The immorality of media coverage of the Palestinian slaughter of Jews.

Strange how tepid has been the Western media coverage of the stabbing deaths of innocent Jewish pedestrians in Israel -condemnations that would be less half-hearted had the acts occurred on the streets of Washington, Paris or London - and how loudly they shout about Palestinian deaths, even those of Palestinian killers.

Come to think of it, there was nothing of the equivocal reaction to the recent killings and the unanimous and unambiguous international outpouring of emotion and solidarity elicited by the fatal hatchet attack on a soldier on a London street on May 22, 2013, a scenario not very different from those unfolding today in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

According to the media, a knife in the hands of a Palestinian murderer is the weapon of the poor. And when he is killed during or after his lethal attack, well, he's the victim.

Strange that they take a completely different approach when the knife is in the hands of Al-Qaida and the head is that of Daniel Pearl, or in the hands of an ISIS butcher and the head is that of James Foley.
No sympathetic editorial equivalence there! The victim is the murdered one, not the knife-wielding terrorist.

Is it only when the head is that of an Israeli Jew that emotion and sympathy fades and an immoral equivalence between victim and killer raises its ugly head?

And, heaven forbid that Israeli Jews take the initiative to stop these murderers in their tracks before they kill.

It is then that biased journalist begin to keep running scoreboard on how many are dying on each side, and broadcasts the rising figures of dead killers to present them as the unfortunate victims of violence perpetrated by the perennially evil Israelis that neatly fits the editorial bias of decades of misreporting.

Barry Shaw.
Author of 'Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism.' www.barrysbooks.info

Jew hating and Jew denial.

Israel fighting Palestinian terror and the Western media.

The old argument used to be that Palestinians were fighting and demonstrating to achieve a state of their own, and that it was Israeli obstinacy that was fermenting Arab violence against Jews. On top of that, a misinterpreted by much of the media positioned Palestinian rage being caused by excessive Israeli military attacks against defenseless Palestinians. This was also known as “disproportionate force.”   

Why wouldn’t a put-upon population rise up in anger when they are so “oppressed” and “occupied,”so they say.

When I put pen to paper to expose the Jew hatred at the core of the Palestinian cause in my book “Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism” I did so to expose the facts and anecdotal evidence that this perception was dangerously flawed and the real burning rage behind a violence that has been going on for a hundred years was primeval anti-Semitism.

Though many were in denial, preferring to reference Israeli policies not in line with conventional left-wing Western thinking, the overwhelming weight of in excess of three hundred pages of undeniable incidents, together with the eruption of anti-Jewish tirades during the numerous pro-Palestinian demonstrations and such expressions by some European politicians during and after the 2014 Gaza conflict, made the thrust of my book resoundingly relevant.

If further evidence of what lies at the heart of Palestinian thinking and planning was needed the outpouring if Palestinian anti-Jewish rhetoric, incitement, and the deliberate hunting and targeting of Jews for knife, gun and rock wielding Palestinian attacks should leave nobody in any further doubt about what is at play here.

Despite the stark reality that the Palestinian cause was never about creating a new and peaceful state that would instantly solve all the problems of the Middle East but rather about killing Jews and destroying the “abomination” of a Jewish state,” a tiny island of progress in the midst of a radical and bloodthirsty Islamic region, many leading politicians and a media in denial still hold to the mistaken notion that only by granting a volatile Palestine statehood will the area calm down.

If there has been any recent abomination it has been with the government of South Africa officially welcome Hamas leader, Khaled Maashal, on the same day that this internationally designated terrorist organization announced it would initiate renewed suicide bombings against Israelis.

Following the declaration from Palestinian Authority head, Mahmoud Abbas, that “every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood as long as it’s for the sake of Allah” and that this blood must be spilled because the Jews were desecrating the Islamic holy places “with their filthy feet,” a lie so preposterously dangerous, hordes of knife and rock wielding Arabs went in search of Jewish victims.

Israelis, tense with the expectations of knifing attacks on the streets of their towns, were subjected to world headlines defining them as the perpetrators and Palestinians as the innocent victims.

The Reuters bureau chief, Luke Baker, falsely tweeted that undercover Israeli police threw stones at Israeli security forces and incited Palestinian youth to do the same. This was repeated by AFP and EuroNews.

You will find most media headlines leave the identity of the assailant anonymous as in “Jerusalem bus and car attacks leaves dead and wounded,” or “Jerusalem attack kills three,” or The Independent’s headline that reads as if Israelis were doing the attacking when, in fact, they were the victims of Palestinian Arabs attacks, “Israel attacks” Guns, cars and knives are the new weapon of war in Jerusalem.”

You would never know that all the attacks were executed by Palestinian Arabs and all of the victims were Israeli Jews.

So incensed was Lord Michael Grade, former chairman of the BBC Trust, that he wrote a letter of complaint slamming the BBC correspondent, Orla Guerin, for her misreporting of the ongoing violence carried out by Palestinians against Israelis. He was upset by her “equivalence between Israeli victims of terrorism and Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli security forces in the act of carrying out terror attacks.”

His letter follows an appalling BBC headline which described a Palestinian youth who carried out an assault that killed two Jewish men, seriously injured a woman and wounded her two year old son thus, “Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attack claims two.”

The twist of this headline leads the BBC audience in to falsely believing that the Palestinian was the innocent victim of a Jerusalem attack by known assailants. Nowhere in this headline would an audience know that Jews had been murdered in a vicious attack.

So egregiously frequent have these incident of untruthful reporting been that a frustrated Prime Minister Netanyahu asked BBC’s Lyse Doucet at a Jerusalem press conference, “Are we living on the same planet?”

When much of the Western media choke on identifying the victims of Palestinian violence as Israeli Jews you know there is a serious breach of trust at play that must be addressed.

Sadly, these headlines are commonplace as editorial discretion repeatedly tilts a bias that fails to allow the truth and honest reporting to shine through.

One of the truths is that there is a deliberate Palestinian policy to incite their followers to attack Israeli Jews and deny them any rights, not to sovereignty, not to heritage in Jerusalem, not even to life.

Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism.’ www.barrysbooks.info

He is also the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies.

The truth and implications of the “Jerusalem Intifada.”

Let me put it in record.

The status quo was not changed by Israel on the Temple Mount, despite Palestinian protests.

Since Rosh HaShana (the Jewish New Year), when the provocations really began, not one Jew set foot inside any of the mosques on the Temple Mount. Not one Jew or tourist spoke loudly or started any violent act on the Temple Mount. Not one Jew did any of the destructive acts on the Temple Mount. Those that were there walked quietly and respectfully around the large open space that is the huge plateau upon which the Temple was built. 

While they were doing so, they were accosted by the paid recruits of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement that has its center in the Israeli Arab town of Um el Fahm and is headed by a notorious Islamic provocateur named Sheikh Raed Salah in collaboration with the religious Wakf, the Palestinian Authority and with the encouragement of Hamas in Gaza. They were shouted at and taunted and had copies of the Koran pushed in their face.

With the encouragement of the PA and Hamas, Muslim youths brought rocks, cinder blocks and material to make firebombs into the Al-Akar mosque. 

The question needs to be asked how these weapons of popular violence were brought onto the Mount and into the mosque. They certainly did not bring them through the official entrances which are secured by Israeli guards who are there to maintain law and order. 

The only way they could have got there was with the assistance of the religious Wakf, who controls the Islamic site, in collaboration with the Islamic Movement and the PA, and that could only have been by access through the underground excavations that the Palestinians had burrowed illegally under the Temple Mount several years ago and to which the Israeli government turned a blind eye.

The Islamic Movement shares the same radical ideology as Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS, but Mahmoud Abbas was the chief social media inciter.

He made speeches which were distributed over the internet in which he said “the Jews are coming to destroy our holy places and defile them with their dirty feet.” 

This inciter in chief followed that up by saying, “Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood. Every shahid (martyr) will reach paradise and every injured person will be rewarded by Allah.”

This was the anti-Semitic incitement coming from the mouth of Israel’s “moderate” peace partner, the so-called President of the Palestinian Authority. 

Under international pressure Abbas, after inciting the bloody violence, began calling for restraint.

What is interesting is that while he was calling for the Arab members of Israel’s Knesset to lower the tone of their rhetoric, and they had been pretty extreme in their words and actions, his call was ignored by them when they announced they intended to go up to the Temple Mount a few days later. Not only did they defy the Israeli Prime Minister, they also defied the Palestinian leader. While they sit in Israel’s parliament they are encouraging violence with their words and deeds. This surely is an act of sedition. One brave Arab mayor, Ali Salim of Nazareth, demanded that these Arab MKs not come to his town to spread their incitement. He accused them of “ruining co-existence.”

Hamas in Gaza began calling the violence the “Al Quds Intifada,” literally the “Jerusalem Intifada.” They supported the violence by organizing hundreds of Gazans to march on Israel’s border to breach it and to attack the nearby kibbutzim and villages to kill Jews. The threat for Israel’s security forces was that Hamas would infiltrate groups of terrorists into these huge demonstrations to breach the border and carry out the wholesale slaughter of Israelis.

After three days of effort resulted in failure, due to the determination of the IDF that resulted in casualties the media was quick to broadcast intimate details of Palestinian deaths, something they had been loath to do when Israeli Jews were killed, to make their story more emotionally edible to their viewers.

The crescendo of hate and religious emotion, generated by multiple Palestinian sources, spilled over with deadly violence onto the street and was supported by a media buying into Palestinian lies by condemning “Israeli provocations.”

Indeed, much of the media replayed their editorial bent that portrayed Israel as the perennial bad guys and Palestinians as the innocent bystanders and victims. There was little space that gave Israelis and Jews the decency and truth they deserve.

Fox News, normally one of the more balanced news outlets when it comes to Israel, got it completely wrong with a headline dealing with the Gaza violence, "Israel security forces shoot and kill 2 Palestinian teenagers at Gaza protest."

To the uninformed, this headline read as if there were only 2 teenagers protesting and Israeli soldiers brutally killed them for simply protesting. This bad reporting reflects the poor image that faulty journalism casts over Israel.

When a 19 year old Palestinian, incited by repeated lies of Israeli “crimes” against Islamic and Palestinian holy places, took a knife and went to the Old City of Jerusalem to murder Jews, he found the Benita-Bennett family walking back from prayers at the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. His attack resulted in the murder of Aharon and Rabbi Nehamia Lavi. He also seriously wounded Aharon’s wife, Adele, and injured their two-year old son. He was killed by security forces before he could continue his deadly rampage.

But this is how the BBC News headline put it, “Palestinian shot dead as Jerusalem attack kills two.”

There was total editorial divorce from the facts and truth of the fatal incident.

The fact that this Palestinian killed Jews was absent. Jews became an anonymous faceless number killed, according to the BBC. Some wrongly interpreted their headline as that the unnamed “two” had enigmatically been killed by the city of Jerusalem.

The truth is that Mahmoud Abbas is a bankrupt “peace” partner. He has nothing to offer.

Against the background of this awful truth, it is demanded of Israel that we surrender the Old City and external sections to the will and control of the Palestinians for this is what they call “east Jerusalem.”

What they are demanding is that Jews must give up everything that justifies our rights for being there, lending credibility to the Palestinian cause. What is incredible is that there are Jewish voices that support this notion. A culture of defeatism is being spread that allows the violent creep of Islam, dressed up in the Palestinian cause, to take over what is ours.

The message may be promulgated in political terms but what we are experiencing is nothing less than the significant march of Islam in the Middle East, and the Jews of Israel are its last bastion.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate on Public Diplomacy at the Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies.

He is also the author of “Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism.” www.barrysbooks.info

The Palestinians' New Intifada

The Palestinians' New Intifada

Intifada.

Parts of Europe, America, Australia, and in other parts of the world, the phenomenon of the “lone wolf” terrorist is a plague on society that is growing.

Disaffected young men carrying out random acts of violence at the instigation of some terror organization located far from the locale of the local terrorist.

Often, the young men are incited by radical imams in local mosques but mostly they are self- taught, finding their cause on their laptops or computers before stepping out of their homes to commit random acts of deadly violence.

While these acts are relatively rare and sudden, in Israel they occur several times a day on a regular basis.

Unlike other countries, these young men are radicalized by a local leadership that the Israeli government is restrained by international pressure from attacking or disbanding.

In Israel’s case, the tsunami of terror is being incited by organizations ranging from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, and from the leadership of the Palestinian Authority.

As a comparison, this would be akin to Britain being infected by daily terror attacks being led by a leadership based in Birmingham, and having the British Government prevented from acting against the source under pain of international condemnation and punishment from the European Union and the United Nations.

The term”intifada” has been used to describe the current wave of Arab violence. Questions are being asked if this is an intifada.

Intifada is an Arab word meaning “uprising” or “shaking off”. It has been used to describe the desire of Palestinian Arabs to drive out the Jews from the land.

The first “intifada” took place between 1987-1993. It was a war of stones as Arabs attacked Israeli soldiers and police with rocks and firebombs. The second Arafat-inspired “intifada” became a widespread attack against all and any Israeli target, mainly civilian, as a prolonged (2000-2003) series of suicide bombings, shootings and car bombs killed hundreds of Israelis. This was put down when Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield, set up checkpoints and road blocks and built a security fence that successfully kept suicide bombers and Palestinian terrorists from reaching central Israel.

The current violence has a stronger religious element to it and this has been orchestrated by the various Palestinian factions. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are strongly Islamic-based so, when Mahmoud Abbas leapt on the Islamic theme that Jews are coming to destroy the Islamic holy places, a competition was lit as to which faction could incite the most violence.

For Hamas, what is going on has nothing to do with Gaza. It has everything to do with them asserting their influence into the West Bank.

It was the Palestinian Authority that purposely provoked the violence in Jerusalem around the Temple Mount, using the Jewish high holy days as an excuse to portray Jews at prayer as trying to take over Muslim holy places. Abbas spoke loudly, including at the podium of the United Nations, highlighting Israeli “crimes,” but they found they were losing control of the Palestinian street that identified itself with other radical elements within Palestinian society.

How did this play out? We saw the spectacle of Muslim women being funded by the Islamic Movement in Israel being bused to Jerusalem to abuse and often use violence to prevent people from visiting the Temple Mount by endangering their personal security. 

The women were banned from the Temple Mount but have been allowed to “protest” in the alleyways of the Old City and the approaches to the Temple Mount, where they continue their provocations.

Part of a statement made by the Israeli Defense Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, when introducing this ban, became gruesomely poignant days later. “Their activity is inflammatory and endangers tourists, visitors and worshippers at the site, leading to violence that could harm human life.”

Their activities are fully supported by the Palestinian Authority whose leader, Mahmoud Abbas, made provocative statements that the Jews were desecrating Islam’s holy places with their “dirty feet.” This follows the well-worn incitement that the Jews have no heritage or history in Jerusalem, and have no right being there.

Arab violence erupted in Jerusalem and throughout the West Bank. This is what drove a wealthy 19 year old Arab boy to kill.

He was caught up in a false religious cause linked to a nationalist agenda that Jews were defiling Islamic holy places with their dirty feet. This boy did not come from an extreme Muslim family. The insulting incitement of Mahmoud Abbas, together with the daily news coverage of rioting Arab youth, motivated him to take a butcher’s knife and enter the Old City in search of Jews.

He attacked two Jewish families who were returning from prayers at the Western Wall, a place which, according to Abbas, Hamas, and the rest of the Islamic world is being desecrated by Jews. He stabbed one of the men and his wife, then grabbed the man’s gun and began shooting. He succeeded in killing two men, leave a couple of women in critical condition, and injuring others including a two year old baby before he was shot and killed by security forces.

As the badly bleeding wife of one of the murdered men staggered away from the scene of the carnage, with the knife still stuck in her back, she was jeered, spat on and insulted by the banned Muslim women who had taken up positions close to the scene of the terror crime. Several of them screamed at her to die.

There is no differentiating women or children as targets in the fevered mind of a radicalized Palestinian. The three Fogel children were hacked to death in their beds, along with their parents, when Palestinian terrorists broke into their home in Moshav Itamar in 2011. 

It was by this village that four small children miraculously avoided death under a hail of bullets when Palestinians mowed down their parents in a drive-by shooting on 1 October. The nine year old son recited Kaddish - the Jewish mourner’s prayer for the dead – at his parent’s graves the following day.

In the hot-headed Middle East environment, the pressure cooker of Islamic religious incitement is easily lit. It spills over onto the streets as the media condemns “Israeli provocations.”

It has all the makings of an “intifada” with incitement from Palestinian leadership that calls on people to use any weapon at hand to strike at the Jewish enemy.

It is acted on by Arabs who wander the streets with their knives, guns or vehicles to kill Jews.

The only difference between what we are seeing today and what transpired fifteen years ago is that recent events have been territorially limited to Jerusalem and the confines of Judea & Samaria.

This is not to say that, if the current outbreak is not capped soon it will not spread to other parts of Israel.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies.   He is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism.’ www.barrysbooks.info

Assad, Putin, and the smart move that Obama must make.

From warfare to lawfare.

The words used to describe Obama in countries in the Middle East plus Ukraine include “unreliable”, “skittish”, “weak in negotiations” and “feeble in foreign policy.”

Best evidence that these words have real meaning can be seen in the “words not action” policy of the Obama Administration when it comes to Syria.

On August 20, 2012, Obama said, “We have been very clear to the Assad regime but also to other players that a red line for us is seeing a whole lot of chemical weapons being moved around or utilized. That would change my calculus.”

Chemical weapons were moved around and utilized by the Assad regime and Obama did nothing.

On October 22, 2012, he said that “Assad’s days are numbered.”

I predict that Assad will still be in power after Obama vacates the White House. With the injection of Russia into Syria, it seems that it is Obama’s days that are numbered, not Assad.

The day after Obama met Putin at the UN, Russia launched an attack on US allies in Syria that are against the Assad regime. The result of this action was a meeting between Secretary of State Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in which Kerry pleased for “deconfliction.”

It is alleged that only an hour prior to the attack Russia told America to get their planes out of the skies of northern Syria. Ash Carter, the US Defense Minister’s response was to call this action “unprofessional.”

Kerry said he would discuss “the nature of the targets” with the Russians and that “talks will go on about other issues.”

As the brief press conference wrapped up, and as Lavrov walked away, he told the media “Don’t listen to the Pentagon.”

In the dangerous Middle East a favorite saying is “It’s best to be feared, not loved.”

Putin is fear and not loved, but he gets respect. Obama is neither feared nor loved. As one Israeli pundit put it to me, “Obama is a bully at home, but is a coward abroad.”

As proof of his statement he posed the following scenario; “If US-backed allies, or worse American soldiers who we are told by Obama are not in Syria, are killed by the Russians or others acting under the military control of the Russians what, if anything, would Obama do about it? Hit back? Highly unlikely. Complain? Absolutely. Big deal!”

Based in this scenario, how is the Obama Administration going to protect its allies when they are hit not by ISIS but by the Russians as they are right now? Maybe Kerry will come up with another new word like “deconfliction.”

It’s open season for contempt for America.

Ben Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Advisor said of Putin, “It’s hardly someone who is in a strong position” to which local comment is who is strong and who is weak?  He went on “Iraq didn’t work out for us. Syria will not work out for them” to which I say, “Ben! You want to bet on that?”

It was clear that Rhodes was speaking for his boss when Obama doubled down at a White House Press Conference on October 2, 2105, by saying Russia went into Syria “out of weakness.”

So here’s another prediction for you. I predict that Russia will be in Iraq before Obama leaves the White House. The signs are already there that ISIS will be the excuse for Russia to “assist” the Iranians fight Islamic State in Iraq.

Are these “weak” words US strategy, or policy? Does America have a policy or strategy? It certainly doesn’t look like it from here in the Middle East. By simply saying that ISIS and Assad must fall is effectual. Words don’t cut it and, in the tough worlds of real politics, foreign policy and global strategy, Obama projects utter weakness and incompetence.

In an election debate on October 22, 2012 with Mitt Romney who had called out Russia as being America’s worst threat going forward, Obama scoffed Romney by saying, “You said the biggest national security threat against America is Russia, not Al-Qaida, but Russia.” Three years later it is legitimate to ask, who was right?

Obama always backs losers, dangerous losers. Examples are the rebels in Libya who were against Gadhafi, The Muslim Brother hood in Egypt, Iraqi forces instead of the brave fighting Kurds, Syrian rebels. He is even schmoozing Iran. According to Middle East strategic experts, Obama is a proven chronic loser.

Ignoring Obama’s reasons for backing Syrian rebels and Assad’s appalling human rights record, Russia claims, with some justification, to be the only legitimate foreign force in Syria. Putin claims he was invited by the president of Syria to fight alongside the official Syrian army. Putin is using the old cliché that “He’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard!”

Using this excuse, Putin and Assad can claim that any other aircraft flying in sovereign Syrian air space will be considered enemy and liable to be shot down.

There is an expression which is applied to the killing and destruction of terrorist enclaves. It’s called “draining the swamp.”  America was not too keen to drain the Syrian swamp so Putin has taken it upon himself to be the exterminator.

The Obama Administration, alarmed that Russia said they would target ISIS and instead bombed their allies cannot shout too loudly about it because there is more than a whiff of hypocrisy about it.

America turned away as Turkey promised the Administration that it would target ISIS but has been heavily bombing the fighting Kurds in Iraq with American knowledge and silence. There is more than a suspicion that Turkey bought American silence by allowing the US to use Turkish air bases to fly sorties against ISIS.

What options are open to the Obama Administration?

As the clock ticks down to his departure, Obama is leaving the next US president an impossible legacy.

There remains only one avenue open to Obama if he wants to save face and out-maneuver Putin in Syria without enlisting military force.

If you don’t want to use warfare, use lawfare.

If America does not want to get into a military fight against Assad, it should think out of the box and apply “lawfare” against the criminal head of Syria by bringing war crimes charges against him to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

It is undeniable that Assad has committed both humanitarian and war crimes. 

The evidence is at hand. There is no dispute that charges can be brought against Assad to the ICC at The Hague, and there are thousands of witnesses and compelling evidence to prove the case.

Assad is the central pawn in Syria upon which Russia stands or falls in its ambitions there. The only way that a US Administration that is loath to use military force to dislodge Assad from power is to bring him to justice for crimes against his own people.

With approaching 300,000 Syrians murdered by Assad, the international crimes are self-evident and a conviction can be brought quite convincingly.

If the Obama Administration claims it wants to bring down Assad for the sake of the people of Syria he is killing, this is the way to do it and, at the same time, trump Russia's latest moves in that country.

Since the US isn't party to the ICC statute it can't institute prosecutions against anyone. However, the ICC statute does enable the UN Security Council to institute proceedings. Therefore, the US should table a motion in the UN Security Council to institute proceedings against Assad.

This would place Putin in the indefensible position of protecting a designated international war criminal. Should he continue to support Assad, further heavy sanctions could be brought against Russia by the United Nations.

Of course, Russia could, and more likely would, veto such a move. But, if they did, they would be seen as protecting a war criminal. 

The smartest move would be to have a notable American individual, preferably a renowned international jurist, or an American-based human rights organization petition the International Criminal Court.

This is the move to which Obama can put Putin in a corner that it will be difficult to get out of and, at the same time, get rid of Assad to the benefit of the Syrian people.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies.

The Delusional State of Denial.

They deny our existence. They deny our heritage. They deny out history, our belonging. They even deny the walls and shrines that scream our name.

It’s not some state created in peace that they want. It is a delusional dream in which Israel doesn’t exist.

It’s not Filastin. It’s Fantasy Land.

And we are expected to play along with this deception, to ignore our own rights. Dispense with our ownership. Throw away our property rights. 

For what?

To accommodate these liars, these rogues?

What are we doing to ourselves?

We are indulging in the same fraudulent delusion as our enemy.

To what end?

To sleepwalk to our own oblivion.

This is nonsense. This is madness. This is fevered insanity to which no nation on earth has ever subscribed.

For Israel, a Palestine peace is an impossible hopeless dream with a delusional vicious rogue state bent on our destruction.

It’s time to call a spade the bloody shovel that it is.

As Yossi Beilin, the architect and driver of the Oslo process, said after the ranting speech of the leader of his disarrayed people at the United Nation General Assembly podium on September 30, “I wish he would have called for the dismantlement of the Palestinian Authority.”

So ends the Oslo dream.

Abbas shattered the remnants of the illusion of Oslo. His Authority was never a solution but always the heart of the problem.

This applies, with absolute certainty, to Hamas.

There you have the total failure of the Palestine project.

Israel acceded to international demands of allowing a Palestinian leadership to develop. They promised us the road map to peace. They gave us the path to our own destruction.

The Palestinian leadership, in all its ugly forms, imposes on us the infamous four D’s. Not of the creation of their own state, but the deconstruction of ours.

Demonization. Delegitimization, Denial. Death.

How much longer must be tolerate this delusional “solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian problem?

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies.

He is the author of ‘Israel Reclaiming the Narrative’ and ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism’ to be found at www.barrysbooks.info

The hypocrisy (read 'lies') of Mahmoud Abbas in the face of facts on the ground.

The Palestinian Authority allows the desecration of mosques on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. 
They incite Muslims to slaughter Jews at prayer in Jerusalem synagogues.
Now they are silent over the Palestinian destruction of a Bethlehem church.
And Abbas has the chutzpah to blame Israel.

Gabriel Naddaf, spokesman for the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, wrote on his Facebook: “I call to strongly condemn the burning of the holy Church ‘St. Charbel’ burned tonight in Bethlehem by Palestinian extremists. I condemn in the strongest terms the powerlessness of the Palestinian Authority in maintaining the holy places of Christians in Palestinian territories. I call PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas to handle the hazardous events seriously and with severity instead of preaching morality to Israel.”

According to Christian community leaders in Bethlehem, the fire was started by extremist Islamists who for months have been threatening community members with harm. As a result of the fire, several rooms on the church’s second floor were completely destroyed. No one was killed or injured.

Sources quoted by Naddaf said that the fire was just another in a long series of attacks by Muslims against Christians in Bethlehem. “The PA tries to sweep these incidents under the rug but it never condemns these acts, which interfere with freedom of religion,” the sources said. 
Before PA chief Mahmoud Abbas “lectures Israel on its morality, he should look at his own responsibilities and deal with them appropriately,” Naddaf wrote.

Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on Facebook;
“I am proud that the Christian community in Israel has grown each year. Unfortunately, across the Middle East, that trend happens only in Israel. In many other parts of our region, the Christian community is persecuted and attacked. Even in the territories of the Palestinian Authority, including Bethlehem, the cradle of Christianity, the Christian community is shrinking every year"

Strangely silent also are anti-Israel, BDS-supporting, church leaders who attack the Jewish state at every opportunity but remain dumb when their churches under Palestinian control are destroyed and their co-religionists intimidated and attacked.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israeli Institute of Strategic Studies.

Rekjavik - the cold capital of hypocrisy.

The Rekjavik mayor, when faced with global criticism and protests, backed down on his council's blanket boycott resolution against Israel and watered it down to a mealy-mouthed boycott on Jewish products from Judea & Samaria.

I wonder why this city exclusively targets the Jewish state above all others.

He replaced a city vote of anti-Semitism (that’s how it looks from Israel when your capital applies double standards) to a more localized version of Rekjavikian anti-Semitism.

Yes, anti-Semitism. That's what it is when you target the Jewish state exclusively, and against the logic that it refuses to apply to worse offenders, and without applying reason to Israel's claims for understanding or justice. 

Let me put it bluntly. Rekjavik’s decision was a hostile one. It was also hypocritical.

As an Israeli, I may surprise many readers by demanding that this town carry out its boycott resolution in full.

I do so in the certain knowledge that Rekjavik needs us far far more than we need them.

It must begin by throwing out all of the city's computer network that operates by virtue of its Israeli technology. All council members must be deprived of their smart phones. They should also check which other Israeli technology is keeping their city in the modern age. The hypocrites!

Rekjavik must be punished for its hypocrisy. Any city with a mayor that visited China yet boycotts Israel is truly the capital city of hypocrisy.

Rekjavik has no problem with China occupying Tibet, or its appalling human rights record. No reason for Rekjavik to boycott China, or Turkey for occupying northern Cyprus and for bombing Kurds, imprisoning journalists and opponents of the Erdogan government, or Morocco for occupying Western Sahara, or Egypt for blockading Gaza.

This hypocrisy came full circle when it was revealed that the left-wing councilwoman who proposed the boycott motion was leaving Iceland to serve Hamas in Gaza! Not Abbas in Ramallah. No. Its Hamas controlled Gaza that she supports. This is the Gaza that fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians last year, and not for the first time.

This leads to my final question.

Does Iceland and Rekjavik designate Hamas as an Islamic terror organization?

If so, they should boycott this council member when he returns to cold and hypocritical Rekjavik.

Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism.’  

https://www.createspace.com/5333306

Bassam Eid. The Palestinian human rights activist that opposes BDS and boycotts.

Bassam Eid is a Palestinian human rights activist. He created Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group that focuses on human rights abuses by and corruption in the Palestinian Authority. No other ‘human rights’ organizations focus on citizen abuses at the hands of Palestinian leadership both in Ramallah and Gaza. He was jailed by the Palestinian Authority for his work.

Eid's organization focused only on human rights violations perpetrated by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip.

"There are many human rights organizations in Israel, whereas there are and were hardly any organizations in the Palestinian Authority that monitored its actions in this regard," Eid says.

Eid's organization received significant funding from European states and managed to employ researchers who operated in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Five years ago, however, things changed, and the funding from Europe came to an end.

Why should a person who bravely exposes the corruption and human rights abuses of the Palestinian leadership against their own people be suddenly deprived of his funding by European countries?

"I think it happened because European policy in recent years has been to come down hard on Israel and not the Palestinian Authority," Eid says. "They view Israel as the main obstacle to the peace process and want to support the PA. One of the ways to show this support is to stop funding organizations that are critical of the PA."

In an interview with YNetNews, Eid said, "I'm opposed to the boycott because it only ends up harming the Palestinians themselves. Take, for example, the SodaStream plant in Mishor Adumim that is now moving some of its operations to Be'er Sheva. I've met with Palestinians who worked at the factory and were fired because of the move. They told me they were earning an average of NIS 5,000 a month there, and that today they are being offered salaries of just NIS 1,400 in the PA.

"People there are deep in debt because they have taken on long-term commitments based on the understanding that their work at the plant would continue; but reality has slapped them in the face because of the pressure created by BDS movement. Today, they are running between the courts and the bailiff offices and is anyone taking any notice of them? Do you think the boycott movement cares about them at all?"

For his outspoken truth Eid was intimidated and prevented from speaking by BDS protesters at the University of Johannesburg in March 2105.

About the Palestinian Authority Eid told Rebel Media;

“The Palestinian Authority is living in one valley and the Palestinian people are living in another valley. There is no communication between the two.”

“Almost not one Palestinian benefited from the money coming from abroad to the Palestinian Authority.”

“As a society we are talking a lot about the corruption of the Palestinian Authority. Unfortunately, the international community still has blind eyes on this corruption.“

“Nobody is talking about the foundation of a Palestinian state.”

Palestinian society is split into two main factions – Fatah and Hamas.  Both openly call for the destruction of Israel.  Can these organizations co-exist?

“Forget any kind of reconciliation or unity between Fatah and Hamas. Although the international community is demanding two states for two people, the Palestinians are calling for three states for two people.  Hamas is fighting for its own interest in Gaza while Fatah is fighting for its own interest in Ramallah, and Israel.”

“I am not sure that there is even one Arab state that is in favor of a Palestinian state. If you take the Palestinian case from 1948 until 1967 the West Bank and east Jerusalem was under the control of the Jordanians and Gaza Strip was under the Egyptian control. Did Jordan or Egypt between 1948 and 1967 try to create a Palestinian state?  If you are asking me between 1948 and 1967 I am not quite sure that the Arabs are interested in the foundation of a Palestinian state and most of the Arab countries are stuck in their own mud.”

The evidence that Arab states really don’t care about improving the lot of the Palestinian Arabs can be seen in the factual statistic that not one Arab country is listed in the top twenty nations that donate to Palestinian humanitarian causes.

To Israel, he says, “You must remember that your country is still feeding 1,800,000 Palestinian in the Gaza Strip. The State of Israel is supplying food, medicine and fuel while 22 Arab do nothing and watch Israeli trucks bring supplies into Gaza.

You are still feeding us Palestinians and, thanks to you, we are surviving.”

(Acknowledgements to YNetNews and Rebel Media)

Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism.’  https://www.createspace.com/5333306

Mahmoud Abbas’s UN speech - Pigs might fly.

Mahmoud Abbas, the man who was elected to a 4 year term as president of the Palestinian Authority in 2005 liked it so much he decided to stay on unelected for another six years, thereby displaying Palestinian-style democracy.

Recently, this ancient occupier of the presidential seat in Ramallah announced he was going to the United Nations on September 29 to “deliver a bombshell” at the end of his speech.

As the co-founder of the Netanya Terror Victims Organization, I can tell you that when a Palestinian tells you he’s going to deliver a bombshell you are strongly recommended to get out of the building as fast as possible. Don’t say you haven’t been warned, UN delegates and workers.

Assuming he’s not going on a suicide mission - most terrorist leaders tend to send somebody else to do the messy stuff - what can he be possibly want to explode?

We know he’s desperate to grab the headlines. He and his failed cause is not even getting a yawn from a media obsessed with a massive crisis in which migrants want to turn Europe into the new Middle East, or an Obama feverishly trying to provide the messianic ayatollahs in Tehran with the ultimate weapon to drop onto the United Nations building sometime down the road, as part of his ‘best deal’ legacy.

So who’s got time to listen to Abbas who claims that Palestinians are really Canaanites?

Assuming he wants to surprise us with some headlight-grabbing shock and awe, what could possibly get us to sit up and take notice?  Well let’s consider his options;.

He could offer to resign from the Palestinian Authority, as he does every other week. But we know he’ll have forgotten about it by the time he gets home and find the chair’s still warm.

He could declare that the Oslo Accords are null and void, but he’s treated them that way for decades, so what’s new?

Or he could declare that he recognizes Israel’s right to exist in peace and security as the Jewish state alongside the State of Palestine. 

Pause.

No. I’m joking.  He knows he’ll be dead before he leaves the building.  

Sorry about the aberration. It was just me thinking out loud what might be with Abbas.

As we say in the kosher Jewish state, and with due respect to my Muslim friends – pigs might fly!

Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS & Anti-Semitism.’  

Who will live, and who will die.

We are between the high holy days of Rosh HaShana, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. They are the most important dates in the Jewish calendar. 

It is the period where Jews search their souls, a period of introspection. It is the time when G-d reminds us how to lead our lives, and the time when G-d seals our fate for the coming year.  It is the time when G-d gets to decide who will live and who will die. Who will prosper and who will perish.

Nobody can deny that it was the Jews who gave the world the Ten Commandments and the Torah, the rich guidebook of Jewish values and morality.

Despite everything, you will hear little, even perhaps in your own country, that we Jews of Israel know how to guide our country by high moral Jewish values. Too many people question this with false narratives. We do not need to be lectured on morality by those who have lost the light of truth, or who have strayed so far from their own origins.

We are a nation with the spirit of biblical heroes. Heroes like Moses who led the Jewish people out of oppression and to the land that G-d had promised us. Heroes like Abraham to whom G-d made a Covenant that the land would be the birthright to a mighty nation, the Jewish nation.

He satisfied us with His Commandment which we cherish and adhere to. But He not only insisted we live moral lives and be a shining light unto nations. He demanded that we protect and safeguard the land He gave us. As He tells us, it is not sufficient to pray. He insists we become a nation of doers. This has meant that we must maintain our guard against those who wish to destroy us, and that we must fight to defend ourselves.

Too many people wish to deny us that right. Look at our history and see that this is true. Today we are threatened by people who subscribe to a hateful doctrine. Some that come to mind are Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the BDS Movement, ISIS, even the Palestinian Authority.

This hatred goes back into the dark ages of history, yet the hate festers until today. The first people that Mohammed’s hordes beheaded were the Jews of Khaybar and Medina. Today, they are beheading still. The Jews are always the first. They are never the last. First they come for the Saturday people. Then they come for the Sunday people.

If you have any doubt about aura that surrounds the Jewish nation think on this holy decree.

“I will bless those that bless you. And I will curse those that curse you.”

At this significant time we, the people of Israel, ask you to join with us and pray for peace and wisdom to descend on our neighbors so that they can reap the benefits of our bounty. But let them be warned that we are decreed to defend ourselves. This is our G-d given right and duty.

Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS & Anti-Semitism’ www.createspace.com/533306 

9/7, 9/11, 9/17. Three significantly important dates.

Today is 9/11 and we recall the horrors of that day when mass terror struck America.

In less than a week, the US Congress will vote on the important Iran nuclear deal.

A few days ago, I recalled another significant date – September 7.  Not many people remembered what happened on that date. It was the date, in 2007, when Israel destroyed the nuclear reactor in Syria. Israel was criticized for that air strike and punished by the US Administration who withdrew aerial intelligence from the Jewish state. Israel was also widely condemned when it took out the Osirik nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981 with another air strike.

It is little known today, on 9/11, that the site of that Syrian nuclear reactor is in the hands of ISIS.

Can you imagine our world had Israel not destroyed this complex leaving Syria with the eight year advantage to progress its nuclear development program to completion, a nuclear facility that has now fallen under control of the most brutal and inhuman terror regime in the world?

Those truly commemorating the victims of 9/11, victims of an earlier warning shot, killed by radical Islamic terror, should acknowledge the service that Israel gave to mankind by its unappreciated actions in Syria and in Iraq.

As we bow in memory of 9/11 and look at recent history, when it comes to the link between nuclear arms and radical Islamic terror regimes, it is obvious that Israel gets it right and America gets it wrong.

As we head to the next significant date of September 17, may the decision-makers on Capitol Hill do some last minute soul searching and realize that Israel got it right on two previous occasions, and that they are pin-point accurate in their assessment of Iran and this deadly deal with yet another Messianic Islamic terror regime.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies.

The Practical Template for Solving the European Migrant Problem.

The problem facing Europe is not only the vast number of migrants that are flooding that continent. It is that, from past experience, these people do not escape the Middle East. They bring the Middle East with them with all the baggage that contains.  The social fabric breaks down. It becomes increasingly difficult to discern the traditional and indigenous society as governments try to accommodate the overwhelming weight of strangers that do not know their customs and do not speak their language. 

Multiculturalism was a dream. It failed. It became a magnet for millions of unwanted migrants. In its place is a nightmare of unmanageable proportions.

The migrant problem has become a huge destabilizing headache for Europe. It shouldn’t be. The solution should be closer the hand for the migrants that originate in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

Had these migrants been Jewish you can be sure that Israel would have taken emergency measures to accept and absorb them into the Jewish State. By these migrants are not Jewish. The vast majority are Muslim and they all speak Arabic. Therein lays the solution.

The host countries must be the rich Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states. They have vast stretches of land, far greater than in Israel, for example, in which these people can be accommodated and given productive lives.

To the west of the Libyan ports, from where thousands of migrants set out of a perilous Mediterranean journey, lies Algeria and Morocco. Europe would be advised to pump large sums of money into these countries to absorb fellow Arabic-speaking Muslims.

It must be asked why these Arab nations have remained cynically silent. There can only be one reason. They are as equally reticent in accepting these migrants as Europe is, but this is the point, surely? Most of the world is reluctant to be swamped by scenes we have witnessed. It does, therefore, lead to the need to distribute the responsibility and the Arab world, which is responsible for the mayhem and destruction that has wrought the migrant whirlwind, must be forced to open their gates to people of the same faith and of the same tongue.

While Europe agonizes over their moral conscience as they cope with the humanitarian crisis, the Arab leaders have not expressed any remorse or compassion over the fate of their fellow Arabs and co-religionists. This cannot stand!

European nations individually, or via the European Union, must call the Arab League to demand that they accept the bulk of the migrants. 

Let the Christians be accepted into Europe. Let the Muslim Arabs go to Muslim Arab countries, and let Israel accept the Jews, the Druze and Kurds for permanent or temporary shelter.

This division of labor is the simple and most practical way of solving the current migrant problem. It will also be the template for similar problems in the future.

Barry Shaw is Senior Adviser on Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.