INTO THE FRAY: The Humanitarian Paradigm- Hobson’s Choice for Israel (Part I)

By MARTIN SHERMAN




Only one policy paradigm can sustain Israel as the nation-state of the Jews and prevent it becoming untenable either geographically or demographically — or both.


…when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, — Sherlock Holmes in “The Sign of the Four”


Hobson’s Choice: a situation in which it seems that you can choose between different things or actions, but there is really only one thing that you can take or do — Cambridge Dictionary


As the more-than — century old dispute between Jews and Arabs over control of the Holy Land nears its third post-Oslo decade , four archetypical approaches have emerged in the public discourse for its resolution — and one for its “management”(a.k.a. its perpetuation).


In this two-part series I will assess the merits (or lack thereof) of these various approaches –both those which endorse (full or partial) Israeli annexation of territory across the pre-1967 Green Line and those which eschew it.


Indeed as I will show — barring divine intervention (something only the more pious than myself can rely on as a policy input — of these five (four plus one) options, all but one are demonstrably incompatible with the long-term survival of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. All but one — demonstrably — do not address adequately either the geographic imperatives and/or the demographic imperatives that Israel must address to avoid becoming either geographically untenable or demographically untenable (or both).


Israel as the nation-state of the Jews


It is — or at least should be — manifestly self-evident that for Israel to endure over time as the nation-state of the Jews, it cannot (a) withdraw to geographical/topographical confines that make it impossible to maintain ongoing socio-economic routine in the country’s major commercial centers, or (b) allow the Jewish majority to be so diminished that maintenance of the Jewish nature of the state is imperiled.

Body and Soul — The State of the Jewish Nation (New York Times, April 23, 2015)

Accordingly, it is in terms of their ability to contend with these undeniable imperatives that the alternative proposals for resolution/management for the conflict must be evaluated as appropriate policy prescriptions for Israel if — at the risk of appearing repetitive — it is to retain its status as the nation-state of the Jewish people.


I belabor this point of the long-term preservation of Jewish sovereignty, as a necessary precondition for the acceptability of competing policy proposals, because if one is prepared to forego it, other proposals, which are unable to ensure such an outcome, may well be acceptable — like for instance the post-Zionist call for a non-Jewish state of all its citizens.


Bearing this brief introductory clarification in mind, let’s begin the critical analysis of the proffered alternatives, which this week I shall confine to policy proposals that eschew full or partial Israeli annexation of territory — deferring analysis of those that endorse such annexation for next week.


Managing the Conflict: Mowing the lawn won’t cut it


The conflict management approach — as opposed to conflict resolution — is ostensibly the least proactive, least provocative — and most pessimistic — largely reflecting the recent assessment of Jared Kushner that there may well be no solution to the Arab-Israeli confrontation.


In a column written last August, I pointed out the grave detriments this approach entailed, detailing how, over the last two-and- half decades, the military prowess of the terrorist organizations have developed far beyond anything imagined, and how Israel’s political positions have been drastically eroded.


Thus, when Israel left Gaza (2005), the range of the Palestinian rockets was barely 5 km., and the explosive charge they carried about 5 kg. Now, their missiles have a range of over 100 km. and warheads of around 100 kg. Likewise, when Israel left Gaza, only the sparse population in its immediate proximity was threatened by missiles. Now, well over 5 million Israelis, well beyond Tel Aviv, are menaced by them. Moreover the terror organizations have exploited periods of calm to further enhance their infrastructures and other abilities, which were barely conceivable a decade ago — including a massive tunneling enterprise and the development of naval forces, commandoes and underwater capabilities.


But it is not only in the exponential growth of the terror groups’ martial prowess that the endeavor at conflict management has been a resounding failure. The same can be said — arguably even more so — with regard to the ever-tightening political constraints Israel faces.


Mowing the lawn won’t cut it (cont.)


Perhaps one of the most dramatic and disturbing indications of just how far Israeli positions have been rolled back over the last two decades is reflected in the views articulated by Yitzhak Rabin, in his last Knesset address(October 5, 1995), a month before his assassination. In it he sought parliamentary ratification of the Oslo II Accords, then considered by much of the Israeli public as excessively dovish and dangerously concessionary.


There can be little doubt that if today, Netanyahu were to embrace, verbatim, Rabin’s 1995 prescription for a permanent accord with the Palestinian-Arabs in the “West Bank , he would be dismissed — scornfully, disparagingly and angrily — as an “unreasonable extremist”.


It of course requires little analytical acumen and a mere smidgeon of common sense to grasp that–whatever one may believe the real size of the Arab population of Judea-Samaria to be — Israel cannot keep an increasing and increasingly recalcitrant and irredentist population indefinitely in a state of suspended disenfranchised political limbo.


In this regard, it should be remembered that, today, with the changing nature of Arab enmity, the major existential challenge to Israel’s existence as the Jewish nation-state is no longer repulsing invasion, but resisting attrition — both militarily and politically.


Accordingly, by eschewing decisive proactive measures to contend with a predicament that entails a mounting threat and decreasing freedom to deal with it, “conflict management” has become a prescription for avoiding immediate confrontations that can be won, thereby risking having to contend with later confrontations that cannot be won — or can be won only at ruinous cost.


Two-States: A mega-Gaza overlooking Tel Aviv?

Tel Aviv skyline — as see from territory designated for Palestinian state

Of course, the policy paradigm which, for decades, has dominated the discourse on how to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict is that advocating a two-state outcome. Bizarrely, support for this formula has always been the sine-qua-non for admission into “polite company” while opposition to it was the perceived hallmark of the uncouth and ignorant.


Just how perverse this situation is can be gauged from the fact that there is no persuasive reason to believe — and certainly none has ever been provided by two-state proponents — that a Palestinian state will be anything other than a homophobic, misogynistic, Muslim-majority tyranny, whose hallmarks would be: gender discrimination, gay persecution, religious intolerance, and political oppression of dissidents — and which would rapidly become a bastion for Islamist terror.


After all, one might well ask, why would anyone purporting to profess to liberal values, wish to endorse the establishment of such an entity — which is clearly the utter negation of the very values invoked for its establishment?!


Readers will recall that it was in Gaza that the initial optimistic attempts to implement the two-state idea were made. So, how events unfolded there should be instructive as to how they may be expected to unfold in Judea-Samaria. For in the absence of a compelling argument to the contrary — and as mentioned, none has ever been presented — there is little reason to believe that if Israel were to evacuate the “West Bank” the outcome would not be largely similar to that which followed Israel’s evacuation of Gaza.


Indeed, unsubstantiated hope aside, there is neither sound theoretical foundation nor empirical evidence on which two-state proponents can base any prognosis for the success of their political credo.


A mega-Gaza (cont.)


Accordingly, the prudent working assumption must be that any attempt to implement the two-state principle in Judea-Samaria will result in a “mega-Gaza” — and that measures, similar to those required to protect the Israeli population in the South, would be required as well on Israel’s eastern border.

But unlike Gaza, which abuts sparsely populated, largely rural areas, the “mega-Gaza” that almost certainly will emerge in Judea-Samaria would abut Israel’s most populous urban areas. Unlike Gaza, which has no topographic superiority over adjacent Israeli territory, the prospective “mega-Gaza” in Judea-Samaria will totally command the adjacent coastal megalopolis, in which much of Israel’s vital infrastructure (both civilian and military) is located, where 80 percent of its civilian population resides and 80% of its commercial activity takes place.


But perhaps most significantly, unlike Gaza, which has only about a 50-km. front with Israel, the envisioned “mega-Gaza” in Judea-Samaria would have a front of up to almost 500 km!

Construction of Gaza security barrier:above and below ground

Accordingly, what might be expected to concentrate two-staters’ minds, more than anything is that, after evacuating Gaza, Israel is now undertaking what IDF Chief-of Staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisencott, called the “largest project” ever carried out in the history of the IDF — a wall along the entire Israel-Gaza border, not only several storeys above ground but — to contend with the tunnel threat — several storeys below it !! Now imagine a project over ten times that scale along a “mega-Gaza” in the east…


Next week: Analyzing Annexation


As mentioned, next week I will focus attention on those approaches which advocate full or partial annexations of the territories across the 1967 Green Line. In the analysis I will demonstrate that without an operational plan for dramatically reducing the Arab presence east of the Jordan River, the former will result in the Lebanonization of Israel, creating a single society so fractured by interethnic strife that it would be untenable as the nation- state of the Jewish people; while the latter will result in the Balkanization of Israel, dividing the territory up into disconnected autonomous enclaves, which will be recalcitrant, rivalrous and rejectionist, creating an ungovernable reality for Israel.


Accordingly, by a logical process of elimination, I will show that the Humanitarian Paradigm, advocating funded emigration of the Arab residents of Judea-Samaria (and eventually Gaza) is the only policy paradigm consistent with the long term survival of Israel as the nation-state of the Jews, and hence — for those dedicated to the preservation of the Zionist ideal — Hobson choice.


Martin Sherman is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

Arabs marginalize the Palestinian issue - The Ettinger Report

Yoram will be in the US in October/November, 2017 available for speaking engagements.

Arabs marginalize the Palestinian issue  Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative” www.TheEttingerReport.com, August 4, 2017, http://bit.ly/2huIdD4   The Al-Aqsa Mosque controversy has exposed, once again, the non-centrality of the Palestinian issue in the overall Arab order of priorities. Contrary to Western media headlines, Arab policy-makers and the Arab Street are not focused on Palestinian rights and Al Aqsa, but on their own chaotic, raging local and regional challenges, which are not related to the Palestinian issue. For example, while the top Palestinian religious leader, Mufti Muhammad Hussein, castigates Arab leaders for their inaction on behalf of the Al Aqsa Mosque, Egyptian President General Sisi, and the Egyptian street, are preoccupied with traumatizing economic and social decay and challenges; the dwindling level of tourism, which is a main source of national income; the lethal, domestic threat of Muslim Brotherhood terrorism; the Libyan chaos and its effective spillover into Egypt; the entrenchment of Islamic terrorism in the Sinai Peninsula, across the Gulf of Suez; the Gaza-based terrorism; the threatening collaboration of Turkey-Qatar-Iran and Turkey’s support of Hamas; the potentially-explosive border with Sudan; etc. General Sisi invests much more time in geo-strategic coordination with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, other Arab Gulf States, the US and Israel – which are perceived as critical allies in combatting terrorism - than with the Palestinian Authority, which is perceived as a destabilizing entity. According to the July 20, 2017 issue of the London-based Middle East Monitor, “Al Aqsa has been abandoned by those who profess the leadership of the Muslim World…. [Egypt’s and Saudi Arabia’s] cold indifference…is unworthy of institutions that profess to be the preeminent leaders of Muslims around the world…. The religious institutions in Makkah, Madinah and Cairo have gone absent without leave despite the dangerous situation at the Noble Sanctuary in occupied Jerusalem…. Both countries are spearheading a regional drive for full normalization of relations with Israel. Their reasoning is that friendship with Israel is the best guarantee of US support for themselves….”  The London-based Palestinian newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, published a cartoon, depicting the Arab World as an ostrich burying its head in the sand, while the Al Aqsa Mosque bleeds. Since 1948, and in defiance of Western foreign policy, academia and media establishments, the Arab/Islamic agenda has transcended the Palestinian issue. While showering the Palestinian issue with substantial talk, the Arab/Islamic walk has mostly been directed at other issues: the 1,400-year-old regional, intra-Arab/Islamic unpredictability, fragmentation, instability and intolerant violence; the Islamic Sunni terrorist machete at the throat of all pro-US Arab regimes; the clear and present danger, posed by Iran’s Ayatollahs, to the same regimes; the destructive role played by Qatar in the context of – and in assistance to - the Ayatollahs; the lethal, regional ripple effects of the disintegration of Iraq, Syria and Libya; the inherent, tectonic (disintegration) potential in every Arab regime; the impact of the global energy revolution on the potency of the Arab oil producing regimes; and the enhanced role of Israel in the battle against the aforementioned threats. The dramatic gap between the Arab walk and talk on behalf of Palestinians was particularly noticeable during the Israel-Palestinian wars of 1982 (in Lebanon), 1987-1991 (the 1st Intifada), 2000-2003 (2nd Intifada) and the Israel-Hamas wars of 2009, 2012 and 2014. Arabs have never shed blood – nor have Arabs dedicated their economic power - on behalf of Palestinians. Moreover, current Iraqi policy-makers and the Iraqi Street are well-aware of the intense Palestinian collaboration with the repressive regime of Saddam Hussein, which caused the Palestinian flight from Iraq following the fall of Saddam.  The Syrian Street has not taken kindly to the Palestinian support of the Assad regime, which has produced an expanding Palestinian emigration from Syria since the eruption of the civil war in 2011. Furthermore, most Arab policy-makers consider the well-documented subversive, terroristic Palestinian track record - against fellow Arabs - to be a potential threat to domestic and regional stability.  The Arab aim has been to reduce the number of stormy spots in the Middle East, realizing that each eruption of violence resembles a rock thrown into a pool, generating ripple effects throughout the pool, as has been documented by the Arab Tsunami, which is simmering in every Arab country. Thus, violence west of the Jordan River could have an infectious impact east of the river, posing a deadly threat to the pro-US Hashemite regime, which could spread southward to Saudi Arabia and other pro-US Arab Gulf states. In 1948-49 – as was the case in succeeding Arab-Israeli wars - Arab countries did not fight Israel on behalf of Palestinians.  Therefore, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt did not share the spoils of the 1948-49 war with Palestinians, prohibiting Palestinian activities in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza.  In fact, a Palestinian Department was established, by the Arab League, in 1949, to be dissolved in 1959. Sacrificing the complex reality of Israel-Arab relations on the altar of simplistic solutions – suggesting that the Palestinian issue is a core cause of Arab policy-making - has failed to advance the cause of peace. In order to advance the cause of Israel-Arab peace, one should study the lessons of the Al Aqsa Mosque controversy, which highlight the limited (and negative) role played by the Palestinian issue in Arab policy-making and the pursuit of peace.

Washington Post whitewashes California imam’s “Annihilate the Jews” sermon

BY ROBERT SPENCER


The Washington Post gave Linda Sarsour space to exonerate herself after she called for jihad against Donald Trump. And now it runs interference for Ammar Shahin. But would the Washington Post ever give a foe of jihad terror a chance to rebut charges from, say, the Southern Poverty Law Center? Not on your life.

“Washington Post whitewashes California Imam’s ‘Annihilate the Jews’ sermon,” by David Gerstman, Legal Insurrection, July 30, 2017:

There are few things less ambiguous than a call to kill another person. Except, apparently, at The Washington Post.

On July 21, imams Ammar Shahin of the Islamic Center of Davis (ICD) and Mahmoud Harmoush of Islamic Center of Riverside gave speeches calling for the destruction of the Jews in the context of the recent violence centered around the Temple Mount. Both imams called on Allah “to liberate Al Aqsa from the Jews.”

The speeches were brought to light by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which picked them up from the YouTube channels of both Islamic centers.

After exposure by MEMRI, news of one or both of the offending sermons were picked up The Jerusalem Post, the National Review, The Times of Israel, the Jewish Journal, the Free Beacon and various pro-Israel blogs, including Legal Insurrection and The Tower. There appears to be little or no national coverage given during the week to the sermons. (The local Davis Enterprise reported on it in middle of last week, but most national news

organizations didn’t touch the story until Friday.)

Ignoring the Controversy

On Friday, Michelle Boorstein, the Post’s religion reporter covered the apology of Sheikh Ammar Shahin, the imam of the mosque, at the Islamic Center of Davis (ICD), in California, for giving an anti-Semitic sermon a week earlier.

For a full week The Washington Post was silent about this crude anti-Semitism. Only a week later did the Post cover it and a number of things are readily apparent.
The Post only reported once Shahin offered a dubious apology.
The Post never reported on Harmoush’s sermon. Harmoush did not apologize.
The Post reported uncritically a false claim made by Shahin and one of his supporters.
The Post got an expert to reinterpret part of his sermon so that it was somewhat less offensive.

The first two items are related. The news, which was first reported by MEMRI, on July 21 was that two California imams gave virulently anti-Semitic speeches calling for the killing of the Jews. That was the news.

The Post had a whole week to be aware of this news before Shahin’s “apology” press conference, but only reported on the sermon once an apology was in hand and damage control effort had begun. The fact that the speech by Harmoush, who to the best of my knowledge never apologized, was ignored makes it less likely that this was an accident.

Reporting the Apology with Sympathy, and Ignoring Root Causes

In the course of the article Boorstein reported ,”In the hour-long sermon, the 31-year-old Shahin focused on the standoff at the site and called Muslims to come together to protest the closure there.”

Later she quoted a worshiper from the mosque who said that he was disgusted “by the action of the Israeli government in preventing Muslim people from doing their prayers in the Masjid Al-Aqsa.”

But it wasn’t the Israeli government that closed the mosque (except in the immediate aftermath of the killings of two police officers there by a gang of three terrorists), Muslims stayed away from the mosque on account of boycott called by the head of the Waqf, the Jordanian religious trust that administers the site.

(I pointed this out to Boorstein on Twitter, she responded that it wasn’t her job to correct the inaccuracies as she linked to the reporting from Israel and this story was about what happened in Davis. Shahin, as her own reporting attests, made the false claim, so its inaccuracy is central to the story and should have been reported on.)

In case people were unconvinced by Shahin’s apology:

A Northern California imam whose widely distributed sermon about Jews in disputed Jerusalem set off controversy and fear of violence apologized at a Friday news conference, saying his words were hurtful and “unacceptable.”
“To the Jewish community, here in Davis and beyond, I say this: I am deeply sorry for the pain that I have caused. The last thing I would do is intentionally hurt anyone, Muslim, Jewish or otherwise. It is not in my heart, nor does my religion allow it,” Ammar Shahin said in his statement. …
“Commitment to defending religious rights in Jerusalem should not cause division or fan the flames of anti-Semitism,” Shahin said at Friday’s news conference. “Today, I commit to working harder and will join efforts for mutual understanding and building bridges. As a young religious leader, this has humbled me.”

Boorstein got an expert to re-translate part of Shahin’s speech so it would fit the imam’s new interpretation:

Nazir Harb Michel, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding in Arab and Islamic Studies, translated one passage in the imam’s sermon this way:

“O God, liberate the al-Aqsa mosque from the desecrations of the Jews. O God, upon you is the handling of those who closed the al-Aqsa mosque. O God, defeat each of them and count them all, and don’t leave any of them out.”

That’s certainly not as offensive as:

Oh Allah, support the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the rest of the Muslim lands. Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews. Oh Allah, destroy those who closed the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon them, and the wonders of Your ability. Oh Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them.

but I suspect that Michel is taking a good deal of literary license with his interpretation. Is it a reporter’s job to seek advocates of a controversial figure and republish those remarks uncritically?

What no one seems to dispute is that elsewhere in the speech Shahin spoke in very unambiguous terms about the destruction of the Jews.

When that war breaks out, they will run and hide behind every rock, and house, and wall, and trees. The house, the wall, and the trees will call upon the Muslims. It will say: Oh Muslim… It will not say: Oh Palestinian, oh Egyptian, oh Syrian, oh Afghan, oh Pakistani, oh Indian… No, it will say: Oh Muslim. Muslim. When Muslims come back… ‘Come, there is someone behind me – except for the Gharqad tree, which is the tree of the Jews. Except for a certain tree that they are growing today in Palestine, in that area, except this form of tree, which they are growing today… That’s the tree that will not speak to the Muslims.

This hadith (saying attributed to Mohammed), along with some embellishments added by Shahin, is one that is cited in the Hamas covenant, saying that all Jews will be destroyed on Judgment day.

Furthermore, it may be possible to excuse Shahin if all he said that his call for Allah to deal with the Jews. But he said more than that. Shahin also prayed, “Oh Allah, make this happen by our hands. Let us play a part in this.” This isn’t simply a prayer for God to settle accounts with the Jews, it is literally a call to arms of his listeners to physically take part in liberating Al Aqsa.

It looks like Boorstein did her best to reduce Shahin’s inflammatory sermon to a political commentary delivered by someone who was understandably upset by the actions of the Israeli government….

Egypt: Muslim military officers beat soldier to death upon learning he was Christian

BY ROBERT SPENCER


Imagine the outcry, the entirely justified international uproar, that would ensue if Christian officers had beat a Muslim soldier to death. But this incident will pass largely unnoticed.



“Soldier Beaten to Death for His Christian Faith, Relatives Say,” Morning Star News, July 27, 2017 (thanks to the Geller Report):


CAIRO (Morning Star News) – Egyptian military officers beat a new soldier to death on July 19 upon learning that he was a Christian, relatives said.

Joseph Reda Helmy of Kafr Darwish village, Beni Suef Governorate, had just completed training at Mobarak military training center and was transferred to Al-Salaam special forces police unit, where three officers killed him, relatives told Middle Eastern media. The Egyptian army told relatives Helmy died of an epileptic seizure.

His father, Reda Helmy, told Al Karma TV by phone that his large, strong son had arrived at the camp at 2 p.m. and was dead by 8 p.m. In the same program, the deceased’s cousin, Youssef Zarif, said he received a message at 2 a.m. on July 20 from the Ministry of Interior to come and retrieve Helmy’s body.

When Zarif arrived, he asked to meet an officer and was initially rebuffed. Eventually he met with an officer who told him that Helmy had died of an epileptic seizure. Zarif refused to believe the army explanation, saying Helmy was a healthy, quiet person loved by all in his village of Christians and Muslims. The heavily Muslim country has population that is about 10 percent Christian.

He told Al Karma that the extensive bruising he found on the body did not look like those of an epileptic episode. He said Helmy had bruises on his head, shoulders, neck, back and genitalia, with the worst injuries occurring on his back.

The doctor who examined the body refused to bow to pressure from those who brought it and reported that the cause of death was not natural, Zarif said. A prosecutor accompanying the family firmly concurred and demanded an investigation, he said.

Zarif said he thanked the doctor and prosecutor for not trying to cover up the truth.

The three officers who attacked his cousin are in custody and under investigation, he said.

Zarif said he learned from police and other soldiers that the three officers began to harass Helmy because of his Christian faith, and that the marks on his body indicate they kicked him with their boots and hit him with heavy instruments.

Another cousin, Malak Youakim, confirmed the killing to Alhorreya.TV. Youakim also said Helmy was attacked for his Christian faith.

A Christian leader in Helmy’s home village said many there are in mourning.

“Many women are wearing black, a sign of mourning for the death of one of their Coptic youth,” he told Morning Star News. “Many are sharing the graphic pictures of the bruised body of Joseph Reda Helmy, a new draftee doing his military service.”

He said Helmy had been in the army for only month when he died on July 19.

Several other Coptic Christians have died for their faith while serving in the Egyptian military. On Feb. 17, 2016, the Egyptian military informed the family of Michael Gamel Mansour that the 22-year-old conscript from Assuit had committed suicide. Authorities claimed Mansour, who was assigned to a unit that guards El Gomhoreya Stadium in Cairo, shot himself with a rifle. They asserted that moments before his suicide, Mansour became despondent after a telephone conversation with members of his family….

Is Tillerson Protecting the Muslim Brotherhood - BREITBART

BREITBART

The Trump Administration hasn’t designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization as it was expected to do.

Designation falls under the purview of Secretary of State Tillerson, who has chosen the Muslim Brotherhood;and its backers in Qatar and Turkey over their Arab rivals.

Tillerson recently signaled his opposition to designating the Muslim Brotherhood in mid-June. He only has negative things to say about the idea.

His main point is that the Brotherhood’s political parties have representatives in governments like those in Bahrain and Turkey. That is irrelevant. If it was such a problem, Bahrain itself wouldn’t have banned the Brotherhood and the U.S. wouldn’t be dealing with the Lebanese government that has Hezbollah in it, which is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Tillerson also repeated the “non-violent” and “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood propaganda. He claimed that the Brotherhood’s political parties in governments “have become so by renouncing violence and terrorism.” That was false when the Obama Administration said it, and it is false now.

The disappointment in Tillerson’s position is made exponentially greater by the fact that now is an optimum time to designate the group.

The Arab world is putting unprecedented pressure on Qatar over its support of the Brotherhood and other jihadists in the Islamist swarm. Muslim foes of the Brotherhood are left wondering where the U.S.stands because Trump and Tillerson aren’t on the same page.

Counter-terrorism expert Patrick Poole goes so far as to assert that Tillerson is “sabotaging” Trump’s foreign policy and urges his departure from the administration.

While President Trump expressed his support for the Arab measures against Qatar and unequivocally described Qatar as a major terrorism-financier, Tillerson did the opposite. He described Qatar as “very reasonable” in its reaction to the Arabs’ pressure.

Read the full story at the Clarion Project.
Ryan Mauro is ClarionProject.org’s Shillman Fellow and national security analyst and an adjunct professor of counter-terrorism. He is frequently interviewed on top-tier television and radio.

How Were the Temple Mount Killings Reported in America’s Media?

by Dr. Eric Mandel, MEPIN



Israel has been getting some bad press recently in the United States, much of it self-inflicted by the decision to halt the expansion of the pluralistic prayer area near Robinson’s Arch on the Western Wall.

Editor's note: this is thanks to American Jeary not taking a firmer stance on safeguarding the status of the Western Wall for three thousand years...

Fair enough, but much of the reporting on Israel and its neighbors by mainstream media sources is factually inaccurate, misleadingly out of context or editorialized to promote a view.

The reporting on the Temple Mount violence is a good case in point.

NPR News Now morning report on July 24th told its listeners three Palestinians and three Israelis were killed in the aftermath of new Israeli security measures relating to the Al Aqsa Mosque. The killings of the Israeli police that precipitated the security measures, or the massacre of Israeli civilians during a Shabbat dinner in the aftermath of the highly charged incitement didn’t merit a word for context.

It really is quite a feat to put both moral equivalence and overt bias all into one short report.

Not to be outdone, PBS Newshour anchor Judy Woodruff said the (Jordanian) “dispute added to tension over new security measures at the al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, they sparked protests on Friday and several Palestinians were killed.”

Again, there was no mention of the root cause of the violence that began with the killing of two Israeli Druze police officers by Israeli Arab citizens who smuggled weapons onto the Temple Mount, breaking the fragile peace in this religiously charged site.

CBC Radio perversely reported that “three Israeli settlers also died in a separate incident in the west bank” insinuating it’s always open season to kill settlers, i.e., trespassing occupiers.

The NY Times headline “Deadly violence erupts,” as if de novo Palestinians and Jews kill each other with no one to blame. The Palestinians killed were described as “protesters.” There were five photos accompanying the article that were good examples of editorialized photojournalism, a fraud perpetrated on the public, who understandably expect news reporting, including its choice of pictures, to be fair and unbiased in context.

The Times web page shows Palestinians cowering and screaming as they run away from Israeli tear gas. Muslims are seen in respectful peaceful prayer. There are two photos of Israeli police in riot gear dragging away a single pitiful Palestinian protester, and one photo of heroic-appearing rock-throwing Palestinians in the image of David vs. Goliath. Mind you, this was in a news article, not an editorial.

The Times continues its long history of finding the good side of Palestinian terrorists, in this case that the terrorist signed off on his Facebook page with emoji hearts before massacring a family enjoying a Sabbath dinner.

The Wall Street Journal news section, not to be confused with its consistently more pro-Israel editorial page, joined the moral equivalence crowd writing, “A weekend of violence left three Israelis and at least three Palestinians dead.” Again there was no differentiation made between violent protesters and innocent Israeli civilians.

Nowhere in the mainstream American media was there any sensible investigative reporting regarding the placement of metal detectors at other Muslim sensitive sites, the question being whether the Israeli decision was egregious or overly provocative.

As any freshman journalism student could have easily found all over the internet, metal detectors and all kinds of security devices are used at Muslim holy sites all around the Arab world, since Muslim-against-Muslim violence is ubiquitous at Muslim holy sites throughout the Middle East, even at Islam’s most holy site in Mecca, where scores of people have been killed, one segment of Islam warring against another.

As Jonathan Tobin wrote in JNS, “To an objective observer, the crisis…makes no sense…. How could putting metal detectors to protect a holy site be considered a casus belli …the answer is that this isn’t about metal detectors. It’s about something much bigger: the right of Jews to be in Jerusalem.”

The media have ignored the larger issue that President Abbas may be imitating his mentor Arafat, who used the Temple Mount as a starting point for Intifada.

Abbas has decided to “ride the recent wave of unrest…and lead the struggle against Israel over the Al Aqsa Mosque” reports the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Instead of defusing the situation after the metal detectors were removed, Abbas continued his incitement saying, “Jerusalem is ours and it is our capital. What you are doing is correct and…(I) support all that you did and are doing.” There were no calls for only exclusively peaceful protests.

Abbas is mobilizing the anger on the Palestinian street to deflect attention away from his Fatah rival Mohammed Dahlen and from Hamas, who is still seen as a less corrupt alternative to the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas is also using the unrest to turn the attention away from Congress’ demand (the Taylor Force Legislation) that the PA stop funding Palestinian terrorists, i.e. martyrs, who are incentivized with more money, the more heinous the terror they commit.

The decision to install metal detectors after a terrorist incident seems obvious to any Western observer who is forced to go through them all the time. I go through a metal detector to enter my Conservative synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan every time.

However, in this part of the world sensibilities are distorted, and respect for differing narratives is in short supply, especially after generations of incitement and brainwashing in the Arab population.

It is ironic that the main impetus for the use of metal detectors has been Palestinians themselves, who hijacked scores of airliners in the 1960’s through the 1970’s, with death and mayhem accompanying their “freedom fight.”

As Beni Avi wrote in the NY Post, “Are they really going to start World War III over metal detectors? Mecca, which is a holy site, has metal detectors. And the Vatican. And many buildings in Manhattan and around the U.S. Yet on Monday the UN Security Council convened an “emergency” session on this new “threat to international peace and security.”

American democracy is an ongoing experiment, and an unbiased media is essential for its continued vitality. Picking and choosing which facts to report based on a viewpoint is fine for editorials, but not in a news article.

In the 1990’s I interviewed a Pulitzer Prize winner journalist who told me that injecting your own opinion into news stories is now considered good journalism. I was appalled. When I asked one of the leading writers of Haaretz if he was against editorialized news in his paper, he told me that if I didn’t like it I should read another paper!

Americans and Israelis deserve and require factually accurate and in-context news reporting on all topics, especially on the hotly charged topic of Israel, where bias against Israel is a given throughout most of the world.