Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, March 16, 2018

EU notices that UNSC1701 resolution is still not implemented 12 years later

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 to end the 2006 Lebanon war calls for "full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state."

Yesterday, EU High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini sort of admitted that this has never happened as she said in a speech:

We, the European Union, have always been on the side of Lebanon and the Lebanese security forces. Since 2006, the EU has invested more than 85 million euros across the entire security sector.

Our Member States are contributing to UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) with thousands of troops – and let me thank in particular Italy for their commitment and for hosting today's conference.

We now want to support the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces to the South of Lebanon, in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1701. The European Union is ready to work with the rest of the international community, and with the Lebanese institutions, towards the full implementation of the Resolution. In particular, we very much support the deployment of a Lebanese “model regiment” in the area, as a step towards a stronger and more stable Lebanon.

Today we commit an additional 50 million euros to support Lebanon's security until 2020.

What is this "model regiment"?

Last year, Lebanon came up with the idea of a "model regiment" as a token force in Hezbollah's territory to pretend that there is actually a Lebanese Army presence there.

UNIFIL has conducted consultations with the Government of Lebanon and the Lebanese Armed Forces on the possibility of establishing what the Lebanese Armed Forces now refers to as a “model Lebanese Armed Forces regiment” to cooperate closely with UNIFIL, in particular along the Blue Line. The Government has reconfirmed its commitment to increasing the presence of the Lebanese Armed Forces in the UNIFIL area of operations, including through such a regiment.

Almost certainly Hezbollah is happily going along with this charade of a tiny token Lebanese force so the EU can pour more money into Lebanon, pretending that this force is a first step at taking Hezbollah's weapons away.

(h/t Irene)

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UNRWA's "Amman New Camp" in Jordan, whose residents are Jordanian citizens, paid for by you

From the European Commission:

Today the European Union has made available €82 million for the 2018 operating budget of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission Federica Mogherini said: "Millions of people – men, women and children – depend on UNRWA for vital services: education, healthcare and social services, humanitarian assistance and employment. Supporting UNRWA is a humanitarian and political duty. It is in our collective interest of building peace and security in the Middle East and for the prospects of a negotiated two-state solution. I have shared this message of urgency with our partners participating in today's meeting in Rome, dedicated to UNRWA's funding crisis. As the Agency faces difficult times, we are – and we will continue to be – strong, consistent and reliable supporters of its work".

In 2016 and 2017, the EU and its Member States together provided €424 million and €391 million respectively to UNRWA, making the European Union by far the largest and most reliable donor to the Agency. Today's €82 million support is allocated as a part of the EU's regular annual contribution for 2018, and has been made available through a sped-up procedure.

The €82 million in funding was announced today during a meeting between High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini and UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl in the margins of the extraordinary UNRWA Ministerial Conference in Rome. The Conference focussed on solving the acute funding crisis the Agency is facing and on moving forward necessary Agency reforms.

Here's an idea for those who really, really care about helping Palestinians: Drastically cut UNRWA services to Jordan.

About 40% of UNRWA's "Palestine refugees" live in Jordan, over 2 million people. The vast majority of them have been Jordanian citizens for nearly 70 years!

For 70 years, the world has funded a housing, medical and educational system for millions of Jordanian citizens that is completely separate and parallel to the existing Jordanian system. They are not refugees by any conceivable definition. The only reason that they are treated differently from any other Jordanian is because some of their ancestors happened to live a few miles away in 1947.

There is no moral, legal or historic reason why these Jordanian citizens need to have their housing, education and medical needs filled by the UN instead of the country that they are citizens of. Nowhere else in the world are people who are full citizens of the country they live in given unending "refugee" aid.

Hundreds of thousands of Jordanian citizens live in camps. Why?

The EU disingenuously has said for years that UNRWA "provides a political space for the efforts to conclude a peace deal and the creation of the future Palestinian state."

Hundreds of million of euros are spent to maintain an apartheid system between two different classes of Jordanian citizens. And not one person who attended this conference in Rome has a problem with that, instead insisting that UNRWA's services and its bizarre definition of "refugee" is sacred.

About 40% of UNRWA's budget can be cut today by noting that citizens of Jordan are not, by definition, refugees.

The only political purpose to providing Jordanian citizens with "refugee" status is to use them as cannon fodder to help destroy Israel. The EU and the rest of the world have a message to two million Jordanian citizens: They are not "real" Jordanians after generations of living there and that they should really move to Israel in order to destroy the Jewish state.

That is not exactly a formula for peace.

European citizens should be outraged that so much of their money is being worse that wasted: it is being used to perpetuate an apartheid system in Jordan and to prolong a "refugee" crisis.

If you care about peace and equal rights, shame Jordan into mainstreaming its own citizens into its own social service programs, and pay Jordan to integrate UNRWA facilities and employees into a single, unified Jordanian system.

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03/15 Links Pt2: Glick: Democrats Join Farrakhan and British Labour Party in Antisemitic Sewer; Shapiro: Not All Anti-Semitism Is Created Equal; SJP advocates gun violence and armed resistance

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Democrats Join Farrakhan and British Labour Party in Antisemitic Sewer

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has asked DNC Chairman Tom Perez to address his party’s ties to Farrakhan “America’s leading anti-Semite.” To date, Perez has remained mum.

Then there is Obama’s consigliere, Valerie Jarrett. In an appearance on NBC’s The View, Jarrett tried to defend Mallory for her association with Farrakhan. Jarrett compared Mallory’s association with Farrakahn to her association with Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers, whom Jarrett met with during her tenure at the White House.

Which brings us back to Britain’s Labour party.

Like Corbyn, the Democrats have responded to the exposure of their close ties to the most powerful antisemite in the United States by deflecting the issue. They have drawn moral equivalences between Farrakhan and the government of Israel, and between Farrakhan and leading conservatives.

They have also embraced him as a “great man” who cannot be dismissed or rejected simply because he seeks the annihilation of the Jewish state of Israel, views the American Jewish community as his “enemy,” thinks the Holocaust was justified, and regards Hitler as a “very great man.”

Until he took over Labour, Corbyn was considered a fringe figure in the Labour party. Likewise, until recently, the Congressional Black Caucus was viewed as being on the leftist margins of the party. But as the forces of the far left have risen to positions of prominence in the party, the CBC has become a major player.

Ellison is not a fringe Democrat. He nearly won the election for DNC chair. His constituency is so large and committed that Perez made him Vice Chairman immediately after he was elected.

Collier’s damning report strengthens the growing sense that Britain’s Labour Party has already gone over the brink. Antisemitism is a central and undeniable rationale for its policies. As for the Democratic Party, it is still possible that the party’s rank-and-file will reject their leadership’s embrace of antisemitism through Farrakhan.

But with each passing day, it is becoming more difficult to imagine that happening.

Ben Shapiro: Not All Anti-Semitism Is Created Equal

That’s the rub, here, naturally. A good number of leftist Jews are leftists first and Jews second; their religious identity runs second to their political identity. And the Women’s March is a deeply leftist institution — its leadership routinely pushes abortion-on-demand, government-paid child care and so-called anti-discrimination laws that target religious institutions. Jews who find this sort of agenda primary are willing to let a little bit of anti-Semitism slide, much in the way that Jews who preferred President Donald Trump were willing to wink at Steve Bannon.

Even more disappointing is the willingness of leftist Jews to let Jewish ethnicity slide into the background in favor of the intersectional coalition building. Intersectionality suggests that we can determine the value of viewpoints by looking at the “interlocking” group identities of the person speaking — so, for example, a Black lesbian has different experiences and, to the left’s point, more valuable experiences than a white straight man. Jewish ethnic identity, therefore, should play some role in the intersectional coalition of the left, which is dedicated to the proposition that America is a brutal place to those of minority status.

But there’s one problem: In the intersectional hierarchy of identity politics, Jews rank relatively low. That’s because Jews are on average financially successful and educationally overachieving. And this means that Jews slandered by the likes of Louis Farrakhan or his Women’s March allies must take a back seat on the intersectional bus. Anti-Semitism matters less coming from minority victim groups than it does from others, apparently.

This has been the case for years. Last year, the self-titled Dyke March in Chicago banned rainbow flags with Jewish stars because they supposedly “made people feel unsafe” — pro-Palestinian groups were unhappy with the juxtaposition of gay rights and a flag that looked somewhat Israeli. The march was billed as an “anti-racist, anti-violent, volunteer-led, grass-roots mobilization and celebration of dyke, queer, bisexual, and transgender resilience.” Tolerance was not extended, however, to gay Jews flying their flag.

Anti-Semitism is unacceptable in any guise. During the last election cycle, I spoke out repeatedly about anti-Semitism in the alt-right, and blasted the Trump campaign for failing to properly disassociate from the alt-right. Trump, thankfully, has disassociated from the alt-right publicly. The fact that so much of the left is willing to embrace the Women’s March leadership rather than calling them to account is a true shandah.

Doulgas Murray: The High Price of Denial

Instead, newspapers like the New York Times have tended in recent years towards the same denialism as Angela Merkel about the problems which mass immigration from the developing world is causing in Europe. They have tended to praise the "courage" of suspending normal border controls while covering over or ignoring the terrible consequences of importing millions of people whose identities are unknown. And of course, like Mayor Hidalgo in Paris, they have tended to shoot the messengers more than report the news, dismissing any such stories as "fake news", "alt-right" or "far right" propaganda.

Just last year, when Donald Trump famously mentioned "what happened last night in Sweden", the mainstream media knew what he was referring to. They knew that he was loosely referencing a report that he had seen on Fox news the night before about the increasingly bad situation in that country. The media, however, chose not to address that problem. Instead they chose -- in the main -- to laugh at the President and ridicule the idea that there were any troubles in the Scandinavian paradise.

Back then the New York Times headlined that President Trump's comments were "baffling", while much of the rest of the media simply pretended that Sweden was a land of infinite peace and Ikea which had been sorely slandered by the President.

The surprise that within days of each other, both Chancellor Merkel and the New York Times have become willing to admit facts which they and their apologists have long pretended to be imaginary could be progress of a kind. It may not, however, be a cause for optimism. Rather than being a demonstration that things are getting better, that they are now admitting what is visible to the eyes of ordinary Europeans may be an admission that things have got so bad -- and are so well-known -- that even the Gray Lady and Mutti Merkel are no longer able to ignore them. If so, one thought must surely follow: imagine what might have been solved if the denials had never even begun?

EoZ Trump symposium part 4: Brian of London

Of the four speakers in my Jerusalem symposium "Donald Trump: Good for the Jews?" last Sunday, Brian of London was (once again) by far the most supportive of Donald Trump, as well as the most entertaining. Because of questions from the audience he took up far more time than everyone else.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

The conflict over drafting Haredim has given birth to a coalition crisis that may yet bring about new elections. A good account of the political twists and turns can be found here, if you really want to know the details. But what about the whole question of the IDF, the draft and its place in Israeli society?

The situation of the Haredim is a highly visible part of the problem. In 1947 Ben-Gurion made a deal with the Agudat Yisrael party, which represented the more observant elements of Orthodox Judaism in the pre-state yishuv, which established a “status quo” for matters of religion and state. In return, party leaders agreed not to oppose the declaration of the state.

The agreement was very general and Ben-Gurion promised that details would be worked out in the constitution for the state that was supposed to be written in the next few months. Needless to say, no constitution was written, and the uneasy status quo developed informally over the years. In 1948, during the War of Independence, Ben-Gurion agreed to exempt some 400 exceptional yeshiva students from the draft, as long as Torah study was their sole occupation (the torah umanuto arrangement). As time passed – and as the religious parties often held the balance of power in coalition governments – the arrangement expanded, until tens of thousands of Haredi young men were exempted (61,000 in 2010, the latest figure I could find).

The Supreme Court found the current situation unconstitutional in 1998, and the legislative and judicial wrangling has continued until today. Recent attempts to draft Haredim against their will gave rise to massive, sometimes violent, demonstrations. The latest proposed draft law, a compromise that is supposed to end the current crisis, has been described as saying“Haredim will enlist in the IDF, unless they don’t feel like enlisting in the IDF.”

One can understand why secular and national-religious people who are asked to give up three years of their lives plus the possibility of a month of reserve duty every year until they are 40, object to the free ride given to the Haredim, many of whom are by no stretch of the imagination “scholars.” For their part, the Haredim claim that the accommodations made by the army for their religious lifestyle are insufficient, and they view the draft as antisemitic persecution.

Some Haredi men are choosing to be drafted, but they are few and their communities treat them badly. The solution, however, can’t be to try to coerce them by threats of jail time, because they will find other ways to escape from service and will certainly contribute nothing until they do.

Over the years, geopolitical and technological changes have resulted in a reduction of the period of regular service, a lowering of the age at which one is released from reserve duty, and a reduction in the amount of reserve duty. When I served in the 1980s, I was called for six weeks every year with no exception; two weeks of training and four weeks of duty. Today, most men and virtually all women are not called in any given year and the number of days they serve when they are called is smaller.

Especially during periods of mass immigration, army service has served to integrate new arrivals into Israeli language and culture, exposing young soldiers to elements of the population that they might not otherwise meet, and serving as an object lesson in the costs of defending the nation. Universal service guarantees a degree of military literacy which makes it possible for Israelis to understand security-related issues, and vote more intelligently on them. Compare this to the US, where many citizens don’t even know anyone who serves in the nation’s professional army. And in opposition to criticism that calls Israel a “militaristic” nation, the first-hand knowledge of war that most Israelis have make it the opposite, a profoundly peace-loving nation.

But there are some downsides to universal conscription, and as time goes by they are becoming more serious. Not every draftee belongs in the military or can be of use to it, and the IDF has to spend a great deal of time and money finding something useful for them to do, warehousing them, or getting rid of them. One can only imagine the difficulties of integrating tens of thousands of unhappy Haredim who can’t eat the kosher food provided by the army and who can’t interact with women as in secular or even non-Haredi Orthodox society, assuming that it were possible to draft them.

Because the number of recruits is so large compared with the needs of the IDF, the length of regular service has been reduced to 32 months for men and two years for women. This means that resources have to be expended on training of new recruits for jobs that they will only be qualified to do for a few months.

Many observers have said that Israel would be better off with a fully volunteer, professional army. The money that would be saved by reduced training of new recruits could be spent on better equipment and good pay for soldiers who would do their jobs for long enough that their expensive training would be justified. It’s argued that modern warfare requires more highly trained specialists and fewer “grunts” who can be given a rifle and pointed in the general direction of the enemy.

One objection to this is that Israel can’t afford a large enough standing army to protect it in the event of an emergency. In the past, virtually the entire able-bodied male population could be called up to fight. But if conscripts were replaced with a professional army, then there would no longer be a pool of trained reservists who – as happened in 1973 – could join their units at a moment’s notice, ready to fight.

On the other hand, with the reduction in training of reservists in recent years, the mass emergency call-up may already be a thing of the past. And perhaps those who believe that in present-day conditions it will not be needed are right.

Moshe Feiglin, a right-wing religious politician who is nevertheless a strong libertarian, makes this suggestion:

The solution is simple: Israel must stop funding tens of thousands of soldiers who are not really needed and do nothing but make more work and expense for the system. Everybody should be drafted for a brief training period of one or two months. The IDF will choose the cream of the crop, who will remain in the army of their own free will for a long period of time. Those soldiers will get the best training and will receive excellent salaries.

The universal training period will at least produce some familiarity with military life, terminology and capabilities, even if it will not produce a supply of “grunts” to be called up in an emergency.

Any changes in this area would have to be made very slowly and thoughtfully. Today, army service is connected with almost every aspect of everyday life in Israel. Unlike the US, students usually defer their studies until they finish their service, and therefore take them more seriously. Employers hire people that they knew during their service, or who served in particular units. Young people often meet their future spouse during their time in the army. The first thing someone asks about a man who wants to work for them or marry their daughter is “what did he do in the army?” (No, they do not ask that about women – yet).

Paradoxically, some of the best things in Israeli life come from the years of compulsory servitude dictated by universal conscription. But the IDF is already moving in the direction of professionalization. The combination of increasing population size and the evolution in the nature of warfare make it unavoidable. Perhaps the revolt of the Haredim will speed up the process.

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03/15 Links Pt1: Murderers are needed, says Fatah, glorifying killer of 10; Dermer: Trump’s Jerusalem move is ‘shock therapy’ for Palestinians; Gaza - let their people go!

From Ian:

PMW: Murderers are needed, says Fatah, glorifying killer of 10

Murderer of 10 is "heroic prisoner" "We are proud of you... our people needs men like you"
In letter from prison, murderer called for "resistance" - A Palestinian euphemism for violence and terror

A branch of Abbas' Fatah Movement has announced that the Palestinian people needs murderers. In a post on Facebook glorifying murderer Thaer Hammad who killed 10 Israelis in 2002, Fatah in Bethlehem stated that the people "needs men like you":
"Heroic prisoner Thaer Hammad, we are proud of you. Allah willing you will soon be among us, our people needs men like you."
[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement - Bethlehem Branch, March 2, 2018]

Palestinian Media Watch exposed a video by Fatah, which visually presented murderer Hammad as a successful agent on a military mission. The video glorified the murder of the 10 Israelis as "one of the most famous operations."

Thaer Hammad is serving 11 life sentences for murdering 3 Israeli civilians and 7 soldiers by shooting them with a sniper rifle from a hilltop in Wadi Al-Haramiya between Ramallah and Nablus on March 3, 2002.

In a letter he sent from prison, murderer Hammad called for a return of the "resistance" - a Palestinian euphemism for violence and terror attacks against Israelis:

"Hammad demanded to resume and revive the spirit of the revolutionary movement, from which the Fatah Movement arose, and the idea of resistance, given that it is the ideal way to protect our cause and our existence in the shadow of the great challenges and dangers that surround us." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 7, 2018]

In another Fatah post, terrorist Hammad was praised as a "prince" and "the sniper from Wadi Al-Haramiya":

Dr. Martin Sherman: Gaza - let their people go!

The crisis in Gaza is not one that funding can solve.

The recent spate of reports warning of the looming humanitarian crisis in Gaza shows the magnitude of the failed attempt to give Palestinian Arabs self rule over a quarter of a century.

The US has given over 5 billion dollars to the Gazans in aid, making them one of the countries which receives the most foreign aid funding per capita in the world.

Three major US priorities of interest have not been met. They are:
1. Promoting the mitigation of terrorism towards Israel
2. Self government, stability and prosperity that might make Gazans more amenable to peace with Israel.
3. Meeting humanitarian needs.

None of these priorities have been achieved. The Gazans are governed by a corrupt and uncaring leadership.

The entire civilian infrastructure is on the verge of collapse,with perennial power outages, failing sanitation services, untreated sewage, polluted water, all due to a dysfunctional government - and all of this has nothing to do with Israel.

What is Gaza manufacturing? Missiles. What is it constructing? Terror tunnels.

Quo Vadis, Palestinians?

Palestinian Arabs are constantly urged by their leaders to engage in rage. Indeed, Abbas walked out of the UNSC meeting, not bothering to hear Ambassador Haley’s speech. As the clock ticks with time seemingly not on their side, changing political landscapes in the USA and Europe, frustration by traditional Arab allies nervously watching Iran and with UNRWA being reassessed and seen as part of the problem, Palestinians can only be dismayed as their lives seem to be going nowhere.

The less charitable might say they are going down. Unfortunately rage, greed, misappropriation of international aid and ongoing victimization are not policies, let alone providing a promising future for talented Palestinian Arabs dreaming of a prosperous and peaceful life.

While experts consider various solutions to the Palestinian Arab problem, ranging from a 2-state solution, land swaps, a single state, a Jordan solution, a Gaza- Sinai solution, population transfer with compensation, and other variants,- none of which have satisfied the PA - Chile is an example of what could be possible.

Chile reportedly has the largest Palestinian Arab community outside the Middle East, estimated at 500,000 in a total population of nearly 18 million dwarfing the Jewish community of 25,000. Palestinian Arabs therefore are a much higher proportion of Chile’s population than Jews anywhere in Europe. In France, there are also about 500,000 Jews, but in a population of almost 67 million.

In addition to the despairing educated PA millennials in Judea/Samaria, all but forgotten Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon and Syria have been impoverished and massacred. On the other hand, Palestinian Arabs in Chile continue to enjoy significant success, by any standards.

Palestinian Arabs arrived in Chile in the second half of the nineteenth century, mostly poor and illiterate, having embarked on ships from Haifa, Beirut and Alexandria. This occurred during Turkish Ottoman rule, long before Israel’s establishment in 1948.

One of the issues of the Israel-Palestinian conflict is the refugee problem resulting from those Arabs who left the land during the 1948 War - how many left due to the encouragement of promises from the Arab world, how many out of fear of the chaos of war and how many from other reasons is a question for another time.

Today there is a symbol used to represent this refugee problem: a key.

Art by a teenage Bethlehem artist, entitled Resolution 194,
a UN resolution. The keys symbolize those kept as mementos
by Palestinians who left their homes in 1948

It is a poignant symbol - but apparently, Arabs have been known to hold onto their keys before.

In 2005, Spain passed a law granting the right of citizenship to Sephardic Jews who were descendants of the Jews who in 1492 were given a choice of either converting or going into exile. Two years later, descendants of Muslims who had been expelled from Spain in the seventeenth century asked for the same treatment. Mansur Escudero, the head of Spain's Islamic Board, representing Spanish Muslims explained at the time:

"It would be more of an emotional, moral gesture, a recognition of an historic injustice," he told Reuters, adding that some "Andalusian" families still preserved keys to houses they left behind four centuries ago. [emphasis added, p. 143]

But as it turns out, Arabs are not the only ones to hold onto their keys to remember home.

Nor are they the first - not by a long shot.

While reading Simon Sebag Montefiore's Jerusalem - A Biography, I came across this last week about the Bar Kochba rebellion:

The Jews retreated to the caves of Judaea, which is why Simon [Bar Kochba]'s letters and their poignant belongings have been found there. These refugees and warriors carried keys to their abandoned houses, the consolation of those doomed never to return. [emphasis added]

In fact, it appears Jews who were forced out of Spain did the same thing.

According to The Routledge Book of Contemporary Jewish Cultures:

The exhibit on display at a small Jewish museum in Bejar [Spain], near Hervas, concludes with a wooden trunk full of keys. According to legend, when the Jews were expelled from their homes, they retained their keys in exile and across generations, occasionally returning to try them in their doors. A placard by the trunk explains that the keys "symbolize the memory of the homes which the Jews had to abandon...It may be that some of these keys had traveled with them to their new place of refuge. Even if this is not actually the case, this chest gives us a reason to imagine this."

While writing this post, I found that I am not the first to notice that holding onto keys goes back as far as the Bar Kochba rebellion. In an anonymous guest post on Israellycool, The Curious Case Of The Key, someone writes

I remembered reading a book by Yigal Yadin by the name of �Bar-Kokhba: The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Last Jewish Revolt Against Imperial Rome,� an interesting book about the discovery of the Cave of Letters and how the artifacts inside shed light on the revolt. One of the items found in the cave was this:

Source: Israel Museum.

Sebag Montefiore gives this book by Yigal Yadin as his source.

For Jews, keys have been no less a symbol of the desire to return home - in our case our indigenous, ancestral home where we have been living for over 3,000 years.

We have returned home.
And we are home to stay.

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Before 1948, anyone wanting to visit the Western Wall had to go through a slum-area neighborhood. It was a narrow area where the authorities didn't allow anyone to bring in chairs or tables or temporary partitions. Muslims were known to use the area as a shortcut and to lead animals through the narrow passageway.

Today, the Kotel haKatan - the "small wall" - looks a great deal like the more famous, bigger Kotel looked in the 1920s.

HaKotel HaKatan is north of the other Kotel, and it is positioned closer to the site of the Holy of Holies. It should be where people pray when they visit Jerusalem

Just like then, Jews aren't allowed to bring in tables or chairs. Just like then, if you blow a shofar at the smaller Kotel you can get arrested.

And when I visited on Friday, I saw that just like then, Muslims will use it as a shortcut to get where they were going. They looked curiously at me, since I was the only Jew at this site that is holier than the Kotel.

As I recall, the far wall of the area was not open the last time I was there. But now there is an opening to a set of narrow stairs that is apparently a path to another alley.

So Muslims are now routinely walking through this site, making it difficult to concentrate. Not exactly like herding cattle through the area but still disruptive.

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When Arabs say they care about Palestinians, they don't put their money where their mouths are

For decades, the narrative has dominated how Arabs talked to the West, especially Western diplomats, was that the Palestinians are the top priority in the Arab world. Every meeting between US diplomats and Arab leaders, as documented in Wikileaks, seem to have prioritized the importance of the Palestinian issue.

An article in Arab American News this week lists ten "core Arab values" and of course support for Palestinians is considered one of them.

Ever since the declaration of Israel in 1948, the Palestinian cause has been the core consideration of all Arabs. Different Arab states, groups, and people advocate for the basic rights of Palestinian people. After the turmoil of Arab Spring, Arab states, and people became overwhelmed with their own issues that the Palestinian case became marginalized. However, Trump’s announcement to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem to become the capital of Israel revived the issue and ignited anger across the Arab world for Palestinian people and Jerusalem, as an Arab holy city.

But as we have seen for many years, Arab countries - even rich Gulf states - have had a habit of pledging lots of money to Palestinians paying only a tiny percentage.

Their actions have never followed their words. And lately, as even this article shows, their words have become less supportive of Palestinians in recent years as well, and Jerusalem has not changed that at all (there were no major protests in the Arab world over the Trump Jerusalem decision, even though reporters looked hard.)

Yoram Ettinger in The Ettinger Report uncovers some additional interesting statistics. The percentage of Saudi foreign aid that goes to Palestinians is about one tenth of one percent, far behind many other states that receive Saudi aid.

Every Arab regime - and especially Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Jordan and Egypt– are not preoccupied with the Palestinian issue, but with the immediate and lethal threats of the Ayatollahs and Islamic terrorism, which could topple them and transform their countries into Iraqi, Syrian, Libyan, Yemeni look-alike traumatic arenas.

For example, from 1979-1989, during the civil war in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia demonstrated its order of national security priorities, investing $1BN annually in the struggle of the Afghan rebels against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul. This was ten times as much as the annual Saudi foreign aid to the PLO – $100MN.

Moreover, the Palestinian Authority was not among the top ten recipients of the $33BN foreign aid from Riyadh from 2007-2017: Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Niger, Mauritania, Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, Jordan and Tunisia.

While the total Saudi foreign aid from 1985-2015 was $130BN - according to the Dubai-based daily, Gulf News - Saudi annual foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority was $100MN-$200MN, reflecting the inferior weight of the Palestinian issue in the Saudi order of national priorities.

According to Reuters News Agency, Saudi Arabia assigned to Egypt a $23BN aid package, reflecting the joint Cairo-Riyadh front against a common enemy: Muslim Brotherhood terrorists. The Toronto-based Geopolitical Monitor reported that a $12BN package was extended to Egypt by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait, in addition to the $8BN Saudi investment in the Egyptian economy.

While the Palestinian Authority claims that Saudi Arabia has failed to fulfill its commitment to the its limited foreign aid package, Dubai-based Al Arabiya TV reported that Yemen supersedes the Palestinians in the eyes of Riyadh, which has provided the Aden-based regime of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi with $8.2BN aid in the battle against the Sanaa’-based Iran-supported Houthis.

The Palestinians have also taken a backseat to Jordan, when it comes to Saudi national priorities, as documented by the Saudi-Jordanian Coordination Council, which is unlocking billions of dollars to the Hashemite regime.

The relative marginalization of the Palestinians – who benefit from a $100MN-$200MN annual Saudi foreign aid package (whenever it is not suspended by Riyadh) – is gleaned through the CNBC December 18, 2017 report on the House of Saud purchasing a rare Leonardo da Vinci painting for $450MN, an exquisite palace in France for $300MN and a royal yacht for $500MN.

The Gulf states would insist on how important Palestinians were - but then let the West pay for most of the aid they receive.

One day, Europe will catch up with the Arab world and the current US administration and realize that they've been lied too for many years and many billions of euros.

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03/14 Links Pt2: The American Black-Jewish alliance---a fiction laid to rest; Culture Corbyn leads fosters the anti-Semitism he claims to condemn; Israel is 11th happiest nation in the world, for fifth year in a row

From Ian:

The American Black-Jewish alliance---a fiction laid to rest

Today there remains a tiny minority in the American Jewish community who continue the charade of promoting the “historic coalition” between Jews and blacks. These Jewish advocates for blacks call themselves Jewish and are funded by Jews, but their organizations are rarely Jewish or support Jewish interests.

And, perhaps, the death knell of black-Jewish relations has been the result of too many Jewish families whose members have been victims of black violence, including murder. If you do not believe this, just ask.

In America, Jews successfully live side-by-side with so many minority communities, where they share the same values of hard work, family and education. But this was never the reality with blacks and Jews.

Regrettably, the half century of Jews promoting American blacks will prove to have been just one more failing, in the long line of failures among American Jewish leaders.

Yet it is also a measure of what eternal optimists Jews are, to have maintained this fiction of a Jewish-black coalition for over 50 years.

Seeking utopia in our times, Jews have embraced delusions such as communism and socialism. And we learned that the only way to justify the indefensible failures of these utopias was to constantly lie and scream down opponents.

In the same way, it has been only delusions that have held together the “historic coalition” among American Jews and blacks.

Culture Corbyn leads fosters the anti-Semitism he claims to condemn

Indeed, of the three ‘admins’ who run the group, one – the group’s founder – is a conspiracy theorist who shares material from Holocaust Denial websites; a second identified himself as a ‘9/11 Truther’ and posted a Holocaust Denial article that dismissed the “fictional account” of six million Jews dying in the Holocaust, claiming instead that “somewhere between 100-150 thousand people perished in Auschwitz mainly as a result of disease and starvation”; while a third admin posted an article in the group titled “Israel Control of USA Government” that quoted approvingly from Mein Kampf.

This doesn’t mean that most of the members of this group are anti-Semitic, any more than most people who sympathise with the Palestinians are anti-Semitic. But what it does confirm is the long-held suspicion that some anti-Semites use anti-Israel activism as a socially-acceptable outlet for their anti-Jewish prejudice; and that this includes some of this country’s leading anti-Israel activists.

It also supports the findings of Britain’s largest-ever survey of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel attitudes, published last year by CST and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, which found that the more anti-Israel a person is, the more likely they are to also hold anti-Jewish attitudes.

And because the most active members of this Facebook group also tend to be the more anti-Semitic ones, their views set the tone for the group as a whole. Meanwhile, the other members of the group, including several Jewish anti-Zionists, rarely object to the anti-Semitism posted there. Instead, they just get on with using the group to organise their activities and encourage their comrades. This is how a political culture becomes anti-Semitic, even if most people in that world are not, themselves, anti-Semites.

Needless to say, many of the group’s members support Jeremy Corbyn and have joined the Labour Party since he became leader.

Corbyn has responded, as he always does, by saying he condemns anti-Semitism.

But until he understands that the political culture of which he is a leader fosters the very anti-Semitism he claims to condemn, this problem will only get worse.

Daily Freier: As a Lefty Jew, How Do I Feel About Farrakhan? Hey Look! A Squirrel! (satire)

As a Progressive Jew, Am I Okay with Farrakhan’s speeches where he says that Jews are “Satanic”? Can we change the subject? Because to be honest, I would rather talk about something that doesn’t challenge my worldview. How about right-wing antisemitism? Wouldn’t you rather talk about right-wing antisemitism? That’s much more interesting than Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory defending Farrakhan. Or Congressman Keith Ellison’s long relationship with him. Or President Obama’s meeting with him and having the photo suppressed for a dozen years.

What is that? you want to talk about the Left’s moral blindness to antisemitism in its midst and the Left’s failure to expel antisemites from their ranks? Because I really felt that Caddyshack 2 was a huge disappointment, didn’t you? Just really fell flat.

Wait, you still want to talk about how Linda Sarsour’s anti-Zionism meshes with her support of a man who called Judaism a “gutter religion”? Hey, did you see the season finale of The Bachelor? Wasn’t that a dramatic ending??? OMG!

OK, you still want to know why the Left gives itself a pass on Farrakhan, while it complains about people on the Right using the word “Globalist”? Because quite frankly I would rather get a tooth extracted than talk about this. Let’s talk about something else. How about the weather? Crazy, huh?

In a bombshell interview with Megyn Kelly, Putin, set to handily win reelection as Russia’s president on March 18, declared that no Russians meddled in the American presidential election. And even if Russians did meddle in the American presidential election, those Russians don’t represent the state.

"So what if they're Russians?" said Putin. “There are 146 million Russians. So what? I don't care. I couldn't care less. They do not represent the interests of the Russian state."

And here’s where it gets really interesting, because this is where Putin said the “J” word. "Maybe they're not even Russians," he said. "Maybe they're Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews, just with Russian citizenship. Even that needs to be checked. Maybe they have dual citizenship. Or maybe a green card. Maybe it was the Americans who paid them for this work. How do you know? I don't know."

Leaders of Jewish organizations went nuts over this statement with both the AJC and the ADL referencing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

President Putin suggesting that Russian Federation minorities, be they Ukrainian, Tatar, or Jewish, were behind U.S. election meddling is eerily reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He should clarify his comments at the earliest opportunity. https://t.co/NsG1qFSlWq
— AJC (@AJCGlobal) March 10, 2018

Our CEO & National Director @JGreenblattADL’s full statement on comments made by the Russian president that gives new life to classic anti-Semitic stereotypes: https://t.co/YTvmnCLmWR pic.twitter.com/00Egv5XfmZ
— ADL (@ADL_National) March 11, 2018

Zionist Union MK Ksenia Svetlova drew a connection to recent remarks by Poland’s president accusing Jews of perpetrating the Polish Holocaust.

We r quite familiar with the oldies “Maybe Jews run the world, maybe Jews use blood for their rituals, maybe Jews had slaughtered Jews in Poland” . Now comes the latest hit “maybe Jews meddled in US elections”. Our government has to condemn strongly this statement #putin #jews https://t.co/pz2JFc4hYi
— Ksenia Svetlova (@KseniaSvetlova) March 10, 2018

The National Coalition Supporting Eurasion Jewry (NCSEJ) said Putin’s remarks were troubling, and requested a clarification. “Russia’s history of anti-Semitism goes back centuries,” said the NCSEJ statement. “It is unfortunate that President Putin, who has gone out of his way to support the Russian Jewish community, resorted in this interview to promoting old and offensive stereotypes.”

But it isn’t the stereotyping that bothered me about Putin’s statement. It was the fact that, to him, Russian Jews aren’t Russians—they’re just Jews with Russian citizenship. The fact that Jews with Russian citizenship don’t, to him, count as actual Russians, suggests that he thinks that either A) Jews aren’t like other humans and therefore, just having Russian citizenship can’t make them Russians, or B) Jews aren’t human—they’re some kind of alien breed, neither animal nor human, so of course, if Jews aren’t human, they can’t be Russian.

There is, of course, another possibility: perhaps Putin believes that Jews, as the Chosen People, have only one nationality as inheritors of the Promised Land, in other words, they can be nationals only of Israel. In which case, we’re all totally off-base slamming him like this for his supposed antisemitism. Tsk. Turns out, Putin’s a Zionist, all along! He believes that Israel belongs to the Jews, that all Jews originate from and belong in Israel, and that Jews can have no true nationality other than Israeli!

Well, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I’m going to go with that third possibility. And now that we’ve stipulated that Putin is a Zionist, I know he'll be over the moon to know that those of us Jews who are finally where we’re supposed to be, i.e. Israel, and NOT RUSSIA, are gleefully breeding our merry little hearts out.

Here’s my latest contribution to the gene pool: the first son of my son, my 12th grandchild.

Varda with Baby Epstein (Not Russian)

My message to Putin: Despite my Russian Jewish ancestry, you’ll be glad to hear that my new grandson is most definitely NOT RUSSIAN.

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What Is This 'Elections' Of Which You Israelis Speak? by Mahmoud Abbas (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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: Credit: Kremlin.ru via Wikimedia Commons

Ramallah, March 14 - Much of the recent discussion of current affairs in Israeli media over the last week has centered on various squabbles among the parties in the prime minister's governing coalition, and the consensus has alternated between predictions of the government completing its 4.5-year term and early elections. To which I have but one response: What are these "elections" of which they speak?

The workings and politics of Israeli administrative concerns and the dynamics of the factions in power are of course an internal Israeli matter, and it would be inappropriate for me to weigh in on it. Nevertheless, the developing news story has raised a number of important issues with ramifications for the Palestinian people, and therefore deserves at least some of my attention. The first step involves clarifying this unknown term, which appears to play a role in Israeli politics and society,but with which my advisers and I are unfamiliar.

Once we understand what "elections" is or are, we can then proceed to determine why holding "early" elections is the subject of so much talk.

Not that the term has no translation in Arabic; we Palestinians have used it to mean the process by which a dictator imposes his will on the public while claiming a popular mandate. It is a phenomenon with a venerable history in Arab and Muslim lands, and as I understand, quite a few others. But I fail to see how that institution, which should ideally be invoked perhaps once in a leader's lifetime, has continuing relevance after it is first exploited.

Leave it to the Jews to deceive the world with their subversive use of language. No one else here in the region has ever used the term to mean anything other than a rubber stamp for authoritarianism, and here go the Zionists, usurping the very language of our traditional, repressive tyranny here in the Levant to mean something else, something that detached it from its traditional meaning and recasting it as something alien - all the while invoking "elections" as if they are practicing anything authentic. How typically Zionist.

We Palestinians often pay close attention to the Israeli political system, even if only to exploit its institutions via our proxies in the Knesset and the Third Sector. However, those folks have been of little help, as they have been unable to explain why a leader would allow any procedure that would remove him from power.

Once we get to the bottom of this, we can move on to an examination of this strange thing Israelis call "free expression."

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