An Unsuccessful 'Follow the Money Trail'

This came across my screen:

From: margaret.cole@uk.pwc.com
Subject: letters to Mr. Ian Powell
 
Mr. ,
I refer to my e mail of yesterday acknowledging your correspondence.
Each member firm of the PricewaterhouseCoopers network of firms owes confidentiality obligations to its clients. We therefore cannot confirm or deny who is or who is not a client and the services that we render to them unless it is available in the public domain.
We are unable to therefore provide any information requested in your letter.
Regards,
Margaret Cole
Margaret Cole
PwC | Executive Board
UK General Counsel
Direct: +44 (0)20 7212 2016
Email: margaret.cole@uk.pwc.com
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
1 Embankment Place, London, WC2N 6RH 

---

Dear Ms Cole,
 
Thank you very much for your response.
 
Paragraph four of the letter from the World Bank makes it plain that the Palestinian Authority is your client so I am unsure about your point in relation to refusing to confirm or deny who your client is.
 
It is your client who can waive confidentiality as any client can in the interests of openness.
 
Would you be so kind as to ask the Palestinian Authority if they would waive confidentiality in respect of these audit reports? Firstly, the audits are audits of large sums of foreign public money  - including over seventy million pounds of tax money from the UK – which are transferred to the PA (and is partially spent, we say, on wages for convicted terrorists) in accordance with the World Bank Trust Fund agreement.
 
Secondly, there is a compelling public  interest in ensuring through openness that these audits are undertaken properly to ensure no public fund from the donor nations is spent on anything other than development projects, payments to civil servants and other appropriate projects.
 
Thirdly, there is a compelling public interest in the PA and PWC releasing these reports to show that UK tax money is not diverted to government institutions in the PA that pay wages to convicted terrorists.
 
I am sending a copy of this correspondence to the President of the World Bank, Mr Jorgensen in the Jerusalem Office and to UK Lawyers for Israel.
 
I look forward to a response.
 
Yours Sincerely,   

---

From: margaret.cole@uk.pwc.com [mailto:margaret.cole@uk.pwc.com]
Subject: Audit Correspondence

Dear Mr ,
We are unable to assist you any further in this matter.
Regards
Margaret
Margaret Cole
PwC | Executive Board
UK General Counsel
Direct: +44 (0)20 7212 2016
Email: margaret.cole@uk.pwc.com
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
1 Embankment Place, London, WC2N 6RH 

^

Aggression, Desecration, Racism

Give me a break.

The Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs of the Palestinian reported [here also] that the Israeli occupation forces and settlers have carried out about 124 violation and aggression against the holy sites during the month of April / May last.

The Minister of Religious Endowments, Joseph Adeis,

in a press statement on Monday that the Israeli attacks "centered" in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem and the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron (south of Jerusalem).

Sheikh Adeis pointed out that the occupation authorities prevented the call to prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque 63 time, pointing out that it continued apostasies on Waqf land in Jericho, Hebron and the shrine "Joseph" in Nablus.

The Palestinian minister said that nearly 1800 Jewish settlers "stormed and desecrated the" Al-Aqsa Mosque during the month of April, Msttrda "which raise the issue during the last four months of 4800 to the settlers."

He pointed out that the occupation authorities "stepped up their actions racism" against the Palestinians in Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque and internal and external courtyards.

Msttrda: "The government of Israel is seeking to bring the Jewish character of the maximum through the daily incursions, and Talmudic prayers, and the attack on the marabouts and detention."

Adeis He stressed that "Israel" has taken a series of measures to "reduce the Palestinian presence" in the city of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, and allowed the settlers to exercise complete their rituals freely and under guard.

^

Elie Wiesel and the Irgun

An earlier, more raw, version of Elie Weisel's The Night has been found.

I wonder what many people, who perhaps may not know of his 1945-1948 activities, would think.

He was an Irgunist in France.  Menahem Begin's underground group. Not a fighter, but a propagandist.

Elie Wiesel's service in the Irgun is to be found in his All Rivers Run to the Sea, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995 from p. 157 onwards

After the November 29, 1947 UN Partition resolution, Wiesel found the Paris office of the Irgun newspaper, Zion in Kamf, ציון אין קאמף: ביולעטין געווידמעט דעם ארץ ישראל באפרייאונגס- קאמף
and offered his services. He was accepted.

He describes his vision of the underground “resistance” at this time on p. 162:

Physical courage, self-sacrifice, and solidarity could be found even in the lower depths; total compassion, rejection of humiliation either suffered or imposed, and altruism in the absolute sense were found only among those who fought for an idea and an ideal that went beyond themselves. Nobility of action was found only among those who espoused the cause of the weak and oppressed, the prisoners of evil and misfortune.

For Wiesel, being in the Irgun in Paris was:

“risking neither death nor imprisonment. Even deportation from France was unlikely. Stateless persons were rarely deported, that was one of the few advantages of the status.” (p. 162)


His introduction to the Irgun is described so:

The following Monday I presented myself at the editorial office. Joseph, the boss, showed me to a desk, handed me an article in Hebrew, and asked me to translate it. The article, published in the Irgun’s newspaper in Israel, was a denunciation of David Ben-Gurion and the Haganah and a paean to Menachem Begin, commander in chief of the Irgun. I translated the Hebrew words into Yiddish without grasping their meaning. I knew that the Haganah was fighting the British as hard as the Irgun was, and I couldn’t understand why the two movements hated each other so much. The article also mentioned the Lehi (the so-called Stern Gang), but what was its role?  (p. 163)

Wiesel’s mentor, Shushani, was also caught up in the Jewish assaults in Palestine:

Though he abhorred violence, he was hardly indifferent to the Jewish struggle in Palestine. Whenever the British arrested a member of an underground organization, Shushani tried to get information about his fate. One day he seemed extremely agitated. He interrupted our lesson, pacing, bumping into walls, blowing his nose, panting and wiping his forehead … It was the day a member of the Lehi and a member of the Irgun committed suicide together just a few hours before their scheduled execution. (.164)

Wiesel has a friend who enlisted in the Lechi:

How and why did François  suddenly decide to join the struggle for an independent Jewish state? Had he, too, knocked on the Jewish Agency’s door on the Avenue de Wagram? Though he joined the Lehi, and I belonged to the Irgun, our friendship was unaffected. In any case, each of us kept his activities to himself. We both agreed that the less we knew about each other, the better. No one asked questions at the synagogue I attended on the Rue Pave’e. To them I was a student like any other. If only they knew. (p. 165)

And he mentions someone I got to know and whose son and daughter I was active with:

Through work I met Shlomo Friedrich, the leader of Betar, Jabotinsky’s Youth Movement. He was a tall, vigorous man with a rapid gait, a former prisoner in the Gulag. […] The process of becoming a journalist involved attending press conferences, public meetings, and demonstrations, and offered a chance to meet such “colleagues” as Henri Bulawko. As we talked, we discovered that we had been in Auschwitz-Buna at the same time. And I met Leon Leneman, one of the first to sound the alarm for Soviet Jews. […] Envoys from the Irgun came to the editorial offices every day. All were from Palestine and I was supposed to know only their aliases. Their commander, Elie Farshtei, was shrouded in mystery [he is Eli Tavin- YM], but, after swearing me to secrecy, Joseph told me of an incident from his past. In 1946 … he was captured and tortured by agents of the Haganah […]  I was flattered when Elie Farshtei stopped by to ask whether I wasn’t working too hard, whether my studies weren’t suffering. I told him that everything was fine, and that I hoped he was pleased with my “contribution” to “Zion in Struggle.” […] In the corridors I might have encountered a young Jewish girl from Vienna, beautiful and daring, who transported documents and provided a hiding place for guns: my future wife. (p. 166-7)

He continues there:

The Zionist organizations in the Diaspora worked tirelessly to supply our brothers in Palestine with political and financial support. In France and in the United States as well, we were mobilized. Young and old, rich and not so rich, all felt the fever our ancestors had known in antiquity. Representatives of all the resistance groups worked day and night, though separately, procuring arms and ammunition, raising funds, recruiting volunteers who would set out for the various fronts of the nascent Jewish state. Elie [Farshtei] and his aides no longer found time to sleep. Out of solidarity, neither did we. (p.167)

Deep down, I had reservations. Military life was not for me. […] what if I died in combat? I hadn’t yet done anything with my life, had written nothing of the visions and obsessions I bore within myself, hadn’t yet shared them with anyone. […] Nevertheless, I decided to heed the call to arms.
Nicholas and I signed up at the recruitment office … (p.167-8)

Wiesel at rear in Ambloy, (Loir-et-Cher) France before arriving in Paris:

^

It? It Who? It What?

To what or of what does the "it" in this headline refer?

Jordan is not acting responsibly at the Temple Mount.

^

"Leftist"?

American knowledge and understanding of foreign affairs:

The boundaries of the proposed new Arab and Jewish states do not satisfy Zionist aspirations from either the political or the economic viewpoint, and the whole plan of partition with economic union is totally unacceptable to the Arabs. Although frequent reference has been made to “sacrifices” accepted in the interest of compromise, the partition plan was strongly supported by the Jewish Agency for Palestine and by various Zionist organizations favoring the establishment of a sovereign Jewish political state in Palestine. It did not, however, have the support of the Irgun, the Revisionists or the Stern gang (the so-called leftist groups), whose influence among the Jews of Palestine appears to be increasing.

That was from here in January 1948.

^

Oh, Look, A Palestine Solution

Proposed March 1944

• 1. With the failure of twenty-five years of government in Palestine, a radically different settlement, freed from the commitments arising from World War I, seems to be required.
• 2. A Trusteeship for Palestine exercised by the three religious groups would be a failure. However, there is moral and political justification for the proposal that the three principal religious groups should be associated with the future plan of government.
• 3. It is recommended that Palestine be constituted as an International Territory under a charter; that a great power be appointed Trustee; that a Board of Overseers representing the three world religions be set up as an advisory body. The reasons and conditions that support this recommendation are as follows:
  • a. The administrator of Palestine must be capable of firm, decisive and prompt action. This requires experienced officials under central control.
  • b. Firm, decisive and prompt action cannot be taken if sectarian and political differences are allowed to exercise their divisive and delaying influences.
  • c. The political and economic problems being highly complex and interwoven with hitherto irreconcilable religious differences, only a centralized and experienced rulership will guarantee justice.
• 4. It is recommended that the Trusteeship should be awarded to Great Britain by the United Nations Organization under the charter. The charter would recognize the interest in Palestine of Christians, Jews, and Muslims. It would establish the Arab and Jewish communities as autonomous political entities with wide powers of local self-government.
• 5. The advantages of the proposed settlement are:
• a. It would eliminate the difficulties that arise because of the conflicting commitments of the past.
• b. It would place Palestine outside the bounds of both nationalist and imperialist ambitions.
• c. It would provide means by which to solve the basic economic problems.
• d. It offers a better prospect than any other plan yet proposed for cooperation in the government of Palestine and for eventual self-government of the people of Palestine.

Another example of State Department discombobulation.

^

I Found a Real Palestinian

.

^

Freedom House Is A House of Horrors

Did you know that Freedom House has downgraded Israel's media status?

And why?

Israel declined due to the growing impact of Yisrael [Israel, actually] Hayom, whose owner-subsidized business model endangered the stability of other media outlets, and the unchecked expansion of paid content—some of it government funded—whose nature was not clearly identified to the public. (p. 20)

That reads as if someone from Yedioth Ahronot, in the past a virtual monopoly on the media scene, had composed that.  Or someone from Haaretz.

Every newspaper is owned.  Haaretz has a foreign investor.  And all owners, at some point, subsidize their outlet.  Does that mean it, too, should under a certain impact?

^

Deir Yassin, June 12, 1939

The Palestine Post, June 13, 1939.

^

Say It Ain't So, PA

What will liberals do now?

New report documents abusive detentions 
by both PA and Hamas 

to stifle freedom of expression

As if we didn't know.

Some details:

The Palestinian security services in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were responsible for 2,578 arbitrary detentions and summons to appear in 2015, documents the Euro-Mediterranean Monitor for Human Rights in a new report—including 228 that resulted in torture.

"Many people are reluctant to talk about human rights violations by Palestinian security forces because it will ‘deepen the division’ between the two main factions, Hamas and Fatah," says Sandra Owen, a political adviser to the Euro-Med Monitor. "...Palestinians have too many external oppressors to be oppressors of their own people, no matter who does it.”

The Euro-Med report, "Strangulation Twice: the Oppressive Practices of Palestinian Security Services," documents 1,274 arbitrary detentions in the West Bank in 2015 and 1,089 summonses to appear in front of the police or “interior security.” Most of these actions by the Palestinian Authority targeted individuals affiliated with Hamas or who opposed PA policies. Among those arrested were about 35 journalists and human rights activists, 476 university students, and 67 teachers/professors.

...During detention, 179 individuals reported not being shown an arrest warrant, confiscation of belongings and even beatings with sticks and solitary confinement. Medical reports confirmed the systematic practice of torture in Palestinian Authority jails in the West Bank.

They'll find a way to blame it on the Jews/Zionists.


(h/t=RRR)


^

Another Traffic Accident

One of the constants in the public diplomacy campaign waged against Israel is the willingness, if not enthusiastic desire, to either lie outright or at the very least, assert unproven and wild accusations before any review is conducted by the Arab side.

Two years ago there was a tragic incident when  a Jewish driver struck two young Arab girls. I blogged it then.  
It happened near where I live at the nearby Sinjil village.

Anyone who has driven that stretch of road knows that it is one-lane each way, no sidewalk or any proper or safe walkway along the road.  And it happened at dusk

Here's from what the Permanent Observer Mission of "Palestine" submitted at the time to the UN:

22 OCTOBER 2014 BY PALESTINE AT THE UN

Excellency,

Pursuant to my letter of 14 October 2014, I am compelled to place on record our absolute condemnation of the criminal, deadly actions being perpetrated by extremist terrorist settlers illegally transferred by Israel, the occupying Power, to the Palestinian land, as well as continued Israeli incitement and provocations against holy sites, in particular in East Jerusalem, in what appear to be a deliberate attempts to exacerbate already-volatile tensions and create further instability.

On a nearly daily basis, Israeli settlers continue with their terror rampages, persisting with attacks on Palestinian civilians, destruction of properties, and theft of land and natural resources.  The latest terrorist crime by a settler occurred yesterday, 20 October 2014, when a setter ran over two young girls who were walking home from school in the West Bank town of Sinjil  in a so-called “hit and run” accident.  Kindergarten student Inas Khalil, age 5, and Nilin Asfour, age 8, had just gotten off the school bus and were walking to their mothers who were waiting for them on the opposite side of the street when an Israeli settler’s car rammed directly at them and sped away.  Inas and Nilin were both rushed to the hospital.   Tragically, 5-year-old Inas was pronounced dead a couple of hours later, while Nilin still remains in critical condition.  We condemn this brutal act of Israeli settler terrorism, and we call on the international community to unequivocally condemn this and all other such attacks and terror against Palestinian children under Israeli occupation.

It should also be mentioned, that this so-called “hit and run” accident has become a reoccurring deadly practice by Israeli settlers against the Palestinian civilian population.

This morning, there was another accident there.  This time, an Arab woman man was struck (I do not as yet know her his medical condition).

But there was a difference.

The driver was an Arab.

Let me know if it makes the news and how it will be reported.

_________________

UPDATE


It has been reported here as

وفاة مواطن في حادث دهس وقع قرب قرية سنجل شمال رام الله

The death of a citizen in an accident hit and felled near the village of Sinjil north of Ramallah

No "terrorism".  No purposeful killing.

Only Arabs involved.

And here was the traffic jam I was caught in:

^

"If We Must Offend One Side..."

One of the very specific claims anti-Zionists (and, of course, anti-Semites) from Great Britain charge Israel with is the underground militant (I would have written "terror" but I understand that term is just not on anymore) campaign waged by the Irgun and the Lechi.  Usually, but not always, the Hagana and Palmach seem to get lost in the antipathy scale.

Not only do these people not like Jews and truly can't stand Zionists but that Jews dared shoot at, kill, mine, and even hang British soldiers and policemen who served here in the Mandate of Palestine until 1948 is way too much for them and the Jews are to be hated.

Parallel to this is the assertion that especially after World War II and the loss of so many British lives in the cause to save Jews from the Nazis, that underground struggle was not only wrong and immoral but it was an example of ingratitude for British blood spilled in Europe.

I understand that approach and of course, on a personal level, the families of the almost 400 British officials, political and security who lost their lives during the Mandate as a result of Jewish violence suffered much.

But somehow, these people never seem to grasp what the British directly did just before and during World War II.  The partition plans of Peel and Woodhead, the St. James Conference and the May 17, 1939 White Paper sealed the fate of millions of Jews, confining them to Europe and making Hitler’s job that much easier.  That the Jewish Brigade was only authorized in 1944 and that the railways to concentration camps were never bombed only compounds the situation.

Here are a few lines from Bruce Hoffman’s new book that illustrates the callousness which, to my mind and that of the underground leaders at the time, should explain why the British political establishment deserved rightly what it suffered in Palestine in the 1940s:

We Jews were "offended".

And the response, as the British learnt, was just as offending.  And coming from Jews, quite embarrassing, I presume.

UPDATE

See this.

^

Rabid Weinberger

From this interview of Brian Lamb with Sally Denton who wrote The Profiteers on the Bechtel Corporation (and read here from p. 301 on):

So how does -- again Jonathan Pollard play in this book and his relationship to Cap Weinberger and the attitude supposedly of the Bechtel people about Israel?

Well he had -- in his own words and in Wolf Blitzer who wrote a book about him. He had been encouraged to or was inspired to spy for Israel, he was working for Office of Naval Intelligence and came upon information about chemical weapons plants being built by American companies and in Syria and in Iraq and in Libya, and he went to his superior in the navy and told him, you know we've got a treaty with Israel they need to know that, you know their enemies are armed -- getting armed for chemical weapons, their neighbors and the -- he was told by his officer -- his boss basically who -- he -- as he recounts it, the boss laughed and said, you know we can't tell the Jews about this, they're sensitive about gas, which was a reference obviously to the mustard gas that the Nazis used.

And so there was some impetus on his part to start spying for Israel, which he did for next, I think 18 months during that time. The -- he pled guilty and was expecting to get a two year sentence, that was the plea bargain that he had made with the US government, but when he pled guilty he was given a life sentence. And the justification for that was a sentencing memorandum written by Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense who, you know, I mean Pollard would have been in his defense department at that time, about the extensive damage that had been done by what Pollard gave to the Israelis. And I think the justification was also for the life sentence was that he had violated his plea agreement by speaking with Wolf Blitzer who went on to write a book about it.

Cap Weinberger also -- I don't remember the exact legal language but was indicted or found to perjure himself in the whole Iran-Contra thing but was pardoned by George W. -- H. W. Bush. What was -- what's your take on Weinberger's relationship to the Saudi Arabia and also George Shultz?
  Sally Denton
I…
  And Saddam Hussein?

Yes. I -- you know there was a time -- I mean -- I think Weinberger and Shultz represented a direct shift from the American government more toward away from Israel and more toward the Arab states and that was certainly felt by the Israelis at the time, and of course the Israelis were always skeptical of Bechtel dating back to, you know the '40s and '50s and '60s and the Arab boycott. And so there was always some, a little bit of skepticism that the Israelis felt towards Bechtel and Bechtel have never done, here they were building throughout the Middle East but no projects in Israel.

And you think -- do think after your research that there was a direct connection?

Between…

The attitude on the part of George Shultz and Cap Weinberger toward Israel.

No I don't think so. I think maybe Cap Weinberger, he was very -- he was rabid on the subject of Israel and George Shultz I think was really a statesman and I think that was -- you know, he was going forward with the policy, he was influencing Reagan and that I think they were in lockstep with each other and I think Cap Weinberger was really kind of a more of a neo-con.

^

The New Tombstone of Stefan Wladyslaw, Warsaw

Stefan Wladyslaw was a member of the Revisionist ZZW militia fighting in the Warsaw Ghetto against the Nazis.

Yesterday was the ceremony of the unveiling of a new gravestone marker at his burial site which is also the symbolic grave of all the soldiers of the Jewish Military Union, members of Betar and the Revisionist Movement who were not allowed to join the rest of the left-wing figthing groups.  It took place at the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw at Okopowa Street yesterday.  Prominent on the new marker is the name of Pawel Frenkel, the ZZW commander.

Pictures I received via Moshe Arens and Wojciech Pluciński, the latter of the Komitet Hadar there in Poland:

Stefan's importance is that on May 17, 1942, disguised as an Aryan, he crossed over from the ghetto and sent a telegram to Hillel Tzur, an Irgun emissary to the Irgun cells organizing in Poland, who had returned to Netanya in Mandate Palestine only in September 1939.  It was hoped that the telegram would, however innocuously worded it was because of the Nazi censor, would alert Jews outside as to the terrible reality.

The telegram indeed was sent from the Red Cross offices although part of it indeed was crossed out on May 17, 1942.  It actually reachyed Tzur on August 31, 1942 but its cryptic message was not understood.

On February 4, 1943, Stefan was again outside the ghetto attempting to purchase weapons for the ZZW.

Upon finishing his task, he began his return but was accosted by German soldiers.

He pulled out his own pistol and engaged the Nazis in battle, killing two before being killed.

His comrades recovered his body and buried him in the Jewish cemetery.  The original tombstone noting his ZZW membership and his nom de gurre, Nesher (Eagle):

Please read Moshe Arens' "Flags Over the Ghetto".

^

Cameras Click Shut (See New Update)

Guess what: Jordan caved in to Islamist extremist pressure:

PM: Jordan cancels plan to install cameras in Al Aqsa Mosque

Poor John Kerry.


Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour 

said on Monday that

"the main objective behind Jordan's decision to install surveillance cameras at Haram Al Sharif compound and not inside the mosque, was to monitor and document the continued Israeli violations against Al Aqsa Mosque/Al Haram Al Sharif, which extends over an area of 144 dunums.

But there are no violations!

"At the beginning, Israel tried to hinder the project through various means, but we were able to overcome that," Ensour added.

Hinder? Israel wanted to show all violations, all incitement, all violence and especially the Waqf connivance with the terrorists.  Israel wanted Jordan to share in the responsibility for overseeing their Waqf.

But

"However, we were surprised since our intention to carry out the project, by the response of some of our Palestinian brethren to the project, adding that they voiced their concern and cast doubt on its aims and objectives. "As we respect the points of views of our brethren in Palestine in general and in Jerusalem in particular, and because we always affirm our full support to the Palestinians and their aspirations at all times, we found that this project is a point of contentious and therefore, we decided to halt its implementation.

Well, moderate Jordan disappoints the United States and does not live up to its committments.

Regional stability anyone?

(h/t=IMRA)

And from the Jordan Times:

Realising that the plan might cause controversy, Jordan found it a sound decision to freeze the project, the premier said...

...Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs Hayel Dawood last month rejected as baseless remarks by Raed Salah, head of the Islamist movement in Israel, that the Jordanian surveillance cameras project in Al Aqsa Mosque would serve Israel 

__________________________

UPDATE

John Kirby, Spokesperson, Daily Press Briefing

Washington, DC, April 18, 2016

...QUESTION: So the much-vaunted cameras on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif --

MR KIRBY: Yeah.

QUESTION: -- concept/idea/project appears to have finally bitten the dust today with the Jordanians saying they’re dropping the whole thing. This was one of the main things that Secretary Kerry pointed to as a success when he was back in the region in October trying to calm the situations down. So what’s your reaction? What’s his, if you’ve talked to him about it?

MR KIRBY: Yeah, certainly have seen the reports that they’re halting their plans. I think in general we still believe that tools like cameras could be a very useful way of increasing transparency and potentially helping work to decrease the violence. So we still see the value in the use of cameras. Now, the Jordanians can speak to the decision that they’ve made now to halt this project. We think it’s unfortunate, and we continue to believe in the value of that tool for that purpose. And more broadly, we continue to urge all sides to restore calm, reduce the violence, and take affirmative steps.

QUESTION: Well, is the camera idea one that you – that the Administration or the Secretary in particular is willing to bring up again to try to revive?

MR KIRBY: I think I would just leave it where I did. We still see that there’s a value to that tool.

QUESTION: Well, okay. The Jordanians say that they’re dropping it because the – concerns from the Palestinians.

MR KIRBY: Yeah.

QUESTION: So, I mean, are you willing – do you think it is an important enough idea to try to convince President Abbas and other Palestinian officials of the need – or the desirability of having these?

MR KIRBY: I don’t have anything specifically to announce today about whether or not the Secretary is going to revisit the idea with Jordanian authorities, but again, I’d just say we continue to believe that that tool is a good one to increase transparency. And while we supported the cameras as a means, we still have been clear that implementation obviously is up to the parties, and one of the parties now in this case has decided not to move forward. As I said, it’s unfortunate. I can’t tell you at this time that we’re going to be assertive in terms of trying to have it revisited, but it doesn’t mean that we’ve changed our mind with respect to the value of that as a tool to increase transparency.

QUESTION: So your impression is that the Jordanian decision is final, it’s not just putting the whole project on hold and maybe revisit it later on?

MR KIRBY: Well, I mean, they – I can just point you to what they’ve said. They’ve said --

QUESTION: Because it’s only like – what, a few days ago it went into action.

MR KIRBY: They --

QUESTION: What made them decide all of a sudden?

MR KIRBY: Well, you’d have to talk to them. I don’t now. I mean, this is a decision they made. I can only go by what we’ve heard them say about it, that they have halted the program. Again, we still think there’s value in that, but these are – the implementation has to be up to the parties. They are one of the parties; they’ve made this decision and they should speak for the reasons why they did that.

ANOTHER UPDATE

Israel remains in favor of installing security cameras on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, even after Jordan reneged on the project due to Palestinian reservations, a senior official said Tuesday."Israel's support for placing cameras on the Temple Mount remains unchanged. That's because we believe in transparency," the Israeli official told AFP on condition of anonymity.  "It is regrettable that the Palestinian Authority objects to this idea. It's clear that they don't want repeated Palestinian provocations caught on tape," the official said.

NEW UPDATE:

اعلن وزير الاوقاف والشؤون والمقدسات الاسلامية هايل داود ان وزارة الاوقاف ستعين ١٥٠حارسا جديدا لساحات المسجد الاقصى خلال ايام قليلة ليصبح مجموع الحراس ٤٥٠ حارسا...
وبين ان فريقا من وزارة الاوقاف سيتوجه للقدس قريبا لمقابلة الحراس الجدد.

Translation:

[Jordan's] Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs Hayel Dawood
announced that the Ministry will appoint 150 new guards for yards al-Aqsa mosque in a few days for a total of 450 guards guards...He said a team from the Ministry of Awqaf will travel to Jerusalem soon to meet new guards.

^ 

Dove's Unjust Justice

Ms. Majorie Dove Kent , Executive Director of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) in New York (supported in part by the UJA Federation),

credit

has decided to get into the Israel-Palestine debate and writes in support of Sanders' campaign suspended Simone Zimmerman in a Haartez op-ed on Apr. 15, 2016.

Her main point:-

There is a growing community of Jews in this country who understand that nobody is free until everybody’s free. Simone Zimmerman embodies this emerging vision. But the fist of the Jewish establishment is clenched too tightly to allow for this direction to a viable, just, and dignified Jewish future...Sanders should have known that the Jewish community is one place that’s not ready for a political revolution.

Zimmerman represents a new generation of Jewish leaders and a new Jewish politics - deeply committed to the Jewish community and equally committed to justice: white Jews and Jews of color, Mizrahim, Sephardim, and Ashkenazim, working for a just future for all...Groups like Jewish Voice for Peace,If Not Now, and JStreet U are growing in numbers and strength as thousands of Jews decide to recommit to the Jewish community and fight for justice and equity, in the United States, in Israel and Palestine, and throughout the world...

...Will Jewish leaders loosen their clenched fist enough to recognize the grounded vision of safety and freedom that the next generation of Jews is fighting for? Will the American Jewish establishment heed the call of our domestic and global Jewish social justice movement that increasingly connects the dots between racial and economic justice here at home and a just peace in Israel and Palestine?

There is a lot I could write especially about the false victimization portrayal of this line of thinking as being persecuted, muted and shut down.  Never has a breakaway minority within religious, political or social spheres of activity been so pampered, supported and tolerated by establishment Jewry.

But that turn to "justice" caught my eye.  Here is Ze'ev Jabotinsky before the Peel Commission as per Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin (eds.), The Israel-Arab Reader (N.Y.: Penguin Books, 4th revised and updated edition 1984), at 58-61 in his Evidence Submitted to the Palestine Royal Commission at the House of Lords, London on February 11, 1937 

I have the profoundest feeling for the Arab case, in so far as that Arab case is not exaggerated. This Commission have already been able to make up their minds as to whether there is any individual hardship to the Arabs of Palestine as men, deriving from the Jewish colonisation. We maintain unanimously that the economic position of the Palestinian Arabs, under the Jewish colonisation and owing to the Jewish colonisation, has become the object of envy in all the surrounding Arab countries, so that the Arabs from those countries show a clear tendency to immigrate into Palestine. I have also shown to you already that, in our submission, there is no question of ousting the Arabs. On the contrary, the idea is that Palestine on both sides of the Jordan should hold the Arabs, their progeny, and many millions of Jews. What I do not deny is that in that process the Arabs of Palestine will necessarily become a minority in the country of Palestine. What I do deny is that that is a hardship. It is not a hardship on any race, any nation, possessing so many National States now and so many more National States in the future. One fraction, one branch of that race, and not a big one, will have to live in someone else's State: well, that is the case with all the mightiest nations of the world. I could hardly mention one of the big nations, having their States, mighty and powerful, who had not one branch living in someone else's State. That is only normal and there is no "hardship" attached to that. So when we hear the Arab claim confronted with the Jewish claim; I fully understand that any minority would prefer to be a majority, it is quite understandable that the Arabs of Palestine would also prefer Palestine to be the Arab State No. 4, No. 5, or No. 6 — that I quite understand; but when the Arab claim is confronted with our Jewish demand to be saved, it is like the claims of appetite versus the claims of starvation. No tribunal has ever had the luck of trying a case where all the justice was on the side of one Party and the other Party had no case whatsoever. Usually in human affairs any tribunal, including this tribunal, in trying two cases, has to concede that both sides have a case on their side and, in order to do justice, they must take into consideration what should constitute the basic justification of all human demands, individual or mass demands — the decisive terrible balance of Need. I think it is clear.

Incidentally, Jabotinsky was obliged to present his remarks in London because the British Mandate power had banned him from reentering Eretz-Yisrael since the end of 1929 when he left for a speaking engagement abroad.  Talk about justice.

Ms. Dove, there is no real link between the two foci you desire to link.

But worse, if there is any movement that is racist, unjust and oppressive in our area here along the banks of the Jordan River and the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, it is that which is called "Palestinianism".

And not only to we Jews and Zionists for the past century or riots, and murder, and rape and theft and torching and terror but since the PA took over and from before, when the Mufti's forces murdered thousands of his opponents among his Arab community,  but for the Arabs who truly deserve a better life but will not get it from the leadership of Palestinianism.

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Strange Sounds and Other Bizarre Occurrences

I try to pay attention when I am reading to the little details.  They usually hide a big story.

For example, this extract from a Haaretz profile on the Polish film on a Holocaust theme, "Demon":-

The dybbuk that takes hold of Itay Tiran in “Demon” is a metaphor for the dybbuk that has taken hold of Polish society in recent decades. Jews have almost completely disappeared from there, but the country’s Jewish past continues to haunt it.

A tangible example of this surfaced last week when infrastructure work in Warsaw uncovered a Torah scroll and other Jewish artifacts that had been buried for dozens of years...There are other, even more surreal examples. In the Warsaw neighborhood of Muranow, erected on the ruins of the ghetto, residents talk from time to time about objects in their homes moving around, strange sounds and other bizarre occurrences; some have even been documented in YouTube clips.

For someone like me, 'Muranow' recalls Muranowska Square.

I first heard about that location from my Betar madrichim and then read "מצדה של ורשה" whose third edition appeared in 2013 and which appeared in English as "Muranowska 7".

And now we have Moshe Arens' magnificent study, "Flags Over the Warsaw Ghetto".

In an earlier 2003 op-ed, we read that of the two fighting organizations: -

...ZZW [was] headed by Frenkel, Apfelbaum, and Rodal at Muranowski Street 7. They were prepared to meet the German assault...On the morning of April 19, 1943, Sammern-Frankenberg led his force into the central ghetto area. Ambushed by ZOB fighters as they entered the ghetto, the Germans fled in panic. Sammern-Frankenbergg was promptly removed and the following day, SS Gen. Stroop was in charge of the German attack on the ghetto.

The most important of the German documents regarding the revolt are the reports of SS Brigadefuehrer Juergen Stroop, that were written at the time of the events themselves...Stroop was awarded the Iron Cross first class, for his suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt.

Stroop sent daily reports on the action in the ghetto to Krueger...In examining Stroop's reports one's attention is drawn to the following statement that appears in his report: "The main Jewish combat group in which participated also Polish bandits, retreated already on the first or second day to a place called Muranowska Square. There it was reinforced by a significant number of Polish bandits. The group wanted to fortify itself in every way possible in order to prevent us from penetrating. On the roof of a concrete building they raised the Jewish flag and the Polish flag, as a signal of war against us. In this firefight with the bandits fell SS Untersturmfuehrere Demke."

...IT WAS in Muranowska Square and the neighboring houses on Muranowski Street that ZZW fighters armed with rifles, sub-machine guns, machine guns, and Molotov cocktails, had established fortified positions and succeeded in holding up the advance of the German forces during an entire day's fighting on the second day of the revolt, April 20, 1943. It was the scene of recurrent fierce battles between ZZW and Stroop's forces. This is corroborated by testimony given after the war by a number of Iwanski's men who participated in these battles.

Here heavy casualties were sustained by the ZZW, losing many of its leading fighters. Apfelbaum and Rodal were mortally wounded in fighting that raged on April 27 and 28. Iwanski's brother, Edvard, fell in Muranowska Square, his son, Roman was mortally wounded, and Iwanski himself was wounded during those days.

Many years later, in 1993, a Polish woman, Alicja Kaczynska, who had lived during the war on the even-numbered side of Muranowski Street outside the ghetto, opposite ZZW headquarters, published a book of war-time reminiscences, At The Gates Of Hell. In it she recalls the flags the ZZW had raised over the ghetto.

"On the roof opposite we could see people coming and going, and we could see that each of them was armed with some kind of weapon. At one moment we witnessed an exceptional sight on that roof - a blue-and-white flag and a red-and-white flag were raised. We all cheered. Look! Look! The Jewish flag! The Jews have taken Muranowska Square! Our voices echoed on the stairs. We hugged each other, hugged and kissed."

Those "strange sounds and other bizarre occurrences" recall even stranger and more bizarre events and more evil and immoral.

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