Gazans Jump to Learn Hebrew

 Increased demand for Hebrew classes at the Nafha languages center follows a new offer of work permits by Israel as it has moved to calm border tensions.

In a brightly lit classroom in Gaza, a teacher spells out Hebrew words on a whiteboard, followed attentively by Maher Al-Farra and dozens of other Palestinians hoping to take advantage of an opening up of employment opportunities in Israel.

Increased demand for the classes at the Nafha languages center follows a new offer of work permits by Israel as it has moved to calm border tensions following an 11-day conflict in May with Hamas, the Islamist group which rules the Gaza Strip.

It now offers 10,000 permits allowing Gaza residents to cross the border to work in Israel - a new source of income to a region where 64% of the population is estimated to live in poverty and unemployment runs at 50%.

Ahmed Al-Faleet, the center's owner, said the number of people enlisted to learn Hebrew has increased four-fold to reach 160 students per course since Israel began giving work permits in the last quarter of 2021.

"These courses allow anyone who gets a permit to read signs, documents written in Hebrew, and communicate with (soldiers) on Israeli checkpoints. If an employer speaks only Hebrew it enables the worker to deal with him," he told Reuters.

 A WEEK'S WAGES IN A DAY

No one expects the cautious increase in the number of work permits to end the long-running conflict between Israel and Hamas, who fought four wars since the Islamist faction seized control in Gaza in 2007.

But for the dozens of workers and merchants enrolled in the class at Nafha, the change offers the prospect of earning, in Israel, the equivalent of a week's wages in Gaza.

"I came here today to learn Hebrew so I can handle things at my work inside (Israel) easily," Farra told Reuters.

Israeli liaison officer Colonel Moshe Tetro said the new jobs would improve Gaza's economy and "would also serve calm and security stability."

Eassam Daalis, a senior Hamas official, said Israel was eventually expected to offer 30,000 work permits, which economists say could allow workers to earn an average of NIS 500 ($156) a day, equivalent to what some can earn a week working in Gaza.

 

 

How a Ukraine Conflict Affects Israel

 Israel’s grain supply will be slashed if there is an escalation in Ukraine, Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova said Sunday.

“In case of an escalation, the State of Israel will be directly affected,” she said in Jerusalem after meeting with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.

Ukraine, known as “Europe’s breadbasket,” is the source of half of the grains imported into Israel, Dzhaparova said.

“Cut your bread supply in half to understand how Israel will be affected,” she said in an interview.

The Israeli construction industry likely would be negatively impacted by a war because Israel imports a lot of metals from Ukraine, Dzhaparova said. Hi-tech, which has outsourced thousands of jobs to Ukraine, also would likely suffer, she said.

“I think Israel should be involved in seeking a resolution to a greater extent,” Dzhaparova said. “With all due understanding of domestic concerns and the issues in Syria and Iran, [Israel has] large communities coming from the former Soviet Union.”

 “This is not the time for Israel to remove itself from the dossier,” she added. “It is time to demonstrate greater involvement in seeking a peaceful resolution.”

 Dzhaparova said she made these points in meetings with Israeli officials, including Lapid, who she invited to visit Kyiv. No trip is currently planned, the Foreign Ministry said Sunday.

Hamas plan to target Israelis in the Philippines thwarted

Police said they uncovered the terror group's actions thanks to a tip from a local resident who was in contact with a Hamas representative.

A plan devised by Hamas was thwarted by the Philippine National Police (PNP) on Tuesday when it unveiled the terror group's plan to establish infrastructure in the country and target Israelis there, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

 Philippines Ambassador to Israel Macairog S. Alberto, a former army general, said the operation reflects the "ongoing joint effort between the Philippines and Israel to fight terror," and a security relationship that has grown stronger in recent years. 

 Citing a report by Intelligence Group director Police Brig.-Gen. Neil Alinsangan, the Philippine police revealed that the terror group planned to “establish a foothold” in the country and specifically target visiting Israelis.

“Our Filipino source identified the Hamas operative as ‘Bashir,’ who was reportedly attempting to establish a foothold in the Philippines with pledges of financial support to some local threat groups, including militant extremists with links to the international terrorist organizations,” Alinsangan said, according to the report.

 He also said that coordination with foreign and local counterparts revealed Bashir's real name to be Fares al-Shikli, who Filipino police claim is a member of Hamas's foreign relations department.

Alinsangan stated that Police uncovered the terror group's actions thanks to a piece of information provided by a local resident who was in contact with a Shikli.

The brigadier general also stated that Shikli has an "Interpol Red Notice and is charged with an Offense of Terrorism Logistic Support."

The Filipino source made trips to Malaysia between 2016-2018 where he met with Shikli to plan attacks against Israelis in the Philippines in exchange for Hamas financial assistance. The PNP stated that Shikli "groomed" the Filipino source as a local contact and introduced bomb-making training while in Malaysia.

 

Palestinians: The Human Rights Violations No One Talks About

 by Khaled Abu Toameh  •  February 8, 2022

• In August alone, the PA security forces committed 287 violations against Palestinians, including arbitrary arrests of a physicist, activists, lawyers and others. Ten detainees went on hunger strike in PA prison and the health condition of two others deteriorated as a result of torture.
• The report analyzed 250 arrest cases between January 2018 and June 2021, and noted: "Not a single case went without one or more instances of violation of procedures related to arrest, detention and fair trial guaranteed by the Palestinian Criminal Procedures Law and the Palestinian Basic Law of 2003." — Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, 2021.
• Under the current circumstances, the Biden administration is stating that it wants to facilitate Abbas' creation of another Arab dictatorship that suppresses public freedoms and sanctions torture and intimidation.
• The ICSPR and ARIJ reports show that the Palestinian dictatorship entity already exists and is actively arresting, torturing, and killing its critics. What else do Blinken and the rest of the international community need to hear before they stop trying to empower such abusive governance and instead heed the voices of these Palestinians?

Ignoring violence against Israelis

  Full article at https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/ignoring-violence-against-israelis/  

There has been a lot written lately about "settler violence" in Judea and Samaria, focusing on recent "settler rampages" and attacks on Palestinians harvesting their olive crop.

The UN has an entire bureaucracy (the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA) devoted to cataloging the "precipitous rise in settler violence." It has a "Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967" who harps on "settler violence" non-stop, as well. The UN claims that in the first ten months of 2021 (latest statistics available) there were 410 attacks by settlers against Palestinians – 302 attacks against property and 108 against individuals.

As Bennett said recently, "In my view, this violence by Jews, which does not reflect the half million normative Israeli citizens in Judea and Samaria, is shameful, and whoever does it wants to dismantle Israeli statehood… I will not allow this to continue." Indeed, in December he convened Israeli security chiefs and ordered them to use all the tools necessary to put an end to such violence.

Foreign Minister Lapid responded this week to the Jewish organizations, also assuring them that Israel is cracking down on violence against Palestinians. At the same time, Lapid warned that "we should not allow (reports of such violence) to be abused to tarnish the entire State of Israel or to be manipulated by those who seek to delegitimize the State of Israel."

Lapid's caveat is in place not just because "settler violence" is not representative of most Israelis and most settlers. Lapid's caveat is in place because the focus on isolated settler violence (yes, in the grand scheme of things we are speaking of isolated incidents!) obscures the far greater violence perpetrated in the West Bank every single day by extremist Palestinians against non-violent Israelis.

According to an important new study published this week – which unsurprisingly was ignored by the global media, by the UN, by "human rights" NGOs, and even by American Jewish organizations – in 2021 there were over 4,000 rock and bomb throwing incidents in Judea and Samaria, perpetrated by Palestinian extremists and terrorists against Israeli Jews.

These attacks included over 500 Molotov cocktail attacks (firebombs), leading to the injury of more than 150 Israelis. There was a 210% rise in rock throwing incidents in 2021 over 2020, and a 156% rise in bomb throwing incidents in 2021 over 2020.

Col. Hirsch, who was head of IDF military prosecution in Judea and Samaria until 2016, adds that Palestinian terrorists are incentivized twice over to commit acts of violence: once by weak Israeli prosecution, and once again by the Palestinian Authority's pay-for-slay program, which provides NIS 600 million a year in salaries for jailed terrorists and their families.

Col. (res.) Amir Avivi, CEO of Habithonistim, believes that the entire issue of "settler violence" has been blown out of proportion by ill-meaning NGOs and European governments, and this certainly this is true when compared to Palestinian attacks on Israelis. "Without meaning to diminish the ugliness of extremist attacks on Palestinians," he says, "300 or so attacks a year against Palestinian property and 100 attacks against individuals pales in comparison to 4,000 Palestinian rock and bomb attacks a year aimed at killing Israeli civilians!"

Responses to Amnesty Report accusing Israel of apartheid: ‘This is absurd’

 U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides called the report by Amnesty International accusing Israel of apartheid “absurd.”

 “Come on, this is absurd. That is not language that we have used and will not use,” he said in a tweet.

His statement was the first by the Biden administration to the 278-page report, which was released on Tuesday. Later, State Department spokesman Ned Price also condemned the apartheid allegation, saying “we certainly reject the label that has been attached to this when speaking about Israel.”

 In the report, human-rights group said that Israel has maintained “a system of oppression and domination” over the Palestinians dating back to the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog outright rejected the claims by Amnesty.

 “Israel is a democracy which is committed to international law and sensitive to human rights and therefore appreciates the valiant work of organizations who genuinely strive to promote human rights. Amnesty UK’s report on Israel which was released today is a totally different story,” he said.

 “This report, which frames Israel as an apartheid state, doesn’t belong in the category of criticism designed to promote human rights, but rather in the category of ideological de-legitimization of the very right of Israel to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” he said.

 Herzog went on to say that “claiming that Israel has built and operated an apartheid system since its inception in 1948 essentially means that it was established on an immoral foundation and therefore has no right to exist. The report itself is blatantly ideologically motivated, biased and full of lies and inaccuracies. It totally distorts the true meaning of the phrase apartheid to suit its political purposes, and it also totally distorts the true nature of Israel.”

 

Amnesty International’s Report on Israel

Amnesty International has released a report accusing Israel of committing apartheid. The report contains a plethora of false and deceptive claims and even promotes extreme and antisemitic positions. Given Amnesty’s history of false and incendiary allegations against Israel, the organization cannot be considered a fair arbiter or neutral source on the subject. To improve upcoming coverage, here is some vital background below for your convenience.

 
Amnesty International’s Extremist Content Includes:  

• Falsifying a quote in the very first line of the report, as detailed by Alex Safian, PhD, in CAMERA’s written rebuttal to Amnesty.  

• Openly calling for the Jewish State to be destroyed, claiming “this system of apartheid originated with the creation of Israel in May 1948…” while recommending “dismantling this appalling system of apartheid….”

• Ignoring terror attacks while legitimizing terror organizations by, for example, claiming support for Hezbollah is “expressing support for popular resistance to the Israeli occupation and other political views that challenge the established narrative of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” while referring to Hamas members as “opponents of Israel’s occupation and its policies.” 

• Falsely insisting that international law requires the West Bank be cleansed of any Jewish population, a blatantly antisemitic position unsupported by international law and which would create an actual apartheid policy that discriminates against the Jewish people.

• Cynically and nefariously describing efforts and statements supporting the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in a Jewish and democratic state as attempts at “Jewish domination,” evoking old and contemporary antisemitic tropes of “Jewish control” and “Jewish supremacy.”

• Creating its own unique definition of the “crime of apartheid,” ignoring the existing controversies and conflicts between varying treaty definitions and the lack of clarity of the basic elements of the supposed crime.

Amnesty International’s History of Bias
 
Although Amnesty International (AI) was established 60 years ago as an organization demanding “human rights for all people – no matter who they are or where they are” with core values that included a commitment to “impartiality,” the organization has shifted. Given the anti-Zionist ideology that underpins AI’s pre-existing bias, it should not be treated as an authoritative source but qualified as an anti-Zionist source whose agenda is to delegitimize the Jewish state.
 
AI has been far from impartial regarding not just Israel, but also the issue of antisemitism. For example, Amnesty held leadership roles in the notorious antisemitic Durban NGO Conference in 2001 in which Jewish participants were harassed and excluded, and which produced an outcome document rife with antisemitism. Irene Khan, Amnesty’s then Secretary-General, personally refused a request from the Jewish caucus to include on the outcome document that the Jewish caucus did not agree to consensus adoption. As U.S. representative to the Durban process Tom Lantos recalled: “The leaders of the great Western human rights NGOs like…Amnesty International…did almost nothing to denounce the activities of the radicals in their midst.”
 
Today, Amnesty is quick to accuse Israel of crimes with little or no evidence, demonstrating little if any actual standards in its research, methodology, and reports on Israel’s alleged wrongdoings. For example, in 2019, Amnesty claimed “an Israeli missile” hit a human rights office in Gaza when, in fact, a U.S. journalist was across the street when it happened and saw that it was actually hit by a misfired Palestinian terrorist rocket. 
 
AI’s public vilification of Israel with false charges is often based on biased testimony from “research consultants” it employs, many of whom are anti-Israel activists, BDS proponents and supporters of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists. The ideology of the consultants informs their reports which underlie AI’s condemnatory reports. Here are just a few examples:
 
Saleh Hijazi – previously worked as a PR officer for the Palestinian Authority’s Office of the Ministry of Planning in Ramallah, and with the International Solidarity Movement that used to encourage Palestinian “legitimate armed struggle” against Israel. He is a promoter of anti-Israel boycotts and has lauded and featured photos of notorious Palestinian terrorists on his Facebook page. He now serves as head of the Jerusalem office and Deputy Regional Director of the Middle East and North Africa branch, continuing his anti-Israel activism through AI under the guise of human rights advocacy.
 
Deborah Hyams—an anti-Israel activist whose credentials included working for various radical organizations before AI, believes the Jewish state was “founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land” and that it is guilty of “ethnic cleansing.” She volunteered to be a human shield in Beit Jalah to protect terrorists who were attacking Israel.  Hyams served as a research consultant at the time AI released its 2014 report entitled “Trigger-happy: Israel’s use of excessive force in the West Bank” which charged Israel with “callous disregard for human life” by carrying out military operation (Cast Lead campaign) to defend its citizens from Hamas rocketing.
 
Hind Khoudary – a Gazan activist/journalist who contributes to Electronic Intifada, Middle East Eye,  Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, and similarly partisan sites.  She has tweeted support for Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorists and retweeted posts calling for Israel’s destruction. In a filmed interview about life in Gaza, she responded to the question “Do you want the State of Israel gone?” by emphatically affirming, “Of course, yes. This is our land.” Opposing peace dialogue with Israeli Jews, Khoudary tagged Hamas officials in a Facebook post that denounced a Palestinian peace activist for meeting with Israeli peace activists, upon which he was arrested by Hamas authorities.