This post is about Sanctions as in BDS – The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against the Jews living in the Holy Land Of Israel, אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל, Eretz Israel and the BDS NAZI background.
There was no such thing as an Arab Palestinian currency |
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No matter what the Antisemites do with their Sanctions, the Jews living in he Holy Land Of Israel, אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל, Eretz Israel will continue to have families and children. |
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Rep. Ilhan Omar’s now-infamous Feb. 11 tweet — “It’s all about the Benjamins baby” Ilhan Omar-tweet-11February2019-It’s all about the Benjamins baby  Ben & Jerrys Targets Anti Semite Demographic With Audacious New Ice Cream Flavors. Reverend Al Sharpton and Minister Louis Farrakhan (Photo by R. Diamond/WireImage)
 Ben-&-Jerry’s-tweet-19July2021-Ben & Jerry’s will end sales of our ice cream in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. |
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The Boycott of Jewish Businesses in Nazi Germany The Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses is the model for the current EU guidelines for boycotting Israeli products. Leftist policies are, by their very nature, totalitarian in impulse and execution http://moshe.blogit.fi/luokka/countries/israel/boycott/ This is the founder of BDS Movement against the Jews living in Eretz Israel, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini and Adolf Hitler December 1941 Grand Mufti of Jerusalem-Amin al Husseini meeting with Hitler in 1941 Gaza “protesters” loft molotov cocktail on swastika kite over Israeli border |
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Hen Mazzig-tweet-3October2023-Israel was established in 1948. But Jews lived in the region for thousands of years. Before Israel existed, here’s what Jews in the Middle East could NOT do: In 1941, my grandma survived the Farhud. It was massacre against the Jewish community of Iraq, encouraged by the Nazis. Thousands of Jews were attacked by a mobs, which was backed by the Iraqi government. My grandma had to flee Iraq – they even took her citizenship. So did with other 150,000 Jews. Today there are no Jews in Iraq. They were ethnically cleansed. This didn’t just happen in Iraq. Jews were ethnically cleansed throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Almost a million Jew ran for their lives. The only place to take them wasn’t America, or Britain— it was Israel. Israel saved my Iraqi mother and my Tunisian father. It will continue to save Jews from everywhere else.  Hen Mazzig-tweet-3October2023–Israel was established in 1948. But Jews lived in the region for thousands of years.
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How many Arabs lived in “Palestine” before the establishment of the State of Israel?
A list of facts with historical sources: 🔸In 1785, Constantine Francois Volney describes the “ruined” and “desolate” state of the country: “We with difficulty recognized Jerusalem… The population is supposed to amount to twelve to fourteen thousands…” 🔸In 1843, Alexander Keith wrote that “in this [Volney’s] day the land had not fully reached its last prophetic degree of desolation and depopulation.” 🔸In 1816, J.S. Buckingham had described Jaffa as “a poor village”, and Ramleh as a place “where, as throughout the greater portion of Palestine, the ruined portion seemed more extensive than that which was inhabited.” 🔸In 1835, Alphonse de Lamartine gave this description: “Outside gates of Jerusalem, we saw indeed no living object, heard no living sound. We found the same void, the same silence as we should have found in the enrombed gates of Pompeii and Herculaneum… a complete, eternal silence resigns in the town, in the highways, in the country… The tomb of a whole people.” 🔸In 1857, the British consul in Palestine, James Finn, reported back to England: “The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population.” 🔸In 1867, Mark Twain wrote in The Innocents Abroad: “Stirring senses… occur in this valley no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent – not for thirty miles in either direction.” He goes on to describe Galilee, Judea, and around Jerusalem as deserts devoid of population. And for the country as a whole: “Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies… Palestine is desolate and unlovely… It is hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land.” 🔸In 1881 (the year designated by Arafat as the beginning of the Zionist “invasion” and “displacement” of the local population), English cartographer Arthur Penrhyn Stanley wrote: “In Judea it is hardly an exaggeration to say that for miles and miles there was no appearance of life or habitation.” 🔸By the third quarter of the 19th century, the total population of the entire country, Arabs and Jews, was only 400,000. Less than 3% of today’s figure.  Dr. Eli David-tweet-27April2024-How many Arabs lived in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel
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Dome of the Rock before the Six Day War-June 1967
Curious how they never cared about these iconic sites before it became a matter of fighting the Jews.  Nioh Berg-tweet-29February2024-Dome of the Rock before the Six Day War June 1967
 The German consulate in the Fast Hotel, 1933. (Wikimedia, Tamar Hayardeni)  the Jewish Virtual Library. logo https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org Arab Riots of the 1920’sby Jacqueline Shields https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/arab-riots-of-the-1920-s At the end of World War I, discussions commenced on the future of the Middle East, including the disposition of Palestine. On April 19, 1920, the Allies, Britain, France, Italy and Greece, Japan and Belgium, convened in San Remo, Italy to discuss a peace treaty with Turkey. The Allies decided to assign Great Britain the mandate over Palestine on both sides of the Jordan River, and the responsibility for putting the Balfour Declaration into effect. Arab nationalists were unsure how best to react to British authority. The two preeminent Jerusalem clans, the el-Husseinis and the Nashashibis, battled for influence throughout the mandate, as they had for decades before. The former was very anti-British, whereas the latter favored a more conciliatory policy.
One of the el-Husseinis, Haj Amin, who emerged as the leading figure in Palestinian politics during the mandate period, first began to organize small groups of suicide groups, fedayeen (“one who sacrifices himself”), to terrorize Jews in 1919 in the hope of duplicating the success of Kemal in Turkey and drive the Jews out of Palestine, just as the Turkish nationalists were driving the Greeks from Turkey. The first large Arab riots took place in Jerusalem in the intermediary days of Passover, April 1920. The Jewish community had anticipated the Arab reaction to the Allies’ convention and was ready to meet it. Jewish affairs in Palestine were then being administered from Jerusalem by the Vaad Hatzirim (Council of Delegates), appointed by the World Zionist Organization (WZO) (which became the Jewish Agency in 1929). The Vaad Hatzirim charged Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky with the task of organizing Jewish self-defense. Jabotinsky was one of the founders of the Jewish battalions, which had served in the British Army during the First World War and had participated in the conquest of Palestine from the Turks. Acting under the auspices of the Vaad Hatzirim, Jabotinsky lead the Haganah (self-defense) organization in Jerusalem, which succeeded in repelling the Arab attack. Six Jews were killed and some 200 injured in Jerusalem in the course of the 1920 riots. In addition, two Americans, Jakov Tucker and Ze’ev Scharff, both WWI veterans, were killed resisting an Arab attack on the Jewish settlement of Tel Hai in March 1920. Had it not been for the preliminary organization of Jewish defense, the number of victims would have undoubtedly been much greater.
After the riots, the British arrested both Arabs and Jews. Among those arrested was Jabotinsky, together with 19 of his associates, on a charge of illegal possession of weapons. Jabotinsky was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment with hard labor and deportation from the country after completion of his sentence. When the sentence became known, the Vaad Hatzirim made plans for widespread protests, including mass demonstrations and a national fast. Meanwhile, however, the mandate for Palestine had been assigned to Great Britain, and the jubilation of the Yishuv outweighed the desire to protest against the harsh sentence imposed on Jabotinsky and his comrades.
With the arrival in Jerusalem of the first High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, British military government was superseded by a civilian administration. As a gesture toward the civilian population, the High Commissioner proclaimed a general amnesty for both Jews and Arabs who had been involved in the April 1920 riots. Jabotinsky and his comrades were released from prison to an enthusiastic welcome by the Yishuv, but Jabotinsky insisted that the sentence passed against them be revoked entirely, arguing that the defender should not be placed on trial with the aggressor. After months of struggle, the British War Office finally revoked the sentences.
In 1921, Haj Amin el-Husseini began to organize larger scale fedayeen to terrorize Jews. Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, former head of British military intelligence in Cairo, and later Chief Political Officer for Palestine and Syria, wrote in his diary that British officials “incline towards the exclusion of Zionism in Palestine.”
 BRITISH POLICE officers corral Jewish men during the 1920 Jerusalem riots In fact, the British encouraged the Arabs to attack the Jews. According to Meinertzhagen, Col. Waters Taylor, financial adviser to the Military Administration in Palestine 1919-23, met with Haj Amin a few days before Easter, in 1920, and told him “he had a great opportunity at Easter to show the world…that Zionism was unpopular not only with the Palestine Administration but in Whitehall and if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, both General Bols [Chief Administrator in Palestine, 1919-20] and General Allenby [Commander of Egyptian Force, 1917-19, then High Commissioner of Egypt] would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home. Waters-Taylor explained that freedom could only be attained through violence.”
Haj Amin took the Colonel’s advice and instigated a riot. The British withdrew their troops and the Jewish police from Jerusalem, and the Arab mob attacked Jews and looted their shops. Due to Haj Amin’s overt role in instigating the pogrom, the British arrested him. Yet, despite the arrest, Haj Amin escaped to Jordan, but he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in absentia. A year later, however, British Arabists convinced High Commissioner Herbert Samuel to pardon Haj Amin and to appoint him Mufti.
Samuel met with Haj Amin on April 11, 1921, and was assured “that the influences of his family and himself would be devoted to tranquility.” Three weeks later, however, riots in Jaffa and Petah Tikvah, instigated by the Mufti, left 43 Jews dead. Following these riots England established the Haycraft Commission to evaluate the cause of these riots. The appendix of the report reads, “The fundamental cause of the Jaffa riots and the subsequent acts of violence was a feeling among the Arabs of discontent with, and hostility to, the Jews, due to political and economic causes, and connected with Jewish immigration, and with their conception of Zionist policy as derived from Jewish exponents . . . the Arab majority, who were generally the aggressors, inflicted most of the casualties.”
Following these riots, Haj Amin consolidated his power and took control of all Muslim religious funds in Palestine. He used his authority to gain control over the mosques, the schools and the courts. No Arab could reach an influential position without being loyal to the Mufti. As the “Palestinian” spokesman, Haj Amin wrote to Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill in 1921, demanding that restrictions be placed on Jewish immigration and that Palestine be reunited with Syria and Transjordan. Churchill issued the White Paper of 1922, which tried to allay Arab fears about the Balfour Declaration. The White Paper acknowledged the need for Jewish immigration to enable the Jewish community to grow but placed the familiar limit of the country’s absorptive capacity on immigration. Although not pleased with Churchill’s diplomatic Paper, the Zionists accepted it; the Arabs, however, rejected it.
Despite the disturbances in 1920-1921, the Yishuv continued to develop in relative peace and security. Another wave of riots, however, broke out in 1924 after another wave of pogrom’s sent 67,000 Polish Jewish refugees to Palestine. After a week of skirmishes in Jerusalem between the Haganah and Arab mobs, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs lay dead. The Yishuv’s main concern at that time was its financial difficulties; the economic crisis of 1926-1928 led many to believe that the Zionist enterprise would fail due to lack of funds. Zionist leaders attempted to rectify the situation by expanding the Jewish Agency to incorporate non-Zionists who were willing to contribute to the practical settlement of Palestine.
The prospects for renewed financial support for the Yishuv upset Arab leaders who feared economic domination by the Zionists. Led by Haj Amin al-Husseini once again, rumors of a Jewish plot to seize control of Muslim holy places began to spread in August 1929. Violence erupted soon after, causing extensive damage. Rioting and looting were rampant throughout Palestine. In Jerusalem, Muslims provoked the violence and tensions by building and praying on or near the holiest place in the world for Jews, the Western Wall. By late August, the Arabs, in well-organized formation, attacked Jewish settlements near Jerusalem. The disturbances spread to Hebron and Safed, including many settlements in between, and on the Kfar Dorom kibbutz in the Gaza Strip.
After six days of rioting, the British finally brought in troops to quell the disturbance. Even though Jews had been living in Gaza and Hebron for centuries, following these riots, the British forced Jews to leave their homes and prohibited Jews from living in the Gaza strip and Hebron to appease Arabs and quell violence. By the end of the rioting, the death toll was 133 Jews, including eight Americans, and 110 Arabs (most killed by British security forces).
More than 200 Arabs and 15 Jews were tried and sentenced for their role in the unrest in 1929. Out of 27 capital cases involving Arabs, only three of the death sentences were carried out, the others were granted “mercy” and their sentences were commuted to life in prison. Muhammad Jamjoum, Fuad Hijazi, and Ataa Al-Zir were put to death on June 17, 1930, because they were convicted of particularly brutal murders in Safad and Hebron.
The British approved payment of nearly 100,000 pounds to Jews for “loss of life and permanent incapacity, and proportionately up to the limits of the sum available in respect of damage to property” by Arabs in the 1929 riots. A “special Jewish Fund for relief and reconstruction purposes to repair the losses suffered by the disturbances of 1929” allocated another 433,000 pounds.
Like the riots earlier in the decade, afterward the British appointed Sir William Shaw to head an inquiry into the causes of the riots. The Shaw Commission found that the violence occurred due to “racial animosity on the part of the Arabs, consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future.” The report claimed that the Arabs feared economic domination by a group who seemed to have, from their perspective, unlimited funding from abroad. The Commission reported that the conflict stemmed from different interpretations of British promises to both Arabs and Jews. The Commission acknowledged the ambiguity of former British statements and recommended that the government clearly define its intentions for Palestine. It also recommended that the issue of further Jewish immigration be more carefully considered to avoid “a repetition of the excessive immigration of 1925 and 1926.” The issue of land tenure would only be eligible for review if new methods of cultivation stimulated considerable growth of the agricultural sector. The Shaw Commission frustrated Zionists, but the two subsequent reports issued on the future of Palestine were more disturbing.
The Hope Simpson report of 1930 painted an unrealistic picture of the economic capacity of the country. It cast doubt on the prospect of industrialization and incorrectly asserted that no more than 20,000 families could be accommodated by the land. The Hope Simpson report was overshadowed, however, by the simultaneous release of the Passfield White Paper, which reflected colonial Secretary Passfield’s deep-seated animus toward Zionism. This report asserted that Britain’s obligations to the Arabs were very weighty and should not be overlooked to satisfy Jewish interests. Many argued that the Passfield Paper overturned the Balfour Declaration, essentially saying that Britain should not plan to establish a Jewish state. The Passfield Paper greatly upset Jews, and interestingly, also the labor and conservative parties in the British Parliament. The result of this widespread outcry to the Secretary’s report was a letter from British Prime Minister MacDonald to Dr. Chaim Weizmann, reaffirming the commitment to create a Jewish homeland.
The Arabs found rioting to be a very effective political tool because the British attitude toward violence against Jews, and their response to the riots, encouraged more outbreaks of violence. In each riot, the British would make little or no effort to prevent the Arabs from attacking the Jews. After each incident, a commission of inquiry would try to establish the cause of the riot. The conclusions were always the same: the Arabs were afraid of being displaced by Jewish immigrants. To stop the disturbances, the commissions routinely recommended that restrictions be made on Jewish immigration.
Thus, the Arabs came to recognize that they could always stop Jewish immigration by staging a riot. Despite the restrictions placed on its growth, the Jewish population increased to more than 160,000 by the 1930s, and the community became solidly entrenched in Palestine. Unfortunately, as the Jewish presence grew stronger, so did the Arab opposition. The riots brought recognition from the international Jewish community to the struggle of the settlers in Palestine, and more than $600,000 was raised for an emergency fund that was used to finance the cost of restoring destroyed or damaged homes, establish schools, and build nurseries. Sources: Mitchell G. Bard, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Middle East Conflict. 4th Edition. NY: Alpha Books, 2008. |
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Nazis in British Mandate of Palestine These flags are flags of the Nazi Youth Organization “Hitler-Jugend”, regional branch of Palestine. The historical context to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini.”  Nazi Handbills openly spread in Jerusalem  Suspect Nazis in Palestine Uprisings |
 Nazis Affiliated with Arabs toboycott Jewish Palestine Goods  Arab Youths Found Nazi Club in Haifa  Former Nazi Envoy charged with stirring Palestine riots  swastika on Arab Oranges |
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The mufti’s war against the JewsIn 1937, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini released an “Appeal to All Muslims of the World,” urging them “to cleanse their lands of the Jews” and laying the foundation for the anti-Semitic arguments used by radical Arab nationalists and Islamists to this day.SEAN DURNS July 24, 2019 / JNS https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-muftis-war-against-the-jews/
(July 24, 2019 / JNS) This month marks the 45th anniversary of the death of Amin al-Husseini, the one-time Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Nazi collaborator. Hailed as a “pioneer” by current Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, during World War II al-Husseini raised SS regiments in the Balkans, promoted the Reich’s propaganda in the Arab world, toured death camps and plotted the genocide of Middle Eastern Jewry. After he escaped justice, conventional wisdom has it that the Mufti ceased to be a political force in the post-war years. But conventional wisdom is wrong.
Declassified CIA documents—many revealed for the first time—and a recent book tell a different story, one in which al-Husseini continued to be influential more than a quarter-century after the war’s end. Although he would never regain the power that he once wielded, the Mufti remained a force to be reckoned with. Intelligence agencies closely monitored him, and Arab regimes variously sought his support or his assassination. Through it all he remained not only an unapologetic anti-Semite, but also an inveterate schemer.
The Mufti’s rise to power was itself owed to intrigues. The British, who ruled Mandate Palestine after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, made al-Husseini the grand mufti of Jerusalem in 1921, making him both the country’s highest Muslim cleric and leading Arab political figure.
As Wolfgang Schwanitz and the late Barry Rubin revealed in their 2014 book Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, the 24-year-old with no religious training was likely chosen in recognition of his service as a spy for the British in the final years of World War I. The decision, the historians conclude, “was one of the most remarkable errors of judgment ever made in a region rife with them.”
Indeed, al-Husseini would spend the next two decades inciting anti-Jewish violence and refusing numerous British-led attempts to broker peace. By the 1930s, the Mufti was actively seeking—and receiving—support from fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. U.S. intelligence would later conclude that the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, in which Palestinians led by al-Husseini murdered rivals, Jews and British officials, “was able to continue only because of Nazi funding.”
In October 1937, the now ex-Mufti fled to Lebanon, but not before he released an “Appeal to All Muslims of the World,” in which he “urged them to cleanse their lands of the Jews … and laid the foundation for the anti-Semitic arguments used by radical Arab nationalists and Islamists down to this day,” note Schwanitz and Rubin. He would eventually make his way to Berlin, where he would aid the Axis powers, befriend high-ranking Nazi officials like Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann, and, in a Nov. 28 1941 meeting with Adolf Hitler, ask for “a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world.”
At war’s end, al-Husseini was considered a war criminal by Yugoslavia and implicated for his role in committing war crimes. Nonetheless, the French government, which briefly captured him, allowed him to network and regroup, and apparently planned on using him to further their post-war ambitions for the region. When the Mufti fled and made his way to Egypt, little effort was made to bring him to justice. Sheltered and supported by Egypt’s King Farouk, the Mufti helped raise forces to attack the fledgling Jewish state during its War of Independence and plotted against Jordan’s King Abdullah, whom he viewed as too pro-British and too willing to compromise with the Israeli government.
In 1949, U.S. intelligence was told that Abdullah’s advisers had sent assassins after al-Husseini. But the Mufti, who had plotted Abdullah’s assassination for years, struck first; his henchmen murdered the Hashemite king in 1951 in front of the regent’s grandson, Hussein. Other Arab politicians who contemplated an accord with Israel were similarly targeted, including former Lebanese Prime Minister Riad al-Sulh.
Although in January 1950 it was reported that the Mufti was “abrupt” and “irritable,” and his “power is on the wane,” the next year would witness a flurry of activity by the Nazi collaborator. In 1951 alone, the Mufti created an intelligence apparatus, traveled to Pakistan to preside over the World Muslim Conference, visited Iran to meet with anti-Shah clerics and figures, conferred with Egyptian and Saudi Arabian foreign ministers, traveled to the ceasefire lines in Kashmir and was the guest of the president of the Syrian Chamber. A 1953 document detailing a trip to Beirut noted: “Not only has the Mufti been greeted by callers of all ranks, but scarcely a day has passed without his being the honored luncheon or dinner guest of some dignitary.”
In early 1950s Cairo, the Nazi collaborator lived in a “luxurious two-story 16 room house” with “a retinue of about 70,” including 20 “Palestinian bodyguards,” and “four male private secretaries and three chauffeurs to drive his two limousines.”
In October 1951, U.S. intelligence warned of a “possible terrorist campaign” by al-Husseini, “who has the combined forces of the [Muslim] Brotherhood and his own terrorist organization” targeting British nationals in four Arab countries, as well as the “property and personnel of the trans-Arabian pipeline.” The Mufti enjoyed close relations with the Brotherhood which used his “spacious home in Jerusalem” for their “Palestine headquarters” where, a neighbor reported in 1947, they read from the Koran, prepared for “a jihad” and chanted “Allah Akbar” after messages from Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna were broadcast on a loudspeaker.
U.S. intelligence managed to capture correspondence showing that the Mufti was regularly briefed on terrorist activities and had operatives traversing the Middle East. As late as 1962, he was still plotting to assassinate opponents. And, as late as 1965, the CIA was warning that Husseini “has instructed key followers” in Jordan to “reactivate” old units for attacks against Israel. The Agency noted that the Mufti was even purchasing “arms and ammunition” that were “remnants of the 1948” conflict.
Those same arms, Rubin and Schwanitz point out, were procured via Nazi funds the Mufti made use of long after the Second World War. The Mufti also depended on the largesse of various Arab regimes, including Farouk’s Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and elements in Iraq and Syria. Ever the schemer, the Mufti eventually had a falling out with Farouk, as well as his successor, Nasser, who reportedly sent assassins after him.
By 1967, al-Husseini had reached a détente with Hussein’s Jordan, which even allowed him to visit Jerusalem shortly before the Six-Day War, in the hopes that the Mufti would help counter Nasser and the then-Egyptian-controlled Palestine Liberation Organization. Amazingly enough, the Mufti even fed intelligence to Hussein—the man whose grandfather he had murdered—about Yasser Arafat, a distant cousin of al-Husseini who he formally anointed as his successor following a Dec. 29, 1968 meeting near Beirut.
By the time of his death in Beirut on July 4, 1974, the Mufti’s legacy was secure. Arafat would similarly play Arab regimes against each other and make war on the Jewish state. A mosque financed by al-Husseini and German ex-Nazis has, in recent years, been linked to Islamist terror groups like Al-Qaeda. And much of the rhetoric employed by al-Husseini—such as comparing Zionists to Nazis—remains common today. “History,” the writer William Faulkner famously observed, “is not was. It is.”
The writer is a senior research analyst for the Washington, D.C. office of CAMERA, the 65,000-member Committee for Accuracy and Middle East Reporting and Analysis. |
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Yasser Arafat was the nephew of Amin al-Husseini
Update on Yasser Arafat and the Grand MuftiJanuary 31, 2008 https://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/01/update-on-yasser-arafat-and-grand-mufti.html I referred in my previous post to the blood relationship between Yasser Arafat and the late Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni. Snouck and others disagreed with my assertion, citing Wikipedia to show that Arafat and al-Husayni were not related.
I don’t know who is correct — I’m not always willing to consider Wikipedia a reliable source on its own — but I’m not alone in asserting a consanguinity between the two famous Jew-haters.
Some sources say that Arafat was a nephew, and others that he was a cousin, of the Grand Mufti. According to Masada2000:
If I remember correctly from my undergraduate cultural anthropology courses, in a traditional patrilineal kinship structure all older male blood relatives who are not direct ancestors are referred to as “uncles”, while those in one’s cohort are called “brothers”. Hence both these assertions could be true — the Grand Mufti was a cousin and also an uncle.
It’s also possible that there was no consanguineal relationship whatsoever, but that hasn’t been settled yet to my satisfaction. Comments: Anonymous said… Haji Husseini was never elected as Mufti by the Palestinian people. In fact, when he ran for elections for Mufti of Jerusalem, he got the least number of Palestinian votes and came in fourth. The British than proceeded to appoint him as Mufti anyway despite the fact that the clerical establishment considered him a hooligan. Their reason-to balance the political aspirations of a competing clan.
Husseini was a British agent who turned against his masters by collaborating with the Nazis. He started out as a Turkish agent against the Arabs during the Ottoman era, than worked with the Brits against the turks during the famous Arab anti-ottoman rebellion, than he worked against the British empire by allying himself with the Germans during WWII. All in all, an odious opportunist whose motto seems to be “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Zenster said…Henrick: What we’re dealing with is a genuine offspring of Nazi ideology. We stopped most of it in 1945, but we need to stop it again, now. Without adding much more well-deserved fuel to this bonfire, I am still obliged to applaud Henrick‘s timely appraisal. Consider these not-so-odd similarities between Islam and Nazism: 1) The way Islamists seek to recreate Hitler’s “final solution” and routinely speak of “finishing the job” begun by the Nazis as reflected in connections between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin el-Husseini, Yasser Arafat and Adolph Hitler. This vile goal and its complement, Holocaust Denial, represent a central feature of these evil ideologies. 2) To this day, Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” remains among one of the best-selling books in the Middle East. 3) Restoration of lost glory with respect to the Caliphate or the reconstruction of post-WWI Germany’s Reich both represent similar goals whose attainment would mean death on a massive scale for the globe’s population. 4) Assigning blame to the Jews for lack of success is used as a misdirection and scapegoat with regard to the actual faults of poor leadership or failed military adventurism. 5) Cultural purity as a dominant theme of philosophical chauvinism to elevate existing ideology above any possible dissent or questioning as personified by German “übermensch” or Islamic jihadist mentality. 6) The tacit approval shown by both moderate Muslims and WWII Germans for absolutism and the atrocities committed in its name despite any infrequent outward condemnation made by either of them. 7) The impossibility of negotiating with Nazis or Islamists due to their ideological mandates and pursuit of global dominance. 8) An absolute prohibition of apostasy under penalty of death. 9) The use of atrocities and crimes against humanity as legitimate tools of war. 10) Commingling religious tenets and fascist doctrine with the intent of disguising political ideology as theistic creed. 11) The imperative aspect of totally eliminating such a dire threat to world peace. 12) The totally unacceptable nature of appeasing or coexisting with such a dangerous mindset.
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Yasser Arafat: Nazi trainedDavid N. Bossie is president of the Citizens United Foundation and former chief investigator for the House
President Bush is right about Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian dictator is a lifelong terrorist and must be replaced before peace can be obtained. Mr. Arafat’s reign of terror includes last month’s Palestinian suicide bomber murdering 20 people, most of them schoolchildren on a Jerusalem bus, and the recent rash of bombings and shootings of Israeli innocents in retaliation for the killing of one his henchmen by the Israeli military. Since September 2000, Mr. Arafat’s terrorist network has murdered at least 560 Israelis and wounded thousands more, and last week murdered five Americans. These innocents are small change to the Palestinian dictator. Since he was a teen-ager in the 1940s, the co-winner of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize has ordered the murder of thousands of civilians while waging war against the Jews.
Mr. Arafat’s mentor, Haj Amin Al Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, indoctrinated him with hatred toward Israel. The grand mufti led Palestinian Arabs from 1920 until Mr. Arafat succeeded him in 1967. The mufti encouraged Arab terrorism against Jewish immigrants to Palestine between the two world wars, and like Mr. Arafat today, the mufti piously disclaimed any responsibility for terrorist acts committed by his followers. In 1929 and 1936, the mufti personally led large-scale riots against Jewish settlers. During World War II, the mufti journeyed to Nazi Germany where he personally begged Adolf Hitler to invade British-ruled Palestine and rid it of Jews. The mufti received sympathy, but no help, from Hitler. Nevertheless, he broadcast radio tirades approving Hitler’s “final solution” of the Jewish problem.
The mufti barely escaped trial for treason by fleeing to Egypt in 1946. There he made young Yasser Arafat, then living in Cairo, his protege. The mufti secretly imported a former Nazi commando officer into Egypt to teach Mr. Arafat and other teenage recruits the fine points of guerrilla warfare. Mr. Arafat learned his lessons well; the mufti was so proud of him he even pretended the two of them were blood relations.
Mr. Arafat first shed Jewish blood during terrorist raids in 1947 and has kept it up ever since. He also became a leader in Palestinian politics and was the first Palestinian nationalist to declare, “Violence is the only solution,” that “Liberating Palestine could only take place through the barrel of a gun.” During the 1950s, Mr. Arafat lived and worked as an engineer in Kuwait. There, he recruited followers for Fatah, his Palestinian guerrilla group. Mr. Arafat also raised funds from rich Persian Gulf oil and construction millionaires in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. These Persian Gulf millionaires remain Mr. Arafat’s main financial backers a half-century later. They also comprise the al Qaeda terror network’s primary source of funding.
Mr. Arafat’s Fatah terror network began conducting murder raids into Israel from Syrian bases in 1964. Mr. Arafat’s raids triggered the 1967 Six Day War between Israel and its hostile Arab neighbors. Despite causing this disastrous defeat for the Arabs, which lost them strategic territory in Egypt, Syria and Jordan, Mr. Arafat emerged as a hero. The “Arab street” lauded Mr. Arafat for the purity of his hatred for Israel; they could have cared less that his actions resulted in military disaster. Mr. Arafat used his popularity to merge Fatah with the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1968. Since then Mr. Arafat has been on a mission, a man wholly dedicated to destroying Israel in order to replace it with a Palestinian state.
While Mr. Arafat’s anti-Israel terrorism is popular with Arab peoples, it is less beloved by their Arab rulers. Cheering for PLO terrorists who murder Israelis is much easier than controlling its murderous, undisciplined thugs. Mr. Arafat and his ruthless PLO terrorists were violently expelled from three different host countries: Syria in 1968; Jordan in 1971; and Lebanon in 1982. From 1982 to 1994, Mr. Arafat and the PLO resided in Tunisia. Mr. Arafat returned to world attention when he supported Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1990-91 Gulf War. This foolish move temporarily turned his Persian Gulf financial supporters against him. Mr. Arafat now seemed discredited.
The Palestinian Intifada uprising against Israeli rule beginning in 1987 rescued Mr. Arafat’s career. At first Mr. Arafat tried to stop the Intifada since it threatened his dictatorial control over the Palestinians. Mr. Arafat, a control freak, pays only lip service to democracy. PLO elections are always rigged. But the uprising in the Palestinian occupied territories continued, so Mr. Arafat began lending it military assistance. Israel tried everything to quell the Intifada, but nothing worked, so Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, cut a deal with Mr. Arafat in 1993. In return for limited autonomy by a Palestinian National Authority ruled by him, Mr. Arafat promised to renounce terrorism and accept Israel’s right to exist.
Mr. Arafat soon broke his promise to the Israelis. Palestinian terrorist bombings murdered 256 Israelis between September 1993 and September 2000. Mr. Arafat oversaw the assassinations of any Palestinian opposed to his one-man rule. Bill Clinton, vainly seeking a legacy for his disgraced presidency, assisted Mr. Arafat’s terror strategy. He convened an Israeli-Palestinian peace conference during the summer of 2000. Mr. Clinton’s bullying of Israel encouraged Mr. Arafat to step up terrorism.
Mr. Arafat is 72 now, an old man in a hurry. He is using American pressure on Israel to undermine the Jewish state in favor of a Palestinian state. We must beware of his past lies and broken promises. As President Bush says, Mr. Arafat must be replaced with a democratic Palestinian leader committed to peaceful coexistence with Israel. |
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 The KGB’s Middle East Files The KGB’s Middle East Files: Palestinians in the service of Mother RussiaSecret KGB documents reveal just how deeply involved the Soviet Union was in the spilling of Israeli blood. The Russian spy agency provided Palestinian terror organizations with funds, training and arms, running agents like ‘Krotov’ – aka Mahmoud Abbas, ‘Aref’ – or Yasser Arafat, and ‘Nationalist,’ who was behind several plane hijackings long before 9/11.Ronen Bergman | Published: 04November2016 https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4874089,00.html The Soviet navy’s reconnaissance ship Kursograf was speeding through the waves on a moonless night in March 1970, making its way to the rendezvous point. Two weeks earlier, Marshal Dmitry Ustinov, at the time a senior defense official and later the Minister of Defense of the USSR, ordered the ship to leave its patrol assignment in the Pacific Ocean and quickly make its way to the military port of Vladivostok to collect several crates of cargo and one passenger. Then, the ship was to sail to the Gulf of Aden in Yemen and await further instructions.
The covert operation was codenamed “Vostok” (east in Russian). The ship’s crew was ordered not to ask any questions, not to open the cargo crates, and most definitely not to try to talk to the mysterious man who came on board. His name was Sergey Grankin and he was a major in Department V, a top secret unit of the KGB which is responsible for contact with “liberation organizations” across the world.
Grankin, then 35 years old, was working on behalf, and under the close supervision, of the Soviet intelligence services’ omnipotent boss—KGB chairman Yuri Andropov.
 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat with Soviet Union leader Leonid Brezhnev (Photo: AFP)
As the ship was nearing Aden, the captain received the coordinates for the late-night rendezvous at the heart of the gulf, somewhere on the way between Yemen and Somalia. Around 9pm, the ship slowed down and its lights went out. All of a sudden, a far-away flashing light appeared which seemed to be coming nearer and nearer still. It was a rotating red signal lamp placed on the mast of a civilian cargo ship.
The two vessels exchanged a series of previously-agreed-upon signals, following which the ship unloaded the cargo crates onto rubber boats that made their way to the civilian ship. After several trips back and forth, Grankin made his way to the second vessel as well.
Upon boarding the civilian cargo vessel, Grankin began opening several of the crates. Despite the complete darkness surrounding him, peeking from the crates he could see guns, machine guns, RPG launchers, grenades, sniper rifles and the crowning glory—landmines and roadside charges with remote detonators, the height of technology at the time.
 Soviet navy’s reconnaissance ship Kursograf
Grankin turned to a Middle Eastern-looking man who was standing on the deck not far from him and appeared to be the boss on the ship, and warmly shook his hand. The man was known in the KGB as “Nationalist,” but his real name had already gained notoriety throughout the West: It was Wadi Haddad, the head of operations at the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). At the time, he was one of the most infamous and dangerous terrorists in the world, and was later believed to be at the top of the Israeli Mossad’s hit list for over a decade.
The massive arms shipment, which included sophisticated weapons the Russians hadn’t even provided the members of the Warsaw Pact, was to be used by Haddad for a series of terror attacks, assassinations and abductions all over the world.
Half a year after that late-night meeting at sea, on September 6, 1970, PFLP terrorists armed with the weapons from these crates hijacked four jet airliners bound for New York City and one bound for London. The hijacking of one of the planes, El Al flight 219 from Amsterdam, was foiled thanks to undercover Shin Bet air marshals who shot terrorist Patrick Argüello dead and managed to subdue and arrest his partner Leila Khaled. Two other hijackers were prevented from boarding that flight, and instead hijacked Pan Am Flight 93. The four planes were flown to Jordan, where they were forced to land at Dawson’s Field, a remote desert airstrip near Zarka, formerly a British Royal Air Force base.
 Two of the planes the PFLP hijacked to Dawson’s Field in November 1970
Thirty-one years before the 9/11 terror attacks, Haddad had already managed to carry out an attack that included the simultaneous hijacking of several jet airliners. This attack was one of the triggers of Jordan’s big confrontation against terror organizations—known as “Black September”—and changed the course of history in the Middle East.
Later, the Russian weapons were used to murder Americans in Lebanon and Israelis in Europe and to blow up oil reservoirs. They were also used in an attempt to sink an Israeli tanker in the Red Sea and were meant to be used in a planned large-scale attack on the Israel Diamond Exchange in Ramat Gan. Several of the guns from those crates were also used by the hijackers of an Air France plane to Entebbe in June 1976.
This shipment was yet another link in the long chain of deep cooperation between the Eastern Bloc’s intelligence services, led by the KGB, and Palestinian terror organizations.
Classified KGB documents reveal that the Soviet spy agency aided Haddad and his men by providing them with training, funding and arms, as well as help in the preparations for specific attacks. In other instances, the KGB itself initiated attacks that were carried out by Haddad and his men. And Haddad’s terror organization was not the only one operated by Moscow.
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Chapter one of “The KGB’s Middle East Files,” a special series of articles which brings to light information mined from some 6,000 KGB documents smuggled to the West in the early 1990s, recounted the story of how Vasili Mitrokhin used his senior position at the spy agency’s archive to copy the top secret documents—with the Soviets being none the wiser.
 Vasili Mitrokhin
These documents helped expose some 1,000 KGB agents across the world and uncover countless covert spy operations. In addition, two books were published about them by Prof. Christopher Andrew in cooperation with Mitrokhin himself. Nevertheless, only part of the information they contain actually made it to Israel. In fact, much in this vast trove of information about the KGB’s operations in the Jewish state remains secret.
The Mitrokhin documents have recently been moved to Churchill College in Cambridge. Over the past six months, we’ve been working on sifting through them, translating them, and cross-referencing the material with other available information and sources.
Chapter one of this series included a list of agents that—according to the Mitrokhin documents—operated in Israel, among them Knesset members, media personalities, senior engineers working on sensitive projects and officers who managed to infiltrate the top echelons of the IDF.
But this was only part of the story. As we delved deeper into the secrets Mitrokhin left behind, we discerned another Soviet strategy taking shape: Not content with merely infiltrating centers of power in Israel and gathering intelligence on the Jewish state, the KGB also forged extensive ties with Palestinian terror organizations, greatly abetting their activities. In fact, the Mitrokhin documents show that the Soviet Union waged a kind of “shadow war” with Israel (and the US) for years, using those terror groups as their proxies.
For many years, Israel’s intelligence services suspected that the KGB was aiding at least some of the Palestinian terror organizations, but these were normally general suspicions, which were not necessarily based on quality or reliable intelligence. The Mitrokhin archives prove just how deep the cooperation between the USSR and the Palestinian terror organizations was, and what a bloody cost it exacted from the world in general—and especially from Israelis.
‘Give me missiles’The genesis of the KGB’s developing ties with Palestinian terror organizations can be traced back to the end of the 1960s. The Soviet spy agency had code names for the different factions making up the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): Fatah, the main movement led by Yasser Arafat, was dubbed “Kabinet” (cabinet); the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) received the name “Khutor” (which means a small village or a farm in Russian); the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) was named “Shkola” (a school in Russian); and Ahmad Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) was dubbed “Blindage” (a fortified wooden military structure).
Arafat himself received the codename “Aref,” but the Russians weren’t particularly impressed with him at first. The Mitrokhin archive includes a memo that notes: “Aref only keeps promises that benefit him. The information he provides is very laconic and only serves to promote his own interests.” The KGB also questioned many of the biographical details Arafat provided them with—his past as a combat soldier, his birth place, and more. Despite this, the KGB appointed a senior liaison officer named Vasili Samoylenko to “cultivate” the Fatah leader.  Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat with Abu Jihad (Photo: Reuters)
At the same time, the KGB planted an agent in the office of Hani al-Hassan, one of Arafat’s close advisors, who later went on to become a senior official in the Palestinian Authority. This agent, who according to the Mitrokhin documents was codenamed “Gidar,” was Rafat Abu Auon, who was recruited in 1968 and served in the KGB for many years henceforth.
 Yasser Arafat with close advisor Hani al-Hassan (Photo: AFP)
But the interest in Fatah and Arafat was limited at that point. The Russians were a lot more interested in the PLO’s other factions, particularly George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
“One of the reasons for that is the Marxist–Leninist ideology of Habash’s men,” explains Prof. Christopher Andrew, one of the world’s foremost historians researching intelligence services, whose second book about the Mitrokhin documents includes an extensive chapter on the KGB’s activity in the Middle East.
Habash may have been the head of the PFLP, but it was his deputy, Dr. Wadi Haddad—a Christian Arab from Safed and a pediatrician like his boss—who had the brilliant operational mind. Haddad greatly improved upon a form of terrorism that was still in its infancy at the time—hijacking planes—and understood the power of international media coverage that such an attack garners.
He was the mastermind behind the hijacking of an El Al plane to Algeria in July 1968, which ended with the release of the passengers in return for 16 Palestinian prisoners and was considered by the Palestinians as a great success.
He was also behind the hijacking of the Tel Aviv-bound TWA Flight 840 to Damascus in August 1969, which received unprecedented media coverage. That hijacking ended with the passengers being released and its perpetrators being arrested by Syrian authorities immediately upon the plane’s landing in Damascus, but not before they managed to blow up the empty plane. One of the hijackers was Haddad’s infamous protégé Leila Khaled, who also took part in many other terror attacks. During the flight to Damascus, Khaled entered the cockpit, put a gun to the captain’s head and ordered him to “fly over Haifa, over my city, over Palestine—where they won’t let me return.”
 Terrorist Leila Khaled (Photo: AP)
According to Yigal Pressler, who at the time was a senior officer in Military Intelligence entrusted with identifying targets for assassination, “We called Wadi Haddad the ‘Palestinian Carlos’ (after infamous terrorist Carlos the Jackal). He was as cunning as a snake and very deadly. We’ve searched for him everywhere.”
Israel’s intelligence community fought Haddad for years, but the Mitrokhin documents reveal it wasn’t just dealing with a talented, diabolical Palestinian terrorist, but was also up against the massive might of the KGB that backed him.
So impressed were the Russians with Haddad’s operational abilities, that shortly after the hijackings of those planes the KGB once again sought to make use of his talents.
The Mitrokhin documents don’t include Haddad’s exact date of recruitment, but in late 1969, KGB chief Andropov wrote a top secret report ( Russian original) to then-Soviet Union leader Leonid Brezhnev, telling him about Haddad’s recruitment under the codename “Nationalist.”
Andropov detailed to his boss the advantages of the new intelligence asset: “The nature of our relations with W. Haddad allows us a degree of control over the activities of the PLFP’s external operations section, to exercise an influence favorable to the USSR, and also to reach some of our own aims, through the activities of the PLFP while observing the necessary secrecy.”
Andropov described the kind of operations Haddad could carry out for Soviet interests as “active measures.” According to the KGB’s internal lexicon—also included in the Mitrokhin documents—active measures are “operations carried out by agents or fighters, meant … to solve international problems, deceive rivals, weaken their status and disrupt their ability to successfully execute hostile (to the Soviet Union) plans.”
 Wadi Haddad
In other words, Andropov was telling his leader that by making effective use of the agent “Nationalist,” the KGB would be able to execute its own operations, carried out by Haddad and his men, without leaving behind any fingerprints linking Soviet intelligence.
Haddad naturally had his own interests that led him to cooperate with the KGB. After the 1967 Six-Day War, he and Habash reached the conclusion that only terror attacks could truly hurt Israel and bring the Palestinian issue to the top of the world’s agenda. But to carry out such attacks, they needed weapons, funding, training and logistical support—all of which could be provided by the KGB.
In early July 1970, Brezhnev gave the KGB the green light to provide Haddad with money and RPG-7 launchers and missiles. But Haddad had much higher expectations. He told his KGB contacts that he expected “anti-aircraft surface-to-air missiles, landmines/roadside charges with remote detonation, naval mines, silencers, landmines/roadside charges with delayed fuses, and military training.”
The KGB noted that “Everything in Haddad’s list is available in Department V’s arms depots, except for the surface-to-air missiles,” but also that most of these weapons “were never provided to elements outside the borders of the Soviet Union.”
Despite this, Moscow decided to grant most of Haddad’s wishes—except for his request for anti-aircraft missiles—marking the beginning of “Operation Vostok.” Any markings that could lead back to the USSR were removed from the weapons, while some items were deliberately provided from a Western source: Guns from West Germany, American rifles, and British silencers.
The Model Snop remote-donation explosives had “a lifespan of a year and a half and remote detonation in urban areas of up to 2 km, and in open areas of 15-20 km.” The long-fused mines could be calibrated to detonate from anywhere between “15-144 minutes” after being planted.
At the time, Haddad was living in Beirut and contact with him was done through the KGB station at the Lebanese capital, usually in surreptitious meetings in one of his hiding places. Haddad sought to maintain complete secrecy—even from his boss George Habash. It worked relatively effectively, until the Israelis came into the picture.
Israeli intelligence located one of Haddad’s hiding places, an apartment on 8 Muhi A-Din al-Hayat Street in Beirut. On the night of July 10, 1970, Israeli naval commandos landed on the beach in Beirut in rubber boats to deliver two RPG launchers to the operatives of the Mossad’s elite assassination unit Caesarea. The Mossad operatives rented an apartment with a view of Haddad’s window, from where they fired two RPG missiles into the living room at 2pm the next day.
“There were two rooms in the apartment,” Mike Harari, the commander of the Caesarea Division, told me in his last interview before passing away.
 Former commander of the Mossad’s Caesarea Division Mike Harari (Photo: Ilan Sapira)
“One was used as a living room, and the other was where the wife and daughter were,” Harari recounted. “Golda (Meir, Israel’s prime minister at the time) ordered us to ensure that not a hair on the head of any innocent person be harmed, otherwise I would have demolished the entire floor.
“The (Mossad) operative saw him (Haddad) in the living room and aimed the missile in that direction, set the timer, and left. A moment before (the missile was fired), the terrorist moved to the other room—and survived.”
‘Pathological hostility’News of this assassination attempt in Beirut made it all the way to Brezhnev—a reflection of how important the incident appeared to the Russians—and increased Haddad’s value in the eyes of the KGB.
Soon afterwards, the KGB decided to use Haddad for a highly sensitive operation of its own: abducting the head of the CIA station in Beirut and taking him to Moscow for interrogation. “This will allow for obtaining credible information on American intelligence’s plans and operations in the Middle East,” Andropov wrote to Brezhnev.
The CIA station chief was described as “born in Denver, Colorado, 1918. Anti-Soviet, pathological hostility towards the USSR and communist ideology. Operates against Soviet institutions and diplomatic missions. Operated against Soviet citizens.”
Andropov promised Brezhnev that no one would suspect the KGB of being behind this abduction because “recently, Palestinian organizations have increased their guerrilla warfare against American targets, fighters and agents. The governments in Lebanon and America will suspect Palestinians carried out the abduction.”
 Former KGB chief Yuri Andropov
On May 5, 1970, Brezhnev gave the green light and “Operation Vint” (screw) was underway.
The Mitrokhin documents include surveillance reports on the CIA chief: “He lives on the fourth floor of 168-174 Ramlet El Baida Boulevard. He owns a Mercury Comet, diplomatic license plate 104/115, light blue.” The reports also mention that he has a “dog, a black poodle, he walks it alone.”
The Operation Order details the abduction plan: “A rag will be pressed to his nose and mouth soaked with a chemical that will cause him to lose consciousness for three to five minutes. During that time, he will be injected with a sedative.” According to the KGB doctors who provided the sedative, “after a while he would regain consciousness, be able to sit and understand what’s happening, but would not be able to resist.”
After abducting the CIA station chief, the Operation Order continues, he would be taken to the Baalbek area, from where he was to be smuggled to Syria and kept at a secure KGB facility in the Zabadani area. There, he would undergo harsh interrogation, during which he would disclose information on American intelligence. “The idea is to get him to understand that he could not return to his country (because he disclosed information) and the only option he has left is to seek political asylum in one of the socialist nations.” If the CIA chief maintains his silence, the Operation Order wastes few words on what should be done: “In such a case, he must be killed.”
The abduction operation never got off the ground. The CIA station chief likely suspected he was being followed and therefore increased his security.
Other Americans were not as lucky: In August 1970, in a joint operation, Haddad and the KGB managed to abduct Prof. Hani Korda, an American academic who was suspected by the KGB (quite possibly wrongly) of having ties to the CIA. Prof. Korda was smuggled from Lebanon to a PFLP base in Jordan, where he was tortured but refused to admit to cooperating with American intelligence and was eventually released.
Two months later, Haddad’s men abducted Aredis Derounian, an Armenian-born American journalist. He too was suspected of cooperating with the CIA. According to the Mitrokhin documents, Haddad’s men found two passports and a significant amount of documents in Derounian’s apartment in Beirut. The documents were handed over to the KGB for examination while Derounian was incarcerated in a Tripoli refugee camp. There he was interrogated, but eventually managed to escape his captors and found shelter at the US Embassy in Beirut.
It was not just Haddad with whom the Americans had to contend. The KGB also recruited his fellow PFLP terrorist Abu Ahmed Yunis as a paid agent, giving him the codename “Tarshikh.”
In 1976, Yunis commanded an operation to assassinate the US ambassador to Beirut, Francis E. Meloy, Jr. The operation itself is not mentioned in the Mitrokhin documents, but it’s difficult to imagine it was carried out without the knowledge of the KGB. The assassination might have even been ordered by the Soviets.
Overall, the KGB was very pleased with Haddad and his men. “It appears worthwhile to actively use the ‘Nationalist’ (Haddad) and his men to carry out aggressive operations directly aimed at Israel,” a senior KGB official wrote to Andropov.
Shortly after that, Haddad and Yunis, in cooperation with the KGB, mounted an attack on the El Al offices at the Athens Airport on July 19, 1973. They also continued their multi-pronged assault on a number of separate occasions which included the bombing of Israeli institutions, the blowing up of an American oil pipeline and the hijacking of an American jet airliner, which they blew up after emptying it of its passengers.
‘Camel f***ers’Through the KGB, Haddad also established close ties with the Stasi, East Germany’s intelligence service. Outwardly, the Germans were very polite in their treatment of Haddad and his cohorts; but internal Stasi correspondences illustrate the true racist sentiments which prevailed among the ranks about the Palestinians, who were dubbed “camel f***ers” by the Germans.
Even so, the Stasi provided training and weapons to the PFLP and, among other things, helped them prepare for “Operation Nasos” (pump), which was carefully planned by Haddad and the KGB over the course of several months.
This was the PFLP’s first naval operation—a daring plan that entailed shooting RPGs at an Israeli tanker that was secretly transporting oil from Iran to Israel through the Red Sea.
For the KGB, there was great value in such an operation: Hitting a significant Israeli target while at the same time exposing the secret oil ties between Israel and Iran, whose ruler, the Shah, was adopting a pro-Western approach at the time. All of this could be achieved without leaving any trace of Soviet involvement—a classic move of the “shadow war.”
The selected target was the Coral Sea oil tanker, which was sailing under a Liberia flag en route from Iran to Eilat. On June 11, 1971, two of Haddad’s top men sailed from the coast of southern Yemen towards the tanker in a speedboat. The Soviets gave the two the poetic codenames “Chuk” and “Gek,” named after two Soviet children who were cultural heroes to anyone who was raised in the USSR.
In the Strait of Bab el Mandeb they located the tanker just as the KGB planned. In an early morning hour, the terrorists approached the tanker and fired several missiles at it, with five hitting the tanker. When they saw the flames rising on deck, they concluded that their mission had been accomplished and quickly left the scene, heading back to Yemen where Haddad was awaiting their arrival.
 Coral Sea
A statement released by the PFLP immediately after the attack read: “The missiles hit the tanker in two places … the oil caught fire and the tanker immediately came to a halt, following which it started to sink.”
But Haddad’s celebrations of the success of the operation were premature and short-lived. The tanker may have ignited, but thanks to a swift and daring action by its captain, Marcus Mouskus, the sailors managed to extinguish the fire, save the tanker—and likely save their own lives as well.
The action was one which earned Mouskus the Medal of Distinguished Service from the Israeli government, making him the first non-Israeli citizen (and the only one so far) to be the recipient of that honor.
Even though the tanker didn’t sink, Haddad greatly benefited from the international attention his daring attack at sea garnered, allowing him to demand more and more weapons for a series of attacks he planned for the coming years against Israel and other Western elements. Some of these attacks were carried out, while the rest were foiled by the Mossad, which had a source inside the PFLP at the time.
The KGB also helped one of Haddad’s top operatives, Taysir Quba’a (codenamed “Kim”), to contact members of radical left-wing organizations in western Europe—including the Red Brigades in Italy and the Baader-Meinhof Group in West Germany—so he could recruit them for joint operations. With the help of German terrorists, the PFLP attempted to down an El Al plane in Nairobi in January 1976 and successfully seized and diverted an Air France plane carrying Jewish and Israeli passengers to Entebbe in June of that year, among other attacks.
In return for the arms shipments he received from the KGB, Haddad agreed to carry out assassinations of “traitors to the motherland”—mostly defectors from the USSR—and even visited Moscow a few times to coordinate these operations.
During that time, in the second half of the 1970s, several delegations of Haddad’s men travelled to the Soviet Union to be trained by the KGB. They were trained in different areas of intelligence work, counterintelligence, interrogations, surveillance, sabotage techniques, firing guns and rifles, and more. There really isn’t a way to account for just how much blood spilling—mostly that of Israelis—this training contributed to.
The close cooperation between Haddad and Soviet intelligence services continued until early 1978, when he was poisoned in an attack attributed to the Israeli Mossad. When the doctors in Baghdad stood helpless by his bedside, Arafat asked the KGB to help him. The Soviet spy agency had Haddad hospitalized under a false name at a hospital in East Berlin, but despite the efforts of the best doctors brought in by the Stasi, Haddad died in intense agony on March 29, 1978.
Expanding ties in the PLOThe KGB may have lost its most important Palestinian agent, but by that time it had already managed to entrench its ties with the other Palestinian organizations. According to the Mitrokhin documents, the KGB provided support to Nayef Hawatmeh (codename “Inzhener,” meaning engineer), the leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and used the DFLP’s newspaper, al-Hurriya, to spread KGB messages and propaganda.
 Yasser Arafat with Nayef Hawatmeh (Photo: The Palestinian Mission)
Ahmed Jibril (codename “Mayorov”), the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), also received support, both directly from Moscow and through the commander of Syria’s Air Force Intelligence Directorate, Gen. ‘Ali Duba, under whose wing Jibril operated. Jibril’s men aided the KGB, for example, in gathering intelligence in different Western nations and in Third World countries to which the Soviet spy agency had a difficult time gaining access.
 Ahmed Jibril, left, with Hamas leader Khaled Mashal (Photo: Reuters)
Special ties were also forged between the KGB and the Western Sector—a Fatah unit under the command of Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), who was responsible for the 1975 Savoy Hotel attack and the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, among others. The Mitrokhin documents only reach 1986, but according to other sources, the KGB’s contact with Abu Jihad continued until he was assassinated by Israel in 1988.
 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat with Abu Jihad (Photo: AP)
In 1973, the KGB decided to change its attitude towards Yasser Arafat and his Fatah faction as the Palestinian organization’s standing in the international arena strengthened. The KGB’s operational and intelligence cooperation with the PLO was mainly conducted through Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), who was responsible for countless terror attacks against Israel.
Abu Iyad, whose codename was “Kochubey,” received a significant amount of weapons, intelligence, assistance and training for his men from the KGB. In return, the KGB directed some of Fatah’s operations and received “information about Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Algeria.” In other words, the Fatah spied on Arab nations for the KGB.
Abu Iyad was highly valued by the KGB, unlike some of his men. KGB specialists who were training Fatah men in Moscow met with quite a few difficulties and complained to their superiors that many of the cadets were characterized by “low standards, alcoholism and sexual offenses.”
Out of the 194 Fatah men who were sent to train in the USSR, 13 were expelled and sent back home. According to a senior official at the KGB’s academy, the number of expelled would’ve been closer to half of the cadets had they been required to meet the same standard as ordinary cadets.
Infiltrating the MukataaThe two most important KGB recruitments from the PLO during the second half of the 1970s were of people who still play a major role in Palestinian politics today.
According to the Mitrokhin documents, the KGB had an agent at the heart of the PLO whose file describes him as “a member of the PLO’s executive committee and a member in the politburo of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).” This was none other than Yasser Abed Rabbo, one of the top officials in the Palestinian Authority, who held a number of senior roles in the PA over the years, was a chief negotiator in talks with Israel, and one of the architects of the Geneva Initiative.
Abed Rabbo was fired by Mahmoud Abbas when the latter was elected, but stayed on as a senior advisor to the Palestinian president.
 Yasser Abed Rabbo (Photo: AFP)
For the most part, the Mitrokhin documents don’t provide details about the information with which the agents provided the KGB, instead merely stating the fact that they were agents. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note the way Abed Rabbo is defined in the documents—as an “informant,” who is ranked below “agent” in the level of importance to the KGB. This means that Abed Rabbo’s contact with the KGB was done without the knowledge of the organization he belonged to.
The second and more important KGB recruitment was of the agent “Krotov” (mole), who was described in the KGB’s files as “born in 1935, Palestinian, prominent figure both politically and socially. Lives in Syria, a member of the PLO Central Council.”
As reported on Channel 1, based on research conducted by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, agent “Krotov” is none other than Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.
The Mitrokhin documents, which have been corroborated by information gathered over the years by Israeli intelligence services, provide further details about agent “Krotov.”
The KGB began Abbas’s “first stage of recruitment” around 1979, when Abbas arrived in Moscow to study at the Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia. In describing those initial contacts, his KGB file notes that “it’s still unclear whether the object will agree to cooperate.”
 Palestinian President Abbas, aka ‘Krotov’ (Photo: AFP)
The university’s declared goal was to aid elements in the Third World and in Africa in obtaining higher education—while increasing the influence of the USSR and of communism in the developing world. But the university had other roles, too. Among other things, the KGB—that essentially controlled the campus—recruited agents there.
Abbas had already been a graduate of the Damascus University’s Faculty of Law, and was accepted in Moscow to study for a Candidate of Sciences degree, which is the Russian equivalent of a PhD in Social Sciences at Western universities.
The university’s president at the time was Yevgeny Primakov, who had close ties to the KGB. He later went on to become the head of the KGB First Chief Directorate and helped it on its transition to the control of the Russian Federation government, under the new name Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). He then served as Russia’s minister of foreign affairs and later still as its prime minister.
As university president, Primakov appointed his top Middle East expert, Prof. Vladimir Ivanovich Kiselev, as the Palestinian leader’s dissertation adviser. Abbas’s CandSc thesis “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism”—a lampoon of blatant lies, including Holocaust denial and accusations that Zionists “assisted” Hitler—was completed in May 1982 and released as a book two years later.
 The original cover of Abbas’ book
By that time, Abbas had already returned to Lebanon and used the PLO archive to spread Soviet propaganda prepared by the KGB and the Stasi, which accused “Western Imperialism and Zionism” of cooperating with the Nazis. This was done as part of a widespread propaganda campaign run by the KGB at the time, which attempted to create a link between anti-Soviet elements and the Nazis—the ultimate symbol of evil.
This propaganda material was later seized in an Israeli Military Intelligence raid of the PLO archive in Beirut, and it constitutes, at the very least, additional circumstantial evidence attesting to the links between Fatah and Abbas and the Soviet intelligence services.
As ties between Abbas and the Russians grew closer, an internal KGB report concisely noted that developing progress: “Krotov is an agent of the KGB.” According to the KGB’s definition, those who reach the level of “agent” are those who “consistently, systematically and covertly carry out intelligence assignments, while maintaining secret contact with an official in the agency.” In other words, according to the KGB documents, Abbas was authorized to be a KGB spy within the PLO.
Yedioth Ahronoth was unable to obtain a response from Mahmoud Abbas’s office or from Yasser Abed Rabbo by the time of publication.
However, a former senior Fatah official who asked to remain anonymous told us that Abbas was not an agent of the KGB in the sense that he acted against Fatah’s interests but rather was “a Fatah-authorized contact appointed by Arafat to coordinate the transfer of measures and arms from the Soviet Union to the Palestinians”—contacts that the official doesn’t deny. The official added that the “Soviet Union and its intelligence services greatly and significantly aided the Palestinian struggle for independence.”
Research and translation from Russian by Will Styles, Alexander Tabachnik, Yana Sofovich and Yael Sass.
The writer would like to extend his gratitude and appreciation to Prof. Christopher Andrew and Dr. Peter Martland of Cambridge University.
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Palestine was invented in 1964 by a public relations company at the request of Yasser Arafat!
ora behar-tweet-9March2024-Palestine was invented in 1964
 ora behar-tweet-9March2024-Palestine was invented in 1964
 Palestine was invented in 1964 by a public relations company at the request of Yasser Arafat
 Cookier-tweet-9March2024-The State of Palestine Quiz  The State of ‘Palestine’ Quiz
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The indigenous Israelis will fight the Arab invaders for 3,000 yearsMontezuma-tweet-15March2024-3049 years of resistance to foreign occupation Now try 3049 years of resistance to foreign occupation! Here’s a tiny glimpse of the Israelite infadah: 1. Revolt against Egyptian Rule (circa 13th century BCE) The indigenous Israelis will fight the Arab invaders for 3,000 years and beyond for their sacred land. #Israel #Palestine  Montezuma-tweet-15March2024-3049 years of resistance to foreign occupation
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8 Disturbing Similarities between the Democrat and Nazi PartiesBy D. Parker  NAZI-FLAG Steve McCann’s “Eight Startling and Uncomfortable Ways the Democrat Party Emulates the Nazi Party” was just the tip of the National Socialist iceberg. The fascist far left have always had to lie to survive. They’ve always been on the wrong side of history, and the only way they can remain viable is by gaslighting people on a full-time basis. For decades, their biggest lie has been that the supposedly pro-freedom side of the political spectrum, imbued in the precepts of individual liberty and limited government, is somehow connected to totalitarian collectivist regimes that displayed the exact opposite of those values.
Anyone who has debated leftists for the past few decades has been subjected to the same bluff abuse in their trying to maintain that nonsensical lie. But the close similarities between fascism and communism have been obvious for at least 75 years:
“In certain basic respects — a totalitarian state structure, a single party, a leader, a secret police, a hatred of political, cultural and intellectual freedom — fascism and communism are clearly more like each other than they are like anything in between”. —Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Associate Professor of History at Harvard, New York Times Magazine, Sunday, April 4, 1948 Even if you set aside the preposterous argument that totalitarians would also be proponents of liberty and limited government, there are still a myriad of parallel characteristics between the Democrat party and the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party. That’s what was so startling about the first eight ways.
Our follow-up along those lines will make the case even more. 1. Democrats and the Nazis were/are obsessed with gun confiscation. We’ll start with the one issue the fascist far left never bring up when they try to make their absurd claims: that the Democrats and the Nazis were obsessed with gun confiscation. You will never hear them try to make this accusation of the pro-freedom right because even they know that their lies can only carry them so far. This obvious common collectivist trait also destroys the far leftist mythology of the “party switch,” which supposedly took place sometime in the late ’60s. This was one glaring item that didn’t switch, so they avoid mentioning it.
Anyone who has been paying attention for the past few years knows that saying that the Democrats are obsessed with gun confiscation is an understatement of massive proportions. Every day, it seems they’ve come out with a new scheme on the national, state, and local levels to deprive the people of their commonsense civil rights.
2. Democrats and Nazis are collectivists. There are essentially two political philosophies: individualism and collectivism. The fact is that all academic disciplines are based on foundational principles, and this is an ironclad rule that separates the two sides of the political spectrum and also eviscerates the fascist far left’s biggest lie. According to F.A. Hayek, students today are often taught that on the imaginary “political spectrum,” socialism and communism are “left of center,” and capitalism and fascism are “right of center.” This is frightfully misleading. Socialism, communism and fascism are all peas in the same collectivist pod. Hayek held that they all despised both competition and the individual, and he was precisely right.
3. The overarching philosophy of both Democrats and Nazis is centralized control. The individualists on the pro-freedom side of the political spectrum favor liberty and limited government. The collectivists of the anti-liberty side of the political spectrum favor control and unlimited government. This can easily be seen in the Democrat’s obsession with controlling not only basic liberties, but also gas stoves, dishwashers, and air-conditioners.
In the case of the German National Socialist Labor Party, this was set out as point 25 in their 25-point program:
4. The centralized collectivist control philosophy of the Democrat and Nazi parties is epitomized in the phrase “the Common Good” (Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz in the original German).
How many times have you heard the fascists of the far left parrot the phrase “the Common Good” when trying to shove a draconian, authoritarian rule down our throats? The COVID crisis was particularly egregious in this regard, exemplified by this piece in USA Today: “The COVID culture war: At what point should personal freedom yield to the common good?”
5. Far-left fascists of the Democrat and Nazi parties see force as means to their political power.
While the German national socialist party exploited force, Democrats started the practice with the KKK and perfected it with the Burning, Looting, and Murder riots during the summer of 2020, making it clear to everyone that if they didn’t get their way, the BLM violence would continue.
The tradition continues with Mr. Liberty Control himself, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), threatening a “popular revolt” if they don’t get their way in ramming the pre-stages of gun confiscation down our throats.
6. Democrats and Nazis are proponents of single-party systems.
It should also be obvious that the authoritarians of the far left would love to keep everything nice and simple with a single party — theirs. This is why the Nazis attacked the rival collectivists of the communist party. Just like the rival factions of Islam, they had the same ideology; it’s just that they wanted to be the people in control.
This was exemplified in a piece from the New Republic, “The Constitution Is the Crisis,” with this lovely quotation: “We’ve seen multiple periods of one-party dominance in our history; we’ve also seen defeated political parties wither and die. Why shouldn’t the Republican Party join them?”
7. Democrats and Nazis are fascistic.
You can always tell when a leftist defines fascism, because aside from the inevitable circular logic that supposedly prevents them from being fascist, such as oh, so cleverly labeling themselves as “anti-fascist,” they will define the term based on an arbitrary set of subjective (and thus meaningless) criteria.
The fact is that fascism is based on several references. When it’s primarily defined as an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer.
In present-day parlance, it’s a “Public/Private” partnership, combining the worst aspects of unlimited governmental rule and corporate oligarchy, with the latter answering to the government instead of the customer. The Bud Light debacle is a prime example.
When the Italian far left originally developed this reprehensible ideology 96 years ago, it was based on La Carta del Lavoro, translated as the Charter of Labor. The New York Times enthused:
Strangely enough, Democrats never refer to this founding document of their base ideology. If you study any of their “academic” work on the subject, they tend to ignore these facts.
8. Democrats are striving for a totalitarian state structure and a single party like the Nazis.
Put all of this together, and you’ll come to the inescapable conclusion that all of these parallels make the ironclad case that both parties are all too similar.
With with modern surveillance technology and tyrannical “innovations” like Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), the Democrats could make the Nazis look like amateurs. This is why they have to be opposed with cultural guerrilla warfare every step of the way.
D Parker is an engineer, inventor, wordsmith, and student of history, the director of communications for a civil rights organization, and a long-time contributor to conservative websites. Find him on Substack. |
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Ilhan Omar: ‘Antisemitism Wouldn’t Be A Problem If We Got Rid Of All The Jews’World · May 24, 2021 · BabylonBee.com https://babylonbee.com/cleanArticle/ilhan-omar-says-antisemitism-wouldnt-be-a-problem-if-we-got-rid-of-all-jews  Omar: “Get rid of the Jews to end Antisemitism” CNN
MINNEAPOLIS, MN – Congresswoman Ilhan Omar proposed a radical solution to the nation’s antisemitism problem: getting rid of all the Jews. The plan is already being embraced by leaders of Hamas, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, the government of Iran, and the Democrat party.
“It recently struck me that the common thread among all of these heinous instances of antisemitism is that they are directed towards Jews,” Omar noted at a press conference. “If we can get rid of all the Jews, we can get rid of antisemitism once and for all!”
Omar said her plan doesn’t advocate for violence against people of Jewish descent. Instead, she said her plan would be to round up the remaining Jews and move them out of places like Israel and the United States so they will be free from the threat of antisemitic attacks.
“I figure we can just let them wander around the desert somewhere where nobody can bother them,” Omar said. “As long as they’re not in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia, or the Americas, they should be fine. I hear Antarctica is nice this time of year!”
Several other progressive members of Congress have started adapting Omar’s plans to tackle other challenges. Nancy Pelosi has proposed getting rid of Republicans to prevent another attack on the Capitol building, and Bernie Sanders is advocating for getting rid of poor people in order to eliminate poverty.
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Israel Gives Up Land for Peace
 Imtiaz Mahmood-tweet-26April2024-Israel Gives Up Land for Peace
 Israel Gives Up Land for Peace
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Drop Dead, Jimmy CarterThe emailed rant that’s been making the forwarded-by-relatives roundsBY  The Emails of Zion – From the editors at Tablet Magazine (Vanessa Davis) The Emails of Zion is a collection of messages from Jewish parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and others who are eager—often way too eager—to inform their children about issues of pressing concern to the Jewish community. Some of these emails may sound crazy, paranoid, ethnocentric, and/or racist, while others are disturbingly sane. These are the voices of our elders, lightly edited and presented for the convenience of their progeny, who are often too busy to write back.
—–Original Message—–
Naomi, Thanks for sending this email. This is an important read. I wonder how the 80% Hebrews who refused to follow Moshe Rabbeinu into the exodus from Egypt, the nearly same number who voted for Obama, are reacting to Mr Graulich’s thoughts.
—–Original Message—–
Dear Friends,
Are we impressed by Jimmy Carter’s belated apology? Me thinks not. His change of heart, which has conveniently come about just as his grandson is about to start a political career in which he needs Jewish votes, doesn’t pull at my heartstrings. Irwin N. Graulich, whose “Drop Dead Jimmy Carter” is making the internet rounds, I guess is of the same opinion.
Be warned: Not for the faint or forgiving of heart.
Naomi
Drop Dead Jimmy Carter
Sorry Mr. President–I just don’t forgive you. How dare you think you can demonize one of the most moral nations in history–and get away with your crimes. How dare you blame Jews for your pathetic world view, which gave credibility to the most evil characters on the face of the planet. Your apology is worthless.
President Jimmy Carter will undoubtedly be known as the worst president in American history. He allowed the Shah of Iran to fall and the evil Khomeni to gain power, giving Muslim extremism the fuel to spread like cancer throughout the world–ultimately leading to 9/11. His presidency was a true calamity from interest rates skyrocketing to 21.5% to the disastrous rescue attempt of the US embassy hostages, to the Carter “malaise” he created throughout America. A total catastrophe and tragedy would sum up the Carter administration at its best. I mean, a born and bred true Polish anti-western antisemite in the tradition of those who aided the Nazis, actually became his National Security Advisor—Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Carter’s cute little “al chayt” prayer of forgiveness is as impressive as Jeffrrey Dahmer’s apology cries. The ex-President finally realizes what a total putz he is–so what? “We must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel,” Carter wrote recently. Please Jimmy, save those platitudes for your wife.
You cannot write books filled with outright lies about Israel and Jews, going on lecture tours and media interviews–fraudulently accusing Israel of apartheid, occupation, war crimes, terrorism, obstacles to peace, targeting innocents and other despicable labels. And then you beg for forgiveness? I mean is that a joke Jimmy boy?
Ex-President Carter recently met with Hamas–the modern day version of the Nazis. Chamberlain redux? No, Carter is much, much worse. What Jimmy Carter has done is join the list of well known historical antisemites to create a new type of Jewish Blood Libel. With tremendous passion and foolishness, Carter pretty much alone gave credibility to the “Israel Blood Libel,” which propagated throughout mainstream Western democracies, especially in Europe, to falsely accuse Israel and Jews of using Arab/Muslim blood to expand Israel’s territory.
In a similar vein to his fellow antisemites throughout history, Carter focused on the blood of children in Gaza and the West Bank, as if Israel purposely targeted non Jewish children to explain their horrific deaths. The fact that terrorists stationed their weapons and missiles in schools was totally irrelevant to the Jimmy Carter immoral psyche.
These Jewish Libel accusations by someone who was an ex-president of the United States gave instant credibility to the lies coming out of the Arab and Muslim world. The original Jewish Blood Libel gave rise to attacks on Jews from the first century through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, right up until the Nazi era. It was pretty much Jimmy Carter who created the modern day scenario which spurred attacks on Jews in France, England, Spain, Belgium, Mumbai, and many other countries.
It was obvious to Jews throughout history that the Jewish Blood Libel was all based on lies because the Jewish Bible, the Torah contains many specific laws against using blood in any way–even animal blood. This same Bible is filled with laws pertaining to the sin of harming innocents. Therefore, this concept of being extremely sensitive to hurting innocent people has become dominant in the Jewish psyche and behavior.
[…]
However, due to Carter’s Christian faith, he actually believes that all Jews should and will actually forgive him, showing a major difference between Judaism and Christianity about sin and forgiveness. Since Jesus’ death atones for the sins of those who have faith in Him, Carter mistakenly thinks that all Jews will ultimately forgive him and move on.
However, only non-Jewish Jews like Abe Foxman of the ADL, who have almost no knowledge of Judaism, will forgive Carter for his massive evil. According to Judaism, God Himself cannot forgive anyone for sins against another person. The only way that Carter can actually be forgiven, would be to go to every Jew worldwide and ask for forgiveness–not make his blanket empty announcement, because his grandson is running for office in a Jewish district in Georgia.
What is ironic about Carter is that he has committed the same “libel accusations” on America, creating the American Blood Libel. Carter’s comments over the last decade have included the rhetoric that “America is a torturer at Abu Ghraib, has performed criminal acts by water boarding in Guatanamo, we’re occupiers in Iraq and colonialists, we attack Arab countries for Halliburton or for oil,” etc. etc. Some day we can all expect an empty Carter apology to America.
So for the damage that Jimmy Carter has caused to both Israel and America, I do not forgive him and neither do many millions of other Jews or Americans. The best I can do for one of the most horrific American men of the past 3 decades is say, “Drop Dead Jimmy Carter,” and then you can ask your maker for forgiveness.
From the editors at Tablet Magazine |
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JerusalemDats Comments: The West (US/EU/NATO) have shown their true colors and they need to be dropped like a “Hot Potato”. It is past time to join the “Global South” starting with The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
A new phase in U.S.-Israel relationsThe Biden administration’s statements and actions this week, coupled with its overall policies towards Israel since entering office, indicate a sea change.Caroline Glick https://www.jns.org/opinion/a-new-phase-in-u-s-israel-relations/ (March 30, 2023 / JNS) Israel was rocked by the news on Thursday that the U.S. State Department had ordered NASA scientist Dr. Amber Straughn to cancel her participation in the Israel Physical Society’s annual meeting. The news came following Straughn’s posting on Twitter that her “travel authorization was revoked” on Wednesday.
The State Department’s move, which gives the appearance of an official boycott, would be stunning under any circumstance. But it is all the more alarming coming on the heels of U.S. President Joe Biden’s shocking remarks in relation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government’s efforts to place minimal limits on the Supreme Court’s currently limitless powers.
In apparently off-the-cuff remarks to reporters on Tuesday, Biden said curtly: “Like many strong supporters of Israel I am very concerned, and I’m concerned that they get this [judicial reform] straight. They cannot continue down this road. Hopefully, the prime minister will act in a way that he’s going to try to work out some genuine compromise. But that remains to be seen.”
Then, after interfering in Israel’s domestic affairs, Biden added: “We’re not interfering. They know my position. They know America’s position. They know the American Jewish position.”
When in a follow-up a reporter asked Biden if he would invite Netanyahu to the White House, the president’s response was immediate and unhesitating. “No, not in the near term.” Even before the State Department ordered Straughn to cancel her trip, it was abundantly clear that Biden’s statement wasn’t a fluke. And it wasn’t about Netanyahu. Despite the occasional compliments that Biden and his advisers showered on Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, the administration’s policies were not more pro-Israel when they were in power. Notwithstanding the failure of the administration’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran last year, the Biden administration remained committed to its policy of appeasing Iran and facilitating its nuclear advancement, despite the previous government’s expressed opposition.
The Biden administration’s single-minded commitment to its pro-Iran policy was most unmistakable in the strong-arm tactics it used to force Lapid to agree to a gas deal with Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon on the eve of the Nov. 1 elections. Under the terms of the deal, in exchange for absolutely nothing, Israel was required to cede its sovereign waters and economic waters, and a natural-gas deposit to Lebanon.
The deal gave Iran’s Lebanese proxy a cash windfall and a foothold in the Eastern Mediterranean. When Israel tried to draw out negotiations, Biden publicly hectored Lapid to close a deal. He refused to speak with Lapid on the phone for months and only did so after Lapid capitulated to Hezbollah demands—transmitted by the U.S. interlocutors.
Then there are the Palestinians. Throughout the previous government’s time in office, the Biden administration was open about its rejection of Israel’s national and legal rights in Judea and Samaria, and Jerusalem. They sided with illegal Arab squatters and their supporters as they rioted against their Jewish landlords and Jewish neighbors in Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood in Jerusalem. They opposed Israel’s counterterror operations and opened an FBI investigation against soldiers and officers in the Israel Defense Forces.
The administration subverted the Abraham Accords by compelling Israel to accept the Palestinians in the Abraham Accord summits. Palestinian participation transformed what had been a working alliance against Iran into a pile-on against Israel—orchestrated and led by the State Department.
As for Democrats in Congress, they drew out the approval process of supplemental Iron Dome missiles following “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” making clear that Democrat-controlled congresses cannot be expected to automatically approve military aid to Israel. All of this happened while the Israeli left was in power. One of the notable aspects of Biden’s remarks on Tuesday is that the day before, Netanyahu already shelved his government’s judicial reform bill and opted to negotiate with opposition leaders to see if it is possible to reach a compromise package acceptable to a broader majority. Biden’s decision to escalate his rhetoric after Netanyahu had agreed to Biden’s position indicates that the administration was less interested in blocking judicial reform than in destabilizing Netanyahu’s government.
The administration’s statements and actions this week, coupled with its overall policies towards Israel since entering office, indicate that Israel has reached a new phase in its relationship with America.
Until now, Israel had a strategic alliance with the United States. Now as a decade of polling has shown, Israel is viewed with hostility by some Americans, and it is strongly supported by other Americans. The most recent poll of U.S. support by Gallup makes the point explicitly.
The poll showed that overall, most Americans are more supportive of Israel than of the Palestinians. But for the first time, 49% of Democrats are more sympathetic towards the Palestinians than towards Israel. A total of 38% of Democrats are more sympathetic towards Israel. Among Republicans, 78% are more supportive of Israel, and a mere 11% are more sympathetic to the Palestinians. Independents are likewise more supportive of Israel than the Palestinians but by a smaller margin.
All the same, the Democrats are one of two parties. And currently, they are more supportive of the Palestinians than of Israel, and that preference is reflected in administration and congressional policies and actions. A different, deeper understanding of American societyHow is Israel supposed to handle this new relationship? The first place to look for answers is in the past. In the 1950s and 1960s, France was Israel’s closest ally. But following France’s withdrawal from Algeria, then-French President Charles de Gaulle turned towards the Arabs and against Israel.
Two things are different about Israel’s current crisis with the United States and the fracture of its relations with France. First, de Gaulle was at the height of his power and popularity when he turned his back on Israel. So when he abandoned Israel, he took France with him. This isn’t the case with Biden and America.
Following Biden’s remarks, some Israeli commenters argued that Biden is likely the last Democrat President who will define himself as a Zionist. If current trends continue, no future Democrat president will risk expressing support for Israel.
The truth is more complicated. For the past 20 years, progressives have built a creed predicated on identity politics. They wove together a coalition of predetermined victim groups tied to one another though the concept of “intersectionality.” Intersectionality asserts that all “victim” groups are automatically aligned. The Palestinians had long been allied with some of the designated victim groups—first and foremost, black nationalists tied to Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. Using its existing alliances, pro-Palestinian activists lobbied to be included in the intersectional alliance. Their success was not a foregone conclusion. But so far, it has been wildly successful and has been instrumental in undermining support for Israel and the position of Jews in the progressive camp and the Democrat Party.
To change the situation, Israel needs to work assiduously to fray the unanimity of hostility among members of the progressive alliance. This won’t be easy. The work requires a different, deeper understanding of American society than most Israelis possess. But it is doable. Israel can make inroads within the African-American community, and the Latino and Asian communities. It can rebuild its longstanding relationships with labor unions, and high-tech and financial-sector professional associations, among others.
Beyond that, Israel needs to maintain and shore up its ties with the people and sectors of American society who support it. This includes evangelical Christians, Catholics and other conservative groups.
The most astounding claim Biden made in his Tuesday diatribe was that his views are shared by American Jews. Certainly, some American Jewish groups oppose the Israeli right. U.S. Jewish groups One Voice and the New Israel Fund, among others, reportedly financed a significant chunk of the left’s anti-government campaign for the past three months. Progressive Jewish groups are increasingly willing to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with anti-Zionists and BDS activists.
All the same, most American Jews are supportive of Israel, regardless of who is in power. They do not support the administration’s pro-Iran policies or its pro-Palestinian bias. Israel needs to stand with and empower this majority. It must stand with them as they defend themselves and their right to support Israel on campuses, in their workplaces and in their communities.
As for Israel’s relationship with the administration itself, it is fairly clear that Israel needs to recalibrate its strategic posture. It is impossible to know whether the Biden administration will want to negotiate another long-term military aid agreement, and it is also unclear whether Israel is better or worse off maintaining its position as a recipient of U.S. military aid.
Israel may be better off paying for U.S. military platforms out of its own pocket and transforming its relationship from that of a client into one of a partner in defense technology development. On March 13, the U.S. Air Force conducted another unsuccessful test of one of the two hypersonic missiles it is developing. Washington may or may not want Israel’s help with its hypersonic missile program, which is lagging far behind China and Russia’s programs. But Israel is probably the only U.S. ally capable of helping. Certainly, under the present circumstances, Israel’s relationship with the United States will be more secure if it is based on collaboration in areas of mutual interest rather than dependence.
With the U.S. position on issues of critical importance to Israel—first and foremost, Iran and the Palestinians, changing completely depending on the president’s partisan affiliation— Israel needs to stop relying on America on issues that require continuous, high-intensity cooperation. Building interest-based partnerships with other nationsThis brings us to the second difference between the new phase we have entered in U.S.-Israel ties and de Gaulle’s breach of Franco-Israeli ties in the 1960s. When the French leader turned on Israel, Israel had the United States more or less at the ready, willing to replace France as Israel’s superpower ally. Today, Israel has no alternative waiting in the wings.
But it may not need one. Israel is much more powerful today than it was in the 1960s. It doesn’t need a protector; it needs partners. Beginning in 2013, Netanyahu began a process of building interest-based partnerships with nations across the region and across the world. These relationships with states in the region and worldwide already form the nucleus of a strategic posture that can secure Israel’s position.
Biden’s statement on Tuesday was roundly applauded by Israeli leftists hell-bent on overthrowing Netanyahu’s government. They would do well to think this through. Sure, Biden has issues with Netanyahu. But the policies Biden pursues vis-à-vis Iran and the Palestinians work to Israel’s strategic disadvantage regardless of who is in power, as his strong-arming of Lapid on the Hezbollah gas deal made clear.
Biden is not de Gaulle, in stature or in influence. American support for Israel is diminishing in some quarters. Still, it remains strong overall. Much can be done to change the situation for the better. And Israel is a powerful, wealthy nation with viable alternatives to strategic dependence on the United States.
This has been a bad week for Israel-U.S. relations, but it isn’t cause for despair. Rather, it is cause for a sober-minded reassessment and rearrangement of Israel’s relations with America to bring them in line with current realities.
Caroline B. Glick is the senior contributing editor of Jewish News Syndicate and the host of the Caroline Glick Show on JNS. Glick is also the diplomatic commentator for Israel’s Channel 14, as well as a columnist at Newsweek. Glick is the senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington and a lecturer at Israel’s College of Statesmanship. |
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The 100 year betrayal of Israel by the WestBy Ted Belman One hundred years ago the British government published the Balfour Declaration which stipulated,
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
In 1920, the WWI victorious allies met in San Remo for the purpose of allocating the captured Ottoman Empire. It was decided, among other things, to put Palestine under British Mandatory rule. Thus the Allies confirmed the pledge contained in the Balfour Declaration concerning the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine and made it a legal obligation on Britain and a legal entitlement for the Jews.
When the Palestine Mandate was drafted by the League of Nations pursuant to the San Remo Resolution, it added this important recital,
“Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”
This addition was of great importance as it affirmed the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, which, by the way, the PA and the UN today are doing their best to deny. In addition, the Jewish right to “reconstitute” their national home was recognized. Thus the Jews were in Palestine as a matter of right and not sufferance. The Mandate provided, “The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co¬operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.“
The first betrayal of that promise and right came in 1921 before the Mandate was signed. The Arabs had rioted and Britain decided to reduce Jewish immigration to “absorptive capacity” and told Chaim Weizmann that the mandate wouldn’t be signed if the Jews didn’t agree to delete temporarily, the east bank of the Jordan. The Jews had no choice but to agree and the Palestine Mandate was signed in 1922. This territory amounted to 78% of what was promised to the Jews and it ultimately became Jordan. The deletion of the east bank became permanent contrary to Article 5 which prohibited any removal of land from the Mandate.
While the British Cabinet was generally sympathetic to the Zionist project, the Civil Administration appointed by it to manage the mandatory was antisemitic. It restrained the Jews and emboldened the Arabs thereby violating its pledge to use its best efforts to facilitate the creation of a homeland. Whenever the Arabs rioted, the Jews were made to pay the price. Sound familiar?
After the Arab riots of 1929. A White Paper was issued by Britain that stated that because of the shortage of arable land, Jewish settlement would be permitted only under stringent government supervision. Thus, another betrayal.
From 1936 to 39, The Arab Revolt against the British took place which led to the Peel Commission being appointed to study the matter and make recommendations. The Commission recommended that the Mandate be partitioned between Arabs and Jews thereby further diminishing what was promised to the Jews and what they had the legal right to. This recommendation was passed by the British Parliament but ultimately abandoned.
In and by virtue of the 1939 White Paper, Jewish immigration to Palestine was limited to 75,000 for the first five years, subject to the country’s “economic absorptive capacity”, and would later be contingent on Arab consent. Stringent restrictions were imposed on land acquisition by Jews.
This betrayal was all the more egregious as Hitler, who had been in power for six years had systematically denied Jews their rights and their property and removed them from their jobs and their professions. The Jews were is dire straits and needed to emigrate.
The Jewish Agency for Palestine issued a scathing response to the White Paper, saying the British were denying the Jewish people their rights in “darkest hour of Jewish history. It was to no avail.
During WWII, Hitler attempted to exterminate the Jews, by first transporting them to extermination camps, like Auschwitz, and then killing them with the use of poison gas. Britain still refused to allow more Jews into Palestine.
In effect, Germany was herding the Jews into barns before setting fire to them and Britain was guarding the burning barns to make sure no Jews escaped, metaphorically speaking.
The British also bombed and torpedoed many ships of refugees, with the express purpose to kill Jews. Thus continuing the work of Nazi Germany upon those that had escaped the Nazis.
Tens of thousands of ‘additional’ Jews were murdered intentionally and with malice aforethought by the Government of Britain.
After the war, Britain still wouldn’t let the survivors in. Instead they were housed in “displaced persons” camps in Europe until Israel’s declaration of Independence on May 19. 1948.
Just imagine the millions of Jews who would have emigrated to Israel during the holocaust had Britain adhered to her obligation in the Mandate.
But before leaving Palestine, Britain once more betrayed the Jews by turning over all their military equipment and police stations to the Arabs. This was after they had confiscated all weapons in the hands of the Jews that they could find.
To make matters worse, the US imposed an embargo on all US weapons to either the Arabs or the Jews, making it very difficult for the Jews to get the arms needed to defend themselves.
Upon Israel declaring independence, six Arab countries invaded Israel intent on destroying the state and killing the Jews. Pres Truman believed that the Jews would be defeated within four months but still maintained the arms embargo. The Jews succeeded in turning the war around and began conquering additional territory. Only then was it possible to arrange a permanent ceasefire. In the Ceasefire Agreement with Jordan, Jordan insisted that the ceasefire lines were never to be construed as a border between Jordan and Israel. Israel agreed. This didn’t stop Pres Obama from demanding that the border between Israel and Palestine be the said ceasefire lines.
In 1956, Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran, an international waterway, and Israel, in response to this causes belli, conquered the Sinai in concert with the Britain and France who were interested in reclaiming the Suez Canal. President Eisenhower forced them all to retreat. Part of the deal was that the US, Britain, France and Russia would guarantee that the Straits would remain open to Israel. In 1967, Nasser again closed the Straits of Tiran and the Guarantors were nowhere to be found. Another betrayal. In response to this causes belli and the massing of Arab armies on all Israel’s borders, Israel pre-emptively attacked and defeated Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 6 days.
Considering that this was the third time in 20 years that Israel was forced to defend itself, you would think that Israel would be entitled to keep all land conquered in such a defensive war pursuant to international law. But no, the best it could get from United Nations Security Council was Res 242 which began by “Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war “ in total disregard to this war being a defensive war which permits it. It required Israel to withdraw from territories acquired (but not all territories) in exchange for “secure and recognized boundaries free from acts or threats of force”. Thus it was recognized that secure boundaries would necessitate Israel retaining some of the territories.
Subsequently, the international community has embraced the Arab Peace Initiative, which has no legal standing whatsoever, and which requires 100% withdrawal. Another betrayal.
In addition, the international community interpreted this, ex post facto, to include unsecure borders which can be made secure by arrangements rather than borders which are inherently secure as was originally intended. Again, a betrayal.
In 1973, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel and in the first 2 or 3 days came close to destroying Israel. I took Israel this long to fully mobilize. It quickly ran low on ammunition and parts and appealed to the US for resupply. Henry Kissinger, Pres Nixon’s Foreign Secretary, refused immediate delivery as he wanted Israel to suffer a bloody nose so that she would be more pliable in future negotiations. Fortunately, without this much-needed resupply, Gen Ariel Sharon managed to create a beach head on the west side of the Suez Canal from which he started for Cairo which was undefended. Most of the Egyptian Army had gone to the east side to fight Israel. Russia threatened to intervene and Nixon stood up to them and ordered Kissinger to affect the resupply immediately and to arrange a ceasefire. The resupply was made more difficult as the various European countries denied the resupply planes with landing rights on their way to Israel. I would say that Kissinger’s delay of resupply and Europe’s withholding landing rights were two more grave betrayals.
President GW Bush put a lot of energy into convening the Madrid Conference in 1991 in which peace negotiations could start. He tried to have the PLO included in the talks but PM Shamir insisted that only Palestinians from the West Bank could participate as part of the Jordanian delegation. Bush also insisted that Jerusalem be put on the table for final status negotiations. Shamir resisted this as well but in the end agreed. He needed a US guarantee for $10 billion in order for Israel to be able to finance the massive aliya from Russia.
After this, Shimon Peres had an opportunity to negotiate with the PLO in secrecy to see what could be negotiated and PM Rabin gave his approval. This resulted in the Oslo Declaration of Principles for Interim Self Government being signed in 1993. It awkwardly described the Palestinian party to the agreement as “the PLO team (in the JordanianPalestinian delegation to the Middle East Peace Conference) (the “Palestinian Delegation”), representing the Palestinian people,”. Quite a mouthful.
“The aim of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations within the current Middle East peace process is, among other things, to establish a Palestinian Interim SelfGovernment Authority, the elected Council (the “Council”), for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, for a transitional period not exceeding five years, leading to a permanent settlement based on Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973)”
What is important to note is that the Council was “for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza” thereby excluding the refugees outside of the West Bank. Furthermore, it was intended to lead to “a permanent settlement based on Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973)”. Nevertheless, the entire world takes the position that the goal of the Oslo Accords is the creation of a Palestinian state. This is a lie and a betrayal.
Of further note, the Accords in no way limited settlement construction, though they did define the settlements as a “final status issue”. Nevertheless, the world demands a freeze on settlement construction because they imperil a two-state solution. But the Accords made no mention of a two-state solution. PM Netanyahu has always said that they are not an impediment because they can always be removed. Besides, the Palestinians have no right to a state.
From day one, the Palestinians have been in default of the Accords because that engaged in incitement and violence which they are committed not to do. In Sept 2000 they started the Second Intifada in which they murdered well over 1000 Israelis. Pres George Bush sent Sen George Mitchell to the territories on a fact-finding mission and he, in his report, you guessed it, recommended that Israel stop settlement construction. Once again, the West made the Jews pay the price for Arab violence.
Though Saudi Arabia played a major role in the perpetration of the attacks on 9/11 in 2001, Pres Bush felt he had to appease them by calling for a Palestinian state in his vision speech in 2002. This was a betrayal of Israel who had always rejected the creation of such a state.
He also introduced the Roadmap for Peace which also was a further betrayal of Israel for a number of reasons: 1) It began by reciting the Arab Peace Initiative which called for 100% withdrawal by Israel contrary to Res 242 and 2) It called for Israel to freeze all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements) and 3) for the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state none of which had Israel agreed to. These were included in the 14 reservations raised by Israel to the Plan and Colin Powell insisted that the Plan be accepted, after all it was only a process he said, and promised that the State Department would give serious consideration to them which it never did.
Because of the pressure put on Israel by the US to create a Palestinian state, PM Sharon thought he had to initiate solutions before he was forced to do what the west wanted. Thus he proposed the Disengagement Plan. Bush gave him a letter in 2004 in support which committed the US to certain things including US support for the retention of the settlement blocs and a solution based on Res 242 rather than the API. It also committed the US to not allow any other Plan to be imposed. This letter was carefully drafted as it was considered to be binding on the US. One of the first things Pres Obama did after his inauguration was to disavow this letter so he would be free to impose terms on Israel if not a full plan. I would say that was a major betrayal.
As part of the Disengagement in 2005, Condi Rice negotiated the Rafah Agreement to remove Israel from manning the Rafah Crossing and to replace them with the Europeans as the arabs had demanded. Shortly thereafter the Europeans hightailed it, leaving no outsider in charge. And thus the smuggling was facilitated.
At the end of the second Lebanese War in 2006, Condi Rice got the UNSC to pass Res 1701 which was intended to prevent Hezbollah from rearming in Lebanon south of the Litani River. It did no such thing due to the lack of commitment and now Hezbollah has stashed 150,000 missies there. A betrayal of massive proportions.
Pres Obama betrayed Israel in many ways during his presidency including forcing Israel to institute a settlement freeze and to support a two-state solution which she wasn’t legally obligated to do. Rather than leave all final status issues to be negotiated directly as had been agreed upon, he attempted to influence the parameters of an agreement by insisting on a division of Jerusalem and the ’67 lines as the borders.
During the last Gaza War in 2014, Obama refused to resupply Israel with needed ammunition and he ordered that US commercial flights to cease during this war. It only was in force for a day but was very dramatic in its implications. Both actions undercut Israel.
His parting shot was to refrain from casting his veto to UN Res 2334 which thoroughly attacked the settlements and demanded a permanent freeze. If that weren’t bad enough, it went on to apply these demands to communities in Jerusalem east of the ceasefire lines.
The Iran Deal requires special mention as a betrayal of major proportions. The driving force behind all these betrayals is the desire on the part of the West to appease the Arabs due to their 300 million population, their oil and gas exports and to their one billion co-religionists. It matters not, what the facts, history, agreements, values, guarantees are. It remains to be seen whether Pres. Trump will put an end to this 100 year betrayal. |
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The European Union’s War on Israelby Bassam Tawil 09January2023 https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19293/european-union-war-israel
The European Union (EU) argues that it respects democracy and shares with Israel the values of an open and democratic rule-of-law-based society. If that is true, then why does the EU not respect the decision by the Arabs and the Israelis to mutually come to the table to negotiate their own borders? Why is the EU secretly helping the Palestinians take over Area C of the West Bank through illegal construction?
A confidential leaked document , composed by the EU mission in east Jerusalem, shows that the Europeans are actively working with, and on behalf of, the Palestinian Authority to take over Area C of the West Bank — although the area was clearly agreed on, by both Israel and the Palestinians, until further negotiations, to be under Israeli control.
The Oslo Accords, signed between Israel and the Palestinians, established the administrative division of the West Bank into three areas: A, B, and C. Area A is under the exclusive control of the Palestinian Authority; in Area B, the Palestinian Authority exercises administrative control but shares security control with Israel. The majority of the Palestinians live in these two areas. Area C is exclusively controlled by Israel. The Oslo Accords are called an interim agreement because they were supposed to be the basis for subsequent negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis and the preliminary to an eventual comprehensive peace agreement. The preamble of the agreement speaks of “peaceful coexistence, mutual dignity and security, while recognizing… mutual legitimate and political rights” of the parties. The aim of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is, among other things, to establish a Palestinian Interim Self-government Authority for the Palestinian people. By 1996, as stated in the Oslo Accords, negotiations on the permanent status issues, including borders, would be started.
The EU, however, has chosen to ignore the decision made by the Israelis and Palestinians to reach a permanent and comprehensive peace agreement through negotiations. It has also chosen to encourage the Palestinians to break the law through illegal construction and land grabs.
Instead of pressuring the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table with Israel, the EU is helping the Palestinians illegally seize control of large parts of Area C — in direct violation of the Oslo Accord. The EU, in short, is encouraging the Palestinians not to return to the negotiating table with Israel. Instead, the EU is telling the Palestinians that the EU will help them steal land as an alternative to reaching a peaceful settlement with Israel through negotiations.
“The European Union is committed to contribute to building a Palestinian State within 1967 borders and mobilize to this purpose its political and financial tools,” the document states.
According to the document:
Dr. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, told the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) that “since 1980, EU policymakers have sought to create a Palestinian state, and for the past two decades, they have used a network of NGO subcontractors to promote this objective.
Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, director of international law at the Kohelet Policy Forum in Jerusalem, told JNS the leaked EU document shows that Brussels is taking steps in anticipation of policies by Israel’s incoming government to “preserve” lands in Area C.
Jenny Aharon, director of Golden Gate Public Affairs, who advises on EU-Israel affairs and works with EU institutions in Brussels, pointed out that the EU was acting in defiance of its own declared goal. “In order to comprehend what has transpired with the document and Israel’s reaction, it’s important to look into the context: the EU has strived to remain a neutral power as it states its opinion on Israel’s policies in the West Bank,” Aharon remarked.
Aharon noted that while the EU was insisting that Israel abide by the Oslo Accords and that a Palestinian state should be established within the framework of a comprehensive peace agreement, the EU, at the same time, is trying to strip Israel of its rights according to that same agreement, which gave Israel responsibility over security, public order and all issues related to territory, including planning and zoning, in Area C.
An Israeli organization consisting of more than 16,000 former military, security, and police officers called the revelation that the EU is working on a Palestinian takeover of Area C “an act of blatant hostility and aggression.”
In an open letter, the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF) slammed the EU for its confidential policy document:
The founder and director of the IDSF, Brig. Gen. (Res.) Amir Avivi said the EU’s activity undermines the Oslo Accords, which established Israel’s control over Area C:
A group of 40 Israeli members of Knesset (parliament) also expressed concern over the policies and actions of the EU. They called on the EU immediately to halt “illegal construction activities in Israel’s sovereign territory.” Addressing the EU leaders, the Knesset members wrote:
The EU policy of funding and encouraging the Palestinian land-grab is beginning to bear fruit. A report released by the Israeli NGO Regavim, which acts to prevent the illegal seizure of Israeli state land, has revealed that in 2022, illegal Palestinian construction in Area C increased by 80%. The report documents 5,535 new illegal structures built in 2022, compared to 3,076 structures in the same period in 2021.
The EU’s support for the Palestinian efforts to take over Area C is actually undermining the prospects of reaching a peaceful settlement between the Palestinians and Israel. The EU has not only damaged any chance for a negotiated settlement, but has duplicitously endorsed the Palestinians’ ongoing attempt to impose a solution on Israel rather than — as both parties involved agreed upon — to reach one through negotiations. It is time to tell the EU to mind its own business and stop its anti-democratic meddling in other countries’ affairs.
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Get Woke, Go Broke: How National Boycotts Are Indeed Crushing ESG Companiesby Tyler Durden, 28June2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/political/get-woke-go-broke-how-national-boycotts-are-indeed-crushing-esg-companies A couple months back the leftist media including Rolling Stone attempted to “debunk” the mantra of “get woke, go broke” with a series of articles and reports suggesting that corporations that embrace social justice ideology and ESG related policies are actually more profitable than ever. At the time, the momentum for conservative boycotts of companies like Anheuser-Busch and eventually Target had just started to roll forward, and as is often the case with the media, they jumped the gun and made assumptions before the dust had settled on the issue.
They said the boycott against Bud Light wouldn’t last long, but it has been three months now and Bud Light just suffered its worst weekly loss so far, with sales down 30% at the end of June. Stock losses for A-B were also in the $27 billion range. The company is now preparing for the possibility that these losses are permanent and that customers are not coming back.  Bud Light Boycott
In response, A-B fired the marketing department responsible for the branding campaign using trans activist Dylan Mulvaney as a spokesman. Take note that the corporate media including the Associated Press tried to “fact check” this claim, arguing that A-B didn’t actually fire the marketing team and that the assertion was “satire” mistaken as reality. According to text messages made by executive staff and obtained by the Daily Caller, the team was actually let go by A-B.
The Bud Light texts note that the people involved are not allowed to use the word “fired” when discussing the marketing incident. This fits with a common theme we are seeing lately with woke companies, which is that when they have to cut activist employees loose they try to hide the fact from the public. Why? Probably because this would be an admission that going woke is a disastrous prospect. ESG driven organizations care more about optics than they do about admitting the problem and taking action to fix it.
Target suffered at least $15 billion in share losses after their their line of trans clothing for kids sparked a mass boycott of the retailer. Overall profit losses will not be known until next year and the company was already dealing with flat sales, but the effects of the boycott will likely be felt by Target for many months to come.
Generally, establishment journalists will use base gross profit numbers as their “smoking gun evidence” that woke companies are doing great while ignoring the various factors that add up to those profits. Using Disney as an example, we can see that if we only go by gross profits, the company appears to be doing well with $28 billion in 2022. What the media doesn’t take into account is the fact that Disney gross profits today compared to pre-covid profits are actually flat.
Furthermore, gross profits are meaningless unless we also take into account project cuts, overhead cuts and employee layoffs. Disney has lost almost $1 billion on multiple woke box office failures in 2023 alone, and its stock performance has been crippled, not to mention they still have a $48 billion debt balance. This spring, Disney cut over $5.5 billion (so far) in overhead and operating costs along with 7000 employees. Meaning, even if Disney’s gross profits maintain at around $28 billion for 2023, they still had to chop $5 billion in spending and fire 7000 workers just to hit that number. They wouldn’t have to do any of this if going woke was profitable.
We also have to ask why, if going woke is such a sure bet, has Disney’s “chief diversity officer” (head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) suddenly left the company after six years? The diversity officer is a pointless job that represents the pinnacle of corporate wokeness. Could it be that she was fired, and Disney is desperately trying to salvage the rest of 2023 into 2024 by finding a DEI chief that is a little less woke? It’s hard to say. As mentioned, activist employees never seem to get officially “fired,” they are simply given a leave of absence or a vacation that they never return from, or they “resign.”
A common argument among leftists and the media is that conservatives and moderates will have to boycott so many companies due to widespread woke policies they will end up making all their own clothes and growing all their own food. In other words, they think there’s no way Americans can boycott them all. But Americans don’t need to – They just need to boycott enough companies to force the rest to accept the reality that they can’t survive on ESG alone.
This is, in an interesting way, also an admission by activists that the corporate world completely backs the political left. Far from being socialist rebels fighting the evil capitalist empire, leftists are actually useful shills and defenders for the corporate cabal.
Beyond that, their attitude reveals an elitism that is corporate-centric. They seem to forget that small businesses are half the US economy and that Americans don’t have to pander to left-leaning companies to get what they want. Not to mention, if said companies continue on their current path of self destruction through ESG devotion they might just implode, leaving localized businesses behind to pick up the pieces.
The social justice crowd might want to seriously consider learning to grow their own food and produce their own necessities. The frail left is at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to living in a world that doesn’t cater to their every convenience. |
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The ESG “Cover Your Ass” Tour Begins As Managers Scramble To Remove References In Pitch Decksby Tyler Durden, 25March2023 – 03:45 PM https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/esg-cover-begins It’s bad enough for “asset managers” that ESG stocks and funds are getting pummeled while people look for flights to actual safety, as opposed to unprofitable publicly traded trash with a shiny “green energy approved” label, but now these same managers are being forced to bury their heads in the sand to try and sidestep political scrutiny over their poor investing decisions.
Who could have thought that investing would actually have turned out to be about risk aversion and companies generating actual cash? Fund managers are now doing damage control for their ESG pitches of years past, Bloomberg wrote this week:
In other words, they’re covering up their idiotic investing “strategies” of years past, wherein they picked companies from a list of Greta Thunberg-approved entities, many of whom still likely used questionable labor tactics and had little governance.
Calling the change a “high wire act”, Bloomberg writes that it also “reflects the dramatic politicization of the $8.4 trillion ESG market, with Republicans firing broadsides at anything connected with pursuing environmental, social or good governance goals”.  State Decisions on EGS
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been one of the outspoken voices delivering the much needed reality check to these asset managers, for example.
And because of this managers “are becoming “coy” about referring to their climate goals to US clients”, Arthur Krebbers, who runs ESG capital markets for corporates at Edinburgh-based NatWest Group Plc, told Bloomberg.
“The term ESG just became too politicized,” commented Trey Welstad, a money manager at Integrity Viking Funds. He removed the ESG label from his $72 million socially responsible fund (whatever that means). Bloomberg highlighted other
ESG research firm Util said it best, we think: “The first rule of ESG is, don’t talk about ESG.” Recall, just days ago we wrote about a deluge of outflows from one of the largest ESG ETFs.  EGS fund flows
ETF expert Eric Balchunas wrote last week that on Friday, the ESGU ETF “saw a record smashing $4b in outflows”. That was followed by another $1 billion on Monday of this week. You can read Bloomberg’s full ESG post-mortem here. |
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19 Attorneys General Slam Morningstar’s Surreptitious Effort to Impose ESG and Anti-Israel Investment Bias“Following public reports into Morningstar’s alleged anti-Israel bias and concerns raised to my Office, we launched an investigation into Morningstar Inc. and Sustainalytics over potential consumer fraud issues. 18 attorneys general have now joined our investigation. These ESG investing firms are playing politics with pensions and real people’s livelihoods,” said Attorney General Schmitt.Posted by Johanna Markind, 23August2022 at 03:00pm https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/08/19-attorneys-general-slam-morningstars-surreptitious-effort-to-impose-esg-and-anti-israel-investment-bias/
Led by Missouri, nineteen states are investigating whether Morningstar, Inc., investment management firm’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) evaluations violate consumer-protection law and unfair trade practices.
ESG is an investment strategy that tries to reward companies who publicly adhere to politically-correct values of environmentalism, woke social justice issues like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and racial diversity in its leadership; and to pressure companies that don’t adhere to them into doing so.
Morningstar has been accused of anti-Israel bias. The investment management company attributed this to complaints following its April 2020 acquisition of the ESG ratings and research firm Sustainalytics. The Dutch company is one of the main firms rating companies based on their social responsibility, and Morningstar wanted a bigger presence in the fast-growing ESG market. After initially blowing off the criticism, Morningstar began a review two weeks before the Illinois Investment Policy Board was set to blacklist the company, which would have barred state-run pension systems from investing in Morningstar.
Morningstar eventually offered a grudging, partial acknowledgment of bias at Sustainalytics. According to Morningstar’s June 2, 2022, public letter:
Nevertheless, Morningstar insisted there was “no evidence of pervasive or systemic bias against Israel across Sustainalytics products, including the Sustainalytics ESG Risk Rating.”
Not everyone is taking Morningstar’s word for it.
In mid-June, Richard Goldberg at Foundation for Defense of Democracies published a report explaining “just how pervasive and systemic that bias remains,” as his introductory summary put it.
In mid-July, a group of Jewish organizations sent Morningstar a letter asking the organization to take additional steps to root out its anti-Israel bias.
Most importantly, last month Missouri’s Attorney General Eric Schmitt launched an investigation into Morningstar, which other states have now joined. Schmitt explained:
Missouri passed an anti-BDS law in July 2020, but it only prevents the government from contracting with BDS supporters. As noted in Schmitt’s statement quoted above, the current investigation officially targets potential consumer fraud or unfair trade practices. The AG is looking into whether Morningstar and Sustainalytics were secretly boycotting or enabling a boycott against Israel, and whether that violated laws regulating business practices.
Schmitt sent civil investigative demands to Morningstar and Sustainalytics. The demands include 43 interrogatories (a fancy legal name for questions) and/or document requests – most are both. Among them are (*snooze alert* – they’re written in Legalese):
The eighteen AGs who have joined Missouri’s include fifteen Republicans, whose states have been identified, and three others that are unidentified. The fifteen are Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.
Eighteen U.S. states join Missouri probe into Morningstar ESG Richard Goldberg-tweet-17August2022- BREAKING: 18 state AGs join Missouri investigation into Morningstar’s boycott of Israel through its ESG research and company ratings. Game-changer. All but Montana and Nebraska have anti-BDS laws. Montana got as far as passing a bill in the state House back in February 2017, but the effort got no further. A Nebraska lawmaker introduced an anti-BDS bill into the legislature in January 2022, but it was indefinitely postponed in April.
Since the other three states haven’t been identified, it is unknown whether they have taken action to combat the anti-Israel boycott movement. Several Democratic-run states have also passed anti-BDS laws.
On the other hand, the states may be motivated by a more generalized concern over efforts to impose woke policies on businesses. Pushback efforts against this have been much in the news lately. For instance, Gov. DeSantis of Florida (which is not one of the states included in the above list) has made some well-publicized efforts in that direction.
There is a great deal of overlap between the nineteen AGs investigating Morningstar and the nineteen states whose Attorneys General (led by Arizona’s AG) have written to the Securities and Exchange Commission asking it to investigate whether Blackrock was properly prioritizing its fiduciary responsibilities to its investors, given its ESG objectives as well as its ties to China. Those nineteen states are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Utah. |
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Top US Banks Under Investigation Over ESG And Climate Actionby Tyler Durden 29October2022 – 11:00 PM https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/top-us-banks-under-investigation-over-esg-and-climate-action Authored by Alex Newman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), A coalition of 19 state attorneys general from across the country launched a formal investigation into six major U.S. banks last week citing legal concerns about banks’ “ESG” investing and their involvement with a United Nations alliance fighting CO2 emissions.
The banks “appear to be colluding with the U.N. to destroy American companies” and undermine the nation’s best interests, one of the AGs warned in a statement e-mailed to The Epoch Times.
Another AG argued that these U.N.-inspired banking policies were resulting in jobs being sent to communist China as the regime there continues building coal-fired power plants to ensure low-cost, reliable energy.
The new investigation is the latest salvo by Republican-led states amid growing nationwide concerns about the “woke” policies of financial institutions and other powerful business interests.
Multiple attorneys general who spoke to The Epoch Times about the probe said it was their job to enforce consumer protection laws and protect citizens in their states from potentially illegal activity by companies.
In particular, officials are investigating the banks’ involvement in the controversial United Nations Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). The global network of banks, convened and overseen by the U.N., pledges to eliminate emissions of so-called “greenhouse gases” by 2050 by transforming their lending and investment practices.
Numerous AGs sounded the alarm about the U.N.’s involvement in targeting key American industries as banks cede policymaking influence to the global organization.
The top law-enforcement officers for the group of mostly Republican-controlled states said they have reason to believe the banks being investigated agreed to align their investing and loan portfolio with U.N. emissions goals.
The goals, outlined in the U.N. Paris Agreement on climate change, call for a transformation of the economy away from traditional energy sources. Government and business leaders in developed nations including the United States and Western Europe agreed to pursue significant reductions in CO2.
The effect of these policies, the AGs warned, would be to starve key industries of credit—especially companies in the energy and agriculture sectors that are critical to the prosperity and even the national security of the United States.
The banks being scrutinized by the top lawmen for their states include Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup.
Each of the companies was served last week with civil investigative demands, essentially acting as a subpoena, demanding that they turn over documents related to their involvement in the U.N. NZBA.
The banks are also expected to provide records of all “Global Climate Initiatives” in which they are participating, and how these U.N.-backed agendas are being incorporated into their businesses, civil investigative demands reviewed by The Epoch Times show.
In addition, the banks are being asked to give details on the involvement of their CEOs in the process and how the decisions were made.
Also under scrutiny are banking actions related to “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) investing. The controversial metrics take into consideration environmental and social policies in making business decisions, rather than simply the traditional metrics of risk and return.
Critics say ESG investing is being used to impose unpopular and economically harmful ideas on Americans while forcing businesses across the economy to adopt them. The term is increasingly being linked by opponents to a woke mentality, “social justice” ideas, and radical left-wing politics.
AGs Speak Out“We got involved in this investigation because this is another attempt by the liberal woke left to shove their ideas down our throats, and since they can’t change the laws using the political process, they want to do it by weaponizing business,” said Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen. “They are doing this out of some misplaced desire to advance their liberal agenda.”
But it may not be legal, Knudsen and many other state AGs say.
“This seems to run afoul of our consumer protection laws that I’m in charge of enforcing,” Knudsen continued in a phone interview with The Epoch Times, saying his office and elected officials at all levels were under growing public pressure to address the issue and potential legal violations.
“It gets cold here in Montana,” the attorney general added. “We need a robust energy sector to keep our homes warm—and we certainly can’t do that using wind and solar.”
Knudsen, who is also working with a coalition of state AGs focusing on investment behemoth BlackRock, said this was essentially a continuation of the same issue: Powerful banking and financial interests seeking to improperly impose their views on the public.
“You have corporate banking and the investment industry trying to flex their muscle and pressure businesses into a political direction and political action,” he said. “But that’s not their function. Their job is to provide credit and earn profit for shareholders.”
“This is a continuation of the woke ESG garbage that we’re having to deal with more and more,” the Montana AG added.
Going forward, Knudsen said “everything is on the table,” depending on the outcome of the investigation. Under consumer protection laws, the state has the authority to levy civil fines.
Knudsen said Montana lawmakers, who are also under growing public pressure, intend to take strong legislative action when the state legislature reconvenes next year.
The effects of these banking policies are hurting numerous legal industries, he continued, pointing to firearms businesses as examples of those “being pinched” by financial services and even insurance companies.
“These companies need to be held accountable, so we are all looking at what authorities are available,” Knudsen said. “All options are definitely on the table.”
In Oklahoma, Attorney General John O’Connor said his office joined the investigation for two primary reasons: “America is not run by the U.N.,” and “these banks are attacking Oklahoma fossil-fuel producers and consumers as well as Oklahoma jobs.”
“The Net-Zero Banking Alliance, overseen by the U.N., will destroy companies that are engaged in fossil fuel-related activities or depend on them for energy or these lenders for capital,” he explained in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times. “It is unacceptable that these banks are pushing an investment strategy designed to impose a leftist social and economic agenda.”
The subpoenas sent to the banks by O’Connor’s office include requests to explain how NZBA objectives are being incorporated into the banks’ operations and what actions they have taken to eliminate hydrocarbon energy from the economy.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita sounded the alarm about what his office described as an “apparent conspiracy” involving the U.N. and the banks being probed.
“These banks appear to be colluding with the U.N. to destroy American companies that specialize in fossil fuels or otherwise depend on them for energy,” Rokita said. “They are pushing an investment strategy designed not to maximize financial returns but to impose a leftist social and economic agenda that cannot otherwise be implemented through the ballot box.”
Blasting ESG investing as a “scheme,” the Indiana AG vowed to protect the people of his state.
“This new woke-ism in the financial sector poses a real threat to everyday Hoosiers,” he continued. “Indiana’s farmers, truck drivers, and fuel-industry workers are hurt when the radical Left attacks whole segments of our economy. And it’s troubling that these banks in the Net-Zero Banking Alliance are taking marching orders from U.N. globalists all-too-eager to undermine America’s best interests.”
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt warned that the Net-Zero Banking Alliance was a major threat to key industries in his state.
“Missouri farmers, oil leasing companies, and other businesses that are vital to Missouri’s and America’s economy will be unable to get a loan because of this alliance,” Schmitt warned in a statement e-mailed to The Epoch Times.
Missouri last week became the latest state to divest from BlackRock over its woke policies, announcing that it would withdraw some $500 million of pension fund investments held with the increasingly controversial financial giant.
Blasting the banks for “ceding authority to the U.N.,” the Missouri AG said these actions would result in the “killing of American companies that don’t subscribe to the woke climate agenda.”
“These banks are accountable to American laws—we don’t let international bodies set the standards for our businesses,” added Schmitt.
The Missouri lawman has become increasingly vocal about the threat he believes these trends pose to the nation, sounding the alarm about how these woke policies benefit communist China and its economy at America’s expense.
This summer, Schmitt’s office also sent civil investigative demands involving ESG investing to Morningstar and Sustainalytics.
Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas vowed to get to the bottom of the relationship between the U.N. and the banks’ potential legal violations.
“The radical climate change movement has been waging an all-out war against American energy for years, and the last thing Americans need right now are corporate activists helping the left bankrupt our fossil fuel industry,” the Texas AG said.
“If the largest banks in the world think they can get away with lying to consumers or taking any other illegal action designed to target a vital American industry like energy, they’re dead wrong,” he continued. “This investigation is just getting started, and we won’t stop until we get to the truth.”
Other states that are investigating include Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Virginia. At least five other states have joined but cannot be named due to state confidentiality policies.
In August, a similar coalition of state AGs warned BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, a board member of the World Economic Forum and the powerful Council on Foreign Relations, that his company’s policies may be illegal.
“Our states will not idly stand for our pensioners’ retirements to be sacrificed for BlackRock’s climate agenda,” they warned, pointing to several potential legal violations involving the politically connected firm’s ESG investing. Effects and ImplicationsBloomberg, a media outlet that has vocally supported the U.N. climate agenda and was founded by Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) co-chair Michael Bloomberg, complained this month that Fink and other key financial leaders would not be at the upcoming U.N. COP27 climate conference in Egypt.
“With more than $135 trillion in assets, GFANZ was supposed to be the planet’s ticket to a more climate-friendly form of finance. But a year later, it’s unclear how members will live up to their promises,” Bloomberg writer Alastair Marsh reported, pointing to GOP states’ efforts as part of the reason.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is among the Republican political leaders aiming to stop woke policies at banks. He is asking lawmakers to pass legislation in the 2023 session to rein in ESG policies.
Read more here…
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Hundreds Of Funds On Brink Of Losing ESG Ratingsby Tyler Durden, 24March2023 – 10:24 PM https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/hundreds-funds-brink-losing-esg-ratings The Financial Times reports that Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing is on the verge of a significant transformation, as index provider MSCI is set to remove the ESG ratings from hundreds of funds. This change is part of a major overhaul of the MSCI’s rating methodology.
According to unpublished research by BlackRock Inc.’s iShares unit, cited by FT, MSCI intends to downgrade the ESG rating of hundreds of funds. The adjustments, scheduled to be implemented by the end of April, will apply to all exchange-traded and mutual funds worldwide.
Index providers are pushing the changes to tighten the requirements for what qualifies as an ESG-compliant fund amid pressure from regulators concerned about “greenwashing.” One of the highest-profile greenwashing scandals has been Deutsche Bank AG and its asset management arm, DWS Group, in Frankfurt, Germany, which exaggerated green investments in ESG products.  Greenwashing Funds
The decline in funds with top ESG ratings implies that ESG-focused investors will face limited investment options, which could potentially increase the price of assets with a sustainable label.
MSCI did not provide details on the extent of the downgrades but said these changes “will lead to fewer funds being rated as AAA or AA and will reduce the volatility in ESG fund ratings, which are outcomes that our client base broadly supported.”
The unpublished research reveals 1,476 Europen ETFs will have their ESG rating slashed, 905 will remain unchanged, and 78 will receive a rating boost. A staggering 446 funds, including over 400 derivative-based funds, will lose their ratings entirely. Perhaps the ESG hype cycle is well beyond its peak… … and all along, Elon Musk was right.
 Eric Balchunas-tweet-18May2022-Tesla has been kicked out of the S&P 500 ESG Index |
“Advocates of woke ideology are the real racists”
Diversity, equity, and inclusionFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusion AntisemitismDEI has been accused of ignoring or even contributing to antisemitism.[73][74][75][76 Politicization and ideologyDEI has according to some critics become a distinct ideology or “political agenda”, leading to a politicization of universities.[88]
There’s no middle ground in the fight against DEI antisemitismAllegations that the battle against campus antisemitism at Harvard was “hijacked” by right-wingers or racists are false. Advocates of woke ideology are the real racists.
 From left: Claudine Gay (Harvard University president), Elizabeth Magill (University of Pennsylvania president), American University professor Pamela Nadell and Sally Kornbluth (Massachusetts Institute of Technology president) testify during a House committee hearing about antisemitism on campus on Dec. 5, 2023. Credit: House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
https://www.jns.org/theres-no-middle-ground-in-the-fight-against-dei-antisemitism/
(January 4, 2024 / JNS) Claudine Gay resigned as president of Harvard University but as she conceded defeat in her battle to hold onto her post, she further poisoned public discourse about the controversy that undid her. In a New York Times op-ed, Gay refused to take full responsibility for her failure to combat antisemitism at Harvard and ensure that Jewish students feel safe on campus. Add to that her hypocrisy about free speech and flat-out lying concerning plagiarism charges, which did more than anything to end her short tenure in the school’s top job. Worse, she also tried to smear her opponents, including those who brought the scholarly fraud that pervaded her meager writings to light, as racists.
But she was right about one thing. This story “is bigger” than her.
Critical to understanding this controversy or even the justified concerns about the post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism is the way leftist ideologies like intersectionality, critical race theory (CRT) and the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) have played in all of this. The obsession with race above and beyond every other possible consideration pushed morally corrupt figures like Gay to a position of pre-eminence in academia. But it also acts as a standing defense or rationale for her misdeeds, as well as her blind spot about antisemitism.
And that is why, before moving on, it’s worth debunking her self-serving swan song, in addition to the growing effort on the left to dismiss the controversy as nothing more than an example of a conservative “culture war” talking point or to second her bogus claim that she is a victim of racism. Equally important is the need to debunk the notion that there can be some middle ground about the role that woke ideology plays in stoking the post-Oct. 7 surge in Jew-hatred.
Lying about her recordGay’s broadside in the Times is not so much clueless as it is a compendium of brazen falsehoods and specious attacks on those who discovered her numerous instances of plagiarism.
Contrary to her assertion, she did not “promptly request corrections” in journals where she had failed to attribute work lifted from other scholars. In fact, she flatly refused to acknowledge what she had done and Harvard threatened the New York Post with legal action if they published reports about her plagiarism. She only corrected some of her thefts under duress. And she has not admitted her guilt even when it came to lifting entire paragraphs from another person’s work.
While she acknowledged that it was a “mistake” for her not to condemn Hamas terrorists in Gaza after Oct. 7, she didn’t own up to the fact that she treated anti-Israel and anti-Jewish demonstrations on her campus in the same way she had silenced those who disagreed with her beliefs. Nor was her disastrous congressional testimony, in which she said it would depend on the “context” if calls for the genocide of Jews would be judged as violating Harvard’s rules, a “trap.” While she later backtracked, she was quite defiant in the moment, clearly demonstrating that she was more worried about being seen as taking sides against antisemites and Israel-haters than labeled as someone willing to defend Jewish students being attacked in the same way she would other minorities.
Then came her attempt to claim the status of a martyr to racism. Her critics, who pointed out that there was something fishy about Harvard choosing someone with such an astonishingly thin record of scholarly achievement to be its president, were not engaging in racism. They were just stating the obvious about Harvard’s hiring process. There is no other rational explanation for Gay’s appointment other than the fact of her race, gender and leftist politics. Diversity and inclusion mean favoring the unqualified, provided they punch the right identity and ideological tickets.
The efforts of racial hucksters like Ibram X. Kendi and the Rev. Al Sharpton to bolster her image as a racial martyr is a flashing neon sign warning fair-minded persons what’s at stake here.
Just as bad are the arguments of those who seconded her belief that her downfall was attributed to a political plot.
The most egregious example of this was an AP article whose conceit was that the plagiarism charges were merely a “weapon” to discredit her that was utilized by ill-intentioned conservatives. In this account, the idea that she actually committed plagiarism was secondary to the fact that she was a black woman and that her opponents were opposed to woke ideology. The frame of reference was that if plagiarism could be used to undermine faith in institutions that have been taken over by progressives, then perhaps the longstanding belief that it is a serious offense should be rethought.
What going woke meant for JewsThis goes hand in hand with arguments that seek to distract us from what the progressive takeover of academia has meant for Jews. Many liberals and moderates are rightly expressing concern about the way Jew-hatred has not just been tolerated but enabled and encouraged by college administrations, cultural and educational institutions, and the mainstream media since the Hamas attack on Israel. But our bifurcated political culture in which Americans are more divided than ever has influenced the debate about not just Gay, but the reasons why brazen antisemitism has become so prevalent on college campuses.
It was conservative political activists like author Christofer Rufo and others like him who have been leading the charge against the leftist ideas that people like Gay championed. And it was Rep. Elisa Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump and a possible running mate for him in the 2024 election, who exposed Gay to the world as a hypocrite when it comes to free speech who considered attacks on Jews unimportant. That has discredited their efforts in the eyes of those who identify as liberals or Democrats, or at the very least, caused them to try to separate the plague of woke leftist antisemitism from the factors that are fueling it.<
Intersectionality, CRT and the DEI mantra have over the last several years been transformed from controversial left-wing ideas into an unchallengeable orthodoxy about race. Most liberals and Democrats acquiesced to the way traditional beliefs about equal opportunity have been discarded in favor of equity—a concept that is the opposite of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream about a nation where individuals would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin—because they feared being called a racist. That became especially true after the moral panic about race set off by the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, in which a heretofore deeply divisive and marginal force like the Black Lives Matter movement went mainstream in the summer of 2020. It even led liberal Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee to endorse BLM and DEI for fear of being out of sync with their allies on the left.
This was and remains a fatal mistake not just for Jews but for other Americans who remain blind to the consequences of empowering radical ideologues and their toxic ideas. The premise that the world is divided into two immutable groups—white oppressors and people of color, who are always the victims—is a recipe for endless racial conflict and threatens to undermine the progress Americans have made towards a more just society since the triumph of the civil-rights movement of the 1960s. While the DEI mantra has the sound of a philosophy of equality, it is nothing of the kind.
But it is particularly foolish for Jews since in this Manichean worldview, the woke falsely label them and the Jewish state as “white” oppressors. In doing so, they have granted a permission slip for antisemitism. While some of us have been pointing this out for years, most Americans didn’t realize it until a few months ago. It was only after Oct. 7—when progressives indoctrinated in the DEI faith demonstrated a knee-jerk willingness to condemn Jews who had suffered mass murder, rape, torture and kidnapping as oppressors and treat the Palestinian terrorists as victims—that evidence that the Jews were the canaries in the coal mine when it came to the perils of DEI became too obvious to ignore.
A choice is necessaryYet too many moderates and liberals are still trying to argue that outrage about the mobs chanting for the destruction of Israel can be separated from the genocide of Jews. It is this warped view that has sent such “progressives” into the streets and onto campuses to vent their rage.
You don’t have to like Stefanik or Rufo, or plan to vote for the Republicans, to understand that so long as woke commissars like Claudine Gay—and her counterparts elsewhere—are dominating America’s college campuses, the virus of antisemitism will continue to grow. Democrats must understand that unless DEI rules are thrown out of academia, the corporate world, the media and the government (where an executive order by President Joe Biden put them in place throughout the federal apparatus), their party will be completely taken over by leftists who hate Israel and are indifferent at best to the spread of antisemitism.
The aftermath of Oct. 7 and the fall of Claudine Gay ought to be a turning point in this debate. But it won’t be if those who acknowledge that antisemitism is on the rise don’t draw the appropriate conclusions about why this has happened
Gay’s fate or that of any other college administrator is secondary to whether their toxic ideas will be allowed to continue to be the official new secular religion of American civic life. On this question, there is no middle ground. There’s no way to make DEI less antisemitic since it is designed to divide and target some for opprobrium in this manner. Treating the impact of woke ideas as nothing more than a conservative culture war controversy won’t work anymore.
Americans have to choose and traditional political loyalties are no longer relevant. They can either join those seeking to roll back the woke tide and restore basic American values of equality and fairness, or they can stand by and watch as a neo-Marxist faith destroys American liberty piece by piece with the Jews just being the first victims.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
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History of the Land Of Israel and the People of Israel:
There was no such thing as an Arab Palestinian currency. There was never any country called Palestine. Ottoman Empire Map 1299 – 1918 Historical Notes: Ottoman Empire 1299–1922OTTOMAN EMPIRE CURRENCYhttps://encyclopedia-of-money.blogspot.com/2011/10/ottoman-empire-currency.html At its height, the Ottoman Empire ruled present-day Turkey, the Middle East, North Africa (including Egypt), and southeastern Europe. By World War I, the Ottoman Empire had largely disintegrated, and after the war the core of the empire was organized as the Republic of Turkey. Although the Sunni-Ottoman dynasty dates back to the 13th century, the empire became a power to be reckoned with after the capture of Constantinople in 1453. Perhaps the most famous sultan of the Ottoman Empire was Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566), whose conquest in the 16th century gave the Ottoman Empire control of East-West trade. The prime coins of the Ottoman Empire were the akce, silver coins that provided the basis of monetary calculations for prices and wages. Suleiman’s architect earned 55 akce per day. A niche for smaller coins was filled by the dirham, with its quarter, and the manghir, which were copper. The most important gold coin was the ashrafit, patterned after the Venetian ducat. To compete with Austrian talers, which rapidly gained acceptance in areas of the empire, Suleiman III (1687–1691) minted a silver coin known as the qurush. To meet the coinage needs of the empire, the Ottomans purchased blank coins from Austria and the Dutch. Mechanized methods of minting coins first appeared in Turkey in the mid- 19th century, two hundred years later than the widespread adoption of these methods in Europe. Iran saw its first mechanized mint established in Tehran in 1876. In the 20th century, European mechanized mints supplied coins for colonized areas of the Ottoman Empire. Paper money also made its debut in the mid-19th century. The Ottomans led the way with the issuance of notes in Turkey, setting an example that was soon followed by other provinces of the empire. Iran waited until the late 1880s to issue banknotes. Colonial powers often introduced paper money, paving the way for newly independent countries to issue their own paper money. In the 20th century, the paper money issued in countries of the old Ottoman Empire was often printed in European countries. A British firm, De La Rue, printed paper money for Iraq until the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 cut Iraq off from Europe. References 5 Livres – Ottoman Empirehttps://en.numista.com/catalogue/note297216.html ObverseToughra at upper centre 
Historical Notes: British Mandate of Palestine 25 April 1920 – 14 May 1948British Palestinian Pound with English, HEBREW, and Arabic on it. There was no such thing as an Arab Palestinian currency. There was never any country called Palestine. Map-Mandate-Jewish Palestine – 1922 – Final territory assigned to the Jewish National Home-24July1922 Palestine poundhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_pound The Palestine pound (Arabic: جُنَيْه فِلَسْطَينِيّ, junayh filastini; Hebrew: (פוּנְט פַּלֶשְׂתִינָאִי (א״י, funt palestina’i (eretz-yisra’eli) or (לירה (א״י lira eretz-yisra’elit; Sign: £P[1][2]) was the currency of the British Mandate of Palestine from 1 November 1927 to 14 May 1948, and of the State of Israel between 15 May 1948, and 23 June 1952, when it was replaced with the Israeli lira. The Palestine pound was also the currency of Transjordan until 1949 when it was replaced by the Jordanian dinar, and remained in usage in the West Bank of Jordan until 1950. In the Gaza Strip, the Palestine pound continued to circulate until April 1951, when it was replaced by the Egyptian pound. ObverseWhite Tower of Ramle, also known as the Ramle Crusaders’ Tower, the Tower of the Forty Martyrs, and the White Mosque. “Palestine Currency Board”, Denomination in English, Hebrew and Arabic. 
Historical Notes: The Modern State of Israel 14May1948 to Date Map – Israel 1949 -1967 Armistice Lines The currency of 1948 with HEBREW. Palestine was JEWISH.5 Palestine Poundshttp://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2017/03/israels-1949-to-contested-may-14-1967.html Since her inception on May 14, 1948 when Israel announced she was a state, she was attacked within 5 minutes and was engaging in her War of Independence. This had actually started on November 29, 1947 when Arabs attacked her, responding with much violence to the United Nations resolution on Palestine, and it lasted until the signing of the Armistice Agreements in 1949. An armistice is a temporary suspension of hostilities by agreement between the 2 sides; a truce. That was a terrible time when Israel was invaded by the regular armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and a Saudi-Arabian contingent and “contingents from Yemen, Morocco, and Sudan also joined the war. 6,000 Israelis were killed in the War of Independence; out of a population of 650,000, more than in all the subsequent wars  Declaration of State of Israel 1948 https://en.numista.com/catalogue/note207999.html ObverseGuilloches; the denomination “Five Palestine Pounds” and “The Anglo-Palestine Bank Limited” in Hebrew and English. 
 Israel Map after Six Day War of 1967 5 LirotPound (1960-1980).  Kotel, Western Wall, Jerusalem, Shavuot . ObversePortrait of Albert Einstein (1879-1955) the German-born theoretical physicist, universally recognized as one of the greatest scientists of all time; the denomination “Five Israeli Pounds” and “Bank of Israel” in Hebrew.  Issuer Israel 5 SheqalimJerusalemCats Comments: If Israel can handle hyperinflation and BDS terrorist sanctions from the Arabs and the West it can handle anything.  Operations Moses-1984-1985 The famine in Sudan at the end of 1984 prompted the Mossad to accelerate the evacuations. U.S. Vice President George Bush asked the Sudanese leader, Jaafar Nimeiri, to allow Israel to fly the Jews directly from Khartoum with the caveats that they remain secret and travel via Europe rather than directly to Israel. In a series of 28 covert airlifts, on Boeing 707s lent by a Jewish Belgian airline owner, 6,380 Ethiopian Jews were flown to Brussels and then straight on to Israel between November 18, 1984, and January 5, 1985. The rescue was codenamed Operation Moses.  Map of Israeli Withdrawal from Sinai Old Shekel (1980-1985). The old Israeli shekel, then known as the shekel (Hebrew: שקל, formally sheqel, pl. שקלים, Sheqalim; Arabic: شيكل, šēkal, formerly Arabic: شيقل, šēqal until 2014) was the currency of the State of Israel between 24 February 1980 and 31 December 1985. It was replaced by the Israeli new shekel at a ratio of 1,000:1 on 1 January 1986. The old shekel was short-lived due to its hyperinflation. The old shekel was subdivided into 100 new agorot (אגורות חדשות). The shekel sign was The Israeli old shekel replaced the Israeli pound (IL), which had been used until 24 February 1980, at the rate of IS 1 shekel to IL10. . ObversePortrait of Chaim Weizmann, 1st President of Israel; the Wix Library at the Weizmann Institute of Science; the denomination “Five Sheqalim” and “Bank of Israel” in Hebrew.  Issuer Israel  map of Israel-מפת-ישראל-1 5 New SheqalimNew shekel (1985–present).  Shofar sounding as Jewish Olim land on a Nefesh B’ Nefesh flight to Israel  Natan Sharansky with Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, and Ariel Sharon, upon arriving in Israel. 11February1986 Photo: Moshe Shai/FLASH90 https://israeled.org/natan-sharansky-reaches-israel/  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greets Jonathan Pollard at the Ben-Gurion International Airport 30December2020  Nefesh B’Nefesh: Live the Dream US & CAN 1-866-4-ALIYAH | UK 020-8150-6690 or 0800-085-2105 | Israel 02-659-5800 https://www.nbn.org.il/ info@nbn.org.il https://en.numista.com/catalogue/note207745.html ObversePortrait of Levi Eshkol, 3rd Prime Minister of Israel; a stylized panorama of a united Jerusalem showing both old and new; the denomination “Five New Sheqalim” and “Bank of Israel” in Hebrew.  Issuer Israel |
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Revival of a Nation – Third Beit HaMikdash Holy Temple in Jerusalem “בית מקדש שלישי בירושלים Third Beit HaMikdash Holy Temple in Jerusalem; And rebuild Jerusalem the holy city soon in our days! Blessed are You, O Lord, Who will rebuild Jerusalem in His mercy. |
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 Elder of Ziyon logo http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/ We are family: the secret of Israel’s successElder of Ziyon 22August2022 https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2022/08/we-are-family-secret-of-israels-success.html
The Economist reports that the birthrates of Israeli Jews has been rising and that of Arabs in Israel and the territories has been dropping – and the Israeli Jewish birthrate is bucking the trends around the world.
In short, the demographic bomb that was predicted for decades to destroy Israel has nearly fizzled.
But the article then touches on an important point that rarely makes it to the media.
In Israel, birth rates are converging between Jews and MuslimsReligious Jews there have bucked the trend of falling fertility elsewhere NURSERY New born Israel babies 18August2022 | TEL AVIV https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2022/08/18/in-israel-birth-rates-are-converging-between-jews-and-muslims “If an israeli woman has fewer than three children, she feels as if she owes everyone an explanation—or an apology.” That, at any rate, is the view of a leading Israeli demographer. When she visits London she is struck by its dearth of toy shops. Israelis have many more children than their counterparts elsewhere in the rich world. Whereas the average Israeli woman has 2.9, her British and French peers have 1.6 and 1.8 respectively.
Demography in the Holy Land has geopolitical as well as economic consequences. Of Israel’s population of 9.5m, Israeli Arabs, mostly Muslim, make up about 21% of the total, while Jews account for roughly 74%. But include people in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza, and the Jewish majority falls to barely half.
This, in a nutshell, is the basis of Israel’s trilemma. It cannot have at the same time a strong Jewish majority, all the land it conquered in 1967 and full democracy that does not discriminate against Arabs. So numbers matter. Israeli and Palestinian leaders have long scrutinised birth rates.
Yasser Arafat, who led the Palestinians for three-and-a-half decades, described “the womb of the Arab woman” as his “strongest weapon”. Demographic projections used to suggest that Arabs living between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean would eventually outnumber Jews. This certainly worried Binyamin Netanyahu before he became Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. In 2003 he lamented that the birth rate of Israeli Arabs, then much higher, was imperilling Israel’s Jewishness, irrespective of the trend in the West Bank and Gaza.
At the time there was indeed a wide demographic gap. In Israel itself Arab women were having almost twice as many babies on average as Jewish women. But in the past few decades this gap has disappeared, as the birth rate of Israeli Arabs has fallen while that of Israeli Jews has risen.  Israel-Average number of births per woman 1980-2020-The Economist JerusalemCats Comments: This compares to the Pew Study  Pew 2016.03.08 Haredim have more children In 1960 the fertility rate of Israeli Arabs stood at 9.3. In the next 35 years it dropped by almost half, to 4.7, before sliding to 3.0 today (see chart). The birth rate of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank also declined, from 4.6 in 2003 to 3.8 in 2019. In this Palestinians and Israeli Arabs have followed a path trodden by women elsewhere. Across the OECD, a club mostly of rich countries, the average fertility rate has fallen from almost three in 1970 to 1.6, well below the rate of about 2.1 needed to keep a population from shrinking.
Globally Muslims have the highest fertility rate of any religious group, according to the Pew Research Centre. Yet even this rate has fallen sharply, from 4.3 in 1995 to 2.9 in 2015. Seven Arab countries were among the 12 recording the world’s biggest drops in fertility between the late 1970s and mid-2000s. In Iran, whose religious leaders have long called on women to have more babies, the birth rate has fallen from 7.0 in 1984 to 1.7.
This makes the rising birth rate of Jewish Israelis all the more surprising. Between 1960 and 1990 their fertility declined from 3.4 to 2.6, suggesting they were in step with their sisters elsewhere. But then they began to buck the trend, driving the birth rate back up to its current level of 3.1.
Prayers v productivity
Almost all this increase is caused by Israel’s growing number of ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi) Jews, who have a fertility rate of 6.6, more than double the national average and three times the rate of secular Jews. As a result the share of Haredim in Israel’s population has more or less doubled every generation, notes Dan Ben-David, an economist at Tel Aviv University and the Shoresh Institute, a think-tank. Though Haredim are just 13% of the population, their offspring make up 19% of Israeli children under the age of 14, and 24% of those under the age of four. Israel’s statistical agency reckons that under present trends half of Israeli children will be Haredi by 2065.
Such fruitfulness may please rabbis and Jewish nationalists. But it is also changing the character of Israel and threatening its economy, argues Mr Ben-David. Most ultra-Orthodox Jews send their boys to study Torah in religious schools rather than make them learn subjects, such as maths and science, needed for a job in Israel’s high-tech economy. Less than half of Haredi men enter the workforce: most keep studying ancient texts in adulthood. They are often financially supported by their wives and subsidised by the state.
There are several reasons why the birth rate among Haredim has remained so high. Many want big families to make up for the millions of Jews killed in the Holocaust, or believe they are serving God by multiplying. “I didn’t do any [family] planning,” says Yerach Toker, who has six children. “A lot of things are in God’s hands, and this is one of them.”
Haredi women also tend to marry and have children at a younger age than secular Jews. And because ultra-Orthodox communities have tried hard to close themselves off from outside influences such as television and the internet, they may be somewhat insulated from the forces pushing down fertility in the rest of the world.
But it is harder to explain why secular Jewish Israelis also have more children than the norm. Most work; paid leave for Israeli parents is not especially generous. Nor is child care cheaper than in other rich places. Some argue that Jewish Israelis make more babies because they foresee a rosier future: Israel ranks among the world’s top ten countries in happiness.
Another reason may be that the state encourages baby-making by, for instance, bankrolling fertility treatment. It subsidises in-vitro fertilisation to the tune of $150m a year. Tiny Israel has about the same number of frozen embryos as America. This may have only a slight effect on Israel’s birth rate, but it signals that the government wants its citizens to procreate.
One more explanation may be that Israeli grandparents tend to help out more than their peers in many other rich countries. Since Israel is small and densely populated, grandma is never far away. In one survey 83% of secular Jewish mothers aged 25-39 said they were supported by their child’s grandparents, whereas only 30% of German mothers said the same. In Israel the traditional family structure is still strong. In France and Britain more than half of babies are born out of wedlock. In Israel it is under 10%.
The convergence of birth rates between Israeli Jews and Arabs suggests demography will be far less important than either Israeli doom-mongers feared or Palestinian nationalists once hoped. Since neither community is likely to swamp the other with babies, both will still have to work out how to live together peacefully in their disputed slice of the Middle East. ■ This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Go forth and multiply”
That last paragraph is the most important one.
Arabs and anti-Zionists pretend that Judaism is a mere religion. But it is so much more than that.
Jews are beyond a people, beyond a tribe.
We are family.
This is the fundamental issue that modern antisemites simply cannot grasp. It is that sense of family, of mutual responsibility, of a shared past and a shared destiny, that is the secret of Israel’s success and strength.
The entire reason for legendary Israeli rudeness and loudness is because one lets their guard down around family. Israelis will ask each other personal questions because that’s how one treats family. Walking on eggshells to make sure people won’t be offended or react unpredictably is for strangers, not for relatives.
“Jewish geography” – the invariable start of a conversation between Jews from different places to find out who they know in common – is a game that only works for cousins.
Normal people, even the most altruistic, care more about their families than about others. It is natural. That is why Israel cares so much about the survival and future of the Jewish people.
The modern antisemites see this family dynamic and twist it into “Jewish supremacy.” That is a perversion. It is nothing of the sort. It is the way that strong, functional families act. And it is a good indicator of how strong societies remain strong.
Strong families make better neighbors with others than disconnected individuals can, but they also circle the wagons together against threats. And this last sentence just explained Israel’s policy towards its Arab citizens and neighbors better than hundreds of academic papers and articles can.
Bethany Mandel had a great thread last week about the bonds between Jews. A slightly shortened version:
Proud Jews get it. We viscerally understand how we are all family. We experience how visiting Israel, even for the first time, feels like returning home, both religious Jerusalem and secular Tel Aviv.
We are family. If you don’t get that, you don’t understand Jews and you don’t understand Israel. |
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Faith and fertility: Israel’s secrets of survivalIn 2020, Orthodox Israeli women had an average of 6.64 children, “traditional” an average of 3.92 and secular an average of 1.96. Op-ed.Giulio Meotti 29January2023, https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/366621
Throughout the West, from foolish America to senescent Europe, the two pillars that have always supported civilizations are collapsing: faith and fertility, the fact of believing in something rather than nothing and of having a sufficient number of children to keep the civilization alive.
During the same hours the same cry, “Allahu Akbar”, resounded in the streets of Gaza after a jihadist killed seven Jews in a synagogue in Jerusalem in the worst attack in fifteen years. But if the Israelis take that war cry seriously, we Europeans censor it. We don’t even know what to answer.
There is in fact only one “Western” country according to all democratic, cultural, social, civil and economic indexes, which has been going against the trend for years: Israel. Faith is increasingly prominent and the population is growing faster than even most Islamic countries.
In 2020, Orthodox Israeli women had an average of 6.64 children, “traditional” women an average of 3.92 and secular women an average of 1.96, a figure higher than that of any other industrial country.
What we learn from the Israeli exception is that it has a higher percentage of religious people than other countries and that this is increasing every year. Israeli society today is a conservative and family-oriented society. Half of Israelis are Mizrahi and they tend to be more traditional and less “wokiste”.
To understand how the country is changing, just look at the government. Jerusalem’s new minister, Meir Porush, has 12 children. Minister Orit Strock has 11. Housing Minister 10, Interior Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has 9, Finance Minister Bezalel Smootrich and Immigration Minister Ofir Sofer each have 7, and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu has 6. Labor leader Merav Michaeli has one child.
Netanyahu’s 64 coalition members have 313 children. The 56 members of the opposition have only 170, just over half. Four Knesset members (Yitzhak Goldknopf, Meir Porush, Israel Eichler and Yacov Tesler) together have 46 children. In contrast, the 24 Knesset members of Yesh Atid (Yair Lapid’s party) have a total of 59 children.
The Nobel Prize winner for literature Saul Bellow wrote it this way: “In this restless hour, the civilized world seems tired of its own civilization. He no longer wants to hear about survival. In their concern for the decay of civilization and in their pride (pride and concern in equal measure), Israelis have something to teach the world.”
The Europe that today seems like a ruin of ideas, values and civilizations that cover it, which no longer knows how to love but only to deny itself (and deny Israel’s right to defend itself),- if it wants to survive must learn from this small Jewish country under existential threat, where more and more children are being born, which loves own identity. This, despite political demonstrations and differences, is the placed where the self-hatred that runs through all Western societies is held in check by religious roots that no ideological herbicide has yet managed to eradicate.
Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio and writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book “A New Shoah”, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter and of “J’Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel” published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone, Frontpage and Commentary. |
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 honest reporting-logo https://honestreporting.com From Food Rationing to the Startup Nation: A Brief History of the Israeli EconomyThe Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics announced that the inflation rate for July 2022 rose to 5.2%, the fastest yearly rate in 14 years. Described as “one of the most difficult economic environments in recent…Chaim Lax 23August2022 https://honestreporting.com/from-food-rationing-to-the-startup-nation-a-brief-history-of-the-israeli-economy/  Panoramic aerial view on Eilat: Sergei25 via Shutterstock The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics announced that the inflation rate for July 2022 rose to 5.2%, the fastest yearly rate in 14 years. Described as “one of the most difficult economic environments in recent years,” this dramatic swell in inflation and the corresponding rise in prices is but the latest episode in Israel’s 74-year economic history.
Marked by incredible lows and dizzying highs, the country’s economic history is the story of how one small state went from relying on food rationing and price controls to becoming an advanced economy and one of the world’s leading technology hubs.
In this piece, we will focus on this fascinating story by taking a look at the three eras that define the history of Israel’s economy: 1948-1973, 1973-1985, and 1985-present. 1948-1973: From Austerity to GrowthThe early years were difficult ones economically, as Israel was slowly rebounding from the 1948-1949 War of Independence — which claimed the lives of 1% of the nascent state’s population — while also being inundated with hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.
In order to ensure that all of Israel’s citizens were receiving their essential needs while also seeking to keep the cost of living low, the Israeli government instituted a number of austerity policies, including food rationing and price controls.
During this period, which was marked by high unemployment and rising inflation, each Israeli adult was given food tickets to use at their local grocery store in order to obtain their daily allowance of 1,600 calories.
As the economy grew and there was less need for strict austerity policies, regulations began to loosen until the rationing regime was ultimately ended in 1959.
Between 1950 and 1965, the Israeli economy grew by 11% annually as the Jewish state began to see an influx of capital from American loans, a rise in the sale of Israel bonds to overseas Jewish communities, transfers to public institutions, and the payment of Holocaust reparations by the German government.
Aside from this influx of capital, one of the major engines of this economic growth was the Israeli government’s 1952 new economic policy, which gradually ended price controls, drastically devalued the Israeli currency, encouraged exports, and embraced fiscal restraint.
In addition, Israel’s protectionist policies allowed for the development of domestic industries, particularly textiles, which were then subsidized in order to expedite the exportation of these products outside of Israel.
In the 1960s, Israel began a process of economic liberalization that saw quantitative restrictions on imports removed in exchange for tariffs and that replaced protectionism with realistic exchange rates. This period also saw the signing of beneficial trade agreements between Israel and the European Economic Community (the precursor to the European Union).
Following Israel’s victory during the 1967 Six Day War, the Israeli economy saw a boom due to investor confidence in the victorious Jewish state and increased investment in the defense industry.
Related Reading: The Israeli Story of Aliyah 1973-1985: ‘The Lost Decade’Following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Israeli economy entered a period of malaise and stagnation that has become colloquially known as “the lost decade.” This period is defined by almost zero economic growth, spiraling inflation as well as rising debt and deficit levels.
This “lost decade” has its roots in the Yom Kippur War, when most of the Israeli workforce was called up for reserve duty for an extended period of time (up to six months). This inevitably led to a downturn in economic activity. In order to offset the business losses from the war, the government artificially propped up salaries, which led to an increase in debt and a rise in taxation.
In addition, increased defense spending contributed to the ballooning government deficit while uncertainty regarding Israel’s future led to a steep drop-off in foreign investment.
Related Reading: The Yom Kippur War: A Turning Point During this time period, both private businesses and the quasi-governmental sector suffered from mismanagement and inefficiency and were forced to become heavily dependent on the government, which led to even further expenditures.
Israel’s inflationary spiral, which began in the 1970s and continued into the 1980s, became exacerbated in 1983 by the Israel bank stock crisis, when artificially inflated bank stocks dropped precipitously and the government was forced to buy these stocks in order to prevent the collapse of the entire Israeli banking system.
This drove up inflation and Israel actually reached a stage of hyperinflation, with the 1984 rate hitting an all-time high of 445%.
It was at this point that the Israeli government decided to take action in order to rescue the economy from impending catastrophe.
Related Reading: Recommended Reading: Top 10 Israel History Books 1985-1990s: Stabilization Plan Successfully ImplementedIn 1985, the Israeli government adopted the stabilization plan, which saw a reduction in government spending, the abolition of subsidies, wage freezing, temporary price controls, and the devaluation of the Shekel (and ultimately replacing it with the New Israeli Shekel in 1986).
In addition, the US government agreed to perform a one-time conversion of defense loans into grants, easing the pressure on the Israeli financial system.
The stabilization plan was incredibly successful, reducing inflation over one year from over 400% to a manageable level of 20%.
As a result of the reduction in government spending, both the private and semi-governmental sectors, which had previously relied on government subsidies, had to become more efficient and productive. A reduction in the role of the unions also during this period meant that it was easier to fire unproductive workers and increase workplace efficiency.
The change to the Israeli economic landscape that occurred during the late 1980s and early 1990s laid the foundation for Israel becoming the advanced economy and tech hub that we know today. 1990s-2000s: Rise of the Startup NationIn the 1990s and 2000s, Israel’s economy was able to take off due to a number of factors, including government initiatives, the changing face of international politics, and the rise of the internet.
In the 1990s, the Israeli government privatized major industries and opened up its markets to international competition by further reducing tariff protection, encouraging exports, and liberalizing currency markets. During this period, Israel also began to open up to the Asian markets.
As well, the separate peace treaties that Israel signed with its regional enemies Egypt and Jordan allowed the Israeli government to considerably reduce its defense spending.
Additionally, the Israeli government founded the Yozma program in the early 1990s which helped facilitate investments in developing Israeli technologies.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Israel saw the arrival of almost a million new Russian-speaking immigrants, many of whom were engineers, academics, or scientists. This influx of human capital gave a much-needed boost to Israel’s growing technological sector.
Perhaps the most important factor that contributed to the evolution of Israel’s economy was the popularization of the internet in the 1990s. With the rise of such digital technology, young Israeli entrepreneurs were able to break into a global market with few government barriers and relatively low overhead costs.
The combination of all these factors helped contribute to the advancement of the Israeli economy and the creation of the “startup nation.”
Related Reading: How Israeli Innovation Contributes to the World Even though Israel has evolved into an advanced economy, it is still susceptible to economic downturns and recessions.
Between 2000 and 2003, Israel experienced the worst recession in its history when it suffered from the global hi-tech crash of 2000 coupled with the severe economic repercussions of the Second Intifada.
The policies adopted by the government in 2003, including more privatization, encouragement of participation in the labor market, and decreasing welfare payments, helped lead to an almost five-year boom in the Israeli economy until the great global recession of 2008.
During that recession, Israel did not fare as badly as other countries due to its strong banking system, its high level of foreign reserves, its high level of employment, and budgetary surpluses in the years prior to the financial meltdown. 2020-2022: Coping With COVIDDuring the 2020 COVID crisis, Israel suffered along with other countries, but fared better than most. While Israel’s GDP dropped 2.2% in 2020, this was a far cry from the average of 4.7% among OECD countries. Similarly, Israel bounced back faster than other countries, with 8.2% growth in 2021 and a forecasted 5.5% in 2022.
Even though the Israeli economy today is relatively resilient, it is still a point of concern for many Israelis, with 44% of Israelis responding to a recent survey that the main factor influencing their vote in the upcoming elections is the economy and the rise in costs.
Related Reading: With Israel’s Economy Reopened, Some Media Keen to Revive COVID-19 Palestinian Vaccine Libel According to a recent report in Globes, the state of the Israeli economy is relatively good when compared with other countries undergoing rising levels of inflation. This is a far cry from the early days of Israel’s existence, when the standard of living was only 30% of the United States, or when the Jewish state suffered from hyperinflation in the early 1980s.
The fact that the Israeli economy has gone from food rationing and price controls to the second-largest market for technology startups in the span of 74 years is nothing short of miraculous.
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[To the “Naysayers” who say: “We must do what the Goyim(Nations) want or they will embargo us!”. Just look at what we went through already, we prospered and grew.]Remembering the hard times predating the startup nationExhibit at a Tel Aviv museum presents the period of rationing and restrictions of Israel’s first decade through rare photos, films, texts, documents.By Rachel Neiman August 13, 2018, 7:00 am https://www.israel21c.org/remembering-the-hard-times-predating-the-startup-nation/
Under austerity, Israelis stood in line for hours to purchase basic products with ration coupons. Photo credit: GPO This year’s celebrations of the State of Israel’s 70th anniversary have focused justifiably on the startup nation’s great successes. Little has been written about the hardscrabble early years, the post-War of Independence austerity regime of the 1950s, when the newly established nation had no credit line and was on the verge of bankruptcy.
A new exhibition, “The Zionist Side of the Coin,” at the Discount Group’s HerzLilienblum Private Museum in Tel Aviv, examines the economic challenges faced from 1949 to 1959, when newborn Israel enforced a tzena (Hebrew for “austerity”).
Those years of rationing and other economic measures are presented through rare photographs and films, texts and documents.
Sponsored by the Discount Bank Group, the museum covers the Israeli banking sector and Tel Aviv nostalgia, and is fittingly located adjacent to the street where black-market money-changers once plied their trade.
“The Zionist Side of the Coin” exhibit presents examples of the locally manufactured goods produced under the aegis of the Ministry of Rationing and Supply. Photo: courtesy What were the circumstances that gave rise to such measures? In a paper published by The Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal entitled, “Unexceptional for Once: Austerity and Food Rationing in Israel, 1939–1959,” researcher Guy Seidman describes the economic situation of the young state of Israel as “under exceptional pressure and near financial collapse.”
“As the grueling War of Independence came to its slow end by July 1949, with separate armistice agreements signed with most Arab nations, the country’s recovery was further slowed by an enormous influx of immigrants. It was widely understood that the government would have to declare an economic emergency situation in the country.”
“Given the time pressures and the familiarity with the British austerity scheme enforced before Israel’s establishment, the government chose to continue the use of the mandatory emergency legislation of 1939.”
Under the British Mandate, Seidman points out, “the mandatory legal regulatory scheme put in place in Palestine was part of the food control scheme also put into effect throughout the entire British empire.”
In early 1949, the government established a Ministry of Rationing and Supply, in charge of rationing food, clothing and all essential provisions, and going after black marketeers.
A food controller posted at the market to settle small complaints on the spot. Photo: GPO Life under austerity was not easy. The Ministry of Rationing and Supply created a “basket” of basic products, such as sugar, oil, bread and margarine, which could be purchased only in authorized stores.
Coupon books allocated the type and amount of food and clothes to be consumed. People stood in line for hours to obtain goods — if they were available.
According to local historian David Sela, curator of the wonderful Nostalgia Israel website, the austerity regime “turned every neighborhood grocery store into a government agency because every citizen had to register at the store, after which every family received a ration coupon book.”
People tried to stay on the grocer’s good side; one argument could mean getting a half-loaf of bread instead of a whole one.
In a television interview given during the 2011 butter shortage, Sela told stories about the truly hard times.
“The allocation per person was 1,600 calories per day only. There was a strict directive. They brought in an international expert whose guidelines were: decide how the amount a person could consume each day without starving to death. And the allocation was a half loaf of bread per person, per day, 60 grams of corn, of rice, of legumes, but only 0.75 grams of meat per month.”
An entire industry of ersatz products was developed: chicory tablets replaced coffee, soup cubes instead of chicken soup, powdered eggs and milk instead of the real thing. According to Sela, “There wasn’t any fruit so they manufactured a compote that was reminiscent of the taste of fruit. A factory was set up precisely for this purpose.”
The ministry also determined import volume, the supply of raw materials and goods to trade and industry, and managed agricultural and industrial production and export. The goal was to strengthen local production and export, reduce and perhaps even prevent the state’s dependence on foreign imports, and reduce its dependence on foreign currency.
In 1949, the government established a Ministry of Rationing and Supply. Photo credit: The Israel Internet Association via PikiWiki This led the ministry to expand the basket of basic products to include utilitarian furniture, clothing and footwear – all of which could be purchased if one had enough coupons.
To combat profiteering, the Ministry of Rationing and Supply implemented strict enforcement measures, a system of inspectors and special courts, a propaganda campaign, and assistance from the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) to search vehicles and confiscate illegally procured goods.
Sela: “A black market developed in which you could buy things under the table. Whoever had a cousin or a relative living on a kibbutz was set for life. ‘Children of the cream’ — those were the kibbutzniks. The expression came into being because if you were a kibbutznik then you had access to cream.”
Golda Meir with children in Israel, 1950. Photo by Teddy Brenner Throughout the austerity period, unemployment was high and inflation grew. On the positive, side, austerity enabled the state to preserve an adequate standard of living while at the same time integrate and resettle more than 700,000 Jewish refugees from Europe and the Arab world.
Seidman: “Gradually, as the economic situation improved and the emergency scheme’s failings began to outweigh its benefits, public pressure brought about the dissolution of the austerity regime. The Rationing and [Supply] Ministry was disbanded in late 1950, and the responsibility for rationing was transferred to other government ministries. From 1952 on [when the reparations agreement with Germany was signed], the austerity regime was gradually rolled back. By 1959 the Israeli government decided to formally end the austerity regime entirely.”
Items displayed in “The Zionist Side of the Coin” exhibit at the HerzLilienblum Museum in Tel Aviv. Photo: courtesy The HerzLilienblum Museum exhibit stresses the amazing nation-building efforts conducted during those years: loans were secured for infrastructure development (electric and other power stations, roadwork, communications systems, etc.), and the foundations of social legislation were laid (laws governing national insurance, work hours, maternity leave and more).
Another part of the exhibit is devoted to the creation of Israel’s currency. In February 1948, the British cut off the Israeli pound from the pound sterling market – a move that could have created monetary uncertainty. In a brave move — given that Israel’s independence had not yet been declared — the monetary infrastructure for the future state was created, and the Anglo-Palestine Bank (later renamed Bank Leumi) issued the new Israeli pound (also called “lira”).
There are also examples of the locally manufactured goods produced under the aegis of the Ministry of Rationing and Supply: school notebooks, “Flit” mosquito sprayers, washboards, and the ubiquitous Wonder Pot, which served as an all-purpose stovetop oven for all new immigrants.
Their nostalgic charm aside, the poverty of these items reinforces the exhibit’s message about the social and economic phenomenon that, only 70 years on, is a thriving, modern state of Israel.
Discount Group – HerzLilienblum Private Museum is located at the corner of Herzl and Lilienblum streets in Tel Aviv. Visits by appointment. For information, click here.
[Remeber this is Anti-Semitism]Beyond Charlottesville – Canary MissionBeyond Charlottesville from Canary Mission on Vimeo. Why Anti-Zionism Is Anti-Semitism |
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Israel Inflation Rate 1960-2023https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ISR/israel/inflation-rate-cpi Inflation as measured by the consumer price index reflects the annual percentage change in the cost to the average consumer of acquiring a basket of goods and services that may be fixed or changed at specified intervals, such as yearly. The Laspeyres formula is generally used.
 israel-inflation-rate-cpi-2023-01-19-macrotrends Israel Inflation Rate 1960-2023. www.macrotrends.net. Retrieved 2023-01-19. |
