian Arabs of any Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the ancestral homeland of the Jews. It is, in the words of Ron Dermer, currently Israel’s ambassador to America, the “core issue”: the Palestinians will not even agree that the goal of the “peace process” is “two states for two peoples.”

Instead of referring to “two states for two peoples,” the Palestinians always frame the goal of the process as ending “the occupation that began in 1967.” The reason they invariably add the last four words to that formulation is that they believe there is also another occupation that they want eventually to end as well: “the occupation that began in 1948.” That is the reason they say they can “never” give up an asserted “right of return.” To do so would be to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

President Trump’s administration is currently deliberating on a new peace process, despite the failures of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama over nearly three decades. A key to whether there would be any chance for success is whether the Palestinians will agree at the outset that the goal is “two states for two peoples.” One hundred years after the Balfour Declaration, and 95 years after the international community endorsed it, the Palestinians are still fighting the recognition of any Jewish sovereignty. They want a Palestinian state, but not at the cost of recognizing a Jewish one.

Militias vs. Palestinian “Reconciliation” by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11230/palestinian-militias-gaza The notion that Hamas would ever dismantle its security apparatus and deliver the Gaza Strip to Mahmoud Abbas’s forces is a fantasy. It is estimated that there are about 50 different militias operating in the Gaza Strip. These militias are said to be in possession of about a million pieces of weaponry. If Hamas […]

ISRAEL AT 69 (FROM MAY 2017) A WONDERFUL TRIBUTE BY DAVID HARRIS

“The coming into being of a Jewish state in Palestine is an event in world history to be viewed in the perspective, not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of a thousand, two thousand, or even three thousand years.” (Winston Churchill)

The establishment of the state in 1948; the fulfillment of its envisioned role as home and haven for Jews from around the world; its wholehearted embrace of democracy and the rule of law; and its impressive scientific, cultural, and economic achievements are accomplishments beyond my wildest imagination.

For centuries, Jews around the world prayed for a return to Zion. We are the lucky ones who have seen those prayers answered. I am grateful to witness this most extraordinary period in Jewish history and Jewish sovereignty ― in the words of Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem, “to be a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.”

And when one adds the key element, namely, that all this took place not in the Middle West but in the Middle East, where Israel’s neighbors determined from day one to destroy it through any means available to them — from full-scale wars to wars of attrition; from diplomatic isolation to international delegitimation; from primary to secondary to even tertiary economic boycotts; from terrorism to the spread of anti-Semitism, often thinly veiled as anti-Zionism — the story of Israel’s first 69 years becomes all the more remarkable.

No other country has faced such a constant challenge to its very right to exist, even though the age-old biblical, spiritual, and physical connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel is unique in the annals of history.

Indeed, that connection is of a totally different character from the basis on which, say, the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, or the bulk of Latin American countries were established, that is, by Europeans with no legitimate claim to those lands who decimated indigenous populations and proclaimed their own authority. Or, for that matter, North African countries that were conquered and occupied by Arab-Islamic invaders who totally redefined their national character. Or nations like Iraq and Jordan, which were created by Western powers for self-serving reasons.

No other country has faced such overwhelming odds against its very survival, or experienced the same degree of never-ending international demonization by too many nations ready to throw integrity and morality to the wind, and slavishly follow the will of the energy-rich and more numerous Arab states.

Yet Israelis have never succumbed to a fortress mentality, never abandoned their deep yearning for peace with their neighbors or willingness to take unprecedented risks to achieve that peace (as was the case with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, for example, and in the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005), never lost their zest for life, and never flinched from their determination to build a vibrant, democratic state.

This story of nation-building is entirely without precedent.

Here was a people brought to the brink of utter destruction by the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany and its allies. Here was a people shown to be utterly powerless to influence a largely indifferent world to stop, or even slow down, the Final Solution. And here was a people, numbering barely 600,000, living cheek-by-jowl with often hostile Arab neighbors, under unsympathetic British occupation, on a harsh soil with no significant natural resources other than human capital in what was then Mandatory Palestine.

That the blue-and-white flag of an independent Israel could be planted on this land, to which the Jewish people had been intimately linked since the time of Abraham, just three years after the end of the Holocaust — and with the support of a decisive majority of UN members at the time (33 in favor, 13 opposed, with ten abstentions) — truly boggles the mind.

And what’s more, that this tiny community of Jews, including survivors of the Holocaust who had somehow made their way to Mandatory Palestine despite the British blockade and British detention camps in Cyprus, could successfully defend themselves against the onslaught of five Arab standing armies, is almost beyond imagination.

To understand the essence of Israel’s meaning, it is enough to ask how the history of the Jewish people might have been different had there been a Jewish state in 1933, in 1938, or even in 1941. If Israel had controlled its borders and the right of entry instead of Britain, if Israel had had embassies and consulates throughout Europe, how many more Jews might have escaped and found sanctuary?

Instead, Jews had to rely on the goodwill of embassies and consulates of other countries and, with woefully few exceptions, they found there neither the “good” nor the “will” to assist.

I witnessed firsthand what Israeli embassies and consulates meant to Jews drawn by the pull of Zion or the push of hatred. I stood in the courtyard of the Israeli embassy in Moscow and saw thousands of Jews seeking a quick exit from a Soviet Union in the throes of cataclysmic change, fearful that the change might be in the direction of renewed chauvinism and anti-Semitism.

Awestruck, I watched up-close as Israel never faltered, not even for a moment, in transporting Soviet Jews to the Jewish homeland, even as Scud missiles launched from Iraq traumatized the nation in 1991. It says a lot about the conditions they were leaving behind that these Jews continued to board planes for Tel Aviv while missiles were exploding in Israeli population centers. In fact, on two occasions I sat in sealed rooms with Soviet Jewish families who had just arrived in Israel during these missile attacks. Not once did any of them question their decision to establish new lives in the Jewish state. And equally, it says a lot about Israel that, amid all the pressing security concerns, it managed to continue to welcome these new immigrants without missing a beat.

And how can I ever forget the surge of pride — Jewish pride — that completely enveloped me 40 years ago, in July 1976, on hearing the astonishing news of Israel’s daring rescue of the 106 Jewish hostages held by Arab and German terrorists in Entebbe, Uganda, over 2,000 miles from Israel’s borders? The unmistakable message: Jews in danger will never again be alone, without hope, and totally dependent on others for their safety.

Not least, I can still remember, as if it were yesterday, my very first visit to Israel. It was in 1970, and I was not quite 21 years old.

I didn’t know what to expect, but I recall being quite emotional from the moment I boarded the El Al plane to the very first glimpse of the Israeli coastline from the plane’s window. As I disembarked, I surprised myself by wanting to kiss the ground. In the ensuing weeks, I marveled at everything I saw. To me, it was as if every apartment building, factory, school, orange grove, and Egged bus was nothing less than a miracle. A state, a Jewish state, was unfolding before my very eyes.

The University of Houston: Promoting Genocide and Praising Hitler “Palestine will be the 2nd place of the Holocaust for the Yahood [Jews].” Sara Dogan

Editor’s note: As revealed in recent congressional testimony, Students for Justice in Palestine is a campus front for Hamas terrorists. SJP’s propaganda activities are orchestrated and funded by a Hamas front group, American Muslims for Palestine, whose chairman is Hatem Bazian and whose principals are former officers of the Holy Land Foundation and other Islamic “charities” previously convicted of funneling money to Hamas.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center is naming the “Top Ten Worst Schools that Support Terrorists.” The latest school to be named to this list is the University of Houston which will host the National Students for Justice in Palestine Conference on October 27-29, 2017. The report and posters are part of a larger Freedom Center campaign titled Stop University Support for Terrorists.

Images of the posters that appeared at the University of Houston and other campuses named to the list may be viewed at www.stopuniversitysupportforterrorists.org. Coinciding with the naming of the University of Houston to this list, the Freedom Center placed posters on the UH campus exposing the links between Students for Justice in Palestine and the terrorist organization Hamas, whose stated goal is the destruction of the Jewish state. Freedom Center founder David Horowitz will speak on the Houston campus on November 2nd.

University of Houston:

The University of Houston is home to an increasing radical and Hamas-promoting chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, as is shown by the choice of that campus to host SJP’s2017 National Conference, a restricted event that spreads hatred of the Jews and teaches Hamas propaganda techniques to SJP chapters who attend from across America. UH SJP and MSA co-hosted an event featuring Sheikh Omar Suleiman who has publicly supported a “3rd Intifada” and SJP has also hosted anti-Israel poet Remi Kanazi who promotes the Hamas-backed BDS movement against Israel. UH SJP also hosts annual “Israeli Apartheid” hate weeks featuring a mock Israeli “apartheid wall” plastered with Hamas propaganda including the genocidal slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” and blood libel claiming that Israel targets Palestinian children for slaughter.

Supporting evidence:

In June 2017, U. Houston SJP announced that the 2017 SJP National Conference—a highly secretive event that spreads hatred of Israel and teaches Hamas propaganda tactics to SJP members from campuses across the nation—would be hosted on their campus in the Fall. SJP National is part of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist network and receives funding from Hamas through an intermediary Hamas front group, American Muslims for Palestine.

During an “Israel Apartheid Week 2017” that was hosted on campus in March, Students for Justice in Palestine erected a mock “Israeli Apartheid Wall” plastered with Hamas propaganda denying the legitimacy of the Jewish state. One panel of the wall contained the slogan, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” a call for the total destruction of Israel—which lies between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. This is the same goal which Hamas endorses in its charter. Another panel of the wall contains an image of the series of Hamas propaganda maps purporting to show the Jewish colonization of Arab Palestine, a nation that has never existed. A third panel states, “If you want to find a safe place in Gaza, do not stand near a child,” implying that Israel deliberately targets Palestinian children with its weapons. In fact it is Hamas that places its rocket launchers in civilian areas and uses Palestinian children as human shields for its terrorist activities. A fourth panel accuses Israel of targeting mosques, schools, and slums in an effort to kill civilians and declares “It is not war, it is murder.” These declarations are Hamas propaganda lies. In fact, Hamas takes pains to use civilian dwellings and areas to launch rocket fire against Israel so that when Israel retaliates, they can point to the resulting civilian casualties as evidence of Israel’s inhumanity.

An event co-hosted by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and SJP during Israeli Apartheid Week 2017 featured UH African-American Studies Chair and Communist Party member Dr. Gerald Horne who spoke on “The Black Radical Tradition and Palestine.” Horne endorsed the genocidal and Hamas-promoted and funded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, stating “Just as we enlist more black organizations into the BDS movement, boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement..it would…give a direct boost to BDS if we had the Palestinian forces and their allies internationally speak out more on police terrorism.” When a group of Zionist students attempted to speak during the question-and-answer session, and to students outside the lecture hall, pro-Palestinian students surrounded them and chanted slogans such as “free, free, Palestine, occupation is a crime!” until they were forced to leave and abandon the attempt at dialogue. An article about the event proudly declared that “Zionists were driven away.”

In March 2017, UH SJP released a statement purportedly opposing anti-Semitism which in fact demonstrated several forms of anti-Semitism including denying Jews self-determination and delegitimizing the Jewish state. The statement declared, “We are committed to building a world that values justice and equality, not oppression and apartheid. That commitment also requires us to reject the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism: we oppose Zionism and Israel’s discriminatory policies, and we condemn anti-Semitism.”

During March 2017, UH SJP hosted “BDS 101,” an event dedicated to promoting the genocidal BDS movement against Israel.

In January 2017, UH SJP shared a video from Jewish Voice for Peace on its Facebook page on “What is Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” that purports to show a timeline of Israel’s occupation of Palestine which includes “ethnic cleansing” of 750,000 Palestinians and “conquest, destruction and expulsion which has continued to the present day.” It also accuses Israel of a “brutal military occupation” and a system of “racial discrimination” that amounts to “apartheid.”

Move the Embassy to Jerusalem and Promote Peace Such a move would make clear that the U.S. supports Israel’s claim to the city’s western part. By Daniel B. Shapiro See note please

Mr. Shapiro was the Obama administration’s ambassador to Israel…..This column promotes the notion of an embassy move facilitating a two state dissolution of Israel. his peace processing should be viewed cum granu salis…..rsk

President Trump, like his three predecessors, has so far waived the 1995 law requiring the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. This month he told Mike Huckabee on the Trinity Broadcast Network that he will delay the move further to give his nascent peace initiative “a shot.”

But Mr. Trump has created the perfect opportunity to combine his unveiling of a U.S. peace plan with an announcement that he will be moving the embassy to the Israeli capital.

The administration indicates Mr. Trump will announce his peace proposal later this year. To gain approval from Palestinians and Arab states, it will need to include an explicit endorsement of a Palestinian state. He will need to be clear that such a state must commit to live in peace alongside Israel, accept provisions to ensure Israel’s security, and recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

That is consistent with Israeli policy. According to U.S. officials, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in closed conversations, has reiterated his commitment to his 2009 Bar-Ilan speech that supports “a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state.” And foreign diplomats report that U.S. officials have confirmed they understand a two-state solution must be included in any viable U.S. peace plan.

Packaging the unveiling of a U.S. peace plan with an announcement of the embassy move could ensure that the latter reinforces the former. But Mr. Trump must be clear on two points: The embassy will relocate to West Jerusalem, the area of the city under undisputed Israeli sovereignty. He also must explain that East Jerusalem’s status will need to be negotiated, and the U.S. expects the outcome to include a Palestinian capital in the city’s Arab neighborhoods, as part of a unified city.

This approach has two advantages. First, it reorients U.S. policy toward a two-state solution. Second, it punctures myths that both sides use to deceive themselves and delay progress. Palestinians will see that the U.S. strongly supports historic Jewish and Israeli claims to Jerusalem, and Israelis will hear from their ally that to end the conflict they need to acknowledge a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem.

There are signs of openness on both sides. Arab states, which already acknowledge Israel as a strategic partner, will be able to help persuade the Palestinians that they will gain from the U.S. endorsement of a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem. In advance, it will be necessary for the U.S. to discuss these ideas with Arabs and the Palestinians to help prepare them for the embassy move.

In Israel, there is recognition from surprising quarters that the Jewish state’s own interests require a new approach on Jerusalem. As Ben Caspit reported in al-Monitor, Anat Berko, a Likud member of the Knesset, handpicked by Mr. Netanyahu, has presented a plan that would transfer control of most East Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods from Israel to the Palestinian Authority. That would help ensure a stable Jewish majority in Israeli Jerusalem. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has long expressed concern about the demographic balance in Israel. His position logically suggests that Israel has no interest in absorbing the more than 300,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem. As growing numbers of Arab residents accept Israel’s offer to apply for citizenship, the Israeli Interior Ministry seems to be having second thoughts.

TWO COLUMNS BY MELANIE PHILLIPS ON ENGLAND, JEWS, ISRAEL, BALFOUR

THE DRUMBEAT OF ALARM GROWS LOUDER FOR BRITISH JEWS

Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to attend next month’s dinner in London to celebrate the centenary of the Balfour Declaration confirms what many have long suspected.

His antipathy to Israel goes way beyond hostility to Israeli “settlements” or any romantic attachment to the Palestinian cause. He does not support the existence of Israel at all.

How else to explain his refusal to attend a dinner to celebrate the event which kick-started the (agonising) process that eventually resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel?

And if he thus opposes the self-determination of the Jewish people in their own ancestral homeland, how can he be anything other than hostile to Judaism itself? For Judaism comprises three inseparable elements: the people, the religion and the land. Judaism is, simply and indivisibly, the mission of the Jewish people to form a nation of priests within the land of Israel.

Of course, neither Corbyn and his hard-left cabal, nor the so-called soft-left whose views about Israel may be less extreme but are no less problematic, have any insight into their own bigotry because they have virtually no understanding of what Judaism means (and that goes for many Jews on the left too, who equally deploy the spurious mantra that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism as their get-out-of-jail-free card).

But hey, some folk are very happy with Corbyn’s Balfour dinner snub; there are reports that the JC story about it has been tweeted by Hamas.

Many British Jews are now shuddering at the possibility of a Corbyn-led Labour government. They are heartbroken and aghast at what has happened to the country that for the half-century following the liberation of Belsen they believed offered them not just physical but psychological safety.

Some, like Angela Epstein in this article, are now talking of emigrating should Corbyn come to power.

She describes how her children’s Jewish schools in Manchester were encircled by fences, CCTV cameras and security guards.

“Elsewhere, every Jewish building now has a guard permanently stationed at the door. In 21st-century Britain — the place of our birth and our home.

“Most Jewish people I know have endured cat-calling as they leave synagogues, schools or other Jewish centres. There have been countless Saturday mornings when, as I walk to synagogue, a car screeches past with the occupants shouting something indeterminate from the window. Friends have had eggs thrown at them.

“My son was subjected to a blistering verbal attack when he recently wore his Jewish skullcap on the London Underground.Little wonder that in a YouGov poll earlier this year for the Campaign Against Antisemitism, almost a third of British Jews said they had considered leaving the country, while one in six said they feel unwelcome here.”

This cultural poison has been swelling for years. The Labour party hasn’t created it but is merely its most visible expression – and as a result is legitimising its further increase. Epstein observes:

“As the Labour Party continues to reveal its toxic underbelly, for many British Jews the question of uprooting our families and leaving Britain is a matter of when, not if… If history has taught us Jews anything, it’s knowing when it’s time to pack.”

Actually, it’s hard to know that. The difficulties and risks of remaining have to outweigh the difficulties and risks of uprooting; and people find themselves at very different points along that sliding scale. But for sure, the drumbeat of alarm among many committed British Jews is growing louder by the day.

BRITS STILL TWO-FACED OVER BALFOUR
http://www.melaniephillips.com/hmg-still-two-faced-balfour/

Astonishingly, the British Foreign Office is still continuing to undermine the Balfour Declaration, the centenary of which falls in a couple of weeks’ time.

In a speech at the UN Security Council a few days ago Jonathan Allen, the UK’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, said the following:

“From the outset, I would like to make clear, as we approach the centenary of the Balfour Declaration next month, that the UK understands and respects the sensitivities many have about the Declaration and the events that have taken place in the region since 1917.

“The UK is proud to have played a role in helping to make a Jewish homeland a reality. And we continue to support the principle of such a homeland and the modern state of Israel.

“Just as we fully support the modern state of Israel as a Jewish homeland, we also fully support the objective of a viable and sovereign Palestinian state. The occupation is a continued impediment to securing the political rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine. And let us remember, there are two halves of Balfour, the second half of which has not been fulfilled. There is therefore unfinished business” (my emphasis).