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Monday, August 09, 2021

08/09 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The west's cultural meltdown We need allies to stop this disease; Democratic Socialists of America Host Corbyn; Farrakhan Roots Feed BLM's Anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Understanding the ‘hows’ of antisemitism
We all agree that antisemitism is bad. People are less likely to be seduced by this hate because we all know where it leads. But anti-Zionism is not perceived to be in the same category. It is sold as speaking truth to power, masked as justice.

The antisemitism we all acknowledge as bad started out looking nothing like where it led. In fact, in comparing the beginnings of antisemitism with anti-Zionism the similarities are striking. In the secular 19th century, Jews were designated as Semites, yet it was never intended to mean anything but Jew.

In the Soviet Union, which claimed to not notice differences in people or religion, Jews were designated as Zionists, and today the designation of Zionism in the West is described as having immutable loathsome qualities. To Christian Europe, we were Christ-killers. To the Nazis, we were an impure race. To the Soviets, we were capitalists. And today, when the greatest sins of the world are racism and colonialism, the Jewish collective is defined as the ultimate bastion of white supremacy, and Israel is seen as a state born in sin.

Antisemitism relies on the greatest authority of any given time. Religion in ancient times, science in the modern era and human rights today. It is only by appealing to the religious doctrine that all Jews of the 12th century could be referred to as the killers of Jesus, 1,000 years after his death. It is only by appealing to the authority of perverted science, that Jews could be accused of endangering its racial purity. It is only by appealing to a distorted version of human rights that Israel and Zionism, a Jewish liberation movement, could be considered its greatest violators. It is only by appealing to this distortion that the same people who continually agreed to partitioning the land into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, could be the ones standing in the way of a two-state solution.

Why go to all these lengths to single out a group and distort reality?
Melanie Phillips (PodCast): The west's cultural meltdown
In a podcast, I joined the editor of spiked, Brendan O’Neill, to discuss the baleful issue which preoccupies both of us — the disarray of the western world, its decline into vicious identity politics with its gross abuse of power, and its progressive repudiation of freedom, community and reason.

Starting with the trans-gender agenda, we covered relations between men and women, the origin of the bedrock values that are currently being lost, the current epidemic of antisemitism and the undermining of what it is to be a human being. You can listen to this spiked podcast by clicking on the arrow above the picture.
We need allies to stop this disease
The impact of trigger events such as this on the Jewish community in the UK cannot be understated, and it really is the entire community that is affected. Jewish individuals are targeted regardless of age, regardless of gender, regardless of public prominence and regardless of level of religious observance. Jewish institutions are subjected to antisemitic threats and abuse, whether or not they have ever passed comment on Israel. Every time that violence in Israel and Gaza flares up, a significant spike in antisemitism is observed. It is indiscriminate. It is not a coincidence.

Of these 1,308 reports, 832 took place across May and June, in light of the conflict escalating. Of these 1,308 reports, 693 referenced the war between Israel and Hamas, were motivated by the fury it inspired, demonstrated anti-Zionist sentiment, or a mixture of the three.

When perpetrators do not separate anti-Israel hatred from anti-Jewish hatred – indeed, when they use whatever they claim Israel is doing to vindicate their prejudice towards Jews – whatever academic distinctions may exist between anti-Zionism and antisemitism become irrelevant. When a Jewish child fears for their safety in school because shouts of “Free Palestine” are repeatedly directed at them; when a Jewish university student is told that their life is worthy of being threatened if they don’t declare themselves to be anti-Zionist; when community members are scared of expressing their identity in public in case they are held accountable for Israel’s alleged actions – this is antisemitism.

CST’s mission is to protect the Jewish community, physically and emotionally, in order to facilitate the thriving of Jewish life in the UK. But this mission cannot be fulfilled alone.

It demands the support of allies, those who want to create an inclusive society that celebrates diversity and denounces racism, to stand in solidarity and call out antisemitism.

It demands the action of social media platforms to adhere to their own policies and show that their claims of zero tolerance for hate is not merely lip service. It demands that the police treat hate crime with the severity it deserves and investigate, arrest and prosecute its offenders. This is a shared responsibility.
Democratic Socialists of America Host Former UK Labour Leader Corbyn at Annual Convention
The Democratic Socialists of America hosted former UK Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday at their annual convention.

During his tenure as head of Labour, Corbyn fostered an atmosphere of systemic antisemitism, including animus toward Israel, antisemitic conspiracy theories, harassment of Jewish members, and his own claim that “Zionists” were un-British. Several Jewish and non-Jewish Labour MPs quit the party and denounced his leadership.

The UK Jewish community, large numbers of which said they would consider emigrating if Corbyn became prime minister, undertook a concerted campaign against him and his allies, and he was eventually routed in the 2019 election by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and resigned as party leader.

During the DSA convention, held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic, Corbyn mentioned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict only once, noting that his new Project for Peace & Justice had “mobilized for solidarity with the people of Palestine during the bombing of Gaza,” an apparent reference to Israel’s 11-day war with the Hamas terrorist group in May.

Corbyn also presented a vague conspiracy theory to participants, saying, “The richest and most powerful are organized across the world. We need to be not as organized as them, but better organized than them.”


Farrakhan Roots Feed Black Lives Matter Movement Anti-Semitism
BLM: Institutional Anti-Zionism

As Ricki. Hollander noted in her ISCA lecture, most people who adopt the #BlackLivesMatter slogan (and even many of those who have protested racism and the deaths of Breonna Taylor or Ahmaud Arberry) don’t have any inkling of the organizational leadership’s connections to Jew-hate; on the contrary, most Americans who repeat the saying likely assume that the movement is simply a continuation of yesteryear’s righteous campaign to secure Black civil rights in segregated 20th century America. But though most casual users of the #BLM hashtags have good intentions, much of BLM leadership is a different story:
In August 2016, the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a coalition of members from the Black Lives Matter network as well as other organizations representing black communities in the U.S., put out a lengthy political platform, entitled “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom & Justice.” One section, headlined ”Invest-Divest,” accused the US, through its alignment with Israel, of complicity in what the authors called the “genocide that is taking place against the Palestinian people” and Israeli “apartheid.”

In her presentation, Ms. Hollander elaborated on some of the figures responsible for composing the platform, including co-author Rachel Gilmer. A 2020 article in the Australian Jewish News revealed,
When informed that several major Jewish organisations would continue to seek ways to support the black community but withhold direct support for the BLM movement [as a result of the anti-Israel platform], a BLM leader, Rachel Gilmer, told Haaretz in 2016, “I don’t think it’s a loss” to the BLM movement. “It’s just made it clear that they weren’t real allies.”

Further, as Ms. Hollander showed in a presentation slide, one of Gilmer’s February 2017 Facebook posts featured a screed by well-known anti-Zionist agitator Susan Abulhawa claiming that Zionism (which, Abulhawa alleged, was only created by “a group of wealthy European Jewish men” in order to “protect or increase their fortunes”) “went out into the world to kidnap, pummel, rape, …paving the way for the 20th century’s greatest, most barbaric and enduring heist.”

Ultimately, as BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors, popular pro-BLM activist Marc Lamont Hill, and other BLM leaders have admitted, the BLM movement seeks to eliminate the Jewish state (or, as Hill puts it, to “dismantle the Zionist project”). And despite their constant refrain that their “criticism of Israel” and “support for Palestinians” is not the same as anti-Semitism, their embrace of openly Judeophobic demagoguery is evidence of their true feelings.

As bizarre as BLM’s antipathy toward Jews and Israel may seem, (given, as Dr. Stephen Norwood noted in his presentation, the long history of Jewish support for the Civil Rights Movement) its anti-Zionism did not emerge in a vacuum. Instead, as Dr. Norwood and Dr. Eunice Pollack also showed in their ISCA panel, BLM anti-Zionists have recycled old anti-Jewish beliefs advanced for decades by notorious anti-Semites such as Louis Farrakhan and his group, the Nation of Islam.


Arab Spring 2: D.C. Politicians Rush to Save Islamists in Tunisia
The media upholds this same cynical line of reasoning without ever challenging it.

"Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off," Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's brutal Islamist tyrant, once reportedly said.

To Islamists, popular protests are also like a streetcar. They board them once they begin and then suppress them once they take over. The message of the Tunisian street to Ennahda, not to mention Omar, Graham, and Tlaib, is that it will never be allowed to work that way.

The Biden administration, to its credit, has avoided Obama’s eagerness to aid the Brotherhood.

That’s why the Washington Post’s Rogin op-ed was titled, “Biden must try harder to stop the coup in Tunisia”. The Biden administration remains sympathetic to Iran, but it’s too busy wrecking America to spare much attention for the rest of the world. The recent international trips by Biden and Kamala Harris demonstrated that both are weak leaders in no shape to either lay out a foreign policy or project strength abroad. The Biden administration continues to enable Jihadists from Israel to Afghanistan to Iran, but its appetite for confrontation remains limited.

And that’s a good thing.

By Syria, even Obama had lost his appetite for military intervention on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Washington Post remains the final outpost for the Arab Springers who have turned Jamal Khashoggi into their Horst Wessel and keep touting the “moderate” Brotherhood.

Most Americans of both parties, even in Washington D.C., have ceased to pay any attention.

The calls by Omar, Tlaib, Murphy, and Graham should be met with the contempt that they deserve. Ghannouchi is a monster, not a moderate, and Ennahda, like its other Brotherhood counterparts, keeps being toppled by secularists and pragmatists, leftists and unions.

Any Republican legislators in D.C. who are tempted to join the Omar’s Brotherhood bandwagon might want to remember how Egypt, Libya, and Syria’s “democratic revolutions” ended.

And stop trying to put Tunisia’s Islamists back in power.


LA Times Editorial: The LA Teachers Union's Opinion on the Middle East Is Not Wanted
What does a teachers bargaining unit in Los Angeles have to do with Israeli policies and actions toward Palestinians? We're still trying to figure that one out and so, apparently, are upset members within United Teachers Los Angeles. The union is in an uproar over a resolution to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. The matter will come before UTLA's governing House of Representatives for a vote in September.

The House should reject the measure. The world is hardly waiting to hear what a California teachers union thinks of the matter. Meanwhile, the Forward Jewish news site reports that hundreds of UTLA members have mounted a campaign against the BDS resolution, and many are threatening to quit the union - in a metropolitan area with the second-biggest Jewish population in the U.S.

Many Jewish parents and students see BDS support as inherently anti-Semitic, even though it's directed at Israel, not the Jewish people. Support for BDS wouldn't accomplish a thing. The union would be better off keeping its nose out of Middle Eastern affairs that don't affect its members or the schools, and in which it has no expertise.


Burnside tweet slammed, apology rejected
Welcoming the fact that Burnside deleted his initial tweet and apologised “after a huge public backlash”, Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) president Jeremy Leibler told The AJN this week, “His subsequent tweets and apparent failure to distinguish between the motivations of the Nazi regime in wiping out world Jewry with the conduct of the Israel Defence Forces, makes it difficult to accept his apology in good faith.”

The ZFA wrote to Greens leader Adam Bandt last week, describing Burnside’s tweet as “atrocious” and calling on Bandt “to condemn unequivocally his tweet, and to rule out him being a Greens candidate in the future”.

While Bandt avoided referencing Burnside and did not respond to the ZFA’s letter, he told media, “The Holocaust is one of the darkest moments in human history and is without modern comparison. It has left an enduring and painful scar on the Jewish people, the impacts of which are still being felt today.

“The treatment of the Palestinian people can be condemned on its own facts.”

Stating that Burnside’s tweet “not only reflects an astonishing ignorance of history but also represents a new low in public debate in Australia”, Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim lamented, “To trivialise this history with false comparisons to any contemporary conflict is beneath contempt.”

Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council national chairman Mark Leibler added that Burnside’s tweet looked “horribly like unadulterated antisemitism”.


Why is Adam Bandt treading so carefully over the Julian Burnside ugliness?
That great humanitarian and soi-distant Jew baiter St Julian of Burnside has said he will not contest the seat of Kooyong for the Greens again after the latest row over his and Mrs Saint Julian’s Tweeting.

Greens leader Adam Bandt’s response to all this ugliness? In paraphrase, it’s been something like “La di da di da, the first flowers of spring are on their way.”

Adam Bandt should not only have distanced himself from Burnside and Dunham’s ugly and offensive remarks. He should have disowned them. He should have condemned them. But he didn’t because he couldn’t. There are hundreds more Burnsides in the Greens, all clamouring to impose their anti-Israel policy on an Albanese government should Labor win the next election. Bandt doesn’t dare cross them, and may well agree with them.

Bingo. Ten out of ten. Get that man a big see-gar.

But there’s more. Bandt himself has form in anti-Semitic Tweeting. Like this deleted Der Sturmer-style shocker from just three years ago drawing on the vilest old “Jewish banker” tropes.

“La di da di da,” Adam?

The Greens leader needs to make a real apology.

Perhaps a censure motion in either the House of Representatives or the Senate would give the Greens a well-needed wake-up call — and the electorate and much of the media a well-needed reminder of what an ugly, extremist, ratbag, ragtag crew they are.
After HRC Complaint, CBC Broadcasts Munich Massacre Moment of Silence
On August 6, HonestReportng Canada (HRC) exposed how instead of covering the historic tribute of the 11 Israeli athletes who were murdered by the Palestinian terror group Black September at the 1972 Munich Olympics, CBC elected to go to commercial break at the opening ceremonies, rather than covering this important memorial.

As we noted in our alert, not only did this show bad judgement on the part of the CBC, it dishonoured the memories of the 11 Israeli athletes who were killed 49 years ago, depriving Canadians of seeing this memorial which also served as an important reminder of how Palestinian terrorism is not limited to the Israeli border.

In response to a complaint sent by HRC to CBC Olympics, Executive Producer Chris Irwin wrote:
I appreciate the importance and the significance of my mistake. It was not an editorial choice but a regrettable timing accident. I do plan on bringing this moment back at a time that is fitting during the closing ceremony show when it is appropriate and not underplaying the significance by simply playing it now as sport is front and centre. Thank you for holding us accountable for our broadcasting responsibility. We began making plans on how to correct this when it happened. And I hope you respect that we will do so.

Sincerely, Chris”

Importantly, at the closing ceremonies of the Olympics on August 8, CBC kept to its word and aired a poignant and touching tribute to the slain Israeli athletes, which by CBC’s own acknowledgement was an act of terrorism.
BBC Arabic journalists remove posts from Twitter and Facebook
A post by CAMERA Arabic

In June, we documented a series of Facebook and Twitter comments by BBC Arabic journalists, who – by sharing views about Jews and Israel that cannot be considered “impartial” – breached the corporation’s social media guidance. Less than two months later, some of those comments have been removed from the platforms.

BBC Arabic correspondents in Beirut, Ramallah and London – Abbas Srour, Eman Eriqat and Deena Mustafa – manually deleted all of their problematic Twitter comments in question.

Sometime during the same period, BBC Arabic special correspondent Feras Kilani deleted a tweet that we documented last April in which he suggested that Israel’s existence somehow stands between him and supposed property rights that he had heard about from his grandmother (“and I believe her”).

BBC Amman correspondent Layla Bashar al-Kloub removed from public view almost all of her problematic Twitter and Facebook comments from the time she was a BBC employee, i.e. since October 2020. This includes a tweet praising the “exquisite journalism” of Holocaust denier Muna Hawwa and a Nakba Day tweet in which she stated that a million Pieds-Noirs leaving independent Algeria to return to Europe in the 1960s and 1970s is “a lesson” that history dictates “to us and you”, implying it should and will also apply to Israeli Jews. Al-Kloub still kept the following 2016 comment from the time she was an independent journalist:
“The Zionist entity does not recognize any international law or agreement, their entire [legal] proceedings are infringements of human rights treaties. They are the terrorists, not us”

BBC contributor Abla Kandalaft deleted three tweets. In one, she criticized an Israeli civilian for reporting that he was under fire (“shameful to request any sympathy”). In another she ridiculed the Israel coverage of the BBC itself and in the third, she was pleased to see the turnout for a protest featuring MP Zara Sultana.
French prosecutors open probe into antisemitic sign raised at anti-vaccine rally
French prosecutors opened an investigation Sunday into a “sign with a clearly antisemitic message” brandished during an anti-vaccination demonstration against COVID-19 restrictions a day earlier in the city of Metz.

The demonstration against the introduction of a public health pass gathered 3,800 people on Saturday, according to the police.

A photo posted on social media showed a woman holding up a sign bearing the names of several politicians, businessmen and intellectuals, some of whom are Jews.

The sign’s headline said: “But who?” in an apparent reference to a June interview given by retired general Daniel Delawarde to the CNEWS TV network, in which he was asked “who controls the media?” and answered: “The community you know well.”

The sign also says “Traitors!!!” and then lists a series of names, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Hungarian Jewish billionaire George Soros, Jewish intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy, World Economic Forum Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab and French-Israeli telecom magnate Patrick Drahi.
Hundreds attend Jewish solidarity march in Alaska
Hundreds of people marched in solidarity with the Jewish community of Alaska last week, after a hate crime occurred several months ago when an unknown person posted a swastika sticker in the middle of the night on the Jewish Museum building located inside the Chabad Jewish campus in Alaska.

The solidarity march was combined with a dedication ceremony for a new Torah scroll belonging to the campus Chabad.

Alaska Representative Dan Sullivan (R), participated in the march, as well as Dave Branson, mayor of Anchorage, the largest city in the state. The senator and mayor both reiterated their support for the Jewish community and said that the hate crime went against the values of the state of Alaska, calling for solidarity with the Jewish community.

Sullivan commented on the march, saying that there has been a "stream of love and concern from thousands of Alaskans who have expressed endless conversations, emails, and letters of solidarity and support for the Jewish community."

Among those who attended the event were Jewish teens from summer camps across New York and New Jersey.

Rabbi Yossi and Esti Greenberg, founders of the Alaskan campus Chabad and the Jewish Museum in Alaska spoke about the positive impact they hoped their protest could create.
Israeli law school journal No. 3 in world in human rights, beats Harvard
The College of Law and Business international law journal has finished third in the world in the human rights category of the 2020 American W&L Law Journal Rankings, narrowly beating out Harvard Law School which finished fourth.

Only Columbia University Law School and Georgetown University Law School finished ahead of the journal, which is formally known as the Law & Ethics of Human Rights journal.

Moshe Cohen Eliya, the president of the Ramat Gan-based law school, recounted that around 20 years ago when he returned to Israel after a post-doctorate at Harvard, he was full of enthusiasm to host a conference on racism and multiculturalism, including publishing a book.

However, Eliya said he was encouraged by legal scholar Eyal Benvenisti to be far more ambitious by starting an international law journal on human rights.

Also, he credited Prof. Gila Stopler, the college's dean, who he said took over the reins from him in 2013 in leading the efforts of the journal to its current highs.

The law school also had a third place finish in the world among 600 non-US law journals in terms of the expected impact of the articles. In that competition, it beat out the European Journal of International Law.
BUFF Becomes Israel’s First Publicly Traded Gaming Company
Israeli company BUFF Technologies has become the first local gaming company to be listed for trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. The company announced on Sunday that it raised over NIS 30 million (approximately $9.3 million) from various investors. The company’s three founders and controlling shareholders are Elay de-Beer, Ophir Gertner and Ophir Sarapi. The IPO was led by Value Base Underwriting.

BUFF’s platform was designed for gamers (eSports) and it supports and works with some of the most famous games in the world: Fortnite, Counter Strike, League of Legends, Rocket League and more. The company is involved in a collaboration agreement with Overwolf, the Israeli gaming startup that developed a plug-in platform for computer games, and that recently raised $52 million. The platform identifies the achievements of the players in various games, rewarding players and allowing them to earn “Buff Points,” which can then be used for real-world purchases.

“We thank investors for expressing their confidence and seeing the IPO as an important milestone in the company’s development,” said de-Beer, CEO at BUFF. “The global gaming market is huge and is continuing to grow rapidly. It is in our strategy to continue with the accelerated growth in our activities, alongside expanding business collaborations, constantly improving our technology and increasing marketing and distribution activities.”

Another company to announce the completion of its IPO on the TASE was Jungo Connectivity. The company raised NIS 27 million ($11.50 million) in a book building IPO of shares to institutional investors and in a Dutch auction to the public, based on a company value of NIS 247.5 million ($76.7 million).

The company, established in 2013, develops AI-based software that uses in-cabin cameras and computer vision algorithms to monitor and analyze the driver’s alertness and readiness.
Of 600,000 Israelis who received 3rd dose, fewer than 50 reported side effects
Of the first 600,000 or so Israelis who received a third dose of the coronavirus vaccine, fewer than 50 reported experiencing side effects, the Health Ministry said Monday evening.

The symptoms reported were all mild — such as pain at the injection site, fever and nausea — and passed quickly, the ministry said in a statement.

The government is still in its early stages of distributing the booster shots, and only a select number of groups such as immunocompromised Israelis, healthcare staff and those over 60 are currently eligible to receive a third dose.

Officials have been trying to encourage Israelis to receive the shots in the hope that a critical mass of vaccinations in the coming weeks could avert a national lockdown to stem the spread of the ultra-contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus.

Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman was the latest senior official to speak out Monday against imposing a nationwide lockdown. No senior official has voiced their support for the extreme measure at this stage, and health officials insist that the goal is to avoid imposing it. However, some have said that it may be inevitable if case numbers continue to rise.

Liberman, in a briefing with reporters, said that the goal of keeping the economy functioning in the midst of the pandemic is not a new challenge and that “we have to make an effort and do everything we can to prevent a lockdown.”
COVID: 90% of patients treated with new Israeli drug discharged in 5 days
Some 93% of 90 coronavirus serious patients treated in several Greek hospitals with a new drug developed by a team at Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center as part of the Phase II trial of the treatment were discharged in five days or fewer.

The Phase II trial confirmed the results of Phase I, which was conducted in Israel last winter and saw 29 out of 30 patients in moderate to serious condition recover within days.

“The main goal of this study was to verify that the drug is safe,” Prof. Nadir Arber said. “To this day we have not registered any significant side effect in any patient from both groups.”

The trial was conducted in Athens because Israel did not have enough relevant patients. The principal investigator was Greece’s coronavirus commissioner, Prof. Sotiris Tsiodras.

Arber and his team, including Dr. Shiran Shapira, developed the drug based on a molecule that the professor has been studying for 25 years called CD24, which is naturally present in the body.

“It is important to remember that 19 out of 20 COVID-19 patients do not need any therapy,” Arber said. “After a window of five to 12 days, some 5% of the patients start to deteriorate.”

The main cause of the clinical deterioration is an over activation of the immune system, also known as a cytokine storm. In case of COVID-19 patients, the system starts attacking healthy cells in the lungs.

“This is exactly the problem that our drug targets,” he said.
Israel Sends Firefighters & Help to Greece amid Wildfires
Crews battling blazes on island of Evia as wildfires burn uncontrolled for a sixth day

Hundreds of Greek firefighters fought desperately Sunday to control wildfires on the island of Evia that have charred vast areas of pine forest, destroyed homes and forced tourists and locals to flee.

Blazes also raged in the Peloponnese region in the southwest, but fires in a northern suburb of Athens have subsided.







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