al-Masri’s Killing to aid Biden-Israel relations?

 Video Of The Week - Israeli Arab Yoseph Haddad On BDS. https://tinyurl.com/y4ajt3g7

For The Full Article go to JP, by Seth j. Frantzman  15.11.2020 https://tinyurl.com/y5h7qf8a     

  Initial reports said Abu Muhammad al-Masri was killed at the “behest” of the US. He was killed in August, so why did the information only come out in November?

 The reports of the killing in Tehran led to important questions about Iran’s role in accepting global terrorists, former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren said.

 “No one is asking why Iran is hosting al-Qaeda commanders and why the United States should renew a nuclear deal that gives tens of billions of dollars to those who harbor the murderers of 3,000 Americans,” he said.

 The operation to track and kill Masri took place earlier this year, the Associated Press reported Sunday, and was facilitated by “bold intelligence operations by the two allied nations.” The US provided the intelligence on where Masri was living and his alias, and “Israeli agents carried out the killing,” the report said.

 Masri was killed by “Kidon, a unit within the secretive Israeli spy organization Mossad allegedly responsible for the assassination of high-value targets,” the report said. Masri’s daughter, the widow of Hamzah bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden, was also killed, it said.

 The killing of this al-Qaeda senior leader could help Israel with the new US administration, according to reports. This is important because the Biden team is considered close to Israel but is also critical of the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

 Regarding Iran, there was deep divergence between the Trump administration and those who preferred to stay within the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Iran deal. There is also a lot of discussion about Iran’s role in the region.

 Some depict Iran as more moderate, a regime the US can work with to reduce tensions. Others see the regime as seeking regional hegemony. Iran’s development of ballistic missiles and drones, and its role in supporting proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, are often a threat to US allies.

 The timing of the reports on the killing of Masri creates two converging narratives. First, it provides evidence of the close relationship between the US and Israel and showcases Israel’s capabilities in the region and why it is such a key ally of Washington. That means the relationship between Israel and the US is not just one of Washington supporting Jerusalem; it goes both ways. Israel provides key capabilities in the region for the Americans.

 Second, the revelation that al-Qaeda operatives are being hosted in Iran shows that Iran not only works with Sunni extremists against the West; it specifically harbors those who killed Americans. Iran could have ejected these terrorists as part of the Iran deal to show it is moderating. But it did not.

 This illustrates what many experts in the region have been saying about Iran: Its threat is not just about the nuclear program but is the sum of all of the threats it poses, including its willingness to work with al-Qaeda.

 This bursts the bubble of the simplistic narrative that portrays Iran as only a Shi’ite Islamic theocracy, incapable of working with Sunni jihadists.

 Iran is also a cynical country that does everything it can to oppose the US and US allies. It has never altered that course, despite opportunities to do so.

 The operation in August revealed that. The timing of the reports on it suggest important ramifications.

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Rabbi Sacks on the connection between Judaism and Israel

Video Of The Week"Why I am a Jew" by Rabbi Sacks https://tinyurl.com/y4wjzdq8

For the full article go to Jonathan Sacks- https://tinyurl.com/y33f6ogl

 How can Anti-Zionism be the new Anti-Semitism? Surely there’s no connection between them. Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews as a people, a race, an ethnic group. Anti-Zionism is objection to a country, a nation, a state. What’s the connection between them?

 Anti-Semitism is a virus that mutates, so that new anti-Semites can deny they are anti-Semites at all, because their hate is different from the old. In the Middle Ages Jews were hated for their religion. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century they were hated for their race. Today they are hated for their nation state, Israel.

 What then is the connection between Jews as a people, Judaism as a religion, and Israel as a state? The connection between the Jewish people and Israel goes back long before the birth of either Christianity or Islam. Jews created a society there in the days of Joshua, a kingdom in the days of Saul, and a nation with Jerusalem as its capital in the days of King David: all this more than 3,000 years ago.

 Jews are the only people who ever created a nation state there. At all other times in the past 3,000 years it was merely an administrative district in an empire whose centre was elsewhere: the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Alexandrian, Roman and Byzantine empires, the Crusaders of the Holy Roman Empire, the various Muslim empires such as the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Mamluks and Ottomans, and finally the British. Jews are the only people who have maintained a continuous presence in the land. They are its indigenous, original inhabitants.

 The November 1947 United Nations vote to bring Israel into existence was a momentous reversal of imperialism. It gave back to the Jewish people the home taken from them by empire after empire. Israel was the only non-artificial creation in the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The rest ­– among them Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – were artificial creations that hadn’t been states before, which is why most of them still exist in a condition of ethnic, religious and tribal strife. Only Israel had previously existed as a nation state.

 That’s the unbreakable connection between Israel and the Jewish people. The connection between Israel and Judaism is equally ancient and fundamental. It is more than just as Robert Frost said, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Read the Hebrew Bible and you’ll see immediately that it isn’t about the salvation of the soul. It’s about creating in the holy land a society based on the biblical ideas of justice, welfare, the sanctity of life – and caring for the stranger “because you know what it feels like to be a stranger.”

 Judaism began with two journeys to the land, one by Abraham and Sarah, the other by the Israelites in the days of Moses. At least half of the 613 commandments of the Bible are only applicable to the land of Israel. And though in the centuries of exile and dispersion Jews lived in almost every land under the sun, Israel has remained a focus of their prayers and the only place where they have been able to do what every other nation takes for granted, construct their own society in the light of their own ideals.

 Judaism differs from the other Abrahamic monotheisms, Christianity and Islam, in that it is the only one of the three that never created or sought to create an empire. It was the imperialism of the Roman emperor Hadrian that led him in the 2nd century to change the country’s name to Palestine, one of the first, but certainly not the last, deliberate falsifications of history by those who seek to deny the Jewish people’s right to their land.

 There are 56 Islamic nations, and 159 in which Christians form the majority. There is and only ever has been one Jewish state, tiny and vulnerable though it is and always was. That is why Anti-Zionism, denying Jews the right to their one and only collective home by misrepresenting Judaism, is the new anti-Semitism, every bit as virulent and dangerous as the old.

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The Real Enemy of Islam

Video Of The Week - Jeremy Corbyn Suspended https://tinyurl.com/y3mftt7v

For the full Article from Gatestone by Khaled Abu Toameh 3-11-2020 https://tinyurl.com/y3t3krk2

a)     "The beheading of the French history teacher proves that political Islam has become a real threat to world peace in light of its expansionist tendency, which is currently embodied by Erdogan's project, which not only targets the societies of Muslim countries, but also other societies that incubate important Islamic communities." — Al-Habib Al-Aswad, Tunisian journalist, Al-Arab, October 28, 2020.

b)     He wants to represent himself as a defender of Islam. Which Islam does he speak for? Erdogan has committed crimes in Libya, Syria and all Arab countries. He is the one who is offending Islam." — Mustafa Bakri, Egyptian media personality, Al-Dostor Studio, October 30, 2020.

c)     The reactions of many Arabs and Muslims show that they view Erdogan as a more serious threat to Islam than Macron or others in the West.

Turkish President Erdogan is not authorized to speak on behalf of the Muslims, especially regarding the current controversy surrounding France's attitude toward Islam and Muslim terrorist attacks. That is what many Muslims are saying these days in the aftermath of Erdogan's attempt to present himself as the grand defender of Islam in a conflict that recently erupted between Muslims and France.

According to several Muslim political analysts and writers, Erdogan is trying to take advantage of the anti-France campaign in the Muslim world for his own political gain. The message the Muslims are sending to France and the rest of the world is that Erdogan is a hypocrite and opportunist, who is acting from personal interest and not out of concern for Muslims or Islam.

Last week, France condemned Erdogan for comments he made about French President Emmanuel Macron's mental health and treatment of Muslims. Erdogan had suggested that the French president needed "some kind of mental treatment" because of Macron's attitude toward Muslims in France. "What else is there to say about a head of state who doesn't believe in the freedom of religion and behaves this way against the millions of people of different faiths living in his own country?" Erdogan said in a speech at a meeting of his Justice and Development Party. He also called on Muslims to boycott French goods.

Erdogan's remarks came in response to Macron's pledge to crack down on radical Islamism in France after a Muslim terrorist beheaded history teacher Samuel Paty on October 16. Paty had taught a class on freedom of expression during which he used cartoons of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed from the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Even before Paty was murdered, Macron defended the right to caricature the Prophet Mohammed. In September, he described Islam as a religion "in crisis" and announced that he would present a bill to strengthen a law that separates church and state in France.

Some Muslims see Erdogan's attacks on France as an attempt to divert attention from the growing criticism in the Arab world toward Turkey's meddling in the internal affairs of a number of Arab countries. Saudi Arabian activists have called for a boycott of Turkish products to protest Erdogan's repeated attacks on Arab leaders and countries.

"Erdogan's statements and his defense of Islam do not bear in their essence any religious dimensions, but rather an attempt to win the friendship of the angry street and also to save his country's economy, which is suffering badly after the success of the Arab boycott of Turkish goods."

Noting that Arab business executives and others have called for a boycott of Turkish products to protest the "hostile policies of the Erdogan regime," the newspaper quoted Egyptian political analyst Tareq Fahmi as saying:

"Erdogan's talk about adopting the defense of Islam has become unacceptable after everyone realized that the matter is purely political and has nothing to do with the religious dimension. The issue is also related to addressing Arab and Islamic public opinion so that Erdogan appears in the image of the great Arab and Islamic leader. Erdogan aims to ride the current wave and try to employ and invest it politically in his battles against Europe and France."

Lebanese journalist Joseph Abu Fadel scoffed at Erdogan's call for the protection of Muslims in France:

Abbas pointed out that Erdogan was also motivated by his concern over the decline of his popularity in Turkey:

"The beheading of the French history teacher proves that political Islam has become a real threat to world peace in light of its expansionist tendency, which is currently embodied by Erdogan's project, which not only targets the societies of Muslim countries, but also other societies that incubate important Islamic communities... When the Turkish president incited against France and President Macron, his primary concern was not religion or the Prophet Mohammed, but rather his geopolitical struggle with the French in the eastern Mediterranean, Libya, and generally North Africa and the Sahara region. Erdogan is convinced that Macron is a declared ally of countries that Ankara considers its enemies."

Egyptian media personality Mustafa Bakri said that Erdogan was taking advantage of various crises and cannot be sincere in his defense of Islam. Erdogan, he added, "is not an honest man."

"He took advantage of the situation against France and claimed to be defending Islam. He wants to represent himself as a defender of Islam. Which Islam does he speak for? Erdogan has committed crimes in Libya, Syria and all Arab countries. He is the one who is offending Islam."

"Some populist politicians think only about achieving their personal victories by using powerful and extremist rhetoric... What Erdogan came out with cannot be considered an endeavor to defend the interests of Muslims and the Prophet Mohammed, and he knows more than others what the consequences could be for the Muslim communities living in Western societies."

The reactions of many Arabs and Muslims show that they view Erdogan as a more serious threat to Islam than Macron or others in the West. The voices of Erdogan's critics, however, rarely find their way to the mainstream media.

Ironically, Erdogan, who is currently calling for a boycott of French products, is himself being boycotted by a growing number of Arabs and Muslims. It is Erdogan, bemoaning the "insults" to Islam made by Westerners, who is himself being accused by Muslims of killing Muslims and occupying their lands.

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Israel and Sudan to Normalise Ties

 Video Of The Week -Israel and Sudan Normalise Ties - https://tinyurl.com/y3o2rnxp

For the full article go to - https://tinyurl.com/y4fryba4

 Israel and Sudan agree to normalization of relations between the countries and to end state of belligerence between them

 US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that Sudan will normalize ties with Israel, becoming the third Arab country to do so in recent months, after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

 During a call with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Sovereign Council president General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and civilian leader and Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, Trump brought reporters into the Oval Office and announced, “The state of Israel and the Republic of Sudan have agreed to make peace.” “It’s peace in the Middle East without bloodshed,” Trump added.

 The President indicated that at least five additional countries want to join in a peace deal with Israel.

 Netanyahu told Trump, “We are expanding the circle of peace so rapidly with your leadership. Trump responded by saying, “There are many, many more coming.”

 "The leaders agreed to the normalization of relations between Sudan and Israel and to end the state of belligerence between their nations," said a subsequent joint statement issued by the three countries.

 The statement added that Sudan’s transitional government has “demonstrated its courage and commitment to combating terrorism, building its democratic institutions, and improving its relations with its neighbors.”

 As a result, “the United States and Israel agreed to partner with Sudan in its new start and ensure that it is fully integrated into the international community,” it continued.

 A signing ceremony is expected to be held at the White House in coming weeks, said officials quoted by Reuters.

 "Today Khartoum says yes to peace with Israel, yes to recognition of Israel and yes to normalization with Israel," he added.

 “This follows on Sudan’s recent agreement to resolve certain claims of United States victims of terror and their families. Yesterday, in fulfillment of that agreement, the transitional government of Sudan transferred $335 million into an escrow account for these victims and their families,” the statement said.

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Why Israel Chose to aid an Ailing Enemy

 Video Of The Week -3,200-Year-Old Canaanite Fortress https://tinyurl.com/y32a3g7v

Saeb Erekat repeatedly libeled Israel, aided terrorists and was an obstacle to peace. But Jewish values will always dictate that Israelis help those in need.

(October 19, 2020 / JNS) It’s the kind of story that drives a lot of friends of Israel nuts. One of its chief opponents, Palestinian Liberation Organization senior leader Saeb Erekat recently fell ill with COVID-19. Faced with the decision as to where to be treated, it was only natural that instead of going to a Palestinian hospital or even one in neighboring Jordan, he chose to go to Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.

This is, after all, the same person who spent his career lying about Israel, and smearing it as a nation of oppressors and war criminals. He’s part of a government that spends far more on paying salaries and pensions to terrorists and their families than on hospitals. Indeed, in March of this year, he actually went as far as to falsely allege that Israelis were spitting on Palestinian cars so as to spread the coronavirus to them. And though he has served as the P.A.’s chief peace negotiator, he’s spent his tenure in that position working to make peace negotiations impossible, swearing that he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state and end the ongoing conflict. 

However, when faced with the question of where was the best place in the region to seek help, Israel was the obvious answer. One of the region’s pre-eminent health-care facilities, Hadassah and its doctors took him in. 

Some Israelis and friends of the Jewish state can’t understand it. They see this willingness to help even enemies as a particular form of weakness. They cite the passage from the Midrash of the sages that says, “He who becomes compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate” as a good reason to turn Erekat down.

Others think that it was wrong of the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to exact concessions from the Palestinians in exchange for what may well be the best chance of saving Erekat’s life. And it wasn’t just right-wingers saying that. Michal Cotler-Wunsh, a moderate member of the Knesset from the Blue and White Party, asserted that prior to admitting him, Israel should have gotten the P.A. to agree to reciprocal humanitarian gestures, such as returning the bodies of slain Israeli soldiers being held by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip or freeing two Israeli Arabs who wandered over the border in that terrorist enclave.

That sounds only fair; still, the supposedly hardline government led by Netanyahu didn’t try to extract such concessions or at least didn’t try very hard to do so quietly. Why not?

One pragmatic answer is that for all of the antagonism between Israel and the P.A., in addition to the latter’s refusal to make peace, the day-to-day working relationship between them continues. Contrary to the incessant talk about the occupation, almost all Palestinians live under the dictatorial rule of P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas and his corrupt Fatah Party. There is a fair amount of security coordination going on that is partly aimed at reducing Palestinian attacks on Israelis, yet also focused on keeping Abbas alive against threats from his Hamas rivals.

Doing favors for Palestinian leaders is part of this uneasy relationship, so it’s hardly surprising that Israel would reserve a bed at Hadassah for the use of a person who has done so much to hurt the Jewish state.

But the real reason goes far deeper than that.

As much as Israel is depicted as a modern day Sparta—a militarized state that is dominated and governed by its security establishment—Jewish values still play a crucial part in its decision-making. Being a Jewish state necessarily involves considerations that a purely utilitarian approach to life would reject.

Much like Netanyahu’s highly controversial decision to trade more than 1,000 convicted Palestinian terrorists, including many with blood on their hands, for the freedom of a kidnapped young soldier, Israeli leaders often wind up doing things that objectively make little sense. The Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange let murderers of children walk free; however, the obligation to redeem a captive took precedence and rather than suffer politically for the decision, Netanyahu was applauded by voters even as security experts deplored the precedent he had set.

By the same token, the generally tough-minded premier likely felt that it was impossible for him to refuse a humanitarian request, even from a bitter foe.

It’s doubtful that any other country would be so generous to an enemy, yet somehow, the notion that Israel would turn away a person in need is inconceivable. Unlike the English common-law tradition, there is a specific Jewish obligation to help others rather than to stand by only watching their plight.

Israel isn't perfect but it is often unfairly judged by a double standard about its conduct towards enemies that is not applied to any other democracy at war. Though it is far more scrupulous about trying to avoid hurting civilians when it fights its foes, it is continually blamed for any casualties in ways that others are not.

Like the peace offers that Erekat and his comrades have repeatedly rejected, no one will give Israel credit for its unilateral humanitarianism. But it’s entirely natural, if also frustrating, that Netanyahu would help a Palestinian leader in need even when we know that if the shoe were on the other foot, Israel’s foes would not do the same.

The instinctual application of traditional Jewish values by the Jewish state’s secular government should not surprise anyone. Even when it will not advance Israel’s cause, behaving decently to those who would not reciprocate such a gesture is still the default position of any government of the Jewish state. 

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Chevronʼs Purchase Could Unlock Israelʼs Natural Gas Bonanza

 Video Of The Week - Lebanese Journalist - Peace with Israel Is Coming -https://tinyurl.com/y6o58zjo

By Stanley Reed, 9-10-2020 NY Times - https://nyti.ms/2Fk0q36

 Chevron, the American oil giant, wrapped up the acquisition on Monday of a relatively small Houston-based company called Noble Energy, paying about $4 billion.

Until recently, the deal would have been unlikely, if not unthinkable — because what distinguishes Noble is the large natural gas business it has built in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, especially in Israel, an area that major oil companies had until now avoided.Chevron’s move is the latest milestone in a remarkable shift in perceptions about a relatively newregion for the petroleum industry in the eastern Mediterranean. Once a dead sea for the oilindustry, this area, reaching from the Nile Delta in Egypt up to Israel and Lebanon and around Cyprus, has come alive with exploration vessels, drilling rigs and production platforms in recentyears thanks to a series of large natural gas discoveries.

Those finds are drawing major oil companies into the area, attracted not only by the prospect of further undiscovered resources but by improving relations between Israel and its former foes Egypt and Jordan.

International oil giants previously steered clear of Israel, partly,  to avoid alienating large Arab oil producers like Saudi Arabia. The move by Chevron, which this week edged ahead of Exxon Mobil to become America’s largest oil company by market value, indicates that thedays when Persian Gulf states bristle about business with Israel may be over. Recently, the UnitedArab Emirates and Bahrain established relations with Israel with apparent Saudi blessing.

“It is opening up the Israeli market to the world,” Nati Birenboim, a former Israeli energy official said of Chevron’s arrival. “Everyone knows when they bought Noble, they bought Israel.”More than 20 years ago, Noble came to Israel to hunt for petroleum. It has produced major natural gas finds that  turned Israelcinto an exporter with long-term contracts worth an estimated $25 billion.

“I think what Chevron sees is the opportunity” to buy into “massive natural gas resources located in the center of a region with a lot of demand”

Along with the drilling sites off the coast of Israel, a major discovery called the Zohr gas field, found by the Italian energy company Eni in Egyptian waters in 2015, has drawn development in the area.Total, the French oil firm, and Eni have even extended the hunt into the sea off strife-torn Lebanon “It is a very attractive region,” said Wayne Ackerman, a former adviser on gas to Saudi Aramco, who has studied the area’s geology. “I am convinced there will be more discoveries there.”

More than 20 years ago, Noble helped put the region on the energy industry’s map. Delek Drilling, an Israeli firm, brought the company to Israel to hunt for petroleum. The partnership, which began in 1999, has produced major natural gas finds that not only reduced Israel’s dependence on imported coal and oil but turned Israel — with some helpful nudging from American diplomats — into an exporter with long-term contracts worth an estimated $25 billion to help power the neighboring economies of Jordan and Egypt.

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Serial Liar and Failed Diplomat Erekat to Lecture on Diplomacy

 

Video Of The Week - BBC smears Roman Abramovich https://tinyurl.com/y6qoqxvn

Based on an Article from the “Algemeiner”

 Erekat will mentor students and give virtual seminars as a fellow in The Future of Diplomacy Project at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Erekat, also the secretary general of the Executive Committee of the PLO, said in a 2014 interview with Al Jazeera that “I will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”

Saeb Erakat has been extensively involved in all negotiations with Israel, including those conducted at Camp David (2000) and in Taba (2001). In 1991, he was the Vice-Chair of the Madrid Peace Delegation and was later the Vice-Chair at the Washington negotiations of 1992. Previously, he served as the Minister of Local Government for the Palestinian National Authority and is also Head of the Palestinian Side of the Steering and Monitoring Committee. He is the author of fourteen books on foreign policy, oil, conflict resolution, and negotiations.

 What diplomatic victory has Erakat ever achieved? He has been instrumental in painting the Palestinians into a corner, stopping negotiations with Israel even after “annexation” is off the table, which only hurts his own people.

His brilliant diplomatic skills have succeeded in turning much of the Arab world from pro-Palestinian to lukewarm or hostile.

He has a long history of the most egregious lies, denying Jewish history, and justifying terror attacks. He’s even lied about his own life and his family’s history.

And that is only scratching the surface.

Erakat is not at all a “respected global leader.” He is a failure at everything he has ever done.

Why would Harvard hire a proven, serial liar, a failed negotiator, and politician who has not helped his own people in any real way, and who is not really even popular among Palestinians, to teach its students?

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