List of terror organizations is missing one - Fatah

 

The U.S. must put Fatah on its list of terror groups

Even Fatah officials admit that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades is the “military arm” of the party. 

By Stephen M, Flatow

Imagine if the ruling party of any country announced that it had begun carrying out terrorist attacks. Imagine the shock and horror if the U.K. Conservative Party, Canada’s Liberal Party or the U.S. Democratic Party made such a declaration. Yet that is exactly what Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority, just did—and the international community is silent.

Logo of the Al Aqsa
Martyr's Brigades

After the killing of an IDF officer near the city of Jenin in Judea/Samaria on Sept. 14, the official Fatah Facebook page featured a video praising the murder. A translation by Palestinian Media Watch states that the video referred to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades organization as Fatah’s “military arm.” It further declared that Fatah “takes responsibility for the operations of its military arm” and that the Brigades “is officially announcing” that it will be carrying out additional “operations.”

Nobody had ever heard of the Brigades until the autumn of 2000, when the Palestinian Arabs launched what they called the second intifada. That campaign of terrorism was led by what was described by the media as a “new” group called the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.

But it was obvious that a terrorist group couldn’t spring up fully-formed overnight, with an entire network of highly trained bombers and shooters already in place. And it didn’t. The Brigades was a front group constructed by Fatah in order to continue the violence the party had promised, in the Oslo Accords, to give up.

The most notorious of the attacks by the Brigades were a Jan. 2002 assault on a bat mitzvah celebration in Hadera that killed six and wounded 33; a March 2002 suicide bombing in front of Jerusalem’s Yeshivat Beit Yisrael that killed 11 (including two infants) and wounded more than 50; and a suicide bombing at the Tel Aviv central bus station in January 2003 that killed 23 and wounded more than 100.

To continue reading, go to jns.org

Terror pays, terrorists don't pay; especially if they are Palestinian

 

Abbas cheers shooting of Americans (but gets a big check from U.S. anyway)

The Office for Justice for US Overseas Terror Victims has never arrested a Palestinian terrorist involved in attacks on Americans.

By Stephen M. Flatow

As five Americans and three Israelis lie wounded in a Jerusalem hospital, some of them fighting for their lives, the official web site of Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas is praising the terrorist who shot them.

Yes, the same Abbas who will be receiving more than $500 million in aid from the Biden administration this year. Most of the money will be channeled through third parties, but it’s all fungible—it covers bills that Abbas and the PA would have to pay if the U.S. wasn’t paying them.

Abbas is chairman of both the PA and Fatah, which is the largest faction of the PA. Abbas was a leader of Fatah for many years under Yasir Arafat, before succeeding him as chairman.

Here is what Abbas’s official Fatah website had to say about the shooting attack on the Americans and Israelis in Jerusalem:

“Praise to the one whose rifle only speaks against his enemy. Long live our people’s unity and long live the free hero. Praise to the rifle muzzles, our people will fight the occupation with all kinds of resistance.” (Translation courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch)

According to my data base, at least 146 American citizens have been murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists since the 1968. The international community has largely forgotten them.

Read the full column at Israel National News.

Teaching terror to children, it's child abuse according to Hillary Clinton

 

Why Hillary Clinton called it ‘Palestinian child abuse’

At summer camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian Arab youths are being taught that all of Israel—Tel Aviv, Haifa, everything—is “occupied Palestine” and must be annihilated

By Stephen M. Flatow

It’s summertime!

“Summer-camp activities” for youth that present terrorists as role models at the
Palestinian Authority Security Forces’ Al-Istiqlal University. Credit: PMW.

For most children, that means campfires, nature hikes and outdoor games like “Capture the Flag.”

For kids in the regions governed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, it means weapons training, skits in which the children pretend to kidnap and murder Jews, and lectures on the importance of destroying Israel.

Hillary Clinton once called it “Palestinian child abuse.” One glance at the campers’ daily schedule explains why.

The Central Hebron branch of Fatah—the major faction of the P.A.—has posted on its website dozens of photos and descriptions of their local “Buds of Construction and Liberation” summer camp. Instead of photos of smiling children holding popsicles or swimming in the camp lake, we see photos of smiling Palestinian Arab children holding AK-47 rifles. They’re standing in front of a giant banner showing P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas and his predecessor, Yasser Arafat.

Palestinian Media Watch, which translated the captions, points out that the banner also shows the official Fatah logo, including rifles, a hand grenade and the official P.A. map of the region, which labels all of Israel as “Palestine.”

Read the full column at jns.org

Munich terror - title to face the truth about the attack

 

Mahmoud Abbas and the Munich massacre: Time to face the truth

“Black September” was a fiction—so says the U.S. State Department.

The families of the Israeli athletes massacred at the 1972 Munich Olympics have announced a boycott of an upcoming 50th-anniversary commemoration in Germany. They’re protesting the inadequate level of compensation provided by the German government, and I fully support their position.

German plaque commemorating the Munich Massacre victims

But let’s not forget that one of the masterminds of the massacre heads a regime that is currently receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in direct and indirect aid each year from the United States, Germany and numerous other countries.

I am referring to Mahmoud Abbas, the chairman of both the Palestinian Authority and its main faction, Fatah.

The autobiography of the late Mohammed Oudeh, better known as Abu Daoud, named Abbas as one of the three senior officials of Fatah who assisted Daoud in planning the Munich massacre.

Officially, the Munich attack was carried out by the “Black September” group that pretended to be independent of Fatah.

But the myth of an “independent” Black September was shattered many years ago with the declassifying of a telegram sent by the U.S. State Department to American embassies around the world on March 13, 1973.

Read the full column at JNS.ORG

Terrorism gets a pass from the Biden Administration

Why does the Biden administration oppose Israel’s anti-terror actions?

The White House denies that Palestinian NGOs are connected to terrorism despite a mountain of evidence. 

The Biden administration is claiming that Israel has not provided evidence that the seven NGOs whose offices it closed down last week were tied to a terror group. Yet there is a mountain of publicly-available evidence proving the existence of such ties—and some of it comes from the U.S. government itself.

Dawson's Field Hijacking

The administration was clear in its support of the NGOs. U.S. State Department Spokesman Ned Price said the administration “voiced our concern” about Israel’s actions. Disputing Israel’s assertion that the groups were connected to the terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Price claimed that “we don’t have that information yet.”

For anyone who has forgotten, the PFLP was a pioneer of the infamous airline hijackings of the 1960s and 1970s. More recently, its bloody record included the murder of an Israeli cabinet minister in October 2001 and the massacre of five rabbis in November 2014, including American citizens, in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood.

If Ned Price and other Biden administration officials are genuinely interested in learning about NGO ties to the PFLP, they should start by picking up the phone and calling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Read the complete column at JNS.ORG

Whatever happened to the generation of peace - college students back Hamas

Palestinians vote for genocide -
What happened to the generation of peace?

Hamas won overwhelmingly in elections for the student council at a leading Palestinian Arab university last week. In other words, the young leadership of the Palestinian Arab community just voted for genocide.

 When I use the term genocide, I am not indulging in hyperbole. I am referring to the actual, legal definition of genocide, which is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide: “Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

“Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide

 That’s exactly what Hamas has been doing for decades, with thousands of rockets, flaming balloons, stabbings, bombings, sniper fire, suicide attacks and kidnap-murders.

And that’s exactly what Hamas has always advocated in its official charter, which Simon Wiesenthal Center has described as “a Fatwa (Muslim religious decree) for genocide.”

(photo credit: FLASH90)

So, when the students at Birzeit University elected Hamas representatives to 28 of the 51 student council seats, they were making a clear and unequivocal statement: they want to “destroy, in whole or in part,” the seven million Jews in Israel.

 This was supposed to be the generation of peace. The 1993 Oslo agreement was based on a Palestinian leadership commitment to raise their young people to embrace non-violence and peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state. They promised to change their old hate-filled textbooks so that Palestinian classrooms would become incubators of peace instead of training facilities for war.

 The fact that young Palestinian Arabs voted for a genocidal group shows that the Palestinian educational system has never changed. No new curriculum has been instituted. No textbooks have been changed. Palestinian Arab boys and girls have been raised since 1993 in the same way they were raised before 1993: to hate and kill Jews.

 LET ME say that again: to hate and kill Jews - not to hate and kill Israelis, and not to hate and kill settlers.

 The distinction is crucially important because it goes to the motives of Hamas and its voters. If their motive was simply to secure some territory and live in peace next to Israel, then many people would see some justification in Hamas violence against settlers.

 If, however, Hamas’s motive is simply to kill Jews, then their actions are genocidal. Nothing can justify it. And no surrender of territory will ever put an end to it.

 Obviously, not everyone who has been harmed in Hamas attacks has been Jewish. But, we know who they are trying to kill. And we know it for the simple reason that Hamas terrorists never try to murder Israeli Arabs.

 Israeli Arabs are Israeli citizens. So, if Hamas is against Israelis and not Jews, why don’t they ever attack Israeli Arabs?

 If Hamas’s grievance is against the policies of Israel and not against Jews, then they should be attacking Israeli Arabs, just as they attack Israeli Jews, but, they don’t.

 If they were merely against “Israelis,” Hamas newspapers, and radio and television programs would be inciting Palestinians to hate Israeli Arabs with the same vehemence that they hate Israeli Jews. They would be accusing Israeli Arabs of being evil and Nazi-like. Their political cartoons against the occupation would be showing Israeli Arabs as monstrous occupiers. Instead, their cartoons show occupiers with huge, hooked noses, side curls, beards and yarmulkes.

Hamas doesn’t plant bombs in supermarkets in Israeli Arab neighborhoods. They don’t machine-gun bus passengers in Israeli Arab towns. They don’t kidnap Israeli Arab teenagers from hitchhiking posts and murder them. The reason is simple, and there is no other plausible explanation, their goal is to murder Jews and that makes it genocide.

 It’s time to acknowledge the true nature of what Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists have been doing to Jews for more than a century. It’s not about politics. It’s not about policies. It’s not about territories or settlers. It’s genocide.

 That’s what the young leaders of the Palestinian Arabs voted for last week. That’s the sad and ugly reality that Israel and its supporters will have to confront in the years ahead.

 The writer 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 Terrorism.

This post originally appeared on JPost.Com

Another Palestinian ‘moderate’ is exposed

The peace-process crowd loves "moderates" but hands out the title too quickly. US Congressmen have an encounter with a Palestinian "moderate" who talks about "fireworks" and come away disappointed.

My latest column on jns.org.

In meetings with members of Congress who were visiting Ramallah, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh launched into a series of venomous anti-Israel tirades.

(March 18, 2022 / JNS) Every time a new Palestinian Arab leader begins to emerge, journalists, pundits and diplomats rush to crown him “moderate.” Well, one of those “moderates” just claimed—to a U.S. congressional delegation, no less—that Hamas has only been shooting “fireworks,” not missiles, at Israel.

 Funny, I don’t see that being reported by any of the journalists who previously praised him. I don’t see any of those pundits or diplomats publicly acknowledging that they were wrong about him.

Mohammed Shtayyeh - Wikipedia

 The latest fallen moderate is Mohammed Shtayyeh, who in 2019 was appointed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority by the P.A.’s apparent chairman-for-life, Mahmoud Abbas.

 As soon as Shtayyeh’s name was announced, Western journalists raced to paint him as a reasonable, moderate, all-around wonderful kind of guy. They did that for an obvious reason: They want to see a sovereign “Palestine” created in Israel’s backyard, and the only way to make that happen is to convince Israel—and its supporters around the world—that it would be safe to do so.

 Agency France Presse called Shtayyeh “a political moderate.” USA Today assured us that Shtayyeh is not some wild-eyed radical; he’s “a British educated economist.”

 The Council on Foreign Relations hosted a public event with Prime Minister Shtayyeh. Richard Engel, chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, was the moderator. Engel quickly cast aside his journalistic objectivity and showered Shtayyeh with sympathy. “It must feel more like you’re more alone, though?” Engel asked him. “It must feel like some of your Arab allies have turned their backs on you. … Does it feel more lonely where you are living right now?”

 The word “technocrat” quickly became attached to the new prime minister’s name. Shtayyeh’s position is “a largely technocratic post,” determined The New York Times. Shtayyeh is “seen largely as a technocrat,” declared Reuters, not identifying just who it is that sees him that way and carefully using the passive tone so as to cement the idea that the description is a widely-accepted fact that no one should question.

 Palestinian Arab extremists are perceived—correctly—as ideologues, ultra-nationalists and violent jihadists. So Shtayyeh’s journalistic friends were anxious to separate the new prime minister from that image. He’s just a “technocrat”—just a regular fellow who is interested only in getting the trains to run on time, that sort of thing.

 Shtayyeh’s media allies are careful not to remind the public that he used to be a senior official of Fatah, the ruling faction of the P.A. that openly sponsors financial rewards for terrorists and calls for the destruction of Israel.

This past week, Shtayyeh threatened to upset the apple cart that the media had so carefully constructed in order to protect his image. In meetings with members of Congress who were visiting Ramallah, the P.A. prime minister launched into a series of venomous anti-Israel tirades.

 House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) asked Shtayyeh about the 4,000-plus Hamas rocket attacks on Israel last May. Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) and Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) told Jewish Insider that “Shtayyeh dismissed Hamas rocket attacks against Israel as ‘fireworks.’ ”

 That’s right, “fireworks.” Which somehow managed to murder 10 Israelis and severely damage countless Israeli homes, schools and kibbutzim.

 Garbarino said that Shtayyeh’s outrageous statement “really annoyed people” in the delegation and indicated that “[the Palestinian Arabs] are not ready to have an adult conversation.”

 Jewish Insider reported that Shtayyeh also falsely accused Israel of “apartheid.” Remarkable! The prime minister of the P.A., which forbids Jews from living in its territory and forbids Arabs from selling property to Jews under penalty of death, accuses the Jews of apartheid.

 According to Jewish Insider, House Democratic Caucus chair Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) “forcefully pushed back” against Shtayyeh’s “apartheid” lie. To his credit, Jeffries recently wrote that accusations of Israeli apartheid are “demonstrably false, dangerous and designed to isolate Israel in one of the toughest neighborhoods in the world.”

 Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.) came away from the meeting with Shtayyeh convinced that the P.A. leaders have “such a victim mentality.” Rep. Valadao said, “I just didn’t get the impression that [Shtayyeh] is someone who is looking for long-term peace with Israelis in the region.” And Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) charged Shtayyeh with engaging in “revisionist history.”

 The truth is that Shtayyeh is no different from any of the other Israel-haters, revisionist liars and terror apologists who comprise the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. The only difference was that the media had done a good job of hiding him from serious scrutiny. Still, they can’t hide his own words.

 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.” Reach him @stephenflatow

 Rashida Tlaib plays the “Grandma Card,” again

 Rashida Tlaib wants to smear Israel. And she is willing to stoop as low as necessary to do so—even lying about her own grandmother.
 

By Stephen M. Flatow, Israel National News March 5, 2022

 Isn’t it remarkable how some anti-Israel lies seem to be repeated again and again, and even published in respected newspapers, no matter how many times they have been exposed as false?

Rashida Tlaib                            Reuters

 In a major New York Times feature this week, U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) once again falsely promoted the claim that her grandmother, Mrs. Muftia Tlaib, is persecuted by Israel—when, in reality, Grandma lives under the rule of the Palestinian Authority, not Israel.

 Yet Tlaib keeps repeating the lie, and New York Times reporter Rozina Ali either didn’t bother, or didn’t want to, do the elementary fact-checking on Tlaib’s claims.

 The narrative of the ‘mistreated grandmother’ —sure to elicit readers’ sympathy— was a major part of the March 3 article. It repeatedly referred to Israel’s supposedly harsh “occupation of the West Bank,” followed by mentions of the fact that Tlaib’s grandmother, Mrs. Muftia Tlaib, “is living in the West Bank.”

 The clear implication, again and again, was the Grandma lives under Israeli rule. To strengthen that oppression, the article mentioned that Some years ago, Tlaib “visited the West Bank and saw for herself the walls and checkpoints.”

 Of course, Israel’s checkpoints are no more oppressive than the checkpoints that one finds at every airport in the United States, and they serve exactly the same purpose—to catch terrorists. But Congresswoman Tlaib, and her sympathetic Times interviewer, seemed determined to create the impression that cruel Israel is mistreating poor grandma.

 The notion that Grandma Tlaib is oppressed by Israel is a lie.

 She resides in the Palestinian Arab village of Beit Ur al-Fauqa. Nothing in the article gave readers even the slightest clue that the Israeli occupation of that village ended in 1995. For the past 24 years, Beit Ur al-Fauqa has been governed by the Palestinian Authority.

 In the autumn of 1995, then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed an agreement with then-PA chairman Yasir Arafat, known as the Oslo II Accord. It provided for the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from the territories where 98% of the Palestinian Arabs reside, including Beit Ur al-Fauqa. The Israelis withdrew. The occupation ended.

 Arafat agreed that a portion of the non-residential agricultural land which Beit Ur al-Fauqa claims belongs to it would be assigned to the area under Israeli security control. Prime Minister Rabin requested this arrangement because that area is dangerously close to the Israeli towns of Beit Horon and Givat Ze’ev, and Route 443, a highway where Israeli automobiles are often subjected to Arab terrorist attacks. But the residential portion of Beit Ur al-Fauqa, as well as the rest of the adjacent agricultural land, have been under the rule of the PA for more than two decades now.

 Isn’t it remarkable how the Times article in effect rewrote history? No Oslo accords, no Israeli withdrawals, no Palestinian Authority control over 98% of the Palestinian Arabs. None of that ever happened, to judge by the Times and Congresswoman Tlaib.

 Ironically, the only oppression Grandma Muftia Tlaib experiences is at the hand of her fellow Palestinian Arabs. The Palestinian Authority refuses to permit Grandma Tlaib and her fellow-residents to vote for their town’s leaders. Beit Ur al-Fauqa has been governed since early 1996 by a group of eleven administrators appointed by the PA. So much for Palestinian democracy.

 In addition, Grandma and her neighbors, like all of the Palestinian Arabs who live under PA rule, have not been allowed to vote for their national leadership, either. PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas is now serving the 17th year of his four year-term. He has accomplished this feat by simply never holding elections for his office.

 Ever wonder why Muftia Tlaib’s Granddaughter-the-Congresswoman never acknowledges the PA’s oppression? The answer is obvious: Rashida Tlaib wants to smear Israel. And she is willing to stoop as low as necessary to accomplish that goal—even if it means both lying about her own grandmother and using Grandma as a political weapon. That’s really about as low as you can get. She ought to try her hand at a limbo dance.

 You can view this column and others by the author on-line here.

Ukraine crisis shows Israel the international community won't rescue you

Even though Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria is fully supported by history and international law, and Russia illegally occupies large parts of Ukraine, accusations against Israel will continue.

By STEPHEN M. FLATOW Published: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-698728 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has only just begun, yet the lessons for Israel are already obvious and they’re not very encouraging.

 Lesson #1: The international community will not rescue you.

People take cover as an air-raid siren sounds, near an apartment building
damaged by recent shelling in Kyiv, Ukraine February 26, 2022
(photo credit: REUTERS/GLEB GARANICH)

If ever there was a situation in which the international community would be totally justified to come to the armed defense of a beleaguered ally, this is it.

 Ukraine is the innocent victim of Russian aggression. Ukraine is a democracy; Russia is de-facto totalitarian. Ukraine’s location makes it strategically vital to the West. Yet, none of that matters.

 Not a single country is willing to take up arms to defend Ukraine against the Russian assault. Every one of the reasons cited above and many more would apply if Israel was again invaded by its Arab neighbors. And not a single country, including Israel’s closest allies, would pick up a gun if Israel faced annihilation.

 For years, the Jewish Left and the United States (US) State Department crowd have been proposing that US peacekeeping troops should be stationed in Judea-Samaria and the Golan Heights. The idea is to lure Israel into surrendering those territories, based on the assumption that a Palestinian state or its allies would never attack American troops.

  However, the American peacekeepers would flee the moment war seemed imminent, exactly as the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping troops fled from the Sinai on the eve of the 1967 war and exactly as the UN troops in southern Lebanon have proven to be completely helpless in the face of Hezbollah’s de facto control of that region.

 Israelis watching the unfolding of the Ukraine crisis undoubtedly recall Israel’s own bitter experiences with international indifference in the face of Arab aggression.

 When Arab armies invaded the newborn Jewish state in 1948, the Truman administration declared an arms embargo and refused to give Israel a single bullet.

 When Arab armies surrounded Israel in 1967 and prepared to attack, the Johnson administration refused to lift a finger.

 When Arab armies prepared to invade Israel in 1973, secretary of state Henry Kissinger pressured the Israelis not to strike first and then withheld weapons for ten days in order to prevent Israel from achieving a decisive victory.

 When Israel defended itself against mass rocket attacks by Hezbollah in 2006 and by Hamas in 2008, 2014, and 2021, the US pressured the Israelis to end their operations prematurely, thus granting de facto victories to the terrorists.

 Lesson #2: The hypocrisy will never end.

Regardless of Russia’s own behavior, Russia and its allies will continue to falsely accuse Israel of illegally occupying Arab territory.

 Even though Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria is fully supported by history and international law, and even though Russia illegally occupies large parts of Ukraine, the accusations against Israel will continue.

 Human rights groups will continue to obsessively focus on the Israeli occupation, while paying little or no attention to Russia’s occupation of Ukraine. The UN will continue to adopt mountains of resolutions condemning Israel and will ignore Ukraine.

 Lesson #3: Appeasers will look for ways to appease.

World leaders who see appeasement as the easy way out will continue look for ways to appease dictators rather than confront them.

The entire world heard President Biden’s initial statement that a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine would not result in a serious western response. In the face of intense criticism, the administration retracted that position. But the whiff of appeasement was clearly in the air.

 Others have been more explicit. Italy’s foreign minister has declared that international penalties against Russia should not include “the energy sector.” Inevitably, other European leaders will soon look for ways to weaken or evade imposing real sanctions on Russia.

 Lesson #4: It matters who your neighbors are.

Throughout history, dictators have constantly assaulted their neighbors. Sometimes they have been motivated by religion or nationalism; sometimes they have wanted to distract their own population from domestic problems. Usually, some combination of those motives has been involved. Whatever their motives, the indisputable fact is that authoritarian regimes often turn aggressive.

 Israel is right to be concerned about the fact that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas (in Gaza) are dictatorships, not democracies. And Israel is right to worry about the fact that those regimes are deeply corrupt, deny civil rights to their citizens and refuse to hold truly democratic elections. Democracies tend to be peaceful neighbors, dictatorships tend not to be.

 Thus, the Ukraine crisis is a reminder to Israel that this is what happens when you have a hostile, fascist dictatorship next door. And when a hostile Palestine and its Arab allies prepare to attack, nobody will come to Israel’s rescue.

 

The writer 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,” and a new Israeli citizen.

The crime? Walking a dog while Jewish. In the news? No, because reporting Palestinian violence undermines anti-Israel agenda

 Reporting Palestinian violence undermines anti-Israel agenda

 Everything about these attacks undermines everything that J Street and the slam-Israel media and the State Department crowd are trying to promote.

 By Stephen M. Flatow  

 Did you hear about the young Arab man who was walking his dog in Jerusalem one evening last spring, and was assaulted and nearly lynched by Jewish extremists?

No, of course you didn’t hear about it – because it didn’t happen. Oh, there certainly was an assault. But the victim was a Jew. And the would-be lynchers were Palestinian Arabs. That’s why it wasn’t covered by the international media. That’s why there were no angry press releases from J Street or Americans for Peace Now. That’s why the usually-vocal Jewish ex-State Department officials were all silent.

Two of the attackers were convicted this week, so the ugly episode was back in the news—in the Israeli media, that is. Not in The New York Times or The Washington Post or CNN. They didn’t report the attack when it happened, and they didn’t report the conviction – because everything about the attack undermines everything that J Street and the slam-Israel media and the State Department crowd are trying to promote.

 It was a lovely spring evening – April 24, 2021. Eli Rosen, 27, decided to walk his dog along Pierre van Paassen Street, part of which runs through the mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhood of Shimon HaTzadik, also known as Sheikh Jarrah.

A number of Palestinian Arabs had gathered nearby. “When they noticed that the victim had a Jewish appearance, they began throwing rocks at him,” according to the bill of indictment.  (A video of the attack can be found here.)

Civil rights activists in the US have coined the term “driving while black” to describe unjust arrests of African-American motorists. I guess Eli Rosen didn’t realize that to some Palestinian Arabs, it’s a crime to walk your dog while Jewish.

The bill of indictment continues: “The rioters – including the defendants  – ran toward him, surrounded him on all sides and began attacking him with fists, kicks, wooden batons, bricks, rocks, various objects and a shocker. All out of a nationalist-ideological motive.”

When Adnan Harbawi, 18, and Ibrahim Zaatari, 26, were convicted this week of taking part in the mob attack, the Israeli media mentioned an additional fascinating aspect of the story: “The rioters uploaded documentation [of the attack] to the social media.”

Before I go any further, I want to emphasize that I don’t like to compare contemporary events to the Holocaust. I don’t like it when the right does it, and I don’t like it when the left does it. Such analogies overstate what is happening today, and by implication understate what the Nazis did.

So, I’m not going to say that a mob beating up a Jew in Jerusalem is “like the Holocaust.” But this phenomenon of publicly boasting about one’s evil deeds should not pass without comment. Holocaust researchers have repeatedly uncovered photo albums which Nazi concentration camp commandants kept, to remember and celebrate what they did to the Jews.

There is a chilling book called “The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders.” The title is from the cover of one such album, which was kept by a commandant at Treblinka.

It is worth reading. Not because the attack on Rosen was “like the Holocaust.” But because the depraved evil of which human beings are capable of committing – and being proud of – is an aspect of human psychology that is worth contemplating, whether it took place in 1945 or last year.

Those who assaulted Rosen were so proud of their violence that they wanted the whole world to see their vile actions. They celebrated. This, they said, is what should be done to Jews.

The Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood has been in the news a lot lately. Arab squatters have been illegally occupying several Jewish-owned apartments, setting off a years-long court battle. Meanwhile, other Arab residents don’t want Jewish neighbors, so they have been using violence to stop Jews from moving into the area.

J Street and the ex-State Department peace-processor crowd have been portraying the Jewish residents as wild-eyed extremists who are the villains in the conflict. They say that the Palestinian Arabs are victims of Jewish aggression, that the Jews should be kept out of the neighborhood, and that the Palestinians should be given their own state, with Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon HaTzadik as part of the capital of “Palestine.”

So now you can see why the critics of Israel – in the media, in the punditry, in the think tanks – haven’t said a word about the assault on Eli Rosen. The near-lynching of a Jew walking his dog undermines the pro-Palestinian narrative. It reveals the ugly, antisemitic hatred that consumes so many Palestinian Arabs. It reminds the world how crazy it would be to give a sovereign state to people whose response to a Jew walking his dog is to try to murder him.

And that’s something that J Street and The Washington Post don’t want anybody to be reminded of.

 The writer is the father of Alisa Flatow, 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, and a new oleh.

The above column originally appeared on February 17, 2022 in the Jerusalem Post and on JPost.com.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs calls Mahmoud Abbas an antisemite. Oops.

 

Jewish left leader accidentally calls Palestinian Authority chief an anti-Semite

I hope she will confront the powerful implications of her own words.

 By Stephen M. Flatow

 (February 14, 2022 / JNS) Jewish left-wing critics of Israel say the darnedest things—sometimes by accident.

Last week, Rabbi Jill Jacobs—a prominent and oft-quoted figure on the American Jewish left—declared that “denying Jewish history” is anti-Semitic. She probably didn’t realize that she was thereby declaring Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, to be an anti-Semite. But she said it, and she was right, and it’s too late to take it back.

Jacobs is the longtime CEO of “T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights,” which is the U.S. arm of an extreme-left Israeli group called Rabbis for Human Rights. It’s a small organization, but it garners a lot of attention because many journalists sympathize with its pro-Palestinian positions. Thus, Jacobs is frequently quoted in the news media and invited to appear on radio and television programs.

Last week, for example, Jacobs was quoted by The Washington Post in its article about the Senate hearing concerning the nomination of Holocaust historian and Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt as U.S. envoy for combating anti-Semitism. Jacobs has no particular connection to Lipstadt and no particular expertise on anti-Semitism; nonetheless, the Post chose to present her as a Jewish leader commenting on the issue.

Now here’s where things got interesting.

Jacobs made a few general, unremarkable statements about examples of anti-Semitism. One of her examples was “denying Jewish history.” And that’s obviously true.

But Jacobs, who fervently supports the Palestinian statehood cause, does not seem to have considered the implications of her statement with regard to the man who would become the head of the Palestinian state that she wants to see established in Judea and Samaria, and the Old City of Jerusalem.

I’m talking about the fact that Abbas is one of the most outspoken deniers of Jewish history in the world today. He has made so many statements denying Jewish history that they could fill a book—and, in fact, they have; he is the author of an entire book claiming that the Nazis killed only 1 million Jews and accusing Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, of collaborating with the Nazis. But for now, I’m going to cite just two of his speeches because they are particularly revealing.

On Jan. 14, 2018, Abbas addressed the Palestinian Central Council at P.A. headquarters in Ramallah. A few excerpts from his lie-filled tirade:

— “Israel … is a colonial project that has nothing to do with Judaism.”

— It was not the British White Paper or mass murder by the Nazis that kept Jews from going to Palestine, but rather, “the Jews did not want to emigrate, even with murder and slaughter.”

— Jews in Yemen and Iraq “didn’t want to come” to Israel, but Ben-Gurion forced them to by collaborating with Iraqi officials “to take away the citizenship of Jews and force them to emigrate.”

— When Theodor Herzl visited Palestine, he said: “We must wipe out the Palestinians from Palestine so that Palestine will be a land without a people for a people without a land.”

On April 20, 2018, Abbas addressed the legislature of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which he chairs. Here are a few of the slurs, lies and assorted absurdities that he mouthed:

— The Jews in Europe provoked the Holocaust because of their “social function” as money-lenders.

— Jews are to blame for communism because Josef Stalin was a secret Jew.

— Today’s Jews are not authentically Jewish, but are actually descendants of the Khazars, a medieval Turkish tribe, “which means they are not Semitic and have no relation to Semitism and have nothing to do with the prophets Abraham or Jacob.”

— There were never any pogroms in Arab countries, as proven by the fact “that there were Jews in Arab countries. Why wasn’t there ever one incident against Jews because they’re Jews? Not even once … in over 1,400 years.”

Abbas’s denials of Jewish history were so egregious that even some of Jacobs’s closest allies on the American Jewish left were compelled to condemn him. Americans for Peace Now charged that Abbas made “vile anti-Semitic statements.” J Street acknowledged that Abbas’s address “featured absurd anti-Semitic tropes and deeply offensive comments on the history of the Jewish people and Israel.”

Even The New York Times, despite its strong pro-Palestinian leanings, reported that Abbas’s remarks were “laced with deeply anti-Semitic tropes.” And Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East, said Abbas was “perpetuating conspiracy theories that fuel anti-Semitism.”

All of which creates a bit of a problem for Rabbi Jill Jacobs and her colleagues at T’ruah.

According to her own definition, the P.A. boss is an anti-Semite. Which means that she will now either drop her call for a Palestinian state—since, of course, it’s crazy to give a sovereign state to a rabid anti-Semite; or she will argue that even though Abbas is an anti-Semite, he should be given a sovereign state just a few miles from Israel’s major cities—which, of course, is crazy since it would mean putting millions of lives in direct danger.

I suppose the rabbi may look for the easy way out—that is, to hope that nobody asks her that question so she can go on pursuing her political agenda. But I hope she will choose a different path; I hope she will choose to be intellectually honest and confront the powerful implications of her own words.

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.”

This column first appeared on JNS.org.

Did a N.Y. Times columnist call his colleague an antisemite?

We will never effectively combat antisemitism until we are willing to speak out when the guilty party is in our own camp.

 By Stephen M. Flatow

My Arutz Sheva column 

A New York Times columnist has defined antisemitism in a way that implicates one of his most prominent colleagues.

In a recent column, Bret Stephens described how “the common denominator” in a wide range of antisemitic accusations, whether on the extreme right or the extreme left, “is an idea, based in fantasy and conspiracy, about Jewish power.” That’s certainly true.

 According to Stephens, some religious antisemites in the past “believed Jews had the power to kill Christ.” And secular antisemites “believed Jews had the power to start wars, manipulate kings and swindle native people of their patrimony.” No doubt about it.

On the far right, antisemites believe Jews are trying “to replace white, working-class America with immigrant labor.” On the far left antisemites “attribute to Israel and its supporters in the United States vast powers that they do not possess.” Again, all true.

 There’s just one problem. Stephens’ description doesn’t fit only David Duke or Ilhan Omar. It also fits one of his most prominent colleagues at the Times, longtime foreign affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman. 

“Jews have the power to manipulate kings”? 

“Israel and its supporters have vast powers”? 

Friedman has written exactly that—on multiple occasions. 

Thomas Friedman - Reuters

In his column in the New York Times on February 5, 2004, Friedman declared that Israel "had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office.”  

On December 13, 2011, Friedman infamously wrote that the standing ovations which Israel’s prime minister received in Congress were "bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.” 

On December 13, 2011, Friedman infamously wrote that the standing ovations which Israel’s prime minister received in Congress were "bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.” 

And Friedman asserted in his column on November 19, 2013, that "many American lawmakers [will] do whatever the Israel lobby asks them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and cam donations." 

The fact that Friedman happens to be Jewish doesn’t get him off the hook. We all know plenty of examples of Jews who—for whatever reason—choose to perpetuate anti-Jewish stereotypes.

It’s equally irrelevant that Friedman himself occasionally complains about antisemitism. Most outrageously, he wrote on February 4, 2015 that if Israel’s prime minister spoke to Congress against the Iran deal, "anti-Semites, who claim Israel controls Washington, will have a field day.” In other words, it’s antisemitic to claim Israel controls Washington—except, apparently, when Friedman is the one making that claim.

 We will never truly be able to effectively combat antisemitism until we are willing to speak out when the guilty party is in our own political or ideological camp. If liberals acknowledge antisemitism only when it comes from conservatives, and conservatives acknowledge it only when it comes from liberals, then we will all be mired in little more than a sleazy political power game.

 We’ve had a good dose of that one-sided, partisan approach in recent weeks. Political figures on both the right and left have made outrageous remarks comparing certain domestic American policies to Nazism or the Holocaust. Liberal Jewish leaders have angrily denounced only the right-wingers who made those comparisons; conservative Jewish leaders have furiously criticized only the left-wingers who have said such things. That reduces the entire discussion to a cheap attempt to score points, not a serious effort to stop antisemitism.

 The same is true when it comes to Thomas Friedman. The fact that he is an influential journalist is no reason to be afraid of speaking the truth about him. The fact that one may agree with positions Friedman has taken on other issues is no reason to treat him as if he is immune from criticism.

 According to Bret Stephens, “the fantasy about Jewish power may seem outlandish, but it’s far more pervasive than many think.” He’s right—and it’s so pervasive that, according to Stephens’ own definition, it’s right up there in the list of New York Times columnists.

 

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.” He is an oleh chadash.

This column can be read on line at Israel National News - Arutz7.

"P is for Palestine" author got one thing right

The "P is for Palestine" children’s book that is causing so much controversy features anti-Israel propaganda and deeply disturbing justifications for “intifada” violence. But it also contains one very important truth.

Golbarg Bashi, the tome’s Iranian-born author, decided to use the device of an alphabet book to indoctrinate children with anti-Israel messages. The most incendiary part of the book, which has been at the center of much of the public debate, declares: “I is for Intifada, Arabic for rising up for what is right, if you are a kid or grownup!”

The accompanying illustration shows a father and child, wearing keffiyahs, standing near barbed wire (a symbol of “Israeli oppression”) and flashing the V-for-victory sign. Victory over Israel, that is.

Not surprisingly, many Jews are troubled by Bashi’s attempt to justify and glorify the waves of Palestinian “intifada” violence, in which more than 1,300 Israeli Jews have been murdered in recent years.

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, a leading critic of the book, correctly described it as “the glorification of the Palestinian intifada — a cruel, murderous, and terroristic campaign that purposely targeted innocent Israelis, including children, in restaurants, buses, hospitals, schools and shopping malls. … The intifada was not ‘a rising up for what is right.’ It was a mass descent into immorality.” 

In a Facebook post, Bashi blamed criticism of her book on what she called “self-proclaimed powerful neighborhoods of New York City.” That’s pretty obvious code language for “the Jews.” 

But it’s also important to pay close attention to the explanations that Bashi and her supporters have presented in several recent interviews. “Intifada is part of Palestinian life, to resist occupation,” she told JTA. In an interview with Haaretz, Bashi elaborated: “Intifada is an aspect of Palestinian life just as Bethlehem is the birthplace of Jesus Christ.” An Israeli-Arab educator named Areej Masarwa added that, “It’s part of Palestinian identity.” 

Exactly right. 

Mass violence against Jews is indeed a central part of “Palestinian” identity. And that tells us a lot about Palestinian identity. 

Palestinian Arab nationalism did not arise because of any major historical, linguistic, religious or cultural differences between Palestinian Arabs and, say, Jordanian Arabs or Syrian Arabs. That’s because there aren’t any. Palestinian nationalism arose as an anti-nationalism. Its raison d’être is to murder Jews and destroy the State of Israel. 

Other nations express their distinctive identity through positive cultural expressions. The Palestinians express their identity by bombing, shooting, hijacking, stabbing and stoning Jews. Witness Sunday’s stabbing attack at Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station. 

And why does the character of Palestinian-Arab identity matter? Because the fight for Israel’s survival is not just a military conflict. It’s also a war of ideas. Understanding the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism, and the falseness of Palestinian nationalism, is vital. We must understand why our side is right — and why their side is wrong. So, thank you, Golbarg Bashi, for helping to remind us of the true nature of Palestinian nationalism. 

Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

This post is from my archive of published writings and appeared in Heritage Florida Jewish News and other newspapers in 2017.

Follow me on Twitter @StephenFlatow

Associated Press reporter admits covering up for Arafat

Arafat was clearly delusional in the interview with AP reporter, which they admit today, but he was portrayed as a man of peace.

by Stephen M. Flatow

Did American journalists cover up for Yasir Arafat, as critics often claimed at the time? A longtime reporter for the Associated Press has finally let the cat out of the bag, and it’s not a pretty sight.

Arafat (Wikimedia Commons)

In a recent blog post, the veteran journalist Dan Perry recounted an interview he did with Arafat for the AP in December 2001. The date is important, because for the previous fifteen months, Arafat had been leading a massive terrorism war against Israel, which the Palestinian Arabs called the “Second Intifada.” Wave after wave of suicide bombings and shootings, for which Arafat’s Fatah movement openly claimed responsibility. Those of us in Israel at the time will never forget the empty streets, stores and buses.

“Was Arafat the one sending crazies to blow themselves up in Israeli buses and cafes?,” Perry wrote in his recent blog. “The Palestinian narrative said violence began organically…and Israel overreacted. Something didn’t quite add up and my colleagues and I at the Associated Press resolved to figure the whole thing out.”

So, they set out for Ramallah, to “figure the whole thing out” by asking Arafat. Not by believing Fatah’s constant claims of responsibility for the attacks against Israel. Instead, they were going to ask Arafat.

The interview began with Arafat complaining that he was not getting enough praise for having “already arrested 17 key militants.” (Perry never uses the word “terrorists” a trend that continues to this day.)

Perry, in his recent blog: “I suggested that if violence so devastating was happening against his will for over a year, the forces carrying it out must be very strong indeed. ‘You are speaking with Yasser Arafat,’ he admonished me. ‘I know how to do it. I know how to do it.’ ”

Read that question again. Perry was challenging Arafat.  He was saying, in effect: “You claim the terrorism is being carried out against your will, which means that the terrorists must be ‘very strong indeed,’ which means arresting 17 of them is woefully inadequate.”

Having failed to get a straight answer about the arrests, Perry next asked Arafat if he “regretting not doing more to prevent the outbreak,” since “1,000 Palestinians had been killed” as a result of the violence. 

Perry was referring to terrorists who were killed in Israeli actions, and Arab civilians who were inadvertently killed when terrorists stationed their men and weapons in civilian neighborhoods, in order to use them as human shields.

The PLO leader’s response? “Arafat said the death toll actually stood at 2,000. I tried to argue, but Arafat insisted...”

Then Perry asked Arafat if he regretted not accepting Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s reported offer of a Palestinian state in 90% of the territories. “ ‘We have our independent state,’ Arafat protested. This would have been a major scoop! Did they sign a secret deal that they were keeping from the world? Arafat smiled in conspiratorial fashion: ‘Ask Barak’.” 

Thus, there were three significant news items contained in the interview: Arafat was evasive about why he had arrested only 17 terrorists; Arafat was lying about the death toll, falsely claiming that it was twice what it really was; and a delusional Arafat was weirdly claiming that a Palestinian state already existed.

Which of these revelations appeared in the article that Perry and his colleague Karin Laub wrote in their December 8, 2001, article for the AP?  

None of them. Not one.

—Arafat falsely inflating the number of fatalities. Not mentioned. 

-- Perry and Laub did mention Barak’s offer of a Palestinian state. But instead of truthfully reporting that the delusional Arafat claimed the state already existed, they wrote: “But the Palestinians held out for more land and a ‘right of return’ for millions of refugees and their descendants.” 

— And as for Perry challenging Arafat for arresting only 17 terrorists, here’s what Perry and Laub wrote: “Asked whether he would be prepared to face down resistance by the militants and their growing legions of supporters, Arafat smiled and said: ‘You are speaking with Yasser Arafat. I know how to do it. I know how to do it.’”

They simply covered up the fact that Arafat had evaded Perry’s question.

In fact, one could say the entire article was a cover-up. Instead of reporting what Arafat actually said—the delusions, the lies, the ducking of questions about the arrests—Perry and Laub portrayed Arafat as a man of peace who was bravely fighting the terrorists: “He said he will not shy away from a confrontation with the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups to revive what hope remains for peace…He said he will continue pursuing the rest despite the continuing Israeli airstrikes…He said he was ready to return to peace talks immediately…”

All this, despite the fact that Perry knew—as he wrote in his recent blog post—that Arafat’s claim of fighting the terrorists was wildly implausible, since there were so many of them, and he had arrested only 17 of those “key militants.”

Perry concluded his blog post with this interesting reflection on Arafat’s military uniform: “Perhaps it [was] borrowed from a play about a fairytale army whose ranks contain one single, solitary man. A very senior officer, who believed that everything was real.”

So today, Perry reflects wistfully on the delusional Arafat. But Perry knew the truth at the time. He knew from the interview that Arafat was a deluded, conspiratorial lunatic. But Perry covered it up. It would have been very helpful to Israelis, American Jews, and everybody else to know the truth about Arafat. They could have made more informed decisions if they had that information. But for some reason, Dan Perry and the Associated Press didn’t want them to have it. I wonder why.

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 Terrorism.”

This column first appeared on Israel National News.