Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Young Woman is the Latest Jewish Hostage (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Zion, will you not ask after the welfare of your prisoners,
Who seek your welfare, and are the remnant of your flock? – Rabbi Yehuda Halevi

Israel still doesn’t have a government, and Turkish planes and artillery are striking civilian targets in Kurdish towns in northeast Syria, while Syrian Sunni militias fighting on behalf of Turkey clash with Kurdish fighters. My newspaper this morning mentioned these things, but pages and pages were devoted to another subject: Na’ama Issachar.

Na’ama, 26, was returning to Israel from India in April of this year, but when she changed planes in Moscow, a dog detected a small amount (less than 10 grams) of marijuana in her luggage. She was arrested, and at first charged with possession, a crime that normally draws a sentence of about a month in jail and a fine, if it is prosecuted at all. But at some point, the Russians decided to change the charge to drug smuggling, and last Friday she was sentenced to 7-1/2 years in prison.

The charge is ridiculous. Na’ama did not even have access to her luggage as she waited in the airport’s transit zone. She did not pass the border control. Can you convict someone of “smuggling” when they have not entered your country? Apparently the Russians can.

In a cute touch, the Russians scheduled court hearings for her case on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

Na’ama was born in the US and moved to Israel when she was 16. She served in the army, and like many – virtually all – young Jewish Israelis, she wanted to travel the world and have adventures before settling down. She did not plan on this kind of adventure.

Some say that she was stupid to travel with any marijuana at all. In retrospect it was a bad idea, although as far as she knew, she and her luggage were going to Israel, where possession of less than 15 grams is not generally enforced, and possession of small amounts for “personal use” is punishable only by a smallish fine. And she certainly didn’t expect that her freedom would become a bargaining chip in a larger international drama.

The rub is that Israel is poised to extradite to the US a real Russian criminal, a hacker named Alexey Burkov, who is accused of stealing millions of dollars from Americans in a credit card scheme. He was arrested while visiting Israel in 2015 – he says he was “hijacked” although innocent – and held for extradition. The Israeli Supreme Court has approved the request, and he is expected to be shipped off to the US, whose federal justice system is known to be severe (ask Jonathan Pollard or Bernie Madoff). The Americans want Burkov badly and there are no further legal obstacles to his extradition.

Russia is more like a combination of a medieval kingdom and the Cosa Nostra than an actual country, and Burkov apparently has powerful friends who do not want to see him spend the next 20 or 30 years in an American federal penitentiary. They would like Israel to “extradite” him to Russia instead of the US, and they have let it be known that if that happens, maybe Na’ama will have her sentence reduced. Since she is both Israeli and American, she is the perfect hostage.

PM Netanyahu will raise the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That will put Putin in an interesting position. The government of Israel doesn’t want to irritate the Americans, so maybe they will find something else that Israel can give Russia in return for Na’ama. Or maybe not, in which case a way will be found to send Burkov to Russia.

Israel has a relationship to its children like no other nation. No culture that I am acquainted with dotes on them to the same extent, from the time they are born until well into adulthood. The national feeling about Na’ama is a complicated story, involving the commandment to redeem captives (pidyon shvuim) and the echoes of history, including the Holocaust. It’s often said that our soldiers are “everybody’s children” and she falls into that category. Like Gilad Shalit, who was held captive by Hamas for five years before Israel fought a war and ultimately traded more than 1000 convicted terrorists for him, including mass murderers, the Jewish nation will not let her sit in a Russian prison.

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10/16 Links Pt1: How Israel Helps Uphold the U.S.-Backed Liberal International Order; Turkey’s Assault on the Kurds: The Silence of the Islamists; Europe Must Do the Right Thing on Hezbollah

From Ian:

How Israel Helps Uphold the U.S.-Backed Liberal International Order

Seeking to reverse decades of diplomatic isolation, and in response to increasing hostility from Western Europe, Jerusalem in recent years has cultivated better relations with a variety of states, including some with unsavory rulers—ranging from the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. While such a policy has provoked sharp criticism in some quarters, Seth Cropsey and Harry Halem explain that a small country like Israel does not have the luxury of disdaining potential allies, and, moreover, continues to do much to support American interests and with them the “liberal international order,” such as it is. Take the fraught case of its relations with Russia:

Small powers such as Israel illustrate the liberal international order’s pathology. The Jewish state in particular feels the existential edge of political competition, having faced annihilation from its inception. Today, Iran is Israel’s greatest adversary. A unique blend of Shiite supremacism and Persian imperial revanchism drives Iran’s leaders to recover Sassanid and Safavid lost glory.

Rather than striking Iran directly, Israel has opted to attack its network of proxies that stretch from the Tigris to the Levantine basin. However, the United States no longer dominates the region’s airspace. Any Israeli action against Iran requires Russian assent as a simple geographical fact. This situation will persist indefinitely, as America shows no desire to challenge the Russian presence in Syria. So Israel must work with Russia if it hopes to combat Iranian expansion—as a matter of course, small powers must search for other options during periods of strategic turmoil, whatever their ideological preferences may be.

The irony is that Israel’s cognizance of Russian interests actually furthers American security goals. Iran poses a threat to the United States irrespective of its alliance with Israel. If a hostile power were to control the Middle East, it could sever the U.S.’s sea lines of communication and supply, preventing effective coordination between American forces and allies in Europe and Asia. Moreover, it could use its oil exports to threaten the reliance of U.S. partners on oil imports, such as Japan.

It is therefore no surprise that the U.S.’s interest in a stable Middle Eastern balance of power has persisted since the 1940s. But the age of imperial dominion has passed. America cannot govern as Britain and France once did. It must work with and through local actors. Critically, every attempt that the U.S., or any Western power, has made to court the “Arab street” has failed irrespective of support for Israel.

Gen. Kuperwasser: The U.S. Commitment to Israel Is Different from Its Commitment to the Syrian Kurds

IDF Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of the IDF Military Intelligence research division, told JNS that the strengthening of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated extremist Sunni forces in northeast Syria "should disturb us." He stressed that Turkey had launched its offensive with "problematic, radical forces."

Kuperwasser predicted that "if the Kurds feel distressed, and American pressure can't stop the Turks, they will try to link up with Assad, as well as with the Russians and the Iranians." The Kurdish-led Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) signed such a cooperation agreement with the Assad regime on Sunday.

While Israel can provide humanitarian assistance to the Syrian Kurds and also apply diplomatic pressure, military intervention is out of the question, said Kuperwasser, director of the Project on Regional Middle East Developments at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Kuperwasser insisted that the events in northeast Syria will have no direct repercussions on U.S.-Israel relations. "The depth of the U.S. commitment to Israel is very different" from its commitment to the Syrian Kurds.

He added that while Israel "is acting decisively to prevent an Iranian base in Syria, what is important in this context is that the American economic pressure on Iran continues."

"Despite pinpoint [Iranian] achievements on the ground, the infrastructure of Iran is still eroding. They can't hold on for a long time without money. It all costs money in the end."

Seth Frantzman: From Iran to Turkey, US browbeaten by 'war' narrative

During the run-up to the Iran deal in 2015, the main narrative put forward by those who supported it was that if the US did not do a deal then there would be a “war.” During the phone call between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and US President Donald Trump, reports indicate, the same “If you don’t do this, there will be war,” threat was used.

US foreign policy has increasing been hostage to the notion that the US must cater to both allies and adversaries to avoid wars. Oddly, those countries, including Turkey and Iran, are able to bluff their way into things by alleging they are prepared for war with the United States. There is no evidence that either country is willing to risk a real conflict with the US, but their threshold for claiming they do is higher than the US, and they have learned that after decades of foreign wars Washington is more cautious about new tensions.

In 2015 the Obama administration presented a claim, through a sophisticated network of op-eds and surrogates sent to speak to media, which argued that “the only alternative to the Iran nuclear deal is war.” An April 2015 piece at The Atlantic noted that the alternative could be a “substantial war.” In May 2018, when Trump left the Iran deal, the BBC reported that a possibility might be a “new and catastrophic regional war.”

Turkey presented the US with a threat that Turkey would begin its operation regardless of the US presence and begin bombing US partners on the ground, the 100,000-strong Syrian Democratic Forces that the US had helped train since 2015 to fight ISIS.

Trump agreed to let Turkey conduct its “long-planned operation” to attack peaceful towns and cities that the US had enjoyed being stationed next to. Turkey has become proficient at using threats against Western powers to get them to do what it wants. It threatened to send 3.6 million refugees to Europe if the EU critiqued its operation. Is it normal for US allies to threaten to send refugees forcefully into their countries to punish them for policies?

Pointing out that Palestinian textbooks erased all mention of peace agreements is "incitement" and "racism" according to PA

Six weeks ago, I noted that the latest review of Palestinian textbooks revealed that they removed nearly every reference to peace agreements with Israel.

Israeli media caught up with the story last week.

(Seriously, journalists, is it that hard to actually read the report rather than regurgitate the press release?)

Anyway, the weekly Palestinian review of Israeli media highlighted the stories about Palestinian textbooks as a prime example of "incitement" and "racism" in Israeli newspapers and TV shows.

Pointing out the fact that Palestinians have erased mentions of peace with Israel from their textbooks is considered "incitement!"

As always, in honor/shame societies, the perception is more important than the truth. When the truth is embarrassing, revealing it is "shameful" and therefore it is "incitement" and "racism."

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Every Palestine Museum artifact from before 1850 is about Jews, not Arabs

I have been looking at the online digital archives of the Palestine Museum where you can search under lots of criteria.

The museum says it has over 70,000 artifacts indexed, which sounds like an impressive number, until you look a little closer.

For example, about 7000 of those artifacts comes from a single person, a teacher named Nabīl ‘alqam, who would wrote individual Arabic proverbs on single pieces of paper - and donated the entire collection.

'Alqam also printed out some other folktales, like this one called "The Fart."

If you look at the oldest pieces in the collection, there are only four artifacts supposedly from before 1850.

Two of them are miscategorized. This photo of a mosque in Lod is probably from 1981, not 1081:

This wedding photo is not from 1847 as it is listed. Maybe early 1900s.

That leaves two artifacts from before 1850, both of them Latin maps.

One is a 1651 map of Biblical Canaan.

The other is a 1838 map of Palestine, showing the land divided up by the Jewish tribes.

Both of these maps feature sites from the Jewish Bible. They have no Arab place names that I can find.

The more the "Palestine Museum" puts out, the less it appears that there is anything that can be remotely called Palestinian history that existed before Zionism.

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Israel has been enforcing a no-man's land buffer zone between 100 and 300 meters from the Gaza fence, to ensure that Hamas or other terror groups do not try to infiltrate into Israel.

The weekly Gaza riots have been inside this buffer zone.

After 18 months of the riots with limited Israeli responses, Hamas has decided to make their children into human shields once again.

It has built a playground within the buffer zone, practically inviting Israel to shoot at Gaza children.

In a major ceremony this week, the playground - called Al Awda (Return) Park - was inaugurated with speeches from people who noted explicitly that the park was built as a challenge to Israel, not a needed place of recreation for kids.

Officials say that they plan to build more in the buffer zone.

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10/15 Links: Israel and Kurdistan - time for an alliance of the ages; UNRWA in trouble; Fatah official calls for “escalation” so Israelis will “pay a heavy price every day”; Failed mass murder in Germany's dysfunctional liberal democracy

From Ian:

Israel and Kurdistan - time for an alliance of the ages.

The Kurdish experiment, in at least the territory's current quasi-independence, has shown the world a decent society where all its inhabitants, men and women, enjoy far greater freedoms than can be found anywhere else in the Arab and Muslim world.

The Jewish state must now, more than ever, not ignore the 35-40 million Kurds, who remain stateless and shunned by the world and who seek, at last, the historic justice they have craved for centuries, nay millennia, but have been denied; an independent Kurdish state of their own.

According to an article titled "Can Israel make it alone?" written some years ago by James Lewis in the American Thinker, Lewis wrote: "Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests - like survival." He realized that with the stark reality of a profoundly unfriendly Obama Administration towards the Jewish state, creating facts on the ground was more important than ever. He wrote:

"If the United States abandons the Jewish State, Jerusalem will have to seek new alliances." Fortunately that is what Prime Minister Netanyahu successfully and largely has achieved. Since then Israel enjoys the friendliest American President it has ever experienced, but there is never any guarantee that a president will succeed to a second term.

Turkey has now chosen to break its alliance with Israel and instead has sought alliances with rogue states such as Iran and Syria, along with the Hamas occupied and terrorist infested Gaza Strip. Under Erdogan it has turned on Israel with a viciousness that is quite desolating. It is a nation turning its back upon the Ataturk secular revolution of the 1920s. Instead, it is sliding remorsefully back to the 7th century mindset and cesspit that so many of its neighbors wallow in.

Israel should advance the restoration of a profoundly just, moral and enduring pact with the Kurdish people, and assistance towards creating a future independent State of Kurdistan. An enduring alliance between Israel and Kurdistan would be a vindication of history, a recognition of the shared sufferings of both peoples, and bring closer the advent of a brighter and strategically stronger future for both non-Arab nations.

UNRWA in trouble

UNRWA’s mandate from the General Assembly comes up for renewal every three years. Due to expire in June 2020, it was renewed during the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, which came to end on September 30, 2019. Nothing has emerged in the media to suggest that Guterres’s investigation into the ethics report came up in the discussions.

Speaking during the 42nd session of the UN Human Rights Council on September 23, 2019, former UNRWA general counsel James Lindsay declared that the agency must evolve or dissolve. UNRWA’s major structural problem, he said, is its unique definition of who qualifies as a refugee. This differs fundamentally from the definition used by the UNHCR, which is responsible for all other refugees around the world. By not demanding that UNRWA adopt this definition,” says Lindsay, “the General Assembly has elevated politics over morality.”

Also speaking on September 23, former Knesset member Einat Wilf said the Palestinians had “hijacked” UNRWA after refusing to accept the outcome of the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel.

“The core issue,” she said, “is that in their mind the war is not over. In their mind, the State of Israel is temporary. If they view Israel as temporary, they will never sign an agreement that will bring peace. They will wait it out.”

Wilf castigated Western donor states “whose definition of peace is two states” but who continue to “funnel money into this organization that makes [Palestinian refugees] think otherwise.”

All in all, the Palestinian refugee story is one of heartless exploitation of Arabs by Arabs – the callous manipulation of powerless victims for political ends, with little regard for their welfare or human rights. Whatever the result of the inquiry into the UNRWA ethics report, this inhumanity must be brought out into the open, the UNRWA farce of “refugee status” in perpetuity must be ended, and steps must be taken to allow people and their families who may have lived in a country for 50 years or more to settle and become full citizens.

PMW: Top Fatah official calls for “escalation” so Israelis will “pay a heavy price every day”

Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki:
"There is no avoiding an escalating policy on the ground with great momentum from the masses, which will not allow the occupiers to live routine lives. Their occupation of our land must have a heavy price, which they will pay every day"

"If we [Fatah and Hamas] consolidate our ranks and unify our internal front... then we will certainly defeat our enemy, which is Israel."

Zaki in speech to Palestinian youth:
"If this enemy [Israel] and America continue with their arrogance, then [our descendants will wave the flag] above Jaffa, the Negev, the Galilee, the Carmel, the Triangle, etc. Land that we don't restore - we are not worthy of it."

One of Fatah's top officials, Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, has called for Fatah-Hamas to unite in order to "defeat" Israel, the common "enemy":
"If we consolidate our ranks and unify our internal front we will begin to work with an open mind, will, and strategy that are undebatable, then we will certainly defeat our enemy, which is Israel."
[Donia Al-Watan, independent Palestinian news agency, Sept. 22, 2019]

In response to US Envoy Jason Greenblatt's statements at a UN Security Council Open Debate on the Middle East on July 23, 2019, that the West Bank is "disputed" and not "occupied" territory, Zaki called for escalation "on the ground" - implicitly calling for violence against Israelis - to "not allow the occupiers to live routine lives" but make them pay "a heavy price every day":
"There is no avoiding an escalating policy on the ground with great momentum from the masses, which will not allow the occupiers to live routine lives. Their occupation of our land must have a heavy price, which they will pay every day."
[Al-Dustour, Jordanian news website, Sept. 8, 2019]

Fatah official: We will obliterate Israel “If enemy [Israel] and America continue their arrogance”

Fatah official: “Wherever there is a problem in the world, behind it is a Zionist fingerprint”

TRANSCRIPT: Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki: “Libya is also about to come out of its crisis.” Host: “How?” Abbas Zaki: “The external interference [in Libya] is the problem... Wherever there is a problem in the world, behind it is a Zionist fingerprint.” [Lebanese Al-Mayadeen TV, Jan. 1, 2019] Abbas Zaki also holds the position as Fatah Commissioner for Arab and China Relations

Chag sameach!

The Jewish holidays keep on coming. Wishing a chag sameach to my readers for the Sukkot holiday starting tonight.

I will not be online until at least Tuesday night.

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10/13 Links: PA libel: US hospital in Gaza is for “trafficking in organs” and medical "experiments" on Palestinians; Trump swears allegiance to Israel as he decries endless Middle East wars

From Ian:

PMW: PA libel: US hospital in Gaza is for “trafficking in organs” and medical "experiments" on Palestinians

A private American organization is to build a hospital at the northern end of the Gaza Strip. Israel has already admitted hospital equipment into the Strip. But the project is being condemned by the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Health, which claims that "the American hospital project is not innocent, and its goals are dangerous." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 27, 2019]

Elaborating on these alleged "dangerous goals," an op-ed in the official PA daily claimed that the hospital is run by "the CIA," and its purpose is not to treat the sick Palestinians but "to carry out experiments on the sick Palestinians," and "to be a partner in trafficking in human organs":

"The American administration and the CIA, which are actually supervising the hospital and its staff, transferred it to the southern Palestinian districts (i.e., the Gaza Strip) to serve the US as an early warning, monitoring, and espionage station where it was established. This was in addition to a matter that I think not one of the observers have noticed: The hospital has an additional functional role, which is to carry out experiments on the sick Palestinians, and not to treat them and care for their health... and it is possible that the hospital will be a partner in trafficking in human organs." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 2, 2019]

The PA Ministry of Health said that it considers it Israel's "deliberate step to finally and completely separate the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by preventing any connection on any level between our people in the two parts of the homeland."

Palestinian Media Watch has exposed previous PA libels claiming Israel does medical experiments on prisoners and steals organs from dead terrorists, the so-called "Martyrs." Even the Arab League has repeated these PA lies.

CAIR and the Rabbis

As anti-Semitism grows in America, synagogue safety has become an urgent concern for most American Jewish leaders. Not so, it would seem, for the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis (MBR). Recently, MBR joined forces with the Hamas front group CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations) to picket the Ahavath Torah Congregation in the South Shore town of Stoughton for hosting speakers whom CAIR calls “anti-Muslim hate group leaders.” The scare campaign ended up working. The synagogue had to permanently shut down its speaker series after CAIR and MBR publicized the synagogue’s address on social media. The synagogue’s rabbi, Jonathan Hausman, got death threats and was forced to hire security guards for his family.

CAIR is a strange ally for a rabbinical board. CAIR’s Massachusetts branch is headed by an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist and an anti-police activist with a history of Israel-bashing. In 2009, a federal district judge ruled that there is “at least a prima facie case as to CAIR’s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas.” Ever since, the FBI has refused to work with CAIR because there might still “be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas.” Even the United Arab Emirates, not exactly the most Israel-friendly country in the world, banned CAIR as a terrorist organization in 2014.

Unlike CAIR, Ahavath Torah’s guest speakers would seem like strange enemies for a rabbinical board. Invited by Rabbi Hausman for a talk titled, “National Security Chaos: Are We Passing the Tipping Point?”, the panelists were all former U.S. government officials. One, retired Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin, is an American hero. A veteran of many wars, General Boykin commanded the Delta Force units in the Mogadishu battle dramatized in the movie Black Hawk Down. Off the battlefield, he served as the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence between 2002 and 2007. Another guest was former congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, who worked at a kibbutz as a teenager and has spoken at many an AIPAC event without previous rabbinical umbrage. General Boykin and the event moderator, Tom Trento, together with the third guest, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, have all been honored with “Genesis Awards” by the Boston-based group, Christians and Jews United for Israel, which represents the values and opinions of many Jewish New Englanders.

Forward opinion editor Batya Ungar Sargon came face to face with the ugliness of leftist antisemitism when she was invited to speak at Bard College last week.

She was going to participate in a few sessions in a conference on "Racism and Antisemitism" at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard. One of them were about how to work with people with different opinions on President Trump, and another was about "Racism and Zionism: Black-Jewish relations."

Her first session, though, was called "Who Needs Antisemitism?" with Ruth Wisse and Shany Mor. This session wasn't about Israel or Zionism, but purely about antisemitism today. It was the only session where Jews discussed antisemitism.

That was the only session that was targeted by protesters from Students for Justice in Palestine.

Ungar-Sargon was mystified, and spoke to the protesters: "I told them that I respected their passion and commitment to what they thought was right, but asked why they had picked this panel.

"'Come to my panel tomorrow,' I said. 'Come protest my comments on Zionism. I’ll be talking about the occupation. Bring your signs.'"

Ungar-Sargon tried to explain to them that they can come and protest at her session on Zionism the next day, that she would let them ask all the questions they want. She tried to explain to them that they were undercutting their own cause by targeting a session on antisemitism when they always claim that they are merely anti-Zionist.

She kept trying logic on people who were animated by hate not for Israel but for Jews. Yet she couldn't quite believe it - these were people she often agrees with about Israel, couldn't they see that protesting three Jews talking about Jew-hatred was antisemitic?

Her biggest shock, though, came from her fellow speakers and other academics who defended the obviously antisemitic protest.

“I disagree with what she is saying,” Shahanna McKinney-Baldon, who was to be part of Batya's panel on racism and Zionism the next day, told the SJPers. “I support what you’re doing. I think you should protest.”

When the session began, students started their planned interruption when Ruth Wisse spoke. Ungar-Sargon noticed that several of the conference speakers were applauding the students.

Not one person apologized to her for these interruptions. No one from the conference denounced the attempts to shut down a session on antisemitism by antisemite. Academics seemed to welcome the explanation given by one of the protesters that any discussion of antisemitism is really about supporting Israel.

Worse yet, at a party afterwards for conference speakers, Etienne Balibar, a French philosopher at Columbia University, told Batya he supported the protesters. “Why are you silencing Palestinians?” he demanded. “There should have been a Palestinian discussing anti-Semitism. They have many thoughts about it!”

This was a session about antisemitism in America.

To Batya's credit, she had enough. At her planned session on Black-Jewish relations the next day, she gave a short speech about what she had experienced. She noted her bona-fides at publishing more Palestnian voices in her opinion pages than all major media combined, how she convinced Jews to vote for the Arab parties in Israel - but that what she experienced wasn't anti-Zionism but antisemitism, and her fellow panelists who she used to idolize as luminaries were cowards who egged on pure antisemitism when it appeared right in front of them.

And she walked off the stage.

If anyone claims that there is no such thing as leftist antisemitism, this proves they are just as craven and complicit as the academics that applauded the supposedly "pro-Palestinian" SJP when they interrupted a session on antisemitism - just because talking about antisemitism might get people to be more sympathetic to Jews.

Will Ungar-Sargon be more aware that a lot of the people she proudly publishes in The Forward are also antisemites in "anti-Zionist" clothing, no better than the academics she called out? I don't know, but at least here she recognized antisemitism when she saw it, and she acted in the most effective way she could.

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Tunisian run-off presidential candidate Kais Saied, spoke during a television debate on the issue of normalization with Israel.

Saied said, "Normalization is a high betrayal, and anyone who deals with an entity consumes a whole people must be prosecuted."

He said that the word normalization is not accurate, and "we are at war with a usurper entity."

Asked about permits to visit synagogues in Tunisia, Saied said he would refuse entry to those holding an Israeli passport, and said: "We accept Jews, not Israelis."

Saied and his runoff opponent Nabil Karoui were the top two vote getters with about 18% and 15% of the votes in the elections three weeks ago, and now go head to head for the final voting.

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10/12 Links: The two faces of antisemitism; Rolling Stone Continues to Promote BDS; British military cemetery vandalized with swastikas in Haifa; Gal Gadot will star as Warsaw Ghetto heroine

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: The two faces of antisemitism

Today's Europe has two faces. On the one hand, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decided last week, almost without mentioning Israel, that Holocaust denial is not a part of freedom of speech or a human right.

The petitioner, Udo Pastörs, is a member of the German far-right NPD party, who was already convicted for his inciteful language in court.

On the other hand, anti-Semitism continues to run rampant and this Yom Kippur, it led to an anti-Semitic attack on a German synagogue.

What is antisemitism? This is the hottest topic in Germany these days.

Last week, neo-Nazis marched the streets of Dortmund, calling for the Palestinians to destroy Israel.

Meanwhile, there is a debate about whether the BDS campaign is antisemitic. The German Bundestag already decided a few months ago that the answer was yes.

So did many other European countries that adopted this definition of antisemitism.

Extreme left circles, also from Israel, campaign against the decision and against the definition.

The debate intensified following a series of decisions linking political or racist positions with freedom of expression and creativity.

What would have happened if a city in Germany were to award a prize to Pastörs for his literary work, and only afterwards did it turn out he was an activist in an antisemitic movement?

CAMERA: Rolling Stone Continues to Promote BDS

The antisemitic movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel has gained a lot of traction in the music industry, thanks in large part to the activities of Roger Waters. BDS activists frequently threaten and harass musicians who schedule concerts in Israel, in an effort to intimidate them into cancellations. Irish singer Sarah McTernan told the Irish Sun, after she participated in the 2019 Eurovision contest in Israel, “Oh my God, I got threats, I got letters. Horrendous stuff online with someone threatening to do something to me. I had hundreds and hundreds of people messaging me saying the most horrible stuff. I got a few sinister threats.” Singer Eric Burdon told Israel Hayom in 2013, after cancelling and then rescheduling a performance, “it wasn’t my decision to cancel the show, but that of my manager, following numerous threatening emails, she was scared for my life.”

Prior to 2019, the music magazine Rolling Stone resisted being drawn down this road. In March of this year, however, the publication put BDS supporter Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on its cover, and did a glamour photo shoot and video with her as well as three other Congresswomen. In May, the magazine uncritically quoted the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, without any rebuttal, in its coverage of Madonna’s Eurovision performance in Israel. In August, in an article having nothing to do with music, Rolling Stone called BDS a movement that “aims to put economic pressure on the nation in order to force the nation to give equal rights to Palestinians.” (After contact from CAMERA, the magazine changed it to the only slightly better, “aims to use economic pressure to push the nation for large-scale changes in its policies related to Palestinians.”)

Then, on Friday of last week, Rolling Stone continued this unfortunate trend of promoting BDS’s goals in its coverage of the Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Demi Lovato’s trip to Israel. (“Demi Lovato Apologizes for Accepting Controversial Trip to Israel,” Brittany Spanos, October 4, 2019.)

The change in direction appears to coincide with Rolling Stone’s coming under the full ownership of Penske Media, a company that, in February of 2018, sold a $200 million stake to the Saudi Arabian company Saudi Research and Marketing Group. SRMG is headquartered in Riyadh and is majority-owned by the Saudi government.

Co-founder of Extinction Rebellion reportedly shared social media posts dismissing Labour antisemitism and defending Ken Livingstone

Gail Bradbrook, a former biophysicist and co-founder of the climate protest group, Extinction Rebellion, reportedly shared social media posts dismissing Labour antisemitism as a “smear” and defended offensive comments by Ken Livingstone.

According to The Sun Dr Bradbrook shared a post in 2016 that described claims that certain comments made by Mr Livingstone were antisemitic as “ridiculous” and “scurrilous” and that “you will hopefully then agree that what is happening is part of a massive project to manipulate public opinion against, and to destroy the popular progressive movement supporting, Jeremy Corbyn.” The post went on to say that “Corbyn represents a threat to the stranglehold the Netanyahu right-wing Israeli extremists have over any mainstream media coverage of the oppressive Israeli occupation of the little left-over scraps of Palestine.”

Another post reportedly said that Mr Corbyn’s critics “smear him with sexism, misogyny and antisemitism by finding sexist or antisemitic comments by a handful of his millions of supporters”.

The Sun, which broke the story, quotes Dr Bradbrook as saying: “I’m not interested in getting involved in a discussion that is clearly an attempt to create division. Antisemitism is a huge problem across the whole of society and I’m longing for a time when all of us are safe.”

Previously it was also reported that a Facebook page administered by Dr Bradbrook entertained numerous conspiracy theories, linked to a blog which quoted from the infamous antisemitic tract The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and contained a post expressing solidarity with disgraced Labour MP Chris Williamson a day after he was suspended for claiming Labour had been “too apologetic” over antisemitism.

"Jewish Holidays: The opportunity of settlers to desecrate the Al-Aqsa Mosque" - hour long TV special in Jordan

This (sadly untranslated) video was shown on Jordan's Al Ghad TV this past week. It is apparently an hour long show (48 minutes without commercials) all about how Jews are using the Jewish holidays to "desecrate" Al Aqsa Mosque, the Temple Mount, by peacefully strolling and sometimes quietly praying there.

This is incitement that the West ignores.

There are many news stories from the Arab world every week about Jews visiting their holiest spot, in print and on video.

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