Jewish World Update Jan/Feb 2022
What the Two-State Solution Is Really About
(JNS)—The recent U.S. congressional drama about funding for Iron Dome was merely a sideshow to a proposed amendment by Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI) that supports Palestinian terrorism against Israel.
By first scuttling and then opposing the funding of Iron Dome (a joint Israeli-U.S. system that is entirely defensive and works only to prevent the wanton murder of Israeli civilians by indiscriminate Arab missile attacks), lawmakers voiced their support for the Palestinians’ terror-war against Israel.
But for all the drama that surrounded the Iron Dome bill, the stunt was a sideshow. The main anti-Israel action was taking place elsewhere.
A few hours before the U.S. House vote on Iron Dome, Levin, a Jewish lawmaker from Michigan, submitted his own bill. And it is far more dangerous to Israel than his fellow progressive lawmakers’ “nay” vote on Iron Dome.
Cosponsored by 24 other members (seven of whom are also Jewish), Levin’s bill supports Palestinian terrorism while adding a laundry list of anti-Israel policies. It amends the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987 by giving the administration authority to permit the opening of a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington, DC, and to transfer funds to the PLO-Palestinian Authority (PA) regardless of its terrorist activities.
It also enables the administration to transfer funds directly to the Palestinian Authority even if the PA continues to pay salaries to terrorists and their families, contrary to the 2018 Taylor Force Act that bars the United States from funding the PA so long as it pays such salaries.
Palestinian Media Watch has reported the PA already believes U.S. funding will be restored despite the fact that nearly 10 percent of the PA budget goes to terrorists and their families. Levin’s bill also:
1. Bars Israel from using weapons it receives from the United States to defend itself in Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and unified Jerusalem.
2. Discriminates against Israel by legitimizing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign against the Jewish state.
3. Bars Israel from marking goods from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza as “Made in Israel.” Instead, Israel would be required to mark them as made in the “West Bank/Gaza.”
4. Restricts Israel’s scientific, agricultural, and other cooperative agreements with the United States to areas Israel controlled in 1949. Israeli institutions and citizens beyond those areas would be boycotted.
5. Requires the administration to designate all Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria as illegal. Israeli neighborhoods built in Jerusalem since 1967 also would be illegal.
Ironically, Levin named the bill “The Two-State Solution Act,” telling us what progressives really mean when they say “two-state solution.” The bill doesn’t say Palestinians and Israelis must resolve their conflict through negotiations. Peace talks are irrelevant to Levin and his cosponsors.
Instead, the bill sets out the means the United States must use to coerce Israel into surrendering to terrorism. So “two-state solution” is code for supporting Palestinian terror against Israel.
The theoretical concept of a two-state solution is founded on the notion that a Palestinian state would be at peace with Israel. Yet, for the past 100 years, the Palestinians have rejected any concept of a two-state solution that isn’t simply a means to advance their unchanging goal of eliminating the Jewish state.
Since the 1920s, they have stated and demonstrated that for them, the point of a Palestinian state is both to ethnically cleanse the areas they receive of all Jewish presence and, as they have done in Gaza for the past 16 years, use the areas as bases for continued war against the rest of Israel.
A recent poll shows the Palestinians’ view of the situation is no different than it was in 1920 or 1947 or 1967 or 1993. For the Palestinians, “the two-state solution” is not a means to achieve either peace or Palestinian statehood. It is a means to advance to the next phase of the war to annihilate Israel.
by Caroline Glick
Caroline is an award-winning columnist and author of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East. This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.
Bye-Bye Ben & Jerry’s
New York and Florida will pull a total of $250 million from investments in Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, because the Vermont ice cream maker will stop selling its product in Judea and Samaria in 2023. New York plans to pull $111 million, JNS.org reported; and Florida is pulling $139 million, according to The Times of Israel. Thirty-five U.S. states have anti-boycott laws. “Our review of the activities of the company, and its subsidiary Ben & Jerry’s, found they engaged in BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] activities,” New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli said. JNS.org reported, “New York’s pension fund, the nation’s third-largest, invests more than $800 million in retirement funds in Israel.”
Beware of Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing
A new booklet by writer John Aman warns Christians about organizations funded by billionaire George Soros that steer Jews and Christians away from supporting Israel. Hijacked: How George Soros and Friends Exploit Your Church exposes how they “flip” support from Israel to the Palestinians via J Street and the Telos Group. J Street is “a left-wing Palestinian-friendly Jewish lobby now positioned as an alternative to the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC),” Aman said. Telos brings Christians, often high-profile ones, to the Holy Land but slants the tours against Israel. “It’s part of a propaganda or cognitive war against Israel,” wrote Dexter Van Zile, with CAMERA. The booklet is available from D. James Kennedy Ministries.
47 Nations Sign Pledge
As neo-Nazism soars, 47 countries have pledged to combat Jew hatred, reported worldisraelnews.com. The UN’s Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which routinely condemns Israel, specifically cited “the recent sharp rise in anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism and said there was a direct connection to the Covid-19 pandemic,” the news source said. Prepared statements, including one from Israel, said anti-Semitism comes from the extreme Left, as well as the fascist Right.
Israel Develops Oral COVID Vaccine
Israel’s Oravax Medical has received clearance from South Africa to enroll volunteers in a Phase I clinical trial of its novel oral COVID-19 vaccine. CEO Nadav Kidron said the company wants to move directly into Phase II/III trials and appeal for emergency use approval, reported The Jerusalem Post. Part of the Phase I trial is supposed to take place in Israel, pending approval from the Health Ministry. The company was founded with technology developed by Jerusalem’s Hadassah-University Medical Center.
Bari Weiss: What Goes On at The New York Times
Former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss said The Times rejected her column about anti-Semitic attacks because the perpetrators “weren’t white supremacists.” The Algemeiner reported that Weiss “had drafted a column in the wake of two deadly attacks on Jews in late 2019, including a mass shooting at a Jersey City, NJ kosher grocery store and a stabbing at the home of a Monsey, NY rabbi during Hanukkah. ‘I wrote a piece . . .
called “America’s Bloody Hanukkah,” or “America’s Bloody Pogrom.”’” She was told, “We can’t really run this” because, basically, “the people carrying out the attacks weren’t white supremacists carrying tiki torches.”
Israel Approves $9.4 Billion for Arab Sector
The Israeli government has approved a massive, $9.45 billion, five-year socio-
economic plan to improve life for its Arab citizens. “Our goal is to reduce the gaps in education, social welfare, women’s employment and the economic-municipal sphere in particular. The more we intensify education for mathematics and the sciences in the Arab sector and increase the Arab participation in the high-tech market, the more we will all gain,” said Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
No Impossible Pork!
Apparently, there won’t be Impossible Pork on kosher menus anytime soon. The Orthodox Union refused to certify it, even though it’s entirely plant based. Yet there are kosher substitutes for cheeseburgers, bacon bits, crab, and shrimp. So what’s the difference? Worldisraelnews.com asked Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz. Pork, he said, “is so identified as the sign of traif [nonkosher], as a betrayal of Jewish commitment to kashrut, that giving a hashgacha [certification] even on fake pork is like coming to synagogue wearing a swastika tie.”
A New Palestinian Lie
The Palestinian Authority (PA) told a UN conference on climate change that Israel is destroying the environment, reported worldisraelnews.com. However, the PA “is the primary and almost sole environmental contaminator in Judea and Samaria. . . .
The Prat Stream is polluted from sewage coming from Al-Bireh. The Shiban Stream is polluted by the slaughterhouses of Ramallah. Nahal Alexander is contaminated by PA oil mills in Samaria. The Hebron River is polluted by Hebron’s marble industry. The Ramallah municipality poured massive mounds of trash into an abandoned quarry in the Binyamin region. More than 10,000 cubic feet of garbage were dumped there for weeks and then set on fire. The fire burned for almost a week, and the smoke reached the outskirts of Jerusalem.”
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