04/29 Links: N. Korea threatens Israel; Trump proclaims May Jewish American Heritage Month

From Ian:

---

N. Korea threatens Israel after Liberman calls Kim a madman

North Korea threatened to punish Israel and accused Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Saturday of “rash and malicious” statements that insulted its leadership, after he criticized the Asian nation and called its leadership “extremist and insane.”
In an official foreign ministry statement, Pyongyang said Liberman has challenged North Korea by making “rash and malicious” comments against the nation.
“Our consistent message is to mercilessly punish those who offend the dignity of our leadership,” the statement said.
“We warn Israel to think twice about the implications of its defamation campaign against us.”
The statement further condemned Israel for its nuclear policy, and accused the Jewish state of abusing the rights of Arabs across the Middle East.
“Israel is the only illegal possessor of nuclear weapons that enjoys the support of the United States, but Israel is attacking North Korea for possessing nuclear weapons,” the statement read, going on to claim this was a cynical move intended to distract from Israeli “occupation” and “crimes against humanity.”
On Thursday Liberman said Pyongyang “seems to have crossed the red line with its recent nuclear tests,” adding that its nuclear weapons program posed more of a threat to world order than Iran or any terrorist group.

At UN Security Council, Tillerson Presses for Economic Sanctions on North Korea

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson took the escalating threat of a nuclear North Korea to the United Nations Security Council Friday, urging member countries to financially cut ties with Pyongyang and freeze access to funds that could be used to build up that nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Tillerson called on the international community to fully implement U.N. sanctions and to suspend or downgrade diplomatic ties as well with North Korea.
“With each successive detonation and missile test, North Korea pushes northeast Asia and the world closer to instability and broader conflict," Tillerson said. "The threat of a North Korean attack on Seoul or Tokyo is real."
Tillerson added that it was “only a matter of time” before Pyongyang takes aim at the United States and said the international community must take concrete steps now in order to prevent North Korea from making good on threats.
“Business as usual is not an option,” Tillerson told 15 top diplomats at the U.N. meeting.
The secretary of state’s comments capped off an intense week in Washington that included closed-door briefings between the Trump administration and U.S. lawmakers over the escalating threat.

John Bolton: If North Korea Gets Nuclear Missiles, ‘Iran Could Have That Capability the Next Day by Writing a Check’

Breitbart News National Security Editor Frances Martel joined the conversation to ask Bolton about the deep relationship between the nuclear issues in Iran and North Korea, which are generally treated as entirely separate matters in media coverage.
“The media don’t get the connection, and that in part is because the national security bureaucracy doesn’t get, or doesn’t want to talk about, the connection,” Bolton replied, portraying it as “a classic bureaucratic example of what they call silos.”
“You’ve got the people dealing with Iran there in one silo, you’ve got the people dealing with North Korea in another silo. They might as well be on different planets,” he explained.
“But the fact is, again, from publicly available information going back 30 years, we know that the North Koreans and the Iranians have been in close cooperation on the development of ballistic missiles for that entire period. North Korea sold Iran the first SCUD missiles that were the basis for the Iranian missile program. They’ve cooperated in multiple ways since then. It makes perfectly good sense for that to happen. They’re both using the same Soviet-era SCUD missile technology for their missile programs, so they’ve got a common scientific and engineering base. Their objectives for the missile programs are exactly the same. It’s to deliver nuclear weapons, not launch communications or weather satellites. On that score, it’s just absolutely clear,” Bolton said.
“It is less clear in terms of publicly available evidence on the nuclear side, but I think there is substantial reason to believe there’s close cooperation there as well,” he continued. “The reactor that Israel destroyed in Syria in September of 2007 was being built by North Koreans. It was a clone of the North Korean Yongbyon reactor. Most people don’t think Syria had the financial wherewithal to pay for building that kind of reactor, and the North Koreans don’t do anything for free, so where did the money come from? I think it probably came from Iran.”
“I think there are a lot of other connections that have been noted, the Iranian scientists in North Korea and vice versa. Forget the Iran nuclear deal for a minute – it’s entirely foreseeable that the day North Korea gets the capability to drop a nuclear warhead on the United States via ballistic missile, Iran could have that capability the next day by writing a check in the right amount of money, so this relationship is extremely important,” he warned.

Read More

10/26 Links: Melanie Phillips: Elizabeth Warren and the destruction of the west’s moral compass; Sanders’s presidential campaign selects anti-Semitic comedian as surrogate

From Ian:

---

Melanie Phillips: Elizabeth Warren and the destruction of the west’s moral compass

The Democratic presidential hopeful, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, has suggested that she would consider cutting military aid to Israel to force it to halt construction of settlements in the disputed territories.

“It is the official policy of the United States of America to support a two-state solution, and if Israel is moving in the opposite direction then everything is on the table,” she said. To ensure that no one failed to understand her threat, she repeated her final phrase.

Her comment furnished more evidence that Warren resembles British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in her far-left and Israel-bashing views. This threatens to harm not only the sole democratic U.S. ally in the Middle East, but also the interests and security of America itself.

Nevertheless, opposing Israeli settlements and taking the side of the Palestinian Arabs is unlikely to damage Warren’s prospects in broader progressive circles because these are views that they generally share.

This is not merely a divisive policy stance. It also displays a fundamental misconception about the Arab war against Israel that is shared widely within the Jewish as well as non-Jewish world.

At the most obvious level, bashing the settlements is historically and legally wrong.

Israel is entitled to retain and settle these territories twice over. The 1922 Palestine Mandate, whose terms have never been abrogated, gave the Jews alone the right to settle in what is now Israel, the “West Bank” and Gaza. In addition, international law upholds Israel’s right to retain land taken, as it was in 1967, in a war of defense against those who still continue to use it as a landing stage for attacks.

Moreover, the belief that the settlements prevent the creation of a Palestine state that would end the Middle East conflict is transparently false and historically illiterate.

The Palestinian Arabs think all Israel is a “settlement” of squatters with no rights to the land, and they want all of Israel gone. They make this plain in their deeds, their propaganda, and their maps and flags.

Lyn Julius: Buffeted by Egyptian winds of exile

‘There is hatred for everything that is different,’ a friend tells the incredulous young woman, as their world collapses around them in Nasser’s Egypt.

‘Le dernier Khamsin des juifs d’Egypte’ is the novel (in French) which the author Bat Ye’or ( her pen name, meaning Daughter of the Nile) had always wanted to write. Instead the Cairo-born Jewess’s life was thrown off course by her pioneering research into the dhimmi, the subaltern status of Jews and Christians under Islam.

The Hamsin is the hot wind blowing in to Egypt from the Sahara. For the 80,000 Jews of Egypt, riots combine with state-sanctioned persecution to blow this age-old community out of the country, never to return.

The book is written in an impressionistic style but is nuanced and covers all aspects of the exodus. It is heavily autobiographical. Arriving in 1957 as a young refugee in London to study at the Institute Z, Elly ( Bat Ye’or) comes from a well-heeled family. Now she is struggling to survive on a handout of eight pounds a month. Depressed in the cold and the fog, she tries to make sense of what has happened. She is haunted by flashbacks and ghosts from her Egyptian past. Her long-dead, observant relatives are resigned to their fate, but Elly, of a new breed of educated, secular, independent women, can’t accept that Egyptian Jewish life is being wiped out. Elly’s father is burning their family archives lest they be accused of Zionism before their hurried departure. They can’t leave without signing a declaration forfeiting their property.

The storm has been brewing for 100 years. Egyptian nationality was only granted to those who could prove roots going back to 1845.

The Needle

Last month, the world marked the 80th anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Poland and the start of WWII. In Israel, too, this was a big milestone: Kids discussed it at school, academics held conferences at the various universities, newspapers ran articles and editorials. But this wasn’t, of course, always the case in Israel. For years, the war—and the Holocaust—were taboo topics. European Jews, many Israelis felt, had gone to the camps like sheep to the slaughter, without resisting, without putting up much of a fight.

Then that perception changed, almost overnight, as a result of one major event: the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann. Every other Israeli, it seems, claims to have been connected to that heroic operation. But for years, one man who actually was at the heart of the covert kidnapping did all he could to erase himself from the history books. Gregory Warner and Daniel Estrin bring us the complicated story of Dr. Yonah Elian, the anesthesiologist who sedated one of the world’s most notorious Nazis. Today’s episode comes from Rough Translation, an NPR podcast that tells stories from around the world that offer new perspectives on familiar conversations.

Read More

08/12 Links Pt1: Where Palestinian Aid Really Goes; Turning Suicidal Teens into Killers

From Ian:

---

Where Palestinian Aid Really Goes

Why does Palestinian corruption get a pass? Because their status as alleged victims of the Jews seems to give them priority over every other group in the world.
How can we be all that shocked when individuals divert money and material intended to alleviate the plight of ordinary Palestinians to terrorism when that is precisely what both Hamas and Fatah do on a regular basis and on a much larger scale? That is especially true for Mahmoud Abbas’s faction, whose leaders have grown wealthy while the world continues to picture Palestinians as indigent. A group that pays pensions to imprisoned terrorists and to the survivors of those who died while trying to kill Jews (and boasts on Facebook that it has killed 11,000 Israelis) ought not to be in any position to cry poverty, but that is exactly what it does.
The supposedly more puritanical Islamists of Hamas are guilty of many of the same offenses. Few homes have been rebuilt there since the 2014 war but somehow the Hamas tunnel network—which serves as a point of attack for terror raids into Israel and strongholds to shelter Palestinian armaments, fighters, and leaders while the population has no bomb shelters—has been reconstituted and strengthened.
The UN and World Vision and all those who contribute to other Palestinian charities should spare us their expressions of shock or denials about these scandals. While the Palestinians have genuine needs, anyone who gives money to them should do so in the knowledge that they are just as likely to be financing a terrorist’s pension, a terror tunnel, or a Hamas bunker than they are to feed a child or build a home.

Turning Suicidal Teens into Killers

The Los Angeles Times published an eye-popping report this week: According to Kadoura Fares, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, roughly one-fifth of all Palestinian attacks on Israelis in recent months have been attempts to commit “suicide by cop.” Even if that estimate were exaggerated, Israeli security officials concur that there have been many such cases, which begs an obvious question: Given that suicides are usually interested mainly in killing themselves, why do so many suicidal Palestinians try to kill others in the process? And Fares is quite upfront about the answer: “In our culture, suicide for no reason isn’t honorable,” he said. “If they try to confront a soldier, however, it’s looked on with more respect.’’
Or to put it more bluntly, Palestinians have created a culture where mass murder is the quickest, easiest and surest path to glory. What distressed Palestinians are told by their society is roughly the following: “Do you feel like a failure? No problem. All you have to do is murder a Jew, and you’ll be an instant hero. You’ll be lionized on radio and television programs; schools and soccer tournaments will be named after you; politicians will sing your praises. And as a bonus, you’ll also earn the respect that goes with being a breadwinner: If you live, the government will pay you an above-market salary while you’re in prison, and if you die, it will pay your family.” For a distraught youngster, such a prospect of instant redemption is enormously tempting.
This, clearly, is a form of society-wide child abuse: Instead of being encouraged to seek help, distressed young people are encouraged to commit murder, thereby ensuring they will either be killed by security personnel or sentenced to years in jail. That this practice is ignored by all the myriad “human rights” groups active in the West Bank is ample proof that they care as little about Palestinians’ human rights as they do about those of Israelis.

One On One With Alan Dershowitz - Aug. 11, 2016 w/ Col Kemp

Read More

04/09 Links Pt2: Brendan O’Neill: Yarmouk exposes callous double standards of ugly Israel bashers

From Ian:

---

Brendan O’Neill: Yarmouk exposes callous double standards of ugly Israel bashers

If there were an award for double standards, for getting crazily angry about some people’s behaviour while turning a blind eye to other people’s behaviour, anti-Israel activists would win it every year.
These are people who take to the streets to march and holler whenever an Israeli warplane leaves its hangar, yet who say next to nothing about the militarism of France, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and too many other states to mention.
They bang on endlessly about Israel being an apartheid state, yet through BDS they have created a system of cultural apartheid. In their eyes, culture created by us, or by China, or by Zimbabwe, is fine, but culture produced by them, those nasty Israelis, must be hounded out of theatres and galleries lest it infect us all with its contagious Zionism.
These are activists who cry “Censorship!” when a conference of theirs is pulled, as happened at Southampton University recently. Yet they spend the rest of their time agitating for the No Platforming of Israeli representatives on campus and for the shutting down of pro-Israel university societies. “Free speech! (For nice people like me, not for rotters like you)” — that’s their fantastically hypocritical motto.
And now we can see that their double standards extend even to the people they claim to care for: the Palestinians.Even here, even on the question of Palestinian suffering, anti-Israel activists only care some of the time. If you’re a Palestinian whose life is made harder by Israeli forces, they’ll share pictures of you, march in the streets for you, write tear-drenched tweets about you. But if you’re a Palestinian under threat from a non-Israeli force, forget about it. You’re on your own.

Read More

08/11 Links Pt1: Jonathan Tobin: Lebanon proves President Trump right on the Middle East; Inside the Struggle Between Israel and Hezbollah; The Palestinian War on History

From Ian:

---

Jonathan S. Tobin: Lebanon proves President Trump right on the Middle East

Lebanese demonstrators are now calling for throwing out all of their leaders. But there is no formula for governing this country that would satisfy any of these warring tribes.

The world wants to help the Lebanese recover from the port disaster. But the question we should be asking is whether there is anything the West can do to change these countries. The answer is no.

Over the last few decades, both the United States and Israel have been dragged into Lebanon’s civil wars in ways that didn’t benefit anyone. The same is true in Syria, where Washington has fought ISIS and Jerusalem seeks to fend off incursions by Iran and Hezbollah.

Some outsiders might be tempted to try to “fix” Lebanon by helping impose a state modeled on modern and democratic norms, rather than its current tribal and sectarian format. As the United States proved in Iraq, anyone who takes on such a task is ignoring history and common sense and will pay for the hubris in blood and treasure.

Also unfortunately, Lebanon, like Syria and Iraq, is a breeding ground for terrorism. We will have to deter those baddies by other means, never again by entangling ourselves in these nations’ broken political lives. We can wish young, aspirational democrats well as they try to fix their countries — but they should do it on their own.

Anyone who criticizes Trump’s refusal, backed by most Americans, to contemplate more military involvement isn’t being realistic.

Pure isolationism isn’t the answer, of course. The United States should support Israel’s efforts to ensure that violence in Lebanon and Syria doesn’t spread. And the West should, as Trump has done, continue sanctioning and isolating Iran, to prevent it from creating more mischief. Sensible people should also worry about creating a Palestinian state that would be just as much of a disaster as Lebanon or Syria.

Americans have long labored under the delusion that we can heal the Middle East. But the internecine slaughter in Syria and Iraq and the catastrophe that is Lebanon should remind us that the only sensible approach is to stop letting ourselves get dragged into the region’s bloodstained sands.

Richard Goldberg: How the Middle East Can Hedge Against a Biden Presidency

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are in for a rude awakening if former Vice President Joe Biden defeats President Donald Trump in November and Democrats take control of the U.S. Senate in addition to the House. The only thing that might save them: normalizing relations with Israel.

For now, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi seem preoccupied with whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will declare sovereignty over roughly 30 percent of the West Bank, consistent with the Trump peace plan proposal. The UAE ambassador to Washington, Yousef al Otaiba, even penned a column for a leading Israeli newspaper warning that a sovereignty declaration would be a setback for Israeli-Gulf ties. Somehow, while President Trump's decisions to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, move the American embassy there and defund the UN agency for Palestinian refugees merited little more than pro forma foreign ministry press releases, the Emiratis are waging a full (royal) court press to stop Israel from asserting sovereignty over a slice of the West Bank.

With only a few months left until the November presidential election, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) might need to readjust their priorities. Without peace treaties with Israel, their support in Washington could soon collapse. Wasting time and energy fighting an Israeli sovereignty declaration in the West Bank—which may not even happen—will not insulate them from a Democratic takeover next January.

A Biden administration will be tempted to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal, returning to the Obama-era strategy of seeking a balance of power between the Islamic Republic and its Sunni Arab neighbors. The revival of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (i.e., Iran nuclear deal) would be compounded by congressional efforts to cut off arms sales to the Gulf—or condition them on Saudi Arabia and the UAE ending all operations in Yemen and ending their embargo on Qatar. A renewed push for sanctions on Saudi leaders in response to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi is also likely. Biden and his advisors would face enormous political pressure to acquiesce from the more radically pro-Iran, anti-Gulf faction of the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, with Iran once again flush with cash from U.S. sanctions relief and importing advanced conventional arms from Russia and China, MBS and MBZ will have only one true ally in the Middle East: the State of Israel. Sovereignty questions in a strip of land more than 1,000 miles away will seem irrelevant when compared to an existential struggle for survival in a region where the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism seeks hegemony.

The Palestinian War on History

"Every person, irrespective of whether or not they are disabled, should have the opportunity to visit the tomb, which is an important Jewish heritage site... The tomb belongs to us after Abraham bought it with his own money 3,800 years ago." — Former Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett.

These Palestinian leaders continue to deny any Jewish connection to the holy site on the pretext that it belongs exclusively to Muslims. Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad Malki has condemned the elevator plan as an Israeli "war crime" and a "violation of international law."

The winners? The Iran-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who dream of extending their control from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. This dream, thanks to the lawless and lethal regime of the Palestinian Authority -- funded by the West -- appears closer than ever.

Read More

09/25 Links Pt2: Israel, US urge EU to take action against anti-Semitic boycott movement; British Labour Party Adopts Anti-Israel Policies, First One on BDS; Berlin cancels Palestinian terror concert

From Ian:

---

Israel, US urge EU to take action against anti-Semitic boycott movement

Israeli and US officials warned Wednesday of a rise in attacks on Jews in western Europe and urged European Union leaders to stop funding organizations that support an international boycott of Israel, claiming they are encouraging anti-Semitism.

Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan said before meeting with a group of European lawmakers that the EU should make sure its money does not go to groups that support the Palestinian-led boycott movement.

In Brussels, Erdan also released a report cataloging alleged examples of BDS branches or activists using anti-Semitic content in their campaigns.

He accused movement activists of hiding their true agenda behind liberal values such as protecting human rights and freedom of expression.

“BDS leaders who use anti-Semitic language and images that also prove their principles, of boycotting the Jew among the nations, Israel, are anti-Semitic,” Erdan said.

The report included 80 examples of what Erdan called anti-Semitism by key European promoters of the BDS movement against Israel.

Behind the Mask: Denying the Jewish People Their Right to Self Determination is Antisemitism

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) defines the denial of the Jewish right to self-determination as antisemitism. IHRA is accepted in over 18 Western countries and over 30 US states. The Ministry of Strategic Affairs exposes the antisemitism of BDS leaders in a new report called "Behind the Mask".

France Welcomes the Saudis, Condemns Critics of Islam

"Mohammed Al-Issa, who heads the World Islamic League, is credited for more than 500 executions when he was Minister of Justice of Saudi Arabia from 2009 to 2015, and countless orders of torture including the conviction of the famous Raif Badawi with 1.000 lashes." — Michel Taube, Le Figaro, September 16, 2019.

Raif Badawi has just launched a hunger strike over mistreatment by the Saudi prison officials. "As part of their cruel crackdown, they've just confiscated his books & crucial medication." — Irwin Cotler, former Canadian Justice Minister and head of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, in a tweet.

How can France, the country of "liberty, equality, fraternity," welcome the former Saudi minister who was in charge of Badawi's torture and imprisonment... who condemns apostates to death and inflicts public flagellation on dissidents such as Badawi?

Right after the extremist massacre at the weekly Charlie Hebdo, then-French President François Hollande invited the Saudis to join the march of solidarity in Paris. When the Saudis returned home, they started flogging Badawi.

Among the French Muslims, political Islam is rapidly increasing. Instead of embracing the West where they were born, the youngest generations are rejecting it.

Éric Zemmour, apparently, was found "guilty" by a French court of saying that Muslims should be given "the choice between Islam and France" and that "in innumerable French suburbs there is a struggle to Islamize territory". Freedom of expression... [is] under threat in France.

Berlin cancels Palestinian terror concert

After Israel’s ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff and his counterpart US ambassador Richard Grenell urged Berlin authorities to ban a slated Wednesday event with two Palestinian rappers who glorify terrorism against the Jewish state, the government of the German capital city relented at the 11th hour on Wednesday.

Martin Pallgen, a spokesman for the city’s interior ministry senator, wrote on Twitter: ”A decision with a ban on political activity is ready and will be sent to the musicians.” However, the pro-Palestinian rally was not banned.

Issacharoff tweeted on Tuesday: “I appeal to the #Berlin authorities to prevent this disturbing event at the Brandenburg Gate featuring antisemitic rhetoric and glorification of violence against Israel. Berlin should unite, not divide!”

Grenell said that he agrees with Issacharoff’s appeal and that the “rappers sing about the annihilation of Jews.”

Berlin’s mayor Michael Müller, who is reeling from hosting an antisemitic Iranian mayor of Tehran just weeks ago, faced another crisis moment. Müller has been accused over the years of being soft toward rising Jew-hatred in Germany’s capital.

The Palestinian rappers, Shadi Al-Bourini and Qassem Al-Najjar, have sung for military action against Tel Aviv and urged the destruction of Israel.

In 2012, a video featuring a song by the duo circulated Palestinian websites threatened Israel and promised to attack Tel Aviv, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Their music was “accompanied by still images of rockets being fired, a plane being shot out of the sky, and Israelis injured and bracing for imminent landing of rockets, among others,” MEMRI said.

The rappers sung: “Strike a blow at Tel Aviv. Strike a blow at Tel Aviv. Strike a blow at Tel Aviv and frighten the Zionists. The more you build it the more we will destroy it.”

Read More

11/01 Links: Melanie Phillips - Anti-Semitism on the rise in Europe; The Palestinians’ genocidal logo

From Ian:

---

Ezra Levant with Melanie Phillips - Anti-Semitism on the rise in Europe


Chloé Valdary: Pride & Privilege

At that moment, I understood what was really meant in academic circles by the concept of “privilege.”
There is a type of Palestinian-Arab privilege which exists today that makes anti-Semitism "okay," acceptable in academic discourse, and even politically correct. It enables college students of the anti-Israel persuasion to question a Jew’s very identity, to reduce him or her to a monolithic creature which exists solely for the purpose of living in a dejected, victimized, dehumanized state. It divorces them from their past in their native land, and thus strips them of their history, and therefore allows them no future.
This type of prejudice must be fought against. It is not enough to fight lies and slanders in the media if we do not understand that these are variations of the old European libels that manifested themselves in racist anti-Jewish laws for centuries in Western Europe, and which culminated in the Holocaust. They undermine a people’s dignity and sense of belonging. Our endeavor to educate others must be coupled with one crucial element, one which speaks to not only the logic and rational basis of a movement, but the heart and soul of a people: Pride.

The Palestinians’ genocidal logo

There is something particularly revolting about ostensibly civilized, modern nations giving both official recognition and massive funding to terrorist organizations with a clearly expressed genocidal goal.
Sweden is the latest country to officially recognize “the state of Palestine”.
But to put Sweden’s embarrassingly amateurish, vote-grabbing domestic politicking move into a proper international perspective, one has only got to look at the Palestinian Arabs’ national symbols. Just to see how “peace-loving” they really are.
But here’s the salient point: We must all – bloggers, the media, local politicians, national politicians, the diplomatic corps, the EU, the UN – insist that both Fatah and Hamas change their official logos (which show their wished-for state of Palestine as replacing ALL of Israel). Their “national symbol” actually predicates the destruction of UN member state Israel.
And in case the map itself is not enough, there are also swords in the official “national logo” of Hamas to drive home just how this Palestinian coalition government partner intends to destroy Israel and replace it with Palestine.

Read More

01/10 Links: What Amnesty International gets wrong about Israel’s vaccine programme; Is J Street Misrepresenting Its Real Mission?; How is technology and data helping Israel become the first country to vanquish Covid-19?

From Ian:

What Amnesty International gets wrong about Israel’s vaccine programme

Meanwhile, the Ramallah administration was lagging behind. Having squandered sackfuls of public money over the years on everything from mansions for its leaders to payments for terrorists, while propped up by billions of aid dollars, its finances were not in good shape. And it suffered from a fundamental lack of coordination between different arms of the government.

Corruption, factionalism, a lack of proper elections – Mahmoud Abbas is currently 16 years into a four-year term – and incompetence had resulted in a government that often struggled to meet the basic needs of its citizens.

Speaking off-the-record as Israel moved towards vaccinating a million-and-a-half people, a senior PA official said earlier this week that given the sluggish progress, he would not rule out asking the Jewish state for help. When asked whether he had done so already, he paused before muttering: ‘yes and no’.

In truth, Palestinian liaison officials had already quietly contacted Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) department to request the vaccine. The Israelis had agreed to help. Assisting the Palestinians made sense, since it was vital to maintain a degree of goodwill in coordination between the two sides on the West Bank.

According to Israel’s state broadcaster, ‘dozens’ of doses were then secretly delivered into Palestinian hands, enough for the most prominent members of the leadership – though exactly who received the jabs remains unknown. The operation was shrouded in secrecy. Partly, this was due to Palestinian shame at going cap-in-hand to Israel. Partly, it was to avoid appearing nepotistic and incompetent to ordinary Palestinians who were waiting with mounting frustration for news about the vaccine.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health had no idea about the secret delivery. In a statement, it denied that the episode had taken place. Then, in a sign of the confusion at the heart of government in Ramallah, it conceded that Israel had made an ‘informal’ offer of 20 doses on a trial basis – though it claimed that the Palestinians had turned the proposal down.

Seen in this light, the picture bears little resemblance to the narrative pushed by the likes of Amnesty International. The Palestinians neither expected nor requested help from Israel. They held no sense of grievance, even as hand-wringing commentators from overseas sought to stir up resentment by reporting that a great injustice had been done.

Palestinians appear to be seen by some as an infantilised people in need of Western intervention. But this is certainly not how they see themselves.

The Media’s New Anti-Israel Slander — Vaccines

Israel’s extraordinary success in speedily vaccinating its population has been lauded globally. As of this writing, almost 13% of Israelis have already received the first COVID-19 vaccine — well over a million people in just a couple of weeks.

However, while many in the media are looking at Israel’s vaccination drive as an example to be followed, others are using it as one more excuse to bash the Jewish state.

Media outlets including the Washington Post, NPR, and the notoriously anti-Israel British paper The Guardian have run spurious and arguably libelous headlines asserting that Israel is preventing Palestinians from being vaccinated. “Palestinians excluded from Israeli Covid vaccine rollout as jabs go to settlers” read one Guardian headline.

Unfortunately, due to the media’s obsession with proving Israel’s bad faith and the Palestinians’ victimhood, they cannot praise Israel without a backhanded snipe at the Jewish state.

However, the truth of the matter is that this story about Israel supposedly withholding coronavirus vaccines is simply another malicious media attack.

First, regardless of all the good that Israel does in the world, inevitably the haters step forward to paint Israel as evil. They cannot afford for Israel to receive credit, because it will demolish the fallacious anti-Israel foundations they have built.

Former Knesset member Einat Wilf put it best on Twitter when she wrote: “Israel advances status of GBTQ? ‘Pinkwashing.’ Israelis lead world as vegans? ‘Veganwashing.’ Israel sets up first mobile hospital in devastated Haiti? ‘Harvesting organs.’ Israel is global vaccination leader? ‘What about Palestinians?’”

Amb. Alan Baker: Is J Street Misrepresenting Its Real Mission?

According to its website, the Congressional lobbying organization calling itself “J Street” was established “to serve as the political home and voice for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans” through “organizing pro-Israel and pro-peace Americans to promote U.S. policies that embody our deeply held Jewish and democratic values and that help secure the State of Israel as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people.”

In its founding aims and principles, J Street declares its overriding aim as “reshaping political perceptions of what it means to be pro-Israel.”

The first and evidently central provision of J Street’s basic principles acknowledges that Israel faces enemies, and J Street expresses support for Israel to defend itself and live in security and peace within internationally recognized boundaries.

However, J Street’s political manifesto detailed on its website would appear to run counter – and even to undermine – any such sentiments.

On the one hand, J Street presents itself and is perceived by many naïve elements within the Jewish and non-Jewish communities as a genuine lobbying organization with the veneer of supporting Israel and expressing concern for its welfare. But, on the other hand, one can nevertheless see, behind the misleading platitudes and sweeping statements in its manifesto, that J Street’s substantive political viewpoint is openly radical and partisan, identifying itself clearly with the Palestinian narrative, and aligning itself with other openly critical-of-Israel organizations such as the Israel Policy Forum, Brookings, and the International Crisis Group. J Street has failed to welcome and promote the normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states, apparently because they downgrade the urgency J Street feels for a Palestinian state. The organization has actively lobbied against military aid to those Arab states that normalized relations.

Read More

12/19 Links: Problem-solver Jared Kushner’s biggest win was Middle East peace; Obama trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes — lefty media didn't notice; Occupied Territories Bill in Ireland Is Dead on Arrival

From Ian:

Problem-solver Jared Kushner’s biggest win was Middle East peace

Of all the problems President Trump threw at senior adviser Jared Kushner, developing a peace plan for the Middle East was the toughest, a win that has eluded administrations for years.

For the Jewish adviser, bringing peace to Israel was personal. And any victory would provide the administration with an everlasting legacy in the region and the world.

He ignored the ridicule of former administration officials when he took a different and secretive path, as he had on several other projects.

“If you look up the definition of an impossible objective in the dictionary, people say Middle East peace. It's almost a metaphor for impossibility,” he told Secrets.

Kushner built a plan that had a big economic and prosperity push, and while many in Washington brushed it off, it has taken root in the region.

And it set the stage for the Abraham Accords, which has led four former foes ⁠— the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco ⁠— to sign peace agreements with Israel.

“We took a very different approach, and this isn't a rebuke of Democrats, it's a rebuke of maybe more of the foreign policy people who've come before because they're Republicans and Democrats, and for years, they did this dance and didn't get results. Then, those were the people who criticized me the loudest for doing things differently than the way they did. I was like, 'Wait, so you want me to accomplish a different result than you got, but you want me to do the exact same way that you tried?'” he said.

Joel Rosenberg, a bestselling author, editor of All Israel News and All Arab News, and a roving diplomat, called Kushner one of “the most innovative and successful Middle East peace brokers in history.”

FDD: Occupied Territories Bill in Ireland Is Dead on Arrival

Amid a COVID-19-induced economic recession, Irish independent Senator Frances Black has revived a draft law targeting Israel after a previous failed attempt. The Occupied Territories Bill, if enacted, could have disastrous consequences for U.S. economic relations with Ireland – and Ireland itself.

The Occupied Territories Bill seeks to criminalize trade in goods and services produced in Israeli settlements. When the bill was initially introduced in January 2018, it triggered a sharp denouncement from the Irish government and U.S. policymakers.

During the 32nd session of the Irish parliament, which was dissolved in January 2020, the bill reached the seventh of 10 steps toward becoming law. Unpassed bills typically lapse at the end of Ireland’s parliamentary session and must begin the process anew in the subsequent session. However, Black succeeded in now having the bill reinstated at the same stage during the 33rd session.

If enacted, the bill could force U.S. companies with an Irish division or subsidiary to choose between one of two costly options: violate Irish law by continuing to do business with companies and persons in Israeli settlements, or violate U.S. law by participating in a foreign boycott not endorsed by the U.S. government. Major U.S. companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, employ over 155,000 people in Ireland. All four of these corporations have substantial research and development centers in Israel. Not only would these and other U.S. companies risk running afoul of U.S. federal law prohibiting compliance with an unsanctioned boycott, they would also be violating nearly two dozen U.S. state laws that prohibit unauthorized boycotts against Israel.

The bill has already received sharp criticism from officials of Ireland’s two leading political parties, as well as bipartisan criticism from the U.S. Congress. Earlier this year, Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin of Ireland’s Fianna Fail party asserted that the bill would violate EU trade regulations by undermining the European Union’s exclusive right to determine trade policy for its member states.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney of the Fine Gael party has made similar assertions. In addition, Irish Attorney General Séamus Woulfe weighed in that the bill would be “impractical” to enforce.

Obama trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes — lefty media didn't notice

The words leap out and grab you. Former President Barack Obama characterizes no other world leader in anything like the terms he reserves for former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

In his recent memoir, Obama tells us that Sarkozy is a “quarter Greek Jew.” Little wonder, then, that Sarkozy has “dark, expressive, Mediterranean features,” which resemble the exaggerated, often distorted figures “of a Toulouse-Lautrec painting.”

Little wonder, too, that he is “all emotional outbursts and overblown rhetoric,” while his conversation, which reflects unbridled ambition and incessant pushiness, “swoops from flattery to bluster to genuine insight.”

One might have thought Obama was deliberately directing at Sarkozy the insults notoriously hurled at Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), the first person of Jewish birth to become Britain’s prime minister. The colonial administrator Lord Cromer said of Disraeli that he was driven by “a tenacity of purpose” that was “a Jewish characteristic.” With his swarthy, “Oriental features,” Disraeli was consumed by an “addiction” to the “passionate outbursts” and “excesses of flattery” that were the hallmarks of his “nimble-witted” race.

Cromer’s taunts, which Obama so uncannily echoes, were hardly unusual. On the contrary, the traits Obama attributes to Sarkozy — from oily complexion to pushy, self-centered assertiveness — were at the heart of the anti-Semitic caricature of the Jew that crystallized, with murderous consequences, in the 19th century.

That history makes calling Sarkozy a Jew vastly different from noting, say, that Angela Merkel’s father was a Lutheran pastor; and if anti-Semitism involves using the label “Jew” to evoke, emphasize or explain an interrelated complex of unattractive attributes, Obama’s description of Sarkozy is unquestionably anti-Semitic.

Yet from The New York Times to The Washington Post and beyond, not one of the gushing reviews considered Obama’s statement even worth mentioning.

Read More

11/26 Link Pt2: Obama’s revisionist ‘Promised Land’; 22% of hate crimes in Europe in 2019 were against Jews, report shows; Exporting Racism: The latest slander against Israel

From Ian:

Obama’s revisionist ‘Promised Land’

I have never criticized former U.S. President Barack Obama publicly—neither during my time in the Knesset nor anywhere else—despite my having disagreed with many of his policies. I am of the strong opinion that Israelis should not engage in or interfere with American politics, and I regularly offer a blanket thank you to all American presidents, including Obama, for their economic and military support for Israel.

However, his memoir, A Promised Land, is filled with historical inaccuracies that I feel the need to address. His telling of Israel’s story (at the beginning of Chapter 25) not only exhibits a flawed understanding of the region—which clearly impacted his policies as president—but misleads readers in a way that will forever shape their negative perspective of the Jewish state.

Obama relates, for example, how the British were “occupying Palestine” when they issued the Balfour Declaration calling for a Jewish state. But labeling Great Britain as an “occupier” clearly casts doubt on its legitimacy to determine anything about the future of the Holy Land—and that wasn’t the situation.

While it is true that England had no legal rights in Palestine when the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917, that changed just five years later. The League of Nations, precursor to the United Nations, gave the British legal rights over Palestine in its 1922 “Mandate for Palestine,” which specifically mentions “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

The League also said that “recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

The former president’s noted omission of the internationally agreed-upon mandate for the British to establish a home for the Jews in Palestine misinforms the reader, who will conclude that the movement for a Jewish state in Palestine had no legitimacy or international consent.

“Over the next 20 years, Zionist leaders mobilized a surge of Jewish migration to Palestine,” Obama writes, creating the image that once the British illegally began the process of forming a Jewish state in Palestine, Jews suddenly started flocking there.

Supreme Court Blocks Cuomo’s Limits On Synagogues, Churches in Thanksgiving Ruling

The Supreme Court sided with a coalition of Orthodox Jewish groups and the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn Thursday in an emergency appeal that alleged New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D.) COVID-related worship restrictions discriminate against Jews and violate the First Amendment.

The vote in the early Thanksgiving morning ruling was five to four, with Chief Justice John Roberts and the liberal trio in dissent. "Statements made in connection with the challenged rules can be viewed as targeting the ‘ultra-Orthodox Jewish' community. But even if we put those comments aside, the regulations cannot be viewed as neutral because they single out houses of worship for especially harsh treatment," the majority wrote in an unsigned opinion.

Cuomo's contested regulations establish three kinds of hotspot zones with corresponding restrictions. In red zones, where transmission is highest, church attendance is capped at 10. In less severe orange zones, that number is 25, while houses of worship in yellow zones may open at 50 percent attendance. A portion of Brooklyn and about half of Queens are currently in yellow zones.

"It is time—past time—to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in defense of the ruling.

Turkish state media and New York local media seem indistinguishable in their antisemitic messaging during the COVID crisis. pic.twitter.com/EQzWfJFj8q

— The Conspiracy Libel (@ConspiracyLibel) November 25, 2020

Read More

11/21 Links: Anti-Israel UN Resolutions are literally dumbfounding; Netanyahu, Rivlin welcome end of Pollard’s parole, await his arrival in Israel

From Ian:

Anti-Israel UN Resolutions are literally dumbfounding

Do United Nations diplomats ever read the numerous anti-Israel resolutions put in front of them? Or do they automatically raise their hand in a five-decade automatic knee-jerk reaction?

I ask because I read some of the conditions of a recently approved stab at Israel on 18 November 2020.

This draft resolution had to do with treating Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria and our capital, Jerusalem, as if they belong to a non-existing country and that Israel has no right to our ancient land and our homes.

This draft resolution passed with a 156-6 majority. The minority countries were Israel, the United States, Canada, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Nauru.

Why do tiny Pacific islands seem to possess more common sense than all the European countries, or even Australia and New Zealand?

Again I ask, did the diplomats that approved the motion read the wording before they raised their hands? Or were they following official guidance from their capitals?

This was a resolution that has been approved annually for decades, so perhaps they can be forgiven for overlooking the wording. Wording that talks about recognizing Palestinian “sovereign rights” to the “natural resources” of the 'West Bank' and east Jerusalem.

What sovereign rights does a non-existing country possess?

As they refer to the so-called 'West Bank', could they be indicating that this territory belongs to Jordan, a country that once claimed this land as theirs? After all, the term “West Bank” refers to the other side of the River Jordan.

Trump’s core righteousness shines through Pompeo's anti-BDS and pro-Jews in Yesha speech

Beyond that, Secretary Pompeo stated that any entity that continues supporting “BDS” — calls to boycott, divest from, or to sanction Israel — will be deemed outright anti-Semitic and will suffer the full ramifications of American financial and other pressure for that hatred banned by our laws.

The thing about “BDS” — a movement founded and created by Arab terrorists and their supporters in Europe and America, and fostered throughout American campuses by Jew-hating Leftist professors and their ignorantly moronic student minions who do not know the difference between the Mideast and the Midwest — is that the same haters and criminals who would boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel never advocate BDS against a China that religiously persecutes and imprisons its Uighyur Muslim minority, suppresses and crushes freedom in Hong Kong and throughout its Communist mainland, and that knowingly criminally exported to the world the worst pandemic of the past hundred years. Imagine that: no BDS against China, but BDS against Israel.

There can be no clearer example of outright virulent Jew-hatred than that: applying one standard — tolerance and gleeful acceptance — for Communist murderers, international criminals, tyrants and dictators who persecute religion and speech . . . and simultaneously applying a completely different standard — zealous hatred and brutal economic warfare — against Jews.

BDS is the anti-Semitism and Jew-hatred of today. Obama and His Fraudulency went along with it and never stood up to it. By contrast, Trump and Pompeo — with no conceivable political benefit to be accrued, only the motivation of common decency — now have placed the force of American law to crush it

Trump’s and Pompeo’s decency and friendship never will be forgotten. That 83 percent favorability among Orthodox Jews will stand in good measure for the next Trump presidential term, whether it commences by court orders in January 2021 or by popular and electoral vote four years from now. His Fraudulency will be gone before we know it. The Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria — now 800,000 strong and growing by leaps and bounds every day — is eternal.

And this was written before Jonathan Pollards' parole restrictions were not renewed.

Read More

11/19 Links Pt2: Arnold Roth: Put justice back on the agenda: Sec. Pompeo, it's not too late; CNN’s shameless assault on the memory of the Holocaust; Douglas Murray: The Nobel Peace Prize has become an ignoble joke

From Ian:

Arnold Roth: Put justice back on the agenda: Sec. Pompeo, it's not too late

We did something yesterday that we have never done before.

We ordered a display advertisement to appear on the front-page of a major print newspaper - today's (Thursday’s) Jerusalem Post. Our message is on its front page.

The timing of our ad is intended to coincide with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Israel that began yesterday afternoon (Wednesday November 18).

Our hope is that he will see it at breakfast. And that perhaps he will think about the images we included, as well as the scriptural quote at the top of the text: “Justice, justice thou shalt pursue”.

The words from Deuteronomy (Devarim in Hebrew) will be recited in the annual cycle of Torah reading when we get to Parshat Shoftim, the weekly portion called “Judges”. That happens next in August 2021. By coincidence, the same week will include the twentieth anniversary of the Sbarro pizzeria massacre.

There are two images in our Pompeo advertisement. One shows Malki. The other is of the devastated Sbarro pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem, minutes after a bomb placed by Ahlam Tamimi exploded inside.

Brendan O'Neill: CNN’s shameless assault on the memory of the Holocaust

Such moral instability has been widespread among the anti-Trump elites these past four years. Trump is ‘literally Hitler’, in these people’s eyes. ‘Donald Trump is a fascist’, serious outlets have suggested, denuding that word of all meaning. A British MP spoke of Trump in the same breath as ‘fascist dictators Mussolini and Hitler’.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Trump was running ‘concentration camps’ on the America-Mexico border and, for good measure, she said the phrase ‘Never Again’ has to ‘mean something’. That’s a phrase used about the Holocaust. AOC was suggesting that something akin to the Holocaust happened in the US under the Trump administration. No doubt she and her fawning followers think such Holocaust-talk lands a blow against Trump, but the truth is it lands a far greater blow on the memory of the Holocaust, which once again is reduced to a mundane event, like temporarily placing illegal immigrants in a camp.

Even historians who ought to know better embraced the Trump-as-Hitler meme. Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler, says he was initially reluctant to talk to the media about Trump’s ‘fascistic tendencies’, because however bad Trump might be, ‘he did not seem bent on genocide’. Then he changed his mind and declared that Trump seems to be working from the ‘playbook of Mein Kampf’.

All these people – and this includes the many anti-Trump protesters who waved placards mentioning Hitler and the Holocaust – seem alarmingly unaware of how much damage they have done to historical memory. Holocaust Relativism is a close cousin of Holocaust Denial. As the Open University’s guide to the Holocaust rightly says: ‘Relativising the Holocaust has been one of the classic techniques of some of those engaged in Holocaust Denial.’ Much of the new anti-Semitism is drenched in Holocaust Relativism. From left-wing anti-Semites to radical Islamists, the cry often goes out: ‘Why do we talk about the Holocaust so much? It wasn’t that special. Bad things happen all the time.’ Amanpour and a host of other anti-Trump obsessives in the media and political elites are unwittingly stirring up this cynical and often racist minimisation of the Holocaust with their cheap, ahistorical shots at Trump.

We hear a lot about the political wreckage left by Trump after his four years in the White House. But one of the worst kinds of damage done over the past four years was to the memory of the Holocaust, and it was done by Trump-bashers. Their reduction of the Holocaust to a political plaything, an exclamation mark to emphasise just how much they hate Trump, has been devastating to the cause of truth. Restoring the reality of the Holocaust will be essential if we are to defend truth in the 21st century and challenge the racist minimisation of the new anti-Semites.

Douglas Murray: The Nobel Peace Prize has become an ignoble joke

For those of us who have long been suspicious of the Nobel Peace Prize, there is nothing quite like the sight of the prize committee struggling to rein in one of their former honourees. Last year, the committee gave its award to Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian Prime Minister. In the citation, it especially noted Mr Ahmed’s laudable efforts “to achieve peace and international cooperation”.

That citation might now need to be carefully edited, since Mr Ahmed has declared war on the leaders of the Tigray region and Ethiopia looks like it is sliding into a wider conflagration. Last year’s Peace Prize recipient has this year refused all requests for dialogue and attempts to de-escalate the conflict. Some critics are even making claims of ethnic cleansing.

Yet in some ways Mr Ahmed stands in a long and ignoble Nobel tradition. This is not the first time that the committee would appear to have backed a wrong-un. Aung San Suu Kyi was given the award in 1991. Now she is an international pariah accused of defending genocide in Burma. In 1994, the committee gave the Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat, then probably the most notorious terrorist in the world. True this was a few years after the first “Intifada”. But having collected his gong and his Nobel loot (not the only loot Arafat managed to acquire in his criminal career), he gave it a couple of years before declaring another Intifada. Just having the gong doesn’t appear to bring about peaceful instincts. Surprising that.

A friendly observer might put this down to bad luck on the part of the Nobel committee: an over-eagerness, perhaps even a blind desire to see the best in people. But any reasonable critic would have to admit that there has been something off with the prize for years. It has become a victim of John O’Sullivan’s law: that all institutions that aren’t statedly conservative drift Left-wards as the years go on.

In 2009, the committee famously gave the prize to Barack Obama, when he was not yet one year into office, and when he had still not achieved anything of note. But the Nobel committee seemed to want to congratulate Obama on just being Obama. In the same way that a few years ago almost every award in the world was given to Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner, simply for being stunning and brave. If you are a Left-wing politician like Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize has become just another of those gongs you collect on your endless victory laps of the world.

Read More

09/08 Links Pt2: Israel, UAE to sign deal at White House ceremony next Tuesday; Where do you draw the line with anti-Semites?; Unpleasant news for Thomas Friedman

From Ian:

---

Israel, UAE to sign deal at White House ceremony next Tuesday

Israel and the United Arab Emirates will sign their historic deal normalizing relations at a White House ceremony on September 15, a senior White House official confirmed to The Times of Israel on Tuesday.

US officials said senior delegations from both countries would likely be led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayad, the brother of the Abu Dhabi crown prince.

The officials, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the ceremony would either be held on the South Lawn, the Rose Garden or inside, depending on weather.

Netanyahu’s office issued a statement in the premier’s name on Tuesday evening confirming his attendance. “I am proud to travel to Washington next week, at the invitation of President Trump, and to attend the historic White House ceremony establishing the peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates,” the prime minister said.

Numerous Arab diplomats, including from countries that don’t have formal ties with Israel, are expected to attend the ceremony, in a bid to show that the agreement enjoys widespread support, the Walla news site reported.

The ceremony will come just a month after the agreement to establish full diplomatic relations was announced on August 13. The deal delivered a key foreign policy victory to US President Donald Trump as he seeks reelection, and reflected a changing Middle East in which shared concerns about archenemy Iran have largely overtaken traditional Arab support for the Palestinians.

According to Walla, Israel and the US are still working toward a diplomatic breakthrough with another Arab state before the signing ceremony, though it is unclear if this will be possible.

Jonathan S. Tobin: Where do you draw the line with anti-Semites?

What do you think would happen if President Donald Trump decided to meet with the family of a shooting victim, and it turned out his father was a neo-Nazi? It would be front-page news in the country’s leading newspapers and be discussed pretty much continuously on CNN and MSNBC. Whatever the other circumstances surrounding the incident, such a meeting would be rightly seen as showing Trump’s indifference to hate.

What do you think would happen if his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, did something just like that? The mainstream media would ignore it. Those who brought up the issue or even asked questions about it would be branded as “right-wing” provocateurs or denounced as trying to divide the country on race.

That was what happened when Biden met last week with the family of Jacob Blake, an African-American man who was left paralyzed when he was shot by a police officer in Kenosha, Wis., after resisting arrest.

Since the death of George Floyd, all incidents involving police shooting African-Americans have become the focus of intense scrutiny as the nation debates the questions of racism and alleged police brutality. Outrage about these shootings has propelled the Black Lives Matter movement to the center of public attention, as well as leading to protests, riots and violence.

In the days since the shooting of their son, both of Blake’s parents had made many public appearances. His father, Jacob Blake Sr., spoke at the March on Washington on Aug. 28 at which Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1963 event was commemorated. In his remarks, he pronounced America “guilty” of racism and other crimes in a speech that was widely broadcast and published in leading newspapers. Indeed, as The Washington Post put it, the Blake family represented the feelings of all African-Americans.

But a few days later, when the elder Blake’s views became known to the public, the same news media that was transfixed by his angry speech in Washington lost interest in him.

Unpleasant news for Thomas Friedman

Does the level of the Kinneret have anything to do with the prospects for peace in the Middle East? Thomas Friedman would like you to think that it does.

Friedman has been the foreign affairs op-ed columnist for The New York Times since 1995. That means that for the past 25 years, he has enjoyed one of the most prominent and influential platforms in public discourse. Not only are his columns read by movers and shakers around the world, but he is also frequently interviewed on national television and radio shows, and invited to speak at major public forums and events hosted by Jewish organizations that should know better.

I say “that should know better” because in his writings about Israel, Friedman sometimes crosses the line in ways that would earn other pundits pariah status in the Jewish world. In 2004, he wrote that Israel “had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office.” In 2011, Friedman claimed that the standing ovations Israel’s prime minister received in Congress were “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.” In 2013, he asserted that “many American lawmakers [will] do whatever the Israel lobby asks them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign donations.”

Despite those Pat Buchanan-like sentiments, Friedman has managed to maintain his status as a prominent opinion-shaper. Partly that’s because as long as he has the imprimatur of The New York Times, he is considered legitimate. Partly it’s because every once in a while, Friedman writes something mildly critical of the Palestinian Arab leadership; that gives him a fig leaf to pretend that he is “even-handed” and not an Israel-basher.

So, Friedman is taken seriously in many quarters when he periodically proffers some new Arab-Israeli “peace plan.” Since all of his plans involve Israel retreating to its nine-miles-wide pre-1967 borders—what diplomat Abba Eban called the “Auschwitz borders”—the only way Friedman can pitch his latest version as “new” is to come up with some new reason why the plan is (supposedly) so urgent.

Earlier this year, Friedman wrote that climate change should be the urgent new factor in Mideast diplomacy. Mother Nature will overwhelm the various political and military conflicts, he declared. His proof? “In the summer of 2018, the Sea of Galilee was so low from droughts and water withdrawals for rising populations that it was threatening to become another saline lake, like the Dead Sea.”

The solution, according to Friedman, is to pressure Israel to permit the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state—and then Israel, Jordan and “Palestine” can form “a confederation of their sovereign entities based on sea and sun.”

Ironically, less than a year before Friedman unveiled his sea-and-sun plan, a headline in Ha’aretz (no doubt Friedman’s favorite Israeli newspaper, given its slant) announced: “Lake Kinneret Is the Fullest It’s Been in Five Years, and There’s More to Come.”

Read More

08/14 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: Harris, Omar and the party's great march leftward; NY Democratic Socialists asks City Council candidates to pledge no Israel visits

From Ian:

---

Caroline Glick: Harris, Omar and the party's great march leftward

Under the leadership of Obama White House alumni Jonathan Greenblatt, in recent years the ADL has tried to reinvent itself as a progressive group that focuses mainly on criticizing the other side of the political divide.

The ADL's fervent efforts to ingratiate itself among progressives places in stark relief the "Open Letter to the Progressive Community" signed by more than a hundred groups calling for ostracizing it. It shows that today's Democrat party is unwilling to accept Jews or politicians who are both progressive and pro-Jewish.

This brings us to Omar's primary victory. It wasn't particularly surprising that Omar won the poll. Her national profile has made her a lightning rod in national politics. While as a bigot she is justifiably hated by many, leftist donors and activists adore her and back her as an anti-Semite.

While predictable, three aspects of her win are particularly significant. First, the main difference between the Omar and the progressive black opponent she defeated is that unlike Omar, Antone Melton-Meaux isn't an anti-Semite. Rather than drawing praise from progressives for his lack of bigotry, Melton-Meaux was decried by progressive activists who accused him of being controlled by Jews.

The second significant aspect of Omar's win is that despite her open anti-Semitism, her reelection bid – and that of her anti-Semitic comrade Rashida Tlaib – was endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi even donated $14,000 to Omar's campaign from her political PAC. Pelosi was long viewed as a friend to both American Jews and to Israel. The fact that she monetarily supported an out and out anti-Semite speaks volumes about the direction of the party.

The final significant aspect of Omar's win is that it was a testament to the rapidly growing power of the radical left in the Democrat party. Two years ago, four female radicals with harshly anti-Israel positions were elected as first-time lawmakers. The joined together, called themselves "The Squad" and proceeded to drain all the air out of the policy discourse in their party.

As the Squad members rose in power and prestige, moderate Democrats insisted their voice was out of synch with their actual power. To be sure, the moderates argued, the likes of Omar and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have the loudest microphones, but they represent but a fraction of the party's Congressional delegation.

So far, Tlaib and Omar handily won their primaries and three new candidates with their same brand of radical, anti-Israel positions just won their primaries replacing moderate lawmakers who either retired or were defeated. These victories point to two things. First, the squad has already nearly doubled its numbers in one Congressional term, and two, they have become, without a doubt, the rising force – and with Pelosi's backing, the dominant force in the Democrat party.

In light of all of this, it is self-evident Omar's primary victory was far more significant than Biden's selection of Harris as his running mate. Biden and Harris, weather vanes both, will not lead their party. They will follow their party's grassroots and donors as they lead the Democrats every further along on their great march into the anti-Semitic leftist abyss.

NY Democratic Socialists asks City Council candidates to pledge no Israel visits

Lots of candidates for New York City Council are expected to seek an endorsement from the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter, a rising force in city politics, in next year’s elections.

To apply for the endorsement, the candidates will have to decide if they will pledge not to travel to Israel if elected.

According to a screenshot of a candidate questionnaire from the DSA posted to Twitter by local reporter Zack Fink, candidates are being asked to “pledge not to travel to Israel if elected to City Council in solidarity with Palestinians living under occupation.” (The party did not immediately confirm that it had distributed the survey.)

The group also asks candidates if they support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is part of the New York City DSA chapter’s platform.

Some candidates declared their answers already on Twitter. “Easy: 1. No. 2. No,” Eric Dinowitz, a teacher (and son of a state Assemblyman) who is running for City Council in the Bronx, posted late Thursday.

The questionnaire comes after pro-BDS activists were vindicated this month when Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who have voiced support for the BDS movement, both won their Democratic primaries. Both represent overwhelmingly Democratic districts where they are likely to be reelected to Congress. A third congressional candidate who has indicated support for the BDS movement, Cori Bush in Missouri, also defeated a longtime incumbent in her primary.

With 35 out of 51 city council seats up for election this year due to term limits as well as open elections for citywide offices like mayor and comptroller, citywide elections in New York City next year present a rare opportunity to reshape most of New York City’s government.

The DSA is considered to be a rising force in New York City after helping Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeat incumbent Joe Crowley in 2018. In this year’s Democratic primary, DSA member Jamaal Bowman defeated Eliot Engel, a longtime incumbent and champion of Israel. Far from pledging to boycott Israel, Bowman has indicated his backing, last week telling City & State, “I am in full support of Israel.”

A few years ago, I had an amazing learning experience when I visited Israel and I encourage my colleagues to be open-minded and travel there to form their own opinions. I refuse to be a part of this litmus test/cancel culture movement. Let’s do more engaging not less. https://t.co/djZDrhTWg5

— Senator Brian Benjamin (@NYSenBenjamin) August 14, 2020

Jonathan S. Tobin: Can a Jewish leader coexist with an anti-Semitic extremist?

As it turns out, it isn't Rodney Muhammad who is on the spot in the controversy about the NAACP and anti-Semitism. The people who should really be worried about the controversy engendered by Muhammad are the Jewish members of the national board of the NAACP, like Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, who are being discredited by the organization's failure to draw a line in the sand about Jew-hatred.

Muhammad is the Philadelphia chapter president of the venerable civil-rights group who sparked controversy last month with a blatantly anti-Semitic Facebook post. The post combined pictures of African-American celebrities who had recently made anti-Semitic statements, and included the image of a Nazi-style caricature of a hook-nosed Jew above a fake quote from Voltaire that said: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." The obvious point was the false claim that powerful and sinister Jewish forces are working to suppress criticism of their fiendish hold on society by courageous but oppressed black people.

While Muhammad was bitterly criticized by various Jewish groups, as well as local politicians and public figures, he doesn't seem so concerned about his future as a public figure, even after such a gross display of prejudice. The national leadership of the NAACP was slow to issue a statement about the incident and when it did, its condemnation stopped well short of demanding Muhammad's resignation or his firing by the Philadelphia chapter.

As the African-American newspaper The Philadelphia Tribune reported, local black leaders such as Bishop J. Louis Felton, the first vice president of the Philadelphia chapter, said they had not received any instructions or guidance from the group's national office. Instead, the Tribune reported that NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson would be meeting with Muhammad, as well as local community and faith leaders, to "open a dialogue and continue the educational conversations." But the time for dialogue about this scandal is over. That statement could be reasonably interpreted as an indication that the national leadership has no interest in breaking with Muhammad, despite the fact that a state board could vote to The reluctance of the NAACP to take swift and decisive action is disappointing. Jews were active in the organization's founding. And there is a direct precedent in which the NAACP was faced with a similar situation in the not-too-distant past.

In August of 2000, Lee Alcorn, president of the group's Dallas chapter, sparked controversy by denouncing the selection of Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) as the Democratic candidate for vice president. Alcorn said he opposed Vice President Al Gore's running mate because "if we get a Jew person, then what I'm wondering is, I mean, what is this movement for, you know? … So I think we need to be very suspicious of any kind of partnerships between the Jews at that kind of level because we know that their interest primarily has to do with money and these kind of things."

NAACP president Kweisi Mfume responded immediately. He not only condemned Alcorn's remarks as "repulsive, anti-Semitic, anti-NAACP and anti-American," he also immediately suspended him from the organization.

Read More

08/13 Links Pt2: Ancient Muslim Texts Confirm the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem; Al-Jazeera Unmasked: Political Islam As A Media Arm Of The Qatari State; An Antisemitic ‘Peace’ Organization Strikes Again

From Ian:

---

JCPA: Ancient Muslim Texts Confirm the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem

The Palestinian Lie about Jerusalem Has Legs
“A lie,” according to the well-known saying, “has no legs,” but that does not mean lies do not need them.

The “Al-Aqsa is in danger” libel rests on a huge false leg that, in the end, will collapse. The lie would not have survived so long without it. Today, the Palestinians and many Muslims charge that Israel “seeks to destroy al-Aqsa” and build the Temple in its stead on a site where no Temple ever stood; that the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount is al-miza’um, that is, “supposed,” “fraudulent,” “invented,” or “imaginary;” that the Jews have no connection to the Temple Mount or, for that matter, to the Western Wall.

This is a libel on top of a libel, a double lie. The many Muslims who are convinced that al-Aqsa is in danger are now also convinced that “their” al-Aqsa stands on a place where “our” Temple never stood – the latter being nothing but a fabrication.

Some of the legitimacy that terrorism draws from the libel rests on that added lie. It is more legitimate to libel and murder Jews, so as “to protect the captive al-Aqsa and free it from the Jews who are plotting to destroy it,” if Israel and the Jews who “conspire to attack the site,” have only a false and concocted connection to it. Thus, the lie that undergirds the libel also bolsters the legitimacy to murder in its name. From the standpoint of the “Al-Aqsa is in danger” terrorists and their supporters, they do not murder only those who seek to wrest the Mount from their hands. As they see it, they are also murdering the falsifiers of history, who have no link to the site at all. They also want the Mount to be “liberated” psychologically so that their historical and religious narrative will prevail. This chapter (the appendix of the book) aims to refute this lie as well and to prove that it is nothing but a broken prop.

To grasp the magnitude of the lie, one must go far back on the path the Muslims themselves trod over the past 1,350 years, the path from which they have strayed only in recent times. Despite the misrepresentations and the sweeping denial that many Muslims now adopt regarding the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and to the Temple that stood there, they themselves were the ones who, up until the Six-Day War, identified the Mount – unequivocally – as the site of Solomon’s Temple and as the place where David said his Psalms. Furthermore, Solomon and David, as important prophets in Islam, are seen as the ones who laid the foundations on the Temple Mount for the building of the mosques there. Nevertheless, today, Muslim clerics and leaders remove the Jewish Temple from the Mount and “transfer” it to places like Mount Zion, Nablus, and even Yemen.

Moreover, many of the names and terms the Muslims have used over the years for the Temple Mount, particularly “Beit al-Maqdis,” which is a translation of the Hebrew name Beit haMikdash, derive from the Jewish designation for the site, where the two Muslim shrines were built around 1,350 years ago. Today, Muslims commonly use the name Beit al-Maqdis for Jerusalem, but in the ancient past, they used the name for the Temple Mount itself. The Jewish people and the State of Israel do not, of course, need the Muslim sources – which, for more than 1,350 years, have identified the Temple Mount as the site of the Temple – to prove their connection to the place. Given, however, the dispute on this issue and the resolutions hostile to Israel in the international arena, which espouse the new Muslim narrative, it is worth presenting the primary Muslim documentation and sources for the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and the Temple. Today, many Muslims erase this reliable documentation from memory. From such forgetfulness, the path is short to denial, and this gives rise to a lie. On this lie now rests the libel from which the “Al-Aqsa is in danger” terror derives its inspiration and legitimacy to murder Jews.

MEMRI: Al-Jazeera Unmasked: Political Islam As A Media Arm Of The Qatari State

Al-Jazeera Arabic channel's promotion of a very tangible and identifiable editorial line is patently obvious to anyone who has watched it over time. Being pro-Islamist (particularly in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood) and anti-West have been benchmarks of its programming and its news coverage from the beginning. That is not to say that these are the only causes the network has trumpeted through the years, but these have been the building blocks for everything else. Both Islamism and anti-West sentiment featured on the channel are often rife with antisemitism. Many strands of this Islamism embrace openly hostile attitudes regarding "the Other," a category that can include all sorts of people, from non-Muslims, to Middle East secularists to gays.

Al-Jazeera's basic affinity for Islamist groups spills over repeatedly over time into giving other groups along the Islamist spectrum, up to and including Al-Qaeda and ISIS – a sympathetic hearing beyond what its regional rivals at Al-Arabiyya and Sky News Arabia would ever do.

While Qatar has at times gone on the record to try to distance itself a bit from the network it created, over secondary issues such as the hiring of Qatari citizens,[58] it has demonstrated its constant support by spending hundreds of millions of dollars over more than two decades faithfully bankrolling a media outlet that has been remarkably consistent in its editorial line. This is eminently logical, given the channel's dogged support in hammering daily Qatari foreign policy points, from North Africa to Pakistan.

The fact that Al-Jazeera became, not surprisingly, one of the points of contention in the ongoing struggle between Qatar and its rivals in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, that exploded in 2017, means that the network is here to stay. Al-Jazeera will remain what it has always been, even though it has lost some of its luster over the past three years. The network that has been so influential for so long has become a bit predictable, not just on Islamism but because of the relentless focus on the ongoing blood feud with Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Cairo.

Without radically transforming Al-Jazeera or its editorial line, Qatar has tried to hedge its bets by funding and creating Al-Araby Television out of London since 2015.[59] Al-Araby seeks to propagate a more secular, pan-Arab voice than Al-Jazeera, still nationalist and broadly aligned with overall Qatari foreign policy goals but without the well-worn Islamist baggage. The idea is akin to the creation of leftist/secular Palestinian liberation groups in addition to Islamist ones. If Al-Jazeera is in a way a vision of Hamas on TV, then Al-Araby is Qatar's version of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Different approach, same ultimate goal.

But historically, on issues that Qatar seems to care the most about – political Islam across the world, support for Hamas, for Erdogan's Turkey, and most importantly, for not criticizing Qatar, its rulers, and its policies – there is no daylight between Al-Jazeera and the government in Doha. That is the surest way of gauging the steadfast and enduring official connection between the goals of the network and the goals of the state of Qatar. The convergence of a documented state funding stream and a broad policy direction between the state and the broadcaster is indisputable.

Tel Aviv Municipality lit up with UAE, Israeli flags following deal

Following the announcement of a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the Tel Aviv Municipality was lit on Thursday evening with the colors of the UAE and Israeli flags.

Earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's son, Yair Netanyahu, published a message on Twitter, referring to Huldai's decision to light up the municipality with the Lebanese flag following the devastating explosion that shook Lebanon a few days ago.

"If Ron Huldai doesn't light up the municipality building with the UAE flag tonight or tomorrow night, then you can understand just how much the Left cares about peace," Yair wrote.

Huldai, in turn, did decide to light up the building on Thursday evening with the UAE flag.

"I congratulate the prime minister for the double accomplishment of reaching peace with the United Arab Emirates and canceling the plan of annexation. Both actions are important for the security of the State of Israel," Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai said in a statement.

Read More

07/17 Links Pt1: David Collier: Peter Beinart, a one state solution and the Jewish far-left; Melanie Phillips: The Jewish surrender to the West’s eclipse of reason

From Ian:

---

David Collier: Peter Beinart, a one state solution and the Jewish far-left

Peter Beinart recently wrote an article of Jewish surrender that was published in Jewish Currents. Falling over itself, the New York Times rushed to publish an abbreviated version to ensure the piece was given a much wider audience.
Beinart

The thrust of the Beinart argument is simple. Beinart used to believe in a Jewish state – he doesn’t anymore, and as he lives in his comfortable home in the US, he believes Israel should dismantle itself and embark upon a utopian one state existence with the Palestinians. Thus ending 100 years of conflict.

There is nothing new inside the article. It is a silly proposition, a notion that the answer to the conflict between Israel and its neighbours is for the Jews to to put away their guns, remove the walls that protect them, surrender their right of self determination – have faith – and create what would eventually become another Muslim majority state in the Middle East.
Beinart and privilege

The article and Beinart’s position is historically and politically illiterate. Beinart pushes a solution with all the privilege of a person sitting under the umbrella of US citizenship, 1000s of miles away from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Or as Benjamin Kerstein put in his response in the Tablet – “Peter Beinart thinks Jews don’t need Zionism. That’s because he’s never needed it himself.”

Beinart, like many of those who dabble in such utopian theory, pushes immature politics. The secular democratic one state solution is a privileged imperialist western answer to a problem they have with ignorant natives in a far-off land. Nobody on the ground wants it – not the Israelis and not the Palestinians.

The simple truth is that Israel looks the way it does – because it reflects the reality of the Middle East. The 1947 partition plan was not written into the British Mandate, but developed as reality took over. The civil war and regional conflict became inevitable. Israel is a natural product of its people, history and neighbourhood. And this simple fact – that Israel is a Middle Eastern nation, is what lies at the heart of the problem.

For some western Jews, the Israel of reality is not the Israel of their dreams. These people tend to view Israel’s growing religious population with horror, they look down on the ‘arsim‘ of Bat Yam and they are quite derogatory about many aspects of Israeli culture. They don’t like the way many Israelis think or behave and clearly they have no respect for the way Israelis vote.

Perversely they show understanding for Israel’s enemies, including those like Hamas – but as is frequently pointed out – they never have any empathy for Israelis with different opinions to their own.

They openly display that they are fundamentally disappointed with Israeli people. Beinart’s position can be described thus: – Israelis don’t deserve their state because of the way they have developed and behaved.

So I was unsurprised by the article. Every few months we are presented with a similar article written by someone who says that they have supported Israel all their lives but because those pesky Israelis have just gone and ******* (fill in the blank with whatever has just occurred – with Beinart it is the ‘annexation’) they must now publicly state that Zionism is in tatters and doomsday is coming. Immature virtue signalling that sells out the millions of Jews who live in Israel.

But what interested me most about this episode was not another of the liberal Zionists falling off the ideological cliff. It was how our own Jewish fringe groups responded.

A Eureka moment: Peter Beinart and the One State Solution

Beinart buttresses his argument for a one state solution by citing Yousef Munayyer and Edward Said, who support his view that “Equality could come in the form of one state that includes Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.”

In the November/December 2019 edition of Foreign Affairs, Yousef Munayyer, director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, (USCPR) said the “only alternative with any chance of delivering lasting peace: equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians in a single shared state.” He argues “The Palestinians [are] a population struggling and surviving under decades of Israeli oppression.”

NGO Monitor reports “USCPR is a national coalition of hundreds of groups working to advocate for Palestinian rights and a shift in US policy and is a leader and mobilizer of anti-Israel BDS campaigns.” According to its “Common Principles,” “We oppose U.S. military, diplomatic, financial, corporate, and all other forms of support for Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies toward Palestinians.”

On March 6, 2019, the Jerusalem Post reported Munayyer appeared “to condone the efforts of PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] on his Twitter feed, including retweeting a PFLP announcement of a terror attack in Jerusalem on June 16, 2017.”

The late Edward Said, a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Palestinian Arab activist, postulated that underlying cause of “the conflict between the two peoples has always been about possession of and sovereignty over the land.”

He accused the Zionists of being a “tool of imperialism” who usurped their land, established settler colonies and a sovereign state whose only means of preservation is by aggression and expansion.

In a September 29, 2015 interview [an article] in the Washington Post entitled “The one-state solution and the brutal honesty of Edward Said,” he said “… the only feasible alternatives to Zionism… have a majority Arab state in which Jews are, at best, a suppressed minority, or force all six million Jews living in Israel to flee to whatever countries (if any) will accept them, or some combination of the two. "

The idea that giving up on 'Zionism' makes you a 'liberal' is false, unless creating yet another Arab dictatorship in what is now Israel at the cost of six million Jews’ lives and liberty, and of by far the most liberal state in their region, is somehow a “liberal” option.” [originally from a Ha'aretz inteview from 2000, source]

Read More