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

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

12/22 Links Pt1: Mother-of-6 killed in apparent terror attack remembered for her ‘joy for life’; The Battle for Washington’s Foreign Policy Has Begun; The Olympics must ban Iran

From Ian:

Mother-of-6 killed in apparent terror attack remembered for her ‘joy for life’
Esther Horgen, who was found dead in a northern West Bank forest in an apparent terror attack, was eulogized for her love of life as she was buried on Tuesday morning.

“For 30 years we walked together, and two days ago you went for a walk and didn’t return,” said her husband Benjamin. Horgen’s body was found a day after she went for a run in a forest near their West Bank home.

“How can a few words manage to express the depth of your heart and your generosity, your joy for life and love for others?” he said.

Esther’s daughter Odelia mourned the loss of her mother and expressed pain that she would not be at her future wedding.

“My mother is my best friend. She came to visit me at the end of the world, in Australia. Where are you now, mother?” said Odelia. “I am sorry that you will not dance at my wedding.”

Dozens of mourners attended the funeral including Settlements Minister Tzachi Hanegbi.

Community leader Rabbi Reuven Uziel said that Horgen’s killer would not be able to “sully” Israel.

“On Friday we sat together at a Shabbat meal. Not for a second we did not think this was the last time we would meet. You were a person of love and lightness, of joy and a smile,” Uziel said. “The murderers will not be able to sully the land of the Land of Israel, which will remain blessed and holy, and you will remain blessed and pure.”

In an interview on Tuesday morning, Benjamin said that his wife had lived life to the full.

“She lived every moment of her life. She had so much to give,” Benjamin Horgen told the Kan public broadcaster. “I trust the defense establishment to do their job, they have updated [us] that things are progressing.”


The Moroccan deal with Israel fills me with joy
There were 20 years of silence. And then, last week, Trump announced that Morocco and Israel would be resuming diplomatic relations. In a tweet afterwards, the President reminded the world that Morocco was the first country to recognise the United States as a nation, in 1777 and, simultaneously, urged for an international recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.

Good news is flowing from the region: the Jewish state, also at the behest of Trump has established ties with Bahrain, the UAE and Sudan. Of course, the most recent news did not please everyone. Some frowned upon the fact that the US released the information before Morocco or Israel; others criticised the power imbalance between Morocco and Israel on one hand, and Palestine and Western Sahara on the other. The latter has been waging a war of independence against Morocco for several decades, led by a socialist separatist group with Islamist ties.

Hamas, naturally, is outraged and denounced the Moroccan treachery; while in its customary partiality against the Moroccan monarchy, the French media — both mainstream, such as Le Monde, and more independent sites such as Mediapart — quickly attacked both Trump and King Mohammed VI of Morocco for an agreement in which both Palestinian and Sahraoui self-determination was jeopardised.

This grumbling contrasts with the elation and relief felt by many Jewish families around the world as the first candle of the Menorah was lit, and by many Muslims in Morocco who can recall what things were like before the 1960s. Having grown up in Morocco, and with a father who remembers those happier times of coexistence, I was moved to tears by the sight of Israelis dancing in the street to traditional Moroccan song, waving flags of both countries and pictures of the King Mohammed.

Almost a million people in the Jewish state are of Moroccan descent, from families who were exiled six decades ago, a mere blip in time compared to the thousands of years they’d spent in the Maghreb. For them, as well as Jewish North African communities in France and increasingly in London, the deal is a hugely welcome Hanukkah gift during a difficult year.
How Moroccans are Reacting to Normalization with Israel

Peace with the Arab world? Tunisian musican sings of peace, is threatened and fired
United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan. The list of countries of the Arab-Islamic world that have made peace with Israel in recent months is impressive.

A Tunisian singer thought it was time to put this atmosphere of normalization into music. So, on December 13, Noamane Chaari uploaded a video of a song he had just recorded with an Israeli musician. The song, in Arabic, speaks of dreams of peace, of olive trees, of the sea, of Tunis, of Jerusalem. Chaari recorded it with Ziv Yehezkel, an Iraqi Jew. An invitation to build bridges between Jews and Arabs.

In the supposedly most moderate country in the region, the only "Arab Spring" of any success, it is still a crime to sing peace with the Jews. Host of a broadcast of the famous radio station Mosaïque Fm, the young musician was the subject of death threats. Stressing that the author of the lyrics, a Yemeni poet, remained anonymous so as not to risk beheading in his country, host Hedi Zaiem asked: "What will happen to the man who sang it?".

Threatened with death, fired by his employer, Channel 1 of public television, Noamane Chaari now tells L’Obs: "I have been accused of espionage and treason. Some media have deliberately tried to antagonize Tunisian public opinion, invoking the violence against me ".

Thus, in the supposedly most moderate country in the region, the only "Arab Spring" of any success, it is still a crime to sing peace with the Jews. Conservative president Kaïs Saïed speaks of a "Zionist entity", like the Iranian ayatollahs. And the Ugtt union, which won the Nobel Peace Prize, has put back on the table the idea of ​​a law that criminalizes the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. The union of music professionals, affiliated precisely with the Ugtt, condemned Chaari's "provocation against the Tunisian people and all the Arab people".

The singer had also traveled to Israel with an Arab delegation. His "fault" is also that of having written the song with a Jew of Iraqi origin and a Moroccan mother, while images of Baghdad appear together with those of Tunis in the music video.

Monday, December 21, 2020

12/21 Links Pt2: The dangerous logic of anti-racism; Fauda became a bridge between Arabs, Jews; Life sentence for Halle synagogue shooter who killed 2 in Yom Kippur rampage

From Ian:

The dangerous logic of anti-racism
We all know that racism is about prejudice and power. Or at least that is an increasingly popular definition, one that has become more mainstream during this most racially-conscious of years.

By this logic, evidence of prejudice is insufficient qualification for racism; the group you are prejudiced against also needs to be structurally oppressed. This explains why many say that white people can’t be victims of racism; they may suffer prejudice, but they are not systematically disadvantaged in school, employment and the criminal justice system on the basis of their race. And this is why, for many, there is no distinction between racism and structural racism; racism is structural by definition.

But this definition raises an important question: that if racism is about disadvantages in education, employment and the criminal justice system, what does this mean for ethnic minorities who are not disadvantaged in contemporary Britain along those lines?

The Labour Party, an avowedly anti-racist movement, has been plagued in recent years by accusations of anti-Semitism. The recent EHRC report found “a culture within the party which, at best, did not do enough to prevent anti-Semitism and, at worst, could be seen to accept it”.

Many Labour supporters and sympathisers have tried nobly to make sense of this contradiction. In a recent article, Novara Media writer Ash Sarkar distinguished anti-Semitism from other forms of racism. Anti-Semitism, she contended, is unrelated to “systemic disadvantage in either the jobs market or the criminal justice system”. Sarkar emphasised in a later tweet that she does not think Jews are privileged, or that they don’t face racism; she simply thinks that the racism they face is different from the racism other minorities face.

Nevertheless, Sarkar seems more sympathetic to the structural definition of racism. She argues, for instance, that “better party strategy, or fairer media coverage, does not result in a healthier anti-racist politic”. This is because “the bullying of black MPs might be stamped out, but it would not mean that Labour’s policy on policing or immigration would improve”. So a “healthier anti-racist politics” is one that focuses on structural inequalities rather than interpersonal prejudice.

The anti-Semitism scandal within the Labour Party has been specifically about the spread of noxious ideas and instances of interpersonal abuse. Sarkar, on the other hand, argues that anti-racism is actually about dismantling the material inequalities in our society, and that “racism against Jewish people does not result in the harsher prison sentences, wage gaps, stop and search or unequal healthcare outcomes that we see with other groups“.

Jews, by this logic, do not qualify under this definition of racism, which emphasises structural inequalities — that same definition to which Sarkar and many others are most attached to. If structural inequalities are the basis for racism, then Jews in contemporary Britain cannot by definition be victims of racism.
Fauda became a bridge between Arabs, Jews
It might have taken Israel years of political manoeuvring to strike the latest peace deals with its Arab neighbours, the UAE and Bahrain. But much before the powers in Washington’s White House negotiated the Abraham Accords on September 15 and ended hostilities, the popular Netflix series ‘Fauda’ had melted the ice between traditional foes --- the Jews and the Arabs.

The award-winning Israeli show – in Hebrew and Arabic – that depicted the heat and gore of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was a cross-border success and won over international audience, including those in the Arab world, on Netflix, an American over-the-top (OTT) content platform and production company.

‘Fauda’ was rated the most-watched series in the UAE.

The high-octane action-drama centred around a counter-terrorism Commando Unit called “Mista’arvim’ of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) that went undercover into the Palestinian territory to nab a Hamas operative. The ensuing chaos packed with raw, unflinching violence, hostage drama and nail-biting plot twists were driven by the protagonist, Doron Kavilio, who had co-authored the show with his old friend, Avi Issacharoff.

When Khaleej Times sat down with Lior, at a private villa in Tel Aviv during our trip to Israel last week, he was excited about the sweeping political changes happening in the region. ‘Fauda’, Lior said, had set the tone and became a bridge between the Arabs and the Jews because it humanised people from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“We showed Israelis like human beings for the first time… our soldiers as human beings. And we also were showing Palestinians as human beings. So, I think this is the achievement of the show. I hope that it helped people understand that there are people behind the headlines of the newspaper. We showed both the narrative.”
A Holocaust Fairy Tale From France
Jean-Claude Grumberg finds the unbelievable truth in ‘The Most Precious of Cargoes’

Grumberg grapples with the enormity of the Shoah through the principle of synecdoche—a part standing for the whole. Paring away superfluous verbiage and nonessential details, his spare prose, trenchantly translated by Frank Wynne, bears the weight of Six Million. Though Grumberg calls the father who saves his infant daughter by abandoning her by the tracks in the forest “our hero,” he never names him, as if individuation would diminish the general devastation. To appreciate the anonymous man’s heroism, and the generosity of a strange benefactor, it is necessary to reach the heartrending conclusion of a story meant to be read in a single bated breath.

The work’s epilogue teases the reader’s credulity. “You want to know if this is a true story? A true story?” Grumberg asks. His answer, “Of course not, absolutely not,” reaffirms his claim that it is all a fairy tale. But then he proceeds to support that claim through a long series of disavowals that only the most obdurate and malicious of Holocaust deniers could support: “There were no cargo trains crossing war-torn continents to deliver urgently their oh-so-perishable cargo. No reunification camps, internment camps, concentration camps, or even extermination camps. No families were vaporized in smoke after their final journey. No hair was shorn, gathered, packaged, and shipped. There were no flames, no ashes, no tears. …” Since we know that these genocidal horrors did occur, that—hard as it is to believe—there were in fact cargo trains that transported human beings to extermination camps, we are forced to read Grumberg’s indelible “fairy tale” as accurate history.

For all his cunning irony, Grumberg is probably sincere about his distaste for “mawkish” fairy tales. His own fairy tale, a story of villainy and valor, loathing and love, earns a reader’s fears and tears without being sentimental. The standard disclaimer on the copyright page—“This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental”—is a blatant lie in the service of truth.

12/21 Links Pt1: Mother-of-six murdered in West Bank, in what police believe was terror attack; Kushner: Jerusalem not cause of problem, it's core of solution

From Ian:

Mother-of-six murdered in West Bank, in what police believe was terror attack
An Israeli woman in her 50s was found dead in a northern West Bank forest in the early hours of Monday after she went for a run on her own a day earlier, with authorities investigating the case as a suspected terror attack.

Police said in a statement that there were signs of violence to her body and that the woman’s death was considered a suspected murder. The Shin Bet security service was also taking part in the investigation.

The woman was later identified as Esther Horgen, 52, of the Tal Menashe settlement, a mother of six.

The police and Shin Bet were “increasingly convinced” that the killing was terror-related, security officials said Monday afternoon, though the police officially said that “all directions are being investigated.” The Shin Bet declined to officially comment on the matter.

The head of the Samaria Regional Council, Yossi Dagan, said Horgen was killed with a large rock.

There were no initial reports of any arrests. Police requested and received a court-issued gag order on Monday morning, barring media outlets from identifying the identities of any suspects or any other details of the investigation.

Despite the gag order, security officials told reporters that there was growing evidence to indicate that this was a nationalistically-based crime, though it appeared unlikely to have been carried out by a well-trained, established terrorist group, given the brutal and unmethodical manner in which Horgen was killed. The officials said that investigators were looking into the possibility that the suspected terrorist was an Arab-Israeli from the nearby Wadi Ara area.
West Bank: Woman Murdered in Suspected Terror Attack

Husband of woman slain in apparent terror attack urges West Bank construction
The husband of an Israeli woman found dead in a northern West Bank forest called for an increase in settlement building and “an appropriate Zionist response” to the apparent terror attack.

“Esther raised a beautiful family and loved her grandchildren, and now they will have neither a mother nor a grandmother. Esther will be missed by us all, her family and everyone who knew her,” Benjamin Horgen told reporters outside his home in the Tal Menashe settlement.

His wife Esther, 52, a mother of six, had gone out for a run in the Reihan forest near their house Sunday afternoon and did not return, whereupon Benjamin called police. Her body was found overnight in the forest with signs of violence on it.

“Esther went out yesterday as she often did, to stroll through the nature that she loved so much around the settlement,” Benjamin Horgen said through tears. “She was so full of life, light and love for everyone, and all of that was cut short in an instant.”

“We attribute the great success of our family and community as a whole to her,” he continued, calling on the government to put forth “an appropriate Zionist response to the murder and to add [to settlement] construction and light for our children.”

Horgen’s funeral is to be held on Tuesday at 10 a.m.

Security forces are increasingly convinced that the death was a terror attack committed by a Palestinian assailant, officials said on Monday afternoon.

Sunday, December 20, 2020

12/20 Links: Peace for Peace: Israel and the Muslim World; Israel could be 1st nation to vaccinate its at-risk populations; Israel’s Chief Rabbi Makes History With Visit to UAE

From Ian:

Ronn Torossian: Peace for Peace: Israel and the Muslim World
History is being made today, in 2020, as Israel makes peace throughout the Muslim world. Peace – for peace – which benefits all people and is best for all interests in the region. With hope of a better tomorrow, Morocco, Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates have all signed peace agreements with Israel in recent weeks.

Against this backdrop, two famous quotes today from Israeli Prime Ministers ring true. Prime Minister Golda Meir once said, “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” And it is clear that today, thankfully ,for many, that day has arrived.

And as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more ‎violence. If the Jews put ‎down their weapons ‎today, there would be no ‎more Israel'.”

Reflecting that, The Washington Post reported this week that in the two weeks since commercial flights began between Tel Aviv and Dubai and Abu Dhabi, more than 50,000 Israelis have visited the region - this in the midst of a global pandemic.

Iconic Israeli singers Omer Adam and Eyal Golan visited, as have the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rishon Letzion Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, and countless others across the political spectrum, right-wingers, left-wingers, Orthodox and non-Orthodox - Israelis are flocking to this Muslim country.

Here in New York, we feel it as well. Well-respected local Rabbi Elie Abadie has moved to the UAE to become the senior rabbi for the Jewish Council of the Emirates. Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Gilad Erdan lit the eighth candle of Hanukkah with the Moroccan Ambassador at a special ceremony in New York, where he proclaimed, "There is no alternative to peace. We are all the sons of Abraham and the sons of Abraham, they always at the end of the day will sit together to make peace together and to build a future together for the next generation."

What an amazing thing for the world and for the Jewish state – tourism, billions of dollars in foreign investment in high tech, agriculture and arms. With the help of G-d, safety, peace and prosperity.
Israel could be 1st nation to vaccinate its at-risk populations, by end of Jan.
Israel kicks off its coronavirus vaccination drive on Saturday evening with reports suggesting the Jewish state could be the first country in the world to vaccinate its at-risk populations.

The first Israeli to receive the vaccine will be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, followed by Health Minister Yuli Edelstein. They will be inoculated Saturday evening at Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv. Netanyahu is 71 and Edelstein 62.

The event, which will be broadcast live, is aimed at “encouraging the Israeli public to get the vaccine,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement, adding that Netanyahu will thus become one of the first world leaders to get the vaccine. US Vice President Mike Pence and Congresspeople began receiving the vaccination on Friday.

President Reuven Rivlin will receive the vaccination Sunday when the country starts vaccinating health workers. From Monday, elderly Israelis and at-risk populations can receive a vaccine at Health maintenance organizations (HMOs) with a doctor’s appointment.

Both Channel 12 and 13 reported that Israel was likely to be one of the first countries in the world, if not the first, to complete the vaccination of its at-risk populations.


Health Ministry chief says aiming to vaccinate 60% of population by April
The director-general of the Health Ministry said Sunday that the ministry has set a goal of vaccinating the majority of Israelis by early next year.

“The goal is to vaccinate about 60 percent of the population by the end of the first quarter of 2021,” he told the high-level coronavirus cabinet, according to leaks from the meeting.

Levy, however, warned that it would be longer before Israelis could return to normalcy.

“Maybe a month after we have achieved a herd immunity state we will start to get back to routine, but with masks,” he said.

Levy also reportedly said that by the end of January, Israel would be able to store up to seven million doses at temperatures low enough for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

His comments came as Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv announced that it had run out doses for the day, after administering 1,000 shots on Sunday.


Saturday, December 19, 2020

12/19 Links: Problem-solver Jared Kushner’s biggest win was Middle East peace; Obama trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes — lefty media didn't notice; Occupied Territories Bill in Ireland Is Dead on Arrival

From Ian:

Problem-solver Jared Kushner’s biggest win was Middle East peace
Of all the problems President Trump threw at senior adviser Jared Kushner, developing a peace plan for the Middle East was the toughest, a win that has eluded administrations for years.

For the Jewish adviser, bringing peace to Israel was personal. And any victory would provide the administration with an everlasting legacy in the region and the world.

He ignored the ridicule of former administration officials when he took a different and secretive path, as he had on several other projects.

“If you look up the definition of an impossible objective in the dictionary, people say Middle East peace. It's almost a metaphor for impossibility,” he told Secrets.

Kushner built a plan that had a big economic and prosperity push, and while many in Washington brushed it off, it has taken root in the region.

And it set the stage for the Abraham Accords, which has led four former foes ⁠— the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco ⁠— to sign peace agreements with Israel.

“We took a very different approach, and this isn't a rebuke of Democrats, it's a rebuke of maybe more of the foreign policy people who've come before because they're Republicans and Democrats, and for years, they did this dance and didn't get results. Then, those were the people who criticized me the loudest for doing things differently than the way they did. I was like, 'Wait, so you want me to accomplish a different result than you got, but you want me to do the exact same way that you tried?'” he said.

Joel Rosenberg, a bestselling author, editor of All Israel News and All Arab News, and a roving diplomat, called Kushner one of “the most innovative and successful Middle East peace brokers in history.”
FDD: Occupied Territories Bill in Ireland Is Dead on Arrival
Amid a COVID-19-induced economic recession, Irish independent Senator Frances Black has revived a draft law targeting Israel after a previous failed attempt. The Occupied Territories Bill, if enacted, could have disastrous consequences for U.S. economic relations with Ireland – and Ireland itself.

The Occupied Territories Bill seeks to criminalize trade in goods and services produced in Israeli settlements. When the bill was initially introduced in January 2018, it triggered a sharp denouncement from the Irish government and U.S. policymakers.

During the 32nd session of the Irish parliament, which was dissolved in January 2020, the bill reached the seventh of 10 steps toward becoming law. Unpassed bills typically lapse at the end of Ireland’s parliamentary session and must begin the process anew in the subsequent session. However, Black succeeded in now having the bill reinstated at the same stage during the 33rd session.

If enacted, the bill could force U.S. companies with an Irish division or subsidiary to choose between one of two costly options: violate Irish law by continuing to do business with companies and persons in Israeli settlements, or violate U.S. law by participating in a foreign boycott not endorsed by the U.S. government. Major U.S. companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, employ over 155,000 people in Ireland. All four of these corporations have substantial research and development centers in Israel. Not only would these and other U.S. companies risk running afoul of U.S. federal law prohibiting compliance with an unsanctioned boycott, they would also be violating nearly two dozen U.S. state laws that prohibit unauthorized boycotts against Israel.

The bill has already received sharp criticism from officials of Ireland’s two leading political parties, as well as bipartisan criticism from the U.S. Congress. Earlier this year, Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin of Ireland’s Fianna Fail party asserted that the bill would violate EU trade regulations by undermining the European Union’s exclusive right to determine trade policy for its member states.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney of the Fine Gael party has made similar assertions. In addition, Irish Attorney General Séamus Woulfe weighed in that the bill would be “impractical” to enforce.
Obama trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes — lefty media didn't notice
The words leap out and grab you. Former President Barack Obama characterizes no other world leader in anything like the terms he reserves for former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

In his recent memoir, Obama tells us that Sarkozy is a “quarter Greek Jew.” Little wonder, then, that Sarkozy has “dark, expressive, Mediterranean features,” which resemble the exaggerated, often distorted figures “of a Toulouse-Lautrec painting.”

Little wonder, too, that he is “all emotional outbursts and overblown rhetoric,” while his conversation, which reflects unbridled ambition and incessant pushiness, “swoops from flattery to bluster to genuine insight.”

One might have thought Obama was deliberately directing at Sarkozy the insults notoriously hurled at Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), the first person of Jewish birth to become Britain’s prime minister. The colonial administrator Lord Cromer said of Disraeli that he was driven by “a tenacity of purpose” that was “a Jewish characteristic.” With his swarthy, “Oriental features,” Disraeli was consumed by an “addiction” to the “passionate outbursts” and “excesses of flattery” that were the hallmarks of his “nimble-witted” race.

Cromer’s taunts, which Obama so uncannily echoes, were hardly unusual. On the contrary, the traits Obama attributes to Sarkozy — from oily complexion to pushy, self-centered assertiveness — were at the heart of the anti-Semitic caricature of the Jew that crystallized, with murderous consequences, in the 19th century.

That history makes calling Sarkozy a Jew vastly different from noting, say, that Angela Merkel’s father was a Lutheran pastor; and if anti-Semitism involves using the label “Jew” to evoke, emphasize or explain an interrelated complex of unattractive attributes, Obama’s description of Sarkozy is unquestionably anti-Semitic.

Yet from The New York Times to The Washington Post and beyond, not one of the gushing reviews considered Obama’s statement even worth mentioning.

Friday, December 18, 2020

12/18 Links Pt2: Columbia professor : Israel 'fabricated' Jewish refugees; Why the cultural elite truly despises Hanukkah; What Raphael Warnock Believes About Israel

From Ian:

Columbia professor : Israel 'fabricated' Jewish refugees
To mark the 30 November Day of Commemoration of the exodus of Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran, Gilad Erdan, Israel's UN ambassador, pledged to press for a UN resolution for the recognition and compensation of Jewish refugees.

Enter Joseph Massad into the fray to call out 'Israel's outrageous fabrications'. Massad is Associate Professor of Arab Politics at Columbia University. Erdan's campaign, he alleges in Middle East Eye, is designed to exonerate Israel from the 'original sin' of expelling the Palestinians and other 'criminal actions'.

Dismissing all the ''push' factors, he argues that Jews coming to the Jewish homeland cannot possibly be refugees. They can't be said to have been expelled either, because Yemen defied an Arab League ban and 'allowed' the Jews to leave. Israel 'removed' 'Arab Jews', as he calls them, to face institutionalised Ashkenazi discrimination in Israel' and the abduction of hundreds of children'. Massad obviously knows better than three Israeli Commissions of Inquiry, who could find no evidence of an abduction racket.

Ignoring the mass violence and state-sanctioned persecution confronting 'Arab Jews', Massad resurrects the old chestnuts favoured by Palestinian propagandists of the 1950 'Mossad' bombs in Iraq and the 1954 Lavon Affair bombings in Egypt to infer that Jews had to be made to leave 'the paradise 'of Arab countries by the Zionists. Then comes a curious inference : because most Jews in Egypt did not have Egyptian nationality, one could not blame Egypt for expelling them as foreigners. In other words, Jews in Egypt were a mini-settler colony. It does not cross Massad's mind that Jews in Egypt could have been denied Egyptian nationality by racist laws. Of 1,000 Jews detained by Nasser after the Suez crisis of 1956, only half were of Egyptian nationality. (A negligible number, so that's alright then.)

Calling mainly on sources such as Tom Segev's The First Israelis, articles in Haaretz, Joel Beinin's The dispersion of tEgyptian Jewry and writings by Ella Shohat, Massad passes over massive evidence that Jews were stripped of their rights as Jews . He claims that there was no population swap between Jewish refugees and Palestinians, as Israel argues : while Jews were given Palestinian homes and land, Palestinians were not given Jewish property in return (Not true: some Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq were housed in Jewish property, and it was Arab League policy neither to complete the exchange, nor resettle the refugees - ed). Massad inflates Palestinian losses to $300 bn, so that they dwarf Jewish losses.
Melanie Phillips: The "antisemitism" of John le Carré
In Britain, a number of people who eulogised le Carré after his death praised him for the moral sense they claimed illuminated his fiction. They did not mean by that his contempt for Soviet communism. They meant instead his contempt for the west.

For they were reflecting the cultural orthodoxy of moral relativism, the doctrine under which there can be no objective moral distinctions between behaviour.

That leads them straight into despising western culture while inflating the moral worth of the developing world. And this loss of moral compass leads them, in turn, straight into the detestation of Israel — the new antisemitism that is a fig leaf for the older kind.

Le Carré was clearly very upset at being accused of antisemitism. That’s a reaction shared by many in progressive, Israel-bashing circles.

Such people often valorise the victims of the Holocaust, sentimentalise certain Jewish characteristics and boast of having Jewish friends. They therefore dismiss as outrageous the suggestion that they may harbour some form of anti-Jewish prejudice.

But antisemitism doesn’t always wear jackboots. Like le Carré’s spies, it hides behind multiple disguises, including western liberalism.

John le Carré was a wonderful writer whose works gave pleasure to millions. His early spy fiction was superlative, and his semi-autobiographical novel A Perfect Spy was a masterpiece.

English literature, however, is full of writers of enduring quality and importance but who had antisemitic views. From Chaucer to Dickens to TS Eliot to Roald Dahl, we continue to read and appreciate writers of genius while being uncomfortably aware of their anti-Jewish prejudice.

This doesn’t just tell us something about these authors, but also about the culture that produced them. Le Carré was the product of an era in which rampant antisemitism has been facilitated by precisely the same moral bankruptcy posing as conscience that is reflected in his fiction.

Ultimately, though, he himself remains an enigma. Was he on the side of the Jewish people — or their enemies? Even George Smiley might fail to resolve that one.
Why the cultural elite truly despises Hanukkah
Our cultural elites’ least ­favorite Jewish holiday has arrived: Hanukkah, of course.

Why did Hanukkah irk everyone from the late Christopher Hitchens, who memorably ­derided it as a “celebration of tribal Jewish backwardness,” to author Sarah Prager, who took to the pages of The New York Times recently to explain that she won’t be teaching her kids about it?

Well, because Hanukkah is about as out of step with the contemporary elite consensus as any religious tradition can be.

If you haven’t reviewed the story in a while, here’s how it goes. One fine day in 167 BC, a crowd of Jews was gathered in the town square of Modi’in, a suburb of Jerusalem.

They were there ­because the Seleucid Empire — the successors of Alexander the Great’s expansive dynasty — had recently moved into town. The conquerors believed that their Greek culture was the only path to enlightenment. The Seleucids had resolved to Hellenize this peculiarly stubborn people, the Jews, and they sought out the right kind of Jewish collaborator — you know, those who weren’t too bearded or too weird — to persuade the rest of the locals to abandon their backward mountain God and primitive laws.

And then, just as one of those Hellenizing Jews stepped up to sacrifice to almighty Zeus, out came a priest named Mattathias. Having precisely zero ­patience for idolatry, the fiery-eyed zealot killed not only the Jewish collaborator but the ­Seleucid governor, as well. Mattathias thus launched a war — partly an internal Jewish conflict, partly a rebellion against Greek imperial power — that would end with that well-publicized victory of the priest and his sons, the Maccabees, aided by one miraculous vat of oil.

So what’s Hanukkah truly about?

12/18 Links Pt1: Kontorovich: The Israel-Morocco peace deal underscores a double standard on the West Bank versus Western Sahara; UN’s Virtual Palestinian Exhibit Distorts Facts

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: The Israel-Morocco peace deal underscores a double standard on the West Bank versus Western Sahara
The basic, universal rule for determining a new country’s borders is to look to the borders of the preceding political entity in the territory, be it a colony, administrative district or Soviet republic. In Israel’s case, it was Mandatory Palestine, which included all of the West Bank. Concerns that the Trump administration’s actions could be used to justify Russia’s takeover of Crimea are baseless. Crimea was indisputably part of Ukraine, a sovereign country.

The Polisario demands a country of its own. Yet only a few countries have recognized the purported Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic. Self-determination in international law doesn’t typically mean the right of a people to have its own country. It can be satisfied by some degree of self-governance, and autonomy in internal matters such as language and culture. This is why the U.S. recognition was coupled with an endorsement of an “autonomy plan” for Western Sahara.

The Palestinians today have vastly more autonomy than the Saharawi would have in the Moroccan plan, which makes Rabat the final arbiter of Saharawi law. Ramallah, by contrast, has the last word on its own legislation. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas, for better or worse, govern the daily lives of their people.

The Obama administration also supported Moroccan sovereignty with Saharwai autonomy, as did other countries such as Spain and France—and even the Palestinian Authority. Morocco’s position has bipartisan support in Congress, and thus the U.S. will likely maintain the recognition policy.

There is a huge gap between many countries’ stances on Western Sahara and the West Bank that can’t be explained by legal differences. It will be a bad look for a Biden administration to harp on Israeli “occupation” and “settlers” while maintaining recognition of Morocco’s 1975 takeover. The U.S. recognition makes eventually doing the same for Israel in the West Bank much easier, and indeed a matter of consistency.
Rights Abusers at UN Oppose ‘Country-Specific’ Resolutions – Unless They Target Israel
Having supported more than a dozen U.N. General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel in the past two weeks, the representatives of some of the world’s most egregious rights-abusing regimes complained on Wednesday about “country-specific” resolutions targeting some among their own ranks – Iran, Russia, North Korea, and the Assad regime – saying they violate the cherished U.N. principles of “objectivity, non-selectivity, and impartiality.”

Among the most outspoken critics during Wednesday’s plenary session in New York were the delegates from China and Cuba, governments whose widely-documented human rights abuses at home have attracted not a single General Assembly resolution this year.

At the meeting, the assembly considered texts from its Third Committee – which deals with social, cultural, and humanitarian issues – including country-specific resolutions relating to the human rights situations in Iran, Syria, North Korea, and the Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula of Ukraine.

All four passed, but with sizeable numbers of “no” votes, and large numbers of abstentions: -- The Iran resolution passed by 82 votes to 30, with 64 abstentions -- The Syria resolution passed by 101 votes to 13, with 62 abstentions -- The Crimea resolution passed by 64 votes to 23, with 86 abstentions -- The North Korea resolution passed without a recorded vote (although several countries – including China, Iran and Cuba – then disassociated themselves from the “consensus.”)
Will Biden break the pattern of how US presidents approach Israel?
Patterns are everywhere: in nature, in art, in human behavior, in interpersonal relationships. They also exist in diplomacy. And for students of diplomacy, or more specifically those who carefully watch the ebb and flow of US-Israel relations, there is one particular pattern that may appear somewhat disconcerting as US President-elect Joe Biden is poised to take office in just over three weeks.

Veteran US Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross identified this pattern in Doomed to Succeed, his 2015 book on the history of US-Israel relations from presidents Harry Truman to Barack Obama.

“When an administration is judged by its successors to be too close to Israel, we [the US] distance ourselves from the Jewish state,” he wrote. And then Ross gave numerous examples.

“[Dwight D.] Eisenhower believed that Truman was too supportive of Israel, so he felt an imperative to demonstrate that we were not partial to Israel, that we were in fact willing to seek closer ties to our real friends in the region – the Arabs

“President [Richard] Nixon, likewise, felt that Lyndon Johnson was too pro-Israel. In his first two years, he, too, distanced us from Israel and showed sensitivity to Arab concerns. President George H.W. Bush believed his former boss, Ronald Reagan, suffered from the same impulse of being too close to Israel. He, too, saw virtue in fostering distance.”

And finally, Ross continued, “President Obama, at the outset of his administration, certainly saw George W. Bush as having cost us in the Arab and Muslim world at least in part because he was unwilling to allow any gap to emerge between the United States and Israel.”

Thursday, December 17, 2020

12/17 Links Pt2: Stop pretending that anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitis; Chief Rabbi launches scathing attack on China’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Stop pretending that anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism
One reason is that these anti-Zionists are, as Beinart claimed, speaking the language of the progressives who dominate the political and social culture of much of the American Jewish world. The other is that, as we have recently seen with respect to critical race theory and cancel culture, marginal ideas and movements that succeed first in academia are likely to eventually make inroads, if not to dominate the media and popular culture.

Among the infuriating aspects of this debate is the pretense on the part of groups like JVP and their fellow travelers that was aired at their Dec. 15 panel was that they are merely “critiquing” Israel. Mere criticism of Israel’s government isn’t anti-Semitism. What the BDS movement and anti-Zionists want is not a different Israeli government or changed policies. It wants to eliminate Israel and replace it with a binational state in which Jews will lose both sovereignty and their ability to defend themselves against hostile neighbors and Islamist terror groups that believe Jews have no right to a state in their ancient homeland, no matter where its borders are drawn.

Beinart, who only a few years ago was posing as the leading light of “liberal Zionism,” now advocates for just such an outcome and says those like Tlaib, who share his new goal, seek human rights for everyone. He says that when Tlaib and Hill advocate for “Palestine from the river to the sea,” they mean the Israeli Jews who live in between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea no harm—or at least no harm as long as they surrender without a struggle.

Put that way, the harm, as well as the denial of Jewish rights and history that are part of their agenda, is clear. But when you state your case, no matter how awful its goal, in the language of progressives, you are on the same wavelength of a Jewish community that prioritizes the universalist element of Jewish identity over its parochial elements. Speaking up for a Jewish state can sound vaguely racist to young progressive ears, especially when they are—as is the case with so many American Jews—ignorant about the conflict and most of Jewish history except for basic knowledge about the Holocaust. In a largely assimilated community, the sense of Jewish peoplehood that previous generations took for granted is now very much up for grabs.

Equally important is the need for us not to underestimate the way academia can influence other sectors of society. Not long ago, the sort of “cancel culture” in which those who questioned critical race theory and radical notions about history were silenced was only something that happened on college campuses. But as we’ve learned this year, the leap from such outrages being solely a way to protect hypersensitive and intolerant college students from hearing opposing views has gone mainstream.

Similarly, hatred for Israel and anti-Zionism used to be a marginal phenomenon that was rarely heard in mainstream media. But Beinart now preaches Israel’s elimination on the opinion pages of the Times and on CNN. He’s far from alone in that respect. And people like Tlaib and her colleague Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who might have been canceled and shunned by respectable media outlets for their trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes about the dual loyalty of American Jews and buying American legislators in Congress to lobby for Israel, as well as support for BDS, are welcomed everywhere and treated as their party’s rock stars rather than the hatemongers they are.
Human Rights Icon Natan Sharansky Calls Out Progressives Who View Jews as ‘Oppressors’
Renowned human rights activist Natan Sharansky called out on Wednesday progressives who viewed Jews as “oppressors,” saying such an outlook contradicted the concept of individual justice.

The former Soviet refusenik was a featured speaker at the “Dismantling Antisemitism: Jews Talk Justice” online event hosted by the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement (CAM), In collaboration with the Tel Aviv Institute.

The forum was organized as a response to a controversial Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) webinar on antisemitism held a day earlier that featured several participants, including US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Professor Marc Lamont Hill, who have themselves perpetuated Jew-hatred.

“Today, there is an attempt to hijack the cause of human rights from Jews by so-called progressives,” Sharanksy remarked. “For the so-called progressives, all the world is the fight between ‘oppressors’ and ‘oppressed.’”

“’Oppressors; are always wrong and ‘oppressed’ are always right,” he continued. “There is no such thing as individual justice, it has to be for the group.”

Sharansky elaborated, “Jews are guilty of belonging to the wrong state, the State of Israel, the wrong group. Jews are accused as a group and Israel is accused as a Jewish State.”

“It is not the struggle for human rights, it is not the struggle for individual freedom,” he declared.

Also taking part in Wednesday’s event was US Assistant Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Ellie Cohanim, who highlighted a “pernicious new form of anti-Semitism” that sought to negate the history of Jews from Arab countries and Iran.

“This erasure of history allows the accusation that Jews enjoy white privilege and are neo-colonialists,” she noted.
Antisemitism Webinar Features Pro-Palestinian Activists Railing Against Jews and Israel
Lamont Hill and Tlaib both previously expressed support for Palestinian freedom “from the river to the sea,” which is commonly used as a call to destroy Israel. As the last panelist to speak, Tlaib, who supports the BDS movement, cried on-screen when talking about how she has been “demonized” and accused of being antisemitic.

“Tell everybody, I don’t hate you. I absolutely love you,” she said. “If anybody comes through my doors or through any forum to try to push antisemitism forward, you will hear me being loud with my bullhorn to tell them to get the hell out.”

She added, “I hope all our Jewish neighbors know we’re in this together.”

The night’s moderator, JVP’s deputy director Rabbi Alissa Wise, told viewers that she is “instinctively repulsed” by the idea that Jews need Israel “as somewhere to go” when they are next at risk of genocide. She also said that a “free Palestine is required if we want a free world for everyone, including Jews.”

She later stated that those who want to call solidarity with Palestinians anti-Israel are “using antisemitism to manufacture hate.”

“People who want to maintain Israeli government control over Palestinian lives and land play a very dangerous game when they call solidarity with Palestinians a form of anti-Jewish hatred. It’s not antisemitism to see that Israel has its boot on Palestinians,” she stated. “Antisemitism is a tool used to manufacture fear and division.”

Roytman-Dratwa said “this event was an attempt to turn reality on its head. It is nothing short of dangerous hypocrisy by those who have stoked antisemitism to claim that they themselves are serious voices in tackling Jew-hatred. Nobody, including self-styled progressives such as Representative Tlaib and Professor Hill, should be allowed to dictate to Jews what constitutes antisemitism. They simply would not treat any other minority group in the same way.”
Chief Rabbi launches scathing attack on China’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims
The Chief Rabbi has launched a scathing attack on China’s persecution of its Uyghur Muslim minority, in an intervention that will add further pressure on governments, companies and consumers to take action.

Writing in The Guardian on Tuesday, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said that, having heard several accounts from Uyghurs who had escaped, “and reflecting upon the deep pain of Jewish persecution throughout the ages, I feel compelled to speak out”.

He said speaking out was a duty, particularly at Chanukah, “when we recall attempts ‘to cause the Jewish faith to be forgotten and to prevent Jews from keeping their traditions’… These words refer back to the cruel oppression of Jews”.

Mirvis said the “weight of evidence” of persecution was “overwhelming,” with Uyghurs “beaten if they refuse to renounce their faith, women forced to abort their unborn children then sterilised to prevent them from becoming pregnant again”.

Lamenting “forced imprisonment, the separation of children from their parents and a culture of intimidation and fear,” he said in his discussions with senior figures he had “been left feeling that any improvement in the desperate situation is impossible”.

He added that, growing up in Apartheid South Africa, and ministering in Ireland during the Troubles, ‘impossible’ was a word he often heard – and in both cases, wrongdoing and conflict came to an end.

“Last week marked the 72nd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights… That same year, the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was also adopted,” he wrote.

12/17 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Trump's Legacy of Peace; Iran's Plan to Topple Arab Leaders; With arms embargo lifted, Iran races to upgrade its arsenal

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Trump's Legacy of Peace
For 72 years, U.S. presidents sought to achieve peace between Israel and the Arab world. For 72 years, they largely failed.

What for so long eluded presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Obama seems to have come effortlessly to President Donald Trump. In the space of just four months, together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump has achieved four peace deals between Israel and Arab states—twice the number achieved by all his predecessors combined. Last Thursday, Trump announced Morocco has joined the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Sudan in the Abraham Accords normalization agreements with Israel. Three or four more Arab states are likely to join the circle of peace in Trump's final weeks in office.

Not only has Trump brought more peace to the Middle East, more comprehensively and faster than all of his predecessors combined, but he made it look easy. Israel's ties with its Abraham Accords partners are expanding massively by the day. Tourists from the UAE are streaming into the country. And with one in seven Israeli Jews descended from the Moroccan diaspora, the potential for business and cultural ties between Israel and Morocco is almost limitless.

Trump's sundry Middle East peace deals are humiliating for his predecessors. Not only did they fail where Trump has succeeded, but they insisted that his achievements were impossible.

For instance, John Kerry, who as Barack Obama's secretary of state oversaw the administration's failed Middle East peace efforts, insisted back in 2016: "There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world."

Speaking at the Brookings Institution, Kerry continued emphatically: "I want to make that very clear with all of you. I've heard several prominent politicians in Israel sometimes saying, 'Well, the Arab world is a different place now. We just have to reach out to them. We can work some things with the Arab world and we'll deal with the Palestinians.' No. No, no, no and no. ...There will be no advanced and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace. Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality."

The "several prominent politicians in Israel" certainly included Netanyahu. It was during the Obama administration that Netanyahu began developing close strategic ties with a number of Arab states—particularly Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The sides came together due to mutual distress over the negative impact of Obama's Middle East policies.

What was it about Obama's policies that brought them together?
Jonathan S. Tobin: In praise of diplomatic quid pro quos
The ability of the Trump foreign-policy team to succeed in doing something its predecessors failed to do was based on two factors. One was that its members were not blinded by ideology when it came to Israel and the Palestinians, as were the Obama, Clinton and both Bush administrations. The other was that they took a more openly transactional approach to diplomacy.

The foreign-policy establishment likes to dress up agreements based on mutual interests in high-sounding language about principles. But the Trump team, which was composed to a large extent of people like White House senior adviser/presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner with a background in real estate, didn't get bogged down in such meaningless and ultimately counterproductive exercises, and stuck to dealing with the world as it is rather than as they'd like it to be. They strove to make deals that made sense for both sides. And as a result of what some consider a crass rather than a principled approach, they advanced the cause of peace far more than any of the experts who mocked them as shallow amateurs.

With American foreign policy about to fall back into the hands of Obama alumni, some are lamenting the Trump administration's achievements in expanding the circle of governments with normal relations with Israel as boxing them and ignoring their obsession with forcing a two-state solution that the Palestinians don't want. Instead, the Biden team should learn from their predecessors. More Trump-style quid pro quos – and less magical thinking and expert ideological condescension from Washington – will make the world a safer place.
What Happens to Israel When Democrats Are in the White House?
Biden and his team have been harshly critical of Trump’s symbolic efforts to tilt U.S. policy toward the Jewish state, such as moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and allowing the word “Jerusalem” to appear on the passports of Jews born in that city. But symbolic actions can have tangible effects. The muted reaction to the embassy move throughout the Middle East revealed the hollowness of the long-standing threat that the “Arab street” would greet any thaw with Israel with violence and revolution. Given how low the cost was, and the fact that the embassy move was directed by U.S. law, it is hard to imagine that a President Biden would expend any political capital on an effort to return the embassy to Tel Aviv. And indeed, Biden has indicated he does not plan to do so.

Another traditional lever used against Israel is U.S. military aid. Biden has both supported aid and threatened cutting it to Israel in the past, but aid to Israel is a bipartisan policy. The current levels are set out in a Memorandum of Understanding established under the Obama administration, and the Biden team has said it does not plan to make that aid conditional. Even more telling, U.S. aid is no longer the existential necessity for Israel that it once was—so threatening to limit it no longer provides the leverage over Israeli decision-making that it once did.

But it is very likely that the Biden administration will put more rhetorical pressure on Israel to strike a deal with the Palestinians. It’s not clear, however, what policy leverage the U.S. has to push Israel in this regard while the Middle East landscape is changing—or whether the Palestinians will even consider some kind of a deal in any case. Still, Biden could, as Obama did, support UN resolutions critical of Israel. He could also sternly lecture Israeli officials, as he has intermittently throughout his career. Biden is on the record unambiguously about restoring the U.S.–Iran nuclear deal.

Looking at all of this, one can discern the outlines of a policy framework toward Israel—call it Bidenism. It will be supportive of continued aid to Israel and unlikely to publicly question the wisdom of such aid. Rhetorically, Biden will repeatedly present himself as a friend of Israel and of Prime Minister Netanyahu, even as he questions whether Netanyahu is too far to the right and as he exerts private pressure for concessions with the Palestinians.

Bidenism will seek a return to the problematic Iran deal in some form but will continue to profess its concerns about Iran getting nuclear weapons and will be unlikely to try to stop Israel from allying with Sunni Gulf states as a counterweight to Iran. Bidenism will not seek to move the U.S. Embassy from Jerusalem—but it won’t encourage other nations to move their embassies from Tel Aviv. And Bidenism will likely be muddled when it comes to the woke left’s intersectional hostility toward Israel—willing to condemn certain outrageous and anti-Semitic statements but ever careful not to offend and, on occasion, will even apologize if its condemnations produce too much blowback.

Israel’s relationship with the outgoing administration was extraordinary. We shall not see its like again. The question going forward is whether the Biden administration will take the recent successes into account as it makes its own way in the Middle East—or whether the powerful urge to restore the status quo ante of the Obama administration will set the course for the next four years.

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

12/16 Links Pt2: Why Does the World Ignore Israel’s Need to Prevent Terror Attacks?; The Bundestag, BDS and ex-pat Israelis in Berlin; Jay Leno shares his support and love for Israel

From Ian:

David Collier: Channel 4 – meet the extremists in the ‘Palestinian voices’ news clip
Channel 4 – The PREVENT inversion

One of the most ‘in-your-face’ errors in the piece came when the news item showed a screenshot of part of the PREVENT guidelines. We were shown just a fraction of an image and told these are possible indicators of extremism.

Except in the news item they completely inverted the meaning of the words that were written in the document. As William Baldet MBE, CVE PREVENT Coordinator thoroughly explained on Twitter- to provide the screenshot without any of the text that follows is to completely change the context of the document. Baldet states quite clearly that the slide content has been misrepresented to imply the *opposite* of its intent. The text literally goes on to say that *it is not extremist* to hold these views if they are not expressed in a way that harasses others or incites violence.

Channel 4 goes full racist After talking with the Palestinians in the room, we meet Avi Shlaim, who is introduced as an ‘Israeli historian’. Shlaim lived for about 8 years in Israel and he has lived here for the last 54 years. Whether he also has Israeli citizenship is not relevant – he is British. Is this acceptable now, do we ‘other’ people who were not born here and negate the fact that Shlaim has spent almost all his life here? Shlaim got married in Islington in the 1970s. How British does he have to be before Channel 4 identify him as British? Can you imagine them doing this to someone who has lived in the UK for 50 years, but who also carry a second citizenship such as Indian, Pakistani or Nigerian? It is absolutely outrageous that they chose to play this kind of racist ‘othering’ trick, simply to strengthen their own propaganda.

Why no voices?

Why are there no voices on mainstream TV? I would argue that Palestinian voices are over-represented. ‘Palestine’ certainly gets a disproportionate amount of attention in the press. If only the Uighurs or Rohingya or Syrians – people who are actually persecuted – were given so much time. But if we are to address why these specific people and those like them are not given airtime, it is chiefly because the media outlets know what they are going to say *AND* know much of it is factually incorrect, offensive and often antisemitic.

You cannot blame the BBC, the Telegraph or any of the mainstream outlets for the fact these people were brought up on myths and are actively spreading propaganda and lies. That they take every opportunity that they can to politicise an event. Why on earth should anyone help them spread their lies?

But I suppose that is the question we now must ask Channel 4.

There is only one course of action that must be taken here. Watch the clip then please complain to OFCOM. Make *YOUR* voices heard.
CAA submits complaint to Ofcom over Channel 4’s segment claiming International Definition of Antisemitism “silences” criticism of Israel, with no input from any mainstream Jewish representative
Campaign Against Antisemitism is submitting a complaint to Ofcom regarding a segment on Channel 4 News that aired last night that was devoted to criticism of the International Definition of Antisemitism.

Speakers during the segment repeatedly stated that the Definition “silenced” debate about Israel, which is precisely the “Livingstone Formulation” that the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) confirmed was used to victimise Jews in the Labour Party to such an extent that it broke equalities law (Campaign Against Antisemitism was the complainant in the EHRC’s investigation of the Labour Party). In using this antisemitic formulation, the segment breached Ofcom’s guidance on harm and offence.

The failure to include a single representative from the mainstream Jewish community – in which there is a consensus in favour of widespread adoption of the Definition – represented a failure by Channel 4 News to show due impartiality in its programme, which is also a breach of Ofcom’s guidance.

The segment lasted almost ten minutes.
Covid-19 Was One of the Biomed Industry’s Finest Hours, Says Israeli Silicon Valley Veteran
“It’s been only 11 months since the coronavirus pandemic broke out and we already have vaccines being distributed around the world. There is no doubt, this has been one of the biomed sector’s finest hours,” said Aya Jakobovits, a serial entrepreneur and investor in the life science sector in an interview to CTech. “It really showcased the depth of new technology and its ability to integrate into solutions quickly and effectively. All of a sudden there is a new interest in infectious diseases that arises from the understanding that there will be more pandemics in the future.”

Jakobovits spoke to CTech from Los Angeles, but is a Silicon Valley veteran, having arrived on the West Coast of the US in 1982 for her postdoctoral studies, after completing her first degrees in Israel at the Hebrew University and a PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Since then, she founded and held senior management positions at a series of life science companies, including Adicet Bio, Kite Pharma, Agensys, Abgenix, and Cell Genesys and currently sits on the boards of Adicet Bio, UCLA Technology Development Corporation, and Yeda Research and Development Co. Her accumulated work in bringing novel technologies and therapeutic products to market brought over $14 billion to shareholders.

Jakobovits is one of the main speakers at the J-Ventures annual investor’s conference, which is taking place this week, an organization she joined a year ago and has found to be a fertile hub for the sector.
92% of Israel’s COVID-19 fatalities had existing chronic diseases — report
Over 90 percent of those who have died of coronavirus infection in Israel were suffering from chronic ailments such as heart disease, high blood pressure or diabetes, Haaretz reported Tuesday, citing figures it had obtained from the Health Ministry.

The data also showed that the virus had taken its largest toll on those over 70 years old, who make up 80% of the fatalities.

At the time the figures were produced for the newspaper, there had been 3,004 deaths in Israel from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The total stood at 3,030 on Wednesday evening.

Health officials are warning that the country is plunging into a third wave of infections that by next week will require the government to again clamp down on some aspects of public life, in an effort to stave off what would be a third national lockdown since the virus outbreak began earlier this year.

Of the 3,004 who had died by Tuesday, 2,778 had chronic diseases, or 92% of the total, Haaretz reported.

A breakdown showed 1,019 had high blood pressure (34%), 750 had diabetes (25%), 633 had heart issues (21%), 246 had chronic lung disorders (8%), 99 had suppressed immune systems (3%) and 31 had chronic liver problems (1%).

Age also played a key role, with data showing that the average age of virus victims has been 79, and the median age 81.
With COVID hitting hard, Brazil's Jews look toward Israel
With Brazil being one of the worst-hit nations in the coronavirus pandemic, the Jewish community has had to find ways to cope with the new reality.

Leaders have said that even as they have followed closely close what has been unfolding in Israel, they have also had to reinvent themselves.

"This was also our way of coping with the new fundraising reality," President of the Jewish Confederation of Brazil and WJC Vice President Fernando Lottenberg told Israel Hayom, recalling that more than many Jews have died from the disease in the country.

Lottenberg, who has a PhD in international public law, has described the impact of the virus on the community as "super dramatic." According to Lottenberg, "During normal times it's hard to maintain contact, but now people keep approaching me and asking whether they can lend a helping hand to the community. Perhaps next year, we will be able to congregate in our synagogues once again and hold the normal meetings, but I hope that we won't forget the positive impact that has been imposed on us due to the pandemic."

He also noted that the Jewish-built hospital in São Paulo has played an important role in highlighting the community's contribution to public health. Rabbi Ezra Dayan, who oversees kashrut supervision in Brazil, says he has been doing his work through Zoom for the past five months. "The biggest challenge is to make sure the kashrut system does not collapse and thank G-d it hasn't. "We supervise hundreds of establishments, and now online supervision is just a fact of life. It's amazing how we can do all this from São Paulo, considering that Brazil is the size of a continent.

12/16 Links Pt1: Sohrab Ahmari: Trump’s peace deals mean the anti-Israel boycott movement is dead; Gulf normalization isn’t about fearing Iran, it’s about embracing Israel

From Ian:

Sohrab Ahmari: Trump’s peace deals mean the anti-Israel boycott movement is dead
The BDSers achieved a measure of success, in Europe especially. Performing artists would often cancel concerts in Israel under BDS pressure — and sometimes lead the charge, as in the case of the likes of Tilda Swinton, Roger Waters and Coldplay’s Chris Martin. European theaters would refuse to host Jewish (not even Israeli) film festivals, even as BDSers preposterously insisted that their movement isn’t anti-Semitic. Western universities or individual departments would mount academic boycotts of Israel. Then, last year, in perhaps the most alarming move, the European Court of Justice ruled that EU states must label West Bank products as “made in settlements.”

Was Israel’s economy ever in serious peril? Probably not. Europe remains the Jewish state’s biggest trade partner, though boycotts and labeling could bite if widened to include firms that operate in Israel or Palestinian territories. The real danger, however, was moral-cum-political. If BDS succeeded, it would make permanent Israel’s status as an abnormal country, rather than a normal fixture of the Mideast map. That would demoralize the Israeli people and compound the hostility they already face in global forums like the United Nations.

Well, so much for all that. Today, a little more than a year since the EU labeling decision, you can find Israeli products — prominently displayed, sometimes with Israeli flags to promote them — on the shelves of grocery stores in the United Arab Emirates.

How far can BDS go in a world where once-sworn enemies of the Jewish state enjoy Israeli citrus products and myriad cultural exchanges? Who exactly do Western champions of the Arabs represent, when the Arabs themselves want to live peacefully alongside Israel and accept the Jewish state’s fundamental legitimacy? Isn’t it more than a bit condescending for, say, Roger Waters — place of birth: Great Bookham, Surrey, England — to tell Arabs whom they can do business with?

To be clear, I’m not suggesting BDS will disappear tomorrow. The wider Arab world is making peace with Israel, but Palestinian leaders aren’t about to give up what is admittedly a very nice grift: billions of dollars in international aid in exchange for refusing to accept reality. BDS helps lend a veneer of global credibility to their rejectionism. And fanatic college professors and students can always use “anti-Zionism” to mask old-fashioned hatred, singling out one state and one state only — the one that happens to be Jewish — for opprobrium.

But the fact remains that the Abraham Accords have revealed a silly side to the BDS movement: For God’s sake, when Sudan, once one of the world’s most virulently anti-Israel states, has made its peace with Jerusalem, BDS looks like a boutique cause for gentry leftists, the kind who put their pronouns in their Twitter bios. The real world — and the Middle East — have just moved on.
Sudan revokes citizenship of Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, dealing blow to terror groups
In a blow to the Islamic movement in Gaza and other terror organizations, Sudan is revoking the citizenship of former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal along with 3,000 other citizenships that were granted to foreigners, according to several reports in Arab media.

The Sudanese government made this change as part of its being removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, in a clear indication that it will fight terrorism rather than support it. The news was widely reported in Sudan and other Arabic media.

Earlier, Meshaal had expressed his dissatisfaction with the normalization of relations between Sudan and Israel.

After the demise of the previous Sudanese regime, which was supportive of Islamist and terrorist movements including Hamas, the new government has been attempting to change Sudan’s image as a shelter and conduit for terrorists. The revoking of citizenship from foreigners with links to Islamic and terrorist movements is a step in that direction.

Sudan is also now requiring a visa for Syrians before entering the country in order to prevent the flow of terrorists into Sudan.

In recent decades, Sudan was designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States for hosting Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other wanted terrorists. Hamas used the country as a funnel for smuggling Iranian weapons to Palestinians in Gaza between 2009-2012.

Sudan was removed from the list of state sponsors of terror after the new regime has made efforts in combating terrorism in cooperation with the American administration under the supervision of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Gulf normalization isn’t about fearing Iran, it’s about embracing Israel
“You think you have chutzpah? We have chutzpah.”

It was an unexpected line from a senior Emirati official, delivered recently in an off-the-record video conference call between current and former Israeli and Emirati officials.

The conversation had turned to business ties, innovation and the cultural differences between the two countries. The official wanted to explain something important about the new Israeli-Arab normalization agreements that Abu Dhabi had helped start: not only why they are happening, but why they seem so inexplicably warm and genuine.

The United Arab Emirates is most visible in this regard, but it isn’t the only one. Bahrain, too, is investing in a warm peace. And Sudan, while agonizing over the step itself — a breach of decades of ideological commitments vis-à-vis the Palestinians — has shown signs of wanting the normalization to reap more benefits than mere diplomatic contact or its removal from the US terror sponsors list.

There is no shortage of benefits that have accrued to the countries that normalized relations with Israel in the waning days of the Trump administration. The Emiratis asked for F-35s, the Moroccans recognition of their claim over Western Sahara, the Sudanese an end to their 27-year stay on the terror list and protection from lawsuits linked to the previous regime.

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

12/15 Links Pt2: EU-Funded Review of Palestinian Textbooks Reeks of ‘Incompetence, Concealment’; Giant Boomerang Menorah lights up Cairns Esplanade

From Ian:

Observers Say EU-Funded Review of Palestinian Textbooks Reeks of ‘Incompetence, Concealment’
Benjamin Strasser, a German politician of the Free Democratic Party, also expressed his concern and told JNS, “false school materials can cement hatred and prejudice for decades. Neither German tax revenues nor our contributions to the Palestinian Authority may be used to promote antisemitism and hatred against Israel.”

Steve McCabe MP, chair of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), blamed the British government for spending taxpayers’ money “on a review which appears deeply flawed and which we may never have the chance to see.”

He accused the government of “hiding behind the EU to escape accountability for its own inaction,” and demanded that the United Kingdom “immediately suspend all PA aid related to the delivery of the PA curriculum until wholesale and urgent revisions are guaranteed.”

LFI vice chair and Member of Parliament John Spellar sent a letter to the government on this same issue, asking for an explanation.

In an emailed statement to JNS, a spokesperson for the Delegation of the European Union to Israel defended the flawed GEI study as “being carried out according to best international standards with native Arab speaking experts being part of the research team.”

The statement said that the EU’s Final Report “will be finalized by the end of the year. … Given that the final report has not even been published yet, any criticisms at the stage are clearly premature in our view, in particular as they have been based on alleged leaks regarding a preliminary report which had no other value than to inform the scoping of the study. … We should clarify that the EU does not fund and will not fund Palestinian textbooks.”
Howard Jacobson: A Jew Is a Jew Is a Jew
Reflecting on the proximity between the deaths of two towering figures in, respectively, literature and the arts, Howard Jacobson sees a certain symmetry between the philo-Semitic Gentile and the uncomfortable Jew:

Quite what Miller supposed he achieved by refusing his Jewishness in “the face of other Jews,” or in what spirit he affirmed it only to those who hated it, is hard to fathom. But in both instances he stripped Jewishness of its amity, making it a thing of hostility and even confrontation. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to say he was a nonpracticing Jew?

Well, not if you were Alec Berman, the hero of Betty Miller’s novel Farewell Leicester Square, whose Jewishness lay like a curse on him and those who loved him. A thing “he never forgets for one moment ... it’s always there, at the back of his mind, whatever he does and wherever he is. It haunts him …” Betty Miller was Jonathan Miller’s mother. Farewell Leicester Square was written, remarkably, when she was only 22 and described the agitations of a young Jewish filmmaker in 1930s London. The London Jonathan Miller had to make his way in, 20 years later, was less hostile to Jews and so less likely to induce such paranoia as Betty Miller described. But it’s a reasonable assumption that her son read his mother’s novel at an impressionable age. He grew up in an upper-tier intellectual milieu, bristling with discomfort in the matter of being alien. Not for him, one might imagine him deciding, the enervating Jewish self-consciousness of Alec Berman.

Nothing unusual or reprehensible in that. You have to get yourself up off the canvas. But Miller continued uncomfortable and sneering. Israel displeased him in the usual, unthinking ways. To the question where else Jews could look to for refuge come the next catastrophe, he posited a sort of Darwinism of destruction: The time might have come, he said, for Judaism to die out.

Clive James sometimes gave the impression that he’d have liked to be a Jew. That’s a luxury, of course, that only a non-Jew can afford. And, unlike Miller, he was a schmoozer. I knew him well enough to benefit from his schmoozing but not so well as to get beyond it. His curiosity, though, was always genuine, as was his disappointment when he learnt I hadn’t made myself a Talmudic scholar, hadn’t learnt Yiddish, and couldn’t read more than a few words of Hebrew. He learnt Russian in order the better to read Tolstoy and would certainly not have written a novel about Jews without mastering both their ancient and their modern languages. I don’t think it was his intention to make me feel I’d failed his expectations, but I did. He was a staunch supporter of Israel and saw through the fashionable denunciations of Zionism made by people “dedicated to knowing as little as possible about the history of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.” If there was one thing that tried his magnanimity it was partisanship built on ignorance. His own knowledge was formidable and principled, as witness Cultural Amnesia, his extraordinary 800-page tribute to 20th-century art and thought—not a feat anyone could have pulled off had they not liked keeping company with the imaginations of Jews. Maybe Jonathan Miller possessed as wide a store of knowledge but, if he did, he didn’t employ it to such generous purpose.

12/15 Links Pt1: How the GCC summit could reshape the Middle East; US sanctions NATO ally Turkey for buying Russian S-400 air defense system

From Ian:

How the GCC summit could reshape the Middle East
In the coming days, this region looks forward to another important event: the Gulf Cooperation Council Summit, a GCC leaders summit that annually sheds light on the most important issues of the hour.

The summit will wrap up December’s main achievement, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Manama Dialogue that concluded on December 6, with the Abraham Accords getting the lion’s share of attention and participants being loud and clear about where they stand regarding threats from Iran, its nuclear program, the significance of unified international efforts to fight extremism, and how the Abraham Accords have changed the face of the Middle East.

Statements from politicians, officials, and security specialists all had one issue of common concern: Without international coordination and cooperation, the world will only be allowing extremist regimes to continue being destructive members in the international community.

If we actively investigate the most important statements made, we will clearly see that Israel has become a stronger team player in Middle East politics following the historic agreements signed with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and now Morocco. Perhaps Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi’s statement regarding the negotiations with Palestinian leaders was a pivotal point in this event that needs to be further analyzed. Ashkenazi’s statement was both clear and came forward as very genuine as he emphasized: “We were born in the region. We know the challenges and it’s a question of leadership.”

Ashkenazi also was more open about directly pointing fingers at Turkey’s aggressiveness in the Eastern Mediterranean, hoping that Erdoğan’s foreign policies toward countries in the Middle East will change as he hosts Hamas’ headquarters, providing them state assistance that has over the years enabled Hamas members to move around more easily with passports provided by Turkey. This was an important clarification of where Israel stands when it comes to its relations with Turkey and its strong stance toward unacceptable Turkish foreign policies.
Israel’s President Praises Bahrain’s King Hamad for Making Peace With Israel
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Monday praised Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa for his “brave and historic decision to establish a warm peace with Israel.”

In a phone conversation with Al Khalifa ahead of Bahrain’s National Day, which falls on Dec. 16, Rivlin said the recent signing of the Abraham Accords was “already a model for other countries in our region,” according to a statement from his office.

“We have chosen to invest from the very beginning in cooperation in the fields of economy, innovation and health,” he said. “I am full of hope that the Palestinians will also take steps to build mutual trust, cooperation and peace.”

Earlier on Monday, Rivlin welcomed a delegation of opinion leaders and activists from Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, greeting them both in Arabic and in Hebrew.

“Peace is made between peoples and nations,” he told the delegation, led by Amit Deri of the Sharaka Project. “Your visit here is another step in the path of building warm relations between our countries.”

The Sharaka (Arabic for “cooperation”) Project “aims to lead social initiatives that bring Israel’s voice to strengthen familiarity with the State of Israel in the Arab world, and create cooperation between young people in Israel and Arab states.”

One member of the delegation, Majid Al Sarrah from the University of Dubai, said “to visit Israel for the first time as part of a delegation is a historic moment. Israel is a prime example of tolerance in the region. This is a new era of peace and stability between peoples.”
Trump deserves the Nobel prize for his work to forge peace in the Middle East
By rights, US President Donald Trump’s groundbreaking peace initiative in Israeli-Arab relations should make him a shoe-in for the Nobel Peace Prize. There is, after all, a long list of previous recipients of the award whose recognition stems from their own contribution to improving relations between Arabs and Jews. Former US President Jimmy Carter won the award for his role in the 1970s Camp David negotiations that resulted in the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. More recently we have seen Yasser Arafat, the reformed Palestinian terrorist, and former Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, appointed Laureates for their contribution to the 1993 Oslo Accords, even though Mr Arafat’s subsequent refusal to sign up to Bill Clinton’s Camp David agreement in 2000 consigned the region to another two decades of conflict.

And, so pronounced is the liberal bias that informs the committee’s outlook, that former President Barack Obama received the award in 2009 simply for being elected to office.

Thus, if there were any degree of consistency in the Nobel committee’s deliberations, Mr Trump – who has done more than any other president in recent history to further the cause of peace in the Middle East – would be a worthy contender for the prize.

Last week Morocco became the latest Middle Eastern country to sign up to the Abraham Accords, the Trump administration’s peace initiative that has made a significant contribution to breaking the stalemate in Israeli-Arab relations.

The bold initiative, the result of years of painstaking diplomacy by Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law, has already resulted in a major thawing in relations between Israel and the Gulf states, with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates agreeing to establish diplomatic ties, and several other Gulf governments – including Saudi Arabia – said to be giving serious consideration to following suit.

Monday, December 14, 2020

12/14 Links Pt2: 50 years ago, a failed hijacking brought light into the world; Omar, Tlaib, Sarsour to headline Georgia Senate event as Warnock fights anti-Semitism claims

From Ian:

50 years ago, a failed hijacking brought light into the world
A little less than 50 years ago, my mother, Natalia Stieglitz, walked down a flight of stairs in search of secret knowledge.

A few months earlier, on December 15th, 1970, a Soviet court convened in Leningrad to try a group of young Jews (and some allies) who planned (and failed) to hijack a small airplane and fly across the border. After years of learning Judaism and Hebrew in secret, after applying repeatedly for emigration visas to Israel and receiving one ‘refusal’ after another, the members of this group had decided to take matters into their own hands. They did not expect to succeed, not really (the letter they left behind was titled “Our Will”). But they had hoped to make a statement.

And they did.

Suddenly, people around the world were asking themselves why a group of promising, normative, young people would try to do something so very outlandish. Were the USSR’s assurances that they allowed Jews to emigrate actually true? Worse, from the Soviets’ perspective: people across the USSR itself were wondering the same thing.

The Six-Day War in 1967 awakened many Soviet Jews to their Jewish identity and filled them with longing to learn about the Jewish state. But most of them didn’t know what to do with what the authorities were bound to see as seditious feelings, nor that there was a movement of people like them that could support them and lend them strength. The Leningrad Trials changed all that: in their efforts to unearth and condemn the so-called-crimes of the would-be hijackers, the authorities publicized the existence of the Jewish underground that had long worked in Leningrad, Riga and Kishinev. Young Jews around the USSR had found out that hundreds of Jews just like themselves had spent years learning Hebrew, reclaiming their tradition, and seeking ways to move to Israel. Defying the USSR was no longer just a dream.

In the course of the trial, Sylva Zalmanson, the only woman to be tried, gave voice to this defiance. Her speech, copied and passed from hand to hand in secret, inspired people wherever it arrived. It did no less when it reached my mother all the way in Moscow, filling her with admiration and with awe.

But my mother could not understand the last sentence in the speech. It was written in a foreign alphabet, which at first she thought might be Sanskrit. After learning that it was actually Hebrew, and making discreet inquiries among her friends, she was on her way to meet a stranger who could decipher those mysterious words.
Europe can’t fight anti-Semitism while ignoring threats to Israel
Dear European Union, we have to talk about a major foreign policy blind spot: your relations with Israel.

Countless times, I have heard European leaders, on commemorative anniversaries and at memorial sites, express their anguish over the Holocaust, the extermination of 6 million European Jews and the fertile European soil that nurtured anti-Semitism over centuries. I have heard them vow repeatedly, “never again.”

I don’t for a moment minimize these statements and gestures. To the contrary, they are extremely important, all the more so as anti-Semitism is again on the rise in Europe and knowledge of the Holocaust declines.

But — and it’s a big but — too many European leaders are not connecting this painful past to present policies.

I was particularly struck by this when I was invited, in 2013, to be one of six keynote speakers at a ceremony at Mauthausen, the infamous Nazi concentration camp in Austria, where my cousin, Mila Racine, was killed in the last weeks of the war.

The four speakers who preceded me — the presidents of Austria, Hungary and Poland, and the speaker of the Russian parliament — all invoked painful images of the war and the massive loss of Jewish life. They made moving statements affirming their commitment to remembrance and their opposition to any resurgence of hatred against Jews.

Yet not one mentioned the word “Israel.” Not one connected the tragedy of the Holocaust to the absence of an Israel that, had it existed, might have rescued and offered safety to countless European Jews trapped on the Continent.

And not one noted that nearly half of the world’s Jews today live in Israel, which faces both military threats to its existence and endless challenges to its legitimacy.

How can any leader speak about the lessons of the Holocaust and the menace of modern-day anti-Semitism without reference to the ongoing threats against Israel and the Jewish right to self-determination?

What happened that day at Mauthausen was not unusual. Indeed, it was all too routine.
Misguided American Jews hiding in plain sight
American Progressive Jews remind me of black people who were thrilled if they could pass for white. I understand that desire. Black people were not welcome in the white world. To get ahead, to get anywhere, it was easier if one could “pass.”

It appears to me that too many Jews in America, today, feel the need to “pass,” to hide in plain sight, in order to be accepted in the Progressive New World. Perhaps because they are too comfortable in America, in Galut (exile), and do not want to move to Israel to be safe, so they cozy up to Jew haters, to blend in.

There was another time when Jews hid in plain sight. They too were comfortable, well-off, educated, sophisticated: Progressive. They were not at all like the other Jews; you know, the one’s from the shtetl. Interesting bit of history. In the end Hitler did not care because all over the world, from time immemorial, a Jew is a Jew is a Jew. This same attitude of us and them is happening in America. Liberal, Progressive Reform Jews hardly reacted when New York Governor Cuomo scapegoated Orthodox Jews, those Jews, for spreading Covid, although he said nothing about BLM protests or Shia Muslim gatherings for Ashura.

What is it, dear misguided, Progressive Jews, that frightens you about being Jewish in America that you align yourselves with the “other” Progressive groups who attack Jews and Israel? I watch as you bend the knee to the antisemitic gods of diversity, Black Lives Matter, and critical race theory.

It never goes well for Am Yisrael when Jews, trying to “pass” stand with those who attack us.

What we are witnessing now is far from the first time that Jews in America tried to diminish the assault on Am Yisrael-the Jewish people, in order to feel comfortable in America. -In 1918, liberated Jews in America said there was no need for the Balfour Declaration, calling for the formation of a Jewish state in Israel. Why bother.

On July 4, 1918, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the national organization of Reform rabbis shared a resolution arguing against the Declaration’s premise that the Jews were a people without a country, when in fact they were “and of right ought to be at home in all lands.”

And then came the Nazis. What a way to learn a lesson. -During WWII when FDR was asked, well begged, to take in the Jews from the St. Louis, fleeing the gas chambers, this at-the-time beloved Democrat President said, no.

It was Reform Rabbi Steven Wise, the founder of the Jewish Institute of Religion to train rabbis in Reform Judaism which later merged into the Hebrew Union College, who during WWII decided to pass on pushing FDR to take in Jews. In 2008 David Ellenson was one in a list of prominent American Jewish leaders who censured the Jewish leadership of the 1940s. He wrote:

“In the 1930s, it was Wise who led the rallies against Hitler, so why did he fail so horribly in the 1940s? Part of the explanation lies in Wise’s “absolute and complete love” for president Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as his antipathy toward the Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and toward the Bergson Group, whose leaders were followers of Jabotinsky, something that “helped blind him” to the need for more activism.
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