Dear Family & Friends,

Hurray! My kitchen is beautifully turned over for Pesach! My son, daughter-in-law & grand-daughter masterfully scoured & cleaned & covered all the surfaces, shelves, fridge & put in all the appropriate foods & supplies. Now we’re ready to celebrate on Friday, Saturday & the ongoing week with family.

But, the world turns on. See what Congress is doing to secure Israel in #1. See what UNESCO is doing to sabotage Israel’s holiest sites in #2. What to do about that?! Bibi is going to see Putin in Moscow for a 6 hour trip in #3. Why? [Gail sez: Maybe because Putin is shipping major defensive weapons to Iran?] Full Sovereignty is the only answer for Israel’s future in #4. Praise for Ted Cruz in #7 & 8. More great writers: Sherman, Medad/Pollak, Blum in #9, 10 & 11. Enjoy!

The moon is rising & will be full for the Seder – as it always is on the 15^th of the month.

Have a sweet night, a busy, happy day.

All the very best, Gail/Geula/Savta/Savta Raba x 2/Mom

1.Congressman to Obama on UN Israel action: ‘Read this letter very carefully’

2.UNESCO adopts resolution ignoring Jewish ties to Temple Mount

3.Netanyahu to meet with Putin in Moscow this week

1.Congressman to Obama on UN Israel action: ‘Read this letter very carefully’ By Michael Wilner JPost.com 04/16/2016 19:04

Is Obama planning his revenge on Netanyahu?

At least two resolutions are currently under the pen related to the decades-old conflict: One being spearheaded by the Palestinian Authority, another by the French government.

US President Barack Obama (R) and Defense Secretary Ash Carter meet at the Pentagon. (photo credit:Official White House Photo / Pete Souza)

WASHINGTON — At least 90 percent of the House of Representatives opposes “one-sided” action at the UN Security Council on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a letter endorsed by 394 members this week– a clear message to the Obama administration, according to one of its authors, Rep. Nita Lowey of New York.
Several congressmen worked on the letter, sent to the White House amid fresh Palestinian and European efforts to affect the conflict through international bodies.
Lowey, a Democrat and ranking member on the House Appropriations Subcommittee, told The Jerusalem Post on Friday that the administration had vetoed similar resolutions in the past– and that its reasoning for such vetoes “still applies today.”

“I feel very confident– when just under 400 members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, express their position with great clarity– that the administration will read the letter,” Lowey said. “Maybe they’ll read this letter very carefully.”
The letter calls on the administration to refuse support for “counterproductive efforts aimed at imposing a solution on the parties” and to oppose “and, if need be, veto one-sided United Nations Security Council resolutions.” It also expresses frustration over the “lack of significant progress toward a lasting peace” between the two sides.
“It just can’t be done from the outside looking in,” Lowey stated, noting that the letter reflects on longstanding US policy. “We wanted to make this bipartisan.”
At least two resolutions are currently under the pen related to the decades-old conflict: One being spearheaded by the Palestinian Authority, another by the French government.
The Palestinian draft would have the Security Council state its opposition to Israel’s settlement activity in the West Bank— a position held by each individual permanent members of the Council.
The Paris-led initiative would have the Security Council outline parameters of a two-state solution. Democrats and Republicans alike, including Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton, oppose this approach and warn that imposing solutions would prove counterproductive.
But the White House said last year it was willing to review its policy toward the conflict in the United Nations, and it has yet to explicitly rule out such an approach. Israeli government leadership has not received assurances that the Obama administration would oppose either or both resolutions, the Post learned last month.
“We understand that there is an early draft that the Palestinians have shared informally in New York,” State Department spokesperson John Kirby said on Thursday, asked by the Post to clarify whether the US would consider voting for or declining to veto a resolution addressing Israel’s settlement activity in the West Bank.
“We are very concerned about trends on the ground and we do have a sense of urgency about the two-state solution. We will consider all of our options for advancing our shared objective of lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but I’m not going to comment on a draft Security Council resolution.”
Trepidation over the issue has apparently affected negotiations over a new decade-long US defense package to Israel.
Over breakfast with foreign policy reporters on Thursday morning, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan warned against any “funny” moves at the UN, arguing that such actions would run counter to peace. The US has long supported direct negotiations between the parties.
In 2011, Susan Rice, who then served as US ambassador to the UN, said a Security Council condemnation of Israel’s settlements would not practically move the political process forward. “Will it move the parties closer to negotiations and an agreement?” Rice questioned. “Unfortunately, this draft resolution risks hardening the position of both sides.”
Rice, who now serves as Obama’s national security advisor, said the president’s decision to veto that resolution should not be misconstrued as support for “the folly and illegitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity.”
She also noted that the US had issued a proposal that would have “offered a constructive alternative course that we believe would have allowed the council to act unanimously to support the pursuit of peace.” That proposal was rejected by other members.

2.UNESCO adopts resolution ignoring Jewish ties to Temple Mount By Tovah Lazaroff JPost.com 04/15/2016 19:43

UNESCO condemns Israeli ‘aggression’ in Jerusalem, ignores Palestinian violence

Western Wall rabbi condemns UNESCO for declaring forefathers’ tombs to be Islamic sites

Resolution refers to Temple Mount area solely as Al-Aksa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif, except for two references to the Western Wall Plaza that were put in parenthesis.

Jerusalem’s Old City & the Temple Mount. (photo credit:Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post) UNESCO’s Executive Board in Paris on Friday adopted a resolution whose language ignores Jewish ties to its holy religious sites of the Temple Mount and the Western Wall area in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The broad-ranging resolution condemns Israeli actions in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip but focus in large part on Israeli actions with regard to the Temple Mount and Western Wall Plaza.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all consider the Temple Mount to be a holy site, but the UNESCO Resolution referred to the area solely as al-Aksa Mosque/al-Haram al Sharif, except for two references to the Western Wall Plaza that were put in parenthesis. The text also referred to the plaza area by the Western Wall as al-Buraq Plaza. In October, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization backed away from reclassifying the Western Wall as solely a Muslim holy site, but is now using language that almost solely refers to it as such.
April’s resolution reaffirmed that the Mughrabi Ascent, which starts at the Western Wall Plaza, is an integral and inseparable part of al-Aksa Mosque/al-Haram al-Sharif.
The resolution calls on Israel to restore the status of the Temple Mount to what it was prior to September 2000 when the second intifada broke out. At that time, according to the resolution, the Jordan Wakf had full control of al-Aksa Mosque/ al-Haram al Sharif including maintenance and restoration work and regulating access.
The site currently is under the full authority, but not full control, of the Islamic Wakf. Only Muslims are allowed to pray at the Aksa complex, but Jews and members of other faiths are allowed to visit.
Israel controls the access to the site, and has persistently rejected all claims that the status quo at the site has been changed.
UNESCO called on Israel not to restrict Muslim worshipers from accessing the Aksa Mosque site and condemned the violence that occurred there in the fall, but focused solely on Israeli actions in those incidents and not the violence of the Muslim rioters.
It condemned Israeli plans to build a prayer space for Women of the Wall by Robinson’s Arch, although it did not mention the group by name.
The resolution also charged that Israel had placed “Jewish fake graves” in other Muslim cemeteries located on Wakf property east and south of the Aksa mosque.
Aside from its condemnations with regard to Jerusalem, the resolution deplored the “new cycle of violence, since October 2015, in the context of the constant aggressions by the Israeli settlers and other extremist groups against Palestinian residents including schoolchildren & asks Israel, the Israeli authorities to prevent such aggressions.” It did not mention the 34 fatalities from Palestinian attacks.
UNESCO also said it regretted Israel’s failure to comply with its request to remove from its National Heritage list, the Cave of the Patriarch/Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb/Bilal bin Rabah mosque in Bethlehem.
The 58-member board approved resolution 19 with 33 votes in favor, six against and 17 abstentions. Ghana and Turkmenistan were absent all together.
Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States opposed the resolution outright, while France, Spain, Sweden, Russia and Slovenia were among those who supported it.
A second resolution that more globally condemned Israeli actions, passed with 45 votes in favor, one vote against – the United States – and 11 abstentions.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the move as another “absurd” UN resolution.
“UNESCO ignores the unique Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, the site of two temples for 1,000 years, and the place to which Jews prayed for thousands of years,” he said in a statement Saturday night. “The UN is rewriting a basic part of human history and proving that there is no low to which it will not reach.”
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid on Friday night distributed copies of the resolutions to the media and slammed the decision.
He penned a letter to the UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova in which he called the resolution a “disgraceful attempt to rewrite history and rewrite reality as part of a sustained political campaign against the State of Israel and the Jewish people.
“This resolution was an utterly irresponsible intervention in one of the most complex places in the Middle East. UNESCO prides itself on promoting tolerance, interfaith and inter-cultural dialogue, yet it passes resolutions which erase the Jewish people from the historical narrative,” Lapid said.
He warned that the “UNESCO resolution feeds the type of incitement that fueled the violence that began around the time of the Jewish New Year.
“The decision by UNESCO feeds this incitement and so contributes to the wave of terrorism. It will lead directly to more attacks against innocent Israeli civilians and you cannot avoid responsibility for that,” Lapid said.
“This latest one-sided resolution is a stain on the United Nations,” he wrote, urging Bokova to publicly declare her opposition to it.
“You must not allow UNESCO to be hijacked as part of the campaign to delegitimize Israel and isolate the Jewish people,” he said.
Herb Keinon contributed to this report.

At Kremlin meeting on Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss military coordination between lsrael and Russia and international efforts to achieve a diplomatic resolution to the civil war in Syria. By Shlomo Cesana & Israel Hayom Staff

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will fly to Moscow on Thursday for a quick six-hour visit during which he will meet with Russian President Vladmir Putin at the Kremlin.

The discussions between Netanyahu and Putin will focus on two main items — the military coordination between Russia and Israel regarding Russia’s military activities in Syria and the international efforts to achieve a diplomatic resolution to the civil war in Syria.

As these diplomatic efforts continue, Syrian President Bashar Assad, who currently controls only around one-fifth of his country, is insisting that Syria has the right to the entire Golan Heights (the western two-thirds of which Israel took control of from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed in 1981). Israel fears that Russia does not object to Assad’s demand for a return of the Israeli Golan. Netanyahu opposes any Israeli territorial concession in the Golan and is seeking American and European recognition of Israeli sovereignty there. At his meeting with Putin in Moscow on Thursday, Netanyahu will demand that Russia oppose any consent to Assad’s demand in diplomatic documents or statements that may result from the international efforts to end the civil war in Syria.

In a recent telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Netanyahu said, “Israel will not hand over the Golan Heights to anyone.”

Netanyahu and Putin have maintained close contact since Russia’s military intervention in Syria began last fall. The prime minister last visited Moscow in September, shortly after Russia’s military buildup in Syria began.

During a visit to the Golan last week, Netanyahu said Israel has carried out dozens of strikes in Syria to prevent the transfer of advanced weaponry to the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah.

Speaking with a group of reservists from the Paratroopers Brigade, Netanyahu said: “We act when we have to act, including here and across the border, with dozens of strikes, to prevent Hezbollah from acquiring game-changing weaponry. We also act on other fronts, both near and far, and we do so intelligently.”

Israel and Russia are now marking the 25th anniversary of the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. During their meeting on Thursday, Netanyahu and Putin will discuss strengthening bilateral cooperation between the countries.

4.Ben-Dahan: Judea-Samaria next for full sovereignty

Deputy Defense Minister says Netanyahu’s Golan Heights speech could mark a preemptive step toward full Israeli law in Judea-Samaria. By Shimon Cohen Arutz Sheva IsraelNationalNews.com 4/17/16 2:13pm

Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan – Tomer Neuberg/Flash 90

Judea-Samaria may be the next area destined for full Israeli sovereignty, Deputy Defense Minister MK Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan stated Sunday, after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s historic Cabinet meeting in the Golan.

Earlier Sunday, Netanyahu declared that the Golan Heights will never be given to Syria in any future diplomatic or political agreement. In light of this, Ben-Dahan hopes Judea and Samaria is next.

“I went to the Golan Heights in ’77 and lived there for six years,” Ben-Dahan stated in a special interview with Arutz Sheva. “I was among the founders of the great community of Hispin.”

“When we got there we were just 11 families, and today there are more than 300 families – a flourishing community which is the center of Torah and religious education in the Golan Heights,” he continued. “This is a personal joy for me.”

“We are also celebrating 35 years of the application of Israeli law to the Golan Heights,” he noted, describing his own joy at seeing the area become a formal part of Israel.

Ben-Dahan also reflected on the political implications of Netanyahu’s statements.

“Only a few years ago, there were those who said the only plan was to give Assad – father or son – the Golan Heights, to provide a certain amount of crude oil, there would be peace and we will be happy,” he noted. “Today everyone understands what a grave mistake we would make if we give away the Golan; ISIS and all the radical Islamist organizations are in power (in southern Syria), and not Assad.”

“In the end, the Prime Minister’s statement is a binding declaration that has impact,” he noted, including on the international level.

“When, in all the world – and certainly in the Middle East – there is unrest, and when [leftist] organizations are trying to harm Israel – there is a country which is an island of stability in a thriving democracy, and declares that the Golan Heights is an integral part of Israel.”

“I hope it is also a preliminary step to guide public opinion toward the application of Israeli law to Judea and Samaria,” he added. “This is the next logical step, especially in light of the reality that we find ourselves in, and I hope it will happen in the near future.”

5.Even without a political solution, the US could forge a Mideast legacy by David Bedein

The United States could dramatically change the state of one of the most pressing issues of the Israel-Arab conflict. Arutz Sheva IsraelNationalNews.com Published: Sunday, April 17, 2016 10:13 AM

David Bedein, is the director of the Israel Resource News Agency & The Center for Near East Policy Research, which has produced books, monographs and movies filmed on location in UNRWA.

The political deadlock between Israel and the Palestinian Authority will not be resolved any time soon.

Israel demands that the PA recognize it as a Jewish state and put an end to its war-inciting education, which the PA will not do. The PA demands that Israel commit to withdraw to the 1949-67 armistice lines before continuing negotiations, which Israel will not do.

Such an irresolvable impasse frustrates the current United States administration, which would like to leave office next January with a Middle East legacy.

This also frustrates a generation of US policy makers who have invested the prestige of four US administrations in these negotiations (launched under US auspices with the genesis of the Madrid summit in 1991 – a quarter of a century ago).

With no political solution in the offing, the US could instead invest its energies and resources in something actually achievable: a humanitarian solution for millions of descendants of the approximately 500,000-700,000 original Arab refugees who fled, for whatever reasons, from the newly proclaimed State of Israel in 1948, and have lived ever since in 59 “temporary” refugee camps (hosted by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, un-integrated by their Arab host countries).

The current situation in the “refugee” camps:

The US provides 33 percent of UNRWA’s budget (it donates $400 million to UNRWA each year), thus assisting to prolong the “refugee status in perpetuity” paradigm that UNRWA drums into the minds of half a million UNRWA students. (All the other considerable numbers of refugees in the world are lumped into one other UN agency.)

Hamas has gained control over the UNRWA workers unions and teachers associations in Gaza over the past 18 years, which means that “humanitarian funds” actually flow to what has been designated by the US as a terrorist organization, where there is not even an expectation of transparency or accountability.

Over the past 28 years the Israel Resource News Agency and the Center for Near East Policy Research have covered UNRWA education, documenting and filming classrooms with teachers and texts that promote the “right of return by force of arms” to new generations of UNRWA students – blatantly opposed to the peace process that the US seeks to promote.

As UNRWA’s largest donor, the US could ask all donor nations to reconsider the curriculum in UNRWA schools, which emphasizes the “values” of Jihad, martyrdom and the “right of return by force of arms.”

(The pathetic excuse used by UNRWA is that they follow the host entity’s syllabus.)

Would this not be the right time to reinstate standards that conform to the UNRWA slogan of “Peace Starts Here?”

How can an agency that operates under the aegis of the United Nations train children for hate, terrorism and combat?

Over the last two years, our agency filmed children’s military training camps, and interviewed Hamas leaders who praise the cooperation of UNRWA in their military training.

Hamas Minister of Religion Ismael Radwan, told us on camera in our documentary film UNRWA goes to War that “The Hamas relationship with UNRWA is good, very good. Now a direct connection exists between UNRWA and Hamas.”

What can and should be done by the current US administration:

The US could demand that UNRWA dismiss employees affiliated with Hamas, in accordance with laws in the US, Canada, the EU, the UK and Australia, which forbid aid to agencies that employ members of a terrorist organization. After all, the US Congress enacted strict laws in 2003 in this regard, but they have never been enforced.

The US could ask that paramilitary training of UNRWA students be brought to an end.

It could also demand to audit donor funds that flow to UNRWA from 68 nations and examine reports of wasted resources, duplicity of services and the illegal flow of cash to terrorist groups.

Perhaps the unkindest cut of all is that UNRWA has renewed a special contract with its youth ambassador Mohammad Assaf, who won “Arab Idol” in 2013 at the age of 22.

Assaf now travels the world encouraging lethal violence.

The lyrics of Assaf’s songs are rife with calls to war, Jihad and martyrdom. Here is an example:

O soils of beloved forgotten land

With precious blood precious, you’re irrigated.

We have all the rights, we are all for it.

My land is from the river to the sea.

…We will protect the land

It’s either victory or martyrdom, the men of this land said.

Take my blood and give me freedom.

My land is from the river to the sea.

This would be an opportune time for the US to ask UNRWA to cancel its contract with this advocate of militant intolerance whose videos on YouTube got more than 36 million hits over the past year.

How the US could improve the future of those in the refugee camps?:

What about the US finally pushing UNRWA to adapt Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) principles that direct UNRWA to engage in permanent resettlement of Arab refugees from the 1948 war?

UNRWA was established in December 1949 by UN General Assembly resolution 302 (IV), with the mandate to provide “direct relief and works programs” to Palestine refugees, to “prevent conditions of starvation and distress… and to further conditions of peace and stability.”

The UN General Assembly established UNHCR in December 1950 “to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide.” It works “to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees,” and to “ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country.”

Since 1949, the 500,000 to 700,000 original Arab refugees have ballooned into five million who covet and wallow in their refugee status, waiting, as Assaf’s song says, to retake what they consider their land “from the river to the sea.”

Are descendants of refugees counted as refugees? Not by UNHCR, but yes by UNWRA. Duration: indefinitely.

The US, which covers a third of UNRWA’s budget, could address the madness of continuing to create more and more refugees – children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and beyond – and instead apply UNHCR standards of resettlement to UNRWA, to resolve the problem instead of expanding and perpetuating it.

There is much that the US administration can do if it really wants to establish a Middle East legacy that will last a lifetime.

Now is the time to launch a courageous initiative to remove the stain of refugee-hood from millions of Palestinian Arabs who have been labeled and burdened with that indignity since 1949.

The writer is author of Roadblock to Peace – How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict: UNRWA Policies Reconsidered and has been active in efforts to reform UNRWA for the past 28 years. He runs the Israel Resource News Agency and the Center for Near East Policy Research, which has produced books, monographs and movies filmed on location in UNRWA.

Even without a political solution, the US could forge a Mideast legacy by David Bedein

6.Palestinians: We Will Not Accept a Jewish Israel by Khaled Abu Toameh
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7849/palestinians-accept-jewish-israel April 15, 2016 at 5:00 am

Israel as a Jewish state remains anathema to the Palestinian community. This is a top-down attitude, communicated on a constant basis by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state is based on the argument that such a move would mean giving up the “right of return” for millions of “refugees” into Israel. This refusal is also based on the continued denial of any historic Jewish connection to the land.

In recent weeks, the PA president has once again reiterated his strong opposition to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

The Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state is one of the main obstacles to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Settlement construction complaints are nothing more than a Palestinian Authority smokescreen.

There is much talk these days about the Palestinian Authority’s intention to ask the United Nations Security Council to issue a resolution condemning Israel for construction in the settlements. It is not yet clear whether the PA will carry out its threat. What is clear, however, is that this obsession with the settlements is certain to divert attention from core issues, such as Palestinian recognition of a Jewish Israel. Many Palestinians continue to regard Israel as one big settlement that needs to be removed from the Middle East.

Why, in fact, do the Palestinians refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state?

Abbas has consistently failed to state his reasons for his total rejection of Israel as a Jewish state. In January 2014, the PA president declared:

“The Palestinians won’t recognize the Jewishness of the State of Israel and won’t accept it. The Israelis say that if we don’t recognize the Jewishness of Israel there would be no solution. And we say that we won’t recognize or accept the Jewishness of Israel and we have many reasons for this rejection.”

On another occasion that same year, Abbas stated: “No one can force us to recognize Israel as Jewish state. If they [Israel] want, they can go to the UN and ask to change their name to whatever they want — even if they want to be called The Jewish Zionist State.” Again, Abbas failed to explain the vehement Palestinian opposition to this demand.

The Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, has shed some light on the matter. “We have already recognized Israel’s existence on the 1948 borders of Occupied Palestine,” Erekat explained. He added that he made it clear to former Israeli Foreign Minister Tipi Livni during a meeting in Munich that the Palestinians “won’t change their history and religion and culture by recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.”

While Palestinian leaders have been rather reluctant to elaborate on the reasons behind their rejectionism, other Palestinians have been more generous about the issue.

One of these is Palestinian political scientist Dr. Saniyeh Al-Husseini, who recently published an article titled, “Why Palestinians Refuse to Accept the Jewishness of the State of Israel.” The article was reprinted by the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA — a definite sign that the Palestinian leadership endorses her views.

In her article, Al-Husseini points out that the U.S. supports the Israeli condition, which she described as a “crippling demand.”

The article warns that “accepting the Jewishness of Israel means relinquishing all the Palestinian rights to the Palestinian lands, including the lands that were occupied in 1967.” According to Al-Husseini, there are two main reasons that Palestinians are opposed to this demand. The first has to do with the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees to their former villages and homes inside Israel; the second is related to the status of Israel’s Arab citizens.

Referring to the first of these, Al-Husseini writes:

“Palestinian acceptance of the Israeli narrative would deny any Palestinian right on the land of Palestine and give justification to Israel’s wars against the Palestinians. Palestinian recognition of the Jewishness of Israel means accepting the Israeli narrative regarding the Jews’ right to the land of Palestine and exempts Israel from bearing responsibility for the moral and legal consequences of all its crimes against the Palestinians.”

In the view of Al-Husseini, then, Palestinians refuse to acknowledge a Jewish state because they believe that this would grant legitimacy to “Jews’ rights to the land of Palestine” and undermine the Palestinian demand for the “right of return” for millions of refugees into Israel.

Let us take a moment to clarify this: the Palestinian Authority wants a Palestinian state next to Israel while at the same time flooding Israel with millions of refugees. That, of course, is something to which no Israeli government could ever agree. Even more crucial is the Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish right to the land. Such denial is a longstanding pillar of the official Palestinian narrative. Even those who say they have accepted the two-state solution are not prepared to recognize any Jewish link to or history in the land.

The second reason, that which concerns the Arab citizens of Israel, is similarly telling. According to Al-Husseini, Israel’s ultimate goal, as “betrayed” by this demand, is to rid itself of its Arab citizens.

There is indeed a betrayal going on, but it is not being perpetrated by Israel. First, by reprinting Al-Husseini’s article, the PA has “betrayed” the fact that it has appointed itself custodian of the Arab citizens of Israel.

As Israel is a democracy — unlike the dictatorial Palestinian regimes — Israel’s Arab citizens have their own leaders and representatives in Israel’s Knesset. The last thing they need is for the Palestinian Authority or Hamas or any other Palestinian faction to meddle in their internal affairs.

But the betrayal continues. The Arab citizens of Israel are represented by leaders, including some Knesset members, who are so preoccupied with the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that they have forgotten who their real constituents are.

Just consider MK Zouheir Bahloul, who spends valuable time re-defining the word “terrorist.” Bahloul, a member of the Labor Party, seems to be enjoying the public outcry he created recently when he declared that a Palestinian who tried to stab IDF soldiers in Hebron last month is not a terrorist.

It is as if Bahloul and the other Arab Knesset members have solved all the problems of the Arab community inside Israel and all that is left is to make sure that no one calls a Palestinian stabber a terrorist. Needless to say, this issue does not top the agenda of the Arab citizens of Israel.

The betrayal thus runs wide and deep. Israeli Arab leaders are betraying their constituencies by privileging the perceived interests of Palestinian Arabs, while Palestinian Arab leaders are betraying their constituencies by continuing to deny any link between Jews and the land. This is a stance that makes peace a non-starter in the Middle East. When the international community is presented with settlement complaints and the like, it might wish to ponder these small but critical points.

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.

7.In praise of Ted Cruz By Nick Muzin, JPOST

T. Belman. Cruz’s money quote to an anti-Israel Christian gathering, “If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you.” and he walked out. You can compare him to Sen Daniel Patrick Moynihan,

King Solomon tells us in Mishlei (Proverbs): “The heavens are for the heights, and the Earth is for the depths, and the hearts of kings no one can ponder.”

It is impossible to know what kings and leaders of nations have in their hearts – with all their myriad pressures and responsibilities, what truly motivates them? And how will they act toward the Jewish people once they attain power? I want to tell you about the person I have worked with closely for the past two years, Sen. Ted Cruz. He is not just my boss, but has become my mentor and my friend. We have traveled the country together; I have seen him in good times and bad; we have worked side by side on some of the biggest issues facing America and the world. I have watched him speak in shuls in Los Angeles, Miami and New York; spend Passover in Texas and California; listen to the shofar, bake matza, read the Purim Megilla and light the Hanukkah menorah.
I can tell you that there is no greater friend of the Jewish people and of Israel.

We started together in the summer of 2014, a very bitter and difficult summer, with a war raging against Hamas in Gaza. Three innocent teenagers were kidnapped in the West Bank. Sen. Cruz took to the Senate floor and spoke passionately about the three boys – Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrah – in order to humanize them in the eyes of the world. He talked about what they were like as people, their passions and their hobbies; and called upon Hamas to release them immediately.

When they were subsequently found murdered, the senator sponsored legislation to offer a $5,000,000 reward for information leading to the discovery of the killers.

A few weeks later, a Hamas rocket landed a mile from Ben-Gurion Airport and the FAA banned all commercial flights into Israel. Sen. Cruz again took to the Senate floor & demanded to know why the FAA had launched what amounted to an economic boycott of Israel while it was fighting a war in Gaza.

He questioned why the ban coincided with Secretary of State John Kerry’s arrival in Israel to try and force a ceasefire; and asked why the FAA banned flights into Israel, while allowing flights into Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and much of Ukraine, where a commercial airliner had recently been shot out of the sky. And it was not just words: the Senator announced he would put a hold on all State Department appointees until his questions were answered.

The very next day the FAA lifted the flight ban.

Then in September, Sen. Cruz was scheduled to speak at a dinner in Washington by a group called In Defense of Christians, whose goal was to bring attention to the persecution of Christians in the Middle East by radical Islamist terrorists. As an evangelical Christian, this was an issue that was of deep concern to the senator. However, on the morning of his speech, we got word that there were pro-Hezbollah speakers at the conference and that many in the crowd seemed anti-Israel.

All day our office struggled with the decision of whether or not the senator should cancel his speech. Finally, the senator said: “I’m going to go and speak the truth, no matter the consequences.”

As he begun his remarks, he said: “Christians have no greater ally than the Jewish state. Those who hate Israel, hate America; and those who hate Jews, hate Christians.”

At that point, there were boos and catcalls from the crowd. The senator continued: “If you hate the Jewish people, you are not reflecting the teachings of Christ.”

The boos got worse, and I actually became afraid for the senator’s personal safety in the hostile crowd. Then he said: “If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you.”

And with that, he walked off the stage.

Not a day goes by that Senator Cruz does not think about the Jewish people and Israel. Whether it is putting together a coalition of evangelicals, national security experts and conservative Tea Party groups to oppose the Iran deal; or working with New York Sen. Kristen Gillibrand to condemn Hamas for acts of terrorism; or fighting against the BDS Movement, discriminatory labeling of products from the West Bank and global anti-Semitism, the Jewish people have a true friend and champion in Senator Cruz.
People often ask me why the senator focuses so much on these issues. I believe that he relates to the struggles and hopes of the Jewish people because his father too fled oppression in a foreign country and came to America seeking freedom and opportunity. While he would never compare what his father went through to what the Jews suffered in the Holocaust, he always quotes his father as saying: “When I fled Cuba, at least we had somewhere to go. If we lose America, where do we go?”

The Senator believes that Israel, like America, is an important beacon for hope and freedom. On a personal level, Ted follows the commandment of ‘tzedek tzedek tirdof (“justice, justice you shall pursue”). He has no patience for lies or falsehood of any kind. I have never seen him lose his temper; I have seen the respect with which he treats everyone around him – whether it is his wife and daughters, his staff, or a taxi driver on the street. His respect for Yiddishkeit enables me to thrive as an Orthodox Jew on his staff, and he makes a personal effort to ensure I get home in time for Shabbat and have kosher food wherever we travel. Often we will be on a train or in an airport together late at night after a long day on the road, and I will pull out my Gemara to study Daf Yomi, and he never fails to ask me what that day’s portion is about.

Ted is a model of mentshlechkeit. I have three young children, and I think a lot about what kind of country I want them to grow up in; who I want them to look up to as president of the United States during their most impressionable years.

The Prophet Jeremiah tells us “Seek the prosperity of the city to which you are exiled, and pray for it to Hashem. For if it prospers, you will prosper.”

America is at a crossroads. Like in 1980, when Americans rejected the failed foreign and domestic policies of Jimmy Carter and elected Ronald Reagan, we have an opportunity in this election to restore America’s leadership in the world, grow our economy and create jobs, and return our country to constitutional principles, including religious liberty.

For the first time in many years, New York is a battleground in the Republican primary. The Jewish community can play a significant role in electing Ted as the next president of the United States.

I am not a rabbinic authority and am still working on my ordination, but I believe with all my heart that it is a great and important mitzva for each and every Jew who can vote in the Republican primary to get to the polls on Tuesday and vote for the next president of the United States and my friend, Ted Cruz.

The writer is a senior adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz in his presidential campaign.

Column One: 8.Obama’s political legacy by Caroline Glick 04/14/2016 22:42 JPost.com

8a. Why it is a mitzva for every Jew to vote for Cruz To understand what he has wrought, a good place to start is with the man running to Obama’s left: Sen. Bernie Sanders.

US President Barack Obama gestures during a meeting with American Jewish leaders. (photo credit:Official White House Photo / Pete Souza)

The US presidential race is President Barack Obama’s political legacy. Depending on who succeeds him, that legacy will either fade or become the new normal.
To understand what he has wrought, a good place to start is with the man running to Obama’s left: Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The socialist from Vermont knows how to play to the crowd. Sanders knows that the people captivated by his tales of avaricious bankers aren’t too keen on Jews either.

And as a Jew, he’s cool with that.
Sanders’s courtship of Jew-haters in a staple of his campaign. The depth of his efforts was made clear at the end of a campaign event at the Apollo Theater in Harlem last Saturday when an audience member got up and began spewing anti-Jewish slanders.
Sanders doesn’t have a problem telling bigots off. He did just that at another event when a questioner asked a question he deemed anti-Muslim. Sanders is an unstinting champion of gay rights and black rights. So if he wanted to tell off a Jew-hater, he could have done so easily.
In the event, the questioner rose and said, “As you know, the Zionist Jews – and I don’t mean to offend anybody – they run the Federal Reserve, they run Wall Street, they run every campaign.”
Weathering a chorus of boos from his fellow audience members, the questioner then asked Sanders, “What is your affiliation to your Jewish community?” Sanders could have told the questioner to take a long walk off a short pier. He could have told him he’d rather win without the support of bigots.
He could have used it as a teaching moment and told his audience that millions of Jews have been murdered because of the lies the questioner just repeated.
Instead, he called him “Brother” and told he needed to hide his hatred better.
“No, no, no, that’s not what you’re asking,” Sanders insisted.
In other words, talking about Jewish bankers is not the way to go.
Sanders said he is proud to be Jewish, got the applause, and then changed the subject from the socially acceptable Jewish bankers to the socially unacceptable Jewish Israelis.
Although the questioner was talking about Jews in America, Sanders said, apropos of nothing, “Talking about the Middle East and Israel, I am a strong defender of Israel, but I also believe that we have got to pay attention to the needs of the Palestinian people.”
If that wasn’t enough, Sanders’s staff reportedly approached the man & told him to meet with Sanders’s communication director after the event concluded. In other words, not only did he not stand up to the anti-Semite, Sanders went out of his way to make the Jew-hating bigot feel loved & respected.
Sanders’s embrace of an out and out anti-Jewish bigot was not surprising. A consistent goal of Sanders’s campaign has been to court leftist anti-Semites.
Last month, Sanders was the only presidential candidate to reject AIPAC’s invitation to speak at its annual convention.
Last week, he told the New York Daily News that the IDF killed 10,000 innocent Palestinians in Gaza during Protective Edge in 2014, (the actual number was fewer than a thousand, and Hamas claims it was around 1,500).
When his slanders caused an outcry, Sanders shrugged his shoulders, winked and then pretended to correct himself while spewing still more inflated statistics. In so doing, he continued his public fight with Israel and the Jews in America who support it.
Then there are his Jewish campaign officials.
They hate Israel.
Sanders’s director of Jewish outreach is Simone Zimmerman. Zimmerman is a prominent anti-Israel, pro-BDS activist. Among her greatest achievements, last year she published an expletive- filled post on her Facebook page describing how much she hates Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
And Zimmerman is not alone. Daniel Sieradski, who manages the Facebook page “Jews for Bernie,” is an anti-Israel activist.
By hiring anti-Israel Jews to serve in key Jewish positions in his campaign, Sanders signals to the anti-Semites that they have a friend in him. He and his Jewish campaign officials are not the bad “Zionist Jews.”
Sanders and his Jewish professionals are the good anti-Zionist Jews whom anti-Semitic leftists can embrace and so prove they aren’t bigots despite the fact that they think a Jewish conspiracy controls the galaxy.
Sanders isn’t empowering anti-Semites because he necessarily hates Jews himself. He may actually like Jews.
He is doing this because he is a populist demagogue.
Sanders isn’t in the race to solve his supporters’ problems. He is in the race to tell them whom to blame, whom to hate. He caters to their hatreds.
Sanders is the legacy Obama has given the Democratic Party.
Eight years ago, to get elected to the presidency, Obama had to pretend to be a moderate. He dismissed the importance of his longstanding ties to terrorists like William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. He pretended away the significance of his intimate relationship with his Jew-hating preacher Jeremiah Wright and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Obama insisted that he was a unifier, not a divider, and a star struck media supported his propaganda.
Obama abandoned his promise of moderation immediately upon entering office. Over the past seven years, he has turned Americans against one another. Racial tensions are higher than they have been since the 1970s. Conservatives and liberals share less and less. Moderates have all but disappeared.
Indeed, one of Obama’s main accomplishments within the Democratic Party is the destruction of the moderate Democratic camp.
When he entered office, there were 54 moderate Democrats in Congress. Today only 14 remain.
Sanders, whose campaign slogan is “revolution,” is proof that Obama has transformed the Democratic Party. Without Obama, Sanders would have remained a quack from Vermont.
The Republicans have also been profoundly affected by Obama. Indeed, today the party is at war with itself.
The first product of this war is Sanders’s Republican counterpart, fellow populist Donald Trump.
Like Sanders, Trump has based his campaign not on offering solutions to America’s problems, but on telling his supporters who is to blame for their misery. Whereas Sanders blames the bankers, and wink, wink, nod, nod “the Zionist Jews,” Trump blames the Mexicans and the Chinese.
To the rapturous applause of frustrated and angry supporters who believe the political class couldn’t care less about them, Trump says that the Chinese and the Mexicans are the reason the US economy is sluggish. So Trump will stick it to them.
And the reason the Chinese and Mexicans are running circles around America, he says, is because the political bosses let them. Trump will stick it to them too.
If Trump and Sanders are two sides of the same populist, bigotry-enabling coin, Ohio Gov.
John Kasich and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton are two sides of an opposing coin. Like Sanders and Trump, Clinton and Kasich offer little in the way of policies – although to her shame, Clinton has embraced Sanders’s radical economic and social positions in the hopes of luring away economically illiterate millennial voters.
Kasich, for his part, runs as the anti-Trump. Trump is a demagogue who channels hate. Kasich is a demagogue who sooths voters by presenting himself as a gentle, slightly dotty uncle.
Clinton’s and Kasich’s campaigns are predicated not on their ability to galvanize voters but on their capacity to secure the support of their respective parties’ establishments. Clinton, to all intent and purposes is the Democratic establishment.
So she is also the front-runner in the race.
Kasich has no path to victory in the primaries. He remains in the race because he believes that an establishment desperate to retain control of the party will anoint him the nominee.
His expectation is not unreasonable. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has indicated that the nominee will be one of the three candidates running – meaning that Kasich is very much a contender despite the fact that he remains in fourth place in a three-man race.
This then brings us to the last candidate running – Sen. Ted Cruz. According to CBS News and The Washington Post, Cruz stands an excellent chance of blocking Trump from securing the nomination on the first ballot of a contested convention and then winning the nomination on a second ballot.
Cruz’s knowledge of the political process is not surprising. He is the product of the Tea Party.
The much maligned Tea Party has been demonized as anti-intellectual and demagogic.
But the Tea Party movement, which arose as a protest movement against both Obama’s policies and the Republican leadership that failed to block them, was the most intellectual, substantive protest movement in a generation.
With their focus on substance, Tea Party organizers made the conscious decision not to accept a leader and run the risk of descending into demagoguery. They preferred instead to keep their focus on substantive policy initiatives and positions.
By focusing its critiques on both Obama’s policies and on the Republican leadership’s failure to block them, the Tea Party became the bane of both.
As a product of the Tea Party movement, since entering the Senate in 2013, Cruz has maintained a laser like focus on the rules of process in order to block implementation of Obama’s policies, which he opposes. At the same time, he has continuously championed the alternative policies that are aligned with this ideological agenda.
Cruz’s commitment to blocking Obama on the one hand, and forcing his party to adopt policies voters support rather than seek compromise with the radicalized Democrats on the other, has made him the bane of his Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle.
In the early months of the campaign, Cruz, used the establishment’s rejection of both himself and Trump as a basis for cooperation with the Republican front-runner. Cruz invited Trump to headline a rally he organized on the steps of the Capitol in opposition to Obama’s nuclear pact with Iran.
The demonstration was held in opposition not only to Obama’s deal but to the Republican leadership’s mishandling of the deal’s approval process.
Had Republican leaders been more dedicated to their principles they could have defined the Iran deal as a treaty and shot it down in the Senate.
By opting not to do so, they made implementation of the deal inevitable.
Over time, the Cruz-Trump partnership became untenable. As a Tea Party politician, Cruz is not only anti-establishment, he is anti-populist.
Cruz isn’t interested in finding scapegoats to blame for America’s problems. He’s interested in solving them.
Hated by the establishment, hated by the Left, Cruz is Obama’s nemesis. If he is elected, he will implement policies that unravel Obama’s legacy.
If America opts for a demagogue, it will remain on its current trajectory.
http://www.carolineglick.com/

9.The self-cannibalization of Europe (revisited) By Martin Sherman 04/14/2016 21:51 JPost.com

The West’s socio-cultural heritage is undergoing a process of self-cannibalization, devoured by the very values that once made it so successful and influential.

A man reacts at a street memorial following Tuesday’s bomb attacks in Brussels.(photo credit:REUTERS)

It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion. – R. Inge, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, 1915
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. – Karl Popper, “On the Paradox of Tolerance,” in The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945
Many Western Europeans, from the man on the street to the cop on the corner, from the politician in Parliament to the immigration official at the border, have long considered it their obligation… to tolerate intolerance. – From “Tolerating Intolerance: The Challenge of Fundamentalist Islam in Western Europe,” Partisan Review, 2002
Several years ago, I used these excerpts as the introduction to a column titled, “A study in self-cannibalization” (November 11, 2011), in which I cautioned that the West in general, and Europe in particular, were devouring themselves, by attempting to apply the values on which their socio-cultural heritage was founded in situations & against perils, where such applications are totally inappropriate.
Events since then have resoundingly affirmed that dire caveat.

Utterly ill-prepared – operationally & mentally
In mid-December 2015, numerous major media channels reported that a raid on a Brussels apartment where suspected jihadi terrorist Salah Abdeslam – accused of involvement in the November 2015 Paris attacks – was thought to be hiding, was delayed for hours. Incredibly, this was because the Belgium penal code prohibits such raids between 9pm & 5am, unless a crime is actually in progress.
Little could better illustrate how utterly ill-prepared – both operationally and mentally – the countries of the European Union are to contend with the rapidly emerging existential threat to their way of life, their cultural heritage and the value system on which they are based.
On Sunday, The New York Times outlined the dimensions of the EU’s rude and belated awakening: “The scale of the Islamic State’s operations in Europe are still not known, but they appear to be larger and more layered than investigators at first realized… the Islamic State appears to be posing a largely hidden and lethal threat across much of Europe…”
Sadly, as the influx of Muslim immigrants engulfs Western Europe and presses against the gates of North America, bringing with it much of what they were attempting to flee, the appalling truth is becoming increasingly clear.
A process of self-cannibalization
In November 2011, I wrote: “Across the Western world today, political liberalism [“liberal” as opposed to “illiberal,” not “conservative” – MS] is undergoing a process of self-cannibalization – devoured by the very values which made it into arguably the most successful and influential socio-political doctrine in modern history. At the very least, it has been complicit in actively facilitating its own demise through an unrestrained and undiscerning compulsion to apply these values universally – even when such application is not only inappropriate, but detrimental to those values.”
This week, the validity of this diagnosis received dramatic support from a most unlikely source – none other than the man widely credited for popularizing the term “Islamophobia” as a pejorative expression of unwarranted anti-Muslim bias, the former head of Britain’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips. Indeed, for much of the week, cyberspace has been abuzz with Phillips’s stark admission of error: “Twenty years ago when… I published the report titled, “Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All”… that first introduced the term Islamophobia to Britain… we thought that the real risk of the arrival of new communities was discrimination against Muslims…” Although the 1996 report did show ample evidence of such discrimination, Phillips concedes: “… we got almost everything else wrong.”
In the rest of his frank and manifestly contrite – some might say, distraught – mea culpa, Phillips reiterates, virtually point by point, almost everything raised in my November 2011 column, lamenting: “Liberal opinion in Britain has, for more than two decades, maintained that most Muslims are just like everyone else… But thanks to the most detailed and comprehensive survey of British Muslim opinion yet conducted, we now know that just isn’t how it is.”
Acknowledging diversity is… diverse
In light of the new “detailed and comprehensive” survey’s findings on the growing “chasm” between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain on fundamental societal issues, Phillips acknowledges: “For a long time, I too thought that Europe’s Muslims would become like previous waves of migrants, gradually abandoning their ancestral ways, wearing their religious and cultural baggage lightly, and gradually blending into Britain’s diverse identity landscape,” confessing: “I should have known better.”
He bluntly puts erstwhile like-minded colleagues on notice: “Some of my journalist friends imagine that, with time, the Muslims will grow out of it. They won’t.”
In November 2011, I cautioned against disregarding the practical ramifications of “Otherness”: “Devotees of political liberalism fervently advocate – quite correctly – the need to acknowledge the diversity of humanity and to accept the existence of those different from us, i.e., the ‘Other.’ “However, they then go on to advocate – with equal fervor – something that in effect empties the previous acknowledgment of all significance, i.e., that we relate to all the diverse ‘Others’ as equals.
“For what is the point of acknowledging diversity if we are called upon to ignore the possible ramifications of that diversity and to relate to those discernibly different from us as if they were essentially the same as us? Prima facie, this is absurdly self-contradictory.
“For surely the awareness of difference raises the possibility that different attitudes (and actions) toward the ‘Other’ may well be called for.
“Although acknowledging diversity necessarily negates equality, this does not a priori mean that ‘Ours’ is morally superior to ‘Theirs’ – although the plausible assumption is that ‘We’ have a subjective preference for ‘Ours’ over ‘Theirs.’ “This, of course, might entail certain practical ramifications for the preservation of ‘Ours’ lest it be consumed by ‘Theirs’ – depending on ‘Their’ ‘appetites and aspirations.’”
‘Us’ as an item on ‘Their’ menu
I continued: “As the foregoing W.R. Inge citation counsels, it would be injudicious to relate to carnivores and herbivores with an undiscriminating sense of egalitarianism.
Indeed, if one is not mindful of the differences between oneself and the ‘Other’ (say with regard to dietary preferences or predatory predilections), disaster may well be unavoidable.
“Of course, such diagnosis of difference does not necessarily imply a value judgment as to the relative moral merits of devouring flesh or grazing grass. However, operationally, it is a distinction that is essential for the preservation of grass-grazers…
“For no matter how sympathetic to, or appreciative of, the untamed majesty of predators one might be, the fate of the flock is likely to be grim if it is left to graze in wolf-frequented territory with nothing more coercive to protect it than an appeal for understanding.”
Thus, in what Breitbart’s Raheem Kassam dubs “a nod to those who have long protested this to be the case in the face of political, media, and even police cover-ups,” Phillips – virtually on cue – charges: “The contempt for white girls among some Muslim men has been highlighted by… recent [widespread underage sexual abuse] scandals in Rotherham, Oxford, Rochdale and other towns. But this merely reflects a deeply ingrained sexism that runs through Britain’s Muslim communities.”
The ‘Other’ as…‘Other’
In November 2011, I diagnosed: “The major source of peril [to Western values of socio-cultural tolerance and individual liberty] today is the reluctance – indeed the resolute refusal – to acknowledge the emerging threat. Leading liberal opinion-makers in mainstream intellectual establishment appear totally incapable of conceiving (or at least, totally unwilling to acknowledge that they are capable of conceiving) of the ‘Other’ as anything but a darker skin-toned version of themselves – with perhaps more exotic tastes in dress and a greater penchant for spicy food, but with essentially the same value system as theirs, or at least one not significantly incompatible with it.”
Indeed, there seems to be an overriding inability to admit the possibility that the “Other” is in fact fundamentally different – i.e. genuinely “Other” – and may hold entirely different beliefs as to what is good and bad, what is legitimate and what is not.
Phillips points an accusatory finger in essentially the same direction: “… the biggest obstacles we now face in addressing the growth of this nation-within-a-nation are not created by British Muslims themselves. Many of our (distinctly un-diverse) elite political and media classes simply refuse to acknowledge the truth. Any undesirable behaviors are attributed to poverty and alienation. Backing for violent extremism must be the fault of the Americans. Oppression of women is a cultural trait that will fade with time, nothing to do with the true face of Islam.”
With commendable candor, he admits, “It’s not as though we couldn’t have seen this coming. But we’ve repeatedly failed to spot the warning signs,” adding disapprovingly: “Even when confronted with the growing pile of evidence to the contrary, and the angst of the liberal minority of British Muslims, clever, important people still cling to the patronizing certainty that British Muslims will, over time, come to see that ‘our’ ways are better.”
An Orwellian corruption of the discourse
It is of little practical consequence whether this lacuna is the product of an overbearing intellectual arrogance, which precludes the possibility of any alternative value system, or of an underlying moral cowardice, which precludes the will to defend the validity of one’s own value system.
The result is the ongoing retreat from the defense of liberty and tolerance in the face of ever-emboldened, intolerant Muslim militancy – not only across the Islamic world, but within the heart of many Western nations as well.
Even more seriously, it has undermined the capacity for honest debate, for accurate assessment of strategic geopolitical shifts & for formulating timely & effective responses to deal with them.
The politically correct endeavor to shy away from harsh truths has introduced an almost Orwellian atmosphere of 1984 mind control into the debate on the ramifications of Islam for the West’s socio-cultural heritage.
Pronouncements almost on a par with the “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery” & “Ignorance is Strength” employed by “The Party” to control the dystopian state of Oceania in George Orwell’s classic novel of pervasive dictatorship have emerged with disturbing frequency.
It is a phenomenon that is not confined only to the UK or EU. Its corrosive effect has crossed the Atlantic – particularly under the Obama administration.
Pronouncing religious fundamentalism secular
Thus, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in effect, pronounced that religious fundamentalism is… secular (!), when he famously characterized the radical Muslim Brotherhood as an organization that is “largely secular.”
Similar convoluted, nonsensical gobbledygook came from current CIA director (then Obama-administration’s homeland security adviser) James Brennan, when he made the astounding claim that accurately defining the threat would exacerbate it: “Nor do we describe our enemy as jihadists or Islamists, because jihad is a holy struggle. [C]haracterizing our adversaries this way would actually be counterproductive.”
But perhaps the pinnacle of Orwellian endeavor came from then-British home secretary Jacqui Smith, in a 2009 Der Spiegel interview, who took it upon herself to bring home to radicalized UK Muslims that they were not who they thought they were! In a breathtaking stroke of self-contradictory double talk, she presumed to dub the acts of terrorism perpetrated by Islamists, in the name of Islam, as “anti-Islamic activity.”
All of this comprises the rhetorical context for the ongoing sycophantic oxymoronic drivel from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that there is “nothing Islamic” about the atrocities committed in the name of Islam by incontrovertibly Islamic organizations.
Clearly, in an intellectual climate such as this – where truth is condemned and dismissed as politically incorrect hate-speech – no effective response can be marshaled against the gathering storm facing Western civilization and the values of liberty and of tolerance that underpin it.
Epilogue
Allow me to conclude with the same observations with which I concluded my November, 2011 column, from a gay intellectual on the propagation of Islam in Europe, where private Islamic academies – subsidized by European governments – “reinforce the Koran-based… morality learned at home that prescribes severe penalties for female adulterers and rape victims (though not necessarily for rapists), and that demands… that homosexuals be put to death.”
With foreboding, perhaps more pertinent today than ever, he remarked: “If fundamentalist Muslims in Europe do not carry out these punishments, it is not because they’ve advanced beyond such thinking, but because they don’t have the power.”
Not yet.
www.martinsherman.org

10.Media Comment: A lack of media memory By Yisrael Medad, Eli Pollak

JPost.com 04/13/2016 22:02

We expect reporters and columnists to mine the archives of their newspapers and networks to make interviews more incisive and reportage more accurate.

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon attends a news conference in Tel Aviv. (photo credit:REUTERS) We depend on the media not only to report and analyze current events but also to remind us of past events so that today’s news is provided with proper context and perspective.
We expect reporters and columnists to mine the archives of their newspapers and networks to make interviews more incisive and reportage more accurate.
This past week demonstrated conclusively that our media does not uphold such standards. Instead of relating to all issues with the same impersonal but professional standard of providing the public with the news, our media manipulates it in accordance with its own convictions and desires.

Our first example is the recent coverage of Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. Ya’alon was very critical in public of the soldier who shot an incapacitated Arab terrorist in Hebron. Due to his principled stance, Ya’alon has been under considerable pressure from within the Likud as well as outside of it. The result is that Ya’alon has become the darling of the media and those who attack him, the black sheep.
Most mainstream media outlets have glossed over the fact that Ya’alon seemingly is interfering in an ongoing criminal investigation.
By contrast, when Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked criticized the Supreme Court’s recent decision further delaying the implementation of the agreement on the utilization of the offshore gas fields, she was portrayed as interfering with the country’s rule of law.
However unlike Ya’alon, Shaked’s pronouncements came after a decision was handed down which she thought wrong. She did not interfere with the judicial process at all.
Digging a bit deeper, we note that now Ya’alon’s pronouncements are praised as upholding true liberal and democratic values. Not too long ago, the media’s frame of reference was quite the opposite.
In mid-January 2014, Yediot Aharonot broke a story that the defense minister had, in a supposedly off-the- record background talk, made comments in which he called US Secretary of State John Kerry “obsessive” and “messianic.” He was also quoted as saying that Kerry “should take his Nobel Prize and leave us alone.” The media played up his remarks, stressing how damaging they were to Israel’s relationship with its “greatest ally.” The leak was obviously not only breaking the accepted norms of interviews in which reporters respect the wishes of the person interviewed and keep off the record comments private, but aimed at damaging Ya’alon and his political backer, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Under fierce media pressure, Ya’alon apologized.
Two months later, he had to do so again, after criticizing the US for its global weakness. Lecturing at Tel Aviv University on March 17, he said, “If your image is feebleness, it doesn’t pay in the world.” US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel placed a call to protest. Ya’alon was again raked over the coals in Israel’s media.
But now he is being backed, especially by Yediot Aharonot. The difference between then and now? If his judgment was so bad then, how come it has become so good now? We can only conclude that Yediot and the media are not reporting the news, but managing it to fit their own personal wish list. A Ya’alon perceived as not relenting to American pressure is put down. The same Ya’alon, when his actions fit the agenda of the press powers, is bolstered.
Another, related example of a lack of historical perspective is the recent investigative item of Dr.
Ilana Dayan on her Uvda program in which former minister Rehavam Ze’evi was accused of sexual harassment. “Gandi,” as he was nicknamed, has been dead for 15 years, assassinated by Arab terrorists.
Besides the fact that he cannot defend himself, the program cannot change the behavior of the deceased.
If Dayan truly believes that such stories, whether true or not, should be investigated, why doesn’t she take up a long list of suspected public personalities whose dalliances may have been, by today’s standards, harassment? These might include Moshe Dayan, Ezer Weizmann or even David Ben-Gurion, who had an affair with Regina Klapholz, 21 years his junior.
What positive contribution did this segment on Ze’evi make? Things become almost ludicrous when we compare the media’s coverage of MKs Zouheir Bahloul (Zionist Union) and Bezalel Smotrich (Bayit Yehudi). Bahloul, in a statement made in his party’s faction and then again on Thursday in an interview on Galatz with Yaron Dekel and Amit Segal, clarified his views regarding terrorists and freedom fighters. In essence, any attack on Israeli soldiers is considered part of a struggle for freedom, according to Bahloul. Only the murder of innocent civilians may be considered terrorism.
Bahloul was roundly criticized, both within and outside his party.
His party colleague MK Eitan Cabel said Bahloul was no longer a member of the Zionist Union. Indeed, anyone who has followed Bahloul’s programs on the regional Arab-language A-Shams radio or who read the detailed report of Shlomo Daskal and Dr. Tehila Altshuler of the Israel Democracy Institute would know Bahloul considers himself to be first and foremost a Palestinian whose land was taken away by Israel. Bahloul insists on referring to the city of Upper Nazareth as Nazareth, claiming that the lands of the Jewish city were stolen from the Arab city of Nazareth. He is an admirer of Muhammad Bakri, the producer of the Jenin, Jenin film which falsely accuses the IDF of perpetrating war crimes in the 2002 battle in the Jenin refugee camp.
Legislation aimed at preventing any public show of mourning on Israel’s Independence Day was considered by him “a shady and despicable act.”
None of this appeared in the ensuing media discourse. Quite the contrary, on Monday, Razi Barkai devoted almost an hour of his Galatz program to analyzing whether Bahloul’s differentiation between killing soldiers and civilians holds water. He thus legitimized Bahloul’s assertion instead of asking the obvious question which is whether any country in the world would defend someone who identifies with its enemies, let alone allow such a person to serve in its parliament.
Smotrich did not receive such empathy. He was branded a racist.
Haaretz’s Uri Misgav used the term “Judeo-Nazi” – ironically, a term coined by the newspaper’s darling, the late professor Yeshayhu Leibowitz, who employed it to describe IDF troops in Lebanon.
But why provide context? It would only ruin the media’s story-line.
The authors are respectively vice chairman and chairman of Israel’s Media Watch (www.imediaw.org.il).

11.Right from Wrong: Killers & healers – a Palestinian-Israeli tale By Ruthie Blum JPost.com 04/17/2016 21:12 As was reported by Palestinian Media Watch, Fatah posted this tribute to the suicide terrorist on its official Facebook page.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas speaks at a Fatah conference in Ramallah in 2009.. (photo credit:REUTERS) On Wednesday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party paid homage to a young woman who killed six people and wounded dozens more when she detonated the homemade bomb in her handbag at the Mahane Yehuda outdoor market in Jerusalem 14 years ago.
As was reported by Palestinian Media Watch, Fatah posted this tribute to the suicide terrorist on its official Facebook page.
The post reads: “Today is the anniversary of the death as a martyr [shahida] of the martyrdom-seeker [istish’hadiya], the hero Andalib Takatka from the town of Beit Fajjar, daughter of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades – Fatah’s military wing – in Bethlehem, who carried out a martyrdom-seeking operation in Jerusalem in which six Zionists were killed, and dozens injured. Glory and eternity to our righteous martyrs. We remain loyal to the path.” As it happens, two of the “Zionists” Takatka slaughtered were actually Chinese construction workers.
In a video produced by her handlers in Fatah’s Tanzim and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades prior to her final hurrah, Takatka was seen holding a Koran and stating that she was about to die as part of the Palestinian women’s fight against “Israeli occupation.”
She also said she was going to finish the job that her cousins, Iman and Samia, had started. (Their own plan to blow themselves up in Mahane Yehuda had been foiled by Israeli security forces.) While Fatah was celebrating Takatka’s “martyrdom,” Abbas headed for a multi-country trip to Europe and the United States. Along with his fancy suits, he packed a draft of an anti-Israel resolution he intends to bring before the UN Security Council when he arrives in New York. Even the fact that his younger brother is critically ill didn’t prevent him from embarking on his “peace-seeking” journey.
That’s how serious he is about international relations.
One thing we can be sure he will not mention when he meets with foreign officials in Turkey, France, Russia, Germany and the US is where his Qatar-based sibling is currently being treated for cancer, and not for the first time. Yes, Abu Lawi, as he is called, is lying in a hospital bed in the Assuta Medical Center in Tel Aviv.
The upscale hospital comes highly recommended by other members of Abbas’ family, as well. His wife, Amina, underwent surgery there in the summer of 2014. This was just after the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens at the hands of Palestinian terrorists – an event that precipitated Operation Protective Edge, otherwise known as the war in Gaza.
And six months ago, Abbas’ brother-in-law received life-saving heart surgery there.
But the PA leader’s relatives aren’t the only Israel-bashers to turn to the Jewish state for medical care. Hamas honchos, too, send their loved ones to the country they keep trying to annihilate whenever such care is needed. Indeed, it is one of few things that Fatah and Hamas have in common, though this was not uttered by Abbas in his interview with Russian news agency Sputnik on Wednesday. What he did say was that it was a “top priority” to reconcile with Hamas. You know, because all that infighting is getting in the way of “resolving” the Israel issue.
Hamas isn’t really interested in rapprochement with Abbas, however, since it would prefer to defeat and overthrow him. But that’s another story. More relevant to the topic at hand is the repeated trek to Israeli hospitals made by mass murderers who keep putting out YouTube clips threatening the lives of Jews.
In June 2014, Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh’s 68-year-old mother-in-law was treated in Jerusalem’s Augusta Victoria Hospital.
In November 2014, Hamas spokesman Moussa Abu Marzouk’s 60-year-old sister was treated for cancer in an Israeli hospital.
In October 2014, Haniyeh’s daughter spent a week in an Israeli hospital.
In November 2013, Haniyeh’s year-old granddaughter was treated at the Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikvah.
Haniyeh expressed his gratitude by calling for a third intifada against Israel. Well, he and Abbas got their wish. For the past seven months, as Israeli doctors tirelessly heal wounded victims and their assailants, Palestinian terrorists continue to commit stabbing, car-ramming and firebombing attacks against innocent Israeli soldiers and civilians, while Fatah and Hamas laud them on Facebook.
The writer is the web editor of The Algemeiner (algemeiner.com) and a columnist at Israel Hayom.