Palestinian Arab propagandists re-write history—literally

By Stephen M. Flatow

History can be so inconvenient for people with agendas, so they just rewrite it. But in Israel, archaeology trumps the lies. Op-ed.

Two small, seemingly unrelated items in the news this week tell you pretty much everything you need to know about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The first had to with an archaeological discovery in Israel. Many years ago, Israeli antiquities experts acquired an ancient inscribed bulla—a stamp used for sealing documents—that was of unknown provenance. It was obtained from a Bedouin merchant, not dug up by archaeologists. Given its condition, and without being able to examine the soil where it was uncovered, it was impossible for experts to precisely date or identify the bulla.

(Dani Machlis/Ben Gurion University)

Impossible, that is, until the advent of new technology. Last week, Prof. Yuval Goren of Ben-Gurion University announced that thanks to the latest laboratory testing methods, he and his colleagues had determined that it is one of the earliest known bullas—it was used in the court of the Israelite king Jeroboam II, in the 8th century BCE.

The partially-preserved inscription on the seal shows a roaring lion, with the Hebrew words “L’Shema, eved Yerov’am,” that is, “Belonging to Shema, the servant [or minister] of Jeroboam.”

Keep that in mind as I describe the second news item. This one has to do with a group of activists known as the Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers, who last week noticed that “The Palestine Project,” an anti-Israel website, has been engaged in some pretty sleazy sleight-of-hand.

The Palestine Project gang has taken 45 photos from Life magazine’s archive and created an online exhibit called “Photos: Palestine 1948.” The sharp-eyed Bay Bloggers discovered that the photos’ original captions, as published in Life, had been changed in the Palestine Project exhibit.

A caption which in the original 1948 magazine referred to a dead “Arab” teenager has been changed to a dead “Palestinian” teenager. A caption mentioning “Arab refugees” is now “Palestinian” refugees. A “deserted street” has become “a deserted Palestinian street.”

Why are pro-Palestinian propagandists literally re-writing history? Because they HAVE to. If they leave the historical record intact, their cause crumbles. Accurate history is their greatest enemy.

Now you can understand how these two news items are related.

The ancient bulla comes from the court of a Jewish king who ruled in the Land of Israel nearly 3,000 years ago. He was one of many Jewish kings, who ruled for many centuries over sovereign Jewish states. There were never any “Palestinian” kings—not 3,000 years ago, not 1,000 years ago, not even 100 years ago.

The writing on the bulla is in Hebrew. Not Arabic. Arabs didn’t live in the Land of Israel 3,000 years ago. Or 2,000 years ago. The Muslim imperialist armies of the Arabian Peninsula invaded and illegally occupied the Land of Israel only in the 7th century CE— fully 1,500 years after Jeroboam II ruled.

Now you can understand the problem facing the folks at the “Palestine Project.” Throughout history, there was never a sovereign state called “Palestine” or—until recently—any Arabs who called themselves “Palestinians.”

So, the Palestine Project has to make them up. It has to retroactively crown them as “Palestinians,” to change captions to read as they wish they had been written—to literally change history, and hope nobody notices. This time, fortunately, somebody noticed.

I wonder what the scribblers at the Palestine Project will think when they notice how many pre-1948 historical records use the word “Palestine” very differently from the way that contemporary anti-Israel propagandists wish it had been used.

I’m referring to the records which remind us that it was the Jews, not the Arabs, who called themselves “Palestinians” before 1948. The Palestine Post was a Jewish newspaper (which later changed its name to the Jerusalem Post). The Palestine Symphony consisted of Jewish musicians. Ben Hecht’s American League for a Free Palestine was lobbying to establish a Jewish state. History can be so inconvenient for people with agendas.

At the end of the day, no matter how many captions the anti-Israel propagandists rewrite, the truth of history will win out—because every time an archaeologist digs his spade into the soil of the Land of Israel, more evidence emerges to show who its real indigenous people are.


(Stephen M. Flatow is a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, an attorney in New Jersey and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”)

This column appears on-line at https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/293060

"Pay to Slay" and Joe Biden

 My latest JNS column asks:

Will Biden tolerate ‘pay for slay?’

Through whatever financial or other pressure is available, we need to force the Palestinian Authority to stop paying terrorists, stop naming schools and streets after terrorists, and stop using their media to portray terrorists as heroes.

Supporters of the Palestinian cause are openly clamoring for the Biden administration to let the Palestinian Authority wriggle out of the ban on U.S. aid over the “pay for slay” policy. Friends of Israel should vigorously oppose these efforts.

Taylor Force

“Pay for slay”—the P.A.’s system of giving financial rewards to imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead terrorists—should not be a partisan issue for Americans. Remember: There was broad bipartisan support for the 2018 legislation known as the Taylor Force Act, which bars U.S. aid to the P.A. until that policy stops.

The vote in the House of Representatives was 256-167 (Republicans had a 238-201 majority at the time). The vote in the Senate (where the Republicans had a 51-47 majority) was 65-32. And many of the “no” votes in both chambers were not meant as a “no” on Taylor Force; they were connected to other segments of the package to which Taylor Force was attached.

Taylor Force, an army veteran and Vanderbilt University graduate student murdered in Jaffa in 2016, was one of the more than 140 Americans who have been killed in Israel by Palestinian Arab terrorists. They were not killed because they were Republicans or Democrats. Every American, regardless of his or her political affiliation, should want to do everything possible to deter Palestinian Arab terrorists

Giving terrorists and their families financial rewards incentivizes terrorism. Forcing the P.A. to stop doing that will take away those incentives. That’s the key—forcing the P.A. to stop. Not coming up with gimmicks and sleight-of-hand maneuvers in order to avoid the Taylor Force restrictions.

The idea of coming up with such a gimmick was promoted in a major New York Times article on Nov. 19. It claimed that P.A. officials are planning to “overhaul” the system of paying terrorists in order to convince the United States to resume sending $500 million in aid annually.

What P.A. officials told the Times is not what they have been telling the folks back home. Palestinian Media Watch reports that “nearly every day since the Times report,” one or more senior P.A. officials have reaffirmed in Arabic that the payments to terrorists will continue.

What’s the gimmick that the P.A.’s American friends are promoting? Acting on “the advice of sympathetic Democrats” and “Washington think tanks,” according to the Times, the P.A. would give out the payments “based on their financial needs instead of how long they are behind bars.”

I’m sure it was just a coincidence that a former Obama administration official who is now with a Washington think tank, David Makovsky, told The Jerusalem Post last week that “the Palestinians would be smart [to adopt] a compromise plan that would allow for a welfare system that would avoid giving money” based on terrorism, but instead would be based on financial needs.

That’s not a “compromise.” It’s not a genuine “welfare system.” It’s a trick. And it’s the most contemptible kind of trick—the kind that is performed openly, right before our eyes, as if we’re all too stupid to realize what they’re doing.

It’s easy enough to imagine how it will proceed. An official of the P.A.’s Ministry of Prisoner Affairs will stamp a piece of paper that says, “You are hereby given X amount of money based on our determination of your financial need.” The amount of money given to each family of a terrorist will be the same as before, only it will come with the piece of paper that —presto!— certifies the money is now being given for “financial need.”

The great irony is that the “peace” activists who are trying to get American money to the P.A. in this fashion are actually undermining peace, not advancing it. The only hope for a real peace is to wean Palestinian Arab society away from its glorification of terrorism. Through whatever financial or other pressure is available, we need to force the P.A. to stop paying terrorists, stop naming schools and streets after terrorists, and stop using their media to portray terrorists as heroes.

The Palestinians need to genuinely recognize that terrorism is morally wrong and expunge their terrorists from their society—just as the Allies compelled the German people, after World War II, to recognize that Nazism was evil and to expunge it from their society. Sticking to the Taylor Force Act is one way to advance that goal. Helping them trick their way around it will only encourage terrorism and prolong the Arab-Israeli conflict.

* * * 

This column and others may be read at JNS.ORG here.

Well, that's what I think.

Stephen M. Flatow

Israel-Palestinian security cooperation. Fact or myth?

Israeli-Palestinian “security cooperation”—myth or reality?

The number of Israelis harmed by terrorists during “cooperation” months was more than twice those harmed in “no cooperation” months.

By Stop The Wall - https://www.flickr.com/photos/stopthewall/8579046337/,
CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91522920

 By Stephen M. Flatow

 (Stephen M. Flatow is a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, an attorney in New Jersey and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”)

The Palestinian Authority announced with great fanfare last week that it is resuming “security cooperation” with Israel. But did anybody even notice it had stopped?

The news media and assorted “experts” are all pointing to the PA’s announcement as a major Palestinian Authority “concession” for which Israel is supposed to be eternally grateful. In fact, already the drums are beating for Israel to “reciprocate” by making some concession of its own.

For those who hadn’t noticed, PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas (now in the 14th year of a 4-year term) declared an end to the “cooperation” six months ago, on May 18, 2020, to protest an Israeli policy decision that he imagined was going to be taken, but never was.

So, I thought it would be interesting to compare the number of Israelis killed or injured in Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks during the past six months of “no cooperation” to the preceding six months of “cooperation.” The statistics are available on the websites of the Israeli Foreign Ministry (mfa.gov.il) and the Israeli Security Services, or Shin Beit (shabak.gov.il).

During these six months without “cooperation,” one Israeli was murdered, and 16 were injured, in Arab terrorist attacks. You can hear all the J Street and Jewish Voices for Peace types crowing, “See? One dead and sixteen injured! Look how bad things got because there was no cooperation!”

Then I checked the numbers for the six months before Abbas’s dramatic announcement—six months when the PA supposedly was cooperating with Israeli security forces to combat terrorism. Well, guess what: One dead, 39 injured.

The number of Israelis harmed by Palestinian Arab terrorists during the “cooperation” months was more than twice the number who were harmed during the “no cooperation” months.

Obviously, these two six-month periods provide only a snapshot of the situation. And it’s not that “security cooperation” has provided Israel with no benefits at all. Occasionally, as part of some internal Arab rivalry, the PA will temporarily detain small numbers of terrorists. And every day a terrorist is behind bars—no matter what the reason—is good.

But let’s be clear: the “cooperation” that the PA undertakes does not even remotely resemble what the Oslo accords require. According to Oslo, the PA security forces are required to disband terrorist groups, seize their weapons, arrest the terrorists, and extradite them to Israel for prosecution.

The PA is more than capable of doing that job. It has one of the largest per-capita police forces in the world. They know the terrain. They know where the weapons depots and safe houses and training sites are. They could do the job if they wanted to. They just don’t want to 

Because as far as the PA is concerned, the various terrorist groups—Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—are their brothers. Occasionally quarrelsome, occasionally rivalrous. But brothers. And the Israelis are their enemies, peace agreement or no peace agreement.

This reality was dramatically demonstrated a few years ago in, of all places, the pages of the New York Times, a newspaper not known for its great sympathy for Israel.

On March 23, 2014, the Times published a news article about Israeli troops entering the PA-ruled area of Jenin in pursuit of terrorists. The lead author was the then-chief of the Times’ Jerusalem bureau, Jodi Rudoren. The troops set out to arrest a terrorist named Hamza Abu El-Hijja, whom an Israeli official said was a “ticking time bomb” with a long record of terrorist attacks who was “in the advanced stages of planning further attacks.” 

Ms. Rudoren paused to explain why the Israelis, and not the PA police, were doing the pursuing. Although Jenin is, as she put it, is under the "full control" of the PA, Israeli officers said “the Palestinian [security forces] did not generally operate in refugee camps.”

“Refugee camps” are notorious hotbeds of terrorist activity. But as far as the PA security forces are concerned, they are the equivalent of “No-Go Zones.” In Europe, that term describes neighborhood where the local population is very hostile to the police, so the police don’t go there. In the PA areas, it means places where there are a lot of people that the PA police don’t want to arrest, so they don’t go there.

When the Israeli forces approached El-Hijja’s house, he opened fire on them. He was assisted by two other terrorists, Omar Abu Zaina and Zain Jabarin. All three were killed in the shoot-out. The Times noted matter-of-factly that Zaina was “a member of Islamic Jihad,” and Jabarin was a member of “the armed wing of Fatah.”

What? The “armed wing of Fatah”? But we are always being told that Fatah—the Yasir Arafat/Mahmoud Abbas faction of the PLO—laid down its arms when they signed the Oslo accords.

And a “member of Islamic Jihad”? How can that be? We are always being told that the Muslim fundamentalists of Islamic Jihad are enemies of the “secular, moderate” Fatah. Yet here we have a trifecta of supposed rivals—El-Hijja, of Hamas; Zaina of Islamic Jihad; and Jabarin, of Fatah—all working closely together in pursuit of their common goal, that is, murdering Jews. And all operating freely in PA territory, while the PA turns a blind eye to their activity.

So, let’s not kid ourselves. “Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation,” as commonly described by the international media, is largely a myth. The only ones genuinely looking out for Israel’s security are the Israelis themselves.

(This column originally appeared on Israel National News)

 

 

 Thomas Friedman lectures about lying

The problem is that the columnist himself seems to disagree with his own words.

Thomas Friedman, The New York Times columnist who built his career on a lie about his pro-Palestinian past, has just authored a column bemoaning the legitimization of lying in American culture. Then, just a few hours later, he publicly urged Democrats around the country to temporarily relocate to Georgia and lie about their intentions in order to vote in the upcoming U.S. Senate runoff races there.

Photo - Charles Haynes

In his Nov. 11 column in the Times, Friedman announced that “the worst legacy of the Trump presidency” is that “lying has been normalized at a scale we’ve never seen before.” According to Friedman, “It is impossible to maintain a free society when leaders and news purveyors feel at liberty to spread lies without sanction.”

Can’t disagree with any of that.

The problem is that Friedman himself seems to disagree with his own words. Later that same day, he was interviewed on CNN. As a “news purveyor,” he is often invited by major television networks to pontificate on the news.

“I hope everybody moves to Georgia, you know, in the next month or two, registers to vote, and votes for these two Democratic senators,” he urged. But Georgia state law specifically prohibits prospective voters from “residing in the state briefly with the intention just to vote and then move away,” the Washington Free Beacon pointed out.

In other words, Friedman was urging Democratic activists to lie about their residency intentions in order to take part in the upcoming Senate runoff elections in Georgia.

What makes Friedman’s behavior all the more remarkable is that his own career is built on a colossal lie—the lie that he was a strong supporter of Israel until Israel’s actions in Lebanon in 1982 supposedly compelled him to become a critic.

Thomas Friedman was an unknown staff reporter for The New York Times when he was assigned to cover the Lebanon War. He rose to fame by writing front-page articles in the Times in which he tried to blame Israel for the killings of Palestinians by Lebanese Christians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

Friedman then turned those articles into a prize-winning book, from Beirut to Jerusalem. There, he portrayed himself as the quintessential “Disillusioned Jew,” the one who allegedly was a passionate supporter of Israel until he witnessed Israel’s aggressive, militarist, barbaric, awful actions in Lebanon. That’s when he opened his eyes. That’s when he saw the light.

But it was all a lie. In 1989, my late colleague, Benyamin Korn, exposed the truth about Thomas Friedman: He had been a harsh public critic of Israel long before he was hired by the Times or went to Lebanon.

Friedman’s political résumé began in 1974, when he was a student at Brandeis University and one of the leaders of a campus organization that was misleadingly named the “Middle East Peace Group.” The group’s recipe for peace was for Israel to bow to the demands of Yasser Arafat.

Who can forget the infamous sight of Arafat speaking at the United Nations in 1974 with his gun holster on his hip? Those were the days when Arafat didn’t even pretend that he was interested in making peace; he openly demanded the destruction of Israel and continually sponsored massacres of Israeli women and children. Anybody remember Ma’alot and Kiryat Shemona?

Friedman and his comrades in the “Peace Group” authored an open letter, which was published in the campus newspaper, The Brandeis Justice, on Nov. 12, 1974, in which they condemned the American Jewish community for criticizing Arafat’s speech.

They warned that Jewish protests against Arafat would “only reinforce Jewish anxiety and contribute to Israel’s further isolation.” They called on Israel to “negotiate with all factions of the Palestinians, including the PLO.” Of course, “negotiate” was a euphemism for setting up a “Palestine” in Israel’s backyard and forcing Israel back to the indefensible nine-miles-wide borders.

All that was eight years—eight years!—before Friedman went to Lebanon. The “Disillusioned Jew” theme of his later reporting and book was a lie.

Thomas Friedman has every right to champion the Palestinian cause. He has every right to campaign for whichever candidates he fancies in Georgia. But he has no right to lie about his own background, to urge others to lie about their residency intentions and then to hypocritically lecture the rest of us about the evils of lying.

* * * * 

This column, and others I have written for JNS.ORG can be seen on-line here.

 Two news articles, seven big Palestinian lies

When you think the Palestinian media cannot sink any lower, it manages to do so

How many really big lies can fit into two articles in the official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper? At least seven, to judge by this year’s Balfour Day outburst from Ramallah.

Balfour Day, November 2, is the anniversary of England’s Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised to help create a “Jewish national home” in Palestine. Palestinian Arabs consider it a day of mourning, and usually mark it by trying to stone Jews to death in Judea-Samaria and elsewhere.

A then-ailing Mahmoud  Abbas reading the newspaper,
Note the anti-Semitic cartoon

Now, if the Palestinian Arabs were truly moderate and peace seeking—as State Department Arabists and Jewish left-wingers are always claiming—they would have no problem with Balfour Day. After all, Balfour did not define the borders of the future Jewish state. The declaration said only that there would be a Jewish “national home” of some size, someday, somewhere in the country. But the existence of a Jewish state of any size is what enrages the Palestinian Arabs—hence the mourning and violence and hysteria.

By hysteria, I am referring to two foaming-at-the-mouth essays which appeared on November 3 in the Palestinian Arab newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. (All translations courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch.)

Note that Al-Hayat Al-Jadida is not some fringe publication. It is the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority. It is the authorized voice of the ruling regime of Mahmoud Abbas.

Also note that the articles in question were not written by some unknown, one-shot, un-vetted freelancers. They were written by two of the newspaper’s regular columnists, Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul and Muwaffaq Matar.  The number of insane fabrications that Al-Ghoul and Matar managed to cram into their articles is almost breathtaking.

First, let’s have a look at Al-Ghoul. He started by claiming that the “beginning” of the “theft of Palestine” was “the Campbell-Bannerman conference” of 1907. That conference of leaders of the United Kingdom and prime ministers of some British colonies discussed calling those territories “dominions” instead of “colonies” and debated self-rule in Ireland and India. It had nothing to do with Palestine, which would not come under British rule until more than a decade later.

Lie #2 from Al-Ghoul was his description of the Jewish community in pre-Israel Palestine as a “foreign colonialist body.” Jews, of course, have been living in the country continuously for more than 3,000 years, while the Arabs arrived from the Arabian Peninsula only in the 7th century CE. So, who, exactly, are the real foreigners?

Lie #3 was his claim that the British “planted” the Jewish state “in the land of the Palestinian people.” In other words, that the British created Israel. In reality, the British allowed modest Jewish immigration in the 1920s, and then severely restricted immigration and Jewish land purchases in the 1930s. Anybody remember the notorious White Paper of 1939?

All the while, the British authorities allowed unchecked illegal Arab immigration into Palestine. And in 1948, British officers led the Arab invasion of the newborn state of Israel and British weapons filled the Arab armies’ arsenals.

Al-Ghoul’s fourth big lie was the one which attracted the most attention last week, because it was so bizarre that it has not even appeared previously in the usual Arab propaganda outlets. The reason that the British “created” Israel, he wrote, was that Europeans wanted to “settle historical accounts with the Arabs and Muslims in response to the defeats of the Crusaders.”

For the record, those Muslim defeats of the Crusaders took place in late 1200s and early 1300s. In other words, about 700 years before the establishment of Israel.  After seven centuries, how many Englishmen do you suppose could even name the leaders, years, or locations of the Crusades, much less care enough about them to want to avenge them?

Now we turn to Matar, for Lie #5: To find the truth about the historical background to the conflict, he declares, one needs to read Mahmoud Abbas’s book on “The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism.” That’s where Abbas claims that the Zionist movement collaborated with the Nazis to kill Jews, so that it could gain sympathy after the war.

Lie #6 reeks of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. According to Matar, “Zionism has control over tools of leadership, money, communications, security, and intelligence in large states and world powers.”

And, finally, we have Lie #7, which both Al-Ghoul and Matar trotted out: the weird claim that “the believers of the Jewish religion” are peace-loving anti-Zionists who have been “exploited” as “pawns” by the evil Zionist movement. We all recall, with horror, how Yasir Arafat used to promote this argument by holding meetings with the leader of the tiny fanatical anti-Zionist “Neturei Karta” sect. Arafat would declare that Neturei Karta was the real representative of Judaism. He couldn’t understand why the world refused to take his insane claim seriously.

Reasonable, rational people don’t take any of these seven big lies seriously. Yet even while everyone acknowledges that these are all insane fantasies and fabrications, the international community continues to demand that Israel agree to the establishment, in its back yard, of a sovereign Palestinian state headed by these delusional hate-mongers. That is the real problem.

(Stephen M. Flatow is a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, an attorney in New Jersey and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”)

Archaeology is the Palestinians' most dangerous enemy

Palestinians’ most dangerous enemy is … archaeology

 The mikvah was the latest in a series of discoveries in Israel during the past year, each of which contradicted the Arab propaganda narrative.

 

(October 6, 2020 / JNS) Pundits will tell you that the most dangerous enemies of the Palestinian Arab cause are the Gulf kingdoms that have decided to recognize Israel, or the European countries that are moving their embassies to Jerusalem, or the American politicians who refuse to keep underwriting the Palestinian Authority’s debts.

I disagree. I say that the Palestinians’ most formidable foe is … archaeology. 

Excavated mikvah at bottom of photo

A 2,000-years-old mikvah (ritual bath) was recently uncovered in the Lower Galilee. Most people probably would never have heard about the discovery if not for the dramatic photos of the entire structure being carried by truck to a nearby kibbutz for preservation.

 

The remarkable sight of a truck-borne mikvah, however, also makes one pause and reflect on the remarkable implications of the archeological find.

 It means that 2,000 years ago, the residents of the Lower Galilee were practicing the exact same religious rituals that Orthodox Jews throughout the world practice today. Those Galileans, in other words, were Jews. They weren’t “Palestinians.” The word “Palestine” had not yet been invented. They weren’t Arabs or Muslims—the invasion of the Land of Israel by Muslim fundamentalists from the Arabian Peninsula was still 600 years in the future.

 The news of the ancient mikvah must have been quite a disappointment to Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas. On Sept. 25, he told the U.N. General Assembly: “The Palestinian people have been present in their homeland, Palestine, the land of their ancestors, for over 6,000 years.”

 Those meddling archaeologists and their discoveries keep getting in the way of Palestinian propaganda!

The airborne mikvah ready to travel

 To make matters worse for Abbas, the directors of the excavation were Walid Atrash and Abd Elghani Ibrahim. You can tell by their names that they are not exactlyodox Jews. The P.A. will have a hard time getting anybody to believe that Atrash and Ibrahim are agents of a Zionist conspiracy.

 The mikvah discovery was just the latest in a series of archaeological finds in Israel during the past year, each of which contradicted the Palestinian Arab propaganda narrative.

 In the Givati Parking Lot excavation in Jerusalem, archaeologists discovered Hebrew-language inscriptions dating back 2,600 years. One was a stone seal with the words “belonging to Ikkar son of Matanyahu.” The other was a clay seal impression that read “belonging to Nathan-Melech, servant of the king.” They weren’t in Arabic. And the names weren’t Yasser or Mahmoud.

 Elsewhere in Jerusalem, archaeologists uncovered a 2,000-year-old paved road that was used by Jews who made the annual pilgrimage to the capital at the time of the festivals of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. It wasn’t used by Arabs, or Muslims or “Palestinians”—because there weren’t any of them around in those days.

 Meanwhile, excavators from the University of North Carolina discovered two stunning mosaics at the site of a 1,600-year-old synagogue near Huqoq in northern Israel. One depicts a scene from the exodus of the Jews from ancient Egypt. The other shows images based on verses in the Torah’s book of Daniel.

 Note that the mosaics do not show scenes from the Koran. There is nothing Arabic of Islamic or “Palestinian” about them. They are Jewish, they are situated in Israel, and they are 1,600 years old.

 Every new archaeological discovery about the ancient Jews constitutes another stick in the spokes of the wheels of the Palestinian Arab propaganda machine. Every physical fact in the soil of the country shatters the P.A.’s lies. Every stone or seal or shard of pottery reminds us who are the real indigenous people of the Land of Israel.

 

 

 

Stephen M. Flatow is a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, an attorney in New Jersey and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. His book, “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror,” is now available on Kindle.

Yossi Beilin, still undermining Israel after all these years

It’s been more than a decade since Yossi Beilin retired from Israeli politics, yet he continues to use his stature as a former government official to sometimes take positions that blacken Israel’s good name.

 This past summer, he appeared alongside Israel-haters Hanan Ashrawi and James Zogby in a panel discussion organized and hosted by the U.N.’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

The Anti-Defamation League describes that committee as “the single most prolific source of material bearing the official imprimatur of the U.N. which maligns and debases the Jewish State. … The meetings and conferences organized by [the committee] are replete with anti-Israel statements such as false claims that Israel is an ‘apartheid state’ and blatantly anti-Semitic comparisons to the Nazis.” How sad that Beilin would choose to grant legitimacy to the committee by appearing at its forum.

Former Israeli minister Yossi Beilin attends a Constitution, Law and Justice,
 Committee meeting at the Knesset on July 9, 2017.
 Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

Beilin is best known for his role in Israeli diplomatic and political affairs. As deputy foreign minister in 1993, he was one of the architects of the Oslo Accords. He claimed that he had brought peace in our time, but PLO chief Yasser Arafat used the accords to create a de facto mini-state, smuggle in tons of weapons and launch wave after wave of suicide bombings.

 In 1997, Beilin established a movement within the Knesset to lobby for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Three years later, Israel pulled out. Hezbollah took over the vacated area and began stockpiling tens of thousands of missiles, terrorizing northern Israel and kidnapping Israeli soldiers—eventually provoking the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Today, Hezbollah has more than 150,000 missiles stationed along the Israel-Lebanon border.

 Beilin competed for the leadership of the Labor Party, was defeated, and then defected to the far-left Meretz Party. In 2004, he became chairman of Meretz, promising to lead the party to greater glory. At the time, it had six seats in the Knesset. In the next election, under Beilin’s leadership, it dropped to five. When it became clear that he would be defeated in the next race for the party’s chairmanship, Beilin withdrew his candidacy and retired from politics.

Over the past decade-and-a-half, he has taken some positions that have surprised and alarmed many friends of Israel.

 One involved former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. In late 2006, Carter shocked and outraged the American Jewish community by authoring a book titled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. Abraham Foxman, then the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, charged that Carter was “engaging in anti-Semitism” by promoting the apartheid libel. Fourteen board members of the Jimmy Carter Center in Atlanta resigned in protest over the book. Even the ultra-liberal Central Conference of American Rabbis announced that it was canceling its forthcoming visit to the Carter Center. It seemed as if the entire Jewish world was—with justification—furious at the former world leader.

 But not Beilin. Writing in The Forward, he heaped praise on Carter as “one of the world’s most accomplished statesmen” and “a public figure of enormous moral clout.” Then, while not directly endorsing the apartheid charge, Beilin in effect justified it by claiming that Carter’s accusation was no different from what “has been said by Israelis themselves.”

 It’s true that there have been a few Israeli extremists, including some of Beilin’s Meretz colleagues, who have accused Israel of apartheid. But the overwhelming majority of Israelis reject that charge as an outrageous falsehood.

An incident earlier this year suggests that Beilin has no real quarrel with the “apartheid” libel. A small group of current and former Meretz leaders, including Beilin, staged a “protest tour” of the Jordan Valley in June. The group’s spokesman absurdly declared to reporters that if Israeli law is extended to the 30 percent of Judea and Samaria where Jewish communities are located, it would create “an apartheid map” reminiscent of South Africa.

Not only did Beilin not dispute the apartheid accusation, but he piled on, telling the reporters that the Israeli government secretly plans to carry out “more annexation” beyond the 30 percent, even though there is no evidence of that.

 A prominent Jewish columnist writing recently in The Forward surprisingly included Beilin on a list of six notable “Jewish thought-leaders” who are “fostering identity-building” among young Jews. Including Beilin on that list was a serious error. His actions and statements are more likely to erode, not foster, Jewish and Zionist pride and identity. Whether by pushing for territorial concessions to Arafat and the terrorist group Hezbollah, taking part in that anti-Israel U.N. forum or siding with promoters of the apartheid slur, Yossi Beilin has proven that he is not a thought-leader at all, but rather, an utterly thoughtless leader.

 Recent events demonstrate that while he and his ilk remain mired in the tired old clichés of yesterday, more thoughtful leaders in the Middle East are beginning to recognize that there are new options for finding ways to a better tomorrow.

* * * 

Well, that's what I have to say.

Stephen M. Flatow

To read more of my columns go to JNS.ORG.

 San Francisco State University hosts a terrorist

PFLP's Leila Khaled to be a program panelist 

Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization, is an unrepentant terrorist responsible for airplane hijackings and other acts of terror in the Middle East is to be a panelist in a program at San Francisco State University.

California's Jewish newspapers are covering the story.  This is from the Jewish News of Northern California:

“It is bitterly ironic that a notorious hijacker and convicted terrorist will be welcomed at an institution of higher learning where the free exchange of ideas ought to be paramount,” said Seth Brysk, director of the ADL’s Central Pacific region. “An individual with a demonstrated commitment to violent extremism will undoubtedly discourage students from free expression and exploration.”

Commons.Wikipedia.org

I decided to get into the fray and have sent the following letter to Dr. Lynn Mahoney, SFSU president.  I do not expect a response.

Here's the text of my letter.

Dr. Lynn Mahoney, President

San Francisco State University

1600 Holloway Avenue

San Francisco, CA 94132

Dear Dr. Mahoney:

I am writing to you as the father of Alisa Flatow who was murdered in a Palestinian Arab terror attack while she was a student studying in Israel in 1995.  She was 20 years old and on leave of absence from Brandeis University when the public bus she was riding was bombed by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.  Eight died in that attack.

My experiences over the 25 years since Alisa was murdered have convinced me that Palestinian Arab terrorists are resolute in their hatred for Jews worldwide.

Thus, I am at a loss to understand why San Francisco State University would lend its name to an appearance by an unrepentant terrorist, Leila Khaled, in a program to be held by the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities Diaspora. Khaled remains in the leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated a terrorist organization, which is still very much in the terror business.  She is an advocate for the destruction of the State of Israel, which includes all its residents.

While you have publicly stated that “an invitation to a public figure to speak to a class should not be construed as an endorsement of point of view” and SFSU “supports the rights of all individuals to express their viewpoints and other speech protected by law, even when those viewpoints may be controversial,” I must tell you that terrorism, and the terrorists who perpetrate it, is not “controversial;” terrorism is a crime against humanity.

Khaled’s appearance at a San Francisco State University sponsored program is an insult to her victims and to all victims of Arab terror worldwide. I urge you to cancel her appearance.

---

Stephen M. Flatow

A terrorist finds a safe-harbor in Turkey.

Sami Al-Arian, admitted terror sponsor, finds a new home in Turkey. 

Old terrorists do not die, they just move to Turkey.

Announcement of United Arab Emirates and Israel normalizing relations has one repentant terrorist up in arms.

My latest JNS column:

 

Condemnation of Israel and Jews from terrorists and their supporters is not new, it just comes from different directions. One case in point is Sami Al-Arian, who was deported from the United States following a prison sentence for his guilt as a sponsor of the terrorist organization, Islamic Jihad.

Today, the Kuwaiti-born Al-Arian lives in Turkey, the only country that would accept him after his deportation, where he heads the Istanbul-based Center for Islam and Global Affairs. He’s often interviewed and quoted by Arab news outlets—most recently, about the announcement of the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

To many in the United States, Sami Al-Arian was the victim of a U.S. government conspiring with Israel to punish him for his pro-Palestinian views. To those of us who have suffered the loss of loved ones because of his support—financial and moral—of terror, he is an unrepentant murderer.

America’s attention was first called to Al-Arian in 1994 by Steven Emerson in his documentary, “Jihad in America,” where Al-Arian’s links to Islamic Jihad were outlined. But it was 1995 that would be the terror group’s defining year. It was in that year that Islamic Jihad conducted a series of deadly suicide bomb attacks in Israel, one of the victims being my 20-year-old daughter, Alisa.

Following the October 1995 death of Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shikaki, an associate of Al-Arian—Ramadan Abdullah Shallah—surfaced in Damascus as new the leader of Islamic Jihad. A month later, Al-Arian’s business records were seized by the FBI in a raid on his home and office at the University of South Florida, where he was working as a computer-science teacher.

Al-Arian used his role at the university to establish two organizations: the Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP), and the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE). According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, both of these “think tanks” were nothing more than fronts used by Al-Arian to assist terrorists such as Abdullah Shallah to enter the United States.

Like many Americans at the time, the raids on Al-Arian’s home and office surprised me. Although Islamic Jihad had murdered my daughter just a few months earlier, no one in the Israeli or American governments made any assertion at the time that fundraising and moral support was coming from within America.

Despite my own meetings with U.S. Justice Department officials in the Clinton administration urging that something be done, the case against Al-Arian, if there was one, languished.

Al-Arian would continue to have photo ops with prominent politicians, including presidents Clinton

Pres. Bush & Al-Arian

and Bush; receive invitations to the White House and meet with

Justice Department officials; and go about his business defending his 

right to free speech—all the time denying any link to Islamic Jihad or 

terrorism in the Middle East.

Justice Department officials told me that the delays in the prosecution were due to difficulties translating faxes and other documents from Arabic to English, the fact that the Israelis were not providing information, and that they did not have the staff resources to pursue the case. All the while, President Clinton was trying to breathe life into a moribund Middle East peace process. I wondered, could the delay be attributable to a calculation that a prosecution of Al-Arian would embarrass the Palestinian leadership? I do not know.

What I do know is that in the summer of 2001, there was a new administration in the White House and a new attorney general at the Justice Department. In July, my attorney and I met with the FBI and Justice Department team working on the links between Al-Arian and Islamic Jihad in this country. The goal, I was told, was to bring Al-Arian to trial.

Many have subsequently ascribed the indictment of Al-Arian in February 2003 as a test of the Patriot Act. But the time line is clear to me that and the Justice Department was on his trail long before the law came into existence, and while the Patriot Act might have made the gathering of information against Al-Arian easier, it was not the impetus or the reason for his indictment. The fact of the matter remains that Al-Arian was accused of working for Islamic Jihad, which had killed Americans, and the crime could be addressed here.

I welcomed the idea of putting Al-Arian on trial. Let Americans and the world see the lengths that terror’s supporters go in order to murder civilians riding a public bus. But the trial turned out to be a disaster.

Experts arguing over the interpretations of Arabic words used in intercepted fax transmissions to Al-Arian from Islamic jihad headquarters in Gaza and Damascus asking for money and announcing terror attacks confused the jury. The jury acquitted Al-Arian on most charges and deadlocked on several others.

He eventually entered a guilty plea to supporting terrorism, and after serving a short prison sentence, he was to be deported from the United States. Denied access to Egypt, which has its own problems dealing with terror organizations, Turkey welcomed him and provided him with a platform to lambaste anything positive coming out of the Middle East when it involves Israel.

News of the breakthrough quickly brought Al-Arian’s condemnation. According to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency, Al-Arian says the move to normalization “grants Israel the keys to Al-Aqsa [mosque] and Jerusalem,” and “[T]his is betrayal, not only of the trust that has been given to the Muslim world over 1,400 years ago, but also of the Palestinian cause and people.”

“Despite the deal, the Palestinian people will remain defiant and vigilant against such attempts” and “will never give up their secret (sic) right, not only in Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, but across Palestine,” said Al-Arian.

Always eager to burn his bridges, he now claims that the “United Arab Emirates has been involved in every aspect of evil doing across the region” and calls for “another wave of an Arab Spring movement in which the people will have their final say.”

There’s nothing like a call for revolution to make friends and influence people. But Al-Arian is never interested in building bridges, just destroying them. And his Turkish hosts give him the forum to do so.

Stephen M. Flatow is a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, an attorney in New Jersey and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. His book, “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror,” is now available on Kindle.  He divides his time between Jerusalem and New Jersey.

 

How do you say chutzpa in French?

Annexation driving EU countries crazy.

While Israeli leadership considers applying sovereignty to portions of Judea and Samaria, and the public rallies for and against that move, European states are having a meltdown.  Well, I think it’s time to look at the blatant hypocrisy of European Union members warning Israel against annexation.

Let’s start with the French as France recently urged the European Union to take punitive measures against Israel if it annexes anything.

That’s right, France—which has been ruling the 890-square mile Reunion Island, off the southeast coast of Africa, for more than 300 years. And the 144-square mile Mayotte Island for nearly 200 years. The area of the Gush Etzion communities is all of 45 square miles.

France, which has been occupying the five so-called “Scattered Islands” in the Indian Ocean in defiance of a 1979 U.N. resolution demanding that those islands be surrendered to Madagascar.

France, which in 1955 announced that the thousands of miles of what it calls “French Southern and Antarctic Lands” would henceforth be considered an official French Overseas Territory. By what right, exactly?

And France, the Grand Annexer, lectures Israel on annexation? How do you say chutzpah in French?

While it has one foot in and the other out of the European Union, England, too, has weighed in. The Brits are furious at the thought of Israeli annexation. Cabinet minister (and chairman of the ruling Conservative Party) James Cleverly told parliament that such Israeli action would be make it “harder” to achieve peace.

I wonder why the British never had such concerns when Jordan annexed all of Judea and Samaria—not just the tiny portion Israel is considering—back in 1950. In fact, England was one of only two countries in the entire world (the other was Pakistan) that recognized the Jordanian annexation.

So, it was OK for Jordan—a country that didn’t even exist until the British created it out of whole cloth in 1922—to annex it. But not Israel, even though the area has been at the heart of the Jewish homeland for 3,000 years.

London is hoping the rest of us won’t notice that there are no less than 14 “British Overseas Territories” that they have forcibly made and kept a part of the British Empire—from the Falkland Islands (that Britain went to war with Argentina in 1982 over the latter’s claims to the islands) to Bermuda. Some are in the South Atlantic, some in the North Atlantic, some in the Caribbean—pretty much everywhere you look on the globe, you can find pieces of the old British Empire still in operation.

What are some of the other E.U. member states who presume to lecture and threaten Israel?

There’s Portugal, which annexed the 908 square-mile Azores Islands some 500 years ago. Spain, illegal occupier of the 3,000 square-mile Canary Islands since the 15th century. Greenland was forcibly made part of Denmark in 1814. Don’t forget Curaçao and Aruba, which were annexed by Holland, along with Saint Martin, Saba, and Bonaire. There are many more examples.

The issue is not just that these countries are incredibly hypocritical for haranguing Israel about annexation while themselves annexing any territory they can get their hands on.

No, the main issue is that France, England, and the rest have no moral, historical or legal right to annex those territories, while Israel has every right to incorporate the parts of Judea and Samaria under discussion. Those areas have been at the center of the Jewish national home since biblical times. Israel won them in self-defense and by international law has no obligation to surrender them. And they have only a small Arab population, so annexation— “reunification” is more accurate—poses no demographic danger to Israel.

So, here’s my message to the European annexationists that criticize Israeli annexation: Mind your own business. I mean that literally. Go attend to the business of convincing your own governments to release the many lands that they have occupied and annexed—and then you can come talk to Israel about the subject.

Not very woman friendly

Not very woman friendly

The Palestinian Authority honors the wrong folks

Sometimes, I just don’t get Palestinian Arab society.

As the world was celebrating International Women’s Day, the Palestinian Authority took a different track.

In the words of the day’s organizers, “we can actively choose to challenge stereotypes, fight bias, broaden perceptions, improve situations and celebrate women's achievements.”  Not so the PA.

Instead of honoring and celebrating the role women play, the PA marked International Women’s Day by praising and honoring terrorists who murdered women.

Official PA Television, which had been continuously broadcasting Coronavirus news, paused on International Women’s Day to devote some attention to an apparently more important topic. The broadcast began with an interview with Um Nasser Abu Hmeid.  If the name doesn’t ring a bell, she’s the mother of five terrorists who are serving life in prison for multiple murders. The interviewer praised them as heroes and their mother spoke about how proud she was of them.

One is Muhammed Abu Hmeid. On December 14, 1990, he and a fellow-terrorist burst into a factory in Jaffa. Using long knives, they murdered Ms. Iris Asraf, a 22 year-old clerk, and two male employees.

I will spare you the horrific details of what the “hero” Muhammed did to Ms. Asraf; I will note only what the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported at the time: “The body of one victim reportedly was sliced into quarters. Another was nearly decapitated, and the a third was disemboweled.”

After the glowing interview with the murderers’ mother, photographs of Arab women terrorists filled the screen. The narrator described their “heroic” deeds and hailed them as “martyrs.” (Thanks to Palestinian Media Watch for these translations.) The fact that many of their victims were women did not diminish their status as the PA’s heroes of International Women’s Day.

There was Leila Khaled, who twice hijacked airplanes on which there were many women passengers. There was Fatima Barnawi, who planted a bomb in a Jerusalem movie theater which many women were attending.

Most of all, there was Dalal Mughrabi. She occupies a special place in the hearts of the PA regime and the Palestinian Arab public. The PA has named numerous girls’ schools, public squares, and sports tournaments after her.

What did Mughrabi do that so endears her to Palestinian Arabs?

On March 9, 1978, she led a squad of Arab terrorists who set out from Lebanon towards Israel, in several small boats. They were members of Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. At the time, Yasir Arafat was chairman of the PLO and Fatah, and Mahmoud Abbas was his second in command. Today, Abbas is chairman of the PLO, Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority.

The Mughrabi gang’s first victim was a woman.

When Dalal Mughrabi and her fellow-terrorists landed on a northern Israeli beach, they happened to encounter Gail Rubin, an American Jewish nature photographer, who was taking photos of rare birds. Her work had been exhibited at the Jewish Museum in New York City and other prominent venues. She was also a niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-Connecticut).

One of the terrorists, Hussain Fayadh, later explained to the Lebanese Television station Al-Manar what happened: "Sister Dalal al-Mughrabi had a conversation with the American journalist. Before killing her, Dalal asked: 'How did you enter Palestine?' [Rubin] answered: 'They gave me a visa.' Dalal said: 'Did you get your visa from me, or from Israel? I have the right to this land. Why didn't you come to me?' Then Dalal opened fire on her."

As Gail laying dying on the beach, Mughrabi and her fellow-terrorists walked to the nearby Coastal Road. An Israeli bus approached. They hijacked it. And they murdered 37 passengers. Eleven of their victims were girls or women.

Tali Aharonovitch. Naomi Elichai. Galit Ankwa. Mathilda Askenazy-Daniel. Rina Bushkenitch. Liat Gal-On. Naama Hadani. Rebecca Hohman. Malka Leibovitch-Weiss. Tziona Lozia-Cohen. Rina Sosensky. Gail Rubin. That is who should be remembered on International Women’s Day.

Instead, the PA turned the occasion into a veritable International Anti-Women’s Day. Where were all the protests from feminist groups who claim to care about women’s rights? Where was the outcry from the all the self-described progressives and peace activists? Do women’s lives mean so little to them?

This post and others like it can be viewed at Times of Israel