Due
to pressure from the U.S. representative for Palestinian affairs and
the Biden administration, the IDF has avoided any major action against
the terrorist infrastructure in northern Samaria.
On Feb. 27, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) wrote a letter to
Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanding the suspension of a State
Department grant that was awarded to Fares Al Arab for Development and
Charity Works in Gaza due to the group’s ties to Hamas, Islamic Jihad
and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist
organizations.
The State Department gave Fares Al Arab a $41,213 grant for “Developing Palestinian Journalists’ English Skills.” But as The Washington Free Beacon
reported, Fares Al Arab issued a grant “to a radio network run by the
Islamic Jihad…, honored a self-described journalist who belonged to the
PFLP, hosted a press freedom event that featured a spokesman for the
Islamic Jihad, and co-led a human rights training course with a
convicted terrorist.”
Issa demanded that by March 10, the State Department explain if it
“knew the history of the group’s ties to terrorism,” “why the grant was
provided if the history was known” and provide a complete accounting for
the State Department’s decision to award Fares Al Arab the grant.
The State Department’s funding of Fares Al Arab is a big deal in and
of itself. But this week it became clear that it isn’t a fluke. The full
expanse of the Biden administration’s policy towards Palestinian
terrorists and Israel became clear this week during U.S. Special
Representative for Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr’s visit to Israel and
Jordan.
Amr’s first stop this week was Aqaba, Jordan. On Sunday, Amr
participated in a summit hosted by the Hashemite regime between senior
officials from Israel, Jordan, the U.S., Egypt and the Palestinian
Authority. The summit, whose stated goal was to “calm” the security
situation in the P.A. and Israel, took place as the newest round of the
Palestinian jihad against the Jewish state and its Jewish citizens went
into high gear. In the month preceding the summit, Palestinian
terrorists murdered 10 Israelis and wounded several more. Three more
have been killed since.
On Sunday evening, Israel’s Channel 14 revealed that the
summit’s agenda was a U.S. security “plan” to tamp down terrorist
violence—and Israeli counterterror operations in Judea and Samaria.
Among other things, the U.S. proposal entails a massive increase in the
number of U.S.-trained Palestinian security personnel. The Biden
administration wishes to provide 5,000 Palestinians with commando
training in Jordan and then deploy them to northern Samaria, and perhaps
the South Hebron Hills—both major nodes of Palestinian terrorist
activity.
The U.S. proposal would also require Israel to sharply curtail IDF
counterterror operations. It foresees the deployment of foreign forces,
including U.S. military forces, on the ground. The ostensible purpose of
those forces would be to separate Palestinians from Israelis. In
practice, such a deployment would pit U.S. and other forces against IDF
soldiers and Israeli civilians on behalf of the Palestinians.
Among the many alarming aspects of the U.S. plan is the fact that it
ignores completely the direct involvement of Palestinian forces in
terrorist attacks. During the course of the Palestinian terror war 20
years ago, U.S.-trained P.A. forces murdered 26 IDF soldiers in 2002
alone. The Palestinians learned how to use cellphones as remote
detonation devices from their American trainers. Over the years, they
have put that knowledge to use not to fight terror but to kill Israelis
in terrorist attacks.
The P.A., whose forces the U.S. seeks to “empower,” is controlled by
the Fatah terror group. P.A. Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is the chairman of
Fatah. Fatah terrorists carried out most of the murderous terror attacks
in 2021-2022. Several of those attacks were carried out by P.A.
security officers.
On Jan. 1, at the P.A.’s official Fatah Day celebration in Ramallah,
the guest of honor was Fathi Azzam. Azzam is a former colonel in the
U.S.-supported Palestinian National Security Forces, the armed group the
U.S. intends to transform into the Palestinian army. Azzam was
celebrated because his son Raad murdered two Israelis at a Tel Aviv pub
last April and his other son Abd was killed along with a P.A. security
officer in the course of a gunfight with IDF soldiers in Jenin last
September. In the weeks before he was killed, Abd carried out several
shooting attacks against IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians.
The message of the U.S. plan that Amr and his colleagues presented at
Aqaba is straightforward. As far as the Biden administration is
concerned, Israel is the rogue actor in the neighborhood and the
Palestinian terror-soaked security forces are America’s partner, not in
fighting terrorism so much as in undermining Israeli counterterror
operations.
While Amr and his colleagues were reading Israel the riot act in
Aqaba, Palestinian terrorists in the northern Samaria terror hub of
Huwara murdered two brothers, Hillel and Yagel Yaniv. The Yaniv brothers
were executed in a rain of bullets while they were stuck at a
roadblock.
The attack was eminently predictable. In the month leading up to
their murder, Palestinians carried out an average of two-three rock and
Molotov cocktail attacks a day against Israeli cars in Huwara and on the
Gilad route leading into the village.
The worst Palestinian terror attack in recent weeks was the Sabbath
massacre of seven Israelis in Jerusalem as they left prayer services on
Jan. 27. The day after the attack, Huwara held an official celebration
of the slaughter replete with fireworks. Footage of the event was posted
on Huwara’s Facebook page.
Following the murder of the Yaniv brothers, Huwara residents
celebrated by handing out sweets. Among those celebrating was the owner
of a car and spare parts lot named Ayed Maharab. As the Kol Yehudi news
agency reported, Maharab is a paroled terrorist who spent five years in
prison. His Facebook page is filled with celebrations of terrorist
attacks and of himself holding an AK-47. Maharab published a post
following the Yaniv brothers’ murders celebrating the attack.
Due to massive pressure from Amr and his colleagues in the Biden
administration, the IDF has avoided taking any major action against the
now sprawling terrorist infrastructure in northern Samaria, including in
Huwara. In the heat of the moment, following the murder of their
friends and neighbors, a number of Israelis from surrounding villages
entered Huwara and committed egregious acts of vigilante violence. Among
other things, they burned Maharab’s car lot.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich lives near Huwara. He reportedly
passed through the location of the Yaniv brothers’ execution just
moments before it occurred. Following the attack, Smotrich seethed that
Huwara should be “wiped out.”
Certainly, Smotrich’s statement was wrong. But anyone even minimally
sympathetic to Israel or more generally, towards a society in the middle
of a major terror onslaught, would cut him some slack. That is, while
you would distance yourself from the sentiment, you would understand the
distress at its source and give Smotrich some credit, particularly when
he apologized.
That’s not what the Biden administration did though. Instead, State
Department Spokesman Ned Price “condemned” Smotrich’s “irresponsible,
repugnant and disgusting, provocative remarks.” Price accused Smotrich
of “incitement of violence,” and demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu condemn Smotrich. The administration also announced that it
will boycott Smotrich when he comes to Washington next week for the
annual Israel Bonds conference.
Price demanded that Israel round up and prosecute the perpetrators and indemnify the victims.
This brings us to Amr’s second stop on his trip. On Monday, Amr
visited Huwara. He didn’t visit the site of the terror attack against
the Yaniv brothers. He didn’t pay his respects to the Yaniv family. Amr
didn’t even condemn their murder. Instead, as the U.S. Embassy’s
Palestinian Affairs Department’s Twitter page reported, Amr “visited
with the [Palestinian] victims of Sunday’s Huwara attack. He expressed
his deepest condolences and condemned the unacceptable widescale,
indiscriminate violence by setters.”
Amr had his picture taken at Maharab’s burned-down car lot.
At Aqaba, Amr and his associates reinstated the Biden
administration’s demand that Israel permit them to open a consulate in
Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority. The fact that such a move would
effectively abrogate U.S. recognition of Israel’s capital city doesn’t
bother Amr or his colleagues.
On Tuesday, Amr visited Jerusalem and went to Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount. He didn’t meet with any rabbis though.
Amr had his picture taken outside of Al-Aqsa Mosque. The post under
the photo on his Twitter page reads, “Special Rep. Amr met with Sheikh
Azzam, Director of the Islamic Waqf, to discuss preparations for a
peaceful Ramadan reflecting the spirit of the Holy Month and to
reiterate the U.S. commitment to the historic status quo.”
“Sheikh Azzam” is Azzam al-Khatib, the director of the Jordanian Waqf
Islamic trust, which by agreement with Israel runs the mosques on the
Temple Mount. If Amr is interested in a “peaceful Ramadan,” his choice
to meet with al-Khatib was a strange one.
In November 2021, the Kol Hayehudi news service reported how in
August 2021, the Waqf’s website posted photos from the graduation
ceremony of 68 women from a four-year course titled “The Fortress
Battalion of Strength.” The course trained women to serve in the
Mourabitoun, a Hamas-controlled group of women who among other things
harass police and Jewish visitors on the Temple Mount.
The course was co-directed by al-Khatib’s deputy Najah Bahirat and
Sheikh Fadi Abu Shahidam. Abu Shahidam headed the Wafq’s Bait Pika al
Aslamiya, a group that teaches Islamic Sharia law on the Temple Mount
under the aegis of the Waqf’s Shariah Education Administration. The
photos on the Waqf’s website showed al-Khatib sitting and standing next
to Abu Shahidam.
Abu Shahidam came to the attention of the Israeli public three months after the course. On Nov. 21, Abu Shahidam murdered Eliyahu Kaye,
26, in a spray of bullets as the young man, who made aliyah from South
Africa, was walking to his job as a tour guide at the Western Wall. Abu
Shahidam was subsequently killed by Israeli police.
Following Abu Shahidam’s attack, Hamas released an official
announcement identifying Abu Shahidam as its senior operative in
Shuafat, Jerusalem. As the Kol Hayehudi agency reported, the police
suspects that the entire course was a Hamas project. Bahirat, who has a
long record of terror incitement in his sermons at Al-Aqsa, was arrested
on terror charges a few days after his colleague Abu Shahidam murdered
Kaye.
Abu Shahidam is far from the only Hamas operative who worked with al-Khatib.
In March 2022, the Jerusalem prosecution indicted a Waqf-controlled
charitable group called Zakat al Quds, its director Khaled Sabah and two
of his sons on terrorism charges. Zakat al Quds had its tax-exempt
status and charitable status removed by the Knesset and the Registrar of
Non-Profits after it was discovered that it is controlled by Hamas,
operates as a Hamas recruitment organization and transfers funds to
Hamas terrorists and the families of dead Hamas terrorists. In all,
Zakat al Quds is accused of raising and transferring 27 million shekels
(about $7.4 million) for Hamas.
Sabah began directing Zakat al Quds in 1994. In 2019, Sabah was
appointed head of Hamas financial operations in Jerusalem by Hamas
leadership in Turkey. In 2021, they promoted him to director of all
Hamas operations in Jerusalem. Among other things, Sabah was charged by
his commanders in Turkey with organizing all Hamas terror activities on
the Temple Mount ahead of the month of Ramadan last year. He and his
sons were charged with laundering 2.7 million shekels (around $740,000)
for Hamas through their personal bank accounts in Israel and Turkey, and
designating 360,000 shekels (some $98,000) for specifically terrorist
purposes. The three men underwent weapons training in Turkey.
As the Kol Hayehudi news agency reported in April, the board of
directors of Zakat al Quds are all heads of the Jordanian Waqf. The
chairman of the board of directors, who holds power of attorney over its
accounts and is responsible among other things for approving its
financial records, is Omar Odallah al-Kiswani. Al-Kiswani is a senior
Jordanian Waqf official and the director of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Incidentally, Zakat al Quds’s accountant from 2009 to 2021 was Esawi
Freij. Freij resigned from his position in 2021 when as a senior
lawmaker from the Meretz Party, he was appointed minister of regional
cooperation in the Bennett-Lapid government.
According to Palestinian sources, Hady Amr’s visit this week to the
Temple Mount marked a major shift in U.S. policy. Amr is the first U.S.
official to carry out an official visit at the Temple Mount.
While Amr’s “Sheikh Azzam” isn’t directly implicated in any of the
Hamas entities operating in the mosque, his web of ties to Hamas
terrorists, including Kaye’s murderer, and Hamas’s central position in
the Jordanian Waqf al-Khatib oversees, casts a dark shadow over Amr’s
visit to the Temple Mount and over the Biden administration’s
Israel-Palestinian policy that Amr leads.
None of Amr’s actions should come as a surprise to those who have
followed his work over the years. Amr laid out his vision for U.S.
policy in a paper he coauthored in 2018 for the Brookings Institution.
In “Ending Gaza’s Perpetual Crisis: A New U.S. Approach,”
Amr called for the U.S. to enable funding of Hamas entities by limiting
the criminal consequences for U.S.-funded NGOs that work with those
entities.
Amr also called for the U.S. to force Israel to stand down against
Hamas by using a combination of direct pressure and European economic
threats to compel Israel to cease fighting the terror group. Amr also
called for the U.S. to support the establishment of a Palestinian unity
government that includes Hamas along with Fatah.
In 2021, President Joe Biden appointed Amr to serve as deputy
assistant secretary of state for Israel and the Palestinians. Last year,
Biden promoted Amr to his current position of special representative
for Palestinian affairs. Judging from Amr’s actions this week in Aqaba,
Huwara and Jerusalem, he has carte blanche to advance the anti-Israel,
pro-Palestinian terrorist vision he set out in his Brookings paper.
Issa’s letter to Blinken regarding the State Department-funded Hamas
charity in Gaza exposed the tip of the iceberg. Amr exposed the iceberg
itself this week. Under his leadership, the Biden administration has
abandoned U.S. support for Israel in favor of support for Palestinian
terrorists and their war against the Jewish state.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot became the first incumbent mayor in Chicago to lose re-election in 40 years. 
Voters
cast their ballots sending Mayoral candidates Paul Vallas and Brandon
Johnson into a runoff to decide who will be Chicago’s next mayor.
Lightfoot chats with supporters after eating lunch at Manny’s Cafeteria and Delicatessen on Election day on February 28.
Maryland mayor Patrick Wojahn was busted on 56 counts of possessing child pornography Thursday.
The Order of Nine Angels logo
New York City Mayor Eric Adams testifies during a joint legislative budget hearing in Albany on Feb. 15, 2023.
Newly-recruited Israeli paratroopers march in full combat gear on a 50-kilometre 12-hour hike in the mountains near Jerusalem. Some Israelis refuse to do military service, others defend the country.
Mayor
Mike Bloomerg’s approach continued to make New York the safest big city
in America as in 2013, his final year as mayor, murders fell to 335 and
eventually hit a modern-day low of 292
During Rudy Giuliani’s first term, the number of murders in New York dropped from nearly 2,000 in 1993 to 770 in 1997. 
Adams blamed Mayor Bill de Blasio for leaving New York in chaos.