Middle East

Hamas terrorists may very well have elevated the exploitation of human shields to an art. For years, they have taken advantage of the civilian population in Gaza by hiding among them, while targeting the civilian population of Israel with their rockets.
Now Hamas has done something new. The media would have you believe that Gazans in general, and Hamas in particular, are experimenting for the first time with peaceful protests, reminiscent of Martin Luther King and Selma. In reality, what is new is that Hamas has been using tens of thousands of Gazans -- including children -- as cover while trying to infiltrate Israel, both on land by breaching border fences and by air using kites carrying Molotov cocktails.

Palestinian child throwing rocks at IDF forces and the Gaza security fence during Gaza border riot.
Source: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)


One response to this breach of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) was reported last month, that Shurat HaDin was going to try to get the International Criminal Court to take action against Hamas:
The Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center is seeking International Criminal Court action against Hamas over the terrorist group’s use of children as human shields in the riots that have taken place over the past month on the Israel-Gaza Strip borderThe Rome Statute that established The International Criminal Court is clear that violations of International Law in an international conflict include:
Utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations
(ICC Statute, Article 8(2)(b)(xxiii))But that is not the statute that Shurat HaDin is going to use.

Instead:
The lawsuit is based on a clause in the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC’s work, which says that recruiting children under the age of 15 to any militant organization is a war crime.Why?

The use of Human Shields, like IHL in general, is contested. Even putting aside that both journalists and the man on the street like to consider themselves experts to the extent that they state opinions as fact, even those who are actually expert in IHL do not agree always agree.

For example, in her article Human Shields in International Humanitarian Law: A Guide to the Legal Framework, Beth Schaack, Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School writes about the Geneva Convention:
The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations. GC IV, Article 28. This rule applies to civilians as well as combatants who are hors de combat, such as prisoners of war. No prisoner of war may at any time be sent to, or detained in areas where he may be exposed to the fire of the combat zone, nor may his presence be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations. GC III, Article 23. Note: the Geneva Conventions in general protect only those individuals who are “in the hands of a Party … of which they are not nationals,” which may limit their application to individuals who are utilized as human shields by their co-nationals. GC IV, Article 4. (emphasis added)In other words, based on the wording of the Geneva Convention, when IHL forbids the use of Human Shields, it is talking about using citizens of the enemy country - not one's own citizens.

The actual wording of the relevant article of the Geneva Convention would seem to bear this out:
DEFINITION OF PROTECTED PERSONS
ARTICLE 4

Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.

Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it. Nationals of a neutral State who find themselves in the territory of a belligerent State, and nationals of a co-belligerent State, shall not be regarded as protected persons while the State of which they are nationals has normal diplomatic representation in the State in whose hands they are.Going a step further, based on the above, since Hamas is not a party to the Geneva Conventions, could it be that Gazans are not protected by the Geneva Convention from being used as Human Shields even if it applies to nationals?

I asked Dr. Robert P. Barnidge about this. He is Lecturer and Coordinator of International Relations at Webster University and Affiliated Professor at the University of Haifa. He is also the author of Self-Determination, Statehood, and the Law of Negotiation: The Case of Palestine. Dr. Barnidge clarified some of the points:

• Parties to an armed conflict, be the armed conflict an international armed conflict or a non-international armed conflict, cannot lawfully use human shields.
• While Hamas is not a High Contracting Party to the Geneva Conventions, meaning that it's not bound by the terms of the General Conventions, it's nonetheless bound by customary international humanitarian law.
• According to Rule 97 of the ICRC's Customary International Humanitarian Law Study, there is nothing to suggest its non-applicability when a state's own nationals are being used as human shields.

This law study is the interpretation of the Geneva Convention by the International Red Cross. Reading Rule 97, it is clear that the law regarding Human Shields applies across the board to both non-nationals and nationals.

This is important because while it’s true that the Geneva Conventions only bind states, in practice, the interpretation of the Geneva Conventions by the ICRC "holds a certain persuasive weight".

So far, so good.

But the Dr. Barnidge also pointed out:

• Although the authority of the ICRC could be seen as an extension of the same mandate the ICRC has from the signatories to the Convention, the ICRC’s interpretation of the Geneva Conventions is not binding per se. 
• The interpretation of International Humanitarian Law principles in practice is a contested terrain.

No one is going to argue against the ICRC and claim that an army is allowed to simply treat all civilians as combatants and attack them. However, there are variables such as the degree of participation in hostilities and the ability to distinguish civilians from combatants.

Keep in mind that in a previous post, What does the ICRC say about civilians rioting in support of a military objective? we saw that experts differed on the paradigm to be applied in the case of Human Shields -- the conduct of hostilities, law enforcement or a combination of the two.

Maybe the lack of absolute clarity in the area of Human Shields explains why Shurat HaDin is pursuing the lawsuit in terms of the recruitment of children, an issue more likely to generate a consensus from the ICC.

Shurat HaDin, in fact, has been working to shed light on the intersection of International Law and War. It has been holding conferences - "Towards a New Law of War."

In 2015, during one panel, "Confronting the Challenge of Human Shields: When Civilians Protect Weapons," Colonel Richard Kemp, suggested a solution to the problem of Human Shields. According to the summary of Col. Kemp's presentation:
How to stop the use of human shields? “Most people agree that the way to deter kidnappers is not to pay ransom, or grant them the concessions they demand,” he said. “The only reason kidnapping continue” is that “ransoms are paid and concessions are met,” he said.

“It’s exactly the same with human shields,” which “work very effectively,” Kemp said. “The only way to stop them is to stop their effectiveness.”

Militaries must be less deterred by human shields, he said, cautioning that “I’m not in any way advocating the unlawful slaughter of civilians on the battlefield, even when they are human shields.” In situations involving human shields, militaries should allow for greater collateral damage than they would normally accept. [emphasis added]Watch the segment below, excerpted to play the relevant portion of Col Kemp's presentation:



He goes on to examine how the Rome Statute might allow for more leeway.

Yet, three years later, we seem no closer to a military-legal solution of how to deal with Human Shields in a way that will dissuade their use.

On the other hand, Hamas has refined their use, incorporating civilians into riots on Israel's borders to provide cover for terrorism -- riots that the media is all too willing to present as peaceful protests.

But don't give Hamas all of the credit.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen writes about this new strategy of using civilians for stategic goals:
Over the past decade, the use of civilians as an operational stratagem has assumed a major role in conflict zones. For instance, the Russian government is using local separatists from the civilian population to spearhead the warfare in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk. Similarly, Beijing is making use of thousands of civilian fishing boats in its efforts to extend its sovereignty over the South China Sea. The combined use of civilians at the overt level and of the military system at the covert level, in a supportive secondary effort, is what has given this phenomenon its elusive characteristics. In the West, this is described as “hybrid warfare.” Russian military thinking, which sees an inherent advantage in the ambiguity stemming from combining civilians and soldiers, refers to this phenomenon as the “warfare of the new generation.”He goes on to describe to what has become known in the military world as the "Gerasimov doctrine." The Russians used this new strategy in Georgia, Crimea and Ukraine, where military force was used in combination with civilian activity. For example, in Georgia the pro-Russia citizens of Georgia seized tunnels and bridges on the expressway leading to the capital, Tbilisi. This enabled armed forces to enter the north of the country.

Screenshot of General of the Russian Army Valeriy Gerasimov
He concludes with a comparison with Hamas:
Against this backdrop, the images arriving from the confrontation along the Gaza fence need not be interpreted as IDF units suppressing civilian protests but as IDF forces protecting the kindergartens and civilians of the Nahal Oz and Kerem Shalom kibbutzim, which are about 200 meters from the fence and under threat from a terror organization in civilian guise.Gerasimov himself writes in The Value of Science Is in the Foresight: New Challenges Demand Rethinking the Forms and Methods of Carrying out Combat Operations
The focus of applied methods of conflict has altered in the direction of the broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other nonmilitary measures—applied in coordination with the protest potential of the population [emphasis added].Colonel Kemp's suggestion, seemingly extreme when he first offered it, may no longer be enough just 3 years later.


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J Street, founded back in November 2007, made no secret of its agenda in its beginnings. In 2009, co-founder Jeremy Ben-Ami admitted to New York Times journalist James Traub:
Our No. 1 agenda item is to do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president’s blocking back.Back then, there was also no secret about what kind of candidates J Street was going to support -- all you had to do was check their website.

• In 2010, J Street endorsed 61 candidates - all Democrats
• In 2012, J Street endorsed 41 candidates - all Democrats
• In 2014, J Street endorsed 71 candidates - all Democrats
• In 2016, J Street endorsed 73 candidates - all Democrats

That's 246 candidates J Street has endorsed during that time, and all of them Democrats.

So much for the importance of bi-partisan support for Israel.


Instead, when J Street claims it is "The Political Home for Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace Americans" -- it should admit that only Democrats need apply!

That page no longer exists.

Instead, these days there is a separate site, J Street Pac, which lists J Street Pac candidates. It lists the candidates according to name, state and office -- but unlike the obsolete page on the J Street site, this page does not list the party of the candidate.

So what kind of candidates is J Street going to support?
Since J Street claims to be pro-Israel, one would naturally suppose that J Street will make a point of supporting only those candidates whose pro-Israel bona fides are impeccable.

But then again, J Street's pro-Israel bona fides are themselves far from impeccable.

True, J Street claims to support Israel, that it is "pro-Israel, pro-peace".

But look at their record:

• Despite their repeated denials to the contrary, in 2008 and 2009 J Street received funding from George Soros, who is on nobody's list of top supporters of Israel.  

• In 2009, Ben Ami claimed J Street "refuses to embrace" the Goldstone Report, which criticized Israel on its conduct during Operation Cast Lead (December 27, 2008 - January 18, 2009). But when a resolution was sponsored in Congress condemning the report, Goldstone circulated a document to defend it. The source of the report traced to Mort Halperin of the J Street advisory council. In 2011, Goldstone himself repudiated his own report.  

• In fact, J Street went so far as to facilitate visits for Goldstone to the Hill  

• Already in 2009, there were connections between JStreet and NIAC, a pro-Iranian advocacy group that would become instrumental in pushing the Iran deal -- which J Street still supports.  

• More recently, last year J Street brought "Breaking the Silence" to speak during Yom HaZikaron and Yom Haatzmaut.

So if this is the kind of organization J Street is, we can expect that the candidates it supports reflect J Street's own anti-Israel animus.

Here is a recent example that proves the point.

On April 25, a letter signed by 3 Congressmen was sent to Ron Dermer, Israeli ambassador to the US to oversee the use of US tax dollars for humanitarian aid in Gaza:



Among the points the letter claims:

• There is a decade-old blockade of Gaza - not mentioning that the blockade was instituted as a response to the bloody Hamas coup that led to the increased threat of rockets and terror attacks. Also not mentioned is the millions of tons of food and supplies provided by Israel, a fact that challenges the claim that there is a "blockade"  

• The threat to the water and electricity is mentioned generally, as if Israel is to blame for shortages, with no mention that the government is run by a terrorist organization, which should be held responsible for its actions -- but is not.  

• Aid through UNRWA is referred to as having a security function, despite the numerous examples of the anti-Israel bias of UNRWA, as documented by Elder of Ziyon  

• Israel denied their request in June 2016 to enter Gaza, a request they claim was without justification. It would be convenient for Israel to give a reason and justification for refusing the request, but the fact remains it is Israel's border and it has the right to refuse. 

• The letter suggests that in refusing the request, Israel does not want them to see the worsening conditions in Gaza -- again implying that Israel is responsible for them.

The 3 Congressmen who signed the letter -- Pocan, Kildee and Johnson -- are supported by J Street. What else do we know about them?

The Washington Free Beacon reported that Representative Mark Pocan was identified as the member of Congress who last year anonymously reserved official Capitol Hill space for an anti-Israel forum organized by organizations that support boycotts. In the end, Pocan did not attend the anti-Israel forum he sponsored. A senior Congressional official was quoted as saying
[Pocan] chose to facilitate a pro-BDS smear campaign using taxpayer dollars without even showing his face at the event...As millions of Jews and non-Jews alike celebrate the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, Congressman Pocan and his J-Street lackeys are spending their time working to undermine the state of Israel.Senator Mark Pocan official photo

Another of the 3 Congressmen, Representative Hank Johnson, referred to Israelis living in Judea and Samaria as...termites:
There has been a steady [stream], almost like termites can get into a residence and eat before you know that you’ve been eaten up and you fall in on yourself, there has been settlement activity that has marched forward with impunity and at an ever increasing rate to the point where it has become alarming.Johnson's 2016 statement of "increasing" settlement activity is easily refuted by the facts. Keep in mind that Johnson is the one who claimed in 2010 that stationing 8,000 Marines on Guam would cause the island to "become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize."

As an apology for his dehumanizing comment, Johnson said his comment was a:
Poor choice of words – apologies for offense...Point is settlement activity continues slowly undermine 2-state solution.Senator Hank Johnson official photo
As for Congressman Kildee, he was one of 3 Congressman in 2016 who met with Shawan Jabarin, an Arab terrorist affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Mark Pocan and Hank Johnson were among them. Such a meeting implies sloppy vetting - or worse.

Senator Daniel Kildee official photo
When you compare the statements and actions of J Street with those of Senators Mark Pocan, Hank Johnson and Daniel Kildee they do seem to be a good fit -- they all undermine Israel.



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Someone limited to just the media coverage of the "Gaza March," could be forgiven for thinking that the issue of the IDF's Rules of Engagement (RoI) during those riots is e a simple matter of math - most of the Gazans rioting at Israel's border are civilians, so that should be the guiding rule for Israel's response.

But it is not that simple.


The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has a report that illustrates that point. In 2012, the ICRC convened a meeting of experts on The Use of Force in Armed Conflicts: Interplay Between The Conduct of Hostilities and Law Enforcement Paradigms. It examines the connection between the "conduct of hostilities paradigm" for dealing with fighters and the "law enforcement paradigm" for dealing with civilians during an armed conflict.

The report presents scenarios, along with the differing opinions of experts on how force should be used. The expert opinions are presented anonymously.

Flag of the ICRC

One of the case studies presented is "Riots in armed conflict situations":
In the context of a non-international armed conflict, a demonstration to protest against the governments’ repression of the insurgency takes place. More than a hundred people gather on the main street of the capital, where government troop are based. Initially, the protest is peaceful. After some attempts by the government army to disperse the crowd (e.g. with a loudspeaker), the crowd becomes more aggressive and starts to throw rocks at the soldiers. At the same time, fighters take advantage of the riot and attack the soldiers with rifles. Some contend that fighters instrumentalized the population and incited it to demonstrate in order to hide in the crowd and to conduct an attack.This roughly corresponds to the situation Israel is facing now.

According to the report, as long as the actions of the civilians do not cross the required threshold of harm, the "law enforcement" paradigm applies as opposed to "conduct of hostilities." The vast majorities of experts believed that it was best to combine the two paradigms into a parallel approach: apply law enforcement to the civilians and conduct of hostilities to the fighters.

Sounds so simple - even a journalist could have come up with it.

But keep in mind that according to those ICRC experts, incidental damage among the civilians would not be prohibited -- as long as the force used is not excessive in relation to the direct military advantage that is anticipated. In other words, as long as disproportionate force is not used.

And we already know what a simple issue that is.

Outside of that, rioting civilians, unlike fighters, cannot be considered to be directly participating in hostilities. Therefore the rioting civilians cannot be targeted using the "conduct of hostilities" paradigm and under International Humanitarian Law, the presence of fighters does not change the overall civilian nature of the group. Again, it sounds straightforward.

However, according to footnote 70 of the report:
One expert expressed the view however that, in some wholly exceptional cases, rioting civilians can be considered as directly participating in hostilities if they are performing acts of violence which are specifically designed to harm directly the State having to face the riot in support of its enemy. This would be the case, for example, if a riot is led by the enemy in order to destroy the military equipment of the State’s armed forces or in order to divert attention of the armed forces and conduct a military operation in a nearby village. In this exceptional situation, the rioters are actually civilians directly participating in hostilities and become targetable under a conduct of hostilities paradigm.According to this opinion, the rioting civilians can be considered to be directly participating in hostilities:

• if it is determined that a riot has as its goal to conduct a military operation in a nearby village
• if the violence is designed to harm the State facing the riots.

The first case arguably is the current case of the Gaza riots, where one of the clear goals is to infiltrate the border fence...



...and if possible reach the Israeli communities nearby.

Source: IDF on Twitter

The second case describes the latest attempts to use kites to carry Molotov cocktails across the border and set fires in Israel.

Kite with Molotov cocktail being flown from Gaza into Israel

In such a situation, according to this opinion, because the civilians are directly participating in hostilities, the paradigm of "conduct of hostilities" and not law enforcement applies - and those civilians taking those steps can be targeted.

Another wrinkle is that according to International Law, as quoted in the report, the presence of civilians does not provide carte blanche for the entire group to act with impunity: “[t]he presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations.”

Instead, if rioting civilians commit acts of violence, then force may be used under "law enforcement" paradigm, which would allow an escalation of force.

On top of all that, the experts who preferred to combine both paradigms -- applying the rules of law enforcement to civilians and of war to fighters -- found their own solution to be impractical:

• How could soldiers distinguish between fighters (who might not distinguish themselves), civilians directly participating in hostilities and rioters who are not directly participating in hostilities?
• How could soldiers be expected to apply two different paradigms at the same time and place?
• Moreover, in most situations of armed conflicts, belligerents may not have snipers able to target surgically fighters among the crowd and thus targeting them may cause excessive incidental civilian losses in violation of IHL.
• Also, situations of civilian unrest in the context of an armed conflict can be highly volatile and can turn into actual armed clashes amounting to hostilities. 

And then there is the issue of self-defense.
Thus, even if a fighter not using lethal force could be identified and targeted, armed forces would be instructed not to do so because of the risk to cause excessive incidental civilian losses. Instead, if the fighter is using force, he might be targeted under self-defence rules, by a sniper for exampleThese are just a few of the variables involved, according to the ICRC report.

In writing about The Blurred Distinction Between Armed Conflict and Civil Unrest: Recent Events in Gaza, Liron Libman, former Chief Military Prosecutor and Head of the International Law Department in the IDF notes:
"The purpose of IHL is to strike a balance between military necessity and humanitarian concerns during an armed conflict. Rules that ignore legitimate military needs are not likely to be sustainable."The idea that International Law looks out for military necessity, and not only humanitarian rights, is lost on journalists and those who freely volunteer their personal opinion of international law as a club to beat the IDF whenever a military situation arises.

In any case, it has been reported that the IDF Chief of staff has ordered a probe will address the issue of civilian casualties.

The ICRC report illustrates that the issues are not nearly as simple and straightforward as the media has been presenting it. Maybe the proposed probe will lead to further clarification of the issues involved.




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Pragmatic: relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters : practical as opposed to idealistic.
Merriam-Webster

To be a pragmatist is to be a realist, someone who understands that there are times that one's idealism or ideology has to give way to different means, even if contrary to that ideology, if one is going to achieve a successful end.

And that is what the new philosophy of Hamas is all about - at least that is what The New York Times believes.

This week, David Halbfinger - who took over last year as the new Jerusalem Bureau Chief for The New York Times - reported that Hamas Sees Gaza Protests as Peaceful — and as a ‘Deadly Weapon’. Halbfinger went on to write approvingly of the Gazan riots controlled by the Hamas terrorists:
Its experiment with popular resistance may or may not be wholehearted, but it is indisputably pragmatic. [emphasis added]Pragmatic?


Hamas logo

Now keep in mind that when Halbfinger started his new position, Times International Editor Michael Slackman and Deputy International Editor Greg Winter wrote of him in their announcement of Halbfinger’s appointment that
He has written hard-hitting investigations of corrupt public officials and businessmen, murderous prison guards, law-breaking Hollywood moguls...No one would claim Halbfinger's writing of Hamas to be hard-hitting or as particularly 'investigative' for that matter.

In his article about the riots last week, Halbfinger described the "protest" as "generally nonviolent." He also summed up that a riot replete with throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, tire burning, explosives and attempts to infiltrate the fence separating the rioters from nearby Israeli communities was "for Gazans, even a tentative experiment with nonviolent protest is a significant step" -- even while granting that Hamas "seeks Israel’s destruction, has always advocated armed struggle."

Getting back to Halbfinger's description of Hamas as "pragmatic," a search of the New York Times website for articles containing both the words "Hamas" and "pragmatic" turned up 247 hits - not exactly scientific, but here are some of the articles that came up:

For 2017 three articles come up on the first page or two of results:

New Hamas Charter Would Name ‘Occupiers,’ Not ‘Jews,’ as the Enemy
Ian Fisher and Majd Al Waheidi, March 9, 2017
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that has governed the Gaza Strip for a decade, is drafting a new platform to present a more pragmatic and cooperative face to the world, Hamas officials confirmed on Thursday. [emphasis added]Actually, the Hamas charter did not change, Hamas still vows to destroy Israel and continues to encourage terrorist attacks against civilians. Yet the word "pragmatic" is not used sarcastically.

In Palestinian Power Struggle, Hamas Moderates Talk on Israel
Ian Fisher, May 1, 2017
Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said the group had to move beyond its original charter to achieve its goals. “The document gives us a chance to connect with the outside world,” he said. “To the world, our message is: Hamas is not radical. We are a pragmatic and civilized movement. We do not hate the Jews. We only fight who occupies our lands and kills our people.” [emphasis added]Again, the article does present both sides on the Hamas claim of pragmatism, but the idea is not directly challenged.

Hamas Offer Reflects Pressure From Egypt and Fatah
David M. Halbfinger, September 19, 2017
Mr. Abbas’s quick and positive reply on Monday — he spoke by telephone with Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political director, and promised to follow up after returning from the United Nations gathering in New York — prompted some to ask whether renewed Egyptian diplomatic assertiveness and pragmatic new Hamas leadership had managed to turn a page on the long-running rivalry.Here, Halbfinger goes so far as to present Hamas pragmatism as fact, for which there is precedent 11 years earlier:

Pragmatic Hamas Figure Is Likely to Be Next Premier
Greg Myre, February 17, 2006
Hamas plans to nominate Ismail Haniya, viewed as one of its less radical leaders, for prime minister, The Associated Press reported, citing a Hamas official in Damascus.Does anyone today consider Haniya "pragmatic" or a "moderate"?

Ismail Haniya. Source: Haniya

Maybe claims of Hamas pragmatism are the stubborn insistence that the predicted moderation of Hamas upon assuming power is finally beginning to materialize. But if so, it will take more than praising Hamas terrorists as pragmatists.

Mark Twain once described pragmatism like this:
The man who sets out to grab a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful.Hamas has had several useful lessons after having been repulsed by Israel on multiple occasions and to a degree neutralized, being pressured by Egypt and after having failed to get the international support and recognition that its fellow terrorist group, Hezbollah, has achieved.

No doubt Hamas has learned a lesson, but what The New York Times and Mr. Halbfinger have failed to do when referring to Hamas as pragmatic is to make clear whether Hamas is in fact being pragmatic in its ends - moderating its declared goal of the destruction of Israel - or whether it is merely being pragmatic in the means to achieve that goal.

Over and over, what self-confident journalists call pragmatism in Hamas is what with hindsight is just deception.

But what about The New York Times description of Israel?

When referring to Israel as pragmatic, The New York Times has - on occasion - used the term sarcastically, critical of whether there is a sincere change of heart.

That is especially true when describing Netanyahu:

What Does Netanyahu Really Want?
Gal Beckerman, December 8, 2016 - Review of "The Resistible Rise of Benjamin Netanyahu" by Neill Lochery
Pragmatism doesn’t tell us much. Every successful politician is pragmatic, if this simply means reading and responding to your public. What Lochery fails to explore are the consequences of Bibi’s “pragmatism” in a place like Israel. Because, in practice, pragmatism for Netanyahu means twisting every which way to avoid confronting the problems of the occupation. [emphasis added]Benjamin Netanyahu. Credit: State Department photo/ Public Domain


Netanyahu Names Avigdor Lieberman Israeli Defense Minister as Party Joins Coalition
Isabel Kershner, May 25, 2016
For all of Mr. Lieberman’s bluster, many Israeli analysts predict that he will become more pragmatic once he takes office. [emphasis added]Hamas disproved those who predicted political responsibility would soften their ideology and rhetoric, but that did not stop the pundits who predicted that Lieberman would soften his views.

When Netanyahu won in 2009, there were those who insisted that if pragmatism was not inherent in the newly elected leadership, perhaps it could be chemically induced, especially if Western values could somehow rub off on the Palestinian Arabs:

Netanyahu to Form New Israel Government
Isabel Kershner, February 20, 2009
A broad government joined by the center and left would likely promote a more pragmatic agenda and avoid friction with Israel’s most important ally, the United States...
Ms. Livni has staked her political career on promoting negotiations with the more pragmatic, Western-backed Palestinian leadership for a two-state solution.Tzipi Livni. Public domain

But on the same day:

Netanyahu, Once Hawkish, Now Touts Pragmatism
Ethan Bronner, February 20, 2009
To many here, it is increasingly likely that Mr. Netanyahu’s government will consist exclusively of parties from the right, which oppose a Palestinian state and favor expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, making it much harder for him to exercise his pragmatic penchant.Whatever Bronner's feelings about Netanyahu's "pragmatism," the editor who wrote the headline would have nothing of it.

But 11 years earlier, during Netanyahu's first term in office, there was no sarcasm:

Without Joy, Netanyahu Wins Vote to Adopt Peace Agreement
Deborah Sontag, November 18, 1998
The Israeli Parliament approved the American-brokered peace plan today by a significant majority, reflecting the widespread, pragmatic acceptance here of partitioning the Land of Israel. [emphasis added]and a few weeks earlier:

Returning Home, Netanyahu Faces The Real Battle
Deborah Sontag, October 26, 1998
At the airport in Tel Aviv, despite the chilly reception from the settlers, Mr. Netanyahu received not only a formal brass-band welcome but also a genuinely enthusiastic one from Cabinet ministers and from the rank and file of his Likud Party. This suggested that he has successfully moved his political camp onto new ideological terrain where territorial compromise with the Palestinians, long anathema, has been accepted as a pragmatic reality. [emphasis added]Yet there may have always been a wariness of Netanyahu's polemical prowess:

Israel's Likud Passes Torch, Naming Netanyahu Leader
Clyde Haberman, March 26, 1993
No modern politician here has logged more time on American television than Mr. Netanyahu, explaining in idiomatic English Israel's positions on international terrorism and the Persian Gulf war. And no Israeli politician has adopted a more American campaign style, from his crafted sound bites to his cross-country barnstorming by bus.

So successful is he at reducing his pragmatically hawkish opinions to manageable television proportions that some in Likud -- allies as well as foes -- worry that he is prey to accusations that he is not a deep thinker. One task before him now, these Israelis say, is to prove that he is more than glib.
Similarly, Rabin's electoral victory, ending 15 years of Likud governing was a victory for...pragmatism:

Israel's Likud Passes Torch, Naming Netanyahu Leader
Clyde Haberman, June 28, 1992
Forget for a moment about which parties landed on top and which on the bottom in Israel's national election last week. The real winner was pragmatism and the big loser uncompromising ideology. [emphasis added]Haberman went so far as to see
...the complex combination of events behind the upheaval that ended 15 years of Likud governance, threatening that party's stability and dashing the conventional wisdom that Israel's political drift is inexorably rightward.Yitzhak Rabin,  Source: Israel Defense Forces. Public domainSo much for that idea.

One can appreciate the frustration of The New York Times.

(Maybe they are the ones who need to be more...pragmatic.)






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My interview with Rabbi Michael Shudrich originally appeared in the March 23rd print issue of The Jewish Press and on their online edition. It is posted here with permission.


Rabbi Michael Schudrich. Credit: Rabbi Michael Schudrich

Although several weeks have passed, indignation over Poland’s “Holocaust Law” still pervades the Jewish community. The law outlaws blaming Poland for crimes committed during the Holocaust, but it has been seen by many as an attempt to deny the Holocaust itself. In reaction, some have suggested boycotting Poland, including ending student trips to the country.

Rabbi Michael Schudrich, chief rabbi of Poland, sees matters in a very different light, arguing that much of the criticism of the new law is misplaced. He recently shared his perspective with The Jewish Press.

The Jewish Press: Before we address the new law, please provide a brief primer on the modern Jewish community of Poland?


Rabbi Schudrich: What’s important to know is that before the war there were 3.5 million Jews, who were murdered by the Germans and their accomplices. That still leaves 10 percent – 350,000 Polish Jews – survived the war. Most of the Jews left, but not all. Those that remained basically stayed in Communist Poland without being Jewish. Many did not even tell their children and grandchildren that they were Jewish.

It remained a deep dark secret from 1939 to 1989. In 1989, communism fell, at which point the not-so-young survivors were confronted with the question: Do I feel safe enough today to tell my children and grandchildren that I am really Jewish? Since 1989, thousands and thousands – perhaps even tens of thousands – of Poles have discovered their Jewish roots. That is the story of Polish Jewry today.

What’s your take on Poland’s new “Holocaust Law”?

The law was not written with the Holocaust as its main concern. It is designed to protect the good name of Poland from false accusations. There really is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the law is about. To say “Polish death camps” is not true, and it is very painful for Poles to hear it.

Now, the way they constructed the law, one could imagine that it speaks about Polish collaborators. But this law is not about the Holocaust directly; it’s about protecting the good name of Poland.

There is a growing number on the right that doesn’t like to talk about the bad things Poles did in the past. But it’s not about distorting the history of the Holocaust. It’s not anti-Semitic; it’s pro-Polish. In other words, it’s not that they don’t want to talk about the fact their grandfathers or uncles collaborated with the Germans because they don’t like Jews. Rather, they don’t want to talk about their grandfathers and uncles [having done something] bad.

Now, the problem is that the way they wrote this very poorly-written law may make it seem like I can be prosecuted if I say a Pole killed a Jew during the war. But fundamentally, this law is not about the tragedy of what happened to the Jews. It’s about hiding what the Poles did.

But isn’t hiding this history a distortion of history?

Yes, but on the other side, to say that all Poles are anti-Semites is also a distortion of history. When survivors say the Poles were worse than the Germans, that’s because the Germans could not tell a Jew from a non-Jew in Poland, and therefore Polish collaborators became very important because they could point out the Jews. The Jews were more threatened by their Polish neighbor than by the Germans who wouldn’t recognize them.

But people misunderstand today. They think the Polish government worked with the Germans. That is simply not true. Germans thought of the Holocaust, planned the Holocaust, and did the Holocaust with the help of collaborators in every country. But without the Germans, there would have been no Holocaust.

So there is a battle against stereotypes on both sides. Now I, personally, as a Jew, am far more offended by the false stereotypes that Poles say about Jews than I am by the false stereotypes Jews say about Poles. What I hear from the Polish side is more difficult than what I hear from the Jewish side. But that anti-Semitic things are said in Poland doesn’t mean we are permitted to say anti-Polish lies.

What does the average Pole on the street think of this law?

Poland was not really free until 1989. It was occupied by the Soviet Union. Poland has only been able to deal with its past since 1989, and this is coming up now because some Poles feel their name is being besmirched. Unfortunately, the way they reacted leaves them worse off than they were before, which is a great irony.

They are a certain segment of the population that likes the law very much. And there is a whole other bunch of people that really don’t get why it is necessary. I believe that certainly more than half the country is against the law.

Has Poland seen a rise in anti-Semitism since this controversy erupted?

For me the concern is not rising anti-Semitism, but that we have heard – because of this controversy – anti-Semitic statements that we have not heard in 25 years. That is the issue.

You have been quoted as saying that Jews should respond to this law by “looking for new ways to connect with the [Polish] Jewish community.” How should they go about doing that?

When people say, “Stop going to Poland,” who is that going to hurt? The Poles would actually be relieved not to have to confront Jewish visitors. And the truth is that right now is the most sensitive period we’ve lived through in 25 years, and all of a sudden we are left by ourselves.

[The boycott] isn’t happening – people have not stopped coming to visit Poland. But the concept is very flawed. So many tens of thousands of Jews visit today. We recently had the yahrzeit of Reb Elimelech of Lizhensk. Many Jews come for many different reasons. And when you come, you should make sure to stop by a living Jewish community such as Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz, Wroclaw, and Gdansk. Bring presents, even small things like your favorite Jewish book or favorite Jewish music tape.

People should write to the Polish embassies and consulates where they live and tell them they are concerned by what’s happening. Write also to your senator and congressman to keep the pressure on — about the law, but also about not allowing discussion of it to permit people to make anti-Semitic statements.

You have been in contact with members of the Polish government. What is your assessment of where they stand on this law?

The problem is no longer the law; the problem is the language and dialogue – or lack of dialogue – around the law. The government has to clearly state that the anti-Semitism we’ve heard is unacceptable. That has nothing to do with the law. People cannot say anti-Semitic things today and think it’s acceptable.

This is something the Polish government is trying to address, but so far has not done so very successfully. They are not sure how to do it. Of all the political leaders in Poland, the president has been the most forthcoming. He visited the JCC in Krakow and said there is no place for anti-Semitism in Poland today and that Poland wants its Jews to stay, which is important for a Polish leader to say. He also spoke on the 50th anniversary of the expulsion of Jews from Poland in 1968 and asked for forgiveness. Keep in mind that he was very young back then.

Where do you see the Jewish community in Poland 20 years down the road?

Twenty years from now? I can’t imagine because I couldn’t begin to imagine 20 years ago what would be today.



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We will take down the border (with Israel) and we will tear out their hearts from their bodies.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, April 6, 2018, on Al Jazeera TV

The sit-in demonstration is set to culminate on May 15 — the day after Israeli independence
NBC News, April 5, 2018

Once again, whenever the conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Israel heats up, a second, parallel story develops as well: the media bias towards Israel.

Take The New York Times, for example.





On April 7, David Halbfinger reported Though Deadly, Gaza Protests Draw Attention and Enthusiasm. He informs us that:
Palestinians seem energized and enthusiastic about sustaining a generally nonviolent form of protest. [emphasis added]Halbfinger has no problem writing that "Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza and seeks Israel’s destruction, has always advocated armed struggle" -- and then without skipping a beat Harbfinger claims that "so for Gazans, even a tentative experiment with nonviolent protest is a significant step."

It's not just any Islamic militant group seeking the destruction of its enemy that experiments with nonviolent protest.

The Financial Times has a similar problem using the "T" word.

The Financial Times quotes Ahmad Abu Artema, one of the organizers of the protest, who admits
Hamas was no interloper — he and his colleagues, mostly penniless, disorganised and inexperienced, invited the Islamist movement in, hoping for logistics, some media coverage and moral supportand then, like Harbfinger, the article tries to soften the implications of Hamas involvement, claiming that
Hamas ordered its civilian employees to join the march, shipped in food and water and set up tents. Like everything else in Gaza, the march belonged to Hamas, and threatened to trigger a new bout of confrontation between the militants and Israeli forces. [emphasis added]The Financial Times will not come right out and report that these "civilian employees" are trained terrorists, nor will The New York Times. In fact, the word "terrorist" does not appear in either article.

Writing in The National Post, Vivian Bercovici, a former Canadian ambassador to Israel now living in Tel Aviv, writes about the discrepancy between the claim for peaceful protests and the reality:
Israel’s critics claim the IDF fired recklessly on a “peaceful protest,” massacring innocents. Thing is, peaceful protests do not encourage participants to overrun an international border, or use weapons, while threatening to conquer the country and murder its people. Thousands of Israeli civilians live within a few hundred metres of this fence, in agricultural settlements that have been undisputedly part of Israeli territory since 1948. Peaceful protests are not organized by terrorist organizations and led by terrorist leaders, some of whom show up with Molotov cocktails and other weapons.If taking Hamas talking points about nonviolence is not jarring to The New York Times' readers, then chances are that neither is any of the other propaganda points that the article takes at face value.

For example, Harbfinger writes that Israel uses "disproportionate force to prevent what they believe could be a catastrophic breach in the Gaza fence." The phrase "disproportionate force" is a term used in international law, and in that usage goes beyond just one side causing more damage or taking more lives than the other one.

Harbfinger uses another term of international law out of its proper context when he writes about Gazans wanting to "protest Israel’s longstanding blockade of the impoverished territory and its two million residents" and that "the 11-year-old blockade by Israel and Egypt has driven it into crisis." [emphasis added]

In What The New York Times Isn’t Telling You About Israel’s Gaza ‘Blockade’, Ira Stoll describes the hundreds of thousands of tons of supplies -- medical, agricultural and building -- to Gaza, in addition to water and electricity. The fact that Israel controls its border with Gaza, Stoll notes, is something that nearly all countries do with their borders.

He concludes:
Accusing Israel of a “blockade” of Gaza when in fact Israel is allowing food, medicine, building supplies, electricity, and water into the territory is inaccurate. It gives Times readers a false impression of what is actually happening, uncritically echoing Palestinian propaganda. That’s not to say that the situation in Gaza is a picnic. But the blame for it lies with the Hamas terrorist organization, not with Israel or some “blockade” imagined by Times journalists.Harbfinger appears particularly invested in the Palestinian Arab narrative. He quotes Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, who "likened attempts to cross Israel’s fence to American civil rights marchers’ attempts to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., more than 50 years ago"

Here are some pictures of that protest march across Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965:

Edmund Pettus Bridge March. Source: Pinterest

Here is a picture of the Gazan "peace march" from Halbfinger's article:

photo from New York Times article. Fair use

Notice any difference?

Mr. Munayyer doesn't. Harbfinger goes on to quote him that
it’s very important in this moment for the international community to be supportive of the protesters. They’ve always said, ‘Abandon militancy, abandon violence.’Actually, what "they" have said is to stop the terrorist attacks and the deliberate murder of civilians - a distinction apparently lost on both gentlemen.

Harbfinger also quotes Nathan Thrall, an analyst for International Crisis Group "who closely watches Gaza."

According to Thrall, "you had huge numbers going on their own initiative," a claim we already saw undercut by the Financial Times quote of one of the organizers. He goes on to claim that Palestinian Arabs "feel that the Arab states are not so much stabbing them in the back as in the face with their open embrace of Israel" - more than an objective observation

In fact, Thrall is more than someone who watches. Thrall is the author of the book "The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine." Last year, Thrall wrote a piece for The Guardian, entitled Israel-Palestine: the real reason there’s still no peace, an article described as "an adapted extract" from his book.

Thrall is a big fan of using force to achieve peace, especially applied to Israel, based on the premise that "Israel, for its part, has consistently opted for stalemate" -- as opposed to accepting the standard proposals that have been suggested for peace. Thrall advocates applying force on Israel, following the examples of Eisenhower, Ford, Carter and James Baker.

But to Thrall's dismay, US Administrations seem to have stopped applying that kind of pressure.
As a result, Palestinians have been unable to induce more from Israel than tactical concessions, steps meant to reduce friction between the populations in order not to end occupation but to mitigate it and restore its low cost.Counted among those mere "tactical" concessions are apparently the establishment of Palestinian Arab control over Gaza and "the West Bank". This seems to be chump change to Thrall, who instead advocates "forcing Israel to make larger, conflict-ending concessions [that] would require making its fallback option so unappealing that it would view a peace agreement as an escape from something worse."

Harbfinger could not have picked anyone more enthusiastic to add his two cents on the Gaza riots. He can quote whomever he likes, but he should have alerted the reader to Thrall's bias instead of presenting him as someone providing objective commentary.

But with all of that, maybe things are changing.
These protests could represent a change in Hamas's fortunes.

Dexter Van Zile, Christian Media Analyst for CAMERA writes Don’t be fooled: Hamas is losing:
Hamas, a group that was previously able to terrorize Israelis with suicide bombings, kidnappings and rocket attacks, is now reduced to staging riots, setting truck tires on fire and getting its young leaders killed in hopeless confrontations with the IDF to generate sympathetic media coverage. News outlets assist Hamas in its PR war, but the fact is, Israelis are increasingly safe from Hamas attacks — and that’s the story that matters.
Here is how Israel Hayom's Ron Gordon describes "The Evolution of Palestinian Terror":



That said, perhaps we could finally be due for a change in that media coverage.

Writing about Downhill slide: Posturing over the ‘plight of Gaza’ has passed peak virtue-signaling, J.E. Dyer -- a retired US Navy intelligence officer -- notes:
It probably doesn’t feel this way to the people trying to explain why Israel has to defend herself, but over the past week, since Hamas’ border fence “protests” from Gaza cranked up, there has been a distinctly tinny, perfunctory sound to the adverse media coverage and political shouting.

...The difference between now and a few years ago is that there is mostly a flat, exhausted silence surrounding the rote paroxysms from the legacy media and the West’s radical partisans of Hamas. The public mind has moved on.

It has done so for good reason. The “Palestinian” narrative was always manufactured: a great disservice to the Arabs in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, because it was false and misleading, and never about constructing a future for them.

The narrative’s essentially worthless nature is thrown into stronger relief by the tectonic shifts of regional geopolitics. The Syrian civil war, with its growing Iranian menace and its recurring chemical weapon attacks, is only a few dozen miles away. Hamas bearing the brand of Iran, on the other side of Israel, is not a net positive for anyone but the radical mullahs of Qom.Could the Middle East really be changing?
And if so, how long will it take the public -- and the media -- to pick up on it?



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

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

Art by a teenage Bethlehem artist, entitled Resolution 194,
a UN resolution. The keys symbolize those kept as mementos
by many Palestinians who left their homes in 1948
It is a poignant symbol - but apparently, Arabs have been known to hold onto their keys before.


In 2005, In 2005, Spain passed a law granting the right of citizenship to Sephardic Jews who were descendants of the Jews who in 1492 were given a choice of either converting or going into exile. Two years later, descendants of Muslims who had been expelled from Spain in the seventeenth century asked for the same treatment. Mansur Escudero, the head of Spain's Islamic Board, representing Spanish Muslims explained at the time:
"It would be more of an emotional, moral gesture, a recognition of an historic injustice," he told Reuters, adding that some "Andalusian" families still preserved keys to houses they left behind four centuries ago. [emphasis added, p. 143]But as it turns out, Arabs are not the only ones to hold onto their keys to remember home.

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

While reading Simon Sebag Montefiore's Jerusalem - A Biography, I came across this last week about the Bar Kochba rebellion:
The Jews retreated to the caves of Judaea, which is why Simon [Bar Kochba]'s letters and their poignant belongings have been found there. These refugees and warriors carried keys to their abandoned houses, the consolation of those doomed never to return. [emphasis added]In fact, it appears Jews who were forced out of Spain did the same thing.

According to The Routledge Book of Contemporary Jewish Cultures:
The exhibit on display at a small Jewish museum in Bejar [Spain], near Hervas, concludes with a wooden trunk full of keys. According to legend, when the Jews were expelled from their homes, they retained their keys in exile and across generations, occasionally returning to try them in their doors. A placard by the trunk explains that the keys "symbolize the memory of the homes which the Jews had to abandon...It may be that some of these keys had traveled with them to their new place of refuge. Even if this is not actually the case, this chest gives us a reason to imagine this."While writing this post, I found that I am not the first to notice that holding onto keys goes back as far as the Bar Kochba rebellion. In an anonymous guest post on Israellycool, The Curious Case Of The Key, someone writes
I remembered reading a book by Yigal Yadin by the name of “Bar-Kokhba: The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Last Jewish Revolt Against Imperial Rome,” an interesting book about the discovery of the Cave of Letters and how the artifacts inside shed light on the revolt. One of the items found in the cave was this:

Source: Israel Museum.Sebag Montefiore gives this book by Yigal Yadin as his source.

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

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




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According to Mahmoud Abbas, Jerusalem is the “eternal capital of the State of Palestine.” Then again, Abbas is the Palestinian Arab dictator whose term in office ended in 2009. Not only do Abbas and the Palestinian Arabs know that Jerusalem is the capital of "Palestine" -- they also think they have a pretty good idea of just what "Palestine" looks like.

Here is the logo of the Fateh Youth Movement. The boundaries of what they call "Palestine" are basically the borders of Israel, except that they also include Gaza and the West Bank.


Not surprisingly, that map bears little resemblance to reality -- not because they are trying to co-opt the State of Israel, but because there was no country called Palestine that corresponds to that map.


For example, in his article "Palestine: On The History and Geography of a Name," Bernard Lewis writes about the borders of the area that bears that name. And those borders were forever changing:
During the later Roman and Byzantine periods a number of changes were made, in the course of which Roman Palestine was extended by the annexation to it of neighbouring territories and then subdivided. Under Diocletian, the province of Arabia, founded by the Emperor Trajan in the year 105, was attached to Palestine, but in 358 this area, consisting of the Negev and southern Transjordan, was constituted a separate province and named Palestina Salutaris. In about 400 ad, Palestine proper was split into two provinces known respectively as Palestina Prima and Palestina Secunda, while Palestina Salutaris was renamed Palestina TertiaHow convenient: three Palestines!

Source: Wikipedia. Uploaded by Haldrik
In this setup you had:
o  Palestina Prima - included Judaea and Samaria, including Edom and extending east into Transjordan. Its capital was was Caesarea.
o  Palestina Secunda - included the valley of Esdraelon, Galilee, northern Transjordan, and the Golan area, Its capital was in Scythopolis (Beth Shean)
o  Palestina Tertia - included the Negev, southern Transjordan, and part of Sinai. Its capital was at PetraThree Palestines - but no capital in Jerusalem.

After the Muslim invasion and conquest of the area, there were some changes made.

Lewis explains:
After the Arab conquest in the seventh century, the new masters of the country seem substantially to have retained the existing administrative subdivisions; Palestina Prima and Palestina Secunda remained but with new names and new capitals. The first became Filastin, an obvious Arabic adaptation of the Roman name, and was administered first from Lydda and later from Ramla. Palestina Secunda was called Urdunn, that is, Jordan, after the river, and had its capital at Tiberias. Jerusalem, which in the earliest Arabic texts is referred to by its Roman name of Aelia, was not a provincial or even a district seat of government [emphasis added].Bottom line, during this period of Muslim rule, there was still no capital in Jerusalem, and no independent country called Palestine either:
In early medieval Arabic usage, Filastin and Urdunn were subdistricts forming part of the greater geographical entity known as Syria or, to use the Arabic term, the land of Sham. [emphasis added]

This subservient status of Palestine existed not only under the Romans but also under the Byzantine Empire and Muslim rule as well - until the Crusaders conquered the land. Then that changed:
During the period of the Crusades, the name Palestine or Filastin fell into disuse. The Muslims no longer administered it, and the Crusaders preferred to call the country which they had conquered the Holy Land and the state which they had established the Kingdom of Jerusalem.Finally, Jerusalem got some recognition -- but it was not by the Muslims.

Later, after the Muslims recaptured the land back from the Crusaders, there were still more re-divisions of the land.
After the Muslim reconquest, the names Filastin and Urdunn disappear from administrative usage. Under the successors of Saladin and still more under the Mamluks who ruled from the mid-thirteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, the country was redistributed in new territorial units, usually known by the names of towns which were district administrative centres. [emphasis added]That last point is important: From this point going forward, there was no Filastin or Palestine.
The name Filastin or Palestine...had never been used by Jews, for whom the normal name of the country, from the time of the Exodus to the present day, was Eretz Israel. It was no longer used by Muslims, for whom it had never meant more than an administrative sub-district and it had been forgotten even in that limited sense.So who did use the word 'Palestine'?

The word became widely adopted in the Christian world. During The Renaissance, there was a revival of interest in classical antiquity and as a result, the Roman name Palestine became the common word used to describe the country in most European languages. And under the British, the word was again used to refer to that area bordering on both sides of the Jordan River - for the first time since the early Middle Ages.

Under Arab rule, the area kept being divided and re-divided. Just to give you an idea of the state of flux in the area:
o  At one point the areas on the two banks of the Jordan were divided into six districts with their capitals in Gaza, Lydda, Qaqun, Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus, all six districts forming part of the province of Sham, with its capital in Damascus. (Jerusalem was finally a capital - a district capital - with the actual capital in Damascus.)
o  At certain times Gaza and Lydda became separate provinces.
o  During the late Mamluk period, most of Palestine seems to have been divided into the Niyabas (lieutenancies) of Gaza and Safed. The Niyaba of Safed included much of what today is south Lebanon, with the districts of Tyre and Tibnin. All these were still under the rule of Damascus.
o  After the Ottoman conquest in 1516-17, the country was divided into the Ottoman administrative districts (Sanjak) of Gaza, Jerusalem, Nablus, and Safed west of the Jordan and Ajlun in Transjordan. An additional district, Lajjun on the west bank, was later added. All these again were subject to the authority of Damascus.
o  These districts were from time to time subdivided and rearranged during the four centuries of Ottoman rule.
o  In the last phase, before the British took over, the center and north of the country were part of the vilayet of Beirut, while the Transjordan was made part of the vilayet of Damascus and the rest of "Palestine" became the indepedent district of Jerusalem -- independent in this case meaning it was directly dependent on the capital in Damascas, but not subject to any of the Pashas of the surrounding provinces.By 1887-1888, the map of the area looked like this:


Source: Wikipedia. Map by Tallicfan20 based off of Efraim Karsh's Palestine Betrayed
There was never a sovereign country called "Palestine" matching the maps that Abbas and Fatah like to parade around. In the end, there was a district called Jerusalem, taking up a portion of what the Palestinian Arabs claim as their state.

As far as capitals go, there were so many -- usually subject to the authority in Damascus -- that if anything, instead of being the eternal capital of "Palestine," Jerusalem was the ephemeral capital of a very truncated district in an area in part of Palestine.



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Last week, The New York Times entered the world of dance.

In an interview, Israeli-American choreographer Hadar Ahuvia talked about her latest work - Everything you have is yours? To Ahuvia, that is no idle question. She is the granddaughter of Eastern European Jews who came to Israel -- and then years later, her parents moved with her to Florida and then Hawaii. Ahuvia has developed an interest in what she sees as the Israeli mimicking of Palestinian Arab culture.


Ahuvia touched on this in her interview:
One issue you explore is cultural appropriation, how the pioneers of Israeli folk dance, mostly Eastern European women, drew from social dance forms like Palestinian dabke.

It’s well-documented that these women went to Palestinian villages and watched them dancing and felt they held the steps for what new Israeli dances could be. And so they borrowed steps and wrote new music and created dances that were directly synchronous to the new music, and in this way it becomes a new Israeli dance.

This was their way of participating in the nation-building and what for them was this revolutionary moment. I don’t think that cultural exchange is bad, but I think it’s about the context of whose narratives get told and seen.In a guest post she wrote for a blog, four days after the interview, Ahuvia goes further:
Increasingly our home [in Florida and Hawaii] began to mimic the Arab essence that is claimed as fundamentally Israeli. Hummus, tahini, olive oil zaatar, pita, baklava. And beside the Palestinian shepherd salad, the syncopated dabke and Yemenite steps, Turkish and Druz inspired melodies of early Hebrew songs and their synchronous dances. These kept us marinating in a Mediterranean Israeli identity, our distinction from the American Ashkenazi diaspora encroaching on us-- ameripoop-- treacherously symbolized by applesauce on latkes.Ira Stoll, who writes a column for Algemeiner dedicated to exposing examples of New York Times bias, addresses how New York Times Accuses Jews of Stealing Folkdances From Palestinian Arabs.

Stoll addresses the one-sided view presented by the interview and supplies context with the opposing view ignored by the New York Times:
o  Former New York Times correspondent David K. Shipler, in his 1986 book Arab and Jew, also wrote about the accusation of cultural theft. He quotes a Ibrahim Kareen of East Jerusalem who claims, “The Israelis have stolen a lot of Palestinian culture...For instance, many dances. The Hora. This is Palestinian. Many dishes.” But Shipler goes a step further and writes, "The roots of folk dance are old and tangled, and while the Hora does bear resemblance to Arab dances, the origins are too deeply buried for any side to make clear proprietary claims.” o  According to the Jewish Women’s Archive article on the history of Israeli Folk Dance, "During the Second and Third Aliyah periods, between 1904 and 1923, the halutzim danced only dances that they had brought with them from the Diaspora — the Horah, Polka, Krakowiak, Czerkassiya and Rondo, with the Horah becoming the national dance." o  According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Israeli folk dance is “an amalgam of Jewish and non-Jewish folk dance forms from many parts of the world,” describing the Hora as Romanian, and then continues that “Widespread enthusiasm for dance followed, bringing with it the creation of a multifaceted folk dance genre set to popular Israeli songs, incorporating motifs such as the Arab debka, as well as dance elements ranging from North American jazz and Latin American rhythms to the cadences typical of Mediterranean countries.”We can even go a little further.

The Encyclopedia of World Folk Dance has a list of dances and their countries of origin. It includes the dabke. Not surprisingly, the dance is not a Palestinian dance -- it is an Arab dance.



And that fact does not negate the Jewish cultural history of the Jewish dance, The Hora:


(pages 138-139)

According to this, if the Palestinian Arabs are going to accuse Jews of stealing their dance, they will just have to stand in line -- behind Rome, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Georgia and Russia.

The Hora, as featured on stamp of Moldova

Interestingly, according to this encyclopedia, the similarities of the Hora to the dabke are attributed to external flourishes to a dance that was already adopted.

All this raises the question of whether the Palestinian Arabs have ever copied anything from the Jews.

Daniel Pipes answers yes.

In Mirror Image: How the PLO Mimics Zionism, Pipes writes that "Palestinian nationalists have time and again modeled their institutions, ideas, and practices on the Zionist movement. This ironic tribute means that the peculiar nature of the PLO can be understood only with reference to its Zionist inspiration."

The similarities go beyond copying the purpose of the organization, such as the National Association of Arab-Americans emulating the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Some Palestinian organizations mimic the original Zionist organization as well:

Palestinian OrganizationZionist OrganizationAnti-Discrimination CommitteeAnti-Defamation Leaguethe Holy Land Fundthe Jewish National Fundthe United Palestinian Appealthe United Jewish Appeal
Pipes writes that the emulation goes beyond organizations and agencies:
o  Palestinian Arabs sometimes refer to themselves as the "Jews of the Middle East"
o  They claim that like Jews, they suffer prejudice, dispossession and expulsion despite being more educated than the majority population
o  Just as Jews were thrown out of multiple countries, they were forced out of Jordon, Lebanon and Kuwait in only 20 years
o  Palestinian Arabs claim their treatment by Israel is analogous to the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust
o  The Palestinian claim to a "Right of Return" mimics the Israeli "Law of Return"And then, of course, there is Jerusalem:
Jerusalem is the only capital of a Jewish state, as well as a unique city in Jewish history, religion, and emotions. In contrast, the city is so minor in Islam, it is not even once mentioned in the Qur'an. Nor did it ever serve as a political capital or cultural center...But based on what Israel has been able to accomplish, it is not surprising how far the Palestinian Arabs have gone in order to copy the very Zionists they condemn. The Jews wanted a state, the re-establishment of the Jewish state, so they were not content just to live off of the land.
The Jewish accomplishment during the Mandatory period was indeed impressive: by developing the Jewish Agency into a proto-state institution, Zionists created the bases for the full-fledged government that emerged in 1948. They already had a political authority, a military wing, an educational system, a mechanism to distribute welfare, and so forth. In contrast, Palestinians failed to match these institutions, and so found themselves disorganized when the British withdrew from Palestine in 1948...In effect, the Palestinians are trying half a century later to make up for their mistakes of the Mandatory period.But we can go a step further. More than what Zionism inspired in Palestinian Arabs in the 20th century, what have Jews contributed to Arabs in general, and to Islamic culture overall, over the generations?

Could be quite a bit.

In Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, Shmuel Katz quotes Philip K. Hitti, a Lebanese American professor and authority on Arab and Middle Eastern history. Hitti writes in his History of the Arabs
But when we speak of 'Arab medicine' or 'Arab philosophy' or 'Arab mathematics', we do not mean the medical science, philosophy or mathematics that are necessarily the product of the Arabian mind or developed by people living in the Arabian peninsula, but that body of knowledge enshrined in books written in the Arabic language by men who flourished chiefly during the caliphate and were themselves Persians, Egyptians or Arabians, Christian, Jewish or Moslem.

Indeed, even what we call 'Arabic literature' was no more Arabian than the Latin literature of the Middle Age was Italian...Even such disciplines as philosophy linguistics, lexicography and grammar, which were primarily Arabian in origin and spirit and in which the Arabs made their chief original contribution, recruited some of their most distinguished scholars from the non-Arab stock (Battleground, p. 111)Bernard Lewis writes similarly in his book, The Arabs in History:
The use of the adjective Arab to describe the various facets of this civilisation has often been challenged on the grounds that the contribution to "Arab medicine", "Arab philosophy", etc, of those who were of Arab descent was relatively small. Even the use of the word Muslim is criticised, since so many of the architects of this culture were Christians and Jews.

During the period of greatness of the Arab and Islamic Empires in the Near and Middle East a flourishing civilisation grew up that is usually known as Arabic. It was not brought ready-made by the Arab invaders from the desert, but was created after the conquests by the collaboration of many peoples, Arabs, Persians, Egyptians and others. Nor was it even purely Muslim, for many Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians were among its creators. (p.14, 131)With all that shared history and shared culture over 1,400 years, maybe the Arabs can share a dance or a falafel for old times sake.

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The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,' except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews."
From Hamas Charter, as recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim

It is no secret that there are Palestinian Arab imams preaching hate against Israel and against Jews.


It is not even surprising that this preaching of hatred has expanded to outside the Middle East, and has found a home in Europe, where the favorite Hadith of Hamas can be heard, promising the death of Jews.




What is surprising is that last year Muslim Antisemitism, with all its vitriolic hatred, has found its way into the US. It is not as if Antisemitism did not already exist. It's just that generally it has not been as out in the open nor expressed as violently as we have seen it elsewhere.


After all, year after year we read the polls in the US showing much stronger support for Israel than for the Palestinian Arabs who seek the destruction of the Jewish state. We have gotten used to the idea that life for Jews in the US is different than what it is like in Europe.

Or maybe we have just gotten complacent.

Looking back, 2017 brought with it something that we are not used to. At the same time, the media, which started off 2017 acting as if it was on the lookout for any case of antisemitism, soon proved that it was only interested in cases of antisemitism that could be traced to Trump.

By the end of the year, we  didn't realize what hit us around the country.

For example, on July 21, Imam Ammar Shahin delivered a sermon at the Islamic Center of Davis, northern California -- inciting hatred against Jews:


The Prophet Muhammad said: 'Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and the trees say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah...' The Prophet Muhammad says that the time will come, the Last Hour will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews... When that war breaks out, they will run and hide behind every rock, and house, and wall, and trees. The house, the wall, and the trees will call upon the Muslims. It will say: ...Oh Muslim. Muslim. When Muslims come back... 'Come, there is someone behind meShahin quoted from the Hadith, leaving out that the trees will call out to the Muslims to come kill the Jew hiding behind it -- but his audience knew what he meant.

On that same day, Imam Mahmoud Harmoush was also nciting hatred - in Riverside, California:
The Jews were coming from Germany, Poland, Italy, and everywhere else, and [the Muslims] would give them rooms, shelter them, and help them out, not knowing that there was a plan. Within the thirty years between the two incidents, until 1948 and the British occupation, everything was plotted to take over that beautiful land, in the way that we all know – with killing, crime, and massacres..."One brother sent me a video, showing a naked woman walking into the holy mosque under the occupation forces, just to insult more and more the psyche, honor, and dignity of the Muslims.


On July 24, the Islamic Center of Tennessee, in Antioch, Tennessee, posted a video on their YouTube channel. It is a Friday sermon delivered by Somali-American Imam AhmedulHadi Sharif. He told his congregants that "the Zionists" are the "number one terrorists in the world," who had "kidnapped" the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Sharif went so far as to say that "if we lose Jerusalem - know that it is not going to stop there... The enemies of Allah will come and try to destroy the Kaaba."



On Friday, December 8, 2017 Imam Abdullah Khadra delivered an antisemitic sermon in a mosque in the Raleigh, NC area. Khadra recites the entire Hadith at 2:37, making clear that Muslims will kill Jews.


Here is Imam Raed Saleh Al Rousan on December 8, also quoting what apparently is an imam's favorite Hadith:



If Al Rousan makes you feel ill at ease -- don't worry. He later apologized for making you feel uncomfortable with his quoting the Hadith about how Muslims will kill the Jews:



Feel better now?

On December 8, during a sermon in Jersey City, NJ, among other things, Imam Aymen Elkasaby told his congreganats that the Al Aqsa mosque was "under the feet of the apes and the pigs, in reference to Israel.


The good news about Elkasaby is that he is going into "rehab":
Ahmed Shedeed said that Sheikh Aymen Elkasaby, imam of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, would be meeting with “interfaith scholars” who would “consult with and retrain him,” following sermons in which Elkasaby called for the murder of Jews and attacked the west for having made Muslims the “tail-end of all nations.”
“This is like sending someone to rehab,” Shedeed, the Islamic Center’s president, told The Algemeiner when asked whether Elkasaby would be dismissed from the imam’s position...“There are extremists in the Jewish, Christian and Buddhist religions and everything can be taken in the wrong way,” Shedeed said.Even with popular backlash, these imams were able to escape serious consequences for their actions.

We can expect more of these kinds of sermons in 2018.

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As the Iranian protests continue, one of the signs of just how serious the protesters are is what they are chanting in public about their government:
“Death to Dictator” “Death to Rouhani” "Death to Khamenei" and “Reza Shah, Bless Your Soul”.

Clearly, the extent of the anger of the protesters goes beyond removing an individual leader -- some want a complete change in government that would return Iran to the way things were before Khomeini and the Islamic revolution.

Here is another anti-government chant opposing Iranian machinations outside of the country:


#BreakingNews
Dec 30 - #Kermanshah, #Iran
People chanting "Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My life for Iran"#IranProtests #تظاهرات_سراسرى pic.twitter.com/UBRKWnt0Ds— Heshmat Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi) December 30, 2017

This was tweeted by Heshmat Alavi, a political and human rights activist who has written for Forbes, The Hill, The Daily Caller and Gatestone Institute.

While "Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My life for Iran" is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Israel, it does illustrate less than enthusiastic support for the Palestinian Arabs in general, and Hamas terror attacks in particular.

But that in itself is not really anything new.

In 2009, Iranian-born conservative author Amir Taheri wrote in his book The Persian Night: Iran under the Khomeinist Revolution:
Since [the crushing of the protest in] 1999, Iran has witnessed countless student demonstrations and protests. In hundreds of resolutions passed during mass gatherings, students have challenged virtually every aspect of the Khomeinist ideology and the regime's domestic and foreign policies. One typical resolution passed repeatedly states that the people of Iran do not desire the destruction of Israel and do seek close and friendly relations with the United States. Every year in July, students mark the anniversary of the 1999 events. On October 8, 2007, students in Tehran greeted Ahmadinejad with cries of "Down with the Dictator" and "Forget about Palestine! Think about Us," forcing him to run away briefly with the help of his bodyguards. [emphasis added]Four years earlier, in 2005, The New York Times reported that Iran's hard line on Israel was not unaminmous:
Beset by practical concerns such as double-digit inflation and unemployment, Iran's youthful population is well aware of the fact that the ideological hubris of their parents' generation - often a half-baked hodgepodge of anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism, Islamism, and Marxism - has borne the country little fruit apart from a soiled international reputation and political and economic isolation. During the 2003 summer student protests, one popular slogan, delivered in lilting Persian, was "forget about Palestine, think about us!" [emphasis added]The article was written by Karim Sadjadpour, currently an Iranian-American policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment and Ray Takeyh, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Sadjadpour and Takeyh go on to write:
There exists no inherent reason why the Israeli-Palestinian struggle should be an overriding concern to the average Iranian. Iran has no territorial disputes with Israel, no Palestinian refugee problem, a long history of contentious relations with the Arab world, and an even longer history of tolerance vis-à-vis the Jewish people. To this day, the Jewish community in Iran is the largest in the Middle East outside of Israel.Ironically, in 2005 this article was claiming that based on the troubled relationship between Iran and the Arab world, it was Iran -- not the Saudis -- that should have been drawn into an alliance with Israel.

They summarized the position that Iran need not be so supportive of the Palestinian Arabs in the words of one reformist leader that:
"We shouldn't be chanting 'death to Israel'; we should be saying 'long live Palestine.' We needn't be more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves."Clearly, things have not worked out that way so far -- this despite the fact that 2 years earlier, in 2003, an article in The New Republic and republished in The Jewish World Review was saying the same thing and was asking Is Iran rethinking its position on Israel? It suggested that
though the West still thinks of Iran as a cauldron of anti-Israel passion, a new generation of pro-democracy Iranians increasingly speaks out against the government's seeming obsession with the Palestinians.From the way the article describes it, even "conservatives" in the Iranian government were apparently seeing the light. You would expect a very different situation from the one currently going on during the past few days.

The article examines why things were potentially so promising:
several senior conservatives have quietly joined the chorus, hinting that Iran's support for terrorist groups opposed to Israel is negotiable. According to one senior conservative official, "Iran's policy in the Middle East and the peace process is not beyond the realm of possibilities that can be discussed, given a dialogue with the United States." Translation from Islamic Republic-speak: We can talk turkey on Israel/Palestine. Sadeq Zibakalam, a Tehran University professor with close ties to conservative officials, underscored this view earlier this year, when he told the U.S.-funded Radio Farda Persian service that Iran understands Washington's concerns about Tehran's support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. President Mohammed Khatami, a reformer who has long argued that Iran should not interfere in any agreements made between Israel and the Palestinians, is unlikely to quibble with the conservatives.So what happened?

While Mohammed Khatami, the reformer, was president in 2003, by 2005 a new president was elected: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- and the rest is history.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Credit: Farzad Khorasani
Source: Wikimedia Commons
While he did not single-handedly stem the supposedly growing tide of reform, Ahmadinejad did represent the interests of the hard-liners.

For now, it is impossible to say whether the current protests will be put down and crushed as were the student protests in 1999 and the election protests in 2009. Even if successful, they are not about to change Iran overnight into a friend of Israel reminiscent of the reign of the Shah of Iran. Instead, it has been suggested that the current unrest will keep the government occupied and reduce the possibility of conflict between the two countries, especially along the Syrian border, at least for a while.

But beyond that, the idea that Iranian animosity towards Israel is not hardwired, may perhaps hold promise for some point in the forseeable future.





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Anyone not knowing the history of the Israeli/Arab conflict might conclude that the Arabs won all of the wars in which they fought, and could therefore dictate the terms of the peace.
Dr. Alex Grobman, Alice in Wonderland



Back in 2006, Amir Taheri, the Iranian-born conservative author, explained why Israel must claim victory over Palestine:
...For a war to be won it is not enough for one side to claim victory, although that is essential. It is also necessary for one side to admit defeat. The problem in the case of the Arab-Israeli wars, however, was that the side that had won every time was not allowed to claim victory while the side that had lost was prevented from admitting defeat.

This was a novel situation in history, throughout which the victor and the vanquished had always acknowledged their respective positions and moved beyond it in accordance with a peace imposed by the victor.

In the Israeli-Arab case this had not been done because each time the UN had intervened to put the victor and the vanquished on an equal basis and lock them into a problematic situation in the name of a mythical quest for an impossible peace.

...In every case the winner wins the land and gives the loser peace. In every case the peace that is imposed is unjust to the loser and just to the winner.Now, this is no longer a claim that is being made in the abstract.


Last December, Daniel Pipes described A New Strategy for Israeli Victory, based on the continued failure of the peace process in its many manifestations and iterations. On the one hand, deterrence could not be maintained indefinitely because of its unpopularity internationally and the way it wore Israelis down. On the other hand, diplomacy became the new way to go -- and seems to be prepared to keep going, indefinitely, with no success.

The solution, according to Pipes, is victory -- The Israel Victory Project:
the key concept of my approach, which is victory, or imposing one’s will on the enemy, compelling him through loss to give up his war ambitions. Wars end, the historical record shows, not through goodwill but through defeat. He who does not win loses. Wars usually end when failure causes one side to despair, when that side has abandoned its war aims and accepted defeat, and when that defeat has exhausted the will to fight. Conversely, so long as both combatants still hope to achieve their war objectives, fighting either goes on or it potentially will resume.Despite the fact that he Arabs lost every war with Israel, in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982, they never saw their defeat as the end. Instead, they looked ahead for another opportunity to make war against Israel.

This is how Pipes described his solution to this problem back in July:




While he makes a point in the video of refraining from suggesting how to convince the Palestinian Arabs that they have lost the war, in his 2016 article, Pipes does make some suggestions how to discourage rejectionism and promote a change of heart:

• When Palestinian “martyrs” cause material damage, pay for repairs out of the roughly $300 million in tax obligations the government of Israel transfers to the Palestinian Authority (PA) each year.
• Respond to activities designed to isolate and weaken Israel internationally by limiting access to the West Bank.
• When a Palestinian attacker is killed, bury the body quietly and anonymously in a potter’s field.
• When the PA leadership incites violence, prevent officials from returning to the PA from abroad.
• Respond to the murder of Israelis by expanding Jewish towns on the West Bank.
• When official PA guns are turned against Israelis, seize these and prohibit new ones, and if this happens repeatedly, dismantle the PA’s security infrastructure.
• Should violence continue, reduce and then shut off the water and electricity that Israel supplies.
• In the case of gunfire, mortar shelling, and rockets, occupy and control the areas from which these originate.

These are described as "examples for Washington to propose," a key point since imposing these measures will require the support and assistance of the US to allow this proposed change of Israeli policy. In other words, this Israel Victory Project would not have been feasible and would never have gotten off the ground during the Obama Administration. Now, during the Trump Administration, there may be a chance.

With that in mind, the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus was announced in April:
Reps. Ron DeSantis and Bill Johnson. From the Press ReleaseReps. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Bill Johnson (R-OH) will launch the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus (CIVC) on April 27 at 9 a.m. The caucus' goal: to introduce a new U.S. approach to Israel-Palestinian relations.

Cong. Johnson notes that "Israel is America's closest ally in the Middle East, and the community of nations must accept that Israel has a right to exist – period. This is not negotiable now, nor ever. The Congressional Israel Victory Caucus aims to focus on this precept, and to better inform our colleagues in Congress about daily life in Israel and the present-day conflict. I look forward to co-chairing this very important caucus with Cong. DeSantis."At the time, no Democrats had joined the group.

In order to be successful, Pipes sees the project as being heavily dependent on US support being provided in a sustained way along with select Arab states and others in order to convince the Palestinian Arabs that rejectionism will not work:
That means supporting Israel’s taking the tough steps outlined above, from burying murderers’ bodies anonymously to shuttering the Palestinian Authority. It means diplomatic support for Israel, such as undoing the “Palestine refugee” farce and rejecting the claim of Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. It also entails ending benefits to the Palestinians unless they work toward the full and permanent acceptance of Israel: no diplomacy, no recognition as a state, no financial aid, and certainly no weapons, much less militia training.Pipes does not sugar-coat the strategy he is proposing:
this change won’t be easy or quick: Palestinians will have to pass through the bitter crucible of defeat, with all its deprivation, destruction, and despair as they repudiate the filthy legacy of Amin al-Husseini and acknowledge their century-long error. But there is no shortcut.Similarly, the criticism is no less direct.

J Street has attacked the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, referring to it as the “defeat Palestinians caucus,” claiming that the project is “devoted to pushing the truly terrifying myth that Israel can end the conflict by using brute force and repression to make Palestinians accept their eternal statelessness.” They urged congressmen to “stay as far away from such savage and dangerous ideas as possible. The creation of a caucus devoted to promoting them should be condemned, not celebrated.”

Among supporters there is some disagreement too.

Martin Sherman, the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, has supported Pipes' proposal, but there is a key item Sherman and Pipes disagree on. According to Sherman:
Pipes concisely sums up the principal point of disagreement between us: “Sherman and I directly disagree on only one point — Israel accepting the possibility of a Palestinian state.” He goes on to speculate that “the allure of a state after the conflict ends offers benefits to both sides. Israelis will be free of ruling unwanted subjects. Palestinians have a reason to behave.”Sherman is vehemently opposed to the idea, noting that historically there is little to support the idea that the demand for Palestinian statehood is a genuine grievance.

Six months after the formal announcement of the Israel Victory Project, the strategy is still taking shape and support is still being drummed up.

Considering the need for US support to make this work and the political uncertainty facing both the Trump Administration and the Republican majority in Congress, the Israel Victory Project may not have much time to establish itself.



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Last month, following the ISIS terrorist attack on a mosque in the Sinai, the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt was closed. This was the crossing that Hamas controlled -- until it turned  control over to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority as part of the "reconciliation" between them. A PA official announced that Egypt closed the crossing because it suspected that some of the terrorists fled the Sinai and used Hamas tunnels to enter Gaza "with the knowledge of senior Hamas officials.”

Evelyn Gordon asserts that the incident and Egypt's reaction prove that Hamas is more than an anti-Israel terrorist group -- it is a Global Jihadist group:
Incidentally, this track record conclusively disproves the widespread fallacy that Hamas is primarily concerned with the Palestinian cause rather than the cause of global jihad. An organization concerned with Palestinian well-being would strive to preserve good relations with Egypt in order to ensure that Gaza’s main gateway to the outside world remained open. Only an organization that prioritized global jihad way above Palestinian wellbeing would offer extensive aid to Islamic State, even at the price of having Rafah almost permanently closed.
Hamas logo

Hamas is certainly not shy about using the word "jihad." The Hamas Covenant uses the word "jihad" 38 times.

More than that, Martin Kramer, in an article he contributed to in "Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas and the Global Jihad" notes that the covenant makes the Hamas connection to the Muslim Brotherhood very clear. According to Article 2:
The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine. Moslem Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern timesThen in Article 7:
The Islamic Resistance Movement is one link in the chain of jihad in confronting the Zionist invasion. It is connected and linked to the [courageous] uprising of the martyr 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam and his brethren the jihad fighters of the Muslim Brotherhood in the year 1936. It is further related and connected to another link, [namely] the jihad of the Palestinians, the efforts and jihad of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1948 war, and the jihad operations of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1968 and afterwards. [emphasis added]Later, the Hamas Covenant directly addresses facilitating the contribution of Jihad fighters:
"We demand that the Arab countries around Israel open their borders to jihad fighters from among the Arab and Islamic peoples, so they may fulfill their role and join their efforts to the efforts of their brothers - the Muslim brethren in Palestine. As for the rest of the Arab and Muslim countries, we demand that they facilitate the passage of the jihad fighters into them and out of them - that is the very least [they can do].Kramer points out that the Hamas parent organiztion, the Muslim Brotherhood, has also been the source of several key members and leading commanders of al Qaeda, such as Abdullah Azzam and Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, the mastermind of 9/11.

Jonathan Halevi, who also contributed an article to "Global Jihad," writes that in March 2006, Hamas Interior Minister Said Sayyam, who is responsible for the security forces, announced that he would not arrest jihadists who carry out terror attacks -- this at a time that al Qaeda was developing a presence in both the West Bank and Gaza.

Halevy writes that connections between Hamas and Al Qaeda go back to the early 1990's, when in April 1991 the Sudanese leader Hasan Turabi hosted a “Popular Arab and Islamic Conference” bringing together Islamists from the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Both Hamas and Osama bin Laden attended and Hamas training camps existed alongside those of al Qaeda. bin Laden went so far as to refer to Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin as one of the five ulema upon whom bin Laden based his August 1996 Declaration of Jihad Against the U.S

Osama bin Laden; credit: Hamid Mir; Source: Wikipedia

Other incidents illustrating a connection between Hamas and Al Qaeda:

• In August 2000, Israel uncovered a terror network linked to al-Qaeda that was headed by Nabil Okal, a Hamas operative from Gaza who underwent military training in bin Laden camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1997-1998.
  
  
• In July 2005, al-Qaeda fired Kassam rockets from Gaza at the Israeli town of Neve Dekalim in Gush Katif, and disseminated a video documenting their activities.
  
  
• October 7, 2005, the Palestinian news agency Ma’an published a declaration circulated in Khan Yunis in which al-Qaeda announced the establishment of a branch in Gaza.
  
  
• On March 26, 2006, senior Hamas figure Muhammad Sayyam met in Pakistan with Sayyid Salah al-Din, leader of the Kashmiri terror orga-nization Hezb ul-Mujahidin, which functioned as an al-Qaeda affiliate

Making the connection between the 2 groups explicit, on October 22, 2003, Richard A. Clarke, the former National Counterterrorism Coordinator on the US National Security Council, said that Hamas and al-Qaeda had a common financial infrastructure: “the funding mechanisms for PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] and Hamas appear also to have been funding al-Qaeda.”

In 2004, Haaretz reported (Hamas Reveals Its Global Islamic Aspirations) that Hamas took credit for a 2003 suicide bombing at Mike's Place in Tel Aviv, where 3 people were killed and dozens were wounded. The attacks were carried out by a Pakistani-born British Muslim accompanied by another Pakistan-born Briton, from Derby. Hamas claimed:
"We have decided that the response to the crime of the assassination of Dr. Ibrahim Almakadeh should take place at the global level of the Islamic world, because of the views represented by the doctor, a supreme Islamic thinker and commander," There were similarities in the attack with terrorist bombings carried out by the global jihadists of Al Qaeda:

• It was the first time Hamas presented one of terrorist attacks as part of a global Islamic struggle
• It was also the first time Hamas had used non-Palestinian suicide bombers.
• At the time of the bombing, no terrorist group took responsibility, so after the identity of the bomber and accomplice was discovered, it was originally assumed that al-Qaida was behind the bombing.

In 2011, a terrorist attack near Eilat killed eight people and wounded 30. It was carried out by 3 groups: 2 associated with Hamas and another with ties to global jihadists.

This game that Hamas has been playing, associating with global jihadist groups, is why in 2014 Egypt designated the Hamas group Izzadin Kassam to be a terrorist group -- the first time any Arab regime had ever declared a Palestinian terrorist organization to be a terrorist group.

According to Carolyn Glick, Egypt had no choice but to define the Hamas group as terrorists:
Despite its insistent protestations that the Jews are its only enemies, Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been a major player, indeed, arguably the key player in the jihadist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula that threatens to destroy the political, economic and military viability of the Egyptian state. The declared purpose of the insurgency is to overthrow the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and integrate Egypt into Islamic State’s “caliphate.”Near the beginning of 2015, thirty-two people, mainly soldiers, were killed in the Sinai by a group identified as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, a jihadist group pledging its allegiance to ISIS and declaring Sinai to be a province of its “caliphate.” Glick notes that a report by Yoram Schweitzer of the Institute for National Security Studies identifies Hamas members as among the original founders of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, in cooperation with local Salafist Beduins and with al-Qaida terrorists.

According to Glick, Hamas terrorists increasingly declare their allegiance to Islamic State. For example, following the massacre of the French journalists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris, several hundred protesters in Gaza waved Islamic State flags in support of the massacre.

Glick sees Hamas not as merely a terrorist threat to Israel but as a lynchpin in the threat of global jihad. This creates the irony that while Israel allies itself with Egypt in facing this threat, the West attempts to coerce Israel into helping Hamas rebuild its infrastructure. Ideally, post-Obama there will a beginning of a realization of the Hamas connection to global jihadist threats.

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On December 9th, taking to her Facebook account, Linda Sarsour justified Palestinian terrorism:
In context of what's happening in Palestine in response to the announcement about Jerusalem and in general living under the longest and most brutal military occupation - we have to get a few things straight.

Nobody gets to tell an occupied people how to respond to their own oppression and the continued stripping of their humanity, agency and land whether they are Palestinians or not. Nobody. Oppressed people determine how, when and where to resist. They set the parameters. You don't have to agree. Unless you have lived in their condition under the boot of a racist, supremacist, violent regime that sees them as less than human - you have no say in this conversation... [emphasis added]Let's put aside how Linda Sarsour, who lives in the US, has a say in this "conversation" -- but not anyone critical of Palestinian Arabs who attack and kill Israeli civilians.


First of all, the Muslim attacks and persecution of indigenous Jews in that land is nothing new.

It has continued for over a millennium -- how could it be otherwise for non-Muslims under Sharia law which originated the requirement for Jews to wear a yellow star to distinguish them from Muslims and shame them, disallows non-Muslims to testify against Muslims outside of commercial cases and obligates non-Muslims to pay a special, onerous, jizya tax.

Arab attacks and mistreatment of Jews has nothing to do with Arabs being oppressed, but rather the continuation of their being the oppressors. For example, Muslims have a history of stoning Jews that predates the re-establishment of the state of Israel, going back to when the Arabs played host to Jews.

• In 1955, S. D. Goitein, in his book Jews and Arabs: Their Contacts Through the Ages, wrote:
  In former times--and in remote places even today--it was common for Muslim schoolboys to stone Jews. When the Turks conquered Yemen in 1872, an envoy was sent from the Chief Rabbi of Istanbul to inquire what grievance the Yemenite Jews had against their neighbors. It is indicative that the first thing of which they complained was this molestation by the schoolboys. But when the Turkish Governor asked an assembly of notables to stop this nuisance, there arose an old doctor of Muslim law and explained that this stone-throwing at Jews was an age-old custom (in Arabic 'Ada) and therefore it was unlawful to forbid it. [p. 76, emphasis added]
• In Eight years in Asia and Africa from 1846-1855, Israel Joseph Benjamin includes among the multiple indignities regularly suffered by Jews at the hands of the Muslims of Persia:
  Under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with the greatest severity, and should they enter a street, inhabited by Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mob with stones and dirt.[p 212]
• Andrew Bostom gives examples in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History.He quotes from Robert Satloff's book, Among the Righteous -- Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands, where Satloff tells the story of Yehuda Chachmon, who lived under Italian rule in Benghazi, Libya, during WWII and wrote about Arab street gangs:
  “Arabs would throw oranges, tomatoes, stones at us,” he said. “Every Jew would hide in his house after five in the evening. The houses were closed [i.e., locked up] with bars and you could not leave until the morning.’” [p 153]

Meanwhile, in then-Palestine, Jews suffered from attacks by Palestinian Arab in control in the centuries leading up to Jewish immigration, illustrating again that Arab attacks on Jews have nothing to do with being oppressed. The examples come from Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial, collected from various authors.
1660: The Jewish community in Safed is massacred. [p. 178]

1742: A rabbi is allowed to settle in Tiberias and his arrival "brought back the Jewish community of Tiberias, which had been virtually purged of Jews for seventy years" [p. 179]

1775: Blood libel is spread against Jews in Hebron, resulting in mob violence. [p. 179]

1799: Safed's Jewish Quarter "was completely sacked by the Turks" [p. 179]

1801: Djezzar sends troops to destroy crops in Nazareth while in Ramleh "during the three days of pillage, the local Latin Christians were either murdered, or lost all their property and fled" [p. 180]

1830's "One book reported the game 'Burn the Jew,' a Christian-Arab children's pastime at Lent in Jaffa. [p. 1888]

1834: Egyptian ruler Ibrahim Pasha levies conscription and when those in Eastern Palestine cross the Jordan to join in a revolt, "forty thousand fellahin rushed on Jerusalem...the mob entered, and looted the city for five or six days. The Jews were the worst sufferers, their homes were sacked and their women violated." [p. 183]

1834: In Safed, the Jewish community is "brutally attacked by Muslim and Druzes" [p. 183]

1834: In Safed, Muhammed Damoor 'prophesies' that on the 15th of June "the true Believers would rise up in just wrath against the Jews, and despoil them of their gold, and their silver, and their jewels"--this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. [p. 185-6]

1837: Safed is hit by an earthquake which results in another attack by the Muslims on the Jews. [p. 183]

1840: Blood libel in Damascus has repercussions in Palestine. [p. 183]

1847: Charge of ritual murder is brought against the Jewish community in Jerusalem. [p. 190]

1847: Jewish visitor to Palestine writes about the Jewish community "They do not have any protection and are at the mercy of policemen and the pashas who treat them as they wish...they pay various taxes every now and then...their property is not at their disposal and they dare not complain about an injury for fear of the Arabs' revenge. Their lives are precarious and subject to daily danger of death" [p. 190-1]

1848 Hebron plundered. [p. 191]

1848-1878: Reports from the British Consulate in Jerusalem document scores of anti-Jewish violence. Example--"July, 1851: It is my duty to report to Your Excellency that the Jews in Hebron have been greatly alarmed by threats of the Moslems there at the commencement of Ramadan..."

1858: Muslim in Hebron is confronted with his theft and vandalism of Jews and responds that "his right derived from time immemorial in his family, to enter Jewish houses, and take toll or contributions at any time without giving account" [p. 173]In contrast, in Israel today, under what Sarsour glibly refers to as a "racist, supremacist, violent regime that sees them as less than human," Israeli Arabs participate in all aspects of Israeli life: social, judicial and political. Among the high-profile political, military, and judiciary roles Israeli Arabs have:

• Jamal Hakrush, Israeli police deputy commissioner.
• Mariam Kabha, Attorney. Unanimously approved by Israel's cabinet to be national commissioner for equal employment opportunities
• George Deek, Israel's Deputy Ambassador to Norway
• Colonel Ghassan Alian, Commander of IDF Golani Brigade
  
  
• Naim Aradi, Israel's Ambassador to Norway
• Yusef Mishleb - IDF Major General
• George Kara, led 3-judge panel that convicted Israeli ex-President.
  
  
• Jamal Zahalka, received BA, MA and Ph.D. Member of Israeli Parliament and leader of Balad political party -- while describing himself a victim of "Israeli racist apartheid"
  
  
• Omar Barghouti, Doctoral student at Tel Aviv -- while a leading Arab advocate for the academic boycott of Israel.
• Majalli Wahabi, Former Deputy Speaker of the Israel Parliament -- and acting President of Israel during February, 2007
  
  
• Reda Mansour, historian, poet and former Israeli ambassador to Ecuador
• Salim Joubran, Israeli Supreme Court Justice
  
  

Obviously, there is a lot of work still to be done, but clearly, there is movement in the right direction.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Arabs in the "West Bank" now have the closest thing they have ever had to their own sovereign state, something they have never had -- least of all under the rule of the Ottoman empire.

The crux of the problem with Sarsour's convenient claim to Palestinian right to murder Jews is that second paragraph:
Nobody gets to tell an occupied people how to respond to their own oppression and the continued stripping of their humanity, agency and land whether they are Palestinians or not. Nobody. Oppressed people determine how, when and where to resist. They set the parameters. This actually sounds familiar -- it is reminiscent of the claim Maureen Dowd's made about Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in the Iraq War. Dowd wrote that "moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute" This arbitrary assignment of superior judgment, or in this case, giving Palestinians a pass on murder, just does not cut it.

Her words may resonate rhetorically, but they fall apart when examing the facts.

In his book, The Case for Israel, Alan Dershowitz examines this issue in the chapter, "Is There Moral Equivalence between Palestinian Terrorists and Israeli Responses?"

It is perhaps a sign of how far Sarsour is willing to go, that instead of talking about moral equivalence, Sarsour is claiming moral superiority.

Dershowitz recalls some examples of Palestinian terrorist attacks that perhaps Sarsour has forgotten:

• The Maalot massacre where 25 hostages, including 22 children, were killed and 68 more were injured.
• A Swiss airliner headed to Israel in which all forty-seven civilian passengers were killed
• The Lod Airport Massacre, in which twenty-seven civilians, mostly Christian pilgrims, were killed
• The Passover Massacre, where twenty-nine Jews were killed during a Passover seder
• The Dolphinarium Massacre, where twenty-one mostly Russian Jews were killed in a discotheque for teenagers
• The Hebrew University bombing, where nine people were killed in the Hebrew University cafeteria

Does Sarsour really thing that Palestinian terrorists get to make the parameters for the murder of defenseless men, women and children?

A better question might be what is Sarsour's source for claiming terrorists have a moral right to choose their victims? Is it based on the Koran or does she have some other source?

In The Crisis of Islam, Bernard Lewis quotes from the standard collections of the traditions of the prophet on the rules of warfare and the conduct of Jihad:
Be advised to treat prisoners well.
Looting is no more lawful than carrion.
Allah has forbidden the killing of women and children
Muslims are bound by their agreements, provided that these are lawful. [p. 33]Lewis later spells it out:
Fighters in a jihad are enjoined not to kill women, children, and the aged unless they attack first, not to torture or mutilate prisoners, to give fair warning of the resumption of hostilities after a struce and to honor agreements. [p. 39]Is Sarsour actually claiming that Islam sanctions the murder of innocent children? If so, let her give a source. If her source is from outside of Islam, why is she elevating that authority above that of Islam?

Contrary to Sarsour, Palestinian terrorists do not have an absolute moral authority that frees them from judgment and allows them to murder unarmed Jews at will.

Palestinian terrorists need to be held accountable for their actions.
Linda Sarsour should be held accountable for her absurd claims.



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The shedding of blood, the violation of the sacred houses of God and the terrorizing of worshippers are acts of corruption on the earth.
Ahmed El-Tayyeb, current Grand Imam of al-Azhar and former president of al-Azhar University
In the last week of November, over 300 Sufi Arabs were murdered in a terrorist attack on their mosque:
The death toll in a bomb and gun attack on a Sufi mosque in northern Sinai has risen to 305, with 27 children among the dead, Egypt's state prosecutor said Saturday.

Another 128 people were wounded, according to a statement from the public prosecutor read out on Egyptian state-run news channel Nile TV.

Between 25 and 30 armed men carried out the assault on the al Rawdah Sufi mosque in Bir al-Abed, the statement said.Along with the horror at the senseless massacre is the sense that of all places, a mosque -- as a holy place of worship -- should be immune from bloodshed. Even if the Islamists behind the attack considered Sufis to be heretics, the blind gunfire would result in the destruction of copies of the Koran in addition to the carnage.

There was a similar Western sense of revulsion and confusion in response to other news reports of Muslim attacks on mosques over the years.


In the course of one year, from August 2010 to August 2011:

• In August 2011, the New York Times reported: 28 Are Killed in a Bombing at a Mosque in Baghdad.
  
  
• In October 2010 in Afghanistan, The Taliban murdered the head of Kunduz province, along with 14 other people, in a mosque bombing in Tahkar after the governor had been spoken out against the Taliban and other terror groups.
  
  
• In September 2010,  a mosque was burned during the arson attack on the Crazy Water Park in Gaza according to a report by The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
  
  
• August 2010, a mosque was destroyed in Lebanon in a fight between Hezbollah and a rival group.
  
  
• In addition, a Turkish general admitted he deliberately destroyed a mosque in 1974 to intimidate an enemy:
  In remarks published in the Haber Türk daily yesterday as part of an interview with Gen. Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu, who led the Special War Department in 1971 and also worked to mobilize civilian resistance during Turkey's military intervention on Cyprus in 1974, said: “In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt down a mosque.” In response to the surprised correspondent's incredulous look the general said, “I am giving an example,” in an attempt to clear things up. [emphasis added]

While the Turkish destruction of a mosque was in the context of a "military intervention" if not a war, those other examples, including the Sufi mosque massacre, were a consequence of Muslim infighting.

Why was there no sense of sacrilege to inhibit the attackers in each case?

Back in 2010, in response to the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center dedicated a chapter of it's own report, Hamas and the Terrorist Threat from the Gaza Strip, to the Hamas exploitation of mosques. An article in The Jerusalem Post summarized the report findings: Hamas used almost 100 mosques for military purposes:
The Malam report asserts that the extensive use of mosques to store weapons and as launch pads for rocket attacks on Israel was part of a Hamas strategy based on the knowledge that the IDF would not target civilian infrastructure including mosques, which were therefore ideal for weapons storehouses and rocket attacks.

The Malam analysis is based on Hamas sketches of neighborhoods that show that mosques were used as sniper positions, Israel Air Force videos showing massive secondary explosions after mosques were hit as well as reports from IDF troops.

One mosque in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City was raided by IDF troops who discovered a warehouse full of rockets and mortar shells. During the operation, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at Israel troops from the mosque.

On January 13, IDF troops raided a mosque in Jabalya in northern Gaza that was full of weaponry including an anti-aircraft cannon. In a mosque in the Atatra neighborhood in northern Gaza City, troops uncovered a secret warehouse built under the podium, from where the imam leads prayers, which was full of weaponry and improvised explosive devices.According to the report, the use of mosques for military purposes is as old as Islam itself:
The massive military use Hamas and the other terrorist organizations made of mosques has historical-religious roots. By the 7th century the prophet Muhammad had turned the mosque he built in Medina into a center for preaching, a place where political matters were dealt with, consultations held and appointments made, and where the Muslim army was prepared before it was dispatched to war and to attack the enemies of Islam. Muslim sages are of the opinion that the mosque is not only a house of prayer but that other uses, including military and political, are acceptable. Contemporary examples of the military and political uses made of mosques by radical Islamic terrorist organizations can be found in the Gaza Strip and many other places in the Arab-Muslim world. [p145. Emphasis in the original]One example of such a Muslim religious leader is the Salafist Sheikh Saeed Abdul Azim:
The mosque is the place of worship and retreat, the place of education and guidance, the place of consultation and advice of Muslims, the safe driving center, the headquarters of the military command, the holding of the armies of the Mujahedeen in the cause of Allah and the place of reception of the coming delegations of the Messenger of Allah. The mosque, and say to them - peace be upon him -: (without you sons of Arvada) Agreed upon.[translated with Google Translate; emphasis added]Then there is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who until 2015 permitted suicide bombings:
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi asserted at the time that mosques may be used for political, social, cultural and religious purposes, including on issues related to jihad. He noted that in the days of the Prophet Muhammad, the mosque was the center of activities for the entire Muslim society. The mosque was not only a place to worship Allah, but also a place of study, a gathering place for consultation, a place for people to get to know one another and the like. According to him, in the days of the Prophet Muhammad, delegations would travel from the Arabian Peninsula to meet with the Prophet at the mosque. In those days, Friday sermons were delivered at mosques, and instructions from the Prophet were given to his followers on various topics, including religious, social and political matters. In AlQaradawi’s opinion, since the inception of Islam, the mosque has played an important role in encouraging Muslims to embark on jihad and in the management of the "resistance against the enemies of the [Muslim] community, from among invaders who seek to govern it [i.e., the Muslim community]." Al-Qaradawi noted that mosques play an important role in any jihad. Moreover, in his opinion, it is permissible to preach in a mosque against a government that does not comply with Sharia. [p. 2, emphasis in original]
Al-Qaradawi. Source: Wikipedia. Credit: Nmkuttiady
Using mosques as a base of operations to fire rockets of course disregards the danger it causes to civilians. We have seen in the past that civilian casualties are not a concern for a terrorist group like Hamas. However, the further danger of this approach towards mosques is that they do not appear to have the kind of sanctity that protects worshippers from attacks by other Muslims.

This is a Pandora's Box that was faced by Jews, when in protest against the writings of the Rambam, they burned his books. When non-Jews saw how Jews treated their own writings, they picked up on the idea and burned Jewish holy books too.

This domino effect explains how the Taliban had no problem defacing a Koran in order to sell Heroin.

We learned our lesson.

The Muslim attitude towards mosques, however, is hardwired into Islam -- and considering the tinderbox that is the Middle East, that Sufi mosque is unlikely to be the last to be targeted by Islamist terrorists.



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A couple of weeks ago, my daughter asked me to help her with her homework. She needed help with a project on Antisemitism. The assignment was to take 4 cartoons -- 2 antisemitic cartoons from the Nazi era and 2 current anti-Israel/antisemitic cartoons -- and compare them..

She wanted my help to find them.

The first two cartoons were easy to find online. Der Stürmer cartoons are easy enough to find.

Title: Brood of Serpents 
Caption (not shown): “The Jew’s symbol is a worm, not without reason.
He seeks to creep up on what he wants.”
Title: Don't Let Go.
Text: Do not grow weary, do not loosen the grip,
This poisonous serpent may not slip away.
Better that one strangles it to death
Than that our misery begin anew.
Title: Insatiable 
The lead article is on the Moscow show trials.
The cartoon caption: “Far be it from the Jews to enslave a single people.
Their goal is to devour the entire world.”There is no problem or argument in seeing these cartoons for what they are. They portray Jews as ugly, threatening and outright dangerous.

According to Wikipedia, the Nazis themselves found Streicher's cartoons downright embarrassing:
Since the late 1920s, Streicher's vulgar and inconsiderate style was increasingly a cause of embarrassment for the Nazi party. In 1936 the sale of the Der Stürmer in Berlin was restricted during the Olympic Games. Joseph Goebbels tried to ban the newspaper in 1938. Hermann Göring forbade Der Stürmer in all of his departments, and Baldur von Schirach banned it as a means of education in the Hitler Youth hostels and other education facilities by a "Reichsbefehl" ("Reich command").Though Hitler supported him, Streicher's luck finally ran out after the war when he was tried at Nuremberg. According to the prosecutors, Streicher's paper incited Germans to kill the Jews, thus making him an accessory to murder. He was found guilty of crimes against humanity and hanged.

Fast forward to today.

If the Nazis themselves realized that Streicher was going too far, can we assume that today's antisemites are equally aware of lines that cannot be crossed?

Not if you are Rutgers Professor Michael Chikindas

Michael Chikindas' tweet
Over three weeks later and Rutgers is still trying to figure what to do about this.

Let's face it: we will always have people who get deranged over Der Sturmer.

Those older cartoons demonized Jews, and did it in a way that was so obvious and so over-the-top that a time came that the Nazis themselves had a sense they had gone to far.

Are people more sensitive to antisemitism and anti-Israel propaganda today?

How about the cartoon below from a Berkeley editorial. I gave it to my daughter as a current example of an anti-Israel/antisemitic cartoon.


Raphael Magarik at the Forward justified the cartoon and claimed it wasn't antisemitic at all, but to do so he had to resort to proving his point by avoiding it.

He picked up on the accusation that this was a "blood libel" -- and defended the cartoon because the whole issue was that blood is being spilled. He then goes on to defend the cartoon by claiming that the various implied attacks in the cartoon on Dershowitz and his politics are justified, which is actually besides the point.

Overlooked was the fact that the image was not of Alan Dershowitz, but of Dershowitz with the body of a spider, an image used in Nazi cartoons, with all that image implies.

I pointed out to my daughter the demonization in the cartoon and I think she understood the point.

A few years ago, the Economist printed a cartoon that it then retracted as being antisemitic:



In the cartoon, the US and Iran, symbolized by Obama and Khamenei are being prevented from completing the Iran deal. Iranian hardliners are holding Khamenei back. Congress is holding Obama back. But one of those stars on that emblem of Congress is a Jewish star.

The issue is not the implication that Jews in the US were trying to prevent the Iran deal. As citizens they had the right to oppose it. The implication was that Jews (or Israel) controlled Congress. It may be more subtle than the Dershowitz cartoon, but that implication was an element of demonization of Jews -- and it was a point that was brought home when even the New York Times attempted to make opposition to the Iran deal into a "Jewish" issue.


The creepiest infographic you'll see today, courtesy of the NYT. Categories include "Jewish?" http://t.co/NenSllbqk8 pic.twitter.com/PxDgZY3bTE— Oren Kessler (@OrenKessler) September 10, 2015Even Linda Sarsour gets in on the action:


Israel should give free citizenship to US politicians. They are more loyal to Israel than they are to the American people.— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) July 29, 2014

In another cartoon, at the beginning of the year, The New York State Education Department apologized for including a political cartoon on its global studies Regents exam that critics claimed was anti-Israel propaganda.

Here is the exam question:


Considering the correct answer is (3) Negotiations have failed, the cartoon -- which criticizes Israel and only Israel -- is a poor illustration of the point. Using Natan Sharansky's 3 D's for determining antisemitism -- demonization, double standard and delegitimization -- none of those 3 factors seem to exist in the cartoon in a blatant hyperbolic way.

The AJC condemned the cartoon as being
“blatantly anti-Israel, disparaging of Israeli soldiers … and is entirely inappropriate to include on a test administered to young minds.”Granted the cartoon is "blatantly anti-Israel" and "disparaging of Israeli soldiers," does that make it "inappropriate"?

The exam was in New York.
What would have happened if this appeared on a test in Iowa?

Antisemitic and anti-Israel cartoons may not be as blatant as this one attack Ariel Sharon and Israel:


But this Ariel Sharon cartoon was "cleared" of being antisemitic by a UK press watchdog. More than that,  the cartoon went on to win the UK's "Political Cartoon of the Year Award for 2003" of the Political Cartoon Society.

But what about the resemblance to the Nazi cartoon above of a Jew eating people? Someone decided the cartoon was criticism, not demonization. Does over-the-top criticism automatically become demonization, antisemitism and anti-Israel propaganda?

Fourteen years later, how do we distinguish antisemitic cartoons from criticism -- valid or not -- of Jews or Israel, especially when those cartoons can sometimes be more nuanced?

Dershowitz opens what may be a Pandora's Box when he quotes approvingly from a letter to the editor from students from a pro-Israel organization at Berkeley printed in the Daily Cal:
To a Jewish student on this campus, seeing this cartoon [of Dershowitz] in the Daily Cal is a reminder that we are not always welcome in the spaces we call home…

Telling Jews that we can or cannot define what is offensive to us, because of our status as privileged minority in the United States, is antisemitic.Considering that this strategy is being used by other groups on campuses across the US, Jewish students should be able to use it too -- especially when the antisemitism on campus is such a threat.

Not to mention antisemitic crime incidents over the years as tracked by the FBI:


But do we really want to have to resort to the "safe spaces" argument?

If we demand the right to define what is offensive to us as Jews, as opposed to seeing it as mere criticism, are we validating the claim that Jews deliberately define criticism of Israel as antisemitism?

Safe spaces are not the answer.
The line between criticism and demonization of Israel may not always be so clear.
We have little choice but to stand our ground.




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Back in July, when Palestinian Arabs protested against the use of metal detectors to secure and protect visitors to the Temple Mount from terrorist attacks, Walter Russel Meade made an interesting point. He noted on his website, The American Interest, the key role Palestinian terrorism has played -- not only in the innovation and development of terrorist strategies, but also in the effort to protect against them:
With the possible exception of al-Qaeda, Palestinian terrorism—which pioneered the use of plane hijackings, airport attacks, and suicide bombings—has perhaps done more to force the introduction of metal detectors into our daily lives than just about any other cause.While plane hijackings in the 1970's were just as easily associated with Cuba as with the Palestinian Arabs, it was the latter that pushed the US to increase security on airplanes.


In September 6th and 9th in 1970, 5 planes were were hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Of the 5 airliners, 3 of them were forced to land at Dawson's Field, located near Zarka, Jordan.

This became then-President Nixon's own "9/11":
The crisis opened Nixon's eyes.

His chief of staff, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, recorded in his diary on September 7, 1970, that Nixon was "very anxious to develop some dramatic administration action about hijackings, need tough shocking steps, especially guards on planes."

Nixon responded to the trio of hijackings in a written statement listing seven steps to combat "air piracy." Beyond the air marshals, he called on foreign governments to join the United States in combatting hijackings and ordered electronic surveillance at airports to spot potential terrorists.

Nixon also envisaged that the 100 initial air marshals would eventually grow to a force of thousands. But over the ensuing years, as the threat from hijackings receded, the force never reached full capacity.President Richard Nixon, who faced his own 9/11 in the form of
Palestinian terrorism. Credit: Wikipedia
On September 11, Nixon responded to the Palestinian hijackings with a program on dealing with the problem.
I have directed the Departments of Transportation, Treasury, and Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of Science and Technology, and other agencies to accelerate their present efforts to develop security measures, including new methods for detecting weapons and explosive devices. At the same time, the Departments of Defense and Transportation will work with all U.S. airlines in determining whether certain metal detectors and x-ray devices now available to the military could provide immediate improvement in airport surveillance efforts. To facilitate passenger surveillance, appropriate agencies of the Federal Government will intensify their efforts to assemble and evaluate all useful intelligence concerning this matter and to disseminate such information to airlines and law enforcement personnel. (emphasis added)Metal detectors, which decades later Palestinian Arabs would protest as an impediment, were first deemed necessary as a result of Palestinian terrorism.

Nixon reiterated this point later that month, while speaking to some of the released Americans who had been held hostage



Again, in speaking to the released hostages, Nixon emphasized that in addition to the newly instituted air marshals, "new electronic devices" would be put in place as well.

Times have changed since then, in ways that Nixon could never have imagined.

The years during which Palestinian Arabs terrorized the airways have been forgotten. Who today remembers that the tools used now to secure travelers against terrorist attacks were originally developed to protect them against Palestinian terrorists.

Instead, the only irony greater than the attempt to used those security devices on Palestinian Arabs is their protest that such tools impinge on their rights.

Meanwhile, the world endures the legacy of Palestinian terrorist innovations used by other terrorist groups: hijackings, airport attacks, suicide bombings -- and now car-rammings.

Nixon may not have foreseen these developments, but he did try to prevent them.



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US bipartisan support for Israel -- when and how did that start?

Apparently, the birth of that bipartisan support for Israel came about during the term of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, despite FDR's antagonism towards Zionism.

FDR. Photo by Leon A. Perski, 1944.
Source: Wikipedia
And a lot of the credit seems to be due to Netanyahu.


In FDR’s Retreat on Zionism–and What it Means Today, Rafael Medoff writes about Roosevelt's attitude towards then-Palestine and Zionism.

Roosevelt opposed both, vigorously:

On January 17, 1943, on the question of restoring the pre-war equal rights of North Africa’s 330,000 Jews following the liberation of Casablanca, Roosevelt suggested that “the number of Jews engaged in the practice of the professions (law, medicine, etc) should be definitely limited to the percentage that the Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole of the North African population,” so that local Arabs would not be angered.

Roosevelt also opposed settling Jewish refugees in North Africa: “I know, in fact, that there is plenty of room for them in North Africa but I raise the question of sending large numbers of Jews there...That would be extremely unwise.”

In April 1943, Roosevelt approved of a suggested Allied ban on all public discussion of Palestine until the end of the war. He backed down after Secretary of War Stimson called such a measure "alarmist"

On March 9, 1944, Roosevelt rejected the request of Rabbis Stephen S. Wise and Abba Hillel Silver to open Palestine to Jews fleeing Hitler. He claimed that the move would enrage Arabs and responded to them, “Do you want to start a Holy Jihad?”

Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise; Library of Congress portrait.
Wikipedia
Abba Hillel Silver; excerpt from YouTube video
Also in 1944, Republican Senator Robert Taft introduced a resolution affirming US support for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. In response, Roosevelt claimed that the resolution would be “responsible for the death of a hundred thousand men.” As a result, the resolution was table for a year, and when Congress passed it – there was no Arab rioting.

Yet despite all this, the same Roosevelt who rejected a request by the Palestine (Jewish) Symphony Orchestra to name one of its theaters the “Roosevelt Amphitheatre” for fear it would link him too closely the Zionists -- did in fact turn around and support Zionism.

To a degree.

In the fall of 1943, it appeared that the Republican contender in the 1944 presidential election would go after the Jewish vote.

A major factor in adapting a strong pro-Zionist plank at the Republican National Convention was Netanyahu -- Benzion Netanyahu, the father of Israel's current prime minister.

Benzion Netanyahu in 2007. Source: Wikipedia
Medoff writes:
Benzion Netanyahu, scholar and activist (and father of the current prime minister) arrived in the United States in 1940 as an emissary of Revisionist Zionism, the militant wing of the Zionist movement, headed by Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Netanyahu organized rallies and authored full-page newspaper advertisements challenging the Roosevelt administration for abandoning European Jewry and the Zionist cause.

Netanyahu also spent part of his time on Capitol Hill. In an interview with this author, Netanyahu recalled the political landscape he encountered in the nation’s capital: “Most of the Jewish and Zionist leaders, led by Rabbi Stephen Wise, were devoted Democrats and supporters of President Roosevelt. The idea of having friendly relationships with Republicans was inconceivable to them.” In the months prior to the June 1944 Republican National Convention, Netanyahu did the inconceivable–he took his case to GOP leaders, including former president Herbert Hoover; Senator Robert Taft, who was chairing the convention’s resolutions committee; and the influential Connecticut congresswoman Clare Booth Luce, who was slated to deliver the keynote address at the convention and would also serve on the resolutions committee. Netanyahu’s goal was to have the GOP platform include a plank supporting Jewish statehood in Palestine. Neither party had ever before taken such a stand.The efforts of Netanyahu -- and Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver -- resulted in the inclusion of the following in the Republican platform :
In order to give refuge to millions of distressed Jewish men, women and children driven from their homes by tyranny, we call for the opening of Palestine to their unrestricted immigration and land ownership, so that in accordance with the full intent and purpose of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the resolution of a Republican Congress in 1922, Palestine may be reconstituted as a free and democratic commonwealth. We condemn the failure of the President to insist that the Palestine Mandatory carry out the provisions of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate while he pretends to support them.In response, Rabbi Wise felt forced to try to get the Democrats, with Roosevelt's approval, to include a pro-Zionist statement in its platform as well.

To a large degree he was successful. The Democratic platform supported the “unrestricted Jewish immigration and colonization” of Palestine as well as the establishment of “a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth.”

One could argue that this was the beginning of the bi-partisan support for Israel that despite its ups and downs continues to this day.

Medoff writes:
Wise summed up what was achieved: “With the plank in both platforms the thing is lifted above partisanship.” The adoption of the two party planks ensured that support for Zionism, and later Israel, would become a permanent part of American political culture. No subsequent Republican or Democratic convention could go back on it without significant electoral ramifications.Despite the questions that are raised today about the extent and degree of Democratic support for Israel, that bi-partisan support does in fact continue.

As does the tendency of Netanyahu's not to quietly acquiesce to US policy towards Israel.











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Thursday is the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, yet after 100 years people still argue over it and Abbas is still asking Great Britain for an apology.

What did the Balfour Declaration actually do?
And what did the Balfour Declaration recognize?

The second question is no more settled than the first, but gives a surprising answer.


Arthur Balfour. Credit: Wikipedia

We all are familiar with the language of the declaration:
His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.But while the declaration seems to be talking about the future, in The Case For Israel, Alan Dershowitz writes that by the time the Balfour Declaration was published in 1917, that national home already existed:
Even before the Balfour Declaration of 1917, there was a de facto Jewish national home in Palestine consisting of several dozens of Jewish moshavim and kibbutzim in western and northeastern Palestine, as well as in Jewish cities such as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Safad. The Jewish refugees in Palestine had established this homeland on the ground without the assistance of any colonial or imperialist powers. They had relied on their own hard work in building an infrastructure and cultivating land they had legally purchased.This was an area under Ottoman control until the end of WWI. Even before WWI, there was no sovereign state, just a collection of districts under the control of foreign Ottoman control.

Dershowitz's interpretation is not his own. He quotes Winston Churchill, who in the British White Paper of 1922 wrote:
During the last two or three generations the Jews have recreated in Palestine a community, now numbering 80,000, of whom about one fourth are farmers or workers upon the land. This community has its own political organs; an elected assembly for the direction of its domestic concerns; elected councils in the towns; and an organization for the control of its schools. It has its elected Chief Rabbinate and Rabbinical Council for the direction of its religious affairs. Its business is conducted in Hebrew as a vernacular language, and a Hebrew Press serves its needs. It has its distinctive intellectual life and displays considerable economic activity. This community, then, with its town and country population, its political, religious, and social organizations, its own language, its own customs, its own life, has in fact "national" characteristics. When it is asked what is meant by the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, it may be answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole, but the further development of the existing Jewish community, with the assistance of Jews in other parts of the world, in order that it may become a centre in which the Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride. But in order that this community should have the best prospect of free development and provide a full opportunity for the Jewish people to display its capacities, it is essential that it should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on the sufferance. That is the reason why it is necessary that the existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine should be internationally guaranteed, and that it should be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection. [emphasis added]Sir Winston Churchill, by Yousuf Karsh. Source: Wikipedia

The Balfour Declaration was not addressed to a foreign group, giving them permission to enter the land. On the contrary, it was recognition of what Jews -- who have an indigenous connection to the land  -- had already accomplished and would continue to develop.

As Dershowitz puts it:
The political and legal seeds were were thus sown for a two- (or three- ) state solution to the "Palestinian problem." This was a perfect example of self-determination at work.This is more than an abstract theory.

Take a look at the 1925 Larousse French dictionary entry for "Palestine":


Here is a closeup view of the beginning of the entry:



This translates as:
PALESTINE, the land of Syria, between Phenicia in the North, the Dead Sea in the South, the Mediterranean in the West, and the Syrian Desert in the East, watered by the Jordan. It is a narrow strip of land, narrowed between the sea, Lebanon, and traversed by the Jordan, which throws itself into the Dead Sea. It is also called, in Scripture, Land of Chanaan, Promised Land and Judea . It is today [in 1925] a Jewish state under the mandate of England; 770,000 inhabitants. Jerusalem capital.Already in 1925, before WWII and before the Israeli War of Independence, there was a recognition of a Jewish state called Palestine, a state of 770,000 inhabitants that included both Jews and Muslims. It's capital was Jerusalem, which did not have that designation under Ottoman rule.

Not everyone may have recognized Palestine as such, certainly the Arabs did not, but the ideas expressed by Churchill were more than abstract and had gained a certain acceptance.

Dershowitz notes that even US President Woodrow Wilson, who was a champion of self-determination and opposed British-French plans on dividing the Ottoman Empire after WWI, saw a Jewish state in Palestine as self-determination:
I am persuaded that the Allied nations, with the fullest concurrence of our own government and people, are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish commonwealth.Woodrow Wilson. Library of Congress.
Source: Wikipedia
The culmination of that self-determination -- with a state for the Arabs -- was prevented by war and a refusal to accept even the presence of Jews on the land.

So, what were the Jews doing in Palestine before the Lord Balfour came out with his famous declaration? They were not waiting around to enter as invited guests. Instead, they worked on a land to which they have a 3,000 year history. Jews with indigenous roots to the land worked to re-establish it as a sovereign state, something it had never been since the time of the Romans.

Jews made a choice.
The Arabs made their own choice too.


Hat tip: EG


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On May 8, 2001, Koby Mandell, a 13 year old Israeli with American citizenship and 14 year old Yosef Ishran, were killed on the outskirts of Tekoa where their families lived. Though the actual identities of the murderers was never determined, the Israeli government determined that Palestinian terrorists were responsible.

Their murders led to Congressional legislation strengthening the US response to the killing of Americans overseas.

Koby Mandell. Source: YouTube video

But it was not easy.


The original version of the Koby Mandell Act applied pressure on the US government to deal with Palestinian terrorists who murdered American citizens in attacks on Israel.

The Koby Mandell Act criticized the US government for its failure to dedicate the necessary resources to apprehending Palestinian terrorists:

1. Numerous American citizens have been murdered or maimed by terrorists around the world, including more than one hundred murdered since 1968 in terrorist attacks occurring in Israel or in territories administered by Israel or in territories administered by the Palestinian Authority.
   
   
2. Some American citizens who have been victims of terrorism overseas, especially those harmed by terrorists operating from areas administered by the Palestinian Authority, have not received from the United States Government services equal to those received by other such victims of overseas terrorism.
   
   
3. The United States Government has not devoted adequate efforts or resources to the apprehension of terrorists who have harmed American citizens overseas, particularly in cases involving terrorists operating from areas administered by the Palestinian Authority. Monetary rewards for information leading to the capture of terrorists overseas, which the government advertises in regions where the terrorists are believed to be hiding, have not been advertised in areas administered by the Palestinian Authority.

The bill was criticized by Jewish groups for being too narrowly focused on Palestinian terrorism and for being more interested in criticizing the government than in developing more effective terrorism countermeasures.

Other aspects of the bill, seemed to be very relevant:
(7) The Office shall endeavor to monitor public actions by governments and regimes overseas pertaining to terrorists who have harmed American citizens, such as naming of schools, streets, or other public institutions or sites after such terrorists. In such instances, the Office shall encourage other United States Government agencies to halt their provision of assistance, directly or indirectly, to those institutions.But one of the most important elements of the bill provided for rewards:
(1) The Office shall assume responsibility for administration of the Rewards for Justice program and its web site, www.rewardsforjustice.com, and in so doing will ensure that--
(A) rewards are offered to capture all terrorists involved in harming American citizens overseas, regardless of the terrorists’ country of origin or residence;
(B) such rewards are prominently advertised in the mass media and public sites in all countries or regions where such terrorists reside;
(C) the names and photographs and suspects in all such cases are included on the web site; and
(D) the names of the specific organizations claiming responsibility for terrorist attacks mentioned on the site are included in the descriptions of those attacks.The key element of the bill is that US victims of Palestinian terrorism receive justice:
To create an office within the Department of Justice to undertake certain specific steps to ensure that all American citizens harmed by terrorism overseas receive equal treatment by the United States government regardless of the terrorists' country of origin or residence, and to ensure that all terrorists involved in such attacks are pursued, prosecuted, and punished with equal vigor, regardless of the terrorists' country of origin or residence.The result was the creation of the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism (OVT)

Where do things stand now?

On February 2, 2016, Representative Ron DeSantis chaired a hearing before the Subcommittee on National Security addressing the job the OVT was doing in general and in prosecuting Palestinian terrorists in particular.

Representative Ron DeSantis. Credit: Wikipedia

A key exchange between Congressman DeSantis and Brad Wiegmann, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, in the Department of Justice went like this:
Mr. Wiegmann, the committee has counted that since ’93, at least 64 Americans have been killed, as well as two unborn children, and 91 have been wounded by terrorists in Israel in disputed territories.

Mr. DESANTIS. How many terrorists who have killed or wounded Americans in Israel or disputed territories has the United States indicted, extradited, or prosecuted during this time period?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I think the answer is—is none.

Mr. DESANTIS. Okay. How many terrorists who have killed or wounded Americans anywhere else overseas has the United States indicted, extradited, or prosecuted?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I don’t have an exact figure for you.

Mr. DESANTIS. But it would be a decent size number, though, correct?
Mr. WIEGMANN. It would be a significant number, yes.

Mr. DESANTIS. Okay. Does the DOJ plan to prosecute any of the terrorism cases committed by Palestinian terrorism and Israel in the disputed territories?
Mr. WIEGMANN. So we have a number of open investigations. I can’t comment further on the status of the investigations.

Mr. DESANTIS. Do you know how many, though?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I can’t give you that number.

Mr. DESANTIS. Why not?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I don’t have the number, and I don’t think we want to comment exactly, because the more we say about the number of investigations we have, the more we tell the bad guys who we are trying to get.

Mr. DESANTIS. ...In your opening statement, you said that these prosecutions, when Americans are killed by terrorists overseas, including in Israel, that that was the highest priority, and that there should be no stone left unturned. And I understand when you’re talking about foreign jurisdictions, and you alluded to some of the issues that arise, and I think that point is well taken. But when it’s zero for 64, I think you see some people, who have been affected negatively, wonder, you know, what exactly is the Department doing within this particular aspect of terrorism that occurs in Israel?Another exchange between Wiegmann and Representative DeSantis concerned whether US foreign might influence the the Department of Justice pursued terrorists:
Mr. DESANTIS. ...Now, it’s been alleged that the reason that DOJ does not prosecute the Palestinian terrorists who harm Americans in Israel, the disputed territories, is that the Department of Justice is concerned that such prosecutions will harm efforts to promote the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or that it will actually harm the Palestinian Authority.

So let me ask you straight up, is that a consideration the Department of Justice?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I can assure that is absolutely not the case.

Mr. DESANTIS. And has the State Department ever made arguments to the Department of Justice to handle some of the Palestinian terrorism cases differently than you may normally handle, say, a terrorism case in Asia?

Mr. WIEGMANN. Absolutely not. The State Department has nothing to say about cases that we bring, whether in Palestinian territories related to these cases or not. So it absolutely makes zero difference to us whether the terrorist attack occurred in Israel, whether it’s a Palestinian terrorist group, whether it’s ISIL, Al Qaeda, they are all the same to us. We want to protect Americans regardless of who they are victimized by.An important issue in the US pursuing and extraditing terrorists in general and Palestinian terrorists in particular is the question of double-jeopardy. Does the US consider pursuit of Palestinian terrorists released from prison, for example in the Gilad Shalit exchange, to be off-limits:
Mr. DESANTIS. ...Now, some have said that if you have a situation where a terrorist who kills Americans in Israel is prosecuted by the Israelis, then they are later released in a prisoner exchange or release, that somehow if we were to prosecute them here, that would trigger double jeopardy. Is that the Department’s position?

Mr. WIEGMANN. Absolutely not. We have prosecuted people who have been released from prison before. Sometimes it takes us a while. One prominent case is an older case, actually a case involving a Palestinian terrorist who hijacked an airliner in Pakistan. He spent, I think, 8 to 10 years in a Pakistani prison. Then he was released, made his way to another country, and was, I think, more, 10, 12, 15 years later that we were able finally to apprehend the person, prosecuted him in 2004, and he’s got a 60-year sentence today.

So we have prosecuted people who have been released from prison before, and certainly, nothing in the Israeli prison release would be any different. We fully intend to pursue charges in any of those cases if we can.Some of Wiegmann's testimony is positive -- that the prosecution of Palestinian terrorists is not influenced or hampered by foreign policy and that double-jeopardy is not an issue.

But the fact remains that the record of the OVT is horrendous. Some of the parents and relatives of victims made clear they thought the Department of Justice and the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism were not doing their job, undercutting the intent of the Koby Mandell Act. Apart from the clear failure to apprehend even one Palestinian terrorist, other complaints during the hearing were that the OVT was not in contact with them..

Sherri Mandell herself indicated in 2012 that the OVT was not doing its job

• When she the head of the American Consulate in Israel to find out about the recent activities of The Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism , she never heard back.
• Her family was not informed of key personnel changes in the OVT.
• Although Rewards for Justice distributed 100 million dollars to 70 people who have given information leading to the apprehension of terrorists -- the program had not been activated in Israel.

We are approaching the end of 2017 and still the OVT has been a failure.

Most recently, efforts to bring Ahlam Tamimi to justice have been thwarted by Jordan's refusal to honor its extradition treaty with the US. It is unclear what the US is going to do to prevent this from being one more failure in the record of the the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism.

And in the record of the Koby Mandell Act.





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