By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

The war of letters began when 22 countries penned a letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council condemning China’s treatment of Uighurs and “other Muslim and minorities communities.”

The letter in defense of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang was signed by France, Germany, Canada, Sweden and 18 other, mostly Western and European, countries. The case of the missing Muslim signatories was solved when the People’s Republic of China fired back with its own letter signed by 37 countries.

This letter in defense of China’s crackdown on Islam was signed by 16 Muslim countries.

While some of the Muslim signatories were drawn from African countries, the letter was also signed by ambassadors for the leading Arab governments including Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, and Kuwait. Pakistan, the world’s second largest Muslim country, also signed on.
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By Ilya Feoktistov, AMERICAN THINKER

By Valerie Sobel

The following events did not take place in the Soviet Union. Cuba and Venezuela are also in the clear. None of this inhumanity was a figment of my imagination.  It all took place in front of me, and I’m narrating the details without the aid of even the slightest hyperbole.

Gather all your compassionate, equality-minded, social justice pals for a ride through one amazingly affordable health care system. The one Obama and other notable liberals paint as the “envy of the world”.  See how quickly you can figure out where this envy of the world dwells.

Got your seat belt on? This liberal utopia is a bit bumpy.
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By Conrad Black, AM GREATNESS

The two greatest political controversies in the western world in the last several years—the attempt to delegitimize President Trump and the question of Britain’s relations with the European Union—have generated similar reflexes and tactics in the opponents of the president and of Brexit. In the one case as in the other, the initial response of the political establishments in the two countries has been disbelief followed by a tenacious determination to undo the verdict of the voters.

There is also an important difference.

In the U.K., the referendum three years ago generated a 52 to 48 percent vote to leave the European Union, contrary to the wishes of the incumbent government, which was so committed to the losing “remain” side that Prime Minister David Cameron had to be replaced by Theresa May.
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As the party lists were locked in place this week, and the right finally ‘united,’ Likudniks are asking, where is the leader guiding us?

By Yossi Verter, HAARET

[After discussing Bibi’s demeanor with the lack of 61 seats in his block, he continues. ]

However you look at the electoral picture, Netanyahu has little reason for excessive optimism. His circle is now turning its gaze to Labor leader Amir Peretz; maybe he will be the deus ex machina, the missing piece to complete the coalition puzzle. For those who have forgotten, Peretz, along with Hatnuah leader Tzipi Livni, joined the third Netanyahu government, after leaving Labor in anger with the excuse that the party’s elected head, Shelly Yacimovich, had refused to promise him, and publicly, that she would never hook up with Netanyahu.

If the Peretz of six years ago was ready to forsake his declarations and principles in return for a junior portfolio, the environmental protection ministry, I was told by a Likud minister, how will he respond when Netanyahu calls him on election night and dangles the Finance Ministry in front of him? In that case, the walls whose collapse the Labor chairman anticipates almost religiously really will come tumbling down.
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By Sharon Goldman, FORWARD

Five years ago, I was sitting in my office trying to figure out options for a desperate Palestinian woman. Her family had found her and her boyfriend together in his apartment in Queens, and they were threatening both of them with physical harm. I had been told that the young couple feared for their lives.

To help them, I reached out to an organization that was working to train the New York City police force about the difference between honor killings and murder (the former is often perpetrated by a close family member who would not be a suspect in a murder). While I was speaking to the liaison about the couple, I happened to notice an email update from a former classmate at Barnard with some news: A Columbia student organization formed to support victims of sexual assault, called “No Red Tape,” was aligning itself with Students for Justice in Palestine, a virulently anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian group.
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By Melanie Phillips, jns

In the 20th century, Jewish lawyers, jurists and other activists sought to fashion international human-rights law into a defense mechanism to protect powerless minorities. The process through which it became a weapon to be used against the Jewish people is a tragic history.

(August 1, 2019 / JNS) For months now, Israel has been attacked by aerial incendiary weapons launched by Hamas during riots at the Gaza border fence.

These weapons—balloons or kites attached to flammable material—are driven by the winds off the sea towards southern Israel.

In just one week in June, they started nearly 100 fires in farmland and forests, in playgrounds and private yards. By last month, Hamas had burned more than 7,400 acres of Israeli land.
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PRAGER U

It is time to pull the plug on UNRWA and move its functions to agencies that truly want to solve humanitarian problems effectively rather than to perpetuate them

By Joseph A. Klein, CFP 

The Trump administration decided last year to cut off U.S. funding for the hopelessly dysfunctional United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). It was a wise decision. A confidential internal report from UNRWA’s own ethics office has chronicled alleged rife mismanagement and corruption reaching the agency’s highest levels of leadership. The report was sent to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s office last December. The UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) has reportedly undertaken a probe into the report’s allegations, which has not yet been completed.

Members of an “inner circle” in UNRWA’s top management have engaged in “abuses of authority for personal gain.
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The pro-Palestinian Saudi talk has diminished, increasingly replaced by an adversarial Saudi walk

By Yoram Ettinger, CFP

With few jobs and no hope, there is little reason for them to stay

ECONOMIST, Middle East and Africa, Aug 3rd 2019 | RAFAH

Yarub ikhdeh and his friends had been waiting half their lives to get on a bus. The six young men had never left Gaza, which has been blockaded by Israel and Egypt since 2007. They grew up in a territory where half the population is jobless and at least 70% rely on aid to survive. “We’re all recent graduates in business and it,” says Mr Ikhdeh. “And we’re all unemployed.”

Early on a recent morning the friends sat in a sun-baked car park in Rafah, on the border with Egypt. Each had crammed his life into a single suitcase. They would soon board a bus for Cairo, then a flight to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (uae). None had a job waiting in the uae. Their tourist visas would be valid for only a month. But the mere prospect of work was enough to make them leave home.
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By Evelyn Gordon

On June 24, Haaretz columnist Amira Hass compared the case of Mahmoud Qatusa to the infamous Leo Frank case in Atlanta. The comparison was suggested by Qatusa’s lawyer, but Hass enthusiastically seconded it.

One day later, the dramatic denouement of Qatusa’s case proved them both wrong. And the story convincingly refutes claims that Israel has become increasingly racist and “anti-democratic” because it shows that the sine qua non of a flourishing democracy is alive and well—not the absence of problems, but the existence of self-correcting mechanisms to resolve those problems.
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By Isi Liebler

Although Benjamin Netanyahu has now become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, projections suggest that MK and former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman will achieve his objective and bring about Netanyahu’s political demise. If, as appears almost certain, Lieberman’s strident anti-haredi positions will gain him additional seats, he will continue to hold the balance of power. His role is strengthened with polls predicting another deadlock with neither Netanyahu nor Blue and White head Benny Gantz able to cobble together sufficient seats to form a government.

On top of that, should Netanyahu be indicted, it is likely that Likud would be divided as to whether he can retain his position as party leader.
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T. Belman. This is very confusing.  Why does Israel have an obligation to issue permits in Area C for Palestinians.  Are these permits for any Palestinian or for those living in Area C? Why is Bibi and the right so passive in response to  the illegal building? Why did Smoltrich agree to the issue of these permits.

Former Defense Ministry settlements adviser says cabinet approval of 700 homes for Palestinians a positive carrot, must be followed by stick of enforcement against illegal building

By JACOB MAGID, TOI

Two months out of his post as Defense Ministry adviser on settlement affairs, Kobi Eliraz is sounding an alarm over what he claims is Israel’s failure to exercise its authority in the strategic parts of the West Bank that it controls.

In an interview with The Times of Israel, Eliraz lamented the pace at which illegal Palestinian construction has ballooned over the past decade without any enforcement by state authorities in Area C — the 60 percent of the West Bank over which Israel was granted full military and administrative control under the 1994 Oslo Accords.

Citing Defense Ministry statistics, Eliraz said Wednesday that compared to Israeli settlers who number roughly 450,000 but take up roughly 9% of Area C, the 200,000 Palestinians there have managed to gain control of 30% of the land, with much of it being used for agricultural and grazing purposes.
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