Israel and Abraham Accords: A Tale of two Parallel Universes.

 Video Of The Week - Israeli-Arab Summit in the Negev - https://tinyurl.com/2xcn7kwt

For the full article by David M. Weinberg go to https://tinyurl.com/2p8bw8k8

Israel seems to exist in two parallel, contradictory worlds. One is a false, hackneyed, out-of-date, and threatening universe where recalcitrant and violent Palestinian leaders are venerated, and admirable Israeli leaders are criminalized. The other universe is real, promising, forward looking, and stabilizing, and is marked by a peace dynamic that runs from Jerusalem to Dubai, Manama, Rabat, Cairo and Amman; and from Jerusalem to the most important leaders in the world.  Consider the following very recent happenings.

GENEVA and NEW YORK: A new UN Human Rights Council (HRC) report this week accused Israel of apartheid, just in time for the annual debate on “Agenda Item 7,” the permanent council item reserved for Israeli “human rights abuses” against Palestinians and other Arabs.

“The political system of entrenched rule in the occupied Palestinian territory which endows one racial-national-ethnic group with substantial rights, benefits and privileges while intentionally subjecting another group to live behind walls, checkpoints and under a permanent military rule… satisfies the prevailing evidentiary standard for the existence of apartheid,” said the ugly report.  The report was the latest in a litany of one-sided, baseless reports, vilifying Israel and engaging in a full-scale lawfare assault on Israel’s very existence as a Jewish state.

Saleh Higazi, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International praised the HRC report as “an important and timely addition to the growing international consensus that Israeli authorities are committing apartheid against the Palestinian people.” In February, Amnesty International released its own tendentious report accusing Israel of apartheid.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH: United Arab Emirates Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett conducted two days of discussions this week to solidify their new regional alliance for peace and security. They discussed energy, market stability, and food security, as well as development of a regional radar security umbrella against Iran.

The Crown Prince also unfroze $10 billion in investments in Israeli companies that he promised former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The UAE’s large sovereign funds will divide the investments between them. The first fund to enter the Israeli market is the ADG (Abu Dhabi Growth) Fund, which plans on investing $200 million in 2022 in Israeli companies, and a similar sum each year over 10 years.

Also this week, Sheikh Mansoor Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum visited Israel’s national pavilion at the GISEC Global cybersecurity fair in Dubai; an Emirati think tank published book on Zionism written by Tel Aviv University researchers; the UAE-based retail giant Lula began talks on operation in Israel; Morocco signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for a joint research and engineering center; and the Israeli navy took part in another joint Red Sea naval drill with the US, UAE, and Bahrain, under auspices of the US Fifth Fleet (which is headquartered in Bahrain).

UNFORTUNATELY, Israel seems to exist in two parallel, contradictory worlds.

One universe, dominated by so-called Western “progressives” in cahoots with Arab/Islamic radicals, disses rather than embraces the Abraham Accords and is stuck in a time warp where Israel is an evil actor.. It is a tragic, forlorn universe.

The other universe – real, promising, forward looking, and stabilizing! – is marked by a peace dynamic. The discourse about Israel in corrupt international institutions and in some aspersive Western campuses and capitals couldn’t be more different than the discourse in Arab capitals and other calm and considered decision-making centers. It’s confrontation versus cooperation, demonization versus solidarity.

 

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Aliyah Surges During COVID-19 Pandemic

 Video Of The Week - Covid Not Stopping Immigration to Israel. https://tinyurl.com/2p84ad53

For the full article from JNS by Eliana Rudee go to - https://tinyurl.com/2p8dd8pa

Valerie Greenfeld, 58, immigrated to Israel just before Passover 2021 from Washington D.C., amid widespread travel restrictions imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. She began her quarantine immediately after arriving in Israel, which coincided with the first night of Passover. She had her own one-woman Passover seder and though it was a different way to celebrate the holiday than most years, she told JNS that she “felt very connected.”

Beginning the aliyah process in 2019, Greenfeld’s immigration was delayed because of the pandemic. “It took two years before I had the approval to make aliyah. All the documents I had prepared early in the process expired because of COVID-related delays and I had to submit them all over again.”

Finally making it to Israel, Greenfeld was one of the 27,057 new immigrants to become Israeli citizens in 2021, an increase of 30% compared to the prior year. Despite travel restrictions, 2021 also saw a record-breaking year for American immigration to Israel.

The Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, with The Jewish Agency and Nefesh B’Nefesh, recently released this year’s official aliyah data — noting the rise in total immigrants compared to last year’s 21,120 new immigrants. In 2019, before the pandemic, 35,651 people immigrated to Israel.

The figures also showed a dramatic increase in aliyah from South Africa (a rise of 72%), Argentina (an increase of 55% and the highest number since 2003), Mexico (a 55% increase), France (a 40% jump and the highest number of arrivals in the last four years), and the continued trend of rising aliyah among younger generations. This year, 55% of olim were under 35 years old. Further, 16.5% of olim were ages 36-50; 13.6% were 51-64; and 14.7% were 65 and older.

Greenfeld believes that the rise in aliyah may be a result of both “people who care about Israel wanting to feel close to the country, as well as fear.”

“A terrible rise in anti-Semitism in the U.S. and all over the world, in synagogues, universities, schools, and social media, as well as its re-emergence in a different form called anti-Zionism… people who care about Israel feel close to the country and at the same time, they are realizing that history repeats itself,” she said.

“Regarding COVID-19, the fact that numerous workplaces are now virtual enabled individuals who had been wanting to make aliyah to maintain their careers while also living in the Jewish state. For others, our advanced healthcare system perhaps was an incentive.

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Human Rights Watch Exploits its Mission for Hate

Video Of The Week - Yes, there is Apartheid in the West Bank - https://tinyurl.com/3pyac8n4

Article from JNS 29-4-2021 by Gerald M. Steinberg  https://tinyurl.com/bf4mcypw

Why has HRW focused so much money and energy on viciously targeting Israel for more than 20 years?

(April 29, 2021 / JNS) In the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviet bloc and the Arab league combined forces in the United Nations to promote anti-Semitism and demonize Israel. This crescendoed into the infamous 1975 United Nations resolution labeling Zionism as racism.

By the 1990s, the hatred had spread to powerful political organizations working under the banners of human rights and international law. In particular, the propaganda war against the Jewish state was and continues to be led by Human Rights Watch (HRW), an NGO superpower working in close cooperation with other groups, including some in Israel. In 2009, HRW founder Robert Bernstein, writing in The New York Times, criticized his own organization for helping “to turn Israel into a pariah state.”

HRW’s latest contribution to the anti-Israel agenda was launched on Tuesday under the heading of “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.” With an annual budget of almost $100 million (including some long-hidden donations such as from a corrupt Saudi billionaire), the organization was able to gain a great deal of publicity and media coverage.

The headlines highlight the disingenuous equivalence that HRW draws between Israel and the South African apartheid regime. HRW’s publication has 200 references to apartheid — approximately one per page—interspersed among false accusations and distorted (or invented) versions of international law, many of which were copied directly from other NGOs. HRW attacks everything from Israel’s 1950 Law of Return, enacted in the shadow of the Holocaust, to counter-terror measures, which, they claim, are used “to advance demographic objectives” and “have no legitimate security justifications.” This claim is made easier by the fact that they fail to mention decades of Palestinian terror against Israeli victims 

Why has HRW focused so much money and energy on viciously targeting Israel for more than 20 years? The answer is Kenneth Roth, who has led HRW since 1993 and is the driving force behind the organization’s obsession with Israel. Roth has not hidden his strong anti-Zionist compulsion. In 2004, an Israeli journalist asked him, “What’s a good Jewish boy from Chicago doing at the helm of HRW, the famous NGO that many accuse of singling out the Jewish state?” Roth did not deny his hostility toward Israel, but instead referred to his father’s “stories of life in Nazi Germany until he fled in summer 1938.” For many years, Roth’s official HRW biography cited his father’s experience in Germany, as if this somehow explained singling out Israel for attack.

In addition to his obscure personal factors, Roth also promotes a condescending worldview known as post-colonialism that automatically treats supposed victims of the West as innocents who can do no wrong, in contrast to the West—particularly the United States—which he always paints as guilty. After 1967, when Israel was no longer in danger of being destroyed by Arab armies, was receiving increased support from the United States and became an “occupier,” the Jewish state became a primary target for the post-colonialists, including Roth.

Many years ago, Roth also understood the value in comparing Israel to the heinous South African apartheid regime. He sent HRW officials to play a central role in the 2001 U.N. Conference in Durban, South Africa, and defended this comparison as part of the organization’s agenda of countering what he referred to, even then, as “Israeli racist practices.” In interviews and on Twitter (Roth posts every hour, seven days a week), he frequently promotes the apartheid and racism theme.

In 2017, after the white supremacist march and violence in Charlottesville, Roth tweeted a link to a propaganda piece headlined “Birds of a feather: White supremacy and Zionism.” He included a picture depicting a Confederate and Israeli flag, commenting, “Many rights activists condemn Israeli abuse & anti-Semitism. Some white supremacists embrace Israel & anti-Semitism.”

Over the years, Roth has also hired a number of experienced and dedicated anti-Israel activists, such as Sarah Leah Whitson, who was born in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City (then under Jordanian occupation). Her family reportedly moved to the United States in 1960, but for whatever reason, her anti-Israel passion, often crossing the line into anti-Semitism, is well-entrenched. Prior to joining HRW in 2004 and heading their BDS campaign, she had been active with the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee and, even then, ran campaigns attacking Israeli “apartheid” and its “matrix of control.” (Whitson also raised money in Saudi Arabia and suddenly left HRW in early 2020 when those details were leaked.

In 2016, Roth and Whitson hired Omar Shakir—the lead author of HRW’s “apartheid” publication. Shakir is also deeply and personally invested in vilifying Israel and spent many years as a campus activist speaking under headings like “Apartheid IsReal.” He has led HRW’s (failed) effort to press Airbnb and the FIFA soccer association to join the anti-Israel boycott. For Shakir, who left Israel after his work visa was not renewed and he lost a lengthy court battle, this is revenge propaganda.

But perhaps this time, Roth, Shakir and HRW overshot their target. After the report was criticized in media reports, such as in Le Point (often quoting NGO Monitor), they tried to spin the message, claiming that they were not actually comparing Israel to South Africa but instead were using a new definition of apartheid. But with the long history, the 200 references and the title, even an NGO superpower will have trouble selling that canard.

Gerald M. Steinberg is a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University and president of the Institute for NGO Research.

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Volunteers Fight Farm Theft In Israel

Video Of The Week - Israeli Owls Control Pests- https://tinyurl.com/yan8n73m

For further information of this group go to - https://www.hashomer.org.il/

The new Hashomer organization is an educational and Zionist social organization established in 2007 by a group of country-loving volunteers to safeguard state land while assisting and empowering farmers and enforcement agencies, alongside connecting citizens and young people to the land, love of the land and Zionist identity.

Since its founding, the new guard has reinforced the sense of love of the tens of thousands of volunteers who help hundreds of farmers and national bodies to protect state land, all while discussing and studying Zionist values.

About 150 volunteers with jeeps and 4-by-4’s, area-loving vehicles, harnessed their hobby for this purpose. Combining affection for field leadership with helpful tours contributes to reducing agricultural crime incidents in the areas of activity and creates high quality and cohesive volunteer groups.

Since the establishment of the Jeeps, about 50,000 hectares are being scanned every night. The unit assisted in reducing crime rates in its locations to 0%. In the past year, she has taken part in the search for 200 alpine goats stolen in the prairie, in pursuit of Lakhish thieves and more.

Volunteer guards create a presence in farms and farm areas but to expand the conserved areas, mounted tours are also required.

The jeep unit allows assistance to some farmers in keeping the open spaces at night.
Volunteers are another pair of eyes in the field. They independently tour, their private vehicles equipped with suitable equipment. Patrollers scan, locate theft or tampering and damage, and report to regional law enforcement officials

Volunteer guards are present in farmland and farm areas and are a major deterrent to all agricultural aid activities. The biker unit was set up to expand the reserved areas through mounted tours.

The motorcycle unit provides assistance to a large number of farmers in maintaining the open spaces at night. Volunteers independently patrol private SUVs, finding attempted theft or injury and damage and reporting to regional law enforcement officials.

Off-road motorcyclists are able to reach a wide area in a short space of time, even in places where 4X4 vehicles have difficulty.  Using a motorcycle, there is an offense capability that is a great advantage in off-road activity and shortened response times. The mobility of motorcyclists in the open areas allows the new guard to respond to crime phenomena more quickly.

The off-road motorcycle unit is made up of a special bunch of off-road lovers who have dedicated their hobby to this end. Combining the affection for driving a motorcycle with helpful tours contributes to reducing agricultural crime in the areas of activity and creates quality volunteer groups.

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Let’s Talk About Colonialism

Video Of The Week - Fighting Anti-Israel Bias - https://tinyurl.com/sfh3of8

From Times Of Israel, 8-1-2020

For the full (quite long) article go to  https://tinyurl.com/t3px5uz

The word “colonialism” brings to mind many things. Most notably, it is a term associated with European imperialist adventures in the “New World” and all of the attendant horrors that followed. It invokes, in specie, mental images of white-European settlers, armed with Bibles and bayonets, dominating “less advanced” indigenous populations

And since nearly all of these and other more infamous examples of colonialism were specifically white-European, the concept itself has come to be seen as associated with white supremacism. It is under this rubric, and in conjunction with the postmodern progressive fixation on racial justice that Zionism has been cast as a “colonial” movement, while the ongoing Arab effort to reverse the gains made by the indigenous Jewish people in 1948 is championed as “anti-colonialism”.

Zionism, however, is not colonialism, but the polar opposite thereof. To understand why this is so, it is important to clearly define both of these concepts.

Colonialism is, at a baseline level, the practice of expropriating foreign territory and incorporating it into a metropole, or “mother country” (e.g. the British Crown). This process typically entails occupying these new lands with settlers, suppressing local indigenous populations, and enforcing the tongue, culture, and lifestyle of the metropole on the aforementioned indigenous inhabitants.

Zionism is an indigenous people’s repatriation/liberation movement. The yearning to return to our homeland has been ingrained in our culture ever since we were jettisoned from our soil by foreign occupiers, primarily into Europe, North Africa, and other parts of the Middle East.

Zionism is, at its core, an indigenous rights project, and has been since day one. The Jews returning from exile had no mother country to “colonize” on behalf of. Israel IS the mother country.

It is commonly alleged by anti-Zionists that the early Israelites were themselves conquerors (of Mesopotamian stock), but this is not corroborated by scholarship.

Now let’s discuss the real colonialism occurring within Palestine – specifically, that conducted by Arab Palestine itself.

The Arabs sought to expand their holdings and their power through acquisition of foreign territory. Conquest, war, and totalization were the popular mode of “progress” in that era, so it isn’t surprising that the Arabs sought to build an empire of their own. Their first conquests included, by dint of proximity, the upper parts of Middle East, specifically Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. They immediately set about the project of “Arabization”: raising taxes on indigenous peoples, restricting our government access, curtailing our civil liberties, replacing our sacred sites with mosques (the most notable example being the Al-Aqsa compound, which sits on the very location where our Temple once was),

What, then, is the Palestinian cause? It is, in essence, a reaction to Zionism and the State of Israel itself. Although it ludicrously presents itself as an indigenous rights-oriented cause, it is really nothing more than a front for Arab imperialism. It is hoped that, by repatriating the 6 million or so descendants of Arab refugees into Israel, the Jews in Israel will be demographically overwhelmed and we will be robbed of our self-determination once more, transforming our country into a de facto Arab state.

The Palestinian cause has nothing whatsoever to do with human rights or “anti-colonialism”. It is about nothing more than the Arab world’s desire to regain its lost “honor” by accomplishing through stealth what it failed to do by force: restoring their hegemony over Israel and putting the “uppity” Jews back in their place.

It is a claim that has been weaponized against indigenous peoples and used to sweep us under the rug, all in the hope of removing us from our homelands and ensuring that they remain “Arab”. They’ve appropriated the Jews histories and identities as their own without actually belonging to our cultures or suffering for them, and despite centuries of benefiting from the very same system of colonial domination that led to our dispossession in the first place.

I think we have every right to be pissed off about that.

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ZIONIST GUIDE FOR THE EURO-VISITOR TO EUROVISION

Video Of The Week - Eurovision 2019 in Israel - https://tinyurl.com/y5vu5slh

Dear Euro-visitor,

Please tell everyone that we aren’t just alive: but, having returned to our natural habitat, our homeland, ever improving and stretching, still being self-critical – we’ve figured out how to thrive.

We know worried friends suggested skipping the Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv, following the Palestinians’ 698-rocket barrage. We know fanatics bullied you to boycott this apolitical celebration of international unity. So, thanks for coming.

In this small Albania-sized country, Israelis party in Tel Aviv clubs as friends scramble into shelters. This insouciance is not callousness or obliviousness; it’s defiance. Our coolest cats cry like babies on Remembrance Day, and exchange their hipster threads for military khaki when called to serve. But after millennia of being persecuted – often, ahem, by your ancestors – we won’t be pushed around anymore. We laugh, love, dance and party whenever we can – while ducking, crying, empathizing and fighting when we must.

Besides, what’s real? Everyone underestimates us. Everyone overestimates our problems. Yet, look around. We have failures and blind spots – what country doesn’t? But watch the trend lines. Israel today is stronger, richer, more sophisticated than ever. And it’s kinder, gentler, more tolerant, more pluralistic, too.

Even with a right-wing government, Israel has a liberal-democratic soul. Israeli Arabs, gays, women, religious people – actually, most citizens – are better off personally, economically, democratically, existentially than they were 10, 20, 30 years ago.

You can’t fake Israel’s freedom, openness, creativity; it pulses through our Eurovision hits. Dana International’s 1998 winner captured our roller-coaster emotions, singing of “pain and hurt” – glorifying a “Diva” who cries like “an angel” yet laughs like “a devil.” Netta Barzilai’s 2018 winner celebrated independence, defiance, openness and Wonder Womanness: “I’m not your toy... You stupid boy!”

BUT TO understand Israel, think historically. Appreciate what Judaism is, what Zionism is and where Palestinians fit into the bigger story.

I’m not sugar-coating: Israelis clash over deep divisions, amid deeper wells of intolerance and insensitivity – like all countries. When Dana International became a transsexual star, some rabbis objected. “I am what I am, and this does not mean I don’t believe in God,” she proclaimed, “and I am part of the Jewish nation.”

Hmm... How can an Israeli drag queen condemned by rabbis be a believer – and what’s this “Jewish nation” – isn’t Judaism just a religion?

Welcome to that complex multidimensional civilization called Judaism. Just as two cookies connected by crème make an Oreo, Judaism combines nationhood and religion. The Jewish people follows the Jewish religion but can create a Jewish state that isn’t a theocracy, because even the religiously mandated Sabbath has national and cultural dimensions. Tel Aviv’s charming Saturday sleepiness reflects collective desire – and memory – not religious coercion. And before condemning democracies wielding religious symbols, check whether your country flies one of Europe’s 27 cross-bearing flags.

Zionism is the Jewish national liberation movement. As a people, we have rights – like the 41 other Eurovision countries – to establish a nation-state in our homeland.

Zionism courts trouble by rejecting John Lennon’s postmodernist “Imagined” world without borders, without countries. But neither Palestinians nor Brits nor Americans nor most proud peoples accept that. As a model of liberal nationalism, Zionism proves that the better term is “nationaliberalism” – that’s how integrated liberal-democratic ideas are into Zionism and into most healthy forms of nationalism.

Zionists imagine the world as a honeycomb. Bonding tribally, nationally, can generate sweet ideas and great achievements, not just xenophobic poison. Rooted in our ancient past and traditions, Israel is what Zionism’s founder Theodor Herzl called Altneuland: old-new land. Gali Atari won the Eurovision in 1978 with “Milk & Honey,” singing an old, particularist call with an expansive vision, delighting in “Hallelujah, sounds of love, Hallelujah, the sunshine above.”

HAVING ESTABLISHED Israel, Zionism now seeks to perfect it. While telling outsiders challenging our legitimacy: “Judge us like any normal country,” as insiders debating our future we strive to be exceptional. These aspirations aren’t about being better than others – just trying to better ourselves, then others.

The boycotters single out Zionism as somehow illegitimate – despite our 3,500-year history here. They often try negating nationalism itself – while somehow supporting Palestinian nationalism and feminist, racial and LGBTQ particularisms. And, characterizing the conflict in black-and-white terms, they cast Israel as “the oppressor” with the Palestinians as “the victims.”

Just as European history is more than all of you squabbling with one another, Israel is much more than the Palestinian conflict. And while we’re not perfect, we’ve repeatedly taken risks for peace. Consider this: Israel withdraws from Gaza in 2005 completely, yet Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and others still claim Gaza’s “occupied.” Then, Hamas unleashes 698 rockets – and Israel is supposed to tolerate these war crimes peacefully, while apologizing for existing.

Unfortunately for the haters, we’re not going away. Remember Ofra Haza’s 1983 second-place entry “Chai” – Alive – a timely reminder to contestants that winning songs sometimes lose Eurovision. “Many are my thorns, but also my flowers,” she sang: patriotically, maturely, acknowledging complexity.

Capturing Israel’s altneu old-new nature, dancing between the universal and particular, emphasizing Jews’ miraculous continuity and never-ending hopes despite oppression, she sang delightedly, not just defiantly: “I’m still alive... The Jewish people live/ This is the song Grandpa sang yesterday to Papa/ And today it’s me.”

But not just “me.” While affirming Jewish vitality, she vowed: “I’ll reach out my hands... To my friends from across the seas.”

So welcome from across the seas – enjoy. If you choose to correct the record back home, please tell everyone that we aren’t just alive: but, having returned to our natural habitat, our homeland, ever improving and stretching, still being self-critical – we’ve figured out how to thrive.

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