Interesting Analysis of Current Protests

 The following analysis of the present noise surrounding the governments plan to review the judicial system is interesting. Written by Amit Segal

Three times in the last generation, crowds from the center-left took to the streets in an attempt to change the direction of the country. 

 After (PM) Rabin's murder it was the Candlelight Youth. The spontaneous gatherings turned into an organized movement, which failed to change the path of political history that went to the right. The peace flag was lowered to half-mast, and the left camp collapsed. 

 In 2011, the country was swept by an unusual protest in its scope, which for a moment seemed as if it would bring down the Netanyahu coalition and lead to a change in the agenda. It died within a few months, not before sending two of its leaders to the Knesset, and absurdly because it was too large: the many demonstrators were unable to focus on one message and change the discourse from security to economic and economic-capitalist towards social democracy. 

 The 2023 protest is the most effective so far: the protesters have stopped the legislative train of a fresh and homogeneous government which has just been elected with a clear majority. The flag of democracy succeeds in annexing to it a public that, according to every poll, exceeds half of the people. 

 The elections, despite the frequent polls, are still far away. Even if they had taken place tomorrow, and even if the results had been in line with the predictions, there would not have been a government with the purity of the protesting camp. A protest that has adopted the Israeli flag as its trademark will have difficulty forming a government with non-Zionist Arab parties. A protest which focuses on equal burden and recruitment for all will pay a heavy price if you base yourself on parties whose voters have never mobilized, not because of evasion but because of opposition on a national basis. 

 It is possible to try to establish another shaky coalition, which will follow the path of its predecessor, the Lapid-Bennett government. So what's going on here? 

 Here are two more unusual phenomena that will lead us to the answer. One is that while the opposition is getting stronger according to every poll by 13 to 18 seats and hundreds of thousands of right-wing supporters are moving to the center, the main opposition party is NOT only NOT getting stronger, but is getting significantly weaker in the polls.

The other phenomenon: the support for changes in the judicial system - admittedly limited, and in conversation - remains cross-campus in all polls. There are moments, which can only be noticed in retrospect, when a controversial issue enters into a consensus: capitalism in the 1990s (prior to which Israel was much more socialist), opposition to withdrawals (from the “territories”) in the last decade, LGBT rights in recent years. There was a debate, and here it is no more. 

 A year or two will pass, a government or two, but there WILL be changes in the judicial system and they won't even be in the headlines. Netanyahu and Lapid are stepping back precisely because the protest is successful: the public that decides the fate of Israel is the center-right camp. The one that in 2021 transferred its votes to Saar and Bennett and overthrew Netanyahu, and a year later fed up with the government with Meretz and Ra’am (Arab party) and gave 64 mandates to the right. 

 The fall of the right does not absolutely mean the rise of the left, but of a political movement called "the third way" a quarter of a century ago. The phenomenon of the last generation was the collapse of Labor and the center-left parties that grew on its ruins - the most prominent of which is Yesh Atid. 

 The phenomenon of the current generation, which began with (former MK) Kahlon, is center-right parties that will grow at the expense of the Likud. At the moment it is Gantz who enjoys these votes, but it is better not to take a mortgage based on this theoretical gain just yet. 

 These are half a million voters, supporters of changes in the judicial system but in consultation, those who seek Judaism but not ultra-Orthodox, supporters of a heavy security hand and not threats on the radio. Their line is a center-right government that relies on 75 mandates from Religious Zionism (party) to (MK) Gantz, without buying support of anyone but at the nominal, not exorbitant, price: no finance minister with seven mandates, no prime minister with six, no national agenda set by two (currently 16% of the parliament) ultra-Orthodox parties. Currently there is a lot of noise which mainly confuses the supporters of the government.

Are the USA Really Serious about Solving the Conflict with the Palestinians?

 

It is quite clear that the US administration is not in love with the Netanyahu government but I believe the feeling is mutual.

Blinken recently gave one of the most scorching denunciations of Israel in recent memory. While he condemning the terror attacks there was no mention of the antisemitism or the intent to destroy Israel, embedded in all aspects of life in Palestinian society.

Blinken expressed pure moral equivalence by saying, “A rising tide of violence has led to the loss of innocent life on both sides. All sides must take steps to prevent further escalation in violence and to restore calm.”

Blinken thinks that Israel needs to adopt a policy of denying civil and property rights to Jews in Judea and Samaria while providing unlimited rights to Palestinians to illegal settlements they build.

In other words, the Biden administration thinks that permitting Jews to lawfully build and buy homes and communities, to buy land or lease government land in Judea, Samaria or unified Jerusalem is unacceptable.

Another step the U.S. opposes, Blinken said is “disruption to the historical status quo in Jerusalem’s holy sites.” Here, Blinken sides with the Palestinians in insisting that Jews should not be permitted to freely access–much less pray at–the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most sacred site.

Then Blinken continued that the U.S. opposes “demolitions and evictions.” But he wasn’t referring to demolitions and evictions of Jews—that’s fine. He was referring to demolition of illegal Palestinian construction and eviction of Palestinian squatters from state land and from apartments and buildings owned by Israeli Jews.

In short, Blinken set out a policy of antisemitic discrimination and demanded that Israel abide by it on behalf of a society organized around the demonization and dehumanization of Jews and the delegitimization and aspiration to annihilate the Jewish state of Israel. The was no reference to the PLO or Hamas charters.

Blinken did say, in the end, that the United States opposes “incitement and acquiescence to violence.” But, as he made clear in his next sentence, he was obviously joking.

Blinken announced that the U.S. is giving an additional $50 million to UNRWA, the U.N. agency most responsible for prolonging the Palestinian conflict with Israel by among other things, inciting and acquiescing to violence. UNRWA schools indoctrinate Palestinian children to hate Jews and aspire to become terrorists and destroy Israel. Hamas and other terror groups use UNRWA installations as missile launching grounds.

Those $50 million are just a drop in the bucket. Blinken bragged that since Biden entered office two years ago, the U.S. has provided $950 million in aid to the Palestinians overall.

The Biden administration doesn’t oppose Palestinian incitement and acquiescence to violence. The administration is funding it.

As Caroline Glick wrote in a recent article “It’s hard to know how the Palestinian conflict with Israel will end. But two things are certain. First, demanding institutional discrimination and the denial of civil rights to Jews will not lead to a solution. And second, we’ll know we’re moving in the right direction if the U.S., the E.U. and the U.N. stop discriminating against Jews and end their support for a Palestinian society organized around the dehumanization and demonization and aspiration to destroy the Jewish state [as stated in the charters].”

More BBC Lies about Israel

 

The 10pm News on BBC One TV on 15 April had a piece about the celebration of Orthodox Christian Easter in Jerusalem. (And here on BBC News website). Much of it – by Yolande Knell – concerned the alleged persecution of Christians in Jerusalem by Jews.  Central to her allegation was the restriction imposed by Israeli Police on the number of Christian worshippers allowed into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to celebrate Orthodox Easter.

But this is yet more demonisation of Israel by the BBC! Israeli Police were simply carrying out the request of the Church itself!

Knell also suggested that attacks by extremist Jews were causing Christians to leave Jerusalem. Let’s look at the facts. Christians are thriving in Israel, the only country in the Middle East where they are free to worship and the only one where their numbers are growing. 84% of them are happy with their lives in Israel.

Of course Christians in Judea and Samaria – controlled by the Palestinian Authority  – are not so happy and their numbers have shrunk sharply.  But you won’t hear about this from the BBC –or indeed from most Christian leaders  – like the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Guess they’re scared of being called ‘Islamophobic’….

An utterly disgraceful misrepresentation of the facts. But hey it’s the BBC and hey …it’s Israel ….

The Biden Administration’s Funny Idea of Democracy

 I have always resisted commenting on decisions by the American administration but today the level of hypocrisy is at a level that I don’t ever remember seeing in the past. The Obama era is certainly not behind us, it is the same messaging by followers of Obama.

As Mitchel Bard wrote recently, see https://tinyurl.com/ys4xbzc8, “we now know that the Biden administration has no hesitation about interfering in Israel’s internal affairs. In the vein of the old Arabist “America has to save Israel from itself” philosophy, U.S. President Joe Biden has cast himself as standing up for Israeli democracy. Instead, he disrespected it.”

Besides weighing in on the side of the critics in the contentious issue of reforming the judiciary, the administration also criticised Israeli democracy for allowing the people’s representatives in the Knesset to pass a law that reversed the prohibition on Jews residing in the area where four settlements were evacuated as part of the disengagement.

The U.S. State Department which, given its dominance by Obama recaps, has returned to that era’s habit of publicly chastising Israel. Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel was in high dudgeon over the repeal claiming the law was inconsistent with commitments that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made to President George W. Bush, and urging Israel to refrain from allowing settlers to return to the area. In addition, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog was summoned for a tongue-lashing from the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, retread Wendy Sherman.

This was especially outrageous coming from the former Obama officials who pointedly rejected the contents of the Bush letter to Sharon because they did not like its recognition of the “new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers” and its conclusion that “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”

It was Obama who reneged on the commitments made by his predecessor. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted that “in looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements.” Now, some of the same people behind the reversal of U.S. policy want to blame Israel for not meeting its obligations after they scuttled the understandings.

Meanwhile, the hypocrisy of the administration was on full display in its response to the proposed reforms to the Israeli judiciary. The reforms themselves need to be negotiated, but the process by which they are being pursued is purely democratic. The officials who were elected by the majority of the Israeli population are proposing legislation they believe is consistent with the mandate they received. Any reform must be approved by a majority vote in the Knesset.

What is more democratic?

Contrast the vicious administration critique of the mechanisms of Israeli democracy with its total silence on the undemocratic behavior of the president of France. Just as tens of thousands of Israelis demonstrated in opposition to the government’s position on judicial reform, even larger numbers of French citizens have been protesting President Emmanuel Macron’s unilateral decision to raise the retirement age. The State Department has not called on Macron to compromise with the protesters or questioned French democracy (the same goes for the media, which has been pillorying Netanyahu). Instead of pausing to consider the change in the pension system and agreeing to negotiate as Netanyahu has now done, Macron simply imposed his will through an executive order.

This is the model of democracy Israel should follow?

And who else has resorted to executive orders because he cannot get support from the democratically elected representatives of the country? Joseph R. Biden Jr.

How is Biden’s circumventing Congress more democratic than Israel’s parliament adopting laws? Imagine the outrage from the administration if Netanyahu had the power to sign an executive order to change the way judges are selected or limit their authority.

Could there be a more blatant double standard?

More on Palestinian Incitement

Even before Ramadan began, Israel was accused of not allowing Muslim prayers on the Temple Mount.

In the first two weeks of Ramadan, tens of thousands of Muslim worshipers came to the Temple Mount. Then two days ago, everything turned upside down when young Muslims barricaded themselves in the mosques, prevented the worshipers from leaving, and vandalized the furniture inside the mosques.

Hamas has called for escalation and to clash with Israel in Jerusalem. One reason given by the Palestinian spokespeople was “to prevent a Passover sacrifice by the Jews”. 

As a result 34 rockets were fired into civilian towns in Israel FROM LEBANON, 25 of which were intercepted by Iron Dome. An additional five rockets were deemed as nonthreatening, and landed in open areas. However those that landed caused 3 injuries (shrapnel).  Gas station hit, office building/bank hit, chicken coop and van hit.  Multiple fires started in fields.

 Hezbollah aims to escalate the situation on the northern border. There were changes in Hezbollah's policy a year and a half ago on the border with new positions and Hezbollah operatives openly monitoring IDF activities sometimes while armed and/or in uniform - while limiting UNIFIL's freedom of movement and violating the UN Security Council resolution 1701. This presence of Hezbollah led to clashes between IDF soldiers and Hezbollah activists, mainly around the construction of the wall on the Israeli side of the border.

 Al-Jazeera reported that the rockets were fired from the Lebanese Palestinian town of Rachidiyeh, south of Tyre. Even if the rockets were fired by Palestinian factions, this could only have been done with Hezbollah's approval, or possibly following its decision.

  

 IDF stated  “Hamas is behind the rocket fire on the Israeli north. “Lebanon is responsible when rockets are fired from its territory. The IDF is highly prepared and we are looking at who knew about the shooting and whether the Iranians are involved.”

As is to expected an Arab report says that UNIFIL forces have evacuated all the bases in southern Lebanon. Where is resolution 1701?

By the way, those who thought international force could lead to a different reality should think again. Today, UNIFIL's statement called for "both sides" to calm down before there was any reaction from Israel and without any condemnation of Hezbollah.

As of this writing, the biggest dilemma in the Israeli security agencies is how to respond in a way that will create effective deterrence without escalating the situation into a war. As far as IDF is concerned, all options are open. And there is no point in guessing what, when, and where the reaction will come. Contrary to the assessment in Hezbollah and Tehran, Israel is strong, and its citizens are resilient.

Ramadan Incitement at Al Aqsa

 

Palestinians barricaded themselves with huge stones, debris and fireworks in Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount last night.  Police negotiated for them to leave, which failed, after which they forcibly removed them - which was videoed and shared as an attack against the mosque throughout Arab media to create incitement. In response short range rockets have been fired 5 times overnight from Gaza against Israeli civilian towns with the IDF bombing 2 sites in Gaza in response.

Dozens of young adults armed with sticks, stones and fireworks, barricaded themselves in the Al Aqsa mosque early in the evening in order to start a violent disturbance. The police tried for hours to convince the young adults to exit the mosque peacefully, but entered forcefully after a continued refusal. 

 Video from the scene published by Palestinian media showed police officers hitting Palestinians in the building with chairs and batons and arresting many of them.

This morning after the dawn prayers at the mosque, scuffles broke out at the complex and in additional locations throughout the Old City.

Overnight at least 10 rockets were fired in 5 salvos, with 1 striking a factory in Sderot.  The latest fired at approx. 7am.

IDF bombed 2 sites in the Gaza Strip in response, claiming them to be weapons manufacturing and storage sites.

Palestinian factions in Gaza fired surface-to-air missiles at the Israeli aircraft carrying out the strikes according to Palestinian reports.

 Hamas has called for escalation and to clash with Israel in Jerusalem. One reason given by the Palestinian spokespeople was “to prevent a Passover sacrifice by the Jews”.  

ANALYSIS:  With constant incitement in all forms, this has the potential to increase in intensity, with possible increase in clashes in Jerusalem and increase in rocket fire.  However initial Hamas statements while inflammatory are considered “relatively moderate” (by those who analyze such things) - so more likely it will continue to simmer but not increase.

Gazans Finally Speak Out

 Communication from Gaza is totally blocked except that from Hamas controlled media. However, with a new inspiring project the views of the Gazans are beginning to reach the outside world.  Joseph Braude is the President of the Center for Peace Communications (CPC). He recently spoke to a Forum in a video about the center's innovative project, which provides a secure outlet for current Gaza Strip residents to speak "candidly" about their lives under Hamas rule.

CPC's Whispered in Gaza project is a series of twenty-five video interviews with Palestinian Arabs, translated into seven languages, who speak openly and without fear of Hamas retaliation, secure in the knowledge that their identities and voices remain anonymous via "video animation." This novel approach that brings to light their "riveting and harrowing" testimonies, viewed millions of times across the region and the West, is proving successful in breaking Hamas's "communications blockade."

Previously, any attempt by journalists to challenge the terror group's "narrative dominance within the region" resulted in threats or deportation. As a result, not only has Hamas's brutal suppression of Gaza's civilians gone largely unreported, but the group has also controlled "the story of Gaza and broader Israeli-Palestinian issues" through propaganda broadcasts from its bully pulpit.