Leaders of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) warned supporters to be vigilant against what they believe to be increasing anti-Israel positions from leaders, and the trend of encroaching tolerance for anti-Semitic rhetoric masked as anti-Zionism, during the organization’s annual gala on Sunday.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the gala was held as a webcast, highlighted by video addresses from leaders and activists in the ZOA, as well as politicians such as former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

The event was hosted by Jewish Iranian-American journalist Lisa Daftari, who personally praised the ZOA for its work in teaching about the dangers of a nuclear Iran, a cause she is intimately involved in.

Mort Klein, president of ZOA for the past 28 years, told viewers that advances which the ZOA supports often get reversed by various governments — dating back to the time Great Britain restricted immigration at the outset of World War II despite international treaties giving Jews the right to immigrate to Mandatory Palestine in 1920.

“Britain turned around and slammed shut the doors to Israel, just at the moment when millions of Jews faced annihilation in Europe,” Klein said.

Today too, according to Klein, the ZOA needs to remain vigilant against what he said was the Biden administration backtracking advances made during the Trump administration.

Klein listed the Trump administration’s pro-Israel accomplishments that the ZOA had long backed, including the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, recognizing the legality of settlements in Judea and Samaria, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, adding sanctions against Iran, defunding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), supporting Israel in the United Nations, opposing the International Criminal Court’s investigations into Israel’s alleged war crimes and cutting off funding of the Palestinian Authority over payments to the families of terrorists.

Almost all these policies have been reversed by the Biden administration, Klein noted.

“We are now facing an administration that is moving to backtrack on some of these very important advances. We’re at a critical moment when Israel and her leaders and all of us who love Israel must stand strong against what this administration is trying to do,” Klein said.

Klein read the words of then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden from 1995 in support of the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, which enshrined in American law that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel and that the U.S. embassy should be moved there. At the time, Biden emphasized how despite efforts by various empires and regimes tried to sever Jewish ties to Jerusalem, “the Jewish people returned to claim what many rulers have tried to deny them for centuries, the right to peaceful existence, their own country, in their own capital.” Yet today, the Biden administration is working to open a Palestinian consulate in western Jerusalem.

“Such a consulate would undermine Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem, it violates the Jerusalem Embassy Act, will likely result in violating the Oslo Accords which prohibit the Palestinian Authority from engaging in foreign relations,” Klein said. “The consulate is a diplomatic insult and danger to Israel and the Jewish people.”

Klein said that opening the consulate would be a reward to the “fascist, terrorist dictatorship” of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who he said will continue to encourage Arabs to kill Jews.

The ZOA has placed giant banners on major buildings in Jerusalem, urging Israeli leaders and citizens to say “no” to the consulate. The organization has also urged other Jewish groups to join this effort.

“But no Jewish group has — I’m sorry to say, it pains me to say — not AIPAC, [American Jewish] Committee, not the ADL, not the Conference of Presidents and not any of the other major groups have done so,” Klein said. “We must urge them to do so to support the Israeli government.”

Klein said that the Biden administration is also undermining Israel’s right to build settlements in Judea and Samaria, which was recognized as legal by the Trump administration. Meanwhile, there are no restrictions on Palestinians building in the same areas. Klein called these actions from the Biden administration blatantly anti-Semitic.

He also pointed to Biden’s warning against the scourge of anti-Semitism during a commemoration of the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, but then asked why Biden and Democratic leaders do not condemn by name the anti-Semitic comments by progressive members of Congress.

“While Israel was being bombarded with over 4,400 Hamas rockets, President Biden shockingly, strongly praised the Jew-hater Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who opposes Israel’s very existence,” Klein said. “Shortly after Tlaib again promoted boycotting Israel and called Israel an apartheid state, Biden disgracefully said to Rashida Tlaib … ‘I admire your intellect. I admire your passion. I admire your concern for so many other people. You’re a fighter, Rashida Tlaib, and God thank you for being a fighter.’ What a disgraceful episode in Biden’s administration.”

He also raised alarm about numerous Biden administration appointees who, according to Klein, had a record of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements. This was so alarming, he said, that ZOA established a webpage to list and document the statements of 20 appointees.

‘Fighting for Truth’
“The fact that thousands of us are gathered here at this virtual gala shows that so many of us, such huge number of us, do care,” Klein concluded. “We will continue to be strong and with the help of Almighty God and with the help of the Jewish Zionists and evangelical Christians Zionists and remarkable Israeli people, we will overcome all of these serious but temporary obstacles and will ultimately re-strengthen U.S.-Israel relations and promote the truth of the Arab Islamist war against Israel and the West, and will finally implement the moral, principled, wise policies that will strengthen and benefit both Israel and America.”

The event also featured a brief address by the ZOA’s newly elected board chairman, attorney David Schoen, who served on Trump’s legal team during his Congressional impeachment hearings.

“Tonight, we celebrate an organization that is dedicated to fighting for truth, an organization that is brave and bold, and an organization that is determined to share and promote facts,” Schoen said. “As we look around the world at the end of 2021, we see increasing anti-Semitism both in the United States and abroad, including violent attacks on college campuses and synagogues across the country, and a harsh anti-Israel climate on Capitol Hill. Israel bashing has become the norm as few are willing to stand against the current in order to shut down the lies.”

ZOA presented the Mortimer Zuckerman Award for Outstanding Jewish Philanthropy to Gloria Kaylie and her late husband Harvey, as well as the Justice Louis D. Brandeis Award to activist Rubin Margules.

“Like Mort, I was born in a [displaced persons] camp in Germany — in Bamberg, Germany. My father and mother were liberated from concentration camps in which nearly all their former families were murdered. So too my wife’s family,” Margules said. “My father was consumed with pride by the emergence of the State of Israel, a haven then and now for the Jewish people and a source of pride to all of us. He taught me love of Israel and even more importantly, that we must do what it takes to ensure that never again means never again!”

Source: https://unitedwithisrael.org/biden-administration-abandoning-israel-appointing-antisemites-says-zionist-leader/

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An Israeli activist holds a banner during a protest against the US peace plan for the Middle East, in front of the US ambassador’s residence in Jerusalem, on May 15, 2020, as Palestinians commemorate the 72nd anniversary of the 1948 Nakba or “catastroph” which left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the war accompanying the birth of Israel. AFP

Palestinians pray during a protest marking the 72nd anniversary of Nakba and against Israeli plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, in the village of Sawiya near Nablus May 15, 2020. Reuters

Palestinian medics run away from tear gas fired by Israeli troops during a protest marking the 72nd anniversary of Nakba and against Israeli plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, in the village of Sawiya near Nablus May 15, 2020. Reuters

A Palestinian man argues with an Israeli border policewoman during a protest marking the 72nd anniversary of Nakba and against Israeli plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, in the village of Sawiya near Nablus May 15, 2020. Reuters

Israeli activists hold placards as they protest against the US peace plan for the Middle East in front of the US ambassador’s residence in Jerusalem, on May 15, 2020. AFP

Since Donald Trump became US President, the walls have been rapidly closing in on Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, and his commitment to negotiating a two-state agreement with Israel.

In January, Mr. Trump issued a “peace proposal” that virtually invites Israel to annex about 30 percent of the occupied West Bank, including the strategically crucial Jordan Valley. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, successfully campaigned to remain in office on a promise to do exactly that in the coming months.

A Palestinian man argues with an Israeli border policewoman during a protest against Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, near Nablus in the West Bank on May 15, 2020. Reuters

The Trump administration has asked Tel Aviv to wait until a joint Israeli-US mapping committee determines which chunks of Palestinian territory Washington will allow Israel to devour. Palestinians have not been included in any of these conversations whatsoever. Naturally, they are desperate to assert their agency, make themselves relevant, and press the international community to act fast to save the possibility of a two-state peace agreement.

On Tuesday, Mr. Abbas voiced this anguish, declaring: “The Palestine Liberation Organisation [of which he is the chairman] and the State of Palestine are no longer committed to all signed agreements and understandings with the Israeli government and the American government, including security commitments.”

It’s not clear what this announcement will mean in practical terms for the Palestinian Authority government in Ramallah and its considerable administrative and governance role in the lives of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. But by adding that Israel would now have to “uphold responsibilities before the international community as the occupying power” he was clearly hinting at the PLO’s longstanding “nuclear option” of dismantling the quasi-independent Palestinian administration that has been developed within the occupation’s broader context since 1993.

Nickolay Mladenov, called May 20, 2020 on Israel to drop plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, joining a growing international chorus of opposition. AFP

Dismantling it would certainly create innumerable headaches for Israel. If the PA completely closes its institutions, Israel would theoretically have to step in and directly rule Palestinian towns as well as provide for the basic needs of the population.

That’s not something many Israelis want to do, but it’s not impossible either.

The greatest brunt, especially at first, would be felt by ordinary Palestinians, who would lose a wide range of administrative and social services and, in many cases, jobs; the PA and its subordinate agencies are the biggest employers in the West Bank and Gaza.

Completely renouncing the Oslo Accords and refusing to deal with Israel would also mean giving up most of the PA’s operating budget, which is funded by Palestinian taxes that under the accords are collected by Israel and transferred to the Authority.

But apart from repeated declarations that the Palestinians have ended all security and intelligence co-operation with Israel and the US, there is no sign that the PA has changed its functional modus operandi. No one seems to have resigned from, let alone closed, any office, though Palestinian security forces have reportedly been withdrawing from certain areas.

The bottom line is that Palestinians have not developed any practicable alternative national strategy to seeking a political agreement with the Israelis. If negotiating with Israel now seems a complete dead-end, armed struggle has an even worse track record. And no one in their right mind really believes Israel is going to be brought to heel by the UN or to its knees by grassroots international boycotts.

So, this threat is probably an empty one, at least until a new leadership with an alternative vision emerges – although the dire situation certainly demonstrates the urgent need for both.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas heads a leadership meeting at his headquarters, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, on May 19, 2020. AP

It is difficult to understand what Mr. Abbas hoped to gain by this speech under the current circumstances. Some Palestinians whisper that the plan was for him to emphasize that this is what the PA and PLO had always intended to do in the event of a major Israeli annexation. That makes more sense, given that should Israel grab all that land such a response would probably be inevitable and arguably justifiable.

But it hasn’t happened yet. And it may not. Publicly, the Trump administration is not urging Israelis to avoid annexation for the rest of the year, but it isn’t encouraging them either. It’s hard to imagine that Mr. Trump would be disappointed if the Israelis decide to wait and see what happens.

With the looming threat of a Joe Biden presidency, Tel Aviv may feel some urgency to act now. But Mr. Biden has pointedly repeated his commitment to a two-state solution and insists he won’t be bound by any new commitments Mr. Trump makes that would render it impossible and is even prepared to reverse them. Is that a fight Israel really wants to have with Washington in 2021 and beyond?

Since it’s unclear what the Israelis will do, why would Palestinians want to appear to be abrogating the very agreements, particularly the Oslo Accords’ Declaration of Principles, that explicitly disallow annexation?

No doubt Mr. Abbas is trying to remain relevant and to communicate the level of Palestinian desperation and despair to an apparently apathetic international community. But the price for such defiant-but-empty bluster – reminiscent of the “you’re leaving because I want you to go” genre of torch song – is potentially quite high. Much wiser to let Israel administer the rhetorical as well as practical coup de grace to the Oslo process.

The Palestinian leadership has said this kind of thing before, although not quite so categorically, and then decided, in the cold light of day, that canceling co-operation, let alone dismantling fledgling Palestinian national institutions, doesn’t make much sense. It is, we keep discovering, easy, and even habitual for both parties’ rash actions to hurt Palestinians and Israelis simultaneously.

Fortunately, Israel and the US are essentially ignoring the speech. Unfortunately, there may come a time when such drastic declarations and steps become unavoidable. But last week wasn’t it. The immediate goal for all responsible actors must be avoiding such a calamitous, but closer than ever, point of no return.

Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States ­Institute in Washington

Source: https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/palestine-s-mahmoud-abbas-is-threatening-the-nuclear-option-1.1024046#2

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Jerusalem (CNN) Palestinian leaders have called on the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to suspend its recognition of Israel just days after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas urged the group to “revise” its agreements with the Jewish state.

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Israeli authorities welcomed the announcement, but Palestinians and other world leaders say the move would spark violence and unhinge prospects for a Middle East peace accord.

Israel regards Jerusalem as its capital, but the international community says the city’s status should be determined through peace talks. Palestinians seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a future, independent state.

More: Hamas leader calls for new ‘intifada’ after Trump’s Jerusalem move

More: Trump declares Jerusalem as Israel’s capital

What is an intifada?

The Arabic word intifada means “shake”, “shaking” or “shake off.” In this case, intifada refers to an uprising against Israel.

The first intifada began in 1987 after Israeli troops killed four Palestinians at a checkpoint in Gaza and an Israeli soldier opened fire on protesting Palestinians, killing a 17-year-old. Images of Palestinian youths throwing rocks and stones at Israeli soldiers were published worldwide. Israeli troops responded with deadly force. The Oslo Accords between the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the setting up of the Palestinian Authority and Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank brought an end to that intifada in 1993.

More: Trump’s plan signals to Palestinians — the less you give up, the more you lose

More: Why declaring Jerusalem as Israel’s capital may upend peace in Middle East

The second intifada began in September 2000 after Ariel Sharon, who went on to serve as Israel’s prime minister from 2001-2006, visited the disputed holy site in Jerusalem known as the Temple Mount to Jews and the Noble Sanctuary (Haram al-Sharif) to Muslims. Palestinians feared Israel was preparing to retake the site, which is home to the Al Aqsa mosque. Two days after Sharon’s visit, Muhammad Durrah, 12, was killed in a firefight between Israeli troops and Palestinians on the Gaza strip, stoking more Palestinian anger. This Hamas-led intifada was characterized by deadly violence, including shootings and suicide bombings. It ended months after the death of Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat in November 2004.

What could a third intifada mean for the troubled region?

“We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision,” said Hamas leader Ismail Haniya at a news conference in the Gaza Strip Thursday.

However some believe a third intifada will not occur.

Muhammad Shehada, an activist from the Gaza Strip, wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the likelihood of another mass uprising was at an “all-time low” because it is not in the interests of the Palestinian Authority or Hamas.

Contributing: Oren Dorell and Kim Hjelmgaard

Source: https://www.garnertedarmstrong.org/wp-admin/post-new.php

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• According to a leaked German government report, up to 6.6 million migrants — both refugees and migrants seeking a better life — are currently waiting to cross to Europe from Africa.
• The “mistake” the Israelis made seems to have been that, although driven out as refugees, they exercised their right to self-determination, returned to their homeland, and turned it into one of the most successful countries in the world. The Palestinians, who had an equal opportunity to achieve that, remain in poverty and disarray, with terrorism for 80 years as their only notable achievement. If they had agreed to work with the Jews instead of fighting them, who knows where they might be today?
• To begin with, there actually are no Palestinian people, as used in the current sense of the term. The Oslo Accords accurately refer to Arabs, which is what they are — Arabs who left Israel in the war of 1947-8 in order not to be involved in a conflict in which other Arabs fought with Jews and Christians and who currently make up more than a million of the Arabs now living in Israel as citizens with equal rights.

Refugees are back in the news. This summer, the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa is likely to rise significantly. According to the Daily Telegraph:

“Europe could face a new wave of migrant arrivals this summer, a leaked German government report has warned. Up to 6.6m people are waiting in countries around the Mediterranean to cross into Europe, according to details of the classified report leaked to Bild newspaper.”

With the closing of the route through the Balkans and entry via Greece, most refugees, economic migrants and asylum seekers are crossing the Mediterranean into Spain or Italy, putting those countries under enormous strain. Since 2016, Austria has strengthened border police to prevent thousands more entering from Italy, and increased the number of troops and armored vehicles on the border in 2017.

On World Refugee Day 2016, the United Nation’s High Commission for Refugees announcedthat there are now more displaced persons than there were after World War Two: “The total at the end of 2015 reached 65.3 million – or one out of every 113 people on Earth… The number represents a 5.8 million increase on the year before.” During the past three years, Gatestone Fellow Soeren Kern has published a strong series of well-researched articles examining the impact of the refugee crisis on Europe overall and on individual countries such as Germany and Sweden. The rise in criminality in general, rape, Islamic radicalization, and even terror attacks as a result of a barely controlled influx of migrants from mainly Muslim countries has created alarm in country after country.

Migrants arrive at a beach on the Greek island of Kos after crossing part of the Aegean sea from Turkey in a rubber dinghy, on August 15, 2015. (Photo by Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)

This alarm has led to serious divisions. It has divided people politically, with the left and centrists welcoming increasing numbers and the right — in particular the far-right in Europe — calling for more rigid controls and even the expulsion of many incomers. Even this division conceals two important issues.

First, it is easy to forget that many countries are legally bound to accept refugees from wherever they originate. These are the 142 countries who are signatories to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol extending it. They include European countries into which refugees have been coming, such as Germany, Spain, Italy, France and the UK. (The United States is signatory only to the 1967 Protocol.) The Convention guarantees that refugees shall not be sent back into harm’s way, and that, according to the UNHCR, “refugees deserve, as a minimum, the same standards of treatment enjoyed by other foreign nationals in a given country and, in many cases, the same treatment as nationals”. Among the few non-signatories are the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

Second, there is a moral dimension that transcends simple party politics. Many religious people, such as Christians, may give greater priority to compassion for their fellow man than national concerns about the ability to cope with overwhelming numbers of new arrivals or ways of integrating them into their own societies. Many Jewish people, conscious of the world’s failure to take in hundreds of thousands of Jews in the years leading up to, and even during, the Holocaust, also feel a moral obligation to show a level of concern for today’s refugees far above what was shown to their grandparents. This view also extended to the way a barely-established state, Israel, took in around a million Jews expelled from Arab states after 1948.

Generosity and moral actions, however, may unintentionally make matters worse. In a recent Gatestone article on migrants, Douglas Murray quotes a statement by Bill Gates, a philanthropist who has started to rethink the results of such generosity:

“On the one hand you want to demonstrate generosity and take in refugees. But the more generous you are, the more word gets around about this — which in turn motivates more people to leave Africa. Germany cannot possibly take in the huge number of people who are wanting to make their way to Europe.”

Balancing legal requirements, stemming from the 1951 Convention, with the needs of national security, finance, and social cohesion, still proves a major dilemma for signatory states. Non-signatories such as the Gulf States, vastly wealthier than European countries such as Greece or Italy, have no such a dilemma, even though many Syrian and North African refugees speak much the same language, have the same religion, and practice similar customs in daily life. That is an anomaly that has yet to be addressed seriously by the United Nations, UNHCR, and many national parliaments.

There are likely to be further waves of refugees in the next few years, then more from Syria now that Islamic State is all but finished in Raqqa. The civil war in Syria, with the ISIS threat to a large extent removed, is certain to intensify; then more will flee Iraq with the recapture of a battered Mosul and further clashes between Sunni and Shi’i militias; then more from Libya, where ISIS-affiliated groups clash with a multitude of other Islamist fighters; then more from other failed and failing states in North Africa, the Middle East, the rest of Africa and Afghanistan, where the Taliban are again resurgent — more, in fact, from everywhere as social structures break down further, now that so many qualified people such as doctors, teachers, scientists have vanished to Europe. According to a leaked German government report, up to 6.6 million migrants — both refugees and migrants seeking a better life — are currently waiting to cross to Europe from Africa.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), since its establishment in 1950, has resettled some 50 million refugees — an extraordinary achievement by any standards. Today it faces an even higher figure, all at one time. The collapse around the world of so many countries that never became democracies — countries lacking in abundant natural resources and whose dictators, taking international aid for their own pockets, sucked them dry — has led to an exodus that threatens to displace some of the world’s leading democracies. Many are now under a barely manageable strain and growing impoverishment, actually enabled by our democratic values, our concern for international conventions, our compassion and, at times, our naïvete. Worst of all, perhaps, our decline will leave future refugees without sanctuaries in which they may thrive and give their children the opportunities for which they came.

Something, however, is missing. The left, who so often lead the campaigns to welcome to our shores an almost unfettered number of newcomers, alongside a great many decent and humanitarian people from churches or secular organizations, have in recent years justified their actions through the concept of intersectionality.

In itself, intersectionality could a useful way of looking at the world by seeing links between people who suffer different forms of oppression, such as racism, misogyny, homophobia and so on. It argues, for example, that a poor black woman has more issues to solve than, say, a middle-class white woman, even though both may be victims of male oppression. In theory, it is a useful tool; in practice, not so much.

How does intersectionality apply to refugees? Well, in general the “Left” have made the open reception of refugees a major cause, using intersectionality to justify this while condemning any other approach as fascist.

Articles often drip with standard far-left language: “emancipate ourselves from all forms of oppression”, “if we want to fight capitalism with all its forms of oppression”, and “white supremacist behavior harms our political self-organization” and other displays of racism framed in victimhood.[1]

Referring to Linda Sarsour, a prominent Palestinian-American “anti-Zionist,” Benjamin Gladstone argues in Tablet Magazine that

“no matter what the Sarsours of the world say, Jewish issues do belong in the intersectional justice movement. … Despite its enormous value and importance, however, the idea of intersectionality can also be manipulated to exclude Jewish issues from pro-justice movements.”

Why “Jewish issues”? And what does this have to do with refugees? The answer is that the “Left”, including the anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist “Left”, have turned intersectionality into two seemingly unlinked matters: as an argument to call for unlimited entry for refugees and other migrants; and as a weapon to advance their hostility for Israel in demonstrations, in conferences, and in their written work.

The clearest expression of this refusal to include Jewish concerns in any intersectional discussion is the way “Left-wing” and anti-racist demonstrators, and speakers, starting in Ferguson in 2014, have consciously linked the Black Lives Matter movement to the Palestinian cause, blaming the “oppression” of the Palestinians on Jews, Zionists, and Israel, and then appealing to intersectionality as the basis for that link. This pairing of two causes rapidly became a core part of the Black Lives Matter movement. Already by 2015, in a deeply anti-Semitic and anti-Israel document, the 2015 Black Solidarity Statement with Palestine, one reads:

“Our support extends to those living under occupation and siege, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the 7 million Palestinian refugees exiled in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. The refugees’ right to return to their homeland in present-day Israel is the most important aspect of justice for Palestinians.”

There is, of course, no mention of Palestinian repression of free speech, of corrupt Palestinian governance, of Palestinian terrorism, or other abuses that follow in the wake of rotten governance. This overdone concern for generations of the descendants of Palestinian refugees — people forced to live in camps, not by Israel but by the Arab states referred to — is then artificially made to meld with the intersectional concern for refugees who are fleeing into Europe from wars in Muslim countries.

It is precisely here that the pretence of intersectionality on the left is most fully exposed. It is not just that supporters of intersectionality refuse to accept Jews as recipients of their outpourings of love and generosity, or that they focus in a racist and fascist manner on the supposed evils of the only Jewish state. They show themselves to be hypocrites in two ways.

To begin with, there actually are no Palestinian people, as used in the current sense of the term. The Oslo Accords accurately refer to Arabs, which is what they are — Arabs who left Israel in the war of 1947-8 in order not to be involved in a conflict in which other Arabs fought with Jews and Christians and who currently make up more than a million of the Arabs now living in Israel as citizens with equal rights. These Arabs who abandoned Israel while it was fighting for its life and who afterwards wanted to return. Israel refused on the grounds that these countrymen had not been loyal. It is those displaced persons, largely in Jordan and Lebanon, who then found themselves on the wrong end of a war that their brother Arabs had started and, to everyone’s astonishment, had lost. It is these Arabs (and their descendants), who fled Israel during the War of 1947-8, and who are therefore considered by Israel a fifth-column, who are what we now call the Palestinians.

Jews have remained in place in the area continuously for more than three thousand years — with Arabs, Christians, Turks, Helenes, Philistines, and whoever else came along — even when, at times, many were forced out.

One might have assumed that this history of abuse of the Jews would excite intersectionalists into reaching out to Jewish people everywhere and working with them to quell anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish terrorism. Instead, they have chosen to align with a people whose leaders have refused multiple times to accept a Palestinian state each time it was offered to them.

Instead, they apparently prefer to hate Jews and the Jewish state of Israel.

This is important. Jewish refugees from the Russian pogroms and Russia in World War I, long before the Holocaust, and from Arab and Muslim states were among the earliest to head for Palestine, then Israel, in order to build a new Jewish homeland, where Jews would be guaranteed a refuge from violence and hatred. Do not those refugees deserve the same intersectional support as those flowing into Europe today? Do not the many thousands of black Jews who went from Ethiopia and Sudan to Israel deserve backing from Black Lives Matter? Do not the thousands of Indian Jews now in Israel deserve friendship from people of color?

Instead, left-wing intersectionalists work towards an increasingly unachievable Palestinian “right of return”. In June 2017, the radical publishing house Verso, hosted an event at which Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, spoke. In 2009, Barghouti accurately said:

“I do not buy into the two-state solution. It is not just pragmatically impossible, it was never a moral solution. The first issue would be the right of return, but if the refugees were to return you cannot have a two-state solution like one Palestinian commentator remarked, you will have a Palestinian state next to a Palestinian state rather than a Palestinian state next to Israel.”

Speaking after Barghouti was Nyle Fort, a prominent organizer of the Black Lives Matter in Ferguson. Fort’s own anti-Semitism, under the US State Department and internationally-recognized IHRA definitions, and his support for Palestinian terrorists place Barghouti’s earlier remarks in a clear context.

There is no room here for a discussion of the spurious nature of “Palestinian Refugees” or the fact that they are kept in refugee camps — not by Israel but by Arab states. But such a discussion within groups who use intersectionality as a tool for hatred against Jews and Israelis is long overdue.

If intersectionality means anything as a system for bringing diverse peoples together, for helping refugees settle, for expressing solidarity with people who have suffered, it is meaningless if certain people are excluded. The “mistake” the Israelis made seems to have been that, although driven out as refugees, they exercised their right to self-determination, returned to their homeland, and turned it into one of the most successful countries in the world. The Palestinians, who had an equal opportunity to attain the same success, remain in poverty and disarray, with terrorism for 80 years as their only notable achievement. If they had agreed to work with the Jews instead of fighting them, who knows where they might be today? That would have been positive intersectionality, bringing two suffering people together for the common good. But to some, being “politically correct” evidently matters more than making the world a better place. The Jews preach tikkun olam, “repairing the world”. What are radical intersectionalists doing to achieve that?

Denis MacEoin PhD is an Irish commentator on Islam, Israel and the Middle East and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute. He lives in England.

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[1] Nadiye Ünsal, an activist at the Refugee Protestcamp at Oranienplatz in Berlin, writing on“Challenging ‘Refugees’ and ‘Supporters’: Intersectional Power Structures in the Refugee Movement in Berlin”

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Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10705/refugees-intersectionalists-jews

[Disclaimer]

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Accompanied by a high-level American delegation, Kushner reiterated Trump’s commitment to finding a lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which Trump has referred to as “the ultimate deal.”

Netanyahu said such a deal is “within our reach,” and promised to work with the Trump administration “to advance peace, stability and security in our region.”

But the short readout of the introduction provided by Israel’s Government Press Office lacked clear specifics or any stated goals. The White House, in pursuing a peace deal, has yet to lay out a framework for negotiations following multiple meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

That ambiguity was reflected in the readout of Kushner’s meeting with Palestinian authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Kushner and Abbas expressed optimism about working together to achieve a deal, but there were no concrete steps outlined.

“We highly appreciate President Trump’s efforts to strike a historical peace deal, a statement he repeated more than one time during our meetings in Washington, Riyadh and Bethlehem,” Abbas said at the beginning of the meeting, according to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency. “We know that things are difficult and complicated, but there is nothing impossible with these good efforts.”

Before arriving in the region, Kushner, along with a delegation that includes Special Envoy for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt and Deputy Adviser Dina Powell, visited the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. If Trump wants to initiate a regional peace initiative, these three countries are critical players in the process. Kushner even met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi despite the United States cutting $100 million from its aid to Egypt this week.

In Tel Aviv and Ramallah, Kushner is encountering two leaders seemingly unable and unwilling to make concessions that are necessary for any real progress.

Netanyahu, under criminal investigation for bribery and breach of trust, has shifted sharply to the right to solidify support among his voter base.

In a recent speech at a rally in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu attacked the Oslo Accords, the interim Israeli-Palestinian agreement intended to facilitate a solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also slammed “the left and the media,” accusing them of trying to carry out a government coup.

If Netanyahu wanted to make concessions to the Palestinians as part of a peace process, he would need the support of center and left parties in the Israeli parliament. Attacking those parties makes them less likely to support Netanyahu and leaves the Israeli Prime Minister with little flexibility for negotiations.

“In that situation, politically, domestically, and I would say personally, with all the problems that [Netanyahu] has back home, it’s almost impossible to create new plans and new ideas,” said Yoaz Hendel, chairman of the Institute for Zionist Strategies, a conservative Israeli think tank.

Palestinian leaders, who were concerned about America’s inability to act as an impartial mediator in negotiations under Trump, are still waiting for the White House to openly commit to a two-state solution. Such a vision has long been the international consensus on what the future of the region should be: an Israeli state next to a Palestinian state.

But the Trump administration has refused to declare that as the goal of a peace process, eroding the willingness of Abbas to follow the White House’s lead.

One day before Kushner’s meetings with Netanyahu and Abbas, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said, “We are not going to state what the outcome has to be. It has to be workable to both sides. And I think, really, that’s the best view as to not really bias one side over the other, to make sure that they can work through it.”

“If we don’t know where we are heading, if we don’t know what the end game is, then we are in a desert without a map,” said Mohammad Shtayyeh, a senior adviser to Abbas. “We have seen it happen before. We are not going to see it happen again.”

Abbas also faces internal political problems, as his Fatah party struggles with Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza, for control and power in the Palestinian political sphere.

In his first visit to the region, Trump, together with Kushner and other members of the administration, visited the Gulf states and Israel. The trip built up Trump’s credibility and goodwill with Gulf leaders, offering him leverage on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Three months later, Netanyahu and Abbas face different political realities, and Trump’s ability to jump-start negotiations may be dwindling.

“That kind of leverage has a very short shelf life if it’s not used,” warns Daniel Shapiro, the former US Ambassador to Israel under Barack Obama. “In the intervening months, as the political circumstances of the leaders in the region have changed and frankly deteriorated from the point of view of their flexibility, and as President Trump’s own standing has taken a beating because of his domestic controversies, I believe his leverage has diminished considerably.”

Nevertheless, Kushner’s third official visit to the region is an indication of Trump’s interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. And if Trump pressures both leaders to come to the negotiating table, they may find it difficult to refuse.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/24/politics/kushner-netanyahu-abbas/index.html

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