RUTHFULLY YOURS

Dublin City Council, in Ireland’s capital, has voted to fly the Palestinian flag over city hall until the end of the month “as a gesture of our solidarity with the people of Palestine.”

The motion, passed Monday, was proposed by left-wing People Before Profit Councillor John Lyons, who said the move would support communities living under a form of “apartheid, worse than South Africa.” It was carried with the support of Sinn Féin and left-wing parties by 42 to 11, with seven abstentions. Center-right parties Fine Gael and Fine Fail opposed the motion.

The motion stated that the city council will fly the flag “as a gesture of our solidarity with the people of Palestine living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, with the Palestinian citizens of Israel denied basic democratic rights and with the over 7 million displaced Palestinians denied the right of return to their homeland.”

Writing on Facebook, Sinn Fein Councillor Larry O’Toole said he was “proud to speak in favor of and support the Palestinian flag flying over City Hall.”

‘Nakba Day,’ also known as ‘Day of Catastrophe,’ sees Palestinians commemorate their expulsion from their homeland between 1947 and 1949. This year will also mark the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War and Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) welcomed the announcement on Facebook, with Chairperson Fatin Al-Tamimi saying she was “speechless” as she thanked the Irish people for their support.

“The refugees created during this ethnic cleansing and their descendants now number in the millions, and all are shamefully still denied their internationally mandated Right of Return to their homeland,” she added.

In an letter to councilors ahead of the vote, Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Ze’ev Boker, said that flying the flag would be“highly politically charged,” adding that “some members of the Irish Jewish community are concerned by the negative message that the flying of the flag promotes.”

Sligo County Council, on Ireland’s west coast, also voted to fly the flag at its council building from May 15 until the end of the month.

Thanks to Abbas’s falsehoods, his media continues to this day dishonestly to talk about “Jewish invaders and settlers storming” Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. This and this alone is the source of the knife and car-ramming attacks against Israelis.

Perhaps by a “culture of peace” Abbas means calling — as he and his top officials regularly do — Israel an apartheid and racist state. Or maybe “culture of peace” means calling all Jews “occupiers” and “colonists” — or denouncing and threatening Palestinian children who play soccer with Israeli kids. Or naming schools and electoral lists after convicted murderers?

Under Abbas, anti-Israel incitement and indoctrination is a business that has expanded exponentially. It has, in fact, grown to the point that a new generation has been raised on the glorification of jihadists — a generation impatient to draw yet more Jewish blood. If this is Abbas’s “culture of peace,” one has to wonder what he would consider a culture of war?

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas may soon be known for his sense of humor. Like many Palestinians, Abbas believes that Westerners will swallow his lies wholesale. Abbas, for instance, ended his May 3 meeting with US President Donald Trump with the following whopper: “We are raising our youth, our children, our grandchildren on a culture of peace.”

Abbas did not provide further details about the “culture of peace” upon which Palestinian children are being raised. Nor did anyone bother to ask Abbas or any member of his entourage to provide examples of the “culture of peace” in Palestinian society. Yet major Western media outlets were quick to publish Abbas’s unmistakable lie.

Apparently, like his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, Abbas is convinced that Palestinians can fool “everyone all the time” about their true goals and intentions. Arafat lied to Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton when he told them that he and the Palestinian Authority were promoting peace and coexistence with Israel. Under Arafat, anti-Israel incitement in the Palestinian media, schools and mosques intensified until Palestinians waged the Second Intifada in September 2000. This intifada was the result of seven years of vicious incitement and indoctrination that came after the inception of the PA. In a truly ironic turn of events, the Oslo Accords, signed between Israel and the PLO in 1993, gave the Palestinians media outlets, including television and radio stations, which were then sued to amplify hatred against Israel and Jews on a daily basis.

Arafat used these media outlets to tell his people — when former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in September 2000 — that Israel was planning to destroy the Aqsa Mosque. It was precisely this incitement that triggered the Second Intifada, in which Palestinians wage a massive and ruthless campaign of suicide bombings and drive-by shootings that caused the death of hundreds of Israelis.

If the UN honestly wants peace, then it must accept that the modern Jewish state is the tugboat that will pull the whole Middle East into the 21st century. Rejecting the historic Jewish legitimacy in Jerusalem, is rejecting the quintessence of peace.

In historical terms, the modern Jewish state has greater historical legitimacy than most modern European states – and far more than at least the five Middle Eastern states artificially created out of the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement: the newborn countries of Greater Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. In Europe, what we now call Germany and France only appeared in the historical space of the Western world in the 3rd Century AD.

Or could it be that secretly the United Nations does not want “peace” but instead the obliteration of Israel and its replacement by another Islamist state?

You can run away from history, but you cannot hide from it. History does not care about your religious beliefs, your political beliefs or your political correctness. History records facts, regardless of how you feel about them.

UNESCO’s latest resolution about Jerusalem, which denies the Jews’ and Israel’s legacy over its historical capital, Jerusalem, is yet another proof of the UN’s corrupt decline. It not only offends the historical truth and archeology of the Jewish people. It also offends the Greek people, and all Christians, who for thousands of years have also had ties with the area and the nation of Jews. As it also offends the foundations of Greek Orthodox Christianity, the Greek government — to is honor — voted against this hallucinatory UNESCO resolution.

Here are more facts: The King of Sparta, Arius I, who lived between 309-267 B.C., sent a letter to Onias the First, the High Priest of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem:

“The King of Sparta, Arius, sends greetings to the High Priest, Onias. It is written about the relations between the Jews and the Spartans that they are brotherly nations and that they originate from Abraham. Now that we have discovered this, tell us how your prosperity is. We write to you that your possessions and your animals are ours and our own possessions and animals are yours”.

The king of Sparta, Arius, not only accepted that the relationship between Spartans and Jews are much older than his reign, but also that there was (as we would call it today) a federation.

King Arius further established the cultural privilege and right between Greeks and Jews to be called brothers.

What the King Arius was really saying here is that two states with different religions — without common economic interests, without a common border and without even the same geographical area — can interact in a political and cultural way. It is an important lesson for modern politicians. It also shows that for millennia, the cultural and historical depth of the Jewish people is undeniable, as well as the foundation for friendship among the Middle East nations. The problem of interacting with other people, as we can even see throughout Europe today, is on the Muslim side, not on the other side.

NEW YORK—President Donald Trump came under increased pressure from the Israeli government to follow through on foreign policy pledges he made during the election campaign, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, just days before he embarks on his inaugural trip to the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warmly welcomed Mr. Trump’s election, following eight years of butting heads with former U.S. President Barack Obama on issues ranging from Israel’s building in disputed territories to the nuclear deal with Iran.

But Mr. Trump’s pledge this month to resume Mideast diplomacy has unnerved members of Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet, many of whom spoke at a conference Sunday in New York. The U.S. leader is scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia, Israel and Europe beginning on May 19, and peace between Israel and the Palestinians is expected to be high on his agenda.

Some of Mr. Netanyahu’s top aides questioned the nature of the Mideast peace process, which for decades has sought to establish an independent Palestinian state on lands in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They sharply criticized the leadership of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whom Mr. Trump welcomed to the White House last week.

“Can the Palestinian Authority be a genuine partner for peace in the Middle East?” asked Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s energy minister, who sits on Mr. Netanyahu’s national security cabinet. He accused Mr. Abbas of leading a government that was corrupt, anti-Semitic and divided.

Other members of Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet were more blunt on Sunday. “As long as I’m a minister, the Palestinian state won’t be created,” said Ofir Akunis, Israel’s minister of science and technology.

Another, more pressing issue, is the status of the American embassy in Israel.

Mr. Trump repeatedly pledged during the campaign to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv once he took office. Both Israel and the Palestinians claim Jerusalem as the capital of their states, making its status among the most contentious issues in the peace process. CONTINUE AT SITE

Hamas on Saturday named Ismail Haniyeh as head of the Islamist movement’s political arm, a long-expected leadership change that puts the Palestinian at the helm of the group that controls Gaza Strip but is facing increasing isolation from its regional supporters.

The Islamist movement said Mr. Haniyeh, 54, will replace Khaled Meshaal, who steps down after a decade in power and just days after he issued a revised set of principles that softened the group’s stance against Israel.

Hamas dropped a longstanding call for Israel’s destruction and accepted the notion of a Palestinian state based on Israeli borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The group, however, said it would continue not to recognize Israel’s right to exist and would eventually seek to control all of historic Palestine, making up Israeli territory, the West Bank and Gaza.

The changes in its principles, dismissed by Israel as cosmetic, appeared aimed at appeasing Arab states that have increasingly isolated the group in recent years. Hamas also renounced its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group considered a terrorist organization by Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Hamas’ diplomatic isolation comes as West Bank-based Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is trying to squeeze the group financially to force it to allow his administration back into Gaza. Mr. Abbas has cut salaries to Gazan-based Authority employees and said it won’t pay for the strip’s electricity, supplied by Israel. CONTINUE AT SITE