Tag: eu

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J Street Uses A Pro-Terrorist EU Bureaucrat To Malign Jewish Neighborhoods

J Street, in a mid-November email appeal, quoted an unnamed “top EU diplomat” in its tirade against an Israeli government call for bids for new homes in a nearly 30 year-old Jerusalem neighborhood where Ethiopian Jewish and Russian immigrants live. What’s more than J Street’s vitriol against the construction of Jewish homes is that the name of the EU functionary was intentionally left off of J Street’s rant because he is an anti-Israel extremist who earlier this year gave outright support for terrorists according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry when he stated that Palestinian Arabs affiliated with blacklisted groups remain eligible to participate in projects funded by the EU.

J Street is the controversial Washington, D.C., based Jewish pressure group that was created specifically, and almost exclusively, to lobby for an independent Palestinian state. J Street maintains, as a central theme of its propaganda, that Jews do not have a right to live wherever they choose and must be transferred out of their homes and neighborhoods in wide swaths of Judea-Samaria where Israeli citizens have lived for nearly fifty years.

The EU bureaucrat who opposes Jewish homes in Givat Hamatos, and was quoted by J Street, is a German named Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff.

von Burgsdorff previously was the head of the EU’s delegation to South Sudan and in a May 8, 2020 JTA article [https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/eu-may-fund-palestinian-supporters-of-terrorist-group-official-assures-aid-recipients] he was identified as heading the “EU mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

The Times of Israel news website reported on May 7, 2020 [https://www.timesofisrael.com/foreign-ministry-rebukes-eu-ambassador-over-support-for-terrorism/] that an Israeli Foreign Ministry official stated that the letter by “von Burgsdorff, constituted a ‘violation of all our agreements with the European Union’.”

The Times also reported that explicitly due to von Burgsdorff’s letter, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz harshly rebuked the EU saying “we demand that the EU immediately end all support, financial or otherwise, for any entities that support terrorism whether directly or indirectly.”
Debra Shushan, J Street’s Director of Government Affairs signed the email that was titled “BREAKING: Outrageous steps by Netanyahu to expand settlements.” In the email J Street made the wild claim that “this week the Netanyahu government announced it will begin the tender process for the major new settlement of Givat Hamatos — a move which a top EU diplomat branded a “de facto annexation attempt.” Construction in Givat Hamatos is part of a deliberate settlement movement strategy to cut off Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem from the West Bank Palestinian city of Bethlehem.”

The reason why J Street’s Shushan left out von Burgsdorff’s name should be clear: he has been widely discredited as a supporter of anti-Israel terrorism.

Another issue with J Street’s email that must be confronted is the use of a place named “East Jerusalem” when no such place has ever actually existed in history. The name “East Jerusalem” is an artificial construct that supporters of the Arab cause use in their propaganda in order to make it appear as if that part of the city is an intrinsically Arab area that Jews are illegally entering. In reality, there are Jewish neighborhoods throughout the eastern, western, northern, and southern parts of Jerusalem. It’s a shameful thing when Jewish organizations choose to use such geographically inaccurate, and politically loaded, language. At the time anti-Israel extremists created the name “East Jerusalem” it was for one reason: they sought to rip Israel’s capital apart in order to defeat Israel. “East Jerusalem” does not actually exist and what they are really saying is that Jerusalem’s Old City and its surrounding neighborhoods are not part of Israel or part of Israeli Jerusalem itself. The original and oldest parts of Jerusalem are what they falsely label “East Jerusalem.”

J Street needs to be honest with Americans. If it opposes Jews living in certain places because they are Jews then why obfuscate on this? If they want to quote an extremist diplomat J Street should at least name that diplomat and not hide his identity due to the fact that he has been accused of supporting terrorists.

The political climate of the Middle East has changed remarkably in the last several years and J Street doesn’t seem to like it at all. The United Arab Emirates has two synagogues and yet if J Street would get their way, synagogues in Judea and Samaria would be dismantled and the Jews in these neighborhoods would be forced from their homes. Haven’t we had enough of Jews being told where they can and cannot live? What was gained by the Israeli government destroying Jewish homes and synagogues in Gush Katif in Gaza in 2005 to hand over Israeli held land in the name of a “peace” that never came about? The Judean Hills, since the times of antiquity considered to be the heart of the Land of Israel, should, especially, be an area where Jewish families feel secure in the idea that their homes will never be destroyed.

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The Crashing Iranian Economy and the Mullahs’ Last Stand

There are reports now that Iranian officials are in a panic as they race to save the nuclear deal and stave off a return of crushing sanctions on their fragile economy. Although European officials have claimed they will stay in the nuclear deal despite President Trump decertifying the it and reapplying crushing sanctions last week, there is little they can do.  Iranian government representatives and their European counterparts have been huddling with ex State Department officials last week, but with little success with a way forward as Congress has been cool to the idea of discussing any relaxing of sanctions.

The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

European diplomats are said to be blaming the Obama administration for drumming up business with Iran and telling these allies that they could engage in economic transactions without penalty. The reaction from lawmakers has been unsympathetic, source said, explaining that congressional opponents of the deal long warned these European countries the deal would be subject to harsh scrutiny after President Barack Obama left office.

A State Department official familiar with the progress of new negotiations surrounding the deal said the Trump administration is set on fundamentally changing Iran’s behavior, including its buildup on ballistic missiles and support for terrorism, before it agree to any Iranian demands.

One veteran U.S. adviser close to the White House told the Washington Free Beacon that Iran’s reaction indicates its desperation to remain in the Obama-era agreement and continue receiving cash windfalls.

“As President Trump has always said, the Iran deal was great for the mullahs and terrible for the American people,” the source said, speaking only on background. “Obama gave Iran more than they could ever have imagined, and now Trump is taking it away. The Iranians are rushing to grab and save whatever they can. Europe will have to choose a side.”

Despite public calls for doing business with Iran, there is little the EU can do as corporations are pulling out of doing business with the rogue state due to fear from banking sanctions.  Russia has no interest in saving the deal either despite public comradery, since Putin finally has an Iran that is becoming pacified before it grows out of control.




All of this pressure on the regime in Tehran makes it far more likely that a military confrontation is in the offing. This is not a bad thing.  A war was expected eventually between the Ayatollahs in Iran and Israel and the Sunni block. If the JCPOA had been kept, Iran would have waited and been far too powerful to stop.  Now they are in a weak position and except for Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, Iran cannot sustain a warfront for too long unless they have other actors enter on their behalf.

With North Korea threatening to pull out of the Trump-Un meet up and China becoming a serious threat, the Mullahs may be banking on making a last stand. Yet they will have to do this before their economy crashes and their citizens revolt.

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TRUMP, THE PISTOL AND HOLY BRANCH

Trump will take office on Friday. Since he was elected, he has given every reason to believe that Abbas and his deputies and their European and American enablers will have to either put up or shut up.

With a gun on his hip, on November 13, 1974, PLO chief Yasser Arafat stood before the UN General Assembly and made the West an offer that it didn’t refuse.

At the end of a long speech in which he rewrote history to erase all connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel and criminalized the very notion of Jewish freedom, Arafat declared, “Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat: Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”

Arafat’s offer has served since that time as the foundation of European relations with the Palestinians and the wider Islamic world. It has also been the basis of US-PLO relations for the better part of the past four decades.

His trade was simple and clear.

If you stand with the PLO in its war to annihilate Israel and deny Jewish freedom, then PLO terrorists and our Arab state supporters will leave you alone.

If you refuse to join our war against the Jewish state, we will kill you.

Today, Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, is reiterating Arafat’s offer.

Speaking Saturday at the Vatican after the Holy See decided to recognize “Palestine,” Abbas said that if US President-elect Donald Trump goes ahead with his plan to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, it will “fuel extremism in our region, as well as worldwide.”

Abbas’s spokesman was more explicit. Saturday night, Osama Qawasmeh, spokesman for Abbas’s Fatah PLO faction and member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, said that if the US moves its embassy to Israel’s capital city, “The gates of hell will be opened in the region and the world.”

Abbas and Qawasmeh also said that the PLO expects that members of the international community will make Trump see the light and abandon his plan.

French President Francois Hollande’s “peace conference” on Sunday was the international community’s way of fulfilling Abbas’s demand.

As multiple commentators have noted, the conference’s purpose wasn’t to promote the prospects for peace. It was to constrain Trump’s policy options for handling the Palestinian war against Israel.

By bringing together representatives of some 70 countries to insist that Israeli homeowners are the moral equivalent of Palestinian terrorists, Hollande and his comrades hoped to box Trump into their PLO-compliant policy.

Spelling out the demand Trump is required to accept, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc-Ayrault parroted the Palestinian threats.

Asked by the French media Sunday if moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem would provoke the Palestinians, Ayrault said, “Of course.”

He then demeaned Trump’s plan to move the embassy as nothing but the regular bluster of American politicians.

In his words, “I think he [Trump] would not be able to do it. It would have extremely serious consequences and it’s not the first time that it’s on the agenda of a US president, but none has let himself make that decision.”

Ayrault is correct about Trump’s predecessors.

To one degree or another, since the early 1970s, successive US administrations have joined the Europeans in selling Israel down the river to prevent Arafat’s minions from pointing their guns at the American people.

Like the Europeans, the Americans have upheld their side of this bargain even when the PLO failed to uphold its end. For instance, in 1973 Arafat ordered his terrorists to storm the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum and take US ambassador Cleo Noel, his deputy, George Curtis Moore, and Belgian diplomat Guy Eid hostage. Arafat then ordered his henchmen to murder the diplomats after then president Richard Nixon rejected his demand to release Robert F. Kennedy’s Palestinian murderer, Sirhan Sirhan, from prison.

Instead of responding to the execution of US diplomats by siding with Israel against the PLO, the US covered up and denied the PLO’s responsibility for the attack for the next 33 years.

The US is still covering up for the PLO’s murder of US embassy personnel in Gaza in 2003. At the same time, it is providing the PLO with nearly three quarters of a billion dollars in direct and indirect annual aid, including the training and provision of its security forces.

The Europeans for their part have egged the US along throughout the years. France has generally led European efforts to convince the Americans to side with Palestinian as well as Hezbollah terrorists in their war against Israel in the name of “peace.”

Sunday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the Paris conference as a “futile” relic of a period that is about to end.

Netanyahu said that the conference’s goal of boxing Israel into an untenable framework for dealing the Palestinians was nothing more than the “final palpitations of a yesterday’s world.”

“Tomorrow,” he intoned, “will look a lot different. And tomorrow is very close.”

Trump will take office on Friday. Since he was elected, he has given every reason to believe that Abbas and his deputies and their European and American enablers will have to either put up or shut up.

Speaking of the president-elect, Henry Kissinger said that Trump is the first man in recent memory who doesn’t owe anybody anything for his victory.

The only people he is answerable to are the voters who elected him.

Trump’s electoral victory owes to his success in tapping into the deep reservoir of popular disaffection with the elitist culture and policies that have governed post-Cold War West. He has used the mandate he received from American voters to revisit the basic assumptions that have driven US policies for the past generation.

His skepticism at NATO and the EU are examples of his refusal to simply accept the received wisdom of his predecessors. Just this weekend he told Germany’s Bild magazine that he continues to question the purpose of NATO, which is a drag on US taxpayers and doesn’t fight terrorism.

He similarly restated his ambivalence toward the EU and that its open border policy has been a “catastrophic failure,” and he expects more countries to follow Britain’s lead and exit the EU.

Trump’s position on the PLO and the Palestinian war on Israel is of a piece with his wider rejection of the common wisdom of Western elites. Just as he didn’t hesitate to say that the EU mainly serves as an instrument for Germany to dominate the European market, so he has made no mystery of his rejection of the moral equivalence between Israel and Palestinian terrorists which forms the basis of the twostate formula.

Not only won’t Trump join the Obama administration and the French in criminalizing Israeli homeowners, Trump is celebrating them. He has invited the leaders of Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria – that is, the so-called “settlements” – to attend his inauguration.

And he appears dead serious about moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

Under these circumstances, Israel has the opportunity and the obligation to end the PLO’s ability to threaten the US, not to mention itself. It is Israel’s duty to ensure that the next time the PLO tries to exact a price in blood for America’s refusal to abide by the terms of Arafat’s blackmail, his terrorist group is finally destroyed.

Similarly, Israel is now obliged to take the lead and abandon the PLO-friendly two-state policy, which blames Israel for Palestinian terrorism, and adopt a strategy that works in its place.

Netanyahu has refused to consider any alternative until after Barack Obama is out of office.

Consultations must be scheduled for Saturday night.

Originally Published in Jerusalem Post.

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Israel Finally Bans Radical Leftwing Organization from Teaching in Schools

Naftali Bennett, Israel’s Education Minister has issued new directives through the ministry effectively banning EU funded subversive groups like Breaking the Silence from lecturing students.

“This circular clarifies the commitment of those – teachers or outside entities – who speak to pupils to the very existence of the State of Israel and to the State Education Law, and stresses the prohibition against undermining the legitimacy of the State of Israel and its national institutions, while allowing criticism of the state on condition that the discussion is kept within the boundaries cited above.  Similarly, the circular stresses that entry will not be granted to outside entities and speakers whose activities encourage, inter alia, racism, discrimination, incitement, calls to violence, party propaganda not in keeping with the director-general’s circular on the matter, and discussion that undermines the legitimacy of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Nor will entry be granted to speakers who have committed a crime of moral turpitude or an entity that operates contrary to the laws of the State of Israel or an entity whose activity undermines the very legitimacy of state entities (like the Israel Defense Forces or the courts).”

 

Breaking the Silence responded by saying: “Since Breaking the Silence does not undermine the legitimacy of the IDF, but the occupation policy of the Bennett government which sends IDF soldiers to enforce an immoral military regime over millions of Palestinians, then apparently these are once again empty political declarations.”

Of course the group does not mention it is heavily funded by George Soros and anti-Israel forces in the EU. Its main objective is not just education, but the group literally disrupts security services and operations throughout Israel’s biblical heartland known as Judea and Samaria. Just because it is made up of former IDF officers does not give it the backing it claims it should have.  Most IDF veterans, both religious and secular support Israel’s continued presence in its historical heartland.  Breaking the Silence has one agenda and that is to disseminate false information with the hope that the IDF will lose the moral justification for its security operations and civilian defense that it undertakes throughout the communities of Judea and Samaria.

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Rome Falls in a Night and the EU Begins to Teeter

In what should have been a fairly innocuous referendum on the nature of Italy’s government has turned the EU upside down as Italy’s voters overwhelmingly voted no to the changes to the country’s constitution that Prime Minister Matteo Renzi proposed.  Renzi did what he promised and resigned entering Italy and the larger EU into a period of political uncertainty.  With populism on the rise across the continent, political leaders like Renzi who are advocates for greater federalism are finding their political futures cut short.

What Does this Mean for the EU?

Prime Minister Renzi was the last European leader left with a road-map for the EU’s future. Angela Merkel of Germany is too busy dealing with crisis after crisis and France is heading towards elections where the National Front is taking the country by storm. With Renzi out, the EU finds itself in uncharted territory as many of the member states face unhappy citizens as a euro-skeptic wave is rising across the continent. We are entering the waning days of what historians will call the failed EU experiment, which has been none other than Germany’s attempt at controlling the continent through economic measures.  With Merkel on the ropes and increased banking instability, the EU may be headed towards a crackup.

How Will This Affect Israel?

The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner and a weakened EU can cause problems economically for Israel.  That being said, the EU’s own support for BDS by labeling “settlement” products has already forced Israel to create a more versatile set of trading partners in the east.  Partners like India, China, and Japan are rising stars in relation to Israel’s potential trade growth.  The EU might still be a large part of Israel’s export economy, but not for long.  As the EU enters the beginning stages of political and economic chaos, Israel will be ready to pivot as it has been doing during Obama’s tenure.

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