01/05 Links Pt2: Jewish unity is the answer to the EU's kosher slaughter ban; How Germany tricked Jewish organizations worldwide

From Ian:

Jewish unity is the answer to the EU's kosher slaughter ban - opinion

Let’s not be fooled into thinking that banning kosher slaughter is the end of the story. In fact, many have noted that this decision represents a ‘slippery slope,’ bringing about the question of, ‘What next?’

Building a united strategy which combines effective use of the law, messaging, bottom-up and top-down activism, and local and global support will ensure that we do not have to find out what could have been next.

Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry sees itself as a convener in this work. Jewish communal leaders, institutions, government officials and legal professionals – both in Europe and around the world – must work together under a shared plan of action, which includes:
• Calling out the hypocrisy of banning kosher slaughter – which shows mercy for the animal – while allowing hunting to continue
• Working effectively with governments
• Bringing together individual European countries and government leaders and offices from around the world, along with the Israeli government, to use diplomatic channels to engage with the European Union and other bodies
• Creating an effective media strategy
• Generating a shared voice to engage the public and leadership
Now is the time to join as a united Jewish coalition to ensure the strength and viability of European Jewry.

How Germany tricked Jewish organizations worldwide

When the German parliament labeled the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement as anti-Semitic, it garnered the praise of Jewish organizations worldwide.

But despite the importance of the move, which influenced more European countries to adopt similar decisions, what remained hidden was the fact that the resolution had no legal and practical validity. It was merely a recommendation.

Besides the fact that many left-wing parties in the Bundestag voted against the decision, the initiative's very purpose was to block a more radical right-wing proposal that demanded a complete ban on BDS activities in Germany.

The vote drew immediate public criticism from BDS supporters, including Israelis, Jews, journalists, and the former Israeli ambassador himself. They claimed the decision was a violation of the principle of freedom of expression. It was also alleged that Israel forced the German government to silence the critics of government policy in Jerusalem, an argument that is anti-Semitic at its very core.

A week later, the Bundestag's Research and Documentation Services issued an opinion that the parliament's decision is legally invalid.

And that is how German authorities pulled off an ingenious move: on the one hand, they presented themselves as pioneers in the fight against anti-Semitism and the de-legitimization of Israel; on the other hand, their decision is void of any practical capability to fight the anti-Semitic boycott movement.

This is how good-old Germany has always operated: its official policy states that the existence and security of Israel is part of the nation's national interest; at the same time, it supports anti-Israel organizations with known ties to terrorists and consistently votes against Israel at the United Nations.

The BBC’s ‘Black Christmas’ is the least of our problems

As the late Rabbi Lord Sacks warned in speeches in the House of Lords in 2018 and 2019 on British anti-Semitism and global anti-Semitism: when anti-Semitism moves from the political fringes to a mainstream party – and when anti-Semites don’t think they are anti-Semites – we are all in serious trouble.

Anti-Semitism starts with Jews, but it never ends with Jews. And I’m afraid to say the churches on the whole are returning to their anti-Semitic traditions, particularly those represented by the World Council of Churches. See this piece by Melanie Phillips on the anti-Semitism of the WCC, and the pusillanimity of the senior clergy of the Church of England – my own faith community – towards BLM. As I wrote in a piece for The Algemeiner, the Anglican Communion, in cahoots with the Jihadists, is now leading what it calls Palestinian ‘Liberation Theology’, a Marxist movement that Pope John Paul II had the good sense to proscribe when it first appeared in the Sandinista movement and Roman Catholics of Nicaragua. Communism/Socialism is not the Way.

In 2004, the BBC commissioned a formal report – the Balen Report – following persistent accusations of anti-Israel bias. To date the BBC has spent about £330,000 of public money in legal costs to hide the report from the public. This cover-up is itself scandalous. The reasons for the BBC’s anti-Israelism, like that of French state TV (France 2), are multifarious, but one reason is that Western institutions are easily duped by Islamist propagandists fluent in the old colonial languages, and expert in feeding the liberal egocentrism of the West. Hence the BBC and France 2 report what their Arab hosts tell them, but fail to report the commonplace preaching and incitement of genocidal antisemitism in Arabic and Persian by clerics, politicians and media. Similarly, Qatar state TV, Al Jazeera, broadcasts democracy in English, but gives a weekly perch to the intellectual head of the Muslim Brotherhood Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi to broadcast genocidal anti-Semitism in the form of fatwas against Israel, including advocating the use of Muslim children as suicide bombs.

I recently wrote a joint essay with the historian and Jerusalemite Dr Richard Landes partly on the dangers of this ‘lethal journalism’. Islamists are winning the cognitive war, and this results in an existential threat to us all, especially if the anticipated Farrakhan-loving Biden administration is lenient with Islamism and the nuclear ambitions of the Ayatollah. As it is, through its political proxy Hezbollah, Iran already has about 150,000 rockets hidden within the civilian populations in south Lebanon, all pointing at Israel to bring on the Shiite Apocalypse.

Richard Landes and I are frustrated that these really serious problems – the ticking time bombs – are being ignored by Western intellectuals and legacy media alike. Even many who claim to be battling anti-Semitism – including some Jewish leadership – get bogged down in pedantry and political correctness.

In sum, anachronisms and the colour of Jesus’s skin are not worth worrying about, rather we have some profoundly serious battles against anti-Israelism that we must take to BBC and the wider world. We must win, and we will.

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Biden Brings Back Cognitive Dissonance Over Israel (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

Binyamin Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by prize recipient Lord David Trimble, who got it in 1998. Trimble was honored for his part in negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement that brought relative peace to Northern Ireland.

In my opinion, the Abraham Accords represent the first ray of light in the darkness of the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948, and if I were a Nobel recipient I would have nominated Donald Trump and Jared Kushner as well.

Of course the chances of Netanyahu receiving anything but abuse from the “international community” of which the Nobel committee is a pillar, are close to zero. The United Nations and the human rights industry, much of it set up in direct response to the industrial murder of European Jewry by the Nazis and their enthusiastic helpers over almost all of Europe, have ironically embraced the would-be genocidaires of the PLO, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the revolutionary Iranian regime. Especially since the year 2000 (see this brilliant analysis by Mark Pickles and Richard Landes), international institutions and NGOs have picked up and carried the flags of misoziony and Judenhass relinquished by the Soviets and the Nazis.

The USA was more or less neutral with respect to Israel (although its Jewish community strongly supported her) until the 1973 war, when it adopted Israel as its Cold War proxy. But soon after, thanks to OPEC’s devastatingly effective “oil weapon,” US policy became ambivalent. Henry Kissinger negotiated multifaceted agreements with the Arabs which resulted in ending the oil boycott; but one of the conditions was that the US would work to restore all territory conquered by Israel in 1967 to Arab control. Until Trump’s presidency, this was firm American policy, followed by relatively pro-Israel presidents like Clinton and Bush II, less friendly ones like Bush I, and anti-Israel ones like Carter and Obama alike.

The policy required a certain degree of cognitive dissonance from American politicians (not to mention the liberal Jews that supported them). It was necessary for them to advocate the transfer of strategically essential territory from Israeli to Arab control, while still at least appearing to support Israel’s continued survival. This they did by providing military aid. A master stroke, the massive aid package for Israel and Egypt that began with the Camp David agreement got Israel out of the Sinai, provided the US with leverage to control Israel’s behavior, and enriched American defense contractors. Later, it served as a fig leaf to hide the dangers of withdrawal inherent in demands for Israel to leave Gaza, the Golan, and Judea and Samaria.

Anti-Israel politicians like Barack Obama had less of an internal struggle than friendly ones. With the help of the Israeli Left, he argued counterfactually that security would come from territorial concessions. His policy was to weaken Israel while pretending to help her, for example by phasing out the portion of the military aid that could be used to buy from Israel’s own military industry. No matter what he did to damage Israel’s strategic position, he could always point to those billions of dollars in military hardware as proof of his support for the Jewish state. But whether an administration was friendly or not, the policy was always fundamentally incoherent. It also distorted internal Israeli politics, leading to disasters like the Oslo Accords.

Trump turned everything upside down. New technology that increased oil production in North America and various other developments had defused the oil weapon. In addition, some of the important Middle Eastern oil producers were worried about Iranian expansionism and its nuclear program, and realized that Israel could be an indispensable ally in opposing it. American interests were now seen to lie with a strong Israel, in truth and not just in rhetoric.

So for the first time since 1973, Trump’s administration was able to introduce a reality-based policy, affirming the rationality of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and Jerusalem, and ending the obsequious treatment of the frankly terrorist PLO and its dictatorial Palestinian Authority. Under the Trump plan, the Palestinians would be required to give up their maximalist demands and make real compromises, if they wanted a state of any kind.

But as almost everyone finally admits, the clock has run out. There will not be a second Trump Administration. The new one, depressingly, seems firmly wedded to the old paradigm. Although most (not all!) of his appointments do not appear to be overt enemies of the Jewish state, Biden seems likely to restore the traditional deference (and funding) to the Palestinians, as well as to try to reopen negotiations about the JCPOA with Iran, which at the very least implies that sanctions on Iran will be reduced.

This is not because Biden and his people are idiots. They are fully aware that things have changed, and that the oil weapon no longer threatens America. But now the pressure comes from the home front. They can’t afford to alienate the misozionist left wing of the Democratic party, which has grown stronger in Congress. They don’t worry about American Jews, for whom Israel has little weight when they vote. They can ignore the Evangelicals, who will support Republicans anyway over social issues like abortion and LGBTx rights. And of course, they want to wipe out any traces of Trumpism. Staying in power and achieving domestic objectives is more important to them than logical consistency, or the negative consequences for America’s allies in the Middle East.

So we will go back to hearing platitudes about the “unbreakable” US-Israel relationship, while the administration complains about Israel building apartments in Jewish neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem. What appeared to be a real possibility that Israel would extend sovereignty to the Jordan Valley – an area of extreme strategic importance – will fade away. We’ll watch as the US goes back to pretending that the failed and antisemitic United Nations can play a positive role in any sphere, and that the PLO can be made into a peace partner. Sanctions on Iran will be relaxed, emboldening the regime to push ahead on the ground and with its nuclear and missile programs.

A dark picture. Israel has a difficult four or eight years ahead of her, at least. There will be little room for mistakes and missed opportunities. It looks like we will shortly go through yet another round of elections. Is it too much to ask that we end up with a government equal to the task?

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10/01 Links P2: A look back at the Muhammad al-Dura affair, 20 years later; Jpost Editorial: Trump is no antisemite. Drawing comparisons with Hitler is just crass

From Ian:

Richard Landes: A look back at the Muhammad al-Dura affair, 20 years later

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of one of the most disastrous events in the year 2000, an event that cast a long shadow over the unhappy early decades of a troubled new millennium. On September 30, 2000, a Palestinian cameraman clumsily filmed what he claimed was footage of a boy who came under fire and was killed by Israelis. A French-Israeli journalist then edited the brief fragments, cutting the last contradictory scene, and broadcast the accompanying narrative on France2.

The image of Muhammad al-Dura via the narrative that the IDF had targeted him became the global symbol of Palestinian suffering at the hand of Israeli cruelty. It rapidly became an “icon of hatred” that had a greater immediate and long-term effect on the new century than any other such vehicle of incitement.

A cry arose, for some of pain, for some of rage, but for all a clear sign that the Infidel, led by the twin Satans Israel and USA, were making war on Muslims. Indeed, no single event so far has done more to arouse the spirit of jihad against the West than this footage, which, as Bin Laden quickly pointed out in his recruiting video for global jihad, demanded vengeance against al Yahud and their allies. Vengeance justified suicide attacks on civilians (two previously “forbidden” practices).

The sentiment so resonated, that even “conservative” al Azhar had to yield before the sanctification of their combination martyrdom operations. While itself not apocalyptic, the Muhammad al-Dura icon fed an apocalyptic jihadi narrative: to #GenerationCaliphate Israel was the Dajjal (Antichrist).

The West followed suit. Lethal journalists like Robert Fisk quickly affirmed the charge of deliberate murder. Where before such comparisons were considered ugly if not worse, now comparing Israel to the Nazis became common. A prominent French news anchor, speaking for many, declared that al-Dura “erased, replaced the image of the boy in the Warsaw Ghetto.” It was a new, post-modern “replacement narrative.”

Instead of Christians or Muslims replacing Israel as the true Chosen People, it was the former chosen people replacing the Nazis, and the poor Palestinian victim suffering the fate of the Jews. The progressive refrain, “Israel has lost the moral high ground.” Nobel Peace Prize winners, politicians, diplomats, award-winning playwrights and journalists, prominent academics, UN officials, Jews and non-Jews, all joined in the chorus, aligning with the jihadi apocalyptic narrative. Israel was the new Nazi secular Antichrist.

Jpost Editorial: Trump is no antisemite. Drawing comparisons with Hitler is just crass

We do not believe – based on Trump’s very positive track record on Israel and steps his administration has taken to combat antisemitism in the US, as well as by the number of Jews in his immediate family and in his inner circle – that the US president is an antisemite.

Those opposed to Trump have enough ammunition to use against him, having to do both with his behavior and his policies, without having to stoop to saying that he is an antisemite or a neo-Nazi sympathizer, or drawing comparisons between him and Hitler.

Unfortunately, the Jewish Democratic Council of America released a political advertisement on Tuesday, even before the debate – that will run in swing states with large Jewish populations – drawing a direct comparison between Trump’s America and the rise of fascism in 1930s Germany, and hinting at comparisons between Trump and Hitler.

“History shows us what happens when leaders use hatred and nationalism to divide their people,” a narrator solemnly stated over pictures of German shops dabbed with the word “Jude,” and a US synagogue defaced with graffiti.

The ad juxtaposes film of Nazi parades in Germany with footage of neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville. It places images of German masses giving the sieg heil salute on one side of the screen, with Trump speaking on the other.

“As antisemitism and white nationalism rise to dangerous levels in America, we are all less secure,” the narrator intoned. “It is time to show that we have learned from the darkest moments in history. Hate doesn’t stop itself: It must be stopped.”

The advertisement – likening Trump to Hitler and 1930s Germany to 2020 America – is over the top, out of line and a gross misappropriation of the absolutely darkest period of Jewish history for momentary political gain.

Disagree with Trump, even vehemently if you wish. Criticize his behavior and his policies. Jump all over him, deservedly so, for not being able to unreservedly condemn white supremacists in America. But don’t compare Trump to Hitler, or the situation facing America’s Jews to that which faced German Jewry in the 1930s. To do so is as much an over-exaggeration as it is wrong.

Left Fascism

In the end, does the left-fascist shoe fit our current culture moment? Consider the list: programmatic silencing of dissenters, purging of editorial pages, growing fear of transgressing murky viewpoint prohibitions, while university leaders generally refuse (there are some exceptions) to offer a full-throated defense of academic freedom, but instead embrace the stereotypical language of the social justice movement in its opposition to “the system.” They sound more like Heidegger promoting the Nazi revolution in the universities in 1934 than Edward R. Murrow in 1954 pushing back against Joe McCarthy. A lot of that is just cowardice. Equally reminiscent of fascism is the de facto coordination between the crowds in the streets and the pronouncements from corporate boardrooms, as well as the monitoring of political opinion by powerful social media. This imposed conformism, this Gleichschaltung, is playing out against the backdrop of attacks on the rule of law and across-the-board denunciations of all law enforcement.

Yet in one respect, the diagnosis of “left fascism” does not go far enough. It misses a key element of the moment, alluded to in Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech: the obsessive effort to suppress history and erase memory. Not only Confederate statues have been toppled but anti-Confederate ones as well, and the Emancipation Memorial honoring Abraham Lincoln and paid for by freed slaves has come under attack. In San Francisco the Board of Supervisors voted to conceal a New Deal era mural that included a critical depiction of slavery. Any symbol of the past has become suspect, as we hurtle into a brave new world robbed of the orientation that historical self-awareness might provide. At root there is only a nihilistic refusal of any positive identification with the shared project to achieve a “land of the free.”

This constellation of riots, lawlessness and social amnesia recalls another moment in American oratory with another American president. When the young Abraham Lincoln spoke at the Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, in 1838, he was responding to mob violence, attacks on African Americans and on abolitionists, when “bands of hundreds and thousands ... burn churches, ravage and rob provision stores, throw printing-presses into rivers, shoot editors and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with impunity.” Lincoln saw this “mobocratic spirit” leading to a general alienation from the government, a loosening of the bonds of affection for the republic, as the direct memory of the struggle for independence waned. It was that loss of a historical awareness of the origins and rationale for the United States which, in Lincoln’s view, threatened political stability. The “scenes of the revolution” were disappearing into forgetfulness, as the “silent artillery of time” erased the national past with every passing generation. Lincoln’s alternative: “General intelligence, sound morality, and, in particular, a reverence for the constitution and the law.”

One-hundred-eighty years after the Lyceum Address, we find ourselves even further away from the founding. In today’s America, even Habermas’ notion of a “constitutional patriotism,” safely removed from the dangerous temptations of nationalism, is under assault, let alone any deeper love of country. National history has all but disappeared from our curricula, and when it is still taught, it is poisoned with adversarial revisionism, an education for ressentiment and guilt. The failings alone matter: We are always only at 1619 and never at 1865 or 1945 or 1989, a distorted perspective that leads to tearing down, never building up, and embarrassing public rituals of pledging disallegiance. Describing these events as “left fascism,” Trump names the constellation of verbal progressivism mixed with a moralistic vitriol to harass dissenters and indulge in irrational violence, but the worst of our crisis is the contemptuous ignorance of the accomplishments of the nation. It is time to reclaim the history.

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07/29 Links Pt2: Matti Friedman: Israel Was Ground Zero for the New Woke Religion; Jonathan Tobin: On Tisha B'Av, it's time for Americans to step back from apocalyptic rhetoric

From Ian:

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Matti Friedman: Israel Was Ground Zero for the New Woke Religion

Western ideologies generally include a parable about villainous Jews. Because this is a set of ideas that sees itself as a political critique, the parable doesn’t come, as past versions have, from Scripture (in the case of Christianity), or from economic theory (as it did in Marxism), or pseudo-scientific racial doctrines (National Socialism). It comes from the news—specifically, from the mythology that I saw being constructed as a reporter a decade ago. A strange antagonism to something called “Israel” came up if you went to a Women’s March against Donald Trump in New York, or protested violence against African Americans in Ferguson, Missouri, or joined the Dyke March in Chicago, or presented an academic paper at the American Studies Association. It appears in the platform of Black Lives Matter from 2016, in left-wing politics in Britain and France, and in gender studies courses at California colleges.

These diverse applications are unique, if not entirely unprecedented, for a news story. But they make sense if we understand the Israel story as a kind of sacred template that can be used to explain many different situations. A good example became visible this spring in the wake of the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis: the myth that Israel trains American police officers in the same methods of brutality that killed Floyd, and which are deployed more generally against people of color. This conspiracy theory has been promoted as factual by (among many others) senior journalists, members of the British Labour Party, and, in early July, by the biggest Lutheran denomination in America.

That last detail supports the idea that new religions are never completely removed from the old ones. Indeed, the unique power of the Israel story is the way it takes the central preoccupation of the new thought system—the inequality of white Western power versus nonwhite Third World innocence—and projects it onto a setting already loaded with religious resonance. If you’re looking for a parable about human inequality, places called Jerusalem or Bethlehem are potent in ways that can’t be rivaled by Xinjiang or Laayoune, or Minneapolis.

A good illustration of this merger came in the form of a speech given to a convention of the Episcopal church in 2018 by a Massachusetts bishop who described atrocities she claimed to have personally witnessed in Israel. She described the murder of an innocent 15-year-old Palestinian by Jewish soldiers—“they shot him in the back four times, he fell on the ground and they shot him another six”—and the aggressive handcuffing by soldiers of a 3-year-old Palestinian boy whose ball rolled off the Temple Mount.

It later turned out that the bishop hadn’t seen any such thing, and she apologized profusely. But in a religious mindset, the question isn’t whether a story happened. The question is whether a story can mobilize believers to achieve good. If the answer is yes, the story is “true.”

This kind of thinking has now bled into newsrooms and university departments, precisely the bodies that are supposed to be engaged in observation and reasoned debate. If important parts of the press and the academy are beginning to sound like ministries, it’s happening at a time when religion and quasi-religion are on the rise everywhere—not just on the progressive left but also on the right, and not only in the West. Some of these trends are evident in Israel, too. As we speak, as if to symbolize the moment, the Hagia Sophia is being changed from a public museum back into a mosque—though in Istanbul, at least, the conversion is being done in the open.

Jonathan Tobin: On Tisha B'Av, it's time for Americans to step back from apocalyptic rhetoric

Americans are experiencing a summer of discontent in a way that exceeds any in living memory. The nation is divided not just along political lines but seems increasingly immersed in something much more dangerous – a culture war in which both sides truly believe that not only will a triumph by their opponents bring ruin, but that the very existence of the republic and American democracy is at stake.

That's why both Jews and non-Jews need to pause this week and consider the lessons that the observance of Tisha B'Av: the day on the Hebrew calendar that marks the destruction of both ancient holy temples in Jerusalem, as well as many other catastrophes of Jewish history. The day of fasting and reflection, which begins this year on the evening of July 29, is not observed by most non-Orthodox Jews and generally considered too depressing to have become part of secular American Jewish culture, which prefers holidays that follow a model that runs along the lines of "they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat."

But if there was ever a year when its lessons were needed by Americans of all faiths, it is 2020.

Tradition teaches us that the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE occurred because of "sinat hinam" – senseless or baseless hatred—that undermined Jewish resistance during the siege of Jerusalem and great revolt against the forces of the Roman Empire.

A war that pitted the forces of a small nation against the world's only superpower wasn't going to have a happy ending, no matter how united the defenders of Jerusalem had been. But the rabbis who subsequently reconstituted Jewish faith emphasized the way that the Jewish rebels were divided into competing factions within Jerusalem's walls. In the civil war that raged inside the doomed city, a Zealot faction destroyed food supplies that could have prolonged resistance. Their self-destructive behavior made the task of Roman conquest that much easier and provided Jewish history with a lesson of what not to do to survive in a hostile world.

It's an important lesson, but not one that most Jews – or non-Jews for that matter – find easy to follow.

The political lines dividing Americans are starker than at any moment in living memory. It's not just that Republicans and Democrats disagree about the issues. Most of the supporters of President Donald Trump and most of those who support his opponents seem unprepared to credit each other with good intentions, period.

The deafening silence of liberal Jewish leadership in the face of BLM anitsemitism

For those of us that are children of Holocaust survivors, we know well the hell our parents went through to survive.
They hid, had no food, no clothes, no medical attention, and no help.
They were cramped in hiding places with no fresh air and couldn' t make a sound or Nazis would kill them.
It lasted a lot longer than this will last, some for up to 4 or 5 years.
They lost their education, their souls, their youth.
There were no supermarkets,no cell phones, no radios and no outside interference.

What we can compare with deadly accuracy is 1933 Nazi Germany and the inaction of our Jewish leadership and the Stockholm Syndrome response of many liberal Jews in the face of rising, hateful antisemitism.

Just as then when the voices of the leadership might have made a difference, but was barely heard, today most liberal leaders and clergy prefer to be politically correct and support our enemies.

Had Hitler conquered America or the area that is now Israel but was then the British Mandate, no Jews would have been left alive. That means many of those reading this article would never have been born.

What is it that left liberal and progressive Jews do not understand? When I hear the rabid antisemitic lies on videos and social media, I sense that another Hitler is coming - while you are sleeping, not 'woke,' dreaming about meeting the demands of the antisemitic Black Lives Matter.

Cogwar 8 Years on: BLM BDS & the Wokeocracy

In 2012 Prof Richard Landes said "Its not every generation that gets to defend a civilisation" and he advised that silence is not an option. In view of the extraordinary events since January 2020 when he was last in London, Campaign4Truth asked him how we have done in these 8 years: Have we been silent?

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07/03 Links Pt2: Jonathan S. Tobin: A tale of 2 revolutions, and why America must be celebrated; Gangsters vs. Nazis; Liberal Jewish Leaders Accuse Jews of Racism, Cover Up Anti-Semitism

From Ian:

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Jonathan S. Tobin: A tale of 2 revolutions, and why America must be celebrated

In the view of those cheering on the efforts of the Black Lives Matter movement, this July 4 will be one less of celebration than of soul-searching and reassessment. Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the normal festivities were always going to be muted. But the brutal death of George Floyd on May 25 sent angry crowds of sometimes peaceful protesters into the streets seeking to topple monuments of not just Confederates, but also the nation's Founding Fathers and a host of other historical figures who don't measure up to the woke standards of the demonstrators.

As such, it is a deeply ominous sign that some advocates of the BLM movement, which has always been linked to anti-Semitic intersectional claims, are sometimes diverging from their usual arguments about racism to attacking Israel with blood libels. This week, one BLM march up Washington, D.C.'s Constitution Avenue, demonstrated its solidarity with a Palestinian "Day of Rage" by chanting, "Israel, we know you murder children too."

No doubt, some will claim that these chants are not typical of BLM sentiments, even though the movement has always supported smears of Israel. Others might say that among them were "some very fine people," a conclusion that few accepted when that sentiment was put forward by US President Donald Trump about those opposed to the removal of Confederate statues during a neo-Nazi march in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Va.

But at the heart of the marches is contempt for the basic idea that the American experiment in democracy – flawed though it is – is a uniquely successful effort in expanding the realm of liberty. As efforts like The New York Times' "1619 Project" that has served as an ideological guide to the protesters' vision of America as an incorrigibly racist nation made plain, the goal of the BLM movement is not so much to reform the police or cleanse the country of hate as it is to recast the entire national narrative that has provided a haven for religious minorities like Jews.

As such, it may be an appropriate moment for Americans to think seriously about their origins as a nation and to ask not only whether this 1619 narrative is true, but to ponder as well why we should still be cheering the memory of 1776.

The "1619 Project" is so named because in the view of the Times, the arrival of the first black slaves in North America was the true beginning of American nationhood, and the revolution in 1776 was fought mainly to preserve slavery. Once we set aside this inherently mendacious premise of that account, it's important to understand that the American Revolution succeeded primarily because it was rooted in a belief in the rule of law.

It's always the right time to talk about anti-Semitism, especially during Black Lives Matter protests

Recent weeks have seen a heated discussion among American Jews about whether there is a “right time” to talk about anti-Semitism. And if so, does now qualify, since our country is going through a reckoning over racism?

American Jews want to show solidarity with peaceful protesters, but should that include support for the Black Lives Matter organization, which called Israel an apartheid state, supported the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, and accused Israel of genocide in its 2016 manifesto? And should Jews remain silent while Israel is falsely accused of teaching brutal tactics to police, or when protests include “vandalism to Jewish businesses and synagogues” in Los Angeles, chants of “From the river to the sea” in Brooklyn, and slanderous accusations that Israel murders children in Washington, D.C.?

There was, by contrast, no such debate during Christians United for Israel's annual summit this week. Conducted virtually for the first time because of the pandemic, CUFI’s national conference included numerous speakers determined to speak up for Zion’s sake, as the book of Isaiah urges.

One message that echoed across the summit was that it’s always the right time to shine a light on anti-Semitism. Speakers encouraged the summit’s tens of thousands of participants to educate themselves about anti-Semitism. That education would include not only learning from dark, historic moments such as the Holocaust, but also how to recognize the anti-Semitism that hides in plain sight today, on college campuses and in the halls of Congress.

During a panel discussion on anti-Semitism, Holocaust survivor Irving Roth explained that words “direct people to the truth.” Words matter because they lead to actions, whether they are atrocities like the Holocaust or the possibility of a better future. Roth was joined by CUFI Middle East analyst Kasim Hafeez, who was raised as a radical Islamist in the United Kingdom and reflected: “I love this country, and it saddens me. There’s this horrible moment of seeing a parallel of what I saw in the U.K. with anti-Semitism. ... It doesn’t just roll in on a truck one day. It’s gradual. There’s little hurdles and steps; it creeps in. People fall asleep at the wheel. It’s almost ignored. There’s this attitude of, ‘It could be worse. At least we’re not the situation in Europe.’” Hafeez warned that ignoring those small changes means losing the chance to halt anti-Semitism while there is still time. Hafeez encouraged participants, “You can make the difference.”

Former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who signed the nation’s first anti-BDS bill into law as governor of South Carolina, told participants, “We must keep telling the truth about Israel.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talked about realizing in law school “how anti-Israel some parts of academia can be” and that “Israel needs to be protected from BDS.” Among Pompeo’s examples of the importance of truth-telling was his simple statement, “Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.”

Gangsters vs. Nazis

Emboldened by Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, and fueled by the Great Depression, anti-Semitism increased throughout the United States, and over 100 anti-Semitic organizations sprung up across the country. They had names like the Friends of the New Germany (Nazi Bund), the Silver Shirts, Defenders of the Christian Faith, the Christian Front, and the Knights of the White Camellia, among others. Protected by the constitution’s First Amendment, they held public rallies, paraded through the streets in their uniforms carrying Nazi flags, published scurrilous magazines, and openly flaunted their hatred for Jews. American Jews were intimidated and frightened. Fearful of stirring up even more anti-Jewish sentiment, the American Jewish establishment’s response was often tentative and cautionary. They worried that what happened in Germany, home to Europe’s elite Jewish community, could easily happen in America. One group of American Jews who had no compunctions about meeting the anti-Semites head-on were Jewish gangsters. Not bound by conventional rules and constitutional legalities, they took direct and violent action against the Jew haters.

Nazi Bund rallies in New York City in the late 1930s created a terrible dilemma for the city’s Jewish leaders. With 20,000 members, the Nazi Bund was the largest anti-Semitic group in the nation. They organized large public rallies and marched to drumbeats wearing brown shirts and swastikas, and carrying Nazi flags. Jewish leaders wanted the meetings stopped, but could not do so legally. Nathan Perlman, a judge and former Republican congressman, was one Jewish leader who believed that the Jews should demonstrate more militancy. In 1935, he surreptitiously contacted Meyer Lansky, a leading organized crime figure born on the 4th of July, and asked him to help. Lansky related to me what followed.

Perlman assured Lansky that money and legal assistance would be put at his disposal. The only stipulation was that no Nazis be killed. They could be beaten up, but not terminated. Lansky reluctantly agreed. No killing. Always very sensitive about anti-Semitism, Lansky was acutely aware of what the Nazis were doing to Jews. “I was a Jew and I felt for those Jews in Europe who were suffering,” he said. “They were my brothers.” Lansky refused the judge’s offer of money and assistance, but he did make one request. He asked Perlman to ensure that after he went into action he would not be criticized by the Jewish press. The judge promised to do what he could.

Lansky rounded up some of his tough associates and went around New York disrupting Nazi meetings. Young Jews not connected to him or the rackets also volunteered to help, and Lansky and others taught them how to use their fists and handle themselves in a fight. Lansky’s crews worked very professionally. Nazi arms, legs, and ribs were broken and skulls cracked, but no one died. The attacks continued for more than a year. And Lansky earned quite a reputation for doing this work.

Lansky later described to an Israeli journalist one of the onslaughts in Yorkville, the German neighborhood in northeast Manhattan:

“We got there in the evening and found several hundred people dressed in their brown shirts. The stage was decorated with a swastika and pictures of Hitler. The speaker started ranting. There were only 15 of us, but we went into action. We attacked them in the hall and threw some of them out the windows. There were fist fights all over the place. Most of the Nazis panicked and ran out. We chased them and beat them up, and some of them were out of action for months. Yes it was violence. We wanted to teach them a lesson. We wanted to show them that Jews would not always sit back and accept insults.”

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06/29 Links Pt2: Stephen Harper: BDS movement brings anti-Semitism into the mainstream; Simon Wiesenthal Center: Cancel Louis Farrakhan's July 4 speech on Fox

From Ian:

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Former Canadian PM Stephen Harper: BDS movement brings anti-Semitism into the mainstream

Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed a virtual conference of the Christians United For Israel (CUFI) organization Sunday evening, accusing the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement of bringing anti-Semitism ‘into polite society’.

Anti-Semitism is on “the rise, often in the guise of opposition to the State of Israel,” said Harper.

“Never forget that. And never forget that that is what the BDS movement is all about. It is nothing more than taking the old hatred of anti-Semitism and translating it into acceptable language for use in polite society.”

“People who would never say that they hate and blame the Jews for their own failings and for all the problems of the world, instead declare their hatred for Israel and blame the Jewish state for all the problems of the world.”

Earlier today I appeared on Sky News, Australia to discuss the madness that is washing across all of our societies. https://t.co/5Sm0f6myIz

— Douglas Murray (@DouglasKMurray) June 28, 2020

Spectator PodCast: The creepy doctrines of Black Lives Matter

With Professor Richard Landes, an expert on millennial or apocalyptic movements.

99.9% of the negative things about Israel on social media are fake. Please watch this very important video & then retweet.

I do this for free. It is very tiring. All I ask is people to share. Not enough do.

H/T to @kweansmom who cared enough to question and ask me about it. 🙏🏽 pic.twitter.com/s95iI3b0Uv

— AZ עם ישראל חי (@americanzionism) June 28, 2020

Maajid Nawaz accused online platforms of hypocrisy for banning people like Katie Hopkins, but ignoring hatred and anti-semitism from "black and brown" extremists like Louis Farrakhan.@MaajidNawazhttps://t.co/7yQvtZmwYi

— LBC (@LBC) June 28, 2020

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06/08 Links Pt2: Hen Mazzig: No, Israel Isn't a Country of Privileged and Powerful White Europeans; Jonathan Tobin: Defunding police will sacrifice Jewish security

From Ian:

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Hen Mazzig (Los Angeles Times): No, Israel Isn't a Country of Privileged and Powerful White Europeans

There is a growing inclination to frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of race. According to this narrative, Israel was established as a refuge for oppressed white European Jews who in turn became oppressors of people of color, the Palestinians. As an Israeli, and the son of an Iraqi Jewish mother and North African Jewish father, it's gut-wrenching to witness this shift.

The majority of Jews in Israel today are of Middle Eastern and North African descent. I am baffled as to why mainstream media and politicians around the world ignore or misrepresent these facts. Israel was established for all Jews from every part of the world - the Middle East, North Africa, Ethiopia, Asia and, yes, Europe. No matter where Jews physically reside, they maintain a connection to the Land of Israel, where our story started and where today we continue to craft it.

Those who misrepresent Israel try to position it as a colonialist aggressor rather than a haven for those fleeing oppression. That all but erases the story of my family. In Iraq, my family experienced ongoing persecution. My great-grandfather was falsely accused of being a Zionist spy and executed in Baghdad in 1951.

Any erasure of the Mizrahi experience negates the lives of 850,000 Jewish refugees. They would also deny the existence of almost 200,000 descendants of Ethiopian Jews who were airlifted to Israel in the early 1990s in a daring rescue operation.

Israel is a place where an indigenous people have reclaimed their land and revived their ancient language, despite being surrounded by hostile neighbors and hounded by radicalized Arab nationalists who cannot tolerate any political entity in the region other than their own. Jews that were expelled from nations across the Middle East, who sacrificed all they had, have been crucial in building and defending the Jewish state since its outset.

Hetz Webinars: Modern Blood Libels

Tuvia Tenenbom, Ricki Hollander (CAMERA), Prof. Richard Landes (h/t Arie)

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06/03 Links Pt2: From Disillusioned Muslim to Christian Arab Zionist; Why Western Media is Biased Against Israel; The video BDS doesn't want you to see

From Ian:

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Melanie Phillips: The opportunity to develop a United Democratic Nations

Before Covid-19 struck, Boris Johnson had decided to invite the Chinese tech giant Huawei to provide parts of Britain’s 5G communications network. Now, with China condemned for causing the pandemic through its reckless behaviour and then behaving like a gangster state in resorting to lies, threats and manipulation, the government is proposing an alliance of ten democratic nations to develop alternatives to Chinese technology.

This “D10” would be composed of the G7 nations — the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan — plus Australia, South Korea and India. It’s an idea that is not only excellent in itself but encapsulates an insight with far-reaching potential to restructure global institutions.

What’s actually outdated is the idea that peace and justice can only be advanced by the world acting as one big united family. This belief in the brotherhood of man lay behind the foundation of the United Nations in 1945. Yet the UN has not only failed to live up to its ideals of confronting aggression, preserving peace and defending human rights, but has in fact helped thwart them.

Given that most countries are tyrannies, kleptocracies or rogue states, a global body which brings them all together will inevitably be dominated by their unsavoury characteristics.

What’s needed instead is a United Democratic Nations. This is an idea that has often been floated wistfully by critics of the UN but dismissed as quixotic. The D10 proposal, however, could be the launchpad for just such a body. Going beyond the issue of Huawei and 5G technology, democracies should band together to defend freedom and justice by standing up to the depredations of regimes that seek to extinguish them.

The UN might have been created as a result of the shattering impact of the Second World War. It was founded, however, on a starry-eyed denial of the fact that if a lion lies down with a lamb, the lion doesn’t turn vegan but the lamb gets eaten.

From Disillusioned Muslim to Christian Arab Zionist

I am a Jordanian Arab from a Muslim family. I was born in 1989. In 2010, I decided to leave Islam after becoming fed up with all the jihadist violence and intolerance and persecution of non-Muslims. What made my decision final was the realization that this violence and hatred was justified by verses of the Koran and Hadith.

From 2010-2012, I was an atheist, though I continued to seek the truth regarding God and religion, even visiting Buddhist temples in Amman.

I was a university student at the time, and announced my newfound atheism through social media, which immediately turned many friends and colleagues against me. They felt I was backwards in my thinking, and I came to feel the same about them.

As you are no doubt aware, atheism is detested in the Arab and Islamic world. I faced a lot of hurtful opposition from those around me, but I kept my head down and focused on completing my university studies. It wasn’t easy. There were those who tried to have me kicked out because of my stance against Islam, but they failed.

In 2012, I decided to visit a church and learn more about Christianity. I was curious about Jesus. After four months of investigating, I joined an international church under the auspices of an American priest. On the very first day, I was asked to pray for salvation, after which one of the Christian brothers gave me weekly Bible lessons. Shortly after, I was baptized in the Jordan River.

Jordan is seen by many as a moderate Arab Muslim country. But even here, it is illegal to leave Islam. The civil courts are still governed by Sharia law, and to have someone complain against you for rejecting Islam can result in criminal punishment.

This didn’t deter me, and in 2012, I made an online video telling people in Arabic about how I’d become a Christian. Several days later, I was attacked by three radical Muslims. I also received threats from a radical Salafi movement under the leadership of Jarrah Rahahleh, an international terrorist, who used to send jihadists to Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and was arrested many times by Jordanian authorities. Further threats came from others.

Jewish Vengeance

Thus it was that the group that would come to be known as the “Nakam,” Hebrew for “Avengers,” was born. In the spring of 1945, a Passover gathering of survivors in Bucharest was addressed by Abba Kovner, the young leader of the Jewish uprising in the Vilna ghetto. Kovner was born in 1918 in Sebastopol, Russia, and spent his high school years in Vilna, where he joined Ha-Shomer Hatzair youth movement. When the Germans invaded and occupied Lithuania, they rounded up the Jews and put them in a ghetto. Kovner pleaded with Vilna’s Jews to join the partisans in a popular uprising, but they refused. After briefly fighting the Germans, Kovner and other partisans fled to the forest. While there, they destroyed 180 miles of train tracks, five bridges, 40 enemy train cars and killed 212 German soldiers. He returned to Vilna with the Red Army on July 7, 1944, capturing the city from the Germans on July 13, 1944. After the war, he and 50 other partisans attempted to poison thousands of Nazi and SS prisoners in a Nuremberg POW camp. It is unknown how many Germans were killed. In 1961 he testified at the trial of Adolf Eichmann. In 1970, he won the “Israel Prize” in literature for his poetry.

At that gathering, Kovner spoke passionately and invoked Psalm 94, in which God promises that he shall deal with the enemies of the people of Israel. “He will turn upon them their own violence and with their own wickedness destroy them.” This, Kovner suggested, was the fate that should be meted out to the Germans. And if the courts of international justice would not do it, then the Jews should do it themselves.

Calmly, the group set about implementing the death sentences they themselves had passed. First, they would identify a Nazi who had melted back into civilian life. They would then stage an arrest and spirit the German away. Some of these ex-SS men were strangled, others hanged. The deaths of those who were hanged could be passed off as suicides. Hangings might take place in a garage, with the subject forced to stand on a car roof while his neck was placed in the noose attached to an overhead beam. An Avenger would drive the car away and the man would be strangled. These efforts endured into the 1950s. The executioners kept their mouths shut and took their secrets to their graves.

The Nakam went to Spain, Latin America, Canada, and other places where Nazi murderers found refuge. In one such operation, the Nakam tracked down Alexander Laak, responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Jews at the Estonian concentration camp of Jagala. One evening they waited for Laak’s wife to leave for the movies, went to his home, and confronted him with his crimes and their intended punishment. They gave him a choice: They would kill him, or he could do it himself. He hung himself.

Benjamin Levi, one of the avengers, recalled that period in his life saying, “I saw a lot of things. I saw very noble people become animals. And very plain people become noble.” He had joined the partisans during the war and helped to liberate Vilna. He and his comrades rounded up Lithuanians who had collaborated with the Germans and shot them on the spot. “We didn’t keep prisoners,” he said. “There was no discussion. It was a normal thing.” All enemies were immediately shot. “The moment I start to think about this more and more memories come,” he said to a later interviewer. “We don’t talk about this anymore. But it’s alive inside.”

After the founding of the State of Israel, the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, undertook the task of tracking down former Nazis and killing them, and in some cases, putting them on trial. But that’s another story.

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05/14 Links Pt2: PragerU: Lies About Israel Lead to Lies About Everything; Top 10 reasons Israel has (so far) survived coronavirus; Reuters Whitewashes Suicide Bombers, Murderers as ‘Killed in Unrest’

From Ian:

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David Collier: An evening with Zoom. Delusion, propaganda and defeat

I sat through two events last night on Zoom. One was hard-core anti-Zionist, featuring several of the anti-Israel camps big names. It was all about how antisemitism doesn’t exist. The other was a much more mundane affair, with Yachad hosting Husam Zomlot, the ‘Palestinian Ambassador’ to the UK. I came away feeling depressed. The level of discussion was so weak. If this is the best that both camps can do, then they are extremely lucky that some people can be so easily fooled.
The defeated conspiracy theorists on Zoom

The first event was hosted by the anti-Zionist Miko Peled. Peled should need little introduction to readers of this blog. Having been to several of his events, and read much of what he has written, I think the time I called him a deflated, lying buffoon sums him up best.

The others on the panel were
- Asa Winstanley the Electronic Intifada writer and ex Labour Party member. Despite his antisemitism, officially Winstanley wasn’t expelled, just suspended – and he quit rather than face the music.
- Estee Chandler founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. When an American Jew, hangs a US flag upside down, you just know she isn’t operating with a full deck.
- Anya Parampil a hard-left correspondent for Russia Today in the US. She writes on Max Blumenthal’s GreyZone about all the things you would expect – Venezuela, Cuba, China, Assange and anything else that can help to attack the US and the West.

During the Q&A, a fifth face appeared, Jamil Mazen to pick out which questions to put to the table.

The event was titled ‘From Corbyn to Sanders‘, looking at whether ‘Zionists’ are targeting ‘progressive politicians’. To be honest, these speakers came across as defeated and dejected. The conversation was dull and each of the speakers in turn played their part. Miko Peled was the buffoon. Chandlers role was to keep quiet and simply nod in agreement when everyone else was talking. When Parampil was on she kept talking for ages, throwing in keywords without making a point. And poor Winstanley could not string two coherent sentences together. ‘Our Asa’ was beyond awful.

Lost they certainly have, and it showed. The thing is, because they are so convinced they are right, the more they get beaten, the more insidious and hidden they believe the enemy they face. The entire conversation was a conspiracy theory. These four used the word ‘they’ to describe the invisible forces against them at least 100 times. Each of these people seem to believe in a Zionist monster that probably even reads their private emails. They are so lost in conspiratorial nonsense, not a single concrete argument was made. I couldn’t help myself, in the end I even felt sorry for them (kidding).

PragerU: Lies About Israel Lead to Lies About Everything

Why would someone like Sebastian Cevallos, a university student in Ecuador, care about Israel? You'd think this tiny country on the other side of the globe from where he lives would have no bearing on his life. But it does. Here’s why.

Daphne Anson: An Interesting Facet of the History of Zionism

It's almost 15 minutes long, but is fast paced, this talk by a British academic who specialises in the history of British-Israel relations.

The speaker is Dr James Vaughan, of the Department of International Relations at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales, the first and arguably still the best such department in the world, which had as its inaugural head Professor Alfred Zimmern, who was of Jewish extraction.

Dr Vaughan is the author of Unconquerable Minds. The Failure of American and British Propaganda in the Arab Middle East, 1945-1957 (Palgrave, 2005), and while he continues to publish on British propaganda policy towards the Arab Middle East and Iran he is currently researching the changing attitudes and policies of Britain's main political parties towards Zionism, Israel, Palestinian nationalism and the Arab-Israel dispute.

The talk is entitled '"From Aberystwyth to San Remo" - The Birth of International Politics and the Jewish National Home' To quote the page of the original uploader, UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust, it explains how scholars such as Zimmern and Sir Charles Webster

"combined idealistic internationalism and a ‘Wilsonian’ belief in the rights of small nations to self-determination with an ability to bridge the worlds of academia and politics, both through their connections to Chaim Weizmann and the Zionist Organization, and in their role as participants in the making of the post-war settlement."

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Root causes of media bias against Israel

Tonight, Dr. Richard Landes spoke at Rutgers University. He is the author of The Augean Stables blog, The Second Draft blog documenting media manipulation by Palestinian Arabs and their supporters, and the driving force behind the Understanding the Goldstone Report blog. Somehow, he also manages to be a professor of history at Boston University and the author of numerous books and articles on topics I cannot begin to understand. 

 His topics tonight were wide-ranging but centered on the media and the Middle East conflict. He brought up numerous videos showing how the media reported on Gaza and how they purposefully ignored facts that would make Hamas look bad. Landes also spent a bit of time on the Goldstone report and on the Mohammed al-Dura Pallywood case. I hadn't told him one way or the other whether I would attend, and tried to keep a low profile, but when he mentioned my blog I admitted who I was. (I am not utterly without ego, but I am working on it.) 

So this was a rare public appearance by The Elder. Landes ascribes much of the anti-Israel bias of the media to the media's fear of Hamas (and Hezbollah.) There is no doubt that this is a strong contributor - terrorists make no secret of the fact that if they are displeased with you, they will make your life unpleasant. And they watch the news. We saw it happen in Lebanon with Hezbollah, and we saw it in Gaza with Hamas and the other terror groups, especially a few years ago when journalists were regularly kidnapped. 

 After Western reporters all fled Gaza, all that were left were Palestinian reporters who have an inherent anti-Israel bias. But more importantly, they are scared witless of Hamas. Hamas has attacked press agencies numerous times. Here is an incident last year when Hamas attacked a mosque, beat people there and trashed it before taking it over. Not one mainstream media outlet published this story. The reason is clearly because of Hamas' threats against Gaza reporters. (Hezbollah also carefully managed news media access to the Lebanon war in 2006, a lot more subtly than Hamas but very effectively.) The New York Times did run a story once on how Gaza reporters censor themselves out of fear. One can pinpoint the exact date that Gaza journalism died. It was mid-June, 2007, and it is detailed in this article from Ma'an - possibly the last objective article Ma'an has ever written about Hamas:

Local Palestinian radio stations in the Gaza Strip were launched in quick succession over recent years. As many as eleven radio stations were counted operating in Gaza Strip in a short space of time. Many of the stations had been closed and looted during the recent conflict in the strip. Ash Sha'b station, affiliated to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was looted, whilst Al Hurriya and Ash Shabab, affiliated to Fatah, chose to cease transmission. The spokesperson of the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, Abu Ubayda, vehemently denied that the brigades had threatened any of the local stations. Abu Ubayda told Ma'an that the radio stations halted transmission willingly because they were working within a certain framework and their coverage of events in Gaza was partial, rather than objective. He added that the employees and owners of the radio stations closed them out of fear, rather than any direct threats from the Qassam Brigades. Abu Ubayda also said that some of the radio stations were affiliated to well-known Fatah figures, or directly owned by Fatah. Palestine radio stopped transmission from the Gaza Strip during the recent events. A statement was issued accusing the Al Qassam Brigades of torching the station's headquarters and a local transmission tower in Khan Younis. Palestine satellite and terrestrial TV stopped transmission last Friday in Gaza City and began transmitting from Ramallah, in the central West Bank. The director of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, Basim Abu Sumayya, ascribed the stoppage to Hamas' seizure of the Gaza Strip, which prevented employees from accessing the company's buildings in order to work. Abu Sumayya accused Hamas of taking control of every property that belongs to the PBC, in addition to the live transmission vehicle and the satellite frequency, which the PBC changed immediately. ...As for the radio stations, which stopped their transmission, Abu Zuhri said they did so voluntarily because they were involved in inciting and they committed criminal acts when they were fuelling disputes in the Palestinian arena. He asserted that the Al-Qassam Brigades and Executive Force never attacked or robbed any radio station. The Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa satellite TV station, which many accuse of lacking professionalism and fuelling dispute, was the sole TV station that continued broadcasting during the conflict in the Gaza Strip. They transmitted special photos of the Al-Qassam Brigades and the Executive Force, while they were storming the security HQs. They also conducted exclusive interviews with Hamas leaders. The most criticism-provoking act of Al-Aqsa TV was the transmission of the execution of Samih Al-Madhoun. The chief editor of Ma'an News Agency threatened to close the agency's Gaza office as a result of the pressure exerted on him and the agency's correspondents and photojournalists. The Al-Qassam Brigades visited the office, but did not harm any employee or property. Meanwhile, Hamas and their Fatah allies criticised Ma'an's reports and some issued threats.

Things only got worse after that. I agree with Richard that fear is a factor in the loss of objectivity in journalism. He mentioned other factors as well, such as the fact that liberal reporters are (perhaps subconsciously) advocates of the simplistic idea that the absence of war is always a desirable objective and that their role is to help that to happen. Therefore you will see a large number of stories about Israel's use of "disproportionate" force and of Arab civilian victims, but very few giving context of everything Israel tried to do over eight years to stop rocket attacks before resorting to the battlefield. I think that a lot can be ascribed to ignorance. Arabs have hammered the West with consistent, simple-minded memes ("occupation," "intransigence," "illegal settlements," "Likud=far right hawks," "Fatah is moderate") that have become ingrained in the very psyche of the media personalities themselves. This is how we see situations like I mentioned today of Fox misrepresenting their own interview with Obama, after it was colored through the glass of Middle East conventional wisdom. 

 Another factor that I mentioned in the Q&A, and that Dr. Landes expanded on, is that Israeli self-criticism, which is part of what makes it strong, is perceived by the media as proof of its being immoral. As Richard noted, when the media interviews 100% of Arabs who say that Israel is completely wrong, and 50% of Israelis interviewed agree with the Arabs, then the impression one gets is that Israel is 75% wrong. All in all, it was an interesting evening, and as you can imagine, Richard is a really nice fellow. The turnout might have been better had this not also been the night that Rutgers held a meeting to discuss contributing leftover meal-plan money to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a charity that has uncomfortably close connections to terrorism.

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Notable

Barry Rubin:

How do we know that the attack at Fort Hood was an act of Islamist terrorism? Simple, Major Nidal Hassan told us so. You’ve seen reports of a long list of things he did and said along these lines. But what’s most amazing of all is this: Hassan is the first terrorist in history to give an academic lecture explaining why he was about to attack.

Media Backspin 15Nov09:

Tomorrow night, UK viewers will be treated to what Channel 4's "Dispatches" program bills as Inside Britain's Israel Lobby.

Here are three reasons why HonestReporting's expecting the worst.

Israellycool:

Rutgers University has voted to sponsor the University Chapter of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) for its semi-annual Meal Sign-Away program. While the PCRF now makes a point of stating it’s adherence to the US Treasury Anti Terrorist Financing Guidelines, terrorism seems to be a recurring theme with the PCRF and it’s personnel. According to this site (but provided with supporting links from other sites I found), there are many troubling links between PCRF personnel and terrorism...

Speaking of Rutgers, Professor Richard Landes of The Augean Stables blog will be speaking there this week.

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I'm part of the anti-NGO conspiracy!

The Guardian reports on HRW's whining about being criticized by people like me:

America's leading human rights organisation has accused Israel and its supporters of an "organised campaign" of false allegations and misinformation, including "extremely personal attacks" on its staff, in an attempt to discredit the group over its reports of war crimes in Gaza. Iain Levine, HRW's programme director, said that while the organisation had long attracted criticism, in recent months there had been significant attempts to intimidate and discredit it. "I really hesitate to use words like conspiracy, but there is a feeling that there is an organised campaign, and we're seeing from different places what would appear to be co-ordinated attacks ... from some of the language and arguments used it would seem as if there has been discussion," he said."We are having to spend a lot of time repudiating the lies, the falsehoods, the misinformation."

Isn't it a shame that HRW has to spend time defending its positions rather than being believed uncritically? All together now....Awwww! Although I was tragically not mentioned by name, I am an integral part of the nefarious anti-NGO conspiracy. After all, I was the one who noticed Marc Garlasco's interesting hobby of collecting Nazi memorabilia, information that I shared with other bloggers in an illegal secret Zionist underground information channel known as "email." I didn't have the time to exhaustively research it all, and Omri Ceren of Mere Rhetoric took the story and ran with it (with my full support.) My later contributions to the story included the sock-puppets that HRW sent out to defend themselves and the picture of Garlasco wearing the Iron Cross sweatshirt (which I believe someone else found first and alerted me to.) [And now Omri has a radio show, where such information can be shared with even more people! See how deep our Zio-connections are?] Notably, even then the Guardian quoted HRW implying some sort of blog conspiracy when the story broke. One has to wonder if, say, HRW and Amnesty and the UNHRC and the PCHR and Al Mezan and Al Addameer share information with each other - and whether this is a terrible conspiracy as well? (The answer to the first question is, of course, "yes.") The difference is that the NGOs have multi-million dollar budgets, and will often repeat the claims of other NGOs - even clearly biased ones - without any of their own fact checking. For example, Al Addameer's absurd claim of 750,000 Palestinian Arab prisoners since 1967 has been accepted as fact. Would HRW say that this story is above criticism as well? In interests of full disclosure, a Zio Blog conspiracy member list has been published. You can see us in the About Us page on the Understanding the Goldstone Report site. It includes NGO Monitor, CAMERA and Honest Reporting as well as some well-known writers and bloggers. We share information and build on other posts and articles. We do this precisely because it is more effective and focused. In fact, I'm going to now link to another, far more detailed critique of the Guardian article, from Richard Landes and Augean Stables. See how we all conspire together? Booga booga!

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Daily Goldstone 11/4

Richard Landes at Augean Stables takes a deeper look at the "36 incidents" that Richard Goldstone has alternatively characterized as "illustrative" and as to "appear to represent situations where there was little or no military justification for what happened." Those two characterizations are contradictory, to say the least.

What’s missing here, of course, is any investigation into the extensive evidence that Hamas used the civilian population as a shield, that they deliberately fired from the midst of civilian neighborhoods in order to provoke attacks, that they dressed as civilians, commandeered ambulances, stole food supplied by Israel to the Gazan population… in short that they did everything they could to maximize their own civilians’ casualties. All these matters are, of course, critical to assessing the behavior of Israeli troops. And yet, Goldstone explicitly refused to look into this material....

We didn’t want to investigate situations where we would be called upon to second-guess decisions made by Israeli Defense Force leaders or soldiers, in what’s called the “fog of battle”. It’s really unfair to do that, especially without hearing the other side. So we tried to concentrate on issues which seem to be less likely to be justifiable by applying those standards.

In other words, we didn’t look specifically into incidents of Hamas using human shields, didn’t listen to witnesses who, taking that information into account, found the IDF took remarkable risks to avoid hitting civilians. Instead, they chose 36 incidents to investigate which “appear to represent situations where there was little or no military justification for what happened,” and nonethess, found Israel guilty of targeting civilians. ...

Indeed, the FFM, even as it only tangentially considered evidence of Hamas’ military strategy of human shields, consistently dismissed any evidence to the contrary. The trope “The Mission found no evidence… did not find any evidence… for illegitimate behavior by Hamas and other Palestinian combatants runs through the report like a scarlet thread...

If you seek not, how will you find?

Read the whole thing.

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Goldstone Report website launches

A new website, set up by prominent bloggers and writers, goes into detail on the Goldstone Report's problems. The main organizer is Professor Richard Landes, historian and writer of the Augean Stables blog and Second Draft site. Many other people, including myself, contribute to the website. As the website says:

Those of us who have constructed Understanding the Goldstone Report, have been following the claims under contention since the events themselves almost a year ago, and have read the report in detail. We offer a wide range of analysis, from careful examination of specific incidents and controversies to broader legal and conceptual issues. In so doing, we have come to the following conclusions:

• The report violates international standards for inquries, including UN rules on fact-finding, replicating earlier UNHRC biased statements.
• The Commission systematically favored witnesses and evidence put forward by anti-Israel advocates, and dismissed evidence and testimony that would undermine its case.
• The commission relied extensively on mediating agencies, especially UN and NGOs, which have a documented hostility to Israel; the report reproduces earlier reports and claims from these agencies.
• At the same time, the Commission inexplicably downplayed or ignored substantial evidence of Hamas’ commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of terror, including specifically its victimization of the Palestinian population by its use of human shields, civilian dress for combatants, and combat use of protected objects like ambulances, hospitals and mosques.
• The Commission openly denies a presumption of innocence to the Israelis accused of crimes (while honoring Hamas’ presumed innocence) and acknowledges that it made accusations of crimes without proof that would stand up in court.
• The report contains numerous gratuitous digressions into issues beyond the purview of a fact-finding commission that are inaccurate and profoundly hostile to Israel and Jews.
• The Commission distorted legal standards, imposing on Israel standards that reverse their generally understood and applied meaning, while ignoring important rules of international law that put the onus of responsibility on an organization as base, by Goldstone’s own standards, as Hamas.

Check it out.

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Must read: Richard Landes fisking Goldstone's NYT piece

Professor Richard Landes does a superlative job fisking Judge Richard Goldstone's op-ed in the New York Times today. And while I have been spending what time I have on the minutae of the large Goldstone Report, Landes' post goes to the very heart of the topic, and shows exactly what is problematic about the entire enterprise. It casts great doubt on Goldstone's honesty, at least with regards to this topic.

It is a must-read, as are the links Landes uses to support his arguments.

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HRW will believe anything (UPDATED)

HRW just came out with a report claiming multiple cases where IDF soldiers killed, in cold blood, innocent civilians holding white flags. I cannot speak to all the details of the report right now, but one part is clear: HRW fully believes the "eyewitness" accounts of liars. They interviewed the Abed Rabbo family, whose previous statements to reporters were found to be incredibly inconsistent. The fact that HRW is so credulous when many have noted the inconsistencies shows that their research is pretty shoddy. At the very least they should have addressed the issue, but of course that is not HRW's aim. One simple example: HRW says that

Seven neighborhood residents who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that major fighting in the area had stopped by the morning of January 7, although sporadic exchanges of fire may have continued after that.

Time magazine's report mentions a salient fact that HRW chose to ignore:

Most residents of Jebel al-Kashif claim there were no Hamas fighters in the area at the time of the alleged incident, but a middle-aged farmer in a battered army jacket took me aside and said, in a near whisper, that Hamas had been firing rockets from the vicinity of where the episode took place.

Now, who is more credible? The farmer has nothing to gain by lying, but the Abed Rabbo family - who are members of Fatah and who had earlier told a PA newspaper that Hamas was using them as human shields - just might not want to antagonize their tormenters. Why are none of these facts mentioned by HRW when it relates the story of the Abed Rabbo sisters told by a family with very shaky credibility? The reason is, of course, that HRW wants to find human rights abuses and "war crimes," and will ignore evidence to the contrary. NGO Monitor's critique of the report can be found here. UPDATE: Here's video of a terrorist trying to get away from the IDF by using a white flag, something HRW seems to not have known about during the past seven months. (h/t Richard Landes of Augean Stables via email)

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Small victories in publicizing PCHR lies

NGO Monitor has linked to our results along with other researchers. The Backspin blog of Honest Reporting had also linked to our research. Someone had posted many of my articles about the PCHR at Cleveland Indymedia. Richard Landes at The Augean Stables republished my Casualties of Truth article. Now I have to find the time to learn a content management system so I can create a nice looking website to show our research....and while I am computer literate, even the simple ones take hours to learn and configure.

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Links

I won't be able to blog during the day, but check out these posts by David Bogner and Richard Landes. And while you are at The Augean Stables site, see Richard's nice commentary on a recent posting of mine.

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Saudi newspaper fawns over bulldozer terrorist

The Arab News goes even beyond calling terrorism "natural" for Arabs:

Israelis killed a Palestinian youth for driving a bulldozer onto the midst of a crowd in the heart of East Jerusalem and killing three Israelis last week. But the reaction of the Western political leaders to the action of the Palestinian worker, one of over a million and half living in humiliation of the Israeli occupation, amounted to killing him and other Palestinians a thousand times.

Yes, this brilliant writer from our "moderate" friends in Saudi Arabia considers a condemnation of the purposeful killing of Jews to be equivalent to killing a thousand innocent Palestinian Arabs. This is the sort of sick mentality that is mainstream in the Arab world.

While the Western leaders did not feel any compunction in condemning the poor building worker in the harshest words they could find in the dictionary, they did not have the guts to describe the incident as the natural and likely reaction of a human being put to indignities beyond his endurance powers.

Indeed, a fully employed Palestinian Arab, who gets paid by evil Jews hellbent on destroying his dignity, is quite justified in killing them en masse because of his abject humiliation. In other words, Arabs are naturally (really, genetically) prone to murder because their honor is far more important than mere Jewish lives, and the West doesn't have the guts to realize this simple fact and start praising the murderer instead of condemning him.

Over the past six months 365 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, most of them civilians, with children accounting for 50 percent.

I don't know about the 365, but the 50% number is wholly fictional, but it must be OK for an Arab to make up statistics making Israel look bad because, after all, he is being humiliated by the very existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. If killing is justifiable, certainly lying is.

It is high time that we made a clear distinction between the acts of terror, particularly from a state that calls itself a democracy, and the acts springing from frustration, injustice and humiliation.

In one sentence the author has just justified every single Arab and Muslim terror act over the past century, because each one must have sprung on some level by someone's "frustration" or perceived "humiliation." This, of course, also includes terror attacks against Saudi Arabia itself, not to mention 9/11.

This Palestinian youth was a human being with normal feelings of pride and honor. He could not be blamed for losing his equanimity for a moment when he thought about the plight of his brothers and sisters who are being treated like dirt in the Gaza Strip and West Bank and put under a blockade denying them the most basic requirements of life.

Our good editorialist has now descended from pure fantasy into mind-reading as he not only justifies a terror attack, he places it in a context where such an attack is positively praiseworthy. The author, Abdul Aziz Al-Suwaigh, is a diplomat who has been an employee of Saudi Arabia's Ministry for Foreign Affairs. And this is all done in English in a newspaper that cannot publish anything without the approval of the Saudi royal family.

A blog post by Richard Landes about this post here

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