Once Again, Qatar Saves Hamas

by Stephen M. Flatow / JNS.org

The government of Qatar has again rescued Hamas.

Every time the Hamas terror regime in Gaza is on the brink of collapse, the Gulf state of Qatar comes riding in on a white horse like a knight in shining armor to ensure that Hamas will live to see another day. What happened to the “moderate” Qatar that American Jewish leaders were praising just a few years ago?

Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.

This time, Hamas allegedly is running out of money to pay the salaries of its employees. If you don’t pay your employees, they don’t work. And if your workers don’t work, your gangster regime collapses. The collapse of Hamas would obviously be a good thing for Israel, the United States and modern civilization in general.

But once again, Qatar has jumped in on the side of the bad guys.

The new deal, according to media reports, will involve Qatar sending fuel to Gaza through Egypt. Hamas is then going to sell the fuel in order to meet its payroll.

That will keep Hamas in power so that it can continue firing thousands of missiles at Israeli kindergartens and kibbutzim near the Gaza border. And it can keep its cells in Judea and Samaria operating, so they can murder Jews there, too.

Qatar is already underwriting Gaza’s power plant and sending financial aid to 100,000 Gazans every month through a UN voucher system, which saves Hamas the expense of having to provide that aid. And it offered Hamas $500 million to rebuild after the 11-day conflict with Israeli in May—a conflict started by the terrorist organization and one that ended with the launching of more than 4,000 rockets at civilian populations in Israel. In short, Qatar is pretty much propping up the entire Hamas mini-terror state. 

Hamas is not the only terror gang supported by Qatar. Its close relationships with the Taliban and the Muslim Brotherhood have been well-documented. And a lawsuit now making its way through British courts charges that Qatar has sent hundreds of millions of dollars to the Al-Nusra Front, a Syrian-based affiliate of Al-Qaeda.

 And for those who are concerned about the rise of antisemitism around the world, it’s worth recalling that a report by the Anti-Defamation League found the official Qatari government media continues to publish editorial cartoons “which blatantly demonize Jews” and “draw on the worst kind of antisemitic themes.”

In addition, a review by MEMRI of textbooks prepared by Qatar’s Ministry of Education and used in its schools found that they “feature antisemitic motifs, presenting Jews as treacherous, dishonest and crafty, and at the same time as weak, wretched and cowardly.”

Moreover, the last international book fair in Qatar’s capital, Doha, featured antisemitic books such as “The Myth of the Nazi Gas Chambers” and “Lies Spread by the Jews,” and an Arabic translation of “Awakening to Jewish Influence in the United States of America” by white-supremacist leader (and former Ku Klux Klansman) David Duke.

This is all quite different from what we were told by the handful of leaders of American Zionist organizations who took all-expenses-paid trips to meet with the Emir of Qatar in his oil-rich Gulf kingdom in 2017-18. One Jewish official later admitted publicly that he was a paid, registered foreign agent of the Qatari government.

When the secret trips were exposed by journalists, the Jewish leaders defended their actions on the grounds that Qatar was becoming more moderate.

I don’t see anything “moderate” about Qatar hosting and sponsoring the world’s largest antisemitic media network, Al Jazeera.

I don’t see anything “moderate” about Qatar financing terrorist groups around the world.

And I don’t see anything “moderate” about Qatar rescuing and sponsoring a deadly terrorist regime along Israel’s southern border.

It’s time to take off the blinders and see Qatar for what it really is—a terror-funding outlet for antisemitic vitriol.

Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney, is 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 Terrorism.”

 

 

A terrorist shatters all the stereotypes about terrorists

Before this latest horrible attack and the name of its dead victim—Eliyahu Kay, a 26-year-old immigrant from South Africa —fade from the news, let us at least learn one important lesson.

At first, it might seem as though Sunday’s attack in Jerusalem’s Old City was just another typical act of Palestinian Arab terrorism—an attacker with a submachine gun opened fire on a street not far from the Western Wall, murdering one Jewish passerby and wounding four others. We’ve heard that kind of horrible news a thousand times before. I’ve lived it.

Chabad.org

But when you look closely, it turns out that there is a lot to learn from this “typical” episode, because everything about it contradicts what the “experts” are always telling us about Arab terrorists and the evil deeds that they perpetrate.

The self-appointed experts say the “profile” of an Arab terrorist is an unemployed, single young man. But Sunday’s killer, Fadi Abu Shkhaydem, was none of those things.

The sociologists and think tank fellows who claim to know everything tell us that terrorists strike because “they have nothing to lose.” They supposedly have “personal problems” or “financial hardships.” They don’t have to worry about leaving behind widows or orphans. Well, this terrorist had everything to lose—but that didn’t stop him.

Shkhaydem was 42, not 22. He wasn’t an unstable, misguided youngster. He was a family man. He had a wife. He had five children. He simply didn’t care about making his wife a widow or leaving his children without a father. Murdering Jews was more important to him than the lives of his own loved ones.

In addition to the submachine gun, Shkhaydem was carrying a knife. Presumably, he wanted to be able to kill more Jews after his ammunition ran out.

Shkhaydem and his family lived in the northeastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat. Classified as a “refugee camp,” Shuafat is adjacent to two Jewish neighborhoods, Pisgat Ze’ev and French Hill. Its residents take the same light rail line as the residents of those cities. In other words, the Shkhaydems had plenty of opportunities for peaceful interaction with Israeli Jews.

The international news media often tell us that terrorists are merely “responding” to some “expansion” by Jewish settlers. They can’t trot out that excuse in this case. The Shkhaydems were living in Jerusalem. They were not being harmed in any way by Jewish “settlers.” Nobody was taking their land or threatening their livelihood.

The Shkhaydems hold Israeli identity cards and have the status of permanent residents of Jerusalem. They enjoy the same rights as Jewish Jerusalemites, including medical care and voting in municipal elections. (The only thing they can’t do is vote in general elections, since they are not Israeli citizens.) Nobody is oppressing them.

Shkhaydem was not some uneducated street thug. He has been described in news reports as “an Islamic scholar.” He was a well-known preacher in Jerusalem mosques, including the al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount. He was a teacher at the Rashidiya Secondary School, in Jerusalem which is in the municipial school system, but teaches the PA curriculum. He was “working on his PhD,” according to Shibli Sweiti, the terrorist’s uncle.

The schools in the Shkhaydems’ Shuafat neighborhood are run by the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA. That’s a concession that the Israeli authorities have made, in the hope of fostering a peaceful atmosphere. That hasn’t worked out too well. UNRWA schools are notorious for using curricula that defame Jews and glorify terrorism. No doubt Fadi Abu Shkhaydem was pleased that his children are being educated there.

According to Israeli news reports, Shkhaydem’s friends and colleagues praised him as a “Mourabit,” or “defender of the faith” because of his frequent participation in rallies to prevent Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and to evict Jews from the Shimon HaTzadik / Sheikh Jarrah neighborhoods.

There’s a similar logic at work in those protests and in this week’s terrorist attack. One day, Shkhaydem is shouting about the need to keep Jews off the Temple Mount and out of the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood; the next day, he picks up a machine gun to try to put that message into practice, in blood. Jewish blood.

I wonder what J Street, B’Tselem, Americans for Peace Now, and all the others who have been demanding the expulsion of Jews from Shimon HaTzadik/Sheikh Jarrah will have to say about Shkhaydem putting their slogans into practice.

So far they haven’t said anything. They’re obviously hoping that the whole episode will quickly retreat from the headlines before anybody starts asking them any embarrassing questions.

But before this latest horrible attack is forgotten, and the name of its dead victim—Eliyahu Kay, a 26-year-old immigrant from South Africa —fades from the news, let us at least learn this one important lesson:

The main cause of terrorism is ideology, not poverty. That may be hard for some Americans to comprehend because it’s so different from our own experience. Most Americans are not ideological. American culture doesn’t accept political violence. The American government doesn’t promote the use of violence. And the religions that most Americans embrace do not espouse violence.

But, as everyone knows, the Middle East is not the Middle West.

Stephen M. Flatow

This column first appeared at https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/317340

 Stop taking pictures of terrorists!

Why exactly are the barbaric Israelis, with their violent cameras, taking so many pictures of Arabs? Can you guess?
 

My recent column on Israel National News.   

Israel’s critics have a new rallying cry: Stop taking pictures of terrorists! They don’t word it quite that way, of course. They wrap it in slogans about “big tech” and “privacy rights.” But at the end of the day, the message is the same—they don’t want Israel to keep track of Arab terrorists and their supporters.

 The Washington Post and the New York Times delivered this message with a journalistic one-two punch on November 9, each publishing a major feature story about how Israel is intrusive, sneaky and underhanded.

Security Cameras           iStock

The Post headlined its front page story “Israel Targets Palestinians with Cameras, Facial Tracking.” The word “target” was obviously intended to conjure up images of violence. They want readers to think of Israelis as sharpshooters with their rifles aimed at the backs of innocent Arabs.

 Why exactly are the barbaric Israelis, with their violent cameras, taking so many pictures of Arabs? It takes a patient and discerning reader of the Post to figure that out. One has to fist wade through paragraph after paragraph that Post correspondent Elizabeth Dwoskin has loaded with ominous terms like “secrecy,” “broad surveillance,” and “invasion of privacy.” The reader is thoroughly confused and frightened before he or she can even figure out why the Israelis are doing what they are accused of doing.

 What the Israelis are doing is secretly taking photographs of potential terrorists. Good! I’m delighted that they are using modern technology to engage in surveillance that will preempt massacres.

 Terrorists do not deserve privacy.

 I’m delighted that they are using modern technology to engage in surveillance that will preempt massacres.

 Elizabeth Dwoskin and the Washington Post evidently want Israel to feel guilty and stop taking the pictures. But Israel has nothing to feel guilty about. When the Palestinian Arabs stop trying to burn and stone Jews to death nearly every single day, the Israelis won’t need to take pictures of the would-be murderers.

 Over at the New York Times, that same day, a headline read, “Palestinians Targeted by Israeli Firm’s Spyware, Experts Say.” There’s that “target” word again, helping to create the impression that terrorists and aspiring terrorists are the victims.

 The Times actually managed to be even more slippery than the Post, because the Times article was not about the State of Israel or the government of Israel, but rather a private Israeli software company. How can you blame all of Israel for one company’s transactions? By portraying the Israeli government as a “backer” of the company, because the government has issued licenses and used some of the products.

 The product that seems to worry the Times the most is software that can access private telephones. The Israeli authorities used it to get into the phones of Palestinian Arab groups that it recently outlawed for supporting the terrorists of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

 Well, once again, I say: Good! That’s how Israel finds out which Arabs are legitimate political activists, and which of them are funneling their European grants to PFLP terrorists.

 The Israelis had two choices regarding the six groups that it outlawed for helping the PFLP. Their first choice was to put privacy rights above the right to life. In other words, allow the groups to keep giving money to the PFLP, let the PFLP use the funds to buy guns and axes, and then mourn when PFLP terrorists make use of the guns and axes—like when PFLP members shot and hacked to death those four worshippers in a Jerusalem synagogue in 2014.

 The Israelis’ second choice was to preempt such slaughter by outlawing the six groups and thus disrupting the flow of funds to the killers. I’m glad the Israelis chose that option.

 The story won’t end soon, however, because we all know how this little game works. First, the articles are published. Next, groups like J Street and Americans for Peace Now will declare how concerned they are by the “chilling effect” of Israel’s latest misbehavior. That will be followed by an “investigation” by some United Nations panel or “human rights” organization.

 In a few months, the investigators will release a “report” confirming what the accusers claimed before there was any investigation. J Street will then announce that the report “deserves serious consideration.” The Washington Post and the New York Times will publish articles about the report, quoting some Jewish former State Department official expressing grave concern. And so it will go, until the next inevitable round.

 Fortunately, the Israelis will ignore all this chatter. They have to ignore it because they have no choice—their lives are on the line. For Diaspora Jewish complainers, it’s all just an amusing intellectual exercise. For Israelis—of all political persuasions—it’s a matter of life and death. Literally.

 So American newspapers and UN panels and Diaspora Jewish whiners can complain all they want. At the end of the day, Israel is just not going to commit national suicide.

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

 

 Sweden rethinking aid to Palestinian Authority; what about U.S.?

Terrorism, authoritarianism, and corruption are not American values. They are those of the PA, a regime that deserves no US support. 

My Israel National News column may be read on-line here.

Stephen M. Flatow, October 24 , 2021
 
Last week, the United States took a step closer to giving the Palestinian Arabs $225-million, regardless of Palestinian behavior. Also last week, Sweden said it will not go forward with its aid to the Palestinian Authority if Palestinian corruption continues.
 
How can this be?
 
In Washington, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved language giving the Palestinian Arabs $225-million, which is $40-million more than the Biden administration requested at this stage. The committee’s action follows an identical step by the House of Representatives.
 
You may wonder how such aid can forward, when the Taylor Force Act of 2018 prohibits U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority until the PA stops paying salaries and rewards to imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead terrorists.
  
American Jewish organizations need to speak out against the proposed $225-million U.S. aid package to the Palestinian Arabs.
The answer is simple—they will elude the law by routing the funds through non-governmental agencies. But that’s just sleight-of-hand. Make no mistake about it: this is American money for the PA in another form. Aid is fungible. That $225-million will mean the PA has to spend $225-million less of its own money.
 
U.S. Senator Christopher Coons said the U.S. aid “reflects America’s core values.” I beg to differ. Terrorism, authoritarianism, and corruption are not American values. They are the values of the Palestinian Authority, a regime that deserves no American support.
 
Sweden, by contrast, seems to be having second thoughts about the $49-million that it gave to the Palestinian Arabs last year. During her visit to Israel last week, Swedish foreign minister Ann Linde indicated that Sweden may be rethinking whether to continue that aid. She said that “corruption at such a level as exists in Palestine” has to end “if we are to be able to fully support” the PA.
 
Let it be noted that Sweden is far from Israel’s best friend in Europe. The Swedes have passionately supported forcing Israel back to the indefensible 1967 lines and creating a deadly Palestinian state in Israel’s back yard. Sweden also still pretends that Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem, is Israel’s capital.
 
But apparently the Swedes are concerned about how their money is spent. I wonder why some of America’s leaders do not seem to have that same level of concern. I don’t see any statements from Sen. Coons or his colleagues saying that U.S. aid to the Palestinian Arabs should be conditioned on ending corruption.
 
Another interesting contrast: the Biden administration is withholding $130-military aid from Egypt because of human rights violations there. Yet the administration and its congressional allies apparently have no problem with the PA’s torture of dissidents, suppression of media critics, or mistreatment of women. Don’t Palestinian human rights matter?
 
Three years ago, two other European countries that are not particularly known as lovers of Israel likewise offered a model for the United States to follow.
 
Belgium, which had been giving the Palestinian Arabs more than $20-million annually, announced that it “will put on hold any projects related to the construction or equipment of Palestinian schools.” That was because Palestinian Media Watch exposed that a Belgian-funded Palestinian school, the Beit Awwa Basic Girls School, changed its name to the Dalal Mughrabi Elementary School.
 
Mughrabi was the leader of the Fatah terrorist gang that landed on Israel’s shore on March 9, 1978. They murdered an American Jewish nature photographer, Gail Rubin (the niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff), then hijacked an Israeli bus and massacred 36 passengers, including 12 children. One of Mughrabi’s accomplices was later hired as a senior adviser to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
 
Norway decided that it, too, does not want to be associated with Mughrabi. The Norwegians had contributed $10,000 to a women’s center in the PA town of Burqa. The PA named the center after mass-murderer Mughrabi. The Norwegian government demanded, and received, a full refund.
 
If these three European countries can stand up for the principle of opposing the glorification of Palestinian terrorism, shouldn’t the United States be able to do likewise?
 
American Jewish organizations need to speak out against the proposed $225-million U.S. aid package to the Palestinian Arabs. Our tax dollars should not be sent—either directly or indirectly—to corrupt, terror-promoting regimes. Belgium, Norway, and now Sweden, are setting an example that the Biden administration should follow.
 
Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney, is 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.”

Israel’s critics have a new slogan

Israel-critics think they’re being very clever with this one, because it actually comes from a phrase that was spoken by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. But of course, they’ve taken it out of context. 

View on line at Israel National News

Stephen M. Flatow  October 12 , 2021

Every couple of years, critics of Israel come up with a new slogan that they hope will pressure the Israelis into making more concessions to the Palestinian Authority. They’ve just trotted out their latest model: “Shrinking the conflict.”

Such slogans are usually invented to try to overcome some obstacle that’s interfering with the left’s campaign to force Israel to accept a Palestinian state in its back yard. The current obstacle is that it’s been more than seven years (!) since Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas has been willing to negotiate with Israel.

 If Abbas won’t talk, there’s no way to talk Israel into surrendering half its country. So, Israel’s leftwing critics figure they will wait him out—after all, Abbas, now in the 16 th year of his four year term of office, is 85 and facing various domestic problems. He can’t last forever. While they wait, the pressure-Israel crowd is looking for other ways to engineer Israeli concessions. Hence “shrinking the conflict.”

Naftali Bennett (Wikimedia Commons

 The Israel-critics think they’re being very clever with this one, because it actually comes from a phrase that was spoken by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. But of course, they’ve taken it out of context and tried to turn it into a weapon against him.

 The concept that Prime Minister Bennett has mentioned is that since there’s no way of ending the conflict, then all that’s possible is to “shrink” it somewhat, through small steps aimed at economic improvement for the Palestinian Arabs.

 But critics of Israel see “shrinking the conflict” differently—they see it as a new formula for building a Palestinian state, just more gradually. So, they’ve seized on the phrase and are running with it.

 In a major feature article last week, Patrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief for the New York Times, announced that the concept of “shrinking the conflict” is “taking root in political and diplomatic discourse in Jerusalem.” Translation: the New York Times declares that it’s “taking root,” in the hope that it will then take root.

 Kingsley trotted out an “Israeli philosopher”—which presumably makes him an expert on Israel’s military and strategic needs!— who supposedly is an “unofficial adviser” to the prime minister, whatever that means. Much to the delight of the Times, this particular “unofficial adviser” wants “shrinking the conflict” to turn into what he calls “expanding Palestinian self-rule.” He thus became the featured voice in the article, which took up nearly an entire page in the Times.

 If leftwing groups were honest and called this “solution” by its real name, “the nine-miles-wide solution,” nobody would support it.

We’ve seen this kind of cheap sloganeering before. Does anybody remember “Diaspora lag”? The leftwing Israel Policy Forum came up with that one in early 1993, to describe what it claimed was the “problem” of Diaspora Jews “lagging behind” the new left-leaning Israeli government. Israel was getting ready to make major concessions to the Palestinian Arabs, and not all American Jews were falling in line quickly enough, so the Israel Policy Forum (a creation of Israel’s Labor Party) wanted to shame them by portraying them as a bunch of Neanderthals who were “lagging behind” the enlightened, progressive left.

 How about “American engagement?” J Street came up with that one. The J Streeters know they can’t get most of American Jews to support forcing Israel back to the indefensible pre-1967 armistice lines. But J Street also knows that historically, American involvement in Mideast negotiations has meant American pressure on Israel to go back to the 1967 lines. So, a few years ago, J Street started taking polls which simply asked American Jews if they favor “American engagement in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.” That sounds pretty innocent, so most of the respondents said “yes.” That’s how J Street hopes to get the trojan horse of American pressure back onto the scene.

 The left’s most successful slogan in recent memory is “two-state solution.” It actually began as “land for peace” back in the 1970s, and it had a certain vague appeal to people who didn’t think it through. But most of the Jewish public still thought that “peace for peace” made more sense.

 So, the left gradually abandoned “land for peace” and began pushing the phrase “two-state solution,” which likewise has a superficial appeal. After all, if you’ve got two peoples, why shouldn’t they each have a state? Isn’t that fair? Like all slogans, though, its weakness is that it crumbles when people ask exactly where the Palestinian Arab state should be.

 That’s because “two-state solution” in practice means that Israel will be pushed back to the indefensible nine-miles-wide lines at its mid-section. That would enable an Arab tank column to cut the country in two in a matter of minutes. If leftwing groups were honest and called this “solution” by its real name, “the nine-miles-wide solution,” nobody would support it.

 The same is true for the new “shrinking the conflict” slogan that the New York Times is now promoting. When people realize that it’s just another cover for trying to wring risky, one-sided concessions out of Israel, it will fade into obscurity alongside the various other propaganda lines that have come and gone over the years. Which is exactly where it belongs.

 Stephen M. Flatow, is an attorney 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.”

They tried to burn Jews alive. Again.

My Israel National News column posted on October 1, 2021.

I wouldn’t have imagined that 76 years after the Holocaust ended, I would be writing these words but here we go again. Last week, anti-Semites tried to burn Jews alive. And the world looked away.

Joseph's Tomb (Flash 90)

Several hundred Jewish worshippers were on their way to hold peaceful, legal religious services on the holiday of Sukkot, at the tomb of the biblical patriarch Joseph, located in the city of Shechem. The city, better known by its Roman name, Nablus, had a sizeable Jewish community until Palestinian Arab rioters drove them out in the 1930s. Today’s generation of Palestinian Arab terrorists ambushed last week’s worshippers. The Palestinian Authority, which governs the city, did nothing to intervene.

The attackers hurled “homemade explosives”—that is, Molotov cocktails—at the buses of worshippers, hoping to set them on fire. If not for the heroic actions of Israeli soldiers, the buses would have turned into rolling infernos, and hundreds of Jews would have been burned alive. That was the terrorists’ intention. Yet the world looked away.

You know what the international response would have been if the victims had thrown those firebombs right back at their attackers.

I checked the major newspapers and news websites in the days following the attack. Aside from the Israeli and Jewish media, I could not find a word about it. World leaders were not interested. “Human rights” organizations were busy elsewhere. The major news media outlets shut their eyes. They all looked away.

The moral outrage of an attempted massacre of Jews should have been sufficient to rouse the international community. But let’s put the moral considerations aside for a moment and just consider the legal implications.

The protection of Jewish worshippers is enshrined in the Oslo II agreement. The Palestinian Authority signed it. The PA has an obligation to abide by its terms. Israel fulfilled its side of the Oslo accords, by withdrawing from 40% of Judea-Samaria and allowing the PA to set up a de-facto state in that area. In return, the PA is required to fulfill its side of the deal, including the provisions applying to protection of Jewish worshippers.

You can find the relevant obligation in Annex I, Article V, Section 2, paragraph (b), under “Jewish Holy Sites.” It concerns Jewish religious sites that are located in PA-governed territory. And Appendix IV specifically lists “Joseph's Tomb (Nablus)” as one of those sites.

The agreement states that “the protection of these sites, as well as of persons visiting them, will be under the responsibility of the Palestinian Police.” The PA must “ensure free, unimpeded and secure access” to the site, and “ensure the peaceful use of such site, to prevent any potential instances of disorder and to respond to any incident.”

Since the PA has one of the largest per-capita security forces in the world, it would not have had any trouble preventing would-be murderers from attacking Jews at the site. That is, if the PA wanted to prevent them. But it doesn’t. In fact, the PA, through its anti-Jewish incitement in its mosques, media and schools, encourages Palestinian Arabs to aspire to kill Jews. Hence last week’s attempt to burn Jews alive.

You know what the international response would have been if the victims had thrown those firebombs right back at their attackers. The United Nations Security Council would have met in emergency session. The Biden administration would have expressed “grave concern at this escalation” and shouted louder for a “two-state solution.” Newspapers around the world would have reported “settlers attacking Palestinians.”

But there was no way to blame the Jews. So, the world looked away.

“They Looked Away” happens to be the title of a searing 2001 documentary by the historian-filmmaker Stuart Erdheim. Narrated by Mike Wallace, it chronicles how the Allies knew what was happening in Auschwitz yet refused to bomb the railway tracks that led into the camp, or the gas chambers and crematoria.

I am not comparing last week’s assault to the Holocaust. I am merely pointing out how once again, the world is indifferent when Jews are under attack. How long will it be before another filmmaker records how world leaders, in our own generation, looked away as anti-Semites tried to burn Jews alive?

 

This column may be viewed on line here.

Stephen M. Flatow, October 01, 2021

 

 Peace Now attacks the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

 The American group is calling large parts of Jerusalem illegally occupied territory—and going after the Conference for not doing likewise.  So much for Lyndon Johnson’s belief it’s better to have someone inside the tent pissing outside, than someone on the outside pissing in.

 (September 24, 2021 / JNS) It’s the ultimate case of biting the hand that feeds you.

Americans for Peace Now (APN) has launched a public assault on the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations—the very organization that risked its good name and credibility by welcoming Peace Now into its ranks, despite plenty of reason to turn them away.

And just to make this whole episode even uglier and more ironic, the attack by APN on the Presidents Conference is over the issue of Jerusalem—the very issue that nearly torpedoed APN’s admission to the conference back in 1993.

The new controversy started innocently enough. The Presidents Conference last week issued a routine press release applauding the decision by the State of Arizona to divest from the British Unilever company. Unilever owns Ben & Jerry’s, the ice-cream manufacturer that is boycotting numerous Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, as well as communities in Judea and Samaria.

 There was nothing unusual or improper about the Presidents Conference release; it’s simple good manners to thank your allies for their efforts. The people of Arizona and the state authorities need to know that the American Jewish community appreciates their stance against the boycott of Jerusalem.

But that was too much for Peace Now, which issued a sarcastic public attack on the Conference of Presidents for daring to laud Arizona. The APN press release accuses the Conference leadership of hypocrisy for—get this—opposing those who divest from Israel but supporting those who divest from Unilever.

That’s “hypocrisy”? That would be like saying that since Jews boycotted products from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, they had no right to complain when anti-Semites boycotted Jews.

Apparently, the folks at APN don’t realize that the problem is not the concept of divesting or the concept of boycotting. The problem is the difference between right and wrong. Divesting from Israel is morally wrong. Boycotting enemies of Israel is morally right, just as boycotting Nazi Germany in the 1930s was morally right.

What makes the APN attack on the Presidents Conference even more galling is its entire premise. APN claims that the Ben & Jerry’s boycott is legitimate (and therefore should not be protested) because it is boycotting “communities that are illegal under international law.”

Experts on international law are divided on whether Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are legal or illegal. But the key point here is that those who say they’re illegal also say that many of the Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem are illegal.

The basis for calling those Jewish communities illegal is that they are in territories that Israel won in the 1967 Six-Day War. Well, Israel won large sections of Jerusalem in that war, too. So what APN is saying is that the following neighborhoods and sites are illegally “occupied” by Israel and therefore should be boycotted, according to international law:

The Temple Mount. The Western Wall. The Jewish Quarter of the Old City. The Mount of Olives cemetery, which is the oldest Jewish cemetery in the world. Ramot. French Hill. Gilo. Ramat Shlomo. And the mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhoods of Shimon HaTzadik (Sheikh Jarrah) and Kfar Shiloah.

For APN to call those Jerusalem neighborhoods “occupied territory” and therefore support the boycott of them is a flagrant violation of an explicit promise that APN made in order gain admission to the Conference of Presidents.

During the debate over APN’s application, back in 1993, pro-Israel activists warned that APN could not be trusted to uphold the Conference’s consensus position that all of Jerusalem belongs to Israel and should remain Israel’s undivided capital.

The activists had good reason to worry. A number of statements and actions by APN or its parent body, the Peace Now movement in Israel, had raised serious questions about the organization’s commitment to Jerusalem.

Just moments before the members of the Conference of Presidents cast their votes on the APN application, the APN leadership sent a telegram that was read aloud at the meeting, pledging to adhere to the Conference position on Jerusalem.

The Conference’s member organizations decided to take a chance. They gambled that APN would be true to its word and be part of the consensus on Jerusalem—sort of like Lyndon Johnson’s belief that it was better to have some people inside the tent than outside the tent. They put the Conference’s good name and credibility on the line.

Their gamble did not pay off.

Within two years, APN was violating its pledge. In 1995, APN leaders met with a senior PLO official in Jerusalem. As a result, the Conference of Presidents leadership sent a letter to APN, reprimanding it.

That 1995 meeting was bad enough, but the latest violation is much worse. Now, APN is in effect calling large parts of Jerusalem illegally occupied territory—and attacking the Conference for not doing likewise. It’s time for the Presidents Conference to reconsider whether APN should be allowed to continue as one of its member organizations.

APN has broken its pledge to the Conference of Presidents on Jerusalem. There have to be consequences for such outrageous behavior.

Stephen M. Flatow is an attorney and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He resides in Jerusalem and is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”

 

 There's no such thing as a Palestinian terrorist

Readers of the NYTimes and Wash Post, note: The 6 escaped prisoners called "militants" by your media murdered innocent civilians.

My latest column at Israel National News

Which of the following actions by "ideologically-motivated" Palestinian Arabs should be considered terrorism?

 (A) Placing a bomb at a bus stop in downtown Tel Aviv, killing an Israeli teenage girl.

 (B) Kidnapping an Israeli teenage boy and shooting him point-blank in the head.

 (C) Throwing flaming bottles of gasoline at Israelis, in order to burn them alive.

 (D) Firing automatic weapons at Israeli civilian buses.

 The answer, according to the New York Times and the Washington Post, is “(E) None of the above.”

Fatah Terrorists

The terrorist attacks listed above were just a small sample of the violent crimes against civilians committed by the six Palestinian Arabs who recently escaped from an Israeli prison. Yet in the coverage of the escape by America’s two most prominent and influential newspapers, the word “terrorist” never appears.

 According to articles by the New York Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, Patrick Kingsley, the murderers are “prisoners,” “militants,” or simply “the six men.” Kingsley’s computer keyboard appears to be incapable of producing the word “terrorist” when Palestinian Arabs are involved. Maybe the tech support folks at the Times should have a look at his laptop. Clearly something is malfunctioning when no act of Palestinian Arab violence, no matter how heinous, is considered terrorism.

 Even when Kingsley gets around to describing the crimes they committed, he cannot bring himself to admit that it was “terrorism.” The six were “convicted or accused of militant activity,” he writes. No, they weren’t. The Israeli prosecutors’ bills of indictment did not use euphemisms such as “militant activity” to cover up the nature of the crimes, as Kingsley does. They were indicted for terrorism and murder.

 What about the terrorist groups to which the six belong? Kingsley of the Times re-brands them, too. Five are members of Islamic Jihad, the terrorist gang that has murdered hundreds of Jews, including my daughter, Alisa, in 1995. Kingsley labels them simply “a militant group.”

 The sixth escaped terrorist was a leader of—here’s how the Times puts it—“the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group loosely linked to Fatah, the secular political party that dominates Palestinian institutions in the West Bank.”

 What’s all this gobbledygook about being “loosely” linked to Fatah? Why do Kingsley and the Times come up with these kinds of verbal gymnastics, instead of acknowledging the indisputable fact that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade is part and parcel of Fatah?

 Because Fatah is chaired by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. Acknowledging that Fatah sponsors terrorism would force the Biden administration to end all relations with the PA. So, the PA and its sympathizers play a game in which they pretend that Fatah doesn’t really control the Al-Aqsa terrorists.

 If you doubt that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are really part of Fatah, don’t take my word for it. Consider what sources that are not friendly to Israel have to say on the subject.

 The official BBC News profile of the Brigades states: “The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades is an armed Palestinian group associated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah organisation.” Perhaps the BBC has no choice but to admit the truth, because it was its own team of journalists which in November 2003 uncovered the fact that Fatah was paying $50,000 monthly to the Brigades.

 National Public Radio has described it as “Fatah’s armed militant wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.” A Council on Foreign Relations report on the Brigades found that they are “aligned with Fatah” and “affiliated with former Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat’s Fatah faction.”

 A June 2005 study by the U.S. government’s own Congressional Research Service reported: “On December 18, 2003, Fatah asked the leaders of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to join the Fatah Council, recognizing it officially as part of the Fatah organization.”

 How about the Palestinian Authority itself? What do PA leaders say about the Al-Aqsa gang? In June 2004, then-PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei openly declared in an interview with the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper: “We have clearly declared that the Aksa Martyrs' Brigades are part of Fatah. We are committed to them, and Fatah bears full responsibility for the group." (Jerusalem Post, June 20, 2004)

 The New York Times’ coverage of the escaped terrorists has been bad enough—but the way the Washington Post has handled the story has been even worse.

 Post correspondent Ellen Francis called them “prisoners” and “fugitives”—not even “militants,” much less “terrorists.” In her reporting, Islamic Jihad is not even “a militant group” (as the Times calls it)—it’s just “the Islamic Jihad movement.” And Fatah is not even mentioned by Francis—it’s merely “the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.” Readers of the Post were not given the slightest indication as to what those two groups are all about.

 Earlier this summer, a poll by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, at Oxford, found that just 29% of Americans trust the news media. The United States placed dead last, out of 46 countries surveyed, in media trust.

 Perhaps the blatant attempts by America’s two most influential newspapers to cover up the nature of Palestinian Arab terrorism might help explain why so many people distrust the media.

 

Stephen M. Flatow, 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 an oleh chadash and the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”

Rescuing Biden from Afghanistan

 Rescuing Biden from Afghanistan

The think-tank crowd and Jewish former officials of the State Department are desperately trying to undercut the notion that the U.S. debacle demonstrates American unreliability where Israel is concerned.

 (August 30, 2021 / JNS) The obvious lesson for Israel from America’s abandonment of Afghanistan to the Taliban is that it can’t count on the U.S. to protect it from the consequences of ceding more territory.

Sgt. Nicole Gee, killed in Kabul

 This reality, however, is a disaster for those who have been banking on the idea of offering “American security guarantees” to facilitate additional Israeli withdrawals. It explains the recent flurry of statements from the think-tank crowd and Jewish former officials of the State Department trying to undercut the notion that the Afghanistan mess demonstrates U.S. unreliability.

 Writing in The Hill on the eve of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s arrival in Washington, ex-State Department “peace processor” David Makovsky urged Bennett to publicly express “confidence that the U.S. is a steadfast ally” of Israel. That, Makovsky asserted, is needed as a “rebuke to the new narrative”—coming out of Afghanistan—“that the U.S. has given up fighting extremism.”

 Meanwhile, Washington think-tanker Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen told The New York Times: “A lot of the criticism about Afghanistan is that it’s an abandonment of traditional U.S. allies. [Bennett’s meeting with President Biden] was an opportunity to sit with a longstanding, steadfast ally and say this is still a focus and we will work side by side.”

 Two other failed “peace processors” weighed in with strikingly similar advice. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer told The Forward that the events in Afghanistan “change nothing” concerning America’s reliability and Israel. “I don’t think [Afghanistan] will impact the [Bennett-Biden] meeting at all,” he said, claiming that “the American people are very happy” with Biden’s actions in Afghanistan.

 Kurtzer’s colleague, Aaron Miller, writing on CNN.com, urged Bennett to “be supportive rather than demanding” with Biden, by “strengthening the Palestinian Authority” (meaning, making more concessions to the P.A.) and “taking steps to avoid provocation of the Palestinians in Jerusalem” (meaning, banning Jews from living in some parts of the city).

 What these commentators have in common (aside from Makovsky and Kurtzer-Ellenbogen oddly using the same language) is that they are all trying to achieve the same goal: to rescue Biden’s image from the rubble of Afghanistan, lest Israelis derive the obvious lessons from that debacle.

 And there’s a specific reason they are so anxious to do that.

 Makovsky, Kurtzer, Miller and Kurtzer-Ellenbogen all advocate creating a Palestinian state in Israel’s back yard. That would reduce Israel to just nine miles wide and leave its security dependent on the good graces of the P.A. But they know that most Israelis think the statehood proposal is too risky. So Makovsky et al think they can sugarcoat the pill by offering American “security guarantees.”

 For years, pro-Palestinian pundits and State Department officials have been floating various versions of this scheme. They speak of stationing American or multinational forces along Israel’s border or setting up American-manned “early warning” posts.

 Occasionally, they have pushed for a U.S.-Israel mutual-defense treaty. Perhaps they could model it on the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty that the U.S. signed with South Vietnam.

 The U.S. abandonment of Afghanistan is a disaster for Makovsky and his colleagues, because it exposes the fragility of America’s overseas commitments. It reminds Israelis that, in the end, no U.S. president can “guarantee” something that one of his future successors might not uphold. The ex-peace processors are desperate to get that Afghanistan lesson out of the limelight as quickly as possible.

 But carefully orchestrated soundbites will not suffice to pull the wool over the Israeli public’s eyes, because Israelis have long memories.

 The Israelis remember how they withdrew from the Sinai after the 1956 war in exchange for a U.S. guarantee of freedom of passage in the Straits of Tiran. When Egypt closed the straits on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War, the Johnson administration suddenly couldn’t remember the promise that the Eisenhower administration had made.

 They remember how the Nixon administration pressured Israel to accept a premature ceasefire in the 1970 War of Attrition, in exchange for a U.S. promise to stop Egypt from moving missiles close to the Suez Canal. But when the Egyptians went ahead and moved their missiles forward, President Nixon didn’t honor that promise. Israel paid a heavy price when those missiles were deployed in the Yom Kippur War three years later.

 There have been American technicians stationed in the Sinai Desert since 1975. That was how former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger got the Israelis to give up strategically vital mountain passes and oil fields there. In fact, ex-Ambassador Martin Indyk—Makovsky was his right-hand man—has just written a book glorifying that Kissinger mission.

 Indyk obviously sees the involvement of Americans on the ground as a useful way to get Israelis to take extreme risks, then and now. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that those Americans in the Sinai have never been tested. You can bet they would be on the first plane out if a new Egyptian regime sent its tanks into the Sinai.

 Afghanistan is another vivid, tragic illustration of the fact that, in the end, Israel is on its own. And Israelis can see that with their own eyes in the scenes of desperate Afghans clinging to the wheels of American planes departing from Kabul. That’s an image that’s hard to erase.

 Stephen M. Flatow is 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.”

Joe Biden supports the "Occupation"

 

Biden supports the "occupation"

By Stephen M. Flatow, Israel National News

 

The Biden administration has announced that it supports “The Occupation.”

 No, not that “occupation,” it’s the British-American occupation of territory which belongs to the nation of Mauritius.

 Yes, the same Biden administration that opposes Israel’s “occupation” of Judea-Samaria and that demands creation of a Palestinian Arab state there, has now publicly declared its support for the colonialist, imperialist, and possibly racist occupation by Britain of islands belonging to the Indian Ocean country of Mauritius.

Chagos Archipelago

 It’s an occupation in which the United States is complicit because the British allow the U.S. to maintain a military base there. So, since the U.S. benefits from this particular occupation, suddenly all those high-sounding principles that our State Department regularly hurls as accusations against Israel— “self-determination,” “illegal occupation” and all the rest—are out the window. 

 And guess who’s going along with this British-American Occupation? That’s right—all the folks who rail about “colonialism,” “imperialism,” “racism” and “occupation” when it comes to Israel. 

 Bernie Sanders. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. J Street. Ben & Jerry’s. Not a word from any of them about The Occupation—that is, when a Democratic administration is the party to blame. They’re only interested when they can blame Israel.

 The name “Mauritius” is familiar to those who know the history of England’s attempts to keep Jews out of the Land of Israel. In 1940, some 1,600 Jews whom the British caught trying to enter the ancient Jewish homeland were deported to Mauritius, which is 1,200 miles off the southeastern coast of Africa.

 Mauritius was just one of the many small countries around the world that British colonialists illegally occupied and exploited for centuries. The British authorities chose that remote island for the Jewish deportees in the hope that the world would forget about them. The fact that Mauritius is so remote has no doubt contributed to the ability of the current British and American governments to keep their ongoing Occupation out of sight. 

 But no longer. A series of recent diplomatic exchanges and little-publicized United Nations actions has shed light on the whole sordid story of the Occupied Mauritian Territory and its hypocritical enablers.

French racist colonialists invaded and occupied Mauritius in 1715. British racist imperialists conquered it in 1810. The newly acquired territory included a series of islands called the Chagos Archipelago.

 In 1966, the British allowed the United States to build a military base there. But the world was changing, the British empire was crumbling, and in 1968 London granted Mauritius its independence.

 But the Brits kept the Chagos Archipelago. Not that they ever asked the indigenous inhabitants what they wanted. “Self-determination” is only for Palestinian Arabs. The black and brown residents of the Chagos Archipelago were not only ignored, but persecuted. Between 1968 and 1973, the British violently expelled all 1,500 of the native Chagossians. 

 According to documents revealed in a lawsuit by one of those deportees, the U.S. and the United Kingdom agreed at the time that it would be “awkward” if the expulsions became known, so they suppressed all publicity about it. In the pre-internet age, colonialists got away with a lot of stuff like that.

 In 2019, the United Nations General Assembly voted, 116 to 6, that Britain had to leave the Chagos Archipelago within six months. The British ignored the UN resolution. Can you imagine how the international community—including Britain!— would respond if Israel ignored some six-month deadline set by the United Nations?

 The Washington Post this week pressed the Biden administration to explain its position. The State Department spokesman responded that the U.S. “unequivocally supports UK sovereignty” in the Occupied Mauritian Territory. He said: “The specific arrangement involving the facilities on Diego Garcia is grounded in the uniquely close and active defense and security partnership between the United States and the UK.”

 Oh, I see. If an Occupation is useful to the Biden administration, then it’s perfectly fine. If nobody is talking about the Occupied Mauritian Territory in trendy Manhattan cocktail parties or on MSNBC, then J Street stays silent, and Ben & Jerry’s can continue selling its ice cream to the personnel in that Occupation Military Base. 

 Nobody is demanding a “right of return” for Chagossians to go back to their archipelago. Nobody claims that the British and American governments are in danger of “losing their souls” because of their Occupation of other people’s land. Nobody is calling for boycotts, or divestments, or sanctions against the Occupation Regime. Nobody is criticizing the American military “settlement” in Chagossian territory. 

 File this one under “H” for hypocrisy. There could be no more blatant example.

 Stephen M. Flatow is 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 a member of the board of Nishmat and author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”