U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s itinerary for his two-day visit in Israel may check all the diplomatic and political boxes, but frankly, it’s a bit boring.

But what might a more daring itinerary look like - one that challenged the arch-conservative American politician's long-held beliefs instead of reinforcing them, and one that introduced him to the Israel outside the Jerusalem bubble? Here are a few suggestions.

Visit the Caracal mixed gender IDF combat unit

Israel, of course, has never had the luxury of keeping women out of the army and has drafted both sexes since the state's establishment. As for combat, it has been integrating women into an increasing number of roles including units like the Caracal light infantry battalion that patrols the country’s border with Egypt.

Caracal was the first mixed-gender combat battalion in the Israeli army, begun as a pilot project 15 years ago, proven a success, and continuing to grow.


If, after his visit, Pence still doesn't believe women belong in combat, that’s OK.

Check out an Israeli health clinic

It would be educational for Pence to take a look at what a well-run universal health-care system looks like - the kind that he and his fellow conservative GOP members have been battling so hard to prevent. And if it isn’t too much for him to handle, it can be explained to the hardline pro-lifer that in Israel, abortions are not only legal, but largely paid for by the state as well.

True, married women of childbearing age are required to appear in front of an “abortion panel,” though permission for the procedure is granted for a vast majority of women - over 97 percent.

If Pence thinks that safe, affordable, easy access to abortion surely makes them are all too common - he should think again. Abortion rates in Israel have both dropped dramatically over the past quarter century and are significantly lower than in the United States...

Lay a wreath at Tel Aviv’s Pink Triangle

Yad Vashem is all well and good, but how about a ceremony at the Tel Aviv memorial to LGBT victims of Hitler, inaugurated in 2013? The memorial is in Gan Meir, a park in the heart of Tel Aviv, where the vice president could also notice the large, rainbow flag flying proudly from the roof of the local center for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, established and funded by the city's municipality.

Sit in on a session in sharia court

Pence might be interested in seeing that in Israel, of all places, sharia law is something practiced in a real court that does not condone any such practices. The Muslim religious courts date back to the Ottoman Empire, when they functioned as the official court of the state. Since the establishment of Israel, they have jurisdiction over marital matters for Muslims.

Last spring, for the first time in Israeli history, a woman, Hana Mansour-Khatib, was appointed as a sharia court judge (no woman has yet been named to an equivalent position in a Jewish religious court). President Rivlin has said Israel’s sharia courts represent “the recognition of the unparalleled importance of the vitality of communities, cultures and traditions to the fabric of the life in the modern state.”

Putting aside that this is an out-and-out lie, what is hilarious is his conclusion which puts all the antisemitic canards onto "Zionists."

We never differed with Judaism as a religion, and history shows that Arabs and Muslims in Andalusia  embraced the Jews who were persecuted in Europe and gave them protection. When the Muslims came out of Andalusia in 1492, the Jews came out with them and spread in North Africa. The Jews of the Levant, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya and Palestine, enjoyed full citizenship until the emergence of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century....

Zionism is a racist movement, believing that Jews are the "chosen people of God". In other words, it sees Jews as better than the rest of humanity. Not only did Zionism distinguish between Jews and "goyim" - non-Jews - but went beyond that to distinguish between Western Jews "Ashkenazim" and Eastern Jews.

Israel, described by President Trump as a "unique democratic state" and described by his predecessors in the United States and Europe as "the dawn of democracy in the Middle East," has two laws, one applied to its Arab citizens and the other to Jews. And in which institutions [Jews] are not allowed to work for non-Jews.

[The Zionists] controlled the entire world. It also controls international institutions and banks that have been able to mislead the world public opinion and exploit it for its benefit. Its power has reached the level of control of America's policy in the world and it convinced the US that it is the protector of American interests in the Middle East. In view of Israel's expansionist Zionist ambitions, it failed to bring peace and security to its people.

.... America has inherited the British and French role in controlling the Arab region. Through its influence and strength and strategic alliance with Israel it has worked to create an "Arab Zionist lobby" represented by Israeli security and trade alliances with Arab countries.  But it has not and will not be able to tame the Palestinian people struggling for their right to self-determination and the establishment of an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital. Will history record that the Palestinians have stood alone in the face of the Zionist threat whose ambitions transcend the historic borders of Palestine?

Hezbollah’s enormous rocket stores pose an unprecedented threat to Israel. Defense officials judge that in the first days of the next confrontation with Hezbollah, 3,000 to 4,000 rockets will be fired into Israel, some of them highly precise and with high payloads.
If the threat is realized, there be hundreds or thousands of casualties and significant damage to infrastructure: airports, seaports, power stations, desalination plants, transportation hubs and the like. Hezbollah’s missiles are capable of hitting not only has enough rockets to hit not only the Kirya military center in Tel Aviv but also the upscale neighborhoods around it. The military response to the threat is only partial, and it cannot prevent most of the damage.

The solution to the growing dangers has long been on our doorstep, but our leaders will not even consider it. On December 13 the president of Iran, the state behind the ballistic threat to Israel, signed a document stating “we support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the borders of 4 June 1967 borders, with Al-Quds Ash-Sharif as its capital. We support peace based on a two-state solution. The borders of Jerusalem will be determined in negotiations. ... we support, as a strategic choice, the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, which was adopted in 2005 by an extraordinary Islamic summit conference.”

President Hassan Rohani signed this document at a session of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul. Apart from one analysis by Akiva Eldar on the Al-Monitor website, there was no reference in the Israeli media to this change in Iran’s position. Iran had never before expressed support for the Arab Peace Initiative. This pivot is a game-changer, and also a reflection of slogans heard in the recent wave of demonstrations in Iran, calling on the state’s leaders to spend less on Hezbollah, Syria and the Gaza Strip and more on domestic needs.

Again, in the absence of the stick wielded by Hezbollah it wouldn’t be so terrible for Israel to ignore the new Iranian carrot, but the existence of this stick makes ignoring the Arab Peace Initiative irresponsible.

Iran has expressed reservations about certain articles of the documents adopted at a recent emergency summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Jerusalem al-Quds, which suggest, somehow, the recognition of the occupying Israeli regime.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi reiterated the Islamic Republic’s support for the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.”

However, he said, Tehran’s backing for the two documents adopted at the Istanbul summit “does not at all amount to the recognition of the occupying and fake regime of Israel by the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Qassemi added that Iran’s reservations about its non-recognition of the Israeli entity was announced during the Istanbul forum, and officially submitted to the secretariat of the summit in a written form.

The main umbrella group of British Jews accused their local branch of Amnesty International of  targeting the community following the abrupt cancellation of a joint event.

The accusation by the Jewish Leadership Council — a charity founded 15 years ago comprising 32 groups with different politics, including the Board of Governors of British Jews, the Jewish World Relief aid organization and several synagogues – came Monday following the cancellation of an event concerning Israel and the United Nations.

Amnesty had undertaken to host the event on Jan. 24 but withdrew the invite Friday, explaining: “are currently campaigning for all governments around the world to ban the import of goods produced in the illegal Israeli settlements. We do not, therefore, think it appropriate for Amnesty International to host an event by those actively supporting such settlements.”

The panel session that Amnesty canceled is entitled “The UNHRC and Israel: How it works, what’s not working, and how it might be repaired.” It was to be chaired by Danny Friedman, a renowned Human Rights lawyer, with speakers including Fred Carver of the UN Association and Hillel Neuer of UN Watch.

Amnesty allowed a speaking event to take place in London in May 2011, organized by the magazine Middle East Monitor Online (MEMO) and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Much controversy surrounded this event since one of the speakers included Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper. In the past, Atwan has said that "he would 'dance with delight' in Trafalgar Square if Iran attacked Israel, and that the terrorist attack on the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, in which eight students were killed, "was justified" as it was responsible for "hatching Israeli extremists and fundamentalists." Amnesty responded by saying that "while we did have concerns about the way the event had originally been organized, these have been resolved."

The implications of unmasking Abbas are clear beyond any doubt. PLO never abandoned its goal of eradicating the Jewish state and rejects Jewish national independence within any borders. Israel and the international community have wasted 25 years and billions of dollars on a “peace process” with a corrupt and genocidal PLO leadership that refuses to let go of its fantasy of destroying Israel.

Since PLO, Hamas and UNWRA are obstacles to genuine peace between Arabs and Jews, they must be dismantled and replaced with a new Arab leadership committed to the welfare of its citizens and peace with Israel. PLO’s leadership are the pupils of Nazi, Communist and Islamist ideologies that are incompatible with genuine peace.

Time has come for Israel and the US to tell PLO that the game is up. With or without Abbas, PLO is a dead man walking and is in no position to demand anything from anyone. Only a mad megalomaniac despot living in fantasyland, issues threats to powerful nations like the US and Israel.

Just like peace in post-1945 Europe required the denazification of Germany, future Middle Eastern peace requires a denazification of the Arab world in general and the PLO-held territories in particular.

Humiliating defeat is never pleasant, especially for aggressors who got intoxicated with hubris and victories. Post-1945 Germany and Japan can attest to it. However, in the end, accepting defeat was the best thing that could have happened to the Germans and the Japanese. Their genocidal despotic regimes were replaced with genuine democracy and progress.

President Trump could become the Middle East’s nuclear Truth Bomb. Unlike the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, the truth bombs in the Middle East do not kill anyone, but force the Muslim Arab world finally to come to terms with reality and the permanency of the reborn Jewish state and its rebuilt ancestral capital Jerusalem.

A song on official Palestinian Authority radio encouraged Palestinians to "redeem" Jerusalem "with your life and blood":
"O Palestinian, Jerusalem is your name, your land, your heartbeat, and your mother. Redeem it with your life and blood, O [you] who raises my head in pride... O pained Palestinian, your head is lifted high with pride, the entire world hears your voice, only your resolve strengthens me... We are united, Muslims and Christians. So that Palestine will live, we must remain united."[Official PA radio station The Voice of Palestine, Jan. 1, 2018]

This song joins the similar messages Palestinian Media Watch has documented have come from PA and Fatah officials calling for "rage" and promoting violence since US President Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Dec. 6, 2017.

The same ideal - to die as a "Martyr" for Jerusalem - was expressed by students belonging to Fatah's Shabiba Student Movement at Birzeit University. At an event, several participants wore mock bomb belts - imitating suicide terrorists - while masked in keffiyehs (Arab headdresses) and wearing yellow Fatah headbands. The participants in white held a Quran in one hand and held up one finger with the other signifying Allah. Other masked participants wore military uniforms and held Fatah flags with the Fatah logo that includes a grenade, crossed rifles, and the PA map of "Palestine" that presents all of Israel as "Palestine" together with the PA areas.

US Vice President Mike Pence was met with one standing ovation after another in the Knesset, during his speech rife with Biblical references and expressions of support for Israel and the Jewish people.

Under US President Donald Trump, Pence said, US-Israel ties are stronger than ever.

“We stand with Israel, because we believe in right over wrong, in good over evil, and in liberty over tyranny...The people of the US have always held a special affection and admiration for the People of the Book. In the story of the Jews, we’ve always seen the story of America. It is the story of Exodus, a journey from persecution to freedom, a story that shows the power of faith and the promise of hope,” he stated.

Pence, the first US Vice President to address the Knesset’s plenary, spoke to a packed room.

A devout Evangelical Christian, Pence paraphrased Psalms: “The USA is proud to stand with Israel and her people, as allies and cherished friends. And so we will pray for the peace of Jerusalem, that those who love you be secure, that there be peace within your walls and security in your citadels. And we will work and strive for that brighter future, so everyone who calls this ancient land home shall sit under their vine and fig tree, and none shall make them afraid.”

Pence urged the Palestinians, who are boycotting his visit to the region, to come to the negotiating table.

“We recognize that peace will require compromise, but you can be confident in this: The USA will never compromise on the safety and security of the State of Israel,” he stated.

“The US remains committed to peace,” Pence stated, saying that the US will support a two-state solution if both sides want it. That comment was met by a standing ovation from the opposition, while the coalition noticeably stayed in their seats.

In a landmark address to the Knesset on Monday, US Vice President Mike Pence pledged the US would relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by the “end of next year,” called on the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table for peace talks, and vowed Washington would withdraw from the “disaster” Iran nuclear deal unless it was “fixed.”

The US vice president’s address earned numerous standing ovations from Knesset members across the political spectrum, and saw Arab lawmakers ejected from the plenary after launching a protest over Washington’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on December 6.

In his remarks, Pence emphatically stressed that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.

“Just last month, President Donald Trump made history. He righted a 70 year wrong, he kept his promise to the American people,” in announcing the recognition of Israel’s capital, said Pence, who is the first American vice president to address Israel’s parliament.

“The US Embassy will open [in Jerusalem] before the end of next year,” said Pence.

US Vice President Mike Pence pointedly referred to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on Monday as he met the country’s leader, further vexing Palestinians who have already snubbed his visit over an American policy shift toward the holy city.

President Donald Trump last month acknowledged Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and said he would move the US embassy there — dismaying Palestinians who claim the eastern part of the city and angering Arab states across the region.

Pence, who was part-way through an official visit to the Middle East, said in Egypt on Saturday and again in Jordan on Sunday that Washington would support a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians if they both agreed to it.

On Monday he said he was honored to be “in Israel’s capital, Jerusalem” at the start of talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Echoing that sentiment, Netanyahu told the vice president, “This is the first time that I stand here where both leaders can say those three words: ‘Israel’s capital Jerusalem.'”

Pence said Trump’s declaration, which most of America’s main allies beyond the Middle East have also criticized, provided new opportunities for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warmly welcomed the arrival in Israel on Sunday of US Vice President Mike Pence.

“This evening a great friend of the State of Israel will arrive in Israel, a true friend, US Vice President Mike Pence,” Netanyahu told the weekly meeting of the Israeli cabinet.

“We will welcome him, I am very much looking forward to our discussions,” Netanyahu said. “We will discuss the efforts of the Trump administration to block Iran’s aggression and the Iranian nuclear program, and of course, advancing security and peace in the region.”

“Whoever truly aspires to realize these goals knows that there is no substitute for US leadership,” the prime minister said, in a barb aimed at Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who this week stated his rejection of any US role in the peace process, while contemplating withdrawing Palestinian recognition of Israel at the same time.

Pence and his wife Karen landed at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv on Sunday night, following a 36-hour visit to both Jordan and Egypt. Among the dignitaries greeting the couple were Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, and the US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.

Israel has welcomed many American statesmen throughout the years, but U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is not here on a mere state visit. He is making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem as a devout Christian. He is here representing a vast community of Zionist Evangelical Christians who believe in the Biblical prophecies heralding the return of the Jewish people to Zion.

The Evangelical movement has launched nothing less than a revolution: For the first time in hundreds of years, Evangelicals are rejecting the central tenet of Catholic Christianity. This tenet, known as Replacement Theory, argues that when the Jews refused to accept Jesus as their savior, God abandoned us, his chosen people, and chose the church in our stead. Evangelicals, however, reject this notion and read the Bible more literally – the Israelites in the Bible remain the Israelites today, and if the prophecies predict the Israelites' return to Zion, then the Evangelists will help them come to pass.

They often repeat the words of the Prophet Isaiah who, 2500 years ago, declared: "For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her triumph go forth as brightness, and her salvation as a torch that burneth" (Isaiah 62:1). They treat this verse as a divine command to enshrine Jerusalem. It was this belief that fueled the Evangelical push for American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state and the relocation of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They believe that the moment Donald Trump made his campaign promise to relocate the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, divine intervention guided the election in his favor.

Israel's Arab MKs and Muslim countries are riling against Pence and for good reason. They understand the political implications of the Evangelical theology on the future of Israel and particularly on Jerusalem.

Lawmakers from the Joint (Arab) List faction were thrown out of the Knesset plenum by parliamentary ushers after brandishing signs reading “Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine,” as US Vice President Mike Pence began his address on Monday.

The phrase on the signs was written in both English and Arabic, but the Arabic line said “East Jerusalem.”

The remaining MKs in the plenum applauded loudly in an effort to drown out the shouts from the party’s 13 lawmakers in a scene that lasted less than a minute but saw angry pushing and shoving.

As the ushers finished clearing the MKs from the plenum, Pence continued his speech, saying he was “humbled to speak before such a vibrant democracy.”

Moments later, Joint List chairman Ayman Odeh tweeted that he was “Proud to lead the Joint List in strong, legitimate protest, against the Trump-Netanyahu regime’s exaltation of racism and hatred, who speak of peace solely as lip service,”

It’s packed house @KnessetIL - but 13 Arab MK seats empty after they loudly disrupted Pence at start of his speech, ending in little scrimmage with Knesset ushers. pic.twitter.com/aRaaewuRgK

— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) January 22, 2018

As US Vice President Mike Pence is visiting Israel, PA and Fatah leaders are showing their anger with the American decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital by boycotting Pence's visit and refusing to meet with him.

Palestinians demonstrating in the streets are burning and stepping on posters with Pence's photo. Text on the posters in English:

"Pence you are desecrating our land Pence go home"

Last week, another Fatah post showing an image of Trump and the White House warned the US:
"Trump's house will be destroyed" [Official Fatah Facebook page, Jan. 14, 2018]

The text repeats PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' statement in his speech on Jan. 14, 2018, to the PLO Central Council, in which he cursed US President Donald Trump and said: "May your house be destroyed." Palestinian Media Watch reported on this insult and other anti-American statements made by Abbas, his advisor, and many other PA and Fatah officials:

"Let them [the US] not do us a favor by paying us money... We do not want anyone to pay us. And may [Trump] not tweet at me on Twitter, saying: 'We will not pay money to the Palestinians because they are refusing negotiations.' May your house be destroyed! When did we refuse?"[Official PA TV, Abbas in speech to PLO Central Council, Jan. 14, 2018]

Fatah's Spokesman and Fatah Revolutionary Council member Osama Al-Qawasmi said "on behalf of Fatah and the Palestinian people" that Pence's visit "is unwanted in the region," and urged "all of the Arab brothers not to welcome [Pence]."Al-Qawasmi further stated that "Pence has made racist and extremist statements against the Palestinian people."[Ma'an, independent Palestinian news agency, Jan. 20, 2018]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent visit to India is symbolic of Israel's growing ties with more countries, further integration into the global political and economic communities, and emergent economic clout and prosperity.

Meanwhile, in Ramallah, PA President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, rejected the reported proposal for the Jerusalem Arab suburb of Abu Dis as the capital of a Palestinian state, threatened to withdraw Palestinian recognition of Israel and to charge Israel for war crimes at the International Criminal Court, and revived efforts to push for international recognition of a Palestinian state.

His remarks sounded like a desperate and pathetic attempt to breathe new life into tired, shopworn words of a bygone period when the world actually listened. It's questionable whether even Palestinians bothered to listen. His cause and that of the Palestinian people is slowly slipping away.

One need only look at the apathetic response in the Arab world to the U.S. action. They are losing interest in a Palestinian leadership that seems stuck in a time warp and has failed to construct sustainable institutions for a state.

The Palestinians need a major overhaul in their leadership, and then a new approach to negotiations. In elections for a new PA leadership, all candidates should be required to subscribe to the Quartet's principles: recognition of the State of Israel, acceptance of all previous agreements, and renunciation of violence. Hamas would not be eligible to participate unless it formally accepted the same principles.

A new Palestinian leadership should commit itself to building genuine institutions of democracy and to raising the economic well-being of the Palestinian people, regardless of the progress of negotiations with Israel.

French President Emanuel Macron sent his deputy national security adviser Aurélien Lechevallier for a secret visit in Ramallah earlier this week to convey reassuring messages to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, French and Palestinian officials told me.

Their main message was that the Palestinians must give a chance to the Trump peace plan, which could be unveiled in the coming months.

Lechevallier met in Ramallah with the head of the Palestinian general intelligence service Majed Faraj, PLO secretary general Saeb Erekat and several other senior officials. According to French and Palestinian officials, Lechevallier emphasized that President Macron expects the Palestinian leadership to stay committed to non-violence and to the two state solution. But the main message, they said, had to do with the Trump peace plan.

According to the officials, Lechevallier told his Palestinian counterparts, "You might be right and the plan might turn out to be bad but don't blow it up right now. The plan might have things you don't like but maybe it will also contain interesting and positive things for you. It will be a shame if you throw the plan to the trash even before you received it. Read it first and then decide if you want to say no".

The bigger picture

Lechevallier's visit to Ramallah was part of a broader move by the French which started on December 22nd when Abbas visited the Elysee palace to see Macron — two weeks after Trump's Jerusalem announcement. French officials said Macron found Abbas frustrated and angry over Trump's announcement and over his upcoming peace plan.

According to French officials, Abbas told Macron in the December 22nd meeting that the leaders of the Arab world are totally consumed in their own domestic crisis and are not interested anymore in the Palestinian issue or in Jerusalem. Abbas added that for this reason Israel can do whatever it wants and create facts on the ground.

"I don’t want violence but it is hard for me to control the situation inside Fatah (Abbas's party) and the PLO", Abbas told Macron.

The French President tried to calm Abbas down, promised him to give him international support but demanded he avoid radical moves.

The Palestinian Authority claims these rewards for violence are a form of welfare to support the downtrodden left without breadwinners. But a welfare system exists and has a budget of $220 million for 120,000 families, which is 40 percent less than the “pay to slay” budget, for 300 percent more people. The average family of an imprisoned terrorist receives more than five times the benefits of the average welfare recipient.

It is well known and extensively documented that Palestinian Authority and Fatah officials incite violence through state-run media and state supported clerics, and glorify terrorists through the naming of roads, schools and community centers in their “blessed” memory.

Now under pressure from the Trump administration to stop the “pay to slay” program, the Palestinian Authority says it won’t be bought by America. But the Palestinian population certainly could use America’s aid; per capita annual income is only $3,200, according to USAID, and unemployment rates are high. The best way the United States can support the Palestinian people is to require the Palestinian Authority, as a condition of receiving aid, to behave like a government that understands employment programs should not incentivize their citizens to become terrorists.

President Trump’s instincts are right, and he is right to feel suckered. U.S. aid to the Palestinians hasn’t gotten us much — and certainly not appreciation or respect. In fact, today it seems clear that foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority is part of the problem and a significant reason why peace is elusive.

President Trump should encourage the Senate to pass the Taylor Force Act, which reduces U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority because of its payments to terrorists. And he should make the shuttering of the Palestinian Authority prisoners and martyrs programs a condition for convening any peace talks.

In Ramallah, Fatah spokesman Osama Qawassmeh echoed the Hamas position verbatim (although he also used harsher language): "Pence is unwelcome. Fatah and the Palestinian people reject Pence's visit and we call on our Arab brothers to boycott him." The Fatah official, who is closely associated with Abbas, went on to accuse Pence of being a "racist" and "extremist."

Such examples, which showcase how hard it has become to distinguish between Fatah and Hamas, can easily be multiplied. Abbas himself is also beginning to sound like a Hamas leader. His recent speech, in which he described Israel as a "colonial project that has nothing to do with Jews," sounds as if it were taken directly from the mouth of Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar.

Make no mistake about it, however; neither Fatah nor Abbas woke up one morning and decided to change its position towards Israel and the US.

For those who have been following the rhetoric and actions of Abbas and his Fatah faction, the extremist anti-Israel and anti-US views and remarks do not come as a surprise. The glorification of terrorists and the denial of Jewish rights and history have always been a main pillar of the ideology of Abbas and Fatah. Abbas and Fatah have worked hard over the past two decades to create the false impression that they differ from Hamas. It now appears that the jig is up: their true colors are showing for all to see.

Indeed, Trump's announcement helped to expose the true sentiments of Abbas and Fatah. It is all out in the open -- Fatah and Hamas belong to the same school of thought: both advocate violence; both propagate the same hostility towards Israel and the US, and both seek the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews -- as many as possible.

Ramallah, January 22 – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas completed thirteen years of his four-year term as president two weeks ago, and will pay residents of the Palestinian Authority to attend a public celebration in honor of the achievement, as an expression of popular support.

Elected January 9, 2005, Abbas began his fourteenth year in office with his political relevance, commitment to a negotiated peace with Israel, and his ability to deliver on any commitments more questionable than ever. An aide told reporters that the president, who also chairs the Fatah and Palestine Liberation Organization terrorist groups, took his cue from the Women’s March in Washington, DC and elsewhere marking the inauguration of Donald Trump as president last year.

“The point is actually the contrast,” explained Nabil Aburedeineh. “Whereas Trump faces a popular backlash over his womanizing, dishonesty, crudeness, prejudice, and much else, Abu Mazen faces no such accusations from his constituents. That alone should be cause for celebration, considering how miserable our people have continued to be since he took office. We intend to celebrate the vibrant Palestinian democracy by hiring people to come to a rally in honor or our eternal president’s inauguration of Year Fourteen in power.”

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has issued another veiled, public call for violence and terrorism against Israelis.

Abbas called on Palestinians to continue “peaceful popular resistance,” in a speech at a recent Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Central Council meeting, the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center reports.

The problem is that the PA does not actually advocate for “quiet protest” through “peaceful means,” as Abbas claims. But Abbas knew that the world would be watching his remarks at the latest PLO meeting, and decided to put up a more moderate face when describing Palestinian “resistance.”

In reality, Abbas and the PA systematically promote violence and attacks against Israelis. The Palestinian leadership often uses the code word “popular resistance” in reference to individual terror initiatives — which has emerged as the norm in Palestinian terrorism recently.

During his January 14 address, Abbas also seemed to threaten US President Donald Trump, saying: “May your house be destroyed.”

While U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visits the Middle East in an effort to promote a new American peace initiative between the Arab states and Israel, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is on his way to a meeting with European foreign ministers in Brussels. Although Abbas' arrival to the capital of the European Union was scheduled before the dates of Pence's visit were announced, there is great symbolism in his finding "refuge" from the American administration in the lap of the European Union.

Instead of making bold moves and dealing with reality, Abbas has adopted the policy of his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, a man to known to have avoided making decisions by flying off to destinations that supported his unyielding positions. By doing so, Abbas is escaping to his comfort zone and working to ensure the continuation of the conflict with Israel under the auspices and encouragement of the EU.

The EU's silence in light of the unprecedently aggressive rhetoric Abbas directed at Trump earlier this month serves as conclusive proof that the EU is uninterested in finding a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. This was not the first time that Abbas – a certified Holocaust denier – has used sick conspiracy theories to distort Jewish history and Zionism. This man, who during his tenure acted to increase anti-Semitic and anti-Israel incitement among his people, cannot be a partner to any type of peace process.

Abbas made the remarks at a press conference at the European Union headquarters in Brussels, standing alongside EU foreign policy chief Frederica Mogherini.

“We call on these states to recognize the State of Palestine,” Abbas said, referring to EU member counties.

“Recognition will not be an obstacle on the road to peace, but rather it will encourage the Palestinian people to preserve hope that peace is coming,” he said, adding, “It will encourage people to continue to hold onto the culture of peace that was disseminated among the Palestinain people over the years.”

Israel has said that recognition of “the State of Palestine” will harden the Palestinians’ negotiating position and make it more difficult to reach a final peace deal.

More than 130 countries have recognized “the State of Palestine,” but the vast majority of EU member states have not made such a move.

The European Union assured President Mahmoud Abbas it supported his ambition to have east Jerusalem as capital of a Palestinian state, in the bloc's latest rejection of US President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

At a meeting in Brussels with EU foreign ministers, Abbas repeated his call for east Jerusalem as capital as he urged EU governments to recognize a state of Palestine immediately, arguing that this would not disrupt negotiations with Israel on a peace settlement for the region.

While Abbas made no reference to Trump's move on Jerusalem or US Vice President Mike Pence's visit to the city on Monday, his presence at the EU headquarters in Brussels was seized on by European officials as a chance to restate opposition to Trump's Dec. 6 decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

Mogherini, in what appeared to be a veiled reference to Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel, called on those involved in the process to speak and act "wisely", with a sense of responsibility.

"I want to reassure President Abbas of the firm commitment of the European Union to the two-state solution with Jerusalem as the shared capital of the two states", Mogherini said.

Before Abbas' arrival, she was more outspoken, saying: "Clearly there is a problem with Jerusalem. That is a very diplomatic euphemism", in reference to Trump's position.

The city council of a suburb of Paris said it would recognize what it called “the state of Palestine.”

The office of Gennevilliers Mayor Patrice Leclerc, a Communist Party of France politician, announced on Friday the move, which is symbolic and has no bearing on French foreign policy, French newspaper Le Figaro reported.

The so-called recognition will be made in an executive order to be signed Monday at city hall in the northern suburb of Gennevilliers, the statement said.

At least three other municipalities in the Paris region, Stains, Bondy, Vitry-sur-Seine, are preparing to take similar steps, the statement also said. Those municipalities have honored Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian terrorist and member of the PLO who is serving multiple life sentences in Israel for the murder of Israeli victims of terrorist attacks he helped plan.

“France by the actions of its former foreign minister Laurent Fabius spoke out at the end of 2016 about the possibility of recognizing Palestine in case the peace process hits a dead end. But nothing was done,” Leclerc wrote in the statement. “President Emmanuel Macron refuses to have France follow through but if thousands of localities in France issue this official order this taking up of positions by municipalities will lead to recognition.”

Slovenia is planning to recognize Palestine as an independent state next month, and three other European countries — Luxembourg, Ireland and Belgium — are thinking of following suit, Channel 10 news reported Sunday.

France, meanwhile, is working behind the scenes to upgrade the Palestinian Authority’s status at the European Union, the report said.

The moves follow US President Donald Trump’s December recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and plan to move the US Embassy to the city from Tel Aviv.

Trump said his declaration reflected reality on the ground, and was not intended to prejudge any future arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians regarding the disputed city, though he later said it had taken Jerusalem off the table. Welcomed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and leaders across most of the Israeli political spectrum, the move caused an uproar throughout the Muslim world and was panned by the United Nations, the European Union, and many European countries.


Last month, Slovenian Parliament Speaker Milan Brglez told Palestinian Ambassador Salah Abdel-Shafi that Slovenia’s recognition of a Palestinian state was “not in doubt,” but just a question of timing.

Britain will continue to support the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) as well as “Palestinian refugees” across the Middle East, the country’s Minister of State for the Middle East and North Africa, Alistair Burt, stated on Sunday night.

Burt said in a statement quoted by Haaretz that his country also intends to provide "around £50 million ($69.5 million) in 2017/18" in order to aid Palestinian refugees.

His statement came following the United States’ decision from last week to significantly cut the aid it transfers to UNRWA.

"My officials are working closely with the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and other European Union partners on how best to ensure continuity of essential services to Palestinian refugees at this time," Burt stated, according to Haaretz.

He said that Britain was "concerned at the impact on UNRWA's activities whenever unexpected reductions or delays in predicted donor disbursements occur."

"The UK remains firmly committed to supporting UNRWA and Palestinian refugees across the Middle East," stated Burt.

His statement came in response to a query by MP Dan Carden, a shadow minister for international development in the British government.

Amos Yadlin was the Labor party’s candidate for defense minister in Israel’s 2015 elections, served as deputy commander of the Israeli air force and later as the head of IDF intelligence, and in 1981 flew one of the planes that bombed Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear reactor. In conversation with Zev Chafets, he discusses some of the threats and challenges confronting the Jewish state. On the possibility of war with Hizballah, Yadlin comments:

[Israel must] prepare not for a third war in Lebanon but for the first “northern war,” one that will be fought not only against Hizballah but against Syria and Iranians in Syria, all along the northern front. . . . Israel has a better air force [and] better intelligence [than its enemies], and it has learned the lessons of previous wars and implemented them. This time, for example, it will not differentiate between Hizballah and Lebanon. And if Bashar al-Assad joins the fighting, he could well lose everything he has gained, with Russian help, over the past two years. . . .

[Nonetheless], we will pay a higher price than we did during the Lebanon war of 2006, especially on the home front. Israel has developed a very effective defensive shield built on several layers and dimensions, including the world’s best missile-defense system. We have intelligence capabilities that will allow us to destroy some long-range rockets on their launch pads. We can also mitigate damage [at home] with an early-warning system that will give civilians a couple of minutes to reach shelter. But there will be substantial damage.

Israelis are resilient. But they are also critical. There is an asymmetrical balance of expectations on both sides. They want the IDF to protect them 100-percent, to win the war in six days, and to force the other side to raise a white flag of surrender. This will never happen. If we measure the score of the next war like a basketball game, Israel will win 99 to 19. Hizballah will declare a divinely inspired victory. Israelis will complain and nominate a committee to investigate the failure.

Palestinian expert on international law Dr. Anis Fawzi Qasim said that it would be naive to call upon Arab Jews to return to their home countries. "The Jews in Israel are better off than the Jews in the Arab world," he said, asking: "what exactly [would they be] returning to?"Dr. Qasim, who resides in Jordan, was a member of the advisory committee to the Palestinian-Jordanian delegation to the 1991 Madrid Conference. His remarks aired on Al-Quds TV on November 3, 2017

Israeli and Egyptian security forces engaged in a “massive” gun battle with drug-runners during a large-scale smuggling attempt over the Sinai border fence late Sunday night, which apparently resulted in the death of one suspect, a Border Police official said Monday.

Officers seized dozens of kilograms of marijuana and hashish — the plant’s processed resin — in the raid, in the northern Negev desert, the police said.

The Border Police’s southern intelligence unit had received information about the planned smuggling attempt, and officers were waiting to ambush the culprits when they arrived, a Border Police spokesperson said.

According to a police statement, late Sunday night, some 30 smugglers in the Sinai Peninsula climbed the Egyptian side of the border fence with ladders and began throwing bundles of drugs over to their Israeli counterparts, who loaded the bags into their cars.

Spokesman for Gaza Refugees Hassan Jibril Following Cut of U.S. Funding for UNRWA: American and Israeli Interests in the Region Will Be Affected by This pic.twitter.com/KY2yauaus4

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) January 22, 2018

Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar confirmed over the weekend that the Gaza Strip-based terrorist group was seeking to bolster its ties with Iran and its Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah.

Al-Zahar's remarks, made in an interview with Palestinian satellite TV channel Al-Quds, seemed to substantiate an assessment by Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who said Friday that Hamas is investing considerable resources into establishing terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon, in order to threaten Israel.

"Our relations with Iran and Hezbollah have returned to their natural path and we intend to develop these relations," Al-Zahar's said. "We will expand our ties with Iran and Hezbollah," he added.

Iran has expressed support for Hamas' efforts to establish terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stating that arming Hamas in the area was "necessary for confronting the Zionist regime."

Khamenei noted that as Iran "helps the Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon, it provides assistance to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Sunni groups in Palestine and will continue this assistance."

Gaza’s entire private sector was due Monday to mount the biggest strike in years to protest a worsening economic crisis that is forcing many businesses into bankruptcy.

The strike was planned to last until 2 p.m.

A flurry of recent reports have warned that the enclave is on the verge of collapse, its 1.8 million inhabitants plagued by frequent electricity blackouts, undrinkable water and an outdated cellular network.

Although the Palestinian Authority has been controlling the Kerem Shalom Crossing — the main entryway for humanitarian aid and commercial goods into the strip — since earlier this month as part of a deal reached with Gaza’s rulers, the terror organization Hamas, consumer buying power is in constant decline, Hadashot News reported Monday.

“I’m 80 years old and I’ve never seen days like this,” a woman told the TV station.

The Philippines said Monday it would deport an Iraqi man described as a scientist for Hamas and accused of helping the Palestinian group lob missiles at Israel.

Iraq tipped off the Philippines about the presence of Taja Mohammad Al Jabori, who was arrested on Sunday, national police chief Ronald Dela Rosa told reporters.

However, the arrest was due to visa problems rather than any evidence of terror activity, the police chief emphasized.

“He’s an illegal alien, his visa is expired so he has to be deported right away,” Dela Rosa said.

“He admitted being a member of Hamas. He’s a chemist and he has been responsible for improving the rocket technology of Hamas in firing their missiles from their area towards the other side, [towards] Israel.”

The suspect will be deported to Iraq.

The police chief said it was the first time Philippine authorities had dealt with an alleged member of Hamas, a group labeled a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel.

The Islamist movement does not recognize Israel, with which it has fought three wars in recent years, and has vied with the rival Fatah movement for control of Palestinian territory.

Taliban militants who killed at least 22 people at a luxury Kabul hotel went from room to room searching for foreigners, survivors said Monday as more details of the victims emerged.

Insurgents armed with Kalashnikovs and suicide vests attacked the landmark Intercontinental Hotel overlooking the Afghan capital late Saturday in an assault that lasted more than 12 hours and prompted questions over how the attackers breached security.

Guests hid behind pillars and in rooms as gunmen sprayed bullets and set fire to parts of the six-story building. Some people climbed over balconies, using bed sheets in a desperate attempt to escape.

“They were saying kill the foreigners,” a 20-year-old hotel employee who gave his name as Hasibullah told AFP from his hospital bed.

He described hiding in a fifth-floor room and listening as the gunmen went from room to room, forcing doors open “with daggers” and killing those inside.

One other witness claimed he had seen the militants beheading guests.

Turkey shelled targets in northern Syria on Monday and said it would swiftly crush the US-backed Kurdish YPG fighters who control the Afrin region, amid growing international concern over its three-day-old military operation.

Turkish forces and their Syrian rebel allies began their push to clear YPG fighters from the northwestern enclave on Saturday, opening a new front in Syria’s civil war despite calls for restraint from United States.

France has called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Monday to discuss the fighting in Afrin and other parts of Syria.

The YPG’s Afrin spokesman, Birusk Hasaka, said there were clashes between Kurdish and Turkey-backed forces on the third day of the operation. He said Turkish shelling had hit civilian areas in Afrin’s northeast.

Ankara considers the YPG a terrorist organization tied to Kurdish militant separatists in Turkey and has been infuriated by US support for the fighters. Washington, which has backed the YPG in the battle against Islamic State in Syria, said on Sunday it was concerned about the situation.

Turkish anger at US support for the YPG is one of a number of issues that have brought relations between the United States and its biggest Muslim ally within NATO to the breaking point in recent months.

Syrian activists and rescue teams said Monday that the Syrian government has launched an attack with suspected poisonous gas that has affected nearly 20 civilians in a rebel-held suburb near the capital Damascus.

The team of first responders known as White Helmets, or Syrian Civil Defense, said the attack hit a neighborhood in the Douma district early on Monday.

It said the rescuers evacuated more than 20 civilians, most of them women and children, from the area, which they said was hit with a suspected chlorine attack. The Ghouta Media Center, an activist-operated media outlet, also claimed the attack involved chlorine gas.

Activists said a foul smell followed a series of bombings that hit the Douma neighborhood.

Dear brothers and sisters, for a long time now blessed Palestine, with its capital Jerusalem and its murabitoun people [people who man fortresses for Islam]  has been exposed to enormous challenges and targeted by racists. Tribulations and catastrophes have come upon this people, which has been assailed by the forces of evil for more than a century, ever since the days of the Balfour Declaration, but its banner has remained fluttering up high, and the morale of its sons and daughters has remained high, (they) struggle and believe in the promised victory, and despite the blood and the suffering, not a single child among us will surrender, and not a single old man will surrender, generation after generation.

You witnessed with your own eye that Palestinian flower, that giant, Ahed Tamimi, ever since she was 6 years old, and now she is 16 years old, as she attacked an Israeli soldier and hit him, and she was not afraid although (the soldier) was armed. She is now in prison, and the State of Israel has punished her through detention and a racist and arbitrary/unfair trial.

According to an Israeli television news report on January 9, 2018,[1] the Israeli prime minister’s National Security Council recently cautioned the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee that the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) will likely open a formal investigation against Israeli officials and officers in response to Palestinian complaints regarding Israel’s 2014 “Protective Edge” operation in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s building of settlements in the West Bank areas of Judea and Samaria.

According to this report, “The opening of an investigation has serious implications for Israel. It will be directed against people and could involve warrants for investigations and arrests.”

Conclusions
In light of the lack of any valid legal basis to the Palestinian claim to statehood, and in light of the fact that Palestinians’ status, and that the status of the territories are under ongoing dispute and negotiation, there can be no legal or logical foundation to accept “Palestine” as party to the ICC statute. Thus, there is no basis for extending the court’s jurisdiction over the territories under dispute, pending resolution of the dispute and the determination, by agreement, of their final and permanent status.

Lacking any legal foundation, the Palestinian complaints – regarding both the “Protective Edge” operation and Israeli settlements – must, therefore, be rejected by the ICC.

The ICC statute renders inadmissible any case that has been duly investigated[11] and, as necessary, prosecuted by the legal authorities of the state concerned.[12] The appropriate legal and law enforcement authorities in Israel maintain the highest international standards, in fitting with the norms and requirements set out in the ICC Statute.

In March 1979, shortly after the mullahs grabbed power and dragged Iran into theocratic dictatorship, destructive wars and terrorism, Iranian women took to the streets to protest the forced hijab. “Freedom is not eastern, not western, it is universal,” they chanted.

Almost 40 years later, the Iranian people are still fighting the same tyrants. In the struggle for freedom, you would expect an institution like the European Union, defined by the universal character of liberty and democracy, to stand in solidarity with the oppressed against their oppressors.

So far Europe has sent the opposite message. “We are not going to sustain political and economic relations with a country engaged in the brutal oppression of peaceful protesters,” are the words Federica Mogherini, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, never uttered. Instead, she remained silent for six days.

When she finally broke her silence, Mogherini’s message was tainted by moral myopia. “We expect all concerned to refrain from violence,” she said, after Iranian security forces had already killed at least 22 people and incarcerated more than 3,000. The EU statement echoed earlier ambiguous messages from the British, German, French and Swedish governments.

The EU’s cowardly reaction contrasts with the strong response from the United States. Lawmakers from the left and right of the political spectrum – everyone from President Donald Trump and Marco Rubio to Bernie Sanders and Bob Menendez – responded to the call for freedom in Iran.

When Adam Ringer was forcibly removed from Poland simply because he was Jewish, he didn't think he'd ever be able to return to his homeland.

It was back in 1968 that Mr Ringer, 19 at the time, was made to renounce his Polish citizenship and kicked out of the country, during one of communism's darker episodes.

Just 23 years after the Holocaust, Poland's surviving Jewish population was targeted by an anti-Semitic purge officially sanctioned by the country's then communist authorities.

Branded an "anti-Zionist" campaign, Polish Jews were stripped of their jobs and deported, because of the government's - and the wider Soviet Bloc's - growing hostility towards Israel at the time.

An estimated 14,000 Poles of Jewish faith or ancestry were forced to leave the country, after each being given a document that stated that its holder was stateless and had no right to ever return to Poland.

Looking back, Mr Ringer says: "Many of my colleagues were arrested... my father was expelled from his job. We were all in shock and feared for the worst." (h/t Zvi)

The only European leader who starkly defied the protesting chorus to applaud Donald Trump’s recognition of Israel’s capital was the President of the Czech Republic, Miloš Zeman.

By so doing, Zeman was renewing a peculiar tradition of his office that started with the founding president Thomas Masaryk, a philosophy professor who first became a public figure in Austro-Hungarian days by powerfully defending Leopold Hilsner, a Jewish tramp tried and convicted of the ritual murder of a girl in 1899. To the fury of the Catholic prelates who had incited mobs against Hilsner, the imperial authorities intervened from Vienna to stop Hilsner’s execution. A long campaign ensued till Hilsner’s liberation, and, in the process, Masaryk won over many Czechs to his view that anti-semitism was a pernicious pack of lies at a time when it was almost Catholic doctrine ( Viennas’s mayor Karl Lueger kept been re-elected till his death in 1910 on an explicitly anti-semitic platform, strongly backed by the Church).

Upon independence, Thomas Masaryk became President of Czechoslovakia, and it was in that capacity that he warmly welcomed the first Zionist Congress convened after the Balfour Declaration, at Karlovy Vary in 1921—two more would follow in 1923 and 1933, under Chaim Weizmann’s leadership.

With that, Masaryk established a more than life-long friendship with Chaim Weizmann and with Zionism; in 1948, when Masaryk was dead and Weizmann was president of the newly declared State of Israel, his son Jan Masaryk personally signed as Foreign Minister the order to sell weapons to Israel.

A central aim of this campaign is to convince the UN Secretary-General to blacklist the Israel Defense Force (IDF) by including it in the “Annex” to his annual report on grave violators of children’s rights – alongside terror groups such as ISIS, Boko Haram, and Al-Qaeda. UNICEF, the UN agency trusted with defending children’s rights, also plays a key role in legitmizing this process through its leadership of a “working group” on Israel made up of terror affiliated and/or radical political advocacy NGOs. As documented in NGO Monitor’s report, the NGO members of this group feed unverifiable and factually inaccurate data and reports into a database that is used by UNICEF in crafting its own reports. In this way, UNICEF promotes the NGO campaign, whose claims are then echoed in other UN documents and ultimately in the UN Secretary-General’s annual report on Children and Armed Conflict. NGO members of UNICEF’s Working Group include DCI-P, B’Tselem, Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), and World Vision.

Further, although Palestinian armed groups routinely use children as combatants, there is little evidence that UNICEF devotes resources toward exposing or ending this practice. In fact, a UNICEF Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) bulletin admits that “In Gaza, the Working Group was not in a position to document cases of child recruitment and use of children in armed conflict owing to a number of factors, including security and protection risks related to collecting comprehensive and detailed information”. The NGOs’ and UNICEF’s failure to monitor and report on Palestinian minors involved in violent attacks negates this form of child abuse – namely, incitement, recruitment, and weaponization. This critical dimension of the conflict goes unmentioned by the EU in its statement.

In 2012-2017, the EU provided $27 million to “UNICEF-State of Palestine.” It would appear that, in return, the EU has adopted the same failures of UNICEF and its NGO partners, undermining its commitment to children’s rights in the region.

The UN Human Rights Council’s annual report for 2017 presents a full list of resolutions passed by the Council throughout the year. The disproportionate number of resolutions against Israel reflects the nearly 100 NGOs that are receiving millions of dollars from governments around the world to push anti-Israel agendas at the UN. Unsurprisingly, these NGOs state that the UNHRC and Agenda Item 7 are a “vital platform” and “essential if justice is to be obtained.”

In one of the pathos-filled, flowery articles published last week by former Breaking the Silence CEO Yuli Novak in Haaretz, she explained her transformation from "just" another privileged Ashkenazi Jewish woman to a dissident – a persecuted opponent of a "tyrannical regime" and an object of threats and abuse. This is the price of resistance, she explained, writing she would rather face the trials and tribulations of resisting than endorse government policies.

Breaking the Silence is a left-wing organization that aims to expose alleged human rights violations by the Israeli military. Novak's opinion piece sought to use semantics to lend her and her group the glorious air reserved for those who, faced with testing times, chose to look evil straight in the face instead of remaining silent. She invited her conscientious readers, wherever the may be, to join her.

She could have hesitated before besmirching the term "dissent," an affront that in and of itself should stir feelings of disgust in anyone who has ever read a history book. It was important, however, for Novak to emphasize the high price of "dissidence." But when you think of it, what has Breaking the Silence actually achieved so far?

At first glance, it seems the group has accomplished very much. Since its establishment in 2004, and even more so under Novak's direction, Breaking the Silence has become one of the leading peace movements in Israel. It has garnered unprecedented support in cultural, intellectual and academic circles. It may not have won any official awards, but academic conferences like the one held in May 2016 at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev honoring "breakers of silence throughout the ages" are held in the group's honor. Senior academics line up to read high-profile testimonies compiled by the group at its events. There is even a movie in the making based on its activities.

A woman who appeared in a recent L’Oreal UK ad campaign for hair care products has stepped down after she received criticism for a series of anti-Israel tweets in 2014.

Writing on Twitter on Monday, Amena Khan, a social-media activist, wrote that she regrets the tweets she posted and will be leaving the campaign because of the backlash.

“I deeply regret the content of the tweets I made in 2014, and sincerely apologize for the upset and hurt that they have caused,” she wrote. “Championing diversity is one of my passions, I don’t discriminate against anyone. I have chosen to delete them as they do not represent the message of harmony that I stand for.”

Khan said she has chosen to step down from the L’Oreal campaign “because the current conversations surrounding it detract from the positive and inclusive sentiment that it set out to deliver.”

In response to a request for comment, L’Oreal told The Jerusalem Post that it had “recently been made aware” of Khan’s tweets. “We appreciate that Amena has since apologized for the content of these tweets and the offense they have caused,” said a representative for the company. “L’Oreal Paris is committed to tolerance and respect toward all people. We agree with her decision to step down from the campaign.”

Yep, you heard it right: the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement does not bother me. Yes, I’m a proud Zionist, and yes I love Israel, and yes I’m concerned by anti-Israel sentiment, but I do not mind having the BDS movement around.

The truth is, the only thing BDS has been successful at is creating a brand for itself. Sure, it did manage to convince a few second-rate artists and angry has-been rock stars from gracing the shores of Israel with their washed-up presence but in return for this, it has inadvertently turned any apolitical artist who does choose to perform in Israel into a high-profile friend of its cause. Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Radiohead – y’know, the real rock stars of the world – even if they don’t want to get involved, still support Israel by simply showing up.

On top of it all, the willingness and graciousness of these musicians to reward their loyal Israeli fans with rocking concerts only further emphasizes the spiteful nature of the BDS movement and the has-been musicians who buy into its kooky ways. While Radiohead are focusing on bringing their music to the people, Brian Eno, Devendra Banhart and Vanessa Paradis are picking sides in a political conflict they, let’s face it, probably know nothing about and canceling concerts because of it – which is kind of sad since these obscure artists could use all the exposure they can get, right? Cultural boycotts are just one example of how BDS exposes the world to what the anti-Israel sentiment is all about. It’s not about helping the Palestinians, it’s about hurting Israel and weakening it to nothing. Even if it means bringing harm to its own people and economy, the BDS movement is hell-bent on the obliteration of Israel and each time it rolls out one of its desperate schemes, the more the world sees BDS for what it truly is.

Even the extreme haters like Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky are beginning to distance themselves from BDS because of how the organization’s extreme and reckless measures are exposing them for the radicals they really are.

Consider what it says. Among the examples which form part of the IHRA Definition
are the following:

Claiming there is a world Jewish conspiracy;
Denying the Holocaust;
Calling Israel a racist state;
Comparing actions of Jews to those of the Nazis.

So Professor Black – According to LSE, it is not antisemitic to say there is a world Jewish conspiracy ‘unless there is additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent’; not antisemitic to deny the Holocaust ‘unless there is additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent’; not antisemitic to call Israel a racist state ‘unless there is additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent’; not antisemitic to compare the actions of Jews to Nazis ‘unless there is additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent’.

This is absurdly circular. It says that an action is antisemitic only if it’s antisemitic. And precisely how are you going to determine ‘if there is antisemitic intent‘? By a vote of all the faculty?

But it’s worse than that. It’s a kick in the teeth to the Jewish community.

I don’t care how many “Jewish staff and students at LSE” you have consulted, Professor Black. Imagine if LSE said that calling a person of colour a ‘ni**er’ is only racist if there is racist intent! Or that ripping the headscarf off the head of a Muslim woman is only Islamophobic if there is Islamophobic intent!

“We would never do that!” I hear you say, Professor Black

So why are Jews any different?

I’m no biblical scholar, but if I was asked to name great Jewish prophets off the top of my head, Moses, Abraham and Jonah would likely get a mention. Gideon Levy, the Israeli commentator, would not.

Nevertheless, on Levy’s visit to New Zealand in December, the unctuous RNZ interviewer Wallace Chapman observed with awe that Noam Chomsky had called Levy a “Jewish prophet”. That, Levy replied, was an exaggerated description, noting however that Chomsky is an “intellectual giant”. On searching for the source for this Chomsky quote, all I found was Levy’s own pronouncement that Chomsky had anointed him as such.

Levy spent much time in his self-aggrandising interviews – including one on each of TVNZ1 and RNZ, as well as in Australia – explaining how he holds a mirror up to Israeli society and tells Israelis the truth that they are blind to and brainwashed about. Blind and brainwashed, I guess, because Israelis are not interested in politics, Jews are not ones for self-reflection and enquiry, and the Palestinian issue garners scant attention in the media, at the UN, and on campuses. He heroically takes on this role – despite the vitriol he attracts and near-death experiences on his regular West Bank visits – because he cares about his people, and is a patriot. A patriot, mind you, who wants to dismantle his homeland, the one Jewish state in the world.

Levy, as with most one-staters, obfuscates this, cloaking his desire for the demise of Jewish self-determination in the language of human rights. He has written that Zionism “contradicts human rights, and thus is indeed an ultranationalist, colonialist and perhaps even racist movement, as proponents of justice worldwide maintain”. His solution is a state where Jews and Palestinians have equal rights. Who could not want that, he asks?

Amnesty International UK on Monday cancelled an event that had been planned for their London offices this Wednesday, because the featured speaker, Hillel Neuer of UN Watch, has written an article praising companies doing business with Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria, the Middle East Monitor reported.

The event, organized by the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC), had been set for Wednesday evening at Amnesty International UK, 25 New Inn Yard, and was titled “The UN Human Rights Council and Israel – How it works, what’s not working, and how it might be repaired.” It was scheduled to feature a debate between Hillel Neuer of UN Watch, and Fred Carver of the UN Association. The debate was going to be chaired by British human rights lawyer Danny Friedman QC.
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However, MEM reported, after concerns were raised both externally and within the organization, Amnesty UK has pulled the plug, saying it has “improved the way we review the hosting of events at Amnesty.”

“We are currently campaigning for all governments around the world to ban the import of goods produced in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories,” said Kerry Moscogiuri, Amnesty International UK’s Director of Supporter Campaigning and Communications, “We do not think it’s appropriate for Amnesty to host an event by an organization that actively supports Israel’s settlements.”

Section heads at Israel’s secret intelligence organization shared congratulatory handshakes and plaudits today after ascertaining that a multi-year effort to get Americans to ingest laundry soap has begun to yield the desired results.

As numerous Americans, principally in the crucial teen demographic, document themselves eating Tide detergent pods, officials at the Mossad allowed gratified smiles to reach their faces, knowing that the stage has now been set for long-term mind-control of the emerging US electorate.

“I can’t believe we’ve finally done it,” breathed Deputy Director of Operations Avqat Kvisa. “This has been decades in the making. Decades. When I started here in 1988 we were just putting the finishing touches on the program before launch, and to see it come to fruition like this, just as we planned. I am intensely proud of this organization today.”

Deputy Director Kvisa spoke of a multifaceted effort on four continents that involved manipulation of manufacturing, marketing, design, and distribution of detergent pods at several Procter and Gamble facilities and subcontractors, an operation that he claimed rivaled the sophistication of the Stuxnet virus that disabled large numbers of Iranian centrifuges and slowed down that country’s nuclear weapons program. “But the complexity of the production and placement was only half the battle,” he recalled. “We had to make sure to get exactly the right demographic to start eating Tide pods at exactly the right time, and to do so without being noticed. Kudos to everyone here and in the field. Just kudos.”

When baseless accusations are left unanswered, the risk is that they’ll become accepted as “conventional wisdom.” This is precisely what makes rhetoric the instrument of choice among Israel’s detractors.

In his latest Kingston Whig-Standard commentary published on January 20, Louis Delvoie reverts to historical revisionism when claiming that “The agony of the Palestinians began in 1948 with the proclamation of the state of Israel.”

In fact, it was in 1948, that the Arab world refused to agree to the existence of a Jewish state living side-by-side with what would have been a newly-formed Arab state. The War of Independence in 1948 saw combined armies of Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon invade the nascent state of Israel to annihilate it. The stated goal of this genocidal war was to rid the Arab world of the region’s, and the world’s, only Jewish state. Their intentions were declared by Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League at the time: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”

While Israel successfully fought off five united Arab armies, one of two fates awaited the Jews whose cities and towns were captured by the Arabs: massacre or forced expulsion. It must be noted that this Arab-instigated war created a dual refugee problem with over 800,000 Jews being forcibly expelled from their homes in Arab and Muslim countries (they were successfully resettled in Israel and other countries, whereas the Arab world forced approximately 800,000 Palestinians to live in squalor in refugee camps, not granting them citizenship, equal rights, etc.).

True to form and consistent with recent CBC journalistic infractions, CBC News.ca continued its disturbing trend of not labelling Palestinians as attackers in its headline coverage.

An article published today on the CBC News website carried the following misleading headline: “Palestinian man killed, another another arrested as Israel hunts for rabbi’s killer”.

As we’ve noted previously, readers view headlines 3:1 over the adjacent article. What this headline failed to mention is that the Palestinian man who was killed was a suspected terrorist, Israel claims, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tried to capture/arrest the suspect who was wanted for the murder of a Rabbi recently. The terrorist opened fire on arresting soldiers who returned fire killing the terrorist.

HRC Executive Director Mike Fegelman filed a complaint with CBC News asking that the headline be amended. We contend that the following headline would have been appropriate: “Palestinian assailant suspected of killing Israeli Rabbi killed, another arrested.”

Once again making no effort to challenge Barghouti’s “ethnic cleansing” lie or his misrepresentation of the number of people registered as refugees, Sharp closed the interview there.

In the next edition of the programme, listeners heard an edited version of that interview (from 01:22 here) in which – once again – Barghouti’s falsehoods were amplified without any challenge whatsoever.

Barghouti: “This decision by the Trump administration is another irresponsible, reckless and harmful decision which is…which represents in our opinion an act of collective punishment against millions of Palestinian refugees who have been victims of occupation and the policy of Israeli ethnic cleansing that displaced them from their country in 1948 and they are also still subjected to the policy of apartheid and racial discrimination by Israeli occupation. It’s an act of collective punishment against people who will now suffer deprivation, who will lose education, who will lose healthcare. And we don’t understand why the United States continue to be complicit in Israeli policies.”

Moreover, Barghouti was brought back for yet another interview on the same topic in a later edition of the programme which will be discussed in part two of this post.

In part one of this post we saw how Mustafa Barghouti was given an unchallenged platform on two editions of the BBC World Service programme ‘Newsday‘ from which to promote anti-Israel propaganda and falsehoods while supposedly discussing the US administration’s withholding of donations to UNRWA.

In a later edition of that same programme – presented by Lawrence Pollard and Shaimaa Khalil – listeners heard from Dr Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank before Mustafa Barghouti was brought in (from 05:02 here) for yet another interview.

Pollard: “Well let’s speak now to Mustafa Barghouti who is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council which was the parliament of the occupied territories. Welcome back to the programme, sir. Very briefly, what will the effect of this move be?”

Barghouti: “Well this is another irresponsible, reckless and harmful decision of President Trump. It represents an act of collective punishment against the victims of Israeli ethnic cleansing that took place in 1948. It’s a collective punishment against millions of Palestinian refugees and it will affect their humanitarian needs. This means that hundreds of thousands of children will not be able to go to school. This means that hundreds of thousands of people will not be able to receive healthcare. It means that hundreds of thousands of elderly people and disabled will be deprived from humanitarian support and it is a political act. It is clearly a political act from the side of the president of the United States…”

Pollard: “Sure.”

Barghouti: “…who is complicit in Israeli policies to liquidate the rights of Palestinian refugees to come home to the place they were displaced from which is an international United Nations resolution.”

The resolution to which Barghouti refers is of course UNGA resolution 194 which is non-binding but Pollard failed to clarify that fact to listeners just as he avoided informing them that there is no factual basis to Barghouti’s egregious claims of “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians by Israel.

Hawkins made no effort to help listeners understand what part UNRWA’s unique policy of automatically awarding hereditary refugee status plays in causing the number of Palestinian refugees to rise, why refugee camps still exist in areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas or why Palestinians with Jordanian citizenship are still classified as refugees.

Hawkins: “Just very quickly because we’re running out of time, Chris – apologies for that – but there’s also been a few questions raised about UNRWA’s…about the money that UNRWA provides – a lot of it going to political activity and what some may think is a questionable use of funds.”

Gunness: “Well we are one of the most audited of UN organisations on the planet. We maintain the highest standards of neutrality. The aid pipeline which we have is…it guarantees…I don’t understand where you say…I don’t understand where these accusations are coming from. Our funds are used for the purposes they’re intended for and that is a matter of public record and it’s something which we achieve to the satisfaction of all our major donors.”

The interview ended there, with no further questioning of Gunness’ (frequently touted) claims of “neutrality” despite his own well-documented activities and the agency’s record of political advocacy.

Once again, BBC audiences heard nothing of the UNRWA employees who were elected to the Hamas political bureau, of the Hamas tunnels dug underneath UNRWA schools or of the antisemitic incitement posted on social media by UNRWA employees.

After Gunness answered that UNRWA is “going after other donors”, Khalil asked him “how will this shortfall affect your operations?” to which (despite having claimed in the previous interview that “what is at stake [is] nothing less than the security and stability of the Middle East”) he replied:

Gunness: “Well let us be clear. The commissioner-general said in his statement that we intend to robustly defend our mandate and we are determined that services will not be impacted. And that remains our position. It is premature to talk about cuts. We will do everything I can…we can a) to go after additional funds and b) to protect the mandate and make sure that the dignity of these people living in such fragile and vulnerable circumstances can continue to be protected with the services that we deliver.”

As we see, not only was Gunness not asked any in-depth questions about UNRWA’s record and agenda that would help BBC audiences understand this story better but his inaccurate and misleading claim concerning hereditary refugee status and his politically motivated allegations concerning Israeli counter-terrorism measures were not challenged at all.

Moreover, not only was the same interview rebroadcast in a later edition of the same programme (from 00:35 here) but the BBC World Service also chose to promote a slightly edited version of it on social media.

An undercover television report that showed members of a Polish neo-Nazi group celebrating Adolf Hitler’s birthday and burning a swastika has prompted a criminal investigation.

Poland’s prime minister also denounced fascism in response to the report broadcast by Polish news channel TVN24 on Saturday.

The report featured members of a group called Pride and Modernity wearing Nazi uniforms, performing the Nazi salute in front of a flaming swastika and singing while presenting a cake with a swastika on it. It said the same group was behind a November protest where pictures of centrist European Parliament lawmakers from Poland were hung on mock gallows.

Poland’s prosecutor general opened an investigation Sunday for suspected “public propagation of fascism,” a crime punishable by up to two years in prison.

The representative body of Jews in France has called on the government to take “all necessary measures” to deter further antisemitic attacks, following a spate of hate crimes targeting Jews this month.

“In recent days, several serious incidents have occurred in the Paris region,” a statement issued this week by France’s leading Jewish communal organization CRIF said. The organization said these incidents were “evidence that a worrying and dangerous climate is settling over our country, creating a real concern for the Jewish community.”

The antisemitic incidents listed by CRIF as part of its “Zero Tolerance” call included the vandalism and subsequent arson of two stores selling kosher products in a mall in the suburb of Créteil and an anonymous threatening letter sent to a synagogue in the suburb of Saint-Maur.

Decorated with Nazi swastikas, the letter to the synagogue warned, “dirty jew bastards, Hitler will win,” and “you will burn.”

Undeterred by the threat, the Saint-Maur community announced on Sunday that a planned Bar Mitzvah party would be going ahead, with security provided and paid for by the family hosting the celebration. Michel Dluto, a representative of the synagogue, told local newspaper Le Parisien that security arrangements at the majority of communal events were now being funded by the community itself. “It’s been over a year since we had troops standing guard outside the synagogue,” Dluto said.

A public broadcaster in France is being criticized for airing a Belgian comedienne’s joke about the Holocaust.

France 2 aired the joke by Laura Laune, 31, on Friday in its 8 p.m. news journal. A winner of the 2017 season of the French version of “America’s Got Talent,” she was seen saying on stage: “What do sneakers and Jews have in common? They’re more common in 39 than in 45.”

World War II, during which six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust in Europe, began in 1939 and ended in 1945. The European shoe sizes of 39 and 45 translate to 8.5 and 11 in US sizes, respectively.

The flattering profile reportage on Laune noted her “boldness” and her popularity in the stand-up comedy scene in France.

Gilles-William Goldnadel, a well-known lawyer in France and a former member of the executive board of the CRIF umbrella of French Jewish communities, called the joke “horrific” on Twitter and accused France 2 and French media in general of pursuing a double standard on black humor that permits its application to Jews but not women.

Notorious Holocaust denier Mark Weber has reportedly been stranded in Madrid after being refused permission to board a flight to London where he had hoped to take a further flight to Los Angeles, where he runs the so-called Institute for Historical Review.

It emerged that Theresa May had personally made Mr Weber “the subject of an exclusion decision…on Unacceptable Behaviour grounds” when she was Home Secretary, according to a letter drafted—but not sent—in 2015 by the Home Office, which added that Ms May “personally directed that you should be excluded from the United Kingdom on the grounds that your presence here is not conductive to the public good.” The Home Office said that it did not send the letter to Mr Weber at the time because it did not know his address.

Ms May’s decision was taken on 28th April 2015, just over a week after Mail on Sunday investigation exposed a secret meeting of the far-right London Forum at which Mr Weber spoke, telling delegates: “As long as the power of the Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish distortion of history…no task is more important or pressing than to identify, counter and break this power.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism applauds Ms May for her decision to exclude Mr Weber from our country.

A Sunday Times exposé has revealed that a meeting of the Seven Sisters branch of the Labour Party in London failed to react in any way when one of its activists claimed that “The only reason there are prostitutes in this ward is because of the Jews.”

According to the Labour Party member who made the allegation: “No one said a word. No action was taken. Everyone, including him, just carried on with the discussion, and it was one of countless examples, including things like open hate material being shared on the Tottenham Labour Facebook forum. A new set of norms has been created in the Haringey Labour Party.”

Haringey Council, which includes a large Jewish population, is currently expected to fall under the control of Momentum in elections due to be held in May. Momentum is the sub-group within the Labour Party which brought Jeremy Corbyn to power and has long been beset by antisemitism scandals, including when its Vice Chair, Jackie Walker, claimed that Jews were “the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade”, and whose activists threatened and heckled Haringey Councillors when they voted to adopt the International Definition of Antisemitism.

Momentum now also has control over the Labour Party’s Discipline Panel, which rules on allegations of antisemitism within the Party.

Is a cure for hemophilia on the horizon? American biotechnology company BioMarin aims to find out with the help of Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, Israel.

BioMarin has chosen Sheba to take part in the next phase of international trials for what’s being touted as a “magic bullet” cure for hemophilia A, a genetic blood-clotting deficiency that results in patients bleeding longer after an injury and more easily bruising. Hemophilia A, which affects mostly men, can be life-threatening.

BioMarin has developed a treatment using viruses to implant new genes into a patient’s cells; a single dose seems to be enough to stop or even cure the disease.

BioMarin has conducted an initial trial on nine patients – all stopped using clotting factor drugs to treat their hemophilia and their annualized bleeding rate fell from some 16 episodes a year to just one.

Prof. Gili Kenet will run the project in Israel. Kenet, the director of the National Hemophilia Center and Institute of Thrombosis and Hemostasis at Sheba Medical Center, is impressed by what she’s seen so far.

“People in the medical community are beginning to speak about curing hemophilia after a one-time treatment with this new drug,” she said.

On a recent Wednesday morning, volunteer emergency medical technician Sanaa Mahameed was the first responder on the scene as fire and rescue personnel extricated two injured people from their vehicles following a car crash.

Unfortunately, motor vehicle accidents aren’t a rare occurrence. What was unusual about this scene is that the woman tending the wounded was a religious Muslim who modestly covers her hair and neck with a hijab.

Sanaa Mahameed holds the distinction of being the first female Muslim volunteer EMT in the United Hatzalah of Israel voluntary first-responder network, whose total volunteer force of 4,000 includes about 320 Muslims and 330 women.

United Hatzalah international spokesman Raphael Poch describes Mahameed as one of the most active volunteers in Umm al-Fahm, an Arab town in the Haifa district.

“Sanaa Mahameed is a powerhouse of lifesaving. She has spent the better part of her adult life dedicating her time to save the lives of others,” Poch said.

Fresh off his new Hebrew remix with Israeli singer Rotem Cohen, Latin superstar Enrique Iglesias will be returning to Tel Aviv this year.

Spanish singer Iglesias will be performing at Yarkon Park on May 28, according to Mako, which first reported the news. It won't be the pop singer's first or even second performance in Israel, but it will be his biggest to date.

Iglesias last performed in Israel in 2015, when he took the stage at Menorah Mivtachim Arena. Before that he played the same arena in June 2011. Iglesias's father, Julio Iglesias, himself a well-known singer, has also performed in Israel multiple times.

Just last month, Iglesias released a Hebrew remix of his song "Subleme La Radio," with Cuban singer Descemer Bueno Israeli crooner Rotem Cohen. While details are not yet confirmed, it wouldn't be surprising if Cohen showed up to accompany Iglesias on the song in May. Iglesias will definitely be joined on stage, however, by his guitarist of several years, Israeli native Sean Hurwitz.

The 42-year-old pop superstar has had a slew of hit songs over the years, including "Bailamos,""Hero,""Be With You" and "I Like It." He also just became a father for the first time last time, when he had twins with his long-term girlfriend tennis player Anna Kournikova.

The Israeli micro-satellite developer Effective Space Solutions last week announced the signing of a $100 million multi-year contract to provide satellite maintenance services to an unnamed client.

The signing of the contract with what Effective Space Solutions referred to as a “major regional satellite operator” marks the closure of the company’s first such deal in the industry.

Headquartered in Tel Aviv with an additional office in the UK, Effective Space Solutions was founded in 2013 and specializes in developing and operating small spacecraft that perform life-extending maintenance services on satellites in space.

“We are seeing steady growth in the number of satellite launches per year, but little progress has been made in increasing the lifespan of this space hardware,” said Arie Halsband, founder and CEO of Effective Space Solutions. “Our technology enables satellite owners to maximize the lifespan of their hardware, and run expensive fuel resources to zero before decommissioning….This will be one of the first commercial mission contracts of in-orbit servicing.”

Adding to Israel’s existing reputation as the “start-up nation” and a major hub of innovation, the Jewish state is a rising star in space and satellite technology. Israel is the smallest country in the world to launch its own satellites, and is also one of only 11 nations with the ability to independently launch unmanned missions into space.

Utilizing 60 minuscule fragments of mysterious ancient code from the second-to-last unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls, researchers at the University of Haifa have decoded a unique 364-day calendar once used by the enigmatic Qumran Sect in the Judean Desert.

The 900 Dead Sea Scrolls (also known as the “Qumran Scrolls”) dating to the Second Temple Period were discovered in the 1940s and 1950s in the Qumran Caves near the Dead Sea.

The Qumran Sect referred to itself as the Yahad (“Together Community”) and was a fanatical group that lived a hermitic lifestyle in the desert, facing persecution by the dominant establishment of the time.

They wrote numerous scrolls, a small number of them in code – including the 60 relics on parchment that Dr. Eshbal Ratson and Prof. Jonathan Ben-Dov of Haifa University’s Department of Bible Studies were able to translate.

The researchers spent a year painstakingly studying the tiny fragments from the second-to-last scroll, some which measured smaller than one square centimeter.

“The reward for their hard work is fresh insight into the unique 364-day calendar used by the members of the Judean Desert sect, including the discovery for the first time of the name given by the sect to the special days marking the transitions between the four seasons,” the university said in a statement on Sunday.

Palestinian Christians say US Vice President Mike Pence's brand of evangelical Christianity, with its fervent embrace of modern-day Israel as fulfilment of biblical prophecy, lacks their faith's compassion and justice.

Palestinian Christians slam the Christian Zionist views as a negation of the teachings of Jesus.

"For me, it's a sick ideology," said Munib Younan, the recently retired bishop of the small Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land and former president of the Lutheran World Federation, an umbrella for churches with millions of believers.

"When I say Jesus is love, they want my Jesus to be a political Jesus," Younan, 67, a Jerusalem-born Palestinian, said in a recent interview at his church.

Younan said he supports a solution to the conflict with Israel, including the establishment of a Palestinian state in the lands Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War. Jerusalem, he said, should be shared by Christians, Muslims and Jews, adding that a peace deal would enhance Israel's security. Israel, however, view Jerusalem as the indivisible and eternal capital of the Jewish people.

The common threads running through the actions and rhetoric of the far-right here and there -- of Trump, Pence and Netanyahu -- are clear:

- Extreme partisanship that puts right-wing ideology ahead of national interests and democratic values;
- Contempt and disrespect for immigrants and people of color;
- Disdain for diplomacy, negotiation and compromise.

Mahmoud Abbas. Snapshot of video

In effect, Abbas is saying that in the foreseeable future there is no chance of starting realistic negotiations that could yield a stable diplomatic outcome. This is not a tactical overturning of the chessboard aimed at mobilizing international pressure, but a cry of despair by a Palestinian president who sees how the vision of an independent Palestinian state has reached a dead end.

The implications of unmasking Abbas are clear beyond any doubt. PLO never abandoned its goal of eradicating the Jewish state and rejects Jewish national independence within any borders. Israel and the international community have wasted 25 years and billions of dollars on a “peace process” with a corrupt and genocidal PLO leadership that refuses to let go of its fantasy of destroying Israel.
Since PLO, Hamas and UNWRA are obstacles to genuine peace between Arabs and Jews, they must be dismantled and replaced with a new Arab leadership committed to the welfare of its citizens and peace with Israel. PLO’s leadership are the pupils of Nazi, Communist and Islamist ideologies that are incompatible with genuine peace.
Time has come for Israel and the US to tell PLO that the game is up. With or without Abbas, PLO is a dead man walking and is in no position to demand anything from anyone. Only a mad megalomaniac despot living in fantasyland, issues threats to powerful nations like the US and Israel.

Donald Trump. Official Portrait

So long as majorities reject the values of liberal democracies generally, and hate the U.S. specifically, there is little chance of America leading a democratization movement that will result in anything positive. Minority regimes may make unreliable allies. But popularly elected regimes that embrace bigotry and reject the U.S. and democratic values will reliably be enemies.

In Abdullah’s case, while his dependence on the U.S. ensures his loyalty, his regime is inherently weak because he lacks popular support. To avoid widespread unrest, Abdullah proclaims and occasionally adopts extremist positions against Israel and the US and in favor of terrorists.

Abdullah benefits twice from his hostile policies. On the one hand, he keeps his opponents at bay by satisfying their anti-Americanism and hatred of Israel. On the other hand, by encouraging the public to hate America and Israel, he makes it less likely that any pro-American alternatives to his regime will emerge that could reduce U.S. and Israeli dependence on him personally.

To modify his behavior, the U.S. can and should demand that Abdullah bar anti-American and antisemitic incitement in his state-owned media. He should be required to extradite Tamimi to the U.S. and run programming explaining why she is a terrorist, not a hero.

Such steps can begin to move back the dial of anti-Americanism and antisemitism in Jordan, if only minimally.

Over time, such basic steps may diminish Abdullah’s perceived need to buy off the mob at his gates with pro-terror policies and reduce America’s need to accept his double-dealing, as Pence was forced to do on Sunday in Amman.

In his recent speech to the PLO Central Council, PA Chairman Abbas repeated the PA libel that Israel floods Palestinian society with drugs deliberately to ruin the young generation:

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas: "We have a plan to fight the drugs. Israel is exporting drugs to us in frightening amounts. We need to pay attention in order to defend our young generation and defend it from the drugs."
[Official PA TV, Jan. 14, 2018]

Palestinian Media Watch has reported that a host on official PA TV and the Palestinian Coordinator of the Project of the War on Drugs in Jerusalem accused Israel of being responsible for Palestinian drug problems:

PA TV host: "Jerusalem is probably the Palestinian district that suffers the most from drugs, [because] the occupation mainly targets young age groups in Jerusalem..."
Coordinator of the Project of the War on Drugs in Jerusalem, Issam Jweihan:"A war is being waged [by Israel] against Jerusalem. This is an unconventional war in which unconventional weapons are being used. The goal of the war is clear - to Judaize the city and empty it of its [Arab] residents. They are using unconventional weapons. The weapon that brings the best results for the Israelis is drugs."
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, June 21, 2017]

In the friendliest speech ever made by a foreign dignitary at the Knesset, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Monday reiterated for anyone who may have forgotten that Israel is right when it comes to the conflict with the Palestinians, Iran, and the world. And perhaps most importantly, that Israel is on the right side of history. It's no wonder that Israel's elected officials (with the exception of the Joint Arab List) continued to applaud him for several minutes. It seemed like no Israeli MK could have written a better speech.

I sat in the Knesset yesterday and saw a modest American vice president who had a clear message for the Middle East: The rules have changed. Under the leadership of U.S. President Donald Trump, the U.S. will operate based on the values it shares with Israel and will not grant veto power to destabilizing players that issue threats – not on matters of peace and not on matters of war.

Pence's simple, courageous words came as no surprise to me. I met the vice president before he was sworn in. Unlike others, who wanted to serve as Trump's second-in-command to improve their own status, Pence truly believed that he and the president complemented one another. The result was evident in the administration's early months.

Pence is a vice president who understands. The superpower he represents is always wise enough to stand on the right side of history, just like the host nation – Israel. Pence's speech was not evangelistic or messianic. It was a speech given by a vice president who sees America's religious and historical objectives as an integral part of the administration's policies.

If there was anyone in the Knesset plenum who understands America better than the rest, it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In his own speech, Netanyahu addressed Pence directly, in English, and told him that the American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel would be remembered by Israelis as a watershed moment in our history.

US Vice President Mike Pence visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Tuesday, wrapping up a two-day visit to Israel, amid an escalating dispute with the Palestinians over the status of the city.

Pence, whose visit to the Western Wall lasted all of 10 minutes, read a short prayer from the Book of Psalms, placed a note in the Wall, and lay his hand upon the ancient stones. He then signed the Wall’s guestbook before heading out.

“It is my great honor to pray here at this sacred place. God bless the Jewish people and God bless the State of Israel always,” he wrote.

The site — the holiest place where Jews can pray — is in the Old City, annexed by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War, but considered by most of the international community to be occupied Palestinian territory

Pence was met by Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, the rabbi of the site, who told him of a visit to the Wall 147 years ago by Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state, William H. Seward, who praised the “exalted” prayer he witnessed there.

“The light of Jerusalem is a light of love, of care for the world, of peace,” said Rabinovitch. “For 2,000 years Jerusalem was tossed from hand to hand, and only now, when it has been returned to its people, can worshipers of all peoples and all faiths come to Western Wall and pray there.”

• Through the generations, the American people became fierce advocates of the Jewish people's aspiration to return to the land of your forefathers.
• Jerusalem is Israel's capital - and, as such, President Trump has directed the State Department to immediately begin preparations to move the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In the weeks ahead, our administration will advance its plan to open the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem - and that United States embassy will open before the end of next year.
• In announcing his decision on Jerusalem, the President also called, in his words, "on all parties to maintain the status quo at Jerusalem's holy sites, including at the Temple Mount, also known as the Haram al-Sharif." And he made it clear that we're not taking a position on any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested borders.
• President Trump reaffirmed that, if both sides agree, the United States of America will support a two-state solution.
• The United States appreciates your government's declared willingness to resume direct peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. We strongly urge the Palestinian leadership to return to the table.
• The United States will continue to work with Israel, and with nations across the world, to confront the leading state sponsor of terror - the Islamic Republic of Iran.
• Two-and-a-half years ago, the previous administration in America signed a deal with Iran that merely delays the day when that regime can acquire a nuclear weapon. The Iran nuclear deal is a disaster, and the United States of America will no longer certify this ill-conceived agreement. At President Trump's direction, we're working to enact effective and lasting restraints on Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
• Unless the Iran nuclear deal is fixed, President Trump has said the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal immediately.

In his opening remarks to US Vice President Mike Pence, President Reuven Rivlin, who does not actually speak Yiddish, used one of the most complimentary Yiddish words that can be bestowed on another person, calling the vice president “a mensch” – meaning “a person of integrity.”

He used this epithet when the two sat down on Tuesday to make statements in the presence of their respective entourages and the media.

And the president didn’t stop there. Rivlin also called Pence “a dear friend of the Jewish people and the State of Israel” and told Pence that, as a seventh generation Jerusalemite, he had deeply appreciated the vice president’s reaffirmation of America’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Rivlin also said that he had no doubt that Pence’s declaration, that the US Embassy would be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by the end of 2019, was essentially a done deal. Pence has always been a person who stood by his word, said Rivlin.

Rivlin saw this move as a gift for Israel’s 70th anniversary.

Pence said that US President Donald Trump’s decision regarding Jerusalem was “the clearest sign yet of the unwavering commitment of the United States of America to Israel” and that “under President Trump’s leadership we are committed to make it stronger still.”

After NBC anchor Andrea Mitchell posted an inaccurate and inflammatory comment on Twitter about the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, she was quickly corrected by Israeli journalists.

In her Monday morning tweet, Mitchell asserted that “the 13 Israel-Arab members” of parliament were removed from the Knesset floor after a disruption, and suggested this should be seen through the lense of American racism:

The 13 Israeli-Arab members of Israel's Parliament held up signs saying "Jerusalem is the Capital of Palestine" and were forcibly removed by security as Pence started to speak. Can you imagine Capitol Police dragging members of the congressional black caucus off the House floor?

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) January 22, 2018

Lahav Harkov, Knesset reporter for the Jerusalem Post, responded:
Indeed, a page on the Knesset website lists 18 current Arab MKs: Talab Abu Arar, Saeed Alkharumi, Hamad Amar, Youssef Atauna, Joumah Azbarga, Zouheir Bahloul, Esawi Frej, Masud Ganaim, Abd Al Hakeem Haj Yahya, Akram Hasoon, Yousef Jabareen, Ayoob Kara, Ayman Odeh, Saleh Saad, Ahmad Tibi, Aida Touma-Sliman, Jamal Zahalka, and Hanin Zoabi.

Responding to the reference to black members of congress, political analyst Omri Ceren noted that this isn’t quite as unimaginable as Mitchell wanted her readers to think:

Oh for crying out loud Andrea. A member of the congressional black caucus was removed from the House floor just a few years ago just for a dress code violation, let alone for disrupting a session, which is what these clowns were doing.

So yeah I think I can imagine it happening. https://t.co/QISJv1XHYM

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) January 22, 2018

Deputy Defense Minister Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan (Jewish Home) arrived Monday at the Ramada Hotel in Jerusalem, where elections for the Jewish Home Party Center and branch councils throughout the country were held.

Ben Dahan said that the vote "is a celebration of democracy. It shows how the Jewish Home is a vibrant, fresh party, with elections for the branches and the central committee.”

Rabbi Ben Dahan attacked the protest held by Arab MKs during US VP Mike Pence’s speech at the Knesset.

"There is no doubt that the Arab MKs have crossed every boundary. Instead of worrying about the Arab minority in the State of Israel, they represent the Palestinian people, an invented people that does not exist, that has no foundations, and they only about care about this."

“They proved how ridiculous and not serious they are.”

You have to hand it to Chief Palestinian Propagandist Saeb Erekat. Even by palestinian standards, his level of chutzpah is stratospheric.

And his quotes more often than not read like something from The Onion. Like this one from yesterday:
Pence’s speech “is a gift to the extremists and proves that the American administration is part of the problem rather than the solution,” Xinhua quoted Saeb Erekat, Secretary General of the Executive Committee of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), as saying.

By extremists, I assume Erekat means Israelis who loved his speech (which would have been most, I would imagine) and not, say, these moderates who reacted moderately ahead of the Pence visit

The Hamas terrorist group on Monday evening expressed support for the MKs of the Joint List who protested U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s speech in the Knesset.

"Hamas praises the role of the Palestinian members of the occupying Israeli Knesset in the resistance against the racist speech of Mike Pence against Jerusalem," the organization said.

"Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Palestine," added Hamas.

The MKs, who had earlier vowed to boycott Pence’s address, attempted to hold a protest in the Knesset Monday against the Trump administration, with some holding placards reading “Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine”.

The protest, which was held in violation of Knesset regulations, was quickly broken up by Knesset officials, who escorted the MKs involved out of the chamber.

Monday was a significant day in the annals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But rather than the conventional quarrels we have grown accustomed to, both violent and rhetoric, this day saw the two sides engage in what could be called a proxy diplomatic war.

Even though it currently appears distant, Israeli and Palestinian leaders know that sooner or later there will be another chapter in the peace process saga, and on Monday, they were battling over who would be in charge. The Israelis were working hard to secure a good starting position for when negotiations will resume, while the Palestinians were trying to organize a new sponsor of talks.

At the end of a long day, it appeared that Israel had won this round.

Due to the White House’s December 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the Palestinians no longer accept the US administration as honest brokers. Israel, however, remains adamant that the US is the only party that it can imagine presiding over peace talks, and is working hard to endear itself to the administration.

On Monday, Ramallah and Jerusalem sought to advance their positions with their respective patrons: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hosted US Vice President Mike Pence in Jerusalem, showering him with great honor and affection in a bid to cement Washington’s pro-Israel disposition. At the same time, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was in Brussels trying to woo the European Union, in the hope it would volunteer to replace Washington as the main sponsor of the peace process.

“The EU should play a political role in this Middle East peace process in order to reach a just solution on the basis of internationally recognized terms and decisions,” Abbas said, standing next to the union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini.

His comments came at about the same time as Pence, speaking from the Knesset podium, vowed to relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem before the end of 2019.

US Vice President Mike Pence said on Tuesday the timing of a long-awaited US Middle East peace initiative depended on the return of Palestinians to negotiations.

President Donald Trump's advisers have been working on the outlines of a plan for some time. But Palestinians ruled out Washington as a peace broker after the US president's December 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"The White House has been working with our partners in the region to see if we can develop a framework for peace," Pence told Reuters in an interview in Jerusalem on the last leg of his three-day Middle East trip. "It all just depends now on when the Palestinians are going to come back to the table."

Trump's Jerusalem move angered the Palestinians, sparked protests in the Middle East and raised concern among Western countries that it could further destabilize the region. Palestinians see east Jerusalem as capital of a future state.

A White House official told reporters his hope was that the plan would be unveiled in 2018, but he declined to commit to a timeline, saying both sides had to be ready for it.

That disconnect between hope and reality has set up a vicious cycle in which negotiations are always undone by the reality of Palestinian politics. While Palestinian rejectionism has been a constant since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, there have been two moments when their actions were so unambiguous that it exposed the peace process as a sham.

One was in 2000, when, after then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak went to Camp David and offered the Palestinians an independent state in almost all of the West Bank, Gaza and a share of Jerusalem. Arafat said no. Within weeks, he began a terrorist war of attrition known as the Second Intifada that took the lives of more than a thousand Israelis and many more Palestinians.

That war created a broad consensus in Israel in which the vast majority of Israelis came to understand that the Palestinians aren’t ready to make peace. But some hoped Arafat’s successor would be different. Abbas disappointed those hopes with rejections of more peace offers, refusals to negotiate and inflammatory rhetoric that set off new rounds of violence, such as his assertion that “stinking Jewish feet” should not pollute the holy sites of Jerusalem. Yet still the peace camp clung to him, and President Barack Obama praised him as a champion of peace.

But no rational person could hear Abbas’s January 14 diatribe and still believe he has any interest in two states or coexistence. His complaints were not so much about the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as they were about the entire Zionist project. He denounced Trump but made it clear his real problem was with Arthur James Balfour and the origins of Jewish statehood as well as in denying the historical ties between the Jewish people and their ancient homeland. He vowed to go on supporting terrorism and his violent words confirmed a commitment to incitement.

Yet rather than confront the truth about Abbas, many on the left prefer to blame Trump.

In light of recent developments, including Mahmoud Abbas’s unusually frank speech to the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s leadership, Moshe Arens advocates jettisoning some frequently mouthed but clearly false assumptions about Israel’s situation, beginning with the idea that the U.S. should act as a neutral party in negotiations between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

The United States cannot be, and has never been, neutral in mediating the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It is the leader of the world’s democratic community of nations and cannot assume a neutral position between democratic Israel and the Palestinians, whether represented by an autocratic leadership that glorifies acts of terror or by Islamic fundamentalists who carry out acts of terror. . . .

In recent years the tectonic shifts in the Arab world, the lower price of oil, and the decreased importance attached to the Palestinian issue in much of the region, have essentially removed the main incentive the United States had in past years to stay involved in the conflict. . . .

Despite the conventional wisdom that the core issues—such as Jerusalem or the fate of Israeli settlements beyond the 1949 armistice lines—are the major stumbling blocks to an agreement, the issue for which there seems to be no solution in sight at the moment is making sure that any Israeli military withdrawal will not result in rockets being launched against Israel’s population centers from areas that are turned over to the Palestinians. . .

Does that mean that Israel is left with a choice between a state with a Palestinian majority or an apartheid state, as claimed by Israel’s left? This imaginary dilemma is based on a deterministic theory of history, which disregards all other possible alternatives in the years to come, and on questionable demographic predictions. What the left is really saying is this: better rockets on Tel Aviv than a continuation of Israeli military control over Judea and Samaria. There is little support in Israel for that view.

Senior Trump administration officials have not spoken with Palestinian leaders since the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital last month, a senior White House official said Tuesday.

The official also said the US is aiming to present its peace plan this year, but both sides needed to be willing to engage in talks, according to a Reuters report.

The official’s comments came as US Vice President Mike Pence visited Israel.

Since US President Donald Trump’s December 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to engage in American-led peace talks, saying the US is not an honest broker.

He has also refused to meet with senior White House officials, including Pence, and cursed Trump in a speech earlier this month in which he called a peace plan being formulated by the US the “slap of the century.”

The Palestinians remain insistently opposed to having the United States as the sole sponsor of peace talks with Israel, but are now open to Washington taking a role within a multilateral framework to pave the way to a Palestinian state, a senior Palestinian official told The Times of Israel on Tuesday.

Following the US decision in December to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the Palestinian leadership declared that Washington could no longer fulfill the historic and central role in the peace process it has held for over two decades.

Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority has been boycotting US administration figures dealing with Mideast peace since US President Donald Trump’s December 6 declaration on Jerusalem, including refusing to meet US Vice President Mike Pence, who left the region Tuesday.

Instead, Abbas has been seeking a new international framework through which the Palestinians can win an independent state, traveling to Brussels this week to seek EU support for a new peace push.

The leading European human rights assembly on Tuesday was set to discuss a resolution that would condemn the American decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and call for an increased European role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, an Israeli official told the Times of Israel.

The resolution, which will be voted on in the Council of Europe on Thursday, was advanced by the Palestinians, Israel’s Hadashot TV news reported Monday.

“The role of the USA as a serious broker in the peace process was undoubtedly undermined by the declaration of its President on Jerusalem,” the draft resolution states.

“Europe should increase its role in the peace process, alongside the USA,” it reads, adding that the US “should still have an important role to play based on a renewed attitude of neutrality in this process.”

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Monday said the world is waiting with “great interest” for the Trump administration’s peace plan, while calling on the US to offer incentives to the Palestinians “to get things moving.”

Speaking alongside Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Johnson sounded an upbeat note on peace prospects, despite the fallout from US President Donald Trump’s December 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“There is a moment of opportunity here. A process that has been stalled for years, if not decades, could see some progress,” he said.

Asked if Trump’s decision on Jerusalem was harmful to the peace process, Johnson said: “It’s possible that it could help to push things along if there is symmetrical movement in the other direction.”

Johnson called the American recognition of Jerusalem last month “premature.” UK Prime Minister Theresa May said it was “unhelpful,” stressing that the city’s status should be determined in negotiations between the sides.

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein met with European Union Foreign Affairs High Representative Federica Mogherini Tuesday.

Edelstein described the meeting, which lasted 45 minutes, as cordial.

The Knesset Speaker asked Mogherini to respond to the two-hour anti-Semitic rant Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas gave last week.

"Abbas said that Israel is a colonial project and I would expect a strong reaction from the EU," Edelstein said.

He warned Mogherini not to be taken in by Abbas' pledges in the international arena to pursue peace, as the Palestinian Authority chairman says exactly the opposite when addressing his own people.

"We must pay attention to Abbas''doublespeak.' as he speaks one way in English and another in Arabic."

Similarly, many Palestinians have long viewed Abbas’s aversion to popular protests as a hindrance. Recent polls have found a clear majority of Palestinians support popular protests, like the ones in Jerusalem last summer where thousands took to the streets to protest Israel’s installation of metal detectors on the Temple Mount-al-Aqsa Mosque compound after a terror attack. At the time, Abbas repeatedly voiced his support for these protests; in his recent speech, he referenced the popular protests at least three times.

This is a marked shift from several years ago, when the Palestinian leadership feared that the ire animating wide-scale protests may be redirected back at them, challenging their rule. In recent years, protests against Palestinian Authority policies on things like teacher salaries and social-security payments have roiled Ramallah, to the point where Abbas’s forces have taken an increasingly heavy hand. Indeed, the change in his rhetoric is the chief reason why he won’t be able to usher in a new strategy—most people simply won’t believe his change in tone is genuine.

When Abbas does eventually leave the scene (on Sunday, he said that this may be “the last time you see me here”), his defining policy positions—a preference for negotiations adhering to the two-state solution formula, a laudable commitment to non-violence, and a resolute commitment to security coordination with Israel—could likely go with him. Whoever rises to follow him may well do so because of his contrast with Abbas, in the same way that Abbas took Arafat’s place after his death in 2004 on the promise of negotiations over open conflict.

This is the larger tragedy of Mahmoud Abbas. In him, the world saw a reformist, a leader who could get the Palestinians to the table and possibly clear the hurdle for the two-state solution. Instead, he has morphed into a bureaucratic tyrant at home, hostile to America and downright incendiary towards Israel. His rule has alienated his people, leaving them disillusioned and disenfranchised. He likely has inadvertently tipped the scales in favor of a more volatile successor. And that, to use his own words, may just result in the destruction of all that has been built.

The Palestinian narrative has historically attempted to portray its society as victims of oppression. Whether falsely accusing Israel of having an apartheid regime, labeling Israeli tactics “indiscriminate targeting” or Palestinian terrorist attacks “freedom fighting,” the PLO managed to use empathy as a powerful tool to arrive at the negotiation table.

When the moment for Oslo came, the true conflict began. Up until 1993, the PLO had a clear mission: to liberate Palestine. When enough international and regional pressure was placed on Yasser Arafat to sign the Oslo agreements and recognize Israel’s right to exist, an existential threat to Palestinian identity arose.

Despite the character of the Palestinian leadership, the mediation process was doomed to fail the moment Oslo was introduced to both parties. Its lack of content regarding the issue of refugees, division of Jerusalem, and lack of land swaps failed to coerce the parties to understand that concessions needed to be made and not all demands could be met. It was a symbolic document which failed to address the critical issues surrounding the conflict.

In addition, it removed the historical and religious aspect of the conflict by attempting to engage it as a political debate. All these factors would seal the fate of Camp David before the parties arrived. Ultimately, mediation failed due to the identity crisis that continues to rattle Palestinian society to this day.

At every historical juncture in which the Palestinians were asked to make painful decisions, and certainly when asked to relinquish something they considered as guaranteed, they preferred to backtrack rather than move forward.

Trepidation over public opinion and fear of potential backlash from their domestic political rivals has time and again crippled Palestinian leaders' ability to make courageous decisions that could advance the peace process and Palestinian interests alike, even if it meant they would not get everything they wanted. The fear of being judged by the masses has always outweighed the fear of being judged by history.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is no exception. Thus, rather than welcoming U.S. Vice President Mike Pence to the region and engage in dialogue and negotiations with the Americans, he has chosen to abandon the fight and flee to Brussels, where the European Union is sure to give him a warmer welcome.

While the EU can offer Abbas pats on the back and words of encouragement, the United States remains the only one that can resuscitate the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process, especially if you consider that the only deal ever achieved between Israel and the Palestinians was brokered only after the Israeli government decided, of its own accord and sans any external pressure, to take that step.

Israel accused the United Nations on Tuesday of continuous discrimination against it over its treatment of Palestinians and called for reforms of its human rights body.

The Human Rights Council’s regular examination of Israel’s record, the first since 2013, comes after US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem last month as the capital of the Jewish state.

Aviva Raz Shechter, Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, told the Human Rights Council that her country had always stood up for human rights and democratic values.

“It has done so while facing serious threats to its security, and while needing to integrate diverse communities and religious groups,” Shechter told the Geneva forum.

The council has taken a strong position against Israel’s control of territory taken during the 1967 Six-Day War, its treatment of Palestinians there, and its building of settlements.

An “unparalleled number of one-sided biased and political resolutions adopted regularly by the automatic majority of its members testify not only to the unfair treatment of the State of Israel, but also to the deficiencies of the council itself and its agenda,” Shechter said. “This theater of the absurd cannot go on forever.”

Washington says the council is stacked with opponents of Israel and US Ambassador Nikki Haley told the council last June that it was reviewing its participation given what it sees as its “chronic anti-Israel bias.”

Border police thwarted at attempted stabbing attack against their forces at the Tapuach junction in the Samaria region of the West Bank on Tuesday afternoon.

An officer in an observation post noted two suspicious looking Palestinian men in the area of a bus station at the junction, according to police.

Border police at the junction called on the two men to stop and one officer fired in the air. The two men continued to advance and one of them drew a knife as he moved in their direction.

A border police officer then shot and wounded the two suspects, according to police.

Photos from the scene show one of the men lying on the ground with his hands in the air, a bullet wound in his leg and a knife by his leg.

Border Police arrested a Palestinian man in the West Bank city of Hebron on Monday, after finding a knife hidden under his clothes at the entrance to the Tomb of the Patriarchs holy site.

Officers asked the man, in his 30s, to walk through a metal detector upon his arrival at the checkpoint. While the device did not sound an alarm, the statement from Border Police said the security forces still suspected the Palestinian and conducted a full body search.

“An initial investigation revealed that the suspect was apparently intending to carry out a stabbing attack,” Border Police said.

The Palestinian, said to be from the nearby village of Dura, was detained and transferred for questioning.

The brother of one of the terrorists suspected of carrying out a deadly shooting attack earlier this month was arrested early Tuesday morning by Israeli security forces, according to Palestinian media.

The Palestinian Ma’an news outlet reported that Israel Defense Forces soldiers in Jenin arrested Suhaib Nassar Jarrar, brother of suspected terror cell leader Ahmad Nassar Jarrar, who is believed to have evaded Israeli arrest raid last week.

The official Palestinian Authority Safa news outlet reported that Wissam Assam Jarrar, a relative of Ahmad, was also arrested in Jenin.

Israeli security officials would not confirm the arrests, as there is a gag order in place preventing publication of details related to the case.

However, the IDF announced that eight Palestinian suspects were arrested between Monday night and Tuesday morning in raids throughout the West Bank.

Three Arab lawmakers from the Balad party should face fraud and other graft charges over alleged financial irregularities, police said Tuesday

Indictments were recommended against MKs Hanin Zoabi, Jamal Zahalka, and Juma Azbarga regarding donations the party received during the 2013 elections and party spending during the 2015 elections. Police recommendations have no legal weight, however; the decision to press charges lies with the State Prosecutor.

The Balad party called the development “a political witch hunt.”

Party officials are suspected of fraudulently accepting funds, forgery, money laundering, fraud and breach of trust, police said.

The development came at the completion of an investigation into the transactions; the case has been sent for review by the State Prosecutor.

Balad, which holds three Knesset seats, is one of the four parties comprising the Joint (Arab) List faction, which holds 13 of the 120 seats in parliament.

The Israeli political arena was in a tizzy Tuesday after Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said he would ban the songs of a prominent poet from being played on Army Radio because the poet had compared a Palestinian teenager who was filmed slapping IDF soldiers to Anne Frank.

Opposition members slammed Liberman and branded him a “commissar” for saying he was prohibiting the public radio station from interviewing or playing songs by Yehonatan Geffen. However, the attorney general quickly weighed in to say the instruction carried no legal weight.

The 70-year-old Geffen on Monday posted on Instagram a photo of Tamimi confronting an IDF soldier, with a poem in Hebrew that said, “When the day comes for this struggle’s story to be told, you, Ahed Tamimi, the redhead, like David who slapped Goliath, will be in the same line with Joan of Arc, Hannah Szenes and Anne Frank.”

A prominent Palestinian-American activist who styles herself a feminist leader has amended her desire to confiscate the lady parts of two women whose politics she opposes with an offer to provide those organs to a Palestinian adolescent currently in Israeli custody for assaulting an IDF soldier.

In March 2011, the Islamist Sarsour tweeted a now-deleted message asserting in crude terms that activists Brigitte Gabriel and Ayaan Hirsi Ali deserve to be beaten, and that she wished she “could take their vaginas away. They don’t deserve to be women.” The new addendum to that sentiment, tweeted over the weekend and also since deleted, adds that should she succeed in engineering the removal of the women’s genitalia, the latter would be gifted to more deserving entities, such as violent Palestinian teenage activist Ahed Tamimi.

The Tamimi clan, a darling of human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Btselem, has yet to offer a formal response to Ms. Sarsour’s offer. A spokesman for the family, headed by father Bassem and mother Nariman Tamimi, told reporters that the couple was too busy at the moment fielding expressions of support for their cousin Ahlam in Jordan, an accomplice to the slaughter of 15 people in a bombing at a Jerusalem pizzeria in 2001.

Sarsour, since the 2011 tweet, has gained further prominence nationally as a leader of the Women’s March movement and a defender of a woman’s “right” to wear a hijab, a garment that in Islamic societies women have no choice but to wear. More recently she stoked further controversy by stating that one could not be both a Zionist and a feminist, prompting outrage from Zionist feminists whose society has integrated feminism to a degree no Islamic society has ever achieved.

France's foreign minister accused Iran on Monday of not respecting part of a U.N. resolution that calls on Tehran to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads.

Speaking on arrival at a European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, Jean-Yves Le Drian also said the 28 ministers would reiterate their concerns over Iran's activities in Yemen, Lebanon and Syria, which he described as destabilizing.

"We will also have the opportunity of underlining our firmness on Iran's compliance with United Nations Resolution 2231, which limits access to ballistic capacity and which Iran does not respect," Le Drian said.

Under the U.N. resolution enshrining the 2015 nuclear deal with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States, Iran is "called upon" to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons for up to eight years.

Some states say this phrasing does not make it an obligatory commitment.

Iran has repeatedly said its missile program is purely defensive and denied the missiles are designed to carry nuclear warheads.

Egyptian Historian Bassam El Shammaa: The Jews Killed and Tortured Germans in a "Counter Holocaust"pic.twitter.com/vCqi7yIO5r

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) January 23, 2018

A senior Al-Qaeda leader has called on Muslims "everywhere" to rise up and kill Jews and Americans in response to US President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

In a video released Monday, Khalid Batarfi said Trump's decision was "a declaration of a new Jewish-Crusader war" and every Muslim had a duty to "liberate" the holy city, the SITE Intelligence monitoring group reported.

"No Muslim has the right to cede Jerusalem no matter what happens," said Batarfi, a top commander with the group's powerful Yemen-based branch. "Only a traitor would give it up or hand it over.""Let them [Muslims] rise and attack the Jews and the Americans everywhere," he said, in the 18-minute video entitled "Our Duty Towards Our Jerusalem".

Trump on December 6 said his administration would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and move its embassy from Tel Aviv to the city.

On Monday, US Vice President Mike Pence pledged to move the embassy by the end of 2019, in a speech to Israel's parliament.

In the video, Batarfi dismissed US allies' protests as not genuine and "nothing but dust thrown in the eyes".

"The greatest responsibility lies upon the Muslims in America and the Western countries in the world," he said.

"The Muslims inside the occupied land must kill every Jew, by running him over, or stabbing him, or by using against him any weapon, or by burning their homes."

Amitabh Bachchan, Karan Johar and other Bollywood stars met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who attended the Shalom Bollywood event in Mumbai yesterday. Not only did PM Netanyahu attended the much-anticipated Bollywood event last night but he also called all the Bollywood stars to join together for a selfie - which was shared by him on his official Twitter handle. In the selfie, which is now viral, PM Netanyahu was joined in by stars like Big B, Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan, Vivek Oberoi and Madhur Bhandarkar among others. In his speech, PM Netanyahu referred to one of the most viral pictures of all time that took place at the Oscars, in which several celebrities including Brad Pitt took a selfie.

Will my Bollywood selfie beat  @TheEllenShow Hollywood selfie at the Oscars? @SrBachchan@juniorbachchan@rajcheerfull@imbhandarkar@vivek_oberoi @ pic.twitter.com/v1r0GIhKLy

— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) January 18, 2018

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) in South Asia and other pro-Palestinian activists have slammed some Bollywood actors, actresses and figures for welcoming and embracing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to India.

Speaking to the Middle East Eye, Apoorva Gautam, head of the BDS movement in South Asia, expressed disappointment in Bollywood for falling for Israel’s “cultural propaganda”

“These initiatives are ultimately part of a wider move by the Israelis to improve its image globally as it continues to perpetrate war crimes against the Palestinians,” he said.

It seems that officially partnering with pro-jihadists was not off limits for the once great and greatly admired Amnesty International, yet hosting Israeli speakers with whom they disagree is. If ever there was proof that the regressive left rot is spreading into the core of our liberal culture, look no further than the way it has politicised this once bright beacon of human rights.

This week, Amnesty UK cancelled a Jewish Leadership Council organised debate it was due to host between Fred Carver of the UN Association, and Hillel Neuer of UN Watch. Amnesty had initially agreed to join the panel debate, but withdrew their speaker months ago.

On Monday they went even further by denying use of their venue entirely. The reason ostensibly cited by Amnesty was that because they are “currently campaigning for all governments around the world to ban the import of goods produced in the illegal Israeli settlements” they do not “therefore, think it appropriate for Amnesty International to host an event by those actively supporting such settlements.”

Amnesty is well within its legal rights to permit or deny whomever it likes to and from its own venue. But the right to do something is very distinct from it being the right thing to do.

So let’s get this straight. Because Amnesty International opposes trading in goods produced in the occupied West Bank, in one clean sweep they’ve decided to extend this boycott to human beings who simply express an opposing view.

It’s better here: That was the message of a panel of experts considering the rise of the extreme right and of antisemitism in the United States and Europe.

That was the good news at Monday’s forum, sponsored by Georgetown University’s Center for Jewish Civilization. The less good news was that no one could quite pin down why Americans were more resistant to antisemitism than Europeans.

“It’s far from perfect,” said Ira Forman, until January the international antisemitism monitor for the State Department. “We do it now better than we did 50 years ago, there’s no guarantee we will continue to do it, and frankly, we do it better with antisemitism than with anti-Muslim rhetoric and with racism.”

Forman cited American communities that spontaneously rallied to counter antisemitism in their midst, like the citizens of Whitefish, Montana who a year ago demonstrated ahead of a planned neo-Nazi march targeting the town’s tiny Jewish community, and civic leaders who, in 2013, called on an Oklahoma lawmaker to apologize for using the phrase “jew down.”

In both cases and in many others, he said, the drive to counter anti-Jewish rhetoric came in communities with small Jewish communities and seemed driven more by non-Jews who were repelled by the rhetoric.

Never has there been a greater divide between Democrats and Republicans on the subject of Israel in forty years of polling, according to a new survey published on Tuesday.

The Pew Research Center findings show Republicans more sympathetic than ever toward Israel, with Democrats increasingly divided, now equally likely to support the Palestinian cause. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains a particularly divisive force.

The poll is released as US Vice President Mike Pence continues his tour of Israel touting the policies of the Trump administration, which 30% of Americans believe "favors Israel too much," according to the report.

Overall, 79% of Republicans sympathize with Israel in the survey compared to only 27% of Democrats.

Americans who are more favorably inclined to Israel are less likely to believe a two-state solution is possible than those inclined to the Palestinians. And belief in the possibility of peace is correlated with age: the younger you are, the more hopeful you are likely to be that an agreement can be reached.

"Since 2001, the share of Republicans sympathizing more with Israel than the Palestinians has increased 29 percentage points," the pollsters found. "Over the same period, the share of Democrats saying this has declined 11 points."

The following are translated excerpts from his article:

"The Palestinian people have sufficient political awareness to understand the extent of the danger posed to the occupied capital… There is significant escalation of the popular struggle and [people are] coming out against the satanic Zionist plans for Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Unlike in past years, hardly a day goes by without an intifada on the ground and the occupation conducting nighttime arrest operations to halt the advance of an entire generation toward the final campaign of national liberation. [However,] there is a decrease in the number of demonstrators, and these are the reasons why:

• They are waiting for the decisions of the Palestinian leadership, in order to understand what direction it will take and how far it will go with its struggle. This, because in previous attempts when the public acted with full force, this was at odds with the decisions of the leadership, which took into consideration the interests of [the different] countries. The moment the public understands that the leadership is continuing with the intifada – and this necessitates at least two months [of popular resistance] – it will immediately go farther than all the intelligence [mechanisms] in the region currently imagine.
  
• Exam time at educational institutions, [relevant] because most of the demonstrators in the streets are school or university students. The Palestinian people's devotion to knowledge and its commitment to education are so well known that, during the first intifada, the 1987 Intifada of Stones, the united leadership organized the educational system and the matriculation exams in such a way… that the schools were closed.
  
• They are waiting for the results of the diplomatic campaign that is [currently] the PA's main focus. The Palestinians are curious to see the results of the international vote on the proposal.
  
• Minimal participation of [the different Palestinian] factions and forces [involved in the resistance], due to an absence of agreement about a [unifying] political slogan, as each faction operates separately, according to its own political doctrine. [At the same time,] it should be noted that the Gaza Strip exceeded all the regions in this regard, since the forces there have overcome [their] disagreement and are now close to [finding] a joint slogan and position.
  
• [The absence of] agreement about the means of action – the picture [in this context] is still unclear. In the 1987 intifada stones were used, since this was useful against the settlers and their cars and made their lives hell. During the intifada in the year 2000, guns were used. However [the choice of weapon] for the present struggle is not yet clear, and so, the meaning of the popular resistance that the leadership is calling for is still not clear to the public, and may not be clear [even] to the leadership itself." (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Why is the Muslim world up in arms about Jerusalem being declared the capital of Israel? After all, Jerusalem is made up of different areas — just as Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan and Staten Island are all part of New York City. The part of Jerusalem that contains the Knesset and is the administrative heart of Israel is located on land that has been part of the state since 1948, and is quite separate from the Old City and the lands reclaimed from Jordan in 1967.

There is no logical reason why Palestine, if it is ever established, should not declare its capital at Abu Dis, a suburb to the east — and part of Jerusalem, too. The fuss is clearly not about Jerusalem itself, but something else.

The religious reason given for Muslim opposition to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is that the Old City is a holy city for Islam, and that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is the place that Mohammad visited in a dream. Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran — and a mosque was not built on the Temple site until almost 100 years after Mohammad’s time.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque, incidentally, is not — and was not — the golden-domed mosque, as the world seems to think. That one was known as Omar’s, and was built in 691. Al-Aqsa, the less impressive one, was built in 705. But Muslim interest in Jerusalem as a holy city only began in response to the Crusaders, who called Jerusalem their holy city (because they believed Jesus had been buried in the Holy Sepulcher there). In reality the holy cities of Islam under Mohammad were Mecca and Medina.

In the predawn hours of January 18, 1991, at the outbreak of the First Gulf War, the Iraqi army launched eight Scud missiles at Israel, hitting both Tel Aviv and Haifa, wounding seven people and causing damage to several residential buildings.

Saddam Hussein’s military went on to fire 30 more Scuds at central Israeli cities, killing two people in direct hits and 11 others indirectly from heart attacks and asphyxiation, and raising the possibility that Jerusalem would conduct retaliatory airstrikes on Iraqi targets.

Interviews from shortly after the war with then-defense minister Moshe Arens and -IDF chief of staff Dan Shomron, which were released by the Defense Ministry’s IDF Archive on Thursday to mark the 27th anniversary of the Scud attacks, show how real the threat of an Israeli response was.

“It turns out that Arens called [then-US secretary of defense Dick] Cheney and told him, ‘OK, we’re going to attack, move your planes,” Shomron recalled in his interview.

In his interview, Arens confirmed that he’d said something along those lines.

“I spoke with Cheney on a special line almost every day. I told him, ‘We need to attack, we need to coordinate,'” he recalled.

“He was always trying to push me off. He said it required permission from the president and that there still wasn’t permission from the president so we couldn’t coordinate,” Arens said.

Last week, Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to India, met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and concluded nine trade deals between the two countries. The visit is just the latest manifestation of the growing alliance between Israel and India, a country that was long hostile to the Jewish state, and refused to have formal diplomatic ties until 1991. To Swapan Dasgupta, New Delhi’s reluctance to improve relations with Jerusalem came from its excessive fear of provoking Muslim rage:

• For the longest possible time, Indian diplomacy has run scared of facing the truth over Israel because of the fear of a Muslim backlash at home and recriminations against migrant Indian workers in the Islamic nations of West Asia. Someone had to take the bull by the horn and end this nonsense. The Modi government took the step in 2014, culminating in the Netanyahu visit last week.
  
• There may have been a few angry editorials in the [mostly Muslim] Urdu press, some inflammatory sermons in mosques, an isolated black-flag demonstration or two in some cities, and some snide comments about the hug [with which Modi greeted Netanyahu upon his arrival]. However, in the main, the visit was a spectacular success. If tomorrow India starts making preparations to shift its embassy, now in Tel Aviv, to Jerusalem—as I believe it should—the protests will be insignificant.
  
• The lessons should be obvious. The veto of a handful of activists should not deter governments from doing what is right and what is in the national interest. Fear should never be the reason for inaction.
  
• Israel may be a tiny country, perhaps even equal in size to some of India’s larger parliamentary constituencies. Yet the popular respect it commands is disproportionate to the area it covers on the world map. This may have partly to do with Israel’s status as the custodian of an ancient Jewish civilization and partly with its doughty battle to survive while being surrounded by implacably hostile countries. Israel today epitomizes a gritty determination that is a source of colossal admiration. It is a friend worth having.

In recent months, the Palestinian media has been debating the activity of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement in the territory of the Palestinian Authority (PA), in the context of the prohibition issued by the Ramallah Municipality against the screening of the film The Insult at the "Days of Cinema" festival that was held in Ramallah on October 23, 2017. The film, directed by Lebanese director Ziad Doueiri, deals with a legal dispute between a Lebanese Christian and a Palestinian refugee. The film was banned following widespread protest by Palestinians on social media, who called ban it because its director maintains relations with Israel that may be classified as normalization. These claims are based on the fact that in 2012, Doueiri filmed his previous movie, The Attack,[1] in Israel. [2] The protesters even created a #Won't Be Screened hashtag on Twitter and expanded the protests to the universities.[3]

Following these events, the Palestinian BDS movement published an announcement expressing solidarity with those calling for the ban, in which they wrote: "In order to prevent the director from benefiting from the screening of his film in occupied Palestine and disseminating normalization in the Arab homeland, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel calls on the management and partners in the Days of Cinema festival to avoid screening the film The Insult... until new criteria are determined for the banning of and struggle against normalization that will deal with the problem in consultation with the society and with prominent cultural figures."[4]

As a result of this pressure, the Ramallah Municipality decided that the film would not be shown in the festival.[5] The Palestinian Ministry of Culture published a diplomatic response, expressing support for freedom of expression on the one hand, and understanding for the position of the BDS movement on the other.

For its part, the festival management expressed regret about the decision and stated that it violates freedom of expression.[6] Doueiri himself responded to the decision in a clip he posted on his Twitter account, in which he said that in the past he had ignored accusations levelled at him about normalization, but that now he had chosen to respond because the star of the film, Kamel Al-Basha, who had served time in an Israeli prison, could not be suspected of lack of patriotism. Al-Basha himself also responded to the accusations, saying that they were a personal vendetta against Doueiri, and declared that he was boycotting the boycott movement.[7] The director of the Venice Film Festival condemned the ban as well, in a message that he sent to the Palestinian Authority.[8]

A Knesset committee on Monday approved a bill prohibiting Knesset members from taking flights paid for by organizations viewed as supporting a boycott against Israel, the Walla website reported.

The organizations are those on a blacklist compiled by the Ministry for Strategic Affairs and published earlier this month.

The bill, approved by the House Committee, which is headed by Likud’s Yoav Kisch, does not need full Knesset approval and will go into effect immediately, the report said.

Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) said earlier this month that the 20 groups on the list to be barred from entering Israel are part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) and consistently and openly work to delegitimize Israel.

“Forming a list is another step in our campaign against the false propaganda of boycott organizations,” said Erdan, who is also public security minister. “No country would allow visitors who arrive to harm the country to enter it and certainly not when their goal is to wipe out Israel as a Jewish country.”

On January 23, 2018, the UN Human Rights Council reviewed Israel as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) framework. According to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, all UN Member States are reviewed on a rotating basis, examining “what actions they [Member States] have taken to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to fulfil their human rights obligations.”

In advance of and during Israel’s review, numerous self-proclaimed human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) took to social media where they made false and exaggerated accusations – for instance, accusing Israel of war crimes. This propaganda is standard practice for these NGOs – such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), Al-Haq, and Medical Aid for Palestinians – which focus on biased anti-Israel efforts while negating human rights violations committed by Palestinian factions.

The following is a selection of Tweets posted by leaders from different Israeli and internationals NGOs that highlight this concerted effort to influence the UN review process.

Amnesty International-UK’s Human Rights Centre in London was originally scheduled to host a debate on January 24, between Hillel Neuer of UN Watch and Fred Carver of the UN Association, moderated by human rights attorney and Yahad board member Danny Friedman. The event was sponsored by the UK’s Jewish Leadership Council.

A few days before the event (January 24), however, Amnesty-UK abruptly cancelled the event on the grounds that the organization was “currently campaigning for all governments around the world to ban the import of goods produced in the illegal Israeli settlements. We do not therefore think it appropriate for Amnesty International to host an event by those actively supporting such settlements.” Amnesty provided no support for its claims that the groups and speakers involved “actively support such settlements.”

This is the latest in a series of incidents involving extreme hostility towards Israel and the British Jewish Community by Amnesty-UK. It fits with Amnesty’s leading role in demonization and political warfare campaigns against Israel, including supporting BDS and lawfare campaigns.

For example, in April 2015, Amnesty-UK highlighted the organization’s hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy by rejecting a campaign against antisemitism in the UK. At Amnesty-UK’s 2015 Annual General Meeting, 16 of 17 motions were adopted. The only proposed resolution that was rejected called on Amnesty UK to “Campaign against anti-Semitism in the UK,” as well as “Lobby the UK Government to tackle the rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Britain” and “monitor anti-semitism closely.” According to the motion, “neither AIUK nor the [Amnesty] International Secretariat have undertaken research or campaigning work specifically on anti-Semitism in the UK.”

Canary Mission, which aims to expose anti-Semitic activity and hatred of Israel on campuses in North America, on Monday published a video documenting anti-Semitic statements by students in the United States and Canada affiliated with the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) group.

The video, released ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, shows the disturbing statements from the SJP activists against the backdrop of footage from the Holocaust. The statements include the following:

“Hitler should have killed the Jews when he had the chance that dog.”
“Every time I read about Hitler, I fall in love all over again.”
“I feel like a Jew that just entered Auschwitz concentration camp #starving.”
“I honestly don’t feel that sympathetic about the Holocaust. #SorryNotSorry.”
“Hitler should have took you all.”
“We need to put Zionists in concentration camps. Now that would be a life experience for them.”

Yad Vashem's expert on North African Jewry during WW2, Irit Abramski, responds to a Haaretz article alleging that North African Jewry has been excluded from Holocaust memory.

Eness Elias’ recent article about Holocaust commemoration in Israel (“Why North African Jews Are Missing From the Holocaust Narrative”) unfortunately contained some inaccuracies and claims that have no basis in reality.

In her piece, Elias mentions the terrible tragedy that occurred in the Giado (or Jadu) camp in Libya. In 1942, the Italian fascists imprisoned more than 2,600 Jews from Cyrenaica, and a few months later, more than 500 other Jews were sent here. The scenes at Giado were reminiscent of those in the Lodz and Warsaw ghettos: piles of dead bodies, with no one to bury them. However, contrary to what the article claimed, it is not the case that “there were many camps like Giado across North Africa.”

What happened in the Giado camp did not happen anywhere else in North Africa – not even in Tunisia, where there were 30 forced labor camps, most of them under the command of the SS.

Elias is angry at the prejudices against North African Jews and the silence concerning the fate of North African Jews in the Holocaust – particularly, seemingly, by Yad Vashem, whose mission “was to commemorate all the Jewish communities and the Jews murdered in the Holocaust. But until 2005, when a small memorial corner was created, the disaster of the North African communities was completely unrepresented.”

Last year, Fisher used his Times column to liken Israel to the brutal dictatorship of North Korea. That column was also riddled with factual errors that remain uncorrected.

When the Times hired Fisher in 2016, we warned that he would be trouble:
Mr. Fisher’s work for Vox on Israel and the Palestinian Arabs has been thoroughly and effectively shredded by both David Bernstein of the Washington Post (here and here) and Noah Pollak of the Washington Free Beacon (“Let us praise Vox Media and its stooges as they stagger and stumble from one hilarious mishap to another, smacking each other in the face with two-by-fours and stepping on rakes.”)

If President Trump had made these sorts of factually erroneous claims and left them uncorrected, the Times would be all over him for waging an unprecedented war on truth. Newly-installed Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger publicly frets, “Misinformation is rising and trust in the media is declining… Growing polarization is jeopardizing even the foundational assumption of common truths, the stuff that binds a society together.”

If Sulzberger really believes what he says about truth and misinformation — “We will continue to put the fairness and accuracy of everything we publish above all else — and in the inevitable moments we fall short, we will continue to own up to our mistakes” — he’ll ask Fisher and Fisher’s editor for a correction to the “neutrality” nonsense. If he lets it stand uncorrected, it will reflect poorly not only on Fisher, but also on the newspaper’s new publisher. Eventually the rake-stepping stops being hilarious and just becomes embarrassing.

Later on readers were told that:
“It follows accusations that she expressed “anti-Israel” views in a number of tweets from 2014.

Newsbeat has not seen the tweets as they have now been deleted but in her post, Amena apologises for them, saying she’s sorry for the “upset and hurt” they’ve caused.

“Championing diversity is one of my passions, I don’t discriminate against anyone,” she adds.”

Newsbeat could have taken a look at the Daily Mail’s report on the story (published over an hour before the final version of the BBC’s article appeared) which includes screenshots of some of Khan’s 2014 tweets.

On January 19th an article written by the BBC Hindi journalist Zubair Ahmed was published on the BBC News website’s ‘India’ and ‘Middle East’ pages under the title “Israel’s Indian Jews and their lives in the ‘promised land’“.

The article relates to one of the communities of Jews who immigrated to Israel from India – Bene Israel – and readers are told that: [emphasis added]

“…the biggest crisis faced by the community was in 1962 when the chief rabbinate prohibited Bene Israelis from marrying Jews from other communities.

Dr Weil said the community was up in arms. “They used to conduct sit-in strikes outside the chief rabbinate’s office saying they were Jews for more than 2,000 years and had the right to marry who they wanted.”

It took two years, but they finally succeeded in seeing their demands fulfilled.”

But is that account accurate? Did Israel’s Chief Rabbinate really ban members of the Bene Israel group from marrying other Israeli Jews in 1962?

Here is an article published in the ‘Herut’ newspaper on October 20th 1961 under the headline “The Chief Rabbinate rules: ‘Bene Israel’ from India are Jews and marriage with them is permitted”.

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein met parliamentarians and politicians in Brussels ahead of International Holocaust Memorial Day Tuesday. The Knesset Speaker warned that the memory of the Holocaust was fading in Belgium and that dangerous overtones of anti-Semitism were being ignored.

Edelstein began his remarks by recalling the 25,000 Belgian Jews murdered during the Holocaust.

"Even after the war, many in Belgium preferred not to look too deeply into the past and instead return to normal. It took time to uncover what had happened during the Holocaust," Edelstein said.

"Only in 2002, did the Senate commission a report on the state's role under the Nazi regime. Only in the past ten years have local leaders issued apologies for helping round up Jews. Only five years ago was the national Holocaust museum opened.

"This country has taken additional, noteworthy steps to ensure that the memory of the Holocaust lives on. Throughout the country, Holocaust education is now part of the school curriculum. Visits to concentration camps and local memorials are standard and play a critical role in raising a generation that is engaged with its history.

The UK’s representative Jewish body, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, issued an angry call on Monday for the removal of a senior London coroner who has been locked in dispute with the Jewish and Muslim communities over the disruption of burial ceremonies conducted according to religious law.

Under both Jewish and Islamic law, the bodies of the deceased require burial within one day of death.

In a statement issued on Monday carrying the headline “Hassell must go!”, the Board demanded that Mary Hassell, the senior coroner for Inner North London, be removed from her post.

The demand for Hassell’s removal came after what the Board described as a “deeply disappointing meeting” with the coroner on Friday, where she showed little interest in addressing the Jewish community’s concerns in her work.”

The row with Hassell broke out at the end of December, when the London Jewish Chronicle reported on several cases of Jewish burials delayed from taking place by Hassell’s directives, causing significant distress to the families involved. One Jewish woman was reported to have made 210 increasingly frantic phone calls to Hassell’s office before her father was released for burial on December 24.

The paper also reported on an exchange of letters between Hassell and representatives of the Jewish community in the East London borough of Hackney — home to a large haredi Jewish population — in which the coroner revealed that “no death will be prioritized in any way over any other because of the religion of the deceased or family, either by coroner’s officers or coroners.”

Following a television report about neo-Nazis in Poland, the leader of the country’s federation of Jewish communities said that extremists are thriving due to inaction by the government.

A TVN report over the weekend featured young men filmed displaying swastikas and speaking positively about Adolf Hitler. The report showed about 10 individuals from the Pride and Modernity group who celebrated Hitler’s birthday on April 20 at a private residence with a cake featuring a swastika glaze. They also burned a swastika made of wood.

Leslaw Piszewski, president of the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland, called out Polish authorities on Facebook in responding to the documentary.

“What else has to happen for us to look open our eyes, the authorities say that fascism and nazism are not tolerated in Poland,” he wrote. “I want to believe in these words, but let authorities do their job.”

Attorney General Zbigniew Ziobro vowed to act tough on the group and individuals pictured, who broke the law by displaying Nazi symbols.

“After Nazi Germany attacked, millions of people were murdered in occupied Poland, including three million Poles,” Ziobro wrote.

Two Berlin museums have returned works to the heirs of a Jewish collector who liquidated them during World War II, according to the Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage.

The foundation returned 11 works from the Museum of Decorative Arts and the Skulpturensammlung that had belonged to Margarete Oppenheim, whose family was forced to sell them at a deflated price to the National Socialists in 1936.

Margarete Oppenheim, widow of the chemist and industrialist Franz Oppenheim, died in 1935, six years after her husband. Her collection has been described as one of Germany’s largest and most valuable, containing works by Impressionists and small sculptures, as well as of porcelain, majolica, faience, and silver work.

The state arranged for the return of the works in keeping with the 20-year-old Washington Declaration signed by 44 countries committing themselves to seeking long-lost artwork that ended up in museums and other public collections. Germany was among the signers.

Five of the 11 works returned to the Oppenheim heirs were repurchased by the museums — two paintings on Christian religious themes from the 16th-century Donau School, and three 18th-century porcelain objects produced by the Meissen and Frankenthal firms.

The foundation has overseen the return of some 350 works of art and more than 1,000 books to the heirs of persecuted Jews.

Its president, Hermann Parzinger, said in a statement that he was grateful to the heirs for their role in coming to a “fair and just solution,” and added that the foundation remained dedicated to researching the provenance of works in Berlin museums.

As rabbis and politicians squabble over the role of women in the Israel Defense Forces, the first female commander of the IDF’s “sky riders” is leading the unit to greater heights, with two new types of drones designed to provide longer flight time and higher-quality intelligence gathering capabilities.

Lt. Col. Reut Rettig-Weiss took command of the Artillery Corps’ elite Sky Riders Unit, also known by its Hebrew acronym Rochash, this past July.

The unit, which was officially formed in 2010, gathers intelligence before and during missions using small, relatively low-cost drones, known in English as Skylarks and in Hebrew as Sky Riders.

“It’s hard for me to think of a recent major operation that we didn’t take part in,” Rettig-Weiss’s deputy, Maj. Nimrod, told The Times of Israel on Monday. (For security reasons, the major can only be identified by his first name.)
Soldiers from the IDF’s Sky Riders Unit launch a Skylark drone during an exercise in an undated photograph. (Israel Defense Forces)

According to Nimrod, this included the Israel Police’s raid on a house in the Palestinian city of Jenin last week, during a search for the terrorists believed to be responsible for a shooting attack earlier this month that killed an Israeli man. They also were involved in the army’s recent activities around the Gaza Strip, searching for and destroying terror groups’ attack tunnels that enter Israeli territory from the coastal enclave.

“The need for [visual intelligence] has changed. There are more tunnels now, more enemies hiding among a civilian population,” he said.

“This platform has broad capabilities to address this,” he said.

Israel and Italy finalized a $1.17 billion reciprocal procurement deal Sunday, with the Jewish state delivering a second advanced reconnaissance jet to the Italian Air Force.

The deal, originally inked in 2012, saw the Israeli Air Force purchase 30 Leonardo M-346 Lavi training jets. In return, Italy acquired two G550 Conformal Airborne Early Warning and Control (CAEW) surveillance planes, amounting to the equivalent value of the Israeli purchase.

“The system reflects the deep and fruitful cooperation between the Italian and Israeli defense ministries, including the understanding on each side of the needs and challenges facing the other,” said Dr. Danny Gold, head of Israel’s Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure.

The reconnaissance planes, developed by the Elta division of Israel Aerospace Industries, are equipped with the CAEW system, which provides a full aerial and maritime awareness to crews.

Written in encrypted ancient Hebrew, one of the last unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls has finally been deciphered by a University of Haifa post-doctoral researcher. According to Dr. Eshbal Ratson, the almost impossible year-long mission was like “putting together a jigsaw puzzle — without knowing what was the picture.”

Using hi-tech images provided by the Israel Antiquity Authority’s Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, Ratson, 38, spent countless hours in front of her computer manipulating, deciphering and joining the 60 minuscule “puzzle pieces” which now form a comprehensive “calendrical scroll,” a document which outlines the intricate mathematical computations used by the Qumran sect to set the rhythm of their year and way of life.

Its discovery is being hailed by scholars this week as “important” and “exciting.”
Inset of Plate 240 of fragments written in Cryptic A script from Cave 4 at Qumran. (Shay Halevi, Israel Antiquities Authority, The Leon Levy Library of the Dead Sea Scrolls)

“It’s always exciting to discover a pile of tiny fragments that were basically considered to be a hopeless conglomerate of fragments and realize that meaningful text can be extracted from that,” said Tel Aviv University Prof. Noam Mizrahi. “It is important on a number of levels.”

Women traveling alone are not allowed to enter the country unless they will be met at the airport by a husband, a sponsor or male relative. The Saudi Embassy advises women to dress conservatively in public; that means wearing ankle-length dresses with long sleeves and not pants. In many areas, particularly the capital, Riyadh, women are pressured to wear a full-length black covering called an abaya and to cover their heads. Women in restaurants not accompanied by a male relative often are not served, and religious police known as the Mutawwa travel in public watching for violations of social mores. Any public display of affection is considered offensive. A woman traveling with a man who is not her husband, sponsor or a male relative can be arrested.

(Hadas Parush/Flash90)

Gali Tibbon, AFP/Getty

When Nikki Haley visited the Wall, coverage access was also rigged to favor male reporters. Until Israeli news orgs & professional Israeli journalist orgs take gender discrimination seriously, or until we force them to so, we will continue to be in the back row. @NTarnopolsky

— Tovah Lazaroff (@tovahlazaroff) January 23, 2018

While the White House confirms that since the "Jerusalem Declaration" there has been a complete disconnect between the Palestinian Authority and the Trump administration, it turns out that the previous administration actually maintains contact with PA officials. Ma'ariv reported that former US Secretary of State John Kerry met in London with a close associate of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Hussein Agha, for a long and open conversation about a variety of topics. Agha apparently reported details of the conversation to senior PA officials in Ramallah. A senior PA official confirmed to Ma'ariv that the meeting took place.

During the conversation, according to the report, Kerry asked Agha to convey a message to Abbas and ask him to "hold on and be strong." Tell him, he told Agha, "that he should stay strong in his spirit and play for time, that he will not break and will not yield to President Trump's demands." According to Kerry, Trump will not remain in office for a long time. It was reported that within a year there was a good chance that Trump would not be in the White House.

Kerry offered his help to the Palestinians in an effort to advance the peace process and recommended that Abbas present his own peace plan. "Maybe it is time for the Palestinians to define their peace principles and present a positive plan," Kerry suggested. He promised to use all his contacts and all his abilities to get support for such a plan. He asked Abbas, through Agha, not to attack the US or the Trump administration, but to concentrate on personal attacks on Trump himself, whom Kerry says is solely and directly responsible for the situation.

According to the report, referring to the president, Kerry used derogatory terms and even worse.Kerry offered to help create an alternative peace initiative and promised to help garner international support, among others, of Europeans, Arab states and the international community. Kerry hinted that many in the American establishment, as well as in American intelligence, are dissatisfied with Trump's performance and the way he leads America. He surprised his interlocutor by saying he was seriously considering running for president in 2020. When asked about his advanced age, he said he was not much older than Trump and would not have an age problem.

In a report on the conversation, Agha said that Kerry appears to be "crazy about things," very energetic, and someone who is yearning to help realize the dream of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Kerry explained, according to the report, that even in the Republican Party they do not know what to do with Trump and are very dissatisfied with him and that patience and breathing time are needed to get through this difficult period.

The camps in the Palestinian Territories have become symbols of territorial illegitimacy because of two processes, one from above and one from below. From above, the camps are invisible in the Oslo process. The new regime of control by Israel divides the Palestinian Territories into Areas A, B and C, while the PNA divides the land according to refugee and non-refugee areas. It excludes the refugee camps from any urban or infrastructural project. From below, the camps as heterotopic places, in the Foucauldian sense, disconnected from the social and urban tissues in their neighboring areas. To an extent this disconnection has happened gradually, and has been expedited by the local elections, which excluded the refugee camp dwellers from voting. 

 Refugees outside the camps are illegible [sic]to vote in national legislative council and municipal elections, but refugees in the camps only participate in the national election

 Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 29, 2004
     “The Supreme National Committee for the Protection of the Right of Return, announced yesterday that it opposes the participation of the refugee camps in the local elections that are expected to take place in the Palestinian territories. The committee justified its objection as protecting the unique status of the refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank, considering them testimony to the crime that the occupation state made against our nation for 56 years. The committee warned of the dangers of integrating the refugee camps into the urban housing units.”

 In the late 1990s when the PNA began to consider holding municipal elections Palestinian refugees decided that those living in camps would not participate in order to avoid the impression that the camps were no different from West Bank and Gaza Strip towns and villages i.e. that the refugees were settled and no longer required a durable solution. 

Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA -- the UN agency responsible for providing services to some five million Palestinian refugees -- and residing in refugee camps across the West Bank are also barred from voting in elections. According to Palestinian rights group Badil, Palestinian refugees residing outside refugee camps are permitted to vote in national legislative council and municipal elections, while those residing in the camps are only allowed to participate in national elections.