Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 03, 2020

08/03 Links Pt2: Celebrity Antisemites Can’t Be Absolved Through Private Apologies; Seth Rogen’s Ignorance Spread by Uncritical Media; Ze’ev Jabotinsky remembered 80 years after his death

From Ian:

Antisemitic tweets – European countries with the most

France (9,150) is followed by Germany, Spain, Belgium, Ireland and Austria.

Diaspora Minister Omar Yankelevich presented the EU Ambassador with data regarding antisemitism on Twitter, as collected by the Diaspora Ministry’s Internet monitoring system. Omar and the EU ambassador agreed to cooperate in order to keep Jewish communities in Europe safe and to monitor online antisemitism.

Over the last two months (June and July 2020) 14,210 antisemitic tweets have been posted in European countries. The largest number of antisemitic tweets was recorded in France – 9,150 tweets uploaded by 3,000 web “surfers;” followed by Germany – 2,470; Spain – 2,080; Belgium – 220; Ireland – 168; and Austria – 93 tweets.

This data was collected by the monitoring system of the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. In total, the monitoring system identified 14,210 antisemitic tweets posted by 4,680 users in these six countries, out of 266,200 posts uploaded by 114,600 users.

Diaspora Minister Omar Yankelevich presented the data at a meeting held last weekend with the EU Ambassador to Israel, Emanuel Joffre, in which they agreed to cooperate in protecting Jewish communities in Europe, monitoring online antisemitism and preserving the religious freedom of European Jews. According to Yankelevich, the difference in the number of tweets between states illustrates the importance of extensive legislation and decisive enforcement against incitement to hatred.

In view of the data presented, the Minister sought to increase cooperation with the EU and streamline funding that communities receive from the EU for security measures. This is to ensure the security and safety of the Jewish communities in Europe. The ambassador expressed his willingness to work in close cooperation with Israel, against the phenomenon of increasing antisemitism on the Internet and “on the ground.” The two also discussed creative ways to connect Jewish communities in Israel with communities across Europe.

Minister Yankelevich: “European Jews are experiencing a difficult period during the Corona crisis. Over a thousand Jews have died of the virus, including rabbis and community leaders. Especially during this period we must work in full cooperation with the EU to maintain the safety and existence of Jewish communities in Europe. I thank the ambassador for his willingness to assist with this issue as well as to monitor anti-Semitism on the Internet and to preserve the religious freedom of the Jews in the EU countries. This is our shared responsibility.”

HONESTREPORTING AT THE KNESSET

The normalization of hate speech is a result of hate on social networks being improperly defined, @gipperschutzpah told the Knesset last week. pic.twitter.com/e9IxTrRaRt
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 3, 2020

Protected hate - Arsen Ostrovsky

French Antisemitic Agitator Dieudonné Permanently Banned From Facebook for ‘Dehumanizing Jews’

A little over a month after he was booted from YouTube for consistently posting antisemitic content, the French comedian and agitator Dieudonné has been permanently banned from the Facebook and Instagram social media platforms for the same offense.

A Facebook spokesperson on Monday confirmed that Dieudonné had used “dehumanizing terms against Jews” in several of his posts.

“In line with our policy on dangerous individuals and organizations, we have permanently banned Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala from Facebook and Instagram,” the company said in a statement. “Banning a person permanently from our services is a decision that we always weigh carefully, but individuals and organizations that attack others on the basis of what they are do not have a place on Facebook or Instagram.”

The prohibition means that Dieudonné has been cut off from his 1.3 million followers on Facebook, in addition to the 400,000 users he lost when his YouTube account was shut down on June 30.

Banned from the UK, Canada and Belgium among other countries, Dieudonné has been convicted numerous times in France for violating laws against hate speech and Holocaust denial. He often collaborates with Alain Soral, a French neo-Nazi, and was an energetic promoter of the late Holocaust denier, Robert Faurisson.

One of Dieudonné’s songs, titled “Shoananas” — a word that combines “Shoah,” the Hebrew word for “Holocaust,” with “ananas,” the French word for “pineapple” — pokes fun at the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis. The comedian is arguably best known for inventing the “quenelle” — an inverted Nazi salute that went viral in 2013.

Facebook’s decision was welcomed by politicians, anti-racist groups and Jewish organizations, some of whom called on the company to close down all similar accounts.

“I welcome Facebook’s decision and hope there will be more,” Elisabeth Moreno — France’s minister for equality — said in a statement. “All forms of speech inciting hatred and racism must be banned from social networks.”

Iran continues to send money to Hezbollah as its economy falls apart

Al Arabiya, quoting the Ava Today website, reports that while the Iranians are suffering from a deteriorating economic situation , and Iranians are protesting, the Revolutionary Guards are continuing to export huge amounts to terror groups that are loyal to it, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon.

While opinion polls conducted by the Iranian Student Foundation revealed that more than two million Iranian families did not eat red meat at all during the year, due to declining purchasing capabilities and high poverty rates in the country, the IRGC, in cooperation with the Central Bank, exploited the national identity number of citizens and issued forged passports in their names. Since citizens are allowed to bring a certain amount of foreign currency out of the country for travel, this is apparently how Iran is hiding its transfer of funds to Hezbollah, by pretending that the smugglers are just tourists visiting Lebanon or Syria on Mahan Airlines using names of people who have no idea they officially went out of Iran.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

From The National (UAE):

Mohamed Hadid has shared a photograph of himself wearing a face mask by Palestinian fashion designer, Noor Subeh.

The mask is made with keffiyeh fabric, the black-and-white checked cloth that is traditionally used for Arabian head dresses.

The Palestinian-American property developer tagged Subeh in the Instagram image and captioned it: "Stay safe for others to keep yourself safe from others."

If it is made from keffiyeh fabric alone it is not really a very good COVID-19 mask.

But there is another reason why people might want to think twice before buying these:

It really looks a lot like women’s genitalia.

Once you see that, you can’t unsee it.

08/03 Links Pt1: International Law, Not Terrorism, Must Be the New Paradigm; China’s Emerging Middle Eastern Kingdom; Israelis have more in common than not with one another

From Ian:

International Law, Not Terrorism, Must Be the New Paradigm

What must occur to alter the course of this perpetual cycle of violence, terror and violation of law and rights is a fundamental shift in the paradigm applied. Israel and the international community must transcend and move away from terms rooted in terror, and hold the violators accountable to the language and terms of international law and human rights.

In practice, what this means is that negotiations anywhere must not take place on the terms determined by genocidal terrorist regimes and their supporters, and that the price paid must conform to agreed-upon international standards. It means a system of "monetary for humanitarian," where only when the humanitarian needs of Israel are met does the cash flow.

For example, instead of allowing Hamas to set the negotiation terms, the international community must acknowledge that holding four Israeli citizens captive is a standing violation of international law, and humanitarian aid is therefore at risk of being embargoed if the Israelis are not returned and if the law is not upheld. The fact that one of the Israelis being held captive for six years nearly to this day—Hadar Goldin—was killed during an internationally brokered humanitarian ceasefire only further strengthens the international legal and moral argument. The concept of a "prisoner swap" prescribed by terrorist thought and rhetoric as the tool to use in such a scenario must be denounced; instead, international law must be upheld.

Similarly, the financial support—known as "pay-for-slay"—that the Palestinian Authority provides to terrorists, must cease, or their humanitarian aid and the provision of international aid by United Nations agencies must be limited. Announcements that Israel is now seizing these terrorists' salaries form a necessary first step. The international community also must make difficult choices of when to restrict aid in order to uphold international laws and human rights norms. If it fails to do this, these laws and norms risk losing their very meaning.

This new paradigm of international law, human rights and norms means that Israel too must move away from the old paradigms or prisoner swaps and cease allowing the "pay-for-slay" payments to take place. The global community and Israel together have the potential of leading by example, utilizing the language of rights and expecting consistency and reciprocity from the international community in return. Only then can the cycle of violence begin to unravel, and a renewed "world order" be built on a profound commitment to uphold, promote and protect human rights.

Michael Doran and Peter Rough: China’s Emerging Middle Eastern Kingdom

If the Russian-Iranian alliance should die, or become weak and ineffectual, China will not step in directly to build it back up—because Beijing fears a direct confrontation with the United States. The first priority of American policy, therefore, is to remove the sword from China’s hand by crushing the Russian-Iranian alliance. The domestic American political climate will not permit the use of large numbers of American troops in this project, but four other tools do exist:
1) Economic sanctions. The Trump administration has been imposing these effectively. The Iranian economy is in perilous condition, and the economic situation of Iran’s allies, the Assad regime and Lebanese Hezbollah, are equally dire.
2) Clandestine operations. In recent months, Iran has experienced a wave of mysterious fires and explosions at industrial complexes and military installations. One of these events, at the nuclear fuel enrichment site at Natanz, reportedly set back the country’s nuclear program significantly. A foreign hand is suspected in at least some of these episodes, and the finger of suspicion points most often at Israel. But the sabotage could just as easily be the result of a joint American-Israeli operation.
3) Direct military action by allies. The Turks and the Israelis have both carried out very effective operations in Syria that have significantly degraded not just Iranian but also, in the case of the Turks, Russian capabilities.
4) Selective and judicious use of American military capabilities. The killing of Qassem Soleimani in December did more to shake the Iranian regime than any step the United States has taken in the last 30 years, with the possible exception of the invasion of Iraq. It not only removed from the game an indispensable player, but it boosted the morale of America’s allies and demoralized its enemies.

These tools, taken together, can effectively remove the Russo-Iranian sword from the hand of China. They are already being used. Are they the result of a conscious Trump administration strategy, or have they simply materialized as a set of ad hoc responses to the president's insistence that his national security team contain Iran aggressively, yet with an economy of force? Whatever the answer, they point the way forward. The goal of American policy should be to use them separately and in coordination so as to increase their lethality.

The greatest advantage that the United States has in its competition with China and, indeed, with any of its adversaries, is hard power. In the realm of trade and investment, Washington simply cannot compete with China and hope to win. If it is to contain China successfully, then it will win with its sledgehammers: military power and economic sanctions. In the Middle East, what America’s allies crave most is the security that comes from the might of the American military. Nothing does more to encourage allies to hedge their bets and cozy up to Beijing than the fear that the United States has decided to abandon military competition as a tool of statecraft.

As China works to make the Middle East a factor in the Western Pacific balance of power, the United States should respond by bringing the Pacific to the Middle East. China’s energy supply lines and its aspiration to become the dominant power in the Persian Gulf should become a regular and significant part of America’s discussions with its Pacific partners and India. The goal of this dialogue should be to arrive not just at a shared picture of the threat but also at strategies for assuring that China’s supply lines remain highly vulnerable. China’s partners and potential partners in its plan to become a Middle Eastern military power—Iran, Djibouti, Pakistan, Iraq, and others—should be put on notice that the days of harmonic convergence are over. Support for Chinese hard-power aspirations must come at a steep price. The U.S. must bury harmonic convergence as an organizing principle, or risk ceding control of the international system to a hostile, anti-democratic power.

Israelis have more in common than not with one another - opinion

If there is a large protest, the media will – as it must – interview the protesters and then the politicians. The protesters are protesting because they are angry, and that anger comes out in their words. The politicians are looking for someone to blame, and that anger comes out in their words.

Both Transportation Minister Miri Regev (Likud) and MK Moshe Ya’alon (Yesh Atid-Telem) – on opposite sides of this country’s pro- and anti-Netanyahu divide – sound as if they are about to blow a gasket every time they talk about the other side. Interviewee after interviewee sound angry, mad and full of hate.

But there is another Israel out there. It’s the one that quietly goes on with its life in these uncertain times, perhaps not agreeing – and perhaps even strongly disagreeing – with the political outlook of their neighbors or co-workers, but not hating them, not wanting to wage an all-out war against them. In fact, there are many who feel a great deal of sympathy for their countrymen’s suffering as a result of the pandemic.

The problem is that right now, that does not attract attention and does not get air time. What attracts attention is extreme rhetoric. What attracts attention is comparisons to dark periods of history. What attracts attention is saying that the other side are a bunch of fanatics hell-bent on destroying the country: anarchists to the left of me, fascists to the right.

And since that is what attracts attention, that is what is shouted out from the megaphones, picked up by the press and amplified on social media. So one wakes up and believes that is the reality.

Except it’s not. It might be a slice of this country’s reality, but only a slice.

There is another reality out there,reflected in that meeting of those reservists, of an Israel where not everyone hates the other side, and where – though it might sound corny – what binds really is greater than what divides.

Which is not to say that the atmosphere is not charged, and that in a charged atmosphere someone may commit an act of political violence. But civil wars – the type some are warning of now – are not made of individuals on the fringes taking extreme action, but rather, brother taking up arms against brother because the hatred in their hearts overflows.

Walk the streets of the country beyond Balfour Street during one of the nightly protests – or step away from Twitter for a day – and chances are that you won’t encounter that overwhelming hatred, but rather, a reality that, while contentious, is softer and far less toxic and hate-filled than what you come across every time you turn on a computer, radio or television set.

Most people are not inhabiting the hate-permeated reality being portrayed in the media and online. There is another Israel out there.

Many critics of Israel (and others) say that philosemitism is just a form of antisemitism.*

I disagree. Two recent examples of seeming praise for Jews shows how to tell the difference between true admiration for Jews and fear of Jews.

Jordanian news site Ad Dustour often has explicitly antisemitic articles. So this article by Muhammad Dawudiya seems incongruous at first glance because it appears to praise Jews.

Judaism is a closed, non-missionary religion that does not promote conversions and refuses to engage in it. Numerical abundance does not occupy a position, interest or goal in the Zionist thought and planning.

No Jewish rabbi calls anyone in the world to convert to Judaism.

The number of Jews in the world is around 14 million, but their financial, electoral, political, media, scientific, and industrial influence is increasing exponentially.

Jews in the world are closer to the party, organization, and system run by the World Jewish Council and their lobbies scattered around their places.

This organization is based on a culture of solidarity, support, and sympathy for the center of the Jews - Israel, the state of all Jews, which constitutes the first investment destination for wealthy Jews who own 10% of the world's billionaires' fortunes, which are achieved by their domination of the knowledge economy, which they manage almost entirely.

Jewish organizations strongly support youth initiatives and innovation, which has achieved fortunes that exceed all the wealth of all Arab countries combined, two to three times!

The number of Christians in the world is about 2.2 billion people, or 32% of the world's population. The number of Muslims in the world about 1.6 billion people, making up 23% of the world's population. The number of Arabs is about 370 million, making up 5% of the world's population.

The number of Jews in the world is about 14 million, making up only 0.2% of the world's population.

Despite the minuscule number of Jews, they have influence that they control in most parts of the world.

More than 80% of the top American managers are Jewish or married to Jews.

According to the Center for Arab Gulf Studies, 3 million Jews possess more than the budgets and incomes of 152 countries in the world!

The average Jewish families’ donation to Jewish students, scientific research, elections, media and other goals amounts to about 9 billion dollars annually.

The place the Jews have achieved is proof of the need to focus on quality rather than quantity. And proof that many of us will not liberate Palestine.

Here we remember Lenin's saying: "Give me a dozen men and I will change the world with them." That dozen of men really changed the world.

Is this article philosemitic? Not at all. It is meant to teach Arabs the supposed Jewish strategy of taking over the world so the Jewish plans can be learned from.

But how can you tell when praise of Jews comes from admiration and when it comes from fear and hate?

Recently, Jonathan Hoffman’s blog reported:

In late March 2019 Stephen Lamonby, 73, a part-time lecturer at Solent University, remarked to a colleague, Dr Janet Bonar, that people from different countries had become good at certain things owing to “high exposure”. He said that Germans are good at engineering because they are “exposed to a high level of industry from an early stage in their lives”. When Dr Bonar, a US-born engineering lecturer, mentioned her degree in physics, Mr Lamonby said that Jewish people had “a particular gift” for the subject. He used Albert Einstein as an example and asked Dr Bonar if she was Jewish. She took offence and called Mr Lamonby a racist. He replied: “I believe that the Jewish are the cleverest people in the world. They are much maligned because of it. I asked if you were Jewish because of your ability with maths/physics et cetera. Which is a speciality of theirs.”

Here is a non-Jew who said that Jews are good at physics, offending his supervisor when he asked if her skill in the field perhaps comes from her being Jewish.

What differentiates Ad Dustour’s praise of Jews from that of Dr. Lamonby - or Donald Trump?

The answer is quite simple.

People who admire Jews would want to partner with them. They want to be friends with them. They want to hang around them.

People who view Jews as an implacable enemy want to learn their “secrets” from a distance. They want to use secondary sources to learn about Jews, but they don’t want to deal with them directly.

UPDATE: Yair Rosenberg wrote to me explaining that he definitely does not say that philosemitism is the same as antisemitism, and he has written this up as an article here.

From the gaming magazine Kotaku:

Israel is currently testing a new armored vehicle prototype that uses a wide array of modern technology, most notably an Xbox controller that allows soldiers to perform combat functions as if they were playing a video game.
…
The only open conflict in which Israel currently finds itself is against the people of Palestine, many of whom are essentially confined to regions run like open-air prisons. They cannot travel freely. They are second-class citizens. Their protests against these conditions are met with overwhelming aggression by the IDF, which even targets children and medics while violently shutting down dissent. When global organizations like the United Nations take steps to curtail Israel’s human rights abuses, the United States is quick to step in and block them.
That’s all to say that we shouldn’t be making it easier or more comfortable to kill someone. The more we make war like Call of Duty, the more removed humans will be from the act of killing. The monitors and controllers that fill these vehicles serve as much as a barrier between the user and the people outside as the vehicles’ armor does. In the Carmel tank, we see the perfect encapsulation of concerns brought up during previous integrations of gaming technology with military equipment: weaponizing the inherent desensitization of video games to turn young men and women into more capable and efficient killers.
As weapons of war have become more sophisticated, so too have the ways in which world governments shield soldiers from the psychological reality of taking another human life. By combining this remove with the familiarity of a video game controller, armies are turning a hobby we love into a de facto training exercise, getting younger generations ready to mow down children or fight in the next world war. We should not be inured to this; we should be horrified.

The writer, Ian Walker, breezily refers to Israel as an “apartheid state” so he is not exactly the most objective writer. But this is what happens when Israel haters push their venom into venues where people aren’t familiar with the facts and can easily be brainwashed.
In fact, as the original Washington Post article about this made clear, the US has been using gaming controllers in various weapons systems for years. If you are in a war, you want every advantage, and using an interface that soldiers are already familiar with is a way to make weapons safer, not more dangerous. Walker knows literally nothing about actual warfare and he apparently thinks that his playing war games on XBox make him some sort of expert.
In fact, Israeli soldiers know more about international humanitarian law than Walker can ever hope to know. The IDF spends millions to avoid innocent casualties. The propaganda that Walker so easily repeats from his forays into anti-Israel sites are lies, but they are lies that his magazine is not likely to catch and edit.
Walker purposefully did not quote the parts of the Washington Post story that contradicts his twisted propaganda agenda:

Critics of the intersection of gaming and war have pointed to the potential desensitizing effect that games could introduce to an arena with lethal consequences. Seeking to fight potential blurring between video games and real life war, Shabtai’s team opted against a virtual reality system with goggles and for an interface that requires a shared sense of reality with other people.
“When you’re dealing with the battle arena itself, you can’t be alone,” Shabtai said. “You’re not fighting in an aircraft, you’re on the ground, with other forces and another team member, everything needs to be connected.” The AI system also integrates weapon selections based on myriad circumstances, he said, giving the example that it would not present the operator with a missile option to respond to a single enemy shooting a rifle from a populated area.
Friedman said the distinctions are very clear. “It’s not being at home, eating and drinking and having fun. This is work,” he said. “There’s also the way [Carmel] moves, the noise it makes, it’s very different from a video game.”

In other words, the Israeli designers specifically thought about Walker’s scenario and mitigated that issue. Walker chose not to mention that, because his article is meant to portray Israelis as bloodthirsty killers, not moral human beings.

UPDATE: Israellycool beat me to this story.

After the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri and 21 others in 2005, the UN set up a special tribunal to investigate the attack and to try the suspects behind it in absentia. The four people on trial are members of Hezbollah and the verdict is expected this week.

Reports say that France has assured Hezbollah that it will protect the terror group if it is found to be complicit in the terror attack.

France has reportedly conveyed “assurances” that the ruling in the murder trial of ex-PM Rafik Hariri will not be followed by international procedures against Hizbullah, and that France has played a major role to make that possible, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Monday.

Quoting diplomatic sources, the daily said: “Paris has assured Hizbullah that ruling in the assassination case of Hariri will not be followed by an international course or effects against the party, and that Paris has played a fundamental role in this field.”

The sources added that France has in return asked Hizbullah to show “lenient” positions and stop media campaigns against the Gulf States, reported al-Joumhouria.

According to the sources, Paris will also work to control the behaviour of Bahaa Hariri, the son of the slain ex-PM, so that anti-Hizbullah regional powers do not invest that in their own interest.

It added that the new French ambassador will continue the task of direct contact with Hizbullah, and an expert assistant will assist in this matter.

France and the EU only designate Hezbollah’s “military wing” to be a terror group, as if there is a magical wall between its terror and political components. That fiction is bad enough.

But to assure the group that it will be actively shielded from international censure by a major Western power is a clear message to the world that France actively supports the group.

In June, France’s ambassador to Israel Eric Danon said that France had no plans to follow Germany in designating all of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. At the same time he said why France was against any Israeli moves to extend Israeli law over the territories: “France has always promoted a vision of international relations based on the rule of law and on negotiations, and not on unilateral actions,” he said.

Isn’t France telling Hezbollah ahead of the verdict that it will defend it from censure by other nations a unilateral action, not based on negotiations with the other nations?

Cartoon of the Day: From the river to the sea

Making fun of clueless protesters is always fun….

Larry Johnson, a former football player, tweets:

Johnson is saying that there IS a Jewish cabal that deals in human sacrifice, ritualistic child torture, pedophilia and so forth.

As evidence, he uses a Samuel L. Jackson movie character who describes how to know a person is lying by his eye movements - and then shows Kellerman looking up and to the right as he says there is no secret Jewish cabal – which, to morons like Johnson and his followers, is proof that there is a secret Jewish cabal for world domination.

Even Marc Lamont Hill, who himself loves ancient antisemitic conspiracy theories, politely told Johnson this was garbage. But many of Johnson’s followers loved what he had to say about Jews.
(The theory that eye movements reveal liars was debunked in 2012.)

Once again, a Black celebrity is spouting Jew-hating garbage. Johnson has nearly 150,000 followers, some of whom are happy to repeat or embellish his hate.

And yet again, the anti-Zionist Jewish Left ignores explicit antisemitism because they want you to think that the only Jew-hatred that exists is white supremacism.

I don’t know if antisemitism is getting worse or if Black celebrities feel more comfortable spouting hate out loud than they were a few months ago, but the net effect is that Jews are less safe today in America than they have been in years.

08/02 Links: Rabbi Cooper: Tech giants should stop letting bigots, terrorists spread hatred online; Israel’s unique methods against the Iranian threat; Hamas leader debunks some BBC narratives

From Ian:

Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Tech giants should stop letting bigots, terrorists spread hatred online

Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and other tech giants have revolutionized our lives for the better in many ways and raked in billions of dollars in profits in the process. But unfortunately, they have also allowed the Internet to become an important tool used by racists, anti-Semites, terrorists and other purveyors of hatred and violence.

With social media and websites increasingly serving as our lifeline to news, entertainment and our children’s education, it would be irresponsible to ignore people who weaponize these essential communication tools in the service of hate groups.

I launched the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Digital Hate Project 27 years ago, when the Internet was in its infancy. When we first met with Facebook it was a small company that owned one building. Now more than 1 billion people around the world use Facebook.

Millions of us were outraged to see neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen, and other anti-Semites and white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017, loudly chanting “Jews shall not replace us.” They carried torches as if they were proudly parading in Nazi Germany in the 1930s or 1940s.

But when these groups use the Internet to spread lies and hatred they draw far less attention from most Americans. Yet the groups can actually have greater impact in cyberspace in poisoning impressionable mind and infecting them with hatred.

It is irresponsible for Big Tech companies to say they are simply common carriers that transmit information the way telephone companies transmit calls. The tech companies have an obligation to set and follow rules setting limitations on what can be said on their platforms so they can degrade the online marketing efforts of purveyors or racism, anti-Semitism, and bigotry in all its ugly forms.

And since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, it has become vital to our national security that the tech companies stop terrorists from using their platforms to plot deadly attacks and recruit new terrorists.

High-fives are few and far between in the struggle against hate. And there is precious little to celebrate when preparing a report card on social media-delivered hate.

Take the new social media whiz-kid on the block, TikTok, which President Trump said Friday he will ban from the U.S. However, TikTok’s general manager for the U.S. posted a video saying “We’re not planning on going anywhere,” and any move by the president to shut down the site by executive order, as he said he would do, would likely face a legal challenge. Fox Business reported Friday that Microsoft has begun talks to buy the company.

An algorithm on TikTok’s platform drove 6.5 million viewers to an anti-Semitic song that includes the lyrics: "We're going on a trip to a place called Auschwitz, it's shower time."

Jpost Editorial: Wake up Twitter, shut down Khamenei’s account

Head of Twitter Policy for the Nordics and Israel Ylwa Pettersson, participating in the meeting via video link, categorized Khamenei’s tweets as permissible political speech.

“We have an approach to world leaders that presently says direct interactions with public figures, comments on political issues of the day or foreign policy saber-rattling on military and economic issues are generally not in violation of twitter rules,” Pettersson said.

Twitter’s Vice President of Public Policy Sinéad McSweeney went further writing to Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Orit Farkash Hacohen that Khamenei’s hateful tweets did not violate their policies.

“World leaders use Twitter to engage in discourse with each other, as well as their constituents,” McSweeney wrote in a June 15 letter.

“Political issues”? “Discourse with each other”? “Foreign policy saber-rattling”? Has Twitter lost its mind? Calling for the destruction of another people is not a political issue and is not foreign policy banter. It is a declaration of genocide, against a people that has some experience in attempts to wipe it out.

In another exchange, pro-Israel activist Emily Schrader asked Pettersson about Holocaust denial on the platform, pointing out that Facebook and TikTok ban it.

Pettersson said: “As our hateful conduct policy states, if the content tries to directly threaten or harass on the basis of religion, then that is something we would enforce.”

Meaning, Holocaust denial not targeting someone specific would not be a violation.

Social media companies like to say that they do not censor what people write out of a desire to uphold freedom of speech. We agree that freedom of speech is a value worth fighting for but there have to be red lines. Antisemitism, sexual exploitation, murder, organized hate and announcing plans to kill someone.

This also needs to apply to the leader of a state calling to destroy another state. This is not political talk or foreign policy disagreements. This is beyond the pale and standing by, as Twitter is doing, will be a stain on the platform for as long as Khamenei is allowed to continue to tweet.

Take a stand Twitter. Shut down Khamenei’s account.

Deputy anti-Semitism envoy slams Twitter for double standard on Khamenei and Trump

U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism Ellie Cohanim slammed Twitter on Friday for censoring U.S. President Donald Trump, but not Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has repeatedly called for Israel’s destruction, saying that it’s “clear” that all that the social media company cares about is the November presidential elections.

In an interview on Fox News on Friday, Cohanim said that she and her family had to flee Iran during the 1979 revolution and increasing anti-Semitism.

“So, I can tell you that I personally understand the threat that…Ayatollah Khamenei presents to the Jewish people and to the world,” she said.

Cohanim also said, “The hypocrisy is so thick it becomes clear to me … that this is about one thing and one thing only and that’s the elections coming up in the United States on November 3rd.”

Queen Elizabeth would have been impressed with today's Gaza supermarkets

In 1957, Queen Elizabeth made her first visit to the United States as a monarch.

After watching college (American) football game, while her motorcade was driving through suburban West Hyattsville, Maryland, she saw a modern American supermarket (in the Queenstown shopping center on Queens Chapel Road) and asked if she could visit. Arrangements were quickly made.

“It’s very nice to be able to take your children here, isn’t it?” Elizabeth asked one bewildered shopper.
[Prince] Philip said to another shopper, picking up the lone cucumber that rested at the bottom of the man’s shopping cart, “You haven’t got very far, have you?”

If an American supermarket amazed the Queen of England then, imagine what she would have thought of today’s Gaza supermarkets.

The Al-Farra family of Khan Younis has apologized for how bad they made Gazans look in a video they made celebrating the cruel slaughtering of cows in the streets of Gaza for Eid al Adha on Friday.

The video, set to war-like music, shows a large clan of young men screaming in celebration for their macho abilities to stab tethered cows, prominently showing off their blood stained hands and clothes as if they were trophies.

The Al Farra family issued a statement that tried to justify the video as a means to make Gazans feel good about themselves, emphasizing that they are peace loving people and proud terrorists.

The Al-Farra family is considered an integral part of the entire Palestinian community and it is a family that preserves the rites of our religion, our customs and beliefs and has a firm doctrine that stems from the teachings of our Islamic religion and we would like to clarify what happened from some of the young people who published a video that shows their joy in the feast. …The family emphasize the following:
1 - Some of the family's youths attempted, with innocent intentions, to bring happiness to their families by celebrating the blessed Eid Al-Adha, but they were betrayed by how it was expressed, and some scenes which we did not accept and which the enemies of the nation took advantage of to distort the image of our people and our nation appeared.
2- These young people wish to live in peace like all the peoples of the world and do not like violence and blood.
3 - These young people have university degrees, including higher degrees, and they suffer from unemployment, like other young people under the siege, but they will remain pillars of this country for liberation and state building.
4- We deplore the scenes that appeared in the videos, which aroused the feelings of many and offended the image of our Palestinian people and our Islamic nation.
5- The Farra family, as part of the Palestinian fabric, has offered many martyrs, prisoners of war and wounded, and the family will remain an asset and a pillar of the homeland and religion.

Clearly the family itself edited the video to highlight their bloodlust, so their only regret is that some non-Gazans saw it and put it on social media.

This other Gaza Eid video shows a cow trampling a young man who is attempting to stab it, so other men beat it with an iron bar.

(h/t Abu Ali)