01/25 Links Pt1: Is Israel’s Inevitable War With Iran Already Underway?; Israel’s Foes Finally Admit That Rocks Can Kill; BDS blacklist under review by UN body will harm Palestinians

From Ian:

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Ruthie Blum: Is Israel’s Inevitable War With Iran Already Underway?

Meanwhile, the Iranian regime — weakened by restored US sanctions and the massive unrest of its subjugated populace — is boasting about its military prowess. This is par for the course in Tehran, particularly as the ruling mullahs are marking the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, which ousted Shah Reza Pahlavi and ushered in Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s reign of terror.

In an interview with Iranian state TV on Tuesday, Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, went as far as to flaunt the regime’s nuclear achievements, thanks in large measure to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the nuclear deal signed with world powers in 2015 — which, he said, “marinated” Iran’s right to enrich uranium.

The only drawback he mentioned was the fact that “for Europeans, a centrifuge takes eight years from designing to become operational, while the process takes us 10 years.”

Salehi then announced that he would be traveling at the end of the month to Ardakan “to oversee the transport of 30 tons of yellowcake produced … there to [the Uranium Conversion Facility at] Isfahan, [which] means that the Ardakan site has become operational.”

It would be a grave mistake to dismiss Salehi’s words as mere saber-rattling, given the Iranian regime’s stated intention and increasingly overt attempts to annihilate Israel, even at its own potential peril. Rather than looking the other way, at best — or, worse, condemning Israel at international forums — the world should be thanking the Jewish state for doing its dirty work. The inevitable war against Iran should have been fought by America decades ago. Today, it is up to the IDF.

When the snow melts on Mount Hermon, we Israelis will be back in shorts and sandals, heading for the polls this spring to elect the next Knesset. The only question at this point is whether we will be doing so in bomb shelters.

House Majority Leader Calls for US Recognition of Israeli Sovereignty Over Golan

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has called for the United States to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, the congressman’s office told Jewish Insider.

The Golan spans about 700 square miles and directly abuts what is now a civil-war-torn Syria.

This development comes as members of Congress have called for the Trump administration to formally acknowledge Israeli control of the Golan Heights, a geographical security barrier for Israel in the fight against terrorism from Hezbollah, with its growing arsenal of missiles and rockets, and other Iranian-backed groups.

Earlier this week, Iranian fighter jets fired a surface-to-surface missile at the Golan Heights, prompting Israel to launch a massive attack on numerous Iranian targets in Syria.

Last week, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) sent a letter to US President Donald Trump calling for the official recognition.

Gottheimer followed Senators Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who introduced a resolution last month that stated, “Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights is critical to Israel’s national security,” and that “Israel’s security from attack from Syria and Lebanon cannot be assured without Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.”

Jonathan S. Tobin: Israel’s Foes Finally Admit That Rocks Can Kill

As far as the mainstream media is usually concerned, when rocks are thrown in the Middle East, it’s nothing to get too worked up about. When Palestinian mobs throw rocks at Israeli soldiers at the Gaza border fence as part of their effort to cross into the Jewish state and commit mayhem, such actions are generally depicted as a non-lethal form of protest.

Ever since the Palestinians launched an intifada — a “national uprising” — in December of 1987, rock-throwing has been treated as a popular form of protest against Israel. Indeed, the act of throwing rocks at Jews has long since become an iconic symbol of the “resistance” to Israel, glorified in Palestinian culture, poems, and songs. Throwing rocks at soldiers and settlers — or their cars and buses — has become something like a national sport, as well as a rite of passage for Arab youth.

Incidents of stone-throwing at Jewish targets are a daily occurrence, and so numerous that Israel barely bothers to keep statistics on them. But we do know that at least 14 Israelis have been killed as a result of car crashes caused by rock-throwing or direct blows. When Palestinians are arrested in connection with such crimes, they are either depicted sympathetically as legitimate combatants using the only weapons available to them, or as children who are unjustly harassed or even tortured by the Israeli army and police for what is, at worst, nothing more than so-called teenage mischief-making.

But after more than 30 years of such stories in the media, the international press has finally decided to treat this “harmless” activity in the West Bank as a crime.

A Palestinian women was killed in October when she was struck in the head by a stone thrown by what police believe was a group of Israeli teenagers. Aisha Rabi, a mother of nine, was with her husband and two of their children driving in a car when the crime occurred. The suspects are students at a West Bank yeshiva high school — one of whom remains in custody since being arrested in December due to the fact that, according to Israeli authorities, traces of his DNA was found on the stone that killed Rabi.

The case raises a lot of uncomfortable questions for both Arabs and Jews.

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01/07 Links Pt1: 'Anti-Zionist' Jewish teens allegedly kill Palestinian woman; Toameh: The Palestinians' Uncivil War; Rashida Tlaib Accuses Jews of Dual Loyalty

From Ian:

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Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinians' Uncivil War

The biggest losers from this internal bloodletting are the Palestinians living under these leaders in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas-ruled Gaza.

The dispute between Hamas and Fatah is not over who will bring democracy and a better economy to the Palestinians. They are not fighting over who will improve the living conditions of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by building new schools and hospitals. They are not fighting over who will introduce major reforms to the Palestinian government and end financial and administrative corruption. They are not fighting over the need for freedom of expression and a free media.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Hamas leaders correctly argue, is not a rightful or legitimate president. If Abbas were to sign a deal with Israel, people could come along later and say that he lacked the legal authority to do so; they would be right.

In order for any peace process to move forward, the Palestinians first need to stop attacking each other. Then, they need to come up with new leaders who actually give a damn about their people.

Melanie Phillips: The terrorist murder of Aisha Rabi

The security agency also reportedly claims to have identified an effort to slander and delegitimise its interrogation methods, which it maintains are carried out in accordance with the law and under the supervision of the State Attorney’s office.

It is unlikely that Israeli Jewish terror suspects would be treated worse than Palestinian Arab ones. It is unlikely that either group would be handled with kid gloves, but the details the lawyers have revealed of the boys’ treatment, although harsh, hardly amounts to torture:

“’From morning to night (my client) was shackled to a chair, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, in a small cell’… the interrogators had ‘cursed, spit on and even sexually harassed’ his client. He claimed that the Shin Bet agents had even performed a jailhouse informant exercise with cops posing as inmates who pressured the suspects to confess.”

More worryingly, when one of these lawyers, Itamar ben Gvir, was asked why he hadn’t criticised the Shin Bet’s interrogation tactics against Palestinian suspects, he denied that the murder of Aisha Rabi was terrorism at all.

“‘When a Jew throws a rock at a Palestinian, it is not terrorism. When a Palestinian throws a rock at a Jew, it is terrorism because it’s part of a larger effort to wipe us out from our land,’ he argues.”

That is wrong and repellent, hardly mitigated by his lame addendum that the “extreme” tactics used by the Shin Bet against his client should not be used against Palestinian inmates either.

The murder of Aisha Rabi was indeed a foul and murderous act of terrorism – violence against the innocent carried out for political motives. Whether or not it was committed by the boys currently in custody, not only the perpetrators but also those who tried to obstruct justice on their behalf should feel the full force of the law.

Unlike the Arab communities in the disputed territories, where the murder of Jews – whose incitement is institutionalised within Palestinian society – is celebrated with sweets and fireworks by jubilant throngs, Jewish terrorism is rare and is viewed by the vast majority of Jews with horror and revulsion.

But it exists; and however small, it is a foul stain on the Jewish conscience. It must be dealt with.

'Anti-Zionist' Jewish teens allegedly kill Palestinian woman

The five Jewish teenagers from Judea and Samaria who were arrested over the past several days were allegedly involved in the deadly attack that led to the death of a Palestinian woman, Aisha al-Rawbi, in October, Israeli authorities said on Sunday.

The five teens who were arrested are students at a yeshiva in Rechelim, close to where the attack took place, on a road near the community. The attack, investigators say, targeted a Palestinian car, causing it to veer off the road and crash. Al-Rawbi, from the Arab village of Badi and a mother of eight, suffered a fatal head injury. Her husband, Aykube, survived.

It is unclear if all five teens are suspected of being the direct perpetrators of the attack. According to the Shin Bet security agency, the breakthrough in the investigation was made possible in part by intelligence gathered close the scene of the attack. The detective work showed that a day after the attack, during the Jewish Sabbath, a group of settler youth traveled from the community of Yitzhar to Rechelim, where they were briefed on the tactics needed for countering Shin Bet interrogations.

The Shin Bet further said that the evidence collected showed "that the arrested had anti-Zionist and extremist views" that included a video in which some of them burn an Israeli flag. One of the arrested youths had also written "death to the Zionists" and drew a swastika on an Israeli flag.

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12/22 Links: Glick: In Wake of Khashoggi, Pressure for Israeli-Palestinian Peace Is Dangerous; We Remember: Bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, December 21, 1988; When BDS Comes to Campus, Antisemitism Follows

From Ian:

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Caroline Glick: In Wake of Khashoggi, Pressure for Israeli-Palestinian Peace Is Dangerous

So far from advancing stability and peace, renewing a peace process — even one based on more realistic assessments of the situation on the ground and what the parties can reasonably achieve — will weaken and destabilize Israel and increase the chance of war.

Obviously, none of this advances U.S. interests either regionally or globally.

Given this state of affairs, perhaps the apparent breakdown of the Trump administration’s efforts to coddle the Saudis into playing a significant role in negotiations between Israel and the PLO is a blessing in disguise. It gives the administration the opportunity to reconsider its efforts to reach a deal in the first place.

The steps that the Trump administration has already taken to end its predecessors’ unhealthy unconditional support for the mordant peace process – ending the ritualistic condemnations of every new Israeli home built beyond the 1949 armistice lines; ending U.S. subsidization of Palestinian terror financing through aid to the PA; ending U.S. support for UNRWA, the UN “refugee” agency that has played a central role in ensuring there will never be a resolution of the Palestinian conflict against Israel; and moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem – have all played a key role in stabilizing the region. They have also made it easier for the Arab states to work cooperatively with Israel.

Rather than push a “peace deal” that will fail to bring peace while harming Israel and America’s Arab allies, if the Trump administration were to publicly acknowledge that there can be no peace between Israel and the Palestinians so long as the Palestinian people remain committed to Israel’s destruction, and that the U.S. is abandoning efforts to reach a deal in light of this reality, it would stabilize the situation still more by diminishing the chance of a major Palestinian campaign against Israel.

Were the Trump administration similarly to give Israel a green light to secure its long-term strategic interests by applying its laws to the areas of Judea and Samaria that it requires to defend itself against invasion from the east and from Palestinian attacks within Judea and Samaria, the move would similarly diminish the chance of war in the medium and long term.

We Remember: Bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, December 21, 1988

According to the FBI, the case is still open and “being actively investigated” with its Scottish partners. The FBI believes there are more co-conspirators involved in the plot.
30 years ago this week, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 sent a shock wave around the world. #FBIWFO & our Scottish partners are still actively seeking justice for the victims & their families. https://t.co/omZPMf7kRv #PanAm103 #Lockerbie pic.twitter.com/RFkOICLT2z
— FBI Washington Field (@FBIWFO) December 17, 2018

Some U.S. investigators also reportedly believe that Iran was involved in the attack, possibly as revenge for a July 1988 incident in which a U.S. warship accidentally downed an Iran Air plane.

Claims that Teheran ordered the destruction of Pan Am 103 (and not Gaddafi’s Libya) have re-surfaced in an article published yesterday in the Daily Mail. In it the daughter of a now deceased Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist insists that she has proof that a PFLP terrorist cell, under the direction of mastermind Ahmed Jibril and in the “pay of the Iranian regime”, perpetrated the bombing.

Scottish MSP Christine Graham says that these new allegations increase the fear that Megrahi may have been “the fall guy” and wrongfully convicted, with Libya “taking the rap” for various reasons. Jim Swire, also quoted in the article, agrees.

Obviously, the new claims underscore the need to keep this investigation open and to push hard for further indictments and convictions.

According to this week’s FBI report on the bombing:
Then as now, the goal is to hold everyone involved responsible for the crime and to bring justice to the families of the victims…the FBI does not forget. The American people—and our adversaries—need to know that we don’t give up”.

Edgar Davidson: Lockerbie 30 years on: the atrocity was committed by Palestinian terrorists but it is their 'privilege' not to be blamed

Lockerbie 30 years on: the atrocity was committed by Palestinian terrorists but it is their 'privilege' not to be blamed
Today is the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing. The fact that a Palestinian group (funded by Iran to do it) got away without blame is just another example of their privilege.

This is something I have reported on many times before including here recently. The fact is, it was politically inconvenient for the British and American governments at the time to go after the Palestinians and Iranians (and as - far as European governments are concerned - the same applies even more so today).

Fortunately, although many relevant articles about it are censored by Google, the true story is finally being told - there are even articles in today's Mirror and Express with the real story.

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12/19 Links Pt1: Netanyahu calls Hezbollah tunnel-digging ‘act of war’; Israel to present evidence proving Lebanese army assists Hezbollah; Poll shows Hamas leader would defeat Abbas to win Palestinian elections

From Ian:

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Ahead of UN meet, Netanyahu calls Hezbollah tunnel-digging ‘act of war’

Ahead of a United Nations Security Council meeting on the attack tunnels Hezbollah dug across the Lebanese-Israeli border, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday urged the international community to take decisive action against the Shiite terrorist group.

At an English-language press conference at the Knesset, Netanyahu called Hezbollah’s tunnel-digging an “act of war,” and accused the Lebanese Armed Forces of doing nothing to counter those acts. While Beirut did not know about the tunnels while they were being dug, its military now knows but still fails to act, he maintained.

He also revealed that he recently spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin in a bid to convince Moscow not to defend Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors during Wednesday’s Security Council session.

Netanyahu said that the four tunnels the Israeli army has so far discovered in its recently launched, ongoing effort to uncover such passages were aimed to “penetrate our territory, kidnap our people, including civilians, murder civilians, and conquer the northern piece of the Galilee. This is not merely an act of aggression. It’s an act of war. It’s part of a war plan, I would say.”

Every third house in South Lebanon is used in one way or another to hide Hezbollah’s tunnel-digging project, the prime minister charged. “It’s targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Lebanese civilians. That’s a double war crime,” he charged.

Israel to present evidence proving Lebanese army assists Hezbollah

Some two weeks after Israel launched Operation Northern Shield to eliminate Hezbollah's cross-border attack tunnels from Lebanon, Israel has said it will present the U.N. Security Council with damning evidence proving that the Lebanese army has been helping Hezbollah in its excavation efforts in violation of the U.N.'s resolutions.

The council was set to meet on Wednesday, days after the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon concluded that the tunnels snaking under the Israel-Lebanon border and jutting into Israeli territory were a violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701.

The resolution, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah, prohibits the presence of any Lebanese armed group south of the Litani River, apart from the central government's military, known as the Lebanese Armed Forces.

On Tuesday, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said that "now that UNIFIL has confirmed that the Hezbollah tunnels are a severe breach of Resolution 1701, the Security Council is duty-bound to use every means at its disposal against Hezbollah, which continues its buildup under the auspices of the Lebanese government."

Danon plans to emphasize that Lebanese troops have given their tacit approval and turned a blind eye to Hezbollah's tunneling activity, effectively sanctioning it.

IDF: Suspicious rock formation, strange fire helped locate 4th Hezbollah tunnel

The Israeli military on Wednesday said it had become aware of a recently uncovered cross-border tunnel from Lebanon thanks to a number of suspicious incidents in the area in recent years.

The tunnel near the Lebanese village of Ramyeh, the fourth uncovered so far in the army’s operation to unearth and destroy Hezbollah attack tunnels, had been monitored for years before the Israel Defense Forces launched Operation Northern Shield this month.

The IDF noted that several factors had led it to suspect that a tunnel was being dug from a forested area near Ramyeh: the burning of a single tree in May 2016, the appearance of a new rock formation at the site, and the creation of new and unnatural paths in the area.

The army said the tunnel, which it uncovered over the weekend, crossed a few meters into Israeli territory but was not yet operational.

The village is opposite the Israeli town of Zarit, where residents in the past complained of hearing digging sounds, prompting an IDF investigation in 2014. But the military said that probe had not had results, and the tunnel was found unrelated to locals’ reports. There were no details on when Hezbollah began building the tunnel.

The army said IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot toured the area with other top military commanders Wednesday to survey the digging operation.

“The effort to expose and neutralize terror tunnels will continue as needed,” the military said in a statement.

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11/19 Links Pt2: Seth Mandel: Ostracizing Jewish Trump Supporters Will Only Hurt the Jewish Community; Airbnb to stop operating in Judea and Samaria

From Ian:

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When America doubted my Jewish grandmother’s loyalty

As I reflect on these events in my grandmother’s life, I am left wondering if our country has learned anything at all since she sat in that El Paso courtroom. And I confess that these reflections do not leave me feeling terribly cheerful.

Today, Jews are still painfully aware that no matter how “American” we may feel, we can easily be accused of having divided loyalties. Politicians sow fear of immigrants, stoking suspicion among neighbors. A simple mistake, a scurrilous rumor or “foreign-looking” family members can leave many among us vulnerable to others’ suspicions that we cannot be trusted – or, as we have seen in recent days, vulnerable even to violence.

My grandmother’s case offers an early glimpse into this aspect of our national culture, which would continue to corrode in the years that followed. Her hearing in the spring of 1949 was 5 1/2 years before Senator McCarthy would finally be chastened with the famous rebuke “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

We are – thankfully – several decades beyond the paranoia of McCarthyism, but its tenacious cells still sleep in the veins of fear beneath our nation’s skin. Today one can witness firsthand how easily some Americans’ love of our country can metastasize into a strain of xenophobia so pernicious that they can be convinced to turn against their fellow citizens.

Seventy years after my grandmother was summoned before a committee of the federal Justice Department, anti-Semitism is ascendant once again across America. And once more it is garbed in the belief that Jews cannot be fully American, that our values threaten the integrity of the nation which has been our beloved home for centuries.

When we discovered the nondescript black binder among my grandmother’s belongings, we had no idea what secrets it would hold. We could never have predicted the story that those yellowing photographs and official documents would tell. And, I confess, we never expected that the historical territory through which that binder led us would look quite so familiar.

Seth Mandel: Ostracizing Jewish Trump Supporters Will Only Hurt the Jewish Community

On the day of the massacre in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, the political commentator Franklin Foer wrote in the Atlantic that “any strategy for enhancing the security of American Jewry should involve shunning Trump’s Jewish enablers. Their money should be refused, their presence in synagogues not welcome. They have placed their community in danger.” Foer was not alone in this sentiment, which was echoed by at least one influential rabbi. Seth Mandel warns of the dangers of this passion for anathematizing political opponents, made even more dangerous by the tendency to blame Israel for the anti-Semitic violence:

Two versions of this [claim] predominate: one, that Israel’s strength has deceived Jews into weakening their position in America; two, that Israeli policies are to blame for the bloodshed. . . . The former Anti-Defamation League official Harry Reis [stated that] Benjamin Netanyahu, the Knesset member Naftali Bennett, the Israeli ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer, and the U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman “are enablers and defenders of [Donald Trump’s] hate and the white supremacists who support him.”

The New Yorker’s Adam Davidson took the next logical step in this progression and—ironically, endorsing a key neo-Nazi talking point—proclaimed: “The bizarre and terrifying nexus between Israel and white nationalism actually starts to make sense when you understand the ethno-nationalist literature. Extreme-right Zionists and anti-Semitic white nationalists have the same core beliefs.” Liberals have thus unwittingly been reprising the old “Zionism equals racism” calumny with the 2018 version: Zionism is borderline Nazism. . . .

So there you have it: the Jews are the authors of their own destruction, supporters of Israel are disloyal Americans, Zionism is a first cousin to Nazism, right-wing Jews are Nazi collaborators, and Trump-supporting Jews should be expurgated from Jewish communal life.

Why are [Foer and others] fixated on excommunication? [There] is a great irony here: liberal laymen and clergy are deploying one of the most heavy-handed rabbinical retributive powers on the menu. . . . But of course the religion we’re talking about isn’t Judaism, is it? It’s progressivism—the Torah of Liberalism. In leftist politics, isolation is the first, not the last, line of defense against upsetting ideas.

EastEnders tackles antisemitism with storyline about vandalised Jewish grave

The BBC’s EastEnders has become the first soap to tackle the issue of antisemitism, in a new storyline introduced this week.

The programme has used the character of Dr Harold Legg, thought to be the only identifiably Jewish role in British soaps, to address the issue. Dr Legg is played by the 92-year-old Jewish actor Leonard Fenton.

Thursday’s programme showed the elderly doctor visiting his mother’s grave in a Jewish cemetery, together with “Dot Cotton”, the role played by June Brown, who is 91.

Dr Legg is explaining to Dot the custom of leaving a stone on a grave, when the pair, to their horror, see graffiti and a swastika daubed on Esther Legg’s tombstone.

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11/03 Links: Bari Weiss: When a Terrorist Comes to Your Hometown; Ben Shapiro: Israel is protecting Western civilization; The not-so-sweet taste of hypocrisy about anti-Semitism

From Ian:

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Bari Weiss: When a Terrorist Comes to Your Hometown

I want to tell you what it is like when your neighborhood becomes the scene of a mass murder.

The first thing you should know is that when your phone pings with a text from your youngest sister saying, “There is a shooter at tree of life,” your brain will insist that it is not true, that it is a hoax.

But your fingers will write back immediately, unthinking: “is dad there.”

Your mouth will turn to cotton while you wait for your mom to confirm that your father, who goes to one of Squirrel Hill’s synagogues every Shabbat morning, was not in the building.

Then another of your sisters will send a link to the police scanner and you will listen as the calls come in from the scene. You hear an officer report that the shooter declared he wants to “kill all the Jews.” He has hit officers. “Shots fired. Shots fired. Shots fired.”

You will cancel all your plans and book a flight home. Before you are even on the plane you will start to hear rumors — a couple has been killed, a doctor. You will wonder which families in your neighborhood will be shattered.

The numbness will break only when you find out that Cecil Rosenthal — the intellectually disabled, gentle giant of a man your mother has known since grade school — was murdered along with his brother, David. You will picture him as a proud usher standing in the entrance to services, and you will wonder if he greeted the killer, too. And you will weep.

When an anti-Semitic murderer mows down Jews in the synagogue where you became a bat mitzvah, you might find yourself in the sanctuary again. But instead of family and friends, the sanctuary is host to a crew of volunteers — the chevra kadisha — who will spend the week cleaning up every drop of blood because, according to Jewish tradition, each part of the body must be sanctified in death and so buried.

Ben Shapiro Interview: Israel is protecting Western civilization

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro‘s star has been rising in the US in recent years. He’s only 34 years old, but he began his career 17 years ago, writing a syndicated column, and now he has his own news site, The Daily Wire, “The Ben Shapiro Show,” a podcast with millions of listeners.

In between, he managed to become editor-at-large of the far-right – these days, some would say alt-right – website Breitbart, and resigned in 2016. Shapiro accused Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon, an eventual adviser to US President Donald Trump, of turning the site into “Trump’s personal Pravda.”

Later that year, the Anti-Defamation League identified Shapiro as the No. 1 target of online antisemitism among Jewish journalists in the US, and he received the most hate by far.

Shapiro continues to be targeted from all ends: from the Left, because he’s staunchly conservative, and from the Right, because he is not a Trump cheerleader, and doesn’t hesitate to criticize the president.

His no-nonsense attitude and caustic humor have attracted admirers and detractors; “facts don’t care about your feelings” is his most famous slogan, and he sells coffee mugs that are labeled “leftist tears.” He’s found allies in the self-described Intellectual Dark Web, a group of thinkers – their day jobs include academia, journalism and comedy – who don’t fit perfectly into mainstream media’s liberal or conservative labels, and have found wild success producing their own content online.

Although Shapiro is an Orthodox Jew and a vocal supporter of Israel, his content is aimed at a broader American audience, and therefore he doesn’t often focus on those areas.

In a conversation with The Jerusalem Post last month from his LA podcast studio, the father of two – married to a Moroccan-Israeli doctor about whom he often sweetly scheps naches (expresses great pride) – discussed American Jewish identity, support for Israel and more, in his typically no-holds-barred manner. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Caroline Glick: Israeli Cabinet Minister Challenges Propaganda on Trump and Antisemitism

Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Naftali Bennett kicked in the foundations of the left’s case against President Donald Trump on Tuesday. And they didn’t like it.

Since Saturday’s massacre of 11 mostly elderly Jews at prayer at the Tree of Life Synagogue, prominent left-wing American Jewish activists and Never Trump pundits have blamed Trump for the massacre by insisting that he has empowered antisemitic forces in the U.S.

The “proof” these commentators provide for their incendiary allegation is the Anti-Defamation League’s 2017 report on antisemitic incidents in the U.S. The ADL alleged that during Trump’s first year in office, there was a 57 percent rise in antisemitic incidents.

Bennett flew to Pittsburgh Sunday as the representative of the Israeli government to show solidarity with the Jewish community in the aftermath of the massacre. Before travelling back to Israel, he participated in a roundtable discussion of antisemitism in New York at the Council on Foreign Relations.

When asked about the ADL data, Bennett said that he wasn’t certain that the report was accurate. “I’m not convinced those are the facts,” Bennett said adding, “I’m not sure there’s a surge in antisemitism in the United States.”

“We need to look at the facts. I understand that the ADL themselves have stated there is a drastic reduction in violent anti-Semitic events, but that has for some reason been hidden from the public discourse,” he maintained.

📆101 years ago today, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, endorsing the Jewish people’s right to a national home.

“The Balfour Declaration puts Britain on the right side of history.”
—@IsraeliPM

📷Inspecting the original Declaration with Mrs Netanyahu at @BritishLibrary pic.twitter.com/JwXN5xwu7e

— Mark Regev (@MarkRegev) November 2, 2018

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.@AFP makes part of the Holocaust debatable

From AFP:

Pre-war Lithuania was home to a thriving Jewish community of more than 200,000 people, with Vilnius a hub of learning known as the "Jerusalem of the North".

But historians contend that around 195,000 perished at the hands of the Nazis and local collaborators under the 1941-44 German occupation, nearly the entire Jewish population.

"Historians contend?" Usuallly, whenever that phrase is used in other news stories, it means that some historians have a theory about something - a theory that others may dispute. For example from recent news stories;

Historians contend that no single event caused the revolution on continental America inclusive of her 13 colonies. It was instead a series of event that led to the war.

Historians and economists, for example, have long disputed the cause of a mid-nineteenth-century spike in Southern productivity. Economists argue for agricultural innovations, such as new cotton seeds, while historians contend that greater levels of violence drove heightened production. 

Some historians contend the 1848 song [Oh! Susanna] is actually an early, subtle anti-slavery song.

In each case the use of the phrase means that there is a novel, possibly controversial assertion made by historians.

The decimation of Vilnius is a well-documented fact. If the specific number 195,000 is in dispute, then the paragraph should have been rewritten as "Virtually all the Jews in Vilnius were murdered by the Nazis and local collaborators..."

This is nothing less than a subtle form of Holocaust revisionism, given the imprimatur of a major wire service that newspapers throughout the world use as authoritative.

Worse yet, this is an AFP boilerplate. The exact same sentence was published in 2016 in another AFP story about Vilnius.

(h/t Jewdah Maccabee)

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07/29 Links: Gaza flotilla backers have history of Hamas support; The UN's William Schabas protests Israel with a 'Friends of Al-Aqsa' sign; Amb. Haley: 'No more free passes for those who bully Israel'

From Ian:

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Boat trying to break Gaza blockade seized by Israeli navy

The Israeli Navy on Sunday stopped a boat that was trying to break the maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip and started to tow the vessel to the port in Ashdod.

The “Freedom Flotilla” group said that the boat had been “seized” and that the ship had received a warning from the navy prior to the interception.

According to the group, the navy said it would “take all necessary measures” if the vessel did not adjust its course.

The IDF confirmed that it had intercepted the boat and was towing it to the nearby Ashdod port.

“The forces made it clear to the boat that it was violating the blockade and that any humanitarian supplies [it is carrying] can be delivered to Gaza through the port of Ashdod,” the military said in a statement. “The activity ended without any unusual incidents. The boat is being towed to the port of Ashdod at this time.”

The “Return” (al-Awda) is one of two vessels making up the flotilla, alongside “Freedom.”

The flotilla was organized by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, an umbrella of organizations aiming to end the closure of Gaza, and set sail from the Danish port of Copenhagen.

Activist flotilla aims to breach Gaza siege with 'nonviolent resistance'

A flotilla seeking to challenge Israel's maritime ‎blockade on the Gaza Strip is currently some 150 ‎miles from its destination and may arrive off the ‎enclave's shores late Sunday afternoon.‎

According to French news agency AFP, a three-vessel ‎flotilla left Palermo, Sicily, on July 21. One of ‎the smaller ships participating in the sail had to ‎turn back due to mechanical failure, but the lead vessel, the Awda ("Return" in Arabic), ‎was set to arrive off Gaza's shores by Sunday or Monday, ‎Pierre Stambul, the co-president of the French Jewish ‎Union for Peace said.

Israel imposed a maritime blockade on the Gaza Strip ‎after the Islamist terrorist group Hamas seized ‎control of the enclave in a military coup in 2007. ‎Israel maintains the measure is necessary to prevent ‎Hamas from smuggling in weapons and terrorists into ‎Gaza. ‎

According to media reports, there are 22 passengers ‎aboard the Awda‎, including journalists, ‎activists ‎and a Jordanian lawmaker.‎

Organizers said the flotilla was a "gesture of ‎solidarity with the Palestinians."‎

An Iranian reporter on the Awda posted a video on ‎his social media accounts Saturday, noting that ‎‎"there is some medical aid on board, although the ‎amount of medical aid is merely a gesture. We're ‎talking about just a few boxes."‎

Flotillas, Politics & Italian Views Of The ‘Conflict’

While supporting pro-Palestinian activists on the flotilla, Palermo’s mayor says his city respects the rights of both sides

It is hard to avoid the impression that Palermo, the capital of sun-drenched Sicily, is aiming to become the capital of something else: Palestinian solidarity. This is thanks to Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando who has done a lot to promote the Palestinian cause.

Just last week, the mayor welcomed another “flotilla” to Palermo’s shores. The word—now a key term in the political lexicon of the Middle East—means a small core of sea-going vessels (usually three or four) staffed with pro-Palestinian activists. The activists, who hail mainly from Europe and beyond, especially Anglophone countries, sail the boats towards the Gaza Strip where they attempt to break Israel’s decade-long naval blockade of the Palestinian enclave.

Flotillas have become a common form of protest within the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. From 2008 to 2016, international activists have sailed at least 31 boats to challenge the Israeli blockade. The latest one is expected to reach the waters around Gaza in the next few days, after setting off from Palermo last weekend.

Comprising four boats, the flotilla, dubbed the “Freedom Flotilla,” is carrying more than 40 pro-Palestinian activists from Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand, Malaysia, Canada, the United States, France, Germany and Italy. After setting off from Copenhagen on March 22, it stopped in 15 European ports before arriving in Palermo, a journey of 4,000 nautical miles (4,600 miles). The final leg of the voyage from Sicily to Gaza is expected to take up to 10 days.

Gaza flotilla backers have history of Hamas support

Several of the activists and organizations behind the flotilla to Gaza stopped by the IDF just off Israel's coast Sunday, aiming to break the Israeli naval blockade, have openly supported Hamas.

The three-vessel flotilla is backed by the “Freedom Flotilla Coalition” of 13 organizations.

One of the coalition’s founders, Zaher Birawi, was designated as a member of a terrorist organization – Hamas Headquarters in Europe – by Israel’s Justice Ministry in 2013.

Birawi is based in London and is head of the “International Coordination Committee for the Great Return March,” meaning the rioting on the Gaza-Israel border in recent months, as well as the “International Committee for Breaking the Siege on the Gaza Strip.”

In May, Birawi posted photographs on Facebook of himself taking part in the “final preparations for the Freedom Flotilla” in Copenhagen, and at the flotilla departure point in Palermo. He has continued posting regular updates on the flotilla as recently as last week, although he did not embark on the journey to Gaza himself.

One of the flotilla’s funders is MyCARE, based in Malaysia, which calls itself a “humanitarian care” organization. MyCARE posted dispatches on Facebook from its associates on the flotilla, including Dr. Mohd Afandi Salleh, who they wrote had 116 boxes of medicine, and Aiman Khairul Azzam who was part of the flotilla’s central command.

MyCARE has direct connections with Hamas. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh publicly thanked MyCARE “for the continued support of the Palestinian defense,” at an event in Gaza in 2015, and the organization’s activists have posed with Haniyeh, together with their logo on at least one other occasion.

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07/26 Links Pt1: Trump exposes UN hypocrisy on PLO, Hamas and Israel; Under the cover of a children's protest: Sniper injures IDF officer; Obama Admin Knowingly Funded an al-Qaeda Affiliate

From Ian:

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David Horovitz: Hamas, the murderous neighbor that demands Israel give it the gun

A few years ago, an awful new neighbor moved in next door. An ex-murderer, unreformed.

Life became a nightmare. He claimed we were on his land. We weren’t. There’d been a dispute before he arrived, but we’d actually conceded.

He vowed alternately to force us out of the neighborhood and to kill us. He told anyone who’d listen that we had no right to be here and that he hated us. Unbelievably, some of the other neighbors supported him.

There were fights at the fence. We were scared to go outside. Life became a nightmare.

He tried to get a gun. He had friends who we knew would give him one. He said that if we didn’t let him get the gun, he’d keep on harassing and attacking us.

So we said okay. We let him get the gun. He killed us.

That ridiculous story is essentially the tale of what’s going on between Hamas and Israel. Except for the last part. That’s not going to happen.

David Singer: David Singer: Trump exposes UN hypocrisy on PLO, Hamas and Israel

President Trump has challenged United Nations (UN) member States to put their money where their mouths are in a hard-hitting speech delivered by US Permanent Representative to the UN – Ambassador Nikki Haley – at a UN Security Council Open Debate on the Middle East on 24 July.

Following Trump’s dressing down of NATO – Haley attacked UN member States who are full of words but short on money when it comes to supporting the Palestinian Arabs.

Haley did not mince her words:
Here at the UN, thousands of miles away from Palestinians who do have real needs, there is no end to the speeches on their behalf. Country after country claims solidarity with the Palestinian people. If those words were useful in the schools, the hospitals, and the streets of their communities, the Palestinian people would not be facing the desperate conditions we are discussing here today. Talk is cheap.

No group of countries is more generous with their words than the Palestinians’ Arab neighbors, and other OIC [Organisation of Islamic Cooperation – ed.]member states. But all of the words spoken here in New York do not feed, clothe, or educate a single Palestinian child. All they do is get the international community riled up.

Haley used members’ contributions to UNRWA to prove her case:
Last year, Iran’s contribution to UNRWA was zero. Algeria’s contribution to UNRWA was zero. Tunisia’s contribution to UNRWA was zero.

Other countries did provide some funding. Pakistan gave $20,000. Egypt gave $20,000. Oman gave $668,000.

Haley did not spare non-Arab and non-Islamic countries from similar naming and shaming:
Other countries talk a big game about the Palestinian cause. In 2017, China provided $350,000 to UNRWA. Russia provided two million dollars to UNWRA.

Haley contrasted America’s generosity:
Last year … the United States gave 364 million dollars… And that’s on top of what the American people give annually to the Palestinians in bilateral assistance. That is another 300 million dollars just last year, and it averages to more than a quarter of a billion dollars every year since 1993.

Israel Should Seek More from Hamas Than a Return to the Status Quo Ante

The fighting between Israel and Hamas has not yet abated, but it’s possible that this round of conflict is coming to an end. Yet even if Israel succeeds in deterring Hamas from further attacks, writes Amos Yadlin, the result will be what he calls an “asymmetric strategic tie.”

Hamas has been able to erode the Israeli deterrence that was established since Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, to breach the calm that prevailed in [Israel’s] south, and to try to define new “equations” and rules of engagement. To be sure, Hamas did not plan the March of Return or the kite- and balloon-based arson attacks, but it found in them attractive tactics and turned them into two central operational efforts. . . .

Israel has undoubtedly scored impressive achievements: its borders were not breached and its citizens were not harmed. Hamas weapons factories, training camps, and storage facilities were wiped out by the air force. Yet Hamas still has a sense of achievement. It has once again put the Gaza issue—both its humanitarian and political aspects—on the international agenda, damaged Israel’s image, undermined the sense of security among the Israeli population in the communities near the Gaza border, and challenged Israeli sovereignty in the Gaza environs.

In order to break this ongoing tie, Israel must adopt a proactive rather than a reactive strategy. It must take an approach designed to change the reality and not sanctify the status quo. . . . [First], efforts can and must be made to promote more modest understandings, namely, a limited hudna [Arabic for a temporary truce]. A fundamental condition for such an arrangement is a total halt of terror from Gaza and the return of Israeli civilians and bodies of the fallen soldiers held by Hamas. . . .

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07/25 Links Pt2: The Media Is Not ‘Pro-Palestinian,’ Just Anti-Israel; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Neturei Karta, and the Corbynization of the Democratic Party; Facebook Must Get Rid of Holocaust Denial

From Ian:

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CAMERA OP-ED: The Media Is Not ‘Pro-Palestinian,’ Just Anti-Israel

Many major Western news outlets are accused—often correctly—of bias against Israel. Yet, this does not mean that their coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict can be described as “pro-Palestinian.” In fact, many in the media—and the policymakers and pundits that they influence—tend to ignore internal Palestinian issues when Israel can’t be blamed. And recent events prove it.

Since the beginning of June 2018, hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) have taken to the streets in protest of their government’s policies toward the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority, dominated by the Fatah movement, rules the West Bank. Under PA President and Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas, the authority has enacted punitive measures towards Gaza in an attempt to apply pressure on Hamas, Fatah’s rival that rules the Strip. Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group with a fiercely antisemitic ideology, has controlled Gaza since besting Fatah in a short but bloody civil war in 2007.

Abbas has attempted to regain control of the coastal enclave ever since.

Among other actions, the PA has cut salaries to its employees living in Gaza, suspended social assistance to hundreds of families residing there, forced the retirement of thousands of civil servants, and reinstated the collection of taxes from previously exempt Gazans. The PA also quit paying Israel for the electricity and fuel that it provides to the Strip—resulting in severe power shortages for Gazans.

For its part, the misery endured by the average Gazan—misery that is not shared by their leaders, many of who live in luxury in Qatar —is a frequent media topic. Many journalists, however, blame Israel’s security blockade for Gaza’s troubles, often failing to note that it exists only because Hamas expends international aid and resources on rockets and terror tunnels to attack the Jewish state.

SPLC Ignores Muslim Anti-Semitism, Warns About Danger to Muslims From Holocaust Denial

On Saturday, the left-wing smear organization the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) attacked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for suggesting that some forms of Holocaust denial could be acceptable on Facebook. Tragically, the left-wing group did not mention a key source of Holocaust denial: anti-Israel sentiment, and anti-Semitism among Muslims. Instead, the SPLC expressed fear that Holocaust denial might hurt American Muslims.

While Nazis were the first to start crafting lies rejecting the reality of the Holocaust, Holocaust denial is most mainstream among Muslims in the Middle East. A 2014 survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found that 63 percent of people in the Middle East and North Africa said the Holocaust was "a myth or an exaggeration. A full 65 percent said "Jews are responsible for most of the world's wars." A whopping 74 percent of those in the Middle East and North Africa harbored anti-Semitic views.

When asked directly about the Holocaust, 61 percent of Muslims under age 65 said it was a myth or an exaggeration, while Christians were consistently the least likely to deny the Holocaust (followed by Buddhists and non-religious people). Hindus also proved surprisingly likely to deny the Holocaust.

After preliminary notes about Nazis founding the practice — pushing "the deeply offensive lie that the Holocaust was a fraud concocted by Jews" — the SPLC noted that it monitors 10 active Holocaust denial groups in the U.S., four of which have a minor presence on Facebook. To its credit, the SPLC does have two pro-Palestinian groups on that list: two chapters of Der Yassin Remembered.

At the same time, after a brief mention of "the resurgence in antisemitism online," the SPLC went on to lament the plight of American Muslims — some of whom are spreading Holocaust denial in an effort to slander the State of Israel.

Poll: Israel not an important partner for US Democrats

A recent Pew Research poll indicates an overwhelming divide between American Republicans and Democrats over perceptions of the importance of the US-Israel relationship.

The poll primarily dealt with comparing American and German perceptions of one another, but also touched tangentially on American perceptions of other countries.

According to the poll, 12% of Americans said that Israel was the “first or second most important partner for American foreign policy.” Israel tied in third place with Germany, also at 12%, coming behind China at 24% and chart topper Great Britain at 33%.

Dividing responses to the same question along party lines, the poll found that 24% of Republicans found Israel to be a top foreign policy partner out of eight countries listed, in second place behind Great Britain at 42% and ahead of China at 18%. Russia closed the list for Republicans, at 5%.

On the other hand, Israel did not make the eight-country list for Democrats, for whom Great Britain topped the list at 32%, China came in second at 26%, and Canada closed the list at 6%.

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07/17 Links Pt2: What Ireland's Boycott Bill Means For Israel; UK Chief Rabbi: Labour guidelines show 'unprecedented contempt' for Jews; Anti-Facebook Group Takes Anti-Semitic Signs to Congress

From Ian:

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What Ireland's Boycott Bill Means For Israel

Fiamma Nirenstein, a former member of the Italian parliament and currently a Fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, considers the boycott movement more of a threat due to what she defines as troublesome constituent elements. "On the one hand, BDS is viewed as a way of attacking Israel without being accused of extremism, so in this sense it is a great invention by the Palestinians. On the other hand," she expounded to The Media Line, "the program is connected to the worst anti-Semitic organizations, including terrorist ones."

Nirenstein further highlighted the danger associated with the potential blurring of boundaries. "Boycotting commerce outside of the [1967 borders] interferes with business conducted inside of them, including banking, insurance, etc... So there is a fine line between calling for a boycott of products in [the territories] and advocating for a [blanket] ban of the Jewish state."

As regards the EU, specifically, she considers the body the "mother of the BDS, as it is globalist, anti-religious and totally devoted to the idea of peace whatever the cost may be. By contrast, Israel is a nation-state with religions undertones that must constantly defend itself and Europe cannot forgive that. I do not think that Israel can do anything to change this attitude."

Somewhat paradoxically, though, the law itself is a critical barrier to the implementation of European boycotts on Israeli goods. As noted by numerous economists, should the Irish bill be passed, U.S. companies, for example, might be forced to end their operations in Ireland as American firms are legally prohibited from participating in foreign economic bans not sanctioned by Washington. Such an eventuality would, in turn, render an estimated 150,000 people in Ireland jobless. And the same holds true across the continent, the potential negative ramifications of which have been made evident by ongoing European efforts to negotiate around renewed U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Aside from the legal, economic and moral implications, there is also the long-touted political norm against taking action that could "pre-judge" the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Increasingly, European countries seem to comprehend that applying uni-directional pressure on Israel is not a recipe for peace, but, rather, serves to push both sides further away from the negotiating table.

Indeed, critics of BDS the movement note its overall limited realization of its raison d'etre to damage the Jewish state diplomatically and financially. Nevertheless, most analysts agree that cases such as the Irish Senate legislation require a fervent Israeli defense, if not measured offensive. Such instances are, in the eyes of Jerusalem and its proponents, more than much ado about nothing, even if the economic sky is not liable to fall.

Ireland, Boycotts, and Israeli ‘Settlement’ Products

Ireland did not extend recognition to Israel until 1963 and did not establish an embassy in Tel Aviv until 1996. Furthermore, Ireland was one of the first European countries to call for a Palestinian state in 1980 and has persistently focused on the Palestinian refugee issue.

Today, despite its subordinate position within the European Union to such larger powers as France and Germany, Ireland has played an outsized role as a voice on matters concerning Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Last year, the Irish parliament passed a symbolic resolution calling on the EU government to recognize Palestinian statehood. Ireland was also the first European country to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization. At the same time, the BDS movement in Ireland is viewed by many as extremely powerful.

The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which has been at the forefront of anti-Israel sentiment in Ireland, led to Israel banning some 20 activists associated with the Dublin-based group from entering the Jewish state as part of a “blacklist” targeting anti-Israel BDS groups.

As such, Kittrie believes that Israel needs to do a better job improving the country’s image in Ireland.

“Israel has a good story to tell. It needs to do a far better job of telling it to the Irish people,” he said.

“Watching the debate in the Irish Senate, one would think that the lack of peace between Israel and the Palestinians is entirely the fault of Israel. That is just not correct. I think education has a big role to play in improving relations between Ireland and Israel.”

EU: Israel spreads ‘disinformation’ by alleging we fund terror-tied BDS efforts

The European Union is pushing back after an Israeli minister accused Brussels of funding boycotts and even terrorism against Israel.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini recently complained to Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan, saying a report from his ministry was spreading disinformation in a report accusing the EU of funding anti-Israel groups with ties to terrorists.

EU Ambassador to Israel Emanuele Giaufret also rebuffed the suggestion Tuesday.

“The idea that the EU could support terrorism is entirely unfounded,” he told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. “We’re very determined in our fight against terrorism and remain opposed to the isolation of Israel or the questioning of its legitimacy. That’s why we don’t fund any BDS activity.”

He added that the EU was open to hearing “issues of concern” from Israel.

Mogherini sent a letter on July 5 to Erdan responding to a May report from his ministry that alleged that the EU funds nonprofit groups that campaign for boycotts of Israel or have ties to terror groups.

Knesset passes law barring 'anti-IDF' groups from schools

Education Minister Bennett: If Breaking the Silence wants to change things, it should act at home, not abroad • Breaking the Silence: The law proves how much Bennett fears his own ideology • Delegitimizing groups should be outlawed, right-wing forum says.

The Knesset on Monday passed a legislative proposal designed to keep out of schools nongovernmental organizations that advocate against the Israeli military. The bill passed its second and third readings with a vote of 43 in favor to 23 against.

The law, sponsored by Habayit Hayehudi MK Shuli Mualem-Rafaeli, was dubbed the "Breaking the Silence bill" for a controversial advocacy group dedicated to exposing alleged wrongdoings by the IDF. The group has been excoriated numerous times for encouraging legal action against Israeli soldiers, an allegation its leaders deny.

The legislation expands Section 2 of the Public Education Law and states that public education will teach Israeli youth about performing a meaningful role in the IDF or in national service.

The bill also grants the education minister the power to establish guidelines that will prevent organizations from outside the school system from activity in public schools if their work contradicts the goals and values of the public education system.

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07/05 Links Pt2: Claude Lanzmann, acclaimed director of documentary 'Shoah,' dies at 92; I’m Jewish and Pakistani… let me go to Israel; Debunking claims about Israel’s “apartheid” wall

From Ian:

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Claude Lanzmann, acclaimed director of documentary 'Shoah,' dies at 92

French Director Claude Lanzmann, whose 9½-hour masterpiece “Shoah” bore unflinching witness to the Holocaust through the testimonies of Jewish victims, German executioners and Polish bystanders, has died at the age of 92.

Gallimard, the publishing house for Lanzmann’s autobiography, said he died Thursday morning at a hospital in Paris. It gave no further details.

The power of “Shoah,” filmed in the 1970s during Lanzmann’s trips to the barren Polish landscapes where the slaughter of Jews was planned and executed, was in viewing the Holocaust as an event in the present, rather than as history. It contained no archival footage, no musical score — just the landscape, trains and recounted memories.

Lanzmann was 59 when the movie, his second, came out in 1985. It defined the Holocaust for those who saw it, and defined him as a filmmaker.

“I knew that the subject of the film would be death itself. Death rather than survival,” Lanzmann wrote in his autobiography. “For 12 years I tried to stare relentlessly into the black sun of the Shoah.”

“Shoah” was nearly universally praised. Roger Ebert called it “one of the noblest films ever made” and Time Out and The Guardian were among those ranking it the greatest documentary of all time. The Polish government was a notable dissenter, which dismissed the film as “anti-Polish propaganda” (but later allowed “Shoah” to be aired in Poland).

Long before Israel, Claude Lanzmann stirred Poland’s wrath

Claude Lanzmann was mostly amused by the “truckloads of calumny” unloaded across the front pages of the livid Polish press after the 1985 release of his nine-and-a-half hour landmark “Shoah” documentary.

Preoccupied with raising money for further copies of his pioneering cinematic masterpiece on the genocide of six million Jews during the Holocaust — and pressed with a sense of urgency to disseminate the accounts of the survivors — the French Jewish journalist and filmmaker had casually shrugged off the torrential, raging criticism emerging from then-Communist Warsaw.

“And yet, while I may have been amused, I did not realize that the Polish lobby disposed of some heavy artillery. Compared to their firepower, the Jewish lobby was barely capable of a skirmish,” Lanzmann wrote in his 2012 memoir, “The Patagonian Hare.”

Lanzmann died on Thursday at the age of 92, some 33 years after he first cast his lens on many ordinary Poles, offering up some piercing accounts of horrific wartime actions and deeply rooted anti-Semitism, and violently upending narratives of untarnished Polish victimhood.

Yad Vashem slams ‘highly problematic’ Israeli-Polish Holocaust statement

The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center on Thursday slammed an agreement between the governments of Israel and Poland regarding the latter’s record during the Holocaust, saying it would stifle free research on the subject.

A joint declaration issued by Warsaw and Jerusalem “contains highly problematic wording that contradicts existing and accepted historical knowledge in this field,” the institution said in a press release.

The statement is an embarrassing blow to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who last week hailed the agreement and the joint statement that was issued on the occasion as safeguarding “the historic truth about the Holocaust.”
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On Thursday, Yad Vashem released a long press release in which its historians detail why they not only contest the joint statement’s historical veracity, but are also dissatisfied with the Polish amendment to the controversial law.

“A thorough review by Yad Vashem historians shows that the historical assertions, presented as unchallenged facts, in the joint statement contain grave errors and deceptions, and that the essence of the statute remains unchanged even after the repeal of the aforementioned sections, including the possibility of real harm to researchers, unimpeded research, and the historical memory of the Holocaust,” the statement read.

Indeed, the statement “contains highly problematic wording that contradicts existing and accepted historical knowledge in this field,” the statement continued.

The joint Israeli-Polish declaration “effectively supports a narrative that research has long since disproved, namely, that the Polish Government-in-Exile and its underground arms strove indefatigably — in occupied Poland and elsewhere — to thwart the extermination of Polish Jewry.”

Bennett: Israel-Poland Holocaust declaration ‘a disgrace, saturated with lies’

Education Minister Naftali Bennett on Thursday led a chorus of widespread condemnation for a joint Israeli-Polish declaration signed by the two nations’ prime ministers that appears to accept Poland’s official position that it is not responsible for the crimes of the Holocaust.

The outrage from across the political spectrum came following a statement from the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center saying it would stifle free research on the subject.

“The joint declaration of Israel and the government of Poland is a disgrace, saturated with lies, that betrays the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust,” Bennett said in statement put out on Twitter. “As minister of education, entrusted with passing on the memory of the Holocaust, I reject it completely. It has no factual basis and won’t be studied in the education system,”

The Jewish Home leader added that he would be demanding”the prime minister cancel the declaration or bring it to the government for approval.”

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06/18 Links Pt2: The Many Ways the Palestinians Violate International Law; SPLC pays Maajid Nawaz $3.5Mil for false extremist accusation; Prince William an FCO hostage in a minefield

From Ian:

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Amb. Alan Baker: The Many Ways the Palestinians Violate International Law

After the UN General Assembly on June 14, 2018, voted to condemn Israel for its handling of the Gaza border fence violence, It is all the more curious to observe the deliberate disregard of the serious and flagrant international humanitarian, environmental, and ecological crimes committed by Hamas and the Palestinians.
Since the Palestinian Authority is utilizing the events in Gaza to conduct its own political and legal campaign against Israel in international bodies, this renders the Palestinian leadership an accessory to Hamas in the commission of these crimes.

By initiating, encouraging, and supporting mass pollution of the border area through the organized stockpiling and burning of tires, the Palestinian leadership is responsible for repeatedly creating caustic clouds of carbon pollution. This act is damaging to the health of the Palestinian civilian demonstrators themselves, as well as the residents of Israeli communities in the vicinity of the border.

Incendiary kites and balloons have ignited vast swathes of agricultural land in Israel, destroyed crops, and endangered Israeli residents. The International Criminal Court Statute defines as a war crime "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."

Weaponizing kites and balloons by attaching explosive devices with the intention that they will explode upon landing or when found by Israeli civilians is a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, notably the 1997 Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings. Moreover, the 2001 Conventional Weapons Convention prohibits the use of incendiary weapons.

From the viewpoint of international humanitarian law and accepted norms of humanity, placing Palestinian civilians, and especially women and children, at the forefront of violent demonstrations and attacks on the border fence as human shields to conceal the presence of Hamas terrorists is a violation of several international treaties protecting children and prohibiting their involvement in warfare.

The Palestinian leadership must be made to understand that its fixation with joining international treaties is not unidirectional. It involves solemn responsibilities to abide by the obligations included in such treaties. The international community must hold the Palestinian leadership to their commitments and not ignore their violations of the most fundamental norms and principles of international law.

Radical-Left SPLC Pays Anti-Islamist Think Tank $3.37 Million After Calling It 'Extremist'

On Monday, Quilliam, a London-based counter-extremism think-tank that battles against Islamic extremism, announced the hard-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) would pay Quilliam almost $4 million after SPLC had included Quilliam in its “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.”

SPLC released a statement, which read:
Today, we entered into a settlement with and offered our sincerest apology to Mr. Maajid Nawaz and his organization, the Quilliam Foundation, for including them in our publication A Journalist’s Manual: Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists. Given our understanding of the views of Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam, it was our opinion at the time that the Field Guide was published that their inclusion was warranted. But after getting a deeper understanding of their views and after hearing from others for whom we have great respect, we realize that we were simply wrong to have included Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam in the Field Guide in the first place.

Then, the acknowledgment of the payment: “As part of our settlement, we have paid $3.375 million to Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam to fund their work to fight anti-Muslim bigotry and extremism.”

And this conclusion: “As we move forward, we are committed to redoubling our efforts to ensure that our work is always carried out with the utmost care and integrity. The stakes in the battle against hate and extremism are simply too great to be satisfied with anything less.”

The SPLC has defended anti-Semite and radical leftist Linda Sarsour; called the late Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum a hate group; named the Family Research Council a hate group, and written that Prager University videos are “indispensable propaganda device for the right.” (h/t jzaik)

Antisemitism at the United Nations Cannot Be Ignored

Yet even most of us who care about these issues tend to treat the UN’s actions as mere rhetoric. While this is true, we’re wrong to treat days like June 12 as deplorable but not worth getting all that upset about. While what goes on in the United Nations is, in a sense, just talk, it’s far more dangerous than that.

What we forget about these exercises in hypocrisy is that they give official imprimatur to antisemitism. As Obama’s State Department certified, a “rising tide of anti-Semitism” is sweeping across Europe and Southeast Asia. Arab and Islamic hatred for Israel, as well as some Western elites’ belief that the Jews are the one people on the planet who aren’t entitled to a homeland, drive this trend.

If other countries are willing to give Hamas a pass for terror and bash Israel for defending its border in a way no different (if not far more humane) than almost all of the nations condemning it, then this is an act of prejudice against the one Jewish state on the planet.

To note this fact is not to assert that Israel is perfect or above criticism. But when a world body attacks Israel alone and vilifies it for doing what any other nation would do, that is called hate.

The Obama administration treated the United Nations like a sacred multilateral cow. But it’s time for the Trump administration to put even more pressure on the United Nations that it already has done, cutting the US allocations that keep it going.

By regarding everyday hate as ordinary, we are, even if only because of exhaustion and a sense of futility, enabling it. That has to stop. We must never allow ourselves to get used to UN-certified Jew-hatred. The United Nations must be made to understand that decent persons won’t tolerate this practice indefinitely without consequences.

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06/16 Links: When Does Pro-Palestinian End … and When Does Anti-Israel Begin?; The UN's Automatic Majority Against Israel is Fraying; 20 Fires Sparked by Incendiary Kites From Gaza

From Ian:

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When Does Pro-Palestinian End … and When Does Anti-Israel Begin?

In a 2013 news item on Iran’s annual Quds Day march, the Associated Press reported that newly elected President Hassan Rouhani said at the event that Israel was an “old wound” that needed to be removed.

The AP later provided some context for those remarks, “Rouhani spoke at an annual pro-Palestinian rally marking ‘Al-Quds Day’ — the Arabic word for Jerusalem — and although his remarks appear contrary to his outreach efforts to the West, they should also be seen in the context of internal Iranian politics where softening the establishment’s anti-Israeli stand is not an option.”

Despite the AP’s efforts to downplay the extremism of Rouhani’s comments – that he had no choice but to express his opposition to the Jewish state – it also reported, “In the capital, Tehran, tens of thousands took to the streets, chanting ‘Down with America’ and ‘Death to Israel.'”

In a report about last week’s cancelled soccer match between Israel and Argentina, The Washington Post reported, “The BDS movement aims to pressure Israel into complying with international law vis-a-vis its policies toward the Palestinians by discouraging the purchase of Israeli goods, pressuring international companies not to conduct business in Israel and urging celebrities not to visit or perform in the country.”

Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) campaign, has been clear about the goal of his movement. He has said, “A Jewish state in Palestine in any shape or form cannot but contravene the basic rights of the indigenous Palestinian population and perpetuate a system of racial discrimination that ought to be opposed categorically….Definitely, most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

Nor is Barghouti alone among proponents of BDS in calling for an end to the modern state of Israel.

Elliott Abrams: The UN's Automatic Majority Against Israel is Fraying

On June 13, the United Nations General Assembly voted once again to condemn Israel, this time for its actions against Hamas in Gaza when tens of thousands of Hamas supporters and terrorists stormed the Israeli border. The condemnation is not news, but the voting patterns are worth a look.

The final resolution passed 120 (yes) to 8 (no) with 45 abstentions. Who were the eight countries voting no? The United States and Israel, several Pacific island states (Marshall Islands, Nauru, Micronesia, Solomon Islands), Togo—and Australia.

Last year Australia’s government announced that it was through with unfair and unbalanced UN treatment of Israel and would henceforth vote against such resolutions in all parts of the UN system. And so it has. For example, on May 18 of this year, the UN Human Rights Council adopted yet another worthless resolution condemning Israel. The vote was 29 to 2, and the two countries voting no were the United States and Australia. So the first thing to note about the recent General Assembly voting was the Australian vote: a rare show of principle and determination on the international diplomatic scene, and a model for other democracies who all ought to be following Australia’s path.

In Israel, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Calls to Turn the Tide Against Terrorists

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told the International Homeland Security Forum in Israel on Tuesday:

Our alliance has been fortified through crises and strengthened by collaboration. Following the 9/11 attacks - the deadliest terror assault in modern world history - you were right there by our side. We knew we could not win the coming fight alone. And we turned to you for guidance because the State of Israel has withstood decades of violence at the hands of fanatics - and has proudly defended freedom against relentless terrorist enemies.

From Ottawa to Berlin, our communities are now on the frontlines. All countries represented here have experienced this evil in one form or another, whether your nationals have been victims or your homelands have been hit directly. We are at war. And we must respond accordingly.

Victory in this struggle begins with moral clarity. We are engaged in a generational struggle against Islamist militants, the preeminent terror threat to our lives, our livelihoods, and our way of life.

Whether it is global jihadist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda and their legions of digital followers, or the proxies of rogue nation states such as Iran, our enemies have perverted a major religion to justify horrific violence and lust for power. Their goal is to establish a totalitarian empire governed under a backwards and repressive worldview. And the danger they pose is at its highest point in decades.

There have been more than 100 terrorist attacks in Western countries since the rise of ISIS in 2013, resulting in thousands of casualties. The U.S. has been the victim of around 25 of those incidents. Most were carried out by homegrown violent extremists inspired by the group's heinous propaganda.

The good news is that we have put clear-eyed, focused pressure on terrorist groups around the world. We have obliterated the core safe havens of groups such as ISIS and taken tens of thousands of them off the battlefield. The U.S. is standing up to rogue regimes that bankroll terror and use proxies to advance their malign goals.

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05/18 Links Pt2: Foundations of a New Middle East; Erdogan: Anti-Semite and regional threat; A Great Historian of Russia on the Soviet Jewish Plight

From Ian:

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Op-Ed: Left and right wing Anti-Semitism/Zionism

The left has accepted the outright lies told by the Islamists as a means of undermining political opponents. This is the old tactic of scapegoating/blaming the Jews/Israel for the ills of the world, again failing to take responsibility for their own behavior.

The postmodern Marxists have successfully inverted the meaning of anti-Semitism. It is no longer hatred of Jews. It is acceptable (normative) to attack pro-Israel Jews for their Jewish identity (part of their program of identity politics and intersectionality.)

Linda Sarsour, women’s movement activist and representative of the terrorist organization Hamas in America, recently redefined anti-Semitism at the New School in N.Y. She reformulated the age-old hatred of Jews so that progressive left activists could continue to be anti-Zionist or anti-Israel.

Hating Jews is not the definition of anti-Semitism under this new language formulation.

Criticizing progressive left activists for being anti-Israel is the new definition of anti-Semitism. Thus, this is a corruption of language and evidence of compelled speech, the very kind that Dr. Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto refused to use in Canada.

This redefinition by a Muslim who represents a terrorist organization in America is a ploy and a shield to protect its own anti-Israel activities. It is benefiting the leftists to the detriment of the Jews and of Israel.

The American Jewish community needs to have the necessary discussion about its safety and security. The time to educate is now so that the community has the tools to take collective action on its behalf.

A Great Historian of Russia on the Soviet Jewish Plight

Richard Pipes, one of America’s foremost historians of Russia and the Soviet Union, died yesterday at the age of ninety-four. In a book review he contributed to Commentary in 1989, when glasnost and the release of substantial numbers of Soviet Jews had made possible new and better-informed histories of Soviet Jewry, he presented a characteristically incisive summation of the situation of Jews under the Communist regime:

[A]lthough they protected Jews from violence and declared overt anti-Semitism a crime, the Communists espoused a program that promised slow death for Jews as a religious community and a nation. Measures outlawing private trade and manufacture, passed in the early years of the Soviet regime, undercut the economic base of Jewish life, creating millions of unemployed. The regime’s anti-religious policies affected Jews no less than Christians: as early as 1919, synagogues and other religious buildings were made liable to confiscation. Hebrew was declared a foreign language and Zionism a subversive doctrine.

In the 1920’s, especially during the relatively benign period of the New Economic Policy, Jews managed to circumvent many of the prohibitions on their economic and cultural activities. But all this came to an end in 1929 when Stalin undertook in earnest to realize Lenin’s revolutionary agenda. . . . By the time he entered into his alliance with Hitler in 1939, Stalin had restored many of the tsarist discriminatory laws, setting quotas on access to educational and bureaucratic opportunities and closing altogether the more sensitive positions. He meant to go farther. In 1942, as Germany’s armies were deep on their murderous mission in the Soviet Union, Hitler confided to his associates that Stalin had promised Ribbentrop “he would oust the Jews from leading positions the moment he had sufficient qualified Gentiles with whom to replace them.” . . .

In the decades since Stalin’s death his successors have done away with the most egregious manifestations of persecution, but discrimination against Jews remains in place. There are no Jews in the Politburo and hardly any in the upper echelons of the military. Strict quotas are imposed on admissions to institutions of higher learning. [Mikhail] Gorbachev’s reforms, which have eased Soviet discriminatory policies, have also allowed the emergence of overtly anti-Semitic movements, of which Pamyat [“memory”] is the most notorious. . . .

Hence very many Russian Jews see no future for themselves and their children, and if given a chance would emigrate. Recent Israeli estimates are that a continuation of Gorbachev’s liberalized emigration policy might lead to the exodus of at least 500,000 Jews. A community that a century ago was not only the largest in the world but also culturally the most vibrant has been destroyed by a regime that many Jews in and out of Russia once regarded as a beacon of hope.

Guatemala becomes 2nd country to open embassy in Jerusalem

In anticipation of the inauguration of the Guatemalan Embassy in Jerusalem’s Malcha Technology Park on May 16, the city illuminated the Old City walls with flags of Guatemala, Israel and the United States along with a message thanking President Jimmy Morales Cabrera of Guatemala.

Morales and the Guatemalan ministers of foreign affairs, defense and economy arrived in Israel earlier in the week to prepare for the event, which closely followed the official opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem.

Guatemala’s embassy was originally in Jerusalem and had moved to Tel Aviv in 1980.

“Guatemalan Embassy, welcome home!” said Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat. “I thank President Jimmy Morales Cabrera of Guatemala for his courageous decision and am honored that we will be opening the embassy in the capital of Israel.”

Before the ceremony inaugurating the new embassy, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Guatemalan President Morales held a private meeting as did their wives, Sara Netanyahu and Patricia Morales. President Reuven Rivlin also met with Morales.

Where were the Democrats?

This should be clear enough, even for clueless Conor Powell, that If you don’t show up for Israel it means you’re showing up for Hamas.

That’s the tribe of terrorists who rule Gaza with love and tolerance for nobody, including their own children.

Why, for Fox News, is Powell dishing this Hamas propaganda about right of return to “ancestral homes” that can only fool a reporter who knows nothing.

Well, what can you expect from today’s journalists except zilch city. On the political front, however, Democrats occasionally know right from wrong. I said occasionally.

So in or out, as we’ve been saying. You can’t be half for Israel, where every child is precious, and half for Moloch who practice child incineration.

Was this a boycott? Either way, mark them as absent without an excuse. The Democrats were not there in Jerusalem when it counted, so count them as sharing the values of Radical Islam.

Include them with Hamas, ISIS, al Qaeda and Hezbollah. Nothing wrong with beheadings, wife beating, gay bashing, honor killings, and capricious mass executions.

It’s a sale, according to this new wave of Bernie Sanders Liberalism and… we should try it at home.

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05/09 Links Pt1: Donald Trump Ends the Obama Mirage; Sohrab Amari: Obama Killed His Own Iran Deal; Palestinians announce embassy move date to be ‘day of rage’

From Ian:

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Bret Stephens: A Courageous Trump Call on a Lousy Iran Deal

Apologists also claim that, with Trump’s decision, Tehran will simply restart its enrichment activities on an industrial scale. Maybe it will, forcing a crisis that could end with U.S. or Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. But that would be stupid, something the regime emphatically isn’t. More likely, it will take symbolic steps to restart enrichment, thereby implying a threat without making good on it. What the regime wants is a renegotiation, not a reckoning.

Why? Even with the sanctions relief, the Iranian economy hangs by a thread: The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported “hundreds of recent outbreaks of labor unrest in Iran, an indication of deepening discord over the nation’s economic troubles.” This week, the rial hit a record low of 67,800 to the dollar; one member of the Iranian Parliament estimated $30 billion of capital outflows in recent months. That’s real money for a country whose gross domestic product barely matches that of Boston.

The regime might calculate that a strategy of confrontation with the West could whip up useful nationalist fervors. But it would have to tread carefully: Ordinary Iranians are already furious that their government has squandered the proceeds of the nuclear deal on propping up the Assad regime. The conditions that led to the so-called Green movement of 2009 are there once again. Nor will it help Iran if it tries to start a war with Israel and comes out badly bloodied.

All this means the administration is in a strong position to negotiate a viable deal. But it missed an opportunity last month when it failed to deliver a crippling blow to Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s puppet in Syria, for his use of chemical weapons. Trump’s appeals in his speech to the Iranian people also sounded hollow from a president who isn’t exactly a tribune of liberalism and has disdained human rights as a tool of U.S. diplomacy. And the U.S. will need to mend fences with its European partners to pursue a coordinated diplomatic approach.

The goal is to put Iran’s rulers to a fundamental choice. They can opt to have a functioning economy, free of sanctions and open to investment, at the price of permanently, verifiably and irreversibly forgoing a nuclear option and abandoning their support for terrorists. Or they can pursue their nuclear ambitions at the cost of economic ruin and possible war. But they are no longer entitled to Barack Obama’s sweetheart deal of getting sanctions lifted first, retaining their nuclear options for later, and sponsoring terrorism throughout.

Trump’s courageous decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal will clarify the stakes for Tehran. Now we’ll see whether the administration is capable of following through.

John Podhoretz: Trump and America’s Centripetal Foreign Policy

With some exceptions (like the elder Bush’s administration in relation to Israel), every element on this list (if in some cases you substitute the Soviet Union for Russia pre-1991 and Libya for Islamist terror) was to some degree at play in American foreign policy from 1981 until 2008. Such has been the powerful logical flow of American foreign policy since the election of Ronald Reagan. This consensus ebbed and flowed depending on the circumstance, of course, and the parallels are not perfect. What Trump has done, and I don’t think strategically or with any grand design, is to place far greater stock in both the unilateralist and the realpolitik aspects of American foreign policy than his predecessors in the Reagan and post-Reagan era. He views enduring alliances more as constraints than grand benefits, which is perhaps the primary way in which he differs from the consensus. But his attacks on those alliances have basically ceased, which is itself a striking change from candidate Trump’s approach.

And what of 2008 to 2016? Barack Obama, schooled in 1970s liberal foreign-policy shibboleths, came at this consensus and flipped it—not entirely on its head, more like about 140 degrees. We went at Israel, we went light on Russia, we sought a concord with Iran, and Obama was celebrated for his acceptance of the monsters of Havana. Most notably, he accepted the left-liberal critique of postwar American foreign policy’s supposedly bad actions in the world and sought to apologize or make implicit amends for them. Viewed in this light, it’s the Obama years that represent the jarring discontinuity from the consensus path and not the election of the X-factor Trump.

We’ll have to see how this North Korea business goes to better understand Trump. (And certainly Trump’s trade practices mark him as very different, though there’s an argument that’s more an economic than a foreign policy.) There’s no reason to believe any of this is conscious or deliberate or designed. There is no Trump Doctrine. But there might be one yet, and it might be more familiar than we had any right to expect.

Sohrab Amari: Obama Killed His Own Iran Deal

He tried to circumvent the Israelis by keeping them in the dark about secret negotiations with the Islamic Republic. For Obama, Arab fears of Iranian expansionism were a tertiary concern, and he was surprised when the most important Sunni powers didn’t show up for a 2015 summit that was supposed to sell them on the deal. He likewise pooh-poohed Iran’s eliminationist anti-Israel rhetoric (“at the margins, where the costs are low, they may pursue policies based on [Jew] hatred as opposed to self-interest,” he told The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg). His aides described a sitting Israeli prime minister as a “chickens—t” (on background, naturally).

He lectured and condescended, and then lectured some more.

On the home front, meanwhile, Obama relied on his signature “pen and phone” methods to ram the deal through. Rather than welcome GOP hawks as good-faith actors seeking to strengthen his hand against an adversary, he treated Republicans as the adversary. He thought his diplomacy pitted him and reasonable Iranians like Javad Zarif against “hard-liners” in Washington and Tehran.

Meanwhile, Obama’s Ben Rhodes-operated media echo chamber swarmed and shouted down journalists and experts who raised concerns about the terms of the accord, not least the fact that it permitted the Iranians to inspect their own military sites and left unaddressed the question of ballistic missiles. The Obama administration never satisfactorily answered critics’ questions about Iran’s refusal to come clean about its prior weaponization activity—the glaring flaw in the deal’s architecture that contributed the most to its undoing this week.

And here we are. The deal’s demise, then, was written into it by its primary author.

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