Author Archives: Sarah Honig

Spellbinding Spreadsheets

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Here clearly are comprehensive statistics that illustrate exactly how the PA uses its resources.

Here clearly are comprehensive statistics that illustrate exactly how the PA uses its resources.

One of the most significant recent scoops came from Israel Radio’s Palestinian affairs correspondent, Gal Berger, who managed to lay his hands on actual Palestinian Authority spreadsheets that show precisely which convicted terrorist behind-Israeli-bars is subsidized and to what tune by the Palestinian Authority.

Normally rows and columns of financial data hardly make for a riveting read. But this case constitutes a striking exception.

Here clearly are comprehensive statistics that illustrate exactly how the PA uses its resources – including moneys handed over monthly by Israel as well as contributions the PA solicits from international donors. The analysis of the figures is singularly enlightening despite the fact that the general bottom line is hardly astonishing or unanticipated.

It has long been known that the PA rewards the perpetrators of some of the most heinous atrocities against Israeli civilians for their deeds. Continue reading →

Another Tack: Abu-Mazen Proved Ezer Wrong

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Ezer Weizman- “the Eternity of Israel shall not deceive and the Arabs won’t let us down.”

Ezer Weizman- “the Eternity of Israel shall not deceive and the Arabs won’t let us down.”

Back when late president Ezer Weizman was still the witty commander of the Israel Air Force, given to rolling cool quips off his tongue, he elaborated only semi-facetiously on a staple quote from the First Book of Samuel: “the Eternity of Israel shall not deceive” (1 Samuel 15-29). To the promise of unfailing divine providence for Israel, Weizman added: “and the Arabs won’t let us down.”

In other words, we can count on our quick-tempered neighbors to extricate us out of any tight spot via their shortsighted intransigence. Less flippantly, Weizman’s contemporary, ultra-dove Abba Eban, hinted at an obliquely related reality when he judged that to their distinct disadvantage the Arabs “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

That said, niggling doubts persisted all along at the back of our minds. There always preyed the bothersome hypothetical of what would happen if the Arabs Ezer wisecracked about would wise-up and quit being too pigheaded for their own good. Now it seems that what we distantly dreaded has finally come to pass.

If things truly went our way, Palestinian Authority figurehead Mahmoud “Abu-Mazen” Abbas would for sure have announced unequivocally from the UN General Assembly podium that he is revoking the Oslo Accords with immediate effect. Continue reading →

Semi-Understandable Bloodletting

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Adele Banita after help arrived

Adele Banita after help arrived

Foreign news purveyors tend to sanitize terrorist crimes against Jews – when they at all bother to report them. They also dehumanize Jewish victims when referring to them by generic designations with distinct derogatory nuances.

The heartrending tragedy of Adele Banita offers a stark case in point.

She, her husband and two babies were attacked by a knife-wielding Arab terrorist on Jerusalem’s main Old City route to and from the Western Wall. Aharon Banita was stabbed to death and one toddler was slashed. Adele escaped the murderer’s grasp – and with his blade still stuck in her neck – ran to raise the alarm, to save her children.

It was the stuff of nightmares, of sadistic horror flicks. Continue reading →

Another Tack: That Level of Hatefulness

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When Suha concluded, Hillary embraced her warmly and planted affectionate kisses on her cheek

When Suha concluded, Hillary embraced her warmly and planted affectionate kisses on her cheek

The hijinks and tomfoolery of America’s presidential election season suffice to confound the minds of the diminishing numbers of Americans who remain unfashionably focused on issues. The raucous monkeyshines parading as the democratic process in action surely stupefy outsiders.

These shenanigans really shouldn’t preoccupy Israelis and it’s altogether not our place to pass judgment. Still, sometimes it’s awfully hard to keep our distance and our cool in the face of hypocrisy that cries to High Heaven.

Moreover, opinion-molders in the Land of the Free prefer to keep their news-consumers politically correct and suitably uninformed. Hence, odds are that most of the minority of eligible primary voters and caucus participants (who actually play a role in the democratic process) won’t connect the dots.

For example, it’s more than unlikely that many will put into context Hillary Clinton’s jibe at Donald Trump’s failure to dissociate himself from unsavory comments by others within his earshot. Clinton informed all and sundry in her school marmish demeanor that she was “appalled” that Trump didn’t chide an audience member at a New Hampshire campaign event for claiming President Barack Obama was a Muslim and “not even an American.”

“Not only was it out of bounds, it was untrue,” intoned Hillary in an interview with CNN, but “he should have from the beginning corrected that kind of rhetoric, that level of hatefulness.” Continue reading →

Iranian Nuclear Fallout

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unnamedSyria’s territory – that until recently domiciled a purportedly bona fide nation – has now been reduced to a proverbial chessboard upon which foreign powers play a cynical realpolitik game.

So far the superior maneuvering is indisputably that of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s far from clear which long-term strategy, if any, is pursued by his American counterpart Barak Obama.

Again, after an extended absence, Russia looms as the Mideast’s imposing hegemon – one whose self-interests determine who will prevail and who will fail.

Historically the now-defunct Soviet Union used to describe this region as “adjacent to our southern borders.” This contention presumably facilitated the claim that the Mideast is essential for the USSR’s security and thus may be annexed to Moscow’s sphere of pseudo-legitimate influence. It’s still the same. Continue reading →

Water Off A Duck’s Back

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Why would “peaceful worshipers” stockpile weaponry and in a holy site at that?

Why would “peaceful worshipers” stockpile weaponry and in a holy site at that?

Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas vowed to prevent Jews from “defiling al-Aksa Mosque with their filthy feet.” Was there no-nonsense condemnation of such incitement from the UN? Not a hint thereof.

The UN never ceases to blow our minds although the organization’s barefaced bias shouldn’t realistically surprise any reasonable Israeli. Yet somehow we compulsively continue to assume that abundant incontrovertible evidence before all eyes would finally even the skewed international scales.

Invariably however, time and again we are shown that no absurdity is too absurd for the UN.  Continue reading →

Chillingly Emblematic Iceland

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This lone windswept island – astride the juncture-point of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans as well as the North American and European tectonic plates – is as far-removed from the Jewish people, the Jewish state and the entire Mideast as can be.

This lone windswept island – astride the juncture-point of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans as well as the North American and European tectonic plates – is as far-removed from the Jewish people, the Jewish state and the entire Mideast as can be.

The boycott which the Reykjavik municipal council declared on all Israeli products (and then clumsily backpedalled therefrom, to include only “occupied-territory” goods) was always meaningless in practical terms. But its meaning was mega-distressing on the moral plane.

Iceland is chillingly emblematic of phenomena greater than its own minuscule role in world affairs.

This lone windswept island – astride the juncture-point of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans as well as the North American and European tectonic plates – is as far-removed from the Jewish people, the Jewish state and the entire Mideast as can be. Continue reading →

Another Tack: Yet Another “idealistic” Idiocy

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No one was about to shoot him, sadistically torture his wife or bash the baby’s head

No one was about to shoot him, sadistically torture his wife or bash the baby’s head

When it suits them, Israel’s left-wingers tug manipulatively at Jewish heartstrings. They know how to play us – or so they think.

And thus Labor leader Isaac Herzog would have us believe that just because we are descendants of persecuted refugees (literally running for their very lives), it now behooves us to open the gates of our still-beleaguered mini-state to the still-inimical descendants of those who denied asylum to distraught Jewish refugees (and thereby sentenced them to death).

Out to garner warm accolades from the indefatigable do-gooder set, Herzog urges that Israel admit Syrian refugees – the very ones who imbibe Nazi-like Judeophobic propaganda with their mothers’ milk. There’s no doubt that they hate us. The only question is whether they ran away from IS and accordingly hate us in the Assad-Hezbollah-Iranian idiom or whether they escaped Assad and despise us in the rabid Jihadist vein.

Conceivably, by Herzog’s reckoning, ushering into our midst outright intractable enemies is a sure-fire vote-getter. Besides, it appears that no pretext to embarrass the government is taboo.  And so, to underscore his ploy, Herzog has posted on his Facebook page nothing less than the contention that those who disagree with him: “have forgotten what it means to be Jews”. Continue reading →

Another Tack: Sympathy for the Scarecrow

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Abbas is just about as crucial to Israel as scarecrows are to contemporary agriculture.

Abbas is just about as crucial to Israel as scarecrows are to contemporary agriculture.

Intelligence analysis is an iffy proposition in the best of times. It’s inevitably tinged with political agendas, wishful thinking, conformity to groupthink, reluctance to upset the boss, keenness to upset the boss, jockeying for position, fear of being proven wrong – and much more from the self-serving to the genuinely clueless.

It’s with this in mind that we ought to approach the periodic perplexity of whether this time Ramallah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas is finally honest about his oft-sounded declarations of intent to resign.

To be sure, he’s not quite legally in office as president of the Palestinian Authority. He was questionably elected to a four-year term in 2005 and is now completing his eleventh year in that position. With noteworthy frequency, sometimes every few months or so, Abbas has been putting the whole watching world on notice that he has had it, is about to throw in the towel and walk away from the leadership. Continue reading →