Considering crime rates under Soros DA Gascon, I didn't think any special motive was needed to explain the attempted assault on Dave Chappelle. There are any number of crazies wandering around Los Angeles and the internet. And as&nbsp;attack plots go, this one didn't seem too well thought out.


	But it looks like the motive <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10843403/Dave-Chappelles-attacker-speaks-time-says-triggered-comedians-jokes.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailus">was political after all</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		The Los Angeles man&nbsp;accused of attacking Dave Chappelle&nbsp;said he was “triggered” by the comedian’s jokes about the LGBTQ community and homelessness — as he insisted he never wanted to harm the funnyman.

	
		In an exclusive jailhouse interview, Isaiah Lee told The Post that Chappelle should be more “sensitive” when it comes to the jokes he cracks.

	
		“I identify as bisexual … and I wanted him to know what he said was triggering,” Lee said Saturday at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles, dressed in brown jail garb and sporting a sling on his broken right arm.

	
		“I wanted him to know that next time, he should consider first running his material by people it could affect.”
</blockquote>


	I'm sure that next time Chappelle will run his bits past random assailants before taking it on stage.


	Obviously the story would be very different if Lee had been a white male conservative offended by jokes. We would be having a loud, vocal, and very different conversaion. Instead it took the New York Post to find out his motive. Not because he was holding it back, but because the media didn't want to know.

Dave Chappelle Attacker Was Triggered By Him

Considering crime rates under Soros DA Gascon, I didn't think any special motive was needed to explain the attempted assault on Dave Chappelle. There are any

Dave Chappelle Attacker Was Triggered By Him

This is why his own people keep <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook/2022/05/22/bidens-logistical-man-extraordinaire-00034257">cutting off </a>his microphone.

<blockquote>
	
		CNN’s&nbsp;KAITLAN COLLINS&nbsp;asked Biden a follow-up question Sunday about if he had a message to North Korean leader&nbsp;KIM JONG-UN. “Hello,” Biden said, before pausing a bit and adding: “Period.”

	
		While reporters were able to hear the president, clear audio and video were almost lost because the U.S. government cut off Biden’s microphone feed prematurely. Some of the mics still caught the response in a way that was usable with subtitles. But the government cutting off the audio early has been a frequent source of frustration for reporters.
</blockquote>


	Apparently, they didn't cut it off <a href="https://thehill.com/news/administration/3497693-biden-us-would-defend-taiwan-militarily-if-china-invaded/">soon enough</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		President&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;on Monday said the U.S. would be willing to defend Taiwan militarily if China were to try and take it by force.

	
		“Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?” Biden was asked at a press conference in Tokyo alongside the Japanese prime minsiter.

	
		“Yes,” Biden responded. “That’s the commitment we made. That’s the commitment we made.

	
		“Look, here’s the situation. We agree with the one China policy… but the idea that to be taken by force, just taken by force, is just not appropriate,” Biden continued. “It will dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine.”
</blockquote>


	I don't necessarily object to the content of the answer so much as the fact that this is the latest in a series of <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/08/biden-commits-defending-taiwan-quickly-takes-it-daniel-greenfield/">back and forths on Taiwan</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		A senior Biden administration official said on Thursday (Aug 19) that US policy on Taiwan had not changed after President Joe Biden appeared to suggest that the United States would defend the island if it were attacked, a deviation from a long-held US position of "strategic ambiguity"...

	
		"They are...entities we've made agreements with based on not a civil war they're having on that island or in South Korea, but on an agreement where they have a unity government that, in fact, is trying to keep bad guys from doing bad things to them," Mr Biden said.

	
		"We have made (and) kept every commitment. We made a sacred commitment to Article 5 that if, in fact, anyone were to invade or take action against our Nato allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan. It's not even comparable to talk about that."

	
		A senior Biden administration official said US "policy with regard to Taiwan has not changed" and analysts said it appeared that Mr Biden had misspoken.
</blockquote>


	Article 5 obviously <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/10/biden-says-dont-worry-about-taiwan-based-daniel-greenfield/">does not</a> apply to Taiwan.


	Biden asserting that the United States would fight in defense of Taiwan is a pretty aggressive position. If you take that kind of position, you have to be willing to back it up. Putting all that credibility on the line and then having a staffer pull it back again makes it obvious that Biden is not mentally functioning and that American military deterrence has no credibility.

Biden is Back to Flip-Flopping on Taiwan

This is why his own people keep cutting off his microphone.


	
		CNN’s&nbsp;KAITLAN COLLINS&nbsp;asked Biden a follow-up question Sunday about if he had a

Biden is Back to Flip-Flopping on Taiwan

There's good reason for being suspicious about this Washington Post poll because it has black people echoing woke lefty talking points even when they clearly contradict previous polls, for example having black people dismiss more police in favor of lefty holistic solutions to crime.


	But let's zero in on this <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3496738-75-percent-of-black-americans-fear-physical-attack-based-on-their-race-poll/">absurd and racist</a> result.

<blockquote>
	
		A new&nbsp;Washington Post-Ipsos poll&nbsp;found that 75 percent of Black Americans polled are worried that they or someone they care about will be physically harmed because they are black...
</blockquote>


	How often does that happen?


	We're not talking about staged white supremacist terror attacks like Buffalo or Charleston.

<blockquote>
	
		Seventy percent of Black Americans polled said they believed half or more white Americans hold white supremacist beliefs compared to 19 percent who believed fewer than half white Americans do.
</blockquote>


	That would be a widespread conviction that most white people are not only racist but white supremacists.


	In the breakdown, 35% believe that most white people hold white supremacist views, while another 27% say that half of white people do.


	Only 8% say very few.


	That's not a survey of racism, it's a racist survey.

A Very Racist Poll About Racism

There's good reason for being suspicious about this Washington Post poll because it has black people echoing woke lefty talking points even when they clearly

A Very Racist Poll About Racism

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has one shtick and it's touting the future of warfare. And while considering the influence of tech on the battlefield is important, the two key military events of the last few years have a common lesson.


	1. Afghanistan


	2. Ukraine


	The lesson is that a determined insurgency can overcome less motivated forces despite wide discrepancies in technology and numbers.


	Putin's regime has been obsessed with touting high-tech future weapons. Some of those have been deployed in Ukraine with few results. The U.S. meanwhile gave the Afghan government the technological edge with little to show for it.


	Technology counts. The Ukrainians were apparently able to effectively make use of Javelins and similar weapons (though considering the propaganda coming out of the region, it's hard to know what's true). But both wars have been fought in fairly familiar ways. A general from WW2 or the 70s would be able to take a look at both Ukraine and Afghanistan and have a fairly good idea of what happened and what's going on.


	With that in mind here's&nbsp;Gen. Mark Milley&nbsp;with more of the same <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/gen-milley-warns-west-point-graduates-of-increasing-risk-of-global-war-robotic-tanks/ar-AAXzERK?ocid=BingNews">old military retrofuturism</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		Weapons technology will also change dramatically in future decades, Milley said, and the shift will be as radical as the change from musket to the rifle, the rifle to the machine gun or from sailing to steam ships. And the technological edge is no longer automatically in America's favor.

	
		"You'll be fighting with&nbsp;robotic tanks&nbsp;and ships and airplanes," Milley said. "We've witnessed a revolution in lethality and precision munitions. What was once the exclusive province of the United States military is now available to most nation states with the money will to acquire them."

	
		Artificial intelligence is "resulting in that profound change, the most profound change ever in human history," Milley said. "Whatever overmatch we the United States enjoyed militarily for the last 70 years is closing quickly. And the United States will be, in fact, we already are challenged in every domain of warfare in space and cyber, maritime air and, of course, land."
</blockquote>


	This is the same sort of thing that Milley has been saying forever, but he doesn't seem to have thought the metaphors through.


	What would the shift from muskets to rifles or sails to steam really be like in the modern context? And what does that have to do with obsessing over AI, a concept that I&nbsp;suspect Milley doesn't grasp, let alone robot tanks, which we could build and deploy no, if there were some actual use for them in anything except a major land war in which we wanted to reduce casualties while spending a lot of money for worse battlefield performance.


	The future of war may yet arrive, but for now it looks a whole lot like somewhat better tools and a few remote options.

Gen. Mark Milley Informs West Point Grads That He's Learned Nothing

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has one shtick and it's touting the future of warfare. And while considering the influence of tech on the battlefield is

Gen. Mark Milley Informs West Point Grads That He's Learned Nothing

Georgia's voter suppression bill is an assault on our democracy - Brookings, Apr 2021


	Yes, the Georgia election law is that bad - Vox, Apr 2021


	Voting is surging in Georgia despite controversial new election law -&nbsp;Washington Post:&nbsp;May 2022


	It's a little awkward when reality inconveniently fails <a href="https://sos.ga.gov/news/record-early-voting-turnout-continues-4">to match up</a> with your political narrative.

<blockquote>
	
		Through Wednesday, May 19th, over 565,000 people have early voted in Georgia—a 189% increase from the same point in the early voting period in the 2018 primary election and a 153% increase in the same point in the early voting period in the 2020 primary election. Georgia has had record early voting turnout since the first day of early voting this year, surging to nearly three times the number on the first day of primary voting in 2018 and double that of 2020, and has continued on that path since.
</blockquote>


	So much<a href="https://www.yahoo.com/video/georgia-early-voting-shatters-records-213543834.html"> for Jim Crow</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		But the law was widely panned by critics, with&nbsp;President Biden calling the legislation&nbsp;the return to the days of "Jim Crow."

	
		"At a time when parts of our country are backsliding,"&nbsp;Biden said at the time.&nbsp;"The days of Jim Crow, passing laws that harken back to the era of poll taxes, when Black people were made to guess how many beans&nbsp;—&nbsp;how many jelly beans in a jar,&nbsp;or count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap before they could cast their ballot."

	
		The new law caught the attention of Major League Baseball, which pulled the 2021&nbsp;All-Star Game from Atlanta&nbsp;in response to the law, arguing that it restricted access to voting.

	
		"I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB Draft," MLB Commissioner&nbsp;Rob Manfred said in a statement at the time.
</blockquote>


	There might <a href="https://www.ajc.com/politics/turnout-surges-in-georgia-primary-led-by-resurgent-republicans/AWMAIU2PFVHR5OKMZWZ55GOJB4/">even be signs</a> of Democrats going Republican.

<blockquote>
	
		About&nbsp;7% of Republican ballots&nbsp;so far have come from voters who cast Democratic ballots in the 2020 primary. Georgia is an open primary state, meaning voters can choose which party’s ballot they want.
</blockquote>


	Clearly, voter suppression at its finest.

Media Claimed Georgia's Voting Law Would Suppress Vote. It's Up 189%.

Georgia's voter suppression bill is an assault on our democracy - Brookings, Apr 2021


	Yes, the Georgia election law is that bad - Vox, Apr 2021

Media Claimed Georgia's Voting Law Would Suppress Vote. It's Up 189%.

Israel has for long ruled the skies over Syria, thanks to its brilliant pilots, Syrian incompetence, and an informal understanding with the Russians, who have given anti-aircraft weapons to the Syrians, but done nothing themselves to prevent the IAF from attacking Iranian, Hezbollah, and Syrian sites. It was in order to ensure that that arrangement would remain in place that Israel was initially reluctant to forthrightly condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. But it has since done so, on several occasions, and as we know from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s angry denunciation of Israel – including his intolerable remark about Hitler’s supposed Jewish ancestry – the Russians are angry about Israel’s siding with Ukraine.

<div>
	
		On May 15, the Israeli Air Force carried out a raid near Masyaf in northwestern Syria, where an important military site was completely obliterated. Just as the planes were leaving the area, Russians fired S-300 anti-aircraft missiles at the Israeli planes, but none were hit. Still, it was a new and worrisome development, a demonstration that Russia was no longer going to allow the IAF to bomb with impunity. What this means is reported on here: “In first, Russian military said to fire S-300 missiles at Israeli jets over Syria,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-first-russian-military-said-to-fire-s-300-missiles-at-israeli-jets-over-syria/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Times of Israel</a>, May 17, 2022:

	<blockquote>
		
			Russian forces opened fire on Israeli jets with advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles at the end of an alleged IAF attack on targets in northwestern Syria last week, Channel 13 news reported Monday, in what could signal a significant shift in Moscow’s attitude to Israel.

		
			According to the unsourced report, the unprecedented incident occurred on Friday night, when the Israeli Air Force bombed several targets near the city of Masyaf in northwestern Syria.

		
			At least five people were killed and seven were hurt in the airstrike, Syria’s state news agency said. Other media in the&nbsp;country said six were killed, all crew members of a Pantsir air defense system who attempted to take down the Israeli missiles.
	</blockquote>

	
		Since 2017, there have been more than 1,200 Israeli airstrikes on targets in Syria. During all that time, the Syrians have managed to shoot down exactly two Israeli planes, both in 2018.

	<blockquote>
		
			The report said the Syrian military fired off dozens of anti-aircraft missiles, which have been largely ineffective at halting the hundreds of Israeli strikes on Syria in recent years.

		
			However, this time the S-300 batteries also opened fire as the jets were departing the area, Channel 12 said.&nbsp;The report noted that Syria’s S-300 batteries are operated by the Russian military and cannot be fired without their approval.

		
			The report said that the S-300 radar did not manage to lock onto the Israeli jets and thus did not present a serious threat to the IAF fighter jets.

		
			If confirmed, however, this would mark the first use of the S-300s against the IAF over Syria and would be a worrying development for Israel, which has carried out hundreds of airstrikes inside Syria in the course of the country’s civil war and since, targeting what it says are arms shipments bound for Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group and other Iranian-linked sites.…
	</blockquote>

	
		Why did the Russians wait until the Israel planes were leaving the area to shoot missiles at them? Were they deliberately trying not to bring down Israeli planes, but simply to send a message of singular displeasure over Israel’s siding with Ukraine?&nbsp;And are they hinting that the next time, the Russians won’t be.delivering a warning, but launching a real anti-aircraft attack with their S-300 missiles, meant to destroy Israeli planes and pilots?

	
		If it is the latter, the Russians are badly miscalculating. Israel will not be dissuaded. Its pilots, the best in the world, will continue to destroy Iranian, Syrian, and Hezbollah bases as they deem necessary. The IAF will evade those S-300 missiles, which will only be a further embarrassment for the Russian military, already suffering mightily from its poor performance in Ukraine. Still worse for the Russians would be the Israeli response if one or more of its planes were to be brought down by an S-300 missile. In that case, the Israelis will not cease operations in Syrian skies, but instead will send punishing waves of Israeli aircraft to destroy the S-300 batteries that are known to exist in Syria. The Russian military doesn’t want to be put to that test; with good reason, it fears what Israeli pilots, planes, and missiles are capable of. It would be sensible for the Russians in Syria to steer clear of direct conflict with the IAF, as it has for years, lest it be shown up in a display of Israeli air superiority. After the Russian debacle in Ukraine, that kind of humiliation in Syria would be too much. The Russians are properly wary of tangling with Israel.

	<blockquote>
		
			Without specifically mentioning the incident, Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Monday said Israel would not be deterred and vowed to prevent Iran from transferring “advanced capabilities” to other entities in Syria.…
	</blockquote>

	
		Defense Minister Gantz was sending a message to several addresses, one of which was the Kremlin. Israel, he was making clear, will not “be deterred” by Russian S-300 missiles; it will continue to do whatever it takes to keep Iran from using its bases in Syria to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah.

	<blockquote>
		
			Israel and its allies for years have lobbied Russia not to give Syria and other regional players the S-300 system, arguing that it would limit Israel’s ability to neutralize threats, including by Hezbollah.
	</blockquote>

	
		Israel has now informed Moscow, through Defense Secretary Gantz’s veiled message, that it will not be deterred from bombing Iranian and Hezbollah sites in Syria. What is not said, and need not be, is what would happen if a Russian missile from an S-300 battery brought down an Israeli plane. The Russians know that Israel will do whatever it takes to eliminate any new threat to its bombing of Iranian sites in Syria, and will not be deterred. The Israelis have not hesitated to attack the Russians in the past; they brought down five Russian Migs, flown by Russian pilots, in Operation Rimon 20 in 1970, with no Israeli losses. Moscow has to be worried about Israel’s response to any further Russian launches of S-300 missiles in Syria. It very well may consider itself satisfied with that single S-300 missile it fired, which, launched only&nbsp;after&nbsp;the Israeli planes had left the area of their bombing, was likely meant only to warn Israel, not to destroy its planes. Having delivered that message, Russia can now go back to its previous position of leaving Israel’s planes over Syria alone. No need to tangle with IAF pilots and planes, where things might go as badly for the Russians as they did in Kharkiv.
</div>

Russians Fire S-300 Missiles At Israeli Aircraft In Syria

Israel has for long ruled the skies over Syria, thanks to its brilliant pilots, Syrian incompetence, and an informal understanding with the Russians, who have

You have all seen the videos of Israeli police appearing to be beating back, for no apparent reason, Palestinian mourners trying to hold onto, or to reach, the coffin of Shireen Abu Akleh. The videos make the police look bad, because the viewer has not been provided with any context: why are the police doing what they are doing? But if you investigate further and find out what the police felt they had to do for the sake of Shireen Abu Akleh’s family, your mind will change. A report on what the Israeli police were trying to do, and ultimately succeeded in doing, is here: “Israel Police: Officers Intervened at Reporter’s Funeral to Prevent ‘Mob’ From Taking Coffin Against Family’s Wishes,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/05/13/israeli-police-forces-intervened-at-reporters-funeral-to-prevent-mob-from-taking-coffin-against-wishes-of-family/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Algemeiner</a>, May 13, 2022:

<div>
	<blockquote>
		
			Israeli police said Friday that they charged a group of Palestinians carrying the coffin of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh to prevent them from taking the coffin on an “unplanned procession by foot,” against the wishes of the slain journalist’s family.
	</blockquote>

	
		Shireen’s family did not want her funeral turned into a political spectacle and circus; they wanted her coffin to be taken from St Joseph’s French Hospital to the church for her funeral, and then to the cemetery on Mt. Zion, in a quiet and dignified fashion, and not be held aloft by a raucous mob of rioting Palestinians, chanting anti-Israel slogans, wearing T-shirts with photographs of M-19 rifles printed on their front, and shouting the Muslim war cry “Allahu akbar,” which would surely have disturbed Shireen’s Christian family. Shireen in death was more valuable to the Palestinians than she was when alive; she was no longer a person but had become a weapon in the Palestinian propaganda war, and the Palestinians were determined to make the most of her funeral and burial, whatever the family itself wanted.

	<blockquote>
		
			On Friday, about 300 rioters arrived at Saint Joseph hospital in Jerusalem and prevented the family members from loading the coffin onto the hearse to travel to the cemetery — as had been planned and coordinated with the family in advance,” an Israel Police statement said.

		
			Instead, the mob threatened the driver of the hearse and then proceeded to carry the coffin on an unplanned procession to the cemetery by foot,” it continued. “This went against the wishes of the Abu Akleh family and the security coordinations that had been planned to safeguard the large number of mourners.”

		
			The group refused instructions from Israel Police as well as the Abu Akleh family and an EU diplomat, the statement continued.
	</blockquote>

	
		This provides an entirely different understanding of the violence just outside St. Joseph’s French hospital. The Israeli police were only trying to enforce the wishes of the Abu Akleh family, who had planned to have her coffin travel by hearse to the Mt. Zion cemetery, where she was to be buried next to her parents. The Israeli police were beating back those trying to grab the coffin and violate her family’s wishes. The 300 Palestinian rioters who had arrived to appropriate the coffin prevented Shireen Abu Akleh’s relatives from loading the coffin into the hearse, to be transported to the church. The mob prevented the hearse itself from moving by threatening the driver, then they seized the coffin from the pallbearers who were relatives and friends of Shireen Abu Akleh, and tried to make off with it, on their unstable shoulders, so as to parade it through the streets of Jerusalem, accompanied by Allahu-akbaring crowds (Shireen Abu Akleh was a Christian), to the church for the funeral. Instead the Israeli police managed, within just a few minutes, to wrest control of the casket from the mob so that it could be placed in the hearse, which then drove off to the church.

	
		The videos of those few minutes, when the police were struggling to wrest control of the casket from the mob, however, did great damage to Israel’s image. One saw policemen pushing and wielding their batons at what,&nbsp;to the unwary, simply seemed to be grieving Palestinians determined to carry the coffin of their “martyr” to her funeral. There was no way to know, from those videos that every national newscast carried, that rioters were violating the wishes of the Abu-Akleh family, who wanted the casket to be transported by hearse, instead of being carried by a raucous and mostly Muslim mob as part of political theatre, and that the Israeli police were attempting only to enforce the family’s desires. Nor could viewers see the M-16 rifles imprinted on the tee-shirts worn by the members of the mob, or hear what they were shouting.&nbsp;

	<blockquote>
		
			Israeli Police intervened to disperse the mob and prevent them from taking the coffin, so that the funeral could proceed as planned in accordance with the wishes of the family,” it added. “During the riot that was instigated by the mob, glass bottles and other objects were thrown, resulting in the injury of both mourners and police officers.”

		
			Several minutes after police intervened, Abu Akleh’s coffin was placed in a vehicle that headed toward the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Virgin in Jerusalem’s Walled Old City, where the funeral ceremony proceeded peacefully.

		
			Police said earlier Friday that six suspects were arrested at the scene for violating public order and attacking police officers before and at the beginning of the funeral procession.
	</blockquote>

	
		What was the reaction of the Bidenites to Israel’s attempts to enforce the wishes of the Abu Akleh family? They rushed to judgment.

	<blockquote>
		
			US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was “deeply troubled” by the violent scenes, and said American officials remained in close contact with Israeli and Palestinian authorities, calling on parties to “maintain calm and avoid any actions that could further escalate tensions.”
	</blockquote>

	
		That is exactly what the Israeli police were trying to do: to “maintain calm” by preventing rioters from grabbing and making off with the coffin as part of their celebration of Abu Akleh’s “martyrdom,” and to ensure that the coffin travelled by hearse to the cemetery as the family had wanted. And that is what the police accomplished within a few minutes, taking control of the coffin and having the designated pallbearers place it in the hearse – but the videos offer no context in showing Israeli police using batons to beat back those trying to make off with the coffin, and preventing it from being loaded into the hearse.

	
		The Bidenites were quick to deplore the “intrusion of what should have been a peaceful procession” at the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh, failing to realize that the “peaceful procession” had been destroyed not by the Israeli police, but by 300 Palestinian rioters who ha arrived to seize the coffin of the dead woman, attempting to take it away from family members who did not want her funeral turned into a violent political event. The Israeli police were trying to prevent those rioters from grabbing the coffin, and to ensure that it was placed in the hearse that would take it to the cemetery. The police succeeded, and the coffin went, as the family wanted, by hearse to the that it remained with the pallbearers chosen by the family.

	
		The Bidenites, however, were quick to comment, apparently unwilling to wait to hear Israel’s explanation of the violent encounter between police and rioters outside the St. Joseph’s French Hospital. A report on their reaction is here: “US Conveys ‘Anger, Frustration’ to Israel Over Violence at Journalist’s Funeral,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/05/13/us-conveys-anger-frustration-to-israel-over-violence-at-journalists-funeral/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Algemeiner</a>, May 13, 2022:

	<blockquote>
		
			The White House Friday described as “deeply disturbing” footage from the Jerusalem funeral of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh that showed Israeli police forces rushing the start of the procession.
	</blockquote>

	
		The White House apparently saw the scenes of baton-armed Israeli police, trying to keep hundreds of rioters from making off with the casket, without understanding what was going on – that Israeli forces intervened only to ensure that the family’s wishes to have the casket transported by hearse to the church would be carried out.

	<blockquote>
		
			“We have all seen those images, they’re obviously deeply disturbing,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. “We regret the intrusion of what should have been a peaceful procession.”
	</blockquote>

	
		The Bidenites ought to have discussed the situation with Israel, to understand what exactly was going on with the casket, the family, and the rioters, before issuing their hasty and wrongheaded condemnation, that appears to blame the Jewish state, which ought instead to be praised for rescuing the casket from those who wanted to exploit it for their own purposes.

	<blockquote>
		
			Meanwhile, Israeli media reported that the administration of President Joe Biden conveyed a harsher message to Jerusalem. According to the Walla! news site, White House sources said there was “anger and frustration” at the actions of Israeli police during the funeral procession.

		
			“We have urged respect for the funeral procession, the mourners and the family at this sensitive time,” Psaki said.
	</blockquote>

	
		Respect “for the funeral procession, the mourners, and the family” are exactly what the Israeli police were trying to enforce. It was not they who were intent on ignoring the family’s wishes, but the rioters.

	<blockquote>
		
			Asked if she condemned the Israeli forces’ actions, she responded: “I think when we said they were disturbing, we obviously were not justifying them.”
	</blockquote>

	
		If the Bidenites had understood the true situation, they would not have expressed “anger and frustration” – even privately — with the Israelis. They would have said, instead, that “we deplore the attempt of several hundred people to interfere violently with the funeral cortege of Shireen Abu Akleh by trying to seize the casket, snatching it away just before it could be put into the hearse. After a few – minutes, order was thankfully restored by the police, the casket placed in the hearse, according to the wishes of the family, and then transported to the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Virgin for her funeral.”

	
		That is what the Bidenites should have said. As usual, they rushed ahead with their condemnation of Israel, based on a gross misunderstanding of what the dead girl’s family wanted, and what the rioters were trying to accomplish in snatching the casket away from the pallbearers.&nbsp;

	
		Israel now must patiently explain to Washington and to the world what the protesters tried to do, and why the Israeli police were right to prevent them, instead of letting a mob violate the wishes of the deceased woman’s family. There is, of course, the perennial problem whenever Israel is maligned and then tries to set the record straight. It’s what Mark Twain once said: “A lie can go halfway round the world, while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
</div>

Riots at the Funeral Cortege of Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

You have all seen the videos of Israeli police appearing to be beating back, for no apparent reason, Palestinian mourners trying to hold onto, or to reach, the

Palestinian-Jordanian-American real estate tycoon Mohamed Hadid — best known as the father of models Gigi and Bella Hadid — claimed on May 7 that former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was a “proud Palestinian” and that her comments about Palestinian identity proved that there was “religious coexistence and tolerance” in “Palestine” until Zionism came along to spoil it. The report on this latest absurdity by Hadid, who shares the virulent anti-Israel views – expressed in tweets, and through the Instagram accounts of his catwalk-strutting daughters – can be found here: “Mohamed Hadid: Golda Meir ‘proud Palestinian,’ shows coexistence before Zionism,” by Michael Starr,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jpost.com/bds-threat/article-706173" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Jerusalem Post</a>, May 9, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		“She [Meir] was [sic] proud Palestinian,” Hadid said on Instagram, of a video excerpt that he posted of an interview of Meir by Thames TV in the 1970s. “There was [sic] Jews, Christian, Muslim, Palestinians, all Arabs [sic]. Israeli prime minister Golda Meir reiterated that she was a Palestinian, carrying a Palestinian passport, in this segment, even though the full interview reflects her colonial Zionist ideology bent on ethnic cleansing and erasing Palestine.”
</blockquote>


	When Golda Meir said she was a “Palestinian,” that was meant not as a sign of ethnic or of any other identification with the Arabs in Mandatory Palestine, who in fact never called themselves “Palestinians” until the Six-Day War. It was purely a geographic term. There was no “religious coexistence and tolerance” as Hadid claims existed, until the “colonial Zionist ideology bent on ethnic cleansing” ruined everything. He’s forgetting the murderous attacks on Zionist pioneers, the massacres at Tel Hai, Nebi Musa, and Jaffa in 1920, the Jerusalem stabbings in 1921, the 1929 massacres in Safed and in Hebron, where every last Jewish man, woman, and child in the latter city was murdered, the Jaffa massacres in 1936, the hundreds of attacks by Arabs on Jews during the Arab Revolt that lasted from 1936 to 1939. And Mohamed Hadid chooses to forget the “spiritual” leader of the Palestinian Arabs from the 1920s till the late 1940s,, Hajj Amin el Husseini, who spent the war years in Berlin, where he met with Hitler and congratulated him on the Final Solution, was befriended by both Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann, and may even have visited Auschwitz to enjoy the spectacle. El Husseini helped to raise several S.S. brigades from among the Muslims in Bosnia, and from Berlin he broadcast into the Middle East, where he encouraged the Arabs of Palestine to keep on murdering Jews. Mohamed Hadid fantasizes – lies – about this being a time of “religious coexistence and tolerance.” It was, rather, a time of unremitting violence visited on innocent Jews by the Arabs who wanted to make sure that they would not be able to live peacefully on the lands that they had bought and settled on in Mandatory Palestine.


	The word “Palestinian” in the days of the Mandate referred only to the Jews, never to the Arabs. Jews who had settled in the Mandate would be called by other Jews, in Europe and America, “Palestinians.” When Vladimir Jabotinsky, or Israel Zangwill, or Isaac Bashevis Singer, for example, in the 1930s would write of “Palestinians,” that word always meant Jewish pioneers who had gone out to Mandatory Palestine to help build what would eventually be the State of Israel.


	Let’s listen to exactly what Golda Meir said in the interview clip that Hadid posted on Telegram:

<blockquote>
	
		“I’m Palestinian. From 1921 until 1948 I carried a Palestinian passport. There was no such thing in this area as Jews and Arabs and Palestinians,” Meir said in Hadid’s clip.

	
		In the full interview, not included by Hadid, Meir goes on to say that “There were Jews and Arabs,” and describes Palestinian identity as” a modern development.” “When were the Palestinians born?” By that she was alluding to their deliberate arrival on the scene—an invented people — just after the Six-Day War.
</blockquote>


	Meir was making a point she made many times. There were “Jews and Arabs” in Mandatory Palestine, but there was no separate “Palestinian” identity. When the Jews used the word, it was simply as a geographic designation for themselves: a “Palestinian” was always a Jew, never an Arab, who lived in Mandatory Palestine. Their identity cards read “Jew” and those of the Arabs read “Arab.” When Meir speaks about the “Palestinian” as a “modern development,” she is referring to the fact that it was not until the mid-1960s that the word “Palestinian” began to be used by a handful of the Arabs; use of the word, to apply to the Arabs “between the river and the sea,” only really took off after the Six-Day War, when Arab propagandists began a conscious campaign, suggested to them by Soviet advisors, to rename themselves as “Palestinians” for political reasons. Golda Meir scoffed at the idea: “Where were the Palestinians born”? And she knew perfectly well – and Mohamed Hadid does too – why the Arabs who had left Mandatory Palestine and Israel between 1947 and 1949, and those who remained, carefully renamed themselves after the Six-Day War the “Palestinians.” By sleight of word, they could present themselves as a tiny people, bullied by the powerful Zionists, whereas before, when they were known only as “Arabs,” the Arab-Israeli conflict was seen as what, in fact, it always has been — a monstrous gang-up by the vast Arab people, already possessing nearly two dozen states, against the single, very tiny Jewish state.


	Zuheir Mohsen, head of the Palestinian terror group As-Saiqa, and a member of the PLO’s executive committee, explained why the “Palestinian” identity proved so useful in a 1977 interview given to the Dutch newspaper&nbsp;Trouw:&nbsp;“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 … 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. There is no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. We are all part of one people, the Arab nation […] Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons.“


	Meir argued that there was no difference between Arabs on the West and East of the Jordan river — they shared the same religion, language, culture, cuisine, folktales, dances — and that there was no reason that Jordan couldn’t have established a Palestinian state in the West Bank when they had ruled between 1949 and 1967.


	In 1969, Meir told Frank Giles, a&nbsp;Times&nbsp;journalist, in an interview, that&nbsp;“there was no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist.”


	In a 1970 interview with Thames TV, Meir said:

<blockquote>
	
		“When were Palestinians born? What was all of this area before the First World War when Britain got the Mandate over Palestine? What was Palestine, then? Palestine was then the area between the Mediterranean and the Iraqian border. East and West Bank was Palestine. I am a Palestinian, from 1921 and 1948, I carried a Palestinian passport. There was no such thing in this area as Jews, and Arabs, and Palestinians.&nbsp;There were Jews and Arabs. […] I don’t say there are no Palestinians, but I say there is no such thing as a distinct Palestinian people.

	
		In a 1972 interview with&nbsp;The New York Times,&nbsp;Meir was asked if she stood by the comments; she replied: “I said there never was a Palestinian nation.”

	
		“Golda is saying the Jews were the ones considered the ‘Palestinians’ back then!”…

	
		Mohamed Hadid shares an interview in which Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir explains Arab Palestinian identity is a modern invention and he [Hadid] doesn’t even realize what an own goal this is,” remarked Israeli writer Emily Schrader.
</blockquote>


	Let’s repeat what Hadid said in his Instagram account:

<blockquote>
	
		Her remarks [about being a “Palestinian”] do prove though, that tolerance, co-existence and peace were prevalent in Palestine pre-1948, where all faiths were welcomed and received equal rights in the holy land. Then arrived colonial Zionism with the founding of the State of Israel and with it forced expulsions, nakba, occupation, apartheid and war crimes being committed daily to this day, that Golda Meir was directly complicit in, making her what?
</blockquote>


	Thousands of Jews were murdered, and many more thousands wounded, by Arabs in pre-1948 Palestine, that place where Mohamed Hadid wants us to believe that “all faiths were welcomed and received equal rights in the holy land.” He also wants us to believe that the Jews were guilty of every conceivable crime: “forced expulsions, nakba, occupation, apartheid, and war crimes” that were, and are, being “committed daily” by the criminal Israelis including, when she was alive, that “war criminal” Golda Meir.


	Golda Meir was a tough, no-nonsense lady, but also could be extremely funny. There are many stories told about her, in peace and war. I’ll leave you with just this one:


	Someone came to her wanting a political favor, and trying to ingratiate himself, in Uriah-Heepish fashion, told her how unworthy he felt to be asking for this favor. Golda looked at him and said: “Don’t be so humble. You’re not that great.”


	Even standing on tiptoe, Mohamed Hadid can’t reach the hem of her dress.

Mohamed Hadid: Golda Meir Was A ‘Proud Palestinian'

Palestinian-Jordanian-American real estate tycoon Mohamed Hadid — best known as the father of models Gigi and Bella Hadid — claimed on May 7 that former

This much is certain about the death of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American journalist who was killed in Jenin on May 11: one side, that of Israel, has been insistently calling for a joint investigation with the Palestinians, and possibly with American representatives, too, into her killing. Israel wants especially to study the bullet retrieved from her body and the helmet she was wearing at the time. The Palestinians, on the other hand, insist that the IDF soldiers killed Abu Akleh, but refuse to produce the bullet lodged in her skull for Israeli inspection, and refuse to join with Israel in any further investigation, claiming that the case is closed.

<div>
	
		A report on the IDF’s latest release, which provides two possible scenarios for the killing of Shireen Al-Akleh, is here: “Initial IDF probe of reporter’s death proposes 2 scenarios for who fired fatal shot,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/initial-idf-probe-of-reporters-death-proposes-2-scenarios-for-who-fired-fatal-shot/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Times of Israel</a>, May 13, 2022:

	<blockquote>
		
			The military on Friday released interim findings from its probe into the death of prominent Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, killed Wednesday amid clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen in Jenin.

		
			The Israel Defense Forces said it had not yet been able to determine who fired the fatal shot. But it said it had narrowed down the possibilities to two scenarios.

		
			In the first, Abu Akleh was hit when armed Palestinians fired “dozens of bullets indiscriminately” toward military vehicles in the northern West Bank city. The IDF said the bullets were fired in the direction where Abu Akleh was standing, adding that it was “possible this is the source of the gunfire that hit here.”
	</blockquote>

	
		Other reports suggest that not “dozens,” but “hundreds” of shots were fired indiscriminately by toward the IDF vehicles by the Palestinians.

	<blockquote>
		
			The second scenario covered by the probe involved a soldier who the military said used a gun with a telescopic sight to fire back at a gunman through a slit in the armored vehicle he was riding in.

		
			The gunman fired bursts toward the IDF soldier several times and there is a possibility that the reporter was struck by the soldier’s fire toward [him],” a statement from the IDF said.

		
			Abu Akleh was about 200 meters from the vehicle at the time, according to the military.

		
			The IDF said a “professional ballistics test” could be decisive in determining how Abu Akleh was shot but noted that the Palestinian Authority has so far rebuffed Israeli requests to hold a joint investigation and examine the bullet.&nbsp;It said the Palestinians also rejected offers to be present and take part in the inquiry alongside an American representative.…
	</blockquote>

	
		It is important to realize that only one side, that of the Palestinians, is blocking a thorough investigation. If they are so certain that the Israelis are responsible for Abu Akleh’s death, why are they so reluctant to produce the evidence? And why do they continue to refuse giving Israelis access to the bullet that killed her? Why, even the Palestinians’ own forensics expert, Dr. Rayyan al-Ali, publicly admitted that at this point there was no way to be certain of who killed Abu Akleh.

	<blockquote>
		
			Abu Akleh, who covered the Mideast conflict for more than 25 years, was killed by gunfire to her head while covering clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen during a military raid in Jenin.&nbsp;The death sparked international condemnation, though it is not yet clear who is responsible for it.

		
			Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has accused Israel of “executing” her and rejected Israeli calls for a joint investigation to determine responsibility. Israeli officials meanwhile have declared that it is too soon to determine who fired the bullet that killed her.&nbsp;
	</blockquote>

	
		Mahmoud Abbas goes a step further in his accusation than others in the PA have done so far. He doesn’t just say that “an Israeli soldier killed Abu Akleh.” That may be true; at this point we cannot know, and won’t until the bullet is produced and subjected to tests. Abbas introduces a suggestion of murder, by saying that Israel “executed” her deliberately, which turns what was at most an accident into a war crime. Such a charge will lead, as Abbas knows, to more unhinged violence by Arabs against Jews in the West Bank, more denunciations and votes condemning Israel as guilty of war crimes at the U.N., more social media campaigns against the “Zionist killers” who are trying to prevent journalists from covering their “atrocities” in the “occupied West Bank” by murdering them.

	<blockquote>
		
			Her casket was brought to Jerusalem from Ramallah Thursday, following what was described as a full state memorial at Abbas’s Ramallah compound, with officials, foreign diplomats and a long stream of mourners present.
	</blockquote>

	
		Shireen Abu Akleh is being turned into a Palestinian martyr, a saint, a veritable Joan of Arc, beginning with the full state memorial service in Ramallah, with all sorts of high officials and foreign dignitaries present to pay homage to this victim of Israeli state terror. To make sure even greater crowds were mobilized, her casket was brought to Jerusalem, where many more thousands gathered, the international media were there to record the event, and Abu Akleh entered the pantheon of Palestinian martyrs.

	<blockquote>
		
			An initial autopsy of Abu Akleh’s body by Palestinian coroners found that it was not possible to tell whether she was killed by Israeli or Palestinian gunfire.
	</blockquote>

	
		That it was “not possible to tell whose gunfire killed her” was the one truthful admission from the Palestinian side. It came not from Mahmoud Abbas or any other P.A. official, but from the senior Palestinian coroner, Dr. Rayaan Al-Ali, who dared to speak the truth – “at this point we just can’t tell.” Whether he will be punished – possibly demoted — for admitting this remains to be seen.

	<blockquote>
		
			Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Thursday that the PA was hindering efforts to investigate the incident.

		
			The Qatari-owned Al Jazeera has accused Israel of deliberately killing her and vowed to take legal action.&nbsp;Reporters who were with her said there were no Palestinian gunmen in the area.…
	</blockquote>

	
		There were “no Palestinian gunmen in the area,” just as there were no Israeli soldiers in the immediate area. Both the gunmen and the soldiers were trading gunfire some 200 meters distant from where Abu Akleh was standing.&nbsp;Abu Akleh was also about 200 meters from the Israeli armored vehicle at the time she was shot, according to the Israeli military.

	
		Here’s how the U.S. can help to arrive at the truth, assuming the Bidenites care about that. Antony Blinken can call publicly for an investigation by forensics experts from three parties – Israel, the P.A. , and the United States – into the death of Shireen Abu Akleh.&nbsp;Blinken should insist that those experts “must be allowed to study, and subject to ballistics tests, the fatal bullet” that “I regret to say, so far the Palestinian Authority has refused to produce.” And “those experts must also be provided with the helmet the journalist was wearing when she was shot.

	
		“There can be no certainty, and no resolution, until such an investigation is allowed. We earnestly call on the Palestinian Authority to release that bullet for study. So far the Palestinian Authority has rebuffed Israeli requests to hold a joint investigation and to examine the bullet, even with an American representative present. We trust that the P.A., in the interests of arriving at the truth, will reconsider their current refusal to engage in such an investigation.“

	
		That should be enough pressure on the P.A. to decide to cooperate. After all, it doesn’t want to appear to be hiding something essential to the investigation – that bullet — nor does it want, at this point, to antagonize the Biden Administration, on which it is relying for desperately needed financial aid.
</div>

How Al Jazeera Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh Died

This much is certain about the death of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American journalist who was killed in Jenin on May 11: one side, that of Israel, has

Celebrating Eid al-Fitr at the White House, our dangerously elder statesman, Joe Biden, made a series of claims that deserve to be examined. We have already discussed in <a href="https://robertspencer.org/?p=257465" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">yesterday’s post</a> his inclusion of the Muslim Rohingyas as innocent victims of persecution in Myanmar, and why that “persecution” was not quite so simple, but forms part of a much more complicated story, one that includes Rohingya massacres of Buddhists in the 1940s, and a separatist insurrection by the Rohingyas that erupted in the 1970s, then again in the 1990s, and again in 2016-2017, that led finally to attacks by the Burmese army and most of the Rohingyas in Myanmar fleeing into Bangladesh, from whence their ancestors had come in the 19th&nbsp;and early 20th&nbsp;century.


	Here is the offending sentence where the Rohingyas appear:

<blockquote>
	
		“Today, we also remember all those who are not able to celebrate this holy day, including Uyghurs and Rohingyas and all those who are facing famine, violence, conflict, and disease,” Biden said.
</blockquote>


	Who are “all those [Muslims] who are facing famine, violence, conflict, and disease”? And who is to blame? Biden makes it sound as if these terrible conditions have been inflicted on Muslims by others – that is, non-Muslims.


	There are certainly Muslims facing famine, violence, conflict, and disease in many parts of the world. Almost all of them, however, live in Muslim-majority countries. Here’s a rundown on a few of them. In Yemen, one group of Muslims, the Shi’a Houthis, backed by Iran, have been fighting other Muslims since 2015. The Houthis are trying to overturn the national government in San’a, which is backed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The ferocity of the fighting has done great harm to the economy, and led to mass starvation and the “worst humanitarian disaster” in the world. Nota bene: in Yemen, none of the violence, nor the consequences of that violence, has had anything to do with non-Muslims. All along it has been a Muslim-against-Muslim conflict, with both sides being backed by other, non-Yemeni Muslims.


	The same holds true in Libya, where, long after Muammar Qaddafi was deposed and killed — sodomized by a rifle and then shot — in 2011, Libyans are still slaughtering one another in attempts to grab power and the money that comes with it. For now, the forces of General Khalifa Haftar, based in Tobruk in eastern Libya, have been fighting the Government of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli, in western Libya. But even within both of these camps, there are smaller factions that persist in fighting each other. In Tripoli, last September, fighting broke out that pitted the 444 Brigade against the Stabilisation Support Force, two of the main groups in the GNA. Another half-dozen factions have been fighting with one another, off and on, mostly within the GNA, but also including fissiparous forces that are nominally under the control of General Haftar, and yet still jostle for power with one another for power. Outside forces involved in Libya are also Muslim. The GNA is supported mainly by Turkey, which has now built a base in western Libya, while General Haftar’s main supporters are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt. Everyone involved on either side, whether Libyan, or foreign supporters of the GNA or General Haftar, is Muslim.


	Then there is Syria, which is now in the eleventh year of its civil war, that pits Muslims against Muslims. Iran’s Shiites support the Alawite Bashar al-Assad, while the Gulf Arabs – Sunnis all – support the Syrian opposition. Save for help extended to Assad by the Russian Air Force, this civil war, too, is purely a Muslim-against-Muslim affair.


	Besides these three civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, there is all kinds of violence that racks the Muslim world. In west Africa, the Islamic terror group Boko Haram and Fulani jihadis, operating mainly in northern Nigeria, has been steadily mass-murdering – hundreds at a time – Nigerian Christians. The Nigerian army is unable to stem this violence, which has spread from the northeast into central Nigeria, So far, about 45,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria. Thousands of other Christians have been killed by Boko Haram in Chad, Niger, and northern Cameroon. And scarcely a day goes by without news of another group of Christian villagers being killed, or girls kidnapped, by Boko Haram, with no letup in sight.


	Elsewhere in Africa, Muslim violence continues in Somalia, where the terror group Al-Shebab has been executing Christians as well as moderate Muslims. Muslims connected to ISIS have carried out terror attacks in Uganda, including two suicide bombings in the capital Kampala, and a series of murderous attacks on pastors. These Islamic terrorists manage to keep one step ahead of the Ugandan army, even in a country that is 82% Christian.


	Christians are persecuted as well in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt. Apostates from Islam are subject to long prison terms, and sometimes executed by members of their own families, who are only following Muhammad’s command “If someone changes his [Muslim] religion, kill him.” In Egypt, Coptic churches have been subject to frequent bombings by Islamic militants; Copts have been killed in their houses and at their businesses, while Coptic women and girls have been kidnapped by Muslims, forced to convert, and then “married” to their kidnapper.


	Since the 1980s, there have been attacks by Muslim terror groups — including Palestinian groups — on Kenyan targets and Israeli properties in Kenya. Al-Shebab has also become more active in the country, recruiting Kenyans to its ranks, and carrying out raids on Christians in northern Kenya.


	In Afghanistan, the Taliban has attacked both the Shi’a Hazara – whom they regard as not being real Muslims — and the handful of Christians who remain in the country. In Pakistan, Hindus and Christians have been the targets of Muslim violence, and their percentages of the Pakistani population have been greatly reduced since Partition in 1947. The state does little to protect them from attacks by Muslims. Sunnis in Pakistan also routinely attack, and kill, members of the Ahmadi sect, claiming they are not real Muslims but the “worst kind of Infidels.” Pakistani Sunnis also target the Shi’a minority. One Sunni group, Sipah-e-Sahaba, exists for one purpose: to attack Shi’a, especially the educated — engineers, doctors, lawyers – who because of their status and wealth are seen as a threat to Sunni dominance.


	All of this is offered as evidence that it is not Muslims who are being persecuted or killed by non-Muslims, as Biden implied in his Eid al-Fitr remarks, but almost everywhere it is Muslims who are persecuting and killing other Muslims. Muslims also persecute, and in some cases kill, non-Muslims – overwhelmingly their victims are Christians, but Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists are also targeted. If Biden wants to talk about “violence, famine, conflict, and disease,” let him examine who is responsible for those four horsemen of the apocalypse, and where, and whom, they plague. Let him investigate the situation in the Muslim countries where endless civil wars continue (Libya, Syria, and Yemen), in the countries where Sunni Muslims attack and murder Hindus Sikhs, Christians, Ahmadis, and Shi’a Muslims (Afghanistan and Pakistan), in the countries where Sunni Muslims persecute and sometimes kill Christians (Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Somalia). This is just the briefest of overviews — a&nbsp;tour d’horizon&nbsp;— of what has been happening in the Muslim lands. But even that was apparently too much for Joe Biden to grasp, our president who wants us to believe that Muslims suffer from “violence, famine, conflict, and disease” that non-Muslims inflict on them, when the greatest source of misery, by far, for Muslims, is other Muslims. But since it would have been impolitic to recognize that truth, why did Biden have to say anything at all? Why not just a quick greeting to his Muslim guests that evening, along the lines of: “Jill and I are very glad to welcome&nbsp;you to the White House to share an Eid el-Fitr dinner, where we can break bread together and celebrate the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Let this be an occasion when we can put aside our anxieties about the state of the world and contemplate, with gratitude, the freedom that this country — our country — secures for all of us.”


	There. That’s enough. That’s more than enough.

Biden’s Peculiar Eid al-Fitr Speech

Celebrating Eid al-Fitr at the White House, our dangerously elder statesman, Joe Biden, made a series of claims that deserve to be examined. We have already

Visitors to the Old City of Jerusalem are often struck by how new all the synagogues in the Jewish Quarter look. That is because they are new, built after 1967, when Israel won back the Old City from Jordan, that had seized the area in 1948 and held onto it for 19 years. Those synagogues that have so far been built were meant to replace the 58 synagogues, some of them many centuries old (the Hurva synagogue dated from the 16th&nbsp;century), that Jordan systematically blew up when it held the Old City. Now Israel is rebuilding the Tiferes Yisrael synagogue on the spot where it once stood, and Jordan is furious: how dare the Jews rebuild that synagogue in the Jewish Quarter that we blew up? Apparently those dozen-odd synagogues that had previously been rebuilt by Israel did not merit the same outrage, but now, with the recent focus on the Old City, and the Temple Mount, and Arab charges that Israel has designs on dividing or appropriating Al-Aqsa being hysterically bruited about, any rebuilding of another synagogue in the Old City, especially one so famous as Tijferes Yisrael, is cause for Arab alarm.Empty stone alley street among jewish and arab quaretrs of Jerusalem old city next to Western Wall (or Wailing Wall aka Kotel)


	A report on this latest Jordanian outrage – in both senses – is here: “Jordanian Royal Committee says rebuilding a synagogue (destroyed by Jordan) is a racist Jewish crime,” <a href="https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2022/05/jordanian-royal-committee-says.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Elder of Ziyon</a>, May 3, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		The&nbsp;<a href="https://rcja.org.jo/%d9%85%d9%86-%d9%86%d8%ad%d9%86/">Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs&nbsp;</a>of Jordan was created by the late King Hussein in 1971 and reconstituted in 1994. Its mission:

	
		The Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs is working to raise awareness of the importance of the issue of Jerusalem and not to separate it from its Arab and Islamic dimension, expose the Judaization and daily Israeli violations it is subjected to, and increase efforts working to stabilize Jerusalemites, support their steadfastness and publicize their suffering.

	
		Its website is filled with antisemitic invective, calling every Jew in Jerusalem a “colonialist.”

	
		Here is a&nbsp;<a href="https://rcja.org.jo/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83%D9%8F%D9%86%D8%B3-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%AA%D8%AC%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%86%D8%B8%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7/">typical article&nbsp;</a>that exposes how thoroughly antisemitic the Committee is – as well as the government that funds it. It rails against the Israeli plans to rebuild the Tireres Yisrael synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, which was destroyed along with every single other synagogue in the Old City in 1948 by Jordanian forces.

	
		[Israel’s] plans to start building a synagogue allegedly called Tiferes Israel, on an endowment land in which there is an Islamic historical building, about 200 meters from the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque from its western side, at a cost of $13 million, and with a construction area of 387 square meters, consisting of six floors, four of them underground and two above the ground, 23 meters high. It includes a synagogue, facilities for holding Talmudic prayers, a false Talmudic museum and public services, to be one of the largest synagogues in the world.This comes after the building of the Hurva synagogue, which was also erected on confiscated Jerusalem land and property, in implementation of an Israeli rabbi’s proposal claiming that it speeds up salvation and the coming of the Messiah and building the temple, according to their claim.
</blockquote>


	Israel is rebuilding one more synagogue in the Jewish Quarter, Tiferes Yisrael, had had been blown up by the Jordanians in 1948. That’s all. Israel has no designs on Al-Aqsa. After destroying the original synagogue, the Jordanians built their own structure on the land upon which the original synagogue was built. That land had been bought by Jews, for an exorbitant sum, in the 1840s. After the 1948 war, the Jordanians promptly destroyed the Tiferes Yisrael synagogue, as they did all 58 synagogues in the Jewish Quarter. On the site where that synagogue had stood, Jordan built what it now describes as an “Islamic historical building.” According to them, that building in the middle of the Jewish Quarter must forever remain Islamic. That “historic” Islamic building is not exactly “historic” – it was built after 1948 –more than a full century after the land for the Tiferes Yisrael synagogue had been bought. And this “Islamic historic building” has no religious or other claim to remain in the Jewish Quarter, but is in effect “squatting” on the land that was bought by Jews in the 1840s and belongs by right to the congregation of a rebuilt Tiferes Yisrael.


	Apparently it is outrageous for the Israelis to build the synagogue on land that belonged to Tiferes Yisrael, which the Jordanians say is “allegedly” called the Tiferes Yisrael synagogue. Why “allegedly”? That was the name of the original synagogue and will be the name of its replacement. There is nothing “allegedly” about it. And why should the size of the synagogue matter to Muslims? The synagogue is not being built in the Muslim Quarter, or on the Temple Mount, and will be more than 600 feet distant from Al-Aqsa as the crow flies, and more than 2000 feet below Al-Aqsa’s base. It’s none of Jordan’s business what size the synagogue is, or how many stories are being built, both below and above ground.

<blockquote>
	
		The Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs stresses the danger of this alleged synagogue, as well as other Jewish centers, which are trying to obliterate the Arab identity of Jerusalem and its authentic Arab (Islamic and Christian) identity, and aims to change the space of the Arab city of Jerusalem in preparation for the expulsion of its Arab residents and the settlement of settlers, and an attempt to create an alleged Jewish climate by creating Talmudic paths and stations and building synagogues and biblical gardens in the vicinity of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and the city of Jerusalem,&nbsp;which destroys peace and security in the region and ends the chance of the two-state solution to establish a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the 1967 borders, which was adopted by international resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative.
</blockquote>


	Why is it called an “alleged” synagogue? Such a word means the Jordanians are suggesting it may have some other purpose. Could those diabolical Israelis be building what they are assuring the world is a synagogue, but that may also have some other use, as a weapons warehouse, or an Iron Dome anti-missile site, or an IDF barracks? After all, the Arabs use their mosques — even the Al-Aqsa Mosque — to store weapons and hide fighters. Why wouldn’t the Jews do the same, these Jordanians must be thinking, with synagogues? Of course, there is no evidence to suggest that this building will be anything other than a synagogue. And there are no examples of synagogues being used as weapons storehouses or hideouts for fighters, as mosques have often been used, especially in Gaza, by Hamas, and in southern Lebanon, by Hezbollah.&nbsp;


	What is the terrible “danger” posed by the rebuilt Tiferes Yisrael synagogue to the Arabs? Note the use of the word “Talmudic”:&nbsp;the synagogue’s rebuilding is “an attempt to create an alleged Jewish climate by creating Talmudic paths and stations and building synagogues and biblical gardens in the vicinity of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.”&nbsp;“Talmudic” is undefined, but the word is meant to suggest something dark and dangerous. And how will all these sinister plans for building synagogues harm the Arabs? Just how many of the 58 synagogues destroyed by the Jordanians does Israel have a right to rebuild in the Jewish Quarter? Many of us would respond “all of them.” In the past 55 years, after Jordan had systematically destroyed all 58 of those synagogues in the Old City, did Israel follow the Jordanian example and blow up mosques in the territory under its control? Not a single one. Not in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, not in the rest of Jerusalem, and not anywhere else in Israel. That should be kept firmly in mind.&nbsp;


	And how would Al-Aqsa Mosque be harmed by this building project, as the Jordanians claim? Al-Aqsa, after all, is built on top of the Temple Mount, that looms 2,428 feet above the rest of Jerusalem, far above the site where the Tiferes Yisrael synagogue is scheduled to be built. And the Tiferes Yisrael synagogue will not only be built on land that is 2,428 feet below Al-Aqsa, but also on land that is 628 feet distant, as the crow flies, from Al-Aqsa. Vertically and horizontally, that’s very far away. &nbsp;


	Israel is not trying to “obliterate” the Islamic component of Jerusalem’s heritage; there is no truth to the Jordanian claim that Israel is plotting to “judaize” east Jerusalem. There were 66,000 Arabs in east Jerusalem in 1967 when Israel took control of the area; there are 340,000 today. The Israelis are simply asserting their rights to rebuild a historic synagogue that the Jordanians destroyed. It is not preparing for the “expulsion of its [Jerusalem’s] Arab residents.” Israel has had 55 years, after all, to “expel” Arabs from Jerusalem; it has not expelled a single one.


	The Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs affirms that the firm position of Jordan under its historical Hashemite leadership, which has historical guardianship over the Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, will remain the defender of Palestine and Jerusalem, regardless of the cost and sacrifices as a national and national cause.&nbsp;The unanimous agreement that includes deterring Israel (the occupying power) to stop its crimes and violations, including hundreds of international resolutions issued by the United Nations and its affiliated organizations, including UNESCO, which affirmed the exclusive Arab identity of Jerusalem and its Islamic and Christian holy sites, and international organizations must protect human rights and humanitarian organizations ….[and expose] Israel’s racist crimes.


	“Historical Hashemite leadership…historical guardianship” – this use of the word “historical” is meant to suggest that Jordan’s role in the Waqf that manages Al-Aqsa Mosque is of long duration. In fact, it began only in 1949; 73 years is not what most of us would describe as “historical.”


	What are Israel’s “crimes and violations” in the Old City? What UN Resolutions have found fault with Israel’s stewardship of the Old City? Lie follows lie in this hysterical screed from the Jordanian government.&nbsp;Where did UNESCO “affirm the exclusive Arab identity of Jerusalem”? It has never done so.


	Let’s get this story straight. It’s very simple. Israel has been scrupulous in its care of the Old City, in respecting the rights of all religions. On the Temple Mount, it has put limits on Jewish worshippers in order to accommodate Muslims, even going so far as to prohibit Jews from praying, aloud or silently, at the holiest site of Judaism. An extraordinary concession, for which Israel gets no gratitude. Furthermore, Israel allows Jewish visitors to visit the Mount for only four hours a day, and only on five days of the week, to minimize the “offense” to Muslims. Furthermore, they are instructed to remain on the perimeter of the Al-Aqsa Compound, and not to get too close to Al-Aqsa itself.&nbsp;


	Israel has been allowing Jews to rebuild the synagogues that the Jordanians destroyed between 1948 and 1967, right on the same spots where they had once stood. So far roughly a dozen have been rebuilt. They are being constructed with sensitivity to the surrounding buildings. The Tiferes Israel synagogue, for example, will have six stories in all, but only two of those stories will be above ground, so that the synagogue does not loom over any buildings nearby, and will be the same height above ground as was the original synagogue.


	Israel has not expelled any Arabs from Jerusalem. It has not destroyed any mosques in Jerusalem or anywhere else in Israel. In rebuilding this famous synagogue that Jordan destroyed, the government of Israel has no sinister aim. The Tiferes Israel synagogue will not be a place where weapons are stored or fighters hidden – unlike what has been the case, as we all know, with many mosques in Gaza and southern Lebanon. The Jordanians can rage, impotently, over the rebuilding of this mosque, but the more they do so, the. more supporters of Israel will have an opening to remind the world of what happened to all 58 of the synagogues in the Old City during the years of Jordanian rule. It’s a story too few know, just as even fewer people know that the Jordanians pulled up tens of thousands of ancient tombstones from the venerable Jewish cemetery at the Mount of Olives, and used them to line the floors of Jordanian army latrines or to be ground into gravel.&nbsp;


	Good can come of this, and evil. The evil is if people fail to grasp just how absurd are every one of the Jordanian charges leveled at Israel The good can come of it if, in answering those charges, we can make sure that Jordan’s record of destroying those 58 synagogues in the Jewish Quarter, and its wanton destruction of tens of thousands of headstones at the oldest Jewish cemetery in the world, become much more widely known. Let Jordan rue the day it raised the alarm about the Tiferes Yisrael synagogue.

How Dare Israel Rebuild a Synagogue the Jordanians Blew Up?

Visitors to the Old City of Jerusalem are often struck by how new all the synagogues in the Jewish Quarter look. That is because they are new, built after 1967

Is it every year, or every other year, that President-For-Life of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas threatens to end all ties to Israel? Sometimes he says he’s done it, but nothing actually changes. Sometimes he says he’s going to do it, and then doesn’t. Sometimes he says he’s waiting for a meeting of the PA leadership to discuss it, then cancels the meeting. A report on the latest farcical threat by the angry&nbsp;rais&nbsp;in Ramallah is here: “Bennett: UN must stop serving terrorists’ agenda,” by Lahav Harkov and Khaled Abu Toameh, <a href="https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-704839" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Jerusalem Post</a>, April 22, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has again threatened to halt security coordination and suspend Palestinian recognition of Israel.

	
		The latest threat was made during a meeting in Ramallah on Thursday night with US administration envoys Yael Lempert, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and Hady Amr, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs….
</blockquote>


	Abbas usually makes this threat to cut ties with Israel when he feels the hot breath down his back of Hamas and other even more violent rivals; it’s a way of re-establishing his anti-Israel bonafides with the doubting thomases: he’s assuring them that he still knows how to be tough on Israel, and don’t anyone forget it.

<blockquote>
	
		Earlier this week, Abbas abruptly called off an emergency meeting of the Palestinian leadership that was scheduled to take place in Ramallah on Sunday night to discuss the implementation of a resolution by the Palestinian Central Council (PCC) to terminate all agreements with Israel, including the security coordination and Palestinian recognition of Israel.…
</blockquote>


	Of course, the only conceivable reason why Abbas called off the emergency meeting was to prevent the Palestinian leadership from meeting. He doesn’t want to discuss how to implement that resolution that the Palestinian Central Committee passed in February, that would have required the PA to terminate all ties to Israel – including security coordination – and most comical of all, would have the PA end its “recognition” of Israel. The Israelis, no doubt, are quivering at the very thought.

<blockquote>
	
		During the meeting with the US diplomats, Abbas demanded urgent intervention from the US administration to “stop Israel’s escalation in the Palestinian territories,” said senior Palestinian official Hussein al-Sheikh, who attended the meeting.
</blockquote>


	There has been no “escalation” by Israel. There has, instead, been a steady, relentless, measured attempt to bring the rioters on the Temple Mount under control. Ever since April 15, Palestinian and Israeli Arabs have been throwing rocks, Molotov cocktails, fireworks, and other objects from the Temple Mount onto Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall far below, and at the Israeli police manfully trying to keep the peace on the Mount. Some of those rioters have been stockpiling rocks and other weapons inside Al-Aqsa itself; they have also been flinging the weapons from inside the mosque, at the Israeli police. Those police have gone into Al-Aqsa briefly, not to interrupt the worshippers, but to seize the cache of weapons and, where possible, to collar some of the rioters. In fact, there are scenes the Israelis have captured on video – they have been posted online — of Arab worshippers outside Al-Aqsa attacking rioters, preventing them from entering the mosque, even pushing them away, so that those worshippers can pray in peace.


	The Israelis do not “escalate,” but they do react; when the level of Arab violence rises, so does the firmness of the police response.

<blockquote>
	
		Sheikh described the meeting as “clear and frank,” adding that Abbas blamed the occupation for the escalation and the absence of a political horizon, which will push us to implement the decisions of the Palestinian Central Council soon.”
</blockquote>


	Implement away, PA. End that security coordination with Israel’s Shin Bet, and see what that does to security in the West Bank. Without Israeli intelligence, and Israeli help in rounding up members of Hamas and PIJ, who are perhaps a greater danger to Abbas and the PA than they are to Israel, Mahmoud Abbas’ regime would have a much harder time staying in power. The security coordination with Israel is not something he can end without harming his own hold on the PA presidency..

<blockquote>
	
		A statement published by the PA president’s office after the meeting said that he called on President Biden and his administration “to intervene immediately and urgently to assume their responsibilities, given the seriousness of the situation as a result of the Israeli measures in all Palestinian territories, especially Jerusalem, al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.”…
</blockquote>


	The statement from Abbas’ office is absurd. How does Abbas think the Bidenites can “intervene immediately and urgently” to change Israel’s determination to protect its own citizens at the Western Wall, and to maintain order on the Temple Mount? So far the Bidenites have, surprisingly, shown a sympathetic understanding of Israel as it tries to contain the Arab violence. Besides, what pressure could the Bidenites bring to bear on Israel at this point? If they tried to make Israel halt its defense of its own citizens now under Arab attack, they know that they can expect a terrific pushback from Congress, including from those Democratic members who want to be re-elected in November.

<blockquote>
	
		Abbas said that in light of the absence of “the political horizon and an Israeli refusal to stop unilateral actions and abide by the signed agreements, the Palestinian leadership will soon have the right to implement the decisions of the Palestinian Central Council,” according to the statement.
</blockquote>


	The “unilateral actions” are those undertaken by the Palestinians themselves, who on April 15 suddenly started rioting on the top of the Temple Mount; the Israelis have merely been reacting to potentially lethal attacks on Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall, and on the police attempting to keep order on the Mount.

<blockquote>
	
		The PA president also called on the Biden administration to fulfill its promises to the Palestinians, including the pledge to reopen the US consulate in Jerusalem that served as a diplomatic mission to the Palestinians and was closed down in 2018 by the Trump administration.…
</blockquote>


	Since that pledge was made by Joe Biden, to reopen the US consulate in Jerusalem that in 2018 had been folded into the American Embassy, the Bidenites have no doubt been chagrined to discover that they will not be able to fulfill that promise. They have been made aware of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which prohibits states from opening (or reopening) consulates in what are defined as the “receiving” states, without the express permission of those “receiving” states. Both Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid have made clear that Israel will not agree, as the receiving state, to any such “consulate to the Palestinians” being opened in Jerusalem.&nbsp;One wonders why the Bidenites have not let the Palestinians know about this principle of international law which, after all, gets them off the hook: “We’d like to open the consulate, but the Vienna Convention won’t allow it.” Or could they perhaps still be harboring the hope that they will be able to change the minds of Bennett and Lapid?

<blockquote>
	
		The Palestinian Affairs Unit at the US Embassy said that Lempert and Amr met with Abbas and his top advisers “to discuss the need for all parties to call and work for calm, especially in Jerusalem, and our mutual commitment to a two-state solution.”
</blockquote>


	The Palestinians won’t be working for calm, but intend to keep up the rioting on the Temple Mount, and to keep inciting Arab violence all over Jerusalem and the West Bank by insisting that the Israelis intend to “seize the Al-Aqsa Mosque.” Israel has shown over the past week that it knows how to seize both weapons and rioters, on the Temple Mount and in the mosque, so well, in fact, that 100,000 Muslim worshippers felt safe enough to come to the Temple Mount on April 22 not to riot, but to pray.


	As for Mahmoud Abbas’ threat to cut ties to Israel, let him this time follow through with that threat. He will regret it. First, if security coordination with Israel ends, the PA security services without Shin Bet’s input will have a much harder time controlling Abbas’ enemies in Hamas and the PIJ who have been expanding their numbers in the West Bank. Second, if the PA cuts all its ties with Israel, the current supplies of water that Israel provides the PA could also be ended. Third, energy sent to the PA would also be halted, after the PA “cuts all ties” to Israel; almost all of the liquid fuel – oil, natural gas — used in the Palestinian territories, is supplied by or via Israel. Fourth, the money that Israel now collects in taxes on imports meant for the Palestinians, and which it dutifully transfers to the PA — save for an amount equivalent to what the PA spends on its “Pay-For-Slay” program, that Israel holds onto — would now be completely withheld. This would lead to the greatest economic crisis in the PA’s history. Fifth, if all ties are cut, Palestinians would likely be prevented from using Israeli hospitals and being treated by Israeli medical personnel. Such care has saved many Palestinian lives. Even the leaders of the PA and Hamas, and their families, have chosen to be treated in Israeli, not Palestinian or other Arab, medical facilities. Sixth, about 140,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been given work permits, allowing them to work in Israel, including the settlements. They receive much higher wages from Israeli employers than they could receive from Palestinian employers, assuming they would have jobs in the PA territories. Their earnings in Israel are an economic lifeline for their extended families. If the PA cuts all ties to Israel, those 140,000 workers would lose their jobs in Israel and again be condemned either to low-wage jobs at home or, in many cases, to unemployment.


	&nbsp;Mahmoud Abbas will have to think long and hard before he makes a move — ending all ties to the Jewish state — that does very little harm to Israel, and a great deal of harm to the Palestinian Authority. But if he does decide to carry out his threat, no one in Israel should try to stop him. He won’t be able to sustain that cutting of the PA’s ties to the Jewish state for long.

Abbas Threatens to Cut Ties to Israel

Is it every year, or every other year, that President-For-Life of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas threatens to end all ties to Israel? Sometimes he

It apparently was not enough for Jordan to denounce the Jewish state for its attempts to protect its citizens who were under attack from rioting Arabs on the Temple Mount. Now it has rebuked&nbsp;Israel for its attempts to maintain order during the “Holy Fire” ceremony at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. A report is here: “In fresh public rebuke, Jordan condemns Israel for Holy Fire crowd restrictions,” <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-fresh-public-rebuke-jordan-condemns-israel-for-holy-fire-crowd-restrictions/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Times of Israel</a>, April 24, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		Jordan condemned on Sunday Israel’s restrictions on attendance at the “Holy Fire” ceremony at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem a day earlier, the latest in a series of recent public rebukes by Amman.

	
		All Israeli measures aimed at restricting the right of Christians to free and unrestricted access to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to perform their religious rites, including imposing restrictions on the number of worshipers, are rejected and condemned,” said spokesman Haitham Abu Al-Ful in a statement released by the Jordanian Foreign Ministry.
</blockquote>


	Israel has a responsibility to make sure that visitors to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are kept safe. That includes crowd control, to avoid sudden surges of visitors that can lead to panic, and stampedes that can prove fatal. Just recently in Israel, such a sudden surge at an Orthodox Jewish religious gathering at Mt. Meron in 2021 led to a stampede in which 45 Jews were trampled to death. At Mina, in Mecca, in 2015, a similar stampede at the entry to the Jamaraat Bridge resulted in the deaths of 2,241 Muslim pilgrims.&nbsp;Those events were surely on the minds of Israeli police, taking care not to allow the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to be packed with too many visitors at one time, for their own safety, and not in order, as the Jordanian condemnation says, to prevent “free access [to Christians] to perform their religious rites.”

<blockquote>
	
		“Israel, the occupying power, must respect the historical and legal status quo in Jerusalem and its sacred [sites], and stop all restrictive measures,” the statement read.
</blockquote>


	Of course, there has to be crowd control when there is an unusual influx — as there was to view the “Holy Fire” ceremony at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — and limits placed on the numbers allowed in to a&nbsp;confined space, whether at a church or at a rock concert. As some visitors left the Church, others were allowed in, in an organized flow directed by the police. Imagine the outcry if the Israelis had not put limits on the number of visitors allowed into the Church at any one time, and some accident – a visitor who trips on a step and falls, grabbing at another pilgrim who, in turn, also falls down, leading to a widening gyre of panic, or&nbsp;a lit candle that sets a tapestry alight, leading to panic and to the kind of stampede in which many people might be trampled to death. Israel would never hear the end of it. Think of the stampedes at Mecca that routinely occur because of poor crowd control at bottlenecks along the route; in the Mina stampede of 2015, 2,431 people died. Surely the government of Jordan knows perfectly well why the Israeli police had to limit the numbers of visitors in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre allowed in to see the “Holy Fire” ceremony.

<blockquote>
	
		Thousands of Christians&nbsp;<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/thousands-attend-jerusalem-holy-fire-despite-complaints-over-safety-restrictions/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">celebrated</a>&nbsp;the Holy Fire ceremony on Saturday amid new restrictions on attendance this year that Israel said were needed for safety.

	
		Several clashes erupted between police and worshipers who were kept outside the compound.

	
		Videos shared online showed a policeman pushing a man and grabbing him by the throat after he attempted to break through a police barrier.

	
		Authorities applied a safety law to the Holy Fire ceremony, limiting crowd size commensurate with space and the number of exits.

	
		Israel said it wants to prevent another disaster after a crush at Mount Meron last year left 45 people dead in one of the worst disasters in the country’s history.

	
		Israel also divided a priestly blessing service for Jews at the Western Wall during the Passover festival into two services, again citing crowding concerns.
</blockquote>


	The&nbsp;Israeli government was not singling out Christian visitors to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for having limits placed on their numbers. It has done the same for Jews, as when it arranged for there to be two services, not one, to handle the unusual number of Jews who wanted to be blessed at the Western Wall during Passover.&nbsp;Limits were placed on them as well.&nbsp;

<blockquote>
	
		However, church leaders rejected any restrictions on principle, saying they infringe on religious freedom.
</blockquote>


	Nonsense.&nbsp;Crowd control measures were in this case&nbsp;a matter of saving lives; they no more “infringe on religious freedom” than do the number of fire exits, or sprinkler systems,&nbsp;that houses of worship are required to have. &nbsp;

<blockquote>
	
		The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, like the Temple Mount, is governed by a decades-old set of informal arrangements known as the status quo. As at the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, seemingly minor violations at the church have ignited violence, including brawls between monks of different denominations.

	
		The condemnation from Amman was the latest in a number of steps taken by Jordan against Israel in recent days, albeit largely symbolic ones.

	
		Amman summoned Israel’s ambassador for a dressing down last week after police entered the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount multiple times to quash Palestinian riots.
</blockquote>


	Jordan’s government, always worried about the 60% of the country’s population that is Palestinian, has been denouncing Israel so that the King can maintain his popularity and deflect any unhappiness with his rule onto the Jewish state. He knows that Palestinian rioters started the conflict on the Temple Mount by hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails at Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall far below, and at the police trying both to keep them from throwing those potentially lethal weapons, and to disarm them.&nbsp;King Abdullah also knows that the only reason the police entered Al-Aqsa mosque was to pursue rioters who had run inside, and to seize the rocks and Molotov cocktails that had been stockpiled inside the Mosque. There was no intention to “seize” Al-Aqsa, which the Israelis entered and exited as quickly as they could. &nbsp;

<blockquote>
	
		Jordan has accused Israel of violating the status quo at the site {Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif], under which Muslims are allowed to visit and pray while Jews cannot pray and may only visit during restricted time slots.
</blockquote>


	As Yair Lapid has repeatedly said, in response to Arab criticism, there has been “no change to the status quo” at the Temple Mount. Jewish visitors may not pray, either aloud or silently, on the Temple Mount. Just think: Jews are not allowed to pray at the holiest site in Judaism, in order not to offend Muslim sensibilities. Furthermore, Jews are allowed to visit the site only for four hours a day, on five days of the week. In other words, Jews – whose numbers on the Mount are strictly limited by the Israeli police – can visit Temple Mount only during 20 hours each week. By contrast, unlimited numbers of Muslims – 100,000 showed up at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on April 22 — can pray on Temple Mount, all day long, every day of the week.&nbsp; &nbsp;

<blockquote>
	
		The Temple Mount is the holiest place in Judaism, as the site of the biblical temples. Al-Aqsa Mosque, which sits atop the mount, is the third holiest shrine in Islam.

	
		This year, major Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holidays have converged, and tensions have soared as tens of thousands of people flock to Jerusalem’s Old City to visit some of the holiest sites for all three faiths for the first time since the lifting of pandemic restrictions.

	
		Israel says it is committed to ensuring freedom of worship for Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
</blockquote>


	So let’s see. Israel allows Muslims by the tens of thousands to visit the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, at any time of day, and any day of the week. At the same time, Israel does not allow Jews to pray, aloud or silently, at the holiest site in Judaism. Israel limits the numbers of Jewish visitors, and allows them to visit the Temple Mount only during a four-hour period, and on only five days of the week. Everything is being done to accommodate Muslims at the expense of Jews. Yet the nonsense continues from the Palestinians and their willing collaborators: Israel is plotting to “seize” Al-Aqsa and turn it into a synagogue.


	Now we have an attempt, by Jordan, to turn the crowd control measures at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre into a deliberate attempt to interfere “with religious freedom.” Tell us, Jordanian spokesman: are the crowd control measures put in place by the Saudis after the Mina stampede at Mecca in 2015 an example of interfering “with religious freedom”? No, I didn’t think you’d&nbsp;say so. And you’re right; these were safety measures, designed to save lives by limiting the number of pilgrims at a well-known bottleneck just before the Jamaraat Bridge.


	It was the same at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The&nbsp;Israeli police enforced crowd control measures for the safety of the Christian visitors. They wanted to avoid a Christian calamity akin to what happened to Jewish visitors to Mt. Meron, and to Muslim pilgrims at Mina, in Mecca. The Israeli safety restrictions – limiting the number of visitors allowed into the Church at any one time — had nothing to do with impinging on “religious freedom.” But&nbsp;the Jordanians, determined to find fault with Israel, will continue to condemn the Jewish state nonetheless. Call it pusillanimity, call it hypocrisy, call it miching mallecho. When it’s Arabs against Israel, there is no end to this.

Jordan Denounces Israel For Crowd Control at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

It apparently was not enough for Jordan to denounce the Jewish state for its attempts to protect its citizens who were under attack from rioting Arabs on the

The Palestinian Authority likes to present itself as the “moderate” face of the Palestinian “resistance.” Unlike Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the PA does not itself conduct terror attacks.&nbsp;But it does encourage terror attacks by others. First, it continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually on its “Pay-For-Slay” program, whereby it provides generous stipends to imprisoned terrorists, and to the families of terrorists who were killed in carrying out their attacks. Congress in 2018 passed the Taylor Force Act, that requires the American government to cease to provide aid to the PA as long as the “Pay-For-Slay” program continues.&nbsp;


	Second, the PA honors terrorists by naming schools, streets, plazas, sports competitions, and more, after them, thereby keeping them fresh in the collective memory of the Palestinians, presenting them as exemplars to be emulated by the young.&nbsp;


	Now the PA has reminded us – and one hopes the Bidenites are paying close attention – that it is perfectly happy to promote those who call for the “extermination” of Jews. Christine Douglass-Williams&nbsp;<a href="https://robertspencer.org/?p=256321" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">wrote about this</a>&nbsp;yesterday, and another report on this can be found here: “Palestinian Authority TV Airs Imam’s Call for ‘Extermination of the Evil Jews’: NGO,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/04/24/palestinian-authority-tv-airs-imams-call-for-extermination-of-the-evil-jews-ngo/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Algemeiner</a>, April 24, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		As Jerusalem saw escalating clashes last week between Palestinian rioters and Israeli police, Palestinian Authority TV aired an imam’s call for the “extermination” of Jews, an Israeli media watchdog said Sunday.

	
		The prayer led by a Palestinian imam was broadcast on PA television on April 17, according to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), as rioting continued on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

	
		“Grant us victory over the infidels,” the imam said, according to a PMW translation. “Allah, delight us with the conquest and liberation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Allah, make us among the first to enter, the conquerors, the worshippers, and those calling out ‘Allahu Akbar’ inside [the mosque] to You, Master of the Universe.”

	
		“Allah, delight us with the extermination of the evil Jews, O Master of the Universe, and [the extermination] of their hypocritical supporters who have evil in their hearts,” he continued.

	
		The Ramadan prayer was delivered at the Al-Ain Mosque in El-Bireh, near Ramallah.&nbsp;

	
		PMW said it had notified the Israel Police of the footage for its “explicit incitement to murder,” and also called for the arrest of the head of PA TV and the Palestinian Broadcast Corporation.
</blockquote>


	Comment:


	The Ramadan prayer of the imam at the Al-Ain Mosque, calling for the “extermination “ of the Jews, is blood-curdling, but even worse is the fact that the “moderate” PA then chose to broadcast it on the PA’s television. Thus it endorsed, and helped to spread, the annihilationist sentiment of the unidentified imam, who calls not for an end to Israel’s “occupation,” or even for “Israel to disappear,” but for all Jews, everywhere on earth, to be killed. Watch it here....

<div class="media_embed" height="315px" width="560px">
	<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315px" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6FTxstJLrxE" title="YouTube video player" width="560px"></iframe></div>


	Such a prayer could not have been broadcast on Palestinian television, one suspects, without the knowledge, and approval, of those at the very highest level of the PA government –the PA’s Prime Minister, Muhammed Shtayyeh, and its President-for-Life Mahmoud Abbas.&nbsp;


	The Biden Administration has been treating the PA with kid gloves. It had promised the PA that it would re-open the “consulate to the Palestinians” in Jerusalem, and the only reason it has not done so is that the Bidenites must have discovered, to their chagrin, that according to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (1963), the “receiving” state where the consulate is to be opened must give its permission, and both Prime Minister Bennett and Foreign Minister Lapid have made clear they will never provide that permission. Biden has als promised to permit the PLO office in Washington, that the Trump Administration had closed,tro re-open. And the Bidenites have, despite the Taylor Force Act, gone ahead and provided hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the PA that the Trump Administration had halted, even though the “Pay-For-Slay” program continues unchanged..


	The Bidenites should read the transcript of the imam’s exterminationist prayer, as broadcast so enthusiastically on the PA’ TV. Better yet, a redoubtable member of Congress, appalled at the Bidenites’’ attempts to appease Mahmoud Abbas and the PA, should read out the imam’s prayer on the Senate or House floor,, and demand to know what consequences, if any, the PA will suffer from having allowed such a “prayer” for the mass murder of Jews to be spread far and wide on its own television station.


	Here’s what one would like to hear from, say, a Senator – both Republican Ted Cruz, and Democrat Robert Menendez, come to mind as candidates:

<blockquote>
	
		“The Palestinian Authority now receives hundreds of millions of dollars annually from American taxpayers. This aid has been given, despite the fact that the PA continues its “Pay-For-Slay” program, that both rewards past, and incentivizes future, terrorism. Vast sums are spent by the PA through its “Pay-For-Slay” program on these terrorists and their families . The Taylor Force Act was passed by Congress in 2018 to end all American economic aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) until the PA ceases paying stipends through the Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund to individuals who commit acts of terrorism and to the families of deceased terrorists.

	
		“But the infamous “Pay-For-Slay” program continues, and yet American aid has not stopped. We have a right to ask – “what gives”? What precisely is the rationale offered by the Biden Administration for ignoring both the letter and spirit of the Taylor Force Act? Does it believe that some kinds of aid are not prohibited underTaylor Force? If so, could the Administration tell us in detail what aid can still be given to the PA , while the “Pay-For-Slay” program continues,: and not violate Taylor Force?

	
		“Furthermore, what is the Administration doing about the PA’s honoring of terrorists by naming schools, streets, plazas, and sports competitions after them? Such memorializing of terrorists is meant to keep them fresh in the collective memory, and induce young Palestinians to emulate them. Has the Administration raised this issue with the PA? If not, why not?

	
		“And now we come to the latest outrage: the broadcasting on the PA television station, of the recorded sermon given by an imam at a mosque in El-Bireh, next to Ramallah, the capital of the&nbsp;Palestinian Authority. Here is part of what the imam said in his Ramadan prayer that the PA TV found so inspiring that it chose to broadcast to its audience:

	
		“Allah delight us with the extermination of the evil Jews,” he prayed, and then called for the extermination of those he called “their[the Jews’] hypocritical supporters who have evil in their hearts.

	
		“Grant us victory over the infidels..Allah, delight us with the conquest and liberation of the AlAqsa Mosque. Allah, make us among the first to enter, the conquerors, the worshippers, and those calling out ‘Allahu Akbar’ inside [the mosque] to You, Master of the Universe. Allah, delight us with the extermination of the evil Jews, O Master of the Universe, and [the extermination] of their hypocritical supporters who have evil in their hearts,” he beseeched God.

	
		“The Palestinian Broadcast Corporation chose to broadcast this explicit incitement to murder Jews – not Israelis alone, but all Jews, the “evil Jews.” Will the Biden Administration demand tha the PA fire – or better still, arrest –the head of PA TV, Khaled Sukkar, and the head of the Palestinian Broadcast Corporation, Ahmad Assaf? Will it threaten to withhold aid if its demands are not met?

	
		“Or does the Biden Administration think that such broadcasting of calls for genocide need not have consequences? We have a right to ask for answers."
</blockquote>


	There. That should do it. Let the flustered Bidenites scramble to formulate a suitable response. Let’s see what they come up with. It won’t be pretty.

A Palestinian Imam’s Genocidal Prayer

The Palestinian Authority likes to present itself as the “moderate” face of the Palestinian “resistance.” Unlike Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the

The Palestinians keep repeating the same baseless charges against Israel. “Israel is an apartheid state.” “Israel wants to expel all the Arabs from the ‘occupied’ West Bank.’” And so on and so ridiculously forth. The charge that has been most in evidence this April, is that “Al Aqsa is being attacked.” A report on how to deal with such charges is here:&nbsp;“Deactivating Palestinian dog whistles,” by&nbsp;Douglas Altabef, <a href="https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/deactivating-palestinian-dog-whistles/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Israel Hayom</a>, April 21, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		In a geopolitical version of the movie “Groundhog Day,” the Palestinians have continually employed a series of dog whistles that are intended both to rally the faithful and gain the sympathy of an unwitting world. Chief among them, of course, is the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount − the site of large pilgrimages during the month of Ramadan, which started at the beginning of April, and disturbances throughout the year − is “under attack.”

	
		In the classic mode of projecting one’s own conduct onto others or seeking to do so, Palestinians who are intent on rioting invoke the threat to Al-Aqsa as the rationale for their actions.&nbsp;But we all know that Al-Aqsa is never under threat. If anything, Israeli police and authorities treat it with kid gloves, allowing violence to flare up rather than taking steps that could be seen objectively as some kind of incursion.
</blockquote>


	On April 15, when the rioting by Arabs started on top of the Temple Mount, a reluctant Israel held back. It requested that the Jordanians, who control the Waqf that administers the Al-Aqsa mosque and compound, deal with the rioters. Only after that request was turned down, and several hours had passed, during which rocks and Molotov cocktails were being hurled by the rioters onto the Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall far below, did the Israeli police take over and institute their riot control measures. They did not “threaten” Al-Aqsa at that or any other time, and the Palestinians knew it. It was only after some of the rioters had entered Al-Aqsa to collect more of their stockpiled weapons – rocks and explosives — and to hurl them through mosque windows at the police on the esplanade, that the Israeli police briefly entered, to seize both those rioters and the stockpile of weapons. Then they left, having ensured that the tens of thousands of peaceful worshippers would not have their prayers disrupted by the rioters. In fact, later that very day, 50,000 Muslims prayed on the Temple Mount in peace. By April 22, that number had grown to 100,000 worshippers. These worshippers were not taking part in the riots, and in fact videos show some of them angrily pushing the rioters away from the mosque. It was Israel that, in suppressing the rioters, made the mosque and most of the compound safe for Muslim worshippers.

<blockquote>
	
		Yet the inevitable pattern is that the “threat” to Al-Aqsa is used as a call to arms. Rioting ensues, Israeli security forces react, and the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs point to the security reaction as proof that Al-Aqsa was indeed threatened.

	
		In the world of PR and advocacy, this is called great work if you can get it. It also means that you are relying on the Pavlovian reaction of useful idiots who unquestioningly buy into this choreography of events and the reaction to them.
</blockquote>


	The Palestinians and their supporters keep repeating the phrase about Israeli “threats to Al-Aqsa” that they had to counter with their rocks and explosives. They have reversed the order of things. It was the rioters who first erupted violently on the Temple Mount, and only then did the Israeli police intervene to disperse, disarm, and arrest the rioters.

<blockquote>
	
		We have seen the same pas de deux with the alleged threats to the Sheikh Jarrah squatters. And then there is my personal favorite: The supposed attempts by Israeli authorities to “Judaize Jerusalem.” The logical question then arises: if we know all of this, why can’t we head it off at the pass?
</blockquote>


	The property disputes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of east Jerusalem, between Jewish owners who had clear title and Arab squatters, who had none and yet have refused for years to pay any rent, were presented by the Palestinians as part of a sinister plot to “Judaize Jerusalem.” Only a few dozen properties were the subject of litigation. None of the Arabs could produce a valid title. One Arab family presented what turned out to be a clumsy forgery of an Ottoman land title. Another Arab family claimed to have bought its property, without any title to prove it, from a man named “Ismail” who promptly disappeared. There has been no attempt to “Judaize” east Jerusalem. In 1967, when Israel took possession of the territory, there were 66,000 Arabs living in the area; now there are 340,000. If Israel is trying to “Judaize” east Jerusalem, it is not trying very hard.

<blockquote>
	
		Here is a simple suggestion: Get a jump on the situation and tell the world − here is what to expect. Then, detail exactly what the chain of events will be, including the reaction that the receiver of the information will be expected to parrot.
</blockquote>


	Don’t wait for the Palestinian lies to be spread. Tell everyone exactly what those lies will be, and then predict the reaction they are expected to elicit. Pre-empt the nonsense and lies, by setting them out —and labelling them as such — before the Arabs have tried to convince the world to believe them.

<blockquote>
	
		One thing that Arabs do very well is to stay on message. This might be a triumph of rote dogma over nuanced reasoning, but it serves their purposes very well. In other words, they are not embarrassed to constantly repeat a set of talking points about a series of totally fictitious events. Said enough times, however, they eventually appear to be truthful.…
</blockquote>


	Over and over again, the Arabs repeat the same calumnies. Endless repetition of a false charge, as Goebbels knew, can make it accepted as the truth. They take care to describe Israel in every statement as “apartheid Israel,” or “colonial-settler Israel”; they always call Judea and Samaria “occupied territory,” they always bewail the Zionist control of “occupied Jerusalem,” they deceptively call for a return to “the 1967 lines” (which really means “the 1949 armistice lines”), and now they hysterically claim that there is an Israeli “threat to Al-Aqsa Mosque.” They never change their phrasing. Mere repetition will make all those lies into truths accepted by many.


	Always pre-empt what the Palestinians will say, and then point out exactly where the falsehood lies, and the response those falsehoods are expected to elicit both from the Arab audience, and from the wider audience of the unwary and the uninformed.


	There is an irreducible core of supporters of the Palestinians or, more exactly, of haters of the Jewish state – the Palestinians are for them merely a convenient excuse for their pre-existing antisemitism –who will believe anything the Palestinians say about Israel.&nbsp;But there are others who have been kept fooled and badly informed about Israeli-Palestinian relations, and who may be persuaded that they have been ill-used by Palestinian propagandists.


	To counteract the messages of the Palestinian propagandists that never vary, keep pre-empting by letting the world know that “this is what they are now going to say about us” and “here’s why it is preposterous.” For example, “they are now going to talk — watch for it — about our supposed threat to the sanctity of Al-Aqsa, but the threat comes from their rioters, who stockpile rocks and explosives inside the mosque, and then throw some of them out the mosque windows at the police, disrupting the peaceful worshippers inside trying to say their prayers.” Or “the only limits placed on worship on the top of the Temple Mount are prohibitions on Jewish prayers, both those said aloud and those which are mouthed silently. It is the Israeli police who enforce those rules. There has not been, and will not be, any change in this policy. Those who accuse Israel of being intent on taking over Al-Aqsa are simply lying.” Or “100,000 Muslims prayed peacefully at Al-Aqsa on April 22, their security assured by the Israeli police who kept the rioters at bay.” Or “did you know that the rioters set off fireecrackers inside Al-Aqsa Mosque, and even played soccer — how is that for desecrating a sacred space?”


	It’s infuriating to have to keep saying the obvious, but it’s the only way to keep turning back the tide – the tsunami — of Palestinian propaganda. To date, Israel has been in reactive mode, but Douglas Altabef has a point. Israelis shouldn’t wait to reply to lies, but instead beat the Palestinians to the punch, uttering the lies they will be telling before they do, but holding those lies up for immediate critical inspection, and answering them, before the Palestinians, caught in the headlights, have had time to react.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque Libel

The Palestinians keep repeating the same baseless charges against Israel. “Israel is an apartheid state.” “Israel wants to expel all the Arabs from the ‘

Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Palestinian Authority all agree: Al-Aqsa Mosque has recently been “under threat” because those wild-eyed Israeli “settlers” – madmen all – were about to engage in the ritual slaughter of a lamb on top of the Temple Mount, as part of a diabolical effort to take over Al-Aqsa, bit by bit, and convert it to a synagogue. Those Palestinians, and especially the terrorists among them, have a rich fantasy life, what the British in the Middle East used to drily call “the vivid oriental imagination.”


	A report by Nadav Shragai on the Palestinians exploiting the Temple Mount conflict as an excuse for another war with Israel can be found here: “Al-Aqsa Mosque is by no means under threat,” by Nadav Shragai, <a href="https://www.israelhayom.com/2022/04/17/al-aqsa-is-by-no-means-under-threat/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Israel Hayom</a>, April 17, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		Hamas is trying—and may succeed—in dragging Israel into a conflict on multiple fronts, with the Temple Mount serving as the trigger, exactly as was the case in April 2021. This time, as on previous occasions, the cry is the modern blood libel that “Al-Aqsa is under threat.”For more than a week now, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have been spreading online stories about how a ritual Passover sacrifice will be carried out on the Temple Mount this year.

	
		They’re knowingly lying now, just as they were in the past. They know the Temple Mount’s history over the last 55 years.&nbsp;They know that Israel has never allowed such a ritual to be performed.&nbsp;Moreover, via a number of channels, including Jordanian, Egyptian and American,&nbsp;the Palestinians—the radical Muslims among them—have received clarification that this year, too, no such ritual will be allowed to take place.
</blockquote>


	Ever since Israel took possession of the Temple Mount in 1967, it has forbidden Jews from making a ritual sacrifice of a lamb at Passover. This year was no different from the previous 54. When Raphael Morris, the leader of the fringe group Returning to the Mount, announced that the group would this year be offering NS 10000 (about $3,091 USD) to anyone who would perform the Pascal lamb sacrifice on Friday, April 15, the Israeli authorities raided his house, took away the lamb tethered inside, and prohibited him not only from visiting the Mount, but from getting anywhere near the Old City. There was never the slightest chance that the Jewish ritual sacrifice would take place. You wouldn’t know that, however, from the hysteria about such a possibility coming – still – from the Palestinians.

<blockquote>
	
		But Hamas and their ilk chose to ignore this and set the Temple Mount on fire because such a conflagration—geared to once again suck in Arab Israelis and pour gasoline on the already burning fire of terrorism—suits them at this time.
</blockquote>


	At this time, Hamas is not prepared for, and does not want, to fight the Israelis in Gaza. Instead it is trying to stir up trouble – incite violence – among the Palestinians in PA-ruled parts of the West Bank and among the Israeli Arabs. Spreading alarm about supposed Israeli threats to Al-Aqsa is the easiest way to rouse the Palestinians, and Israeli Arabs, to violence.&nbsp;

<blockquote>
	
		The police have thus far been gentle, initially proposing that Waqf officials try to disperse the rioters themselves. This was a miske. Even if it wanted to—and it doesn’t—the Waqf is incapable of confronting Hamas. Some senior Waqf officials were and perhaps remain connected to Hamas.
</blockquote>


	So eager were the Israelis not to have to suppress the rioters themselves – they were trying to avoid a confrontation, not to create one, with the Arabs – that they suggested that the Jordanians, whose Waqf administers the mosque site, take charge of dispersing the rioters who were throwing rocks and other objects at the Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall. The Waqf refused, and the Israeli police, reluctantly, took on the messy task. It wasn’t easy; on Friday, April 15, the first day of the rioting, it took six hours to suppress the maddened Allahu-akbaring rioters.

<blockquote>
	
		Preparations for the riots and clashes, the largest seen since the IDF’s “Operation Guardian of the Walls” in the Gaza Strip last May, began on Thursday night and were carried out in the open. The stockpiles of rocks, bottles and explosives should have been confiscated the moment they began to pile up, and the rioters should have been pulled off the Temple Mount before, and not after, the riots began.
</blockquote>


	There was nothing hidden about the rioters’ plans. The day before the riots started, the weapons – rocks, bottles, explosives — were openly being piled up, ready for use the next day. Israel Hayom’s Nadav Shragai wonders why, at that point, the police did not confiscate those weapons before any of them could be used. Did the police think that if they tried to seize those weapons, the Arabs would certainly respond violently, using whatever weapons they already had in their possession, in order to prevent the whole stockpile from being confiscated? Perhaps the police thought that if they waited, perhaps calmer heads among the Arabs might prevail the next day. Was it worth waiting to see what the Arabs decided? Shragai thinks the police made a mistake, and so do many others in Israel.

<blockquote>
	
		But it is difficult to conduct oneself correctly when the public security minister is Labor’s Omer Barlev, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Ra’am Party, whose members have repeatedly identified with the worst of our enemies, is a coalition partner.&nbsp;Shamefully, it was only hours after the rocks were thrown at the Western Wall that the decision was finally made to act with greater force.
</blockquote>


	Shragai is contemptuous of Omar Barlev, as are many on the right, for the Minister of Public Security’s expression of concern about “settler violence,” which he has apparently exaggerated – only a few hundred settlers out of 500,000 in Judea and Samaria, after all, have been involved in retaliatory violence against the Palestinians. The power of the Arab Ra’am Party, that has not hesitated to make common cause with Palestinians against their own country, Israel, may also have played a part in delaying a firm reaction to the violence on the Temple Mount by the Israeli police. Hours went by, during which rocks and bottles were continuously thrown on worshipers at the Western Wall, before the police finally went into action to grab, disarm, and arrest the rioters. By that time, the violence had spread all across the Al-Aqsa esplanade, and the greatly outnumbered police were themselves the victims of Arab aggression, dodging rocks and Molotov cocktails, as they attempted to round up the most egregious malefactors.

<blockquote>
	
		As always when it comes to the Temple Mount, Jordan has played a double game. This time around, Israel went out of its way to coordinate with the Hashemite Kingdom. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, and Defense Minister Benny Gantz spoke to King Abdullah II and his people before Ramadan even began. The Jordanians were asked to ensure there was no nocturnal barricading inside the mosque. They succeeded at this for a few nights but failed on Thursday night.…
</blockquote>


	Jordan’s King Abdullah is no profile in courage. He wants to keep his throne, and his head, for that matter. He will not do anything that could inflame the more than 60% of the Jordanian population that is Palestinian. He knows that Israel did not start the violence on the Temple Mount, and that the Israelis were perfectly willing to let the Jordanians, because of their role administering the Waqf, do the policing early on, before those intent on rioting had armed themselves. Had Jordanian police arrested a hundred or so Arabs on the Temple Mount on Thursday, after their stockpiling of rocks made their intentions clear, and before they had had a chance to arm themselves, as they did on Friday morning, the crowds might have sullenly dispersed. But Jordan shirked its responsibility. It didn’t want to be seen as keeping the Palestinians on the Temple Mount under control, for fear of how it would be viewed at home.


	The Israeli police stationed on the Temple Mount did not “invade” Al-Aqsa. It was those Arab rioters, who stockpiled rocks and other weapons inside the mosque, who were the true invaders, violating the sanctity of the place. It was those Arabs who from the 35-acre esplanade of the Temple Mount, tried to injure or kill, by throwing rocks down on them, the Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall far below. Given that, it is unconscionable for the Israeli police to have waited apparently for several hours before finally acting to push back, and disarm, the rioters.


	It is the Jews of Israel who have bent over backward to accommodate the Arabs on the Temple Mount. When Israel took possession of the Temple Mount in June 1967, it might have insisted that Jews be allowed to pray at the holiest site in Judaism. At that point, still staggering from their recent loss, the Arabs would have been unable to oppose Israel’s wishes. Instead, in a move that many Jews have come to regret, the Israeli government. decided that it would prohibit Jews from praying aloud, or even praying silently, on the top of the Temple Mount. That’s how eager the Israelis were not to offend Arabs and Muslims. And Israel went even further. It severely limited the number of religious Jews allowed onto the Mount at any one time. Until 2003, only five – five! – were allowed to visit the Mount. By now, that number is up to 50. Compare that to the unlimited number of Arabs who are allowed on the Temple Mount, sometimes numbering up to 80,000. They can arrive at any time of day, every day of the week. But the Jews can only come, thanks&nbsp;to a decision of the Israelis themselves, during a designated four-hour period each day, and then only for five out of the seven days of the week. How many people around the world, who have been brainwashed by the media to believe that it is the Israelis who are trying to “take over” the Temple Mount, know these things?

Al-Aqsa Is Not Now, and Never Was, ‘Under Threat’ From Israel

Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Palestinian Authority all agree: Al-Aqsa Mosque has recently been “under threat” because those wild-eyed Israeli “

The Palestinians were once the favored recipient of foreign aid, as billions of dollars were heaped upon them every year from so many the donors – the United States, Western European countries, and the Gulf Arab states. But since 2014, there has been a steady, precipitous drop in that aid, and now, so far in 2022, there has been no foreign aid coming in for the P.A at all. A report on the colossal drop in aid is here: “Foreign cash aid to Palestinian Authority so far this year: $0,” <a href="https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2022/04/foreign-cash-aid-to-palestinian.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Elder of Ziyon</a>, April 21, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		Estephan Salameh, who is the advisor to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas for aid coordination, says that no foreign countries have paid a red cent so far this year of their pledges to help the Palestinian budget.

	
		He said, “We expect to receive 200 to 300 million dollars in international financial support for the Palestinian government treasury this year, but so far none of those financial pledges have arrived.”

	
		Speaking to Voice of Palestine Radio, Salameh said that in 2021, the Palestinian Authority only received 10% of the amount it had gotten in 2013 and 2014. That was when the EU and Arab governments didn’t care about accountability or transparency.
</blockquote>


	In 2015, as the donor nations began to insist on an end to the colossal corruption in the PA, and made the momentous decision to cut their aid until “accountability and transparency” were instituted, they steadily turned down the spigot of aid until, with the PA still unable or unwilling to come clean about its finances, by 2021 the PA was receiving only 10% of what it had been getting just seven years before. And now, one-third of the way through 2021, the PA has received&nbsp;no aid&nbsp;from foreign donors.

<blockquote>
	
		A donors’ conference, scheduled to be held on May 5 in Brussels, will attempt to garner international support for the Palestinian treasury, and the Palestinians hope to convince attendees to pressure Israel to stop reducing tax revenues in the amount that the Abbas regime uses to pay terrorists and their families, which is a significant portion of the PA budget. In 2021, the PA paid some $270 million as rewards to terrorists.

	
		“Obliquely&nbsp;alluding to the well known corruption in the PA that has prompted the huge drop in aid, Salameh added, “”We are implementing a comprehensive reform plan, especially in the financial and economic sectors.”

	
		Which they have said for many years.
</blockquote>


	First, the conference in Brussels on May 5 will be taking place when all eyes will be on Ukraine, and the tens of billions of dollars it needs to continue to fight its war, which may go on for months, and for humanitarian aid — housing, medicine, food — needed to support the five million Ukrainian refugees who have already fled the country at this point, with millions more expected in the coming months. Donor countries will be thinking about the Ukrainians, who are genuine refugees, and comparing them to the Palestinians in both Hamas-run Gaza and in the PA-run parts of Judea and Samaria, who have been living off the international dole for decades, and clearly believe it is their due to be supported indefinitely — an assumption that now infuriates donors.&nbsp;


	The drop in aid began in 2014 when the tales of massive corruption in the PA began to spread. By now everyone knows that Mahmoud Abbas, with his two sons Tareq and Yasser, has amassed a $400 million fortune, but it took quite a while for that information to leak out to the Western donors and be confirmed by them. Then there are the lesser sums, measured in the millions of dollars, of aid money to which Abbas loyalists have been allowed to help themselves. There is also rampant nepotism, with extravagantly-paid sinecures provided to the relatives of those loyalists, and that too has become better known as complaints by ordinary Palestinians themselves reach the West. The same corruption, on an even grander scale, has taken place in Gaza, where two Hamas leaders, Khaled Meshaal and Mousa ibn Marzouk, have managed to acquire at least $2.5 billion apiece, while 600 “Hamas millionaires” live in grand style in Gaza, away from the prying eyes of the impoverished populace. No wonder there is no longer any enthusiasm for pouring money into the pockets of the Palestinian leaders, who take so much for themselves, or to support ordinary Palestinians, who have become the welfare queens of international aid.


	Another reason for the drop in aid from the United States is the Taylor Force Act, passed by Congress in 2018, which prohibits aid being given to the P.A. as long as its “Pay-For-Slay” program remains in force. That program commits to the PA to giving large monthly stipends to imprisoned terrorists and to the families of terrorists who died while committing their attacks. The Bidenites in 2021 sent some money to the PA by describing it as “humanitarian aid” and therefore exempt from the Taylor Force Act, but has not done so in 2022, perhaps calculating that a Congressional challenge to its continuing to give aid to the Palestinians would be risky in an election year.


	Then there is the EU, which for a long time has been a generous supporter of the PA, but no longer. For the last several years, the EU has demanded that the PA remove the antisemitic and violent content from its schoolbooks. The PA promises to do so, without fail, and then, year after year, does nothing. At some point the EU was bound to stop the farce, and in 2022, that is what has happened. No money has yet been sent this year by the EU to the PA, and the EU has vowed no money will be sent, until the revised or replaced textbooks have appeared in the schools.&nbsp;


	The Palestinian spokesman lamenting the lack of foreign aid doesn’t dare to mention that all the PA has to do to satisfy the EU, and have the tap of its aid turned on again, is to remove the antisemitic hate from those schoolbooks. So simple, and yet, so impossible a task for those raised up in such hate themselves, and whose&nbsp;raison d’ėtre&nbsp;is the destruction, by degrees, of the Jewish state. So far, the EU has given no signs of backing down on conditioning any more of its aid to the PA on the revision or replacement of those schoolbooks. After so many years of massive corruption within the PA, and of its failing to deliver on its solemn promises to clean up its textbooks, the EU no longer sees the PA as a worthy recipient of its aid. Besides, the EU is now overwhelmed by the immediate and enormous need to help Ukrainians, both those who have lost their homes but remain, displaced, inside the country, and those who have fled Ukraine altogether.


	The Gulf Arabs have also slashed their aid to the PA – down to nothing – for other reasons. They have grown sick of the constant whining by the PA for more aid. In 2018, when Mahmoud Abbas was het again complaining to the Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MbS) of the need for more aid being given to the PA, an exasperated MbS told Abbas “just accept whatever deal the Americans offer you.” In other words, stop holding out for the impossible, and stop bothering me with your demands for more money. The Saudis feel they have done enough.


	The other Gulf state that has been a major donor to the Palestinians, the UAE, has been similarly disenchanted with the PA. The Emiratis were furious when the PA bitterly criticized them for joining the Abraham Accords in 2020, and since then has withheld its formerly generous contributions. Bahrain another donor to the PA, has also cut off its aid for the same reason – the criticism directed at it by the PA for joining the Abraham Accords.


	These are the varied reasons why the Americans, the Europeans, and the Gulf Arabs have chosen to cut their aid to the PA down to zero in 2022. A donor’s conference on renewing aid to the PA is be held on May 5. I doubt if much will come of it. The PA is not going to end its corruption and nepotism; that’s the glue that keeps the PA together. It is not going to change its textbooks as it has promised the Europeans it would do so over many years. Where would the Palestinians be if they stopped inculcating antisemitic attitudes in their young? And the Palestinians will never reconcile themselves to the Abraham Accords and those who have joined it. Renewed aid from the Gulf Arabs is a Palestinian pipe dream.


	Perhaps this is the year that Mahmoud Abbas will finally end the PA’s Pay-For-Slay program, in order to have Israel transfer to the PA the tax money it has been withholding in an amount equal to what the PA spends on its “Pay-For-Slay” program. That will bring in a few hundred million dollars. It’s a start. But the really good times for the PA, in the years leading up to 2014, when billions of dollars in aid were flowing in, from America, from Europe, from the Gulf Arabs, will not come again. And the Palestinians must know it.

Palestinians Find the Aid Cupboard is Bare

The Palestinians were once the favored recipient of foreign aid, as billions of dollars were heaped upon them every year from so many the donors – the United

We all remember how the visit of Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount in 2000 was used as a pretext by the Palestinians, who described it as a “provocation” and started the violence that became the Second Intifada. In fact, Sharon’s aides had in advance told Jibril Rajoub, who was then in charge of security on the Temple Mount, of his planned visit; Rajoub raised no objections at the time, though later he denied having been contacted by Sharon’s men. Tightly guarded by an Israeli security cordon, Sharon led a group of Israeli legislators onto the bitterly contested Temple Mount to assert Jewish claims there, setting off a stone-throwing clash that left several Palestinians and more than two dozen policemen injured.


	The violence spread later to the streets of East Jerusalem and to the West Bank town of Ramallah, where six Palestinians were reportedly hurt as Israeli soldiers fired rubber-coated bullets and protesters hurled rocks and firebombs.

<blockquote>
	
		‘‘I brought a message of peace,” Mr. Sharon said after a one-hour tour of the Temple Mount that Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, condemned as a ”dangerous action” against Muslim holy sites.

	
		‘‘I believe that Jews and Arabs can live together,” Mr. Sharon declared as stones and rubber-coated bullets flew at the holy site. ”It was no provocation whatsoever,” he said of his visit. ”It’s our right. Arabs have the right to visit everywhere in the Land of Israel, and Jews have the right to visit every place in the Land of Israel.”
</blockquote>


	The Palestinians, who had been looking for an excuse to start a massive upsurge in violence against the Israelis, found it in Sharon’s visit. In fact, he had done nothing more than visit, as Jews had been doing since 1967, the Temple Mount. He did not enter, nor get near, the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He did not say, or silently mouth, a Jewish prayer. He did not make any provocative statements. But his mere appearance was enough for Palestinians to start rioting, throwing stones at Sharon and his party, with the violence then spreading to east Jerusalem and Ramallah, where Palestinians threw not just rocks, but also firebombs at Israeli police.


	The visit of Foreign Minister Yair Lapid at the beginning of April did not go anywhere near the Temple Mount or Al-Aqsa. He went near to, but not right in front of, the Damascus Gate, which has often been the site where Palestinians have gathered to attack the Israeli police and Jewish civilians. Lapid made no provocative remarks, but appeared near the Damascus Gate to do one thing: to thank Israeli police for their tremendous efforts, during a period of great tension, to keep the area calm after three separate Palestinian terror attacks left 11 Israelis dead, in Beersheva, Hadera, and Bnei Brak. The Palestinians had cheered, and yelled the takbir, and handed out sweets, to celebrate the murders and the murderers. Surely, that was the true “provocation” – the murders of innocent Israelis and the ghoulish celebration of those murders — that deserves to be recognized. “Hamas: Israel to ‘bear consequences’ of Lapid’s Damascus Gate visit,” <a href="https://www.jns.org/hamas-israel-to-bear-consequences-of-lapids-damascus-gate-visit/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">JNS</a>, April 8, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		“The storming of the Damascus Gate by the foreign minister of the Zionist enemy, Yair Lapid, is a dangerous escalation, and the occupation will be responsible for its consequences. We and our people pledge to protect Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque,” said Hamas in a statement.
</blockquote>


	Neither Lapid, nor anyone else in his party, went onto Temple Mount, and certainly never got anywhere near Al-Aqsa Mosque. There was no “storming” of the Damascus Gate. Lapid didn’t enter the Old City through the Gate. He left the Old City alone. Instead, he walked calmly – no “storming” was observable –near the Gate, where members of Israel’s security services had gathered, to thank them for their service and to express the country’s appreciation, amid a spike of violence and unrest – those 11 lives lost in terror attacks – that coincided with the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on April 1. There had already been a night of rioting near the Damascus Gate before Lapid showed up, giving the lie to those who insisted that Lapid’s visit had provoked violence.


	Of course, the Palestinians were ready, just as they had been in 2000 when Ariel Sharon had visited the Temple Mount, to turn this visit, which took place outside the Old City, into a reason to riot, and to attack Israelis throughout Jerusalem. Sure enough, a few hours after Lapid’s visit, riots broke out in the area for the second consecutive night, with rioters hurling bottles, rocks and other objects at police. One officer was wounded, according to police. An officer was also wounded during Saturday’s riots, having been struck in the head by a bottle.

<blockquote>
	
		“This is a tense time, but we have a police force that can be trusted,” Lapid said in a statement on Sunday evening. “The security forces have our full backing. They work professionally in impossible conditions. We are committed to them and will give them all necessary resources,” he added.

	
		On Sunday, the Israeli government authorized the allocation of 181 million shekels ($56.5 million) in emergency funding to the Israel Police. The budget supplement was authorized “in light of the significant challenges that Israel’s police force currently faces and given the operational gaps that have accumulated in recent years,” according to an official statement.

	
		Also on Sunday, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi said that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization in Gaza may launch missiles at Israel’s south in retaliation for Israel’s elimination on Saturday of a PIJ terrorist cell in Jenin, according to Channel 13 News.

	
		Three PIJ terrorists were killed and four Israeli forces were wounded, one seriously, in a counter-terror operation early on Saturday morning in Judea and Samaria.

	
		According to senior Israeli security officials, the cell was preparing to cross into Israel to carry out an attack in the center of the country similar to the one on March 29 in Bnei Brak, in which five people were killed.
</blockquote>


	Yair Lapid walked calmly to the microphone set up in the vicinity of the Damascus Gate, to honor members of Israeli security forces who had been working for 24 hours straight to contain Palestinian rioters. Those rioters, it needs to be emphasized, had begun their rioting long before Yair Lapid showed up; his visit could not have possibly been the cause of their riots. But the Palestinians didn’t care about the truth; hysterical cries about his “storming” of the Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa itself spread round the city; stories about Lapid defiling the Al-Aqsa mosque whipped Arabs in Jerusalem into a frenzy; they hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israelis in response to the news of this entirely fictive outrage.


	Thus has the story of Lapid’s brief appearance&nbsp;outside&nbsp;the Old City metamorphosed, in the telling of the Palestinian propagandists, into this: “Lapid’s outrageous storming, with Zionist soldiers of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where they beat innocent worshippers, will be avenged,” or words to that lying effect. For the Palestinian leaders trying to whip up murderous hatred, and to justify their own terror attacks, even the least offensive of outings can be turned into something monstrous.

Israel: Foreign Minister Lapid Walks Near Damascus Gate, ‘Provokes’ the ‘Palestinians’

We all remember how the visit of Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount in 2000 was used as a pretext by the Palestinians, who described it as a “provocation” and

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is the body responsible for monitoring and inspecting Iran’s nuclear program. Iran has in the past has kept hidden from the IAEA certain sites, of whose existence the agency became aware only after the Mossad managed to locate and bring to the West in 2018 Iran’s entire nuclear archive, which provided the evidence of those top-secret well-hidden sites. But even where the IAEA knew of the existence of sites where Iran’s nuclear program was proceeding, its inspection teams were in some cases required to give Iran a long lead time of warning before going to a particular site, which allowed Iran to remove any incriminating evidence of activities it was not permitted to engage in, including the enrichment of uranium to a level of 60%, just below weapons grade. And Iran continues to keep certain sites off-limits to the IAEA inspectors altogether, like the facilities built deep inside the mountain at Fordow, or underground at Natanz.


	This past December, after months of wrangling, the IAEA was at long last allowed to inspect the site at Karaj, where Iran had a workshop that made centrifuge parts. It seemed like a clear victory for the IAEA, but it was short-lived. For now Iran has moved all of its machines out of Karaj to its site at Natanz (it’s not clear if it is an aboveground, or underground, facility). In addition, Iran has set up a another site in Isfahan, where it will also produce parts for advanced centrifuges. A report on these sites, and Iran’s managing to play hide-and-seek with the IAEA, is here: “Iran moves equipment for making centrifuge parts to Natanz – IAEA,” <a href="https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-703410" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Reuters</a>, April 6, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		Iran has moved all its machines that make centrifuge parts from its mothballed workshop at Karaj to its sprawling Natanz site just six weeks after it set up another site at Isfahan to make the same parts, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday.

	
		Iran granted International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors access to Karaj in December to re-install surveillance cameras there after a months-long standoff that followed what Tehran said was Israeli sabotage destroyed one camera and badly damaged another, prompting Iran to remove all four cameras.
</blockquote>


	But why would Israel want to damage or destroy cameras that allowed the IAEA to keep an eye on part of Iran’s nuclear program? This makes no sense. Of course the destruction of one camera, and the severe damage to another were Iran’s handiwork, and gave it all the excuse it needed to remove “all four cameras” at the site lest, we are supposed to believe, “the Israelis sabotage all of them.”

<blockquote>
	
		A month later, Iran told the IAEA it was moving production of the parts for advanced centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, to a new location in Isfahan, and the IAEA set up cameras there to monitor that work.

	
		Little is known about the Isfahan workshop. Diplomats have said it is slightly larger than the Karaj one. On Wednesday, the IAEA said Iran had moved all the equipment from Karaj to an unspecified location at Natanz, raising the question of whether it will increase output by using both Natanz and Isfahan.
</blockquote>


	If Iran is about to make an agreement about its nuclear program that would require it to mothball all of its advanced centrifuges, why would it go to the trouble of moving those it now has to Natanz, and what’s more, to more than double the number of its workshops to make parts for advanced centrifuge by opening another such workshop in Isfahan? Could it be that with or without an agreement in Vienna, Iran has no intention of slowing down its manufacture of advanced centrifuges, but will speed it up by this doubling of workshops, from the single one at Karaj to two new ones, at Isfahan and at Natanz?

<blockquote>
	
		On the same date (April 4), agency inspectors verified that these machines remained under agency seal at this location in Natanz and, therefore, were not operating,” the IAEA said in a statement summarizing a confidential report to member states seen by Reuters.
</blockquote>


	For now, the machines that had been moved from Karaj to Natanz remain “under agency seal” so that they cannot be put to use without the IAEA inspectors, who were apparently allowed to freely inspect the facilities where the Karaj machines had been transferred. But that is right now, when Iran is presumably on its best behavior while the nuclear agreement it wants is still being negotiated. What will happen if, in the future, Tehran decides to end inspections at Natanz? Or if it does not allow the IAEA to inspect the other facilities built deep inside the mountain at Fordow? It has happened before, at other sites. There is no mechanism for forcing Iran to comply with its promises to the IAEA. And judging by Iran’s past behavior – think of those hidden sites that were revealed only after Mossad managed to get hold of Iran’s nuclear archive and bring it back to the West – isn’t it likely that it will engage in similar deception in the future?

<blockquote>
	
		Neither the statement nor the report described the location at Natanz, a site that includes a large underground enrichment plant and various buildings above ground.

	
		Under an arrangement that is more than a year old, the IAEA does not have access for the time being to the data collected by some of its cameras, such as those at the new Isfahan workshop.
</blockquote>


	If the IAEA does not have access to the data collected by its cameras, then what good are they? What can Iran do to that data, to damage or erase the information it collected, before giving the IAEA access?

<blockquote>
	
		“Without access to the data and recordings collected by these cameras, the agency is unable to confirm whether the production of centrifuge components at the workshop in Isfahan has begun,” the report to IAEA member states said.
</blockquote>


	In other words, the IAEA admits in its report to its members, we simply do not know what is going on at the new plant in Isfahan, and don’t even know when we might – if ever – find out. All the IAEA knows is that once it started to monitor what was going on at the workshop for the production of parts for advanced centrifuges at Karaj, two of the four cameras were put out of commission – one destroyed, and another so badly damaged it was useless. Iran blames, preposterously, Israeli saboteurs, but Israel had no desire to keep the IAEA from monitoring Iran’s nuclear facilities.


	For the past year, Iran has not permitted the IAEA to have access to the data collected by some of its cameras, including those at the new Isfahan workshop. Why should anyone believe that Iran will not fiddle with those Isfahan cameras, or continue to deny the IAEA access to the data those cameras collect? In the end, the only way the IAEA will learn about what is really going on with Iran’s nuclear program is from those exceedingly daring, clever, and inventive Mossad agents who appear to be everywhere in Iran, working hand-in-glove with those dissident and preternaturally brave Iranians who have worked with Mossad before.

Iran Plays Hide-And-Seek with the IAEA

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is the body responsible for monitoring and inspecting Iran’s nuclear program. Iran has in the past has kept

Sarah Idan is an Iraqi beauty queen and former Miss Universe contestant, who became friends with — and took a selfie with – Adar Gandelsman, the Israeli contestant at the 2017 Miss Universe contest. For that heinous act, Ms. Idan received death threats and had to leave Iraq with her family. She now lives in the United States. A report on her recent trip to South Africa is here: “Former Miss Iraq Says Nelson Mandela’s Grandson Refuses ‘Dialogue’ Over Anti-Israel Stance,” by Shiryn Ghermezian,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/03/29/former-miss-iraq-says-nelson-mandelas-grandson-refuses-dialogue-over-anti-israel-stance/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Algemeiner</a>, March 29, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		Former Miss Universe contestant Sarah&nbsp;Idan said on Tuesday [March 29] that the grandson of the late civil rights activist and former South African President Nelson Mandela has so far declined her offer to speak with her during her visit to the country, to discuss his controversial views on Israel and the conflict in the Middle East.

	
		“He saw my messages. I called on him to have the conversation twice! I guess it’s easier to start a war than to have the dialogue which can lead to peace,” the former Miss Iraq, 32, said on her Instagram Stories.&nbsp;She previously said on Instagram that she had invited Nkosi Zwelivelile “Mandla” Mandela — a member of South Africa’s parliament and an outspoken critic of Israel — to meet with her to speak about human rights and the Middle East.
</blockquote>


	Why would Mandla Mandela avoid meeting Sarah Idan? What is he so afraid of? It’s because he knows what a poor figure he would cut, as his vast ignorance about Israel would be exposed in any exchange with Ms. Idan, who has visited Israel several times and seen with her own eyes the absence of that “apartheid” that so exercises Mandla Mandela. As an Arab and a Muslim, her defense of Israel naturally carries special weight.

<blockquote>
	
		Idan, who founded the human rights NGO Humanity Forward, is in South Africa to talk with students across the country about peace, human rights, Zionism and antisemitism, as well as gender-based violence and female empowerment. Her visit coincides with Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) taking place on college and university campuses in Africa from March 21-April 4.
</blockquote>


	Idan is a truth-teller, undermining with her own eyewitness account of the Jewish state these charges of “apartheid” that will be made during this scandalous Israel Apartheid Week.

<blockquote>
	
		The former beauty queen previously slammed Mandela when he called on Miss South Africa Lalela Mswane and all African countries to boycott the 2021 Miss Universe pageant, which was held in Eilat, Israel. The staunch supporter of the movement to boycott the Jewish state accused Israel of a “heinous occupation.”

	
		“Israel is an apartheid state and we will continue to mobilize all freedom loving people of the world to boycott, divest and pass sanctions against the brutal apartheid regime,” he said at the time. “We must persist in isolating apartheid Israel in the same way that we isolated apartheid South Africa.”
</blockquote>


	Mandela’s call for Miss South Africa, Lalela Mswane, to boycott the 2021 Miss Universe pageant because it was being held in Eilat, Israel, was fortunately ignored. Lalela Mswane took part in the Miss Universe contest in Eilat and, what’s more, she was crowned “second runner-up” – i.e., she came in third. South Africans swelled with pride; they realized that had Mandla Mandela had his way, there would have been no such victory for Ms. Mswane nor reflected glory for her country..

<blockquote>
	
		Former Miss Iraq Sarah Idan dismissed claims that Israel is practicing “apartheid,” a charge frequently levied by anti-Zionist activists.
</blockquote>


	Mandla Mandela visited Israel in 2017. He paid scant attention to Israeli Jews — upon his arrival in the country he headed straight to Ramallah to meet with P.A. officials, including Mahmoud Abbas, who, of course, filled him in on all the terrible things the Israelis were doing, including their practice of apartheid. It didn’t bother Mandla Mandela that he hadn’t himself observed any Israeli Jews enforcing “apartheid” rules or Israeli Arabs suffering from this practice. He needed no proof; it was enough that PA officials told him there was “apartheid.” Why should he disbelieve them?&nbsp;

<blockquote>
	
		Last year he supported a call by the South African government to revoke Israel’s observer status at the African Union. During a 2017 visit to Israel to meet with Palestinian leaders he called Israel “the worst apartheid regime,”&nbsp;while most recently, he cast Ukraine’s leaders as “neo-Nazis” allied with “apartheid Israel’s dogs of war.”…
</blockquote>


	So in Mandla Mandela’s mind, Israel’s “apartheid regime” is worse even than that practiced in South Afric , even though he has been unable, in all his public fulminations against Israel, to produce a single example of apartheid as practiced by Israel.


	Why did Mandla Mandela charge that “Israel is the worst apartheid regime”? He came to that damning conclusion because Mahmoud Abbas told him so. He did not bother to investigate for himself, for if he had, he would have seen that Israeli Arabs sit in the Knesset, serve on the Supreme Court, go abroad as ambassadors. He might have discovered that the chairman of Israel’s largest bank, Bank Leumi, is an Arab. He could have seen for himself Jews and Arabs working side by side in offices and factories, studying together in universities, being treated by both Jewish and Arab medical personnel. He would have observed Jews and Arabs play on the same teams (the captain of Israel’s national soccer team is an Arab), and in the same orchestras. All of that could have been discovered by Mandla Mandela, but his mind was made up. He had been told about Israel’s “apartheid” regime and he believed.


	A remarkable woman, Sarah Idan has endured exile from her country, endured the stripping of her citizenship, too, and endured the many death threats she has received for her selfie with an Israeli beauty queen. Despite all this, she continues to travel the world to tell the truth about Israel, and about its Arab neighbors.


	Of course, Mandla Mandela won’t come out in the open to debate her. He wants her gone from South Africa, so he can reappear in public and&nbsp;again&nbsp;let loose with his spittle-flecked calumny of the Jewish state. Sarah Idan is Muslim, Arab, articulate, and very beautiful. As for Mandla Mandela, his only claim on the world’s attention is that he is Nelson Mandela’s grandson. No wonder he’ll remain in hiding until the formidable Ms. Idan leaves the country.

Snubbing Iraq's Beauty Queen

Sarah Idan is an Iraqi beauty queen and former Miss Universe contestant, who became friends with — and took a selfie with – Adar Gandelsman, the Israeli

Like&nbsp;the&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;with its roster of anti-Israel contributors, such as the anti-Israel post-Zionist Peter Beinart,&nbsp;the&nbsp;Washington Post&nbsp;favors op-ed contributors on Israel-Palestine who are very much on the side of the Palestinians. A recent example, featuring the Palestinian Mariam Barghouti, is reported on here: “Washington Post Publishes Op-Ed by Mariam Barghouti, Who Compared Israel to Nazi Germany,” by Rachel O’Donoghue,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/04/01/washington-post-publishes-op-ed-by-mariam-barghouti-who-compared-israel-to-nazi-germany/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Algemeiner</a>, April 1, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		It would appear that having a documented history that has included comparing Israel to Nazi Germany does not preclude one from offering their opinions on the editorial webpages of The Washington Post, a publication that prides itself on a self-stated commitment to fairness.

	
		Mariam Barghouti, who describes herself as a “writer and researcher based in Palestine,” was recently invited to share her views with Post readers, in a piece titled, “Another group recognized Israel’s Palestinian apartheid. How will the world react?”

	
		Barghouti, who has also previously written for and contributed to outlets including&nbsp;The New&nbsp;York Times, The Guardian,&nbsp;and&nbsp;Newsweek, came to HonestReporting’s attention last year after we uncovered a series of now-deleted tweets, such as one in which she asserted that “Israel has been beating Hitler at his own game since 1948,” and another that referred to former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as being “nothing more than a war criminal and a Nazi.”
</blockquote>


	Barghouti declared in her tweets that Israel was even worse – more murderous, more evil – than the Nazis, for the Jewish state “has been beating Hitler at his own game since 1948.” And Benjamin Netanyahu is a “war criminal and a Nazi.” Yes, we all remember how the Israeli police rounded up hundreds of thousands, or was it millions, of Palestinians and then sent them off to a series of death camps that that “Nazi” Netanyahu had built. Of course, once this grotesque series of tweets was discovered, Barghouti did the only thing she could do: she quickly deleted the tweets, but it was too late; they had already been seen and recorded.

<blockquote>
	
		Such remarks are evidence of anti-Jewish bigotry, and are a breach of the IHRA’s internationally-recognized working definition of antisemitism, specifically making comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis and claiming that Israel’s very existence is in itself a racist endeavor.

	
		The IHRA definition of antisemitism includes making comparisons between Israeli policy and the genocidal program of the Nazis, and insisting that Israel is in its very essence a “racist” undertaking. Barghouti’s tweets, now taken down, make both claims.

	
		The IHRA definition has been either adopted or endorsed by dozens of countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Italy, Sweden, Spain, and Germany.

	
		In her latest piece, Barghouti accuses the Jewish state of maintaining a “deep essence of apartheid;” suggests that Jerusalem’s decision to designate six Palestinian NGOs is part of a campaign to “discredit and vilify” critics; and claims that Israel “weaponizes charges of antisemitism to manipulate and gaslight.”
</blockquote>


	Hundreds of NGOs are active in Israel, many of them quite critical of the Jewish state. But they are not shut down. The six NGOs that Israel banned last fall were not merely critical of Israel, but their members had close ties to the internationally-recognized terrorist group the PFLP. In fact, there was an overlap of the personnel of these NGOs and the PFLP. These six NGOs were, in essence, working hand-in-glove with a known terrorist group, and thus deserved the “terrorist” designation themselves. Initially critical of Israel’s move, Washington asked Israel for more evidence to justify its banning of these six NGOs as “terrorist organizations.” Jerusalem supplied that evidence, which was apparently convincing enough for the Americans, for there have been no complaints ever since from Washington about Israel’s banning of those six NGOs.


	Mariam Barghouti’s description of Israel maintaining a “deep essence of apartheid” reflects the latest fashion in anti-Israel propaganda: that Israel is an “apartheid” state. This charge is made ad nauseam, repeated all over social media. For too many, this charge is enough to blacken Israel’s image; the credulous, animated by hate, will believe. Not a shred of evidence is required.

<blockquote>
	
		There are a number of points that deserve to be&nbsp;noted&nbsp;in response to such allegations.

	
		For starters, the accusation of apartheid, which has been primarily promulgated by three organizations — Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and B’Tselem — has previously been thoroughly debunked by HonestReporting.
</blockquote>


	Let’s repeat that debunking of the “apartheid” charge here. There is no apartheid in Israel. Arabs serve in the Knesset, sit on the Supreme Court, go abroad as Israeli ambassadors. The chairman of the largest bank in Israel, Bank Leumi, is an Arab. Jews and Arabs study in the same universities. Jews and Arabs work in the same offices and factories. Jews and Arabs are treated in the same hospitals, by the same Jewish and Arab medical personnel. Jews and Arabs play on the same sports teams (an Arab is the captain of Israel’s national soccer team), and in the same orchestras. Jews and Arabs own businesses together, everything from restaurants to high tech start-ups. Nothing here bespeaks “apartheid.” The only difference is that Israeli Jews&nbsp;must, while Israeli Arabs&nbsp;may, serve in the IDF.&nbsp;

<blockquote>
	
		In addition,&nbsp;two of the organizations, Amnesty and HRW, that have spread this libel have been accused of having a fixation on alleged misdeeds by Israel. For example, when Amnesty released its widely-publicized report last month, an analysis of its Twitter account over the next six days revealed it had posted no fewer than 132 tweets accusing the Jewish state of perpetrating various crimes, compared to just 13 about every other human rights issue in the world.

	
		Human Rights Watch released a 5,000-word report about Israel in December last year, in which it claimed Israeli law enforcement responded to outbreaks of violence in May in an “apparently discriminatory manner.” Yet the same document completely ignored what had been described as “pogroms” by Arab-Israelis against Jews and their property during the same period.
</blockquote>


	Israel’s police did not “discriminate” in May when they arrested Jews and Israeli Arabs alike who had been attacking one another in such “mixed” cities as Lod and Ramle. But there were many more, and much more violent, attacks by Arabs on Jews than by Jews who, in response, attacked Arabs, during this unrest, which HRW did not see fit to disclose. And that’s why – the only reason – that more Arabs than Jews were arrested.

<blockquote>
	
		In April, HRW penned a 213-page report that peddled the “apartheid” canard and a third 6,500-word report was released in May that accused Israel of “war crimes” for its response to the barrage of indiscriminate rocket fire by Hamas during last year’s conflict.
</blockquote>


	It would be fascinating to see how HRW managed to support its “apartheid” charge when all the evidence – see above — undermines that claim. As for the “war crimes” supposedly committed by the IDF in the May war, there were none. Hamas deliberately placed its weapons, rocket launchers, command-and-control centers, and fighters in civilian buildings, in schools, hospitals, apartment houses, office buildings. It is Hamas that thereby put civilians in danger. Furthermore, Hamas launched its rockets indiscriminately into Israeli cities. The IDF made enormous efforts to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza. It warned civilians to leave, or get away from, buildings about to be targeted, using telephoning, emailing, and the “knock-on-the-roof” technique. No other military, according to Colonel Richard Kemp, commander of the British forces in Afghanistan and the veteran of a half-dozen military campaigns, makes such efforts to limit civilian casualties as does the IDF; it is, he has said, the “most moral” of militaries.

<blockquote>
	
		The NGOs that Barghouti claims Israel has unfairly targeted have proven links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terror group by most of the western world.
</blockquote>


	The six NGOs Israel banned as “terrorist groups” were not only were staffed by members of the PFLP, but served as the conduits for funds that they received from unsuspecting donors, and then were transferred to the PFLP.


	The overlap of PFLP personnel with those staffing the six NGOs, and those NGOs also transferring donor funds to the PFLP, proved convincing enough for one European country, the Netherlands, which initially was doubtful about Israel’s charges against these six NGOs, to itself stop its funding of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) this past January; the UAWC is one of the six Palestinian NGOs Israel banned last year due to ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization.


	In a letter to the Dutch parliament, two ministers wrote that their investigation found that 34 UAWC employees were active in the PFLP in 2007-2020, some at the same time as holding leadership positions in the terrorist group.


	And after it had initially insisted that Israel provide more proof of its allegations about the six NGOs, Washington has gone silent on the matter, presumably because that proof was provided by Israel. The Bidenites still don’t want to follow Israel’s lead and designate those NGOs as terrorist organizations; they are trying to appease the P.A. just as they have been appeasing Iran in Vienna.

<blockquote>
	
		Finally, there is an irony in Barghouti accusing Jerusalem of weaponizing antisemitism, when she has manifestly spread anti-Jewish hatred online.

	
		Just this week — mere hours before a Palestinian gunman murdered five people in the central city of Bnei Brak and amid a wave of terrorism —&nbsp;Barghouti tweeted that every year around the time of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Israel becomes “charged with intensified aggression” to create circumstances whereby Palestinians face violence or “the fear and crippling anxiety of anticipated attacks.”…
</blockquote>


	Ramadan is well known to be a time when Muslim violence erupts, and not just in Israel; it’s the Palestinians, not the Israelis, who during this Ramadan, as in all previous Ramadans, will demonstrate “intensified aggression” against the Israelis. Barghouti turns it upside down, claiming that the violence that erupts at Ramadan will come from the Israelis, and that is why the poor Palestinians, at such risk of terrible violence from the Jews, suffer this “fear and crippling anxiety of anticipated attacks.”&nbsp;That “fear and anxiety” is not felt by the Palestinians, but by their intended victims, Israel’s Jews, who know all too well how the Muslim Arabs customarily behave at Ramadan.


	Will the&nbsp;Washington Post, following the “fairness doctrine,” allow an op-ed to be published in response to Mariam Barghouti? Such an article would answer her claim that Israel is an “apartheid” state, by citing all the ways that Israeli Arabs work, study, play, are treated medically, side by side with Jews, and serve in every part of Israel’s government, from the Knesset to the Supreme Court to the diplomatic corps.


	And such an article would note that the evidence linking those six NGOs in Israel to the terrorist PFLP has now apparently been accepted by the Biden Administration, as it has ceased to criticize Israel’s banning of those six NGOs.


	Finally, the editors of the&nbsp;Washington Post&nbsp;should ask themselves if they think it proper to run an op-ed on the sins of Israel by someone who clearly has exhibited a deep antisemitism, according to the IHRA definition. Shouldn’t such views have disqualified Mariam Barghouti from making her malevolent and baseless claims about Israel from the exalted heights of&nbsp;the&nbsp;Washington Post’s&nbsp;op-ed page?&nbsp;

Introducing Mariam Barghouti, Washington Post Op-Ed Contributor

Like&nbsp;the&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;with its roster of anti-Israel contributors, such as the anti-Israel post-Zionist Peter Beinart,&nbsp;the&nbsp;

Alice Walker, the author of&nbsp;The Color Purple, has been disinvited from a book festival when the organizers discovered her long history of antisemitic remarks about Jews and Israel, the Jewish state that she often compares to Nazi Germany. A report on the reasons for her being uninvited is here: “California Book Festival Rescinds Invitation to Author Alice Walker Over Past Antisemitic Comments,” by Shiryn Ghermezian,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/03/29/california-book-festival-rescinds-invitation-to-author-alice-walker-over-past-antisemitic-comments/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Algemeiner</a>, March 29, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		A book festival in California has disinvited Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and poet Alice Walker from its event due to the author’s history of making antisemitic remarks about Jews and Israel,&nbsp;The&nbsp;Jewish News of Northern California&nbsp;reported on Friday.

	
		Walker, 78, was scheduled to interview writer Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, at the latter’s request, at the headlining event of the annual Bay Area Book Festival,&nbsp;which will take place May 7-8 in downtown Berkeley and is set to feature over 250 authors. The festival is the main project of the Foundation for the Future of Literature and Literacy, a California non-profit organization.

	
		Organizers cancelled Walker’s participation in the festival on Thursday after being informed about her past hateful comments, according to The Jewish News of Northern California. Jeffers subsequently pulled out of the festival in response, the festival’s publicist Julia Drake told the outlet.…

	
		Walker, who was the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for “The Color Purple” in 1983, has repeatedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany and is an avid supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. In 2011, she claimed, “I think Israel is the greatest terrorist in that part of the world. And I think in general, the United States and Israel are great terrorist organizations themselves.” That same year she said Israel is “as frightening to many of us as Germany used to be.” Walker has also made antisemitic claims about Jews and Israel in her poetry.
</blockquote>


	Walker has been obsessed with Jews and Israel for years. She frequently compares Israel to Nazi Germany, and attacks the Talmud as an evil and racist document.&nbsp;In 2018, she promoted a book by British antisemite and conspiracy theorist David Icke,&nbsp;And the Truth Shall Set You Free, during an interview with&nbsp;The New York Times. In the book, Icke claims that Jews control the world and quotes frequently from the&nbsp;Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Icke, whose work Alice Walker so admires, describes the Talmud as “among the most appallingly racist documents on the planet,” and claimed that Jewish organizations are secretly behind various racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan.


	Walker’s interview of the writer Honorée Fannone Jeffers was to have been the headline event at the Bay Area Book Festival. Jeffers, as the writer being honored in this fashion, had insisted that Walker be her interviewer.&nbsp;Jeffers must have known, when she chose her, Walker’s history of antisemitism, her repeated denunciations of Jews, Judaism, and Israel. She would have known Walker’s work, including the very long 2017 poem Walker wrote in which she called Israeli rule “demonic to the core,” and suggested that to understand “the inspiration for so much evil,” one must “study The Talmud” and “its poison.” Jeffers apparently was not bothered by any of this; she wanted Walker and no one else to interview her. And when Walker was disinvited because of her history of antisemitism Jeffers, in a sign of solidarity with Walker, refused to appear at the Book Festival.


	Walker’s hatred of Israel is extraordinary. She told an Israeli publisher in 2012 that she does not allow&nbsp;The Color Purple&nbsp;to be translated into Hebrew because “Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.”


	The organizers of the Bay Area Book Festival had apparently not known the extent of her demented antisemitism, when they chose her to interview Honorée Fannone Jeffers at the headline event, did not know the full extent of her hatred of Israel – “demonic to the core” — the Jewish state that she compares to Nazi Germany, nor her deep hatred of Judaism, and that Talmud whose “poison” she denounces. But when it was brought to their attention, the organizers of the Bay Area Book Festival did the right thing, and at once disinvited the disgraceful Alice Walker. It is heartening that there was no wobbling on the issue, once the evidence of her malignant obsession was presented, no attempt to explain away or hide her spittle-flecked hatred. She won’t be an honored guest; she won’t be anything at all, at the Bay Area Book Festival. That’s as it should be.

Alice Walker Disinvited From Book Festival

Alice Walker, the author of&nbsp;The Color Purple, has been disinvited from a book festival when the organizers discovered her long history of antisemitic

The Palestinians like to display their malignant obsession with Israel in everything they do. The children’s programs on PA television where tiny tots lisp their hatred of “the Jews” as they make stabbing gestures with the little knives they have been given, the public celebrations of the latest school or street or plaza to be named after a terrorist who murdered two, or ten, or 37 Israelis, and even, as the latest news brings, a marathon race in Bethlehem that turns into a propaganda assault on the Jewish state, are some examples of this. A report on that most recent Palestine Marathon can be found here: “Race to Reject Israel: The Problematic Palestine Marathon,” by Gidon Ben-Zvi, <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/03/24/race-to-reject-israel-the-problematic-palestine-marathon/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Algemeiner</a>, March 24, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		Sports have the unique power to foster inclusion and bridge gaps in increasingly divided societies around the world.

	
		But not, it seems, in areas where the Palestinian Authority (PA) is in charge.

	
		The annual&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/PalestineMarathon.org" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Palestine Marathon,</a> held on March 18 this year, was ostensibly created so that people from around the world could gather in Bethlehem for one of the city’s social and cultural highlights.

	
		However, the race was used by its organizers — various branches of the PA — to target Israel.

	
		For a supposedly apolitical event like a sports race, this year’s Palestine Marathon was noteworthy for its political agenda. For one thing, the official logo of the marathon was a map — but not of Bethlehem or other Palestinian areas of the West Bank. Rather, the entirety of Israel was subsumed under the “Palestine” moniker.
</blockquote>


	The official logo of the race in Bethlehem, that should have had nothing to do with politics, could have borne an image of a previous winner crossing the finish line, or a painting of Manger Square, where the race begins and ends, or even a view of the Church of the Nativity, the main site for tourists visiting Bethlehem. Instead, the organizers of the Palestine Marathon chose as their logo a place called “Palestine,” extending “from the river to the sea” — the Jordan River, the Mediterranean Sea — with the state of Israel entirely effaced. Israel can be found, however, in the Mission Statement at the Marathon’s website, where mention is made of Israel’s “Occupation” that supposedly prevents “freedom of movement” for the Palestinians. The organizers of the Palestine Marathon have made their meaning clear: Israel should not, and eventually will not, exist.

<blockquote>
	
		Furthermore, terms such as “country,” “Palestine,” and “State of Palestine” were frequently used on the event’s official website.
</blockquote>


	The notion of “Palestine” as a place, as a country, as a future state replacing Israel, is emphasized both with the logo and at the Marathon’s website. This insistence on replacing “Israel” in its entirety with “Palestine” makes clear that the Palestine Marathon is not so much about sport as it is one more vehicle for Palestinian propaganda and irredentism.

<blockquote>
	
		For the record, there has never been a Palestinian state. While the United Nations General Assembly in 2012 voted to accept the PA as a “non-member observer state,” this did not confer full sovereignty upon the government in Ramallah. In fact, the PA does not meet the requirements for statehood as defined in international law….
</blockquote>


	The PA lacks a sovereign’s control of its own borders. It does not have a national army. It does not enter into treaties with foreign states. It has only the status of a “non-member observer state” at the U.N., meaning it ordinarily takes no part in the votes. It is a pretend state passing itself off as a real one.


	The Palestinians have not done everything they were obligated to do under the Oslo Accords to halt terrorist attacks on Israel. The greatest Israeli dissatisfaction with the 1993 Oslo Accords is over the fact that the Palestinian Authority has often failed to prevent terrorist attacks emanating from its territory. It refused to take steps towards disarming terrorist militias, permitted terrorist organizations to operate in its territory and either refused to arrest terrorists or adopted a policy of “revolving door” arrests–placing terrorists in prison for a handful of days and then releasing them. The rules were different, of course, if those terrorists had the PA, too, in their sights. In those cases, the PA security forces were willing to collaborate with Israel’s Shin Bet to help both themselves and the Israelis to deal with a common enemy.


	While claiming to be fighting terrorism, the PA provides with its Pay-For-Slay program generous subsidies both to imprisoned terrorists and to the families of terrorists killed during their attacks. Mahmoud Abbas has claimed that, no matter how much American pressure is brought to bear, he will continue to support the program with his “last penny.” That program rewards past, and incentivizes future, terrorism. Just as disturbing, the PA names schools, streets, and squares after terrorists, thus holding them up to young Palestinians as heroes to be emulated.


	Furthermore, since 2008, when Mahmoud Abbas walked out on negotiations with Ehud Olmert, rejecting the Israeli offer of 94% of the West Bank and internationalization of Jerusalem, the Palestinians have engaged with Israel only once, in 2014, in talks that eventually blew up because of Palestinian intransigence, and in the past eight years since, Mahmoud Abbas has refused to reengage with the Israelis.


	The Palestinians have tried to present the Palestine Marathon as an example of the PA’s inclusivity, with this race ostensibly open to all. (How many Jewish Israelis, do you think, were allowed to register for this year’s marathon? None.) But they chose to have the starting and finishing lines of the Marathon in Manger Square in Bethlehem, a city that now stands not for inclusivity, but for the harassment and persecution of its Christian population by Muslims. The numbers tell the melancholy tale: in 1947, 85% of Bethlehem’s population was Christian. Today, that figure has sunk to 16%. Bethlehem now offers a case study of Muslim supremacism, that has caused so many of its Christians to flee, turning a once overwhelmingly Christian into one that is overwhelmingly Muslim.

<blockquote>
	
		Also notice how casually the Palestine Marathon website works in the apartheid libel against Israel:

	
		Starting at the Church of the Nativity, in the center of Bethlehem’s Old City, its route takes runners through the town, two refugee camps (Aida and Dheisheh), and along the apartheid Wall.
</blockquote>


	Nota Bene: “along the apartheid Wall.”

<blockquote>
	
		Ever since its construction, the&nbsp;<a href="https://honestreporting.com/the-truth-about-the-security-barrier/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">West Bank security barrier</a>&nbsp;has been incorrectly depicted by Israel’s most vehement critics as an “apartheid” wall. In fact, it was built in 2002 in response to the&nbsp;Second Intifada, during which Palestinian terrorists killed more than 1,000 Israelis. Some 7,000 more were injured during this period of suicide bombings and shootings.

	
		The Israeli government&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-of-israel-s-security-fence#7" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">approved and began construction</a>&nbsp;of the security fence — only about 10% is a concrete wall — in 2002, in an attempt to stop Palestinian terrorist infiltration. As a result, the number of terror attacks originating from the West Bank has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-of-israel-s-security-fence" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">decreased</a>&nbsp;by more than 90%.
</blockquote>


	What the website of the Palestine Marathon calls an “apartheid wall” is in fact a “security fence”&nbsp;– only 10% of it is made of concrete. It was not put in to torment the Palestinians but to save lives, both Jewish and Muslim. It began to be built in 2002, during the Second Intifada, when the Palestinian terrorists killed more than 1,000 Israelis, through shootings, stabbings, and suicide bombs, and wounded 7,000.&nbsp;Israel’s security fence – what the Palestine Marathon website calls an “apartheid” wall – was deemed the most effective way to diminish infiltration by Palestinian terrorists. And it worked: terror attacks from the West Bank have gone down by 90% since 2002.

<blockquote>
	
		Yet the claim that Israel is an “apartheid state” is intensifying worldwide. PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh in November of last year said that Israel risked&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/mahmoud-abbas-naftali-bennett-west-bank-israel-middle-east-f8e5e6fb0b64378868db55567a408e1c" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">perpetuating a system of “apartheid.”</a>&nbsp;His remarks were parroted by many news outlets, which failed to even mention repeated Israeli peace overtures that&nbsp;<a href="https://honestreporting.com/cnns-fareed-zakaria-falsely-accuses-israel-of-killing-two-state-solution-for-15-years/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">have been rejected by the PA</a>.

	
		In reality, apartheid refers to the policy of racial segregation in pre-1990s South Africa — a construct that does not remotely apply to Israel, as HonestReporting has outlined in numerous articles (see for example&nbsp;<a href="https://honestreporting.com/apartheid-myth-the-concerted-international-campaign-to-mainstream-vicious-libel-harm-israel/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">here</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://honestreporting.com/amnesty-international-employs-twisted-definition-of-apartheid-to-call-for-dismantling-of-israel/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">here</a>).
</blockquote>


	As often as the “apartheid” libel is made, Israel’s defenders respond just as often with the evidence that shows just how absurd such a charge turns out to be. We have to keep sweeping back the malignant tide. So here goes, yet again, to disprove the ”apartheid” label and libel: Arabs serve in the Knesset, sit on the Supreme Court, go abroad as ambassadors. The chairman of Israel’s largest bank, Bank Leumi, is an Arab. Jews and Arabs study in the same universities, work in the same offices and factories, play on the same sports teams and in the same orchestras. Jewish and Arab medical personnel together treat Jewish and Arab patients. Jewish and Arab entrepreneurs own businesses together, everything from restaurants to high tech startups. But while these facts are repeated ad nauseam, the army of Israel-haters simply ignores all this, and continues to insist, without feeling the need to produce any evidence, that Israel is an “apartheid” state. All we can do is to keep offering the evidence, in the hope that those whose minds are not made up will be convinced by our sober recital of the facts, and not by the baseless fictions of Palestinian propaganda.

<blockquote>
	
		Specifically, since the signing of the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, the vast majority of Palestinians have been governed by either the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank or Hamas.
</blockquote>


	100 percent of the Palestinians in Gaza live under the despotic rule of Hamas. 95 percent of the Palestinians in the West Bank live in Areas A and B, under the despotic rule of the Palestinian Authority. The only Arabs “between the river and the sea” who enjoy democracy and the rule of law are the Israeli Arabs.

<blockquote>
	
		Meanwhile, in Israel, the legal, state-sanctioned discrimination that is the very definition of apartheid is not only absent, but it is combated by the country’s laws and court system.

	
		Equal rights for all groups, including ethnic and religious minorities, are safeguarded in Israel – forming the basis of the Middle East’s only functioning democracy.
</blockquote>


	Everyone – Jew, Christian, Muslim, Druze – is equal under Israeli law. No state-sanctioned discrimination, ethnic or religious, is allowed. The sole difference in the treatment of Jews and Arabs is this: Jews&nbsp;must&nbsp;serve in the IDF, while Arabs&nbsp;may&nbsp;serve if they so choose. This hardly constitutes discrimination.

<blockquote>
	
		By infusing an event meant to bring people together with such divisive rhetoric, the PA is serving notice that it will continue to incite Palestinians to reject coexistence with Israel — hurting peace-seeking Palestinians in the process.
</blockquote>


	The Palestine Marathon is billed by its organizers as an event to “bring people together.” But instead, at every turn – on the posters that are put up in the city and along the race route, and at the website for the Marathon — we see that the PA continues to reject Israel’s very existence. The logo for the Marathon is a map of ”Palestine” which extends “from the river to the sea.” Israel does not exist. Or rather, it does exist, but only as an evil presence. Israel is mentioned only at the website, in the Palestine Marathon’s “mission statement.” Here it is:

<blockquote>
	
		Mission:

	
		The PALESTINE MARATHON ‘s mission is to telling [sic] different stories about Palestinians and their lack of freedom of movement, and adding value to the Palestinian tourism sector &amp; economy.

	
		OBJECTIVES:

	
		To tell a different story about Palestine and increase international knowledge of Palestinian culture, hospitality and life – and of course the effect of the Israeli’s [sic] Occupation on Palestinians’ freedom of movement.
</blockquote>


	Sport is the vehicle, but the real story, as always with the Palestinians, is Israel’s cruel “Occupation” and its “effects on the Palestinians’ freedom of movement.” The Palestinians are not restricted in most of their “freedom of movement.” They can leave the PA territories to go anywhere they wish in the world –outside of Israel. And the only reason Israel has kept most of the Palestinians from entering is because of its unhappy experience with Palestinian terrorists who too often in the past were let in to work by the Israeli government, and then they proceeded to commit attacks on Israeli civilians.


	Even so, in the hope of improving economic conditions for the Palestinians, Israel feels that the security situation is such at present that they can increase the number of work permits it gives to the Palestinians. In the West Bank, 106,000 Palestinians now have permits to work in Israel within the Green Line, and another 35,000 work in the settlements. Another ten thousand Palestinians from Gaza also have permits to work in Israel. Israel provides jobs for these Palestinians, and their pay is many times greater than what those workers would earn at home – to even more Palestinians if the security situation merits it. And the Palestinians who are allowed to work in Israel consider themselves very lucky; as one such worker said, “I feel I have won the lottery.”


	None of this is going to be mentioned in any of the material disseminated by the organizers of the Palestine Marathon. For them, the Israeli “Occupation” is the primal sin. But there is no “occupation” in Gaza, where not a single Israeli remains, nor is it correct to describe as an “occupation” the situation in Areas A and B in Judea and Samaria, where 95% of the Palestinians in the West Bank live, ruled by the PA. Israel does not keep the Palestinians “cooped up” – they can travel around the world, if they wish. Right now more than 150,000 Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank are allowed to work in Israel, and more will soon be permitted to join therm.&nbsp;


	None of this will be mentioned at the website of the Palestine Marathon. But you can read it here, and then can send that information on to others who may have been misled by Palestinian propaganda. Feel free.

For the Palestinians, a Road Race is an Occasion to Bash Israel

The Palestinians like to display their malignant obsession with Israel in everything they do. The children’s programs on PA television where tiny tots lisp

That indispensable source of information on Muslim lands and peoples, MEMRI, has just carried a report on a speech given by Yousef Makharzah, a Palestinian Islamic scholar, in which he accuses the Europeans of every conceivable atrocity, including having “sex with animals and beasts more than with humans.” MEMRI’s report is here: “Palestinian Islamic Scholar Yousef Makharzah: Europeans Practice Bestiality, Sleep With Animals More Than With Humans; Western Civilization Is Inferior, Asinine, Racist,” <a href="https://www.memri.org/tv/palestinian-islamic-scholar-makharzah-europeans-practice-bestiality-inferior" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">MEMRI</a>, March 6, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		Palestinian Islamic scholar Yousef Makharzah said in a March 6, 2022 speech that aired on the Hizb-ut-Tahrir-affiliated Al-Waqiyah TV (Lebanon) that Syrian refugees were driven to Europe by “oppressive Europeans” and that the Europeans are the cause of the Muslims’ tragedies. Makharzah claimed that Europeans practice bestiality to the extent that “they have sex with animals and beasts more than with humans.” He also said that that Western civilization is inferior, asinine, and racist, and that it causes “a man to oppress his brother and kill him with no justification.” In addition, Makharzah asserted that when European colonialist came to Muslim countries, they made the Muslims “more ignorant and shallow” so they would purchase the European consumer goods.&nbsp;For more about Sheikh Makharzah, see MEMRI TV Clips No. 7849, No. 8500, No. 8557, No. 8877, No. 9207, No. 9356 and No. 9411.

	
		Yousef Makharzah: “Why did the Syrians flee to Europe? They were driven there by the oppressive Europeans.&nbsp;Why did the people of the poor countries in Africa flee to Europe?

	
		“They were driven there by the injustice of colonialism that devoured the wealth of those countries. The [Europeans] are the cause of our tragedies.
</blockquote>


	The 6.7 million Syrians who fled the 11-year-old Syrian civil war were driven to do so to avoid the unending violence of the war, and especially the repeated attacks, by Assad’s army, on &nbsp;civilians. Europeans had nothing to with those atrocities. &nbsp;The refugees were Syrians fleeing other Syrians. Why would the Europeans have “driven” Syrians to Europe, where they are not wanted, and where they constitute a terrific drain on the economies of the generous welfare states of Europe, that provide those Syrian refugees who do arrive with free housing, medical care, education, and family allowances. Fortunately, of the 6.7 million Syrian refugees, 5.6 million remain in the Middle East, in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. Only In the crazed imagination of Yousef Makharzah are Europeans “driving” Syrians to Europe.

<blockquote>
	
		They brought cattle and beasts into their bedrooms. They have sex with animals and beasts more than with humans.
</blockquote>


	“Sex with animals”? The only religion whose clerics have solemnly considered sex with animals, and has carefully set out the “rules” that should govern such sex, is Islam. It was that most learned of Shi’a theologians, Ayatollah Khomeini himself, who set out the dating Do’s-N’-Don’ts for Muslims having sex with sheep, cows, camels. Here is what he wrote in his “Tahrirolvasyleh,” fourth volume, 1990:

<blockquote>
	
		A man can have sex with animals such as sheep, cows, camels and so on. However, he should kill the animal after he has his orgasm. He should not sell the meat to the people in his own village, but selling the meat to a neighboring village is reasonable.
</blockquote>


	Good to know, because otherwise you might commit the unpardonable faux pas of serving the meat of a camel — or of a cow, or of a sheep — you have just sodomized, to people of your own village, and that, as Ayatollah Khomeini reminds us, would never do.


	Yousef Makharzah continues:

<blockquote>
	
		This filthy civilization that is invading us is the Western civilization. Our leaders and our intellectuals were enticed by this bestial civilization. It is an inferior, asinine, and racist civilization, that causes a man to oppress his brother and kill him with no justification.
</blockquote>


	The civilization of the advanced West fills so many Muslims with wonder and envy, as it is so obviously superior to that of the Muslims, and this sends the troglodytic Makharzah into a fury. He knows – the Qur’an tells him so – that Muslims are the “best of peoples”(3:110) while the Infidels are “the most vile of created beings.”(98:6) Therefore he insists, though without any evidence, that Western civilization must be “inferior, asinine, and racist.” If it is “inferior,” why have tens of millions of Muslims flooded into the countries of the West, with millions more trying desperately to enter in order to settle deep within that “inferior, asinine, and racist” civilization? And why is that pull felt most keenly among Muslim “leaders and intellectuals,” who presumably have the best opportunity to study and compare the Muslim and the non-Muslim worlds? Could it be because they find that civilization not at all “inferior, asinine, and racist,” but in every respect superior to the Islamic civilization that they with great difficulty are tasked with defending?

<blockquote>
	
		When they came to our country, they made us more ignorant and shallow, so that we could become a consumer market for their industry. Through their Muslim leaders-for-hire, they prevented us from innovating. They prevented us from [developing] industry and improving our lives.
</blockquote>


	So the explanation for Muslim backwardness has nothing to do with Islam; it is the result of a deliberate plot by those who “came to our country” (dar al-Islam) to make us “more ignorant and shallow.” Goodness, how weak Muslims must be, to be used in such a manner. The European reentry into the modern Middle East began with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, but the Middle East and North Africa would remain under the rule by fellow Muslims, Ottoman Turks, for at least another century. And for more than 75 years, no Muslim land has been under non-Muslim — European — rule. Yet Muslims such as Yousef Makharzah must blame the Europeans for all that has gone wrong in their wretched, backward lands.


	How did those Europeans make Muslims “more ignorant and shallow”? The French remained in both Morocco and Tunisia for a very short period, about 40 years; only in Algeria did the French have a full-fledged colony, with a large transfer of French&nbsp;colons,&nbsp;that lasted from 1830 to 1962. The Italians held Libya only from 1911 to 1940. All over North Africa, even in that short time, the Europeans did much good. They built the first modern school systems, to replace the madrasahs. They allowed girls to go to school. They built the first universities. They modernized agricultural production. They built hospitals and clinics; as a result, infant mortality plummeted and life expectancy lengthened. They built roads, bridges, ports. They did not make Muslims “more ignorant and shallow.” The Europeans did more to educate the Arabs who were under their rule in North Africa than had been done by the Ottomans during more than 600 years of rule.


	In the Middle East, the Europeans — Britain and France — were present not as colonists, but as holders of League of Nations’ Mandates. Britain held those for Iraq, and Palestine, and having sealed it off from Mandatory Palestine, for Jordan as well. The British helped to set up the Hashemite monarchies in Iraq and Jordan, and provided arms and training to their armies, but little else. The French, who held the Mandate for Syria and Lebanon, did a great deal to set up a system of secular schools and, as part of its mission civilisatrie (“civilizig mission”), introduced French-language schools for the Lebanese elite, for whom French became more popular than Arabic, for it was the second language of the enlightened West.


	If most Muslims remained “more ignorant and shallow,” this was not because of the Europeans, but because Islam itself encouraged submission to authority, and discouraged, even punished, skeptical inquiry. This habit of mental submission kept people “more ignorant” as they rejected, for example, new scientific theories, and the True Believers clung to the belief that all knowledge could be found in the Qur’an, which dampened any desire to learn more..


	Yousef Makharzah claims that “through their Muslim leaders-for-hire, they prevented us from innovating.”&nbsp;There are several things wrong with this claim. What “Muslim leaders for hire” were there? Not Hafez nor his son Bashar Assad, the Syrian despots who despise the West. Not Gamal Abdel Nasser, nor Saddam Hussein, dictators who embodied anti-Western pan-Arabism. None of the rich Sunni Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Kuwait, were “Muslim leaders-for-hire”: it was they who paid, and still pay, Western politicians and P.R. firms to do their bidding in the capitals of the Western world.


	It was never the West that “prevented us [the Muslims] from innovating.” It is Islam itself that warns Muslims of the dangers of innovation, or&nbsp;bida. Innovation in any aspect of life is a danger for Muslims, because it might lead Believers to want to “innovate” in matters of faith, even perhaps seeking changes in the tenets and teachings of Islam, iand that would never do.


	Yousef Makharzah has made wild charges about the West that do not withstand scrutiny. He rants against “this filthy civilization that is invading us is the Western civilization. Our leaders and our intellectuals were enticed by this bestial civilization. It is an inferior, asinine, and racist civilization, that causes a man to oppress his brother and kill him with no justification.”&nbsp;In what respect is Western civilization inferior to that of the Muslims? In its scientific achievements, in its political framework, in its art, its music, its literature, its philosophy? In its equal treatment of men and women, and of people of all religions, and of no religion? In what way are Western states “inferior” to such states of high Muslim civilization as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Qatar, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Algeria?


	As to the charge that Yousef Makharzah makes against our “filthy civilization that is invading us [the Muslim lands]” – to repeat, we are not invading you. You are invading us. Tens of millions of Muslims have already settled in Europe, deep behind what they are taught to regard as enemy lands. Please, we don’t want you here, please go home, back to your wonderful Muslim countries, instead of remaining in our “inferior, asinine, and racist civilization,” where a “man will kill his brother with no justification,” so very unlike what happens in the peaceable kingdoms of Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan, and so very many more.

Palestinian Islamic ‘Scholar’ Blames Europeans For Everything

That indispensable source of information on Muslim lands and peoples, MEMRI, has just carried a report on a speech given by Yousef Makharzah, a Palestinian

Peter Beinart, who has previously announced to the world – which he believes hangs on his every word –that he no longer supports Israel as a “Jewish state,” is at it again, declaring this time that American support for Israel should be withdrawn because it has, just like Russia in Ukraine, “illegally” annexed territory. A report on his self-important bloviating is here: “Did Peter Beinart Just Blame Israel for Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine?,” by Gidon Ben-Zvi, <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/03/15/did-peter-beinart-just-blame-israel-for-russias-invasion-of-ukraine/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Algemeiner</a>, March 15, 2022:

<blockquote>
	
		In an article in&nbsp;The Guardian&nbsp;titled, “The US supports illegal annexations by Israel and Morocco. Why the hypocrisy?,” Peter Beinart draws a parallel between Russia’s incursion into Ukraine and Israel’s defensive actions during the 1967 Six-Day War.
</blockquote>


	What “illegal annexations” by Israel is Beinart talking about? Israel has formally annexed, among the territories it took possession of In the Six-Day War, only east Jerusalem, in 1980, and the Golan Heights, in 1981. Those annexations were not illegal. The League of Nations in 1922 created the Mandate for Palestine, that would become the Jewish National Home and, in time, a sovereign Jewish state. The territory included in Mandatory Palestine extended from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, and from the Golan Heights in the north to the Red Sea in the south. Israel was only annexing territory – the Golan and east Jerusalem — that had already been assigned to it by the League of Nations.


	There is another, independent justification for Israel’s annexation of the Golan: UN Security Council Resolution 242 (Nov. 22, 1967) allows Israel to retain any territory taken “in the recent conflict” that Israel needed in order to have “secure [defensible] and recognized boundaries.” The Golan, from which Syrian artillery had from 1949 to 1967 fired on Israelis working the fields far below, certainly was needed by Israel to prevent a resumption of such attacks, and to prevent a full-scale invasion from the north, as Syria attempted in 1967 and 1973.

<blockquote>
	
		In the piece, Beinart suggests that the United States should no longer continue providing the Jewish state with military aid because doing so would “make Ukraine, Taiwan and every other weaker nation bordered by a rapacious neighbor more vulnerable.”
</blockquote>


	In Beinart’s view, Israel is a “rapacious neighbor” wantonly attacking others, and by providing it with military aid, the U.S. i not only encouraging Jerusalem’s aggression, but also that of Russia against Ukraine, China against Taiwan, and all stronger states that threaten weaker ones.

<blockquote>
	
		Beinart frames his argument by quoting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who described Russia’s aggression as an affront to “Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” as well as a “gross violation of international law.”

	
		Beinart proceeds:

	
		Remaking borders by force violates a core principle of international law. Which is why the Biden administration must do more than resist Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. It must stop violating that principle itself.
</blockquote>


	There is a difference between “remaking borders by force” and winning, and keeping, territory won in a war of self-defense. Israel did not attack Egypt, Syria, and Jordan first In the Six-Day War. That war began when, starting in mid-May, Nasser blockaded the Straits of Tiran, ordered the U.N. to pull its peacekeeping troops from the Sinai, and moved tens of thousands of Egyptian troops to the northern Sinai, ready to invade Israel. How does this compare to the unprovoked attack on Ukraine by Russia?


	Israel won its war in June, 1967, against the gang-up of three Arab countries, and with it, took possession of Gaza, the Golan, east Jerusalem, and the Sinai. Eventually, in exchange for a peace treaty, it gave the Sinai back to Egypt; it also withdrew entirely from the Gaza Strip in 2005, leaving the Gazans to rule themselves. That is, it gave up 95% of the territory it had taken in the 1967 war.&nbsp;

<blockquote>
	
		Beinart writes this in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, accusing the Jewish state of disregarding “a core principle of international law” when it annexed the Golan Heights that were “seized from Syria in the 1967 War.”

	
		What Beinart fails to note is that, in stark contrast to Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, Israel, which indeed gained control of parts of the Golan Heights during the Six-Day War, had been attacked by neighboring Arab countries and as such, was forced into fighting for its very survival.

	
		Indeed, regional leaders in the run-up to launching the 1967 war launched by neighboring Arab states against Israel (in a manner similar to Putin’s invasion), repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel. Not only did then Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser impose a blockade of Israeli goods through the Straits of Tiran, itself an act of war, all while ordering a massive military buildup and demanding the removal of UN peacekeeping forces monitoring the shared border, but top Arab officials repeatedly made genocidal statements — such as the following by then Syrian defense minister (and later president) Hafez Assad:

	
		Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse any aggression, but to initiate the act ourselves, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland of Palestine. The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united. I believe that the time has come to begin a battle of annihilation.
</blockquote>


	Who were the “rapacious neighbors” in 1967? Not Israel, which for the second time was forced to fight, as it had in 1948, for its very survival. Egypt and Syria were the aggressors; little Jordan joined in, King Hussein having been inveigled by Nasser into attacking Israel. It was a big mistake: Jordan lost east Jerusalem, including the Old City, as well as all of the West Bank.

<blockquote>
	
		Moreover, Beinart blithely ignores the fact that Syria remains in the throes of a decade-plus-long war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, and that the country is run by a murderous dictator.&nbsp;Beinart also discounts the strategic importance of the area as it relates to Israel’s security, even as Iranian-backed fighters are trying to remilitarize the region so that they may one day exterminate Israel.
</blockquote>


	Syria is run by a murderous dictator who is the closest ally of Iran. Iran’s leaders have constantly pledged to “annihilate” the Jewish state. That is the reason for Iran’s nuclear program, and for its ballistic missile program. And recently, Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters, armed with Iranian weapons, have been trying to establish bases just to the north of the Golan, still under Syrian control. The Golan plateau, which with an average altitude of 1,000 meters looms over the Syrian plain beneath, is essential to the defense of Israel’s north. All Israeli military men are convinced of that. So were the American officers who were sent to Israel by President Johnson in 1967 to report back on which territories Israel would have to keep to ensure its security. But Field Marshall Peter Beinart, that master of military strategy, doesn’t agree. Whom should we trust?

<blockquote>
	
		Prior to the 1967 war, the Syrian army plagued northern Israel by frequently launching artillery attacks against Israelis. In the preceding 17 years, approximately 370 Israelis were hit by Syrian fire, resulting in 121 deaths. In the first three months of 1967 alone, Damascus and its allies caused over 270 border “incidents.”

	
		Despite the obvious security ramifications, the Israeli government after the war still proposed returning the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for peace. In response, the Arab League — at the time comprising Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, and Sudan — issued a proclamation known as the Khartoum Resolution, or, more informally, the Three Nos: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it….”

	
		Perhaps sensing that his Russia-Israel comparison is unfounded, Beinart then compares Israel’s 1981 application of sovereignty over the Golan Heights to Morocco’s annexation of the Western Sahara — which Rabat invaded in 1975 after the withdrawal from the region of its Spanish colonial rulers.
</blockquote>


	Beinart wants us to believe that Morocco’s seizure and annexation of the Western Sahara, a sparsely populated area that posed no threat to Rabat, is akin to Israel keeping, in a war of self-defense, territory — the Golan — that had been used by Syria for only one purpose: to rain fire down on Israeli civilians.

<blockquote>
	
		For good measure, Beinart invokes the thoroughly debunked Israel “apartheid” libel:

	
		Even as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International allege that it [Israel] is practicing apartheid… the Biden administration has also boosted arms sales to Morocco&nbsp;even though the US-based democracy watchdog Freedom House reports that people in Western Sahara enjoy fewer freedoms than people in China or Iran….
</blockquote>


	We might as well, tedious as it has become, yet again rebut the absurd charge that Israel practices apartheid, Here goes. Israeli Arabs serve in the Knesset, sit on the Supreme Court, are sent abroad as Israeli ambassadors. The chairman of Israel’s largest bank, Bank Leumi, is an Arab. Jews and Arabs in Israel work in the same offices and factories, are doctors and nurses in the same hospitals, treating both Arab and Jewish patients. Jews and Arabs play on the same sports teams – an Arab is the captain of Israel’s national soccer team — and in the same orchestras. Jews and Arabs start businesses together – everything from restaurants to high-tech start-ups. But Peter Beinart refuses to recognize any of that, as he asserts, as If it were a universally-accepted truth, “even as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International allege that it [Israel] is practicing apartheid” – and then he segues into a non sequitur about American aid to Morocco.


	Let’s see. Because Israel annexed the Golan, which it had won in a war of self-defense – as international law permits — in order to better protect itself against another invasion attempt from the north, that means that China will be encouraged to attack Taiwan. I’ve tried to make sense out of this but have failed. Peter Beinart connects, I’m afraid, a handful of non-existent dots.

Peter Beinart Blames Israel For Ukraine’s Plight

Peter Beinart, who has previously announced to the world – which he believes hangs on his every word –that he no longer supports Israel as a “Jewish state,” is

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