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Israel Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 04, 2014 5 Comments
Yesterday was oral argument at the Supreme Court in a lawsuit over whether Congress had the power to designate Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel on passports. The case is Zivotofsky v. Kerry, and the issue is a fight between Congress and the Executive Branch, Via Scotus Blog:
Issue: Whether a federal statute that directs the Secretary of State, on request, to record the birthplace of an American citizen born in Jerusalem as born in "Israel" on a Consular Report of Birth Abroad and on a United States passport is unconstitutional on the ground that the statute "impermissibly infringes on the President's exercise of the recognition power reposing exclusively in him."
Prof. Eugene Kontorovich points out that legally the issue is not the same as the political issue of recognition of Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. Most observers of the oral argument believe it it will be a 5-4 split, most likely in favor of the Executive Branch. But oral arguments are not necessarily accurate predictors of ultimate outcome, so who knows. Regardless of the legal technicalities, the media and public perception is that this is a political issue regarding Jerusalem, particularly in light of hostile and threatening statements made by the Obama administration over Israeli exercise of sovereignty over "East Jerusalem" (the part of Jerusalem illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949-1967). Via Mirabelle from Israelly Cool:
Some of Obama’s biggest recent grievances in that relationship [between Obama and Netanyahu] seem to have been over Jews living in various neighborhoods in Jerusalem. In the past few weeks, Obama or his spokespeople have expressed their displeasure with Jews moving into homes they legally purchased in Silwan, planned construction of mixed Jewish and Arab housing in Givat Hamatos, or Monday’s announcement of homes in Har Homa and Ramat Shlomo. Rather than go on a lengthy rant about my complete and utter disappointment at my own President, I though we’d just take a trip in the Wayback Machine, to 2008 . . .
In 2008, Obama pledged that Israel could keep its undivided Capital of Jerusalem, if it likes it. That was then. This is now:

Posted by David Gerstman on October 31, 2014 6 Comments
Elder of Ziyon picked up on a recent bit of hypocrisy when Egypt began destroying hundreds of homes along the Sinai's border with Gaza. In So where are the Rachel Corries for Egypt?  Elder writes:
800 homes demolished in the next few days? Israel has never demolished so many in so little time. Yet over the years there have been numerous NGOs and reports about Israel's home demolitions - and no one cares about Egypt's. There are no groups popping up where young idealistic moronic college students volunteer to act as human shields to protect these homes. Indeed, no one cares about Egypt's demolishing homes for security purposes.
Rachel Corrie was a college student who didn't heed the IDF's warning to get out of the way during the demolition of a house in Gaza that housed a smuggling tunnel; Corrie was killed during the demolition. Elder is right in saying that there has been precious little protest of Egypt's actions. (Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch has been exception. In the case of Egypt, as with Israel, he sides with Hamas.) But what's frustrating is not just in the vastly different reactions to demolitions carried out by Israel as opposed to those carried out by Egypt, but also the contrast in how the world treats Israeli construction plans. This week the topic of Israel building in its capital, Jerusalem, has gotten the world worked up. From the New York Times (emphasis mine):
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday that Israel would fast-track planning for 1,060 new apartments in populous Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, a move that appears calibrated to appeal to the maximum number of Israelis while causing the minimum damage to Israel internationally, according to Israeli analysts. But as is often the case, Mr. Netanyahu’s decision prompted swift international condemnation at a time when Israel’s relations with Washington are already strained and risked further igniting Palestinian anger and tensions in Jerusalem. It was also unlikely to satisfy the right-wing political rivals it was intended to appease, the analysts said.
Though there was "Palestinian anger" there's no immediate consequence to this action. No one lost property. No one was displaced.

Posted by New Neo on October 30, 2014 20 Comments
The senior official in the Obama administration who referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as "chickshit" probably has much more courageous things than Operation Isotope on his resume. Operation Isotope was a raid involving the rescue of hijacked Sabena Flight 571, and Netanyahu was a participant, along with another Israeli Prime Minister-to-be, Ehud Barak:
On 9 May 1972 at 4:00 p.m. the rescue operation began: a team of 16 Sayeret Matkal commandos, led by Ehud Barak and including Benjamin Netanyahu, both future Israeli Prime Ministers, approached the airplane. The commandos were disguised as airplane technicians in white overalls, and were able to convince the terrorists that the aircraft needed repair. The commandos stormed the aircraft and took control of the plane in ten minutes, killing both male hijackers and capturing the two women. All the passengers were rescued. Three of the passengers were wounded, one of whom eventually died from her wounds. Netanyahu was wounded during the rescue, presumably by friendly fire. The two female surviving terrorists were eventually sentenced to life imprisonment, but were freed as part of a prisoner exchange after the 1982 Lebanon War.
[caption id="attachment_104421" align="alignnone" width="550"]Benjamin Netanyahu is congratulated by former Israeli President Zalman Shazar during a ceremony honoring the elite commandos who rescued the hostages from the Sabena Flight 571. [Benjamin Netanyahu is congratulated by former Israeli President
Zalman Shazar during a ceremony honoring the elite commandos who
rescued the hostages from the Sabena Flight 571. (via Maggie's Notebook)][/caption] To paraphrase Winston Churchill: some chicken, some shit.

Posted by David Gerstman on October 29, 2014 11 Comments
Yesterday Prof Jacobson rightly assessed Jeffrey Goldberg's The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here as describing a crisis "in Obama-Israel relations." Although the White House has offered a disavowal of the profane insult made by one of Goldberg's sources, the full substance of his remarks needs to be rebutted. The offending official explained his boorish insult of Netanyahu :
“The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars,” the official said, expanding the definition of what a chickenshit Israeli prime minister looks like. “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.”
This is utterly false. Bret Stephens pointed out (Google link, emphasis mine):
The real problem for the administration is that the Israelis—along with all the other disappointed allies—are learning how little it pays to be on Barack Obama’s good side. Since coming to office in 2009, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed, against his own inclination and over the objections of his political base, to (1) recognize a Palestinian state; (2) enforce an unprecedented 10-month settlement freeze; (3) release scores of Palestinian prisoners held on murder charges; (4) embark on an ill-starred effort to reach a final peace deal with the Palestinians; (5) refrain from taking overt military steps against Iran; and (6) agree to every possible cease-fire during the summer’s war with Hamas. In exchange, Mr. Kerry publicly blamed Israel for the failure of the peace effort, the White House held up the delivery of munitions at the height of the Gaza war, and Mr. Obama is hellbent on striking whatever deal the Iranians can plausibly offer him.

Posted by David Gerstman on October 22, 2014 2 Comments
Earlier today, a Palestinian drove his car off the road into a group of people who had just gotten off Jerusalem's light rail at the Ammunition Hill stop, killing a three month old baby and injuring seven others. The Times of Israel reports:
“A private car which arrived from the direction of the French Hill junction hit a number of pedestrians who were on the pavement and injured nine of them,” police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement. “Initial indications suggest this is a hit-and-run terror attack,” Samri said. The baby died at the nearby Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus a few hours after the incident. A spokesperson for Israeli rescue service Magen David Adom said a 60-year-old woman and seven other people, including the baby’s father, were also lightly and moderately wounded in the attack. ...
The suspect , Abdelrahman al-Shaludi, previously served time in jail and has been identified by Israeli government spokesman Ofir Gendelman as a member of Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for partnering with Hamas and inciting violence.

Posted by David Gerstman on October 21, 2014 22 Comments
Remember when President Barack Obama said that the United States will "always have Israel's back" when it comes to Israel's security---especially in regards to Iran's nuclear program? Or when Secretary of State John Kerry said that with Iran "no deal was better than a bad deal?" They were lying. The administration's aim is to make a deal with Iran even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns that the emerging deal "is a threat to the entire world, and, first and foremost, this is a threat to us." Kerry's negotiation team continues to operate from a premise that "any deal is better than no deal." The Los Angeles Times is now reporting that the administration has sweetened its deal to allow Iran 4000 operational centrifuges.
The Obama administration has sweetened its offer to Iran in ongoing nuclear negotiations, saying it might accept Tehran operating 4,000 centrifuges, up from the previous 1,300, according to a semiofficial Iranian news agency. The Mehr news agency also said Monday that Iran and the six world powers seeking to negotiate a nuclear deal remained divided over how much uranium-enrichment capacity the Middle East nation should be allowed to maintain, and how to lift punitive sanctions from its economy.
Ray Tayekh, a critic of the current negotiations, observed that "the U.S. sweetener may encourage Iran to drag out negotiations to see what better offer it might receive after a few more months of talks."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on October 03, 2014 10 Comments
As if the situation in Ferguson, Missouri wasn't bad enough, Code Pink has decided to join the riots and protests. Code Pink infamously dressed as vaginas and paraded around the RNC in 2012. They also protested the maker of my favorite body wash, Ahava, (made in Israel), because it contains "occupied mud." More ominously, Medea Benjamin, the leader of Code Pink, just attended a gathering of anti-Israel groups, including notorious anti-Semites, in Tehran, as reported by Buzzfeed:
A number of American and European antiwar activists and conspiracy theorists have gathered in Tehran for a conference aimed at addressing supposed Zionist control of the United States, according to Iranian press reports and the Anti-Defamation League. Code Pink chief Medea Benjamin, journalist and former Cambodian genocide denier Gareth Porter, conspiracy journalist and 9/11 truther Wayne Madsen, and PressTV contributor Kevin Barrett are all reportedly at the conference. Other reported attendees include Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, the anti-Semitic French comedian whose performances have been banned in several French jurisdictions, several Holocaust deniers, and former congressman Mark Siljander, who pleaded guilty in 2010 to being an unregistered foreign agent for an Islamic charity that the government said was connected to terrorism.
Capitalizing on the two month anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, Code Pink is among the groups organizing a Weekend of Resistance, and is equating Ferguson to Gaza:

Posted by David Gerstman on October 03, 2014 10 Comments
The lead article in the October issue of Commentary by Omri Ceren is Yes, Israel Won in Gaza. Ceren's central premise is that Hamas built a huge terror infrastructure including tunnels, an enhanced rocket arsenal and specialized training for its terrorists, but "[a]ll of it was gone by mid-August." Hamas' plans for a spectacular terror attack against Israel and a coup against Fatah in the West Bank similarly were stymied. But what really grabbed me about the article was his description of the escalation:
In Gaza, Hamas radically escalated what had been, since the beginning of the year, a steadily increasing stream of rocket fire. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon had declared in January that Jerusalem would “not tolerate rocket fire” and that the “IDF and other security forces will continue to chase after those who shoot at Israel.” February saw more rockets and a large bomb planted on the border. In March, Hamas fired its heaviest rocket barrage since the conclusion of Israel’s 2012 incursion into Gaza—but then the fire steadily decreased throughout April and May.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 26, 2014 8 Comments
Mahmoud Abbas showed his hand today at the U.N., accusing Israel of genocide, getting a predictable reaction, via Times of Israel:
In his address, Abbas accused Israel of committing genocide in its recent conflict with terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip — calling 2014 “a year of a new war of genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian people” — and said that Israel was not interested in living in peace with its Palestinian neighbors. “It’s a speech of incitement full of lies,” an unnamed source from the PMO told the Hebrew press. “That’s not how someone who wants peace speaks.” Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said in a statement shortly after Abbas’s speech that the PA president demonstrated that “he doesn’t want and cannot be a partner for a logical diplomatic resolution.”
Here is part of the speech, in which Abbas heaps verbal abuse on Israel:

Posted by David Gerstman on September 23, 2014 2 Comments
Yesterday a jury in a federal court in New  York found the Arab Bank - the largest lender in Jordan - liable for "knowingly supporting terrorism efforts connected to two dozen attacks in the Middle East." The New York Times reports:
Arab Bank, a major Middle Eastern bank with $46 billion in assets, was accused of knowingly supporting specific terrorist acts in and around Israel during the second Palestinian uprising of the early 2000s. The verdict is expected to have a strong impact on similar legal efforts to hold financial institutions responsible for wrongdoing by their clients, even if the institutions followed banking rules, and could be seen as a deterrent for banks that conduct business in violent areas. The plaintiffs in this case, about 300 victims of 24 terrorist attacks, said the acts had been carried out by Hamas, and accused Arab Bank of supporting the organization by handling transfers and payments for Hamas members.
The Times quotes Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on the significance of the verdict.
“What this has done is it’s made the effects of American law felt in far-off places, and that is significant,” said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former terrorism finance analyst for the Treasury Department. “I don’t think any country, any bank, would want to be cut off from the U.S. financial sector, and they’re going to start thinking very carefully about whether they accept financial transactions” even from people or groups who are not on designated terrorist lists.
The damages were not determined and will be decided at a future  trial.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 23, 2014 10 Comments
Remember when Katie Zavadski of NY Magazine, Sheera Frenkel of Buzzfeed and Jon Donnison of the BBC reported that Hamas was not behind the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens, Gil-ad Shaer, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrach? That gave rise to the widespread false meme that Israeli invented the Hamas connection in order to start the Gaza war (never mind that the Gaza war actually was started and continued due to Hamas rocket fire on Israeli cities, not by Israeli reaction to the kidnapping). Since then, Hamas representatives repeatedly have admitted it was a Hamas operation. Indeed, they bragged about it, though Hamas denies that the most senior Hamas officials were involved. Israeli spokesmen not only identified the murderers, but also how they were funded and coordinated by Hamas operatives in Gaza and Turkey. Israel has been searching for the two murderers for several months. Israel finally found them last night in Hebron. After a firefight, the two were killed and Hamas, once again, admits they were Hamas operatives, as The Times of Israel reports:
Marwan Kawasme and Amer Abu Aysha were both killed during an early Tuesday arrest attempt in Hebron, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.... At around 3 a.m., the forces descended on the house where the suspects were believed to be hiding and began firing heavily on the home. Both were killed after refusing to surrender. “We opened fire, they returned fire and they were killed in the exchange,” IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Peter Lerner told Reuters. “We have visual confirmation for one. The second one, we have no visual confirmation, but the assumption is he was killed.” Hamas confirmed in a statement the two were killed, Israeli media reported. “Two members of the Izz A-Din al-Qasam brigades, Marwan Kawasme and Amer Abu Aysha, were killed after a journey of sacrifice and giving,” Hamas spokesman Hussam Badran said in a statement. “This is the path of resistance and we walk it side by side.” An armed bulldozer was also used to destroy the home the two were in during the operation, Israel’s Channel 10 news reported.
The Jerusalem Post further reports:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 22, 2014 5 Comments
You need no better proof of how the anti-Israel Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement poisons everything it touches than the story of how anti-Israel activists turned a once-respected medical journal, The Lancet, into a BDS platform. Just like Ohio University student senate president Megan Marzec hijacked the purpose of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to bash Israel, so too a handful anti-Israel physicians, including the notorious Dr. Mads Gilbert, corrupted the purpose of Lancet by publishing an anti-Israel screed in the journal. That was bad enough, and caused substantial protest against the biased politicization of a medical journal . Then, NGO Monitor, a group that investigates the anti-Israel Non-Governmental Organization industry, uncovered that two of the physicians involved peddled anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and circulated a David Duke video. The Telegraph in Britain reports:

Posted by David Gerstman on September 19, 2014 3 Comments
The New York Times earlier this month published an expose of how foreign money influenced think tanks. One of the subjects of the article was the Brookings Institution, its vice president Indyk and $14.8 million grant that the government of Qatar had given Brookings. A former scholar at Brookings cautioned that because of Qatar's influence any report coming out of the institution is likely not to be the "full story." The New York Times didn't seem much concerned with the implication of its reporting but some people did notice. In Tablet this week Lee Smith pounced on the Times for not looking into the implications of what it reported.
Or maybe the editors decided that it was all on the level, and the money influenced neither Indyk’s government work on the peace process nor Brookings’ analysis of the Middle East. Or maybe journalists just don’t think it’s worth making a big fuss out of obvious conflicts of interest that may affect American foreign policy. Maybe Qatar’s $14.8 million doesn’t affect Brookings’ research projects or what the think tank’s scholars tell the media, including the New York Times, about subjects like Qatar, Hamas, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other related areas in which Qatar has key interests at stake. Maybe the think tank’s vaunted objectivity, and Indyk’s personal integrity and his pride in his career as a public servant, trump the large piles of vulgar Qatari natural gas money that keep the lights on and furnish the offices of Brookings scholars and pay their cell-phone bills and foreign travel.
Smith also observed that the Qatar connection made Indyk poorly suited as an interlocutor for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
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