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Friday, December 10, 2021

12/10 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Double standard of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia; Why Josephus Matters; AOC goes full Jeremy Corbyn; Guardian corrects egregious error about Texas anti-BDS law

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Double standard of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia
An assumption of just such moral equivalence was on display in the BBC report of the London bus attack. Even if its journalists genuinely thought they heard an anti-Muslim slur on the video, they nevertheless recklessly failed to verify such an explosive claim before transmitting it.

Their reasoning became clear from an interview with one of the journalists involved, who said that his team “thought it important to reflect there was abuse going both ways.”

In other words, they thought they needed to demonstrate a notion of balance. Yet it is only where an anti-Semitic attack is concerned that the BBC seems to think balance involves diminishing the significance of the attack by suggesting that its victims were morally culpable in some way.

Moreover, the BBC report involved a further double standard—for it described the visibly anti-Semitic attack as merely “allegations,” while the alleged anti-Muslim smear was presented as fact.

The West in general has a problem with acknowledging anti-Semitism. There are various reasons for this.

Unable to cope with the fact that the Holocaust took place in the epicenter of high European culture, the West tries to bury the persistent evidence that much of it still has an innate prejudice against the Jewish people.

Although the anti-Semitic far-right exists, much of today’s anti-Semitism comes from the left, which assumes itself to be the acme of virtue and therefore incapable of bad things, and from Muslims, whom the left deem to be victims and therefore incapable of bad things.

Moreover, admitting the enormity of anti-Semitism within the Muslim world would shatter the fiction Western liberals believe as unchallengeable truth that, in the Middle East, the Jews of Israel are human-rights abusers while Palestinian Muslims are their victims.

The worst reason of all is that those who think that claims of anti-Semitism are exaggerated do so because they believe that the Jews really do dominate the world through money, media and politics, and try to manipulate it in their own interests.

In other words, the double standard used to minimize or deny anti-Semitism is itself further evidence of the anti-Jewish feeling that so frighteningly continues to poison the West.
Thomas Mann’s Philo-Semitism and Colm Toibin’s Thomas Mann
In January 1934, the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior revoked the novelist Thomas Mann’s German citizenship, in part, because of his membership in the ‘German Committee Pro Palestine’ (‘Deutsches Komitee Pro Palästina’) and his support for its main goal, to sponsor the settlement of Jews in Palestine. Shalom Goldman, Professor of Religion at Middlebury College, is an avid reader of both Thomas Mann and Colm Toibin, the author of The Magician, a new novel about Mann. Goldman explains his disappointment with the novel.

I have been reading and rereading Thomas Mann’s Joseph novels for over half a century. Like many others educated in the Yeshiva tradition, I delighted in Mann’s use of midrashim, the legends that supplement the spare narratives of the Bible. Mann accessed these legends through his own research, and through a network of European Jewish scholars he cultivated before he set to work on what would eventually be his four volume 1500-page magnum opus on Joseph – a quartet of books he dubbed his ‘pyramids.’

And I have been reading and admiring Colm Toibin’s novels – including The Master, his novel about Henry James – for over a decade. So it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to reading Toibin’s new novel about Thomas Mann, The Magician. Before its publication in September, I reread some of my favorite sections of the Joseph books, as well as all of The Magic Mountain, another Mann classic that has been a constant companion. I also looked again into a number of the excellent biographies of Mann that have appeared since his death in 1955, and it is these biographies that Toibin acknowledges in a note at the end of the novel, giving pride of place to Anthony Heilbut’s Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature, published in 1996.

Thomas Mann (1878-1955) was one of the great literary figures of the Twentieth Century. He wrote short stories, novels, and essays and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929.

Mann opposed the Nazis early on, left Germany when they rose to power, and used his considerable energies to oppose them.
Why Josephus Matters
If we leave biblical and New Testament authors out of the frame, Flavius Josephus (37–100+ CE) was the most consequential ancient writer in the West. This claim is not provable by statistics, but a process of elimination supports it. Plato was big, Aristotle too. Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius had their admirers, and every literate Roman knew Cicero and Livy. But Christian Crusaders did not take Plato into battle in the Holy Land. Thucydides was not rewritten in Latin and Hebrew versions, as Josephus was, amplifying his already huge impact. From the first to the twenty-first centuries, Josephus’ work has mattered to more people and more consistently than any other non-biblical text.

Does that mean that he should matter now? Nothing simply matters. Classical music, stock prices, and American politics matter to some but not others. Things that mattered to us when we were twenty might not at forty or sixty. To ask why Josephus matters is to ask, first, why he has mattered, and second, why he might matter from now on, which is not the same thing.

It is only worth discussing Josephus’ mattering if we know something of his life and writings. When he was born in Jerusalem (37 CE), to a member of the priestly caste named Mattityahu, an older brother had already scooped the father’s name and so he was called Yoseph, after a grandfather. Furnished with the gold-plated education enjoyed by Jerusalem’s elite, in both Hebrew and Greek literature, young Yoseph must have stood out. When he was just twenty-six, the city elders dispatched him on a delicate mission to Nero’s Rome. His task: to liberate three fellow-priests being held by the emperor. Nero, though he had already ruled for a decade, was only Yoseph’s age. After surviving a deadly shipwreck, Yoseph succeeded in his mission by scoring an introduction to Nero’s wife Poppaea. She won over her volatile husband, who had recently killed his mother and would soon dispatch her.

When Yoseph returned to Jerusalem, in 65/66 CE, he was distressed to find the city in commotion. Nero had recently sent a new official to coastal Caesarea with instructions to extract large sums from Jerusalem’s world-famous temple, using his locally recruited auxiliary force to crush any resistance. We cannot explore Nero’s reasons (his officials elsewhere had the same orders), or the origins of the war that this ignited in Judea. Suffice it to say that the common image of Judeans long struggling under oppressive imperial rule is hard to sustain. In Josephus’ view, Jerusalem had until then been the happiest of all cities under Roman rule. Now he conveys a universal sense of shock, grievance, and humiliation at the latest moves. But what to do about them? Although we have nothing to check it against, his portrayal of the range of responses sounds plausible. Some desperately armed themselves for protection. Indignant younger priests demanded the exclusion of foreigners from the city. Many prominent elders who had worked with the ruling consensus counseled patience and relentless diplomacy. Eventually, charismatic militants would enter the city with armed followers, in deadly conflict with each other.


Mark Regev: Understanding the Israel-Poland standoff over the Holocaust
Throughout the period of Nazi rule, all too many Poles either demonstrated an indifference to the plight of their Jewish neighbors or identified with the antisemitic policies of the Germans. There are multifold documented cases of Jews who managed to escape ghettos and camps only to be turned over to the Germans by Polish citizens, who despite knowing what the Nazis were doing, thought that Jews deserved neither their assistance nor protection.

The communist regime installed by the Red Army after the Second World War was also not free of antisemitism. Despite the commonly held prejudice of Jews being Marxists and agents of Soviet subjugation, popular antisemitism was nonetheless exploited by the unpopular Polish communist government in an effort to strengthen its legitimacy. In 1967, Jews were purged from leadership positions, and in 1968-69 the Polish authorities launched a state-wide antisemitic campaign.

Jews correctly point to the ubiquitous presence of antisemitism throughout modern Polish history, a phenomenon that undoubtedly affected the behavior of many Poles during the terrible years from 1939 to 1945. At the same time, Poland declares the Holocaust to be an imported crime, carried out by the German invaders after Polish independence had been crushed and the Polish people enslaved.

If there is to be a diplomatic solution to the Jerusalem-Warsaw face-off, it may be found in a formula that includes both Israeli recognition that Poland was a victim of Nazi aggression and Poland’s acknowledgment that numerous Poles either actively or passively collaborated in the mass murder of the Jews.

Of late, there have been some modest signs of a change in the downward Israel-Poland spiral; the recent return of the chargé d’affaires to Israel’s Warsaw embassy indicating the possibility of movement in a more positive direction.

Last month the Polish leadership expressed outrage at the disgraceful events in the city of Kalisz, where hundreds of ultra-Right demonstrators chanted “Death to Jews.” If official Poland can denounce present-day expressions of anti-Jewish bigotry, it is not illogical to expect the Polish government to likewise condemn past manifestations of Polish antisemitism.

Ultimately, just as Poland justifiably takes pride in its Righteous Among the Nations, it needs to take responsibility for and cease denying the existence of Poles whose wartime behavior was less than commendable.
Holocaust manipulation: Do not defile their memory
Given its unprecedented and total nature, the Holocaust is considered by many as the most extreme form of genocide on the continuum of crimes against humanity.

In the words of historian Dr. David Silberklang: “The very goal itself – a state plan to annihilate an entire people without exception, not to leave a single Jew alive under any circumstances – is what makes the Holocaust unique.”

As a result, “The Holocaust has become the ‘master narrative’ for suffering, shaping discussions about every present conflict over genocide and human rights,” as one writer noted.

Precisely because of this, sadly, the Holocaust has been the object of distortion for partisan political purposes from across the political spectrum. In fact, the Far Right and Far Left are equal opportunity offenders.

Those on the far right, are more likely to outright deny the Holocaust or wish for it to happen again (sometimes in the same breath, ignoring the obvious contradiction).

Those on the far left are more likely to claim that attention to the Holocaust obscures the suffering of other minorities or equate the Jewish state, Israel, with Nazi Germany.

Just last week, a Dutch far-left party called for cancelling the Netherlands’ main Holocaust commemoration ceremony, saying it’s “inherently racist."
Matti Friedman: The New Bitcoin
For people of my disposition, the financial news is a blur in the background: a graph in the newspaper, a ticker with ominous acronyms, a smattering of words like “fiscal,” which have an effect equivalent to two Ambiens and a shot of rum. The economy is kind of like the molten lava at the Earth’s core. It’s there, apparently roiling and occasionally spurting through the surface, but it seems useless to think much about it.

But this is one of the times we probably should: The shekel has risen to historic heights in a dramatic moment for Israelis, our bank accounts, businesses, and travel plans. A consideration of our currency and its checkered biography seems warranted, from its days in the financial doghouse to its present life in the penthouse with coins like the strapping, ruddy-cheeked, oil-fueled Norwegian krone. The rise of the Israeli shekel isn’t a fluke, and it’s more than a business story.

It wasn’t too long ago that a dollar could easily buy four shekels—in fact, there was a time when a dollar could buy 1,630 shekels (more on that below)—but as I write these lines the dollar is struggling, incredibly, to buy a measly three. The dollars in my bank account are worth a fifth less in shekels than they were last March, and the same trend affects my parents’ pensions and what I’ll get from Tablet for writing this column. American currency has always played an important role in the emotional life of Israelis, who used to hoard dollars under floor tiles. Serious business was done in dollars, which were like that stable guy who’d always be there for you. Our own colorful shekel notes, by contrast, were like the high-strung friend you hung out with but wouldn’t trust with your car.

We say that a dollar’s a dollar, but actually currencies are complex creatures not to be taken for granted, and they’re often unintentionally revealing about the place where they’re minted. The sturdy dollar, for example, was once only one of about 10,000 kinds of paper circulating as legal currency in the United States, not including countless fakes; before the Civil War, banks printed their own money, and so did the Mormons, Young’s Hotel in Boston, and a church in Schenectady, New York. In his book about that era, A Nation of Counterfeiters, Stephen Mihm makes the case that at the time America itself was a counterfeit country, unable to impose order or sovereignty. When currency was finally unified and brought under control, it marked a change in the way Americans thought about themselves. The dollar, in other words, says something deep about America. What does the shekel say about us?
US lawmaker who ran to represent marginalized in Bronx finds himself talking Hebron
Few lawmakers in Congress have had their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more scrutinized than Jamaal Bowman.

The freshman representative of New York’s 16th District has sought to stake a unique position, supporting US aid to Israel and opposing the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement while harshly criticizing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and co-sponsoring legislation barring American assistance to Israel from being used for various IDF activities in the West Bank.

But the relatively nuanced approach has not won Bowman lots of friends. Pro-Israel America PAC and Democratic Majority for Israel spent millions against the 45-year-old ex-middle school teacher in the 2020 election that saw Bowman primary the district’s longtime representative Elliot Engel. On the other side, local chapters of Democratic Socialists of America across the US have called to have Bowman’s membership and endorsement stripped over his views on BDS, support for replenishment of Israel’s Iron Dome and a trip to Israel and the West Bank that he took last month with the dovish pro-Israel lobby J Street.

But what may be most surprising about Bowman’s engagement with the lightning rod issue is that it wasn’t what he came to Congress to focus on. The Times of Israel spoke with sources in Bowman’s office as well as those he’s recently worked with in various capacities who told the story of a lawmaker who is much more driven by domestic issues.

“He ran to represent the most marginalized children in the Bronx and Westchester,” said one associate familiar with Bowman’s thinking, who added that the congressman’s significant engagement with the issue “was never the plan.”

“Every time he opens his mouth on Israel-Palestine, no matter what he says, it causes a storm. He hates it,” said a Democratic aide in another office that works closely with Bowman’s office.
AOC goes full Jeremy Corbyn
For a party whose members hear supposed racial dog whistles in even the most mundane language, it’s amazing Democrats never seem to notice their own actual dog whistles.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York went full Jeremy Corbyn this week in defense of a fellow New York House Representative, Jamaal Bowman, who has been targeted by the Democratic Socialists of America for being insufficiently committed to the cause of Palestine.

Bowman, whose district is heavily Jewish, “has been an incredible champion [for Palestine] given the community that he’s in,” Ocasio-Cortez told Politico this week.

Well, this is subtle!

Bowman, the latest addition to the so-called “squad,” is in hot water with far-left agitators because he agreed to meet with Israeli leaders. The congressman, who won his election thanks to strong support from the DSA, has also irked left-wingers with his vote to fund the Iron Dome, a purely defensive system that blocks terrorists' missiles from hitting civilian populations.

Bowman's recent praise for J Street, the liberal answer to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, did not win him any friends on the far Left, either.

“For the Democratic Socialists of America, under whose banner Bowman launched his political career — knocking off a pro-Israel Democratic incumbent last year — it was three strikes and you’re out,” Politico reports .

The report adds, “DSA's working group on Palestine is now pushing for the broader organization to expel Bowman over Israel. On Thursday, DSA's national political committee said it wouldn’t push Bowman out but chastised him and said it wouldn't endorse his reelection absent certain conditions.”

Meanwhile, Bowman’s allies point to his recent criticisms of the Israeli government’s handling of the West Bank.
Why Did the JDA Exonerate David Miller?
A few months ago, I described the David Miller controversy as the JDA's "test case": would it ever be used to declare a contested case of commentary on "Zionism" to be antisemitic, or would it only be used to level "not guilty" verdicts? Shortly thereafter, it was revealed that an internal investigation by the University of Bristol into Miller's antisemitism had entirely exonerated him -- largely relying on the JDA to do so. The JDA cried vindication.

Now, two signatories of the JDA -- Yair Wallach and David Feldman (the latter is a JDA co-author) -- have written to explain why they think that was incorrect and a misapplication of JDA. They make reasonable arguments for why Miller's conduct should have been viewed as antisemitic under the JDA framework. However, they observe, a definition is only as good as those applying it -- Labour, after all, didn't become instantly free of antisemitism simply after adopting IHRA. The JDA, too -- any definition, really -- can only be so resistant against interpreters determined to see no evil.

This is a fair point. But I think a little more reflection is needed. Reading Wallach and Feldman, one might get the sense that the exoneration of Miller was simply a matter of bad luck: the university picked the wrong actor to conduct its internal inquiry, who did a bad job reading the JDA and so came to incorrect conclusions. A better reader who exhibited more careful, lawyerly interpretive skills would have come to the right conclusion: that Miller was, under the JDA framework, antisemitic.

I agree that texts alone will provide only moderate, if any, constraints on poor reading. And I agree that the JDA, fairly read, very much can provide support for why Miller was antisemitic. But Wallach and Feldman do not grapple with the cultural meaning of JDA which I think clearly is germane to why it was used, as its critics predicted it would be, as a tool of exculpation.

As a cultural phenomenon, JDA was introduced to the world as a corrective against the overzealous labeling of things as antisemitic. The "problem" JDA was there to correct was the presumed assumption by IHRA and its adherents that "criticism of Israel is antisemitic"; it corrected this (among other ways) by sharply delinking "Jewishness" and "Zionism" and declaring itself a sentinel against their wrongful conflation. In a real sense, the JDA was less concerned about protecting Jews from antisemitism than it was protecting non-Jews from being (wrongfully) accused of antisemitism. It's not that the former wasn't important, but the latter was what JDA believed was missing from antisemitism discourse and addressing that problem was accordingly the document's value-added. Nearly all of the JDA's marketing and public reception centered around this function, and it was accordingly taken up as the standard by people whose primary orientation towards antisemitism is that of Bruce Robbins: "The real issue here is anti-Semitism; that is, accusing people of it."


Toronto School Board Trustee Who Denounced Antisemitic Materials ‘Vindicated’ After Vote to Reject Censure
In a vote hailed as a “vindication” by Canadian Jewish groups, a Toronto school board rejected on Wednesday night an effort to censure a Jewish member who was accused of Islamophobia after she denounced antisemitism.

The Toronto District School Board had launched an investigation of trustee Alexandra Lulka after she reviewed unapproved teacher’s manuals about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict distributed by equity advisor Javier Davila, and tweeted that their content was “virulently anti-Israel and even antisemitic” and justifying of “suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism.”

The TDSB Human Rights Office (HRO) initially found that the materials “could reasonably be considered to contain antisemitic material, references, or allusions,” and that resources they linked to could “support the use of violence and terrorism against Israeli Jews.” In particular, it cited links to the website of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and interviews with known terrorists.

But on May 21, Davila complained, prompting TDSB to investigate Lulka for harassment, improper influencing of an investigation, and defamation of a TDSB employee. Despite clearing Lulka of those charges, the TDSB Integrity Commission nonetheless accused her of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bigotry, recommending that she be censured by the TDSB Board of Trustees.
London university students ban Jews, whites from meeting
Jews and white people were banned from a student meeting at Goldsmiths, University of London, that discussed “defending Palestine”.

The meeting last month, which was strictly limited to students who were “African, Arab, Asian, Caribbean and other black communities”, was part of an effort by pro-Palestine activists to use a student strike against job cuts at the university to campaign for their cause.

On the first day of the strike, which began in November, an advertisement for “Palestinian liberation” was shared online while Palestine flags and banners appeared on the picket line.

This was despite the fact that the protest was actually against plans to make staff at the university redundant.

One speaker at the rally was filmed praising “solidarity with the UCU (University and College Union) and the ongoing commitment to the Palestinian cause”.

She then declared her support for the anti-Israel Boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

“The fight for our university workers, and a demilitarised university that opposes apartheid and occupation, instead of funding it, is the same fight,” she said.


Toronto school board takes lunacy to a whole new level
But why stop at two goals when a hat trick beckons? The latest from TDSB concerns its Integrity Commissioner, Suzanne Craig, recommending the censure of one of the board’s own trustees, Alexandra Lulka. Lulka, who is Jewish, had strongly condemned a collection of “resource materials” about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that were distributed to teachers by a student equity program adviser, Javier Davila.

Among the material was a statement that Palestinians “have been legitimately resisting racism, colonization and genocide since the 1920s to the present day by any means necessary: general strikes, demonstrations, armed struggle, and martyrdom operations (called ‘suicide bombing’ by Zionists).”

Davila was initially put on leave but has since returned to his post without discipline.

In a Tweet, Lulka condemned the material as being “virulently anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic.”

“I was outraged to discover that some of this material justifies suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism,” she tweeted. “This is reprehensible. These materials were provided by an employee from the TDSB equity department, the very department that should be countering anti-Semitism and violence, not fanning the flames.”

Craig recommended Lulka be censured for her remarks, despite conceding that some of the distributed material was indeed anti-Semitic. Which was, when you give extensive thought to it, what the trustee so strongly objected to in the first place. The commissioner then assumed the role of trustee adviser, offering that Lulka “could have carefully crafted a statement to call out the potentially harmful materials while appropriately characterizing other materials as important, positive pro-Palestinian discourse.”

Well, if gratuitous advice is being offered on what Lulka could have done on seeing the anti-Semitic material — she could have gone for a walk, or taken up macramé or translating Proust. The subjunctive is a strange tense for an investigator. And why Lulka should be criticized for not highlighting “pro-Palestinian discourse” while warning of anti-Semitism (beware the term “discourse,” it’s a shadow word for committed activists), is a puzzle.

The TDSB is a world of its own — casual about anti-Israel remarks, absorbed in every progressive version of “right thinking” and political correctness. If it would offer half as much energy to actual teaching, to English and mathematics, as it does to matters completely out of its scope, and far beyond its competence, a lot of Toronto parents would be much better disposed towards it.
Exclusive interview with Miss South Africa: I had to visit Israel
“If I had not come to Israel to compete in the Miss Universe pageant, I think I would have regretted it for the rest of my life,” said Lalela Mswane, who won the Miss South Africa pageant and then defied the South African government, which pressured her to boycott the contest, because it is being held in Israel. She spoke in an interview on Thursday night, in between rehearsals for the pageant’s musical numbers, breaking her silence about the pressure she has faced.

The pageant will take place on December 12 in Eilat and will be broadcast around the world. This is the first time it has been held in Israel. “My soul would not have been at peace if I had skipped it,” said Mswane, a law-school graduate, model and dancer. A devout Catholic, she said that she was moved when she visited the Old City of Jerusalem with the other contestants, especially the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where she felt “calmness and a sense of renewal.”

This feeling of calmness was particularly welcome because the 24-year-old who became Miss South Africa in October has been in the eye of a storm of controversy since she won the title. The South African government’s arts and culture ministry came into conflict with the organizers of the South African pageant after the government called for Mswane to boycott, citing Israeli “atrocities against Palestinians.”

South Africa has downgraded its diplomatic relations with Israel in recent years and withdrawn its ambassador. South African politicians released statements calling on Mswane to boycott, describing Israel as an “apartheid regime” and questioning how any South African could choose to participate in an event held in the country. The government withdrew its support, although the national pageant continued to back her.

Stephanie Weil, CEO of the Miss South Africa organization, wrote on Instagram: “Lalela will be a role model to young women – not just across the country, but across the African continent. Anyone who wants to rob Lalela of her moment in the spotlight is unkind and short-sighted.”
New Jersey Pulling $182M in Unilever Stock After Investigation Into Ben & Jerry’s West Bank Boycott
New Jersey will pull its $182 million in Unilever stocks and bonds after a three-month preliminary investigation found that the company’s subsidiary, Ben & Jerry’s, engaged in a boycott of “Israeli-controlled” territories against state law.

State officials said that Unilever, whose US headquarters is located in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, did not appeal the findings of the preliminary investigation, the NorthJersey news site reported.

“The Division of Investment did not receive a response from Unilever within the 90-day window, and therefore the provisional determination of ineligibility for Unilever became final on Dec. 1,” New Jersey Department of Treasury spokesperson Danielle Currie said in a statement. “The Division has placed the company on its prohibited investment list. It is now looking at next steps to appropriately divest existing Unilever plc holdings in accordance with the statute.”

A state law in effect since 2016 prohibits state pension or annuity funds from investing in “any company that boycotts the goods, products, or businesses of Israel, boycotts those doing business with Israel, or boycotts companies operating in Israel or Israeli-controlled territory.”

More than 30 states have similar anti-boycott laws — including New York, Arizona, Illinois and Florida — and several have also taken action to sell shares in Unilever, following Ben & Jerry’s announcement in July that it would stop selling its products in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem because it was “inconsistent with our values.”

New Jersey officials warned Unilever in September that it would divest pension funds from the company in light of Ben & Jerry’s decision.


Guardian corrects egregious error about Texas anti-BDS law
As blogger Elder of Ziyon first revealed, a Guardian article on the impact of Texas anti-BDS legislation on a Palestinian-American egregiously misrepresented the law. The piece (‘I thought I was a free man’: the engineer fighting Texas’s ban on boycotting Israel, Dec. 7), written by the outlet’s digital producer and reporter Erum Salam, included the claim, in the strap line and text, that the bill bans individuals from boycotting Israel.

It also includes a misleading caption, under the photo of the ‘victim’ of Texas’s BDS law, reinforcing the broader suggestion that the law prevents individuals from making consumer decisions based on their personal politics.

Rasmy Hassouna: ‘If I don’t want to buy anything at WalMart, who are you to tell me not to shop at WalMart?’

However, as the text of the bill makes clear, the bill only bars companies that wish to do business with the state from participating in the boycott of Israel.
Further, it only impacts companies with more than 10 employees, and contracts worth more than $100,000. Individuals, who enjoy constitutionally guaranteed free speech protections, are not impacted by the bill.

We contacted Guardian editors about the error, and they upheld our complaint – revising the relevant sentences and adding the following addendum:
BBC interviews ‘we love death’ activist on tackling Jew-hate
The BBC has interviewed an Islamic activist who has stood beside Palestinian flags and declared that he “loves death”, asking for his views on beating Jew-hate for a documentary on antisemitism.

Mohammed Hijab, who has more than half-a-million subscribers on YouTube, was asked by journalist Tom Brada how to “promote a sense of harmony between different communities, specifically with the Jewish community”.

He replied that the answer lay in “bringing people together”, though he emphasised that “if someone who is an apologist for Israel or Zionism, that should be delineated from Jewishness”.

In an outtake of the interview for British, Jewish: Is Anti-Semitism on the Rise?, which was broadcast last Friday, the BBC journalist said he “completely agrees” with Mr Hijab’s statement.

In May, at a London rally against Israel’s operation against Hamas, Mr Hijab shouted through a megaphone: “The difference between us and them is that for them, they think life begins. For us, we believe that death begins. We believe that life begins at death. We don’t care about death. We love death.”

The activist repeated similar sentiments in a speech he delivered topless outside the Chinese embassy in November, while the crowd shouted “Allahu Akbar”.




Berlin Jews Face ‘Background Noise’ of Daily Antisemitism, Says German Monitoring Report
Antisemitic incidents in Germany’s capital peaked in the first six months of this year compared to years prior, according to a report published Thursday, fueled mainly by Israel-related hatred and protests against coronavirus measures.

A total of 522 antisemitic outrages were registered in Berlin from January to June, showing an increase of about 17 percent year-on-year, according a report by RIAS, a Berlin-based monitoring institute.

The number was the highest since 2018. On average, there were almost three antisemitic incidents a day during the period, with almost half of the incidents (211) recorded during the month of May hostilities between Israel and the Hamas terror group.

“Every antisemitic act is one too many,” commented Samuel Salzborn, antisemitism commissioner for Berlin. “We need to aim to have no more antisemitic incidents. Unfortunately, we are far away from being there.”

Salzborn said that the latest RIAS study makes one point particularly clear: “antisemitic incidents pile up when people find excuses to justify their hatred.”

“This was most recently visible in the context of the ideological conspiracist ‘Querdenken’ scene, and during the anti-Israel demonstrations in the spring,” he continued, referring to the right-wing political group. “We have to keep these structures of opportunity for antisemitic expressions and deeds more closely in mind earlier on and not allow them to become antisemitic hotspots in the first place.”
No Let-Up to ‘Epidemic’ of Antisemitism in Australian City of Melbourne
Dozens of handwritten antisemitic leaflets have been delivered to homes in a suburb of the Australian city of Melbourne promoting the classic conspiracy theory of Jewish control over world events.

Photocopies of the leaflet, neatly written out in upper case letters, were placed in residents’ mailboxes in the Melbourne suburb of Pakenham, the Australian Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) — a Jewish civil rights organization — reported on Friday.

The leaflet exhorted readers not to trust the Australian government because “Jews hang in the background using their freemason puppets to push their agendas.”

It went on to claim that “all celebrity suicides are induced by Jews” who will “even attack selected people within society that spread truth about their tactics and agendas.”

The leaflet used the pejorative “Jew flu” to describe the COVID-19 pandemic, “which is all about spreading fear whilst obtaining more power and control over the population.”

Dvid Abramovich, the ADC’s CEO, said that the appearance of the leaflet demonstrated that the “genie of antisemitism has been unleashed in Australian suburbs.”
Barnes & Noble Profits Off Anti-Semitic, Nazi Literature in the Name of Diversity
In the wake of a CAMERA exposé and communication with CAMERA staff and members, the Target Corporation commendably took swift action to remove two dozen Holocaust-denial and anti-Semitic conspiracy books being sold on the company website. An appeal to Barnes & Noble – which calls itself “The Internet’s Largest Bookstore” – to either remove or appropriately label anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda, however, met with an entirely different response, as B&N chose to continue to profit off the sale of racist hate rhetoric. The book in question (which happens to be only one of other racist books sold through Barnes & Noble) is authored by a notorious Italian anti-Semite, Gian Pio Mattogno (brother of Holocaust denier Carlos Mattogno). Marketed in Italian by B&N under the title “Moralita’ Giudaiche” (“Jewish Morality”), it is self-published on Lulu.com and appears to have come directly from Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher’s archives.

The book’s cover is an anti-Semitic caricature taken directly from the children’s book, Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom) by Ernst Hiemer, that was published in 1938 by Streicher’s Der Sturmer. The rest of the book is based on the anti-Semitic, Nazi tropes about the Talmud and the moral depravity of Jews that was promoted in the children’s book and in other Nazi literature of the time.

But rather than labelling the book as what it is – i.e. Nazi-era incitement against Jews – it is marketed on B&N’s website as the truth about Jews. Its promotional overview states:
“A careful and documented work of exegesis of the hidden profiles of the Jewish Talmud. This study is the fruit of patient research by the nonconformist historian Gian Pio Mattogno. In these pages, the reader will learn of the disturbing profiles of the ethics of Talmudist “pious Jews” who justify and admit foul practices outlawed by all mankind, such as pedophilia, necrophilia, and zoophilia. Abysses of moral depravity that the rabbinical schools have sought for centuries to conceal from the horrified eyes of mankind. A text extensively documented on primary and misunderstood sources from the Jewish Talmud. Disturbing.”

In response to concerns that were raised by CAMERA about the marketing of dangerous, anti-Jewish falsehoods that led to the genocide of Jews, B&N’s customer service responded with boiler-plate platitudes about “diversity of opinion” and “freedom of choice”.
Celtic FC Investigation Stalls 11 Months After Israeli Midfielder Abused Online
A Scottish professional soccer team has so far provided no information about an investigation it vowed to conduct after one of its players faced antisemitic abuse online.

Celtic FC’s Israeli midfielder Nir Bitton, 30, was called a “dirty Jew bastard” and a “Zionist rat” on social media when the team lost a match in January. His wife received messages calling for her and her husband to “be hung,” and hateful comments were also directed at the couple’s two children.

Celtic FC promised to investigate the matter but has so far provided no updates to the public and did not respond to inquiries by The Jewish Chronicle.

FIFA fined the Scottish Football Association $11,000 last month after Israel’s national anthem was booed by Scotland fans at the start of a World Cup qualifier against Israel, which took place at Hampden Park in October. SFA was also sanctioned by FIFA for the “inappropriate use of a flag”—reportedly a Palestinian flag—that was waved by one person at the international match.

Pro-Palestinian activists outside of the stadium held a banner that read “Zionism is racism. Victory to the intifada.” Ahead of the game, one Scottish fan asked on Facebook: “Is it OK to sing ‘We Hate England More Than Jews?’” according to the Chronicle.
10th Flag Football World Championships Touch Down in Israel
Thirty-nine teams from 23 countries around the world gathered in Israel this week for the International Federation of American Football’s (IFAF) 10th Flag Football World Championship, hosted by the American Football in Israel (AFI) organization at the Kraft Family Sports Campus in Jerusalem.

After three days of intense competition, both the USA men’s and women’s national teams took home gold medals, each needing comeback wins in the finals to defeat Team Mexico’s talented men’s and women’s squads, respectively, who both walked away with the silver.

Team Panama reached the podium with a third place finish in the men’s bracket, as the Austrian women’s team joined them by securing a bronze medal as well.

The top eight finishers in both the men’s and women’s divisions automatically qualified for the 2022 World Games in Birmingham, Ala., which features the highest level of competition in non-Olympic sports. It will mark the first time that flag football will be featured at that event. The hope is that flag football will become an official sport in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Summer Games.

Unfortunately for the host country, Israel’s men’s national team, which came into the tournament ranked fifth in the world, finished in ninth place. Israel’s women’s team secured the 12th slot, leaving both teams out of the World Games.

The AFI was relieved that the tournament wasn’t canceled at the last minute, as just days before the Israeli government implemented COVID-19 travel restrictions, essentially banning all non-Israeli citizens from entering the country with limited exceptions.
Yeshiva University Basketball Now Top-Ranked DIII College Team in US, With Record Winning Streak at 47
The basketball team at Yeshiva University in New York City is the top-ranked NCAA Division 3 men’s basketball team in the country, for the first time in the history of the Orthodox Jewish school — and boasts the longest winning streak in all of college basketball.

The Maccabees remain undefeated and have won 47 consecutive games dating back to 2019. The team’s latest win took place on Monday in a matchup against Brooklyn College, 94-48, and their 46th victory happened Saturday night in a 2021 Skyline Basketball Conference matchup over SUNY Old Westbury, 105-77. The Maccabees remain undefeated at 7-0 in conference play.

The NCAA’s Division 3 features typically smaller colleges, and mostly private institutions, while the Skyline Basketball Conference is open to schools in the New York metropolitan area.

“Everything is not just for us, you know, we are playing for a community, and that’s the Jewish community, no matter if they are religious,” Maccabees player Ofek Reef told local NY1 news. “It’s the whole faith of Judaism, so winning a national championship for us would be very important and cement ourselves as one of the greatest Jewish teams ever to play.”

The Maccabees beat Farmingdale State College by a score of 80-66 on Dec. 1 and earlier took home a win against Manhattanville College 78-56 on Nov. 28, during which their shooting guard Ryan Turell scored 51 points, marking a Yeshiva University record.
Professor From Israel Wins Award for Alzheimer’s research
Professor Illana Gozes from Israel’s Tel Aviv University, along with a team of University of Hong Kong researchers, jointly received the 2021 Healthy Longevity Catalyst Awards from the US National Academy of Medicine (NAM) for their work on Alzheimer’s disease.

Gozes collaborated with Professor Victor OK Li and Dr. Jacqueline CK Lam to create an artificial intelligence-led strategy which helps select drug candidates for new Alzheimer’s disease therapies.

The study shows how certain combinations of drug candidates respond to somatic gene mutations that accumulate as humans age.

“This is a great honor for me, and I am delighted that the international community sees fit to invest efforts in promoting solutions to diseases such as Alzheimer’s,” Gozes said, according to a university press release.

“I thank my colleagues from HKU-AI WiSe, the University of Hong Kong, led by Prof. Li and Dr. Lam, for our fruitful collaboration.”

Tel Aviv University is placing a greater emphasis on aging-related research, including the diseases which accompany the process of growing older.
Warner Media picks up Israeli show taking jabs at Prison Service
A comedy about the inner workings of the Israel Prison Service has been picked up by Warner Media for international production, Walla news reported on Tuesday.

The multinational mass media company – the third-largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world, which controls HBO, CNN, and Warner Brothers Pictures – plans to produce an English version of the show, the report said.

The show will air on TNT sometime in 2023.

The brainchild of Eight Productions for the Kan 11 Public Broadcaster, IPS, which has so far aired for two seasons, is set in the imaginary Grapes Prison. The satirical sketch program tells the stories of the guards, inmates, and visitors to the prison.

The show first aired in July 2019 and gained an instant cult following. It features appearances by some of the biggest names in the local entertainment scene.

"This deal is the result of very hard work. We are very proud of all the people who helped make it happen," the production company said.
Salad with whopping 99 ingredients salutes Israeli farmers, agriculture
Can a salad have too many ingredients? Israeli farmers sought to answer that question on Wednesday, making a salad with 99 ingredients, not including spices, and breaking an Israeli record in the process.

Within the framework of the 12th annual Israel Agriculture Summit, every ingredient used to make the salad was produced on an Israeli farm – from the Galilee in the north the Negev Desert in the south.

Noi Hadas, CEO of the Noi HaSadeh food chain, which provided the fruits, vegetables, cheeses, and herbs for the salad, said of the grand salute to Israeli farmers and agriculture: "I'm proud to give a home and a stage to more than 100 farmers from across the country, who safeguard our nutritional security, the country's borders and our health. With this salad, we are displaying the strength of Israeli agriculture – sophisticated, diverse, healthy, and fresh."
Yisrael Medad: And That German Knight Then Visited the Temple Mount (Another, Too)
See my previous post on the book, "The Pilgrimage of Arnold von Harff / Knight / from Cologne, through Italy, Syria, Egypt, Arabia, Ethiopia, Nubia, Palestine, Turkey, France and Spain, which he Accomplished in the years 1496-1499

Starting on page 207.
we came to the Temple of Solomon® which stands one hundred and sixty paces from the temple of Christ. Item, by means of gifts and other friendly help, I was taken by a Mameluke into this temple. But no Christian or Jew is suffered to enter there or draw near, since they say and maintain that we are base dogs, and not worthy to go to the holy places on pain of death, at which I was frightened. But this Mameluke instructed me that if I would go with him one evening, dressed in his manner, he would take me into the Temple, and that if I was recognised I was to reply like a heathen with the words and speech, and to use the words and make the signs which I was forced to use when it happened that I was imprisoned at Gazera, as I have related above, ^ whereupon the heathen would show me honour and suffer me to go, as indeed happened. Item the Mameluke fetched me one evening from the monastery at Mt. Sion and took me to his house, in pretence that I should have spent the night -with him, where he dressed me in the clothes and apparelled me like a Mameluke. Thus we both made our way at evening towards the Temple of Solomon which, by his direction, was opened and forthwith closed so that we should not be crowded: for this I had to give four ducats.
My life as a pro-Israel Bedouin – A fireside chat with Mohammad Kabiya: Episode 38
Mohammad Kabiya has become one of the most outspoken pro-Israel voices in the world today. He is a young Israeli Bedouin from northern Israel who enlisted in the IDF voluntarily in order to give back to his country.

But Mohammad wasn’t satisfied yet. He became an international lecturer, speaking to groups around the world, helping to dispel the most common anti-Israel claims, and with his first-hand experience, he has become a valuable asset to the pro-Israel cause.

We are pleased to welcome Mohammad as our guest this week.







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