Use the box below to search THINK-ISRAEL. Don't use partial words or
wildcard expressions. If you type in several words separated by
spaces, Google will find articles containing all these words in
any order. If you put double quote marks before and after some words, Google
will treat them as a single phrase. If the searchwords are judea samaria "san remo" golan,
Judea, Samaria and Golan are independent and may be anywhere in the article.
San Remo is treated as a single word. Case is ignored.
(Click the Star icon on the right top of an Google output page for more ways to search for results.) |
|
![]() We are told that there is a difference between extremist Islam and
peaceloving normal Islam.
|
"The Palestinian people does not
exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for
continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab
unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians,
Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical
reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people,
since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a
distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism.
"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan." (PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein, March 31, 1977, interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw.) The Palestinian leadership, including Ahmed Shukar and Yasser Arafat, has openly admitted Palestinian "peoplehood" is a fraud; See here. |
![]() "It should be remembered that in 1918, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France were handed more than 5,000,000 square miles to divvy up and 99% was given to the Arabs to create countries that did not exist previously. Less than 1% was given as a Mandate for the re-establishment of a state for the Jews on both banks of the Jordan River. In 1921, to appease the Arabs once again, another three quarters of that less than 1% was given to a fictitious state called Trans-Jordan." (Jack Berger, May 31, 2004.) |
The total for all the 22 Arab League
countries is 6,145,389 square miles (SM). By comparison, all 50 states of
the United States have a total of 3,787,318 SM. Israel has
8,463 SM, about one-sixth of that of the State of Michigan.
Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan are Muslim but not Arab and are
not included.
World Arab population: 300 million; World Jewish population: 13.6 million; Israel's Jewish population: 5.4 million. (Dr. Wilbert Simkovitz, http://dehai.org/archives/dehai_news_archive/apr04/0223.html) |
"... during the late 1940s, more than 40 million refugees around the world were resettled, except for one people. They [Palestinian arabs] remain defined as refugees, wallowing 60 years later in 59 UNRWA refugee camps, financed by $400 million contributed annually by nations of the world to nurture the promise of the "right of return" to Arab neighborhoods and Arab villages from 1948 that no longer exist." (Noam Bedein, Jerusalem Post, January 6, 2009.) |
Some 900,000 Jews left behind $300 billion in assets when they were forced to flee for their lives from the Arab countries in the 1940s. They hold deeds for five times Israel's size. (Independent Media Centre, Winnipeg) |
Re Israel's irrevocable ownership of Israel, Samaria, Judea, the Golan and Gaza: "Nothing that Israel's legal system says can change the facts that: (1) the legal binding document is the Mandate of the League of Nations and (2) the obligations of the Mandate are valid in perpetuity." (Professor Julius Stone) |
"By 1920 the Ottoman Empire had exercised undisputed sovereignty over Palestine for 400 years. In Article 95 of the treaty of Sevres, that sovereignty was transferred to England in trust for a national homeland for the Jews. The local Arabs had never exercised sovereignty over Palestine and so they lost nothing. Their rights were fully protected by a provisio in the grant: '...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine...' The proviso has been fully observed by the Israelis. Since 1950 the Arabs have built some 261 new settlements in Judea and Samaria more than twice as many as the Jews, but you never hear of them. They fill them with Arabs from Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan and by the grace of God they become Palestinians. Allahu Akbar! The Arabs call Judea "the West Bank' because they would look silly claiming that Jews are illegally living in Judea." (Comment by Wallace Brand on Martin Peretz "Narrative Dissonance" The New Republic, July 1, 2009) |
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia [rabies] in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. "A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property either as a child, a wife, or a concubine must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. "Individual Moslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome." (Winston Churchill, The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan, Vol II, pages 248-250, 1899.) |
Two Imperatives: "To ensure its long term survivability as the Jewish nation-state, Israel has to deal effectively with two imperatives: The Geographic and the Demographic. The first imperative calls for Israeli control (i.e. sovereignty) over all the territory east of the coastal plain up to the Jordan River—to prevent intolerable risks to its physical survival; the second imperative calls for significant reduction of the Arab presence in the territory under Jewish sovereignty to forestall the emergence of an intolerable demographic threat to its dominant Jewish character." (Martin Sherman; see here and here.) |
|
What we are talking about in the January–December 2020 Issue
Editor's Note:Think-Israel tends to use salafist rather than extremist or Islamist or militant or fundamentalist or activist to describe generically a pious Muslim, one who sticks as closely as possible to the unfiltered words and actions of Mohammad and the first three generations of Muslims, including, especially, the Companions of the Prophet. In modeling himself as closely as he can on the preachings and practices of Mohammad, a salafist can in modern terms be precisely described as an uninhibited terrorist, a theological supersessionist, a political supremacist who believes Islam and sharia law must dominate and a social barbarian, who wages jihad with whatever tools are available. Thanks to the high quality of whitewash supplied by sympathetic propagandists, he seldom is so described.
We devote this issue to several entities that are swelling Jew-hatred by word and by deed. We focus on the Black Liberation Movement (BLM), a major source of Jew Hate. BLM may tout itself as an organization to improve the position of the blacks in our society, but it spends much more time and money lambasting Judaism and its proxy Israel. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is another institution with a noble-sounding name and activities that are less than reputable.
The other major area of discussion is the false notion that a non-people, the Palestinians, have owned Samaria and Judea and some of the eastern part of Jerusalem since ... well the story changes but it always a long time ago. Therefore, according to this lie, the Jews are occupying Arab land. Jews are certainly occupying these territories, just as you occupy your own home.
Starting after the mid 1880s, the Jews returned to their land in strength and restored the magnificence of a land that had fallen into ruin and squalor. But they have been living there from time immemorial one way or another. Jordan in 1948 invaded the new modern state of Israel and grabbed a part of the Jewish land, kicking out or killing each and every Jew who was living in Samaria and Judea and some of eastern Jerusalem and destroying the synagogues. It was not until 1967, when Jordan again invaded Israel, that Israel was able to take back this land and Jews again settled in Samaria, Judea and the eastern part of Jerusalem.
Aside from the Torah, history and the obvious eternal symbiosis of the Jew and his land, it is also the case that the land is legally Jewish and so said each and every member of the League of Nations in 1922, when they created an irrevocable trust for the Jews as owners of their historic land. The decree with its full power was passed on to the United Nations.
Rather than being satisfied that the Jews only have some tenth of one percent of the land area and the Arabs and other Muslims control all the rest of the Middle East that was lost by the Ottoman Empire in World War 1, too many Arabs spend their time thinking out better ways to slaughter Jews and destroy the Jewish state. Some of the articles discuss ways to stop the Arabs from distracting the Jews from making more major accomplishments by continuing to make the Jews miserable.
These articles also contribute information to a topic that is known but not widely circulated, namely, that while the Israeli administration allows little actual Jewish growth in the Territories and prattles on about changing from a military to a civil governance, the Arabs are busily engaged in stealing Jewish state land. That is why Bezalel Smotrich declared, in a statement that is hard for most of us to accept but is likely an accurate assessment, "It's either or. Either the settlements have a future, or the Palestinian state does — but not both." here.
Based on the assumption that slavery was mostly in the western hemisphere or on the arrogant assumption that slavery only counts in the western hemisphere, the ignorant Left spends time seeking retribution for the putative descendants of the slaves in the USA, a task almost impossible to do fairly, given the tangled genetics of the black community and the unreasonableness of inflicting a tax on whites whose ancestors were in Europe and Asia during the slave years, many living in worse conditions that the slaves in the USA.
The first articles below trace the history of slavery from about the time blacks were shipped from Africa to Europe and then America. Most of the emphasis is on the current organization, Black Lives Matter (BLM).
While chapters of the BLM network destroy both black and white communities, ruining property and committing vandalism across the country, universities and large companies are so intimidated, they declare admiration for its activities which are said to better the lives of blacks and pour tons of money into its treasury. The media blandly accept what BLM says its mission is, i.e., to protest brutality against blacks by society in general and police specifically, while ignoring how the organization actually operates. No matter how much damage is done, how many lives are lost, how many businesses are destroyed, the main stream media back up BLM claims. Commentators, their backs to burning buildings and rioters swinging bats, calmly say into the microphone, "This was mostly a peaceful demonstration." This is a lie but it is a sustained and repeated lie.
In addition to these articles, we urge you to read Ricki Hollander's monograph, "The BLM Movement and Antisemitism", which is to be found here. It is an excellent analysis of BLM's early embrace of anti-Israel Palestinian Arabs. It contains detailed portraits of some leading actors in the movement. It is a painfully accurate assessment of the Jewish organizations that ignore BLM's antipathy to Jews in their anxiety to protect that organization from criticism. They are so driven to defend BLM, they have exaggerated to the point of absurdity the supposed differences in attitude and rhetoric between the core and some of its partner organizations and chapters, ignoring BLM's slippery ways of ducking the issue of their bigotry. (Note that Joshua Washington deals with this point in an article below.) In sum, Hollander paints an accurate picture of BLM, stripped of the fluff often to be found in articles on BLM.
Ben Davis cites African historians who write of the major role Africans played in capturing other Africans and selling them into the slave trade. In fact, selling slaves was a major source of income for "African rulers, traders and military aristocracy." While the European slave traders stayed along the coastlines, it was Africans who trekked into the interior to capture Africans to feed the slave trade, it was Africans who often sold their own people into slavery.
See also a video on slavery routes - a short history of human
trafficking in the Common Era in 4 videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InQvC9c-3K8 - (1/4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3ppAebUW54 - (2/4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMB7CpjIS9s - (3/4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKwXuRAseIc - (4/4)
From the typical article on black slavery, one would never suspect that Europeans were routinely taken into slavery as late as the nineteenth Century; the slavers were mostly Arabs. Black slavery was routinely handled by Africans and Arabs, long before the Europeans entered into the trade. Michael McManus writes on aspects of the slave trade that are ignored in the bubbling promotion of white guilt for black slavery.
Additional material on the early history of slavery in the West can be found in an article by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani entitled "When The Slave Traders Were Themselves African" in the The Wall Street Journal Sept. 20, 2019:
'This August marked 400 years since the first documented enslaved Africans arrived in the U.S. In 1619, a ship reached the Jamestown settlement in the colony of Virginia, carrying "some 20 and odd Negroes" who were kidnapped from their villages in present-day Angola.READ MORE
The government of Mauritania denies slavery exists in Mauritania. But it does. Slave-trading has been ongoing for some two thousand years and chattel slavery, where one person is the property of another, for some 800 years. In fact some 10-20% of the population is enslaved; they are enslaved generation after generation, as a class, with no way to buy out of slavery. Tom Kadie writes that "neither racial discrimination nor the historical model of chattel slavery defines slavery in Mauritania." Slaves there are usually dark-skinned and often from sub-Saharan Africa and the ruling Arab-Berbers are light-skinned, but slave owners range in color from dark to white and come from many races. And Arabs are allowed to own Arabs. It usually isn't necessary to compel slaves to work by using physical force, because generations of slaves have been conditioned to accept their condition. Moreover, given the high degree of unemployment in the country, they have little alternative choice. Those who do leave slavery do so mostly by physically escaping or by being freed by a group whose mission is to stop slavery.
See also the article, "Mauritania and Slavery: An Epidemic", by Zachary Crockett, February 25, 2014 at https://priceonomics.com/mauritania-and-slavery-an-epidemic/
See videos on Mauratanian slavery at https://www.youtube.com/embed/aCB7I-p26sU and https://youtu.be/5yQlOPD8mNo, both available at https://www.iabolish.org.
READ MORE
The Mass Resistance organization has been tracking BLM's teaching that LGBT gender? genders? is just fine for a while. A later article on BLM (https://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen4/20d/BLM-and-lgbt-school-assault/index.html) October 23, 2020, discusses the new attack on math and English by BLM in the schools.
The present article is the second article on BLM in the schools. It examines how the same objectives are tailored to different age groups. "Like all good Marxists, they dress all this up in 'feel-good' sounding language on the surface. But that is just the starting point. Underneath the surface these 'principles' are heavily refined and used consistently and to push the clear Marxist agenda that they were intended for." We may think BLM's objectives are inane, or even insane, but when it comes to communicating their message, they are very good. This is a highly professional job.
READ MORETo hear BLM spokesmen tell it, they speak for the blacks, all blacks. There's no way to refute what they say. America is intrinsically racist; there hasn't been a time that blacks haven't been victimized. The reality is that black economists and civil rights leaders and leader across the black community do repudiate what BLM say. They advise shaping up, getting an education, working hard is the way to go. Their example indicates that every community can make its own way; they are not passive pawns that need a socialist leg-up to succeed.
READ MOREThis article provides information about two subjects, related but independent. First, it is an excellent summation of the techniques for political revolution developed by Professors Richard Cloward and Francis Fox Piven. Second, Durden lays out how the Cloward-Pivan strategy is being used by such leftist groups as BLM to destroy America and replace it with a socialist state. This is an insightful article providing us with necessary information required to understand BLM's tactics.
READ MORE
Phillip Carl Salzman explores the intersection of the BLM organization and Intersectionality, the currently popular social theory that 'explains' the oppression of selective categories of the down-trodden: gender, sexuality, race, nationality, religion, capability, etc. Underlying this notion of identity by group and feeding it justifications is radical Marxism. So it not surprising that a new emerging political group spouts the old ideas of anti-Semitism.
A reader said this about Dr. Salzman's articles: "Dr. Salzman's articles neatly captures the narrow framework characteristic of ideological worldviews, which are most vulnerable to historically informed contexts cleansed of emotionality and respectful of fact based objective analysis. Salzmans 3 most recent articles, bundled, exposes students educated within the stifling confines of academia with a broader perspective, complete with conceptual constructs (ex.intersectionality), to venture outside the fishbowl. Recommend required reading in social science curriculum."
READ MOREThis article from Patriotic Viral News contrasts the impressive way BLM -- as do all socialist groups -- talks about distributing wealth equitably and how wealth is actually distributed. As Nebojsa Malic writes here: "Between July 2017 and June 2019, the Global Network had spent $4.5 million on consultants, travel and salaries while giving only $328,000 to local chapters." And that was before the enormous expansion of money being donated to BLM. He continues, "Not only did the BLM chapters not get that [money], they also bore the brunt of the backlash against rioting, arson, and property destruction inflicted by the riots on their own communities. It was a win-win for the self-styled leadership, lose-lose for the actual foot soldiers on the ground. What Black Lives Matter chapters don't understand is that the [socialist] system they've embraced is working exactly as intended."
READ MOREJoshua Washington write that BLM doesn't represent the black community. Most black Americans want a police presence, while BLM preaches defunding the police. Similarly, black Americans want school choice, while BLM want to end charter schools. BLM wants collective care of the young, while most blacks don't, preferring a nuclear family. And most blacks don't want Marxism, the ideology underlying BLM. He provides information that goes well beyond what is usually available; i.e., the degree to which, thanks to BLM, witchcraft has made its way into mainstream churches. He also references an article that points out that California's curriculum is now anti-Zionist and pro-Communist; both are BLM positions. In sum, "a movement for black Americans to be treated as equals turned into the destruction of black self-determination and joining us to an educational system that is now teaching the very Marxist principles many of us reject."
READ MOREJonathan Tobin lays out his thesis at the start of this article: 'The specter of armed extremists facing off against violent mobs is a prescription for not just bloodshed, but chaos with unknowable consequences. Predictably, the Anti-Defamation League is chiming in about this to hype fears that the presence of militias in this combustible mix will add anti-Semitism to the mix. The question is, are they telling us something we need to know about the situation or, as appears to be the case, is the ADL just riding their favorite hobby horse in order to promote their preferred political agenda and distract us from the real threat to both Jews and the nation in this situation.' He expands on some of the consequences of American Jews downplaying the rising anti-Semitism on the Left.
READ MOREPaul Miller writes of the recent growth of anti-semitism. He says outright what many are too squeamish to say: "attacking Jews is acceptable in academia, the Democratic Party, and the press, as long as it comes from a left-wing source." Again, "... anti-Semitism has gone mainstream." He focuses on President Biden's "choices for top people in his administration. There is, as an example, the nomination of Kristen Clarke to head the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice." As far back as when she was head of Harvard's Black Students Association, she has welcomed unambiguous anti-Semites. Under Biden's administration, we can expect no abatement of Jew-hate spouted by Muslims, supposedly representing their states and districts.
READ MOREThe authority of the ICC is often invoked as the last word, end of discussion. This section examines in depth whether such confidence in the decisions, arguments and opinions of the ICC is warranted.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) located in the Hague, Netherlands, is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal. The brainchild of the United Nations, it was created to handle cases that sovereign countries who were members of the ICC could not themselves handle. As Prof. Gregory Rose and Maurice Hirsch comment in an article entitled 'Rule or Ruse of Law in the UN International Criminal Court?' here:
"The ICC was established in 2002 to prosecute the most heinous international crimes where there is no national court that can do so. With convictions in only four cases in 18 years, it is doubtful that potential offenders are deterred. Its convictions have all been for crimes in Africa where national courts were unable to prosecute. In actual practice, the ICC brand is tarnished: it is political in essence, defective in execution, and undermining the very tenets of law it was set up to protect. Most UN Security Council permanent members and the emerging global powers declined to sign the Rome Statute establishing the ICC. Israel also never joined the court." Its results may be meager and as Dr Manfred Greenfield notes in his 16January2020 BESA Center article 'How Israel Should Fend Off the ICC,': "It has few convictions, yet in the 17 years of its existence has spent more than $1.5 billion."
Being a development of the United Nations, it will surprise no one that it was corrupted and twisted into yet another weapon, a weapon using a legal system to wage lawfare.
Lawfare is a term coined by Major General Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., in a lecture at Harvard in 2001 to describe the hijacking and exploitation of the legal system "to the detriment of humanitarian values as well as the law itself." [See: Yale J. of Int’l Aff. 136, 146 (2008)]
Lawfare describes the actions of the ICC perfectly. So frequently has the ICC aggressively combated common sense and legal rules in acting against Israel, it is commonplace for anti-Israel debaters to declare ICC speaks for the world. They will assert "Israel acted against international law", meaning the ICC, to defend a blatantly false assertion about Israel. The ICC is the source of truth for the factually handicapped. Sad to say, the ICC has gone from being a respected entity that tried monstrous war criminals after World War II to a parody of itself.
The actions of the ICC have been rebutted from many points of view, from the diplomatic to the sneer. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo said that the "ICC case against Israel is illegitimate prosecution" here. Some excerpts from his statement:
"The International Criminal Court is a political body, not a judicial institution. This unfortunate reality has been confirmed yet again by the ICC Prosecutor's attempt to assert jurisdiction over Israel, which, like the United States, is not a party to the Rome Statute that created the Court."
".... we do not believe the Palestinians qualify as a sovereign state, and they therefore are not qualified to obtain full membership, or participate as a state in international organizations, entities, or conferences, including the ICC."
"A court that attempts to exercise its power outside its jurisdiction is a political tool that makes a mockery of the law and due process. The United States reiterates its longstanding objection to any illegitimate ICC investigations. If the ICC continues down its current course, we will exact consequences."
On the other extreme, the ICC has been rebutted sarcastically, as in this appraisal of the ICC monomanical focus on Israel that appeared in the Objectivist, December 26, 2019:
"Heads up to the ICC. Keep ignoring actual war crimes and/or crimes against humanity that are being committed in any number of countries including but not limited to Syria, North Korea. This way the court will still have enough funds and time to prosecute Israel for rumped up reasons. As with most EU and UN bodies, the ICC is a cruel and fraudulent organization that does nothing to protect people against the crimes noted above. In fact, because the ICC focuses on bogus cases that concern Israel, which virtually assures its inaction elsewhere, it is aiding and abetting the commission of crimes against humanity and war crimes in general."
Below, we focus on several aspects of ICC's conduct and behavior. To cover important points, there is some overlap in articles. We spend most time on ICC's negative attitude and behavior toward Jews and Judaism, the converse of its strong connections with Palestinians, the European Union and UN NGOs, all of which are intrinsically unfriendly to Israel. The intimate relationship between ICC and the two Palestinian terror administrations in the Territories — the Arab Palestine Authority and Hamas, which controls Gaza — are also discussed.
The set includes an examination of the ICC's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and her fatuous pomposity in pursuit of her illegal objectives. Her guidance has played a large part in ICC's loss of respectability. With no legal right to do so, she had labored to bring Israeli soldiers and politicians to trial at the Hague, and has pontificated on the jurisdiction of Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza. She claims Israel has violated international law, but brings no evidence to back her spurious claims, while ignoring strong evidence to the contrary. It would be comic, were it not outrageous and totally illegal, that the committee she has selected to work with her includes "six members of Hamas and a PFLP member with a senior Hamas official acting as spokesman." All in all, in Richard Kemp's words, here: "ICC has twisted itself into a political court rather than a serious legal body." It has weaponized aspects of the legal system, distorting or inventing rules to illegally attack Western democracies, particularly Israel.
All in all, this comment by Professor Gregory Rose and Maurice Hirsch here is a fair assessment:
"Fundamental to the rule of law is equal treatment and non-arbitrary, fair application of law. Instead, the International Criminal Court (ICC) exemplifies UN politicisation of international law principles and bureaucratic corruption of the rule of law, at extravagant cost."
In another article in the Jerusalem Post rebutting the ICC prosecutors accusations that Israel used disproportionate force during the 2014 Gaza War, Richard Kemp wrote:
I was present during these conflicts, witnessed, and was extensively briefed on IDF operations. I was a member of an investigation into the 2014 Gaza war by the High Level Military Group, an independent body of retired generals from Western armed forces and human rights experts. The group unanimously concluded that: "The IDF not only met its obligations under the Law of Armed Conflict, but often exceeded these on the battlefield."
In this article, he writes that "SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, architect and director of the Holocaust, would be proud of the latest move by Fatou Bensouda, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Intent on the total elimination of the Jewish race, Himmler supported Amin al-Huseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, in his plans to eradicate the Jews in Palestine." It is ironic that the Nuremberg Tribunal, the progenitor of the ICC was created in the wake of World War II to give justice to the Jews by trying Nazis in a court of law. But, as Kemp writes, "[i]n a grotesque inversion, the ICC, heir to the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, has become a propaganda weapon of anti-Semitic hate." The ICC "more closely resembles that of the Nazis' notorious People's Court, the Volksgerichthof, than the Nuremberg trials." Harsh words. But accurate.
READ MORELawrence Franklin brings us quickly up to date on the ICC — its reputation, its general attitude of the ICC towards Israel and the USA, its illegality in attempting to put Israel's IDF on trial when Israel is not a member of the ICC. He describes the ICC as "a straightforwardly politicized international body whose judgments continue to betray a mindset of politicization and bias." Perhaps only Eugene Kontorovich, director of International Law at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum and director of the Center for International Law in the Middle East at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., has put it more succinctly. Kontorovich told JNS that the ICC's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda "has come to the absurd decision that a non-country can sue a non-member of the ICC for a non-crime that nobody has ever been prosecuted for, [and] which the ICC prosecutor herself has said does not exist when it comes to Russia and Crimea or Turkey and Cyprus." (cited here.)
READ MOREBoth the USA and Israel see the ICC under Bensouda as a menace. In this article, Eytan Gilboa focuses primarily on Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague, As the Executive Summary has it, "[She has] decided to indict senior Israeli policymakers and military officers for committing war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza. Her decision is baseless, preposterous, and discriminatory, and it violates the ICC's own mission and rules." Bensouda's action takes its place within the wider context of the extensive Palestinian demonization campaign against Israel at the UN and elsewhere.
READ MOREOne runs out of digits counting the ways the ICC has no business prosecuting Israel and gunning for the USA. Joseph Klein examines some of them in detail. He writes, "The prosecutor's appearance of even-handedness in claiming to look at the conduct of both sides is a sham. Her anti-Israel bias is evident." Aside from ignoring lack of jurisdiction, chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has no problem ignoring that the major 'crime' the IDF committed "was taken in self-defense. Israel is only responding to Hamas's call for Israel's annihilation and its rocket launches from the Gaza territory that it controls against civilians in Israel."
READ MOREA major component of the Palestinian rejection of peace with Israel is to label Israel a criminal country. Implementing this has been primarily handled by Fatou Bensouda, the ICC's leading prosecutor. Maurice Hirsch provides us with the details. He concludes, "Accusing Israel of committing 'crimes against humanity' is simply ludicrous. A political decision of this nature should be met with a harsh political response. Removing from Israel the hostile U.N. agencies responsible for creating the fiction of 'Palestine' would be a good start."
Bensouda herself is corrupt: "news reports recently revealed that Bensouda advised Palestinian officials on how to obtain a decision from the Court to investigate and indict Israel, and that she collaborated with Palestinian organizations while preparing her brief for the pre-trial judges. All of this conduct violates ICC rules." (Emphasis added here and above) For details, see Professor Eytan Gilboa's May 25, 2020 article here.
READ MOREAlan Baker writes a succinct and sober article, which, in a nutshell says: the ICC is open to states only; there's no Palestinian state; so ICC can't deal with Palestinian Complaint. It would seem that a court would be among the first to respect a legal statute, but the ICC has gone to absurd lengths to ignore its own restrictions and to openly advocate for the Palestinian Arabs. As it is, in Baker's words, the UN and ICC "have permitted themselves to be abused and manipulated by an irresponsible Palestinian leadership, intent on hijacking international organizations for obvious and blatant political purposes." That the farce has been allowed to continue only reduces the credibility of the ICC further; and adds no respect for the UN.
READ MOREIn an important paper, James Sinkinson [See here] indicated that what the ICC is attempting to do to Israel and also the US may make for headlines and dramatic political theatrics but these actions are not legal. "Since the court completely lacks legal jurisdiction in these matters, its only purpose can be to politically smear the two countries... "Thus, according to the ICC's own core mission, both prosecutions are extra-judicial and inappropriate not only a misuse of time and money, but essentially unjust... But the travesty continues: In order to justify these politically-motivated prosecutions, the ICC has to ignore actual international law." In this article, Michel Calvo expertly provides us with the details and context for a full understanding of what's wrong with the case put forth by the ICC partnered with the Palestinian Arabs against Israel.
READ MOREGerald M. Steinberg, an expert in politicized NGOs has written of the ICC [here] that "The ICC was created in the context of the negotiations that ended in 1998 with the Rome Statute, and already then it was clear that Israel was a primary target, particularly for the Arab states and for the anti-Israel groups that claim to promote international law and human rights. The facade may be legal, but in practice, this is a political institution." He talks about Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; both of these NGOs claim neutrality but spit Jew Hate.
Adam Kredo in the present article focuses on ICC's affiliation with NGOs that are affiliated with Palestinian Arab terrorist groups, specifically, Haq, Al-Dameer, Al Mezan, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR). Moreover, ICC chief prosecutor Bensouda herself has close ties with the international Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) that is close to the Palestinian NGOs that brought the complaint against Israel. READ MOREMany take the view that self-styled Jewish organizations such as B'tselem and New Israel Fund and J Street are simply presenting a different view on events affecting Israel, as if this were a self-contained debate taking place in one place at one time with no extensions or consequences. The reality is that these groups play a huge role in aiding and abetting organizations that are extremely hostile to Israel. Akiva Bigman described how "The Israeli rights group B'Tselem, as well as other NGOs, receive grants often from European governments that are earmarked for activity intended to make Israel vulnerable to prosecution in the International Criminal Court."
READ MOREThe European Union holds a VIP seat in De Hague's international court. It accuses Israel of "war crimes" while funding Palestinian NGO's. The French, British, German, Belgian, Swiss, Dutch, and Swedish all put significant funds in the pockets of Israel's mortal enemies. Mahmoud Abbas, the premier purveyor-employer of PA's pay-to-slay terror against Israeli citizens is the beneficiary of an annual $250,000,000 gift from the EU. This article by Valerie Sobel isn't about the Europeans and the ICC, but it paints a realistic picture of European actions towards Jews in general. Sobel puts these European contributions in context, noting how the same European politicians who shed a tear on Holocaust Remembrance day reinstate their ancestors' attacks on the Jews the rest of the time with their generous contributions to Israel's enemies.
READ MOREThe previous article discusses the general attitude and actions of Europeans toward Jews. This article by Dan Schueftan focuses on Europe and ICC, with a somewhat different view. It discusses how the Europeans have joined the oppressive regimes, giving them legitimacy. As Schueftan writes, "Without this legitimacy, the international bodies would have been dismissed as nothing more than a circus that should be ignored because they are being controlled by outcast regimes. But the Europeans have systematically stood by those who distort the very values they have championed."
What does this lead to? Schueftan speculates:
READ MOREWhat's troubling is not just that the ICC is distorted. What's truly troubling is that civilized countries, especially in Europe, might one day allow their legal system to accept ICC warrants and that terrorist entities and their sympathizers around the world — from Hezbollah and Hamas to Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Jeremy Corbyn — will take great encouragement from humiliating those who challenge the court.
This section describes the history and consequences of the San Remo Conference of 1920 in which much of the land that had been the Middle Eastern territory of the Ottoman Empire was assigned to an independent Syria and Mesopotamia, and a small amount of land including TransJordan was assigned to the Jews, allowing them to take back land that was historically under their sovereignty. The latter document hashed out at the Conference was eventually signed by all the members of the League of Nations, a forerunner of the United Nations. The League of Nations was disbanded soon after World War 2 and was replaced by the current United Nations. All treaties, trusts and deeds held by the League were transferred to the United Nations, to be carried out as designed.
Briefly, the San Remo Conference assigned a tiny piece of the Ottoman Empire -- less than a tenth of 1% -- to Israel entirely. The rest was eventually cut up into Arab states. The original assignment to Israel included part of the Golan Heights, all of Gaza, and all of Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank) eastward to the eastern border of what is now Jordan.
It ensured religious and civil rights to non-Jews as well as Jews, but the Jews had exclusive political (i.e., voting) rights. Unlike the rest of the Middle East area of the Ottoman Empire, which was divided among Arab states willy-nilly without regard to clan or kinship claims, this land specifically was given to Israel because the bond between the Jews and this particular territory went back in time thousands of years and has continued into the present. Significantly, it was signed by each and every one of the member of the then League of Nations. The USA was not a member so did not sign, but a joint Congressional resolution in 1922 was unanimous in supporting the creation of a Jewish homeland.
Britain, perhaps regretting its moment of decency, managed to cut out 78% of the land, the area now claimed by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, between the time of the Conference, May 2020, and the end of the signing on July 24, 1922. As Ted Belman has written:
"For those who do not know, the San Remo Resolution on the partition of the Ottoman Empire in 1920 gave binding international recognition to the right of the Jews to Palestine as it was then described. 78% of which lay east of the Jordan River.
"Before the Palestine Mandate was signed by the League of Nation in 1922, Winston Churchill deleted the east bank lands from the lands the Mandate would include as Israel's national home and it became known as Jordan. But he also declared that the Jewish right to the land was a matter of right and not of sufferance. The Jews were given the right to "reconstitute" what was, in recognition of their historic right to the land, save for the lands to the east. ... Nevertheless the San Remo Resolution stands as precedent for the right of the Jews to all of Jordan."
Using the low-keyed phrase "national home" instead of "state" has allowed many an enemy deciding that meant the Jewish state was to be within the Palestinian Mandate, but not over the entire area, small as it was. (Stein, Leonard: The Balfour Declaration, New York: Simon and Schuster. 1961, p. 470.) This argument became moot after Israel successful withstood several invasions from her neighboring Arab states, winning territory in the process.
The San Remo Resolution, this irrevocable document, was handed in trust to the United Nations when the League of Nations was dissolved. It is still in power and is still ignored.
Sad to say, the legal and historic rights of the Jews of Israel to the Land of Israel has received much less attention than it deserves. The January-June 2016 issue of Think-Israel is one such factual source. Part I of that issue is devoted to context: who are the Palestinians, claims to the Land of Israel, media propaganda and arguments derived from the 'Jews Stole Arab Land' assertions. Part II examines applicable legal concepts and pertinent legal documents. As the issue concludes, "the 19 years of Jordanian occupation [from 1948 to 1967] were the occasion for starting all sorts of creative theatrics. Arabs have hijacked Israel's history and have attempted to steal Israel's land. They have inverted history and claimed Israel is occupying Palestinian land. Given successive Israeli governments that don't even answer back, they have convinced most of the world they are in the right. Just think. Had Israel not lost control of some of her land for a few years, the Arabs would not be asserting rights they never had in the Land of Israel."
And these are some videos that are introductions to the essential issues involved on who has claim to the Land of Israel. "San Remo, April 25, 1920" here and "San Remo Conference celebrating 100 years" here are two videos on San Remo, both featuring Amb. Dore Gold.
Also see Im Tirtzu's video called "Israel's legal rights" here. It features Eugene Kontrovich, who speaks about nation-states and why Israel includes Samaria and Judea. The Jews are not illegally occupying Samaria and Judea. Kontrovich talks about the essential issues.
This articles tells us what San Remo was, when it was, what countries attended and a video hitting the high points. It also provides us with the core of the accomplishments, namely:
It was agreed
READ MORE(a) To accept the terms of the Mandates Article as given below with reference to Palestine, on the understanding that there was inserted in the proces-verbal an undertaking by the Mandatory Power that this would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine; this undertaking not to refer to the question of the religious protectorate of France, which had been settled earlier in the previous afternoon by the undertaking given by the French Government that they recognized this protectorate as being at an end.
(b) that the terms of the Mandates Article should be as follows:
The High Contracting Parties agree that Syria and Mesopotamia shall, in accordance with the fourth paragraph of Article 22, Part I (Covenant of the League of Nations), be provisionally recognized as independent States, subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The boundaries of the said States will be determined, and the selection of the Mandatories made, by the Principal Allied Powers.
The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
Julian Zuckerbrot provides an excellent and full-bodied description of the historic, political and social context of the San Remo Conference, where the victors of World War 1 "took what, for 400 years, had been the possessions of the Ottoman Empire and, in their place, laid the groundwork for the emergence of Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon — and of Israel. [...] It was at San Remo, one hundred years ago, where the world recognized the right of the Jews to build — to rebuild — their national home. The Jews of Palestine would be able to develop a state within the framework of a new concept, a mandate, established by the international community and under its authority. One day the mandate would end and a new Jewish state would replace it." And so it did. That state includes Judea and Samaria, so, as Zuckerbrot writes, "that is why, today, Israel cannot be accurately described as the illegal occupant of any of that territory."
After San Remo, all the Jews had to do to gain a state was to fight multiple invasions by their Arab neighbors, fight the politicians from Europe, the Arab countries and often the USA at the UN, and ignore the nastiness of a hateful media. And lo, within a relatively short time, it has become a vibrant creative state, which contributes mightily to the advancement of human knowledge, agriculture, medicine and instrumentation as well as being one of the first to provide emergency aid to a country suddenly stricken by an overwhelming disaster, be it earthquake, storm or terrorist attack.
READ MOREDan Adler's emphasis in this article on the San Remo Conference is on how the winners of the first World War gave the Middle East territory of the Ottoman Empire -- the losers -- to the Jews and Arabs. With the Jews, the agreement reconstituted the Jewish right to their ancient land; The Jews already owned this piece of land and had since ancient times. Throughout the centuries, they had never lost contact with their land, sometime holding it collectively, sometimes individually, They were redeeming what was theirs. Early on, even Emil Feisal speaking for Hejaz supported the Jewish claim. Even so, Britain managed to cut out 78% of the land assigned to the Jews and placed it in the hands of the Arab Hashemites 'to administer'. Yet some people continue to argue the Jewish state itself is illegitimate. In contrast, the delegates accepted the Arab demands without argument and gave them 99.9% of the Ottoman Empire cut into states. It was a gift, a new gift. As Adler notes, "before the San Remo conference there did not exist a single Arab independent nation state. Not one." And no one objects that any of the Arab states are illegitimate.
READ MOREThe San Remo Convention put into law that Israel included Samaria and Judea, aka the West Bank. David Wurmser points out the irony that "Israel [is] one of only a very few nations anchored in an inherited right (which can be revoked by no one), rather than a granted right (which the giver of the right can take back," yet the European Union proclaims "Israel is to be considered an occupying power of the territories." He cuts through the misinformation, insisting that "Fifty years of propagandistic debate over Israel in the international community must not be allowed to obscure facts, both historical and legal." It started with the Mandate for Palestine, which embodied the Balfour Declaration, and it is still irrevocably enforceable today. He lays out the specifics, some of the relevant history and the solemn obligation taken by all the members of the international community: "the international community's legal obligations to defend the rights of the Jewish people in their homeland, as defined and recognized by the international community nearly a century ago, enshrined in the UN Charter, and ratified by the member states of the United Nations, making it their own law."
READ MOREThe underlying theme of Yishai Fleisher's article is how the media, politicians and hypocritical members of the UN promote plans they like over legally binding resolutions not in accordance with their wishes. Specifically, he asks, "why does the empty UN partition resolution get so much play compared to the real law of the San Remo Accords?" The San Remo Resolution of 1920 is firmly anchored in international law and affirmed by the members of the League of Nations; its laws and rulings became binding on its successor organization, the United Nations. In contrast, the UN plan of 1947 for partitioning 'Palestine' into Jewish and Arab states was a non-binding resolution of the UN's General Assembly. Nevertheless, "for those who wish to see a 'two-state solution' implemented, the idea that Israel was created through the UN partition vote is an indispensable narrative." The implication, of course, being, that what UN wrought, it could undo. The San Remo Resolution, in contrast, is irrevocable. It is time it became better known and not buried under the flurry of pseudo-legal demands to surrender Israeli land to the Palestinian Arabs.
READ MOREAs Eugene Kontorovich writes:
"At San Remo, the Jews were promised a 'national home' in Palestine, and an explicit right to 'settle' throughout the territory, which included Judea and Samaria. The international community did nothing to implement this promise, or ensure its fulfillment in the face of reluctance by the Mandatory government and growing anti-immigrant xenophobia by local Arabs. It was left entirely up to the Jews to translate the international promises into facts on the ground, and in 1948 they partially did so, though with much of the territory, including the holy sites, falling to the Jordanians. After Israel retook these territories in 1967, much of the international community pretended its earlier guarantees did not exist.READ MORE"President Trump's recognition of a united Jerusalem, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's conclusion that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are not war crimes, represent a proper understanding of the legal significance of the League of Nations Mandate. More importantly, they are perhaps the first leaders who refuse to subordinate Israel's legal rights to political blackmail from Arab states."
Howard Grief disposes of some objections to Israel having sovereignty over all the land declared to be for the Jews. People have made the sounds-good argument that the Jews were to have a homeland IN the Palestine Mandate, but not OVER the Palestine Mandate. Grief writes: "The term 'Jewish National Home' was defined to mean a state by the British government at the Cabinet session which approved the Balfour Declaration on October 31, 1917. That was also the meaning originally given to this phrase by the program committee which drafted the Basel Program at the first Zionist Congress in August 1897 and by Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist Organization." The same sort of arguments were made that the future state was to be IN Palestine, not OVER Palestine. Grief points out: "Had 'Palestine' meant a partitioned country with certain areas of it set aside for Jews and others for Arabs, that intention would have been stated explicitly at the time the Balfour Declaration was drafted and approved and later adopted by the Principal Allied Powers. No such allusion was ever made in the prolonged discussions that took place in fashioning the Declaration and ensuring it international approval."
Similarly, to those who claimed Article 22 of the Covenant applied to the Arabs, Grief makes the case that Article 22 was applied "exclusively to the Jewish National Home, as set down in the Balfour Declaration, a fact everyone was aware of at the time, including the representatives of the Arab national movement, as evidenced by the agreement between Emir Feisal and Dr. Chaim Weizmann dated January 3, 1919 as well as an important letter sent by the Emir to future US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter dated March 3, 1919."
But his main thesis is that under unassailable international law — every member of the League of Nations signed consent to the San Remo Resolution — Israel had and has legal sovereignty over the entire land then labeled the Palestine Mandate, including what is now known as the West Bank. In this essay, Howard Grief brilliantly fulfills his objective "to set down in a brief, yet clear and precise manner the legal rights and title of sovereignty of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and Palestine under international law." This paper should be part of your armamentarium for the next time you are told that Resolution XXX of the U.N. guarantees the rights of the Palestinian Arabs to YYY.
READ MORESamaria and Judea and the eastern part of Jerusalem were seized by Jordan in 1948, when it invaded the new state of Israel. This territory was reclaimed by Israel when she won back the land when Jordan invaded Israel again in 1967. What might have been a simple taking back of its land by declaration had it been done immediately became complex and problematic for several reasons. There was the Oslo Accords of 1993, where Israel agreed to allow the Palestinians to control parts of the West Bank in order to create a peace that never happened; the Arabs never even started to keep their promises. There was the unilateral giving up of Gaza by Israel in August 2005, throwing out every Jew, again to encourage the Arabs to become peaceful. That had the effect of increasing the space within which the Arabs could manufacture hand-made explosives and train snipers, but had no impact on developing a peaceful accord. There was the stupidity of putting the West Bank under a hodge-podge of military government mixed with some regional law and national law, when the Jews won it back in 1967. And so the hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens living in the West Bank are still forced to live under a misbegotten set of laws, all because the politicians didn't seem to know what to do with their land when they won it back.
The Europeans, in contrast, have been consistent. Not surprisingly, the Europeans, who have invested heavily in Palestinian infrastructure and who politically consistently support the Palestinian Arabs, are opposed even to Israel 'annexing' towns acknowledged by all as Jewish. As Raphael Ahren wrote in an article in TOI entitled "Over 1,000 MPs From Across Europe Call For 'Decisive Action' Against Annexation," here:
"We, parliamentarians from across Europe committed to a rules-based global order, share serious concerns about [US] President [Donald] Trump's plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the imminent prospect of Israeli annexation of West Bank territory. We are deeply worried about the precedent this would set for international relations at large."
What the Arabs might do in the event of annexation is the subject of Jonathan Ferziger's paper here. Backlash? Insurrection? Or will annexation happen with little drama and things continuing much as before. Ferziger cites Riad Al Khouri, an Amman-based economist and political risk consultant at GeoEconomica:
"Abbas is going to foam at the mouth, he's going to chew the carpet, he's going to spend a whole day screaming his head off about the Palestinian holocaust and how this is the end, because he has to, because his public posture demands it. ... Behind the scenes he's going to be looking for a quid pro quo."
We start with an article that lays out some of the major arguments for and against Israel annexing Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley. It discusses options and key possibilities. We continue with papers that more precisely define what might happen. Israel taking back the area lost in the 1948 Jordanian invasion is by no means 'annexation', A country can not 'annex' or 'occupy' its own territory. Samaria and Judea have indeed belonged to Israel for thousands of years historically and symbiotically. It has belonged solely to the Jews, legally, morally and irrevocably, since 1922, according to the world's community of nations. The remaining articles emphasize particular arguments for Israel redeeming its own land. Some of the arguments are reinforced in an interview with Eurgene Kontorovich entitled "Why Israeli Rule in the West Bank Is Legal under International Law." (See here.)
This is an extensively detailed even-handed article on applying Israeli sovereignty to Samaria and Judea, aka the West Bank. Mitchell Bard points out that although "the world refers to the West Bank as 'occupied,' the more accurate description is 'disputed' territory." (I would agree that it certainly is disputed, but the opposite of 'occupied', in the sense of an invasion, is 'not occupied'.) More importantly, he notes that "it is inaccurate to refer to Israel's plans — as critics do — as annexation. Erielle Davidson has explained, 'A nation cannot annex land over which it already has sovereign claims.'
Despite Israeli legal right to all of the land, proposed plans envision redeeming different amounts of land. Minimalist plans would incorporate some of the largest Jewish towns in Samaria and Judea. Most politicians understand that for security reasons, it must also retain control of the Jordan Valley. As usual, Israel has announced it is willing to compromise, and is then surprised that there are objections, no matter what it plans. Maximal plans would mean taking back the whole area, but in practice, plans rarely go beyond adding some of the existing Jewish towns.
All the various plans for applying sovereignty suffer, more or less, from Israel's fear of a global outcry particularly from the European Union and Arab protest. On the other hand, as Bard points out, major Arab states in the Middle East no longer view the Palestinians as a priority, even though they have voiced concern about 'annexation.' Possible action by terrorist groups such as Hezbollah is a consideration. But in truth, there is no real correlation between what Israel does or doesn't do and what any or some of the multitude of Arab terrorists do. They flare up and show what they can do in small ways all the time and in big ways some of the time. There are also genuine concerns about the impact of Israel recovering some of its land on the position of the Jordanian king. But his regime is unstable in so many ways, increased instability and regime failure is as likely from any one of Jordan's many problems.
Not surprising, some European leaders are vocal nay-sayers. More surprisingly, many of the Jews who continue to stay in the Democratic Party, despite the continuous Jew-hate spouted by Muslim congressmen, also oppose Israel acting unilaterally. On the other hand, Israelis, by and large support annexation of the settlements. They oppose a Palestinian Arab state. The Arabs would be getting real land, Jewish land, for promises they have never been known to keep. And there is the practical concern that giving up land means hundreds of thousands more homeless Jews. People remember "the wrenching experience of removing 9,000 from the Gaza Strip. Instead of peace, the end of the 'occupation' of Gaza has resulted in more than 15 years of violence which made Israelis doubt that territorial concessions in the West Bank will bring an end to the conflict." And on the other end of the spectrum from the nay-sayers, there is an increasing number of Israelis on the far right who advocate the return of all of Israeli land to Israel.
READ MOREMartin Sherman has written cogently in multiple articles on the fallacy of partial annexation of Samaria and Judea. Creating a single state with both Arabs and Jews in control will also not work. This article has its basis in Daniel Pipes' assertion here that annexing the West Bank would hurt Israel. Pipes says that annexation would rile both her friends and her enemies: the Trump administration, the Democrats, the EU, the Israeli Left, and the Arabs. He also is concerned that annexation would add a large number of additional Arabs. Martin Sherman recapitulates these arguments against annexation and rebuts them clearly and effectively. He acknowledges that the trend in Arab birthrate is in the direction of fewer births. Nevertheless he agrees with Pipes that "even a sizable minority will make Israel untenable as a Jewish nation state." But Sherman's solution is for a "large-scale initiative for the incentivized emigration (evacuation-compensation) of the Arab population of Judea-Samaria and Gaza." Sherman also points out that any major decision or change that Israel has made was accompanied by prophecies of ''imminent conflagrations that will set the Mid-East and beyond ablaze because of it. As a general rule, they have all proven unfounded."
READ MOREDaniel Greenfield writes about yet another group that is against Israel taking back her own land: liberal American Jews, It is, unfortunately, the case that 60%-70% of American Jews vote Democratic and oppose or at least do not speak out when the 'progressive' (aka 'socialist') leaders of the democratic party oppose Israel resuming sovereignty over land that is legally Jewish. He points out the House of Saud, "the oldest enemies of an independent free Jewish state, have at least temporarily abandoned their project to destroy it by replacing it with the Islamic terrorist colony of 'Palestine'." He asks pointedly, why can't liberal Jews do the same?
One has to agree with him when he write, "It's a sad day when Wahhabi Islam shows more aptitude for setting aside its fanaticism and adapting to reality than the alphabet soup organization leaders and non-profit newspapers that have been running the liberal Jewish community into the ground for over a hundred years without ever learning a thing." Liberal Jews seen to be making all the wrong choices. They have substituted waiting for Palestinian Arab peace partners in place of waiting for the messiah. That isn't going to happen. And they chose the Socialist Left over support for their own people, apparently ignorant of the fact that Jew-hate has always been a big part of Marxism.
READ MORE
Victor Rosenthal continues the discussion on the uproar against Israel's annexation. But he also applies a corrective, pointing out exactly what it is that Israel is actually doing and why it is unquestionably legal. The main impact would be that Israel would substitute civil law for mainly military law, which, in itself would be a good thing. Caroline Glick put it this way, here: "Israeli sovereignty, not appeasement is the key to lasting peace. [...] "Israel's civilian legal code is far more liberal than the military laws that currently apply to the areas. The civil rights of area residents — Jews and Arabs alike—will be far better protected under Israeli law than they have been under Israeli military administrative law." The PA won't accept any peace plan that leaves Israel viable, so Israel might as well go ahead and do what she should do.
READ MOREYechiel Leiter writes of the "cascade of dire warnings about the consequences should Israel's elected government follow through on Prime Minister Netanyahu's campaign promise to apply Israeli law in parts of Judea and Samaria." He points out that "[t]he Jewish people are the only people in fact who have a recognized legal right over Judea and Samaria. This was enshrined in the mandate drafted and approved by 51 members of the League of Nations guaranteeing the 'right of Jewish people to reconstitute their national home' in the Land of Israel (1922)." "Judea and Samaria have never been under the sovereignty of any other country than the State of Israel. Jordan's invasion of the territory in 1948 and its attempt to annex it in 1950 was widely opposed internationally."
Moreover, as Leiter writes, "... The prohibition against the forcible transfer of civilians to territory of an occupied state under the Fourth Geneva Convention has no relevance. It was never intended to relate to circumstances of voluntary Jewish settlement on legitimately acquired land which did not belong to a previous lawful sovereign and which was designated as part of the Jewish state under the League of Nations Mandate."
READ MOREThe Jewish towns in Samaria and Judea, disparagingly referred to as 'settlements', are of course part and parcel of the land of Samaria and Judea, which is legally and morally and historically Jewish. Hence, by definition, these settlements are legal. Yet European politicians and the media has so muddied up the facts that international law is disregarded and these settlements are themselves considered illegal.
As Michel Calvo writes, "According to international law, the Jews are the indigenous people of the lands referred to as Judea, Samaria, Palestine, Israel and the Holy Land. Jewish rights of 'settlement' in the so-called 'West Bank' therefore exist; it cannot seriously be contended, as the EU, France, Britain, Russia, China and other states do, that Jewish communities in the West Bank are illegal and that annexation is contrary to international law.
"Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired (Art. 26.1) and that the exercise of these rights shall be free from discrimination of any kind (Art. 2). — UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13, 2007. "Among others, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Israel and Luxembourg voted in favor of the Declaration. Since 2007, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, who voted against, formally endorsed the Declaration in 2010. In their relations with Israel, these states cannot claim that the Declaration does not apply to Israeli Jews, since such position would amount to blatant racial discrimination."
READ MOREEugene Kontorovich says it's time Israel did what it should have done 53 years ago [in 1967] when it won back Judea, Samaria and the eastern part of Jerusalem, namely, apply Israeli law over the area, as it had been doing for decades before Jordan invaded Israel in 1948 and captured the area illegally. Jordan held the territory for 19 years until it again invaded Israel, and this time Israel was strong enough to win back its land.
As Kontorovich says, "All peace proposals —except Trump's— that have been put forward over the years since Israel liberated the West Bank from Jordanian occupation in the 1967 defensive war have been based on the erroneous idea that Jewish presence there is illegal and needs to be reversed." That is to say, while ethnic cleaning is abhorrent everywhere else, it is to be practiced on some 400,000 Jews in territory that belongs to Israel legally, morally, historically and by conquest.
"Kontorovich also takes issue with the term 'annexation,' explaining that in international law annexation is defined as one state taking land from another sovereign state. Since, in this case, the West Bank has no sovereign, the term 'annexation' is a misnomer." I suspect Israel could have avoided a lot of misdirected argument by just issuing a memo stating that military governance is being replaced by civil authority as of the first of next month.
Kontorovich's article in WSJ, which is posted in the Appendix, makes a good introduction to this article. It notes: "Over the past 53 years, Jews have returned to Judea and Samaria, territories from which they had been, to a man, ethnically cleansed by the Jordanians in 1949. Today, more than 400,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, still governed by an odd patchwork of military regulations. As a result, property is governed by obscure Ottoman land law. Permitting for infrastructure projects is difficult and burdensome. Most Israeli environmental regulations don't apply."
Note also that there is a must-read explanatory video featuring Kontorovich. It is a brilliant discourse on Israel's rights, international law, the meaning of "occupation," and more. It is called 'Jewish Settlements & International Law' and was issued. Feb 7, 2017. It is at https://youtu.be/V0ZTi-53t88. Click here.
Also see "International Law Issues in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict", issued March 8, 2016 and featuring Eugene Kontorovich. It is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwB7LyPhzr0/. Click here.
READ MORENadia Matar argues against applying sovereignty only in parts of Judea and Samaria with the addition of a Palestinian state. She points out problems with the Trump plan that would give the Arabs a state and most of the territory. For the sake of stability, Israel must apply sovereignty to the whole area. She also writes about what is so often ignored: Mahmoud Abbas may continue to malign Israel and kill Arabs that sell land to Israel, but "[t]he majority of the Arabs here in Judea and Samaria say it very clearly when they are not on camera: We prefer being residents under Israeli control and sovereignty than be citizens under a Palestinian state." she states firmly what is a legal, moral and historic fact, "This land belongs to the Jewish people and only to the Jewish people."
This article is formatted as a transcript to an embedded video featuring Nadia Matar on the Sovereignty Movement. See here.
READ MOREDenis MacEoin focuses on Palestinian reactions to Israel restructuring the governing of its Territories from a military administration to a civil one. He points out that "Peace plans and treaties only work when both sides sincerely want to make them do so, and then can require one or more generations of young people who learn the benefits of an end to violence. Sadly, that is still a remote hope." The Palestinian Arabs have acquired land from Israel and much money from the global community -- at least their leaders have. They have signed treaties of peace but they have never forsaken what they consider their mission: to destroy Israel.
In Part I, he explains why "it is common today to find references to Palestine as a mainly Muslim Arab state that was supposedly 'stolen' by Jews, or promised but not given to those people who describe themselves as Palestinians. That is an immense misconception, albeit one that seems to influence political and legal thinking internationally, especially among people who would like to believe it." In Part II he suggests that "if Israel were to extend Israeli law to more land, the move could present a great opportunity to end the conflict. The decisive end by Israel to a Palestinian fantasy that should never have been humoured in the first place might finally enable Palestinian leaders finally to start their citizens on a constructive -- rather than a destructive -- path." He also brings up another reason why peace is difficult, if not impossible: the Islamic law of waqf. "In the present context, it refers to any territory once conquered by or converted to Islam and ruled by a Muslim monarch or government -- such as previously by the Ottoman Empire. No such territory should be allowed to pass into profane, secular, Christian (such as al Andalus, consisting of southern Spain) or, in this case, Jewish hands."
READ MOREAs Gershon Hacohen writes in the Executive Summary: "Contrary to the alarming charge that the application of sovereignty over parts of the West Bank would transform Israel into a binational state, doing so would not affect 95% of the West Bankers who have been living under the rule of the Palestinian Authority since January 1996. They will continue to do so. The move does entail political risks, but they are smaller than the security hazards that would accompany Israel's inability to maintain a permanent security presence in the Jordan Valley."
Hacohen writes of the risks if Israel incorporates the land it regained. Dan Schueftan has written bluntly of the probabilities if it doesn't [here]: "'To ensure the Israeli response to the Palestinians and Jordan, it is best to strive for establishing permanent Israeli rule in the Jordan Valley.'" He recalls an American plan in 2014 that would place the Jordan Valley in Palestinian hands but would rely on high-tech sensors and unmanned aircraft plus foreign security forces to protect Israel's security in the face of Palestinian hostility. Schueftan sensibly points out that 'Peacekeepers and high-tech surveillance are no substitute for the IDF s on the ground. [...] What Israel needs is not information on threats and the hope that someone else will respond before it's too late. Rather, it needs deterrence that comes with a good chance of prevention and an Israeli force that will neutralize threats when needed.'"
READ MOREJudea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank) are home to a half million Jews and somewhere between 2-3 million Arabs.
As part of the Oslo Agreements, Israel put management of parts of Judea and Samaria in Arab hands. Area C was to be fully governed by Israel.
Elad Tzemach describes the 3-way split here:
- Area A (18%) which has full civil and security control by the Palestinian Authority. This is where most of the Palestinian population is, with no Israeli settlements around. Entry into this area is forbidden to all Israeli citizens.
- Area B (22%) which has Palestinian civil control and a joint Israeli-Palestinian security control. This area includes about 450 Palestinian villages and their surrounding lands, with no Israeli settlements.
- Area C (60%) which has full Israeli civil and security control, which is where all Israeli settlements are situated alongside many Palestinian villages. 400,000 Israelis and 300,000 Palestinians live in this area.
At the moment, Israel is making verbal motions to absorb some of Samaria, Judea and the eastern part of Jerusalem, which they were able to take back in 1967 from Jordan, which had captured them in an aggressive invasion in 1948. Unfortunately, in 1967, Israel did not immediately incorporate the area and return it to its pre-1948 status as just another part of the Mandated territory intended as a Jewish State.
The constant delay to action doesn't mean that nothing is happening. In the words of Regavim, many Jewish towns are now surrounded "by clusters of illegal Bedouin squatters’ camps, and [have] suffered for many years from crime, vandalism, burglary and agricultural theft." In the larger picture, while the Jews yatter and chatter, there a dynamics at work which ensure a disastrous outcome for Israel. Namely, while Jews hesitate, the Arabs preordain the ultimate result by taking over state land in Area C in the West Bank nibble by nibble, gulp by gulp.
The PA has enjoyed diplomatic and monetary support of European countries for decades. Although the European Union was an active participant in the formulation of the Oslo Accords and its representatives participated in the signing ceremony, in recent years the EU has actively funded many of the PA's illegal activities in Area C, contributing to the very projects that undermine those accords by taking unilateral steps to create a Palestinian state encompassing all of Judea and Samaria.
Matters have become even worse since the Regavim report on the Arab illegal land grab in Area C (here) came out in November 2018:
Since 2009, the Palestinian Authority has been making methodical progress toward the unilateral creation of a Palestinian state by means of large-scale land theft. Regavim's newly-released report provides details of this hostile takeover of territory, and reveals the primary tactic employed since 2013: Agricultural land-seizure. As opposed to illegal construction, agricultural use is a quick and convenient method of annexing very large tracts of land, under the guise of innocuous 'humanitarian aid.'
Under the system of law in force in Judea and Samaria, agricultural use of land affords rights akin to outright ownership — effectively enabling poached land to be transferred quickly and irrevocably to private Arab hands. This explains the intensive "agricultural" activity orchestrated by the Palestinian Authority in areas surrounding Jewish communities, adjacent to the security fence, and near other strategic assets: The seizure of land in these particular locations interrupts the contiguity of Jewish settlement and annexes a crucial band of territory to Palestinian Authority control.
The modus operandi for these agricultural land-seizures follows a fairly standardized protocol of operating procedures: Access to the area slated for seizure is established by creating new 'agricultural' roads; irrigation networks made up of kilometers of pipes, hundreds of cisterns and water collection devices, and hundreds water tanks are dispersed over massive tracts of open space. The next stage involves seizing control of tens of thousands of dunams of uncultivated land through agricultural take-overs: Mass-scale tree-planting campaigns, plowing and planting crops, constructing hothouses, building terracing and fences, and more — all on land that belongs to the State of Israel. From 2013 through 2017, hundreds of agricultural land-seizure sites have been created using these methods, accessed by more than 150 new roads covering hundreds of kilometers.
One way or another — land theft, constructing illegal buildings, doing agriculture, planting olive trees on land they don't own, encroaching on archaeological sites, raising structures on hills overlooking Jewish towns — the Arabs are gobbling up much of Area C. And no one is stopping them. One can visualize a point in the not so distant future that the discussions now taking place will be moot, because the Arabs, by doing rather than talking and with the help of the European Union and a government reluctant to actually end Arab encroachment, will have established themselves firmly on most of the land, and, for all practical purposes, it will be theirs.
This article provides additional details about what's in Regavim' report entitled "The Roots of Evil: The Palestinian Authority's Systematic Annexation of Tens of Thousands of Acres in Judea and Samaria." The report itself is available here.
READ MOREMoshe Dann emphasizes the role of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) in the siphoning off of Jewish land. It's a commonplace observation that the Arabs often falsely accuse Israel of doing what they themselves are actually doing. Hence the accusation that the Jews are stealing Arab land, when the opposite is true. It is also unfortunately true that too often the Arabs claim land although they "lack supporting evidence of ownership, such as deeds, transactions and actual possession, or usufruct. Nevertheless, COGAT recognizes the claims as valid, thus supporting charges that Israel steals private land."
As another example of in a related area, the Knesset tried to put through a law called the Settlements Law under which 4000 housing units built by Jews in good faith on vacant land with government approval would be retroactively legalized and the Arabs who later claimed they were the actual owners would be reimbursed. The Law was struck down by the Supreme Court, thus again favoring Arab land claims. More information is to be found in the next section, the "Israel's Judiciary' section. See also Martin Sherman's article entitled "Judicial Overreach & The Sovereignty Imperative" here.
READ MOREIn this article, Arik Greenstein describes how the European Union is massively funding illegal Palestinian construction, openly, blatantly, and with no effective opposition. The embedded map makes clear how efficient the European project has been. Greenstein makes clear that the Israeli bureaucracy has backtracked on stopping the Europeans, while accepting lame excuses.
Aviel Schneider, writing in Israel Today [here] may have reached a core understanding why the Europeans are acting this way:
READ MOREA recent report from the Israeli non-governmental organization Regavim shows how broadly and profoundly the scheme by the Palestinian Authority is working. Barren hilltops, valleys, and other areas surrounding Jewish settlements in Area C are being taken over with the full knowledge of the Europeans. "The European governments don't just have a problem with Israel; first and foremost they have a problem with the Jewish people. Just look at the increasing antisemitism in Europe ... and the Palestinians are profiting from it."
Acting on the Fayyad Plan, the Arabs have been pursuing focused strategic illegal building in Area C of Samaria and Judea, which is supposed to be completely under Israel control. As Edwin Black writes, "European governments and the PA have completed the shredding of the already-weakened Oslo agreements." "In many instances, Arab residents from Areas A and B are bused in, encouraged by incentives to relocate or start a second home in the new settlements. ... In several cases, the illegal constructions are deliberately established on Israeli military reserves." Stopping them is difficult because of "Israel's complex legal system." And there's little indication that the politicians are making an effort.
European funding is not haphazard. Money for this takeover appears to be routed through the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), which, itself, has had strong ties for decades to a terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation Palestine (PFLP). They have shared resources and people. Senior PFLP leaders have served in high level positions in UAWC. "Despite, the growing body of public information about the UAWC and the PFLP, there is no indication that any of its donors intend to reduce the millions they are sending the UAWC for illegal development projects in Area C."
READ MORENaomi Kahn writes specifically of one aspect of the Arab illegal construction in Area C of Samaria and Judea; namely, the connection of these illegal structures to the East Jerusalem Electric Company's (EJEC) grid. "Other than the Israel Electric Company, the East Jerusalem Electric Company is the only company in Israel licensed to distribute electricity throughout the country." Regavim attempted to determine how these unauthorized connections of EJEC to the structures erected by the Arabs came about? The Israeli Civil Administration stonewalled, so Regavim "petitioned the court to compel the Civil Administration to provide satisfactory answers about this absurd situation." "... on the one hand, the Israeli government has vowed to fight and win what it has called ‘the battle for Area C,’ on the other hand it is allowing this phenomenon to entrench and reward the illegal construction that is the primary tool for the hostile Palestinian takeover of Area C.” What is going on?
READ MOREEliana Rudee writes that, while knives, car rammings, and bullets are often seen as the modern weapons of choice in Palestinian terrorism against Israel, according to agriculturalists and Israeli NGOs, trees could be the greatest threat to ensuring the future of Israel.
Yes, trees.
Usually olive trees. The Arabs are doing large-scale agriculture - on Jewish land. Well, the plantings may not be extensive, but the land grabbed for these plantings is.According to Regavim International Division Director Naomi Kahn, Israel is being blocked out of its own land in a "silent conquest." The Palestinian Authority has been illegally planting trees in Area C, land under full Israeli control, with millions of euros financial backing from the European Union (EU) and a Norwegian NGO, which has affiliations with The Popular Front for the liberation of Palestine (a terrorist organization as described by Israel, the United States Canada, Australia, and even the EU itself).
READ MOREAs if it comes from a single source, the news media have overwhelmingly and often in the same words portrayed the Bedouins illegally building in Khan al-Ahmar as defenseless, long-term occupants; Israel of course is the evil giant stripping the Bedouin group "of its land, its culture and its way of life." None of this is factual, but Israel is again facing a dilemma. "Enforcing its own High Court ruling will portray Israel as a war criminal [the ICC again]. Overriding it will turn Israel into a laughing stock. So far, the Israeli government has chosen the latter." To put it bluntly, Israel prefers to reduce the security of its state and to lose more of its small amount of land than do what it needs to do. The Bedouins, while garnishing the sympathy of the world as helpless, are engaged in a cold-blooded detailed plan to take control of Israeli land, dunim by dunim, and set up, in its stead, a de facto Arab state.
READ MOREYaakov Eliraz provides us with an accurate picture of how the Arabs have been extending their holding by illegal means. Eliraz writes: "The process is simple: First, they build illegal structures in an area in which they have a particular interest, challenging the Israeli enforcement authorities. This is followed by extensive use of legal means to prevent or delay demolition, as they employ the media and public opinion to portray the demolition efforts as a violation of human rights. Finally, the illegal construction is legitimized by means of civic planning processes." The game is simple, but deadly.
It is worth noting that in the words of Jacob Magid, January 9, 2020 (here):
READ MOREDefense Minister Naftali Bennett on Thursday announced the appointment of an external adviser who will be tasked with combating illegal Palestinian construction in the West Bank. Kobi Eliraz, who as Defense Ministry adviser on settlement affairs from 2016 to 2019 worked primarily on regulating illegal Israeli construction beyond the Green Line, will now "coordinate the fight against illegal Palestinian construction in Area C on behalf of the defense minister," Bennett's office said in a statement. "Citing Defense Ministry statistics, Kovi Eliraz said that compared to Israeli settlers who number roughly 450,000 but take up roughly 9% of Area C, the 240,000 Palestinians there have managed to gain control of 30% of the land, with much of it being used for agricultural and grazing purposes."
Last month, Bennett declared that combating illegal Palestinian construction in the roughly 60% of the West Bank that is under Israeli military and civil control based on the 1994 Oslo Accords would be a top priority for his office. "The future of the Land of Israel is at stake," Bennett said in a statement introducing the appointment of Eliraz. "Unfortunately, while the Palestinians have been taking over territory in a largely uninterrupted manner, the State of Israel simply has not risen to the occasion."
The Israeli judiciary has finally rejected 'embarrassing' bids to delay a Khan al-Ahmar evacuation hearing. It set a new date of November 1, 2020, by when the state must explain to the court why it had failed to evacuate the tents and huts and buildings that are home to some 180 members of the Jahalin tribe. But see the next article by Adam Berkowitz.
READ MOREIt is discouraging that Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, writing more recently than the other articles on Arab illegal building, tells the same story. The Arabs continue to build larger and stronger structures without permit on land that is not theirs. On September 9, 2020, despite the court's demanding it be told by November 1, 2020 why Khan al-Ahmar hasn't been evacuated, it was announced that Israel's decision to demolish Khan al Ahmar was postponed an additional six months. Here it is going into April 2021, and nothing much has changed, even though the media made much of the fact that Israel demolished two Khan al-Ahmar structures, sizes unknown, in January 2021.
Much of the illegal building is funded by the European Union (EU) that "provides money, people and planning, and legal knowledge." [The EU] "funds schools that intentionally place Palestinian children in danger in order to illegally grab Israeli land." And they have not been stopped from doing this by successive Israeli governments.
The article contains a novel way of confirming the facts. An Ad Kan narrator says:
"In the past year we have infiltrated agents in the Palestinian Authority under false identities and established contacts with EU officials — and what we have discovered is State of Israel, what we discovered was the European Union's 'Century Project'."
Aryeh Savir in "Exposed: PA Grand Plan to Occupy Area C, Israel is 'Losing Judea and Samaria'" here also has written on how Ad Kan obtained its information. He writes that Israel is losing the battle for the control of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinian Authority's (PA) grand plan to take it over illegally."
READ MOREIt is true that the Palestinians are stealing Jewish Land with the help of the European Union. This isn't surprising. The EU has made no secret of its support of legal and illegals Palestinian Arab activities. What is surprising is the illegality is aided and abetted by what seems an unlikely source: Israel's Supreme Court. The next set of articles tells us about this.
There is an anecdote that sums up the sorry state of events. The Arabs set up tents on the hills in Area C and declare it their land. In any war in the area, the Arabs will have the advantage of location. The Israeli Judiciary does little or nothing to prevent this. So some Jews decided to do what the Arabs were doing. They set up tents on some vacant hills. They were told to take them down; Jews are subject to Ottoman Law in the Territories and it is not permitted. It is certainly factual, as Moshe Dann (see above) writes:
The status of land in Judea and Samaria was further confused by former High Court Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, who, at the end of her term decided unilaterally that hazakah, the right to claim title to land by working it and paying taxes applied only to Arabs, not Jews.
We've seen that the judiciary often takes great pains to avoid having to stop illegal Arab building. This get little attention in the global press. Contrariwise, when the High Court struck down the 2017 Settlement Law, multiple articles appeared, almost all of which saw the end of the Law as a good thing, because it protected Arab interests. Jewish interests didn't matter. The article below by Yonah Jeremy Bob was as close to (left of) center as we could find. Note that the comments accompanying the article in the Jerusalem Post were in general much less kind to the Supreme Court than Bob is.
Bob writes that the 2017 Settlement Law "would have retroactively legalized over 4,000 unauthorized settler units in the West Bank." It should be noted that most of these are single outposts built next to a Jewish town. Marcy Oster, writing for the Arizona Jewish Post observed that "The Knesset passed the measure after Israel demolished homes or entire outposts built on lands that were later discovered to be privately owned by Palestinians." [Ed: Before assuming that Palestinian assertions of home ownership are necessarily accurate or even plausible, see Moshe Dann's article above.]
The Settlement Law was declared 'unconstitutional', which is curious in that Israel does not have a constitution. This is another instance of a high-handed left-wing extremist ruling by the High Court of Justice that capriciously negates a law passed by the Knesset. "Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin said the court 'trampled Israeli democracy and basic human rights' and warned that 'the Knesset will not accept the continued harm to its authority.'" Bob summarized the ruling this way: "the High Court said it was declaring the law unconstitutional since the law, 'retroactively legalizes illegal building by Jews in the area [West Bank],' while having 'deeply harmful consequences for the substantive rights of Palestinians.'"
As noted in Asian News: "The 2017 law would have legalised homes built on private land in the West Bank without government authorisation, provided that they had been established 'in good faith' or had government support, and that the Palestinian owners receive 125 per cent financial compensation for the land."
Dov Benovadia writing in hamodia.com explained: "The purpose of the law is to prevent demolitions of Israeli houses inadvertently built on land claimed by Arabs in Yehudah and Shomron. The law replaces the process which had been in place previously, in which Arab claims of ownership of land on which Israeli homes are built were adjudicated by the High Court. The bill instead institutes a special arbitration process that would, among other things, advocate land swaps that would replace the land claimed by Palestinians with state land of equal or greater value that is not in dispute."
There is also an excellent article by Martin Sherman entitled "Judicial Overreach & The Sovereignty Imperative," which takes the High Court to task for taking down the 2017 Settlement Law. It can be read here.
READ MOREAlex Dershowitz notes that while In the United States, the judiciary is the third branch of government and co-equal with the elected legislative and executive branches, in most parliamentary democracies, the judiciary is subordinate to the legislature (of which the executive is part), though they are generally somewhat independent.
Dershowitz writes further that, "Israel is a parliamentary democracy with an independent judiciary headed by a Supreme Court. It does not have a written Constitution, but it does have a series of basic laws that are quasi constitutional in nature. Unlike the United States Supreme Court which is constrained by the requirements that there be an actual case and controversy and that the case be brought by someone with standing, the Israel Supreme Court declined to accept such constraints on its power." Instead, it has become "increasingly involved in political and electoral issues," which often brings it into conflict with the Knesset.
READ MOREAs this article indicates, groups and individuals have protested the High Court's actions by word and by deed. This article describes one such example:
READ MORE"A large convoy set out Sunday morning in protest over the High Court of Justice's decision to hear petitions against the Likud-Blue and White unity government deal. The convoy, comprised of more than 100 Israeli flag-carrying cars led by the Zionist watchdog Im Tirtzu, accused the High Court of abusing its power by unlawfully interfering in the Knesset's agenda." As Matan Peleg phrased it, "This blatant violation of the basic principles of democracy endangers the future of the State of Israel, and the time has come for the judges to end their judicial dictatorship and realize that this is a democracy, not Iran."
This article gives us a good view of a serious problem, namely, Israel's Supreme Court is arbitrarily and arrogantly overriding, overturning and ignoring Knesset rulings. Avi Abelow writes about Israel's Knesset Speaker resigning his position as Knesset Speaker. He felt he had no other choice, given that "[t]he HCJ decision is not based on the language of the law, but on a unilateral and extreme interpretation. The decision of the High Court destroys the work of the Knesset. The High Court decision constitutes a gross and arrogant intervention of the judiciary in the affairs of the elected legislature. The High Court decision infringes on the sovereignty and sovereignty of the Knesset."
READ MOREMartin Sherman has written a well-documented essay on how Israel's judiciary is subverting the democratic process. Because this is going on, the judiciary is losing its aura of infallibility, and is being perceived as just another political entity. He cites Ran Hirschl, who wrote:
"In Israel, the negative impact of the judicialization of politics on the Supreme Court's legitimacy is already beginning to show its mark. Over the past decade, the public image of the Supreme Court as an autonomous and impartial arbiter has been increasingly eroded... as political arrangements and public policies agreed upon in majoritarian decision-making arenas are likely to be reviewed by an often hostile Supreme Court. As a result, the court and its judges are increasingly viewed by a considerable portion of the Israeli public as pushing forward their own political agenda."
As Sherman puts it, [The Supreme Court is using] "the law as a political weapon." In doing so, it is losing the people's trust. But, as we've seen in the previous section, this hasn't yet stopped the Court from allowing the Arabs to take over large swatches of Area C in Judea and Samaria, while restricting Jews from expanding their holdings.
READ MOREWhile the Jews waffle, the secular Jews waiting for the Palestine to graciously decide to live peacefully, there is a dynamic at work which ensure a disastrous outcome for Israel. Namely, the Arabs, who allow no Jews in areas they control, are illegally taking over more and more land in Area C, which is supposed to be totally under Israeli jurisdiction. The military and living space consequences are dire.
This is why some courageous souls have suggested that Israel carry out the second stage of Population Exchange. The first transfer was at the time modern Israel became a state. Almost a million Jews were kicked out of the Arab countries, forced to leave behind land, property and personal possessions., The ancestors of many of these Jews had lived there hundreds, even thousands, of years before the Arabs invaded in the 7th Century CE.
The reason for transferring the 'Palestinian' Arabs from Israel and its territories was stated succinctly by Bezalel Yoel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionist Party, in an interview with the New York Times June 2, 2020, here.
It's either [Jewish]settlements or a Palestinian state. "It's either or," he stated. "Either the settlements have a future, or the Palestinian state does — but not both."
Transferring the local Arabs from the land set aside for a Jewish State in 1922 to some spacious viable area somewhere in the enormous, partially empty area the Arab States control would stop the bickering and hostilities and deaths we now see daily at the borders of Israel, within its cities and in the Territories, Judea, Samaria and Gaza. It would create a better life for the Jews and for the Palestinian Arabs, as well as for the those Arabs who have been living as 'refugees' on UN welfare without the rights of citizenship in Arab countries.
The global media has since 1967, when Israel reclaimed Samaria and Judea, pushed the fallacious idea that the Arabs own Samaria and Judea and eastern Jerusalem. It is a 'everybody knows' that blocks the truth from being acted upon. The truth? That Samaria and Judea and some of the eastern part of Jerusalem were ordinary parts of Israel and were grabbed by Jordan in 1948 when it invaded the newborn state of modern Israel. In 1967, Jordan again invaded Israel, and this time Israel regained this land, land that belonged to her. The Arabs retained 99.9% of the what had been the Ottoman Middle East. is that not enough?
This set of papers in this section discuss the second part of a population exchange, i.e., that the Arabs, for the most part, be moved out of Israel and the Territories of Judea and Samaria. It is the most sweeping of the ideas of how to obtain peace in the Middle East. But small measures aren't working. If anything, the Arabs are getting better at murder and destruction of Jews and their property. Eliminating the Jews remains the mission and focus of the leadership and most of the Arabs of Gaza and the Territories, To date they have had little time to waste on developing a normal government with normal focus on family and jobs and recreation.
Note that none of the papers suggest that the Arabs just be kicked out, in imitation of how the Arabs governments in the 1940-50s kept the Jewish homes and property when they forced the Jews to leave, literally with the clothes on their back and whatever personal articles they could carry.
Lewis Lipkin defines population exchange as "the legal and enforced exchange of populations so as to eliminate conflict by eliminating contact." He notes that "[p]opulation exchange is not a new idea. Sometimes a complete separation is the only way that two groups unable to live together can get on with their lives. It might be time to complete the separation of the Jews and the Arabs. The Jews were evacuated from Arab countries when Israel was born. Maybe it's time to do the second half of the transfer: move the Palestinian Arabs to Arab countries." If it is moral and not racist to contemplate the removal of hundreds of thousands of Jews, who have legitimate ownership, from Samaria and Judea, it is not racist to transfer Palestinian Arabs to one or more Arab states.
There are, moreover, practical reasons. First, were an Arab state to be established in Samaria and Judea, it would, like Gaza, become yet another area from which to launch attacks against Israel. Second, as Lipkin points out, "The neck between the 1967 border and Netanya on the Mediterranean coast is less than 10 miles. There is no depth to defend against external attack — against external attackers that are supported by 5th columns that can draw on some 2 million internal enemies. Neither the geographic situation or the demographics are acceptable." As we have seen, any Israeli concession encourages the diplomats of a hostile Europe and UN to pressure Israel to give up yet more land. And if the Palestinian Arab population is not resettled in Arab Land, the Peace Diplomats will pressure Israel to allow a sufficient number of alleged 1948 "refugees" to come live in Israel, where they can more easily work to destroy it.
READ MOREMartin Sherman's writes about an article by Newt Gingrich called "Palestinians Are An 'Invented' People," December 9, 2011. In it, Gingrich said, "I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community." Gingrich kicked up a storm. In response, the more the writer's ignorance, the more he was appalled. Many responded that of course they knew this all along and it was no big deal. They didn't think to tell us why they had never corrected the notion that the Palestinian Arabs were a people. And some admired his courage.
Invented is right on the mark. In 1920 at the San Remo conference, the League of Nations, as part of their cutting up what had been the Middle East section of the Ottoman Empire, declared the area called the Palestine Mandate was legally destined to become a Jewish state. There were already some local Arabs living there, but the majority of Arabs had started coming from the neighboring Arab countries after 1905 for the economic opportunities created by the Jews and the British. These Arabs became a people overnight by Yasir Arafat's decree in 1964. Well, most of them become Palestinian but the Arabs in the part of the Palestine Mandate called Samaria and Judea, (aka the West Bank) were not part of the new Palestinians people. The West Bank had been seized by Jordan in 1948 when it invaded Israel. Then Jordan attacked Israel again in 1967 and this time Israel regained Samaria and Judea. Arafat repalestined the local Arabs. The Arabs living in the territory reclaimed by the Jews in 1967 became Palestinians, joining the 'Palestinians' living in the rest of Israel. Many of these new Palestinians objected. If they were to be considered part of a collective, they were Syrian, and had been so from the time the Ottomans ruled the area they called Syria Palestina.
Sherman asks how this plays into Israel's major concern: survival as the "nation-state of the Jewish people." Clearly, both demographics and geography as well as factual history are the substrate upon which political decisions are to be made. If the notion of an authentic Palestinian people is fallacious, it follows that they are not the owners of "Palestine" and the thrust to deprive Israel of its rightfully-owned land becomes nonsensical, if not downright hostile. Nevertheless, there are the so-called Arab refugees, individuals from different clans and their descendants, who have been kept in a state of suspended animation for years. Sherman does a masterful job in laying out the outlines of a comprehensive plan to relocate these people to a suitable milieu in an Arab country or Arab countries, where they could live as citizens and be responsible for their own lives. The plan would also benefit the economy of the countries that would play host.Martin Sherman has written other papers on subsidized emigration. One is called 'Incentivized Emigration: An idea whose time has come?' available at Arutz-Sheva here.
READ MORETed Belman and others have written extensively of the advantages of moving them to Jordan, where the majority of the population is already Palestinian Arab. See for example this video. Moving to Sinai is a less familiar possibility. In another article entitled "Anti-Israel Travesty of Population Transfer from January 15, 2020 (here), Steven Shamrak reminds us that "[on] 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, calling for the partition of what is left of the Mandate into Arab and Jewish states (into ridiculous six triangles). Interestingly, the resolution had a provision of population transfer. Arabs rejected this resolution and waged war against Jews! [...] Just two years earlier, 12 million people were transferred between India and Pakistan to stop the blood bath and resolve the conflict!
Because Israel won the war, when all international anti-Semites were hoping that Jews would lose, against seven well-armed Muslim states, the UN deliberately stopped the flood of Arab refugees from Israel! By doing so, the UN has created an unresolvable conflict and persistently has been maintaining it." In the present article, Shamrak writes why the local Arabs should be moved into the Sinai, which in point of fact never actually was part of Egypt.
READ MOREIt would be suicidal for Israel to allow a Palestinian state to be carved out of Biblical Israel, particularly one that would control a major component of her water supply and is capable of shooting missiles everywhere in Israel. But there remains the festering problem of a growing Palestinian refugee population living on cradle-to-coffin debilitating welfare, taught to hate Israel and the West and used as pawns to make claim to Jewish land. The editors of Think-Israel propose that the Palestinian Arabs — those from the refugee camps and those residing in the Territories — be helped to establish a viable state within the land given to the Arabs by the League of Nations when the Ottoman Empire was dissolved. The state would be physically well-separated from Arab population centers and legally independent of the Arab country that previously owned the land. Within their state, the Palestinian Arabs would have complete control of their politics, education, culture and living style. Given recent political developments in the Middle East where Israel's military and technological strength is a major asset, the strengthening of Israel's appreciation of its own religious roots and a growing disbelief in the reliability of supposedly impartial external organizations, this is a propitious time to create such a state.
READ MOREIt is a curious fact that Bedouins, living as nomads with no permanent housing for centuries now are claiming hundreds of thousands of dunams as their land. They have a romanticized tale that they are indigenous, despite the fact that most of the Bedouin tribes first came in the 18th and 19th centuries from Arabia, Egypt and Transjordan. They claim the Ottomans officially distributed tribal lands to them in the Negev. This, as have other dramatic claims to land ownership, has proven to be fact-free. [http://www.thetower.org/article/why-the-bedouins-claims-to-the-negev-are-outrageous/]. The media and the EU tend to lap up their claims and make no comment when they are shown to be totally without merit. When pressed, the Bedouins claim Israeli law doesn't apply to the Negev. But buffoonery pays. And their encroachments have become permanent.
In this essay, Mordechai Kedar dwells on some larger issues. He points out that "the truth of the matter is that the problem is not only an issue of the land and the Bedouins' illegal settlement on state lands." There is the deep problem that their lives are structured around tribal practices that have long been outmoded in the larger society. Though polygamy is illegal in Israel, the Bedouins practice large-scale polygamy. They tend to marry relatives, "and the result is that many children suffer from genetic diseases, some of which are severe and life-threatening," and taking much of the State's resources allocated to children. They indulge in honor killings and blood feuds. Israel, like other states in the Middle East where Bedouins live, hasn't been successful in coping with these practices, which are deeply rooted in their tribal culture. Kedar points out that these practices need to be changed, so that the Bedouins become normative citizens. Israel needs a holistic sustained approach. It is not acceptable that "the citizen in Tel Aviv is forbidden to build illegally on state land, while a citizen in the Negev is permitted." The Bedouins have taken advantage of their political and civil rights, which are equal to those of all Israel's citizens. Now they must be educated into accepting that they also have the same obligations as all other citizens.
See: http://abuyehuda.com/2021/02/the-bedouins-and-the-jewish-state/ - http://www.thetower.org/article/why-the-bedouins-claims-to-the-negev-are-outrageous/
READ MOREThe majority of the Palestinian Arabs continue to see their mission as the destruction of Israel. Ben Shapiro writes that "[t]he time for half measures has passed. Bulldozing houses of homicide bombers is useless. Instituting ongoing curfews in Arab-populated cities is useless. Roadblocks, touch fences, midnight negotiations and cease-fires are useless." The solution? Shapiro writes, "If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper. It's an ugly solution, but it is the only solution. And it is far less ugly than the prospect of bloody conflict ad infinitum. When two populations are constantly enmeshed in conflict, it is insane to suggest that somehow deep-seated ideological change will miraculously occur, allowing the two sides to live together." He might have added that, as things are now, the Arabs can lose many of the hostilities they start with no consequence, but Israel would not survive even one defeat.
READ MOREThis section has articles striding in time from the miracle of Hanukah, described by its author as the first battle against transnationalism, on to the Middle Ages when Christianity battled Islam to prevent it taking over Europe to some current concerns such as the activism of the modern fascist organization, Antifa, which claims to be fighting fascism.
These days, as throughout history, Jews are often caught in the crossfire and, just as frequently, are the first victims of a larger plan to take over a country or a kingdom. Today, some Jews devoted to the Democratic Party are beginning to reluctantly admit the party has been infiltrated by Socialists and Muslims, and both have an intrinsic hate of Judaism. As Lawrence Bush wrote in his article entititled "December 30, 1066: The Granada Massacre," https://jewishwebsite.com/featured/december-30-1066-the-granada-massacre/50392/.]
"A Muslim mob stormed the royal palace in Granada, Spain on this date [December 30] in 1066, crucified Joseph ibn Naghrela, the Jewish vizier to the Berber king, and massacred more than a thousand Jewish families." The violence, as usual, had been preceded by verbal hostility, including even a "maliciously anti-Semitic poem."
How familiar it all sounds.
Uzay Bulut writes on nine Christian churches, all named Hagia Sophia, that have been converted to mosques in Turkey. "These former churches no longer have local congregants because the Christians of these cities were massacred or deported about a hundred years ago." He traces the history of these churches, pointing out that "[t]he genocide against Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians committed by Ottoman Turkey from 1913 to 1923 has nearly marked the end of the indigenous Christian communities in the region. But it was not only hundreds of thousands of lives that perished in the genocide. The religious and cultural heritage of these peoples was also largely destroyed."
READ MOREFrom its inception, Islam was an invading army, conquering, slaughtering, vandalizing the Middle East, India, and invading Europe again and again after conquering Spain in the 8th Century. All of Christian Europe would likely be Islamic, were it not that the Islamic invaders were stopped at Vienna in 1683. And it turned the tide. Raymond Ibrahim tells us the tale, noting an important byproduct of Islam's continuous jihad over the centuries: Europe's subconscious fear of Islam. Could that be why Europeans handle the current Islamic 'refugees' so gingerly?
READ MOREEmil Avdaliani writes of the Khazars, a nomadic people from the Eurasian steppes, who managed to create a 'large powerful state' although hemmed in by the Islamic Empire. Remembered now mainly because they converted to Judaism, the Khazars achieved significant geopolitical power by taking advantage of the local geography. They situated themselves at the crossroads of two important trade routes and controlled the major rivers of the region, which allowed them to collect taxes from those entering and leaving these rivers. Similarly, they aimed at controlling key passes and cities on land. Moreover, they allied themselves with the Byzantines to neutralize the Muslim threat. And finally, urged by their Christian and Islamic neighbors to adopt their religions, they chose neither, but became Jews.
Nowadays, you might read a comment that modern Jews are not descended from the ancient Israelites but are descendants of the Khazars, a notion expanded in print by Arthur Koestler. Despite all the information tracing the DNA of modern-day Cohanim to ancient Cohanim, this false information on Jewish lineage continues to be cited in many an anti-Jew comment.
READ MOREMartin Sherman discusses the defects of the policy of 'land for peace', which found expression in the disastrous provisions of the 1993 Oslo Accords. Giving up land was never a way to reduce Arab animosity because the Arab states weren't angry over the amount of land Israel held. They were outraged that Israel existed at all. Yet Simon Peres, who understood that Arab hatred had nothing to do with Israel's land holdings, stupidly signed the Olso Accords, initiating the practice of giving up land for nothing, or even worse, expanding the area in which the Arabs could train to attack Israel without hindrance. While the Arabs gained the luxury of an enlarged platform for war, Israel lost "territorial barriers and strategic depth," which significantly reduced the security of its population. The story of not acting on one's knowledge and experience was repeated some years later when Ariel Sharon, who had written on the importance of retaining Gaza, gave it away unilaterally. Those are the facts. What remains a mystery is why Israeli leaders are so often dazzled by the talk of peace, they ignore the dangers to Israel of giving up its land, dangers which they had previously understood so well.
READ MOREIn Part 1, Soeren Kern discribes Antifa's ideology and its structure as a global network that started in Europe in the 1920s and has no limits on its use of violence and destruction of property in its fight against "fascism.' Part 11 focuses on Antifa in the United States. Antifa pretends it is a loose connection of grass roots groups that have sprung up to fight fascism. Actually, as Kern notes, Antifa is "highly networked, well-funded and has a global presence." It rails against the police. It uses violence and destruction of public and private property to carry out its objectives and is often employed by the Left to do what the Left can not do openly, i.e., eliminate the capitalist system. This goal remains constant, while the triggers for Antifa's destructive behavior vary, depending on what they can use at a particular moment to be outraged by. In sum, it is a fascist organization claiming to fight fascism.
READ MOREAs far back as the beginning of the United States of America and even before, piracy offshore Africa has been a scourge to boats transferring goods between countries. It is not far from the truth to say that thanks to the problems caused by the capture of American ships by the Barbary pirates, America reluctantly decided to utilize and expand its navy for warfare [Jefferson and the Barbary Pirates By Dave Benner on Jan 26, 2016. https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/review/jefferson-and-the-barbary-pirates/]. As recently as the 21st Century, between 2007 and 2012, more than 200 vessels were hijacked by Somali pirates. Peter Cook and Terry McKnight recount the story of the capture by Somali pirates of the Sirius Star, the largest ship ever pirated. They make clear that piracy was big business, done by young men with few other sources of income and 'owned' by organized criminals, 'warlords' undeterred by their non-functioning government. But, as Cook and McKnight write, "the entire maritime community came together to find a solution regarding Somalia. And succeeded. " The unabridged Horn of Africa counter-piracy operation has been a text book success for future international conflicts."
READ MOREIn Israel, it's hard to drop a pin into the ground most everywhere, without dredging up some object from antiquity. David Israel writes about a discovery of gold coins In Yavneh around Chanukah time. They found "gold dinars issued by the Aghlabid dynasty that ruled in North Africa, in the region of modern Tunisia, on behalf of the Abbasid Caliphate centered in Baghdad." As one of the archaeologists said, these are real Chanuka gelt.
Older coins, Hasmonean coins, were also found at Chanukah time in Shilo.
These coins date back to the ruler Alexander Jannnaeus and his
successors, so they are some 2000 years old.
[https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/2000-year-old-Hasmonean-coins-unearthed-in-Shiloh-on-Hanukkah-612567
"2,000-year-old Hasmonean coins unearthed in Shiloh over Hanukkah"
By Ilanit Chernick, December 30, 2019]
A seal (bulla) excavated in the City of David in Jerusalem makes even the Hasmonean coins seem relatively new. It dates from after the destruction of the first Temple, making it more than 2500 years old.
[https://www.jns.org/excavations-in-jerusalem-dredge-up-a-seal-impression-from-after-first-temple/ Excavations In Jerusalem Dredge Up A Seal Impression From After First Temple JNS, June 30,2020]What we are talking about in the January–December 2019 Issue
Editor's Note:Think-Israel tends to use salafist rather than extremist or Islamist or militant or fundamentalist or activist to describe generically a pious Muslim, one who sticks as closely as possible to the unfiltered words and actions of Mohammad and the first three generations of Muslims, including, especially, the Companions of the Prophet. In modeling himself as closely as he can on the preachings and practices of Mohammad, a salafist can in modern terms be precisely described as an uninhibited terrorist, a theological supersessionist, a political supremacist who believes Islam and sharia law must dominate and a social barbarian, who wages jihad with whatever tools are available. Thanks to the high quality of whitewash supplied by sympathetic propagandists, he seldom is so described.
This issue begins with suggesting why an organization such as the Muslim Brotherhood, with its wide range of ways to promote sharia from networking with politically, socially and theologically important groups in the West to starting the terrorists group Hamas in the Middle East, is still not labeled terrorist by the American government. It goes on to look at anti-Jewish activities that American Jews allow with no protest or participate in to some extent. It is most puzzling that just as Resurgent Islam, in league with Far-Left Democratic Party socialists, is again stirring a serious and strong brew of anti-Semitism, American Jews are largely unperturbed. American Jews who promote far-left-socialism, globalism and almost any group but their own, often work for the enlargement of socialist institutions, ignoring or castigating Judaism. Meantime, European Jews are already suffering severely from a large increase of anti-Semitism stemming from the large number of Muslim 'refugees' that have been coming to Europe the part few years.
We conclude with a History Section which begins with a description of some current excavations in Jerusalem, in the City of David and moves to other eras. One particularly startling bit of history is how the IDF had to be carefully conditioned to override their concern for all Jews so they could become capable of kicking out the innocent Jews living and working in Gaza, leaving it in the hands of Arab terrorists. It was supposed to bring peace. It brought increased hatred from the Arabs and havoc among the Jews.
Considering the villainy done by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) world wide, not exempting the USA, why is there still argument about labeling the MB a terrorist organization? The answer may lie in their use of stealth jihad as a major technique in the early stages of infiltration of a host country, holding back their strong-arm methods until they judge they can go for full control. Their 'quiet subversion', as Raymond Ibrahim puts it, allows people that don't want to see the obvious to point to the MB's peaceful behavior as evidence that the MB means no harm. In Prez Obama's time, they were even welcome in the White House and capable of squashing anti-Muslim Government training material (see here). Even today, if you google queries involving them, many of the items focus on islamophobia and other noxious injuries to the MB, not coming from them.
This set of articles starts with information on Sharia law, the practical product of Sharia ideology, the rock to which the Islamic lifestyle is anchored, before discussing some MB techniques and gambits. The next articles look at CAIR, an MB front linked to Hamas, and Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, a prominent figure in the MB leadership. For insight into how CAIR argues, read James Simpson article, "CAIR's New 'Islamophobia' Report: The Larger Threat," here.
Finally, we extend the range of information about the MB to the Middle East, where MB groups and activities promoting its global mission have, in the last few years, been in conflict with such countries as Egypt and Saudi Arabia but are acceptable in Jordan, Qatar and others countries.
The most benevolent definition of sharia I've seen comes from the Ing website here. It starts this way: "With the focus in recent years on the issue of Sharia in the United States, many myths and half-truths have arisen around the topic. The following are a series of questions and answers about Sharia in the United States, including a look at what exactly Sharia means and encompasses, how much of a real threat Sharia really poses in this country, and who is behind this campaign." The author(s) use a great deal of whitewash, as they paint a well-sanitized portrait of a peaceful Islam. Take for example the answer to this question, "Isn't it un-American to follow Sharia in the United States?" After claiming an unwarranted affinity of Muslim sharia to Catholic magisterium and Jewish halakhah, they state that the "essential parts of Sharia are practices such as daily prayers, fasting during the month of Ramadan, marriage contracts, and rules for charity and investments." This blandly ignores stoning adulterers and honor killing girls who have been raped, two of sharia's many such quaint customs. In this article, Earl Taylor explains why, contrary to what Islamic propagandists claim, the US Constitution and Islamic sharia law are not compatible.
READ MOREBill Warner writes on an important fact: Islam's ideology isn't just 'religious', it is also political, dwelling on how Islam is to dominate the entire world. This means that those who are skittish about discussing religion can examine Islam's concepts as they affect practical matters, such as a Muslim's attitude toward the kafir (a non-Muslim) versus how he behaves to another Muslim. If there is one flaw, it is that Warner notes that there are essentially two Korans without emphasizing the implications. The early verses written in Mecca and the later ones in Medina are contradictory. The early ones praise the Jew, the later ones revile him. In Islamic law, the later verses abrogate — cancel, nullify — the early one. Unfortunately the verses are arranged roughly by size from long to short and not by topic, event or chronological order. For a systematic analysis, see "Peace or Jihad? Abrogation in Islam' by David Bukay here and Stephen Coughlin's book Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad. Both provide a deeper understanding of how acceptance of the later verses laid the foundation for Islamic jihad and intolerance.
READ MOREKelleigh Nelson details particulars of Creeping Sharia, features that make it a serious menace to the United States. She provides us with actual example of sharia as it operates in America — attacks, demands, lawsuits, threats, intimidation censorship — carried out by Muslims whose mission is to make Islam preeminent in the US. She points out, "The steady adoption of sharia's tenets is a strategy Muslims are using to transform America into an Islamic state." She concludes with the chilling observation that "Sharia is in every facet of American society, from politics to football, including Kaepernick's kneeling during the Anthem. Islam is being taught in government schools while Judaism and Christianity are banned."
READ MORE
This video is from an article entitled, "Islamic clerics in Iraq arrange selling of 9 year olds for "pleasure marriages" by Avi Abelow. (here.) As Abelow writes, "Listen to this Islamic cleric in Iraq. Technically speaking, he is just promoting Sharia Law. The problem is that Sharia Law is appalling and sickening. What religion allows for 9 year old orphans to be sold for something called a 'pleasure marriage?' Being sold and forced to marry AT ALL is wrong. Even if someone is of marriageable age, they should not be sold into a marriage. But especially a 9 year old orphan? How can this be happening in our world?"
Tawfik Hamid urges that the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) be declared a terrorist group, if we are to retain our American civilization. Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE have already done so. They have seen MB in action and know MB is not moderate; it is regressive and works to put all countries around the world under Sharia dominance. Even Hamas, itself a violent terrorist branch of the MB tree, has announced it has broken away — but MB still supports it through cutouts. Qatar, with the help of MB, has used terror groups effectively against Middle East countries that can compete with Qatar in selling natural gas to Europe. Turkey was living in the modern era for many years, until Recep Erdoğan, a MB supporter, gained control and is moving Turkey back to the 7th century; he is capable of helping carry out the MB desire to flood Europe with Muslims. The MB is as hostile to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who have been straying away from strict Koranic fundamentalism, as it is to European democracies. On the whole, MB may claims it is moderate and indeed has peaceful enterprises, but it underwrites and often commits violence, secure in the knowledge that it is obeying the Koran's command to "slay the idolaters [that's you and me] wherever you find them."
READ MOREISIS and al-Qaeda leaders, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, all started out as members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). They left to join more exciting, overt terrorist groups, but, as Raymond Ibrahim points out, "... when all is said and done, the Brotherhood's patient and incremental methodology has proven far more effective than the outright jihad of its terroristic offshoots." Almost thirty years ago, MB wrote out how they would wage jihad from within the USA (see here). They called what they would be doing as the 'Civilization-Jihadist Process.' They described their work in America as a kind of grand jihad to eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within, "'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers..." They would use coalition, conversion, absorption and cooperation; they would unify and direct Muslim efforts. They would continue to create front organizations to infiltrate particular parts of society. Their single goal was to gently ease (their word was 'settle') Islam into American society. Islam would eventually become rooted. As they wrote, "That Islam is resident and not a passing thing; rooted "entrenched" in the soil of the spot where it moves and not a strange plant to it". They aren't in for a sudden kill. They work to spread their civilization deeply and broadly in the USA, without alarming the populace. They are confident that ultimately it will become ingrained and intrinsic to American culture. It is certainly true that they have had great success infiltrating our media and our educational, judicial, financial and political systems.
READ MOREWhy ever would anyone think there's a hidden agenda in a friendly get together of Christians and Muslims? It is low-keyed; it takes place in a church, underscoring that it is a peaceful event, with no evil intent. Clearly, the Muslims wish only to reach out and familiarize the Christian audience with the peaceful nature of Islam. They want to make the church goers understand they all worship one God, the same God. How absurd to think this is part of a global effort to make Islam globally supreme. Why would Tabitha Korol write of this polite assembly as Muslim-controlled and part of Islamic policy to take control of the local population? Simple. Because behind the smiles, there is the reality that the Muslim leadership really is focused on taking over all countries, one way or another, one way and another. And another. And another.
READ MORERecall, if you will, the agitation, violence and death threats emanating from Muslims everywhere because some cartoonists had drawn Mohammad in a contest sponsored by the Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper. These protests were in no way spontaneous. Olivier Guitta writing soon after the rioting, pointed out that, the "cartoon jihad is tailor-made to advance the Muslim Brotherhood's long-term worldwide strategy for establishing Islamic supremacy in the West." They had been trying to get Europe to criminalize any criticism of Islam as blasphemy. They would make good use of the 'blasphemous' cartoons. A Muslim cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a leader in MB, was one of those involved in rousing Muslims around the world to riot. Kyle Shideler writes more about him below.
READ MOREIlya Feoktostov writes of the strange behavior of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis (MBR), which joined forces with CAIR to picket a synagogue which "hosted speakers whom CAIR calls 'anti-Muslim hate group leaders.'" If the MBR was indeed concerned about hate groups, then why partner with CAIR? With strong though mistaken indignation, they and many other Jewish leaders denounced the synagogue, not the damage that Muslim CAIR has inflicted on Jews. The speakers brought important and valid information on security against radical Islam to the congregants. Unfortunately, the intimidation by CAIR and the picketing Rabbis worked and the synagogue has abandoned their speakers program, making the local Jews less able to cope with attack by Jew-haters.
READ MOREIndividual democratic congressmen have associated themselves with CAIR. One such, Ilhan Omar, spoke at a CAIR fundraiser. To put it more bluntly, as Raymond Berger wrote here, "The purpose of Omar's speech was to raise funds for an unsavory organization. [...] Why is a powerful Congresswoman helping to raise funds for an organization connected to terrorist and Islamist groups devoted to destroying the US government?" Eileen Toplansky writes of a more general issue: the bond between the Democratic party and terrorist-affiliated CAIR. Virulent Jew-hating statements by Democratic presidential candidates and congressmen are not chastised. And the Democratic party has had a radical political transformation. She concludes we need "to vote out every Democrat who supports CAIR since Democrats and jihadists are actively engaged in dismantling America."
READ MOREKyle Shideler writes about Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, one of the Muslim Brotherhood's (MB) outstanding leaders, who, like the MB itself, is yet to be designated as a terrorist by the USA. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries have banned the MB, but Qatar remains supportive, especially of Qaradawi, who has been a major figure in shaping Qatar's educational and banking systems and utilizing an umbrella fund for meting out charity intake to various terrorist groups. His work is not confined to Qatar. "Qaradawi provides Qatar access to an international network of committed Islamist activists throughout the West, who are willing to support Qatari policy goals." Thus Qatar has a position internationally much larger than its size would indicate. Shideler suggests that labeling Qaradawi a terrorist would put pressure on Qatar to reduce its terrorist-supporting activities.
READ MOREUsing data from the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), Edwin Mora writes about the common goal toward which the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and Islamic terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda work: the establishment of a global Islamic caliphate under sharia law. The oldest, the MB, has the advantage of being well-organized, well-funded, far-reaching and possessing a large network of associated and derived groups. Its reach is global. It is actively present in some 18 Middle East and African countries, itself or by proxy. It is closest to reaching the goal of fundamentalist Islam primarily by seeking to change "existing governments and societies from within." It thinks of itself as offering a different culture, an alternative civilization to Western culture. In 4 of these countries (Turkey, Qatar, Sudan, Iraq) and in the Israeli's Territories where Palestinian Arabs reside, MB "maintains a terror-linked presence." MB works directly with the state (Qatar is a major sponsor) and/or provides groups who commit genocidal violence with money, weapons, intelligence and asylum. CEP considers Hamas, which operates out of the Gaza Strip, the most "lethal Brotherhood offshoot." Some Middle East countries have justifiably labeled MB a terrorist group. The CEP report is available here.
READ MOREMudar Zahran describes the Muslim Brotherhood as "the world's wholesale terror producer...it has evil tentacles that stretch across the globe wherever democracy and free choice thrive." He provides us with a description of the relationship between the MB and King Abdullah in Jordan, where it openly "works hand-in-hand with the monarchy" and helps keep the population, which is 70% Palestinian Arab, in check. It is a major force preventing King Abdullah's overthrow, acting "as a sort of para-military squad." In turn, with Abdullah's connivance, it won seats in the Jordanian parliament. "The King and the MB are using their resources to promote antisemitism, hatred for America and stall the peace process, putting people's lives in jeopardy."
READ MOREThe Boycott-Divest-Sanction (BDS) movement seeks to destroy Israel through economic sanctions and divesting investors of stock in countries that sell to Israel. We need to take BDS seriously, if only because it has reached deeply into the legal, academic and political infrastructure of countries around the world. This set of articles provides examples of BDS infiltration in these areas. One area that is often ignored is the incorporation of BDS ideology into what on the surface would appear an unlikely environment: professional societies, noted for having a high percentage of members capable of thinking logically and with detailed knowledge of their particular expertise. The technique for absorbing these societies into the BDS movement is actually simple. The 'humanistic' and/or 'social justice' committees of the professional society are taken over by members of the radical left. They then attempt to formulate attitudes for the entire organization. The American Library Association was an early example (see here). The tactic didn't succeed in September 2019 with the American Political Science Association (see here). But they keep pushing.
As Alex Joffe writes in his article "Social Geography of the BDS Movement and Antisemitism" here:
Like antisemitism, BDS is both an environment and an instrument; it exists as a free-floating cultural norm both of the far left and far right, and as a tool utilized against Israel and Jews. The presence or absence of Jews is secondary and the complex realities of Israel are irrelevant. But the creep of BDS and resulting antisemitism into the normative liberal political behavior of Western countries where Jews have been an active, welcome presence in post-war history is an ominous development.
Alan Dershowitz points out that critics of Israel criticize only Israel for "doing bad things to the Palestinians." They ignore the oppression suffered by "Tibetans, Georgians, Syrians, Armenians, Kurds or even Ukrainians." He asks, "Where are your BDS movements against the Chinese, the Russians, the Cubans, the Turks or the Assad Regime? Only the Palestinians, only Israel? Why ... the disproportionate hatred directed against the only nationstate of the Jewish people and the disproportionate silence regarding the far greater imperfections and deserved criticism of other nations and groups including the Palestinians." The answer: the Nazis had many Western European sympathizers and collaborators in the countries they conquered. This anti-Semitism from both the right and the left has persisted generation after generation. Note that there is another large source of European Jew-hate: there is a strong correlation between spikes of Jew-hate and clusters of Jew-hating Muslims settling in Europe. These 'refugees' unabashedly sprout Jew-hate without hindrance, making it acceptable for others to chime in.
READ MOREEugene Kontorovich, professor at George Mason University's School of Law and a director at the Kohelet Policy Forum in Jerusalem, wrote an important article on the ACLU's 180 degree flip on discrimination in its protection of BDS. (See here.) The article can't be read except by subscription. It was summarized by the editor of Just Desserts, Vivienne Grace Ziner, here:
In this article David Weisberg expands on Mr. Kontorovich's arguments. He concludes by asking, "So, is the ACLU woefully ignorant or intellectually dishonest? You decide."
READ MORELukas Mikelionis records Ilhan Omar's assertion that a boycott of Israel is as proper as boycotts of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Such language is shocking coming from a member of Congress, yet there was no thunderous rebuke. Democrats, however, are said to be "mulling a resolution condemning the boycott movement." How nice!
READ MOREMany commentators are skittish about writing about the choices American Jews make politically. It was bad enough when 70-80% of American Jews voted twice for Prez Obama, who worked hard at weakening Israel, even refusing to send ammunition in the 2014 Gaza War, while the Arabs were shelling Israel. Melanie Phillips writes of a choice closer to home: American Jews stay with the Democrats, who allow newly-elected Muslims to mouth ugly Jew-hatred. As she writes, "Downplaying or ignoring the Jew-baiting now tolerated by the Democratic Party, liberal Jews are so blinded by hatred of Trump that they actually attack him for supporting the Jewish people."
In truth, American Jews largely ignore that President Trump has acted decidedly against anti-Semitism on campus and in communities. He has also done a huge amount to benefit Israel. This includes moving the USA embassy to Jerusalem and confirming what has always been true, namely, that Israel has owned Samaria and Judea (AKA the West Bank) since the 1920 San Remo Conference. The Jews do occupy it, just as you occupy your own house.
READ MOREDespite his being prepared on how to react to anti-Jewish propaganda in college and despite accepting the kindnesses the Jews he knew bestowed upon him, Stacy Gittleman sad story describes a boy who almost immediately was caught up in the BDS movement when he entered college. He began mouthing the false and/or distorted BDS versions of the facts, and was impervious to correction. Unfortunately, this is not a unique or infrequent case.
READ MOREIn Academia, staging hurtful theatrical events to highlight BDS is an accepted way to behave. It is mostly being triggered and maneuvered by Muslims. One such incident occurred at Columbus State Community College in Ohio and is described here by Rachel Wolf. On occasion, but not this time, Jewish students have participated, anxious to show they were on the right side of social justice for the Palestinians. A comment by GreenBasketball to Wolf's article stated the generality clearly: "Import Muslims, import hatred. And as more Muslims immigrate to the US, the more hatred that will come to the US. In Europe this has already reached violent levels of Jew hate. As the number of muslims increase there, it will reach middle eastern violence levels. It is merely math. The more of them, the greater the Jew hate. No, it does not mean all will hate and be terrorists, but as I say, it is just numbers. The more of them, the more Jew hate. It never fails. Never. Naturally Jews in the US are so insane they are in favor of this immigration."
READ MORETeaching students to hate Israel and Jews isn't confined to colleges and universities. Jonathan Tobin describes a proposed high school course designed to do the same openly and blatantly. Aside from its message, note that it takes advantage of the division in American Jewry between those who recognize the BDS threat for what it is and the majority of American Jews, those on the left politically, who, in conformity with the Democratic Party, only recognize Jew-hate when it comes from the right, not from the left.
READ MOREMany churches are active supporters of BDS. Denis MacEoin writes of one of these, one of the liberal United Church of Christ (UCC), specifically ex-Prez Obama's 'spiritual home', Trinity UCC in Chicago, with its openly hostile attitude toward Israel, the bald and ugly anti-Semitic speeches by its pastors such as Jeremiah Wright Jr. and its close affiliation with Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. MacEoin stresses that these views aren't confined to black Chicago radicals but, judging from the anti-Israel resolutions passed, permeate much of the UCC membership. They fawn on Muslims and encourage their practices; they ignore CAIR's links to international terrorists; they are silent on " the expanding exodus of Christians from the West Bank and Gaza ... precipitated by extremist Muslims and the Palestinian authorities"; and they don't allow facts to prevent them from writing earnestly but erroneously about Israel's supposed mistreatment of Palestinian children. Both their words and actions are "a contradiction of normative Christian ethics."
READ MOREAnti-Semitism is growing again in the USA. Not only is it growing, it is becoming normalized. Ben Shapiro (here) sums up the three sources of anti-semitism: "Right-wing white supremacist anti-Semites see the Jews as an eternal threat, a racially "mongrelizing" threat to white purity, a religious blot, a nefarious group of schemers threatening their race-based civilization. Radical Islamist anti-Semites see the Jews as the sons of pigs and monkeys, religious threats who must be exterminated. Left-wing anti-Semites see the Jews as defenders of brutal hierarchies, purveyors of exploitation."
We start off with an article on respect, and the lack of respect. Respect blocks nasty anti-Semitic theatrics. Instead, Jews have tried to deal with anti-Semitism by claiming victimhood. This works well for Muslims, but is annoying when it is a Jew complaining.
For the most part, this section deals with the typical response by very many, if not the majority, of American Jews to the growing anti-Semitism in America. It can be summed up this way: when not in denial, they identify the strongest sources of Jew-hate incorrectly.
Jews are known to be trendy, They are first to adopt a new point of view, a new generality, a new life style. Yet in one area, they retain a loyalty almost a century-old. Starting In the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then president of the United States, managed to convince Jews he was their friend while ensuring that his administration kept Jews out of America, when the Nazis were hounding Jews and later slaughtering them. After the second World War, American Jews continued to indulge in the dogma that the left as embodied in the Democratic Party was liberal and pro-Jewish, unlike the evil old Protestants who kept Jews out of so many areas. Besides, these stodgy Republicans had no sense of humor. If this ever held true, it is now some half century in the past, Nowadays, a member in good standing in the Democratic Party must subscribe to socialism and globalism, old ideas that have been brought back and to a new one, intersectionality, a gestalt of minority groups, all discriminated against. Jews are specifically excluded. Whites are excluded, unless they be of the new feminist persuasion.
For a while, Jews believed they could be loyal to Judaism and loyal to the Leftists, each separate in time and place. They are reluctantly learning they can subscribe to leftist tenets or they can follow Judaism. They can't be both, they can't do both, no matter how they distort Judaism to fake a commonality that doesn't exist.
Jews have applied none of their smarts to discovering effective ways to deal with the new rules governing one's identity and the old enemy, anti-Semitism.
Many American Jews are in uneasy denial. They still boast of their twinning with non-Jewish comrades of comparable wealth, education and status. Like others on the far-left, they are vexed at voiced 'islamophobia' but blithely trivialize ingrained Islamic Jew-hate. Yet somewhere, way in the back of their consciousness where it doesn't need to be examined, there's an untalked-about apprehension, a vague disquiet, that brings forth a voluminous denial when someone talks about the Democratic Party's growing anti-Semitism. They are solidly against racism, but shrug off indications that it has become a characteristic of the Democratic party. As a notable example, the new Muslim congress women spew forth Jew-hate much more virulent than that spoken by the current versions of the KKK. Do the Jews not hear it? Why are they not concerned that the DNC hasn't disavowed such speech?
The Republicans removed Stephen King from the Judiciary and Agriculture Committees because of what they said was a racist remark. King has a history of remarks that, these days, are considered to be racist and white supremacist. The remark that got him kicked off the committees was typical in tenor and content: "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?" Querulous? Maybe. Mild? Certainly. Factual? Definitely. In tone, a sputtering candle compared to the fierce fire coming from the Muslim congress ladies. King's remarks over the years are as nothing compared to the shrill, blunt, angry and unending hate the congress women pour forth at each and every opportunity. They believe every word of what they say. They never sugar coat their arguments. Their hatred of the Jews is unmistakable. They nurse Jew hatred in others and encourage its growth. They unambiguously proclaim their prejudice at every opportunity. It is their core passion.
They have received no serious condemnation. Their positions on congressional committees are safe. They are of the far left. The far left, allied with resurgent Islam, is socialist in political theory, global in aim, and practitioner of 'you are what your group is' identification. More and more, the far left leads and makes the rules for the Democratic party.
The activities and the remarks by the Congress ladies are openly hostile to Jews, but au fond no different than ex-Prz Obama's attitude. He wasn't often confrontational but he worked hard to get the Iran deal accepted, even though the Iranians openly proclaimed they'd use the bomb on the Jews. He knew what they intended but ignored it in his speeches. Instead, he emphasized how he was slowing down Iran's nuclear activities, often implying he was changing Iranian direction. He wasn't changing Iranian plans and he knew it. He showed his real feelings again when he denied Israel ammunition just when it was needed — when the Jews finally invaded Gaza, after trying to stop 'lone-wolf' Arab terrorism for 8 years. But most of his activities were behind the scenes, and alerted few Jews.
Obama's attitude wasn't a minority opinion among Democrats, not even when he was first elected. American Jews seem to have forgotten that the Democratic National Committee (the DNC) barely was able to keep a popular anti-Israel plank off their platform. They succeeded because they feared losing Jewish money, not because such sentiments were abhorrent to them.
The current Jewish attitude — ignore Jew-hate but hate everyone who hates any of a particular set of minorities — was epitomized by Sacha Baron Cohen's award by the ADL. When first announced, it sounded like satire — a comedian being declared a leader by a deliberately ineffectual Jewish organization. But it was actually the case. The Jewish Chronicle reported that Sacha Baron Cohen, British and Jewish, actor, comedian and director, was to receive the International Leadership Award November 21, 2019 from the Anti-Defamation League for his use of comedy to expose racism, Islamophobia and, oh yes, anti-Semitism. When he gave his speech, yack after yack, he demonstrated that he didn't know there a jihad against the Jews going on. The audience laughed with him in gleeful agreement. Maybe he should have thrown in a comment that some dummies believe the world is round. The laughter would have been explosive.
About the speech itself: the media wrote almost exclusively about Cohen's major theme, his anger at Internet companies, whose major sin is, apparently, that they reinforce what Cohen calls conspiracy theories. Muslims, who are far-right in ideology are now considered by the Left as another endangered minority. The media were as oblivious to the damage being done by these Muslims as Cohen himself. Matt Wilson wrote here:
Baron Cohen turned to the rise of demagoguery, conspiracy theories and hate crimes around the world, and pointed to what he sees as the most logical explanation for this dangerous trend. "All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history," he said.
And to him, no one bears more responsibility than the man who created Facebook. "It's like we're living in the Roman Empire, and Mark Zuckerberg is Caesar," he said at one point. "At least that would explain his haircut."
Baron Cohen spent the rest of his speech systematically dismantling a recent address given by Zuckerberg at Georgetown University in which he defended Facebook's limited attempts to combat its massive problems and explained away its inaction as a defense of "free expression."
Read Cohen's ADL speech and view the video below. It makes clear that the ADL, in selecting Cohen, selected someone who shares with many American Jews the belief that conservative Jews, nationalists and the right-wing hold absurd opinions. They ignore that the pertinent statements from these groups are not opinions but facts. They ignore that resurgent Islam, while playing the victim, has already created severe problems in the US and Europe for Jews and non-Jews alike. They are angry that some of the social media disseminate these distasteful facts. They want these distributors censored.
Victor Rosenthal deals with the new anti-Semitism and how to respond. He focuses on ways and means using actions by Israel as illustration. Forget "trying to teach Jew-hating bullies about the Holocaust, or about the importance of tolerance, or that someday they might be the ones being persecuted, or about how all humans are brothers (they aren't)." Go for respect, he advises. Like a barometer, respect increases when Israel aggressively wins a war or a sporting competition. It goes down when Israel is lenient to terrorists it's arrested. Batting "away missiles without killing the would-be murderers that are launching them is a very big minus." In the millenia of the disapora, "anti-Semitism thrived, in part because it was easy and safe to victimize them [Jews]." To fight anti-Semitism, Jews need better ways than writing letters and preaching peace. Gaining respect is one way to deter manifestations of Jew-hate.
READ MOREThis is a video of Sacha Baron Cohen delivering his speech, when presented with the International Leadership Award by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) November 21, 2019. He received the award for using his talents to expose racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
Below is the transcript of the speech itself.
The Middle Eastern Arab states have had an excellent return on the millions and million of dollars they have spent proclaiming the rights of the Palestinians to Israel and stirring up hate against the Jews around the world, yet there was not a word about the Muslim war against the Jews by Cohen in his speech on fighting bigotry, racism and hate. Nor does Cohen seem to know that the Antifa is a terrorist organization. His implied argument seems to be: Antifa marched against the far right, so how can they be a terrorist organization? He finds it despicable that the social media will reinforce the (to him) fallacy that in Britain "white Christians are being deliberately replaced by Muslim immigrants." He believes it is a disgusting lie promulgated by the internet that the millions of illegals coming into the USA via its southern border (bringing crime and disease and disrupting communities near the border) is an invasion.
In giving his speech, Cohen was not acting in his typical mode as an exaggeration, a cartoonish character. In stating his own opinions, he was telling us what many American Jews also believe. What is worse is that Cohen voiced opinions are held by the ADL leadership. These opinions do not inspire the ADL to acknowledge who the enemies of the Jews are. Without incorporating this knowledge, how can the Anti-Defamation League do what it was set up to do?
READ MOREThe large majority of Jews who run the large Jewish organizations are members of the Democratic Party. They have no problem fulminating against right-wing anti-Semitism but tend to ignore attacks against Jews by minorities favored by the Democrats. Unhappily for them, as Caroline Glick points out, the attacks against the Jews, say in large Jewish communities such as Brooklyn, are executed by blacks, a minority favored by the Democratic Party. How have these Jewish organizations responded? These large Jewish well-funded organizations designed to protect Jews from verbal abuse and physical attack have been most mousy quiet, speaking up mostly to suggest it is right-wing Jew-haters who are responsible, even though they know that isn't so. The foci of attacks have also expanded to academia, where Jewish students are harassed and physically attacked, and university administrators and professors encourage these acts by allowing antl-Semitic conferences on campus.
Glick points out that there is a larger issue: "many non-Orthodox Jewish communities now conflate progressive politics with Jewish identity [...] The problem with this strategy is that with anti-Semitism rapidly becoming a major component of progressive politics, the more strongly liberal Jews embrace progressivism, the less capable they become of defending their Judaism—much less defending their fellow Jews who aren't progressive."
READ MOREOf the congregations of Jew haters, there is right-wing anti-Semitism and there is left-wing anti-Semitism. In the right wing in 2016, all such groups — white supremacists, skinheads, the KKK and neo-Nazis — numbered almost 1000, 917 to be exact, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (here.) This sounds impressive, but there is only a relatively small number of members within this large number of groups. Many of these groups literally have only a handful of members. The KKK, which was once large and powerful, now totals well under 100 chapters and some 3000 members as of 2016, according to the Anti-Defamation League. I've read estimates of the total membership in all these groups as around 10,000 to 20,000. Few if any have political clout, funding or implementation strength. In contrast, the far left such as the Intifada have hundreds of thousands of members, and are well-supported to fight, to riot, to disrupt gatherings they don't control.
Matthew Hausman writes of the Jew-hating new Left, which now dominates the Democratic Party and Congress. Its controlling members are ideologues of socialism/Marxism, now labeled 'Progressivism, and Islam. They describe themselves as workers for social justice and equality. This is no burden for many Jewish Americans. As Caroline Glick notes, "Whereas the 2013 Pew survey of American Jews showed that a mere 19 percent of American Jews believe that observing Jewish law is an essential part of what it means to be Jewish, 56 percent said working for justice and equality is an essential part of Judaism."
What these Jews are trying to ignore, these Left-leaning Jews whose devotion to the Democratic Party has never faltered, is that they now need to subscribe to every tenet of the Democratic Party package, if they wish to continue as loyal members. And Progressivism is decidedly anti-Jewish. To conform, they need to embrace 'progressivism' and its intrinsic Jew-hate as the heart of Judaism.
READ MOREIt appears American Jews are working to retain their loyalty to the old liberal Democratic party, despite the fact that the Democratic ideology has changed almost completely in content. It is no longer 'live and let live', it's more 'live as we tell you to live.' As part of this effort, they have joined the 'liberal' castigation of President Trump. They allege he is racist and bigoted toward minorities, anti-Semitic and authoritarian. True, he can hardly be described as weak and ineffective. But the Jewish frenzy at Trump's supposed anti-Semitism because he is targeting the Muslim freshmen congresswomen is bizarre. Apparently these Jews regard them as minorities, not hateful anti-Semites; ergo, Trump is persecuting minorities, which is a sign of underlying anti-Semitism. In actuality, it is the Congress women who are the Jew-haters. In defending them against Trump, Jews are defending Jew-haters against some one who speaks up against their Jew hate. As Jonathan Tobin points out, "claims that this administration is destroying democracy and liberty are partisan hogwash."
READ MOREIsi Leibler writes an excellent summary of Jews acting against Judaism and following progressivism. He notes that "[o]ver the past decade, the Jewish establishment leadership in America with the exception of the Orthodox, the Zionist Organization of America, and other small groups has failed to speak up in defense of Israel and imposed a curtain of silence." [...] "Many of these consider support for social radicalism to be a far higher priority than support for Israel." ... "They stand out as the most anti-Trump minority in the nation." Jewish organizations that should be neutral "openly display bias against Trump," who has been strongly pro-Jew, not just in word but in deed. This rejectionism has emboldened Democratic party radicals such as the new Muslim women congressmen and those seeking to be the Democratic Party's 2020 presidential candidate to promote BDS and criticize Israel at every opportunity. Ironically, this comes at a time when support of Israel by the American puble is at an all-time high.
READ MOREAllen Bergstein writes of some of the many ways that Jews, who "excel in the arts, science, medicine, law and finance" are just plain stupid when it comes to political intelligence. "Their support for Democratic candidates who are outright Jew haters is inexplicable. They show no common sense nor any desire to build up whatever portion of the brain functions as a road map to survival." True, sad but true. Too many American Jews prefer to ignore the facts and give their allegiance to the Democratic party, which is chock full of members filled with open and brazen hatred of the Jews.
READ MOREJews sense the growing anti-semitism. It's hard to ignore that Jews are being beaten up, the synagogues sprayed, their cemeteries vandalized. But they accuse the wrong people. The new threat, the real threat. Caren Besner writes, "comes from an unholy red-green alliance — the Marxist left and Islam." Unfortunately, too many Jews continue to believe that their powerful enemies of old, the neo-Nazis and the KKK, are as powerful and effective as they once were. Just when American Jews need to understand where the new, dangerous, potentially deadly Jew-hate is coming from, the majority of the Jewish leadership is useless. It too ignores the Democratic party Muslims who spout anti-Semitism in the halls of Congress. It too continues to identify the current left with the liberal left our ancestors knew. Meantime, the Democrats effectively preach the doctrine of intersectionality, embracing the victimhood of particular minorities. More and more openly, they declare Jews are the source of the problems these minorities have.
READ MOREManfred Gerstenfeld provides us with a wide range of ways anti-Semitism is currently whitewashed. They are used by politicians, the news media, members of the judiciary, even by writers who identify themselves as Jews. As Gerstemfeld notes with reference to Peter Beinart, "Jewish whitewashers of antisemitism are particularly in demand." Muslim foment Jew-hatred wherever they settle, and yet there is always a large group of politicians and media personalities ready to deflect awareness of the persistent Muslim incitement to harm Jews. Gerstenfeld mentions several ways but didn't include the oft-used technique, where violent and murderous Muslims declare themselves to be the victims. But as Gerstenfeld points out, he's written of "only a small selection of examples of antisemitism whitewashing that, with appropriate research, can be turned into a major collection."
READ MOREThere are several overlapping Jewish groups that can rightfully be called traitors to Judaism.
First there are Jews who have superimposed and/or substituted tikkunism, human rights and social justice for Judaism and declare the ersatz product authentic.
Then there are individual Jews undermining Jews, Judaism and Israel, writers such as Peter Beinart and Norman Finkelstein and academics both in Israel and America who use their positions to preach against their own people or ignore their own and endorse groups who would destroy Israel.
Most of the damage comes from Jewish organizations. Organizations such as J Street, the New Israel Fund and Peace Now claim to be Jewish, and may indeed have many Jewish members. But they consistently reject measures that would support Israel or strengthen its security. Contrariwise, couched in lofty language and hollow generalities, their plans are designed to weaken or destroy Israel. In the name of 'democracy', the New Israel Fund uses Jewish money to generously fund Arab groups such as Adalah that openly work against Israel's existence. Discover The Networks has an accurate article about the New Israel Fund here. Discover the Networks also has a detailed article on J Street. The facts presented (see here.) lay to rest J Street's assertions that it wishes Israel well. The newer and very insidious organization, IfNotNow, is examined in this video that comes from the Elder of Ziyon.
There are Jewish organizations Jews have supported for many many years, without investigating whether these groups are doing the jobs they are richly paid to do. One, the ADL, protests Jew-hate speech from the right but ignores the vast amount and more effective hate speech and harassment coming from the left. Its recommendations are in general in keeping with far-left Democratic Party ideology, to which the ADL leadership subscribes. Another, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) has stopped helping Jews. European Jews could currently use their help in leaving Europe, where they have no protection against terrorist attacks that specifically target them. Instead, HIAS may take Jewish money but they are now busy bringing Jew-hating Muslim 'refugees' into America. Not only have they dropped Hebrew from their name, they are linked with organizations such as J Street and the New Israel Fund, organizations that claim to be Jewish but that are notoriously anti-Israel and supporters of BDS. HIAS (or is that now IAS?) also collaborates with CAIR, a subversive organization that actively seeks to replace the Constitution with Sharia law. CAIR was formed by Hamas members and, as guided by its co-founder Omar Ahmad, acts as a front group to carry out Muslim Brotherhood objectives.
Some organizations are bad for the Jews because they give us a false sense of security; they claim they are busy, busy, busy working to defend Jews but they accomplish little or nothing. This is particularly true in the universities. Around the beginning of the 21st century, the Muslims began a sustained attack against Jews in major universities. From the start, they had groups organized, large and nasty pre-printed posters and well-practiced techniques to harass and intimide Jewish students. They soon connected with far-Left Marxists and began a concerted and effective effort to prevent those who didn't agree with them from speaking or teaching on campus. Hillel and other groups have yet to act effectively while more and more Jewish students are intimidated, Judaism vilified and free speech undermined. Small groups such as Amcha Initiative, The Lawfare Project, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, ZOA and Im Tirtzu in Israel are effective within their limited resources, but we are yet to see the large organizations get significant results. Some supposedly Jewish groups on campus are undermining Jews by collaborating with the Jew-haters, J Street for sure, and ADL on occasion. We are also beginning to see the hostility toward Jewish students and the distorted and often fallacious information about Israel taught in the universities being transmitted to high school students and to even younger children.
This section examines some of these Jewish Jew haters and anti-Israel organizations.
In this essay, Victor Rosenthal has written about violently anti-Zionist Jews and Jewish organizations, who embrace the Arab's goal of destroying Israel. Ignoring both history and Israel's legal ownership, they claim Israel is occupying Palestinian Arab land. They subscribe to a detailed fantasy, which, contrary to reality, views Jews as racist, 'white' oppressors and "Arabs as the indigenous 'brown' inhabitants of the region who have been colonized by (primarily) 'white' European Jews, supported by the rest of the white, privileged, world." Rosenthal calls them misozionist Jews. Many base their activities on their idiosyncratic view of Tikuum Olam. Tikuum Olam (fixing/rectifying/improving the world) is actually an important Jewish activity. The Chabad Rabbi, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, maintained it was everybody's mission (here). Israel's quick response with doctors and medical equipment to disasters around the globe is an excellent example of how the concept has been incorporated into the Israeli way of behaving.
As used by latter-day social justice 'theologians', it came to be defined as repair of the world, in the sense of redoing it properly, a rather tall order, considering their ignorance of actual Judaism. But then again, rather that using Judaism as the base from which to develop ways and means to make the world a better place to live in, the adherents of Tikuum Olam substitute their socialist and human rights slogans and call that Judaism.
This article is one of a series of articles. In another article (here), Rosenthal points out that Tikkunism is "a radical departure from traditional Judaism. Reform Judaism de-emphasized the 'ritual' commandments like observance of kashrut and Shabbat, while emphasizing the 'social' commandments like concern for strangers, widows, and orphans, and the political vision of the Prophets. Tikkunism goes even farther and redefines the social commandments in terms of progressive politics. For example, the 'stranger' (ger) in the Torah, who in traditional Judaism is a convert to Judaism or a non-Jew living in the Land of Israel and obeying the Noachide commandments (ger toshav), becomes any outsider even a Palestinian terrorist or an illegal immigrant. The injunctions of the Prophets are also interpreted in the most extreme left-wing way possible."
For a rounded picture of how Tikkunism relates to anti-Zionism, read also Rosenthal's article, "Tikkunism Begets Misoziony" (here). Using Carolyn Karcher's views on Tikkunism, he details how the anti-Zionists have replaced Jewish concepts with their idea of Tikkun Olam. For example, it would be a move to social justice "to participate in a demonstration to make it easier for people to vote, but it would not be tikkun olam to try to tighten safeguards against voter fraud." With the same reasoning, they assure us their allegiance to Arab causes is Jewish.
READ MORECinnamon Stillwell writes about supposedly reputable academics who distort objective reality in their desire to destroy Israel. One of her articles reviews a book by Sunaina Maira, with its "skewered perceptions" of the USA and Israel, all couched in "numbing leftist jargon" (see here). Another describes the anti-Israel antics of faculty members of departments of Jewish Studies at various California universities (see here). Yet another article turns Israel's being the only state in the Middle East to not discriminate against gays into a defect, asserting "pinkwashing" was invented by Israel "to downplay its alleged oppression of the Palestinians." (See here.)
When a group of Jewish studies professors wrote on 'word crimes', "the manipulation of academic language whereby Israel is demonized and its foes are cast as victims" (see here), academics such as Ian Lustick of the U. of Penn Middle East Studies Department were outraged. In the present article, Stillwell writes about Norman Finkelstein, a well-known anti-Israel Israeli. What is indicative of how wide-spread academic anti-Israel vitriol has spread, he spoke at a panel at Princeton University.
READ MOREIn this article, Rabbi Aryeh Spero condemns the major Jewish secular establishment organizations (ADL, AJC, NYF, JCRC, Conference of Presidents, and Federations) for knowing full well that Jews are being attacked in Brooklyn and Manhattan by blacks, Hispanics and Muslims. Yet they do nothing. As Spero says, "You can be sure that if the attackers were white or Jewish and the victims Black, Muslim, or Hispanic, [they] would be the very first organizing protests against racism and pontificating about something rotten within American society." For many years, they have fought hard for minority rights, mostly excluding Jews, who, apparently are not considered by these Jewish organizations to be a minority. Spero suggests that denouncing their minorities for beating on Jews "would shatter all they believe in." "These Jewish organizations also call their support of Islamic immigration a 'Jewish value,' ignoring that a cardinal Jewish value is protecting Jewish life and safeguarding Jews." They may believe that protecting all minorities except the Jews is 'Jewish', but in effect they strip Jews of protection and put Jewish survival at risk.
Rabbi Spero also points out that in many universities, like many Jewish deans and professors, these organizations ignore the harassment Jewish students suffer on campus. The attitude of the secular Jewish organizations that repudiate the need to attend to their own particular people, is also mirrored in Congress, where Jewish politicians are silent while the squad of Muslim women congressmen loudly preach Jew-hate. Time and again, universalist Jews use their drive and energy to promote their Far Left-liberalism values; "the Jewish people and their needs are insignificant and must take a back seat."
READ MOREDaniel Greenfield writes about Jonathan Greenblatt, the director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Greenblatt was an odd choice for an organization intended to protect Jews. He had worked as a special assistant for Prez Obama, no lover of Jews, and for the Aspen Institute, which received many large grants from George Soros, the quintessential Jewish Jew-hater. Under his leadership, which began in July 2015, "the ADL had turned sharply to the left." This was made glaringly clear at the ADL's Never is Now 2018 conference. Greenblatt defended Soros, not Israel." Greenfield points out that the "list of speakers did not include a single official from a major pro-Israel organization. Not even AIPAC. However Jill Jacobs, the head of the militantly anti-Israel T'ruah, was a featured speaker. T'ruah had rallied efforts to force Jewish charities to stop helping Jews living in areas claimed by Islamic terrorists." The other speakers and invitees were no better. Greenfield's gloomy conclusion needs to be taken seriously: "Once upon a time, the ADL was a Jewish civil rights organization. Now it's just another generic lefty group that pretends to care about Jewish causes only long enough to fleece some of its donors. ... As the Left goes anti-Semitic, the ADL is becoming a threat to Jews."
READ MOREIlya Feoktistov, executive director of APT, a Jewish organization that reports on anti-Semites and others that wish to create dissidence between ethnic groups, describes what happened when he himself was reported to the police as a dangerous anti-Semite by leaders of the ADL and JCRC, who disliked his accurate portrayal of them as using their organizations to engage in promulgating anti-Trump nastiness and Democratic Party ideology, not the defense of Judaism. That the New England regional director of ADL, Robert Trestan, and the executive director of Boston's Jewish Community Relations Council, Jeremy Burton, would behave in such a disgraceful manner is almost unbelievable, but Feoktistov's account is factual, even tending to be low-keyed.
Feoktisov has published additional thoughts on the larger significance of leaders of Jewish defense groups using their positions to maliciously and falsely accusing a "rival" of being an anti-Semite. (See here.) As he says:
READ MORE"In some ways like the doomed Athenians of Socrates's time, who destroyed their community while repressing internal enemies and ignoring threats from external ones, Burton, Trestan, and the other Jewish sophists play a dangerous game. By inflating its meaning to encompass their political enemies, including Jews on the right, they embezzle the gravest term of opprobrium that can be wielded by the Jewish people, and devalue it into their own worthless political plaything."
Steve Frank writes about J Street's tour of Israel for young Jewish adults, as a conscious alternative to Birthright Israel. J Street's tour is all about the suffering Palestinian Arabs, crushed under the ruthless feet of the Israeli occupiers. The participants in the J Street tour heard only from selected Palestinian Arabs and saw very little. The highlight of the tour was a visit to "the now-shuttered ... Shuhada Street ... a half-mile long road in Hebron which used to be the thriving market center of the city." The Arabs had a field day. There were no neutrals present to correct distortions. Nothing was said of the murderous Arab violence that led to Shuhada Street being closed. There was no hint that the Arabs now shopped in a close-by commercial district, which includes a luxurious mall. Shuhuda Street is a very dramatic visual in its ghost-town appearance,. Susceptible tourists were readily persuaded that the Palestinians are mistreated and Israel is evil. Frank spells out some of the facts the tourists didn't get to hear. They paint a very different picture.
READ MOREStrictly speaking, the US Green Party (GP) doesn't belong here. It has Jewish subscribers, but it is not a Jewish organization. However, as Ambassador Alan Baker points out, the environment is part of a bundle of GP's concerns, which include the promotion of non-violence, the distribution of wealth, the demolition of Israel. In other words, it differs little from the goals espoused by the US Democratic Party. This may be why many Jews support it, despite its attitude towards Israel.
As Amb. Baker writes:
"In a world that is plagued by environmental and ecological catastrophes and that faces continuing and ongoing moral and humanitarian crises such as willful bombing and wholesale killing of civilians, mass murders, mass expulsions, denial of basic social, cultural and religious rights and freedoms, assaults on immigrants and others, it is curious that the U.S. Green Party has chosen to concentrate most of its efforts on hounding Israel. This is even more astounding because Israel is one of the only states that excels in the very values treasured by the Green movement innovative ways to protect the environment, reduce pollution, purify wastewater, desalinate seawater, reforest, and protect natural resources.
Israel has indeed developed important ways to protect the environment while the Palestinian Arabs have garbaged up their aquifer and show little concern for the environment. Yet GP wants to dissolve Israel and create a Palestinian state in its stead. Curious.
READ MOREResurgent Islam continues to infiltrate America's educational system, popularizing its version of the history and geography of the Middle East, while falsifying information about Israel. It is in full swing in the universities, where anti-Israel attacks now include attacks on Jewish students. It has also more quietly but effectively infiltrated high schools and even grammar schools, where dedicated Marxists and teachers just following the curriculum teach the beauty of Islam. Their israelophobic and islamophilic efforts are often aided by the inaction of Jewish defense organizations, the acceptance of a corrupt curriculum by the school administration and the school board and by the support of the local population. Bernice Lipkin describes one such example in detail.
There is also a video available. Lipkin writes, "I didn't discover this video on Newton until recently, else I would have cited it. It describes the Newton scandal in an nicely formatted informative narrative. See it here."
READ MOREIn this set we explore the increased strength of anti-Semitism and the constriction of free speech in Europe.
Traditionally, Jew hate came from the right, but now it is mostly coming from the left. Muslims infiltrating a host country bring in Jew hate as part of their core creed. They also are responsible for much of the actual violence against Jews.
Ambassador Ron Prosor put it this way here:
There comes a time in any decent person's life when they should face reality and say, "No more." We are at such a point — the radical has become mainstream, and anti-Semitism has moved from the edges of society to the heart of the political system in certain European countries."
It may be more sophisticated, yet it is just as violent as it always has been. Behind its new, civilized mask of political opposition to Israel's policies, anti-Semitism has the potential to be extremely dangerous, since it erodes the very basis on which the free world has stood since the end of World War II. This basis is a shared set of values that have become the consensus in politics and international relations. Among others, they include the sanctity of free speech until the point where it becomes incitement, the sovereignty of nation-states and absolute intolerance for racism.
[...] A survey published by the European Commission this month [July 2019] found that 44 percent of Jews between the ages of 18-34 have experienced some sort of anti-Semitic attack. Many of them now hide their Jewish identities for fear of harassment, attacks and violence. We usually only hear about the deadly attacks, such as the ones on a Jewish school in Toulouse or the Parisian kosher grocery store, but Jewish people deal with some sort of anti-Semitism regularly.
Different countries are at different points on the line connecting rejecting Jew-hate to coping with it — often inadequately — to actively furthering it. But while different European countries react differently, the European Union (EU), the collective representing the majority of the European countries, is strongly and consistently anti-Semitic, focusing its hostile activities primarily on Israel, which it sees as thwarting the EU's plans. Starting with the sensible goal of sharing a common currency and easing entry across neighboring states, the EU began overriding decisions made by elected officials in the member states. Long term, EU shares with the UN a desire that we all live in a one-world socialist society, administered, of course, by the UN. And Israel is strongly nationalist.
The inpour of Muslims who expect the host population to conform to their ways has not only terrorized the country's Jewish community, it has played havoc with the native population, disrupting the way they live, the values they have and how they express their cultural and religious identities.
Constricting free speech is how European politicians and legislators cope with the response of the native population to being overrun by the non-assimilating Muslim immigrants. Instead of dealing with the core Muslim values that fuel alien behavior, they hamper effective response by the natives and censor speech that might offend Muslims — which means that any criticism of Islam and Mohammad, not matter how accurate or how mild, is off-limits.
In turn, suppression of anti-Muslim criticism has helped populism grow. As William A. Galston writes: (here)
... populism draws strength from public opposition to mass immigration, cultural liberalization, and the perceived surrender of national sovereignty to distant and unresponsive international bodies. If economic arguments had determined the outcome of the Brexit vote, Britain would have remained in the EU. If economic growth had been decisive in Poland, which enjoyed the faster growth rate in Europe between 1989 and 2015, the populist Law and Justice Party would never have become the country's dominant political force.
Despite this political reaction, the betting money still appears to be on Europe being controlled by Islam within a few years. A video that assesses and projects from the current status features Douglas Murray in 'Death of Europe' (here).
Is there an inconsistency in predicting an Islamic future and at the same time a socialist one-world? Probably not. Muslim countries, Sunni and Shiite, often work together to put Islam in control, and then duke it out on which country does the actual management.
Rami Dabbas points out that "the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has the most extensive network of completely legal organizations in the Old World, while they retain the closest of ties with the Salafis and jihadists, which makes them even more dangerous than the militant radicals." Asking whether the MB is a terrorist organization invites slippery answers, in that its protectors, who also protest plans to declare it an illegal organization in the US, can point to all its legal activities. An accurate answer is this: the MB will do anything and everything, legal and illegal, locally and globally, to advance Islam above all other religions and Muslims above all other people.
Among the many videos on MB, we suggest starting with Cynthia Farahat's 'What is the Muslim Brotherhood' (here). Ami Horowitz has many factual and interesting videos about the MB, including 'The Truth About The Muslim Brotherhood' (here).
READ MOREIn a related article (here), Olivier Guitta observes that Europe's growing radicalization happens in jails, mosques and universities. In this article, he focuses on the growing number of mosques where Islamic imams preach Muslim doctrine and urge terrorism as acts of piety. Mosques and preachers are well-funded by groups and organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood that Westerners call extremist, but which religious Muslims see as conforming to Islam as practiced by Mohammad.
Two documents that deal with inculcating radicalism in the very young are: Kasim Hafeez's video 'Born to Hate Jews' (here) and Raheel Raza's article 'Radicalization of Kids: a Global Threat (here).
READ MOREEuropean deradicalization projects have focused on how to reorient terrorists, to give them a "healthy identity." Olivier Guitta (see above) suggested that it was the propagandizing imams that needed to be deradicalized, if only because they were the nucleus that inculcated the desire to do acts of terrorism in large numbers of Muslims. Giulio Meotti would agree that attempting to rehabilitate jihadists doesn't work. He points out that until we tackle the core statements in the Islamic texts that provide religious justification for slaughtering people, deradicalization won't work.
READ MORESwedish politicians for the most part still insist that Muslim immigration benefits the Swedish people but the reality, as Bruce Bawer writes, is very different. In fact, it may be "already far too late to forestall Sweden's transformation into a sharia state." As it is, services for the elderly have been severely cut to pay for welfare for immigrants without the language or level of education needed to find a job.
READ MOREThis is an email describing problems confronting hospital personnel because of the attitudes and behavior of the influx of Muslim 'refugees'. It has been circulating on the internet for some five years. It came to Think-Israel as having been written by a nurse in Germany (here). The same letter has also been attributed to a Czech female physician in Munich Germany. Aside from the opening remark and trivial changes in some text ("Is this situation coming to your country?" vs "Is this 'situation' coming to America?') the letter is the same.
I am using the 'doctor letter' that appeared in the Sun Bay Paper because it is an early letter before much was known about how the Muslim refugees were reacting in Europe. Yet it is in keeping with what has been reported over time in bits and pieces in many articles and in comments appending articles. Moreover, Sun Bay Paper added remarks from Snopes.com. Snopes, always protective of Islam, disparaged these claims. But as the editor of the Sun Bay Paper points out (here)
Ed. Note: While we agree that unregulated influxes of economic migrants, asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are causing widespead problems for Western Societies, there is no way to verify this "letter" from the Czech Doctor, who, due to security risks from Islamic extremists, choose to remain anonymous. Snopes.com (an online service that vets material for authenticity) could neither deny nor affirm its veracity. However, since similar information is also available that mirrors much of what the missive states, we have chosen to print the information as a guest commentary/opinion with a following caveat from Scopes at the end of the article so readers can judge for themselves.
I had to admit I found so much of what Snopes said (here) risible. I especially liked Snopes subtly suggesting the letter was not authentic because the authority of a doctor bolstered the claims in a way that wouldn't happen if the claim came from a "barista or dog walker." It read as if Snopes was pleased it had scored a debating point. But would a barista or dog walker have the knowledge and hospital experience to write such a letter? Huh?
READ MOREGuy Milliere writes about France as a "a country adrift. Unrest and lawlessness continue to gain ground. Disorder has become part of daily life." Antifa members take to the streets. Separately, Arabs take to the streets. In another demonstration, African illegal immigrants take to the streets. Yellow Vests take to the streets at another time. Living areas are similarly partitioned with built-in no-go zones, and avoided by outsiders. Jews, targeted by Muslims, are leaving the country. President Macron chooses to focus on climate change. The government's response to the increasing disunity is to use new laws that allow the police to arrest "anyone, anywhere, even without cause" and punish anyone who uses ill-defined 'hate speech'.
READ MORESoeren Kern writes of Ursula von der Leyen, slated to be the President of the European Commission, the powerful administrative arm of the European Union. Like any dedicated leftist, she urges large amounts of money be spent on reduction in carbon emissions, a guaranteed minimum wage, gender balance quotas, admission by all the member states of any migrant that requests asylum and inquiry into the "human and ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence." These expenses will of course come out of the pockets of the taxpayers and, of course, will have positive impact with no downside. But she also has larger, more global ambitions. Her policy proposals indicate she plans a large increase in the power of the EU, primacy of EU law over the current laws of the member states, the creation of a European army and the formation of a European superstate "at the expense of national sovereignty of the member states." Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said of her plans, "She wants to build a centralized, undemocratic, updated form of Communism that will render [obsolete] nation state parliaments, where the state controls everything, where nation state parliaments will cease to have any relevance at all.."
READ MORE
Imagine this scene. Several gangs are finally on trial for raping, grooming for prostitution and trafficking many, many children. These activities have been an open secret for decades but the media and the police have kept it quiet. Finally someone is convicted and sent to prison. It is a media person who has been writing about these horrible activities. As Linda Goudsmit writes, "Tommy Robinson was convicted for reporting the crime of Muslim rape gangs in England. The only law that Tommy Robinson broke was the Islamic supremacist sharia law forbidding criticism of Islam." This is, unfortunately, a true story.
READ MOREJudith Bergman informs us of the details of the Action Plan against Disinformation launched by the European Union (EU). The EU's concern is for Muslims. It wishes to avoid connections, informatively or disinformatively, between Islam and/or Muslims and extremism, a vague word for terrorism. it is quite serious about stomping out any activities it regards as disinformation. It advocate severe censorship on what the media write about Muslims.. The ways to 'detect and expose' and stop information are quite Orwelllian. The EU apparently believes it is better to stop information from reaching the public than refute it after the fact.
READ MOREThis issue, as usual, explores a sequence of points in time of historic importance. What is unusual is those discussing the most recent events are first. These discuss the current archaeological digging in Jerusalem in the area called the City of David extending to the Arab village of Silwan. Obviously, it is of enormous historic and religious importance. Andrew Lawler, writing in the National Geographic, November 14, 2019, notes that the maze of tunnels reveals remains of ancient Jerusalem. "... A rocky spur of land jutting south from Jerusalem's Old City ... conceals a subterranean labyrinth of natural caves, Canaanite water channels, Judean tunnels, and Roman quarries." Unfortunately, as do most of the main-stream media, he spends a disproportionate amount of time recording the disgruntlement of above-ground Arabs complaining that the excavation is damaging their houses. Such articles ignore Arab distortions, exaggerations and just plain lies. Considering the harm these complaints do when used as a reason to close down a source that proves the Jewish attachment to its ancient homeland, more balanced articles such as the one below by Nadav Shragai need focus on refuting these complaints rather than the archaeological artifacts uncovered.. Victor Sharpe writes about some serious vandalism: the local Arabs have been deliberately destroying Jewish antiquities on the Temple Mount and environs. The local Arabs have not complained about Arab bulldozing affecting their homes; apparently Arab bulldozers don't crack Arab houses.
One of the artifacts found is a weight engraved with the word 'Beka' in ancient Hebrew; it dates from the First Temple period. As the Arutz-Sheva Staff writes here:
The Beka weight was used to weigh the half-shekel donation brought by the Jewish people for the maintenance of the Temple and the census, and it is mentioned in the Bible in Exodus 38, Verse 26:
"One beka per head; [that is,] half a shekel, according to the holy shekel, for each one who goes through the counting, from twenty years old and upward, for six hundred three thousand, five hundred and fifty [people]."
Another major find is a bulla (a seal), which bears the name Natan-Melech (Servant of the King) and has been accepted by even skeptical experts as likely having belonged to the Natan-Melech who was an official in King Josiah's court (Kings II 23:11). See here.
Nadav Shragai refutes the many inaccuracies in the usual write-up of the dig in the Old City of Jerusalem and provides the context the main stream media tend to ignore. He also tells us about some of the exciting findings recovered on the Pilgrimage Road to the Temple Mount.
READ MOREAs Luke Moon points out, excavations in the village of Silwan are confirming the Biblical record. In fact, each new finding in the City of David and environs makes even more preposterous the Arab claim that Jews are johnnies-come-lately in their ancient land. In a recent article, the New York Times chose to ignore Silwan's history as a Yemini Jewish village. In an egregious lie — or maybe just out of plonkin' ignorance — it reasserted that "Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967 and then annexed it", implying it was Jordanian and the Jews were the aggressors. Even a 101 course in History would familiarize the NYT writers with the fact it was Jordan that invaded Israel in 1948 and captured Samaria, Judea and a piece in eastern Jerusalem. In 1967, when Jordan again attacked Israel, Israel didn't capture Jordanian land. Israel took back its own land, land that Jordan had seized in 1948, when it attacked the new-born state of Israel.
READ MOREVictor Sharpe writes that many Muslim 'authorities', including Yassir Arafat, have reassured us that the Jews built no Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and they have no long-term association with the city. Retroactively, the Palestinian Arabs have been 'proving' this by using bulldozers to wantonly destroying archaeological evidence buried under the Temple Mount and environs. As expected, most of the media, which bemoaned ISIS destroying antiquities in Iraq and Syria, raised no objections. Archaeologists and volunteers have sifted the tons of dirt dumped by the Arabs. They have found thousands of artifacts. But As Sharpe points out, "... each precious find, ripped and torn from its age old location upon the Temple Mount by Palestinians, fatally compromises what archaeologists can tell us: a most grievous and barbarous sin against history and civilization."
READ MORE
In 2005, the then Israeli government handed over Gaza completely to the Arabs by kicking out each and every Jew who was living there. There was an attempt to justify this action by asserting it markedly reduced terrorism. As Akiva Bigman notes here, this assertion only works if one starts counting from the 2000 Intifada, when Arafat deliberately caused a sharp increase in terror incidents. It is more accurate to assert, as most Jews have come to understand, that "the Gaza withdrawal of more than 8,500 Jews in August 2005 serves as a costly case study demonstrating the implications of evacuating lands and turning them over to Arab control." [See Avrohom Shmuel Lewin, here.] Instead of turning Gaza into a mini-state promoting industry and human rights, Gaza was soon taken over by Hamas with the endorsement of the Arab voters and became another place to train terrorists and develop ways to kill Jews. In his JNS article, Lewin cites Maj (res.) Gen. Gershon Hacohen, who points out the military assumptions asserted before withdrawal, i.e., "territorial separation between Israelis and Palestinians ... will delineate borders, reduce friction and create stability" proved "totally untrue." There was also the blithe reassurance to Israelis, repeating the nonsense reassurance at the time of the Oslo Accords, that if this proved untrue, the military would "embark on any necessary military operation;" That didn't happen. That couldn't happen.
One aspect of the Gaza withdrawal that has received little attention is the preparation it required to condition the Israel Defense Force (IDF) to be ready to carry out an attack on its own people. The article below describes the grotesque training required to make Jewish soldiers act against their own people and its impact on the fighting ability of the IDF. As noted by Professor Arieh Zaritsky In Eretz Israel Shelanu:
'The Mental Preparation' for the Disengagement and its Aftermath in the IDF, summarizes a fact-finding investigation of the notorious "mental preparation" the IDF (Israel Defense Force) had been undergoing for 18 months, prior to the "Disengagement" from Gush Katif. This "mental preparation" had been an outright brainwash that had been the big enabler of the deportation crime (dubbed disengagement).READ MORE
In Mosaic Magazine, Rick Richman quotes Ben Hecht on his early life:
I lived 40 years in my country without encountering anti-Semitism or concerning myself even remotely with its existence. This is perhaps a record for a Jew or, more likely, for a country. . . . I attended no synagogue, read no Jewish history or literature, never heard of the Spanish Inquisition, and listened to no discussion of Jewish problems.
It took the growing power of Hitler and the Nazis to instill in him his Jewish identity. Working with Hillel Kook (aka Peter Bergson), he took up his pen to boldly push people into action. As Colin Shindler writes, "Ben Hecht offended many during his campaign to open people's eyes to the Holocaust. He didn't care a jot."
READ MOREIn this article, Alex Grobman and Susan Rosenbluth review Michael Dobbs book: "The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught in Between." Dobbs writes of the time Germany wanted to rid itself of its Jews; its mania to slaughter all Jews was still a few years in the future. Dobbs writes about a group of Jews trapped in Germany but with no place to go, unwanted in Germany, unwanted elsewhere. Grobman and Rosenbluth, summarizing Dobbs, convey the anxiety, the urgency, the panic, the despair endured by this particular group of German Jews, who were suddenly awoken to the fact that they were decidedly not wanted in the very place they had called home, some for generations, some for hundreds of years. Speeches filled with Jew-hate and restrictions on Jewish activities grew increasingly in the 1930s in Hitler's Socialist Germany. By Kristallnacht -- the night in November 1938 that windows in thousand of synagogues and shops were smashed -- it was clear even to those who had ignored earlier anti-Semitic actions, that they had to leave. They wanted to go to the USA, but the USA didn't want them. Dobbs details the twists and turns of their unhappy history.
READ MOREJordan invaded the new state of Israel in 1948 and was able to grab Samaria, Judea and some of the eastern part of Jerusalem. She killed or kicked out all the Jews. When she again invaded Israel in 1967, Israel was stronger and took back her stolen land. Foolishly, Israel did not evict the Arab squatters who lived in Jewish homes at Jordan's invitation. So Jews have been forced to sue at great cost in money and time to regain their own homes. David Rosenberg writes of one such incident. NOTE: See also "The Muslim Quarter of the Old City was Jewish before the Mandate" by Dovid Mark here.
READ MORERuth Blum addresses the problem of how the treatment of Jews in the Middle East and North Africa by Muslims has been presented. Too many books and articles assert that Muslims and Jews happily coexisted, completely ignoring that Jews were treated as dhimmis are treated in Arab countries: badly. She points out that Exile in the Maghreb authored by Paul B. Fenton and David G. Littman "is a most important book, which sets the record straight about the true plight of the Jews after the conquests of the lands in which they had peacefully resided."
READ MOREIn the 6th Century BCE, the Jews of Judea were conquered and exiled by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar 2, their Temple destroyed. When Cyrus the Great, ruler of Persia, (now called Iran), overcame the Babylonians in 539 BCE, he allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild their Temple. As Rivkah Fishman-Duker points out, it was his political policy to allow freedom of religion. This did not return the Jews to control of their homeland, as did, say, the San Remo Conference in 1920. The Washington Post hastened to refute claims that Trump is a modern-day Cyrus because he moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem. In doing so, the newspaper violated one of their policies. By talking about events involving Jews that happened more than 2500 years ago, they were implicitly and atypically refuting "the mendacious Palestinian narrative, which claims that the Jews are not the indigenous people and are usurpers who lack a historical claim to the land."
READ MOREBruce Bawer reminds us how little the world understood the threat of Islamic Jihad just thirty years ago. Salman Rushdie had just published a novel, The Satanic Verses which featured the Koran and Muhammed. The Ayatollah Khomeini declared the novel blasphemous. He issued a fatwa condemning Rushdie to death and promising $6 million dollars to the one who killed him. The world was so unfamiliar with the concepts of fatwa, jihad and sharia law that many found it all "grotesque, absurd — a joke, even." Many agreed that Islam had been slandered. Few understood this was not an isolated incident of no lasting importance. Since 1989 we have become much more familiar with fatwas and jihad and acts of Islamic terrorism. We no longer think Khomeini's fatwa was a joke. But it can not be said that we yet understand that Resurgent Islam is waging a war to the death against the West and Israel in a variety of ways. It will not stop until we take the threat seriously enough to fight back effectively.
READ MORENurit Greenger writes of the return of sheep called Jacob sheep to Israel after thousands of years. The association to the Biblical Jacob is that like the sheep Jacob got to keep from his father-in-law's flock, these sheep are "piebald, of spotted and speckled patterns." Sheep were originally domesticated and bred in the Fertile Crescent, but deliberately-induced modifications in features may have occurred over the millennia. Nevertheless, 'closing the circle' is a charming notion.
READ MOREMichael Freund acquaints us with some astonishing facts about how many people in Central and South America are of Jewish descent. Genetic tests indicated that a quarter of a 6500-people statistical sample have Jewish genetic ancestry. Translated to the general population, that means the millions of this population have Jewish roots. Another study determined that some 20% of the 50 million combined population in Spain and Portugal were descendants of Jews forced to convert to Catholicism centuries ago. Currently some individuals and groups of these people, called Bnei Anusim (Children of the Coerced), have formally reverted to Judaism. Freund suggests that as others become aware of their ancestry, the Jewish community should embrace "the Bnei Anusim and other Jewish descendants." It should welcome "back those who wish to come home."
READ MOREWhat we are talking about in the July–December 2018 Issue
Editor's Note:Think-Israel tends to use salafist rather than extremist or Islamist or militant or fundamentalist or activist to describe generically a pious Muslim, one who sticks as closely as possible to the unfiltered words and actions of Mohammad and the first three generations of Muslims, including, especially, the Companions of the Prophet. In modeling himself as closely as he can on the preachings and practices of Mohammad, a salafist can in modern terms be precisely described as an uninhibited terrorist, a theological supersessionist, a political supremacist who believes Islam and sharia law must dominate and a social barbarian, who wages jihad with whatever tools are available. Thanks to the high quality of whitewash supplied by sympathetic propagandists, he seldom is so described.
This issue we tackle, in a small way, aspects of some large topics — Nationalism versus Globalism and Capitalism versus Socialism. We examine how avowed Marxists and pious Muslims have banded together to destroy our political system and our personal freedoms.
Part 1 examines the return of the notion of a single government planet-wide. To bring it about we would need to restructure our society and our values. Part 1 looks at the pressure to stop global warming (GW) and open all our borders. Doing so will move us closer to a one-world government.
Cleaning the atmosphere of carbon dioxide can not be done in bits and pieces, here and there. It needs to be done over the entire globe. The infra-structure in any one place needs to be connected to the network infrastructure. Once developed, a single network managed by some entity such as the United Nations is a global government in all but the name. In this way, dedicating ourselves to stopping GW would help bring about a single state.
If we start even in a small way to have open borders, we will be downgrading one essential characteristic of a sovereign state. Then too, if we rid ourselves of the idea that a sovereign nation has the right to decide which outsiders can reside within its borders, then we have no way to curtail the entry of people that don't have our values or want to abide by our laws.
Part 2 looks at socialism, defining it as best we can and exploring some of its practices. It also discusses the morphing of the Democratic party from liberalism to a political entity that is anti-Semitic, anti-family, anti-religion except perhaps Islam, and against our major values of personal freedom in speech and action. A few years ago, the Democrats promised to unite all groups by underplaying differences in skin color, religion, ethnic group and other features. Instead, we have morality by stratification. White people are told to go sit at the back of the bus and admit, despite their record of advancing civilization spectacularly, that they are worthless. We are being taught to value groups selectively, instead of assessing individuals according to what they have accomplished.
Part 3 looks at what's happening to Resurgent Islam's mission to make sharia law universal. What's happening in the States, in Europe, the Middle East and in the Far East.
The issue ends with Part 4 with sections on Public Relations and History.