State TV says military shot down ‘hostile targets coming from direction of occupied territories,’ a day after explosions heard in vicinity of Iranian and Hezbollah facilities
Footage aired by Syrian state media shows an air defense missile after it was fired during reported Israeli strikes near the capital Damascus on May 17, 2019. (Screen capture: Twitter)
Syria claimed its air defenses on Saturday night shot down a number of missiles fired from Israel, for the second time in less than 24 hours.
The official SANA news agency said the military intercepted “hostile targets coming from direction of occupied territories.” Syrian state TV said the missiles were shot down over Quneitra and near Damascus.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Israel fired at least three missiles. Two of the strikes targeted a Syrian army brigade which supervises the country’s Quneitra province, he told AFP, while the third missile was destroyed by Syrian defenses.
On Friday night, Syrian state TV reported sounds of explosions near the capital, and aired footage of what it claimed were air defenses intercepting missiles fired from Israeli jets seen over Quneitra in the Syrian Golan Heights.
“Aerial defenses detected hostile targets coming from the direction of Quneitra and dealt with them,” the official SANA news agency quoted a military source saying, referring to a Syrian town in the Golan Heights bordering Israel.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported several explosions in the Al-Kiswah area outside the city, in the vicinity of Iranian and Hezbollah storage facilities and air defense batteries. The group added that it was not immediately clear if the explosions were caused by Israeli airstrikes or surface-to-surface missiles.
There was no response from the Israel Defense Forces, which rarely comments on reported strikes.
The Hebrew-language media reported Saturday night that Friday’s alleged strike was another episode in the confrontation between Israel and Iran in Syria. Israel accuses Iran of seeking to set up a military presence in Syria that could be used to threaten the Jewish state.
In November 2017, Western intelligence officials told the BBC that Iran had established a permanent military base in el-Kiswah. Israel has reportedly hit the base several times.
The Israeli military has acknowledged carrying out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria in recent years on targets linked to Iran, which is backing President Bashar Assad’s regime in the Syrian civil war.
The United States has increased its forces in the Middle East, including aircraft carriers, B52 bombers and Patriot missiles, in response to intelligence information.
US President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (R) attend the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia May 21, 2017.. (photo credit: REUTERS/JONATHAN ERNST)
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have agreed to a request for a renewed deployment of US forces to deter Iran, the Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported Saturday.
According to the report, the deployment of the forces comes as part of the cooperation agreement between Washington and the Arab states in the Gulf, and will take place both at sea and on land. A Saudi source told the London-based newspaper that “the agreement was aimed at deterring Iran from a military escalation, including attacking American targets… and not with the aim of entering into a war with it.” Iran videotaped US aircraft carrier on its way to the Gulf, saying that although the Pentagon claims that it can attack thousands of targets, in a real situation it will not be the case. They claimed that the Iranians have been trained in this kind of fighting and use thousands of speedboats called Panthel, capable of launching a large number of mortars towards targets, and serve as a firewall for radar and warships.
The leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, met with leaders of Shi’ite militias in Baghdad and ordered them to “prepare for war by proxy,” the Guardian reported Thursday evening. Two intelligence sources told the newspaper that Soleimani had summoned the Iranian-backed militias about three weeks ago in light of the tension in the region. The move aroused concern in the US that there was a threat to American targets in the Middle East.
The United States has increased its forces in the Middle East, including aircraft carriers, B52 bombers and Patriot missiles, in response to intelligence information that the Iranian regime ordered its proxies to attack American forces in the region.
Wouk, an Orthodox Jew, embodied the new postwar possibilities for American Jews and his writing helped normalize Judaism within the larger American landscape
BOSTON (JTA) — Herman Wouk, who died Friday at the age of 103, was an Orthodox Jewish author whose literary career spanned nearly seven decades and who helped usher Judaism into the American mainstream.
Wouk was the author of two dozen novels and works of nonfiction, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Caine Mutiny” from 1951, which was a fixture on best-seller lists for two years, and the best-selling “Marjorie Morningstar” from 1955. Both books were later adapted for the screen. His novels “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance” both became successful television miniseries. By the mid-1950s, Wouk’s popular and financial success as an American Jewish novelist was unmatched.
Even more unusual for a writer of Wouk’s celebrity was his Orthodox observance and treatment of Jewish religious practice in his writing. Wouk embodied the new postwar possibilities for American Jews and his writing was both cause and effect of the normalization of Judaism within the larger American Judeo-Christian tradition.
When he appeared on the cover of Time in 1955, the magazine described Wouk’s blend of worldly success and Jewish religious observance as paradoxical.
“He is a devout Orthodox Jew who had achieved worldly success in worldly-wise Manhattan while adhering to dietary prohibitions and traditional rituals which many of his fellow Jews find embarrassing,” the article said.
At the time, Wouk’s fame seemed like an incredible feat for an Orthodox Jew. Unlike other Jewish novelists, who had focused on Jewish immigrant culture and tended to portray religious Judaism as foreign and exotic, Wouk made Jewish religious observance appear mainstream in his books. Scenes of a Passover seder and a bar mitzvah service became scenes of middle-class American life in “Marjorie Morningstar.”
None of this escaped criticism. With the exception of “The Caine Mutiny,” critical reviews of Wouk’s works were typically mixed. Both Jewish and mainstream reviewers expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of his writing, his conservative outlook on politics and sex, and his treatment of Judaism. Some rabbis even criticized Wouk for mocking Jewish observance — though in the coming decade, Philip Roth’s fiction would radically change their perspective on what counted as literary denigration of Judaism.
In this file photo taken on May 7, 2006 writer Herman Wouk attends the Broadway Opening of ‘The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial’ in New York City. (Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images North America/AFP)
Meanwhile, fellow Jewish novelists like Roth, Saul Bellow and Norman Mailer viewed Wouk as conforming to middle-class American values that prioritized marriage, family, religion and service to country. Not only did he stay married to the same woman for more than six decades, but Wouk expressed pride in his military service, for which he received a US Navy Lone Sailor Award. Wouk in turn saw the others as bowing to fashionable literary trends of rebellion and shocking readers.
From his debut novel, “Aurora Dawn,” in 1947, to his last book, “Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author” — published in 2015 when he had reached a century — Wouk wove themes central to the American Jewish experience throughout his work. Even “The Caine Mutiny,” a less Jewish novel than later works, included Lt. Barney Greenwald, who gives a moving speech in defense of a lieutenant who helped keep Greenwald’s Jewish mother from being “melted down into a bar of soap” by the Nazis.
Set in the 1930s and ’40s, Wouk’s fourth book, “Marjorie Morningstar,” heralded a new era for American Jews. The novel followed the journey of a New York Jewish protagonist no different from any other bright and beautiful girl, an image further cemented by Natalie Wood’s portrayal of Marjorie in the 1958 film version.
Not since the 1927 film “The Jazz Singer,” starring Al Jolson, had a movie shown Jewish religious scenes. But unlike “The Jazz Singer,” Marjorie and her religion were not exoticized — Jewishness was portrayed as middle class and American. With Marjorie, Wouk had succeeded in making a story about Jews into an American story.
Marjorie also marked a turning point in his writing career. With confidence that he had readers who would follow him to less popular subjects, Wouk’s fourth book, his first work of nonfiction, took on the subject of Orthodox Judaism. Published in 1959, “This Is My God” was a primer about the Jewish religion intended for both Jewish and non-Jewish readers.
As other American celebrities would do, Wouk used his fame to draw attention to his little-understood religion. Serialized in the Los Angeles Times, “This Is My God” introduced readers to such Jewish particulars as the laws of kashrut and family purity and the holidays of Sukkot and Shavuot. The book showed, through anecdotes from Wouk’s glamorous Manhattan life, that it was possible to be both a modern American and Orthodox.
At a time when Jews still encountered quotas at universities and discrimination in hiring and housing, Wouk’s example provided inspiration. “This Is My God” became a popular bar mitzvah and confirmation gift for young Jews of all movements.
This May 15, 2000, file photo, shows Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk in Palm Springs, Calif. Wouk died in his sleep early Friday, May 17, 2019, according to his literary agent Amy Rennert. He was 103. (AP Photo/Douglas L. Benc Jr., File)
Born in the Bronx borough of New York City on May 27, 1915, Wouk was the second of three children of Esther and Abraham Wouk, both immigrants from Belarus. Abraham Wouk began work as a laundry laborer and found financial success in the laundry business. Herman spent his early years in the Bronx receiving basic Hebrew training from his grandfather. His childhood included the teasing and bullying that was common for bookish boys in rough neighborhoods.
From an early age, Wouk found a haven in reading, family and Judaism. After graduating from the public Townsend Harris High School, Wouk entered Columbia University, where he served as editor of its humor magazine. He also took courses at Yeshiva University.
Upon graduating, Wouk briefly abandoned his religious lifestyle when he became a radio dramatist, writing for the comedian Fred Allen. Although the work was lucrative, Wouk felt a void in a life without Jewish learning and religion, and he eventually returned to his previous level of observance.
In the coming years he would reside in the Virgin Islands, New York’s Fire Island, Washington, DC, Manhattan and Palm Springs, California — and in all those locales he was involved in setting up Jewish study and prayer groups.
Following Pearl Harbor, Wouk joined the Navy and served in the Pacific, where he was an officer aboard two destroyers, participated in eight invasions and won several battle stars. Wouk also started to write “Aurora Dawn” while aboard ship. After Wouk sent part of a draft to one of his former Columbia professors, the professor connected Wouk with an editor, and a contract followed.
While his ship was being repaired in California, Wouk met Betty Sarah Brown, a graduate of the University of Southern California and a civilian Navy employee. After her conversion to Judaism, the couple married in 1945 and had three sons. Betty, who died in 2011, would eventually become her husband’s literary agent.
Wouk is survived by two sons, Nathaniel and Joseph, and three grandchildren. His oldest son, Abraham, died in a 1951 swimming pool accident.
(Rachel Gordan teaches American Jewish studies at Boston University and Brandeis University. She interviewed Herman Wouk at his home in Palm Springs in February 2011.)
The German flag is pictured at the Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany, November 7, 2017. (photo credit: REUTERS/HANNIBAL HANSCHKE)
The German Bundestag ruled on Friday that the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is antisemitic, calling on German Federal offices and bodies not to collaborate in any way with events that advocate to boycott or delegitimize the Jewish state.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated the Bundestag on its “important decision to recognize BDS as an anti-Semitic movement and that it is forbidden to support it.
I particularly appreciate the Bundestag’s call on Germany to stop funding organizations that work against the existence of the State of Israel. I hope this decision will lead to concrete action and I call on other countries to adopt similar legislation.”
Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan reacted to the decision by calling it “an important step in the war against the boycott and the new antisemitism” and argued that “the true face of the boycott movement had been exposed.”
He called on other countries in the European Union to follow Germany.
The spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry Emmanuel Nahshon also lauded the decision. In a tweet he noted the large majority that supported the resolution.
Blue and White’s Yair Lapid said, “The decision by the Bundestag to label the BDS movement antisemitic and call on the German government to oppose all forms of BDS is an important and just step. BDS is the modern manifestation of an ancient hatred. Now is the time for the rest of Europe to follow Germany’s lead.”
Israel’s Ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff tweeted,”The Bundestag has just adopted a Resolution condemning BDS and Anti-Semitism by a wide margin. We welcome this initiative by its sponsors. It has broader European significance given that BDS makes no attempt to build coexistence and peace between Israel and all of its neighbors.”
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon hailed the decision and called other world leaders to join Germany “and work to shape a future without hate of Jews and Israel,” a press release sent by spokesperson of the Israeli Mission in the UN reported on Friday.
“German showed BDS activists that lies do not carry with them immunity, but a heavy price,” he said.
Chairman of the Jewish Agency, Isaac Herzog: “German Bundestag made a bold statement today resolving BDS as antisemitic. A significant step in fighting hate crimes on the rise throughout the globe. Leaders of the free world have moral responsibility to follow in Germany’s footsteps and stop this dangerous trend.”
The World Zionist Organization also welcomed the recent ruling, and expressed the wish to see other parliaments in Europe and the world pass similar votes, Wallareported on Friday.
The resolution was initiated by the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Green Party and the Free Democratic Party (FDP).
The motion, termed “Resisting the BDS movement decisively – fighting antisemitism,” calls on the government to “not provide premises and facilities under the administration of the Bundestag to organizations that express themselves in antisemitic terms or question Israel’s right to exist.”
In practicality, the motion is being understood as recognizing that Israel represents the Jewish people and is the home of the Jewish collective, therefore delegitimizing Israel is considered antisemitism. Uri Bollag contributed to this report.
Left-wing generals never warn of any risks to their suicidal policies, and that’s why they are frauds. Knowing how to plan and conduct miitary operations and command soldiers does not make one a political prophet or statesman.
Imagine, (G-d forbid) if your 60 year-old mother had a sore toe that she could walk around on, and that wasn’t fatal, but just a bother. It would get better with a little aspirin, but didn’t go away. Now, a doctor, a medical expert, comes around and hysterically urges your mother to have a “fantastic” operation for her sore toe but was silent on any risks of the operation. And, then, during the operation, she died.
You found out the procedure had a 97.6% risk of mortality, and 99.99% probability that her toe would still hurt after the operation no matter what and that the doctor never warned of the operation’s fatal risks. The doctor would be guilty of not just negligence but criminal negligence and criminal assault for not adequately disclosing the procedure’s risks to your mother and you. The doctor might even be guilty of criminal murder.
Let us look at Israel’s Left-wing generals, these “military experts,” who for decades advocated, based on their “professional military expertise,” that Israel withdraw from the Gaza Strip and the ‘West Bank’ and have a “Demilitarized” Palestinian State.
Did any of these Left-Wing Israel generals ever adequately warn Israeli and American Jews that:
1) there is a 99% risk that the “Demilitarized” Palestinian State would become a Palestinian terror hot spot and the Palestinian Arab terrorists would smuggle in and fire Katyusha rockets into pre-1967 Israel, and
2) that there is a 99% risk Israel will have to re-invade the “Demilitarized” areas to where the terrorists will have smuggled in 10 of thousands of of advanced anti-tank missiles and tens of millions of rounds of small arms ammo.
Checking the word “adequately disclosed,” have these Left-wing generals ever warned of any risks in their “Two-State Solution”?
The answer to all these questions is a resounding no. Left-wing generals never warn of any risks to their suicidal policies, and that’s why they are frauds.
Knowing how to plan and conduct miitary operations and command soldiers does not make one a political prophet or statesman.
When you go to a doctor, a medical expert, you don’t ask whether the doctor is a Labor, a Meretz, or a Likud doctor. A doctor is a doctor is a non-political medical expert. You are going to a doctor for his unvarnished medical advice and expertise, not his politics. A doctor’s political opinions should have nothing to do with his professional medical advice. You expect the doctor to tell you the whole story and disclose all the risks, and allow you as the patient to make an informed decision on what procedure should be done.
A general is supposed to be a general who is supposed to be a non-political military expert.
The same way, when you go to a military general, a military expert, you don’t ask whether the general is a Labor, a Meretz, or a Likud general. A general is supposed to be a general who is supposed to be a non-political military expert. You are going to a general for his unvarnished military advice and expertise, not his politics. A general’s political opinions should have nothing to do with his professional military advice.
You expect the general, if he can, to tell you the whole story and disclose all the risks, and allow you as the decision maker to make an informed decision on what military course of action you should vote for.
In fact, the entire basis of Israel’s generals’ legitimacy is that they give the appearance that their advice is “purely professional,” and not political. Have you ever heard an Israeli general tell people, “I’m really a politician, and I have an undisclosed political agenda which is what lies behind my pronouncements” before he explains that Israel must create a Palestinian State in the Judea and Samaria aka ‘West Bank’? Never!
When is the Israeli media going to stop treating them like oracles?
There is another possibility. Maybe these Left-wing generals didn’t know the obvious military likelihood that the Palestinians would smuggle and fire rockets from Gaza. That, however, would make them idiots – and they are not.
What happens when these Israeli Left-wing generals-cum-politicians get it all wrong, and force Israel to leave Gaza,, resulting in rockets fired into Israel? They go to America and make countless millions telling American Jews how Israel is a fascist apartheid state.
It’s time an official Israeli governmental commission is convened to investigate these Left-wing generals and expose them for what they are.
We are all frogs, my brothers and sisters. As the temperature around us slowly rises, we adapt and ignore the impending doom.
In director Stanley Kramer’s 1965 film, “Ship of Fools,” set on board a German ocean liner bound to Hamburg from Mexico in 1933, one of the Jewish passengers, Lowenthal, who is forced to share a table with other undesirables such as a dwarf named Glocken, says about the new Nazi regime: “Germany has been good for the Jews and the Jews have been good for Germany …. Anyway, what are they going to do, kill us all?”
My dear brothers and sisters in America, in the UK, in France, it is my unpleasant task to warn you: at some point in the foreseeable future, they are going to try and kill us all.
Holocausts, by definition, defy the imagination. “It couldn’t possibly happen here” is probably the most notorious comforting line spoken by Jews since the first Pharaonic policeman entered the first Israelite hut demanding to be handed the newborn Jewish male child to be drowned in the Nile.
I spent close to 40 years of my adult life in New York City. I am an American citizen, I love America, I follow the Yankees and the Jets but gave up on the Rangers and the Knicks, I love the Lower East Side where I used to know everybody as a local reporter and publisher, I am a registered member of the Harry S. Truman Democratic club, I used to be a regular in two different shuls in the neighborhood, and when I finally decided to leave and resettle in Israel, it had nothing to do with fear of anti-Semitism. It was entirely an economic move – things were going downhill in the US in 2007-8 and we decided to try our luck in Israel.
Ten years later, it’s no longer the economy.
There is a burgeoning coalition of intersectionality in the US of anti-Semites which includes white power Aryans, Farrakhan and Al Sharpton Blacks, and several varieties of radicalized Muslims and anti-Zionist students.
They’ve been terrorizing Jewish students in several key universities across America for at least a decade. Now we see the first bloody attacks on synagogues. This trend will not stop, it will only get stronger, it will certainly happen here too.
Like many of you, I am the son of a Holocaust survivor, and was taught at my father’s knee the lessons of a betrayal by a homeland that turned out not be my own.
My father grew up in a small town outside Łódź, in central Poland. The town’s elite were the Jews and the German expatriates – the Poles were the servants for both communities. The Jewish and German communities were intertwined, united by their terrible pidgin German. My dad described his shock as kids his age he went to school with and played soccer with started wearing the swastika armbands.
The writing was on the wall for all to see, at least since 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor. Then hooligan violence against the Jews became a normal thing, police mistreatment and brutality was to be expected, and double standards against Jews, later coupled with anti-Semitic laws, set the stage for the mass execution of Germany’s Jews, or as Herr Lowenthal put it so eloquently, “What are they going to do, kill us all?”
We’ve all heard the boiling frog fable. It isn’t scientifically true, because frogs aren’t stupid. But it’s useful as a metaphor. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the same frog is put in room temperature water which is then brought to a boil very slowly, it will stay put and be cooked to death.
To illustrate: in 1939, a Jewish-German woman I once knew, who had already settled in Haifa in the ’30s, packed a suitcase and traveled back to Germany, where she visited all of her relatives, warning them about the coming Holocaust and inviting them to flee either to Palestine or to any other country where Jews could find shelter.
They all thanked her for her concern and reassured her that this Nazi crisis would soon become a thing of the past. Sooner or later, the Western democracies would put an end to Hitler’s shenanigans.
On September 1, 1939, half the Jewish people of my father’s town huddled together in my grandfather’s living room, where he had a radio. The Polish announcers described the German invasion, and everyone, without exception, according to my father’s recollection, were certain this was finally Hitler’s end. After all, two major European empires, France and England, had signed mutual protection pacts with the Polish government – let’s see Hitler win a battle against the French and the English, my grandfather’s guests were convinced.
We are all frogs, my brothers and sisters.
As the temperature around us is rising, we adapt.
Muslim members of Congress openly accuse us of controlling the banks, of dual loyalties – and they no longer get a rise out of anyone, not even us. Most Democratic candidates for president shun the AIPAC convention – and we understand, they need the Black vote. The social networks are full of conspiracy theories about how it was us, Jews, who felled the Trade Towers. Nazis march in the street of Charlottesville, Virginia, carrying torches and hollering, “Jews will not replace us,” and “Blood and soil,” and they’re doing it again, unmolested by our government. In today’s Germany, incidentally, they’d be thrown in jail.
Frankly, I don’t expect a single Jewish American person to read my appeal and reach the conclusion that five or fewer years from now could make so much sense: sell while you can and come home. Honestly, I doubt even I would have heeded the same advice. It’s too early. Incidentally, I must disclose my own personal interest in having a huge, Jewish-American Aliyah wave: I believe Israel so needs you – your democratic values, your open-mindedness, your academic excellence, your political savvy, your business acumen, your wealth – your culture of debate, for heaven’s sake, a rare thing to find in Israeli society.
But even if you don’t pack up and leave right away – I urge you to set up a second home in Israel.
I know our finance minister has done everything in his power to stop that kind of investment because, let’s face it, the man is not the shiniest shekel in the coin sack. But please, take out for yourself an insurance policy against unforeseen holocausts, and purchase a home in Israel. You’ll be amazed how cheap they can be if you stay away from Tel Aviv or Raanana. Use them on your vacations, send your kids to become familiar with the home country. You can sell them eventually (the home, not the kids), should I be proven wrong.
But I want you to be ready not because I expect you to flee to the home country. I only want you to take the approaching second Holocaust seriously because I love you and admire you and we’re all froggies from the same pond.
TEL AVIV – The Arab League on Sunday pledged $100 million per month to the Palestinian Authority to cover the funds suspended by Israel in taxes and tariffs owed to the PA over the latter’s so-called “pay-for-slay” scheme paying salaries to terrorists and their families.
Earlier in the day, PA President Mahmoud Abbas appealed to the Arab League in Cairo to support him in rejecting the Trump administration’s as-yet unveiled peace plan.
“The Arabs need to be engaging actively at this critical time,” Abbas said.
He noted that the U.S. could offer nothing to the Palestinians in light of the moves it has taken against them, including recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the subsequent transfer of the US Embassy there, as well as cutting aid.
“What’s left to offer us? Is there anything left to offer us that would make us happy? They took Jerusalem and the occupied territories, canceled the [rights of the] refugees and legitimized settlements. They want to fool us. They have nothing to offer us. Even if they want to offer something, it will be worse than anything else.”
“We can’t hear that the holy city of Jerusalem has been annexed to Israel,” he said. “After this crime, what can we expect?”
He also addressed President Donald Trump’s recent decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
“We don’t accept the annexation of the Golan and Jerusalem,” Abbas said. “These are all Arab territories. They are all occupied territories, and Israel needs to quickly withdraw from them.”
He also asked Arab nations to help alleviate the PA’s dire financial crisis.
“A safety net must be provided,” Abbas said.
In February, Israel began cutting monthly funds to the PA over its payments to convicted terrorists and their families, totaling close to $140 million. The PA at the time responded that it would result in anarchy in the West Bank. Abbas also said that if Israel deducts even “one penny” from tax monies owed to the PA, the PA would not accept the money transfers.
France last week called on Israel to “change your decision to freeze the transfer of tax funds to the Palestinian Authority,” Israel’s Channel 12 news reported on Sunday.
Israel responded that the request itself was immoral and opposed to the EU’s own laws.
According to a new report from the World Bank, the Palestinian deficit is set to increase from $400 million last year to over $1 billion this year.
Last week, newly appointed PA prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh accused the Trump administration of facilitating Israel’s “financial war” on the Palestinian Authority.
“Israel is part of the financial war that has been declared upon us by the United States. The whole system is to try to push us to surrender” in order to force the PA into accepting Trump’s upcoming peace proposal, Shtayyeh said.
“This is financial blackmail, which we reject.”
Shtayyeh outlined some ways he’s hoping to alleviate the dire financial crisis, including cutting bonuses for PA officials, developing agriculture, receiving more aid from the Arab world and Europe, and seeking financial independence from Israel. The last proposal may include importing fuel from neighboring Jordan as opposed to Israel, and even introducing a Palestinian currency.
The apparent objective of the Palestinian Authority (PA) is to annex these areas and bring them under PA control as part of its larger plan for the unilateral creation of a Palestinian state. This plan was publicized in 2009, in an official PA document written by then-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad; since its publication, it has been carried out virtually unhindered, with the help of massive European funding in violation of the Oslo Accords, and in violation of international law. Additionally, this type of activity is more easily presented to international media outlets and foreign benefactors as “humanitarian aid.”
The key actor in these land-grab projects is the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC). UAWC maintains close organizational and operational ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terror organization that has carried out many deadly attacks against Israel’s citizens – including numerous suicide bombings in the 2000s. UAWC is funded, for the most part, by European governments and humanitarian aid organizations, and by the European Union.
In recent years, and in particular since 2013, the Palestinians have intensified agricultural activity as a means of quickly and efficiently seizing large swaths of land under the guise of humanitarian aid for farmers. This activity is illegal and violates the international treaties to which the PA is a signatory. But this has not troubled foreign governments and organizations, including the European Union, who continue to bankroll this illegal activity – while at the same time vocally criticizing the State of Israel.
Pictured: Illegal land seizures of thousands of acres in the West Bank, funded by the European Union under the guise of “agricultural assistance.” EU funding is facilitating a massive program of land theft by the Palestinian Authority. (Image source: Regavim)
Under the guise of “agricultural assistance,” the Palestinian Authority is taking over Area C (the area placed under full Israeli jurisdiction in the Oslo Accords, pending a full peace agreement which would establish sovereignty over the area for one side or the other), with the help of massive European financial support — in violation of the law, and of international agreements signed by the EU.
Over the past decade, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has implemented a long-term program aimed at taking control of strategic locations in Area C of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria. The PA’s apparent objective is to annex these areas and bring them under PA control, as part of its larger plan for the unilateral creation of a Palestinian state. This plan was publicized in 2009, in an official PA document written by then-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad; since its publication, it has been carried out virtually unhindered, with the help of massive European funding.
Since 2013 there has been a marked acceleration of the plan’s execution, mainly through intensive, large-scale agricultural activity, with the understanding that this tactic, as opposed to illegal construction, enables the PA to take control of vast tracts of land relatively quickly. This activity, carried out under the umbrella of the Palestinian Authority’s “Roots Project” (جذور or Juthoor), enables massive land grabs to be more easily presented to international media outlets and foreign benefactors as “humanitarian aid.”
The key actor in these land-grab projects is the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC). With branch offices throughout Judea and Samaria, UAWC maintains close organizational and operational ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terror organization that has carried out many deadly attacks against Israel’s citizens, including numerous suicide bombings in the 2000s. UAWC is funded, for the most part, by European governments and humanitarian aid organizations, and by the European Union.
The majority of UAWC’s activities are carried out in Area C. Among the more central projects: Illegal seizure of thousands of dunams of land through agricultural use, illegal seizure of water sources, and creation of new roads, ostensibly to facilitate Palestinian farmers’ access to agricultural areas. These activities are concentrated in areas of strategic importance, particularly areas adjacent to Jewish settlements and the security barrier, as well as locations in Area C that serve as a buffer zone between Areas A and B (which are under full or partial Palestinian Authority jurisdiction, respectively).
Needless to say, all of this activity is carried out unilaterally, without permits or coordination with the State of Israel — in violation of the law that is in force in these areas, in violation of the Oslo Accords, and in violation of international law.
A non-governmental organization, Regavim, dedicated to preserving Israel’s land resources and promoting a forward-thinking land-use policy, has conducted precise documentation and mapping of PA activity in the field, and culled information regarding EU funding for UAWC activities by monitoring Palestinian and European Union publications, media reports, and internet coverage (such as this recent video which boasts of extensive illegal activity). The results of this research, which were presented in a comprehensive report to the Knesset Subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Judea and Samaria, are summarized in “The Roots of Evil.”
The Political Context – The Battle for Control of Judea and Samaria
In the “Interim Agreement between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority” signed in Oslo in 1993 (“The Oslo Accord“) between Israel and the leaders of the PLO, the State of Israel officially recognized what had openly operated as a terrorist organization, and allowed it to establish a Palestinian Authority to oversee autonomous Arab governance in parts of Judea and Samaria.
Under these accords, Judea and Samaria were divided into three regions: Area A was placed under full Palestinian civil and security jurisdiction; Area B was assigned to PA civil control, while Israel remained responsible for security; and Area C, which was placed under full Israeli civil and security jurisdiction. Despite the fact that, in practice, many of the Oslo Accords’ clauses were never activated and other elements are no longer relevant, the division of jurisdictional authority remains in force.
Almost a decade ago, then-Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority Salam Fayyad began to promote a unilateral program for the creation of “an independent, fully autonomous Arab state on all of the territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as per the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital.” A central element of the Fayyad Plan is the attempt to deepen the PA’s official administrative presence specifically in Area C and to establish de facto annexation of the territory, based on the underlying assumption that Areas A and B have already been “taken care of” by the Oslo Accords.
The implementation of this program of “creeping annexation” is carried out on two parallel tracks. The first involves cooperation with Israel: The PA submits requests to the relevant Israeli authorities for approval of “special priority” construction projects; generally, international funding for these projects is contingent upon a “seal of approval” from Israel. The second track, which is far more widespread, is the creation of facts on the ground, through extensive illegal construction and development, obviously without coordination or permission of the Israeli authorities. The projects in this illegal track are planned and executed according to a clear, systematic master plan that aims to create territorial contiguity for the future Palestinian state while disrupting the growth and contiguity of Israeli communities.
Over the past number of years, the illegal track has become not only more pronounced but more “creative,” using agricultural work to establish facts on the ground — in violation of the law in force in this region, in violation of the Oslo Accords which stipulate that the State of Israel is the sole sovereign over this territory, in violation of international law.
The PA has enjoyed the diplomatic support of European countries for decades. Although the European Union was an active participant in the formulation of the Oslo Accords and its representatives participated in the signing ceremony, in recent years the EU has actively funded many of the PA’s illegal activities in Area C, contributing to the very projects that undermine those accords by taking unilateral steps to create a Palestinian state encompassing all of Judea and Samaria.
Palestinian “civil society” organizations and the PA itself have received massive practical and economic support from European governments and organizations. European funding, as well as diplomatic support and other forms of active participation, have been channeled directly to Fayyad Plan projects.
One of the methods employed by the European Union to create a de facto Palestinian state is to block the development of infrastructure and expansion of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria through Palestinian construction and agriculture. Over the last several years, the EU has built more than 2,000 structures in Area C for the Palestinian population, creating or supporting dozens of illegal settlement clusters, without requesting or receiving construction permits or coordinating these projects with the relevant Israeli authorities. In fact, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu protested the EU’s blatant violation of the law, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini gave an official commitment to desist from any additional illegal construction in the E1 area – but not in the rest of Area C. All of the EU-funded construction projects, agricultural projects, and infrastructure projects in Area C are clearly designed to establish territorial contiguity for the Palestinian Authority presence, in an attempt to preclude the possibility of annexation or development of these areas by Israel in the future. All are carried out illegally, in contravention of Israeli jurisdiction over this territory, under the guise of European Union Foreign Affairs Council humanitarian aid to needy Palestinian communities in Judea and Samaria.
The Legal Context – Ottoman Property Law in the Service of Land Expropriation
The law in force in Area C of Judea and Samaria, which is under full Israeli jurisdiction, is comprised of many layers of legal systems, including Ottoman law, Mandatory law, Jordanian law, military rule, international law, as well as legislative acts of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. In general, however, the essential underpinnings of property law in Area C rest upon Ottoman law.
According to Ottoman law and Israeli Supreme Court decisions that continue to enforce it, uncultivated land belongs to the sovereign – in this case, the State of Israel. Additionally, some of the land in Area C is classified as “survey land” – tracts that are not registered as privately owned, which the sovereign (the Israeli government) is in the process of regulating and registering as state land.
A private individual may be granted ownership of agricultural land (as per section 78 of the Ottoman Legal Code) if he held and cultivated the land in question for a consecutive period of several years (the precise period required is dictated by the nature of the land parcel itself).
Thus, a person who poaches land and uses it for agricultural purposes may claim ownership or other rights to the land in question, simply by claiming to have worked the land for a number of years. Palestinian land-use projects exploit this “loophole” in Ottoman law to great advantage.
Activities carried out under the Roots Project, the systematic program of land seizure in Area C, are presented as agricultural projects; nonetheless, many of these types of work – erecting fences and walls, excavation with heavy machinery, creation of roads, and more – require building permits, which they obviously do not have. On the other hand, the law is meticulously enforced against Jewish construction, resulting in what can best be described as “reverse apartheid:” A number of draconian regulations are applied exclusively to Jewish residents of Area C, such as “delimiting orders” and “obstructive use orders,” which empower the authorities to demolish structures en masse and to bar residents, without due process, from contested areas.
The Union of Agricultural Work Committees – The Operational Arm of the Land Seizure Enterprise
The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) is the main operational arm of the PA’s plan to seize control of Area C and to create a de facto Palestinian state in this territory.
The Union, headquartered in Ramallah, is comprised of more than 65 branches of local agricultural councils throughout Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. With more than 100 employees, its annual budget exceeds 5 million euros (nearly $6 million USD). Its budget is based mainly on direct and indirect donations from foreign sources, including the European Union and the United Nations, and the governments of France, Norway, and Holland.
UAWC has both overt and covert ties to the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and its activities are carried out in coordination with the Palestinian security apparatus and other Palestinian judicial bodies.
Both the PFLP and UAWC have attempted to obscure their close ties, in order to portray the civilian organization as an independent non-profit entity. Notwithstanding their efforts, there is clear evidence of their ideological and financial interdependence: An internal document prepared for the American humanitarian organization USAID in 1993 stated that the UAWC is “[t]he PFLP’s agricultural organization” and “The PFLP’s agricultural extension services are provided by the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC).” In fact, the PLO’s dominant Fatah faction identified the UAWC as an “affiliate” of the PFLP.
The affiliation of the UAWC with the PFLP is ongoing, despite the classification of the PFLP as a terrorist organization both by the United States and the European Union. Senior figures in the PFLP hierarchy have served in senior positions in the UAWC, among them Jamil Muhamad Ismail Al Majdalawi, formerly the Vice President of the UAWC in Gaza, who is a well-known senior officer in the PFLP. He served as head of the political division of the PFLP in Gaza, and in 2013 acted as the PFLP’s representative to Fatah bodies in the Palestinian Authority. Bashar Al Khiri served as Chief of the PFLP’s Political Division in the early 2000s. He was arrested and imprisoned by the State of Israel, and after his release served as President of the UAWC Advisory Board from 2005-2010.
One of the European organizations that provides financial support for UAWC activities is Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), a Norwegian society that describes itself as “committed to building democratic society and to strengthening people’s ability to take control of their own lives.” NPA describes itself as non-political, although its views are not neutral. Thus, it “supports organizations that represent weak or vulnerable populations, particularly if they resist or are in conflict with those in power.” NPA lists UAWC as one of its partner organizations in Palestine.
NPA, which was supported by the American government’s humanitarian aid program USAID for many years, was brought up on charges of supporting terrorism by the US Department of Justice in 2017. In the course of the trial, which was concluded in 2018, the NPA admitted to supporting Iran, Hamas, and a number of other terror organizations.
From 2016 to 2018, NPA received 32,000,000 Norwegian kroner (3,320,000 euros – nearly $4 million USD) from the government of Norway (out of a total commitment of 50 million kroner) for joint UAWC-NPA projects.
In fact, the terrorist ties of the UAWC have not deterred the EU, which earmarked 3.6 million euros to the UAWC to run the Roots Project in the Bethlehem area in 2014, and funded 90% of its overall budget. Under the auspices of the Roots Project, a representative of the EU visited the area in order to report on the progress of the initiative and provide an overview of the UAWC’s activities.
In March 2015 the inaugural ceremony for the Roots Project was held in Bethlehem. The EU’s ambassador to the Palestinian Authority, John Gatt-Ruter, an honored guest, addressed the ceremony:
“The projects the European Union will carry out for the residents of Area C are essential, particularly in the agricultural sector, which is an important segment of the economy. This project will contribute to assistance for Palestinian farmers … and establishing Palestinian facts on the ground … The Union of Agricultural Work Committees has demonstrated its ability to carry out agricultural projects in many Palestinian areas, and the relationship with the European Union is the result of the successes achieved by the UAWC.” [Emphasis added.]
Conclusions and Recommendations
In the past decade, the Palestinian Authority has made a concerted effort to gain control over as much land in Area C as possible. In recent years, and in particular since 2013, the Palestinians have intensified agricultural activity as a means of quickly and efficiently seizing large swaths of land under the guise of humanitarian aid for farmers. This activity is illegal, and violates the international treaties to which the PA is a signatory. But this has not troubled foreign governments and organizations, including the European Union, who continue to bankroll this illegal activity – while at the same time vocally criticizing the State of Israel.
Because of the large-scale strategic consequences of the Palestinian program of land seizure, this problem cannot be addressed as a case-by-case, localized problem. The larger picture must be taken into consideration, and the European Union must cease its unbridled intervention in the internal affairs of a democratic state (Israel) and its wholesale violations of international law and treaty – activities that entrench Palestinian intransigence, cripple the prospect for a negotiated settlement, and endanger the security of Israelis in a very real and immediate sense.
Naomi Linder Kahn is Director of the International Division of Regavim.
Iran and Pakistan share a 959km land border. Tehran has been complaining for years about recurring attacks by Pakistani militants on Iranian security forces, with the latest episode reported in February.
The future force, which was announced by the two leaders during a joint media conference after a meeting, is intended to boost border security and foster bilateral ties.
The remote border area has many mountains and is difficult to control. Extremist groups, based on both sides of the border, have been causing trouble for Iranians for quite some time, but Pakistani authorities see them as a problem as well, Vladimir Sazhin, senior research fellow at Russia’s Institute for Oriental Studies, told RT. So it’s quite natural for the two nations to coordinate their efforts in this area.
“Both sides would benefit from it,” he said. “I don’t expect it to be a separate force per se but rather a mechanism for sharing intelligence on what is happening in the area… Iranian border forces won’t tolerate a Pakistani command and Pakistani forces won’t tolerate an Iranian command. It will be a consultative body, I believe.”
The February suicide bombing attack killed 27 members of the Revolutionary Guards in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province. Rouhani last month demanded decisive actions from Pakistan to crack down on “anti-Iranian terrorists” on its territory.
The Sunni jihadist group Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice), which Tehran accused of perpetrating the bombing against its armed forces, is blamed by Pakistan for targeting its troops in its own Balochistan province last week. The attackers killed 14 members of the security forces. Pakistani officials said the group’s base of support extends into the Iranian border territory where the militants have “training and logistic camps”.
Palestinian Authority (PA) Vice Chairman Mahmoud Aloul on Monday said that if Israel continues freezing tax funds, the PA will cease security coordination with Israel and retract its recognition of the State of Israel, Israel Hayom reported.
Israel’s cabinet in February approved the implementation of the freeze on funds to the Palestinian Authority. The law, which passed in July 2018 with a majority of 87 Knesset members, offset 502,697,000 shekels ($138,426,818) from funds transferred from Israel to the PA.
Last month, PA employees received 50% of their salaries, while terrorists and their families continued to receive their salaries as usual.
“The leadership plans to retract recognition of Israel and cease coordination on security matters with the occupation’s forces,” Aloul told the Shehab news agency.
Aloul also blamed the US for the situation, saying that “the American government decided to escalate matters in the area after transferring its Embassy to Jerusalem, and it actively encourages the Israeli settlement enterprise. Right now, Israel is planning to annex parts of the West Bank.”
“Due to these events, the status quo we relied on for our relationship may disappear soon. The leadership is expected to announce that we will not accept the situation continuing as it is, and we will soon announce drastic measures.”
Aloul also said that the leaders of Arab countries, including Turkey, are planning the next steps together with Abbas.
Abbas, he said, plans to meet the leaders of Muslim and African countries in order to garner support for his next steps.
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Burning Synagoge Kristallnacht 9 November 1938
We are all frogs, my brothers and sisters. As the temperature around us slowly rises, we adapt and ignore the impending doom.
In director Stanley Kramer’s 1965 film, “Ship of Fools,” set on board a German ocean liner bound to Hamburg from Mexico in 1933, one of the Jewish passengers, Lowenthal, who is forced to share a table with other undesirables such as a dwarf named Glocken, says about the new Nazi regime: “Germany has been good for the Jews and the Jews have been good for Germany …. Anyway, what are they going to do, kill us all?”
My dear brothers and sisters in America, in the UK, in France, it is my unpleasant task to warn you: at some point in the foreseeable future, they are going to try and kill us all.
Holocausts, by definition, defy the imagination. “It couldn’t possibly happen here” is probably the most notorious comforting line spoken by Jews since the first Pharaonic policeman entered the first Israelite hut demanding to be handed the newborn Jewish male child to be drowned in the Nile.
I spent close to 40 years of my adult life in New York City. I am an American citizen, I love America, I follow the Yankees and the Jets but gave up on the Rangers and the Knicks, I love the Lower East Side where I used to know everybody as a local reporter and publisher, I am a registered member of the Harry S. Truman Democratic club, I used to be a regular in two different shuls in the neighborhood, and when I finally decided to leave and resettle in Israel, it had nothing to do with fear of anti-Semitism. It was entirely an economic move – things were going downhill in the US in 2007-8 and we decided to try our luck in Israel.
Ten years later, it’s no longer the economy.
There is a burgeoning coalition of intersectionality in the US of anti-Semites which includes white power Aryans, Farrakhan and Al Sharpton Blacks, and several varieties of radicalized Muslims and anti-Zionist students.
They’ve been terrorizing Jewish students in several key universities across America for at least a decade. Now we see the first bloody attacks on synagogues. This trend will not stop, it will only get stronger, it will certainly happen here too.
Like many of you, I am the son of a Holocaust survivor, and was taught at my father’s knee the lessons of a betrayal by a homeland that turned out not be my own.
My father grew up in a small town outside Łódź, in central Poland. The town’s elite were the Jews and the German expatriates – the Poles were the servants for both communities. The Jewish and German communities were intertwined, united by their terrible pidgin German. My dad described his shock as kids his age he went to school with and played soccer with started wearing the swastika armbands.
The writing was on the wall for all to see, at least since 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor. Then hooligan violence against the Jews became a normal thing, police mistreatment and brutality was to be expected, and double standards against Jews, later coupled with anti-Semitic laws, set the stage for the mass execution of Germany’s Jews, or as Herr Lowenthal put it so eloquently, “What are they going to do, kill us all?”
We’ve all heard the boiling frog fable. It isn’t scientifically true, because frogs aren’t stupid. But it’s useful as a metaphor. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the same frog is put in room temperature water which is then brought to a boil very slowly, it will stay put and be cooked to death.
To illustrate: in 1939, a Jewish-German woman I once knew, who had already settled in Haifa in the ’30s, packed a suitcase and traveled back to Germany, where she visited all of her relatives, warning them about the coming Holocaust and inviting them to flee either to Palestine or to any other country where Jews could find shelter.
They all thanked her for her concern and reassured her that this Nazi crisis would soon become a thing of the past. Sooner or later, the Western democracies would put an end to Hitler’s shenanigans.
On September 1, 1939, half the Jewish people of my father’s town huddled together in my grandfather’s living room, where he had a radio. The Polish announcers described the German invasion, and everyone, without exception, according to my father’s recollection, were certain this was finally Hitler’s end. After all, two major European empires, France and England, had signed mutual protection pacts with the Polish government – let’s see Hitler win a battle against the French and the English, my grandfather’s guests were convinced.
We are all frogs, my brothers and sisters.
As the temperature around us is rising, we adapt.
Muslim members of Congress openly accuse us of controlling the banks, of dual loyalties – and they no longer get a rise out of anyone, not even us. Most Democratic candidates for president shun the AIPAC convention – and we understand, they need the Black vote. The social networks are full of conspiracy theories about how it was us, Jews, who felled the Trade Towers. Nazis march in the street of Charlottesville, Virginia, carrying torches and hollering, “Jews will not replace us,” and “Blood and soil,” and they’re doing it again, unmolested by our government. In today’s Germany, incidentally, they’d be thrown in jail.
Frankly, I don’t expect a single Jewish American person to read my appeal and reach the conclusion that five or fewer years from now could make so much sense: sell while you can and come home. Honestly, I doubt even I would have heeded the same advice. It’s too early. Incidentally, I must disclose my own personal interest in having a huge, Jewish-American Aliyah wave: I believe Israel so needs you – your democratic values, your open-mindedness, your academic excellence, your political savvy, your business acumen, your wealth – your culture of debate, for heaven’s sake, a rare thing to find in Israeli society.
But even if you don’t pack up and leave right away – I urge you to set up a second home in Israel.
I know our finance minister has done everything in his power to stop that kind of investment because, let’s face it, the man is not the shiniest shekel in the coin sack. But please, take out for yourself an insurance policy against unforeseen holocausts, and purchase a home in Israel. You’ll be amazed how cheap they can be if you stay away from Tel Aviv or Raanana. Use them on your vacations, send your kids to become familiar with the home country. You can sell them eventually (the home, not the kids), should I be proven wrong.
But I want you to be ready not because I expect you to flee to the home country. I only want you to take the approaching second Holocaust seriously because I love you and admire you and we’re all froggies from the same pond.