Author: Hugh Fitzgerald

The Palestinians presented “five demands” to Joe Biden when he met with Mahmoud Abbas in mid-July.

The Palestinians, as heedless of reality as ever, had the ever-astonishing audacity to prepare “five demands” that they presented to President Biden when he met with Mahmoud Abbas in mid-July.

The Palestinians still don’t get it. They refuse to comprehend their new, much diminished status in the world.

Earlier this year, prominent Kuwaiti journalist Ahmed Al-Jarallah explained why he and many others are fed up with the Palestinians.

The late Palestinian activist Nizar Banat uploaded scathing videos about the corruption in the Palestinian Authority (PA), and especially that in which Mahmoud Abbas was implicated; for his pains, Abbas had his goons beat Banat to death, giving new meaning to the phrase about “silencing your critics.” Many Palestinians have been up in arms about recent high-profile appointments of close relatives of senior PA officials to positions in the government for which they were distinctly unqualified.

The PA, the PLO, and other Palestinian groups must show that they:

The award-winning Arab journalist, the Jerusalem-based Khaled Abu Toameh, has for years been scathingly critical of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders. Recently he noted, with evident satisfaction over the wheels of justice grinding however slowly, that the Arab states have stopped their financial support for both Palestinian groups, and are thoroughly fed up with…

The Palestinians can only blame themselves for antagonizing their Arab brothers and consequently losing the Arab money. The Palestinians have been spitting in the face of the Arab countries, while at the same time expecting these countries to continue funding them.

The AP has disseminated the glad news that Mahmoud Abbas, now entering the 18th year of his four-year term as President of the Palestinian Authority (PA), is against an “armed struggle.”

The Saudis now know that their most useful partner in confronting their mortal enemy, Iran, is the Jewish state.

The Crown Prince has also turned the Muslim World League, once a prime vehicle for the Saudi government funding of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism globally, into a public relations tool for propagating Saudi religious tolerance. The league’s head, Mohammed al-Issa, a former Saudi justice minister, led a delegation of Muslim religious leaders on a ground-breaking visit in January 2020 to Auschwitz, one of Nazi Germany’s foremost extermination camps for Jews.

While Egypt and Israel have for years been security partners, sharing intelligence on Jihadis in the Sinai, including regrouped remnants of the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, as well as on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Gazan branch of which is Hamas, a new and promising development is bringing them closer still: Israeli natural gas

These are the Democrat’s ‘peace makers.”

More of the fruit borne of Trump’s Middle East peace…..the greatest historical achievement of the 21st century.

Trump peace.

The New York Times has a well-deserved reputation for biased reporting on Israel. Instead of answering its critics, it has done nothing to remedy the situation. Instead, it has chosen to make matters worse with its latest hire….

The New York Times has a long history of biased reporting on Israel. Reuters is no different.

Let’s get this straight. If members of the terror group Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state (see its Charter, Articles 1 and 3) fires rockets toward Jerusalem – not a military target – in order to kill civilians, and if, to stop those Hamas attacks, the IDF launches air strikes and kills those responsible for such an unprovoked attack, that is not “murder,” but “self-defense.”

The New York Times has a long record of biased reporting on Israel.

Preposterous demands of an equally preposterous administration.

Not only has Mahmoud Abbas threatened to “rescind the recognition” of Israel by the P.A., but he is also calling on the Biden Administration to “rescind” the 1987 Congressional designation of the PLO as a terror group, which US presidents for over 30 years have waived every six months.

Terror leaders are not legitimate.

Blinken was determined to come down hard on the Israelis, and to go easy on the Palestinians.

Mahmoud Abbas recently met with Nancy Pelosi in Ramallah. No new ground was broken; instead, Abbas made the same demands he has made innumerable times before, in front of a wide variety of American and European politicians. Chief among his demands, not unexpectedly, was that Israeli “settlement activity” must cease immediately if there is to be any hope of peace.

A report on the illuminating and yet predictable recent encounter between Mahmoud Abbas and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Ramallah is here

 While Israel has had several Christian Arabs serving on its high court, until now it has not had a permanent Muslim justice. Now it does: Judge Khaled Kabub was appointed to the high court in mid-February.

Nancy Pelosi has many faults, but a failure to support Israel is not one of them. In Congress, the Speaker of the House has always been a strong supporter of the Jewish state. She inherited her strong sympathies from her father, Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., who was first a Congressman from Maryland and later the Mayor of Baltimore, and who played an unsung role in supporting a campaign to force Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help Jewish refugees, and in urging American recognition of the state of Israel.

Nasser Abu Hmeid is a Palestinian now behind bars for having murdered seven Israelis. While imprisoned, he developed lung cancer. The PA claims that the Israelis were deliberately employing “medical neglect” in his case and others. A report on this libel is here.

It looks as though the world is preoccupied more with the Palestinians than with any other unfortunate ethnic group in the world, or indeed than with all of them combined. But that is only an illusion. The world isn’t really interested in them. The Palestinians only interest the world when an accusatory finger can be pointed at Israel. The most oppressed group of Palestinians in the world – close to half a million people, according to UNRWA – is the one living in Lebanon.

No good deed…..

, the United Nations General Assembly passed “by consensus” – meaning no vote was taken – a resolution calling on the world’s states, and on the tech giants of the Internet, to work to combat Holocaust denial.

That it has come to this – that the world has needed a U.N. Resolution condemning Holocaust denial and committing states to combat its expression – is deeply depressing. But this denial, which both results from, and further encourages, antisemitism, is found unacceptably often on social media, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all the other insensate carriers of antisemitic messages that fail to remove such material in a timely – i.e., nearly instantaneous – fashion.

Most Palestinians in Lebanon do not have Lebanese citizenship, and therefore do not have Lebanese identity cards, which would entitle them to government services, such as health and education. They must rely on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for basic services, such as health care and education that the Lebanese state denies them. Nor are they are granted access to the other social services the Lebanese government provides.

As has now been clearly established by Israel, several Palestinian NGOs are working hand in glove with terrorist groups, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the PFLP (Popular Front For the Liberation of Palestine). Among them is DCI-P, the Palestinian branch of the NGO Defense For Children, which Israel has linked to the PFLP. DCI-P has been found to minimize, distort, or hide reports of Palestinian youth violence, and has shown little interest in how Palestinian children are recruited and exploited by the terror groups.

Were they genuinely motivated by a concern for Palestinian children, DCI-P would advocate and campaign against the endemic incitement against Jews and Israelis to which these children are exposed.

Iran’s capacity for self-delusion is a wonder to behold. It has now concluded that Israel is fearful of the Islamic Republic’s ability to create an “Axis of Resistance” that will surround the Jewish state and, with help from Arabs within Israel and the territories, manage to destroy it. A report on Iran’s rich fantasy life is here.

Nothing is going right for the Islamic Republic. Hackers promoting the liberation of Ahwaz – the southern province right on the Gulf, where Iran’s Arab minority live, and most of the country’s oil is produced – have hacked into, and disrupted for the third time, Iran’s Mahan Airlines. In Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city, for several weeks this November many thousands of farmers, joined by thousands of others who share their rage…..

The Iranians have an impressive capacity to block out reality, about both their own weaknesses and about the Jewish state’s strengths. The latest report on Iran’s rich fantasy life is here.

Translation: Axis of evil.

It’s true that in any future conflict with Egypt, if one were ever to erupt, the IDF will have to contend with a massive army equipped with modern, sophisticated weapons. At the current juncture, however, the clear and present dangers to Israel are from the north, not the south.”

There are still Israelis who worry about a possible military threat to the Jewish state from Egypt, and continue to insist that returning the entire Sinai was a mistake. They point to the spectacular improvements in Egypt’s army, and wonder If the pro-Israel policies of the Egyptian government will survive the rule of General El-Sissi.

The donor nations that have in the past been so generous in funding the Palestinian Authority have this year finally had enough, and have massively cut down the aid provided to 10% of what had previously been pledged. A report on this welcome development is here.

After Ben & Jerry’s decided to end sales of its product in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Gilad Erdan, sent a letter to the governors of the 35 states that have anti-BDS laws on their books, urging them to now apply them, which would mean divesting from Ben & Jerry’s parent company, the conglomerate Unilever. And that is what has been happening.

So deep is their inculcated hatred of the Jews that none of the Arab students the author spoke to were willing to condemn the terrorist bombing of a bus, even though they knew some of the wounded; for them the suicide bombing was a legitimate blow struck at the Zionist enemy, in this case the “enemy” being civilian men, women, and children.

Legend attacked the Jewish state ….. again.

Keenly aware of Arab misperceptions of Israel, the American Jewish Committee has been releasing a series of Arabic-language videos about, among other topics, the history of the Jews, the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, Jews in Muslim lands. Now it has released an animated short about Israel’s Arab citizens, their role in Israeli society, and the rights afforded both them, and all of Israel’s citizens.

Old fashioned Jew hatred — packaged and sold by celeb know nothing racists in order to retain ‘cool’ factor.

Germany has just now signed an agreement with the P.A.’s Prime Minister, Mohammed Shtayyeh, according to which Berlin has pledged that $117 million will be provided to the rulers of the P.A. sitting in Ramallah, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, as “investment” in unspecified “vital projects” (presumably, infrastrucure projects fo bring such necessities as water and…

Israel leads the world in the recycling of water; fully 90% of its waste water ends up being recycled. It leads the world in drip irrigation techniques, so essential for farmers in water-poor lands. It leads the world, too, in innovative methods of desalination that provide more than half of the country’s domestic water. And now Israel’s culture of innovation has brought forth a way to rid the world’s 60 million lakes of the blue-green algae that has been turning them into dead zones, where no life is possible. With the Israeli company BlueGreen’s technology, those millions of lakes threatened by blue-green algae can once again be made safe for fish, for wildlife, and for humans, while the algae can be safely, and cheaply, eradicated.

We are left with the recognition that the supposed Arab attachment to the land of “Palestine” is hollow; the Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Arabs who participate in arson, and the many others who cheer them on, taking satisfaction in such destruction, do not “love” the Land of Palestine. They are willing to contemplate the destruction of that land through arson, just as long as it deprives the hated Zionists of their farmlands and forests.