Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 16, 2017

02/16 Links Pt1: Trump: Palestinians Must Stop The Hate If They Want Peace; Kontorovich: Jewish Settlements & International Law

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian Assault on Freedoms

The Palestinians seem to be marching towards establishing a regime that is remarkably reminiscent of the despotic and corrupt Arab and Islamic governments.
By failing -- or, more accurately, refusing -- to hold the PA accountable for its crackdown on public freedoms, American and European taxpayers actively contribute to the emergence of another Arab dictatorship in the Middle East.
Palestinian professor Abdel Sattar Qassem, who teaches political science at An-Najah University in Nablus, is facing trial for "extending his tongue" against PA President Mahmoud Abbas and other senior PA officials.
Many Palestinians used to say that their dream is that one day they would have a free media and democracy like their neighbors in Israel. But thanks to the apathy of the international community, Palestinians have come to learn that if and when they ever have their own state, its role model will not be Israel or any Western democracy, but the regimes of repression that control the Arab and Muslim world.

Eugene Kontorovich: Jewish Settlements & International Law

Northwestern University Law Professor Eugene Kontorovich makes the case that Israeli settlements are not illegal under international law. A program of Zionist Organization of America.

PMW: Fatah official: Palestinians have "right" to use terror to "liberate our homeland"

A senior Fatah leader, Nabil Shaath, said three times in a short interview that the Palestinians have a right to use "armed struggle," the Palestinian euphemism for terror. In fact Shaath said that this right is "indisputable." [Fatah-run Awdah TV, The Story of a Photograph, Jan. 23, 2017]
According to Shaath, the goal of using violence is to "liberate our homeland," after which a "Palestinian Arab democratic state" will exist, and Jews, Muslims and Christians will live in "Palestine" together.
The fundamental condition under which the PLO and Fatah, the movement headed by Mahmoud Abbas, were taken off the list of terror organizations was that they had committed to giving up terror. This statement by a senior Fatah leader contradicts the PLO's commitment and is a reiteration that Fatah has never attempted to fulfill the terms for which it was removed from the list of terror organizations. As Shaath said, Fatah claims that violence against Israel, including the killing of Israeli civilians, is legitimate "resistance."

Fatah leader Nabil Shaath: The armed struggle is our right

Ariel is the largest town that is deep inside Samaria, smack in the middle of the northern part of what has been called the West Bank for the past few decades. Mrs. Elder and I had the opportunity to visit Ariel University last year.

Ariel's mayor, Eli Shaviro, is in the United States and I caught up with him. I asked him his opinion of what President Trump had said on Wednesday, and he said that he was happy that Trump was no longer committed to a two-state solution.

I asked him what his alternative was.

"I'd say today that the two state plan is not feasible. I believe that we have to take broad the common denominators (between the peoples); an example would be the economy, or health care. From our level, not the national/government level but the local level, these are things that we can create and move things in a positive direction.

"You can look at the Palestinians working in Ariel or in the Barkan Industrial park. In partnership with Ariel University we are building a large medical facility that will serve both Israelis and Palestinians. These are the things that both sides need, both us and the Palestinians.

"Once our neighbors begin to receive these services and benefits of neighbors working together, they will get to know us, and once they get to know us things can move in further positive directions."

"If you speak with a Palestinian and ask him if he would rather work in the Ariel Industrial Park, of course he would. But beyond there is a Palestinian Authority that is trying to prevent him from working there.

"That's why if you ask which way things are going, the change will happen from the bottom up and not from the top down.

"I agree we have to think about the future. But for now, it would be unwise to project the end-game, rather we need to work step-by-step towards a solution."

Shaviro is putting his money where his mouth is. Even before the major medical center opens in Ariel, he is building a clinic specifically for the Arab population in the area. He says that the Ariel industrial zone employs highly skilled Arab workers and managers, most who come from Nablus, who are treated absolutely equally with the Jews who work there.

Shaviro is not a religious man, so I asked him what his ideological reason was for wanting to live in a "settlement." He pointed out that most of Ariel is not religious, and neither is the university. "But it is impossible to overlook our past. Judea and Samaria are the land of the Jewish Bible. To one side of Ariel is the tomb of Joshua, to the east of Ariel is Shilo, the original capital of Israel. You cannot ignore that."

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The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have all come out deriding President Trump's statement that perhaps a two-state solution is not the solution.

All of these editorials make a basic implicit assumption: that Palestinians should have veto power over any solution - but Israelis shouldn't.

The NYT is most explicit:

His willingness, however, to lend credence to those who would deny a separate state to the Palestinians will certainly make peace harder to achieve. Palestinians have long sought their own state and are sure to reject the idea of having their lands annexed by Israel, even if offered some kind of limited autonomy.

But Israelis are sure to reject the Palestinian demands for peace. As Mahmoud Abbas stated just today, here they are (and this is only a partial description of Palestinian demands):

President Mahmoud Abbas stressed that his administration adheres to the option of two states as well as international law and international legitimacy to ensure an end to the Israeli occupation and the establishment of the independent State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital to live in security and peace alongside the State of Israel on the June 4, 1967 borders.

Abbas specifically rejects Israel's two red lines described by Netanyahu, in either a one or two-state scenario:

The President stressed that persistence of the Israeli Prime Minister in his dictates regarding continuation of Israeli control over the eastern border of the territory of the State of Palestine as well as to demand recognition of Israel as a Jewish state are considered a continuation of the attempt to impose facts on the ground and to destroy the two-state option while replacing it with the principle of one state with two systems - Apartheid.

In Arabic, Abbas demands even more: the mythical "right to return," the freeing of terrorist prisoners, and more.

All of these are described over and over again by the Palestinian leaders as non-negotiable demands, meaning that they will reject anything less than what they want.

Yet the major media make the assumption that Palestinian rejectionism is legitimate and therefore, unless they get what they want, there can be no solution. The media also tacitly accepts the idea that Palestinians will naturally gravitate to terror if they don't get what they want, and gives those threats legitimacy.

But what about what Israelis want? None of these editorials even give Netanyahu's insistence on controlling the border with Jordan, of the Palestinians accepting that Israel is a Jewish state, or that incitement in schools and media against Israel end, as Israeli red lines that can be used to legitimately reject a Palestinian state.

Only Palestinians are granted veto power over any solution. Only their red lines are real.

The editorials all ignore the most fundamental fact of all: Israel's previous peace offers addressed every single one of their objections and warnings that Israel would become an "apartheid state." It wasn't the Israeli side that rejected peace - it was the Palestinian side, over and over again.

The Washington Post editorial is most interesting because it accidentally gives the best argument for keeping the status quo. It says that Trump's statement "increased the chances that one of the few relatively peaceful corners of the region will return to conflict."

Hold on: things are peaceful now without a Palestinian state?

Yes, there are occasional stabbings and shooting attacks and car rammings. But compared to the past, including during the Oslo process itself in the 1990s, things really are comparatively peaceful today.

The reason isn't because Palestinians have hope for a state. They stopped negotiating years ago. The reason is because they have autonomy and political power that they don't want to lose. They will not risk losing what they have in order to try to gain a state they are unlikely to get.

It is Hamas that is stopping rocket attacks, not a peace plan. The Gaza wars are what dissuades them from terror today, not a piece of paper. They want to hold onto power above all. This doesn't mean that they don't fantasize about spectacular terror attacks, but they are far more careful to make sure that they don't lose more than they could gain from any move they make - which limits their terror options dramatically.

The Palestinian Authority relishes the symbolism of statehood that it has, opening diplomatic missions, fielding Olympic teams and enjoying unparalleled respect at the UN. Its security forces are stopping terror attacks, not the "peace process" - because, like Hamas, it doesn't want to lose what it has.

This is the most peaceful the region has been since the 1980s, when Israel really did control the territories. Yet unlike the 1980s, it isn't because of the IDF - it is because the Arabs have something to lose and don't want to jeopardize it.

Who can realistically say that a Palestinian state, where they can field an army and openly promote terrorist attacks beyond what they do today, would have anything to do with peace? How can the Washington Post assume that "one of the few relatively peaceful corners of the region" would remain that way (or get better) when the side that openly supports and literally pays terrorists gets a state?

Palestinians who have consistently rejected reasonable peace plans and who still embrace terror today do not deserve a state as long as they remain intransigent.

"Two states" used to be a potential formula to reach a goal of peace. It failed. The mistake that the world is making is that it cannot distinguish between the goal and the means.

The goal remains peace, not "two states." As the Washington Post admits, right now there is more peace in Israel and the territories than Israel's neighbors enjoy, and things in Israel haven't been this peaceful for decades. There is absolutely no evidence that a Palestinian state would make things better - and there is considerable evidence that it would make things worse.

The status quo is not ideal, and Israel every day has to balance its security needs with ensuring that Palestinian Arabs have the best lives and most rights possible. Whether the world likes it or not, that is the best peace plan available today. As long as the Palestinians refuse to compromise, the status quo will remain the option that optimizes real peace.

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Days after the election last November, I wrote:

The President isn't only about policies and laws and bills and strategy: The White House has a huge influence on American public opinion and how Americans view the world.

Americans will inevitably view the Middle East differently because no one that shares the Obama worldview will remain in the White House.

It will be shocking to the world the first time President Trump opines on the Middle East. But chances are that he will look at it without the obscuring clouds of years of lies about "settlers" and "Likud intransigence". If there is anything Trump loves to do, it is to burst the bubble of conventional wisdom.

...Maybe he'll ask, "Why, 23 years after Oslo, has the Palestinian Authority continued to teach hate on TV and in the classrooms?"

Maybe he'll ask, "If Palestinians want peace so much, why have they turned down every peace offer, and why did they respond to the Clinton plan with a war on Jewish civilians?"

Maybe he'll ask, "Why are people wanting to boycott the one country that does more for human rights than any other country in the entire Middle East"?

...These types of obvious questions - obvious to anyone who is not caught up in the previous narrative, that is - will create more positive change than any number of conferences or bills passed. The media will not be able to ignore the plain truths that they have been studiously ignoring for many years.

On Wednesday, my prediction came true.

Not only because President Trump publicly said that perhaps the two-state solution isn't the ideal. Not only because he spoke out about Arab incitement, and not only because he pointed out Israel is amazing for what it achieves while under attack.

As I predicted, the entire narrative has changed.

The New York Times published an op-ed by Yishai Fleisher, a "settler" who has a radio show in Israel (and who presented at the Hasby Awards last year.) He explained why he and his fellow settlers have felt that the two-state solution has been dead for years, but more importantly he discusses five alternatives that Israelis are aware of but that the mainstream media has all but ignored.

The first option, proposed by former members of Israel’s Parliament Aryeh Eldad and Benny Alon, is known as “Jordan is Palestine,” a fair name given that Jordan’s population is generally reckoned to be majority Palestinian. Under their plan, Israel would assert Israeli law in Judea and Samaria while Arabs living there would have Israeli residency and Jordanian citizenship. Those Arabs would exercise their democratic rights in Jordan, but live as expats with civil rights in Israel.

A second alternative, suggested by Israel’s education minister, Naftali Bennett, proposes annexation of only Area C — the territory in the West Bank as defined by the Oslo Accords (about 60 percent by area), where a majority of the 400,000 settlers live — while offering Israeli citizenship to the relatively few Arabs there. But Arabs living in Areas A and B — the main Palestinian population centers — would have self-rule.

A third option, which dovetails with Mr. Bennett’s, is promoted by Prof. Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University, near Tel Aviv. His premise is that the most stable Arab entity in the Middle East is the Gulf Emirates, which are based on a consolidated traditional group or tribe. The Palestinian Arabs are not a cohesive nation, he argues, but are comprised of separate city-based clans. So he proposes Palestinian autonomy for seven non-contiguous emirates in major Arab cities, as well as Gaza, which he considers already an emirate. Israel would annex the rest of the West Bank and offer Israeli citizenship to Arab villagers outside those cities.

The fourth proposal is the most straightforward. Caroline Glick, a Jerusalem Post journalist, wrote in her 2014 book, “The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for Peace in the Middle East,” that, contrary to prevailing opinion, Jews are not in danger of losing a demographic majority in an Israel that includes Judea and Samaria. New demographic research shows that thanks to falling Palestinian birth rates and emigration, combined with opposite trends among Jews, a stable Jewish majority of above 60 percent exists between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean (excluding Gaza); and this is projected to grow to about 70 percent by 2059.

Ms. Glick thus concludes that the Jewish State is secure: Israel should assert Israeli law in the West Bank and offer Israeli citizenship to its entire Arab population without fear of being outvoted. This very week, Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, announced his backing for the idea in principle. “If we extend sovereignty,” he said, “the law must apply equally to all.”

Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, similarly advocates for annexation and giving the Palestinians residency rights — with a pathway to citizenship for those who pledge allegiance to the Jewish State. Others prefer an arrangement more like that of Puerto Rico, a United States territory whose residents cannot vote in federal elections. Some Palestinians, like the Jabari clan in Hebron, want Israeli residency and oppose the Palestinian Authority, which they view as illegitimate and corrupt.

Finally, there is a fifth alternative, which comes from the head of the new Zehut party, Moshe Feiglin, and Martin Sherman of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. They do not see a resolution of conflicting national aspirations in one land and instead propose an exchange of populations with Arab countries, which effectively expelled about 800,000 Jews around the time of Israeli independence. In contrast, however, Palestinians in Judea and Samaria would be offered generous compensation to emigrate voluntarily.

None of these options is a panacea. Every formula has some potentially repugnant element or tricky trade-off. But Israeli policy is at last on the move, as the passing of the bill on settlements indicates.

While it is unusual for the New York Times to publish something like this, from its perspective it is publishing a loony right wing rant so it can be called "balanced" against its usual Israel bashing, knowing that its readers won't take this seriously.

But now that the White House is publicly saying that perhaps the two-state solution isn't the best possible way forward, the mainstream media is forced to address the alternatives, even as they deride them.

AP published what would have been unthinkable a few months ago. Although it is skeptical and derogatory towards anything but the two state "solution" it has been forced to acknowledge that there are alternatives. So while it downplays them, it mentions some:

INTERIM AGREEMENT
Many Israelis have concluded that a final peace agreement with the Palestinians is simply not possible because the Palestinians are asking for the moon as a result of a feeling that they hold the demographic cards. It is not just about territory: the Palestinians still in theory demand a "right of return" to Israel proper for millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees living around the region and the world, which the vast majority of Jewish Israelis reject.
But perhaps a partial deal is possible whereby the Palestinians would not have to forego future claims but for now get their state on, say, 80% of the West Bank, with some sort of preferred access or new regime in the Old City of Jerusalem? Even the current nationalist Netanyahu government would probably accept such a thing, but the Palestinians have ruled it out, fearing the temporary would become permanent. To get them to agree would require massive global and Arab world pressure, and risks huge internal conflict among the Palestinians.

The article also looks at versions of the "one state" solution, a version of the "Jordanian option," a partial unilateral pullout and the status quo. The analysis is flawed but that's not the point - the needle has moved and the conventional wisdom of the Obama White House and the mainstream media is no longer so conventional.

No matter what happens from today onward, this is a sea change in the dynamic, and suddenly more creative solutions - such as the one that Netanyahu seemed to suggest at the press briefing, of a more regional peace deal where the Arab nations benefit and the Palestinian issue is put in a more proper perspective - become more viable.

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A danger on the horizon for textbooks

I noticed this business story on Bloomberg:

Top Hat, the Canadian education technology startup, completed a new round of funding to give it more firepower to go after textbook publishers like Pearson Plc.

Top Hat is one of a handful of startups trying to find ways to disrupt the traditional textbook publishing industry, dominated by companies like Pearson, Cengage Learning Inc. and McGraw-Hill Education Inc... All of these firms have added digital educational materials to their range of products, but the transition has been rocky.

Even as the big publishers work to increase the proportion of sales that come from digital products, they’re still largely dependent on physical books.

That’s a weakness Top Hat Chief Executive Officer Mike Silagadze said he’s trying to exploit.

In November, they launched an online content marketplace, where professors can create course materials and sell it around the world. The idea is to cut out the publisher and let professors sell directly to students and each other, Silagadze said.

“It fundamentally breaks the publisher’s traditional model of producing content,” he said. “Our aim is to disrupt the paradigm the publishers have created over the last 100 years.”

I'm all for progress, but in this case there is a huge danger that the professors who sell their content directly will be more biased than traditional publishers whose texts must go through numerous reviews before they invest the money into publishing them.

It is more than likely that a professor or teacher who is anti-Israel will publish shoddy, half-baked materials and with this peer-to-peer system his or her customers will buy based on style, not content. Unless there is more oversight than is being reported here, this model has the potential of spreading lies without even a modicum of peer review.

And you can be certain that some politically biased professors will jump at the opportunity to spread propaganda as textbooks - not to mention they can make money doing it.

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02/15 Links Pt2: A View From The Frontlines; Phillips: A most deplorable analogy; Douglas Murray Speaking at the Israel Rally in London

From Ian:

A View From The Frontlines

In the summer of 2015, just three days after I moved to Israel for a one-and-a-half year stint freelance reporting in the region, I wrote down my feelings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A friend of mine in New York had mentioned that it would be interesting to see if living in Israel would change the way I felt about it. My friend probably suspected that things would look differently from the front-row seat, so to speak.
Boy was he right.
Before I moved to Jerusalem, I was very pro-Palestinian. Almost everyone I knew was. I grew up Protestant in a quaint, politically-correct New England town; almost everyone around me was liberal. And being liberal in America comes with a pantheon of beliefs: You support pluralism, tolerance and diversity. You support gay rights, access to abortion and gun control.
The belief that Israel is unjustly bullying the Palestinians is an inextricable part of this pantheon. Most progressives in the US view Israel as an aggressor, oppressing the poor noble Arabs who are being so brutally denied their freedom. “I believe Israel should relinquish control of all of the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank,” I wrote on July 11, 2015 from a park near my new apartment in Baka. “The occupation is an act of colonialism that only creates suffering, frustration and despair for millions of Palestinians.”
Perhaps predictably, this view didn’t play well among the people I met during my first few weeks in Jerusalem, which even by Israeli standards is a conservative city. My wife and I had moved to the Jewish side of town, more or less by chance —the first Airbnb host who accepted our request to rent a room happened to be in the Nachlaot neighborhood, where even the hipsters are religious. As a result, almost everyone we interacted with was Jewish Israeli and very supportive of Israel. I didn’t announce my pro-Palestinian views to them —I was too afraid. But they must have sensed my antipathy. (I later learned this is a sixth sense Israelis have.)
Because my first few weeks in Jerusalem I found myself constantly getting into arguments about the conflict with my roommates and in social settings. Unlike waspy New England, Israel does not afford the privilege of politely avoiding unpleasant political conversations. Outside of the Tel Aviv bubble, the conflict is omnipresent; it affects almost every aspect of life. Avoiding it simply isn’t an option. (h/t Yenta Press)

Douglas Murray Speaking at the Israel Rally in London

Melanie Phillips: A most deplorable analogy

Now an analogy is being drawn between Britain’s decency over the Kindertransport and its supposed absence of decency over today’s European migrant crisis. Many, not least within the UK’s Jewish community – including, astoundingly, some of its religious leaders – have made much of the supposed analogy between these migrants and the Jewish refugees from Nazism. The refusal to take not just a greater number of Dubs children but also more adults migrants, they claim, is on a par with the refusal to accept refugees from the Holocaust.
I’m appalled by this analogy. Neither the Syrian civil war, brutal and unspeakable as it is, nor any other current conflict can be compared to the Holocaust.
That was the attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish people, along with the mass murder of other groups. Unlike today, there were no refugee camps from whence to pluck these victims to provide them with a better life. They were simply deprived of life altogether. The Holocaust was an attempted genocide. Today’s migrant crisis is part of a mass movement of people, not all of them refugees, which threatens to engulf western Europe.
It is absolutely nauseating that the Holocaust is being used in this way as an emotional bludgeon, so that anyone who supports restrictions on today’s migrants is not only attacked as a heartless monster but also for somehow betraying the memory of the victims of Nazism.
In fact this analogy itself diminishes the Holocaust. It is not just offensive. It displays an inability to make vital moral distinctions. It uses excruciatingly complex global dilemmas as a platform for self-centred grandstanding.
And it is simply incomprehensible, tragic and unforgivable that some who are making this comparison are Jews themselves.

What motivates a journalist to slant an article against Israel? This has never seemed a particularly difficult question. But let’s take a look at some of the possibilities. Consider it exercise for the mind. Like doing stretches. How many scenarios can you come up with?

A writer might slant an article against Israel:

· Because an editor demands he do so and it’s hate on Israel or lose your job.

· As a forever rebellion against all things Jewish, to spite the Jewish journalist’s parents/upbringing.

· As an expression of xenophobia

· Out of ignorance

· Because of antisemitism

· Because the Arab journalist’s goal is to acquire Israeli land and this is part of his narrative/agitprop

· Because of intersectionality, in the case of the leftist writer

· To get page views and advance one’s career, since hating Israel is ever popular

· Out of jealousy—the journalist doesn’t really hate Jews, but every time he gets passed over for a promotion, it’s someone Jewish and this is his way of getting back, gosh darnit

If you examine the above list, it boils down to ignorance, the acquisition of goals, or hatred.

Now a journalist who is ignorant is guilty, guilty, guilty of the worst sort of journalism. A writer is supposed to do homework. He’s supposed to track down credible sources in support of what he writes. He is supposed to gather facts. A journalist at a loss to find the data he needs says so or leaves it out of his piece. If he offers a theory because he cannot find cold, hard, data, he says it is a theory.

So no. No excuse for ignorance.

Let’s look at the acquisition of goals. Here we’re talking about someone who maybe doesn’t care one way or the other about Israel, but his newspaper tells him what editorial stance to take and by golly, that’s the position he’s going to adopt, that is if he wants to keep his job at, for instance, the New York Times. Or maybe it’s a writer just starting out and he’s going for sensational, because he wants to make it to the top. What better way to get there than smearing the world’s favorite target? Is this okay, then? Can we say that in the case of professional goals, the ends justify the means?

No. No we can’t. People are supposed to have integrity. Even if it means losing your job or staying stuck in a rut. There are things you can do, and things you can’t. Slanting articles is beyond the pale.

It’s just wrong.

Perhaps the writer is an Arab journalist who supports a worldwide caliphate for religious reasons? He wants Israel, all of it, as part of the ummah. Or perhaps he is an Arab who has been fed with his mother’s milk the idea that the Jews stole his land. Or maybe the journalist is heavy into all sorts of leftist causes like gay marriage and third-trimester abortion which means that struggling against the imagined “occupation” is just one more leftist cause, indistinguishable from the others, nothing personal, you understand.

Is this okay? No. It’s not. Any time you have to lie, which is what slanting an article is—a lie—you’re showing that the truth is not in your favor. If it were, you’d use it. Where you instead use media bias as a tool, you need to do some self-examination and do some deep thinking about your values.

And then we come to hatred: is it okay to slant an article because you hate that the entire world hates you for being Jewish and you want to prove you’re not like those other ZIO Jews?

No. It’s not okay to sacrifice your people and smear your land, your inheritance, because you want to be liked, you want to be a citizen of the world. That’s your burden to carry always, and you need to carry it with pride! They hate us because they envy us. They hate us because they can’t supplant us.

Do not choose the wrong side here. Strive to be a mensch! That is all there is, really. Our integrity is who we are in the end.

The other types of hatred that drive people to smear Israel? They don’t bear discussion here. We all know that hatred is an ugly thing that should be repulsed by all good people. Period.

Embed from Getty Images

And so it was that when I wrote my piece, Booth and Eglash: A Pathological Hatred of Israel, I felt secure in deciding that Booth and Eglash were motivated by hatred in their Israel-related articles:

When one sees the byline of William Booth and Ruth Eglash on a Washington Post article, what follows, one knows, is going to be a very ugly piece about Israel. There will be the pretense of balance, but the slant will always be there and the direction of that slant will never favor Israel. You read their stuff and you have to wonder what's wrong with them, the authors. Their regular and willful distortion of the facts must, by design, be born of deep-seated hatred for the Jewish State.

Now if the articles were balanced and at least factually true, we might have given Booth and Eglash a pass. We might have said they are writing what they write for the sake of truth. . . We could have ascribed a certain logic to reporting true but ugly news about Israel, and called the authors "truth seekers." (Even though nitpicking on Israel is kind of a strange thing to do, considering the slaughter going on next door in, for instance, Syria.)

With Booth and Eglash, however, what you've got is something far from the truth, something at a distant remove from decency and basic journalistic standards. What you've got instead is two authors pushing a single agenda and passing off selected half-truths as cover for their naked hate of Israel.

It's pathological.

It was a process of elimination. Eglash is Jewish. The Washington Post may be a media outlet that leans to the left, but it does carry articles by Eugene Kontorovich and Jennifer Rubin, who write honestly and positively of Israel.

Therefore, Eglash has made a choice when she contributes to biased articles about Israel and the choice is not in Israel’s favor. The descriptive language, the lack of context and selective context are too out there to ignore.

Booth? Well, he too, has made a choice that appears to have nothing to do with his getting ahead in his career, since, as noted above, he could have been a Jennifer Rubin or a Eugene Kontorovich writing good and truthful things about a good and truthful nation.

Is everything about Israel good?

Of course not. But we’re not talking about Israel’s warts. We’re talking about MEDIA BIAS.

Here is a recent example of a Booth article to which Ruth Eglash contributed: Netanyahu is Urged Not to Use the Words Palestinian State When He Visits Trump.

The first sentence:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likes to boast to his boisterous cabinet that no one understands the Americans better than he does.

“Likes to boast?” “Boisterous cabinet?”

This piece is not presented as an opinion piece but as a straight news piece about the Middle East. Yet here we have Netanyahu’s character described. He is described as someone boastful, someone who LIKES boasting. And the Knesset is described as “boisterous” like so many ragtag pickpockets sent out into the streets of London by Fagan, to steal and trick the people.

It’s already “Jewy.” If you see what I mean. It's a kind of character assasination.

Does it end there, the bias? If it did, we might give a pass. But no. There’s this:

His education minister and coalition partner, Naftali Bennett, leader of the pro-settlement Jewish Home party, has pressed him to abandon his tentative commitment to the two-state solution, which Netanyahu first announced in a speech at Bar Ilan University in 2009.

“Tentative commitment?” On what basis the use of the word “tentative” to characterize Netanyahu’s commitment? Is that fact, or is that opinion? Because if it’s fact, there needs to be a link or reference to a source that proves the point. Otherwise, it’s opinion. And if it’s opinion, it doesn’t belong here, in a straight news piece.

So let’s take a look at the text of Netanyahu’s Bar Ilan speech:

I told President Obama when I was in Washington that if we could agree on the substance, then the terminology would not pose a problem. And here is the substance that I now state clearly:

If we receive this guarantee regarding demilitarization and Israel's security needs, and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the State of the Jewish people, then we will be ready in a future peace agreement to reach a solution where a demilitarized Palestinian state exists alongside the Jewish state.

We took a look at the actual text, because Booth and Eglash made the assertion, without offering proof. Which already says something. It says they’ve got no good reason to use the word “tentative.” Because if they had a good reason, they would have offered the text of the speech as their source.

As you can see, Bibi was firm. He said, “I now state clearly,” and so forth. There is nothing tentative there. Which is why the source for this contention, this descriptor that slants the piece, is missing. It doesn’t serve their point, their slant.

We could continue to analyze the article in depth, pointing out each descriptor as I did in my earlier piece about Booth’s and Eglash’s bias, but there is a broader point I wish to make.

Back in December, I tweeted the link to my piece about Booth and Eglash only to be virtually bitch-slapped by the managing editor of Honest Reporting.

@epavard @BoothWilliam @washingtonpost Absolutely appalling. I can personally vouch 4 @reglash who is anything but an Israel hater.
— Simon Plosker (@SimonPlosker) December 15, 2016

@epavard @washingtonpost @reglash & while I don't always agree with @BoothWilliam, he is one of the most professional journos out here.
— Simon Plosker (@SimonPlosker) December 15, 2016

@epavard @washingtonpost @reglash @BoothWilliam Is hatred something u attribute 2 everyone whom u disagree with?
— Simon Plosker (@SimonPlosker) December 15, 2016

@epavard @washingtonpost @BoothWilliam On the basis that I've known @reglash 4 over 20yrs, ur suggestion that she hates Israel is offensive.
— Simon Plosker (@SimonPlosker) December 15, 2016

@epavard @washingtonpost @BoothWilliam @reglash How can u rationally critique someone's work and then assume it's driven by hate?
— Simon Plosker (@SimonPlosker) December 15, 2016

Plosker tweeted: How can u rationally critique someone's work and then assume it's driven by hate?

This is what I have tried to answer in this week’s column, after seeing several more such collaborative articles from the Washington Post’s Booth and Eglash that betray a bias against Israel.

There are the descriptors (boisterous, boasting, tentative) where none belong. There is selective omission of facts that are needed for context as referenced in my earlier piece on Booth and Eglash. There’s no getting around it. It is what it is. Media bias.

And I don’t see any good reason for media bias whatsoever, especially for such seasoned reporters as Booth and Eglash, working for a media outlet that does have pro-Israel writers among its staff. I don’t have a way to excuse the bias against Israel when I see it. And neither should you.

Media bias. It’s what you use when you’re trying to get ahead, you don’t know better, or you’re filled with hate. And there’s no excuse for any of this.

Whatsoever.

Palestinian Claims Victory In Twitter Exchange, Bringing Statehood Ever Closer (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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San Francisco, February 15 - Twitter executives reported today that in a series of messages between a Palestinian tweeter and two advocates for Israel, the Palestinian twice announced he had bested his opponents, thereby contributing to the establishment of a hoped-for Palestinian State.

The user, with 31 followers as of this writing, took on three tweeters with an interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by replying to a satirical link posted by one of them regarding Israeli settlements. During the ensuing exchange, the Palestinian user repeatedly invoked what he called a legal argument regarding Palestinian statehood and the illegality of Israeli control over areas it captured in 1967, and derided his opponents for their seeming inability to muster a counterargument on a legal basis. For so doing, the Palestinian tweeter declared he had won the argument; he had thus brought his people that much closer to sovereignty.

One of his interlocutors observed that his arguments in fact featured no legal content, as they were the product of declarative, political decisions with no legal standing. This observation prompted the user to double down on his assertion, then declare again that he had bested his opponents.

Palestinians reacted with excitement to this development. "We've been waiting for so long to have someone declare victory on Twitter," gushed Saeb Erekat, the Palestine Liberation Organization's chief negotiator with Israel. "This is of potentially greater weight than UN Security Resolution 2334, which we hailed as a victory - but this Twitter victory renders that diplomatic coup inconsequential by comparison. Today is a blessed day in the annals of the Palestinian struggle."

"It is good news, yes, but this must serve as the springboard to greater achievement," urged Israeli Member of Knesset Haneen Zoabi. "A self-declared victory in debate on Twitter, we can all agree, was never dreamed of by our ancestors, but that is no reason to rest now, when the objective is so much closer. I can practically taste the air of a liberated Palestine now. I guess because it would be the same air where Israel is now, just with a stronger smell of rotting corpses."

The unprecedented milestone has also galvanized supporters of the Palestinian cause around the world. "With the wind at our backs, we can press forward. Allah praise our loyal compatriot!" read a message from the Students for Justice in Palestine - Urbana-Champaign chapter. "The tactics are familiar, of course, but you have taken them to new heights!"

Israeli defense officials were reportedly quaking in their boots at the defeat.

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02/15 Links Pt1: Senator Cotton: “Jews Are Called Jews, Because They’re From Judea”; Trump officials: Two-state solution not the only path to peace

From Ian:

IsraellyCool: Senator Tom Cotton: “Jews Are Called Jews, Because They’re From Judea”

effrey Goldberg of The Atlantic recently interviewed Tom Cotton, the junior senator from Arkansas, who he describes as “the future Republican candidate for president.”
And at least when it comes to Israel, Cotton really seems to get it.
Goldberg: A semi-related question. How would you organize the West Bank in such a way as to give the Palestinians something of what they want without endangering Israel?
Cotton: Ultimately, that would be a question for Israelis and Palestinians, if the Palestinians can get non-terror supporting leaders. The United States over the last eight years has made that harder. For instance, in 2009, demanding a freeze on construction in Judea and Samaria, something that Mahmoud Abbas had never even demanded. As soon as Barack Obama demanded it, Abbas had to demand it because if you’re the Palestinian leader you can’t allow the American President to be more Palestinian than you are.
Goldberg: Do you always refer to them as a Judea and Samaria?
Cotton: I do.
Goldberg: Why?
Cotton: That’s why the Jews are called Jews, because they’re from Judea.

Agents of Their Own Destruction

Psychologically, it is easier to embrace a good cause (or, for that matter, even a bad one) in simplistic, "black and white" terms. For many people a "good" cause is made up of people who suffer from "imperialism" and "colonialism", plucky minorities, third-world victims of first-world oppression, revolutionary vanguards, and anyone put upon by the United States, Great Britain, France or any former "imperialist" power. Other "imperialist" powers, such as Russia, China or Iran, are conveniently overlooked or forgotten -- not to mention the centuries of Islamist imperialism that covered Iran, Turkey, Greece, all of North Africa, Hungary, Serbia, the Balkans, virtually all of Eastern Europe and which we see still continuing.
The Palestinians, in this narrative of "good" and "bad" have purportedly been permanently "dispossessed" by, of all people, the Jews -- whom they had the misfortune to attack in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 -- and lose to.
If members of the new U.S. administration seek to advance the moribund "peace process", they could find no better place to start than direct confrontation with Palestinian rejectionism. This means that those leaders must be pressed as hard as possible to end their persecution of their own populations.
There must be carrots, but there must also be sticks. The UN, the EU, and the OIC will offer only carrots. Will the U.S. now add the threat of real consequences to that mix?

As part of the Oxford Union Debate on the subject of "This House Believes the UN is a Failing Institution" last November, Professor Anne Bayefsky succinctly described exactly why it is true.

Interestingly, the Palestinian envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour argued on the same side, by saying that the Palestinians were victims of the UN - because the UN decided in 1947 that the Jews of Mandate Palestine shouldn't be slaughtered by their Arab neighbors. He says that the UN failed to create a Palestinian state without noting that his own people wanted to be part of Jordan in 1949.

Typically, Mansour argues that the UN is responsible to solve the Palestinian issue, and Palestinian Arabs themselves have no agency or responsibility of their own. His argument is filled with lies, like claiming that there are more than 5 million Palestinian refugees living in camps. He quotes Resolution 242, falsely claiming that Israel didn't give up land for peace, without saying that Palestinians were bitterly against it because it recognized Israel has a right to exist.

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Hey Thomas Friedman, who is dividing world Jewry?

Thomas Friedman has yet another self-righteous piece of stupidity in the New York Times.

[President Trump,] you may be the last man standing between Israel and a complete, self-inflicted disaster for the Jewish state and the Jewish people.

Let me explain it in terms you’ll appreciate: golf.

Did you happen to follow the story involving Barack Obama and Woodmont Country Club? Woodmont is the mostly Jewish golf club in Maryland, just outside D.C., where Obama played as a guest several times during his presidency. Near the end of his term it was rumored that Obama would seek membership there.

Then he clashed with Netanyahu over Obama’s refusal to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s relentless expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Shortly thereafter, The Washington Post reported that a Woodmont member, Faith Goldstein, had sent a private email to the club’s president declaring that Obama “is not welcome at Woodmont” because of his U.N. vote.

It was appalling to think that Jews, who for so many years were themselves excluded from joining certain country clubs, would consider excluding our first black president, especially for his acting on the basis of what half of Israel believes — that continued expansion of Jewish settlements into Palestinian-populated zones of the West Bank will eventually make the separation of Israelis and Palestinians in a two-state solution impossible, and thereby threaten Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic state.

Fortunately, in the end, the decent members of Woodmont prevailed. As The Washington Post reported, the club’s president, Barry Forman, invited the Obamas to join, declaring that “it is all the more important that Woodmont be a place where people of varying views and beliefs can enjoy fellowship.”

Why am I telling you this story? Because Israel is getting closer every day to wiping out any possibility of a two-state solution. Just last week, Netanyahu’s government pushed through the Knesset a shameful new law declaring that wildcat Jewish settlers who had illegally set up caravans on private West Bank Palestinian land, and erected their own settlement there, will have their settlements legalized, although the Palestinian landowners have to be compensated.

First Friedman essentially calls Jews racist, even though President Obama's race had zero to do with the country club story. (He also completely misrepresents the "Regulation Law" pretending that Israel now allows "wildcat Jewish settlers" to just grab land without checking if it is privately owned.) And calling Jews racist seems to be the only reason for Friedman to tell over this story, because the only tie he brings between the country club story and his usual anti-settlement screed is this:

I don’t expect Israel to just up and leave the West Bank without a Palestinian partner for a secure peace, which Israel doesn’t now have. But legalizing this land grab by settlers deep in Palestinian areas is not an act of security — it will actually create security problems. It is an act of moral turpitude that will make it even harder to ever find that Palestinian partner and will undermine the moral foundations of the state. This is about right versus wrong.

And if that is where the debate goes, what happened at Woodmont golf club will happen everywhere. That debate will tear apart virtually every synagogue, Jewish organization and Jewish group on every campus in America, and around the world. Israel will divide world Jewry.

It isn't Israel that is dividing world Jewry, it is the Thomas Friedmans of the world who claim that Israel has no rights in its homeland to begin with. That's why he equates his fake Jewish racists with Jews who believe that there are actual legal and moral reasons why Judea and Samaria should not be Judenfrei.

Who is more divisive than a smug columnist who declares every Jew who disagrees with him to be the morally equivalent to racists? How much can Tom Friedman care about Jewish unity when he makes such a claim?

While Friedman pays lip service to the fact that Palestinians aren't a peace partner, he lays the blame on Israel by saying that only Israel is killing the two state solution - despite the fact that Israel has lready accepted and offered the Palestinians a state multiple times.

Let's put this in terms Friedman might be able to understand.

Here is the top of the PLO official webpage, today:

I'll increase the size of the logo in case your reading glasses aren't on:

Where, exactly, is Israel on this PLO map of their ersatz state?

If Friedman wants to unite Jews, he should write about how the "moderate" Palestinians have never budged from their position that the "peace process" is a Trojan horse to destroy Israel. That's something all Jews should be aware of, but they certainly wouldn't know it from reading Friedman's columns.

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Valentine's Day in Gaza is actually pretty funny

Palestine Today, the Islamic Jihad mouthpiece, points out that Gazans generally do not celebrate Valentine's Day because many religious authorities forbid it. They even have an interview with a sheikh bitterly complaining about how damaging the holiday is to Islamic morals and how celebrating it violates a hadith not to imitate the customs of Jews and Christians.

But some Gazans managed to celebrate in their own way without violating any community standards - with humor.

Presenting the Love Donkeys:

And sheep got in the act as well:

Instead of a bouquet of flowers, how about a bouquet of meat for the holiday?

And Gaza women have to put on their sexiest burqas for the holiday:

Yowza.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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