Tag Archive for: Palestinian Authority

The World Prepares to Recognize a Hamas Palestinian State

/in , , , , , , , , /by

A “Palestinian” state will be a state of the terrorists, by the terrorists and for the terrorists.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PLO’s Palestinian Authority and the other Islamic terrorist groups who make up the official “Palestinian” leadership have been invited for unity talks in Moscow.

The terrorist unity talks scheduled by the Putin regime for the end of February are a homecoming for a “Palestinian” movement invented by Soviet propagandists. Mahmoud Abbas, the long-serving dictator of the PA, wrote his Holocaust denial thesis while studying at Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba University which had trained a generation of third world terrorists.

The invitation to Moscow comes from Putin’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov. Materials from a KGB defector revealed that Abbas had worked for the KGB under Bogdanov. Back then Abbas had the KGB codename “mole”, these days, his code name is “president”.

Some of the same ex-Soviet operatives who helped set up and fund the PLO, the PFLP and the rest of the “Palestinian” movement are now trying to unite them all under one single banner.

While the State Department in D.C. and British Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron are talking about immediately recognizing a “Palestinian” state as soon as they can force Israel to stop its campaign to destroy Hamas, the Palestinian Authority is trying to bring Hamas into the state.

The media claimed that Abbas had visited Qatar to hold talks with the Islamic tyranny’s leaders on a “ceasefire”. In reality, the Palestinian Authority leader had been meeting with the Qatari regime, another state sponsor of Hamas, to pursue unity talks with the fellow terror group.

Putin’s relationship with Iran makes Moscow, like Doha, home turf for Hamas. Some weeks after Oct 7, top Hamas leaders had flown out to Moscow to meet with Bogdanov after the Russian official had previously chatted with leaders of the terror group in their home base in Qatar.

In 2006, Putin had reacted to the Hamas takeover of Gaza by declaring that “we are maintaining our contacts with Hamas and intend, in the near future, to invite the leadership of this organisation to Moscow” and emphasized that, “we have never called Hamas a terrorist organisation.” Putin invited Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, who recently claimed that “the Russians told us they would study our Oct. 7 attack in their military academies.”

A week after the Oct 7 attacks, Hamas stated, “we in the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS) appreciate Russian President Vladimir Putin’s position on the ongoing Zionist aggression against our people and his opposition to the siege of Gaza”.

After Oct 7, Putin and China’s Xi had blocked a UN condemnation of the Hamas atrocities. Now Russia is working on uniting its old PLO friends and its new Hamas friends. But Russia and Qatar are not alone. The Biden administration and the European Union are all pushing for a “Palestinian” state after they force a ceasefire. And that state will inevitably include Hamas.

“Russia has invited all Palestinian factions who will be meeting on the 26 of this month in Moscow. We will see if Hamas is ready to come to the ground with us,” Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh informed the Munich Security Conference. “We are prepared to engage. If Hamas is willing to join us, that’s positive. We need Palestinian unity,”

“One should not continue focusing on October 7,” he warned attendees at the forum.

“Hamas is an essential part of the Palestinian political map. Israel’s talk of eliminating Hamas will not happen and are not acceptable to us,” Shtayyeh had told Qatar’s Doha Forum in December around the same time that the PA was holding unity talks with Hamas in Doha.

After the Oct 7 attacks, Biden claimed that, “the vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.” In reality, polls show that Hamas would easily win any current election, as it won the last set of “Palestinian” elections in 2006, leading Abbas and his Fatah faction to seize total control of the West Bank and reject any future elections. Hamas was able to take over Gaza leading to the two “Palestinian” statelets.

In January, Abbas’ spokesman had promised to “hold general elections, and if Hamas wins, the president will hand over the [Palestinian] Authority.”

With polls showing that Hamas would handily win an election, If Abbas is serious this time, that means recognizing a “Palestinian” state will mean creating a Hamas state inside Israel.

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority had been holding unity talks on and off, including four months before the Oct 7 attacks, and quickly began holding them again afterward.

The current proposal, like previous ones coming out of the unity talks, places Palestinian Authority officials up front, so that terrorists can receive foreign aid from America and the EU, while Hamas officials maintain an official subsidiary role but continue to control Gaza.

In the past, Hamas had been able to siphon foreign aid through UNRWA, but as it now faces the possibility of utter destruction in Gaza, it may be more willing to accept the proposal being advanced by Qatar, Russia, the EU and the Biden administration. While Russia and Qatar may be more publicly supportive of their Hamas allies, all the proposals come down to a government of “technocrats” serving as the public face of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

Shtayyeh is an example of one of those “technocrats”, academics with experience in extracting foreign aid and telling foreign diplomats what they want to hear, but with no actual political power, who were put into place to act as a cover for the Arafat and Abbas regimes. A similar puppet regime of technocrats subsidiary to Afghanistan’s warlords had operated in Kabul before it fled the Taliban. The Taliban and the Biden administration have resurrected a version of its “technocrats” to administer the funds going from the United States to Afghanistan.

The current plan is to blame Oct 7 entirely on Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, and a few of his cronies, to demand their expulsion, and then to make a deal with the “moderate” Hamas leaders in Doha before putting the plan for a “Palestinian” state in overdrive. But the Moscow summit is a warning that any such state will never be anything other than a terror state.

The primary difference between the Qatari and Russian positions, and the Biden and EU position, is plausible deniability. Qatar and Russia want Hamas out front, while Biden and the EU prefer it out back. And we already know from Afghanistan how that will end up working out.

The Qataris negotiated our deal with the Taliban that would have made the Islamic terrorist group a part of a multilateral government. Americans died to maintain that State Department fiction as the Taliban were advancing to take over the entire country. Hamas had its chance to be part of a multilateral government with other Islamic terrorists and each time it chose to try and take everything. Biden and the EU may want to keep Hamas in the background, but history tells us that, like the Taliban, it will eventually seize power and dominate any “Palestinian” state.

It’s difficult to know whether Secretary of State Blinken and the State Department personnel who pretended until the last moment that the Taliban were not trying to take over Afghanistan, but only to take a stronger position in the negotiations for a united government really believed that. It’s also difficult to know whether they truly believe that their proposed “Palestinian” state will be anything other than a terrorist state that will eventually fall into the hands of Hamas.

But we know that not only Qatar and Russia, but the Biden administration and the EU, have urgently fought against any Israeli move into Rafah that would finish off Hamas in Gaza.

It’s obvious why Qatar or Russia’s Bogdanov are condemning an attack on Rafah, but the Biden administration has introduced a draft UN resolution calling for a ceasefire, and from Biden on down have warned Israel against going into Rafah. The internal reasoning is probably similar to the one that guided Nixon and Kissinger during another October war 50 years ago.

During the Yom Kippur War, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had told Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that “my nightmare is a victory for either side.” He warned that without negotiations and a deal, “the Israelis [will] have pushed the Arabs out of every territory and “If we do nothing by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest, Arabs will have been defeated.”

“I do not mean to imply that he wanted Israel to lose the war, he simply did not want Israel to win decisively. He wanted Israel to bleed just enough to soften it up for the post-war diplomacy he was planning,” Admiral Elmo Zuwalt, the former head of the Navy, wrote in his memoir.

The Biden administration also wanted Israel to defeat Hamas, but not to defeat it too much.

The administration is worried that if Israel wins in Rafah, it will win too much and be much less interested in its diplomatic solution of creating a “Palestinian” state which it believes is the real solution to the conflict. And it needs Hamas to provide pressure on Israel to create such a state.

The same failed idea that has haunted the region for decades is that Islamic terrorism can only be defeated by giving the terrorists some, but not all, of what they want. Much as it did not occur to the State Department that the Taliban would want everything, it refuses to believe that Hamas would want everything. And every time the negotiations fall apart, history is rewritten again.

In an article published in early October, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan described the negotiations that had brought peace between Hamas and Israel. “We have de-escalated crises in Gaza,” he boasted. The online version of the article has been edited to remove those words.

Since December, Sullivan has taken to warning Israel to “transition” to a new “phase” of the war in which it stops its military campaign and goes back to occasional drone attacks on Hamas leaders. And then he and the rest can get started building their “Palestinian” state. And when Hamas takes over again, more articles will have to be edited and more bodies will be buried.

The Biden administration, the European Union (for now only being held off by Hungary), Russia and the rest of the international community are preparing to reward Oct 7 with a terrorist state. A ‘Palestinian’ state will be a state of the terrorists, by the terrorists and for the terrorists.

The 10/7 attacks reminded Israelis of what Americans had known and forgotten after 9/11.

The Israeli soldiers battling in Gaza are not just fighting for their country, but to remind America and the world that it is possible to defeat Islamic terrorists, instead of negotiating with them. A victory there will show everyone that we can all fight and win, instead of surrendering to Islam.

A lot is riding on that battle for Israel, for America, Europe and the free world. That is why the leaders of the international community and the diplomats of the world are fighting to save Hamas. What happens in the next weeks will hand the Islamic terrorists and their enablers either one of their greatest defeats or their greatest victory: a Hamas ‘Palestinian’ state.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden Regime Warns Israel Not to Interfere With Hamas Members Stealing Aid

Biden’s Strikes Against the Houthis Haven’t Touched a Fraction Of Their Arsenal

Hamas Supporters Protest Chinese New Year Parade

How the Media Misreported the Hezbollah-Israel Exchanges of Fire

UK: Ministry of Justice hosts speaker who said ‘Jews need to get in the queue behind Muslims’

France: 11-year-old Muslim boy arrested for glorifying terrorism and threatening to murder a teacher

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: The Road To October 7 – Education For Jihad And Martyrdom

/in , , , , , , /by

Palestinian Authority | MEMRI Daily Brief No. 558

This extensive collection of MEMRI TV clips exposes educational materials that encourage Palestinian and Muslim youth to wage jihad and to become martyrs, in the spirit of Islamic fundamentalism. These materials are taught at kindergartens, schools, and other educational settings, as well as by mothers and fathers at home, by religious scholars, in mosques, and by political leaders in various settings.

To view this collection below:

AUTHOR

Yigal Carmon

Yigal Carmon is Founder and President of MEMRI.

POST ON X:

EDITORS NOTE: This MEMRI column with video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Regime Boycotts Israel

/in , , , , , , /by

Straughn informed the organizers that the State Department canceled her authorization to fly.

This is governmental BDS, but it also reminds me of how the Obama administration gamed the shutdown by forcing the cancelation of all sorts of events and venues just to make a point. If this story is accurate, then part of the Biden admin’s pressure campaign on Israel involved the cancelation of completely apolitical events.

Astrophysicist and deputy project scientist of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Amber Straughn canceled her scheduled Israel Physical Society conference appearance due to tensions between Israel and the United States.

Straughn told the conference organizers at Bar-Ilan University that the cancelation was due to instructions from the U.S. State Department.

In addition to her appearance at the conference, which was slated for next week, Straughn was also scheduled to give a lecture this week sponsored by the university’s physics department to some 300 students and researchers. She additionally was set to hold a lecture open to the public at Jerusalem’s Bloomfield Science Museum on Friday.

Straughn said at the start of the week that NASA and the State Department might order her to cancel her appearance due to bilateral tensions.

On Tuesday afternoon, a few hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he was pausing his government’s judicial overhaul legislation, Straughn informed the organizers that the State Department had, in fact, canceled her authorization to fly.

That is really ugly, if true.

One issue with this story is that it’s Haaretz, an extreme left publication, one that is a longtime opponent of Israel and its government, and which has credibility issues. Also it seems like a story out of Bar-Ilan University would not be the immediate vector to Haaretz.

But the premise is credible enough. If this were happening, then it would be part of a broader package of similar canceled events. We’ll see if that turns out to be the case. The lack of response by Jewish groups to this entire situation is disgusting and predictable.

A petition has been created challenging the culture of lies about democratic judicial reform that all of this has been based on.

It notes that…

We have different views on these reforms, but many of them parallel existing practice within the United States and all are compatible with democracy. The U.S. Constitution even allows Congress to eliminate most of the federal judiciary, and President Joe Biden himself has considered “packing” the Supreme Court.

There is room for criticism and debate, and good friends can disagree, even on fundamental issues. But the attacks have gone too far. They echo the worst claims of Israel’s enemies in the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) movement — an antisemitic effort to isolate Israel, as the White House is now doing.

It is a slander against the Jewish state to claim that its government is mounting a “coup” because its newly-elected legislature is engaged in the democratic process of lawmaking.

With stories like these, we see that the campaign against democratic judicial reform has become BDS.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED ARTICLES:

SHOSHANA BRYEN: Here’s What Really Lies Behind The Biden Admin’s Icy Israel Relationship

U.S. Bolsters Forces In Middle East Following Series Of Attacks On US Troops In Syria

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ZOA Accuses Biden’s Handlers of Planning to Train, Equip and Deploy Palestinian Terrorists in Judea and Samaria

/in , , , , , , , , /by

The Biden administration is either dangerously naïve or worse. It is presenting this plan under the pretext of helping to curb terrorism in Judea and Samaria, yet ZOA says this “unconscionable and illegal plan” would aid Palestinian jihadists. Meanwhile, another report has exposed the U.S. State Department’s funding of an anti-Netanyahu Leftist group that is behind the chaotic protests in Israel. What exactly is the motivation of the Biden administration?

A news article by Tablet Magazine stated of America’s most recent plan:

Incredibly, the U.S. is now proposing to take advantage of its ally’s political weakness by standing up a potential 5,000-man Palestinian terror army that would ostensibly fight terrorism in the West Bank in place of the IDF.

Washington, D.C.’s latest bout of Mideast pyromania began with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Ramallah at the end of January, right after a Palestinian terrorist shot dead seven Israelis outside a synagogue in Neve Yaakov.

The key words are “ostensibly fight terrorism in the West Bank in place of the IDF,” which puts a different spin on America’s possible intent from that of the ZOA below. But what would make the Biden administration actually think its plan could possibly work to bring Palestinians to “fight terrorism”? Given the administration’s consistent anti-Israel stance, does it really believe that arming, training and deploying Palestinians could be a trusted strategy to “fight terrorism,” rather than help perpetuate it?

In reality, such a plan would greatly empower the Palestinian “resistance.” History bears out the fact that the Palestinians do now want and never wanted peace. They aim to obliterate Israel from the River to the Sea, as is stated in the founding Charters of all the major Palestinian organizations, and they’re watching closely as America further positions itself as their ally rather than the ally of Israel.

Surely America should know that Israel cannot allow such a plan. The IDF, in fact, beefed up troops in Samaria last month in response to the escalating violence.

ZOA: Stop Biden/Blinken/Amr Unconscionable Plan to Establish Army of 5,000 Palestinian-Arab Terrorists plus U.S./Foreign Forces

Zionist Organization of America, March 17, 2023:

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) denounces, in the strongest possible terms, the Biden Administration’s unconscionable, illegal plan to provide commando training in Jordan to 5,000 Palestinian-Arab army of terrorists or future terrorists; and to then equip and deploy this Palestinian-Arab commando army in Judea/Samaria, along with foreign and U.S. forces.

The administration’s horrific, frightening, dangerous plan also requires Israel “to sharply curtail IDF counterterror operations.” U.S. security coordinator Lieutenant General (LTG) Michael Fenzel, who is currently responsible for training Palestinian Authority (PA) police in Judea and Samaria, proposed training the new 5,000-strong commando army, and deploying foreign forces, including U.S. military forces, on the ground.

Thus, under the Biden administration’s plan, Israel would be restricted from defending innocent Israelis from terrorists; and much of Judea/Samaria would become a “safe haven” for terrorists to retreat to and be celebrated after perpetrating murderous terror attacks in Israel, with no consequences.

Moreover, American and other foreign forces on the ground would become sitting ducks, subject to Palestinian-Arab terror attacks. American and foreign soldiers would also become human shields, who block Israel from going after the terrorists, lest foreign forces be caught in the crossfire. Further, the PA will want foreign forces to include Iranians, thereby introducing even more terror into the region…..

Read more.

AUTHOR

RELATED VIDEO: Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff Video: Islam’s Assault on Human Rights.

RELATED ARTICLES:

DC News Now tells you ‘everything you need to know’ about Ramadan, except what you need to know

Israeli Finance Minister says ‘There is no such thing as a Palestinian people,’ U.S. says ‘we utterly object’

German Tourists Get a Taste of Palestinian Hospitality

Palestinian Islamic Jihad meets with Hizballah head to ‘strengthen the rebellion against the Zionist enemy’

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

After Biden Sent $1,000,000,000 to PLO, Israeli Deaths Rose 900%

/in , , , , , , , , /by

It cost $10,000 to kill a 6-year-old boy and the terrorists have the money. 

When Secretary of State Blinken met with PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas, he boasted of the over billion dollars in aid that the Biden administration had programmed for the terrorist territories.

That aid has come with a very heavy price.

In Feb 2019, President Trump’s total cutoff of aid became official. That year, 10 Israelis or people in Israeli controlled areas were killed in stabbings, shootings, rocket and other attacks, down from 12 the previous year, and 15 in 2017, and 16 in 2016.

In 2020, however, only three Israelis were killed.

These numbers reflected the diminished capacity of the Islamic terrorists. The reduction in numbers was not due to the pandemic. 2020 still saw attacks, including firebombings, rocket launches and stabbings, but the success and lethality rates for these attacks were lower.

The numbers turned around dramatically once again in 2021.

In April 2021, the Biden administration restored aid to the PLO. Terror incidents, reflecting attack attempts, shot up sharply from 91 in February and 89 in March to 130 in April.

By May, major fighting resumed with 13 Israelis, including two children, killed.

By the time the year was over, 17 people in Israeli areas had been killed. The over 400% increase in deaths was only the beginning. In 2022, 31 Israelis or people in Israeli areas were killed, up from only 3 in 2020, for a massive 900% increase in casualties since the restoration of foreign aid to the terrorists. This was the worst death toll since 2015 under Obama.

But in January and the first half of February of 2023, 10 Israelis have already been killed, including a 6-year-old boy and an 8-year-old boy.

Three times as many have been killed in a month and a half of 2023 as in all of 2020. That’s a 233% increase over 2020 in just a fraction of a year, but it’s also a marked month-to-month escalation from 2022 which featured no attacks at all in January or February. More people have already been killed by terrorists in 2023 than through most of March in 2022.

What a difference a billion dollars makes.

While the media has tried to portray the terrorism as “lone wolf” attacks, they’re crowdsourced violence of the kind that Al Qaeda and ISIS helped innovate. But the PLO’s version is unique through its ‘Pay-to-Slay’ program which rewards terrorists, regardless of their formal affiliation, including ISIS and Hamas members, with salaries and payments for their families.

Terrorists are paid based on the length of their prison sentence. That means successful killers can earn $2,000 to $3,000 a month in a part of the world where the average salary is around $700 a month. It’s five times more profitable to be a terrorist than a teacher.

The Palestinian Authority calls for the murder of Jews, praises it and then rewards it.

Muhammad Al-Lahham of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, which runs the political movement behind the terrorists of the Palestinian Authority, was caught on video praising the “patriotic conscience” of a terrorist who had killed a rabbi taking his 2-year-old son for a walk in 2022.

The Trump administration cut off aid to the PLO’s Palestinian Authority and Congress passed the Taylor Force Act banning funds from going to finance Pay-to-Slay.

Throughout all this, PLO leadership have been consistent in refusing to stop financing terrorism.

“We will neither reduce nor prevent [payment] of allowances to the families of martyrs, prisoners and released prisoners, as some seek, and if we had only a single penny left, we would pay it to families of the martyrs and prisoners,” Abbas had bragged. By “martyrs”, he meant those Islamic terrorists who were killed while carrying out terrorist attacks.

Despite this, the Biden administration had restored aid and rebuilt diplomatic relations. Biden and Blinken have met with Abbas. And while they have attacked Israel over everything from letting Jews pray on the Temple Mount (due to Jewish prayers offending Muslim sensibilities) to democratic judicial reform that will limit the unilateral authority of pro-terrorist judges, Biden and Blinken have had nothing to say to the terrorists about the program funding the murder of Jews.

America First Legal, under Stephen Miller, filed suit against the Biden administration on behalf of the parents of Taylor Force: a non-Jewish Afghanistan war vet murdered in Jerusalem.

“The Biden Administration is well aware that the PA pays Palestinian terrorists to injure or kill innocent Americans and Israelis in Israel. Yet, in blatant violation of  the Taylor Force Act, a federal law that prohibits the government from sending American taxpayer dollars to the PA until it stops supporting terrorism, President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken have resumed payments to the PA after the Trump Administration had stopped these payments in compliance with the Taylor Force Act,” America First Legal declared..

“The Taylor Force Act, named after our son, was passed by Congress and signed by President Trump to stop this Pay to Slay. Yet the Biden Administration has resumed payments to the PA notwithstanding its Pay to Slay program,” Stuart Force, Taylor’s father, said.

The Biden administration’s decision to fund the Palestinian Authority has consequences beyond Israel. Islamic terrorism is a global threat and has been a reliable killer of Americans abroad.

“Robbi and I call upon President Biden to stop sending fungible taxpayer dollars to the PA that will end up funding terrorism,” Stuart Force appealed.

And the latest wave of violence shows just how ‘fungible’ that money is.

The massive uptick in successful terrorist attacks is not a coincidence. The numbers become more significant when we distinguish between so-called “lone wolf” attacks which are most directly impacted by ‘Pay-to-Slay’ and rocket attacks by other terrorist groups. 14 people were killed in direct terrorist attacks in 2018. That number dropped to 5 in 2019, the year Trump cut off aid to the PLO. By 2020, it fell to 3, in 2021, the year Biden restored aid, it rose to 4 and then shot up to 32 in 2022 reflecting the ‘slow burn’ effect of fungible aid money being taken away and then restored within a government bureaucracy even if it’s run by and for terrorists.

As the Biden administration continues pumping money into the terrorist entities occupying parts of Israel, the violence is drastically increasing. 2023 is already on track to top 2022 which had the worst numbers since 2015. The level of Islamic terrorism is returning to that of the Obama administration and that means that we can expect an even higher death toll in Israel.

The billion dollars in aid is a factor, but an even bigger factor is that the Biden administration, like its Democrat predecessor, has made no secret of its support for the Palestinian Authority. And the Biden administration has gone even further with its diplomatic support for the PLO regime and its pressure on Israel. The latest murders are the work of a terrorist group that knows that Washington D.C. has its back and will intervene to protect it from Israel.

The Biden administration’s decision to appoint Hady Amr, an open supporter of Islamic terrorism and opponent of the Jewish State, as its key liaison to the PLO, who was inspired by the intifada, has consequences, and dead bodies in Jerusalem are among the most obvious ones.

Islamic terrorism runs on money and foreign support. The Biden administration has provided both. The Palestinian Authority spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on Pay-to-Slay.

The pipeline of terror may end with a 6-year-old boy lying dead on a Jerusalem street but it begins with cash coming out of Washington D.C. The attacks of September 11 cost Al Qaeda about half a million dollars. The cost to the PLO of killing that little boy, his brother and a newly married man going to spend the Sabbath with his wife’s family probably comes out to about $30,000 a year. Or $10,000 per dead Jewish person. That’s a fraction of the millions of dollars in foreign aid which could be used to finance hundreds and thousands of more murders of Jews.

$10,000 to kill a six-year-old boy, another $10,000 to kill his 8-year-old brother. Thanks to the financiers of murdering Jews in the Biden administration, the terrorists have the cash.

And we’re the ones providing it.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED ARTICLES:

Bigoted Biden Regime Calls Jewish prayer at Judaism’s Holiest Site in Jerusalem ‘Unacceptable’

Biden’s handlers side with jihadis against Hindus in Bangladesh

‘Why Would You Want Some Lady’s Dirty Clothes?’: Biden’s ‘Non-Binary’ Ex-Nuclear Waste Chief’s Rough Day in Court

Sweden: Two Muslim migrants accused of keeping three high school girls as sex slaves

Germany: Muslim migrant stabs his girlfriend and her son, screams ‘I’ll cut off your head’

Antifa Shares a Fundraising Platform With the DNC

How the New York Times and Washington Post Covered the Latest Palestinian Car-Ramming

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Tells Israel to Give Money to Terrorists, Not Terror Victims

/in , , , , , , /by

The most anti-Israel administration stands with Islamic terrorists.

The Biden administration condemned Israel for giving $39 million in tax revenues to the victims of terrorism instead of the terrorists.

“It is morally just and important for the war against terror. There is no greater justice than using the funds for the victims of terror,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said of the move.

State Department spokesman Ned Price condemned Israel’s actions as a “unilateral response” that will “exacerbate tensions. and warned that the administration will raise the issue with Israel.

Price did not address whether the Palestinian Authority spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to finance terrorist attacks against Israelis through the ‘Pay-to-Slay’ program raises any tensions. The ruling PLO body spending millions to kill Jews is not unilateral, but Israel refusing to finance the murder of its own citizens is a dangerous move that will make peace difficult.

Palestinian Authority PM Mohammad Shtayyeh claims that if Israel doesn’t give it $39 million, that “will promptly lead to its collapse.”

The terror organization has been claiming variations of the same thing for over two decades.

“Palestinian Authority Broke and In Disarray,” the media agonized in 2004. “Palestinians Threaten to Collapse the Palestinian Authority,” they clamored in 2009. “Suspended tax transfers leave Palestinian economy on the brink” came the warnings in 2015. “Palestinian finances near collapse as cuts deepen,” we were told in 2019.

The PLO’s terror infrastructure is always on the verge of collapse, but sadly never does.

“Israel sells us everything, including water treatment, electricity and drinking water, and in fact profits from all of this,” Shtayyeh whined.

Why after 30 years can’t the aspiring terror state do anything for itself? The “Palestinians” have received an estimated $40 billion in foreign aid. Other estimates have put it at $50 billion.

Over $14 billion of that money went directly to the Palestinian Authority. What did all that money buy apart from mansions for top terrorists?

Pinchas Rutenberg, who had unsuccessfully urged Russia’s liberal Kerensky government to execute Lenin and Trotsky before it was too late and fought to the last to defend the Winter Palace against the Bolsheviks, headed to Israel and began electrifying the country.

“No one doubts the duty of the British Empire to develop the Land of Israel, but who will be charged the financial burden? The British taxpayer? Or perhaps the Arab public that has lived in the country for hundreds of years and has not lifted a finger to develop it. True, Rutenberg is a Jew, and he recruited businessmen and Jewish capitalists to develop the natural resources of the Land of Israel and create jobs for its Arab residents, but is it therefore necessary to disqualify his vision?” Churchill opined.

In a matter of years, much of Israel was powered by the generators that Rutenberg had built.

And all of this happened over two decades before Israel even achieved independence.

Somehow Jewish refugees could do a better job of providing electricity in the 1920s after only a few years than the Palestinian Authority has managed in the 2020s after 30 years.

Churchill correctly observed that the Arab invaders and colonizers had lived there for “hundreds of years” yet had “lifted a finger to develop it.” The cost of developing the territories under PLO control has passed right back to the British taxpayer, the American taxpayer and the Israelis.

Every few years, Israel threatens to cut off the power unless the terrorists pay their debts. The last time around the debt had shot up to $500 million. Each time diplomats warn that if Israel cuts off the power, there will be a humanitarian crisis. But when isn’t there a crisis?

Biden directed over half-a-billion dollars to the terrorists since taking office. And yet the PLO claims that it’s still on the verge of collapse and Israel has to save it all over again.

“The PA must stop its involvement in terror if it wants to survive. As long as it continues to encourage terror, it is our enemy and as such, what interest do we have to help it?” Israeli Finance Minister Smotritch pointed out.

The Palestinian Authority has never run out of money to pay the terrorists, but it can’t manage to pay for its power bill or accomplish anything useful for its people.

Secretary of State Blinken and Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, are headed to Israel to scold the Jewish State for not giving money to the terrorists. The administration has used every possible forum to show contempt and undermine Israel: including a recent UN session denying Jews the right to visit the Temple Mount which is the holiest site in Judaism.

When National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the Temple Mount, the Biden administration called it an “unacceptable” violation of the “historic status quo” that bans Jews.

And yet Ben-Gvir’s visit came and went.

Since then, he’s told the police to take down the terrorist flags of the PLO.

“It is inconceivable that lawbreakers will wave terror flags, incite and encourage terrorism,” Ben Gvir said. “I have issued instructions for the removal of the flags, which support terrorism, from the public space and to stop incitement against the State of Israel.”

The Biden administration, which funds terrorism and incitement against Israel through its foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority, is probably unhappy with this. Its spokesmen repeatedly accuse Israel of “unilateral” acts that increase “tensions”. Every time a Jewish person sneezes in Jerusalem, Ned Price appears at a State Department podium to intone about unilateral sneezing, raising tensions. And yet it’s the Biden administration that is conducting unilateral actions meant to undermine Israel’s status like its rogue diplomatic operation to the PLO.

The level of pettiness included stepping in when an Iron Age spoon was seized from the founder of Birthright Israel to “return” it to the Palestinian Authority even though the Arab Muslim colonists had invaded the area a thousand years later and have no claim to the ancient artifact.

The spoon was identified in the files as coming from the country of Israel, “from the Hebron area” that “is the area of the richest Iron age Jewish tombs (many royal).”

The pettiness of seizing an artifact that originated from an Israeli source and turning it over to the Arab Muslim terrorists who currently occupy parts of Hebron to make a point is emblematic of the Biden administration’s determination to undermine the Jewish People’s claim to its land.

The Biden administration and the media are furious that Israel’s new patriotic government is asserting its rights. It’s a belated act of self-defense that the media treats as an attack.

A hysterical AP news story denounces Netanyahu’s new government as “hard-line”,  “ultra-nationalist”, and the “most hard-line and religious government in Israel’s history” that is “shaking the foundations of Israel’s democracy”, “fomenting divisions” and “barreling toward conflict”.

And that’s just the first two paragraphs of a deranged screed masquerading as news coverage.

Israel’s new government is not “shaking the foundations of Israel’s democracy”, it’s restoring it after decades of hijacking by an activist judiciary by implementing a system of checks and balances to equalize its power with that of the legislature.

It is not “fomenting divisions”, it’s confronting divisions created by leftists and dealing with them. And it’s not “barreling toward conflict” but responding to the attacks against the Jewish State.

What has Israel’s “ultra-nationalist” and “hard-line” government done so far? It diverted money that will be used by terrorists to finance the murder of Jews to the victims of these attacks.

One of its cabinet members briefly visited the holiest site in Judaism. Another suggested that the terrorists need to choose between getting money through Israel and killing Jews.

All that outrage over basic acts of decency.

It’s hard to argue with any of these actions when they’re described objectively. That’s why shrill labels like “hard-line” and  “ultra-nationalist” are being used to silence any meaningful debate.

The media doesn’t want to talk about why Israel and the United States should be financing Islamic terrorism against Jews. Israel’s new government is determined to make that the issue.

Anyone in the Biden administration, the media and activists who scream about “unilateralism” and “ultra-nationalists” should be asked to put away their thesauruses and answer why money should go to terrorists not terror victims.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED ARTICLES:

Media Blackout Over Islamic Terror Attack At Vegas Solar Power Plant

Biden Regime Gives ‘Temporary’ Amnesty to Thousands of Somalis Living in U.S.

Hamas-linked CAIR supports ritual animal sacrifice in Hamtramck, Michigan

Shamima Begum On Islamic State Beheadings: ‘I Was Okay With That’

Afghanistan: Taliban education minister says ban on girls’ education is based on culture and Islam

Afghanistan: Death toll from jihad suicide bombing at foreign ministry could be as high as 20

Muslim Thug in NYC Attack On Jewish Man to Get Slap on the Wrist

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden’s Israel Trip was a Failure Before He Even Arrived

/in , , , , , , /by

A failed president meets with failed Israeli leftists and failed terrorists.

Don’t touch me.

Even though Biden was seen pressing the flesh with outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at a NATO summit, and getting a hug from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, not to mention shaking hands with a variety of foreign leaders during his summer trip to Europe, including those of Turkey, Indonesia, and India, there’ll be no touching in Israel.

According to a Jerusalem Post report, the Biden administration has told the Israelis that its titular figurehead won’t be shaking hands in Israel due to COVID. Apparently there’s a whole lot more of a COVID threat in Israel than in meeting politicians from across the entire world.

Instead of the traditional greeting line at Ben Gurion Airport, the Israelis have been told that due to “scheduling pressure, COVID, and the hot weather, the US president will not shake hands with the invited, and there will be no opportunity for personal photographs.”

Not that there’s likely to be too much demand for selfies with Biden anyway.

While the official word is that Biden is too old and won’t be able to handle 90 degree heat, he did not seem to have a problem getting out and shaking hands when he landed at Spain’s Torrejon de Ardoz air base last month at a time when temperatures in Madrid hit 88 degrees.

Either, Biden aged quite a bit in three weeks or two degrees make a hell of a difference.

Or, possibly, the Biden administration wanted to avoid a big show with the Israelis and is using COVID, old age and the weather as an excuse for playing down the traditional ceremony.

While Biden won’t be touching any Israelis (something the local women will no doubt appreciate), he has made a point of becoming the first sitting president to visit a “Palestinian” facility in East Jerusalem. The Biden administration refused to allow Israeli officials to accompany him on the hospital visit, demonstrating that despite President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem, Biden doesn’t recognize Israel’s sovereignty over its own capital.

Considering the location of the hospital in question on the Mount of Olives, Biden is effectively declaring that the historic location belongs to the terrorists. It’s a much worse insult than shaking hands with the tyrant of Turkey, but not elected officials in the Jewish State.

Biden began the prep for his trip by boasting of providing “over $500 million” in aid to the terrorist-occupied territories in Israel despite the refusal of the PLO to stop its ‘Pay-to-Slay’ program subsidizing salaries for convicted terrorists and payments to the families of PLO, Hamas, and even ISIS terrorists killed during their attempts to murder Israelis and Americans.

Administration figures have also demanded that Israel upgrade the terrorist territories to 4G, complaining that the Palestinian Authority is still only able to use 3G networks. After repeated terrorist attacks that murdered Israelis, the big issue is that the terrorists won’t be able to download beheading videos on their iPhones at 4G and will suffer under 3G speeds instead.

There’s no apparent reason for Biden to come to Israel except to boost the terrorists.

The visit is especially oddly timed since Israel doesn’t even have a functioning government. After the collapse of the leftist coalition, the country is headed for new elections. Biden will be greeted at the airport by the ‘caretaker’ prime minister, Yair Lapid, Israel’s answer to Justin Trudeau, whose militantly secularist leftist Yesh Atid party falls well below Netanyahu’s Likud party in the polls, but whom the Biden administration is trying to boost in the coming elections.

Biden will be met by Lapid and outgoing former prime minister Naftali Bennett, and then will have an event with Defense Minister Benny Gantz whose Blue and White party alliance, one in a long series of fake centrist stalking horse parties for the Left, is a player in the next election. And then there will be a session with President Isaac Herzog, the former head of the leftist Labor Party. The Israeli portion of this visit is essentially one long Biden leftist election ad.

But Biden’s stamp of approval isn’t likely to do much for Lapid since Biden is not that much more popular in Israel than he is in America. Surveys of the Israeli public show that confidence in the White House has fallen significantly since the Trump administration. Biden has released funds to Iran and to the terrorists inside Israel. And his visit is set to undermine Jerusalem and Israel.

After the photo ops with Israeli leftists, Biden will head to the PLO to meet with Mahmoud Abbas, its terrorist leader, and to announce concessions being made on behalf of the Israelis.

What the visit really amounts to is Lapid and various leftist politicians trading away Israeli security and lives for an election ad with Biden. And Biden is using the trip to undermine President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem and an end to taxpayer money going to terrorists.

But a meeting between Biden, Lapid, and the rest of the gang is a conclave of failed politicians.

When presidents fail at home, they turn abroad. Biden’s European and Middle Eastern trips are a futile effort by a failing president to bolster his image. Biden has nothing new to offer the Middle East. In Israel, he is reduced to picking away at Trump’s accomplishments and promoting a diminished agenda for the terrorists after the success of the Abraham Accords.

As Biden, 79, meets with Mahmoud Abbas, 87, the leaders of the Left and the PLO are men whose eras have passed. The Palestinian Authority is a failed institution and the entire ideological infrastructure of the peace process on which it was built has been discredited.

The visit of a failing president will conclude with a meeting with a failed PLO president and will come after a series of meetings with Israeli leftist politicians whose governing coalition also failed.

Even before Biden sets foot in Israel, his trip is already marked by failure. It’s just as well that he won’t be shaking hands with anyone. Failure can be even more infectious than the coronavirus.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. This article was written before the trip began, but it all still holds true.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Muttering and Lost: Disoriented Biden – “What Am I Doing Now?”

Biden says US would use military force against Iran as a ‘last resort’ to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon

‘I was 27, a bad Muslim, an educated, single woman who asked too many questions and rarely wore a hijab’

UK: Muslim rape gang activity went on for decades, nothing was done for fear of being ‘Islamophobic’

Biden Still Talks About Reopening the Jerusalem Consulate

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

U.S. ambassador to Israel: ‘The Biden administration believes it must take care of the Palestinian people’

/in , , , , , , /by

At his first interview with the Israeli media in early January the new American ambassador was asked If he would be visiting any of the settlements. No, he said, “I absolutely will not.” This went over well in the Muqata in Ramallah, but left most Israelis feeling a blend of amazement, chagrin, and fury.

There was more to come. “New US envoy says ‘absolutely won’t’ visit settlements, to avoid inflaming tensions,” by Jacob Magid, Times of Israel, January 14, 2022:

Pointing to another difference between the current and previous American administrations, the US ambassador said, “The Biden administration believes it must take care of the Palestinian people. That is the difference between us and the Trump administration.”

“The Biden administration believes it must take care of the Palestinian people”? Since when did that become an American duty? We have no historic connection to, no special affection for, no duty towards, the soi-disant “Palestinian people,” who, thanks to UNRWA’s ever-increasing largesse, are better provided for than any of the hundreds of millions of real refugees created since World War II.

Some of us – the better-informed some of us — don’t accept the existence of a separate “Palestinian people” whom Ambassador Nides thinks we must “take care of.” We know that their invention was a propaganda effort, suggested to Arafat by the KGB. The head of the Palestinian terror group As-Saiqa, Zuheir Mohsen, explained in an interview he gave to the Dutch newspaper Trouw in 1977: “Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of one people, the Arab nation […] Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons.”

Mohsen repeated – and reinforced — the point: “The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons.”

Nides may think “we have to take care of the Palestinian people,” but many will reject – as you and I do – both parts of that bizarre proposition.

Nides pointed to Biden’s renewal of hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians that was cut by Trump, amid Ramallah’s refusal to engage with his administration.

Asked if he’s had any meetings with Palestinian officials since his arrival, the envoy admitted that he had yet to cross the Green Line, but said he well might do so in the coming weeks if asked.

While the Palestinian Authority has renewed its ties with the Biden administration, it has maintained an overall boycott of the US embassy, objecting to its relocation from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The boycott hasn’t always been maintained though, and PA President Mahmoud Abbas has met with the head of the embassy’s Palestinian Affairs Unit George Noll — which operates in lieu of the Jerusalem Consulate that Trump shuttered in 2019.

Nides repeated the Biden administration’s assertion that the US plans to reopen the consulate that historically served as the de facto mission to the Palestinians. However, he did not provide any additional details, including a timeline for when the matter will be seen through.

Biden is a year into his term as President, and while he promised to reopen the consulate to the Palestinians very early on, it looks as if it’s not going to happen. Biden has a lot on his plate: a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, a Chinese threat to Taiwan, the North Korean missiles, the endless wrangling with Iran in Vienna. The Palestinians are small beer. The Abraham Accords show how little they matter to the other Arabs. He’s already thinking of the 2024 election, his sinking numbers in the polls, and likely Democratic losses in 2022. Why unnecessarily antagonize Israel’s supporters by trying – in vain — to reopen that consulate to the Palestinians in east Jerusalem?

Besides, Biden would need to obtain the approval of Israel to open that consulate, and he knows that under the Vienna Convention of 1963, to which both Israel and the US are signatories, a consulate cannot be opened without the agreement of the host state. A unilateral reopening of the consulate would contradict the convention, custom, and common sense. Both Prime Minister Bennett and Foreign Minister Lapid have insisted that Israel will never give such approval. Biden is stuck.

And the Bidenites have gotten the message.

Three sources familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel last month that Washington has effectively decided to shelve plans to reopen the consulate amid strong Israeli resistance to the move. The news has deeply angered PA leaders, who warned ToI [Times of Israel] that the move would have consequences on US-Palestinian relations moving forward.

Oh dear. America, you have been warned. There will be “consequences on [sic] US-Palestinian relations” if that consulate is not reopened. What might they be? Will the Palestinians refuse to cash those generous checks the Bidenites have been sending to Ramallah? No one in the U.S. will be losing sleep over that.

Nides asserted that despite declarative efforts to reopen the consulate, “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and the American ambassador works and lives there.”

Beyond that, he said that the US hopes the final status of Jerusalem will be determined through direct negotiations between the parties.

I hate to break it to Ambassador Nides, but the “final status” of Jerusalem was decided some 3000 years ago, when it became the center of Jewish life, the place where Jews lived uninterruptedly for thousands of years. There have been updates to the story since, as the city changed rulers, but not its central significance to Jews. The last major change was in 1980, when the modern state of Israel formally annexed all of Jerusalem. Its “status” is not subject to “negotiations between the parties.” Sorry, Mr. Ambassador. No can do.

As for the Biden administration’s support for Israel more broadly, Nides characterized it as “unconditional.”…

“Unconditional”? Not if the Bidenites are willing to violate the Taylor Force Act and provide hundreds of millions of dollars to the P.A. despite its continuing to reward past, and incentivize future, terrorist acts through the “Pay-For-Slay” program that is Mahmoud Abbas’ proudest achievement. Not if it is willing to let the PLO, which has Israeli blood on its hands, reopen an office in Washington.

“Unconditional”? Not If the Biden Administration refuses to admit that Israel has a very strong claim to retain all of Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the West Bank), based on Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine, which encourages “close settlement by Jews on the land.” What land? All the land that the League of Nations assigned to the Palestine Mandate for the Jewish National Home. That land extended from the Golan in the north to the Red Sea in the south, and from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean in the west. Have the Bidenites read, and understood what the League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine signifies? Are they aware that Article 80 of the U.N. Charter committed the U.N. to fulfill the requirements of any League of Nations mandates still remaining? Does Biden, does Blinken, does Sullivan understand that Resolution 242 of the U.N. Security Council allowed Israel to retain the territory it deems necessary in order to have “secure [i.e. defensible] and recognized boundaries”? I have an awful feeling that Ambassador Nides has paid no attention to, inter alia, the Mandate for Palestine, the Treaty of San Remo, Article 80 of the U.N Charter, and Resolution 242 of the Security Council. It’s time, Ambassador Nides, for you to hit the books, and burn the midnight oil.

“Some of the conversations are meant to calm your anxiety. If I were Israeli, I would be anxious too. I respect that with all my heart,” Nides said.

They’d be a little less anxious in Israel, Mr. Ambassador, If you’d do the right and handsome thing, and announce that “upon reconsideration, I intend to visit the five settlement blocs that Israelis keep telling me, will remain part of Israel, whatever else may be subject to negotiation. Yes, I’d like to see some things in the West Bank for myself. And I will.”

Impotent rage from the rais in Ramallah, feeling betrayed. Quiet satisfaction in Jerusalem. A highly desirable denouement.

COLUMN BY

HUGH FITZGERALD

RELATED ARTICLES:

Terror Regime: Biden Halted Terror-Vetting Procedures Which Would Have STOPPED Texas Jihadi From Entering the Country

Palestinians refer to Jesus in terms reserved for jihad terrorists

After synagogue incident, Muslim spokesmen ignore Islamic antisemitism, focus on ‘Islamophobia’ and criticize Israel

Why Was Texas Synagogue Jihadi Allowed Into U.S. Two Weeks Ago Despite ‘Long Criminal Record’?

In Wake of Texas Synagogue Hostage-Taking, Anti-Defamation League Warns Against ‘Islamophobia’

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Republicans Introduce Bill to Stop Jerusalem Consulate for Palestinians

/in , , , , , , /by

In the face of the Biden administration’s lack of support for Israel — from its open rebuke of Israeli settlement policies in Judea and Samaria, to establishing a Jerusalem consulate to Palestinians — some Republicans have introduced a bill to stop the latter, which is welcome news.

Although Biden has said he won’t reverse Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, he proceeded with a move that would in effect symbolically neutralize Trump’s gesture. Reopening the Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem is inappropriate, given the Palestinian goal to annihilate Israel. It provides a further opportunity for the Palestinians to target Israel and exacerbate divisions in Jerusalem. We can hope that Israel will block Biden’s plans.

Biden’s overall stance on Israel has far-reaching implications; he is encouraging the jihad and antagonism against Israel. America’s stance will likely have an adverse impact in the next round of Palestinian jihadist rocket fire against Israel, which is inevitable, so that when Israel defends itself, pro-Palestinian protests, accompanied by antisemitic flareups, will likely gain even more momentum, as was already seen in May during Operation Guardian of the Walls.

Also, last month, the Squad “forced Iron Dome funding to be pulled from a bill to keep the United States government funded.” The Iron Dome intercepts incoming rockets on Israeli territory, thus saving many lives, while Palestinian leadership has no problem with using their own people as human shields.

GOP bill seeks to stop Jerusalem consulate for Palestinians

by Lahav Harkov, Jerusalem Post, October 26, 2021:

US Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, along with 33 other Republican senators, introduced a bill on Tuesday meant to block the Biden administration from opening a consulate serving Palestinians in Jerusalem.

The Upholding the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Law Act of 2021 is meant to ensure the full implementation of the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act and stop what Hagerty views as the Biden administration’s attempted subversion of that law.

US President Joe Biden has said he will not reverse former president Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

However, Biden promised in his election campaign that he would reopen the consulate to the Palestinians in Jerusalem, which was merged into the US Embassy to Israel in 2018, when Trump implemented the 1995 law and moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other US officials have said they will reopen the consulate, which was historically in a building on Agron Street in downtown Jerusalem.

The US would need Israel’s approval to open a consulate, and the current Israeli government opposes the move.

Hagerty said: “It is regrettable that the Biden administration insists on making moves that divide the United States and Israel when our two nations should be laser-focused on stopping Iran’s terror-sponsoring regime from going nuclear, on countering growing threats from Hezbollah, Hamas, and other Iran-backed terrorist groups, and on strengthening and expanding the historic Abraham Accords that truly have increased peace in the Middle East.”

“The Trump administration kept its promise to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, the eternal and indivisible capital of the Jewish State, and Congress must do everything in our power to strengthen our posture,” he added.

The new act quotes the 1995 law, which states, “Jerusalem should remain an undivided city,” and calls for it to be recognized as the capital of Israel and the relocation of the US Embassy.….

COLUMN BY

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

RELATED ARTICLE: Impeach Kamala Harris for Afghanistan Betrayal

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Fatah Commission of Information and Culture depicts Netanyahu as Hitler

/in , , , , , , /by

The Palestinian resistance is a jihadist assault on the state of Israel. It disseminates propaganda to justify human rights abuses that would never be tolerated if they were perpetrated by Christians or Jews. The so-called “far right” is routinely compared to Hitler, even though Hitler was leftist (as is evidenced by the name of his party, the National Socialist German Workers Party). Nazi Germany launched an “extensive propaganda campaign in the Middle East and North Africa during World War II.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has stated that no Jew will live in a Palestinian state. He also did his PhD dissertation in Holocaust denial. And now this. Yet far too many Western governments still support pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel resolutions at the UN, even as the Palestinians continue their gross antisemitism and jihadist attacks on the state of Israel, calling them a just “resistance” and manipulating victimhood in the face of historical truths.

Abbas teaches Palestinians that “Jews must be fought for Allah on behalf of all humanity.” The soft bigotry of low expectations allows the Palestinian leadership to scream victimhood while being the aggressor.

“Netanyahu is Hitler – Antisemitic Fatah cartoon,”

by Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Palestinian Media Watch, March 2, 2021:

The antisemitic cartoon above was posted by Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Commission of Information and Culture. It shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Hitler with Hitler’s mustache and a Nazi uniform with Stars of David on blue instead of Swastikas on red on his tie and arm band. Netanyahu is making a Nazi salute and blood is dripping from his hand.

Headline: “He killed the Palestinians with the weapon of racism!”
Text on cartoon: “Adolf Netanyahu”

[Website of the Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Feb. 16, 2021]

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) internationally accepted working definition of Antisemitism, includes “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

The PA and Fatah have often disseminated this specific kind of Antisemitism by comparing Israel in general and Netanyahu in particular to the Nazis. Fatah has portrayed Netanyahu as a Nazi officer:

Netanyahu has been called Nazi propaganda minister “Goebbels’ outstanding student”:

And recently Palestinian Media Watch documented that Netanyahu was referred to as “the ugly face of Mussolini and Hitler:

Israel as such has been called “fascist and Nazi” and the behavior of Israelis has been compared to that of the Nazis prosecuted at the Nuremberg trials….

RELATED ARTICLES:

This Just in: John Brennan Is ‘Embarrassed’ to Be White

PA plants trees for jihad murderers at a school to teach kids about ‘heroic prisoners’

Pakistan: Muslim cleric tells students not to play sports, but to join jihad and kill ‘blasphemers’

UK: Screwdriver-wielding Muslim who attacked reporter while screaming ‘Allahu akbar’ gets 28 months in prison

Jammu and Kashmir: Four Muslims in communication with jihad groups held in narco-terrorism case

Sweden: Man who injured eight people with an axe is Muslim migrant from Afghanistan

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Gaza: Internal Hamas government memo calls for ‘activities to reduce interaction with Christmas’

/in , , , , /by

Once again, anger and fear resurface among Christians living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, who also are preparing to celebrate Christmas amidst the restrictions due to the Covid19 pandemic.

However, their concerns are not because of the spread of coronavirus, but rather because of a letter (which was made public on social media and other Palestinian websites) that was sent to the government of Hamas in Gaza regarding the upcoming celebrations of Christmas.

The letter, entitled “Activities to reduce interaction with Christmas during the next two weeks,” was sent by the Director-General of the General Administration of Preaching and Counseling of the Palestinian Endowment Ministry in Gaza.

In what appeared to be an official correspondence between Palestinian officials, the letter discussed the steps taken during “an emergency meeting” that was held in Gaza on December 15. It included the issuance of “awareness and guidance” that needed to be implemented by 10 departments within the Islamic Waqf ministry.

The main goal behind this campaign would include “issuing fatwas [to prohibit Muslims from participating in Christmas], releasing videos, and requesting some preachers” to talk about the great sins of celebrating their holidays with the Christians.

It is worth noting that the number of Christians still living in Gaza may not reach 1000, while the Orthodox and Catholic churches continue to provide parish services to the remaining families, in addition to two schools whose students are mostly Muslims.

After Hamas gained full control of the Strip, the Baptist Church in Gaza, which had operated since 1950, was soon almost shattered. In October 2007, Rami Ayyad, one of its active members in Gaza, who managed its Christian bookstore there, was kidnapped, tortured, and then killed.

After Ayyad’s assassination, seven church leaders left for the West Bank, while Hanna Massad, the church’s pastor, moved to Jordan with his family.

Since Hamas installed Shari’ah law in Gaza, which fomented further threats against the remaining Christians from Islamic extremists, Christians in general feared gathering in groups. They no longer wear crosses, while women dare not move around freely by themselves or be unveiled.

Hamas has always prohibited the Christians from holding public celebrations during Christmas and New Year, ever since its usurpation of power in 2007. This time, it intends to socially isolate them as well.

In the West Bank, the situation of the Christians may seem relatively better, but the fear of Islamic jihad remains a ghost haunting them.

The number of Christians in Bethlehem, which is under the control of the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, is rapidly dwindling. Christians today make up merely 15% of what was once known as a Christian-majority town. The violent military actions taken by Fatah militants wreaked havoc on the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ after the outbreak of the so-called Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000.

Palestinian Christians singing Christmas carol near the Church of the Nativity

A few years ago, a visa clerk at the US consulate disclosed to this writer that Palestinian Christians who met the US tourist visa requirements often decided to overstay their visit to the United States, and eventually applied for political asylum because of fear of growing Islamic jihad activity within the Palestinian society. Those applicants share with the USCIS in secrecy their valid stories of persecution at the hands of “their Muslim brethren.”

On the other side of the country, Christians inside Israel tell a completely different story. They increasingly are incorporated in all walks of life, and their numbers are growing. It is worth noting that their academic achievements rival those of the majority Jewish population.

The head of the Israeli Christian Aramaic Association recently posted on his Facebook page an appeal to the Likud, the main party of the current Israeli government. “We call upon the Likud party which is the [ Israeli] government to open up for appointing Christians and to work on integrating our Christian community and our youth into the state of Israel. This is the responsibility of the members of the Likud party today.”

The Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic, recited by Shadi Khaloul, head of the Israeli Christian Aramaic Association

In Jordan, where Christians have lived so far in peace and safety and enjoyed opportunities that secured them access to both the public and the private sectors, the picture has begun to change.

Yesterday, The Students’ Union of the College of Sharia at the University of Jordan issued a statement expressing its refusal to erect a Christmas tree and light inside the university courtyard. It added that what the university did is a matter that does not appease God in a country whose religion is Islam.

“Muslims, in general, are living in a crisis because the image of Islam has worldwide been shaken. I am not surprised that they seek to defuse their anger in the remaining Christian minorities.” George Abu Kova, a Palestinian Christian who lives in the United States commented on Facebook in reply to Hamas’s letter against Christmas.

Samir Qumsiyeh, a former advisor to the Orthodox and Catholic Patriarchs in Jerusalem, expressed his dismay and anger to the letter in a post on Facebook, saying, “Hamas’s positions are well known. Have you forgotten that Ismail Haniyeh [Hamas Prime Minister] congratulated Erdogan for turning the Hagia Sophia Church into a mosque and thus ignored the feelings of Christians in general and the Christian Palestinians in particular? Then you hear from them that we are one people within all its components.” Unfortunately, our reality is painful and we have no future.“

COLUMN BY

SAMIR A. ZEDAN

RELATED ARTICLES:

UK: Muslim rape gangs still active, 2,000 victims in the last year were ‘fobbed off by authorities’

Jammu and Kashmir: Missing Muslim boy tells parents not to search for him ‘as he has chosen the way of Allah’

UK: Attorney General wants to increase Islamic State jihadi’s minimum sentence from nine years to twelve

Australia: Muslim who was ‘known extremist’ wearing tracking device murders elderly couple in ‘terrorism incident’

Iranian dissident kidnapped in Turkey after ‘honeytrap’ by Iran, faces execution

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib retweets genocidal slogan ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’

/in , , , , /by

This slogan means no Jewish state at all, and that would mean the slaughter of millions of Jews. But it’s acceptable on the Left today to harbor such genocidal aspirations.

“Democrat Rashida Tlaib Promotes Slogan Associated With Calling For Elimination Of Israel,” by Ryan Saavedra, Daily Wire, November 29, 2020 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) promoted a tweet on her Twitter account on Sunday that contained a phrase that is associated with calling for the elimination of Israel.

StopAntisemitism.org highlighted the tweet that Tlaib retweeted, which stated: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

“Rashida Tlaib RT’s out the same message that got Marc Lamont Hill canned from CNN,” StopAntisemitism.org noted. “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free – code for eradicating the State of Israel and its millions of Jews. Reminder – this is a sitting U.S. Congresswoman.”

The Daily Beast, a left-wing publication, wrote the following about the meaning of the phrase:

The river in this formulation is the Jordan, the naturally occurring eastern border of Israel and of the West Bank; the sea is the Mediterranean to the west. Uttered by advocates of the Palestinian cause for decades, the pithy slogan very pointedly makes no place for Israel. It evokes a strip of Middle Eastern land where Israel is no more, replaced by a unified Palestinian entity in the space it once occupied. It could be that this entity would welcome and protect a Jewish population. But when supporters of the Jewish state hear those 10 words, they worry about their potentially violent implications.

CNN did fire then-contributor Marc Lamont Hill in 2018 after he used the slogan, which The Times of Israel noted was associated with “Palestinian extremists,” during a speech at the United Nations. Hamas has repeatedly used the phrase…

RELATED ARTICLES:

Daily Beast Features Psychic Who Says Biden’s Dogs Told Her He Would Be a Great President

France: Muslim with knife, screwdriver and Qur’an screams ‘You will see in 2021, Islam, we will kill you all’

Austria: Vienna jihad murderer wanted to commit jihad massacre at Catholic youth group, couldn’t get into building

Nigeria: Muslims murder seven Christians, two days after murdering a pastor

Egypt reiterates refusal to link terrorist acts with Islam

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Chutzpah: Palestinians Prepare List of Demands For Biden Administration

/in , , /by

The Palestinian Arabs sense an opening for them in Biden’s Washington, where they rightly assume they will be personae gratae again. They have already been preparing their laundry list of demands for the Biden Administration, which is discussed here: “PA wants Biden to reverse ‘anti-Palestinian’ decisions,” by Khaled Abu Toameh, Jerusalem Post, November 22, 2020:

The Palestinians will demand that the new administration under US President-elect Joe Biden cancel “anti-Palestinian” decisions taken by the administration of President Donald Trump, Palestinian officials said on Sunday.

The officials told The Jerusalem Post that the Palestinian Authority has prepared a list of demands that will be presented to Biden after he is sworn in on January 20.

The list includes a request to reopen the PLO diplomatic mission in Washington, rescinding Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, resuming financial aid to the PA and the UN Relief and Work Agency and reopening the US consulate in east Jerusalem.

In addition, the officials said, the Palestinians will also demand the Biden administration cancel the recent decision that allows US citizens born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their place of birth, as well as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement allowing for settlement products to be labeled as “Made in Israel.”

“We have already contacted Biden’s people to inform them of our demands,” a Palestinian official told the Post. “We had a positive dialogue with senior officials who are close to Biden.”

Since that contact between the Palestinians with Biden’s staff, the two most pro-Israel of Biden’s advisers, Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, have been appointed to be, respectively, Secretary of State and National Security Adviser. It may not be quite as smooth sailing for the PA as it thought just a few days ago.

Last week, PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki said the Palestinians want to conduct dialogue with the new US administration in order to cancel decisions taken by the Trump administration.

Malki said the Palestinians have suffered tremendously as a result of Trump’s decisions directed against them, including the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the transfer of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the closure of the PLO mission in the US and the suspension of US financial aid to the Palestinians.

Malki and other Palestinian officials said they also expected the Biden administration to distance itself from Trump’s plan for Middle East peace, also known as the “Deal of the Century.” The Palestinian leadership has strongly condemned the plan, unveiled in January 2020, as a “conspiracy aiming to liquidate the Palestinian issue and national rights.”

Another Palestinian official told the Post that while he was optimistic the Biden administration would cancel some of the decisions taken by the Trump administration, the Palestinians do not believe it would be easy to return the US Embassy to Tel Aviv.

No, it won’t be easy to move the Embassy back to Tel Aviv. It will be impossible. There is not a chance in hell that the American Embassy will be moved out of Jerusalem. Biden has already declared that he would not do it, though he also added that he “would not have made the move himself,” a curious remark given that he was one of the most enthusiastic backers of the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, which passed in the Senate by 93 to 5.

“We know that the Biden administration would not be able to accept all our demands, such as the removal of the embassy from Jerusalem, but we are very optimistic regarding the other demands,” the official explained. “If [Biden] renounces the ‘Deal of the Century’ and resumes financial aid to the Palestinians, this will be a good step in the right direction. It will be a big victory for the Palestinian people.”

The suspension of financial aid to the Palestinians was partly in response to the PA’s refusal to end its Pay-For-Slay program, which incentivizes terrorism by providing generous monthly stipends to imprisoned terrorists, and to the families of terrorists who had been killed. The PA has been recently been making noises about modifying the plan, by providing stipends based not, as now, on the length of a sentence, which provide more money the longer the sentence (so those who commit the worst attacks get more money), but instead on the “financial need” of a terrorist’s family. Qadri Abu Bakr, the PLO’s Director for Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, in English told the New York Times that the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) policy on terrorists’ families’ salaries will change. But in the Arabic version of those remarks, Qadri Abu Bakr said the exact opposite, assuring his listeners that the calculation of stipends to terrorists and their families would not change in any way. Two versions, directly contradicting each other. Why not? Qadri Abu Bakr knows: “War is deceit,” said Muhammad.

It is thus doubtful that the PA could bring itself to change its Pay-For-Slay policy, which reflects the Palestinians’ visceral support for terrorism. But even if the PA did change the criteria according to which the stipends are calculated, this would still leave in place a program that subsidizes, and therefore incentivizes, terrorism. This will make it very difficult for the Americans to turn on the faucet of aid again.

The PA’s complacent assumption that the Americans will renew financial aid to the Palestinians needs to be challenged and undermined. Even without the Pay-For-Slay program, why should the Americans turn on that tap for the PA, rather than have the PA go hat in hand to their fellow Arabs in the oil states, or Iran, or Turkey, and ask them for aid? Who decided that the United States owes the Palestinians a permanent living? And why should American taxpayers be shelling out billions, over the years, to UNRWA, which includes on its ever-expanding rolls of those who receive its largesse not just the real Palestinian refugees, those who left in 1947-1949, of whom there may now be 30,000 still alive – but also all of their descendants, now amounting to more than five million people? Who decided that among the many tens of millions of refugees who have been created by conflicts – wars, civil wars, persecutions — all over the world since the late 1940s, only one group, the Palestinians, should be allowed to pass on the refugee status to their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on, world without end?

This ever-lengthening list of “Palestinian refugees” has been on the international – almost entirely Western – dole for decades. Don’t we need to ask a few questions at this point? For example, why are we Americans expected to give hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the Palestinians instead of, say, to the inoffensive and much poorer people in Bolivia or the Congo or Nepal? What exactly have the Palestinians done for us? Haven’t they used terror as a weapon for a half-century? Didn’t we see the Palestinians hand out candies and celebrate when they heard the glad news on 9/11/2001? Haven’t Palestinian terrorists killed American citizens? Isn’t Hamas a local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, that seeks a worldwide caliphate? And what about the links between the Palestinians and our mortal enemy, Iran?

According to the official, the Palestinians are also expecting the Biden administration to return to the long-standing US policy toward settlements and adhere to UN resolutions on this issue.

In November 2019, Pompeo announced that the US no longer views settlements as “inconsistent with international law,” a move that drew strong condemnation from the Palestinian leadership.

Secretary Pompeo had quite properly declared as a break with previous policy what ought to have been American policy all along. The Israeli settlements in the West Bank do not violate, and are not “inconsistent with” international law. Their legality stems from the Mandate for Palestine, that included the entire West Bank in the territories assigned to the future Jewish National Home. Previous administrations had relied on the “Hansell Memorandum” of 1978, which took the position that the settlements were “illegal,” but Hansell himself never mentions the Palestine Mandate In his memorandum, as if it were of little moment, when it is, in fact, the essential document for understanding Israel’s claim to the West Bank, and hence, the basis of Israel’s right to build settlements in that territory.

COLUMN BY

HUGH FITZGERALD

RELATED ARTICLES:

Anticipating Biden Coming in, the Iranian Mullahs Let the Good Times Roll

UK: Muslim jailed for jihad terror offenses asks of people killed by ISIS, ‘Why didn’t they just accept Sharia?’

Australia cancels citizenship of Muslim cleric who plotted jihad massacre at soccer match

France: Muslim stabs man and repeatedly screams ‘Allahu akbar’ while resisting arrest

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Kamala Harris: Biden will restore aid to ‘Palestinians’, reopen East Jerusalem consulate and PLO office in D.C.

/in , , , /by

Returning to the old arrangement: pressuring our only reliable ally in the Middle East, while coddling and enabling those who would conquer and subjugate us.

“Exclusive: Q&A with Kamala Harris ahead of election,” Arab American News, October 28, 2020:

DEARBORN — Democratic vice presidential nominee and California Senator Kamala Harris visited Metro Detroit last Sunday, making a notable, unannounced stop in Dearborn to grab dinner at the Khalaf Grill. The visit by Joe Biden’s running mate was just one of several visits by both prominent Democratic and Republican candidates in the last few weeks ahead of the critical upcoming general election….

Many Arab voters in Dearborn and Hamtramck hold foreign policy issues important, particularly the Israel and Palestine conflict, Syria, the war on Yemen and others. What can a Biden presidency mean for lasting peace and demands for human rights in the Mid East region? Could we see an end to continued U.S. military engagements in the region?

Joe and I are committed to helping the people of the Arab world meet the challenges they face. The United States cannot dictate the outcomes in other countries, but we do have a responsibility to advance human rights and democratic principles on behalf of all people. We have an obligation to promote universal values and work toward a more peaceful and secure world.

Joe and I also believe in the worth and value of every Palestinian and every Israeli and we will work to ensure that Palestinians and Israelis enjoy equal measures of freedom, security, prosperity and democracy. We are committed to a two-state solution, and we will oppose any unilateral steps that undermine that goal. We will also oppose annexation and settlement expansion. And we will take immediate steps to restore economic and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people, address the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem and work to reopen the PLO mission in Washington.

In Syria, Joe and I will once again stand with civil society and pro-democracy partners in Syria, and help advance a political settlement where the Syrian people have a voice. We will work to protect the most vulnerable Syrians and lead the global coalition to defeat ISIS. And instead of standing by as the government of Saudi Arabia pursues disastrous, dangerous policies, including the ongoing war in Yemen, we will reassess the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia and end support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen….

RELATED ARTICLES:

100 Rabbis: The SPLC Makes Life More Dangerous for Jews by Covering for Radical Islam

Biden plans to undo Trump’s America-First foreign policy

SITE Intel Group: Jihadist says Vienna attack ‘part of the bill’ that Austria must pay

Austria: At least seven dead, hostages taken, suicide bomb detonated in Vienna

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Trump Administration’s Geopolitical Hat Trick

/in , , , , /by

Sudan has become the third Arab country to agree to normalize relations with Israel. The Palestinians are most unhappy: “Palestinians condemn ‘shameful’ Israel-Sudan accord,” by Khaled Abu Toameh and Celia Jean, Jerusalem Post, October 24, 2020:

The Palestinian Authority said on Friday that it “condemns and rejects” the normalization of relations between Arab countries and Israel.

A statement by the PA presidency in Ramallah said that normalization with Israel is in violation of the Arab summit resolutions and the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative….

Friday’s statement by the PA, however, did not accuse Sudan of betraying the Palestinians or stabbing the Palestinian people in the back, as was the case with the UAE and Bahrain.

Mahmoud Abbas has apparently figured out that the curses and insults that he and his cronies flung at the UAE and Bahrain when they normalized relations with Israel, did the Palestinians no good, but merely inflamed passions against them. With the Sudan, they’re trying a different, more-in-sorrow approach: How can you do this to us? Don’t you feel our pain?

“No one has the right to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian issue,” the statement added. “The path to a just and comprehensive peace should be based on international law and legitimacy so as to end the Israeli occupation of the land of the State of Palestine and achieve independence for the Palestinian people in their state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on the 1967 borders. The Palestinian leadership will take the necessary decisions to protect the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”

But Sudan did not arrogate to itself the “right to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian issue.” It said nothing at all about the “Palestinians” in its agreement to normalize relations with Israel. It was only addressing, and promoting in two ways, its own national interest. First, to obtain this agreement, the U.S. has removed the Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. That will give it access to foreign investors, and to loans from the World Bank, the IMF, and other institutions. Second, Israel will be eager to prove to the Sudan that it made the right choice, by helping it where it most could use Israeli help: in agriculture. Israel is a world leader in drip irrigation, in wastewater management, and in solar energy, all of which could be of great help to Sudanese farmers.

While not in the official PA statement, Wasel Abu Youssef from the Palestinian Liberation Front, a small faction in the Palestinian Liberation Organization, said that Sudan joining “others who normalized ties with the state of the Israeli occupation represents a new stab in the back of the Palestinian people and a betrayal of the just Palestinian cause.”

“A new stab in the back”? Oh dear. It sounds as if Wasel Abu Youssef of the PLF did not get the memo from Mahmoud Abbas calling for a kinder, gentler approach to Sudan. This kind of charge only infuriated the UAE and Bahrain when it was made about them by the PA; the Sudanese are just as unlikely to be pleased to be described as back-stabbers. The Palestinians really ought to do a better job of coordinating their responses; this mixed-messaging will never do.

Abbas Zaki, a senior official of the ruling Fatah faction, said that Sudan would not gain anything from the normalization accord with Israel….

“Sudan would not gain anything from the normalization accord”? But Sudan has already gained something. It has been removed from the American list of state sponsors of terrorism; that removal will greatly improve Sudan’s ability to attract foreign investment, and will now enable Sudan to receive loans from the IMF, the World Bank, and other financial institutions that were previously impossible to obtain. And then there is the extensive Israeli aid that will be given to Sudanese farmers, just as soon as the agreement goes into effect. Abbas Zaki is whistling in the dark.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that the agreement was “not compatible with Sudan’s record of supporting the Palestinians.”

But that “record of supporting the Palestinians” took place under the long and terrible rule of Omar al-Bashir, the dictator of Sudan from 1989 to 2019. Bashir was an ardent supporter of Hamas, allowing it to operate freely in the country. Bashir also gave refuge to Osama bin Laden, who lived securely in the Sudan for four years. The new regime in Sudan wants to end any hint of the country’s previous connection to terrorists; it wants to reconnect with the West, attract investors, and build its economy, especially agriculture. It has gotten nothing from its “record of supporting the Palestinians” except being placed on the list of state sponsors of terror. Now, by normalizing relations with Israel, it has already been taken off that list, allowing it to attract investors, be again eligible for foreign aid, and be able to obtain loans from major financial institutions such as the IMF. Israel is ready to share with Sudanese farmers the benefits of its expertise and advances in at least three key areas – solar energy, drip irrigation, and wastewater management – where it is a world leader.

PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] spokesman Daoud Shehab accused Sudan of presenting Israel with a “free gift” in order to appease the US.

“This is a black day in the history of Sudan,” Shehab added. “The agreement jeopardizes Sudan’s future and identity and is a betrayal of the Arabs and Muslims.”

The PIJ official expressed confidence that the Sudanese people would not accept this “betrayal.”…

It is Israel that will be giving gifts to the Sudan, in the form of aid to its agricultural sector. As for Shehab’s claim that the normalization agreement “jeopardizes Sudan’s future and identity,” since when did the Palestinians become the judges as to the “Arab” identity of others? Because the Sudanese are black, is there possibly an attempt here to hint at doubt as to their “Arab” identity unless they fall back into line with what the Palestinians demand? And what exactly was the “betrayal” by the Sudan? Did it owe the Palestinians anything? Have the Palestinians ever done anything for the Sudan, other than land the country on the list of state sponsors of terrorism?

There is certainly domestic opposition in the Sudan to this new agreement. But the opponents of normalization surely know that the Sudanese quid for that significant American quo was Sudan’s agreeing to normalize relations with Israel. And if they are willing to “give peace a chance,” they will find the new connection with Israel will pay ample dividends, for the Israelis want to make sure that the “early adopters” of normalization realize economic benefits quickly. In the case of Sudan, as bears repeating, that means Israeli help to Sudanese farmers, mainly by sharing Israeli advances in drip irrigation, in waste water management, and in solar energy.

Commending the agreement from the Arab world was Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who tweeted that he welcomed the joint efforts of all three states involved in the agreement.

He added that he also values “all efforts aimed at achieving regional stability and peace.”…

El-Sisi has for a long time been cooperating with Israel on security matters, especially against Jihadis in the Sinai and, naturally, against the Muslim Brotherhood that is the sworn enemy of his regime. He previously praised both the UAE and Bahrain for their normalization agreements with Israel. It is not surprising, but is still heartening, that the most populous Arab state, and Sudan’s immediate northern neighbor, has come out foursquare for the agreement.

The Palestinian Arabs continue to believe that they should have a veto power over the policy toward Israel of all the other Arabs. They seek to deny the Arab states the possibility of making their own arrangements with Israel, arrangements that further their own national interests. The UAE and Bahrain dismissed the Palestinian objections, and went ahead in normalizing relations with the Jewish state. They have had only curses and insults heaped on them by the Palestinians, which only makes them more determined to promote both economic and people-to-people ties with the Israelis – “a warm peace.” Meanwhile, the entire nation of Israel seems ready to make sure their new Arab interlocutors benefit from such normalization; Israeli businessmen, entrepreneurs, scientists, academics, and tourists have gone to the UAE and Bahrain, while Emiratis and Bahrainis are doing the same in the Jewish state. And now, to complete the Trump Administration’s geopolitical hat trick, Sudan has just become the third Arab state to announce its intention to normalize relations with Israel. Abbas rages in Ramallah, for he can do no other, and the caravan moves on.

COLUMN BY

HUGH FITZGERALD

RELATED TWEET:

RELATED VIDEO: FBI warns David Wood of jihadists’ calls to murder him for eating Qur’an pages

RELATED ARTICLES:

North Carolina Leftist who wanted to kill Biden to ‘save Bernie’ had pro-jihad video, praised 9/11

Colorado: Non-Muslims try to destroy Islam by ‘sugarcoating, watering it down, accept LGBT…HIYZ…music is okay’

Muslims from Mozambique screaming ‘Allahu akbar’ cross into Tanzania, behead 20 people

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.