Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, March 27, 2020

Arab media says hareidi Jews are protecting themselves from coronavirus with Koran recordings (update)

The Israel in Arabic account from Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted this fairly bizarre scene:

فيديو مؤثر من إسرائيل..
في بادرة مست المواطنين المسلمين لدى دخولهم الى مطعم حمص في البلاد انطلق تسجيل لسورة الفاتحة من القرآن الكريم. قام بهذه اللفتة عامل متدين يهودي في المطعم قائلا إن هذا كلام الله. رسالة واضحة لكل ابناء الديانات التوحيدية كلنا واحد. pic.twitter.com/DWOtwCcliS
— إسرائيل بالعربية (@IsraelArabic) March 26, 2020

It shows a religious Jews who is the owner of a shop, blasting Koranic verses from a famous Muslim cleric. An Arab enters the store and compliments the Jew in Hebrew.

The MFA account says, "The gesture was carried out by a Jewish religious worker in the restaurant, saying that this is God’s word. A clear message to all the people of monotheistic religions, we are all one."

But somehow that message got garbled. Arabic media are saying that the Jews was playing the Koran audio as some sort of protection against the coronavirus, which is not even hinted at anywhere.

UPDATE: The restaurant is part of a chain of hummus restaurants called "Hummus Eliyahu." (h/t Yoel)

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03/26 Links Pt2: Abolish the World Health Organization; America’s Largest Population of Holocaust Survivors Is Endangered by the Coronavirus

From Ian:

America’s Largest Population of Holocaust Survivors Is Endangered by the Coronavirus as Crown Heights and Borough Park Shut Down

By last Wednesday afternoon the outer doors of 770 Eastern Parkway were locked, while the doors connecting the complex’s narrow lobby to the rambunctious communal shul for New York’s Chabad Hasidim were chained shut. The unthinkable was occurring. The Mitzvah Tanks sat idle on Kingston Avenue, Crown Heights’ typically lively ultra-Orthodox main street, which is now almost fully emptied of people. The mikvah and the Beit Din were closed, although in the latter case, “drop-off for shaalos can be done in the door slot as always,” per a posted notice. Pallets of paper towels and toilet paper crowded the entrance to nearby Empire Kosher, where the shoppers seemed every bit as fearful of one another—or, perhaps, every bit as wary of revealing their fears to one another—as the people in my local Walgreens a couple neighborhoods north. “You see,” said Dovid Margolin, an editor for Chabad.org and my guide around virus-era Crown Heights last week, “there are no old people here.”

The coronavirus pandemic is perhaps the first total event in human history. There have been other spells of worldwide pestilence and conflict, but this is the only one to occur during a time of instantaneous mass communication and high-speed global travel—and maybe the only one to occur during an era in which there is theoretically a species-wide agreement on the intrinsic value of human life.

And yet the pandemic inflicts miseries that are particular to each place it visits. On Wednesday at 770, there were maybe 15 young men standing around a long table stacked with religious texts. I began chatting with two chavruta partners who were sitting together next to the Eastern Parkway bike path, studying the section of the Shulchan Aruch about religious courts—the pages they might have otherwise been probing if their yeshiva had stayed open (all the religious schools in Crown Heights had suspended operations at noon the previous Friday). They, and the nearby group of 15, were all speaking Hebrew to one another. These were students who had no family in America, nothing to do, nowhere else to go. The resilience of the Crown Heights community, and of Orthodox communities in general, comes from their close-knit, multigenerational families, a ready-made support network when things take an unexpected turn for the surreal. These students only had each other.

Everywhere else in the neighborhood, a visitor could feel the presence of people hiding behind brick walls and closed doors. On Crown Street, someone blasted a recording of the Shema from a high balcony, followed by “Ouf Ghazal” or “Fly, Fledgeling,” a beloved secular Israeli folk song by the late Arik Einstein whose lyrics are an extended metaphor for a parents’ hopes and fears for their young in an unpredictable world. Maybe the listeners found the music heartening—but they were inside, invisible.

Stephen L. Miller: Abolish the World Health Organization

The WHO has become another pointless organization pandering to the world’s worst actors

Since the coronavirus has become a global pandemic, halting the world’s economy in its tracks, Tedros has taken it upon himself to repeat Chinese state talking points about shifting blame for their own role in the spread of the virus: ‘When fighting an outbreak such as #COVID19, we must be guided by solidarity, not stigma. The greatest enemy we face is not the virus itself; it’s the stigma that turns us against each other. We must stop stigma and hate!’

This has been a familiar refrain from the Chinese state, whose government which runs forced labor and concentration camps. China repeatedly eludes scrutiny by the not only the head of WHO but sectors of the American media as well.

Since his appointment as head of the WHO in 2017, with the full backing of China and its vast financial resources, Tedros has come under fire for his role in covering up multiple cholera epidemics in Ethiopia. Shortly after his appointment as WHO D-G, Adhanom bestowed the honor of Goodwill Ambassador on late Zimbabwean president and tyrant Robert Mugabe. It was only after a deluge of outrage from human rights groups and WHO members that Adhanom withdrew the honor.

According to a Washington Post report at the time, Tedros’s decision was based partly on rewarding China for backing his appointment. ‘Some speculate that Tedros’s decision to appoint Mugabe was a pay-off to China, which worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help Tedros defeat the United Kingdom candidate for the WHO job, David Nabarro. Tedros’s victory was also a victory for Beijing, whose leader Xi Jinping has made public his goal of flexing China’s muscle in the world.’

Beijing and Mugabe had an understanding: he would not criticize Chinese colonialism and exploitation of Africa’s resources; they would support him. In December 2015, Mugabe gushed about Xi at the China-Africa summit in Johannesburg. He called the Chinese autocrat ‘a God-sent person’.

But Tedros’s capitulation to the world’s worst actors isn’t the biggest problem with WHO as an organization. WHO slow-walked its coordinated response to the Ebola epidemic in 2015, which killed more than 10,000 people on the continent of Africa alone. The whole organization is evidently unfit for purpose: it needs to be abolished and replaced. Tedros’s goal seems to be turning the WHO into another United Nations, a body that delivers impotent lectures without ever taking politically sensitive decisions. The world demands accountability and action. It demands both come from the country behind this all and its puppet leader at the WHO.

Ummm...World Health Organization doesn’t include Israel in its list of “eastern Mediterranean” countries but of course includes all the countries around it and the Palestinian Territories 🤔 pic.twitter.com/JhGqKUQ0mH
— Seth Frantzman (@sfrantzman) March 25, 2020

May 23, 2017: Thanks to China's lobbying, @DrTedros wins election as WHO chief.

May 24, 2017: @DrTedros meets first with Chinese health minister, pledges allegiance to "One-China principle", promises to "properly handle Taiwan-related issues."https://t.co/EEmwNvQnok
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) March 26, 2020

I still cannot get over the fact that any Democrat who comes into the White House will favor "pay-to-slay."

This is the policy wherein Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority (PA) literally pays-off random Arabs who kill Jews in Israel with foreign tax dollars. What is even more strange is that Democrats seem entirely oblivious to this practice. Trump cut funding to the Palestinian Authority. The PA, under previous American presidents, both Democratic and Republican, used American tax dollars to primarily line their own pockets and to pay Arabs to murder Jews in Israel. This is what is called "pay-to-slay."

And, yet, American Jews, in the minds of many, are supposed to think of themselves as holding dual-loyalty if we oppose paying Arabs to murder Jews in Israel? Ridiculous. How the Democratic Party maintains American Jewish loyalty is a mystery. Democrats would literally pay Arabs to murder Jews in Israel and we are supposed to smile and nod our pretty little heads?

It is grotesque and almost nobody ever discusses it.

The truth, of course, is that the Arabs in Israel have refused every single offer for a state of their own since the British Peel Commission of 1937. They said "no" in 1937. They said "no" in 1947. They said "no" three times in 1967. Arafat refused an Arab state in the heart of Israel, as did Mahmoud Abbas... a dictator in the fifteenth year of his four-year term.

And, nonetheless, the Democratic Party would turn over working-class American tax dollars to the Palestinian Authority, if not Hamas, who will use that money to incentivize the murder of Jews on historically Jewish land. And yet they still think that we are somehow unethical if we refuse to vote for their candidates.

The worst example of this antisemitic anti-Zionist trend within the Democratic Party is Bernie Sanders. Sanders is no friend to either the Jewish people or the Jewish state. He has surrounded himself by people who despise Jewish self-determination and self-defense. He has surrounded himself by people who oppose the Movement for Jewish Freedom which we call Zionism. His formal surrogates, such as Linda Sarsour, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar, among others, are uniformly antisemitic anti-Zionist. And he has specifically proposed funding Hamas at Israeli expense, despite the fact that former Hamas charters have called directly for the genocide of the Jews and current Hamas charter scalls directly for the elimination of the state of Israel. In the 2017 version we read:

Palestine is a land that was seized by a racist, anti-human and colonial Zionist project that was founded on a false promise (the Balfour Declaration), on recognition of a usurping entity and on imposing a fait accompli by force.

Palestine symbolises the resistance that shall continue until liberation is accomplished, until the return is fulfilled and until a fully sovereign state is established with Jerusalem as its capital.

Sanders surrogates in "the Squad" are not seeking social justice, nor are they merely criticizing Israeli policies. On the contrary, they actively undermine Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land within living memory of the Holocaust and three of the four do so from within the US Congress. One begins to wonder how much of Tlaib's energies go into supporting the people who voted her into Congress in Detroit versus her efforts to undermine Israel?

My major criticism of President Barack Obama's foreign policy concerning Israel is that he seemed so blithe in telling Jewish people where we may, or may not, be allowed to live within our ancestral homeland. He demanded "total settlement freeze." By this, he did not mean the building of no new "settlements" -- otherwise known as Jewish townships -- but no building even within existing Jewish townships in the parts of Israel that he particularly does not like.

He reminded me of nothing so much as a Medieval Italian prince dictating where Jews might be allowed to live within the Italian peninsula. But at least the Medieval Italian princes had the modesty to keep their demands within their own domains. Obama, on the other hand, took it upon himself to tell Jewish people where we could live on our own land and did so from the other side of the planet.

I was astonished at the time that so few American Jews seemed to mind seeing our brothers and sisters in Israel pushed around by an American President with shaky credentials regarding Israeli well-being. But that was then and this is now. If my major concern during the Obama years was the complacency with which American Jewish Democrats accepted the dictates of that President, my primary concern now is that the election of a Democrat to the White House in 2020 will resurrect US participation in "pay-to-slay."

If Biden wins the Presidency he would send working-class American tax-dollars to Ramallah or Gaza City, or both. Those governments will use a considerable amount of that money for the purpose of killing Jews on the land of the Jewish people.

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Before I Judge An Act I Ask If Israel Did It, And Then I Judge by Issa Amro (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Before I Judge An Act I Ask If Israel Did It, And Then I Judge

by Issa Amro, Palestinian activist

Hebron, March 26 - Philosophers and thinkers have long grappled with the nature of a given act: its context, its purpose, and of course its effects, to determine whether that act complies with or violates human morality. They have failed, however, to reach a convincing conclusion - and I maintain they have failed because they do not apply the litmus test I and my allies have devised. The test asks one simple question: did Israel do the act? If not, the act can be moral; if yes, perforce the act is evil.

This illustrates and explains a phenomenon we saw most recently with divergent official Palestinian reactions to the same act performed by two different agents: Israel and Hamas. The Palestinian Authority, led by Fatah, condemned Hamas's closure of mosques throughout the Gaza Strip; at the same time it lambasted Israel for not closing mosques in areas under its control, because of course Israel neglects the health of its Arab minority.

To many people such contrasting responses to the same question smacks of hypocrisy, but those people ignore the salient point: anything Israel does is evil, even if others engage in the same behavior yet escape that characterization. The answer hinges on Jewish- I mean Israeli or Zionist action, not the act itself. Thus, self-defense by the vast majority of humanity qualifies as a positive moral value, a defensible, if unfortunate act when necessary, and, indeed, a moral imperative; whereas when Zionists engage in so-called self-defense they automatically violate the human rights of Palestinians. I am a human rights activist; I know these things.

Note also that a Zionist failing to uphold the principle of self-defense would not thus perform a good act - just the opposite. That Zionist would be committing evil by choosing not to exercise self-defense, since his refusal to defend himself violates the sanctity of the life God gave him, and is it not just like a Jew to show no appreciation for all the kindness done to him by his non-Jewish hosts through the generations?

The question can still remain regarding acts by non-Zionists; I do not pretend to greater intelligence than all the thinkers who preceded me in this line of inquiry, and acknowledge the larger question remains unresolved. But I do confess no small amount of pride in bringing this iota of moral clarity into the world, and look forward to its application much more widely than has, to our collective chagrin, been the case.

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The PLO is trying to use the coronavirus pandemic to demand international action to force Israel to release terrorists.

Of course, the PLO always demands the release of terrorists, so they are just using the pandemic as a new lever to get their demands met.

But the language they use shows how they project their own thinking onto Israel.

The PLO executive committee member Ahmed Al-Tamimi, head of the Human Rights and Civil Society Department, sent letters to the United Nations and all international bodies, to press the occupation to release the Palestinian prisoners after they became easy prey for the Coronavirus...

Al-Tamimi warned the international community "that the occupation exploits the coronavirus and the preoccupation of societies and states with it, in order to implement its criminal plans against the Palestinians, especially the prisoners who are now in great danger. And unleashing the settlers to attack the Palestinians and the leveling of lands and the expansion of settlements in the occupied territories, is evidence of this fascist racist mentality that will not hesitate to commit any crime against the Palestinians."

If anything, Israel's activities in the territories has decreased, mostly because of fewer Palestinians rioting.

The Palestinian leadership finds any excuse - or no excuse - do constantly demonize Israel, even in the middle of a pandemic. This is practically part of their DNA.

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03/26 Links Pt1: 3 more die from virus as Israel death toll reaches 8; number of cases hits 2,666; Netanyahu and Gantz said forming unity government; Blue and White collapses

From Ian:

3 more die from virus as Israel death toll reaches 8; number of cases hits 2,666

The number of Israelis who have died in the COVID-19 pandemic rose Thursday by three to a total of eight, with diagnosed cases rising by 171 to 2,666, the Health Ministry announced.

The sixth fatality was a 91-year-old woman with the coronavirus, Wolfson Medical Center in Holon said, adding that she had been in critical condition for many days, sedated and on a ventilator, and that staff had tried to save her life “with every means, night and day, with much dedication.”

“We share in the sorrow of the family members,” the hospital said.

It said her family members had been informed and that social workers were helping them.

The Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem said that one of the deceased was an 89-year-woman who had been admitted to the medical center with the virus as well as underlying health problems. Her family has been informed.

The third fatality was reportedly an 83-year-old man who was hospitalized at the Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak.

The Health Ministry also said there were 39 people in serious condition, 68 were in moderate condition and the rest had mild symptoms.

So far, 68 people have fully recovered from the illness, the ministry said.

Earlier in the day, the ministry said there were 5,240 tests conducted for the virus in the 24 hours from Wednesday morning to Thursday morning, and 59,493 people were under mandatory home quarantine over concerns they may have been exposed to the virus, the ministry noted.

The updated ministry figures came after the government tightened lockdown rules and warned violators could face fines and six months of imprisonment.

The emergency regulations, in effect for a seven-day period, include a prohibition on people venturing more than 100 meters from their homes, apart from under certain circumstances, and the shuttering of synagogues.

PM @netanyahu:

"Citizens of #Israel, you know the saying: 'Whoever saves one life, it is as if he saved the whole world'. But with the #coronavirus, that saying has a second, vicious side: 'Whoever infects one person, it is as if he infected the whole world.' pic.twitter.com/YINIAvFlsV
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) March 26, 2020

Instructions for keeping safe in Israel: English, Russian, Hebrew and Arabic

Lies about Israel's Ministry of Health's handling of the Coronovirus are spreading faster than .... well...you know what.

One common trope is that instructions to insure the safety of the populace are only given out in Hebrew.

Um. No.

The truth is out there...in many languages. You need only look.

Google Autotranslate

This is a real PLO press release translated from Arabic:

The President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, congratulated the President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, on the great victory that China had achieved by overcoming the ordeal of the novel coronavirus, and "through which you have proven your country's vast capabilities in the health, administrative and technological fields, and in which you have made achievements that everyone has witnessed, And it won the admiration of the whole world, thanks to your wise leadership and your wisdom in managing the biggest health crisis the contemporary world has known. "

In a congratulatory telegram in this regard, President Abbas said that the State of Palestine was guided from the first moment by the Chinese steps in confronting this pandemic, as we restricted the Covid-19 infections to its minimum.

Thanks for helping kill and sicken millions!

I noted on Twitter another PLO press release, which sounds like it could have been written in China or North Korea as well:

Dictators like to stick together.

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The coronavirus is slowing down Iranian arms transfers to Hezbollah and other terror groups

Al-Modon asks why Israel hasn't been doing as many airstrikes in Syria recently. Is it because the IDF is preoccupied with the coronavirus, or another reason?

A Russian diplomatic source tells the site that the reason is because the amount of air traffic from Iran to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon has plummeted because of the pandemic - and the weapons transfers to Hezbollah and other terror groups were often done by air.

Moreover, Iran's allies do not want Iran's Quds Force members on their lands for fear of more spreading of the disease.

The number of cases of Covid-19 is being severely underreported in Iran, Syria and apparently Iraq as well, as there are credible reports that Iran is sending many of its forces to hospitals in those countries (as well as Lebanon) for treatment.

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While people who pretend to care about Palestinians put up petition after petition to use the pandemic as an excuse to pressure Israel to compromise its security in the name of human rights, they are curiously silent about the plight of Palestinians not only in Lebanon but in Syria also.

From the Action Group of Palestinians in Syria:

As the novel coronavirus COVID-19 continues to grip the Middle East and the world, AGPS has called on the Syrian government to free all Palestinians and Syrians held behind prison bars.

AGPS is deeply concerned over an unabated outbreak of coronavirus in Syrian prisons, at a time when the deadly virus continues to claim the lives of thousands of people across the globe.

Though the Syrian government reported only one case of coronavirus infection throughout the war-ravaged country, there are growing fears that a large outbreak in Palestinian refugee camps in Syria could be particularly catastrophic.

And:

Over recent weeks, AGPS has warned of a projected outbreak of COVID-19 in Palestinian refugee camps in Syria. Though campaigns to help spread awareness among the camps’ residents have recently seen the day, limited access to running water, pharmacies and medical facilities mean displacement camps are more susceptible to the spread of the highly infectious virus.
Displacement camps set up in northern Syria are especially vulnerable as most hospitals and medical facilities have been bombed, rendering them out of order.

Over 4000 Palestinians have been killed in Syria. More than 1700 are missing. The ones who are still in Syria have very limited access to medical facilities; those in refugee camps are in great danger of a massive epidemic in those camps.

Somehow, these Palestinians aren't on the radar of the people who claim to care so much about the human rights of Palestinians.

Perhaps the motivation of these "activists" has nothing to do with helping Palestinians and everything to do with blaming Jews.

It is the only explanation that is consistent with their actions.

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Gaza health officials announced that seven more people have been tested positive with the coronavirus. The good news is that they were all security guards who worked at the quarantine center where the two infected Gazans who came from Pakistan are being held, and the guards have never left the center, according to authorities.

They are all in good health.

Meanwhile, between 15 and 18 Palestinians from the village of Bidu northwest of Jerusalem were found to have the virus. They were all in contact with the first Palestinian who died of the virus, a woman who succumbed yesterday.

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A Short Political History of Israel (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

In the pre-state period, the socialist Left dominated the yishuv. They created the institutions that would form the basis of the state, and ran them according to their ideology. The Histadrut labor federation dominated the economy; its closely allied kibbutz movement was the primary producer of agricultural products, the Solel Boneh construction company built roads and buildings, and the Kupat Holim Clalit health fund was everyone’s healthcare provider. The Zim shipping line and the ports, the Tnuva dairy cooperative – most of the essential pieces of the economy were fully or partly controlled by the Histadrut, which was the heart of the Labor Party.

When Labor Party leader David Ben-Gurion declared the state of Israel and became its first Prime Minister, naturally his people ended up in key places in government and business. The government supported arts and culture, and naturally the artists who received grants were the right kind (I should say, the left kind) of people. Music on the state radio stations was primarily written and performed by ideologically correct artists. The Mizrachi Jews that came here after the War of Independence and through the 1960s were treated as second-class citizens by the Labor establishment, which tried to keep them out of the political and cultural life of the country (this was the case for many years – when I tried to buy music by Mizrachi artists in the early 1980s, it was still mostly found on cassettes produced by back-porch entrepreneurs).

The right-wing political opposition was kept as far away from power as possible. Efforts were made to delegitimize the Herut party, led by Menachem Begin, and even to “remove [it] from any recollection or participation in [remembrance of war dead].” The contributions of the right-wing military organizations, Etzel and Lehi, to the achievement of independence were minimized or erased from official histories. Ben Gurion would not even mention Menachem Begin’s name in the Knesset, or speak directly to him. Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Etzel and the inspiration for much of the Israeli Right, died in 1940; Ben Gurion did not allow him to be buried in Israel and it was not until he left power that Jabotinsky’s remains were finally brought to Mount Herzl.

But in 1977, the world (well, at least Medinat Yisrael) turned upside down. In 1973, the Labor government had blown it big time. Regardless of the debate about precisely who was responsible for the debacle that almost ended the State of Israel, it was clear that it was time for new leadership. At the same time, Mizrachim had had enough of the paternalistic condescension and discrimination that characterized the establishment that was running the government. The people of Israel gave Begin’s Likud 43 seats, despite the fact that Begin himself had recently suffered a heart attack and did not participate in the campaign.

Since then, Israel has had right-wing leadership – or at least purportedly right-wing leadership – with the exception of a period between 1984-86 when Shimon Peres was PM in a rotation agreement as part of a unity government, 1992-96 when Yitzhak Rabin was PM, followed by Peres after his assassination; and then in 1999-2001, the term of the execrable Ehud Barak.

The Labor Party and the various small parties to its left have shrunk radically, as the Israeli public lost confidence in them following Oslo and then the Second Intifada. But to a great extent the leftish establishment in the media, the arts, academia, and the legal profession has remained dominant in those areas. And it has become more and more frantic in its desire to regain its former control of the country. In particular, it sees Binyamin Netanyahu, who has surpassed Ben Gurion as the longest-serving Prime Minister, as the personification of the enemy, a fascist enemy of democracy. But that is unfair. Netanyahu has problems, but he is not an enemy of democracy. He has become PM by winning democratic elections, or at least by putting together coalitions, something the opposition cannot do.

The Blue and White party was created by this establishment for one reason only: to remove Netanyahu. Benny Gantz was chosen as a neutral figure, somebody that would be respected as a former Chief of Staff, a person who has little baggage. His campaign was notable for its concentration on Netanyahu’s indictments and its almost total lack of other content. The party leadership does not share an ideology, and I suspect that 99% of those who voted for it understood that they were voting to depose Netanyahu – and the rest would have to take care of itself.

What has happened now, as I write, is that Blue and White did not come close to being able to obtain the needed 61 mandates to form a government, so they violated their pre-election promise to not try to form a minority government supported from the outside by votes from the anti-Zionist Arab parties. But then it turned out that they did not have the votes to do even that. So while they negotiated with the Likud to form a unity government in which Netanyahu and Gantz would take turns being PM, they planned to get the Knesset to pass several bills that would prevent Bibi from serving due to his indictments.

In order to do this, the Speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein, would have to let it happen, and Likudnik Edelstein wasn’t moving. B&W demanded that the Knesset vote to replace Edelstein with a more pliant candidate, but Edelstein refused to schedule that vote. So they turned to the Supreme Court, which issued a ruling that Edelstein must schedule the vote to replace him. Edelstein responded by resigning his position as Speaker, and in a particularly moving statement, said,

The High Court of Justice’s decision is not based on the language of the law, but on a unilateral and extreme interpretation. The decision of the High Court destroys the work of the Knesset. The High Court decision constitutes a gross and arrogant intervention of the judiciary in the affairs of the elected legislature. The High Court decision infringes on the sovereignty of the Knesset. ...

As someone who has paid a heavy personal cost of years of imprisonment and hard labor for the right to live as a citizen of the State of Israel, no explanation is needed as to how much I love the State of Israel and the people of Israel. Therefore, as a democrat, as a Jewish-Zionist, as a person fighting against dark regimes, and as chair of this House, I will not allow Israel to deteriorate into anarchy. I will not lend a hand to civil war. I will act in the spirit of Menachem Begin who in June 1948, during the Altalena days, prevented civil war.

Members of Knesset, citizens of Israel, these days our people need unity, need a unity government. These days, when an epidemic threatens us from the outside and the cleavage rips us from the inside, we must all act as human beings, we must all transcend. We must all unite.

Therefore, for the State of Israel and in order to renew the state spirit in Israel, I hereby resign from my position as Speaker of the Knesset. We will pray, and even act, for better days.

Edelstein’s resignation will take effect in 48 hours. But the Knesset’s legal advisor warned him that he will be liable to a charge of contempt of court if he does not allow a vote to be called immediately. I suspect that the man who spent three years in a Siberian gulag will not change his mind.

I see the whole process that began with the investigations into Netanyahu more than three years ago, with all of the improprieties involved – the continuous media leaks from the police and prosecution, the abuse of witnesses, the recent last-minute attempts to change the law so that Netanyahu could not be even a part-time PM, the intervention of the Court – as a continuation of the struggle to subvert the will of Israeli voters, and bring the discredited Left back to power.

But the world has changed. The Labor Party and the Histadrut can’t pick the prime minister from among their activists anymore, as they did until 1977. Ben Gurion isn’t coming back. Form a unity government with Bibi and move on.

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03/25 Links Pt2: The virus spreading faster than coronavirus: Antisemitism; AJC Starts #BeAMensch Initiative to Promote and Encourage Kindness

From Ian:

The virus spreading faster than coronavirus: Antisemitism

As for the BDS movement, they have been relatively quiet on the question of whether or not they would use a (hypothetical) Israeli vaccine, but at least one pro-BDS Press TV journalist, Roshan Salih, tweeted he would rather be infected by coronavirus than use an Israeli product. Apparently, hating Israel is more important than living to some of these BDS activists. When Salih was mocked on social media, he reverted to another conspiracy claiming “Israel’s troll army” attacked him online.

No less hateful than the conspiracy theories and hate speech, there has also been a litany of outrageous comments exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to smear the state of Israel. From journalists, to organizations like Human Rights Watch (HRW), to Jewish extremist groups like IfNotNow, to Palestinian NGOs, comments which pre-emptively assume that Israel is failing to assist the Palestinians are spreading faster than the coronavirus itself.

Another popular talking point in these crowds has been using the pandemic to talk about occupation. “Students for Justice in Palestine” held a campus event on the topic in the US - before American universities were ordered shuttered. Regardless of one’s position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, if your response to a global pandemic is to bash Israel you can’t be surprised when your motives are questioned. After all, the line between condemning policy and outright antisemitism has been repeatedly crossed in such statements. Last week a former HRW employee, Sarah Whitson, tweeted that Israel is only “missing a tablespoon of blood” in its oppression of Palestinians, a classic antisemitic trope about bloodthirsty Jews. Whitson later deleted the tweet saying it was being “misunderstood” but carried on bashing Israel. It’s no coincidence that statements like this “accidentally” come out when those who hold deeply ignorant and antisemitic views use words like “Israel” or “Zionism” as socially acceptable replacements for the words “Jews” and “Judaism.”

The plague of antisemitism is an ongoing problem on social media, as social media provides uncensored and sometimes anonymous platform to broadcast to the entire world. But this global pandemic has shown, in just a matter of days, that antisemitism today flourishes not just from the usual neo-Nazi or radical Islam fringes, but from the general public – world leaders, journalists, human rights activists, and more. Once again, irrational obsession with Jews demonstrates that antisemitism is not a marginal problem but all-too-mainstream.

Jonathan S. Tobin: The Zionist Congress election and the truth about American Jewry

It’s been derided as irrelevant and a relic of the distant past that ought to have been junked decades ago. But the World Zionist Congress election that has just concluded generated more interest and participation than it has in decades.

Just as interesting is a clear shift in the results from elections that just wrapped up on March 11 showing an increase in support for Orthodox slates and groups that identify with Israel’s Likud Party and other right-leaning groups. While the increased participation is a healthy sign for the Zionist movement, the gap between these results and polls of American Jewish opinion illustrate something else.

The Zionist Congress is significant because it helps control a nearly $1 billion budget that can support projects in Israel. Americans make up about one-third of those who will attend the gathering, which was scheduled to be held this summer.

Those who voted for the Congress may well be representative of the opinion of Jews who remain affiliated with synagogues and care deeply about Israel. But that distance between that segment of the population and the far larger group of Jews who are not motivated to take part in a Zionist Congress election is greater than ever. Though the vote produced a result that was surprisingly encouraging for most of those who consider themselves part of the pro-Israel community, it may also show that those who answer to that label are actually a minority of those Americans who consider themselves, by one definition or another, Jewish.

The vote that was held online from January through March generated a turnout of 123,629 votes. That may not sound like much when you consider that the Jewish population in the United States is about 7.5 million, according to the generous estimate of the Brandeis University Steinhardt Social Research Institute with the same study claiming that if you define it solely by religion, there are only 4.4 million American Jews.

That notwithstanding, the voters are a significant sample of the opinion of Jews who care enough about Israel and Zionism to pay a modest fee to register and declare support for the Jerusalem Program of the Zionist movement.

Freeing the Captives

Review of 'Genius and Anxiety' by Norman Lebrecht

Why the Jews? By a liberal definition of tribal membership (meaning those with at least one Jewish parent), there are around 17 million Jews in the world—about the population of Kazakhstan. An ancient civilization, Kazakhstan boasts a 99.5 percent literacy rate, but while it has produced writers and scientists, their names are not exactly household words.

Contrast this with the Jews. They invented monotheism, Hollywood, gefilte fish, relativity, and free will (Adam chose to eat the apple). Over the centuries, Jewish über-achievers range from Marx, Freud, Proust, Kafka, and Einstein to Mahler, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Gershwin, and Dylan; to Disraeli and Leon Blum; to Jonas Salk (polio vaccine) and Paul Ehrlich (chemotherapy); to Silicon Valley titans such as Sergei Brin and Larry Ellison; to Kirk Douglas, Steven Spielberg, and Seinfeld. Not to mention Groucho. Or Helena Rubinstein and Estée Lauder, who cooked up modern cosmetics.

So how did the Jews, who make up .2 percent of mankind, “change the world?” This is the question Norman Lebrecht asks in the subtitle of his new book, Genius and Anxiety. “I am not about to make a case for Jewish exceptionalism,” he answers, “nor do I believe that Jews are genetically gifted above the average.” Instead, he ascribes Jewish seichel to “culture and experience rather than DNA.” It’s all due to numeracy, literacy, and critical reasoning—the stuff of Talmudic study.

Lebrecht keeps referring to the causal role of the Talmud throughout his book, suggesting that even Freud and Einstein, who had never set foot in a yeshiva, were somehow formed by Talmudic sages who kept arguing ad infinitum for some 300 years at the beginning of the first millennium following the destruction of the Temple. But it is a long trip from Babylon and Jerusalem to Vienna and Berlin, from the Talmudic giants to the secularized, even areligious Jews of the 19th and 20th centuries, many of whom (or their parents) had converted to Christianity.

So let’s posit, as Lebrecht suggests we should, that somehow the ancient masters of pilpul handed the art of disputation down through the generations. After all, Freud’s father, Jacob, a wool merchant, was a Torah scholar.

But if “like father, like son” is the transmission belt, there are two problems.