Friday, January 15, 2021
From Ian:
Caroline Glick: Israel goes back to the future
Caroline Glick: Israel goes back to the future
Then there are the Palestinians. In September 2000, the Palestinians launched a massive terror onslaught against Israel which lasted for four years. Every day, Israelis were subjected to acts of murderous terrorism that ranged from roadside stonings, shootings and bombings to mass shootings to suicide bombings, to mortar and missile assaults.The IHRA: A Reply to the Guardian Letter signed by Sir Stephen Sedley et al.
The Palestinians launched their terror war after rejecting Israel's offer of peace and statehood at the Camp David Peace Summit in July 2000. Yet in 2001, Burns was instrumental in convincing then-president Bush to become the first president to support Palestinian statehood.
Burns' support for the Palestinians is widely shared among members of Biden's incoming team. On Wednesday, Biden announced he is appointing Obama's former UN ambassador Samantha Power to serve as administrator of USAID.
Power played a central role in conceiving and passing UN Security Council Resolution 2334 in December 2016 which referred to Israeli communities and installations beyond the 1949 armistice lines in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria as "a flagrant violation of international law." As USAID administrator, Power will be responsible for providing US financial support to the endemically corrupt and terror-supporting Palestinian Authority and to international organizations that facilitate Hamas's terror regime in Gaza.
According to sources in contact with Biden's transition team, Biden intends to appoint Obama's ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro to oversee the Abraham Accords. The sources raised the concern that Biden's goal in making the appointment is to restore the Palestinian veto over the normalization of relations between Israel and Arab states. Shapiro, who took the unprecedented step of remaining in Israel and active in public affairs after he left office, is expected to remain in Israel to take on this function.
In anticipation of the incoming administration's restoration of Obama's policies towards Israel and the Palestinians, on Tuesday, the foreign ministers of Germany, France Britain, Egypt, and Jordan called on the Biden and his team to lead negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians towards the so-called "two-state solution," replete with an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines. The foreign ministers also called on Israel "to completely end all settlement activities including in East Jerusalem."
The leftist political group J Street issued a call for Biden to officially abandon the Trump administration's peace plan. It also asked the new administration to end scientific cooperation with Israeli institutions located beyond the 1949 armistice lines, to open a diplomatic legation in Jerusalem to serve the Palestinians, and to pledge to open a US embassy to "Palestine" in Israel's capital upon the conclusion of a peace deal.
Efforts by Biden's supporters to blot out the actions and achievements of the outgoing administration extend to the fight against anti-Semitism. One of the most significant achievements that Israel and Diaspora Jewry have accomplished in recent years in the fight against anti-Semitism has been the adoption by governments throughout the world of the definition of anti-Semitism conceived by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
On 7 January 2021 The Guardian published a letter from eight lawyers who claimed that the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which the UK government has instructed UK universities to adopt, undermines free expression. The signatories also claimed that examples included in the IHRA definition have been ‘widely used to suppress or avoid criticism of the state of Israel.’ Dave Rich, Director of Policy at the Community Security Trust and a leading expert on left-wing antisemitism, argues that the letter rests on a ‘misrepresentation of what the definition says and does, ‘unevidenced claims’ about its impact, and confusions about its legal status and power. The IHRA definition, he contends, offers universities ‘a modest, sensible and practical guide to antisemitism that would help Jewish students to play a full part in campus life’.In the Guardian, Antisemites are Authorities on Antisemitism
The campaign against the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism has been running for long enough that it is now possible to identify its common themes. These include repeated misrepresentation of what the definition does, and does not, say about Israel and antisemitism; unevidenced claims about the definition’s alleged impact on free speech; confusion of its legal status and power; and an appeal to authority by quoting others from within this same campaign.
A letter in last week’s Guardian (where else?), signed by eight experienced lawyers, is a helpful example of how this works. It opens with the claim that, ‘The legally entrenched right to free expression is being undermined by an internally incoherent “non-legally binding working definition” of antisemitism.’ The letter then cites the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Education Act 1986 before noting that the IHRA definition ‘has no legislative or other authority in international or domestic law.’
Given that this is the case, it is hard to see how a non-legal definition with no legal authority could undermine legally-guaranteed rights to free expression and academic freedom. Most universities understand this, even if these eight lawyers don’t: the University of Oxford, in announcing its recent adoption of the IHRA definition, stated that, ‘The IHRA definition does not affect the legal definition of racial discrimination, so does not change our approach to meeting our legal duties and responsibilities.’
There are other legal restrictions on free expression which these lawyers did not mention in their letter, including the Public Order Act, the Equality Act, the Protection from Harassment Act, the Malicious Communications Act and so on. These all limit free speech, including at universities, but the letter’s signatories do not seem troubled by this. Instead, a definition that even they concede is ‘non-legally binding’ is, apparently, such a grave threat to free expression that it is worth a letter to the Guardian. Why is this the case?
Signers of the Guardian letter had previously accused Jews of dual loyalty; of using their control over the media and banks to manipulate others; of “whining” about the Holocaust and pedaling “fairy tales” about the Final Solution; and of being part of a “pampered religion.” They had celebrated terrorists who targeted and murdered innocent Jewish civilians. And they had excused those responsible for vile antisemitism, including the claim that Jews use Christian blood in their rituals, Holocaust denial, and calls to “kill the Jews.”
ANTISEMITISM
Subhi Hadidi: Jews forever disloyal to home countries
One co-signer, Subhi Hadidi, justified the persecution of Jews living in the Arab world by insisting their expulsion underscored a “higher truth”: that Jews are disloyal and insular.
In the London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, Hadidi took issue with historian Geoffrey Alderman’s criticism of the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab lands. It seems Alderman placed blame on the wrong side. The expulsions, Hadidi wrote, were “a textbook case of a greater truth: the failure of most Jewish communities to assimilate into any national culture, their unwillingness to meet a high or sufficient standard of citizenship sense and participation in society, and raising [their] loyalty to Israel, even before it was born, above all loyalties.”
The charge of dual loyalties is something of a habit for Hadidi. After the US ambassador to Israel criticized Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas for saying the Holocaust was provoked by the Jewish role in society — “usury and banking and such” —Hadidi insisted the real reason for the ambassador’s criticism was that the he was “a Jew before he is an American.”
He has also cast Judaism in general as being pampered — “a very spoiled [religion] on a global scale.”
Despite this history of flagrant antisemitism, the Guardian felt it was appropriate for him to instruct readers on what is and isn’t appropriate language about Jews.
Mohamed Alyahyai: “Jewish media machine” abuses Holocaust
Hadidi is hardly the only hen-house guard that looks suspiciously foxy.
Mohamed Alyahyai, another co-signer of the letter, has blamed the “Jewish media machine” for planting guilt in European minds about the Holocaust.
Ali Fakhrou: Jewish “whining” about Holocaust includes lies, fairy tales, exaggerations
Ali Fakhrou, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, has taken such arguments even farther. If his co-signer Hadidi insisted the persecution of Jews in the Arab world is the fault of the Jews themselves, Fakhrou flatly denied any such mistreatment occurred, writing in al-Quds al-Arabi of a “false Zionist claim that the Arab Jews were persecuted.”
And just as co-signer Alyahyai charged the Jews with running the media and misusing the Holocaust, so too did Fakhrou, who expanded on the argument by raising doubts about Holocaust historiography.
Jerusalem, January 14 - Proprietors of a neighborhood establishment specializing in pastries, breads, and various confections has to date not voiced opinions on behalf of the enterprise regarding the ongoing political turmoil in the US, thus defying a recent trend that has seen business after business jump onto the political stability concern bandwagon.
