Showing posts with label Linkdump. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Linkdump. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 03, 2021

02/03 Links Pt2: Bernard-Henri Levy: A Letter to the American President: The Killer of Daniel Pearl Must Not Go Free; Sarah Wilkinson, the Holocaust denying star of anti-Israel activism

From Ian:

Bernard-Henri Levy: A Letter to the American President: The Killer of Daniel Pearl Must Not Go Free
Mr. President,

I am one of those still living who has most extensively investigated the abduction and decapitation, in February 2002, of your fellow American, Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.

After the killing, I conducted research and interviews in Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar, which led the 2003 publication of my book Who Killed Daniel Pearl?

In it I gave the name of the man who held the knife, four years before his confession in a special court in Guantanamo: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was al-Qaida’s No.3 man and the probable architect of the Sept. 11 attacks.

But, above all, I retraced in detail the machinations that drew Pearl to the Akbar Hotel in Rawalpindi; that lured and deceived him through a series of emails promising him an interview with Mubarak Ali Gilani, leader of the Jamaat ul-Fuqra and one of the inspirations for the founding of al-Qaida; and that finally led him, deep into Karachi’s Gulzar-e-Hijri neighborhood, to an isolated house in which Fazal Karim, Naeem Bukhari, and others were waiting to murder him.

I arrived, then, at the firm conclusion that the brain behind the operation, the man who conceived it with an almost diabolical zeal, the one who served as the link between the various jihadist factions that cooperated to pull it off, was Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British Pakistani who was immediately arrested, convicted, and imprisoned.

Moreover, I adduced proof that this man, Omar Sheikh, was no ordinary criminal but rather an influential member of a galaxy of terrorist organizations that gravitated around al-Qaida. Educated at the London School of Economics, he had been Osama bin Laden’s financial adviser and bin Laden referred to him as his “favorite son.”
David Collier: Sarah Wilkinson, the Holocaust denying star of anti-Israel activism
There is no goodwill

So remember all this the next time you see an attack on a Jewish or Israeli business led by a group such as Palestine Action or Extinction Rebellion. Think of the twisted ideologies of those behind the masks. Either they share antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial or don’t care if their fellow activists do.

And if a Holocaust denying, antisemitic conspiracy theorist is acceptable to JVP, the PSC, Palestine Action or Tikkun Olum – then what or who isn’t? Holocaust Denial and racism against Jews does not matter to them. There is a cause, Sarah Wilkinson is valuable to the cause – if she is a toxic antisemite, well then, they can look past that. They even get to benefit from the extra motivation this provides.

100s came out to support Wilkinson. And those that follow her do not seem to care either. A sitting member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee, when informed about Wilkinson’s antisemitism by a campaigner, chose to block the campaigner rather than unfollow Wilkinson.

This is why those on our side, who still think through prisms of ‘fair play’ and ‘moderates’, keep getting it wrong. There is no goodwill on the other side. Stop pretending it is there. This is not about settlements or Gaza. It is ALL about the very existence of the Jewish state. A Holocaust denying antisemite is helping to lead the charge against British Jews and NOT ONE of the pro-Palestinian organisations will publicly distance themselves from her.


CAA submits evidence to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights to counter claims that International Definition of Antisemitism restricts freedom of expression
Campaign Against Antisemitism has submitted evidence to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights to counter claims that adoption of the International Definition of Antisemitism, especially by universities, stifles freedom of expression.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights comprises members drawn from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords and examines matters relating to human rights. One of its current inquiries is into freedom of expression.

The campaign to encourage universities to adopt the International Definition of Antisemitism has encountered opposition on the basis that adoption somehow stifles freedom of expression, but this argument does not have merit, and the evidence that we have submitted lays out in detail why this is the case. “The claim that adoption of the Definition conflicts with the duty on universities to protect free speech is a familiar and flawed argument, notwithstanding its persistence,” our letter says.

The letter proceeds to analyse the difference between speech that is ‘merely’ insulting or offensive, and speech that is antisemitic, and the implications for whether those types of speech are protected under Article 10 of the European Charter of Human Rights.

We also cite the legal opinion, produced for us in 2017 by Lord Wolfson of Tredegar QC and Jeremy Brier, which argued that “this Definition should be used by public bodies on the basis that it will ensure that the identification of antisemitism is clear, fair and accurate” and emphasised that “Criticism of Israel, even in robust terms, cannot be regarded as antisemitic per se and such criticism is not captured by the Definition.”

02/03 Links Pt1: Joe Biden needs to understand that the Middle East has changed; Biden’s New Asst Sec of State Worked for Islamic Terror State That Funds Hamas

From Ian:

Joe Biden needs to understand that the Middle East has changed
It is very apparent that America will not stand against its interests in the Gulf in order to favour Iran. However, what America is required to know, is that if the Gulf states are forced to make a firm decision, they will do so. As they did during the presidency of Obama. During March 2011 the GCC responded to the request from Bahrain by sending its Peninsula Shield Force to assist the Bahraini government in defeating Iranian backed riots in the country (which were supported and backed by Obama’s administration).

Times like these cannot be forgotten, as countries like the Emirates and Bahrain have a strong and resolute ally, which is the State of Israel. Over the years, this ally has not changed its position and has continued to refuse any negotiations with the Iranian regime. However, the USA has and will continue to change its positions and allies with every change of presidency.

What needs to be made clear to Biden, is that the Arab world view and can compare the Iranian regime to the Nazis, however, the only difference is that Iran located within the Middle East. The Iranians have continuously proven to be fascist and racist towards all kinds of Arabs. Since the 1970s, the Iranians have occupied three of UAE’s islands. Iran has murdered millions of Arabs by inflicting and supporting multiple wars such as the ones located within Iraq, Syria, and Yemen and they’ve supported every terrorist attack in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.

The citizens as well as the governors of GCC people know that Israel were not responsible for blast explosions near the Kaaba, and they did not target Makkah with its missiles. Israel did not manufacture militias that kill the people of Iraq and Yemen, nor did they swing pictures of Netanyahu in southern Lebanon, or occupy Syria, Ahwaz, and the Emirates Islands. Israel did not kill 4,000,000 people and make 7,000,000 migrate. Rather, Iran is responsible for all of the aforementioned situations and Iran continues to prove that they are the enemy of humanity as well the enemy of the Arab nations.

Now is the time that we should unite together in order to thrive together and to stand together as one against one enemy. Regardless of Biden’s suggestion to take a step back to square one by re-joining the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, we need to live in peace and prosperity and coexistence and have a mutual culture and religious understanding.
MEMRI: A New Alliance Rising In The East – Turkey, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, China – And Its Enemies – The U.S. and India
The year 2021 marks the emergence of a new Eastern alliance. MEMRI has been the first to richly document its rise, illustrated by a wide variety of media content.[1] Brought into sharp relief by the bloody November 2020 war between Azerbaijan and the Armenians of Artsakh, the alliance between three authoritarian regimes – in Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan – seems to have acquired a surprising silent partner in the People's Republic of China. This is surprising because the first three countries are Muslim states, which are not shy about using religion as a tool of statecraft, but not so surprising because this alliance is as much about mutual cooperation as it is directed against a disparate group of potential adversaries large and small – India, Armenia, and the United States.[2] Some might add Russia and Iran to this list, but both countries are as often collaborators as they are rivals of their authoritarian neighbors.

The connections are not new. Religious, political, and emotional ties between the Muslims of then-British India and Turkey date to the end of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. Both Turkey and Pakistan (along with Pahlevi Iran and Hashemite Iraq!) were members of the ill-fated U.S./U.K.-supported Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in the late 1950s. Pakistan reportedly facilitated the sending of 1,500 Afghan fighters belonging to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's faction to fight against Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians in 1993. But it is with the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as Turkey's president and the failed 2016 coup against him that these trilateral ties have blossomed. The first trilateral summit between Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan was held in 2017, while the second just concluded last month in Islamabad.[3] Islamabad has supported Turkey on Northern Cyprus and Azerbaijan on Nagorno-Karabakh, while those countries have reciprocated in supporting Pakistan on Kashmir.

Turkey's ties now make it Pakistan's second-largest arms supplier, after Islamabad's longtime patron China.[4] Pakistan has been helpful to Turkey in the defense field as well, especially in pilots after the Turkish purge of its air force after the failed 2016 coup. Of greater concern is the specter of Turkish-Pakistani nuclear cooperation.[5] Some observers were startled by Pakistan's recent reminder that it is not bound by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (no nuclear power is a signatory).[6] But perhaps more significant was the latest (the 15th) session of the Turkey-Pakistan High Level Military Dialogue Group (HLMDG) and the fact that Turkish engineering students are the second-largest group by nationality studying nuclear science in Russia (Russia is building four nuclear power plants for Turkey).[7]

While China has been an ally of Pakistan for decades, there was a time when the Islamist Erdoğan was an open critic of China and its treatment of Uyghur Muslims. Those years are long gone.[8] Since then, the Turkish leadership has been able to appease China, even on the Turkic Uyghur issue, where Turkey hosts a significant exile community of Uyghurs. China and Turkey are now linked by rail, bypassing a jealous Russia, with Turkey becoming an enthusiastic partner of China's Eurasian ambitions.[9] In December 2020, the first transport train from Turkey to China (through Azerbaijan) carried household appliances from Istanbul to Xian in just two weeks, having covered 5,402 miles, two continents, two seas, and five countries.[10]


Seth J. Frantzman: America Gets Middle East 'Withdrawal Fever' Again
To underpin the new bout of fatigue in dealing with the Middle East a group of experts have been publishing articles that they hope will be required reading in the new administration.

Robert Ford, former ambassador to Syria, argued recently that the U.S. had failed in eastern Syria and that it could rely on Turkey and Russia in Syria. Turkey's authoritarian regime, which is buying Russia's S-400 system and working with Iran, likes this idea. Russia surely likes it. The argument is that the U.S. isn't good at "nation-building." This is a false reading of the successful U.S. role in Syria.

Washington never tried "nation-building" in eastern Syria. The U.S. actually did very little there but its partners in the Syrian Democratic Forces accomplished a lot. It seems a bit strange the U.S. help would rid eastern Syria of ISIS and then just turn the area over to adversaries or countries like Turkey which have proven that their role in Syria is to ethnically cleanse minorities, the same minorities like the Kurds the U.S. was working with.

The strange thing about the constant argument that the Middle East is a "quagmire" and the U.S. "failed" and should "leave" is not how other countries view the region.

Russia doesn't view the region as a quagmire. It is building influence in Syria and Libya, as well as offering weapons for sale across the region. Turkey is working with Iran, Russia and China to do trade. Iran wants to do more business with China and Russia and is increasing influence in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. China is moving into the region also.

None of these countries appear worried about open-ended commitments or state-building or forever wars. They want influence and to increase trade and military sales and support for proxy groups or governments. Only the U.S. appears to get a fever every four years about its role in the Middle East. It would be good to take a short rest, and disabuse ourselves that another haphazard withdrawal is helpful.

The region is not a quagmire and the U.S. should play a role supporting allies and friends in the Middle East.

Tuesday, February 02, 2021

02/02 Links Pt2: Israel's hasbara efforts - it's time for an anti-propaganda agency; 170 Celebs, Execs to Launch New ‘Black-Jewish Entertainment Alliance’

From Ian:

Israel's hasbara efforts - it's time for an anti-propaganda agency
The antipropaganda issue is a complex one, which people know very little about. The answer to the above two questions requires spelling out a number of key aspects in some detail. Perhaps the most important is that such a private agency would have to collaborate closely with the Mossad, the domestic security agency Shabak, the military intelligence agency Aman, and the Israel National Cyber Directorate. These are all government agencies, which cannot disclose state secrets to a non-government body.

I raised the idea of the anti-propaganda agency for the first time in my book, The War of a Million Cuts, The Struggle Against the Delegitimization of Israel and the Jews, and the Growth of New Anti-Semitism, which was published in 2015. At the time I consulted with a number of people who were somewhat familiar with the field. We estimated the annual budget for a properly functioning state anti-propaganda agency to be approximately US$250 million. Even for a number of the largest private pro-Israel donors together, this is a very large amount.

Yet there are further aspects that differentiate a state anti-propaganda agency from an aggregate of private pro-Israel bodies. The American CAMERA organization is an example of a pro-Israel organization that does very good work in exposeng media distortions in the US and some other countries such as Great Britain. One of its executives follows the Guardian and regularly depicts the many fallacies about Israel in its articles. His rhetoric, however, has to be restrained. The same is true for another valuable organization active in this area, Honest Reporting.

An Israeli anti-propaganda agency would operate in a very different way. It would start from the realization that the Guardian is an extreme anti-Israel paper. It can be considered a part-time enemy of the country. The anti-propaganda agency would not spend time pointing out to the public what is wrong in articles in the Guardian, identifying lies, or noting instances where this newspaper mobilizes extreme anti-Israelis including Jews and Israeli hate mongers against the state such as the head of the Israeli B'zelem organization.

Instead, the Agency leaders would ask themselves: “How are we going to damage this enemy as fast as possible with minimal effort. The originator of such damage could be open or hidden. The answer to these questions is not very difficult but disclosing it here would be counterproductive.
170 Celebs, Execs to Launch New ‘Black-Jewish Entertainment Alliance’
More than 170 leaders of the entertainment industry released a unity statement on Feb. 1 after launching the Black-Jewish Entertainment Alliance (BJEA), a joint initiative by Black and Jewish entertainment industry professionals devoted to countering racism and anti-Semitism.

In the face of institutional racism and rising anti-Semitism the members of the Alliance feel it is critical to stand together and support one another.

Signatories of the statement include Billy Porter (“Pose”), Mayim Bialik (“Call Me Kat”) Jeremy Piven (“Entourage”), Sharon Osbourne, Tiffany Haddish, Nick Cannon, Jason Alexander (“Seinfeld”), Co-chairman & CEO of Warner Records Aaron Bay-Schuck,, Antoine Fuqua (Director/Producer), President of Motown Records Ethiopia Habtemariam, CEO/Chairman of Columbia Records Ron Perry, Dulé Hill (“The West Wing”) The late-Larry King, Gene Simmons, Pittsburgh Steeler Zach Banner and Jeff Ross among many others.

“The Black and Jewish communities, who have a long history of supporting and working together, are so much stronger when we stand together in the fight against hate,” said Aaron Bay-Schuck, Co-Chairman & CEO of Warner Records. “This Alliance will elevate voices in the entertainment community that can help the public to better understand the causes, manifestations, and effects of racism and antisemitism, ensuring that our industry is doing its part to be a voice for hope, unity, and healing in our country.”

While many organizations combat anti-Semitism and racism individually, the Alliance will aim to create a unified voice against both. It will host programming to highlight their common mission to fight hate and facilitate collaborative events to build solidarity between the Black and Jewish communities. They will also work to elevate voices within the entertainment community to help the public better understand the causes, manifestations and effects of institutional racism and anti-Semitism.

The unity statement (which can be read in full here) starts by acknowledging the “subjugation and persecution” that both Black and Jewish Americans continue to face in the U.S. daily, and continues with a promise to condemn hate when they see it take place.


American Jewish Committee, U.S. Conference of Mayors Launch Campaign Against Antisemitism
American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) announced today the launch of a national effort to combat antisemitism. The two organizations, which have partnered on other projects, are calling on mayors across the country to sign a statement declaring that antisemitism is incompatible with fundamental democratic values.

“Antisemitism is a growing societal menace, it comes from multiple sources, and mayors are uniquely positioned to lead their cities in taking concerted steps to fight it,” said AJC CEO David Harris. “By launching this joint effort on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we recall the darkest period of genocide against the Jewish people, and the constant need for vigilance to guard against any and all forms of antisemitism.”

“In the last few years we have seen a significant increase in hate crimes directed at individuals and institutions based on faith, with the biggest increase among these incidents having been those directed at Jews,” said Conference of Mayors CEO and Executive Director Tom Cochran. “We have always called on mayors to speak out against hate crimes when they occur, and the statement we are inviting mayors to sign today provides a way for them to register their opposition to the dramatic increase in antisemitism we have experienced in our country and work together to reverse it.”

Mayors United Against Antisemitism
The AJC-USCM initiative comes as incidents of antisemitism, some of them violent, continue to rise across the United States, confirmed in FBI reports and AJC public opinion surveys. American Jews, who make up less than 2% of the American population, were the victims of 60.2% of anti-religious hate crimes, according to the FBI 2019 Hate Crimes Statistics report.

AJC’s 2020 State of Antisemitism in America report found that 88% of Jews considered antisemitism a problem today in the U.S., 35% had personally been victims of antisemitism over the past five years and 31% had taken measures to conceal their Jewishness in public. Moreover, the AJC report revealed that nearly half of all Americans said they had either never heard the term “antisemitism” (21%) or are familiar with the word but not sure what it means (25%).

02/02 Links Pt1: UN Watch report highlights anti-Israel bias at UNHRC; US all but admits nuclear deal has failed; London: Firebomb thrown near Golders Green synagogue

From Ian:

UN Watch report highlights anti-Israel bias at UN Human Rights Council
The watchdog organization UN Watch published its first-ever report on Monday detailing the strong anti-Israel claims made at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) by various countries.

The release of the report comes amid the 46th session of the UNHRC, which is scheduled to take place on February 22 in Geneva and will run until March 23.

The 58-page report titled “Agenda Item 7: Country Claims & UN Watch Responses” focuses on how claims put forward against Israel by notorious human rights abuses, such as the Palestinian Authority, Syria, North Korea, and dozens of other council members that frequently accused Israel of various crimes and human rights violations.

Among the claims made against Israel at the UNHRC include Israel hindering the Palestinians in their fight against COVID-19, Israel occupying Palestinian land, Israel committing apartheid against the Palestinians, damaging holy sites, and the blockade of Gaza being illegal.

Under Agenda Item 7, Israel is the sole country discussed at the council, while all the other 193 countries in the world are addressed under Agenda Item 4. Likewise, the report notes that no special agenda items were filed on Iran, Syria, North Korea, and other prominent human rights abusing countries.

“Israel has become a convenient punching bag and scapegoat for non-democratic states, many of them members of the UNHRC such as Cuba, Pakistan, and Libya, to divert attention away from their own gross and systematic human rights abuses," said UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer in response to the report.

At the same time, the report notes that all Western countries have refused to participate in the Item 7 debate, due to the claim it is biassed against Israel.


London: Firebomb thrown near Golders Green synagogue
A Molotov Cocktail was thrown at a synagogue in the Golders Green neighborhood of London Tuesday.

Police cordoned off the area around the Munks Beit Midrash after a suspicious individual was spotted at the site. Footage from the scene showed firefighters attempting to put out a small fire near the building.

Local councilor Alex Prager wrote on Twitter that "Golders Green Road is closed due to a security incident. Police and fire brigade on site. Appears to have involved a molotov cocktail next to a synagogue on The Riding."

Police stated that the incident is not believed to be related to terrorism.


Pakistan orders man acquitted in Pearl murder off death row and into safe house
Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the Pakistani-British man acquitted of the 2002 gruesome beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl off death row and moved to a so-called government “safe house.”

Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh, who has been on death row for 18 years, will be under guard and will not be allowed to leave the safe house, but he will be able to have his wife and children visit him.

“It is not complete freedom. It is a step toward freedom,” said Sheikh’s father, Ahmad Saeed Sheikh, who attended the hearing.

The Pakistan government has been scrambling to keep Sheikh in jail since a Supreme Court order last Thursday upheld his acquittal in the death of Pearl, triggering outrage by Pearl’s family and the US administration.

In a final effort to overturn the acquittal, Pakistan’s government as well as the Pearl family filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, asking it to review the decision to exonerate Sheikh of Pearl’s murder. The family’s lawyer, Faisal Siddiqi, however, said such a review had a slim chance of success because the same Supreme Court judges who ordered Sheikh’s acquittal sit on the review panel.

The US government has said that it would seek Sheikh’s extradition if his acquittal is upheld. Sheikh has been indicted in the United States on Pearl’s murder as well as in a 1994 kidnapping of an American citizen in Indian-ruled sector of the divided region of Kashmir. The American was eventually freed.

Monday, February 01, 2021

02/01 Links Pt2: The Normalization of Antisemitism; UNRWA fundamentally and knowingly breaches agreement that allowed renewed Canadian Aid; Biden administration: Where do BDS and B'Tselem fit in?

From Ian:

Ha'aretz[$]: The Normalization of Antisemitism
The New Israel Fund, along with a series of other “progressive” organizations in the United States that make up the Progressive Israel Network – including J Street, Americans for Peace Now, Habonim Dror North America and Hashomer Hatzair World Movement – put together a petition ahead of Joe Biden’s entry to the White House. It calls on the U.S. government not to adopt the working definition of antisemitism formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and already adopted by more than 10 countries (including Muslim-majority countries like Bahrain and Albania, with Morocco also on the way). The signatories say the definition is overly broad and so will allow the fight against antisemitism to be exploited to “suppress legitimate free speech, criticism of Israeli government actions, and advocacy for Palestinian rights.”

What specifically bothers the authors of the petition? They object to the section that cites as an example of antisemitism the assertion that “the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.” The “existence” of Israel, mind you, is not this or that government policy. In other words, the petition’s authors wish to legitimize the ideas that stood behind the UN Security Council’s despicable 1975 resolution that “Zionism is racism.” So despicable that even the UN, not exactly the most Israel-friendly forum, decided to rescind it in 1991.

Amos Oz used to say that whoever thinks that all peoples deserve the right to self-definition, except the Jews, is antisemitic. By this definition – from the most important intellectual the Israeli left has ever had, not the IHRA – the New Israel Fund and its partners are not seeking to distinguish legitimate criticism from anti-Jewish racism, but rather to advance the legitimation and normalization of antisemitism.

So as to remove any doubt, the petition they’ve signed clarifies not just what it aims to legitimize, but whom in particular: “Secretary of State Pompeo’s State Department’s unambiguous declarations that ‘anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism’ and that ‘the Global BDS Campaign [is] a manifestation of anti-Semitism’ represent a harmful overreach.” The radical left often tends to blur the line between those who oppose the occupation and support the two states for two peoples solution, and those who do not recognize the nation-state of the Jewish people’s right to exist and believe that Zionism is a regrettable historic aberration, an illegitimate colonialist enterprise that must be rolled back.


The Fights Against BDS and for IHRA Converge
January was marked by unprecedented political unrest in the US, following the presidential election and rioting in Washington. The incoming Biden administration has not yet articulated its policy regarding antisemitism or BDS, but certain aspects are becoming clearer. Incoming Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated during his confirmation hearing that he and the Biden administration are “resolutely opposed to BDS.” Nominee for US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield stated in her confirmation hearing that BDS is “unacceptable,” “verges on antisemitic,” and “it’s important that they not be allowed to have a voice at the UN, and I intend to work against that.”

According to one report, a Trump-era initiative to list BDS groups has been sidelined because of the transition, and internal State Department opposition. The stance of new Education Department appointees on BDS remains unclear.

Concern is rising with regard to lower-level nominees. The nomination of a former member of Students for Justice in Palestine, Maher Bitar, to head intelligence activities at the National Security Council is especially alarming. Bitar had served in the Obama administration as Director for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs, as well as a lawyer for UNRWA, before becoming General Counsel for the House Intelligence Committee. A nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights who espoused troubling beliefs in college, including the idea that Jews were responsible for the slave trade, unconvincingly characterized her previous stance as satire but also denounced antisemitism.

The new administration has revoked the Trump administration’s Executive Order banning “Critical Race Theory” training in Federal agencies and for Federal contractors (a move that had already been blocked by a Federal court).

The use of ethnic studies and “racial equity” by the BDS movement to generate antisemitism was demonstrated by the California “ethnic studies” curriculum — and also by comments from a University of California Riverside professor that “Most California public education administrators don’t understand how Zionism politically toxified our schools and curricula. It prevents us from teaching historical material about entire populations. This must not continue.”

02/01 Links Pt1: Kushner, Berkowitz, Friedman nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for Israel deals; Muslim-majority Kosovo forges ties with Israel - will open embassy in Jerusalem; The Apartheid state of Lebanon.

From Ian:

Kushner, Berkowitz, Friedman nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for Israel deals
Former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and his deputy, Avi Berkowitz, as well as former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and former Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer were nominated on Sunday for the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in negotiating four normalization deals between Israel and Arab nations known as the "Abraham Accords."

Nominating the pair of former deputies to then-President Donald Trump was American attorney Alan Dershowitz, who was eligible to do so in his capacity as a professor emeritus of Harvard Law School.

In his nomination letter, Dershowitz wrote that he strongly believes that the singular event that warrants the Nobel Peace Prize for this past year is the Abraham Accords.

"These Accords, which have brought about normalization between Israel and several Sunni Arab nations, fulfill all the criteria for the prize. They hold the promise of an even broader peace in the Middle East between Israel, the Palestinians and other Arab nations. They are a giant step forward in bringing peace and stability to the region, and even to the world," he continued.

Dershowitz added that he wanted to "emphasize the enormous contributions to peace made by Jared Kushner, Avrahm Berkowitz, David Friedman and Ron Dermer," insisting that "these men played especially important roles."

"Kushner and Berkowitz traveled all over the region, meeting with leaders and their associates, advocating for peace and nailing down all the details."


Muslim-majority Kosovo forges ties with Israel; will open embassy in Jerusalem
Israel and Kosovo formally established diplomatic ties on Monday, with the Muslim-majority territory also recognizing Jerusalem as the Jewish state’s capital — putting it at odds with the rest of the Islamic world.

In a ceremony held over Zoom in Jerusalem and Pristina, Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and his counterpart from Kosovo, Meliza Haradinaj Stublla, signed a joint declaration establishing ties.

Travel restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19, including the closure of Ben Gurion Airport, made an in-person ceremony impossible. It was the first time Israel established relations with a country virtually.

Ashkenazi said he had approved Kosovo’s “formal request to open an embassy in Jerusalem.”

“The establishment of relations between Israel and Kosovo is an important and moving historical step that reflects the many changes the region has experienced in recent months,” Ashkenazi said.

“Today, Kosovo officially joins the circle of countries that aspire to peace and stability and recognize Israel, and Jerusalem as its capital.”

The foreign ministers signed two cooperation agreements — one to establish their diplomatic relations and the other relating to the activities of Israel’s international development agency Mashav. They will send each other copies via email, each to be signed by their counterpart, according to the Foreign Ministry.

The ceremony was broadcast live on the Foreign Ministry’s Facebook page.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price praised the sides for the “historic day.”

“When our partners are united, the United States is stronger. Deeper international ties help further peace and stability in the Balkans and Middle East,” he said.


Sunday, January 31, 2021

01/31 Links: NY Post Editorial: A new libel against Israel from Human Rights Watch; What drove Obama into Iran's arms?; Evidence Suggests Iranian Link to Blast Near Israeli Embassy in New Delhi

From Ian:

NYPost Editorial: A new libel against Israel from Human Rights Watch
Israel has led the world in rapidly vaccinating much of its population, so naturally the global left has to find fault: hence the drive to condemn Jerusalem for not taking responsibility for vaccinations in Gaza and the West Bank.

In a series of tweets, Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth accused Israel of racism for this supposed failure; a week later, Palestinian officials decided to join the blame game, announcing that Israel is responsible for vaccinating Palestinians despite past statements to the contrary.

In reality, as UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer notes, the 1995 Oslo II Accord designates responsibility for the health care and vaccinations of its people to the Palestinian Authority.

And while the two countries are supposed to cooperate in terms of handling epidemics, Palestinian Health Ministry officials admitted back in December that they didn’t ask for help in obtaining vaccines from Israel.

Top Palestinian officials routinely go to Israel for major medical care, but PA propaganda discourages it for everyone else, with dark hints that Jewish doctors will offer Arabs only substandard care — if they’re not secretly experimenting on Palestinian patients.
What drove Obama into Iran's arms?
From Obama’s perspective, Iran was the state with which to develop a relationship. The mullahs have the will, aggression and desire to destroy Israel, which they have expressed continuously. However, Iran’s nuclear ambitions posed a PR problem. Therefore, Obama relied on the belief that Iran could not be stopped, and as a result the US and some of its European partners negotiated a deal, which on the surface could be sold to a compliant and ever helpful main stream media, which in turn would sell it to the world’s public. Iran would agree not to develop a nuclear weapon for at least ten years, after which they would be free to do so. This could follow without any international interference. Obama, by then, would have “kicked the can down the road” for a future President to deal with along with the possible fate of Israel.

Whether Iran would comply didn’t really bother anyone, and clauses contained in the agreement limited inspections to civilian sites only whilst excluding military sites -- which is, of course, exactly where nuclear weapons would be developed. This was not only an awful and extremely bad agreement, which appeared to be Obama’s intention, but it has never been ratified by the US Congress. Part of the “deal” was that Obama would transfer huge amounts of cash to the Iranians in the amount of $150 to $170 billion. It remains questionable as to how much of it would find its way into Obama’s pocket. If this was so, a Democrat aligned media would be part of the conspiracy in covering it up.

During the signing and lead up to the JCPOA, I was always struck by the arrogance and cocksureness of Mohammad Javad Zarif so much on display I suspected and speculated that he possibly had Obama and Kerry in his pocket.

This whole scheme essentially threw the USA’s Sunni Arab allies “under the bus” abandoning them with Iran simultaneously threatening them. The great unintended irony, which had not been clearly thought through or even imagined, was that this would encourage the Sunni Arabs to make peace with Israel for their mutual defence as they no longer trusted America. As a result, these states were no longer bound by a ridiculous Palestinian-imposed veto. Their interests and defence obviously took precedence and under a Biden presidency, this situation would be even more relevant, with Obama very likely in the background pulling the Biden strings.

What appealed to Obama and his useless sidekick, John Kerry, was more the potential destruction of Israel, and perhaps to a lesser extent, limiting Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The JCPOA agreement said nothing about the development of missiles, which should have been a logical inclusion. Why something so fundamental was omitted remains a mystery. What should have occurred to them during negotiations was that a nuclear bomb has to be delivered. Iran has an antiquated air force which could not manage such a task. It could of course acquire aircraft from Russia or China. However, the obvious and only alternative was via a ballistic missile. This is precisely what Iran has been developing and testing for years.


Report: Evidence Suggests Iranian Link to Blast Near Israeli Embassy in New Delhi
Indian terrorist group Jaish-ul-Hind has claimed responsibility for the blast that took place near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi on Friday, local media reported.

No one was injured in the explosion, which took place on the 29th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and Israel.

According to the India.com news site, the investigation so far has recovered social-media chatter according to which Jaish-ul-Hind operatives boast about carrying out the attack.

The Indian Express reported on a police source as saying that the bomb appeared to have been planted in a flowerpot on the road divider. According to the report, a letter found on the scene, addressed to “Israel Embassy ambassador,” said that the blast was a “trailer,” suggesting that it was a prelude to future attacks against the embassy or other Israeli targets in the country.

The note also refers to “Iranian martyrs” Qassem Soleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander killed in a US drone strike in Iran on Jan. 3, 2020, and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, head of the Iranian military nuclear program, who was assassinated near Tehran on Nov. 27 in a hit for which Iran has blamed Israel.
New Delhi Blast: 2 Suspects Seen on Security Footage

Saturday, January 30, 2021

01/30 Links: Natan Sharansky: Remember the People, Not Just the Atrocities; Caroline Glick: Democrats, American Jews and Politically Correct Bigotry

From Ian:

Natan Sharansky: Remember the People, Not Just the Atrocities
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, everyone around the world — individuals, leaders, communities — gather to reinforce their commitment to honor the memory of the victims of the darkest hour of human history.

But while the world bows its head to commemorate the Holocaust, it often remembers its victims as a unified collective. The very day we commemorate the victims, Jan. 27, marks the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the ultimate symbol of the Nazi terror. But not all Holocaust victims were sent to concentration camps. Far from it. The time has come to tell the all-encompassing story of the Holocaust.

Behind the monstrous number of “six million victims” stand six million individual life stories. To commemorate the Holocaust means remembering each and every one of those individually. We are committed to telling as many stories as possible, but unfortunately, too many of them remain unknown.

How many life stories will never be known after the massacre in Ukraine’s Babi Yar ravine? Within two days, the Nazis brutally murdered 33,771 Jewish men, women and children. By the end of the war, they murdered 100,000 people, including Ukrainians and gypsies.

The Babi Yar massacre destroyed the Jewish community in Kyiv. The Jews of Riga, Minsk and Vilnius encountered the same tragic fate — murdered in ravines. Some 1.5 million Jews lost their lives that way.

The central chapter of the Nazi’s “final solution” is still largely unknown. As I know from bitter experience, the Soviet regime after World War II did everything possible to erase Jewish identity and the memory of the Holocaust from collective memory.
The Jews who fought back during the Holocaust
Much has been written about what needs to be done during the remaining days of the year to properly commemorate and educate the world about the horrors of the Holocaust, and what “never again” really means. A recent Pew Research poll proves that Americans’ Holocaust education is sorely lacking. For example, only 45 percent of Americans interviewed even knew that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Even fewer knew that Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany by a democratic political process.

Surely, what is far less known is how many Jews fought valiantly against the Nazis. But fight they did. Jews fought back alongside resistance groups around Europe, organized uprisings in the ghettos, created partisan units and even fought back in the concentration camps, attempting to bomb a crematorium in Auschwitz. To properly commemorate the Holocaust, these stories must be told as well.

To that end, I commemorate and honor the story of the following Jews who courageously fought back during World War II and the Holocaust. Their stories represent the thousands who fought to the end.
- Mordechai Anielewitz. The leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In April 1943, he led 750 Jewish fighters armed with a handful of pistols, 17 rifles and Molotov cocktails—all smuggled into the ghetto—in a clash with more than 2,000 heavily armed and well-trained German troops. They held off the Germans for 27 days.
- Boris Lekach. This one is personal. My wife’s maternal grandfather. Lekach fought for the Russians against the Nazis. He enlisted at age 16 with doctored papers just so he could fight. He was also well-known to many in the Jewish community in Russia for helping Jews escape during and after the war.
- The Bielski Brothers. Made famous in a number of books and in the 2008 movie “Defiance,” the Bielski brothers—Tuvia, Asael and Zus—fled their city in Belarus after their parents and two other siblings were murdered. The brothers found shelter in the forest, where they created one of the largest and most effective partisan groups during the war, focusing on guerrilla attacks against the Nazis and their collaborators, as well as on preserving Jewish life even in their hideout. In a little more than two years, the Bielski group grew to about 1,200 people.
- Tosia Altman. A young woman who used fake papers to smuggle weapons and information in and out of Poland’s ghettos. She was an active member of the social Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, active in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising alongside Anielewitz and the other brave fighters.
- Eta Wrobel. A young woman in her 20s who helped form an all-Jewish partisan unit in the Polish woods. Her unit attacked German troops as they traveled through the area and is credited for saving hundreds of Jews.
- Rudolph Masaryk. On Aug. 2, 1943, at the Treblinka extermination camp, Masaryk and other Jewish prisoners stole 20 grenades, 20 rifles and a few handguns. Together, they attacked the SS guards, while another doused a large part of the camp with gasoline and lit it on fire. Approximately 300 prisoners escaped and 40 Nazi guards were killed during the Treblinka uprising.
Caroline Glick: Democrats, American Jews and Politically Correct Bigotry
In recent weeks, outspoken anti-Israel campaigners and BDS supporters like Representative Ilhan Omar, former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill and New York Times columnist Peter Beinart have been pushing for the new administration to reject the IHRA definition and legitimize BDS. They have attacked Jewish Democratic groups like the Democratic Majority for Israel, as well as the vast majority of all American Jewish groups, led by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations—all of which are urging the Biden administration to maintain the previous administration's policies.

These efforts are being driven both by overtly anti-Israel, nominally Jewish groups like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, and by ostensibly "pro-Israel" progressive Jewish groups, including Peace Now, J Street, T'ruah and the New Israel Fund. The AMCHA Initiative report found that since 2019, 44 percent of efforts to discredit the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism were carried out by these and other like-minded Jewish-run groups.

All of these groups are calling for the Biden administration to disavow the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and its examples of contemporary anti-Semitism as a legal tool for combating anti-Semitism. IfNotNow is running a social media campaign, as well, to lobby the Biden administration to appoint an official special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism who will simply ignore leftist anti-Semitism. As the group put it in a recent Twitter post, "It is important for us to demand that [President Biden] appoint someone to the special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism who'll be committed to fighting neo-Nazis and white nationalists, not Palestinians and students."

It is a peculiar thing to see ostensibly Jewish groups dedicating their efforts to removing legal protections against anti-Jewish discrimination from their fellow Jews. It is a mark of the corruption of the American Jewish far Left that this is what they wish to fight for today. But even more disconcerting is the anti-Semitic disposition of large swaths of the Democratic Party. Democratic activist circles are now dominated by anti-Semitic voices from the Left who denounce Israel and its supporters. The effort by progressive Jewish groups to deny civil rights protection to pro-Israel Jews is indicative of the prevailing winds in the Democratic Party. Progressive Jews believe that to remain relevant in their party, they must fill the role of Jewish fig leaves for their party's anti-Semitic activist base.

This then brings us to the object of their lobbying efforts—President Joe Biden. Wednesday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. To mark the occasion, Biden released a strong statement decrying anti-Semitism. Arguably more significant, however, is the fact that Trump's executive order on anti-Semitism has been scrubbed from the Biden White House's website.

Friday, January 29, 2021

01/29 Links Pt2: Holding "Politicized, Biased" Academia Accountable; Arab Writers Slam Facebook And Twitter's Hypocrisy: They Block Trump, Yet Continue To Provide Platform For Terror Organizations

From Ian:

Winfield Myers on Holding "Politicized, Biased" Academia Accountable
Winfield Myers, director of Campus Watch at the Middle East Forum, spoke to participants in a December 18 Middle East Forum webinar (video) about Campus Watch's pivotal role in documenting the misuse of taxpayer funds and the questionable foreign funding sources of various Middle East studies centers at American universities.

A major focus of Campus Watch in 2020 was the widespread misuse of federal grants received by Middle East studies centers under Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965. The Title VI statute stipulates that these grants, usually in the neighborhood of $250,000-300,000 per year, be used for "the teaching of area studies and languages that will strengthen America's national security," said Myers. Instead, as Campus Watch research has shown, the monies are typically used to support "politicized, biased, anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Western teaching, scholarship, conferences, travel, you name it, in a variety of ways."

Campus Watch has worked in tandem with Clifford Smith of MEF's Washington Project to hold academia accountable for long-overlooked abuses. Campus Watch documents proof of the abuses, which Smith brings to the attention of policymakers, congressional leaders, and others in Washington D.C. to see "what might be done to rein them in."

Campus Watch and the Washington Project organized a congressional letter-writing campaign requesting departmental investigations into various Middle East studies centers that were abusing their grants. These letters found a "sympathetic ear" among Secretary Betsy DeVos and other political appointees in the Department of Education (DoE) during the Trump administration, who began several investigations and completed one. In prior years, the DoE had "cozy relationships" with D.C.'s higher education lobby and various directors of Middle East studies centers. The latter, whom Myers dubbed "the higher education blob," pressed "for more money and less oversight," and largely got their way.




MEMRI: Arab Writers Slam Facebook And Twitter's Hypocrisy: They Block Trump, Yet Continue To Provide Platform For Terror Organizations
Facebook's and Twitter's suspension of former U.S. President's Donald Trump's accounts following the Washington DC riots on January 6, 2021 sparked criticism from Arab writers, who accused the networks of employing a double standard. Twitter and Facebook, they said, shut down Trump's accounts on the pretext of incitement to violence, yet at the same time they continue to provide a platform for numerous terror groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, which call for murder and violence against innocent people.

January 9, 2021 Cartoon in Egyptian daily Al-Yawm Al-Sabi': Twitter and Facebook silence Trump on grounds of "public security," yet provide the "organizations of chaos and terror" with a platform on the grounds of "freedom of opinion"

The following are translated excerpts from some of the articles:
Akram Al-Qassas, acting editor of the Al-Yawm Al-Sabi' daily, which is affiliated with the Egyptian regime, wrote: "Twitter's decision to shut down the account of U.S. president Donald Trump constitutes a turning point in the practices of the social media networks [in general] and of Twitter in particular… Twitter's closing of [his] account on the pretext of incitement to violence marks a turning point, and one wonders whether Twitter will limit these rules to the U.S. alone or impose them on everyone - especially considering that Twitter is the social media network which in recent years has enabled the promotion of violence more than any other [network]. In fact, organizations like the Islamic State [ISIS] and Al-Qaeda had [Twitter] accounts on which they published statements inciting to violence, and even disseminated and marketed terror attacks. Cached Twitter accounts still include hundreds of videos in which terrorists incite terror, bombings and murder of Egyptian military personnel and police. Moreover, Twitter still provides a platform for people who call for violent demonstrations, incitement and murder, and for videos featuring religious rulings that accuse Egyptians of heresy and incite to murder them.

"[All this] may indicate that Twitter's sudden adoption of a policy opposing violence and terror applies only to the U.S., or that the [network] is employing a double standard: spreading [the messages of] terrorists and those who incite violence in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Europe, while preventing the same in the U.S. This seems to be motivated by some kind of fear by Twitter that it might be sued if it continues to allow Trump to tweet.

"Generally speaking, stopping Trump's tweets after he was accused of incitement to violence represent an important turning point, compelling all the countries in the world to apply these norms in the fight against terror and to block all accounts which call for violence and promote terror. There are hundreds of Twitter accounts… of armed organizations… which clearly incite against Egypt and other Arab countries.

"[But] it seems that the decision to suspend Trump's account is specific to him, and that Twitter will find it difficult to apply the same policy in all cases, for the network apparently profits, directly or indirectly, from fake accounts or accounts inciting violence or terror, so it will be reluctant to block them as it did with Trump."[1]

01/29 Links Pt1: Blast outside Israel’s New Delhi embassy - security raised worldwide; White House Punts on Condemning BDS Movement; Iran Turns Gaza Into Storehouse for Weapons

From Ian:

President Biden, please don't rock the Israel-PA boat
Please don't rock the boat. Don't stray from the path that has proven to be effective. Too many have died, too many lives ruined. Please,stay with the initiative that has ushered in one of the most peaceful times in recent history.

Why did previous administrations fail while the last administration slowed the cycle of violence and offered unprecedented hope for a true and lasting peace?

1. Examining the claims. Palestinian negotiator's claims were generally accepted outright, without much research into their validity, or consideration for the inevitable consequences of accepting such demands. This led to negotiations that started at a place much too steep for Israeli negotiators to even consider realistic talks. A basic and objective check on these claims would have quickly resulted in the nullification of many of them.

For example the demand for "the right of return". Well, why was it that so many Arabs left Israel in the first place? Were any even forced out? Why did Arab nations require the incoming refugees to remain in refugee camps, kept in squalid conditions, while other refugees have long ago been settled and rebuilt their lives?

Even the basic claim to "restore" the "Palestinian State" raises many red flags. Was there ever really a Palestinian Arab nation? Did they ever have rulership anywhere? Or perhaps it is all a pretext to simply gain valuable land? Perhaps the "poor Palestinian people" cause, is a multi billion dollar money maker where leaders like Arafat, Abbas and Hamas get filthy rich by inciting others to violence, continuously fueling the flames of hatred, while staying safely behind the scenes. Have you checked why they are sitting on billions of dollars? Why PA schools books are filled with antisemitism?


Caroline Glick: Maher Bitar and Israel's ideological elections
Israel's March 23 elections are being presented as a simple referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The media and Netanyahu's opponents would have us believe that there is no ideological struggle. It's all just a question of whether you love or hate Bibi.

But this is untrue. The coming elections are primarily about ideology. To understand why this is the case, we need to look no further than President Joe Biden's appointments.

This week the White House announced that Maher Bitar has been appointed to serve as the senior director for Intelligence at the National Security Council. The position is one of the most powerful posts in the US intelligence community. The senior director is the node to which all intelligence from all agencies flows. He decides what to share with the President. And in the name of the President, he determines priorities for intelligence operations and collection.

The senior director of intelligence also determines what information the US intelligence community will share with foreign intelligence services. Likewise, he decides how to relate to information that foreign intelligence agencies share with the Americans.

As one former senior national security council member explained, "The senior director for intelligence controls the information everyone sees. And by controlling information, he controls the conversation."

Usually, the sensitive position is reserved for a CIA officer who is detailed to the National Security Council. Bitar, however, is not an intelligence professional. He is an anti-Israel political activist.
Blast outside Israel’s New Delhi embassy damages cars; security raised worldwide
A blast outside the Israeli embassy in New Delhi on Friday damaged cars but did not cause injuries, police said. Israeli authorities were treating the explosion as a suspected attack aimed at the embassy, The Times of Israel has learned, and was stepping up security precautions at missions around the world.

The district around the embassy was sealed off after the explosion and police and bomb disposal experts took over the scene.

A police statement described it as a “very low-intensity improvised device” that blew out the windows on three nearby cars and said a preliminary investigation “suggests a mischievous attempt to create a sensation.”

The New Delhi Television news channel said the explosive device had ball bearings wrapped in a plastic bag and was left on the pavement outside the embassy. There was no immediate police confirmation.

The blast in the high-security zone occurred while India’s president and prime minister were attending a ceremony marking the end of Republic Day celebrations. The venue is about 1.4 kilometers (1 mile) from the Israeli Embassy.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the blast and that no one was hurt.

“The incident is being investigated by Indian authorities who are in contact with the relevant Israeli officials,” the ministry said. “The foreign minister is being updated regularly and has ordered all necessary security steps be taken.”

Thursday, January 28, 2021

01/28 Links Pt2: Understanding B’tselem’s “Apartheid” Libel; Tu B’Shvat: The Festival that Proves the Jewish People’s Connection to the Land of Israel; California Is Cleansing Jews From History

From Ian:

Understanding B’tselem’s “Apartheid” Libel
If you’re looking for examples of spin in B’tselem’s latest anti-Israel document, in which the organization slings around the inflammatory terms “apartheid” and “Jewish supremacy,” there are plenty.

Consider, as one small example, the report’s charge that Israel has built “hundreds of communities for Jewish citizens – yet not a single one for Palestinian citizens.” The sentence was written to sound as damning as possible, which increases its shock value, but also left the authors in the uncomfortable position of having to immediately rebut their own falsehood. “The exception,” B’tselem admits in the very next sentence, “is a handful of towns and villages built to concentrate the Bedouin population.” Image of Bedouin town

The town of Ararat an-Naqab, which Israel built for the Bedouin community.

Which is to say, Israel built “not a single” community for Palestinians, except for all the ones it did build: Rahat, Kuseife, Shaqib al-Salam, Ar’arat an-Naqab, Lakiya, Tel as-Sabi, Hura, Tirabin al-Sana, Mulada, Abu Krinat, Bir Hadaj, Qasr al-Sir, Makhul, Umm Batin. It’s Orwellian newspeak: None, but many. A lie, but with the truth appended as a throwaway-line.

This is far from the worst distortion in the document. The big lie is conveyed in the report’s title, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.” But the semantic gamesmanship here is revealing. What should be straightforward, B’tselem makes a point of muddling. And so it goes throughout the report, with the result being a mess of factoids, fibs, and fraudulence meant to inflame and misinform, and which tells us more about the organization than about Israel.

The other side of the ledger – B’tselem’s comment about communities for Jews —is hardly better. It’s true that Israel has established hundreds of Jewish communities. But the reason for that isn’t nefarious, as B’tselem suggests. These towns and cities were needed to house immigrants numbering in the millions — Holocaust survivors, Middle Eastern Jews escaping persecution in Arab countries, Jews who wanted to live near their holy sites — absorbed by a country serving as a haven for Jews everywhere. It isn’t supremacy. It’s sanctuary.
Tu B’Shvat: The Festival that Proves the Jewish People’s Connection to the Land of Israel
The Jewish calendar has many holidays. Some celebrate the survival of the Jewish people over various enemies, some are solemnly spiritual in nature, but others exist, too. One such festival, Tu B’Shvat (sometimes written Tu BiShvat), is perhaps the greatest proof of the Jewish people’s deep connection with the Holy Land.

What Is Tu B’Shvat?
Tu B’Shvat is a Jewish holiday heralding the blossoming of trees and the beginning of the coming cycle of fruit. The name actually derives directly from the Hebrew date of the holiday, which occurs on the fifteenth day of Sh’vat. “Tu” stands for the Hebrew letters Tet and Vav, which have numerical values of 9 and 6 respectively, which add up to 15. Hence Tu B’Shvat literally means the “fifteenth [day of the month] of Sh’vat.”

Where Does Tu B’Shvat Come From?
Tu B’Shvat’s roots can be traced all the way back to the Jewish Talmud. While Rosh Hashanah, the main Jewish new year festival, is familiar to many people, there are actually a number of new year dates in the Jewish tradition. The Talmud records a debate with various opinions, leading to the establishment of four new years:
- The first of Nisan as the “new year for kings and festivals”;
- The first of Elul as the “new year for the tithe of cattle”;
- The first of Tishrei as the “new year for years,” including the calculation of the calendar and sabbatical years;
- The fifteenth of Sh’vat as the “new year for trees”.

Many centuries ago, a variety of different taxation methods were employed. One of the most common was called tithing. Tithing required separating percentages of produce, and handing them over to the local authorities. And for farmed in ancient Israel, Tu B’Shvat marked the date when calculations of the forthcoming fruit crop would begin.

The Talmud records this date as being the point in time when trees in the Land of Israel are said to awaken from their winter hibernation and start the process of renewal, blooming and bearing new fruit. While the date can naturally only be approximate, the month of Sh’vat was selected because “most of the yearly rainfall has passed” (Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashana, 14a), causing the trees to renew and their fruit ripen.

So before it was ever considered a festival, Tu B’Shvat was actually a formal date which was primarily significant for its function in governance. Over the centuries, however, the day has been transformed into an opportunity to connect with the Land of Israel.


California Is Cleansing Jews From History
As a result of the outpouring of criticism of the first ESMC draft, in August 2019, Superintendent Thurmond ordered a revision. A second draft was completed in August 2020 and was immediately criticized for simply moving objectionable material to the appendices and footnotes. In the current, third draft, released in December, some of the most offensive material was actually moved back in. For example, an historical resource was added with the following description of prewar Zionism: “the Jews have filled the air with their cries and lamentations in an effort to raise funds and American Jews, as is well known, are the richest in the world.”

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director of AMCHA Initiative, which fights campus anti-Semitism, points out that all 13 founding members of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association (CESA) are BDS activists. CESA, the national home base for critical studies, passed a resolution to boycott all Israeli academic institutions in 2014, and the group’s past four biennial meetings included multiple sessions demonizing Israel. “There are a couple thousand academic boycotters of Israel in the country,” she said, “and the largest percentage of them come from ethnic studies. Anti-Zionism is built into the theory and the discipline of ethnic studies, which demonizes Israel as an apartheid settler-colonialist Nazi state.”

But of even greater concern to Jews, she believes, is the singling out of Jewish students as enjoying racial privilege. “I don’t see any way that Jewish students can sit in an ethnic studies class and not feel they have a double target on their backs,” she said, fearing hatred and violence will ensue. First, because they’re Jewish, and considered white and part of the 1%, the purported villains of the teaching, and then through an assumed association with Israel. “There’s a state requirement that you have to sit through a class that says to Jewish students they have extraordinary racial privilege and yet forbids them from speaking because ‘this course is not about you?’ If you don’t accept it, you’re publicly shamed and ostracized—you can’t even speak up and say, ‘I’m not sure if I think that all white people are racists.’”

To placate critics, the third version has added lessons about Korean Americans, Armenian Americans, and Sikhs. Two lessons have been offered about Jews. One, following crude CRT dogma, teaches that Mizrahi Jews coming to the United States from Arab lands were mistreated by “white” Ashkenazim. The other suggests that Jews of European descent have white privilege.

The Jewish Journal points out that Jews are the only group in the curriculum for whom the term “privilege” is used. And this privilege is not earned by way of talent, or educational and professional attainment, but rather trickery. The ESMC, echoing Nazi propaganda about Jews as impostors and appropriators hiding in plain sight, points out that American Jews often change their names (“this practice of name-changing continues to the present day”) to change their rank in the social hierarchy.

01/28 Links Pt1: David Singer: Biden declares Trump peace plan dead and buried; Vaccine found 92% effective in Israel, in first controlled result outside trials

From Ian:

David Singer: Biden declares Trump peace plan dead and buried
A Washington Post article in August 2020 summed up Biden and the Democrats position on Trump’s version of a two-state solution:

“The Democrats, led by presidential candidate Joe Biden, are determined to change course should they come to power. There are open discussions within the caucus about conditioning the billions in aid given to Israel on the basis of its actions. Biden and virtually every Democrat in Congress were vocal in their opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s now-stalled plans to start annexing parts of the West Bank.”

Any attempt by Israel to extend its sovereignty unilaterally into any part of Judea and Samaria (aka 'West Bank') – incorrectly termed “annexation” – will assuredly be opposed by President Biden.

Trump’s Vision acknowledged the historic and biblical right of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in the 'West Bank' – recognized and legally authorized by the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine - and preserved under article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

A jointly-appointed US-Israel Mapping Committee - headed by Friedman – had failed – after 11 months - to produce a detailed subdivision of the 'West Bank' embracing the concept of a two-state solution proposed by Trump - before Friedman’s retirement as Ambassador.

Closing the Embassy’s second Twitter page signals such a map will never be released under President Biden’s administration.

Biden has effectively declared Trump’s peace plan dead and buried.


Ambassador Dan Shapiro Comes Home to Joe Biden’s Washington
Shapiro’s party often appeared highly factionalized during much of his post-administration life in Israel, especially on the Middle East. Jake Sullivan and Ben Rhodes might have co-founded National Security Action, an anti-Trump foreign policy-focused political organization packed with former Obama administration officials, in which Shapiro sat on the advisory council. But they represent different poles of Democratic Party opinion on the region, and perhaps on the exercise of American power in general. Whether the party would embrace Shapiro’s brand of left-leaning pragmatism, or the more ideological stance embodied in Sen. Bernie Sanders, would depend on the outcome of the Democratic presidential primary, in which Shapiro was once again an early backer of the eventual winner.

By the time Biden was elected president, Shapiro had been discussing the Middle East with Tony Blinken and the former vice president’s foreign policy team for well over a year. Blinken and Shapiro are reportedly close and have known each other for over two decades, ever since they served together on the NSC at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Blinken was later deputy national security adviser when Shapiro was on the NSC during Obama’s first term. Their career paths mirror one another’s—Blinken is not a professional diplomat but a former NSC hand who advised Biden while serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s staff in the early 2000s; similarly, Shapiro was a deputy chief of staff for a Democratic senator who went straight to a senior NSC position after being on the right side of a closely contested presidential primary.

During the 2020 race Shapiro “participated in strategy calls about policy, and about the Jewish and pro-Israel community,” according to Marc Stanley, a Dallas-based Democratic Party activist and fundraiser. Shapiro phone-banked and appeared in multiple Zoom events a week during the decisive phase of the race—in terms of Jewish outreach, the only figure within the campaign who seemed to outrank Shapiro was Doug Emhoff, the husband of vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris. At one virtual event during the stretch run of the race, Matt Nosanchuk, a former Obama liaison to the Jewish community, marveled that Shapiro was “available 24/6” for anything campaign-related, despite the time difference between the United States and Israel. At another event, attended by over 1,000 Jewish communal leaders, Shapiro was the speaker who handed things off to Biden himself, who then repeatedly stated that he would be leaning on Shapiro for help once he won the presidency.

“I don’t represent the Biden campaign,” Shapiro cautioned during a June 2020 conference call for Americans for Peace Now. Yet he spoke to Jewish audiences with a unique credibility about what his candidate was likely to do once elected. Biden, Shapiro said during that event, has a “deep, I would say very personal and emotional connection to Israel ... He calls himself a Zionist. There are not very many non-Jewish politicians who openly embrace that word.”

Whether the capital that Shapiro has amassed with both Israeli and American Jewish audiences and decision-makers will be put toward a historic peace breakthrough with the Palestinians, or will simply cushion a series of conflicts and disappointments that will push Democrats further from Israel and Israel further from the United States, could end up depending on a single issue alone, one which Shapiro successfully insulated himself from during his ambassadorship: Iran.

Few people are in a position to know whether and in what fashion President Biden will try to reenter the Iran Nuclear Deal, the centerpiece of Obama’s second-term foreign policy, as he has repeatedly and publicly pledged to do. Until the new administration’s policy clarifies, no one knows whether President Biden will unilaterally lift sanctions and allow the Iranians to expand their fast-accelerating nuclear weapons program, or instead attempt to utilize the leverage the Trump administration has established over the Islamic Republic to create a breakthrough of a kind that both Iranians and Israelis might applaud. Shapiro is the only figure in the Biden Middle East policy world whom Israelis have known and lived beside for nearly a decade—when the time comes for attempting the near-impossible diplomatic balancing act of moving toward a new understanding with Tehran, Israelis and Americans might get to find out what Shapiro’s years in the Middle East have truly amounted to.
The Tikvah Podcast: Emmanuel Navon on Jewish Diplomacy from Abraham to Abba Eban
For much of its history, the Jewish people hasn’t had a state. The Israel described in the Hebrew Bible had emissaries and military power, and the modern state of Israel has a foreign ministry and an advanced military, yet there’s nearly 2,000 years of stateless history in between. Throughout that time, however, Jewish diplomacy has been constant. Even without a state, the Jewish people has integrated, separated, argued, and made amends with the other nations of the world. And, as a new book shows, there’s much to be learned from that long experience today, in the state of Israel and out.

On this week’s podcast, Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver speaks with Emmanuel Navon, the author of The Star and the Scepter: A Diplomatic History of Israel. Navon puts Israel’s diplomatic history in the context of the entire history of the Jews, beginning with the Hebrew Bible. In doing so, he and Silver try to dig up some eternal truths about the nature of the Jewish people.

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

01/27 Links Pt2: Benjamin Netanyahu: ‘Never Again’ Is More Than a Slogan; The Courage of William Cooper; How people deny the Holocaust without denying it

From Ian:

Benjamin Netanyahu: Benjamin Netanyahu: ‘Never Again’ Is More Than a Slogan
Some thought that after the horrors of Auschwitz and Treblinka, humanity would learn its lesson once and for all, disavow antisemitism, and throw the destructive hatred onto the ash heap of history where it belonged. However, they were sorely mistaken. The gangrene of antisemitism continues to spread in the 21st century. We see expressions of it at respected universities in North America, in Islamic madrasas in south Asia, and among the European elite.

Antisemitism is present in the developed Western world as well as the developing East. It is the official policy of Iran, which day after day declares arrogantly: Our goal is to kill another six million Jews and destroy Israel. Indeed, no vaccine has been found for the virus of antisemitism. Some would say that it will never go away, because things don’t change.

But I can tell you what has changed: we, the Jewish people, have changed. During the Holocaust we had no home, no state, and no salvation, and were forced to beg others to defend us; but that is no longer the case.

Today we are free, established in our homeland, and the superior power in our independent country. As prime minister of the proud, strong State of Israel, a state that was reborn after the Holocaust, a state that was built on the ashes of destruction, a state that gave survivors a home, a state in which the Jewish people is living the fulfilment of a dream, I swear that we will never forget the tragic past, and will never again be helpless against those who seek to kill us.

“Never again” is not merely a slogan. It is our policy, our mission, and our task. We will execute it, and with God’s help ensure that the Jewish people live forever.


Jpost Editorial: Holocaust Remembrance Day: We remember
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said Monday that because the pandemic had led to rising antisemitism, “The world must remain vigilant against this persistent form of racism and religious persecution.”

Speaking at an online event, Guterres said although antisemitism found its most horrific expression in the Holocaust, it did not end there and continues to blight the world today.

“It is sad, but not surprising, that the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered yet another eruption of this poisonous ideology. We can never let down our guard,” he said. “In Europe, the United States and elsewhere, white supremacists are organizing and recruiting across borders, flaunting the symbols and tropes of the Nazis and their murderous ambitions.”

The rise in hatred and antisemitism, Guterres said, must be seen in the context of a global attack on truth, and as the number of Holocaust survivors diminishes every year. Guterres concluded, “We must make ever greater efforts to elevate the truth and ensure that it lives on.” We applaud the secretary-general for his remarks, and support his call for coordinated global action to counter the growth and spread of neo-Nazism, white supremacy and antisemitism, and to fight propaganda and disinformation.

“History shows that those who undermine truth ultimately undermine themselves,” the UN chief noted. “The only way out of the COVID-19 pandemic is through science and fact-based analysis. The production of vaccines in record time is testimony to the effectiveness of this approach. There is no vaccine for antisemitism and xenophobia, but our best weapon remains the truth.”

The truth is that six million Jews – about two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population – perished during the Holocaust, 1.1 million of them at Auschwitz. Today, an estimated 400,000 survivors are still living, almost half of them in Israel. As we stand alone but together today, let us declare in unison, “We remember!”
The Courage of William Cooper
In the early 2000s, Abe Schwarz was working and living in Echuca, a small town 115 miles north of Melbourne, Australia, where he was tasked with organizing a conference to discuss the prevention of youth suicide in the area. After this conference, an Aboriginal elder from the Yorta Yorta clan approached Schwarz to ask if he was “from the Hebrew mob.” When Schwarz confirmed that he was Jewish, the elder told him that he had “always wanted to meet someone of the mob that my mob tried to save.”

The elder then described the details of an incident that was well known among members of the Yorta Yorta Aboriginal clan, but mostly unknown to members of the Australian Jewish community.

On Dec. 6, 1938—one month after Kristallnacht—a 77-year-old Yorta Yorta Aboriginal man named William Cooper had led a delegation, along with members of the Australian Aborigines League, to the German Consulate in Melbourne to deliver a letter protesting the violence against Jewish people in Germany. The letter was refused, and Cooper and his delegation were turned away from the consulate.

This protest on behalf of European Jews was extraordinary—not just because Cooper was protesting an injustice that many countries had failed to properly address, but because Cooper himself was an oppressed Australian Aboriginal man trying to fight for his own rights, yet nonetheless felt compelled to take the time to call out the injustice against European Jews thousands of miles away.

Schwarz was intrigued. As he told Tablet recently: “The next day I called the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne and asked them for more information.”

“It took the centre some time to pull together the facts,” he said, “but they were able to verify the story through newspaper clippings in their archives which had been published on Dec. 7, 1938, the day after Cooper’s delegation was turned away from the consulate, and some prior research undertaken by members of the Jewish and Aboriginal communities.”

01/27 Links Pt1: Renewed talk of two-state solution illustrates US influence; Canada probes UNRWA funds over textbooks for promoting hate; Iran is totally confused on how to approach Biden

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: Renewed talk of two-state solution illustrates US influence - analysis
The narrative in Israel has been, with perhaps shortsighted reference to the Trump years, that the Palestinian issue no longer matters to the region. Israeli experts say that countries care more about the Iranian threat. That may be true and it may be not. For instance Turkey’s aggressive behavior also appeared to bring Israel closer to Egypt, Greece, Cyprus and the UAE. However, Qatar and Saudi Arabia recently agreed to normalize relations and this inevitably affects views of Ankara.

There is much more moderate talk from Cairo now about Ankara and also about Iran and other issues. In short, the idea that an aggressive Iran and Turkey would mean that no one cares about Ramallah and Gaza may be oversold, especially as Biden’s administration wants to talk two states again.

WHAT IS clear from the recent talk of Saudi Arabia, Russia, Germany, France, Egypt, Jordan – and basically everyone taking an interest in two states again – is that there is a hunger for a US role and a kind of competition to see who can fit in with the new administration on this issue.

In contrast to the Trump administration’s early discussions with Jordan, the Biden administration has not had a lot of talks with Middle East leaders – yet. The US is focusing on repairing relationships with its neighbors Canada and Mexico, supporting friends in Japan and South Korea, talking about what to do in Afghanistan, and looking at European allies, as well as the Iran issue.

That means that Israel’s assessment that the two-state issue is not the top priority may be correct. However, any signal from Washington regarding moves in the Middle East – and how it may play a role with Moscow, Riyadh or Paris on their interest in two states – will matter. Russia and France’s role is important as both are historic key players in the region. In addition, Israel’s growing relations with the Gulf matter to Saudi Arabia, which has signaled support for these relationships.

How, exactly, anything can manifest itself in the Palestinian arena is unclear. The divided Palestinian authority, Hamas in Gaza, talk of elections – and the tenuous nature of Ramallah’s control of an autonomous statelet – all leave serious questions.
Palestinians Greet Our New President With an Old Trick
Eying the new administration in Washington, Ramallah is promising full democracy in Palestine. The Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, has declared parliamentary and presidential election in June and July respectively.

It’s an old trick. Not that it went unwelcomed by the marks at the United Nations. Secretary General Guterres was to make that clear. He was followed by a number of Western governments, hoping the 85 year old Mr. Abbas, who was elected for a four year stint back in 2005, will finally face voters and democracy will return.

Ramallah is eager to present its promised election round as superior to that of Israel, which will go to the polls in March for the fourth time in less than two years. Here is how Mr. Abbas’s foreign minister, Riad Malki, put it in a speech to the Security Council today:

“In this period of electoral campaigns, there are those who, in trying to secure votes, remain committed to international law, the two-State solution and peaceful means, and those who instead announce settlements, advance annexation and persist in their provocations.”

It’s almost impossible to parse all fallacies here. Feature “this period of electoral campaigns.” True, Israel’s politics have gone bonkers. The country is overly segmented, with every third-rate politician believing he or she is a potential national leader, forming new political parties almost daily. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanayhu, prefers election campaigns to dealing with trials against him on various criminal charges.

So Israel’s democracy might be in crisis, but a democracy it is, including a tradition of competitive elections, a vigorous adversarial press, independent courts, and a free economy. None of that is evident in the Palestinian territories.

Yes, 16 years after being elected to his four-year presidential stint Mr. Abbas has declared a new election round. But is that a sign of democracy promotion? Is it even a piece of news?


Canada probes UNRWA funds over textbooks for promoting hate
Canada will investigate its contributions to UNRWA following a report that the refugee agency for Palestinians uses textbooks that incite hatred and violence, Canada’s International Development Minister Karina Gould announced.

Gould said she was “deeply concerned” to learn that educational materials UNRWA gave Palestinian children during coronavirus-related lockdowns “contained references that violated UN values of human rights, tolerance, neutrality and nondiscrimination,” the minister said last week.

Canadian officials plan to investigate “how this happened and to reinforce UNRWA’s corrective actions, monitoring and oversight in the future,” Gould added.

Gould also spoke directly with UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.

“I reiterated that the use of these educational materials violates the neutrality principles that UNRWA is committed to as a UN organization and under the Framework for Cooperation between Canada and UNRWA,” she stated. “I am personally reaching out to a number of my counterparts to discuss this situation and Canada will remain closely engaged with UNRWA and other donor countries on this and other neutrality issues.” Canada pledged $24 million to UNRWA in 2020.

Gould’s statement came less than a week after IMPACT-se, an Israel-based organization that monitors textbooks, mostly in the Middle East, released a report showing UNRWA distributed content that “promoted jihad, violence and martyrdom, [and] libelous claims that Israel intentionally dumps toxic waste into the West Bank.” The materials also erased Israel from its maps.
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