Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Historically, Jews Prayed on the Temple Mount When Muslims Controlled it -- So Why Not Now? (Daled Amos)

Today, we regularly hear about tensions on the Temple Mount, where either the Waqf or other Muslims accuse Jews of violating the "permission" granted to Jews by the Arabs to go to the Mount by praying there.

Historically, though, Jews have prayed on the Temple Mount after the destruction of the Second Temple -- including when the area was under Muslim control.

In an article, The Mounting Problem of Temple Denial, David Barnett writes that denial of the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount by Palestinian Arabs makes no sense, considering the fact that classical Islamic literature clearly recognizes the existence of the Jewish Temple and its importance to Judaism:

Sura 17:1 of the Koran, the “Farthest Mosque” is called the al-masjid al-Aqsa.
The Tafsir al-Jalalayn, a well-respected Sunni exegesis of the Koran from the 15th and 16th centuries, notes that the “Farthest Mosque” is a reference to the Bayt al-Maqdis of Jerusalem (nearly identical to the Hebrew "Beyt Ha-Miqdash")
In the commentary of Abdullah Ibn Omar al-Baydawi, who authored several prominent theological works in the 13th century, the masjid is referred to as the Bayt al-Maqdis because during Muhammad’s time no mosque existed in Jerusalem.
Koranic historian and commentator, Abu Jafar Muhammad al-Tabari, who chronicled the seventh century Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, wrote that one day when Omar finished praying, he went to the place where “the Romans buried the Temple [bayt al-maqdis] at the time of the sons of Israel.”
Eleventh century historian Muhammad Ibn Ahmad al-Maqdisi and fourteenth century Iranian religious scholar Hamdallah al-Mustawfi acknowledged that the al-Aqsa Mosque was built on top of Solomon’s Temple.

So it is not surprising that historically, Jews have been granted access to the Temple Mount by the Muslim rulers of the time to not only ascend to the Temple Mount, but also to pray there.

In his Jerusalem: The Biography, Simon Sebag Montefiore writes

Jews, many of them from Iran and Iraq, settled in the Holy City, living together south of the Temple Mount, retaining the privilege of praying on (and maintaining) the Temple Mount. But in about 720, after almost a century of freedom to pray there, the new Caliph Omar II, who was, unusually in this decadent dynasty, an ascetic stickler for Islamic orthodoxy, banned Jewish worship--and this prohibition would stand for the rest of Islamic rule. p. 195

The source for this is the book Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims and Prophets from the Days of Abraham to the Beginning of Modern Times.by F. E. Peters. Peters quotes Salman ben Yeruham, a Karaite writing in about 950.

Peters goes on to write that this would have been during the earliest days of the Muslim occupation, probably before the construction of the Dome of the Rock by Abd al-Malik and the consecration of the Temple Mount as the "Noble Sanctuary." According to Peters, the construction of the Dome would have changed the nature of the area.

F.M. Loewenberg, in an article on the Middle East Forum website, Did Jews Abandon the Temple Mount? goes further. He writes that 50 years after Omar had conquered Jerusalem in 680, a struggle broke out with a rebel dynasty in Mecca. In order to damage the Meccan economy, the Umayyads decided to build a competing pilgrimage site in Jerusalem to siphon off Mecca's revenue. That was accomplished with the building of the Dome of the Rock:

Thus, a political strategy designed to fight mutineers in far-off Mecca transformed Jerusalem's Temple Mount into a Muslim holy site with far-reaching implications to this day.

As Sebag Montefiore writes in explaining the 40 year silence of the Muslim world when the Arabs lost Jerusalem during the Crusades, "as so often in Jerusalem's history, religious fervour was inspired by political necessity."

But according to Lowenberg, this in itself did not put an end to Jewish access to the Temple Mount. Basing himself on the same Salman ben Yeruham, he writes

Soon after the Muslim conquest, Jews received permission to build a synagogue on the Temple Mount. Perhaps the wooden structure that was built over the Foundation Stone was first intended for a synagogue, but even before it was completed, the site was expropriated by the city's rulers [as the site for the Dome of the Rock]. The Jews received another site on the mount for a synagogue in compensation for the expropriated building. Most probably there was an active synagogue on the Temple Mount during most of the early Muslim period. [emphasis added]

After the Fatimids conquered Jerusalem in 969, a Temple Mount synagogue was rebuilt and used -- until the Jews were then banished by Caliph al-Hakim in 1015. That decree was rescinded by a later ruler and Jews were again allowed to worship there until the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders.

But even then, Jews were able to go up to the Temple Mount. The Rambam wrote in a letter in 1165 that he "entered the Great and Holy House [and] prayed there."

Portrait of The Rambam. Public domain

The Jewish traveler, Benjamin of Tudela, visited Jerusalem between 1159 and 1172, and writes there were Jews praying "in front of the Western Wall [of the Dome of the Rock], one of the [remaining] walls of what was once the Holy of Holies." Loewenberg notes that the Western Wall described by Benjamin of Tudela could not be the current Western Wall because it did not become a site for prayer until the sixteenth century, but instead the reference is to the ruins of the western wall of the Second Temple building on the Temple Mount.

Even after Saladin captured Jerusalem back from the Crusaders in 1187, and even though the Temple Mount was re-consecrated as a Muslim sanctuary, Saladin still allowed Jews access not only to Jerusalem, but also to worship on the Temple Mount. Later, though, Saladin forbade Jews from praying there. From the late thirteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, the Temple Mount was basically off-limits to Jews, though occasionally they were allowed access.

The chief rabbi of Jerusalem, David ben Shlomo Ibn Zimra (Radbaz, 1479-1573) wrote that the city's Jews regularly went to the Temple Mount in order to view the entire temple ruins and pray there and that "we have not heard or seen anyone object to this."

After the Ottoman conquest of Jerusalem in 1516, Sultan Suleiman I encouraged European Jews, especially those expelled from Spain and Portugal a generation earlier, to resettle in Jerusalem. He instructed his court architect to prepare a special place for Jewish prayer in an alley at the bottom of the Western retaining wall of the Temple Mount in compensation for prohibiting all non-Muslims from entering any part of the Temple Mount. He issued a royal decree guaranteeing Jews the right to pray at this Western Wall for all time.

So much much for Jews not being allowed to pray on the Temple Mount under Muslim control. Halachic issues are one thing, but that Israel today allows the Arabs, who were defeated by Israel in 1967 when Jerusalem was reunified, to continue to have the power to dictate to Jews what they can and cannot do on the Temple Mount is mind boggling.

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When is any reporter (besides Khaled Abu Toameh) going to mention that Mahmoud Abbas is delusional?

Here is the English press release from the Palestinian Authority news agency on Abbas' speech last night. It is simply insane.

President Mahmoud Abbas accused Hamas at the start of the leadership meeting in Ramallah on Monday of being responsible for the assassination attempt against Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and chief of intelligence Majid Faraj in Gaza last week, saying that he decided to take national, legal and financial measures to punish Hamas for its act.

Hamas has nothing at all to gain from assassinating Hamdallah. Almost certainly it was one of the other terror groups responsible for the attack.

President Abbas said he does not want to punish the Palestinian people, but he has to take action against Hamas, which rules Gaza and refuses to allow the Palestinian government to rule there.

"I have decided to take national, legal and financial measures to protect out national project," said the president. "We never thought of punishing any Palestinian citizen, not in the West Bank or Gaza. But we have to say where the wrong is and where the crime is. This situation is not acceptable."

When Abbas threatens to punish Hamas, he means to punish Gaza. Which means he is threatening to accelerate the inhumane things he did to Gazans over the past year - reduce electricity, food, fuel, medicine, salaries, social services. Hey, no "human rights" NGOs criticized him for what he did so far, and everyone blames Israel anyway, so there is no downside.

He accused Hamas of sabotaging all efforts for reconciliation, saying that either the Palestinian government takes full charge of everything in Gaza, or the de facto authority remains fully responsible for it.

He said he will not wait for Hamas' investigation into the assassination attempt "because we know that they, Hamas, are behind it," adding that assassinations are not new to Hamas, whose history is full of similar acts, warning that the attempt will not go without reaction.

Interestingly, Abbas brought down examples from Islamist Palestinian arabs in the 1930s and 1940s who killed other Arabs as proof.

Abbas said Hamas and US President Donald Trump are cooperating in destroying the Palestinian national project of independence because they want a state in Gaza.

Ah, yes, that pro-Hamas President Trump.

The funny thing is that J-Street and the loony Left will probably agree with this, since any accusation against Trump is assumed to be true.

He said the US supports the separation between the West Bank and Gaza because it does not want a Palestinian state. He said Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and cut aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA, aim at destroying Palestinian aspirations for independence and statehood.

Obviously. Because a strong, independent state must allow many of its citizens to be in a separate social service program, have their kids educated in a separate school system, and allow them to live in separate areas with different rules and the inability to fully participate in national politics.

Abbas is delusional. He always has been. The amount of criticism of him in the West is minuscule compared to how insane his words are. And the only explanation for this is because the West is committed to the meme of blaming Israel for everything, first and foremost, in any story.

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Antisemitic Latuff cartoon published in Belgian textbook

A Flemish geography book published a cartoon by noted anti-semite Carlos Latuff

It shows a stereotypical, fat religious Jew enjoying Palestinian water while their own pipes run dry.

The geography textbook, Polaris GO!, attributes the cartoon to Amnesty International, although Amnesty has nothing to do with the cartoon. The textbook authors decided to attribute the cartoon to Amnesty in an apparent attempt to make it look like it was an official protest cartoon from that organization.

The book reaches many thousands of Flemish children.

Amnesty, when reached by a Jewish newspaper, denied anything to do with the cartoon.

The good news is that the publisher Plantyn agreed to remove the cartoon from future editions of the textbook, although it will keep the misleading Amnesty quote that ."In the ...Israeli settlement of Sussia, whose very existence is unlawful under international law, the Israeli settlers have ample water supplies. They have a swimming pool and their lush irrigated vineyards, herb farms and lawns – verdant even at the height of the dry season – stand in stark contrast to the parched and arid Palestinian villages on their doorstep. "

Keeping the quote while eliminating the picture is still an example of bias in the textbook.

Here is a photo of the Yasser Arafat Museum in Ramallah. Note the lawn. Note the pool.

Of course, the "parched" Palestinians have lots of swimming pools too.

But Amnesty would never mention that. Only "settlers" have water, not Palestinians. That's the myth that Amnesty helps create and no anti-Israel schoolbook publisher will disagree.

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Abbas calling Friedman "son of a dog" was a calculated move to increase his popularity

From TOI:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas launched an unprecedentedly scathing attack Monday on US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, calling him a “son of a dog” and a “settler.”

Abbas, addressing the opening of a Palestinian leadership meeting, made the comments hours after Friedman criticized the PA on Twitter for failing to condemn a pair of terror attacks over the weekend.

This was not a slip of the tongue. Abbas was counting on the controversy and it using it to shore up his popularity among Palestinians.

The Fatah Facebook page shows a poster of Friedman with the Arabic "son of a dog" and "settler" written on it - as a hashtag.

The Haaretz headline on the story is highlighted.

And at the exact same time, a poster of Abbas was published with the word "proud."

These were all posted in the middle of the night in Ramallah.

This was clearly a scheduled campaign to make Abbas look like he is strong for standing up to America.

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03/19 Links Pt2: U.S. University Publishers Shun Book “Ending the Deir Yassin Myth”; Yoni’s Last Battle; Al Sharpton And Black Lives Matter Team Up For Pro-Farrakhan Protest

From Ian:

Silencing History: U.S. University Publishers Shun Book “Ending the Deir Yassin Myth”

Anti-Israel faculty reviewers worry the book will undermine the Palestinian narrative

Why have American academic presses rejected a book manuscript by Dr. Eliezer Tauber, a former dean and highly-regarded Israeli history professor at Bar-Ilan University’s Department of Middle Eastern Studies?

Tauber is an award-winning and prolific expert on the early phases of the Arab-Israeli conflict. By all accounts, his latest book about the April 9, 1948 battle in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin has “many strengths” and provides the most comprehensive investigation to date of what was both a seminal event in Israel’s War of Independence and in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem.

A book of this caliber and importance should really be of great interest to American publishers.

But so far—after three years of trying to convince an American university press to publish his book—none have agreed to give Tauber a contract for the English-language version of Deir Yassin: The End of a Myth.

Academic publishing is a tough business, and even first-rate manuscripts can be passed over if the scholarship isn’t a perfect fit for a publisher’s list or on account of a bottleneck in the pipeline—which isn’t uncommon for elite presses.

But something else, very damaging to academia, is going on here.

That’s because the U.S. university presses which Tauber approached reportedly rejected his book on the say-so of anti-Israel faculty reviewers and members of their editorial boards. Apparently, these faculty are worried that Deir Yassin: The End of a Myth could upend the way a lot of American and English-language readers assess the Palestinian narrative of 1948, so they’re advising acquisition editors not to adopt it.

If that’s true, then it’s a scandal of mega proportions.

Basically, it would be another indication that the virulently anti-Israel perspective which currently dominates in many disciplines in the Humanities and soft Social Sciences, especially Middle Eastern Studies, is truly having a corrosive impact on American higher education by undermining viewpoint diversity and hindering the growth of knowledge. (h/t MtTB)

NGO Monitor: Using UNICEF Funds, B’Tselem Recycles Distortions on Military Justice

In response to “Minors in Jeopardy,” a publication released today by B’Tselem, NGO Monitor issued the following statement:

B’Tselem’s report was funded by UNICEF, and is part of a broader political advocacy campaign to falsely accuse the IDF of violating the rights of Palestinian minors, with the goal of imposing sanctions against Israel. B’Tselem recycles allegations from NGOs such as Defense for Children International-Palestine that have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization, designated as such by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel.

Other than an appendix of four anecdotal “testimonies,” B’Tselem does not contribute anything substantive that has not been previously published. NGO Monitor’s analyses of the previous reports used by B’Tselem shows that they are replete with numerous false and misleading claims about the IDF and Israeli Military Courts, and repeat allegations without verification or meaningful statistical analysis.

The timing of the report’s release coincides with B’Tselem’s and other NGOs’ celebration of Ahed Tamimi, reflecting how the NGOs exploit children’s rights to demonize Israel instead of protecting children.

IsraellyCool: SodaStream’s Brilliant Move To Counter BDS Vandals

The following photo of a sticker affixed to the box of a SodaStream was posted on Reddit.

I think this is a brilliant move, considering how many times we have seen BDS-holes affixing their own boycott stickers to Israeli products.

In fact, I would suggest other Israeli businesses follow suit – I am sure Sodastream is not the only one employing Arabs.

Gaza airport employees held a protest recently protesting the PA's decision to force them into early retirement.

Which means that they have been getting salaries for the past 18 years even though the airport doesn't exist.

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Max Blumenthal (and his $20 lawyer) vs. the Southern Poverty Law Center (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

I’m quite sure that there are many people who think Max Blumenthal doesn’t have much of a reputation to lose, but he still seems to feel otherwise. So he reacted with great fury a few days ago when he found out that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) – which claims to fight “hate and bigotry” – had published an analysis on “how fascists operationalize left-wing resentment.” The piece provided lots of interesting material on “red-brown populist collaboration” and featured Blumenthal as an example of a supposedly left-wing activist who happily collaborates with media outlets and individuals promoting a far-right agenda.

Before most people had a chance to read the piece, Blumenthal managed to bully the SPLC into taking it down – though luckily someone was even quicker than Blumenthal and archived it before it disappeared. Why the SPLC caved so promptly is a bit of a mystery (- some clues later -), because all claims and conclusions in the analysis are meticulously supported by links.

Take for example the part that deals with Sputnik: it’s a media site that “has widely been described as a Russian propaganda outlet,” and Max Blumenthal has repeatedly collaborated with them to promote ideas that fit Sputnik’s agenda.

The SPLC’s retracted piece mentioned Sputnik podcast “Loud & Clear,” noting:

“Aside from marginal guests, Loud & Clear can bring on some heavy hitters. During his two appearances on ‘Loud & Clear’ in late 2017, bestselling author Max Blumenthal called the red-brown radio show ‘the finest public affairs programming’ and declared, ‘I am increasingly turning to RT America [Russian government-funded propaganda channel] for sanity.’”

Presumably, Blumenthal won’t dispute that he made these statements – which truly speak for themselves and reveal a lot about what he regards as “sanity”…

But one can’t deny that Max-Blumenthal-style “sanity” has its rewards: the lawyer who threatened the SPLC on Blumenthal’s behalf apparently did so pro bono, charging only a nominal fee of $20; and it just so happens that he is “a former Sputnik editor who previously represented ‘alt-right’ star Cassandra Fairbanks, who also worked at Sputnik.” One could indeed almost be tempted to conclude that “Russian state media promotes Red-Brown alliances.”

It is then hardly surprising that a recent Sputnik piece on SPLC’s craven retraction celebrates Max Blumenthal as a “prominent journalist and author (and strident critic of the West)” who can’t possibly be tainted in any way by his admirers on the far-right.

Well, let’s recall just a few of the relevant examples I documented a few years ago:

Back in 2010, Max Blumenthal attracted some heartfelt praise on Stormfront for his efforts to demonize Israel and Jews: “Max Blumenthal has done a great service for all of humanity here, and we WNS [i.e. white nationalists], and the rest of the world, ought to be grateful to him.”

A few years later, when his vile anti-Israel screed “Goliath” was published, Blumenthal got some well-deserved praise on David Duke’s website: “Blumenthal’s recent book and much of his other work have been extremely valuable.” You can check out archived copies of some of the relevant posts here and here.

But when Blumenthal won plaudits from the far-right for demonizing the world’s only Jewish state, many of the people who are now so appalled by his apologetics for Putin’s Russia could see nothing wrong and were very happy to cheer him on. That includes the SPLC: as Blumenthal gleefully pointed out on Twitter, the organization had mounted an ardent defense of him in 2014 after it emerged that the far-right perpetrator of a deadly attack on a Jewish community center was an admirer of Blumenthal’s work. The SPLC passionately denounced attempts by “leading conservatives … to blame liberals for the massacre,” noting: “Specifically, they pinned the blame on a single liberal journalist, Max Blumenthal, because Miller [the far-right perpetrator] on a handful of occasions praised Blumenthal’s against-the-grain reporting on the right wing in Israel.”

So while the SPLC claims to fight “hate and bigotry,” they apparently also think that it’s part of their mission to whitewash a book that demonizes the world’s only Jewish state as the Nazi Germany of our time as “against-the-grain reporting on the right wing in Israel”…

The SPLC also asserted that “Blumenthal … is of Jewish descent and has spent years off and on in Israel,” and that he “does not ‘despise’ Israel” and merely “has written a number of articles that criticize Israeli policies.”

That was written on April 18, 2014. A few months earlier, the Simon Wiesenthal Center had published its 2013 list of the “Top 10 Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Slurs” and included Blumenthal in the category “The Power of the Poison Pen.” As I also documented at the time, during his book tour for “Goliath” in fall 2013, Blumenthal had discussed the urgent moral imperative to eliminate the world’s only Jewish state and had advocated a “Juden raus” policy for Israeli Jews who wouldn’t willingly “become indigenized” by accepting Arab-Muslim dominance in political, cultural and social terms.

Since the SPLC had no problem whitewashing Blumenthal’s agenda four years ago, it’s understandable that they now decided that it was a regrettable slip to expose his unsavory views and the fact that he has quite a few admirers on the far-right.

It is of course true that it can happen to every writer that people whose views one might find deplorable will pick up on one’s writings. But in Blumenthal’s case, it’s not an occasional article that was picked up by people on the fringes and put to unintended use. If you get complimented on David Duke’s site that your “recent book” and “much of” your “other work have been extremely valuable,” and if similar praise is heaped on you on quite a few similar sites, it’s plainly well-deserved praise.

But the SPLC’s defense of Blumenthal in 2014 is also noteworthy for another reason: while I agree that the fact that a far-right terrorist had cited Blumenthal approvingly “on a handful of occasions” does not mean Blumenthal inspired his deadly attack, Blumenthal himself had claimed in 2011 that American writers cited by the Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik were “Right-Wing Hatemongers Who Inspired the Norway Killer.” So the people who tried a few years later to tar Blumenthal with the deadly attack perpetrated by his fan merely sank to Blumenthal’s own level.

Indeed, in another related piece, Blumenthal described Breivik as “a perfect product of the Axis of Islamophobia” and again emphasized that Breivik’s “writings contain the same themes and language as more prominent right-wing Islamophobes (or those who style themselves as “counter-Jihadists”) and many conservatives in general.” Needless to say, Israel loomed large in Blumenthal’s musings about Breivik – as he put it on the notorious “hate site” Mondoweiss, people like the Norwegian mass murderer “turn for inspiration to Israel, the only ethnocracy in the world.”

Well, guess what? These were ideas that appealed to Stormfront proprietor Don Black. In April 2014, he penned a post responding to allegations by the SPLC that Breivik and other far-right terrorist killers had been members of his forum. As Black confidently explained:

“Breivik’s murderous rampage was actually inspired by Zionist extremists. As Jewish peace advocate Max Blumenthal has documented, Breivik fell under the influence of Zionists Daniel Pipes, Pam Geller and Robert Spencer. So he attacked a youth group that had demanded disinvestment from Israel.”

It’s of course just a coincidence, but it still is a great illustration of the absurdity of the SPLC’s defense of Max Blumenthal: Black published his Stormfront post on April 17, 2014 – praising Max Blumenthal as a “Jewish peace advocate” and trying to use his writings on Breivik against the SPLC, while the SPLC published its post defending Max Blumenthal against the kind of smears he had spread in the wake of Breivik’s murderous rampage one day later, on April 18, 2014.

Well, if you have so dedicated supporters from the far-right all the way to the progressive left…

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03/19 Links Pt1: French consular employee charged in Gaza gun-running scheme; Palestinian Authority pays terrorists who murder Israelis

From Ian:

French consular employee charged in Gaza gun-running scheme

An employee at the French consulate in Jerusalem was indicted on Monday for using a diplomatic vehicle to smuggle dozens of guns from Gaza to the West Bank.

In addition to Romain Franck, five residents of the West Bank and East Jerusalem were also charged. A total of nine suspects have been arrested in the case.

According to the indictment, Franck, 24, was aware of the reduced security checks for vehicles with diplomatic license plates, which he allegedly used to illegally transport weapons out of Gaza and into the West Bank.

Franck, who worked as a driver at the consulate, spoke through an interpreter to confirm his identity during the brief court appearance. Two French diplomats were at the court to monitor the proceedings.

He allegedly made five smuggling runs, bringing 70 pistols and two assault rifles to the West Bank from a Palestinian employee at the French Cultural Center in Gaza, Zuheir Abed Abdeen. A contact in the West Bank then sold the weapons to other arms dealers, investigators say.

Franck was already transporting various valuables in his car on behalf of Abdeen when in September 2017 the Palestinian propositioned him to join a gun-running ring run by Gaza resident Mahmad Jamil al-Haladi, the indictment said.

Franck later brought Mahmad Siad, an Israeli citizen employed at the French consulate in Jerusalem, into the operation and the two would allegedly travel together to deliver the weapons in the West Bank.

Prosecutors say Franck would usually take delivery of the guns from Aabdin and then place them in the trunk of his vehicle. At the border checks he would then falsely declare that all of the bags belonged to him or his passengers and that he was not carrying any weapons.

PreOccupiedTerritory: French Consulate Employee Caught Smuggling Votes To Meretz (satire)

A volunteer with the consulate of France in Israel’s capital was arrested today and charged with smuggling votes to a political party desperate to head off disappearance from the Knesset in the next elections.

Romain Franck, 23, a French national serving as a driver for consular staff, was taken into custody Monday morning after a police investigation showed him handling the contraband. A spokesman for the French consulate confirmed the arrest and stated they cooperated with the police on the investigation.

Meretz, which currently holds five seats in the parliament, has suffered consistent electoral frustration over the last several contests in 2009, 2012, and 2015, falling far short of its 12-seat representation in the late 1990’s and early part of last decade. Widespread disillusionment with the party’s hard-left stances following the disastrous long-term outcome of the Oslo Accords have kept it perilously close to elimination. While the threat of early elections was removed last week as warring coalition parties walked back their threats to bolt the government, Meretz faces a bleak outcome whether the next elections take place in late 2019 as scheduled or earlier. Under current electoral threshold rules, a party must earn at least 3.25% of the vote, which translates to about four parliamentary seats, if it is to appear in the Knesset. Surveys see the party garnering at best retaining its five-seat delegation, with some polls finding it falling below the representation threshold.

To forestall this nightmare scenario, allege police, party operatives arranged for votes from Palestinian-controlled areas, where they are not being used, to be smuggled into Israel. According to police, Mr. Franck made numerous trips into the Gaza Strip and Areas A and B of Judea end Samaria, with the consular vehicle he operated, exploiting his diplomatic immunity to avoid inspection and detection of the illegal cargo. Police claim they were able to document more than six hundred votes that Franck then sold to dealers hired by Meretz to procure the votes.

PMW: Palestinian terrorist prisoners continue academic studies, despite prohibition by Israel’s government

After the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, the Government of Israel decided to prevent terrorist prisoners from receiving academic degrees while in prison

Responding to a PMW report exposing that such studies are taking place, the Israeli Prison Service rejected the claim that terrorist prisoners are undertaking academic studies

Despite the decision of the Israeli government and the response of the Prison Service, the PA announced that there are currently 1,000 terrorist prisoner students

In April 2017, Palestinian Media Watch exposed that the Palestinian Authority is actively undermining a decision the Israeli government adopted in response to the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, to prohibit Palestinian terrorist prisoners from receiving academic degrees while serving their sentences.

Despite the ban, the PA claimed 484 terrorist prisoners were studying for degrees in a program initiated by the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs. The program is run in cooperation with Al-Quds Open University and the PA Ministry of Education.

Regardless of the substantial alleged number of terrorist prisoner students, the Israeli Prison Service rejected the claim and responded to PMW that in accordance with the decision of the government "security prisoners are not allowed to undertake academic studies."

Notwithstanding this response, Director of the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake stated that "a thousand Palestinian prisoners who are in the prisons have joined the Palestinian universities." Karake added that "an academic revolution is taking place in the prisons." [Donia Al-Watan, independent Palestinian news agency, Feb. 22, 2018]

Palestinian Authority pays terrorists who murder Israelis

Arab media quotes Al Quds Al Arabi reporting that Israel, together with an unnamed Arab country, rescued some 400 Yemen Jews - which is probably all the Jews who were left - in a clandestine operation last month.

The special operation was carried out by Israeli commando forces who smuggled the Jews by helicopter.

The article says the Israeli Ministry of Absorption and Immigration confirmed the report, although I cannot find any Hebrew reports about this as of this writing. The newspaper quoted an Arab officer working in the Israeli army who participated in the operation ass saying that an Israeli commando unit carried out the operation in cooperation with an unnamed Arab country. The Jews were transferred by civilian aircraft to Ben Gurion airport. It isn't clear if this was a direct flight from the Arab country that helped out.

The report quoted an officer in the IDF saying that Yemeni Jews arrived at an agreed place outside their residential centers, and were in a difficult state of health, especially women and children.

The report quoted the spokesperson of the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption, "Alla Garteson," who said her ministry was happy with the result but could not give details.

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Palestine Today admits that the anti-Trump protests and "days of rage" that followed the announcement of the US move of the Israel embassy to Jerusalem never reached any serious levels.

But you'll never guess who they say is to blame for that.

The article on the negative effect that NGOs have on Palestinian society that I've noted in the past couple of days, written for an Islamic Jihad newspaper, adds a very Palestinian twist:

The role of the Palestinian Authority in the field of security coordination and economic policies, as well as harsh Israeli measures, are usually used to understand the low frequency of confrontations in the occupied West Bank. However, the issue of foreign-funded institutions (NGOs), which have been deployed in the Palestinian areas since the beginning of the 1990s is no less a dangerous fasctor. Although it represents a source of income for thousands of Palestinians, in light of unemployment and poor economic conditions, these NGOs are subject to the conditions of the foreign financier, including the signing of a "document of renunciation of resistance and non-incitement" or rejection of "anti-Israel" activities.

...Little by little, a large number [of our young people] found themselves involved in these institutions controlled by the foreigner through the terms of funding, which provided the Israeli enemy with great services, which is to neutralize large numbers of young people from the arena of conflict with him, and their preoccupation with these projects. As a result, there is... a great void and a rift between the factions and the Palestinian society.

This is one of the reasons for the weak participation of the youth in the confrontations following the declaration of US President Donald Trump, the decision of the end of last year, despite the state of boiling anger in the street, the confrontations were fairly major for the first two weeks after the announcement, and then gradually began to fade.... According to statistics we obtained, the largest number of "contact points" with the enemy were recorded the first Friday following the decision of Trump, was 78 points of confrontation, and the level of confrontation gradually decreased and never went past 33 points of contact in the best cases since the beginning of this year.

They are saying that NGOs, many of whom force their employees to sign an anti-terror and anti-incitement pledge, are the ones who are killing the anti-Israel and anti-US protests!

There actually may be something to this.

Fatah has never been able to mobilize the kinds of mass rallies that Islamic Jihad and Hamas have, mostly because Fatah doesn't excite people so much to action, and Palestinian Arabs tend to be more energetic towards explicitly pro-violence messages.

But the danger of losing one's job for participating in these protests with rocks and firebombs is definitely something that will dissuade the employees of American and European NGOs. Remember that when I and UN Watch publicized UNRWA workers' pro-terror Facebook postings, UNRWA threatened the jobs of anyone who embarrassed them this way - and the postings have all but ended.

The NGOs employ tens of thousands, which is only a small percentage of the workforce, but part of the article is showing that youths would rather work for these NGOs - with relatively high salaries in a scarce job market - than join terror organizations like Islamic Jihad. In that narrow sense, these NGOs helping to move the anti-Israel protests from the violent to the political, because these NGOs are invariably anti-Israel and nearly their entire output is anti-Israel reports, some of which make it into the mainstream media and official UN and EU reports.

Palestinian Arabs would be far better served with jobs that actually contributed something to their society. NGO jobs do not give the same sense of pride that one gets from manufacturing or computer programming.

But in the medium term, the desire to make money is a huge incentive in how Palestinians act.

Which is the major reason why the PLO pays salaries to terrorists and their families.

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Reflections on my trip to Israel

This was some trip!

Most of the attendees of #Digitell18 with the Minister of Strategic Affairs

The main focus of the trip was the first Digitell conference, where I was honored to be invited with some 60 other influential Israel advocates worldwide to discuss how we can work together to support Israel. It was sponsored by Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs and they actually did it right; not trying to dictate the message but coming up with ways for bloggers, Facebookers, tweeters and other Israel advocates to work together and get resources when necessary from each other.

Other bloggers and I have often discussed how come we can't have a unified message the way the Israel haters usually do. I think the answer is - because we think, and they parrot.

How many times have you seen a video for a BDS group where one person shouts out a phrase in a megaphone and dozens of people mindlessly repeat what the leader says? It only happens because they attract human drones who cannot think for themselves. Pro-Israel advocates, on the other hand, often disagree with each other - because we are thinkers, not followers.

So the challenge is to get us to work together in a way that preserves our independence. I think the conference did a great job going towards that goal.

I also hosted two events of my own in Israel, both put together very quickly (perhaps too quickly.) One was the "Donald Trump: Good for the Jews?" symposium in Jerusalem last Sunday, which I have already posted the videos of, and the other was the live Hasby Awards last Thursday.

The Hasbys were fun. I was hoping for a bigger crowd, but a Thursday night a couple of weeks before Passover in Ramat Gan is perhaps not the ideal time and place for such an event.

The Hasbys have a number of facets. They are an awards show to highlight the best Israel advocates. They are a mini-symposium on the topic of Israel advocacy. They are a means to tell the world about advocates and videos that many might not have heard of otherwise. They are an excuse to get like-minded people who love Israel, from the left and the right, to meet each other. And, this year, Lex Markus also turned them into a small expo of Hasbara organizations, getting a couple of them to set up booths outside the awards themselves.

It will take a little time to edit the Hasby video footage (there are some sound problems, unfortunately.)

Because these events took up almost all of my time, I didn't get the chance to do what I normally do when we come to Israel, which is interviews and exclusive video tours.

I wish I could have stayed longer!

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