Selected articles concerning Israel, published weekly by Suburban Orthodox Toras Chaim’s (Baltimore) Israel Action Committee Edited by Jerry Appelbaum ( [email protected] ) | Founding editor: Sheldon J. Berman Z”L

Issue 8 4 5 Volume 20 , Number 2 4 Parshias Korach June 2 7 , 20 20

Why Israel Must Maintain Its Presence in the Jordan Valley By Dan Schueftan israelhayom.com June 16, 2020 Peacekeepers and high - tech surveillance are no arrangement at all. Without it, Israel acts "defiantly" substitute for the IDF’s boots on the ground. against threats when it sees them, and foreign diplomats The strategic steps being taken in Judea and Samaria protest after they are successfully neutra lized. Since must b e done in coordination with the US. At the same decolonization in the mid - 20th century, the fate of a time, Israel must maintain a delicate balance between the foreign military presence in sovereign land of a hostile need to achieve its national goals, a reasonable response to country has been grim. This scheme will postpone and Palestinian aggression and recalcitrance, and the fears of sterilize the Israeli response to perceived threats and will Jordan. This balancing act req uires that Israel refrain from give the Palestini ans an effective tool to damage Israel's integrating millions of West Bank Palestinians into its relations with the US. Endangering the lives of US soldiers boundaries in order to maintain its pluralistic, democratic, by defending Israeli territory will eliminate the independent and Jewish identity. discretion of Israel in vital issues. And principally: this The response to Palestinian recalcitrance and format will encourage constant fr iction and provocations aggression, and the strategic fears of Jo rdan, calls for between the Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans. isolating the Palestinians in the West Bank, and by proxy It's important to take such a harmful option off the the millions in Gaza, from the Hashemite kingdom. To table. If it were possible to ensure the current situation in achieve this isolation, it is best not to apply Israeli the Jordan Valley, there would be no need to discuss sovereignty to all settlements in Judea and Samaria. sovereignty n ow. The main reason it has arisen is the Additionally, to ens ure the Israeli response to the renewed discussion on the Palestinian issue and the Palestinians and Jordan, it is best to strive for establishing distress it causes the Jordanians. Democrats in the US will permanent Israeli rule in the Jordan Valley. increasingly disapprove. The EU and some of its In 2014 General John Allen, the security adviser to unfriendly states may cause trouble. The UN and the former Secretary of State John Kerry, suggested a plan that Hag ue will draw up anti - Israel initiatives. was based on much goodwill yet little understanding of the The Arab streets may awaken. The Palestinians, as conditions in the Middle East. always, will go berserk. Jordan will have to protest The plan was drawn up by dedicated officers who vigorously and may even suspend diplomatic ties and call made notable achievements for their country during an era back its ambassador. All these are grave possible of strategic failure in Afghanistan and Iraq. The plan conse quences, but if Joe Biden is elected, the US is included Palestinian sovereignty in the Jordan Valley. The expected to return to the sterile route that strives for an answer to Israel's security fears would be sensors, agreement between Israel and Palestinians based on the unmanned aircraft, satellites, and other technological outline of Allen's plan. Applying sovereignty in the Jordan devices. There was also talk of foreign troops, possibly Valley will improve Israel's nego tiating position in the American, being stationed along banks of t he Jordan battle against this terrible format. River, and a possibility of a US - Israel deal ensuring Jordan is expected to return to its normal pattern of American support for unilateral moves by Israel when behavior in every confrontation: to be happy deep in its responding to threats on its security. heart about Israel's achievements, and to shout loudly on Establishing control in the Jordan Valley entails behalf of the Palestinians . The physical isolation of the abandoning the delusional idea of Israeli and Jord anian Hashemite kingdom from the aggressive subversion of the security based on technology and foreign presence. What Palestinians in West Bank calms the regime in Amman. Israel needs is not information on threats and the hope The need to differentiate itself from Israel, due to radical that someone else will respond before it's too late. Rather, internal elements, causes the Hashemite king to respon d to it needs deterrence that comes with a good chance of Israeli actions in a more aggravated manner. That's how it's prevention and an Israel i force that will neutralize threats been for decades, and that's how it most probably will be when needed. in the future. A scheme like the Allen plan is much worse than no

No, Coronavirus Won’t Transform the Middle East By Reuel Marc Gerecht hoover.org June 16, 2020 Some historical perspective. in handling the pandemic will fall from office. There isn’t a In the democratic West, many expect there to be a clear understanding of what virological comp etence in a post – Covid - 19 reckoning. That politicians who did poorly leader ought to look like (Angela Merkel appears, for now, Focus o n Israel June 27, 2020 Page 2 to be the exemplar), but many executives in the more the Mediterranean littoral, the median age is even younger severely infected nations — for example, Donald Trump, than Iran’s. The median age in Saudi Arabia, the newest Emanuel Macron, and Boris Johnson — aren’t role models coronavirus hotspot among the Arabs, is 30. The damage and should be punished. An d beyond leadership, many wrought by this malady on youth is vastly less than on the seem to believe that the virus will produce a social and old. cultural judgment day for national priorities. Much more We still don’t know how this contagion is going to welfare, more state capitalism, and less defense spending play out in Eg ypt’s massive shanty towns. The fate of seem to be the themes. Covid - 19 will, we are assured, Algeria, much more plugged into the West via its shak e and shape us long into the future. immigrant population in Europe, with a military junta that If the coronavirus were the Black Death, which tore may be even more sclerotic than Cairo’s, proven through the Middle East and Europe in the 14th century, democratic aspirations among the people, and an or the less lethal but still pulverizing pneumonic plagues opposition m ovement, Hirak, that the regime doesn’t seem that struck later, one might be more quickly sympathetic to able to squash, is also in a possibly precarious situation. the prognostications about th e contagion’s convulsive Algeria has been hit hard by the drop in prices for oil and effects. This pandemic isn’t what the historian Ibn natural gas, noticeably spooking and, it appears, dividing Khaldun, who lost his parents and many of his teachers to the military junta that has domi nated the country since the the Black Death, described: 1960s. Accompanying the collapse of hard - currency Civilization both in the East and West was visited by a revenue, Covid - 19 has afflicted several large Algerian destructive plague that devastated na tions and caused cities, where public health facilities are bad to abysmal. populations to vanish. It swallowed up many of the good French - speaking Algeria has rarely garnered much things of civilization and wiped them out….Cities and American attent ion; it should attract more. buildings were laid waste, roads and way signs were Among the rich and pampered, the Gulf states will obliterated, settlements and mansions became empty, likely survive, mildly scathed. The loss of oil revenue and dynasties and tribes grew weak. The entire inhabited world commerce, in part due directly to the pandemic abroad, is changed. unlikely to convulse these countries given their cash Certainly in the West, the coronavirus might seriously res erves and the eventual return of better petroleum prices. reorder priorities if economies can’t recover rapidly from Their foreign manual laborers, on whom much daily life the first wave — and can’t withstand subsequent waves — of depends, may not fare as well since they are stacked up in this malady. It’s reasonable to assume that Covid - 19, and poor housing; but they can still probably be forcibly deficit spending that many Western nations, especially the repatriated, if infected, by t he local rulers. The arrival of United States, are utilizing in an effort to stave off Ramadan this year isn’t a blessing for any Muslim country depression, will accelerate the decades - old shift in funds (the Black Death was so devastating in Egypt in 1349 in from defense to domestic spending and bring us more part because it struck during Ramadan, when the Muslim quickly to the d ay when bond markets rebel against debt. identity and communal festivities are fervent). But the Gulf A disarming, retrenching America will, of course, have states’ resources should be able to contain the virus. enormous impact abroad. In the Middle East, American Saudi Arabia is the one possible exception given its power has often checked Russian and Iranian ambitions larger, poorer population and just the general ineptitude of and made worst - case scenarios, say, Iranian dominatio n of Saudi government. Its cash reserves remain extensive, Persian Gulf oil, unthinkable. Neither Russia nor China however, and its public health care system, though nor the Islamic Republic — the big three revisionist degrading, is still probably enough to handle the contagion powers — are likely to respond to the coronavirus and a unless it comes in intensifying waves. A perfect storm may retreating United States with timidity and isolationism. be slowly building in the country if oil prices stay low and Beyond continuing American retrenchment, does Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s Vision 2030 Covid - 19 in any way rewrite the politico – economic map in de velopment plan falls apart, which is likely even without the Muslim Middle East, making dictatorships and declining revenue. But Covid - 19, among the country’s democracies weaker or stronger? In particular might this denizens, will probably be a bit player in this drama. be the nail in the coffin — a viral Chernobyl moment — for Muslim families, though smaller and less tight - knit the Islamic Republi c, which is perhaps the most politically than yesteryear, are still bigger an d more cohesive than in explosive country in the region? the West. It’s possible that if large numbers die from the The big Middle Eastern countries have a distinct contagion, the young men who watched their grandparents medical advantage over their Western counterparts: the and parents perish will hold their rulers responsible and median age is much lower. In Iran, the epicenter of the seek revenge — still a hallmark of Muslim ethics even in disease in the Middl e East, it’s 29.5 years. In Italy, the thor oughly detribalized metropolises. But the military hardest hit of European countries by Covid - 19, the median regimes in Cairo and Algiers, the two Arab regimes most at age is 47.3. In Algeria and Egypt, the two Arab states risk, like the theocrats in Iran, have all played brutal and whose political tumult inevitably reverberates throughout successful defense against popular unrest. This is especially Page 3 June 27, 2020 Focus on Israel true in the Islamic Rep ublic, where the theocracy proved And as long as the virus remains a fear in the Middle resilient in crushing the gasoline - subsidy protests last East, we are unlikely to see young men take to the streets November. Hundreds were killed over the span of a few in large nu mbers owing to the distinct possibility that days, many, according to Persian social media, through protestors could catch and transmit the disease to elder enfilading machine - gun fire. members of their own families. On balance, Covid - 19 may The clerical regime’s res ponse to the petrol protests well be the most effective, least damaging, crowd - control certainly shows that the Revolutionary Guards and their mechanism that authoritarian regimes cou ld have more thuggish minions in the Basij haven’t lost their imagined. capacity to gun down young men and women. To have a When thinking about the effect of the pandemic in the game - changing effect, Covid - 19 would have to either crack Middle East, it’s perhaps most helpful to view it culturally. this re solve, embolden protestors to risk their lives with It’s good to recall that the Islamic and European Christian greater abandon, or kill large numbers of the ruling elite, responses in the 14th century were distinctly different. In who now are mostly in their seventies, thereby sapping the Christendom, to quote the historian Michael Dols: theocracy’s capacity against the wayward proclivities of the …the Black Death affected the central theme of Iranian people. Foreseei ng the disease’s denouement in Christian teaching concerning evil and human suffering; Iran is difficult, especially if it recrudesces more virulently Western man took the plague epidemic as an individual in the fall, but we can surmise that the men who were trial more than a collective social calamity. The Islamic shooting protestors in November were pretty close in age tradition, however, has not concerned itself to the same to those being shot. To wit: the regime has the ad vantage. degree with personal suffering; the central problem for the The same might be said in Lebanon of the Hizbollah, Muslim is the solemn responsibility for his decisions that the real power behind the confessional facade of affect other men’s lives and fortunes with a purposeful government. Covid - 19 hasn’t so far struck the country creation. T he cosmic settings of the two faiths are wide hard, which is surprising given the substantial contact apart in their emphasis: where the Muslim’s primary duty between the Shi’a community and Iranians, whose travel, was toward the correct behavior of the total community like the Chinese’s, has brought the virus in its wake. The based on the sacred law, the Christian’s was with personal Revolutionary Guards come and go as they please in salvation — resignation as opposed to red emption. For the southern Lebanon — unless the Israeli Air Force Muslim, the Black Death was part of a God - ordered, intervenes. It’s Lebanon’s financial woes, now the worst in natural universe; for the Christian, it was an irruption of the region, that make Covid - 19 seem like a small - scale the profane world of sin and excruciating punishment. affliction. The country’s financial system, a concatenation After the Black Death in Europe, Christians got of profoundly corrupt banks, is in a state of collapse and rowdy. Peasant revolts occ urred for years after. Old habits nothing — not France, not the International Monetary and institutions, first and foremost the Church, took a big Fund — can save it. Recent protests, which drew l arge hit as individuals started to reevaluate their lives and worth crowds in the Shiite south before the virus struck, certainly and how they communed with God. Intellectuals became suggest a profound disquiet with religious militancy and more questioning, if not downright disrespectf ul. Women Iranian domination of an Arab community that helped to began pushing boundaries, or as one wry historian put it, establish Shiism in Iran in the 16th century. In the Levant, “Who could doubt that humanity was slipping towards Covid - 19 will li kely just be one more reason to want some perdition when women appeared in public wearing distance from Persians. artificial hair and low - necked blouses and with their breasts Nor is the coronavirus likely to become a decisive laced so high ‘that a cand lestick could actually be put upon player in the struggling democracies in Tunisia and Iraq. them.’” By comparison, the Islamic world remained The incidence in the former has been low. Democracy conservative, if not quiescent. there has had many problems , but viral incompetence, so Today, in the Middle East, for things to change post – far, isn’t on the list. In Iraq, bordering Iran, it has been Covid - 19, individuals would have to feel greater agency in much higher, but protests against the government have not themselves and an unbearab le weariness of old, repressive so far centered on the disease. Incompetence, corruption, orders. They would have to see in the virus something and Iranian intrusion are the dominant themes. Cov id - 19 beyond kismet, fate, which always inclines toward cruelty. may become a grievance, but given all the problems still They would need to feel angry, energetic, and, above all, afflicting Iraq, it probably won’t preempt other popular brave. demands. Mr. Gerecht is a senior fellow at the Found ation for Defense of Democracies.

Beating on the Dead Horse of Palestinian Statehood By David Adler and Ted Lapkin spectator.com.au June 20, 2020 The legal, strategic, and moral case. his wonderful essay Politics and the English Language. Yet George Orwell warned against ‘flyblown metaphors’ in there are times when a political writer encounters sophistry Focus o n Israel June 27, 2020 Page 4 so absurd that a descent into cliché constitutes the only The creation of a Jewish state, warned Pasha, ‘will lead adequate response. to a war of extermination and momentous massacre that Thus, the phrase ‘beating a dead horse’ leaps front of will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the mind after reading a sp ate of newspaper editorials and Crusades.’ If there’s a singular salient lesson to be learned opinion pieces bemoaning the evils of Benjamin from 20th century Jewish history, it’s that if people say Netanyahu’s plan to extend Israeli sovereignty to they intend to kill you, it’s wise t o take them seriously. additional regions of Judea - Samaria, aka the West Bank. The geo - strategic argument is simpler, arising from the The defunct equine in question is the ‘two - state fact that Israeli territorial withdrawals most often lead to solution’ that has lon g been the centre - piece of diplomatic the establishment of terrorist enclaves on the doorstep of initiatives to end the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. And the Jewish State. After Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005 , it typical of this teeth - gnashing, garment - rending ‘woe is me’ got rocket fire, suicide bombers and terrorist infiltration style of editorialising was an op - ed by Australian academics tunnels rather than peace. There’s no way Israelis are going Anas Iqtait and Tristan Dunning that ran in the Age on 23 to replicate that experiment in the West Bank which is May 2020. only 20 kilometres away from downtown Tel Aviv. In this article, Drs. Iqtait and Dunning expend almost The collapse of the Arab Mi ddle East into bloody 1,000 words arguing that a move by Israel to annex chaos over the past decade affords even greater weight to portions of the West Bank will be the death knell of any such geo - strategic considerations. As Syria is torn to chance for a negotiated peace. Of course, how anyone still shreds by civil war and Jordan teeters on the brink of retain s faith in the two - state solution after almost three financial insolvency, Israel simply cannot and will not decades of diplomatic failure recalls that famous Einstein abandon it s most defensible eastern border along the definition of madness as doing the same thing over and Jordan River. over again, expecting a different result. Nor will Israel ever agree to the Palestinian demand The creation of an independent Palestinian stat e in the for a fully sovereign nation - state with its own army and West Bank will never happen for very good legal, strategic foreign policy. Independent Palestinian public opinion and moral reasons. To indulge in another Orwellian faux surveys consistently show that a large majority of Arab pas, the ship of dreams Two - State - Solution has not only West Bank residents reject any form of Jewish national sailed, but has long since sunk. self - determination. The West Bank is far too small, and The legal argument against Palestinian stat ehood has West Bankers far too radical, for Israel to accept an particular salience as this is the centenary of the 1920 San independent Palestinian state in the hills overlooking major Remo Convention, when the victorious WWI Allies Israeli population centres. decided the fate of the vanquished Ottoman Empire. By The moral argument against Palestinia n statehood is the terms of this agreement, Britain was awarded self - evident as well. The Palestinian Arabs have forfeited temporary governance over the land of Israel for the any legitimate claim to independence through their express purpose of establishing ‘a national home for the repeated rejection of any political compromise that Jewish people’. This British Mandate encompassed pre - recognises Jewish national ambitions. 1967 Israel, the West Bank and the entirety of Jordan. The state of Israel affords political equ ality to all We’ll leave aside the Trans - Jordanian part of the citizens, including 1.8 million Muslim and Christian Arabs British Mandate that w as hived off by Whitehall who enjoy freedom of speech and religious worship while unilaterally in 1922 as a consolation prize for Hashemite participating in fair and open elections. Prince Abdullah after Arabia was given to the House of By contrast, Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 16th year of Saud. The more important point is that when now - King his four - year term as Palestinian Authority president, Abdullah of Jordan conquered the West Bank in 1948 - 49, demands that any future Arab state in the West Bank must his subse quent annexation of that territory was never be utterly Jew - free. In other words, the PA is calling for recognised by the international community. Thus, there’s a the ethnic cleansing of 460,000 Jews from their homes in cogent legal argument to be made that Israel’s capture of Judea - Samaria and Jerusalem. the West Bank (Judea - Samaria) during its defensive war of Soi - disant human rights ‘activist s’ who argue for this 1967 simply restored the geographica l unity of that single mass deportation of Jews remind us of a favourite scene territorial entity. from the movie Shooter. After confronting rogue army Don’t forget that the Palestinian Arabs voided the officer Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover), the US attorney 1947 UN Partition Plan by embarking on their war of general declares: ‘Colonel, your moral compass is so effed wanna - be genocide against the Jewish community of the up I’d be su rprised if you can find your way to the parking British Mandate. Lest anyone be inclined to challenge th is lot.’ assertion, we refer them to the words of the Arab League So what’s the ‘solution’ to the Israeli - Palestinian Secretary General Azzam Pasha as published just a few conflict? In fact, is there even one to be had? We don’t weeks before the UN partition vote in the Egyptian know. But we do know that an independent Palestinian newspaper Akhbar al - Yom. Page 5 June 27, 2020 Focus on Israel

state in the Judea - Samaria will never co me into being. And Dr David Adler and Ted Lapkin are the President and Executive rightly so. Director of the Australian Jewish Association. Visit suburbanorthodox.org for the current issue.

Iran’s Other Nuclear Violations By The Editorial Board wsj.com June 22, 2020 The IAEA calls out Tehran for violatin g the non - government has rejected and refused to comply with its proliferation treaty. obligations under the IAEA’s Additional Protocol.” The media barely noticed, but the world on Friday France, Germany and the United Kingdom introduced called out Iran for blocking nuclear inspections unrelated the rebuke, which passed 25 - 2 with seven abstentions. The to President Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal. This problem will Western Europeans remain committed to the 2015 nuclear continue no matter who is the American President in 2021. deal and have criticized Mr. Trump’s “maximum pressure” Iran has been a party to the Treaty on the Non - sanctions against Iran. But their role here shows a trans - Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since 1970. As a Atlantic consensus around the nature of the Iranian signatory, the country has committed to use nuclear regime, despite disagreements about how to contain it. material and technology only for peaceful purposes — and The s ame can’t be said for Russia or China, which to cooperate with inspectors from the International opposed the resolution. This illustrates the degree to which Atomic Energy Agency. the world’s three main expansionist authoritarian powers On Friday the IAEA’s board of governors called Iran are uniting to frustrate global norms. Azerbaijan, India, out. The resolution noted that nearly yearlong discussions Mongolia, Niger, Pakistan, South Af rica and Thailand “to clarify Agency questions related to possible undeclared abstained. These nations have taken the indefensible nuclear material and nuclear related activities in Iran have position of not having a position against clear non - no t led to progress.” It demanded that Tehran provide proliferation violations. “prompt access to the locations specified by the Agency.” “The responsibility for creating tension in the relations Earlier this month an IAEA report criticized Iran for between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IAEA lies scrubbing possible former nuclear facilities. It further with the founders of this resolution,” an Iranian foreign expressed concern about the locatio n of a metal disk made ministry spokesman said, according to Iranian state media. of uranium and research in the early 2000s that used other “These countries must accept the consequences of this undeclared nuclear material. Iran says the allegations are action.” based on “fabricated” Israel intelligence. If that’s true, why The IAEA has often given public cover to Iran’s not open up the sites and prove Jerusalem wrong? noncompliance while pr ivately pushing it to be more “Wh ile everyone was staring at the JCPOA [the 2015 transparent. The agency’s shift is welcome and explains the deal], new safeguards problems have arisen in a very threats from Tehran. The next step should be an IAEA different lane,” U.S. Assistant Secretary for International referral to the United Nations Security Council, and U.S. - Security and Nonproliferation Christopher Ford noted. “It Europe cooperation on sanctions. is the first time ever by any country anywhere that a

Hummus Becomes the Lat est Target of Israel’s Enemies By Gilead Ini commentarymagazine.com July/August 2020 “The only Israeli food that they eat is the blood of the mistake of describing shakshuka as “Israeli,” he was Palestinian people.” accosted on camera by anti - Israel activists who insisted In February, the Washington Post published a that the eggs - and - tomato dish is really Palestinian. (It isn’t. broadside at tack on Israeli food by the Palestinian food As Libyan food writer Sara Elmusrati has explained, writer Reem Kassis. Kassis did not object to the flavors, Sephardic Jews brought the dish from its original home in textures, or aromas of Israeli food but to the very idea that North Africa to Israel, where it’s been “showcased in a it exists at all. Her piece might be the most visible example way it has never been in the Ma ghreb states.”) of this bizarre food fight ta rgeting Israel. But it’s hardly the Kassis’s piece in the Washington Post uses more first one. measured tones in an attempt to explain the angry A few years ago, for example, after television food - reactions to a straightforward phrase. “As it is for many show host Rachel Ray wrote about her “Israeli nite” dinner Palestinians, the term ‘Israeli cuisine’ is hard for me to of hummus, eggplant, and other Middle Eastern dips, swallow,” she writes. pollster James Zogby responded on Twitter with hashtags Aft er being introduced to an Israeli restaurant in of fury: “Damn it @rachaelray. This is cultural #genocide. Philadelphia that serves Levantine food, she explains, her It’s not #Israeli food.” eyes were opened to the gravity of the problem: Likewise, in 2017, when Conan O’Brien made the Foc u s o n Israel June 27, 2020 Page 6

It’s not that I am opposed to the idea or can’t Similar slurs come from higher up the ivory tower. tolerate “Israeli food, you Zionist occupiers and thieves? It [is] as cultural diversity and fusion. To the contra ry, I know Israeli as Apple pie is Arabic,” mused California State full well that our Palestinian cuisine, like every other, is professor Asad Abukhalil. a byproduct of evolution and diffusion. In fact, the Although this language sounds more extreme than concept of national cuisine is a relatively recent anyt hing Kassis wrote, she suggests in her Post article that construct, appearing in the late 18th and early 19th the same sentiment — the view that Jews in Israel are centuries following the ris e of the nation - state. thieves — drives her reflux upon hearing the phrase Israeli But cultural diffusion is different from cultural food: “First the land, now the food and culture?” The verb appropriation. Diffusion is the result of people from and actor are missing from the sentence, but they are different cultures living in close quarters and understood. It is the Jews who returned to their ancestral interacting with or learning from one another. Cultural home and who stole Palestinian land and food. appropriation, on the oth er hand, relies on Aside from the unhealthy rage that often accompanies exploitation and consequent erasure, followed by the these arguments, what’s wrong with the claim that there is willful denying of those actions. Food, after all, is an no such thing as Israeli food? expression of history, culture, and tradition. By this Most plainly, there’s the matter of basic geography. If token, presenting dishes of Palestinian provenance as you take a map and highlight locales where hummus has “Israeli” not only denies the Palestinian contribution lon g been a staple, you’d end up with florescent yellow to Israeli cuisine, but it erases our very history and across Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and the Palestinian - ruled existence. West Bank and Gaza; and also Jaffa, Tiberias, Abu Ghosh, Israeli food is bad, in other words, because Israelis are Akko, and Daliyat al - Karmel — towns and cities in Israel. bad. Those who talk about, celebrate, and serve the cuisine Try as some might to scrub it away , Israel remains on the aim to exploit and erase Palestinia ns. And to suggest map of the Middle East. otherwise isn’t just disagreement, it is “willful denial.” The But, the food - fighters might object, those towns only evidence of all this bad faith? Well, Kassis just knows it. became Israeli after 1948, when the modern State of Israel There is some irony to her comments. One doesn’t was established. Previously they were part of Palestine. often encounter Israeli food writers who deny the Indeed, what had been known as Canaan, the Kingdoms existence of, a nd confront references to, Palestinian food. of Israel and Judah, Judaea, Syria Palaestina, Southern On the contrary, Kassis herself cites “leading Israeli food Syria, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the Beirut Vilayet scholars” and “many Israeli academics and food writers” was officially dubbed, when the British took control of the who give Palestinian food its due. Israelis in general refer land in the First World War, Palestine. to their chopped salad as “Arab sa lad,” she acknowledges The whole while, though, the l and was known by its while making a particular point, never mind that it Jewish inhabitants as Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel. undermines her central argument about nefarious Israeli Aware of this, the British High Commissioner of Palestine appropriation. included the Hebrew letters Aleph and Yud — “a Even the anecdote about the Philadelphia restaurant recognized abbreviation of the Hebrew name ‘Eretz raises questions. The most prominent Israeli restaurant in Israel,’” he explained — on Palestinian coins and stamps as Philadelphia, Michael Solomonov’s Zahav, matches part of the Hebrew designation for the territory. Even Kassis’s description of being “newly opened” shortly after Arab geographers of yore referred to the environs of she moved to the city. And Solomonov, a James Beard Israel’s southern desert as “Tih Bani Isra’il,” or Land of Award – winning Israeli chef, doesn’t hesitate to highlight the Wandering of the Children of Israel. the Palestinian connection to the foo d he makes. In the At any rate, pre vious territorial names, such as documentary In Search of Israeli Cuisine, for example, he Palestine, don’t tend to matter much at the dinner table. freely acknowledges that many Israeli foods have One can safely talk of Bolivian food without fear of attack Palestinian - Arab roots. (Kassis should know this. She’s by those who insist we use South Peru (the country’s friends with Solomonov.) earlier moniker) instead of Bolivia (a name that, un like The denial and erasure, rather, tend to go in the Israel, has European roots). It’s okay to order Thai instead opposite direction. The delegitimization of Israeli food is a of Siamese, Ethiopian instead of Abyssinian, and Korean predictable outgrowth of a broader campaign to denigrate instead of Samhan. In the same manner, there’s nothing Israel itself and to deny the culture and humanity of its wrong with describing regional foods from within the Jewish citizens. We can look to campus for some typical borders of the State of Is rael as Israeli food. examples: “The only Is raeli food that they eat is the blood That should be the end of the story. But the food - of the Palestinian people,” wrote a Kent State student who fighters offer a further objection: Israel is the Jewish state; later headed the university’s chapter of Students for Justice Jews aren’t legitimate sons and daughters of that land; and in Palestine. (This, of course, is a reprise of the blood libel Arabs, the true custodians of hummus, don’t view their that cost so many Jewish lives in Europe.) ident ity as tied to the term Israel. 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This amounts to just more erasure. Firstly, much of In the abridged version of Jewish history, we learn that the country’s non - Jewish Arab - speaking population does Jews made their home in Israel for thousands of years, use “Israel” or “Israeli” when self - identifying. According were expelled, lived in exile for another 2,000 years, then to a 2019 poll by sociologist Sammi Smooha, for example, returned. Although that describes the trajectory of many, it 2 7 percent of that population, or about 500,000 Arab is a half - truth. To the extent they could, Jews clung on to citizens of Israel, call themselves Israeli Arab, Israeli their homeland just as any people would in the realm of Palestinian, or just Israeli. An additional 46 percent include their an cestors and holy places. “in Israel” as part of their Arab or Palestinian identity. Roughly 2,600 years ago, then, when the Babylonians Moreover, when Kassis an d others insist on calling conquered ancient Israel and exiled the Jews, most of the Middle Eastern food “Arab,” they ignore the many non - Jewish community stayed behind. It was only 50 years later Arab minorities in the region who are counted among that a new foreign conqueror, Cyrus of Persia, defeated the hummus’s guardians, whether Samaritan, Coptic, Assyrian, Ba bylonians and facilitated the return home of many of Armenian, or other. those in exile. And it is one particular “other” that really st icks in the The Jews were still there a few hundred years later craw of critics. The paramount act of erasure by those when Alexander the Great appeared and were still there opposed to Israeli food — and the entire point of their when his empire disintegrated. They remained in Israel to protest — is the argument that Jews are alien to the region, live out the Hanukkah story, a revolt by an indigenous usurping colonists from afar who have no business people against foreign rulers. And they remained to revolt, regarding hummus as part o f their culture. It is the Cal twice more, against the subsequent Roman invaders. The State professor’s “Zionist thieves” narrative. first Jewish defeat was marked by an arch in Rome The history of the Jewish people tells a different story. depicting the menorah and other Jewish spoils from the Throughout the multiethnic Middle East, Jews ate and Tem ple in Jerusalem; the second included the massacre of made hummus for as long as anyone has. If you search for rebels, the infamous exile, and the renaming of Judea to the world’ s earliest known published hummus recipe, for Syria Palaestina. example, you’d find it in 13th - century Egypt. There, you’d Though the expulsion of Jews opened the book on also find a prominent demographic minority of Jews — the Jewish life in Europe, it didn’t close the book on Jewish ancestors of so many Egyptian Jews who took the short life in Israel. We kn ow, for example, that for centuries voyage east to Israel. after the Roman victory, Jewish communities thrived in In her article, tho ugh, Kassis deftly dodges this reality, and around northern Israel. Today, we can still find the arguing that Jews from the Arab world, or Mizrahi Jews, remains of their towns and synagogues. Arab villagers who are not to be associated with Near Eastern food: subsequently resettled one of those Jewish towns n amed Some might counter that Mizrahi Jews brought their new village Yehudiya, a reference to the Jews who, these dishes to Israel. But hummus and falafel were they fully understood, preceded them. not part of th e culinary repertoire of most Mizrahi From those homes in the north, Jews again revolted in Jews before their immigration in the 1950s, as they the year 351. In 572, they joined a Samaritan revolt. In 613, were generally eaten in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and they fought off the Byzantines. Palestine, rather than in North Africa, Yemen, and After Mu hammad’s armies came to Israel from Arabia, Iraq, from where most Mizrahi immigrants hailed. thousands of Jews still lived there. In the 10th century, for Just like that , she snips the roots of a hundred example, an Arab geographer wrote of their flourishing in thousand Egyptian, Syrian, and Lebanese Jews. And for Jerusalem — “Everywhere the Christians and the Jews have what? To deny their connection to processed legumes. the upper hand” — working as tanners an d dyers and Jewish roots in the Levant, it seems, are an inconvenient moneychangers. It is easy to imagine a chickpea being reminder that Jews have been part of the “Arab world” smashed after a long day at work. ev en longer than the Arab world was Arab. Around the year 1000, letters written by Egyptian Jews But the main target of the food - fighters isn’t those referred to Jewish towns dotting the land of Israel. The roots in Lebanon, Egypt, or Iraq. It’s the taproot — the residents of those towns joined forces with Muslims to place that unites Jews across the Middle East with one fight yet another round of European invaders, the another and with Jews worldwide. It is the Jewish Crusaders. rel ationship to the Holy Land, specifically, that offends. Each of these revolts was followed by massacres of And so it may pain James Zogby and Asad Abukhalil Jews in their homeland that devastated the community. to hear that hummus was not merely the food of so many But those who survived still managed to keep a foothold Jews from Arab countries who fled to Israel in the past on the land — sometimes a smaller one and sometimes a century, but also a likely favorite of generations of Jews larger one, as fortunes dictated. who never left Zion — those who managed to remain for Meanwhile, Jews living in exile returned. Among the thousands of years, despite massacre after massacre and notable examples, the famed poet Yehuda Halevi arrived expulsion after expulsion. in the Land of Israel from Spain in 1141. Many of those Foc u s o n Israel June 27, 2020 Page 8

who developed the Kabbalah, th e branch of Jewish In medieval Spain, for example, Yehuda Halevi wrote mysticism, were Jews who moved from Spain to the city of not in Spanish, but in Hebrew. In one of his poems, he Tzfat in the 1500s. In the mid - 18th century, the Arab described his longing for the homeland he had never seen: leader Zahir al - Omar welcomed Jews back to Tiberias, “My heart is in the East, an d I am at the edge of the West. another of their holy cities. About 100 years later, Jews So how can I even taste what I eat? How can it give me became the larg est religious group in Jerusalem, a city from pleasure?” Perhaps he regained his appetite when he which they were barred for centuries. sojourned in Egypt with the Jewish community there en None of this is to suggest that medieval Palestine was route to Jerusalem. It was right around that time and place, the demographic center of Judaism. Vast numbers of Jews re call, that the earliest known hummus recipe was lived in exile in Spain, Poland, and Iraq, for example, as published. th e population of the Holy Land dwindled during much of The conviction that the Land of Israel is the Jewish the second millennium. Still, to those who decry Israeli home stayed with Jews through the darkest periods of their hummus, we can confidently point out that Jews and history. In 1945, President Harry Truman sent an envoy to hummus do share the same homeland. displaced - persons camps that housed Holocaust survivors. We might also remind them that it’s no coincidence The envoy reported back that Jews “want to be evacuated that Isr ael is, again today, home to the largest to Palestine now, just as other national groups are being concentration of Jews in the world — Jews who are there repatriated to their homes.” not as “colonists,” as anti - Israel activists like to claim, but And still today, polls indicate that most Jews see their as an indigenous people who continuously maintained Jewishness as a matter of ancestry and culture, even more their ethnic, cultural, and religious links t o the land, even than religion. A vast major ity of American Jews feel that a from afar. thriving State of Israel is vital to the future of the Jewish Evidence of those links abound in Jewish rites. When people. An overwhelming majority of British Jews, 93 Jews pray, they face Jerusalem, a city mentioned repeatedly percent, say that Israel plays a role in their Jewish identity. in the Hebrew Bible and prayer books. They observe Tisha The connection between Jews and their homela nd, b’Av, a holiday about the Temple in Jerusalem. They mark then, is reflected in the genes of Jews everywhere, in the S ukkoth, one of three ancient festivals during which Jews footsteps of the Jewish community that remained and made pilgrimages to the Temple. And they celebrate returned, and in the hearts of Jewish poets who, like Hanukkah every year by lighting a candelabra designed to Yehuda Halevi, dream of Zion. look like the menorah from the Temple. Over the past It is past time for Israel’s critics to accept that the 2,000 years, that same Jerusalemite de sign has decorated r elationship can be found, too, in Jewish stomachs. Or synagogues in Jericho, Jewish tombs in Rome, and Hebrew they can continue banging on the table. But it will remain Bibles in France. the case that Israel is on the map; that Israeli towns, like The timing of those holidays is based on an ancient Palestinian ones, are celebrated for Levantine cuisine; that Middle Eastern calendar, not a Western one. The songs Israeli citizens, bot h Arab and Jewish, are weaned on that commemorating them are sung in Hebrew, a language food; and that Jews, whether Ashkenazi or Mizrahi, are not Jews ne ver discarded, regardless of where they were forced strangers in the land of their forefathers. to settle. Mr. Ini is a senior research analyst at Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting.

The Myth of the Lone - Wolf Terrorist By Nitsana Darshan - Leitner israelhayom.com June 18, 2020 A U.S. court recognizes the truth. as a "lone - wolf terrorist" – and that behind every act of In recent weeks, various defense officials have raised terrorism brought before the court were guiding hands their concerns over an apocalyptic scenario whereby that recruited the terrorists, incited them to perpetrate applying sovereignty in parts of Judea and Sama ria and the thei r act, guided them and embraced them after their Jordan Valley will trigger hundreds of stabbing and attacks. Those guiding hands belong to the terrorist vehicular attacks by lone - wolf terrorists. The reference is organizations Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, along to those terrorists who act independently, spontaneously, with Iran and Syria who support them. The court placed uncontrollably. Last week, the federal court of appeals in responsibility for the terrorist attacks o n these elements. Washington D.C. issued an unprecedented ruling on the Among the cases heard by the court was the murder of wave of stabbing attacks against Israelis in recent years, American tourist Taylor Force at the Jaffa Port, the which sheds new light on the manner in which we can murder of human rights activist Richard Lakin in the approach the term "lone - terrorist" and the way the Jerusalem neighborhood of Armon Hanatziv, and others. phenomenon should be fought. The court's ruling, howev er, extends beyond the The American court unprece dentedly accepted the individual connection between the victims and their victims' families' claims and ruled there was no such thing murderers. It also applies to the State of Israel's diplomatic Page 9 June 27, 2020 Focus on Israel

and security spheres, particularly amid the backdrop of responsibility for the attack on various online platforms Israel's expected sovereignty bid in Judea and Samaria. affiliated with the organization, cal ling the terrorist a Indeed , terrorist organizations use lone - wolf attacks to shahid and a warrior. harm Israel without assuming direct responsibility: A type The State of Israel must adopt the spirit behind the of having their cake and eating it too. Hamas and PIJ use American court's ruling and act accordingly. To eliminate social media as a tool to instruct followers to carry out the waves of "lone - wolf" attacks, Israel must also target low - intensity attacks on Isra eli targets, after which they the people who dispatch these terrorists, ra ther than just only assume tacit responsibility that is understood by their focus on direct prevention. Lone - wolf terrorists are cogs in Palestinian target audience. an orchestrated attack, and action must also be taken These murderous acts, therefore, are anything but against the states and organizations that support them. spontaneous; they can be predicted and perhaps even Defeating terrorism, both practically and in terms of foiled in advance. A year prior to his attack, for example, perception, requ ires a terminological shift. We must stop the terrorist who murdered Taylor Force listened to a using misleading terms such as "lone - wolf terrorists" to sermon by Sheikh Mohamad al - Arefe, a radical Islamist make it unequivocally clear that the State of Israel knows cleric from Saudi Arabia who preaches the ideology of the the wolf is not alone, that an entire pack of wolves stands Muslim Brotherhood. About a month before carrying out behind him, and that the war on terror doesn't end with his attack , the terrorist posted a message on his Facebook destroying the terrorist's home but by exacting a price page that unmistakably implied his desire to die a shahid from the organization or state that sent him. (martyr). Two days after his attack, Hamas proclaimed

Don’t Let the UN Arms Embargo on Iran Expire By Behnam Ben Taleblu newsweek.com June 19, 2020 Russia and China are eager to sell weapons to the On exports, the loss of the embargo wo uld mean the Islamic Republic. loss of the highest - level blanket international prohibition It's not every day that Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme against Iranian weapons transfers, a move sure to leader, borrows from the lexicon of international relations complicate the political predicate for future multi - national theory. Highlighting the Islamic Republic's proliferation of efforts to interdict weapons or address threats to conventional ar ms, Khamenei bragged in a recent address international shippin g. Moreover, if the ban terminates this that Iran managed to change "the balance of power" in the October, there will be only country - specific resolutions Levant against Israel. Rhetorical flourishes aside, the with general arms bans, such as those pertaining to content of Khamenei's statement is not new. For years, Lebanon and Yemen — both of which Iran has already Tehran has spread weapons across the Middle Ea st to violated. further its revisionist vision of an ideal regional order. On imports, if the embargo lapses, the most But this is only part of a larger problem. sign ificant multilateral restriction on Iranian military Barreling down on the international community this modernization will go with it. For the U.S., which has long October is a lapsing U.N. arms embargo on Iran. The ban sought to impede the Islamic Republic's military power, covers both exports and imports of conven tional weapons, the next best policy tools are almost all unilateral. They as defined in the U.N. Conventional Register of Arms. range from enforcing an exis ting U.S. - origin embargo on Subject to a five - year limit, the ban is enshrined in U.N. Iran that has been in place since the early 1980s, to Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2231 — which threatening various sanctions against foreign sales nodes, codified the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (known by its acronym, to engaging in covert action to thwart purchases, to the "JCPOA"). This te mporary ban replaced the previous, introducing defective material into Iran's supply chain. and incrementally more restrictive, UNSCRs on Iran that While the Trump administration has shown how contained no expiration dates. effective U.S. unilateral pressure can be, there is no reason The end of the embargo brings with it a two - fold to let the international prohibition lapse. In fact, Iranian conventional arms challenge: Iranian military leaders like President Rouhani have cited the expiring modernization through the legal importa tion of weapons, embargo as one reason to keep the JCPO A (instead as well as Iran's greater export of weapons that enhance choosing to incrementally violate the accord) despite the the lethality of its proxies and partners. While Iran has return of sanctions. Blunter still was the secretary of Iran's already violated UNSCR 2231's arms ban through attempts Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, who to both procure and proliferate weapons, losing the threatened that the JCPOA would "die forever" if international ar chitecture with which to call this activity a sanctions against Ira nian arms purchases were extended. "violation" and rally the international community to act Underscoring that threat was a semi - official Iranian news permits Tehran, to Khamenei's point, to more easily chip outlet, which recently broadcast five retaliatory options away at the existing balance of power in the Middle East. Tehran has to turn the screws on Washington if the embargo is extended. For Rouhani, Shamkhani, and other s Foc u s o n Israel June 27, 2020 Page 10 in the Islamic Republic, the JCPOA is more than just a In fact, some scholars have implicitly embraced the "patient pathway" to a nuclear weapon. It is also a patient idea. This school of thoug ht hopes that a more pathway to an enhanced Iranian military. conventionally capable Islamic Republic could mean a Washington has been ringing the alarm bell on this more secure Islamic Republic, which over time might issue for some time, with the administration (a nd voices in dampen the regime's desire for unconventional warfighting Congress) openly calling for, at the very least, extending tools like terror proxies or even nuclear weapons. Other the arms embargo at the U.N. Security Council. Should analysts have s ought to temper concerns over a deluge of that fail, they will reportedly press for restoring all U.N. foreign weaponry arriving in Iran by citing the legacy of sanctions on Iran, which resets the international baseline past procurement hurdles (such as over the S - 300 system), for pressu re against Iran back to what existed from 2010 as well as by raising the question of financing. to 2015. It is no secret Iranian military planners are con scious This strategy is not lost on America's adversaries, who of their conventional shortcomings, but focusing only on are gearing up to oppose any extension of the embargo. At the above driver downplays other, more path - dependent the helm of this effort are Russia and China, two states components of Iranian security policy. This includes the Iran has already lobbied to o ppose the U.S. at the Security legacy of conflicts like the Iran - Iraq War, which taught Council. Despite its rhetoric about "self - sufficiency," it is Tehran the value of dete rrence — as well as the legacy of no accident that Moscow and Beijing are the two places Iran's asymmetric interventions and proxy wars, which where Tehran now seeks help. Both played an outsized taught Tehran how to bleed its adversaries in a plausibly role in Iran's post - Iran - Iraq War (1980 - 1988) re - armame nt, deniable fashion. helping it gain access to a limited quantity of fighter jets, Both legacies mean that Iran would be less likely to diesel submarines and anti - ship missiles. Both states also divest from its quest for the ultimate de terrent (a nuclear signed up during that era to aid Iran's nuclear program. weapon) or cheap and relatively successful war - fighting According to a 2019 Defense Intelligence Agency tools — like using proxies — when presented with the assessment, Iran is again likely to turn to Russia and China option to grow its conventional military. If anything, the for "advanced conventional capabilities" after the embargo regime would work to retain its asymmetric capabilities ends. These capabilities could reportedly include advanced and layer on grea ter conventional capabilities when they fighter aircraft, tanks, coastal defenses and air - defense become available, pocketing the arms embargo's systems. What the report overlooks, however, are the termination as a concession from an irresolute West. potential cruise missiles Tehran may seek to procure from Worse, the newfound capability could spur an Russia and China. Another land - attack cruise missile would escalation in Iranian low - intensity warfare in the region. significantly enhance Iran's long - range strike capabilities. It With the reg ime feeling more secure — and thus more would also help the regime achieve parity between its confident in its deterrence and ability to protect the cruise and ba llistic missile arsenal. Iran is believed to have homeland using conventional weapons — it will turn its proliferated cruise missiles in the past, and currently seeks sights abroad. to grow the lethality of these weapons. Last September, None of this is to mean that Tehran will immediately cruise missiles featured prominently in Iran's attack against become a conventional military power in Oc tober 2020. oil facilities in Saudi Ar abia. However, as new hardware is procured, reverse While Russia and China are not predisposed to engineered, incorporated into existing doctrine, rendered provide Tehran with every capability it desires, interoperable (if possible) and perhaps even proliferated, empowering Iran would create more headaches for the net effect will be a more hybridized and lethal war - Washington and yield less time and resources for the fighting capability. When placed in the hands of Iran's Russian and Chinese problem sets. In 2017, the U.S. revolutionary and Islamist leadership, such capability is not Na tional Security Strategy warned that the era of "great inclined to promote responsibility and restraint. power competition" was back, with Russia and China more It is this outcome that an extended arms embargo inclined to challenge Washington's "geopolitical seeks to avoid. Washington has no philosophical gripe advantages" around the world. Iran is now set to be one with Iranian military power, or the idea of Iran having a theater for this contestation. defense policy. However, it does take issue with how such Although Iran is classified as a "rogue" power in that power is wielded. Therefore, Washingt on opposes the same strategy document, there are growing linkages Islamic Republic of Iran, which is the world's foremost between it and Russia and China. Since the advent of the state sponsor of terrorism and already the largest missile JCPOA, Iran has purposely drawn itself closer to both power in the Middle East, attaining a significant powers. If the arms embargo lapses in October, conventional military capability. W ashington could witness in real time the merging of the "Normal" nations do not face such embargoe s or great and regional power challenge. impediments. Revolutionary regimes ought to. Tehran But not everyone believes enhanced Iranian should be permitted to access international arms markets if conventional capabilities are a bad thing. and only if it acts like a normal nation. Otherwise, Page 11 June 27, 2020 Focus on Israel

Washington should press ahead with its plans to extend Mr. Ben Taleblu is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of the embargo. Democracies, where he focuses on Iranian political and security issues.

Israel’s Netanyahu seeks to have his cake and eat it too By David Gardner ft. com June 24, 2020 Helped by the Trump administration, he has changed Trump himself — facing an increasingly uncertain re - the conversation about Palestine . election — must keep an eye on millions of Evangelical Next week, Israel will be at the centre of one of two Christian supporters, who are theologically invested in a geopolitically seismic events. Either Benjamin Netanyahu, Great er Israel. Mr Netanyahu may fear this opportunity the Israeli prime minister, will deliver on his pledge to will close if Mr Trump loses in November. anne x up to a third of the occupied Palestinian territory of Yet if partial annexation goes ahead it will not be just a the West Bank. His and the Israeli far - right’s ambitions tactic to parry volleys of international criticism. It will were endorsed by Donald Trump, the US president, in his gobble up strategic strips of land, ostensibl y letting Mr lopsided “deal of the century” in January. Netanyahu have his cake and eat it anyway. Or, more likely, he will delay this sweepin g annexation, It would probably include Ma’ale Adumim, near the perhaps postponing the land - grab but adding up to three northern tip of East Jerusalem. This is not just any Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank to Israel’s settlement. Its municipal boundaries encompass an area territory. nearly the size of Tel Aviv and reach almo st to Jericho, the If the latter, many would hail Mr Netanyahu as a easternmost Palestinian city in the Jordan Valley. If other statesman who has heard the pleas of moderate Arabs as settlements are taken, they may include the Gush Etzion well as Israel i securocrats not to unilaterally endanger bloc south of Bethlehem and Har Homa just north of it. Israel’s warming relations with some of its Arab Connected to Ma’ale Adumim by a new settler road, this neighbours — such as the United Arab Emirates and would cut o ff Arab Jerusalem from its West Bank Saudi Arabia — as well as existing peace treaties with hinterland. Egypt and Jordan. Partial annexation, in other words, will install the last But some would also recognise the five - ti me Israeli ramparts needed to enclose East Jerusalem, encircle premier has already done what no predecessor could Bethlehem and bisect the West Bank. Game over. manage since Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza and Will the artifice of Israeli moderation sway Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab - Israeli war. inter national opinion? Most states fear further spread of The incremental dispossession of Palestinians from the irredentism virus, endemic in countries such as Russia their land may have reached its limits. Yet Mr Netanyahu and China, Turkey and India, which like Israel are seeking has ended negotiation on the basis of giving up land for to stretch beyond their recognised borders. The Trumpian peace, and won Israel the blessing of its US patron to keep US has swelled a sense of im punity in the Israeli all Jewish settlements, considered illegal under government, which expects no more than a slap on the international law except by the Trump administration. wrist from the EU. Although Mr Trump’ s so - called peace plan floats the idea Yet, of Israel’s neighbours, Jordan will care, fearing of a Palestinian state, this is utterly bogus. Israel will use tactics such as the demolition of homes to The Trump blueprint entails the surrender of the heart displace Palestinians into Jordan, thereby addin g to an of the occupied land that Palestinians were led to believe existing Palestinian majority descended from earlier waves by the Oslo peace accords of 1993 - 95 would give them a of refugees. Saudi Arabia cares too. While Crown Prince r eal state on the West Bank and Gaza, with Arab East Mohammed bin Salman promised support for the Trump Jerusalem as its capital. Palestinians are instead being plan, his father King Salman publicly repudiated this, offered a collection of scattered cantons, investment of sensitive to Israel’s US - re cognised sovereignty over all $50bn and, at best, a supra - municipal government that has Jerusalem, which is home to Islam’s third holiest site. been Mr Netanyahu’s real intenti on for three decades. Saudi kings go by the title Custodians of the Holy But Planet Netanyahu is more complex than the Mosques (of Mecca and Medina), from which the al - Saud irredentism his rhetoric irradiates. Despite his fire - eating dynasty draws legitimacy. bombast he is notoriously risk - averse. He is also trial on Even partial annexation will further erode Israel’s three charges of corruption. legitimacy, especially in Europe, by mixing up its He is in a power - sharing government wit h erstwhile recognised right to a state within the 1967 borders with the arch - rival and former army chief Benny Gantz, with whom right it asserts to settle occupied Palestinian territory. That he will rotate the premiership. Mr Gantz shares Mr opens the door to an aparthe id - style campaign by Netanyahu’s ambitions to enlarge Israel’s 1967 borders. Palestinians for equal rights inside an expanded Israel and But he wants it done in an internationally backed rather the spread of a boycott movement outside. It is not easy to than unilateral way. Whi le some officials in Washington have your cake and eat it. want a Gantz greenlight for annexation to proceed, Mr Foc u s o n Israel June 27, 2020 Page 12

Bashar al - Assad has no solutions to Sy ria’s crisis By Sean Durns economist.com June 20, 2020 Even former loyalists are turning on the dictator. But country’s biggest mobile - network provider, from Mr he will not go easily. Makhlouf. When Mr Assad inherited the presidency from his Other former supporters are also turning their backs father two decades ago, Syria was a middle - income on the regime. Hundreds of members of the Alawite sect, country. Now over 80% of its people are poor. Last year an offshoot of Shia Islam from which Mr Assad hails, have gdp was thought to be about a third of what it was before protested along the coast. The Druze, followers of a small the war. This year it will be even lower. A covid - 19 esoteric religion, h ave taken to the streets of Suweida. lockdown is partly to blame. Then there is the situation in “The regime’s problem is with its loyalists, not with the neighbouring Lebanon. Syria’s biggest foreign market and opposition,” says Ibrahim Hamidi, a Syrian journalist. But main supplier of dollars is mired in a financial crisis. With violence is also flaring in places such as Daraa, where the dollars scarce in both countries, the value of the Syrian uprising began — and which the regime though t it had pound has fallen to record lows. pacified. The currency traded at about 50 On June 11th Mr Assad to the dollar before the war. dismissed his prime minister, Today a greenback fetches Imad Khamis. The president about 3,000 pounds on the now relies on a diminishing black market. The rebels in Idlib circle of cronies. But his recently adopted the Turkish lira problems are growing. On June to replace the pound. 17th America implemented The value of government tough new sanctions on Syria, salaries is also sinking, a s prices under what is know n as the rise. The upshot, says the un, is Caesar Act (named after a that many people can no longer former Syrian military afford food. Even a local photographer who smuggled football hero posted a picture of pictures of torture out of the himself on the street with his country). They target any belongings. Pharmacies have person, company or run out of medicines because institution — Syrian or producers don’t have enough foreign — that does business money to pay for ingredients with or provides support to the from abroad. Shops and cafés regime. The leg islation’s net has which reopened after the been cast so wide that it is lockdown was lifted hav e expected to deter investors and quickly closed again for want of custom. In an effort to firms which hoped to participate in Syria’s reconstruction. prop up its reserves of hard cash, the government has Mr Assad is undoubtedly weak. Still, he is probably made things worse. Banks have been told to stop lending. not going anywhere. His people are worn out; millions They have switched off their cash machines and limited depend on him to allow the delivery of un food aid. Four withdrawals. People wait outsid e in queues, hoping to decades of sanctions have taught the regime how to cope recover what savings they can before the currency drops with pressure and redirect blame. It says the West is again. waging an economic war on Syria, after failing to unseat Short on answers, as well as cash, Mr Assad has begun Mr Assad by arming the rebels. It castigat es America for fleecing his own wealthy supporters. Many have handing the territory containing Syria’s oilfields and its acquiesced — but not Rami Makhlouf, Syria’s wealthiest bread basket to the Kurds. It is falling back on old tycoon and Mr As sad’s cousin. In May he began posting smuggling routes, mostly through Lebanon, and creating videos on social media in which he complained about the new ones. Most importantly, Russia and Iran continue to regime’s heavy - handedness and its confiscation of his prop up the dictat or. They are still hoping for a return on assets. Earlier this month Mr Assad seized Syriatel, the their investment.

When It Comes to Anti - Semitism, the Woke Are Fast Asleep By Jonathan Marks commentarymagazine.com June 19, 2020 Hating the Jews won’t get you cancelled. professor Jasbir Puar, lionized by academics on the left I have written before about the case of Rutgers despite or because of her anti - Semitic attacks on Israel. Page 13 June 27, 2020 Focus on Israel

Recently, the most egregious of Puar’s claims were motivated to do so by a letter, signed by numerous resurfaced in an incident at Florida State University. The purportedly progressive organizations, that mentions Student Senate President, Ah mad Daraldik, reportedly Daraldik’s First Amendment rights, doesn’t mention the built a website that, among other things, accuses Israel of website, and pretends that Daraldik is the victim of a organ harvesting. But she adds a twist: Just as “the Nazis “smear campaign” to suppress legitimate criticism of conducted many different types of experiments on the Israel. inmates of the concentration camps,” so, too, do the In fact, critics are instead perpetuating the view that Israel is harvest organs. Daraldik can be held to account for noxious views that — In Puar’s case, the charge goes back to unsourced though it is unclear when exactly the website went up — he rumors concerning Israel’s activities during the “knife has not disowned. intifada” of 2015 - 16. In our student’s case, the charge goes John Thrasher, FSU’s president, has issued a statement back to the 1990s and concerns a single facility in which affirming the university’s opposition to anti - Semitism. corneas, hea rt valves, and skin grafts were taken, While he initially wrote merely of “offensive anti - Israel sometimes without family permission, from approximately rhetoric,” the statement has since been modified to read 150 cadavers. Among those bodies were, as Daraldik’s web “anti - Semit ic rhetoric.” That is a heartening correction. site tells you, Palestinians. Also among them, as it does not As a rule, I am not in favor of taking the extraordinary tell you, Israeli soldiers and civilians. measure of removing someone from office over troubling To compare this incident, in which a pathologist broke remarks, even in student governments. Nor am I in favor a law and thereby harmed Jewish and non - Jewish families, of picking on young people who may well k now better to Nazi experimentation is gross Holocaust minimization when they’re a little older. What we should object to and and inversion. As Miriam Elman of the Academic be concerned about is this: Even in a time of heightened Engagement Network says, the comparison i s scrutiny of people’s utterances and actions, even in a time “unequivocally anti - Semitic.” Yet a Student Senate that when admissions offers are being rescinded for racist quite recently, in an overwhelming vote, removed its social media pos ts, anti - Semitism wins plaudits. president over remarks he’d made in an online group When it comes to anti - Semitism, the “woke” are fast chat — he’d stressed the incompatibility between his asleep. Catholicism and queer and transgender poli tics on the Mr. Marks, a contributor to Commentary’s blog, is professor of other — voted to keep Daraldik in office. Perhaps they politics at Ursinus College . . W hy Palestinians Should Take to the Streets and Start Toppling Statues By Ruthie Blum israelhayom.com June 18, 2020 Do Palestinian lives matter? most are able to rattle off the names of every Kardashian, Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters across the West sports star and Instagram influencer, few appear to be are on a rampage against cultural and historical symbols versed in much of anything other than fashionable slogans that they deem racist. No book, film, play or monument is and platitudes about the world in which they live. saf e from their scrutiny and disdain. It would be interesting to do a s urvey on the number Minnesota removed Mark Twain and Harper Lee of placard - waving demonstrators who actually read The novels from its schools’ curricula. HBO pulled Gone with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or had a clue about the Wind from its movie line - up. battles fought in World War II. Apparently, however, there The Paramount Network canceled the new season of is nothing quite as effective as the kind of snap education the popular reality show Cops before i ts June 15 premiere. gleaned on t he Internet, in the wake of a contemporary Other studios and companies are rushing to follow suit murder - gone - viral. with everything from sit - coms to old classics. This is not to deny the need for serious intellectual Statues of American founding fathers George debate over the type of material that a society wishes to Washington and Thomas Jefferson have been defaced. promote or discourage. On the contrary, democracies Even the legacy of Britain’s lionized late prime minister grapple regularly with this is sue. Winston Churchill is under assault. Take, for example, The Protocols of the Elders of Indeed, nothing is sacred and all is fair game when it Zion, a fabricated document published in Russia in 1903, comes to the “woke” generation taking personal or and presented as evidence that the Jews were conspiring to political offense. achieve global hegemony by underhanded means. Given the unapologetic ignorance displayed by While some consider banning its sale a moral students everywhere these days , it is heartening to discover imperative, others argue not unreasonably that it should be that the young people demonstrating from California to included in syllabi pertinent to the study of antisemitism. Melbourne are remotely familiar with the iconic figures After all, the vile text – falsely portrayed as the minutes of they’ve been trashing since the horrific killing of George actual meetings among Jewish leaders – was translated into Floyd on May 25 by a Minneapolis police officer. While many lan guages, and continues to circulate both online and Foc u s o n Israel June 27, 2020 Page 14

in print in certain Asian, South American and Middle commit stabbing, car - ramming, Molotov cocktail and Eastern countries. missile attacks on Israelis. Oh, and hopefully to lose life Which brings us to the Palestinian Authority, where and limb during the endeavor. The Protocols is presented as an authentic book that If Palestinians were to take to the streets of the PA to reveals the true nature of J ewish treachery. shout about their lives mattering, it would make perfect The PA is also home to activists, and the origin of ex - sense. Not only are they persecuted, kept impoverished pats, who have been piggyback riding on the BLM protests and programmed to exist in a state of fear, but are egged in the US to demonize Israel. One method of doing this is on to sacrifice themselves and their children for a goal that by claiming that the Israeli military trains American police their leaders perpetually block. in the art of brutality – a skill it hones on the necks of If the r esidents of Ramallah and Gaza were to topple defenseless Palestinians. portraits of terrorists, overturn police cars and demand a The BLM movement doesn’t mind being exploited for new order of democracy and civil rights, they would be this purpose, since it uses the Palestinians in its own justified. Unfortunately, they’d also be subjected to torture campaign against Uncle Sam and the Jewish “apartheid” on a par with, or worse than, that suffered by George state. Floyd. What these co - champions of vi ctimhood never admit Nor would any Palestinian sadists - in - uniform tasked to themselves or to anybody else is that Palestinian lives do with quelling the unrest be punished by the authorities not matter in the least to their leaders, who treat them as who answer to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. It’s not for pawns and cannon fodder. nothing that he perpetuates the fiction – among his people Yes, the honchos in Ramallah and Gaza – while and for international consumption – that Israel is at the engaging in an ongoing war between and amo ng root of Palestinian misery. Doing so has enabled him to themselves – prevent the people over whom they rule stay in power, and in clover, for the past 15 years and from holding, let alone expressing, independent thoughts counting. and aspirations. The Palestinians know this and hate him for it, as was They infuse their tightly controlled media, classrooms evident in interviews last we ek with Israeli Channel 13’s and cultural events with propaganda that denigrates Israel Arab affairs correspondent and analyst Zvi Yehezkeli. and the West, and glorifies martyrdom in the name of “In Israel, there’s law and order; life is good,” said one Allah. West Bank Palestinian, when asked about Prime Minister They incentivize terrorism through the granting of Benjamin Netanyahu’s intention to begin extending Israeli hefty salaries to those who shed Jewish blood and stipends s overeignty to parts of Judea and Samaria next month. to the families of those killed in the process of doing so. Another admitted, “I prefer Israeli sovereignty [to Meanwhile, they have spent decades pock eting the Palestinian] 100%.” billions of dollars, euros and shekels given to them for A third asserted that if elections were held today in the humanitarian aid, rehabilitation and institution building. PA between Abbas and Netanyahu, the latter would win In fairness, they have been steadfast in their dedication for sure. Unlike the ir Western counterparts, Palestinians to culture, making sure to fund monuments, sports events, actually long to have a little liberty, not to mention a steady dance festival s and art exhibits dedicated to the heroes job. whom they wish their people to celebrate. It’s a hip way of How is it, then, that the world’s liberals – who are conveying an ideology of death and destruction. voicing solidarity with BLM, erasing history and offering One monument of note is a structure in Ramallah special benefits to “black, indigenous and other people of honoring Dalal Mughrabi, a female Palestinian terrorist color” (BIPOC) – are forsaking the Palestinians? And why f rom Lebanon who led the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre, do Palestinians imagine that BLM and company give a considered the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history. damn about them? The attack began with the hijacking of a bus and ended The answer is that the current chaos has nothing to do with the slaughter of 38 innocent passengers – among with wanting the US government or police to value life . It them 13 children – and the woundi ng of more than 70 is, rather, a revolution fomented by radicals with an others. agenda: to destroy Western civilization by nullifying it. As for sports, well, Palestinian karate, chess, soccer, The fact that participants in this effort imagine that it table tennis and other youth tournaments bear the names will result in an improved society for any citizen indicates of “martyred” mass murderers. Ditto for murals, music how utterly ignorant they are – as if that weren’t already videos and cartoons depicting Jews as hook - nosed abundantly clear. aggressors in IDF uniforms, and urging Palestinians to

C urre n t issue also available at suburbanorthodox.org . If you see something, send something” – editor