Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 07, 2016

12/07 Links Pt1: Abbas is no champion of Palestinian democracy; The UN is unable to resist its anti-Israel fix

From Ian:

Abbas is no champion of Palestinian democracy

One man, one vote, one time: In 2005, Mahmoud Abbas was elected to a four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority. He has not bothered to run for re-election since.
He is also the chairman of Fatah, a political movement with past ties to terrorism that is the dominant faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO was founded in 1964 -- three years before Israelis were in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. Abbas is chairman of the PLO, too.
What all this means is that despite Abbas' declining popularity -- two-thirds of Palestinians would like him to resign, according to a recent poll -- no one has been able to successfully challenge his power.
And last week, at the Seventh Fatah Congress, held at the Muqataa, his fortified headquarters in Ramallah, Abbas further solidified his position. With members of rival factions barred from attending, and no other candidates on the ballot, Abbas was handily re-elected as Fatah's leader.
"Everybody voted yes," Fatah spokesman Mahmoud Abu al-Hija assured reporters who had not been permitted to witness the event.

The Future of the International Criminal Court and Impacts for Israel: A Roundtable Discussion

Mon 19 December 2016
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has come under considerable scrutiny in the past few months. Three African countries (Burundi, South Africa, and Gambia) have begun the process of exiting the court, claiming the ICC has an anti-African bias and that the laws of the court conflict with their understanding of sovereign immunity. Kenya and Uganda have also threatened to leave citing procedural and other irregularities. In addition to the issues relating to Africa, the ICC began a “Preliminary Examination into the Situation in Palestine” under highly controversial circumstances. Other critics have highlighted the small number of successful prosecutions and slow pace of the work. The expert panel will discuss these issues and what they mean for Israel.
Panelists include, Gerald Steinberg, Bar Ilan University and NGO Monitor; Anne Herzberg, Legal Advisor, NGO Monitor; Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, Northwestern University; Adv. Pnina Sharvit Baruch, Senior Research Fellow, head of the Program on Law and National Security, and former head of the IDF International Law Department.
Bar Ilan University, Beck Hall 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM

IsraellyCool: Exclusive: From Jew-Hating Gazan to Lover of Israel

At a café in Beit Jala, where Gideon (fictitious name due to security concerns) met with me for an exclusive Israellycool interview, the 22-year-old described what was supposed to be happy time in his childhood –a field trip to “liberated Gaza.”
“We were in this big bus, and we entered this street, and when we went in the ‘settlement’ street, it was smooth and nice,” he recalled of this 10 shekel trip to the ruins of Gush Katif. The guide proudly pointed out where “martyrs” killed Israeli soldiers, bravely causing the Jews to retreat. Once inside, he and his schoolmates were more than eager to mock Jewish settlers and to loot whatever was left.
“I remember I saw the kippah on the street with the Star of David – so the children put it on and made fun of it and spit on it,” he said. “When we got to this place on the second level [of the regional community center], there was this basketball court, and we were shocked that it was nice. We didn’t have anything like this in Gaza.”
He visited the hothouses that were this farming community’s specialty.
“I remember how brilliant they were in how they made it. And I thought: ‘Why don’t we have these plants in Gaza? Trees like they have?’ It was organized. Homes were nice.”
He had watched the 2005 pullout on television, ironically cheering the IDF as they tore thousands Jews from their homes and farms.
“I saw the image of the Jews screaming and soldiers hitting them,” he said. “I was very excited about that because they were going out. And then I started hearing the sound of blowing stuff up. I asked my family about it, and they said now that they’re kicking them out, they’re blowing up their houses so they don’t leave anything for us.”
Gideon grew up in a middle class Christian home in Gaza City not far from the Jewish settlement of Netzarim, where the sounds of those expulsions came. He attended UNRWA schools (even though he did not consider himself a “refugee”) where he was taught that Israel is to blame for Palestinian hardship. But his family’s finances deteriorated once Hamas took over.
As he matured into adolescence, he realized how Hamas leadership – and not the settlers – are the true Palestinian oppressors.

Today's peaceful message from Fatah

From the official Fatah Facebook page:

"If they cut off the olive-tree branch, oh my homeland, than we will turn it into a sub machine gun and use it to take revenge"

Just a reminder: Mahmoud Abbas is the head of Fatah.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Israel restricts Gaza worshipers from visiting Al Aqsa on Fridays - because they weren't returning

From Ma'an:

Israeli authorities Tuesday cancelled weekly permits allowing elderly Gazans to travel to occupied East Jerusalem on Fridays to attend prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

An official at the Palestinian liaison office told Ma’an that Israeli authorities decided to cancel the weekly visits of Palestinians in Gaza to Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque due to Palestinian worshipers not returning directly back to the Gaza Strip after prayers, in violation of the permit conditions.

However, the official added that Israel would continue to permit 100 Palestinians who are UNRWA employees, the UN agency responsible for providing services to some five million Palestinian refugees, to travel to Al-Aqsa for prayers.

Since several months ago, Israeli authorities have allowed 250 Palestinians to leave Gaza for prayers at Al-Aqsa, including UNRWA employees and 150 additional worshipers whose permits are arranged by Gaza’s Civil Affairs Committee.

As Yisrael Medad shows, the "not returning directly" means "not returning at all." Gazans were taking advantage of the ability to pray in Jerusalem to illegally immigrate to Israel.

And for those who will inevitably claim that this is merely an excuse for Israel to make the lives of Gazans miserable, then how can you explain that last week, Israel allowed a brand new Coca Cola factory to open in Gaza?

And four tons of strawberries were exported from Gaza to Europe last week as well.

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Is this article on a "progressive" site anti-Zionist or antisemitic? You decide!

From MWC News, an "alternative news" source, by Elias Akleh:

Notice how they illustrate "Zionism:" a Jew praying and a Torah.

Refreshingly, and despite the headline, the author is quite explicit that he sees no difference between evil Zionists and Jews altogether:

Zionist ideology was born out of Judaism; a supremacist, racist, manipulative, genocidal religion with a racist discriminative warmongering blood thirsty god (Satan), who demands bloodshed, child sacrifice, total destruction and enslavement of all goyims (non-Jews), and the hording of all gold and silver. Those, who apologetically attempt to separate the two, have not read or understood the Judaic teachings and historical events narrated in the Old Testament and in other Judaic texts.

And Jewish anti-Zionists are just as evil as Jewish Zionists, because, well, they are Jews:

It is also noticeable that some anti-Israeli government sentiment is on the rise among American Jews themselves. Jewish organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Tikkun Olam, Satmar (Jews Not Zionists), Jews Against Racist Zionism, and Neturei Karta International (NKI) are raising their protesting voices against the inhumane policies of the Israeli government.

Yet, one must not be disillusioned by these Jewish organizations. Although they seem to be liberal and humanist, yet supremacist Judaic theology, or at least elements of it, is still ingrained in their Jewish psyche and identity. The fact that they are still calling for the implementation of the already dead and impractical two-state-solution asserting their support for an Israeli state for Jews, whose existence in itself and in any form negates a Palestinian state over the whole Palestine and deny Palestinians’ right of return to their own homes and land.

Abolishing Zionism and returning Palestine to its original owners would not guarantee global peace because the real threat resides in the core of the Judaic teachings that call for the supremacy of the Jews as god’s chosen people and its hatred and enmity to all goyim.

MWC News claims that in order to publish at the site, "Articles must be well-written, balanced, articulate, factual, and succinct."

Here's a good litmus test for "progressives" who pretend to be aghast at resurgent antisemitism from the right to see whether they will do anything about this article on one of their own alternative news sites.

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12/06 Links Pt2: WikiLeaks: UN Human Rights Council Nothing More Than “Cudgel With Which To Batter Israel”

From Ian:

Jewish Pundit Hounded by Black Lives Matter, White Supremacists Says He’s Received More Antisemitic Tweets Than Any Media Peer

Calling himself “more conservative than [President-elect Donald] Trump on every issue,” yet the bane of the alt-right, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire — who has the distinction of being “one of the few people who has managed to unite the Black Lives Matter movement and white supremacists in protest against him” — told the UK-based J-TV that he has received more antisemitic tweets in the past year than any of his colleagues in the media.
On the program “Current Affairs” — moderated by the UK-based Henry Jackson Society founder and executive director Dr. Alan Mendoza — Ben Shapiro, an American political author, pundit and Orthodox Jew, who resigned from Breitbart News Network in March after a widely publicized incident involving reporter Michelle Fields and former Trump staffer Corey Lewandowski — said nevertheless that he does not believe that the incoming administration in Washington will be antisemitic.
“I’ve been a very critical voice about Donald Trump and about [former Breitbart editor] Steve Bannon, his White House chief strategist, in particular,” he said. “[But] I don’t have any evidence that [either is] antisemitic. I think that both are willing to pander to some of the worst people in the world on the alt-right in order to advance their agenda on particular issues, but there is no evidence that Trump is particularly anti-Israel, and Breitbart has never been an anti-Israel site; it’s always been a very pro-Israel site, so I’m not deeply concerned about antisemitism in the Trump administration as much as I am about the emboldenment of antisemites through a kind of patting on the head… But as far as policy [is concerned]…I think it’s going to be a more pro-Israel administration than the Obama administration was…”

Who’s Really Driving “Grassroots” Anti-Israel Activism in America?

“Israelis have to be bombed… it is wrong to maintain the State of Israel. It is an illegitimate creation” — Taher Herzallah, American Muslims for Palestine National Campus Coordinator
One of the most prominent faces of BDS in America is Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — a self-titled “grassroots, human rights organization” with branches at dozens of US campuses. But while it claims to be “resisting racism,” SJP’s 2014 national conference featured a keynote speaker infamous for defending public calls to “shoot the Jew!” This discrepancy between SJP’s stated principles and its conduct is no exception: funded and closely guided by AMP and other political interest groups, SJP systematically exploits the language of social justice to promote a bigoted agenda.
In private SJP denies Israel’s right to exist, while in public they claim to support justice and peace.
SJP’s ties to AMP run deep, and SJP itself has admitted that, “NGO employees are in powerful positions,” within their movement. AMP chairman and Berkeley professor Hatem Bazian co-founded SJP in 2000 and is credited with “help[ing] to construct [the] successful narrative SJP has produced over the years” (in fact, AMP supplies the infamous “wall” that SJP displays on campuses). AMP organized the first SJP national conference in 2010, and has funded the group’s national conferences ever since. AMP’s own conferences include a “Campus Track” with sessions on “How To Start an SJP”.
AMP, in turn, has disturbingly close ties not only with Hamas but also with its parent organization — the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is a religious supremacist movement which believes that Islam must “impose its law on all nations.” The Brotherhood openly promotes homophobia and female genital mutilation, and vigorously fought efforts to bring Sudan’s dictator to justice for genocide against Africans in Darfur. AMP emerged in 2005 as a successor to the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), which was, according to memos uncovered by the FBI, founded by the Brotherhood “to serve the cause of Palestine on the political and media fronts” in the US. That is, the IAP was established by the Brotherhood — a foreign religious supremacist group — to spread propaganda. The IAP officially advocated for replacing Israel with an Islamist theocracy, and its former leaders now oversee AMP’s finances.

WikiLeaks: UN Human Rights Council Nothing More Than “Cudgel With Which To Batter Israel”

Former United Nations Special Rapporteur Richard Falk has proven himself to be no fan of Israel, to put it mildly. He wrote a book called “Slouching Towards a Palestinian Holocaust” after all. But if you think he’s bad (and he is), he’s nothing compared to the UN Human Rights Council.
A recently released Wikileaks cable from 2008, sent by the US Mission Geneva to the US Secretary of State, reveals that Falk proposed the UNHRC’s mandate be expanded to included – wait for it – violations of international humanitarian law by palestinians (but not non-international human rights violations by palestinians because we are talking about Richard Falk here).
As you can see from the cable, Falk’s proposal went down like a lead balloon.
Note the acknowledgement that the UNHRC is just an instrument with which to batter Israel.

1. (C) Summary: Newly appointed Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, took the Human Rights Council by surprise in his first appearance before the body June 16 by proposing that his mandate be expanded to include violations of international humanitarian law by Palestinians. Falk’s proposal had clearly not been previewed either for supporters of the mandate, nor for Israel, the U.S., or any other delegation that opposes it. In a June 18 meeting with Mission officers, Falk admitted he had been unaware of the intense political sensitivities regarding this mandate at the Council, and noted that representatives of Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) delegations had told him that reopening the mandate would be impossible for procedural reasons. In fact, the Review, Rationalization and Improvement (RRI) of the OPT mandate, which Israel had hoped would be scheduled for the September 2008 Council session, does not appear on the program of work and will not be conducted at that time. Still, Falk’s proposal highlighted not only his unfamiliarity with the highly charged political environment in Geneva, but perhaps also an unexpected independence and approach to his new mandate that may make him a more serious interlocutor on this issue than his predecessor had been. End Summary.

Here is a list of every time the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was mentioned in the past month in Arabic-language newspapers, and whether the article accepts them as real.

Egypt's Al Mogaz "investigated" the Protocols and ruled that they were legitimate (covered here.)

SudaNile.com says that the Protocols can be a great model to use to learn to influence the world.

Al Quds al Arabi quotes the "second protocol" to make a point, without any indication that it believes that it is a hoax.

Arabi21 complains that Arab media shows too much "pornography," saying that this is one of the instructions in the Protocols to break down a society.

Al Ahram, one of Egypt's major newspapers, refers to the Protocols when giving an example of how leaders don't listen to what the people want.

Kitabat mentions it in passing as well, with no indication it is anything but a reference to a fact.

Al Basra refers to a book by Benjamin Netanyahu as a realization of the goals of the Protocols.

Almmike refers to the Protocols as but a single example of how the West is trying to break apart Arab nations.

New Sabah seems to be a Shiite publication in Iraq whose article blames the Jews for tearing apart the Arab world, using the Protocols.

The only Arabic-language article I could find this month that mentions that the Protocols are a myth came from a non-Arab media outlet - the Arabic version of RT.

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Facebook Safety Check In: Are you safe from the brush fires in Haifa? (Forest Rain)

It’s amazing how many things can be wrong with one little sentence.

Nov 24^th was the day fires started appearing in different places in Haifa. 60,000 people were evacuated from 12 neighborhoods in the city. The day before the fires were in Zichron Ya’acov. Throughout the week fires appeared in towns in the north and center of the country.

I don’t remember when I started getting Facebook notifications requesting I mark myself “safe from the brush fires.” At the time, I was more focused on the flames in my neighborhood than my social media notifications. When things started to calm down I could focus on the beeping of my phone. That’s when I began to get angry.

Before I go further, I want to make it very clear that Facebook is an example, a symptom indicative of an attitude. They are not the problem itself.

Activating the Safety Check In feature

I suppose I should be pleased Facebook decided to turn on the Safety Check In feature for us. Although the feature was invented and developed in Israel for Facebook I only remember it being used once before – when a parking garage in Tel Aviv collapsed, trapping a number of people. It seems that none of the terror attacks we’ve experienced have been deemed significant enough or of wide enough impact to merit turning on this feature.

In an article on Israel21c, they reported: In the wake of the Paris tragedy, some 4.1 million people checked in with friends and relatives using the Safety Check feature, and around 360 million people received automatic messages through it from friends in Paris who had marked themselves as “safe.”

The feature was initially intended for use in natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. It was the enthusiastic response of users following the terror attacks in Paris that led Facebook to decide to apply the feature for “man-made disasters” as well.

The “brush fires in Haifa” were deemed significant enough to turn on the feature.

So why did I get angry?

There were two major issues in the one little question: “brush fires” and “safe”.

Brush fires

Brush fires are what happens in places like Australia when the weather is too dry. They are natural disasters, terrible and with some of the same outcomes as what we experienced. Brush fires spread over vast amounts of territory. They don’t spontaneously combust in multiple, disconnected neighborhoods. They also don’t begin with Molotov cocktails.

What we experienced was man-made, deliberate arson. It wasn’t a brush fire or a forest fire. It was people targeting everything we hold dear: our homes, our wildlife and our land.

In 2010 there was a terrible fire in the Carmel Forest (which is right next to Haifa). It was caused by human negligence, exacerbated by weather conditions and because of some poor decisions, caused the death of 44 people. That was a forest fire. It consumed trees. What we just experienced was a wave of fires deliberately ignited in green areas in the middle of neighborhoods.

One could say, “But Facebook didn’t know what caused the fires so they just said brush fires.” Yes. Maybe. On the other hand, on the day of the fires in Haifa the experts already knew that the fires that occurred the day before in Zichron were not natural. The bizarre suddenness of fires popping up within the neighborhoods of Haifa were, even then, very suspicious.

Within Israel there are still arguments regarding what extent of the fires were caused by arson. What media and political commentators from elsewhere are ignoring is the reason for these arguments, as if the existence of the arguments signifies lack of validity in the definition of arson terrorism.

1. First and foremost, there is an issue of financial compensation.

The Israeli government is obligated to compensate civilians damaged in a terror attack whereas they are not obligated to compensate for damages caused by a natural disaster.

Insurance companies are released from the obligation to compensate the insured when the cause of damage is terrorism. If this was a natural disaster the government would not be responsible for the uninsured.

In this case, the bill for compensating people who lost their homes and livelihoods will be in the billions. The government has no incentive to declare these fires a terror attack. It was only when the evidence piled up to levels impossible to ignore that Israeli politicians declared that we were under attack, that this was an arson intifada.

2. The normalcy bias

The normalcy bias is a recognized sociological condition is defined as “the phenomenon of disbelieving one's situation when faced with grave and imminent danger and/or catastrophe.” In other words, no one wanted to believe that there are Arab terrorists amongst us who hate us so much that they are willing to burn the country down around us all. We all know there are terrorists but the wanton destruction of the land they too live in, the land they claim to love so much, takes a level of hate that surpasses the standard gun/bomb/knife/car/stone attacks on Jews. The people who live in Tel Aviv, the Israeli media and society elites find it particularly difficult to comprehend this level of hatred. They prefer to believe that if Israelis could be better, kinder, the Arabs who hate us would stop trying to destroy Israel and would be willing to live together in peace. Israelis, particularly those who shape our news, don’t want to believe that the fires were caused by arson terror.

The question, “Am I safe from the brush fires?” bothered me because the fires obviously weren’t your standard “brush fires” but it was the “are you safe” part that was the real problem.

When I first received the request to mark myself safe my house wasn’t on fire. Some of my neighbors’ houses were. The authorities had deemed the area so dangerous they requested everyone evacuate (we decided to stay and defend our home). At one point an arsonist started a fire right behind our garden (we know it was an arsonist because someone saw him before the flames began and then he raced away before anyone could catch him). The flames from that fire were as high as the house. To our great luck the neighbors managed to put out the flames before they ignited our too dry garden. Had our garden caught fire, due to the weather conditions, our home would have quickly been consumed as well. We got lucky.

On the news, we heard reports of fires elsewhere in the city and then elsewhere in the country. My home wasn’t burning… did that mean I could declare myself safe?

The most disturbing part of the fires is who caused them. The extent of the fire damage was caused by the weather conditions but they were started by arsonists. Those who were not caught or others who think arson terrorism is a good idea could start new fires at any time.

There are pyromaniacs everywhere but the extent of the fires and the people caught starting them proved that many (if not all) were caused by arson-terrorism.

From the locations of the fires, it seems that they were started by people familiar with the areas in which they were ignited. For example, the fire behind my garden was started on a side path between our street and the main street, a place not obvious from the road, only someone walking the neighborhood would happen on that spot.

My home is right next to a hospital that serves both Jews and Arabs, where Jews and Arabs work together. The construction projects in my neighborhood (including the house right next to mine) are full of Arab construction workers. Jews and Arabs work together, shop together… our lives are not separate. How can anyone tell who is a peaceful Arab-Israeli and who has so much hatred in their heart that they are willing to burn down the land we both live in?

No one blames the entire Arab population for these acts of terrorism. Israeli Jews have a lot of appreciation for Israeli Arabs (and the Arabs in PA controlled areas) who want to live together peacefully.

At the same time, no one is completely sure what percentage of the Arab population supported the arson-terror or would be willing to participate in similar acts in the future. What do the construction workers building next door to me think?

What do you think? How should I answer the question: “Am I safe?”

Solidarity

I don’t need a Facebook Safety Check In to let me know if my friends are safe. I don’t even need Facebook to correctly define the crisis. It would be nice to be treated like other nations in the world. Facebook gimmicks are just an example. When there are flag filters for people to change their profile picture in solidarity with a country who experienced a terror attack (like what was created for France) or hashtags like #IStandWithTurkey or #IAmOrlando but not for Israel it sends a message.

Somehow terror attacks elsewhere are declared to be attacks while attacks in Israel remain undefined (or completely ignored). Somehow it is deemed appropriate to stand in solidarity, if only via social media, with other countries – but not Israel.

Solidarity doesn’t fix the problem but it is an important step. As long as some lives matter more than others, nothing will ever change.

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12/06 Links Pt1: Good Riddance, John Kerry; Kerry’s Bitter Alternative Reality; Is Iran Plotting a Kenya Attack?

From Ian:

David Horovitz: Wrong from the start: Why John Kerry failed to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace

Watching John Kerry deliver his indictment of Israel’s settlement enterprise at the Saban Forum in Washington, DC, on Sunday, my strongest feeling was one of sorrow — sorrow for him, but mainly for us, at the wasted time and the wrongheaded approach that doomed the indefatigable, well-intentioned secretary of state’s approach to peacemaking.
Kerry calculated that he has spent 130 hours in formal discussions with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his near four years as secretary of state, and visited Israel a staggering 40-plus times.
And yet for all that time and effort, as his valedictory jeremiad again made plain, he never internalized why he was unable to clear the obstacles to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. And in the one key area where Sunday’s presentation showed a belated appreciation of where he had gone wrong, clarity has arrived long after the damage was done.
The first, foundational mistake was to believe, like a long line of global statespeople before him, that he could succeed where others had failed in trying to strong-arm the two sides into an accord on a rapid timetable, when it is tragically and undeniably obvious that the deadline-based approach cannot work.
Many, perhaps most, Israelis recognize an imperative to separate from the Palestinians in order to maintain a state that is both Jewish and democratic. But In today’s treacherous Middle East, they need more persuasion than ever that relinquishing territory will bring guaranteed tranquility, rather than escalated terrorism and new efforts to paralyze, and ultimately destroy, the country.

Ruthie Blum: Good Riddance, John Kerry

He continued by lambasting settlements, while claiming he understands that they are not the root cause of the conflict, saying he “cannot accept the notion that they do not affect the peace process — that they aren’t a barrier to the capacity to have peace.”
And here was the clincher. He said he knows this, because “the Left in Israel is telling everybody they are a barrier to peace and the Right that supports it, openly supports it, because they don’t want peace.”
And there you have it. Kerry’s utter gall. His accusation that most Israelis oppose peace. Not that we long to live without fear of being stabbed, car-rammed, torched, blown up by bombs and hit by rocket-fire by hate-filled terrorists bent on our annihilation. Not that we have relinquished most of the West Bank and all of Gaza to those killers. Not that every territorial withdrawal has been accompanied by an escalation in violence against us.
Netanyahu also addressed the Saban Forum, via video feed. His remarks were decidedly different from Kerry’s. He stressed the danger of the Iran nuclear deal; reminded everyone that the Palestinian Liberation Organization was created in 1964, three years before the Six-Day War, which led to Israel’s taking control of the territories it is accused of “illegally occupying.” He also pointed out that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not about settlements or Palestinian statehood, but rather part of the “battle between modernity and medievalism.”
If Netanyahu is waiting with bated breath for Trump’s inauguration in January, it is with good reason – if only never to have to hear from the insufferable Kerry, who quipped that his wife complained over the years about his spending more time conversing with the Israeli prime minister than with her.

Kerry’s Bitter Alternative Reality

To Kerry, none of that matters because of the settlements. The secretary refuses to understand that building a few more houses in existing communities doesn’t mean that Israel wouldn’t or couldn’t give up territory if Abbas were ever to take yes for an answer. He ignores the fact that the Palestinians have repeatedly refused to accept Israeli offers of statehood. The focus on settlements is a flimsy Palestinian excuse for not making peace–not the substantive obstacle Kerry falsely claims it to be.
Kerry was also right when he said the Arab states wouldn’t make formal peace with Israel without an agreement with the Palestinians. But Netanyahu’s assertion that the Arabs are far more worried about an Iran that has been empowered and appeased by Obama and Kerry than they are about the Palestinians is also correct. Formal relations may have to wait, but, despite Kerry’s warnings, Israel’s diplomatic position is not as weak as he claims.
From Obama’s first moments in office, his administration has been committed to the idea that more “daylight” between Israel and the United States would provide a path to peace. Eight years of ginned up fights with Netanyahu and tilting the diplomatic playing field in their direction has only encouraged the Palestinians to be more intransigent. More daylight has been an abysmal failure, and, in characteristic fashion, Kerry would rather double down on this disaster than admit he’s been wrong.
Stabbing Israel in the back at the UN won’t bring peace any closer either, but Kerry prefers to leave the State Department with a gesture that would damage Israel and hamstring his successor rather than simply go home. It can only be hoped that Obama will listen to the better angels of his nature and to those who tell him that acting in this manner will only provoke President-elect Trump to embrace Israel even more closely rather than Kerry’s bitter and foolish advice.

Work accident! Hamas dude blows himself up.

Another day, another "martyr."

Hamas' al-Qassam Brigades issued a statement saying that Ahmad Atiya Ibrahim Mansour, 30, died when his grenade blew up unexpectedly.

"He has been elevated to the path of Jihad and resistance in the Honor and Glory in the field of Mujahideen al-Qassam Brigades heroesm" the statement said.

Let's look back at the highlights of this man's life so we can appreciate exactly what has been lost:

May the ranks of holy martyrs of Hamas increase exponentially. Ameen.

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When Jordan's army forced Palestinian refugees out of their homes

As we've mentioned before, most recently in August, during the 1970s Israel tried to build permanent, modern homes for Palestinians in Gaza so they wouldn't have to live in decrepit "refugee camps" and would have a chance to build normal lives.

Over 2000 Gaza families moved into the new homes.

The PLO and the UN were dead-set against this. With a mixture of intimidation against those who wanted to move into the new homes and the UN passing two resolutions (31/15E and 34/52F) condemning Israel for trying to improve the lives of the Gazans, the plan fizzled.

The first UN resolution against Israel's attempts to improve Palestinians' lives was passed almost exactly 40 years ago.

Lets go back another 11 years.

Here's how UNRWA describes the history of the Shuafat camp:

Shu'fat camp is located on the outskirts of Jerusalem. ..The camp was established by UNRWA in 1965 in order to provide improved housing for the roughly 500 refugee families living in Mu'askar camp in the Old City of Jerusalem.

UNRWA, in this case, wanted to provide improved housing. The Mu'askar camp was in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, and Jordan provided the space to UNRWA, but the homes were in bad shape and UNRWA wanted to move the residents.

Against their will.

The residents lived near the Al Aqsa Mosque and many worked in the Old City souks. They preferred to live in the old Jewish homes, as bad as they were.

But UNRWA wanted them to move.

So it forced them to move, and with the help of the Jordanian army, all the residents were forced to move to Shuafat.

This is all detailed in this book:

Actually, hundreds of families were forcibly moved into Shuafat as late as July 1966 according to UNRWA documents (which didn't mention the Jordanian army's role, and didn't mention that most residents refused to move.)

Gazans moving voluntarily into new homes was condemned as illegal by the UN in 1976, but the forcible removal of Palestinians from their (stolen) homes into another neighborhood (that was also stolen from Jews) did not elicit a single peep from the world. In fact, this episode has been entirely whitewashed by UNRWA and forgotten by nearly everyone else.

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PA TV video shows exactly how "peaceful" the Palestinian Authority and Fatah are

According to Palestinian Media Watch, this music video extolling Fatah violence was broadcast 11 times on official Palestinian Authority TV during the Fatah conference this past weekend:

The Fatah song emphasizes that Fatah’s “oath” is to destroy Israel, saying “free the state from the hands of the Zionists,” and that this will be done through violence, terror and killing:
“Slice open the enemy’s chest, slice it”
“Shoot the Dashka (machine gun) and the cannon”
“The Fatah man... fires the mortar and the machine gun”“Strike, mortar, strike!”

The song applauds that it was Fatah who committed what it considers to be the first Palestinian terror attack against Israel - the attempted bombing of Israel’s main water carrier in 1965.
“Eilabun [in 1965] was the first shot [at Israel] and Fatah was responsible”

Lyrics:

"Long Live Fatah Men,” sung by the ‎Al-Asifa band: "Shoot the Dashka (machine gun) and the cannon
Let the whole world hear:
The Palestinian will never bow other than to the Lord of the universe…
Eilabun [in 1965] was the first shot [at Israel] and Fatah was responsible
The oath is to free the state from the hands of the Zionists
Long live all the Fatah men
No one prevailed over us
We burst over the borders...
The Fatah man does not take things lightly…
He fires the mortar and the machine gun...
Strike, mortar, strike!
Slice open the enemy’s chest, slice it
I’m a Palestinian and I want my right
My full right...
The difficult way is our way
Bullets! Sing for us!
The sound of the rifles gives us joy
Fatah taught me, thank you, Fatah
I have no love other than the love of the rifle."

The full video is here. Assuming that this is the original, it has surprisingly few views - less than 2,000 - indicating that Fatah's popularity among the people is pretty low.

But if that is right, it means that official PA TV is going out of its way to push a video not for its popularity but for its propaganda value. It is trying to position Fatah not as a moderate group promoting peace and a two-state solution but as a violent "resistance" group dedicated to destroying Israel.

This is the message being given to Palestinians, day in and day out. It has been 23 years since Oslo and an entire new generation has been raised on hate while Mahmoud Abbas, Saeb Erekat and Hanan Ashrawi tell the world that it is Israel that is not interested in peace.

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John Kerry lies about the basics of the Oslo Accords at Saban

John Kerry, speaking at the Saban Forum this past weekend, said:

When Oslo was signed in 1993, the vision was that with the signing of Oslo, Area C – everybody knows there’s Area A, B, C – Area A is Palestinian security and administrative control, Area B is a split between administrative and security control, and Area C, which is 60 percent of the West Bank, is just Israel security and administrative still. But the deal of Oslo in 1993 was over the next year and a half Area C would be transferred to the Palestinian control administratively. Well, it didn’t happen for a number of different reasons. We won’t go into that now.

Kerry had good reason not to go into it - because it is a complete fiction.

The original 1993 Oslo Accords did not divide the territories into Areas A, B and C. That was Oslo II, in 1995, not 1993.

Oslo II mentioned very little about redeploying Israeli control.

The Wye River Agreement of 1998 did say Israel was to withdraw from a percentage of Area C, but the bulk was going to remain under Israeli control. It was never implemented after Netanyahu, who opposed it, lost a vote of no-confidence. But there were a whole lot of terror attacks in the md-90s that would seem to be a violation of Oslo.

Kerry didn't mention Hamas or suicide bombings or terror.

Kerry is completely wrong in his history. I find it very hard to believe that he doesn't know the intricacies of the peace process history in detail - he could never have negotiated anything if he hadn't known what happened in the recent past.

Why should Israel have ever trusted someone who cannot tell the truth about the basics of the peace process - and who lies about it to make Israel look bad?

(h/t Irene)

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