RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/05/17/colluding-with-terror-affiliated-ngos-icc-becomes-tool-of-war-against-israel/

International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda is in the hot seat. In response to reports that her office is collaborating with anti-Israel NGOs affiliated with terror groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, she tweeted, “Misinformation and smear campaigns do not change facts about the conduct of my Office’s work concerning the situation in Palestine.”

As she is currently focused on bringing false charges of war crimes against Israel, Bensouda believes that the ICC should be able to adjudicate the case, calling the accusation that she is collaborating with terror-affiliated NGOs as “misled and unfounded.” However, a recent report published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), argues that the ICC is another tool being used by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority to delegitimize Israel.

According to Dan Diker, one of the authors of the JCPA report titled, “Legal Assault: How the ICC Has Been Weaponized Against the US and Israel,” the case against Israel at the ICC “is a successful continuation of the PLO-PA strategy of assaulting Israel in the international community.”

“What we decided to do here [in the report] is to expose the criminal terrorist-affiliated illegitimacy not only of the court but also of the complainants,” he told JNS. “It is one thing to fight against the court’s lack of credibility, but it is another thing to fight against a court that is cooperating with terror affiliates.”

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/anti-israel-crowd-misreads-outlook-for-annexing/91133/

Relax everyone. It turns out that Israel’s annexation of Judea and Samaria isn’t around the corner.

Even as Jerusalem edges toward concluding the two-year political crisis that deprived the country of an elected government, the entire world is aghast at the possibility of applying Israeli sovereignty to parts of the West Bank.

The Hashemite king, Abdullah II, threatens “massive conflict” with Israel. The European Union weighs sanctioning the Jewish state. Arabists predict an eruption of violence. The United Nations warns of an end to a peace process that expired a long time ago.

In America, Israelis and their supporters predict a rift between Jerusalem and a future Democratic-led administration.

All because of a promise, made by Prime Minister Netanyahu amid endless campaigning in three unresolved election cycles. Trying to lure right wing supporters, he vowed to extend Israeli law to the Jordan Valley and large Israeli settlement blocs in the West Bank.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/right-from-wrong-a-portrait-of-viral-antisemitism-628125

Nothing serves as a better Petri dish for the incubation of antisemitism than a global health crisis that causes economies to crash. It is no wonder, then, that the coronavirus pandemic has been an inspiration to Jew-haters and Israel-bashers of all strains.

Though COVID-19 may be novel, there is nothing new about blaming the People of the Book for the world’s ills. On the contrary, the phenomenon is as old and entrenched as the common cold.

But while quarantines were being imposed to “flatten the curve,” they simultaneously sparked an outbreak of antisemitic conspiracy theories about the ostensibly Jewish origin and spread of the infectious disease. Lockdowns also led to a burst of creative energy on the part of holed-up cartoonists whose work would have made the Third Reich proud.

Unlike the Nazi propaganda machine, however, today’s caricaturists have the weapon of social media at their disposal – one that has proven immune to vows by Facebook and Twitter to confront with “community standards” algorithms.

Yes, curbing anti-Jewish expression on the Internet by suspending individual posts is about as realistic a proposition as curing corona by donning a surgical mask – especially with the massive amount of web traffic that home isolation has wrought.

“A Little Piece of Ground,” by Elizabeth Laird, is a propagandist book available to all children in many libraries across the country.  It concerns 12-year-old Karim who lives in Ramallah, historically an Arab Christian town, now a Palestinian city in central West Bank (Judea and Samaria), 10 km north of Jerusalem, Israel.  He hears of nothing but violence and aspires to be the Liberator of Palestine.

Karim resides with his parents and three siblings on the fifth floor of an apartment building.  He hates living under the occupation, yet no one has told him that the Israelis ceased its occupation three years before he was born.  He knows that a Palestinian gunman shot two people in an Israeli café two weeks ago and, as a consequence, the next building was demolished.  His building is on lockdown, guarded by an Israeli tank to ensure that no one may enter or leave until further notice.  The residents may not go to work or shop for food, and his school was levelled, the computers confiscated.  

More recently, a Palestinian gunman opened fire in Jerusalem, gravely injuring five adults and three children.  Three days later, new curfew hours were announced for his area, allowing two hours for shopping and errands.   That evolved into free daytime hours, but confinement continues from evening through dawn.  Now his father may tend his store and inventory, his mother may take the baby to the doctor, and Karim and Joni meet a new friend, Hopper, with whom to play soccer – until dusk. 

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/280171

On the 37th anniversary of the Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass), the UN General Assembly declared that Zionism is racism and a form of racial discrimination (Z=R) when it adopted Resolution 3379. The resolution, which passed on November 10, 1975, was part of an organized global campaign by the Soviets and the Arab states to delegitimize the State of Israel, after an abortive attempt to expel her from the UN.

On the same day, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3376, creating an Assembly Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. Sixteen of the original 20 members on the Assembly committee did not have diplomatic relations with Israel, and some had never acknowledged Israel’s right to exist. [1]

The Z=R resolution attracted worldwide attention to Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination.” guaranteeing Israel would be viewed as a racist state the international community would have to confront. Although the resolution was abrogated in 1991, depriving it of legal status, the hostility it generated toward Israel in most UN member nations, and in the UN’s own institutions continues unabated. [2].

No Longer Just a Common Reprobate

Israel was “no longer among the ordinary evil-doers of this world, all of whom at one time or another attack and harm civilian populations, oppress minorities, and institute exclusive immigration laws and monopolistic religious laws.” wrote Ehud Sprinzak, a Hebrew University political science professor. Israel’s crimes were committed “as part of an entire ideological system” and therefore every Israeli government action was racist and “antihumanistic.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16001/international-kangaroo-court

According to the ICC’s charter, the Court cannot investigate the conduct of non-signatory states of the 1998 Rome Statute that established the Court. Israel, like the U.S., is not a signatory of the statute.

Bensouda, by accepting the Palestinian Authority (PA) as plaintiff, further violates the Rome Statute: the ICC is only permitted to investigate allegations brought by a sovereign state. There is no State of Palestine. There are no established boundaries of any possible future Palestinian state. There is no population of a sovereign state to act as a plaintiff….

Bensouda’s decision appears to undercut the ICC’s already damaged reputation that it is neither independent nor impartial. The ICC’s budget is limited and increasingly hostage to the UNGA. The UN also appoints the ICC’s panel of judges, an intrinsically political process, subject to bloc voting in the UNGA.

The spokesman for the 45-member PA Executive Committee that briefed the ICC is Dr. Ghazi Hamad, deputy foreign minister of the terrorist group Hamas, which is unquestionably dedicated to destroying Israel. The committee also includes representatives of two other terrorist organizations besides Hamas, namely, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF).

A recent Jordanian newspaper article reinforces the claim that Bensouda secretly colluded with the PA to target Israel. This collusion between Bensouda and the PA may explain the optimism of longtime Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat that the ICC’s investigation will ultimately be successful.

Bensouda has already proved her bias by her conduct in a previous investigation of baseless charges of systemic human rights abuses by British military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) appears ready to begin an investigation of alleged war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers against Arab civilian citizens of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Fatou Bensouda, the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, announced on April 30 that she would proceed with the investigation if the ICC’s pre-trial judges instruct her that she is on solid ground to launch the inquiry.

Even if the judges give Bensouda the go-ahead, it still appears that jurisdictional prohibitions exist, as enumerated in the Hague-based court’s founding document. According to the ICC’s charter, the Court cannot investigate the conduct of non-signatory states of the 1998 Rome Statute that established the Court. Israel, like the U.S., is not a signatory of the statute.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/why-the-israeli-right-need-not-fear-trumps-peace-plan/
The right must not squander the moment by adhering to a purist philosophy. Instead, it should back the plan, support the extension of sovereignty and let the Palestinians fail, as they always do.
 

(May 12, 2020 / JNS) U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s upcoming visit to Jerusalem this week—to “meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Speaker of the Knesset Benny Gantz … to discuss [American] and Israeli efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic [and] regional security issues related to Iran’s malign influence”—is encouraging.

Though nobody is buying State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus’s above description of the purpose of the trip, which is assumed to be aimed at ironing out details of Israel’s intention to begin extending sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and parts of Judea and Samaria, few cast aspersions on the next part of her May 8 press release.

“The U.S. commitment to Israel has never been stronger than under President Trump’s leadership,” it reads. “The United States and Israel will face threats to the security and prosperity of our peoples together. In challenging times, we stand by our friends, and our friends stand by us.”