10/23 Links Pt2: Pro-Israel YouTube channel discovers YouTube has been hiding its videos; Czech lawmakers pass resolution condemning BDS; The Tlaib and Omar Affair – what we learned about the Democratic Party

From Ian:

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Pro-Israel YouTube channel discovers YouTube has been hiding its videos

Hiding pro-Israel videos and content is nothing short of antisemitic. Maybe some want to claim that it is anti-Israel and not antisemitic, but we just call that modern antisemitism. It might look different than it did before the modern state of Israel existed, but antisemitism is antisemitism. Stopping people from seeing content that supports the Jewish state – well, what else would that be called? It screams antisemitism!

If YouTube tried to stop people from seeing pro-Muslim videos, the world would be outraged. If YouTube tried to stop people from supporting the Palestinian Arabs, again, the world would be outraged. But when it comes to the Jewish people and the Jewish state, the world is silent.

YouTube shuts down Israeli NGO’s channel for showing UNRWA violence videos

YouTube has shut down the channel of the Center for Near East Policy (otherwise known as the Israel Resource Review) for what it claims were “repeated or severe violations of our Community Guidelines on Violence or Graphic content.”

In a letter sent last week to the center’s head, David Bedein, “the YouTube Team” said that the platform “prohibits violent or gory content posted in a shocking, sensational or disrespectful manner.

“We have decided to keep your account suspended,” the letter continued. “You won’t be able to access or create any other YouTube accounts.”

The letter, according to Bedein, was in response to an appeal by the organization. The YouTube channel was shut down for the first time about one week prior.

The Center for Near East Policy works to uncover corruption within the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA. The organization has produced several mini documentaries, including UNRWA in Jerusalem: Anatomy of Chaos, which examines what it describes as the “human tragedy of life in the UNRWA refugee camp of Shuafat, in the heart of Jerusalem.”

Another documentary, Terror of Return, was shot on the Gaza border in the summer of 2018, showing how “UNRWA’s right of return policy is the ideological foundation with which the next generation of children are brainwashed to believe.”

The documentaries are filmed by Arabs on site and produced by academics in Israel.

“The only real proof that UNRWA is violent is film,” Bedein told The Jerusalem Post. “We have statements by UNRWA children, but these are just statements. The films are convincing proof.”

He said he was shocked that a social media outlet would shut down a team of journalists for doing their jobs.

Czech lawmakers pass resolution condemning BDS movement

The lower house of the Czech parliament on Tuesday passed a resolution condemning all forms of anti-Semitism as well as calls for boycotts of Israel.

The non-binding resolution, which passed the Chamber of Deputies with an overwhelming majority, strongly condemns “all manifestations of anti-Semitism directed against individuals, religious institutions, organizations as well as the State of Israel, including the denial of the Holocaust.”

It further rejects “any questioning of the State of Israel’s right of existence and defense” and “condemns all activities and statements by groups calling for a boycott of the State of Israel, its goods, services or citizens.”

The resolution calls on the government in Prague not to offer any financial support to groups that promote a boycott of Israel and to intensify efforts to prevent anti-Semitism. It also urges the government to provide “greater security” to people and institutions that could become the target of anti-Semitic attacks.

During a brief discussion before the vote, lawmakers stressed the historically close relations between Israel and the Czech Republic.

Jan Bartošek, the head of the Christian Democrats faction in the chamber, who introduced the resolution, said the Czech Foreign Ministry helped formulate the wording of the resolution.

“I am convinced that Israel is our strategic partner and ally in the Middle East,” he said.

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09/07 Links: Israeli teen badly hurt in West Bank stabbing attack; Tlaib Meets With Members of Terrorism-Supporting, Anti-Israel Organization; Juan Cole: Michigan's Pontificator-in-Chief

From Ian:

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JPost Editorial: A changed paradigm

Greenblatt helped change the conversation from one that was just about placing blame on Israel to one that recognized that the Palestinians were just as much to blame for the lack of progress in the peace process, if not more.

The economic summit held in Bahrain in June which was attended by Israelis – including our own Herb Keinon – showed how Greenblatt could skillfully break down barriers and help realign the Middle East with an understanding that Israel is a partner to countries in the Gulf, not an adversary.

On the other hand, Greenblatt’s role and outspoken support of Israel led Palestinians to believe that the US was no longer an “honest” broker in the region. That alone may have buried the so-called “Deal of the Century”.

What will happen with that plan now remains to be seen. Greenblatt might have been the key convener and author of the plan, but it has other architects, including Jared Kushner and Friedman. Will it really come out as the administration says it will after Israel’s election? Will it succeed in bringing the sides together? Or will it automatically be rejected by Abbas’s intransigent government in Ramallah?

Ultimately, no matter how detailed and comprehensive a deal it is, it will face two major problems from the outset. The first is that any peace plan needs to have presidential involvement, without which it will be difficult, if not impossible, to bring the two sides to the table. Trump, who is already deep into his re-election campaign, does not appear to be the type willing to invest the time, effort and personal resources.

The second problem is in Jerusalem and Ramallah, where the leaders – Benjamin Netanyahu and Abbas – do not seem interested in negotiating or working on a resolution to the conflict. Netanyahu is never in a rush to get involved in a peace process and Abbas seems to prefer to wait for November 2020 and see who wins the presidential elections. Why rush into something if Trump might be out of the Oval Office in a year?

Greenblatt has played a positive role in this process. As much as he has done though, no one can want peace more than the sides themselves.

PA: Greenblatt resignation is Trump's "opportunity to rethink" peace plan

Jason Greenblatt, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Middle East peace, has announced he’ll be leaving his post.

According to administration officials, Greenblatt’s departure will wait until the US rolls out the political part of its long-awaited peace plan between Israel and the Palestinians sometime after the Israeli national election on September 17. It unveiled the plan’s financial segment last June during a conference in Bahrain.

Greenblatt has been a main pillar of President Trump’s Mideast team. He has worked alongside Trump’s powerful son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

His resignation could throw the future of the troubled peace initiative – it has already been rejected by the Palestinian Authority – into a swirl of ambiguity. The team itself has come to be viewed by the Palestinians as an extension of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s policies.

The PA has yet to officially respond to the news, but a high-ranking official in Ramallah told The Media Line he hoped that Greenblatt’s departure would create an “opportunity” for the White House to “rethink” its policy toward the Palestinians.

“His resignation,” the official said, asking to remain unnamed, “is a result of the growing conviction by the US administration that implementing the plan as originally conceived is not going to be easy. This does not mean that America will abandon attempts to pressure the Palestinian side, but Greenblatt's flight means he does not trust all the promises he and his team have made.”

Juan Cole: Michigan's Pontificator-in-Chief

Becoming a recognized authority in any field is an admirable achievement. Yet when professors pontificate on matters far beyond their expertise, the results can be risible. That's particularly true of academics whose track record in their own field leaves much to be desired.

Which brings us to Juan Cole, Exhibit A for professorial puffery and purple prose.

Breitbart has taken note of the University of Michigan Middle Eastern history professor's latest foray into a subject well beyond his competence: climate science. Never one for wise counsel when hysteria will do, Cole called on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to resign in the wake of Hurricane Dorian because "his inaction on fossil fuels will literally sink Florida."

Moreover, Cole believes studying the Middle East qualifies him for informed comment on the underground liquid gold that made the region rich: oil and, now, natural gas. To boot, being above ground and partaking of the climate on a daily basis, he fancies himself a meteorologist extraordinaire, able to leap logic in a single blog post – a skill at which we'll concede he excels. And if that's not enough, since Florida will "literally sink," we must add geology to his conquests.

As for Breitbart, Cole wasted no time responding to its article by labeling the conservative publication "far, far rightwing reused toilet paper," a "brown shirt rag," and a "racist piece of excrement" that makes "fascist sh** up, riffing on Mein Kampf." One might suspect Cole is a bit fixated on the scatological (calling Freud), but at least the implements at hand are recyclable.

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08/26 Links Pt2: Jewish Rabbis and Disloyalty; ‘The Squad’ Co-Sponsors Bill Claiming Israel Tortures Children; The Myth of Palestinian ‘Canaanites’

From Ian:

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Jewish Rabbis and Disloyalty

Like the boy in the tale of the emperor’s new clothes, President Trump has once again spoken a taboo truth: Some American Jews seem to be more loyal to an increasingly anti-Jewish and far-left Democratic Party than they are to the Jewish people. That’s not necessarily an immoral position for most American Jews to take: As individuals, they have no concrete duty of loyalty to the Jewish people, and it is their absolute right to seek stronger allegiances through political, rather than through religious or ethnic affinity. But American Jewish leaders, picked and paid as such by the Jewish community, are in a different position. Those Jewish leaders whose fiduciary duty of loyalty is to the Jewish missions of their organizations, but whose primary loyalty is to the Tlaibanized progressive movement and the party that champions it, are betraying that duty in some truly indecent ways.

Consider Reconstructionist Rabbi Toba Spitzer. As president of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis (MBR), and as the long-time rabbi of the cultish Congregation Dorshei Tzedek, Spitzer has aggressively promoted extreme left-wing causes. Many are direct threats to the Jewish community: embracing anti-Semitic Islamist extremists like Linda Sarsour, hostility toward the U.S. government, hostility toward the Israeli government, support for the anti-Semitic Occupy Wall Street movement, support for the anti-Semitic Black Lives Matter movement, and open border refugee policies are some examples. Yet Rabbi Spitzer and the MBR insist that these causes are Jewish religious imperatives, even as they proclaim Jew-haters like the Hamas front group, CAIR, and the terror-affiliated Islamic Society of Boston to be their friends and allies. At the same time, Spitzer and the MBR demonize in vicious terms those fellow Jews who don’t agree with their political viewpoints.

Last year, Spitzer wrote that, when it comes to Israel, American Jews should ask themselves: “Do we believe that the physical continuity of the Jewish people supersedes other Jewish values?” In other words: Should the Israelis choose to die en masse instead of committing what Rabbi Spitzer feels is the unforgivable sin of perpetuating the fight with the Palestinians? Implicitly answering in the affirmative, Spitzer challenged the “existential narrative” of Israel, arguing that Jewish sovereignty -- and the Jewish lives protected by its existence -- should not supersede the Jewish values of “lovingkindness” (chesed) and “mercy” (rachamim) toward “supporters of Hamas” -- her words, not mine.

Rabbi Spitzer’s question, and the argument implicit in it, comes from ignorance. According to the Jewish canon, which deals with the laws of armed conflict at length, war against the likes of Hamas is literally a mitzvah. Beyond Judaism, the principle of individual and collective self-defense of life and property is a universal human value enshrined in the law of nations and in free sovereign legal systems like those of the United States. It is an inhuman demand, most often made by totalitarians, that a class of people die or submit to being robbed without putting up a fight -- for the good of another class or people. (h/t MtTB)

John Podhoretz: About This Whole Loyalty Business… A reflection on the discourse.

We American Jews are not disloyal when we turn our backs on Israel and insult its friends and treat them as though they are enemies–and when we treat its enemies as though they are our friends, Peter Beinart.

At best, we are blind fools who do not see how a mere twist of fate has kept us from speaking Hebrew as a first language as we ride on a bus headed toward Mount Scopus that will be blown up or ensanguined by a knife-bearing terrorist.

At worst, we are far lower than merely disloyal. We are acting as active collaborators with those who wish our destruction. Such people do not bother sorting out which Jew is full of deep feeling for Palestinian rights and which Jew is a settler seeking to annex the entire West Bank. What they see is a Jew, and the Jew should be dead, and that Jew could be you or your mother or your baby.

Clearly, Trump shouldn’t have wandered into this minefield. But spare me the outrage about Trump saying no Jew should vote Democrat. This isn’t about Jews. Trump thinks no person in America should vote Democrat. This is just part of his own evolution as a partisan since he was a Democrat until about five minutes ago. Now, he’s a Republican, so he thinks everybody else should be, too, especially because he’s sure he so wonderful. Why is this surprising? Every liberal thinks everybody should vote liberal. Every conservative thinks everybody should vote conservative. Every Jew thinks every other Jew should vote the way he does. You think you’re right and the other side is wrong. You can work to understand the opinions of others and respect them, but you still think they’re wrong. If you didn’t, you would vote the other way.

Donald Trump says things no president has ever said before, and many of his rhetorical innovations have not been good for our political life or our country. But in this respect, he’s just like everybody else these days. (h/t IsaacStorm)

Commentary Magazine Podcast: How Much Outrage Can Trump Generate?

Hosted by Abe Greenwald, Christine Rosen, John Podhoretz, Noah Rothman
What was Trump doing talking about Jews and loyalty? Why does everyone have a cow every five minutes about what Trump says when he’s been doing the same thing for four years now? Whom does this help? Whom does it hurt? The whole podcast gang is back to offer maybe a little insight.

‘The Squad’ Co-Sponsors Bill Claiming Israel Tortures Children, And Parrots Other Terrorist Propaganda

Many Americans now know that Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar—two members of “the squad” of far-left congresswomen so much in the news—were recently barred from traveling to Israel to agitate for the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Fewer know all four members of “the squad,” including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, have co-sponsored a bill that accuses the Jewish state of torturing children. Fewer still know the claims made in the bill originate mostly from a group that could be described as the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization.

The so-called “Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act“ was re-introduced in the House by Rep. Betty McCollum, whose congressional district neighbors Omar’s in Minnesota. Until recently, McCollum was considered a supporter of Israel, but a critic of its government.

In February, however, she condemned “[t]he right-wing, extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu and its apartheid-like policies,” adding “there are now members of Congress who are not willing to ignore the Israeli government’s destructive actions because they are afraid of losing an election.”

McCollum’s invective prompted Mark Mellman of the Democratic Majority for Israel to respond that Netanyahu “came to office in a fair and democratic election in which every Arab citizen of Israel had the same right to vote as any Jewish citizen.” Mellman added that “by suggesting that Jews have disproportionate influence on U.S. elections, the Congresswoman exploits an anti-Semitic trope widely used by far right forces from Czarism to fascism.”

McCollum’s bill, while not directly exploiting the anti-Semitic trope of blood libel, trades on the accusation that Israel treats non-Jewish children cruelly and inhumanely. The bill claims Palestinian children detained by Israeli defense forces suffer torture and physical violence, are deprived of lawyers and parents, not informed of their legal rights, and so on. (h/t MtTB)

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07/24 Links Pt2: The Forward Opinion Page Defends “Pay-to-Slay”; BDS, Omar Shakir, and Israel Eliminationism; A CAIR Leader’s Consequence-Free Antisemitism

From Ian:

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The Forward Opinion Page Defends “Pay-to-Slay”

Last December, the Forward gaslit Jews with the claim that “‘From The River To The Sea’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means,” an opinion piece by University of Arizona professor Maha Nassar. In January, the publication gave space to Ariel Gold, an activist with the pro-Iran, pro-Maduro group Code Pink, to advocate for housing discrimination against Jews. This month, the publication once again defies all credible expectations, hitting yet another new low with justifications for Palestinian Authority payments to terrorists who murder Jews. (“Does The Palestinian Authority ‘Pay To Slay’ Jews? Here’s How We Palestinians See It,” July 10.)

In the second paragraph, author Muhammad Shehada claims “Pay to Slay” is a “canard” that has been debunked by the Washington Post. This is grossly dishonest. The Post fact-check to which he refers took issue only with the claimed total amount of the payments, $350 million, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted in a speech – but the Post’s piece acknowledges, without caveat, that such payments are in fact being made: “the State Department, by law, already deducts from its Palestinian aid budget a figure that represents the amount of money the Palestinian Authority pays to people convicted of terrorism. The exact number is classified ….”

The same Post article continues, “in the Palestinian Authority’s budget, one can find $350 million in annual payments to Palestinian prisoners, ‘martyrs’ and injured, but can one with certainty say they are all terrorists?”

BDS, Omar Shakir, and Israel Eliminationism

BDS and the accompanying delegitimization are also closely correlated with violent attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions. Data published by the UK Community Security Trust (CST) shows that when reports of clashes in Gaza increase, often quoting accusations from HRW and other NGOs, the number of antisemitic incidents also goes up. HRW and other members of the NGO network ignore the antisemitic implications of their campaigns.

To promote this demonizing agenda, Shakir and other BDS campaigners need to sell the defamatory mythology that Zionism, unique among nationalisms, is racism; that Israel is a uniquely evil pariah (racist, apartheid, genocidal) state - worse than Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, China; and that Israel uniquely fits the description of a “colonial settler state” that deserves to be eliminated. HRW and BDS allies have not invested resources in campaigns to boycot Russia over the occupation in Ukraine; or China regarding Tibet and the suppression of human rights in Hong Kong; or Turkey over its occupation of northern Cyprus, to cite a few examples.

For these reasons, in 2009, Robert Bernstein, who founded HRW in the 1970s, condemned the leaders of his own organization in an opinion piece in the New York Times. HRW’s activities and biases, he declared, played a leading role in turning Israel into a pariah state. Later, he detailed the criticism of the bias, false accusations, and demonization. But Roth and the HRW Middle East division leaders, steeped in anti-Israel campaigns, expanded the efforts and hired BDS activist Shakir.

All of this is vital to the context of the case being heard in the High Court, and goes far beyond the legal issues of whether the State’s refusal to renew Shakir’s work visa is lawful. Antisemitism and eliminationism are moral and political concepts, and will remain even if Shakir is technically allowed to stay.

Regardless of the High Court’s decision, Shakir has been exposed as a major activist in the elimination campaign. And far beyond the legal arena, HRW and Shakir, like Corbyn and his ilk, are clearly in violation of basic moral norms.

NGO Monitor: Omar Shakir Fact Sheet

In October 2016, Human Rights Watch (HRW) hired Omar Shakir to serve as its “Israel and Palestine Country Director.” Shakir has been a consistent supporter of a one-state framework and advocate for BDS (boycotts, divestment, sanctions) campaigns, fitting the longstanding HRW practice of hiring anti-Israel activists to serve in key positions relating to Israel.

In May 2018, due to Shakir’s BDS ties, the Israeli Ministry of Interior chose not to renew his work visa. HRW and Shakir have been challenging this decision in Israeli courts. In April 2019, he lost his case in the Jerusalem District Court and immediately appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court. The hearing will take place on July 25, 2019. While Shakir regularly assails Israel for its “lack of democracy,” in fact, the Israeli courts allowed him to remain in the country during his appeal process despite having no obligation to do so.

Omar Shakir’s background and history of anti-Israel activity exemplifies the organization’s troubling ideological approach to Israel and retreat from the universal principles of human rights.

High Court changes tune about quick hearing to expel HRW official

In a surprise move, the High Court of Justice postponed Thursday’s hearing on whether the Israel and Palestine director for Human Rights Watch could be deported for calls he made to boycott Israel.

After the court had earlier fast-tracked the case, the postponement left many scratching their heads.

Omar Shakir, the HRW official, has been fighting government efforts to use a 2017 law to expel him for his alleged support of boycotting Israel for 14 months. Shakir denies the charge, saying that he criticizes Israel in an attempt to improve its human rights record just as the HRW criticizes other countries.

Following a long battle before the Jerusalem District Court in which the government and a range of outside groups, such as NGO Monitor, obtained an order to expel him, Shakir appealed to the High Court. NGO Monitor is neutral on whether he must be expelled, but wants him to “own” his outlook.

The High Court appeared to side with Shakir by freezing the order to expel him, and pushing off the hearing until November. However, following additional efforts by the state and some of right-wing NGOs, the court was convinced to move up the date by nearly four months to July 25.

This decision itself was highly unusual, as the court typically delays cases and rarely expedites them. This makes the latest decision on Wednesday even rarer.

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06/27 Links Pt1: Will Arabs Accept Normalization with Israel?; Bahrain FM: Israel is here to stay, and we want peace with it; The Flawed Human Rights Watch Report on Gaza

From Ian:

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Will Arabs Accept Normalization with Israel?

Israel's peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan were a result of their leaders coming to terms with the fact that fighting Israel was too costly and that it was therefore preferable to make peace. But the treaties were not about the public's recognition of the legitimacy of Israel and the Zionist cause.

The idea of "normalization," as Israelis like to call it, is unacceptable to most Arabs. It means acceptance of Israel as a natural facet of the Middle Eastern neighborhood. But they don't, and they won't (and they don't think they should).

There is an antipathy towards Israel which is perceived as having imposed itself on the Arabs, inflicting a humiliating defeat upon them. It is too much for us to ask for them to not only accept Israel, but to embrace it too. This "cold peace" means that Israel must retain its military superiority to maintain deterrence.

The Arab world has entered a protracted period of crisis, with declining economies and rapidly growing populations creating unmanageable economic situations and instability. What happens if Jordan or Egypt collapses economically? How is Syria expected to be re-established? What lies ahead for the West Bank and Gaza? There is a zone of instability on Israel's doorstep and it could blow up at any time.

Honest Reporting: Palestinian Poverty: Who Isn’t Sharing the Wealth?

A key refrain in the Israeli-Palestinian narrative is the issue of the Palestinian poverty, allegedly resulting from the Israeli occupation. Surveys cite statistics that anywhere from 26 to 53 percent of Palestinians are poor. In October 2018, the United Nations warned that humanitarian aid to the Palestinians is at an all-time low, a sign of increasing Palestinian poverty.

This raises several key questions:
- How poor are the Palestinians relative to other economies?
- Is Palestinian poverty evenly distributed at all levels of society?
- What is being done to remedy Palestinian poverty and is it effective?
- Are there other nationalities that are poor, but do not get the attention that poor Palestinians get?
- Is Palestinian poverty a legitimate reason for the belligerent actions of its leaders?

The default reason for Palestinian poverty is “Israeli occupation.” Thus, by extension, since Israel wishes to prolong the occupation, Palestinian poverty is in Israel’s interest. As the argument goes, Israel wishes to force its enemy into submission and therefore keeps the Palestinians impoverished. This argument however doesn’t account for something befuddling – the wealth of the Palestinian leadership. If a nation wishes to defeat another nation, it looks to weaken the other nation’s leaders. In the case of the Palestinians:
Professor Ahmed Karima of Al-Azhar University in Egypt claims that Hamas has some 1,200 millionaires among its members, but is unwilling to reveal his sources.

Corroborating this claim, albeit on a lesser scale, Deborah Danan writes:
Pan-Arab London based paper, Asharq al Awsat, which is considered a reliable media outlet, recently ran a story saying there are 600 millionaires in Gaza.

Moreover, as Ynet detailed:
In 2010, Egyptian magazine Rose al-Yusuf reported that [Hamas leader Ismael] Haniyeh paid for $4 million for a 2,500 m sq parcel of land area in Rimal, a tiny beachfront neighborhood of Gaza City.

The Tikvah Podcast: Michael Doran on America’s Standoff with Iran

This Friday, the world’s leading economic powers will gather in Osaka, Japan, for the G20 summit, and though it won’t be on the official agenda, the rising tensions between Iran and the United States will loom large over the gathering. Since May, the Islamic Republic has carried out half a dozen acts of sabotage and violence against the U.S. and its allies. What is the story behind Iran’s escalating provocations? Is it looking for war? Is America? Earlier this week, Hudson Institute scholar Michael Doran offered a compelling account of the strategic thinking behind these recent Iranian actions. In “What Iran Is Really Up To,” published in Mosaic, Doran presents compelling evidence that Iran is seeking to sow fear among European governments in the hope that they will pressure the Trump Administration to reinstate two vital waivers that would ensure the continued viability of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. This is part of a long game, writes Doran, to revive the Iran Deal and preserve Iran’s path to a nuclear bomb. In our podcast this week, Michael Doran joins Jonathan Silver to explain his essay and its argument. He discusses why the revoked waivers are so important, why the Iranians believe their strategy will work, and why the biases of European governments and many American Democrats play right into Iranian hands.

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06/26 Links Pt1: Dershowitz: How Does Turning Down a $50 Billion Economic Plan Help the Palestinians?; Bahrain FM: Israel is here to stay, and we want peace with it

From Ian:

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Alan Dershowitz: How Does Turning Down a $50 Billion Economic Plan Help the Palestinians?

Neither the Palestinian Authority nor the Hamas tyranny over the Gaza Strip are functioning democracies with structures that assure that the opinions of their citizens will be taken into account. But neither could those leaders totally ignore “the street” — Palestinian public opinion. The problem is that the street will not even know what their leaders are denying them unless they become aware of the contents of the U.S. economic plan.

There is no free, independent media on the West Bank or Gaza Strip. Residents can tune into Israeli or international media but they have been taught not to trust either. So it is uncertain whether the Palestinian street will know what their leaders are depriving them of by not engaging with the U.S. and its beneficial economic proposals. It is certainly possible that Palestinian leaders will once again miss an opportunity to help their people and that their people will be misinformed about that missed opportunity.

This may be the Palestinians’ last chance for a peaceful resolution of the long conflict with Israel that has caused so much misery and so many deaths on both sides. When then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat turned down the offer of a two-state solution from President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. called Arafat’s decision a “crime” against the Palestinian people. Will Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas commit yet another crime against his people by refusing even to listen or negotiate?

If he were to agree to negotiate in earnest about the proposed peace plan — the geopolitical elements of which will be rolled out toward the end of this year — there is a significant likelihood that the end result of mutual, painful compromises may be a Palestinian state. If he persists in his refusal to negotiate, he and his people will have no one but themselves to blame for the persistence of an untenable status quo.

The U.S. has presented the first phase of its plan. It’s an excellent, fair start. The ball is now in the Palestinian court. They should reconsider their knee-jerk rejection and begin negotiations that may be the only road to statehood.

Bahrain FM to Times of Israel: Israel is here to stay, and we want peace with it

Bahrain sees the US-led economic workshop taking place in Manama this week as a possible “gamechanger” tantamount in its scope to the 1978 Camp David peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, the Gulf state’s foreign minister said Wednesday, also firmly backing Israel’s right to exist.

“We see it as very, very important,” Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa told The Times of Israel on the sidelines of the “Peace to Prosperity” workshop.

Khalifa also stressed that his country recognizes Israel’s right to exist, knows that it is “there to stay,” and wants peace with it.

He said the US-organized conference here, which is focused on the economic aspects of the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, could be like Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in 1977, which helped pave the way to the Camp David Accords and the normalizing of relations between Egypt and Israel.

“As much as Camp David 1 was a major gamechanger, after the visit of President Sadat — if this succeeds, and we build on it, and it attracts attention and momentum, this would be the second gamechanger,” Khalifa said.

In an interview in his suite at Manama’s posh Four Seasons hotel, Khalifa did not commit to normalizing diplomatic ties with Israel in the near future, but unequivocally affirmed Israel’s right to exist as a state with secure borders.

“Israel is a country in the region… and it’s there to stay, of course,” he said.

“Who did we offer peace to [with] the [Arab] Peace Initiative? We offered it to a state named the State of Israel, in the region. We did not offer it to some faraway island or some faraway country,” Khalifa continued, referring to a Saudi-backed peace framework.

“We offered it to Israel. So we do believe that Israel is a country to stay, and we want better relations with it, and we want peace with it.”

Palestinians: Never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity

Leaders from several Arab nations will gather in Bahrain this week to discuss a 50 billion dollar relief plan and a possible path to peace between Palestinians and Israelis. The economic incentive program for building a future Palestinian state will be discussed at the “Peace to Prosperity” conference, co-hosted by the U.S. government and Bahrain. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco are participating. The Palestinians are boycotting the conference- Israeli government officials were not invited, but a business delegation from Israel will attend.

Under the plan, donor nations and investors would contribute about $50 billion over 10 years, with $28 billion going to the Palestinian territories. States that have absorbed Palestinian refugees int he past will also receive a significant amount of funding. $7.5 billion will be earmarked to Jordan, with $9 billion going to Egypt and $6 billion going to Lebanon.

Among 179 proposed infrastructure and business projects is a $5 billion transport corridor to connect the West Bank and Gaza. The proposed plan will facilitate billions of dollars of investment in Palestinian electricity, water, and telecommunications in an effort to create efficient transmission and distribution networks. Tourism, health care and cultural institutions will also be funded.

The Palestinian Authority is boycotting the conference, although 15 private Palestinian business leaders were expected to attend. President Mahmoud Abbas said focusing on economic issues “is unacceptable before the political situation is discussed.”

Comprehensive peace proposals have been presented to Palestinian leadership many times times in the past, and have all been rejected.

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06/13 Links Pt1: Dershowitz: International Law Supports Israel Retaining Some of the West Bank; Nikki Haley: Trump's peace plan puts Israel's security first

From Ian:

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Alan M. Dershowitz: International Law Supports Israel Retaining Some of the West Bank

I participated in the drafting of UN Security Council Resolution 242 back in 1967, when Justice Arthur Goldberg was the U.S. Representative to the UN. I had been Justice Goldberg's law clerk, and he asked me to come to New York to advise him on some of the legal issues surrounding the West Bank. The major controversy was whether Israel had to return "all" or only some of the territories captured in its defensive war against Jordan.

The end result was that the binding English version of the resolution deliberately omitted the crucial word "all," which both Justice Goldberg and British Ambassador Lord Caradon publicly stated meant that Israel was entitled to retain some of the West Bank. Moreover, under Resolution 242, Israel was not required to return a single inch of captured territory unless its enemies recognized its right to live within secure boundaries.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman is right in two respects: (1) Israel has no right to retain all of the West Bank, if its enemies recognize its right to live within secure borders; (2) Israel has "the right to retain some" of these territories. The specifics are left to negotiation between the parties.

The reality is that Israel will maintain control over traditionally Jewish areas, as well as the settlement blocs close to the Green Line. I know this because Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has told me this on more than one occasion when we have met.

The attack on Ambassador Friedman is mere posturing by the Palestinian leaders and their supporters. The realpolitik, recognized by all reasonable people, is that Israel does have a right to retain some, but not all, of the West Bank.

The Palestinians can end the untenable status quo by agreeing to compromise their absolutist claims, just as Israel will have to compromise on its claims. The virtue of Ambassador Friedman's statement is that it recognizes that both sides must give up their absolutist claims, and that the end result must be Israeli control over some, but not all, of the West Bank.

Ambassador Danny Danon: Israel and the US, winning together

For decades, the United Nations has served as the home turf of Arab countries who used it to batter the State of Israel and the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. In recent years, though, the rules of the game have changed, and no longer finding itself having to deal with a last-minute tie, Israel now takes the field with a significant advantage.

The strength of the alliance between the United States and Israel is a prominent layer in our policies at the UN. Our cooperation at the forefront of the diplomatic stage helps leverage the efforts of both Israel and the US.

In December, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and I submitted a motion condemning the Hamas terrorist movement to the General Assembly. For the first time in the organization’s history, 87 countries voted to condemn Hamas and admitted the terrorist group was a global problem. This helped leverage the efforts Israel is leading to have Hamas defined as a terrorist organization at the UN.

At the same time, when Washington needed our help, we were the first to stand alongside the US. Every year, a resolution is submitted demanding the US revoke its economic embargo on Cuba. Israel was the only country outside the US at the UN to oppose the resolution in last year’s vote.

A few days ago, one of Hamas’ terrorist arms in Lebanon, disguised as a human rights organization by the name of “Shahed,” tried to gain observer status at the UN. We informed our counterparts in the American delegation and together, enlisted a majority of countries within the framework of an international campaign that succeeded in preventing a Hamas delegation from penetrating the UN.

But the cooperation does not begin and end in New York; it is spread across the various branches of the UN, including the infamously anti-Israel Human Rights Council in Geneva. One year ago, the US announced that while it would continue to fight for human rights, it would no longer do so within the framework of an organization so blind with Israel hatred. The US quit the council and called on other countries to follow suit.

Nikki Haley: Trump's peace plan puts Israel's security first

Nikki Haley may no longer be the United States permanent representative to the United Nations, but her passion for defending Israel is as strong as ever.

The Jewish community in the United States and Israelis by and large treated Haley as the superstar of the Trump administration because she relentlessly took the UN to task and put a mirror in front of the international organization, revealing just how biased it was toward Israel.

Now, as a private citizen, she takes pains to assure Israelis they have nothing to fear regarding the administration’s peace efforts, just weeks before the rollout of the economic component of its peace plan. She says President Donald Trump’s peace team considers Israel’s security paramount.

Haley sat down for an interview with Israel Hayom Editor-in-Chief Boaz Bismuth on Thursday in New York. The following are excerpts from the interview. The full version will be published on Friday.
Former US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley with Israel Hayom Editor-in-Chief Boaz Bismuth | Photo: Nir Arieli

Q: Later this month, the administration will roll out the economic component of its peace plan. Some in Israel are worried that the US would want something from Israel in return for recognizing Jerusalem as its capital and recognizing its sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Should Israel be worried about the plan?

“Israel should not be worried. Because through the Middle East plan, one of the main goals that [Senior Adviser to the President] Jared Kushner and [US Special Representative for International Negotiations] Jason Greenblatt focused on was to not hurt the national security interests of Israel. They understand the importance of security, they understand the importance of keeping Israel safe. I think everybody needs to go into it with an open mind, everybody should want a peace plan. Everybody should want to make way for a better situation in Israel and I think it can happen. So rather than pushing back against what we don’t know, I hope everybody would lean in on what the possibilities of what the peace plan could look like and think of a better life for everyone.”

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06/05 Links Pt2: BDS: The Big Lie; Glick: Ron DeSantis Takes on the BDS Movement; How Ancient Coins and Seals Prove the Jewish Connection to Jerusalem

From Ian:

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BDS: The Big Lie

To counteract BDS it’s not enough merely to condemn the movement’s lies, Nelson writes. In a series of chapters interspersed throughout Israel Denial, Nelson shows his commitment to the imperfect yet inspiring reality of Israel, giving his own ideas about increasing peace between Israelis and Palestinians through a series of trust-building Israeli concessions like ceding parts of the West Bank’s Area C to the Palestinian Authority. The point is to create a two-state dynamic even without a peace deal. He describes his own practice of “teaching for empathy” by presenting Jewish and Palestinian poets together. Nelson’s Israel is not the mythic realm of demons fantasized by BDS advocates but an actual place that contains signs of hope.

Yet professors and students like Nelson are often denied chances to share their experiences. Instead they are silenced by BDS, which seeks to advance their agenda not through reasoned debate but by a full-frontal assault on free speech. BDS adherents have in the last few years tried to shut down 90 mostly Israeli speakers, some of whom were bona fide leftists. Tactically, the BDS movement uses violence and extreme pressure to forcefully prevent reasoned discussion about Israel on campus, and make university faculty, administrators, and students afraid.

It is in the context of the BDS movement’s campaign of continuous pressure and often violent intimidation against those who hold more nuanced, fact-based views that the apparatus of academic BDS publications and conferences should properly be understood. The jargon of po-mo theory, words like “apartheid,” and baldfaced lies about organ harvesting and biological warfare are intended to intimidate while serving as a fig leaf for the eliminationist fantasies they are intended to justify. Even when the facts are wrong, the fact that books are published and conferences are held allows nervous administrators to pretend that the BDS movement is somehow observing normal rules of academic discourse, rather than violating them.

Yet perhaps because of these social pressure tactics, BDS gets a free ride in much of the mainstream media. Their violent heckling of speakers, their traffic in disinformation, and their opposition to dialogue and open debate are nowhere mentioned, for example, in a recent New York Times Magazine piece by Nathan Thrall. When BDS looks in the mirror, what it sees is the noble faces of crusaders against injustice—but that’s because the mirror is cracked, too.

These days, American universities give awards to student BDS organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, which dutifully parrot the hateful nonsense spewed by their professors, in a grotesque parody of what a humanistic education should look like. Instead, the academy ought to follow the German Bundestag, which declared on May 17 that “the pattern of argument and the methods of BDS are anti-Semitic,” and, the Bundestag added, clearly reminiscent of Nazi-era anti-Jewish boycotts. It’s time that these words became as commonly accepted in America as they are in Germany.

Caroline Glick: Ron DeSantis Takes on the BDS Movement

In greeting DeSantis, Minister Erdan said, “Governor DeSantis has been one of the greatest and most consistent friends of Israel and of the U.S.-Israel alliance. Governor DeSantis promised that under his leadership, Florida would be the most pro-Israel state in America and he has kept his promise. In the name of the government and people of Israel, I want to thank Governor DeSantis for all that he has done.”

DeSantis’s decision to include the trip to Judea in his itinerary demonstrated two key facts.

First, elections matter. While it is true that Gillum tried to distance himself from his ties to BDS groups once they became an election issue, the fact is that he enjoyed long-standing, close ties to these groups. Gallium also harshly criticized President Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and Israel’s steps to defend its border with Gaza from penetration by Hamas-organized mobs.

Had Gillum been elected, there is little chance Florida would today be leading the campaign to protect U.S. business, academic and cultural ties with Israel and defeating BDS campaigns to criminalize and discriminate Jews in the U.S. or in any part of Israel.

The second lesson from DeSantis’s visit is that the Palestinians are right about one thing: if Jewish life can be delegitimized in any part of Israel, then it will inevitably be delegitimized in all parts of Israel. You cannot defend Israel’s right to exist in general while claiming Jews are criminals for living or working or building in specific parts of the country.

Florida’s DeSantis removes Airbnb from state blacklist

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that he has decided to remove Airbnb from the state’s blacklist after it renounced its decision not to advertise apartments in Judea and Samaria.

“As governor, I have an obligation to oppose policies that unfairly target Israel,” DeSantis wrote on his Twitter account. “Once @Airbnb ended their discriminatory policy toward Israel, we decided to remove them from the @FloridaSBA Scrutinized Companies List.”

Florida sanctioned the global vacation website in January after it announced a decision to boycott West Bank settlements.

The state was able to make the move because, according to Florida law, any company that engages in Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) actions can be placed on the Scrutinized Companies List. The state of Florida is prohibited from investing in publicly traded companies on that list or contracting with them for services. But such companies can still engage in commercial activities in the state.

In April, Airbnb announced it would back off of its plan to remove Jewish rentals in Judea and Samaria from its rental listings, to end lawsuits brought by hosts and potential hosts.

Argentina embassies to mark 25 years since AMIA Jewish center bombing

Argentina’s embassies in 20 cities around the world will mark the 25th anniversary of the terrorist bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires in a joint initiative with the World Jewish Congress.

The July 18, 1994 blast killed 85 people and injured more than 300.

The international commemorations began on Monday in Santiago, Chile, and are scheduled to continue this week in Berlin. Some of the other cities that will hold events through July 18 are New York, London, Madrid, Moscow, Brasilia, Canberra, Tel Aviv, Rome, and the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva.

On Monday in Santiago the president of the local Jewish community, Gerardo Gorodischer, remembered the Chileans that were killed in the attack: Carlos Avendaño Bobadilla and Susana Kreiman.

The Argentinean ambassador to Chile, Jose Octavio Bordon, called for international cooperation from “the democratic countries of the world to put on trial in Argentina the Iranian citizens that are under an international arrest warrant” for their alleged responsibility in the attack.

No one yet has been convicted of the bombing, though Argentina – and Israel – have long pointed the finger at Tehran, implicating several former Iranian officials, and Hezbollah in the AMIA attack and also in the March 17, 1992 terrorist attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires.

🆕PODCAST: Lyn Julius’ book, Uprooted: 3,000 years of Jewish life vanished overnight
▶️A total rebuke to @georgegalloway’s #ApartheidIsrael tropes
▶️inc @HillelNeuer’s “Where are your Jews?”@UNHumanRights with his personal permission
▶️Mizrahi history

🎧 https://t.co/UX3XTzzeMO pic.twitter.com/YNFZLrGETe

— Jonny Gould (@jonnygould) June 4, 2019

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04/06 Links: Netanyahu vows to annex settlements in WB if he wins; Ben Rhodes is back for more Israel-bashing; Front-Page New York Times Antisemitism Article Is Total Nonsense

From Ian:

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Netanyahu vows to annex settlements in West Bank if he wins election

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began a campaign over the weekend to take seats away from the Likud’s satellite parties on the Right, in an effort to win more seats for Likud than Blue and White in Tuesday’s election, and ensure that President Reuven Rivlin will ask him to form the next government.

As part of that effort, in an interview with Channel 12 on Saturday night, Netanyahu vowed to annex territories in settlements and evacuate the illegal West Bank herding village of Khan Al-Ahmar, if he wins another term.

“We are dealing [with the Americans] on exercising Israeli sovereignty on Ma’aleh Adumim and other things,” Netanyahu said. “Everyone understands the next term will be fateful for guaranteeing our security and our control over key territory in Judea and Samaria.”

In weekend interviews with Channel 13 and the right-wing Makor Rishon and Israel Hayom newspapers, Netanyahu vowed to not permit a single settlement or a single resident of them to be evacuated.

“That [evacuation] will not be happening,” he told Channel 13. “If that’s the plan, there will be no plan.”

In the Makor Rishon interview, Netanyahu promised more clearly than ever that he would form a government with right-wing parties and not invite Blue and White to join his coalition.

“Anyone with a brain understands that a unity government cannot be formed,” he said.

Ben Rhodes is back for more Israel-bashing

In the same Times article, a “former member of the Obama White House” (sounding an awful lot like Rhodes) revealed that the Obama administration played a central role in that U.N. Security Council vote against Israel in the autumn of 2016.

You remember that one. It was a run-of-the-mill U.N. resolution declaring that the Jewish presence in the Old City of Jerusalem was “illegal.” The kind of resolution American presidents routinely vetoed many times in the past. But not President Obama. He had secretly decided to abstain, so that the resolution would pass.

The problem for Obama was the timing: The vote was scheduled to take place shortly before that year’s presidential election. So the Obama team manipulated the schedule. “There is a reason the U.N. vote did not come up before the election in November,” the anonymous “former official” told the Times. “It was because you were going to have skittish donors. That, and the fact that we didn’t want [Hillary] Clinton to face pressure to condemn the resolution or be damaged by having to defend it.”

At the time, of course, Team Obama loudly denied the Israeli government’s claim that the White House was secretly planning to let the U.N. resolution pass. Obama aides like Rhodes, on the record and off the record, vigorously attacked critics who raised such suspicions. But now we know that the suspicions were well-founded.

Why does any of this matter now, years after Obama left office?

First, it matters because Obama is still a major force in the Democratic Party. He will influence the outcome of the race for the Democratic nomination in 2020. His views on Israel will continue to shape the party’s position.

Second, it matters because it sheds some light on why Obama rushed to appoint Rhodes to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council in the waning hours before he left office—and why Rhodes wanted the appointment. Rhodes has harsh opinions about Israel. He seems proud that he helped trick the public into accepting the Iran deal. And he’s proud of his role in Obama’s policies towards Israel—in fact, he regrets that they weren’t harsher. Clearly, Rhodes wants a platform that will help keep him and his opinions in the public spotlight.

Serving on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council gives Rhodes cover as he plans his next move. You can almost hear him warming up the argument: “You can’t accuse me of being anti-Israel—I’m part of the leadership of the Holocaust Museum!” Sadly, Israel and American Jewry have not heard the last of him.

Sarsour Whitewashes Omar

Raging Linda Sarsour recently tried to whitewash her buddy Omar's obvious anti-semitism in a recent speech:

But what has happened often from White Jews when they call you call an antisemite, is they look at Muslim women from an orientalist trope, that we are inherently antisemitic because we are Muslims, right?

"It's a stereotype that has been used often against the Muslim community. That we are antisemitic until proven otherwise. That we are guilty until proven innocent. It's not okay."

"She didn't know nothing in Somalia, about no antisemitism. This is something she is learning along the way now that she is a legislator

Where to begin? White Jews. Two of the most hated groups among leftists and Muslims like Sarsour and Omar evidently. The inclusion of the word white is an attempt I suppose to do the old good Jew Bad Jew thing; a common anti-semitic trope. This is also an attempt, like all the rants these bigots give, to mainstream antisemitic tropes.

Orientalist? Well, this is a reference to failed Jew hater and PLO member Edward Said's definition of "a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates and distorts differences of Arab peoples and cultures as compared to that of Europe and the U.S. It often involves seeing Arab culture as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous" Exotic? Eye of the beholder. Backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous? Well, look at what they do and say. Geeze, a whole Arab nation, Brunei has progressed so much it is now stoning gays in 2019. If that ain't backward, uncivilized and dangerous, I don;t know what is.

Stereotype? Well, if it walks like duck....show me a Muslim that isn't Pro-BDS or or anti-Israel and I'll show you a Muslim that isn't antisemitic. Until then, the shoe fits Linda.

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03/06 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Why the Labour party cannot deal with its antisemitism; Sanders Fills Ranks With Anti-Israel Advocates Tied to Anti-Semitism Scandal

From Ian:

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Melanie Phillips: Why the Labour party cannot deal with its antisemitism

The left has absorbed the Marxist concept that the world is divided into the powerful and the powerless. Those with power can never be good; those without power, like the Palestinians, can never be bad. Those who make money have power over those who don’t. Those who make money are bad; those without money are good. Jews make money. Therefore Jews are powerful and bad.

Worse, Israel is militarily powerful. That is seen as its crime; and it’s also why anti-Israelism is umbilically connected to antisemitism. The fact that Jews are now equipped with military power, albeit solely to defend themselves against annihilation, breathes life into the paranoid delusion that the Jews are so powerful they pose a threat to everyone else.

Antisemitism is now surging across continents in an unholy alliance between the left, neo-Nazis and the Islamic world.

Such a derangement of reason on a global scale is terrifying and, as with antisemitism throughout the ages, ultimately unfathomable. For the west, however, support for Palestinianism has clearly destroyed its moral compass.

The left believes that it is morally unimpeachable and simply incapable of racism. Its support for the Palestine cause demonstrates and reinforces its self-righteousness.

It won’t begin to address its own antisemitism, therefore, until and unless it acknowledges that the evil it has supported abroad has seeded itself not just in the Labour party but throughout the “anti-racist” world.

Sanders Fills Ranks With Anti-Israel Advocates Tied to Anti-Semitism Scandal

Two of Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I., Vt.) top advisers have deep ties to the anti-Israel community and were chastised several years ago for their involvement in an anti-Semitism scandal that gripped a prominent Washington, D.C., think-tank.

Sanders, a self-proclaimed Democratic-socialist who has once again thrown his hat into the ring for a 2020 presidential bid, has begun to rely in recent months on two staffers: Foreign policy adviser Matt Duss and campaign manager Faiz Shakir, both of whom faced charges of promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories during their time at the Center for American Progress, or CAP, a liberal think-tank.

Sanders's dependence on Duss and Shakir has been making waves in the pro-Israel and Jewish community in recent months, given the duo's prominent role in CAP's 2012 anti-Semitism row, which saw several staffers at the organization's Think Progress blog rebuked for invoking age-old canards about Jewish control of money and politics. Duss has faced additional scrutiny in the subsequent years for publishing Nazi-era propaganda posters and steadfastly standing against the U.S.-Israel alliance

As the matter of anti-Jewish bias in prominent D.C. political circles makes its way back into the news following a series of anti-Semitic comments by freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), many in the pro-Israel community are beginning to raise questions about Sanders' choice to fill his ranks with individuals closely tied to some of the most prominent anti-Israel causes.

In 2012, Duss was CAP's Middle East director, while Shakir served as editor-in-chief of the group's Think Progress blog, which has since become regarded as a hotbed for anti-Israel activism.

During their tenure at CAP, Duss and Shakir emerged at the forefront of a scandal involving several Think Progress bloggers who accused pro-Israel Jews and members of Congress of being "Israel firsters," a term implying that those who support the Jewish state have dual loyalties.

The scandal rocked CAP for several months and drew condemnation across the board, including from the Obama administration, which distanced itself from Duss, Shakir, and the rest of Think Progress's former staff.

Bernie Sanders staffer fired for anti-Netanyahu rant hired to run B’Tselem USA

The Israeli human rights organization B’tselem said Tuesday that former Bernie Sanders adviser and long-time anti-occupation activist Simone Zimmerman has been appointed the new director of its American operations.

Zimmerman is an “American Jewish anti-occupation activist” who will “work to amplify B’Tselem’s voice among US policy makers and the broader public,” the rights group said in an official statement.

“As a Jewish activist who has worked for years to challenge my own community’s denialism about the reality of the occupation, I am excited to take on my new role,” the statement quoted Zimmerman as saying. “I hope to deepen the partnership between the anti-occupation movements working on the ground and those working here in the USA.”

In 2016 Zimmerman was suspended from her role as adviser to US Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign after reports surfaced of her harsh and foul-mouthed criticism of Israeli policies and of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

After Zimmerman, a former J Street student activist, was hired by the Sanders campaign, it was discovered she previously wrote on Facebook, “Bibi Netanyahu is an arrogant, deceptive, cynical, manipulative asshole,” according to the Washington-based Free Beacon.

Honest Reporting: Boycotting Israel – Is it Free Speech?

Boycotting Israel and other Western countries
Most of the Western world treats boycotts similarly to the United States. For example, courts and legislative bodies in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Chile, and others have struck down local or private BDS activities or even passed anti-BDS laws, on similar principles.

The Irish senate advanced legislation banning products originating from Israeli settlements in disputed territories, yet Ireland’s attorney general opposes passing the measure into law, warning that it may violate European Union trade rules, which supersede the individual laws of EU member states.

Indeed, even the less onerous measure of applying special labels to settlement goods has been struck down in other EU countries, such as Greece.

While EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, declared that boycotting Israel constitutes “free speech,” this is merely a talking point which does not constitute binding law. By contrast, the EU’s 2016 Report on Competition Policy interprets the EU trade law as including, “the need to fight against unfair collective boycotts.” The chair of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Israel confirmed that this language was indeed intended to prevent private boycotts against Israel (as well as others) as a matter of EU trade law.

EU law is evolving, but its underlying philosophy appears to be that no party should be allowed to interfere with the trade priorities set by the EU itself.

In conclusion
There was indeed an American boycott against South Africa: enacted by the United States Congress under the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. The United States also enacted an embargo against Cuba, waged economic warfare against Japan, imposed sanctions on Iran, and more. The common denominator among them is that they were imposed by the United States federal government. The Constitution does not hold that boycotts are illegal, only that private, concerted boycotts of foreign nations are illegal.

Once we strip away the slogans and propaganda we see the truth: a boycotting Israel has never been “free speech,” by any laws. Open debate is essential to democracy, but taking illegal, private actions against foreign nations undermines our entire system of government.

70 years of transcripts from UK’s parliament show clear ‘obsession’ with Israel

Using a new analytics tool, researcher David Collier picks up 17,667 parliamentary references to the Jewish state — more than Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine combined

By expending so much energy discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, West Bank settlements or Gaza, parliamentarians – who have only a finite amount of time to spend in debates – grapple less with issues around Islamist extremism, terrorism, corrupt and undemocratic governance, economic weakness, and Iranian expansionism which lay at the root of the Middle East’s ills.

Collier also notes the rise in mentions of anti-Semitism in parliament in recent years.

“It is part of a trend. It isn’t tied to a single individual, nor can accusations of anti-Semitism simply be a plot to unseat Corbyn,” he asks. “If the anti-Semitism ‘smear’ exists to unseat Corbyn, why were there spikes of discussion in 2004, ‘8, ‘9, ’11 and ’14?”

“The rise of Corbyn is linked to the rise of anti-Semitism, in that extremist ideologies have entered the mainstream … Corbyn is a symptom of a problem that is getting worse,” he writes.

Collier argued to The Times of Israel that the increasing preoccupation with Israel and rising anti-Semitism were “absolutely connected.”

“Whilst not all anti-Israel activity is rooted in anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism is part and parcel of anti-Israel activism,” he said. “Any rise in one, will inevitably bring about a rise in the other.”

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03/06 Links Pt1: Ruthie Blum: Nothing new in Ramallah; Honest Reporting: Debunking the ‘Disproportionate Force’ Charge; Germany’s celebration of Iran’s murderous regime is nothing new

From Ian:

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Ruthie Blum: Nothing new in Ramallah

Abbas clearly intends to adhere to this fatwa, as he made clear during a trip to Egypt in January.

"I will not end my life as a traitor," he told reporters in Cairo. "I can say 'no,' and I have a people that can say 'no' beside me. … The doors are closed to the U.S. As long as it does not retract its decisions against the Palestinian people, no Palestinian should meet with the American leadership, no matter what their role is."

More recently, on a visit to Iraq on Monday, Abbas told leaders in Baghdad that the Trump administration "is encouraging Israel to be a state above the law," as well as "biased and not suitable to be a sponsor of peace talks."

So much for the "deal of the century," whose details have yet to be revealed. So much for the fantasists in Israel and abroad who continue to harbor any hope.

Honest Reporting: Debunking the ‘Disproportionate Force’ Charge

It’s unequivocal that greater numbers of Palestinians than Israelis have been killed or injured during periods of intense conflict. This has repeatedly led to accusations that Israel has employed “disproportionate force” for security measures and during military operations over the years.

The term has has been abused by activists, journalists, non-governmental organizations and politicians who have employed it without bothering to research precisely what disproportionate actually means in terms of international law. One thing it does not mean an imbalance in casualty figures proves Israeli disproportionate force.

So what does it mean? Here are some explanations.

Operation Cast Lead

The UN’s Goldstone Report into the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead, later recanted by its author Judge Richard Goldstone, asserted that Israel had launched a “deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”

Back in 2011, former commander of UK forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp stated in response:

no one has been able to tell me which other army in history has ever done more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone.

In fact, my judgments about the steps taken in that conflict by the IDF to avoid civilian deaths are inadvertently borne out by a study published by the United Nations itself, a study which shows that the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in Gaza was by far the lowest in any asymmetric conflict in the history of warfare.

The UN estimate that there has been an average three-to one ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in such conflicts worldwide. Three civilians for every combatant killed.

That is the estimated ratio in Afghanistan: three to one.

In Iraq, and in Kosovo, it was worse: the ratio is believed to be four-to-one. Anecdotal evidence suggests the ratios were very much higher in Chechnya and Serbia.

In Gaza, it was less than one-to-one.

Critics of America's Support for Israel Cannot Escape History

Certain of our recently elected congressional representatives view U.S. support for Israel as inexplicable. They are dismissive of explanations of shared values or strategic importance. They ask what reason other than a malignant influence could possibly explain why the U.S. has supported Israel and Zionism.

They fail to appreciate the extent to which the restoration of the Jewish people to sovereignty in their ancient homeland has been deeply ingrained in the religious, political and social fabric of America.

Even before there was a U.S., our Founding Fathers and even their forefathers longed to restore the Jews to their ancient homeland. The Puritans saw themselves as a "New Israel." Increase Mather, the Puritan leader, taught his followers that one day the "Jews would return to their homeland and establish the most glorious nation in the world." The Yale University coat of arms is adorned with the Hebrew words meaning "light and perfection."

Benjamin Franklin recommended that the Great Seal of the United States be an illustration of the Hebrews fleeing Egypt for their homeland. John Adams wrote in 1819: "I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation." This all occurred when the Jews in America numbered only in the thousands.

Abraham Lincoln wrote of "restoring the [Jews] to their national home in Palestine" and that relieving their oppression was "a noble dream and one shared by many Americans." This support was echoed by Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover.

While recent congressional critics of America's support of Israel might dismiss this history, they cannot escape it.

Gallup: Americans still overwhelmingly support Israel, antisemitic conspiracy mongers hardest hit

The Democrat Party is trying to come to grips with the antisemitic agitation by Minnesota Rep. Ihlan Omar, backed by Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that Americans who support Israel do so for money and have pledged allegiance to Israel.

These dual-loyalty and disloyalty accusations are echoed by left-wing and Islamist Democrat activists.

We have made the point in the past that support for Israel was at historical highs, as measured by Gallup. When Gallup released its results in March 2018, Gallup: Americans’ support for Israel increases to historical high:

These findings reinforce a point I’ve made many times. The so-called “Israel Lobby” is the American people.

Gallup just released its 2019 report, and finds that support for Israel over the Palestinians has dropped slightly, returning to the level in 2009. This drop was largely due to a drop in support among Republicans, which is hard to understand. So we’ll have to see if this is a blip, or a long-term trend. As other polling has showed, the weakest support for Israel comes from liberal Democrats.

Gallup reports, Americans, but Not Liberal Democrats, Mostly Pro-Israel:
The majority of Americans remain partial toward Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with 59% saying they sympathize more with the Israelis whereas 21% sympathize more with the Palestinians. While still widespread, sympathy toward Israel is down from 64% in 2018 and marks the lowest percentage favoring Israel since 2009. Meanwhile, the 21% sympathizing more with the Palestinians, statistically unchanged from a year ago, is the highest by one point in Gallup’s trend since 2001.

These results are based on Gallup’s annual World Affairs survey, conducted each February. The 2019 poll was conducted Feb. 1-10 prior to Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s recent remarks questioning U.S. support for Israel and suggesting that some supporters of Israel are pushing for “allegiance to a foreign country.” ….

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03/05 Links Pt1: Abbas’s legacy; Hamas's Systematic Use of Civilians to Promote Terrorism; The UK Admits That Hezbollah Is Nothing But Terrorism; Europe Must Follow

From Ian:

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Abbas’s legacy

Abbas’s response was again quick to come. If Israel dares to implement the law, he will refuse to accept any of the remaining taxes.

Without these funds, the PA will no longer be able to provide essential services to the innocent Palestinian population or pay the tens of thousands of its law-abiding civil servants.

As if positively choosing to deprive the law-abiding Palestinians of hundreds of millions of shekels a year while instead squandering it to pay financial rewards to terrorists was not enough, Abbas is now positively choosing to inflict financial ruin on all the Palestinians. The PA has announced that public employees and employees in the private sector will have to take pay cuts in order for the PA to continue paying terrorist murderers in full.

In the absence of any other clear legacy, Abbas will certainly be remembered as the PA chairman who paid the most in financial rewards to terrorists, at the expense of and to the detriment of the millions of law-abiding and productive Palestinians.

The writer is head of legal strategies for Palestinian Media Watch, and a retired lieutenant-colonel who served for 19 years in the IDF Military Advocate General Corps, most recently as director of Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria.

Hamas's Systematic Use of Civilians to Promote Terrorism

Since seizing power in a 2007 violent coup, Hamas has developed a range of cynical ways to exploit civilians in the Gaza Strip to build up its military wing and promote lethal terrorist activities.

Within Gaza, around its borders, and away from it, Hamas's military wing sends out tentacles disguised in civilian camouflage.

These tactics including importing equipment for its military build-up program, embedding rocket launchers in civilian neighborhoods, using human shields to protect its armed operatives, digging attack tunnels into Israel, and exploiting civilian infrastructure needs for terrorist purposes. Hamas regularly exploits humanitarian efforts, designed to save Gazan lives, in order to enable terrorist atrocities designed to kill Israelis.

Exploiting humanitarian traffic

Hamas frequently tries to exploit Israel's practice of allowing humanitarian crossings in from Gaza to send cash and explosive materials to its West Bank terror cells.

For example, when the Palestinian Authority stopped medical equipment supplies to Gaza, as part of its pressure tactics against Hamas last May, and reduced the number of medical referrals for Gazans that allow them treatment in West Bank hospitals, Israel increased the number of permits allowing Gazans to visit Israeli hospitals.

Israel did this despite having multiple intelligence warnings of Hamas intentions to take advantage of the measure.

A 65-year-old Gazan woman, received a permit last April to receive cancer treatment in an Israeli hospital. The woman was stopped at the Erez border crossing with enough explosives to blow up four buses.

What media ignored: 15-year-old killed at Gaza border was active military member of terror groups

On February 23rd, 2019, a 15 year-old Palestinian, Yusef al-Daya, was shot in the chest at a weekly event called the March of Return. The event is held every Friday at the Gaza border. Al-Daya was rushed to a local hospital where he was resuscitated but a short time later, succumbed to his wound.

Prominent media outlets such as Reuters stated; “Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teen.” The article makes no mention of important facts about al-Daya and what he was doing at the security fence.

This is a common framing of the “protests” at the security fence, which portray the participants as civilians and highlight people under 18 (“children”) killed. The death received considerable media attention, and came not long before the UN Human Rights Council issued a report condemning Israeli killings of “civilians” at the Gaza security fence.

Al-Daya wasn’t just a civilian protesting, he was a member of the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement who have a military wing called Mujahideen Brigades.

"The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement mourns its knight: The knight of the Mujahideen / Yusuf Sayeed al-Daya, who was martyred during his participation in the March of Return and Breaking the Seige east of #Gaza." #Israel pic.twitter.com/tRGtLYnZgK
— Joe Truzman (@Jtruzmah) February 22, 2019

Caroline Glick: Time to walk away from Afghanistan

While curtailing U.S. support for Pakistan, the Trump administration has been working steadily to solidify a strategic alliance with India. Most significantly, last September, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis met with their Indian counterparts in New Delhi and signed an agreement that increased the interoperability of the U.S. and Indian armed forces, paving the way for Indian purchase of U.S. military technology that had been out of bounds until then.

That brings us to Afghanistan. The current U.S. policy is to leave after finalizing an agreement with the Taliban and other stakeholders through ongoing talks in Geneva. The talks are reportedly leading to an outcome that will see the Pakistan controlled-Taliban return to power in Afghanistan supported by Turkey on the one hand, and Iran on the other. This outcome, which may be inevitable in light of the balance of forces on the ground, is not one that redounds to the U.S.’s benefit.

Given that the outcome of the talks will not be a good one for America, the U.S. has no interest in being a party to such an agreement. The U.S. would be better off not signing any deal and walking away, rather than acquiescing to a settlement that isn’t in its interest. By walking away with no agreement, the U.S. would reserve its right to attack enemy targets, as it deems necessary, in the future.

Pakistan’s policy of using terrorism and nuclear brinksmanship to force India to accept its belligerence, like its policy of sponsoring the Taliban and other groups attacking U.S. forces in Afghanistan even while serving as the logistical base for U.S. operations, shows that it is well nigh time for the U.S. to follow through on Trump’s campaign policy of walking away from Afghanistan.

Just as there is nothing to be gained by taking a neutral stance between India and Pakistan, so there is no point in permitting Pakistan to play the U.S. for a fool in Afghanistan.

There are downsides to walking away from Afghanistan and Pakistan, but they are far smaller than the price the U.S. pays by funding the wars Pakistan wages against it.

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Lecture in Egypt on "Herzl, Imam of the Zionists"

There was a lecture this week at the Egyptian Opera House about Theodor Herzl, described in this article as the "imam of the Zionist."

,Dr. Adel Al-Sayyid, lecturer at the Department of Political Science and Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck, just published a book about Herzl and he discussed his findings.

In the lecture, the author said that the rush of some Arab rulers today to cooperate with Israel without solving the basic question of Palestine will not contribute to resolving the crisis and will not end the conflict and the dispute between Jews And the Arabs.

Al-Sayyid emphasized that if only the Jews would have moved to Argentina or Chile, then the Jewish problem in Europe would have been solved and there would be no Israel to cause such problems.

The lecture discussed Herzl's motivation for Zionism but does not mention the Dreyfus Affair. Therefore, the author could say that the only antisemitism was in Tsarist Russia and the Western European Zionists planned to use Russian Jews as cheap labor to build the land.

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The Forward publishes another stupid anti-Israel argument by a BDS activist

Yousef Munayyer, a BDS activist for the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, wrote an absurd op-ed that The Forward naturally felt had merit.

Here's his main argument:

The truth is that no state has a “right to exist” — not Israel, not Palestine, not the United States. Neither do Zimbabwe, Chile, North Korea, Saudi Arabia or Luxembourg have a “right to exist.”

States do exist; there are about 200 in our world today, even though there are thousands of ethno-religious or ethno-linguistic groups.

And these states don’t exist because they have a “right” to. They exist because certain groups of people amassed enough political and material power to make territorial claims and establish governments, sometimes with the consent of those already living there and, oftentimes, at their expense.

Most people understand this. I’ve never heard anyone demand to know whether Switzerland, or even the United States, has “a right to exist.” States come and go over time; borders can change, names can change, regimes can change and yes, discriminatory systems underpinning regimes can change, too. But one state demands to be beyond reproach through a mythical “right to exist”: Israel.

Can you imagine asking indigenous Americans and indigenous rights activists — fighting for the rights of a population whose languages, societies, culture and possessions were categorically decimated in the process of erecting the United States — whether the United States has a “right to exist”?

That you can’t imagine this is testimony to the disingenuousness of the question. For this question is asked — almost always of critics of Israel’s policies — not for the purposes of debate and discourse, but rather, to create a gotcha moment, to undermine the credibility of the person questioned.

It is intellectually dishonest and intended, almost always, to silence critics and criticism of Israeli policies.

This is an amazing twisting of the truth.  Israel is the only nation whose right to existence is regularly questioned, and Munayyer twists this into making it sound like only Israel insists on the right to exist!

Munayyer's assertion that no state has the right to exist is flat out wrong. The concept of a nation's right to exist pre-dates Israel, as Wikipedia notes:

The  right to exist is said to be an attribute of nations. According to an essay by the nineteenth century French philosopher Ernest Renan, a state has the right to exist when individuals are willing to sacrifice their own interests for the community it represents.
... Proponents of the right to exist trace it back to the "right of existence", said to be a fundamental right of states recognized by writers on international law for hundreds of years.... The phrase gained enormous usage in reference to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. "If Turkey has a right to exist – and the Powers are very prompt to assert that she has – she possesses an equally good right to defend herself against all attempts to imperil her political existence," wrote Eliakim and Robert Littell in 1903. In many cases, a nation's right to exist is not questioned, and is therefore not asserted.

That last sentence demolishes Munayyer's core argument. (The Wikipedia article goes over other states and aspiring states that assert a right to exist, including "Palestine," which also demolishes his argument that only Israel insists on that right.)

Does anyone question Israel's right to exist? Um, yeah. Every day. Including Munayyer's BDS buddies like Omar Barghouti.  But proof of Israel's right to exist can be seen, ironically, from Yasir Arafat:

 In 1993, there was an official exchange of letters between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Arafat, in which Arafat declared that "the PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid."

The unquestioned Palestinian leader admits that he did not agree for most of his life that Israel has the right to exist, and then he claimed he accepted that right.

Munayyer is disproved by the leader of the Palestinians that he claims he is supporting.

But, since Munayyer declares the question of Israel's right to exist to be a "bullshit question," let's cut through the bullshit.

When people talk about Israel's right to exist, it implicitly means Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. That is, of course, Israel's purpose, to be a refuge for Jews around the world. (Arafat, of course, tried to thread the needle by saying he accepts the State of Israel but not its purpose.)

Munayyer emphatically rejects that right of a Jewish state to exist.

Asking the question whether Israel has the right to exist isn't a "gotcha" question - it is a question asking whether the Jewish people have the right of self determination, like all other peoples, and can say that Israel fulfills that right.  Those who answer "no" are antisemites, and their refusal to accept Israel's existence is proof of their bigotry.

That is what Munayyer objects to. The question that he refuses to answer reveals that he, and the people on his side, are bigots.

It isn't intellectually dishonest to ask that question - it is intellectually dishonest to refuse to answer.

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01/07 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: How western humbug gives antisemitism a free pass; How Chaim Weizmann Crafted the First Arab-Zionist Alliance

From Ian:

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Melanie Phillips: How western humbug gives antisemitism a free pass

Of course they don’t accept that calling Israel’s policies racist and criminal is an example of antisemitism. But it is. That’s because it singles out Israel for an obsessional campaign of double standards, demonisation and delegitimisation based solely on malevolent falsehoods, distortion and selective reporting – treatment afforded to no other country, people or cause.

At the same time, such people ignore the true racism, prejudice and antisemitism displayed by Palestinians. They ignore the constant incitement to murder Jews, the relentless terror attacks against Israelis, the Nazi style deranged discourse demonising not just the State of Israel but also the Jewish people as a source of cosmic conspiracies and evil intent.

There was recently a graphic example of this egregious double standard. Jamil Tamimi was jailed for 18 years at Jerusalem district court for the murder of 21 year old British student Hannah Bladon whom he stabbed repeatedly with a seven-inch knife.

Her parents were outraged by what they as an unjustifiably lenient sentence. But the court had found that Tamimi was mentally ill, possibly trying to provoke the police into shooting him dead by stabbing someone. “This was not a terrorist incident,” the prosecutor told the court. “This was a terrible murder carried out by a mentally ill person.”

A few days later a Palestinian Arab, Issam Akel, did get a life sentence. He was convicted at Ramallah high court, in the Palestinian-run territories, of acting to broker the sale of a house in the Muslim quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem to a Jewish organisation.

Palestinian law deems it treasonous to sell land to Jews, a crime for which the maximum penalty is execution. It was commuted here to a life sentence with hard labour, possibly because Akel also held American citizenship.

So Israel showed leniency to a Palestinian Arab convicted of murder – while the Palestinians imposed a far harsher sentence on a Palestinian convicted of selling land to a Jew.

The Israelis saw the killer as a person just like any other human being whose mental illness had diminished his moral agency; they treated him accordingly with a total absence of racism. The Palestinians jailed for life a Palestinian who had dared reject the racist law requiring him to discriminate against Jews. The Palestinians thus made not just the Jewish people a victim of their antisemitism but one of their own, too.

How Chaim Weizmann Crafted the First Arab-Zionist Alliance

“No true Arab can be suspicious or afraid of Jewish nationalism. . . . We are demanding Arab freedom and we would show ourselves unworthy of it if we did not now, as I do, say to the Jews—welcome back home.” These words were spoken by Faisal al-Hashemi—the future king of Iraq—at a banquet in honor of Chaim Weizmann on December 29, 1918. T.E. Lawrence (a/k/a “Lawrence of Arabia”) served as the translator. While many today see the Israeli-Arab conflict as both eternal and inevitable, the idea of an alliance between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East seemed perfectly natural to Weizmann and to Faisal, who were seen by the British empire as the representatives of their respective peoples. Rick Richman tells the story of this alliance:

On January 3, 1919, a few weeks after World War I ended, the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann met with Emir Faisal, the commander-in-chief of the Arab uprising against the Ottoman empire, at a London hotel. . . . At the meeting, Weizmann and Faisal signed an agreement, brokered over the preceding month by Lawrence, exchanging Arab acceptance of the Balfour Declaration for Zionist support of an Arab state in the rest of the Ottoman lands. In February, they traveled to the Paris Peace Conference, where the victorious Allies would remap Europe and the Middle East, and made complementary presentations about the future of the region. . . .

Faisal and his father, [King Hussein of the Hejaz], believed Zionism would bring financial resources and technical expertise to Palestine, transforming the economic circumstances of the Arabs in both Palestine and beyond. In January 1918, D.G. Hogarth, director of Britain’s Arab Bureau in Cairo, had traveled to Jedda to deliver to King Hussein a formal message regarding British policy: the Arabs would be given “full opportunity of once again forming a nation,” and “no obstacle should be put in the way” of the return of the Jews to Palestine. All holy sites would be protected, and the religious and political rights of all residents preserved. The message emphasized the importance of “the friendship of world Jewry” to the Arab cause.

In an article published in March 1918 in al-Qibla, the daily newspaper in Mecca, the king wrote that Palestine was “a sacred and beloved homeland” for “its original sons” [abna’ihi-l-asliyin], and the “return of these exiles [jaliya] to their homeland” would be beneficial to the region.

Devotees of the Liberal Order—Unlike Its Founders—Underestimated the Importance of Nationalism and Religion

The year 1948, writes Yehudah Mirsky, saw the birth of the basic elements of what came to be known—perhaps misleadingly—as the “liberal international order.” These included the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Genocide Convention, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and the creation of Israel with the imprimatur of the United Nations. Mirsky argues that some of the failures of this order stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of those committed to defending it:

[Many] thought human rights and nationalism were antithetical, and that promoting the former meant pushing back on the latter. The architects of the world of 1948 understood better. As the historian James Loeffler has shown in his remarkable new book, Rooted Cosmopolitans, so many key figures in the human-rights revolution of mid-century were not only Jews but Zionists. For them, an international regime of protecting individual human rights as well as nation-states for persecuted minorities were necessary to overcome the Holocaust’s ghastly trauma of statelessness. The deep structural suspicion of the idea of state sovereignty woven into the human-rights framework, it seems, has unwittingly fostered the legalistic abstraction and airy disregard for political realities that has made that framework such a supple tool in the hands of dictators who couldn’t care less. . . .

[Moreover, many] underestimated the role of religion not only in people’s lives but in human rights and liberalism’s own foundations. Religion is about the search for the absolute and how that ultimate truth shapes what it means fully to be human. Liberalism and human rights are understood by many people in different ways, but there is no denying they make serious claims about the ultimacy of human dignity, so ultimate that there are certain things that no state, or collective body of any kind, can do to harm human dignity.

Why the US Diaspora Misunderstands Israel

What does the Diaspora find alienating about Israel? Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, recently criticized the Israeli government for its treatment of the Palestinians, its attitude towards asylum-seekers, and the dominance of the Orthodox rabbinate in Israel.

But these concerns show a fundamental misunderstanding of Israel and of the conflict. Progressives (and not just in the United States) think that the two-state solution would fulfill Palestinian aspirations. In reality, the ultimate Palestinian objective is the “right of return” — overrunning Israel proper with Arab refugees. They believe that time is on their side.

The US Diaspora also misunderstands what makes Israelis tick. Israeli support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a response to rockets and terror tunnels. But many Israelis view the Palestinian jihad as just the latest chapter in a long story of Arab and Muslim antisemitism predating anti-Zionism. Anti-Jewish hatred goes to the very heart of the conflict.

More than 50 percent of Israeli Jews have their roots in Arab and Muslim states. The American Diaspora, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly Ashkenazi: Their background is European antisemitism and the Holocaust. They project a Eurocentric world view and their own Western values on the Arab and Muslim world.

Most Jews are in Israel because of the Arabs, not the Nazis (although Arabs and Nazis were allied during World War II). They vote for Netanyahu because of this legacy of bitterness and mistrust. Arabs will only respect a strong Israel, they believe. These Jews, their parents, and their grandparents left Arab countries due to pogroms, institutionalized inferiority, and state-sanctioned laws. Most left as destitute refugees with a single suitcase. Israel rescued them. Jews in the West may take their freedoms and rights for granted. Jews from the Middle East and North Africa do not.

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