All The News Anti-Israel Posters Will Not Read Or Discuss 2

[Sixties Fan]

Put that photo in context for a moment.

Here is the head of the Israeli Air Force, loathed in wide swaths of the Middle East for its sorties over Syria and Gaza and its vaunted ability to project Israeli power, meeting in the open in an Arab country with counterparts from the UAE and Jordan. The head of Germany’s air force, Lt.-Gen. Ingo Gerhartz, was also in the picture, but there is nothing remarkable about that.
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It was one thing for Egypt and Jordan – as well as other countries in the Arab world that did not have diplomatic ties with Israel – to hold discreet talks for decades with IDF officers and officials in back rooms. This they would do quite readily. But it was quite another to do so in the open, with cameras clicking.

The Abraham Accords in 2019 changed that dynamic. What these accords brought was a willingness on the part of Arab countries with whom Israel now had diplomatic relations to bring these ties – including military and intelligence ties – out into the open.

(full article online)

Photos of IDF meeting with Arab nation counterparts are important

Israeli Air Force commander Mag.-Gen. Amikam Norkin was photographed at the Dubai Air Show with the commander of the UAE Air Force.

www.jpost.com

 

[rylah]

Will Islam survive Islamism?​

Increasing numbers of Muslims fear and reject a radical version of Islam​

The Islamist movement, which seeks to apply medieval Islamic laws and build a worldwide caliphate, has expanded massively in the past half-century. But it now faces a significant and growing counter-movement, especially in Muslim-majority countries. Growing numbers of Muslims, spurred by shocks like the fall of Kabul, fear and reject this radical version of Islam. Awareness of the anti-Islamist surge has been largely limited to those directly involved but it deserves to be much better known.

Anti-Islamism comprises four complementary trends. Going from quietest to most radical, they are: moderate Islam, irreligiosity, apostasy, and conversion to other religions. All have an international presence but, for illustrative purposes, I shall focus in each case on a key Middle Eastern country: moderate Islam in Egypt, irreligiosity in Turkey, atheism in Saudi Arabia, and conversion in Iran.

Moderation: Husni Mubarak's 30-year police state so consistently accommodated Islamists that Egyptians dared not oppose them. His fall from power in 2011 finally permitted an open expression of views, which the one-year Islamist rule of Mohamed Morsi further galvanized. The results have been hyperbolically anti-Islamist, as seen by street attacks on Muslim Brotherhood-appearing men, by women discarding the hijab, and the immense popularity of scathingly anti-Islamist figures such as Islam al-Behairy, Ibrahim Issa, Mukhtar Jom'ah, Khaled Montaser, and Abdallah Nasr. Even President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a former Islamist sympathizer, has accommodated these moderate sentiments.

Irreligiosity: Turkey's Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has dominated the country's politics since 2002 with the goal of raising a "pious generation." But younger Turks are adopting non-Islamic ways. Survey research by Volkan Ertit found the sacred having less influence regarding such matters as belief in supernatural beings, clothing that reveals body shape, premarital flirtation, non-marital sex, and homosexuality. A government report documented the appeal of deism among religious school students. A 2012 WIN/Gallup survey found that "Not religious" persons make up 73 percent of Turkey's population (the highest of 57 countries surveyed).

Apostasy: In Saudi Arabia, flat-out rejection of Islam "is spreading like wildfire" says a Saudi refugee. The WIN/Gallup survey found that "convinced atheists" make up 5 percent of the population in Saudi Arabia, the same as in the United States. The monarchy has responded in two ways. First, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman partially acquiesced to such sentiments by opening the country to many modern ways. Second, he promulgated anti-terrorist regulations that punish "calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based." Yes, the monarchy fights atheism with anti-terrorist regulations.

Conversion: Shay Khatiri, an analyst, writes about Iran that "Islam is the fastest shrinking religion..., while Christianity is growing the fastest." The Christian Broadcast Network goes further, asserting that "Christianity is growing faster in the Islamic Republic of Iran than in any other country in the world." David Yeghnazar of Elam Ministries finds that "Iranians have become the most open people to the gospel." According to a former Muslim, now an Evangelical priest, "We find ourselves facing what is more than a conversion to the Christian faith," he said. "It's a mass exodus from Islam." Lela Gilbert and Arielle Del Turco report that the mullahs consider Christianity "an existential threat" to their rule. Reza Safa predicts Iran will become the first Muslim-majority country to convert to Christianity. Confirming these trends, the Iranian intelligence minister, Mahmoud Alavi, publicly expressed fears about Muslims converting to Christianity.

Some observations about this anti-Islamist surge:
It appears limited to Muslim-majority countries; among Muslims minorities,
especially in the West, Islamism continues to grow.

Conspiracy theories to the contrary, it results almost entirely from internal developments among Muslims; non-Muslim have but a limited supporting role. As ever, Muslims determine their own destiny.

Anti-Islamists almost diametrically oppose Islamists on matters of faith, family, social relations, politics, and beyond. Among other implications, free-thinkers and ex-Muslims tend to be intensely pro-West, pro-America, and pro-Israel.

Read more:

Will Islam survive Islamism?

Increasing numbers of Muslims fear and reject a radical version of Islam. Op-ed.

www.israelnationalnews.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

“But the current listing of Hamas creates an artificial distinction between various parts of the organization – it is right that the listing is updated to reflect this. This is an important step, especially for the Jewish community. If we tolerate extremism, it will erode the rock of security.”

“Hamas is fundamentally and rabidly antisemitic,” she will say. “Antisemitism is an enduring evil which I will never tolerate. Jewish people routinely feel unsafe – at school, in the streets, when they worship, in their homes, and online.

“This step will strengthen the case against anyone who waves a Hamas flag in the United Kingdom, an act that is bound to make Jewish people feel unsafe.”

UK to designate entire Hamas a terror group, outlaw support

British home secretary set to announce new policy, which will no longer distinguish between military and political wings; Hamas backers in UK could face up to 10 years in prison

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[P F Tinmore]

“But the current listing of Hamas creates an artificial distinction between various parts of the organization – it is right that the listing is updated to reflect this. This is an important step, especially for the Jewish community. If we tolerate extremism, it will erode the rock of security.”

“Hamas is fundamentally and rabidly antisemitic,” she will say. “Antisemitism is an enduring evil which I will never tolerate. Jewish people routinely feel unsafe – at school, in the streets, when they worship, in their homes, and online.

“This step will strengthen the case against anyone who waves a Hamas flag in the United Kingdom, an act that is bound to make Jewish people feel unsafe.”

UK to designate entire Hamas a terror group, outlaw support

British home secretary set to announce new policy, which will no longer distinguish between military and political wings; Hamas backers in UK could face up to 10 years in prison

www.timesofisrael.com

So you can be prosecuted if you have a different opinion than the state?

 

[Sixties Fan]

It was his grandfather, George Deek senior, who first parted ways with Arab propaganda. An electrician living in 1940s Palestine, he worked for the then-Palestine Electric Corporation, now familiar to Israelis as the national utility, Chevrat Hachashmal.

The Deek family had a tradition in the Holy Land that went back 400 years, and while Jewish-Arab tensions mounted steadily from the 1920s, George himself got on well with his Jewish neighbors. Many of the company’s other employees hailed from Eastern Europe, so he even learned to speak a smattering of Yiddish.

But as the British prepared to end their Palestine mandate in 1948, that era of coexistence came to an end.

“The family heard about the Deir Yassin massacre,” says his grandson, referring to a botched Irgun-led attack on a Palestinian village located in what’s now the commercial area between Givat Shaul and Har Nof. “The Arab leadership warned that Arabs would be slaughtered by the Jews if they didn’t leave and promised to destroy the newborn Israel. So, my grandfather hurriedly married his fiancé, and they fled north to Lebanon.”

The fleeing Arabs were told that if they left temporarily, they could return after the Arab victory and take back their homes. The flight of some quarter-million Arabs at Israel’s birth was part of the narrative of the Nakba, the “disaster” of Israel’s birth, on which generations of Palestinians have been raised, feeding the seven-decades-long storyline of refugee status and persecution.

But George Deed senior realized he’d been deceived. The Arabs didn’t win the war, but neither were they slaughtered. And he didn’t have any desire to spend his future as a refugee. “My grandfather saw that there was no future in Lebanon,” says Deek. “Members of his family moved everywhere — to Jordan, Canada, Australia — but he wanted to return to Yafo.”

And so, he did something few others did — he contacted his old colleagues in the power company, those his community saw as enemies. George and his wife smuggled themselves back over the border into the new Jewish state, and when George was arrested and thrown in jail, his former Jewish coworkers came to his aid and enabled his return to Yafo and helped him get back his old job.Deek says his grandparents’ move was a powerful impetus for his own life. They could have been angry, resentful, and full of revenge. But instead, they rebuilt their life, educated their children, and provided them with opportunities. And that, he says, is why today he’s an Israeli diplomat and not a Palestinian refugee or a frustrated Israeli Arab, mired in the destructive mindset of victimhood.

“You don’t have to be anti-Israel to see that this was a humanitarian tragedy,” Deek told his Oslo audience in 2014. “But why is this the only conflict that’s remembered? The Kurds lost their homes in Iraq; the Yazidis and Christians were recently expelled and will never reclaim their homes. On the other side, in 1948, 800,000 Jews were intimidated into leaving Arab countries.

“The way that the Nakba has been transformed from a human disaster into a political weapon,” he continued, “can be seen in the date chosen to mark it. It’s not the date when Arabs fled, but May 15th, after Israel’s independence. In other words, the day doesn’t mourn the fact that my cousins are Jordanian — it mourns the fact that I’m Israeli.”

(full article online)

Diplomatic Immunity - Mishpacha Magazine

He's an Arab, a Christian, and an Israeli Ambassador. George Deek makes the unlikely case for his country.

mishpacha.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

Shin Bet Arrests Over 50 Hamas Operatives in Terror Cell - Algemeiner.com

i24 News - Israel's Shin Bet security agency announced on Monday that over 50 Hamas operatives suspected of planning terror attacks were arrested in the West Bank and Jerusalem. The effort to uncover the cell was ongoing for several months, with the first round of initial arrest raids in...

www.algemeiner.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

[IMG alt="Sagi Cohen
"]https://img.haarets.co.il/img/1.693...op=351,351,x90,y71&height=100&width=100[/IMG]
Sagi Cohen
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Nov. 19, 2021


During 2018, the Israeli communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip came under a relentless assault of hundreds of explosive and incendiary kites and balloons. As part of its attempts to find a response to this new threat, the Israel Defense Forces came up with an original idea. In what sounds a bit like the premise of a Hollywood movie, the IDF located the 15 best and most experienced drone operators in Israel, called them up for reserve duty and sent them to the border with the Strip with the task of using their skills to intercept the troublesome kites and balloons.

Israel's army recruited 15 drone operators for a special mission. It turned into a multi-million dollar startup

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www.haaretz.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

• On November 9, 2021, the Fourth (Special Political) Committee of the UN General Assembly adopted by a 160-1 vote a draft resolution on Palestinian refugees. The U.S. abstained, although all previous administrations, apart from the Obama administration, had voted against this resolution.
• In 1999, the U.S. representative (representing the Clinton administration) stated, “This delegation could not support unbalanced resolutions which attempted to prejudge the outcome of negotiations; lasting peace would come from agreements reached among the parties themselves, not from any action taken by the Committee.”
• The international media pounced on the latest change in the U.S. voting pattern, erroneously claiming that it signified “support by the Biden administration for a right of return for Palestinian refugees to sovereign Israel.” In fact, the U.S. vote-change signifies no such thing, and the resolution does not mention any right of return for Palestinian refugees.
• Several international legal and political documents try to tackle the question of return of refugees, but they do not establish any right of return for Palestinian refugees. UN General Assembly Resolution 194 states that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so,” but no resolution of the General Assembly has the capacity to determine laws or establish rights. The term “should” underlines that this is solely a recommendation.
• Moreover, a “right of return” does not appear in resolutions of the UN Security Council, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), or in Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process documentation.

(full article online)

Does a Palestinian “Right of Return” Exist in International Law?

The erroneous interpretation of the legal situation of Palestinian Refugees - Does a Palestinian “Right of Return” Exist in International Law?

jcpa.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

Why we should scrap Islamophobia Awareness Month

The term ‘Islamophobia’ is too often used to shield radical Islamists from criticism.

www.spiked-online.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

While there has been much condemnation in Arab media and from individuals on the British decision to label all of Hamas a terrorist group, the reaction from Arab governments has been muted.

An op-ed in Arabi21 decries the silence of the Arab nations, seeing it as part of a larger issue of Arab nations not even bothering to condemn Israel:

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Middle East Eye lists Arab political leaders who have condemned the move, and the list is pretty short: Hamas itself, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority, and 75 members of Jordan's parliament (but not its foreign ministry or government.)

The reason isn't hard to understand: most Arab governments themselves already treat Hamas as a terror group, and a part of the Muslim Brotherhood. They regard Hamas' brand of Islamism as a threat to their own stability.

Sunday's terror attack where the murderer was a member of Hamas but not its Al Qassam Brigades, and Hamas' rush to praise the attack, cemented the fact that all of Hamas indeed is a terror group.

Hamas' political website stresses that all of Hamas wholeheartedly supports murdering Jews:

(full article online)

Arab nations have been silent on British labeling Hamas as terrorist. For good reason.

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

The Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror group is trying to smuggle weapons into Israel for use by the Arab Israeli community in future clashes, a police official has said.

The Israel Police have noticed a significant increase in efforts to smuggle weapons into the country via the Lebanese and Jordanian borders in the months since a May conflict with the Gaza Strip that was accompanied by some of the most severe rioting in decades between the Jewish and Arab communities in Israel, Channel 12 reported Monday.

There has been a several-fold jump in smuggling and a marked improvement in the quality of the weapons being sent, in what police described as a “strategic threat” to the country, according to the report.

(full article online)

Hezbollah smuggling weapons to Arab Israelis to sow civil strife – police

Lebanese terror group accused of upping efforts to send quality arms into Israel following May clashes between Jews and Arabs

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Dear Peter Gabriel,

As a teenager in a cold and grey North Shields in the 1970s one of my treasured possessions was a red hooded sweat-shirt into which my friend Eddie Thomas had sewn the titles of Genesis albums in beautiful, flowing, many-colored silken threads. After school and paper rounds, we’d sit listening to Foxtrot in a bedroom smelling of a sickly sweet joss stick and bathed in the equally sickly light cast by a cheap coloured bulb. (Well, as I say, it was the 1970s, and there was no Joe Strummer yet.) We’d listen to the epic ‘Supper’s Ready’ and hear your voice soaring above Tony Banks’ gorgeous chord progressions, asking ‘Can’t you see he’s fooled you all?’ For me, that is still one of prog’s great transcendent moments.

I was reminded of that question when I saw you had signed the Open Letter calling Israel a ‘settler colonial’ society, akin to the USA, Australia and New Zealand. I think you are mistaken and I want to explain why. I think someone has indeed fooled you all. (Ilan Pappe, probably.) I think many of the signatories think they are on the right side of history and fighting against injustice by endorsing the ‘settler colonialism’ label. It’s one of the victories of BDS; they get well meaning people to support extreme positions. (I leave aside other claims you make in the open letter. It’s the labeling of Israel as a ‘settler colonial’ society I want to disagree with you about. I want to try and persuade you that it’s a deeply unhelpful way to talk about Israel and the conflict.)

‘Settler colonialism’ is a newish way of talking about Israel and Palestine that radically misunderstands the conflict, harms the cause of peace and Palestinian statehood, and aligns western activists, whatever their intentions, with Hamas.

Those pushing the ‘settler colonial’ paradigm tell us it is time to forget talk of ‘two peoples’ being trapped in a tragic and unresolved national question that requires mutual recognition, negotiation and a division of the land into two states. That’s all so last century they say, and just a Zionist ploy anyway. (Pappe explains much in terms of Zionist ploys.)

The new thing is to think of Israel as a ‘settler-colonial society’ like America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The Jews are cast as the ‘white’ settler-colonialists and the Palestinians are given the role of the ‘black’ indigenous. And now it’s all so easy to grasp! The Israel-Palestine conflict is just like Derek Chauvin and George Floyd! The racist white European colonialist Jews, we are told, ‘invaded’ Palestine, a foreign land to them, and they collectively knelt on the neck of the ‘indigenous’ Arabs. Israel is, therefore, a ‘settler colonial society’ and so has no right to exist.

And what’s wrong with this new ‘settler colonialism’ paradigm? Oh, pretty much everything.

Everything one needs to know in order to properly understand the conflict (and so make a useful contribution to its resolution) is erased by the ‘settler colonialism’ label. It misses everything that distinguishes the Jewish return to Palestine from White European Settler Colonialism. Here is a short list of the differences.

First, the intimate Jewish relationship to the land

The ‘settler colonialism’ paradigm misses everything that is historically and religiously distinctive about the Jewish relationship to the land of Israel/Palestine. That relationship is utterly unlike anything you can find in the societies usually identified as ‘settler colonial’. The Jews were returning to a land that had been theirs, in which their religion was born, their temple built, and their Matriarchs and Patriarchs walked. A land that was at the absolute centre of Judaism and Jewish peoplehood. The land from which they had been forcibly expelled. Oh, and to a Jerusalem in which they had been a majority since the 19th century. That’s your first huge difference, right there. If it were only that, that would be enough to make the label ‘settler colonialism’ completely ridiculous, one of those ideas that as George Orwell said, are so idiotic you can only get the intellectuals to believe in them.

But it isn’t only that.

Second, the exceptional history of Jewish persecution

(full article online)

‘Can’t You See He’s Fooled You All?’: An Open Letter to Peter Gabriel et al explaining why Israel is not a ‘Settler Colonial’ society

100 artists including Ken Loach, Mark Rylance and Susan Sarandon have signed an open letter indicting Israel as an illegitimate ‘settler colonial’ society. Fathom editor Alan Johnson sets out the ...

fathomjournal.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

The Jews of Europe are perhaps the best-known victims of genocide. Germany's Third Reich intended to eliminate the Jewish people and specifically targeted them – rounded up and killed six million of us – strictly for the "crime" of being Jewish.

Likewise, the Armenian genocide: Ottoman Turks targeted Armenians with the intention of reducing their population in the Ottoman Empire so as to prevent Armenians from ever forming a state. An estimated 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians were killed during World War I.

More recently, East Timor, with a population of 650,000, was invaded by Indonesia in 1975. A truth and reconciliation commission concluded that in 25 years – between 1974 and 1999, when East Timor gained independence – approximately 18,600 people were killed and another 84,200 deaths were caused by the Indonesian military's use of "starvation as a weapon to exterminate the East Timorese."

Many other modern incidents have been termed genocide, and all have in common the intentional murder or physical displacement of a national, ethnic or religious group.

Since Israel's founding, an estimated 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in military conflicts – mostly wars or terror attacks initiated by Palestinians against Israel. Of these, an estimated 4,000-5,000 died as non-combatants involuntarily exposed to battle, usually as human shields.

One thing is clear: Combatants killed in attacks that their own side initiates are not examples of genocide. Nor are unintentional civilian casualties resulting from such battles.

So what are Israel's critics referring to when they accuse the Jewish state of genocide?

These critics can produce zero evidence that Israel has ever had a plan or intent to eliminate the Palestinian people.

Nor do critics produce evidence that Israel has ever intentionally killed innocent Palestinians. To the contrary, Israel assiduously – famously – avoids harming civilians during its battles with Hamas and other terrorists.

In addition, Israel annually donates thousands of tons of medicines, food and other essential goods to sustain the lives of Palestinians in Gaza – despite regular attacks on Israel from Gaza by Hamas. Thousands of Palestinians also travel to Israel every year to receive free medical care.

(full article online)

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/why-do-israels-critics-keep-repeating-the-genocide-lie/