יום חמישי, 30 באפריל 2020

Elder of Ziyon Libyan TV approvingly shows people beating up fake "Israeli" reporters

Elder of Ziyon Libyan TV approvingly shows people beating up fake "Israeli" reporters

Link to Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Libyan TV approvingly shows people beating up fake "Israeli" reporters

Posted: 30 Apr 2020 08:46 AM PDT



This was shown on Libyan TV, where a "reporter" with a crude Israeli flag microphone asked shopkeepers if they thought Libya should trade with Israel.

In the segments we can see, the "reporter" was berated and beaten, to the delight of viewers.




(h/t iTi)


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When speaking to Jews as human beings is a worse sin than genocide

Posted: 30 Apr 2020 07:00 AM PDT



Electronic Intifada published an article from Hind Khoudary, cashing in on her fame from informing Hamas about a Zoom meeting between Gaza and Israeli peace activists, resulting in the abduction and disappearance of Rami Aman three weeks ago.

Khoudary, a former Amnesty contractor who described herself as a human rights activist until this incident, shows off the insanity that is the accepted Palestinian mentality - and this is accepted by the anti-Israel crowd as if it makes sense.

Her article includes these examples of what only can be described as psychological illness.

She describes her reaction to hearing Aman in the Zoom meeting say that most Gazans want peace with Israel: "I grew so angry listening to this meeting, I started to shake. This was normalization, pure and simple. To me, there is no greater sin."

 No greater sin than Arabs speaking to Jews on Zoom as if they are human beings? Of Arabs seeking peace through dialogue?

Worse than gang rapes? Worse than genocide? Worse than blowing up buses and hotels and pizza shops filled with kids?

To Khoudary and Electronic Intifada, that is indeed the case.

She doubles down:
I believe that the worst sin any Palestinian can commit is normalization.
She paints herself as a victim:
I know that what happened may affect my future career, my relationship with international organizations I've worked with before, even my online presence. I have already been kicked out of a couple of online journalism groups.
But she knows that she has equally insane haters who share her pathology of Jew-hatred:
But I've also received a lot of support from Palestinians, ordinary folk, journalists and political activists.
And she breezily dismisses anyone who disagrees:
And to those who ask how resolution and peace can ever be reached without "dialogue," the answer is simple: Peace begins when occupation ends.
Besides the absurdity of demanding that Israel just give back land without negotiations, Khoudary betrays what she considers "occupation" to be - and to her, it didn't start in 1967. She wrote earlier, "The root cause of Palestinian misery is the creation of the State of Israel."

Which means that she is not demanding Israel end "occupation" - she is demanding that Israel dismantle itself.

Only then, she says, could there be peace.

This is the reason the Arab world has grown tired of the Palestinian issue. Israel has given the Palestinians land and self-rule - more than any Arab regime has ever given any of their many minorities - and the response has been terror, rejectionism and demands way beyond the foolhardy Israeli peace offers of years past.

Khoudary's rants hurt her cause more than she can even imagine.

People like Khoudary think that they have support because a fringe of crazed anti-Israel activists show support for her extremist positions. Similarly, Palestinians still pretend they have support because the UN and the Arab League still issues statements bashing Israel and expressing solidarity with Palestinians. But they are closing their eyes to the truth - the Arab world and the Arab street are sick of them and their refusal to accept peace.

As long as Khoudary is being positioned as a spokesperson for Palestinians at sites like EI. even the Europeans will start to follow suit and give up on the idea of statehood for immature, intransigent Palestinians.

In that sense, I welcome Knoudary's screed where she claims that speaking to Israeli Jewish leftists is a worse crime than murdering Jews.  I welcome Electronic Intifada publishing such pieces.  Even as they think that they are bolstering their case (just as there was a fringe who used to justify Palestinian terror in the early 2000s) in reality they are the ones who are hammering the nails in the coffin of the Palestinian cause.

Any Palestinians who truly want peace, who truly want a peaceful Palestinian state side by side with Israel, should be in the forefront of denouncing Khoudary and her fans. It is a shame that such people are so hard to find.



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That elusive, magic moment when the Judea and Samaria became "occupied Palestinian territories"

Posted: 30 Apr 2020 05:00 AM PDT

This week was the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference that provides the legal basis for Israel's ownership of Judea and Samaria. I've never seen a convincing argument otherwise.

The international community has not accepted that reasoning, but it is an interesting exercise to figure out exactly how the world - specifically, the UN - has looked at Judea and Samaria over the years.

When did the territory become "Palestinian?"

When Israel regained that land in 1967, nobody referred to it and Gaza as "Palestinian territories."

The media sometimes called it "Israeli-occupied Jordan."  But practically no one in the world accepted Jordan's annexation of the territory in 1950, and the UN certainly didn't.

UN resolutions in the 1970s referred to "Occupied Arab Territories" but that was because they were including the Sinai and Golan Heights which no one considers to be "Palestinian." Often the documents punted on the idea of exactly whose territories were being occupied by saying "Occupied West Bank."

One might think that the date that they became "Occupied Palestinian Territories," which the UN still refers to routinely as the "oPt." would be the date that Jordan formally gave up its claims on Judea and Samaria in 1988 and recognized the PLO as the sovereign of the territory. Even though Jordan itself had no legal right over the territory, perhaps that was the fig leaf that the UN used?

However, the UN started referring to the west bank of the Jordan as "occupied Palestinian territory" years before. The earliest I can find is from the report of an international conference on the question of Palestine in 1983, which refers to "occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories."  (I found an earlier reference to the phrase in 1981 but it was from a speech by a Jordanian delegate to the UN and not from an official UN document.)

Also interestingly, the UN archive system seems to have changed the titles of some documents to refer to the "situation in the OPT" as early as 1979, but the documents themselves use no such language. Perhaps the UN archivist is trying to retroactively change history, but I'm not sure why they might have chosen 1979 as the start date.




If one does not accept Israel's argument from international law from San Remo, then there must be a date that the territories transferred to become "Palestinian." Transfer of territory is a legal matter that requires a legal transaction, whether it is a war or an agreement or an annexation. For those who do not accept Israel's claim, there is great confusion as to who legally owned the territory after the Ottoman Empire collapsed - was it the British? The League of Nations? And then, after 1948, was it Jordan?

But besides the Palestinians themselves, no one said that the territory was Palestinian - until the 1980s when the idea gained currency.

I still can't find that magic moment when the UN and the international community collectively decided that the land belonged to the PLO terror group, or to a people who nobody recognized as a people before the 1950s.

This indicates that the purported Palestinian ownership of the land has been more propaganda than law.




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יום רביעי, 29 באפריל 2020

Elder of Ziyon IfNotNow and Gisha claim Gaza is occupied. The @ICRC's definition disagrees - but the ICRC changes the rule for Gaza alone. (Daled Amos)

Elder of Ziyon IfNotNow and Gisha claim Gaza is occupied. The @ICRC's definition disagrees - but the ICRC changes the rule for Gaza alone. (Daled Amos)

Link to Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

IfNotNow and Gisha claim Gaza is occupied. The @ICRC's definition disagrees - but the ICRC changes the rule for Gaza alone. (Daled Amos)

Posted: 29 Apr 2020 07:26 AM PDT

By Daled Amos


The fringe group If Not Now has found a new way to draw attention to itself this week:


Their argument is presented in a bulleted list:
o Israel controls Gaza's air and coastline, and six of Gaza's seven land crossings. --
This is according to Gisha. We will discuss the issue of "control" below.

o Israel reserves the right to enter Gaza at will with its military and maintains a no-go buffer zone within the Gaza territory. --
It's not immediately clear what the source is, but we can all agree that Israel reserves the right to defend itself against Hamas terror attacks.

o Israel controls Electricity: At certain points during the blockade, Gaza had electricity for only 4 hours a day  --
 but this is based on a Haaretz article from 2 years ago, that specifically says the reason is a temporary lack of diesel fuel

o Israel controls Water Supply: Less than 4% of water in Gaza is drinkable at this point --
"At this point"? But the Oxfam article used as the source, though undated, is from June 2017 according to the HTML code.

o Israel controls the Internet: the internet in Gaza is only available when electricity is available --
this is from Al-Monitor, which doesn't sink to accusing Israel of diabolical "control of the Internet" 
Their tweet includes a map from Gisha detailing the Israeli blockade of Gazan fishing -- up to 2016.

Also, note If Not Now hedges its bet by claiming that Israel is either occupying Gaza or exercising control.

Their basic argument seems to come from Gisha, which has a position paper from 2011 with an executive summary here, where they make their case, also heavily stressing that Israel has "control":
In 2007, Gisha published "Disengaged Occupiers: The Legal Status of Gaza", a position paper in which it argued that the law of occupation continues to apply to all Israeli actions toward the Gaza Strip due to the significant control it still exercises over Gaza. "Scale of Control: Israel's Continued Responsibility in the Gaza Strip" updates our previous legal analysis and adapts it to reflect the changes on the  round and in the patterns of control exercised over the Gaza Strip by the various actors  since 2007, including as a result of the Hamas movement's takeover of internal  control in Gaza.

This position paper illustrates how despite recent developments, Israel continues to control Gaza's airspace and territorial waters, the Palestinian population registry and passage of goods and people to and from Gaza. Israel still collects customs and value added tax for goods entering the Gaza Strip and maintains some physical presence in the Strip. Israel also controls Gaza's infrastructure by virtue of its control over supply of electricity and other inputs to the system. [emphasis added]
The thing is, the European Court of Human Rights refuted this argument in 2015.

Marko Milanovic, who writes "EJIL:Talk!: Blog of the European Journal of Int'l Law" wrote a post in 2015 'European Court Decides Israel Is Not Occupying Gaza.' The case is Azerbaijan's claim that Gulistan is occupied by Armenia. In order to address the issues involved, the court defines what constitutes occupation.

And that is where things get interesting.

Milanovic quotes from the court decision in CASE OF SARGSYAN v. AZERBAIJAN, which notes that occupation requires foreign troops "with boots on the ground."
Military occupation is considered to exist in a territory, or part of a territory, if the following elements can be demonstrated: the presence of foreign troops, which are in a position to exercise effective control without the consent of the sovereign. According to widespread expert opinion physical presence of foreign troops is a sine qua non requirement of occupation[2], that is, occupation is not conceivable without "boots on the ground", therefore forces exercising naval or air control through a naval or air blockade do not suffice. [emphasis added]
The source for that "widespread expert opinion" requiring the physical presence of foreign troops -- in refutation of If Not Now -- is The International Red Cross (ICRC):
2Most experts consulted by the ICRC in the context of the project on occupation and other forms of administration of foreign territory agreed that "boots on the ground" are needed for the establishment of occupation – see T. Ferraro, "Expert Meeting: Occupation and Other Forms of Administration of Foreign Territory" (Geneva: ICRC, 2012), at pp. 10, 17 and 33; see also E. Benvenisti, cited avove [sic], at pp. 43 et seq.; V. Koutroulis, Le début et la fin de l'application du droit de l'occupation (Paris: Éditions Pedone, 2010), at pp. 35-41. [emphasis added]
In its decision, the European Court, indicates that w/o the presence of troops, there is neither occupation nor "effective control," refuting both of If Not Now's own myths:
144. The Court notes that under international law (in particular Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations) a territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of a hostile army, "actual authority" being widely considered as translating to effective control and requiring such elements as presence of foreign troops, which are in a position to exercise effective control without the consent of the sovereign (see paragraph 94 above). On the basis of all the material before it and having regard to the above establishment of facts, the Court finds that Gulistan is not occupied by or under the effective control of foreign forces as this would require a presence of foreign troops in Gulistan. [emphasis added]
Milanovic puts it all together:
See what I meant? Replace "Gulistan" with "Gaza", and there you have it!...I also very much doubt that the judges were really aware of the implications a categorical statement such as the one made here will have on the whole Gaza debate. If they were, I imagine that they would have avoided it like the plague.
A key part of the decision is that it not only decides that a physical presence is necessary, with boots on the ground, but it also directly refutes both If Not Now and Gisha by making clear that "forces exercising naval or air control through a naval or air blockade do not suffice."

The term "control" is, in any case, a nebulous concept. In that ICRC report which found the majority of legal experts require a physical presence, there is this footnote:
The notion of "effective control" is not found in treaty law; it reflects an idea developed in the legal discourse pertaining to occupation to describe the circumstances and conditions under which one could determine the existence of a state of occupation under IHL. As such, effective control is reached when the three criteria derived from Article 42 of the Hague Regulations of 1907 – and discussed infra in the report – are fulfilled [ (1) foreign forces are physically present in the territory of a State without its consent; (2) the authorities of the latter State lack the capacity to exercise authority in the territory; and (3) the foreign forces have the capacity to exercise authority over the territory]. (p. 17) [emphasis added]
All this is not to say that there are no legal opinions that agree with If Not Now -- the footnote quoting the ICRC indicated a majority opinion, not a unanimous one. And there may be a time that a court of international law decides that "control" without "boots" is enough. The point is that international law is based on precedent, and this legal decision by the European Court of Human Rights provides exactly that.

But another issue remains.

Forget about If Not Now and Gisha -- what about the International Red Cross itself?

In that Gisha report, it says on the bottom of page 29:
Contrary to the Supreme Court of Israel, international organizations such as the UN48 and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)49 continue to consider Gaza to be occupied territory...
Here is the source Gisha uses for the ICRC:
See for example, a news release issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which defines the Gaza closure as "collective punishment": Gaza closure, Not Another Year!, INT'L COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS, June 14, 2010, at: www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/update/palestine-update-140610.htm. See also posts on the ICRC website in which Gaza is defined as an occupied territory: "In 2010, the ICRC reminded the Israeli authorities of their responsibilities under IHL towards the people under Israeli occupation and called for an end to the Gaza blockade". The ICRC in Israel and the Occupied Territories, International Committee of the Red Cross, 2010 at: www.icrc.org/eng/where-we-work/middle-east/israel-occupied-territories/index.jsp. [emphasis added]
This self-contradiction in the ICRC was already noticed in 2013 by Elder of Ziyon, in a post where he pointed out how the ICRC found a consensus of experts that Gaza was not occupied -- yet still claimed that it was. He also links to an earlier post by Marko Milanovic in 2009, making the point that occupation, in fact, does require troops on the ground.

Juan-Pedro Schaerer, ICRC Head of Delegation Israel and the Occupied Territories, responded to Elder of Ziyon's post:
The ICRC closely monitors developments in the Gaza Strip, since facts on the ground are crucial to determining whether the elements of effective control required for occupation continue to be met. While it cannot be said that the Gaza Strip is a "classic" situation of occupation, Israel has not entirely relinquished its effective control over the Strip. This control includes amongst other the almost total control over the borders of the Gaza Strip (except for the border with Egypt), the control over the airspace and the entire coast line, the control over who can move out of the Gaza Strip, the control of the population register, control over all the items that can be imported and exported from the Strip and the control over a no-go zone along the Gaza fence inside the Gaza Strip. These facts and others allow ICRC to determine that Israel exercises effective control and therefore remains bound by the law of occupation in the case of Gaza.
In other words, despite the consensus in the ICRC's own report, they are intent on making a special case out of Gaza.

As Elder of Ziyon notes, it is one thing when the UN mischaracterizes Gaza --
In the case of the ICRC, it is worse. Because the ICRC acts like it is the ultimate authority on international humanitarian law, so when it says Gaza is occupied - against the legal reasoning of the experts it consulted* - it has gravitas.
The issue becomes more interesting in a follow-up post he writes, A legal scholar details ICRC bias against Israel over "occupation" of Gaza, quoting Professor Avi Bell, an expert in international law who has written on the topic.

Prof. Bell notes:
The argument first used by Mr. Schaerer was taken near verbatim from one invented by Gisha, a political pro-Palestinian NGO. It is not an argument that has any basis in general international law.

Mr. Schaerer's argument consisted of a list of factual assertions, some of which are obviously correct but irrelevant (yes, Israel controls Israel's own land borders with Gaza), and some of which are obviously both false and irrelevant (no, Israel does not "control … all the items that can be imported and exported from the Strip" – Gaza imports and exports goods through its land borders with Egypt).

None of the factual assertions relate to the generally understood legal criteria for effective control as understood in international law, as ICRC officials would readily acknowledge if Israel were not in the dock. [emphasis added]
Rather than Gisha merely using the ICRC as a source in its report, their relationship appears to be symbiotic.

And, like If Not Now, Schaerer is so intent in emphasizing Israeli "control" that he get some details wrong.

Another point to keep in mind is that as mentioned earlier, that footnote in the ICRC report notes that "control" is an abstract idea and not originating in treaty law, which may be why it is anchored in those 3 criteria -- possibly to curb the kind of loose interpretation that the ICRC is using.

Another indication of the weakness of the ICRC's defense of its contradictory position is found in a second clarification that Schaerer sent:
In response to your comments and for the purpose of clarification, I wish to emphasize that the ICRC does not maintain that Israel has retained all elements of authority and governmental functions in Gaza. Rather, our position is that even after the withdrawal of its forces in 2005 Israel continues to exercise effective control over certain key elements of authority in Gaza and therefore remains bound by obligations under the law of occupation within the territorial and functional limits of the competences it has retained. This reflects a functional approach to the law of occupation that emanates from the underlying purpose and rationale of that body of law. In simplified terms it means that to the extent that an occupying power retains control of key functions and authorities in the occupied territory it also remains bound by the relevant provisions of the law of occupation. Where there is control there is responsibility. For an elaboration on this see T. Ferraro, Determining the beginning and end of an occupation under international humanitarian law, 94 IRRC 133, 159 (available online here:)
Prof. Bell points out, Schaerer clarification only makes matters worse:
Mr. Schaerer's "clarification" is even more mystifying. He appears to be saying that the ICRC acknowledges that Gaza is not occupied by Israel, but that the ICRC claims that Israel can still be bound by some of the rules of belligerent occupation due to legally insufficient effective control. This is a novel theory that was advanced by Gisha after its earlier arguments that Israel "occupies" Gaza found no support among legal scholars not pre-committed to the Palestinian side. Needless to say, Gisha's new theory has no basis in the text of any treaties, and it has never been applied against any other country in recorded history. In other words, it is a brand-new anti-Israel theory aimed to create legal duties that restrict the conduct of the Jewish state, but not of any other state in the world. [emphasis added]
Schaerer's attempt to defend ICRC's disregard for its own report by claiming a "functional approach" is making a difference without a distinction -- Prof. Bell notes that "I cannot find a single public statement of the ICRC that acknowledges that Gaza is not actually belligerently occupied by Israel."

This novel distinction is apparently only for the benefit of readers of the blog and makes no real practical difference in international law, except for the purpose of singling out Israel.

Despite all its scrambling in an effort to escape from the blatant discrepancy between its own report and its actions, in the end The International Red Cross reveals itself as a biased, as opposed to a neutral, organization.


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Why is the @ICRC glorifying the matriarch of a terrorist family?

Posted: 29 Apr 2020 04:34 AM PDT

Yesterday, the International Committee of the Red Cross tweeted:



A poor old woman, pining to visit her son in prison, but she is being stopped. How sad.

Except that there is no difference between her and pretty much everyone else on the planet who cannot visit their relatives. What makes her situation any different? Prisoners in Israel can and do make phone calls, the same way we are all getting by with phone calls. The COVID-19 restrictions are meant to save people like this old woman.

On first glance, this tweet seems like a gratuitous effort to keep the plight of Palestinian prisoners in the spotlight when the world has other issues to deal with.

On second glance, this is much worse.

The unnamed woman was profiled by the ICRC last year, giving only her first name, Mayzouna. They did a photo essay on her visiting her son, where she told them that she lost her eyesight four years ago after a stroke but has not told her son when she visits him.

Yet the photos shows her looking at her outfit to wear, looking out the window of the bus, walking unaided.

A little research shows that this is Mayzouna Ben Srour, and the son she is visiting is Nasser Abu Srour, who along with his brother Mahmoud and another relative murdered a Shin Bet handler for yet another relative. In 2016, when 19-year old Abad al-Hamid Abu Srour killed himself with a bomb on a Jerusalem bus, Times of Israel ran through the family history:

Abad al-Hamid Abu Srour is not just another "lone wolf" terrorist. He was known to Palestinian security forces, and possibly the Israelis too; one of his family members was killed during recently during clashes with Israeli security forces not far from his home near Bethlehem.

His last name is well known among operatives in the Shin Bet security service: In January 1993, Maher Abu Srour, a Palestinian informant who comes from the same clan, along with two members of his family, Nasser and Mahmoud Abu Srour, killed his Shin Bet coordinator Chaim Nachmani.

Maher had made an appointment with Nachmani in a safe house in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Rehavia. When he arrived, Abu Srour charged at Nachmani with a knife before his two family members joined him to finish off the murder. A week later, Nasser and Mahmoud were arrested but Maher repeatedly evaded arrest by Israeli security forces until he was killed while trying to carry out another attack five months later in Jerusalem's French Hill neighborhood.
There was an article in the Washington Post about the family:

But his relatives said Abu Srour was more of a Palestinian preppy, the scion of a well-to-do and well-known clan of eight prosperous brothers, who own and operate a string of furniture outlets and are rich enough to take their young sons for holidays in Jordan and to set them up with their own shops selling clothes.

"We are financially comfortable, you could say very comfortable," said his uncle Mahmoud Abu Srour, who was gathered with relatives in a courtyard at a family house in Bethlehem awaiting the return of his nephew's body so they could bury him.

Abu Scour's teenage cousins listened to their uncles speak but kept silent. They wore pricey watches, skinny jeans and fancy sneakers.
Mayzouna is part of a family that is not poor, not desperate and quite well-off.

Even though some of them still choose to live in the Aida "refugee camp" where UNRWA provides free housing.

The story doesn't end there. Mayzouna is a celebrity, a go-to person for interviews by dozens of news outlets, as a symbol of Palestinian suffering.

She spoke to Russia Today about being a witness to the "Nakba." She told Mondoweiss that money from the PLO paid for Nasser's bachelors and masters degrees from Hebrew University while in prison and how the family couldn't afford for him to even buy olive oil from the prison canteen if it wasn't for the program now known as "pay for slay." Only last month she described how she is dealing with being under closure for the pandemic and she told Arab media that no one should complain about being in quarantine since her son has been in prison for 27 years.

In 2018, she was scheduled to travel to Ireland to speak about the plight of the Palestinians. The PLO has sent high-ranking officials to honor her for mothering a terrorist.

This is who the ICRC is choosing to highlight as an example of the cruelty of the Israelis and the coronavirus.

(h/t iTi)
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Proud to Be a Zionist, 2020 edition

Posted: 29 Apr 2020 02:45 AM PDT



I wrote the original essay around 2002 and I have been modifying it since then. Here is this year's version:
========================

I am a Zionist and I am proud of it.

I know that Israel has the absolute right to exist in peace and security, at least as much as any other country. Given Israel's unique history and the resurgence of antisemitism worldwide, Israel arguably has more moral legitimacy than any other nation on Earth.

I am proud of how the IDF conducts itself during its never ending war on Palestinian terror. There is no other country on the planet that tries to minimize civilian casualties in such a situation where innocent Israelis are being threatened, shot at, mortared, rocketed, stabbed and murdered in cold blood. At times there are discussions whether the IDF's moral standards are too high and end up being counterproductive - and what other army could one even have that conversation about?

I am also proud that Israel investigates any mistakes that happen on the battlefield and keeps trying to improve its methods to maximize damage to the terrorists while minimizing damage to the people that the enemy is hiding behind. This is not done because of pressure from "human rights" organizations - it is done because it is the right thing to do. Even when everyone knows that the world will accuse it of "war crimes," the IDF retains incredibly high moral standards, which can be easily proven for anyone who wants to investigate the situation impartially. (People willing to do that are, regrettably, few and far between.) It would be so easy for Israelis to say that since the world will accuse them of atrocities anyway, then why bother with holding themselves to such standards - but young Israeli soldiers do, day in and day out. The rare exceptions prove the rule.

I am proud that Israel remains a true democracy, with a free press and vigorous opposition parties, while on a constant war footing. One only needs to read the hateful articles in Israel's left-wing publications on Israel's Independence Day to fathom how far press freedom goes in Israel.

I am proud of how Israel responds to seemingly intractable problems. In the early days of the intifada there seemed to be no solution - but the IDF found one, managing to bring deadly suicide attacks from 60 in 2002 down to practically none today. For every "successful" attack (if you can use such a term) there have been many failed attempts, and these are truly miraculous. The 'knife intifada," car rammings, and other violent "innovations" by Israel's enemies have  largely died down because of Israeli defensive actions and innovative pro-active work on social media. Hamas has been reduced to celebrating attacks that cause only minor injuries because most of their major attacks, thank God, are foiled. Today there are new challenges, but each one is met and solved with brains and creativity.

The enemy has not stopped trying, and the history of antisemitism shows that it never will. If the Israel haters had their way, Israel would resemble Libya or Afghanistan today with the Jews as frightened as minorities are in every other Middle Eastern country.

Jews know something about being singled out, about being judged with double standards. We have been attacked for being too rich and too poor, too successful and too needy, too capitalist and too socialist, too religious and too secular, too insular and too integrated. These same wildly inconsistent attacks are targeting the Jewish state. Israel will survive and thrive, just as Jews themselves have, despite these attacks.

And the best survival technique is success.

Israel has succeeded and continues to succeed in its many accomplishments in building up a desert wasteland into a thriving and vibrant modern country, with its countless scientific achievements, incredible leadership in high-tech and the environment, world class universities and culture. Practically every computer and mobile phone being built today includes technology and innovations from a single small Middle Eastern country. A tiny nation, under constant siege, with few natural resources besides breathtaking beauty, has used its smarts and strength to build a modern success story. In a short period of time Israel made itself into a strong yet open nation that its neighbors can only dream of becoming.

And they are indeed starting to dream. Arab nations are waking up to the reality of Israel and the desire to be more like her.. Despite the constant incitement against Israel in their media, ordinary Arabs know that Israel treats its minorities with more respect, and gives them more civil rights, than Arab nations give their own Arab citizens. Miraculously, in recent years, we are seeing some of Israel's intractable enemies now accepting that Israel has the right to exist and seeking to partner with it. This was unthinkable a few years ago, and the reason is because of Israel's strength, both militarily and economically. The biggest (and artificial) dagger that has been used against Israel for 72 years, the Palestinian Arabs, is quickly losing its effectiveness in the Arab world except for lip service. Israel is simply more valuable to the Arab world as a partner than as an enemy, and this is directly due to wise and forward thinking Israeli policies..

Zionists have every reason to be proud of the incredible achievements of the Jewish national movement. There is a right and a wrong in this conflict, and I am proud that Israel is in the right.

The word "Zionist" is not an epithet - it is a compliment.


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