Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 25, 2017

12/25 Links Pt2: The night the UNRWA stole Xmas; One Malaysian, standing with Israel

From Ian:

Christmas Eve 1944: How singing ‘Silent Night’ saved American POWs during the Battle of the Bulge

The story was told in 2011 by Keith Ginther of Montana, and was republished on his death in July 2014 by The Great Falls Tribune:
Quiet, dependable, faithful rancher Keith Ginther died Sunday in Choteau. His passing brought to mind this story, which we featured Christmas 2011. I had known him for many years in a vague sort of way. He never had much to say. And then at Christmas one year, he suddenly started talking. He seemed shocked later by all he’d reveled [sic] but proud to have told his story, too. — Kristen Inbody

Here’s an excerpt from his story (emphasis added):
In December 1944, Ginther became one of the 23,000 Americans captured or missing by the end of the Battle of the Bulge, Germany’s final and ultimately unsuccessful offensive on the Western Front.

He began a 150-mile march into Germany 67 years ago this month. He remembers feeling humbled in defeat, even more so as the POWs met German artillery pulled by horses or one truck pulling another on its way to the front….

The column of POWs passed through a countryside devastated by war and damaged by Allied bombing. At one village, the POWs had to clear rubble so German artillery could pass through. An American bomber pilot joined the prisoner ranks.

“The people seemed to be more hostile to airmen, whom they blamed for being bombed,” Ginther said.

Germans harassed the downed pilot. They’d rush the sides of the column, trying to grab him.

The villagers were starving, exhausted and angry.

When the hostility was at its worst, all the prisoners had reason to be afraid — though none so much as the captured bomber pilot.

Yet at that moment, an American in the ranks began singing “Silent Night.”

“Pretty soon the Germans were singing ‘Silent Night’ too, so it calmed things down,” Ginther said. “Halfway through the first verse, you could hear the German words, too.”

If not for the song, which for one moment brought a measure of peace to a one small corner of Germany, “I don’t really know what would have happened,” he said. “The guards would have tried, I guess, to protect him.” (h/t MtTB)

From Jerusalem on Christmas Eve, Netanyahu Offers Christians Personal Tours of Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to play tour guide to Christian pilgrims on Sunday in a Christmas Eve message relayed from Jerusalem.

In a video he posted on social media — titled “Merry Christmas from Jerusalem, the capital of Israel!” — Netanyahu described Israel as a haven for its 2-percent Christian minority.

“We protect the rights of everyone to worship in the holy sites behind me,” he said, standing in front of the Jerusalem skyline.

Netanyahu named several Christian pilgrimage sites in Israel — including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City — which would take visitors “in the footsteps of Jesus and the origin of our Judeo-Christian heritage.”

“For those of you who come to Israel, I’m going to take a guided tour. In fact, I’ll be your guide on this guided tour,” Netanyahu said. This would happen Christmas next year he said, without going into the logistics.

I'm very proud to be the Prime Minister of Israel. A country that says Merry Christmas, first to its Christian citizens, and to our Christian friends around the world! #MerryChristmas pic.twitter.com/R8DadFwoSD
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) December 24, 2017

Muhammed Yusoff Rawther: One Malaysian, standing with Israel

Arutz Sheva received the following letter several days ago:

With the recent developments in the Israeli Palestinian conflict, I have penned my thoughts on the matter from a Malaysian perspective, for your kind consideration to be published as a piece.

Thank you for your kind indulgence.
Yusoff
Penang, Malaysia

One Malaysian, standing with Israel

As the crowd of peace loving brethren from the religion of peace made their way outside the mosques in Penang and Kuala Lumpur after Friday prayers, an ugly and ironic truth dawned upon me. On the podium constructed specially for the protest, community leaders and politicians alike rose above the sea of protesters to reveal their true colours.

With chants like “death to America” and “down with Israel”, they did not for a second hesitate before the utterance of hatred, anti-Semitism, racism and sheer stupidity.

It then occurred to me, Malaysians are either too afraid, or have so become numb to such ridiculous rhetorics, that none have emerged forward to provide the counter narrative in defence of a democracy in the midst of tyrannical rule and political suppression.

Egyptian politician calls Nikki Haley a racist - while emphasizing her Sikh background

Egypt's Youm7 has an article by Salah al-Madawi, a former governor of

The Family history of the racist US delegate to the UN

When I was watching this woman’s face during the Security Council meetings I found a face loaded with strange inner ugliness and a weird determination to be more American than the Americans themselves and to be more racist than the White Americans, the descendants of the first migrants to the New World and to stand for the support of Zionism more than the Zionists themselves endeavor to.

Where did this woman whose two parents are of Indian origin gain all that hatred towards us? The woman that can sell everything sold her ethnic origin and pretended to embrace Christianity, though actually, she belongs to the Sikhs. The questions as to her religious affinity on the part of some Americans faded when she submitted her candidacy to senior positions to the state of South Carolina. When she married Michael Haley, who is a National Guard employee, the couple held two wedding ceremonies, one in accordance with Sikh rituals and later in a church in accordance with its rituals. Afterward, she [Mrs. Haley] omitted her Indian name Nimrata Nikki Randhawa and used only her middle name Nikki which means ‘the little one’ and along with it her husband’s name. Then she set into the track of political career instead of her work as an accountant.

Her best friend from amongst the Jewish Americans… of those who stood by her and supported her with money and ‘shortcuts’ till she arrived at the post of the Governor of South Carolina than with the sponsorship of AIPAC and its affiliates, she was recommended to Trump. They knew well that she acts as a mercenary and here she appears with a furious expression in the face of those who said ‘No to racism and to those who become Zionists’, so much so that there were some people who thought her to be of Jewish extract. She is not of a Jewish extract, but she is another facet of those whom the Jews of America buy and promote on Saturday in order to make use of them as their trumpets on Sunday. This woman does not have any interest in the Sikh nor with Christianity or with Islam, nor with anything else. She is a pragmatic dealer to such a degree that she adapts herself to the ideas of [Donald] Trump of assessing everything with money.

What kind of a state is that in which no one can promote himself politically without first presenting his credentials to Zionism and not the people that elect him?

Former Governor of Daqhaliyya District [in Egypt]

The antisemitism isn't too far behind, is it?

(h/t Abdallah Mashaallah)

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12/25 Links Pt1: Guatemala pledges to move embassy to Jerusalem; Phillips: The UN theatre of hatred; Bye UNESCO

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The UN theatre of hatred

Many people are understandably baffled by the recent UN vote condemning President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Since such a vote has zero practical effect, they ask, what was the point of it?

Well indeed. As the American ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said in her barnstorming response, America will still be moving its embassy to Jerusalem regardless of the UN’s opinion.

The resolution didn’t need to have any practical import. It was merely part of the UN’s theatre of hatred, the malevolent campaign it has waged for decades against Israel and Israel alone as a result of the preponderance of tyrannies, dictatorships, kleptocracies and genocidal antisemitic regimes that make up what’s called called the UN’s “non-aligned block” and which are united in their desire that Israel should be wiped off the map.

So egregious is this hypocrisy in singling out Israel, the sole democracy and upholder of human rights in the region while ignoring the brutal and murderous record of those tyrannies, dictatorships, kleptocracies and genocidal antisemitic regimes, that even a CNN correspondent has been moved to call this out. Jake Tapper tweeted: “Among the 128 countries that voted in favor of the UN resolution condemning the US decision to move the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem were “some countries with some rather questionable records of their own”.

You don’t say. The shocking thing is that so many democratic nations voted alongside these tyrannies: nations such as Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, most disappointingly India and, most sickening (to me, anyway), the UK.

Britain, the historic cradle of liberty and democracy and which once fought to defend freedom, has now made common cause with China, Iran, Libya, North Korea and Russia in their joint aim of denying the right of the Jewish people to declare, in accordance with law and history, the capital city of their own country, a right the UK and these other states would deny to no other people or state. What a disgrace.

JPost Editorial: Bye UNESCO

Israel will join the United States in removing itself and its funding from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

It’s about time.

The decision by the US was precipitated by UNESCO’s decision in 2011 to accept “Palestine” as a full-fledged member, even though there is no such thing as a Palestinian state, only a failed, quasi-political entity that is split between an Islamist enclave ruled by Hamas in Gaza and a corrupt fiefdom controlled by Fatah on the West Bank.

A 1990s-era law prohibits US funding for any UN agencies that recognize Palestine as a state. Former US president Barack Obama failed to convince Congress to change the law and restore funding. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is following through on the spirit of the law.

But the American and Israeli decisions are not just about the acceptance of “Palestine.” Like other UN institutions, UNESCO has in recent years proven to be an organization hijacked by an anti-American, antisemitic agenda that completely disregards concern for individual rights.

The US footed a large portion of UNESCO’s budget – most of which went to the payment of salaries and workers’ expenses – that did nothing to endear America to UNESCO’s functionaries.

UN Watch: The End of Human Rights at the U.N. — Panel was “Mother of All Rogues’ Galleries”

Even within the rogues’ gallery that is the U.N. human rights Council, today’s council panel attacking Western democracies for imposing sanctions on dictatorships was the mother of all rogues’ galleries.

The panelists:
1. Lead panelist was UN expert Idriss Jazairy, who described Putin’s Russia as a human rights victim. Coincidentally, as UN Watch revealed today, Jazairy received $50,000 from the Russian government. As Algerian ambassador to UN, he once said “antisemitism targets Arabs”; and, most famously, he led a major effort to muzzle UN human rights experts. And then he became a UN human rights expert himself.

2. Alena Douhan, a Belarus academic with a soft spot for Russia, whose doctorate was on the principle of “non-interference” in countries’ “internal affairs.”

3. Alfred de Zayas, the Cuban-appointed expert for a “democratic and equitable international order.” Zayas has defended Iran’s right to nuclear weapons, and writes books claiming Germany suffered a “genocide” in 1945. Zayas is a hero to Holocaust deniers.

4. Jean Ziegler, co-founder & 2002 recipient of the Qaddafi Human Rights Prize. In his presentation, Ziegler actually defended the murderous Maduro regime of Venezuela, which he said was being victimized by a U.S. “economic war.”

5. Panel Chair: the ambassador of Venezuela’s Maduro regime, Jorge Romero. He effusively thanked Ziegler for his kind words.

6. Peggy Hicks, a top official in the office of UN high commissioner Zeid, delivered the opening statement. A former Human Rights Watch official, we hoped she would provide a dissenting voice. Instead, she echoed the same line. And when Ziegler spouted pro-Maduro propaganda, Hicks was silent.

Yes, Abbas still supports terrorists. Somehow, the media keeps missing it.

Here is Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas greeting Rafat Jawabra, commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the "military wing" of Fatah movement, after he was released from prison by Israel.

The Al Aqsa Brigades were supposedly dismantled by Abbas years ago - yet they still exist. And not only in Gaza, where they recently shot rockets at Israel, but in the West Bank as well.

Here are the Brigades greeting Jawabra last week:

Those masked people with automatic weapons are on Fatah's payroll. They report to Mahmoud Abbas.

These photos are all on the official Fatah Facebook page. No one is hiding these ties. No one is hiding the fact that the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a designated terror group by the US, still operates openly under Palestinian rule.

If the hundreds of journalists drinking lattes in Tel Aviv would spend 1% of their time uncovering official Palestinian ties to terror, the world would look at the Middle East conflict in a completely different light.

Which is the exact reason why they don't.

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I am so sick of the Roger Cohens of the world

Roger Cohen, in the New York Times, writes a pretty good review of Simon Schama's The Story of the Jews: Belonging: 1492-1900. He describes how the Jewish people ping ponged from seemingly secure lives to persecution throughout the world.

But in the end, Cohen feels compelled to add two paragraphs to the time beyond 1900, and shows yet again how Israel is held to standards that are far beyond any other nation.

Not even Herzl, however, could have foreseen the industrialized mass murder of the Holocaust, the unspoken shadow that hovers over these pages. Nor could he have imagined the fulfillment in 1948, with the foundation of the modern state of Israel, of his dream. Nor how the Zionism he described in Basel as a “moral, humanitarian movement” would be prodded over time toward messianic nationalism by the violent, still unresolved confrontation with the Arabs of Palestine; nor how the Jewish exercise of power, rather than Jewish subjection to its cruel whim, would test the very ethics that bound Jews to their formless, faceless God during the millenniums of tribulation in the diaspora.

In the end the price of Jewish statehood has been heavy: the exile of another people, the Palestinians. More than a half-century of occupation of the West Bank has corroded Israeli democracy. This was not inevitable and is still not irreparable. No doubt, these themes will be prominent in Schama’s next volume. At a time of facile anti-Zionism spilling sometimes into outright anti-Semitism, Schama has made an eloquent and a far-reaching case for why Jews needed a small piece of earth they could call home.

Was there a hint of Jewish messianic nationalism when the Arabs of Palestine started attacking Jews in the 19th century and through the 1920s and 1930s? And is the current Israeli government really being influenced by messianic nationalism? Of course not - only the people who hate Israel to begin with make up that canard, and Cohen sucks it all up.

Moreover, Cohen has the astonishing ability not to recognize in today's Arab "anti-Zionism" the parallel mentality as traditional European antisemitism described by Schama. Arabs didn't care when they were under non-Arab rule of the Ottomans - but the idea of Jewish leaders is what prompted them - and still prompts them - to violence. That isn't the Jews' fault - it is simple antisemitism.

Cohen's blindness cannot be accidental. He immerses himself in the anti-Israel narrative rather than actually looking at the facts and the history.

Then comes the ethical tests of Jewish exercise of power. for some reason, only Jews have such ethical issues that test their very right to exist. Does anyone say that US control over territories where people cannot vote for president corrodes American democracy? Is anyone demanding Native Americans be given, say, South Carolina so they can exercise their rights of self determination? Is how they were treated a couple of orders of magnitude worse than how Palestinians have been treated?

And that's just the US. Every Western European country is guilty of immorality that far exceeds the worst that one can ever blame Israel for even assuming Arab lies as truth. Yet only Israel is singled out by Western, often Jewish pundits, who are so wracked with guilt over Israel's insistence on control over some historic Jewish lands whose legal status is hardly obviously "Palestinian."

Even that last sentence, where Cohen tries to show his support for Israel's existence, is ambiguous. Jews needed a small piece of earth - but don't any more?

Cohen's moralizing on behalf of the Jewish state is condescending, misdirected, biased and mostly false. Israel doesn't want "occupation" and has offered many times since 1967 to end it. Each time - each and every time - the answer was no. That simple, irrefutable fact is kryptonite to self-righteous jerks like Cohen who want to repent on behalf of Israel for not committing national suicide in the name of "peace."

Cohen will not place any blame on Palestinians (except for pro-forma denunciations of suicide bombings and the like, pretending that they are not supported by the majority.)

Only Israel is expected to live up to standards of ethics that are so high, they are unethical - because they would result in the deaths and ethnic cleansing of more people than the status quo, as long as Palestinians refuse to compromise.

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Israel Hayom reports:

The fresh violence came a day after the U.N. General Assembly resolution denouncing Trump's decision. However, the number of Palestinians who answered a call to the colors and participated in a "day of rage" over Trump's declaration was lower than expected, with a total of only about 4,000 protesters counted in the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria.
The Palestinians are reportedly disappointed at the low numbers of protesters, which is dropping weekly. One senior Palestinian Authority official told Israel Hayom that "the fact that the Palestinian public remains apathetic is worrying, and mostly infuriating. This is a failure by the Palestinian leadership."

Israel Hayom's Hebrew edition adds that Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are upset at how the Palestinian leadership has handled the Jerusalem issue. They were not enthusiastic about the Istanbul conference where Turkey and Iran dominated the discussion, and they fear that Abbas' rhetoric that the entire Arab world would ignite over the issue has been shown to be false, making him look like a fool.

Jordan in particular is upset because it feels that it has a special responsibility towards Jerusalem and Abbas' reaction, such as to try to isolate the US at the UN, could backfire for Jordan's efforts to be relevant in the holy city.

As a result, the three countries have established a commission together with the Palestinians in the Arab League on a more reasonable response to the Trump declaration, as the Palestinian strategy is imploding. Their public statements that they would not meet with Vice President Pence also hurt their cause, according to this article, as the Americans were reported to have reacted angrily.

The victories at the UN are symbolic, and the Arabs are much more concerned thatthe tepid Arab reaction to the Trump declaration might cause the issue to backfire on them, prompting other countries to move their embassies to Jerusalem as well. Guatemala already announced this and Romania is considering it.

(h/t Yoel)

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Egyptian TV host freaks out over Jewish students learning Arabic through an Arab singer

This TV clip from Egypt's Al Nahar TV shows a classroom in a Jewish school in Israel. The teacher is leading a class in Arabic language, and the students are learning a famous Arab song sung by Umm Kulthum.

The Egyptian host is livid. I don't have subtitles, but for five minutes he is raging about this, saying that the original Arab singer and composer would die if they witnessed these Jews singing their song.

The host also says that this is an attempt by Israel to normalize relations with Egypt.

At the end of the article he stresses that Israel is the worst and biggest enemy of the Arabs. Of course.

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"Maccabees are Palestinian" and other fun facts in Arab media

Dr. Jamal Salsa writes in Al Watan Voice that the Maccabees were just Jewish Palestinians fighting for their religious rights.

We learn from this Arab scholar (I looked him up, he is a dentist) that the Jews were Bedouins who moved from one place to another and lived in tents, while the Palestinian people were more civilized and lived in houses.

He then says that Abimelech, king of the Philistines, was really king of the Palestinians. "Abraham swore to Abimelech to preserve Palestine and the people of Palestine and live among them and live in the land with them in peace."

When the press reports on Neturei Karta "rabbis" waving the Palestinian flag, accoding to this nutcase, it is the embodiment of the divine covenant of Abraham, and in respect of these concepts and the law, who sought to live in peace with the "Kingdom of the Palestinians."

He ends off by saying "The bottom line is that Palestine existed before the waters of the sea knew their waves, and before the moon went into its orbit."

So, yes, he says that Palestine has existed for several billion years.

Which brings to mind this classic, originally from Latma:

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12/24 Links: Saudi Arabia bars Israelis from chess tournament; Shin Bet thwarted over 400 attacks in 2017

From Ian:

Saudi Arabia bars Israelis from chess tournament

Israeli chess players on Sunday were denied the visas necessary for them to participate in an international tournament in Saudi Arabia next week, crushing hopes that they could make history by being the first representatives of the Jewish state to take part in such an event hosted by the kingdom.

Seven Israeli players had filed requests for visas to participate in the games to be held in Riyadh on December 26-30 as part of the world rapid and blitz chess championships.

Last month, the World Chess Federation (FIDE), which runs the tournament, said that it was “making a huge effort to assure that all players get their visas.”

But on Sunday that international body announced that its efforts were for naught.

Moshe Shalev, the interim head of the Israel Chess Federation, told The Times of Israel that the players had not been granted visas and said his group was discussing taking legal action.

“We are thinking about suing the World Chess Federation,” he said.

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: Europe's betrayal

I am reliving the Evian Conference, held in 1938. No European country was willing to take the Jews.

Eighty years later, on December 21, 2017, twenty six European countries voted to condemn the United States’ decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Six abstained. No European country dared to stand with the United States, with Israel, or with reality.

Austria and Germany—Hitler’s home base—voted to condemn the United States’ decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Germany—whose shame about the Nazi genocide of six million assimilated, productive, and non-violent Jews led Merkel’s Germany tp embrace millions of non-assimilated, non-productive, and very violent Muslim refugees—and why?

Partly to redeem their own soiled reputation and, more diabolically, to continue their traditional Jew-hatred by allowing Muslim refugees to harass, beat, torture, and murder Jews—and by consistently voting for Palestinian terrorists over a peaceful and democratic Israel.

Germany—on whose soil Israeli athletes were murdered in cold blood at the Olympics and whose police could not stop the Palestinian killing spree or apprehend the perpetrators.

Austria and Germany were not the only European countries who voted to condemn the vote on moving the American Embassy to Israel’s capital city, Jerusalem.

Israeli experts weigh in on Obama-Hezbollah revelation

In fact, while much of the probe has centered on the potential illegality of Obama's intervention, investigators are scrutinizing the former chief executive’s reasons for interfering to Hezbollah’s benefit: namely, to examine the assumptions and, more generally, the worldview that shaped his policy toward the organization and, by extension, Iran.

To that end, Politico cited statements made by John Brennan, who would become Obama's top counterterrorism adviser and then CIA director. As early as 2010, just one year after Obama assumed office, Brennan confirmed that the administration was looking for ways to build up “moderate elements” within the "very interesting" Hezbollah group which was no longer considered a "purely terrorist organization."

Obama loyalists see in this interpretation a reasonable justification for the former president’s actions as a path to engaging Tehran diplomatically rather than militarily. Critics not only see no reasonable indication to have believed Hezbollah was malleable, and in fact, saw the terrorist group’s militancy as intractable. This is supported by the now infamous comments by top Obama aide Ben Rhodes who bragged in an interview of manipulating an uninformed media and populace to ratify the Iranian nuclear agreement. Indeed, it is being reported that the core of the Obama team has been activated to de-toxify the alleged Obama actions vis-à-vis Hezbollah.

Those who rejected the agreement have been strengthened during the ensuing years, as Shiite Tehran continues to foment unrest in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and beyond, arguing that by all indicators—and citing its blatant development of missile delivery systems capable of supporting nuclear weapons and flouting of United Nations Security Council resolutions—the Islamic Republic remains committed to exporting its revolutionary ideology while competing with Sunni Saudi Arabia for regional dominance.

And while proponents of the accord contend that Tehran is abiding by it, opponents continue to warn that the devil is in the existence of "sunset clauses" that will expire after 12 more years, effectively giving Iran a green-light to resume enriching uranium. At that point, the country will have pocketed all of the benefits of sanctions relief and reinforced its so-called "Shiite Crescent," a land corridor stretching through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and into the Mediterranean.

According to Efraim Kam, a Senior Research Fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, Iran's unwillingness to change course was predictable. "Obama saw the nuclear deal as a way to get Tehran to modify its strategy," he explained to The Media Line. "In the administration's view it was a jumping off point to more cooperation and dialogue.

"However," Kam highlighted, "even before the accord was concluded Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei made clear that he was not going to alter his calculus. He left no doubt that coordination would not be extended to other areas and never changed his mind for one minute."

The western-left is the most racist political movement in the West today outside of political Islam.

The categories of contemporary progressive-left racism include:

1) Anti-White Racism

2) Antisemitic Anti-Zionism

and

3) Humanitarian Racism

While left-leaning politicos in the United States are searching for Nazis and Klansmen and White Supremacists and White Nationalists and the "Alt-Right" - whatever that is, exactly - hiding beneath every bed, they remain childishly oblivious to the toxic and divisive racism that is eating its way through the core of their own political movement.

Up until about the election of Barack Obama - who I voted for in 2008 - the United States made highly significant strides in ethnic relations over many decades, which was a major factor in Obama's electoral success.

Since then, the United States is regressing on issues of race even as the inheritors of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. urinate on that legacy while calling it "social justice."

There has not been this much racial discord in the United States since 1968 and it is largely due to the fact that the progressive-left has beat it into the heads of poor "black" kids that they are oppressed and that poor "white" kids are the oppressors.

What kind of social results did they expect would emerge from incessant left-leaning racial hatred in the United States?

Anti-White Racism

Although nobody on the left ever wants to discuss it, the most prominent form of publically acceptable racism in the United States, today, is anti-white racism.

Hundreds of articles and other forms of media have been published in left-leaning venues decrying how horrible and racist and brutal - yet, somehow, fragile - "white" people are.

As an American Jew - and since the word "white" has become a racist perjorative - I am not even certain that I know what a "white" person is. I do know that I am constantly mistaken for one despite the fact that my ancestry, along with almost all non-converted Jews, goes to the Levant.

The fundamental point, of course, is that people do not get to pick-and-choose who it is acceptable to be racist towards. Either you oppose racism or you do not. If you claim that certain ethnicities, for historical and socio-economic reasons around power relations, are incapable of racism then - guess what? - you are being racist.

That is, you are holding some groups of people to different ethical standards based on their ethnic background.

Excuse me, but that is the very definition of racism.

Western-left identity politics is both racist and noxious because it indoctrinates young people into a political point of view which places individuals upon an ethnic and gendered Hierarchy of Victimhood wherein one's political significance, if not one's humanity, itself, depends upon where one falls within the hierarchy.

Contemporary left identity politics, therefore, in distinction from old-timey interest group politics, is the most prominent racist and illiberal political movement in the United States today.

It is what I call "identity politics overreach."

It is also one significant reason, among others, that Donald J. Trump happily sits in the Oval Office.

Antisemitic Anti-Zionism

This one, naturally, is my favorite.

One of the astonishing things about antisemitism is that, like an ideological virus, it has the ability to mutate according to the changing nature of its political environment. If in previous generations antisemitism was justified by notions such as the Jews killed Jesus or the Jews killed Mohammad or the Jews invented capitalism or the Jews invented socialism or the Jews represented an inferior and parasitic race, today we are to understand that the Jews are inhumane to the allegedly indigenous "Palestinian" population.

kIf you were to question your average U.S. Democrat they would likely agree that the historical persecution of the Jewish people was entirely unjustified. The western-left despises Nazism and racism and fascism, even as they unthinkingly embrace certain aspects of it. They would absolutely agree that the European persecution of the Jews was a great injustice in the past, even as they also embrace the western-left antisemitic anti-Zionism of the present.

Unfortunately, polling data also shows that a majority of self-identified "liberal Democrats" favor the Palestinians-Arabs over the Jews of Israel by a plurality of 40 percent over 33 percent.

In other words, in the imaginations of "liberal Democrats" - by which they actually mean "progressives" or, as some would say, the "regressive left" - every previous generation the Jews were innocent and did not deserve harassment or persecution... except for this one.

By some mysterious happenstance the Jewish people, today, both Israeli and diaspora, are, in fact, guilty. We were not in the past, but we are today.

Thus, who can really blame "Palestinians" if they perpetually seek to murder Jews in the very heartland of the tiny Jewish nation?

If the international community despises the Jewish State of Israel it is, therefore, because of the Jews, themselves, who generally insist upon supporting the allegedly racist, militaristic state of Israel. What this suggests, within the western-left mind, about the morality of diaspora Jewry which supports Israel is not very pretty.

Humanitarian Racism

In Manfred Gerstenfeld's introduction to Behind The Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel, and the Jews, which is a scholarly compilation of articles published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, Gerstenfeld writes:

Behind the Nordic countries’ righteous appearance and oft-proclaimed concern for human rights often lurk darker attitudes. This volume’s main purpose is to lift their humanitarian mask as far as Israel and Jews are concerned. This disguise hides many ugly characteristics, including the financing of demonizers of Israel, a false morality, invented moral superiority, and “humanitarian racism.”

The condescension and imperial superiority of contemporary leftists toward those of non-European descent, with the exception of Jews, is unfathomable. The progressive-left, as a group, treats all non-Europeans, other than Jews, like little children in need of a pat on the head and a chocolate chip cookie.

It is, at least in my estimation, the current iteration of nineteenth-century western imperial notions of "white man's burden" and it takes the form of holding non-Europeans to the ethical standards of inferiors.

In this way, European historical guilt around issues of race trump feminism, and even regular human decency, in how much of the guilt-riddent "white" middle-class judge people who in an earlier generation they would have called "our little brown brothers."

Until the western-left moves beyond anti-white racism, antisemitic anti-Zionism, and humanitarian racism, it will remain riddled with hypocrisy and acting in cross-purposes toward its own supposed values.

It is very sad that over fifty years after Martin Luther King, Jr's famous I Have A Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. that the western-left has flung King's admonitions into the gutter.

The most important thing that King stood for was this:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for anti-racism.

The contemporary left does not.

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A year ago, I critiqued a major essay in the New York Times' philosophy section by Omri Boehm, who teaches at The New School. Using arguments that wouldn't pass a first year logic course, he argued that Zionism was racism.

Now he has moved into critiquing Judaism itself.

In an article in the Los Angeles Review of Books, which was translated and published by the major German newspaper Die Zeit, Boehm argues that thousands of year of Jewish attachment to Jerusalem is really bogus, and any Jew who thinks that Jews should control Jerusalem are tantamount to idolators.

The name of the article is "Jerusalem, Our Golden Calf."

Yes, a lesson in Judaism from a person who hates Judaism.

OK, this should be fun:

[T]he heart of our heart is the Torah, and Jerusalem is not mentioned in it even once. Other municipal centers play in the book significant theological roles: Hebron is strongly associated with Abraham’s figure; Shchem, more familiar today as Nablus, functions as the Promised Land’s gate; and it is in Beit El that Jacob is renamed, very symbolically, as “Israel.” Clearly, Moses has never heard of Jerusalem, and Joseph never dreamt of it in his dreams. As the Torah’s literary theology unfolds, Jerusalem remains conspicuously absent.

Because, perhaps, Jerusalem's role is only as the capital of the Jewish nation that had yet to be born? And its prominence is obvious to anyone who glances at the Hebrew Scriptures outside the Pentateuch? (Not to mention that Jerusalem's spiritual centrality is strongly hinted in the Bible as well, as the place that God will choose to place the Temple.)

Nah, this is not important.

When the city does gain prominence, its role emerges directly from the Israelites’ demand to become “like all the other nations” — to be ruled by an earthly political authority, rather than directly by God (1 Sam. 8:5). Samuel interprets this request as an idolatrous act of betrayal, and God unequivocally shares the same judgment. Comparing it to the Israelites’ “worshiping other Gods” and “forsaking” him in the desert, God explains to Samuel that the Israelites are rebelling directly against the deity: “It is not you that they have rejected; it is Me that they have rejected as their king” (1 Sam. 8:7-8). Indeed, alongside the infamous incident with the Golden Calf, the Israelites’ request to be ruled “like the nations” has become one of the Bible’s prime examples of idolatry.

One can argue as to exactly God meant when he used those words. But Boehm, knowing his readers won't bother to look up the verses, purposefully omits what God said immediately afterwards. In the very next verse, God tells Samuel "Now therefore hearken unto their voice; howbeit thou shalt earnestly forewarn them, and shalt declare unto them the manner of the king that shall reign over them."

God and Samuel definitely have a problem with the way the people request a king, but clearly they don' t have a problem with the concept of a king. After all, the Torah mentions that Israel should have a king, explicitly, in Deuteronomy 17 - even using the words that the nation will want to be like the nations around them. Choosing a king is considered one of the commandments of the Torah.

To flatly call this request "idolatry" is absurd, because this means that, according to Boehm, God is instructing the Jews to worship idols.

What does this have to do with Jerusalem? Not much. But the "philosopher" will twist the truth to pretend it is, with more absurd interpretations that fly in the face of normative Judaism:

It is from this paradigmatic idolatrous moment that Jewish politics would be subsequently centralized in Jerusalem — a king’s earthly capital — and the city’s Temple would be built, consolidating its political-theological sway. These idolatrous origins have left on Jerusalem an enduring stain: an adequately Jewish relation to it can be at most one of ambivalent love, mixed with suspicion. Not one of enthusiastic identification.

Not surprisingly, Boehm doesn't bring any verses from any prophets that describe this supposed ambivalence or suspicion.

It is common to mention that for 2000 years, Jews have recited Psalms 137 in wedding ceremonies: “If I forget you Jerusalem, my right hand forget its skill, my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.” But this is misleading, because for 2000 years Jews have recited this while rejecting the establishment of Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem as an abomination. Indeed Jewish law strictly prohibits Jewish rule over Jerusalem before the Messiah’s arrival and the fulfillment of Isaiah’s aforementioned prophecy. In this light, not just Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — but also Ben Gurion’s declaration of Israel’s independence — stand in sharp contradiction to the Jewish religion.

There is not one source in codified Jewish law that says that Jewish rule over Jerusalem is prohibited before the Messiah's arrival. Nowhere in Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, nowhere in Shulchan Aruch, nowhere. (There have been some anti-Zionist rabbis who make such an assertion, but there is no basis in Jewish law for it.)

This entire essay is complete garbage. Boehm's entire thesis is literally made up, using cherry-picked Biblical quotes and assertions that have no basis.

And, as we have seen, even Boehm doesn't pretend to have proven that attachment to Jerusalem is akin to idolatry. He makes a false assertion that desiring a king is idolatry, he associates that with Jerusalem without any proof, and voila! An essay that gets published in prestigious journals based on nothing but hot air.

You cannot call Boehm ignorant. He knows very well he is twisting the Bible and Jewish law in ways that are utterly antithetical to what anyone with any knowledge can see what they say. He knows very well that God told Samuel to listen to the people and establish a kingdom. He didn't stop reading the verses at the point that shows him to be a liar - he just stopped quoting them, because intellectual honesty is exactly what Boehm is not about.

He is a fraud.

However, you can call the Los Angeles Review of Books and Die Zeit ignorant for publishing such blatant lies by a confirmed anti-Zionist a hater of Judaism, talking about Judaism and Jerusalem without doing the least amount of fact checking.

How does this happen? How can otherwise responsible publications allow something that is literally based on easily-refuted lies to be published? It isn't hard to open up a Bible and read the context of the verses, nor is it difficult to notice the other logical fallacies in Boehm's article.

The answer, I think, is that here is another example of things that are too good to check. Jews have been wrong about the holiness of Jerusalem for thousands of years! We have a Jewish scholar who says so! And he is a philosopher, which gives him some extra special credibility, because we really don't know much about that field but it sounds really prestigious!

So I don't blame Boehm for widely spreading his anti-Israel and now anti-Jewish hate. That's what he is about. But I do blame periodicals and newspapers to blindly believe his lies without even bothering to call up a local rabbi who might know a thing or two about the Jewish scriptures to save themselves embarrassment.

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How the PLO threatened Christmas tourists in 1967 - and today

From Time, December 29, 1967:

A warning by the Arab guerrilla organization El Fatah that Christmas tourists would not be safe in the Holy Land led the Israeli government to station 950 security police in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and to set up roadblocks in the area.

From the New York Times, December 24, 1968:

Also from the NYT on that same date:

Fatah, the dominant party in the PLO, explicitly warned and threatened Christian tourists in 1967 and 1968. And Christian leaders, under Israeli rule, were confident enough to tell the world to ignore the terrorists and come anyway, even though some were scared off. And Israel took drastic steps to reduce the chance of terror attacks by banning non-Christians from Bethlehem.

This month, virtually the same thing happened. Fatah, led by Mahmoud Abbas, and other Palestinian groups warned of "days of rage" in Israel. However, Christians under Palestinian rule - who have been fleeing their homes in droves since the Palestinian Authority was established, under Muslim threats to them - are too frightened to blame their Muslim-dominated government, so they blame Israel and Trump.

And credulous reporters believe them:

A week before Christmas, there were only a handful of tourists snapping photos of the huge decorated tree in Manger Square, with its strings of red and white lights. The large plaza in front of the Church of the Nativity was nearly empty except for a handful of visiting clergy.

Chalk the absence of visitors up to President Trump’s Jerusalem speech, which outraged Muslims, scared off tourists, and unnerved Christian clerics. It also bushwhacked Vice President Pence’s planned (now postponed) trip to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Cairo, which was meant to express solidarity with Mideast Christians. Church leaders were refusing to meet him.
...

For starters, the president’s move wrecked a pre-Christmas tourist season that is especially important to Palestinian Christians.

“Before the Trump statement, we thought this would be the best year in the past 10 years for tourism,” I was told by Maher Canawati, who, with his father, Nicola, owns the legendary Three Arches gift shops in Bethlehem, specializing in mother of pearl and carved olive wood objects. Living in Bethlehem since the early 17th century, the family has managed to navigate political challenges over time; portraits of ancestors look down on Canawati, including one of his father posing with a Bethlehem Boy Scout troop,

“The city has 50 hotels, 20 built in the last four years,” says Canawati. “Everyone thought things would be better. But now there have been many cancellations after the statement.” Bethlehem’s economy is at stake.

Trump's statement didn't scare off tourists.Palestinian threats - from the exact same Fatah that threatened tourists in the 1960s, as well as from a host of other Palestinian terror groups - is what is scaring off tourists.

Palestinian Christians, scared as hell of their tenuous position under Arab rule, have learned that breaking ranks with the Muslim majority can be deadly. So they know exactly what to say to reporters when they are on the record.

Off the record, though, Palestinian Christians admit their fears, they talk about their persecution, and they are voting with their feet by relocating anywhere they can outside the Arab world.

As I quoted an article by Standpoint in 2014:

While Bethlehem remains the most populous Christian city in the West Bank, its Christian population, as in the West Bank generally, is shrinking dramatically. Only 50 years ago, Christians constituted 70 per cent of Bethlehem's population. Today they make up just 15 per cent. Christians number approximately 38,000 people in the West Bank, representing 2 per cent of the population.
"We used to be many. Now there are so few of us left. Everyone is trying to leave," says Samir, another salesman in a neighbouring shop selling Orthodox icons. Worrying about the consequences of complaining about the situation, Samir declined to use his real name.
"My mother doesn't like to walk in the street at night because her hair is uncovered, and people come up behind her and make rude comments," he tells me. During Christmas celebrations last December, women in their twenties on a visit from London with their parents and siblings complained of being harassed by a gang of male youths as they stood watching a festive performance in Manger Square. The gang did not desist until some local women came to stand nearby and told the boys to stop.
Everyone agrees that economic hardship and the low birthrate of the Christian community are the primary causes for decline. Yet in recent years Christians in Bethlehem also complain of a growing climate of intimidation from Islamic extremists.

It was Muslims who decided to downgrade Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem and Nazareth this year. It was Muslims who decided on violent riots to protest a symbolic declaration by Trump.

And it is the exact same Fatah that threatens Christian tourists, while claiming to represent them.

UPDATE: As of December 20, Israel expected more Christian tourists this year than last. The entire premise of the article seems to be mistaken.

Journalists who don't bother fact checking. Sheesh.

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12/23 Links: Another "Reconciliation" Bites the Dust; Israel to formally announce withdrawal from UNESCO; Pierre Rehov’s new film “Unveiling Jerusalem”

From Ian:

After investigation, Denmark to cut funding from some Palestinian NGOs

Denmark is to revoke funding from several Palestinian non-governmental organizations and tighten aid criteria for others after they were tied to anti-Israel activities.

Israel hailed the move as a victory and urged other European governments to follow suit.

The Danish Foreign Ministry made the announcement Friday, saying it would implement a more stringent vetting process for the transfer of funds to Palestinian NGOs.

“It is important that there is confidence that Danish assistance is going for the right purposes,” said Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen.

Samuelsen said that, following an investigation, most of the earmarked funds will be returned to Danish government coffers. He added that many organizations currently receiving Danish support would no longer do so.

“This is a welcome, moral, and crucially-important decision. Palestinian NGOs that have ties to internationally-designated terrorist organizations and that promote boycotts against Israel should not receive European governmental funding,” said Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan.

“I call on all other European governments to exercise the same moral responsibility and take similar steps,” he said.
(h/t Elder of Lobby)

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Another "Reconciliation" Bites the Dust

The idea that Hamas would disarm and stop digging tunnels and hand the Gaza Strip on a silver platter to Abbas and Fatah is pure fantasy.

From the outset, it was clear that Hamas had no intention of relinquishing its security control over the Gaza Strip and that it plans to continue holding hostage the two million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. How do we know that? The answer is simple: That is what Hamas leaders themselves have been stating in public almost every day for the past few weeks since the "reconciliation" agreement was announced in Cairo.

The Hamas-Fatah "reconciliation" accord failed because Hamas will continue to prepare itself to pursue the fight against Israel. It wants to continue digging tunnels along the border with Israel so that it can use them one day to kill or kidnap Israelis. Hamas wants to continue building tunnels along the border with Egypt so that it can use them to smuggle weapons and terrorists into and out of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas wants to hold on to the thousands of militiamen it employs and continues to recruit in the Gaza Strip because it will never allow anyone else to rule the Gaza Strip. Hamas denies that it had agreed to disarm or dismantle its security forces when it reached its agreement with Fatah.

The "reconciliation" deal, however, not only failed because of the controversy over the security control of the Gaza Strip.

The other reason the deal never materialized is because Hamas simply cannot accept a situation in which it is being asked to accept the so-called two-state solution. Hamas is worried that its partnership with Abbas and Fatah might be interpreted as a sign that Hamas recognizes the Oslo Accords and has abandoned its genocidal ideology, which calls for the destruction of Israel. As made clear by the Hamas leaders, their goal remains to seek the "liberation of all of Palestine, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river." This is Hamas's mantra.

The United Nations Long Ago Lost Its Moral Authority To Tut-Tut At Trump Over Jerusalem

On December 21, the 193-member UN General Assembly held an emergency special session at the request of Arab and Muslim states. The session was aimed at rebuking President Trump’s recent announcement to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Not surprisingly, the special session passed a non-binding resolution approved by 128 states, declaring Trump’s announcement is “null and void and must be rescinded.” But this resolution only serves as the latest example that the UN lacks moral authority to resolve the thorniest world affairs.

The UN’s Anti-Isrel Bias Is Appalling
While the UN charter claims it is an “organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members, “ Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is often subjected to the UN’s anti-Israel bias. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon justified Palestinian terror against Israeli civilians by saying, “it is human nature to react to occupation.”

The UN’s Human Rights Council, packed with human rights abusers such as Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Venezuela, permanently singles out Israel under a special agenda item and condemns Israel at every one of its meetings. The UN Commission on the Status of Women condemned Israel as the only country in the world violating Palestinian women’s rights, while ignoring the violations committed by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, and many abuses women suffer in countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.

The UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) singled out Israel as the only violator of “mental, physical and environmental health,” while ignoring the atrocities taking place at the time in Syria and Yemen. Interestingly, the same WHO appointed Zimbabwe’s 93-year-old authoritarian leader, Robert Mugabe, one of the worst human rights abusers in the world, as WHO’s goodwill ambassador in 2017. It had to recant its offer after worldwide outrage.

The UN has done little in the last six decades to come up with any reasonable solution to the Israel- Palestine conflict. By singling out Israel constantly and repeatedly as the target for its condemnation, the UN has already lost moral authority to be the right venue to solve this conflict.

Elliott Abrams: Honor and Dishonor at the United Nations

But then we get to the meat, where the General Assembly resolution continues:

“Expressing in this regard its deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem,

“Affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered, the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded….”

Israel made no “recent decision;” only the United States did. And now we are told it “must be rescinded,” to which one can only reply with the famous words Daniel Patrick Moynihan spoke in 1975 after the “Zionism is Racism” resolution passed: the United States “does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.”

Some will argue that it is unfair to compare these two resolutions. I think not. Both continue the General Assembly’s record of infamous maltreatment of Israel. No other country has ever been singled out for abuse in such a manner, and now the United States is abused for the crime of acknowledging the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. Only one nation on earth is not permitted to choose its capital, and the refusal to allow Israel that right is part and parcel of the delegitimization campaign against Israel of which this resolution is itself a part.

Now what? The United States has said there will be a price to pay for insulting us in this way. Withholding aid is unlikely to be the way forward. There are too many cases where humanitarian aid is needed and there is no reason to punish desperately poor people because of a vote their rulers made. In other cases American security interests are too important. But there are ways to make our displeasure known, such as canceling or delaying the visit of a top-level American official, or the visit to the United States by a foreign official. Downgrading ties quite informally is also possible: some foreign minister comes, and finds that unaccountably the President, National Security Advisor, and Secretary of State are unavailable, and that the mid-level officials who are available have just a few minutes rather than the time requested. Requests that are too important to deny can be slowed down. A creative diplomat will find plenty of ways to show that we remember and resent this gratuitous insult to our country.

From The New York Times:

A protest in Malaysia against President Trump’s decision to designate Jerusalem the capital of Israel brought together political foes on Friday, illustrating how solidarity with Palestinians has united disparate forces in the Muslim world.

Prime Minister Najib Razak headlined a rally of more than 1,000 people in the Putra Mosque compound in Putrajaya, the country’s administrative capital.

Also in attendance were former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the 92-year-old opposition leader, who has led a campaign to oust the scandal-plagued Mr. Najib, his former protégé, and Khalil Abdul Hadi, the head of the youth wing of the country’s main Islamic party. Mr. Mahathir joined a prayer service at the Putra Mosque, along with other politicians.

“Today, regardless of our political beliefs, we gather to show that as Muslims in Malaysia we are united in opposing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” Mr. Najib said Friday.

"There are 1.6 billion Muslims,” Mr. Najib said at the Malaysian rally, to vigorous applause. “There are only 13 million Jews. It does not make sense if 1.6 billion lose to the Jews. If we don’t unite, we will be looked down upon.”

That is honor./shame in a perfect little nutshell. It shows that the issue isn't Israel or Jerusalem or Palestinians - it is Muslims losing to the Jews.

And the prime minister's political opponents are even more antisemitic:

Lawyer-cum-activist Azhar Harun has suggested that Prime Minister Najib Razak is wrong in the way he is looking at the issue of Palestine and Jerusalem, following comments made at the “rally for Jerusalem” in Putrajaya yesterday.Firstly, the 1.6 billion has never lost to the 13 million. The 1.6 billion have lost to themselves. They are busy trying to kill each other, whether figuratively or even literally.
“Secondly, and more importantly, many among the 1.6 billion are absolute hypocrites. They lack the absolute and sincere willingness to free Palestine and the Palestinians from the clutch of the 13 million,” Azhar said.
He added that there has been no proper plan, if any, from Muslim leaders and nations other than making fiery speeches.
Azhar then asked Najib to accept the fact that social media tools, such as Twitter and Facebook, through which he has “voiced his disdain against the 13 million”, is owned by the 13 million.
He also made the distinction of how the Jews now hold economic power and indirectly, political power, including among Muslim leaders.
“They, themselves, rely on the Jews and the friends of the Jews, to make money and to pursue their selfish agenda. They lack altruism,” he said.
Azhar explained how the Jews had plotted their way back from the “pogrom and holocaust” to persevere and eventually gain “world dominance”.
“They did that, first by gaining control of the economy through the financial system, international trade, properties and the world’s essential productions.
“Then, with the wealth that they created, and the essential services that they excel in and even monopolise, they made themselves indespensable to everything that moves in this world, including politicians who were too eager to pursue their own agenda, even at the expense of the Palestinian cause.
“With that, they become an absolute necessity. With that they control the politicians and the politics,” he said
Azhad added that there were no fiery speeches or “sad poems” involved in the Jews’ efforts.
“They had a plan. They worked to execute that plan quietly. And that is why, the 1.6 billion ‘lost’ the plot. And they ‘lost’ to the 13 million.”

The further Muslims are from Israel (and therefore the Western media limelight), the more free they are to be public about their antisemitism. But make no mistake - deep down, the self-loathing and shame that came from weak, lowly Jews defeating the Muslims to gain Israel is the driving force behind all the political moves of the Muslim world towards Israel, and Palestinians are merely pawns.

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12/22 Links Pt2: Phillips: The true presidential collusion scandal; Top 12 BDS Fails of 2017; That mental illness problem again.....

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Straws in the wind or a dangerous delusion?

In Jerusalem this week, a touching film was screened about the Jews of Iraq. In Remember Baghdad, sensitively directed by British filmmaker Fiona Murphy, five Iraqi Jewish families look back at a scarcely imaginable time when Jews lived and prospered in Baghdad before persecution and massacres drove them out of the country.

One of these exiles, London resident Edwin Shuker, has recently made the deeply quixotic gesture of buying a house in Erbil, the embattled Kurdish city. As he emotionally explains, he feels a duty to reestablish a connection, however small, with ancient Babylon, which 2,500 years ago was home to one of the most ancient Jewish communities in the world.

No less striking is the reaction to this film from Iraqis themselves.

Earlier this month, it was screened at the British Academy in London to a mainly Iraqi Muslim audience, including a senior delegation from the Iraqi Embassy.

According to David Dangoor, a prominent Iraqi Jewish exile who also lives in London, the Iraqi ambassador’s political adviser said at the screening that, with the defeat of ISIS and extremism, the country is intent on pushing tolerance and diversity. Other members of the audience, said Dangoor, made very positive comments about Iraqi Jews.

There are other straws in the wind.

Last December, the Iraq Society of London’s Imperial College held an Iraq Day sponsored by the Iraqi Embassy at which the ambassador insisted that Iraqi Jews should have a stand. Although this sported many books about their lost community and related subjects all saying “printed in Israel,” Dangoor says it was the most popular of all the displays and its books all sold out.

Some Iraqi exiles scoff at the suggestion that Iraqi Muslims are now warming toward the Jews and Israel. Nevertheless, the Arab Muslim world is changing in startling ways.

Sohrab Ahmari: Swedish Secularism Targets Jewish Homeschoolers

The firebombing of a synagogue in Gothenburg thrust Sweden’s anti-Semitism crisis into global headlines. For years, Swedish Jews have lived in fear of such violence, which is almost always perpetrated by the country’s large and ill-assimilated Muslim minority. According to a 2013 European Union study, four out of five Jews decline to publicly identify themselves as Jewish in Sweden–a damning indictment of a country that likes to portray itself as one of the Continent’s most tolerant.

Street-level thuggery isn’t the only source of the crisis. As if Molotov cocktails and mobs chanting “we will shoot the Jews” weren’t enough, Swedish Jews also find themselves pressed by the reigning securalism. The Swedish state is full of solicitude for Jewish citizens in the wake of anti-Semitic attacks. But it also seeks to limit their freedom to practice their faith.

Consider Rabbi Alexander Namdar and his six-year battle to homeschool the four youngest of his 11 children in Sweden. The rabbi and his wife, Leah, arrived in the country in 1991 as emissaries of the Chabad movement, and they founded its first outpost in Scandinavia. Their center now serves some 4,000 Jews in Gothenburg, offering religious education, holding prayer and holy-day activities, and promoting Jewish life and culture in the city.

When it came to educating their own children, the public system was out of the question. The public schools were religiously inadequate and, more important, physically unsafe for Jews. Private schools were no better. All schools, including “private” and religious schools, are government-funded in Sweden, and therefore required to accept all-comers. For the Namdars, then, homeschooling was the only way to ensure their school-age children’s security and the Jewish character of their education.

Caroline Glick: Israel’s learning disabled Right

It is an iron rule of Israeli politics regularly disregarded by the political Right that left-wing parties govern from the Left, not the Right; center-left parties govern from the Left, not from the Center.

Despite the axiomatic nature of this rule, time after time, politicians and public figures on the Right have ignored it. Periodically, they make light of the distinction between governments run by their political camp and governments run by their leftist opponents.

To their credit, the converse is never true. Leftist politicians and activists never delude themselves that they are better off in the opposition. They always prefer governments led by their own camp to governments led by the Right.

For several years, this pathology unique to the political Right laid dormant – never entirely gone, but out of sight. Today, the Right’s pathological refusal to recognize that it is better off in charge than in the opposition is making a political comeback.

For the past month, a rapidly growing chorus of columnists and politicians – all of whom dwell on either the right-wing or left-wing margins of the nationalist camp – have decided to join the Left in its assault against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and call either directly or indirectly from his ouster from office.

The Left – like its rightist followers – characterizes its anti-Netanyahu campaign as an anti-corruption campaign.

EoZ top tweets of the week

Here are my top tweets of the week, sorted by number of impressions.

5.

Remember Omar Mishrawi, the @BBC reporter's son whose death from a Hamas rocket was blamed on Israel?

The case of Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh is worse.https://t.co/wiGQiXPOSF pic.twitter.com/MYgp2yhufK
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 20, 2017

I find it amusing that the idea of US money as leverage on a UN vote is considered so outrageous when the threat of Arab oil boycotts and terror has been what has fueled anti-Israel resolutions since 1970.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 21, 2017

Jerusalem is the only place in the world where 19 years of a 3000 year history is considered the "status quo" that must be preserved.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 21, 2017

When a member of the Arab American Association told Linda Sarsour about being sexually harassed by a Muslim man, the "feminist" @lsarsour sided with the man and threatened the woman. https://t.co/R8yUV7XitV

Sarsour is a hypocrite.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 18, 2017

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah literally giving illustrated lessons to children on how to attack Israelis with rocks https://t.co/Vwcz02TyJK @UNICEF and other NGOs silent. pic.twitter.com/Efzy1BCrR2
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 17, 2017

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