RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/04/the-true-lies-of-zionophobia/

It was my mistake to post a piece on Facebook by the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies about Amnesty International having “lost its moral way with regard to Israel”. A social media friend fired back with alacrity: “Have you seen how evil Israel has been to Palestinians trying to survive—cut off all their water and cut down their olive trees. Not an ounce of humanity in their evil hearts.” Evil hearts, I reflected, is very strong language. It so commonly occurs that liberal-minded thinkers—of the armchair variety—believe themselves to be non-discriminatory and well-informed without reading critically or with the open mind they purportedly prize. There’s no incentive to read more broadly if you believe you already have “the truth” and, fortified with that truth, you can scorn any sympathy for Israel as heartless or stupid.

he expression “Zionophobia” was first coined by Judea Pearl, father of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal journalist kidnapped and beheaded by Salafi jihadists in 2002. Judea Pearl agrees that classical anti-Semitism played a role in the slaying of his son. After all, the self-identified executioner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, while an inmate at Guantánamo Bay, made the following confession during a military tribunal hearing: “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl in the city of Karachi, Pakistan.” However, the enmity directed specifically at the Jewish state, rather than at Jewish people per se, requires a separate term:

Denying Jewish people the right for nationhood is straight racism, not anti-Semitism. Jews fight Zionophobia by labelling it anti-Semitism, which is a mistake. It is so easily deflected by saying “My best friends are Jewish” or “I’ll go to prison to defend a Jew’s right to wear a yarmulke or eat kosher food” but still want Israel abolished.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-reason-why-the-gaza-wars-continue/?fbclid=IwAR2TuleWPf_lOGlqg3kBpyqELHYeIBzpOPu8tJADF_OnbVI0tKOvRffO8TA

Fred Maroun, a Canadian of Arab origin who lived in Lebanon until 1984 (including during 10 years of civil war), says it in a nutshell…thanks to KRD Daily…..Pretty much all the mainstream reporting on Gaza’s conflict with Israel misses the most important fact, leading the general public that relies on the mainstream media to totally misunderstand the situation: The reason why the conflict continues is because Israel does not hit Gaza hard enough to end it. Once it is said, the statement sounds obvious, yet journalists rarely say it.

Israel withdrew its military and its settlements from Gaza in 2005, and left it 100% in the hands of the Palestinians. At first, there was no blockade. The blockade by Egypt and Israel developed later, after terrorists started attacking Israel from Gaza, as even the anti-Israel Al Jazeera recognizes. The only purpose of the blockade, which is backed by the United Nations, is to limit the supply of weapons to Gaza terrorists.

Yet Gaza terrorists keep attacking Israel, knowing that the attacks result in a blockade. The terrorists themselves tell us why they make that choice, by using expressions such as the “Great March of Return” and “Raising the banner of Allah on every inch of Palestine [Israel]”. Their clearly stated objective is to invade Israel.

The Gaza terrorists are not a resistance force because there is nothing for them to resist. Israel would gladly leave Gaza alone if it could. The Gaza terrorists are an invasion force, regardless of the fact that they are not capable of invading Israel at this time, and while they cannot invade, they can kill and terrorize, and they do it at will.

When Gaza terrorists attack Israel, they are attacking a sovereign nation that they have no legal right and no moral justification to attack, and Israel’s duty is to protect its citizens and the integrity of its borders. As was written in the National Review, “The actual law of war would allow Israel to invade Gaza, utterly destroy Hamas, and occupy Gaza City until Israel’s safety is ensured, even if it [Gaza City] burned in the fight”. Yet, Israel chooses to only manage the attacks and not to stop them. It chooses to not burn down Gaza City.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/international-law-backs-the-trump-golan-policy-11557875474

Mr. Pompeo is U.S. secretary of state. Mr. Friedman is U.S. ambassador to Israel.

President Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights was met with condemnation from the European Union and others. Leaders called the move “invalid,” “illegitimate” and “absolutely worthless.” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan “null and void and without international legal effect.” These assertions are baseless.

Virtually every nation cited U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which outlined a framework for achieving peace in the Middle East. The preamble speaks of “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” Yet President Trump’s Golan proclamation is entirely consistent with Resolution 242.

Resolution 242 was heavily negotiated and agreed to in 1967 by all but one of the warring parties in the Six-Day War—Syria, which controlled the Golan before the conflict. Damascus stayed on the sidelines until 1973 when, with its Arab allies, it launched and lost the Yom Kippur War. After that defeat, Syria signed on to Resolution 338, which made 242 applicable to all—the only substantive resolution to which all combatants have agreed.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/no-rashida-tlaib-palestinians-arent-israels-victims/

The Palestinian rage and victimhood machine has been running in high gear this week. First, there were Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s semi-coherent, counterfactual words basically crediting Palestinians for saving Jews from the Holocaust while portraying Palestinians as its ultimate victims. And on Wednesday, on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank, there was another Nakba—or “Catastrophe”—Day, an annual negative commemoration of Israel’s establishment in 1948 and the failure of Palestinian forces and five Arab armies to strangle it at its birth.

“In Gaza,” The Times of Israel reported,

[A]t least 10,000 people flocked to the border between Israel and the coastal enclave…. “The rioters are setting tires on fire and hurling rocks,” the army said. “A number of explosive devices have been hurled within the Gaza Strip, as well, and a number of attempts have been made to damage the security fence. IDF troops are responding with riot dispersal means.”

…Several balloon-borne incendiary devices landed in southern Israel, where they sparked at least nine blazes, according to area firefighters.

…In a speech at the border area, senior Hamas official Fathi Hamad…warned Israel that “The day of your slaughter, extermination and demise is approaching.”

As for the West Bank: “In Ramallah…, hundreds of people marched from the grave of the late Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat to a rally downtown, calling for the return of Palestinian refugees to lands that are now a part of Israel.”

But was Israel’s creation really a nakba, a catastrophe, for the Palestinian Arabs?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14226/palestinians-freedom-of-expression

As far as many Palestinians are concerned, there is no difference between Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority and Hamas when it comes to their people being able to tell the truth as they see it.

The two rival parties may disagree on many matters, but they share considerable common ground in their efforts to silence their critics and prevent the emergence of new voices seeking a better life for the Palestinians.

While this muzzling of Palestinian mouths is perfectly visible to the naked eye, the jaundiced eye of the international community and media sees flaws only in Israel.

The first promise the new Palestinian Authority (PA) government made after it was sworn in last month was that it would honor public freedoms, particularly freedom of the media and freedom of expression.

Ibrahim Milhem, the new spokesman for the PA government, headed by Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh, said in a radio interview that no Palestinian journalist would be arrested for expressing his or her views. Milhem promised that his government would allow the press to play its role as a watchdog over the performance of the ministers and their ministries.

Palestinian journalists living and working in PA-controlled territories in the West Bank welcomed Milhem’s statement and expressed hope that it would mark the beginning of a new era between the media and the government.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/700-reasons-not-to-create-a-palestinian-state/

Gaza has become the most graphic illustration of why relinquishing Judea and Samaria to the perennially hostile and extremely corrupt Palestinian Authority is a fantastically dangerous idea.

The nearly 700 rockets fired at Israel by terrorists from Gaza by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in early May were not just another round of the same mini-wars between Israel and Hamas to which the world has become accustomed to. Coming just as U.S. President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” for Arab-Israeli peace is reportedly weeks from being launched, the rockets offer 700 vivid demonstrations of why a Palestinian state must not be created.

The international community for years badgered Israel to leave the Gaza Strip. Israelis were told that if only the occupation ended, then Gazans would embrace peace. That the presence of Israeli soldiers and Jewish communities in Gaza were the obstacles to peace. That once Israel withdrew, the Gaza Palestinians would no longer have a reason to attack Israel. And that “if even a single missile were fired into Israel from Gaza,” the Israeli army would be justified in reoccupying the area.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/a-particularly-happy-anniversary/

One year ago, U.S. President Donald Trump, the new sheriff in town, conveyed a loud and clear message that a seismic shift had hit the Middle East. Enemies of freedom and democracy be damned.

One year ago today, on May 14, 2018, the United States officially transferred its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Although the move could be viewed as merely the fulfillment of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which also recognized Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel, it was received by supporters and opponents alike with amazement.

In the first place, three previous administrations—those of U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama—had opted to invoke and repeatedly renew the law’s six-month waiver of application on “national security” grounds.

In June 2017, a few months after he assumed office, U.S. President Donald Trump also signed a six-month waiver, which he renewed after recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December. In February 2018, however, he announced that the embassy, finally, would be moved.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14223/western-wall-note

I urge all visitors to join me in a conspiracy to violate the UN Security Council Resolution…Obama, himself, engineered the Resolution. He pushed it through the Security Council despite some reservations by other members, including Egypt, which believed that the Resolution itself could become a barrier to a negotiated two-state solution. After all, if Israel’s control over Judaism’s holiest site is deemed illegal, then Israel would have to negotiate its legality with the Palestinians.

These Jewish areas were illegally occupied by Jordan between 1948 and 1967 and lawfully recaptured by Israel in a defensive war, started by Jordan when it fired mortars at civilian targets inside pre-1967 Israel…. Yet there were no United Nations Resolutions, campus protests or other organized shows of opposition by the international community. Only after Israel liberated these historically Jewish areas, did the world, and Obama, decide — in violation of international law — that they were illegally occupied.

Declaring the Western Wall to be illegally occupied territory is akin to declaring the Vatican, Mecca or other religious, holy sites to be occupied by those who pray at them. The Western Wall is lawfully part of the nation state of the Jewish people. It will remain so as long as Israel exists. If there is to be any hope of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the world must recognize that historic, moral and legal reality.

Last week, in Israel, I committed a flagrant violation of international law. This “war crime” consisted of placing a note asking for “peace, salaam, shalom” in the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site. The reason the note requesting peace constituted “a flagrant violation of international law” and a “war crime” is that the United Nations Security Council, in a Resolution adopted in December 2016, declared that all areas captured by Israel during the 1967 War are illegally occupied territories. That includes the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem and the access roads on Mount Scopus to the Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital.

Former US President Barack Obama demanded that his permanent representative to the United Nations not veto this one-sided, wrong-headed, ahistorical, bigoted, and anti-peace Resolution. Obama changed American policy by allowing such a resolution to be enacted by the Security Council as revenge on Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, quite correctly, opposed the very bad deal Obama made with Iran enabling it to develop nuclear weapons.

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/barring-eurovision-jerusalem-win-for-bds/

The €28.5 million Eurovision Song Contest, which draws 200 million viewers from 42 countries, might seem to be just a huge pop spectacle, but it is a good deal more. In addition to serving as an entertainment vehicle, it is a powerful mechanism of soft power – a tool that is critically important to the modern State of Israel and particularly to the city of Jerusalem. Europe’s refusal to allow the contest to be held in Jerusalem, in contravention of Eurovision’s own rules, constitutes a victory for the BDS movement.

The refusal of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to allow the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest to take place in Jerusalem shone a light on the gap that remains between Israel and Europe despite their natural affinity.

Following President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city, the EU has led global opposition to Israel’s sovereignty. Israel is an associated state of the EU, yet its capital – alone among the capitals of all other countries – has never been acknowledged by Europe or, indeed, by most of the world’s states. The 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, which will take place in Israel this weekend, is thus underpinned with years of tension and suspicion.

Despite the fact that Israel has won the contest four times and hosted the competition in Jerusalem twice (in 1979 and 1999), Europe decided that this year it would not tolerate Jerusalem’s hosting of the contest. Israel won Eurovision last year, and according to the event’s protocol, the capital city of the winning country hosts the contest the following year. No matter: Israel’s claim to host the contest in Jerusalem, which would have been in accordance with the contest’s own rules, was rejected.