Moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem

From JCPA, Vol. 17, No. 29, November 9, 2017, by Amb. Dore Gold:

Summary of a presentation by Amb. Dore Gold to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Nov. 8:

• President Donald Trump has made a commitment to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and I believe he will stand by what he has said. The U.S. will evaluate the timing and circumstances for executing that decision in accordance with its interests.
• The embassy question is a subset of a much more important issue: the need for Western recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The denial of recognition helps fuel the dangerous fantasy that Israel is impermanent and illegitimate - that the presence of the Jews is an imposition because the land is not their homeland.
• The main international interest in Jerusalem concerns the protection of the holy sites and assuring complete freedom of access to them. The State of Israel and the people of Israel assumed responsibility for protecting Jerusalem's holy sites in 1967, when Jerusalem was re-united after the Six-Day War.
• For etched into the collective consciousness of all of us is what happened to Jerusalem when we were absent. It is clear that only a free and democratic Israel will protect the holy sites of all the great faiths in Jerusalem. To the extent that the U.S. reinforces Israel's standing in Jerusalem, it is reinforcing the position of the only international actor that will protect Jerusalem's holy sites.
• After the PLO launched the Second Intifada in 2000, Palestinian security services assaulted Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem. In 2002, armed Palestinians forcibly entered the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem - one of the holiest sites for Christianity - seized the Christian clergy as hostages and looted church valuables. Another repeated target for attack was Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, which the Palestinian side undertook to protect in the Oslo II Agreement. The site was repeatedly ransacked and torched. Indeed, aggression against holy sites has become a hallmark of many jihadi groups across the Middle East.
• The question of the location of the U.S. Embassy is really a question of whether the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's permanent capital - sending a signal to the world that efforts to delegitimize Israel and to rewrite the history of other religions will fail. By recognizing Jerusalem and moving its embassy, the U.S. would help promote peace and security in the region.

 Follow this link to read the full presentation.

Terror Links of Students for Justice in Palestine

From Algemeiner, 13 Nov 2017, by Shiri Moshe:


Members of the NYU chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine hold a ‘die-in’ on campus. 
Photo: NYU SJP / Facebook.

The anti-Zionist campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) seeks “to isolate, demonize, and ultimately destroy” Israel with the help of terror-linked financial and ideological supporters, according to a new report by a Jerusalem-based think tank.

Authored by Dan Diker and Jamie Berk of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, the report cautioned against viewing SJP “as a pro-Palestinian equivalent to pro-Israel student groups,” noting that it rejects cooperation with organizations that support Jewish self-determination, incites against Jewish students and rejects Israel’s existence in any borders.

The report highlighted multiple instances of American Jewish students being targeted for “anti-Semitic vandalism, verbal attacks, and outright violence” by SJP members, and pointed to studies conducted by the Brandeis University and the watchdog group AMCHA Initiative, which “found a correlation between the presence of SJP and a rise in campus anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.”

In one of several examples provided, the report pointed to Professor M. Shahid Alam, Northeastern University’s SJP faculty advisor, who in 2012 told students that they should be proud to be called antisemites. “Wear that as a sign of distinction,” Alam said in filmed remarks. “This proves that I’m working for the right side, for the just cause.”

Jewish students also complained of being “spat on, harassed, and assaulted on campus by SJP protestors” at Stanford, Cornell and Loyola University in Chicago. “In 2014, a man tabling for SJP at Temple University punched a student in the face and called him a ‘kike’ and ‘baby-killer’ for asking to discuss Israel,” the report noted. “In 2010, a Jewish student holding a sign saying ‘Israel Wants Peace’ was rammed with a shopping cart by an SJP activist during University of California, Berkeley’s Israel Apartheid Week.”

SJP’s ultimate goal of “eliminating the Jewish nation-state” is routinely made clear by the organization, according to the report, from its backing of resolutions endorsing the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign — whose leaders publicly call for Israel’s destruction — to one of its favored chants, “From the river [Jordan] to the sea [Mediterranean], Palestine will be free.”

SJP members and chapters have expressed support for terrorist organizations that seek to advance this objective, going so far as to invite convicted terrorists to address students on campus. In 2013, SJP at American University organized a Skype conference with Khader Adnan Mohammed Musa — a spokesperson for Palestinian Islamic Jihad who previously called for suicide bombings. “Who among you is the next suicide bomber? Who among you will carry the next explosive belt?” Adnan asked in 2007. “Who among you will have his body parts blown all over?”

SJP chapters “at Bowdoin College, Tufts University, Union Theological Seminary, Ryerson University, and Columbia University have expressed solidarity with Adnan on social media,” the report observed.

Multiple SJP branches have also sympathized with convicted terrorists belonging to the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas. Abdullah al-Barghouti — a Hamas bombmaker who helped murder 66 people and wound 500 others in multiple terrorist attacks — was called an “innocent” Palestinian prisoner by University of Alabama – Birmingham’s SJP chapter in 2012, along with two Islamic Jihad members.

SJP’s reported ties to Palestinian terrorist organizations extend beyond glorifying individual members.

Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, said in congressional testimony last year that American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) — whose leadership includes individuals who worked for organizations with links to Hamas — was “arguably the most important sponsor and organizer” for SJP.

Schanzer explained that “at least seven individuals who work for or on behalf of AMP have worked for or on behalf of organizations previously shut down or held civilly liable in the United States for providing financial support to Hamas: the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), and KindHearts.”

The report — which noted that “AMP leaders and supporters have been implicated for fundraising for Hamas” — emphasized that the group spearheaded efforts to unite SJP campus branches under a national organization in 2010.

The report called on university trustees, donors, alumni and administrators concerned by SJP’s activities to urge university administrations to “demand that their campus communities and state governments unmask, expose, investigate, prosecute, and sanction SJP in order to reign in extremist terror-supporting and anti-Semitic actions on U.S. campuses.”

It also pointed to legislation outlawing state support of entities that back boycotts of Israel, and claimed that the existence of SJP chapters at public universities in these states was illegal.

“Exposing the intensifying activity of Students for Justice in Palestine at over nearly 200 American campuses is necessary to neutralize SJP’s support for terror and political warfare against Israel,” it concluded.

SJP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jewish-Arab demographics in Israel

From  "Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative", November 11, 2017, by Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger: 

In 2017, Israel is the only advanced economy and Western democracy endowed with a relatively high fertility rate, which facilitates further economic growth with no reliance on migrant labor.  Moreover, Israel's thriving demography provides for bolstered national security (larger classes of recruits) and a more confident foreign policy.

In contrast to conventional demographic wisdom, Israel is not facing a potential Arab demographic time bomb. In fact, the Jewish State benefits from a robust Jewish demographic tailwind.

At the outset of 2017, for the first time - and in defiance of projections made by Israel's demographic establishment since the early 1940s - Israel's Jewish fertility rate (3.16 births per woman) exceeds Israel's Arab rate of fertility (3.11).  Actually, in 2017, Israel's fertility rate is higher than most Arab countries (e.g., Saudi Arabia – 2.1 births per woman, Kuwait – 2.4, Syria – 2.5, Morocco – 2.1, etc.).

The Westernization of the Arab fertility rate has also been in effect in Judea and Samaria: from 5 births per Arab woman in 2000 to about 3 in 2016; from a median age of 17 in 2000 to 21 in 2017.

The substantial, systematic Westernization of Arab fertility – from 9.5 births per woman in 1960 to 3.11 in 2016 – has been a derivative of the accelerated integration of Israeli Arabs into modernity, in general, and the enhanced status of Israel's Arab women, in particular.

For example – as it is among the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, whose fertility rate is similar - almost all Israeli Arab girls complete high school, and are increasingly enrolling in colleges and universities, improving their status within their own communities. This process has expanded their use of contraceptives, delaying wedding-age and reproduction, which used to start at the age of 15-16, to the age of 20 year old and older.

In addition, Arab women are increasingly integrated into Israel's employment market, becoming more career and social-oriented, which terminates their reproductive process at the age of 45, rather than 50-55 as it used to be.  Furthermore, an intensified urbanization process has shifted an increasing number of Israeli Arabs from self-reliant agricultural to urban jobs, and from private rural homes to urban apartments, which has reduced the need for - and the convenience of raising– many children.

At the same time, since 1995, there has been an unprecedented rise in the rate of Jewish fertility - especially in the secular sector - resulting from a relatively-high level optimism, patriotism, attachment to national roots and collective/communal responsibility.

From 80,400 Jewish births in 1995, the number surged to 139,400 in 2016, while the annual number of Arab births remained stable at around 41,000. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the 73% rise in the number of Jewish births took place despite the mild decline of ultra-orthodox fertility (due to expanded integration into the employment market, higher learning and the military) and the stabilized modern-orthodox fertility, but due to the rising fertility of the secular Jewish sector.

The unprecedented tailwind behind Israel's burgeoning Jewish demography is documented by the proportion of Jewish births in the country: 77% of total births in 2016, compared with 69% in 1995. Also, in 2016, there were 3.2 Jewish births per Arab birth, compared to 2.2 births in 1995. 

Moreover, while Aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel) persists in higher numbers than forecasted by Israel's demographic establishment (26,000 in 2016), it has a dramatically higher potential, which obliges Israel to reintroduce the pro-active Aliyah policy – in France, throughout Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Argentina, etc. – as it was prior to the Aliyah of one million Jews from the former USSR during the 1990s.

Simultaneously, an annual Arab net-emigration has been documented, persistently, from Judea and Samaria (about 20,000, annually, in recent years), while the annual net-number of Israeli emigrants (staying abroad for over a year) – total departures minus total returnees – has decreased substantially: from 14,200 in 1990 to 8,200 in 2015.   At the same time, the population of Israel almost doubled from 4.5MN in 1990 to 8.4MN in 2015.

In 2017, the total number of Arabs in Judea and Samaria is 1.8MN, not 3MN as claimed by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. The latter includes in its count over 400,000 Palestinians who have been away for over a year; over 300,000 Jerusalem Arabs, who are doubly-counted (by Israel and by the Palestinian Authority); and 100,000 Palestinians who married Israeli Arabs and received Israeli ID cards, who are also doubly-counted.

Furthermore, the Palestinian Authority claims zero net-migration, ignoring the annual net-emigration (from Judea & Samaria) of 20,000 Arabs in recent years, and the systematic net-emigration since 1950, which has been on the rise since the year 2000. A September 7, 2006 World Bank study documented a 32% inflated number of births claimed by the Palestinian Authority.

In March 1898, the leading Jewish demographer and historian, Simon Dubnov, ridiculed the Zionist vision, claiming that by 1998 there will be no more than 500,000 Jews in the Land of Israel….

In October 1944, the founder of Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, Prof. Roberto Bachi, contended that under the best-case-scenario, in 2001, there will be 2.3MN Jews in the Land of Israel, a 34% minority….

...in 2017, in defiance of demographic conventional "wisdom," there are 6.8MN Jews in the Land of Israel (including Judea and Samaria), a 66% majority, benefitting from a robust demographic tailwind.