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Wednesday, June 26, 2019

06/26 Links Pt2: Al Sharpton, Return of the kingmaker; Fifty-six antisemitic conspiracies- by members of the Labour Party; Nikki Haley visits Western Wall in Jerusalem

From Ian:
Seth Mandel: Return of the kingmaker
Indeed, Sharpton had become a fixture in Obamaworld. The seeds for that alliance were planted in 2007. Obama had been getting flak from Jesse Jackson and others for supposedly not supporting black activism enough. Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett was looking for someone from the world of civil rights advocacy to fill the void. That’s when Rev. Al stepped up, reported Jillian Melchior, then at National Review, in 2015. “In late 2007 or early 2008, Jarrett negotiated a simple deal with the reverend: Sharpton would discreetly support Obama for president, working mostly behind the scenes; he wouldn’t publicly criticize Obama, but he also wouldn’t back him in a way that aroused attention.”

That helped change the narrative that the black establishment was with the establishment candidate, Clinton. But Sharpton’s value to the campaign would skyrocket when controversial comments by Obama’s family pastor, Jeremiah Wright, became too much of a headache to be ignored. Obama distanced himself from Wright. “Behind the scenes,” Melchior reported, “the Obama campaign relied on Sharpton to reach out to influential black pastors across the U.S., persuading them not to revolt against Obama for his treatment of Wright.” That earned the trust of "Team Obama," and the relationship continued into the White House.

“His counsel was invaluable,” Jarrett recently told Evan Halper of the Los Angeles Times, especially when it came to “pushing back on people he thought were not constructive and unfairly criticizing President Obama.”

Just having Sharpton around, in fact, was a boost for Obama’s standing among black activists, according to Emory University expert on African American politics Andra Gillespie. “There were some concerns that Obama would be symbolically important but would not advocate for substantive change to help the African American community,” Gillespie told the LA Times. “The fact that Rev. Sharpton, who clearly came from an activist background and put race at the forefront and was unafraid to speak out on behalf of African Americans explicitly, put him in a position to lend an air of credibility to the Obama administration.”



David Collier: Fifty-six antisemitic conspiracies- by members of the Labour Party
You are about to enter a twilight zone, a place deep in antisemitic conspiracy. Everyone mentioned has implied that they have been members of the Labour Party. Many explicitly say they joined because of Jeremy Corbyn. Because of the antisemitic nature of these conspiracy theories, ‘Israel, ‘Zionist’ and ‘Jewish’ are used interchangeably.

There will be two images on each conspiracy, the first evidence that the poster is affiliated to the Labour Party, the other an example of the antisemitic conspiracy theory that they shared.

I have created this compilation for a simple reason. Antisemitism is not about what one person says or believes. Antisemitism is a way of seeing the world, an ideology, and the pieces need to be put together for the dangers to be understood properly.

The antisemitic conspiracies

One of the most widespread claims is that Israel did 9/11. I could fill an entire report with images just containing this antisemitic conspiracy theory, however I intend to provide just one example from each of the claims:
Israel is ISIS
Or just fund ISIS:
Israel was behind Charlie Hebdo:
Responsible for the November 2015 attacks in Paris:
The Zionists are behind the attack in Brussels too.
Incredibly, some believe the Zionists even control the Labour Party. Sheem Bari is also admin for the FB Group ‘the Labour Party Supporter‘:
The Mossad blackmail MPs to get them to defend the indefensible:
Michael Doran: Red Light, Green Light
Review of Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power by Yaakov Katz

Rolling the dice of war is the loneliest decision of any leader, but for an Israeli, rolling them without superpower support is especially harrowing. Every Israeli leader knows Ben-Gurion’s dictum: Never go to war without great power support. It is easy for Israel to start a war alone, but nearly impossible to bring the conflict to an end on favorable political terms without help from a powerful backer in the international arena.

Israelis tell a story about what happened, in 1967, when Ben-Gurion schooled then–chief of staff General Yitzhak Rabin on the necessity of great power support. President Lyndon Johnson, preoccupied with the Vietnam War, had refused to take any significant action against Nasser in the lead-up to the Six-Day War. “You won’t have to go it alone, unless you go it alone,” he famously told the Israelis. In other words, the United States would not stop Israel from attacking, but it would not support the war. If things went wrong, the Israelis were on their own. During the tense waiting period between the Egyptian remilitarization of the Sinai and the Israeli decision to attack, Rabin visited Ben-Gurion, who was living in retirement at his home in Sde Boker in the Negev. Ben-Gurion, so the story goes, castigated Rabin for preparing to launch a war without American backing. Following the dressing down from Ben-Gurion, he suffered a nervous breakdown that incapacitated him for two weeks.

Bush probably never heard this story, but his own experience had taught him the loneliness of ordering men and women into harm’s way. He offered Olmert the emotional and political support needed to face any adversity that lurked ahead. Among American presidents, Bush surely ranks as one of the most supportive of the Jewish State. Nevertheless, his administration still harbored very serious doubts about the Israelis’ chosen course of action. The al-Kibar episode thus reminds us, among other things, that algorithms do not determine how best to secure national interests, people do.

Although the bet that Olmert placed on Bush entailed some risks, he always held a trump card up his sleeve: the IDF. Olmert was confident from the outset that even if the Americans would oppose military action, Israel still possessed the tools to get the job done. One of Olmert’s colleagues, Katz reports, had been working for years to keep this fact at the forefront of the Israeli thinking. Major General Eliezer Shkedi, the commander of the Israeli Air Force, had distributed a dramatic photo to countless Israeli soldiers and airmen. The photo captures the moment when three Israeli F-15s, operating on Shkedi’s orders, defied the Polish authorities and flew low over Auschwitz. Shkedi had personally inscribed most of the photos, “To remember. Not to forget. To rely only on ourselves.” Shkedi was the man responsible for planning the al-Kibar operation.

This exhortation to self-reliance is laudatory, but as practical advice to prime ministers it probably requires a slight revision: “To remember. Not to forget. To rely, when necessary, only on ourselves.” Olmert was wise to seek assistance from Bush, and he did so shrewdly, but his readiness to go it alone in very trying circumstances was his greatest asset. Without that, Bush’s red light would never have turned to green.



UK lawmaker calls for recognizing Jews forced to flee Arab countries
A British lawmaker called on the UK government to recognize the plight of Jews forced to flee their homes in Arab countries during the 20th century.

Theresa Villiers, who represents the Conservative Party, said the government should acknowledge Jewish refugees when discussing the Middle East and urged fellow Parliament members to support efforts to preserve Jewish sites in the region, the Jewish Chronicle reported Monday.

Some 850,000 Jews were forced to flee their home countries in the Middle East and North Africa following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Many faced violence in their home countries and had to leave behind most of their property.

“This is an untold story and an unresolved injustice: between 1948 and the 1970s, pogroms and violent attacks were perpetrated in across the Muslim world against Jewish citizens,” Villiers said during a parliamentary debate.

Villiers, who is not Jewish, previously served as secretary of state for Northern Ireland.


Jewish social media users respond in disgust to Corbyn-supporting accounts mimicking Holocaust tweet
Jewish social media users have expressed disgust after Twitter accounts supporting Jeremy Corbyn parroted claims by the child of a Holocaust survivor that the Labour leader is not antisemitic.

Andrew Feinstein, a far-left activist, tweeted that he could “state unequivocally that Jeremy Corbyn is not antisemitic”, citing how his mother was “a Holocaust survivor who lost 39 members of her family in the camps”, how he “lectured at Auschwitz on genocide prevention” and “experienced antisemitism in apartheid South Africa.”

However, a number of Twitter accounts supporting Jeremy Corbyn then similarly claimed to have lost 39 members of their families in the camps and having lectured at Auschwitz on genocide prevention, in response to concern about Labour antisemitism from other people.

One of those same accounts had previously asked people to vote on whether the Holocaust “was a hoax”.

Jewish twitter users described the behaviour as “sick”, “repulsive” and “repugnant".

“Not only are they deep antisemites they are willing to go even lower in their depravity by ridiculing the horror of the Holocaust”, one wrote, before urging “Jewish Corbynites” to “wake the f*** up.”

Others mocked the Corbynite accounts, saying all of those claiming the exact same story “must be siblings”.




BDS thrives while the US and Israel dither
BDS coordinated with terrorists

And what about those 600 rockets fired at Israeli civilians recently? BDS, while it tries to claim it is a grassroots movement, is in fact a war program run by Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas leadership. When Israel’s fortunes climb like during the embassy change and the Golan recognition, the BDS movement works in coordination with the terrorists to shore up the fiction that the Jews are using excessive force against the poor Arabs in Gaza. That is the idea heard in the pulpits of the Presbyterian Churches today by the likes of the shooter. Apparently it worked well enough to get a 19 year-old “Christian boy” inspired enough to enter a synagogue and shoot up some Jews. According to his manifesto, he shot up the Jews for the glory and grace of God.

The concessions by President Trump to Israel’s sovereignty inspire some to consider Trump as Israel’s savior. But to the BDS activists who communicate with Hamas and Abbas it’s a signal to step up the rocket attacks and kite terror against the Jews. And this fervor apparently worked within the Presbyterian Church.

There are 190 Students for Justice in Palestine cells on U.S. Campuses promoting BDS and funded by taxpayer money. A pseudo-intellectual Professor Hatem Bazian leads the movement nationwide like a Rico racket. BDS is following the tactics of Rico and everyone looks the other way.

If President Trump forbids BDS from being promoted - which ultimately plays into those rocket attacks - and if the U.S. government sanctions “allies” who contribute to the boycott, the entire war might come to a halt.President Trump needs to the right thing here. And Israel needs to understand it can’t kick the can down the road forever.


What can be done about the Highland Park 'P is for Palestine' fiasco?
Imagine that a supporter of a movement considered racist by many African Americans wrote a children’s book designed to spread that movement’s ideas among the young and impressionable. Now imagine that this individual was invited to present the book at a reading in a small town’s public library. Not any town, but one with a substantial African American population.

We would rightfully expect African Americans to be outraged at the provocation and to call for the reading to be cancelled, even as we would expect the author to cite the First Amendment in insisting that it proceed.

Under no circumstances would we expect significant elements of the community’s leadership to pave the way for the reading to take place.

Nor would we expect that they would endorse cancellation of a public forum that has been scheduled to give the residents a chance to air their concerns before the library’s board of trustees.

Needless to say, in the event that the controversial book reading in our theoretical town went forward, it would be taken for granted that the local African American community leadership, as well as its regional and national counterparts, would stand united in staging a vocal protest.
Las Vegas now taking bets for when Peter Beinart goes full BDS (Satire)
There’s some hot new action here in Sin City, and the High Rollers are starting to notice. College Football? Nope. Keno? Nope. Nope. Blackjack? Still Nope. The name of the game this year is picking the date that Peter Beinart goes Full BDS, and everyone wants a piece of the action. You see, Mr. Beinart used to (sorta) be the Conscience of Liberal Zionism. But maybe he switched to a different High School or something, because he’s started to run with the wrong crowd ….and don’t think we haven’t noticed. Anyhoo, as Peter keeps driving down Sanctimony Highway (past the old Tikkun Olam Rest Area) toward BDS City, the bookies have started to notice. And now they’re laying down odds. The Daily Freier put on our best suit, and headed out to the Desert to get a piece of the action.

The Daily Freier met up with “Fat Sal”, who greeted us at his office behind a dilapidated motel a few blocks off the Strip. We asked Mr. Fat Sal if he truly felt that Mr. Beinart was flirting with BDS. Sal took a drag from his cigar and replied. “Has Peter been flirting with BDS lately? Oh he’s been flirting. Lotsa flirting. With BDS. You catch my drift?”

We then asked Mr. Sal just how they put down odds on such a unique form of gambling as Peter Beinart’s very public slow-motion Total Eclipse of the Woke Heart, and Sal explained. “There’s a science to handicapping this. How many times this week did he mention his one-way feud with Bibi? How many times has Code Pink praised his articles on Twitter today? How many times has…” [Sal paused and yelled into the other room] “Hey Jimmy! What’s the over/under on Peter’s ‘As a Jew’ count today?”
Guardian narrative on causes of Palestinian poverty is pure fantasy
In an official editorial (“The Guardian view on Trump and Israel-Palestine: the reality behind Kushner’s fantasy”) published on June 25, the Guardian predictably lambasted the new US peace plan, particularly its economy-first approach of promoting Palestinian prosperity as a path to a permanent resolution.

Whilst there was little in the editorial that was surprising, one sentence in particular caught our eye, because it says so much about how little the Guardian understands the root causes of Palestinian economic woes.

Many of these initiatives have been proposed before – in some cases, more than a decade ago – and are unachievable under current conditions. The report advocates them nonetheless because it simply refuses to recognise that the biggest obstacle to economic development is the West Bank’s occupation and the blockade of Gaza.

On the same day, the Guardian published another analysis by Mid-East correspondent Martin Chulov which similarly opined that “a central factor in the slow growth of the Palestinian economy has been the Israeli occupation”.
France 24 Arabic Adds “Expulsion” Error to AFP Report
France 24 recently published on its Arabic website an edited AFP report (“Thousands of Palestinians commemorate the 71st anniversary to the Nakba”) about the May 15 protests in the Gaza Strip, along the fence separating that territory from Israel.

In its report, France 24, a state-owned news network, inaccurately characterized hundreds of thousands of those who left Israel in 1948 as having been “expelled,” ignoring that the vast majority fled, often at the urging of their own leaders. It reads (translation by CAMERA Arabic):
“The Palestinians commemorate on the May 15th of every year the Nakba of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homes during the war that preceded the establishment of Israel”.

The original version of the report by AFP, though, uses a different term, stating that the Palestinians “were made to emigrate/ were displaced”
Another PA official gets unchallenging BBC radio air-time
Refraining from raising the relevant topic of the Palestinian Authority’s role in creating its current economic crisis and specifically the issue of its payment of cash rewards for terrorism, Coomarasamy went on:

Coomarasamy: “They say that there is a second stage to this; that there will be a political part of the plan but this is…the first part is to get the cash injection you do need, after all, don’t you?”

Zomlot: “Of course cash is always needed. Of course economic support is always needed but it’s a matter of priority. Cash and economic support has been happening for over 25 years by the international community but it was for a certain purpose. It was for a certain direction which is establishing a Palestinian sovereign state. The UK has spent hundreds of millions of dollars, the US, Europe and what have you and we agreed to that economic assistance. But Kushner is thinking like a real estate man, not like a statesman and he thinks that Israel takes the property and we take the cash. Now Palestine is not for sale, number one. Number two: what cash? The fifty billion is not coming to the Palestinians. Around half of it will be coming to the Palestinians over a period of ten years and half of the half of it is going to be loans that will be incurring a lot of interest. We will be heavily indebted and if you do the math then we will end up with one billion every year from the international community, which we already get – but for a programme that goes towards the two-state solution on the 1967 borders according to international resolution.”

Coomarasamy failed to clarify to listeners that there is no such thing as “1967 borders” and that Zomlot’s partisan interpretation of the two-state solution does not stand up to scrutiny. Neither did he bother to ask his interviewee why the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected offers based on the principle of the two-state solution throughout the 25 years that they have been receiving the foreign aid Zomlot claims was for that purpose.
French Jews urge Macron to adopt IHRA definition of antisemitism
French Jews have urged French President Emmanuel Macron to formally adopt the definition of antisemitism proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

“In the current context, where antisemitism and its other form of manifestation anti-Zionism do not know any limit, we believe that there is a big need that this proposition is examined and voted as soon as possible,” Francis Kalifat, president of CRIF (Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions), wrote in a letter to Macron on June 19.

The content of the letter was published on the CRIF website on Monday.

Macron had promised to adopt the definition of antisemitism drafted by the IHRA during the annual CRIF dinner on February 20.

“For the first time in many years, antisemitism is killing people again in France,” Macron said on the occasion as reported by JTA, adding that French authorities “did not know how to react effectively,” and calling this a “failure.”

Earlier in February, French authorities had reported a 74% increase in antisemitic incidents in 2018 over the previous year.

The French Parliament was supposed to approve the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism on May 29, but the vote was postponed and never rescheduled.
‘A Sad Reality’: Berlin Antisemitism Official Repeats Kippah Warning for German Capital
The Berlin city official tasked with combating antisemitism in the German capital on Tuesday repeated earlier official warnings about the potential dangers of wearing visibly Jewish symbols, such as the kippah, in public.

In an extensive interview with the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, Lorenz Korgel — a political scientist who was appointed as Berlin’s antisemitism commissioner in May — stated that it was a “sad reality in Berlin that Jews who confess their faith with symbols experience hostility and attacks in public over and over again.”

But when asked by correspondent Melanie Reinsch whether he personally would “walk through Neukölln” — a Berlin neighborhood with a large Muslim community that has been the location of several antisemitic outrages — “with a kippah,” Korgel declined to give a direct answer.

“I am not Jewish and, as a government official, I am not in a position to give Jews advice on how to deal with their religious symbols,” he replied. “Most of them know their situation very well, better than I do.”

Antisemitism rose sharply in Berlin during 2018, with more than 300 incidents recorded — a 17-percent rise from the previous year. Some local politicians have criticized the city’s police for too-readily assuming that attacks on Jews are the work of far-right thugs, thereby underplaying or ignoring outright the participation of anti-Zionist and Islamist agitators.
Malmo’s Jewish community warns it could disappear by 2029 over security fears
The Jewish Community of Malmo, Sweden, may need to dissolve itself by 2029 unless its current circumstances change.

Community spokesman Fredrik Sieradski confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Tuesday that the shutdown was a “possible scenario” following a report Friday in Expressen in which a local politician said the Jewish community had said it may “die out” in the coming decade, partly because of alleged indifference by authorities to the community’s security needs.

The debate was about a donation of more than $4 million by two philanthropists to cover security costs. The donation followed the objection of the city government’s ruling coalition, comprising the local chapter of Prime Minister Stefan Lofven’s Swedish Social Democratic Party and the Liberals, to allocate the funds from the municipal budget, Expressen reported.

Malmo’s Jewish community has declined amid frequent threats and attacks, mostly by Muslims, from 1,200 several years ago to an estimated 800 or fewer members today.
Dutch rapper chose stage name ‘Anne Frank,' turns out she’s antisemitic
When a scandal began to brew around her use of Anne Frank as a stage name, a 25-year-old rapper from the Netherlands defended it as a tribute to the Holocaust victim.

“It’s not malicious,” the rapper, whose real name has not yet been published in the Dutch media, told the Het Parool daily in an interview published Wednesday, a week after the release of her debut single titled “Silence.”

The R-rated song is ostensibly about sex (see lines such as “If you come to me do it naked”) but it also contains the lines “Anne Frank is a bossy bitch” and “I stashed shit in the secret annex” — the latter a reference to both hard drugs and the hiding place where the teenage diarist stayed for two years during the Holocaust before the was discovered by the Nazis and murdered (the specific word for “secret annex” that she uses, “achterhuis,” is closely associated with the Anne Frank story in Holland).

Responding to criticism by the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam over her use of the name — the museum called it “insensitive” — she said that she chose it because it had just been her nickname since elementary school.

“I read her books then. She’s an inspiration, a role model for living in unbearable situations. I know we’re not living in wartime but the world isn’t peaceful either,” she said.

Het Parool framed the affair as one of many recent examples of perceived trivializations of the Anne Frank story.

But soon after the article was published, a Dutch watchdog called the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI, showed that the performer has been tweeting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments for years. To CIDI, the rapper’s online footprint suggests her appropriation of the Anne Frank name is much more sinister than she says it is.
Family of French Jewish WW2 Resistance Hero Launch Legal Fight Over Nazi-Plundered Paintings
The first hearing in a legal case that pits the descendants of a Jewish art dealer against the French state began in Paris on Tuesday, as the family of René Gimpel — who later on became a prominent resistance fighter against the Nazis — sought to recover three paintings they asserted were plundered from their father’s collection during the wartime German occupation.

A lawyer for Gimpel’s granddaughter Claire and four other relatives told the AFP news agency that the family was intent on recovering all works of art that were either stolen outright, or sold at a fraction of their market value to finance the family’s flight to London following the Nazi invasion of France in 1940.

Gimpel himself joined the French resistance during World War II. In 1942, he was arrested and deported to the Neuengamme concentration camp in Germany, where he later died of ill health.

Tuesday’s court hearing concerned three works purchased by Gimpel in 1921 that were painted by Andre Derain, renowned as one of the founders of the Fauvist school that emerged in the early 20th century. The works are currently on display at galleries in the cities of Troyes and Marseille.
Oldest Jewish cemetery in Cuba renovated in honor of Havana's 500th anniversary
Some marble grave covers are broken and tombstones lie on the ground, covered in moss. At some graves, vegetation pokes through the cement cracks.

But slowly, the oldest Jewish cemetery in Cuba is beginning to be rehabilitated, along with the memory of many of the island's early Jewish forebears.

The restoration is the result of an initiative by the government-run city historian's office to spruce up Havana ahead of the 500th anniversary of its founding in November. Across the city, streets are being paved, monuments are being polished and historic sites are being restored.

There is also an effort to recover long-forgotten sites – among them the almost completely neglected Jewish cemetery in the Guanabacoa neighborhood on Havana's east side.

"I feel very great peace and calmness when I visit the cemetery. … For me it's like being with my mother, my only sister and my nephew," Adela Dworin, president of the Hebrew Board of Cuba, said standing beside a grave adorned with small rocks that are used by Jews to pay homage to the dead.
Nikki Haley visits Western Wall in Jerusalem
Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Wednesday and placed a note in it, as per the practice of making a wish at the holy site.

Haley is in the country as a special guest of honor at a conference dealing with U.S.-Israeli relations held by the Israel Hayom newspaper.

This is Haley's first visit to Israel since she left office.

Haley, who is very much loved in Israel for the support she showed the Jewish state while in office, recently had a mural painted with her depiction at Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem.



SpaceIL: Beresheet won't attempt moon landing, will seek another challenge
SpaceIL, the team behind the Beresheet spacecraft, will not be reattempting its mission to land on the Moon, the non-profit announced on Tuesday.

Following a lengthy debate, SpaceIL decided that landing on the Moon was "not a sufficiently great challenge."

"The journey of Beresheet to the Moon, despite the hard landing, will last in the memory of Israel and the world as a successful one, a breakthrough, and very significant for future human journeys to the Moon," SpaceIL said in a statement.

"Feedback that we received from across the world in the weeks following the landing pointed toward the mission being considered an extraordinary success and breaking many world records."

As a result, the committee decided, SpaceIL would search for a new challenge. It will also keep the public informed of any decisions made and continue its educational "Beresheet Effect" projects for schoolchildren.

SpaceIL’s first, ill-fated Beresheet project, crash-landed in the Sea of Serenity on April 11.
Poway rabbi addresses UN meeting on growing threat of antisemitism
It is time “to tackle the tsunami of hatred that is so visible and violence across the world today,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Wednesday, at a special discussion by the UN General Assembly on the growing threat of antisemitism.

The discussion was organized by Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.

“White supremacists and neo-Nazis are emboldened by elections showing an appeal of racist messages,” said Guterres. “One week ago, I launched the UN system-wide strategy to combat hate speech.”

Guterres said that “hatred left unopposed” can damage democratic values, social stability, and peace.

“We need to treat hate speeches as we treat every malicious act, by condemning it and refusing to amplify it,” he said. “That does not mean limiting freedom of speech. It means keeping hate speech from escalating into something more dangerous. Our efforts need to step up most urgently in the digital space where hatred is thriving. Social media provides a conduit for hatred on an enormous scale with virtually no cost and no accountability... used to polarize societies and demonize people often targeting women, minorities, and the most vulnerable.”

Delegates from 90 different countries attended the event, as well as hundreds from the Jewish community in the US.

Calling on the world to declare war on antisemitism, Danon said “the sounds we heard at Pittsburgh and Poway do not allow us to act with restraint. The world’s approach to eradicating antisemitism must be like that of modern warfare. It must attack multiple fronts.”


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