06/20 Links Pt2: How Did ‘Syria Palaestina’ Come Back to Life 1,800 Years Later?; Israel creates Hate Net map of BDS groups, linking activists to terrorists

From Ian:

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How Did ‘Syria Palaestina’ Come Back to Life 1,800 Years Later?

In reporting on the trial in Berlin of a man who attacked an individual wearing a yarmulke, where the accused confessed to the court that he had committed the assault and then apologized to his victim, JTA also reported that the assailant was “identified as a 19-year-old Syrian Palestinian living in Germany since 2015,” reviving a term that hasn’t been in use for close to two millennia.

But JTA probably did not suggest that the world’s geopolitical order has been changed overnight, even in the turbulent Middle East, and so they probably referred to a Palestinian who was born in Syria. Which is testimony to a serious problem in geopolitical thinking over at the last news providers still using the telegraph.

Most Arab refugees fled to Syria in 1948 from Safad, Haifa, Acre, Tiberias, and Nazareth. By the summer of 1948, there were about 85,000 refugees in Syria, the majority concentrated along the border area with Israel. Now, since the Berlin assailant is 19, it is safe to assume that he was born in Syria and that his parents were likewise born in Syria. Regardless of whether or not his grandparents, who probably came from south of the border, are alive, our 19-year-old assailant is Syrian for all intents and purposes.

But he’s not. Because of the Casablanca Protocol.

The September 11, 1965 Protocol for the Treatment of Palestinians in Arab States, a.k.a the Casablanca Protocol, determines, “on the basis of the Charter of the League of Arab States and its special annex pertaining to Palestine,” a set of rights accorded these refugees who would otherwise are prevented from attaining the nationality of the countries where they reside and were born!

Syria, despite the promises to the contrary of the Casablanca Protocol, keeps a separate set of rules for its “Palestinians” – who were born and raised in Syria – who, for instance, unlike Syrian nationals, may not own more than one home or purchase arable land.

It's offensive and inaccurate to compare the current US border tragedy to the Holocaust

Michael Hayden, who previously served as director of both the CIA and the National Security Agency, waded into this issue when he tweeted a picture of Auschwitz and wrote, “Other governments have separated mothers and children.”

The CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer discussed the reactions to the tweet with Hayden, who had explained that he “felt a warning flare was necessary” and was trying to describe “what is happening to us as a people.”

It’s easy to understand why Hayden was disturbed and concerned about the ways American officials are acting. The images of children in cages, the act of separating children from parents, the detention centres with their cramped quarters and barrack-like interiors.

But comparisons to Auschwitz are ludicrous and offensive. Blitzer explained to Hayden why so many people were outraged by his tweet.

“I speak with some authority on this,” Blitzer said. “My grandparents were murdered at Auschwitz. My dad survived, but two of his brothers and two of his sisters were killed at Auschwitz. They weren’t separated to go to some other facility. They were separated to die.”

What’s going on at the border is a tragedy. But critics of the administration’s actions should be honest, articulate, and accurate. They should refrain from comparisons that will only serve to highlight how Trump and his policies are not quite as bad as they could be.

PreOccupiedTerritory: Treblinka Inmates Slap Foreheads, Realize Mistake: Not Being Mexican Children To Get Liberal Sympathy (satire)

Members of this death camp’s Sonderkommando, tasked with disposing of the corpses of fellow Jews from the gas chamber and cleaning it out for its next use, expressed embarrassment today at understanding where they erred in trying to attract the attention of left-wing activists in the US. Instead of being Jews condemned to starvation, beatings, disease, and death, they now realize, in order to generate the proper sentiments they should instead have been children of Mexicans who illegally crossed the border into the US and are being held in facilities separately from their parents, where they do receive sufficient food, clothing, and medical care.

Inmates at this facility in the forest northeast of Warsaw slapped their foreheads in sudden recognition of their mistake.

“God damn it, I should have known,” grumbled Szlama Grubinski, 20, as he moved a corpse onto a litter for removal to a mass grave. “If our suffering isn’t enough to engender political action by those people, we should have realized much sooner it was stupid to be here instead of in a detention facility at the Texas border.”

Josef Kohn, 22, agreed. “It’s an unpleasant feeling, suddenly becoming aware of this truth,” he remarked as he scrubbed down a railroad cattle car from the bodily fluids and other debris of the hundreds of Jews who had been crammed inside for days without food, water, or toilet facilities on their way to extermination at the camp. “All of this could have been different if we’d only known. And I can’t shake the sense that I actually knew it all along.”

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06/06 Links Pt2: Sirhan Sirhan, Forgotten Terrorist; Argentina soccer match canceled over terrorism, not a boycott; Rockefeller Fund gives to groups funding Palestinian terrorism

From Ian:

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Sirhan Sirhan, Forgotten Terrorist

Because the assassination came just over four years after his brother President John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, and just two months after Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down in Memphis, the nation focused on gun violence and hatred of the Kennedy family in its aftermath. Many blamed right-wing racists, since the Kennedys had supported the civil-rights movement. I was in school back then, and I remember the most common phrase: “They killed another Kennedy.” The “they” was generic. It wasn’t an individual; it referred to a supposed violent streak that ran through American culture and mythology all the way back to our frontier days.

But a single individual killed Kennedy for very specific reasons. Sirhan was obsessed with both Israel and Jews. He was born in British Mandatory Palestine in 1944 and emigrated to the United States in 1956, attending school in Los Angeles. Yet even though the California economy of the 1950s and 1960s was one of the strongest in the world, Sirhan never took advantage of what surrounded him: He worked as a stable boy and never became a U.S. citizen.

The shooting took place on the one-year anniversary of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War. This was no coincidence. When Kennedy was 22 years old, he traveled to Palestine, writing articles for the Boston Post about his admiration for the country’s Jewish inhabitants. As a senator from New York, Kennedy continued his strong support of Israel. Shortly before the assassination, in a televised debate with his chief Democratic rival, Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy, Kennedy said he supported the sale of fighter jets to Israel.

Indeed, Kennedy was a consistent and staunch supporter of Israel — which infuriated Sirhan. In a 1989 interview with David Frost, Sirhan said: “My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center Is Indifferent to Muslim Antisemitism

Muslim antisemitism receives scant mention from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organization that is supposed to be dedicated to “fighting hate and extremism.” Its website has 1,327 articles on non-Muslim antisemitic actions, statements, or hate crimes. But less than 10 articles out of thousands mention Muslim antisemitism.

Instead, the SPLC aligns with Islamist groups and leaders — including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) — while giving their antisemitism a pass.

The SPLC’s credibility has already been questioned. It took down its media guide this year after Quilliam Foundation co-founder Maajid Nawaz pointed out that it contained fabrications about him.

While the report may be gone, SPLC Intelligence Project Director Heidi Beirich has yet to correct a false accusation she made against Nawaz, claiming that he was placed on a list of anti-Muslim extremists in part because he supported vast surveillance of Muslims.

Beirich has produced no evidence to support the claim, which Nawaz insists is a lie.

“The SPLC says it fights hate. Yet it criticizes groups that call out Jew-hating Islamists and ignores groups packed with Jew-hating Islamists,” Center for Security Policy Executive Vice President Christopher Hull told the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

U.N. Accused of Doctoring Video to Erase Leading Pro-Israel Speaker’s Credentials

The United Nations is facing accusations it doctored an official video to remove all mention of a leading pro-Israel speaker's credentials ahead of a scathing speech accusing the international organization of promoting anti-Semitism and hatred against Israel, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Professor Anne Bayefsky, the director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and president of Human Rights Voices, was recently invited by the Israeli government to speak at an event at the U.N. on anti-Semitism about the harmful impact of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, a global campaign to economically isolate the Jewish state that has widely been discredited as anti-Semitic in nature. Bayefsky specifically addressed anti-Semitism at the U.N. itself.

In an official video of the May 30 event posted on the U.N.'s website, all mention of Bayefsky's credentials and longstanding status as a leading expert on anti-Semitism was initially erased, leaving a confusing gap that she claims diminished the speech's impact.

Bayefsky, a vocal critic of the U.N.'s anti-Israel bias, alleged in a subsequent video highlighting the U.N.'s deletion that the international body was engaged in an attempt to revise history and weaken a speech that called out in stark terms the entire U.N. for its promotion of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic policies.

U.N. officials who spoke to the Free Beacon admitted the original video deleted all mention of Bayefsky's credentials, but explained this was due to a technical issue that was rectified soon after the Free Beacon began its initial inquiries in the matter.

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05/03 Links Pt1: Ben Shapiro: Lies and More Lies; Oren: 'Conduct of the Obama administration borders on criminal'; NY Times calls for Abbas ouster over ‘vile’ claim on Jews and Holocaust

From Ian:

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Ben Shapiro: Lies and More Lies

So, the Iranians lied.

So did the Obama administration.

On April 30, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that in a stunning intelligence coup, the Israelis had somehow obtained 100,000 files from Iran’s secret atomic archive in Tehran. The files showed that Iran had ardently pursued nuclear weapons for years, lying about it all the while; that they had then failed to turn over the information showing the extent of their program during negotiations over the Barack Obama administration-pushed Iran deal; and that they had hidden those files in a secret warehouse with the obvious intent of reviving their nuclear program the minute they can get away with it.

According to Netanyahu, Iran “is brazenly lying when it says it never had a nuclear weapons program.” Furthermore, Netanyahu claimed that nuclear development “continued … in a series of organizations over the years, and today, in 2018, this work is carried out by SPND, that’s an organization inside Iran’s Defense Ministry.” The head of Iran’s earlier nuclear program currently heads the SPND.

Advocates for the Obama administration have come forward to contend that there’s nothing new here — that everyone knew Iran had been lying about its nuclear program. But when the deal was signed, Secretary of State John Kerry stated that Iran would have to disclose past military-related nuclear activities: “If there’s going to be a deal, it will be done. … It will be part of a final agreement.”

Other advocates say that Israel’s intelligence would be damaging to the Iran deal — but those nefarious Jews made it up. According to Tommy Vietor, former Obama National Security Council spokesman, “After years of bashing U.S. intelligence agencies for getting Iraq wrong, [Donald] Trump is now cooking up intel with the Israelis to push us closer to a conflict with Iran. A scandal hiding in plain sight.”

Caroline Glick: The Ayatollah's Archive Violates the Iran Deal

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s revelation Monday evening that Israel’s Mossad spy agency had seized Iran’s nuclear archive means that the ayatollahs have violated the nuclear deal negotiated by then-President Barack Obama, his EU partners, the Russians, and the Chinese in 2015.

Despite misleading claims by former Obama administration officials and their supporters in the liberal media that the material provided “nothing new,” the existence of the archive itself is a bombshell.

The intelligence Israel captured from a secret warehouse in Teheran includes more than half a ton of documents and computer files that detail the regime’s past work in developing all aspects of a nuclear arsenal. The archive was painstakingly preserved and transferred to a new secret location after Iran concluded the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal.

According to Ehud Yaari, Arab Affairs commentator for Israel’s Reshet television station, by archiving the material and so preserving Iran’s progress towards constructing nuclear weapons, Iran committed a material breach of the JCPOA.

Paragraph T of Annex 1 of the JCPOA is titled “Activities which could contribute to the design and development of a nuclear explosive device.”

Prelude to a Showdown?

Again, though, to focus on the intelligence Netanyahu revealed is to lose the plot. The exposure of an exceedingly complex operation that revealed these documents to the world is by itself an alarming development. According to the Israeli officials with whom Axios reporter Barak Ravid spoke, the Iranian nuclear archive was transferred to its covert home in February of 2016 explicitly to hide the military dimensions of its nuclear program from inspectors. The Israeli operation that uncovered that warehouse, which was known only to a small circle of Iranian officials, took years to prepare and involved hundreds of agents and informants. Exposing this operation has compromised all of those irreplaceable human assets and sacrificed a lot of invaluable collection capability. No government does that without performing a cost/benefit analysis. Either Israel concluded that making this operation public was worth the concrete policy objective that would be achieved by the reveal, or Netanyahu’s government determined that the value of its assets in Tehran was going to depreciate soon anyway as a result of events. And events are becoming rather ominous.

In as many months, Israel has executed three airstrikes on Iranian targets inside Syria. In February, Israel claimed to have shot down an Iranian drone originating in Syria that penetrated its airspace. In response to that incursion, the Israeli military targeted and destroyed four Iranian positions and an Iranian-operated command-and-control center from which the drone originated. One Israeli aircraft was shot down by Syrian anti-aircraft fire during that operation. In early April, Israel executed an airstrike on an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps post in Syria in which Iranian soldiers and Hezbollah were killed. And just days ago, Israel attacked two Iranian-linked bases inside Syria killing dozens of Iranian and Syrian fighters and igniting ammunition that resulted in several massive explosions. The tempo of Israeli operations is increasing and Americans sources say observers have every reason to fear the accelerating trend.

U.S. officials reportedly told NBC News that, within the last two weeks, Iran has stepped up deliveries of small arms and surface-to-air missiles to Syria as part of Tehran’s effort to “shore up Iranian ground forces and to strike at Israel.” The conspicuous reinforcement of Iranian soldiers, support staff, and weapons stockpiles might have led Israel to draw the gravest of conclusions. “The three U.S. officials said Israel now seems to be preparing for military action and is seeking U.S. help and support,” NBC News revealed.

The arguments among political factions within the United States regarding the Iran nuclear deal and various presidential legacies are peripheral to what may be the more immediate issue: the prospect of imminent hostilities between Israel and Iran, to say nothing of Tehran’s proxy forces in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. Seen in that light, Netanyahu’s decision to reveal the most eye-opening feat of spycraft in a generation is anything but a “nothing-burger.”

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03/26 Links Pt2: Where BDS goes, antisemitism follows; Melanie Phillips: Labour and the Jews, John Bolton; Shmuley Boteach: Israel Is a Haven for LGBT Palestinians Escaping Persecution

From Ian:

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Where BDS goes, antisemitism follows

It’s that time of the year when the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement launches its infamous “Apartheid Week” on university campuses. “Apartheid Week” is just the climax of a yearlong activity on campuses where BDS is most active in promoting an anti-Israel and anti-Zionist agenda, which calls for a widespread boycott of Israel. While many view BDS as mostly “Israel’s problem,” its antisemitic roots and rhetoric should worry Jewish communities across the world and especially American Jews.

The concept of boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel is not new. Even before the BDS movement’s creation, Jews and Israel had to fight for their place in the global economy while being boycotted by the world's Arab nations.

Nevertheless, Israel was able to establish a thriving economy, join leading intergovernmental economic organizations such as the OECD and become one of the world’s innovators in Hi-Tech, Bio-Tech and Security. However, the danger with BDS is not only the potential economic damage to Israel but rather its deep-rooted antisemitism that spreads through its activism across campuses. Where BDS goes, antisemitism follows. Naturally, this is a cause for concern for Israel but, the danger doesn’t stop there.

According to the ADL’s recent Anti-Semitic Incidents report, in 2017 in the US alone, there was an 89% increase in antisemitic incidents on college and university campuses, where BDS is most active. 90 reported incidents constituted actual harassment and another 114 were antisemitic vandalism. It’s important to remember that these figures were compiled from reported incidents, so the real numbers are in all likelihood much higher. Just a year ago, the universities of Central Lancashire and University College London in the United Kingdom canceled “Apartheid Week” on their campuses, acknowledging that it violated British laws against antisemitism. The BDS movement has long flourished on college campuses in the UK, but the acknowledgment that BDS equates to antisemitism was the most effective challenge to the movement so far. In the United States, the increase in antisemitic incidents on campuses is enough to suggest a worrying emerging picture.

Besides the BDS antisemitic strategy to delegitimize the only Jewish state and to put it to different standards from the rest of the world, the BDS hides behind its argument that it is not antisemitic but “anti-Zionist”, all the while seeking to blur the distinction between the two concepts. On the one hand, it disregards Jews’ right to self-determination, despite promoting its distorted definition of Zionism as a “colonialist” power that seeks to “take over control of land and resources and forcibly remove Palestinians” and engages in “ethnic cleansing.” Even more so, it seeks to rewrite any manifestation of Jewish identity that does not fit its propaganda. In doing so, all Jews are referred to as “Whites” in an attempt to align Jews with colonialist powers, the South African apartheid regime, and the white supremacy movement. The only time that Sephardi Jews or Ethiopian Jews are mentioned, is when propagating the lie that the “White” Jews are “also” committing genocide against Sephardi Jews.

Melanie Phillips: Labour and the Jews, John Bolton

Please join me here in discussion with Avi Abelow of Israel Unwired. We’re talking about the explosive row over Jeremy Corbyn and the Jews, and the appointment of John Bolton as National Security Adviser.

EXCLUSIVE - Shmuley Boteach: Israel Is a Haven for LGBT Palestinians Escaping Persecution

Israel provides a safe haven for gay Palestinians fleeing persecution and honor killings, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach told Breitbart Jerusalem, noting the Jewish state’s equal treatment of the LGBT community in all aspects of civil and military life.

The Orthodox rabbi, who heads up the World Values Network, said that many LGBT Palestinians seek asylum in Israel after facing death in their hometowns either by their families or even the Palestinian police.

“Israel’s laws protect human rights. LGBT Palestinians suffer beatings, imprisonment and even death at the hands of their families and the police,” Boteach said.

“Many are lucky enough to escape to Israel,” he added.

Boteach noted that in Israel members of the LGBT community — as with any other minority community — are afforded the same rights as everyone else.

“Gay Israelis can be members of parliament, serve openly in the military and are protected by law, whether or not people agree with their lifestyle,” he said.

“It’s immaterial when it comes to the Jewish insistence on the infinite value of life and protecting innocents from harm.”

His comments come after his organization honored TV personality and former Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner with the “Champion of Israel and LGBTQ rights” award earlier this month. Boteach noted that Jenner, who was presented the award at the sixth annual World Values Network gala, “is an important friend of Israel.”

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03/13 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The Sewer of Left-Wing Antisemitism; NGO Activists – Including Amnesty International – Members of Facebook Group Rife with Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial

From Ian:

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Melanie Phillips: The Sewer of Left-Wing Antisemitism

There was only one thing worse than the remarkable revelation of institutionalised antisemitism on the left revealed by David Collier on his website last week. It was the reaction.

Collier is an indefatigable blogger who spends much of his life immersed in the cesspools of anti-Jewish and Israel-bashing bigotry in British institutions. His aim is to bring the epidemic of open antisemitism to the attention of the wider public. He is positively heroic in subjecting himself to the traumatic effects of wading through all this filth. But last week he took his investigations onto a different level altogether.

His 280-page two-part report, here and here, exposed a secret, pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel Facebook group called Palestine Live, which was created in 2013. Its members included politicians and other members of the Labour party and the left.

Secret forum
Secrecy was paramount: when one member asked “how safe is this group?” its creator, Elleanne Green, replied: “Very…no one is allowed in who is not trusted…I am very very careful…and it is a Secret Group…so it really is as safe as you will be able to find anywhere…”

The reason for such secrecy immediately becomes apparent from Collier’s expose. One of the first posts – and it was typical – referred to the “barbarian part of that [Jewish] tribe that is lording it over every single government in the word and using their untold wealth to control the agenda for all of us in order to further their nefarious aims for the Jewish state and to wipe out the Palestinians in the process”. Another referred to Jews as a “cancer” who “murder Palestinians” so they can “harvest their organs”. Others claimed that the Jew were behind 9/11 and the 2015 Paris terror attacks.

Group members referenced rabid white supremacists, Holocaust deniers and other far-right sites. They claimed that the blood libel and Protocols of the Elders of Zion were true, that the Rothschilds were a world conspiracy stealing people’s money, that the Jews were behind the two world wars and so on. As Collier asks: “At what point did the British Labour party suddenly develop a fetish for white supremacy?

Pro-Palestinian Group Founder Corroborates Israel’s Version of 2010 Gaza Flotilla Raids

A high-ranking leader of the Free Gaza Movement, a coalition of human rights activists and pro-Palestinian groups formed to challenge the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip, appears to have corroborated Israel's previously challenged version of the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid that resulted in the death of 10 Turkish activists.

Greta Berlin, a co-founder and spokesperson for the Free Gaza Movement, made comments in a secret British Facebook group that seem to corroborate accounts that members of the Israeli armed services did not open fire until one of the activists attempted to disarm one of the troops, according to the Times of Israel.

The Gaza Freedom Flotilla was a group of three passenger and three cargo ships organized by the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief in an attempt to breach the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Tensions arose when Israel offered to inspect the six civilians ships that had been chartered to carry what the Free Gaza Movement claimed to be humanitarian supplies and construction material to the Gaza Strip. Israel also offered to transport the supplies via land crossings, but the activists turned down the offer. Israeli armed services than conducted a raid on the six ships in an effort to force the flotilla to the port of Ashdod, where it could be inspected.

While attempting to seize control of the flotilla, Israeli defense forces faced resistance on one of the ships, the Mavi Marmara. What exactly occurred on the ship has long been disputed. The Israeli government has alleged that IDF commandos were attacked with clubs, knives, and metal rods while attempting to board the ship. The government has stated it was forced to open fire after a passenger grabbed a weapon from one of the commandos.

A few years later, Berlin seems to have corroborated the Israeli government's report during a heated debate in a private Facebook group comprised of pro-Palestinian activists who had all been approved or invited to join. In her comments, which were written in 2014, Berlin specifically rebuked other social media users in the group who were attempting to absolve one of the activists onboard the ship, Kenneth O'Keefe, from any blame.

Melanie Phillips: Left wingers can't see their cesspool of antisemitism

For the left, bashing Israel and supporting the Palestinians is a noble cause. So there’s no reason to suspect that anyone associated with it will be anything other than decent. This is to ignore the symbiotic connection between Israel-bashing and antisemitism. No, that does not mean criticism of Israel is antisemitic. It is as legitimate as criticism of any other country. The way in which Israel is treated, however, is totally unlike the treatment of any other country.

We’re talking here about demonisation: a unique campaign based entirely on malicious falsehoods, accusing Israel of crimes of which it is not only innocent but is in fact the victim, employing libellous and incendiary tropes such as deliberate child-killing and presenting it as a global conspiracy and menace to the world. These are all the markers of classic antisemitism through the centuries. So the links to the far right and white supremacists aren’t surprising.

The left, though, believes with perfect faith that it stands only for good things such as conscience and human rights. Accordingly, only the “right” can be antisemitic. The “anti-racist” left believes that it is itself utterly incapable of antisemitism. So it is blind to both its own behaviour and the noxious company it keeps.

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03/12 Links Pt2: How the Dutch Red Cross Abetted the Nazis during World War II; Why is Kal Penn so angry?; Prince William’s visit may not be too late

From Ian:

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How the Dutch Red Cross Abetted the Nazis during World War II

Last month, the president of the Netherlands’ Red Cross visited Israel to apologize formally for the organization’s conduct during the German occupation of the country. He was moved to do so by a recent book on the subject written by Regina Grüter, which assembles much evidence to prove what Dutch Jews themselves have long believed, as Ofer Aderet writes. (Free registration may be required.)

At the beginning of 1941, when the order came to stop accepting blood donations from Jews, the Dutch Red Cross accepted the decree . . . and didn’t send a protest letter. In February of that year, when 427 Jews were arrested in Amsterdam and sent to Buchenwald, the Dutch Red Cross sent a letter to the German occupying authorities wondering whether the organization was allowed to send packages to these Jews. The answer was as one would expect: it was forbidden to help Jews. The Red Cross simply accepted the order and sent aid packages only to non-Jewish Dutch political prisoners.

When in late 1941 the Germans ordered that all Jewish volunteers be dropped from the Red Cross, the group [again] followed these orders without a word. And the archives contain not one mention of any attempt to oppose these orders, or any underground attempts by the group to help Jews.

The research also didn’t uncover any evidence of discussions among the group’s leaders about the fate of the Dutch Jews. Grüter’s book leaves the impression that the Red Cross people acted as mere bureaucrats who carried out the Nazi occupiers’ orders to the letter and never tried to make things hard for the Germans—in clear violation of their role as aid workers. . . . “They weren’t anti-Semites, they were simply neutral,” Grüter says.

Elliott Abrams: At Long Last, "The Crown" Will Visit Israel

Seventy years after Israel's founding, at long last a member of the British royal family will visit there. The summer visit of the Duke of Cambridge, HRH Prince William, has been announced.

This visit is remarkable for only one reason: that there has been no such visit before. Prince Charles attended the funerals of Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, and Prince Philip made an equally brief visit one time to see his mother's grave site. Neither was an "official visit," because such a horrible event was simply not acceptable to the Foreign Office. The change is important. As the great historian Andrew Roberts wrote,

Royal visits have always been a central plank of Britain’s diplomacy over the centuries, and this one is a statement that Israel is no longer going to be treated like the pariah nation it so long has been by the Foreign Office. It is no therefore coincidence that although Her Majesty the Queen has made over 250 official overseas visits to 129 different countries during her reign, neither she nor one single member of the British royal family has ever yet been to Israel on an official visit.

Why now? There are various theories. One is that Prince Charles was the wrong royal to send (see this Spectator story for one of the theories as to why) and time had to pass until someone in the next generation could do it. Another theory is that the Foreign Office simply could no longer maintain the claim that a visit would sour relations with the Arab states when those states are improving their own relations with Israel. Finally it has been argued that the Foreign Office and royal refusal (and it is not clear whether the "no" was over the years really from the bureaucrats or the royals, or both) was based on Zionist violence against British colonial administrators in the pre-1948 years of the Palestinian mandate. That obstacle would seem very odd when the Queen in 2012 was willing to shake the hand of Martin McGuinness, who had been a very senior IRA commander leader in 1979 when the IRA killed Lord Mountbatten, to whom she was close and who was Prince Philip's uncle.

Andrew Roberts is right: this visit is praiseworthy because it treats Israel as a normal nation. In that sense it is very much in line with President Trump's move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, acknowledging that it has the right every other nation has to choose its capital city, and the American effort at the United Nations system to stop the unfair and unequal treatment of Israel. Seventy years is a long time to wait for normal treatment, and of course Israel is far from achieving it even now. But these steps are symbolic of real progress.

Prince William’s visit may not be too late

The British Foreign Office has its own reasons for sending Prince William to visit Israel. The prince himself is only an excuse. The visit is not intended to boost the young man himself or the Royal Family as a whole, nor to showcase Israel on its 70th anniversary. The real aim is to get Britain back in the engine room of Middle East and world politics. Not necessarily a bad idea in itself, but an exercise in cynicism and humbug. I hope it is not too late.

Britain seems to be feeling increasingly fragile on the world scene. If the British government had been smart it could have claimed a special status in the Middle East by virtue of its (sometimes tortuous) role in 19th and 20th century Zionism, and one might have thought its vaunted friendship with Israel could have been given expression before this. There may be reason to fear that Britain has abdicated to the US the role of special friend.

Many Israelis still need convincing that Britain really is a friend. Those with long memories cannot forget the Mandate period. When my late parents-in-law made aliya in 1965 and said they were from London they saw Israelis physically flinch. Possibly most Israelis today think this is just history and prefer to accentuate the more positive attitudes of Arthur James Balfour and Winston Churchill, but this still does not justify the lack of official visits by British royals. The British way of showing friendship is to send the royals on a visit. They have had sixty-odd years to do this during the queen’s incumbency but the Foreign Office kept dithering – or worse, sneering and using bad language about the Jews.

Over the years there could have been some official fence-mending, but now it will be harder. The queen might have been able to charm Israel but she is no longer so young and energetic after more than 65 years on the throne, making her the longest-serving British monarch. She will presumably keep going until the day she dies. Few people share her concern for dogs and horses, nor is she a warm everyone’s-grandmother type. But she is part of the marketing, like Big Ben and the Thames. She is part of the ethos that makes Britain interesting.

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03/09 Links Pt2: Farrakhan and the Left; Antifa: the militant wing of authoritarianism; Caitlyn Jenner’s Love & Admiration For The Jewish People And Israel

From Ian:

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TWS Editorial: Farrakhan and the Left

How strange that self-proclaimed “intersectional” feminists such as Sarsour, Mallory, and Perez would support an openly misogynistic and racist demagogue like Farrakhan. Among his more recent offerings: “When a woman does not know how to cook and the right foods to cook, she's preparing death for herself, her husband and her children.” He’s also observed that “man is supposed to have rule, especially in his own house . . . and when she rules you, you become her child.” Directly to women he asserted: “You are a failure if you can’t keep a man, no profession can keep you happy!” One wonders what it is about him that these feminists find so alluring.

More troubling, perhaps, is the recently surfaced photo of a 2005 Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) meeting with Farrakhan. It featured then-senator Barack Obama posing for a photo with the Nation of Islam leader. The photographer, Askia Muhammad, now says the CBC asked him to suppress the image because it might have derailed Obama’s campaign. Nor is that the only time CBC members hobnobbed with Farrakhan: As Jeryl Bier pointed out in the Wall Street Journal in January, several of them can be seen shaking hands and hugging in a 2009 YouTube video.

We doubt the photo with Farrakhan would have hurt Obama, who easily weathered revelations of his long association with the similarly anti-semitic and anti-American Jeremiah Wright. These associations are troubling all the same, however the preponderance of mainstream journalists may wish to look the other way. We suspect that if a photo emerges some day of Donald Trump or George W. Bush grinning with Richard Spencer, the New York Times will make room for it on page 1A.

When asked about the CBC’s meeting and his relationship with Farrakhan, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) defended his relationship with Farrakhan by remarking that “the world is so much bigger than Farrakhan and the Jewish question and his position on that and so forth.” That phrase, “the Jewish question”—where have we heard that before?

Women's March says it loves, but spreads hatred instead

Interesting how the Women’s March claims to be “inclusive” and for “free speech” when they only allow the opinions of giddy liberal women who have no clue what’s really going on. And they are decidedly pro-Palestinian to the exclusion of every other group in spite of their claims otherwise.

“Pro apartheid” is a common statement used as propaganda by the pro-Palestinian crowd. The Jewish women were even called “Nazis” by one woman on the page a term that cuts at the heart of who the ladies are. The Women’s March claims to be inclusive, yet have thrown Jewish women out of the marches so often, that a new band of progressive Jewish women formed their own group, according to Algemeiner.

Another Women’s March organizer Carmen Perez is also a fan of Farrakhan. In this picture below from her Instagram account Perez (on the right) honored the hater as a valued elder.

When the ADL asked Ms.Perez about her association with Farrakhan, Perez refused to denounce his anti-Semitism and instead retorted: “There are no perfect leaders.” In other words, “of course he is a hater, but who cares.

The Women’s March could write 100-page manifesto declaring how they love everybody–but the truth is, the women leading the Women’s March and the organizations it associates with are haters. or people who condone hatred, and should be labeled as such by the media, and by all people who abhor bigotry.

Dem Rep Who Had Called Farrakhan An ‘Outstanding Human Being’ Releases New Statement Condemning Him By Name

Rep. Danny Davis (D., Ill.) released a new statement Thursday evening denouncing anti-Semitic Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan after an earlier, weaker statement led liberal Jewish group J Street to say it was reevaluating its endorsement of him.

A month early, The Forward reports, Davis called Farrakhan an "outstanding human being."

The congressman had also downplayed the importance of Farrakhan's anti-Semitism by saying "The world is so much bigger than Farrakhan and the Jewish question and his position on that and so forth."

After criticism from the Jewish community, Davis' statement Monday did not address his own words about "the Jewish question" and instead blamed media for asking him about the controversy, although it was titled "Statement of Danny K. Davis on Anti-Semitism."

"Recently the ultra-right propaganda site The Daily Caller attempted to impugn my character," his statement began.

"History is replete with the horrific consequences of racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, male chauvinism and other forms of hatred and bigotry and discrimination," Davis wrote, saying that those who promote those views are "pursuing an agenda which I will never accept."

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02/28 Links Pt2: BDS: Free Speech Hypocrites; Farrakhan Rails Against Jews, Israel and the U.S. Government ; Twitter suspends anti-Semitism watchdog Canary Mission after campaign by anti-Israel activists

From Ian:

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Free Speech Hypocrites

Supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel frequently complain about a “Palestinian exception” to free speech. Never mind that whole, albeit small, segments of the academy are openly committed to the view that Israel is America’s accomplice in crimes of imperialism. People who criticize Israel, they say are not allowed to speak—often they make this point at university-sponsored events, or during “Israeli Apartheid Week,” a yearly ritual on many American campuses.

The claim, to be sure, refutes itself. But it is nonetheless heartening that an article in InsideHigherEd, a mainstream higher education website with no dog in the hunt, recognized that it is pro-Israel speakers who are uncommonly subject to disruption by—you guessed it—“pro-Palestinian” activists. Just last Thursday, at the University of Virginia, a panel of Israeli military reservists was interrupted by a group “shouting anti-Israel slogans through a megaphone, preventing the speakers from being heard.” Rabbi Jake Rubin, executive director of UVA’s Brody Jewish Center, which sponsored the panel, invited the protesters to stay and ask questions, but the “protesting students refused to do so and continued to shout at the speakers, making it impossible for the event to proceed as planned,” until the police arrived.

As Scott Jaschik, the author of the report and co-editor of InsideHigherEd, observed, this is hardly an isolated incident. He detailed seven instances of disruption, and he could have named many more. For example, he described a 2016 incident at UC-Irvine in which “protesters disrupted a screening of a film Beneath the Helmet, about the lives of five Israeli soldiers. The protest involved shouting that made it impossible for people to hear the film.” But he did not describe another incident at UC-Irvine in 2017, also featuring Israeli reservists, which earned the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine two years of probation.

Anti-normalization—in this case the attempt to render Zionism unspeakable—is the raison d’etre of the BDS movement, and shutting down speakers is one of its primary techniques. Before activists looked to shut down genuine white nationalists, like Richard Spencer, BDS was shouting down people like Bassam Eid, a Palestinian whose primary thought crime is denying that Israel is demonic. I guess there is a Palestinian exception to free speech after all.

Farrakhan Rails Against Jews, Israel and the U.S. Government in Wide-Ranging Saviours' Day Speech

On February 25th, Nation of Islam’s longtime leader Louis Farrakhan spoke at the Wintrust Arena in Chicago. As in previous Saviours’ Day speeches, Farrakhan used the opportunity to rail against the Jews, Israel and the U.S. government.

Before Farrakhan’s keynote address, fellow Nation of Islam principals Ava Muhammad, Nuri Muhammad and Ishmael Muhammad shared remarks. In a short speech, Ava Muhammad warned the crowd that the end of days is imminent, and they should heed the words of Farrakhan:

“If we think we can act crazy. If we think we can be plagues in our own community. If we think we can make mockery of the servant. If we think we can run away from Minister Farrakhan because you’re afraid of white people. Or if you think you can be used as a mouthpiece of the slander of the Jewish controlled media think again. Because while Allah’s whipping their behind he will ask you, did you hear my reminder calling you?”

Nuri Muhammad made a financial appeal, and announced that a $5000 donation from longtime Farrakhan ally and music producer Russell Simmons. Ishmael Muhammad, meanwhile, alleged that the Nation of Islam and Farrakhan are “miracles,” since many have tried to stop them:

“If God was not with him and the Nation of Islam we could not have survived the constant and ever increasing assault of the United States government and those who say they are Jews, but are of the Synagogue of Satan.”

The difference between Farrakhan and some members of the alt-reich whose heinous bigotry has received a lot of attention this past year: Farrakhan has a much larger following and elected officials meet with him openly.
-fin-

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 28, 2018

There is a persistent unwillingness to acknowledge that two of the organizers of the @womensmarch are groupies of Louis Farrakhan, whose anti-Semitism and homophobia rivals Richard Spencer's. They're very open about it! pic.twitter.com/HDUwwUV2zw

— (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) February 27, 2018

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02/01 Links Pt2: Palestinian Children Are The Child Soldiers No One Is Talking About; Google Partners with Anti-Semitic Islamists; Fencer who survived 1972 Munich massacre passes away

From Ian:

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Alan Baker: Trivializing and paying lip service to antisemitism

The annual Holocaust remembrance events, whether in the UN or in individual countries, held on and around the official, international day of remembrance on January 27, have now passed, until next year.

The hollow and disingenuous lip-service payed by international leaders to the greatest tragedy that has befallen the Jewish people, has passed.

The annual “day in the sun” of professors, Holocaust researchers and experts, whether in research centers in Israeli universities or elsewhere, is over until next year.

Life must go on.

The international community can now get back to its routine and regular agenda of political correctness. It can get back to ignoring and sidestepping the most tragic violations of human rights in the centers of conflict in Syria, Africa and elsewhere.

The UN and the EU and their organs can return to adopting meaningless and futile political resolutions, generated by political groupings with specific political agendas that achieve nothing other than to fan the embers of hatred and antisemitism.

The world can now get back to pandering to autocratic regimes, to ayatollahs and to artificial leaders, purveyors of incitement and hatred that seek, through their actions and words, to sow the seeds of the next Holocaust.

Dr. Gerald M. Steinberg: Palestinian Children Are The Child Soldiers No One Is Talking About

[The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.]
Even more disturbing is the role of UNICEF — which was created to help children around the world. In 2013, UNICEF’s “copy and paste” version of the unverifiable and false claims made by NGOs like DCIP (based on “affidavits” that officials cannot understand or verify) gave them a UN seal of approval and significant legitimacy. In 2015, after Israeli officials demonstrated the systematic errors, and the degree to which their treatment of minors involved in illegal activities is consistent with international standards, the UNICEF office in Jerusalem acknowledged the falsehoods in discussions with Israeli officials. But in public, where the propaganda wars are waged, the UN organization and its NGO allies continue to quote the original.

Joining DCIP and UNICEF in this cynical campaign are the American Friends Service Committee, Amnesty International, the so-called Jewish Voice for Peace, and the “Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel” (EAPPI) — which brings activists for three months to “witness” the suffering of Palestinian children and is run by the notoriously anti-Israel World Council of Churches.

In addition to adding its prestige to political warfare that exploits children, and laundering the false allegations targeting Israel, UNICEF funds a number of the organizations in this unholy alliance, including DCI-P and EAPPI. Together, their goal is the get the UN Secretary General to add the IDF to the notorious group of warlords and failed states listed under the Children and Armed Conflict resolution, which includes ISIS and Boko Haram. Although UNICEF officials claim to be uninvolved in this effort, they are the ones who select the NGOs in their “working group” and in provide funding to DCI-P and EAPPI.

As a result of these factors, UNICEF’s reports on Israel are far more bellicose in comparison to other Middle Eastern countries. The allegations of “widespread and systematic abuse” echo the definition of crimes against humanity in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. UNICEF does not employ similar language in other conflict situations, sharpening the conclusion that the organization singles out Israel for political, rather than substantive reasons.

Countering the cynical “child mistreatment” propaganda requires highlighting the foundation of lies, and the naming and shaming of the participants, including the NGOs. In parallel, UNICEF officials and donors, including the US, Canadian, Japanese and European governments, must be pressed to review funding and move to end this complicity. The individuals and foundations who give generously to UNICEF under the illusion that unlike other UN bodies, this one actually acts morally, should reconsider. If UNICEF officials are seriously concerned about protecting children like Ahed Tamimi, as well as the Israeli child victims the ongoing terror war, they should keep far away from such exploitation.

How Anti-Semitism’s True Origin Makes It Invisible To The Left

Perhaps as disturbing as the resurgence of anti-Semitism on the hard left is the reluctance of leftists who aren’t anti-Semites to acknowledge it. This reluctance, argues John-Paul Pagano, stems directly from trends in left-wing thinking that have created a special blindness to the hatred of Jews.

[This] erasure of anti-Semitism . . . exposes a huge moral failure at the heart of the modern left. Under the enveloping paradigm of “intersectionality,” people are granularly defined by their various identities—except for white Jews, whose Jewishness is often overwritten by their skin color. . . .

[I]n a key sense, regular racism, [directed] against blacks and Latinos for example, is the opposite of anti-Semitism. [This sort of bigotry] comes from white people believing they are superior to people of [other races]. But the hatred of Jews stems from the belief that Jews are a cabal with supernatural, [or near-supernatural], powers. . . . Whereas the white racist regards blacks as inferior, the anti-Semite imagines that Jews have preternatural power to afflict humankind. . . . If Jews have power, then “punching up” at Jews is a form of “speaking truth to power”—a form of speech of which the left is currently enamored. In other words, it is because anti-Semitism pretends to strike at power that the left cannot see it, and is doomed to erase—and even reproduce—its tropes. . . .

Above all else, anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory about the maleficent Jewish elite. And it’s this that makes it easy to disguise anti-Semitism as a “politics of liberation,” or at least, to embed it quietly in efforts for social justice. You can see this in the resuscitated efforts of groups like Black4Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace to portray Israel and America as bastions of capitalist white supremacy that collude to brutalize “people of color.” . . .

When the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas delivered his recent rant of over two hours to assembled Palestinian leaders, he alleged wild conspiracies, . . . [declaring] that “Israel has imported frightening amounts of drugs in order to destroy our younger generation.” In response, the [lobbying] group J Street, after rejecting “the divisive and inflammatory rhetoric used by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,” complained that Donald Trump had provoked Abbas to despair [rather than acknowledging that Abbas has thought and said such things about Jews for his entire career].

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01/22 Links Pt2: Iranian brutality, European cowardice, US leadership; The businessman exiled from Poland for being Jewish

From Ian:

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Amb. Alan Baker: Palestinian Manipulation of the International Criminal Court

According to an Israeli television news report on January 9, 2018,[1] the Israeli prime minister’s National Security Council recently cautioned the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee that the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) will likely open a formal investigation against Israeli officials and officers in response to Palestinian complaints regarding Israel’s 2014 “Protective Edge” operation in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s building of settlements in the West Bank areas of Judea and Samaria.

According to this report, “The opening of an investigation has serious implications for Israel. It will be directed against people and could involve warrants for investigations and arrests.”

Conclusions
In light of the lack of any valid legal basis to the Palestinian claim to statehood, and in light of the fact that Palestinians’ status, and that the status of the territories are under ongoing dispute and negotiation, there can be no legal or logical foundation to accept “Palestine” as party to the ICC statute. Thus, there is no basis for extending the court’s jurisdiction over the territories under dispute, pending resolution of the dispute and the determination, by agreement, of their final and permanent status.

Lacking any legal foundation, the Palestinian complaints – regarding both the “Protective Edge” operation and Israeli settlements – must, therefore, be rejected by the ICC.

The ICC statute renders inadmissible any case that has been duly investigated[11] and, as necessary, prosecuted by the legal authorities of the state concerned.[12] The appropriate legal and law enforcement authorities in Israel maintain the highest international standards, in fitting with the norms and requirements set out in the ICC Statute.

Iranian brutality, European cowardice, US leadership

In March 1979, shortly after the mullahs grabbed power and dragged Iran into theocratic dictatorship, destructive wars and terrorism, Iranian women took to the streets to protest the forced hijab. “Freedom is not eastern, not western, it is universal,” they chanted.

Almost 40 years later, the Iranian people are still fighting the same tyrants. In the struggle for freedom, you would expect an institution like the European Union, defined by the universal character of liberty and democracy, to stand in solidarity with the oppressed against their oppressors.

So far Europe has sent the opposite message. “We are not going to sustain political and economic relations with a country engaged in the brutal oppression of peaceful protesters,” are the words Federica Mogherini, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, never uttered. Instead, she remained silent for six days.

When she finally broke her silence, Mogherini’s message was tainted by moral myopia. “We expect all concerned to refrain from violence,” she said, after Iranian security forces had already killed at least 22 people and incarcerated more than 3,000. The EU statement echoed earlier ambiguous messages from the British, German, French and Swedish governments.

The EU’s cowardly reaction contrasts with the strong response from the United States. Lawmakers from the left and right of the political spectrum – everyone from President Donald Trump and Marco Rubio to Bernie Sanders and Bob Menendez – responded to the call for freedom in Iran.

The businessman exiled for being Jewish

When Adam Ringer was forcibly removed from Poland simply because he was Jewish, he didn't think he'd ever be able to return to his homeland.

It was back in 1968 that Mr Ringer, 19 at the time, was made to renounce his Polish citizenship and kicked out of the country, during one of communism's darker episodes.

Just 23 years after the Holocaust, Poland's surviving Jewish population was targeted by an anti-Semitic purge officially sanctioned by the country's then communist authorities.

Branded an "anti-Zionist" campaign, Polish Jews were stripped of their jobs and deported, because of the government's - and the wider Soviet Bloc's - growing hostility towards Israel at the time.

An estimated 14,000 Poles of Jewish faith or ancestry were forced to leave the country, after each being given a document that stated that its holder was stateless and had no right to ever return to Poland.

Looking back, Mr Ringer says: "Many of my colleagues were arrested... my father was expelled from his job. We were all in shock and feared for the worst." (h/t Zvi)

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01/08 Links Pt1: UNICEF Being Fed False Info By Anti-Israel Hate Groups To Target IDF; PA TV uses music to incite murder; Terror victims: Deduct terrorists' salaries from PA tax funds

From Ian:

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NGO Monitor: UNICEF and its NGO Working Group: The Campaign to Blacklist the IDF

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
UNICEF spearheads a campaign to have Israel included on a UN blacklist of “grave” vio-lators of children’s rights.The list appears as an annex to the UN Secretary-General’s annual report on Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC). This political agenda is a primary facet of UNICEF’s activities relating to Israel, completely inconsistent with its mandate of “child protection” and from its guidelines for neutrality and impartiality.

• UNICEF-oPt’s partners (“working group”) for this campaign are radical advocacy non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These anti-Israel NGOs play an integral role in carrying out UNICEF’s campaign and receive substantial funding from UNICEF to do so.
  
• The UN blacklist consists almost entirely of terror groups and militias from failed states. In essence, by pushing for the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) inclusion on the list, UNICEF and its NGO partners are claiming that Israel’s army is equivalent to ISIS, Boko Haram, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda.
  
• Several of the Palestinian groups – including Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), which plays a leading role in this campaign – have reported links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – listed as a terrorist organization by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel. UNICEF-oPt states, “UNICEF has a clear policy that is does not fund support (sic) organizations which are listed as terrorist organizations by the United Nations” – a list that excludes Hamas, the PFLP, and Islamic Jihad.
  
• Several UNICEF-oPt NGO partners recommended inclusion of the IDF on the UN blacklist, but absurdly claimed they lacked sufficient evidence to recommend inclusion of the PFLP or Hamas.
  
• A key component of the UN’s Children and Armed Conflict campaign is to end the exploi-tation and use of children as combatants and child soldiers. Although Palestinian armed groups routinely use children in this way, there is little evidence that UNICEF-oPt funding is devoted towards exposing or ending this practice. In fact, a UNICEF Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) bulletin admits that “In Gaza, the Working Group was not in a position to document cases of child recruitment and use of children in armed conflict owing to a number of factors, including security and protection risks related to collecting comprehensive and detailed information” (emphasis added). This admission of an inability to carry out the core mission of its UN mandate in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza calls into question the necessity and utility of continued funding for the agency in the region.
  
• Other UNICEF-oPt partners are NGOs that seek to marginalize Israel through BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions) initiatives. One such contributor is the World Council of Churches’ EAPPI program, which is heavily involved in church-based BDS and whose non-professional volunteers purport to collect data for a UNICEF database.
  
• UNICEF-oPt’s NGO partners publish misleading and false reports on the treatment of Palestinian minors involved in attacks and arrested by the IDF, rife with distortions and in-accuracies and devoid of necessary context. These same erroneous and unverified claims are then laundered through a UNICEF database to a variety of UN publications, lending them legitimacy and prominence.

Click to Read Full Report in PDF Version

UNICEF acting to add IDF to list of 'grave violators of children's rights'

The NGO Monitor report further shows how UNICEF opted to ignore violations of children's rights by Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip, when it admitted "the working group was not in a position to document cases of child recruitment and use of children in armed conflict owing to a number of factors, including security and protection risks related to collecting comprehensive and detailed information."

The anti-Israel organizations behind the UNICEF working group have in recent years published false and misleading reports on the IDF's arrest and purported abuse of Palestinian minors involved in attacks which were later entered into a UNICEF database, lending them legitimacy.

A number of these organizations, including the Defense for Children International- Palestine, have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which has been recognized as a terrorist organization by Israel, Canada, the EU and the U.S.

In response to a query from NGO Monitor, UNICEF Palestine did not deny that the organization had ties to terrorist groups.

"UNICEF has a clear policy that it does not fund … organizations which are listed as terrorist organizations by the United Nations."

Among those organizations excluded from the world body's terrorist list are Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Other organizations involved in efforts to include the IDF in the U.N. blacklist actively promote the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

UNICEF Being Fed False Info By Anti-Israel Hate Groups To Target IDF

NGO Monitor states, “UNICEF’s role in this process includes giving legitimacy to false and distorted claims made by the NGOs, which are fed through a UNICEF database to a variety of U.N. publications.” NGO Monitor notes that three groups passing information to the working group are linked to The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

Those groups allegedly include Addameer, which NGO Monitor states is an affiliate of the PFLP; the Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), which had a board member who helped launch grenade attacks against Israeli civilians in 1968, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whose founder was imprisoned by Israel for membership in the PFLP.

Rep. Ron DeSantis, (R-FL), stated that Israel is a “staunch defender of human rights,” and warned the U.N. there might be financial consequences if the IDF was blacklisted. He added, “For the United Nations to even consider such action following their condemnation of President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is further proof of the U.N.’s anti-Israel bias. ... The United States should take any punitive action against Israel into consideration when determining who is deserving of foreign assistance.”

Groups already on the blacklist include ISIS, Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Interestingly, one of the violations listed by the U.N. is “recruitment or use of children as soldiers.” One wonders why the U.N. has not seen fit to list the Palestinians and Hamas, who have used children as human shields and suicide bombers.

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01/01 Links Pt2: Even the Beatles preceded the Palestinians; Hezbollah and Hamas top ‘Richest Terror Groups’ list; Chanting "Jews, remember Khaybar" in Italy

From Ian:

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Even the Beatles preceded the Palestinians

Since then…since 1964…the “Palestinians” have been the world’s number one concern, even though they have been nothing but a headache and exist in no history books. Nothing to be found about them before June 2, 1964. That’s when the Arab League certified them as the PLO.

That’s when they became a “people” -- a people still in search of an ancestry. So far, no luck.

Abbas keeps trying. He names himself and his “people” heirs to every ancient civilization on record.

But there is not even a single page about them; not in the Hebrew Bible, or the Christian Bible. The Koran never heard of them, and neither did Josephus.

Consider the Beatles. They made their splash February 7, 1964. That’s four months BEFORE the “Palestinians” got noticed...
If the 1960s are your idea of “ancient times,” okay; consider the Beatles. They made their splash February 7, 1964.

That’s four months BEFORE the “Palestinians” got noticed and they, The Beatles, never asked for favors besides “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”

It’s the song that launched them on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” (Originally known as “Toast of the Town.”) Anybody remember Ed Sullivan? Of course not.

Yes, Millennials, we did have TV back then, though to change channels Americans had to get up off the couch. Imagine such a thing!

Since math is not my strength, I will trust you to check my figures, to which I say that the “Palestinian people” have been around for 54 years.

For that, they want their own country deep in the heart of Israel, where the Jews go back 3,800 years – and a share of Jerusalem, Israel’s capital for 3,000 years.

Hezbollah and Hamas rank at top of Forbes’ ‘Richest Terror Groups’ list

Eight of the ‘Top Ten’ terror groups in terms of income are Muslim, with Hezbollah and Hamas ranked #1 and #3 respectively.

One of the more far-reaching consequences of former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran is on display in Forbes Israel’s latest ranking of the richest terrorist groups in the world, as in 2017 Iran-backed Hezbollah leaped to the top of list with a whopping $1.1 billion in revenue.

That is not to say that all their income stems from Iran. Terrorist organizations in general also fund their purchase of arms, training and salary payments to their members from such criminal activities as drug smuggling, money laundering, kickbacks, kidnappings, ‘protection’, etc., just as organized crime does.

But the nuclear deal, it should be recalled, allowed for the release of billions of dollars into Iran’s state coffers from the lifting of internationally imposed sanctions, and the unfreezing of its assets abroad. This, in turn, allowed the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism to open the spigots to its proxies, and the results can clearly be seen by comparing this year’s “Top Ten” list with the previous one, made in 2014. Lebanese group Hezbollah, which has been fighting in Syria for years for Iranian ally Bashar al-Assad, was then ranked fourth, with $500 million – only half of what it has today.

Hamas has $700 million
The Gaza Strip’s Hamas, meanwhile, is now in third place, having actually dropped a rung from 2014. (The Taliban now occupy second place, with a revenue of $800 million). Forbes lists them as currently receiving about $700 million a year, vs. a billion dollars three years ago. They have two well-known state sponsors, Qatar and, again, Iran. But in the decade since it took over Gaza, Hamas also became expert in extracting money from its own citizens.

According to Forbes’ 2014 report, Hamas makes most of its money from a sophisticated tax system aimed at, among other things, pocketing large portions of the international aid that flows into Gaza. It also runs hundreds of businesses, controls several banks, and has levies on all consumer goods entering the Gaza Strip. All in all, the report says, about 15% of Gaza’s economy ends up in this organization’s pocket.

Riyadh chess champion criticizes Saudi visa discrimination against Israeli players

Winner of the world speed chess championship in Riyadh, grandmaster Magnus Carlsen from Norway, said in an interview with the Norwegian NRK broadcasting network that if the Saudi visa issue is not regulated until next year, Saudi Arabia should not host the next tournament. “I really hope they solve the issue of visas for all countries,” said Carlsen.

The four-day chess championship ended December 30 amid controversy surrounding Riyadh’s refusal to provide visas for Israeli players. Seven Israeli chess players reportedly requested visas for the event. Head of the English Chess Federation Dominic Lawson said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia should be stripped of the right to host chess championships. "This contract for the World Rapid Chess Championship was signed on the understanding that the Saudis would ensure that Israeli masters would be able to play,” Lawson said.

Criticism surrounding the tournament also concerned the Kingdom’s treatment of its women. This year will reportedly be the first-year female chess players were not forced to wear an Islamic abaya garment to the games; instead, they were apparently permitted to wear a long blouse. Ukrainian chess champion Anna Muzychuk told reporters she decided to turn down a chance to participate in the event due to Saudi human right violations and its treatment of women. (h/t Zvi)

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12/21 Links Pt2: The 10 most insane UN anti-Israel actions of 2017; Is The Liberal Media Giving Linda Sarsour A Pass On A Sexual Assault Cover-Up?

From Ian:

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UN defies Trump, rejects US recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli capital by 128-9

Non-binding General Assembly motion brands US president's decision on holy city 'null and void'; US envoy Haley notes '65 countries refused to condemn the United States'
The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday defied warnings from the United States and overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and calling on countries not to move their diplomatic missions to the city.

A total of 128 countries voted in favor of the text, defying the threats — that were forcefully reiterated in an address before the vote by US envoy Nikki Haley — to cut aid to countries that opposed the motion.

Nine countries — the US, Israel, Togo, Micronesia, Guatemala, Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands and Honduras — voted against the resolution.

There were 35 abstentions, including a number of countries that had been widely expected to support the move, such as Colombia, Mexico, Malawi and Rwanda. A further 21 countries did not vote at all.

By abstaining, Hungary, Croatia, Latvia, Romania and the Czech Republic broke European Union consensus on the vote. The EU had previously vehemently rejected any attempt to change Jerusalem’s status in the absence of a final peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians.

Haley tweeted after the vote that “65 countries refused to condemn the United States” — totaling the no votes, the abstentions and the no-shows.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, in a video, that “Israel completely rejects this preposterous resolution. Jerusalem is our capital — always was, always will be.” However, he added, “I do appreciate the fact that a growing number of countries refuse to participate in this theater of the absurd.” He thanked US President Donald Trump and Haley for their “stalwart defense” of Israel and the truth.

Full text of Nikki Haley’s speech to UN General Assembly on Jerusalem

.@dannydanon: “I am holding before you a coin. It says ‘Freedom of Zion’. If you check the envelopes on your desk, you will see I left one for each of you... These are the facts no one wants to hear.” pic.twitter.com/FjcxMF4QZo

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) December 21, 2017

Hillel Neuer: The 10 most insane UN anti-Israel actions of 2017

5. Dubravka Simonovic, the U.N. expert on violence against women, visited Israel and the territories and concluded: When Palestinian men beat their wives, it’s Israel’s fault.

UN Watch’s executive director took the floor to challenge the U.N. investigator’s report: “Why did you fail to mention that official Palestinian TV regularly broadcasts Islamic preachers who tell the people how to beat their wives?”

In reaction, the Egyptian chair of the meeting broke with parliamentary protocol: “I would like to say thank you, but I can’t,” said Ambassador Amr Ramadan. “Because I think that you need to respect this council more.”

4. In its ritual annual scapegoating of the Jewish state, the UN General Assembly adopted 20 one-sided resolutions against Israel—and only 6 resolutions on the rest of the world combined. Tomorrow, at an emergency meeting called by the Arab and Islamic states to condemn the United States over its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a 21st resolution will be adopted criticizing the Jewish state.

3. UNESCO negated its mandate to protect world heritage by adopting a resolution recognizing Hebron—second holiest city in Judaism because of the Tomb of the Patriarchs—as a Palestinian world heritage site.

UN Watch revealed that UNESCO had rejected its own experts’ advice, who opposed the Palestinian nomination on account of failing to properly recognize Hebron’s Jewish and Christian heritage.

2. UNRWA launched a global campaign showing the picture of an 11-year-old girl, “Aya from Gaza,” in a bombed-out building—portraying Israel as a cruel oppressor of Palestinian children—but UN Watch exposed it as a fraud: the photo was actually from Syria. The story went viral online. UNRWA suffered massive embarrassment, and was forced to remove the photo worldwide.

1. The office of U.N. human rights commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein spent the past year preparing to inflame the anti-Israel boycott campaign by drawing up a blacklist of companies that do business in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and other Jewish communities over the 1949 armistice line. The report is due to be submitted this month, and presented before the council in March. UN Watch will take the lead in countering the blacklist, what Nikki Haley this week called the “ugly creation” of the UNHRC.

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12/07 Links Pt2: BDS has failed; Six Facts The MSM Isn’t Reporting About The Jerusalem Issue; BDS: Sudden Converts to Caution

From Ian:

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JPost Editorial: BDS has failed

It has become abundantly clear that the campaign to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel is losing steam.

Radiohead, Bon Jovi, Elton John, Neil Young, Madonna and Bryan Adams either have already performed here or plan on coming. All of these artists have rejected calls by BDS lobbyists – led by Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters – to skip Israel on their tours.

When singer Nick Cave was in Israel last month, he held a press conference in part to rebut proponents of BDS. “I came to Israel for two reasons,” Cave said.

“One is because I love Israel and Israelis. Two is to take a principled stand against anyone who attempts to shut down, censor, silence or bully musicians.”

On US college campuses, while there is still a toxic atmosphere that makes many students who are openly pro-Israel feel unsafe, pro-Palestinian movements have repeatedly failed to pass resolutions that would force their universities to boycott Israel.

Just last month, the University of Maryland’s student government association rejected a resolution, brought by Students for Justice in Palestine, that accused Israel of human rights violations and that called for the university to divest from a range of American companies investing in Israel. The same dynamic has been played out on other campuses as well.

And while doomsayers have for years warned that Israel faces imminent diplomatic, military and economic isolation and censure for its policies, this has not happened. If anything, Israel has succeeded in cultivating relations with a wider range of nations, not just in Africa and South America but also in Europe. Just last month Israel hosted Blue Flag, an 11-day joint military exercise that brought together the air forces of Germany, Poland, India, France, Italy, Greece and the US. If this is isolation, what do open diplomatic relations look like?

The reason the BDS movement is failing is that it is based on lies and people are not stupid. Anyone with access to the Internet can easily uncover the many inconsistencies and internal contradictions of the BDS movement.

StandWithUs at the Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference


BDS: Sudden Converts to Caution

As I write, we do not know what might go into President Trump’s planned announcement on Jerusalem. But on at least some of our college campuses, protests are already being prepared.

At Oklahoma University, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) are set to argue that any declaration, even if it is merely an acknowledgment of Israel’s claim to West Jerusalem as its capital, “will fuel extremism, violence, and tension in Palestine and the Middle East, and the consequences will be costly for all the parties involved.” SJP of the City College of New York quoted American Muslims for Palestine to the effect that any declaration will “unleash chaos in the Arab World.”

This is pretty rich. Students for Justice in Palestine is the campus wing of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. BDS and SJP laud figures like Ali Abunimah, a fixture on the anti-Israel campus speaking circuit, whose apologetics on behalf of Hamas are well-documented, and Leila Khaled of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, known mainly for her work as a hijacker. Hatem Bazian, chair of the national board of American Muslims for Palestine, is most recently in the news for sharing a blatantly anti-Semitic tweet. He apologized, but he also has a track record.

Faced in 2015 with an opportunity to condemn violence against civilians during the “knife intifada,” BDS organizations instead issued statements of solidarity. “A new generation of Palestinians is marching on the footsteps of previous generations, rising up against Israel’s brutal, decades-old system of occupation, settler colonialism, and apartheid.” But now, they worry about fueling extremism?

Student Activists Plan to Protest Trump’s Expected Announcement Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital

Student activists around the country are planning protests of President Donald Trump's expected announcement later Wednesday recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and expressing his intention to relocate the U.S. embassy to the city.

In New York City, the Palestine Solidarity Alliance of Hunter College and Jewish Voice for Peace, a far-left organization, are cohosting a protest titled, in Arabic, "We will not abandon Jerusalem."

Hundreds have expressed interest in attending the demonstration. Students from Columbia University, Brooklyn College, and the New School have marked themselves as "going."

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Oklahoma have organized a similar protest for this afternoon.

Trump's move would be in "violation of international law," insists SJP.

The group has claimed, "The demonstration is not associated with our organization or any OU association," though the club is listed as the official hosts of the demonstration and promoted the event on their social media page.

SJP did not respond to request for comment and clarification of its role.

Some 300 people may be expected at an "emergency rally" in Boston organized by the Jewish group IfNotNow, which believes Israel is a "daily nightmare" for Palestinians.

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"Defending" Palestinian children by turning them into martyrdom-seekers

Palestinian Media Watch reported last week:

For almost a decade, the Palestinian NGO Defence for Children International - Palestine (DCI-P) has unjustifiably been accusing Israel of breaching the rights of Palestinian minors who are arrested on suspicion of committing terror attacks. Most recently, DCI-P launched a campaign in the US and in Canada under the title "No Way to Treat a Child", whose goal is "to challenge and end Israel's prolonged military occupation of Palestinians by exposing widespread and systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system."

Among other baseless claims, DCI-P argues that the Palestinian minors are arrested, interrogated in breach of all of their rights, prosecuted and sentenced to prison terms.

A recent interview with DCI-P's Accountability Program Director Ayed Abu Qteish on official PA TV, shows that the claims made by his own organization are false. Abu Qteish explained that Palestinian minors do in fact commit terror attacks, and they do it, not necessarily because they want to attack Israelis, but in order to enhance or maintain their status in Palestinian society.

Ayed Abu Qteish: "There are children who, when they were in prison, told the lawyer: 'I want to be imprisoned.' The first time [the child] was imprisoned, he didn't confess, and they released him because there was no evidence to convict him in the Israeli military court. The second time, there was no evidence either. The third time, he wanted to be imprisoned so that his image won't be hurt in the eyes of his friends, even though he is actually innocent... In several cases [Palestinian children] carried out stabbing operations because of the way the public looks at them. They realized 'the best way to clear myself of this image [of helping Israel] is to participate in resistance operations.'"

[Official PA TV, Personal Encounter, Oct. 11, 2017]

 PMW correctly points out that this interview shows that, contrary to DCI-P's claims, Israel does not unjustly convict kids.

But I think the most important part of this is the sheer hypocrisy of DCI-P. They claim to "defend" Palestinian children's rights, but they have nothing to say about a society where the kids are brought up to hate. To lionize stabbers and suicide bombers. To aspire to martyrdom. To gain social status by becoming terrorists and criminals.

One would think that the defense of children would include a mention of these actual things that can incarcerate, injure or kill children. But DCI-P is not an organization that cares about helping children, it is only meant to attack Israel under the pretext of helping children.

It is a shame that most people cannot tell the difference.

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11/16 Links Pt2: U.S. Jews and Israel’s Right to Be Heard; Ben Shapiro: BDS is Antisemitism

From Ian:

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Evelyn Gordon: U.S. Jews and Israel’s Right to Be Heard

The growing divide between Israeli and American Jews was a major topic of conversation at this week’s annual meeting of the Jewish Federations of North America. It was also the topic of a lengthy feature in Haaretz, which largely blamed the Israeli government. Inter alia, it quoted former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro as saying, in reference to that majority of American Jews who identify as non-Orthodox and politically liberal, “There is an idea that has some currency in certain circles around the Israeli government that says, ‘You know what, we can write off that segment of American Jewry because in a couple of generations their children or grandchildren will assimilate.’”

I agree that the idea of writing off this segment of American Jewry has some currency in Israel. But in most cases, it’s due less to fantasies about liberal Jews disappearing than to a belief that Israel will have to do without them whether it wants to or not, because liberal Jews can no longer be depended on for even the most minimal level of support. And by that, I don’t mean support for any specific Israeli policy, but for something far more basic: Israel’s right to be heard, by both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences.

Nothing better illustrates this than recent decisions by two campus Hillels to bar mainstream Israeli speakers from addressing Jewish students. At Princeton, it was Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, and at Stanford, it was a group of Israeli Arab veterans of the Israel Defense Forces. I can understand Hillel refusing to host speakers from the radical fringes. But how are Jewish students supposed to learn anything about Israel if campus Hillels won’t even let them hear from representatives of two of the country’s most mainstream institutions – its elected government and its army?

Both Hillels later termed their decisions a “mistake” – most likely under pressure from Hillel International, whose CEO, Eric Fingerhut, was the lead author on Princeton Hillel’s apology. But that doesn’t change the fact that at two leading universities on opposite sides of the country, the Hillel directors, both non-Orthodox rabbis, initially thought canceling the speeches in response to progressive students’ objections was a reasonable decision. Princeton’s Julie Roth thought it completely reasonable to deny her students the chance to hear an official Israeli government representative try to explain the government’s policies. And Stanford’s Jessica Kirschner – backed, incredibly, by the university’s “pro-Israel” association – thought it completely reasonable to deny her students the chance to hear from non-Jewish Israelis who don’t agree that Israel is an apartheid state.

Ben Shapiro: BDS is Antisemitism


A Leftist Crank on Fox News

There was no pushback from Carlson, usually known for his spunky, combative style. Nor did he bother to present a charitable version of the opposing argument. In the Washington Post, Brookings fellow and COMMENTARY contributor James Kirchick has written a strong brief for why the U.S. should make it harder for RT to access American airwaves. Yet I’m not quite persuaded of the wisdom of such restrictions. I worry about opening the door, even an inch, to government regulation of broadcast speech, even if that speech comes from an adversarial, autocratic regime. Perhaps such moves make sense in small, fragile, Kremlin-endangered states that lack a robust indigenous media. But in the U.S., with its large and diverse media market, the best antidote to Moscow’s lies is truthful reporting.

But never mind all that. What Blumenthal wanted to talk about were the real sources of malign foreign influence in Washington: the Jews. Or as Blumenthal put it to Carlson, “the Israel lobby and organizations like [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee], which have been promoting a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, war on Lebanon, war on Iran, which is [sic] not required for some reason to register as a foreign agent, and I don’t why that is.”

Carlson didn’t offer a single critical note in response to any of this. Instead, he went on to underscore Blumenthal’s points, raising a knowing eyebrow here and there as his guest cast the pro-Israel lobby–a domestic, small-“d” democratic movement reflecting a broad opinion consensus among U.S. voters–as equally if not more malign than Putin’s infowar operations. And Blumenthal said all this, unchallenged, not on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now–but on Fox News.

The Blumenthal interview followed an earlier segment, in which Carlson approvingly quoted Noam Chomsky to the effect that American democracy represents a form of “manufactured consent”–i.e., that it is merely a more subtle form of dictatorship than those found in obviously unfree societies. I wonder: Which icon of leftist crankery will Carlson elevate next? Naomi Klein? Slavoj Zizek? The ghost of Howard Zinn? Tune in to Fox to find out.

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