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Friday, October 26, 2018

10/26 Links Pt2: Phillips: How the West has created antisemitism denial; Glick: What was Rabin’s legacy?; Liberation, Not Colonization, Motivated the Creation of the Jewish State

From Ian:
Melanie Phillips: How the West has created antisemitism denial
Among Democrats, it is commonplace to compare US President Donald Trump to Hitler and the Republicans to Nazis.

Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price produced an ad for the mid-term Congressional elections next month in which he compared Trump to Hitler.

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Democratic Representative Yvette Clarke stood in front of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Manhattan and declared: “We are standing in front of a building that has become the headquarters for the Gestapo of the United States of America.”

Even Jewish Democrats are guilty of this. Democratic Representative Stephen Cohen was forced to apologize after he likened the Republicans’ promotion of healthcare policy to the propaganda of Hitler’s henchman Joseph Goebbels.

If everyone’s a Nazi, the real Nazis stop being uniquely evil. They become instead Everyman. Thus the Holocaust is traduced, bad people get a free pass and the innocent are demonized.

The impulse behind Holocaust education and memorializing was noble and understandable. But it missed something crucial.

This was the need to teach the world about Jewish history in both the land of Israel and the Diaspora; to teach the world what it has done to the Jews over the course of recorded time; to teach the world how Judaism itself embodies a unique and unbreakable connection between the people, the religion and the land.

Judaism lies at the heart of western values. Yet it has been misrepresented and demonized by Christianity, Islam and secularism. It is that continuing ignorance and bigotry over Judaism itself which fuels the demonization of Israel, the misreading of the Holocaust and the return of open antisemitism.

In a culture framed by Holocaust memorializing, the West has itself become the avatar of antisemitism denial.
Caroline Glick: What was Rabin’s legacy?
In his speech before the Knesset, Rabin detailed his view of where things would lead. He did not believe that the end result of the Oslo process would be the establishment of a Palestinian state, much less a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital in control of all or the vast majority of the land in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Rabin not only opposed any compromise on sole Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem: He called for extending Israeli sovereignty to Ma’aleh Adumim and Givat Ze’ev, two major Israeli communities in Judea just north of the city.

He also called for extending Israeli sovereignty to Gush Etzion and other major Israeli communities south of Jerusalem, and for building settlement blocs throughout Judea and Samaria. He committed to take no action to curtail the expansion of Israeli communities, and specifically ruled out any construction freeze in those communities throughout the interim period. He also praised the Israeli communities in Gaza, signaling strongly that they would never be forsaken.

Rabin said that Israel’s eastern border would remain the Jordan Valley in perpetuity and defined the frontier in the broadest possible terms.

In short, depending on how you interpret his phrasing, Rabin was either expressing his support for Netanyahu’s vision of a demilitarized Palestinian state, or for Education Minister Naftali Bennett’s plan to apply Israeli sovereignty to all of Area C.

Either way, Rabin’s actual vision tells us something important about how the Left’s draconian restrictions on freedom of speech have harmed Israel. By shunting aside what Rabin actually stood for, and reinventing him as a leftist ideologue, the Left has cheapened and distorted the true significance of what he stood for while preventing Israel from correcting his mistakes and building on his successes.

Liberation, Not Colonization, Motivated the Creation of the Jewish State
If your child came home from college and said she was challenged by a classmate who claimed that Palestine is Arab land stolen by the Jews, could you provide her with a response?

For the 400 years before World War I, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire, so it was owned by the Turks, not by the Arabs, let alone by the Arabs of Palestine. There was never a country called Palestine ruled by its own Arab inhabitants.

The original Zionists came to Palestine without the backing of any imperialist or colonialist power. They bought the land on which they settled.

Colonialism didn't bring Britain to Palestine. It conquered the land in World War I not from the Arabs but from Turkey, which had joined Britain's enemies in the war. The Arabs in Palestine fought for Turkey against Britain. The land was enemy territory.

Supporting Zionism appealed to Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Lord Balfour and other officials not just on strategic grounds, but also for moral reasons. They sympathized with the Jewish national cause. Zionism was an answer to the historical Jewish question, a way to remedy some of the harm shamefully done to the Jewish people over history.

And it would give Jews an opportunity to normalize their place in the world, by building up a national center and a refuge, a country in their ancient homeland where they could become the majority and enjoy self-determination as a people.

In 1919, the first Palestinian Congress declared that Palestine had never been divided from Syria and that Palestinians and Syrians were one people. Palestine's Arabs were not viewed by their own leaders as a separate nation.



Does Iran lurk behind Netanyahu’s historic visit to Oman?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a surprise visit to Oman on Friday, boosting his claim to be leading Israel into a new era in ties with Arab nations and prompting speculation about what lay behind the rare public interaction between Israel and a Gulf state with which it no longer has diplomatic relations.

There were few concrete details on his talks with Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said beyond a joint statement saying the two sides “discussed ways to advance the Middle East peace process and discussed a number of issues of mutual interest to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East.”

The sultanate has long had a low-key role in fostering negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. Days before Netanyahu’s visit, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also visited Oman, raising the possibility that Oman might be trying to help revive negotiations or push forward a troubled US peace plan.

But analysts were skeptical that this was the true reason behind the visit, the first by an Israeli leader in over two decades.

“Oman wants to be a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, however, Israel doesn’t need anyone’s help to be able to talk to the Palestinians,” said Hadashot news Arab affairs analyst Ehud Ya’ari pointing to another role for Muscat. “Oman is a pipeline to Tehran.”

Oman, which sits on the southeastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, with Saudi Arabia to its north and Iran to its east, also has a long record of being a quiet broker in the region, opting to stay on the sidelines of the rivalry between the two regional powerhouses.

While Oman’s influence over Israel and the Palestinians is limited, its unique regional position could enable it to play a bigger role mediating between Israel and archenemy Iran.
Politicians congratulate Kochavi on appointment as new IDF chief of staff
Israeli politicians welcomed Maj.-Gen Avi Kochavi as the new IDF chief of staff on Friday, shortly after Minister of Defence Avigdor Liberman made the announcement.

Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev expressed that she had great confidence in Kochavi's abilities to fill the post.

"I congratulate Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi on his appointment to the position of the 22nd chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF has complex tasks and great challenges, and I am certain that Maj.-Gen. Kochavi will succeed in meeting them," Regev said.

"Kochavi is both powerful and a family person."

Member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee MK Moti Yogev said: "I am happy to see Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi as the next Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. He is strong and courageous."

"I was privileged to be the commander of Lieutenant Aviv Kochavi [and...] I was impressed by him throughout the years and the many roles he filled," he added.

"All that remains to say is to congratulate him and his family. May he be strong and very courageous for the security of the people of Israel, our land and our state." (h/t Elder of Lobby)




Colonel Richard Kemp on the bravery and morality of the Israeli Defense Forces
Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, talks about the continuing violence along the Gaza border instigated by the terrorist group Hamas. Please see two parts of his interview with host Erick Stakelbeck below. For the full episode of CUFI’s The Watchman, click here.
PART 1: Col. Richard Kemp on the Bravery and Morality of the Israel Defense Forces


Part 2: How a British Army Commander Became One of Israel’s Greatest Friends

Looking beyond the BBC Berlin correspondent’s framing
The Palestinian NGO ‘Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network’ also took part in the rally.

“Palestinian and Palestine solidarity activists joined the mass #Unteilbar (“Indivisible”) demonstration in Berlin, Germany on 13 October, organizing a contingent in support of the Palestinian struggle against racism, colonialism and oppression and for the freedom of Palestinian political prisoners. […]

The Palestine bloc marched in a left/revolutionary group with the Internationalist Alliance, including the MLPD (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany), Rebell youth organization, ATIF (Association of Turkish Workers in Germany) and many other groups.”

The people described as ‘political prisoners’ include of course the convicted terrorists who are supported by that NGO.

“Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network participated in the contingent, carrying signs and posters demanding freedom for all Palestinian prisoners. The protest action also came as part of the week of action for Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the Arab Communist struggler for Palestine jailed in France for 34 years, with actions in cities across Europe, in Palestine, Lebanon and throughout the Arab world.

BDS Berlin activists marched for Palestine as part of the bloc, while organizers from Coup Pour Coup 31 in Toulouse, France, joined the protest in Berlin, carrying signs and posters for Georges Abdallah. Palestinian youth led the contingent, carrying the Palestinian flag high while carrying the group’s lead banner calling for Abdallah’s liberation.”

In other words, this ‘tolerance’ rally was allowed to become a stage for ‘protest action’ on behalf of a terrorist convicted for the murders of an American military attaché and an Israeli diplomat in Paris.
Antisemitic comments made at Canadian University faculty event
The University of Winnipeg said that antisemitic statements were made at a faculty-sponsored event on Israel.

A team that included the Canadian university’s human rights and diversity officer reviewed comments made during a Feb. 28 panel discussion, “My Jerusalem: Responding to the US Embassy Announcement,” and determined that it promoted anti-Semitic tropes, according to a statement by B’nai B'rith Canada, which first denounced the event as “anti-Israel propaganda.”

The event was organized by Independent Jewish Voices-Winnipeg, the Canadian Arab Association of Manitoba, United Jewish Peoples Order-Winnipeg and others, and was co-sponsored by Global College, a subdivision of the university. The stated goal of the event was to discuss the Jewish, Christian and Muslim reactions to the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The committee report on the event does not detail the allegedly anti-Semitic comments, but said they violated a working definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. That definition, adopted by Canada but considered controversial by many critics of Israel, includes certain forms of one-sided criticism of Israel as examples of antisemitism.

B’nai B'rith had complained that one of the speakers accused Israel of committing a “genocide” against Palestinians and another referred to indigenous Israeli Jews as “European settlers.”

The report also said the event included only “marginal” Jewish speakers on the subject; was held on Purim, a Jewish holiday, when many Jewish students and faculty would have been unlikely to attend; and that video of the event posted on the internet was “subsequently removed, suggesting that the university had something that it was trying to hide.”

In a statement issued last week, the university said it “regrets the antisemitic statements made at the My Jerusalem event.”
IsraellyCool: Richard Silverstein Applauds Post by Antisemite & Uses Antisemitic Slur to Describe My Family
Someone who clearly enjoyed antisemite Ariyana Love’s vile attack on me and my wife is pathological Israel hater and liar, DouchebloggerTM Richard Silverstein. He wasted no time disseminating the post, and applauding it, despite the fact Love is a known Jew hater.

What’s more, he used an antisemitic slur to describe my family.

Make no mistake – Silverstein’s use of the word “cabal” here was deliberate; it is commonly used by antisemites to describe the Jewish lobby or a shady group of Jewish people supposedly behind all sorts of nefarious activities. Don’t believe me? Click here to see antisemite (and Silverstein fan) David Duke’s use of the word.

Bear in mind that Silverstein also constantly defends his use of the word “Zio”, commonly used by antisemites (not to mention other vile terms).

And this is not even the first time Silverstein has colluded with a known antisemite to try and harm me.

I will also point out that Silverstein directly attacks my wife, claiming she engages in “propaganda activities.”
Germany won’t outlaw BDS, head of Bundestag says
Germany currently has no plans to outlaw the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement, the speaker of its parliament said Thursday.

“We fight it politically, but we don’t believe that it is fought more successfully through prohibitions,” Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble told reporters in Jerusalem.

“We are relatively hesitant regarding prohibitions, since our constitution doesn’t give the parliament much room to enact prohibitions, and rightly so, because we believe that is up to an independent judiciary,” he added.

In April of this year, the Bundestag passed with an overwhelming majority a resolution rejecting any attempts to boycott Israel. “The German Bundestag decidedly rejects the activities of the BDS movement, which calls for the boycott and the isolation of Israel,” the resolution read.

Asked by The Times of Israel about Israel’s decision to boycott the far-right Alternative for Germany party, known in Germany as AfD, Schäuble replied: “A parliamentary democracy starts with respecting whoever is elected in free and democratic elections.

“We are all elected, we all have the same rights and also the same duties. The rules apply to everyone. Part of the rules — and I won’t tire to say this in Germany — is a certain basic consensus that lies at the root of our constitution, and that is that we affirm the responsibility that is born out of German history. That must not be questioned in Germany.”
Student Gov Passes Anti-Semitism Resolution
So George Mason University’s student senate said that it would not tolerate “hatred and acts of malice” and called its Jewish community “a vital part of the Mason community” in a resolution last week, reported The Algemeiner. But what’s really interesting is what the GMU student senate speaker pro tempore McKenna Bates said on the subject.

Apparently, while she was holding a kiosk on media bias, McKenna “was told that Palestinian lives matter more than Jewish lives, and that the murder of Jews is justified because Palestinians are at the bottom of the oppression system and thus any expressions of resistance are ultimately justified.”

And see, this is the really dangerous thing about oppression olympics. Perceived victimhood becomes a kind of currency that justifies not just bigger platforms for certain people on critical issues, not just affirmative action that could make or break an academic or professional career, but yes, actual violence.

Anyways, McKenna was a fan of the anti-Semitism resolution, as was George Mason’s Hillel group. Now, GMU doesn’t often come on my radar for anti-Israel or left-wing bias, but you may remember Professor Noura Erakat over there, who complained about a Washington Post headline reading “Israel’s Use Of Fatal Fire In Gaza: Excessive Force Or Justified Mob Control?” with a tweet saying ““Mob”??? Can we plz try to acknowledge Palestinians as human? Not bugs to be exterminated. This is a freedom struggle.”

Well, it might shock you to learn that Noura is a bit of a hypocrite. Or maybe not — she’s a professor, after all! The professor has seemed to have no problem using the term “mob” while referring to groups of Israelis and Jewish people on Twitter.


Shock as Antisemitic Vandal Targets Dean of Leading French Medical School
Students and faculty at one of France’s leading medical schools have expressed shock at the discovery of antisemitic graffiti targeting the acting dean.

The daubings were reported last Friday, Oct. 19, on the wall of a pavilion adjoining the University of Paris-Est-Créteil medical school. The acting dean of the school was labeled a “voleur” — French for “thief” — with the letter “o” in that word rendered as a Jewish Star of David. On Monday, the acting dean filed a complaint at the police station in Créteil.

The school’s administration strongly condemned the daubings. In a statement, the president o the university, Jean-Luc Dubois-Randé, said he “denounces with the greatest vigor the insulting inscriptions painted on the wall of a particular house near the Faculty of Medicine, affecting a member of the facultyas well as the entire university.” He pledged that the college’s “management will take all necessary measures to ensure that this type of unacceptable action does not happen again. ”

A student named as Sacha told French newspaper Le Figaro it had been “a great shock to see this in our faculty.”

“It is one of the faculties where Jewish students are a little more numerous, but there has never been a problem of this kind, even in moments of tension on the international scene,” Sacha told the paper. Medical students, he added, “do not have time to hate each other, they have too much work for that.”

The incident in Créteil is part of what France’s higher education minister, Frédérique Vidal, described earlier this week as an “upsurge” in antisemitic vandalism on the country’s campuses.
Top Indian Official Seeks Israeli Expertise on Waste Water Recycling
A top Indian political leader is seeking cooperation with Israel in the realm of waste water recycling, Punjab Newsline reported on Thursday.

Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh met on Wednesday in Jerusalem with Israeli Minister of Energy and Water Resources Yuval Steinitz. The main agenda item was “the issue of water management to boost water conservation in Punjab,” the report said.

Singh “was impressed with the fact that 95% of sewerage water was being recycled for agriculture in Israel and said Punjab would like to do the same in urban areas,” the report added.

He also called Israel’s drip irrigation technology a “laudable initiative that Punjab could adopt to its advantage.”

Last year, Israel and India celebrated the 25th anniversary of the official establishment of diplomatic relations. Ties between the two countries have flourished in numerous realms in recent years.
How Israel Rules The World Of Cyber Security | VICE on HBO
U.S. intelligence agencies accuse Russia of hacking the 2016 presidential election, a Ben Ferguson travels to Tel Aviv to find out how Israel is on its way to becoming the world's top cyber superpower.


Overlooked No More: Rose Zar, a Holocaust Survivor Who Hid in Plain Sight
Zar worked in the home of a Nazi commander and saved dozens of Jewish orphans, then moved to the United States and shared her life story.

Unlike Anne Frank and thousands of other Jews who spent all or part of World War II sequestered in attics, caves or sewers, Rose Zar survived the Holocaust by hiding in the open.

In October 1942, when she was 19, her father feared that the Nazis were closing in on the ghetto where they lived, in Piotrkow, Poland. Zar, who had been part of the Jewish resistance before the war broke out, was prepared. She grabbed her suitcase and forged passport and left her family behind.

For the next three years, she would move around Poland, disguising herself as a Roman Catholic named Wanda Gajda. She relied on a mix of courage, intelligence and moxie to get herself out of delicate encounters with suspicious Poles who, she later said, would “turn a Jew in for a liter of flour.”

Ruszka Guterman was born in Piotrkow on July 27, 1922. Her father, a leather craftsman who ran a shoe factory, told her that if she ever had to go into hiding, the best place would be the most obvious, where those pursuing her would never look.

“He said you have to hide in the mouth of the wolf, under the officials’ nose,” Zar told the USC Shoah Foundation in 1996, “and watch that they don’t devour you.”

Although she had earned a teaching certificate before leaving home, Zar was forced to find menial jobs like cleaning the stairs in a hospital or peeling potatoes in the kitchen of the local SS headquarters in Krakow. To keep out of trouble, she learned to laugh at the crude, often anti-Semitic jokes told by the Polish women she worked with.

“I figured it like this,” Zar said in the Shoah Foundation interview. “You are born in the wrong times in history. You are an actress. You have to play your role good, because you pay one price. It is your life.”
How we let a Holocaust hero be forgotten
In July 1958, two newspapers in Lucerne, Switzerland, printed a small death notice no one would ever have recognized as an obituary. There was no "we regret to inform" and no mention of any mourners. Just plain facts: "Konstanty Rokicki, profession: consular officer, Polish citizen, born in 1899, funeral Monday, 10 a.m."

Two days later, Rokicki would be buried in Lucerne cemetery, in a section reserved for the poor. There is no evidence that anyone was at the funeral.

Twenty years later, the mound of earth marking his grave was flattened and then replaced by lawn. Sixty years later, when reporters from the Polish daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna and Canada's Daily Globe and Mail discovered Rokicki's story, no trace of him remained anywhere.

Today we know quite a lot about his deeds. As the Polish consul in Bern during World War II, it has been estimated that over 12 months in 1942-1943, Rokicki forged about a thousand Paraguayan passports. All bear the mark of his distinctive handwriting.

For many Jews in the ghettos of Warsaw and Bendzin, and in the Nazi concentration camps in Vught and Westerbork in the occupied Netherlands, these documents were a lifeline. Instead of being shipped to extermination camps, these prisoners ended up in internment camps, and some were exchanged for Germans captured by the Allies, even while the Holocaust was in progress.

The names of almost 400 of the roughly 800 Jews he saved are known. At least 20 are still alive. The story of the Paraguayan passports has been mentioned often in Holocaust literature and in memoirs penned by survivors.

Only one thing was missing from these ubiquitous accounts: the name of the person who made it happen.


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