What are the Palestinian Arabs thinking?

Video Of The Week -Arab Children's Lives are Saved - https://tinyurl.com/7836fsct

A new poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), provides a fresh view of Palestinian Arab opinions.

For the full article by Maurice Hirsch go to - https://tinyurl.com/mtu7wrm9

• 71% of Palestinian Arabs support the cold-blooded murder of Israeli brothers Yagel and Hallel Yaniv while they were driving on a main road through Hawara

• Only 27% of Palestinian Arabs support the so-called “Two-State solution”
• 63% of Palestinian Arabs view the PA as a burden and 52% of Palestinian Arabs believe that the collapse or dissolution of the PA is in their interest
• 77% of Palestinian Arabs are dissatisfied with the performance of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and want him to resign

A newly published poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), provide an interesting view of the thoughts and opinions of the Palestinian Arabs regarding different subjects. Several provide an insight into how the Palestinians see both Palestinian-Israel relations and internal Palestinian Arab issues. While the United States and the European Union often present what they believe the Palestinians are thinking, the reality is far different.

Palestinian-Israeli relations

• Palestinian Arab support for terror

According to the survey, the Palestinian Arab support for terror against Israel is multi-faceted and includes, inter alia, substantial support - 71% of the population - for the cold-blooded murder of brothers Yagel and Hallel Yaniv, aged 19 and 21 respectively, by Hamas terrorist Abd Al-Fattah Kharousha, while they were driving on a main road through Huwara.

In addition to supporting the cold-blooded murder of Israelis, substantial parts of the Palestinian Arabs (68%) support the creation of armed terror groups to attack Israelis and 83% of them are against the surrender of existing terror groups.

87% of Palestinian Arabs believe that the PA Security Forces do not have the right to arrest members of these armed groups to prevent them from carrying out attacks against Israel. A majority of 63% say it supports the ending of security coordination with Israel.

When asked about the most effective means of “ending the Israeli occupation and building an independent state,” the report says that 77% of Palestinian Arabs chose violence. 54% chose armed struggle - i.e., to engage in all-out terror similar to the PA-launched 2000 – 2005 terror campaign. 23% chose “popular resistance” – i.e., the PA euphemism that includes sporadic terror attacks like shootings, stabbings, and car rammings. Only 18% of the Palestinian Arabs chose the path of “negotiations.”

These statistics are particularly significant since they reflect a rise in support for violence and a decline in support for negotiations, compared to a similar survey conducted a year ago, as exposed by Palestinian Media Watch. Then, support for violence stood at 68% while 25% of Palestinians supported negotiations.

• What political solution do the Palestinian Arabs support?

According to the survey, only 27% support the so-called “Two-State solution”. Most Palestinian Arabs (74%) appear to have embraced the PA propaganda, and believe that the two-state solution is “no longer practical or feasible due to the expansion of Israeli settlements”. This, notwithstanding the fact that all the Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip were evacuated in 2005, that there are no Israeli settlements in areas A or B of Judea and Samaria (which together make up 40% of the area), and that the Israeli settlements in area C cover no more than 2.5% of that area.

The same percentage (74%) also believe that the chances of creating a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel in the next five years are slim or nonexistent.

While they are skeptical about the possibility of creating a Palestinian state, 75% of them are opposed to the suggestion of Mahmoud Abbas to demand one Israeli-Palestinian state.

Interestingly, in a question about the main problem confronting Palestinian society today, 26% say it is corruption; 21% say it is unemployment and poverty; while only 20% say it is the continuation of the Israeli “occupation and settlement construction.”

Regarding the Arab residents of Jerusalem, who the PA considers “Palestinians”, a separate recent PCPSR study, found that 38% of the respondents believe that East Jerusalem should be under Palestinian sovereignty, 19% would prefer Israeli sovereignty and 14% do not want anyone to have sovereignty over the city. The remainder want the city to be under 25% international sovereignty (25%) or Islamic/Arab sovereignty (3%).

The findings are significant when compared to the same PCPSR survey conducted in 2010, in which 52% of the respondents supported Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem and only 6% supported Israeli sovereignty.

A similar trend was also identified in the preferences of the Jerusalem Arabs regarding citizenship as part of a permanent political solution. In the current study, 58% of the Jerusalem Arabs said that they would prefer Palestinian citizenship (down from 63% in 2010) while 37% said they would prefer Israeli citizenship (up from 24% in 2010).

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Israel’s Two-Faced Allies

Video Of The Week.United Hatzalah (Rescue) Volunteers https://tinyurl.com/673kt94v

For the full article from  Israel Hayom, by Melanie Philips go to - https://tinyurl.com/4pac558n

America and Britain claim to be allies of Israel. There is no gainsaying the deep links between them of military assistance, intelligence and trade. Israel is the invaluable strategic asset for America and Britain in the Middle East, a crucial bulwark in the defence of the west.  And yet both America and Britain undermine Israel’s security and defence against existential attack by sanitising, promoting and funding Palestinian Arabs, whose active cause remains the destruction of the Jewish state.

A recent event illustrated this particularly sharply when British diplomatic officials in Jerusalem effectively endorsed the Palestinian Authority’s agenda to eradicate Israel.  Palestinian Media Watch has revealed that at last Friday’s annual “Palestine Marathon” held by the PA, seven British officials taking part as “#TeamUK” wore marathon T-shirts displaying the PA’s map that erases Israel and represents the whole country as Palestine.  The Jewish Chronicle reports that the team consisted of the UK’s Deputy Consul General Alison McEwen and Foreign Office colleagues. A picture of the team was tweeted from the official account of the British Consulate in Jerusalem, hailing “the incredible Palestine Marathon to support #FREEDOMOFMOVEMENT for all Palestinians”.

Palestinian Media Watch observes that this hashtag was conceived to support the PA’s demand that Israel remove the security measures it has adopted to prevent the flow of Palestinian terrorists from PA-controlled areas into Israel’s cities.  According to The Jewish Chronicle, the marathon was organised by a group called “Right to Movement,” which campaigns against “the many obstacles that we live daily under fascist racist occupation”.  The race was held under the auspices of the Palestine Liberation Organisation Supreme Council for Youth and Sports headed by Jibril Rajoub, a man who has been convicted of numerous terrorist offences and who persistently glorifies Palestinian terrorist murderers.

So these British diplomats took part in an event supervised by a terrorist sympathiser; openly supported the Palestinian Arabs’ lie that Israel is subjecting them to “fascist racist occupation”; openly opposed Israel’s measures to protect its citizens against attack; and openly endorsed the eradication of Israel altogether.

The current British government under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak contains an unprecedented number of Israel supporters. So how can its diplomats have displayed such egregious hostility to Israel’s security and even its very existence?  The consular bodies run by both Britain and America in Jerusalem, which provide assistance to the Palestinian Arabs in the east of the city, the disputed territories and in the Gaza Strip, have long been viewed by the Israeli government as working against Israeli interests.

What is the reason for this two-faced attitude? There’s a charitable explanation and a less charitable one.

The charitable one is that neither the American nor British government accepts that the PA’s objective is the extermination of Israel. This is because these governments are committed to the “two-state solution”. It requires them to define the problem to which this is the solution as the division of land between two sets of people with legitimate claims to that land.  This is clearly untrue. The PA’s own repeated statements, its maps and insignia depicting a state of Palestine that erases Israel, its incitement to seize Israeli cities such as Haifa and Jaffa and its support for terrorism all show that its aim is Israel’s destruction.

Yet the American and British governments can’t allow themselves to acknowledge this. Partly, this is due to pressure from the Arab world. Mostly, though, it’s due to the implacable liberal belief in conflict resolution and peace processes.

Since the Americans and British can’t allow anything to disrupt such a peace process, they ignore any evidence of a non-negotiable and unconscionable agenda.  So Israel, which has always been willing to negotiate and has indeed offered a Palestinian state on numerous occasions, gets blamed for endangering the peace process when it insists on defending itself against never-ending Palestinian Arab terrorism.  That liberal tunnel vision helps explain why the Biden administration funds the PA even though it continues its “pay-for-slay” stipends to terrorists’ families.

The less charitable explanation, meanwhile, is that some of those promoting the Palestinian Arab cause are motivated by malign hatred of Israel and the Jewish people.

 

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"From Terror Supporter to ‘Palestine Correspondent”

Video Of The Week -The Story of a Palestinian Terrorist - https://tinyurl.com/3xatcujn

For the full article by Honest Reporting go to - https://tinyurl.com/5cpyvwz5

On September 8, The Nation announced the hiring of Mohammed El-Kurd as its first-ever “Palestine Correspondent.” El-Kurd, a student at the City University of New York’s Brooklyn College, said he would be writing about “Palestinian resistance without burrowing in the sand,” using language that is “loyal to the Palestinian street.”

El-Kurd will publish his first essay about the Arab-Israeli conflict in the coming days, introducing the magazine’s million followers to his radical viewpoints, as HonestReporting detailed in July.

Indeed, for those who have followed the writer since he gained notoriety by protesting against Jews seeking to reclaim ownership of properties in the eastern part of Jerusalem that were confiscated from them between 1948 and 1967 when Jordan occupied the holy city, El-Kurd’s skewed interpretation of “journalism” is crystal clear.

In fact, El-Kurd’s Twitter feed demonstrated what The Nation’s latest addition defines as “Palestinian resistance;” that is, the murder of Jewish Israelis. Just two days before his hiring was announced, he rejoiced as six Palestinian terrorists broke out of Israel’s maximum-security Gilboa Prison.

“I am going to bed with a smile on my face and dreaming of the day all prisons are abolished,” El-Kurd tweeted, calling the incident “excellent.” Nevertheless, El-Kurd called the recapture of four of the terrorists a “heartbreaking development.”

Moreover, The Nation’s new correspondent regularly downplays war crimes by Hamas, another US-designated terrorist organization. El-Kurd has incited violence and glorified terrorism, recently stating that he mourns “all of our [Palestinian] martyrs.” He previously lauded Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine member and two-time airplane hijacker Leila Khaled.

El Kurd’s support for Palestinian terrorists dovetails with his long history of shockingly antisemitic remarks. For instance, El-Kurd in May called the Israel Defense Forces “sadistic & bloodthirsty,” a slanderous charge reminiscent of medieval blood libels. Similarly, he shared an Instagram post that promoted claims that the Jewish state deliberately kills Palestinians to harvest their organs.

He has furthermore said that Israel “kills,” “blows up,” “burns” and “tortures” Palestinian children in order to “instill terror” in them (see here, here, here and here). The so-called correspondent has gone so far as to describe Israel as a “child killing entity” — an overt example of Jew-hatred according to the widely adopted IHRA definition.

In an equally repulsive Twitter post, El-Kurd claimed — without proof — that “Holocaust survivors” threw Molotov cocktails at his home. He also accused a Hong Kong-based Jewish author of “ethnically cleansing” and “Kristallnachting” Palestinians, the latter being a reference to the Nazi-initiated pogrom in Germany in 1938 that various historians mark as the beginning of the genocide of some six million Jews.

While El-Kurd’s claim to fame is that he “reports” on events in Jerusalem, he all-too-often simply disseminates lies. On May 10, for example, El-Kurd posted a video to Twitter that he claimed proved Israelis were “readying themselves” to “invade” the Al-Aqsa Mosque. In reality, the clip showed Jews praying at the Western Wall.

El-Kurd conjured up a bogus story about a stabbing attack by Israeli “settlers.”

One needn’t be a journalist to reach the conclusion that El-Kurd’s history of spreading fake news, antisemitism and inciting violence should disqualify him from informing The Nation’s readership on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

That said, The Nation is known for its anti-Israel bias. In the last few months alone, it charged Israel with “colonialism,” “official racism” and “mass expulsions.” Moreover, the magazine has repeatedly peddled false accusations that Israel practices “apartheid”, and gave a platform to the mother of a confirmed Palestinian terrorist to suggest her son was innocent.

With the hiring of El-Kurd, though, The Nation has plunged to new depths in its ongoing campaign to tarnish the Jewish state.

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ISA and NASA sign SpaceIL Beresheet-2 Mission

 We must start this week with an apology. Last week we published as an article and video of the week the story of an inscription found bearing the name of Persian King Darius. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a hoax and the Antiquities Authority confirmed the find as not authentic.

Video Of The Week - Israeli Space Agency and NASA- https://tinyurl.com/yuvyk57k                 

 For the full article go to: Gov.il -  https://tinyurl.com/2zknyzt5

 The Israel Space Agency (ISA) in the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology signed a joint statement of intent (SOI) with NASA to collaborate on the Beresheet2 lunar Mission, on the sidelines of the 18th Ilan Ramon International Space Conference, held in the David Intercontinental hotel in Tel Aviv.

 NASA Associate Administrator, Mr. Robert D. Cabana, and ISA Director, Mr. Uri Oron, reiterated the importance of the long-standing relationship between the space agencies, including on education and their continued cooperation on Earth and space science.

Under the joint SOI, NASA is expected to contribute a Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer, communication network support, and coordination with the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA will participate in the selection of landing sites and join the mission’s science team. ISA, in coordination with SpaceIL, is expected to participate in the Beresheet2 mission to the Moon and act in accordance with open science principles. Beresheet2 builds on the success of the first NASA-ISA collaboration in 2019, on SpaceIL's  Beresheet1, the first private spacecraft to fly to the moon, which impacted more than 2 million students worldwide, inspiring them to engage in STEM education. Beresheet2 is planned to launch by SpaceIL in 2025.

MK Ofir Akunis, Israel’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology: "The Beresheet project is the pride of Israel’s groundbreaking science and technology. The collaboration with NASA and our new agreement, which I welcome, is a further testimony to the excellent relations between Israel and the USA and to the intensifying cooperation on science and technology issues."

Mr. Robert D. Cabana, NASA Associate Administrator: “The moon is an exciting destination to explore and I look forward to the scientific discoveries that will come from the Beresheet-2 mission. Our partnership on this lunar mission and Israel’s commitment to the Artemis Accords are enabling us to explore the Moon together.”

Shimon Sarid, SpaceIL CEO: “We are thrilled and honored that NASA and the Israeli Space Agency signed a cooperation agreement about our challenging lunar mission Beresheet2. We are thankful for the continuous support to SpaceIL and we hope that we'll continue to push the boundaries of space exploration and space education together”.

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Inscription bearing Persian King Darius

 Video Of The Week - Persian King Darius the Great -https://tinyurl.com/2upz776e

 By JERUSALEM POST 1-3-2023

 An inscription bearing the name of the Persian king Darius the Great was discovered in the Tel Lachish National Park in the first discovery of an inscription bearing the king's name anywhere in Israel.

The discovery was made by Eylon Levy, the international media advisor to Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Levy reportedly chanced on a 2,500-year-old potsherd with the inscribed letters of the ancient king and reported it to the Israel Antiquities Authority.

 The king's name on the inscription, Darius the Great, is supposedly the father of King Ahasuerus, also known as the biblical Achashverosh from the story of Purim and the Book of Esther.

“When I picked up the ostracon and saw the inscription, my hands shook. I looked left and right for the cameras because I was sure someone was playing an elaborate prank on me," said Levy.

  "When I was walking around here with a friend just exploring the history, I was turning over pieces of pottery and stones in my hand and suddenly, I found something that had letters on it and I thought this was too good to be true," Levy added.

 When Levy found the potsherd, he reported it to the Israel Antiquities Authority, where he said that three people at the organization were skeptical that it was real but intrigued by what Levy had found.

 A few weeks later, Levy received a phone call from Saar Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority and said that he was "on his way from the Dead Sea Scrolls labs. We've put it through three scanners. This is authentic. No modern had could do it and it's from two and a half thousand years ago from before the story of Purim."

 "When I was walking around here with a friend just exploring the history, I was turning over pieces of pottery and stones in my hand and suddenly, I found something that had letters on it and I thought this was too good to be true."

 Ganor analyzed Levy's discovery with Dr. Haggai Misgav of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and they both confirmed that the artifact dated to the Persian royal administration at Lachish in the Achaemenid period, at the turn of the fifth century BCE.

The inscription reads “Year 24 of Darius,” which dates back to 498 BCE. The king's reign began in 522 BCE and ended in 486 BCE.

 Eli Escuzido, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, stated that "It's amazing that visitors to the site come across such a rare inscription 'reviving' the Persian King Darius known to us from the sources! His son King Ahasuerus could never have imagined that we would find evidence of his father in Israel 2,500 years after the dramatic events in his royal court!”

 Who was King Darius, King Ahasuerus?

Darius the Great, also known as Darius I, was one of the most famous rulers of the Achaemenid Empire, also known as the first incarnation of the Persian Empire. His rule saw him take over in a time of chaos, though he managed to reorganize what was then the largest empire of the ancient world into coherent satrapies, centralized authority with major construction projects, and monetary measures and promoted the Aramaic language.

 Darius was also mentioned repeatedly throughout the Bible, having made appearances in the Book of Haggai, the Book of Zechariah and the Book of Ezra-Nehemiah. He is also believed by some scholars to either be the same person as or one of the inspirations of Darius the Mede, a central figure within the Book of Daniel.

 Darius also had several sons, and while none of them were named Ahasuerus in Persian or Aramaic, his most famous son and successor, Xerxes I, also known as Xerxes the Great (named Khshayarsha in Persian), has been linked to the Persian ruler of the Purim story, though the exact level of historical accuracy in the Purim story has been heavily questioned by scholars for years.

 Xerxes's portrayal in the Book of Esther as Ahasuerus has led some to believe he was an incompetent and always drunk monarch, while in fact, Xerxes was a very active ruler, though he is most famous for his ultimately failed war against the Greek city-states. But the fact that he was a very real monarch who indeed ruled over the region at the time of the Book of Esther is widely accepted.

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