Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Heroism, unsung: Lt. Col M.

Is it possible to mourn a man you don’t know?

A wave of sadness hit me and, with a sigh, I sat down next to the grave of Lt. Col M., tears welling up in my eyes.

The fresh grave was piled with flower wreaths, bright and beautiful, a silent testament of the grief of those who truly understood the enormity of the loss. To them he was not anonymous – a son, husband, father, friend, colleague and mentor who touched countless lives, influenced organizations and helped shape the country we have today.

This man, who must remain anonymous for national security reasons and for the safety of his own family, dedicated his life to our country, knowing that he would never get public credit or glory. Heroism, unsung.

On Nov 11^th, we learned of a special operation happening inside Gaza that developed into a gun fight between IDF soldiers and Hamas terrorists. The reporting that night ended with the information that 7 Hamas terrorists were killed, including one of their regional military leaders. We were told that all the IDF soldiers returned to Israeli territory.

No one reported what condition they were in.

The next day we learned that M. had been killed and another soldier had been injured. Later the media released some details of the heroism of that night – how M drew fire to himself, giving the other soldiers the time needed to react to the threat. How the injured soldier tried to save M. How the IAF pilot rescued the soldiers from the midst of a full-blown firefight.

Hollywood creates blockbuster films from the stories of lesser deeds.

During my years in Israel I learned that real heroes don’t like to be given that label. In their minds, they just did what needed to be done. Often, their focus will be on what was not accomplished, feeling uncomfortable and upset that they did not do more.

Lt. Col M. was an Israeli hero. He died heroically but more than that, he lived heroically. He was an example and an inspiration to those who knew him, a friend who listened more than he spoke, always there, always ready to help.

The results of his unsung deeds (and those of others like him) are living Israelis, people who would otherwise be dead.

I am glad I had the opportunity to speak with his parents and wife. It is such a small thing… there is no real way to repay such an enormous debt or to provide solace for such depths of grief.

To his parents I said: “The people of Israel know that we owe him so much but we can’t thank him so I came to thank you for raising your son to become who he was.”

His father’s response was: “We all owe so much to this country. We need to do everything possible for each other.” His mother thanked me and expressed what many bereaved parents before her have said: “I hope that he will be the last one. That no other mother will have to feel this.” How many mothers have said that before her? How many will say that after?

When I saw his wife, my heart cracked. Straight and small, she had tissues balled up in her hands. She cried, almost silently. I gave her a hug. Relatives and friends surrounded her, supporting her, strained to hear what we were saying.

What could I say?

Nothing can really comfort when your foundation is suddenly shattered, ripped out from underneath you. How do you reconcile the fact that your husband had two loves, your family and your country, and that his dedication to one resulted in him being taken from the other?

I told her: “I know this doesn’t help but maybe it will make things a little less terrible to know that there are people all over the country and even around the world who don’t know your name but know about your sorrow and are praying for you, that you will have strength and comfort. That your children will be okay. That knowing that their daddy was a hero will help. Please hug them knowing this. Knowing that many, many people care.”

Softly she responded: “Thank you. I will hug them a lot. Give them many, many hugs.”

True heroism isn’t in glory. It is modest and quiet. Unsung.

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11/20 Links Pt1: Shapiro: AirBNB Goes Anti-Semitic, Targets Jewish Businesses In Judea, Samaria; The NGOs Behind Airbnb’s BDS Policy; Abbas rejected billions of dollars in return for J'lem concessions

From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: AirBNB Goes Anti-Semitic, Targets Jewish Businesses In Judea, Samaria

This is absurd. As Dr. Michael Oren points out, AirBNB lists apartments in Turkish-occupied Cyprus, the Moroccan-occupied Sahara, Chinese-occupied Tibet and Russian-occupied Crimea. Not only that, but AirBNB allows listings in a wide variety of countries without any democratic rights and with wildly discriminatory policies.

Judea and Samaria are disputed territories, not “occupied” territories. Israel controls those territories thanks to repeated refusal by Arab states that repeatedly declared war on Israel to accept any peace deal. Radical Muslim anti-Semites and their left-wing apologists insist not only that these territories be turned over to the terrorist Palestinian Authority for control, but that Jews evacuate those territories entirely, making them Judenrein. Remember, this AirBNB policy isn’t targeting the Israeli government — it’s targeting Jews themselves for living in areas under international dispute.

Leaders of the BDS movement are explicitly anti-Semitic, calling openly for the end of Israel’s existence. The very notion of labeling Jewish products from particular areas for boycott is reminiscent of Nazi policy directed against Jews. As Alan Dershowitz writes:

The boycott against Israel and its Jewish supporters (to many Palestinians, all of Israel is one big "settlement"; just look at any map of Palestine) began before any "occupation" or "settlements" and picked up steam just as Israel offered to end the "occupation" and settlements as part of a two-state solution that the Palestinians rejected. BDS is not a protest against Israel's policies. It is a protest against Israel's very existence.

Still, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) is gaining serious steam on the mainstream Left these days thanks to the intersectional notion that Jews rank high on the hierarchy of privilege. Such thinking allows anti-Semitism to thrive across the world, and particularly in the Middle East. AirBNB’s latest move is simply the best evidence yet that the intersectional Leftist ideology has invaded the corporate world, and that anti-Semitism is perfectly acceptable among otherwise “woke” actors on the Left.

NGO Monitor: The NGOs and Funders Behind Airbnb’s BDS Policy

On November 19, 2018, Airbnb issued a press release announcing it was “removing listings” in “Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank.” The company provided no details as to how it defines “Israeli settlements” or the “Occupied West Bank” and whether its decision relates to Jerusalem, and in particular, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. This change in policy was a clear result of a coordinated and well-financed campaign targeting the company by NGOs involved in BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns against Israel, led by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), in concert with the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), at least three Israeli groups, and the Palestinian Authority. The funders responsible for this campaign include a number of European governments as well as the US-based Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Airbnb faced an intensive multi-year attack and threats of being included in the forthcoming UN HRC “blacklist,” boycotts, and other forms of negative publicity. Indeed, the company acknowledged that offering listings in West Bank “settlements” was not illegal, meaning that its decision was the result of political pressure.

The company provided five vague criteria used in the process of making this decision:
“1. Recognize that each situation is unique and requires a case-by-case approach.
2. Consult with a range of experts and our community of stakeholders.
3. Assess any potential safety risks for our hosts and guests.
4. Evaluate whether the existence of listings is contributing to existing human suffering.
5. Determine whether the existence of listings in the occupied territory has a direct connection to the larger dispute in the region.”

Airbnb did not disclose details of how these criteria were implemented, how it analyzed these factors, nor identify the supposed “experts” and “community of stakeholders” consulted.

After Airbnb, watchdog calls for Booking.com to remove settlement listings

Human Rights Watch on Tuesday urged Booking.com to follow the example of Airbnb and withdraw listings for rentals located in settlements in the West Bank.

Airbnb said Monday it will remove such listings, just ahead of the release of an HRW report criticizing them.

Israel strongly denounced Airbnb’s decision and threatened legal action against the company, while Palestinian officials welcomed it.

The US-based rights group issued its report on Tuesday and called on Booking.com to follow Airbnb’s “positive step.”

“By ending its brokering of rentals in illegal settlements on land off-limits to Palestinians, Airbnb has taken a stand against discrimination and land confiscation and theft,” Omar Shakir, HRW’s director for Israel and the Palestinian territories, told AFP.

“It is an important and welcome step and we encourage other companies like Booking.com to follow their lead and stop listing in settlements.”

HRW issued the report on the online reservations firms, entitled “Bed and Breakfast on Stolen Land,” along with Israeli NGO Kerem Navot.

When the popular demagogue Linda Sarsour demonizes Zionism, she tends to talk in generalities, leaving its evils to the imagination of her audience. Considering her unconditional support for Louis Farrakhan and his own incitement of Jew-hatred, it is not difficult to figure our where Sarsour and her allies stand.

But Zionism, for all of Sarsour's talk, is simply the national movement of the Jewish people in support of the re-establishment of the Jewish homeland in its historic territory.

That being said, how many Jews in the US are Zionists, that is -- how many Jews are pro-Israel?

According to a national survey done last month by the Mellman Group, a lot:

While 32% of those surveyed were pro-Israel and supportive of its policies, 35% described themselves as pro-Israel while being critical of some of its policies and 24% described themselves as pro-Israel while remaining critical of many of its policies.

That's 91% - and the report itself actually puts the number at 92%:

Most Jewish voters (92%) consider themselves to be “generally pro-Israel,” but fewer than a third (32%) say that they are also supportive of the current Israeli government’s policies. A majority (59%) say that they are “pro-Israel,” but critical of at least some Israeli government policies, with 24% critical of many of the government’s policies.

The implication?

Its one thing to generalize and attack the idea of Zionism, but when the real numbers indicate that the vast majority of Jews in the US are pro-Israel, attacks on Zionism and upon those who support Israel is no longer an abstraction.

But those same results play into another of Sarsour's attacks on the Jewish community.

Sarsour, who has difficulty dealing with criticism, reacted harshly to criticism of Ilhan Omar's support for BDS. Sarsour lashed out, claiming that Omar was

“being attacked for saying that she supports BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) and the right for people to engage in constitutionally protected freedoms. This is not only coming from the right-wing but some folks who masquerade as progressives but always choose their allegiance to Israel over their commitment to democracy and free speech.”

The claim of Jewish dual loyalty is, of course, an old antisemitic standard, something that Sarsour doesn't think applies when she talks about the Palestinian roots of herself and other Muslims.

But the same poll dashes that idea.

Jewish attitudes towards both Israel and the US defy the simplistic labeling tossed about by Sarsour:

According to the poll, despite 92% of Jews identifying as being pro-Israel -

o American Jews are not pro-Trump, despite his strong support for Israel
o American Jews oppose moving the US embassy to Jerusalem
o American Jews oppose the way Trump is handling US relations with Palestinian Arabs

And this goes beyond being anti-Trump.

According to The American Jewish Committee's 2007 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion, taken 11 years ago strong feelings about Israel did not translate into favoring Israel interests over US interests.

Yet despite 70% feeling close to Israel and 69% responding that caring about Israel was very important to them when it came to picking priorities of what were the most important issues in the 2008 election - only 6% chose support for Israel as being a main factor in deciding whom they would vote for:

The bottom line is while Jews continue to consider themselves pro-Israel and support her, that support has not overshadowed their concern for domestic issues in the US itself.

That fact has been a source of frustration because many would like to see that level of support for Israel to translate into support for politicians who are even stronger in their support for Israel.

At the same time, however, it proves the lie to the antisemitic incitement Sarsour tries to stir up against American Jews, claiming they are disloyal to the country they live in.

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The EU spends lots of money to help the Palestinian Authority arrest critics, opponents, and people who sell land to Jews

From their website:

EUPOL COPPS, established on 1 January 2006, is the EU Police and Rule of Law Mission for the Palestinian Territories. Initially the Mission was established as a Police Mission comprising a Police Advisory Section. In 2008 a Rule of Law Section was added.

EUPOL COPPS (the EU Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support), mainly through these two sections, assists the Palestinian Authority in building its institutions, for a future Palestinian state, focused on security and justice sector reforms. This is effected under Palestinian ownership and in accordance with the best European and international standards. Ultimately the Mission’s objective is to improve the safety and security of the Palestinian people.

The organization recently built a huge headquarters in Ramallah:

EUPOL COPPS has been around for nearly 13 years now, and they seem proud of their accomplishments. They have an annual budget of nearly EUR 13 million.

But while they advise the Palestinian Authority police, the PA police are arresting and torturing critics and political opponents. They are arresting people who commit the crime of selling land to Jews.

At what point does the EU own responsibility for being complicit in the crimes of the PA security forces? If they cannot get the PA to understand the basics of human rights after 13 years, what are they still doing there?

How many years does it take to cross the line from being mere advisers into being collaborators in violating the rights of Palestinians?

(h/t Irene)

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Yesterday, the founder of Women's March, Teresa Shook, issued a blistering critique of the current leaders of the organization and their tolerance for antisemitism:

Bob Bland, Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour and Carmen Perez of Women’s March, Inc. have steered the Movement away from its true course. I have waited, hoping they would right the ship. But they have not. In opposition to our Unity Principles, they have allowed anti-Semitism, anti- LBGTQIA sentiment and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform by their refusal to separate themselves from groups that espouse these racist, hateful beliefs. I call for the current Co-Chairs to step down and to let others lead who can restore faith in the Movement and its original intent. I stand in Solidarity with all the Sister March Organizations, to bring the Movement back to its authentic purpose. As Women’s March founder, I am stepping up to bring focus back to the Unity Principles on which our movement began, and with the support of all of those who marched and have continued to march, I pledge to support grassroots, decentralized leadership promoting a safe, worldwide community devoid of hate speech, bigotry and racism.

Predictably, Sarsour and Mallory and the rest issued their own statement accusing Shook of trying to fracture the movement that she herself founded.

But it was a comment from Mercy Morganfield to Shook's post that really identified the specific outrages that Bland, Mallory, Sarsour and Perez do:

As an African American and past president of the DC chapter’s Women’s March. I agree with you, Ms. Shook. I’d repeatedly denounced Tamika’s anti-Semitic rhetoric in public and in private. I was shushed by Bob Bland as she protected Tamika. I was shushed by others who didnt want their criticism to reflect badly on women. But not only have they not held up the Unity Principles, they refused to give the chapters any accountability for the money they receive in donations and grants. The travel with a glam squad. They employ The Nation of Islam as security detail. They fly their family and friends everywhere. They stay in 5-Star hotels. They pay themselves a monthly stipend. They refuse to show financial records when asked. They want to trademark the name Women’s March although most of the original marchers have left. They are not only non-inclusive of certain segments of women but Tamika and Linda have betrayed all women by their subservience to radical religious beliefs that do not believe in equal rights for women. Tamika wrote about “enemies of Jesus” just as any right-wing anti-semitic establishment would write. All six should step down. It is a board of six friends and zero accountability. The four mentioned and two more friends. No involvement of state chapters who actually do all the work. I don’t think they will resign, not as long as millions of dollars are available for their personal use. This happens when four tokens are chosen. They were handpicked to make the movement look less white. That is not intersectionality. That is tokenism. And tokenism attracts predators.

Practically every sentence here is a bombshell, and I see no reason to doubt any of it. The accusation that the current board of the March is siphoning funds for their own use is something that needs to be investigated.

But within the tsunami of complaints is an accusation that would explain why the leaders of the Women's March do not want to repudiate Louis Farrakhan and instead try to downplay his obvious hate.

They have a financial relationship with him.

The Women's March is paying an antisemitic, anti-gay, anti-white, misogynist hate group - while at the same time pretending to adhere to Unity Principles that are against everything Nation of Islam stands for.

Morganfield's post is not getting the same press as Shook's, but hopefully today she will be interviewed and her accusations investigated by the media.

UPDATE: Here's a post where Linda Sarsour offers her "security detail" to protect an author from "Zionist" threats.

Source

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11/19 Links Pt2: Seth Mandel: Ostracizing Jewish Trump Supporters Will Only Hurt the Jewish Community; Airbnb to stop operating in Judea and Samaria

From Ian:

When America doubted my Jewish grandmother’s loyalty

As I reflect on these events in my grandmother’s life, I am left wondering if our country has learned anything at all since she sat in that El Paso courtroom. And I confess that these reflections do not leave me feeling terribly cheerful.

Today, Jews are still painfully aware that no matter how “American” we may feel, we can easily be accused of having divided loyalties. Politicians sow fear of immigrants, stoking suspicion among neighbors. A simple mistake, a scurrilous rumor or “foreign-looking” family members can leave many among us vulnerable to others’ suspicions that we cannot be trusted – or, as we have seen in recent days, vulnerable even to violence.

My grandmother’s case offers an early glimpse into this aspect of our national culture, which would continue to corrode in the years that followed. Her hearing in the spring of 1949 was 5 1/2 years before Senator McCarthy would finally be chastened with the famous rebuke “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

We are – thankfully – several decades beyond the paranoia of McCarthyism, but its tenacious cells still sleep in the veins of fear beneath our nation’s skin. Today one can witness firsthand how easily some Americans’ love of our country can metastasize into a strain of xenophobia so pernicious that they can be convinced to turn against their fellow citizens.

Seventy years after my grandmother was summoned before a committee of the federal Justice Department, anti-Semitism is ascendant once again across America. And once more it is garbed in the belief that Jews cannot be fully American, that our values threaten the integrity of the nation which has been our beloved home for centuries.

When we discovered the nondescript black binder among my grandmother’s belongings, we had no idea what secrets it would hold. We could never have predicted the story that those yellowing photographs and official documents would tell. And, I confess, we never expected that the historical territory through which that binder led us would look quite so familiar.

Seth Mandel: Ostracizing Jewish Trump Supporters Will Only Hurt the Jewish Community

On the day of the massacre in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, the political commentator Franklin Foer wrote in the Atlantic that “any strategy for enhancing the security of American Jewry should involve shunning Trump’s Jewish enablers. Their money should be refused, their presence in synagogues not welcome. They have placed their community in danger.” Foer was not alone in this sentiment, which was echoed by at least one influential rabbi. Seth Mandel warns of the dangers of this passion for anathematizing political opponents, made even more dangerous by the tendency to blame Israel for the anti-Semitic violence:

Two versions of this [claim] predominate: one, that Israel’s strength has deceived Jews into weakening their position in America; two, that Israeli policies are to blame for the bloodshed. . . . The former Anti-Defamation League official Harry Reis [stated that] Benjamin Netanyahu, the Knesset member Naftali Bennett, the Israeli ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer, and the U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman “are enablers and defenders of [Donald Trump’s] hate and the white supremacists who support him.”

The New Yorker’s Adam Davidson took the next logical step in this progression and—ironically, endorsing a key neo-Nazi talking point—proclaimed: “The bizarre and terrifying nexus between Israel and white nationalism actually starts to make sense when you understand the ethno-nationalist literature. Extreme-right Zionists and anti-Semitic white nationalists have the same core beliefs.” Liberals have thus unwittingly been reprising the old “Zionism equals racism” calumny with the 2018 version: Zionism is borderline Nazism. . . .

So there you have it: the Jews are the authors of their own destruction, supporters of Israel are disloyal Americans, Zionism is a first cousin to Nazism, right-wing Jews are Nazi collaborators, and Trump-supporting Jews should be expurgated from Jewish communal life.

Why are [Foer and others] fixated on excommunication? [There] is a great irony here: liberal laymen and clergy are deploying one of the most heavy-handed rabbinical retributive powers on the menu. . . . But of course the religion we’re talking about isn’t Judaism, is it? It’s progressivism—the Torah of Liberalism. In leftist politics, isolation is the first, not the last, line of defense against upsetting ideas.

EastEnders tackles antisemitism with storyline about vandalised Jewish grave

The BBC’s EastEnders has become the first soap to tackle the issue of antisemitism, in a new storyline introduced this week.

The programme has used the character of Dr Harold Legg, thought to be the only identifiably Jewish role in British soaps, to address the issue. Dr Legg is played by the 92-year-old Jewish actor Leonard Fenton.

Thursday’s programme showed the elderly doctor visiting his mother’s grave in a Jewish cemetery, together with “Dot Cotton”, the role played by June Brown, who is 91.

Dr Legg is explaining to Dot the custom of leaving a stone on a grave, when the pair, to their horror, see graffiti and a swastika daubed on Esther Legg’s tombstone.

As I mentioned at the end of the first part of this review of Lukianoff and Haidt’s 2018 Coddling of the American Mind, the book does not specifically deal with the how the conflict over Israel is playing out on campuses, apart from some examples of pro-Israel speakers being disrupted at talks given at certain colleges.

While their choice to provide a general analysis, rather than diving into one particular controversial issue, is perfectly reasonable, I suspect the role anti-Israel forces have played on campus over the last few decades helped catalyze what we’re now seeing in many places today.

New forms of behavior rarely spring from nothing, nor are they the result of careful analysis then translated into action. Rather, they tend to rely on precedent. For when someone behaves in ways no one else would have ever considered previously, that makes something once unthinkable thinkable. It is only after people start doing things that criticisms as well as justifications of what they are doing get formed, leading to misbehavior either getting shunned or establishing new norms.

Precedent can provide an explanation for many phenomena, such as mass shootings like the horror show in Pittsburg last month. If places like schools, synagogues and other places of worship have been outgunned since the invention of the gun, where did the idea of shooting up lots of innocents in such places originate? This response provides some potential answers based on individual psychology and societal change. But another factor is that it only became possible for an unstable individual to consider opening fire on a schoolyard when someone else had already set the precedent.

If you look across the increasingly radicalized campus landscape, featuring intersectional mobs making demands on administrators, faculty and fellow students based on allegations of systematic racism and other crimes, an eerie familiarity kicks in the more attention you have been paying to how the assault on Israel has proceeded on campuses over the last several decades.

The aggressiveness of the campus campaigns covered in Coddling is one source of such déjà vu. I’ve lost count of the number of incidents of violence that accompanied pro-Israel events, especially during the era of BDS. Where did this form of behavior spring from? At some point (maybe Michael Oren at UC Irvine), a group of anti-Israel activists got it into their heads to try a new innovative tactic of shouting down a speaker they didn’t want anyone else to hear.

Once that precedent was set, justification followed in the form of claims that the protestors were simply taking advantage of their free speech rights, ignoring the fact that those “rights” were being used entirely to shut down the free speech of everyone else. When those responsible for preventing such travesties decided to sit out making hard choices (i.e., when school administrators soft peddled responses to the behavior of SJP and similar groups), a precedent was fully established that said disrupting others through tactics that dance right at (and occasionally over) the line of criminality was justified and would go unpunished.

Today, the mobs are falling on many more than Jews and non-Jewish supporters of Israel. But if precedent had not been set beforehand it is not clear where they might have gotten the idea to do so.

The language, and psychology behind the language, used to explain modern radical politics also owes a debt to the Palestiniaization of campus political discourse.

To begin with, there is the unwillingness to entertain (or even listen to) any fact or opinion that falls afoul of “the narrative.” This reaches extremes in anti-Israel politics, up to and including the need to invent pretend phenomena (like Pinkwashing) to avoid and prevent any thought about the chasm between Israel and her foes regarding treatment of homosexuals. But whole swarths of history, countless demonstrable facts and one of history’s most enormous paper trails detailing Palestinian responsibility for their own fate must also be dumped down the memory hole, or buried beneath mountains of propaganda (some of it written by PhDs) that says black is white, and anyone who disagrees is a bigot.

Does America have a lot to answer for regarding it racist pass? You bet it does. But is racism and white supremacy more prevalent today than ever before? There are fact of the matter and arguments to be made that could be brought in to answer that question. But those touting the narrative underlying today’s campus protests are unable to listen to facts or engage in arguments that conflict with their beliefs, and are ready to stop anyone else from doing so.

Then there is our old friend ruthlessness that needs to be brought into the equation. When the concept of intersectionality (which says all oppressed people are fighting a common struggle and thus should unite) first came on the scene, questions came up regarding who gets to join the struggle (can Jews who support Israel partake, for example?) and what standards will be used to determine a hierarchy of more vs. less oppressed groups.

Today’s campus coalitions provide answers to those questions by establishing which oppressed people and issues can and cannot be discussed. As I’ve noted a number of times before, feminist groups joining such coalitions must fully embrace the Palestinian cause, while the treatment of women throughout the Middle East (including “Palestine”) seems to be permanently off the table.

In discourse I once heard used about the topic of intersectional priorities, the phenomena I just described was boiled down to “Palestine trumps woman,” an especially ironic twist, given that the ruthless actors from SJP and elsewhere who women activists must submit to are mostly men.

I was completely convinced that the psychological and social phenomena Lukianoff and Haidt describe in Coddling are real, and the mechanism they lay out to describe changes they observed is compelling. But remember that there are always ruthless actors ready to take advantage of developing trends, including unhealthy ones, to magnify their own power.

The Palestine Uber Alles cru has managed to establish themselves as the arbiters of what constitutes true belief within this new order, and they have every reason to want damaging trends to continue and spread, regardless of the cost to the rest of the world.

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Rooting for the underdog may be noble, but it is no guarantee that you know what you are talking about.

In November 2016, Ami Horowitz did one of his "Ami on the Street" interviews, this one covering "How white liberals really view black voter."

The issue was voter ID's and the first half showed him interviewing students at UC Berkeley, where the students claimed:

o African Americans are less likely to have state ID's
o Minorities are less likely to have ID's
o African Americans don't live in areas with easy access to DMV's
o African Americans don't have access to the Internet
o African Americans don't have the money to pay an Internet Service Provider
o African Americans don't know how the Internet works

The second half of the video takes place in Harlem -- and needless to say, the African Americans interviewed thought the Berkeley students to be wildly uninformed, if not racist themselves.

See for yourself:

I was reminded of this video when I read about the College of Arts and Science at NYU, where a proposal for a BDS resolution was brought by Rose Asaf last month.

A student countered:

“BDS infantilizes Palestinians, removing any responsibility or agency from their end...It hinders the prospects of a mutually agreed-upon peaceful solution and ultimately hurts the wrong people, namely, the near 50,000 Palestinians with jobs at risk if their firms are sanctioned.”

Asaf however, insisted that major Palestinian trade unions approve of BDS:

“It is neo-colonial and paternalistic to tell Palestinian workers what is best for them when they are telling us what is best for themselves — and that is to support BDS”

Asaf's claim does not actually refute the point that boycotts would harm Palestinian Arab jobs.
The reference to unions approving of BDS just implies that Palestinian Arab workers would be willing to lose their jobs -- assuming these unions actually reflect the opinions of the workers.

But do the union leaders actually represent the Palestinian Arabs and their interests? Do Palestinian Arabs really support BDS?

The case of SodaStream seems to disprove Asaf's point.

SodaStream employed more than 500 Palestinian Arab workers in East Jerusalem and the "West Bank" -- Forbes puts the number of Palestinian Arabs employed at 900.

Those 500+ workers did not care where the plants were located, and when pressure forced SodaStream to move, those workers lost their jobs.

Are Asaf and those unions any more knowledgeable of what Palestinian Arab workers want?
For that matter, is what those workers want even a priority of the supporters of BDS?

Supporting the evidence that Palestinian Arabs are willing to work in Israel and even in the settlements is a July poll carried out by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre, in cooperation with Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. It found that a sizeable majority of Palestinian Arabs in both the West Bank and Gaza have no problem working in Israel:

Another example is the ignorance of those who claim to speak out on behalf of Israel Arabs in claiming that Israel is an apartheid state.

While Israel is not perfect and there is a lot of work still to be done, many of those who claim to defend the interests of the Arabs are apparently unaware of the following list compiled by Elder of Ziyon, illustrating the extent of integration of Arabs into Israeli society that has been achieved:

There are Arabs in the IDF such as:

o Colonel Ghassan Alian, Commander of IDF Golani Brigade
o Yusef Mishleb - IDF Major General
o Annett Hoskia, an outspoken Israeli Zionist, whose 3 sons have served in IDF.
o Shibel Karmy Mansour, announcer Israel Army Radio

In the Israeli judicial system there are:

o George Kara, who led a 3-judge panel that convicted an Israeli ex-President.
o Salim Joubran, Israeli Supreme Court Justice
o Jamal Hakrush, Israeli police deputy commissioner.

And then there is academia:

o Dr. Jacob Hanna, Biologist and stem cell research at Weizmann Institute
o Dr. Rania Okby, first female Bedouin physician in history
o Dr. Hossam Haick, World renowned scientist and inventor of innovative cancer-detection techniques
o Dr. Aziz Darawshe, Director of Emergency Medicine, Hadassah Medical Center - Ein Kerem
o Masad Barhoum, Director General of Western Galilee Hospital
o Professor Alean Al-Krenawi, President Achva College, University of the Negev
o Ashraf Brik, Professor at Ben-Gurion University, winner of Israel's 2011 "Outstanding Young Chemist" Award
o Omar Barghouti, Doctoral student at Tel Aviv -- while a leading Arab advocate for academic boycott of Israel.

In politics and diplomacy:

o George Deek, recently appointed Israel's ambassador to Azerbaijan
o Naim Aradi, Israel's Ambassador to Norway
o Reda Mansour, historian, poet and former Israeli ambassador to Ecuador
o Jamal Zahalka, received BA, MA and PhD. Member of Israeli Parliament & leader of Balad political party - while describing himself a victim of "Israeli racist Apartheid"
o Majalli Wahabi, Former Deputy Speaker of Israel Parliament, and acting President of Israel in 2/07

In popular culture

o Walid Badir, Israeli football star/Capt of HaPoel Tel Aviv
o Mira Awad, Actress, singer & songwriter - represented Israel at 2009 Eurovision Song Festival
o Nissren Kader, Winner of Israeli singing competition
o Lina Makhoul, Chosen by Israeli viewers -- 2013 Winner of "The Voice"
o Rana Raslan, Former Miss Israel
o Lina Machola, Miss Israel Universe
o Niral Karantinji, Winner of Israel's Next Top Model
o Salma Fayumi, Israeli nurse and runner-up in Master Chef Israel
o Lucy Aharish, Israeli news anchor/TV host

As in the case of the Ami Horowitz video above, there is a lot of ignorance out there in the claims made by people claiming to be looking out for the humanitarian rights of Palestinian Arabs.

But also a lot of malignance as well.

It's almost as if the Palestinian Arabs are not their primary concern of some of these critics of Israel.

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11/19 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Why Israel let Hamas win latest round of Gaza violence; NGOs in Gaza and the West Bank Incite with European Support

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Why Israel let Hamas win latest round of Gaza violence

Israel’s security cabinet’s decision Tuesday afternoon to walk away from the war Hamas initiated Monday and to accept a “ceasefire” is frustrating and infuriating. Hamas shot nearly 500 projectiles into Israel in under 24 hours. It blew up a bus with a Kornet anti-tank missile. Sixty Israelis were wounded, several critically. One civilian was killed. Numerous homes were destroyed.

Israel has never experienced any rocket onslaught from Gaza remotely as intense as what Hamas and Islamic Jihad shot off on Monday and Tuesday. And yet, rather than respond with equal – or better yet – far greater force and teach Hamas and Islamic Jihad a lesson they would long remember, the security cabinet sufficed with a couple hundred pinpoint air attacks, and then accepted the IDF’s advice and opted for the ceasefire. In so doing, they left the residents of southern Israel virtual hostages of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who have retained the capacity to attack them at will.

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman’s sudden resignation on Wednesday may help his little party Yisrael Beitenu get reelected to Knesset in the next elections. But if it does, then Liberman will have won his political survival at Israel’s expense. Hamas is entirely justified in presenting Liberman’s resignation as proof that it defeated Israel this week.

Winners don’t quit. Losers do.

But beyond being frustrating and infuriating, the cabinet’s decision is a cause for deep concern. Why did the cabinet opt to stand down in the face of Hamas’s unprecedented onslaught?

JPost Editorial: Golan, Israel

Anyone remotely familiar with Israel’s geographical and political landscape knows that the notion of giving up the Golan Heights is laughable.

Never mind the natural beauty, ruggedness and open spaces the region offers –qualities which have helped turn it into one of the country’s main getaways and outdoor recreational destinations.

The northern area was captured by the IDF from Syria during the Six Day War in 1967, after Israel was attacked simultaneously by Egypt, Jordan and the regime of Hafez Assad, father of the current leader. The area is a vital strategic asset.

Imagine the strife and danger that northern Israel would be facing due to the long, bloody civil war in Syria if the Golan was still in the hands of brutal Syrian dictator Basher Assad.

Former prime minister Menachem Begin’s surprise measure to annex the Golan Heights – which he pushed through the Knesset in 1981 by a vote of 63 to 21 – has proven to be a far-sighted move that probably has more consensus approval inside Israel than almost any other issue.

Begin’s decision was based on the belligerent Syrian declaration that even if Israel and the Palestinians would have reached a peace agreement, Syria would never make peace with Israel.

The reactions to the annexation were predictable. Then-Syrian president Assad called it a “declaration of war,” and the Reagan administration said that the annexation was inconsistent with the Camp David accords, complaining that the United States had been given no prior warning of the move.

That’s why Friday’s vote by the US to oppose for the first time the UN General Assembly’s annual call on Israel to return the Golan to Syria is so welcome, even though it’s been so long in coming.

NGOs in Gaza and the West Bank Incite with European Support

In Gaza, the NGO network is closely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and the European "Red-Green" alliance, comprised of the European Left and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The NGO network in Ramallah, however, belongs to the historical Palestinian Left - the former Communists and the Marxist terror organizations such as the Popular Front and the Democratic Front.

The NGOs in Ramallah are very radical, marked by hatred of Israel and the U.S., and they foment tension between Europe and the U.S.

In the last Palestinian Legislative Council elections in 2006, the leftist parties won only meager percentages and barely qualified for the Palestinian parliament. They maintain their political power thanks only to the NGO frameworks, which are buttressed by European money.

Mustafa Barghouti is the spokesman of the Ramallah NGOs. He was the leader of the Communist Party in the West Bank. In the 2006 presidential elections, he ran against Abbas and won 20% of the vote.

When former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry tried to promote an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, Barghouti instigated a demonstration against him.

Most Israeli media in English are not publishing the exact statement Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released last night, but parts of it indicate that there may be something going on around Gaza that we are not being told explicitly.

Bibi said "I want to tell you, citizens of Israel, I understand your heart. A large part of the criticism stems from the fact that for obvious reasons, the full details of the IDF chief of staff, the generals of the IDF, the head of the Shin Bet, the head of the Mossad and myself can not be presented, [The plans] are still in full force and that I am obligated to complete them in order to bring full security to the residents of the south and to all the residents of Israel ... I will not say here tonight when we will act and how we will act.

"..... We will overcome our enemies. I say this, my friends, without minimizing the challenge before us, and I tell you beforehand that this will involve sacrifices, but I have no doubt that with the courage of our soldiers, the strength of our citizens, we will overcome our enemies."

Could these secret plans be part of the reason Naftali Bennett decided not to leave the coalition?

This is all very interesting.

(h/t Yoel)

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The origins of the concept of intersectionality were reasonable - to recognize that people do not necessarily belong to a single oppressed group and that their experiences cannot be assumed to be the same as the "mainstream" of that group. Hence, black women have completely different issues of being discriminated against than white women, but mainstream feminism did not take their issues into account.

The problem is that the concept has been twisted into a victimhood Olympics, where people are now competing with each other to be the top victims and therefore most deserving of attention.

This thinking has become so mainstream that in large swaths of the Western world, logic and morality have become nearly meaningless in the face of the intersectional view of the world where your identity as a member of a victim group trumps all else.

All that matters in any conflict - from mere arguments on Twitter to large scale wars - is to understand which side is perceived to be the bigger victim.

The victim always wins in the court of public opinion run by most of the media, academia and diplomats.

Here is my attempt on calculating who is the perceived underdog, and therefore the more righteous, of each side in any conflict. The more you think about it, the more it reflects reality:

Attribute	Victimhood score
Trans	8
Black	8
Native American or other First People	7
Woman	6
Gay	6
Muslim	5
Arab, other Middle Eastern	5
Hispanic	4
Disabled, pregnant	4
Anti-Zionist Jew	4
Wears hijab	2
Palestinian	2
Asian American	1
White	-1
Republican or conservative	-3
Christian (white only)	-3
Jew	-3
Visibly religious Jew	-3
Jewish settler	-6
Identifies proudly as Zionist	-8
Trump supporter	-8
White nationalist/neo Nazi	-18

Multiple attributes are summed. So for example, a female Muslim Palestinian Arab who wears a hijab has a victimhood score of 6+5+5+2+2, 20 in total, which is quite high. (If she is disabled and lesbian, the score soars to 30, meaning that she almost automatically wins the victimhood sweepstakes against anyone - unless the other person is similar but transsexual instead of lesbian.)

The score depends on how you are perceived. So if you only start identifying as a member of a victim group later in life, as long as no one knows any different, you are in. This also applies to those who are half-or-quarter members of the oppressed group.

There are two classes of people who are the lowest of the low, according to this taxonomy. One is white nationalists who are Christian and support Trump, a score of -30. The other is the proudly Zionist religious Jewish settler, who gathers a score of -20 (-21 if white, -16 if Mizrahi.)

White nationalists are the only people who may be considered more evil than Jewish settlers. In other words, if anyone besides a neo-Nazi kills a Jewish settler, the settler deserved it, in the minds of the people who look at the world this way.

This explains why it is not embarrassing for people to publicly support Rasmea Odeh, the Palestinian who murdered two Jews in Jerusalem. She has a score of at least 13 (I'm not certain if she is Muslim) and the people she killed, two Jewish students, had scores of merely -4. The act of murder, of lying to American immigration officials, of openly supporting terror - all that doesn't matter because the victimhood score is the only metric that matters to the intersectional crowd.

Anti-Zionist Jews claim victimhood status because they pretend that the entire Jewish establishment is blackballing them, even though somehow they heroically manage to loudly proclaim their positions without any repercussions. Most of them are still white and of course they are still Jews, so their score isn't very high, but high enough to claim moral authority over the Jews who don't hate Israel.

This chart also explains why Jews aren't considered as victims together with the other groups associated with intersectionality. By default, Jews are considered the oppressors (of blacks, Palestinians, Africans and possibly others) so they don't qualify to be considered victims - unless they are attacked by white nationalists, in which case the intersectional community suddenly pretends to care about antisemitism. (Of course, Mizrahi Jews "of color" or Ethiopian Jews can indeed be victims of Ashkenazic "white" Jews, which is reflected in the chart as they can be identified as Middle Eastern or black.)

Lots of questions are answered by this chart. Why is the world more upset over David Duke than Louis Farrakhan? Add up their scores and find out. Who is more disgusting, Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein? The chart answers all. Why does no one care about an explicit law against Muslims selling land to Jews? Read the chart. Why did Linda Sarsour, who from my understanding is not particularly devout, decide to wear a hijab? It is because it is an easy way to increase her score. Why were people so upset over Rachael Dolezal? Because she was caught cheating at the only system that matters nowadays.

The chart also indicates the level of outrage to be appropriate in any circumstance. The larger the discrepancy in the scores, the more one should be upset. So when Lebanon decides to put Palestinians in a literal open air prison complete with watchtowers and guards, it is a shame and no one supports it, but no one is really outraged either because the scoring differential between Lebanese Arabs and Palestinian Arabs is so small.

The only time that actual facts matter is when both sides have similar scores. So black on black violence, when the victim is the same gender as the assailant, is a matter for the courts, since the intersectional crowd loses interest when there isn't a clear score discrepancy.

All the time we spend trying to come up with cogent arguments for one side or the other are wasted. Sure, a nominal effort needs to be done so that the victims can claim some moral authority outside of identity, but the arguments do not need to make any sense - they are just something to point to as a counterargument to anyone who disagrees. See, for example, the argument that Palestinians have the legal right to kill Israeli Jews under international law - the argument is absurd and has zero basis in reality, but its existence is the fig leaf necessary to maintain the primacy of the victimhood metrics.

We finally have a mathematical model to determine who is the more righteous party in any conflict. You no longer have to worry about the details of the conflict itself. It is already known which side is presumed correct.

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Alaa Quresh

From JTA:

A chief rabbi of Jerusalem allowed a Palestinian man to be buried in a Jewish cemetery following his body’s exclusion by imams over his sale of real estate to Jews.

Aryeh Stern, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel’s capital, ruled this week as a rabbinical judge that Alah Kirsh may be buried at a Jewish cemetery as an exception because he was a “righteous gentile,” Ynet reported Friday.

Kirsh and five others were killed in a traffic accident on Nov. 4. His family sought to bury his body at their Muslim cemetery in eastern Jerusalem, but the imams turned them away because he had been accused of selling real estate in that part of the capital to Jews several years ago. The family was not allowed to bring Kirsh’s body to the Al Aqsa mosque and was forbidden to pitch a mourner’s tent and receive guests there, as is the Muslim custom.

Ekrima Said Sabri, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, cited a 1935 fatwa, or religious Muslim edict, issued by his predecessor, Amin al-Husseini.

A publicly anti-Semitic leader of Arab Israelis and ally of Nazi Germany, al-Husseini wrote that “anyone who sells a home or land to Jews will not receive a Muslim burial.” Basing a new fatwa on the old one, Sabri wrote: “Whoever sells to the Jews in Jerusalem is not a member of the Muslim nation, we will not accept his repentance and he will not be buried in the Muslim’s cemetery.”

Kirsh’s body was placed temporarily outside a Muslim cemetery in Nabi Salih, a village near Ramallah. Stern ruled that he may be buried at a section of the Jewish cemetery at Har Hamenuchot reserved for people without religion.

“Since the Muslims will not bury him, we must correct the distortion of justice that results in unjust humiliation of a man whose only sin was being prepared to sell land to Jews,” Stern wrote. “It is incumbent on us to honor a righteous gentile, and in this case a person who showed good will and was willing to take risks for the Jewish settlement.”

Arab media are reporting the story, and mentioning the severity of the fatwa by the Mufti as well as another one by a group of Muslim scholars in Jerusalem, saying that selling land to Jews is "one of the largest religious and national crimes committed against Islamic and Arab Jerusalem."

The commission that issued the fatwa stressed the inviolability of any property from Jerusalem, confirming the fatwa issued by the antisemitic Mufti in 1935, and extending it to refusal to sell any property to any non-Muslim out of fear that eventually a Jew might buy it. Christian Arabs in Jerusalem presumably cannot buy property either from Muslims, according to this fatwa.

The commission called on Muslims to "defame real estate traffickers."

Some forms of blatant discrimination against Jews are not found to be objectionable by the "progressives" and "human rights activists" of the world.

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