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

Saturday, March 16, 2019

From Ian:

Nothing happened at Gaza border today, proving Hamas completely controls the ‘Great March of Return’
The supposedly civilian and spontaneous border ‘protests’ are a charade, a propaganda event, turned on and off by Hamas like a spigot. It’s deadly Pallywood.

The so-called ‘Great March of Return’ was launched in late March 2018.

Palestinian propagandists and western anti-Israel activists, amplified by the international media, routinely depict the ‘protests’ as a spontaneous civilian uprising caused by Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

But as we have shown in dozens of posts, the protests are violent riots, often under cover of huge clouds of burning tires.

The participants are led by Hamas and Islamic Jihad military operatives. It is no coincidence that at least 80% of the Palestinians killed were terrorist group members.

Joe Truzman has extensively documented both the violence and involvement of terror groups.

Even many of the “children” involved and sometimes killed are teenage terror group members.

So what didn’t happen today that proves our point?

The best proof that the riots are not spontaneous or civilian is that nothing happened today, for the first Friday in almost a year.
Germany to deport Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh at urging of U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell
When Rasmea Odeh was deported to Jordan by the U.S. government for immigration fraud in September 2017, it was uncertain whether we would hear from her again.

Who is Rasmea Odeh?

Odeh was the military member of the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who masterminded and carried out the bombing of the SuperSol Supermarket in Jerusalem in 1969, killing two Hebrew University students. We recently marked the 50th Anniversary of the bombing, In Memory of Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner, murdered 50 years ago in a Jerusalem supermarket bombing.

Odeh was convicted of the bombing after a lengthy trial which even an observer from the International Red Cross said was fair. Odeh served 10 years of her life sentence before being released in a prisoner exchange for an Israeli soldier captured in Lebanon. Odeh then made her way to the U.S. where she lied on her visa and naturalization forms. When her fraud was discovered, she was prosecuted, and then deported in a plea deal by which she escaped a prison term.

Odeh and her supporters concocted a demonstrably false story that she only was convicted in Israel after she falsely confessed after 25 days of sexual torture. In fact, the evidence showed that she confessed after one day, and the additional evidence against her was overwhelming. For a full discussion, see this post, The Lies of Rasmea Odeh and Her Supporters Exposed.

Rasmea became a hero to the anti-Israel movement in the U.S., including now-Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.

Sbarro terrorist wanted in the US
Ahlam al-Tamimi, a Jordanian terrorist who assisted in the 2001 suicide bombing in the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, responded to a tweet by US Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, who linked to the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program which offers financial rewards for information on the whereabouts of terrorists, including Tamimi.

Tamimi, who served a prison term for her part in the attack at the Sbarro restaurant and was released as part of an exchange deal with Hamas, said that Greenblatt's remarks showed that he is a "racist figure working for the occupation."

Tamimi, the first woman to join Hamas, was the person who drove the suicide bomber who carried out the Sbarro attack.

In 2017, the FBI placed her on its "Most Wanted Terrorist" list, charging her with "conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against US nationals outside the US, resulting in death."

15 people, including two American citizens, were killed in the attack. Over 120 others were injured, including four Americans.

Friday, March 15, 2019

From Ian:

Judea Pearl: An Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi on Ilhan Omar
The following letter is an adaptation of remarks made at the sit-in protest in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office in Washington, DC, on March 14, 2019.

As president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, and a lifelong Democrat, I urge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to act boldly and decisively on Rep. Ilhan Omar’s antisemitic bigotry.

Our late son, Daniel Pearl, was not an Islamophobe, nor a foreign agent or a trader in “Benjamins.” He was a principled American journalist, a champion of truth, and a relentless peace-seeker, who was murdered for being a Jew and a lover of Israel. I plead with Speaker Pelosi to rid the House of Representative of a new form of bigotry — directed again at Jews and lovers of Israel.

Words matter. And the hateful words pronounced by Rep. Ilhan Omar will continue to haunt and poison the future of American Jewry. However, we are concerned not merely with the harsh consequences of those words, but with the obsessive hatred that produced them, and the ultimate purpose for which they were enunciated — to erode American support for the State of Israel, the miracle that symbolizes Jewish history and Jewish aspirations.

We stand here to remind Speaker Pelosi of words that she has spoken many times in the past — that US support for Israel is not only a matter of mutual interest and shared values, but that American support of a homeland for the Jewish people is a moral imperative — a historical calling that should not be polluted with accusations of dual loyalty or greed.

The resolution passed by the House on March 9 condemns almost every form of hate on earth, except one — the anti-Zionist hatred waged against our brothers and
sisters in Israel. They are six and a half million refugees or descendants of refugees who have been denied normalcy for the past 70 years, besieged by hostile neighbors and confronted by daily existential threats from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.

The anti-Zionist obsession that Rep. Omar now brings to the halls of Congress aims to strip these six and a half million people from sovereignty and abandon them, stateless, to the mercy of genocidal neighbors. Americans cannot allow such moral deformity to stain the halls of their representative government.
‘Stand with Israel’ and ‘Stand with Ilhan' Chants Compete in Nancy Pelosi's Office
Pro-Israel demonstrators poured into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office Thursday, calling on her to condemn Rep. Ilhan Omar and antisemitism. They were interrupted by two pink-clad “Stand with Ilhan” counter-protesters.
Rabbi Aryeh Spero of the National Conference of Jewish Affairs organized the sit-in and from outside Pelosi’s office, went after the speaker’s failure to condemn Rep. Omar’s most recent antisemitic comments or even antisemitism itself.

“She failed us. She had a chance to condemn Omar. She didn’t. She had a chance to condemn standalone, by itself, antisemitism. She didn’t,” said Rabbi Spero. “This was a turning point to stand up and do what was right, what was just, what was fair, and she didn’t.”

After the Rabbi’s comments outside of the office, protesters streamed into Pelosi’s front office.

The group began chanting, “Stand with Israel.”

A pink-clad counter-protester responded with shouts of “Stand with Ilhan” while brandishing a “Stop Islamophobia” sign.

Melanie Phillips: Jewish Book Week, Corbynised Democrats
Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Unwired the latest developments to roil our crazy world. On our agenda this week are what happened when I appeared at Jewish Book Week in London, and the “Corbynisation” of the US Democrats.

I talk about the discussion in which I took part at Jewish Book Week on Brexit, the rough reception given to myself and my fellow Brexiteer Maurice Glasman, and why I think that the majority support by bBritish Jews for remaining in the EU is profoundly and self-destructively wrong.

We go on to discuss the growing feeling among sections of the British Jewish community that it’s “time to leave”. Then we talk about the similarities between the Labour party’s crisis and the growing difficulties of the US Democrats, whose leadership has conspicuously failed to deal with the antisemitism displayed by certain new members of Congress. I make the point that, as has been observed from the French Revolution onwards and as I observed in my Times column, the Democrats are once again proving the truth of the old adage that “the revolution consumes its own”.


The Libertarian PodCast: Anti-Semitism on the Left
Richard Epstein grapples with a new wave of anti-semitism on the left, and explains why progressive notions of ‘tolerance’ often undermine pluralism.

From Ian:

Two rockets fired at Tel Aviv from Gaza for first time since 2014 war
Rocket sirens were triggered Thursday evening in the Tel Aviv area in central Israel, as two rockets from the Gaza Strip were fired at the heart of the country for the first time since the war of 2014, signalling a possible dramatic escalation of violence by terror groups in the Strip just weeks before the Knesset elections.

Residents of Israel’s second-largest city and the surrounding metropolis of Gush Dan rushed to bomb shelters and reported hearing explosions. The rockets both hit open areas, and did not cause casualties. However, five people were treated for shock by paramedics.

Initial reports indicated that the Iron Dome missile defense system was launched to intercept an oncoming rocket. However, the Israel Defense Force said no interception had taken place, and it was not clear whether an interceptor had been launched.

“Two rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israeli territory. The alert and warning systems operated as required,” the army said. “No interceptions were made by aerial defense systems. No damage or injuries were reported. There are no special instructions for the civilian home front.”
Rockets fired from Gaza to Tel Aviv


IDF hits more than 100 Hamas targets in Gaza after rockets fired at Tel Aviv
Israeli war planes hit over 100 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip in a night of strikes after two rockets were fired at Tel Aviv for the first time since the 2014 war, the Israel Defense Forces said.

The strikes came after an urgent late night consultation between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense chiefs in Tel Aviv. “Decisions were taken,” an Israeli official said without elaborating.

Shortly after the strikes began, the IDF issued a statement saying the “Hamas terror group carried out the rocket fire.” Hamas has denied it was behind the move.

On Friday morning, IDF spokesman Ronen Manelis said that over 100 Hamas targets were hit in response to the fire on Tel Aviv; air strikes went on throughout the night.



Iranian fingerprints in Gaza
Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired the missiles at central Israel from Gaza on Thursday night. But Iran, which controls the terrorist group and its leaders and which gives it money and provides it with the type of missiles used in Thursday's attack, is directly responsible. Iran doesn't hide its desire to spark a conflagration in Gaza with the aim of sabotaging and even halting Israel's efforts to dislodge the Islamic republic from Syria. The Iranians also want to embarrass Israel and harm it, by exploiting the fact that this is a sensitive period, ahead of the upcoming April 9 general election.

Hamas, however, is also responsible for the missile attack, because it hasn't taken action against Islamic Jihad and other recalcitrant groups in Gaza, which continue targeting Israel. Hamas lends a hand to the escalation along the border as a matter of routine, hoping to improve its negotiating position with Israel and receive aid dollars from Qatar.

In this regard, the missile attack on Gush Dan indicates the collapse of this conception and essentially the illusion – created by Hamas and Israel alike – that it's possible to control the flames Hamas is fanning along the Gaza border and prevent them from spreading. At the end of the day, those who shoot at Israeli communities near Gaza will also shoot at Tel Aviv.

It is also evident that Hamas isn't omnipotent in Gaza. Just yesterday, even before the missile attack, demonstrations erupted in Gaza against the organization over the grim economic situation there. In light of these protests, Hamas has no interest in even trying to control the rioters on the border with Israel or restraining Islamic Jihad and other like-minded groups.

Thursday, March 14, 2019

From Ian:

J Street launches Birthright-style trip to Israel that will include Palestinians
After months of chastising Birthright Israel for what it calls one-sided trips, J Street U is launching its first-ever free trip to Israel and the West Bank.

Come July, 40 American college students will participate on a 10-day trip courtesy of the progressive group. Billed as an alternative to Birthright, the trip, which will be funded by J Street donors, is part of its “Let Our People Know” campaign. Group leaders hope the trip will give American Jewish youth a more complete and nuanced picture of life in Israel.

“We hope this trip will provide a model for the kind of Israel education young Jews want and need — one that engages fully with Israel’s reality, including perspectives from Palestinians living under its 52-year military occupation,” said Eva Borgwardt, president of the J Street U National Board and Stanford University senior.

“It will prove that American Jews can engage with Israel as a complex place, one that is meaningful, important and challenging. In doing so, they will meet Israelis and Palestinians who are working toward a better future, and think critically about their own role as Americans in that conversation and the push for the just, peaceful, democratic future for the country outlined in its Declaration of Independence,” she said.

The announcement for the trip comes months after J Street U circulated a petition on campuses nationwide demanding Palestinian speakers of its own choosing be included on Birthright Israel trips. More than 2,000 students signed the petition. At the time neither J Street U nor other left-leaning groups considered funding their own trips.

Additionally, those opposing Birthright also staged several civil disobedience events in the past year. In early December 2018 three students with ties to the self-described anti- occupation group IfNotNow said Birthright forced them off their trip for inquiring about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. During the summer of 2018 activists also staged several walk-offs in in protest of what they said was Birthright’s steadfast refusal to address the ongoing conflict. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Leading African Historian Urges President Macron to ‘Save France’ From Revival of ‘Colonial and Antisemitic’ Past
One of Africa’s leading historians has urged President Emmanuel Macron to “save France from itself” by confronting the rising antisemitism in the country head-on.

In an open letter to Macron published in the Malian news outlet Mali Actu on Monday, Ismaël Diadié Haïdara — a Malian scholar recognized for establishing a library that houses thousands of rare Muslim, Jewish and Christian manuscripts — told the French leader that the diverse, cosmopolitan France “which I have learned to love from my childhood is dying.”

Many intellectuals in Mali — a West African nation that won independence from France in 1960 — retain a strong affinity for French culture and history, while also being deeply critical of its colonial aspects. Citing some of France’s finest philosophers and writers — including the poet Victor Hugo, the Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne, and the great twentieth century writer Albert Camus — Haïdara contrasted them dramatically with what he called “the colonial and antisemitic France” that, he feared, was again in the ascendant.

“We are in a world that is sinking into an economic abyss with serious ecological consequences, seeking solutions to political issues that already showed their limits in Vichy [the location of the capital of the collaborationist regime in France during the Nazi occupation of 1940-44] and in Auschwitz,” Haïdara wrote.

“Mr. President, save France from itself,” he urged Macron.

Haïdara asserted that the “desperate cry” of “J’accuse” (“I accuse”) — the title of the famous 1898 letter penned by the writer Emile Zola in defense of the falsely convicted French Jewish Army officer, Capt. Alfred Dreyfus — was still relevant today. Referring to the brutal antisemitic murder in 2018 of French Jewish Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll, as well as more recent acts of vandalism and desecration of Jewish cemeteries, Haïdara argued that “to march in the streets of Paris…is no longer enough.”
Polish newspaper’s front page teaches ‘how to recognize a Jew’
A right-wing newspaper with national distribution in Poland ran on its front page an article that instructs readers on “how to recognize a Jew.”

The Polish-language weekly, Tylko Polska, or “Only Poland,” lists on its front page “Names, anthropological features, expressions, appearances, character traits, methods of operation” and “disinformation activities.”

The text also reads: “How to defeat them? This cannot go on!”

The page also features a headline reading, “Attack on Poland at a conference in Paris.” The reference is to a Holocaust studies conference last month during which Polish nationalists complained that speakers were anti-Polish. That article features a picture of Jan Gross, a Polish-Jewish Princeton University scholar of Polish complicity in the Holocaust and a frequent target of nationalist attacks.

From Ian:

The Palestinians Don't Have "a Veto on Progress"
U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman interviewed by Washington Examiner

Referring to the Trump administration's peace plan, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman explained, "There ought to be a means to get at least closer to a point where the Palestinians have more control over their lives in a way that doesn't jeopardize Israel's security." The plan "will hopefully, if nothing else, provoke a serious discussion that hasn't taken place in a long time."

Friedman has sought out business leaders and other nonpolitical figures in the West Bank to understand ways to improve Palestinians' quality of life. "I'm happy to meet with Palestinians, even if they don't agree with me or like me. Their thoughts and perspectives make me smarter, thoughtful, and more creative."

He views the U.S. embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem last year as a shift in the U.S. message, that "this is not a conflict where the Palestinians have a veto on progress. At some point...things will move forward with or without them. The U.S. is not going to ignore reality. We are not going to indulge the Palestinians in the fantasy that somehow Jerusalem can be disconnected from Israel or the Jewish people....The idea that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel is a fact...a reality, not a negotiation point," though its boundaries are negotiable.

"The idea that one could approach this conflict with a sense of neutrality...is pretty insulting to Israel. The reason Israel holds the territory it holds today, in simple terms, is because it kept getting attacked, wars kept getting fought, and Israel kept winning. The reason Israel hasn't given back all of it, and they gave back a lot, is because to give it away would be an existential risk to the country." Friedman said any other way of looking at the conflict is trying to make peace based on an "alternative reality."

"The biggest danger in this part of the world is to be consumed with wishful thinking. You should see a better future down the road, but you can't wish your way to that. You have to protect yourself along the way."
Why Israel Is Not to Blame for the Lack of Peace
As humans, one of the hardest things to do is give up something we love. When something is held so close to the heart, our strongest instinct tells us to guard it with all of our might.

The State of Israel may be relatively young, but Zionism is not nearly as new. The yearning to live in our ancestral homeland has existed for thousands of years. We’ve known, since the beginning of time, that this land was something we had to protect for eternity.

Today, despite our love for Israel, we understand that others will stop at nothing to cause it harm. This is why, on Israel’s end, there have been countless attempts to ease tensions with the Palestinians through land partitions and peace offers, all of which were rejected by the Palestinian leadership.

In 2005, in an attempt at making peace with the Palestinians, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. This decision divided the country; many believed that this was a huge mistake, while others argued that it was worth the risk.

Gush Katif was a Jewish neighborhood established in the Gaza Strip in 1970. Unfortunately, the situation there intensified during the year 2000, when the Second Intifada broke out. During this time, attacks on Israelis escalated dramatically.

Five years later, residents were notified that Israel would be withdrawing from Gaza in order to achieve peace, and to empower the Palestinian people. If this plan proved to be successful, it would have served as confirmation that the Palestinians were ready for their own state.

As part of the disengagement, the Israeli Army forcibly removed around 8,000 Jewish residents from Gush Katif, displacing hundreds of families. All of the private property within the settlement was completely destroyed, the settlement was dismantled, and the entire Gaza Strip was handed over to the Palestinians.
Ruthie Blum: Israel vs. its Enemies in Europe
What Abbas's Fatah faction and Hamas -- both of which glorify terrorism against innocent Israelis and call for international sanctions against the state of Israel -- keep neatly under wraps, however, is the frequency with which they themselves have turned to Israel for medical care, often for cancer treatments.

In 2016, for instance, Abbas' Qatar-based brother, Abu Lawi, was treated for cancer at the Assuta Medical Center in Tel Aviv, and not for the first time.

In 2015, Abbas' brother-in-law received life-saving heart surgery at that same hospital. Abbas' wife, Amina, underwent surgery there in 2014.

In 2014, as well, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's mother-in-law was treated for cancer at Jerusalem's Augusta Victoria Hospital. That same year, Haniyeh's daughter was treated at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. She was among the more than 1,000 residents of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority treated at Ichilov every year.

Also in 2014, Hamas spokesman Moussa Abu Marzouk's sister was treated for cancer at an Israeli hospital.

In 2013, Haniyeh's baby granddaughter was treated at the Schneider Children's Medical Center in Petah Tikvah.

Most recently, in May 2018, Abbas himself was treated by an Israeli specialist, who joined a foreign team of doctors caring for him in the intensive care unit at a hospital in Ramallah, in the Palestinian Authority.

Israel proudly joined its counterparts around the globe on February 4 to mark World Cancer Day, initiated by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC). It is time for the world to cease and desist in its efforts to demonize Israel, and to admit to its use of and reliance on the innovation and technology for healing that Israel -- turning no one away -- always graciously provides. It would be a welcome change if its adversaries were half as ethical.

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

From Ian:

US calls Golan ‘Israeli-controlled,’ drops all mention of West Bank ‘occupation’
For the first time, the Trump administration referred to the Golan Heights on Wednesday as “Israeli-controlled” and ceased to refer to the West Bank as “occupied” in the State Department’s annual report on human rights around the world.

While last year’s report marked a departure from years of American foreign policy by no longer calling the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights “occupied” in the section title, this year’s report went two small steps further.

“Authorities subjected non-Israeli citizens in Jerusalem and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights to the same laws as Israeli citizens,” this year’s text says. In previous iterations of the same report, the Golan Heights was described in the text as “Israeli-occupied.”

This year’s report also refrains from labeling any of the territories as “occupied.” In last year’s document, the US government took a position in referring to these areas. “Authorities prosecuted Palestinian non-citizens held in Israel under Israeli military law, a practice Israel has applied since the 1967 occupation,” read one passage. The new report, by contrast, uses the term “occupied” just twice — and only when quoting outside organizations, such as the Israeli nonprofit Breaking the Silence and the United Nations.

Despite the change in language vis-a-vis the Golan Heights, an administration official on Wednesday denied that it amounted to American recognition of Israeli sovereignty over that area.

“Our policy on Golan has not changed,” a spokesperson for the US embassy in Jerusalem told The Times of Israel. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
Before Ilhan Omar, Barack Obama Mainstreamed Anti-Semitism In The Democratic Party
Lost in the mists of the last decade is Barack Obama’s mainstreaming of anti-Semitism into Democratic and American politics. To be clear, even after two terms as president, Obama remains such a cipher that saying he mainstreamed anti-Semitism is hardly the same thing as saying he’s personally anti-Semitic. It is fair, however, to say he has consorted with Israel critics with dubious motivations and people with anti-Israel terror connections to such a degree that the most charitable thing one can say is that there’s a possibility his embrace of these people was just a way to cynically advance his political career and foreign policy priorities, priorities that were just coincidentally threatening to Israel’s security.

In fact, when Obama ran for president in 2008, people spoke openly of his “Jewish problem.” It wasn’t strictly a partisan concern, either: Hillary Clinton raised the issue in the Democratic Party. Obama did a poor job of persuading people that this wasn’t a legitimate concern.

In 2008, Jimmy Carter met with the leader of terror group Hamas, a move condemned by Condoleezza Rice, who then was secretary of state. Obama declined to condemn the meeting because “he’s a private citizen. It’s not my place to discuss who he shouldn’t meet with.” This is a remarkably calm reaction to Carter’s blatant Logan Act violation, a crime the Obama administration would later deem so serious it was used to justify investigating and surveilling the Trump campaign.

Obama reversed course a few days later, after it became obvious that refusing to condemn the meeting was damaging his campaign. As the Los Angeles Times observed then, when the condemnation finally came it was “as he tried to reassure Jewish voters that his candidacy isn’t a threat to them or U.S. support for Israel.”

Of course, there were plenty more reasons to think Obama didn’t really think that the murderous and anti-Semitic Hamas was all that bad. When Hamas came out and officially endorsed his candidacy in 2008, Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, said the endorsement was “flattering.” This is not an exaggeration. “We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it’s flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps,” Axelrod said.

Much has been made of Obama’s friendship with scholar Rashid Khalidi, who has been accused of working as an advisor for the PLO terror group (Khalidi claims he was only helping the press understand the group). Obama sat on the board of a foundation that gave $40,000 to a local charity Khalidi’s wife headed.

In 2008, the Los Angeles Times notoriously reported on a videotape of Obama speaking at an event in Khalidi’s honor, where one of the speakers compared Zionists to Osama bin Laden. While the still unreleased video of this event attracted the most attention, other aspects of the Los Angeles Times’s lengthy report on Obama’s close ties to Palestinian activists are noteworthy. For instance, in the same report Khalidi heavily implies that any pro-Israel sentiment Obama expresses while running for president was “a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S.” (h/t MtTB)
Corbynism Comes to America
A critical element of the trans-Atlantic Corbynista project is to knock Jews down a few pegs in the progressive victim hierarchy. Democratic House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn’s perverse defense of Omar–that her experience as a refugee is “more personal” than that of the children of Holocaust survivors, and that this somehow legitimates her spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories–was a clumsy effort at privileging Muslims over Jews. Omar and her defenders seek, in the words of New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, “a left-of-center politics that remembers the Holocaust as one great historical tragedy among many.” To achieve this reordering, Corbynism exploits fringe Jewish activists and organizations to deflect charges of anti-Semitism. As the most high-profile Jewish politician in America, Sanders has disgracefully assumed this role, alleging that Omar is being slandered for “legitimate criticism” of Israel, when it is her imputation of dual loyalties that is at issue. In so doing, Sanders lends credence to the view, increasingly prevalent among progressives on both sides of the Atlantic, that left-wing anti-Semitism does not really exist and that accusations of it are really just cynical attempts to forestall socialism and smear people of color. No other form of bigotry–whether anti-black racism, homophobia, misogyny, ableism–is subject to such exacting standards of proof and semiotic scrutiny by left wingers.

Obsession with Israel—the decision to make this tiny country, and America’s relationship with it, the battlefield upon which they will try to wrest control of the Democratic Party away from its establishment leadership—is a window into the worldview of the American Corbynista left. Antagonism toward the only liberal democracy in the Middle East is like an acid test for wanting to reduce American global power and influence. Asked to describe Sanders’ worldview, his chief foreign policy advisor Matt Duss, a career anti-Israel polemicist, says that the United States should be “a kind of global facilitator.” Arsenal of democracy and leader of the free world are just so passé.

For these people, condemning the U.S.-Israel alliance is a way of condemning something much larger than a country 10,000 miles away. Attacking the Jewish state is the means by which they express their broader antipathy toward American exceptionalism. America and Israel are exceptional nations, the only two founded upon an idea. They are linked by shared values and, yes, religious affinity. When Americans look at the Middle East, they naturally see Israel as the polity with which they have the most in common. American support for Israel, then, is not explained by “Benjamins,” as Ilhan Omar conspiratorially tweets, but by a deep and widely held conviction that the two nations share a providential fate. This is something which the American Corbynistas, like their British cousins, deeply resent, and thus try to undermine with their sneers and tweets and purges.
The pro-Israel blogger conference that has become a support group
Kasim Hafeez, a British Muslim and former Islamist who is now a proud Zionist who stands with Israel, will land in Israel this week for #DigiTell, a gathering of 100 pro-Israel bloggers and social network managers from all over the world.

“We are bringing together those who have fought this year against anti-Israel and antisemitic hate-writers and those promoting the boycott campaign against Israel,” said Ido Daniel, senior director for digital strategy for the Strategic Affairs Ministry, the ministry running the #DigiTell seminar. “We are opening our doors to the influencers and social media activists for Israel who are fighting our fight every day.”

Hafeez is among the most interesting and unlikely participants. He grew up being exposed to radical anti-Western, antisemitic and anti-Israel ideas on what he describes as a daily basis. During his teenage years, Hafeez embraced a radical Islamist ideology and became very active in the anti-Israel movement.

But in the early 2000s, he came across Alan Dershowitz’s book, The Case for Israel.

“I was so convinced that I was right, I bought the book and read it to essentially read the ‘Zionist lies' for myself,’” he told The Jerusalem Post. “I was presented with ideas and arguments I had never come across in all my years of being anti-Israel. While I did dismiss them all as lies, I did however want to reassure myself that I was right.”

So, he read a few more books.

“I began to see a lack of factual argument on the anti-Israel side, a lot of rhetoric and emotion but little fact,” he said.

From Ian:

Former Israeli Defense Minister: Israeli-Arab Conflict Is Over
With Israel and a good part of the Sunni Arab world today sharing both common threats and opportunities, the term “Israeli-Arab” conflict is no longer applicable, former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon said on Monday.

“Today – at the present moment, in the meantime – there is not an Israeli-Arab conflict: There is an Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Ya’alon said at a conference at the Hebrew University’s Truman Institute marking the 40th anniversary later this month of the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement.

And none of that would have been possible, added Ya’alon – number three on the Blue and White Party list – had Egypt not removed itself from the circle of countries at war with Israel 40 years ago.
“When we look back at the agreement, there has not been a threat of conventional war against Israel since it was signed,” said the former IDF chief of staff. “No Arab leader or Arab army dared to challenge Israel as army-against-army, and the Yom Kippur War was the last war the Arab leaders initiated against us.”

He said that the signing of the peace agreement essentially put an end to the nationalist pan-Arabist threat to Israel, noting that a month before the agreement was signed on March 26, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in Iran heralding the Islamic revolution in that country.

And that revolution, Ya’alon said, gave support and a strong back wind to all the variations of Islamic radicalism – be it Sunni or Shia – that the region has witnessed since: from an increase in the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, to the rise of Hamas and al-Qaeda. The vacuum created by the end of the nationalist pan-Arabist ideology was filled by a radical Islamist ideology, he said.


Israeli Victims of Ethiopian Airlines Crash Identified
Two Israelis killed in the March 10 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 have been identified as Avraham Matzliah of Ma’ale Adumim and Shimon Re’em of Zichron Ya’akov.

Matzliah, 49, was identified on Monday as a victim of the plane crash on Sunday near Addis Ababa. He was described as a loving father to his twin daughters, who both serve in the Israel Defense Forces, and a man with a good sense of humor. His high-tech work led him to travel often between Israel and Africa. He had apparently been on a trip to close a business deal for the Radwin telecom firm.

Shimon Re’em, 55, the father of five children, was a 23-year retired veteran of Israel’s Shin Bet security services who was working for Israel’s Shafran security consulting company at the time of his death.

Channel 13 news said Re’em once headed up security for two Israeli embassies in South America and then served as head of regional security for El Al Airlines.

According to reports, authorities are having a difficult time locating bodies of the victims, both because some have been scattered and others were burnt in the crash.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Abbas Stands 'Trial' for Treason
The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas has made no secret of its desire to see Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas stand trial for betraying the Palestinians for his alleged "collaboration" with Israel and sanctions against the Gaza Strip.

Last year, a senior Hamas official, Ahmed Bahr, called for bringing Abbas to trial for "great treason" -- a crime punishable by death. Abbas is not only refusing to make peace with Hamas, he wants it to hand over its weapons to his government, Bahr said. "For that, he should be brought before a popular and constitutional court on charges of great treason."

Earlier, another Hamas official, Marwan Abu Ras, called for Abbas to be executed by hanging in accordance with Islamic sharia law. Abu Ras, accusing Abbas of "collaboration" with Israel, claimed that the Palestinian president was depriving the Gaza Strip of international financial aid. "Abbas is the biggest traitor the Palestinian cause has known," he said. "He should be put on trial in the center of the Gaza Strip and sentenced to death by hanging in line with sharia law."

Hamas's leaders are angry with Abbas: they say that he recognizes Israel's right to exist and is even prepared to accept US President Donald Trump's upcoming plan for peace in the Middle East, known as the "Deal of the Century."

They also say they want to hang Abbas because his security forces conduct security coordination with Israel in the West Bank and because of the economic sanctions he imposed on the Gaza Strip. The sanctions include cutting salaries to thousands of Palestinian employees there.

Above all, Hamas's leaders say the organization does not -- and will not -- recognize Israel's right to exist.

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

From Ian:

Political Powerlessness Is Expensive
Without AIPAC and its infrastructure, there is no institutional U.S. support for the peace process. Why? Because only 21 percent of Americans sympathize more with the Palestinians than with the Israelis. Just as the evangelical Christian community is the base of U.S. support for the Jewish state, it is the liberal Jewish establishment that advances the idea of a Palestinian state.

So why did Obama rub this community’s nose in the ground? Why did he have to corner AIPAC, for instance, by appointing Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, a man who referred to it as the “Jewish lobby” and proudly announced that, unlike some of his peers, he was not an “Israeli senator”?

Then there was the Iran deal, the making and marketing of which was a bloody affair, intended not only to secure the president’s key foreign policy initiative, but also to humiliate his opponents.

Accordingly, the president, and a complicit press corps, used anti-Semitic conceits to bludgeon Jewish community leaders, Democrats as well as Republicans. They were beholden to “donors” and “lobbies,” and more loyal to Israel than their own country. There’s barely a stone’s throw from what Obama said to what Omar has said and tweeted.

Obama explained that the Islamic Republic uses anti-Semitic rhetoric as an “organizing tool.” He went after AIPAC not because he personally dislikes Jews or Israel, but because he promised to radically transform America. So he had to start with the one institution he had absolute control over: the Democratic Party. He hacked away at the Jewish community because American Jewry is the pillar of the liberal political establishment.

By targeting AIPAC, and rejecting the foundational nature of the U.S.-Israel relationship, Obama crippled the party’s then-dominant liberal wing and empowered the progressives, whose ranks the Jews are more than welcome to join—but on new terms. On Rep. Ilhan Omar’s terms. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
Trump Promotes ‘Jexodus’
A few days after declaring the Democratic Party the "anti-Israel" and "anti-Jewish" party, President Trump promoted the nascent "Jexodus" movement, urging young Jewish Democrats to abandon the party.

As The Daily Wire reported last week, Jexodus is a newly formed group geared toward "Jewish Millennials tired of living in bondage to leftist politics." In a press release announcing its launch, Jexodus laid out its mission:

We are proud Jewish Millennials tired of living in bondage to leftist politics. We reject the hypocrisy, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism of the rising far-left. Progressives, Democrats, and far too many old-school Jewish organizations take our support for granted. After all, we’re Jewish, and Jews vote for Democrats.

Until today.

We are determined and we are unafraid to speak for ourselves. As combatants and veterans of the campus wars, we know the threat progressivism poses to Jews. We’ve had front row seats witnessing anti-Semites hide behind the thin veil of anti-Zionism. We know the BDS movement harbors deep hatred not only for Israel, but for Jews. We’re done standing with supposed Jewish leaders and allegedly supportive Democrats who rationalize, mainstream, and promote our enemies. We’d rather spend forty years wandering in the desert than belong to a party that welcomes Jew-haters like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.


On Tuesday morning, President Trump promoted the group by tweeting out a quote from the group's national spokeswoman Elizabeth Pipko:


Multicultural Jew-Hatred: Failed Ideologies Bond Over Scapegoating
Yes, the radical Islamists and their allies, the radical Leftists, hate Jews and Americans. Bernard Lewis wrote a masterpiece about it entitled What Went Wrong?, explaining that the Middle Eastern Islamic world constitutes one vast area of failure. Unwilling or incapable of taking the blame for this epic failure, they blamed it on the West -- above all, on the United States and the Jews. Ironically, they imported these doctrines from the West they hate.

As Martin Kramer says, if there had been Nobel prizes a thousand years ago, almost all of them would have gone to Muslims. Today you can count them on the fingers of one mutilated hand, and those were invariably trained at Oxford or Cal Tech. Most Nobel laureates, above all in the hard sciences, are Americans (or trained or worked in America), and a spectacular percentage of those are Jewish. As of 2017, 22.5 percent of Nobel winners were Jews, out of a global population of 0.2 percent. The anti-Semites hate that, taking it as evidence of the power of the Jewish conspiracy.

The Islamic peoples have earned their low standing. Between the late Ninth Century to the beginning of the 20th Century -- a thousand years -- fewer books were translated from foreign languages to Arabic than were translated into Spanish in Spain alone. No wonder they are so prone to crazy theories about us.

Moreover, their countries are for the most part despotic failures, while Israel and the United States are bursting with freedom, energy and creativity (and good food). The Muslims know this, and of late some of their leaders have finally begun to work with Israel, and increased cooperation with America. They know that they have invariably been defeated by Israel and America in every armed conflict, whether in the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the fight against ISIS, the war in Iraq, or on the Afghanistan battlefield.

Our superiority enrages them, as does our refusal to convert to Islam, just as our refusal to convert to Christianity fueled so much Jew-hatred throughout the centuries.

From Ian:

Edgar Davidson: The Fogel family massacre eight years on
Eight years ago today Arab terrorists murdered five members of the Fogel family in their home in Itamar, killing the parents, Ehud and Ruth, and three of their children, Yoav, aged 11, Elad, aged 4, and baby Hadas just 3 months. The killers cut off the baby's head. My blog posting from that day appears below.

Few people know about the massacre and even less know about the depraved terrorists who committed it. The massacre was ignored by the entire main stream media outside Israel, except for a couple of ludicrous reports claiming that it might not have been a terrorist attack, with even nonsense like it could have been a 'disgruntled Thai worker'. But the terrorists Hakim and Amjad Awad (who are cousins) were eventually found and convicted. They told the court they were proud to have committed the attack, which was carefully planned. From the day Hakim Awad was arrested the PA rewarded him with a monthly salary of $3,000 a month, four times the average Palestinian civil servant’s salary. Official PA TV invited his mother and aunt to talk on the PA TV program dedicated to honoring and sending greetings to imprisoned terrorists. They referred to Awad and his accomplices as “heroes” and Hakim Awad himself was called “the hero, the legend.” The PA TV host added: “We, for our part, also convey our greetings to them.”

It is also worth noting the depraved reactions of leftists in Israel to the massacre



New Palestinian Authority PM, In 2010 Interview From The MEMRI Archives, Praised Mastermind Of Munich Olympics Terror Attack, Adding That He Believes Palestinian History 'Will Continue To Be Written In Red Ink'
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud 'Abbas recently appointed his longtime advisor Muhammad Ishtayeh to the position of prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. In 2010, MEMRI TV released a clip of Ishtayeh's interview on July 9 of that year with Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV; in that interview, Ishtayeh said of Abu Daoud, the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, that "the martyr Abu Daoud continues the convoy of martyrs who fell for the sake of Palestine. We all follow this path."

"The Martyr Abu Daoud Continues The Convoy Of Martyrs Who Fell For The Sake Of Palestine – We All Follow This Path"

Muhammad Ishtayeh: "The martyr Abu Daoud continues the convoy of martyrs who fell for the sake of Palestine. We all follow this path. As for the claim that history can be rewritten in a different way – I think it is unjust to say that Palestinian history can be written in a different ink."

"The Ink In Which Palestinian History Has Been Written Is Red, And I Believe That It Will Continue To Be Written In Red Ink"

"The ink in which the Palestinian history has been written is red, and I believe that it will continue to be written in red ink. In addition, the martyr Abu Daoud was officially eulogized by the Fatah movement and the Palestinian establishment." (h/t Elder of Lobby)
Qatar's 'Spiritual Leader' Prompts World Cup Fears Over Calls For New Holocaust
The spiritual leader of Qatar’s royal family has called for a Muslim holocaust against Jews, prompting concern about the security of Israelis, Jews, Americans and other “non-believers” during the 2022 World Cup in Doha, Qatar.

Yusuf al Qaradawi, in a Jan. 30, 2009 speech that aired on Qatar’s state-owned Al-Jazeera TV network, said, “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler.”

Qatar’s spiritual leader then went on to praise Hitler saying, “By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place.” Following this, he called for an Islamic holocaust against the Jews. “This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.” (RELATED: Al Jazeera Readers Celebrate Orlando Terror Attack)

Two days earlier, Al Jazeera TV aired another speech, in which the radical cleric volunteered personally to “shoot” the Jews and end his life as a martyr for his main cause, which is the annihilation of the Jewish people.

“To conclude my speech, I’d like to say that the only thing I hope for is that as my life approaches its end, Allah will give me an opportunity to go to the land of jihad and resistance, even if in a wheelchair,” Qaradawi said. “I will shoot Allah’s enemies—the Jews—and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus, I will seal my life with martyrdom. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds. Allah’s mercy and blessings upon you.”

Monday, March 11, 2019

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: No one loses a debate over anti-Semitism. Except Jews.
Here’s the thing, though: None of this is going to hurt anyone involved, politically.

The Democratic Party’s behavior last week was unconscionable. Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) led the rebellion against Pelosi’s symbolic denunciation of anti-Semitism, calling the idea of a reprimand “hurtful.” Four presidential candidates — Bernie Sanders, Kamala D. Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand — made it clear they feared Ocasio-Cortez, not the speaker. Sanders said umbrage at Omar’s comments was an attempt at “stifling” debate. Harris took it a step further and said those offended were putting Omar in danger.

It’ll cost the party nothing.

Please stop with the predictions that the Jewish vote in 2020 is suddenly up for grabs. Democrats may have thrown Jews who were offended by Omar under the bus, but they’ll file provisional ballots while looking up at the rear axle if they have to. And Republicans who think they don’t play a role in that are fooling themselves. “We finally censured Steve King after he won his ninth term” isn’t the bumper sticker of a party that’s done everything in its power to reach Jewish voters — especially when it’s still led by a president who infamously equivocated on racist, anti-Semitic marchers in Charlottesville.

The irony is the vote Thursday proves just how wrong Omar and anyone else who sees shadowy powers directing Washington really are. Far from controlling the conversation, Jews are powerless to stop it.

Anti-Semitism is not a partisan issue, no matter how it might have looked last week. Anti-Semitism is a virus. It mutates and adapts to survive and thrive under whatever conditions currently prevail.

The defense many Democrats made of Omar’s statements is that they weren’t anti-Semitic, they were targeting Israel and its allies in Washington. But anti-Semitism often hides behind “anti-Zionism.” As Izabella Tabarovsky, who grew up in the Soviet Union, wrote in the Forward about one such case, “It was under the banner of anti-Zionism that Soviet anti-Semitism blossomed.” From the outside, the Soviet campaign against Zionism may have looked like criticism of an external-facing ideology, but to those living under the Soviet thumb, the truth was plain: “We were targets of anti-Semitic insults in the streets. Our educational and professional opportunities were diminished. When I was deciding what college I wanted to apply to to study foreign languages, I learned that my top two schools were off limits to me: They prepared students for careers in foreign service, and these were closed to the untrustworthy Jews.”

Ross Douthat: Is Anti-Semitism Exceptional? The inevitable decline of left-wing philo-Semitism.
Finally, a great deal of the new anti-Semitism — from the recent wave of hate crimes in New York City to the anti-Jewish violence befouling Europe — would still be coming from minority and immigrant communities that are seen as essential to left-of-center and especially radical-left politics going forward, making them more difficult than right-wing anti-Semitism for the left to full-throatedly condemn.

Of course right-wing anti-Semites haven’t gone away either — which is part of why anti-anti-Omar Democrats can tell themselves that by downgrading Jewish exceptionalism, trading a specific philo-Semitism for a general politics of all-bigotry-is-bad, they are asking liberal Jews to make a sacrifice that’s essential for the greater good of defeating the greater enemy, which is still the reactionary right.

Whether this argument works depends in part on what the post-Trump right ultimately becomes — whether there’s a way to marry nationalism and philo-Semitism, perhaps wooing Jewish voters rightward, or whether any form of right-wing populism inevitably brings anti-Semitism roaring back.

But it also depends on whether the assumptions of Omar’s left-wing defenders are justified — whether anti-Semitism can be contained if it’s treated as one form of bigotry among many, or whether the perverse resilience of Jew-hatred is such that cultures choose between philo-Semitism and anti-Semitism, with only a swift downward slope lying in between.
Reviews of Friedman's 'Spies of No Country'
'Spies of No Country' proves the point that Israel's early Arabic-speaking spies had no country to call their own own - except Israel, writes Lily Meyer for NPR:

For half a decade, Friedman has been working hard, and publicly, to dispel easy narratives about Israel. He rose to attention — and controversy — through a pair of essays about media bias in coverage of Israel, and has remained on the beat ever since. His perspective is unusual: Israeli by choice, he clarifies his own bias in every piece but he writes to complicate, not to defend. In his third book, Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel, Friedman rejects the narrative of Israel as a country filled with Europeans and their descendants, motivated by memories and guilt like my grandfather's. And he does it through a spy story.

Spies of No Country focuses on a fledgling Israeli intelligence unit called the Arab Section, and on four of its spies. The Arab Section emerged at the tail end of British colonialism, at a moment when the Palestine was filling with Jews. The British had made hazy promises, but none clear enough to prevent the war that ensued. The Jews in Palestine formed an army, which in turn formed the Arab Section, a fledgling espionage operation easiest to understand as a version of the Soviets' Directorate S. Where the USSR trained Russians to live in America, though, the Arab Section did something much murkier. It trained Middle Eastern Jews to embed themselves in the very countries they were from.

Friedman builds his story around four such Jews: Gamliel Cohen, Havakuk Cohen, Isaac Shoshan, and Yakuba Cohen. (None of the Cohens were related.) All four were native Arabic speakers. Yakuba grew up in Palestine, Havakuk in Yemen, and Gamliel and Isaac in Syria. In present-day Israeli parlance, they were Mizrahi. In the parlance of the Arab Section, they were not spies but mista'arvim, a word Friedman often uses in its full English translation: Ones Who Become Like Arabs. But it's hard to parse what made them like Arabs. "They were native to the Arab world," Friedman writes, "as native as Arabs. If the key to belonging to the Arabic nation was the Arabic language, as the Arab nationalists claimed, they were inside. So were they really...pretending to be Arabs, or were they pretending to be people who weren't Arabs pretending to be Arabs?"

From Ian:

The Failure of Palestinian Nationalism
At last month’s American-backed Middle East summit in Warsaw, the Palestinian issue remained conspicuously absent as Arab leaders appeared side-by-side with Benjamin Netanyahu. Alex Joffe explains why, after a century of agitation, Palestinian nationalism has hit a dead end:

On the one hand, [Palestinian nationalism] relies on romantic visions of an imaginary past, the myth of ancestors sitting beneath their lemon trees. These and other supposedly timeless essences are at odds with the hardscrabble reality of pre-modern Palestine, which was controlled by the Ottoman empire, dominated by its leading families, and beset by endemic poverty and disease. As in all national visions, these unhappy memories are mostly edited out.

On the other hand, Palestinian nationalism is [itself] resolutely negative, in that it relies on the existential evils of “settler-colonialist” Zionism and ever-perfidious Jews. Consider the essential symbols of Palestine: a fighter holding a rifle and a map that erases Israel completely. It is a nationalism—and thus an identity—based in large part on negation of [another nation], preferably through violence. [These symbols] also imply that Palestinian identity exists only through struggle. . . .

In terms of creating an actual state, the Palestinian problem is one that is also endemic to Arab and Islamic states. Because the state is fundamentally an extension or tool of the ruling tribe, sect, or ideology, the state’s security institutions are exceptionally strong but its social institutions are weak, both by default and by design. In Palestinian society, the proliferation of security organizations maps onto tribal and clan groups. But, as in many Arab and Islamic states, health, education, and welfare services are either neglected or (just as often) funded by external sources. . . . For the Palestinians, it is foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).


Joffe concludes that until Palestinian leaders reject their traditional tools of “threats, shaming, and blackmail” and accept that Israel isn’t going anywhere—both of which he deems unlikely in the foreseeable future—the failure will continue.
Amb. Alan Baker: The UN Human Rights Council Report on Israel’s Response to the Gaza Border Riots
Where the UN Human Rights Council is concerned, there can be no such thing as an "independent" commission of inquiry. The outcome of the commission's inquiry was determined in advance by its mandating resolution, which condemned in its first paragraph "the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by the Israeli occupying forces against Palestinian civilians...in the context of peaceful protests."

The commission uses the term "Occupied Palestinian Territory" in the title of the report, which wrongfully assumes and determines that the territory is Palestinian, despite the fact that its status remains in dispute pending a negotiated settlement between Israel and the PLO pursuant to the 1993-1995 Oslo Accords.

Even more absurd is the fact that the commission's report determined that the Gaza Strip is part of the territories occupied by Israel, even though Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and the report acknowledges that the Gaza Strip is governed by "de facto authorities in Gaza."

To accept that the protests are "non-violent" and "fully peaceful" shows a lack of awareness of the extent of the violence of the demonstrations and public statements by senior Hamas operatives and demonstration organizers inciting violence, assaulting the separation fence, infiltrating into Israeli territory, and seeking to kill Israelis.

MEMRI quotes Emad 'Aql, of Gaza, who tweeted: "[The Israeli town of] Sderot is only 700 meters east of [the Palestinian town of] Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza....[The town] can be reached in two minutes on motorcycles or in 5-8 minutes at a brisk run." He urged: "Murder, slaughter, burn and never show them any mercy."

An extensive professional analysis of the identities of those Palestinians killed during the protests found that 80% were terrorist operatives or affiliated with terrorist organizations, mostly from Hamas. This demonstrates that the marches were not "popular" events but rather a Hamas strategic move accompanied by preplanned violence.
JPost Editorial: Break the loop
This cycle has repeated itself so many times, it’s like we are stuck in a loop that no one knows how to break.

In theory, with 29 days to an election, we should be hearing creative ideas of how to change the paradigm, bust the loop open and end these weekly attacks – for the good of the residents of the Gaza envelope and all of Israel. It would also be good for Gazans to not have weekly demonstrations with senseless violence, considering that the border protests have yet to change their dire reality.

This is a constant drain on Israeli security and resources, putting our civilians and soldiers in danger. Our leaders – and those who would like to be – should be telling us how they plan to deal with it.

The Blue and White Party– whose leader, former IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz, is a candidate for prime minister – does have ideas about how to proceed, which have been laid out in its platform, though in vague terms. For example: “a strong response to any provocation and use of violence against our territory,” while working with regional partners to give Gazans a better life and erode their support for Hamas.

The Likud still does not have a platform, so we don’t know what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggests, or even if he thinks there needs to be a change. When his government didn’t respond to the hundreds of rockets in November, his explanation was that there are greater security challenges, which ended up being the operation to destroy Hezbollah tunnels in the South.

What is his explanation for the past few months? How does he plan to go forward? These are important issues for Israelis to have answers to before they head to the polls on April 9. In fact, smaller parties on the Right, like Yisrael Beytenu and the New Right, have repeatedly attacked him on this point in their election campaigns.

With neither Netanyahu nor Gantz submitting themselves to interviews by journalists, it’s hard to get a clear view on where they stand, even if Blue and White has made more headway towards addressing the point.

Whoever ends up being prime minister after the upcoming election will have a lot on his plate and many issues to address, from US President Donald Trump’s peace plan to the growing deficit. But putting an end to our weekly national déjà vu should be at the top of his list.

Sunday, March 10, 2019

From Ian:

Anne Frank center compares Jews fleeing Nazis to Islamic State terrorists
The Anne Frank Educational Center in the German city of Frankfurt is under intense fire for comparing Jews during the Holocaust with Islamic State terrorists in a series of tweets on Wednesday.

The center appeared to object to a German government plan to strip German Islamic State fighters of their citizenship. The educational center wrote that “protests formed against the plan,” in connection with a reference to the Third Reich.

“In fact, the Nazis made generous use of the means of expatriation. In several waves, a total of over 39,000 people were expatriated - especially Jews. As of November 1941, they automatically lost their citizenship when they the crossed the borders of the Reich regardless of whether ‘voluntarily’ emigrated or deported,” the center wrote on Twitter.

The tweet continued, “Their assets were confiscated. Among other things, Albert Einstein was affected on the grounds that he had ‘violated the duty of loyalty to the Reich and the people."'

When asked about its tweets by The Jerusalem Post on Saturday, the Anne Frank Educational Center’s Twitter feed wrote: “No, we did not compare or equate Jewish holocaust victims to IS terrorists. And we made that very clear after some misinterpreted our tweet in that way. In no way did we defend jihadists. This is simply not true.”

According to the website of the center, “The Anne Frank Educational Center is a place where both young people and adults can learn about the history of National Socialism and discuss its relevance to today. In our work we use the diary and the biography of Anne Frank as a unique tool to promote tolerance and educate people about the consequences of discrimination and racism.”

Col. Richard Kemp, who was a former British Army commander of Operation Fingal in Afghanistan, wrote on Twitter: “A terrible insult by @BS_AnneFrank. They should delete this disgraceful tweet.”
Trump Peace Envoy Scolds Palestinians, U.N. Members for Enabling Payments to Terrorists
U.S. peace envoy Jason Greenblatt offered a rebuke of the Palestinian Authority and United Nations members who he said are enabling the embattled government to continue paying salaries to terrorists who have killed Jews, according to a readout of Greenblatt's remarks Friday to a closed-door session of the U.N. Security Council exclusively provided to the Washington Free Beacon.

Greenblatt, who has been engaged in shuttle diplomacy to help foster peace between the Israeli and Palestinians, offered a robust defense of Israel and blamed the P.A.'s ongoing budget crunch on a package of policies that have enabled the government to continue spending internationally provided aid dollars on terrorist salaries, a policy known as "pay to slay."

As the P.A. grapples with a deepening budget crisis that threatens its control, U.N. member states have sought to blame Israel for the situation, which has thrown the Palestinian government into chaos. Greenblatt fiercely pushed back against these charges, telling U.N. members that the Palestinians' problems are tied to their refusal to stop spending critical budgetary dollars on terrorists and their families.

The "pay to slay" policy has emerged as a chief diplomatic hurdle in peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, sources told the Free Beacon, and Greenblatt used his perch at the U.N. to send a clear message: These payments must stop immediately if the Palestinians are to be seen as a serious partner for peace.

Greenblatt's criticism comes at a key time in peace negotiations, as the Trump administration prepares to unveil its much-anticipated framework for peace.
PMW: Official PA TV teaches children that Israel will come to an end: “All of Palestine will return to us”
Despite insurances from Palestinian Authority leaders that they support a two-state solution and want to live side by side with Israel, the PA continues to teach children that Israel will come to an end.

Showing a drawing of a map of "Palestine" which included all of Israel together with the PA areas, the host on official PA TV stated that "all of Palestine will return to us":

Official PA TV host to girl: "Hold up [your drawing of] the map of Palestine. How nice! Allah willing, all of Palestine will return to us and we will enjoy its breathtaking views."
[Official PA TV, The Best Home, Feb. 21, 2019]

Palestinian Media Watch has documented this aspect of PA education numerous times and shown that the denial of Israel's right to exist is a fundamental message coming from PA leaders.

PA Minister of Education Sabri Saidam recently illustrated this same message - that all of Israel is "Palestine":



Saturday, March 09, 2019

From Ian:

Jonathan Freedland: For 2,000 years we’ve linked Jews to money. It’s why antisemitism is so ingrained
Whatever its origins, the archetype of the avaricious Jew acquired its place in the culture. It can operate at the level of playground insult – “Jew” as a synonym for stinginess – and at the level of global conspiracy theory, with Jews, or “Rothschilds”, the hidden hand pulling the strings of world capitalism and its necessary corollary, imperialism. It is planted deep in the soil of western civilisation, in Britain, the land of Fagin and Shylock, especially. It is deep enough to shape our thinking – there to be reached for when a crisis, such as the 2008 crash, requires an easy, explanatory villain – but also so deep that it is almost buried, out of sight.

The result is that sometimes we can’t even see it, even when it is right in front of us. Recall that Jeremy Corbyn’s first response on hearing that the notorious mural depicting Jewish bankers playing Monopoly on the backs of the poor was to be removed, was to ask, “Why?” He literally could not see the problem. (An image of that mural will be included in the exhibition, alongside other examples of antisemitic depictions of supposed Jewish power.)

Given the 2,000-year-old history of this equation between Jews and the wickedness of money, it is absurd to imagine any one of us would be immune to it. Inevitably, plenty of Jews have themselves internalised it – including no less than Karl Marx, whose writings are peppered with anti-Jewish sentiment, who referred to money as “the jealous god of Israel”, and who looked forward to “the emancipation of mankind from Judaism”.

It is equally absurd to think that merely announcing yourself as an anti-racist automatically inoculates you from this history. It doesn’t. Instead it has to be brought into the open and confronted. But first we have to admit that it’s there. (h/t Zvi)

Douglas Murray: The false equivalence between ‘Islamophobia’ and anti-Semitism
And this is where we return to the problem which I started with. Which is how you could have anything more than a shallow and cowardly debate about this without finding yourself condemned for ‘Islamophobia’? It is difficult, isn’t it? Because the modern multi-cultural get-out is that everything – including every religion – basically comes out the same in the wash, and that if we just unite against ‘all forms of bigotry’ that wash will bring us to some equitable nirvana.

As has often been said, ‘Islamophobia’ is a word created by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons. As it happens, we have plenty of religiously inclined fascists in Britain (as in America), including a number now in positions of legislative power from across the parties. We also have a whole plethora of cowards, from left and right, willing to dodge any problem and audibly sigh with relief as they imagine that having dodged the problem they will no longer have to encounter it again. But the one positive thing is that there are fewer morons than the fascists and cowards would wish. The general public are not morons. And we can find things out for ourselves. We have access to information. And so it would seem that in the matter of ‘Islamophobia’, as with a range of other matters, it is the people who are expected to be morons who will have to continue to correct the people who aspire to lead us.
Denouncing ‘Racist Israel and Its Lobbies,’ PLO Rejects Internationally-Accepted Definition of Antisemitism
The PLO’s Ambassador to Senegal has published what he called the “position of the State of Palestine on this debate around antisemitism” — a furious objection to the definition of antisemitism drawn up by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), so far adopted by 31 countries and endorsed by the European Parliament.

In a communiqué carried by the Senegalese news outlet Dakar Actu earlier this week, Safwat Ibraghith — the PLO’s diplomatic representative to the West African nation — stated that because his organization rejected all forms of racism, “including antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia…Palestine condemns, a priori, the State of Israel through its racist and discriminatory laws and policies: starting with the Law of Return, and the law relating to the property of the absentees in 1950, up to to the last law on the ‘nation-state of the Jewish people,’ dated July 19, 2018.”

The immediate source of the PLO’s ire with the IHRA definition is its inclusion of examples of anti-Zionist rhetoric — comparisons of Israel with Nazi Germany, the denunciation of Zionism as racism — that are antisemitic in nature. According to Ibraghith, “Palestine refuses any amalgamation between antisemitism and anti-Zionism.”

“While the first is racially racist,” he said, “the second is inscribed only in anti-colonial logic, namely that Zionism is a colonialist and racist ideology in nature.”

Accordingly, Ibraghith denied that the Jews could legitimately constitute a nation, reducing them to the status of a tolerated religious minority.

Friday, March 08, 2019

From Ian:

Bret Stephens (NYTs): Ilhan Omar Knows Exactly What She Is Doing
As the criticism of Omar mounts, it becomes that much easier for her to seem like the victim of a smear campaign, rather than the instigator of a smear. The secret of anti-Semitism has always rested, in part, on creating the perception that the anti-Semite is, in fact, the victim of the Jews and their allies. Just which powers-that-be are orchestrating that campaign? Why are they afraid of open debate? And what about all the bigotry on their side?

The goal is not to win the argument, at least not anytime soon. Yet merely by refusing to fold, Omar stands to shift the range of acceptable discussion — the so-called Overton window — sharply in her direction. Ideas once thought of as intellectually uncouth and morally repulsive have suddenly become merely controversial. It’s how anti-Zionism has abruptly become an acceptable point of view in reputable circles. It’s why anti-Semitism is just outside the frame, bidding to get in.

House Democrats are now wrangling over the text of a resolution that was initially intended as a condemnation of anti-Semitism, with Omar as its implicit target. At this writing it is mired in predictable controversy, as members of the party’s progressive wing and black caucus rally to Omar’s side in the first open challenge to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership. In the Senate, the presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Warren have weighed in with statements that painted Omar as a victim of Islamophobia — which she is — without mentioning that she’s also a purveyor of anti-Semitic bigotry — which she surely is as well.

It says something about the progressive movement today that it has no trouble denouncing Republican racism, real and alleged, every day of the week but has so much trouble calling out a naked anti-Semite in its own ranks. This is how progressivism becomes Corbynism. It’s how the left finds its own path toward legitimizing hate. It’s how self-declared anti-fascists develop their own forms of fascism.

If Pelosi can’t muster a powerful and unequivocal resolution condemning anti-Semitism, then Omar will have secured her political future and won a critical battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. At that point, the days when American Jews can live comfortably within the Democratic fold will be numbered.
Ben Shapiro: Worst Defense Of Ilhan Omar's Anti-Semitism Yet


The Democratic Party Has Normalized Anti-Semitism
This week, the Democratic Party was unable to pass a watered-down, platitudinous resolution condemning anti-Semitism, due to “fierce backlash” from presidential candidates, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and the now-powerful progressive base. Rather than censuring Rep. Ilhan Omar, the intellectually frivolous, Hamas-supporting freshman representative from Minnesota, she was rewarded and inoculated from party criticism.

More consequently, the Democrats deemed Protocols of Zion-style attacks a legitimate form of debate. That’s because Omar, despite what you hear, has repeatedly attacked Jews, not only Israel supporters, and certainly not only specific Israeli policies.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who would finally bring an “All Lives Matter” resolution to the floor, told reporters she didn’t believe the congresswoman’s comments were “intentionally anti-Semitic.” No educated human believes Omar inadvertently accused “Benjamin”-grubbing Rootless Cosmopolitans of hypnotizing the world for their evil. These are long-standing, conspiratorial attacks on the Jewish people, used by anti-Semites on right and left, and popular throughout the Islamic world.

Even the Democratic Party activist groups that typically cover for the Israel-haters, like the Anti- Defamation League, have condemned Omar. Yet it was the lie that coursed through the Democratic Party’s defense of Omar.

Anti-Semitism part of wave of `depraved hatred', pope says
Pope Francis on Friday branded anti-Semitism part of a wave of "depraved hatred" sweeping some countries and urged everyone to be vigilant against it.

In comments to members of the American Jewish Committee during a visit to the Vatican, he also reiterated that it was sinful for Christians to hold anti-Semitic sentiments because they shared a heritage with Jews.

"A source of great concern to me is the spread, in many places, of a climate of wickedness and fury, in which an excessive and depraved hatred is taking root," Francis said. "I think especially of the outbreak of anti-Semitic attacks in various countries."

Francis did not name any of those countries, but government statistics released last month showed more than 500 anti-Semitic attacks occurred last year in France, which has Europe's biggest Jewish community. That was a 74 percent increase from 2017.

"I stress that for a Christian any form of anti-Semitism is a rejection of one's own origins, a complete contradiction," Francis said.


From Ian:

Dr. Martin Sherman: “Palestine” - Time to say “No!”
Ladies and gentlemen, when the Palestinians say "two states" they do not mean what we mean—Maj-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin , October 2018.

Failed in past, unfeasible in present, dangerous in future

Echoing precisely what two-state opponents have been insisting on for decades, he pronounced categorically: “There is no-one to agree with, there is nothing to agree on—and the implementation [of any two-state initiative] is dangerous”.

But then, astonishingly, rather than arrive at the rational conclusion that the pursuit of the two-state objective be abandoned and alternative approaches be explored—he did precisely the opposite!

He urged that Israel should undertake a policy, set out in the INSS “plan”, that assumes that there is—or rather that there might be—someone to agree with, and something to agree on—at some unspecified future date and as a result of some unspecified process that would somehow overcome his previously stipulated obstacles of “Palestinian divisiveness, political weakness and ideological extremism.”

Yadlin’s patently perverse and paradoxical position on the two-state doctrine—or rather dogma—underscores precisely why it must be renounced—unequivocally and irrevocably.

Indeed, its deadly detriments are so glaringly apparent that it is becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile calls for a Palestinian state with genuine concern for the well-being of the Jewish nation-state.

The dinosaurs and the Palestinian state
You still hear serious people talking out loud about the two-state solution as a reasonable – even inevitable – possibility to the conflict between us and the Arabs of the region: dividing the good land and establishing an Arab state on the hills of Judea and Samaria, which could wind up connecting to the Hamas state in the Gaza Strip to the west and the state of Jordan to the east.

Exactly 100 years have passed since the division of the land was first suggested in the 1919 Faisal–Weizmann Agreement, after World War I. Eighteen years later, in 1937, the Peel Commission (convened to investigate the bloody events of 1936) proposed dividing the land, and a decade later, on Nov. 29, 1947, the U.N. voted in favor of the partition plan. The Arabs refused, and their response was war.

The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded before the "occupation" of the 1967 Six-Day War. Its goal was to "liberate all the land from the Zionists." Our country was then quite small in size, and still the organization's terrorists wanted it. The goal hasn't changed; it has sometimes been disguised to delude naïve, liberal, self-righteous Jews in the West.

The Oslo Accords came into being after the PLO was on the mat after backing Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein during the First Persian Gulf War. The Palestinians supported any murderous dictator who served their purposes. In Oslo, the government under then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin put the dying organization on artificial life support and brought tens of thousands of terrorists whom we had armed into western Israel to force the division of the country and fulfill their dream of peace. If the Jews don't acknowledge their right to their own land and revive their sworn enemies from the ashes, we can expect nothing more from Europe or the U.S. That is how the organization of terrorists became the official, respectable representative of the supposed forthcoming Palestinian state.
Arab Religiosity and Support for the Palestinians
Palestinians—as well as Arab leaders and opponents of Israel in the U.S. and Europe—have often claimed that the Palestinian fate is a central concern, if not the central concern, of Arabs everywhere. Examining data from Google in various Arab countries, Hillel Frisch notes that the frequency of searches for such topics as “Palestinian resistance” decreases sharply the farther one goes from Gaza and the West Bank. Non-Palestinian Arabs, by contrast, are far and away more likely to search for “al-Aqsa mosque” than for information about the Palestinian resistance, and Palestinians’ own interest in al-Aqsa is similarly high. To Frisch, all of this makes clear that religion, far more than nationalism, motivates Arab attitudes regarding Israel:

[These data] underscore the importance of the religious dimension in the Arabic-speaking world, both within and without the Palestinian arena, in the Arab-Palestinian conflict. This is hardly new. Islam was a major if not dominant theme in the most tumultuous periods of strife between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land. In April 1920, attacks against Jews began during the religious Nabi Musa pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The 1921 riots began in Jaffa to protest the participation of immodestly clad Jewish women in the May Day demonstrations in Jaffa.

Seven years later, in 1928, Haj Amin al-Husseini coined the phrase “al-Aqsa in danger” in a pan-Islamic campaign against the Zionist movement that led to the most murderous onslaught against Jews to date in August 1929. This term has since been adopted by both Hamas and the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, which was banned by Israel in 2015.

During the second intifada, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah tried in vain to name the conflict the “independence intifada” in its struggle against a rising Hamas, which wanted to color the conflict with Israel in religious terms. Today, it is universally referred to in Arabic as the “al-Aqsa intifada,” even in Fatah and PA discourse. The same religious zeal regarding the Palestinian cause can be found in the Arab world.

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