Author: Hugh Fitzgerald

Jewish demography has been impacted by the Israeli state of mind, which is heavy on optimism, faith, patriotism, attachment to roots, collective responsibility and the centrality of children. Israeli Jews have a frontier mentality, in the face of Jewish history and contemporary existential threats in the stormy, violently intolerant, unpredictable and anti-“infidel” Middle East.

Though the Biden Administration has been pledging large sums of money to the PA, despite the PA’s continuation of its “Pay-For-Slay” plan – giving large subsidies to terrorists and their families, both to reward past, and to incentivize future, terrorists – Israel at least is not going to contribute to that farce. The Bidenites may think they can get away with ignoring the Taylor Force Act, passed by Congress in 2018, which forbids any American aid from going to the PA as long as it continues with the “Pay-For-Slay” program, but Israel remains true to both the spirit and the letter of Taylor Force.

Not so fast….

The Palestinian Authority elections were called not because Palestinian Authority President-for-Life Mahmoud Abbas had suddenly become a believer in democracy, but because he wanted to put on a show for the Americans, with what he thought would be a reasonable facsimile of democracy, hoping thereby to turn on the spigot of aid that Trump had turned off. But when it became clear he would lose both the presidential and the parliamentary elections, he cancelled the elections.

The Biden Administration seems to believe that the best way to oppose the terror group Hamas is to support its arch-rival, the Palestinian Authority. Mahmoud Abbas may be a despot, a President-For-Life now entering the sixteenth year of his four-year term; he may have his goons threaten and intimidate his critics, but at least he isn’t launching rockets into Israel.

The latest item from the annals of Palestinian atrocity can be found here.

Was the targeted assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist any more “reckless” than the American killing of the head of Iran’s Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, at the beginning of 2020? Or was this killing any more “reckless” than the killing of Osama bin Laden by Seal Team Six, in 2011, when Brennan was high up in the CIA (he became the Director in 2013)?

John Brennan mentions that these young Palestinians grow up suffering “discrimination.” What does he have in mind? There is not a single Israeli in Gaza, so Israeli “discrimination” against Palestinians in Gaza is not possible. In the West Bank, 90% of the Arabs live in Areas A and B. In Area A, the PA has complete control of daily life. In Area B, the PA has complete control of all aspects of the Arab inhabitants lives except for security. It is only in Area C, where Israelis retain control, that fewer than 10% of the West Bank Arabs live. What kind of “discrimination” does Brennan think they must endure in Area C? Are they denied schooling, medical care, the right to practice their (Muslim) religion, the right to employment? No. They can’t vote in Israeli elections, granted – but why should they? They are not Israeli citizens.

Former CIA director John Brennan has long been delivering himself of his most unsympathetic view of Israel and of Jews.

Unsurprisingly, as well as being a scold and scourge of those terrible Israelis, and a sympathizer with those inoffensive Palestinians, former CIA director John Brennan has also long been a defender of Islam. In 2010, Brennan said, taking up the theme of the false – because “extremist” – Muslims, and the true ones: “Nor do we describe our enemy as ‘Jihadists’ or ‘Islamists,’ because Jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women, and children.”

A commentary by Nadav Shragai on the Muslim demand that Jews be barred from the Temple Mount altogether is here. …We need to hope that no one in any of the Zionist political parties, defense establishment, or Israel Police is even remotely entertaining this impertinent demand. The ability to visit the Temple Mount is all…

The vile Jewish Voice for Peace is an anti-Israel pro-Palestinian group of far-left Jews that has become ever more absurd in the charges it flings at the Jewish state.

Islamic supremacism unleashed.

Israel also transferred 5,000 vaccine doses meant to inoculate Palestinian health workers. Some of those vaccines were promptly claimed for themselves by PA leaders and their extended families, a scandalous misappropriation over which Israel had no control. Israel has always made clear that if the Palestinians requested help, Israel would respond favorably.

Mahmoud Abbas is the PA’s President-for-Life, now entering the 16th year of his four-year term. He has decided to hold parliamentary and presidential elections this summer, in order to impress the Biden Administration with his suddenly-discovered democratic credentials. But there are problems, and Nadav Argaman, the Shin Bet head, went to visit the rais in Ramallah to discuss a worrisome possibility.

Hard hit by COVID-19, Lebanon is in dire need of oxygen machines for more than 1,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients on respirators. The Israelis are hoping to help.
The gift of the Jews …….

The EU and the US have failed to criticize the Turkish political establishment for allowing such a development or criticized the rise of Nazi-like ideologies in Turkey

The Biden Administration is eager to again turn on the spigot of American aid to terrorists.

Morocco is one of the four Arab states that have agreed to normalize relations with Israel.

As one more sign of how far the Arabs have come in forging closer ties with Israel and leaving the Palestinians to fend for themselves, talks are now underway between the Jewish state and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia about a possible defense pact.

The Biden administration will reportedly push for a two-state solution based on the pre-1967 lines.

Can someone please get him copies of both the Mandate for Palestine and U.N. Resolution 242, in triplicate, for him, for National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and for President Biden? Clearly, in Washington, it’s time to burn the midnight oil.

With Joebama in the WHI, the Jew-haters are unleashed

Israel remains perennially in the dock at that kangaroo court

Yossi Cohen, the Mossad chief and wonder-worker who is straight out of Central Casting, has a list of issues he would like to raise with the Biden Administration as it considers whether, when, and exactly with what undertakings by Iran, it will rejoin the JCPOA nuclear deal. The visit, and what will be discussed, is…

….. to discuss the terror state of Iran.

Sheesh.

Syria is now, and will be for decades to come, an economic basket case. Five million Syrians have fled the country, six million are internally displaced. They need peace.

As is well known, the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik, based in Damascus, planted his flag on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism and the site from where, he wanted Muslims to believe, Muhammad had ascended to Heaven on his winged steed Buraq, in his famous Night Journey. Abd al-Malik built what he called…

The attempt by the Palestinians to arrogate to themselves alone the decision as to who can visit, and who is barred, from al-Aqsa, sticks in the craw of the Emiratis, and of other Muslims too. The Palestinians’ behavior violates the agreed-upon rules; it is the Jordanians who possess the custodianship of the Haram al-Sharif, and…

Peace-hating jihadis have burned Emirati flags, and defaced, stomped on, and set fire to, images of the Emirati Crown Prince, Muhammad bin Zayed. PA President Mahmoud Abbas has raged in Ramallah, denouncing the Emiratis in spittle-flecked impotent fury.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Arabs from the Emirates and Bahrain are landing in Tel Aviv to make deals, and Israelis are going to Doha and Manama to do the same.

The notion of any huge oil corporations doing business in Israel was unthinkable since they were among the primary enablers of the Islamic boycott of the Jewish state….

Defunding terror.

While the PA staggered from one comical debacle to another, Israel moved from strength to strength.

Suhail Nafal first posted in 2018 at Facebook a photograph of Rebecca Rum, in her IDF uniform, next to a photograph of Razan al-Najar, who was killed while attending one of those violent demonstrations at Israel’s security fence known collectively as the Great March of Return. After someone discovered what Nafal already knew – that…

A Palestinian BDS activist, one Suhair Nafal, in June 2018 posted on Facebook photograph of a young female IDF soldier, identified by name as Rebecca Rum, right next to a photo of a Palestinian woman who was killed during one of the Great March of Return protest riots in 2018. The implication was clear: that…

For decades, the Palestinian Arabs have viewed the Arab states — that is, the rich Arab states of the Gulf that have been dutifully supporting them — as reliable funders, ATMs with flags. No longer.

Part 1: Jordanian PM Omar Razzaz on the “Single-State Solution” Jordanian Prime Minister Omar Razzaz proclaims that if there is no prospect of a “two-state solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict – by this he means if there is no prospect of a solution that meets the Arabs’ maximalist demands – then the Arabs should support…

 The so-called “single-state solution” would mean the death of Israel as a Jewish state. No wonder the Jordanian P. M. Omar Razzaz supports it.

The Israeli settlers’ movement is angry with Prime Minister Minister Netanyahu, who, they believe, had deceived them into thinking he would extend Israeli sovereignty over part, or even all, of the West Bank. But now he has agreed “to suspend” any such move, in order to make possible the UAE-Israel agreement to normalize relations. For…

More from the article in Israel Hayom on settlers’ mistrust of Netanyahu: Polls have shown wide support in Israel for the UAE deal. But the ideological settler leadership has significant political clout, and has long been a bastion of Netanyahu’s support. Aware that he might lose their backing to parties even more hawkish than his own,…

The Israelis have been steadily, relentlessly, conducting a bombing campaign in Syria, in order to prevent Iran from building its own permanent bases inside the county and, especially, from delivering to Hezbollah operatives precision-guided missiles. After each attack, Iran threatens to retaliate, but somehow never manages to follow through. And the same goes for its…

Although it is hard to imagine now, not so long ago Hezbollah was popular in Lebanon as the self-proclaimed center of “national resistance” to Israel. It had fought Israel to a 33-day standstill, or so it claimed, seemingly oblivious to the vast damage the IDF had inflicted on it and, because Hezbollah had hidden weapons…

The Palestinian Authority gives lots of money to Arab terrorists, if they are in prison, and to their families, if they are dead. It’s a very generous amount, more than any of those terrorists could ever have earned by working. And the more people they kill, the more money they receive. These “martyrs” have, according…

The German magazine Der Spiegel, which has a history of anti-Israel bias, in late June was at it again, publishing an article that appeared at first to blame the Israeli police for shooting an inoffensive Palestinian.

Of course the Arab states will continue to vote in support of the Palestinians at the U.N., and to make pro-forma statements, verbal boilerplate on their behalf. That costs the Arabs nothing. A few of the richest states — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar — will donate what for them are trivial sums, to…

A new book by two Israelis, The War of Return, describes the changes in how the Arabs – not the Palestinians, but all the others – now view the “right of return.” They appear to have lost interest in the matter, believe that the Palestinians should stop pretending they will ever “return” to places they…

On May 21, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Israel that its planned annexation of parts of the West Bank could lead to an escalation of violence in the region. It’s possible, of course, but history suggests that it is even more possible that such annexation would in the long term improve the chances for…