08/25 Links: US State Department removes all mention of Palestinian Authority; Israel Says Air Strike in Syria Sent ‘No Immunity’ Message to Iran

From Ian:

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US State Department removes all mention of Palestinian Authority

The US State Department website has deleted the Palestinian Authority from the list of countries and areas on its website.

Until recently, 'Palestinians' appeared on the site under the name 'Palestinian Authority' and before that the 'Palestinian Territories'.

Over the past year there has been a significant devaluation of the Palestinian status on the US side, with the State Department ordering to remove any reference that included the word 'occupied territories' in reference to the Palestinian Arabs.

Now the very existence of a Palestinian Authority is not present on the official website representing the US State Department.

How Trump Started a Civil War Between the UN and Hamas

Even within the United Nations, a sprawling multinational bureaucracy linked by luxury dining, corruption and complicity in terrorism, the UNRWA stands out for waste, corruption and terror.

The UNRWA’s abbreviation leaves out its full title, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and its heavy focus on Gaza. The UNRWA classifies 1.4 million or 73% of the people living in Gaza as “refugees” even though it’s an independent territory run by Hamas.

There are really two UNRWA agencies. One is a UN agency run by a small number of international staffers. Another is an arm of Hamas which employs thousands of “Palestinians”. Many if not most of these are members of Hamas. Some, like Suhail al-Hindi, the former head of the UNRWA union, who was also a member of Hamas’ leadership, serve in the upper echelons of the terror group.

While a handful of European UN employees act as the public face of UNRWA, the actual agency is run by Hamas operatives who control its schools, using them to recruit and to store weapons. The union representing UNRWA employees is controlled by Hamas and its employees implement Hamas policies.

Hamas had announced as much when its newspaper responded to a call to fire UNRWA Hamas members by writing, “Laying off the agency employees because of their political affiliation means laying off all the employees of the aid agency, because…they are all members of the ‘resistance.’”

The power struggle between the UN employees and Hamas was tested before during clashes over the teaching of the Holocaust in UNRWA schools and the use of UNRWA schools to launch attacks on Israel.

The real crackup came when the Trump administration cut off all funding to UNRWA.

On a Rosh Hashana call, President Trump told Jewish leaders that the free ride for terrorists was over.

“I stopped massive amounts of money that we were paying to the Palestinians,” he announced. “The United States was paying them tremendous amounts of money.”

New Zealand suspends funding to UNRWA.

New Zealand has now joined the Swiss, Dutch, and Belgium governments in suspending donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) following an internal report that found “credible and corroborated” allegations of serious ethical abuses including “sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and other abuses of authority, for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent, and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives.”

Originally, Foreign Minister Peters and officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) said

“We are aware of recent media reports of allegations of ethical issues and mismanagement within UNRWA. We expect UNRWA to cooperate fully with any investigation and to report back on the investigation’s findings and recommendations.”Rt Hon Winston Peters

However, after seeing a draft report from The Israel Institute of New Zealand (IINZ) that shows MFAT officials did not brief Ministers on substantial failings within UNRWA, did not record meetings where concerns about UNRWA were raised, and took the word of UNRWA officials without any apparent attempts at independent corroboration, MFAT responded that

“the Ministry will review the findings of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) report once the investigation is complete and provide advice to the New Zealand Government. New Zealand will not make any further payments to UNRWA until we have reviewed the report’s findings and assessed UNRWA’s response to any recommendations.”MFAT staff

This is the first time New Zealand has suspended donations to the UN agency.

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08/20 Links Pt2: Is the Campus BDS Threat Shifting to Academic Boycotts?; How Al Sharpton Failed African Slaves

From Ian:

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Is the Campus BDS Threat Shifting to Academic Boycotts?

In some cases, the principle of academic boycott is of greater concern than the direct impact on students.

At Pitzer, fewer than a dozen students have participated in the Haifa program since 2007. And the idea that a university should institutionally sever access or collaboration with international partners is not only antithetical to the very idea of a university, but can actually have tangible adverse effects on student course enrollment and even school choice. No student should have to consider an individual professor’s political agenda when registering for courses or choosing a major. Students should be able to pursue any degree, any course, or any study-abroad destination without fear that someone else’s politics will limit their own educational journey.

Antisemitic ideology will also pose threats to healthy campus life this year in other vehicles besides academic boycotts. Already, a pair of Israeli student athletes at the University of Indianapolis found a swastika on the wall as they were moving into their dorm. Graffiti incidents are increasingly commonplace on campuses, and other forms of harassment, including mock eviction notices, continue to disenfranchise Israel-supporting students. On the eight campuses where divestment failed last year, there’s likely to be some attempt to revive a traditional BDS push in the next year. Students will also undoubtedly see a continued campus presence from right-wing white-nationalist groups, which have increased their college activities.

While other concerns are sure to pop up this year for Jewish and pro-Israel students, the academic boycott against Israel has the most potential for coordinated activity. An entire section on the BDSMovement.net website — run by the Palestinian BDS National Committee — serves as an instructional guide to launching start-up chapters to help them promote the boycott. Anti-Israel activists across the country are sure to attempt to capitalize on the near success of the Pitzer campaign and pursue boycotts against Israeli institutions at whatever levels they can.

Supporters of Israel, democracy, and the free exchange of ideas must recognize the threat that academic boycotts pose to the health of the university environment and make clear that these attacks on academic freedom are not welcome on any campus.

Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Disengagement from Gaza

Fifteen years after Israel withdrew completely from the Gaza Strip, and evicted the Jews who lived there, many of the former officers and other self-described security experts who supported the move at the time continue to argue that it was the correct decision, pointing to the decrease in the number of Israelis killed and wounded since then. But, argues Gershon Hacohen, this is the wrong yardstick:

[B]y making the number of casualties the main criterion by which to assess the security situation, as U.S. generals did in Vietnam to cover up their abysmal failures, the “experts” ignore the fact that a national-security equation does not by any means depend primarily on the number of wounded and killed. If that were indeed the key criterion, most struggles for national liberation would not have happened.

To begin with, Israel’s withdrawal reinforced Hamas’s belief that Palestinian victory will be won through “resistance” and not by political means, à la the approach of Mahmoud Abbas. . . . According to Hamas, it was not the yearning for peace that impelled the Israelis to withdraw from Gaza but operative and mental distress in the face of relentless “resistance,” similar to the panicky flight from Lebanon in May 2000. Hence the two-state solution has succumbed to a radical logic that paints it, according to Hamas’s former leader Khaled Mashal, in the colors of an ongoing phased strategy in the ceaseless struggle for Israel’s destruction.

For rockets, missiles, and mortars, as well as explosive and incendiary balloons, the fence [separating Israel from Gaza] is not an obstacle. Nor does it inhibit the tunnel threat. The fence does contribute to the regular security routine, but in symmetrical fashion it helps the enemy build up its power undisturbed. Under the protection of the fence, . . . Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been able to form an organized military force, comprising battalions and brigades, replete with a concealed and protected arsenal of rocket fire and supported by an effective command-and-control system.

How Al Sharpton Failed African Slaves

In 2001, Al Sharpton paid a visit to Sudan, where he met with black Christians who had been held as slaves by Muslim Arabs. Most of these slaves had been captured during raids on their villages in which the male population was slaughtered and women and children sold into servitude. Sharpton, notorious for aggravating racial tensions in the U.S. and provoking two murderous outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence in New York City, pledged to take up their cause and for a brief time spoke about it publicly. But he soon abandoned the issue, as Charles Jacobs explains:

When Sharpton returned from Sudan he met with senior members of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. Farrakhan had been vigorously denying that Arabs were enslaving blacks. His mission is to convince American blacks that Islam is the path to authentic freedom; it would be damaged by living and breathing proof that blacks are enslaved and slaughtered in African countries like Sudan where Islam dominates.

In 2017, after ignoring Africa’s slaves for many years, Sharpton returned to the issue. The occasion was a CNN report on Arabs in Libya capturing and selling Africans as slaves which featured a video of an auction where a man was sold for $400. . . . For whatever reason, Sharpton never actually went to Libya, but he did meet with Libya’s UN ambassador Elmahdi Elmajerbi to discuss the problem—and made sure to get the photo-op. Just as with his trip to Sudan, however, Sharpton’s ire quickly faded and once again the slaves went down the memory hole.

Today, in five Arab and Muslim African countries—Sudan, Mauritania, Libya, Nigeria, and Algeria—blacks are enslaved. These are known realities, easily documented. Sharpton and Farrakhan ignored or denied the current-day plight of black people who are taken as slaves. They do so for two primary reasons; first, so as not to denigrate Islam, and secondly, to keep “America’s racism” a singular and unique focus, the benefits of which would be lost to them if blacks here knew that today, sadly, in some parts of the Islamic world, African men, women, and children are still in bondage, captured, bought, and sold as chattel.

Al Sharpton heard the groans of enslaved black Africans, saw their tears, and then, seeing the way the wind was blowing, ran away.

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05/12 Links: Eurovision: Israel Fights BDS with ‘Beautiful, Diverse, Sensational’ Campaign; American Jewry forgot the main lesson of the Holocaust; Antisemitic hate walks through London once more

From Ian:

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Eurovision: Israel Fights BDS with ‘Beautiful, Diverse, Sensational’ Campaign

Ahead of next week’s Eurovision Song Contest, Israel is countering the anti-Israel boycott movement, or BDS, on social media and the internet with its ‘Beautiful, Diverse, Sensational’ campaign.

The move comes after Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs exposed a coordinated campaign by the BDS movement calling for the boycott of the Israeli-hosted international music event. As David Gerstman reported for Legal Insurrection earlier this month, the BDS movement had “deployed hundreds of bots to promote a campaign to boycott this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.” The online campaign was backed by several Palestinian groups, including designated terrorist groups Hamas, the PFLP, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, David wrote, citing an official Israeli report.

“Instead of believing in culture as a tool to unite, Israel’s detractors try to use it to divide,” Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan said recently. “Israel is a vibrant democracy which provides a safe-haven of freedom in the Middle East for its wide mix of cultures, people and religions. I call on all artists of the world to reject BDS’s hate-filled and bigoted campaign and continue to unite the world with their music.”

Israeli news website Ynetnews reported:
israel has launched a PR campaign to counter calls for a boycott of the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest final in Tel Aviv, using Google ads which refer to the boycott but lead to a glossy website extolling Israel. The international Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement dismissed the tactic as “crude propaganda”. (…)

Internet advertisements on Google featuring the words “boycott” and “Eurovision” encourage searchers to click on a link that, in fact, leads them to a pro-Israel website which – in a play on the BDS initials – extols Israel as “Beautiful, Diverse, Sensational”. (…)

Minister of Strategic Affairs, Gilad Erdan, said the advertisement, which features high quality photographs and videos, was intended to “show Israel as it really is, a diverse, beautiful and sensational place, while at the same time, successfully dispelling the lies BDS spreads.”

כאן מציגים: מחזמר האירוויזיון הרשמי של ישראל, ארץ זבת חלב והרבה שווארמה. הצטרפו אל לוסי ואליה והסבירו פנים לתיירים #כאן_אירוויזיון ⏰ 4 ימים לחצי הגמר הראשון! pic.twitter.com/ABuizHNZnQ

— כאן (@kann) May 10, 2019

Eurovision boycott activists are opposed to Israel's right to self-determination

Regrettably, there is a small group of extremist activists who have tried very hard over the past year to prevent the Eurovision happening this year or at least to stop Ireland’s state broadcaster RTE from airing the event.

These people like to call themselves ‘pro-Palestinian.’ Actually, they are not.

Their activism, their hatred, their negative calls for boycotts, and their aggressive intimidation of people who support Israel do not do anything to improve the life of a single Palestinian but show that their only agenda is an anti-Israel one.

They pretend that the Jewish people have no right to live in the places where they were born and where their history, religion and culture are deeply rooted since ancient times.

They ignore that since the 1990s continuous attempts to reach a peace agreement have been rebuffed and have been met with more and more Palestinian terrorism.

Only last week, Israeli civilians once again became the target of more than 600 rockets fired indiscriminately at towns and cities in southern Israel.

Hamas, the Palestinian terrorists who carried out those attacks, have committed a double war crime. They are intentionally targeting civilians in Israel while also using their own civilian population as human shields for their military assets and rocket launching sites.

In essence, all of this is being backed by those extremist boycotters.

While debate over Israeli policy, like a debate of any country’s policies, is, of course, legitimate, the extremists constantly try to bash and defame Israel by abusing terms and descriptions hijacked from other agendas, places and times.

The most extreme of those false allegations come dangerously close to being covered by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, adopted by representatives of 31 countries – including Ireland.

These include, for example, denying the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination; describing Israel as a racist state; dehumanising and demonising Israeli Jews. (h/t Zvi)

Is Eurovision Racist?


PA demands Israel remove Jerusalem from Eurovision promo videos

The Palestinian Authority called Saturday for Jerusalem to be cut from videos promoting Eurovision, accusing Israel of “propaganda” ahead of Tel Aviv hosting the international song contest.

The Kan public broadcaster aired a clip Friday aimed at tourists traveling to the country for Eurovision, which features a shot of East Jerusalem’s Temple Mount compound, the holiest place in Judaism, referred to as the Noble Sanctuary by Muslims, where the Al-Aqsa Mosque stands.

The video also refers to Jerusalem as “our beloved capital.” Palestinians claim the eastern sector as the capital of their future state.

East Jerusalem was captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed in a move never recognized by most of the international community. The US recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017, and moved its embassy to the city last May.

The PA’s foreign ministry said Israel was using the song competition to “entrench its colonial occupation by effectively normalizing the global acceptance of its unlawful conduct.”

Hamas can prevent the Eurovision Song Contest in Israel, warns Hamas TV editor

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04/04 Links Pt2: Collier: Bloodthirsty – in the mind of the anti-Israel activists; Pro-Palestinian activists post eviction notices on Jewish students' doors; 2,000-year-old image of 9-stem menorah found in rare Jewish site

From Ian:

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David Collier: Bloodthirsty – in the mind of the anti-Israel activists

One of the biggest lies currently being sold to populations in the west is that anti-Israel activity is related to a movement of peace or justice. Relying on a strategy of intersectionality, this deception has permitted violent, racist ideologies to take a firm foothold within other well-known ’causes’. Infecting them and leading them astray. These people may call themselves members of ‘solidarity movements’ or ‘pro-Palestinian’ but they are nothing to do with ‘peace-makers’ in the traditional sense. I’ve been inside these movements, pretending to be an activist, infiltrating their social media groups and I’ve been researching them for years. Anti-Israel activity is full of little but fake news, hate and demonisation. In their twisted world, Palestinians are sacrificial, and these movements act as a bloodsucker, leeching onto the conflict, yearning for blood and only satiated when it flows.
Gaza

The situation between Israel and Gaza is a complex one. Anyone who thinks this is about ‘strong’ Israel battering weak ‘Palestinians’, has no understanding of the conflict at all. Many of the shortages in Gaza are the result of Fatah-Hamas power-struggles. Egypt’s own issues with the Muslim Brotherhood play a major role. In addition, Hamas rule is brutal and Gazans face a violent crackdown when they protest.

An interesting note can be made here. I recently wrote about ‘independent reporters’ operating from Gaza. I suggested they were not independent at all and that their massive online social media accounts allowed for Hamas propaganda to be delivered directly into the veins of anti-Israel activism. It raises a question – how many of those accounts I monitor, which spill out ‘news’ 24-7, even mentioned the public protest and Hamas crackdown? The answer is – just one. All the other ‘independent reporters’ – telling ‘the truth’ from Gaza – didn’t see anything at all. As Gazans were arrested, beaten and tortured, all those people ‘reporting’ on life in Gaza, like Muhammad Smiry and Walid Mahmoud, didn’t see a thing.

Anti-Israel activists swallow *anything* whole and without question. Look at this post. Walid Mahmoud, (who did not see Hamas thugs beating up and torturing Gazan demonstrators) blames a broken lens cap on the Israelis, turning it into a ‘near-death’ incident. The post received 787 likes and 680 shares. I’ve no idea how this happened but I do know he is a propaganda agent. Every trip, every broken I-phone screen, every accident, is used to turn Israelis into blood-thirsty monsters – and it is all devoured ravenously by a truly insane crowd.

Pro-Palestinian activists post eviction notices on Jewish students' doors

Numerous Jewish students at Emory University in Atlanta Georgia woke up yesterday to find fictitious “eviction notices” produced by pro-Palestinian activists posted on the doors or their dorm rooms or private apartments.

The notices were produced and distributed by the Emory chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine organization and Emory University’s Office of Residence and Housing Approval gave permission for the notices to be distributed.

Sophia Weinstein, the manager of the Emory-Israel Public Affairs Committee (EIPAC) organization, wrote on Facebook on Tuesday that at least 30 students had informed her about the stunt, and that Jewish students with mezuzahs on their doors had noticed that the “eviction notices” had been posted on their doors, but not those of neighbors without mezuzahs.

The notices declared that the student’s residence was scheduled for demolition in three days, and that all the contents of their apartment could be destroyed if it was not vacated on time.

It went on to make various allegations about the use of eviction notices against Palestinians by Israeli authorities, saying the practice was part of “the state of Israel’s ongoing attempts to ethnically cleanse the region of its Arab inhabitants and maintain an exclusively ‘Jewish’ character of the state.”

It noted at the bottom that it was not a real eviction notice and designed to draw attention to “the reality that Palestinians confront on a regular basis.”

Weinstein said that the notices had made her feel that the secure environment of university was being stripped away.

“It is one thing to criticize Israel. Dialogue is encouraged. It is another to target students and mislead with false information,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

Jewish students with Mezuzahs on their doors @EmoryUniversity woke up this morning to these “eviction notices”.

It’s not the Jews, it’s just Israel they said.. pic.twitter.com/5zSIEwbH1r

— Leibel Mangel (@LeibelMangel) April 3, 2019

Joe Rogan Experience #1276 - Ben Shapiro

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03/22 Links Pt2: Israel Advocacy: Fighting for the truth; The American Left abandons Zionism; The persecution of Jews in medieval England

From Ian:

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Jewish and antisemitic?

David Collier on the antisemitism denial industry
Independent writer and researcher David Collier has released a new 270-page report in which he went undercover into a secret Facebook group to expose key Jewish anti-Zionist and antisemitic activists and their relations with people who share materials from Neo-Nazis and white supremacist websites.

“These Jewish activists are most vocal at suggesting there is little or no antisemitism,” Collier explains. But in private, “They belittle or joke about the allegations.”

Who are they joking with about antisemitism?

According to Collier, these activists are laughing about antisemitism with people who post white supremacist material, Holocaust denial and take their keys from Holocaust denial websites.

“They say that as a Zionist, I am the enemy,” Collier notes in a film on the report. “But these Jewish activists spend time attacking Israel alongside people who share material from Nazi sites. Those people are their allies, and I am the enemy.”

He cites several examples, such as BDS activist Ariel Gold. She is a member of Code Pink. In a Facebook post, independent journalist, researcher Ariyana Love is complaining about being called an antisemite, “Ariel jumps in to calm her down.

“She doesn’t ask what happened or what was said,” notes Collier.

Then he demonstrates that Love shares antisemitic content, including from the “Renegade Tribune,” a well-known white separatist, Holocaust denying, historical revisionist, neo-Nazi website established in 2012 by Kyle Hunt. In one post, she said that 6 million Jews dying in the Holocaust was a hoax.

Israel Advocacy: Fighting for the truth

In a room below the United Nation Human Rights Council which once again condemned Israel and the IDF one day after a deadly terror attack in the West Bank, sat a number of IDF reservists who wanted one thing: To tell their side of the story which has been ignored by the world body.

“We are here not for the State of Israel, but for us,” said Eli Bogdan, a former squad commander in the IDF. “In many combat operations civilians are being used by militants in order for them to carry out attacks and escape. How come the IDF is being condemned and not Hamas which uses their own women and children as human shields?”

Bogdan is part of My Truth, an organization established following Operation Protective Edge in 2014 by Avihai Shorshan, which collects signed testimonies and photographs from combat operations between 2004-2018 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that attest to the use of human shields and other human rights violations by Hamas and other terror groups.

The organization has documented testimonies from dozens of former combat soldiers, including several who just recently finished their military service and were posted along the Gaza border fence during the “March of Return” protests.

For these soldiers, who still serve in their reserve duty, the front lines are not only in the West Bank or Gaza Strip. It’s everywhere they go, and against everything they hear.

Several volunteers of the organization – who continue to do their reserve service in the IDF – flew into Geneva on Sunday with the goal of sharing their stories from the front lines.

“The war we are fighting where Hamas takes the fight towards civilians is a very hard war to fight,” Bogdan said at a panel alongside NGO Monitor and UN Watch. “They hide not because they have nowhere to hide, but because they know how the IDF acts. This is the worst violation of human rights in the world, they are using their own women and children.”

Antisemitism is the key election issue for 28 per cent of Jews, with Brexit a distant second

Twenty eight per cent of British Jews say that antisemitism is now the single most important issue in deciding which party to vote for — nearly double the next issue, Brexit, on 15 per cent with the economy on 13 per cent.

The poll, conducted by Survation for the Jewish Leadership Council and given exclusively to the JC, also found that 96 per cent say antisemitism is “important” in deciding which party to support.

Despite claims by Labour to be making progress on dealing with antisemitism, the poll shows that attitudes among British Jews have solidified and are effectively unchanged since a similar JC poll last August.

In that poll, nearly 40 per cent said they would “seriously consider” emigrating if Jeremy Corbyn became Prime Minister. That number has now risen to 42 per cent.

In this latest JC poll, of 757 British Jews conducted between February 18 and March 15, 86 per cent say they believe there are significant levels of antisemitism among Labour’s members and representatives — the same figure as in August 2018.

Similarly, 87 per cent of the Jewish community believe Jeremy Corbyn is himself antisemitic, up from 86 per cent in August 2018.

Only one per cent believe the Conservative leader, Theresa May, is antisemitic. (h/t Zvi)

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03/14 Links Pt1: Amb. Friedman: The Palestinians Don't Have "a Veto on Progress"; The sick stupidity of comparing Nazi-era Jews to ISIS fighters; Israel’s ambassador shocked over PFLP terrorist speech in Berlin

From Ian:

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The Palestinians Don't Have "a Veto on Progress"

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman interviewed by Washington Examiner

Referring to the Trump administration's peace plan, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman explained, "There ought to be a means to get at least closer to a point where the Palestinians have more control over their lives in a way that doesn't jeopardize Israel's security." The plan "will hopefully, if nothing else, provoke a serious discussion that hasn't taken place in a long time."

Friedman has sought out business leaders and other nonpolitical figures in the West Bank to understand ways to improve Palestinians' quality of life. "I'm happy to meet with Palestinians, even if they don't agree with me or like me. Their thoughts and perspectives make me smarter, thoughtful, and more creative."

He views the U.S. embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem last year as a shift in the U.S. message, that "this is not a conflict where the Palestinians have a veto on progress. At some point...things will move forward with or without them. The U.S. is not going to ignore reality. We are not going to indulge the Palestinians in the fantasy that somehow Jerusalem can be disconnected from Israel or the Jewish people....The idea that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel is a fact...a reality, not a negotiation point," though its boundaries are negotiable.

"The idea that one could approach this conflict with a sense of neutrality...is pretty insulting to Israel. The reason Israel holds the territory it holds today, in simple terms, is because it kept getting attacked, wars kept getting fought, and Israel kept winning. The reason Israel hasn't given back all of it, and they gave back a lot, is because to give it away would be an existential risk to the country." Friedman said any other way of looking at the conflict is trying to make peace based on an "alternative reality."

"The biggest danger in this part of the world is to be consumed with wishful thinking. You should see a better future down the road, but you can't wish your way to that. You have to protect yourself along the way."

Why Israel Is Not to Blame for the Lack of Peace

As humans, one of the hardest things to do is give up something we love. When something is held so close to the heart, our strongest instinct tells us to guard it with all of our might.

The State of Israel may be relatively young, but Zionism is not nearly as new. The yearning to live in our ancestral homeland has existed for thousands of years. We’ve known, since the beginning of time, that this land was something we had to protect for eternity.

Today, despite our love for Israel, we understand that others will stop at nothing to cause it harm. This is why, on Israel’s end, there have been countless attempts to ease tensions with the Palestinians through land partitions and peace offers, all of which were rejected by the Palestinian leadership.

In 2005, in an attempt at making peace with the Palestinians, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. This decision divided the country; many believed that this was a huge mistake, while others argued that it was worth the risk.

Gush Katif was a Jewish neighborhood established in the Gaza Strip in 1970. Unfortunately, the situation there intensified during the year 2000, when the Second Intifada broke out. During this time, attacks on Israelis escalated dramatically.

Five years later, residents were notified that Israel would be withdrawing from Gaza in order to achieve peace, and to empower the Palestinian people. If this plan proved to be successful, it would have served as confirmation that the Palestinians were ready for their own state.

As part of the disengagement, the Israeli Army forcibly removed around 8,000 Jewish residents from Gush Katif, displacing hundreds of families. All of the private property within the settlement was completely destroyed, the settlement was dismantled, and the entire Gaza Strip was handed over to the Palestinians.

Ruthie Blum: Israel vs. its Enemies in Europe

What Abbas's Fatah faction and Hamas -- both of which glorify terrorism against innocent Israelis and call for international sanctions against the state of Israel -- keep neatly under wraps, however, is the frequency with which they themselves have turned to Israel for medical care, often for cancer treatments.

In 2016, for instance, Abbas' Qatar-based brother, Abu Lawi, was treated for cancer at the Assuta Medical Center in Tel Aviv, and not for the first time.

In 2015, Abbas' brother-in-law received life-saving heart surgery at that same hospital. Abbas' wife, Amina, underwent surgery there in 2014.

In 2014, as well, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's mother-in-law was treated for cancer at Jerusalem's Augusta Victoria Hospital. That same year, Haniyeh's daughter was treated at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. She was among the more than 1,000 residents of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority treated at Ichilov every year.

Also in 2014, Hamas spokesman Moussa Abu Marzouk's sister was treated for cancer at an Israeli hospital.

In 2013, Haniyeh's baby granddaughter was treated at the Schneider Children's Medical Center in Petah Tikvah.

Most recently, in May 2018, Abbas himself was treated by an Israeli specialist, who joined a foreign team of doctors caring for him in the intensive care unit at a hospital in Ramallah, in the Palestinian Authority.

Israel proudly joined its counterparts around the globe on February 4 to mark World Cancer Day, initiated by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC). It is time for the world to cease and desist in its efforts to demonize Israel, and to admit to its use of and reliance on the innovation and technology for healing that Israel -- turning no one away -- always graciously provides. It would be a welcome change if its adversaries were half as ethical.

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01/17 Links Pt2: The Genius of Jeremy Corbyn; Arafat and the Ayatollahs; A guide to who’s marching as anti-Semitism controversy roils Women’s March

From Ian:

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Unintended Consequences

This week, Tablet looks back on 40 years of the Iranian Revolution.

In an excerpt from a new history of 20th-century Iran, the neglected story of the Jewish revolutionaries who participated in—or adapted to—the sweeping changes of 1979

When the anti-Shah upheavals of 1978 erupted, Iranian Jews found themselves, naturally, on both sides of the revolutionary movement: among its supporters and its opponents.

As violence intensified, many wounded protesters calling for the establishment of an Islamic Republic found sanctuary from the clashes in a rather surprising place: the Sapir Hospital (Bimaristan-i Sapir), the Jewish hospital in Tehran.

On Sept. 8, 1978, mass demonstrations erupted in Tehran. The Shah sent the army to shoot live ammunition at the crowd of protesters. This event became known as Black Friday.

“That Friday the head nurse, Ms. Farangis Hasidim, called me and told me that they are bringing many casualties to the hospital,” recalls Dr. Jalali, one of the senior officials in Sapir Hospital at that time. “I drove to the hospital but the Zhalah [avenue] was blocked, so I went by foot and there was shooting. … Since I was friendly with the ambulance-services people, almost 90 percent of the injured people came to Sapir Hospital, where we treated all of them in our four surgery rooms.”

On Dec. 11, 1978, one of the largest demonstrations against the Shah took place in Tehran. Newspapers called it a “demonstration of millions,” and it set a milestone in the struggle against the Shah’s regime. Jewish participation set records as well; according to some sources, 5,000 Jews participated in these protests.Other estimates were much higher. Hushang, a longtime leftist activist in the Jewish community and a member of the Association of Jewish Iranian Intellectuals (AJII), a Jewish leftist activist group, helped organize the massive Jewish appearance that day: “According to press reports close to 12,000 Jews participated in these protests that day,” he says. “The Jewish religious leaders marched in the front row and the rest of the Jews followed them, showing great solidarity with our Iranian compatriots.”

Arafat and the Ayatollahs

The PLO’s greatest single contribution to the Iranian Revolution was the formation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but the Palestinian leader’s involvement with Iran didn’t end there

By the end of 1981, Arafat had very clearly lost favor in Tehran. To make things worse, two of his closest Iranian allies, Mohammad Montazeri and Mohammad Saleh Hosseini, would be assassinated that year—the former in an MEK bombing, the latter by Iraqi agents in Beirut. By then, the IRP had consolidated its grip on power within Iran and sidelined rival factions.

Likewise, within Lebanon, the dominant Iranian revolutionary faction—Hezbollah—had already begun cloning itself within its host country. Khomeini lieutenants like Hosseini had used connections with Fatah to recruit new cadres of Lebanese Shiite youth (among whom was a young man named Imad Mughniyeh) to their own banner. These recruits received military training in Fatah’s camps, but became part of a separate Khomeinist formation which was named after its Iranian progenitor.

In 1982, the PLO would be routed in Lebanon by the IDF, and was forced to withdraw its leadership under American protection to Tunis. By then the Iranians had already set up their own alternative structure to the PLO within Lebanon, formally known as Hezbollah.

Arafat would have one last dance with Iran before his death. After launching the Second Intifada against Israel, Arafat reached out to Iran for weapons. He purchased a freighter, the Karine A, in Lebanon, and the Iranians loaded it with 50 tons of weapons. Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh played an integral role in the operation. The IDF intercepted the ship in January 2002.

Arafat’s fantasy of pulling the strings and balancing the Iranians and the Arabs in a grand anti-Israel camp of regional states never stood much of a chance. However, his wish to see Iran back the Palestinian armed struggle is now a fact, as Tehran has effectively become the principal, if not the only, sponsor of the Palestinian military option though its direct sponsorship of Islamic Jihad and its sustaining strategic and organizational ties with Hamas.

By forging ties with the Khomeinists, Arafat unwittingly helped to achieve the very opposite of his dream. Iran has turned the Palestinian factions into its proxies, and the PLO has been relegated to the regional sidelines.

The Genius of Jeremy Corbyn

Leaving no weapon unmobilized, Corbyn and his allies have also adopted the “intersectional” left’s insistence that Jews are too privileged to be considered victims of racism and as such, by definition, cannot experience “race hatred.” In this spirit, a local Labor group recently rejected a statement expressing sympathy with the victims of the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh on the grounds that it gave too much credence to the very concept of anti-Semitism.

Finally, even as Corbyn has made the denial of anti-Semitism a core principle of the left, he has made it clear that he is more than willing to support “good” Jewish groups—that is, those who share his ideology. These include the self-described radical British groups Jewdas (sic) and Jewish Voice for Labor, both of which have refashioned Judaism into a battle cry against Israel and Western civilization.

As for the bad Jews, those who dare to affiliate in any way with the state of Israel, they are entitled to neither tolerance nor sympathy when they are the objects of violence whether physical (as at Tree of Life) or verbal—a notable case of the latter being the Labor MP Luciana Berger, who was compelled to employ a bodyguard at a Labor-party conference after being targeted with abuse labeling her a “racist Zionist,” an “apartheid apologist,” and a “warmonger.”

Jeremy Corbyn reminds us that anti-Semitism is not just an irrational hatred, harbored by madmen at the fringes of British society. He has achieved something new, not only infiltrating anti-Semitic language, tropes, and accusations into mainstream British political discourse but successfully wielding anti-Semitism as a means of dramatically increasing support for his larger program of “transforming British society.” No matter how much the British Jewish community cries “Enough is Enough,” for Corbyn it is never enough; to the contrary, to renege on his “anti-Zionism” would be to repudiate his entire worldview and renounce a core strategic key to his political success.

In sum, if Theresa May’s government falls and Jeremy Corbyn is elected prime minister of the United Kingdom, anti-Semitism, in one cheeky guise or another, will have been declared not only officially acceptable but an essential component of the governing mandate of one of the world’s greatest democracies.

Postscript: one must always hesitate to compare like with unlike, but a British observer cannot help feeling a twinge of sympathetic worry at the recent accession to the U.S. House of Representatives of several Democratic congresswomen harboring a frank and open animus toward Israel and boasting political affiliations reminiscent of Jeremy Corbyn and his milieu. One can only pray the worry is misplaced.

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01/11 Links Pt2: BDS ban is not about free speech; The Music Video Driving Israel Haters Nuts; Edelman Cleats in Memory of Pittsburgh Shooting Victims Sell for $10,000

From Ian:

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BDS ban is not about free speech

Activists on one side of this debate have maligned anti-boycott laws as requiring a "loyalty oath to Israel," arguing that "the government cannot force people to subscribe to a specific political viewpoint." When so framed, these laws appear to be intolerable censorship. The First Amendment enables anyone to freely express their views without fear of government retribution – even if those views are racist or anti-Semitic. But ACTING on such views is in many cases illegal, particularly when the effect is discriminatory. So while First Amendment arguments must be evaluated in these lawsuits, ignoring the well-established distinction between speech and action grossly misrepresents the controversy.

Contrary to the challengers' free speech narrative, these state laws do not actually impact anyone's ability to hold, express or advocate any viewpoint. Instead, they only require businesses seeking government contracts (or investments) to certify they are not engaged in discriminatory boycotts. This is actually milder than many other anti-discrimination laws at the federal, state and local level, which require companies – regardless of their financial relationship with any government – to disregard traits such as religion or national origin in hiring practices and business dealings. The laws in question here, instead of directly regulating conduct, are intended to spare the public from subsidizing companies that act contrary to the collective interest.

The key question that free speech advocates (and the courts) have to answer is whether a boycott of Israel, in its current form, is merely a political viewpoint rather than a form of discrimination. For if such a boycott does nothing but express a political viewpoint, these laws should be struck down. The collective interest is never served by stifling one side of a genuine debate. However, if a boycott represents discrimination against a protected category, it would be on par with any other uncontroversial law safeguarding public funds from being used toward discriminatory ends.

While much discourse on this subject has uncritically assumed Israel boycotts are the former, there are good reasons to believe they're the latter.

Most Israel boycotts today are conducted in solidarity with the BDS movement, founded in 2005. As just the latest in a long line of Jewish boycotts, BDS is arguably discriminatory in both its goals and its effect. Ignoring countries engaged in far more egregious behavior, the movement singles out Israel as exceptionally and uniquely evil among all nations of the world. It spuriously places all blame for a two-sided conflict on "Jewish colonialism." And though there may certainly be times when Israeli policies or government actions warrant criticism, BDS does not merely target any individual Israeli policy or government. Rather, it rejects Jewish self-determination outright. Co-founder Omar Barghouti has said he opposes a Jewish state "in any part of Palestine," which BDS sees as being a single state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Members quit Birmingham board that rescinded award to Angela Davis

Three board members have resigned from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which rescinded its award to African-American activist Angela Davis, allegedly due in part to complaints from Jewish leaders.

The resignations follow controversy over the museum and educational center’s decision last week to withdraw the Fred L. Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award from Davis. She was intended to receive the award next month in a ceremony that has since been canceled.

Davis, a Birmingham, Alabama, native and leading civil rights activist, is an outspoken critic of Israel and an advocate of the movement to boycott the country. She also was a far-left leader in activist movements of the 1960s and ’70s.

The board members who resigned Wednesday were its chairman, Mike Oatridge; its first vice chair, Walter Body; and its secretary, Janice Kelsey. Their names were removed Thursday afternoon from the museum’s website.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said in a statement that the decision to rescind the award, which was announced in September, came “after protests from our local Jewish community and some of its allies.”

Davis wrote in the pro-Palestinian publication Mondoweiss that she learned her “long-term support of justice for Palestine was at issue.”

Who made it an issue is still not clear. None of the people who reportedly were involved in the decision agreed to a request from JTA for comment, including the Birmingham Jewish Federation’s CEO, Richard Friedman, and the civil rights institute’s president, Andrea Taylor, who did not respond to a call and text message.

Those Who Boycott Mosque Holocaust Exhibit Do Not Speak for Muslims

The polticisation around Israel and Palestine choked any voices that wanted to document these stories, as though they would legitimise Israel. This perverse logic meant many of these oral histories were lost, helped the claim, pushed by, that Muslims were part of SS Gestapo Units in Bosnia - who were involved in rounding up and exterminating Jews - dominate. This is true and cannot be washed over. It highlights how the SS used Islam and antisemitism to attract some who were Muslims from the Balkan regions. Serbian nationalists used this piece of history to whip up hatred against Bosnian Muslims between 1992 and 1995.

Yet, the vast majority of Muslims fought against Hitler and the courageous stories of Muslims saving Jews are now a forgotten history. As a Muslim, a part of my heritage has disappeared, hyper-politicised into a silence that will stay for eternity.

You would think that hosting an exhibition highlighting some of these stories would be a chance for Muslims to reclaim their history at a time when so many wrongly align Islam and Muslims with just terrorism and extremism. But a decade after launching the Righteous Muslims booklet, only a handful of the three milion British Muslims even know of any stories of Muslims who saved Jews in the Holocaust. I put this down to those who believe they are speaking for the Palestinians by denying Muslims their own history and heritage.

I have met Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem who want to hear the stories of Muslims who saved Jews in the Holocaust. Granted there are Palestinians who will revere and laud the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who asked Hitler to help an Arab revolt against the British in 1941, but there are others who are ashamed of that history. The latter have said to me that “Muslims need pride in their actions when they have done the right thing”, when I talked about the stories of Righteous Muslims.

Who exactly are those seeking boycotts against Yad Vashem speaking for? They are not speaking for the Palestinians. They are also not speaking up for Muslims. They are speaking up for those who want to keep the status quo going, the very status quo that throttled the life and voices out of the stories of Muslims who saved Jews.

Much like Haj Amin al-Husseini, they are on the wrong side of history and worst still, on the side of those who deny the voices of the dead and murdered from speaking to the living today. We cannot allow this to happen, for the sake of all of our histories.

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12/07 Link Pt2: The ‘Hyper-Whitening’ of the Jews; Video Appears to Show Marc Lamont Hill Accusing Israel of Poisoning Palestinian Water; The BDS Movement, Where the Anti-Semites Find Room to Flourish

From Ian:

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The ‘Hyper-Whitening’ of the Jews

At the Forward, Ari Feldman reflects on whether or not recent attacks against Jews in Brooklyn are the result of anti-Semitism. The article is gaining a bit of attention because of its nonsensical premise and because of a few choice quotes. He cites a local salesman as saying, “It’s less of an anti-Semitic thing than they needed a target to respond to this word: gentrification.” And he quotes someone named Mark Winston Griffith from the Black Movement Center, who says that may be the result black people’s seeing Judaism as “a form of almost hyper-whiteness.”

To reject these explanations as preposterous and offensive is, of course, righteous. But to do that alone is to miss something critical. Considering these claims at face value is important. Not because they have merit, but because they show precisely how anti-Semitism works and what it is.

The Jew is hated as whatever the anti-Semite holds responsible for his own misfortune. If you’re a capitalist, the Jew is a Communist; if you’re a Communist, the Jew is a capitalist. If you’re a pacifist, the Jew is a warmonger. If you’re a warrior, the Jew is a coward. Depending on your circumstance, the Jew can be grimy or snobbish, rootless or nationalist, invader or separatist. And if 100 years ago, American bigots saw Jews as Asiatic cross-breeds, today bigots see them as “hyper-white.” If you want to know what a culture considers most problematic, look at its brand of anti-Semitism. When you have headlines about “white privilege” and “evil white men,” Jews become the epitome of whiteness—except, of course, for neo-Nazis, who see Jews as hyper-integrationists.

No one explained it better than Ruth Wisse in the 2010 issue of COMMENTARY:
Anti-Semitism works through the strategy of the pointing finger. Through political prestidigitation, the accuser draws attention away from his own sins—in the case of Arab leaders, the systematic oppression and immiseration of their own people—by pointing to the Jews, whose demonically inflated image and luridly portrayed wickedness make them a plausible explanation for whatever ails his regime. The pointing finger keeps negative attention focused on the Jews—or Israelis—and the latter, as often as not, obligingly fall into the trap by accepting responsibility for a situation they cannot control. In politics as before the law, whoever points the finger is the plaintiff, and whoever stands in the dock is the defendant. Unless they were to file a countersuit, simply answering to the charge of which they stood accused placed the Jews under the constant obligation of defending their innocence.

America’s Jewish left endorses anti-Jewish discrimination

In the view of these five groups, every inch of Judea and Samaria is “Palestinian land,” and any Jew who lives there is an “usurper” who deserves to be boycotted, treated as a pariah, and eventually driven out.

Obviously if Jewish leftwing groups choose to support anti-Jewish discrimination—by boycotting only Jewish settlements and not Arab ones—that is their right according the U.S. Constitution. And if these groups want to advocate that every inch of Judea and Samaria is “usurped Palestinian land,” that, too, is their right.

But that does not mean the organized American Jewish community has to treat such racist positions as legitimate.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization overwhelmingly rejected J Street’s application for membership several years ago. That was a wise move. Jewish umbrella groups that have relationships with the New Israel Fund and the other members of the Gang of Five should reconsider whether they want to maintain those relationships.

Partners for Progressive Israel (PPI), for example, is a member of the American Zionist Movement. It’s fair to ask whether PPI’s support for discrimination against Israeli Jews is consistent with the AZM’s declared mission is “ to strengthen the connection of American Jews with Israel; develop their appreciation of the centrality of Israel to Jewish life worldwide; deepen their understanding of Israeli society and the challenges it faces; encourage travel, long-term visits and Aliyah to Israel; and to facilitate dialogue, debate and collective action to further Zionism in the United States and abroad.”

Is advocating discrimination against Jews in Judea-Samaria consistent with the AZM’s mission statement?

Gerald Steinberg: Human Rights Day nothing to celebrate

International Human Rights Day – commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Conventions on December 10, 1948 – is marked every year in the United Nations and by other organizations claiming to carry out its noble principles. But in stark contrast to the self-congratulation and high-sounding rhetoric that characterize these events, the reality makes a particularly desolate picture.

If anything, this day is a timely reminder of the failures of the institutions that were created after the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust to protect and defend human rights. Indeed, 2018 was another dismal year, and there is little to celebrate. The massive government bureaucracies and millions provided to groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International did nothing to prevent the carnage in Syria that destroyed millions of lives. And the triumph of the Assad-Russia-Iran-Hezbollah coalition offers no hope for the future. In Venezuela, the tyranny of oppression and repression continues, and hopes that after the death of Hugo Chavez the situation would improve have been dashed.

Ignoring most of the victims around the world, the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva continues to be controlled by some of the worst violators, including Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia (a major offender long before the murder of Jamal Khashoggi), Egypt and China. The member-states and UN officials they appoint routinely exploit the rhetoric of international law to deflect attention from their own behavior, and obsessively target Israel. Syrian and Iranian diplomats take the floor to make poisonous accusations against Israel, while their governments make genocidal threats that turn the 1948 declaration into a mockery.

This year, the council voted to again conduct a pseudo-investigation of Israel, this time over the claims of excessive force and war crimes during the Hamas-orchestrated violent “Grand Return March” incidents along the Gaza border with Israel. Like the infamous (and eventually discredited) Goldstone Report published in 2009, the one-sided results of this version were decided before the commission members were named. For these reasons and more, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley declared “the Human Rights Council is the United Nations’ greatest failure.” After all efforts to enact reforms were rejected, the US suspended its membership, further diminishing the council’s legitimacy.

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12/05 Links Pt2: What PBS got right — and so wrong — about the Jews of Iran; France gives human rights award to BDS organization with terror ties; Dubai’s Jewish community steps hesitantly out of the shadows

From Ian:

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From Jerusalem, Marc Lamont Hill’s ‘river to the sea’ comments hit too close to home

Unfortunately, if you were to base your understanding of why CNN fired Hill on the international media coverage of the row, and tweets by Hill’s defenders, you’d come away with the false impression that he was let go merely for criticising Israel and calling for a “free Palestine.”

In fact, he was fired because his speech included a call for a future Palestinian state “from the river to the sea,” and a thinly veiled justification for Palestinian terror.

Regarding the "river to the sea" comments, Hill denied that it was a call for Israel's destruction.

However, there is simply no question that, among Western pro-Palestinian activists and -- especially -- terror groups like Hamas, calling for a future Palestine “from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea” is code for the rejection of the continued existence of a Jewish state within any borders. In fact, Hill himself, in a recent tweet, acknowledged that he holds this view.

Hill’s support for the Palestinian right to engage in terrorism seems clear in several passages from his speech, including his evocation of the American slave revolts, which he described as equally important to attaining freedom as non-violent methods, adding that “true solidarity” with the Palestinians “must allow them the same range of opportunity.” He also spoke of the alleged “right of an occupied people to defend themselves,” and rejected what he termed the “narrow politics that shames Palestinians” for engaging in this kind of “resistance.”

Moreover, it’s important to note that Hill’s apparent support for violence isn’t a one-off. He has previously advocated on behalf of convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh, appeared to justify the kidnapping and murder in 2014 of three Israeli teens by Palestinian terrorists, and, in 2017, labeled the call for Palestinians to reject hatred and terrorism “offensive and counterproductive.”

Temple University Reviewing Whether Marc Lamont Hill Can Be Reprimanded After Israel Remarks, Board Chair Says

Temple University is determining whether it can reprimand Marc Lamont Hill, a faculty member whose contract as a CNN commentator ended after he made comments denounced as antisemitic.

Hill, a tenured professor of media studies and production, came under fire from Jewish groups after speaking at the United Nations last Wednesday, where he endorsed the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel in pursuit of “a free Palestine from the river to the sea” — a call typically used by Arab nationalist and Islamist groups to advocate for the establishment of a Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, in place of Israel. The BDS campaign itself is often criticized for rejecting the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and denying Jewish indigenity to the Levant.

In his speech, Hill also did not rule out violence as a means of Palestinian “resistance,” suggesting that as “black resistance to American apartheid did not come purely through Gandi and nonviolence … we must allow the Palestinian people the same range of opportunity and political possibility.”

His comments were quickly condemned by local and national Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Zionist Organization of America, National Council of Young Israel and Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, with the latter rebuking Hill’s remarks as “anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.”

Jews from Islamic countries are migrants of the clash of civilizations

Islam decolonized itself with an anti-Semitic ethnic cleansing whose very existence has been denied by the West. These Jews had been confiscated of everything: wealth totalling hundreds of billions of dollars. they were prevented from practicing religion, they were kicked out of their homes, they were massacred in the streets, they were robbed also of their own history.

And they became invisible.

But their sufferings didn't come to an end with their flight. In France it continues today. Most French Jews, in fact, are the sons and the grandsons of those who fled the Arab world: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt. And these Jews are targeted again by the Islamists.

“I'm scared for the future of my baby here”, say the French Jews in a chilling series that appeared on CNN. Nathaniel Azoulay, a boy from Paris attacked with a saw, tells his story: “He saw the kippah”. Azoulay and his brother started running as fast as possible. “He started to launch anti-Semitic insults, 'f*** Jew, you will die on this street'. He hit my brother with the saw. He shouted to the others: 'Let's beat the Jews, come, let's hit them'. I cut my fingers with the saw”.

Yonatan Arfi, vice president of Jewish communities, speaks of “hundreds of attacks” like this from 2000 to today.

Islamicized France, outside the Macrononian bubble, can become a war zone for the Jews, exactly as it was in Cairo, Marrakesh, Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo and Beirut at the time of the Jewish Nakba, the real one.

What PBS got right — and so wrong — about the Jews of Iran

In fact, the discrimination goes considerably beyond this. Under Iran’s sharia law code, different penalties are laid out for Muslims and non-Muslims for a variety of violations, almost always disfavoring the non-Muslims. The government also insists that each of the Tehran Jewish community’s five schools must be run by a Muslim principal — a requirement that the head of the Jewish community bluntly, and courageously, condemned on the record as “insulting” in my 2015 interview with him. If a Jew murders a Muslim, the proscribed penalty is death. If a Muslim murders a Jew, the payment of blood money is an option.

To be sure Jews, along with Christians and Zoroastrians, are recognized as “people of the book” in the Islamic Republic, with a legitimate place as tolerated minorities in Muslim society. The physical security of Jews as a community in Iran is even buttressed by a religious fatwa forbidding harm to the community that was issued by the Islamic Republic’s founding leader, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, soon after he took power. But taken in total, the legal and social discrimination under which Iran’s Jews (and Christians and Zoroastrians) live leave them as basically well protected second-class citizens.

For Jews, the impact of these conditions is reflected in a basic statistic found nowhere in the PBS report. Before the 1979 revolution, 80,000 to 100,000 Jews lived in Iran. Today, only 9,000 Jews live there, according to census figures, where Iranians are obliged to list their religion. Those numbers make a big statement about what most Iranian Jews think about living under the conditions “News Hour” describes more or less accurately, if incompletely.

Much of the emigration took place in the years immediately after the revolution, when the ability of Jews to make reasonable lives for themselves was far less clear. Just months after the installation of Khomeini’s first post-revolution government, Iran’s execution of one of the community’s major leaders and leading businessmen, Habib Elghanian, for “contacts with Israel and Zionism” shocked many Jews into flight. The charge was one that could be applied easily to many Iranian Jews. To this day Iranian Jews, many of whom have family in Israel, must be discreet about those ties. But today, the government often looks the other way when Iranian Jews quietly visit Israel via third countries. (h/t Zvi)

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10/26 Links Pt2: Phillips: How the West has created antisemitism denial; Glick: What was Rabin’s legacy?; Liberation, Not Colonization, Motivated the Creation of the Jewish State

From Ian:

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Melanie Phillips: How the West has created antisemitism denial

Among Democrats, it is commonplace to compare US President Donald Trump to Hitler and the Republicans to Nazis.

Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price produced an ad for the mid-term Congressional elections next month in which he compared Trump to Hitler.

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Democratic Representative Yvette Clarke stood in front of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Manhattan and declared: “We are standing in front of a building that has become the headquarters for the Gestapo of the United States of America.”

Even Jewish Democrats are guilty of this. Democratic Representative Stephen Cohen was forced to apologize after he likened the Republicans’ promotion of healthcare policy to the propaganda of Hitler’s henchman Joseph Goebbels.

If everyone’s a Nazi, the real Nazis stop being uniquely evil. They become instead Everyman. Thus the Holocaust is traduced, bad people get a free pass and the innocent are demonized.

The impulse behind Holocaust education and memorializing was noble and understandable. But it missed something crucial.

This was the need to teach the world about Jewish history in both the land of Israel and the Diaspora; to teach the world what it has done to the Jews over the course of recorded time; to teach the world how Judaism itself embodies a unique and unbreakable connection between the people, the religion and the land.

Judaism lies at the heart of western values. Yet it has been misrepresented and demonized by Christianity, Islam and secularism. It is that continuing ignorance and bigotry over Judaism itself which fuels the demonization of Israel, the misreading of the Holocaust and the return of open antisemitism.

In a culture framed by Holocaust memorializing, the West has itself become the avatar of antisemitism denial.

Caroline Glick: What was Rabin’s legacy?

In his speech before the Knesset, Rabin detailed his view of where things would lead. He did not believe that the end result of the Oslo process would be the establishment of a Palestinian state, much less a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital in control of all or the vast majority of the land in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Rabin not only opposed any compromise on sole Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem: He called for extending Israeli sovereignty to Ma’aleh Adumim and Givat Ze’ev, two major Israeli communities in Judea just north of the city.

He also called for extending Israeli sovereignty to Gush Etzion and other major Israeli communities south of Jerusalem, and for building settlement blocs throughout Judea and Samaria. He committed to take no action to curtail the expansion of Israeli communities, and specifically ruled out any construction freeze in those communities throughout the interim period. He also praised the Israeli communities in Gaza, signaling strongly that they would never be forsaken.

Rabin said that Israel’s eastern border would remain the Jordan Valley in perpetuity and defined the frontier in the broadest possible terms.

In short, depending on how you interpret his phrasing, Rabin was either expressing his support for Netanyahu’s vision of a demilitarized Palestinian state, or for Education Minister Naftali Bennett’s plan to apply Israeli sovereignty to all of Area C.

Either way, Rabin’s actual vision tells us something important about how the Left’s draconian restrictions on freedom of speech have harmed Israel. By shunting aside what Rabin actually stood for, and reinventing him as a leftist ideologue, the Left has cheapened and distorted the true significance of what he stood for while preventing Israel from correcting his mistakes and building on his successes.

Liberation, Not Colonization, Motivated the Creation of the Jewish State

If your child came home from college and said she was challenged by a classmate who claimed that Palestine is Arab land stolen by the Jews, could you provide her with a response?

For the 400 years before World War I, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire, so it was owned by the Turks, not by the Arabs, let alone by the Arabs of Palestine. There was never a country called Palestine ruled by its own Arab inhabitants.

The original Zionists came to Palestine without the backing of any imperialist or colonialist power. They bought the land on which they settled.

Colonialism didn't bring Britain to Palestine. It conquered the land in World War I not from the Arabs but from Turkey, which had joined Britain's enemies in the war. The Arabs in Palestine fought for Turkey against Britain. The land was enemy territory.

Supporting Zionism appealed to Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Lord Balfour and other officials not just on strategic grounds, but also for moral reasons. They sympathized with the Jewish national cause. Zionism was an answer to the historical Jewish question, a way to remedy some of the harm shamefully done to the Jewish people over history.

And it would give Jews an opportunity to normalize their place in the world, by building up a national center and a refuge, a country in their ancient homeland where they could become the majority and enjoy self-determination as a people.

In 1919, the first Palestinian Congress declared that Palestine had never been divided from Syria and that Palestinians and Syrians were one people. Palestine's Arabs were not viewed by their own leaders as a separate nation.

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10/24 Links Pt1: Peace with Jordan – stop panicking; Netanyahu reaffirms commitment to demilitarized Palestinian state; PA Violates Oslo Accords in East Jerusalem

From Ian:

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Dr. Mordechai Kedar: Peace with Jordan – stop panicking

The King of Jordan, not some lowly clerk, announced that Jordan will not extend the currently existing leases renting two parcels of land to Israel. One is the so-called Island of Peace in the northern Naharayim area and the other located in the southern Arava, near Tzofar, an agricultural cooperative village (moshav). Jordan was entirely within its rights to decide not to renew the leases insofar as the relevant clauses in the 1994 peace treaty with Israel are concerned, and the only reason the king announced it himself was to give the declaration the weight of a final decision not open to negotiation. Jordan’s foreign minister added, in his own declaration, that if there are to be negotiations, they will be limited to deciding on the way those areas are to be returned to Jordanian jurisdiction.

Since the publication of the King’s declaration, utter hysteria has overcome the Israeli media and the voices of both broadcasters and those they interview are laced with panic. “Jordan has cancelled the peace treaty!!” “Why is the king doing this to us?” “What will happen to the longest peaceful border Israel has? “ Politicians, on the other hand, are attempting to calm us down on the lines of: “The peace treaty with Jordan is a strategic asset of the first order for Israel,” “ there is no threat to future relations with Jordan,” “Jordan depends on us for its security,” and other similarly irresponsible remarks, the gist of which is that Israel would do anything to preserve the peace agreement with Jordan.

Those media personalities and their interviewees do not realize that when they talk about the importance of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, they are granting the Hashemite kingdom the ability to pressure Israel on more crucial issues, such as a Palestinian Arab state in Judea and Samaria, continuing Jordan’s special status in Jerusalem overriding Israel’s sovereignty in the Holy City and including Jordan as a partner to negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. In its endless search for scoops and hysterical headlines, the media have turned into talking heads whose unnecessary pronouncements ignore the Middle Eastern propensity for raising the price of anything Israel considers important.

The King of Jordan announced the cancellation of the leasing due to internal pressures. Numerous Jordanians demanded that the leasing of Jordanian land to Israel must end and the king acceded to those demands. In addition, the king has several “bones to pick” with Israel and the US, especially regarding Jerusalem, America’s recognition of the city as Israel’s capital and its relocation of the embassy. Trump took these steps despite King Abdullah II’s requests to leave the Jerusalem issue to negotiations between the PA and Israel, expecting the city to be divided between Israel and a future Palestinian state. The king was insulted when his request was ignored and looked for a way to punish Israel.

Hashemite Chutzpah

Traditionally, when you start a war and lose, there's a price to pay--especially if the land you launched from wasn’t yours in the first place. Whatever will or won't become, in the future, of the land in question, it must be noted that this is disputed territory, not "purely Arab" land. In Arab eyes, however, they claim the whole region as “purely Arab patrimony.”

Jews lived and owned property in those "occupied territories" until their slaughter by Arabs in the 1920s and 1930s. Judea (as in JEW) and Samaria, only since the 20th century known as the "West Bank" (via British imperialism and Transjordan's later annexation), were non-apportioned parts of the original 1920 Mandate with thousands of years of documented Jewish history; and leading authorities such as Eugene Rostow, William O'Brien, and others have stressed that these areas were open to settlement by Jew, Arab, and other residents of the Mandate alike.

The Minutes of the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission documented scores of thousands entering into Palestine from Syria alone in just several months’ time. Hamas' "patron saint," Sheikh Izzedine al-Qassam (for whom the rockets and terror brigade are named), was from Latakia.

It's estimated that many more Arabs entered the Mandate, to take advantage of the economic development going on because of the Jews, under cover of darkness and were never recorded...more Arab settlers setting up more Arab settlements in Palestine. Why are these "legal" and those of the Jews not? Scores of thousands of Jews in Syria soon became refugees fleeing that country. Greater New York City alone now has tens of thousands of descendants, with some of the most beautiful synagogues I’ve ever seen.

Peace between Israel and its immediate Arab neighbor to the east is obviously a worthy goal. But the world must stop accepting the Hashemites’ assertion that Jordan is not part of the balance sheet when the of rights of both Arabs and Jews in the region are being discussed.

David Singer: Jordan and Israel – Trump’s only viable two-state solution

Four major developments in the past week have heightened expectations that President Trump will have no option but to call on Jordan and Israel to negotiate the allocation of sovereignty between their two respective States in the West Bank and Gaza – 5% of the territory comprised in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (Mandate) .

Jordan and Israel are the two successor States to the Mandate currently exercising sovereignty in the other 95% of the Mandate territory – Jordan 78%, Israel 17%.

Jordan-Israel negotiations – if successfully concluded – would complete the two-state solution first contemplated under article 25 of the Mandate. Arab and Jewish claims to the Mandate territory would be finally resolved.

These four developments were:
1. The G77 and China – comprising 135 of the 193 United Nations member states – appointed the non-existing “State of Palestine” as Chairman of the G77 for 2019 and procured the passage of a United Nations General Assembly Resolution giving this phantom “State of Palestine” the right to:
(a) Make statements on behalf of the Group of 77 and China, including among representatives of major groups;
(b) Submit proposals and amendments and introduce them on behalf of the Group of 77 and China;
(c) Co-sponsor proposals and amendments;
(d) Make explanations of vote on behalf of the States Members of the United Nations that are members of the Group of 77 and China;
(e) Reply regarding positions of the Group of 77 and China;
(f) Raise procedural motions, including points of order and requests to put proposals to the vote, on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.

US Ambassador to the UN – Nikki Haley – re-iterated America’s long-standing position:
“The United States does not recognize a Palestinian state, notes that no such state has been admitted as a UN Member State, and does not believe that the Palestinians are eligible to be admitted as a UN Member State.”

The PLO has chosen the United Nations fantasyland to push its agenda in preference to negotiating with Israel under Trump’s proposed plan – simultaneously rejecting the Montevideo Convention requirements necessary for statehood in international law.

11 other UN member states embraced this nonsensical resolution, whilst the remaining 47 voted: Against (3), Abstained (15), or Did Not Vote (29).

2. US Secretary of State – Mike Pompeo – announced that the U.S. Embassy Jerusalem and U.S. Consulate General Jerusalem would be merged into a single diplomatic mission.
This was Trump’s response to the UN’s embrace of the “State of Palestine”.

3. President Trump sent World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder as his personal envoy to Jordan.
Lauder's visit reportedly occurred without the knowledge of Israel or Trump’s Special Middle East Negotiators – Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt.

Jordan received $690 million in US aid in 2018 – to be boosted by a 27% increase for each of the next five years. Lauder would have reminded Jordan’s King Abdullah that Trump’s policy could see this aid reduced if Jordan refuses to negotiate with Israel.

4. King Abdullah gave Israel twelve months’ notice of Jordan’s intention to not renew twenty-five year leases of two areas denoted as “Special Regimes” in the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty.
Israel is entitled to request that consultations be entered into – as Israel undoubtedly will – since Israeli private land ownership rights and property interests are affected in one area and Israeli private land use rights in the other.

These Special Regimes would become important bargaining chips in Jordan – Israel negotiations on the West Bank and Gaza over the next 12 months.

Any Trump peace proposal not requiring direct Jordan –Israel negotiations will be dead in the water from the get-go.

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09/25 Links: At UN, Trump hails Israel, urges world to isolate Iran, which sows ‘destruction’; Israel-Russia crisis artificial, driven by anti-Semitism; Tamimi: Our goal is to remove Israel

From Ian:

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Caroline Glick: Mahmoud Abbas Should Be Barred from Entering the U.S.

The U.S. government should bar Palestinian Authority Chairman and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Mahmoud Abbas from entering the United States on Wednesday for the opening of the United Nations.

In the days that have passed since Queens, New York, native and dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Ari Fuld was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist, we have learned several things about how his murder came about.

Together, they make a compelling case to take action against Abbas when he arrives at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. (Abbas is scheduled to arrive in New York to address the UN General Assembly meeting on Thursday.)

Ari Fuld, a 45-year-old father of four, was stabbed in the back by Palestinian terrorist Khalil Jabarin last Sunday morning outside a shopping center at Gush Etzion Junction in Judea, south of Jerusalem.

On Tuesday, Palestinian journalist Bassem Tawil provided significant evidence that recent statements by Abbas may have encouraged 16-year-old Jabarin to murder Fuld – or any other Jewish person. Jabarin is from Dura, a village about a half hour south of the shopping center – a convenient site for his attack.

Tawil reported that Saturday, the day before the murder, Abbas gave a speech to the PLO’s Executive Committee in Ramallah. In his address, Abbas reportedly “repeated the old libel that Israel was planning to establish special Jewish prayer zones inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” which is on the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism, the site of the Second Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

Report: PA leader aims to undercut US peace plan at UN

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is ‎planning to host a conference of world leaders and ‎high-ranking diplomats on the sidelines of the ‎United Nations General Assembly this week with the ‎expressed intention of undermining U.S. President ‎Donald Trump's regional peace plan, Channel 10 ‎News reported Monday.‎

Relations between Washington and Ramallah have been ‎‎‎particularly strained since U.S. President Donald ‎‎Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's ‎capital last December and subsequently moved the ‎U.S. ‎Embassy there in May. The move outraged ‎Palestinians, who envision east Jerusalem as the ‎capital of a future Palestinian state. ‎

Abbas has ‎since refused ‎to engage with any of ‎Trump's Middle ‎East envoys, saying that the U.S. ‎bias in favor of Israel ‎proves ‎it cannot act as an ‎impartial mediator in ‎‎regional peace talks.‎

The Trump administration has taken ‎several other steps ‎against the Palestinian ‎Authority, including ‎suspending the large U.S. ‎contribution to the U.N. aid ‎agency assisting ‎Palestinian refugees and shuttering ‎the Palestine ‎Liberation Organization's mission in ‎Washington. ‎‎

The United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and ‎‎Germany, as well as diplomats from 40 nations and ‎international organizations, have been invited to the conference ‎scheduled for Wednesday, the ‎report said. ‎

Titled "Salvaging the Two-State ‎Solution, ‎Defending the ‎International Rules-Based ‎System,"‎ the conference is set to take place at the Grand Hyatt ‎hotel in New York.‎

Former envoy: Israel-Russia crisis artificial, driven by anti-Semitism

The crisis between Israel and Russia resulting from a Russian military aircraft being shot down over Syria last week is "calculated and artificial, unrelated to reality or the facts, because the Russians want payment," former Israeli Ambassador to Russia Zvi Magen told Israel Hayom in an interview.

Now a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, Magen underscored that "it doesn't matter what Israel does. From the moment the other side wants a crisis, there's no way of preventing one.

"The media blamed Israel on the day of crisis in a well-timed orchestrated manner, filled with anti-Semitic elements. This wasn't random."

According to Magen's analysis, the Russian defense establishment never changed its stance, even after Israeli Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin visited Moscow to present Israel's findings on the incident.

Anti-Semitism rears its head

A Russian Defense Ministry statement repeating gross accusations about Israel being responsible for shooting down a Russian military plane over Syria last week is a signal that, at least outwardly, Russia is unwilling to turn over a new page and move on from the past.

The inaccurate, unfounded, and even false claims in the ministry's findings should not come as a surprise to anyone. After announcing that Israel was at fault, the Russians have not been able to back down, not even after an Israeli Air Force delegation showed them clear proof that Israel had operated within both nations' coordination guidelines. It goes against the Russian culture of power to publicly admit to a mistake. The Russian government will never let facts confuse its citizens' belief that Russia is always right.

The false accusation against Israel has awakened the ghosts of anti-Semitism that always existed in Russian society and which the ruling powers have made an effort to hide these past few decades. Russian television stations permit themselves to make harsh statements about Israel and a number of speakers, including senior delegates in the Russian parliament, have demanded that military air bases in the Jewish state be bombed in retribution. Until last week's incident, such remarks were effectively prohibited in public in Russia, because officials were certain that the person at the top – President Vladimir Putin – objected to them.

But the new situation in which a major government entity in the form of the Russian Defense Ministry talks about Israel in language reminiscent of the Cold War has unleashed anti-Semitic language in Russia in general.

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07/31 Links Pt2: Carter Blocked Begin’s Citizenship Offer to Palestinians; Indy promotes Noam Chomsky’s charge on “Israeli intervention in US elections”; WikiLeaks made antisemitic remarks in private chats

From Ian:

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Carter Administration Blocked Begin’s Citizenship Offer to Palestinians

Commemorating nearly 40 years since United States President Jimmy Carter initiated the negotiations that led to Israel’s surrender of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, the Center for Israel Education is incrementally releasing sensitive memoranda from the Carter administration archives detailing conversations during those negotiations.

The fourth memo in a 10-part series highlighting the Carter administration’s involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict unveiled a March 1978 meeting in Washington between Carter’s team and an Israeli delegation led by Prime Minister Menaḥem Begin.

The conversation from that meeting shows an American administration intent on forcing Israel to relinquish not only Sinai, but also most of the West Bank, Gaza region and the Golan Heights.

In response to the American pressure, Begin expressed his willingness to offer Palestinians the option of full Israeli citizenship with equal rights but would leave the choice in the hands of individual Palestinians themselves.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security adviser, rejected Begin’s offer of citizenship for Palestinians on the grounds that Israel would then retain control over the West Bank, revealing that from the perspective of American interests, an Israeli withdrawal was more important than addressing the actual needs of Palestinians.

Indy promotes Noam Chomsky’s charge on “Israeli intervention in US elections”

The Independent legitimised the warped political views of linguist Noam Chomsky today, in a column by their US editor, Andrew Buncombe. The article, titled “Israeli intervention in US elections ‘vastly overwhelms’ anything Russia has done, claims Noam Chomsky”, highlighted a charge made by the American academic in an interview with the fringe radical left show ‘Democracy Now’.

Here’s the Chomsky quote highlighted by the Indy journalist:

“Israeli intervention in US elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president’s policies – what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015.”

Buncombe then contextualises Chomsky’s views by uncritically citing the (widely discredited) views of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt:

The power of the pro-Israel lobby has long been one of the contentious, and disputed, issues in Washington. In 2007, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, published The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, which described the lobby as “loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction”.

A self-declared leftist wages war on the Palestinian ‘right of return’

Former Labor MK Einat Wilf believes the Palestinians are not ready for peace. They are, in fact, miles away from accepting the idea of dividing the land and are still hoping Israel will soon disappear, she asserts in a new book.

And yet, she insists she’s a leftist.

But the peace camp must sober up, she says, and start realizing that peace will not come as long as the Palestinians cling to their demand to “return” to areas now belonging to Israel.

“If you truly want peace, rather than just feel good about wanting peace — and there are a lot of those — and if you actually understand that at the end of the day they [the Palestinians] are the ones with whom we have to live and share the country, you need to be realistic about where they’re coming from,” she told The Times of Israel during a recent interview in a Jerusalem cafe.

“The War of Return,” which she co-authored with former Haaretz journalist Adi Schwartz, provides an in-depth analysis of the Palestinian refugee problem. It notes that immediately after the 1948 War of Independence, Arab leaders were opposed to the return of those who had left their homes in what had become the State of Israel, as this was considered a tacit recognition of Israeli sovereignty.

But a short while later, Arab leaders changed their strategy and demanded that the “refugees” return to their old homes, Wilf and Schwartz write, citing countless historical documents to prove their point.

Yesterday I visited a young widow grieving the death of her husband, murdered last week by a Palestinian terrorist. I was heartbroken by her tears and those of her in-laws who had lost their only son. Today, the PA Foreign Ministry condemned my visit. Nothing more to say.

— David M. Friedman (@USAmbIsrael) July 31, 2018

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