09/01 Links Pt2: Candidate for UK Labor Leader Campaigned to Free Israel Embassy Bombers

From Ian:

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UK Labor Front-Runner Campaigned to Free Israel Embassy Bombers

The man likely to be elected head of the UK's major opposition party, Labor MP Jeremy Corbyn, campaigned in support of two terrorists convicted for bombing Jewish and Israeli targets in London, it has been revealed.
It is just the latest disturbing revelation of the Labor front runner's connection to extremists, including terrorists and virulent anti-Semites.
Corbyn led the campaign to release Palestinian terrorists Jawad Botmeh and Samar Alami, who were convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for bombing the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish charity headquarters in 1994.
14 people were injured in the embassy attack, while six were wounded in the attack on the offices of the United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA) just one day later. Both attacks involved car bombs packed with high explosives.
Botmeh and Alami were found in possession of five pounds of explosives, which investigators say were were used to make the bombs, and a sizable cache of guns. But while they admitted possession of the arms the convicted terrorists protested their innocence, saying they weren't intended for use in the UK. Botmeh even claimed Israel had bombed the sites themselves to gain sympathy.
But a 2001 appeal against their conviction was rejected, with the prosecution noting the "overwhelming" evidence of their involvement in the plot - though their suspected accomplices have never been caught.
Undeterred, Corbyn took up their cause in 2002, signing five early day motions in Parliament between 2002-2006 and calling for their parole, according to the Jewish Chronicle. He called for the pair's release repeatedly, and in 2003 questioned then-Home Secretary David Blunkett over the investigation, suggesting the men had been framed.
His support for the bombers continued after their release from prison as well.

Douglas Murray: Jeremy Corbyn isn’t alone in thinking that Osama bin Laden’s death was ‘a tragedy’

The news that Jeremy Corbyn thought the death of Osama bin Laden ‘a tragedy‘ because he was never put on trial is not very surprising. Nor is it as far-out-there as most of his comments.
I did a BBC Question Time immediately after bin Laden’s death where I got the impression I was the only person in Britain not to feel sad about the terrorist’s death. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Paddy Ashdown and most of the audience seemed horrified by the terrorist’s early demise and were most exercised of all over whether or not he had been given an appropriately ‘Islamic’ burial.
Fortunately there was a woman in the audience (in Hammersmith, London) who had been on the Tube on 7 July and had seen people ripped from their lives far more brutally and with far less reason than Osama bin Laden was. But most people in the room were far too high on ‘liberal’ fury to care about that or about commuters murdered on the transport most of them would use each morning.
All of which is to say that people should beware of thinking Corbyn is in a minority on this one. It is possible – I have certainly thought for some time – that a liberal death-wish, as exemplified by weeping over your enemies, is fairly mainstream in our country these days.

Emails Show Blumenthal Pushed Son’s Anti-Israel Activism On Hillary

In response to a tweet from The Daily Caller’s Jamie Weinstein asking the younger Blumenthal if he was an “informal adviser” to Clinton, Blumenthal responded, “I warned her about the danger of #JSIL. She didn’t listen.”
The JSIL (The Jewish State of Israel in the Levant) hashtag on Twitter is the creation of Max and fellow anti-Israel writer, Rania Khalek. The hashtag is meant to compare Israel to the terrorist organization ISIL.
In June 2010, Sid sent Clinton a piece Max wrote about the Gaza-bound flotilla carrying pro-Palestinian activists, which ended in a deadly raid by Israeli commandos after the flotilla refused to turn around when it attempted to break through Israel’s coastal territory.
The incident remains in dispute to this day. In his piece, Max claims that Israel provided no proof the flotilla passengers had terrorist connections and Israeli media was playing along with whatever the Israel Defense Forces told them.
Sid sent Clinton another Max article that attacked Israel over the flotilla incident in June 2010. The piece is titled, “The Flotilla Raid Was Not ‘Bungled.’ The IDF Detailed Its Violent Strategy In Advance.”
A few months later in August, Sid sent Clinton an email with Max’s piece that described Israeli teenagers who spent their summer demolishing Palestinian structures in the Bedouin village of Al-Arakib. Max calls it the “Summer Camp Of Destruction.” (h/t Effect)

Israeli-Palestinian Faceoff - on a Welsh Mountain?

Now that's commitment: When a group of British pro-Israel activist got wind of a fund-raising event for a terrorist-linked charity they decided they had to act.
Dozens had already signed up for the fundraiser for Interpal, a charity which is banned in the US for funding Hamas, but which is still legal in the UK, despite Hamas also being a proscribed terrorist group there.
Hamas is responsible for the murder of thousands of Israelis and the maiming of many more, mostly civilians. Its charter details its commitment to the destruction of the State of Israel and the ultimate genocide of the Jewish people.
Joseph Cohen, founder and leader of the Israel Advocacy Movement, decided to arrange a counter-protest in response. A simple enough task - except the fund-raiser was a hike up the highest mountain in England and Wales, Mount Snowdon.
But that didn't deter the half-dozen Israel activists who, together with Cohen, schlepped all the way from London to Wales for a mountaintop showdown.
They decided the most appropriate response would be to dedicate their own hike to the One Family organization, which helps survivors of terrorist attacks and bereaved families deal with their physical, psychological and emotional wounds.
However, not wanting to tip-off the pro-Palestinian group, they only announced their own fundraiser after the event.

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"The Nation" sportswriter blames Israel for US police brutality

We've already seen how Dave Zirin, "sports writer" for The Nation  who has a special obsession with Israel, disregards facts that get in the way of his hate. And how The Nation has no interest in correcting his egregious and provable lies.

He's at it again. This time he is so incensed that some NBA players are visiting Israel that he is telling them that Israel is responsible for every time a black person is assaulted or killed by an American cop.

Yes, really.

On December 12, you were one of several Sacramento Kings players to wear an “I Can’t Breathe” shirt during warm-ups. The shirts were worn to commemorate the last words of Staten Island’s Eric Garner and protest his death at the hands of the New York Police Department. It was a brave act, a link in a chain, which aligned some of the NBA’s biggest stars with the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Of course, lethal police brutality has been directed at black Americans for as long as there have been police. But the #BlackLivesMatter movement has emerged out of a dramatic spike in this violence. Roughly 400 people were shot and killed by police over the first five months of 2015, according to a Washington Post analysis. That is more than twice the average of the past decade. Those killed are primarily black and brown, as police departments have outfitted themselves in military fashion. Finding justice for those killed has proven to be a near impossible task.

This epidemic of killings has been aggravated by the influence of Israeli police practices on US policing. Since 9/11, police chiefs and high-ranking officers from across the United States—from Ferguson to New York City—have traveled to Israel for training in the arts of suppression. As Ali Winston reported, “[a]t least 300” chiefs from across the country have gone to Israel for these workshops. Former US Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer called Israel “the Harvard of antiterrorism” after one all-expenses-paid trip. The NYPD, which took the life of Eric Garner and broke the leg of NBA player Thabo Sefolosha, now has an office in Tel Aviv.

Since 9/11, Israel has turned its repressive capabilities into an exportable commodity. It instructs on surveillance, crowd control tactics, and psychological operations like keeping lights on police cars at all times.

Zirin is not the first idiot to make this argument. Rania Khalek did the same in May, and I demolished it then:

First of all, the programs that Khalek highlights are not for riot control. One of them mentions a demonstration of "crowd control" during a terror attack - not a training session - but most of the training was for counterterrorism techniques such as intelligence gathering and operations to capture terrorists before they begin their operations; border security, mechanisms to delay terrorists on their way to a target such as checkpoints; and site security - the protection of the restaurants, shopping malls and buses that are the preferred terrorist targets, preventing bombings, securing airports and border crossings and performing mass rescue operations.

Secondly, even if Israel did offer training in riot control, it is up to individual police departments to decide on their techniques. They wouldn't photocopy Israel's manual for riot control. They take the lessons that they like and incorporate them into their own programs. One has to be thoroughly consumed with hate in order to blame Japan if someone kills another with a karate kick. (In fact, I am very surprised that Khalek didn't notice that the Baltimore police offers krav maga seminars. )

(For those interested, here is a blog post from someone who took Baltimore cop riot training in 2000, with a comment from someone who took it in 2008. Nothing about Israel, of course. )

According to Khalek's moronic logic, there is another organization responsible for Baltimore police actions:

The United Nations.

Yes, the UN offers police commander training, and one of the sessions was attended by a major in the Baltimore Police Department.  Clearly the UN is culpable for the Baltimore riots.

Do you hear how stupid that sounds?

That is how stupid Rania Khalek's argument, the same argument used by other Israel haters, is.

But it isn't stupidity that animates Khalek's half-baked theories. It is pure hate.

The Electronic Intifada readers who buy this argument, however, are truly stupid.

The same goes for readers of The Nation who buy this garbage.

Zirin also mentions that Israeli police used tear gas against Ethiopian protesters, not mentioning that the response was only to those who were throwing bottles and bricks while trying to storm a police headquarters.  He of course didn't mention that subsequent rallies by Ethiopian Jews who were rightly protesting discrimination were successful and changes are being made including Israeli police promising to hire more Ethiopian Jews. But that doesn't fit Zirin's narrative of racist Israelis.

The only person filled with hate here is Zirin. But blind, irrational, hate against Israelis is perfectly OK for people who pretend they are against blind, irrational hate.

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Idiots blame Israel for - Baltimore!

From Rania Khalek in Electronic Intifada:

The similarities in suppression tactics employed by Baltimore and Israeli security forces are no coincidence.

Under the cover of counterterrorism training, nearly every major police agency in the United States has traveled to Israel for lessons in occupation enforcement, including many of the agencies active in Baltimore last week.

In 2002, Baltimore city police officers went to Israel on a junket organized by the neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), where they studied Israeli occupation tactics used against Palestinians, including “crowd control, and coordination with the media,” according to a JINSA press release. “Participants resolved to begin the process of sharing ‘lessons learned’ in Israel with their law enforcement colleagues in the United States,” boasted JINSA.

Baltimore city police returned to Israel for more occupation training in a 2009 trip arranged by the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange.

On a 2007 training session in Israel, Baltimore County police reportedly “received valued lessons from Israeli officials…about gathering human and electronic intelligence” that can “apply to investigations into organized crime and gangs.”

The Montgomery County Police Department, which sent dozens of police officers to assist in the Baltimore crackdown, has attended several training sessions in Israel, including one in 2010 and another in 2012, both hosted by Project Interchange.

This is phenomenally stupid on multiple levels.

First of all, the programs that Khalek highlights are not for riot control. One of them mentions a demonstration of "crowd control" during a terror attack - not a training session - but most of the training was for counterterrorism techniques such as intelligence gathering and operations to capture terrorists before they begin their operations; border security, mechanisms to delay terrorists on their way to a target such as checkpoints; and site security - the protection of the restaurants, shopping malls and buses that are the preferred terrorist targets, preventing bombings, securing airports and border crossings and performing mass rescue operations.

Secondly, even if Israel did offer training in riot control, it is up to individual police departments to decide on their techniques. They wouldn't photocopy Israel's manual for riot control. They take the lessons that they like and incorporate them into their own programs. One has to be thoroughly consumed with hate in order to blame Japan if someone kills another with a karate kick. (In fact, I am very surprised that Khalek didn't notice that the Baltimore police offers krav maga seminars. )

(For those interested, here is a blog post from someone who took Baltimore cop riot training in 2000, with a comment from someone who took it in 2008. Nothing about Israel, of course. )

According to Khalek's moronic logic, there is another organization responsible for Baltimore police actions:

The United Nations.

Yes, the UN offers police commander training, and one of the sessions was attended by a major in the Baltimore Police Department.  Clearly the UN is culpable for the Baltimore riots.

Do you hear how stupid that sounds?

That is how stupid Rania Khalek's argument, the same argument used by other Israel haters, is.

But it isn't stupidity that animates Khalek's half-baked theories. It is pure hate.

The Electronic Intifada readers who buy this argument, however, are truly stupid.

(h/t Mitchell)

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When you hate Israel, it can do nothing right

When you hate Israel,  it can do nothing right
Evil Hasbara claim	Israel Derangement Response
Israel is tolerant towards gays	Israel has some homophobes, and therefore really hates gays (Richard Silverstein) Israel is only pretending to be tolerant; it is engaging in “pinkwashing” to distract the world from its crimes (Sarah Schulman)
Israel has repeatedly offered peace and been rebuffed	Those “peace plans” were completely unacceptable to Palestinian society and therefore Israel didn’t offer enough (+972) Palestinians accepted the idea of two states in 1988 and therefore cannot be expected to ever compromise on anything ever again (Robert Malley)
How could supposedly racist Jews consistently vote for non-Jews in TV reality polls?	They are still racist, they are simply practicing “tokenism” (Max Blumenthal)
Israel sends aid to help victims of natural disasters	Israel really wants to learn how to kill more effectively (Rania Khalek) Israel wants to steal the organs of the victims (Jenny Tonge) Israel is trying to distract the world from its crimes by pretending to do good (Ali Abuminah)
Hamas and Hezbollah are terror groups that Israel must defend itself from	Hamas and Hezbollah are “social movements that  are progressive” (Judith Butler)
Arab men beat their wives and engage in “honor killings”	It is Israeli policies that cause Arab men to beat and kill their wives (The Lancet and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay)
The IDF has fewer reports of rape compared to other countries’ armies	They don’t rape because they consider Arab women too inhuman to even consider raping (Tal Nitzan) IDF rabbis say rape is perfectly OK according to Yossi Gurwitz Tasteless T-shirts prove Israel has a “rape culture” (David Sheen)

In short: If Israel does something bad, it is proof that Israel is evil. If Israel does something admirable, it is proof that Israel is evil. If Arabs do something bad, it is because Israel is evil.

Life is so simple for the simple-minded.

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10/01 Links Pt2: Post-Liberal Europe and its Jewish Problem; Muslim Zionist recalls his transformation

From Ian:

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Natan Sharansky: Post-Liberal Europe and its Jewish Problem

Why should European Jews, or anyone for that matter, choose to hold fast to their particular identity in the face of so much pressure to abandon it? Because identity, Jewish or otherwise, imbues life with a meaning and purpose beyond mere material existence. It satisfies a basic human longing to be part of something bigger than oneself, an inter-generational community that shares a set of values and a sense of overarching purpose.
Of course, there is another basic human longing: the desire to be free, to think for oneself and choose one’s own path. But these two basic desires—to belong and to be free—can reinforce rather than oppose one another. Freedom provides the opportunity to cultivate one’s identity fully; but freedom must be defended, and identity gives one the strength for that task. Just as it is a perilous mistake to sacrifice freedom for the sake of identity, it is a potentially disastrous mistake to jettison identity in the name of freedom, as today’s European post-liberals have done in their belief that nothing is worth dying for.
Indeed, the real issue here is not the future of the Jews; as so often in history, Jews are a litmus test. What is really at stake is the future of Europe. The attempt to liberate itself from its history and its traditional institutions has made Europe decadent and weak. Now that Islamic fundamentalism, an identity violently at odds with liberalism, has moved into the heart of tolerant, multicultural Europe, the question is whether a society that has run away from its identity in order to enjoy its freedom can muster the will to fight, before losing them both.
As one who grew up in the darker corners of Europe, and who garnered from the great European liberal tradition the strength to struggle against oppression, I can only hope that the democratic nation states of Europe will rediscover the capacity to fight for their freedom. But my task as an Israeli citizen is simpler. I must make sure that every Jew in the world who feels homeless will be able to find a home here, in this small island of freedom in a great ocean of tyranny, in this small oasis of identity in a desert of post-identity anomie. To these Jews I say: welcome to the Jewish democratic state.

Europe's 'Other': A Response to Natan Sharansky

n a forthright article in Mosaic, Natan Sharansky does us a valuable service in explaining the roots of disdain in Europe for Jews in general and Jewish national rights in particular. He correctly points to a 'post-liberal' culture which derides national identity and ironically extolls the most anti-liberal and violent minorities. The voices he brings from Europe about what Jews can and can't do are very troubling to say the least.
Yet I believe Sharansky missed a key part of the puzzle of this phenomenon, one which he must be aware of: the disdain of Western and Northern Europe for the people in the rest of the continent. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

World Must Understand That Anti-Semitism is a Universal Problem, Israeli Envoy Tells The Algemeiner (INTERVIEW)

In a lengthy interview with The Algemeiner in New York, where he discussed his work with Jewish advocacy groups, academics and others, Behar was keen to talk about the impact of the recent Gaza war on Jewish communities abroad. “When we looked at what was happening in Europe, we noticed that in places like Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, there was no rise in anti-Semitism,” he said. “Those countries that were once communist didn’t experience the levels of anti-Semitism that we saw in western Europe.” While eastern Europe is certainly not free of Jew-hatred – at several points in the conversation, Behar talked with concern about Jobbik, the neo-Nazi Hungarian party that has grown markedly in popularity – he emphasized that in western Europe, there has been an alarming crossover between anti-Israel rhetoric and demonstrations, and violent attacks on Jews, often carried out by Muslims.
There are, Behar said, four principal sources of anti-Semitism today: the Arab and Islamic world, the neo-fascist right, the radical left and online – during Israel’s operation in Gaza, social media platforms and website comment sections bristled with anti-Semitic invective, often from anonymous contributors. Anywhere where there are acute social, economic or political problems, Behar argued, is fertile soil for anti-Semitism. That also applies to those countries, especially in Europe, which Behar described as undergoing an “identity crisis.” The spectacle of Hungarian fascists unveiling a statue of the country’s pro-Nazi wartime ruler, Admiral Miklos Horthy, as well as the images from Greece of supporters of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party offering Hitler salutes, suggests to Behar that Europe has not quite gotten over its deadly recent past.
How, though, can a phenomenon that surfaces from Venezuela to Turkey, and that has rightly been described by scholars as “the longest hatred,” be countered effectively? Behar is modest about what is possible and he doesn’t claim that anti-Semitism will eventually disappear. But its toxic influence can, nonetheless, be ameliorated – and education, Behar believes, is key.

In Vienna, Edelstein warns: Indifference to anti-Semitism is not an option

Indifference to anti-Semitism cannot be allowed, because it was a crucial component in bringing about the Holocaust, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein warned Tuesday at a ceremony posthumously honoring 11 Righteous Among the Nations in Vienna.
“The Holocaust did not start in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Babi Yar, or any of the other myriad Nazi killing grounds.
It began in cities when bricks were thrown through Jewish storefronts, when synagogues were desecrated, and when Jewish businesses were boycotted, and it spread because too many of those good people remained indifferent,” he stated.
Edelstein pointed to “clouds of anti-Semitism brewing over Europe,” including attacks on synagogues and well-attended rallies featuring anti-Semitic slogans.

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03/24 Links Pt2: Double Trouble- The Leftist Threat and the Islamist Threat; Israel in the World Cup?

From Ian:

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Double Trouble: The Leftist Threat and the Islamist Threat

Focusing on Islam, however, does not preclude worrying about the left. Both are worrisome. More to the point, they are not unrelated threats. It is unrealistic to think of the two ideological movements—the one secular, the other religious—as separate and distinct, as though we can afford to tackle the immediate threat first and the remote one later. In reality, leftism and Islamism are best understood as a combined threat. Radical leftists and radical Islamists share similar ideologies and goals and have formed numerous alliances, both tacit and not-so-tacit.
The words “Islamism” and “Islamist” were chosen because of their similarity to “communism” and “communist,” but the ideological similarities between Islam and communism were noted long before the politicized terms came into common usage. The list of philosophers, historians and intellectuals who have likened Islam to communism includes Bertrand Russell, Arthur Koestler, Whittaker Chambers, Jules Monnerot, and Bernard Lewis. More tellingly, the three most influential Islamic theorists of the twentieth century—Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb and Maulana Maududi—were all deeply impressed with Soviet communism. Though they rejected the atheistic element of communism, they recognized its affinities with Islam, and their writings reflect the influence of leftist thought.

The Real Problem With Academia Isn’t the Anti-Israel Boycotts; It’s the Horrible Ideas

Just what is wrong with academia these days? If you’ve been reading Tablet, you are surely versed in the grand guignol that is the attempt by clusters of professors in a host of professional associations that have little or nothing to do with the Middle East to single out Israel as the world’s singular source of evil. It’s a fun story to follow, mainly because—as that great poet of power, Henry Kissinger, noted—the politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low. With precision that would’ve made Newton swoon, for every BDS action there is an equal and opposite and much greater anti-BDS action, and unless you’ve got your mind set on becoming a post-modernist, post-colonialist, post-Focauldian doctoral candidate in a second-tier university, chances are you can live a happy and fulfilling life and never give the rumbles of a few nasty and misguided fools another thought.
But BDS isn’t the problem. What should concern us, what is truly harmful, isn’t what a few academic organizations choose to do, but what many academic departments choose to teach. And the spirit of what they choose to teach is intimated in Evelyn Barish’s thrilling new biography of Paul de Man.

How to thwart terrorism at 29,000 feet, by the only pilot who ever did

With world attention focused on MH370, Uri Bar-Lev recalls how he saved his El Al passengers from an attempted skyjacking, and says other pilots should have been trained to do the same — on 9/11 and in countless other cases
On September 6, 1970, Bar-Lev, who had flown as a 16-year-old in the 1948 War of Independence and later during the 1956 War, was picked up from his Amsterdam hotel and brought to Schiphol airport to fly the second leg of El Al Flight 219 from Tel Aviv to New York. Before take-off, El Al’s security officer on duty at the airport told the pilot that there were four suspicious people seeking to board the flight. Two held Senegalese passports with consecutive numbers; two others, a couple, carried less suspicious looking Honduran passports, but all had ordered their tickets at the last minute.

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